Hobbyist made devices outliving commercial ones? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: fubar.gr
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 20, 2016, 06:20:46 pm
content: Don't you feel proud when the one-off, hobbyist level device you designed and built from scratch works day in and day out as intended?Especially when it outlives similar commercially-made devices?Case in point:A few months ago, I deployed a pair of flashing warning lights. You can see the contraption here:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/flashing-warning-lights/The device is working 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, with zero problems so far.At around the same time, the local municipality installed a solar powered flashing led light at a dangerous intersection nearby. I don't know what went wrong, but the light intensity started dropping significantly after the first month, and now it doesn't work at all. The light cosists of individual 5mm leds, instead of the more common nowadays smd ones.Did they use cheapo ebay leds that weren't made for continuous use at high intensities? Some problem with the driving-charging circuit? I wonder how much they paid for that light....Feel free to post your own examples of hobbyist devices outliving commercial ones!

author: retrolefty
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2016, 06:46:32 pm
content: Learning C/C++ with the arduino platform I built a standalone 4x4x4 blue led cube. It's sits on a shelf blinking randomly for around 4 years non-stop now and outside of a couple of mains power failures has never suffered a beat running 24/7/365. Construction was just point to point soldering wire wrap wire on a protoboard mounted in a cigar box. I made the LED 'frame' from narrow soldered brass rods. The hardware side was old hat to me but to actually code it without using any other's code except standard arduino functions and libraries was quite satisfying.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2016, 06:53:04 pm
content: Interesting that the first reply to your build post was that the commercial ones are so expensive because they need to be 100% reliable....Granted, your contraption, while proven to be reliable, would not be acceptable in application involving life safety, likely neither would that one the government put up that has failed. Or maybe it IS approved, and they just got a dud, it happens. Hopefully the failed blinking lights have not caused an accident or injury.I still have my first computer, built from a kit when I was about 13-14 years old, using a soldering iron that when I think about it today I have to wonder what I was thinking - or rather, it was the only available soldering tool outside of a big 200 watt soldering gun which even as a young player I was well aware was far too big for electronics, let alone fine circuit board work. But the computer still works, same as it did all those years ago, while newer machines I've bought or 'built' (assembling a motherboard, processor, and ram in a case is not really building anything, it's assembly - soldering all the discretes and sockets and populating the bare PCB, that's building) have long since failed and been consigned to the scrap heap.

author: edpalmer42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 20, 2016, 06:59:43 pm
content: It doesn't surprise me that hobbyists can build equipment that has higher reliability than the pros. The problem is that the pros have to deal with the bean counters who demand that everything be shaved to the bone. Don't use a 1/4 watt resistor when you can use a 1/8 watt. Don't use a good capacitor when you can use a cheap one. Design it so that it fails 3 days after the warranty expires - no longer. In decades past, the design life of a piece of electronics might have been a decade. Now the bean counters insist that it be designed to fail.Ed

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2016, 10:09:14 am
content: Quote from: edpalmer42 on April 20, 2016, 06:59:43 pmIf it's meant to last 5 years and lasts 10 it's over engineered. The ideal solution would break at exactly 5 years and 1 second lifetime. If it lasts longer someone overpaid.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2016, 10:20:23 am
content: I've made an audio mixer in 1989 for which I have drawn the PCB layout with PCB layout software I wrote myself on an MSX-II home computer. It has been in use 24/7 ever since. It might be the first PCB I have designed using a computer.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2016, 10:59:13 am
content: QuoteNo surprise at all. there is a wide spectrum of commercial devices as they are a wide or even wider spectrum of diy devices.

author: mmagin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2016, 03:44:49 pm
content: I have a lamp I made from a string of 5 colored Luxeon Star 350mA leds running at a bit less current off a ZXLD1350 buck driver on a home-etched PCB with a standard unregulated supply feeding that (transformer, diode bridge, moderately large capacitors). It's definitely been in near-continuous operation for 9 years. I recently opened it up -- the LED lenses have darkened some, but nothing else seems wrong with it. I wouldn't be surprised if it runs for another decade.

