Is the electronics hobby dead? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: homebrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 09:15:21 am
content: Is it only my impression, or is is happening in reality that diy and hobby electronics are dying?I personally see less and less people engaging with it.And I don't talk about the arudino guys just plugging stuff together without understanding the basics ...I'm talking about the good old days when electronic hobbyists could (re)create products (measurement equipment, HIFI stuff or even computers) that would otherwise not be affordable to them or were just not available at all. Today it is basically the other way around. There is no purpose in building something for yourself (e.g. own power supply) otherwise an educational one. It might easily not even reach the performance of even entry-level products (e.g. homemade DSO).And it is not only about the electronics design itself. It is also about the skills and practices applied. E.g.. it becomes more and more difficult and questionable to etch your own boards.(1) Chemicals and materials are harder to get, more expensive to obtain.(2) More and more designs require the use of SMD components. That practically means that DIY pcbs are not an option anymore (e.g. throughhole plating and solder mask).And nobody with a sane mind would nowadays even think of selling his products (be it kits or assembled boards) due to the endless regulations like CE, WEEE, ROHS and whatnot...So therefore the question to the community: What could we do about that?

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 09:56:46 am
content: Short answer, noLong answer, no, and for lots of reasons. A couple of weekends ago I was at Friedrichshafen in southern Germany for a massive ham radio event. The highlight was one of the biggest electronics flea markets in the world where you could purchase new components, gear to modify, test equipment, ham radio gear and lots of other stuff. The place was packed, tens of thousands of people spending days looking round the place.Then there are the radio hams who can REALLY build stuff, the folks who can make their homebrew efforts look like commercial gear. Don't believe me? Have a look at these:http://dk4sx.darc.dehttp://www.jogis-roehrenbude.de/Leserbriefe/Hermann-Mini-Amp/Hermann-Mini.htmhttp://www.w6pql.comThat's just a sample, I have dozens more links to web pages run by radio hams who like to build stuff. As for myself, if you walk into my workshop you'll see the following home made gear: Station power supply, station PC, antenna tuner, RF power meter, frequency counter, lab power supply, AF voltmeter, signal generator and spectrum analyzer. Only the oscilloscope and the multimeter come from a factory.It's important to pass this stuff on. Once a week I have a young visitor who originally turned up with his mother asking questions but now he comes to learn. We started off with basic electrical theory and now, after learning to solder, he's building his own stuff. Young Felix is eight years old and he now wants to bring along three of his friends.I know that electronics construction in Germany is not dead because I have evidence to support this. Our local electronics store has queues at the counters on a regular basis and right now they're hiring more staff. We also have three companies who, via their thick catalogs, have a thriving mail order business (Conrad, Reichelt and Pollin). Add Element 14, Digikey and Mouser to the list (all of whom have offices in Germany) and someone must be building a lot of stuff.

author: PartialDischarge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 09:59:08 am
content: The answer is from my point of view, find a niche.Certainly you can't compete with mass produced products, or products that small companies make better than you. But theres still room for devices that you can design/manufacture/sell. Take for example the small board a guy sells to calibrate multimeters for $50 (can't remember the name), etc... there are numerous examples but you have to be knowledgeable of each field and thats not easy. Not every industry develops all the technologies to make a product, they rely on small firms for submodules that are already tested. I know of an industry for example that uses a handheld infrared remote control to activate one of its machines, well they just buy the sturdy emitter/receiver from someone, and for unknown reasons (patents maybe?) there is only one "someone" who charges enough for this simple device.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 10:21:29 am
content: I think I know what you mean. I seriously considered starting a thread a while back titled 'Is it really fun anymore?' It was a day when I'd been involved in a couple of threads, I can't remember the details but I think one was related to someone wanting a specific simple test signal which would have been very simple to generate with a couple of chips, but which soon degenerated into which cheap chinese function generator / AWG to get, followed by a comparison of all the bugs and glitches of each...It does seem that we have degenerated from a 'making' or 'make do and mend' ethos to a 'just click and buy one' mentality. Now I'm not knocking having the stuff to make your time productive, but I think it's narrowed the gap between a work environment (assuming you're doing something related) and home, and made it less fun as a result.In a way, all this stuff is becoming a little akin to the arduino guys that you mentioned. Newbs tend to be persuaded (if only by reading) into thinking that they need to buy this, that and the other bit of bells and whistles test gear (which they will probably not learn to use properly), rather than working up from the basics and making every bit count.For myself, I still enjoy designing and building both HiFi and measurement equipment, together with having accumulated 'treasures' which are a joy to fettle in themselves (please do not let this turn into yet another analog vs digital debate), but every bit earns its keep. For me, budget isstillan issue...and thankfully, long may it remain so!Ironically I think that the only truly happy guys around here are probably the Metrology crowd, they get to endlessly fettle their gear, find unloved precision treasures, fine tune their circuits and measurements and generally get a kick out of achieving something.I'm not having a dig at the Chinese equipment manufacturers, honestly, they produce some genuinely useful test gear at remarkable prices but have they made life just too easy... or more difficult in the home lab environment, as you say, why build when you can buy.The surface mount stuff is doable, I tend not to produce PCBs unless I really have to, but to an extent a lot of parts lend themselves quite well to breadboarding techniques, unless they're silly packages anyway.As for the solution, I think a lot of that depends on people themselves, their reasons for getting into the 'hobby' and their mindset. I agree that is getting harder to achieve that last one.There's probably a lot of rambling above, but I've had lots of random thoughts floating round my head for a while.

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 10:22:56 am
content: The DIY hobby around where i live has died down since electronics became both cheaper and more available.In my whole town ( of about 14k people ) i'm probably the only one who does what he does, like designing/making PCBs, building my own stuff rather that building some kit off the internet. Often times when my friends see what i do as a hobby they just get amazed, they think i'm a magician of some sorts ( and i might very well be).

author: Kalvin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 10:37:00 am
content: About the problems with the SMD components: You can buy cheap SMD-to-through-hole adapter PCBs so that you can use the SMD ICs in the breadboarding or hobby projects**. Just go to eBay and enter the magic keywords: PCB adapterSoldering the SMD components is not that difficult when you have a decent soldering iron etc.About manufacturing the PCB boards at home: There are tens or hundreds of good tutorials in the internet using different techniques on how to manufacture decent PCBs at home. If you are careful enough the SMD components are not a problem either. Chemicals and stuff is still very easy to obtain from the electronics retailers. Some chemicals can be even obtained from your local hardware store.Through hole plating is not required as you can make the vias using thin-wire-through-a-hole technique. Solder mask is nice to have option, and it can be made using a cheap UV film bought from the eBay. You can also buy cheap 3W UV LEDs to make a the needed UV-box powered by a lab power supply, for example.If you need to squeeze the PCB size to bare minimum, the design requires more than 2 PCB layers for a reason or another, or you just want to make your design neat and mechanically more robust, you can design the PCB using freely available software and get it manufactured very cheaply in a PCB manufacturer on a shoestring budget. In the "good old days" this wasn't really an option for a hobbyist.I would say that the electronics hobbyists have more possibilities than ever. One can also purchase basic equipment and instruments in a very low price compared to the "good old days".The level of abstraction has risen from the single component level to the IC level and further to the module level as the hobbyists want to and are able to build more complex gadgets than before.** Edit: This is similar to buying the strip/Vero-board. You could manufacture your own strip board and spend the days drilling the holes, but why bother with that in the first place.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 10:53:33 am
content: Is isn't dead but it is dying.Our local Jaycar had only sold one AM radio kit is two years. A shame really because most hobbyists and most graduate engineers have almost no understanding how an AM radio works. Nor do they care. As well as improving technologies, one of the causes is electronics is too cheap thanks to almost slave like working conditions in red China and the lack of stiff import duties by western governments. One of the draw cards to electronics hobby used to be you could build stuff cheaper and often better than what you could buy. Today there are almost no electronics stores left. Gone are the glory days of Ellistronics and McGraths. There is push in some places in the world to teach young children how to code, rather than becoming being dumb computer or mobile phone users like many of their parents. That is a start in the right direction. But there is is precious little they will ever learn about electronics.Make no mistake, ham radio is also dying too. We have heaps of dead repeaters here in Melbourne. They are there, but no-one uses them. Thirty years ago the repeaters will full of activity. I reckon you could call mayday these days and no-one would respond because no-one is there.CB radio is completely dead except for a few grey nomads burning their kids inheritance as they enjoy travelling around Australia. Even truckies don't bother now they have mobile phones. Not that they knew how to conduct a conversation anyway. Try calling out for any YL's on 27MHz or 470MHz and see how many responses you get. Absolutely none. Terrorists just need a few CB radios to avoid being detected. Whilst the secret services monitor their phone calls, no-one is going to monitor CB!There is an ex-colleague of mine who is bucking the trend. He is teaching his young daughter all he can about electronics, astronomy, mathematics and how things work. And she is going great guns, enjoying learning from her dad and enjoying the subject matter and leaving her school teachers for dead. She start soldering electronics components at a very young age. That kid has a bright future because her dad is equipping her.

