are drawing normal schematics a dying art?

[fourfathom]

If you want to build a circuit you SHOULD take the time and effort to sit down and work out how it functions and what the components are doing. If you're blindly following a guide, slotting modules together or doing the electrical equivalent of "dot to dot" kids books, then don't you DARE go and show off your copied device to someone, boasting and accepting praise. People ARE VERY lazy nowadays - they want the rewards and adulation without the hard work (look at society too - Instagram nonsense etc - everyone's constantly out having a huge "party", and yet they've got nothing of any substance to be celebrating, if ANYTHING - it's an attention seeking generation)

This was my initial reaction to the "Make movement".  Copying a blinking LED project???  Pathetic!

After a few minutes, remembering how I personally started in this field, I changed my mind.  Yes, I started before I was ten years old and it turned into a rewarding career, but I see no reason to disparage an adult who wants to build something.  If they advance from there that's great, but if a MAKE magazine project is as far as they get it's still so much better than passively watching television or playing video games.

[T3sl4co1l]

Heck, I mean I make a "blinking LED" project every time I'm picking up a new platform.  Granted that's a rather more abstract affair, but you never stop doing "blinking LED" projects at some level or another.

Tim

[fourfathom]

Heck, I mean I make a "blinking LED" project every time I'm picking up a new platform.  Granted that's a rather more abstract affair, but you never stop doing "blinking LED" projects at some level or another.

Tim

Yes, me too.  It's the "Hello World" of hardware / firmware.  And that blinkable LED can really help later in the debugging!

[T3sl4co1l]

My typical progression has been:
1. It has GPIO? Blinking LED.
2. It has serial?  Put a console on it.  (Now I can inspect memory, run commands of my own design, etc.)
3. It has graphics? Put a raycaster on it.  Or Doom if it's got enough power.

Tim

[eti]

If I taught an electronics class, I'd teach them to blink an LED using an oscillator, but mention that a uc is a possibility, but wouldn't demonstrate it; that'd be moving from electronics into programming. I don't "care" how you blink one, but why go to all that silicon expense for such a trivial operation?

[fourfathom]

I don't "care" how you blink one, but why go to all that silicon expense for such a trivial operation?

Because you can?  Because it's cheaper?  Or you want it to blink in morse code?  Does it matter?  Actually, I don't care either, but I don't think that's the point.

[eti]

I don't "care" how you blink one, but why go to all that silicon expense for such a trivial operation?

Because you can?  Because it's cheaper?  Or you want it to blink in morse code?  Does it matter?  Actually, I don't care either, but I don't think that's the point.

We're talking about a simple cyclic flashing, not Morse code. Clearly it's "horses for courses", and would rather daft to design a discrete transistor solution for Morse code, although it would be a feat worthy of praise.

From a teaching *actual* electronics perspective, it teaches far more to impart the knowledge to make them self-sufficient, and learn how to use the bare essentials such as transistors, or failing that a relay and caps, (and not be tethered to a PC and some silly SDK to make it happen), and not dependant on a specific UC (or any).

If one is to learn electronics, then teach them it, not how to setup a PC & SDK just for that. Teach them how to make an LED flash with a few random transistors, and they'll always have a way of doing so.

Laziness is a modern epidemic. Any excuse to take the least.effort route and pull some nonsense off GitHub for such trivia. It's actually amusing that anyone would want to teach this way "just because you can". Find the most simple and efficient solution, not the one that "everyone else uses".

I can make a neon flash with a diode, a cap and a resistor, it's far more rewarding AND they simultaneously learn about the theory of operation.

https://www.build-electronic-circuits.com/blinking-led-circuit/

K.I.S.S. 

[Berni]

If I taught an electronics class, I'd teach them to blink an LED using an oscillator, but mention that a uc is a possibility, but wouldn't demonstrate it; that'd be moving from electronics into programming. I don't "care" how you blink one, but why go to all that silicon expense for such a trivial operation?

It's usually about the journey, not the destination.

