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Arduino is lightyears more accessible than PICs a decade ago; it’s never been easier to use a free or OSS tool to design a board and have it mailed to you. The
by FakeComments 7y ago
Arduino is lightyears more accessible than PICs a decade ago; it’s never been easier to use a free or OSS tool to design a board and have it mailed to you.
There actually used to be a every Sunday workshop where you made one from scratch in 3 hours (including board fab) with a grab bag of components to populate with — within the past couple years. (That shop closed due to lack of patrons.)
You can’t modify simple electronics as easily — but how many people built their own drones in the 80s? I’d guess RC cars and drones have about the same number of DIY whatever, and that we’re not seeing a fall off (because of difficulty — availability and community are different issues).
The simple truth is most people don’t care and don’t want to manage their stuff all the time: I make my own electronics, but my laptop is still Windows with minimal config. My desktop is parts and Linux — but only because I needed it to mirror what I do at work, as a test bed. The company itself found data centers to be too much fuss, and lifted-and-shifted most of it to the cloud.
Why don’t I bother? Because fighting the laptop constantly to keep FOSS working (and secure!) detracts from my time building my own electronics (or other forms of living life).
If you really care, our failure to create broader technical skill is not technical: it’s social.
We allowed RadioShack to be gutted, we allowed ”hacker spaces” to be priced out of business as cities grew, etc.
- sokoloff 7y agoCouldn't agree more strongly with the first half of your comment. Bravo! Radio Shack gutted itself, IMO, albeit probably in response to the reality that they couldn't sell very many single 555 timers for $1.99 anymore once people had obvious alternatives. As for hacker spaces, if people want them, they have to be willing to pay [enough] to have them. If the local real estate gets progressively more expensive such that the hacker space is no longer viable economically, then it's going to close or move. It was game playing collectives before them. It'll be something else next. Things we like aren't immune from the laws of economics.
- blacksmith_tb 7y agoThere's also a public/private angle - many libraries are adding some makerspace-like labs, with 3D printers etc. That seems like a logical way to sidestep the problem of needing a paying support base (since we're all already paying for our libraries, and they don't have to contend with real estate prices).
- DerekL 7y ago> Radio Shack gutted itself, IMO, albeit probably in response to the reality that they couldn't sell very many single 555 timers for $1.99 anymore once people had obvious alternatives. I don't have any firm numbers on this, but I doubt that discrete components for building circuits from scratch were ever a significant portion of Radio Shack's business. Seems like most of their sales were in manufactured devices (for example, amps, pocket radios, walkie talkies, computers), accessories (antennas, microphones), cables, replacement tubes for radios and TVs, and, of course, batteries.