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?
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.htmhttp://www.w6pql.comThat'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.
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.
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
), 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.
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
).
About the problems with the SMD components: You can buy cheap SMD-to-through-hole adapter PCBs so that you can use the SMD ICs in the breadboarding or hobby projects**. Just go to eBay and enter the magic keywords: PCB adapter
Soldering the SMD components is not that difficult when you have a decent soldering iron etc.
About manufacturing the PCB boards at home: There are tens or hundreds of good tutorials in the internet using different techniques on how to manufacture decent PCBs at home. If you are careful enough the SMD components are not a problem either. Chemicals and stuff is still very easy to obtain from the electronics retailers. Some chemicals can be even obtained from your local hardware store.
Through hole plating is not required as you can make the vias using thin-wire-through-a-hole technique. Solder mask is nice to have option, and it can be made using a cheap UV film bought from the eBay. You can also buy cheap 3W UV LEDs to make a the needed UV-box powered by a lab power supply, for example.
If you need to squeeze the PCB size to bare minimum, the design requires more than 2 PCB layers for a reason or another, or you just want to make your design neat and mechanically more robust, you can design the PCB using freely available software and get it manufactured very cheaply in a PCB manufacturer on a shoestring budget. In the "good old days" this wasn't really an option for a hobbyist.
I would say that the electronics hobbyists have more possibilities than ever. One can also purchase basic equipment and instruments in a very low price compared to the "good old days".
The level of abstraction has risen from the single component level to the IC level and further to the module level as the hobbyists want to and are able to build more complex gadgets than before.
** Edit: This is similar to buying the strip/Vero-board. You could manufacture your own strip board and spend the days drilling the holes, but why bother with that in the first place.
Is isn't dead but it is dying.
Our local Jaycar had only sold one AM radio kit is two years. A shame really because most hobbyists and most graduate engineers have almost no understanding how an AM radio works. Nor do they care. As well as improving technologies, one of the causes is electronics is too cheap thanks to almost slave like working conditions in red China and the lack of stiff import duties by western governments. One of the draw cards to electronics hobby used to be you could build stuff cheaper and often better than what you could buy. Today there are almost no electronics stores left. Gone are the glory days of Ellistronics and McGraths. There is push in some places in the world to teach young children how to code, rather than becoming being dumb computer or mobile phone users like many of their parents. That is a start in the right direction. But there is is precious little they will ever learn about electronics.
Make no mistake, ham radio is also dying too. We have heaps of dead repeaters here in Melbourne. They are there, but no-one uses them. Thirty years ago the repeaters will full of activity. I reckon you could call mayday these days and no-one would respond because no-one is there.
CB radio is completely dead except for a few grey nomads burning their kids inheritance as they enjoy travelling around Australia. Even truckies don't bother now they have mobile phones. Not that they knew how to conduct a conversation anyway. Try calling out for any YL's on 27MHz or 470MHz and see how many responses you get. Absolutely none. Terrorists just need a few CB radios to avoid being detected. Whilst the secret services monitor their phone calls, no-one is going to monitor CB!
There is an ex-colleague of mine who is bucking the trend. He is teaching his young daughter all he can about electronics, astronomy, mathematics and how things work. And she is going great guns, enjoying learning from her dad and enjoying the subject matter and leaving her school teachers for dead. She start soldering electronics components at a very young age. That kid has a bright future because her dad is equipping her.
About the problems with the SMD components: You can buy cheap SMD-to-through-hole adapter PCBs so that you can use the SMD ICs in the breadboarding or hobby projects**. Just go to eBay and enter the magic keywords: PCB adapter
Soldering the SMD components is not that difficult when you have a decent soldering iron etc.
About manufacturing the PCB boards at home: There are tens or hundreds of good tutorials in the internet using different techniques on how to manufacture decent PCBs at home. If you are careful enough the SMD components are not a problem either. Chemicals and stuff is still very easy to obtain from the electronics retailers. Some chemicals can be even obtained from your local hardware store.
Yes, there are tutorials out there but they don't help much, because the technology has become obsolete. Modern board design (at least what I need and do) have easily more than 100 vias. Power regulators come in DQFN-10 packages and they don't like being used with adapter boards and breadboards :-) 0.4mm pin pitch. Think of thermal vias, via stiching, impedance control etc. etc. Making this at home is impossible - at least without spending a fortune.
Of course you can build useful things in THT but then you are basically doing the things as they were be done 20 years back. That is ok but in the long run not very sustainable. Industry will not care that much on the needs of hobbyists.
