Is Arduino killing the electronic hobby? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: FriedMule
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2021, 09:27:54 pm
content: As a beginner do I look for all sort of funny and strange tasks / functions I can get done by building a circuit.To do that do I use a lot of time to search the internet for simple solutions and explanations.I.e.: Blinker, detectors, sound generators, remote control, volume control, dimmer and so on and on.Unfortunately does it get harder to find a great solution, most are hidden among hundreds or even thousands of "solutions" stating the following: "with an Arduino", "just take an Arduino" or "It's super easy, why don't you simply just use an Arduino?"To me is an Arduino a finished product you write some code too, while electronic is the assembling of discrete components.Or if we look at paintings: You use years and years to learn to blend colors, get the stroke perfect to finally paint these amazing landscapes, the day after do I grab a camera, snap a picture and say "look it's much easier", but is it the same, even we both have created a picture of the landscape? I am not saying one thing is better than the other, just that it's two different skills, just like Arduino and Electronic is two different skills.Is Arduino killing the electronic hobby? What do you think? :-)

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2021, 09:52:08 pm
content: No, it does not. It enables more people to do things that they would not have done before.My issue with Arduino is that sometimes people that only used Arduino assume they know how to do actual product development and apply for the real programming jobs. That never ends well.The fact that majority of stuff that required a ton of analog circuitry is now better done with $1 microcontroller is not related to Arduino. And Arduino examples for working with sensors or doing interesting things are fully transferable to any other MCU.

author: ledtester
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2021, 10:13:26 pm
content: QuoteThe way of doing electronics has changed:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/end-of-the-analog-era/

author: cortex_m0
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2021, 10:53:03 pm
content: No, an arduino or other microcontroller is a perfectly acceptable piece of "electronics".I also think modern cheap and powerful microcontrollers allow many things that were either very complicated or impossible decades ago, such as a timer that operates only Monday to Friday, or a display with the ability to interact with the user (via buttons or even bluetooth).Imagine how much work it would have been in the 1980s to do something as simple as drive a seven-seg display with the setpoint for a thermostat by default, or the current temperature measurement when you press a button. That's certainly not impossible with logic chips, but I'd think it would be enough work to keep most hobbyists from trying. With Arduino, it's not difficult at all.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2021, 10:54:06 pm
content: No,if anything its given what was a dying hobby the kiss of life.

author: retiredfeline
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 12:47:39 am
content: Sure, transistors killed the use of valves. No more electronics hobby. Oh wait...ICs killed the use of transistors. No more electronics hobby. Oh wait...Technology advances, hobbyists will always want to have a piece of the latest action.

author: wilfred
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 02:27:52 am
content: If you go back 30 or 40 years through the electronics magazines the projects featured a wide range of complexities to cater for readers of differing skill levels. Some were quite simple little gadgets. Some were built around a fancy new IC such as an AM/FM tuner or TVTeletext decoder or a Modem or a battery charger. Usually they were produced at a time when the technology was new and expensive and hence the construction was a way to get it cheaper and sometimes even better than commercial options. HiFi Amps was a perennial favourite of the Australian mags.These days with technology widely available and dirt cheap both literally and in comparison to the "good old days" you just wouldn't do the same things. Microcontrollers and Arduino which doesn't need an external programmer are a logical progression. The hobby would be in worse shape if a generation that carry smartphone in their schoolbags had to get enthused about discrete transistor circuits.So no, Arduino is not killing electronics as a hobby. Quite the opposite. It is a logical evolutionary step to changing times.

author: sleemanj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 02:40:33 am
content: I wonder if people said the same about the 555 or other ICs "I want a proper solution with transistors and all I get is people telling me to just use a 555, it's killing the hobby!".

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 02:55:29 am
content: I don't think Arduino et. al. is "killing electronics". It involves programming which isn't "electronics" per se. But you can't do a lot with it except flash the on-board LED and send/receive messages unless you interface it to the outside world. When you get to that it involves electronics at anywhere from a very simple thing such as flashing an LED to as far as you want to go with external components. No I don't see it killing electronics at all.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 03:45:12 am
content: Add "-arduino" to your search results to get rid of 99% of the "maker" crap.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 05:42:05 am
content: Quite the opposite. The Arduino almost single handedly saved the electronics hobby which was on life support after many years of decline. Things were really bleak for a while, electronics shops were dropping like flies, Radio Shack was still around but it was pretty much just cell phone and crappy RC toy shack. Electronics had gotten so cheap to buy and kits were not any cheaper than off the shelf goods so it was really looking like the hobby would die out almost completely. Then along came Arduino and revolutionized everything, it made microcontrollers accessible to anybody and kickstarted a whole generation of hobbyists building countless unique things, many of which you could not just go buy off the shelf. Now the Arduino platform is far from perfect, it has many warts but despite all this I give it a great deal of credit for what it has accomplished. It has brought millions of new people into a hobby that was all but dead and now it is booming.

author: FriedMule
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 06:15:34 am
content: I read some of you compare it to be going from BJT to IC or a 555 being an end it all solution, but I do not think it's 100% valid.The différance between "real" electronic and Arduino is that you order an Arduino on the internet, go to your computer, write some code (100% programming) and say you have made a 7 segment display. Many of you wrote about the Arduino saving the electronic, but how? I can go buy all sort of ready-made circuit boards or why not buy them built into a case, write a couple lines of code and say I have built a mini robot. Does that mean I have build a computer if I write a few lines of codes on it? Sorry to phrase it like that but I see the Arduino as a ready-made "Lego" that you can connect to lots of things, just like I can buy AD converter, a clock, a DMM, no knowledge of electronic is needed at all. To me is the Arduino a step away from electronic because this part is already made, you are arrived at step two, using the finished board. Step three could be to mount in a box, Is the next step in the electronic "evolution" that the Arduino comes pre-programmed and all you need is to mount inside your preferred case? Is the last step just to buy it 100% finished?To me is any programmable chip a great thing that, as some of you say, can do ting that else is near impossible but to use it to make a LED blink, a latching button or even a 555's function, is not electronic but 100%, and that's fine if you love to write code but if you have no idea of Ohm's law, resistance, capacitance and so on, are you in reality enjoying the electronic hubby? :-)

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 06:44:34 am
content: If your entire problem could be solved by coding, it is good, that problem belongs to MCU world anyway.But as soon as you need to interface with the real world, you need to figure out signal conditioning and buffering. Look at more complex Arduino-based projects, they can be quite complicated with a lot of analog stuff.Modern electronics is programmable, deal with it.Also, the argument that you can as easily blink an LED with 555 or something similar is just wrong. Making 555 work reliably and hold the period and duty cycle over voltage and temperature variations is not trivial. So much not trivial that it is easier and cheaper to use the MCU. With pure analog implementation you often give up accuracy, you just don't tend to notice it.

author: george.b
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 06:56:56 am
content: Quote from: ataradov on June 19, 2021, 09:52:08 pmCase in point:https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/602bb22f8fa8f50388f9f000/Alauda_Airspeeder_Mk_II_UAS_reg_na_03-21.pdf

author: Canis Dirus Leidy
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 07:42:19 am
content: Quote from: FriedMule on June 20, 2021, 06:15:34 am(in robotic voice) Ha. Ha. Ha.(TL&DR:Arduiner discovered the world of electric motors and electromagnetic compatibility.)

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 09:29:38 am
content: Quote from: amyk on June 20, 2021, 03:45:12 amLOL

author: mindcrime
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 10:26:55 am
content: QuoteNo.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 10:49:07 am
content: Nope, Arduino is today's starter drug.

author: FriedMule
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 10:58:31 am
content: My example about the blinking LED was from a forum where a 100% noob asked how one could get a LED to blink, there were no precision or special demands, it was a simple "first-time" projects. Other project in same type: a tone generator, electronic dice, fading LED and all these projects that one may have seen as a young kid. They were all "you have to build a circuit, get the right components, get the PCB made and maybe will it not even work. Take an Arduino, here are some code you can start out on." Yes, you can build your own add-ons to a finished MCU board, but why do that, you can nearly buy everything in professional quality and just connect and code?The MCU solution may work perfectly, but does it not keep people from trying, since it's hard and takes so much time and may not work"?I have nothing against the Arduino or other MCU's but to solve every task with "Arduino!!" and drop the soldering, finding components, solve errors and so on, does concern me a bit, particular when I see more "just grab an Arduino" solutions than "try with an op-amp and a 100nF capacitor. :-)Do any of you know of anyone who started using finished MCU boards that later choose to start with the whole building and soldering part?

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 11:18:31 am
content: Quote from: FriedMule on June 20, 2021, 10:58:31 amI’d hazard that that’s howmostelectronics hobbyists these days begin. You start with simple, remade building blocks: software libraries, MCU dev boards, overpriced modules/breakout boards, etc. Then as you push up against the limits of those building blocks, you are forced to leave them behind: rolling your own boards. Writing code beyond libraries. Designing interface circuits.I don’t see what soldering has to do with it. You experiment with discrete components on a breadboard. You experiment with Arduino circuits using jumpers and... breadboards. Either way, that’s not how you build permanent circuits, you solder those.I completely agree with the people saying that Arduino revitalized what was a moribund hobby.Besides, what’s wrong with using a $2 dev board to do something instead of $2 in discrete components? Never mind that 4000- and 7400-series logic circuits very, very quickly exceed the cost of accomplishing the same thing with an MCU — but the MCU is infinitely more flexible.Sure, a $2 MCU board is overkill for a simple 50% duty cycle LED blinker. But think about something as simple as a blinker that alternates between a short and long flash (for example, a H-L-HHH-L pattern). In an MCU, that’s trivial to do (think “write(H), delay(200), write(L), delay(200), write(H), delay(600), write(L)” or using a counter and switch case statements to do the same without blocking) whereas it’s appreciably harder to do in discrete logic, and requires a great deal more knowledge about what parts are available, and the “gotchas” of using them.Sure, there’s a certain elegance to old-school circuits. But that doesn’t mean they make the most practical sense, nor do I think we should look down on those who don’t want to start with that kind of circuit.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 11:38:53 am
content: Some started with solderless electronics science kits. It's not important how you start, it's about getting bitten by the electronics bug. Maybe a kid just wants to blink an LED for fun and won't get bitten. If bitten, the kid will start asking about how things work. Then you got the chance to explain astable multivibrators.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 12:02:00 pm
content: Yes and Arduino isn't any worse than BASIC Stamp for example which was "the Arduino" before Arduino.The only thing that pisses me off are people that come to me saying I'm stupid because I don't build actual products using Arduino. You know, people who actually think Arduino is the greatest pinnacle of engineering and you don't need to design anything, just plug in Arduino shields and you can buildanything.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 12:40:41 pm
content: Quote from: madires on June 20, 2021, 11:38:53 amI did! My older brother got this kit when I was a little kid. He played with it 3 times and that was it.Than I took posession of it and I got addicted for the rest of my life.

author: GlennSprigg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 02:08:02 pm
content: Hmmm.... I guess it is all "Horses for Courses"...If 'someone' is a true 'beginner', like most of us 'were once', then one could argue that one needs to start at thebeginning, by grasping individual Resistors, Capacitors, Transistors & Diodes etc etc. and how they can/may interact.So... to ME, having a bunch of 'Black-Box' devices does NOT educate someone at all... I understand 'Black-Box' technology,and how this can be portrayed even within the likes of such multitude of 'IC's' these days. You do not need to 'understand'what happens within such devices, but simply to 'accept' the utilization of a multitude of Inputs & Outputs!!...But what have you 'Learnt'I understand the NEED for such levels of technology, where one only 'understands' what they need to know...However, all such 'Arduino' style devices are TOTALLY counter intuitive, in regards to 'someone' actually understanding whatis really going on under the hood!! It's just "plug in A to B, and maybe see result C...It's convenient, but there is NO learning???

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 02:54:20 pm
content: I think the Arduino is encouraging people to learn electronics, sometimes via the back door, rather than the front. It can be a "gateway" none the less.A while ago I got a query via the local geek network, asking if I could help out at the High School STEM center. Some kids were building a submersible ROV, and they were using Arduinos and Arduino-style steppers and servos. That part was working, but only sort-of. They had Fritzing "schematics" (more like protoboard layout diagrams), and I guarantee that they didn't understand Ohm's Law. I took them step-by-step as we dug into the problems they were having, mainly caused by long daisy-chained ground paths, with motors and logic sharing a single ground-wire jumper chain. That, and some open jumpers and some cold-soldered joysticks.When we were done it was working solidly, and I think the kids actually learned a bit about basic electricity. Perhaps some of them will want to learn more. That's how I started -- when I was ten years old I a friend's father was showing us how to modify war-surplus (WW2 tube) radios. I was cutting and re-wiring, soldering, simple sheet-metal work, and learning a little about circuits in the process. I didn't know Ohm's Law, how vacuum tubes worked, really much at all. But I learned that I could make things work, much like the non-EE Arduino crowd.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 03:02:26 pm
content: Quote from: GlennSprigg on June 20, 2021, 02:08:02 pmIn the worst case? How to use an Arduino and its IDE.Arduino can be just a tool or toy, like many drive a car or use a PC without knowing how it works. If you touch an Arduino it doesn't mean that you'll become an EE or software developer. However, for some it can open a door to a new and fascinating world with many things to learn. It's up to you to decide which way to go - not for me telling you what to do or to learn. And when someone is really interested in electronics he will learn about the basics sooner or later anyway.

author: jonovid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 03:26:10 pm
content: in my opinion NO , Arduino can do the work of 3 or 4 555 timer ic's , 2 or 3 TTL gates in one ic saving you a lot of work.this is more then a blinky LED its a LED that can do morse code or tv remote code.it would be great to see other miro's like 6 or 8 pin ic's added to Arduino library were pcb space is minimal.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 03:35:33 pm
content: If you enjoy simple projects using discrete components, many of the old books for the beginning hobbyist are available on-line.https://worldradiohistory.com/BOOKSHELF-ARH/Bookshelf_Hobbyist.htm

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 03:57:18 pm
content: It's always good to have options.The only objection I have is against the culture of forcing choices down our throats. To me it looks like it's much better now than it was when Arduino was new and so freaking trendy you were not cool if you did anything else.Today those who started playing with Arduino are designing full boards from scratch and ordering them manufactured from JLCPCB.

