Any time! Just learn what you can now and pass the knowledge forward later.
It might be worth it for you to get a ham radio license. If the low power modules work for what you need, that is just fine. For the distances you are talking about with cattle fields, being able to legally transmit at over 1000 watts could have perks. (I jest, but having a little more power, in the 1 to 2 watt range, might be practical.)
At a minimum, a portable ham radio might be a good safety tool depending on the size of the ranch. It would be hella more reliable than CB as well.
Lol! I suppose the million dollar question is if you are generating interference. You are allowed to have a shitty design that works as long as you aren't causing grandmas pacemaker any problems.
That book is a great start, actually. AC theory is critical in understanding RF circuits.
I noticed there were dedicated sections in that book for LC/RLC circuits. In regards to RF, you might see those referenced as resonant tank circuits, so keep that in mind as you move forward.
You aren't going to see too much about impedance matching until you start working with transmission lines, as far as I know.
I just looked this up and read through it and it seems like a good intro. It'll be confusing unless you have a basic understanding of AC: https://resources.system-analysis.cadence.com/blog/msa2021-understanding-impedance-matching-in-transmission-lines
Start looking for YouTube videos with Eric Bogatin. He is a professor at CSU Boulder and has re-written the book on proper PCB design. (He does have a book, but he debunked a ton of old theories on high frequency board design and signal integrity.) If there is anything you must do, is follow his work on ground and power plane design or anyone that references his work. If someone uses a ground plane to just "fill in gaps" or have it act as a generic fix-all "shield", ignore them. (Many RF/HF myths came from the way boards were fabricated, not because of a specific circuit function.)
Once your signals get past a certain speed, you need to learn how electricity actually flows while understanding that both AC and DC theory applies. If you didn't know that energy flows in the field around a wire, you probably need to step back a little before you step forward. (Reference Veritasium on YouTube: The Big Misconception About Electricity )
You don't really need to get into heavy RF theory, but it helps. If there is anything you must learn about, it's impedance matching and why it matters. To summarize quickly, if there is an impedance mismatch between your transmitter and your antenna, you could easily blow out your transmitter due to excessive power draw and signal reflection. (That is somewhat rare for low power devices, but not uncommon once you start to transmit above 5-10 watts.) If a device needs an antenna, use it, even if were are talking about something as common as WiFi.
For your first designs, respect trace lengths and recommended components. Most of all, respect the keep out areas around an antenna diagram and ensure your ground plane is properly designed and away from the antenna. There are many shitty designs that do work, but you want to strive for precision for your first few iterations.
Also, decoupling becomes more than just a thing to do that might improve stability of your MCU or other components. It's entirely possible to get the rest of your PCB resonating which will cause all kinds of noise. This is partially negated with proper decoupling.
High frequency design just takes a little more care. Just remember the basic saying: Everything is a resistor, capacitor and inductor.
Now, if you just work with modules (and ESP32 with an integrated antenna comes to mind), almost all of the hard work is done. Make sure you have proper clearances, slap the thing on a board and you are good to go.
For the absolute basics, impedance matching with proper antenna length is what you need to learn first. (Receivers are much more forgiving than transmitters, btw.)
I am fully aware that some key details are missing here and just summarized as best as I could. If something I said turns out to be misleading, that isn't the intent and I apologize in advance. The intent was just to kick start more curiosity.
Edit: RF design and high frequency board design share some design considerations. Not all signals on an RF project are going to be high frequency and not all high frequency designs use RF, but, all high frequency designs can quickly become RF designs.
Also edited a time or two for clarification, grammar and spelling.
I suspect many people aren't talking about this because many Lemmy users don't use the platform.
Just use an alternative service instead of trying to find more ways to use Musks personal propaganda platform. Honesly, It makes more sense to open up apps like this again, quietly, since it was was a serious strategic flaw to block it in the first place.
I don't disagree with the concept of this front end, but there are just better options out there.
Well, most gods are created in mans image. Along those lines, any religious "fact" can be altered to fit whatever agenda the churches have at the moment to justify the widest level of religious adoption "in the name" of their god.
How many white people would have worshiped a darker skinned person while slavery was still an acceptable practice?
Some people are still able to rationalize the many images of jesus from around the world. (IMHO, this is yet another attempt to obfuscate discrimination by bouncing back and forth between reality and the meaning of religious symbolism.)
I question using religious scholars as references to a religious post, but at least that same site seems to be speaking out against white supremacy. I don't quite know what to think about that post, but it seems the intent was positive. Absolutely make a call-out if I missed some glaring.
Not at all. It absolutely is horrendously complex at times, so be warned. However, it's an awesome learning project, if you like those kinds of things. (Paw through YouTube for photogrammetry projects as it's really neat stuff.)
I "stole" a big fossilized rock specimen by taking a 4k video with my phone from all angles. Extracted a few thousand frames and rebuilt it. It doesn't look like much without the surface texture, but I was able to generate a reasonable 3D model. (Meshroom has also been the only app to thermal-throttle my 7950X3D.)
Photogrammetry (with Meshroom) or 3D scanning (point cloud alignments and processing has some beast requirements).
Meshroom would gladly use any resources it can find within a 20 mile radius.
We could pay down the national debt in about 4 hours.
They should have let her smoke on set. While I don't condone smoking, it would have been totally on-point for her character and would have tied in well to the coffee addiction. Her mannerisms just fit with her being a smoker. (Back then, smoking was still kinda socially acceptable.)
If someone didn't know, Kate Mulgrew was a heavy smoker back then but quit during the filming of Scientific Method. The pain was actually real.
Same here. Nerd blood runs deep in families.
(When the power brick blew out for my Atari, my dad simply cut open a random spare and re-wound the transformer to match the correct voltage. It was the neatest thing I had ever seen at that age.)