The level of abstraction has risen from the single component level to the IC level and further to the module level as the hobbyists want to and are able to build more complex gadgets than before.
** Edit: This is similar to buying the strip/Vero-board. You could manufacture your own strip board and spend the days drilling the holes, but why bother with that in the first place.
Yes, and that shift in the abstraction level is the exact problem as I perceive it. Try connect something to the PC now. Serial port? Parallel Port? No, not anymore. Today it is more like USB, Ethernet or even Wireless (ESP8266 or so). So again it becomes more some sort of buying modules and plugging them together...
It's not that I personally suffer from this in any way shape or form but it certainly was not the way I started electronics. From my early childhood it was a path from the very simple to more and more compexity.
First there were bulbs and switches, then transistors and later microcontrollers. I programmed my first EEProm MANUALLY with switches and buttons. I could debug my parallel-port PC interface with a voltmeter. It may have took me an awful lot of time, but in the end I knew what I was doing down to the layer of single bits in the system.
Today it seems to be the exact other way around. One starts at a high abstraction and the gradually goes down to lower layers as he/she feels comfortably. But probably most of them never reaching a state of proper understanding, though. And a layer of magic always remains ...
I'm not pretending to have things done better in any way. My point is that the way I could developed my hobby is not possible any more ...
Don't believe me? Have a look at these:
Sure there are a few, but... just looking at the pictures shows that these people aren't exactly the youngest anymore, they're doing what they've been doing all their lives, all fine and good but the whole point is that they aren't being replaced.
When they were kids it was very common to find people doing DIY electronics all over the place - but now coming across a young guy who starts building stuff is really rare.
I'm with the OP, there were times where you could either save money or get access to some tech you could not otherwise afford by DIY, and the general level of complexity was such that it was possible for an individual to understand, design and produce those things but now not only everyone's already got easy access to pretty much anything they could want, but due to the general level of complexity anything you'd want and can't find or afford would be pretty much impossible for an you to design do to the high understanding in various different fields it would require...
Ham radio was fascinating a few decades ago (actually played a bit with it when I was a kid 20 years ago), being able to talk to random people from afar was quite something, but it's become totally irrelevant nowadays... I'm sure people who have been interested by this for decades continue using it, but the appeal for newcomers is pretty much nonexistant, there's nothing to be impressed with when you've got an Internet connection that allows you to do the same 1000 times better.
I'd have loved living in the 70s and being part of the first computer builders, it's something I love and could have done something good/clever when it was new but today it's just irrelevant, beyond doing a little thing to play with anything I do would be pointless compared to what's around.
As mentioned, in many ways "we" have it as sweet as ever. With the popularity of things like Arduino and raspberry pi - biased towards those who either don't have much experience in electronics, but know software (like IT guys) the number of very cheap 'modules' has exploded. It is true you can make some quite cool 'gear' just by plugging modules together and writing a few lines of code but it really comes down to what you would consider a project worth building. In some ways many of my past 'projects' are now completely redundant as a premade module does a better job, at a fraction of the cost of the parts so it has shifted from 'necessity and lack of availability' to 'I can build almost anything!'. If your thing is to made up small circuits, power supplies, and common test equipment, then yes, that side of the hobby has taken a big hit. But with that comes the benefit of no longer having to make everything from scratch, spending a few $$ on prebuilt subsystems allowing one to concentrate on that actual application rather than get bogged down in the finer details of one tiny part of whole system.
With the ever growing number of commercial products/devices people no-longer have to build certain things as its just cheaper to buy. These include test equipment, wireless controls, sensors etc.. as its a 'hobby' we're talking about here, the joy/interest is in the designing and building - you don't' have to purchase a pre-made product, and whilst it may be more expensive to build, you have the facility to completely customise. There are still parts of projects that you have to DIY because anything remotely complicated, the cost of all those modules starts to add up, and so would be cheaper to order a single PCB of your own design.
I am somewhat saddened that as I go through my 'old boards box' full of DIY PCB's, breadboard modules etc.. I realise that almost all of it is now useless. But that's just how electronics is, it's moved incredibly fast and can make one feel old and redundant if they aren't 'using the lastest tech'. But the fundamentals hasn't changed, and with all the hackaday/maker posts you still see plenty of hand soldered wiring/boards.
Hi
As mentioned, in many ways "we" have it as sweet as ever. With the popularity of things like Arduino and raspberry pi - biased towards those who either don't have much experience in electronics,
Well said buriedcode.
If anything, the growing world of Arduino has got more people interrested in electronics than before but in a different way. As someone else, no they are not the classic type of person wants to put together some circuit because it is cheaper or you simply cannot buy it, they are they type people who want to build something and now have the tools to do.
