So It started when I was in 6th standard. There was as science fair in which I demonstrated how our lungs get affected due to smoking. I used a PET bottle,  a cosmetic face, a hole to place cigarette and an old rubber blow horn thing (not sure what it was called exactly) but yes this horn used to make sound when this rubber was pressed,it was used in 80's or early 90's in motor vehicles) pressing the rubber would imitate exhale and releasing it would mean inhale actions. By end of the day, my model had consumed 10 odd cigarettes and thus the lungs were all black. As my model did not have any electronics and seniors of my schools were using Motors, Rotors, Lights etc. , I was not very happy about my model. This was the moment when i realized my love for "The magical things that use electricity". Time Passed by and next year ,in 7th standard, I made my first Remote Controlled Car. Hacking a Cassette Player, a plastic toy car and some transparent tape,i got my vehicle ready. Using a matchbox, a shaving blade,wires, some tape and adhesive, i got my remote ready. yes it was wired remote control. When i demonstrated this car to my peers and teacher, i got an overwhelming response. This was the first time when i was recognized and praised. Before that day I thought of myself as a NOBODY. In my academics, i was not good.In sports, i was not good.In family,i wasn't among the respectable kids. And on top of it, i was the Shortest guy in my class! :-(.
So this recognition was a great deal for me .

In India there is not much of emphasis on Practicals, Labs , etc. Science Fairs are considered to be a secondary thing. So when i changed my school, all i was remained with was academics and this continued till 10th standard.

I chose to study commerce due to some reasons but on my first day of school while coming to home, i saw a transformer and a thought struck me at lightening speed- "Now I will never be able to know what is inside if it and how it works". This was the deciding moment when i decided that i want to study and remain studying Science. Next day I went to school and for the next 7 days , I had to go to my teachers, department heads and principle to convince them that I WANT to study science and not commerce and that I CAN study sciFence. My the grace of god, i succeeded in convincing them and the journey continued.

As I said, I was never great at academics and scores, cramming wan't my thing either. I ended up in landing to a non premiere college and university,where things weren't great. The only thing relaxing was that I got into Electronics and Communications Engineering and not into some other branch. I enjoyed learning things and concepts on my own. I enjoyed learning from MIT OCW and IIT's online lectures more as opposed to many crammers. Anyway, it was our final year project which made me think-"3.5 Years have been passed and I haven't done any significant thing that can make me feel, I am an engineer".

In colleges like the one i was in, there is a culture of Buying Projects. There are many shops in Delhi NCR that sell projects to Electronics, Mechanical and CS/IT students. This was the time that I chose to listen to my heart and make a project on my own. I decided to make a Remote Controlled Surveillance Hovercraft. This time it was going to be Wireless. I was friends with 3 people of my class which were closest friends of mine. So I asked them and motivated them to be with me and make this unique thing as our final year project. I convinced them. I thought so, I mean. I spent more than 3 months while researching and designing different skirts for the hovercraft and then all of a sudden , all the three closest friends of mine pulled back. They insisted me to join them in Buying the project but I could not think of doing so. Luckily, One of three came back to me and agreed to face the good or bad time with me.

So we went on towards the mighty goal (for us, in the kind of environment we were,it was not a simple thing) and we successfully created ,tested, and demonstrated our Hovercraft.

It has been 5 years since i passed out of the college. Luckily, I am not into a job which I don't love. Luckily, I still want to create awesome stuff and I am proceeding in the direction I want to. I loved Electronics and it is still with me. I realize and thank god for letting me to have my bread and butter by doing things that I Love .

I feel I am becoming an Engineer. Slowly and Steadily. :-)
I feel I will be able to solve at-least One problem that people face. I love motorcycling and presently I am trying to solve a problem related to motorcyclists only.
Thanks for reading. Hope you all love your work !
@Don Bishop Thanks for correcting me

I've always had a love for how things worked and how they were made

I have memories of making Airfix/Revell kits with my dad when I was under 10

Meccano and TinkerToy featured heavily in my childhood - my mum and dad always encouraged an inquiring mind

I remember dad giving me a battery (the old 4.5 flat/oval brick), a lamp holder, lamp and wires - I was fascinated - it didn't take long to move to the "100 in 1" kit from Tandy/Radio Shack - and when a RS shop opened up in the local shopping mall - I was stoked. We also had a *** Smith Electronics nearby as well

There were 2 memorable magazines - Electronics Australia and Electronics Today - they were great for info and great projects - I think one of the most wanteds was the ARRL Handbook

In my teens (1970's) I attended (and later attended as a leader) a Summer camp (CamTech) that focused on electronics, photography and computers - absolutely fantastic - we were taught everything from etching boards to photo developing

Along the way I've made radios, musicolors etc.