author: homebrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 11:15:32 am
content: Quote from: Kalvin on July 10, 2016, 10:37:00 amYes, there are tutorials out there but they don't help much, because the technology has become obsolete. Modern board design (at least what I need and do) have easily more than 100 vias. Power regulators come in DQFN-10 packages and they don't like being used with adapter boards and breadboards :-) 0.4mm pin pitch. Think of thermal vias, via stiching, impedance control etc. etc. Making this at home is impossible - at least without spending a fortune.Of course you can build useful things in THT but then you are basically doing the things as they were be done 20 years back. That is ok but in the long run not very sustainable. Industry will not care that much on the needs of hobbyists.Quote from: Kalvin on July 10, 2016, 10:37:00 amYes, and that shift in the abstraction level is the exact problem as I perceive it. Try connect something to the PC now. Serial port? Parallel Port? No, not anymore. Today it is more like USB, Ethernet or even Wireless (ESP8266 or so). So again it becomes more some sort of buying modules and plugging them together...It's not that I personally suffer from this in any way shape or form but it certainly was not the way I started electronics. From my early childhood it was a path from the very simple to more and more compexity.First there were bulbs and switches, then transistors and later microcontrollers. I programmed my first EEProm MANUALLY with switches and buttons. I could debug my parallel-port PC interface with a voltmeter. It may have took me an awful lot of time, but in the end I knew what I was doing down to the layer of single bits in the system.Today it seems to be the exact other way around. One starts at a high abstraction and the gradually goes down to lower layers as he/she feels comfortably. But probably most of them never reaching a state of proper understanding, though. And a layer of magic always remains ...I'm not pretending to have things done better in any way. My point is that the way I could developed my hobby is not possible any more ...

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 11:21:36 am
content: Quote from: German_EE on July 10, 2016, 09:56:46 amSure there are a few, but... just looking at the pictures shows that these people aren't exactly the youngest anymore, they're doing what they've been doing all their lives, all fine and good but the whole point is that they aren't being replaced.When they were kids it was very common to find people doing DIY electronics all over the place - but now coming across a young guy who starts building stuff is really rare.I'm with the OP, there were times where you could either save money or get access to some tech you could not otherwise afford by DIY, and the general level of complexity was such that it was possible for an individual to understand, design and produce those things but now not only everyone's already got easy access to pretty much anything they could want, but due to the general level of complexity anything you'd want and can't find or afford would be pretty much impossible for an you to design do to the high understanding in various different fields it would require...Ham radio was fascinating a few decades ago (actually played a bit with it when I was a kid 20 years ago), being able to talk to random people from afar was quite something, but it's become totally irrelevant nowadays... I'm sure people who have been interested by this for decades continue using it, but the appeal for newcomers is pretty much nonexistant, there's nothing to be impressed with when you've got an Internet connection that allows you to do the same 1000 times better.I'd have loved living in the 70s and being part of the first computer builders, it's something I love and could have done something good/clever when it was new but today it's just irrelevant, beyond doing a little thing to play with anything I do would be pointless compared to what's around.

author: Buriedcode
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 11:44:23 am
content: As mentioned, in many ways "we" have it as sweet as ever. With the popularity of things like Arduino and raspberry pi - biased towards those who either don't have much experience in electronics, but know software (like IT guys) the number of very cheap 'modules' has exploded. It is true you can make some quite cool 'gear' just by plugging modules together and writing a few lines of code but it really comes down to what you would consider a project worth building. In some ways many of my past 'projects' are now completely redundant as a premade module does a better job, at a fraction of the cost of the parts so it has shifted from 'necessity and lack of availability' to 'I can build almost anything!'. If your thing is to made up small circuits, power supplies, and common test equipment, then yes, that side of the hobby has taken a big hit. But with that comes the benefit of no longer having to make everything from scratch, spending a few $$ on prebuilt subsystems allowing one to concentrate on that actual application rather than get bogged down in the finer details of one tiny part of whole system.With the ever growing number of commercial products/devices people no-longer have to build certain things as its just cheaper to buy. These include test equipment, wireless controls, sensors etc.. as its a 'hobby' we're talking about here, the joy/interest is in the designing and building - you don't' have to purchase a pre-made product, and whilst it may be more expensive to build, you have the facility to completely customise. There are still parts of projects that you have to DIY because anything remotely complicated, the cost of all those modules starts to add up, and so would be cheaper to order a single PCB of your own design.I am somewhat saddened that as I go through my 'old boards box' full of DIY PCB's, breadboard modules etc.. I realise that almost all of it is now useless. But that's just how electronics is, it's moved incredibly fast and can make one feel old and redundant if they aren't 'using the lastest tech'. But the fundamentals hasn't changed, and with all the hackaday/maker posts you still see plenty of hand soldered wiring/boards.

author: MosherIV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 12:02:28 pm
content: HiQuoteWell said buriedcode.If anything, the growing world of Arduino has got more people interrested in electronics than before but in a different way. As someone else, no they are not the classic type of person wants to put together some circuit because it is cheaper or you simply cannot buy it, they are they type people who want to build something and now have the tools to do.As buriedcode says, stuff is so cheap and available now that it is so much easier to get into electronics. When I started, there was very little choice in multimeters, you just chose one from Maplins or Radioshak or (if were lucky enough to have access to Farnell or RS) an expensive professional meter.My pennies worth

author: chris_leyson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 12:33:56 pm
content: Unfortunately the old ways of doing things are dying off and being replaced by abstracted plug and play things like Arduinos. I'm not saying that Arduinos are bad but can you learn assembler on an Arduino. There are probably people reading that comment and thinking "who the hell writes code in assembler", well somebody has to write libraries for your compiler or interpreter. And that is just from a software perspective, too much cut and paste with no real understanding of the basic principles. I've seen people cut and paste pages of Matlab code that you could have written in just a few lines if the underlying mathematical principles were understoodI think the same is true from a hardware point of view, who builds things from scratch these days when you can buy it ready made and probably cheaper as well. It's easy to cut and paste circuits from an app note but if you don't understand the underlying principles expect to get your fingers burnt, in some case quite literally, "wow this switched mode power supply is chucking out a lot of heat" for example. At least there are young people on the EEVblog forum letting the magic smoke out of thingsAnd then there is the whole service and repair point of view, I've got a small 20W SMPS sitting on my desk that came out of an old router, financially it isn't worth fixing or replacing when you can buy a better router for very little cost these days, but morally it's worth fixing because why turn a potentially working router into landfill.The old school traditional ways of doing things are dying off but the hobby is evolving and changing.

author: bktemp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 12:55:30 pm
content: Quote from: chris_leyson on July 10, 2016, 12:33:56 pmExactly.I wouldn't say electronics hobby is dead, but it is changing because all electronic devices we use are changing:Today we have a much higher level of integration: 30-40 years ago you had to build your own computer yourself, because it was much cheaper to buy all parts and assemble them yourself. Today you buy a single chip controller loaded with many peripherals for much less only the CPU ic did cost at that time. So it simply does not make sense to build a lot of stuff yourself if you can buy it much cheaper.But also the develepoment has changed: 30 years ago you had large boards full of all kind of analogue and digital ics for all the functionallity you needed. Today you can do almost everything in software. So you don't care much less about hardware, because you can buy highly specialized ics for almost everything and configure them in software.

