Yesterday a friend came over with his oscilloscope, a signal generator, a handful of electronic parts, and showed me some experiments he was doing with indoor positioning systems. (Think of an indoor positioning system as something like a GPS for inside a house, warehouse, convention center, or so on. It can tell a mobile Robot or device where it is or its heading within a building, where GPS doesn’t work.) I’ll leave the details up to him to blog about when he’s ready, but what I will say now is that I had a blast.
As you might know, I’m still recovering from a brain metastisis, surgery, and radiation so it’s a bit like I’m working with 3/4 of my brain. (At least that’s how I joke about it.) That still didn’t hold me back from admiring the process of experimentation and discovery.
It’s little side projects like this that often can be the most enjoyable. Whether they ultimately turn into anything spectacular, who knows. But how wonderful they are.
I’m a strong advocate of working on side projects. For me, right now, they are great mental exercise, which I need. But, of course, in the more general case they can boost morale, making you feel good as you discover new things. They can give you hands on experience. And, for those frugal like myself, they often can be done on the cheap.
What’s my ideal side project? There isn’t one. That’s the beauty of it. There’s always one more thing to learn, to discover, to design, to build.