Do you think dave is good at what he does?

[8086]

I've gone from working on 1200 pin $5K FPGA's, gigibit ethernet characterisation, and 10,000 data acquisition systems, to opening my mail, ranting, and tearing stuff down. Buy hey, it's a living 

Speaking honestly and candidly (and I know you will have no problem with that!), which of these would you rather be doing?

[Tinkerer]

Dave doesnt need to know everything to be good at what he does. He can see a problem and know what steps to take to solve that problem even if he has to look up information for every step. In other words, he knows how to successfully apply what he does know, and what he researches, in order to get things done well. This is the basis of any good engineer, the application of knowledge.

[TVman]

I find it interesting that the poll allows you to select all four of "yes", "no", "Yay and nay" and "I haven't thought about that".  Shouldn't those choices be mutually exclusive?  What would it mean for someone to select all fou

sorry,but it won't let me change it!

[Corporate666]

if "what Dave does" is defined as being a YouTube content creator for electronics folks, then I think he is exceptionally good at what he does.

What strikes me is the absolute lack of really good electronics content on YouTube.  There are a few guys who obviously really have no clue what they are doing when it comes to electronics and are doing more equipment reviews and delving into irrelevant minutiae on spec sheets.  Then there are a whole crapload of people doing stupid shit with Arduinos.  And a bunch of people buying cheap Chinese eBay shite and doing teardowns but who don't really understand electronics or design well enough to offer any meaningful insight - they just narrate what we're already seeing in the video.   Nothing wrong with that, but it's not really electronics engineering.. it's people screwing around with stuff.

For people who are really in the electronics business and working on real products, Dave strikes the best combination of humor, knowledge, teaching-ability, insight and quantity of content produced to keep people interested.  I think that's why his subscriber base has grown at such a rapid clip.

I'd love to see Mike Harrison doing more videos - he has an amazing insight into so many varied areas of electronics (and just stuff in general) that I could watch his stuff all day long, but unfortunately he has a day job and his videos are fewer and farther between than I'm sure we'd all like

[EEVblog]

he's absolutely the best in the world at what he does.

I'm the only one in the world that does what I do 
There are other electronics video bloggers (only one other full time), but each has their own style and way of doing things, just like I have my own.

[EEVblog]

Speaking honestly and candidly (and I know you will have no problem with that!), which of these would you rather be doing?

Isn't that obvious? 
I do this because I enjoy it more.
But as far as actual practical electronics design goes, it's hard to beat working for a company that has a big budget, works on big stuff, and "forces" you to work on stuff you wouldn't ordinarily consider working on. When you work for yourself that breadth of experience is hard to get, unless you are a freelance designer and work with a wide range of clients. But then you are essentially "working for the man" anyway.

[G0HZU]

if "what Dave does" is defined as being a YouTube content creator for electronics folks, then I think he is exceptionally good at what he does.

What strikes me is the absolute lack of really good electronics content on YouTube.  There are a few guys who obviously really have no clue what they are doing when it comes to electronics and are doing more equipment reviews and delving into irrelevant minutiae on spec sheets.  Then there are a whole crapload of people doing stupid shit with Arduinos.  And a bunch of people buying cheap Chinese eBay shite and doing teardowns but who don't really understand electronics or design well enough to offer any meaningful insight - they just narrate what we're already seeing in the video.   Nothing wrong with that, but it's not really electronics engineering.. it's people screwing around with stuff.

For people who are really in the electronics business and working on real products, Dave strikes the best combination of humor, knowledge, teaching-ability, insight and quantity of content produced to keep people interested.  I think that's why his subscriber base has grown at such a rapid clip.

I agree with pretty much all of the above, but I do have one gripe about most of the blogger type videos.

If you look at the tutorial content on the eevblog and you look at the stuff in the projects section of the forum there isn't anything being discussed that needs test gear with fantastic accuracy. It's pretty much all student level stuff you could do with a few items of cheap used test gear and $2 crystal oscillator modules from Farnell.

But then when you watch the eevblog videos (or similar blogger videos from other people) it is always set against a backdrop of a bench that is littered with lab grade megadigit DMMs and calibration gear, flashy new scopes, new function generators, new programmable PSUs etc etc. There is also a HUGE
emphasis set against evaluating these (new)  products.

It's interesting (and entertaining) to watch reviews on this stuff but I don't think the balance is right. But I guess if the balance was better there would be fewer subscribers and far fewer people spending money on the products in the reviews.

[EEVblog]

if "what Dave does" is defined as being a YouTube content creator for electronics folks, then I think he is exceptionally good at what he does.

From my perspective I think I'm just ok at doing that.
Why?
Well, because I don't think I'm very efficient at doing it, consistent enough, thorough enough, and I'm inherently lazy and will almost always take the easiest and laziest approach. But most of that is not readily apparent from the audience perspective.
Hence my "off-the-cuff" approach. I won't spend a day researching something to make sure I know what I'm talking about, I'll just hit record and waffle on. And rarely will I go back and fix or refine a video. Sometimes that approach works, sometimes it doesn't.

