Learn hardware engineering in pieces you can finish, and have every one of them checked by a human.
35 skills. Six to eight hours each. Every one ends in something you build on your own — a calculation sheet, a simulation, a capture file, a routed board, a bring-up log — which an evaluator then validates or sends back with specific feedback.
- 35
- skills
- 238
- hours of material
- 3
- tracks to aim at
- 6–8 h
- per skill, always
Two routes through every skill
The same project and the same acceptance criteria either way. What changes is how much of the material you sit through first.
- Route A
Work it through
You have not met this before.
Read the concepts, follow the worked example, do the tool demonstration in KiCad or ngspice or FreeCAD, then build the project. Four to six hours of material, two to four hours of project.
- Concepts written out, not a reading list
- One problem solved end to end with real numbers
- Keystroke-level tool instructions
- Route B
Audit it
You already do this at work.
Skip straight to the project. Build it, then hold it against the competence checklist — the same rubric an evaluator uses. It counts identically. The system records competence, not attendance.
- Learning material hidden by default
- Same project, same acceptance criteria
- Your portfolio shows it was audited, honestly
Self-assessed, or validated by someone else
You can do the whole thing without an account. What an account buys is the part you cannot do for yourself.
- No account
Self-assessed
Everything is readable and workable signed out. Progress lives in your browser. You tick your own competence checklist, and the app is clear that nobody else has looked at it.
- With an account
Validated by an evaluator
Submit a finished skill. An evaluator opens your artifact and your notes and records validated, or not yet validated with specific feedback about what is missing. Then you fix it and submit again.
Submitted, sitting in the evaluation queue. Nobody has looked at it yet.
An evaluator has looked and written down what is missing. It comes back to you with the feedback attached, and resubmitting puts it back in the queue.
Someone other than you has checked the work against the acceptance criteria and signed it off. This is the only thing that counts towards a track.
There is no certificate at the end and nothing is awarded by an authority. What you hold is a portfolio of built artifacts, each one with a named evaluator's sign-off against published acceptance criteria. That is a harder thing to earn and a more useful thing to show.
3 tracks, sharing most of their skills
A track is an ordered set of skills grouped into stages. Start with the first if you are new; the other two reuse most of it.
- 32 skills216 hours
Digital PCB Designer
From what a volt is to a fabricated, brought-up, reviewed board.
The core track. It starts at charge and current and ends with you releasing a manufactured four-layer digital board with a documented bring-up, an errata list and a design review behind it. Every skill produces an artifact; by the end you have a portfolio of around thirty pieces of evidence rather than a certificate.
ElectricityLab & instrumentsComponentsDigitalPowerPCB designProcess30 of these skills are shared with the other tracks — finishing one puts you most of the way through the next.
See the full sequence → - 30 skills200 hours
Embedded Hardware Prototyper
Design the board, write the bring-up firmware, and make it fit the box.
Shares most of its skills with the Digital PCB Designer track, then diverges into firmware bring-up and mechanical integration. Built for people who need to take a whole small product from idea to a working prototype in an enclosure, rather than to specialise in layout alone.
ElectricityLab & instrumentsComponentsDigitalPowerPCB designFirmwareMechanicalProcess28 of these skills are shared with the other tracks — finishing one puts you most of the way through the next.
See the full sequence → - 26 skills175 hours
Analogue and Power Designer
Small signals, hot parts, and the layouts that decide both.
Shares the foundations, bench and PCB skills with the other tracks, then goes deep on signal conditioning, switching power and the power integrity and EMC work that analogue boards live or die by. Take it after, or instead of, the digital-heavy stages.
ElectricityLab & instrumentsComponentsPowerPCB designProcess25 of these skills are shared with the other tracks — finishing one puts you most of the way through the next.
See the full sequence →
The same six parts, every skill
So you always know where you are, and so auditing means skipping something specific rather than guessing.
- 01
Concepts
The ideas stated plainly, each with the equation worth committing to memory.
- 02
Worked example
One real problem, solved step by step — usually including the step where the obvious answer turns out to be wrong.
- 03
Tool demonstration
Do it for real in KiCad, ngspice, FreeCAD, PulseView or Digital. Netlists and menu paths included.
- 04
Resources
Specific free readings and videos, each with a note on which part to use and how long it takes.
- 05
Project
Two to four hours, built alone, with deliverables and acceptance criteria.
- 06
Competence checklist
What you must be able to do. Also the rubric your evaluator uses.
Open source, all the way down
Every tool in the curriculum is open source, and every reading is free. Where no open tool exists with the data you need — real measured capacitor bias curves, live distributor stock — a free proprietary one is used and labelled as such on the page.
Start with skill 01, or audit your way in and prove what you already know.
Creating an account takes a moment — single sign-on or email and password. If you have already been working through this signed out, you can bring that progress with you.