Welcome to InterGeoTV Geotalks 2019. Today we are talking about the future of server's life with my three guests. Let's meet them. Craig Hill, vice president of like a geo systems. James Van Rens, senior vice president of Regal. Tommy van der Hayden, founder of Maxxx. So welcome to all again. Thank you. Let's start with Craig. How we explain that future of server's life from your eyes. We know worldwide there's quite a shortage of surveyors. And surveyors with educational background. That have a university degree will continue. I think to be the owners and the managers of the data and of the projects. But with the equipment becoming more and more easy to use. I think that it will be often non-surveyors will be using surveying equipment to conduct surveying activities. But under the guidance of a professional surveyor. But I think that's where the where we're going in the future. And technology is going to help that development. What do you think Tommy? I would agree with Greg. Definitely the life of the surveyors we see it now will change. I would say that the surveyors come more and more responsible for a broader operation. And he would have more help with people actually conducting the work in the field collecting the points collecting the data. Under the work of that surveyor with indeed easy tools. And also well integrated to their GIS systems. They are already walking outdoors with digital maps. So why not add a pin to that map where they can just restructure the data in the field with one click of a button. And that way we make the actual surveyor who is now overwhelmed with a lot of easy work. More available for the hard stuff which he is really trained for to do and skilled for. So in the future we will be making more use of the real knowledge of the surveyor and what is trained for it I think. So James. Yes thank you. Well from my perspective I think that surveyors are with the rest of us. Right so it's been a digital revolution in our personal lives. It's been a digital revolution within our the technologies of all of our companies. And the surveyors really need to deal with this as they are. But it's been a it's been a big transition. There's a shortage of surveyors as Craig pointed out perfectly. And it's necessary that they come into the modern age and really start to address things in a digital fashion. To meet the needs and the requirements of a burgeoning world around them that needs them desperately. So today's we are in a high speed technology revolution. So what's your plan to synchronize your company to the dynamic trends. So we can start. One of one of the ways we're doing it is through our open APIs for a uni cloud APIs. We are enabling basically any piece of software any piece of hardware equipment which is connected to the internet. To communicate with our device with our data making sure that you can actually use the location of our devices on basically every device you want. If you're smart enough you could even synchronize it to your home making sure that the lights go on when you're done surveying. And the key to that is open and to make sure that the surveyor or the person using it the company using it is able to choose how they work. And our equipment and our software needs to adapt to that to make sure we can stay up to speed with the trends in the market. What about you? Yes things are very dynamic and I think we're seeing the need for surveyors to do more with less. I think that's one where we're bringing innovation to make up surveyors and our customers more productive. And I think one recent announcement we've made is the GS18T rover GPS rover where the surveyor doesn't no longer needs to hold the pole vertically above the point you can hold it tilted. And then measure that point much quicker and much easier and their customers are telling us they're at least 20% more productive. So I think it's making surveyors be able to do more with less through innovative technologies. Yes James. So today it's a brand new world and technology is transforming it constantly. Our sensors are part of the what's now known as that fabulous term internet of things. So our data our sensors all of this has to join into that web that's pulling information in and getting it refreshed making it timeless so to speak. And that internet of things with an open data source and crowdsourcing of information is critical for all of us going forward to making sure that the data, the information, the assets, the highways, the byways, the seaways, the shores, the buildings, they're all relevant and they're up to date. So yes what we will see from your company next days. Could you give us some secrets from Naika? We have some new releases here at this at this show and one is for theft detection of survey equipment and that is becoming unfortunately a problem. Equipment is stole and even on site. And now we have a new lock eight or a locate system that you can then track and then lock the system and then hand that information over to the police so that they can recover the equipment and bring it back to the rightful owner. Reducing downtime and also hopefully reducing insurance premiums for our customers. Another release we have here is the city mapper two, which is bringing airborne mapping to really a new level of productivity being again doing more with less. So in terms of the future, like geosystems hexagon geosystems spend a lot of money in R&D and you can expect a lot more coming in the next months and weeks and years stay tuned. We are constantly working on bringing new stuff to our customers. We work with automatic and free updates over the year. The short future we will see new futures of our devices. For example, indeed using the tilt sensor to augment the antenna to the right position on the ground so you can hold it at a tilt level. Apart from that, you can expect a lot of integrations with the open API. We've seen a lot of interest from a lot of GIS systems, BIM systems. So basically what you would see in the future is people making use of software that has never seen surveying before but holds the data and just basically amanding the data, collecting data based on the real time position in the field. So I would think that you see most of that coming from us in this period and I think that's what the future needs. So James. So lots of exciting times are regaled right now. So there's a brand new production facility being built in Horn. Late last year, excuse me earlier this year, we occupied a brand new production facility for our mobile systems. We are building a new support service and of course office building in the United States and opening up a number of offices around the world. And all of that activity is being driven by the innovation that Regal has developed over the years. So in the area of LIDAR, they're very active. Underway and construction right now in Horn is a calibration fielding that's world class. It's laboratory level. It's one of a kind and it's the sort of thing that Regal invests in to make sure that it's digital regime of LIDAR is the latest. It's the greatest. It's the most precise. And it fills the needs and the requirements that our customers are looking for. And an example of that would be the newly announced airborne mapping system. It's 4 million hertz coming from this system. The productivity is outstanding and so for national mapping, country mapping, white area mapping, that sort of thing. It's an astounding leap forward. And there's of course more to talk about but that's an example. Thank you all again for that great conversation and to be part of Intergeo and Geotox 19. So thank you.


assassin Sweepy sweepy boys. I got big rock dog behind me Got our spot boys. That's all that matters. We got four dozen decoys. I'm sorry We got four dozen mallards We got a dozen whigen all final approach to the live series three dozen of the mallards are the flocked heads one is the Painted and then we got the whigen that are beautiful We did a podcast yesterday check it out if you haven't the MVM show and we were kind of talking how we're almost a little anxious A little bit anxiety. So a little build-up on this hunt in this video about Kelly. We've been training hard Well, I shouldn't say we Nathaniel has been doing the work It's all come down to this moment And so I think that's kind of our biggest excitement factor is seeing how Kelly does a day We're all excited about that. So stay tuned.  What's the old dog handler back there again?  I want to mess this up Good girl Kelly here. Good girl. Oh Kelly here.   Come on Come on Well, Morgan just shot his first two for the season doubled Sit Rocky sit. I thought I shot these two in front of me. What'd you do? On the right Morgan Morgan on the right shoot that one nice shot, baby Rock Send her on that close one Nathaniel if she can do it. I thought I shot these two right here. Did you shoot one of them?  She might get that one. Let her get that one. She gets it get her all the way this down It kicked her. It's all right. It's kicking her get her girl Get her work up Good boy Good boy Leave I'm looking for your bands Morgan. Nice. She did it. Come on Rocky. Come on. Every time's gonna get better Nice shot sit Sit Rocky Rocky Good shot Morgan come fire, baby How do you like those close shots? It's a wedging sweet the boy you know, yep Yep, let's go baby Yeah, we do actually and they're flaring hard you think she would do it Should we let her or no Rocky? Come on here. Where's that front? I gotta be careful now That's two hands. All right guys. We're less than an hour in and we have seven birds down. No eight birds Oh Sorry, just had some wood ducks go over but anyways, we got eight birds down Morgan's got five I got three Kelly's doing awesome for her first time She was bringing her first retrieve back and it started kicking in her mouth I think it kind of caught to her a little bit But that's to be expected for her never dealing with a live bird before I mean it was dead But it was just kicking we got some birds coming. Hey birds coming Nice Nice shot. No. No. Oh that one fell right on us Was yours one of yours alive still? Oh it was it was I guess he was alive still the one he's bringing is the one I already a shot Good boy rock. Come on, bud. I didn't know if you guys seen it or not So I didn't want to take a chance to say something Sorry Plastered him right on top of me. That's my bad. I Didn't want to whistle cuz I already had watched him come all the way from out there And I didn't want to say nothing to scare him No, not really It was just I thought he's gonna decoy right in front of this thing and he turned good boy. He got double hammered That was pretty cool, huh? Dude, he was just like Yeah, this is my second one hold hold Hold leave good boy. Huh?  He's still brownhead. I thought it was a man. Come here bud He never seen us, huh? I fell back on Rocky's dog stand.  They came from behind. Good boy. Oh, that's a nice one, huh? Here buddy. Oh, he's going pee He's taking a leak hold Hold Leave good dog Nice Yeah, that is a good one Nice sweet This is awesome. I'm at five right three in the boat, right? Are you sure three so I have five in here They're coming back guys There you go Out of baby. Do you want to have her get this one? This one stone. This is bad the bone boys Mmm, that was bad. I was bad Yep, it worked perfect Come on buddy leave good boy. This one was plastered Dude that old Kirk McCullough boys.  That was bad. All right. It's not good. I'm bad. That was awesome They were right Excuse me That was sick. Oh my goodness.  I hate use that term honestly, but that's basically what it was Sit nice shot, baby That was the farthest shot of the day and that was like 25 yards. Good boy. No, not a bit Yep, yeah, that's that's a Drake. Hey those those teal landed right in The witch and decoys over there. Tell me if something's coming.  I'm done. Thank you Hey, I want to show you guys this trick my gun out. Yeah, I'm seeing it Austin shout out served me. Well, it's all wet right now did some damage today Boom 21 birds. We all shot 14 shells Morgan shot 14 shells, but then shot 14 guess what I shot 14 So we shot 50% today not bad not that all alright boys gonna be in in the heart You know what we got to do you know what we got to do we got to do The dude alright Morgan. He ain't no stranger to this game. This is your chance.  We'll see on the next one


