Is the electronics hobby dead?

[CatalinaWOW]

I can see this same thread in a newspaper 75 years ago, asking about the death of our hobby.  People are no longer building their own knife switches and are using insulated wire to make their connections.  Where is the skill in that? Why can't people use post insulators and bare wire to connect things.  Why can't they build their switches instead of buying them.  No more galena crystals, they are actually using valves as detectors.  Where is the skill in using a pre-packaged valve instead of finding the sweet spot on your crystal?

The worldwide market has made a lot of things cheap and easy to buy that used to be expensive.  Which lets us spend our energy doing the unique things that interest us, rather than spending all the time putting together the basics.  Even in the basics areas, people are using their skills to put together instruments that used to be the dreams of national laboratories, and doing it for far less than the cost of purchasing the capability. Check the volt nuts and time nuts threads.  Even the oldest skills/techniques get used.  I have built my own switches for unique applications.  Using the best of old school and modern materials and techniques.  (Brass, high density polyethylene, CNC machining).  If I needed to do something similar again I might take another step into the future and use 3D printing to make a prettier and more sophisticated switch.

[Kilrah]

The days where electronics as a 'useful' hobby - that is, using your knowledge and wits to build something that solves a real problem - aren't over yet.  It is just we see more and more novelty or 'gadget' projects being posted in hackaday, instructables, maker etc.. that use $120 worth of prebuilt modules, a ridiculously powerful raspberry pi and large OS's to make a string of LED's pulse to music.  That is the hobby side! you may not see the point, but the creators do it for shits'n'giggles.  Sure the design is completely overkill so is hardly commercially viable, but its a hobby. 

There is a big difference however in the fact that when you had to build the basic circuit once you were done you could usually quite easily move out of the "hobby" thing and actually start selling your thing as a product without any major changes if you felt like it.
Now precisely given the building blocks are overkill, once you managed to make something good with them if you wanted to bring it to market you'd probably havce to throw it in the trash, start over from scratch, and make something more appropriate and specialized for the purpose so it can be priced in a way you've got a chance of selling it... but having been able to put the Pi-based thing together has taught you approximately nothing of what you need to do so.

[jpb]

I started electronics as a hobby in the 1970s (as a teenager) and it inspired me to do electronic engineering at university. But then it became a job and I became less enthused about doing it as a hobby.
Also there were big changes - surface mount, the move to digital which doesn't feel quite the same as true analogue electronics and the fact that electronics items became consumable.

The fact that DVD players, TVs and so on are cheap throw-away items has affected even those who earn a living in the area - I have a friend who runs a family tv repair business but when the cost of a new item is only about an hour or twos labour costs and the fact that the item being repaired was not built to last makes it rather disheartening. Also smart phones have every sensor under the sun in a tiny package so it is hard to think of anything electronic that you might build that is not already covered.

BUT, I have now come back to electronics as a hobby after a gap of several decades and there are some positives. PCBs can be bought cheaply from China, a lab can be equipped cheaply, interesting old stuff can be bought off e-bay. I do it for my own education and enjoyment. I am very slowly designing a GPSDO. It presents plenty of challenges. I'm never going to build anything that is a commercial proposition but I'm keeping my electronics knowledge alive (I've switched to computer programming as a day job) which perhaps makes me more employable.

So in some ways electronics is more doable now than for many years - there is also forums like this on the internet so you don't have to rely on fellow nuts who live locally

[rrinker]

 I see a thread like this come up every few weeks in a forum dedicated to my other hobby, model railroading. "it's dead, it's dead" cry the Chicken Littles.

 Me, I merrily go on designing and building my model railroad, combined with my other hobby which is also not dead, electronics. I used to do more at home with computers, but since it's my day job, I kind of just one my systems at home to just work without a lot of mucking around.

