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Interview with Mark Pavlyukovskyy, CEO and Founder of Piper, Inc.

semaj — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 21:32:11 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by semaj on 10/6/2021 9:32:11 PM

Piper, Inc. is a STEM education startup that seeks to empower future generations of engineers through technology-driven play. The Piper Computer Kit is the company's flagship product and provides children with the opportunity to assemble a fully functional computer. Once built, users play a special Raspberry Pi Edition of Minecraft and build various electronic smart devices in order to complete in-game tasks.

The following is an abridged transcript of a February 13, 2018 interview between Mark Pavlyukovskyy, CEO and Founder of Piper, Inc., and the element14 Community team.

Why don't we begin by you giving me a brief overview of your company and the Piper Computer Kit product?

I'll begin with my own personal story. I was born in Ukraine and moved to America when I was nine, and growing up here as a kid I felt really lucky for all of the opportunities I got. I got to go to some of the best universities and schools. I went to Princeton and Oxford. So, I wanted to give back in some way. Growing up, I began to realize that talent is distributed evenly around the world but opportunity is not. And, I felt like I got lucky, had a lot of opportunities, so I wanted to empower others. And, my first attempt at doing that was, I went abroad to Africa, to Ghana specifically, and was teaching kids about global health through games. And, as I was doing that, it was going really well, but I actually got sick myself, ironically, and almost died in the process. And, that experience made me realize that to have an insight to actually do something more scalable than go to places on a one-off basis. I started teaching myself programming, electronics, and right around the time, the Raspberry Pi came out. And, I had thought, "Wow, this is a really great product. If I had this growing up, I probably would've been building things in code—scalable things—from a much younger age." I wanted to create that product that I wish I had growing up. And then as we went out we did a lot of kit testing. And, what we learned is that kids, they're not necessarily interested in coding and electronics, per se; they're interested in playing games like Minecraft, sharing with friends, interacting with friends. So, we realized that whatever product we made had to have its focus on platforms and context that kids already understood and were excited about. So, that's how we came to this idea of combining the experience of building your own computer with the experience of learning through Minecraft. And that's kind of what the product is today.

Did you feel like there was any sort of resistance within the minds of young people to learning about technology? Did you feel like, by using the video game as a medium, that it was a way of sort of tricking them into something that they might not have necessarily wanted to learn?

I think it's all about motivation, really. I think that kids are the same way that adults are: if you're motivated by something, you'll do something. You're going to find a lot of energy and excitement in doing that. Something where it's forced on you or it's boring, you're not going to be that excited. I think that's true universally. A lot of the education system today is kind of removing the context; it removes the motivation. It doesn't present topics and subjects as a kid like, "Here's what you want to build; you can try to do it." It's more like, "Here, learn this," right? And so I think, telling kids, "Hey, learn some Python or learn how to program this LED," again, you're removing the context. There's no context for why they'd want to do that. If you presented the context in, "Hey, you're already playing Minecraft, and here's a way that you can find your diamonds faster, by hooking up this LED light to it, or you can build stuff faster in the game if you write a script to do it." Then all of a sudden, kids are really motivated and they say, "Oh, that's really useful. That makes a lot of sense why I would learn coding or electronics." So, yeah, I wouldn't say kids are opposed to it, it's just you have to motivate them.

Looking at the product specs of the Piper Computer: so, it's powered by the Raspberry Pi, and how did you end up selecting the Pi computer to power your product? Why is it suited for the purpose better than other products out there?

It's the best bang for your buck in terms of what it can do for the price point. There are many other options that are more expensive, but the fact that the Pi is relatively inexpensive and can run a full operating system and can run a 3D game like Minecraft, those are all things that make it a really appealing option.

Can you speak a little bit of the steps involved in going from that vision to a working prototype, and then finally bringing your product to market with that launch?

I'd say, probably the most important thing is understanding what you're building and what you have a vision for, that there's actually a demand for it in the market. The quick prototypes that I made, I very quickly, very immediately went and tested them with kids and parents. I tried to understand, "Do parents want to buy a product like this? Did the parents find a need for a product like this? Were the kids playing with it? Is there really room in the market for a pro product like this? Would there be demand?" And so, doing that for a good while—probably a couple of months—the beginning is crucial to really understand your market. Because if you don't do that, if you go off and you have an idea that, it's not valued by customers, you could go off pretty far in the wrong direction and then launch a product that flops. You didn't do your initial research. I'd say that's probably the most important thing. And then as you develop a product, you stress that we build more features, you don't need to build the full product; you just need to show enough of a prototype to get people excited and interested and to get their feedback. And then as you continue to build some new features, continue to get feedback. Getting feedback from customers is probably the most important piece of this—building a great product. And then after that, it was learning about the different opportunities that existed to launch a product: Kickstarter, Indiegogo, other kinds of platforms that exist. Then just learning about the platform, how it works, what the best way to leverage people on it was. That was how we launched the product.

Can you explain a little bit about the team that you and Joel assembled, and any keys to successfully putting together a great team to develop a product?

I'd say, one of the things we learned, is that it's really important to have people on your team who not only—it's always good to have people who are hardworking, who can run fast and get things done and stay motivated and keep focus in a very unpredictable environment. But as you start to scale a bit more, you definitely want to bring in at least some advisors, more senior people, people who can help guide you around, and can help you see that course that you might not be able to see because it's your first time doing something. That's really valuable. I think even having an eye-opening conversation with someone who's really experienced is better than kind of doing it yourself because it will take you a week or two weeks to figure something out that someone can just tell you quickly. And, triangulating that advice across a couple of mentors, or a couple experts really allows you to make decisions quickly without having to make your own mistakes.

It seems to me that it almost takes a bit of humility to admit to oneself that there are people who might know more about the industry. Do you think that yours is a unique case, where you have this idea and you're not seeking to guard it and keep it close to the vest, but you're sharing it with others, you're bringing people in to help you along? Do you think that that's true of many people who are in your situation?

Yeah, that's definitely a very lucky thing to think. I hear it all the time with folks who have ideas, they're like, "Man, I want to build this thing, but I can't tell you about it," or it's a secret. That's a huge rookie mistake because it's not about the idea, it's definitely about the execution. If your idea is any good, you're now going to spend a lot of time convincing people that this is a good idea instead of going the other way and hiding the idea. Eventually, the job of a founding CEO becomes just convincing, selling the vision to the employees, to investors, to customers; you have to convince people that it's a good idea. So, starting with an attitude that you have to hide this and that it's a secret definitely doesn't help. And, the other piece is, you also learn a lot talking to people. You might think you have the best idea, but you probably don't. Talking to a few folks, you get a lot of feedback that will help you improve your idea. You definitely have to listen to your audience, really understand that other people might know more, probably do know more, and you should try and listen to them and take their advice if they're believable people. If they don't know what they're talking about, that's different. But, yeah, I'd say definitely, that's a big thing you gotta have, is a good portion of a good helping of humility.

Were there any examples within your own development where you were going along one path, but then someone opened your eyes to a new perspective and it caused you to drastically change the direction of the company?

I don't know if it was drastic, but one example kind of early on, thinking about how do we expand the platform, and we were thinking we were limited by Minecraft and we think we'll probably do something else. Like, switch away from Minecraft, build a platform on our own. We talked to one of our advisors who sold a couple companies in the advertising space, and he had kids. And he was like, "Look, I know it might seem appealing to do that now, but the thing is, kids really love Minecraft, and that's what they get excited about. If you were to switch, you're going to lose some of that excitement and magic that you have right now. I see it with my kids: there're a lot of products that they have, but there's a special relationship they have with Minecraft. And so, even when you think you can build a really awesome product just on your own in the first year, maybe in time, but not now, especially with Minecraft, maybe later, maybe for someone more mature." I think that was probably spot-on advice because as we talked to customers, that's what they brought up over and over: is that having that Minecraft piece is what actually draws them in. Because they realize, "Oh, my kid already has a relationship with that game. My kid already understands that game and plays it, so this product is going to be much more accessible and much easier for them to master and they're going to find it more enjoyable because they already have a shared context with the game, rather than if it was just a completely standalone, different product." So, I think that was spot-on advice that we couldn't have had because we didn't have this experience—we didn't have kids ourselves.

Were there any other major roadblocks or setbacks that you experienced that you think someone interested in going and starting their own company, it might be a benefit for that person to hear so that they can avoid similar challenges?

Actually, you know, I'd say my bias, my personal bias to action and to doing things, a lot of times— And I think a lot of founders probably tilt that way as well, because they want to do stuff and they want to be done quickly. And it has always helped me tremendously to be able to slow down and take an extra minute, an extra hour, or maybe get another piece of advice to help really understand the choice, whatever choice or decision I'm making. And make it a little more process and a little business. I had my cofounder Joel be that counterweight and help slow things down and help me make better decisions. If you're like that and you have someone in that role, definitely bring someone on board, because it's really easy to chase after a lot of things and try to move quickly. It's all very exciting. If you have a lot of different opportunities in front of you, just really focusing and making the right choice can also be difficult. So, the folks who are tilted toward action and biased toward action, I'd say, slowing down and having someone to help you make a more deliberate decision, that's a piece of feedback and advice I'd give.

What excites you about the future of Piper? And, outside of your own company, are there any other products or technological developments that have captured your interest as of late?

Yeah, what excites me about Piper is that we're building something that doesn't exist that I think can inspire a whole generation of kids the same way that I was inspired, to be curious about the world and to understand how things work. I hope that our product inspires this next generation of kids to understand technology, to become curious about it, and to feel that they're not as happy consuming content. They're actually creators and they're part of the process and they can invent and create whatever they want. That's really what excites me about what we're building. In terms of other products out there, it's never a problem with technology—it's always figuring out what the big need is and how to solve it. What I've been thinking a lot about is, how do we change our thoughts around what education is supposed to be for kids? I've been thinking a lot about that space and the products in that space and the technology that is there, and both on the consumer and on the school side. You know, schools were created in America to train factory workers and to train people to be compliant with a schedule and to follow instructions and having a basic set of skills that they knew like arithmetic and literacy, et cetera. In a world where information is accessible twenty-four/seven and you can do whatever you want—you can work remotely and you can freelance and do your thing—the kind of education that we need now is actually to inspire people and kids to go and develop and to take risks and start their own projects and to learn how to be creative. The information and technology is there. So, how do you train someone to be creative? How do you train someone to not be afraid to go after a hard problem? I think it's more of a human question, more of a design question. How do you design something that works at scale? That helps produce creative people and citizens, at scale? Helps train their minds to work in a way that allows them to solve big problems in the world and not just to become robots that follow instructions? Because, we're going to have robots very soon. So, thinking about that, and thinking about that from a very young age, right? And, I think the technology—once you figure out how to solve the problem, most of the technology is there. We have things like the Raspberry Pi, which, the Pi Zero you can buy for ten dollars, five dollars. And that's a whole computer that costs a Starbucks coffee. So, I think in terms of what's possible—anything's possible. You just have to figure out what the right solution is.

For more information about Piper, Inc., check out our in-depth Case Study highlighting the Piper Computer Kit.

Tags: interview, piper computer kit, piper, interviews, mark pavlyukovskyy

Interview with Joshua Montgomery, CEO of Mycroft AI, Inc.

semaj — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 21:30:46 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by semaj on 10/6/2021 9:30:46 PM

Mycroft is the world's first open source voice assistant designed to provide users with the ability to customize their experience in order to create a personalized AI. Additionally, user data is kept private and all queries are deleted in real time by the software. The voice platform can be deployed anywhere or used in conjunction with Mycroft's "Mark" family of devices.

The following is an abridged transcript of a February 15, 2018 interview between Joshua Montgomery, CEO of Mycroft AI, Inc., and the element14 Community team.

Can you give a high level overview of Mycroft and talk about the inspiration behind developing this software and releasing it?

Mycroft is envisioned as an AI that runs anywhere and interacts exactly like a person. The idea being that you can have a real conversation with a smart speaker or an automobile or, for corporate America, a planned sales system—the same type of natural conversation that you would have with another person. It's a big vision—it's something that's going to take a long time to achieve—but it's clearly the vision of Big Tech in Silicon Valley: that eventually all of your devices will be able to hold a conversation and they'll—in Big Tech's case—those conversations will be with them. In our case, our vision is a future where these AIs that inhabit the devices that we use every day, they belong to the users, they represent the users, and they respect the users from the standpoint of privacy and data independence. That's the big vision here at Mycroft.

It seems like a lot of the product descriptions and the press releases really stress that issue of privacy. What is it about transparency and releasing your product as an open source technology that you think consumers find valuable, and why is it of such significance to Mycroft?

Privacy is something that we've largely given up in our day-to-day lives on the Internet. Companies track us and monitor us and monetize us every time we open a web browser. But, you have a choice as to whether or not you use the Internet. There are spaces in your life that are private and personal, that today are isolated and you can't be spied on. The issue with these technologies is they become ubiquitous, is that they're moving into our homes. They're moving into our bedrooms. They're moving into our vehicles and into all of our personal spaces. And if the story that Silicon Valley's been telling for the last twenty years continues, we'll end up giving up all privacy to just a few companies in Silicon Valley. It's important that people have private space in their lives; it's an important part of being human. Right now, there's a danger that all of this technology will be locked up in the vaults of Silicon Valley and nobody will have access to it without sacrificing their privacy. Our vision around this technology is that the users control their experience, they control their data, they're able to customize it, and they're able to keep their private information, private. It's become an issue on the Internet, because people do spend so much time there, there's danger in the future of all of our information being owned and monetized by these third party companies. We're the bulwark against that. We're building a technology that's open, that can be audited, where it's a stated vision of the technology to respect people's privacy, so that when you install a Mycroft-powered microwave or a Mycroft-powered smart speaker in your home, you know that your activities and your day-to-day life are not being monitored and monetized by some random data analyst in a Big Tech company.

Along with privacy, it seems like another emphasis of the Mark II product is the element of customization. Between those two—privacy and customization—are there any other main selling points that you're really trying to hit on with this product?

Yeah, privacy and customization are both really important, and then, finally, we're doing a lot of innovative things around the user experience and around user agency. The technologies that are coming out of some of the other companies—I view it as hit it and quit it: you ask one question, it answers it or it doesn't, but there's no real opportunity to follow on. There's really no stated objective with those companies to be able to hold a conversation. It's a very utilitarian, in and out, sort of, interaction. Where, for us, we're looking to build something that's a little bit deeper. Our community is working on a variety of different tools. The one that has most recently become available, training.mycroft.ai, takes missed queries and makes them available to the community so the community can answer them. So, if I ask the technology, "What's your favorite color?" it really doesn't have an objective answer to that—that's a subjective query. So, the subjective query gets sent in to the community and the community manages the responses. And for the default Mycroft persona—the one that represents our brand—we're being very careful to make sure that it's very objective and unopinionated about a variety of subjects, because we really do need to provide a neutral playing field for people to stand on. But, people can take that personality and fork it, and they can do whatever they want. They can make Mycroft a fan of the Steelers and they can make Mycroft a fan of the Patriots. They can customize how it responds to various different missed queries: it could be sarcastic, it could be funny, it could be childlike. We're making all of those features available and building them into a conversation engine called Persona that will eventually allow people to have full conversations with the technology. I think that that's a very different goal than the goal that has been set for some of these other technology stacks: they're more about HMI and data access than they are about building what I'd call a strong AI. I think the differentiation of goals is very important because we're not building a new human-machine interface, we really are building an AI that interacts like a person. And that's a very different thing. One of the other concepts that we've really been giving a lot of thought to is the concept of user agency. User agency is the idea that the technology that you represent, represents you and not the company that developed it. We have to really examine, as we use technology, "Is this piece of technology I'm using—is it looking out for my best interest, or is it looking out for the best interest of the company that made it?" And, for us, we want to build a technology stack that looks out for the users first.

I'm wondering if we can get into more of the product specs and talk to me a little bit about the hardware that goes into the Mark II?

When we made the Mark 1, we decided to base it on hacker and maker technologies that were easy to access and had great documentation, which is why we used Raspberry Pi. It was fantastic as we went through the development cycle that Raspberry Pi advanced from the Pi 2 to the Pi 3, because then we got Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and a bunch of other features that we effectively paid the same price for the part, so that was great and it turned out to be a really great decision and made the technology extensible and it also allowed us to use the same software on the Mark 1 that you can bring down as a Raspberry Pi image and just image to any Pi anywhere. The idea behind the Mark 1 was to empower makers and hackers and developers to help to advance the state of the art of this technology by engaging in creative activities with it. The Mark II is being designed for the consumer market. The idea is that it works just as well for grandma as it does for a maker. The Mark II is also being developed as a completely open hardware technology, the same as the Mark 1, so that if you're a big brand and you want to ship a smart speaker, you can take a Mark II design, send it off to a contract manufacturer and make a million of them. We hope that you use our software stack, but if you want to build your own or use one from another company, you're welcome to. The idea there is that we will get the economies of scale that you would get from a big tech company, without having to build a retail brand that will sell hundreds of thousands of units. The Mark II is completely open source, like the Mark 1, it has a quad-core processor. We added another gig of RAM to the Mark II, and we're working with Xilinx on the chip set, which is really, really exciting, because Xilinx has an FPGA fabric as part of that chip that allows us to move software effectively on hardware. We'll be using about twenty percent of that fabric to do wakeword spotting and a few other things inside the software stack—beamforming and noise cancellation—but the rest of the fabric remains available for people to do all kinds of crazy, exciting things with it. We're really excited to be bringing a state of the art chip set with noise cancellation, beamforming, lots of processing power, lots of RAM—and then a removable SD, so you can add as much storage as you want—to market for the same price that Big Tech is bringing completely closed and proprietary speakers to market.

You talked a little bit about the importance of being able to scale this product. Going along that line, can you talk about your relationship with Avnet and how they fit into the picture?

As a small company that's really building more of a reference design than a product, it's important that we get the types of economies of scale that are available to companies that would be shipping vastly greater quantity. Between Avent and Aaware, that's doing our noise cancellation, we're able to access a supply chain that small companies like us would never be able to build on our own at pricing that's very competitive to what a big tech company would pay—a company that made hundreds of thousands or millions of units. Those partnerships are important from a logistics standpoint in making sure that we have access to all of the parts we need. They're important from a pricing standpoint, making sure that those prices are in line with our competition. And then they're important from a strategic standpoint, because Avnet and Aaware and our friends at Kickstarter are really great at building communities and helping to promote into the maker and the developer community, which is where we're hoping our software will live.

I'm wondering if you could take a moment to identify any key landmarks or milestones that you encountered in your own journey going from that initial vision to a physical prototype and then finally a product that you brought to market. Were there any really key moments that stood out to you that others might find helpful as they navigate their own journeys?

As a technical person, my inclination is to build a design and then go out and build a prototype, do a couple of iterations, build a production unit, and then take it to market. The issue with that is it's completely backwards. The first thing you should do is envision your product. The second thing you should do is take it to market. Make sure that somebody is actually willing to pay for this thing that you're building. That's where crowdfunding sites are very, very important. I think that the biggest wasted resource in our country is entrepreneurs who are chasing problems that nobody's willing to pay to have solved. Going out to market with your product early, finding out if people are willing to pay for it, doing something called a smoke test, where you go out and you presell a product that doesn't even exist—actually take the customer's money to make sure that they're willing to pay and then return it and say, "Hey, we're going to be back in a year with the product." That type of testing is really, really key to building a successful product, because then the next step becomes building a prototype, iterating, and making sure, in an ideal world, that you deliver a product that's significantly better than the one you originally sold. In Mycroft's case with the Mark 1, we originally had a Mark 1 Basic, where, in the back of the Mark 1, we were going to expose a single USB port and an Ethernet port. The USB port would have been used for a Wi-Fi dongle. The product we actually shipped had two RCA ports, 40 pins of IO, four USB ports, an Ethernet port, built-in Ethernet, built-in Bluetooth, and really significantly exceeded the original specifications. The reason we were able to do that is because we had the support of this community, because we had gone out and presold the product and verified there was a market for it. It's really important for makers and hackers everywhere who are thinking of doing a commercial product to make sure that people want to buy it before they waste a lot of time and effort building something that nobody wants.

For more information about Mycroft AI, read our in-depth case study highlighting the Mark products and the evolution of the company.

Tags: joshua montgomery, mark 1, mycroft ai, mark ii, interview, interviews

Sky offers a £25k scholarship for women in STEM (UK)

e14phil — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 21:23:02 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by e14phil on 10/6/2021 9:23:02 PM

Sky Women in Technology (UK)

Scholarship Application

The Women in Technology Scholars programme is the latest grass roots initiative that Sky has launched to help encourage more women to pursue careers in technology. The scheme runs on a one-year rotation, with up to three scholars supported this year.

Applications for the Women in Tech Scholars scheme are open to all women aged 18-25 who demonstrate a passion for technology and a strong commitment to build a career in the media and entertainment industry.

Their interest can be across any field of technology, such as: software development, broadcast engineering, AI and machine learning, robotics, digital, innovation, but should be relevant and relatable to Sky’s business.

The scholars will be selected by a panel of judges who are experts in the industry; between them they have over 90 years of experience in the technology and education sectors. All of them have a passion for technology and to see women fulfil their potential.

This scheme follows on from the successful Sky Sports Scholars programme, which is now entering its third cycle of supporting and funding young athletes. This year the scheme is expanding outside of the UK and Ireland to include Italy and Germany, with 14 places available.

Sky’s scholarship programme is part of Sky’s Bigger Picture, an initiative that focuses on investing in the next generation.

The three selected Scholars will be paired with a high calibre mentors who will guide them through the scheme and support them as they develop their skills and pursue their individual projects, as well as access to media training and Sky’s expansive technology network.

Jeremy Darroch, Group Chief Executive, Sky:

“This is all about giving young women with a passion for tech a real chance of reaching their full potential.

“There are too few women working in technology. This is a problem that needs resolving, and we’re fully committed to finding that resolution. Our Women in Technology Scholars scheme is a step in the right direction and I’m excited to see how it helps talented women develop their careers.”

https://www.skywomenintechscholars.com/apply

This is a non sponsored post, Sky have not requested that I share this but element14 and I, believe strongly in supporting the advancement of women in STEM .

