Electronics – In the beginning there was…

Back in the early nineties I knew what I wanted to do upon leaving school and that was to work in the Electronics Design industry as a Design Engineer. I bought a book on getting started with electronics from Tandy (RadioShack for the Americans out there) which really got me excited, fast forward to 1996 and my last careers advice meeting with Careers Wales. They advised they had an opening for an apprenticeship in electronics design which was a nail on the head for me so jumped at it, went for the interview and got it. I was jumping for joy and started the apprenticeship a week after leaving school, at the start everything was great learning so much getting to do literally what I enjoyed doing. Well few months later things started to go down hill from there, we were (2 apprentices) asked to help out on the production line due to resignations and was told it would only be for a few weeks till the replacements were found, well this turned into months then years. The other apprentice quit to join the air force leaving just me, I just plodded along with it eventually kicking up a stir and getting the company to get me formal training from which they enrolled me with Neath College on a ONC in Electronics and few NVQ’s in electrical maintenance. Again was going great and back on track then they started pulling me from college and ended up missing half the year and failing the course, at this point I asked them to just take me on as a full production technician which they did, which also signalled the end of my career in electronics design.

With everything that went on and how the apprenticeship ended well to say I had a grudge towards the electronics industry from my bad experience, I moved off to work with computers leading to where I am now. Well I’ve finally kicked myself and kicked the grudge out the window with a head strong resurgence of re-learning electronics. Bring on the Arduino a micro controller aimed at the makers of the world (Arduino Introduction), well this really has pushed me into thinking differently and wanting to learn the trade I always wanted as a teen.

My first project is based on an Instructables post I seen a few months back which overlaps with another hobby of mine Photography. Basically the guy had created a standalone photo booth box (http://www.instructables.com/id/Instagram-Inspired-DIY-Photo-Booth/), he fell short of how it was coded etc which got me thinking on how he did this. So I set out on my way to figure this out…..

Well enough of that, will put up another post on how I accomplished it and the final result (No I didn’t actually make the box etc).