 I will say it was Dave's videos and this forum, plus the Arduino, which really got me ramped back up in electronics. I was going to build a lot of the control electronics for my model railroad myself, but more or less in the sense of using someone else's design and just building them myself (like building a computer today - it's really just fitting together the jigsaw puzzle pieces). Now, however, I am designing my own control and monitoring circuits using Arduinos to drive the signals and points and collecting occupancy information in manageable 'nodes'. And writing most of the controlling software myself, both on the Arduino side and the PC that controls the whole thing. I will probably 'cheat' and use an existing communications protocol rather than try to develop my own though. All fun.

[Lukas]

It's definitely a great time for 'advanced hobbyists'. Thanks to digikey and mouser, you can get pretty much every part delivered right to your desk within reasonable amount of time. $100 gets you a 4-Layer PCB from china, there's no shortage of MCUs of all shapes and sizes and FPGA and the required tools. All this enables projects like this one: http://hforsten.com/homemade-synthetic-aperture-radar.html Wouldn't have been possible that easily 10 years ago.

[rstofer]

Arduino...  The other day I wanted to send a short text stream to check the ASCII decoding on my new DS1054Z.  The absolute easiest way to do that is with an Arduino.  It's a tool!

People's interest in electronics vary all over the map.  I like analog computing and messing around with FPGAs.  For a certainty, analog computing isn't in the mainstream of electronics.  Nobody cares anymore because we can model the equations with Matlab and Simlink.

I do a lot of messing around with FPGAs.  This begs the question of whether it is electronics or code.  A register is a register and gates are gates, no matter how you create them.  It's electronics!

Everybody has their own place in the sandbox.  If we're smart, we will be inclusive rather than exclusive.

[John_ITIC]

I think it is a matter what the introverted use to hide from "normal" people. It used to be fiddling with radios (1930-60s), general electronics (60s-70s), TTL and microprocessors (80s), then PCs and programming (80s-90s) and now various Internet high-level programming. It seems to me that electronics are just something one uses to execute code on. Of course, specialized electronics are needed for specialty execution platforms when the general-purpose platforms are not fast enough. For sure, it is much easier to get a well paid job in the programming field compared to lower-level electronics.

[woodchips]

Seems so. There looks to be no real interest in making simple circuits to prove that you can, and then experiment with them. Is this important? You can simulate most things so why go to the hassle of building it. But do you actually learn anything from a simulations? Need to separate the 'got to get the job done' from 'I am teaching myself and learning' type situations.

Was at the IMechE train challenge little while ago. For universities there seemed, to me, to be a lack of real world expertise in the electronics used to control the engines. In fact I couldn't really see why there was any electronics at all, relays would have worked just as well. I quite realise this is grossly unfair, but these students were building a real locomotive, and that seemed to require real expertise.

I am also interested in old computing but running out of space so trying to thin the collection/pile down. I have some old Seagate ST412 Winchester disc drives from the early 80s. Did a low and high level format on a couple, sold one, and then found that £20 for the other drive was considered too expensive. I wondered about that, it did take a good couple of hours to find a suitable computer, get it working, finding the MFM controller and then very slowly format the drives. If you saw these drives at a radio rally for £20 would you consider them to be a bargain or outrageously expensive? Seems to me that there is now a disconnect between what someone will pay for a collectable item and what it is worth, in time, to test it, list it, pack it and then post it?

The rise of China has reduced the cost of a manufactured item to near zero, $3 phones I see on the BBC, so is everything now zero cost? There is no financial point in making many things, no argument there, but the making is more than just having it, there is the fun and sweat of making it, then getting it working. I can't see how you learn anything other than making it? But, there again, I think analogue scopes are a really neat thing so am possibly just too old for all this new electronics.

[VK3DRB]

There is always something special about building it yourself. Even better designing it yourseff. Both of these aspects tower over buying something off-the-shelf.

My mum once said if she won lotto, she would not buy here kids a home each because unless you work for it, you won't appreciate it. It is similar to electronics. There is nothing more fulfilling than doing it yourself, and you appreciate it more.

