Where did you learn electronics?

[HankMcSpank]

I 'learnt' electronics in the Air Force (way back in 1980) ...I say 'learn't - there's no substitute for getting your hands dirty & fixing stuff (& specializing in radar - there's no substitute for having -500V DC travel across your heart for learing the ropes towards respecting electricity yet not being too afraid!)

The continued 'pursuit' of knowledge came out of necessity (eg a young man, not much money & a broken TV in his room!)...then part professionally (I used to fix all the musical electronic kit in my fathers electronic organ business) ...I then drifted into IT.

I still 'keep my hand' in though...presently building a guitar sustainer - in fact, I just produced this last night...



a joyous joining of, 'electronics' & 'CNCs worlds'!

Re PICs...funnily enough I needed to learn them from scratch for the cricuit that drives the above coil (I wanted to use digital AGC) - I'm not a programmer, but nevertheless I didn't find programming PICs too onerous. I bought a PICkit2 (priceless at getting you up & running quick) & then started hanging out on the associated PIC forums - for my modest needs there's not a lot of depth of PIC programming knowledge needed. I'd say in the infancy, forget 'assembly' & go with a higher level language more suited to PICs ...ie PICBAsic.