As buriedcode says, stuff is so cheap and available now that it is so much easier to get into electronics. When I started, there was very little choice in multimeters, you just chose one from Maplins or Radioshak or (if were lucky enough to have access to Farnell or RS) an expensive professional meter.
My pennies worth
Unfortunately the old ways of doing things are dying off and being replaced by abstracted plug and play things like Arduinos. I'm not saying that Arduinos are bad but can you learn assembler on an Arduino. There are probably people reading that comment and thinking "who the hell writes code in assembler", well somebody has to write libraries for your compiler or interpreter. And that is just from a software perspective, too much cut and paste with no real understanding of the basic principles. I've seen people cut and paste pages of Matlab code that you could have written in just a few lines if the underlying mathematical principles were understood
I think the same is true from a hardware point of view, who builds things from scratch these days when you can buy it ready made and probably cheaper as well. It's easy to cut and paste circuits from an app note but if you don't understand the underlying principles expect to get your fingers burnt, in some case quite literally, "wow this switched mode power supply is chucking out a lot of heat" for example. At least there are young people on the EEVblog forum letting the magic smoke out of things
And then there is the whole service and repair point of view, I've got a small 20W SMPS sitting on my desk that came out of an old router, financially it isn't worth fixing or replacing when you can buy a better router for very little cost these days, but morally it's worth fixing because why turn a potentially working router into landfill.
The old school traditional ways of doing things are dying off but the hobby is evolving and changing.
Unfortunately the old ways of doing things are dying off and being replaced by abstracted plug and play things like Arduinos.
Exactly.
I wouldn't say electronics hobby is dead, but it is changing because all electronic devices we use are changing:
Today we have a much higher level of integration: 30-40 years ago you had to build your own computer yourself, because it was much cheaper to buy all parts and assemble them yourself. Today you buy a single chip controller loaded with many peripherals for much less only the CPU ic did cost at that time. So it simply does not make sense to build a lot of stuff yourself if you can buy it much cheaper.
But also the develepoment has changed: 30 years ago you had large boards full of all kind of analogue and digital ics for all the functionallity you needed. Today you can do almost everything in software. So you don't care much less about hardware, because you can buy highly specialized ics for almost everything and configure them in software.
All you can do is not look disdainfully down your nose at the people who show an interest in plugging modules together and thus drive them away before they can get hooked.
If you look down on the Arduino crowd. Why do you?
Of course the answer is "too feel superior". Great.
Sorry, but that was not my point. Everybody is free to do what ever he wants to and I don't care. So why should I feel superior? My point exactly is that these people have little chance to "get hooked". And here is why ...
Doing a hobby properly involves (at least for me) to develop some deep level of expertise in a certain area. Being it model airplane building or collecting stamps. But by commercializing such an area a lot of this is taken away. There are much less drivers anymore to learn the underlying principles.
I mean look at these modules and boards. Arduino even managed to offset the connectors from the 0.1" grid so you can't use them easily on combination with your typical perfboard/breadboard. WHY?
But things like these are not restricted to electronics only. One can see this happening in the R/C community, too. Go in your typical R/C-shop and look for an R/C-glider kit where you would construct your model from individual woodern parts. You could learn so much from these kits and develop so many new skills. Now, 99% of the kits are "ready-to-fly", contain mostly fibre parts or are made from foam entirely. If the plane breaks - nevermind - you can buy a new one. It's so cheap!
So my point is that everything is getting too cheap (not in money but in effort). Without that pain of figuring out the details, the reward you get is also very minimal - probably not enough to keep you in it on the long run.
There are probably people reading that comment and thinking "who the hell writes code in assembler", well somebody has to write libraries for your compiler or interpreter.
They are typically written in high level languages. Which is both sensible and economically responsible.
Is it only my impression, or is is happening in reality that diy and hobby electronics are dying?
Two things to consider:
1) the hardware side of "electronics hobby" is nowhere where it was back then. Hoobyists branched out into other things, like software, and the low-cost manufacturing has made this hobby less appealing / justifiable.
2) what is "electronics hobby" is changing. today, it is far more software driven than hardware driven and if you consider the people engaging in coding apps, I suspect the number can be significant.
I would also point out a few pluses for electronics hobbyists today vs. then:
1) much better parts availability: from distributors like digikey to ebay, at much lower costs vs. back then;
2) so many more options: having a 32-bit chip for less than a dollar is unimaginable in the 1980s.
