Electronics
Ever since I got into cars and LED's, I've been interested as to how to make those LED's blink, strobe and chase eachother. I have to give credit to 'whats a microcontroller', a kit inluding an educational book with tutorials explaining the BASIC coding, a project breadboard that you mount your project onto, and a download cable for the computer.
This kit allowed me to learn BASIC in less than 2 weeks by doing all the projects and modifying them to my wants. If you want to get into this kind of stuff, I highly suggest getting this kit at your local Radioshack for about $80.
From there, I did some searching on online, wanting to be able to program those little IC' chips, or Integrated Circuits. I came up with the PicAxe programmer. Tried it out, and it's perfect to what I want to do. The PicAxe allows you to run a visual program (without code) and map out your circuit (or with code). Simply download it to your little IC chip and be able to take that chip elsewhere, hook it up and have a working circuit without needing your computer and cables and stuff. I played around with the PicAxe for a couple of months while searching the net to try and expand my electronics knowledge only to find, you can make your own circuit boards, etched and all.
While i'm working with this PicAxe programmer, I'm using "breadboards", a simple plastic board with a bunch of little boards for projects like mine. While this is very simple, it can get very complicated if you end up with a circuit that involves a bunch of components. If theres a problem with your circuit, you've got wires EVERYWHERE, and let me tell you, when you have 50 wires connected in a 4x5in piece of plastic, trying to trace each and everyone of those wires to a specific component get extremely complicated.
