| General > General Technical Chat |
| Countless tempting projects, yet none really needed, now what? |
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| pqass:
There are different goals at play. You don't need or want a productionized implementation for every design idea you come across. A simulation or one-of-kind prototype may be enough to internalize it. It'll be in preparation for your Magnum Opus one day. If you come across an existing implementation that meets your needs, that you can use to leverage in pursuit of another goal, buy it. You don't want to spend most of your time building your tools. Because someone can [now] produce a well executed implementation doesn't mean your effort will be worthless. If you go the build route, do so to prove your mastery. It will never be identical. We riff off each other to evolve the state of the art. |
| Smokey:
The only way to really learn a thing is to do the thing. If you make a habit of taking the opportunity to do some new thing, it opens up the possibilities for the next new thing down the line. Watching Youtube videos of other people doing things is no substitute for actually doing the thing yourself. |
| woofy:
I don't consider any hobby project a waste of time, no matter how far it progresses - or not. The experience you build up doing it is invaluable. The hardware and software snippets you create doing so can be used again in paying projects. Confidence and enthusiasm are two things that go down well with customers. |
| Infraviolet:
One thing you can try for "new" ideas in electronics is looking at the datasheet of one of the fancy "does it all for you" chips for something like a sensor application, then have a go at building up circuits from more ordinary components to replicate the same functionality (albeit with much more board area and perhaps reduced performance on some (though usually not all) measures. |
| NiHaoMike:
--- Quote from: RoGeorge on October 12, 2023, 03:19:48 pm ---Or, if you really need the device, then most probably it can be bought ready made. With more performance and for less money than your DIY. :-// --- End quote --- Try to focus on obscure and/or high margin areas, that's where DIY ends up cheaper more often. One great example are those $30 TPA3255 amplifier boards, the same boards already installed in an enclosure get marked up a lot more than the cost of the enclosure. While you're at it, you could pick an enclosure big enough to hold some other boards like a power supply and DAC, giving you the option to customize. Then there's the middle ground between "DIY from scratch" and "buy a product that does what you need out of the box". Most commonly, that would be buying something and modifying it. A great example would be modding LED bulbs to run at lower power for improved lifetime. Or reflashing off the shelf products with community developed open source software. |
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