-e14Phil

Tags: stem, sky, women, women in tech, sponsorship, stemtlc

Redeem a Mystery Board: a Raspberry Pi 3, BeagleBone Black, or an Arduino Uno; Free e14 Swag; and a CodeBug to Gift!

tariq.ahmad — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 21:01:00 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by tariq.ahmad on 10/6/2021 9:01:00 PM

{tabbedtable} Tab Label	Tab Content
The Promotion	At the end of every year element14 does something special for its community members. This year, we did a "Bit by the Bug" promotion. The element14 team slipped one mystery board in each package: either a Raspberry Pi 3, a BeagleBone Black, or an Arduino Uno; threw in some Free element14 Swag; and gift wrapped a CodeBug for you to give to someone else as a gift. Most of you spend a lot of time around technology & engineering and we are interested in knowing what drove you along your current path. Maybe it was your first computer, a Heath Kit, a mentor or a parent, a project you worked on, or an electronics device you tore apart to see how it worked. The idea behind the promotion was simple. Your story is an intangible gift, by sharing it with the rest of the community, you inspire others. By gifting a CodeBug to others, you are gifting a tangible piece of technology to inspire a love for engineering & technology.
The Highlights	Here are some of your stories from the 'Bit by the Bug' Promotion the-dubster : Who hasn't fallen slightly in love with Heath Robinson creation? For those who have, did you ever study it to see how much of it would really work? For me, my interest started early, I wanted to know how everything worked, if I had a screwdriver that fitted - apart it came! (Sorry dad for destroying your wood chisels by using them as screwdrivers)!! Knowing how things worked was fundamental to me, I can't just accept that 'it just does', I want to know why. School in 70's and 80's UK was starting to bring us computers - BBC Model B, Commodore PET to name a few. I was lucky enough to be introduced to electronic engineering by a family member and then later, a family friend. School also included Electronics and Computer Studies by the time I hit 6th form - I'll take both of those then (they go nicely with Metalwork & Woodwork don't they)! Physics stopped at O Level - certainly for a long time, but my interest has again been sparked. My job of 25 years was Avionics Engineering Technician with the Royal Air Force, following my interests there then, and I now teach the same. Married to it? Yup! For as long as I can remember, and I'm fortunate my real wife is so accepting of my other passion! kenfloyd : My interest in electronics was primed when I built an analog temperature gauge for an 8th grade science class. It used a thermistor and a volt meter, with an electric train power supply. I was given an 'F' because the instructor did not believe I designed and built it. The thermistor was not water resistant, so I used a Bic Pen plastic sleeve and embedded the thermistor in epoxy at the end of the pen and calibrated the voltmeter by sticking the pen in water of a known temperature. I joined the Navy and became an ETR, Electronic Technician Radar. While I was in, it was the period of time when the Navy was converting in analog to digital and I worked on some crazy hybrid systems. After I started college with an Electrical Engineering major, I switched to Computer Science. Most of what I learned is now somewhat obsolete. I had one professor guarantee it was impossible to build a hard drive bigger than 750K. Now I was designing temporary traffic lights, for use in moving work zones in road construction or rehabilitation, and I found the Raspberry Pi. That's why I am here. jgerred : I would have to say that my fascination with electricity, electronics, and how the world works started when I was less than four years old. Old family stories tell about how I was fascinated with the night light in the living room. I got my butt whipped more than once for playing with it. Finally my father decided to let me learn on my own and just watched (while reading the newspaper) as I would unplug the night light and plug it back in. Eventually I got my tiny little fingers on the prongs of the nightlight as I plugged it in and got a good zap. I have no recollection of this, but according to the stories I then proceeded to get about a foot away from the outlet and tried to throw the night light back into the outlet while carefully looking around periodically to make sure I didn't get busted. Eventually (after about 15+ tries), I lifted up the edge of the carpet and neatly tucked the night light under the carpet and wandered off. As I got older, the fascination with how things work got stronger and I ended up taking apart many devices (radios, blenders, tape decks, turntables, etc) and usually would end up getting them back together and still having them function when I was done. That got me into actually repairing broken items (successfully more often than not). Eventually a family friend got me one of the old "160 in 1" electronics kits from Radio Shack (still have it!) and I started to learn about circuits and electronics. Throughout my teenage years I continued to learn about how things work and ended up in the IT industry as a Systems Administrator (specializing in UNIX/Linux) with a hobby of working on just about anything (electronics, automotive work, small engine repair, woodworking, construction, etc) but my go to entertainment projects have always been working on something electrical. I find it mind boggling that getting shocked from fiddling with a night light got me into a career that has taken me to numerous places around the globe while working in a job that also happens to be my hobby! malloc : Wanna know a secret? We all do; that’s the short of why I got into technology. Specifically, though, I didn’t just want someone to tell me secrets. I wanted to find them, and then get something for it. Functionally, this becomes a desire to see How It Works™ and eventually obtain enough knowledge and resources to Make It Yourself™, and then Make It Better™. Realistically though I think I just wanted to be a wizard as a kid, got super annoyed when I discovered magic isn’t real, and refused to accept it. I think that’s pretty universal, but you can see how this is a bit at odds with itself. You learn science to figure out how to do magic. It’s also an absurdly difficult concept to articulate without sounding INSANELY DUMB, right? Despite how common it is. I seriously don’t think English has a word for that particular drive that you can find outside of a Dungeons and Dragons manual, but man we really should. It’s also extremely common among essentially everyone in my life who is tech-inclined. I’m going to take a crack at explaining this brain splinter a lot of us probably have, tell me how I do: I want to find hidden stuff, and I want that hidden stuff to be part of a story, and I want that story to have meaning. What I find genuinely exciting is discovering the unknown; what I find even more exciting is finding ways to manipulate it. For example, it’s cool to me to find a prototype board for, say, an unreleased video game system. It’s much, much cooler for me to get to crack it open and see how it works and what decisions were made when building it; the best thing would be to fix it, get something running on it, and then publish that information to see what other people do with it.That’s kind of the selfish but true reason I got into technology. There isn’t any particular desire on my end to better humanity’s ills or cure a particular disease or anything. I’m in it for that rush of “Hey, you wanna see a cool thing?” Turns out you can do this as a job! That’s how I wound up where I am. rsc : When I was about 7 or 8, I took apart all of my moms watches to play with the little gears. She was not impressed. I even managed to put one of them back together! When I was 11-ish, one of my dads friends was moving to Florida and gave me several boxes of Ham radio equipment. I spent hours figuring out how to light up the filaments. After that, it was a challenge to fix broken TVs and radios. My dad and his brothers used to race cars, so I learned how to rebuild motors and how to weld frames. [insert 30 years of stories here] Now I work on motorcycles, and embedded controllers, Lasers and Radars and LiDars and Tesla Coils, Fusion, VR, and anything else mechanical or electrical ...... I like to give boxes of parts to kids for Christmas, motors, LEDs, protoboards and stuff, I can still remember the first time my son hooked up an LED to a battery, priceless... I think his eyes lit up brighter than the LED. linuxgnuru : Ever since I got a VIC 20 back in the 80s (I think I was 8 or 10) I've been into writing programs that did things; even got a BS in computer science. But it wasn't until 2014 when I got my first raspberry pi that I asked "what do all those pins do?" and when I wrote a program that just turned on a LED; that something I wrote actually changed something in the physical world that my mind was blown. Before then, programs just counted things or did something if you clicked a button on the screen. 2 months after that moment I got my first Arduino. Now I have spools of wires, boxes of resistors and the like and tomorrow I'll be creating some 555 toy electric organs with some speakers and buttons for some kids for christmas. Oh yeah; I've also been using Linux since May 1995 and haven't touched windows since ... oisinogorman : My earliest introduction to technology was probably the day I discovered what was going on inside an old radio in the cave of wonders that held so much (my father could be classed as a hoarder) that was our shed. From one device to the next, they were all dismantled. It all didn't make much sense at the time but it was intriguing to say the least and lead to years of every piece of electronic technology I could get my hands on and much to the disdain of their rightful owners, the ability to reassemble it all didn't come until later in life. I simply had to know how it worked, this was the spark that has led me to where I am today. Now studying for my final year exams in Industrial Automation and Robotic Control Technology, working with PIC microcontrollers has opened a world of possibilities and this would make an amazing christmas present for me and a friend. anderson7420 : As a little kid I'd always liked science. I would sit for hours and paint little Styrofoam balls to match the pictures of the planets from one of the encyclopedias we had laying around. Jupiter's red spot sticking to the floor we just had put in, quickly covered by an oddly placed nightstand and a less than efficient diagonally placed bed that made the room "more open." I had a teacher in high school though that that brought a warm, human centric science and engineering to me. Some of her lessons reverberate even louder today than they did then. Her name was Ralma, and she taught chemistry at our rather rural PA high school. Ralma had this way of giving, with a bubbly laugh, a warmer meaning to colder equations. She would instill trust in you, and leverage that to focus you into working harder.... While I didn't stick with chemistry in college, the lessons I learned in her lab did: good laboratory practice, safety, and an analytical mindset. More specifically, having the opportunity to work with the thermocouples and logging software gave me that initial push towards engineering. I finished engineering in undergrad and ended up moving to Germany for more in grad school. After grad school, I worked in an engineering company for a while designing electronics/mechanics for spacecraft design and learned some fantastic technical lessons. However, the deeper the technical knowledge I gained, the more I felt myself missing that human connection to the technology itself. I missed that bubbly laugh of Ralma that came with letting students explore something new, and trusting them to do it with integrity and safe curiosity. I ended up leaving that engineering job recently to practice teaching back in Philadelphia. I picked up a few high school teams to mentor with hopes that I can figure out a way to emulate Ralma's impact; not just on the technical STEM side, but also with her human centric approach. I think it would be a life's dream to take Ralma's human based STEM approach and deliver it on a scale like Bill Nye did in the 90's. The more technical I get, I think it becomes even more important to remember the human aspect of engineering for people, how to cultivate curiosity instead of crushing it upfront with too much theory, and teaching others how to safely explore their own technical interests. Thanks Ralma. jack.chaney56 : Turmoil... Love, hate. Anguish, frustration, and heartbreak. All these were countered by passion, longing, sacrifice, and intense attraction. This is my love affair with electronics and computing. The metaphor is quite appropriate, because I get jealous when someone's system is working better than mine. When things get slow an dull, I experiment with new and different algorithms. Always I wonder about the choices I made, and never consider leaving what I know I really love. I'm pretty sure in one of these things, I told my tale of growing up with an EE father, who was also a ham radio operator, who did a lot of experimentation with side-band and antenna experimentation resulting in a patent that got us shipped to "the labs" in New Jersey. So the exposure to engineering is very old indeed. I still wax nostalgic when I get a whiff of rosin solder, or that particular ozone smell of dust on warming tubes. I tried to avoid it for a long time by working in restaurants, and got to be a pretty good cook, but, like in the Godfather, got sucked back in, by the lure of mathematics and puzzle solving. Finished my degree, and landed a job programming video games, learned that embedded systems is all applied video game practice. So I have done lots, learned lots, suffered lots, and now I get to play with the grand kids (next generation of programmers) trying to explain being productive with a 300 baud modem, on a standard phone line. Explaining punch cards and batch stations. Explaining why UNIX is better than DOS, and why you still need to understand assembly language, so you can understand what the processor can and can't do. Finally, like any great love, I will be with it, enjoying its company until I am no longer here. sarunaszx: I got interested in electronics only about 4 years ago when I started studying physics at university. I got a little task to program stm microcontroller and even though it was mostly programming task I got really curious. Programming always fascinated me, but only when I noticed that digital world can be transfered to real life - control, move and detect things, I got really amazed. Soon I got familiar with microcontroller basics - PWM, GPIOs, ADC's, some PID control theory. Then I saw quadcopters on youtube (which also were pretty impressive to me) and a wild thought appeared - I have enough knowledge to build a quadcopter flight controller by myself! (big mistake ). In theory everything seemed so easy. So I started building it from scratch. Homemade frame, cheapest motors, cheapest propellers, no oscilloscope - it was meant to fail and of course it did But doing that I received solid(imo understanding about project planning digital filtering techniques soldering basics and etc I also equiped myself with basic tools required for electronics logic analyzer multimeter soldering iron breadboards leds resistors capacitors and etc Now I am still learning different technologies on my spare time programming beaglebone black(which I received from element14 last christmas adapting Rpi media center and RetroPie station to suit my needs making(slowly granular synthesizer with STM32F3Discovery board experimenting with ESP8266 boards and etc billhudson: I was a young teenage self taught programmer (XB, ASM on a TI-99/4a) when my uncle (an electrician) got a divorce and then moved in with us for a while. He was fascinated with my computer and programming and made a deal where he would teach me some electronics if I would teach him some programming. I was fascinated how close the two were related. Electronics was basically programming but physically instead of software. AND, OR, XOR, it was all there but in chips. Well my first real thing I did is what got me hooked. Back before remote controls existed for televisions our furnace intake was just above our couch and the TV across the room like normal. Well my dad would complain all the time because when the furnace kicked on the intake was so loud he had to get up and turn the volume up. When it kicked off, it was back up, across the room and turn it back down. He hated that! Well we had a couple of those monitors that use the 110 wiring to transmit and receive voice. I knew if I could find a 5v change on the board when TALK was pressed I could use a relay and another Volume knob to turn the TV up, I also needed 110 from the furnace. Well I found the 5v on the monitor when the button was pressed to talk. Well those things could be locked on as well. So I locked it on, went to the furnace closet and got lucky, there was a 110 outlet right on the wall that went hot with the furnace. I just plugged it in and that side was done. When the furnace came on, it turned on the transmitter and sent the signal. I opened the back of the console TV and ran the original volume knob through my relay for off, and drilled a hole in the press board back and installed another knob through my relay for (Furnace on!). Now set the back knob louder and the front knob softer. Now when the furnace kicked on, the TV went up! (and it was adjustable too) When the furnace turned off the TV went back down! (to the front knob setting) My dad, well my entire family was just blown away! My brother still brags to this day, and I am now 51 years old, so it's been quite some time ago. I have to admit, I was pretty impressed myself, and seeing that I could do things like that I just fell in love!!! I have been in love every since. Oh, and of course I fix everything in the world for my family and all their friends as well, as we all probably do. For those days and times, that was pretty amazing! dougw : I grew up in the jungle at the equator with no TV, no computers, no electronics stores and no cell phones, but I always liked building things like kites, sailboats, slingshots and model planes. We also had Meccano and Tinkertoy to get creative with. My first big decision came when I was 11 - my parents let me decide if I wanted to go to boarding school in Canada or stay and train to be a professional athlete. Although I love sports, I chose to get an education. I was not a good student though - I was always reading books when I was supposed to be doing homework, and I mean always. My next big decision was to jump from grade 11 (5th form) to engineering at university (because it was cheaper than boarding school). I wanted to be a mechanical engineer because I had never been exposed to electronics and I had been designing a rotary internal combustion engine in my head. However this jump put me way behind my classmates that were coming out of grade 13. I had never seen a computer and never even heard of calculus. I remember my first computer science assignment was to write a program that used numerical methods to calculate an integral. That was a huge challenge, but I managed to figure it out and get 100% on the assignment. It was such a thrilling accomplishment to successfully learn all that in a few days and get that first program to execute properly that I have always liked computers ever since. My next big decision was to become a systems engineer (mostly electronics) because I realized it would be way cheaper to tinker with electronics as a hobby than outfit a machine shop. I still took lots of mechanical courses though which have been very useful. The rest is just a long storied history of fun projects, learning new things and inventing stuff..... And I still get to do sports. rwap : Always having had a keen interest in mathematics, I started out learning to program programmable calculators, and then with the birth of the home computer industry, bought a Sinclair ZX81 from my brother (he had moved onto a Spectrum) and taught myself to program both ZX BASIC and Z80 Machine Code. I moved onto the SInclair QL when it was launched in 1984, and taught myself 68008 machine code - so much easier and started analysing other people's code as part of bug-testing and reviewing software for magazines in the 80s. Since then, my hobby turned into a business, with me learning more through various PLC programming projects (including bug-fixing someone elses code for a sewerage handling plant), and turning my hand to C so that I could adapt an existing printer driver to handle 720dpi and colours as these technologies became more widespread. Since then, I have continued to support the retro and vintage computer market, by reverse engineering parts and tracking down old stocks of computer chips and connectors, as well as getting involved in numerous interface projects. I am proud to say that I was behind the re-vitalisation of the Sinclair ZX81 market which had long been forgotten until I decided to turn back to this - and the market is now flourishing thanks to SD card interfaces (which cannot be made quickly enough), and lots of new software making the most of modern development tools and pushing the limits of this (originally) 1K computer to the max. The Raspberry Pi and Banana Pi have both opened new opportunities for me to provide products which are aimed at keeping both this retro computer market; as well as numerous industrial applications to the fore, all built around my love of electronics and programming, and the desire to get the best out of any hardware. fozdik : The story of how I became hooked on technology is a long one, covering nearly 40 years.... I began my interest in technology at a very early age. My Dad got me interested in electronics when I was about 10 years old. He wasn’t a very good teacher, but I was intrigued by the things he was doing and I liked doing them with him. LED’s and a 555 timer could keep me dazzled for hours. And Forrest Mims was quite readable and understandable, even for me. Wanting to take electronics further, but not having the funds to do so, I discovered that the garbage bins out back of the IBM building were full of discarded circuit boards that were loaded with digital ICs sitting in IC sockets. An enterprising kid such as myself could save a lot of money by popping those chips off the boards carefully. I made most of my early circuits this way. Later on I discovered an electronics store that sold kits and parts at reasonable prices, and my allowance was suddenly less of a hindrance to my interests. I bought an Apple IIe kit and cut my teeth learning how to solder all the parts on. It was very cool when it was finished and worked! Now I needed to learn how to program. That led to a Commodore Vic 20, and later a Commodore 64. I still enjoyed dumpster-diving, though. At least I did until IBM caught on and started locking their bins.... ...I started out loving the fact that technology was something that I could share with my father, and ended up loving the fact that technology is something I can indulge in anytime I want and in just about any way that I want, and I love this! Case in point; I have always been blown away by what can be made with a CNC machine. Thanks to YouTube, and the Internet in general, I was able to build one in my basement! I can design my own stuff, and make it in my own house, using software and hardware that would have been ABSOLUTELY out of reach for any but the largest and richest of companies when I was a boy. Today, we have open-source software, open-source hardware, community versions of top-of-the-line software, inexpensive hardware, 3D printers, laser cutters, hobby (and not-so-hobby) scale CNC machines, etc., etc., all available to the creative and techy minds out there for such reasonable costs that they are driving real change in our society. Suppliers of such technology and the parts and meterials required for their use, such as element14 (nice plug, eh?), also provide community forums (such as this one) where these folks can exchange ideas and information. This is where the real power for change lies. And all you need is an internet connection and the desire to use it. The ever increasing facilitation of creativity for those working in their kitchens, basements, garages, and college labs is INCREDIBLE and I can’t wait to see what comes of it. Just you go to a MAKER FAIRE to see exactly what I’m talking about. If you think the world is full of problems, go to one of these events and you will see the very people who are going to solve them. And that includes you and me, thanks to the pervasiveness and availability of technology, AND the information and education regarding its use that is so freely available. With all of this in mind, how can you NOT love technology?? xKZx : When I was a kid, I loved LEGO, every birthday, every Christmas, any occasion I wanted LEGO. All I pretty much did was playing with LEGOs. Both of my parents were teachers in Latvia and the pay back in the 90s was not so great, but my dad understood the importance of LEGO in my early years and kept on buying it. At one point the amount of LEGO was the most valuable thing we had, even more valuable then the Lada 2101 my dad was driving. I was building anything I could think about, and LEGO taught me a lot - math while counting bricks, construction and structural engineering while building cranes, It taught me love for bikes when I understood how gears worked. Later I loved LEGO Technics - It was great for building all this stuff, but for a young curious mind that was not enough, I wanted those expensive LEGO electronics kits that my parents could not afford. I asked them If I could get any, but the answer was "no". Hoping, waiting and repetitive asking did not help. It just cost too much. At some point I started adding various non LEGO components to my projects - rubber bands, springs from pens, glass marbles, steel weight for catapults etc. It made my LEGO experiance more fun but something was still mising. One day I went to my dads office at the school he was working and I was studying in the First or Second class. There I saw this old Soviet copy machine in ugly brown plastic, but it was opened, it didn't work and was meant for scrap, but I it was the first time I had the idea to salvage parts - I asked dad if I can I remove those Motors I saw? I knew how DC motors looked from my friends cheap RC cars that always broke and that I never had (I had LEGO), but these were bigger. They were 9V and that was a lot of battery money for me. Tape came along and it all worked and worked well - it was the first time gears started to break due to torque. A week later dad made a 9V power supply so I wouldn't have to spend my pocket money on batteries. A month later I had build a wired "remote control" LEGO car which would steer and drive forward and backward working on a 7.2V Nokia THF-2 Rechargable battery (My granny's old mobile at the time). It was a marvel and didn't cost my parents a fortune. It was the first thing I ever built that I could be really proud about. From there things just continued and 18 years later I am a mechanical engineer with love for salvaging parts, DIY and electronics. fortyishguy : I have always been fascinated by how things work, not so much the theory but the mechanics of it. Tools, screws and bolts and nails, taking things apart and successfully (hopefully) putting it back together fixed or better than it was ( or at the least the way it was before). My earliest passions were hammering and nailing, and unscrewing anything that would unscrew. This generated many happy times from childhood and I'm sure the items left apart didn't bother my parents at all. