I’ve studied electronics. I can probably answer questions. But I don’t know how to apply electronics. I don’t have any ideas. I’m mostly into testing electronic products and playing with them.
I want to be able to come up with creative ideas but I feel like I was born without the creative gene.
All I can do is follow test scripts and put components on a breadboard following the instructions.
I feel like I’m just an automaton, a robot.
Is there a place for me in electrical engineering?
I want to build a home security (ie. alarms, sensors, locks, etc) but I’m like an empty shell, a blank slate.
Any help and advice anyone has for me would be much appreciated. I can’t promise I’ll follow and take the advice I’m given. I’m very stubborn and willful. I always want to do things my way and this frustrates people and drives them away.
So I’m warning you in advance. Maybe I’m just a lost cause. My personality has been described as negative, boring, and “woe as me”. I’m toxic at work.
Nobody can help or give creativity. You have to make yourself think of things YOU want. My suggestion would be to get a kit from here and start doing the tutorials in the book. This will tell you if you want to pursue larger projects.
The subject of Home automation, there are tons of blogs and posts about Arduino and home automation…
I’m not in the electronics business, so I’m not a good source on matters of employment in it. I started with mechanics in school and learned a bit about both when doing aeronautical engineering. And never made use of it. I’m unemployed now. Electronics is just a hobby now. But I recognize you mindset.
I too find it hard to come up with designing new things. It may not be the answer that you are looking for, but some people are better at finding faults, solving functionality problems, improving that which is already built/optimize. There are creators and there are fixers. And no doubt another breed of electronics people that I can’t come up with. You may have a keener eye for seeing things that are not correct. Which might make you come across to others as being negative. I look at it as finding room for improvement. An “always positive”-attitude is naive imho. A glass halve full or halve empty? As always there is a balance in things. So to some extent they may have a point, or not (I don’t know you). I’m just saying that the personal description you give of yourself can also have some uses in some fields of electronics (or whichever one). You could have the have tenacity to get to the root of things. At least that is one way to bend the stubborn and willfullness. Designers or creators might just throw the thing overboard and start over. You might just dig a bit deeper and find the crux why it doesn’t work at all in the conditions given. Testers are needed too.
Creativity will come when you recognize the good. (in you)
Valen:
I too find it hard to come up with designing new things. It may not be the answer that you are looking for, but some people are better at finding faults, solving functionality problems, improving that which is already built/optimize. There are creators and there are fixers. And no doubt another breed of electronics people that I can’t come up with. You may have a keener eye for seeing things that are not correct. Which might make you come across to others as being negative. I look at it as finding room for improvement. An “always positive”-attitude is naive imho. A glass halve full or halve empty? As always there is a balance in things. So to some extent they may have a point, or not (I don’t know you). I’m just saying that the personal description you give of yourself can also have some uses in some fields of electronics (or whichever one). You could have the have tenacity to get to the root of things. At least that is one way to bend the stubborn and willfullness. Designers or creators might just throw the thing overboard and start over. You might just dig a bit deeper and find the crux why it doesn’t work at all in the conditions given. Testers are needed too.
Creativity will come when you recognize the good. (in you)
I can't design or fix things, or solve problems, or improve that which is already built (ie. optimize). So I'm not a creator or a fixer. Will testing electronics, for example software, count as creative? Or do I need to be able to design and fix things?
I work in software Q&A and I’m stressed because I’m not good at finding bugs and learning new features. Will it be easier and less stressful for me if I transfer to the hardware test team? If my stress-level now is a 7 on a 1-10 scale, what would be my stress on the hardware test team? How do the hardware test procedures compare to the software test procedures? It seems like I would not have to worry nearly as much about new features. And doesn’t hardware pretty much stay the same for the most part, making the testing repetitive? I just want to be in the group where I can last the longest without getting fired or laid off, with the highest quality of life.
My experience of QA departments, in companies I have worked for, is that they employ two types of people. Those that can diagnose problems and those that can verify correct operation of product. These disciplines are common for both hardware and software QA.
During my career as an employed Electronics Designer I achieved much success as the Hardware Design Department’s interface to manufacturing. I was able to act on feedback from manufacturing to resolve potential hardware problems across the divide.
It appears to me that you have not yet identified your strengths within your present team. I am not sure that switching disciplines, before exploring what more you could achieve in your present role, will be a positive experience.
