How did you learn electronics? (tell your story)

[george graves]

I thought about making this a pole.  But there would never be enough options!(?)

Sure - there is:

 - I went to school for it
- I started as a kid, and been tinkering every since
- Just one day picked up an arduino, and love to have fun in my free time
- or "I'm a PHD - and I'll "kung-foo" your ass in my know how

I'd think it would be much more interesting if you tell how you learned electronics, and the story of what drove you to it.  Or did you stumble upon it?  Don't be shy, and maybe even include what you struggle with?  What trips you up?  What do you want to learn?  And what was a hard lesson in your career. 

[Spawn]

Well I was giving the signs to my parents and grandparents when I was kid to be a electrician, in the 70’s things like radio’s, video players were not so cheap, and if you walk in a room and your grandson has your expensive radio cassette player in 100 pieces (my granddad) or you walk in and you see your newly and proudly bought Sony betamax video player open and your son is trying to get something out of it (my father) and people madly talk things like “he will be a electrician when he grows up” than you know what’s going to happen to you profession wise.

But the question was how I learned it, well not back than later on school and spend 8 years only for this profession at school, before that I was learning gibberish j/k
The thing is electronics is my hobby and yet I have to learn a lot about it. I went to school for higher currency applications in buildings and later for machinery and not for electronics.

PS: I am still mad at my father, if only he walked in 2 minutes later I would have a nice shinny wheel to play with 

[Blofeld]

I couldn't find a link to my first electronics lab that I had when I was a kid, but this was my favourite one, learned much more from it than from school.

http://www.experimentierkasten-board.de/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=243

And if you would have asked me back in the late 70s / early 80s what an arduino is, I probably would have guessed that it is some kind of animal...

[siliconmix]

still learning

[T4P]

I had started off attempting to repair a fan and it all went like this : ~~~~~~ .

[david77]

As a kid I took everything apart that had buttons or a cable on it. My mum must've been at her wits end when she found me mixing a sandcake in the sandbox with her kitchen mixer one day and then taking the thing to pieces . Later everybody donated old radios, cassette players, etc. to keep me from demolishing all the electric things in the house.
A family friend is an EE and they've got a house stuffed from cellar to the roof full of electronics gear, rooms full of junk boxes and a heavenly lab with the finest test gear. Their son had an enormous train set in the attic, I'd guess about 30m². There were kilometers of wires under that train set, stacks of home made power supplies and lots and lots of custom electronics to control all the trains, lights, cars, what have you. That really got me interested in electronics and wanting to understand how it works.
This EE gave me my first soldering iron for christmas when I was 9. He also got me into computers with a 386 20MHz machine when I was 13 and then for my 18th birthday he gave me my first scope, the Hitachi V550B which I still use 12 years later.

[quantumfall]

Taking things apart, vacuum tube "Valve" TV's seemed to be dumped all over the place when I was a boy,   didn't know anything about how they worked though.

Had Tandy / Realistic 200 in one electronics kits type things, which was great then.

Watching my granddad he was a geek with a whole room full of big valve radios, an  oscilloscope a Cossor with more knobs than mission control, A Geiger counter we would listen to cosmic rays.  Had a 19'' Rack mount HV PSU would wind the voltage up to 2500 V DC then the clicks would start.  A teleprinter that he would hook to the radio and it mostly printed rubbish, but it was fun tuning in all the radios, he would log all the ones he found.

He stopped transmitting long before  because he had been suspected of being a spy in the war just because he had visited Germany many times and had the house visited by the men in suits !! It turned out they had been listening to him and had picked up a faulty clothes Iron thermostat clicking.  I think this put him off.

He taught me how to make basic linear power supplies with selenium rectifiers and other things.  When I was a teenager I had a friend who experimented with "Sound to light systems"  His MK I was a heap of relays switching 240 v inside a plastic ice cream carton, more blue flashes came out of that than the lamp bulbs !!