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) This combined with a love of math led to models of engines and cars, Rubik's cubes and fixing bikes. I once took my sisters bike apart when I was mad at her knowing she couldn't put it back together, but she sweet talked me into putting it back together... ....I rebuilt engines, I rewired more than one Saab (one after a fire) and troubleshot many issues and breakdowns. I credit it with fueling an interest in troubleshooting that has helped me accomplish quite a bit in life, and saves money too. jw0752 : I must have been born with a curiosity for electricity and mechanical things. My father had no skill or interest in these areas but he was very supportive, always bringing me things to take apart and explore. His lack of knowledge about electricity allowed me to explore the subject without interference from him. I blew my first fuse at age five when I hooked up a frayed extension cord to a small toy typewriter. I declared it an electric typewriter and plugged it in. By the time I was 10 I had received so many shocks from the old tube radios that I routinely played with that it was no big deal. That what I was doing could have been fatal never occurred to me or my parents. Perhaps around age 13 I was fixing more things than I was breaking, though my mother often told people that I could fix things the rest of my life and never make up for all the things I broke in those early years. While some kids collect coins, stamps, butterflies, or rocks I collected electronic and technology parts. I also like to organize them into small jam jars and boxes. To this end I still have parts, pieces and small hardware as a resource for present day projects that I collected 55 years ago. I continue this process to this day salvaging parts from broken equipment and electronics. I really enjoyed reading the stories of my fellow posters to this blog. We all seem to have been caught up in the adventure of understanding how things work. As I have tried, over the years, to inspire children and grandchildren I have come to realize that it is a special calling to have this consuming curiosity for the technical. Those that do not have the passion can be taught but keeping them going is like pushing a car down the road when it is out of gas. pikespeakelement14 : I was an electronic technician for Hughes Aircraft Co. in El Segundo, CA during 1978 through 1981. I loved it - soldering and wire wrapping circuits. One day, one of the engineers handed me a magazine that mentioned some scientists that had invented a switch that could turn on and off over a million times a second! I was totally blown away, picturing a house light switch being frantically moved back and forth. I asked him how that was possible, and he told be that it was by electric fields - no moving parts. I was hooked. I graduated with a degree in computer science, learning as much as I could about electronics, and it's been very useful in my career over the last 35 years. gentlemanwolf : So, here's where it all started. One sunny afternoon a long time ago, I was sitting around my house as all nine year olds would do. Staring at a speaker. the reason behind this, was that I was trying to figure out how sound was being produced from it, and what was inside of it. The next thing I did, being the smart nine year old I was, was take the speaker and throw it as the ground as hard as I possibly could in a vain attempt at opening it. Breaking it in half like an IPhone getting thrown off of the top floor of a parking garage. (I didn't know screwdrivers existed then.) Believe it or not this is what got me into engineering. After dealing with the consequences of destroying a $20 speaker I was still curious as to how on earth speakers could make sound, so I fished the speaker out of the revolting garbage and went to work in my room in secret. This time instead of throwing the speaker on the ground again, I proceeded to pull it apart piece by piece, through a process I would later learn was called reverse engineering. I unfortunately I never did manage to put the darn thing back together, mainly because I lost all the screws and the coil snapped, but, whatever. Anyway, after losing the speaker for good, that curiosity stuck with me. I would begin to look at everything i passed, and wonder how did someone accomplish that? So, with this newfound curiosity, I would try to reverse engineer anything I could get my hands onto. It was also because of this curiousness, that I Learned new skills, like how to solder wires together, how to avoid breathing it toxic gas from the solder, and the ability to repair things like the wiring in computers, or other things. These skills were certainty very useful. if it wasn't for me throwing that $20 speaker, I probably wouldn't be where I am now. Starting a potential family business creating arcades. programing Raspberry Pi's, and going to a technical school to learn more about engineering. That is how I first got into the amazing world of engineering. wrustylane : I first got started in electronics when I built my first computer along with my Dad. He built a 286SX and I built a 286DX because I liked how much faster it was than even the slowest 386 at the time. My 286DX would run rings around most 386's at the time. After that I was given an RCA television (solid state) in the early '80's by my father in law. He had taken the TV to several shops around the area and could never get it fixed. I took it home and plugged it in and gave it the "smoke" test to try to identify the problem. The thing smoked and I found out where the smoke was coming from. There was a burnt resistor in the sound board section so I grabbed an unknown resistor about the same size (1/4 watt) and stuck it in the circuit. The TV came on and we watched it for a year before the second problem crept up. We had wooden floors in the house we were renting and when you would walk across the floor the video would flash and some times go off. I took it apart again and pulled out the IF board with the video output transistor and when I pulled the can apart I saw what was making the problem. A solder ball rolled out of the IF can that was rolling around and shorting out the video output transistor as one would walk across the floor. After I fixed that problem we watched that TV for over 10 years without any further problems. Then it finally developed a high voltage leak around the fly back transformer so I sealed it up with silicone rubber and it lasted another 4 to 5 years and then developed another high voltage leak that I couldn't fix this time. So through my experimentation we had a nice solid state color TV to watch for over 15 years. I then became interested in CB radio since it was in vogue at that time. My parents ran a base station with two mobile CB radios. I joined the club and got a base station going with a 150 watt "kicker" (linear amp) and a mobile with a 75 watt kicker. My parents and I would only talk single sideband because there was more power transmitted into the sideband than in AM alone (12 watts vs. 4 watts on AM). Then I got me a frequency counter and began modifying SSB radios for those who wanted to go up or down the CB radio band - just barely keeping out of the HAM band on the upward side of the sideband. I even bored a hole through my main radio cabinet so I could get a tuning wand on my oscillator. That way I could adjust the frequency band to the upper side or go way below the 1 channel frequency. I finally ended up into television repair and had my own business for about 2 to 3 years thereafter. Once again I got bitten by a bug--this time the model railroading bug. Now I have my own layout that I wired myself and it works and does everything I had set out for it to do. Now I'm into the Arduino UNO and plan to do some experimenting with the Arduino UNO board to control my new layout that I'm planning on building. I've also wanted a new computer (linux) based so I'd heard about the Raspberry and decided to look into getting one for our main computer. I hate DOS based machines and the Windows GUI; it's a wonder I didn't end up with a MAC instead of a PC but the cost drove me to a PC. I'm a self taught electronics tech. with many hours of trial and error, since building my 1st computer. I think a Raspberry PI3 in in my near future. I'm also a former USMC sergeant and went to Vietnam in '71- '72. rider51 : Then... The "Electronics Bug" first bit me back when I was little; I had received a few SnapCircuit kits which I instantly found fascinating. Now looking back, I can only think to myself how childish those things were, no soldering and no chance of explosions! Fast forward a few years, I was about 13 and I admit I hadn't evolved myself much from SnapCiruits. Its funny how you remember these things, but one night I was browsing some YouTube videos when I stumbled upon some videos of a guy putting together his own computer. For reasons I can't explain, I was compelled to do that myself as well. I worked and saved up my money until I had enough to buy the components for a decent gaming rig. I ordered them up and next thing I knew I was at my cousins house putting to together. I enjoyed every second of it, even though I was terribly afraid of ruining a $200 part by scratching it. Almost instantly after that you could say my "Electronics Bug" turned into an "Electronics Swarm". I discovered the world of Arduino, and I began making simple robots and projects using that. Then that Christmas my cousin gifted me a Raspberry Pi 2, and my interest in that took off. Now... I am a programmer and builder for a high school FTC Robotics team. I spend my free time working with electronics and technology. My most recent project is a "Pi Boy" as you may call it. Its an original GameBoy shaped MAME console using a Raspberry Pi 2. Whether there really is an electronics bug or not, something sparked in me, and I can without doubt say there is no other hobby and future career I would want to go into other than Technology. satyavrat : ...I joined a course on *Embedded Systems. There, I met three people who would later become the best project partners I've ever had and more importantly, the most reliable friends I will ever have. With them, I blinked my first LED and pressed my first switch. This changed everything.* I was opened up to a world where anything I did, be it change a line of code or twist a potentiometer, made a tangible difference to the world around me. It wasn't some equation which was Greek and Latin to me ( to be honest, sigma, omega, alpha, beta are actually Greek.), and whose only contribution to my world was a number. I dove head first into this interesting and captivating field. The beauty of it was that the more I learned, the more there was to learn. I began to look at the world as bits and voltages. The four of us formed a group whose aim was to learn through doing. We learned PID control and PWM from line tracers, SPI and I2C from sensor nodes, RF communication and ZigBee from RC bots, and were introduced to IoT and cloud computing through our Bachelor's Degree project, a cloud connected autonomous LPG control system. We spent countless nights in the lab, testing, resting and other things interesting, till we had the perfect output. As a side effect, we won quite a few robotics competitions, awards for best project for our Bachelor's degree project, which went ahead to become the first patented project in our department. The love for Embedded Systems and Internet of Things stayed strong after I graduated, and I published two research papers on the merging of Internet of Things protocols and lightweight machine learning. To add to this, countless projects on a number of development platforms enabled me to learn new technologies, programming languages and applications. I have learned more in the past eight months than I have in the eight years before it. Most importantly, it stoked the passion in me to forge ahead and do more. winzurf : In about 1963 my teacher took a group of us who had finished the years math curriculum early and taught us binary numbers and math. Fascinating, but no obvious purpose. In 1970 I was studying physics at university but was forced to stop playing soccer following an injury, I started building lighting controllers for rock concerts as a hobby and discovered I liked electronics. I also studied the philosophy and history of science, probably the most important 'gift' from university. In 1973 the chief engineer at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences decided I had something and offered me a job. For the next 25 years I designed, built, programmed and breathed digital technology. I designed and built my own computer which could emulate several of the microcomputers of the day such as the Altair and Cromemco. At one stage I was so obsessed with technology I was only sleeping about 4 hours per night. Fortunately I discovered another obsession - windsurfing, and managed to lead a balanced life since, but I regard myself as being exceptionally lucky to have caught and surfed the digital wave over my whole career. Still riding! I always remember the opportunity that engineer gave me and have tried to do the same for those that have come behind me. lkornel : It was year 1984, On my birthdate my father gave me a DIY microphone preamp kit. It was the first time when I took an electronic component in my hands. That was the moment. Now I still work in electronics repairing Inverter Welding Machines. balatech : As a small boy - may be 6 or 7, I got up early one sunday morning and found a television that my father was repairing on his work bench with the back still off. I thought I would 'help' and set about the task with enthusiasm! turning his AVO8 to volts and prodding the insides of the T.V. there was a loud bang and lots of smoke! slightly shell shocked, I was still staring at the aftermath when my father appeared not looking very happy! for the remainder of the morning I sat with him whilst he fault found and I had to replace the now defunct components. The sense of satisfaction when it was completed was amazing, to see it burst back into life with full sound and picture, it was then that he informed me that he had in fact completed the repair the previous evening but just hadn't replaced the back. From then on I was hooked, I started buying Everyday Electronics and set about building just about every project (money permitting) in each magazine, learning along the way. At the age of 17 I was accepted as an apprentice with Radio Rentals and completed my 4 year apprenticeship. Some ten years after this I then attended University of Central Lancashire on a B.Eng course in Computing and Electronics. Following on, I started my own Computer consultancy business and have now retired to Spain, although still with an avid interest in electronics. paul_nicholls: My love of technology and computers started back in early 1984. It was a few months before my 12th birthday, and my parents purchased a Commodore 64 computer complete with a basic (pun intended) computer book (Creepy Computer Games: https://archive.org/details/Creepy_Computer_Games_1983_Usborne_Publishing ) and a tape drive....I started tinkering around with programming, and BAM! they didn't know what they had done...bwahahaha!! They had created a "monster" who loved computers and similar stuff haha. Since then I have loved computers, programming and electronics...not that I have done any electronics for a few years now though. At college (1989 - 1990) I designed and created a PCB that allowed a motor to be controlled in both forward and reverse directions using relays to switch the flow of current. I also created a numeric keypad using switches and diodes, etc. for my Commodore 64 computer that connected to the userport. My first full time job (1991 - 1994 was as a trainee Biomedical Technician (fixing machines that went ping lol) at a hospital, and my longest software/electronics job was at an Electronics Design Automation company (1999 - 2012). I still want to do electronics, but just don't have the money or time, but I do like looking at other people's projects, the Ben Heck show, and similar things. I do computer programming as a hobby akhilrb: My interest in electronics started from something as small as impressing my friends by switching on a small LED with a simple switch when I was 7. The look on their faces gave me a sense of achievement. Fast forward 8 years, and I made a radio for a school exhibition. It was because of the radio that my crush thought I was smart. I remember the shine in her eyes as she looked at the project (and me) and my friends remember the shine in my eyes as I looked at her. Although the waves of limerence didn't last long, it was at that moment in time that I knew I had to pursue Electronics. A lot of Years have passed since, and electronics is now a passion because it is a necessary, omnipresent technology, that can possibly attract my crush, but definitely change the world continuously. silicaphysics : It would be difficult, if not impossible, to pin down a single moment, gift or experience that sucked me into the abyss of engineering. It could be chalked up to genetics (Dad was a EE) but I think that it was more nurture than nature... My father had his faults but engaging his sons with his passion for all things man made was not one of them. My earliest memory of this is probably the crystal radio we put together out of his junk drawer one freezing winter day in Dallas, around 1962 or 1963 when I was just four or five years old... My father introduced me to lasers around age 7 or 8, with a HeNe and my Mom's engagement ring. He took me to lectures by Townes and bought me a subscription to Scientific American -- I maintain one to this day... After that I had access to just about any of his tools I needed from oscilloscopes to signal generators to torque wrenches. Of course, it also meant I was the son chosen to get up on the roof with him, guiding a stinky plumber's snake into the perpetually slow kitchen drain vent, but I could build lasers described in the Amature Scientist column of Scientific American and calculators on his breadboarding equipment. Heathkit became my BestBuy.... It was in pursuit of my Ph.D. in analytical chemistry where the engineering bug again took hold again, and it's grip proved unbreakable this time. My research advisor taught part of a course in instrumental analysis as a tale of intrigue that truly fascinated me: a battle between Beckman and Cary for supremacy in UV-visible spectrometer performance circa the '40s and '50s. I have been in optics pretty much ever since, starting in fiber optics, followed by lasers, and on my own since 1991 designing and building mostly laser surgical instruments, with a bit of analytical instrumentation on the side: 20 patents and counting. It's no crystal radio, but I enjoy almost every single day. rdallons: My love electronics began at the age of ten. My grandfather owned a motor-court and store in Bakersfield, California and in 1956 he took me into a back room and uncovered a large slot-machine in a beautiful wooden cabinet. Slot machines were (and probably still are) highly illegal in California, and having one in storage was making him nervous. He gave it to me with the condition that I would completely dismantle it. I eventually had it dismantled. It has all kinds of lights, bells, relays and electronic parts. I then began to study each part and figure out what they did, the transformers, rectifiers, capacitors, etc. I was hooked. Now, at 70, still hooked. Workshopshed: When I was young I got given some old electronics magazines and some bits to take apart. I still have some of those including a resistor which is almost as thick as a pencil. jlangbridge: Like most people here, I started off by accident. I was born in Singapore, and my parents travelled a lot; And I mean, a lot. I was let alone pretty often, i suppose that explains a few things today. Anyway, details. I found their home computer at age 6, an Apple IIe. There wasn't much you could do with it, my parents tried a few database programs, but I was fascinated with its capacity of storing data. Then I learned about programming, using the BASIC interpreter. My first program was written at age 6. It didn't doo much, just a vague copy of CeeFax, something you don't hear about much today, but before Internet, you could get information about TV programs using CeeFax on your TV. This was a machine of pure logic, it did everything I told it to do, no more, no less. If something went wrong, it is because I did something wrong, and I could correct my work of art, perfecting it, or tear it down and remake it again. I went through a few computers; ZX80, ZX81, Spectrum +3 and a few others. Aged 8, I had a BBC Micro at school, and a few real lessons that went with it. My teacher was into computers, but also electronics. However, he was heavily into radio, and analog just wasn't my thing. It still isn't. I finally got an Amiga 2000. It was then that I started assembly programming, which also taught me a lot about low-level programming, knowing what information is sent on which wire. It didn't take me too long to get into electronics... Flash forward a few years, and here I am, almost 40. I'm still into electronics, but I'm more into teaching people about my love for the systems, going to different schools (secondary to engineering), and writing books.... Today, I'm a maker, teacher, and tester. I receive cards from different makers, and make tutorials on how they work. cherenkovchase : My father used to work for a communications company and he would bring back circuit boards that failed testing and we're being recycled. I loved them, I would sit for hours and imagine that they were tiny metropolises. Then he started teaching me what each component was and whatnot did. I being around 4 or 5 years old I would sleep with them as if they were stuffed animals and all my shirts had holes in them from the solder connections on the back, my babysitter found it very odd to say the least. By the time I was 7 I could name all the components, I could make a solder joint by age 10 and built my first Tesla coil (hv flyback driver technically) at 13. Long story short I love building circuits as a hobby to this day. RovertScott : Growing up I loved technology, I was fascinated by the inventors who created our modern world. The insight and creativity of inventors like Edison, The Wright Brothers, Philo Farnsworth and others, inspired me to become like them. I was the only kid in grade school who was excited to watch documentaries on History Channel, Discovery, TLC, and etc. My mind was a sponge and I was compelled to learn all that I could about the world of technology around me. I always imagined I would someday become a great innovator like my heroes, inspire others through my inventions, and change the world. I remember spending third grade making paper airplanes every day, trying to discover the perfect design. These were the dreams of a child, whose imagination knew no bounds, but had no ability to make those dreams a reality... At this point, I moved away from electronics and focused on Film and Television. Through Junior and High School I devoted my time to filming, editing, and showing film projects. I had abandoned my initial curiosity with electronics with something less volatile. Thanks to the rise of home video editing programs, Mini DV-Camcorders and DVD-Burners, I had an outlet for my imagination. By High School, I was helping film, edit, and broadcast morning video announcements and I never really thought about designing electronics. However, it was during this time that I stumbled upon BenHeck.com and his gaming portables that re-sparked my interests in inventing. I was still just an outsider looking into a mystical and exclusive world of engineering. Yet, it was DIY inventors like Ben Heckindorn and Jeri Ellsworth that now inspired me.... When I went to Junior College, I took an introduction to Audio Technology class. My professor made it a point that we learn how to solder electronics as part of our understanding of audio technology. Part of our final was to put together an audio amplifier with a microphone pre-amp and enclose it in a case. This was the moment that I truly fell in love with electronics and engineering. The ability to walk into a Radioshack, talk to the regular old guys for advice, and hold the parts that I needed to build my device, was exhilarating. The experience let me know, that I could make the inventions that were once reserved for my imagination. I even adding a photo-diode and a laser pointer to my audio amplifier, to include a "laser microphone" option. At this point on, I continued my studies in film and television, but electronics became a side hobby of mine. I also began scraping broken radios and alarm clocks for the additional parts I may need for future projects... doctorwho8: Me? I got interested in electronics when I was asked by my father, the usual question; and he steered me into the direction I'm in. Eventually that turned from things analog into things digital. After realizing the why and how, behind why computers respond the way they do, I ended up learning how to repair them, and even advise people on what the machine they are working on is doing. I also help out via my local LUG, (when it meets.) it also includes a hack night, and I'm in constant demand there to answer nearly impossible questions, that includes the reasons behind why a Raspberry Pi sometimes responds differently to Linux commands, as regards to a PC running Linux. And the time honored question, regarding the later (and newer) methods for installing Linux on a newer machine, (after 2009) versus doing so on one from 2000 to 2008 for example. mikeyman64 : My earliest memories of thinking about electronics and how they worked came when I watched my older friend play Super Mario World for the SNES. I remember being fascinated by the concept of human input making a little man jump around on a TV screen. I must have been close to five or six years old. When I asked my dad how it all worked, he told me it was very complicated like a puzzle, and that he would show me some time what "it" looked like. One day, I think it was my seventh birthday, he brought home his recently replaced security system panel home from his vet clinic. It was a steel 12"x12" box with a keyed door, and inside was a large circuit board. He handed it and the key to me, and told I could do what I wanted with it. I promptly opened it and began poring over the intricate network of traces, ICs, capacitors and semiconductors, having no idea what they did. For the longest time, I salvaged the parts of any busted electronic device my parents no longer needed or wanted by prying them off with screwdrivers, and kept them in this box. It was my special stash of "electronics". As I got older, I starting taking more care with the components and learning as much as I could about how they worked and what they did. I was home schooled, so my mother, seeing this fascination, did her best to get me books and equipment suited for my interests. Eventually, I was able to harness my fascination by fixing things that were broken instead of just collecting their "guts", as well as making things that could help make life easier for people, like custom game controllers or automatic dog feeders. Now (I'm 26), after a few years of gaining IT and engineering work experience, I am spending my time refining my understanding of all things electronics as an EE student at Georgia Tech. luelui : My dad was friends with a guy that owned a TV/radio repair shop. I was a junior in high school back in 1967. The shop was 2 blocks from my house so I ended up loafing there for my junior and senior years. One day I asked the owner about a Zenith AM/FM and 78 speed record player that had been laying around the shop forever. All of the components (tubes and related electronics) were in 4 old milk crates. The console was completely bare. He said "You can have it if you think you can put it back together." He said you'll need the "SAMS" book for the model. I went downtown to the electronics and part store and got it. I spent about a month putting it back together. I learned a lot by doing it and asking him when I got stumped. I'll never forget the joy I had when I finally got it working! The neat things I remember about the console was it had a Nixie cat's eye tuner tube.The green circle would fluctuate as the FM signal intensified and decreased. I also replaced the turntable with a multi-speed turntable. That was the beginning of my love of electronics and my entrance into geek-dom... gypo : My first introduction to electronics and electrics was in my pre-teen days back in the 60’s some of my mates (or their parents) had record players for birthdays and Xmas, I got a cast off bare record deck without a needle, box, speaker or amp. My Dad was a coal man and saw it discarded in a coal shed and thought I would like it. He didn’t know if it would work or how much was missing or what was needed to get it working. I was pleased as punch, I had a record deck! but I didn’t know any more than my Dad at that point. The motor worked connected directly to the mains and a bent knobby pin fitted into the cartridge. That meant I could put a record on and listen to the sound coming from the pin.As you can imagine it wasn’t great but it worked and that is how it was for a long time (except I mounted it on top of a biscuit tin). I did try and find ways to make it louder like putting weights on the arm and wondered about amps etc, but a school kid as I was could only dream of such things.When I moved up to secondary school science had 3 different classes you could choose from, Photography, Electrics and Chemistry, I’m sure they wasn’t called that but in essence that is what they turned out to be. I chose Electrics, I wanted to build an amp for my deck and although it wasn’t what the class was about the teacher took me under his wing and helped teach me how to build an amp using valves. I wasn’t an expert but I then knew how to make an amp for my record deck, I had my dad asking for anything electric dumped in coal sheds. I got loads of old valve TV’s and radios and through necessity I found what made them tick and eventually how to fix them, I managed to build a fantastic amp with only one drawback, it only had very loud or even louder volume settings. The biggest help in doing that was the teacher who had helped me and set the seed to find out more. However in those days the circuit diagrams of almost every British built TV & Radio was published in a series of yearly books called ‘TV & Radio Servicing Manuals’ which the local library kept copies, no such luck now days.That was it, I got to know valve equipment very well and was asked to repair a lot for my parent’s friends before leaving school which helped fund a better record deck… As the electrics & electronics moved on it kept my interest going and 50+ years on it’s still there. mrkeiman: My love of electronics and technology began when I watched my Father repairing a television, of course things were a bit different back then. The most common fault in televisions was a filament failure in a valve. Most of your readers now probably have no idea what I am talking about but long before transistors the main active component was the electron valve, They had a heater element in them and if that failed then the valve didn't work. of course there were other problems but the first thing to check was that all the valves were "lit up". I they were then you started replacing them 1 at a time, hopefully one of them would make everything spring to life again. then when I started work as an apprentice electrical fitter I was invited to study electronics as well. that convinced me that it was my future. after the apprenticeship I entered the world of computers with NCR. I have been working in the computer field ever since. Then in recent years I revitalized an even older interest in model railways, it occurred to me that there are many areas where the 2 interests can be linked and that is what I am currently trying to do.unfortunately life keeps side tracking me but I keep coming back. slashthedragon : When I was a child I designed a perpetual motion machine. It was a simple cart with two axles. Both axles had a pulley in the middle. The front pulley was slightly smaller than the real pulley. As the cart moved the rear wheels would turn the the pulley which would turn the front pulley a little faster which moved the cart a little faster. I put it on the road and gave it a shove. The cart kept going and going. I haven't seen it since. Then I came out of my imagination. About the same time I was experimenting with magnets and electricity. I wonder how long a magnet could hold a needle on a thread in the air. I would play with mercury switches. Then break them open and play with the mercury. I would cover dimes and squeeze them between my fingers. So did my brothers. I wonder what I would be like if I had skipped that experimenting. In high school I started a radio club. It never did have its first meeting. I got my AS in electronics in 1971. The LED was beginning at the time and the vacuum tube was ending. This was when 1971. I serviced mechanical calculators which was replaced with the electronic ones. They cost $2000 and would add, subtract, multiply and divide. I saw the print heads evolve. Each company would make their own unique design. Eventually one design would win out and the other companies would stop designing their own and buy the most successful. I expect to see the same with 3D printers. I serviced audio equipment and repaired instruments in at a capacitor manufacturing company. Finally I serviced medical equipment from blood pressure cuffs to linear accelerators for last thirty years. So what do I do when I retire? I go back to college just for fun. I just finished ECE471, embedded systems with Vince Weaver, at the University of Maine. dcirka : A long time ago, in a galax.... OK, it was the 70's and I was at grandmas house. I just got all excited about seeing Rogue One and was reflecting back when Star Wars was released... Back then, dad and grandpa were vacuum sales/repairmen and I always got to play with random parts, discarded wires and such. I recall one day disassembling, meticulously cleaning, replacing a worn belt and reassembling a powered attachment... and to the surprise of myself and kinfolk, the thing worked - that was the hook! I was roughly nine years old when that occurred. I was also a bookworm so naturally I migrated towards the 530 section of the library - physical sciences. I began with the basic coil of wire wrapped around a nail making an electromagnet. I had replicated this several times experimenting with different nails, number of turns, different wires, etc. Well, my curiosity could not be quenched and my what-would-now-be-classified as hyperactivity-disorder led me to find a bigger power source than an old lantern battery - naturally the wall receptacle would deliver the power I so desperately craved. (cue the Tim Allen "more power" grunt from 'Home Improvement'). Thankfully, the outlet was on a circuit that did not have a penny in the fusebox. I think I was 10 or 11. That was my first learning-through-experimentation experience. Once the tears cleared and the sting from the butt-whoopin' I received had dissipated, I had to figure out why my mondo-magnet failed, so back to the library. I remember the book that hurled me forward - "The Boys First Book of Radio and Electronics." Or was it the "Second" or "Third Book," I cannot remember. But what an impact it made! Years went on, Radio Shack was my favorite store and every Christmas or birthday wish included the latest "Science Fair nnn-in-One Electronic Project Kit." After which building all the circuits, were disassembled and resurrected into random creations of my own. Proud of my accomplishments, yet, disappointed as the more enthusiastic I became, the less folks near me were interested in what I was doing. Years more of tinkering and learning... and actually repairing equipment, but now was my time to move out on my own and do something with my life... enlisted in the military as an aircraft electronics tech. Everything from tubes to digital circuits. I also moonlighted working on tube- and transistor-based gear... and some basic integrated circuit gear. But nothing really digital. Several years in the military and I was introduced to the use of a personal computer. There were brief, past encounters with an Apple II. And Pong, Activision, and Atari games. But the military was the springboard into actual computing. Until then, C:\> prompt, hard drives and operating systems were strange and new to my vocabulary. One thing lead to another, here I am 20 or so years later as a senior network/systems engineer, but I still have a love and passion for old, analog equipment. Then a year ago, I stumbled across Arduino, now Raspberry Pi and oh my! Now I wrestle with family and work schedules and desk space to fiddle and fidget - looking for any excuse to integrate and make. What's in the works now? My wife is a baker and needs a proofing box - a temperature and humidity controlled environment for raising bread. Sounds like a job for Arduino. Our wood fired oven needs temperature-monitoring - some thermocouple, Arduino and a digital display outta work... maybe slap in a Raspberry Pi and include databasing of times and temps. Ah, what next... homemade weather station? I just read about a Pi-based Point Of Sale system... we don't necessarily need it, but....

