American Electronics Hobbyist Census [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

American Electronics Hobbyist Census [pdf]

media.jameco.com

33 pointsepalmer36 comments

This is so accurate:

>> They are convinced that the American economy is at least in part fueled by this hobby and believe emphasis of electronics in education is immensely valuable.

>> This is not a new passion, in fact most began by taking things apart at a young age and have spent 35 years or more pursuing their avocation. While they haven’t always had a lot of time to pursue electronics as a hobby, they expect that it will become a larger part of their lives in the near future.

>> Hobbyists believe that this is first and foremost a hobby about creativity that transforms from an idea into something tangible. New technology and renewed devotions have given electronics hobbyists the ability to create almost anything they can dream up and yet at the end of the day there is a childish affection that succumbs to goofing around and playing with fun, blinking lights.

>> This is an old-boys club very much split between those that make their living with electronics during the day and then use it to play and those that pursue it as a pure pastime. For those who see it as a pure hobby, a large percentage are self-taught but are no less skilled nor passionate than those who have dedicated all aspects of their life to electronics.

OP here: I have two daughters. One builds things (robots) and one does not. But there are so few women as electronic hobbyists. FIRST Robotics is helping bring young women into the fabrication maker mentality. I just wish it could happen faster.

Building "robots" is a lame thing; teach her the real things: batteries, leds etc.

Oh she does all of that. These are 120 lb robots with 100+ amp circuits. She wires up the control system board system board, uses CNC mills to fab parts (and many other tools), works with the designers to ensure that the design can be build, does on the fly diagnostics and break fix. She is getting really good experience. She also works with the programmers to ensure a smooth control system. And much more.

That's fantastic! If you don't mind me asking, how old is she? University student or younger?

Rising High School Senior. FIRST robots is the program. 6 Years on the HS team (she was allowed on in Middle School). Wants to be a Mechanical Engr. with a 2nd degree in CS. Makes her Dad proud. She also is a lobbyist for disadvantaged youth for CS and STEM opportunity.

> 38% report blowing something up on purpose

Also, 62% are lying their asses off on this questionnaire. :)

Yeah, I'm going to "guess" that as late as the 1970's at least, almost 100% of male children succeeded at blowing up stuff on purpose, whether or not they were electronics hobbyists.

OP here. I'm 61. When I was in High School I unwrapped a model rocket engine and lit it. Wow was that stupid. It came right at me and then exploded. No harm but did not try that again.

One of your first three thoughts after blowing an electrolytic cap for the first time is bound to be, "That was cool! How do I do that again?"

It's amusing to note the hostility towards surface-mounted devices. You don't find that in Shentzen. That may be a Jameco issue. If you use SMDs, you don't get them from Jameco.

I sometimes buy from Jameco, but only because their HQ is about a mile from me and they have will-call. Online ordering is Digi-Key or Mouser.

I didn't even realize JameCo was still in business ... at my first engineering job, we bought most of our parts from JDK Microdevices and JameCo. If something was less common, it might come from Newark. Since this was prior to the Internet (1983?), you had to get the catalogs from the vendors and peruse them.

Digikey and the Internet have changed things dramatically!

octopart.com is another good one. They have prices from all distributors in one place.

OP here: This explains my obsession for building widgets and little robots to my wife.

What are they referring to with the phrase "open source microcontroller"? I must spend too much time with ARM cortex parts, I had no idea there are popular open cores.

Probably the arduino - with the open source libraries and such.

Some movements at http://opencores.org/

Arduino IMHO is bad and harmful: it "gentrifies" the hobby, floods it with people who have no desire to learn the basics.

Partially agree, the same could be said about the Parallax crowd 20 years ago.

I think the real problem is Abstraction. Most things are assembled as blocks, with no idea how the blocks work. It seems like many projects today consist of, A) Take X microcontroller B) Add Y1, Y2, Yx component blocks (LCD screen, motor controller, etc.) C) Add connecting wires D) Use manufacture supplied libraries E) Add some custom code for your domain.

Which is exactly the progression that software made. When was the last time you wrote your own bios, bootloader, os, device drivers, filesystem, network stack, etc.? You don't do that now, as you said, "most things are assembled as blocks," except it's worse than that, you just get a big monolithic "OS" now days install that on your desktop and then you write "custom code for your domain."

I don't think this is a bad thing, since all that software that you don't write yourself is available as open source and you can still dig in and see how it works if you want. I'm not a close follower of arduino, but from what I understand the low-level code and board schematics and layout are open source, so it's kind of the same idea. I don't think the processor is open source though (having the verilog code, timing constraints, layout, etc. for that would be the ideal).

