What are the best forums for electrical engineers, hardware engineers, and PCB Designers? We did some digging and asked members of the AllSpice team – several of whom are electrical engineers – which message boards they check the most often.
We previously covered the best electrical engineering YouTube channels, as well as the best hardware resources/news sources.
Our criteria for these forums were simple – engineers are collaborative and curious by nature. Here are some of the forums where we saw just that, along with recent and frequent postings from the hardware community.
Some are highly focused on solving specific problems or sharing projects for community feedback. Others are more hardware news related – and sometimes off-topic, yet still intriguing. Enjoy!
The best electrical engineering forums
All about circuits forum
Sharing the name of its news and resource publication, All About Circuits splits its community into multiple forums. According to its media kit, it has over 1.5 million monthly readers.
The forums are split into Hardware Design, Embedded & Programming, Education, Math & Science, as well as Community. The hardware design section has general chat on, news, test and measurement, and many others.
EEVblog electronics community forum
A forum to the widely known site by David L. Jones (as seen in its classic logo.), it has hundreds of thousands of posts, categorized into many subforums. This includes beginner EE topics, Repair, Microcontrollers, PCB/ EDA/ CAD, and dozens of others.
We recommend his podcast, too, The Amp Hour.
Hacker news forum via Y combinator
Run by Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, Hacker News has widely-ranging topics. According to them, posts with relevant content should be on “anything that gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity.” Throughout the threads, humor and wit are by default from this community of engineers and technologists.
Contextual electronics Forum
With a bulk of the subthreads focusing on PCB Design and KiCAD, Contextual Electronics is a great place to troubleshoot with fellow engineers. Its community is smaller than some of the other forums but has threads that are thorough in troubleshooting and analyzing specific topics. Worth a search if you’re stuck in error on projects.
r/ElectricalEngineering subreddit
Reddit itself needs no introduction or context. This subreddit of 180k is “for electronics and electrical engineering professionals, students, and enthusiasts.” Many other subreddits are relevant for hardware development, electrical engineering, and PCB Design, but this is one of the largest and most active.
EDA board
Run by the publication Design World, EDA Board is one of the better-organized forums, with a “Best Answers” section to drill down into some of the more helpful Q&A boards. Its user groups also help further focus on topics and get quicker responses – some include MATLAB, HFSS, and Industrial PLC and Automation.
Elektroda
Its parent site boasts over 3 million readers and has been active since 1999. Elektroda is one of the widest-ranging forums on this list, has more of an emphasis on news and consumer electronics, but also has subs on PCB Design, electronic components, robotics, development boards, electro tools, and beginner to advanced tutorials.
PCB Design Engineers – LinkedIn
We ran a bunch of polls in this LinkedIn PCB Design Engineers group and found that the PCB Design Engineer community was the most engaged – and relevant – in terms of titles who responded to our questions. Hundreds of electrical engineers, hardware engineers, managers, CTOs, and students would respond to our polls. There is a decent mix of news articles, crowdsourcing design issues, as well as industry trade shows/events.
Electrical engineering stack exchange
With most of its nearly 200k subthreads being purely Q&A, this forum is less about finding industry news and events, and more so about answering specific questions you may have in either very specific troubleshooting or tackling new design projects.
Which forums have you bookmarked in the EE and hardware world? Let our team know by emailing [email protected].