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The Promotion

At the end of every year element14 does something special for its community members.

This year, we did a "Bit by the Bug" promotion.

The element14 team slipped one mystery board in each package: either a Raspberry Pi 3, a BeagleBone Black, or an Arduino Uno; threw in some Free element14 Swag; and gift wrapped a CodeBug for you to give to someone else as a gift.

Most of you spend a lot of time around technology & engineering and we are interested in knowing what drove you along your current path. Maybe it was your first computer, a Heath Kit, a mentor or a parent, a project you worked on, or an electronics device you tore apart to see how it worked.

The idea behind the promotion was simple. Your story is an intangible gift, by sharing it with the rest of the community, you inspire others. By gifting a CodeBug to others, you are gifting a tangible piece of technology to inspire a love for engineering & technology.

The Highlights

Here are some of your stories from the 'Bit by the Bug' Promotion

the-dubster : Who hasn't fallen slightly in love with Heath Robinson creation? For those who have, did you ever study it to see how much of it would really work? For me, my interest started early, I wanted to know how everything worked, if I had a screwdriver that fitted - apart it came! (Sorry dad for destroying your wood chisels by using them as screwdrivers)!! Knowing how things worked was fundamental to me, I can't just accept that 'it just does', I want to know why. School in 70's and 80's UK was starting to bring us computers - BBC Model B, Commodore PET to name a few. I was lucky enough to be introduced to electronic engineering by a family member and then later, a family friend. School also included Electronics and Computer Studies by the time I hit 6th form - I'll take both of those then (they go nicely with Metalwork & Woodwork don't they)! Physics stopped at O Level - certainly for a long time, but my interest has again been sparked. My job of 25 years was Avionics Engineering Technician with the Royal Air Force, following my interests there then, and I now teach the same. Married to it? Yup! For as long as I can remember, and I'm fortunate my real wife is so accepting of my other passion!

kenfloyd : My interest in electronics was primed when I built an analog temperature gauge for an 8th grade science class. It used a thermistor and a volt meter, with an electric train power supply. I was given an 'F' because the instructor did not believe I designed and built it. The thermistor was not water resistant, so I used a Bic Pen plastic sleeve and embedded the thermistor in epoxy at the end of the pen and calibrated the voltmeter by sticking the pen in water of a known temperature. I joined the Navy and became an ETR, Electronic Technician Radar. While I was in, it was the period of time when the Navy was converting in analog to digital and I worked on some crazy hybrid systems. After I started college with an Electrical Engineering major, I switched to Computer Science. Most of what I learned is now somewhat obsolete. I had one professor guarantee it was impossible to build a hard drive bigger than 750K. Now I was designing temporary traffic lights, for use in moving work zones in road construction or rehabilitation, and I found the Raspberry Pi. That's why I am here.

jgerred : I would have to say that my fascination with electricity, electronics, and how the world works started when I was less than four years old. Old family stories tell about how I was fascinated with the night light in the living room. I got my butt whipped more than once for playing with it. Finally my father decided to let me learn on my own and just watched (while reading the newspaper) as I would unplug the night light and plug it back in. Eventually I got my tiny little fingers on the prongs of the nightlight as I plugged it in and got a good zap. I have no recollection of this, but according to the stories I then proceeded to get about a foot away from the outlet and tried to throw the night light back into the outlet while carefully looking around periodically to make sure I didn't get busted. Eventually (after about 15+ tries), I lifted up the edge of the carpet and neatly tucked the night light under the carpet and wandered off. As I got older, the fascination with how things work got stronger and I ended up taking apart many devices (radios, blenders, tape decks, turntables, etc) and usually would end up getting them back together and still having them function when I was done. That got me into actually repairing broken items (successfully more often than not). Eventually a family friend got me one of the old "160 in 1" electronics kits from Radio Shack (still have it!) and I started to learn about circuits and electronics. Throughout my teenage years I continued to learn about how things work and ended up in the IT industry as a Systems Administrator (specializing in UNIX/Linux) with a hobby of working on just about anything (electronics, automotive work, small engine repair, woodworking, construction, etc) but my go to entertainment projects have always been working on something electrical. I find it mind boggling that getting shocked from fiddling with a night light got me into a career that has taken me to numerous places around the globe while working in a job that also happens to be my hobby!

malloc : Wanna know a secret? We all do; that’s the short of why I got into technology. Specifically, though, I didn’t just want someone to tell me secrets. I wanted to find them, and then get something for it. Functionally, this becomes a desire to see How It Works™ and eventually obtain enough knowledge and resources to Make It Yourself™, and then Make It Better™. Realistically though I think I just wanted to be a wizard as a kid, got super annoyed when I discovered magic isn’t real, and refused to accept it. I think that’s pretty universal, but you can see how this is a bit at odds with itself. You learn science to figure out how to do magic. It’s also an absurdly difficult concept to articulate without sounding INSANELY DUMB, right? Despite how common it is. I seriously don’t think English has a word for that particular drive that you can find outside of a Dungeons and Dragons manual, but man we really should. It’s also extremely common among essentially everyone in my life who is tech-inclined. I’m going to take a crack at explaining this brain splinter a lot of us probably have, tell me how I do: I want to find hidden stuff, and I want that hidden stuff to be part of a story, and I want that story to have meaning. What I find genuinely exciting is discovering the unknown; what I find even more exciting is finding ways to manipulate it. For example, it’s cool to me to find a prototype board for, say, an unreleased video game system. It’s much, much cooler for me to get to crack it open and see how it works and what decisions were made when building it; the best thing would be to fix it, get something running on it, and then publish that information to see what other people do with it.That’s kind of the selfish but true reason I got into technology. There isn’t any particular desire on my end to better humanity’s ills or cure a particular disease or anything. I’m in it for that rush of “Hey, you wanna see a cool thing?” Turns out you can do this as a job! That’s how I wound up where I am.

rsc : When I was about 7 or 8, I took apart all of my moms watches to play with the little gears. She was not impressed. I even managed to put one of them back together! When I was 11-ish, one of my dads friends was moving to Florida and gave me several boxes of Ham radio equipment. I spent hours figuring out how to light up the filaments. After that, it was a challenge to fix broken TVs and radios. My dad and his brothers used to race cars, so I learned how to rebuild motors and how to weld frames.

[insert 30 years of stories here] Now I work on motorcycles, and embedded controllers, Lasers and Radars and LiDars and Tesla Coils, Fusion, VR, and anything else mechanical or electrical ...... I like to give boxes of parts to kids for Christmas, motors, LEDs, protoboards and stuff, I can still remember the first time my son hooked up an LED to a battery, priceless... I think his eyes lit up brighter than the LED.

linuxgnuru : Ever since I got a VIC 20 back in the 80s (I think I was 8 or 10) I've been into writing programs that did things; even got a BS in computer science. But it wasn't until 2014 when I got my first raspberry pi that I asked "what do all those pins do?" and when I wrote a program that just turned on a LED; that something I wrote actually changed something in the physical world that my mind was blown. Before then, programs just counted things or did something if you clicked a button on the screen. 2 months after that moment I got my first Arduino. Now I have spools of wires, boxes of resistors and the like and tomorrow I'll be creating some 555 toy electric organs with some speakers and buttons for some kids for christmas. Oh yeah; I've also been using Linux since May 1995 and haven't touched windows since ...

oisinogorman : My earliest introduction to technology was probably the day I discovered what was going on inside an old radio in the cave of wonders that held so much (my father could be classed as a hoarder) that was our shed. From one device to the next, they were all dismantled. It all didn't make much sense at the time but it was intriguing to say the least and lead to years of every piece of electronic technology I could get my hands on and much to the disdain of their rightful owners, the ability to reassemble it all didn't come until later in life. I simply had to know how it worked, this was the spark that has led me to where I am today. Now studying for my final year exams in Industrial Automation and Robotic Control Technology, working with PIC microcontrollers has opened a world of possibilities and this would make an amazing christmas present for me and a friend.

anderson7420 :

As a little kid I'd always liked science. I would sit for hours and paint little Styrofoam balls to match the pictures of the planets from one of the encyclopedias we had laying around. Jupiter's red spot sticking to the floor we just had put in, quickly covered by an oddly placed nightstand and a less than efficient diagonally placed bed that made the room "more open." I had a teacher in high school though that that brought a warm, human centric science and engineering to me. Some of her lessons reverberate even louder today than they did then. Her name was Ralma, and she taught chemistry at our rather rural PA high school. Ralma had this way of giving, with a bubbly laugh, a warmer meaning to colder equations. She would instill trust in you, and leverage that to focus you into working harder.... While I didn't stick with chemistry in college, the lessons I learned in her lab did: good laboratory practice, safety, and an analytical mindset. More specifically, having the opportunity to work with the thermocouples and logging software gave me that initial push towards engineering. I finished engineering in undergrad and ended up moving to Germany for more in grad school. After grad school, I worked in an engineering company for a while designing electronics/mechanics for spacecraft design and learned some fantastic technical lessons. However, the deeper the technical knowledge I gained, the more I felt myself missing that human connection to the technology itself. I missed that bubbly laugh of Ralma that came with letting students explore something new, and trusting them to do it with integrity and safe curiosity. I ended up leaving that engineering job recently to practice teaching back in Philadelphia. I picked up a few high school teams to mentor with hopes that I can figure out a way to emulate Ralma's impact; not just on the technical STEM side, but also with her human centric approach. I think it would be a life's dream to take Ralma's human based STEM approach and deliver it on a scale like Bill Nye did in the 90's. The more technical I get, I think it becomes even more important to remember the human aspect of engineering for people, how to cultivate curiosity instead of crushing it upfront with too much theory, and teaching others how to safely explore their own technical interests. Thanks Ralma.

jack.chaney56 : Turmoil... Love, hate. Anguish, frustration, and heartbreak. All these were countered by passion, longing, sacrifice, and intense attraction. This is my love affair with electronics and computing. The metaphor is quite appropriate, because I get jealous when someone's system is working better than mine. When things get slow an dull, I experiment with new and different algorithms. Always I wonder about the choices I made, and never consider leaving what I know I really love.

I'm pretty sure in one of these things, I told my tale of growing up with an EE father, who was also a ham radio operator, who did a lot of experimentation with side-band and antenna experimentation resulting in a patent that got us shipped to "the labs" in New Jersey. So the exposure to engineering is very old indeed. I still wax nostalgic when I get a whiff of rosin solder, or that particular ozone smell of dust on warming tubes.

I tried to avoid it for a long time by working in restaurants, and got to be a pretty good cook, but, like in the Godfather, got sucked back in, by the lure of mathematics and puzzle solving. Finished my degree, and landed a job programming video games, learned that embedded systems is all applied video game practice. So I have done lots, learned lots, suffered lots, and now I get to play with the grand kids (next generation of programmers) trying to explain being productive with a 300 baud modem, on a standard phone line. Explaining punch cards and batch stations. Explaining why UNIX is better than DOS, and why you still need to understand assembly language, so you can understand what the processor can and can't do.

Finally, like any great love, I will be with it, enjoying its company until I am no longer here.

sarunaszx: I got interested in electronics only about 4 years ago when I started studying physics at university. I got a little task to program stm microcontroller and even though it was mostly programming task I got really curious. Programming always fascinated me, but only when I noticed that digital world can be transfered to real life - control, move and detect things, I got really amazed. Soon I got familiar with microcontroller basics - PWM, GPIOs, ADC's, some PID control theory. Then I saw quadcopters on youtube (which also were pretty impressive to me) and a wild thought appeared - I have enough knowledge to build a quadcopter flight controller by myself! (big mistake ). In theory everything seemed so easy. So I started building it from scratch. Homemade frame, cheapest motors, cheapest propellers, no oscilloscope - it was meant to fail and of course it did But doing that I received solid(imo understanding about project planning digital filtering techniques soldering basics and etc I also equiped myself with basic tools required for electronics logic analyzer multimeter soldering iron breadboards leds resistors capacitors and etc Now I am still learning different technologies on my spare time programming beaglebone black(which I received from element14 last christmas adapting Rpi media center and RetroPie station to suit my needs making(slowly granular synthesizer with STM32F3Discovery board experimenting with ESP8266 boards and etc

billhudson: I was a young teenage self taught programmer (XB, ASM on a TI-99/4a) when my uncle (an electrician) got a divorce and then moved in with us for a while. He was fascinated with my computer and programming and made a deal where he would teach me some electronics if I would teach him some programming. I was fascinated how close the two were related. Electronics was basically programming but physically instead of software. AND, OR, XOR, it was all there but in chips. Well my first real thing I did is what got me hooked. Back before remote controls existed for televisions our furnace intake was just above our couch and the TV across the room like normal. Well my dad would complain all the time because when the furnace kicked on the intake was so loud he had to get up and turn the volume up. When it kicked off, it was back up, across the room and turn it back down. He hated that! Well we had a couple of those monitors that use the 110 wiring to transmit and receive voice. I knew if I could find a 5v change on the board when TALK was pressed I could use a relay and another Volume knob to turn the TV up, I also needed 110 from the furnace. Well I found the 5v on the monitor when the button was pressed to talk. Well those things could be locked on as well. So I locked it on, went to the furnace closet and got lucky, there was a 110 outlet right on the wall that went hot with the furnace. I just plugged it in and that side was done. When the furnace came on, it turned on the transmitter and sent the signal. I opened the back of the console TV and ran the original volume knob through my relay for off, and drilled a hole in the press board back and installed another knob through my relay for (Furnace on!). Now set the back knob louder and the front knob softer. Now when the furnace kicked on, the TV went up! (and it was adjustable too) When the furnace turned off the TV went back down! (to the front knob setting) My dad, well my entire family was just blown away! My brother still brags to this day, and I am now 51 years old, so it's been quite some time ago. I have to admit, I was pretty impressed myself, and seeing that I could do things like that I just fell in love!!! I have been in love every since. Oh, and of course I fix everything in the world for my family and all their friends as well, as we all probably do. For those days and times, that was pretty amazing!

dougw : I grew up in the jungle at the equator with no TV, no computers, no electronics stores and no cell phones, but I always liked building things like kites, sailboats, slingshots and model planes. We also had Meccano and Tinkertoy to get creative with. My first big decision came when I was 11 - my parents let me decide if I wanted to go to boarding school in Canada or stay and train to be a professional athlete. Although I love sports, I chose to get an education. I was not a good student though - I was always reading books when I was supposed to be doing homework, and I mean always. My next big decision was to jump from grade 11 (5th form) to engineering at university (because it was cheaper than boarding school). I wanted to be a mechanical engineer because I had never been exposed to electronics and I had been designing a rotary internal combustion engine in my head. However this jump put me way behind my classmates that were coming out of grade 13. I had never seen a computer and never even heard of calculus. I remember my first computer science assignment was to write a program that used numerical methods to calculate an integral. That was a huge challenge, but I managed to figure it out and get 100% on the assignment. It was such a thrilling accomplishment to successfully learn all that in a few days and get that first program to execute properly that I have always liked computers ever since. My next big decision was to become a systems engineer (mostly electronics) because I realized it would be way cheaper to tinker with electronics as a hobby than outfit a machine shop. I still took lots of mechanical courses though which have been very useful. The rest is just a long storied history of fun projects, learning new things and inventing stuff..... And I still get to do sports.

rwap : Always having had a keen interest in mathematics, I started out learning to program programmable calculators, and then with the birth of the home computer industry, bought a Sinclair ZX81 from my brother (he had moved onto a Spectrum) and taught myself to program both ZX BASIC and Z80 Machine Code. I moved onto the SInclair QL when it was launched in 1984, and taught myself 68008 machine code - so much easier and started analysing other people's code as part of bug-testing and reviewing software for magazines in the 80s. Since then, my hobby turned into a business, with me learning more through various PLC programming projects (including bug-fixing someone elses code for a sewerage handling plant), and turning my hand to C so that I could adapt an existing printer driver to handle 720dpi and colours as these technologies became more widespread. Since then, I have continued to support the retro and vintage computer market, by reverse engineering parts and tracking down old stocks of computer chips and connectors, as well as getting involved in numerous interface projects. I am proud to say that I was behind the re-vitalisation of the Sinclair ZX81 market which had long been forgotten until I decided to turn back to this - and the market is now flourishing thanks to SD card interfaces (which cannot be made quickly enough), and lots of new software making the most of modern development tools and pushing the limits of this (originally) 1K computer to the max. The Raspberry Pi and Banana Pi have both opened new opportunities for me to provide products which are aimed at keeping both this retro computer market; as well as numerous industrial applications to the fore, all built around my love of electronics and programming, and the desire to get the best out of any hardware.

fozdik : The story of how I became hooked on technology is a long one, covering nearly 40 years.... I began my interest in technology at a very early age. My Dad got me interested in electronics when I was about 10 years old. He wasn’t a very good teacher, but I was intrigued by the things he was doing and I liked doing them with him. LED’s and a 555 timer could keep me dazzled for hours. And Forrest Mims was quite readable and understandable, even for me. Wanting to take electronics further, but not having the funds to do so, I discovered that the garbage bins out back of the IBM building were full of discarded circuit boards that were loaded with digital ICs sitting in IC sockets. An enterprising kid such as myself could save a lot of money by popping those chips off the boards carefully. I made most of my early circuits this way. Later on I discovered an electronics store that sold kits and parts at reasonable prices, and my allowance was suddenly less of a hindrance to my interests. I bought an Apple IIe kit and cut my teeth learning how to solder all the parts on. It was very cool when it was finished and worked! Now I needed to learn how to program. That led to a Commodore Vic 20, and later a Commodore 64. I still enjoyed dumpster-diving, though. At least I did until IBM caught on and started locking their bins.... ...I started out loving the fact that technology was something that I could share with my father, and ended up loving the fact that technology is something I can indulge in anytime I want and in just about any way that I want, and I love this! Case in point; I have always been blown away by what can be made with a CNC machine. Thanks to YouTube, and the Internet in general, I was able to build one in my basement! I can design my own stuff, and make it in my own house, using software and hardware that would have been ABSOLUTELY out of reach for any but the largest and richest of companies when I was a boy. Today, we have open-source software, open-source hardware, community versions of top-of-the-line software, inexpensive hardware, 3D printers, laser cutters, hobby (and not-so-hobby) scale CNC machines, etc., etc., all available to the creative and techy minds out there for such reasonable costs that they are driving real change in our society. Suppliers of such technology and the parts and meterials required for their use, such as element14 (nice plug, eh?), also provide community forums (such as this one) where these folks can exchange ideas and information. This is where the real power for change lies. And all you need is an internet connection and the desire to use it. The ever increasing facilitation of creativity for those working in their kitchens, basements, garages, and college labs is INCREDIBLE and I can’t wait to see what comes of it. Just you go to a MAKER FAIRE to see exactly what I’m talking about. If you think the world is full of problems, go to one of these events and you will see the very people who are going to solve them. And that includes you and me, thanks to the pervasiveness and availability of technology, AND the information and education regarding its use that is so freely available. With all of this in mind, how can you NOT love technology??

xKZx : When I was a kid, I loved LEGO, every birthday, every Christmas, any occasion I wanted LEGO. All I pretty much did was playing with LEGOs. Both of my parents were teachers in Latvia and the pay back in the 90s was not so great, but my dad understood the importance of LEGO in my early years and kept on buying it. At one point the amount of LEGO was the most valuable thing we had, even more valuable then the Lada 2101 my dad was driving. I was building anything I could think about, and LEGO taught me a lot - math while counting bricks, construction and structural engineering while building cranes, It taught me love for bikes when I understood how gears worked. Later I loved LEGO Technics - It was great for building all this stuff, but for a young curious mind that was not enough, I wanted those expensive LEGO electronics kits that my parents could not afford. I asked them If I could get any, but the answer was "no". Hoping, waiting and repetitive asking did not help. It just cost too much. At some point I started adding various non LEGO components to my projects - rubber bands, springs from pens, glass marbles, steel weight for catapults etc. It made my LEGO experiance more fun but something was still mising. One day I went to my dads office at the school he was working and I was studying in the First or Second class. There I saw this old Soviet copy machine in ugly brown plastic, but it was opened, it didn't work and was meant for scrap, but I it was the first time I had the idea to salvage parts - I asked dad if I can I remove those Motors I saw? I knew how DC motors looked from my friends cheap RC cars that always broke and that I never had (I had LEGO), but these were bigger. They were 9V and that was a lot of battery money for me. Tape came along and it all worked and worked well - it was the first time gears started to break due to torque. A week later dad made a 9V power supply so I wouldn't have to spend my pocket money on batteries. A month later I had build a wired "remote control" LEGO car which would steer and drive forward and backward working on a 7.2V Nokia THF-2 Rechargable battery (My granny's old mobile at the time). It was a marvel and didn't cost my parents a fortune. It was the first thing I ever built that I could be really proud about. From there things just continued and 18 years later I am a mechanical engineer with love for salvaging parts, DIY and electronics.

fortyishguy : I have always been fascinated by how things work, not so much the theory but the mechanics of it. Tools, screws and bolts and nails, taking things apart and successfully (hopefully) putting it back together fixed or better than it was ( or at the least the way it was before). My earliest passions were hammering and nailing, and unscrewing anything that would unscrew. This generated many happy times from childhood and I'm sure the items left apart didn't bother my parents at all. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) This combined with a love of math led to models of engines and cars, Rubik's cubes and fixing bikes. I once took my sisters bike apart when I was mad at her knowing she couldn't put it back together, but she sweet talked me into putting it back together... ....I rebuilt engines, I rewired more than one Saab (one after a fire) and troubleshot many issues and breakdowns. I credit it with fueling an interest in troubleshooting that has helped me accomplish quite a bit in life, and saves money too.

jw0752 : I must have been born with a curiosity for electricity and mechanical things. My father had no skill or interest in these areas but he was very supportive, always bringing me things to take apart and explore. His lack of knowledge about electricity allowed me to explore the subject without interference from him. I blew my first fuse at age five when I hooked up a frayed extension cord to a small toy typewriter. I declared it an electric typewriter and plugged it in. By the time I was 10 I had received so many shocks from the old tube radios that I routinely played with that it was no big deal. That what I was doing could have been fatal never occurred to me or my parents. Perhaps around age 13 I was fixing more things than I was breaking, though my mother often told people that I could fix things the rest of my life and never make up for all the things I broke in those early years. While some kids collect coins, stamps, butterflies, or rocks I collected electronic and technology parts. I also like to organize them into small jam jars and boxes. To this end I still have parts, pieces and small hardware as a resource for present day projects that I collected 55 years ago. I continue this process to this day salvaging parts from broken equipment and electronics. I really enjoyed reading the stories of my fellow posters to this blog. We all seem to have been caught up in the adventure of understanding how things work. As I have tried, over the years, to inspire children and grandchildren I have come to realize that it is a special calling to have this consuming curiosity for the technical. Those that do not have the passion can be taught but keeping them going is like pushing a car down the road when it is out of gas.

pikespeakelement14 : I was an electronic technician for Hughes Aircraft Co. in El Segundo, CA during 1978 through 1981. I loved it - soldering and wire wrapping circuits. One day, one of the engineers handed me a magazine that mentioned some scientists that had invented a switch that could turn on and off over a million times a second! I was totally blown away, picturing a house light switch being frantically moved back and forth. I asked him how that was possible, and he told be that it was by electric fields - no moving parts. I was hooked. I graduated with a degree in computer science, learning as much as I could about electronics, and it's been very useful in my career over the last 35 years.

gentlemanwolf : So, here's where it all started. One sunny afternoon a long time ago, I was sitting around my house as all nine year olds would do. Staring at a speaker. the reason behind this, was that I was trying to figure out how sound was being produced from it, and what was inside of it. The next thing I did, being the smart nine year old I was, was take the speaker and throw it as the ground as hard as I possibly could in a vain attempt at opening it. Breaking it in half like an IPhone getting thrown off of the top floor of a parking garage. (I didn't know screwdrivers existed then.) Believe it or not this is what got me into engineering. After dealing with the consequences of destroying a $20 speaker I was still curious as to how on earth speakers could make sound, so I fished the speaker out of the revolting garbage and went to work in my room in secret. This time instead of throwing the speaker on the ground again, I proceeded to pull it apart piece by piece, through a process I would later learn was called reverse engineering. I unfortunately I never did manage to put the darn thing back together, mainly because I lost all the screws and the coil snapped, but, whatever. Anyway, after losing the speaker for good, that curiosity stuck with me. I would begin to look at everything i passed, and wonder how did someone accomplish that? So, with this newfound curiosity, I would try to reverse engineer anything I could get my hands onto. It was also because of this curiousness, that I Learned new skills, like how to solder wires together, how to avoid breathing it toxic gas from the solder, and the ability to repair things like the wiring in computers, or other things. These skills were certainty very useful. if it wasn't for me throwing that $20 speaker, I probably wouldn't be where I am now. Starting a potential family business creating arcades. programing Raspberry Pi's, and going to a technical school to learn more about engineering. That is how I first got into the amazing world of engineering.

wrustylane : I first got started in electronics when I built my first computer along with my Dad. He built a 286SX and I built a 286DX because I liked how much faster it was than even the slowest 386 at the time. My 286DX would run rings around most 386's at the time. After that I was given an RCA television (solid state) in the early '80's by my father in law. He had taken the TV to several shops around the area and could never get it fixed. I took it home and plugged it in and gave it the "smoke" test to try to identify the problem. The thing smoked and I found out where the smoke was coming from. There was a burnt resistor in the sound board section so I grabbed an unknown resistor about the same size (1/4 watt) and stuck it in the circuit. The TV came on and we watched it for a year before the second problem crept up. We had wooden floors in the house we were renting and when you would walk across the floor the video would flash and some times go off. I took it apart again and pulled out the IF board with the video output transistor and when I pulled the can apart I saw what was making the problem. A solder ball rolled out of the IF can that was rolling around and shorting out the video output transistor as one would walk across the floor. After I fixed that problem we watched that TV for over 10 years without any further problems. Then it finally developed a high voltage leak around the fly back transformer so I sealed it up with silicone rubber and it lasted another 4 to 5 years and then developed another high voltage leak that I couldn't fix this time. So through my experimentation we had a nice solid state color TV to watch for over 15 years. I then became interested in CB radio since it was in vogue at that time. My parents ran a base station with two mobile CB radios. I joined the club and got a base station going with a 150 watt "kicker" (linear amp) and a mobile with a 75 watt kicker. My parents and I would only talk single sideband because there was more power transmitted into the sideband than in AM alone (12 watts vs. 4 watts on AM). Then I got me a frequency counter and began modifying SSB radios for those who wanted to go up or down the CB radio band - just barely keeping out of the HAM band on the upward side of the sideband. I even bored a hole through my main radio cabinet so I could get a tuning wand on my oscillator. That way I could adjust the frequency band to the upper side or go way below the 1 channel frequency. I finally ended up into television repair and had my own business for about 2 to 3 years thereafter.

