Valley Services Electronics

Both my physics and engineering college professors expressed a mentality of “do it right or do it twice” to instill course material and problem-solving methods into their student’s heads. They thought anyone in those courses could pass one of their notoriously difficult exams.

Whenever I’m planning how to design a circuit board, I’m reminded of the famous quote by Laozi, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Perhaps I’m being dramatic – layout design is not a thousand-mile journey.

“It’s what’s on the inside that counts.” Most of us have heard this in wildly different contexts than PCB design. Still, it’s true more generally: diving beyond the surface is likely to reveal the most critical features, attributes, or characteristics of many things, both esoteric and universal

When I was a kid, I remember leaving on video game consoles overnight when it was “lights out” because my siblings and I were at a point where we couldn’t save and exit the game. Faced with a loss of progress, we decided it was more beneficial to keep the hardware running and pick up where we left off later.

One of my favorite team-building activities from school was constructing a stable tower from marshmallows and dry pasta under a time limit. This brainstorming exercise challenged teams to construct the tallest structure without external support.

Years ago, I was remapping the functionality of an RC car for a school project. My team and I had to design, shop, build, test, and debug an analog circuit that added cruise control functionality and IR sensing.