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This is an excellent article, detailed and thoughtful. Thanks. Got me thinking about some business things, and apologies if this goes off topic.... 50 years a

This is an excellent article, detailed and thoughtful. Thanks. Got me thinking about some business things, and apologies if this goes off topic.... 50 years ago there were a wealth of books for electronic hobbyists to build things like this - home automation, home security, plant irrigation systems and suchlike. Later an industry sprang up to make products for this market which was initially niche and geeky. Small companies became big companies. Big companies became shitty, extractive, exploitative monopoly companies as the author describes. Today we lament an apparent choice between "convenience" and "too much work to do yourself". The cynics and naysayers are always keen to point out just how few people can accomplish anything like this - and that is indeed true. But between the lonely hobbyist with soldering iron in hand, and the big technology company was an era that seems almost dead today (for many reasons like customer support and reliable sourcing). It was the kit movement. Many of the early microcomputers were in fact kits. Clive Sinclair first offered the ZX80 as a "solder it yourself" job. Heathkit hifi and music synthesisers were a big thing for a while. Many people who couldn't build a home system like this might be interested in a DIY solution if they had a big helping hand up. I wonder what happened to the kit economy and why it doesn't work as a business model any more.

minimalist 4y ago
I think the software dimension adds some fuzziness to what can be considered a complete 'kit'. For instance, I've been able to piece together a voice assistant using a Matrix Creator [0] and a home alarm retrofit using Konnected [1] that is more tailored to my needs than any commercial offering could be. Both projects can be thought of as kits, but one can take any number of paths toward setting up and maintaining the software behind the system. Furthermore, the pace of development is so quick that a particular system may lose development interest to a newer sexier project, and if your system connects with third-party APIs, that is always a moving target. So, I think the spirit of kits lives on, just in a different way :) [0]: https://www.matrix.one/products/creator https://www.matrix.one/products/creator [1]: https://konnected.io/ https://konnected.io/
mike_d 4y ago
> what happened to the kit economy Like Adadfruit, SparkFun, Jameco, Seeed Studio, Tindie, etc?
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  No. I see those occupying the approximate space as Radio Shack and Maplin used to, and in the same period (pre-2000) they would stand in contrast to component level only supplies like Radio Spares etc. The kit market in electronics never really reached the level of say the kit-car industry, or marine design space where very detailed hull and outfitting plans would be sold alongside specialist materials and support. What was going on in that space was almost like flat-pack furniture; a full product but with highly customisable self-labour. Oddly, flat-pack furniture has become the norm and self-assembly is expected for most products. Obviously this has to do with size, weight, shipping etc.
  - carapace 4y ago
    I guess we're seeing different things? I just got back into hobby electronics and the kit market in electronics seems pretty healthy. I mean, I don't have any hard numbers, but there's a lot of activity. - - - - To me the sequence of events in the RepRap (self-printable 3D printers concept) space is very telling: the middle ground between hobbyists and professionals seems to have hollowed out. You can design a part and have it printed and shipped to you within days, of pretty much arbitrarily high quality, involving plastic, metal, rubber, etc... Or you can get a kit for a 3D printer, but it will take time before you can actually print well enough to do anything useful, in the sense of being economically competitive with the 3D print shops or e.g. the Daiso chain. Daiso is incredible. You can outfit an enter household with quality items for just a dollar or two each. Average item price is about $1.75 I'd guess. That covers the entire thing: raw materials, design, manufacturing, distribution, profit, etc... You're just not going to beat that with a toy 3D printer on your kitchen table, eh?
