I'm about at that stage now. I want to do original design now. It feels
like a bigger step.
AFAIK, there isn't much happening in Australia employment wise. Thirty
years ago, thousands were fed into the bottom in technical traineeships
that might lead there. Then it all stopped. Now, it is mostly a guy with
skills in the job buying solutions in or bodgying stuff together if they
can not buy it.
There are a few people on this list that seem to do part time design aka
projects for electronic magazines, but I don't think there is a handful
of them. AFAIK, anything else (paid design)is very competitive and you
need decades of experience.
Also, if you happy reading, then peeps might recommend a good book to
learn something specific. Do you have your own "lab" at home?
That's an interesting idea.
Always, always, always talk to the person doing the employment.
IME, agencies will demand piece after piece of expensive paper, where as
the guy doing the employment may simply want to know what work you've
done on/with this device/or task in the industry/or ???
If you have practical skills, then my 2c is that TAFE may even be a waste
of time and money unless the qualification at the end is what you really
want or need.
Nial at Bankstown TAFE (NSW) runs an evening class under Advanced Diploma
in ??? Engineering that is interesting in you select your subjects(not
all), do self study and use him as a mentor. Library is reasonable as
well.
All the equipment at Petersham* is worn out crap and you will end up
there for practicals if you do correspondence through OTEN. OTOH, it must
be worse (availability wise) in other states as people were flying in
from other states to do practicals there.
North Sydney has a positive reputation, but I've never been there. The
guys from St George(?) were good, but I'm not sure if they offer what you
want there. Note OTEN guys were generally from electrical power
background.
Bottom line, if it is just personal skill, why not just ask here and
other relevant usenet groups? There are some highly skilled people that
hang out in different groups. The hard part is selecting an interesting
useful project.
Digital is just logic design really and the craft tricks of plugging it
all together. You can build your own sensors for "been there-done that"
or you can just buy them. You can build the logic from logic gates, then
learn any one the the programmable chip methods, where all that logic
shrinks it all into one programmable chip that drives it all. then you
are just stepping into embedded devices, then fully fledged computers.
Analogue is driving transistors and RL&C, the basics of which are covered
everywhere, then you get into using pre-built blocks.
Note, AFAIK, employment wise, people tend to specialise in design in very
specific areas and might only design a handful or original devices in
their lifetime.