author: homebrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 01:02:36 pm
content: Quote from: wilfred on July 10, 2016, 11:56:12 amSorry, but that was not my point. Everybody is free to do what ever he wants to and I don't care. So why should I feel superior? My point exactly is that these people have little chance to "get hooked". And here is why ...Doing a hobby properly involves (at least for me) to develop some deep level of expertise in a certain area. Being it model airplane building or collecting stamps. But by commercializing such an area a lot of this is taken away. There are much less drivers anymore to learn the underlying principles.I mean look at these modules and boards. Arduino even managed to offset the connectors from the 0.1" grid so you can't use them easily on combination with your typical perfboard/breadboard. WHY?But things like these are not restricted to electronics only. One can see this happening in the R/C community, too. Go in your typical R/C-shop and look for an R/C-glider kit where you would construct your model from individual woodern parts. You could learn so much from these kits and develop so many new skills. Now, 99% of the kits are "ready-to-fly", contain mostly fibre parts or are made from foam entirely. If the plane breaks - nevermind - you can buy a new one. It's so cheap!So my point is that everything is getting too cheap (not in money but in effort). Without that pain of figuring out the details, the reward you get is also very minimal - probably not enough to keep you in it on the long run.

author: Tepe
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 01:18:37 pm
content: Quote from: chris_leyson on July 10, 2016, 12:33:56 pmThey are typically written in high level languages. Which is both sensible and economically responsible.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 01:26:56 pm
content: QuoteTwo things to consider:1) the hardware side of "electronics hobby" is nowhere where it was back then. Hoobyists branched out into other things, like software, and the low-cost manufacturing has made this hobby less appealing / justifiable.2) what is "electronics hobby" is changing. today, it is far more software driven than hardware driven and if you consider the people engaging in coding apps, I suspect the number can be significant.I would also point out a few pluses for electronics hobbyists today vs. then:1) much better parts availability: from distributors like digikey to ebay, at much lower costs vs. back then;2) so many more options: having a 32-bit chip for less than a dollar is unimaginable in the 1980s.3) medium for information sharing is so much better: no more clubs and you can reach lots of people all over the globe in expensively and quickly, even for someone who lives in a 3rd world country (like me,).But as a business model, serving the hobbyists is long dead.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 01:30:13 pm
content: Quote from: chris_leyson on July 10, 2016, 12:33:56 pmOf course you can.

author: kripton2035
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 01:42:37 pm
content: in the last century, you could build things that were cheaper and better than their commercially available counterpartstoday, things have changed, but you can still build things that dont exist and that are completely suited to your needsarduino is a good start for that, and when learners want to know more, they learn what's inside an arduinoanalog electronics is not necessary, althought a good start too.arduino makes me think of the Lego we had in the 70's. I like them very much !

author: homebrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 01:45:44 pm
content: Quote from: wilfred on July 10, 2016, 11:56:12 amThank you very much. I couldn't have found better examples to underline what I mean:Look at the 1976 projects and boy were they great in these days. Computer I/O when the first machines could be built by hobbyists. 50-100 W was actually quite a lot in those days. And something that everybody could built using just one chip.That's awesome !!!Now look at the current volume:1) A brownout protector for induction motors. Really? Probably illegal anyway to alter electrical installations of this kind as a hobbyist (at least here) ...2) Touchscreen Superclock: Totally over-engineered clock. With GPS-Option and whatnot. Does anyone really NEED this?3) LED UV-Meter: The magazine advertised this as "Add bling to your HIFI amplifier". Oh boy... And a 100dB range: Oh boy again ...4) over/under Temperature: Great - advertised to not include any SMD and to use "easy to solder components".So to sum up: Three projects that practically nobody will ever need and one project targeting the very same need as in 1976. Now again: What does this say about the current state of our hobby?

author: Buriedcode
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 01:51:09 pm
content: Whilst I do see your point, I still 'get a kick' out of designing and prototyping idea's - its just now the bar is set higher, so the 'stuff you can make' can be much more complicated than it was 20 years ago, for the same cost and design time. Whats changed is the complexity modern integration has afforded us.I've always considered myself a 'hardware guy' but of course write software and firmware. Like software, hardware can be thought of as modules - you design them once and re-use them as and when you need to - perhaps making a few minor changes to adapt them for specific applications. There isn't much point in designing everything from scratch/first principles every project when you've already done it. That means that many software and/or hardware apps are pretty much just older designs stitched together. Where do you draw the line between 'made from scratch' and 'bolting modules together' ?What with the ability to share vast amounts of information in free online storage - people can share millions of lines of code, and thousands of schematics, BOMs, gerbers and so where-as maybe 20 years ago, there were freely available existing designs/ideas/code it wasn't particularly common or easy to access. These days if someone wants say, a 2-pole LPF do they sit down with a pencil, paper and their own knowledge and draw a schematic, using maths to work out the values? Or do they google for a schematic, or use an applet calculator, orfreesim software to do it for them, taking minutes? Same with writing drivers for LCD displays, SPI devices, reading sensors etc.. given the huge number of people who design electronics both for work, and as a hobby, who share the fruits of their labour, its sillynotto google it first. Sure people might not learn about such systems much, but I'm sure they will when they need to.And again, many years ago, if someone produced a board with a large microcontroller, some analogue, a display, LED's etc.. you would probably think that they know their stuff. These days that can be 'made' with limited knowledge of the basics, much quicker and cheaper, so the 'value' of such a system as highlighting knowledge has diminished. So whilst you may remember the days when stuff like that was impressive, these days it has to be much more complicated to be considered impressive, which for a hobby I find refreshing - it means I don't stop learning new things. Also don't underestimate how many people who do electronics as a hobby have the 'how does it work?' instinct, after all, its that trait which is probably why most people become interested int he subject. I still almost obsessively try to work out how something works, and feel uncomfortable using 'black boxes' without knowing the intimate details of its inner workings. You may see the 'maker crowd' seemingly not caring about how their modules work but I believe those are in the monitory.As for taking the fun out of it - there is always more to learn. Whether or not you find that rewarding is up to you but you have to accept times have changed. If you don't find what you are doing rewarding - try something else, lord knows there are many areas of electronics to delve into, FPGA's, RF, microwave, audio. As as I tried to hammer home in my previous post - it is easier than ever to get started, in any area.The days where electronics as a 'useful' hobby - that is, using your knowledge and wits to build something that solves a real problem - aren't over yet. It is just we see more and more novelty or 'gadget' projects being posted in hackaday, instructables, maker etc.. that use $120 worth of prebuilt modules, a ridiculously powerful raspberry pi and large OS's to make a string of LED's pulse to music. That is the hobby side! you may not see the point, but the creators do it for shits'n'giggles. Sure the design is completely overkill so is hardly commercially viable, but its a hobby.Also remember, those who post their projects - the projects you read about on tech websites, forums etc.. are biased towards projects that are either really useful to people, so they share - niches like RC, meteorology, audio, guitar pedals - or those who just want to show off. I suspect that there are many many things people have designed to solve a problem they have, being very clever about it, but don't' feel the need to post because it was so specific to their need, and was done 'to solve the problem' rather than share. If one was to try and capture the general state of 'hobbyist electronics' by googling, they would probably see much more of the above than anything else, but that doesn't mean to say its so.

author: chris_leyson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 02:11:19 pm
content: There is nothing wrong with Arduinos and Raspberry pies, at least you can connect to real world hardware unlike a PC which is slowly loosing I/O ports or an Ipad which won't interface to anything apart from wifiYoungsters are learning to code these days which isn't a bad thing, later on they may turn their attention to digital signal processing, software defind radio, control algorithms or robots just to mention a few aspects. I think hardware skills are now being replaced by software skills. Some or perhaps most of todays electronics from a hobby point of view you couldn't even imagine back in the 70's and 80's.

author: homebrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 02:15:25 pm
content: Quote from: Buriedcode on July 10, 2016, 01:51:09 pmThat indeed may be sooo true. One person's point of view is always heavily influenced by his environment. And in my environment I've seen so many people buying these "starter kits" and not a single one of them got into electronics by any means.I would be more than happy to be wrong. But that's why I started this thread in the first place.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 02:41:24 pm
content: There's always differences between those who think arduinos and such aren't "real electronics" and those that believe they are. I'm in the "not" camp. Using them usually requires little more electronics knowledge than basic "connect the dots" wiring skill.If arduino stuff and programming in general is excluded from being "hobby electronics", then my guess would be there's probably not much difference in the number of hobbyists between now and 30 years ago. Access to information, parts, and tools has gotten a lot better, easier, and cheaper however.