louthy 4y ago
This spirit definitely still lives on in the modular-synth world: https://www.thonk.co.uk/ https://www.thonk.co.uk/
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
I see quite the opposite happening... "back in the day", it was hard to get anything, computers were expensive, electronics (except very basic) were hard to source, and prebuilt software (for whatever custom use) was non-existant. Now, a microcontroller with wifi and bluetooth is <$5, a computer/server for running code is ~$50 (if you manage to find a raspberrypi, or a bit more for a micro pc), wireless interfaces (zigbee, bluetooth) are cheap, prebuilt code for sensors (tasmota, esphome,...) is very mature and stable, central management systems (home assistant,...) are stable and support pretty much everything... The only problem I see is, that a lot of people have lost their tinkering capabilities and don't want to get their hands dirty compared to "back then" when a lot of stuff needed getting your hands dirty and more people went along the DIY path.
- briHass 4y ago
  Agreed, and the ease of 'assembling' various components is much easier now. Even the project in this article has very little soldering/individual components besides a few pull up resistors and some LEDs, both of which could have been on breakout boards. Everything else is just pin headers and jumpers to/from prebuilt boards. The Heathkits and even things like the Radio Shack spring-wire 250-in-one type kits had you build circuits from all individual components: resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, inductors, etc. If lucky, maybe a few basic ICs like triple-nickels, op-amps, comparators. After hours of soldering/wiring you had something that did some very basic function - not a microcontroller/SBC with full programming language support and more power than a supercomputer a few decades ago.
  - wildzzz 4y ago
    Back in the day, kit radios were about as advanced as you could get with DIY electronics. You can still buy kit ham radios but the advancements that have been made in what is available for hackers is enormous. A full fleged computer the size of a deck of cards is amazing. This guy built an incredibly complex security system using off the shelf components that could have easily required zero soldering had he only used wireless sensors. His design is maybe a little over engineered (tamper switches on junction boxes?) and is probably much better than what any residential alarm company could offer.
amelius 4y ago
The x86 platform is sort of a kit economy, where you build your own systems from separate components. And it's a great business model, just not targeted at end-consumers, but at industry.
- wildzzz 4y ago
  There is always a new layer of abstraction available when it comes to building your own thing. You can still build a radio from a rusty razorblade but nowadays, building your own radio means buying a simple rtlsdr and setting up your own modem in gnuradio. The added layers of abstraction make it easier to do more with less time and effort. You can even design your own SDR but you'll still be buying VCOs and FPGAs since it's not really possible to do it with discretes, let alone homemade discretes. The economy of scale has greatly reduced the cost of using more advanced components. Someone could build a similar security system using all off the shelf wireless sensors without making a single solder joint. The challenge for a lot of DIY projects now involves the software, whether that means writing your own or hooking up various applications and services. Sure, you could build your own microcontroller board to talk to the sensors but that's a lot of effort you could instead apply to the software side of things.
thomasjsn 4y ago
Thank you :) I think for people willing to put in the time — things have certainly become much easier. I started with AVR microcontrollers about 20 years ago, and couldn't even dream of accomplishing things I am easily able to to today. Raspberry Pi, Arduino; have changed the scene for sure. But at the same time; maybe there is less inventive for someone to really dig into something, as you say: with soldering iron in hand. As so much is available as a product or service already. My first "serious" soldering was a few PCB kits :)

