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What got you interested in electronics?

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Adam Munich

Tue Mar 08 2011, 04:56AM

Registered Member #2893 Joined: Tue Jun 01 2010, 09:25PM
Location: Cali-forn. i. a.
Posts: 2242

I'll need to do some research if I am to follow the right path on my mission.

So... what got you interested in electronics?

Killa-X

Tue Mar 08 2011, 05:07AM

Registered Member #1643 Joined: Mon Aug 18 2008, 06:10PM
Location:
Posts: 1039

Well my way is different on it's own. Basically I have been into it since 6th grade science class. Our teacher had circuit labs where we used radioshacks snap-kits to make circuits. I thought it was fun. I later got the more advanced radioshacks one where you had to do schematics. I hated it, gave up.

Months later a gaming friend of mine online started talking about the HV he did. He basically reached me over the Internet and got me into my first ignition coil flyback design. From here I picked it up my self. Â And now I enjoy it. I went from having no idea how to read schematics, to making my own boards under 6 moths.

Summary of how I got into electronics. Just a natural like. I have always been interested in how stuff works, tearing it apart, along with building stuff with knex.

Adam Munich

Tue Mar 08 2011, 05:11AM

Registered Member #2893 Joined: Tue Jun 01 2010, 09:25PM
Location: Cali-forn. i. a.
Posts: 2242

Well I played with the radioshack kits too, but they pissed me off and I gave up on them.

The thing that really got me interested in electronics was figuring out that an MOT makes plasma. Scared the crap out of me when I realized that the core was ground...

Nicko

Tue Mar 08 2011, 06:56AM

Registered Member #1334 Joined: Tue Feb 19 2008, 04:37PM
Location: Nr. London, UK
Posts: 615

Grenadier wrote ...
So... what got you interested in electronics?

The glamour! The bright lights! All the sex & drugs!

Yeah. Whatever. In my undergraduate year, there were 80 EE types, of whom 2 (two!) were undeniably female and one other a possible... Their eyes had that 1000-yard stare of hunted rabbits... Of the males, many had pre-historic social skills that would have embarrassed a dinosaur

I stuck with the rugby club, identifying those departments with a better F:M ratio (i.e. almost any other, even physics) and kept away from most other engineers... Geology & English were good...

Like most people with engineering in their blood, I was just drawn to it - needing to know how things worked. Started reading wireless World & Practical Electronics (UK mags), built a few things, had a mate whose uncle worked in HL Smiths (one of the classic "sawdust on the floor" types of *real* electronics shops in Edgware Road London), built a tube radio, got a Philips Kit, all downhill from there...

Dr. Slack

Tue Mar 08 2011, 08:04AM

Registered Member #72 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:29AM
Location: UK St. Albans
Posts: 1659

I was about 9 or 10 years old. The school, in an innovative (for the '60s) cross-subject project, made hand puppets, wrote scripts, and built a simple wood and carboard theatre. My job was the "lighting", with 4.5v batteries and MES torch bulbs. Bulbs in series or parallel? Batteries in series or parallel? Did it matter if the bulb voltage matched the battery? I probably finished that term with more questions than answers, but I was hooked. What a perfect intorduction to the subject: not too many variables, voltages add linearly, and the result matters, because the batteries running down halfway through a performance is a lose.

A few years later got given a Phillips EE kit, and the rest is history.

Turkey9

Tue Mar 08 2011, 08:06AM

Registered Member #1451 Joined: Wed Apr 23 2008, 03:48AM
Location: Boulder, Co
Posts: 661

I got started by tearing stuff apart, looking at the guts, and playing with the stuff inside! When I was 9, I got my hands on a Mobile Robots book that introduced me to schematics, diodes, transistors, caps, relays, all that basic stuff. From there I just read and made simple circuit to take into show and tell, including some really simple robots. Then in 6th grade my science teacher let me play in the supply closet while everyone else was learning the simple stuff and I found a small Tesla Coil! The first time I figured out how to make it work (my teacher had no idea what it was), I was hooked. From there I got into HV, plasma, vacuums, lasers, it just exploded. Unlike most engineers who decide to go into the field junior or senior year of high school, I've known since elementary school.

Bennem

Tue Mar 08 2011, 08:25AM

Registered Member #154 Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 04:28PM
Location: Westmidlands, UK
Posts: 260

[quote]
The glamour! The bright lights! All the sex & drugs!
[/quote1299571196]

What drugs?......lol

well the year is 1891, it was a dark winters morn here in the west midlands when i came across
'ye olde practical electronics' magazine........lol

I started out 'experimenting' with electronics at about the age of 12, and taking household
items apart, much to the dismay of my parents as some things never quite assembled back together right,
At school i loved Physics and so built various van-de- graffs and electrostatic machines.
I too had a radio shack/Tandy kit where i made things like crystal radio, flashing light, light switch etc.....all very technical stuff...lol
At 16 i went to college and started my career in TV/Video repairing by starting a City & Guilds
course which lasted some five years.
About 10 years ago i saw my first demonstration of a Tesla coil on tv and i was hooked,
i wanted one! i've since been making DRSSTC's and attended UK Teslathons.
My next project will be a larger DRSSTC.....must start saving up for the parts..lol

Mel

101111

Tue Mar 08 2011, 12:31PM

Registered Member #575 Joined: Sun Mar 11 2007, 04:00AM
Location: Norway
Posts: 263

Nicko wrote ...

Grenadier wrote ...
So... what got you interested in electronics?

The glamour! The bright lights! All the sex & drugs!

Me too!

Renesis

Tue Mar 08 2011, 03:45PM

Registered Member #2028 Joined: Mon Mar 16 2009, 08:13PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 319

As a kid i was always tearing my toys apart, trying to figure out how they worked. So i guess it's in my blood. I often made my mother read those childrens facts books about physics and such before bedtime. Not to mention my bigass box of lego technic!

My father works at the local electrical company repairing distribution lines, and listening to the stories about giant electric arcs and exploding transformers was probably what sparked my early interest in electricity. My older brother works along side him now, and my younger brother is studying to be an electrician too.

I grew up among tractors and combines home on my parents farm, and thus my main interest was always in mechanics. In high school i spendt one year studying agricultural mechanics and two years in industrial mechanics. That last year we had a simple electrics class, and my teacher noticed i was doing far better there than the rest of the class. He said i had a potential and adviced me to try industrial process automation, and i did. Now im almost done with my second year, and im absolutely loving it!

That was roughly the same time as i discovered this forum. And it was 4hv, together with my automation class, that sparked off my interest in electronics.

Avalanche

Tue Mar 08 2011, 07:09PM

Registered Member #103 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:16PM
Location: Derby, UK
Posts: 845

Hmm, a number of things - it's difficult to blame any one thing in particular.

Probably a combination of :

- http://www.secretlifeofmachines.com/ when it was first aired in the UK
- People giving me electronics parts from a very young age, from old components to whole appliances (used to happen quite often, and still does actually!)
- Electronics kits (with the spring terminals) and electronics project books - those where you built everything on veroboard by copying the layout
- EPE magazines which they had in my school library - I used to spend loads going through them and photocopying the projects! I think I was the only one in the school who looked at them, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had all been thrown away now :(
- The local electronics component shop in town - if that wasn't there, it's unlikely my Dad would have bought me components for projects
- Smashing things up

I used to like smashing old appliances up with a hammer out in the garden

More recently (2005+) what has kept my interest is the discovery of 4HV and power electronics, getting a placement in an electronics lab, and getting a job in power electronics and control systems.

Quite interesting thinking back on it!!

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