When did you start electronics - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: skillz21
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2017, 10:47:17 am
content: This is a first for me, a question that's not super serious... At what age did you guys start doing electronics? I want to know if when I started electronics was average or early (not late, since I can't really imagine a kid younger than 7 or 8 years old playing with batteries and motors) But yeah, I started doing electronics when I was about 7.... is that early? I'm curious about how you guys started doing electronics, what were your inspirations, and when did you decide you liked playing with electronics?

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2017, 11:38:30 am
content: About 7, when I discovered jumble sales in the UK. I used to buy transistor and valve radios and try and fix them (mostly unsuccessfully, sometimes involving fire). My parents used the "benevolent neglect" methodology of parenting. Then I got bought a Radio Shack 160-in-1 for Christmas and I was hooked.Soldering when I was about 8-9. First scope when I was 12 (car boot sale telequipment D61).TBH I had absolutely no idea what I was doing properly until I went to university and stuff mostly worked by luck.

author: skillz21
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2017, 12:03:53 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 22, 2017, 11:38:30 amNice! I should really get an oscillescope...

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2017, 12:22:16 pm
content: First 230V shock when I was 3 and touched the outlet with nail.Took my first tube radio apart when I was 5 but could not get it back together.And from that time on it went forward.About 8 or 9, when things also ended up back together and worked.After that I repaired TVs and Radios for people in our village.First high voltage shock from a TV transformer when I was 10.My first scope came from our school when I was 13, a Leybold scope, very similar to the picture.Oh, was I happy about this one!

author: alexanderbrevig
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2017, 12:33:42 pm
content: Two years ago (jumped into it and got hired for one of these IoT startups that popped up everywhere).My previous experience? Just some tinkering with Arduino (over a hundred libraries written and published).Two years later I actually know how to lay out a PCB rather propery, I know how to impedance match, how to write proper firmware, how to read datasheets, how to debug, how to DFM etc. It's been a stressful time..!While at it I'd like to thank this articlehttps://startupbros.com/21-ways-overcome-impostor-syndrome/As a kid I loved taking things apart, and I (ab)used the LEGO mindstorms kit quite a while.I love electronics.

author: skillz21
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2017, 12:45:06 pm
content: Wow, after hearing all of these stories, I don't feel so... alone (lol what)? Idk I mean I don't know anyone (as in real life) who knows at least how much I do when it comes to electronics... it's pretty annoying when I do something cool and want to tell people about it.... no one understands what the hell I'm talking about....

author: sibeen
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2017, 01:02:09 pm
content: I was ripping apart old radios and sundry gear by the time I was about 9 or thereabouts. I was always the nerd at school. Eventually made a career out of it, and still do. Yet as a 55 year old engineer I still find the subject fascinating; yet in all this time the software side has never interested me. I've learnt, in a very cursory fashion some code over the years; not really more than a led blinking or a basic subroutine. BoringIt's still the hardware side that intrigues me. I'm a power engineer, or at least a medium power engineer. If it's below 100 amps it's probably not worth measuringI'm constantly amazed by the times I say to myself, "WTF happened there". It what keeps me interested and amused...and employed

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2017, 03:41:59 pm
content: As a teenager, I would help my grandfather repair tube radios.He was not an EE, not even a technician. But he had insatiable technical curiosity and was a consummate tinkerer.He did read several electronics books, though.He gave me the Van Valkenburg, Nooger and Neville's "Basic Electronics", volumes 1 thru 6.

author: skarecrow
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2017, 03:47:49 pm
content: I really don't remember exactly when electronics started interesting me, perhaps before my first memories. Probably around the same time I got into computers. I started playing (VERY BASIC) computer games on a Heathkit computer when I was 3. When I was 4 I got a Commodore VIC-20 and started writing my own games.It must have been around the same time that I started tinkering with other electronics. My older brother and I had a bunch of those 100+ in one learning lab kits and I was ALWAYS building circuits with them, often stringing several kits together to make more advanced stuff than any 1 was capable of.I couldn't have been much older than that when I learned how to properly use an analog multimeter and a soldering iron. I used to love taking things apart and trying to change how they worked, or make them do things they were never intended to do. I remember one time after messing with the electronics inside a Spiderman RC car a spark shot out of it and hurt my leg pretty bad, then all of a sudden a radio station was coming out of the car. To this day I have no idea what I did or how any sound at all was coming out of it. It didn't have a speaker in it!I'm confident I know more about electronics than just about everyone I know since I started so young, but I still consider myself a beginner in a lot of ways.Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

