Is Arduino killing the electronic hobby?

[FriedMule]

As a beginner do I look for all sort of funny and strange tasks / functions I can get done by building a circuit.
To do that do I use a lot of time to search the internet for simple solutions and explanations.

I.e.: Blinker, detectors, sound generators, remote control, volume control, dimmer and so on and on.
Unfortunately does it get harder to find a great solution, most are hidden among hundreds or even thousands of "solutions" stating the following: "with an Arduino", "just take an Arduino" or "It's super easy, why don't you simply just use an Arduino?"

To me is an Arduino a finished product you write some code too, while electronic is the assembling of discrete components.
Or if we look at paintings: You use years and years to learn to blend colors, get the stroke perfect to finally paint these amazing landscapes, the day after do I grab a camera, snap a picture and say "look it's much easier", but is it the same, even we both have created a picture of the landscape? I am not saying one thing is better than the other, just that it's two different skills, just like Arduino and Electronic is two different skills.

Is Arduino killing the electronic hobby? What do you think? :-)

[ataradov]

No, it does not. It enables more people to do things that they would not have done before.

My issue with Arduino is that sometimes people that only used Arduino assume they know how to do actual product development and apply for the real programming jobs. That never ends well.

The fact that majority of stuff that required a ton of analog circuitry is now better done with $1 microcontroller is not related to Arduino. And Arduino examples for working with sensors or doing interesting things are fully transferable to any other MCU.

[ledtester]

... while electronic is the assembling of discrete components

The way of doing electronics has changed:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/end-of-the-analog-era/

[cortex_m0]

No, an arduino or other microcontroller is a perfectly acceptable piece of "electronics".

I also think modern cheap and powerful microcontrollers allow many things that were either very complicated or impossible decades ago, such as a timer that operates only Monday to Friday, or a display with the ability to interact with the user (via buttons or even bluetooth).

Imagine how much work it would have been in the 1980s to do something as simple as drive a seven-seg display with the setpoint for a thermostat by default, or the current temperature measurement when you press a button. That's certainly not impossible with logic chips, but I'd think it would be enough work to keep most hobbyists from trying. With Arduino, it's not difficult at all.

[themadhippy]

No,if anything its  given what was a dying hobby the kiss of life.

[retiredfeline]

Sure, transistors killed the use of valves. No more electronics hobby. Oh wait...

ICs killed the use of transistors. No more electronics hobby. Oh wait...

Technology advances, hobbyists will always want to have a piece of the latest action. 

[wilfred]

If you go back 30 or 40 years through the electronics magazines the projects featured a wide range of complexities to cater for readers of differing skill levels. Some were quite simple little gadgets. Some were built around a fancy new IC such as an AM/FM tuner or TVTeletext decoder or a Modem or a battery charger. Usually they were produced at a time when the technology was new and expensive and hence the construction was a way to get it cheaper and sometimes even better than commercial options. HiFi Amps was a perennial favourite of the Australian mags.

These days with technology widely available and dirt cheap both literally and in comparison to the "good old days" you just wouldn't do the same things. Microcontrollers and Arduino which doesn't need an external programmer are a logical progression. The hobby would be in worse shape if a generation that carry smartphone in their schoolbags had to get enthused about discrete transistor circuits.

So no, Arduino is not killing electronics as a hobby. Quite the opposite. It is a logical evolutionary step to changing times.

[sleemanj]

I wonder if people said the same about the 555 or other ICs "I want a proper solution with transistors and all I get is people telling me to just use a 555, it's killing the hobby!".

[xrunner]

I don't think Arduino et. al.  is "killing electronics". It involves programming which isn't "electronics" per se. But you can't do a lot with it except flash the on-board LED and send/receive messages unless you interface it to the outside world. When you get to that it involves electronics at anywhere from a very simple thing such as flashing an LED to as far as you want to go with external components. No I don't see it killing electronics at all.

[amyk]

Add "-arduino" to your search results to get rid of 99% of the "maker" crap.

[james_s]

Quite the opposite. The Arduino almost single handedly saved the electronics hobby which was on life support after many years of decline. Things were really bleak for a while, electronics shops were dropping like flies, Radio Shack was still around but it was pretty much just cell phone and crappy RC toy shack. Electronics had gotten so cheap to buy and kits were not any cheaper than off the shelf goods so it was really looking like the hobby would die out almost completely. Then along came Arduino and revolutionized everything, it made microcontrollers accessible to anybody and kickstarted a whole generation of hobbyists building countless unique things, many of which you could not just go buy off the shelf. Now the Arduino platform is far from perfect, it has many warts but despite all this I give it a great deal of credit for what it has accomplished. It has brought millions of new people into a hobby that was all but dead and now it is booming.