The difference is that Arduino interfaces the electronic world; you need to know your domain.

That makes absolutely no difference.

I've been designing electronics and firmware professionally for my entire career. Right now I'm acting as a consultant developing a network-enabled industrial device. It's going to be powered by an Arduino simply because it's easy to do, robust enough (after I design appropriate power supply protection), and most important: enormous amounts of documentation and experience in the community means I can probably complete the entire project in less than a day of work.

That's what matters. Not some mistaken concept of "gentrification" because you're pissed off at opening up your Good ol' boys club.

> I've been designing electronics and firmware professionally for my entire career.

That makes absolutely no difference. You can still be a bad engineer.

If you find Arduino bastardized C++ superior than AVR-GCC, you are a poor developer. Everything you can do with Arduino C++ wrapper you can do with normal C++. You'll save resources, end up with firmware, written in industrially standard language, will have better control over hardware.

> experience in the community means I can probably complete the entire project in less than a day of work.

If you after "designing electronics and firmware professionally for the entire career " still need assistance from the community for already well-documented 8-bit controller, it tells about you.

> pissed off at opening up your Good ol' boys club.

No, I am not - after all I am not an embedded developer; I am pissed that it is advertised as something it is not: not a good tool for making industrial automation, not a good tool to stay with if you decide to get involved with automation seriously. It gives a wrong idea to the student about how AVR works, it locks you in with the platform and at the same time dominates the sector.

To be fair, every generation skips the basics learned by the previous generation to some extent - standing on the shoulders of giants is the only way to reach further.

There's definitely value in digging deeper into more fundamental components, but I wouldn't say that doing so is the only way to advance the field, and even if there's a flood of superficial hobbyists, would you argue that there are actually fewer people who learn the basics?

> fewer people who learn the basics?

It stays constant, but the noise increases.

this is going to go in my collection of classic comments about arduino, you're saying arduino is "bad" and "harmful" (to who and how?) because more, and different people than you might get interested in electronics as a hobby. wow.

here's another you may enjoy from my article "Why the Arduino Won and Why It’s Here to Stay"

“Arduino: baby-talk programming for pothead” – ArnoldB, AVRfreaks.net http://makezine.com/2011/02/10/why-the-arduino-won-and-why-i...

disclosure, i work at the open-source hardware company, adafruit and we make arduinos for arduino.cc !

> to who?

Everyone and especially the arduinists themselves.

> people than you might get interested in electronics as a hobby. wow.

People get interested in Arduino, not electronics; they get interested in the bling, not how it works. Instead of wasting time with Arduino, they can as well just read the datasheets.

Then I guess everyone who has not written their own network stack and built their own networking hardware should get off the internet. After all, they are just interested in the bling and not how it works.

No, wrong analogy. Web browsing should not be advertised as an introduction into TCP/IP.

If you really want to get into TCP/IP it's not the worst place to start, and all the others who just browse for fun aren't hurting you any, are they?

Arduino has its niche: it is artists; it actually started as a part of Processing. However, what bothers me is the culture around it: newspeak ("fritzing" etc.), lack of understanding that it is a toy and inferior thing, not suitable for real-world applications; abundance of bad hardware designs; overall drive toward abstraction, which is not ok when dealing with real world tasks.

Web browsing is more likely to get someone interested in TCP/IP than plopping the RFCs in front of them. I know I've found myself more motivated to learn more of the basics of electronics after working with an Arduino than basic crap I put together for a logic course.

People learn different ways and are motivated in different ways. I'm motivated to learn top down in electronics. Arduino is helpful to that crowd.

The problem starts when someone unfamiliar with low level OS details writes a network service; you end up hacked. With arduino people get false sense of knowledge and when they put the things togethe for a real world application, it ends up bad.

> I'm motivated to learn top down in electronics.

Very dangerous and potentially deadly approach (electric shock, battery caught fire, floating inputs cooked the processor etc.) Electronics is not programming: errors have tanible consequences.

Besides, last time I checked "open-source hardware" meant VHDL, Verilog and FPGA. The word has been hijacked I guess.

Arduino, as a piece of hardware btw is a nice development kit on its own.

Gentrification is bad because it pushes out the people who can no longer afford it. How does Arduino do this to electronics hobbyists?

There was a link on HN recently about gentrification of the concept "hacker". It explains better than I can do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com