I am reminded of D&D, where everyone starts at Level 1 and you need to go adventuring to gain experience. Overlaid on that, each character has their class and sets of skills. And as they gain experience, they achieve new levels which open up new capabilities.
The Maker Class
I feel that I’ve been living the Maker character class. Part of that are a string of skills that I slowly work at and gain experience. And (ok, a bit off the D&D formula) as I level up on each of those skills, things become easier and a whole new set of things open up.
Some skills I’ve been working on these past 9 months since I really started on this journey:
- Arduino (and similar dev boards)
- Sensors
- Soldering (through hole)
- AVR programming
- Circuit building (including paper circuits)
- PCB design
- Badgelife (combination circuit building and PCB design)
- 3D printing
Thems a lot of things to learn.
Stepwise
Where this whole ‘level’ thinking came from is the realization that the quickest way for me to learn things is to set stepwise goals that teach me one new aspect of a skill.
For example, I’m totally fascinated by badgelife – the mixing of art, hacking, and PCB design. At first, I had a ton of ideas of what I’d make. Then I realized that there were foundational skills I needed to work on before I could make anything complex.
So I started with just lighting an LED. I printed out my company’s logo, put it on cardboard, poked some LEDs through the cardboard, and laid down some copper traces to connect the LEDs to a 3V battery.
I ended up learning a bit about scale, shapes, fitting things in. The exercise also got me thinking of other ways to do the same thing.
Learning with your hands
For the second iteration, I printed a larger logo, made a more robust circuit (copper tape and solder), and programmed an ATtiny45 to fade the LEDs (the one in the GIF).
That got me thinking of the challenge of programming a board once built, and perhaps other circuits that could do the same thing, and counting components.
From that, I read up on astable multivibrator circuits, as a way to blink LEDs without a circuit. And rather than be theoretical, I printed out a circuit, pasted it on cardboard, and connected it all up (the other GIF). A major driver to do this was to see the scale and what it felt like in the hands. From there I could iterate, make smaller. Perhaps I could add to the circuit to fade the LEDs.
More hands on building to learn things, I suppose.
Level up and up
My very first D&D character (yes, I played it) was Harg from the City Afar, a thief (I always preferred such character classes). An, obviously, unforgettable name. And a fun time while he lasted.
But this Maker class guy is me, and I’m not role playing.
I wonder where the adventure will take me. All I know is that I’ll be doing it step by step and learning amazing things along the way (with a lot of kobolds getting in the way).
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