author: chris_leyson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 03:20:59 pm
content: From an amateur radio point of view what goes into the RSGB or ARRL handbooks these days just out of interest, I'm guessing SDR and digital modes have their own chapters, I don't know are they still teaching basic RF principles, I hope so. I've heard quite a few old timers winging and grumping about digital modes in the past, they are there for a damn good reason.My great uncle Dai (Welsh for David) was teaching me radio propagation one afternoon and he said "nobody can overcome fading" he was right about that, but now we can fix it with digital modes, thanks uncle Dai. Long haul flights still use SSB rather than FM because of the threshold effect, is it all satellite comms now ?... but what if your satellite link doesn't work ?Navigation is all done by GPS these days, but pop up a carrier in the GPS band, hmmm, the ship steering on GPS autopilot, whoops ouch coastline disaster sort of Titanic scenario and there are quite a few reseach papers out there on the subject of GPS navigation and reliabillity.There was a song back in the day "Video killed the radio star" by Buggles, still true but now it should be "Internet killed the video and radio star" but what if you loose you internet connection, you've got to do old school i.e. radio.Radio rant over(pun intended)

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 03:31:22 pm
content: As others have said, the hobby is changing - not only in sophistication, but in the basic definition as well.In the past, we defined an electronics project as an assembly of components to achieve a specified function. That hasn't really changed - but the components available have.I remember a project I helped someone with quite a few years ago where they were building a tone sequencer. That design consisted of sixteen individual tone generators switched in sequence - and if you wanted a note of double length, you tuned two consecutive tone generators to the same frequency. You did it this way, because it was a simple concept that could deliver the result using the components available. Today, you would do this with an Arduino or Pi. Like it or not, code is now an integral part of electronics.The hobby - like all technology - has evolved.Another example is mathematical calculation. Log books aren't necessary any more and slide rules are museum pieces. Calculators are everywhere. The processes have become more sophisticated, allowing far more complex and challenging calculations that can support functionality only imagined 40 years ago.This is not to say electronics as a hobby has abandoned the volts, ohms and Hfe - but theentry pointhas changed. There will be those who start with an Arduino to drive an LED and then want to drive 100 of them. They will then need to learn the basics necessary to achieve that - and so it grows.Yes - with the preponderance of pre-built modules and cheap equipment, you will see a lot of electronic Lego going on - but when their inadequacies provoke a desire to achieve a higher standard, the fundamentals become necessary rungs on the ladder to that success.IMHO, electronics as a hobby is not dying ... it is just 'different' - most notably so in the entry point.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 03:53:17 pm
content: I can see this same thread in a newspaper 75 years ago, asking about the death of our hobby. People are no longer building their own knife switches and are using insulated wire to make their connections. Where is the skill in that? Why can't people use post insulators and bare wire to connect things. Why can't they build their switches instead of buying them. No more galena crystals, they are actually using valves as detectors. Where is the skill in using a pre-packaged valve instead of finding the sweet spot on your crystal?The worldwide market has made a lot of things cheap and easy to buy that used to be expensive. Which lets us spend our energy doing the unique things that interest us, rather than spending all the time putting together the basics. Even in the basics areas, people are using their skills to put together instruments that used to be the dreams of national laboratories, and doing it for far less than the cost of purchasing the capability. Check the volt nuts and time nuts threads. Even the oldest skills/techniques get used. I have built my own switches for unique applications. Using the best of old school and modern materials and techniques. (Brass, high density polyethylene, CNC machining). If I needed to do something similar again I might take another step into the future and use 3D printing to make a prettier and more sophisticated switch.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 04:11:55 pm
content: Quote from: Buriedcode on July 10, 2016, 01:51:09 pmThere is a big difference however in the fact that when you had to build the basic circuit once you were done you could usually quite easily move out of the "hobby" thing and actually start selling your thing as a product without any major changes if you felt like it.Now precisely given the building blocks are overkill, once you managed to make something good with them if you wanted to bring it to market you'd probably havce to throw it in the trash, start over from scratch, and make something more appropriate and specialized for the purpose so it can be priced in a way you've got a chance of selling it... but having been able to put the Pi-based thing together has taught you approximately nothing of what you need to do so.

author: jpb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 04:54:21 pm
content: I started electronics as a hobby in the 1970s (as a teenager) and it inspired me to do electronic engineering at university. But then it became a job and I became less enthused about doing it as a hobby.Also there were big changes - surface mount, the move to digital which doesn't feel quite the same as true analogue electronics and the fact that electronics items became consumable.The fact that DVD players, TVs and so on are cheap throw-away items has affected even those who earn a living in the area - I have a friend who runs a family tv repair business but when the cost of a new item is only about an hour or twos labour costs and the fact that the item being repaired was not built to last makes it rather disheartening. Also smart phones have every sensor under the sun in a tiny package so it is hard to think of anything electronic that you might build that is not already covered.BUT, I have now come back to electronics as a hobby after a gap of several decades and there are some positives. PCBs can be bought cheaply from China, a lab can be equipped cheaply, interesting old stuff can be bought off e-bay. I do it for my own education and enjoyment. I am very slowly designing a GPSDO. It presents plenty of challenges. I'm never going to build anything that is a commercial proposition but I'm keeping my electronics knowledge alive (I've switched to computer programming as a day job) which perhaps makes me more employable.So in some ways electronics is more doable now than for many years - there is also forums like this on the internet so you don't have to rely on fellow nuts who live locally

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 02:13:40 pm
content: I see a thread like this come up every few weeks in a forum dedicated to my other hobby, model railroading. "it's dead, it's dead" cry the Chicken Littles.Me, I merrily go on designing and building my model railroad, combined with my other hobby which is also not dead, electronics. I used to do more at home with computers, but since it's my day job, I kind of just one my systems at home to just work without a lot of mucking around.I will say it was Dave's videos and this forum, plus the Arduino, which really got me ramped back up in electronics. I was going to build a lot of the control electronics for my model railroad myself, but more or less in the sense of using someone else's design and just building them myself (like building a computer today - it's really just fitting together the jigsaw puzzle pieces). Now, however, I am designing my own control and monitoring circuits using Arduinos to drive the signals and points and collecting occupancy information in manageable 'nodes'. And writing most of the controlling software myself, both on the Arduino side and the PC that controls the whole thing. I will probably 'cheat' and use an existing communications protocol rather than try to develop my own though. All fun.

author: Lukas
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 04:50:27 pm
content: It's definitely a great time for 'advanced hobbyists'. Thanks to digikey and mouser, you can get pretty much every part delivered right to your desk within reasonable amount of time. $100 gets you a 4-Layer PCB from china, there's no shortage of MCUs of all shapes and sizes and FPGA and the required tools. All this enables projects like this one:http://hforsten.com/homemade-synthetic-aperture-radar.htmlWouldn't have been possible that easily 10 years ago.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 09:39:19 pm
content: Arduino... The other day I wanted to send a short text stream to check the ASCII decoding on my new DS1054Z. The absolute easiest way to do that is with an Arduino. It's a tool!People's interest in electronics vary all over the map. I like analog computing and messing around with FPGAs. For a certainty, analog computing isn't in the mainstream of electronics. Nobody cares anymore because we can model the equations with Matlab and Simlink.I do a lot of messing around with FPGAs. This begs the question of whether it is electronics or code. A register is a register and gates are gates, no matter how you create them. It's electronics!Everybody has their own place in the sandbox. If we're smart, we will be inclusive rather than exclusive.

author: John_ITIC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 10:14:48 pm
content: I think it is a matter what the introverted use to hide from "normal" people. It used to be fiddling with radios (1930-60s), general electronics (60s-70s), TTL and microprocessors (80s), then PCs and programming (80s-90s) and now various Internet high-level programming. It seems to me that electronics are just something one uses to execute code on. Of course, specialized electronics are needed for specialty execution platforms when the general-purpose platforms are not fast enough. For sure, it is much easier to get a well paid job in the programming field compared to lower-level electronics.

