3 ms·
While I get your overall point, I'd hardly consider pulse-width modulation as "basic electronics." IIRC, I first encountered it in a senior-year EE Communicatio
by HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
While I get your overall point, I'd hardly consider pulse-width modulation as "basic electronics." IIRC, I first encountered it in a senior-year EE Communications Theory class as a subset of Duty-Cycle Modulation. And I have to assume when you say "how a servo worked" that you don't mean how to analyze a servomechanism or feedback control system (Bode plots & root locus, anyone?), but how to control an R/C servo.
Sure, it's common for hobbyists using R/C servos to know the term these days, but I can't really consider that universal knowledge. I'd be pretty impressed if a CS interview candidate even knew what an RC servo was.
- bcrl 5y agoThe 555 timer IC book I got when I was a kid in the 1980s taught me about pulse width modulation when I was less only 10 or 11 years old. Granted, I had a father who was an electronics technician that got me started with a Radio Shack 101 electronics kit. While such knowledge is quite accessible on the internet these days, there's just so much more high level knowledge that people are driven towards, it's not surprising that many of the basics are missed. The level of complexity in modern devices makes it nearly impossible to tinker with them, and you can't salvage surface mount parts as easily as discrete components once made electronics accessible. Gone are the days when most electronic devices shipped with schematics and were eminently hackable.