Electrical Engineers/Embedded Programmers, how comfy is your job...

Electrical Engineers/Embedded Programmers, how comfy is your job? Do you feel it's more fulfilling working directly with hardware instead of developing software to run on top of the hardware?

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Ultra comfy.
Lookup parts to use, order samples, play with all kinds of toys and instruments, sometimes to soldering or machining work to create some test jig or prototype, alternate between schematic/pcb layput and C programming.
Am allowed to use the shop, tools and spare parts for my own hobby projects, can use company contacts for cheap and fast prototype pcbs.
Could not imagine a better job.

Not the most high paying though, webshitters probably make more, but consideting I enjoy going to work every day I can see myself working here until retirement.

That sounds pretty dam comfy. What do you work on at your job?

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You will hear "read the fucking datasheet" more times that you can imagine, but appart from that is very comfy.
Just be sure to work with the hardware guys from the beginning and that you have a proper interface for debugging, doesnt matter if jtag or a simple pin you can use to print messages. Also, learn well how to use an osciloscope.

Mostly ventilation systems for hospitals and chemical labs, sometimes other custom stuff like water heater controllers, pellets burner, basically various pid-controller stuff.
Lately there has been a request for monitoring displays and smart phone app integration (i.e bluetooth/nfc) so that's what I've playing around with.
All of it are custom boards, cortex m0-m4 level of complexity, mixed signals (but fairly basic current loops and analog sensing circuits).

I fucking love my job in embedded SW. It's a lot of fun, even when I get angry at the below-pajeet-tier code the HW engineers write.

As an aspiring embedded engineer, are there any books, resources, or tips that I should know? I love playing around with STM32s but I want to get serious about my hobby.

Not that guy, but I would suggest
>learn basic electronics
>how to read datasheets
>and the ISA of your target
Aside from that, the best way to learn is to make stuff.

>Embedded Programmers, how comfy is your job?
pretty comfy, although its usually a thankless job if you're doing OS/HAL/drivers etc.
something regarding reliable/safety-critical development might be useful
you may also want to look into some MISRA/Autosar C/C++ guidelines
otherwise, if you are comfortable with C/C++ without standard libraries and understand some basic assembly you should do fine after some experience since reading relevant reference manuals/datasheets/ISA will give you everything you need
if you want to get serious, get yourself a JTAG debugger and learn to debug your stuff. at work i use some lauterbach powertrace with trace32 for this but i think they're expensive
in uni i used some avr dragon i think, but its only for avr
dont get some cheap shit, this will be your best friend

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does making control system software for pic related count as embedded programming?

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whats a good and decently priced debugger for either an stm32 chip or some avr development board?
if it works with gnu/linux its also a plus

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electrical engineer here. design magnetic components. small place and i'm the only engineer under 30 so fairly comfy. i do 0 programming and pretty much exclusively use excel for calculations

desu, I kinda mixed up between game engine programming and embedded system. I really like both, and C++ is my favourite lang

Keep playing with electronics. the knowledge will come naturally. If you want to get a job in embedded hardware an EE degree is the way to go.
Considering most EE students by the time they graduated barely touched an arduino for a senior design project you'd be miles ahead.

probably yes, especially if it has some sort of FPGA in it

stm32 is an arm cotex M series so segger jlink (edu version is cheaper) or black magic probe. It uses gdb so you can use a either a command line or vscode. If you get the jlink, segger embedded studio works and is free for non commercial use.

avr from atmel/microchip would be usbasp but you're better off using arm since the industry primarily is moving in that direction for all embedded processors, Cortex M0, M3, M4, etc

Atmel/Microchip also has an arm series called sam but the ide is windows only.

What is your IDE to debug and program micro? I still use good old serial log. I'm thinking to get visualgdb for visual studio, but it's kinda expensive for starter (90 euro)

if i'm using JTAG and a jlink its segger embedded studio.
or JTAG with a black magic probe and vscode with cortex-debug plugin.
both are free. with SES you just have to click a prompt "this is not for commercial use" on the first run after launching.

otherwise whatever the manufacturer provides/recommends, code composer studio for TI, Atmel Studio for AVR, etc

STM32s are pretty great. I used a couple of those for an ECU telemetry system and steering wheel display for a university car building project project about 5-10 years ago.