author: woodchips
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2016, 09:30:22 am
content: Seems so. There looks to be no real interest in making simple circuits to prove that you can, and then experiment with them. Is this important? You can simulate most things so why go to the hassle of building it. But do you actually learn anything from a simulations? Need to separate the 'got to get the job done' from 'I am teaching myself and learning' type situations.Was at the IMechE train challenge little while ago. For universities there seemed, to me, to be a lack of real world expertise in the electronics used to control the engines. In fact I couldn't really see why there was any electronics at all, relays would have worked just as well. I quite realise this is grossly unfair, but these students were building a real locomotive, and that seemed to require real expertise.I am also interested in old computing but running out of space so trying to thin the collection/pile down. I have some old Seagate ST412 Winchester disc drives from the early 80s. Did a low and high level format on a couple, sold one, and then found that £20 for the other drive was considered too expensive. I wondered about that, it did take a good couple of hours to find a suitable computer, get it working, finding the MFM controller and then very slowly format the drives. If you saw these drives at a radio rally for £20 would you consider them to be a bargain or outrageously expensive? Seems to me that there is now a disconnect between what someone will pay for a collectable item and what it is worth, in time, to test it, list it, pack it and then post it?The rise of China has reduced the cost of a manufactured item to near zero, $3 phones I see on the BBC, so is everything now zero cost? There is no financial point in making many things, no argument there, but the making is more than just having it, there is the fun and sweat of making it, then getting it working. I can't see how you learn anything other than making it? But, there again, I think analogue scopes are a really neat thing so am possibly just too old for all this new electronics.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2016, 10:37:35 am
content: There is always something special about building it yourself. Even better designing it yourseff. Both of these aspects tower over buying something off-the-shelf.My mum once said if she won lotto, she would not buy here kids a home each because unless you work for it, you won't appreciate it. It is similar to electronics. There is nothing more fulfilling than doing it yourself, and you appreciate it more.I have designed and building a 5-star extreme garage myself - literally. A little extreme in the design and a lot of hard work, but there is nothing more satisfying than seeing the results of my own handiwork and ideas. The result is better than any tradesman would (not could) do. It is built far better than most "slap-dash" houses.Similar with DIY in electronics. Do it yourself, its YOURS. Something to be proud of. And it is fully serviceable. Something that might last years and show your grandkids. And if it is your pride and joy, you can even ask to be buried with it when your times comes.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 14, 2016, 12:13:02 pm
content: Quote from: woodchips on July 14, 2016, 09:30:22 amA "collectible" only becomes one once there's someone who wants to collect it, and that may be becoming less of a trend. I don't know anyone my age who collects things anymore...I have a couple of old pieces of computer equipment, but get them out of curiosity in a pinch when I see something cheap that I'd fancy playing with.If I came across someone getting rid of "any old HDD" for $10 I'd pick it up out of curiosity, but I would not be looking for "a Seagate ST412 HDD" and pay the price it costs to prepare/maintain it even if I can recognise the value in it.

author: homebrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 04:22:28 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on July 14, 2016, 10:37:35 amExactly! The point I wanted to make is that this got harder and harder over time. While I fully buy into the argument that part's availability has radically changed during the last decade, it has has also become much more difficult to start.Try, asking a newbie to order an 470 Ohm THT resistor from Farnell. Or a simple spindle of wire, a switch, a relay or something else. Much luck ...And then the bar to reach satisfaction with your DIY project is so much higher. Not just in price but also in performance. The little LM317 power supply project might still be nice to do but it would not get any near to the performance of even simple bench supplies you can buy for a small amount of money.So with every advancement in technology and availability there will be new requirements on the skills.* cheap 2 and 4 layer boards available -> PCB design skills required.* sophisticated SMD packages available -> advances soldering skills required -> hot air station -> microscope* hundreds of thousands of components available from a single store -> product selection skills requiredSo, for the people engaged in the hobby this is heaven. But on the other hands there are high bars for outsiders to get in.Dave does a great job in his videos but also here the bar is high. You already need a sufficient understanding of electronics to really profit. ABSOLUTELY NO CRITIQUE in this! Just my experience whenever I recommended your channel to an interested newbie ...

author: Chris Mr
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 05:43:40 pm
content: When I started, in the 1960s, the adverts in Practical Electronics had nearly all the parts that were available: on 1/2 page advert! As time goes on one soaks up new stuff without realising that there are hundreds of thousands of parts now. Thank goodness we have the internet to find stuff.What must it all look like to a young person though?I would say pretty daunting.When there were fewer parts you could buy stuff and re-use it because all the designs had basically the same bits in.The challenge now is to find something in fashion that's at a level of complexity that a young person would find attractive. I guess that's part of the attraction of Arduino - when you have a mobile phone as competition.How about starting a thread suggesting projects for young people - ask your kid(s) what they want and see if a project can be made from it?

author: Cubdriver
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 08:06:34 pm
content: The comments on the overwhelming aspect of part selection are very valid. When I first began playing with electronics as a kid in the mid-late 70s, the Digi Key catalog was the size of a thin magazine. Now it makes a phone book look svelte. Hell, just the connector section is about the size of a phone book! When you're doing this for a living and as a hobby all along, it is a slow change that you adjust to incrementally as it grows. If you drop that monster book in the lap of a newbie, their eyes are apt to glaze over as they thumb through it.And I have to say, I miss old part numbers. Things used to be simple. 2N107. 1N34A. DM74154. LM324. Now it seems that everything has a 75 digit alphanumeric part number, with special characters too. LTC4365CTS8#TRMPBF. TPS3808G01MDBVTEP. MMST2222AT146. SI4214DDY-T1-GE3.-Pat

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 08:22:02 pm
content: There is one other point, we are up against this shit:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11359517/Ladybird-books-from-the-1960s-that-would-be-banned-by-todays-health-and-safety-brigade.htmlWhile the majority of H&S aspect is well-meaning, there is also a very negative subtext that undermines our innate desire for for exploration and creativity, which inevitably includes some risk. The problem is that the balance is not right. Nobody died, or was even hospitalised, or endured any injuries of any sort, from sucking on a couple of electrodes off a lemon. Sure, the carpet might need a clean after stripping a carbon battery though.

author: homebrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 08:49:10 pm
content: Quote from: Howardlong on July 15, 2016, 08:22:02 pmSo true. But that changed for all (most) of us. When I was at the age of 7, my parents had no problem letting me use the soldering iron for myself - mains powered of course! My father bought it for me and my uncle built a lab power supply (still works today flawlessly!) for me to have sufficient power for my experiments ...And now I have a son myself at the age of seven. Guess what I would have a problem with ...Just imagine: Hot iron, toxic fumes, LEAD !!!Luckily my son is more the sports, cars and planes kind of kid anyway.But when you think about it, its quite scary how fearsome society has made us.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 08:53:38 pm
content: Quote from: homebrew on July 15, 2016, 08:49:10 pmJust look at the picture (from these ladybird books), what could possibly go wrong ?

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 09:08:40 pm
content: Quote from: MK14 on July 15, 2016, 08:53:38 pmPrecisely, and I did them all. Cut fingers, bolllocking for messing up the carpet, dirty gob, messy everything.Part of growing up, and growing a pair.

author: G0HZU
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 09:09:44 pm
content: Quote from: Howardlong on July 15, 2016, 08:22:02 pmI'm afraid that this also applies to modern industry. The large electronics/comms company I work for has introduced various H&S rules/restrictions along these lines. Basically, the modern corporate types have jumped on the bandwagon and introduced all kinds of rules and restrictions and I have to be trained for everything. I even had a (compulsory) 30 minute training session showing me how to safely operate the controls on my office chair so that I don't injure myself.This may seem absurd but engineers are now not supposed to have any sharp objects in their toolkit anymore, (so no knives or scalpels, ESPECIALLY scalpels) and RF/HW engineers are not supposed to have a soldering iron on their workbench anymore. It all has to be carried out at a communal/safe workstation. The idea is that you do your soldering change/repair and then walk back to the bench to test the change. If you want anything cut you either get an approved technician to do it or you go for training and book out the tools to do it. You aren't allowed to keep the sharp tools and nobody is allowed to own or use a regular scalpel anymore. Only special/safe equivalents are allowed and only if you fill in a form and book it out for an allotted timeslot. PCB cleaning products and strong/smelly adhesives are also banned from ownership and this all has to be done by an approved operator using materials locked away in a secure cupboard.To preserve my sanity I still have both my iron and scalpels and other banned items and still use them (I ignored the amnesty) but it's only a matter of time before someone complains.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 09:32:31 pm
content: Quote from: Howardlong on July 15, 2016, 09:08:40 pmYes, I learn't a lot, from a similar process. I think you sort of have to make the mistakes, to climb the learning curve. There is not really a proper short-cut method. If you don't, the learning exercise does not get powerfully enough created in your brain.Sometimes by messing about with things, you learn and ask questions "Why ?" does it behave in this way. Then you learn even more stuff.Even within Electronics engineer circles there are issues. But hopefully they don't matter too much. In the 1960's, there were lots of engineers, who knew how to create circuits, with huge numbers of discrete transistors. Some of these circuits are rather amazing, even today. E.g. A very early (all transistor) Analogue Sound Synthesizer.But these days, most people (Electronics engineers), especially younger engineers, (except ones who spend time at integrated circuit plants), don't really have the skills to easily/quickly design complicated, many transistor, circuits. Because they are so use to just using integrated circuits, such as op-amps, to do it.I sometimes admire some of the early oscilloscopes, which may consist of a very large and complicated all transistor design, with very high voltage and bandwidth/accuracy capabilities.These days, it would be very difficult, to get freshly designed a high performance all analogue, discrete transistor circuit.Maybe I have not given the best of examples. But certainly some things would need advanced analogue designers, who are not very commonly available these days. Because of DSP's, op-amps and such, it usually does not matter, as circuits containing a large number of discrete transistors (only, no ICs), are rarely designed these days.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 11:02:26 pm
content: Quote from: G0HZU on July 15, 2016, 09:09:44 pmWhat the...Quote from: MK14 on July 15, 2016, 09:32:31 pmYou don't necessarily need to actually make the mistake, just getting into the process of making it will often make you realize something seems wrong soon enough so you recheck and manage to avoid it.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 11:17:33 pm
content: Quote from: Kilrah on July 15, 2016, 11:02:26 pmI use to think that myself, and to an extent you are right.But it is a bit like learning to ride a bike. You maybe need to fall off a few times, so that you properly learn that you need to pay attentionallthe time, andnotride the bike, in a crazy manner.That's the theory, anyway. Somehow some cyclists who have raced past me at way too fast a "safe" speed, on the pavement, in the UK. Begin to make me think otherwise.tl;drYou can read as many books as you like, on how to ride a bike. But if you have never done it at all. You still will be very ropey/bad at it, at first.

