From the basic of the basics
Basic of Basics: A Beginner’s Guide for Aspiring Hardware Design Engineers
So let me assume, you’re a CSE or EE student or a fresh graduate who have always been fascinated with printed boards or someone who casually dug up his old pc/video game and found out a old plate with inscriptions of the language never heard of? some wild lines running down from one chip to another and now you wanna design these inscripted boards on you own but have no clue where to begin with? you’re not alone in feeling lost. I’ve been there-sitting in my college dorm, excited about electronics, but overwhelmed by the lack of guidance and affordable resources. The journey is tough, but you don’t have to walk it alone. Through this blog I want to pen down my journey for my own reference (but hey, if it helps you in any way, drop an email or message!)
The Missing Map: Where Do I Even Start?
The Problem is most colleges don’t have enough experienced faculty or mentors who made their hands numb in hardware design. You might find yourself surrounded by theory, but when it comes to practical, real-world skills, you’re left scratching your head. what is EMI/EMC? what does stack-up means? IPC? what is this sorcery?
Well the journey of anything begins with google! so hit up your pc and look for job roles like ‘hardware design engineer’ ; ‘embedded hardware engineer’ ; ‘analog and digital design engineer’ ; ‘‘printed circuit board designer’ or ‘embedded hardware developer’ and try to understand what does this job even demands of. The most common things are enlisted below:
- Studying various circuits and ICs and understand their working
- Making schematic, planning the layout, designing stack-up and post design analysis
- Communicating with vendor and manufacturers to gather various design resources, sample pieces and looking for great prices for desired components
- Making simulations, analysis, generating production files and communication with pcb fabricators.
- Create documentations and reports, strategies and analysis for future versioning, correction or fault analysis.
While anyone can simply guide you these tasks you need to perform as a hardware design engineer. What most of people fail ( or will fail ) to tell you is the debugging skills you need to learn. As a hardware designer, there is really very less scope for mistake or so, since even routing a bad trace can cost you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars but human being a human, will make a mistake either today or in future and the most common skills that will save you from losing your job is hardware debugging but their is a crux, to learn hardware debugging you need some bad hardware and many good lessons and to acquire some bad hardware you need to design some bad hardware (you see that never ending loop right?) but no worries, every pro was once a beginner and for sure, will make some bad designs in your early career. so never throw those bad designs in bin, but try to find the real issue fix those issue by soldering hard wires, replacing ICs or so. The other long lost brother of Hardware Debugging is called Reverse Engineering and we will dig more about it in future discussion.
Now that you know what skills you need to become a hardware design engineer what you need is right tools and right resources but that’s a bit difficult path to walk upon (too).
The YouTube Rabbit Hole: Blessing or Curse?
The Problem:
YouTube is full of content, but not all of it is good. Some channels are amazing, but finding them is like searching for a needle in a haystack. Plus, you can waste hours on videos that don’t really teach you much. It’s a problem that almost all self learner face at the early stage of their learning journey and let’s just accept the fact that we all have wasted a little time on searching good content.
My Tip:
Look for channels with clear explanations, practical demos, live project building from scratch, and active communities in the comments/reddit/discord/etc. Don’t be afraid to ask questions-sometimes, creators or other viewers will help out. Always remember, Being fool for few seconds is always better than being fool for life.
The Cost Barrier: Knowledge Shouldn’t Be a Luxury
The Problem: Let’s be honest-most high-quality courses and certifications are expensive. As a student, you might not have the budget, and not everyone wants to keep asking their parents for money.
I too, found myself in the situation where I wanted enroll in a popular certification course, only to see the price tag and feeling bad about it. It felt unfair that learning something essential could be so out of reach.
What Helped Me:
Open-source projects: Exploring GitHub repositories and contributing to open hardware projects.
Free online courses: Platforms like Coursera, NPTEL, and MIT OpenCourseWare sometimes offer free versions of their courses.
Community forums: Sites like EEVblog, Reddit’s r/ECE, and Stack Exchange can be goldmines of information.
Okay now you have learnt right tools from right resources. You are all ready to change the world with your revolutionary ideas in your first job, but err, wait! there’s more of a challenge to come…
The Experience Paradox: “We Want Experience, But Don’t Offer It”
The Problem: Every job or internship seems to require experience-but how do you get experience if no one gives you a chance?
My Advice: Start small: Build your own mini-projects. Even a simple 2 layer board can be a great projectile.
Document your work: Share your projects on LinkedIn, GitHub, or a personal blog. This builds your portfolio and shows initiative.
Network online: Join Discord servers, LinkedIn groups, or local meetups (even virtual ones). Sometimes, opportunities come from unexpected places.
Conclusion: You’re Not Alone
The path to becoming a hardware design engineer isn’t easy, but it’s definitely possible. Don’t get discouraged by the lack of resources or opportunities. Keep learning, keep building, and reach out to communities online. Remember, every expert was once a beginner-just like you.
Quick Tips for Newbies
Start with basics: Master simple circuits before moving to complex systems.
Learn by doing: Build, break, and fix things.
Ask questions: There’s no such thing as a silly question.
Stay curious: Technology changes fast-keep exploring!