So, we will talk about I mean when we see what are the sensor characteristics that are required for application and how to go about selecting a sensor and or actuator I mean for example, I mean both are similar having similar requirements, ok. Now, these are basic formulations like the charge generated is proportional to some force applied, ok and where this D is a piezoelectric coefficient and, ok, this is like a static relationship. I am not considering here dynamic relationship, ok. So, in dynamics like you will have more more complicated, there is a there is a effect of capacitance also coming into picture in the constitutive basic fundamental relations for the piezoelectric sensor. So, this is a static relationship and then in that we see that this voltage is proportional to the force, ok. Then basic materials that are therefore, piezoelectric city are quartz crystal, then PZT like lead zirconium titanite and PVDF, ok. Now, out of these maybe like some of the materials like which are compatible with the MEMS processes, I mean they are basically used for see these piezoelectric sensors they are actuators also, ok. So, sensing and actuation is combined in this piezoelectric effect is reversible, ok. It is not just sensing, but like now if you apply voltage there will be a force produced. So, you can make use of these unique feature. There is a trick maybe I can talk at a little later point. When I talk about actuators, I mean it will be better, I mean I should talk it about that time because basically you can use the actuation and sensing together, ok and have the capabilities of your sensor enhanced, ok. So, say for example, if you have a accelerometer which is sensing some range of acceleration, you can have additional voltage, I mean whatever principle based on which it is working, like you can have additional actuation inside the sensor itself, ok, which can enhance like if you give some bias, ok. Now, the range of acceleration say for example, 1g to 3g it was measuring previously, then with the bias you can change that range to measure with 1 to 3, I mean like 3g change only, but you can have that at 10g to 13g, ok. So, that is possible with if you have sensor and actuator together, I mean that philosophy, I mean not many people have exploited that so far. I mean we will talk about when we come to MEMS like where it is it is very easily exploitable, ok. So, that is also possibility, ok. So, if you want a sensor which can perform very, very good and also have higher range, ok. See there is a dilemma here, ok. When you demand more range, ok, your sensing accuracy typically will go down, ok. That is you take any sensor specification and you see there the any sensor data sheets and you see the range, if they have the enhance range of sensing, their accuracy has to go down. I mean that is a way like I mean all the things in the nature behave. So, its resolution will go down, ok. But if you want to have both at the same time, ok, you can use I mean there again you can have a sensor itself as a mechatronics system where you have actuation inside the sensor, ok. That is very, very nice way of doing like high performance thing using mechatronics, ok and in the same cost, ok. When you demand high resolution and high range both at the same time, you will typically find in the current data sheets in the literature like you will find that sensor will be very costly, ok. So, higher range and higher resolution both at the same time the sensor will be costly and that that cost you can bring down by using mechatronics philosophy in there, ok. If you do not understand point, I mean this is like a important point for futuristic sensors, ok. Now, this is one of the application of piezoelectric sensor for the sensing pressure in the mold cavity. Advantage basically is again as I was talking about both actuation and sensing is possible and they are typically high frequency kind of sensors, ok. So, very high dynamics they can sense like, ok. Now, let us come to the sensor selection, ok. So, based on like, ok, you have some conceptualize some idea about your mechatronics system and you have come now to the level, ok. I want to sense variable, ok. You know the variable that you want to sense and there are many possibilities like for displacement sensing you can have encoder or I mean there are tons of possibilities there. So, what is to be selected? So, basically you come up first with the sensor requirements, ok. What exactly will suffice your job, ok? You should not have something which is overkill and at the same time something which will not work, ok. There are these two extremes like, ok. Either you have something which is overkill like, ok. You say, ok, you do not do detail analysis and then, ok, you come up with something, some specification you know for sure it will work. But I mean you see into detail like, ok, whether it is overkill for my system, ok. So, it should not be that overkill and it should also work, ok. It should not be that it is not working, I mean, ok. So, that is for that you need to do some system analysis, system modeling, ok and then like come up with system requirements and from system requirements derive the sensor requirements, ok. That is a formal way of like getting to the sensor, ok. Of course, there will be as we do in the mechanical domain like your first iteration, then second iteration of design like that. There will be some iterations, ok. You may have to go through like, ok. You select something and then you go and analyze your mechatronics like I mean the interfacing and you say that, ok, this is not working for this particular, let me change this and so that kind of a thing always you need to do, ok. But that is a design is a iterative process, I mean that is, but your analysis and your knowledge of mechatronics will decrease the number of iterations that you have to go through, ok. So, analysis you basically do either, I mean depending upon your application frequency, ok. Do you understand what is application frequency like application bandwidth, ok, where which frequency your thing is like operating at, ok, your device is operating at, ok. If it is like, say for example, this liquid level sensor, ok, that we will take it as a example and if I am just interested in like monitoring the level of a liquid, ok, not these dynamic changes in the level, ok. Just like simple level, that is very slowly changing level in, say for example, in the overhead tanks, ok. That is very slowly changing. So, there I do not need to bother about like dynamic bandwidth, ok. It is very slowly like say for example, if the liquid level in my tank changes and I get to see that only after say whatever, because of whatever like the response time of a sensor, I get to see only after 2 seconds. It is ok, right. I am not interested in like, ok, monitoring the liquid changes in my over a tank, I mean second to second, ok. But the same thing if I am going for the slosh application, where I am interested in knowing like how the liquid level is changing because of the motion of the tank, then it is a different matter. I cannot use that, ok. So, you understand the difference, ok. So, you need to see what are the end goals that your system is supposed to work for, ok. And accordingly you come up with bandwidth and like amplitude range requirements for your sensor, ok. And then once you know the analysis and at least rough analysis and you are clear about some of the numbers, then like it is a matter of just going to the data sheets and selecting, ok. This is appropriate, this is not appropriate like that, ok. Then based on the analog and digital sensor, you need to worry about the noise in the system, ok. This is very important practical point, ok. I mean theoretically everything is sound, ok. You have a linear sensor and all those things you say. But when you practically connect the wires, I mean every wire is sitting there to act as an antenna, ok. I mean will you may. So, it is very important to think ahead of time like how, what is the way you are going to connect, how much is the length of wire that you are going to use and what is a magnetic field or electromagnetic sources around your application, ok. Say for example, typically this is a case like all the mechanics engineers they will go for some motor. They will be some motor in the and for motor you need a motor driver, ok. High power motor is there, there is a high power driver. And typically all these drivers they are based on the something called edge bridge configuration. Let us see I mean I have that in the slides, but I do not know whether I will get a time to talk about in detail. But in those edge bridge there is high frequency switching that is happening. See any high voltage switching will cause electromagnetic disturbance, ok. Say for example, here in the tubeless you have a choke, ok, where there is a high frequency thing going on. High frequency and high electromagnetic that choke coils are really heavy, ok. So, high voltage electromagnetics is there. Similarly, like if you go for motor controller I mean edge bridge controller I mean they will have this kind of a switching going on there. So, wherever that acts as a source of noise to your sensors and your sensor sitting in a electron or mechatonic kind of an application by the side of this kind of a source is really damaging, ok. And actually we have seen in our application of this Losh rig a lot of noise, ok. We are using the pressure I mean not pressure the force sensor 6 axis load cell, ok. And it used to give a lot of noise then we will have to think about what are the strategies will eliminate this noise. And if not eliminate completely like what we can do to at least software process that thing. So, that like we get the signal which is of interest, ok. So, signal processing consideration I do not know whether they are getting covered in this course, but they are again important in this sense, ok. Then the cost implications as I was saying you have to balance against like what is the cost that your company is permitting you, ok, to spend, ok. And you may be recommending that within whatever this much cost it is not at all possible or this is overkill I mean you do not need really that higher cost I mean you can save on the cost. All those kinds of things like if you do proper analysis what are the requirements then you can come up with the numbers, ok. This is I am talking about specifically for robotic applications there, ok. See for robotics like first you need to do kinematic analysis, ok. Then only you can go for dynamic analysis. Basically this kinematic I have mentioned for the robotics application. What you need to do is basically a dynamic analysis, ok. Ah, ok. That is what I was telling when I consider the example of slosh, ok. When you are interested in monitoring the liquid level in the overhead tank you do not have to consider the dynamics, ok, because it is changing very slowly over the day. But in my slosh application like I will show you video the liquid is changing its level very fast and very having various kinds of ways in which it is sloshing. And I want to study those ways of sloshing. If I if that is my end goal I need to have a sensor which can respond faster than that application. Whatever the changes are happening. Oh, how is the dynamic analysis done? You need to go to then this next step which is mathematical modeling of a system, ok. This you have to mathematically capture the dynamics, ok. Say for example this slosh application, ok. I can just consider it to be a pendulum kind of a system. Simple pendulum kind of a system and study the dynamics, ok. Though it is a complex application I mean where lot of fluid motion and fluid structure interaction is involved like one of the ways, ok, depending upon the frequency of course. But like whatever this this kind of a slosh I can study by using pendulum analogy, ok. So, so like that you need to think about even an application what is the way I can come up with the mathematical model, ok.  