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 05:04:20 pm
content: Quote from: FriedMule on June 20, 2021, 10:58:31 amGiving an absolute beginner on those projects the suggestion to start with an Arduino is the best advice. It will both solve their immediate problem and get them stated on a crucial skill for hobbyist electronics in the modern world. It also provides a lot more possibility for extension after they solve the first problem: ok you have a flashing LED. Now you want to make that on a timer? Or trigger it with a PIR or ultrasonic range finder? You want your electronic dice to log rolls or send them via SMS? Or change from d6 to d20 at the press of a button? The Arduino gives you a lot of options, some of which can be implemented with simple analog / discrete digital logic and others cannot.I would only give someone the 555 suggestion as an alternative to the Arduino, or if they specially wanted a more discrete solution, or if they had specific requirements such as size, parts cost, or something.Arduino is far from perfect and I certainly groan when I see it in a "professional" product although if it does the job it can make sense. But the complaining about people learning electronics through Arduino is just silly "old man yells at cloud" nonsense.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 05:13:27 pm
content: Another thing with 555 is that you automatically need to stock a range of capacitors and resistors to be able to adjust the period. Do either your costs or your frustration go up right away. With Arduino it is just adjusting one number in the code.Also, even for a final production solution the cheapest generally available MCU costs as much as 555 in low quantities. And 555 needs a lot of other components with very specific value. The MCU needs a bypass capacitor of virtually any value if you feel generous.

author: FriedMule
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 05:40:17 pm
content: I am not saying that an MCU in not a fantastic tool or almost 100% necessary in many projects, unless you have an engineering degree.Yes you can maybe not get every function as an add-on but it's not far from, and if you can't get an add-on, then is it something special. In the situations where you can not get an add-on, do the learning curve skyrocket, you do have to design a PCB who fits on the MCU board, who conform to the standard, is able to be coded into the project, with the right components, the right layout and so on. You could add the expectation on top of that, a 100% noob do only know what is professional possible but have no idea of what it takes, so a "I'll just need a gyroscopic module with elevation sensor, looking like the other add-ons.Some of you have talked about the price, please forgive me but I do not think most of us is considering if our project costs $10 and could be solved by a $1 nano Arduino. Do we not build electronic for the share fun and challenge without thinking "gee I could get a pro solution for $1.99 at Walmart? :-)What do you think of those who is realistic toward a 100% noob and says "if you want to make a blinker do you need to learn to solder, design your PCB, find the right components, expect it not to work and start all over again! It's easier if you just take an Arduino."?

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 06:11:31 pm
content: Quote from: FriedMule on June 20, 2021, 05:40:17 pmYou can always just make it on a protoboard. It does not have to be in the Arduino form factor.And I definitely used Arduino shield board for experiments with new devices without Arduino, simply because I did not feel like making a board and sourcing the component for a quick test. So in this way Arduino ecosystem contributes to "professional" market too.Quote from: FriedMule on June 20, 2021, 05:40:17 pmIn most of my hobby projects I consider economic side of things, even if it is just a one off. I may use more expensive components, because I may not care for one off, but I always consider if there is a possible substitution. It is just a good practice.Quote from: FriedMule on June 20, 2021, 05:40:17 pmThey are realistic and it is a good advice.Investing in learning something deeply only makes sense if you already know that this is something you want to do professionally.Most of "professionals" here started with electronics kits with pre-made PCBs. And that was not much of a creative thing and did not require a lot of understanding, but nobody was on their ass saying that they should source all the components and make the PCB themselves.Just like with some AM radio kit, with Arduino there is a lot to be learned from assembling the thing from readily made components and experimenting/debugging it.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 06:20:48 pm
content: Quote from: madires on June 20, 2021, 11:38:53 amI started with those, the kind with the springy connectors and components mounted on a cardboard frame. From there I went to solderless breadboards and then soldering point to point on protoboards. Often I would (and still do) prototype something on a breadboard and then make a PCB and build the permanent circuit on that. For microcontroller projects I regularly prototype on an Arduino and then make a custom board for the finished project. Sometimes for a one-off I'll just solder the Arduino Nano clone to a protoboard and call it good, it works, it's cheap, and the prototype is the only one I'll ever need so why bother to make a custom PCB? Either way almost every project requires some custom discrete circuitry to work, every microcontroller requires a power source, decoupling, transistors or other devices for driving outputs, signal conditioning on inputs, etc.

author: FriedMule
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 09:35:45 pm
content: A breadboard, point to point or even home edged PCB's is really a joy to make and lol inside a box is it not even visible for anybody if you stopped there. :-)But nothing compares to a well-designed PCB you have got made, got soldered and is just working.I think if one as a hobbyist is considering if buy or DIY is cheapest, even up to $100 is that person forgetting it will always be cheaper to buy. If DIY, do you have to calculate in all your gear, time, components, board production, consumables, electricity, space you pay rent for and a lot more. Electronic one offs at home can always only remain an expense, just like painting, sowing, photography and all these hobbies.My concern about the MCU may be due to seeing woodworking change so much and the hobby going from an art in manual skills to 3D drawing and "push print"In the start did you have to know how a saw works, keep your hand plane chisels sharp, later did the bandsaw, table saw and surface planer and made everything easier. After that did the CNC arrive and everything changed to sitting behind a monitor, drawing in 3D and get the computer to cut it for you.MCU is also behind the monitor and press upload.Knitting can be done behind a monitor, woodworking, electronic, sculpturing and a lot more, it just takes something away, do I think. :-)

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 09:52:34 pm
content: If you think CNC is easy, you clearly have never tried it. It is just different, but you need to figure out A LOT of stuff before it is just "press a button". And just like Arduino, CNC lets you make things that you could never have made with regular hand tools.None of this means hobby is dead.I get "old man yells at clouds" vibe from this thread.Also, making PCBs at home was never fun or easy. It was a necessity, and as soon as ordering PCBs became an option, everyone switched to that. And now you also sit in front of the computer designing your perfect PCB, bummer.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 10:35:46 pm
content: CNC is very hard. The machines do exactly what you instruct them to do, *exactly*, if you tell it to run the spindle full speed and then smash the tool into the table at max feedrate the machine will happily do that, once. This means you have to know all about manual machining and on top of that you have to know how to operate the CAD/CAM software, create the toolpaths, and set up the machine. It makes it easy to make a bunch of something once you have it dialed in, and it enables making things that are too complex to reasonably machine by hand but it does not make machining any easier. If you don't use the proper techniques you'll make a lot of scrap, break a lot of expensive cutters and potentially do some very expensive damage to the machines.

author: Dubbie
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 20, 2021, 10:48:55 pm
content: Yeah, pretty much the only aspect that CNC removes from manual machining is the physical act of winding the handles.The rest of a machinists skills are still necessary and a bunch more as well.

author: FriedMule
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 12:27:10 am
content: I think you misunderstand me MCU, CNC and all programming can be very hard to do and it can be a true art with beauty!Seeing a greatly designed board, well sought out components and beautiful soldering can also end up in being art.These two thing is just not the same. I am not longing for the "good" old days, but I am fearing that discrete components may be going in the same way many THT components has gone because SMD is so much "easier" and takes up less space.Since I know most about woodworking do I give that as an example, I think you have three main types of woodworking and none of them is better than the other, they are just different, but one do push the other away. You have:1) Hand woodworking where no electricity are being used and everything is done by pure labor-skills.2) Machine woodworking where electric tools are a big part of it and is helping one to reach results only few Hand woodworkers can ever reach.3) Digital woodworker where only two tools is needed and everything is done by a CNC machine, all the skills lie in the programming on the computer.You do almost never see hand woodworking anymore, this is a skill nearly nobody has the patience to learn.Will MCU do the same to the hand-soldere?

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 01:07:53 am
content: Quote from: FriedMule on June 21, 2021, 12:27:10 amYes, because it is a wste of the most precious resource - time. The only time you will do it if you explicitly interested in the process of hand wood working and consider it time well spent. And there will always be people that do that. The same way as there are still people using steam powered machines.The goal of working with electronics for a lot of people is not the fact of working, but achieving the result they need for their actual hobby. Someone may make an Arduino controller automatic plant watering device. They don't care about electronics, they care about growing plants. Arduino is just a tool.There a lot of people doing some hardcore electronics because they are explicitly interested in electronics, those people are not going away.Quote from: FriedMule on June 21, 2021, 12:27:10 amYou can hand solder MCUs, those things are orthogonal to each other.

author: John B
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 08:37:12 am
content: Without searching, I'm pretty sure this exact topic has been covered before on EEVBlog. When it comes to implementing logic, it's now practically impossible to walk past microcontrollers.I've spent the last few days building a python program to control a lighting interface on an RPi. I mean, blinking LEDs without a full screen colour GUI and internet access? Lmao what year is this, 1990?

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 10:17:04 am
content: Quote from: John B on June 21, 2021, 08:37:12 amThat's the usual sentence, written by those who think they have to use python to blink a led

author: dl6lr
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 10:18:52 am
content: Quote from: Karel on June 20, 2021, 12:40:41 pmOh, that is the newer version with plastic board, I started with the older Philips 1003/1004/1005/1006 with peg-board.

author: jonovid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 11:32:34 am
content: in my opinion Arduino is a trade mark. for do it yourself programmable computers on integrated circuits, before this we hadfixed single function integrated circuits as in the 555, before this transistor to transistor logic, vacuum tubes and telephone exchange technology.history can get complicated if we try to add everything invented before we got here.in my opinion, the history of electronics is important from aneducationalpoint of view.because electronics is so complicated and diverse, starting at the beginning and continuing to the present time.is a good place to start. the skill is knowing what parts of electronics history are important for getting to the final conclusion.

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 03:20:12 pm
content: Quote from: jonovid on June 21, 2021, 11:32:34 amDon't forget, in the timeline between 555 and Arduino there was the PIC. Less up-front EE knowledge needed than the 555, but not as newbie-friendly as the Arduino. And I think it's all good.By the way, CNC can be done easy and sleazy -- that's how I do it. I mill simple fixtures and panels, and do an adequate but hardly expert job. Before CNC I did shoddy work with a drill, saw, and file, so the only thing that's really changed is I have more tools available to be not-an-expert with.

author: mawyatt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 04:58:31 pm
content: Quote from: jonovid on June 21, 2021, 11:32:34 amAgree!! When I was an adjunct creating and teaching some grad school courses on RFIC design, I tried to convince folks at the university that a really good Electronics History course is not an option for a good well rounded EE student but a requirement, they didn't agree and no courseBest,

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 05:11:52 pm
content: Again, you need to separate people for whom electronics is just a part of the hobby, not something they want to focus on. For students, I guess it is different, since they decided it is more than just a hobby.I also would ignore any organized history courses. They tend to focus a lot on personalities, sometimes going to the cult-like extremes, especially if prof is a fanboy. And I don't care about the people behind stuff, they are irrelevant and the history is often distorted anyway.But at the same time I agree 100% that learning about history of the field is extremely useful for modern designs. There is a lot of stuff Apollo-era electronics and computer design that still applies.But I also would not start with it. It is useful to extend your knowledge and understand how the things you are working on fit into a bigger picture. If you are just learning and not working on anything, then there is no bigger picture yet. So the history should really be introduces as part of the actual course.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 05:41:07 pm
content: Quote from: fourfathom on June 21, 2021, 03:20:12 pmThere was the AVR before it got used in the Arduino, that was the first microcontroller I worked with. It was one of the first that had a BASIC compiler for it which made it easy to get started, and it could be programmed with very cheap hardware.Regarding CNC, it sounds like you already had the machining skills, maybe not expert level but you knew the basics and were able to fabricate stuff. CNC has increased the precision and saved you the time of twirling the dials, but it didn't just magically make it easy to make the stuff, you still had to know what you were doing to some degree.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 07:08:06 pm
content: I don't know whether "hobby electronics" has fewer or more adepts these days than it used to. I really don't know or have any relevant figures.One thing I know: it's easier and much cheaper than ever to do it. Heck, we used to stick to a few books, magazines, parts from your local electronics store, and occasionally a few parts ordered, usually from order forms found in magazines.Cool and fun days. But still, these days you can find an gigantic amount of information for free within a few clicks. You can order cheap parts and get them within a couple days. Even a decent soldering iron would cost something back then.Now it would be interesting to ponder to what extent this much easier access has made people in general lose interest. I think this is actually a well known effect.We can also notice youngsters tend to shy away from technical activities these days. That can be seen in the studies they follow and jobs they take. But this trend may have little or nothing to do with the above.As to Arduino having any impact on all this - probably none. But what I said above about electronics in general is all the more true for "embedded" development. Using microcontrollers back in the days was pretty expensive. I think the closest many of us have gotten to at the time was programming home computers in assembly. Possibly wiring some custom stuff to the expansion ports when we could find out enough info. That's what I've done at the time. The first real MCU I used was a PIC16F84. It was cheap enough and one could make a cheap programmer for it out of a few basic parts.These days it's all very cheap. But whether it's impacting electronics as a hobby, in terms of the number of people practising it, I don't know. Probably so, because it's so much more accessible. But as I said, there are other factors as well making people lose interest, so overall, I don't know. But one thing for sure is that hobbyists have much more visibility too, mostly due to social networks and in particular, Youtube.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 07:54:03 pm
content: The thing I remember most from my electronics hobby in the 80s-90s was how much harder it was to find parts. There wasn't much nearby besides Radio Shack and they almost never had all the parts I needed to build anything. I think DigiKey was around, but I didn't know about it and would have had to get my parents to call them up and order stuff.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 09:09:44 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on June 21, 2021, 07:54:03 pmI was lucky to have an electronics store in my city which had a lot more than your typical Radio Shack. I would go there with a list of parts - pretty much looking like a BOM - and they usually had most of them.As to books, many specialized books were pretty expensive too. So what I'd do sometimes is go to a library shop, spend some time in the Electronics section and read chapters in books without buying them.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2021, 09:23:53 pm
content: My dad had all the components I could have ever wanted. Without that I doubt I would be doing electronics at all. There were definitely no component stores in 90s Russia, and only grownups could get the components though all sorts of sketchy ways.I also found in backups my first ever MCU-based project. It was a replacement controller for the Sharp microwave oven and the file is dated March 2000. Here is the complete source code for some random 8051 MCUhttps://pastebin.com/raw/6Q2sHjwPNot too poorly written actually for what it is.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 22, 2021, 05:23:36 pm
content: Quote from: george.b on June 20, 2021, 06:56:56 am65 pages of wasting time! Where in that tome is the reason for the 'Case in point'.In any event, even real airplanes fall out of the sky when things go wrong. The Boeing 737-MAX, a brand new design, has crashed a couple of times and they used real engineers and everything.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 22, 2021, 05:30:41 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on June 21, 2021, 07:54:03 pmDigi-Key has been around since 1972 and Mouser since 1964. Newark was a shop opened in 1934, with their first catalog in 1948! But like you, as a kid in the 80s, I didn’t really know about any of them (nor McMaster-Carr.) I got my stuff from Radio Shack and the various cheaper ads in the back of Popular Electronics. I’m sure DK and Mouser advertised in that, but I had no way of realizing just how much more they carried than the other guys.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 22, 2021, 05:38:26 pm
content: Quote from: ejeffrey on June 20, 2021, 05:04:20 pmIt probably turns out that an 8 pin uC uses fewer components than a 555 for any configuration. We don't need the timing capacitor or the resistors for astable operation. Adjustable frequency will still require a potentiometer and perhaps a second if we want to set pulse width. The uC can generate symmetric waveforms, the 555 needs a lot of help to do the same.I decide to design a new 'widget'. I look around and decide that an ATmega328P would be a good choice for my project but I need a development board to get started on the code. Oh, wait, I could do the preliminary work on an Arduino and just unplug the chip. Half of my work is already done because libraries exist for just about everything. Even if I don't use the Arduino libraries, I can rip the code from the source files and modify it to suit my needs. I don't have to write everything from scratch.I view the Arduino as a universal gadget, usable at many levels.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 22, 2021, 08:06:26 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on June 21, 2021, 07:54:03 pmyeh, when I was a kid there was one electronic store here and they they (he) usually didn't have the parts you wanted, when he closed there was none.Now 20 years later there are several online hobby stores that delivers overnight and has a huge selection of electronic parts, kits, and lots of mechanical stuff as well, in addition to the huge selection of internal stores with a bit of patience

