'Do you really need all these wires ?!'

'Do you really need all these wires ? !' - This is a question that my mother first asked me over 15 years ago, and hasn't stopped ever since :-)

It all began with my interactions with DV sparking my interest in electronics in high school. DV was about 5 years my senior, and a first rate circuit design wizard. He wasn't particularly social, and it was hard to get him to talk, but he had a rare knack - for debugging circuits that didn't work - and perhaps it was this 'detective work' aspect to it that first lured me in. Soon, I had my own soldering iron. and spent most of my weekends trying to rig up circuits - getting speakers to sound alarms, leds to blink, and later, clap switch circuits, FM trasmitters, and so forth..

After a while, I learnt that with copper-clad PCBs, it was possible to 'draw' the PCB traces without having to use external wiring ( of course this wouldn't work for complicated wiring that needed multiple layers, as that needed more sophisticated equipment). Armed with Ferric chloride solution, I would etch out the unnecessary copper, leaving behind only the traces I needed to interconect the components on the PCB. All this meant that my circuits looked highly un-polished - a fact that didn't bother me in the least, and in fact added a touch of old world charm :-)

All the constant clutter on my table - of half built circuits, was a cause for concern for my mother, and she thought it was perhaps a teenage fad that would pass. She was wrong ;) I soon ended up saving 'any' piece of equipment that remotely had anything to do with electronics - Radio-sets that didn't work, old telephones, alarm clocks. I think at some level I believed that each of these gadgets possessed a soul, and it was my responsibility to see to it that they were properly preserved, until I had acquired the skills to restore them to their past glory :-)

A few years later it was music that again raised 'why all these wires?' questions, and really, it was reasonable  question to ask- I had my keyboard, and a pair of amps all of which needed to be powered. I had cables connecting the keyboard to the amp, as well as to the PC, which in turn had to be powered up. Add to this the external sound card, and a few USB cables - It was quite a task to convince people that all of these cables were absolutely essential to be able to play and listen to 'Jingle Bells ' :-)

All this comes to my mind for a reason - while rummaging through one of the boxes in my top shelves, I found some of those circuits I had built all those years ago.. Here is one - built over 15 years ago.  The blinking LED would 'race' from left to right, and then cross over and begin again. the speed at which it raced through could be controlled with a potentiometer. The other side shows the wiring - It is a bit of a miracle that it worked at all! I notice that there are 10 resistors but only 9 LEDs. Presumably one LED refused to function; luckily a corner one, that I must have gotten rid of.

Components mounted on the PCB

The wiring underneath