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Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

124 points akktor | 2 comments | 09 Jun 25 12:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.612s | source

This question's for all those cool projects or skills you're secretly fascinated by, but haven't quite jumped into. Maybe you feel like you just don't have the right "brain" for it, or you're not smart enough to figure it out, or even worse, you simply have no clue how or where to even start.

The idea here is to shine a light on these hidden interests and the little (or big!) mental blocks that come with them. If you're already rocking in those specific areas – or you've been there and figured out how to get past similar hurdles – please chime in! Share some helpful resources, dish out general advice, or just give a nudge of encouragement on how to take that intimidating first step.

Let's help each other get unstuck!

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jesol ◴[10 Jun 25 19:05 UTC] No.44240228[source]▶
I don't know anything about electronics design, but I'm really into backpacking so a high efficiency battery system with a solar panel is really interesting to me. I came across this project[1], and wanted to improve upon it for my usecase. I want to add the ability to have multiple 21700 cells in a lightweight charger, instead of a single cell with a builtin USB charger. I want to learn more electronics, but it definitely feels like a multiyear process, and it'd be nice to shortcut it for the projects I'm interested in.

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/myog/comments/1k3stln/ultralight_13...

replies(1): >>44240435 #
1. HeyLaughingBoy ◴[10 Jun 25 19:23 UTC] No.44240435[source]▶
Learning just enough for your needs is a valid approach to learning electronics design, unless you're planning on becoming an actual EE.

It provides a huge amount of self-motivation and as much as I hate to admit it (as a one-time electronics design engineer), you can skip a lot of the middle-layer concepts. Sure, you should understand Ohm's law and what basic components (resistors, capacitors, transistors) do, but you can jump from that right into understanding how a battery charger works without having to understand how the components actually work.

The hard part is finding good tutorial material that starts at the right level: most of the professionally written stuff presupposes that you're either already an EE, or have one at your disposal to translate things for you.

replies(1): >>44252671 #
2. dapperdrake ◴[11 Jun 25 22:53 UTC] No.44252671[source]▶
Such is life in STEM.

Edit: And EE is genuinely involved.