General > General Technical Chat
Is Arduino killing the electronic hobby?
madires:
Some started with solderless electronics science kits. It's not important how you start, it's about getting bitten by the electronics bug. Maybe a kid just wants to blink an LED for fun and won't get bitten. If bitten, the kid will start asking about how things work. Then you got the chance to explain astable multivibrators.
Siwastaja:
Yes and Arduino isn't any worse than BASIC Stamp for example which was "the Arduino" before Arduino.
The only thing that pisses me off are people that come to me saying I'm stupid because I don't build actual products using Arduino |O. You know, people who actually think Arduino is the greatest pinnacle of engineering and you don't need to design anything, just plug in Arduino shields and you can build anything.
Karel:
--- Quote from: madires on June 20, 2021, 11:38:53 am ---Some started with solderless electronics science kits. It's not important how you start, it's about getting bitten by the electronics bug. Maybe a kid just wants to blink an LED for fun and won't get bitten. If bitten, the kid will start asking about how things work. Then you got the chance to explain astable multivibrators.
--- End quote ---
I did! My older brother got this kit when I was a little kid. He played with it 3 times and that was it.
Than I took posession of it and I got addicted for the rest of my life.
GlennSprigg:
Hmmm.... I guess it is all "Horses for Courses"...
If 'someone' is a true 'beginner', like most of us 'were once', then one could argue that one needs to start at the
beginning, by grasping individual Resistors, Capacitors, Transistors & Diodes etc etc. and how they can/may interact.
So... to ME, having a bunch of 'Black-Box' devices does NOT educate someone at all... I understand 'Black-Box' technology,
and how this can be portrayed even within the likes of such multitude of 'IC's' these days. You do not need to 'understand'
what happens within such devices, but simply to 'accept' the utilization of a multitude of Inputs & Outputs!!...
But what have you 'Learnt' ???
I understand the NEED for such levels of technology, where one only 'understands' what they need to know...
However, all such 'Arduino' style devices are TOTALLY counter intuitive, in regards to 'someone' actually understanding what
is really going on under the hood!! It's just "plug in A to B, and maybe see result C...
It's convenient, but there is NO learning??????
fourfathom:
I think the Arduino is encouraging people to learn electronics, sometimes via the back door, rather than the front. It can be a "gateway" none the less.
A while ago I got a query via the local geek network, asking if I could help out at the High School STEM center. Some kids were building a submersible ROV, and they were using Arduinos and Arduino-style steppers and servos. That part was working, but only sort-of. They had Fritzing "schematics" (more like protoboard layout diagrams), and I guarantee that they didn't understand Ohm's Law. I took them step-by-step as we dug into the problems they were having, mainly caused by long daisy-chained ground paths, with motors and logic sharing a single ground-wire jumper chain. That, and some open jumpers and some cold-soldered joysticks.
When we were done it was working solidly, and I think the kids actually learned a bit about basic electricity. Perhaps some of them will want to learn more. That's how I started -- when I was ten years old I a friend's father was showing us how to modify war-surplus (WW2 tube) radios. I was cutting and re-wiring, soldering, simple sheet-metal work, and learning a little about circuits in the process. I didn't know Ohm's Law, how vacuum tubes worked, really much at all. But I learned that I could make things work, much like the non-EE Arduino crowd.
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