We graduated to building small circuits from electronic magazines and most did not work at first, if ever, you learn a bit. I built an led bar graph star shaped burst thing using CMos logic from a project in a magazine that was a total fail so I lost interest for a while, I did not have any good test gear or knowledge to fault find it and I'm sure some of the components you got then was junk  1970's

Later on I did an apprenticeship as an electrician and did basic AC theory,  Later again a 3 Month course in electronics and Microprocessor Technology at Control Data Institute in London, very good and intensive we covered Amps, PSUs, logic systems , number theory of binary, logic circuits, Semiconductor Theory, lots of other flip flops register circuits etc, and one month chalk and talk with an engineer from Control Data Corporation, we programmed 8080's in hex to make serial ports etc. not even assembler code.  We looked at the output of pins on a Tektronix scope. It was hard but really felt like you had learned something.

Off topic here, pass over if you not interested please.

Stayed a hobbyist for a few years but I did not have a place to work, getting parts was a headache then no Internet etc.

I gave up for many years when I wanted to have a circuit layout photo copied on to acetate and the local copy shop refused to copy from a magazine (Which they had previously been happy to do) even when I pointed out that was why they was in the back of the mag.  I contacted the editor of the mag on the phone and he said That was correct he would not encourage them to copy magazines and why did I not do it photographically as he did he explained some complicated dark room technique to me but I was so pissed at it all I did not do any more hobby work for a long time.

Just getting back into it really now collecting some tools an old scope etc, but slow going at the moment.  Microcontrollers are all new to me so may have some fun with them, Would like to have made the Micro supply as a kit but if its just a ready made board it sort of spoils the fun as a hobby guy,  I will probably get it to help Dave and it looks good to have.

Got a bit off the topic at times but well there it is.

[Mint.]

I thought about making this a pole.  But there would never be enough options!(?)

Sure - there is:

 - I went to school for it
- I started as a kid, and been tinkering every since
- Just one day picked up an arduino, and love to have fun in my free time
- or "I'm a PHD - and I'll "kung-foo" your ass in my know how

I'd think it would be much more interesting if you tell how you learned electronics, and the story of what drove you to it.  Or did you stumble upon it?  Don't be shy, and maybe even include what you struggle with?  What trips you up?  What do you want to learn?  And what was a hard lesson in your career. 

Started off by being interested since I was a kid. Then at school we had 6 months of physics and it was all about electronics, it was great fun we made lots of stuff! I aced that class, thats when I realised that I really enjoy electronics and I wanted to go further. I really liked the idea that out of nothing you can create something useful! Tried MITx 6.002x without meeting the requirements, just dropped it a few hours ago after 4 weeks. Found it too hard and complex in terms of the math. I am slowly building my lab over time and it looks great, I have good some awesome gear: My Rigol and my Hakko! They are both amazing pieces of equipment. Now I am just tinkering with electronics, frequently burning things up I am also reading various electronic sites and trying to get information from there.

[Rerouter]

Started out when i was very young, around 5? i think, when a neighbour of mine came over to repair a computer that had something foul up with it (parts lying about freely on the carpet) and when he wasnt looking i ran off to look at one of the parts, an old dram module, i believe, and that started me off wondering how all this made the picture appear on the screen,

later on, did electronics in years 9-10 in highschool, was one of the few schools in the state to offer it and was only due to the teacher of it being on good terms with the principle, and while i never even had logic gates or transistors fully explained to me it was a good kick in the right direction, then kicked in the other direction with physics which explained how things worked down to rediculous boredom, but never actually went in to how to use them in a circuit, with engineering oddly enough giving me my first intro into logic gates,

and now i work with automotive instruments which over time are becoming more and more computerised, an irony from what i have come to understand as it means there is a single failure point , but has always kept my mind going being hit with odd ways of using devices and modules to complete tasks, and repairing everything from 1960's tech, where handwound resistors started having there spindles fall apart, to modern day bga infested computers sitting in a dash to move a pointer,

personally my largest struggle has always been progressing to the step of getting boards made / making my own, i cannot quantify why, but it has always been my stumbling point in electronics, leaving me to get creative with veroboard, and more than one project just having a breadboard glued inside a box :/

