1. Introduction

I have started to learn Electronics a few years ago, doing it the hard way - all by myself.

I'm a veteran self learner for many years now so it shouldn't surprise anyone about the decision I took.

One thing I should explain to you before I begin describing the project itself which this site is all about, is the reason I decided to learn Electronics.

I am a self educated, proffessional C/C++/C# programmer and work in the industry for almost 15 years now.

I started my programming hobby when I was 12 years old, starting with Basic, and later when being an adult,

learned Visual Basic, Pascal, C, C++, both for DOS and Windows and in the recent years also C# using the fabulus .NET Framework.

I always were very interested in Graphics programming so I learned this subject by reading many books about Graphics and Game creation,

Image formats and color schemes, and made the leap from 2D to 3D graphics using DirectX/3D APIs.

I worked as a GUI developer in companies which required my graphics knowledge and skills and all went pretty well.

I also worked with embedded systems, usually WindowsCE systems, and this is where things started to change.

I started to feel that something is missing - some kind of a gap in my knowledge -

I started to feel that I don't really know how all those computers, embedded systems and other kinds of hardware really work.

I felt the urge to really understand what's going on inside the hardware.

This is where I decided I should start and learn Electronics.

It was very difficult, but also very interesting. It took a lot of time to understand basic concepts.

I've subscribed to the EPE Magazine (Everyday Practicle Electronics magazine) and tried to understand the circuits they published - both schematics and theoretically.

I'm still learning - there is so much to learn - but I also wanted to get practicle - I wanted to see if everything that I read is really useful and worthwhile.

But electronics is not as accessible as programming - you can't just sit and build a real circuit and change everything by pressing some undo button -

you work with real components and if something fails - it costs money. It can be also dangerous and even lethal,

so I decided two important decisions - I will stay on the safest side - building circuits which requires very low power.

The second decision was to stay in the digital circuits and stay away from analog ones, at least for now, because it's a different,

complicated world which also requires mathematical skills I currently lack.

Those decisions lead me the way to another major path I chose - I wanted to combine programming and electronics together, since I'm a programmer, first and foremost.

Thanks also to the EPE magazine, I noticed there are some digital creatures called 'microcontrollers' - That got my attention, and than I knew - this is the way to combine programming and electronics.

Suddenly I had the urge to get dirty with those. I started to think, what project can I design and build, that will involve microcontrollers.

One day it happened - I don't know if that was a really bright idea, but I thought to myself that it would be possible, somehow, to build a digital clock

that will get its time data from a PC rather by calculating it by itself.

I thought about this idea, and I knew that somehow a microcontroller should be involved with this project.

It took me a while to think about the basic design requirments, until I had the basic idea of how such a system should be designed. Than I went to work.

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