You usually don't actually need the blinking LED for anything, its just a convenient indicator that whatever you connected it to is working. So if you are trying to learn how to use a microcontroller it is the best first goal to do. You have to learn how to walk before you learn how to run. Heck even i constantly make blinking LED programs as a hello world on the first prototype of a project. It gives me a nice indication that the processor is alive and running, that my MCUs clocks and PLLs and dividers and whatnot are set correctly for the blink speed, that my IDE is configured correctly to spit out working code that is placed in the correct spot in memory..etc. A lot of ducks had to get in a row for that LED to do its thing.

If you are learning about analog electronics then make it blink in using transistors instead.

That being said MCUs are often a sensible economical solution for a trivial problem. They can be bought for <0.50$ in small volume off DigiKey and often require 0 external components do to the job. So as long as you need anything more than just a constant frequency blink it will actually be cheaper to use a tiny 6 pin MCU, also its more compact. I went down the path of designing an analog circuit for a easy task, only to get half way there, realize this takes a lot of components to do properly, then throw it away and replace it with a MCU. Things like a delayed off for the light in my garage, turning on the driveway lights when it gets dark etc..

[fourfathom]

I can make a neon flash with a diode, a cap and a resistor, it's far more rewarding AND they simultaneously learn about the theory of operation.

The neon bulb relaxation oscillator was my first blinking light! (about 55 years ago)  And I agree about learning by starting with the simple fundamentals.  But if someone starts by copying something more complicated, that's OK with me.  If it interests them they will eventually get around to the fundamentals.  In my early years I learned a lot by building something I didn't understand, then figuring out how to make it do something different.   We don't all start out on the same path.  And I doubt that we actually disagree on any of this very much, if at all.

[SL4P]

A schematic / circuit diagram is part of the project DOCUMENTATION.

The PCB layout is a tool that assists with manufacturing.
You can still build the project without a PCB ( think old style point-point) wiring…
BUT you can’t build or repair a moderately complex circuit with any reliability - without a schematic.

[Zero999]

So as long as you need anything more than just a constant frequency blink it will actually be cheaper to use a tiny 6 pin MCU, also its more compact. I went down the path of designing an analog circuit for a easy task, only to get half way there, realize this takes a lot of components to do properly, then throw it away and replace it with a MCU.

You can't get much cheaper than a Schmitt trigger IC, such as the 74HC1G14 + RC circuit and costs less than the cheapest MCU, in small quantities.

If all I wanted was a flashing LED, just use a self-flashing LED: no discrete components, or coding required!

[eti]

So as long as you need anything more than just a constant frequency blink it will actually be cheaper to use a tiny 6 pin MCU, also its more compact. I went down the path of designing an analog circuit for a easy task, only to get half way there, realize this takes a lot of components to do properly, then throw it away and replace it with a MCU.

You can't get much cheaper than a Schmitt trigger IC, such as the 74HC1G14 + RC circuit and costs less than the cheapest MCU, in small quantities.

If all I wanted was a flashing LED, just use a self-flashing LED: no discrete components, or coding required!

I remember seeing flashing red LEDs in “Tandy” in the UK, back in the 90s, for about £4, and I recall thinking what a ripoff it was 😁

It was, but they’re great.

[Berni]

So as long as you need anything more than just a constant frequency blink it will actually be cheaper to use a tiny 6 pin MCU, also its more compact. I went down the path of designing an analog circuit for a easy task, only to get half way there, realize this takes a lot of components to do properly, then throw it away and replace it with a MCU.

You can't get much cheaper than a Schmitt trigger IC, such as the 74HC1G14 + RC circuit and costs less than the cheapest MCU, in small quantities.

If all I wanted was a flashing LED, just use a self-flashing LED: no discrete components, or coding required!

Yes this is why i brought up flashing with something more than just a fixed frequency. Like you want it to flash 3 times upon seeing a rising edge on a input, or you want it to flash in a pattern of 2 flashes every x seconds. Or perhaps you also want a certain beep to accompany it. There are lots of these simple tasks that sound like a pretty dumb task for a MCU, yet still require a fair number of components to put together. The use of a MCU also provides easy communicability as sometimes when you first put together the prototype you find it doesn't work that well and needs to work slightly differently, no need to bodge circuitry onto it, just change a few lines of code.