For people who are really in the electronics business and working on real products, Dave strikes the best combination of humor, knowledge, teaching-ability, insight and quantity of content produced to keep people interested.  I think that's why his subscriber base has grown at such a rapid clip.

I won't argue that whatever I'm doing it seems to have worked.

I'd love to see Mike Harrison doing more videos - he has an amazing insight into so many varied areas of electronics (and just stuff in general) that I could watch his stuff all day long, but unfortunately he has a day job and his videos are fewer and farther between than I'm sure we'd all like

I would have liked to have done the blog when I was working on some of the more interesting stuff like Mike does, I would have had a ton of stuff to show and tell.
That's the disadvantage of not working in the industry any more.

[EEVblog]

If you look at the tutorial content on the eevblog and you look at the stuff in the projects section of the forum there isn't anything being discussed that needs test gear with fantastic accuracy. It's pretty much all student level stuff you could do with a few items of cheap used test gear and $2 crystal oscillator modules from Farnell.

That's because really advanced design usually has pretty niche appeal, or essentially no appeal in the real world.
At previous company I could have blogged the design of a 10,000 channel real time 24bit data acquisition system spread over 10km using fibre optic ATM switching, but who wants to follow that design through from go to whoa for a full year? Can they build it themselves? can they use concepts from it and modify it for something else? probably not, it's just too niche.

But then when you watch the eevblog videos (or similar blogger videos from other people) it is always set against a backdrop of a bench that is littered with lab grade megadigit DMMs and calibration gear, flashy new scopes, new function generators, new programmable PSUs etc etc.

Because we all have an obsession with test gear and our lab, it's a sickness 

There is also a HUGE emphasis set against evaluating these (new)  products.
It's interesting (and entertaining) to watch reviews on this stuff but I don't think the balance is right.

You said it yourself. The high end stuff is usually more interesting. I know it is for me. I've rather take apart or review a new $10K scope then a no-name $100 multimeter.

But I guess if the balance was better there would be fewer subscribers and far fewer people spending money on the products in the reviews.

What has people spending money on products in the reviews got anything to do with it?
I can't speak for the others, but I review the gear I personally find interesting, the end. I don't make any money from the sale of any gear from any reviews. At least not directly, perhaps through indirect advertising and adsense money on the views, but that same money is there regardless of what type of video I do.

[EEVblog]

Yes, although I'm doing an electronics blog full time, I have effectively walked away from commercial electronics design. I haven't worked on any serious electronics design projects for the last 3 years I've been doing this blog full time.

Actually, that's not true. I forgot early on in the full-time gig I did some investigatory design and PCB work for Cochlear, on their new generation hearing implants. I needed the money, so I whored myself out for a while

[G0HZU]

Because we all have an obsession with test gear and our lab, it's a sickness 

Yes, I guess the thing I see as being unbalanced is the emphasis on test gear worship

It's not a major gripe... I enjoy your videos and I think you are very talented and so are the other major bloggers. But my gripe is that they are also surrounded by high end test gear when they are in the camera view. The danger here is you will all end up creating a new breed of hobby EE who see a particular class of test gear as a kind of entry requirement to join the gang.

I'd love to see Mike Harrison doing more videos - he has an amazing insight into so many varied areas of electronics (and just stuff in general) that I could watch his stuff all day long, but unfortunately he has a day job and his videos are fewer and farther between than I'm sure we'd all like

Yes, I do find his videos to be very good too

[BravoV]

The danger here is you will all end up creating a new breed of hobby EE who see a particular class of test gear as a kind of entry requirement to join the gang.

Its already happened for while, especially in this forum.

Just stay longer in the forum and watch, once in a while there are always seasonal active posters, usually/mostly are in their teen age as they sound like (could be wrong though). And typically at the beginning they asked tons of questions, and very frequent on buying new T&M gears that may cost probably thousands of dollars like high end dmms (plural), 4 ch scope, SA, FG, bench PSU, high end soldering iron etc. 

Interesting part was at their other posts asking about basic electronics, they sound like they don't even know what a voltage divider is ?

From my faint memory, I guess I've recognized few for last few years, usually this type will pop out, overly active at the forum for certain period, once they've gathered their toys and probably getting bored with them, usually they will fade away from the forum and never heard again.

[Stonent]

Well I'll put it this way, Dave must be fairly good because there's a lot of people here who do this stuff as their every day job (EE Work) and I don't hear many people calling BS on stuff he says very often (at least not in regards to electronics  )

[Corporate666]

It's not a major gripe... I enjoy your videos and I think you are very talented and so are the other major bloggers. But my gripe is that they are also surrounded by high end test gear when they are in the camera view. The danger here is you will all end up creating a new breed of hobby EE who see a particular class of test gear as a kind of entry requirement to join the gang.