Like say for example one of the students in our mechatronics course like he was studying I mean he was studying the dynamics of motor and he asked me a question sir why why we should not take a air damping when the motor is rotating, ok. So, so the thing is that see these are all the phenomena that are definitely happening, ok. But are they relevant for my process? Are they affecting my process, ok? See motor is rotating air which is surrounding the motor how fast it is damping. If you compare the damping in the bearings and damping of the air which is rotating I mean which is like moving around I mean because of the shaft rotation it is weak gap, it is hardly I mean it is negligible you can safely I mean very safely ignore that, ok. So, so you I mean that quality is there with all of us engineers, ok that seeing the phenomena observing the phenomena very carefully you need to think about, ok, whether what is important what is not important to model, ok. See you cannot say that there is a perfect mathematical model for any phenomena in the world there will be no perfect model. All models whether it is linear or non-linear there will be approximations, ok. Approximations that you are specifying, ok. In this range that application will application range that approximation will be valid, ok. So, so that is very very important point to take home that you need to be able to see, ok. And we have all of engineers have that quality, ok to some extent we need to be conscious about it and develop that, ok. But we have that quality that, ok, seeing the phenomena we know, ok what is going to be important in this phenomena, ok. Now to translate that in the mathematics is a skill that we need to like develop and master, ok. Once we develop that skill then whatever this like how to come up with the dynamic requirements of a sensor will be very easy, ok. So, modeling of the phenomena, ok under consideration with a simple mathematical model which is representing like most of the essence of the application that is that is a key, ok. Case study I will see what time for me is like I mean I am already running late, but let us see. Running on a very bad road. Yeah, you do not need. What is the variation in this level? So, you see the. Exactly. What? Yeah, that is very right. In volume I need at least 3 sensors to find out the first about the plane of the movement and the response type of that, how fast it is going to move you cannot visualize this even. When car is running on a very rough road it will move like a. See, yeah, yeah. So, you will not be able to judge what is the level because like in car when the liquid is moving or in the petrol tank your fuel is moving and if you have very high response time sensor placed in there it will always be fluctuating, ok. It will not show you what is actual level I mean. So, you have to do something to like have this response time damped or like. Exactly. Yeah, that is a good example, ok. So, once this mathematical model is there and you do the analysis little bit of analysis dynamic analysis do use MATLAB to carry out simulation and then you can come up with proper specifications and then like it can you can use them with the manufacturer's catalog to select a particular sensor for your application, ok. So, that is about that is all about sensors. Now, we will focus on actuators now, ok. Some of the basic principles and things are similar I mean say for example, selection of actuators I mean again there you need to worry about bandwidth and how fast you want to have the dynamics going and things like that, ok. So, I will not spend the time on that, but I will give you the flavor of typical actuators that are used in the in the mechatronic system, ok. AC and DC motors, stepper motors and hydraulic actuators are three major classes that are used for mechatronic system. And solenoids of course, I mean they are not I mean they are not kind of a servo actuators, ok. They are like a I mean 01 kind of actuators, ok. So, piezoelectric motors and other pneumatic devices we will not talk about, but they can also be used in mechatronic system. Pneumatic devices mainly you will find go well with the PLC kind of a controller, ok. How many of you are working with the you are working with PLC? So, there it is kind of a logic which is very easy to be programmed and then you have this kind of actuators, pneumatic actuators working there quite well, ok. So, DC motors the basic principle is wire carrying conductor placed in magnetic field will generate a force when so that force is basically used for like moving and generating like whatever like this rotary motion in the motor or whatever, ok. So, there are two primary classes one is brush type DC motor and other is brush less type. So, brush less DC motors because of obvious reasons like there is no friction in the brush to like reduce the speed I mean we can have these motors going at very high speeds, ok. And then you can have also AC similar kind of AC motors also. Wide variety of motors are available in the market, ok. So, I will not get into the details about these, but there are the main thing that you need to look for is whether the torque or whatever torque and speeds are compatible for your application and whatever actuator you are selecting, ok. That is again based on that actuator similar to the sensor selection you have to do this analysis and come up with the actuator specifications, ok. Solid states, solid state switching is basically you use the semiconductor, ok. There is no physical switch, ok, a transistor switch which is solid state, ok. So, stepper motors are basically basically used for high torque and low speed kind of application, ok. So, we will see exactly how the stepper motor works I mean the principle and other thing. There is a stepping action as the name suggests in the motor, ok. So, it is not like a smoothly running I mean, ok. Of course, this smoothness will depend upon what is required for the application, but typically the stepper motor if you are feeling like you rotate the shaft of the stepper motor, you will not be able to rotate it smoothly. It will go in and lock into some steps, ok. So, that is the way the stepper motor is designed to work actually. This is ideal for implementation of digital control. So, why it will become clear in the next slide. Also there is a holding torque in the stepper motor even if you have no power given to the stepper motor, it has some holding torque, ok, which may be important for some applications, ok. So, that you can make use of. Then there are various types of constructions and configurations possible and these are the two different types of stepper motors, but basic principle is like this. You have a permanent magnet which is here and these coils surrounding it can be like excited impulses, ok. So, say for example, when you excite one of the coils, ok, the magnet orientation will change in that direction, ok. So, that is a basic basic principle of stepper motor, ok. I am exaggerating it here like it is not really just 90 degree step at a time, it is 1.8 degree step usually for many of the stepper motors, ok. So, that is like it is very small steps it can move, ok. So, your job, I mean as a mechatronic engineer is to make sure that, ok, this excitation sequence is proper, ok. So, there are many different kinds of sequences also possible for the stepper motor. Say for example, in this particular sequence you can say this is a half step mode, ok. You are exciting two coils at a time and one coil in the next insert, I mean next step, ok. So, these logically can be displayed as in here, ok. So, this is a half step sequence. You can see these two coils are excited at a time and in the next step only one coil is excited, ok. Then the next coil is excited in the next step, ok. So, this logic sequence you need to develop in your microprocessor, ok. Did you see yesterday digital input outputs? No, ok, but ok. So, in microprocessor it is possible to configure or like to program the pins of your digital, there are pins that are provided like maybe 16 pins or 8 pins will be provided for digital input outputs, ok. These pins you can program to give either 0 or 1. So, you can program this, like say for example, in this case we will require these 4 pins, ok. One a, one b, two a and two b, there are 2, 4 coils to be excited. So, you need 4 pins that you will program there and on that pin 0 and 1 you give according to this sequence and your motor will start running, ok. So, these are the various applications of stepper motors in your dot matrix printer. So, see these are the sources like say if you are in the college and you want like for your students to gain knowledge in in mechatronics.  This is a stepper motor you can I mean so that is just like directly available at no cost that electronics is available for you. So, you can make use of that and demonstrate students to like what are the like sophisticated mechatronics you can demonstrate at no cost at all, ok. So, CD-ROM drive stepper motor for example, we have developed one setup around the CD-ROM drive to teach principles of CD-ROM, ok. And it has all the necessary things we have the laser of CD-ROM drive actuated separately not as in the CD-ROM drive, ok. We just take a head and then like actuate the laser and you can see now all the focusing signals and the tracking signals and all those things, ok. So, that is a way I mean if you are college teacher you can or in your industry also I mean you can think about what can be used because this is a high quality electronics believe me like anything you would take out from the from the printer or floppy drive or whatever scanner or whatever the very high quality electronics that is available at no cost very low cost. So, if you are like requirements and that match you as well borrow it from existing high industry, high quality industrial product, ok. The question is between DC and stepper, ok which one is more controllable?  See more controllable is not really see I would say what are the specifications that you are you are looking for. So, if you so see now, ok. This stepper motor technology has like really developed in the years and people are using stepper motor also in the floppy drives, ok. Of course, they are not using it for hard disk drive or like, ok. So, that kind of a precision whatever is required for floppy drive is possible with the stepper motor, but it should be high end stepper motor. But typically stepper motors are not used for very high resolution kind of application typically, ok. So, this is just industrial hydraulic motor you can see this is a axial motor there on the top here you can see axial piston motor with a swash plate and other thing and then it is driving the this industrial product, ok. These are you this is a use of hydraulic devices I mean where anywhere you see earth moving machinery, ok. You need to have hydraulics there, ok. Because you need typically very high forces, high power, ok. And in the in the mobile application it can be generated very easily by using pumps oil pumps oil pressure basically and use that for hydraulic actuators, ok. Now, so basically how now the the way is, ok we have selected actuator and sensor. Now, what are the different interfaces possible for interfacing them with your microcontroller, ok. This cannot be done independent of microcontroller selection I mean I mean I am not talking right now of microcontroller selection or microprocessor selection, but I am talking about interfaces, ok. So, you need to make sure that, ok your microprocessor is having those interfaces or appropriate interfaces for your application, ok. And, ok there are if you are using microprocessor then these interfaces you will have to create, based on like some chips which are used for input output ports for example, A255 chip for example, it can be interfaced for digital input outputs. So, like that you need to create those, ok. Other solution if you are not really in the electronic engineer and you do not want to mess up with electronics like you can directly go for microcontroller, ok. Microcontroller are the chips that provide these interfaces to you directly, ok. If you are working in a research kind of environment like it is not a product which is but your the product is in development, ok. Then instead of going for microprocessors or microcontrollers you can go for data acquisition systems directly which can be sitting in your computer and controlling your application, ok. They will have their own microcontroller, microprocessor on board, but you would not bother about like programming