Once again I got bitten by a bug--this time the model railroading bug. Now I have my own layout that I wired myself and it works and does everything I had set out for it to do. Now I'm into the Arduino UNO and plan to do some experimenting with the Arduino UNO board to control my new layout that I'm planning on building. I've also wanted a new computer (linux) based so I'd heard about the Raspberry and decided to look into getting one for our main computer. I hate DOS based machines and the Windows GUI; it's a wonder I didn't end up with a MAC instead of a PC but the cost drove me to a PC. I'm a self taught electronics tech. with many hours of trial and error, since building my 1st computer. I think a Raspberry PI3 in in my near future. I'm also a former USMC sergeant and went to Vietnam in '71- '72.

rider51 : Then... The "Electronics Bug" first bit me back when I was little; I had received a few SnapCircuit kits which I instantly found fascinating. Now looking back, I can only think to myself how childish those things were, no soldering and no chance of explosions! Fast forward a few years, I was about 13 and I admit I hadn't evolved myself much from SnapCiruits. Its funny how you remember these things, but one night I was browsing some YouTube videos when I stumbled upon some videos of a guy putting together his own computer. For reasons I can't explain, I was compelled to do that myself as well. I worked and saved up my money until I had enough to buy the components for a decent gaming rig. I ordered them up and next thing I knew I was at my cousins house putting to together. I enjoyed every second of it, even though I was terribly afraid of ruining a $200 part by scratching it. Almost instantly after that you could say my "Electronics Bug" turned into an "Electronics Swarm". I discovered the world of Arduino, and I began making simple robots and projects using that. Then that Christmas my cousin gifted me a Raspberry Pi 2, and my interest in that took off. Now... I am a programmer and builder for a high school FTC Robotics team. I spend my free time working with electronics and technology. My most recent project is a "Pi Boy" as you may call it. Its an original GameBoy shaped MAME console using a Raspberry Pi 2. Whether there really is an electronics bug or not, something sparked in me, and I can without doubt say there is no other hobby and future career I would want to go into other than Technology.

satyavrat : ...I joined a course on Embedded Systems. There, I met three people who would later become the best project partners I've ever had and more importantly, the most reliable friends I will ever have. With them, I blinked my first LED and pressed my first switch. This changed everything. I was opened up to a world where anything I did, be it change a line of code or twist a potentiometer, made a tangible difference to the world around me. It wasn't some equation which was Greek and Latin to me ( to be honest, sigma, omega, alpha, beta are actually Greek.), and whose only contribution to my world was a number. I dove head first into this interesting and captivating field. The beauty of it was that the more I learned, the more there was to learn. I began to look at the world as bits and voltages. The four of us formed a group whose aim was to learn through doing. We learned PID control and PWM from line tracers, SPI and I2C from sensor nodes, RF communication and ZigBee from RC bots, and were introduced to IoT and cloud computing through our Bachelor's Degree project, a cloud connected autonomous LPG control system. We spent countless nights in the lab, testing, resting and other things interesting, till we had the perfect output. As a side effect, we won quite a few robotics competitions, awards for best project for our Bachelor's degree project, which went ahead to become the first patented project in our department. The love for Embedded Systems and Internet of Things stayed strong after I graduated, and I published two research papers on the merging of Internet of Things protocols and lightweight machine learning. To add to this, countless projects on a number of development platforms enabled me to learn new technologies, programming languages and applications. I have learned more in the past eight months than I have in the eight years before it. Most importantly, it stoked the passion in me to forge ahead and do more.

winzurf : In about 1963 my teacher took a group of us who had finished the years math curriculum early and taught us binary numbers and math. Fascinating, but no obvious purpose. In 1970 I was studying physics at university but was forced to stop playing soccer following an injury, I started building lighting controllers for rock concerts as a hobby and discovered I liked electronics. I also studied the philosophy and history of science, probably the most important 'gift' from university. In 1973 the chief engineer at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences decided I had something and offered me a job. For the next 25 years I designed, built, programmed and breathed digital technology. I designed and built my own computer which could emulate several of the microcomputers of the day such as the Altair and Cromemco. At one stage I was so obsessed with technology I was only sleeping about 4 hours per night. Fortunately I discovered another obsession - windsurfing, and managed to lead a balanced life since, but I regard myself as being exceptionally lucky to have caught and surfed the digital wave over my whole career. Still riding! I always remember the opportunity that engineer gave me and have tried to do the same for those that have come behind me.

lkornel : It was year 1984, On my birthdate my father gave me a DIY microphone preamp kit. It was the first time when I took an electronic component in my hands. That was the moment. Now I still work in electronics repairing Inverter Welding Machines.

balatech : As a small boy - may be 6 or 7, I got up early one sunday morning and found a television that my father was repairing on his work bench with the back still off. I thought I would 'help' and set about the task with enthusiasm! turning his AVO8 to volts and prodding the insides of the T.V. there was a loud bang and lots of smoke! slightly shell shocked, I was still staring at the aftermath when my father appeared not looking very happy! for the remainder of the morning I sat with him whilst he fault found and I had to replace the now defunct components. The sense of satisfaction when it was completed was amazing, to see it burst back into life with full sound and picture, it was then that he informed me that he had in fact completed the repair the previous evening but just hadn't replaced the back. From then on I was hooked, I started buying Everyday Electronics and set about building just about every project (money permitting) in each magazine, learning along the way. At the age of 17 I was accepted as an apprentice with Radio Rentals and completed my 4 year apprenticeship. Some ten years after this I then attended University of Central Lancashire on a B.Eng course in Computing and Electronics. Following on, I started my own Computer consultancy business and have now retired to Spain, although still with an avid interest in electronics.

paul_nicholls: My love of technology and computers started back in early 1984. It was a few months before my 12th birthday, and my parents purchased a Commodore 64 computer complete with a basic (pun intended) computer book (Creepy Computer Games: https://archive.org/details/Creepy_Computer_Games_1983_Usborne_Publishing ) and a tape drive....I started tinkering around with programming, and BAM! they didn't know what they had done...bwahahaha!! They had created a "monster" who loved computers and similar stuff haha. Since then I have loved computers, programming and electronics...not that I have done any electronics for a few years now though. At college (1989 - 1990) I designed and created a PCB that allowed a motor to be controlled in both forward and reverse directions using relays to switch the flow of current. I also created a numeric keypad using switches and diodes, etc. for my Commodore 64 computer that connected to the userport. My first full time job (1991 - 1994 was as a trainee Biomedical Technician (fixing machines that went ping lol) at a hospital, and my longest software/electronics job was at an Electronics Design Automation company (1999 - 2012). I still want to do electronics, but just don't have the money or time, but I do like looking at other people's projects, the Ben Heck show, and similar things. I do computer programming as a hobby

akhilrb: My interest in electronics started from something as small as impressing my friends by switching on a small LED with a simple switch when I was 7. The look on their faces gave me a sense of achievement. Fast forward 8 years, and I made a radio for a school exhibition. It was because of the radio that my crush thought I was smart. I remember the shine in her eyes as she looked at the project (and me) and my friends remember the shine in my eyes as I looked at her. Although the waves of limerence didn't last long, it was at that moment in time that I knew I had to pursue Electronics.

A lot of Years have passed since, and electronics is now a passion because it is a necessary, omnipresent technology, that can possibly attract my crush, but definitely change the world continuously.

silicaphysics : It would be difficult, if not impossible, to pin down a single moment, gift or experience that sucked me into the abyss of engineering. It could be chalked up to genetics (Dad was a EE) but I think that it was more nurture than nature... My father had his faults but engaging his sons with his passion for all things man made was not one of them. My earliest memory of this is probably the crystal radio we put together out of his junk drawer one freezing winter day in Dallas, around 1962 or 1963 when I was just four or five years old... My father introduced me to lasers around age 7 or 8, with a HeNe and my Mom's engagement ring. He took me to lectures by Townes and bought me a subscription to Scientific American -- I maintain one to this day... After that I had access to just about any of his tools I needed from oscilloscopes to signal generators to torque wrenches. Of course, it also meant I was the son chosen to get up on the roof with him, guiding a stinky plumber's snake into the perpetually slow kitchen drain vent, but I could build lasers described in the Amature Scientist column of Scientific American and calculators on his breadboarding equipment. Heathkit became my BestBuy.... It was in pursuit of my Ph.D. in analytical chemistry where the engineering bug again took hold again, and it's grip proved unbreakable this time. My research advisor taught part of a course in instrumental analysis as a tale of intrigue that truly fascinated me: a battle between Beckman and Cary for supremacy in UV-visible spectrometer performance circa the '40s and '50s. I have been in optics pretty much ever since, starting in fiber optics, followed by lasers, and on my own since 1991 designing and building mostly laser surgical instruments, with a bit of analytical instrumentation on the side: 20 patents and counting. It's no crystal radio, but I enjoy almost every single day.

rdallons: My love electronics began at the age of ten. My grandfather owned a motor-court and store in Bakersfield, California and in 1956 he took me into a back room and uncovered a large slot-machine in a beautiful wooden cabinet. Slot machines were (and probably still are) highly illegal in California, and having one in storage was making him nervous. He gave it to me with the condition that I would completely dismantle it. I eventually had it dismantled. It has all kinds of lights, bells, relays and electronic parts. I then began to study each part and figure out what they did, the transformers, rectifiers, capacitors, etc. I was hooked. Now, at 70, still hooked.

Workshopshed: When I was young I got given some old electronics magazines and some bits to take apart. I still have some of those including a resistor which is almost as thick as a pencil.

jlangbridge: Like most people here, I started off by accident. I was born in Singapore, and my parents travelled a lot; And I mean, a lot. I was let alone pretty often, i suppose that explains a few things today. Anyway, details. I found their home computer at age 6, an Apple IIe. There wasn't much you could do with it, my parents tried a few database programs, but I was fascinated with its capacity of storing data. Then I learned about programming, using the BASIC interpreter. My first program was written at age 6. It didn't doo much, just a vague copy of CeeFax, something you don't hear about much today, but before Internet, you could get information about TV programs using CeeFax on your TV. This was a machine of pure logic, it did everything I told it to do, no more, no less. If something went wrong, it is because I did something wrong, and I could correct my work of art, perfecting it, or tear it down and remake it again. I went through a few computers; ZX80, ZX81, Spectrum +3 and a few others. Aged 8, I had a BBC Micro at school, and a few real lessons that went with it. My teacher was into computers, but also electronics. However, he was heavily into radio, and analog just wasn't my thing. It still isn't. I finally got an Amiga 2000. It was then that I started assembly programming, which also taught me a lot about low-level programming, knowing what information is sent on which wire. It didn't take me too long to get into electronics... Flash forward a few years, and here I am, almost 40. I'm still into electronics, but I'm more into teaching people about my love for the systems, going to different schools (secondary to engineering), and writing books.... Today, I'm a maker, teacher, and tester. I receive cards from different makers, and make tutorials on how they work.

cherenkovchase : My father used to work for a communications company and he would bring back circuit boards that failed testing and we're being recycled. I loved them, I would sit for hours and imagine that they were tiny metropolises. Then he started teaching me what each component was and whatnot did. I being around 4 or 5 years old I would sleep with them as if they were stuffed animals and all my shirts had holes in them from the solder connections on the back, my babysitter found it very odd to say the least. By the time I was 7 I could name all the components, I could make a solder joint by age 10 and built my first Tesla coil (hv flyback driver technically) at 13. Long story short I love building circuits as a hobby to this day.

RovertScott : Growing up I loved technology, I was fascinated by the inventors who created our modern world. The insight and creativity of inventors like Edison, The Wright Brothers, Philo Farnsworth and others, inspired me to become like them. I was the only kid in grade school who was excited to watch documentaries on History Channel, Discovery, TLC, and etc. My mind was a sponge and I was compelled to learn all that I could about the world of technology around me. I always imagined I would someday become a great innovator like my heroes, inspire others through my inventions, and change the world. I remember spending third grade making paper airplanes every day, trying to discover the perfect design. These were the dreams of a child, whose imagination knew no bounds, but had no ability to make those dreams a reality... At this point, I moved away from electronics and focused on Film and Television. Through Junior and High School I devoted my time to filming, editing, and showing film projects. I had abandoned my initial curiosity with electronics with something less volatile. Thanks to the rise of home video editing programs, Mini DV-Camcorders and DVD-Burners, I had an outlet for my imagination. By High School, I was helping film, edit, and broadcast morning video announcements and I never really thought about designing electronics. However, it was during this time that I stumbled upon BenHeck.com and his gaming portables that re-sparked my interests in inventing. I was still just an outsider looking into a mystical and exclusive world of engineering. Yet, it was DIY inventors like Ben Heckindorn and Jeri Ellsworth that now inspired me.... When I went to Junior College, I took an introduction to Audio Technology class. My professor made it a point that we learn how to solder electronics as part of our understanding of audio technology. Part of our final was to put together an audio amplifier with a microphone pre-amp and enclose it in a case. This was the moment that I truly fell in love with electronics and engineering. The ability to walk into a Radioshack, talk to the regular old guys for advice, and hold the parts that I needed to build my device, was exhilarating. The experience let me know, that I could make the inventions that were once reserved for my imagination. I even adding a photo-diode and a laser pointer to my audio amplifier, to include a "laser microphone" option. At this point on, I continued my studies in film and television, but electronics became a side hobby of mine. I also began scraping broken radios and alarm clocks for the additional parts I may need for future projects...

doctorwho8: Me? I got interested in electronics when I was asked by my father, the usual question; and he steered me into the direction I'm in. Eventually that turned from things analog into things digital. After realizing the why and how, behind why computers respond the way they do, I ended up learning how to repair them, and even advise people on what the machine they are working on is doing. I also help out via my local LUG, (when it meets.) it also includes a hack night, and I'm in constant demand there to answer nearly impossible questions, that includes the reasons behind why a Raspberry Pi sometimes responds differently to Linux commands, as regards to a PC running Linux. And the time honored question, regarding the later (and newer) methods for installing Linux on a newer machine, (after 2009) versus doing so on one from 2000 to 2008 for example.

mikeyman64 : My earliest memories of thinking about electronics and how they worked came when I watched my older friend play Super Mario World for the SNES. I remember being fascinated by the concept of human input making a little man jump around on a TV screen. I must have been close to five or six years old. When I asked my dad how it all worked, he told me it was very complicated like a puzzle, and that he would show me some time what "it" looked like. One day, I think it was my seventh birthday, he brought home his recently replaced security system panel home from his vet clinic. It was a steel 12"x12" box with a keyed door, and inside was a large circuit board. He handed it and the key to me, and told I could do what I wanted with it. I promptly opened it and began poring over the intricate network of traces, ICs, capacitors and semiconductors, having no idea what they did. For the longest time, I salvaged the parts of any busted electronic device my parents no longer needed or wanted by prying them off with screwdrivers, and kept them in this box. It was my special stash of "electronics". As I got older, I starting taking more care with the components and learning as much as I could about how they worked and what they did. I was home schooled, so my mother, seeing this fascination, did her best to get me books and equipment suited for my interests. Eventually, I was able to harness my fascination by fixing things that were broken instead of just collecting their "guts", as well as making things that could help make life easier for people, like custom game controllers or automatic dog feeders. Now (I'm 26), after a few years of gaining IT and engineering work experience, I am spending my time refining my understanding of all things electronics as an EE student at Georgia Tech.

luelui : My dad was friends with a guy that owned a TV/radio repair shop. I was a junior in high school back in 1967. The shop was 2 blocks from my house so I ended up loafing there for my junior and senior years. One day I asked the owner about a Zenith AM/FM and 78 speed record player that had been laying around the shop forever. All of the components (tubes and related electronics) were in 4 old milk crates. The console was completely bare. He said "You can have it if you think you can put it back together." He said you'll need the "SAMS" book for the model. I went downtown to the electronics and part store and got it. I spent about a month putting it back together. I learned a lot by doing it and asking him when I got stumped. I'll never forget the joy I had when I finally got it working! The neat things I remember about the console was it had a Nixie cat's eye tuner tube.The green circle would fluctuate as the FM signal intensified and decreased. I also replaced the turntable with a multi-speed turntable. That was the beginning of my love of electronics and my entrance into geek-dom...

gypo : My first introduction to electronics and electrics was in my pre-teen days back in the 60’s some of my mates (or their parents) had record players for birthdays and Xmas, I got a cast off bare record deck without a needle, box, speaker or amp. My Dad was a coal man and saw it discarded in a coal shed and thought I would like it. He didn’t know if it would work or how much was missing or what was needed to get it working.

I was pleased as punch, I had a record deck! but I didn’t know any more than my Dad at that point. The motor worked connected directly to the mains and a bent knobby pin fitted into the cartridge. That meant I could put a record on and listen to the sound coming from the pin.As you can imagine it wasn’t great but it worked and that is how it was for a long time (except I mounted it on top of a biscuit tin). I did try and find ways to make it louder like putting weights on the arm and wondered about amps etc, but a school kid as I was could only dream of such things.When I moved up to secondary school science had 3 different classes you could choose from, Photography, Electrics and Chemistry, I’m sure they wasn’t called that but in essence that is what they turned out to be. I chose Electrics, I wanted to build an amp for my deck and although it wasn’t what the class was about the teacher took me under his wing and helped teach me how to build an amp using valves. I wasn’t an expert but I then knew how to make an amp for my record deck, I had my dad asking for anything electric dumped in coal sheds. I got loads of old valve TV’s and radios and through necessity I found what made them tick and eventually how to fix them, I managed to build a fantastic amp with only one drawback, it only had very loud or even louder volume settings. The biggest help in doing that was the teacher who had helped me and set the seed to find out more. However in those days the circuit diagrams of almost every British built TV & Radio was published in a series of yearly books called ‘TV & Radio Servicing Manuals’ which the local library kept copies, no such luck now days.That was it, I got to know valve equipment very well and was asked to repair a lot for my parent’s friends before leaving school which helped fund a better record deck… As the electrics & electronics moved on it kept my interest going and 50+ years on it’s still there.

mrkeiman: My love of electronics and technology began when I watched my Father repairing a television, of course things were a bit different back then. The most common fault in televisions was a filament failure in a valve. Most of your readers now probably have no idea what I am talking about but long before transistors the main active component was the electron valve, They had a heater element in them and if that failed then the valve didn't work. of course there were other problems but the first thing to check was that all the valves were "lit up". I they were then you started replacing them 1 at a time, hopefully one of them would make everything spring to life again. then when I started work as an apprentice electrical fitter I was invited to study electronics as well. that convinced me that it was my future. after the apprenticeship I entered the world of computers with NCR. I have been working in the computer field ever since. Then in recent years I revitalized an even older interest in model railways, it occurred to me that there are many areas where the 2 interests can be linked and that is what I am currently trying to do.unfortunately life keeps side tracking me but I keep coming back.

slashthedragon : When I was a child I designed a perpetual motion machine. It was a simple cart with two axles. Both axles had a pulley in the middle. The front pulley was slightly smaller than the real pulley. As the cart moved the rear wheels would turn the the pulley which would turn the front pulley a little faster which moved the cart a little faster. I put it on the road and gave it a shove. The cart kept going and going. I haven't seen it since. Then I came out of my imagination. About the same time I was experimenting with magnets and electricity. I wonder how long a magnet could hold a needle on a thread in the air. I would play with mercury switches. Then break them open and play with the mercury. I would cover dimes and squeeze them between my fingers. So did my brothers. I wonder what I would be like if I had skipped that experimenting. In high school I started a radio club. It never did have its first meeting. I got my AS in electronics in 1971. The LED was beginning at the time and the vacuum tube was ending. This was when 1971. I serviced mechanical calculators which was replaced with the electronic ones. They cost $2000 and would add, subtract, multiply and divide. I saw the print heads evolve. Each company would make their own unique design. Eventually one design would win out and the other companies would stop designing their own and buy the most successful. I expect to see the same with 3D printers. I serviced audio equipment and repaired instruments in at a capacitor manufacturing company. Finally I serviced medical equipment from blood pressure cuffs to linear accelerators for last thirty years. So what do I do when I retire? I go back to college just for fun. I just finished ECE471, embedded systems with Vince Weaver, at the University of Maine.

dcirka : A long time ago, in a galax.... OK, it was the 70's and I was at grandmas house. I just got all excited about seeing Rogue One and was reflecting back when Star Wars was released... Back then, dad and grandpa were vacuum sales/repairmen and I always got to play with random parts, discarded wires and such. I recall one day disassembling, meticulously cleaning, replacing a worn belt and reassembling a powered attachment... and to the surprise of myself and kinfolk, the thing worked - that was the hook! I was roughly nine years old when that occurred. I was also a bookworm so naturally I migrated towards the 530 section of the library - physical sciences. I began with the basic coil of wire wrapped around a nail making an electromagnet. I had replicated this several times experimenting with different nails, number of turns, different wires, etc. Well, my curiosity could not be quenched and my what-would-now-be-classified as hyperactivity-disorder led me to find a bigger power source than an old lantern battery - naturally the wall receptacle would deliver the power I so desperately craved. (cue the Tim Allen "more power" grunt from 'Home Improvement'). Thankfully, the outlet was on a circuit that did not have a penny in the fusebox. I think I was 10 or 11. That was my first learning-through-experimentation experience. Once the tears cleared and the sting from the butt-whoopin' I received had dissipated, I had to figure out why my mondo-magnet failed, so back to the library. I remember the book that hurled me forward - "The Boys First Book of Radio and Electronics." Or was it the "Second" or "Third Book," I cannot remember. But what an impact it made! Years went on, Radio Shack was my favorite store and every Christmas or birthday wish included the latest "Science Fair nnn-in-One Electronic Project Kit." After which building all the circuits, were disassembled and resurrected into random creations of my own. Proud of my accomplishments, yet, disappointed as the more enthusiastic I became, the less folks near me were interested in what I was doing. Years more of tinkering and learning... and actually repairing equipment, but now was my time to move out on my own and do something with my life... enlisted in the military as an aircraft electronics tech. Everything from tubes to digital circuits. I also moonlighted working on tube- and transistor-based gear... and some basic integrated circuit gear. But nothing really digital. Several years in the military and I was introduced to the use of a personal computer. There were brief, past encounters with an Apple II. And Pong, Activision, and Atari games. But the military was the springboard into actual computing. Until then, C:\> prompt, hard drives and operating systems were strange and new to my vocabulary. One thing lead to another, here I am 20 or so years later as a senior network/systems engineer, but I still have a love and passion for old, analog equipment. Then a year ago, I stumbled across Arduino, now Raspberry Pi and oh my! Now I wrestle with family and work schedules and desk space to fiddle and fidget - looking for any excuse to integrate and make. What's in the works now? My wife is a baker and needs a proofing box - a temperature and humidity controlled environment for raising bread. Sounds like a job for Arduino. Our wood fired oven needs temperature-monitoring - some thermocouple, Arduino and a digital display outta work... maybe slap in a Raspberry Pi and include databasing of times and temps. Ah, what next... homemade weather station? I just read about a Pi-based Point Of Sale system... we don't necessarily need it, but....