I have designed and building a 5-star extreme garage myself - literally. A little extreme in the design and a lot of hard work, but there is nothing more satisfying than seeing the results of my own handiwork and ideas. The result is better than any tradesman would (not could) do. It is built far better than most "slap-dash" houses.

Similar with DIY in electronics. Do it yourself, its YOURS. Something to be proud of. And it is fully serviceable. Something that might last years and show your grandkids. And if it is your pride and joy, you can even ask to be buried with it when your times comes.

[Kilrah]

If you saw these drives at a radio rally for £20 would you consider them to be a bargain or outrageously expensive? Seems to me that there is now a disconnect between what someone will pay for a collectable item and what it is worth, in time, to test it, list it, pack it and then post it?

A "collectible" only becomes one once there's someone who wants to collect it, and that may be becoming less of a trend. I don't know anyone my age who collects things anymore...
I have a couple of old pieces of computer equipment, but get them out of curiosity in a pinch when I see something cheap that I'd fancy playing with.

If I came across someone getting rid of "any old HDD" for $10 I'd pick it up out of curiosity, but I would not be looking for "a Seagate ST412 HDD" and pay the price it costs to prepare/maintain it even if I can recognise the value in it.

[homebrew]

There is always something special about building it yourself. Even better designing it yourseff. Both of these aspects tower over buying something off-the-shelf.
[...]
Similar with DIY in electronics. Do it yourself, its YOURS. Something to be proud of. And it is fully serviceable. Something that might last years and show your grandkids. And if it is your pride and joy, you can even ask to be buried with it when your times comes.

Exactly! The point I wanted to make is that this got harder and harder over time. While I fully buy into the argument that part's availability has radically changed during the last decade, it has has also become much more difficult to start.

Try, asking a newbie to order an 470 Ohm THT resistor from Farnell. Or a simple spindle of wire, a switch, a relay or something else. Much luck ...

And then the bar to reach satisfaction with your DIY project is so much higher. Not just in price but also in performance. The little LM317 power supply project might still be nice to do but it would not get any near to the performance of even simple bench supplies you can buy for a small amount of money.

So with every advancement in technology and availability there will be new requirements on the skills.

* cheap 2 and 4 layer boards available -> PCB design skills required.
* sophisticated SMD packages available -> advances soldering skills required -> hot air station -> microscope
* hundreds of thousands of components available from a single store -> product selection skills required

So, for the people engaged in the hobby this is heaven. But on the other hands there are high bars for outsiders to get in.
Dave does a great job in his videos but also here the bar is high. You already need a sufficient understanding of electronics to really profit. ABSOLUTELY NO CRITIQUE in this! Just my experience whenever I recommended your channel to an interested newbie ...

[Chris Mr]

When I started, in the 1960s, the adverts in Practical Electronics had nearly all the parts that were available: on 1/2 page advert!  As time goes on one soaks up new stuff without realising that there are hundreds of thousands of parts now.  Thank goodness we have the internet to find stuff.

What must it all look like to a young person though?

I would say pretty daunting.

When there were fewer parts you could buy stuff and re-use it because all the designs had basically the same bits in.

The challenge now is to find something in fashion that's at a level of complexity that a young person would find attractive.  I guess that's part of the attraction of Arduino - when you have a mobile phone as competition.

How about starting a thread suggesting projects for young people - ask your kid(s) what they want and see if a project can be made from it?

[Cubdriver]

The comments on the overwhelming aspect of part selection are very valid.  When I first began playing with electronics as a kid in the mid-late 70s, the Digi Key catalog was the size of a thin magazine.  Now it makes a phone book look svelte.  Hell, just the connector section is about the size of a phone book!  When you're doing this for a living and as a hobby all along, it is a slow change that you adjust to incrementally as it grows.  If you drop that monster book in the lap of a newbie, their eyes are apt to glaze over as they thumb through it.

