Seeking Electronics Wizard in UK please? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: Peter3
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 21, 2017, 09:07:11 am
content: Hello.Seeking electronics wizard in SW England, for occasional tech assistance with variousdomestic related projects. I am a mechanical engineer by trade but do not have an electronicsbackground. Domestic electrical I can manage myself.Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire if possible please?Thank you, Peter3

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2017, 02:40:37 pm
content: Design, repair, installation, faultfinding, certification, digital, analogue, RF, power?There are at least as many varieties of electronic engineering as there are mechanical engineering.

author: Mukrakiish
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2017, 03:02:52 pm
content: I think the biggest eye opener becoming an engineer (mech eng. myself) was realizing how many bloody things you don't know a lick about. Within your own field, then when you try to tinker in other fields, then it just gets even bigger!

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2017, 03:19:49 pm
content: Quote from: Mukrakiish on April 21, 2017, 03:02:52 pmHmmm. Interesting comment.I've always known that I don't know much; that's the reason I wanted to go to university, and then get a job in industry, and then in industrial research.However, your comment leads me to remember (and maybe understand) some of the anti-university comments made by a few people on this forum.You know the kind of thing... "going to university is a waste of time, all you need is practical knowledge" or "PhDs are useless; I know a PhD that tried to measure the impedance of the mains with an Avometer", etc.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2017, 07:39:59 pm
content: Quote from: Peter3 on April 21, 2017, 09:07:11 amVery vague and posted in the wrong section. . .I think that's enough to deter anyone with any sense from applying for that job.

author: Mukrakiish
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2017, 09:49:09 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on April 21, 2017, 03:19:49 pmPerhaps some folks who were very anti-university were deep down a bit worried about getting to see how big the world of understanding really is. Personally, I'm excited that I will probably never run out of things to learn about and explore. The reason I got into engineering was so that I could make/build bigger and better creations with the expanded knowledge. Turns out the side-effect of taking that kind of schooling was that, not only did you learn that you now barely have your feet wet...but you've learned how to learn more complex things on your own time. But that could also be subject to the type of school you went to. Mine was heavily pressed on "practicality + knowing the math behind the practicality". Best way to do it in my opinion.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2017, 10:01:34 pm
content: Quote from: Mukrakiish on April 21, 2017, 09:49:09 pmWe are in violent agreement.Sometimes people don't understand the value of the theoretical understanding because they have tried and failed at it, sometimes because they have never been exposed to it, and sometimes because they have a limited imagination.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2017, 10:28:02 pm
content: I don't think I've ever met anyone on here who's anti-university. There are people like me who've decided it's not for them and no I'm not anti-learning and I haven't failed an exam in my life. I have studied engineering to HND level but beyond a certain point I felt as though I wasn't learning anything particularly useful or interesting. I did consider a degree at one point, until a one of my lecturers told be it's basically the same as HND but more in-depth. Perhaps it was the course I did or my lecturers? May be if I went on to study a degree course which really interested me, I'd enjoy it and do well?Fortunately money hasn't come into the equation. I earn enough money to pay my bills and mortgage, plus enough to save and spend on what I want, so that isn't an incentive to study to get a more well paid job.As far as the comments regarding the lack of practical experience in graduates: yes I think that's a problem, perhaps more the fact that some graduates are unaware of their inexperience, leading to overconfidence.I have also met some utterly useless engineers, both with and without degrees. I'm of the opinion that degrees are good, they prove both intelligence and the motivation to learn but they don't automatically make someone a good engineer. I think the good thing about doing any qualification, rather then being self-taught is it makes one study things they wouldn't study voluntarily.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2017, 11:03:01 pm
content: Quote from: Hero999 on April 21, 2017, 10:28:02 pmThat's fine, since it is a personal opinion that you don't overgeneralise. But there are spates of postings where people go much further to the point of trying to persuade others that university isn't worthwhile for that other person.Yes, a degree is more in-depth than an HND. Good; that's the point and purpose!But university isn't for everybody. Personally I hated it when the UK's polytechnics rebranded themselves as universities. The whole point of the distinction was that one size doesn't fit all.QuoteExactly the same can be said of non-graduates.QuoteAgreed.

author: Mukrakiish
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2017, 03:40:57 pm
content: Quote from: Hero999 on April 21, 2017, 10:28:02 pmYup, agree with you. I was always a self-taught guy and only because there was a college with practicality in mind did I go there, I would have never taken the local University courses. That and I had tried to design new equipment for my then employer that didn't take me seriously because I didn't have a "piece of paper" to say I knew what I knew. Needless to say, I don't work with them and I got my paper anyway.