[metalphreak]

I grew up always taking things apart for no good reason (well I consider "to see whats inside" a valid one...). My dad bought me one of those 200in1 electronics kit things but I never actually did very much with it, mainly because I was too young. Ever since leaving high school and starting university, I quickly realised that I was actually in for 5.5years of theory again rather than any real hands on stuff, so I started experimenting on my own. I guess I'm lucky that I started getting into it when the entry level hobbyist scene really kicked off with good access to parts and services (Sparkfun, Seeed, Itead, eBay parts and so on).

I find it helps to find a proper project to work on where you have to build/design things yourself, so that you get a real good understanding of every part of it. The trouble is finding something that nobody else has done so you don't just assemble their work instead.

[Greg323i]

Like most people have posted, I started pulling things apart since I could hold a butter knife. We didn't have a screwdriver. I used to work on electrical outlets with that butter knife (the one that I used was marked with a notch in the blade when I arced hot to neutral, we didn't have no stinking grounds when I was growing up!) and I was definitely bitten many times. But I guess I didn't start to learn about electronics until I got Craig Anderton's Electronic Projects for Musicians and a Radio Shack 150 in 1 Projects, or whatever it was. I've bounced around electronics repair shops, parts wholesalers and computer shops ever since.

[rbola35618]

I started thinkering in electronics at the age of 12 years old. I had three uncles who were all TV repairmen.  My uncle Negro was working on a TV set. In 1972, most TVs that he worked were vacume tubes. He disconnected the high voltage anode from the TV picture tube and brought it close to the TV chassis and to my astonishment, he produced a 1 to 2 inch lighting bolts. That lighting spark literraly sparked my life long interest in electronics.  Thats my story

[quantumfall]

The "butter knife" screwdriver, I'm sure a lot of people started with that one, I know and remember the frustration of it well !

Also used as a wire stripper along with teeth.

[AntiProtonBoy]

I started learning when my grandfather gave me an old radio tear apart and a hammer.

Best thing he's ever done. 

[dcel]

Third grade for me, a science portion of the day that the teacher showed us how a flashlight worked using a couple d-cells, a switch, and a flashlight bulb, explained in detail, I was hooked. I was told before recess not to leave it on, but did any way. Was asked why and I told her that I wanted to see if it was still lit when I came back. After that it was Lego motors and switches and lamps. Graduated to soldering a year later when my uncle gave me a weller soldering gun. Then it was fixing the wiring and lights on our garden tractor. Then I hooked up the trailer lights that my dad used for his business.

We moved up north and I wired up the whole house my parents remodeled. Repaired stuff for friends and neighbors, tablesaws, stereos, tvs, trucks and tractors. Later on vcr's, I made some good money cleaning vcrs back then. My summer job from 15 til I was 20 was on a family carnival where I worked my way up to show electrician from pulling wire. That was alot of hard work and long hours with little pay. It taught me how to plan a layout to get everything hooked up. Hooked up and operated some really large generators. Friends during high school wanted practice guitar amps, so I found some schematics and designed it up and hand made the pcb's at home. Not much money growing up, so I scrapped everything I could get for parts. Three years in a vocational electronics program and on to college for two semesters till the money dried up. After a few odd jobs, I ended up at a sound company in the repair department.