author: sarepairman2
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2016, 01:43:51 am
content: oh yea.commercial devices will only beat home made stuff if the commercial devices were designed to operate near theoretical limits or when built for size. They can do this better then you if they say, screen hundreds of components to select the best ones. They will do this if they want a small transistor that can operate outside of its spec or something along this line.otherwise, regardless of the spec, if a company is making it, it will be beat down to the lowest price possible, even with a military device. You don't have patriotic people that will work for free designing these things. corners will always be cut.Maybe you will find a exception (I can only hope) in scientific space equipment, like the deep horizons probe. And weapons of mass destruction. Maybe.With a nuclear bomb you might have some very paranoid engineers scrutinizing it. But then again.... $$$$$$$$$$

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2016, 01:48:07 am
content: Quote from: fubar.gr on April 20, 2016, 06:20:46 pmOr perhaps it was not installed properly and moisture has leaked in and causing rapid decay of the electronics. There probably are SOME civil-servants who are conscientious and reliable. But most government agencies don't have stellar records of hiring the best and brightest.

author: DimitriP
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2016, 02:17:00 am
content: Either :The municipality approved 1000 EU for the light,"Someone" found "similar light" for 300, paid an extra 200 to get an invoice for 1000 and pocketed the 500 ....A win win for at least two people.OR simply installed the cheapest light incorrectly by the cheapset most inexperienced installerORjust bad luck

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2016, 03:59:48 pm
content: I can see it. Home made devices are made because you want that device for a purpose, and/or because you enjoy making things. Commercial devices are made for profit, thus built down to a price but made "good enough" so people buy it.

author: Seekonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2016, 08:41:36 pm
content: This made me think of an incident years ago when I worked for a company that made plug in modules. It ws a small company where a customer could still get in contact with the designer. Just so happened that this guy worked for a town and they made their own flashing signs to slow down traffic in front of a school. I was pretty proud of the guy taking the initiative to build his own. He sent back numerous alternating timers that were bad. Each one had blown traces clear off the board. We tried to explain to him that this could only happen if there was a dead short on the output of the relay. He said there was a fuse right at the relays output pin and that never blew. A few days later he called back and told us that he had used an old socket. It was missing a screw for the output terminal and had found one that was just a tad too long. Wind, temperature, who knows, but every couple of days that screw would make contact with the metal case and short everything out. Home brew isn't always a junk box miracle. This guy cost us $1,000.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2016, 01:45:33 am
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on April 22, 2016, 03:59:48 pmThere's a saying along the lines of "A company will cut a fraction of a cent on a $1000 product that costs $200 to make if it can get away with it. A DIYer will spend a few extra dollars on a $200 project to make it better."

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2016, 09:02:28 am
content: Quote from: fubar.gr on April 20, 2016, 06:20:46 pmMy 40 year old LED digital clock, the first one most people had seen...Internals:https://entertaininghacks.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/a-40-year-old-hack-disinterred/Updated to be a Vetinari clock:https://entertaininghacks.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/vetinari-digital-clock/Old techniques, a good counterbalance to any "things were better back then sentiments":https://entertaininghacks.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/vintage-hacking-or-the-past-is-a-foreign-country-they-do-things-differently-there/And have a look at the "Vintage" tags/topics to see inside thin-film hybrids and a scope's CRT.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2016, 09:55:01 am
content: Maintenance and confirmation bias.1. The hobbyist has constant access to their gear.2. They probably enjoy (rather than dread) repairing it!3. You only hear about the ones that work. Didn't work? Throw it away. No one wants to hear about it.It works in reverse. Airliners are mind-bogglingly reliable. Even in the presence of faulty maintenance schedules and pilot error -- the human element!It should be no surprise, then, that when an airliner does finally crash to the ground, it doesn't make news, because everyone understands that these things happen from time to time.Oh wait...Tim