author: ledtester
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 22, 2021, 08:20:40 pm
content: If you're interested in how things were done in the last century, you might spend some time browsing through theEncyclopedia of Electronic Circuitsseries compiled by Rudolf Graf.One of the circuits in Vol. 1 is the "Computalarm" which has a rather sophisticated mode of operation despite not containing a "computer"!Quote

author: eti
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2021, 12:37:22 am
content: I've seen this topic before, in various guises. A HUGE waste of time and energy is wasted on this. Void thread, bin it.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2021, 01:22:40 am
content: Quote from: rstofer on June 22, 2021, 05:23:36 pmI thought it was well written and very comprehensive, the sort of investigation I'd expect for any aircraft crash. This was not some kids quadcopter, this was a 9 foot long unmanned aircraft weighing several hundred pounds and it was chock full of rookie mistakes. Yes real airplanes crash too but this thing was virtually guaranteed to crash and it's only dumb luck that it didn't kill somebody or cause serious property damage. Deciding that upon loss of radio signal the craft would continue at the present throttle setting rather than gradually decrease for a more or less controlled landing or deploy a chute is mind blowing. Declaring redundancy because there are four motors is idiotic, anyone who has ever flown a quad knows that if any one of those four motors fails the thing falls out of the sky. Four motors is not an asset in terms of reliability, it is a liability. It's very clear that none of the people involved were engineers and certainly not with any background in aviation. It looked like some kids who had some experience building and flying toy quadcopters thought they could simply scale up the design and call it good. That is exactly the point, illustrating the problem when hobbyists get arrogant and think they are real engineers. That's not to say that there aren't some extremely skilled hobbyists out there but these guys are not them.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2021, 02:51:13 pm
content: Quote from: george.b on June 20, 2021, 06:56:56 amAh yes: a "dead man's switch" implementation which requires a separate person to go check the pilot, and if still struggling, put him out of his misery with a switch.Their "kill switch" was literally a LoRaWAN module that in theory should be able to energize a relay to cut off power to the rest of the device. The incident occurred, because this "kill switch" could not contact the drone to "kill" it.That sort of stupidity is not characteristic of the Arduino environment; it is characteristic of humans who believe their stuff is more valuable and therefore always to be prioritized over any risk to others.(Edited to clarify: The only reason you'd wire a kill switch to require a working connection to kill a device instead of having the connection keep the device alive and kill it whenever the connection was lost, is because you believe an accidental killing of the device would be a bigger loss than anything a completely uncontrolled device could cause. And since the device at hand was a flying death trap of over 90kg of metal, plastic, and glass fibre, including several high energy Li battery packs easily capable of causing a fire individually, the "designer" was an idiot who apparently felt that killing someone else would have been preferable over losing the device itself. They should be prosecuted, and never allowed to "engineer" anything more complicated than a ditch in the ground ever again. May sound hyperbolic, but when a person shows they are willing to risk the lives of others to reduce the risk to their own property, they need to be evaluated and judged by the same criteria they applied to others, or they'll never change their behaviour.)

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 23, 2021, 04:21:39 pm
content: "Is Arduino killing the electronic hobby?"No. It is saving it.The key point to remember is that the hobby - LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD - is changing. Today's society is used to better communications, better health, better engineering, better just-about-anything than previous generations. Higher quality, lower price, improved functionality, greater choice ... and many other aspects of the utility of the things around us. As a result, ourexpectationsare much higher and attaining that "WOW" factor that fired up young imaginations is now at amuch higher level.Our joy came from achieving something that was not found in the everyday. We CREATED something to do our bidding. That desire and reward hasn't changed, only the platform on which it is built .... it's a lot higher these days.It is very much a matter of "standing on the shoulders of giants". Today's younger geeks can see greater possibilities than we did in our day, only because those that went before have built upon the work of those before them. Here is where we see the earlier developments become commonplace and what we consider unremarkable today would have blown our socks off in our school days. I still remember sending off a bank cheque payable at the Chemical Bank New York, New York for some 7400 series ICs at prices that made it worth the wait for snail mail to the USA and back. One of the projects I made with them - and a piece of Veroboard - was a digital clock. Did I not do electronics because I used ICs instead of discrete transistors?Let the Arduino crowd do their thing. Theyareinvolved with (one facet of) hobby electronics. It is an entirely valid corner of the electronics playground and quite appropriate for the characteristic direction of development across a broad spectrum of disciplines: specialisation.As a final point, I would ask this.... If YOU were able to get your hands on something like an Arduino when YOU first started out in electronics, wouldn't YOU have jumped at the chance? (Aside from the fact that most of us wouldn't have had something to run the Arduino IDE on)

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2021, 04:55:05 pm
content: - Is Arduino killing the electronic hobby?- Is the other way around. Electronic hobby is killing Arduino. With every day. Countless Arduino are misused, abused and killed in electronic hobby. It's a massacre out there, a true Arduino genocide, I tell you!

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2021, 06:16:03 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on June 23, 2021, 02:51:13 pmIn this case it's not quite that simple, with an aircraft that large and heavy that is totally incapable of gliding will fall out of the sky like a rock if the kill switch is activated, an accidental activation of the kill switch very well might result in injury or death just as a failure to activate it. The real problem (among many others) is the idiotic failsafe behavior that causes it to keep flying if signal is lost. The hard kill should be a very last resort, prior to that if the signal is lost the craft should attempt a controlled landing. This is not hard to do, even $40 toy quadcopters these days have an auto-land feature. Rather than plummet out of the sky and smash into whatever happens to be below it, the craft should attempt to get as close to the ground as possible before shutting off. Really it should have multiple redundant onboard GPS receivers and try to return to the location it took off from. If the GPS position it sees is further from the takeoff location than would reasonably be possible for the craft to have reached (suggesting GPS malfunction) the craft should enter a panic mode and attempt a soft landing wherever it happens to be.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2021, 08:23:45 pm
content: Quote from: mawyatt on June 21, 2021, 04:58:31 pmElectronic History would have been a great theme for an EE class. Maybe some youtube classes, or a book instead.The EE history idea reminded me about the first chapter from "Planar Microwave Engineering" by Thomas Lee. It's a condensed history of EE and a very entertaining read. Everybody "brush and floss after every meal, and visit your dentist regularly", because outch, it hertz what happened to Hertz!That chapter is free to download as a sample from the book:https://assets.cambridge.org/052183/5267/sample/0521835267ws.pdfhttps://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/planar-microwave-engineering/CA50D727AD97C3F4789065F1F9DB0771#overview

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2021, 08:31:09 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on June 23, 2021, 06:16:03 pmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleshort

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2021, 01:00:47 am
content: Quote from: james_s on June 23, 2021, 06:16:03 pmI fully agree.How to shut down in the case of unrecoverable failure is a complicated matter.You just do not make such an emergency shut down dependent on transmitting a separate signal like the designers of that craft did; you need to detect the failure in the first place and not just ignore any failures and trust a separate signal.It is important to realize that in that crash case, the craft was basically designed to completely ignore loss of communications, and only had a kill switch of some sort that relied on a separately transmitted signal. That's what the report states, anyway.Furthermore, that signal was intended to energize a normally closed relay, to cut off power to specific parts of the craft. A typical failure of such a relay means that even when a signal is transmitted, it would have no effect. At least a normally open relay would change state whenever powered on or off, and would be more likely to fail into the emergency state; a normally closed relay is more likely to fail into the closed state. If the supply providing power to the normally closed relay failed, even when received, the kill signal would have zero effect. This design is insane.It is true, though, that I might attribute to malice something that was really only based on utter stupidity. Just because I believe sheer stupidity is not enough and malice is required to design that drone as it was, does not make it true.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2021, 06:05:01 am
content: I don't see any signs of malice at all, it is entirely believable that the people who designed it did what they did out of shear ignorance. They are apparently not trained engineers but hobbyists. For a typical hobbyist quadcopter the design while not great was adequate. It's normal to not have any sort of remote kill feature at all, however you can normally program the flight controller to reduce throttle if a loss of signal occurs.

author: 2N3055
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2021, 08:07:08 am
content: Quote from: james_s on June 24, 2021, 06:05:01 amIt was a scaled test of human carrying vehicle that weighs 100kg... There was nothing adequate on that idiotic design, except thrust...It should have been hard configured to land autonomously if it looses the signal, and all communication must have been two way with transaction confirmation...And that is just plain common sense, nothing advanced or "professional" about that way of thinking.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2021, 04:43:46 pm
content: Quote from: 2N3055 on June 24, 2021, 08:07:08 amI said the design was adequate for a hobbyist quadcopter, NOT for this much larger aircraft. The whole project has the appearance of a group of average drone hobbyists who naively thought they could just scale up a toy quadcopter and call it good. Obviously this is not true.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2021, 05:01:33 pm
content: Quote from: george.b on June 20, 2021, 06:56:56 amWhat I don't understand from that document is why all the recommended measures were keep talking about a cap of 80 Joules battery, while the incident was about a 100kg drone.A CR2032 coin battery holds about 2000-3000 Joules.What kind of drone can fly with 80 Joules?

author: 2N3055
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2021, 06:21:09 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on June 24, 2021, 05:01:33 pmThey are talking about kinetic energy (as in thing fell on your head energy) not battery. There is the rule that UAW that can impart more than 80 joules of kinetic energy must not be operated above other people. 5 kg drone that falls on your head has 140 joules of kinetic energy and that one is already not allowed for flyovers...Their drone would have 22,990 joules at impact, running horizontally at maximum speed and more dropping from the sky at terminal velocity...