I think there are quite a few people who get into the hobby of electronics and don't really ever develop themselves beyond being test gear geeks.  There are people who will debate over whether an 6.5 digit Agilent meter is better/worse than a 6.5 digit Keithley, but then the extent of their electronics knowledge is checking the voltage output of the regulator on their Arduino.  Nothing wrong with that I guess, but I think that's where Dave is pretty good.  He has some very cool equipment (and I will admit his videos made me lust after some equipment after seeing it in his videos, which led me to spend a few thousand on gear I probably didn't really need - although it does make my job easier) but he also knows how to use it and what it's important for. 

But it seems to me there are quite a few people who are geared up to the max, but don't have anything to work on.

That's actually one thing I would say that I'd love to see Dave doing more of.  I miss the old days where there seemed to be more project stuff.  Like the one where he made LED strips for his deck, but went into the temperature calculations and took a very methodical/analytical approach to his design.  I'd certainly trade teardowns of cheap meters and mailbag segments for more of that.  I'm sure Dave would love to do more project based stuff - but he nailed it in his objection to that earlier.  That being, anything that is really in-depth and interesting is too long to do in just one video (or even 10), and anything that is short enough to do in a video can't possibly go into depth enough.

Although the fix-it videos where we get multiple segments I find to be fantastic.  It would be really cool to have some ongoing projects too - sort of like the Mu Current or the USB power source.  But again, you toss in a weekly teardown, a weekly mailbag, a weekly review and a tutorial each week - and we're asking the man to work 60 hours a week  if we expect him to be handling product development also.  That would be unfair.

Can't we clone Dave?

[TVman]

I am glad that most everyone likes Dave......

[EEVblog]

I am glad that most everyone likes Dave......

You are talking to a biased group here!
I get daily hate mail, and a couple of death threats a year.

[TVman]

I am glad that most everyone likes Dave......

You are talking to a biased group here!
I get daily hate mail, and a couple of death threats a year.

The hate mail makes sense but
Death threats??
What???

GN

[uprightsquire]

There are people who get violent when Dave says that you can never have too many oscilloscopes.

[han]

I am glad that most everyone likes Dave......

You are talking to a biased group here!
I get daily hate mail, and a couple of death threats a year.

The hate mail makes sense but
Death threats??
What???

GN

There are people who get violent when Dave says that you can never have too many oscilloscopes.

The hate mail is probably angry wife because her husband buy lot of Oscilloscope and DMM because of Dave?
But a death threats..that one just gone too far

[zapta]

Good at what? Video blogging or electronics?

And running a successful forum.

[pickle9000]

Threatening Dave that's one thing, but never threaten his test equipment. All the forum members on the planet will be after you. 

[SeanB]

I think Dave got the most hate mail from his using beer to clean his drain. I grew up in a brewery, so I know that there is very little difference from what is in the bottle to what is in the drain. ( cue the hate mail as well!!!!  ) As I no longer drink, and did not really like beer either ( but love the brewers yeast) I am ambivalent on the choice of Dave not to drink, if he does not like the taste it is HIS choice.

I use beer for cooking though, nice to put out the flames on the BBQ. Makes a good ingredient in a marinade as well, free invite to Dave if he ever is in SAfrica to come to a BBQ. No shrimp though, will get him some good game meat instead.

[Rigby]

You are talking to a biased group here!
I get daily hate mail, and a couple of death threats a year.

There are a few ways that I measure success:
1) Number of people whose comfort-zone I've invaded (in terms of things I've done that they don't approve of, technically)
2) Number of people I've angered because of comfort-zone invasion or because I "moved their cheese."
3) Number of people whom I've angered enough to get them to confront me personally.

I try to get at least two-people into #3 per year.  If I don't, then it is because I am not trying hard enough to get people to challenge their perceptions and let go of stupid tradition and habit.  I am not asking people to do silly things, just general procedural stuff that exists only because it exists.  I like to get rid of that BS and automate it, which pisses a lot of people off, because a lot of people have entire jobs dedicated to manual crap that could be done by a computer.

If I don't piss off several of these people per year then I simply am not doing my job.

Dave is doing his job.  But do not misunderstand me: anyone that threatens you is doing so because of a problem that THEY are having, not because of something YOU are doing.  If someone threatens you, they are doing so because there is a whole lot of other stuff going on that they can't deal with; it is not indicative of something you're not doing properly.

Dave knows this, I'm sure, but maybe not everyone understands these, so I type it.

[Corporate666]

I get daily hate mail, and a couple of death threats a year.

Is it people angry that you've banned them from the forum, or something?  I can see brand fanbois getting angry if you bash the product they just dropped a lot of $$ on, but death threats?  What on earth could you possibly do to someone to provoke such a response?  What a bizarre world we live in... sorry to hear about it.

[linux-works]

I am glad that most everyone likes Dave......

You are talking to a biased group here!
I get daily hate mail, and a couple of death threats a year.

you've openly said you are an athiest.  let me guess that that triggers quite a bit of hate mail?

I once had to leave a forum (my own choice) when the rednecks got too out of hand and started threatening me, personally.  there was a lot of political discussion going on and some people really can't accept that others don't think like they do.  it angers them to the point of violence.  I left that forum and never looked back.  (not electronics based, but technical in nature).