details of that microprocessor, ok. So, there are various kinds of microprocessor interfaces or digital control implementation interfaces possible. I am not going into details of that I am just talking what are the sensors and actuator interfaces. And, typically you see this is a configuration that I have shown here that your control computation will take place. There will be clock which will be synchronizing all these events like you have analog to digital converter here which will be taking your sensor. I am just showing this analog to digital for convenience, ok. This can be a encoder interface also I mean completely digital interface also, but there will be some interface from the sensor which will interface your sensor with the controller and computer or microprocessor or whatever, ok. It may be simply if it is in analog domain like it may be simply the electronics at it, ok. So, you have many possibilities in all of these elements, ok. Then from control you do control computation and then like you need to give it to your actuator which is typically in the analog domain. Say for example, your servo motor, ok. Saper motor is a special case which is in the digital domain you can say, but typically all the other actuators will be in the servo mode and you will have them as analog actuators, ok. So, you it is required to convert that digital signal into analog domain and that is done by this digital analog converter, ok, which can be interfaced with your microprocessor. So, microprocessor, ok. Yesterday you saw the fundamentals of microprocessor, but just microprocessor is not sufficient. You need to have these like peripheral interfaces, ok. So, it is like just the computer chip 4866 or Pentium chip you are given that is not sufficient for you to work. I mean there should be some interface where you can you can be seeing what is going on in the chip on the monitor, ok. So, you need that kind of a monitor interface. So, this is a similar thing, ok. Just this microprocessor chip is not sufficient that is a brain, but you need hands and legs or eyes to see and operate, ok. So, those are the interfaces through which like microprocessor can talk with the high power mechanical application, ok. Ok, this is a question that I was I paused on like few minutes ago. Like can your computer be connected to any motor directly? What is your response? Yeah, exactly. Small motors. Small motors, very small tiny motors you can think of, ok. Even small motors if you want to drive through your computer like you will need some something similar to sound card, ok or you can drive that motor through the sound card. If you connect it directly to your parallel port or serial port you will destroy, ok. So, so, so never, never, never, ever attempt, ok. This was one of the questions we asked in the exam like if what if I like one of the DD students connects the motor directly to the computer what will happen? Like power requirements on both the sides are totally mismatch, ok. So, you need something some device called amplifier in between to do the job and provide the extra power that your application needs, yeah, ok. So, the simple, simplest interface, ok, you might be familiar with is a sound card, ok. So, through sound card maybe you can drive some speakers which are having low power. If you want to drive like high power speakers you need some more monitor or some device to take care of that, ok. So, it is exactly same like the way you are familiar actually with all these concepts I mean in your day to day life, but I mean you see it from different perspective and it will be useful for your mechatronics application, ok. This sound card is an interface that you can use I mean this is for people who are in the college and they want to make use of CD-ROM at the example that I gave for control. So, they can interface the CD-ROM drive with the sound card, I mean sound card output instead of going to speakers they can drive the coils in the CD head, ok. And then like you have with no cost at all the complete mechatronic application in place, ok. So, digital analog converter is one of the interface PWM is another interface, ok pulse width modulation, ok. We will see what is that in the brief and then digital signals, ok digital port you can have 0s and 1s programmable on the digital port and you can use that for driving stepper motor. Then you can have, ok. The more high-ended cards like detection systems that you get in the market as a I mean as a product, ok. Mainly for the research purposes you can use that and those maybe having some kind of a serial or parallel interface with your computer, ok. So, that RS232 or some kind of a CAN is another interface for automobile applications. So, there are people have developed lot of interfaces other than these, I mean these are most typical kind of interfaces directly for the hardware, but other interfaces are for mainly for communication, ok. So, say for example, if you want to drive a simple servo motor with maximum current limit 4 amperes, let us say. Then this MC33186 is a Motorola chip which you can use for that kind of a application. This is very simple chip which is having this edge bridge configuration and that can be used for DC servo motor control with PWM, ok. And when you want to like have, see stepper motor also you cannot directly connect stepper motor terminals to your digital input output. So, that interface or amplifier interface for the stepper motor is this ULN 2003 chip. A lot of interfaces actually are chips available, but these are the things which you can directly start with for building your application one of the examples, ok. There are all these issues we are talking about. The other more the very important issue is reversing the direction, ok. We will see how it is done, what are the solutions. I mean you just amplifying a signal is not sufficient, ok. So, this direction reversal needs a special treatment or special attention, ok, especially in the servo motors not in the stepper motors. Stepper motors you just change the sequence and it will reverse the direction, but step I mean servo motors is that is an issue, ok. So, this power amplification let us not dwell into, ok. See typical transistor characteristics is having like very low, see it is kind of a dead zone in the near 0, ok. This voltage versus collector current, amplifier current, ok. So, this kind of a dead zone characteristics is where the problem is, ok. So, you will not be able to drive your motor at very low speeds, so to say, because of this kind of a characteristics. And you do not have these characteristics on the reverse side, ok. On the reverse side you do not have these characteristics, ok. That is another problem. So, that is why you cannot reverse the direction, ok. So, what you do is use this pulse width modulation, ok. You use this pulse kind of a signal, where these are very high frequency pulses which are square in square type of pulses. And the voltage of this pulse is remaining constant, but the time period, time period is remaining constant, but this on time all or called pulse width is what is modulated or changed, ok. By changing this pulse width, you can change the average voltage that is seen by the motor, ok. So, here like these pulses are changing very fast, but motor sees only the average level, ok. Motor does not see, because motor cannot respond that fast. These pulses are typically like 10 k or 20 k kilohertz kind of a frequency, ok. So, you cannot see it changing that fast. It is like a tubelight. Tubelight also there is a fluctuations happening, but our eyes cannot detect those fluctuations. We see that it is as a continuous source of a light, ok. But those fluctuations which are at higher frequencies, we cannot see. Like that, these motors will not be able to see these fluctuations, ok. So, you need to have this point in mind when using PWM for any other applications rather than motor, ok. Where say if you are saying like piezoelectric application I am using PWM, piezoelectric will respond to this, ok. This high fluctuation, immediately it will respond. But because response time for piezoelectric is much, much smaller, ok. So, you need to be wise in taking decision while using this PWM philosophy for any other application. The basic idea here is that you are not changing the operating point on your transistor characteristics, ok. The operating point on your transistor characteristics is say for whatever like fixed voltage that you have in the PWM this, this fixed voltage, ok. You are not changing that operating point on your transistor characteristics, ok. So, you are always operating at this point and so corresponding to that you will get current, ok. So, you are not at all touching this zone. That is a basic, basics of like using PWM. So, you avoid that dead zone by having your operating point fixed. But now how to change the energy that is if the operating point is fixed, how to change the energy like amount of time for which it is on you reduce or increase. That way it will allow you to change the energy that is going into your motor, ok. Finally, what matters for motor to see is average energy that is going into the motor, ok. So, that is how you can beat application around this philosophy. And all the components for this kind of a way are easily available in the market. You can program your digital input output ports to generate this PWM and you can use this 3D 186. See, this is a thing which we give in our mechatronics course for students to like I mean interface and see themselves, ok. So, this is a most simple way of constructing your own mechatronics system, ok. Then you can have like more higher ended systems built by using more higher ended like drives, ok. So, 3 3 186 that chip is basically edge tree edge bridge driver. It is it is it works basically on the switching of the transistors, ok. So, this say for example, if you have this out of this four switch switches these are transistors, ok. Basically switching is done by the transistor, ok. So, these transistors S 1 and S 4 when they are switched on the motor will go in one direction and when they are open and S 2 and S 3 are switched on motor will reverse the direction, ok. So, it is basically the reversal is done by using transistor switching in the edge bridge and edge bridge chip has that I mean everything is there on the chip to take care of your direction reversal. You need to give appropriate signals to the pins of the chip and then it will there is a pin on which like if you give 0, if you give 1 it will change the direction, ok. So, that is how in edge bridge I mean that 3 3 186 chip it will happen, but if you go to internally what is happening is this is what is happening internally into the chip, ok. If you want to have specified accuracy and range how that specifications affect like selection of actuator, ok. So, say for example, for one micrometer you cannot use anything which gives you the friction, ok. So, basically friction is a very killing factor in very high precision applications, ok. So, you need to avoid friction and backlash, there are two things to be avoided if you are going for one micron kind of a precision, ok. So, in that case what is done is basically like if you want to have a motion you use some kind of a cantilever, cantilever to which your stage is suspended and you keep it in the magnetic field, ok. So, as you change the magnetic field this cantilever will bend and there is no friction happening anywhere, ok. You get this point, so it is a simple philosophy of like flexures, this is called flexure, ok. Flexure mechanism or flexure joint you can use and you can have reproducibly same thing, I mean exactly at the same position it will stop when your voltage is at the same point, ok. So, that is a precision that you will get because there is no friction. If there is a friction like next time you cannot predict that at that point the same amount of force, frictional force will be there, ok. Because of the wear the surface might have changed its characteristics and it would have changed the friction force. So, high precision positioning will not be possible with the friction, ok. So, that is the main point of like this example, ok. So, those you are applying magnetic field you need to have the magnetic coils or permanent magnet and magnetic coil and you can