The Re-birth of the Electronics Hobby

[prenato]

It still amazes me that electronics as a hobby seems to be growing again. For a while there in the 90s, seemed like it was really dying. This article has a similar view:

http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/email/corner/gregs-corner-radio-shack.html?sp_rid=MjM1NTU3NDg0NzUS1&sp_mid=7497553&spMailingID=7497553&spUserID=MjM1NTU3NDg0NzUS1&spJobID=187328711&spReportId=MTg3MzI4NzExS0

I'm quite happy too see the new trend

[chrisbrown]

I think it's largely because today's teens and young adults (myself included) are the first generation to grow up with computers. Kids pick up a How to Java book and write a "Hello World," and eventually the adventurous ones get themselves an Arduino starter pack to blink some LEDs and things snowball from there.

I can't speak from experience but I imagine it would have been much more daunting to get started in electronics before the internet came along.

[prenato]

I can't speak from experience but I imagine it would have been much more daunting to get started in electronics before the internet came along.

Glad you got the "Electronics" bug. In the days before the internet (before the 90s roughly) the hobby was actually pretty active. There were many more electronics magazines than even today for example, and corner electronics parts suppliers were easy to find. The beginning days of the Internet (90s) were actually the "dead-spot" (or at least it seems to me looking back). Maybe people were too excited with the .com world to care about the hardware?...

[Stonent]

That and now I think that people are realizing that you don't have to pay RadioShack $2.00 for a transistor, you can get them for a penny each online.

I would say that Arduino had a lot to do with it. It certainly did for me.  Sure there was the Basic Stamp in the 90s but it seems that was mainly being used by people for robotics.

[Wytnucls]

The gear is getting a lot cheaper too. I don't think hobbyists could afford a decent oscilloscope or function gen in the 70s or 80s.

[don.r]

ebay, China and cheap postage: the new Radio Shack. EEVBlog: the new electronics magazine.

[nanofrog]

The gear is getting a lot cheaper too. I don't think hobbyists could afford a decent oscilloscope or function gen in the 70s or 80s.

I figure this has had a huge, if not the biggest, impact in the recent shift. Definitely out of my financial reach back then, that's for sure.

Between used gear available on places like eBay and inexpensive gear out of Asia, the ability to obtain more than a DMM and firestick seems to be much easier and far less expensive than back then.

Toss in the internet for sources of information (such as here in EEVBlog), and it's created the right combination of elements to spark off a renewed interest.

[PedroDaGr8]

I agree with much of what's said. I think it's no one thing but a combination of things:

1. The proliferation of diy sites which have brought people back from being scared of device internals. Sites like this and others, YouTube, etc has brought the "mystical" world to the masses.

2. Arduino which introduced people to the concept of making things do what you want. They get started, realize how easy it is and start digging deeper.

3. Cheap equipment both domestically and from abroad. It's now relatively easy to get the devices you need for an affordable amount.

4. A minor influence is the pro-environment fix it/reuse it culture. This ties into the diy sites above. People are much more interested in the internals of stuff and bending it to their will.

Lastly, I think the hacker ethos was still there even during the "downturn" but it was redirected to the internet. Programming and making sites was the "new frontier". Now people have returned to electronics as the internet is no longer so novel.

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk

[echen1024]

Ah yes. In the 70s, a good analog scope would have been out of the reach of many, many people. Now, $300 can get you a good, digital scope with many features.

[cwalex]

the internet and microcontrollers is what brought me back to the hobby after many years. I read about microcontrollers and it just seemed like such a cool concept with so much potential to make fun things that I bought a couple of PIC books and got no where until I bought a book on AVR called I think "C for microcontrollers" by smileymicros based on the AVR butterfly board and WinAVR and I managed to get through the book and do all the projects. It was enough to get me hooked and from there all sorts of different AVRs. I hope the arduino gets heaps of kids and adults into this fun hobby!

[robrenz]

Come on guys,  Dave is responsible for most of it   He is certainly responsible for my return.

[prenato]

Come on guys,  Dave is responsible for most of it   He is certainly responsible for my return.

