Proposing the Feasibility of a Circuit Design Challenge-- What Do You Think?

Hi Randall,

Your idea would be perfect for the progressive type of challenge I suggested last year.

Basically, you make the participants earn the toys piecemeal by showing they have knowledge of the process and are willing work for the good stuff.

I agree with Andy about this not being something that day job engineers would want to do, but to me that is kind of the point.  You do not want "real" engineers involved except as judges and mentors.

I would get a couple of volunteers who come in at the end of each partial challenge to go over the process, assess the presentations, show off the good ones, and then give the challengers another week for rework and resubmittal.

Those that pass go to the next part of the challenge.

Now, if you are going to make the work this hard, you need some really cool prizes as a reward, but I think you could turn this approach into an excellent learning and mentoring challenge.

I would be happy to work with you on setting up a series of "beginning" steps, where we can introduce the challengers to the process, identify the key issues each week, and then let them go off and put their first entries together.

I did something similar when I put a CMMI compliant systems/software engineering training course together about twenty years ago.

You show them what to do, give them an exercise where they try to do it, then you review and discuss, do clean up and get everyone still interested a chance to move onto the next phase.

I think this challenge could be a great enticement for students, makers and newbies.

Just a thought,

DAB

I have to admit I know lots of engineers and students who do not indulge in electronics as a hobby, although I have no idea why not. In fact I know many more technicians, technologists, computer scientists and programmers who do electronics as a hobby than engineers. I know many engineers have lots of equipment and CAD stations at home that almost never gets used.

Generally if you are good at something it pre-disposes you to like doing it, so why wouldn't you want to do it as a hobby?

Having a complementary hobby can make you better and more successful at your day job, so how come it isn't more popular?.

Maybe there is a segment that values Netflix and social media more than other hobbies, but I think there is potential in trying to motivate more engineers as well as everyone else to participate in electronics as a hobby.

I also noticed the same, but I find it kind of "normal". I believe the reason why hobbies and day job usually don't mix well together is the difference in the "driving force" behind them. An hobby is fuelled by passion and love: you want to design "the best" for yourself and you take lots of pride and joy from what you achieve (even when what you achieved is not actually the best possible result). At work, business rules very often force you to accept tough compromises you would not normally make if it was something done as hobby. This is because at work, you are often asked to design something that needs only to be "good enough" to do the job required, so that you can meet project deadlines while remaining within budget, resources that are very limited if you want to make a business successful. On the countrary, with your hobbies, time and money are (almost) never a show-stopper for your pet projects. I personally find switching between those two, almost opposite, approaches to design very hard (disclaimer: I admittedly suffer from the "reinvent-the-wheel" syndrom when it comes to my hobbies ).

Before I was an electronics engineer, electronics was my hobby. Now that I spend 40 or 50 hours a week doing it for a living, it's really hard to motivate myself to spend my limited free time doing the exact same thing. Hobbies generally help us get some space from work - that's why your computer scientists and programmers do it. It's far enough away from their main occupation.

I also find it's hard to do things "properly", and it irritates me. I can't afford to have boards populated just for a home project, so I end up with designs that are a real pain to assemble. Those BGAs and QFNs don't solder themselves. Good equipment is expensive. I would really like to spend some time designing some spectrum analyzer components, but I don't have the test equipment to actually design/build/tune them.

As for the challenge idea itself - it would be hard to balance it. Design engineers would absolutely dominate it. Taking your SMPS example; any experienced electronics engineer could design, simulate, and lay out a SMPS on a board in <1 day and be >95% confident it would just work. It would be an interesting learning exercise for others to read, though. Maybe you could base the challenge around the educational value of the submission? Instead of "Cout = this", have "Now, to select the output capacitors we have to consider X, Y and Z...."

Nicely articulate analysis - your description of work priorities really resonates. There are always many drawbacks and frustrations with any job which you have little control over or you have to make big sacrifices and accommodations to overcome. With projects at home you have full control to maximize enjoyment and reward.

Nicely articulate analysis - your description of work priorities really resonates. There are always many drawbacks and frustrations with any job which you have little control over or you have to make big sacrifices and accommodations to overcome. With projects at home you have full control to maximize enjoyment and reward.