like that magnetic force you apply at the end and then like flex this thing will have to bend, right. When you apply force on the cantilever it will bend. So, that is how the force is generated, ok. Ok. The sensor interfaces are essentially the same like you in addition to the digital and AD I mean analog to digital converter you have encoder interface which you do not have for actuators, ok. So, that is a additional interface. Again that has some something to do with the way the like I showed you in encoder. So, whatever 0s and 1 coming out of that encoder need to be processed in proper way to say that, ok this is one count this is another count like that. So, that is there is a, ok. How is it happening is a little complicated thing, but how to use that is very simple, ok. See so, you need to have a balanced understanding, ok. You need not be knowing everything that, ok how is it happening? You may be in specialized in whatever your field, ok. So, you may not know details about how microprocessor is working, ok or how flip flops and other things are changing to make the microprocessor work. I mean that is not your field of specialization. You need not know that, but how to use microprocessor that is for sure you should know, ok. So, some of the things you may be knowing may not be knowing does not matter, but like it is important to know what are the things which are important to know, ok. So, that as long as you think about and like make the sense of, ok what is important to know and then you are fine, ok. So, it is not like your skill in a particular area that will help you, but it is a thing, ok. What is important to know for this application to work with a high performance with a lower cost? What is important to know? As long as you are making that kind of a decision, ok, this is not sufficient. I need to know more about this to get this thing. That is a kind of a field that if you are getting for the application that will work best, ok. It does not matter what expertise you have, ok. You just need to have that kind of a with that kind of a understanding. I mean, it will come through, it will come through.  And it will come through as you go along and consciously be aware, ok. Am I taking right decision? I am not taking. All those things it will slowly start developing, ok. Just being aware about that kind of a faculty, it will get developed, ok. This is the rig that I was talking about. So, these are the actuators, ok. This is a motor. There is a encoder on this motor at the back and then there is a ball screw which is hidden under this paper which is used for like preventing dust to enter there which is moving this linear stage which is placed on the linear bearings, ok. And this is a mechanism which will be giving me the tank a rotary motion, ok. And here again there is this linear slide. You can see that there is a stage which is moving in the linear direction as this rotary excitation motor rotates which is again having this encoder, ok. This has a big amplifier attached to this motor and then from that amplifier we are taking the signals into actually computer, ok. So, are giving the signal from computer to this amplifier and then that is driving this motor, ok. So, I will show you this video. You can see I am not able to point out because it is showing in some different monitor on this monitor it is not seen. But you can see how the linear slide is moving and along with that also the linear the pitching actuation motor is also working on the at the same time. And if you see at a liquid level closely it is not changing at all, ok. So, this is what we are doing actually is we are giving one motion to the linear degree of freedom like I mean linear translation we are giving some motion and we are adjusting the other motion such that the slosh is compensated, ok. So, this it is possible to do that, ok. So, this is a demonstration actually of slosh cancellation, ok. I mean this is not really a feedback kind of a control, ok. We have developed couple of feedback control strategies also on these. Actually at a base of this tank if you notice carefully you will find that load cell, ok. No, no it is hidden here, ok. This is a wire that you see for the load cell, ok. So, we have the load cell which is at a base of the tank which is capturing the forces and movements in all six whatever like three translate I mean three forces and three movements we are capturing, ok. And because of the sloshing whatever these movements and forces are generated they are getting recorded and that is can be used now for like identifying pendulum parameters, identifying different proposing different models, ok. So, those that data can be processed further to like get the meaningful information out of the system. I mean this is a project from ISRO, you know in launch vehicles that go in the space there are like lot of fuel they carry, ok. The 70 percent of the weight that goes in the space is liquid. So, the liquid motion has lot of effect on your trajectory. I mean for this Saturn trajectory I mean Saturn failure was because of the slosh. I mean these forces were not characterized before and because of that like the controller that they had developed was not sufficient to like take care of these and because of that there was a Saturn failure. So, slosh is very important for space rockets, ok. So, ISRO has like given this project to us to develop this rig and like develop different models and model parameters schemes algorithms for the space application, ok. Now, this technology has been transferred to them and they are also now developing a on a bigger size. This is like 10 kg tank, but they are developing on a bigger size like 50 kg or 100 kg tank to carry out their experiments and they will be all using our control algorithms to really identify various parameters, ok. That is a practical example. So, in conclusion like the automation engineer needs to have good knowledge about these elements, ok. Sensors actuator and they are interfacing to really synthesize your mechanical system, ok. All right.


2020 has been one of the weirdest years I've ever seen since I started investing. Start off in February crashing to levels we haven't seen in years and then the market quickly recovered right after to make all-time highs. And I've been getting tons of comments asking me, Shane, I see how much you're making investing in the stock market. How do I get into this game? How do I do it step by step, etc.  And in this video, I'm not going to be talking about day trading and how much money you can make investing in these three secret stocks. And all you have to do is join my signal group or sign up to my $1,997 course. No, no, no, no, we're not playing any games like that. There's no course here. There's no upsell. And the truth is good investing is relatively simple. And that's probably why nobody makes courses that promote the best ways of investing. Okay, so I'm going to teach you what I wish I knew when I started. So instead of spending money on all this stuff that you don't need, you can start making passive income from your investments. In full disclosure, I talked about this in a few videos made me extremely uncomfortable.  Specifically, I talked about December in January of 2021. And each month, my portfolio went up by over $25,000. And of course, these are freak months because we are in a bull market right now. So I don't expect these really good months to happen in the future. But I've designed this video to kind of be like a mini course where I highly recommend watching until the end, because I'm going to reveal pretty much everything you need to know about investing. And with the strategies that I'm going to reveal in this video, you will be able to beat literally 99% of investors. And that's scientifically proven. And I'm not saying that as a joke, this has literally been proven to be the best way of investing. They've done lots of research on this. And it's kind of simple. It's really stupidly simple. And so that's why you probably don't hear that many people talking about it. And in this video, I'm going to prove it. So just stick around until the end. And also, if you appreciate videos like this, where they're almost like mini courses, hit that like button, let me know, and I'll make more just like it. So first of all, let's start at the beginning. Let's get into it and start talking about why you should invest in the first place. So this is a question everybody has to answer for themselves. Why should I spend my time and money investing when I could go out and have a good time with the money? Or I could go buy Gucci shoes and Versace glasses and all kinds of other stuff that you don't need. And the simple answer is to build your wealth and more importantly, to buy freedom. Okay, so you've probably seen some of the older people in your family talking about this before.  And now it's like $5 for the same burger. What's going on? Well, the reason for that is because of inflation. So the value of money is going to go down over time. So if you're just keeping money in your bank account, for instance, if you're just like saving money, or maybe you don't trust banks, right? You withdraw the money and you keep it under your mattress, it is actually losing value. It's probably losing like somewhere between one and 3% per year depending on how much money the government is printing, which right now is quite a bit. So the benefit of investing rather than just saving money is you can make your money increase in value over time rather than losing value. Even if you're putting your money in a high interest savings account, which I remember last year before, you know, all this situation happened with the pandemic, there was one bank account that was giving me 2.57% interest, which is fantastic. But that's still barely keeping up with inflation. And right now, I think the best one is offering about one to 1.5%. Now on top of beating inflation and making your money more valuable over time, what's even more important is the fact that you're earning compound interest. Now you've probably heard about compound interest before. Einstein says it's like the eighth wonder of the world, for instance. And I feel like I have mentioned this at least like 10 times in my videos before.  But very simply, if you put something like $500 a month into your investments over like a 30 to 40 year period, you are going to end up a millionaire. You're going to be able to retire. So for instance, if you put $500 a month into a Roth IRA, which would be about $6,000 a year, and a Roth IRA is a tax advantage retirement account that is probably going to earn somewhere between 7% and 8% per year compounded, you will end up a millionaire. You will have enough money to retire just by doing that alone. However, it's going to take a very long time. So you have to be patient. If you want to be a little bit more aggressive with your investments, you can retire a lot earlier than the average person. So in the case of the Roth IRA, for example, you would only put in around $300,000 or so. But by the time you're ready to retire, that would turn into over 2.5 million. All right. So in other videos, I've gone over in detail how compound interest works. I'm not going to do that in this video. You can check out other videos on my channel, but I think you get the point here. So next, let's talk about what exactly is investing. Let's define it. So there's so many different types of investing. So how do you pin it down and define exactly what it is? So basically you're putting your money into an asset with the goal of that asset generating value. So generating more money over time. So real estate, for example, someone might put $100,000 in a house and maybe 10 years later, it's worth $200,000. So it's already doubled in value. Same goes for investing in a stock or a share of a company. And that's basically just a small piece of the company itself. So when you invest in a share, you own a small part of that company. Sometimes companies will actually pay you for investing in them in the form of dividends, which they pay out monthly, sometimes every three months, six months to a year.   