Take time to reflect on what you can do well and see how you can fit that into your work.
Reading your description of your perceived personality I have a concern that you are beginning to see yourself in this light. Be positive, look to your strengths and take measured steps to improve your situation.
neildarlow:
My experience of QA departments, in companies I have worked for, is that they employ two types of people. Those that can diagnose problems and those that can verify correct operation of product. These disciplines are common for both hardware and software QA.
During my career as an employed Electronics Designer I achieved much success as the Hardware Design Department’s interface to manufacturing. I was able to act on feedback from manufacturing to resolve potential hardware problems across the divide.
It appears to me that you have not yet identified your strengths within your present team. I am not sure that switching disciplines, before exploring what more you could achieve in your present role, will be a positive experience.
Take time to reflect on what you can do well and see how you can fit that into your work.
Reading your description of your perceived personality I have a concern that you are beginning to see yourself in this light. Be positive, look to your strengths and take measured steps to improve your situation.
I guess my main job is running test procedures that others create. I'm always concerned about test progress. I usually run the tests I'm most comfortable with. Complicated new feature procedure are my big weakness. I'm not good at learning how to use test equipment. I can't be an end user because I don't think I could find or recognize a bug if it came up and bit me. I guess verifying the correct operation of the products would be my role. It's just there's so many specs. How can I learn and remember/recall all that?
You don’t. There are documents to assist you (I have written many test specifications and procedures but never expected people to know them verbatim). Test engineers would consult the relevant documentation as they needed to.
I think you are concerning yourself with the need to learn information too much. Someone once said “A wise man does not know everything. Instead he knows where to look for knowledge”.
Which is more important? Finding bugs or running test procedures? I’ve tried end user and ad hoc testing and I can’t seem to find any bugs. Can I be an automaton just running test procedures? Will I get fired or laid off by just being strictly a procedure tester?
You run test procedures to find bugs. You don’t run testing procedures just for the fun of it. Only in rare chances would you find a bug by random pushing buttons or whatever. So yeah, sometimes it is beneficial to not follow the testing procedures and just be stubborn and do anything to the device under test.
If every thing is working as it should then you will not find bugs. Or the testing procedures were not deep enough, and the bug is more obscure. You don’t catch something with fishing every time either. I guess the creativity comes in finding the loopholes in those tests. Figuring out what this test is not actually testing.
Let me answer your questions with a return question. Did you ever miss a bug that others did find? Did they use different testing methods. And if so, how did their method compare to your way of doing things?
Valen:
You run test procedures to find bugs. You don’t run testing procedures just for the fun of it. Only in rare chances would you find a bug by random pushing buttons or whatever. So yeah, sometimes it is beneficial to not follow the testing procedures and just be stubborn and do anything to the device under test.
If every thing is working as it should then you will not find bugs. Or the testing procedures were not deep enough, and the bug is more obscure. You don’t catch something with fishing every time either. I guess the creativity comes in finding the loopholes in those tests. Figuring out what this test is not actually testing.
Let me answer your questions with a return question. Did you ever miss a bug that others did find? Did they use different testing methods. And if so, how did their method compare to your way of doing things?
Most bugs are found by end user testing, which I suck at. I feel like I run test procedures like a monkey. I try to run a lot of tests but I almost never find bugs.
End-users finding more bugs than the testing/QA department doesn’t surprise me. The end-users are in large(r) numbers. So have more testing time as a whole and will try to do things in almost infinitely different ways.
Also, I think production variances in materials and assembly of devices can help them uncover more bugs if it pertains to the interaction of hardware and software. You know, i.e. capacitors and resistors making a bit larger timeconstants than the software expects as a time out. You will not likely experience that with just a handfull of devices in your test lab.
What I dislike about this end-user testing thing is that companies might think of this as a way of crowd-sourced QA testing. Which would allow then to cut their budgets on product testing and get to the market a bit quicker. I really do not want to do the work of the testing team, after I bought something and doesn’t seem to work right. But that is a soapbox, which I should step down from.
Maybe hardware testing is easier because they don’t have to worry about bug counts. They just run procedures. But some of those procedures are thick. Hardware testers seem to work weekend and overtime. I want to party and have fun life.
:lol: