This is just awesome!

[Joe Jones]

I am the first to admit that I know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about electronics. However, this is something awesome! I can start experimenting with circuits, without a fire extinguisher on the table

I have always been a mechanical minded person. I can build or fix anything mechanical. Ask me to build a circuit board to turn on a light inside of a mailbox, and I am lost.

For those of you who like to work with this stuff, I think this program might be a real help.

Joe

http://youtu.be/_rQ5e0jnQUA

[kicktillmonday]

That is awesome, no need for it at the moment but I could have used a program like that many times in the past. Thanks Joe.

[Joe Jones]

I have memory issues that work against me, and learning electronics is difficult for me for that reason. I would love to lean how to solder these components together to build my time machine but connecting them together is only half the battle. One would need to know what they do, and WHY one needs a certain component in a certain place.

I know a guy who is just phenomenal at this stuff. I visited his home to buy a cnc machine, and also bought a fiber laser while I was there. but his garage ... I saw futuristic drones, and robots, and androids, and satellite dish laser gun things ... I was in complete AWE at his knowledge of electronics. I thought I was talking to George Jetson! He spoke about building electronic devices like I would coach a kid on building a popsicle stick wood cabin! If I weren't so settled HERE, I would buy a house near him, and spend as much time as possible hanging out in his garage shop, just LEARNING from him.

Joe

[acourtjester]

Joe "different strokes for different folks" if we were all the same there would be no reason for communications. This site is a great example where theories and ideas are are presented to solve problems members are having. Tutorials are posted to help others understand how to do things. Knowledge and skills are tools we sometime need to borrow from each other, you help me I help you.

[adbuch]

This is all really cool stuff. I can remember back in the day buying those little booklets from Radio Shack called "Engineer's Mini-Notebooks". One of them is titled "Basic Semiconductor Circuits" and tells many details of how to use resistors, capacitors, etc. to build small experimental circuits. In fact - those probably got me started on my journey towards becoming an Electrical Engineer.

Back then, everything was pretty much "hands on" using the actual parts to build little test circuits on bread boards. It would have been pretty cool to have access to something like the Design Spark Simulator shown in the video, but back in those days we had no internet and very, very basic computers were just beginning to come available - where you had to program them in Hexidecimal using a small keypad, and programs were written in machine code - Ones and Zeros.

David

[rdj357]

...
I can remember back in the day buying those little booklets from Radio Shack called "Engineer's Mini-Notebooks". One of them is titled "Basic Semiconductor Circuits" and tells many details of how to use resistors, capacitors, etc. to build small experimental circuits. In fact - those probably got me started on my journey towards becoming an Electrical Engineer.
...
David

I think I still have some of those, this one included!! It also got me going toward that path but once in college, the professors (especially English) helped convince me that I couldn't put up with that for 4 years so I took the OJT path with HVAC but I definitely learned a lot from those little books!

[adbuch]

Robert - I bought the whole set individually back in the day at Radio Shack. I think the price was around $1.39 per booklet, The prices are right on the booklets, but I already put them back on the bookshelf and am too lazy to get them down to take a look. There is one on 555 timers, one on RF communication, and others. I think I have about 6 or 7 total booklets total. I'll have to get them back down and take a few photos to post.

David

[AngiePittman]

Haha, your enthusiasm is infectious! It's great to hear that this program has sparked your interest in electronics. Starting with circuits without the need for a fire extinguisher sounds like a win-win. Remember, everyone starts somewhere, and you might just surprise yourself with your circuit-building skills. Keep exploring and having fun with it!

[Joe Jones]

Haha, your enthusiasm is infectious! It's great to hear that this program has sparked your interest in electronics. Starting with circuits without the need for a fire extinguisher sounds like a win-win. Remember, everyone starts somewhere, and you might just surprise yourself with your circuit-building skills. Keep exploring and having fun with it!

Alas, I have always been mechanically-minded. I can fix nearly anything mechanical, if it is broken, or needs to be assembled, or modified, or even invented from scratch. I move slowly these days, but I do have several projects in various stages of completion lying around my shops, waiting for me to get motivated to finish them.

Electronics ... They escape me completely. I cannot wrap my head around electrical impulses coursing through the circuitry, and changing into this or that depending on what they pass through, so they become light, or heat, or cool air, or sound, or color, or digital readouts, or CMOS circuits for digital cameras, or X-rays, or holograms, or ... or ...

Some guys like Robert and David can LOOK at a schematic and tell you ... "This is the schematic of a 100 Watt transmitter on the (xxx) frequency band..." I see a lot of lines and scribbles, and I cannot follow a circuit if the line goes into one thing, and then there are six different exits! I know... it takes education, and dedication. I could go to WKU and study this, but I still have the ever-present handicap of a nearly non-existent memory. I can LEARN anything, but I do not RETAIN things unless I work with them on a daily basis.

For example, I paid for Fusion360 software. I began (three times) to go through the various training exercises, to draw this and that, according to the instructions designed to teach you the tools and how they work. I DREW all of them successfully, and I even began to wander off into variations on each lesson, but life got in the way, and I haven't touched the program for nearly four months. Last night, I fired it up again, to see if I could pick up where I left off. NOPE! It is as if I am looking at the software for the very first time all over again. Whatever I learned and was able to do in April is now LOST. I live with it. this is why I work with DesignEdge almost every day. So I don't FORGET how to use it!

When I park my motorcycle over the winter and hop onto it again in the Spring, I have to re-learn where all of the buttons are, what they do, and how to operate the complicated sound system with the phone sync and other features like GPS, etc. I rode it to the gas station and I had to LOOK UP how to open the locked gas filler door. There is a hidden finger switch inside of the right side glove box, but I had forgotten about it. I do not have the ability to retain information for long periods of time without constant review. I am almost as bad as "10 Second Tom" in the movie, 50 First Dates.

Joe