A long hiatus following marriage and family priorities.... although i still maintained a somewhat curtailed interest...

My interest was renewed when I started helping a Summer camp again - some of the other leaders had an idea for a "cheap" Laser Tag game using laser pointers and asked if I had any ideas - I ended up designing a PIC based solution - and we made 50 units for the camp

I've since been doing stuff with Arduino and RaspberryPi - eg. a Lie Detector for a Detective themed summer camp, timer "treasure" boxes etc.

Professionally, I've worked in

- IT - everything from building PCs, networking, etc.

- Software - Web, SQL, C#, VBA, Alteryx etc

I probably consider myself more of a programmer than electronics - and I found that now with all these new microcontrollers/embedded systems - you can do nearly anything via programming - it's a great "new" world

Bit by the Bug...

As I have been reading through many of the Members posts on how they were introduced/bit by the bug, I have been encouraged and excited with what I have been trying to do with my children and other youth within the school system so they can share the fun and excitement of tinkering/hacking/making!

I personally do not have any specific person I can call upon that affected me directly by introducing me to electronics.  I grew up a Stepchild in a small Coal Town and my family did not see any value in such luxurious items like computers or other high end electronics.  A single television, a single corded phone, those were the most that could be found in our home.  Well there was the old HiFi stereo with 8-Track and LP that my Mother had in her bedroom but it was many years before I would ever have a Cassette Deck or similar as a youth.

I did have a close friend who had an IBM computer that his Father let us use occasionally, so that quickly caught my interest and had me pursuing Computer Programming in School.  So much so that my last years had me taking Independent study since I had exceeded the public school offering for Computers.

If I were to call upon a specific memory that made me believe that tinkering was not only viable but a great thing to do, it would have to stem from that Classic Movie back in the late 70s.  I am sure some of you may recognize this scene where Luke's tinkering had started R2's recorded message.

I think many a child was captivated by the idea of taking something "old and not very valuable" and being able to find a treasure within it.  Something that could potentially take you out of your dreary and boring existence (because honestly very few children regardless of their situation fail to think something better must be out there!).

I quickly realized that Computers were the thing that would take me into my unknown future, away from Coal Town, USA working Grill at the local McDonalds.

I joined the United States Marine Corps a Cobol Programmer straight out of High School and was quickly introduced to the world of Mainframes and DASDs, Dumb Terminals and Modems coaxial cable and impact printers.  One of the facts about the Marine Corps is due to a limited budget, you made due with many repairs and upgrades from scavenged parts and what was at hand.  The Mission was always priority one.

Eventually Personal Computers came more into play with the Corps and this allowed me hands on access to chip level diagnostics and modifications.

It was a great time!  It seemed every month there was a new upgrade with more memory, smaller sizes, constant improvements.

On the non-military side I built my own IBM 286 clone and started playing with my 300 baud modem.  Bulletin Board Systems provided a wealth of information on how to tweak items and custom make tools that seemed like Science Fiction.  2600 the Magazine was even publishing some of this for anyone to read and organizing meeting groups for like minded people to meet in person.

(Interesting fact, have an article published in the 2600 Magazine and they send you a Shirt!)

As I grew older and worked in various Computer based jobs, hardware tinkering has always been of interest.

Now that I have my own children and they have expressed interest in learning how to make things, I feel that I have been Re-Bit by the Bug!  All thanks to Element 14!

This incredible source of hardware and information is truly a Digital Treasure-Trove and I enjoy sharing it with anyone I think who would enjoy it, but especially my children.

From Raspberry Pis and Scratch Programming to Codebug and wearable applications my children are fascinated by what is being done by members of Element 14 and will sit next to me in the evenings as I peruse the various posts and projects.

While Luke Skywalker and R2D2 may have opened my imagination to the potential of The Making Bug, I feel that Element 14 is a true inspiration in today's Age of Easy Access Information and will continue to bring adults and children into the world of creating and making, the same as so many of us here enjoy!

Thank you Element 14!

