1- Essential building blocks [4 months]

Electronics design, circuit design and simulation, basic robotics and movement analysis, programming robots controlled by a microcontroller, building electronics projects to demonstrate learned skills, analog circuits design, digital circuits design, and more.

The best book to use in this phase is "Practical electronics for inventors – 3rd edition" as it is, in my opinion, the best electronics reference book. It starts from the very basics until complex circuits and theories, demonstrated by a practical modern way. This book will serve me as a reference during all research period not just this phase.

These essential building blocks are necessary for many reasons. When a product idea is demonstrated and verified, the designer needs to actually make a prototype using that idea or concept. How will he do it? He needs all these skills and even more, as in product idea demonstration, a block diagram is used. However, when the designer starts making it, he must know how to achieve and design each block and how to connect them together. During and after that, many problems (called "bugs") will occur, and it needs to be solved, he must have the hands-on skills to do it.

Project to design in this phase: Programmable high efficiency switch-mode power supply.

2- Core design skills [9 months]

In this phase, I will focus on learning the use of modern and professional design tools like 32-bit ARM-based microcontrollers. Learning to use these controllers is a major advantage in the embedded systems world. These are the standard of today's (and the future's) electronics product design.

Next step will be learning real-time operating systems (RTOS) and how to integrate them with 32-bit ARM-based microcontrollers. Using an RTOS is an advantage which helps reducing the amount of development time and resources significantly to help the product reach the market faster and more efficient. Today's design requirements are harder to achieve than the past, some of these requirements are connectivity, ease of use, low power high efficiency, high-end human machine interface (HMI), modern graphical user interface (GUI), high processing speed, and more. These can never be achieved by using typical hobbyist tools and methods.

I am interested in designing human machine interfaces (HMI) and graphical user interfaces (GUI) for embedded applications and electronics products. Today, there are many useful technologies in this field such as TFT screens, LCD, GLCD, and OLED for example. It all depends on the design orientation of the product as well as the budget, but modern designs should aim for better specifications rather than just the functionality itself.

Project to design in this phase: Wirelessly controlled car robot with speed control.

3- Professional design and manufacturing [3 months]

Driving a prototype or a simple project all the way to be a professional commercial product is the fruit of all previous efforts. The core part of professional products is the printed circuit board (PCB). A PCB is the board that contains all electronics components connected together as the schematic design. It is designed by using high quality software like Altium designer (AD) which is the best PCB design software and the industry standard. Altium released 2 new software packages which are Circuit maker (CM) and Circuit studio (CS).

This is because AD is pricey and contains tons of features that are not that useful in PCB design. However, CS is a professional design tool that contains only the features needed to design boards and it is not much expensive. CM is free software that looks like CS but has many limitations, and it is made for the hobby/maker market. Learning CM will open the door to mastering CS (which is my plan) as they share the same interface and options.

I am interested in mechanical CAD too, using Solidworks design software. Integration between electronics design and mechanical design is a must in all electronics products. Solidworks is a parametric design software unlike the famous AutoCAD. This type of software is the standard of mechanical CAD nowadays as they are easier to use and more efficient and productive. My main focus will be at the previous points rather than this, but of course it is a good and interesting field to be learned.

Along that, I will conduct a study about professional design and manufacturing and how to bring a product to market, which is what product design engineers do. This includes field tours, interviews, visits, internship (if possible), economical study of the product, analysis of work to be done and procedures to completion, study the time consumption, getting to know the NRE (Non-recurring engineering) and its cost, and all related matters.

Project to design in this phase: A PCB design of phase 1's project.

4- Next-generation HMI design [7 months]

Human machine interface (HMI) is getting more and more demandable, as modern graphical user interface (GUI) adds a big benefit to the design. Now most new designs implements a high quality display with touch feature instead of mechanical buttons and old fashioned character LCDs.

Next-generation HMIs use TFT displays which need proper control and design with sensitive timing, so it is not easy and straightforward. There are quite few methods to implement such displays in the design like using a driver chips or direct drive LCD feature in some dedicated microcontrollers. Renesas Rx microcontroller family is optimized for this field, and there are several professional tools provided by Renesas and third-party companies that are optimized for Rx family and HMI design.

Renesas provides a world-leading professional solution for future-driven HMI design, which is the Rx and Rz family of microcontrollers. Rz is a superior family to Rx, so I plan to learn HMI and GUI design for embedded electronics products using the Rx family of microcontrollers which is made for mid-range HMI and GUI designs, while the Rz family is for high-end HMI application and it is more complicated to use, so it will be the next step after learning Rx family.

I plan to use this learned skills in projects to demonstrate the idea and to be my first step of my planned future career. High quality HMIs are a revolution in the engineering product design world today, and it is one of the essentials of future products that are human-oriented and friendly, and more robust and elegant. It is a leap that must be taken in all fields where applicable.

This new technology is now applied in lots of markets, for example, consumer electronics like cell phones and tablets, medical applications, automotive industry like the next-generation car dashboard display that will take the place of conventional analog gauges soon enough. This can be a car monitoring and control system not just for dashboard display, which significantly increase the quality of the product and user experience. I aim to take part in that and direct my future career to where it must be, towards the bright innovative future.