author: jmelson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2017, 03:52:06 pm
content: I was tinkering with electronic stuff probably when I was about 9, didn't actually accomplish much but had fun with it.Started building various things from tube and transistor data books when I was maybe 12. I converted a war surplus radar scope to a very primitive oscilloscope when I was about 16. I got hired as a technician at an outfit that did communications research and field testing as a summer job when I was 18, just before going off to college (1968).I got a summer job in 1975 that turned into a career, and built and connected up air pollution measuring instruments for a group doing EPA studies. Some of it was from aircraft, so we had a lot of interesting integration/interfacing tasks to tie our data acq. gear into the plane's nav system, run instruments off 28 V without allowing spikes through, etc.I did that for 9 years, and then moved over to another group doing basic nuclear science (shooting ions from particle accelerators at targets and measuring the particles that fly off.) We make most of our own data acq. gear as nothing commercial is compact or cheap enough, when you are talking about 100+ channels. Now, we are making our own ICs to make it smaller and cheaper. One channel is a discriminator (detects occurrence of signal arrival), active filter and peak detector. Then, put 16 of those channels on one chip, 2 chips on a board and 16 boards on a motherboard, in a housing roughly the size of a breadbox. So, that is 512 channels. So, that has been a good part of my work for the last 10 years.I wrote the GUIs that set up the chip's configuration, designed everything but the chips themselves, and build and maintain it all. (Good job security, too, as nobody else understands the whole system.)Jon

author: skillz21
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2017, 09:42:25 pm
content: What are these tube radios that keep getting mentioned?

author: skarecrow
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 02:11:00 am
content: Quote from: skillz21 on August 22, 2017, 09:42:25 pmIt's like the old audio-only version of youtube, but you couldn't rewind or replay anything unless you paid for the cassette deck upgrade. :-DSent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

author: skarecrow
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 02:21:05 am
content: I thought you were being funny and then I noticed your age on your profile. There's a good chance you may have been serious and don't know what they are. Before transistors, radios (and quite a lot of other electronics) used vacuum tubes. Hence the term tube radio. A lot of current high end audiophile gear uses tubes because some people like the sound they produce much better.Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 02:49:32 am
content: I was about 4. Started with some old Email quicklag breakers, 3V MES lamps, D cell battery holders and croc-clip jumpers. For my 5th birthday mum and dad made me a component board where they mounted a heap of switches, lamp holders, a buzzer and a battery holder to an old cupboard door. Each device had terminals made from a 3/16" bolt that I could connect together with croc-clips or wind wire around. I'm positive about 30 seconds after giving it to me they regretted putting an old electromechanical buzzer on there.I have my 3 year old playing with croc-clip jumpers, batteries, LEDs and resistors. He said to me the other night, "Daddy when it's christmas time I'm getting my *own* soldering iron". Umm, no he's *not*. I had to wait until I was 6, he can wait until he's 6.I still have the Email quicklag breakers in a box for him to play with when his fingers get a bit stronger.

author: bjcuizon
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 02:58:38 am
content: Quote from: skillz21 on August 22, 2017, 09:42:25 pmTubes...a.k.a. Vacuum Tubes, Valves, electron tube <-- These things were used in the old day. They got replaced with the transistors, integrated circuits and todays microcontrollershttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube

author: Fire Doger
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 03:58:19 am
content: I loved to screw screws on a cardboard at the age of 2-3, a couple of hundred per dayI got into electronics around 12 with a fm radio kit for kids (which never worked) and trying to solder broken wires on toys with lighter but nothing more. Real trigger came when I saw how good I was on pseudo code at high school.I believe that engineers are born to be engineers, figuring it out though is matter of education.Quote from: skillz21 on August 22, 2017, 12:45:06 pmI am trying to teach my best friend to have someone to talk about...

author: mainman
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 04:13:07 am
content: Like most of us, I started at 4 taking apart and putting back together my toys.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 04:26:55 am
content: Quote from: skillz21 on August 22, 2017, 09:42:25 pmThat's a 'murican thing. Over here (and in the motherland) they call them "Valves". Once upon a time there were no such thing as transistors and electricity was modulated using glass, tungsten, heat and the absence of air. Men were men and fixing a TV meant replacing the valve that wasn't glowing (or gently tapping each valve with a screwdriver handle until you found the one causing the symptoms).In reality they are distortion generators. Highly prized by musicians (for their brand of distortion) and deluded audiophools who use them to listen to their vinyl in the "purest form" (again, it's distortion, but mainly of their sense of reality)Don't get me wrong, I love my Vinyl, but I'm under no illusion that a Class A single Valve heater provides a cleaner and less distorted signal than any good semiconductor amplifier.