So they're working for you and you're not having to actually do anything. And this is called passive income. Now when you first start investing, you're probably only going to be making like, I don't know, 30 cents a day or something like that from passive income. But eventually you can get to the point where you're making really good money from it. And there's actually an entire movement on the internet called the fire movement, financial independence retire early that is built around this. These are normal people who have relatively normal jobs that just live frugally invest as much as they can. And a lot of them are able to retire by 35 or 40 instead of the usual, which is around 67. So the next question is going to be when should you start investing? And the answer to that is your parents should have opened up a custodial account for you the day you were born pretty much, right? So the best time to start investing was as soon as you possibly could like it was yesterday, 10 years ago, whatever. And so the best answer to this is you need to start investing as soon as you possibly can. So right after you watch this video all the way through, right? And right after you smash the like button on this video, go ahead, you know, go to wee bowl, something like that and start investing. The great thing here is investing used to be very difficult to get into. So it used to be, you know, you'd have to have like $5,000, $10,000 minimum just to open an account. And then you'd also have to meet all these other stipulations. Thanks to a lot of, you know, really cool inventions, fintech apps, for instance, that have popped up like Robin Hood, Wee Bowl, etc. It is incredibly easy to start investing. The one that I personally recommend, if you're a beginner, you've never invested before is going to be Wee Bowl. And there is a free link down in the description, you can get up to $1,800 and four free stocks just for signing up and funding a $100 account. But there's also lots of other companies you can use. I made a video last year about like the best, you know, companies in my opinion, Acorns is really easy. You could go with Robin Hood, although there was a controversy with them, SoFi Invest, Public, there's just a ton of great companies out there that you can get started investing with. Once you're a little more advanced, in my opinion, the best companies are probably going to be Fidelity, Vanguard, Charles Schwab. Now there is one thing that you should technically do before you start investing. Okay. And that is make sure to save up an emergency fund. So this emergency fund should be cash that you actually do hold in your bank, hopefully in a high interest savings account. And it needs to cover at least three months of your expenses. And the reason for that is because you don't want to max out your credit cards or have to take out any payday loans just to cover your day to day expenses when an emergency happens. However, there are some people who argue on the internet that you can put all of your money into a tax advantage retirement account like a Roth IRA or 401k instead. And so the reason for that is because normally if you took money out of those tax advantage retirement accounts early, you would get penalized for it. So you generally don't want to do it. However, you can apply for hardship withdrawal, which would take the penalty away. And a lot of the time you're going to get it. But overall, I personally don't do that. I have an emergency fund that's around six months or so. And the big reason that I do that is mostly just for peace of mind. So the next big question we're going to ask is how much should you invest? And the truth is, especially if you're a beginner, this is going to be different for everyone. And it's going to really rely on three main factors. The first one is going to be goals. The second one is going to be capital. And the third one is risk tolerance. So first of all, let's start with goals. Maybe your goal is just to be able to retire when you're 65 or 67. In that case, you probably don't need to invest all that much. You should be able to just invest in a 401k, a Roth IRA, maybe a little bit on the side, maybe buy a house, something like that. And you should be good to go. Let's say your goals are a little bit different. You want to be able to retire at 65 or 67. But you also want to be able to travel around the world. So you want to have a lot of freedom. Well, in that case, you're probably going to need a little bit of extra money to fund your travels, especially if you want to travel when you're young enough to actually enjoy it. And so you would want to invest a little bit more aggressively. Let's say that your goal is to retire by 40. So you want to have enough money to retire by 40 and just live off of your passive income. In this case, you do have to invest relatively aggressively unless you're, you know, a doctor or something making $500,000 to a million dollars a year. Most normal people are going to have to invest really aggressively.  You also might want to look into side hustles or starting a business on the side, or just trying to get into a career that pays more. Let's say you're extremely aggressive. You're like an 18 year old watching this and you want to retire at 25. Well, in that case, investing in the traditional way probably isn't going to get you there. And so you're going to have to be much more aggressive about it. You're probably going to want to start your own business as well. And even then your chances of success are going to be relatively low, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. It's still completely possible. And later on in the video, I'm going to go over some of these other opportunities that you could look into.  And then you think about, okay, how much money do you need in order to achieve that goal? You know, how much money would you need to just live a very frugal lifestyle and retire maybe when you're 40, or how much money you're going to need to travel the world, live more of an extravagant lifestyle, figure that out. Maybe it's, you know, $40,000 a year, maybe it's $100,000 a year. Most of the studies say your happiness doesn't increase past around 80,000 to 100,000 depending on where you're living. So keep that in mind. I always tell people to kind of aim for that 80 to 100,000 or so. And then also keep in mind your risk tolerance. So there's certain types of investments that are extremely low risk. And we'll go over those a little bit later. We're talking about bonds, for instance, bonds are relatively low risk. Other investments are much more risky. So we're talking about starting your own business, for instance, cryptocurrency, these investments are much more risky, but they also have a higher upside as well. The big thing here is you just set a goal for yourself. So in my case, for instance, I have set several different goals. They've always changed just a little bit. But my big thing is I want to be able to retire before 40 and be able to travel the world. So I figured out that in order to do that, I'm probably going to need to make around $100,000 a year passively, which using the 4% rule, which basically means that you can kind of live off of 4% of whatever your total net worth is for the rest of your life. And you can retire early from that. That means I need to make around $2.5 million by the time that I'm 40. Now, once you've set that goal, it comes down to very simple numbers. All you have to do is calculate exactly how much you need to invest every month in order to get to that goal. And there's a ton of different calculators on the internet. You can also use a simple Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheets in order to calculate this. Now keep in mind, I did mention this before that longer term goals are almost always much easier to reach. And you also don't have to rely as much on luck. If you're trying to become like a millionaire or a billionaire by the time you're 25, there is going to be a tremendous amount of luck that goes into that. However, if you're, you know, trying to do something a little more reasonable, like retiring by the time you're 40, you don't really have to rely all that much on luck. Luck does still play a role, but it's mostly minimized. And the longer you give yourself, the more time you give for compound interest to work in your favor. So next, let's talk about capital. Now you see a lot of videos on YouTube where they tell you to start investing about five to 10% of your income. But the truth is this might not be realistic for everybody watching this video. Maybe you don't have any income. There's a lot of people that are not in a situation where they can put five to 10% of whatever they're making into their investments. So the truth is the best place to start when it comes to investing is to figure out your budgeting situation. So you really want to figure out how you can cut your costs. You can almost think about this like playing offense and defense.  It really doesn't matter how much money you make. You've seen these studies where 80% of lottery winners end up going broke 70% of professional athletes who make millions and millions of dollars also end up filing for bankruptcy. And the reason for that is because they're very good at making money, but they're not good at saving money, they're not good at budgeting. They're not good at figuring out how to make their money, make them money. So like a sports analogy here is going to be they're very good at offense, but they're not so good at defense. And we all know that defense wins championships. So you can't ignore one or the other. And the great thing about defense is you can always focus on budgeting and saving your money. Even if you don't have a job, maybe you're living off of unemployment right now, you can always focus on making a budget and saving your money. Okay, so defense is something you can start working on no matter what age you are or where you're at in life. All right, so are you spending a ton of money eating out with your friends?  Are you paying for a lease that you can't afford? For instance, how much are you paying for your rent? Can you get roommates, for instance, that are going to take away half or sometimes even more of that cost? Do you start drinking late at night and start ordering stuff on Amazon that you don't need? Do you buy the newest iPhone the moment that it comes out when it's like $1,500? These are things that everybody can work on. Everybody can save money on. It's very easy, but you do have to make a budget, especially at the beginning. You got to track your expenses later on down the line. Maybe it's not as important to budget when you kind of got it down a little bit. But chances are, if you're not tracking it, you're going to end up spending way more money than you need to. And the truth is most of these things don't make you happy at all. There's some things that actually will make you happy.  