Know your community: Justin

Can you tell us a bit about you?
My name is Justin Wilson and I am from New Zealand. I am married and we have to young boys, 10 and 6 years old. I have been living and working in the UK for past 6 years as a software architect. Being a typical kiwi I am a jack of all trades and master of none J.

I had the usual up bringing in New Zealand, running around bare foot in a grass skirt and chasing off the English invaders after they supplied us with rusty guns, beads and rum…

My father is an electronics engineer and developed the first FM proportional RC control gear so I was exposed to electronics and computers from an early age – Vic20, C64 home built TVs and stereos etc.

What are your hobbies?
The usual, computers, RC planes and cars, in my younger miss spent youth I used to ride motorcycles and have done a few track days.

Having the luxury of many beaches in New Zealand I also used to do wave skiing, have jumped out of planes at 12,000 feet and a few other silly sports.

What is your profession?
I am currently leading development of a print solution for production based printers (30 feet long) where paper goes in one end and bound documents come out the other end based just North of sunny London.

How did you get started with hardware?
My first foray into hardware was a 6 button joystick for my C64 about 20 years ago.

It was self-etched using ferric chloride after drawing the tracks with black tape and touching it up with a pen.

After this first successful design for playing Elite far better than the commodore joystick i had I discovered beer and motorcycles and forgot about the fun of building hardware until about 18 months ago.

What was your first GHI product?
My first GHI board was a Cobra – got it for a project that I still havent finished J - Hopefully I will finish it soon but It will be a G120 based design now…

Have you designed hardware yourself?
Gadgeteer has really got my interesting boiling about building hardware again and Im having a huge amount of fun building modules and a few other designs are in the pipeline.

Any words, advice or comments for the community?
Dont be shy to ask questions or put forward ideas on the forum, I have found that GHI forum is an incredible trove of knowledge with many friendly and helpful members ready and willing to help solve the easy to over my head challenges.

Dont necessarily believe so called experts telling you cant do something particularly with NetMf and this is reason I found out about the joys of NetMF – the experts at DiyDrones said you cannot fly a RC plane with .Net, well I tried and had it flying in a week :wink:

Where can we find you on the web?
Here :slight_smile:

One day www.ingenuitymicro.com …i did say one day…

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If it hadn’t been for Justin I don’t think i would have ever got round to actually making any of my own gadgeteer modules. A huge thank you is well deserved to a fantastic member of this community (and a few beers too) :wink:

Justin, you’ve been a great addition to the community. Keep the great modules coming!

Did I miss this project post??? Let’s hear more about this!

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Thanks for chaps…

@ ianlee74 - i never really bothered to post anything other than this… Netduino - It actually worked.... - Blogs - diydrones - it was done before i discovered the joys of GHI…

There is a far more interesting G120Pilot cooking away behind closed doors :wink:

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Nice. I’m looking forward to seeing the G120Pilot!

As always nice the have some more background info on community members :slight_smile: Seems that we share hobbies: FPV and NET(MF) :slight_smile:

just started building my Quad (a TBS Discovery)

@ Patrick - I think RC, FPV, Robotics and now NETMF make for a good time wasting mix :slight_smile:

I shall keep you up to date on progress - maybe i should try and drop some modules off to you via the plane - will be a good test of the technology and to see if big brother comes to takes me away in hand cuffs :smiley:

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I’ve also got plans (unfortunately long term ones) to do a Quad with FPV and powered by NETMF, RC control & an flight controller like this one: Radio Control Planes, Drones, Cars, FPV, Quadcopters and more - Hobbyking

By the time I get to it, Justin’s G120 will likely fit in there somewhere.

Not sure if this is actually in service or if was hoax … so with a big grain of salt.

edit:

From: Tacocopter Aims To Deliver Tacos Using Unmanned Drone Helicopters | HuffPost Impact

@ mhectorgato - Yeah i remember laughing about that at the time, it was always a hoax…

Hi Justin,
You recently demonstrated a Gadgeteer 24vdc input module on YouTube.
I and many others would be interested to know if this was going to become a commercially available product. GHI does not currently list any 24vdc capable modules on their web site.
There is a demand for these items.