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Tags: codebug, raspberry pi, bitbythebug, BeagleBone Black

Documents

migration.user — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 18:01:45 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by migration.user on 10/1/2021 6:01:45 PM

Introducing The Business of Engineering Podcast

jlucas — Sat, 14 Sep 2019 01:40:50 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by jlucas on 9/14/2019 1:40:50 AM

The element14 team is proud and excited to announce the launch of our new Podcast, The Business of Engineering - offering a new way for our members to interact with the community via one of the world's fastest-growing mediums for online content consumption.

The Business of Engineering is a monthly round table discussion that brings together startup leaders and entrepreneurs working in the tech sector, inviting them to share their experiences and insights on a range of industry-related topics, from prototyping and manufacturing to finance and marketing. We hope that in time it will become a cornerstone of the Business of Engineering section of the element14 community, where we regularly share news and interviews around the tech industry, with a particular focus on startups, entrepreneurship and design & manufacturing.

The Business of Engineering podcast can be found online right now for free download and streaming via Podbean.com. They can also be found on most major Podcasting platforms, including iTunes, Stitcher and aCast. Alternatively, you can listen through many other Podcast apps using the RSS feed.

Episode One | Starting From Zero

All tech startups begin with an idea, but how do you take that idea and turn it into a viable business model? In this first episode of The Business of Engineering Podcast, we discuss the challenges of 'starting from zero' - from taking the leap into self employment to building an audience, forging professional partnerships and developing your first prototype.

Featuring Daniel Burton (Natwest Business Accelerator), Ethan Howard (Bare Tech) and Nook Barnes and Rowena Madar (Eat Fish Design)

Episode Two | Funding & Finance

Raising capital and maintaining a healthy cash flow are essential aspects of running any business — and the tech sector is no exception. In this episode, we discuss the unique financial challenges faced by tech startups, and share some advice on how to navigate them.

Featuring Daniel Burton (Natwest Business Accelerator), Tom Martin (JetSoft), Chris Nriapia (SentrySIS) and Will Schaffer (NorthInvest)

Episode Three | Scaling The Manufacturing Mountain

Getting a product to the manufacturing stage is a key milestone for any hardware business, but it's also a process that can be filled with challenges and hidden costs. In this episode, we discuss finding the right manufacturer, knowing your rights and understanding the major hurdles on the road to getting your product into production.

Featuring Daniel Burton (Natwest Business Accelerator), Leon Doyle (WIFIPLUG) and Joseph Crabtree (Additive Manufacturing Technologies)

Episode Four | Accelerating Your Business

Accelerator programs promise valuable mentorship and networking opportunities for new and emerging startups - but often require a significant commitment of time and resources in return. In this episode, we chat to accelerator veterans from both sides of the table to explore the benefits and challenges associated with joining a program, and the most effective ways to get the best out of your experience.

Featuring Ben Barker (Artemis), Ian Emberton (Xerogrid) and Annabell Gast (Natwest Business Accelerator)

Episode Five | Preparing for Product Launch

There's nothing more exciting for a tech startup than the moment when you finally get your product into the hands of consumers. But with so many new kits and devices hitting the shelves all the time, what can you do to give your product the best chance of success when it hits the market? In this episode, we discuss the most important preparations and investments you should be making before your tech product goes on sale - and some of the common pitfalls you should be avoiding.

Featuring Natasha Barber-Evans (Natwest Business Accelerator), Chris Burgess (Binary Bots) and Gareth Gadd (Compliance Compendium).

Episode Six | Sustaining Momentum Post-Product Launch

For many entrepreneurs, simply getting your product to market can feel like the ultimate goal. But once you've reached this milestone, it's vital to ensure that you're building on this momentum and laying the groundwork for a healthy long-term business. In this episode, we discuss what the first few months after an initial product launch looks like, the challenges involved in growing your company and developing a brand, and tactics for converting one-time buyers into long-term customers.

Featuring Jordan Appleson (Hark), Laura Mason (Natwest Business Accelerator) and James Talbot (Damson Global)

Episode Seven | Learning From Failure

Every startup business reaches a point when the best laid plans go awry. Sometimes it may be possible to recover, but on other occasions the only course of action is to admit defeat and re-strategise. When you've spent months or years building your tech company from scratch, accepting that your enterprise has reached a point of no return can be incredibly tough. On this episode of the Business of Engineering podcast, we talk to entrepreneurs about their experiences of pivoting, rebuilding and achieving success from the ashes of a perceived failure.

Featuring Daniel Burton (Natwest Business Accelerator), Bradley Jensen (For Fork Sake), Tia Roqaa (Roccabox) and Mark Walsh (Kwizzbit)

Episode Eight | Partnership Management

From distribution and supplier relationships to creative collaborations and brand extension, professional partnerships are essential to a growing tech enterprise. In this episode, our panel discusses the best ways to build strong professional relationships with other companies, how those partnerships have helped their own businesses to grow and how to ensure that partnerships remain healthy and mutually beneficial in the long term.

Featuring Ryan Ciecko (Free Agent), Tracey Dawson (DaleTech Electronics) and Alistair Maiden (SYKE)

Episode Nine | Attracting and Retaining Customers

Every business needs customers. You could design the best product in your field, but unless somebody buys it, your enterprise is likely to have a short shelf life. In this episode, startup leaders discuss tactics for attracting early buyers and converting them into long-term brand advocates.

Featuring Ben Barker (Artemis), Mihaela Gruia (Research Retold), Dr. James Gupta (Synap) and Gordon Merrylees (Natwest)

Episode Ten | Online Marketing Strategies for Tech Startups

Online marketing is an essential part of running any modern business, but as a new or emerging startup it can be difficult to know where to start. In this episode, our entrepreneurial round table discusses some of the most important tactics you should be aware of when attempting to build and retain your online audience - from the importance of SEO vs PPC to website design and content marketing.

Featuring Melissa Becker (Natwest Business Accelerator) Sam Ducker (Lucky Duck) and Richard Michie (The Marketing Optimist)

Episode Eleven | How AI and Smart Technology are Transforming the Tech Sector

In 2018, there were over 79 million devices with embedded AI. This is expected to rise to 1.2 billion devices by 2023. The rise of embedded and connected devices across the tech sector provides valuable new opportunities for innovation, data analysis, automation and more. In this round table, we discuss the potential impact of the rise of AI and the opportunities this presents for tech startups.

Featuring Daniel Burkhardt Cerigo (Freelance Data Scientist), Taras Lanchev (Calbot) and Keith McCabe (Simplifai Systems Limited)

Episode Twelve | How to Innovate

Innovation is one of the most crucial aspects of staying ahead of the competition in a crowded technology market. From simple enhancements to game-changing developments, your success in fostering a community of ideas can make-or-break your business. In this month's episode of the Business of Engineering podcast, we talk to three successful entrepreneurs about how they promote innovation in their own businesses, and how and where they get their own best ideas...

Featuring William Fish (Manulytica), Danny Manu (Mymanu) and Rob Hughes (RE-NU-ME).

Element14 also recently launched an eBook entitled ‘Startups on Startups’, which acts as a companion piece to the first episodes of the Business of Engineering podcast. It can be downloaded for free in our eBooks library.

Tags: business of engineering, manufacturing, finance, startups, podcast, podcasts

Case Study | Reinventing high volume manufacturing with Dragon Innovation

jlucas — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 21:41:26 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by jlucas on 10/24/2018 9:41:26 PM

“We want to help tech companies to see around the corners” - Dragon Innovation CEO Scott Miller.

Manufacturing a new tech product can be an incredibly complex process. From choosing the right factory and sourcing components to scaling and long-term planning, how a company navigates the various challenges in a hyper-competitive market is often the difference between whether their product ultimately succeeds or fails.

As specialists in providing scalable manufacturing solutions for high volume releases, Dragon Innovation are looking to simplify this process and provide the transparency and expertise needed to help tech companies to make intelligent long term decisions at the production stage.

A mechanical engineer with senior roles at both iRobot and Walt Disney Imagineering on his CV, Dragon’s CEO Scott Miller believes that his company’s grounding in deep manufacturing and hands-on engineering expertise helps to set them apart from the competition.

“There are several companies out there that can help a tech enterprise to get from prototype to production, and then there are other companies that can write planning software around it” he says. “But I don’t know of any other companies that combine deep hardware experience with a world-class software team to the degree that we do.”

An analytical approach

In the ten years that Scott has been running Dragon Innovation, the typical customer has been a tech start-up with a working prototype and a rough bill of materials, looking to figure out how to get through the pre-manufacture stage and into production. Using innovative software tools and project managers with extensive hands-on experience, Dragon can help these companies to think about core issues such as design, trimming, assembly, finding the right factory for manufacture and implementing long-term plans - ultimately guiding them through to high volume production and distribution.

“Our product planning software is really geared towards helping companies to understand the trade-offs of the decisions they make during the product development phase” explains Scott.

More recently, they’ve also been able to work with considerably larger companies on new hardware products. According to Scott, these companies often face similar challenges to independent start-ups in the sense that they may not have a lot of in-house experience creating hardware. What they do have is funding, reach and brand recognition to take a product to market faster and at higher volume - raising the stakes all round.

“These (manufacturing) decisions can really cast a long shadow. A small issue today can turn into a huge problem down the line. Let’s say, for example, a company is choosing a processor for their product. If they happen to pick one that is nearing end-of-life or becomes unavailable, the effect on their ability to deliver on schedule can be devastating.”

“Similarly, if a company is looking at building some sort of housing for their hardware, there’s a decision to make whether to use injection molding or CNC machining. That’s two different technologies with very different capital costs and lead times - all of which are very important factors to consider.”

Many of these potentially make-or-break decisions come down to the Bill of Materials, which is why providing a deep insight into the BoM process is the foundation of Dragon Innovation’s flagship software: Product Planner . In addition to a clear picture of how the BoM will shape a company’s cashflow, the software also offers scenario-planning functionality to help the user to anticipate the consequences of these early decisions and make smart choices for long-term growth and sustainability.

Joining the Avnet Family

In 2017, Dragon Innovation was acquired by Avnet, a partnership which has opened up new doors for the company, allowing them to work in collaboration with partner companies such as Premier Farnell and Hackster.io to significantly expand their offering.

“Coupling the manufacturing chops of Dragon with the reach and distribution of Avnet gives us an opportunity to make a much bigger impact than I believe we ever could have done as a standalone company” explains Scott.

“In addition to our own expertise in helping our customers to navigate the manufacturing process, we can now offer a complete end-to-end solution in a way that no other company is set up to do. At one end, we can now work with companies like Avid and Embest to support product development, and at the other we can leverage Avnet’s supply chain and logistics to deliver the finished product to the customer.”

Looking to the future

Now that Dragon Innovation is fully integrated into the Avnet family, Scott and his colleagues are looking forward to exciting developments in the months to come. These include a number of upcoming projects with major companies, the recent opening of their first permanent European office in Amsterdam and planned appearances at several key industry events including Electronica and CES.

“Our entire team is really energised about the future” says Scott. “We have an excellent pipeline in place that’s going to help us to really ramp up the work we’re doing with larger companies. Now that we’ve built the foundations, we can really focus on growth, development, and continuing to work with some really interesting, innovative customers.”

Scott N. Miller

CEO/Co-founder Dragon Innovation

Scott has been fascinated with hardware since he was old enough to hold a screwdriver. He worked on a robotic tuna fish, life-size robotic dinosaurs for Disney Imagineering, and robotic baby dolls with Hasbro, before joining iRobot where he was responsible for leading the Roomba team to scale the functional prototype to high-volume production of the first three million units.

Tags: business of engineering, avnet, manufacturing, product planner, dragon innovation, startup stories, case study, dragon

Case Study | Spatial: Holographic Gaming, No Headsets Required

danzima — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 16:54:11 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by danzima on 8/14/2018 4:54:11 PM

Gaming is a massive global community, and a similarly huge industry. One chunk of that industry, video gaming, is expected to be a roughly $140 billion global market in 2018, according to VentureBeat. And that figure doesn't even account for a form of gaming with a much longer history: tabletop games. And it's the intersection of those two -- video gaming and tabletop gaming -- that interests the California-based startup Spatial. They refer to themselves as a "mixed reality gaming company," and the reasons why became clear to me once I watched their demo videos:

www.youtube.com/watch

"I think the gaming market is overflowing with massive anonymous content, and there are a lot of winners in that arena," says Spatial founder Kerry Shih. "But for me ... there’s sometimes a taxing and tiresome feeling to everything always being online, everything anonymous and massive. I think there’s a counter to that trend, towards a more interpersonal experience, and we hope to foster that in the form of tabletop gaming." The research bears out Shih's observations, as board games are projected to remain a growing global market in the coming years, and one that has embraced new tech. To take one example, tabletop classic Settlers of Catan is available in a variety of electronic formats, including iOS and Android apps, and one can play against opponents all over the world. "Tabletop has this unbelievably great venue where you’re shoulder to shoulder," Shih adds with a laugh, "so I can look at the anguish in my brother’s face as I beat him in a board game. That’s a really rich experience, with your family or friends or whomever." As someone who spent a good deal of time in his teens in hobby shops and convention centers playing in Magic: The Gathering tournaments, I can attest to this!

The aforementioned Settlers of Catan is part of the gaming experience that helped Shih and the Spatial team set their goals as they developed their product. "I think you could talk about our goal in terms of, I love Settlers of Catan, but I also love Clash Royale and Hearthstone (two popular online games which reference board gaming, collectible card gaming, and more). And with the first example you have piece play and the tactile feel, and the face to face contest gathered around the table, but with the second you have those amazing mechanics and graphics and the stuff I grew up on and love. And the whole project was borne out of, 'Why do I have to choose? Why can’t I have the awesome parts of digital gaming combined with tabletop piece play?'"

Where do you think Spatial fits into the next iteration of electronic gaming, I asked Shih. "I actually think it’s a bit of a trap to say 'next' as if there’s some curve where one form of gaming is better than the other," he points out. "But if you’re looking at the market as a whole, you have headset driven stuff like virtual reality (VR) and it’s kind of its own beast, it’s a very singleton experience and highly immersive. Headset-driven AR is another side of the spectrum where you’re wearing glasses or a hololens or something and it’s augmenting the digital imagery, as opposed to through the phone or tablet AR where you’re looking through a reconstituted world born from my camera and those images are morphed on the fly. And what we’re about is projected AR, which is using a display and the glass to render the images tethered to the piece play and the play space that you’re manipulating with your hands."

Watching Spatial's demo videos, I was reminded of the famous scene in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, where Chewbacca and R2D2 play a sort of holographic chess game (the internet helpfully let me know that the game is called Dejarik, and supposedly it's pretty popular). So how did the company develop this space age tech? "One thing we’ve tried to solve is 'How do you build the world’s most inexpensive camera-driven IoT device?'” says Shih. "That’s something a lot of people are trying to solve, and we’re trying to crack it by using the camera for detection of objects in a gaming context. With the architecture, our idea was to let the hardware itself proxy the joystick controls and images from the camera, and then shovel it over to the mobile device and let that do the majority of the processing."

"One thing about computer vision and machine learning we found," he continues, "is that you don’t actually want HD images! Trying to find a 1 inch play piece in a tabletop size area, you don’t want a 1080p image because it would take forever to process, so what is the right resolution and encoding, and the tradeoff is between how much time it takes to encode the image on the sensor rig device and then unpack it on the mobile device."

Unsurprisingly for this emerging type of gaming tech, Spatial faced challenges in development. The team were creating a model in the gaming engine that could triangulate the two dimensional location of a play piece, detected by a camera, which then informs about a location on the table. This in turn communicates with the game engine rendering on a display that’s tilting backwards, bouncing off of glass and into the user's eyes. There were also the types of dollars and cents questions anyone who is selling hardware runs into: "We were working with what we could get off the shelf, parts online at low scale, tinkering around until we can get it working. We said 'we’re never going to be able to have an accessibly priced product if it needs any sort of Raspberry Pi or other chipset on there. Even a $10 computer would be too expensive, because once you mark it up for retail that’s the majority of your bill of materials." Finding the right components -- MCU, camera, and more -- was its own breakthrough, Shih says.

Shih has naturally been engrossed in the world of Spatial, but what developments in tech outside of his own company have caught his attention, I asked. "So having sort of heard the words machine learning, deep learning, neural nets, I sort of glossed over those when I originally read about them," he explains, "but now having used them in this project and seeing what other big companies are doing, it really is mindblowing. What it does to the programmatic model is remarkable; someone described it to me as: the old model was, ‘I write some rules, I give it some data, and it calculates an answer,’ and machine learning is ‘I have the data, I don’t know the rules, but here are the answers I expect.' And machine learning figures out the most optimal ruleset."

And finally, what's coming up next for Spatial? Says Shih: "Currently we’re all about the Kickstarter, we’re really happy with the response we’re getting from the campaign, and of course the market will tell us what they like and what they don’t like. Even in those three weeks of pre-campaigning we’ve come up with some game ideas from the feedback, so that’s awesome!"

Tags: interview, startup, gaming, machine learning, startup stories, case_study, mixed reality, augmented reality, case study

Interview with Rodolfo Saccoman, Founder and CEO of MATRIX Labs

semaj — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 15:17:17 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by semaj on 6/20/2018 3:17:17 PM

MATRIX Labs is an organization dedicated to helping aspiring creators and entrepreneurs develop Internet of Things solutions. The company's principal products include MATRIX CreatorMATRIX Creator and VoiceVoice—development boards designed for efficient and affordable hardware applications, with the latter product specifically focused on voice assistant applications.

The following is an abridged transcript of a March 18, 2018 interview between Rodolfo Saccoman, Founder and CEO of MATRIX Labs, and the element14 Community team.

Can you give a quick overview of the MATRIX Voice and share some of the inspiration that motivated you to develop this product?

MATRIX Voice is an evolution of our plan to provide users, makers, and entrepreneurs with the ability to create hardware products and solutions extremely fast. One of our big missions is to democratize the intersection between hardware, AI, and software. If you think about it, creating hardware products is extremely expensive. It requires years of development. There're a lot of barriers for a company to innovate, in terms of hardware. How do you easily interface artificial intelligence—be it computer vision, be it voice recognition, and other aspects of AI—into the hardware and some type of a software stack, where you can actually focus on building your market, building your solution, and then just developing something of value instead of spending millions of dollars and a couple of years trying to get a prototype together?

You decided to release this product as a piece of open source technology that's designed to expedite the development process you talked about. Why do you find that open source approach to be valuable?

We are really community-centric. We believe in this concept that if you give smart and creative engineers and thinkers this kind of building block platform, amazing things will come from it. All of our technologies are geared towards that. Specifically for MATRIX Voice, what we achieved was creating a very affordable development board where you can bring in any third party voice recognition APIs or solutions and run it through MATRIX Voice. MATRIX Voice can work with the Raspberry Pi collection, but it can also work by itself. It’s almost like we want to embrace more of the creative minds globally, and enabling our hardware and accompanying operating systems to allow these solutions and creations and new companies to happen. We're very bullish on computer vision. We're very bullish on voice recognition. We're bullish on gesture recognition and things that we like to call "touchless technology." Our MATRIX product lines are focused on that concept of making touchless technology approachable by everyone. Our slogan, it's "The Internet of Things for everyone," which, I think, it's pretty accurate what we're trying to achieve.

Can you talk about how your ongoing collaboration with element14 specifically fits into the picture in terms of the MATRIX Voice?

Right now, we are finalizing the details of how element14 is distributing MATRIX Voice. What we have created with Hari [Kalyanaraman, Global Head of Emerging Businesses at element14] and the great team at Avnet is this family of products that are MATRIX products. The first one was MATRIX Creator that in many ways surpassed our every expectation of the reach. And then MATRIX Voice is the next product in line. The idea there is for element14 to distribute it globally. We have certified Voice so it can be shipped to any country in the world. We passed all of the strict certifications of the product globally. From a very high level overview, we love how Avnet is thinking about the maker innovation of hardware solutions. I think the vision is aligned to ours in a way that— Give people amazing products, have software that is enabling, and make it as open source as you can. In many ways, the way I like to compare it is, think back—I think it was 2007 if I'm not mistaken—where Apple introduced its iPhone. What happened there is that they created a hardware, they allowed the software to be somewhat flexible, they enabled people to create apps—the hardware had some sensors and it had the ability to have connectivity. Our MATRIX Creator and MATRIX Voice product lines go somewhat along that same thinking. Let's trade this very powerful piece of hardware—more intended, obviously, for Internet of Things/AI physical world applications—let's create an operating system that is pretty flexible, let's give developers the tool to create, and let's see what amazing things happen. What killer apps are going to happen in the world based on MATRIX Creator and MATRIX Voice? We even launched a very early app store, where you have developers creating apps on top of the MATRIX Creator, which is awesome. We foresee that happening more and more.

I'm thinking about what you're talking about and the various other interviews that I've conducted, and a common theme that all of these founders of startups have articulated is that of collaboration and empowering others who may have otherwise limited access to learning more about how technology functions. At this point where we are in today's society, everyone's a consumer, but it seems like so few people really understand what goes into the technology that powers their lives. I'm wondering, what are some ways that we can break down those barriers to entry within the world of technology?

If you think back to maybe, I don't know, 1994, HTML and other web coding languages—very few people knew about it. It wasn't commonplace. It took some time to learn. And then, today, there're a plethora of of mobile and web services. I think what we are trying to do at MATRIX Labs is make hardware/AI convergence as easy as it is to create websites. I think that would be amazing. Think of, let's say, our MATRIX Creator product. If you were just to get all the different components and protocols that we have embedded into the board, it would take about $350.00 worth of components. Then you have to manufacture, you have to certify it, and so forth. We were able to bring down the price to $99.00 per board. And then you can go to our GitHub account or go to our Community, you can go to our app store, you can start downloading apps. You're basically making that MATRIX Voice become usable, become a building platform. But, if you were to look at that many years ago, or even today, it's very expensive. Our goal is to democratize that and give folks the tools to build. I think that's so rewarding for the team.

Looking back at the evolution of MATRIX Labs, can you share any key landmarks or milestones that directly led to your current success?

The most important thing is your team. I think going at it alone is very difficult. My suggestion would be to find a complementary co-founder from the get-go. Usually, it's a three-prong approach. You want one very technical co-founder—especially for technology companies—a very technical co-founder, a very sales-oriented partnership-oriented co-founder, and the other one is a business marketer co-founder. I think that's very important. Second portion is, you're going to need some funding. There're many ways of doing it. Increasingly, there's a lot of more crowd-source funding opportunities. You want to raise enough funding to reach some very important milestones. The other thing is, you'll want to make decisions where you reduce your development time. Let's say if you have a hardware product in mind, what can you use right now off the shelf, but that it's scalable enough that maybe you can do 5,000 units, 10,000 units quickly, inexpensively, so you can prove the market so you can get some deals? Take that route instead of developing your own hardware. I think that's really important. I would say the mix of your co-founders—the founding team. Second is, you have to secure some type of funding to give you a runway for you to show your first proof of concept. Thirdly is, utilize technologies that are already out there in the marketplace so you can really prove that you can sell whatever it is that you're building. I think those things are really, really important.

Are there any significant challenges that you've had to overcome during the development of the MATRIX Voice?