And I have to say, I miss old part numbers.  Things used to be simple.  2N107.  1N34A.  DM74154.  LM324.  Now it seems that everything has a 75 digit alphanumeric part number, with special characters too.  LTC4365CTS8#TRMPBF.  TPS3808G01MDBVTEP.  MMST2222AT146.  SI4214DDY-T1-GE3.   

-Pat

[Howardlong]

There is one other point, we are up against this shit:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11359517/Ladybird-books-from-the-1960s-that-would-be-banned-by-todays-health-and-safety-brigade.html

While the majority of H&S aspect is well-meaning, there is also a very negative subtext that undermines our innate desire for for exploration and creativity, which inevitably includes some risk. The problem is that the balance is not right. Nobody died, or was even hospitalised, or endured any injuries of any sort, from sucking on a couple of electrodes off a lemon. Sure, the carpet might need a clean after stripping a carbon battery though.

[homebrew]

There is one other point, we are up against this shit:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11359517/Ladybird-books-from-the-1960s-that-would-be-banned-by-todays-health-and-safety-brigade.html

While the majority of H&S aspect is well-meaning, there is also a very negative subtext that undermines our innate desire for for exploration and creativity, which inevitably includes some risk. The problem is that the balance is not right. Nobody died, or was even hospitalised, or endured any injuries of any sort, from sucking on a couple of electrodes off a lemon. Sure, the carpet might need a clean after stripping a carbon battery though.

So true. But that changed for all (most) of us. When I was at the age of 7, my parents had no problem letting me use the soldering iron for myself - mains powered of course! My father bought it for me and my uncle built a lab power supply (still works today flawlessly!) for me to have sufficient power for my experiments ... 

And now I have a son myself at the age of seven. Guess what I would have a problem with ... 
Just imagine: Hot iron, toxic fumes, LEAD !!!
Luckily my son is more the sports, cars and planes kind of kid anyway.

But when you think about it, its quite scary how fearsome society has made us.

[MK14]

There is one other point, we are up against this shit:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11359517/Ladybird-books-from-the-1960s-that-would-be-banned-by-todays-health-and-safety-brigade.html

While the majority of H&S aspect is well-meaning, there is also a very negative subtext that undermines our innate desire for for exploration and creativity, which inevitably includes some risk. The problem is that the balance is not right. Nobody died, or was even hospitalised, or endured any injuries of any sort, from sucking on a couple of electrodes off a lemon. Sure, the carpet might need a clean after stripping a carbon battery though.

So true. But that changed for all (most) of us. When I was at the age of 7, my parents had no problem letting me use the soldering iron for myself - mains powered of course! My father bought it for me and my uncle built a lab power supply (still works today flawlessly!) for me to have sufficient power for my experiments ... 

And now I have a son myself at the age of seven. Guess what I would have a problem with ... 
Just imagine: Hot iron, toxic fumes, LEAD !!!
Luckily my son is more the sports, cars and planes kind of kid anyway.

But when you think about it, its quite scary how fearsome society has made us.

Just look at the picture (from these ladybird books), what could possibly go wrong ?

[Howardlong]

There is one other point, we are up against this shit:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11359517/Ladybird-books-from-the-1960s-that-would-be-banned-by-todays-health-and-safety-brigade.html

While the majority of H&S aspect is well-meaning, there is also a very negative subtext that undermines our innate desire for for exploration and creativity, which inevitably includes some risk. The problem is that the balance is not right. Nobody died, or was even hospitalised, or endured any injuries of any sort, from sucking on a couple of electrodes off a lemon. Sure, the carpet might need a clean after stripping a carbon battery though.

So true. But that changed for all (most) of us. When I was at the age of 7, my parents had no problem letting me use the soldering iron for myself - mains powered of course! My father bought it for me and my uncle built a lab power supply (still works today flawlessly!) for me to have sufficient power for my experiments ... 