It is indeed much less satisfying of a solution, but it gets the job done.

For example the task of turning on the lights when it gets dark is easy to do in analog, its one of the most basic projects. But i wanted this thing to be fairly robust, so i used a IR sensor that can't see light from the CFL bulbs (White LEDs ware not quite there yet back then), but it can see halogen car headlights, yet i don't want to unnecessarily cycle the CFL bulbs. So i needed a really slow low pass filter, it turned out to be annoying to make without huge capacitors or high impedance nodes (this is outside so i don't want high impedance) then i also need a schmitt tiger, then i also wanted to lock out changing state for 15 minute after a turn on, again requiring a slow timer. In the end a MCU with a A4 paper worth of code was the solution and its still running today. The 'cost saving' was made even more significant since it was a one off done on perfboard, so extra components mean more work to wire it all up.

[Zero999]

So as long as you need anything more than just a constant frequency blink it will actually be cheaper to use a tiny 6 pin MCU, also its more compact. I went down the path of designing an analog circuit for a easy task, only to get half way there, realize this takes a lot of components to do properly, then throw it away and replace it with a MCU.

You can't get much cheaper than a Schmitt trigger IC, such as the 74HC1G14 + RC circuit and costs less than the cheapest MCU, in small quantities.

If all I wanted was a flashing LED, just use a self-flashing LED: no discrete components, or coding required!

I remember seeing flashing red LEDs in “Tandy” in the UK, back in the 90s, for about £4, and I recall thinking what a ripoff it was 😁

It was, but they’re great.

Everything was expensive in Tandy. Basic components, such as a plain old TO-92 BJT, 741, 555 timer etc. cost around £1 each. They used to be sold in blister packs with the component sealed inside a vacuum formed bubble, stuck to a piece of cardboard, with a basic datasheet printed on the back. Worse still, the packaging wasn't even ESD proof. I'm pretty sure I had bought faulty components from Tandy, but as I was only 12 at the time and a complete beginner, I didn't have the confidence to complain, as I thought it might've been my fault.

I remember seeing a few empty packets in the store. Either someone had stolen the components, or the glue had started to fail, allowing them to fall on the floor and presumably vacuumed up. They probably lost as many parts, as they sold.

I remember discovering Maplin, which was much cheaper and sold a greater range of components, but there wasn't one in my town, so my dad occasionally drove me 10 miles to go there. Eventually a Maplin did open near me, but by then Tandy had gone and it had deteriorated to the point of being useless, for most things.

[eti]

So as long as you need anything more than just a constant frequency blink it will actually be cheaper to use a tiny 6 pin MCU, also its more compact. I went down the path of designing an analog circuit for a easy task, only to get half way there, realize this takes a lot of components to do properly, then throw it away and replace it with a MCU.

You can't get much cheaper than a Schmitt trigger IC, such as the 74HC1G14 + RC circuit and costs less than the cheapest MCU, in small quantities.

If all I wanted was a flashing LED, just use a self-flashing LED: no discrete components, or coding required!

I remember seeing flashing red LEDs in “Tandy” in the UK, back in the 90s, for about £4, and I recall thinking what a ripoff it was 😁

It was, but they’re great.

Everything was expensive in Tandy. Basic components, such as a plain old TO-92 BJT, 741, 555 timer etc. cost around £1 each. They used to be sold in blister packs with the component sealed inside a vacuum formed bubble, stuck to a piece of cardboard, with a basic datasheet printed on the back. Worse still, the packaging wasn't even ESD proof. I'm pretty sure I had bought faulty components from Tandy, but as I was only 12 at the time and a complete beginner, I didn't have the confidence to complain, as I thought it might've been my fault.

I remember seeing a few empty packets in the store. Either someone had stolen the components, or the glue had started to fail, allowing them to fall on the floor and presumably vacuumed up. They probably lost as many parts, as they sold.

I remember discovering Maplin, which was much cheaper and sold a greater range of components, but there wasn't one in my town, so my dad occasionally drove me 10 miles to go there. Eventually a Maplin did open near me, but by then Tandy had gone and it had deteriorated to the point of being useless, for most things.