author: Buriedcode
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2017, 05:07:08 pm
content: Quote from: Peter3 on April 21, 2017, 09:07:11 amWell, Herts right here, so a loong way from Devon/Dorset (lovely places though!). If you plan on doing your own 'electronics' projects then I'm sure members of the forum can help. If you are asking for someone to design/make/repair things then this is indeed the wrong section, although it sounds like this isn't strictly formal 'contract work'.Examples of what skills are required, or rather whether you require things to be designed from scratch, and the sorts of 'projects' that one would be doing will get more responses. Be aware that even very simple things like 'making a control panel' costs can balloon for various reasons. For someone's time, even for a one-off simple project can easily go into the hundreds for a couple of days work.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2017, 06:25:40 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on April 21, 2017, 03:19:49 pmFor me, the issue with university was the slowly-setting disappointment, simply caused by the low quality of the university. When you start noticing that you are clearlyoverqualifiedfor most of the courses, you start losing your motivation, since you are not learning much, only doing hard manual, formal work to pass the courses. When you notice that most of the professors and teachers have no freaking clue what they are talking about, but are still able to produce a lot of workload for passing courses, with little understanding gained, you lose the trust in the system.(Want an extreme example? On a course about image recognition, the teacher spent first two hours reiterating over and over again that on the coordinate system, X values increase to the right, and on the left side, there are the negative values. He really kept this going for two hours straight, it was an absurd scene, and the Y axis was left for the next lecture. When I later attended the third lecture, he was still reiterating the coordinate system, so that wereallyknow that negative X values are on the left side of the origin. He was also revising that rabbit traces on snow are round in shape. This was reiterated for hours, so this is something I'll remember for the rest of my life as what the university taught me. Later, some complex math was skimmed through in matter of minutes; naturally because the professor didn't have a clue how to teach something he doesn't understand himself.)Here, most people appear to be studying in order to get the degree, and their level of understanding is ridiculously low. And I don't mean the issue is the lack of practical low-level experience - that's for granted anyway, coming from any university, and you are supposed to gain the experience in your own way - but the issue here is that the graduates don't even have a solid theoretical background, which should be the result of attending the university.For me, the university became a temple of bureacracy and formal achievements, where you are not supposed to ask "Why?", or seek understanding.This has been my case. I also worked there for years, also giving some lectures, so I got a closer look behind the scenes. I really didn't like the system and its horribly poor efficiency. It seems we had lost most of the "old style" theoretical but knowledgeable professors, and had simply totally incompetent but arrogant people trying to teach the theoretical background they don't understand themselves, adding a touch of "practical" world they have no idea about either.But I know universities do differ. And I know there are better universities out there. Surprisingly, many are happy here. I guess we have different levels of standards.In my case, learning the theoretical background myself has been a lot more succesful, even though I sometimes hope I could have had a chance in receiving high-quality university level technical education. That being said, I'm doing amazing things even with gaping holes in theoretical background.But since it's free (really paid by the taxpayers....) I shouldn't complain!

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2017, 06:37:44 pm
content: I had one spectacularly bad course in the first year.I also had a course that I thought was simple, so I initially freewheeled. Fortunately there was a test after 2 weeks, which I failed. I stopped freewheeling, and did more than strictly necessary. That worked very well, a good life lesson.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2017, 06:54:58 pm
content: I somehow lasted very long, I only have about 20% of the courses left and I almost finished writing my master's thesis while working for them, but I was stuck in some formal bureaucratic limbo at some point, requiring some extra motivation I clearly don't have.So what I'm talking about is not about a few small issues within a few courses. The shitty quality is the trend; the high-quality courses are the exceptions here.I still witness the results of poor education here since I have been active at the electronic student's club, and there seems to be huge need for someone who simply says: what they taught you is totally incorrect, not based on anything, they got it out of thin air; here's how it really works, and here's some basic theory behind it...Still, even though I could do it in less than one year now, I find it totally impossible to finish this task and graduate, and day after day, year after year I see fewer and fewer reasons to do it. I'm also seeing the interest in the degree dropping among the people I would design for, for moneyz. They know that most graduates are incompetent, so they need direct proof of skills, not the paper. I'm doing design work as an independent enterpreneur and I don't feel like going back to those olden&golden days where graduates were automatically hired in one certain large corporation, later dysfunctional in all of its might, and later acquired by a certain U.S. software giant to be shut down.Sorry for offtopic.

author: Peter3
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 22, 2017, 06:59:50 pm
content: Thank you Buriedcode for your reply.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2017, 07:18:29 pm
content: Quote from: Peter3 on April 22, 2017, 06:59:50 pmThank you for not being put off by some of the replies.You really need to give more information about what you want, if you want to get the right person for you.Plenty of people here have been burned in the past by taking on work they later on regret. If the technical requirements are unclear, then it's impossible to accurately cost a job and some customers may want more than they initially specify, yet are reluctant to pay more for it.Is it for one specific project? What's the budget? Are you willing to pay an hourly rate and if so how much?

author: Buriedcode
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2017, 09:20:01 pm
content: Quote from: Hero999 on April 22, 2017, 07:18:29 pmWhilst I don't want to detail the thread.. this. This should be put in a stick or something. I used to 'help people out' by knocking up reasonably simple stuff on stripboard (offered to be it for free!), or writing a bit of code for them, and sometimes they wanted to 'make a donation' but almost always certain things would be added bit by bit until I refused without some form of payment for my time. They got angry, I got angry etc..

author: Peter3
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 22, 2017, 09:28:36 pm
content: Thank you Buriedcode for your reply.