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Is Arduino killing the electronic hobby?

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rstofer:

--- Quote from: Zero999 on June 27, 2021, 10:39:46 am ---Well there's safety critical software., which does have to work and not kill anyone. I put a lot of the blame on those who commission the services of software companies. A government organisation, such as the UK's national health service, should write penalty clauses into the contract, with software companies, stating that they're responsible for damages if it goes wrong.

--- End quote ---

I don't disagree but the premiums for "Errors and Omissions Insurance" are going to be staggering.  In fact, the premiums are likely greater than the base contract.

Imagine how much money Internet based companies would have to pay if they were held accountable for all the hacks that reveal customer's identity and credit card info.  But I agree, they should be held accountable.

More so for life safety failings, of course!

rstofer:
Back to Arduino...

In another thread on the Beginners Forum, I showed an Analog Discover 2 project displaying the rise and fall curves of an RC circuit.  The AD2 is very expensive so I wanted a cheaper solution.

The 555 comes to mind, it's a great solution as long as the circuit will produce 50% duty cycle.  Still, there's a lot of messing around wiring everything up on a breadboard.  Some form of external power is required.

Enter the Arduino Nano.  It took exactly 1 line of code to create a symmetric square wave source of very nearly exactly 80 Hz.  The statement:  "tone(2,80)" in the setup() function.  All of the boilerplate setup() and loop() functions are provided by the IDE.  Yes, one line of code and I had my square wave.

I plugged the Nano into the breadboard, plugged the resistor between pin 2 and one leg of the capacitor and the other leg went to ground.  I used the USB programming cable to provide power.
 Pretty quick!

I didn't want elegance, I wanted a square wave.  The Nano is a pretty slick solution for less than $5 and the device is serially reusable.  The cost can be spread over a number of breadboard projects.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/what-an-oscilloscope-recommended-for-a-woman-passionate-about-electronics/msg3594603/#msg3594603

Reply #906 has the final image for the charge/discharge waveform

Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: rstofer on June 27, 2021, 11:36:23 am ---Back to Arduino... [...] It took exactly 1 line of code to create a symmetric square wave source of very nearly exactly 80 Hz.
--- End quote ---
And do consider what this means for anyone starting electronics as a hobby.

I think it is very similar to how in the 1980s my friends and I painstakingly copied Basic code off computer magazines, saved to cheap and slow cassette tapes, and were elated after several hours of work to see a funny little game or program producing visible results: we did that with our own effort.

It is true that some never advance from that stage; that alone is/was fun enough.

More important is how that kind of experience shaped those that did decide to dig deeper, designing their own code from scratch –– the first I designed were mazes and a jump-over-the-obstacle stuff.  A few decades later, I am no longer limited by my skill, only by my own imagination and effort required.  That sort of power of creation is intoxicating.

Instead of evaluating Arduino based on how many stay at that stage, we should evaluate the effect of Arduino on electronics as a hobby and as a profession based on those who do advance from Arduino to "truer" electronics.

After all, thing not happening could be due to any number of reasons, so it is more sane to focus on those that did happen; and compare those two categories qualitatively, not quantitatively: why, not how many.

I would bet real money that most structural and mechanical engineers played with Lego Technics, Meccano, or similar toys as children, for example.

(I do worry about chemistry and similar, since things like chemistry sets are considered Dangerous And Not For Kids anymore.  To say nothing of climbing in trees and playing with your friends without direct continuous adult supervision, and what that means wrt. attitude towards physical exercise and personal responsibilities later in life.)

DiTBho:

--- Quote from: RoGeorge on June 23, 2021, 04:55:05 pm ---- Is Arduino killing the electronic hobby?
- Is the other way around.  Electronic hobby is killing Arduino.  With every day.  Countless Arduino are misused, abused and killed in electronic hobby.  It's a massacre out there, a true Arduino genocide, I tell you!  ;D

--- End quote ---

LOL & RIP  :D

rstofer:

--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on June 27, 2021, 01:21:50 pm ---Instead of evaluating Arduino based on how many stay at that stage, we should evaluate the effect of Arduino on electronics as a hobby and as a profession based on those who do advance from Arduino to "truer" electronics.

After all, thing not happening could be due to any number of reasons, so it is more sane to focus on those that did happen; and compare those two categories qualitatively, not quantitatively: why, not how many.

--- End quote ---

I have been writing code since 1970 and playing with uCs since I bought the Altair 8800 in '75.  It wasn't much of a system at the start with just 256 bytes of RAM but it wasn't long before systems were fully populated with 64k.  A 4k memory board cost $400.

Given that background, I have never given much thought to the Arduino.  I just pick one up off the bench and do something with it.  They've been around here for a long time, I probably have more than a dozen of various flavors.

As a result of this thread, I'm beginning to suspect that the Arduino is the most important device in modern electronics and it is aimed right at the beginners.  The range of potential projects is enormous.  Variations on the theme include WiFi and networking.  There are larger AVR devices and the IDE, for better or worse, supports even more capable devices like the Teensy 4.1 which is a blazing fast uC.

OK, I concede that using the Arduino is likely to be more code than wire but that's just the nature of modern electronics.  The good news is that libraries provide most of the code and you can create a useful project with just a single line of user code.

And, yes, the Raspberry Pi is right up there on the importance scale as well.  Who would have thought that Linux could run on such a small board?  It gets better!

I always wanted a PDP-11/70 and now I have two!  They are the PiDP11 boxes that use a Pi to emulate the PDP-11 and even in emulation, they are faster than the original.  Playing with Fortran, Pascal and Assembly Language for the PDP-11 is fun!  Running a full version of Unix means all the tools are there along with networking.  Very slick!  OK, there's no GUI but there isn't supposed to be.  The world ran on Telnet and FTP back in the day.

https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11

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