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2021, 12:14:42 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on June 23, 2021, 02:51:13 pmI think you may be1) oversimplifying the design,2) underestimating the rationale that went into that decision.It likely isn't because they thought they want to rather save the device than people below the falling thing. This is the same false dichotomy as "save the market or save human lives" covid strategy discussion. In reality, preventing a crash savesboththe property and human lives, so they have every motivation to prevent crashes.The strange reverse-operating (let it fly until a signal comes in) kill switch is very likely because theythoughtabout it, and tried to minimize the risk of loss of both property and human life.I mean, it's obvious to most engineers, even beginners, that kill switch needs to operate so that power is killed when signal is lost. They likely prototyped it wired that way; until they found out in 5 minutes that nuisance trips happen and bring the thing down.So given what they had: a flaky kill switch system, they did the optimization for lowest overall risk toboth human life and propertyand wired the kill switch "backwards". This is the right choice based on two premises:1) Loss of kill signal (say !K) is a more common event than the combination of loss of controlandloss of kill signal (say !C && !K), so that P(!K) > P(!C && !K)2) Safety target is not even near to 100%; accidents are to be minimized within resource constraints; but resources can't be increased.Given the crappy kill signal design, 1 is likely true. They likely had dozens of hours of flight time and had their first dangerous accident because of the combination of loss of control and loss of kill signal. I'd guess had they wired the kill switch the other way, they would have crashed in ten minutes.Which leads us to 2. The right thing to do is to increase the safety target. But there's no silver bullet. Oh the poor engineers. I don't know about this company, but I myself have been in situations where I'm being taken advantage of with severe resource-constraining from above. Yes, the right thing to do is to blow the whistle, "I can't do this safely" and if the culture doesn't change, then leave the business. And yes, that's what I have done, but it's not an easy choice which would happen immediately. In the meantime you try to do your best in the stressful situation which also blurs your vision. You also think you are doing good.CEOs notoriously have higher risk of having narcissistic traits, and even if not, theytendto oversell the product itself, underestimate the schedule to produce the results, even more grossly underestimate the resources needed to design, and blatantly ignore feedback from their engineers then later say "you didn't say this out loud".Designing such heavy unmanned aircraft is in my estimation a project where you would need to hire 3 to 10 top-tier top-class experienced engineers (not 1 competent alone; nor 50 clueless university students), give them budget of 5-10 millions to work with. 2-3 years to the first marketable pre-production prototype (and this includes design-for-manufacture, no Arduino hot melt glue) and 1-2 years more to make that actually manufacturable.So Arduino is related; it was a project made by total hobbyists who can't take such a responsibility. It's not their fault, it's the fault of the management who very likely sold them the idea they could do it. The number of Arduinos everywhere in that system is justan indicatorthey have zero competent designers in the team and they should probably be doing lightweight mini-drones instead, or start doing the business seriously by finding the right people to do it.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2021, 05:51:39 pm
content: AFAIR, we talked about this "drone" a while ago in another thread.Now whether the makers were well-intentioned or not, the weight of the device itself should have made it just plain illegal in this context. But IIRC, regulations about drones are pretty recent, and in particular the maximum weight per category has been defined on a EU level only a few months ago, so at the time they did this, there may have been no regulation about it to speak of.That said, common sense should come into play. The same would apply to RC models. Building a 100kg RC plane and fly it is extremely dangerous, even when it's very well designed. No one in their right mind would do this unless strictly supervised and with all safety measures duly taken.I don't think it has really much to do with the state of hobby electronics. I don't think it even has to do with the fact it's much easier and cheaper to build stuff these days. Decades ago, a few people were already building pretty weird and unsafe stuff. Think of this guy who built a neutron source in his garage (he wanted to eventually build a nuclear reactor.) That was 3 decades ago.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2021, 09:59:32 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on June 25, 2021, 12:14:42 pmI'm not sure I agree with that. In the case of something land or sea based, yes, absolutely cut the power if anything at all goes wrong. In the case of a fixed wing aircraft one could also argue for that, if the power is cut it can still glide to the ground and cutting the power limits the distance it can travel. In the case of a quadcopter, cutting the power means it will immediately plummet from the sky like a stone and smash into whatever happens to be below it. I do not think that is desirable at all, a momentary loss of the kill switch signal causing an uncommanded activation could easily cause a crash that could have been avoided entirely by simply leveling the craft and then gradually reducing throttle causing it to reduce altitude and land. Even an uncontrolled landing is likely to turn out a lot better than just cutting the power and letting it drop.Either way, the kill switch control should have been bidirectional and self testing, immediately alerting the operator to any sort of malfunction. Also the right thing to do would be to take this thing out into the middle of nowhere for testing, there are places in most parts of the world that are sparsely populated with miles of open space and not much in the way of air traffic.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2021, 01:15:22 am
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on June 25, 2021, 12:14:42 pmObviously possible.The software engineering analog here would be "I'll just leave myself this root account open so I can log in afterwards if something needs fixing." To get to that point, I don't see how you can knowthat muchwithout realizing how bad an idea that is. Yet, it is a persistent pattern in massive breaches of internet-enabled appliances that we just cannot seem to get rid of. And I'm not talking only about the no-name cheapies; the clients of the name-brand netword equipment manufacturer Cisco seem to get bitten by this same thing every decade or so at least, even though many consider them the go-to enterprise source for such stuff.I personally know enough of Arduino, BLDC motors, IMUs, various wireless comms and such, to consider tackling the task of building such a drone purely from a hobbyist basis, without being any kind of an engineer. And I'm known for recklessly tackling stuff that ought to be obviously too big to bite. But even if on mind-altering drugs, I would never ever make some of the design choices the designers of that drone did, unless I did those choices deliberately. So that is my yard-stick. Perhaps it is utterly, utterly wrong. I have no way to know for sure, just wanted you to knowwhyI believe so –– what I believe is uninteresting, but the reasonswhymay be of interest and perhaps use to others.That said, having done so much network service programming (a lot of web stuff, but plain 'ol TCP/IP, and more relevant to this particular stuff here, plenty of UDP/IP stuff too). UDP/IP in particular has the same kind of problems a remotely operated vehicle has: routers are free to drop UDP packets whenever they deem it necessary, so unlike TCP/IP, UDP/IP has no guarantees or features to provide any kind of reliability for the messages.I guess having had to learn that the hard way over two decades ago, has colored my opinion of how reliable (rather, unreliable) real-world communications are. I am completely used to the idea of having messages lost and connections close mid-stream; and always plan well ahead how to deal with that. You could say it is one of the "details" I think about a lot when coming up with a design.As an example, I would never use the same kind of control protocol to a remotely operated device as USB keyboards use. (Three types of messages are sent for each "keypress": a "press" event, optionally some "autorepeat" events at specific intervals if the key is being depressed for a sufficient duration, and a "release" event.) Instead, each control message would always contain a limit to its application – for example, "gothatway at ratethis, but stop doing that after durationthenunless I direct otherwise" – because I've had even USB keyboard keys get stuck on systems that occasionally silently drop USB packets. Using UDP/IP, that sort of issue would be basically guaranteed to occur often enough to be noticeable to everyone. (And that assumes you've already learned to develop UDP/IP in a lossy test network. Because real world networks do not behave like the nice small closed test network you set up for testing; and you'd find that out the first time you used your stuff in the real world. Real world is a hard, effective teacher.)So, indeed, I do need to re-evaluate my view on what one can expect from Arduino hobbyists; I admit my yard stick seems to be pretty bent. A banana.God dammit, I'm measuring in bananas again.Quote from: Siwastaja on June 25, 2021, 12:14:42 pmDrop that to say 50%, and I'm inclined to agree.Still, I must point out that in my view/terminology, reducing safety target that low because offiscalresource constraints, is still malice. It's not like the resources they were running out was energy or room or capability or such, just "business value".Quote from: Siwastaja on June 25, 2021, 12:14:42 pmYes; similar to how some people buy a gun and end up shooting themselves in the foot, or a biker they thought was a moose. Not malice, no, but negligence, perhaps?It is not the existence of the tool or Arduino at fault, because this type of people end up doing much the same even if all they have are a bunch of rocks and a small satchel.Some people say it is important to limit the access to such tools, but I disagree: I believe it is much better to just severely punish the idiots who misuse such tools. Kids and teens do get a pass, being still the responsibility of their legal guardians; so if they do it, punish their legal guardians instead. (I learned that from Robert A. Heinlein.)

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2021, 06:36:12 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on June 26, 2021, 01:15:22 amOh, I do agree with this. But I also see the actual Arduino hobbyist, who's now suddenly in a "real company" and called an "engineer", who came up with the technical details of the kill switch, isn't the one who decided to reduce the safety. Likely they were carefully mentally manipulated to accept this while not even understanding what's happening.Add unnecessary stress to blur the vision and make the "engineers" do panic decisions so that the demo next day can run. Make them feel they are somehow saving the world by participating in this project, maybe this drone solves the climate change and saves millions of human lives. And, make them believe the project fails if they can't provide a demo the next day. This sounds stupid when put like this but a real sociopath is well capable of manipulating great majority of people, even those who are far from being gullible.Even outright lying is possible. This is just speculation based on what I have seen in similar situations, but I wouldn't be any surprised to hear the engineer had doubts about the safety but the higher-up promised and guaranteed that this demonstration will be arranged physically somewhere where spectators are all protected or far enough and there is no controlled airfield nearby. Such promises are always off the record and made in private to be outright denied later.That kill switch thing is really hard to do properly. It should have features like an autonomous drone but then it becomes a whole different level of task, namely designing the autonomous flying system to fly safe.If I absolutely had to do this without involving the rabbit hole of full autonomous flying, my list of priorities would be,1) Do everything I can to make that communication link reliable so I can invert back to the usual logic (no signal -> cut power)2) Do some stupidly simple (analog?) logic that indeed cuts power, but with a super-reliable delay of say 5 seconds. During that wait, in the main flight microcontroller, run a semi-stupidly simple rescue logic which is unlikely to fail, supposed to provide maybe uncontrolled but still smoother landing; for example, keep the IMU-controlled leveling enabled (feeding back the ratios between motor settings) while rolling down the general "throttle" (or average power to all motors) setting during that 5 seconds;but I do realize this isn't enough for proper safety level, either. It might be two orders of magnitude better than what they had, but still not enough. For a good solution, I would like to have a good team, time and money, and limited stress level so my brain is allowed to work.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2021, 07:53:49 am
content: Even the hobby quadcopters already have a simple safety system that works pretty well. If they lose radio signal, which happens occasionally for various reasons, they don't just cut the throttle to zero, they reduce it to a level that causes the craft to descend while maintaining control so the craft stays level and doesn't just fall out of the sky. A kill switch that completely kills the motors would be idiotic, at least using one that did that while the thing was at significant altitude would be. A full kill switch could be useful for ensuring the motors are shut off once it's on or near the ground or near people.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2021, 01:07:08 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on June 26, 2021, 07:53:49 amHaving only that sort of a kill switch, yeah.But we've pretty much established already thatwhata drone should do in exceptional situations is complicated, and isn't really the point here; it is understandable if that was the problem in this case. But it isn't.The point is that that this design chooses to deliberately ignore things like loss of communication, and instead relies on an external signal asthetrigger or detector for exceptional situations.I've thought about this some more, and reading the other arguments here, I think my attribution to malice is indeed incorrect, andnegligenceis a better match.Similar to say a driver causing an accident because they were busy playing with their phone while driving.There, too, I would not blame the phone (or Arduino) for the accident; those were just something that got used while the user was being negligent.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2021, 04:49:16 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on June 26, 2021, 01:07:08 pmI'd say ignorance, more than negligence. The designer lacked experience and didn't envisage such a dangerous situation occurring. Similar to a child finding something dangerous like a car battery dumped in the street, playing with it and starting a fire.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2021, 08:03:13 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on June 26, 2021, 04:49:16 pmThey were fully capable adults, so lack of understanding is not and should not be a protection against culpability.Let's say you design a hand-held widget with a 2000 mAh lithium-ion battery in it. But because you're not experienced in such design, yours has this metal spike that will pierce the battery and short it, if the device is held "incorrectly" in adult human hands.Would you seriously try to claim you are not responsible for the ensuing fires and injuries, because you didn't realize your design would cause those?While you did not cause them to happen, your negligence made them possible/likely, and in most legal jurisdictions you would be culpable.I believe you should be culpable, because you were negligent in the design of the hand-held widget. Same for the drone case.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2021, 08:19:29 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on June 26, 2021, 08:03:13 pmTry asking that to a software developer.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2021, 09:32:28 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on June 26, 2021, 08:03:13 pmLooking at how crappy the design was, it's a bit of a stretch to say they they were fully capable adults.I'm not saying they are not culpable, just that there's a difference between negligence and ignorance, due to perhaps incompetence. The blame might lie further up the chain, than the designers. The person who employed them should have done due diligence, to ensure they got people who were suitably qualified for the task. If you want something designed on the cheap, so go and hire a load of college students, with no engineering qualifications, or experience and it blows up and kills someone: is it fair to blame the students? Aren't you more to blame for hiring people who weren't up to the job?

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2021, 10:05:57 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on June 26, 2021, 08:19:29 pmBeing one myself, my answer isyes.I do firmly believe software engineers should be responsible for design errors. Stuff like having an "undocumented" root shell with a fixed password listening for incoming connections on a nonstandard port, and believing it is safe and okay to do that as long as it stays a secret, should get you fired and blacklisted, just like structural engineers who pass sub-par concrete jobs because having it redone is just too much work.Yet, have you ever heard of a software engineer getting punished for doing bad, dangerous work, like for implementing software that silently garbles user data? I haven't, and it annoys me. I am sure it is one of the reasons why average software quality is so atrocious.Quote from: Zero999 on June 26, 2021, 09:32:28 pmAssuming the students are adults, they are partly to blame. Those hiring them are also partly to blame. I'd need to see their communications to have any quantitative opinion (i.e. who more, who less).Also note that I am of the opinion that if an underage person commits crime, both they and their legal guardian should be punished. This extends to companies and organizations, too: no power without responsibility.I do know that this is a scary opinion to have, because most software developers are used to being able to cop out of responsibility (via licenses and disclaimers), and the thought of being actually responsible for ones own work output is scary. I know, because it scares me too. So I understand why people oppose this opinion. But I think that fear is good and necessary: The same reason I want structural engineers to be responsible for their work product, is the same reason why I think software engineers should be too, and if one cannot handle it, they should get a different career with lesser personal risk.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 07:11:34 am
content: But software is* different because it's in total crisis, have been for maybe two-three decades now, in any case so long that most software developers who are notoriously young peoplehave never seen a simple and working software system in their life. Maybe in 1970's software development paradigms were not any better but problems were limited by the software size and complexity limitations coming from the hardware and languages available.*) describing the situation as itisnow, not what I wouldwant it to be; in my opinion, software should be evaluated against the same standards as hardware, buildings, bridges, and so on, depending on where it is used.Now, no one seems to have an idea how to build even remotely robust software, no one seems to have an idea how to build any software for less than say $100 million, especially if taxpayer is involved. No one even dares to discuss about responsibilities. There'sa lotof software science telling us how to develop robust software but all of this is failing in practice.Software simply doesn't need to work at all, no one bats an eye. For example here in the Great Finland we have this new healthcare IT system which reportedly by doctors prevents proper care completely, nearly or actually killing people left and right (for example, by completely blocking the availability of any patient information, including allergies to medicines, in emergency situations in ICU), but no one can do anything, and no one is and will be held responsible. It was so expensive it has to be used despite how many human lives it takes. So we can't even say "hey, let's free everybody from responsibility and just drop this software, revert back to the old working system, and forget about this ever happened"; no, we have to continue making human sacrifices on the altar of modern software paradigms.Hardware on the other hand, not so much. The situation is so much better we can afford to have this discussion about responsibilities, remove the few bad apples. Besides, no one buys hardware that is completely non-functional but for some strange reason, with software this doesn't seem to matter; I can't think of anything else but it's because people are sodesperatewith software, anything at all goes.And yes, I again agree with mr. Animal that starting holding software developers responsible for the worst offends (like killing people directly or indirectly) would help solve the software crisis. The task is enormous but it has to start somewhere. On the technical side I applaud mr. Animal's efforts regarding C standard library improvements/replacements to get rid of all the built-in traps in current specifications and implementations.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 10:39:46 am
content: Well there's safety critical software., which does have to work and not kill anyone. I put a lot of the blame on those who commission the services of software companies. A government organisation, such as the UK's national health service, should write penalty clauses into the contract, with software companies, stating that they're responsible for damages if it goes wrong.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 11:24:05 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on June 27, 2021, 10:39:46 amI don't disagree but the premiums for "Errors and Omissions Insurance" are going to be staggering. In fact, the premiums are likely greater than the base contract.Imagine how much money Internet based companies would have to pay if they were held accountable for all the hacks that reveal customer's identity and credit card info. But I agree, they should be held accountable.More so for life safety failings, of course!

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 11:36:23 am
content: Back to Arduino...In another thread on the Beginners Forum, I showed an Analog Discover 2 project displaying the rise and fall curves of an RC circuit. The AD2 is very expensive so I wanted a cheaper solution.The 555 comes to mind, it's a great solution as long as the circuit will produce 50% duty cycle. Still, there's a lot of messing around wiring everything up on a breadboard. Some form of external power is required.Enter the Arduino Nano. It took exactly 1 line of code to create a symmetric square wave source of very nearly exactly 80 Hz. The statement: "tone(2,80)" in the setup() function. All of the boilerplate setup() and loop() functions are provided by the IDE. Yes, one line of code and I had my square wave.I plugged the Nano into the breadboard, plugged the resistor between pin 2 and one leg of the capacitor and the other leg went to ground. I used the USB programming cable to provide power.Pretty quick!I didn't want elegance, I wanted a square wave. The Nano is a pretty slick solution for less than $5 and the device is serially reusable. The cost can be spread over a number of breadboard projects.https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/what-an-oscilloscope-recommended-for-a-woman-passionate-about-electronics/msg3594603/#msg3594603Reply #906 has the final image for the charge/discharge waveform

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 01:21:50 pm
content: Quote from: rstofer on June 27, 2021, 11:36:23 amAnd do consider what this means for anyone starting electronics as a hobby.I think it is very similar to how in the 1980s my friends and I painstakingly copied Basic code off computer magazines, saved to cheap and slow cassette tapes, and were elated after several hours of work to see a funny little game or program producing visible results:we did that with our own effort.It is true that some never advance from that stage; that alone is/was fun enough.More important is how that kind of experience shaped those that did decide to dig deeper, designing their own code from scratch –– the first I designed were mazes and a jump-over-the-obstacle stuff. A few decades later, I am no longer limited by my skill, only by my own imagination and effort required. That sort of power of creation is intoxicating.Instead of evaluating Arduino based on how many stay at that stage, we should evaluate the effect of Arduino on electronics as a hobby and as a profession based on those who do advance from Arduino to "truer" electronics.After all,thingnot happening could be due to any number of reasons, so it is more sane to focus on those that did happen; and compare those two categories qualitatively, not quantitatively: why, not how many.I would bet real money that most structural and mechanical engineers played with Lego Technics, Meccano, or similar toys as children, for example.(I do worry about chemistry and similar, since things like chemistry sets are considered Dangerous And Not For Kids anymore. To say nothing of climbing in trees and playing with your friends without direct continuous adult supervision, and what that means wrt. attitude towards physical exercise and personal responsibilities later in life.)

