I thought I'd kick off the Electronics SIG forum Section with a bit about me, at least as far as electronics as applied to 009 railway modelling goes. If you are inclined to take part in the SIG please feel free to add to the thread.
My main interest is DC control of 009 locomotives to get the best performance from the variety of chassis of varying vintage that are found in them. Allied to that is an interest in motor characteristics (and going away from electronics, gearbox selection). This includes the design of speed controller circuits and associated circuits such as overload prevention. Allied to this is track circuiting and train detection, and elements of automatic train control.
Another interest is in electronics for various lighting and animation effects (or gimmicks if you prefer :) ). This includes using the Arduino microcontroller.
Not 009, but model railway related I played a part in exhibiting a MERG (Model Electronic Railway Group) stand at Aberdeen and other exhibitions in the North and East of Scotland.
I only noticed this sig by chance today!
I have a very long background in electronics, going through very early computers (Z80, Nascom etc), Robot Wars (Competitor), Synthesizers (Builder, not player), microcontrollers etc.
I have just recently started playing with Arduinos which was a good excuse for brushing off my C programming which has remained largely dormant for 15 years :-)
I went back to model railways after a 50 year gap looking for a sedate, gentle, hobby involving kit bashing, dyed sawdust, dried lichen, and plasticard, but ended up with DCC, 3D printing and static grass.
I have a very varied engineering background starting with the Fleet Air Arm from school. Although, originally, on airframes and engines, a fellow mess-mate was heavily into radio, radar and electronics and gave me an early interest in valve and transistor circuits.
Later, with the CEGB in Pembrokeshire, I worked in the computer dept. on test equipment, A-D-C's and clock circuits. Moving onto PC's (and HP disk controllers) and mini computers and IBM PC's - Z80 and Motorola 68000 stuff really. Latterly, I worked with Rediffusion on 'piped' TV in the Welsh valleys and in their workshops in Bridgend.
These days, I dabble with Arduino's (I think I'm up to 'H-Bridges' now). Main interest in 009 is for aspects of special effects (eg a rope-worked incline) and better /finer control of small engines for shunting etc. Still a lot to learn !
Dave C
I started off in electronics in the sixth form at school, thanks to an inspirational Physics teacher. But I couldn't afford to get heavily into it.
Come University (Physics) and Computer programming; we were taught FORTAN (IV) (It seemed odd that the engineering students were taught ALGOL-60) and a bit of elctronics was on the syllabus. And there was something called "Fred" if I recall correctly, that was an interactive line interpreter you ran on a teletype; most of us wrote moon landing programs - it did rather waste teletype paper!
After graduating, I fell into working in Cosmic Ray research where electronics came in in a practical way - as did programming - ALOGOL-68, Assembler code (Don't suppose anyone else has heard of the Interdata77 minicomputer, which was built entirely out of first generation 7400 series ICs), Pascal, too. And then the S-100 bus micros started to appear (running CP/M) - which came as kits of parts!
Later (different job) Commodore PET (BASIC) These had a SCSI interface - which meant they could be connected to (some) lab equipment.
Then into Medical Physics - involving PDP-11 and LSI-11 (FORTRAN and assembler) Interestingly DEC preferred to use Octal rather than Hexadecimal - could be confusing. I worked on remote measurement of patients' movement whilst undergoing radiotherapy, and on adding computer control to treatment machine positioning (got a MPhil for my efforts).
Change of job that involved a General Data mini and micro (more Pascal...)
Another job change and another hospital - looking after CT, Ultrasound and Nuclear Medcine. Involved electronics and programming - I got involved in dBase and latterly PICK. Oh, yes the BBC micro came along - which was a ground-breaker. That was fun - especially getting the optional voice synthesiser chip (which used Kenneth Kendal's voice) to swear! Then the PC arrived (I'd like to say it's all been downhill since then... )
On the way I tried out Visual Basic, Delphi, various flavours of Basic....
I got out of the Health service while it was still enjoyable to work there....
Worked in schools for a bit as IT support - at one time I knew how to configure servers! (I find that difficult to believe, actually - the tech moves on so fast). It left me with a great respect for teachers and a deep dis-satisfaction for the IT environment in schools. Whether it has got any better since I left in 2008, I can only hope.
These days it's all hobby as I'm retired. I dabble in electronincs - building train controllers, messing around with PicAxe micros, etc... Not so much into programming these days.
You're sorry you asked now...