I am thinking of building a PI weather station and lightning detector with cloud storage

When I was way younger (like 7), we would get these toy train sets for Christmas.  They were cool for a little while, but they had something cooler inside, speakers!  Now it wasn't exactly the speakers I was after.  I REALLY liked magnets.  I had a few of those magnet kids kits in the 90's of course.  Well, when I have have my mind set on something, nothing gets in my way.  Not even a bunch of train shaped plastic!

So, I would proceed to unscrew the parts of the train that I could.  Oh, and yes, there was not only one train victim   .  After I would get the screws I could out, I started to rip that plastic apart.  There would always be something stuck preventing me from reaching that magnetic    magic.  So...I would tear at it until it finally gave up and relinquished access to the speaker   .

Now that I can see the speaker, there was the glue they would hold it into the speaker formed place in the plastic with.  Of course because it was the 90's that Bad boy would not give up easily, so I had to pry at it for a while to get it out.

Now that I finally had it in my hands, I would rip the wires off (who needs wires?) And  proceed to rip the plastic speaker casing off.  Finally I have my magnet!  Now, I later learned that motors had magnets too...so, those were no longer safe either   .

To this day I still hear from my your brothers about how I would always destroy our trains to get the magnets out   .

I've been tinkering with electronics since I was 8 years old and made my first crystal radio. that led to me taking electronics classes through my VoTech in high school. now I'm making brew controllers for beer.

So glad I learned!

Ah the "Hot Water" series Heathkit. I had a Hot-Water 101 that I inherited from a fellow ham back a long time ago. Never had the opportunity to build one though. I've also never heard of the book by Ethelyn, I'm heading off to the library now.

73

N3YLI

Probably the best, most electronic-y gift that I have ever received was the Heathkit HW-8 Amateur Radio Transceiver Kit. I was probably around 8 or 9 years old, and after having read the book "Today I am a Ham" by Ethelyn Parkinson, I was obsessed with ham radio! I had been studying morse code for about a year, but never quite made it to the 5 words-per-minute rate necessary for the novice license.
Anyway, I had carefully priced out radio receivers and tried to find something that was attainable within the limits I could expect for a Christmas gift, and pointed my parents at this Heathkit as the very best value for the money!
So, I wasn't too surprised to find it under the tree.
I spent the rest of vacation soldering the thing together with my grandfather, and it is a memory I'll cherish forever, burned fingers and all! My first taste of building something with my own hands and having it work!
I went on to get a degree in Electrical Engineering, this project being instrumental in building my love of electronics at an early age!

Am sad to say that I haven't received any product previously, this is my first contest to participate and as  a developer am very much interested in having a Raspberry pi

I've always loved electronics growing up. Now my job revolves around it. As a kid growing up I got a radio shack electronics builder kit and loved building circuits with it. Now I'm 36 and my wife found the exact kit I had more than 25 years ago. I mess around with that kit all the time and now have started teaching my kids with it . Soon I hope to move them over to more advanced electronics.

My favorite was an old Simpson meter. A man gave it to me when I was about 12. He sowed me how to use it. So I started "testing" everything lol

So here I am 40 years later working on electronics. I work for an FM radio station as a DJ and tech.

I never received a gift in electronics , so i gifted my self with DSLR and raspberry pi 2b and my life changed. Now i play retro games and learning the electronics in more fun way. If I receive this gift I would be very happy.

Thank you Element14.

I would have to say the best electronics gift I ever received and one that I still use to this day is curiosity.

Whenever an appliance broke in our household, Dad always had a rule of repair before replace.

Looking back, I can see that it wasn't only encouraging his four sons (I'm eldest) to want to fix things and be self-sufficient.
When four young boys get hungry, the entire household gets eaten
The one memory that rings true is a blender that Dad, my brother and I disassembled.
I'd seen a simple DC motor before and thought that all motors had brushes, a commutator, armature windings on the rotor, etc.
I had no idea that motors could have no brushes. They could also have lots of little coil windings on the non-moving part of the motor.
And there was no electrical connection that I could see between the rotor and the stator.
So, off to the library I went, looking for books on electric motors. I discovered that there were more than just simple DC motors. There were AC motors, universal motors, but what I had was an induction motor.
I was hooked.
And that curiosity about how things works is the best electronics gift I've ever received.