[FriedMule]

I read some of you compare it to be going from BJT to IC or a 555 being an end it all solution, but I do not think it's 100% valid.
The différance between "real" electronic and Arduino is that you order an Arduino on the internet, go to your computer, write some code (100% programming) and say you have made a 7 segment display. Many of you wrote about the Arduino saving the electronic, but how? I can go buy all sort of ready-made circuit boards or why not buy them built into a case, write a couple lines of code and say I have built a mini robot. Does that mean I have build a computer if I write a few lines of codes on it? Sorry to phrase it like that but I see the Arduino as a ready-made "Lego" that you can connect to lots of things, just like I can buy AD converter, a clock, a DMM, no knowledge of electronic is needed at all. To me is the Arduino a step away from electronic because this part is already made, you are arrived at step two, using the finished board. Step three could be to mount in a box, Is the next step in the electronic "evolution" that the Arduino comes pre-programmed and all you need is to mount inside your preferred case? Is the last step just to buy it 100% finished?

To me is any programmable chip a great thing that, as some of you say, can do ting that else is near impossible but to use it to make a LED blink, a latching button or even a 555's function, is not electronic but 100%, and that's fine if you love to write code but if you have no idea of Ohm's law, resistance, capacitance and so on, are you in reality enjoying the electronic hubby? :-)

[ataradov]

If your entire problem could be solved by coding, it is good, that problem belongs to MCU world anyway.

But as soon as you need to interface with the real world, you need to figure out signal conditioning and buffering. Look at more complex Arduino-based projects, they can be quite complicated with a lot of analog stuff.

Modern electronics is programmable, deal with it.

Also, the argument that you can as easily blink an LED with 555 or something similar is just wrong. Making 555 work reliably and hold the period and duty cycle over voltage and temperature variations is not trivial. So much not trivial that it is easier and cheaper to use the MCU. With pure analog implementation you often give up accuracy, you just don't tend to notice it.

[george.b]

My issue with Arduino is that sometimes people that only used Arduino assume they know how to do actual product development and apply for the real programming jobs. That never ends well.

Case in point: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/602bb22f8fa8f50388f9f000/Alauda_Airspeeder_Mk_II_UAS_reg_na_03-21.pdf

[Canis Dirus Leidy]

Sorry to phrase it like that but I see the Arduino as a ready-made "Lego" that you can connect to lots of things, just like I can buy AD converter, a clock, a DMM, no knowledge of electronic is needed at all.

(in robotic voice) Ha. Ha. Ha.


(TL&DR: Arduiner discovered the world of electric motors and electromagnetic compatibility.)

[Karel]

Add "-arduino" to your search results to get rid of 99% of the "maker" crap.

LOL 

[mindcrime]

Is Arduino killing the electronic hobby?

No.

[madires]

Nope, Arduino is today's starter drug.

[FriedMule]

My example about the blinking LED was from a forum where a 100% noob asked how one could get a LED to blink, there were no precision or special demands, it was a simple "first-time" projects. Other project in same type: a tone generator, electronic dice, fading LED and all these projects that one may have seen as a young kid. They were all "you have to build a circuit, get the right components, get the PCB made and maybe will it not even work. Take an Arduino, here are some code you can start out on." Yes, you can build your own add-ons to a finished MCU board, but why do that, you can nearly buy everything in professional quality and just connect and code?

The MCU solution may work perfectly, but does it not keep people from trying, since it's hard and takes so much time and may not work"?

I have nothing against the Arduino or other MCU's but to solve every task with "Arduino!!" and drop the soldering, finding components, solve errors and so on, does concern me a bit, particular when I see more "just grab an Arduino" solutions than "try with an op-amp and a 100nF capacitor. :-)

Do any of you know of anyone who started using finished MCU boards that later choose to start with the whole building and soldering part?

[tooki]

I have nothing against the Arduino or other MCU's but to solve every task with "Arduino!!" and drop the soldering, finding components, solve errors and so on, does concern me a bit, particular when I see more "just grab an Arduino" solutions than "try with an op-amp and a 100nF capacitor. :-)

Do any of you know of anyone who started using finished MCU boards that later choose to start with the whole building and soldering part?

I’d hazard that that’s how most electronics hobbyists these days begin. You start with simple, remade building blocks: software libraries, MCU dev boards, overpriced modules/breakout boards, etc. Then as you push up against the limits of those building blocks, you are forced to leave them behind: rolling your own boards. Writing code beyond libraries. Designing interface circuits.

I don’t see what soldering has to do with it. You experiment with discrete components on a breadboard. You experiment with Arduino circuits using jumpers and... breadboards. Either way, that’s not how you build permanent circuits, you solder those.

I completely agree with the people saying that Arduino revitalized what was a moribund hobby.

Besides, what’s wrong with using a $2 dev board to do something instead of $2 in discrete components? Never mind that 4000- and 7400-series logic circuits very, very quickly exceed the cost of accomplishing the same thing with an MCU — but the MCU is infinitely more flexible.

Sure, a $2 MCU board is overkill for a simple 50% duty cycle LED blinker. But think about something as simple as a blinker that alternates between a short and long flash (for example, a H-L-HHH-L pattern). In an MCU, that’s trivial to do (think “write(H), delay(200), write(L), delay(200), write(H), delay(600), write(L)” or using a counter and switch case statements to do the same without blocking) whereas it’s appreciably harder to do in discrete logic, and requires a great deal more knowledge about what parts are available, and the “gotchas” of using them.

Sure, there’s a certain elegance to old-school circuits. But that doesn’t mean they make the most practical sense, nor do I think we should look down on those who don’t want to start with that kind of circuit.

[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 . 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]

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.

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.