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Is the electronics hobby dead?
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chris_leyson:
There is nothing wrong with Arduinos and Raspberry pies, at least you can connect to real world hardware unlike a PC which is slowly loosing I/O ports or an Ipad which won't interface to anything apart from wifi  :palm: Youngsters are learning to code these days which isn't a bad thing, later on they may turn their attention to digital signal processing, software defind radio, control algorithms or robots just to mention a few aspects. I think hardware skills are now being replaced by software skills. Some or perhaps most of todays electronics from a hobby point of view you couldn't even imagine back in the 70's and 80's.
homebrew:

--- Quote from: Buriedcode on July 10, 2016, 01:51:09 pm ---Also remember, those who post their projects  - the projects you read about on tech websites, forums etc.. are biased towards projects that are either really useful to people, so they share - niches like RC, meteorology, audio, guitar pedals - or those who just want to show off.  I suspect that there are many many things people have designed to solve a problem they have, being very clever about it, but don't' feel the need to post because it was so specific to their need, and was done 'to solve the problem' rather than share.  If one was to try and capture the general state of 'hobbyist electronics' by googling, they would probably see much more of the above than anything else, but that doesn't mean to say its so.

--- End quote ---

That indeed may be sooo true. One person's point of view is always heavily influenced by his environment. And in my environment I've seen so many people buying these "starter kits" and not a single one of them got into electronics by any means.

I would be more than happy to be wrong. But that's why I started this thread in the first place.
rdl:
There's always differences between those who think arduinos and such aren't "real electronics" and those that believe they are. I'm in the "not" camp. Using them usually requires little more electronics knowledge than basic "connect the dots" wiring skill.

If arduino stuff and programming in general is excluded from being "hobby electronics", then my guess would be there's probably not much difference in the number of hobbyists between now and 30 years ago. Access to information, parts, and tools has gotten a lot better, easier, and cheaper however.
chris_leyson:
From an amateur radio point of view what goes into the RSGB or ARRL handbooks these days just out of interest, I'm guessing SDR and digital modes have their own chapters, I don't know are they still teaching basic RF principles, I hope so. I've heard quite a few old timers winging and grumping about digital modes in the past, they are there for a damn good reason.
My great uncle Dai (Welsh for David) was teaching me radio propagation one afternoon and he said "nobody can overcome fading" he was right about that, but now we can fix it with digital modes, thanks uncle Dai. Long haul flights still use SSB rather than FM because of the threshold effect, is it all satellite comms now ?... but what if your satellite link doesn't work ?
Navigation is all done by GPS these days, but pop up a carrier in the GPS band, hmmm, the ship steering on GPS autopilot, whoops ouch coastline disaster sort of Titanic scenario and there are quite a few reseach papers out there on the subject of GPS navigation and reliabillity.There was a song back in the day "Video killed the radio star" by Buggles, still true but now it should be "Internet killed the video and radio star" but what if you loose you internet connection, you've got to do old school i.e. radio.
Radio rant over  ;)(pun intended)
Brumby:
As others have said, the hobby is changing - not only in sophistication, but in the basic definition as well.

In the past, we defined an electronics project as an assembly of components to achieve a specified function.  That hasn't really changed - but the components available have.

I remember a project I helped someone with quite a few years ago where they were building a tone sequencer.  That design consisted of sixteen individual tone generators switched in sequence - and if you wanted a note of double length, you tuned two consecutive tone generators to the same frequency.  You did it this way, because it was a simple concept that could deliver the result using the components available.  Today, you would do this with an Arduino or Pi.  Like it or not, code is now an integral part of electronics.

The hobby - like all technology - has evolved.

Another example is mathematical calculation.  Log books aren't necessary any more and slide rules are museum pieces.  Calculators are everywhere.  The processes have become more sophisticated, allowing far more complex and challenging calculations that can support functionality only imagined 40 years ago.

This is not to say electronics as a hobby has abandoned the volts, ohms and Hfe - but the entry point has changed.  There will be those who start with an Arduino to drive an LED and then want to drive 100 of them.  They will then need to learn the basics necessary to achieve that - and so it grows.


Yes - with the preponderance of pre-built modules and cheap equipment, you will see a lot of electronic Lego going on - but when their inadequacies provoke a desire to achieve a higher standard, the fundamentals become necessary rungs on the ladder to that success.


IMHO, electronics as a hobby is not dying ... it is just 'different' - most notably so in the entry point.
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