And now I have a son myself at the age of seven. Guess what I would have a problem with ... 
Just imagine: Hot iron, toxic fumes, LEAD !!!
Luckily my son is more the sports, cars and planes kind of kid anyway.

But when you think about it, its quite scary how fearsome society has made us.

Just look at the picture (from these ladybird books), what could possibly go wrong ?

Precisely, and I did them all. Cut fingers, bolllocking for messing up the carpet, dirty gob, messy everything.

Part of growing up, and growing a pair.

[G0HZU]

There is one other point, we are up against this shit:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11359517/Ladybird-books-from-the-1960s-that-would-be-banned-by-todays-health-and-safety-brigade.html

While the majority of H&S aspect is well-meaning, there is also a very negative subtext that undermines our innate desire for for exploration and creativity, which inevitably includes some risk. The problem is that the balance is not right. Nobody died, or was even hospitalised, or endured any injuries of any sort, from sucking on a couple of electrodes off a lemon. Sure, the carpet might need a clean after stripping a carbon battery though.

I'm afraid that this also applies to modern industry. The large electronics/comms company I work for has introduced various H&S rules/restrictions along these lines. Basically, the modern corporate types have jumped on the bandwagon and introduced all kinds of rules and restrictions and I have to be trained for everything. I even had a (compulsory) 30 minute training session showing me how to safely operate the controls on my office chair so that I don't injure myself.

This may seem absurd but engineers are now not supposed to have any sharp objects in their toolkit anymore, (so no knives or scalpels, ESPECIALLY scalpels) and RF/HW engineers are not supposed to have a soldering iron on their workbench anymore. It all has to be carried out at a communal/safe workstation. The idea is that you do your soldering change/repair and then walk back to the bench to test the change. If you want anything cut you either get an approved technician to do it or you go for training and book out the tools to do it. You aren't allowed to keep the sharp tools and nobody is allowed to own or use a regular scalpel anymore. Only special/safe equivalents are allowed and only if you fill in a form and book it out for an allotted timeslot. PCB cleaning products and strong/smelly adhesives are also banned from ownership and this all has to be done by an approved operator using materials locked away in a secure cupboard.

To preserve my sanity I still have both my iron and scalpels and other banned items and still use them (I ignored the amnesty) but it's only a matter of time before someone complains.

[MK14]

Precisely, and I did them all. Cut fingers, bolllocking for messing up the carpet, dirty gob, messy everything.

Part of growing up, and growing a pair.

Yes, I learn't a lot, from a similar process. I think you sort of have to make the mistakes, to climb the learning curve. There is not really a proper short-cut method. If you don't, the learning exercise does not get powerfully enough created in your brain.

Sometimes by messing about with things, you learn and ask questions "Why ?" does it behave in this way. Then you learn even more stuff.

Even within Electronics engineer circles there are issues. But hopefully they don't matter too much. In the 1960's, there were lots of engineers, who knew how to create circuits, with huge numbers of discrete transistors. Some of these circuits are rather amazing, even today. E.g. A very early (all transistor) Analogue Sound Synthesizer.

But these days, most people (Electronics engineers), especially younger engineers, (except ones who spend time at integrated circuit plants), don't really have the skills to easily/quickly design complicated, many transistor, circuits. Because they are so use to just using integrated circuits, such as op-amps, to do it.

I sometimes admire some of the early oscilloscopes, which may consist of a very large and complicated all transistor design, with very high voltage and bandwidth/accuracy capabilities.

These days, it would be very difficult, to get freshly designed a high performance all analogue, discrete transistor circuit.

Maybe I have not given the best of examples. But certainly some things would need advanced analogue designers, who are not very commonly available these days. Because of DSP's, op-amps and such, it usually does not matter, as circuits containing a large number of discrete transistors (only, no ICs), are rarely designed these days.

[Kilrah]

I even had a (compulsory) 30 minute training session showing me how to safely operate the controls on my office chair so that I don't injure myself.