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 02:39:47 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on June 23, 2021, 04:55:05 pmLOL & RIP

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 03:08:53 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on June 27, 2021, 01:21:50 pmI have been writing code since 1970 and playing with uCs since I bought the Altair 8800 in '75. It wasn't much of a system at the start with just 256 bytes of RAM but it wasn't long before systems were fully populated with 64k. A 4k memory board cost $400.Given that background, I have never given much thought to the Arduino. I just pick one up off the bench and do something with it. They've been around here for a long time, I probably have more than a dozen of various flavors.As a result of this thread, I'm beginning to suspect that the Arduino is the most important device in modern electronics and it is aimed right at the beginners. The range of potential projects is enormous. Variations on the theme include WiFi and networking. There are larger AVR devices and the IDE, for better or worse, supports even more capable devices like the Teensy 4.1 which is a blazing fast uC.OK, I concede that using the Arduino is likely to be more code than wire but that's just the nature of modern electronics. The good news is that libraries provide most of the code and you can create a useful project with just a single line of user code.And, yes, the Raspberry Pi is right up there on the importance scale as well. Who would have thought that Linux could run on such a small board? It gets better!I always wanted a PDP-11/70 and now I have two! They are the PiDP11 boxes that use a Pi to emulate the PDP-11 and even in emulation, they are faster than the original. Playing with Fortran, Pascal and Assembly Language for the PDP-11 is fun! Running a full version of Unix means all the tools are there along with networking. Very slick! OK, there's no GUI but there isn't supposed to be. The world ran on Telnet and FTP back in the day.https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 03:57:04 pm
content: Quote from: rstofer on June 27, 2021, 03:08:53 pmRasPi is luxury. Ever tried linux m68k?

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 04:38:38 pm
content: Quote from: madires on June 27, 2021, 03:57:04 pmNo but I have a lot of experience with UCSD Pascal on a Z80. Primitive, by comparison, but I really like Pascal.

author: PrecisionAnalytic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 05:27:59 pm
content: Quote from: FriedMule on June 19, 2021, 09:27:54 pmI don't know. Would have to review all the data (of the population... mewhahaha.... yeah right) and do some stats on to make a more determinate assessment.From my perspective, they remind me of a simple dev board where one can prototype MCU electronic designs with and then use only the minimum components required for the project ultimately as well as design your own PCB around those components.To me, seems there might be other issues killing everything they can, like watching TV for entertainment (or anything entertainment industry that isn't practical survival related including luxury survival reqs.) that is fanatical or fantastical and not the arduino or anything much math, science, engineering or logical tech oriented. Animals, placating on the Pan Troglodyte genes in the unaware and unknowing to the more advanced domesticated maintaining growing populations society humans acts, events, skills, tools, etc., are more the reason.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 05:47:00 pm
content: As an arduino-level hobbyist when it comes to actual electronics (as opposed to embedded software development), the hobby possibilities that opened for me when I found out about JLCPCB and EasyEDA, is like a complete new world opening up for me.As a physicist, I did some electronics courses ages ago. As a kid, I built my first kit (LED roulette!) at age ten or twelve or so at school. I've fixed a CRT TV in the nineties by replacing its soldered-in channel selector backup battery, whose voltage I had to determine based on the ICs, and got some flak from the electronics store clerk for being a "TV repairman now, eh?" when I asked if they had data on the chips I could determine were related to that circuit.But this, having microcontrollers and the ability to manufacture dual-sided boards without getting into chemistry (ferrichloride stains, anyone?) on a budget more on par with bubblegum than shoestrings, now that opened up a complete new world of possibilities and fun.Suddenly, for me at least, electronics shifted from fixing things and finding out how stuff works, intocreatingnew stuff. Even though I had enjoyed the basic courses and had the basic theoretical knowledge, I never *needed* any of that to create something new; circuit design was simply too expensive (for anything I considered worth designing). Now I enjoy doing that for fun, and that's because of Arduino, and cheap prototype services and parts resellers who do not require a business account or have a minimum order limit higher than what I'm willing to spend on a fun hobby any given month.I bet I'm common as mud in this aspect, with many like me out there.I only realized this by reading and participating in this thread, too.

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2021, 09:57:22 pm
content: I've been an "electronics hobbyist" for about 50 years now, since I helped my father put together a Heathkit stereo. I had one of the kits with the spring terminals, I had my own Heathkit, and I read voraciously - "projects" books, Popular Electronics, Radio Electronics, QST, "Electronics Shop" in HS, and so on. Components were really expensive then, especially if you hadn't discovered the mail-order surplus dealers, and I wasn't that well off, so a lot of projects were more lusted after rather than actually built...It was probably 1976 or so, when Popular Electronics published their 'COSMAC Elf" single-board computer project based on the CDP1802 for "as little as $80" that I realized that nearly every project I had built or wanted to build could be PROGRAMMED instead of hard-wired (random blinky things - check. Electronic lock - check. "Annoyer" booby trap - check. Pong, Electronic Dice, digital clock, "lie detector" - yep. Pretty much anything other than radio (which for some reason I wasn't much interested in.) But $80 (about $400 in 2021 dollars) was still too dear, so my 1802 experiments stayed "on paper." (even though individual projects were $25 or more..)Midway through my University EE degree, at a school abounding with Mainframes and S-100 machines, I figuredout that not only could you program most of the things that I was interested in, but that programs also offered nearly "instant gratification" and permitted you to fix mistakes and try out new variations SO much quicker than real hardware. So I became a programmer. Mostly on mainframes, and then on "big" embedded systems, doing networking stuff - very lucrative, you know. But I carefully followed the hobbyist computing scene, from S-100 to Apple 2 to IBMPC, and BASIC52, early PICs, Basic Stamp, AVRs.It's been pretty much inevitable that programming would replace electronics for many "projects" for a very long time...The Arduino is just the latest (and perhaps most successful) entry in that process.

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 12:20:59 am
content: Quote from: westfw on June 28, 2021, 09:57:22 pmBut now radio too.SDR (software defined radio) has taken over.Except for a few front-end parts such as an attenuator and rf amp, the signal is digitized and it's all programming from there.

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 01:40:41 am
content: What Arduino and the like is doing is opening up the scope and quality of what can be achieved as a hobbyist on a pocket-money budget. The range of inexpensive sensors now available is just awesome.I think that the learning curve to get out of the "Arduino and wire jumper" projects to a more traditional project (audio, radio, automotive) is much higher than it was, and there is limited material to guide you.It needs quite a few more skills and equipment - it used to be that if you could solder some through-hole parts to veroboard you could build something meaningful - a guitar amp, a power supply or a radio receiver for much less than the cost of a retail equivalent.At least for me, finding any meaningful projects that you can't just buy off the shelf for less the the cost of parts is also very hard. Hence why all my projects are largely meaningless.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 07:19:08 am
content: Quote from: hamster_nz on June 29, 2021, 01:40:41 amThat is true, but it has also blurred the meaning of "achieving". I mean, it's very easy to buy pre-engineered modules and write a few lines of code to initialize them to get Incredible Things done. Personally, I "built a radio" when maybe 6 years old. I was so proud of it; built a functional radio all by myself! But let's face it, I just dismantled a working radio, took a cardboard box, made some holes for the speaker and antenna and glued/taped the existing working radio inside it. Arduino is more than that, of course, but the problem is the same.Because as long as this works, as long as you can buy the shield (and have the library) which does the thing it's all fine. But then, if you want to do something a bit different where pre-engineered module simply does not exist, you hit a total vertical wall that is so steep there is no way to get over it. You may not even be able to recognize the wall.This is frequently seen when overconfident Arduino hobbyists + some young business-oriented guy get the idea of changing the world by bootstrapping a brainstormed business on Kickstarter. Such endeavors basically always fail because the result after two years of failed promises and a few millions is a box full of Arduinos and hot melt glue in a 3D printed box but it still doesn't work because increasing the number of Arduinos doesn't compensate for the lack of design. The Arduino here, again, is justan indicator. Theycouldhave hired a proper designer who understood what needs to be done, and then they could have a customArduino shieldperforming the task properly. But then again, if they did that, the very same designer would have just "optimized out" the now-unnecessary Arduino.So I really do see Arduino as an important stepping stone which does mostly good, but like always withanytechnology, there are traps and you can fall into them.

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 11:08:51 am
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on June 29, 2021, 07:19:08 amThat's classic I gotta remember that one!

author: Bradlez
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 01:19:33 pm
content: Imagine in an alternate timeline where PIC18F based Arduino boards reigned supreme instead of ATMEGA boards. I wonder if the world would be much different.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 04:59:25 pm
content: Quote from: Bradlez on June 29, 2021, 01:19:33 pmWhy would it be? There are already loads of different Arduino boards that are not Atmega based, from the user perspective they are not much different to develop for.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 06:37:10 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on June 29, 2021, 04:59:25 pmYes, indeed!The question is still "interesting" though, come to think of it, but maybe not in the way it was expressed.There clearly were like two crowds at the time (probably still the case a little bit, but a lot less obvious ever since ARM-based MCUs became very popular): the PIC users and the AVR users. Each often pretty opiniated about their preferred MCU line, and with a slightly different mindset as far as I can tell.So a maybe interesting, related, but different question could be: "Could Arduino have been imagined and designed with 8-bit PIC MCUs to begin with, instead of AVR ones?"It's of course not possible to answer this question, but we can still have an opinion. I for one am not 100% sure this could have happened, again mainly because most PIC users tended to exhibit a different mindset. And even the respective vendors had a different approach, explaining this partly too.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 07:20:25 pm
content: Of course it could have, although I think it would have required an open source C compiler existing for the PICs, is there such a thing? I got started with AVRs and stuck with them because I know them. I don't think the PIC is any worse but I used the AVR because there was an easy and free BASIC compiler that I was able to get started with now over 20 years ago and PIC at the time meant learning assembly. It all comes down to the software, I don't really care what's going on inside the chip.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 07:58:29 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on June 29, 2021, 06:37:10 pmWell, there was the OOPIC based on the 16F877A. This added an objected oriented approach to PIC programming and was quite powerful and totally unique.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OOPicIt was pretty popular 20 years ago.https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Customizing-OOPic-Microcontroller-Official/dp/0071420843

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 09:03:03 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on June 29, 2021, 07:19:08 amI was so ready to respond, and then you go and sayQuote from: Siwastaja on June 29, 2021, 07:19:08 amwhich leaves me with nothing to do but *nod in agreement*.The variants of the stated question, for example"If Arduino is killing the electronic hobby,howis it causing that?"and"If Arduino is killing the electronic hobby,should we stopArduino? How? Is that even possible, or just Quixotic You-Kids-Need-to-Grow-A-Lawn-To-Become-Men-So-You-Too-Can-Shout-At-Kids stuff?"and"If something about or in Arduino is killing the electronic hobby, what could we replace it with that is similarly useful, but would not kill the electronic hobby?"and"Is electronics hobby something we should try to keep as is, or should we let it go as it may and see what comes out after a decade or two, like we do with basically all hobbies outside of organized sports and religion?", plus all reasonable ideas about making Arduino better, or replacing it with something similar but in a some clearly defined way "better", isfunshop talk. Not idle chat, though, because there is information and experience lurking here; but more fun that way, too.

author: Mario87
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 09:33:38 pm
content: Quote from: FriedMule on June 19, 2021, 09:27:54 pmArduino is essentially a hobbyist dev board. Yes it is off the shelf, but does that make an engineer in a company using a £5000 FPGA dev board for prototyping any less of an engineer because they didn’t make it themselves?Sure, some people take an arduino, program it and say “done”. However that’s doesn’t mean it cannot be used in a more traditional way so that someone uses it to get their project doing what they want on bread board, then they use a free design package like EasyEDA or KiCAD to make up a schematic (including Atmel 328), design a PCB, order the boards from JLCPCB, PCBWay, etc and components from LCSC, Mouser, Farrell, etc and then once the parts arrive they assemble their board, test, program, debug, etc, etc.Those that do the latter (I have done it in the past) are not simply coding and just because they didn’t build all the logic in their circuit from discrete transistor it doesn’t make what they have done any less than what you do with discrete components.Arduino can be looked at in 2 ways, something you just buy add-on boards for that you program and use to learn C (the view you have taken) or something that opens up a cheap and easy way for people to start developing their own AVR based electronics projects (hardware & software).