3) medium for information sharing is so much better: no more clubs and you can reach lots of people all over the globe in expensively and quickly, even for someone who lives in a 3rd world country (like me,
).
But as a business model, serving the hobbyists is long dead.
in the last century, you could build things that were cheaper and better than their commercially available counterparts
today, things have changed, but you can still build things that dont exist and that are completely suited to your needs
arduino is a good start for that, and when learners want to know more, they learn what's inside an arduino
analog electronics is not necessary, althought a good start too.
arduino makes me think of the Lego we had in the 70's. I like them very much !
I just went back and picked, at random, an old electronics magazine Electronics Today International (ETI) from December 1976, 40 years ago nearly and it had these projects.
1. ASCII keyboard for your computer
2. HEX digit display (seven segment LED)
3. 50W and 100W power amp modules (gasp a module!)
4. An over/under temperature alarm (555 based circuit suitable for any beginner)
Then I went and looked at the projects in the latest issue of Silicon Chip.
1. Brownout protector for induction motors
2. Touchscreen superclock
3. LED VU meter (not using a LM3914 as far as I can tell from the website)
and finally
4. An over/under temerature alarm (probably not using a 555)
What does that say?
Thank you very much. I couldn't have found better examples to underline what I mean:
Look at the 1976 projects and boy were they great in these days. Computer I/O when the first machines could be built by hobbyists. 50-100 W was actually quite a lot in those days. And something that everybody could built using just one chip.
That's awesome !!!
Now look at the current volume:
1) A brownout protector for induction motors. Really? Probably illegal anyway to alter electrical installations of this kind as a hobbyist (at least here) ...
2) Touchscreen Superclock: Totally over-engineered clock. With GPS-Option and whatnot. Does anyone really NEED this?
3) LED UV-Meter: The magazine advertised this as "Add bling to your HIFI amplifier". Oh boy... And a 100dB range: Oh boy again ...
4) over/under Temperature: Great - advertised to not include any SMD and to use "easy to solder components".
So to sum up: Three projects that practically nobody will ever need and one project targeting the very same need as in 1976. Now again: What does this say about the current state of our hobby?
Whilst I do see your point, I still 'get a kick' out of designing and prototyping idea's - its just now the bar is set higher, so the 'stuff you can make' can be much more complicated than it was 20 years ago, for the same cost and design time. Whats changed is the complexity modern integration has afforded us.
I've always considered myself a 'hardware guy' but of course write software and firmware. Like software, hardware can be thought of as modules - you design them once and re-use them as and when you need to - perhaps making a few minor changes to adapt them for specific applications. There isn't much point in designing everything from scratch/first principles every project when you've already done it. That means that many software and/or hardware apps are pretty much just older designs stitched together. Where do you draw the line between 'made from scratch' and 'bolting modules together' ?
What with the ability to share vast amounts of information in free online storage - people can share millions of lines of code, and thousands of schematics, BOMs, gerbers and so where-as maybe 20 years ago, there were freely available existing designs/ideas/code it wasn't particularly common or easy to access. These days if someone wants say, a 2-pole LPF do they sit down with a pencil, paper and their own knowledge and draw a schematic, using maths to work out the values? Or do they google for a schematic, or use an applet calculator, or free sim software to do it for them, taking minutes? Same with writing drivers for LCD displays, SPI devices, reading sensors etc.. given the huge number of people who design electronics both for work, and as a hobby, who share the fruits of their labour, its silly not to google it first. Sure people might not learn about such systems much, but I'm sure they will when they need to.
And again, many years ago, if someone produced a board with a large microcontroller, some analogue, a display, LED's etc.. you would probably think that they know their stuff. These days that can be 'made' with limited knowledge of the basics, much quicker and cheaper, so the 'value' of such a system as highlighting knowledge has diminished. So whilst you may remember the days when stuff like that was impressive, these days it has to be much more complicated to be considered impressive, which for a hobby I find refreshing - it means I don't stop learning new things. Also don't underestimate how many people who do electronics as a hobby have the 'how does it work?' instinct, after all, its that trait which is probably why most people become interested int he subject. I still almost obsessively try to work out how something works, and feel uncomfortable using 'black boxes' without knowing the intimate details of its inner workings. You may see the 'maker crowd' seemingly not caring about how their modules work but I believe those are in the monitory.
As for taking the fun out of it - there is always more to learn. Whether or not you find that rewarding is up to you but you have to accept times have changed. If you don't find what you are doing rewarding - try something else, lord knows there are many areas of electronics to delve into, FPGA's, RF, microwave, audio. As as I tried to hammer home in my previous post - it is easier than ever to get started, in any area.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.