What are /r/ComputerEngineering's favorite Products & Services?

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Step 1) Cut the socket off C
Step 2) Cut the front of A
Step 3) Take out your soldering iron and wire strippers
Step 4) Buy https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Ethernet-Portable-1-Gigabit-Chromebook/dp/B00ZZ6NW5E

On the coding side, The C Programming Language by K&R will get you further than many undergrads ever get with C. On the electronics side, pick up a PIC18 or ATMega dev kit and find some tutorials you like. I wouldn’t recommend leaning on Arduino too much—the abstractions will eventually cause you more trouble than the convenience is worth. Also, any text titled “Practical Electronics” will help you avoid some common pitfalls. As far as theory goes, Tanenbaum’s Structured Computer Organization is a treasure. It will learn you some computers.

Agreed on the last bit, since OP’s interest is in hardware they should definitely look into that. All the new SoCs have a separate “AI Chip” since a custom chip can be multitudes faster than using the conventional CPU (or GPU for that matter)

For example here’s a Huawei chip specifically for AI

Work on Open Source projects, show that you are contributing to large projects. Find something interesting to you on GitHub. For example, OpenSSL is very interesting to me. I learned a lot about what's underneath the hood for encrypted traffic. Plus fixed, a few bugs here and there :). Work on personal projects. Showcase your work on Github or a personal website. PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE interview questions! I highly recommend that you use Leetcode.com for interview questions! Just keep applying for internship positions, eventually, someone will call you, so be ready for the interview. Also, do not forget to practice for interviews. The field is getting very competitive. Again, make Leetcode your friend, your lover, your mistress, your everything. Good luck!

I'm still early on but, comp eng so far isn't terrible.

You will take physics(mechanical & electromagnetics), calculus(single and multi variable), differential equations, and discrete math.

You will probably have to take or test out of an intro to c/c++ class.

You will take data structures. Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest, also sometimes referred to as CLR is a very good book that you can use to learn 99% of the material beforehand.

You will take some form of basic hardware design classes including basic digital and analog circuits, general CPU design, and general computer design. There also likely will be a microcontroller class for learning the basics of programming for embedded systems.

After this, it is largely up to you and your school. You could specialise in silicon design(CPUs, GPUs, microprocessors),

embedded design(Design electronics hardware & software for a product. Think motherboards, firmware, and Mars rover control systems. ),

or software design(operating systems, kernels, drivers. You could do higher level stuff as well but this is what you will primarily learn.).

Also, another option which is will depend on how your school sets stuff up is communications design.( Think WiFi, radio, Bluetooth, satellite. Design the underlying protocol or the implementation of said protocol depending on what you choose.)

But ya. In terms of difficulty, it's not awful if you read up before hand. Have summer/winter reading material and complete assignments as soon as physically possible and you will have no issues.

Yes! C is ubiquitous. It's everywhere in embedded things. When working with embedded stuff, you're most likely going to become familiar with ARM's assembly language, too. ARM processors typically have a lower cost and use less power, so they're utilized a lot in smaller, low power situations.

Knowing assembly is good, since it allows you to debug or modify code that's been generated by a compiler. But in the end, you're gonna be writing in C, probably. A big reason why is because you have access to tools that help manipulate and interact directly with hardware at a higher level to write and express your process in an easier to follow format. You'll work faster it in it too. For simple devices, you might end up essentially writing your own operating system.

For learning C, practically and deeply, I'd check out, read, and do all or a bunch of the exercises of the following, in order:

1. Learn C the Hard Way by Zed Shaw.
   
2. Programming in C by Stephen Koch
3. For historical reasons, and also because the exercises are bomb-diggity, The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie

Then the following in any order:

• C Programming A Modern Approach by K N King
  
• Using C Pointers by Richard Reese.
  
• 21st Century C by Ben Klemens

After reading all of those, doing the exercises in them, and coming up with your own and putzing, you'll know a ton. You'll be really prepared, actually.

After all that, I'd then check into resources about ARM assembly programming.

