What ever happened to the electronics hobbyist?

[R.G.]

http://www.elecdesign.com/Article/ArticleID/15076/15076.html&feed=Top20

[Nasse]

Yeah, only McJob everywhere.

I mail-ordered electronis mini diy kit yesterday, hope it arrives tomorrow. A 8 year old kid has birthday on Sunday and I am invited.

[Tim Escobedo]

Raises some good points. Clearly, much analog electronics have been made obsolete by digital technology, even in the musical instrument world where customers are most reluctant. But programming bores me to tears. It feels like being disconnected from reality. I like hardware. For me, the day (fast approaching) I can find components only in SMT packaging, is the day I stop messing with electronics.

[R.G.]

Are you sure you CAN quit, Tim?



Addiction is a terrible thing.

[Seljer]

Raises some good points. Clearly, much analog electronics have been made obsolete by digital technology, even in the musical instrument world where customers are most reluctant. But programming bores me to tears. It feels like being disconnected from reality. I like hardware. For me, the day (fast approaching) I can find components only in SMT packaging, is the day I stop messing with electronics.

the solution is to stock up one a lifetimes worth of regular components while you still can 

[Mark Hammer]

An excellent article, and hardly a point I could disagree with.

I suspect the writer overstates the case about it being cheaper to buy than to build.  I think it has frequently and historically been more expensive to build than to buy, when you factor in all the things you need to buy in order to build.  Note that this includes not just the parts/materials for the final product, but all the magazines and books, tools, consumables, workbench, etc etc.  What may have changed is that we came closer to the tipping point over time, where it was simply hard to justify the pleasure of self-build against the ever-increasing gap in cost.

Miniaturization, by itself, hasn't sounded the death knell (or at least fired off the 3-minute warning gun) of the electronics hobbyist.  Rather it is the way in which miniaturization has packed in so many features in so small a package.  So, while things being tinier and therefore being harder to work with, is true, the ease with which so many features can be obtained from miniature stuff, compared to the feature set obtainable from through-hole parts, makes through-hole components feel worthless.

[Paul Marossy]

For me, the day (fast approaching) I can find components only in SMT packaging, is the day I stop messing with electronics.

Yeah, it probably won't be long before that happens. Everything seems to be going SMT these days. Even the really cheap, cheap stuff. Actually, sometimes more so with the really cheap stuff.

[petemoore]

  Cell phones still remind me of Uhura, Kirk, 'n Spock. Great shape for a communicator.
  They aren't near as fun to take apart and play with as the old communication / appliance type devices.

[ulysses]

i made a lot of the cool dick smith kits as a kid..

they still seem to be popular with the kids.

i must have made about 10 "fm bugs" and sold them at school.. all those years ago..

cheers
ulysses

[Ge_Whiz]

For me, the day (fast approaching) I can find components only in SMT packaging, is the day I stop messing with electronics.

Yeah, it probably won't be long before that happens. Everything seems to be going SMT these days. Even the really cheap, cheap stuff. Actually, sometimes more so with the really cheap stuff.

Yes, a couple of years at most. The end of hobby electronics was a couple of years away in 1980, 1990, 1997, and I see no reason why it shouldn't be a couple of years away now.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

I sometimes search through the newsgroups for hints on PCB prototyping services etc.
My conclusion is that most DIY electronics now is robotics associated, followed by stompboxes & other music, then audio, then hams. (hams a bad last).
Fortunately, humans are born with a tendency to take shit apart & modify it, so there will always be hobbyists of some kind. Program hacking may not have the same tactile appeal, but it certainly is entertainig enough if your talent lies that way. And a LOT more convenient....

As for a lifetime's supply of parts, I've got enough for a couple of lives, I think..

[Paul Marossy]

For me, the day (fast approaching) I can find components only in SMT packaging, is the day I stop messing with electronics.

Yeah, it probably won't be long before that happens. Everything seems to be going SMT these days. Even the really cheap, cheap stuff. Actually, sometimes more so with the really cheap stuff.

Yes, a couple of years at most. The end of hobby electronics was a couple of years away in 1980, 1990, 1997, and I see no reason why it shouldn't be a couple of years away now.

The end is closer than I thought! LOL 

[Threefish]

My almost-five-years-old son is very interested in my electronics tinkering. I built a very simple lighthouse nightlight for him (it's taller than he is) from a 160mm diameter cardboard carpet tube with a plastic clear container top, and a 6v globe running off of a plugpack. We painted and decorated it together of course. He shows it to every vistor we get, and explains to them how it works. I do my valve amp work when he's not around for safety's sake, but he watches from a respectful distance when I build pedals (he understands he doesn't touch the iron) and can say "capacitor", "transistor" and "potentiometer" (they're tricky words!). I'm buying him a radio project set for his birthday. I would just do it with him from components I already have, but the kit comes in a colourful box....

For me it's not just imparting my knowledge and interest in electronics, but DIY in general. There's a very strong DIY ethic in my extended family and network of friends, and I think we aussies generally pride ourselves on our DIY anyway. Aside from electronics I've built furniture and cabinets, renovated two houses, and built a strawbale construction workshop. I've got the hottest lawnmower in oz too 
Why get someone else to do it when you can do it yourself, and learn something at the same time?

Use it or lose it.

i must have made about 10 "fm bugs" and sold them at school.. all those years ago..

I can see my son doing this. Heck.