author: G0HZU
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 11:36:57 pm
content: QuoteThe new corporate types who have slowly taken over the company also like to see tidy worklabs and the rules for this have become more and more restrictive in the last few years. They basically don't understand engineers and have 'tidied up' by adopting a numbers game (the only game they understand).So to get a tidier lab you reduce the number and size of the benches and ban storage of unnecessary stuff like old breadboards and parts. Basically the place has been sterilised beyond belief. What is hilarious is the fact they don't understand why the company is slowly shrinking and dying and they are now having crisis meetings because the company has lost its innovative edge and the engineers are leaving. My turn to leave soon I think

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2016, 02:37:56 am
content: Hard to tell, it may potentially be less popular but on the other hand it may potentially be making a come back. Though I'm talking more about Arduino stuff, but that's at least a stepping stone to wanting to learn more. I'm more at the Arduino phase myself but it peaked my interest in electronics. My nephew who is 14 had a science fair project that was fairly advanced for his age and had electronics involved, and from the sound of it they were playing a lot with that stuff at school. We never did that when I was in school, I think the most complex thing we did was connect batteries to bulb sockets. With the internet it's also easier to get into. Even watching lot of videos and reading lot of tutorials I still don't understand most of the advanced topics, I can't imagine even trying to understand without the internet. I guess you just bought a lot of books back then, and perhaps because of no internet there was less distraction too.I feel that this new age of corporate and government sponsored espionage of our lives may hopefully get more people to really consider the functioning of what they buy. It seems they stick spy stuff in lot of stuff now and it's only going to get worse, so we can't trust anything we buy. It's one of the reason I don't buy premade home automation stuff, I design and build my own. But at some point it will be even basic stuff like your toaster. So more people will want to know at least basic stuff like take something apart and tell what should and should not be there. On the other hand it's frightening how most people are not even worried about the surveillance state.The spy stuff is getting scary though as it's now at the die level, so nothing stops them from putting it right within micro controllers for example. They're already doing it with CPUs.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 16, 2016, 03:19:15 am
content: Quote from: MK14 on July 15, 2016, 08:53:38 pmI have that book:

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2016, 03:54:20 am
content: In the quoted image it looks like they're trying out some new drugs or something.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2016, 06:27:29 am
content: http://blog.fh-kaernten.at/ingmarsretro/2015/03/07/experimentierkasten-philips-ee/

author: FuzzyOnion
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2016, 06:41:50 am
content: A lot of differing perspectives to digest. I find those opinions of folks from different countries intriguing. Growing up in the 1960s (born in the mid 50s) here in the US, I thought there was only one other country - USSR. I had no idea there were other hobbyists like me elsewhere in the world - such was America at that time. If you lived in the US and can remember when a 1 year subscription to Popular Electronics cost $3.00, it's clearly a generational thing. Post WWII advances, booming economy, the space race - science and technology could solve anything.As a kid I would read anything I could get my hands on that had to do with science and electronics. I knew a couple of other kids who shared the same appetite. It seemed almost infectious. But as with all things, it changed. One of the things I noticed most was how the level of precision changed. Using 20% carbon resistors, 25% capacitors , etc just wasn't going to cut it anymore. Projects got more complex, more precise, often requiring expertise outside of electronics to complete. As these levels of precision and complexity increased, I found myself less and less engaged. Surface mount just about killed it for me. It didn't help that I was getting older and the parts kept getting tinier.Given all the other changes -economics, education, policies, etc, the face and content of the hobby is entirely different than it was during my early years. It has become quite wide, but not very deep. I feel the frustration when trying to help younger folks - I'm always asking myself "how can they not know this?" But I bite my tongue and press on. Digging deep was what my generation of tinkers did, but not so much now. Then again, it was a much smaller field to till. I think that what we older gents experienced is essentially dead. It was a time and place that won't be coming around again. I think we have to realize that a new version of what we did has emerged - perhaps not as fascinating to us as what we did, but at least it still keeps the experimenter spirit alive.So as an old guy, I will lament - because that what we do. I still have a stockpile of 7400 TTL and 4000 series CMOS chips and somewhere in the house is a dog-eared copy of Forrest Mims' book - I can relive the glory days if I need too.Anyway, the best to all and I enjoyed the previous comments.

author: julian1
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2016, 09:25:54 am
content: QuoteMeanwhile jobs and entire industries get exported to China because of their superior economic competitiveness. Not to say that all OHS is misplaced effort, but it feels like something has gone wrong with work and business culture.

author: Synthetase
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2016, 12:23:29 pm
content: Quote from: homebrew on July 10, 2016, 09:15:21 amHaven't thoroughly read the whole thread, but I can tell you hobby hi-fi is very much alive and kicking. The fundamentals haven't really changed much in a long time and any hobbiest worth his/her salt can, with a relatively modest outlay, produce a hi-fi system that easily eclipses most commercial offerings. In fact, given that I don't have to be commercially competitive, I can over-engineer the crap out of my system (and have) so it will also last longer. No more transistors running at the ragged edge of their ratings because some bean counter told the engineer to scrimp on the heatsink. Extremely low ripple supplies; ultra fast, ultra low distortion opamps if that's ya poison; electronic crossovers with filters perfectly matched to the desired loudspeaker; clipping/distortion indicators (when was the last time you saw one of those on a commercial amp?) - all of these things can be yours.My system is built using through-hole parts on single sided boards and it sounds better because I made it myselfOn a similar note, I built my guitar amplifier and all my effects units. My amplifier cost me a couple of hundred dollars to build and has features you won't see on models costing more than double that (how many cheap amps have Burr Brown opamps in them?). It will also drive a four ohm load at full volume all day every day without melting.

author: strangersound
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2016, 03:44:47 am
content: One area that still shows promise is the guitar amplifier sector. Guitar tone junkies all pretty much agree that the only way you can get the holy grail of guitar tone is from a hand crafted circuit using point to point wiring and typically tubes (valves). Guitar effects being the same, with 'boutique' products popping up all over the place. It's a seriously growing niche market.I personally love point to point wiring and find it to be one the most beautiful art forms. Old Hammond organs and the like being examples of craftsmanship that are amazing to look at. Post Apocalyptic Inventor got hold of an old tube Tektronix 551 Dual Beam Oscilloscope and it's innards are incredible. I'm sure a lot of you have seen it, but if not take a look, it's worth your time:

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2016, 04:59:14 am
content: Wow quite impressive. Imagine the manual work that went into something like that.

author: strangersound
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2016, 07:37:59 am
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on July 19, 2016, 04:59:14 amYeah...I was expecting to be impressed, but it exceeded any expectations by a long shot. I was also pleased to see it ended up in the hands of somebody that would appreciate it and that it didn't get scrapped, which would have been a travesty. The manual work is totally why I mentioned the old organs. Those things are mind blowing the first time you open one up.It's just amazing on both ends. The type of things they accomplished in the old days and the way they do the same things and so much more in unbelievably small footprints. It makes me think of the mechanical computers, which were amazing feats of mechanical engineering. It's like technology is always advancing to catch up with ideas.Wikipedia has an article about a tide measurement device nicknamed Old Brass Brains, which was in service from 1910 to 1965, when it was replaced with an electronic computer. Never ceases to amaze me the type of things humans can come up with.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide-Predicting_Machine_No._2

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2016, 10:17:36 pm
content: No it's not dying, it's just changed.As others have mentioned, a lot more people are using pre-built modules these days but a decent level of understanding is still required to make something.People still experiment for educational purpose, for example I've built a discrete op-amp out of BJTs before, even though it has no practical use: even 30 years ago, an EE would have used an op-amp IC for that.SPICE is good but it has its limitations and people will soon learn the hard way. See attached. Run it through SPICE and it works. Now try building it!