This may seem absurd but engineers are now not supposed to have any sharp objects in their toolkit anymore, (so no knives or scalpels, ESPECIALLY scalpels) and RF/HW engineers are not supposed to have a soldering iron on their workbench anymore. It all has to be carried out at a communal/safe workstation. The idea is that you do your soldering change/repair and then walk back to the bench to test the change. If you want anything cut you either get an approved technician to do it or you go for training and book out the tools to do it. You aren't allowed to keep the sharp tools and nobody is allowed to own or use a regular scalpel anymore. Only special/safe equivalents are allowed and only if you fill in a form and book it out for an allotted timeslot. PCB cleaning products and strong/smelly adhesives are also banned from ownership and this all has to be done by an approved operator using materials locked away in a secure cupboard.

To preserve my sanity I still have both my iron and scalpels and other banned items and still use them (I ignored the amnesty) but it's only a matter of time before someone complains.

What the... 

 

I think you sort of have to make the mistakes, to climb the learning curve.

You don't necessarily need to actually make the mistake, just getting into the process of making it will often make you realize something seems wrong soon enough so you recheck and manage to avoid it.

[MK14]

You don't necessarily need to actually make the mistake, just getting into the process of making it will often make you realize something seems wrong soon enough so you recheck and manage to avoid it.

I use to think that myself, and to an extent you are right.

But it is a bit like learning to ride a bike. You maybe need to fall off a few times, so that you properly learn that you need to pay attention all the time, and not ride the bike, in a crazy manner.
That's the theory, anyway. Somehow some cyclists who have raced past me at way too fast a "safe" speed, on the pavement, in the UK. Begin to make me think otherwise.

tl;dr
You can read as many books as you like, on how to ride a bike. But if you have never done it at all. You still will be very ropey/bad at it, at first.

[G0HZU]

What the... 

 

The new corporate types who have slowly taken over the company also like to see tidy worklabs and the rules for this have become more and more restrictive in the last few years. They basically don't understand engineers and have 'tidied up' by adopting a numbers game (the only game they understand).

So to get a tidier lab you reduce the number and size of the benches and ban storage of unnecessary stuff like old breadboards and parts. Basically the place has been sterilised beyond belief. What is hilarious is the fact they don't understand why the company is slowly shrinking and dying and they are now having crisis meetings because the company has lost its innovative edge and the engineers are leaving. My turn to leave soon I think

[Red Squirrel]

Hard to tell, it may potentially be less popular but on the other hand it may potentially be making a come back.  Though I'm talking more about Arduino stuff, but that's at least a stepping stone to wanting to learn more. I'm more at the Arduino phase myself but it peaked my interest in electronics.   My nephew who is 14 had a science fair project that was fairly advanced for his age and had electronics involved, and from the sound of it they were playing a lot with that stuff at school.  We never did that when I was in school, I think the most complex thing we did was connect batteries to bulb sockets.   With the internet it's also easier to get into.  Even watching lot of videos and reading lot of tutorials I still don't understand most of the advanced topics, I can't imagine even trying to understand without the internet.  I guess you just bought a lot of books back then, and perhaps because of no internet there was less distraction too.

I feel that this new age of corporate and government sponsored espionage of our lives may hopefully get more people to really consider the functioning of what they buy.  It seems they stick spy stuff in lot of stuff now and it's only going to get worse, so we can't trust anything we buy.  It's one of the reason I don't buy premade home automation stuff, I design and build my own.  But at some point it will be even basic stuff like your toaster.  So more people will want to know at least basic stuff like take something apart and tell what should and should not be there.  On the other hand it's frightening how most people are not even worried about the surveillance state.

The spy stuff is getting scary though as it's now at the die level, so nothing stops them from putting it right within micro controllers for example.   They're already doing it with CPUs. 

[Brumby]

I have that book:

[Red Squirrel]

In the quoted image it looks like they're trying out some new drugs or something.