Codecadmy! I recommend python or ruby. They are pretty easy languages to pick up, so you will have a good understanding of programming concepts when you start doing C/C++ or java. Also for digital logic I recommend picking up a copy of Code by Charles Petzold. It is by no means a comprehensive guide, but you will be familiar with everything when you take a logic class and while most of the class is trying to figure out what an adder is you will already know and be focusing on how and why it works

I think you're trying to learn about logic gates.

A logic gate is a circuit that has a boolean output (1 or 0) that is determined by what kind of gate it is and the input. For example, if you have an AND gate, you will only get a 1 output when all inputs are a 1. If you have an OR gate, you only have to have one input be a 1 in order to have a 1 output.

Edit: here's some more reading on gates. http://www.tutorialspoint.com/computer_logical_organization/logic_gates.htm

don't have much but I liked this book:

That's the ARM edition but they also have one on the MIPS arch and the authors just came out with a new one based on RISCV.

The book is expensive but colleges often have stuff like this buried in the stacks, or a subscription to the publishers repertoire or something. I love this book:

DRAM Circuit Design: Fundamental and High-Speed Topics https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470184752/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_2n8eFb4DSFC6W

In the future, you might have better luck on r/buildapc or r/techsupport with these types of question. Also, why is this tagged NSFW?

That aside, this seems to do what you're looking for in part 1 (I googled "ethernet wifi receiver"). Not sure about part 2.

Try to learn python, you could do a lot things with it. You can automate your tasks like automatically email someone, scrape contents of a website, make chat bots etc. • Study Algorithms, "Introduction to Algorithms" by CLRS is like the bible for computer science. • Study networking, " Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach" by Jim Kurose is a good book to start with. • Try to complete a project on topics which you finished studying.

I ended up getting a 2 in 1 Handheld Oscilloscope Multimeter for $89.00 on Amazon.
There's still time for me to change the order if I find a better option:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08832JX4H/ref=ppx\_yo\_dt\_b\_asin\_title\_o02\_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This is backwards from what you wrote, but latches are NOT flip flops nor are flip flops latches. You need to revisit your digital design fundamentals if you think though this was true.

This is the book you're after if you're interested in learning more: https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-ARM-Architecture/dp/0128017333/ref=asc_df_0128017333/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312045876164&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=18327197135697394308&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hv...

Agree with Patterson & Hennesy and they also by chance wrote the graduate textbook as well:

https://smile.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-John-Hennessy/dp/012383872X?sa-no-redirect=1

That is indeed more of a surface-level book to provide you with some context (it's definitely not a book to learn ML from). The classical book many people learn ML from is this - https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Learning-Adaptive-Computation-Machine/dp/0262035618

EE student here... You're just starting out and are unlikely to experience anything that requires an expensive scope or DMM for some time. For a DMM, I'd get something cheap like this. This exact model has carried me through two years of school so far.

For a scope, check out Digilent's Analog Discovery 2. You can get a hefty student discount on it which brings the price down to ~$250USD. It will not work on higher frequency sources (30MHz max) and doesn't have the sex appeal of a bench unit, but it's a perfect choice for hobby use. Additionally, it can work as a function generator and logic analyzer. I've used mine to assist in debugging some custom PWM code, analyze data streams for UARTs and more.

These two items alone have been the only two measurement tools I've needed to create some kick-ass projects. Those projects played a key role in helping me land a summer internship.

http://www.skillsoft.com/catalog/

Here is the non-Army catalog (if that was the problem) scroll down to IT collections and click on any of those links. Most of the items under IT collections is included in the Army catalog.

It is a big pdf, I can take a few screenshots of the course directory pages if that doesn't work.

It think it will be best if you check for yourself. Here - I've recreated this situation in Crcuit Simulator

Found it here:

HDMI Splitter, GANA HDMI Switch Bidirectional 2 Input to 1 Output or 1 in to 2 Out, Supports 4K/3D/1080/HDCP Passthrough-HDMI Switcher for HDTV/Blu-Ray Player/DVD/DVR/Xbox etc. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BFVN6GY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_6479JD5QX2SZ6HMADVYK

okay so i have managed to get a few things done today! i ordered this (https://www.amazon.ca/Elegoo-Project-Starter-Tutorial-Arduino/dp/B01D8KOZF4) which should have everything i need to fiddle with this thing and many more things to come! it comes with a whole bunch of cool things i can use to configure this light to my liking. I think your idea of the smart phone clicker would work absolutely perfectly and i definitely am going to consider that once everything comes and i get the hang of it! the package arrives sunday so i will make sure to keep this post updated with anything new i find in case anybody else tries to do something like this in the future

I'm not trying to be mean, but I'm going to sound that way. I would recommend the DE10-nano kit that's used for the Mister FPGA retro system. It's $140 on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B89YHSB/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_PuV6FbQRKQ7KG There's tons of code and help available for it.