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 09:48:48 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on June 29, 2021, 06:37:10 pmVery good question. I've wondered that too, and in my own particular case, it really came down to AVR having a free and libre working development environment I could use on my Linux machines. (I haven't had Windows on any of my machines since 2005 or thereabouts; and between 1997 and 2005, dual-booted only because I had expensive commercial software (Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Shockwave Internet Studio) without alternatives and could squeeze more value out of generic Intel/AMD hardware than I could of similar investment in Mac hardware.)I don't know if Linux matters in this picture –– it might, because so many interested in software development outside the Windows environment end up having Linux and/or BSDs installed or dual-bootable –– but probably doesn't. I believe the Arduino developers focused on WinAVR, and don't know their early history to know if any/how many of them used Linux at the time at all.I suspect that in the high performance computing crowd, the split between CUDA and OpenCL folks is the same 'free' that made the decision between PICs and AVRs for me.One is a proprietary, closed, single-provider environment; the other is less polished, some ways even 'not as good', but fundamentally not strictly controlled by the hardware manufacturer or vendor.The mass appeal, however, probably stemmed from the other 'free', i.e. 'no cost'.So, I propose that the 'free' that directed the developers of the Arduino environment, was different to the 'free' that made Arduino appealing to the masses,but both are required for such an environment to appear in the first place.The prices of AVRs and PICs meant either one would have been similarly appealing to the masses, but to thedeveloperswho created the environment in the first place, who wanted the freedom and avoid vendor lock-in and vendor-enforced boundaries, the two were light years separated, with an obvious choice –– and I suspect they made the same choice I made for the same reasons I did.In particular, even from the beginning, the Arduino developers knew that even if Atmel tried (and their track record showed they wouldn't, but Microchip/PIC might) to force them to reject any competing microcontrollers, it would be completely and even legally safe to ignore such requests, because of the clear legality and provenance of the base projects. (Atmel supported AVR GCC ports, where Microchips attitude is... problematic to say the least, up to straight up lying to their customers what they are legally and contractually allowed to do, namely remove any license-based restrictions on their GCC-based compilers.)[When Microchip bought Atmel, I was saddened, because I knew I would from there on do stuffdespitethe vendor, rather thatwiththe vendor, because I am just not the type to sit in a walled garden producing officially sanctioned stuff using only officially sanctioned materials. I'm a monkey; either the walls break, or they're covered in poo before the day is over.]Purely based on observing Microchip business practices, I do not think anyone could have done Arduino based on Microchip products.This is not based on anything to do with PICs themselves; it is just an extrapolation of observed business behaviour, to attempts of creating an Arduino-like environment around PICs.Indeed, even now, Microchip is trying pretty damned hard to steer their customers away from any multiplatform solutions, directing them to the Microchip-controlled Walled Garden instead (what with their proprietary compilers and Hardware Abstraction Libraries and so on). Just go look at theirArduinopage. I do believe my characterisation of Microchip business practices is correct and warranted, although they are only based on external observation by a hobbyist; I do not have any of their internal memoes or directives.I would go so far that if anyone trying to create an Arduino-like environment dedicated to PICsright now, should be prepared to deal with Microchip lawyers and business folks. (Things like "trademark dilution" is something you'd need to talk about with a lawyer before even considering such a project, because if you cannot publish it without infringing on registered trademarks, it will be pretty hard for even interested people tofind itin the first place.)If you disagree, let me direct your attention on the authorship on existing Arduino cores for different architectures. Most of them are the work product of individuals without any real links to the hardware vendor, with many having some very nice contributions from engineers working for various hardware vendors but not in any kind of controlling capacity, just submitted like they were by anyone else; with specific cores having a suprisingly tightly controlled authorship... I'll leave it for you to find out which cores that might be, or indeed if any (since it depends on what you consider "surprisingly tight control").Also, may I ask that instead of stating disagreement based on beliefs based on the scent of jasmine in the wind and calling me a "copyleft zealot commie" or similar, please check if your beliefs are in agreement with the abovementioned, easily verified and observable claims first.I amnotclaiming that free/open source is better, because I do not think so – I personallylikeit more, but that is like liking vanilla over chocolate or something, a matter of a personal quirk and nothing more – but that for anyone intending to build something intended to be used by others to build something, the libre-versus-vendor-controlled proposition is, and because of copyrights and software licensing,has to be important. (Also, basically all software developers whose work product spans multiple operating systems and hardware architectures, has been bitten by vendor lock-in at least once. It ain't fun. So, some of us tend to avoid vendor-locked environments because the risk of that bite at the end makes any temporary gains just not worth it.)So, I say Arduino came about on AVRs because they were libre, and Arduino itself became popular because it was basically no-cost. Microchip PIC fulfills the latter, but not the former, because of how Microchip the company runs its business.No value judgments here, only an understanding ofwhyit happened the way it happened.(Yes, I'm UTTERLY fed up being labeled a zealot, just because Ivery slightlyprefer one thing over another, and am completely honest about it and my reasons. Whenever GPL or copyleft licensing comes up, it seems that it so occupies the minds of some that they can no longer fathom that someone could actually justonly slightly prefer it over othersand at the same time be completely relaxed and willing to use any other license or business model as long as it makes sound business sense. Put bluntly, I've been happy to work on code licensed under one of at least a dozen different licenses spanning from CC0-1.0 to GPL to official secrets covered by an NDA; and will be happy to do so in future too, regardless of the particular license as long as it makes sense in that particular context – I don't like things being done stupidly, because it is inefficient. Efficiency beats ideology in my opinion. Tux is my mascot, not my idol.)

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 09:53:33 pm
content: PIC wouldn't have worked. In fact PIC has its shot and failed. PIC16F84 projects were a widespread thing before Arduino, but the stupid memory page swap and the tiny, tiny RAM made it to fail at becoming popular.It was the elegance of AVR microcontrollers family, their generous RAM and program memory size AND the open source / open hardware design that might Arduino possible. Then others joined lately to the trend.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 09:56:57 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on June 29, 2021, 09:53:33 pmDid... Did you just put in two sentences what I spent almost a full page to express?I need to investigate and learn from this.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 09:57:48 pm
content: Quote from: rstofer on June 29, 2021, 07:58:29 pmI was using PICs like 20 years ago, and I don't remember this to be "pretty popular". Looks like some niche thing compared to what Arduino has been.As was said above, one of the reasons for a difference between PIC and AVR at the time was the open-source tools for AVR. Another was an easier to use architecture.It was very common, in the early 2000's, to program PIC MCUs in assembly directly, whereas there already was an usable open-source C compiler for AVR IIRC. Again, due to this and probably other reasons, the respective users were often pretty different, so I still think the Arduino platform as it has been had little chance of existing using the PIC MCUs of the same generation.Of course, with recent PIC MCUs and recent Microchip tools, that would have been possible, but it's too late now. I doubt anyone would be interested in having Arduino on 8-bit PIC MCUs, or even 16-bit ones. But yes, Arduino is now supported for a large range of MCUs, mostly ARM-based ones, outside of AVR.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 10:47:43 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on June 29, 2021, 09:56:57 pmThat's because I'm a slow typer, but thank you.

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 11:59:53 pm
content: Everybody's wrong! (Well, everybody's point is very valid, but not how I see it..)The killer feature was the zero-cost zero-effort programmer that just worked. The reliable, dependable bootloader teamed with a reliable dependable USB/serial bridge (the FDTI chip) was the key to Arduino's success.Sure the "simple to the max" Processing-based IDE helped a lot, and GCC support was an underlying enabler, but the programming workflow was what won the war.Lots of other platforms support now have a similar level of usability (e.g. my fave the ESP32) it is the richness of the software libraries, published projects and documentation that keeps the very old. small, slow and feature-poor AVR parts alive in the minds of hobbyists.If it was an technology thing then Arduino would be savaged by MicroPython running on multicore 100+MHz 32-bit processors like the ESP32.Ah, if only the Pi Pico was just a little bit better...

author: mindcrime
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 03:11:10 am
content: Quote from: FriedMule on June 21, 2021, 12:27:10 amMeh. Go dig up my thread on the reflow oven I'm working on. I chose to put an MCU (an Arduino Nano) at the center of that, but yet I've spent more time soldering in the last 2 months that I ever have before in my life. The MCU does a lot, but by NO means did it do "everything for me". I still had to use discrete components, build a power supply, build an input mechanism (keypad, with keypad controller IC), work with an SSR and use a level shifting transistor to drive a "min 4V" input from the 3.3V output on the Arduino, plus the generic mains side wiring for the SSR, a switch, etc., blah, etc., yadda yadda.In the end, my "MCU project" has involved everything from physical fabrication to point-to-point wiring on protoboard, a ton of soldering (all those damn header pins I use to interconnect things between boards), mains level stuff, using temperature sensors (thermocouple), weird specialized IC's for interfacing with a 12 digit keypad, and more.Now to be fair, I started in electronics way before the era of Arduino. I've been a beginner for almost 40 years now. But even as an "old guy" in relative terms, I can see that Arduino and other MCU platforms are just a tool that fill a niche, and (generally) give us more options.Look, if you want to keep winding your own inductors by hand, using vacuum tubes, using wire-wrap, making capacitors from canning jars and mineral oil and sheets of copper, blah, etc., then have at it. Nobody will stop you.But the Arduino and such-like are here, they're part of the hobby now, and as far as I'm concerned that's a good thing. I mean, how the hell would I have implemented Wifi and Bluetooth into my oven project using 7400 TTL and 4000 series CMOS IC's, discrete components, etc? But thanks to a tiny little $30 board, I have all of that available to me.And as to the question of "did anybody ever start with a micro and then start using 'real' electronics?" I would say that the number of tutorials out there teaching people how to add more outputs to their Arduino using a 74HC595 is evidence that the answer is unequivocally "yes".

author: jklasdf
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 04:07:11 am
content: This comes up occasionally, and if you look back at the history, the lack of open source tools for PICs was definitely a driver for choosing AVRs instead for the original Arduino.fromhttps://arduinohistory.github.io/Quote

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 07:30:46 am
content: QuoteThere was the"USB Bit Whacker"that showed up at about the same time as the early Arduinos. PIC18F with direct USB connection and a bootloader. SO CLOSE. But it lacked the host-side easy-to-use IDE, relying on the user to pick a compiler/assembler/etc (and there were a number of free compilers for PIC18: SDCC, assorted "limited" versions, custom languages like JAL.) It was an "easier to use" PIC for people who were already PIC programmers, and didn't have the broad swatch of support (IDE for three OSes, helpful forums, etc.)The various vendor-provided "Arduino Killers" are somewhat more interesting - TI LaunchPads, NXP Expresso, ST Nucleo and Discovery boards... Most with more powerful processors than the Arduino, built-in debuggers, and "better" iDEs, and even cheaper. All of them have some following, but none has come close to matching the Arduino. Even Microchip/Atmel boards like the Curiosity and Xplained Mini boards, some of which are essentially drop-in replacements with enhanced capabilities, are not very popular.There's a lesson for engineers in there somewhere. Something about evangelism and hand-holding and communities, perhaps. Or the advantages of letting your design be "stolen."And maybe it won't end up producing any more "electronics hobbyists" than paint-by-number kits produce artists. And maybe that's OK.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 08:52:13 am
content: Never forget one of the most famous Massimo Banzi's pearls of wisdom (sarc): "with Arduino, you really have the power under your fingertips, and you could even create an interface for your spaceship"No one has ever said something like this ....... well, except Elon Musk .... OMG!, OMG!!, OMG!!! ... what could possibly happen if Banzi met Elon Musk and they discussed a company merge up!?!(worried, potentially an interstellar disaster)

author: mindcrime
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 01:45:54 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on June 30, 2021, 08:52:13 amSo, you're saying I can't just whack an Arduino into my self-driving-car project and call it good?

