Before the Navy, and before my short stint in college majoring in computer science, I took a vocational class in high school teaching basic housewiring. In fact if you google the phrase Modern Housewiring book you can see the same text book I had in high school. The class was pretty fun, and valuable in many ways. By the end of the class, I had put together a working fusebox that powered a couple of lights and switches. If you’re interested, you can get an updated edition of the book on Amazon.
A few years later when I was in the Navy, I had leaned toward being an electronics technician, but because I hadn’t yet learned how to study effectively, I ran into some of the same problems I ran into in college. Tragically, it wasn’t from partying like most people that struggle with college the first time around so there aren’t many interesting stories but I digress…
In short, I didn’t realize it yet, but my interest in hardware as a hobby was always there. I enjoyed taking apart anything electronic as a kid. Not as much as my parents, but whatever, it was fun. If I were to be honest, unlike many people in this field that lean toward a background in Computer Science, I would’ve been closer to Electrical Engineer…hmm, could that be an epiphany?
I had already mentioned attending a lot of conferences, and many of those conferences have electronic badges or other hardware available to tinker with. Considering all the wonderful IoT devices out there, and the potential security risks, I figured it would be great to get a better understanding as to how some of this stuff works.
I had been waiting for these devices to get delivered, so now that they are here a write up will be forthcoming. As I’ve been working on my skills with Python, I figured I would find a project with python based code, and kickstarter didn’t fail to disappoint.
I’ll be providing updates as I learn more about these devices, but if you are interested and want to jump ahead, I left links to them below.