author: Rbastler
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 06:55:13 am
content: Damn, you all startend really young with electronics. In some sense I feel old, because I started with 13 years. Before that I watched my Dad repair tube radio (they got my interested in electronics and later bevame a rather big part of it). I also took stuff apart, mostly in a destructive way... I was about 8-9 then.With 13 years I finally got my fist soldering iron and desoldered parts from a printer PSU. I build mostly blinking circuits, tone generators(that mad my parents go crazy), small audio amps, shortwave radios and various tiny circuits.About two years later I started to play with HV from TV line Transformers. Nothing but arcing around and building some more or less sucessfull plasma speekers.When I was around 16 years, I build my first Vakuum tube AMP. That stuff got me hooked. Probably since I was 8. Then I made my way through various tube circuits, repaired tube radios and a TV from the 60s. Nothing much, if at all was done with semiconductors.After changing school, I worked much more with them. The first self designed circuits were build and the Theorie became more interesting and important.Over time I had aquired some gear and parts. That continuied, more stuff came in and circuits got more complex and better designed. Now Im studiyng EE and have a decent lab with parts and gear. Mostly working on semiconductor projects now, rather then some with tubes. But now end then I will build something with tubes. Like the headphone AMP last weekend.Edit: typo

author: Alex Nikitin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 08:03:19 am
content: Quote from: bjcuizon on August 23, 2017, 02:58:38 amI work for a company which makes a piece of equipment still using a vacuum valve/tube in a place where nothing else works (at least not for long).On the thread subject. I've started probably when I was 11-12, and by the time I was 15, I was in apprenticeship to a very good electronics engineer. I've built my first amplifier (a version of the JLH Class A) when I was 16 and my first oscilloscope when I was 17. I remember reading books with data on transistors and valves as if it was the best fiction.CheersAlex

author: sean87
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 08:16:10 am
content: Hmmm when I was around 12 I got a 4-LED blinking kit and a soldering iron as a birthday gift...then I stuck in kits....eventually got into computer science and software development in university but I still do electronics. Too bad I do not have a brain for Analog electronics so I always suck

author: bjcuizon
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 09:06:12 am
content: If you are wondering what *everyone's* first circuit is; how they started; and what age they first got into electronics, you might want to look here:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/what-was-your-first-circuit-do-you-still-remember-it/Alright,..so I started when I was 8 years old. I bought some parts and built a blinking led circuit that would react depending on the audio input. Yeah! It was really fun!

author: Rbastler
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 09:32:29 am
content: Quote from: Alex Nikitin on August 23, 2017, 08:03:19 amWhere is a tube still used today ? Is it a microphone, some wired HF stuff or high power application ?My first tube amp was a mono single ended el84 with a ef80/800 as pre amp.I build scope with tubes a bit later, but i dismantled it, because i realized later how much it sucked. But it did work!

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 09:36:46 am
content: High power RF amplifiers still seem to use tubes. Also don't forget your microwave technically uses a vacuum tube (magnetron). Oh and guitar amps.

author: Insatman
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 09:38:30 am
content: 1977. I got a job fixing cable TV boxes. Prior to that I only read about it and did basic electrical wiring or audio stuff. After some years I got a job in an R&D oriented company as a technician. 35 years later I retired as a Pulsed Power Physicist. Prior to that I was the senior EE in the company. I was a long road...lots of memories. Now I just play in my home lab.

author: skillz21
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 10:37:20 am
content: Quote from: skillz21 on August 22, 2017, 10:47:17 amOk... I take that back.

author: skillz21
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 10:39:43 am
content: Quote from: BradC on August 23, 2017, 02:49:32 amwow

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 11:21:57 am
content: Quote from: BradC on August 23, 2017, 02:49:32 amI was probably 4 or 5. By age 7, I know I had at least one book on the matter, by age 9 I'd burned myself with a soldering iron, and by 11 the local radio shack manager was telling me he'd hire me if I were older. :pLike many people here, I began by taking things apart. At first, I took them apart and they stayed disassembled. Later I began to be able to reassemble them, and later still, I was able to take broken things apart and fix them.That said, I didn't have anyone to mentor me (I'm the only science and tech nerd in the family, and my non-techie parents simply had no idea where to go to find me a mentor, though I did make friends with two nerds in elementary school, who to this day are my only friends from that era), so I didn't really learn a lot of basic concepts properly. Around age 12, we moved abroad and I kind of got out of electronics and into computers instead (we'd never had one before that). I mostly ignored electronics until I became unemployed at age 34, and took the time off to regroup, and I rediscovered electronics and started getting into it in a much more proper style (EEVblog was instrumentally important in this!). A few years and a lot of ebay shopping later, I've got myself a proper little lab that's threatening to take over my bedroom, and am now close to being able to actually complete a bunch of projects!

