That is cool!
I started my working career in electronics way back. I worked for a small industrial electronics company as an assembler, then moved up to repair tech, and eventually was working as I guess what you'd call an engineers aid, or something. Was a lot of fun. I called it being paid to play
One of the products we were developing was a self contained graphics camera. Had a light table with a mylar cover sheet and vacuum pump, a camera box with a big 'ol Nikon lens, and a built-in developing system. It was mainly for prototyping printed circuit boards. You'd make your master positive tape-overlay 2x actual size, then make a photographic negative that you'd use for making the circuit board. Anyhow, it was all controlled by an EPROM that we programmed ourselves with this clunky programming box. Had to manually input each line of command with a set of switches. (this was in about 1980) The old fella I worked for was a great teacher. I only had a electronics tech degree, but he took me in and taught me alot. But I kinda faded away from electronics after that company fell apart in the recession of the early 80's, and ended up as a machinist. Always wished I had gotten more schooling and finished my EE degree. I could be playing with cool stuff like you are