In the past week, we had a chance to learn with Mitch Altman, an awesome alumnus who is a hacker, inventor and international expert on the hackerspace movement as well as introductory electronics workshops. “In 2004 Altman released a one-button universal remote control called TV-B-Gone, to be used for turning off TVs in public places.” The main purpose of this workshop was allowing us to build a Trippy RGB waves through basic soldering skill. I was very exciting to see Trippy RGB waves before we actually started the tutorial section.  Although I do not have any previous knowledge of electronic engineering, I did soldering a simple fan when I was in the elementary school with the help of my father. However, I barely remember the process of using tools and melting iron in order to allow each component to attach to the main panel. Thanks to this very detailed lesson with Mitch, I recalled my memories of soldering. The tools we used in the class are very similar to what I owned in 15 years ago. I felt soldering is a very fundamental skill for engineering to connect small pieces electronics together.

Although I do not have any previous knowledge of electronic engineering, I did soldering a simple fan when I was in the elementary school with the help of my father. However, I barely remember the process of using tools and melting iron in order to allow each component to attach to the main panel. Thanks to this very detailed lesson with Mitch, I recalled my memories of soldering. The tools we used in the class are very similar to what I owned in 15 years ago. The only difference is I did not have a sponge to clean up the head of the solder so that extra iron and heat will not impact the quality of the following work.  I felt soldering is a very fundamental skill for engineering to not only connect small pieces electronics together but impact the innovations and different types of research. Mitch had a lot of passions and patience to teach everyone in the classroom to complete our first Trippy RGB waves step by step. He also explained the functions of each component in the power point. I thought it was meaningful, interesting and useful for us to understand the stories behind the soldering.

As a business student, I felt this workshop is an amazing opportunity for me to learn the one of the most important engineering skill. I’ve already gained lots of interesting and useful technical skills from this class. I expect to utilize those hardware and software knowledge on my future project.