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 23, 2016, 01:25:41 am
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on July 16, 2016, 03:54:20 amThe Ladybird Book on Hard DrugsOver 100 mind expanding projects for kids! Learn how to:-Bake Crack Pies-Use common household chemicals and OTC decongestants to make Meth!-Make Hash Oil and Resin with Butane-Turn a soda can into a makeshift crack pipe or bong!-Find a Vein-Use a Razor Blade to Properly Cut Coke-Safely Crack Whippits-Evade the PopoAnd much, much more!About the Author: I been in this game for years, it made me an animal. It's rules to this shit, so I wrote me a manual; a step by step booklet for you to get you game on track, not your wig pushed back.

author: nick.theboatman
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 04, 2021, 10:26:17 am
content: So this is an old thread but I just wanted to share...In the '70s I was a ardent self-taught hobbyist. I made stuff that sometimes worked. Sometimes it went bangYou could do that then lolIn the '80s I did a degree in Electronic Engineering and got a 1st for my practical work (ok so I flunked field theory but whatever. Never did like capacitors..)In the '90s I ran a telecomms company. We built good shit.In the '00s I ran a renewables business. We needed stuff made. There were millions of ways of doing it and we got bogged down in the decision making.Now I'm not exactly retired but I'm a volunteer advocate and a boat-builder. I make shit. It makes the welder work again. It makes lights flash and the £2000 compressor that came out of a skip has a new lease of life. I look at the stuff that comes at me via eBay - like computers for £1 and LEDs in packets of 100 for £1 (shit, everything is £1) and I think "so why do I bother making things?"Because I can. Because it gives leverage again. Because if I didn't we wouldn't have a welder. It gives new options.Most of all although it is so different to the '70s it still is happening - and between us we know how to do it.Woe betide us for the engineers who fall away and disappear because they think that "doing shit" is a waste of time. The tools may change (my first oscilloscope had valves - and they weren't small ones either; my logic analyser - agh it cost £1) and the methods of getting hardware are different but so what? They'll change again.So keep "doing it" - make shit happen !!I'll just leave this here

author: duckduck
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2021, 07:32:54 pm
content: What I've seen in my corner:I have seen a great deal of growth in hobbyists building vacuum tube guitar amplifiers over the past 10-15 years. There used to just be a few web forums and retailers that cater to this crowd and now there are many. I would say that a significant portion of the builders couldn't write out an equation for Ohm's law, but the more people that pick up a soldering iron, the more that are going to end up reading The Art of Electronics.My macro prediction:I think there is much more competition for kids' time nowadays, and I think that a lower percentage of kids in the USA will get into electronics than have in the past, but there will always be those that are compelled to know how things work, and see the possibilities of what they can build using electronics. I had the Radio Shack 200-in-1 electronics kit as a kid and played with it for hours, sitting on my bedroom floor connecting the wires to those annoying little springs. I can see that the good old days are gone, and that we are in the middle of a golden era for a new generation of hobbyists and future EEs. Shenzhen, the internet, and the increasing power of computing available to the average person all conspire to empower those with the thirst for knowledge. Perhaps the USA will fill up with lazy stupid brats that know only XBox, YouTube, and facebook, but I am raising my kid to know better. Everyone on this forum with kids is doing the same. Also, speaking of Shenzhen, there are bound to be millions of Chinese kids that are excited by what's going on there that learn about electronics.TLDR; I predict that electronics won't be as popular a hobby in the West as it used to be. I predict that the center of the electronics hobby universe will continue to shift East, following electronics manufacturing.

author: RJSV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2021, 01:09:48 am
content: I'm betting 'NO', That the hobby activities are not dead, just maybe sometimes grows, changes, shrinks, and then "BAMM..." Someone invents, or discovers some novel sh17t.In 1970 some folks provided me with a vacume tube radio, for experimenting with audio. Radio Shack sold me a microphone / pre-made cables, even, shock shock: The store sold me some 'actual' batteries!I mean, didn't have to lift a finger, to build my own cabinet... Just plug 'n play; not like it was in 1899.These days, I buy my parts, mostly, but the information flow going on is more 2-way:Way more bidirectional flow. Today, I can think and debate, virtually instantly check out the other person's source, and if I'm good can actually effect the other's concept, if correction needed.So, no, hobby stuff is transformed, improved some, gone bad some, but overall very very better (compared with 1970.

author: mindcrime
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 12, 2021, 04:35:41 am
content: I started doing this stuff (hobby electronics) when I was around 10 or so, so I've been at it for about 37 years now. My perspective is that while thenatureof the hobby has evolved, it's actually more (much more) vibrant than ever in general. And I would argue that the same factors that make itseemlike it's dying to some, are part of what's making it better than ever.Some thoughts on that:1. Yes, there's more focus on micro-controllers these days, more software, and less "build everything from NAND gates" type stuff. My feeling: "So what?" The range ofcapabilitiesof what you can do today is SO much greater than it was in the 80's when I was a kid. Holy %^^@# what I would have given then for something close to an Arduino Nano 33 IoT. So yeah, the nature of the hobby is changing. I get it. But "adapt and evolve, or get left behind" as far as I'm concerned.2. Knowledge / information is SO much more available now thanks to the Internet. This very forum we are on? Youtube? Pirate e-book sites from which you can easily download any electronics textbook you ever dreamed of? That is, if you don't just buy it from Amazon legit, which is so much easier than when I was a kid and had to beg my parents to drive me 35 miles to a town big enough to have a bookstore... And what about online learning resources like Coursera, Udacity, EdX, Khan Academy, Udemy, the various Stack Exchange sites (electronics.stackexchange.com is pretty good), various subreddits (/r/electronics, etc.)? And so on...3. Open source software: there's so much useful software out there now, a much of it is F/OSS. KiCad? Ngspice? Python? Octave? R? Linux? ROS? FreeRTOS?4. Parts availability: while it's true than when I was a kid we had a Radio Shack store 5 miles away, and now I have nowhere to buy components at retail nearby, I will again say (mostly) "So what?" I can spend 50 bucks on Amazon, or Ebay or Aliexpress and have a mountain of components that I would never have dreamed of having in the past. And there are so many places to find components online - my list of potential shopping sites currently includes:(yes, I literally keep a list in a text file)Amazon -Adafruit -Jameco -Sparkfun -Digikey -Mouser -Newark -SeedStudio -DFRobot -Ebay -Aliexpress -Futurlec -RadioShack -All Electronics -Alltronics -Allied Electronics -Arrow -RS Electronics -Northern Tool -Harbor Freight -Electronics Goldmine -Future Electronics -Makershed -Information Unlimited -BG Electronics -Microcenter -Best Buy -Summit Electronics -Cheapham.com -Robotshop.com -Rossen Robotics -Super Droid Robotics -Pololu -Robot Marketplace -Active Robots -Servo City -FANUC America -Motoman -Zagros Robotics -Compared to decades ago, it's trivially easy now for me to jump online and order up components from halfway on the other side of the world, including weird and scary places like Australia! And I have, I believe. Aren't Futurlec headquartered in Australia? Anyway...5. The growth of "associated" hobbies - 3d printing, drones, robotics, desktop cnc machining, etc. This goes back to the point about how the nature of the hobby has changed, but that's OK. If kids today are hacking on their desktop CNC mill or 3D printer, is that any worse than if they were hacking on a ham radio? I say "no". Maybe the primary goal for some of these folks isn't "electronics qua electronics", but I don't see that as a problem. If they're drawn to learn some electronics to get their drone working, that's great.6. China, etc. - alluded to above indirectly, but there's something quite amazing about the availability of tools, parts, test equipment (!), etc. for the prices this stuff is available at, and that's largely driven by Asian manufacturing. And sure, I get that some people resent seeing the Rigol's and Owon's and Siglent's of the world seemingly displace the HP and Tek and Rohde & Schwarz's to some extent. And sure, some of the stuff you buy off of Aliexpress is crap. But on balance, I'll take the ability to buy a cheap but fantastically useful oscilloscope from a company like Rigol.7. There's probably more that could be said about this, but whyit? I think electronics is thriving, and that the existence of Adafruit, Sparkfun, Seedstudio, etc. alone is pretty good evidence of that. I mean, somebody is buying their stuff. You just have to look at it from a perspective that the hobby has evolved since some of us where whippersnappers. And that's probably a good thing.QuoteCan't agree. That big bottle of MG Chemicals 99.99% IPA in the lab? The one labeled "for professional use only"? Yeah... when I was coming up, I had nowhere near me to get something like that, and if I had, they wouldn't have sold it to me. Now, I jump on amazon, click a button, and 2 days later it's on my doorstep. Fantastic.QuoteThat's a fair point, but you can machine a PCB with a $200 desktop mill that works with SMD components. Or if you can wait a few days to get your board, you can have it made by OSH Park, JLCPCB, etc. Other services that didn't exist in the past, that make this a golden era for hobby electronics in my mind. And soldering? You can often get by with just hot-air, or if you want a reflow oven you can buy a cheap T962 for not a lot of money, or do what I'm doing, and build your own reflow oven from a Black and Decker convection oven.QuoteAnd yet Kickstarter is loaded with stuff you can "buy". Another way to look at it? Here's a business opportunity for some enterprising type - start the "OSH Park of certification and compliance testing". Find a way to make money helping small scale hobbyists get set up for manufacturing.QuoteAgain - the nature of the hobby has changed, yes. But why should we care that the "thing to build" is no longer an oscilloscope or power supply? Who mandated that the way things were years ago have to be the way they remain forever? And personally Iambuilding something myself for my lab - a reflow oven. I'm doing it partly for didactic purposes, but based on the experience of a friend of mine, I believe I'll be able to build something that both outperforms something like a T962, and costs me less overall $$$.QuotePersonally I always thought that at-home board etching was a huge PITA and something to be avoided. I'mgladwe live in an era where I can buy a desktop CNC mill for $200 and machine my PCB's that way, or wait a couple of days and have my board fabbed in a professional fab and mailed to me.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2021, 03:14:24 pm
content: It is funny watching complaints about the demise of through hole PCBs. In earlier eras the complaints were:A. The demise of making your own inductors, capacitors and resistors.B. The demise of breadboards with fahnstock clips and a literal breadboard.C. The demise of point to point wiring with terminal strips.D. The demise of wire wrap.In my mind the only way that we have changed from the goldenest age of hobby electronics is that it is now difficult to build common equipment that is cost and performance competitive with what you can purchase. So the hobby has become about learning, niche applications and systems made of commercial modules with a bit of electronic glue to fasten them together.Sometimes those niche applications become commercial. The $20 transistor tester and microVNA being prime examples.