Interesting story, I was working for a friend from college that had a DJ company and we rented equipment from the local sound company, one day we went there to return the equipment and I saw the repair benches with all the test gear and asked the owner if he was looking for a repair tech, 'not really' was the answer, but come back Thursday and we will talk. Thursday morning I'm there before he gets there and I follow him in as he opens up. Not remembering what he told me, he asks if he can help me and I had to explain to him that I was there to try out for repair tech. He takes me back and shows me a bench and grabs a Soundcraftsman PM860 off the rack to fix. Those amps were a real pain to disassemble, and in the process of him looking for the right screwdrivers, I told him I would be right back, went out to my truck and got my tool box, and that is where I and my toolbox stayed for about ten years. I learned a lot about electronics from him, helped him build his recording studio, designed and built PA, home and custom car speaker enclosures, etc. I repaired everything but tv's working there. Worked with him setting up and tracking a few recording sessions. I built a custom cable checker for the rentals using diode logic and an opamp, worked very well for years, considerably cheaper than the commercial units available at the time, much faster than checking with a meter before they went out.

Been in and out of electronics ever since and I wish I would have found microcontrollers back then, my life may have taken a different route, but yeh, hindsight is 20/20...

I still have a lot to learn about transistors and electronics in general. Recently, with the forums help, I really learned how to design something using mosfets, thanks guys! I even programmed my first two pic mcu's and it all worked first go. I have yet to edit and post the video, I'll get to it...sometime.

Chris

[Mechatrommer]

i want to build a human. but for the start, it will looks similar to c3po. i'm a full_life_time tinkerer, during kids i broke every toys/consumer products i can find.

[sacherjj]

The easiest answer for this is Mini Notebooks from Radio Shack, written by Forrest Mims.

I'm sure I started learning before that, but that was when I really started doing.

[IanJ]

Hi all,

Here's mine:-

Aged about 8 I got into batteries & lightbulbs and taking things apart with a kitchen knife for a screwdriver.

Aged 18 started working for my dad repairing CB Radio and home-hifi equipment.

Aged 19 got a job in the oil industry bulding electronics drilling instrumentation. No formal EE qualifications, I'm self taught. It was a small company so I learned not only electronics but software, hydraulics, pneumatics and even welding!
I worked my way up to R&D Manager in charge of hardware & software design for all the companies products.

Aged 40 I left that job for a desk job, and about 2 years after that I got the yearning to get back into hands-on electronics and so I built a home workshop and subscribed to the EEVBlog....

Today I'm having a lot of fun.

Ian.

[johnwa]

That really got me interested in electronics and wanting to understand how it works.
This EE gave me my first soldering iron for christmas when I was 9. He also got me into computers with a 386 20MHz machine when I was 13 and then for my 18th birthday he gave me my first scope, the Hitachi V550B which I still use 12 years later.

Oh, I'm not the only one who got a scope for my 18th birthday then! A nice old BWD, still goes today, though I had to replace the EHT transformer with one out of an old telly a few years ago. It really helped out my understanding of electronics, I wish I could have got one earlier.

I grew up always taking things apart for no good reason (well I consider "to see whats inside" a valid one...)

Yes, this is an excellent reason! I was just like this too. To other kids, a treat might be going to the cinema or getting an ice cream or something, but I always looked forward to being given broken electronic things the most! Eventually, I figured out how to put things back together, and even managed to repair some of them.

I started off at a very early age with the Dick Smith 'Funway' kits - who else remembers these? I think they were still on sale, unchanged, until just a few years ago, when a lot of the technology they used was quite obsolete! Transformer coupled audio amplifiers anyone?

[Dataforensics]

Well I started at 14 when my parents bought me a Philips kit, the one with all the springs. Then I started buying dirt cheap ex mil radios and electronics to take apart. Wish I still had the no 19 set. By end of school sixth form got my amateur radio licence, then went on to do an engieering hnd, and thats where the glitch was. They only seemed to teach ancient electronics, Wheatstone bridges etc, did not even get to see what transistors were for!. Still break came during my six month work experience which was for Kelvin Hughes radar systems, learnt more during this than anywhere. Back at college and still bored went for an interview with what was then the Met Police chief Engineers dept and got the post in electronics research and development. After around three years help start their computer forensics dept, where I stayed. Now I am nearing retirement am trying to get back into amateur radio and electronics.

Ton