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What was your first electronics project?

dougw

What was your very first electronics project?

Why did you take it on?

I think my first successful, non school-related electronics project was an electronic doorbell that would randomly play one of a whole (fixed) suite of sound effects and melodies or jingles.

After brief use as a doorbell, it eventually got used as toy, but "someone" couldn't stand the kids playing it non-stop, so it got tossed out....Disappointed

I built the project because I thought it was such a cool chip, (I still think it was cool) but it was many years ago and I can no longer recall the chip I used or find something that seems similar.

Parents

  • First was a "manual answering machine" which was a notepad on a stand, with a toggle switch.
    This worked  with the now foreign concept, that when you answer your landline phone and its not for you, you would take a message on the notepad, and flip the switch, which would illuminate a red LED, indicating a message was waiting for another person in your household. 

    My first experience of Programming and Microcontrollers was some sort of PIC chip programming that was dictated out loud from the front of the class room by my, entirely not interested, Design & Technology teacher as if it was a recipe for a cake. 

    "COLON, CLOSE BRACKET, RUN, ENTER. YOU ALL GOT THAT? GOOD! LETS CARRY ON"

    It went in one ear and out the other.  As always you have good teachers and bad.
    I had a sciences teacher who would always respond to my "oh that is cool, why does it work like that?" with "Because X, and Y, and that is built on Z".
    Then I had a Mathematics teacher who rarely made me go "oh that is cool, why does it work like that?" and he would respond with "Because it does. Memorize it", resulting in my brain switching off. 

    Who knows what would have happened if those teachers were switched! 

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  • First was a "manual answering machine" which was a notepad on a stand, with a toggle switch.
    This worked  with the now foreign concept, that when you answer your landline phone and its not for you, you would take a message on the notepad, and flip the switch, which would illuminate a red LED, indicating a message was waiting for another person in your household. 

    My first experience of Programming and Microcontrollers was some sort of PIC chip programming that was dictated out loud from the front of the class room by my, entirely not interested, Design & Technology teacher as if it was a recipe for a cake. 

    "COLON, CLOSE BRACKET, RUN, ENTER. YOU ALL GOT THAT? GOOD! LETS CARRY ON"

    It went in one ear and out the other.  As always you have good teachers and bad.
    I had a sciences teacher who would always respond to my "oh that is cool, why does it work like that?" with "Because X, and Y, and that is built on Z".
    Then I had a Mathematics teacher who rarely made me go "oh that is cool, why does it work like that?" and he would respond with "Because it does. Memorize it", resulting in my brain switching off. 

    Who knows what would have happened if those teachers were switched! 

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