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What got you interested in electronics?

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Jrz126

Tue Mar 08 2011, 10:27PM

Registered Member #242 Joined: Thu Feb 23 2006, 11:37PM
Location: Erie PA
Posts: 210

Got a 200 in 1 electronics kit when i was 9. Was fun, but i didnt know what i was doing. ended up burning most of the components up.

Was interested in mechanical things for awhile. Go-karts, 25+ MPH riding lawn mowers.

Wasn't until junior/senior year of high-school until I really started playing around with electronics. First project i built was a VU meter for my car stereo.

Wish I had gotten started sooner... Now I have a basement full of electronics parts, but no free time to do anything with them

Muttyfutty!

Wed Mar 09 2011, 09:43AM

Registered Member #2915 Joined: Fri Jun 11 2010, 10:41AM
Location: Malaysia!
Posts: 101

YAY! 200 in 1 electronics was one of the reasons I got into electronics myself.
My dad used to work for BAE and we always had components lying around the workshop.
I have always been fascinated with electronics. I remember getting old 2N3055's, diodes and
resistors and soldering them all together, just for fun. My dad wasn't too happy when
I finally showed the lump of solder and silicone...

Mattski

Wed Mar 09 2011, 07:18PM

Registered Member #1792 Joined: Fri Oct 31 2008, 08:12PM
Location: University of California
Posts: 527

When I was young I went to garage sales and picked up electronics to take apart. I didn't have any idea what was going on in the circuits, I mostly just liked to look at them. At some point my parents bought me a 300-in-1 kit for Christmas, but the creators foolishly (In my opinion) made the first few projects somewhat large complicated projects, and then later in had the introductory projects that were easy and taught some concepts. I never made it past the second project and I had no idea how any of it worked, and so it languished in a closet.

Then around 9th grade or so I bought a very simple electronics kit (very similar to this) that had only a small selection of components all connected to spring contacts, with circuits wired together with jumper wires. The projects were simple and easy to do, and what's more I could actually understand most of what was going on. Then when I had done about all I could with that kit, I went back to the 300-in-1 as well, and that's about the time I discovered high voltage, tesla coils, 4HV, and such. In high school I played around with that, doing Marx Generators, flybacks, Jacobs Ladders, and so on. That's when I knew I wanted to go into electrical engineering, rather than other fields that sounded good like mechanical engineering, computer science, chemistry, etc.

Now I'm in grad school working on microwave circuits and devices, with a few personal electronic projects on the back burner, and I'm pretty happy with where I ended up :)

ScotchTapeLord

Thu Mar 10 2011, 06:15AM

Registered Member #1875 Joined: Sun Dec 21 2008, 06:36PM
Location:
Posts: 635

When I was quite young and my mom would take me to work at the family's refrigeration business, I'd often sit in the room filled with "junk" and stare at the bare circuit boards and hook together different pipes and valves to pass the hours. I was pretty good at figuring things out as a kid, and I didn't like not understanding things, but those heavily populated boards remained a mystery for a long time. I'd asked my grandfather about them. "Those are resistors." "What do they do." "I don't know." I had to settle for that for many years.

After that, my grandfather helped me put together a little radio kit. We also tried to build a motor following instructions but it didn't work...

Then there was a long period of complete insignificance, until in my junior year of high school I came across the famous disposable camera modification... Ignition coils, flyback drivers, coil guns, then Tesla coils... and now a lot of signal, logic, and sound theory... and trying to integrate them into Tesla coils! ;)

Needless to say, the refrigeration's "junk room" is more like a grocery store nowadays. Nothing terribly awesome but big switches, random PVC, enclosures, motors... it's worth something.

Damn I should "do my part" for cleaning the junk room and post some of that stuff on ebay or on here, heheh.

hvscrapper

Sat Mar 26 2011, 04:46PM

Registered Member #3786 Joined: Sat Mar 26 2011, 04:24PM
Location:
Posts: 1

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Radioshack's Engineer's Mini-Notebooks. Those things were nice and simple, strait to the point, with lots of examples.
Next came Gordom McComb's Gadgeteer's Goldmine and Robert E. Iannini's Build Your Own Laser Phaser Ion Ray Gun and other working space-age projects.
LOL "space-age!" The future is now i guess...
Not to mention guidance from math&science teachers, relatives, and neon sign artisans.
I only hope I can pass along the passion to experiment and discover new realms of science to the next generation.

Turkey9

Sun Mar 27 2011, 06:01AM

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

Oh I love those books by Forest M. Mimms!!! Those taught me quite a lot and I still use them! I completely forgot about those books I got at radioshack. Also, a book about mobile robots called Mobile Robots

that taught me how to read schematics.

Adam Munich

Sun Mar 27 2011, 05:00PM

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

I remember those books. At the time I understood none of it, though I do remember taking a 9V battery and a file and making noise on a radio. I then scaled up to a car battery and well, that didn't go too well.

Nah

Mon Mar 28 2011, 07:15PM

Registered Member #3567 Joined: Mon Jan 03 2011, 10:49PM
Location: USA, 1960s
Posts: 260

I liked to take everything apart. I also read every physics book in the library at age 10. I didn't know what I was doing, but hey, it was fun. I then got into high voltage and forced myself to read schematics. Radio repair made me learn a lot more about RF electronics and high voltage is mare power electronics.

You went to collage at 16??????

Experimentonomen

Mon Mar 28 2011, 07:17PM

Registered Member #941 Joined: Sun Aug 05 2007, 10:09AM
Location: in a swedish junk pile
Posts: 497

A battery and a motor at the age of six.

haxor5354

Mon Mar 28 2011, 09:05PM

Registered Member #2063 Joined: Sat Apr 04 2009, 03:16PM
Location: Toronto
Posts: 352

Experimentonomen wrote ...

A battery and a motor at the age of six.

for me, its light bulb and battery at the age of 6

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