[oldrocker]

Interesting reading.  When I was a kid my dad bought me one of the electronic project experimenter kits where you put the components into those springs.  (They don't make them like that anymore.)  I loved that thing and built everything I could think of.  I was hooked then.  When I got to high school back in 1978 I took vocational electronic classes for 2 years.  2 hours a day fixing TV's, radios and CB's. I even etched my first fuzz pedal back then.  I loved it and became an electrician for 5 years when I graduated.  Then I became a controls and electrical technician for 20 years after that.  I love electricity and electronics and it always fascinated me. 
For me it doesn't matter if I can buy a Danelectro for $15.00 and to build one cost me $30.00.  I still feel more satisfied that I built it myself.  I hope SMT's don't take over.  With any luck so many stompbox builders are buying the per hole large components that manufacturers will find a market in it and keep making them.  It could happen.   (Not.)

[runmikeyrun]

it'll just fade away.  I remember the size of the Dayton Hamfest as a kid (dad was a ham, i could never get through morse code to get a license!!  Now they have no code licenses  ) and then what it had dwindled to now.  With the advent of email all of a sudden people didn't need a radio to talk to people in other countries.  BUT... there is still a dedicated ham base. 

As there will be with electronics hobbyists.  I buy pedals that are too complicated to build.  But i love to build whatever i can because i love putting it in a custom enclosure, adding my own touches to the sound and way it works.  I try to mod pedals that i buy.  I put a friggin guitar pickup in my bass for God's sake (dimarzio x2n, right in between the soapbars- fantastic huge low mid hump!)  I love having something that isn't what someone else can get off the shelf.  And that's what will always keep me a hobbyist.

[ulysses]

Program hacking may not have the same tactile appeal, but it certainly is entertainig enough if your talent lies that way. And a LOT more convenient....

are you talking about cracking paul? i was going to mention enjoying a good old "crack me" as a kid also.. didnt know if it was appropriate to say so on this board 

As for a lifetime's supply of parts, I've got enough for a couple of lives, I think..

can you put me in your will paul? I'll drive down to melbourne to pick up all your stuff 

cheers
ulysses

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Ulysses, I wasn't thinking about crackz as such, just the way some people enjoy writing programs. As for my will..... it's all accounted for, but I must say it's amazing how many people think they will outlive me. I intend to suprise them

[brett]

Another factor was the emergence of massive cheap off-shore manufacturing. This meant you could buy ready-built products cheaper than you could buy the parts and build one yourself. A good example is a power supply. Even a complex switch mode supply for a PC cost less than $30 bucks. Why bother with building your own?

When I was a teenager, Dick Smith and Jaycar kits were the only affordable option for me to get a hi-fi.  I had a Playmaster 40.  What cost $50 in 1977, I bought again in 2006 for $10 on ebay (for parts).

Kids these days want to plug and play.  Who can blame them?  The way I see it, they are no less creative than we were, they're just expressing it in a different way. 
WRT occupations, many of our parents didn't quite understand when we went to work in offices and factories instead of on farms and down mines.

[Gladmarr]

I came up almost the same path as the author of that article.  I started messing with electronics because my grand-dad died before he could teach me about all the doodads in his basement radio lab.  I was always fixing other kids' walkmans in high school, fixing my own amps after high school and stuff like that.  I was convinced to go to tech school by a friend I worked with at a bike store.  Meanwhile I got a Fender and a pair of Earth tube amps for free, so I tried to make Marshalls out of them.  I worked in a couple of Museums fixing and fabricating exhibits while trying to make my own pedals and the like.  This was slightly after the internet got going and slightly before I knew about sites like this... around the time when the only well-known source for music effects schematics was Jamie Heilman's μarchive.  I eventually went to school for engineering and I was blown away by the fact that not one of the people I was in school with could solder and few of them knew what a resistor or electrolytic capacitor looked like!  At that point I could see how hobby-electronics was falling by the wayside as miniaturization and one-chip-solutions were starting to take over.  I think it's a real bummer that kids aren't learning about this kind of stuff in school, and it seems like ham radio clubs carry a social stigma almost like boy scouts or student government as far as the high school social hierarchy goes.  While I think there's a lot of kids who want to know how stuff works, I don't know how many of them are taking things apart and trying to figure them out and I don't know if they have access to the information they would need to be able to get started.  Maybe I need to volunteer at the local high school.... 

[Mark Hammer]

I put in a proposal to our local board of education a few years back to offer a non-credit extension/night course for teens and young adults on building things for your guitar.  Part of the proposed curriculum and course costs was that they build a distortion pedal.  Through what may have been my inability to produce a convincing proposal, or maybe the shortsightedness of the reviewers, or quite possibly a full slate that left no room for anything else once flower arranging, Reiki, and how to e-mail were taken care of, nothing came of the proposal, unfortunately.  But I still think such a course is a terrific idea and encourage others to explore offering something like that in their own locality.  Certainly if one was going to order boards, boxes, and components from any of the regular suppliers here as educational supplies, I'm sure they'd be happy to cut some deal for an order of 25 or more.  I'm certain that, even though the sorts of electronics hobbyist mags with projects that nourished many of us here have now thinned out or disappeared, the I-made-it-myself zing is a universal and refuses to die.

As an aside, my wife bought a "make your own remote control" kit for our younger son for Hannukah.  It was partially a hommage to myself and a way for our son and I to "bond" over common interests.  I suppose it could be considered a "DIY kit", but unfortunately, it consisted of a PCB with smt components mounted, a conductive rubber keypad layer, and the upper and lower halves of the chassis.  Essentially what you get if you buy a $4.99 universal remote and take the screws off.  She meant well but you and I both know that isn't a real kit, nor real DIY.