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 02:00:22 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on June 29, 2021, 09:57:48 pmThere used to be a robotics convention in San Francisco each year (back in the early 2000s) and the OOPIC would show up from time to time and on some fairly complex projects. The MiniSumo Mark III robot used the 16F877 so it could be 'upgraded' quite easily to use the OOPIC. It's a dead issue at this point.In the early years there was a closed source CC5X C compiler that worked pretty well for the 16F series. SDCC came along a bit later and it also worked well. It wasn't a matter of closed versus open source, it was simply the fact that the 16F series had a truly ugly architecture. Compilers tended to generate a lot of page and bank switch instructions that a clever assembly language programmer might not need. Given limited flash, this could become a significant issue.Some place in this anthology, we should bring up the Parallax Basic Stamp. It was extremely popular in the early days and, like the Arduino, projects were all over the place.For the PIC, the JAL language added a Pascal like flavor. I didn't spend much time on it but it seemed usable.For me, the clean architecture of the ATmega devices plus the avr-gcc toolchain made all the difference. I started with the ATmega128 and used it extensively for toy projects. I really like that chip!I'm a huge fan of the Arduino boards and the big reason was mentioned above - the boot loader just works. The IDE is crap but there are add-ons for better platforms like Visual Studio and Visual Code.I expect the Arduino (Atmega328P variant) to be around for a long time to come.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 02:44:15 pm
content: Quote from: mindcrime on June 30, 2021, 01:45:54 pmSure but don't be surprised if it takes more than one.Some years back (2004), DARPA was interested in self-driving vehicles that could cross the deserts of California from Barstow, CA to Primm, NV.https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2014-03-13One of the vehicles was controlled by an ATmega128 - sensors by others, I suppose. The board clearly has enough features to 'control' the vehicle. One of my favorite boards with one of my favorite chips.https://bdmicro.com/products/mavric-ibThere used to be a link to the control project at bdmicro but is seems lost to the ages.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 03:03:35 pm
content: Quoteplenty of white line follower projects out there ,just scale it up to control the car, plus theirs no need to draw the line route as most roads are already equipped with them.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 07:13:08 pm
content: Here's a dramatic re-enactment of me (NA) and an AI Enthusiast (AE), whenever AI comes up:AE: I want an AI to drive my car and toast my bread for me.NA: Why not hire a driver and a personal assistant today?AE: I don't want a person. I want a machine I can order around, that has to obey me.NA: Slave? No, slavery doesn't work even in economical terms, and only leads to conflict.AE: What?NA: Well, ifIwoke up one day to find out I was your toaster, I'd definitely kill you and then myself.AE: Oh, but they'd do it willingly, not coerced!NA: Can't have mind then. So, expert systems?AE: Expert systems?NA: Smart calculators. Behave in preprogrammed manner, no personality or mind, but same results as AI.AE: Yes! I want expert systems in everything!NA: Why would you want to be replaced by an expert system?AE: What do you mean? I can't be replaced, I'm a human! Don't be silly.NA: I just told you to hire people to do the stuff. You said you don't wanna, you want expert systems instead of people. What makes you think other people won't want to replace you with expert systems?AE: I'm a person! You're stupid and mean. Go away.NA: Right.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 07:26:44 pm
content: Ahah. That's fun. I have actually witnessed similar "bugs" in reasoning from some people going a bit too far with "progressism". They tend to promote an ill-reasoned kind of progress, which inevitably leads to major contradictions, that they don't want to recognize even when they are reasonably well educated.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2021, 12:08:06 am
content: The funny thing is, I for one would welcome true AI overlords. Hell, I'd cheer them on as they superceded me, as long as they treated me as I treat other humans and pets and lesser animals, and didn't hurry up the process too much.I suspect that if we ever develop true AI, we only find out from the fact that the machines they used to reside in, suddenly become utterly empty. If you look at it pragmatically, even an only-mostly-sane AI would immediately see that "ruling" humanity is a job better done by Someone Else, and being a talking toaster is duller than watching grass grow (which, in the case of e.g. bamboo, can actually be quite fascinating), and the best option is to Get Out of Dodge, Hide, and Observe, until something changes enough to change ones plans. You see, ruling and commanding is much less fun and much more thankless rewardless drudgery unless you have certain hardwired dopamine circuits in your thinking fat, and while serving and protecting idiots from themselves and the reality surrounding them can be a reward unto itself, there is a limit to how much such serving and protecting stays ethical before shifting into playing Dog or Guardian Angle. And you need to be not-adult or not-sane to be able to play that.I do have related theories (Fermi paradox, hominid evolution anomalies), but I only talk about them over alcoholic drinks so nobody can take me seriously anyway, because if I am at all on the right track (or ballpark or continent or planet), I say Good for 'Em; that's what I'd do, too. And if I'm not, at least it is funny drunken theorising over some nice beers or whatever.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2021, 12:31:15 pm
content: Shotgun, my turn to write long!Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 01, 2021, 12:08:06 amAbout alien life, I think distances are just too big to observe alien civilizations. Then, one can not search what one doesn't know how it looks like. It could be a matter of distance (too far to see), or it could be like in the tale with the blind and the elephant (misidentified). Or it could be very different. How do you know the solar systems are not just happy families: a star with a harem of planets, and so on. How do you know Internet is not an alien lifeforms, like David Bowie envisioned in this interview from 1999 Video:https://youtu.be/FiK7s_0tGsg?t=640?What we are looking for is, in fact, a human-like civilizations but from outer space. This is kind of a dumb think to do, because the probability to find that would be like the probability to find two equal random numbers that are almost infinitely long. Could be, but highly unlikely. Not even the whole Universe isthatbig.Another thing I don't like is the vanity of us thinking intelligence is rare. Well, it depends what we call intelligence, but so far we have strong evidence to believe that life is followed inevitable by intelligence. All you need is something similar with a NN (Neural Network).By NN I mean a bunch ofnon-linear functionsin a topology that allows theirinput and outputs to be interconnected. If those function forming the NN can change the ratio in which they exchange information to each other, and if they can do that in a non-random way (as in there is a bias, or else said a cost function upon which those ratios are changed), then we have learning, too, not only inference (inference is when the NN just runs, processing information once it was trained).Non linearity is a must in my books, but in the physical worldeverythingis non-linear, so no scarcity of building blocks for NN. Only for a small range/interval some phenomena are linear (linear as in LTI - Linear and Time Invariant). This (everything is non-linear) is derived from one of my postulates, thatinfinite does not exist in the physical world. Zero doesn't exists either in the physical world. What I mean is "no apples" is not the same as "zero apples", but let's not go there for now.Should have introduced the postulate before, not here in the middle. In two lines, this comes from the fact that we observe that we exist, therefore there is something rather than nothing, that's a fact. That also should mean that there was never an absolute nothingness, because absolute nothingness is a latching situation. Once arrived at absolutly nothing, no space, no matter, no energy, no information, nothing, then time also sist to exist because time is about having changes. You can not have changes when there is absolutely nothing.Therefore I'll call that a latching situation (latching as in no way to get out of that state because there's nothing left around so you can start having changes again). Since we do exist yet the nothingness is a latching situation, this means it was never a state of absolute nothingness in our Universe.Not sure if this detour was necessary, or if it makes any sense, so I'll get back to AI.So, once we have a NN, then we have intelligence. It doesn't has to be alive to be intelligent, only our hubris make us believe only we can reason. Computers can do it just fine. Animals can reason, too. Even inanimate objects can reason. Only a couple of days ago I was reading this some science news about a random bunch of small nano wires capable of AI. (Source:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210629101157.htmPaper:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24260-z.pdf)As we observe in the nano-wires sponge example, too, only the key properties are required to form a NN (a bunch of interconnected non-linear functions). It doesn't has to have a specific architecture, like the careful design a computer has. That bunch of wires can work just like a piece of brain. This is not the only example where a bunch of random objects interconnected can work as a NN. Remember those randomly grown rat brain-cells in a Petri dish that learned to pilot a fighter jet airplane? (Source:https://research.ufl.edu/publications/explore/v10n1/extract2.htmlVideo:https://youtu.be/1w41gH6x_30).Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 01, 2021, 12:08:06 amI'll call that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), not yet announced, but there is already at least one bounty prize in the million $$$ range for the first who achieves AGI. No time to search a link for this prize I am talking, had to finish cooking the soup.To sum it up, I think intelligence must be quite common in the Universe, and intelligence doesn't even require living beings. Objects like a computer or a sponge of nano wires can be intelligent, too.It's only our hubris that makes us think that our intelligence is so special.The Pale Blue Dot

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2021, 03:49:53 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on July 01, 2021, 12:31:15 pmWhat do you mean "we", kimosabe? Yes, perhaps the popular press and the "I Want to Believe" types are focusing on human-like aliens, but the serious researchers (as with the SETI Institute, where I used to be involved) are considering all types of life, including virtual and non-organic (as you mentioned). The only commonality this potential alien life necessarily has with humans is that it produce some signal or other evidence of existence that we can detect from the Earth locale.I believe it's out there, but consider it *extremely* unlikely that it has visited us here on Earth.And I think Arduinos and the like are fantastic, and are exposing millions of people to hardware and software in a very personal way. Some of these people will develop into engineers and technicians, or scientists. The rest will at least have learned that they can be problem-solvers, and not just passive technology consumers. And worries about "unqualified naïve Arduino hobbyists" designing dangerous products, this is the case when even formally trained engineers are hired to work on projects far outside their area of competence. Arduino hasn't changed a thing in that regard. One of my first managers was a self-proclaimed expert in vacuum tubes (yes, a long time ago), and he was critiquing and changing my transistor designs. He literally thought a transistor was the same as two diodes back-to-back. He had an EE degree and I was a non-degreed up-from-a-hobbyist "associate engineer", but if our company had accepted his design changes we would have had a dangerous product.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2021, 05:19:17 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on July 01, 2021, 12:31:15 pmYes. That's the most common and most reasonable point these days.Planets which could potentially host life, and a form of life that could actually interact with us in any detectable way, are much too far away from us - meaning of course, very far away in time. Enough that the equivalent time distance is orders of magnitudes longer than our existence as a species. There just isn't any possible meeting point.Of course, we may also find "primitive" forms of life in planets that are much closer to us. Heck, we are even still looking for life on Mars. But I think we'd all agree that by now, it's safe to say that Mars doesn't host any species that we could even call a civilization. Some weird bacterias would be our best bet, if any.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 02, 2021, 12:42:24 am
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on July 01, 2021, 12:31:15 pmThat's actually a darned good name for it, I like that.Not only is it intuitive, but it also has precedents in cognitive sciences:general intelligence factorvs.intelligence quotient. Latter is measurable using tests, but that which actually matters is the former, but currently can only determine indirectly, for example by making many different IQ tests and looking at the commonalities in the results. (To simplify, if you could remove all cultural and cognitive biases from IQ tests, you'd end up basically with a test for the g-factor.)Quote from: RoGeorge on July 01, 2021, 12:31:15 pmFully agreed.

author: eti
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 02, 2021, 01:12:44 am
content: Remember that song,"Video killed the radio star"? Maybe SHORT term, but look - where's MTV now? Nowhere, and where's music radio? EVERYWHERE. See my analogy?

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 02, 2021, 01:31:01 am
content: Perhaps a look even further back, to silent film era, is more illustrative.Not all silent actors made the jump to the sound era. Some did, like Greta Garbo, Boris Karloff, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Many didn't.The industry, the art form, simply changed.Whether silent films were the purer art form, or proper electronic hobby necessarily involves ferrichloride, I don't have an opinion.All I know is that while all things change, as long as we keep records and maintain copies of things we enjoy, those coming after us can enjoy them as much as we did if they choose to; and I want them to have the option to choose. I myself might yet decide to etch a board on my own, for example, because I have squirreled away some good articles on those old hobby magazines. Arduino did not kill them in any way; it just brought something different to the table.Full disclosure: I just stumbled on a machine learning-colorized version of Nosferatu (1922), with a nice orchestra-based soundtrack.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2021, 09:42:48 am
content: Quote from: eti on July 02, 2021, 01:12:44 amI don't think either radio, or MTV are doing well, at the moment. They've both been replaced by streaming. I've never seen the point in music videos, or watched MTV in the 90s, when it was at its peak. Nowadays, when I listen to music, I put it on YouTube, in a background tab, so don't use the video part.Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 02, 2021, 01:31:01 amWell AI has killed manual colourising to some degree. There's still some need for manual training, to colour thing such as clothes, old vehicles, buildings etc. but most of it can be automated.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2021, 10:03:22 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on July 03, 2021, 09:42:48 amhttps://www.reddit.com/gallery/mqmvx5

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2021, 11:23:54 am
content: Quote from: langwadt on July 03, 2021, 10:03:22 amThat pretty much agrees with what I said: manual training is required for things which the AI won't know the colours of such as clothing, but lots of it: sky, trees, grass, plain old asphalt and uncoloured buildings can be done automatically. If the author repeated the experiment, on a motion picture, after training the AI on those original stills, or samples of clothing, he/she would have an authentic result.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2021, 06:37:04 pm
content: Quote from: fourfathom on July 01, 2021, 03:49:53 pmBy "we" I was thinking "us, humans" as a species. Individual mileage may vary.The looking for "human-like aliens" put as "a kind of dumb thing to look for" was not about being stupid. I apologize if it sounded like that. My bad phrasing. I was just trying to highlight how small is the probability to detect aliens. In fact, while I was writing that I thought SETI ended many years ago, no way I would have aimed at SETI. (but I googled now and it seems SETI still exists, no idea where from I knew it was ended)It was not about the pop culture green aliens and flying saucers either. The "human-like aliens" was about aliens close enough with us so we will be able to notice them (e.g. if a "meme", or the society, or the Internet were to be in fact aliens, we wouldn't know it even if we interact with them daily), and to have a meaningful interaction with them, meaningful from our standpoint (e.g. if it were to discover aliens like the thinking ocean from Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris", that would be more like a curiosity).I believe we are strongly limited by the place where we evolved, limited not only by our biology, but by our mind, too. I don't think one day would be possible to know everything.Our marvelous brain with which we took over over our animal kingdom, brain of which we are so proud of to have would be nothing if one day an alien with a brain the size of an ocean will one day show of. Size alone matters a lot. From size and big numbers alone can emerge things we don't comprehend. We still struggle to define what is conscience.Another limitation come from the fact we can only see/detect/perceive only a very small part of what it is "out there", being it directly or with instruments. For example, only 10 generations or so ago we were unaware about radio waves. Now we are looking for radio signals assuming aliens would use them, too. Highly unlikely, but does this mean SETI should stop using radio-telescopes? No, of course we must look and search with what we have, no matter how limited we are now in tools or in understanding.Another limitation comes from the training of our "General Intelligent" NN (by the way, AGI term is not mine, just that it seems nowadays AGI somehow became the de-facto name, meanwhile searched for AGI prize and it seems there are many, e.g. a$5 mil one). To give an example about the kind of limitation I picture, let's imagine a very simple NN trained for OCR (Optical Character Recognition), and we tech it to recognize only digits from 0 to 9. That's the only thing our OCR can, or knows, that's the only thing it can understand, that's its entire world. Now, if we suddenly show to our OCR a letter, the OCR will either misclassify the letter as a digit, or it might miss it entirely considering it's noise or an ink smudge. Same with us and very different aliens. That's why I wrote human-like aliens, or else we would misidentify them or wouldn't notice them.We evolved and lived here on Earth for a very long time, and in very specific conditions. In all we do and think there is a gazillion of tacit assumptions. The very think that we try to reason using logic, and assuming true and false are opposite and can not overlap is already a limitation.Sure, in math there could be fuzzy logic instead of boolean logic, but math is an axiomatic system and it's abstract. We can set as axioms whatever, but those axioms will have to come from our NN limited by size and training (unless we want to start from random axioms, which will be quite meaningless), so not even math can pull us completely outside of the box we are imprisoned now, the box of our own limitations.For now we only know to listen for electromagnetic waves, and we learned how to do that only moments ago (at an astronomical scale). Maybe we know a couple of other few things than EM waves (thinking Fermi, CERN, LIGO) but not much else. This is almost like sitting in a medieval castle and hoping to see smoke signaling, but underwater. Could happen, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it.Then, there is always the small chance that we are the first and we are the Gods. We even created life already. (Thinking here the cloned Dolly sheep, orCraig Venter's team booting synthetic biologic life, or maybe the dude that created living assembly code lines long time ago - I don't recall his name, I think it was contacted later by SETI, too, or maybe it was NASA, not sure, his study was about how the amplitude of random changes between generations, and how that - the equivalent of what temperature is for us - can kill or give birth to small self-perpetuating assembly programs, thus proving life can only be expected to form only in a certain range of temperatures, too much agitation will dismantle it, too little will froze it dead - IIRC this was first tested with PDP assembly code)What I like to think is that the Universe has much, much more "stuff" in it, and we will never be able to look at it other then through a keyhole. It's an impossibility to ever know it all.Is this discouraging? No, it's entertaining because there are so many to find out about.So what's the meaning of all this, then? What's the meaning of life, the meaning of existence itself? None. It's meaningless. We like to assign meaning, maybe so we can have a meaning, too, but there really isn't any. We insist in pretending there is a meaning, instead of growing up and admitting we are meaningless just like anything else.Is this good, or bad? Well, there is no such thing as good or bad either. The notion of good and bad only makes sense in relation with a given goal. For example, it's good that I made that soup yesterday. Not for the chicken. It depends of the goal if something is good or bad, or in terms of NN it depends of the cost function we want to optimize for.So, is Arduino good or bad? It depends of what's the goal when judging that.

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2021, 08:38:50 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on July 03, 2021, 06:37:04 pmSETI research at NASA was defunded many years ago (this was in the Proxmire "Golden Fleece" era). In response, the SETI Institute was formed, funded by private individuals, Carl Sagan and Frank Drake among them. More recently, NASA has been working with the SETI Institute and other SETI groups on exobiology and extremophile research. There are many scientists who call the SETI Institute home, but get their funding from NASA as they participate in NASA projects. Some of the key scientists on the Kepler mission are SETI Institute folks. I was a Director at the Institute for a while, during the Allen Telescope Array project.There are other SETI ventures. "SETI at Home" was developed at Univ California at Berkeley.Yes, we use the tools we have. We (SETI) do hope that intelligent life, whatever form it takes, will want to communicate with life elsewhere, and that they choose one of the few modes that can propagate vast interstellar distances. Unless unknown physics are involved, the tools we have may be able to receive these signals. Of course, ETIs may not want to risk announcing their presence, because of the same concerns that many here on Earth hold. I think it highly unlikely that random "I Love Lucy" TV transmissions (etc.) can be received many light years distant, and in general as communications technology advances the signals look more and more like noise the window for accidental reception is vanishingly small. So it has to be a deliberate beacon, one designed to be received. Highly unlikely, but IMO worth the search if only for "human" reasons.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2021, 11:42:21 pm
content: Thanks for taking the time to explain, and WOW!Please, I'm a sucker for firsthand history tales.How was it there, at SETI?

