Humm. Good memories, many of which I have forgotten.
Born: 1962
First automation: metal strip screwed to a block of wood under the front door pad. Heard it ring, and opened the door to my dad's friend, holding his girlfriend and touching the pad with his toe to see what it did.
I watched the movie collossis, and hung a monitor from my bedroom ceiling. The interface was an etched circuit board I made in high school (that my wife tried to throw away as junk -- it looked like it.) The board went into an apple II+ computer. It told me what doors were open in the house. Dad was good to let me experiment. The wires are now used for the alarm system some. . .30 years later. I had a trs-80 model I with 4k, and had to wait for it to come in because RS had it backordered. 8080A processor replaced bya z80 I believe. I placed 3rd in the state in vo-tech competition because I insisted on using a rechargeable soldering iron against my teacher's suggestions. 2 guys finished about 5 minutes before me. could have been me with those college scholarships.
BSR was found while wandering around Sears. Late 70's I think.
Went into Ham radio in 1983 as Tech class to use 2 meter radio only.
Wrote a home automation program in GWBASIC, and when I first tested it in my own first house, I opened the kitchen door and it was supposed to play a tone, but it turned on the front porch light enstead. I was using a relay and transistor driver circuit from the Intel 286 6/10 Mhz computer to do that.
Bought ECS and spent DAYS programming it and then it ran for over a year without a reboot in DOS. a couple of years later Mark (ECS Fame) quit the business and took a salary job and then came back, but rewrote it all and I lost many of my devices. So I went looking for a replacement and found HOMESEER.
I have bought form Barclay at HAL (whatever happened to him, is he still alive?) and I have pieced hundreds of projects together. My family and I moved in with dad who has cancer (89 yrs old) and until he is gone, my Homeseer machine is cold and dark. My daughter called it "Mark" after the best man ay my wedding (because she thought he was cute when she met him years leater). She is now 11 years old.
I did the Tandy/Radio Shack, and Heathkit stuff, and I built lots of breadboarded digital electronics, robots, and computer programming. i guess I started back when I was about 8. Dad told me that for a light to work, it needed a battery, a light, and a wire for the current to go to the light and come back. "And now, son, you know everything I know about electronics. . . "
OH MY GOSH. I am sounding like the guys at the retirement homes I used to HAVE to listen to.
When we moved back in to dad's, I showed my wife the tiny holes in my bedroom ceiling that held that monitor up, some . . . 27 years ago.
Born: 1962
First automation: metal strip screwed to a block of wood under the front door pad. Heard it ring, and opened the door to my dad's friend, holding his girlfriend and touching the pad with his toe to see what it did.
I watched the movie collossis, and hung a monitor from my bedroom ceiling. The interface was an etched circuit board I made in high school (that my wife tried to throw away as junk -- it looked like it.) The board went into an apple II+ computer. It told me what doors were open in the house. Dad was good to let me experiment. The wires are now used for the alarm system some. . .30 years later. I had a trs-80 model I with 4k, and had to wait for it to come in because RS had it backordered. 8080A processor replaced bya z80 I believe. I placed 3rd in the state in vo-tech competition because I insisted on using a rechargeable soldering iron against my teacher's suggestions. 2 guys finished about 5 minutes before me. could have been me with those college scholarships.
BSR was found while wandering around Sears. Late 70's I think.
Went into Ham radio in 1983 as Tech class to use 2 meter radio only.
Wrote a home automation program in GWBASIC, and when I first tested it in my own first house, I opened the kitchen door and it was supposed to play a tone, but it turned on the front porch light enstead. I was using a relay and transistor driver circuit from the Intel 286 6/10 Mhz computer to do that.
Bought ECS and spent DAYS programming it and then it ran for over a year without a reboot in DOS. a couple of years later Mark (ECS Fame) quit the business and took a salary job and then came back, but rewrote it all and I lost many of my devices. So I went looking for a replacement and found HOMESEER.
I have bought form Barclay at HAL (whatever happened to him, is he still alive?) and I have pieced hundreds of projects together. My family and I moved in with dad who has cancer (89 yrs old) and until he is gone, my Homeseer machine is cold and dark. My daughter called it "Mark" after the best man ay my wedding (because she thought he was cute when she met him years leater). She is now 11 years old.
I did the Tandy/Radio Shack, and Heathkit stuff, and I built lots of breadboarded digital electronics, robots, and computer programming. i guess I started back when I was about 8. Dad told me that for a light to work, it needed a battery, a light, and a wire for the current to go to the light and come back. "And now, son, you know everything I know about electronics. . . "
OH MY GOSH. I am sounding like the guys at the retirement homes I used to HAVE to listen to.
When we moved back in to dad's, I showed my wife the tiny holes in my bedroom ceiling that held that monitor up, some . . . 27 years ago.
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