A warm hello from The Netherlands

Hi all!

I'm Oof (pronounced as in a  "loaf" of bread 😉

46 years old but feeling like the eternal child inside.

I live in the centre region of The Netherlands from where i run my one-person company in construction and renovation.

Although running the bizz takes up most of the daily time, I tend to squeeze out as much time as I can to always fiddle around with computers, science, tech and totally unrelated to the previous... survival stuff.

As a young child I was always deeply intrigued by technology & Science, whether it was computers, electronics, chemistry or physics. And after doing some school and study related years on those subjects, around 20 years ago, I ended up doing all sorts of other things in the past 2 decades. The only topic of those I have been involved in in all these last years was computer related, mainly on the hardware side.

However, due to some changes in my personal life and a bunch of new choices I made a couple of months ago, I find myself highly enthusiastic and eager again to pick up two of those old hobbies: electronics and robotics.

With over 20 years past since my last experience on those 2 matters I find myself to be in a rather rusty state, regarding those 2..  and a lot has changed also! (my last robot experience evolved around programming in GWBasic <shrug>)

So a while back, I decided to undust my old books and started reading them again, while having tons of websites open on the browsers about all the new stuff.

Rather quickly I found out that the old books, apart from some basic electronics knowledge, were not gonna help me much. And decided it was time for a new era. After clearing some space and redesigning a corner of my house into a tiny workspace, it was time to get some materials, so I went ahead and ordered a nice amount of building blocks for my new endeavor.

The idea I have is to eventually create a bunch of smaller and semi-sized robot arms and "intelligent" devices that could help out the physically disabled people running small errands in and around their homes. ( I have a few friends that are in a wheelchair and end up having to pay ridiculous high prices for the simplest of (electro)mechanical aids for their wheelchair for example)

With the modern cheap kits and modules, as well as 3D printers, I figured I could possibly make very affordable open source versions for them and others.

So I also purchased a 3D printer and a bunch of Arduino related building blocks and started fiddling around.

To keep the pressure on, I decided to start off with a 6-DOF robotic arm, from scratch, the MacBot-1

Very soon I found myself rather stuck in every possible corner of what I wanted to do, due to the simple lack of knowledge on all this new Arduino stuff and the new programming language and thus the google and Youtube pilgrimage found its start.

This is where I stumbled upon Bill's Dronebotworkshop Youtube series and I immediately got hooked. Hardly ever have I found the widest variety of topics covered on something I wanted to know more about, that was explained in such an absolutely amazing, clear, detailed, thorough [fill in here, all the other thumbs-up words] format, that I simply got addicted to, watching them.

Through the Youtube channel, I found the website and thus the forums and noticed the "type" of conversation going on in there. A warm and helping community, instead of a bunch of flaming hipsters, that only tell you what you did wrong, without giving you a useful piece of information that could actually help you.

And the fact that I didn't instantaneously ended up with an epileptic shock due to all the flashing adds, on the average forum, hinted that I had found the right place!

Ill round this introduction on myself up for now, if you have any questions after the above ramble, you will know how to reach me 😉

I'm looking forward to learning and sharing as much as I can from and with you all!

Oof  (Macoofer)