Daves Jones is an Australian electronics design engineer. He is the creator and driving force of the popular engineering blog “EEVblog” on YouTube. He does product reviews, electronics tutorials, and mailbox videos very often and is one of my primary sources for knowledge on the subject. This is an explanation of his response video on how he got into electronics in general.
How did he get into electronics?
Dave Jones began life as a small child in Australia, a country known mostly for its fierce boxing kangaroos. A most unlikely place for budding electrical engineer in the 80’s, wouldn’t you say? One thing is certain in this world - the destructive power of kids. Dave began taking things apart around the house from an early age and through attempting to get them back together again, learned a great deal by trial and error. He and many other engineers like him started out with electronics kits. The first image is of a Tandy brand Science Fair series 150-in-ONE kit. It was comparable to today’s Arduino* in the sense that it had lots of different functions for experimenting and learning the principles in which electronic components work together.
Dave soon ran out of projects in this kit and upgraded to this model below, the 200-in-ONE kit.
These kits fostered Dave’s interest in electronics and he saved up $800 when he was 13 years old and bought 20MHz Analog oscilloscope**. This was very expensive for a kid back in the 80’s and speaks for his dedication to learning. Soon after, everything began to fall into place for Dave and because of his early beginning in hobby electronics, learning all of the information in college was a breeze compared to those who had never had any experience in it at all.
How have things changed?
Around the mid-90’s, the internet began exploding into the fast-growing source of information we know today. As a result, the world of hobbyist electronics grew as well. Information on all the different components became readily available without the use of books and magazines and even obtaining the parts was much easier because of the emergence of online ordering. This was something Dave got to see happen right before his eyes and the difference was apparent. He compares the differences from before and after the internet. Before the internet, all the hobbyists had giant books of information and many magazines and catalogs full of parts to order. Once the internet showed up, the need for huge libraries of books went away and information was more compact and readily available right on the web. This trend has followed all the way through into today.
Where are things going today?
With the arrival of a new generation of people comes the arrival of different opportunities. We as a generation are blessed with a huge variety of fields to study in, all of which are constantly moving forward and changing. The electronics world has never been so easily accessible as it is now. You can order a part off of Amazon that would have cost 10x as much 30 years ago and have it on your doorstep in 2 days. The variety and complexity of the components available are mind boggling. For example, a GPS module that is capable of locating accurately down to 1 foot movements at 10Hz (1 Hertz = 1 time per second.) is available for purchase on Amazon for $43. The satellite infrastructure for such a device wasn’t even around for civilian use until the late 90’s - early 2000’s. This all may seem overwhelming for a newbie just starting to learn about electronics.
Around the mid-90’s, the internet began exploding into the fast-growing source of information we know today. As a result, the world of hobbyist electronics grew as well. Information on all the different components became readily available without the use of books and magazines and even obtaining the parts was much easier because of the emergence of online ordering. This was something Dave got to see happen right before his eyes and the difference was apparent. He compares the differences from before and after the internet. Before the internet, all the hobbyists had giant books of information and many magazines and catalogs full of parts to order. Once the internet showed up, the need for huge libraries of books went away and information was more compact and readily available right on the web. This trend has followed all the way through into today.
Where are things going today?
With the arrival of a new generation of people comes the arrival of different opportunities. We as a generation are blessed with a huge variety of fields to study in, all of which are constantly moving forward and changing. The electronics world has never been so easily accessible as it is now. You can order a part off of Amazon that would have cost 10x as much 30 years ago and have it on your doorstep in 2 days. The variety and complexity of the components available are mind boggling. For example, a GPS module that is capable of locating accurately down to 1 foot movements at 10Hz (1 Hertz = 1 time per second.) is available for purchase on Amazon for $43. The satellite infrastructure for such a device wasn’t even around for civilian use until the late 90’s - early 2000’s. This all may seem overwhelming for a newbie just starting to learn about electronics.
To truly begin to create things, you must first learn the basics. Dave’s background in beginning electronics remains a very useful guide in today’s hectic environment. The only major difference between Dave’s time and our time is the speed at which you can learn things. I learned almost all I know about electronics from places on the internet like YouTube. There are many people like Dave Jones who are creating a huge wealth of information to learn from and a great community to go along with it. Go out and start learning!
* Microcontroller development platform. I use them on projects and learned a great deal.
The open-source project can be found here: http://www.arduino.cc/
** An oscilloscope is a test instrument used to measure the signals and waves from electrical circuits. The bandwidth of a scope is how many times it measures per second. 1 Hertz is once per second. 20 Megahertz (MHz) is 20,000 times a second. That's a lot of measurements! However, for comparison, I recently bought a digital oscilloscope that is capable of 100MHz for only $400. It is also one quarter of the size of the old analog ones. It’s engineers like Dave that design these amazing pieces of technology!
The open-source project can be found here: http://www.arduino.cc/
** An oscilloscope is a test instrument used to measure the signals and waves from electrical circuits. The bandwidth of a scope is how many times it measures per second. 1 Hertz is once per second. 20 Megahertz (MHz) is 20,000 times a second. That's a lot of measurements! However, for comparison, I recently bought a digital oscilloscope that is capable of 100MHz for only $400. It is also one quarter of the size of the old analog ones. It’s engineers like Dave that design these amazing pieces of technology!