{"id":2,"date":"2017-12-02T12:53:38","date_gmt":"2017-12-02T12:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adrian-smith31.co.uk\/blog\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2023-11-20T17:41:08","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T17:41:08","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.adrian-smith31.co.uk\/blog\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m an experienced electronics engineer and amateur embedded systems programmer (C++) who likes to mess with electronics ‘junk’. Things that are not very interesting to others I find useful; hardware hacking is one of the things I like to mess about with. I like vintage 1980’s computers and I refurbish them if I come across them at boot sales etc to resell on ebay or keep for nostalgia purposes. I’ve built many things over the years with many of my projects on this website. I’ve re-discovered electronics in the last few years and found it has changed. A lot.<\/p>\n

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Not the exact one I had but something similar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So where do I start? I suppose at the beginning. Of my electronics background that is when I was given a Radio Shack electronics experimenter’s kit for Christmas. I specifically remember being blown away by the sheer awesomeness of a 7 segment display… See how it can display different numbers? Chuff’n brilliant.<\/p>\n

The things I thought were cool back then.<\/p>\n

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A 7 segment display. Not cool.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Anyway since 1984 I have been an electronics hobbyist and built lots of projects and circuits in the past mainly test equipment to aid in repair work of TV’s and consumer electronics. I also made some example circuits such as audio amplifiers, traffic lights and flashing LED projects. Looking back at my early projects I realise now that most of them were pretty pointless. Some were useful items some not so much. Ill get round to posting some photos, maybe unless I decide they are not interesting enough.<\/p>\n

I had a 20 year break in electronics and only recently returned to the hobbyist scene and found that things have drastically changed from playing around with 74 series logic and 555 timers that cost an arm and a leg. I’ve been experimenting with 8051 and AVR microcontrollers (the former more complex) and begun to use the Arduino as a development platform. Cheap Chinese electronics have made many things unavailable to the hobbyist years ago now possible and you are only limited by your imagination and skill level. Chinese electronics also has it’s bad points e.g fake components but more on that later.<\/p>\n

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Just one of the things I made out of old crap<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I decided the other day when I was having a clearout of junk in my cupboards I came across some of the circuits I made in the early 90’s and thought it would be cool to document them somewhere. Some of these projects I don’t even know what they do and a lot I’ve thrown out. I made some pretty sweet test equipment some of which were unfinished and thought shit, that looks really professional! I have been less than impressed with some of my recent projects although my current project is looking pretty damn good.<\/p>\n

Huh. You will see what I mean as I begin to populate this blog. I think Ill start with the very early stuff and move on to my current project which is a LED matrix clock that displays animations etc. It’s brilliant. And awesome because I made it.<\/p>\n

The only thing I need to be careful of is not to go back to my old ways and make something just for the sake of it otherwise Ill end up with a cupboard full of shite again that Ill never use. Only useful stuff from now on.<\/p>\n