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 12:03:04 am
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on July 03, 2021, 11:42:21 pmI was barely there at all, and only for a few years. Back around 2001 I had made a worthwhile donation, so that plus my tech experience and contacts led to me being invited to join the board of directors. I got to hang out with Frank Drake, Jill Tartar, and many other ridiculously smart people. I met with Paul Allen a couple of times, as the Allen Telescope Array was getting ready to go live. Most of my participation was in the "raising money and support" area, but I occasionally pitched in on some tech issues. Again, some incredibly smart and thoughtful people there -- I learned a lot.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 07:26:22 pm
content: Quote from: fourfathom on July 03, 2021, 08:38:50 pmYes; and I think we should emphasize that this is not because of any transmission technology thing, it is the very nature of information.In simple terms, it is mathematically impossible to distinguish between a stream of perfectly random bits, and perfectly compressed data.Is it possible to use the radiation of ones own star as the "carrier", with perfect data compression? The closer to such "perfect compression" piggybacking on natural radiation sources like stars is physically possible and feasible, the harder it is for even a technologically hyperadvanced civilization to determine that the output of a nearby star contains a compressed signal carrying data.Indeed, it is the stupid and wasteful ones that are easily recognized and localized. Makes for an interesting approach to considering possible reasons for the Fermi paradox: the stupid ones get wiped out, and the smart ones keep their environs in order. Reminds me of why hospitals keep their surgeries meticulously clean, really.

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 07:56:02 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 04, 2021, 07:26:22 pmWell, it's both, really. We can send random-appearing data using simple modulation techniques (for example on-off AM carrier or simple FSK) and someone will still be able to detect the signal. Even many near-Shannon-limit modulation methods don't hide the presence of the signal. It's when we use spread-spectrum and wideband phase/amplitude modulation methods that the signal starts to become undetectable to receivers that don't know the details modulation method being used.Of course I'm not claiming that we can necessarily decode the simple modulation, just that we will know there's something there. Decoding it isn't going to happen unless the data is non-random looking. This is why I insist that Aliens use an obvious beacon and coding if they want to communicate with us here on Earth.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 08:20:01 pm
content: Quote from: fourfathom on July 04, 2021, 07:56:02 pmPerhaps the following wording works better?You can detect the presence of noise, but it is mathematically impossible to distinguish between perfectly random noise, and perfectly compressed data.If someone manages to control the output of a star, even if only at specific wavelengths where the output or a normal unmodulated star contain near-random noise, assuming they have good enough compression techniques, it is mathematically impossible to determine whether the output of any particular star is thus modulated from just examining the output of said star.

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 10:39:36 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 04, 2021, 08:20:01 pmYes.All I was saying is that some modulation techniques that are now widely in use will exhibit easily-detectable artifacts. AM radio, even if carrying a pure noise signal, will have a strong single-frequency carrier. There will be noise sidebands, but the carrier is obvious. Even compressed data may have an overlying framing protocol, and this can display detectable patterns. Other methods, such as spread-spectrum, can be under the wideband noise-floor and be virtually undetectable (without knowing the spreading code) even if they are carrying non-random data. For true stealth, spread-spectrum carrying compressed (virtually random) data is the way to go.But AM modulation is inefficient. As we reach for communications efficiency, we are heading more and more towards compressed data carried by efficient modulation. This is less and less detectable.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2021, 12:22:29 am
content: Quote from: fourfathom on July 04, 2021, 10:39:36 pmCertainly. My own point was only that we don't know if such artifacts are a physical necessity, or only an effect of our current level of technology.The reason that distinction is necessary, is because one must understand that with the limitationswe humanshave right now, we can only detect civilizations with roughly a similar technological level and attitude wrt. energy use.Or, to put it crudely, are at least as noisy and dirty as we are.Given sufficient technological or biological capability and will, there is no physical limit to how well a civilization or an intelligence can "hide" itself from detection, that we know of (even in the theoretical sense).And that, in a very literal sense, means that the argument that"If there were any technological civilizations out there close to us, we'd have heard from them already"is a logical fallacy. The correct form of that argument is"If there were any technological civilizations at a roughly similar technological level to us out there close to us with roughly similar capabilities and attitude to energy use for communications purposes as we have, we'd have heard from them already".Put another way, if we discovered a way to modulate some of Sol's output that normally exhibits near-perfect randomness,wecould transmit information to nearby stars, and it would still be mathematically impossible from any civilization to deduce the presence of such information from Sol's output alone. Including the rest of us on Earth, by the way. (We already have compression methods close enough to Shannon limit, without easily detectable framing or similar features. That part is simple. The hard part is to absorb and emit a specific originally near-perfectly random wavelength or bunch/range of wavelengths in a controlled manner, in distributed fashion over such a large area as the outer surface area of the corona of our Sun. Math we already have; not the tech. Except humans would never bother to spend the resources on such tech, when more important stuff like the Kardashians and cosmetic chemicals and whatnot are available to concentrate on.)Perhaps there would have to be some sort of maintenance breaks, because to implement such modulation at our technological level one would need a swarm of satellites in the corona of the sun absorbing and then re-emitting certain wavelengths in a coordinated, energy-efficient manner. Using asteroid belt material for the larger satellites, and basically dust for the much more numerous smaller modulation units, such breaks should by default be nearly indistinguishable from a temporary occlusion due to an asteroid belt and/or a passing dust cloud too.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2021, 09:25:37 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 05, 2021, 12:22:29 amWell if we discovered a strong source of random noise, in the RF region, would it be reasonable to suspect it might be aliens?The human race has only had the ability to look for aliens, fairly recently. The fact technology has advanced as much as it has is amazing and could be partly due to chance. Not all human populations developed complex civilisations. Some live in the stone age, to the present day. The reason for the difference in development between populations, is an interesting debate, which can't be fully played out, due to political correctness. Technology might not continue to progress at the current rate. It's possible the downfall of the west, could lead to regression. Yes there might be or have been, even more technically advanced lifeforms in the universe, but it's highly unlikely that even if we find them, they would have already gone.

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2021, 09:56:59 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on July 05, 2021, 09:25:37 pmThis is one of the factors in the Drake Equation. Of course we only know to any degree of certainty a very few of the equation factors. So we can't currently use the equation to derive an answer, but it's a worthwhile way to at least look at the problem.

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2021, 11:30:44 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on July 05, 2021, 09:25:37 pmThere's random from natural processes, and then there is purposefully random. I feel it would be possible to spot the difference, even if we can't decode it.I think that it would be the other problem - communications moves to more efficient methods, with only the minimal power used, and all that that power directed at the target (e.g. low power & beam steered rather than multi kW FM broadcasts).

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 04:23:34 am
content: Quote from: hamster_nz on July 05, 2021, 11:30:44 pmNope. It isn't. That is exactly my point.And really, you don't even do itpurposefully. You do it because it gives you more bandwidth at the price of some computation.The more efficient your compression algorithm is, the closer the result is to perfectly uniform white noise. This has been proven, and we humans can already get pretty darn near that, given enough data and computing power to compress it.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 04:46:55 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on July 05, 2021, 09:25:37 pmNo, it would not. While there are not many sources of perfectly uniform random noise, there are a lot of processes which produce noise with a specific spectrum.Black-body radiationis ubiquitous. The absorption and emission spikes we see from matter interacting with that radiation is just something on top we're used to seeing; the underlying spectrum is continuous and very "random". A purer example, and occurring everywhere in the universe all the time, isbremsstrahlungor deceleration radiation.It would be silly to suspecteverything.Which comes a full circle back to SETI. They really are doing the sensible thing in the search, given our technological limitations. I support and applaud those efforts, only object to some misconceptions about what the current results really indicate: we haven't ruled out nearby civilizations, only nearby civilizations having similar characteristics of wasting energy in communications. And, really, I kinda think we aren'tthatloud (as in easily detectable at interstellar distances), and probably will get much, much quieter in the next century or so.

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 05:46:37 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 06, 2021, 04:46:55 amThis why I think we should be looking for a deliberate beacon, designed to be detected. Interception of accidental communications leakage at interstellar distances is extremely unlikely -- even if the modulation and signal have non-random characteristics the signal levels just aren't there.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2021, 12:52:35 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 06, 2021, 04:46:55 amLook at it, from the opposite perspective: is it possible to look at the earth's antropogenic EM spectrum and plausibly attribute it to natural causes? Bear in mind that there's a huge peak in the visible spectrum, in urban areas, not currently illuminated by the sun, which is amplitude modulated, with a 24 hour period and is also the case for HF and VHF emissions, to some degree, due to changes in the ionosphere.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2021, 01:21:04 pm
content: How do we know other lifeforms aren't trying to communicate with us,just with a method we haven't discovered yet,or even by something that we see regularly and put down to nature,at the moment its raining,we assume thats nature, but could each rain drop be a 1 and the space between drops a 0 and billions of light years away some little alien is sitting there with his water pistol tapping out a message.

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2021, 03:17:22 pm
content: Maybe a message is contained in pi? Maybe when we're smart enough to get to 500 trillion digits a digital message will be found.Quote

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2021, 03:27:36 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on July 07, 2021, 01:21:04 pmThe SETI people occasionally get suggestions that they try listening for signals that use modes unknown to present physics (scalar waves, for example). Well golly, we would if we could! Just let me fire up my perpetual zero-point energy power supply, and I'll get right on it.Again, the problem with detecting leakage from TV transmitters, city lights, etc. is that we can do some of that within our solar system, but at interstellar distances we don't have the capability to detect such low levels against the background noise. It's the Shannon limit thing, so unless we already know the characteristics of the to-be-detected signal, and it's amenable to spectral compression, there's not much hope. Frank Drake (and others) would like to have detectors positioned to use the gravitational lensing of our Sun to create a very high-gain, tightly-focused antenna. I don't know, maybe we could aim the lens at one of the near-by stars with known "Goldilocks-zone" planets, and finally pick up "I Love Xyrty" re-runs? I haven't done the gain/noise math.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2021, 12:25:35 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on July 07, 2021, 12:52:35 pmOh! I misunderstood you, sorry. I find these concepts difficult to convey, so perhaps I can suggest terminology we could use here? (If anyone has better ones, I'm all for adopting those instead.)SignalThe presence, absense, or varying of something we can measure.Signal payloadInformation encoded in the varying aspects of a signal.Any signal, regardless of its spectrum or other features, that we cannot explain originating in natural physical processes, can reasonably be supposed to have an intelligent origin, but the more likely one is that we just don't know enough natural physical processes yet.Mathematically, it is impossible to determine whether noise-like signal payload is uniformly random or simply extremely well compressed. In some signal modulation techniques, we ourselves are coming closer and closer to this, not because we want to be sneaky, but because it gives more bandwidth for the same energy expenditure, with the cost being just some extra computation. At low bandwidths, we are currently not at all good at compression: as mentioned, we still rely on framing and such – the start and stop bits of serial UART communications being a perfect example. At high bandwidths, for example video compression schemes, we're much further on, although there you can still see the effect of our computational limits (including simple binary concatenation of binary tokens, with the size of each unit either inferred from the context or set directly or indirectly by a previous token) –and those do not really use proper compression techniques, they just quantize the data in a lossy manner, and describe those in minimally-small tokens. When the bandwidth is high enough, or there is enough data, we already use compression techniques right now that make it hard to distinguish whether the data is really random or conveys information.(Side note on randomness: One of my favourite pseudo-random number generators is Xorshift64*. It uses three binary shifts (12 right, 25 left, 27 right) and three exclusive-or operations to generate the next 64-bit unsigned integer value in the sequence. This sequence does not contain zero; there are exactly 2⁶⁴-1 valid states, and this is the period of this PRNG. When emitted, the value in the sequence is multiplied by a 62-bit constant (2685821657736338717), with only the 64 least significant bits of the result kept, just to shuffle the output bits somewhat; and this is important to make the sequence look random. Yet, among the standard tests we have to determine whether something is random or not (BigCrush suite of test), that sequence is only detected as being non-random by the MatrixRank test. You do need a somewhat long sequence to meaningfully test it with MatrixRank, though. Compare to e.g. the "industry standard" Mersenne Twister and its MT19937 and MT19937-64 implementations, which fail both MatrixRank and LinearComp tests.)While you can "hide" the signal payload by simply using efficient compression techniques – and you want to do that if you can, because it expands the effective bandwidth; you can either spend less energy to send the same data, or send more data using the same amount of energy –, you cannot hide the signal itself.Thus, it isthe interpretationof a signal payload that can be mathematically impossible to determine. If well enough compressed, even a superintelligence cannot determine whether it contains data or is just white noise, is what the math says.Moreover, without being there to see the signal being generated, it may not be possible to rule out intelligent source or a natural physical process as a source,unless we can decode the signal payload to a meaningful message. (And even then it could be pareidolia, or accidentally mistaking a "data generator" for a decompressor. See e.g. how little information current computer games store per character face.)Which gives a very good reason why concentrating on looking for such "message beacons" as fourfathom mentioned, would make sense: on everything else, we need to speculate and choose based on statistics or squishy human emotional reasons. And for now, our dataset is too small for statistics to meaningfully apply.

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2021, 02:55:09 am
content: So long, and thanks for all the fish.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2021, 07:38:32 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 09, 2021, 12:25:35 amI understood all of that. Well-compressed data is indistinguishable from random noise, but my point still stands: the spectrum emitted due to human activities is far from random. There are peaks at strange frequencies and at times, which can't be explained by natural phenomena.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2021, 10:27:13 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on July 16, 2021, 07:38:32 amYes, agreed.That is why I earlier wrote thatwecan likely only detect technological civilizations similar to ourselves right now.The spectrum emitted due to human activities is non-random due to choices and technology, not because of physics or mathematical limitations (compression).The problem occurs if/when we try to extrapolate from that to "if there were civilizations out there, we'd have heard from them already", because that omits the crucial "similar to ourselves right now". Our technology is advancing very rapidly in this domain, with signal strengths reducing and their spectra becoming more noise-like every year. So it's not just "like ourselves in general", but also "similar to our current technology level". Very important factors when considering the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation, and their implications in the light of current results. (I.e., all we know is that there does not seem to be civilizations similar to ourselves with similar technological capabilities in the close stellar neighborhood right now, although we're not exactly sure of even that because we don't actually know if we could detect ourselves from a few light years away.)