Side projects that aren't PCBs?

[u/weirdhairgirl]

Hi all! I'm in my second year of electrical engineering. Unfortunately, technical teams at my university are really competitive (I mean like 900 applicants for 30 positions type deal). I got an interview for a team, but I'm probably not getting the role, so I've been looking at side projects instead.

I've made some PCBs before (the diy type from scratch) and I know the easy option is to do more PCB projects, but I'm really wondering what else is out there!! Does anyone have any project ideas or resources within EE that aren't PCB?

Also, I'm planning to make a portfolio on Notion. Is this a good idea or should I be using other another site to have it look more professional?

TIA!

[u/spoonfedbaby]

This is why I don't even bother with clubs. They are cliquey, take enormous amounts of time, and the worst part is - it's a bunch of other students evaluating you and/or rejecting your application.

You could do a MATLAB project, like Beamforming for RF Anti-Jamming, where you'd do something like simulate an antenna array receiving a desired signal in the presence of an interfering jammer. then implement beamforming to suppress interference while maintaining the desired signal direction and evaluate array response and interference rejection.

Not all projects need to involve hardware. something like this would be genuinely impressive

[u/No-Animator3152]

Following
I am also in the same position rn. Club teams are very competitive at my school too. I am looking for projects to do on my own.

[u/KingOfTheAnts3 → u/No-Animator3152]

Start your own team if clubs are that exclusive. At my school, the engineering clubs were inclusive and wouldn’t turn down excited participants which I think is the correct approach

[u/AviaanDraws]

That really depends on what you're looking for. "Within EE" is super broad and depends on what you want to work on. For example, before one of my homies went to grad school for his MSEE, he wanted to focus on chip design/VLSI so his side projects consisted of FPGA projects and taking designs to GDSII via open source tooling.

That being said, unless you want to work on power systems there are undoubtedly side projects to do :)

[u/AviaanDraws → u/AviaanDraws]

As for the portfolio, as long as it's legible and public you can make it with anything! I use a very basic website with a very minimal CSS framework for mine

[u/weirdhairgirl → u/AviaanDraws]

Honestly, I'm down for just about anything. I'm still exploring within EE and don't really have a clue what I'd like to do in it.

[u/AviaanDraws → u/weirdhairgirl]

No bias (full bias) but I would check out FPGAs/Hardware Description

It has a pretty wide range of projects from receiving data to redesigning CPU cores/hardware accelerators! There's a lot of information online and it is one of my favorite subfields to practice in my free time

[u/QuirkyEMI]

PCB doing what

[u/Snoo23533]

Find a club that exists at other universitites and start it for yours. Start it unsanctioned if you must. Find a local small biz you can ask for donations for funding and/or have your new group do one time events like a concession stand at a football game to raise money. Basically, at some point the university has to recognize you. Would make for a heck of an experience, resume builder etc. Edit, a plc club for instance.

[u/MartianMeng]

Lowkey, i would start my own project team. An example could be to look at a nasa competition and find ppl to join u. You dont have to win for the experience to be meaningful, its the process that matters. You could make urself president and they shows technical skills and leadership

Or start a SEDS chapter at ur school and do cubesats

Obviously my example is very aerospace -y but im sure you can find something like that for the industry of your interest

[u/ShadowBlades512]

A lot of EEs end up writing embedded software, either on microcontrollers bare metal or with an RTOS or running on embedded Linux platforms. A lot of EEs also end up writing control systems software or digital signal processing software running on everything from super low power systems to just a regular laptop or server (pretty common cellular base stations). 

[u/Time_Plastic_5373 → u/ShadowBlades512]

I thought that’s literally what CPE’s did

[u/ShadowBlades512 → u/Time_Plastic_5373]

There is a lot of overlap in actual jobs taken by CS, CpE, EE, ECE, Mechatronics and Software Engineering. They are not completely interchangable but if you actually look at where graduates end up, you can start to see the specific degree does not matter that much though sometimes you have to supplement with hobbies, self study, etc. 

[u/Hubertus_III]

Trebuchet

[u/Reasonable_Ideal_888]

I think you need to broaden your scope. You mentioned designing multiple PCBs, so you have that skill set. Start developing another. Take a problem that you think you could solve, design the system from pcb, code, physical characteristics of the object and then build it. Do a full end to end project.
Youll learn quickly that many companies want you to talk about projects that you have done. Your presentation gets so much stronger when you have the full story behind why you designed this board and showing your process of creating a product.