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| Is the electronics hobby dead? |
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| homebrew:
Is it only my impression, or is is happening in reality that diy and hobby electronics are dying? I personally see less and less people engaging with it. And I don't talk about the arudino guys just plugging stuff together without understanding the basics ... I'm talking about the good old days when electronic hobbyists could (re)create products (measurement equipment, HIFI stuff or even computers) that would otherwise not be affordable to them or were just not available at all. Today it is basically the other way around. There is no purpose in building something for yourself (e.g. own power supply) otherwise an educational one. It might easily not even reach the performance of even entry-level products (e.g. homemade DSO). And it is not only about the electronics design itself. It is also about the skills and practices applied. E.g.. it becomes more and more difficult and questionable to etch your own boards. (1) Chemicals and materials are harder to get, more expensive to obtain. (2) More and more designs require the use of SMD components. That practically means that DIY pcbs are not an option anymore (e.g. throughhole plating and solder mask). And nobody with a sane mind would nowadays even think of selling his products (be it kits or assembled boards) due to the endless regulations like CE, WEEE, ROHS and whatnot... So therefore the question to the community: What could we do about that? |
| German_EE:
Short answer, no Long answer, no, and for lots of reasons. A couple of weekends ago I was at Friedrichshafen in southern Germany for a massive ham radio event. The highlight was one of the biggest electronics flea markets in the world where you could purchase new components, gear to modify, test equipment, ham radio gear and lots of other stuff. The place was packed, tens of thousands of people spending days looking round the place. Then there are the radio hams who can REALLY build stuff, the folks who can make their homebrew efforts look like commercial gear. Don't believe me? Have a look at these: http://dk4sx.darc.de http://www.jogis-roehrenbude.de/Leserbriefe/Hermann-Mini-Amp/Hermann-Mini.htm http://www.w6pql.com That's just a sample, I have dozens more links to web pages run by radio hams who like to build stuff. As for myself, if you walk into my workshop you'll see the following home made gear: Station power supply, station PC, antenna tuner, RF power meter, frequency counter, lab power supply, AF voltmeter, signal generator and spectrum analyzer. Only the oscilloscope and the multimeter come from a factory. It's important to pass this stuff on. Once a week I have a young visitor who originally turned up with his mother asking questions but now he comes to learn. We started off with basic electrical theory and now, after learning to solder, he's building his own stuff. Young Felix is eight years old and he now wants to bring along three of his friends. I know that electronics construction in Germany is not dead because I have evidence to support this. Our local electronics store has queues at the counters on a regular basis and right now they're hiring more staff. We also have three companies who, via their thick catalogs, have a thriving mail order business (Conrad, Reichelt and Pollin). Add Element 14, Digikey and Mouser to the list (all of whom have offices in Germany) and someone must be building a lot of stuff. |
| PartialDischarge:
The answer is from my point of view, find a niche. Certainly you can't compete with mass produced products, or products that small companies make better than you. But theres still room for devices that you can design/manufacture/sell. Take for example the small board a guy sells to calibrate multimeters for $50 (can't remember the name), etc... there are numerous examples but you have to be knowledgeable of each field and thats not easy. Not every industry develops all the technologies to make a product, they rely on small firms for submodules that are already tested. I know of an industry for example that uses a handheld infrared remote control to activate one of its machines, well they just buy the sturdy emitter/receiver from someone, and for unknown reasons (patents maybe?) there is only one "someone" who charges enough for this simple device. |
| Gyro:
I think I know what you mean. I seriously considered starting a thread a while back titled 'Is it really fun anymore?' It was a day when I'd been involved in a couple of threads, I can't remember the details but I think one was related to someone wanting a specific simple test signal which would have been very simple to generate with a couple of chips, but which soon degenerated into which cheap chinese function generator / AWG to get, followed by a comparison of all the bugs and glitches of each... It does seem that we have degenerated from a 'making' or 'make do and mend' ethos to a 'just click and buy one' mentality. Now I'm not knocking having the stuff to make your time productive, but I think it's narrowed the gap between a work environment (assuming you're doing something related) and home, and made it less fun as a result. In a way, all this stuff is becoming a little akin to the arduino guys that you mentioned. Newbs tend to be persuaded (if only by reading) into thinking that they need to buy this, that and the other bit of bells and whistles test gear (which they will probably not learn to use properly), rather than working up from the basics and making every bit count. For myself, I still enjoy designing and building both HiFi and measurement equipment, together with having accumulated 'treasures' which are a joy to fettle in themselves (please do not let this turn into yet another analog vs digital debate :palm:), but every bit earns its keep. For me, budget is still an issue...and thankfully, long may it remain so! Ironically I think that the only truly happy guys around here are probably the Metrology crowd, they get to endlessly fettle their gear, find unloved precision treasures, fine tune their circuits and measurements and generally get a kick out of achieving something. I'm not having a dig at the Chinese equipment manufacturers, honestly, they produce some genuinely useful test gear at remarkable prices but have they made life just too easy... or more difficult in the home lab environment, as you say, why build when you can buy. The surface mount stuff is doable, I tend not to produce PCBs unless I really have to, but to an extent a lot of parts lend themselves quite well to breadboarding techniques, unless they're silly packages anyway. As for the solution, I think a lot of that depends on people themselves, their reasons for getting into the 'hobby' and their mindset. I agree that is getting harder to achieve that last one. There's probably a lot of rambling above, but I've had lots of random thoughts floating round my head for a while. |
| Refrigerator:
The DIY hobby around where i live has died down since electronics became both cheaper and more available. In my whole town ( of about 14k people ) i'm probably the only one who does what he does, like designing/making PCBs, building my own stuff rather that building some kit off the internet. Often times when my friends see what i do as a hobby they just get amazed, they think i'm a magician of some sorts ( and i might very well be 8) ;D ). |
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