Celebrating 50 Years!

fischertechnik has celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2015. Here's my story with this German toy, which I discovered 45 years ago, and again 15 years ago. 

How many children were introduced to mechanics and electronics, and how many children ddecided to be engineers thanks to fischertechnik?
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My first boxes were the Standard Set 50 and the Static Set 50S. I can't remember how many models I built.

Then came the motors (mot1 and mini-mot1), electro-mechanics (em1) and electronics (ec1). 

The sets weren't designed for a limited set of models. Instead, the manuals provided some examples and very quickly, I was designing and building my own models. I really like the storing system with the gray boxes.

Due to my studies, this hobby was put on hold at the mid-1980's. 
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The Silver Line electronic modules provided an introduction to electronic control, with op-amps, flip-flops and relays. Here, the command centre for a sliding door.

This is one of the three versions of the same sliding door model I presented at the ft Convention 2014 to pay tribute to the fischertechnik history.

The components I used to play with 35 years ago worked as at the first day. This gives a clear idea of the quality of the fischertechnik elements!

In 2000, I visited the Franz Carl Weber toy shop in Geneva and found the new line with black stones instead of light grey. 

I bought the Pneumatic Robots, which was really outstanding with its own compressor, controlled by the Intelligent Interface, and resumed with this hobby. 

Embedded competing was at its early age at this time.
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The RoboTX controller represented a major milestone. 

The  32-bit MCU brought speed for large large projects with multiple processes. The Bluetooth cable-free connection made LAN easy for large model with multiple controllers talking to each others. Finally, the I²C port opened endless possibilities for advanced sensors with a standard protocol. 
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Leveraging the I²C port, I built my own advanced sensors or smartSensors, including a colour recognition sensor, a RFID reader, a 4-digit 7-segment display, and even a touch-screen display and a camera.

Each smartSensor embeds its own MCU to acquire and process data. 

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The last iteration of the controller, the Robotics TXT, provides a dual-core Linux-based micro-computer and micro-controller.

The camera and the WIFi and Bluetooth connectivity open new possibilities.

Happy anniversary, fischertechnik!

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