[TriEmbed] Learning Curve

Wed Apr 15 15:14:44 CDT 2015

There are two types of people in the world: those who think there are two types of people in the world, and those who don't. :-)
I used "maker" vs "engineer" as if they were two mutually exclusive ecosystems, but really I think the "maker" vs "engineer" distinction is just two very fuzzy regions on a spectrum, with all sorts of different tradeoffs between them.

I love the question of how to go from Arduino to "lower level" embedded stuff, without a stop at an engineering degree along the way.
This free edX course covers some of the "engineering" side: https://www.edx.org/course/embedded-systems-shape-world-utaustinx-ut-6-02x
But aside from that I don't know of any prepackaged resources. I hope other people do!

I've considered putting together an "Embedded Software Engineering 101" type of class, but wasn't sure if there was any audience for such a thing.
Thoughts?

     On Wednesday, April 15, 2015 3:31 PM, Burr Sutter <burrsutter at gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 9:35 AM, Christopher Svec <christophersvec at yahoo.com> wrote:

Great! That leads to another question: which ecosystem?
I would classify the products you've listed (Arduino, RaspPi, Spark, etc.) as mostly from what I call the "maker" ecosystem, meaning they're "batteries included" products useful in prototyping and product/experience exploration. And the products you've called out are definitely the top ones in that ecosystem.
 Another ecosystem is what I call the "engineering" ecosystem, meaning embedded products intended for high volume and high reliability products; it's anything you might want to manufacture and ship a bunch of (and not have them fail in the field).

I have been asking about the "maker" vs "engineering" distinction in other forums.  Some folks believe there are two different universes, some think that one is merely an extension of the other, that there is a spectrum (not binary) of skills engineering/crafting for different needs/requirements. 

The "maker" and "engineering" ecosystems can both create a product that does the same thing, but cost, design time, scale, reliability, etc. will be quite different.

Does that make sense?
Totally
I am interested in the "starting as a maker" and then "becoming a real engineer" journey.   I feel that one can learn a lot in the Arduino/RPi/Spark/Intel Edison world and then begin to learn ARM's mbed...then TI/FreeScale/SiliconLabs.  What are the stepping stones (for someone unwilling to go back to school for an electrical engineering degree)?

(See? I love questions! :-) )

Thank you very much for your responses! :-) 

-svec
Chris SvecSenior Principal Software EngineeriRobot
     On Wednesday, April 15, 2015 9:20 AM, Burr Sutter <burrsutter at gmail.com> wrote:

 I think that is a perfectly fair question...my focus is on learning at this time, trying to understand the overall ecosystem.  
On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 8:20 AM, Christopher Svec <christophersvec at yahoo.com> wrote:

Yes! I totally agree about the growth of our once-very-niche industry.
Another question to consider is "what are you trying to do or accomplish as an end-goal?", in addition to the "where to invest time & energy to learn" question.
You can spend the rest of your life testing & learning each new platform or dev board or widget that comes out - and there's nothing wrong with that at all! Especially if pure learning is your goal.
But is that what you're after?
(I'm a fan of frequently backing up and asking the big picture "why?" questions.)
-svec

     On Wednesday, April 15, 2015 8:05 AM, Burr Sutter <burrsutter at gmail.com> wrote:

 The world of embedded microcontrollers has seen some dramatic growth (from my perspective) and it is tough to figure out where to invest my learning time & energy.  

I have followed this path so far:1) Arduino2) Raspberry Pi3) Spark Core4) Intel Edison (just using it as a Linux box so far)5) TI SensorTagand played a bit with the NXP LPC1768 running mbed (http://mbed.org/)
Mostly I have been simply playing with the various "developer kits" where my mission is on detection and connection - trying to understand what can be sensed and how to get the data back to the cloud.
How do you all feel about mbed? Is that worthy of expending dozens/hundreds of hours of learning time? And if so, which of the various ARM/mbed-based hardware vendors are interesting to you?

_______________________________________________
Triangle, NC Embedded Computing mailing list
TriEmbed at triembed.org
http://mail.triembed.org/mailman/listinfo/triembed_triembed.org
TriEmbed web site: http://TriEmbed.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.triembed.org/pipermail/triembed_triembed.org/attachments/20150415/a15311d1/attachment.htm>