It had an influence on me for sure too Youtube channels like Dave's, w2aew and Mikes Electric Stuff  (just to name a few) are great motivators and sources of inspiration for new projects...

It's a great hobby and lead  into a good career as well (something I can't say about some of my other hobbies, say photography:)

[MacAttak]

It's easy to explain. Many are around 40 years old, plus or minus a few years. This puts us right in the group of people who were young teenagers back in the heyday of popularity for the hobby. But it also puts us right smack in the middle of the group of people who are hitting mid-life crisis events.

Guys who wanted fast cars as a teenager go out and buy corvettes in their 40's. Those of us who were into electronics at that age, but then followed different paths after grade school, will go out and buy a shop full of test gear in their 40's.

[nanofrog]

Many are around 40 years old, plus or minus a few years. This puts us right in the group of people who were young teenagers back in the heyday of popularity for the hobby.

How did you come to the conclusion that this group is the majority of those in the hobby?

Just curious if you've seen anything (statistics wise) that demonstrates the 40y/o age group makes up the largest segment.

[SeanB]

Looking at the radio amateurs I am for once in the section of " Youngster" there, most are well over 50, and a lot are well into the 70's and 80's.

[SLJ]

I got my 5 year old grandson a "Snap Circuits" electronic set last year.  He's made most of the 300 projects in it and loves learning what each component does.  This year he's getting the motion detector and FM radio add ons for it. (both which he asked for).  He's still a little young for his own soldering iron but it won't be long.

[KedasProbe]

Being able to order a good quality PCB for an acceptable price by using good free software and not having to breath chemicals yourself and still get a lower quality PCB is probably also a reason why people get back in.

[Kjelt]

Still undecided if there is a rebirth. Hardware is these days mostly ordered ready build and if you need extras they order the specific shield. Where are the projects/own designs you have to find the right components for make design the pcb and build it? Still a small group of people that do that.
So the majority of people are busy with mass produced but very nice stuff ( arduino / raspberry pi etc.) and I would not call that electronics hobby more embedded sw/device hobby.  Don't get me wrong I like that even youngsters are doing this, better this stuff then the whole day playing games, just unsure if this is a hardware hobby or just advanced Lego stuff.

[prenato]

It's easy to explain. Many are around 40 years old, plus or minus a few years. This puts us right in the group of people who were young teenagers back in the heyday of popularity for the hobby. But it also puts us right smack in the middle of the group of people who are hitting mid-life crisis events.

Guys who wanted fast cars as a teenager go out and buy corvettes in their 40's. Those of us who were into electronics at that age, but then followed different paths after grade school, will go out and buy a shop full of test gear in their 40's.

LOL . I like your analysis (though I suspect the humor was lost on some).

[staxquad]

I'll attribute more  time invested in my "Electronics Hobby" to the EEVblog resource center (Dave and members), the China Syndrome (low wage mass production) and Ebay.   Every week I've got stuff arriving from China or Ebay (from wherever), couldn't afford it otherwise.  Got stuff to fix, new projects to attempt and accumulating method,  tools and parts as cheaply as possible.

[michaelp]

Still undecided if there is a rebirth. Hardware is these days mostly ordered ready build and if you need extras they order the specific shield. Where are the projects/own designs you have to find the right components for make design the pcb and build it? Still a small group of people that do that.
So the majority of people are busy with mass produced but very nice stuff ( arduino / raspberry pi etc.) and I would not call that electronics hobby more embedded sw/device hobby.  Don't get me wrong I like that even youngsters are doing this, better this stuff then the whole day playing games, just unsure if this is a hardware hobby or just advanced Lego stuff.

I've been a software programmer/now engineer for 10+ years (I'm almost 30), and ever since leaving my teenager years I've not given one thought to hardware. I know server hardware, but that's it these days.

However, I recently got into Raspberry Pi. So you could classify me as an "advanced Lego" builder. But I think you're underestimating just how powerful the raspberry pi has become. From my interest in the Pi, I've since built my own Irdium + GPS + GSM tracker backed by an arduino with a focus on low power. So, again, yes, I guess I'm an advanced Lego builder. But from this interest I'm slowly going deeper and deeper.