But there's a lot of things that kind of make you happy for a moment. It's like a dopamine spike. And then two seconds later, you don't, you don't even care about it. In fact, maybe it makes you feel bad, right? Like eating an entire pint of ice cream or something like that. Okay, it makes you happy for the moment. But then right afterwards, you feel regret. So pretty much no matter where you're at in life, identifying these things or spending way too much money on and cutting back on them is almost always going to be a good thing. Next, let's really dive deep into the concept of risk. And this is something I don't really hear all that many people on YouTube talk about. And it's a really complex topic. And this is going to depend on so many different factors. We're talking about whatever living situation you're in, you know, your current living situation, how much you're making, how much do you have in savings? What are your expenses? What's your overhead? What obligations do you have? You know, do you have a mortgage? Do you have credit card debt? Do you have people who financially depend on you like kids, for instance? And the big thing here is making sure that you're in the right position to take risk. And the great thing here is most people watching this channel are relatively young. And so you probably don't have that many obligations. And the younger you are, the lower your expenses and the less obligations you have, the more risk you can take. And also, if you have an emergency fund that covers your expenses for three months, six months, maybe even 12 months, that means you can take even more risk. So a lot of the time, let's say you're starting a business, for instance, and you quit your job, you go off on your own, most of the time, it's going to take at least six months, we're talking at least six months before you even start making money. And so chances are, if you wanted to start a business, your emergency fund, you'd probably want it to be six to 12 months, maybe even 12 months is a better idea here. So generally speaking, the younger you are, the more risk that you should be taking. And let's contrast this to somebody who is maybe the sole breadwinner in their household, their entire house depends on them to be making that money every single month, you probably don't want to be taking nearly as much risk in that situation. So you'd be wanting to put your money into much less risky investments. And those are some of the ones that we're going to go over pretty soon. And then an extreme example, let's say you're very close to retirement age, you're like 65 years old, and you're pretty close to that number that you need in order to be able to live passively for the rest of your life. In that case, you'd want to be extremely risk averse, you would be putting most of your money into bonds, most likely, which are some of the least risky investments that you can make. And the reason for this is because you never know when the market's going to drop. For all you know, tomorrow, the market could drop and it's going to be down for the next three years. And then what will end up happening if you invested in stocks, for instance, that it might take like three to five years for the market to recover to the point where it was when you had almost enough money to retire. And so you'd probably have to delay your retirement by three to five years. All right, so now we're getting into the good stuff. How do you start investing? Well, the first step is you want to choose a brokerage or an investing app. And the one that I recommend for beginners is Weebol, Fidelity's great, Vanguard's great, Charles Schwab is great. Honestly, at this point, it kind of just comes down to preference when you're looking at some of the top ones. I made an entire video about which ones I think are the best and for what reasons I think they're the best, which you can check that out. I think it's called the stock brokerage tier list and the investing app tier list. Once you've chosen which stock brokerage you're going to invest in, the next thing you want to do is to choose your investment. And again, where you choose to invest is going to depend on your personal situation. However, I see my analytics. I know most people watching this channel are younger people who probably haven't invested before. They have very limited investing experience. And so I will be giving my opinion on that very shortly. But just to give a short list of the possible investments you could make, you've got individual stocks, index funds, ETFs, day trading, forex trading, cryptocurrencies, commodities, bonds, real estate, REITs, REIT stands for real estate investment trust. So first of all, let's start with investing into individual stocks. So this would be something like Tesla or GameStop. So this one is relatively risky because you never know when a company is going to go up or down. We've seen Tesla and GameStop go up quite a bit over the last year and that's why it's gotten so much attention. But what they haven't seen is all the other companies that have ended up dropping in value. So it's very easy to see which stocks do well in hindsight. You know, we all have 2020 hindsight, but very difficult to see which ones are going to do well into the future. And that's why most people recommend one investing for the long run because chances are, you know, a company might go down, but usually it's going to recover when things go back to normal. And two, making sure to diversify your investment. So don't just put your money into one company.  Now a very easy way to do this is to track the market or put your money into a stock indices. This is also known as an index fund or an ETF, which stands for exchange traded fund. Now ETFs and index funds are extremely similar.  But they're essentially the same thing where you're diversifying your money throughout a bunch of different companies. Index funds are one of my favorite investments. I think they're a great combination of return. You're usually going to get about 10% returns per year, 7 to 8% adjusted for inflation if you put your money into a normal index fund. This is the route of investment that legendary investor Warren Buffett recommends for the average person. So index funds are passively managed. So let's say like the S&P 500 index funds, for instance, it basically just has a small percentage invested into each of the top 500 companies in the world. This is passively managed. Almost all of it is done automatically. And so therefore the fees are very low. A lot of the time they're like 0.01% or 0.03%, depending on the company that you go with. And by doing this, you're going to beat 99% of normal everyday investors and 95% of finance professionals, right? So these people who are geniuses, they graduate from the top schools like Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, et cetera, their finance professionals, they still can't beat a simple S&P 500 index fund. And that's with all of their resources, all of the people they can talk to, probably insider information, let's be honest. They're still not able to beat a simple index fund. So what does this tell you? You should probably put your money into index funds most of the time. Now there is some argument about that 95% number. Some people say it's like 85%. But still 85%, 95%. What's the difference? Most of the time, 85%, 95% of the time, it's going to be better for you to just set up an index fund that automatically reinvest the dividends back into the fund and also set up your bank account to have automatic withdrawals. So you invest a certain amount into the index fund every month. Next, we're going to be talking about cryptocurrencies. And this is a type of investment that I believe to be a much higher risk investment than something like index funds. However, the upside is also extremely high. So back in 2012, Bitcoin was like $1. Now it's over $60,000. Back in 2015, Ethereum was around $1. Now it's about $2,000. And even the last year, we've seen all kinds of random cryptocurrencies and blockchains, you know, go up like 1000% or more. There are also risks outside of the investment going up itself. There's been lots of different hacks where different exchanges where you buy cryptocurrency from have been hacked. And then sometimes people get their money back. Sometimes it takes years to get it back. And in some cases, they don't get their money back. On top of that, if you accidentally send your cryptocurrency to the wrong wallet, there's a chance that you could lose it. It's much easier for you to get hacked if your password gets out. And let's say you keep your cryptocurrency in an external wallet, which is recommended by most people, your house could always burn down and the wallet could burn to flames as well. So there is a ton of risk in investing in cryptocurrency. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. I see these channels that say like, oh, it's not risky at all to invest in Ethereum and Bitcoin. These could absolutely go to zero. That is a possibility. It probably won't happen, but there is a higher possibility that they would go to zero than something like investing in an index fund. But with that being said, I do invest in cryptocurrency. And one of the big reasons is, is I think it's more risky to not invest than to invest. The reason is there's also a possibility that the normal financial markets in the world are going to collapse. And when that happens, there's a very good chance people are going to put their money into cryptocurrency instead. So I think a lot of advice out there would say that you should have maybe 5% of your portfolio into cryptocurrency. And I think that's pretty solid. I started off with like 5 to 10% or so. And since then it's grown to a much higher amount. But also keep in mind here that you need to do your research and do your due diligence. All the other things that I talked about still apply here. You want to make sure that you invest in multiple different cryptocurrencies, because chances are, if you just put all of your money into one, bad things are going to happen. You also want to try investing with long term thinking in mind. Don't just go for the super hot one that has a lot of hype around it. Try to invest long term.  That's great. You know, you're going to have to pay taxes on it.  That's pretty awesome. But if it doesn't, if it's a company you really believed in, you thought the founder was really good, or the idea behind it is great, then chances are in the long run, if you do enough of those companies, you're going to have one that goes up 100 X or 200 X. And that's going to cover the losses. Next, we're going to talk about investing in bonds for beginners. Now a bond is essentially just an IOU and it could come from a company or a government. And they're used by companies and governments in order to raise capital. Now how much you get back is going to depend on what type of bond you invest in. But generally speaking, you know, it's going to be around three to 4% per year. However, bonds are relatively safe. And this is why most financial advisors will tell you if you're close to retirement, like you're 65 and you want to retire at 67 to invest most of your portfolio into bonds. Next, we're going to talk about investing in real estate. And there's two different ways you can do this, you can either invest in a physical property like a house, or you can invest in what are known as REITs, which is real estate investment trusts. Real estate itself, of course, like investing in a house is one of the better investments that you can make. There are some downsides to it because it takes up a lot of your time. And you also have to have some expertise in order to invest in a good investment property. Real estate investment trusts, on the other hand, are kind of like investing in shares into a house. So it's almost like the shares of a company. But instead of doing that, you're investing into property. Now, I think that real estate is a fantastic investment. It just doesn't personally fit my lifestyle, the lifestyle that I want to live, because at the end of the day, I'm aiming for freedom. And I don't want to have to worry about someone's, you know, toilet breaking at 3am in the morning, or the washer needing to get repaired on a weekend where I'm trying to have fun, or anything like that. However, generally speaking, if you are good at investing in real estate, it will probably outperform even an index fund. And then the last one that I'm just going to briefly talk about, which is sort of an investment, I guess you could say, this is going to be the least passive type of investment. And that is investing in yourself, aka starting a side hustle or a business. So this is the most risky type of investment that you could possibly make. It also takes up a ton of time. And it's very difficult. However, if you are successful with this, you can get better returns in any other investment on this list. So next, I'm going to be going over some beginner tips for you to get started with investing. And all of these are going to apply to pretty much any type of investment that you decide to go into. And like I said before, the investment that you decide to go into is going to be completely up to you. It depends on your personal situation, your risk tolerance, etc. So first of all, no matter what you need to think long term, if you are trying to get rich quick, especially when it comes to investing, you are going to have to rely a lot on luck. Okay, luck is going to play a huge role in that. Yes, you can get lucky and you can get rich quick, but chances are you're not going to be able to do it. If you give yourself a longer time frame, which you'd be surprised, it doesn't really take all that long, you know, a lot of people, especially on the financial independence, retire early subreddit, end up retiring 3540. But if you give yourself