minimalist 4y ago

I think the software dimension adds some fuzziness to what can be considered a complete 'kit'. For instance, I've been able to piece together a voice assistant using a Matrix Creator [0] and a home alarm retrofit using Konnected [1] that is more tailored to my needs than any commercial offering could be. Both projects can be thought of as kits, but one can take any number of paths toward setting up and maintaining the software behind the system. Furthermore, the pace of development is so quick that a particular system may lose development interest to a newer sexier project, and if your system connects with third-party APIs, that is always a moving target. So, I think the spirit of kits lives on, just in a different way :) [0]: https://www.matrix.one/products/creator https://www.matrix.one/products/creator [1]: https://konnected.io/ https://konnected.io/

mike_d 4y ago

> what happened to the kit economy Like Adadfruit, SparkFun, Jameco, Seeed Studio, Tindie, etc?

nonrandomstring 4y ago
No. I see those occupying the approximate space as Radio Shack and Maplin used to, and in the same period (pre-2000) they would stand in contrast to component level only supplies like Radio Spares etc. The kit market in electronics never really reached the level of say the kit-car industry, or marine design space where very detailed hull and outfitting plans would be sold alongside specialist materials and support. What was going on in that space was almost like flat-pack furniture; a full product but with highly customisable self-labour. Oddly, flat-pack furniture has become the norm and self-assembly is expected for most products. Obviously this has to do with size, weight, shipping etc.
- carapace 4y ago
  I guess we're seeing different things? I just got back into hobby electronics and the kit market in electronics seems pretty healthy. I mean, I don't have any hard numbers, but there's a lot of activity. - - - - To me the sequence of events in the RepRap (self-printable 3D printers concept) space is very telling: the middle ground between hobbyists and professionals seems to have hollowed out. You can design a part and have it printed and shipped to you within days, of pretty much arbitrarily high quality, involving plastic, metal, rubber, etc... Or you can get a kit for a 3D printer, but it will take time before you can actually print well enough to do anything useful, in the sense of being economically competitive with the 3D print shops or e.g. the Daiso chain. Daiso is incredible. You can outfit an enter household with quality items for just a dollar or two each. Average item price is about $1.75 I'd guess. That covers the entire thing: raw materials, design, manufacturing, distribution, profit, etc... You're just not going to beat that with a toy 3D printer on your kitchen table, eh?

louthy 4y ago

This spirit definitely still lives on in the modular-synth world: https://www.thonk.co.uk/ https://www.thonk.co.uk/

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

I see quite the opposite happening... "back in the day", it was hard to get anything, computers were expensive, electronics (except very basic) were hard to source, and prebuilt software (for whatever custom use) was non-existant. Now, a microcontroller with wifi and bluetooth is <$5, a computer/server for running code is ~$50 (if you manage to find a raspberrypi, or a bit more for a micro pc), wireless interfaces (zigbee, bluetooth) are cheap, prebuilt code for sensors (tasmota, esphome,...) is very mature and stable, central management systems (home assistant,...) are stable and support pretty much everything... The only problem I see is, that a lot of people have lost their tinkering capabilities and don't want to get their hands dirty compared to "back then" when a lot of stuff needed getting your hands dirty and more people went along the DIY path.

briHass 4y ago
Agreed, and the ease of 'assembling' various components is much easier now. Even the project in this article has very little soldering/individual components besides a few pull up resistors and some LEDs, both of which could have been on breakout boards. Everything else is just pin headers and jumpers to/from prebuilt boards. The Heathkits and even things like the Radio Shack spring-wire 250-in-one type kits had you build circuits from all individual components: resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, inductors, etc. If lucky, maybe a few basic ICs like triple-nickels, op-amps, comparators. After hours of soldering/wiring you had something that did some very basic function - not a microcontroller/SBC with full programming language support and more power than a supercomputer a few decades ago.
- wildzzz 4y ago
  Back in the day, kit radios were about as advanced as you could get with DIY electronics. You can still buy kit ham radios but the advancements that have been made in what is available for hackers is enormous. A full fleged computer the size of a deck of cards is amazing. This guy built an incredibly complex security system using off the shelf components that could have easily required zero soldering had he only used wireless sensors. His design is maybe a little over engineered (tamper switches on junction boxes?) and is probably much better than what any residential alarm company could offer.

amelius 4y ago

The x86 platform is sort of a kit economy, where you build your own systems from separate components. And it's a great business model, just not targeted at end-consumers, but at industry.

wildzzz 4y ago
There is always a new layer of abstraction available when it comes to building your own thing. You can still build a radio from a rusty razorblade but nowadays, building your own radio means buying a simple rtlsdr and setting up your own modem in gnuradio. The added layers of abstraction make it easier to do more with less time and effort. You can even design your own SDR but you'll still be buying VCOs and FPGAs since it's not really possible to do it with discretes, let alone homemade discretes. The economy of scale has greatly reduced the cost of using more advanced components. Someone could build a similar security system using all off the shelf wireless sensors without making a single solder joint. The challenge for a lot of DIY projects now involves the software, whether that means writing your own or hooking up various applications and services. Sure, you could build your own microcontroller board to talk to the sensors but that's a lot of effort you could instead apply to the software side of things.

thomasjsn 4y ago

Thank you :) I think for people willing to put in the time — things have certainly become much easier. I started with AVR microcontrollers about 20 years ago, and couldn't even dream of accomplishing things I am easily able to to today. Raspberry Pi, Arduino; have changed the scene for sure. But at the same time; maybe there is less inventive for someone to really dig into something, as you say: with soldering iron in hand. As so much is available as a product or service already. My first "serious" soldering was a few PCB kits :)