I am a retiree, having spent my ‘working years’ in various occupations. My formal tertiary qualification is in Agricultural Science, specialising in entomology - and within that field, subterranean termite behaviour.

After graduation, about 5 decades ago, I worked, successively, in three of our wider family’s enterprises. My first position was in our family’s grape-growing and winemaking enterprise. Following that, I spent several years helping my in-laws with their cattle grazing business, during, and following which I became a director of our family’s diversified property investment company, founded in 1840 and from that experience developed a strong interest in corporate governance.

With first-hand experience in family businesses over several decades, I also became very interested in what’s broadly known as family business dynamics. This led to my active involvement with a local not-for-profit enterprise which provides education, networking and other forms of support to people interested in ‘professionalising’ the ‘family’ aspect of their business. This rewarding experience ultimately enabled me to help lead the substantial restructure of our wider family enterprises: a long and complex task.

No mention of electronics! Indeed, prior to my recently developed interest in Arduino-related electronics, my previous acquaintance with such technology was during my secondary schooling (before the computer age). I’m now being put to the test trying to recall fundamental principles of physics! Not to mention programming, which is quite foreign to me.

The specific project which has introduced me to Arduino-related electronics is related to an electric vehicle which I purchased last year. For those unfamiliar with EVs, they – or at least mine – continually clicks and whirs, even when inactive, as the car manages its high voltage battery system. Most of this activity seems to relate to the maintenance of optimum battery temperature. I am especially interested in the temperature dynamics of the cooling system and, related to it, the opening and closing of shutters mounted at the front of the car. Hence, my project, outlined in another thread on this Forum

I have been aware of Core Electronics (‘CE’) for some time, but I only joined its Forum a couple of days ago – and purchased some hardware from CE earlier this week. Whilst my experience is narrow and brief, I am impressed and encouraged by the CE community. Earlier today, I was grateful to the generous support of a Forum contributor to help resolve the code for my radiator shutter monitoring sub-project. I am now keen to identify suitable code to log the temperatures recorded by 4 DS18B20 temperature sensors in conjunction with my Arduino Uno board and an Adafruit data logging shield, in transit from CE.

I look forward to sustaining and developing my interest in this field – hopefully with the support of the Core Electronics community.