I'm now comfortable with attempting to repair circuit boards, and I've fixed a few Macs/iPhones with faulty SMDs.

So from picking up a raspberry, my knowledge of hardware and electronics is becoming deeper and deeper. I have a world of more complicated pet-projects I'll like to complete some day, but I'm in no rush to learn, I'm happy with learning a bit here and there and this is all because the raspberry platform gave me an introduction to electronics that was fun, and easily accessible.

I know of at-least another half dozen people who are in the exact same position as me, and in my case. I've actually switched degrees from a purely computer science focused degree into a degree that encompasses both software and hardware engineering.

Without a doubt electronics as a hobby is reborn. The raspberry pi alone has sparked interest into an entire new generation; yes, we can argue how deeply that spark will diffuse. But that spark is there.

[MacAttak]

Many are around 40 years old, plus or minus a few years. This puts us right in the group of people who were young teenagers back in the heyday of popularity for the hobby.

How did you come to the conclusion that this group is the majority of those in the hobby?

Just curious if you've seen anything (statistics wise) that demonstrates the 40y/o age group makes up the largest segment.

I didn't claim majority, just "many".

There are frequent new members to this forum that introduce themselves as having "rekindled interest" in electronics after many years (decades) of forgetting about it. Usually accompanied by stories of dismay the first time they go to a Radio Shack in so many years, only to discover it isn't the palace of electronics parts that they remembered from their youth.

Purely anecdotal. No real statistics. Unless you want me to make up some.

[Kjelt]

But I think you're underestimating just how powerful the raspberry pi has become. From my interest in the Pi, I've since built my own Irdium + GPS + GSM tracker backed by an arduino with a focus on low power. So, again, yes, I guess I'm an advanced Lego builder. But from this interest I'm slowly going deeper and deeper.

I know how powerfull a Raspberry Pi is , actually that is my whole point. It is so powerfull I have absolutely no use for it for my personal use
But seriously let me explain a bit further. The electronics hobby as I know it is first making stuff you don't need as a kid to exploit all possibilities and make yourself familiar with the components. My generation started with the electronic dice PCB's as an example and the electronics boxes with 100 projects.
Starting from basics how do those components function.
Later on the whole exercise of the hobby is identifying a problem and then making a design, selecting the right components (in my generation for digital designs the 74HC and CMOS4000 series) and breadboarding and testing the design. Then came the microcontroller and it was easier to let that handle all non real time aspects of the problem instead of doing it in discrete hardware components, thus born the embedded software.
Still a lot of external components had to be choosen since the microcontroller itself was nothing more then that. Not many peripherals, so search for the ADC/DAC you need etc. Everybody wrote their own code, little sharing. Everyone had to read the datasheet and really understand what was going on and why some decisions were made.

To put it black/white, nowadays someone orders an Arduino and PSU, downloads some code from the net, installs, runs, if it doesn't work right away starts bitching on a forum asking why it doesn't work and wants ready made answers so it works. Not to explore how it works, why it didn't work. This is what I meant with I am unsure if there is a re-birth or just a lot of people that read they can do something and go that way, for instance the mediaplayer on the raspberry pi. Plug Install and Play not much thinking needed there, so those people I would not consider electronic hobbieists. Or would everybody with a PC be called an electronic hobbieist, if that is the definition ok.

On the other hand you show real interest in the matter, are on this forum, probably contribute, read and learn, even switching you curricullum, so good for you and you are not in the above category. So enjoy and start learning also some basics cause some day you are going to need it to solve an issue 

[madires]

Never stopped doing electronics since I was around 14. Of course there are times I do less but I never took a break.

[lemmegraphdat]

I got my 5 year old grandson a "Snap Circuits" electronic set last year.  He's made most of the 300 projects in it and loves learning what each component does.  This year he's getting the motion detector and FM radio add ons for it. (both which he asked for).  He's still a little young for his own soldering iron but it won't be long.

Elinco makes a lot of stuff. I'm going to get something for my nephew in a year or so. He got bumped up to another reading level because he was bored. The kid's in first grade and just soaks it all up like a sponge.