The start of the end? [Elektor]

[wagon]

Electronics Australia started to go down hill when they became largely a consumer crap review magazine.  Huh?

Silicon Chip is still good, but they have gone down the microprocessor road a lot.  Makes for more compact, simpler circuits, but unless you have the internet subscription, you can't see the source code to understand how it works.

[ivan747]

I stopped my subscription when they switched to doing mostly uC based projects without publishing/releasing the source code.
What good is that? You can not modify anything and still don't know how it exactly works.
They have some nice articles in the current magazines but limited, most good stuff is from 3rd party amateur hobbieists/writers.
If the people of this forum would get their own topic and publish their projects/schematics you could have the same source of interesting info.

hmmmmmmmmmmm...

What if we make a magazine section on this forum??? Just for polished, well documented publications??? 


Here in the spanish speaking world we got this nasty thing called Saber Electrónica (Knowing electronics). So far it has always been crap. They often publish the same stuff over and over. They seem to be stuck with Livewire and PCB wizard as their CAD tools (if you can even call those things CAD). Those programs are crap. They often publish stuff copied over the internet without even building it. Frankly I have no respect for them.

The worst offence?

The guy who runs the magazine (or the chief editor.. i don't know) once published a 1.5GHz RF prescaler, you can't trust the design or even build it, as I will explain. The PCB was an AUTOROUTE job, straight edges, all 0.1" traces. I mean, the guy who runs the magazine published that and put a photo of himself on the first page of the magazine and then went to embarass himself with that and autoroute job on a 1.5GHz ciruit. He publishes (plagiarizes) half of the articles in that magazine, from stupidly simple to complex, he uses PCB Wizard and hits the autoplace/autoroute button.

The article had photos from a website, clearly showing a good RF board layout with a HAM callsign. It didn't take me long to find the original author.
This is the project in question, it is actually a very impressive 12GHz prescaler module card for an HP frequency counter:

http://ve2zaz.net/hp5328a/hp5328a_prescaler.htm

The schematic in the magazine is different from VE2ZAZ's circuit. Looking around, it seems like the same circuit was originally published 120 editions ago. I can't track the original author of the circuit but it uses an obsolete IC anyway. There's stuff like that all over this magazine. 




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And I actually found something funny in this magazine, the same guy is talking about the distribution of the magazine, he says it is hard and can be expensive because many of the copies stay in the shelves... he believes it's because the readers don't stumble upon it. 

[jeffbronk]

I stopped Elektor a few months ago when they bundle the print and digital edition for $80 US dollars. I was paying $40 just for the printed edition, but no longer, $80 or nothing. $40 was high, but Elektor was better than Nuts and Volts and i am an electronics junky.   
So now i am just going with Circuit Cellar and Nuts and Volts. I miss Steve Ciarcia!

[Richard Crowley]

What if we make a magazine section on this forum??? Just for polished, well documented publications??? 

I like that idea.  Something a bit more substantial than Hack-a-day.

[German_EE]

I thought I was the only person who remembered Steve Ciarcia, I still have the full set of Circuit Cellar books on my shelf but they don't get referred to all that often now because the technology has moved on. Scary to think that at one point I considered building the Circuit Cellar PC from a bare board.

[SeanB]

Steve solar powered his house when solar was still something insanely expensive. Very friendly, and quite approachable online. I think his series on solar power installation are still up on the CC website., he had issues with digging into the ground by him, which is essentially basalt and granite.

[nctnico]

What if we make a magazine section on this forum??? Just for polished, well documented publications??? 

I like that idea.  Something a bit more substantial than Hack-a-day.

The idea is nice but it takes a lot of time and effort to make a circuit ready for publishing. It is as much work as making a circuit ready for mass production plus creating proper documentation on how it works. I doubt many people would like to do that for free.

[Kjelt]

If you take your hobby project seriously, as in that the project is going to fullfill a real need on a dayly basis, it is a good practice to document the project anyway in case you need to repair or expand it in a few years.
The schematics are already there as the pcb layout.
The most time is going in the description of the circuit but as the audience are EE,s you can skip the basic stuff.

[nctnico]

Still you'd need to update the schematic after testing, make a proper parts list, description, convert drafts into documents. A lot of documentation for my projects are hand written notes and calculations.

[zapta]

Still you'd need to update the schematic after testing, make a proper parts list, description, convert drafts into documents. A lot of documentation for my projects are hand written notes and calculations.

That's what Altium CM is for . Community projects. Dave can partner with them.

[Bored@Work]

The idea is nice but it takes a lot of time and effort to make a circuit ready for publishing. It is as much work as making a circuit ready for mass production plus creating proper documentation on how it works. I doubt many people would like to do that for free.

And if you go through all that work you could also offer it to a real publisher. Not that you make more money, or even any money, by getting it published the classic way. But you could at least add a publication to your CV. As opposite to adding a mention on hack-a-day to your CV, which won't cut it.

[nctnico]

Still you'd need to update the schematic after testing, make a proper parts list, description, convert drafts into documents. A lot of documentation for my projects are hand written notes and calculations.

That's what Altium CM is for . Community projects. Dave can partner with them.

I don't see how a piece of software can create documentation out of thin air. Or do you want to use Doxygen? "There is resistor one and there is resistor two, and... and..." Utterly useless  What makes a circuit interesting and educational is the reasoning and math behind it. The diagram itself is just an end result. Fine if you just want to copy a circuit but that doesn't provide much gain in knowledge.

[SeanB]

Good news, Circuit Cellar is now no longer part of the Elektor collective!

Quote:
Last week, Circuit Cellar's founder Steve Ciarcia finalized a deal to purchase Circuit Cellar, audioXpress, Voice Coil, Loudspeaker Industry Sourcebook, and their respective websites, newsletters, and products from Netherlands-based Elektor International Media. The aforementioned magazines will continue to be published by Ciarcia's US-based team.

I might even renew my subscription again.

[slburris]

I've got to think this is a hugely positive move for Circuit Cellar.  I've been a long time subscriber
and after the Elektor purchase I found the mix of articles to be less and less interesting.

Anyone know what the backstory on Steve's purchase is?  I thought he wanted to retire?

What does this mean for Elektor?  Do you think they will pull out of the US market now?

Scott

Good news, Circuit Cellar is now no longer part of the Elektor collective!

[SeanB]

I think he was disappointed about the direction, and with the falling subs income from others showing as well he probably was able to get it for fire sale price. He might want to have a less regular contribution, but I cannot see him actually sitting back and doing gardening full time.