
NEETS - Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series - brk
http://jacquesricher.com/NEETS/
======
simonsarris
Since there's no immediate explanation I imagine someone will click through to
the comments to find one. This really should be at the top of the linked-to
page (if the author is present to see this comment).

\----------------

The Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series (NEETS) was developed for
use by personnel in many electrical- and electronic-related Navy ratings.
Written by, and with the advice of, senior technicians in these ratings, this
series provides beginners with fundamental electrical and electronic concepts
through self-study. The presentation of this series is not oriented to any
specific rating structure, but is divided into modules containing related
information organized into traditional paths of instruction.

The series is designed to give small amounts of information that can be easily
digested before advancing further into the more complex material. For a
student just becoming acquainted with electricity or electronics, it is highly
recommended that the modules be studied in their suggested sequence. While
there is a listing of NEETS by module title, the following brief descriptions
give a quick overview of how the individual modules flow together.

\----------------

Slightly larger Module descriptions can be found here:
<https://gist.github.com/4053057> (didn't want to pollute commentspace by
pasting it all here)

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ChuckMcM
A friend of mine gave me a dog eared copy of the Navy electronics training
manual when I was in high school and it was fabulous. Here was a book written
to approach the largest audience with a variable set of backgrounds. It helped
me pass my Novice exam and later much of the stuff I just "knew" confounded my
fellow students while pursuing my EE degree. Nice to find these updated
versions although the motors & generators section is much as I remember it.

------
DanielBMarkham
This is exactly the type of education experience we should be optimizing as a
society: self-study, in-depth, yet practical material geared toward leaving
the student able to perform some service of value in the world.

I'm a huge fan of a broad liberal education, but many educational institutions
have lost the plot. When a free PDF on the web can double your salary ability
and a 50K education from the local university will leave you only in debt? The
feedback loop for higher education is broken.

I'd love to see this integrated into something with more video material. In
fact, if I had money for philanthropy, putting together a job-oriented free
electronics course would be near the top of my list of things to do.

Side note: there are instructions for sending completed training material to
the Navy to have them grade it. I wonder how many packages the Navy gets from
students all over the world consuming this material and looking for a grade?

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throwaway1979
Thanks! I've been slowly teaching myself electronics for the past few years
(as a hobby). I recently got an oscilloscope and it opened a whole new world
for me!

I'd also suggest the following playlist on YouTube. The army/navy/air force
videos are amazing! <http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAA9B0175C3E15B47>

~~~
grandalf
I am doing the same thing. Any tips for cool things to do with the
oscilloscope?

~~~
throwaway1979
I cut one of the ear buds from an old pair of headphones. Connected it to the
scope and got a cool visualization of the music being played.

Beyond that, the biggest benefit of the Oscilloscope was it let me learn about
and build oscillators and op-amps. For instance, I made a relaxation
oscillator a few days ago (produces low frequency square waves).

I recently also got two electronics learning lab. I got the 300-in-1 from
Elenco. Radioshack also has a similar one. The material that comes with the
lab is strange - on the one hand, the projects are pretty sophisticated. On
the other, there is little to no explanation on how they work. But I've found
that this is great for self-study. The oscilloscope has been very handy for
this part.

P.S.1 Someone showed me a cool trick with an oscilloscope at maker faire. You
need two signals out of phase. Go into X-Y mode and voila ... you get some
cool annimated drawings :)

P.S.2 Be careful and safe playing with electricity!

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Having a term to google may help others: it's called a Lissajous Figure

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evoxed
I'm on my phone so typing is a little bothersome, but if this is the same as
the printed manuals they've had for years I would highly recommend it. Most of
my study on electronics outside of hands on work was with this series. If
you're thinking of taking 6.002x on edX these might help out a lot as a primer
for those who might otherwise be jumping in blind.

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kiba
My brain immediately parse the acronym as Not in Education, Employment or
Training(NEET) before I read the rest of the title.

------
m_d
Thanks for posting this. Not only does it appear to be an excellent resource,
but downloading all of the PDFs finally gave me a reason to try out curl.

~~~
Luyt
I used this small Python program to download the entire set of PDFs:

    
    
      import urllib
      for i in range(14173, 14197):
          url = "http://jacquesricher.com/NEETS/%d.pdf" % i
          print url
          urllib.urlretrieve(url, "%d.pdf" % i)

~~~
js2
With curl:

    
    
      curl -O 'http://jacquesricher.com/NEETS/[14173-14196].pdf'
    

Here's a way to do 4 downloads in parallel:

    
    
      for ((i=14173; i<14197; i++)); do
        echo http://jacquesricher.com/NEETS/$i.pdf
      done | xargs -n 1 -P 4 curl -O
    

Another trick for parallel execution is to generate a makefile then use make
-j.

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niels_olson
I was the electrical officer on a Navy ship. Since my undergraduate degree was
in physics, I thought it was incredible that my guys were learning this stuff.
Glad to see it's made it to the Internet.

------
krisneuharth
I went to school in San Diego where there are a lot of former sailors. The
former Navy tech guys always dominated in my EE classes after learning from
these materials.

------
leef
Interesting to see these posted on HN. I studied NEETS modules while working
on radar and weapon systems electronics as Data System Technician in the Navy
(DS). They cover a lot of ground and most teach things in a pretty simple way
(as the often need to train people who weren't the most academically
successful). They are a bit dry, though.

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sown
I almost joined the Navy's <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power_School>
. Back then it seemed like it would be really technically challenging but I
chickened out at the last moment. :( oh well. Given how my life has gone so
far maybe it would have been a good option.

It seems like this NEETS training would have also been neat. Thanks for this
link. The nuclear school material is SECRET, so I won't expect to find it,
lol. :)

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chm
Here's a quote from the introduction:

"If there are roots to western science, they no doubt lie under the rubble
that was once ancient Greece. With the exception of the Greeks, ancient people
had little interest in the structure of materials. [...] Recent experiments
have revealed that there are, indeed, several basic particles, or building
blocks within all substances."

The document doesn't read like a usual textbook, it feels lighter though maybe
a little less rigorous. Interesting read nonetheless!

------
meaty
This is great. Thanks for posting. Much less rambling than the art of
electronics!