MATRIX Creator and MATRIX Voice, these are hard products to make. MATRIX Voice took us probably six months longer than we had projected, though we made some really good changes along the way. We included an ESP32 chip as another version, so there's a basic MATRIX Voice version and then there's a MATRIX Voice ESP32, which is this chip that has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and a microcontroller. That was a great addition to the product because now it enables developers and enterprises to create MATRIX Voice products just with the MATRIX Voice board itself. They can choose just to run it by itself. You don't need another kind of processor. But, that took longer. Certification processes—we're very serious on that because what we are seeing is that we have a lot of enterprise clients also utilizing our boards to create office automation solutions, home automation products, so, that usually takes longer. For Voice, specifically, we took a little longer to get the final product out because we wanted to bring in that ESP32, we wanted to increase the size of the FPGA so people can do a lot of more voice recognition applications right at the edge, so they don't have to hit the cloud if they don't want to. Yeah, so, I think those were certain things. But, they were calculated. But, again, as all of us, we want to ship the product as fast as we can, but we only ship if it's incredible.

Looking ahead, what excites you about the future of your company?

I think the future for MATRIX Labs is us enabling the IoT app economy. This amazing building block that we're building, the goal is that it can operate similar to how the Apple Store—how you can download apps on your smartphone, so your smartphone does, possibly 1.6 million, I think that's the number of apps today. Our goal for MATRIX Labs is that our products, working with others, can really enable that IoT app economy to happen. That would be really exciting.

For more information about MATRIX Labs, read our in-depth case study highlighting the MATRIX Voice.

Tags: rodolfo saccoman, matrix voice, matrix labs, interview, startup, interviews

Case Study | MATRIX Voice: Open-Source Voice Development for All

semaj — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 15:16:28 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by semaj on 6/20/2018 3:16:28 PM

As the Internet of Things continues to expand, the prospect of developing unique IoT products is something that should, in theory, excite makers, engineers, and hobbyists. However, the process of successfully integrating artificial intelligence, hardware, and software in order to create a viable solution can sometimes take years and millions of dollars to bring to fruition. For a single individual or even a small tech company looking to enter the IoT space, those can be insurmountable barriers to entry.

After recognizing that startup companies like his faced steep odds in order to successfully compete in such a market, MATRIX Labs CEO and co-founder Rodolfo Saccoman set about devising a solution that would allow companies to bypass years of research and millions of dollars spent developing prototypes that would require additional testing and compliance certifications before being brought to market. The product he ultimately delivered was the MATRIX VoiceMATRIX Voice.

Building off of the success of the MATRIX CreatorMATRIX Creator, a development board also designed for creating IoT solutions, the MATRIX Voice is a development board that specifically targets the development of speech recognition and virtual assistant technologies. Powered by a Raspberry Pi computer, the MATRIX Voice allows a user to utilize existing software such as Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, or any other voice recognition API, and create unique voice applications.

A fitting 3.14 inches in diameter, the MATRIX Voice board features a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA, 64 Mbit SDRAM, a 7 MEMS microphone array, and 18 LEDs among other features, including an optional Wi-Fi attachmentoptional Wi-Fi attachment depending on the model. 64 GPIO expansion pins—40 of which are used to connect to a Raspberry Pi—allow for additional customization. Beamforming, noise cancellation, far-field speech recognition, and dereverberation capabilities ensure high quality performance for all voice applications.

When asked about the decision to release the product as open-source technology, Saccoman spoke to the importance of fostering creativity within the global community of engineers and makers, saying, "We want to enable our hardware and accompanying operating systems to allow their solutions, creations, and new companies to succeed. Instead of a company trying to build their own board, they can package our MATRIX Voice, manufacture any kind of casing, and then take their product to market." This community-centric approach is one that Saccoman holds in high esteem as he strives "to democratize the intersection between hardware, AI, and software."

In pursuit of this goal, Saccoman mentioned that he gleaned some inspiration from the launch of the iPhone in 2007. Similar to the iPhone, Saccoman wanted to release a piece of hardware that utilized software that had some flexibility that would enable users to create apps and other tools with real-world applications. In fact, MATRIX maintains its own App Store, featuring apps that have been created for use with the MATRIX Creator and Voice.

Moving forward, Saccoman is excited by the prospect of MATRIX Labs being a forerunner of an IoT app economy that he hopes will flourish alongside the Creator and Voice development boards. He's confident in the ability of both products to "provide users, makers, and entrepreneurs with the ability to create hardware products and solutions extremely fast" and efficiently, thereby enabling them to have a better chance of finding success in the IoT market. Saccoman and the team he's assembled are eager to see how makers choose to harness the power of the Voice for domestic and commercial purposes. Declaring "The Internet of Things for Everyone" as the company's adopted slogan, the team at Matrix Labs recognizes that they have their work cut out for them as they attempt to make headway in a market primarily dominated by three tech giants. Nevertheless, their enthusiasm is undeniable and the proven success of the Creator seems to suggest that the Voice will also prove to be a welcome addition to a burgeoning Internet of Things.

www.youtube.com/watch

For more information regarding how Premier Farnell can support your startup initiative, visit us at www.element14.com/startups

Tags: rodolfo saccoman, matrix voice, start up, matrix labs, interview, startup, startup stories, case_study, case study, interviews

Interview with Azhar Hussain, Founder and CEO of Hanhaa, Ltd.

semaj — Tue, 08 May 2018 15:36:03 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by semaj on 5/8/2018 3:36:03 PM

Hanhaa, Ltd. is a London-based Internet of Things innovator dedicated to connecting customers and service providers to real-time information about the location, condition, and security of their assets, wherever they are in the world. The company's current products and services include Symbisa, a data-capture device that transmits data to Excel spreadsheets in real-time; Parcelive, a live parcel-tracking service; and Hanhaa Mobile, the first mobile network dedicated to the unique needs of the Internet of Things.

The following is an abridged transcript of an April 23, 2018 interview between Azhar Hussain, Founder and CEO of Hanhaa, Ltd., and the element14 Community team.

To begin, can you give a quick overview of Hanhaa and share some of the inspiration that motivated you to develop Symbisa?

So, Hanhaa—we're about twenty people now—based in London. We have a lot of products, but Symbisa is one of our founding products. What inspired us to really look at this problem was that we discovered that the biggest problem with production isn't money, it isn't tech, it isn't knowledge, it's actually just the practicality of getting something done in synchronization. If you are part of a big company, there're so many moving parts that, even when everyone agrees that they should do something, there's a backlog of work, which could stretch into a year or two, unless you get the team moving, hire everyone, sponsorships to try and get it done—everything becomes a battle. Even when everybody wants to do it, it still seems to be a battle. So, what Symbisa would try to do was see how we get the person with the problem to actually address the problem themselves. And that meant, one, remove any engineering bias, or as many as practically possible; two, make the cost of adoption so low that it doesn't require a really big level of finances in order to get going; and three, it was really to make it so easy, that from the time you could buy it to the time you were actively using it—it would be minutes. So, the first thing, we use Excel as our main front end. The upside of this is, that everybody either knows how to use Excel or is one degree away from somebody who knows how to use Excel, almost anywhere in the world. That was really a big part of our cycle, was to drive that. The second one was to remove any kind of integration issues.

So, what Symbisa does is, for the first time it live-links sensors to a cell in a spreadsheet. In other words, you could take a Symbisa device, deploy it somewhere in the world, you basically would send it out into the world either with an asset or whatever you want to monitor. And then, you could sit there with a spreadsheet, type in the name of the device and the sensor that you want, and that data will appear in your spreadsheet. That's it. There's nothing else for you to do. You don't have to install anything other than a small plugin. You don't need any programming experience, you don't need to configure anything. From the time you open the box to the time you get live data—that time is minutes. And, if you want to share that data with somebody else, you just send them an email attachment with the Excel spreadsheet. And, when they open up Excel, all the data is instantly refreshed, so they get data that's new. And then what it allows you to do is, you can link in other data sources or create your own template and you can send templates out to people and it allows them to fill in the name of the device for the entire template to get populated with all the information that you need.

Let's say you're a rancher. You care a lot about how many head of cattle you have. Now, a cow or a bull, that'll cost you—depending on where you are—about a thousand dollars per head. This is an asset that you really care about. So, what you can do with Symbisa is just attach it to an animal and then go back to your farm, open up a spreadsheet, type in the name of the device, and then suddenly, you get to see the location of that animal. Is the animal moving or not? What's the temperature of the environment? Are they inside or outside? Have they been standing still for a long time? If they're not standing still, if they're moving, which direction are they moving? You have all of that on a spreadsheet. Imagine, if you'd like, having line upon line of every animal that you want to track on a spreadsheet, where the spreadsheet is—in real-time—changing according to what's happening in the world out there on your farm, which could be acres and acres and acres across. What Symbisa does is it allows somebody who's not super technical, but who has a real problem to solve, to solve that problem such that they don't need anybody else to really help them, or the skills that they needed to do so was within their own family or organization; they didn't need somebody special to come in and set anything up.

Can you talk about your market? Do you envision this as a product for corporations as an alternate way to collect data, or is it more for personal use, or both?

I think it's both. We see the ease of adoption to be the main selling point. It means that if you're a small company or an individual, you can easily create your own cases and try new things out. But, even if you're a large company, other ways of collecting data usually require you to do something where you have to install stuff, you have to configure stuff, you have to get people special software, you have to train them, all this kind of stuff. Where, what they could do with Symbisa is they could buy a bunch of devices and just set up spreadsheets. You can have a spreadsheet out, and suddenly those spreadsheets come alive. And, everybody has Excel.

I can give you another example of that. We're talking to a big car company. One of the challenges they have is that they can't keep track of their cars between the factory and the dealer. They're a car company; it's not a lack of money that's stopping them, it's just the complexity of how many people are involved with the process. Secondly, a lot of these people don't work for the car company. The dealer has people of their own. What they can do with Symbisa is they can put the device into the document wallet of the car. And, now they can just email a spreadsheet to the dealer on the other side and he can look up on the spreadsheet where the cars are that are supposed to be coming to him. Easy. Didn't require anything elaborate, didn't require any special software.

As you've been developing this product, have there been any notable challenges that you've had to overcome as you work to make this a very intuitive and easy-to-understand product for others to use?

A problem we wanted to solve was connectivity and security. Each device actually ships with its own mobile connection. That was a lot of work to get done. Hanhaa is its own mobile operator now. What this means for our customers is that, one, on the security side, we've taken the devices off the public IP network, so these devices are not publicly accessible, and that really helps the security and hacking—it makes it much tougher to do that. The second thing we wanted to do was to remove the concept of roaming from our devices. That’s a big thing that we've done away with. The way you pay for the device is, you pay per data read. Every time the data comes back to you, you pay a micro fee. If your device is in Boston or Brazil or Belgium, it wouldn't matter—you're charged the same. Those are some of the big challenges we had to work at. How do you make it so easy, that when you open it up and power up, it just works? The device does not connect to Wi-Fi, it doesn't connect to anything online; it only works in a licensed environment. That allows Symbisa to have global coverage without you having to mess around with anything, really. Another challenge we've tried to overcome is compliance. Everything from the battery, the plastics, the radio, aviation, yeah, it's just a whole load of things that we had to make sure were compliant. And, we've made all of that publicly available as well. You can download documents and reports and whatever else you need to verify that it complies with the standards that've been set.

Looking ahead, what excites you about the future of your company and your product that you're developing here?

I'm looking forward to growing my relationship with Avnet and Microsoft. In the future, we'll be migrating the devices to 5G cellular technology. But, as an immediate next step, we're looking forward to launching this product not just in the U.S., but across the Avnet global—or Farnell—global reach. We're bringing up new technology around our Parcelive product, which is another product that we have around parcel tracking. We're quite excited about that, including new proof of delivery technology, which allows you to track your parcel with your credit card. That's some new tech we've got coming next year.

What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs looking to start a company or develop a product?

If you need advice to be an entrepreneur, it's probably not for you. Don't get into it because it's hard and it's absolutely not the road you should travel down. And, if advice from a total stranger is going to sway your decision, it's clearly not a thing for you.

For more information about Hanhaa, Ltd., read our in-depth case study highlighting the Symbisa product.

Tags: start up, hanhaa symbisa, interview, symbisa, startup stories, hanhaa, azhar hussain, interviews

Case Study | Hanhaa Presents Symbisa: Real-Time Data Capture and Analysis Around the World

semaj — Tue, 08 May 2018 15:10:46 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by semaj on 5/8/2018 3:10:46 PM

After recognizing the growing importance of data collection and management to corporations of all sizes, Azhar Hussain, founder and CEO of Hanhaa, Ltd., sought to develop an IoT solution that would eliminate any technical barriers to entry for prospective users and allow for direct out-of-the-box operation. Because he identifies practicality, rather than finances or limited technology, as the most substantial impediment to a company's general efficiency, Hussain emphasized the need for a product that a user could simply power on and immediately achieve full functionality.

Following the development of a working prototype, the team at Hanhaa was ready to introduce the world to Symbisa. The device is equipped with five sensors capable of tracking location, light, temperature, humidity, and movement, and also features a GSM quad band module for communications. With the ability to be deployed nearly anywhere in the world and transmit data over Hanhaa's own private mobile network, Symbisa provides an attractive solution for individuals seeking efficient and secure access to data.

Once activated, data captured by the device is automatically loaded into the user's preconfigured Microsoft Excel spreadsheet using a special plugin. The user can then easily share this data as an email attachment and it will be immediately refreshed when the attachment is opened by the recipient.

Hussain credits the ubiquity of Microsoft Excel as a primary reason for Symbisa's appeal to customers who might not have technical backgrounds. Utilizing a well-known platform such as Excel is a way of empowering users to interact with data within an environment that is already familiar, thereby contributing to the product's overall ease of use. Hussain explains that users can easily "link in other data sources or create their own template and send templates out to people" who can then "fill in the name of a specific Symbisa device and the entire template will be instantly populated with all of the information that they need."

Speaking to the effective integration of Excel within Symbisa, a representative from Microsoft's Office 365 Ecosystem team recalls being impressed by Symbisa's ability to "bring live data into Excel that you could analyze or consume in all kinds of ways that we might not even imagine." When Hussain approached Microsoft seeking resources that would allow him to upgrade his product, the Office 365 team immediately saw potential in Symbisa and offered him engineering support amongst other resources that, according to Microsoft, helped the Hanhaa team "build a modern add-in that worked with Office 365, that worked with Excel, that worked across platforms, and really looked like it was integrated into the Excel experience in an elegant way."

During the development process, Hussain shared that his team faced challenges regarding connectivity and security. Rather than utilizing a Wi-Fi connection to transmit data, the team ultimately decided to equip Symbisa with a mobile connection, with Hanhaa serving as its own mobile operator. Hussain notes that by "taking the devices off the public IP network, they are not publicly accessible, and that really helps increase the security and minimize the risk of hacking." While Symbisa devices presently utilize 2G cellular technology, Hussain is excited about the prospect of transitioning the devices to 5G mobile services in the future.

Additionally, Hanhaa forged a working relationship with Premier Farnell, Avnet, and TE Connectivity early on in the company's development, which Hussain mentions was crucial in terms of "developing, modifying, and fixing Symbisa and helping the product come to market." The connection with Microsoft further augmented Symbisa's accessibility and proved to be an essential component of the product's success.

Hari Kalyanaraman, Global Head of Emerging Businesses at element14, shares Hussain's excitement regarding the limitless possibilities that Symbisa offers. He explains, "By combining sensing capabilities with a global mobile network, Symbisa offers a secure IoT solution that can be rapidly deployed. The ability to stream data in real-time from Symbisa into Microsoft Excel lowers the barrier to entry for IoT applications. We are seeing effective real-world applications from environmental monitoring to freight tracking, and are excited to collaborate with Hanhaa and Microsoft and bring Symbisa to market."

According to Hussain, Symbisa is well-positioned to improve upon the data capture methods currently employed by both individuals and large corporations. As a low-cost and intuitive IoT device, "Symbisa empowers users to quickly and easily measure, capture, and analyze their world," offering immediate solutions to problems that previously required far more labor-intensive processes. Whether it's used to track the shipment of valuable merchandise, monitor the humidity of a museum display case, or establish a comfortable temperature within the home, Symbisa offers an endless possibility of applications that can be customized and adapted to meet any need.

players.brightcove.net/.../index.html

For more information regarding how Premier Farnell can support your startup initiative, visit us at www.element14.com/startups

Tags: start-ups, start up, hanhaa symbisa, start-up, interview, startup, symbisa, start ups, startup stories, case_study, hanhaa, azhar hussain, case study, interviews

Case Study | GraspIO Cloudio: Democratizing Physical Computing

semaj — Thu, 03 May 2018 13:10:33 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by semaj on 5/3/2018 1:10:33 PM

GraspIO's CloudioGraspIO's Cloudio is a comprehensive development suite that serves as both an educational device for tech enthusiasts interested in physical computing as well as a helpful prototyping tool for experienced makers looking to harness the full power of the Raspberry Pi. Comprised of three components—a Raspberry Pi add-on card, a mobile app available on iOS and Android devices, and the GraspIO IoT Cloud—Cloudio offers a wide array of applications ranging from voice assistance to sensor monitoring.

Powered by an Atmel AVR ATmega32U4 8-bit microcontroller, Cloudio includes three digital output ports, three ADC ports, and various on-board sensors amongst other features. The mobile app features an intuitive drag and drop method of programming that allows users to quickly map out various actions directly from their phone or tablet. Cloudio also allows for IFTTT (If This Then That) functionality as both an action and a trigger, with integration possible with thousands of apps and smart devices.

Speaking to the product's appeal among individuals who might not have extensive physical computing experience, Hari Kalyanaraman, Global Head of Emerging Businesses at element14, notes, "Cloudio's intuitive drag and drop-based mobile app makes it very easy for anyone to prototype and build IoT applications using the Raspberry Pi in minutes. Element14 is strongly committed to fostering innovation and helping startups bring their ideas to life. Our manufacturing and distribution partnership with GraspIO is a perfect example."

When asked about the inspiration behind the product, company co-founder Shanmugha T S explained that "the goal of the GraspIO company is to make the world of robotics and IoT less technical and more practical for prototyping, play, and learning." He recognized the popularity of the Raspberry Pi and decided to utilize this device as a platform for his own product that would grant novice makers further accessibility into the world of IoT, while also appealing to experienced builders.

Despite marketing Cloudio as a device designed for both beginners and experts, Shanmugha acknowledges that the company is primarily operating within what he describes as "a developers and makers ecosystem." This is due in part to what has traditionally been perceived as a steep learning curve that deters novice tech enthusiasts from feeling comfortable engaging with a product such as Cloudio. But Shanmugha remains confident that, "[GraspIO has] a very good role to play in the education setting" since the product can be effectively utilized by all, including those individuals without extensive engineering backgrounds.

During the development process, the GraspIO team experienced challenges concerning varying performance speeds across different models of the Raspberry Pi. Shanmugha wanted to ensure that Cloudio was compatible with each generation of the Raspberry Pi without compromising the overall user experience. Unsurprisingly, when used in conjunction with the newer models of the Pi, the team noted that Cloudio operated much faster when compared to the older Pi computers. Shanmugha admits that his team has not yet reached a full resolution regarding performance speeds across Pi models, but he is satisfied with the fact that Cloudio still provides the user with a positive experience, even on the early generation Pi computers.

After developing a working prototype, Shanmugha, along with co-founder Kishore Varma, presented Cloudio at an IoT contest hosted by the University of Cambridge's Robinson College. It was here that the partners met representatives from element14 who saw great potential in the product and were interested in developing a working relationship with the company. Shanmugha immediately recognized the value that element14 would provide for GraspIO "in terms of experience, management, distribution, and manufacturing," calling this relationship "a homerun" for the company.

The democratization of physical computing is a goal as ambitious as it is noble, but nevertheless it's one that Shanmugha has adopted as his company's slogan and one that he hopes to bring to fruition within his lifetime. He looks forward to "building a future where [students] are not only going to carry books and tablets; they're going to carry one single-board computer," and he wants to ensure that the GraspIO platform can empower those same students and help them harness the full potential of the computing power at their disposal.

www.youtube.com/watch

If you are interested in learning more about Cloudio and how the product functions, you can check out the recent RoadTest that was hosted on the element14 Community. There, you'll find in-depth product reviews, descriptions, images, and videos submitted by Community members who tested the product and demonstrated its various applications.

For more information regarding how Premier Farnell can support your startup initiative, visit us at www.element14.com/startups

Tags: start-ups, start up, start-up, graspio, interview, grasp.io, start ups, startup stories, case_study, shanmugha, case study, interviews, cloudio

Case Study | Piper Computer Kit – Crafting the Minds of Young Engineers

semaj — Mon, 19 Mar 2018 20:36:35 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by semaj on 3/19/2018 8:36:35 PM

As the world around us continues to rapidly evolve, one of the most significant factors that inhibits technological progress is a lack of opportunities or resources that would help inspire young people and children to seek to understand the technologies that power their world.

After engaging in humanitarian work in Ghana, Mark Pavlyukovskyy, founder and CEO of Piper, Inc., realized that the concept of technological proficiency was more closely correlated to context and opportunity than it was to talent. He recognized that, because most children derive pleasure from playing games and interacting with friends, the prospect of learning coding and electronics might appear daunting unless such concepts were presented in a different context that appealed to these same children.

With this information in mind, Mark and Piper cofounder Dr. Joel Sadler set out to build a product that they hoped would motivate and excite children to learn basic engineering skills. Understanding the importance of contextualizing these skills, Mark and Joel chose to utilize Minecraft as the platform for what ultimately became the Piper Computer Kit.

As the second best-selling video game of all time, Minecraft, according to Mark, makes the Piper Computer Kit "much more accessible and much easier for [kids] to master … because they already have a shared context with the game."

The kit provides the user with everything needed to build a fully functioning computer and is designed "to inspire kids to unlock their innate creative potential … by growing confidence around being creators of technology." Kids first assemble their own personal computer by following an actual engineering blueprint before using the computer to play Piper’s own educational edition of Minecraft, which is powered by the Raspberry Pi 3.

Within the game, users are prompted to physically build and code switches and LEDs in order to accomplish various tasks. According to the company website, "kids learn the electronics and programming skills necessary to invent solutions to the problems that surround them. These skills include building, parallel circuitry, breadboarding, problem solving, [and] critical thinking," among others.

Hari Kalyanaraman, Global Head of Emerging Businesses at element14, commends Piper for "developing a fun and engaging STEM kit that enables kids to build their own computer and derive intuition behind simple electronics through Minecraft. Our collaboration started with their very first Kickstarter campaign and we look forward to bringing the Piper Computer Kit to market."

When originally designing the Piper Computer Kit, Mark acknowledged that his ability to constantly test early prototypes with kids and receive feedback from parents and educators was crucial to the product's success. He also attested that he often had to resist his "bias to action and to doing things" in order to "slow down and … make a more deliberate decision" so as not to spend a great deal of time pursuing ideas that might not have resulted in the same level of success.

There was a point in the early stages of development where Mark and Joel contemplated developing their own platform rather than using Minecraft as the basis for their product. They consulted with a trusted senior advisor who emphasized the importance of the existing relationship that kids already had with the game, and Mark recalled being told that "'if you were to switch, you're going to lose some of that excitement and magic that you have right now.'" Fortunately, Mark recognized the value of that advice and he revealed that he often receives feedback from parents who explain that Minecraft is what initially attracts them to the product.

When asked what excites him about the future of his company, Mark explained that the fact "that we're building something that doesn't exist that I think can inspire a whole generation of kids the same way that I was inspired, to be curious about the world and to understand how things work" motivates him and his team to continue to refine the Piper Computer Kit and make it a useful educational tool that teaches, entertains, and empowers children to identify themselves as creators rather than consumers of technology.

Mark also expressed his willingness to directly answer questions from any interested readers or serve as a mentor for aspiring entrepreneurs. He can be reached via email at mark@playpiper.com.

www.youtube.com/watch

For more information regarding how Premier Farnell can support your startup initiative, visit us at www.element14.com/startups

Tags: interview, startup, piper computer kit, start ups, piper, startup stories, case_study, case study, interviews, mark pavlyukovskyy

Case Study | Mycroft AI – The Open Source Voice Assistant

semaj — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 14:06:59 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by semaj on 3/6/2018 2:06:59 PM

With the expansion of voice command within smart devices, the need to ensure users' privacy and grant them agency is one that Mycroft AI, Inc. CEO Joshua Montgomery has made his company's central mission. As an ascending player in a market dominated by the giants of Silicon Valley, Mycroft AI supports a technological future that is transparent, open, and free from third party interference.

