And this is number one..............................

Well, everybody has to begin somewhere.

So what is a "Big Thing" anyway?

Well look at it this way, we all have ambitions to achieve something in our lives.

Sometimes we do and, more often, we don't but we usually give it a try.

A good example of this would be a "Bucket List" of things to do before we meet the grim reaper.

Well, I've been pretty lucky with my ambitions and I pretty much achieved everything I wanted to do by the age of fifty at which point I started to achieve a lot of stuff I didn't want for a while.

Probably the most exciting of these was an inordinately large amount of hospital time involving various operations upon my person.

Looking back on the past 21 years, it has been a bit of a pain in a lot of places quite frankly.

So I have returned to an old ambition that I thought I had fulfilled many years ago and when I retired, I updated it and began to play with digital electronics.

The trouble was, being retired, I should have had a lot of time to play with but that wasn't the case at all. I had the inclination and the money but no time so I ended up with a pile of bits but no end product.

Until Now!

covid 19 has given me the time to dig in and get on with it at long last.

About two years ago I began a project to make some Christmas light decorations for the front of our house. I just managed to put them on display last Christmas...............slightly unfinished.

In the new year I was putting them away and realised that they were a good idea but badly executed so I re-built them properly and then put them away. Then I thought of several more ways they could be improved that involved using a small mains power supply. So I built one.

That was pretty successful but looked tatty so I bought a much better 3D printer and made another one using the same files and it didn't look tatty any longer.

By now I was getting quite enthusiastic about 3D printing as well so I built two small light displays with a self designed case and learnt a lot about designing for electronic devices in the process. Shortly after my daughter was looking at the little light show and asked whether I could fit something like it but larger into a stage costume she was thinking of making and we decided to collaborate on that.

Then, some friends saw my first two lighting projects and asked me to build a handheld unit for her to carry at comicom type conventions so I did.

Then I built me a better mouse trap........actually a better power supply.

And then, I had my idea for my next "Big Thing".

But you'll have to read about how I made everything else first before I 'll reveal just exactly what it is or they are!