Go to the /ohm/ general on /diy/ the books they have there are great resources on analogue and digital electronics which will improve your knowledge massively. Particularly "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. Its a tome of a book but amazingly detailed. It should help you offload some of the workload to discrete components and allow you better flexibility in design. You won't need everything in here but its a good on the shelf resource when you need a detailed refresher on component usage

I'd also recommend learning about computer architecture. "Computer Organization and Design" by Patterson and Hennesy. Everything you learn in that book will filter down into (provided you follow some of the assembly tutorials) every future design. While modern compilers will do most optimizations for you, its important to understand what those compilers are doing.

Some FPGA work can be rewarding too if you're looking at doing some very high performance or time critical projects. You will definitely need basic digital electronics knowledge and an understanding of how discrete components work internally. Not so much the analogue side but the logical operation of them. FPGA designers are fairly highly paid depending on skill level.

But yeah as others have said; learn to read datasheets, learn to debug

DO NOT TAKE THE BAIT
i was basically in your position, doing firmware for battery powered measurement devices. then I was asked if I couldnt also make an app for android, then for ios, then for windows uwp, fuck. going from embedded to apps is really really frustrating. your old ways wont work anymore; most of the time the manuals for anything app related are outdated and incomplete, you're supposed to jump from one technology to another every 6 month, seemingly made by 12yos.

ps:
Dont ever use Bluetooth for consumer devices, unless your application is only using the default profiles.

If you're making a 'smart' device, so customers can connect their phones via bluetooth for some data transfer, it's a nightmare.
In my last 'smart' device project, I spent less than 8 work-hours in firmware development to get bluetooth to work in the firmware, 30 more to get it work properly on my android phone, and I have logged over 450 work-hours to get bluetooth to work correctly on (nearly) all android phones. In my office, there are more phones than in the rest of the company building combined.

Bluetooth also requires a dedicated thread on android, so if its turned on the performance of the phone will start dying and if the Bluetooth is interrupted at any point theres a good chance you'll crash whatever app you made. And possibly cause a freeze on the embedded side, which makes it useless.
Bluetooth is awful. Better to just connect it to the wifi and have people access the device through a webpage embedded in an app. Even if security is a concern, there are better ways to protect the system than making it bluetooth/app accessible.

Does anyone have a good resource for getting into embedded stuff and electrical? I was thinking of getting a rpi but I'd really like a guided/structured course for learning stuff from the ground up

Microchip has been using MPLAB X for years now and its Win/Mac/Linux.
PICs and AVRs are good to learn. I've been designing PIC systems for years, fully under Linux for the past 4 years now.

>embedded
Check the /ohm/ thread in /diy/
There are a lot of resources linked in the first post

> a thread with fucking technology and no faggots.
THANKS GOD.

Not anymore since you posted here

Didn't know MPLAB X supports atmel AVR and SAM.
Good to know.

my internship sucks, no engineering work for now or the position i would be offered. But its my first and only internship so im hoping it helps me get a Power Engineering gig when i graduate in about a year.

what i dig the most is having the chance to work with real engineers. They're like 10-15% people employed here but they keep me stay.
Bummer is, my team is pretty high in the component chain so I'm basically dealing with abstractions all the time not bare metal. If not the test drive on my bench I could oftenly forget that I work in embedded.

What's a good way to get into machine vision? I'm a computer engineer who's been doing firmware for ten years and worked for the same company for five. I think it's time to move on to something more challenging and higher paying, but I'm already so highly paid there are only a handful of jobs to pick from. They're always all about machine vision which is something I feel I'd be great at but have never done before in my career so I don't have the experience they want.

I want to sniff her pantsu

i'm doing EE right now, what do i have to do to get a comfy job like this ?