As the world's first open source voice assistant, Mycroft provides users with an AI system that is completely customizable and designed to simulate human interaction. Although Mycroft can operate on any system such as a personal computer or an automobile, the company has developed two products, the Mark 1 and the soon-to-be-released Mark II, in order to offer an open source alternative to existing smart speakers that collect and mine customer data.

Powered by the Raspberry Pi 3, the Mark 1 is an open software and hardware device geared toward the hacker and developer communities. According to Joshua, "the idea behind the Mark 1 was to empower makers and hackers and developers to help to advance the state of the art of this technology by engaging in creative activities with it." Unlike other AIs, Mycroft features a limitless set of skills that are being continuously developed and refined by its own user base.

After presenting the Mark 1 as an advanced prototype primarily intended for hackers, the company is marketing the Mark II as a polished smart speaker that will appeal to both consumers and makers. Utilizing the same open source approach as its predecessor, the Mark II features a Xilinx quad-core processor, a far-field six microphone array designed by Aaware, beamforming and noise reduction functionalities, and a MicroSD card slot, among other specifications.

"Mycroft brings an open source approach to AI that is a good fit with our community of makers, developers and hackers. It is great to see their evolution from the days of the Mark I," says Hari Kalyanaraman, Global Head of Emerging Businesses at element14.

When developing both of the Mark products, Joshua recognized that in order to be competitive within the market, it was "important that we get the types of economies of scale that are available to companies that would be shipping vastly greater quantity." In pursuit of this goal, he collaborated with element14, Avnet, and Aaware in order to "access a supply chain that small companies like us would never be able to build on our own at pricing that's very competitive to what a big tech company would pay."

Joshua also attributes much of his success to his decision to take his initial vision for Mycroft to market without feeling pressured to build anything beforehand. According to Joshua, "the biggest wasted resource in our country is entrepreneurs who are chasing problems that nobody's willing to pay to have solved." He advises other entrepreneurs to first engage in market research with an idea rather than a physical product. The act of successfully preselling a product that does not yet exist, with the promise of later delivering the physical product is crucial to a company's overall success.

In Mycroft's case, the company has currently raised over $400,000 for the Mark II, with the finished product expected to ship by the end of the year. Those interested in supporting the company can do so via the Mark II Kickstarter or Mark II Indiegogo page.

Looking ahead, Joshua expressed his enthusiasm for building a product that will allow people to effortlessly accomplish both simple and complex tasks within environments that they inhabit in their everyday lives. His is a vision for a future where "the users control their experience, they control their data, they're able to customize it, and they're able to keep their private information, private." He can't help but be excited about the prospect of developing a ubiquitous AI that runs anywhere and responds exactly like a person.

Or, as Joshua says, "We're building J.A.R.V.I.S. from Iron Man. Who doesn't want to work on that project?"

www.youtube.com/watch

For more information regarding how Premier Farnell can support your startup initiative, visit us at https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-83185

Tags: joshua montgomery, mark 1, mycroft ai, mark ii, interview, start ups, startup stories, case_study, case study, interviews

High Performance Computing with Raspberry Pi? Bitscope Clusters Says Yes!

danzima — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 21:36:10 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by danzima on 11/30/2017 9:36:10 PM

When you think of the Raspberry Pi, words like "small," "affordable," and "flexible" come to mind, right? And you probably don't then add "supercomputer?" It turns out, however, that those attributes of the Pi can be quite useful in the field of high-performance computing, which I personally associate with beastly machines made by Cray or IBM. The concept behind Bitscope's Cluster Module is simple: take a large group of Raspberry Pis and put them to work in tandem, creating a system that combines great power with scalable design. This approach grabbed the attention of no less than Los Alamos National Lab, which has faced the problem of needing to develop software for supercomputers while not having available time, as they're tied down with other research, as well as the fact that these machines are rather expensive to run. They hope that the Raspberry Pi cluster concept could prove a timely solution.

Says Bruce Tulloch, CEO of Bitscope: "Our Bitscope Blade is the key building block we used for the cluster. We originally built the Blade boards as a power mounting solution for Pi ... [and] as soon as we built them we had people asking “Can I stack these, can I put them together?” So we created the Blade rack series, small clusters of 10, 20, maybe 40 nodes, usually. But then people would start buying several of those to build bigger clusters, and finally SICORP approached us with Gary Grider's request for a larger cluster. And of course we said “Oh yeah we can do that, how big do you want?” and then they asked for "10, maybe 50 thousand nodes?" (laughs) And we said “We can do that.”

The idea of combining a cluster of Raspberry Pis in this way had been around for some time, but in a more limited and less practical form. Explains Tulloch: "In the past, people have toyed with the idea of using Pi with clusters, mounted on cardboard or plywood or something along those lines, and people have seen it as a bit of a toy. But when you actually mount a Pi and power it reliably in the way Bitscope Blade does, it gives you a solution that we’ve found is remarkably resilient and reliable. So the Pi actually is an industrial quality product in a lot of applications. Now that Los Alamos is planning to scale it out in the way they are we'll certainly find out if that’s true!"

www.youtube.com/watch

Bitscope brought its Cluster Module to the Supercomputing 2017 conference in Denver and found a good deal of interest in their concept. "I think what we found when we exhibited at the show," says Tulloch, "is that everyone loves the Pi. So when they saw our cluster at the show they all said “Wow, look at that!” But then of course the next question is “Why??” (laughs). But almost every university student who came up to the stand, you could see their mouths watering at the prospect of having access to a hundred nodes or two hundred nodes to do their course work or their post doc research, exploring things having to do with architectures relating to scalability." And the appeal of the Cluster concept isn't limited to education, it has potential for private sector companies as well. As Tulloch explains: "Another area that we had a lot of inquiries about at this show was distributed computing, think more cloud services and so on. We see things like function as a service rather than software as a service being rolled out on [a system of] very low-powered nodes but in large numbers. For highly distributed computing, even though the Pi has a small amount of memory it’s not an issue in those applications."

Though a dense cluster of Raspberry Pis might seem like an odd concept, in practice it actually relates well to a common tool for designers. Explains Tulloch: "I think a term that SICORP came up with [to describe the Cluster Modules] at the show says it really well, which is a 'high-performance computing breadboard.' Effectively, what we’re doing for people building clusters is giving them a tool in the same way that electronics designers have breadboards, to put together their ideas at low cost, low power, very quickly, and in a flexible way." The Pi clusters may not be able to compete with the Los Alamos Trinity or Crossroads supercomputers in terms of computational power, but they provide a more cost-effective way to test development code without needing the use of a massively expensive and energy-intensive machine like those.

Tags: bitscope blade, supercomputers, raspberry_pi, raspberry pi, bitscope, high performance computing, hpc

Case Study | Matrix Creator: Helping the World Design and Build Hardware

danzima — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 19:56:02 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by danzima on 6/22/2017 7:56:02 PM

In the world of hardware, how do you take that product you dream of designing from a sketch to a marketable reality? “If you were trying to take, for example, a Raspberry Pi and solder a few sensors onto it, it’s not a fast process,” says Matrix Creator co-founder and CEO Rodolfo Saccoman. “It starts getting really expensive, and let’s say you create a cool little gadget and suddenly you want to go produce a thousand of those; for you to solder all those little sensors onto the Pi, and then create the firmware for it and the app for it, it can become nightmarish.” With that in mind, the Matrix Creator team aimed to make the process of developing hardware products easier and more affordable, and therefore also more broadly available to the global tech community. Says Saccoman: “We’re really trying to remove the barriers to entry that have historically limited hardware development to the big boys and big girls … Our tools democratize it, so that anyone can create hardware.”

As the Matrix Creator team brainstormed about how to achieve that vision, they realized that a number of their members were already Raspberry Pi aficionados, and the way that the Pi had helped to spread accessible computing around the world mirrored their goals for the future of Internet of Things hardware development. With the Matrix Creator, says platform architect Sean Canton, “If you can write a website you can create an IoT application … we’ve taken care of the infrastructure, so you don’t have to worry about writing all of the sensor data or dealing with thousands of devices, and you don’t have to worry about computer vision, how to take those pictures and turn them into data. We’ve taken care of that.” And for connectivity and communications it has ZigBee, Z-Wave, NFC, and Thread capability (among other features), making it particularly attractive for designers focused on home automation, explains Saccoman.

www.youtube.com/watch

Co-founder and CTO Brian Sanchez speaks to the possibilities Matrix Creator opens up for its users: "We built the board so that people could build any type of application they wanted, whether they’re an experienced hardware engineer or a tinkerer, making something as simple as a sensor-driven application or as complex as a custom drone, or even a swarm of custom drones communicating through the platform. We’ve provided a lot of tech that allows you to be as flexible as you want with the hardware, in particular with the FPGA and the onboard MCU." Indeed, a quick check of their site shows their creation in use already in the development of drones, facial recognition tech, and voice controlled applications, among others. And the company's app store is a repository of software to help get newcomers started, one that will grow as the user base itself does.

Matrix Creator has already shipped its solution in over 70 countries, and is partnering with Farnell element14 for even wider distribution and more market presence, advancing its project of democratizing hardware development. And the team is always working to expand Matrix Creator’s capabilities: soon to arrive is their Matrix Voice, a sister board dedicated to voice recognition that has a seven microphone array, a powerful Xilinx FPGA, 64 Mbit SDRAM, and other features meant to make it a more developer-friendly and affordable option in a voice hardware space where major players like Google and Amazon force developers into their own services. In fact, tech site The Verge recently built a DIY Amazon Echo voice controlled digital assistant using the Matrix Voice:

players.brightcove.net/.../index.html

There was a fair bit of luck involved in making the connection between Matrix Creator and Farnell element14, says Saccoman. “We were at the Maker Faire where we launched Matrix Creator in June 2016, and we had some Farnell folks stop by who were very excited about our project … and when we discovered that they were the main manufacturer and distributor of the Raspberry Pi we realized this could be a perfect partnership.” Adds element14's Hari Kalyanaraman: “The Matrix Creator enables rapid prototyping and development of IoT and AI applications using the Raspberry Pi. We are excited to bring the Creator to our developer and maker community.”

The Matrix Creator team sees parallels between the development and subsequent growth of the iPhone and its app ecosystem and their project. Says Saccoman: “In all of our ecosystem, in terms of either our OS or on the board level, we provide a lot of documentation, it’s all public, and we have a community of developers giving each other ideas and help … Because of [our OS and app store] we think there’s a lot of potential for the Matrix Creator to become more powerful over time.” For the team their creation both serves a community and is served by it; they designed the Matrix Creator and delivered it, but the community will be a huge part of helping it grow and adding to its capabilities.

And Matrix Creator’s future potential doesn’t originate exclusively with the team that developed it; as Canton explained: “I was at a Maker Faire and was approached by a teacher at one of the schools from the area who worked with autistic children, and she was saying that if they had a way to track what their facial expression was showing as an emotion it would really help them integrate … both in reading facial expressions correctly and making appropriate facial expressions in response themselves.” And there’s an open-source vision behind the whole Matrix Creator project, he adds: “We’re trying to build a counter to the closed ecosystems of some of the biggest players in tech, to break new ground and help people.”

To find out how Premier Farnell could support your start-up initiative, get in touch with us at: www.element14.com/startups

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Tags: business of engineering, internet of things, rpibeginner, raspberry_pi, start ups, raspberry pi, raspberrypi, startup stories, matrix creator, case study, pi accessories

Tell Us Your Stories

jlucas — Wed, 24 May 2017 17:26:05 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by jlucas on 5/24/2017 5:26:05 PM

At element14 we love supporting innovative tech enterprises. With a fast-growing online membership numbering over 475,000, our community is the perfect place to promote your products and services to a global audience of professional engineers, industry insiders, makers and hobbyists. Through our partnerships with leading international manufacturers, research and education facilities and accelerator programs, we can also help you to get your company seen by the right people.

The Business of Engineering is our dedicated space for startups and tech enterprises. It's where we encourage them to share stories, make connections and interact with each other on one of the largest electronics and tech communities in the world.

If you have a tech product or enterprise that you'd like to see featured on the element14 community, contact John Lucas at Jlucas@premierfarnell.com.

Tags: business of engineering

We Love Startups!

jlucas — Tue, 23 May 2017 14:31:52 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by jlucas on 5/23/2017 2:31:52 PM

Here at Farnell element14, we're passionate about supporting innovative tech startups. Whether it's through offering manufacture and distribution support through our strategic alliances with companies such as Futurehome, Pi Supply and The Things Network or helping new initiatives to reach a broader audience and get instant feedback from our members right here on the community, we're always interested in engaging with the grass-roots enterprises that are helping to shape the global engineering market.

This document collects the wide variety of startups we've featured here on the community so far. Want to have your business featured on our community? Leave a comment below, or contact John Lucas at Jlucas@premierfarnell.com.

Chirp

Chirp use advanced data-over-audio technologies to allow information transfer between devices even while those devices are in offline mode. Having already enjoyed demonstrated successful application in public transport and gaming, this innovative enterprise could be music to the ears of many IoT fans.

Read the case study

Doordeck

Bringing an internet-based solution to an access control space that's still enamored with plastic keycards, Doordeck seeks to let everyone use the key they already carry with them: their smartphone. Raspberry Pi powers their access control solution, which is less expensive to install than a traditional keycard system and much easier for both building managers and tenants.

Read the case study

Futurehome

Founded by a trio of Norwegian students, Futurehome utilises smart technology to allow users to remotely control, automate and monitor hundreds of smart devices through a single Smart Hub gateway, which is managed via a simple, user-friendly app. Already a success in their home country, with support from Farnell element14 they are currently in the process of launching their product onto the global market.

Read the case study

Read our interview with Futurehome development manager Odd Eivind Evensen

OpenROV

Driven by both a love of robotics and a fascination with exploration, OpenROV designs underwater drones that both enthusiasts and researchers can operate. The company started by offering kits that users could assemble to craft their drone, and are now poised to launch a ready-made vehicle called Trident that has expanded capabilities with a mass market appeal.

Read the case study

nScope

When a pair of NorthWestern University alumni identified the lack of resources for teaching hands-on electronics outside a traditional lab environment, it inspired the development of an inspiring Kickstarter success story. nScope is a USB-powered hardware and software package featuring a power supply, oscilloscope and function generator, effectively transforming any laptop into a portable electronics workbench.

Read the case study

Read our interview with nScope founders Nick Marchuk and David Meyer

Pi Supply

Starting with the development of a user-friendly solution to managing power flow to Raspberry Pi devices, Pi Supply has blossomed into a Raspberry Pi emporium with a difference; specialising in distributing existing Pi technology combined with their own specially develop accessories, including the Pi Supply Switch and the PiJuice.

Read the case study

Read our interview with Pi Supply founder Aaron Shaw

The Things Network

Dutch startup The Things Network caused a sensation when they build a crowd-sourced data network that covered the entirety of their home city of Amsterdam without the need to rely on 3G or WiFi. After partnering with Premier Farnell, this long range, low power IoT connectivity solution looks set to go from strength to strength.

Read the case study

Read our interview with The Things Network co-founder Wienke Giezeman

Think Engineer

Think Engineer is a team of product development specialists who produce bespoke electronics and software, providing clients with fully functional, high-tech prototypes. In 2016 they made the leap from client work to developing their own projects with the launch of CapHat - a Raspberry Pi capacitive keypad HAT accessory

Read the case study

Tags: chirp, start up, the things network, pi supply, nscope, case study, futurehome

How Were You 'Bit by the Bug' of Engineering & Technology?

tariq.ahmad — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 12:40:47 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by tariq.ahmad on 1/11/2017 12:40:47 PM

What's the Gift that Led You to Give Back?

Gift us the story of your love for engineering & technology!

Every great love affair starts somewhere. Did the sparks fly the moment of your first encounter with anything related to engineering or technology?

Maybe you found it dull and boring at first? Did your mind go numb as you listened to concepts too complicated to understand and numbers too overwhelming to compute? Did your love blossom slowly over time, as you discovered layer upon layer of depth, becoming arrested by incomprehensible beauty, as you longingly gazed into the abyss of a perfect alignment of mathematical symmetry and artistic harmony?

Did it begin with an exchange of gifts? Engineering and technology, as you know, offers many tantalizing gifts. Did you have a moment together? A moment that would change the rest of your life forever!

The end of the year is a time for giving and reflection. Gifts are exchanged, resolutions are made, and you look back on the past. You may even reach further and think of the pivotal moments that led you in the current direction of your life.

Whether its the gift of an experience, the gift of a piece of hardware or software, the gift of an idea or a person who inspired you, think of a gift that influenced you to pursue engineering & technology.

Here are some examples of the gifts that led others to give back:

The Gift of Wonder

Steve Wozniak, widely credited as the inventor of the Personal Computer, gave an interview where he credits a journal he found in a hall closet for his interest in engineering and technology: "...I found a journal in a hall closet with descriptions of binary numbering, logic gates and storage devices....When I discovered a 9-year old could understand this stuff I knew it would be my passion forever."

An engineer may not get or even want attention for their accomplishments, its their job, to make things work even if it means pushing technology as far as it goes, making the seemingly impossible, possible. A good deal of selflessness is required in engineering, which in its way makes it sound a lot like giving. For an engineer like Wozniak, it opened up a world of wonder for him that would change the world forever!

"I found a journal in a hall closet with descriptions of binary numbering, logic gates and storage devices....When I discovered a 9-year old could understand this stuff I knew it would be my passion forever."

The Gift of the Whole Brain

Many of the skills required to be a good engineer are well known and have been talked about a lot. A lot of formal training in math and science is required to develop the rational thinking and logic required to solve real world problems. Not only are you expected to solve complex problems, you are asked to implement solutions in cost effective and practical ways.This brings us to another prized trait in engineers; the ability to think creatively. The ability to think big and use your imagination is highly valued, especially when it comes to solving complicated problems that may involve monetary or feasibility concerns. Anyone that has ever worked in tech knows you have to work within the constraints of the technology of the given time and even a perfect product will be obsolete before you know it.

Although mostly known as one of the great artist, there's perhaps no better exemplier what can be accomplished in engineering using a whole-brain approach than Leonardo Di Vinci: "To develop a complete mind: study the science of art; study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else." In addition to being an accomplished architectural engineer, Da Vinci's investigation of human anatomy helped lay the early foundation of the biomedical engineering field.

"To develop a complete mind: study the science of art; study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else."

The Gift of Diversity

In a world ruled by seemingly arbitrary lines. Engineering and technology follow the laws of physics and if you can master those laws and bend technology to your will, you find it's the product of your work that matters and this gives opportunity to people from diverse backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses. The appeal of technology and engineering for people in all corners of the world is that regardless of your gender, race, family, background, or social status, your contribution has value because of where you come from. That is why some of the great technology companies and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) educators are at the forefront of recognizing the need to promote a diverse and inclusive environment.

Engineers and technologists recognize the value diversity brings to the work they are able to accomplish, if you are going to invent and innovate solutions that solve the needs of everyone you're only going to succeed by bringing in diverse perspectives. Education in engineering is now focused on being more diverse because, as explained in an article about the changing face of engineering education, that drives innovation.

The Gift of Curiosity

Once you understand the mathematical and mechanistic way everything works you open doors, that lead you to other doors, that lead to still more doors. Engineers use quantitative analysis to understand and model the world around them. They witness the interplay between science and technology, how science advances technology, and vice versa. In a profile on Live Science, Maurizio Porfiri, who holds a PH.D. in engineering mechanics credits the literature he read growing up for the curiosity needed to excel in engineering: "Being creative and being curious is more important than being the smartest or best at equations if you want to be a great engineer or researcher."

Porfiri was included in Popular Science's Brilliant 10 in 2012, an elite group of scientists under 40 who stands to dramatically impact their field, despite being a self-described "okay student" as well as the recipient of the 2008 NSF Career Award. In engineering and technology, curiosity is what drives you to learn new programming languages, experiment with new systems, and come up with novel solutions to solve problems.

"Being creative and being curious is more important than being the smartest or best at equations if you want to be a great engineer or researcher."

The Gift of a Better Tomorrow

There are many pressing needs in the world in fields like technology including energy, sustainability, transportation, education, healthcare, food, and the environment. While a goal of many disciplines in science is to understand reality, the ultimate goal of engineering and technology is to create a better tomorrow that leaves the world a better a place.

The work of engineers is everywhere. In hospitals and clinics there is manufacturing pharmaceuticals, designing intravenous infusion pumps, programming electronic medical records. Biomedical engineers are as much a part of patient care as nurses and physicians. Meanwhile, mechanical engineers contribute to transportation; environmental engineers contribute to sustainability and energy; and electrical engineers contribute to communications.

The Gift of Generosity

Perhaps the greatest gift of engineering and technology is that it can not only make life more comfortable for everyone, but it can also save lives. An understanding of engineering and technology can be used to serve the public and address global challenges by putting you in a position to help others using your skills. Environmental Engineer Lilia Abron, founder of Peer Consultants and Peer Africa, credits the book Silent Sprint by Rachel Carson, as the inspiration behind her sanitary engineering vocation.

Lilia Abron runs a program that unifies energy efficiency and sustainable housing construction, along with economic development, to create sustainable human settlements. She tells her alumni bulletin: "It bothered me to see people living without any power to change their lives, and government funds being wasted by construction companies just trying to make money. I told my business partner, 'I know how to solve this.'" The book Silent Spring, first published in 1962, is also the inspiration for the environmental movement that led to the EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency).

"It bothered me to see people living without any power to change their lives, and government funds being wasted by construction companies just trying to make money. I told my business partner, 'I know how to solve this.'"

The Gift that Kept On Giving

There's perhaps no better way to succeed in life than to love what you do because then you'll never you'll never "work" a day in your life. Educators are finding that key to developing children's interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) may lie in making STEM applicable to everyday life, making it more interesting and hands on, and emphasizing the process over results. If you developed a love for Science, Technology, and Math you could probably point to examples in your life that fall into one of those categories. It could be a HEATH kit you received when you were a child, your first computer, working with your Dad in the garage, a science fair, or any number of experiences that you can point to as having influenced your love for engineering or technology.

You've heard from others. Now, tell us what sparked YOUR interest in Engineering or Technology! Was it a gift you received? What was the gift? Do you remember how old you were when the moment happened! Do you remember where you were when it happened? Tell us what it means to you now. Everyone has to start from somewhere, with that "eureka" moment. Were you working one day and suddenly realized, engineering and technology is where you want to spend the rest of your life. Engineering and technology are definitely a worthwhile life-long companions. Others have always known they wanted to be with engineering and technology. What's your story?

Love at First Bite? Tell Us How Your Love Affair with Engineering or Technology Began!

Love is a gift (I'm reliably informed by every rom com movie ever made). So we want to lavish technology gifts upon you, due to your love of technology (recipients of the freebies will be selected on the quality of their storytelling chops)!

Not only that, but we'll give you something to pass along to a techno-noobie to spread your love of electronics and inspire the next generation of engineers, like ripples in a solder bath.

Here's how to join in:

Register for free here at element14.com, or log in if you're already registered.
Tell the story of what got you hooked on electronics and tech in the comments below, leaving no lyric unwaxed!
Make sure your postal address and phone number are filled out in your element14 profile (if it's not, we can't send you anything even if we wanted to!). Click your name at the very top of the screen to open the drop-down menu, followed by "Edit Profile + Privacy", and fill in the details so you're eligible for freebies.
- PRIVACY NOTE: Click your name at the very top of the scree to open the drop-down menu, followed by "Edit Profile + Privacy", go to the "Privacy" tab, and change the relevant options to "Yourself" so that your postal address and phone number aren't publicly visible.
This promotion only runs until 20th January, 2017, or until we run out of hot tech swag, so tell us your stories now!

Tags: stem, engineering and technology, sustainable engineering, epa, programming languages, global challenges, personal computer, pharmaceutical, stem subjects, biomedical engineering, brilliant 10, engineering and diversity, nsf career award, environmental engineering, gifts, mechanical engineering, energy efficiency, popular science, past_promotion, environmental protection agency