Do you like to invent things?

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Just out of curiosity, how many of you like to invent or build things?

Secondly, have you found that your drive to do this has diminished over the years (perhaps due to circumstances, not enough time/resources, lack of drive/interest)?

I ask because when I was in junior high, I used to love to build various projects out of the electronics kits I had in junior high. Sometimes I would even build things that weren't in the manual. I.E. I took a schematic for a light sensitive switch and built a light sensitive alarm with it. I took my alarm clock and fed the alarm audio to an audio amp through a relay. When my mother came in my room and turned the light on, it loudly went off "EEE EEE EEE EEE" and she screamed! I found it quite funny. I was quite the geeky prankster.

Well, after high school I found that I would start some projects but not finish them. Eventually, after getting married at 24, I really never built things on a real regular basis. I.E. in the last 10 years this is really all I've done:
1. After I bought an HF rig on ebay, I built a multiband dipole for 10m and 20m.
2. I built a couple of antennas for ELF/VLF when I found out I could use my sound card in my laptop to pick up natural/manmade signals in that frequency range.
3. After my divorce 2 years ago, I built a software defined radio (SDR) receiver using only 10 parts and a solderless breadboard. I managed to get it to pick up 80m & 40m but not 20m by switching out the crystal oscillator.
4. I built a contraption to change water to HHO gas (or whatever gas it may be).

Thats pretty much it. MAYBE I'm forgetting a couple of things, but thats about it. I did work experiment with things that were already built, but never really built anything of my own as I did years ago.

Thanks in advance for your replies and I look forward to reading them.

I have also always enjoyed making things. I actually think that I do it more as an adult because I couldn't read very well when I was younger. This made it difficult for me to follow the directions. However, I do have a tendency to not look at the directions all that much now either! In retrospect, maybe that had nothing to do with it!!

I will say that I spend more time making things when I am not stressed out by other life events, however.

I like to sew. Most of my creations are things that can be sewn. I also like to craft jewelry and the like. If I were not afraid of power tools.... I have a million ideas for building wall mounted shelving and accent furniture. I probably won't ever get around to building those things because I am a chicken. I do bother my husband to create things that I have come up with!!

Many years ago before Margaret Thatcher ruined my country a good living could be made by people who made things.
There are few things that give me as much pleasure as switching on a machine and watching it operate perfectly knowing I had made it.

Yes, I love making new things. I enjoy owning something that is one of a kind.

I have invented 2 things when i was a kid. A patent would have been nice

Now when i am older, i do not "invent" things, but i have helped to develop products (programming) and have also given feedback to people on their ideas.

I have good problem solving skills and if i ever should run into a problem of a non-software related nature, i am sure i would find a solution to the problem.

I always used to tinker and make things as far back as I can remember. I never had the resources to do much, and my parents wouldn't support me back then because I was a kid, and kids obviously never do anything worthwhile. They preferred that I play by digging holes or something else uncreative.

Now I don't really have an environment where I can work on things, and I'm too busy with school and everything else to produce much. I still keep trying when I get time, but I'm not very motivated anymore.

Yes, very much. More in terms of building things, although there's usually a lot of weird ('novel') design, uses of parts, etc. I love browsing hardware stores; every little item will spark an idea for some project (same for surplus electronics stores). I lucked out as a kid, my father had a garage full of good tools (including things like taps and dies).

The projects got more ambitious as I got older, but money, and working, and school and such put a damper on things. I don't think the drive is less so much as damped down in-the-bud by a grown-up sense resource limits. Not that I don't still have projects; the smaller/cheaper ones just win out over "make my house completely wind-powered."

Certainly. It has been that way forever. Making something for yourself is much better than simply going out and getting something. I recently built this computer here.... and I generally do some redneck rigging here and there when doing such things.

I'm not interested in building things just for the fun of building them, though I'm also a Ham Radio operator (AF3S), and made a low-power crystal cw transmitter once.

I'm more interested in improvising something to help me. Most people who find doing a particular task difficult will just accept that difficulty. I think about ways to make it easier or better, and improvise something to meet my needs. I'm pretty good at this process.