that timeframe, right 10 to 20 years in order to retire, it becomes much more possible. And it becomes much more realistic for the average person. If you give yourself even longer 3040 years to retire, it becomes extremely easy. The only thing is you just have to be very patient. The second thing I want to talk about is dollar cost averaging. And this means you want to be putting in around the same amount if you can every single month. So a lot of people will hold a bunch of money, right? They've got like, I don't know, $50,000 to invest, they're going to hold it in cash. And then they're going to try to put it into the market at the right moment. And they think that they're going to get the most returns from that study after study has shown that it's almost impossible to time the market. Even if you are a finance professional, you're the best of the best. You're a genius with 160 IQ, you have access to the best consultants, the best technology, etc. You still cannot consistently time the market. So a much better idea is whenever you get paid every single month, you just put a certain percentage of your paycheck into your investment. So when the market is going up, for instance, if you put it into an index fund, you get to ride that wave and when it's going down, you're getting to buy those stocks at a discount. So if you were to have started dollar cost averaging two years ago into Bitcoin, for instance, it would now be worth over $117,000. And you only would have invested $18,000 into it, and the percent change would be over 500%. If you started dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin five years ago, it would be worth over $680,000 right now. And that's again with only $30,000 invested. That's a 2169% increase in value. Same thing goes with Ethereum, for instance, it's even more ridiculous with that one. If you started dollar cost averaging into that one around five years ago, spent $30,000, it would now be worth about $5 million. Okay, so ridiculous ROI on that one. Again, that's just $500 a month, right? You're putting $500 a month into Ethereum, and you did that for the last five years, you would now have over $5 million. Okay, so I'm not saying you should put all your money into Bitcoin or Ethereum chances are those are not going to go up as much as they did in the past. But I think you get the point when it comes to dollar cost averaging. Number three, we're going to talk about understanding risk, reward and luck, right? So luck specifically is something you don't really hear people talking about here on YouTube. A lot of the gurus here will tell you, you don't need to rely on luck, you just have to work hard and all that sort of thing. I think that's BS. I think luck always plays a role. However, you can minimize the amount of luck you need by making sure that you set a long term goal for one. So you give yourself plenty of time and then also positioning yourself correctly. So investing in assets that are very likely to go up over time. So again, being consistent dollar cost averaging is going to lower the amount of luck you need, giving yourself more time and being patient is also going to lower the amount of luck you need. And then understanding risk and reward. When you're younger, you can take more risks. This is the time for you to start businesses, invest in cryptocurrency, do things that are a little more risky. However, when you get older, you probably want to put your money into, you know, index funds and bonds. And then when you get really close to retirement, you probably want to put most of your money into bonds. Number four is diversify, diversify, diversify. Very important that you do this, not only diversifying with different stocks, but probably different types of investments as well. You know, if you invest in an S&P 500 index fund, that's awesome. However, you might not realize that maybe the rest of the world is going to catch up with the United States. Most of those companies in there from the United States, it's possible that companies in the rest of the world are undervalued. And so maybe over the next 10 to 20 years, companies from Japan and the UK, China, et cetera, are going to catch up with US stocks. So it might be a good idea for you to also invest in an international index fund as well. There's a lot more to that part. But you know, I'm just going to keep this relatively short. That's basically what you need to know. Number five is going to be remember your goals. Remember the goal that you originally set for yourself. Over time, you can change these goals. Let's say, you know, you're way ahead of schedule, you wanted to retire at 40, maybe you can change it. Hey, I want to retire at 35 now. That's awesome. Whatever keeps you motivated. But the big thing here is that it's very easy to get greedy, especially if you get lucky. You really want to make sure that you have an exit strategy. Figure out how much money you need to be happy, right? Because at the end of the day, what are we trying to do? We're trying to achieve freedom and maximize our happiness. So how much money do you need to achieve your freedom and maximize your happiness? Figure that out and then, you know, do the numbers from there. Use the 4% rule, multiply that number by 25 and you're going to have how much you need to retire. Then you can work backwards from there, figure out how much you need to invest every month to get to that point by whatever age you want to retire. You know, one thing I want to quickly talk about here is hopelessness and the doomer culture that we sort of have around these days. It seems like a lot of people that are my age are just very hopeless because the economy isn't nearly as good as it used to be when people in the boomer generation, for instance, were young. I mean, they had things so easy. They could go to college and pay for it with a part-time job and they wouldn't have to take out any student loans or they wouldn't have any loans after they're done with college. They could work like a part-time job and live easily from that. They could even probably retire with just a normal part-time job. My dad told me a story about how he worked as like a gas boy. I guess you could say like the person who fills up gas back in the day. My dad's like over 70 years old, so he's like a boomer and he told me that he made enough money from that to buy a house. So we definitely don't have the same kind of economic situation that our parents or grandparents had. That's totally true. So I understand why so many people are upset about that. However, I still don't think that you should just give up and be a doomer. Now, one thing you want to look into here is you don't necessarily need millions of dollars to retire. So I live just north of Seattle, Washington, so we can compare the cost of living in Seattle, Washington versus Chiang Mai, Thailand. It's almost three times more expensive to live in Seattle than it is in Chiang Mai. And this is on numbeo.com. This is a really good website for kind of comparing the cost of living in different places. And you can live on about $1,000 a month in Chiang Mai, Thailand. There's tons of different channels here on YouTube that talk about how you can do this. So for instance, $1,000 times 12, that's going to be $12,000. You multiply that by what you're going to get on average with an index fund and you come up with about $171,000. Now, this isn't super safe, but with $171,000, you can live for quite a while in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Now, using the 4% rule, $1,000 a month, 12 months times 25, that's going to be $300,000, right? So I'm not saying this is the best option for everybody. Some people probably don't want to live in a country like Thailand, although a lot of people who go there say it's pretty awesome.  That's totally fine. This is not an option for everybody. But what I'm trying to show you here is you don't have to just retire traditionally. There are other options for you out there.   If you'd like, I'm trying to keep this one relatively short. It's kind of like a mini course. But the sixth thing you want to look into here, and this is more my opinion kind of my investing philosophy. Some other people would disagree on this is you want to choose investments that don't take up very much of your time. So this is one reason why I don't like investing in real estate. I'm probably going to make an entire video about this is there are so many hidden costs in real estate, hidden things you have to keep up with, you have to fix stuff when it breaks down, you have to deal with tenants. If you hire a property manager, you have to make sure the property manager is doing their due diligence. There's just so much that goes into investing in real estate. It takes so long to get good at it and understand all the different factors you have to look into. And so for that reason, I don't really like investing in real estate because it takes up so much of my time. Instead, I like investing in index funds. And I've shown you guys why index funds are probably objectively the best investment for the average person. I also invest in cryptocurrency because it has such a high upside. And in my opinion, it's riskier to not invest in it than to invest in it. And then the third thing I invest in is myself, right? So I made sure to invest in my education. And I started my own business, which is now pretty successful.  All of my other investments are relatively passive. So for instance, 401k, Roth IRA, these are tax advantage retirement investments. And I highly recommend investing in those. They're basically you can do an index fund within those that takes basically 0% of my time, same with the index funds that I invest in.  But again, that doesn't take very much of my time. This is why things like day trading, for instance, are definitely not worth it. Not only because of the fact that almost everybody loses money day trading, but it also takes a tremendous amount of skill to even be decent at it. And it takes up a ton of your time. Now that segues into number seven on the list, which is to use logic, not emotion. And a great example of that is everybody is just freaking out about crypto right now. And the truth is, yes, you can probably get some pretty good gains if you invest in crypto right now. But chances are the best time to invest was about one year ago, when literally nobody was talking about it. You know, Bitcoin right now, for instance, is like 10x from what it was about one year ago. Same with Ethereum and a bunch of the other cryptocurrencies. Some of them are ridiculous. Some of them are like 100x. And you see this playing out over and over again. It's like every single time it happens the same exact way. Nobody's talking about cryptocurrency when the market's down. That's the best time to invest in it. As soon as the market starts to go up, when it's, you know, getting relatively close to its peak, or it's like halfway there, that's when every start, everybody starts picking up on it. They all start investing in it. And that's when most normal people start investing. That is not the best time to invest in it. Chances are it's going to, you know, end at some point this year. Nobody really knows when, but the market is going to drop at some point this year, most likely. And then a lot of people are going to end up losing their money because they invested at the top. And it's so simple, but people do this over and over again, especially new investors. And it's almost like the old saying, be fearful when other people are greedy and greedy when other people are fearful. So most people are investing with emotion because there's so much hype right now. You know, we've been seeing channels go from like 100,000 to like 500,000 subscribers in just a few months. All the news networks are covering it. You're seeing articles pop up everywhere. Guess what? There's a reason for that because there's a ton of hype right now. And pretty soon, all the hype is probably going to create a bubble and then the bubble is going to burst just like it has every single time in the past. So if you enjoyed this video and you haven't done it already, make sure to gently tap that like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera. And before you leave, check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.