Yeah I remember seeing the same poor old CPU sitting on their shelves for many years, cardboard fading. I can’t imagine anyone needing such a niche product or knowing what it was, in our rather basic, backwater town. 😂

[vk6zgo]

So as long as you need anything more than just a constant frequency blink it will actually be cheaper to use a tiny 6 pin MCU, also its more compact. I went down the path of designing an analog circuit for a easy task, only to get half way there, realize this takes a lot of components to do properly, then throw it away and replace it with a MCU.

You can't get much cheaper than a Schmitt trigger IC, such as the 74HC1G14 + RC circuit and costs less than the cheapest MCU, in small quantities.

If all I wanted was a flashing LED, just use a self-flashing LED: no discrete components, or coding required!

I remember seeing flashing red LEDs in “Tandy” in the UK, back in the 90s, for about £4, and I recall thinking what a ripoff it was 😁

It was, but they’re great.

Everything was expensive in Tandy. Basic components, such as a plain old TO-92 BJT, 741, 555 timer etc. cost around £1 each. They used to be sold in blister packs with the component sealed inside a vacuum formed bubble, stuck to a piece of cardboard, with a basic datasheet printed on the back. Worse still, the packaging wasn't even ESD proof. I'm pretty sure I had bought faulty components from Tandy, but as I was only 12 at the time and a complete beginner, I didn't have the confidence to complain, as I thought it might've been my fault.

I remember seeing a few empty packets in the store. Either someone had stolen the components, or the glue had started to fail, allowing them to fall on the floor and presumably vacuumed up. They probably lost as many parts, as they sold.

I remember discovering Maplin, which was much cheaper and sold a greater range of components, but there wasn't one in my town, so my dad occasionally drove me 10 miles to go there. Eventually a Maplin did open near me, but by then Tandy had gone and it had deteriorated to the point of being useless, for most things.

In Oz, sometimes Tandy would have some weird bit that nobody else had, but at an exorbitant price, or other times, it was just easier to "bite the bullet" & pay up for a common component, rather than drive a couple of suburbs away to Dick Smith.

On the former point, the bloke next door came over with his daughter's intermittent car radio for me to "take a look at".

All pretty standard, except for a largish DIP audio amp IC, which turned out to have a temperature sensitive fault, & more importantly, was "unobtainium" in Oz.(this was pre-Internet!)

After looking everywhere, I was just about to give up, when whilst browsing in Tandy, I saw an audio IC in a vacuum pack, that someone had put on the hook with the cardboard back, showing a suggested application, facing out.

It was "near as dammit" the same as the one I needed, except in a totally different, single inline package, with a heatsink tab on top.

As luck would have it, there was enough room to attach it to the radio's side panel, & by using  a bunch of  conductors stripped out of a multi cored phone cable, I was able to do a reasonably neat job of connecting it up.

It went "first go"---no more temperature sensitive failures.

No more "Mr Fixit" for me, either, I pleaded too much work from my real job!

 

[eti]

So as long as you need anything more than just a constant frequency blink it will actually be cheaper to use a tiny 6 pin MCU, also its more compact. I went down the path of designing an analog circuit for a easy task, only to get half way there, realize this takes a lot of components to do properly, then throw it away and replace it with a MCU.

You can't get much cheaper than a Schmitt trigger IC, such as the 74HC1G14 + RC circuit and costs less than the cheapest MCU, in small quantities.

If all I wanted was a flashing LED, just use a self-flashing LED: no discrete components, or coding required!

I remember seeing flashing red LEDs in “Tandy” in the UK, back in the 90s, for about £4, and I recall thinking what a ripoff it was 😁

It was, but they’re great.

Everything was expensive in Tandy. Basic components, such as a plain old TO-92 BJT, 741, 555 timer etc. cost around £1 each. They used to be sold in blister packs with the component sealed inside a vacuum formed bubble, stuck to a piece of cardboard, with a basic datasheet printed on the back. Worse still, the packaging wasn't even ESD proof. I'm pretty sure I had bought faulty components from Tandy, but as I was only 12 at the time and a complete beginner, I didn't have the confidence to complain, as I thought it might've been my fault.

