Accessibility of Hardware and Software

[Abstr7ct]

Lately, I've been literally arguing myself about electronics and programming, or in other words, hardware and software. Before I go any further, let me introduce myself a little bit. I haven't been exposed to the exciting world of electronics hobby until two years ago when I was introduced to breadboards and physical electronic components in an electric circuit analysis course in college. Before that time, I thought that these components and lab equipments are out of my reach because I wasn't aware that there are distributors which are specialized in selling these components and equipments; I thought that it's only accessible to universities, labs and businesses.

I generally enjoy doing electronics and embedded software work. I feel that I can taste the code that I wrote and the electrons that flow through the circuit, and they taste very delicious. Going back to complete the first line of the topic, the arguing, that was sparked by a bit of frustration, is about the accessibility of having electronics hardware as a hobby.

I recently bought a used DS1052E oscilloscope and to complete the group, I ought to buy a DC power supply and a function generator. I decided to look for these two equipments via the local lab equipment distributors. There's only one distributor that I know in the city, so I went to there and I was surprised by the very high prices. For example, they sell Mastech HY3005F at 1066+$ and 130$ for an unknown MCH-303DB. It's apparent that these prices are targeted toward businesses and universities and there are barely any products for hobby-level work apart from a few breadboards and an overpriced Uni-T UT33A multimeter. They sell the latter at 50$.

The prices go too much unfriendly for a hobbyist. For example, A PIC16F84 mcu is sold at 7 USD/unit. This may be justified because they buy in wholesale these chips and have them shipped to the stockroom. Anyhow, you now get the idea of how unfriendly the prices for a hobbyist are. The same thing goes for the availability of what you need. Sometimes when looking for an IC, you don't find it at any local distributor. What do you do at this case? order one tiny IC from the internet and have it shipped at 30+$? you pay and wait for a week or more until the tiny IC knocks on your door!   

This had me to develop a bit of frustration, so I questioned myself, should I ditch hardware completely and switch to application software (i.e. developing computer applications)? apparently the difference in accessibility is vast. To work on computer applications, I won't need to buy an overpriced power supply, nor wait for a 30$ shipped IC to knock on my door.  Instead, all I would need, is a fully free IDE package bundled with a free compiler. Don't understand me wrong that I try to promote computer software hobby over electronics hobby because after all this forum is all about electronics, but all I need is to hear and read your experience on this matter. How do you deal with buying lab equipments and shipping? how hard is it for you to have ICs available at reasonable prices and at quick? I believe that you answers would encourage me that I'm not alone in this world.

[marshallh]

Yes, many software people when they try to do hardware get frustrated because there is no immediate feedback. Your decision and revision loop is measure in weeks, not minutes. That's hardware.

A friend of mine pushed himself and made a very good effort on a 4layer pcb. It was almost fully working except it had a critical mistake. He was actually very disturbed and annoyed, because it would take weeks for the fix to come back, whereas if it was a small bug in C++ it would be fixed in 5 minutes and patch pushed to all users.

You can easily waste a lot of time unless you plan things out. I stack up designs I send out and pipeline them so I always have new stuff coming back. Since it takes over a month usually for the pcbs and parts to show up if you want to make progress you'll have to adapt and change the way you approach things.
Once you're mentally trained like this you'll never want to buy local anymore

[nctnico]

Magic word: simulation
If you know how to use a simulator (*) you can simulate tricky parts of a circuit of figure out why it is not working.

(*) Yes this takes time to learn.

[Abstr7ct]

Guys, it looks like that you didn't read the topic from start to end. I'm not talking about the time needed to debug a circuit or a software. I'm asking to write your experience in regard to buying lab equipments and electronic components, specifically about how much access you do have when needing some. My major complaint about working on hardware, is that it takes much more time and money than application software. In hardware, your project/experiment may be put on hold just because you couldn't find an IC in a local distributor. What do you do now? order this one tiny IC, pay an expensive shipping costs and wait for a week or more until it knocks on your door? this doesn't happen in application software because you wouldn't need to search distributors looking for a library function, nor you would pay for having this function since it's most likely available everywhere on the internet or in reference books.

I just want to read your experience in this regard because I've suffered lately looking for a decent power supply with a reasonable price locally in order to avoid shipping costs. I just want to see that it's common in hardware to go through this and it's not something exclusive to my experience. Show me your sufferings!

[Zbig]

I just want to read your experience in this regard because I've suffered lately looking for a decent power supply with a reasonable price locally in order to avoid shipping costs. I just want to see that it's common in hardware to go through this and it's not something exclusive to my experience. Show me your sufferings!

I'm sorry, I'm not really that much into BDSM, can't help you there. I do it for fun.

Things cost money. Shipping takes time. We're (mostly) grown-ups and make our own decisions. Had electronics and waiting and paying for stuff made me suffer, I'd switch to something more instantly-gratifying. Like haikus.

Most. Pointless. Thread. Ever.