But to be honest, I can tell you're at a much earlier level than that. I suggest you learn basic microcontrollers 1st before moving onto FPGAs. Just a simple $20 freedom board from NXP will teach you much about basic CPUs, peripherals, and coding. There's also the STM32 boards. Just pick an inexpensive board and follow the examples and read all the code. At $20, you can throw it away if you learn EE isn't for you.

FPGAs are used to create, develop, debug advanced CPUs, logic, and systems. They can be difficult to write good code for, can be unforgiving and difficult to troubleshoot.

I gotcha.

I like my 24" Asus monitor. On Amazon, like $130. To put it vertically, it would need a separate VESA stand though, which is only an issue if he would want it vertical. There is also a 27" version out there that I've bought as a gift that is a little more expensive, but more real estate.

Don't learn any language except C, Python, bash, or any flavor of assembly. Don't ever touch C++ or Java. When possible only write things in C with inline assembly. Only use python and bash if you need to, but for the most part learn C. On your first day, they will expect that you are a decent C programmer and know the basics of memory management. You will want to read this book a few times, http://amazon.com/Programming-Language-2nd-Brian-Kernighan/dp/0131103628. As for laptop it depends what you like. Your university will likely give you a vm to use, so it doesn't really matter. I like either, at points I have had a mac which I prefer for programming. Now I have a mac for personal and windows/linux(I have multiple computers and also virtualize) for work. If you have more money, go for a mac or a computer with i7, 16gb memory, pcie ssd and such. If you don't have much, a macbook air would suffice or something with an i5 and reasonable other specs.

As a computer engineer. I would absolutely love a diy kit.

Something that I have to solder together.

It can be a simple clock, or a tiny robot kind of thing. I don't really care. But I think a tiny hardware project would be awesome.

The dso138 is what I hope someone will get me one day.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LWK49W3/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_kejdFbW4NB2Y3

This was recently asked on r/mechanicalkeyboards and the suggestion was: https://www.amazon.com/Glorious-Modular-Mechanical-Gaming-Keyboard/dp/B01D8YNJH0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542998339&sr=8-1&keywords=gmmk

It allows you to easily switch out the key switches do you can try out multiple types of you're unsure of what you like. Also has RGB which is nice.

I own this kit, and it comes in handy a ton. iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit - Electronics, Smartphone, Computer & Tablet Repair Kit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GF0KV6G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_s1T5Bb2M0NWKG

I am not aware of any but we used this book for my classes.

https://www.amazon.com/VHDL-Engineers-Kenneth-L-Short/dp/0131424785

that combined with

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jmoorkan/vhdlref/

got me the A.

It depends on what you are wanting to go? You can start with this:

Effective Python: 59 Specific Ways to Write Better Python (Effective Software Development Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0134034287/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_w-O0AbM4Z2FJR

It’s an EXTREMELY broad space to study.

As a beginner, I’d start playing with microprocessors like arduinos. Alongside that, read up on some c++ concepts (not syntax unless you don’t know it).

Once you realize that it’s fun, study diffeq before you take the class. If you can pass that class, you’ll easily pass the rest of all your classes.

Books C++

Just YouTube microprocessor projects and diffeq.

We use vivado in school and they teach verilog. My impression is that VHDL is more of an industry standard, but I'm still a student so don't quote me on that. The way my university introduced digital logic was by having us start at logic gate level then use those modules to make state machines and last semester we made a MIPS processor.

Vivado (web pack should be free) https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/vivado.html

Here is the book we used for the processor https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-Fifth-Architecture/dp/0124077269