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 11:44:50 am
content: Quote from: tooki on August 23, 2017, 11:21:57 amMy old man says I was a walking destruction unit up until about the age of 12. He kept a pile of all the things I'd pulled apart over the years and about 12-13 I learned how to put them back together again.I have a philosophy that has served me well though. "If you pull it apart until you find the broken bit, fix/replace that and then put it back together in the reverse order, it *has* to work". That applies to everything I've ever touched from tape recorders, test equipment, washing machines, motorbikes, cars, marine diesel engines... I've been blessed with a memory that means I can dismantle something down to its elements, put it all in a bucket and then 6 months later put it back together again from memory. I'm sure that'll fade as I get older so I've taken to making notes and taking photos now.My father is an electrical engineer (which explains the quicklag breakers that I used as switches) and he knew (that sounds like he no longer knows, but he still does) enough about electricity and the laws of physics to get me started. The rest I kinda picked up from books and pulling things to bits. I'm lucky in that my parents went out of their way to encourage my curiosity and (within their means) feed my habit. I'm trying to do the same thing with my kids.Funny you mention Radio Shack. They were Tandy over here, and I used to go in like clockwork once a month for the "battery of the month" club. I also got a 200 in 1 kit for my 7th birthday which taught me unquantifiable amounts of practice and theory. Tandy also sold the worlds most expensive 1/4W 5% carbon resistors, but they had what you needed when you needed it.Out of interest @skillz21, whereabouts in Aus are you? You'll probably find someone close by willing to lend you advice/parts if you ask around. There are a lot of us slightly older people with the desire to help the new generation.

author: TomS_
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 01:53:40 pm
content: Im kind of surprised Im still alive really.I started with electronics early, I dont remember what age, but it was the early 90's, so I was under 10. Mostly it started with pulling old appliances apart to see what was in them. I built a few kits that sometimes worked, and did a bit of soldering, too.As for still being alive, as part of my curiosity I did all kinds of silly things with mains voltage. I stuck knives in toasters while they were on (and got shocked), tried to cut through cables with metal scissors (and got shocked), used screwdrivers on live wires (and got shocked). I think about the only thing I didnt do was use a hair drier in the bathtub.But I lived on a farm (in Australia) and access to materials beyond the odd appliance from the "local" repair shop to pull to bits, datasheets, and people who knew about all of this stuff to help me understand it properly were few and far between or difficult to get.When I started high school I was introduced to QBASIC by a new friend, and since I had a computer with QBASIC at home, that kind of became my new hobby. Some time in the early 2000's my interests shifted to telecommunications and I started working as a network engineer.Now I live in the UK, and with Internet access as ready as it is in general, and electronics suppliers in no short supply, I am getting back in to electronics and really enjoying it. Ive learned so much over the past year just practicing and playing, breaking things, making things etc. Im in my mid 30's now, so theres been a good 20 year gap between when I played around with it all as a kid and when it has become a real consume-all-of-my-spare-time hobby. Its great, and I love it. Sometimes I wonder if I could turn it in to my day job, but maybe I should keep this one purely as a hobby.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 04:01:44 pm
content: Was interested in electrics from a very early age. My father was an EE. Became interested in electronics around about 10.As I've worked in professional A-V I'm well aware of those evil glowing things the yanks call 'toobz' but we call 'valves.' Kinda hazardous to work with, but much simpler circuitry and stand a lot more abuse than transistor amplification.

author: pelule
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 06:06:10 pm
content: I become interested in (analog) electronics in the age of 13 and ask a friend of my father, to give me a short start introduction (R, C, transistors). One year later my first circuit was operating (transistor based audio mixing circuit for the music at our parties)./PeLuLe

author: sairfan1
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2017, 06:27:05 pm
content: Its interesting to see most of us started with old radio. My story is almost same, I started at age 8/9, when i wanted to explore radio, what's inside and how it works. I setup my first lab when i was 12, i fixed and distroyed lots of electronic equipments. Then suddenly my interest increased in computer programming and i totally shifted towards it. After completing my BS in software eng. i did lots of work in my field, after about 10 years working as developer i started electronics again, i satup my lab, started reading books, my strong knowledge of software side helped me a lot to put different approch in writing c code.