Old guy who wants to learn

Hello all you young whippersnappers. I hope you will welcome me to this forum. I live in Huntington Beach Ca. and I'm very interested in learning Arduino. I have purchased a beginners kit and have been watching all the videos that I can find. I still am at a loss though as to what to do to progress on. I'm starting to understand the coding part but where I am at a loss is once I have a bit of knowledge, how do I put it to use? I'm just not sure what to do with what I've learned. So, I'm looking for someone near me who might be in the same boat. I know all you young folks seem to be born with the knowledge already in your heads. So you are way ahead of me. Thanks for any help or suggestions.

Ray

Ray, just a "hello" from another 73 year old trying to learn more about Arduino. Hope you have located a group out your way. I am about 75 miles north of Houston, Texas. Not much technology around here. george

Hey George you already are in a great group. :wink:

Welcome
.

Man I feel young for a change, I didn't think anyone my age tried this stuff.
I am a young 70 year old and have been fighting, cussing and throwing things for the last six months.
I am working on a project right now that remote controls a device in my shed that uses a RF 315
433 transmitter and receiver. The devices are controlled by a C# program running on my desktop.
Since I live in the boring state of Ohio, there isn't a lot to do in the winter so I spent a lot of my time
writing code and fighting with components. If you want to find practical projects to build just do a search
in Bing for Arduino projects, there are literally hundreds of them on the web.

Hope this helped
Frank

Ray,
Just another hello from 71 year old in the town of George in South Africa. Thou not near you but still.
I just moved from the PIC Basic Pro environment to AVR/Arduino world after motivation from a youngster.
Good move experience so far.

I have just successfully created a stepper driving circuit for a belt feeding system in a bottle filling factory.
To be commissioned in 2 weeks time.
I must admit I got a lot of information from the forum and especially from Nick Gammon's sketches.

I am still planning to write a ballistic chronograph sketch. The LED/photo transistor sensor and amplifier has been tested on my oscilloscope and seems to give a nice pulse when bullet passes the sensors.

Another project that I am planning to build is a digital readout for my metal lathe, indicating movement to a 0.01 mm accuracy. Do not know if that accuracy is possible. I am looking at using 2 rotary encoders with an LCD display each for the 2 axes.

I hope you the talk helped a bit.

Please feel free to make contact. I will be happy to share my Arduino experience so far.

Danie.

Hello All, how many of you are still looking to get started?

Ray,

I just joined 2 days ago, so I can't really say "welcome to the forum", but I do IT consulting for a company that makes all kinds of equipment and supplies for DNA testing, Electrophoresis and other Lab related work. Their clients range anywhere from NIH, other Government orgs, universities and high school chemistry and biology labs.

Anyway, one of the 2 partners in the company is 94 years old. Former US NAVY electrical engineer. Literally, one of the sharpest people I've ever met. He is responsible for any and all PCB designs and anything electronics related. Spends his entire day soldering and 3D printing things, drives to and from office every damn day and yells at me when i'm 2 minutes late to fix his computer issues. When I am not late, he yells at me for being a goddam communist (I'm from Russia). I love the guy!

You are still a young gun and i'm pretty sure you will have no trouble learning all these things! You got this!

Another Old Gizzard

I'm checking this forum for some time now. Retired, bored out of my mind. Currently, finishing my own personal MAKER-SPACE. Like to chat, Facetime or Skype with people with similar, curiosity level about basic electronic, micros (Arduino, Raspberry)and programming.

I live in the VERY rural area of wild Northen Georgia 90 miles from Atlanta.Nowhere around here, I can meet people of similar interest.
Love Dogs.

English is my third language.

Stan

Yo Ray! You've probably realized by now that most of us here are old farts.

Although this forum is hosted on arduino.cc, it is not the official Arduino support forum. This is a social forum, where the primary activity is discussing Arduino projects and related technology.

If you hang out in the Project Guidance subforum, you will see a wide range of projects, and many proposed solutions. Lurk for a bit to learn the culture.

Everyone starts somewhere. In this endeavor, you are starting here. Have fun!