author: M0HZH
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2021, 03:40:09 pm
content: We have the most affordable test equipment in history, excellent free software, cheap PCB services, unrestricted access to resources and the largest hobby-oriented communities.Thisis the Golden Age of electronics.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2021, 03:59:45 pm
content: I agree with @M0HZH and other posters,Thisis the golden age of electronics.To me, a good hobby project is where you make something that you can't just go out and buy - special stuff that is not available for $5 from Asia...That, and building "test" circuits to learn something from.When all is said and done, if you think what you're doing is interesting, keep doing it... if not, why are you doing it?

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2021, 04:13:48 pm
content: Quote from: mindcrime on May 12, 2021, 04:35:41 amThat is one area where modern electronics is definitely harder to do: the small size of components makes it harder to work with.I still hand solder all SMD components, using a fine point iron. I only start up the hot air station if there is a chip in play that doesn't have exposed leads (there is usually a package available with exposed leads). Overall, this is time-competitive with other methods unless you have a pick&place machine.I'm not saying this is the recommended or best way, I'm saying you don't need special equipment to work with it, if you play your cards wisely - like don't go with smaller than 0603 sized SMT components.It is still completely realistic to etch your own PCBs at home, using toner transfer or photographic methods. But why would you bother, unless you are in a hurry, or doing a very large PCB which can still become quite expensive with Osh Park, JLCPCB et al?

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2021, 04:58:12 pm
content: Quote from: mindcrime on May 12, 2021, 04:35:41 amThere is much truth to the claim that chemicals are harder to get now. Sure, you can order IPA easily, but other chemicals? Not so much. When I was a kid I was interested in chemistry and could go down to the local drug store and buy a wide variety of chemicals. If they didn't have it, they could get it for me. They had no problem selling chemicals to a 12-year-old.Today the situation is very different. Drug stores still sell IPA, but that's about it. Nearly everything else is off limits. Commercial chemical and scientific suppliers won't sell chemicals to private individuals at all--you have to be a business or an educational institution. These companies assume that private individuals buying this stuff are either terrorists building a bomb, or drug dealers running a meth lab. In some states in the U.S. private individuals can't even buy glassware like beakers and flasks.

author: marcelogadotti
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 12, 2021, 05:00:19 pm
content: In Brazil the electronics hobby isn't dead. There are a lot of stores selling cheap components, Ham Radio increase the number of licenses and digital modes like DMR and FT8. Near my home and work, there are more than 3 electronics store selling PTH components and it's very easy to buy components from China.I grew up in a TV repair service and I agree that this area has disappeared, however, the hobby is still very much alive.Now, I am working with the development of embedded systems, which reduced my interest in the hobby in the free time.

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2021, 05:09:32 pm
content: It's certainly true that the old-school "build this two-tone siren with a 556" projects are long gone... and who cares.OTOH working on zombie 1960s electronics like my Tektronix scope beasts is so much easier now with instant access to all manuals and schematics, and in some cases even engineers that created them.Seems to me that whatever level you pick, it's still a great time to play around with it.

author: mindcrime
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 12, 2021, 07:53:19 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on May 12, 2021, 04:58:12 pmThat's a fair point, although it sounds like more of a concern for people practicing "hobby chemistry" than "hobby electronics". Still, you have a point about the terrorism point, and all the "WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN???" paranoia. Shit, where I live you're even limited in how much allergy medicine (with pseudoephedrine) you can buy, because the people who make meth (or something) extract the pseudoephedrine from it to use. :-(All of that said, the flip-side is, if you want to start a company to make the process of buying chemicals easier, it's pretty cheap and easy to start an LLC (at least here in NC, in the US), and getting a business banking account is pretty trivial here as well. One challenge though, is that some places won't ship to an address that's listed as a "residential" address, even if you run your company from home. Obviously a lot of this stuff will vary from country to country due to differing regulations.The one other angle on getting chemicals, is that you can sometimes get certain chemicals from China (where else?) that you otherwise couldn't get, by having the seller label them as "research chemicals" (or something like that) which clear customs with less problems (or so I hear). I have not personally tried this, but it's something I've heard a lot about. It seems to be more in the context of "designer drugs", but if you could make the right contact with the chemistry equivalent of Shenzhen, I bet you could get them to sell you just about anything.

author: RichC
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2021, 09:35:58 pm
content: Having recently gotten back into electronics I'm actually quite enjoying making little smt boards at home.My cheap Chinese cnc will cut 8 mil traces without any problems and will do 6 mil with a little care. I've even done double sided boards on it using small nails for alignment.For reflow I'm using a little ptc hotplate off ebay. For the price ($10) it's hard to beat and because I bought a DC model I can run it off a bench supply and ramp the temperature up slowly. Feels easier and probably quicker for me than hand soldering.

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2021, 11:26:06 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on May 12, 2021, 04:58:12 pmSame here. I would regularly raid the pharmacy down my street as a kid for all the strike anywhere matches, saltpeter, and sulfur they had and no one raised an eyebrow... Hilarious times!Now I can't even get a small vial of harmless oxalic acid anymore to clean rust off ceramics, etc

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2021, 11:47:33 pm
content: Quote from: Alex Eisenhut on May 12, 2021, 11:26:06 pmThe rules are sort of random. Here in the US oxalic acid is hard to get most places, but readily available in hardware and building supply stores. Other materials show similar foibles. Hydrochloric acid is hard to find except at pool supply stores.

author: eti
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2021, 05:17:12 am
content: Not one bit. Ardweeeenos are everywhere, and you can now buy a special device to flash an LED called a Raspberry Pi.