When I was a kid my father got me an Atari 800XL. I loved that thing and it got me in to gaming and learning how to program. I played with it all of the time and had a lot of fun. Due to a lot of moves and other things I fell out of computing for awhile. In high school I took a computer class where we learned how to do very basic programming on an Apple IIe. That was a lot of fun as well. I went to DeVry University for a little while to learn electrical engineering. Taking classes and working full time didn't work out for me very well. So I left DeVry but I kept playing with different electronics. Taking them apart and fixing what I could or just seeing what made them tick.

Now, I work full time as a firefighter but I kept my tech desire alive by learning Java so I could create a few Android and Android Wear apps. I'm currently working on C#/Xamarin so that I can use one language for both Android , iOS, Windows and Mac. I'm actually hoping to move to this full time after I retire from firefighting in a few years. Hard to say of that will work out but it will keep my tech desires stimulated.  

At school, in the 1970's, I was told I couldn't study computing because I wasn't good enough at maths. However the school's computer, a Teletype terminal linked to Manchester University, was in my form room, so I got a log-on ID and taught myself BASIC in my lunchtimes and was soon writing programs too large to transmit over the rudimentary modem, so would have to take card decks up to the university at the weekends. When a program compiled and then ran successfully (two separate overnight events) you'd get a report back saying how long the compile took and how much of the computer's resources your program had used - and so the game began. How could I write a program to use as much of the resources as possible. This self-taught 'game' perversely helped me understand more about how computers and computer languages worked, allocated and used resources than any class would have done at that time.

I went on to study engineering, and naturally, my focus was drawn to CNC and Robotics - a passion that has stayed with me right up to today.

Now, for fun, I build baby CNCs, robots and drones, using Arduino, PI and I'm now just getting back into building circuits from scratch

Python is sold by Snake Oil peddlers as a panacea.

I was bit by the bug disassembling things.

When I was very young (I mean, 8 or 10 years old) I liked to screw-open (or break-open, when one of that strange Torx screws showed up) every sort of electronics I can put my hands on. I was fascinated seeing all that coloured and small barrels and wires, connecting each other to give life to something inanimated. I started with small appliances, like phones and irons, and then that old and bulk TVs.

Growing up, I switched to computers - both HW assembling and programming them.

In the mean time, first makers board came up. My first board was a self-built single-sided Arduino Severino...but that was after building also required tools, like parallel programmers and power supply. The ability to build tools always fascinated me - and still do now.

Having practical electronics on one side, Linux was another of the greatest discoveries in my tech life. I explored several distributions, compiled kernels, wrote small drivers and yes, I also did a rm -rf without having that intention and lost a day for that. Still, I think that a good Linux knoweledge is a key point in everyone interested in engineering and/or technology.

I graduated in Electronics Eningineering and now I work as Linux programmer in the automotive field - but still like to disassemble and build things.

It started out with python. But python is hard to use and I quickly migrated to these things called Snap Circuits. But because Snap Circuits didn't tell you how things work, I moved to Scratch and Arduino youtube videos while dreaming to have an Arduino. Then I got into a Arduino Camp and it was so much fun. Now I am building my own projects and only partly confused.

When I was a kid, I loved magnets, and science. I had an old science book I got someplace second hand. Would read and reread the world book year book articles on computers and the DynaBook. In 4th grade I won a ribbon at the local science fair for a galvanic meter made with a compass, a block of wood and some copper wire. Telegraphs, magnets, crude motors, microphones, and all kinds of inventions a kid can make lantern battery and wire followed. Then one day my brothers and I got home from school to find our parents were not home yet. They got home soon after, with a magic box. It was a Commodore Vic 20 they had bought in town. We spent all night entering the basic programs from the back of the user manual, and at the end of the night, we had to shut it down because we didn't have a way to save the program. Dad bought the dataset recorder a few days later, but we were hooked. I wrote all kinds of silly video games and other things in basic.

I have always been fascinated by how things work. I am told that as a child I regular took things apart to see how they sometimes much to my Dad's chagrin as he tried to put them back together. My interest has carried on when computer were first available when I got a dragon32, after a few months I learnt 6809 assembly after being bored of typing opcodes in. I started working life in a bank in IOT but became unhappy and left to be an electrician and later an Enginerr. For 15 years I worked in Air Traffic control as an elecronics and radio engineer before things changed again. I retrained in iT security with a bent towards ethical hacking / penetration testing. My engineering skills have stood in good stead in a number of ways from problem solving to discipline when trying to make things work. in my current hacking role. Recently , I entered a hackathon with a modified air quality distributed sensor (modified hardware and software) coupled to a custom built of android, it is safe to say that without my engineering skills I would not have completed on time in 36 hours.

Cheers

Cyberkryption