Tinkerers’ Lab, A Fun place to have!

Ever got bored in campus from daily academic schedule but it still interests you and you understand its impact and beauty!, You might want to try out handson and tinker. What! “Never Tried”, and how to “DO” if you wanted to. First hear my experience as a tinkerer!

It was my 6th standard when things really got me. Tied to the bed for the day having fever, not going to classes with my brother, was the memorable day. He brought me a DC motor with a AA battery from a hardware shop which stands in way between home and class, being far away from the class, and riding on back seat with my brother on a scooty is fun!. After playing with the motor and the amazing things it can do was very exciting, so much that for the rest of the year I played with various types of motors. All was in Kota. After moving to Mumbai attention turned to chemicals! The day i remember when I forgot to completely tight pack the cap of Hydrochloric Acid which resulted the house in Hydrogen fumes due to copper wires around it in a bag. The day I had to throw away most of my stuff in junk, was sad but exciting too. One of the ways in which u can mess your kitchen is to heat a test tube full of commonly available chemicals like Magnesium Sulphate, Baking Soda, Potassium Permanganate mixed together u dont know and getting test tub crack over the stove and all that when your mom is away. Time passes so do interests, until one day when my friend showed the discharging capacitor producing sparks!. This got me interested in electronics, the stuff which was the most exciting to me was the junk!, nevermind, but it was. Really.. getting CD players, thrown radio receivers, or even buying a new one just to break, finding and picking unknown chip in front of the station and googling to find it as a microcontroller got me, a feeling where things take a drastic change of mind and knowledge immensely exciting to get thrills with, and it filled my highschool time. Getting bored was never an option cause I always had things to do which I loved. One of the difficult things I found was in procuring the parts, be it anything from chemicals to mechanical things to electronics, Finding the shop was the difficult part. First uC to work with was PIC16F84A, with assembly sitting for over a month in free time trying to understand its code and why it is like it is. Travelling once in a 2 weeks through local trains just to buy new Integrated Circuits was on my agenda list. Yeah, after managing the money somehow, but thats a different issue. Moving to the microcontrollers the software had to be learnt, obsessed with the 35 instructions of PIC16 family, and hearing about cheap Atmel microconrollers yet more powerful B), made me learn C. Initially it was daunting, I never really understood it in my Junior Highschool, but soon it was way easier than mind boggling Assemblies. Gave enough boost to do many interesting projects and insights. Soon it was the time for Undergraduate Studies. Welcome to IIT Bombay! :D . Initially it was hard to spot. Newly build (more like rebuilt) but clouded in the pleothra of events and buildings, getting there was a task!. Until when you hear there’s a place where you can do techy-geeky thinkgs!, called Tinkerers’ Lab. In the sheds of not so cool from outside, enter and you will find the luxury. Welcome to Tinkerers’ Lab. Its a place where you will find techy-geeky socially enthused people. A home of all the clubs with the pleothra of equipments. And say what, my first year was all set to begin with!

And there it is, hidden in the sheds the treasured thing.., treasured by the people love to do thingks.