Brony's/Furry's in Electronics Engineering

Why here?
I tried to find another forum other than the art communities. Either they silence spiritual people or they ban you for cartoony art. Via your profile.

This Thread
I decided to try here. The art forums have been so welcoming despite my pitfalls in autism. Where else can I talk so freely? This thread is focussed primarily on electronics and lab safety procedures. Though music being my forte its welcomed.

I am having a little trouble getting the hang of transformers and vacuum tubes. Though I persionally could improve in descrete logic and Op-Amps. Like most know I primarily focus on musical instruments, but I study computer archetecture out of necessity.

My background
I began a mentorship with two gifted repair techs. One focussed on digital piano and accoustic pianos. The other on Hammoned organs and old fashioned tube amplifiers.

Basically for guitar and bass. Basically taking me under their wing after screwing up college on my attempts.

The collab currently is A Messa Boogie Dual Rectafier. We are replacing diodes and transistors until we know what every knob does.

My current Project
Right now I am focussing on learning safety procedures with transformers and overcoming mybfear of them. My project for this is a multi-multimeter.

It will include set-voltage power supplies and a series of circuits for very basic arduino type meters. Though I will upgrade thing as I learn

@LP2Lily
Greetings!

My background started working at the baby bell phone company on a university in the US. We went through all the dorm rooms and offices every year maintaining phones and other telecom equipment. You wouldn’t believe how often people hid their pot inside the cases of their phones - these were the old wired boxes that hung on the wall so there was lots of room inside.

Our security alarm system was all tube based. Not because it was cheeper, but because no one could hack it. We got so many reports from the campus cops and other officers who responded to alarms only to find the robbers staring at an opened alarm panel, literally gobsmacked by the glowing tubes and inexplicably retro wax-and-string wrapped wires. Invariably they’d have some hyper modern hacking gear, just hanging limply in their hands as they posed for selfies with the officers in front of the glowing boxes during their arrests.

So, I got to learn a little about tubes, and the local AxMan junk store kept us stocked with a random assortment of tubes intended for old TV sets for years.

Later I worked at some places that were involved in the first laserprinters, but at that point it went from pure electronics to pulling motherboards out of PCs, Macs, and Sun Microsystems and getting them to fit and work together inside of various photocopiers to make them “Cross Platform”.

That’s why so many of the early “Cross Platform” laserprinters started at US $ 18K. They literally had one of every kind of computer they worked with inside of them, because it was cheeper than paying the licensing for everyone’s proprietary networks topologies.

2LDR: Make the computer think the printer is a monitor, and it outputs the “thing to be printed” without any additional work needed.

Getting those monsters through the FCC licensing was always a freaking nightmare. The Faraday cages inside of those printers were some of the more expensive parts, and when you’d turn one of them on they would literally brown out the lights in the room.

Fun times.

I worked for awhile with Digi on the “Internet Of Things”, with stuff like light bulbs for street lights that were wifi repeaters to create free wireless for cars. But that plan went POOF because the barrier for implementation was 5 cents a module, and no one could ever get it cheeper than 12 or 15 cents. Also, public wifi is such a heavily regulated industry in the US. There’s literally laws preventing you from setting up public networks that compete with the established network providers for towns. Soooo … we did ISDN instead. Because Japan, which was still completely happy to pay whatever it cost to get the internet crammed into their already straining city infrastructures.

But, yeah. Electronics and electrical engineering is amazing stuff, and a ton of fun. I hope you have an amazing career :)

And, for tubes? Just keep it simple seems to be the way to survive. Or, like, work on some tube amps for guitars and stereos - lots of volts there, but also lots of fun and fairly simple circuits. Also those tubes are commonly available at most music stores that sell electric guitars.

My knowledge about this subject is level 1.

@phoenixacezero
A lot of this work starts with “Solder these things there”, and just kind of grows with the “Why didn’t my soldering work?”. Sometimes its not so much engineering as it is the same kind of “Thing not go. Make thing go.” work farmers do. Especially if you come to it through jobs not specifically intended to be electrical jobs, like working in a car repair shop and no one else wants to get out the multimeter so one day that’s your new career.

@Ciaran
Ah.

You would get along with my electronics mentor nicely. A tad bit more Christian then I am. Yet, he started in odd jobs. One being in telephone and internet lines.

Though he dealt more with putting a compressed air type element into the lines. Basically to disolve water and make locating broken lines easier to find.

I bet he get a kick out of the tube security system you mentioned. He even repaired printers scanners. He has two oldfashioned ones in his house. Basically bought them from the bank when they upgraded.