I remember seeing a few empty packets in the store. Either someone had stolen the components, or the glue had started to fail, allowing them to fall on the floor and presumably vacuumed up. They probably lost as many parts, as they sold.

I remember discovering Maplin, which was much cheaper and sold a greater range of components, but there wasn't one in my town, so my dad occasionally drove me 10 miles to go there. Eventually a Maplin did open near me, but by then Tandy had gone and it had deteriorated to the point of being useless, for most things.

In Oz, sometimes Tandy would have some weird bit that nobody else had, but at an exorbitant price, or other times, it was just easier to "bite the bullet" & pay up for a common component, rather than drive a couple of suburbs away to Dick Smith.

On the former point, the bloke next door came over with his daughter's intermittent car radio for me to "take a look at".

All pretty standard, except for a largish DIP audio amp IC, which turned out to have a temperature sensitive fault, & more importantly, was "unobtainium" in Oz.(this was pre-Internet!)

After looking everywhere, I was just about to give up, when whilst browsing in Tandy, I saw an audio IC in a vacuum pack, that someone had put on the hook with the cardboard back, showing a suggested application, facing out.

It was "near as dammit" the same as the one I needed, except in a totally different, single inline package, with a heatsink tab on top.

As luck would have it, there was enough room to attach it to the radio's side panel, & by using  a bunch of  conductors stripped out of a multi cored phone cable, I was able to do a reasonably neat job of connecting it up.

It went "first go"---no more temperature sensitive failures.

No more "Mr Fixit" for me, either, I pleaded too much work from my real job!

Aaah! Car radios! I absolutely adore that format and the compact nature of clever mechanical things coupled with a very dense electronics. I am now casting my mind back to my teenager years where my boy racer friends would ask me “please wire up my stereo, Matthew.” (muggins  here couldn’t say no, 🙃) or the DREADED “Moss” car alarms, which even at the tender age of 17, I was perceptive enough to sense were a “trend”, and utter junk! 😝

Car electrics are tedious and cramped, and the crusty, crude wiring looms which are nothing but a bunch of wires encased in spiral-wound insulation tape and the endless mismatched and poorly made bodge connections which silently tell the history of the owners of the logbook. Ughhhh

[johnboxall]

Everything was expensive in Tandy.

A free 9V battery every month made up for it. Tandy did some things right - as a kid I would pay off those pocket BASIC computers using lay-by. Would have hundreds of the yellow hand-written slips over my high-school days.

[james_s]

Everything was expensive in Tandy. Basic components, such as a plain old TO-92 BJT, 741, 555 timer etc. cost around £1 each. They used to be sold in blister packs with the component sealed inside a vacuum formed bubble, stuck to a piece of cardboard, with a basic datasheet printed on the back. Worse still, the packaging wasn't even ESD proof. I'm pretty sure I had bought faulty components from Tandy, but as I was only 12 at the time and a complete beginner, I didn't have the confidence to complain, as I thought it might've been my fault.

I remember seeing a few empty packets in the store. Either someone had stolen the components, or the glue had started to fail, allowing them to fall on the floor and presumably vacuumed up. They probably lost as many parts, as they sold.

I remember discovering Maplin, which was much cheaper and sold a greater range of components, but there wasn't one in my town, so my dad occasionally drove me 10 miles to go there. Eventually a Maplin did open near me, but by then Tandy had gone and it had deteriorated to the point of being useless, for most things.

It was relatively expensive, but there wasn't anywhere else around, at least not that I knew of at the time. Radio Shack was in every shopping mall and when I was a kid it was the most interesting store there was in the mall and always the place I wanted to go to first whenever I was in one. The problem I had with them was not the prices but the fact that they almost NEVER had all the parts needed to build ANYTHING, even the projects in their own books they sold. You could get a lot of common ICs and stuff like LEDs and switches and project boxes, but they never seemed to have all of the values of resistors or capacitors I needed, it was always something. Eventually I learned about Digikey somehow, I think they randomly sent me a catalog but even then I had to make a list and get my mom to call and order things because I didn't have a checkbook or credit card when I was a kid.