Planet Analog DesignLine Blog
DIY days: better, worse, or just very different?
Bill Schweber
1/25/2012 8:52 PM EST
Norman Edmund passed away last week at age 95, but the news received very little attention; you can read a nice Wall Street Journal remembrance here.
Some of you are asking: "who was he, anyway?" For many years, Edmund Scientific was the best-known supplier of lenses, optical filters, polarizers, motors, switches, gears, small fixtures and tools, and all sorts of electromechanical items and gadgets to the amateur science experimenter/hobbyist (as well as government agencies, such as NASA). They accepted one-off, small orders in addition to those of the "big boys."
Getting his catalog in the mail was always a joy, just thumbing through the pages to see what he had—and they sent the catalog to anyone year after year, even if you never bought anything. Going through it page-by-page was a way to, at least vicariously; and to feel like a scientist and engineer, and on the cheap, until you had saved up enough money to fulfill your small-scale "must have" aspiration.
[Some years ago, he and his family sold the "mail order/experimenter" business to another company (see here) while they focused on selling optics, and only to commercial customers.]
His passing made me think of the world of the amateur experimentation and project-building years ago versus today. Some will those say were the good old days: you could actually handle the electronic parts (and you could strip them from old TVs, too), you didn't need development systems, and things were more tangible in various ways. You didn't need a microscope or special oven to solder components to PC boards.
In addition to project-oriented publications such as Popular Electronics and its rivals, even the prestigious Scientific American had a popular monthly "Amateur Scientist" column (long-since discontinued), which presented electronic and mechanical projects that were non-trivial but very buildable—a typical project was a highly sensitive seismograph built from easily obtained parts.
But were those really such "good old days"? Today's DIY folks have easy access to online search and sources with quick delivery; rapid prototyping machines and small machining centers; Lego Mindstorms; customizable, software-driven subassemblies (such as motor and controls; high-performance servos and controllers; wired and wireless communication links; displays and keyboards; and much more. All of these can be tied together with powerful, often free tools, apps, operating systems, and development systems that run on PCs, tablets, or even smart phones.
For ideas, plans, and tutorials, there are countless user groups, informal forums, and blogs, as well as more formal sources such as data sheets, or Circuit Cellar and Maker Faire/Make: (full disclosure: we and our parent UBM have absolutely no connection to either of those two publications; in fact, they are competitors in some ways.)
So, is hobbyist and experimenter DIY situation better or worse than back then? I'd say it is both, and certainly it is very different. As with most things in life, what you get out of it depends on what you are willing and able to put into it.
What's your view on the past-versus-present DIY situation? ◊
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t.alex
1/26/2012 10:26 AM EST
With the cost of development boards getting lower, DIY seems to be better nowadays.
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jlinstrom
1/26/2012 12:00 PM EST
small SMT devices seem the rule of the day; for obvious reasons - volume production. But that has little consolation for the DIY - adapter boards or microsurgery.
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Work to Ride, RIde to Work
1/26/2012 4:25 PM EST
Bill, like you said, some things are better, some things are worse, but definitely different. Sad to hear of his passing. Forty years ago, I put together a 6-inch Newtonian reflector from parts purchased from ES. I would spend hours poring over their catalog. I also enjoyed the Heathkit craze as well building all kinds of kits from test equipment to windshield wiper delays before they became standard equipment on all cars. Although there are huge resources available over the 'Net, I do miss the turn-key kits with detailed instructions. Heathkit was certainly not the only one out there, but they were the biggest. I still use my trusty signal generator and bench top DMM from Heathkit. I even have a vacuum tube VOM from Heathkit that I keep in the office as a conversation piece. It works fine, by the way.
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David Ashton
1/26/2012 5:44 PM EST
I'd also agree, it's a bit of both. It's so nice to be able to just grab a datasheet off the net - I used to have to be good at persuading suppliers to lend me their books to copy. And I remember it took me 4 months once to source a CMOS 4050 for a project (but then again Zimbabwe was not "Electronics Central"). Now I can get almost anything I want in a few days.
Since my young days I've cannibalised bits off old TVs and boards. I still do - its a good way of getting high quality components for next to nothing - but with everything going SMD the pickings are getting slim.
And I kinda miss the old style Practical Electronics and Elektor projects where you'd build something from the ground up - use veroboard (stripboard) or even make your own PCB. I still do my own PCBs, and I design things myself now, but a lot of the projects in the magazines use ready-built boards as the heart of their projects. But then again you can build some pretty sophisticated things with them.
Although I've been into electronics since I was knee high to a grasshopper, I've worked in telecomms most of my life (and had a lot of fun doing it). But telecomms these days is mostly racking, stacking and board changing. So my DIY activities at home have a lot to do with keeping me sane. As you say Bill, you get out what you put in.
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jackOfManyTrades
1/27/2012 5:25 AM EST
When I was a boy, electronics was a hobby. Now I get paid for it. Which is nice. I'm not so obscessed that after doing it all day, I go home and do some more!
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prabhakar_deosthali
1/27/2012 5:52 AM EST
With micro electronics a lot of fun of doing something by yourself has gone. Today you have to use magnifying glass just to read the component name.
But the advanced development boards and the software to go with it and the simulation has all made it fun to build complex systems
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GarySXT
1/27/2012 8:57 AM EST
I’m sorry to hear about Mr. Edmund passing away. As a kid I poured over their catalogs and made a telescope with a mirror grinding kit and other parts from his company. As a ham operator for over 40 years I often hear comments like "nobody builds anything anymore because you can’t get parts".
Can't get parts? Ever see a DigiKey, Mouser or Newark catalog or visit their websites or those of a number of other suppliers? It is true you can't find inexpensive high power RF parts like you used to, but there are lots of other projects to do.
Some things today are more difficult. Working with SMT is challenging as mentioned before. The days of doing a big project with just a volt-ohm meter are probably gone, but some of the microcontroller development systems have free software and USB based debugging hardware tools can cost well below $100. Systems like Arduino are great because the cost is low, and you can start with minimal knowledge and learn as you go.
I don’t know as many people who build things as I used to, but I am very excited about the new DIY movement. It is different today but in many ways better.
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sharps_eng
1/27/2012 11:06 AM EST
Yes Edmunds is one of the great catalogues. I got a lot out of Ambit's catalog, and the famous Jermyn catalogue.
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JeffCB
1/27/2012 3:18 PM EST
Having done DIY electronics projects both in the old days and modern times, I find modern times to be vastly better, for one reason: The Internet. The information, inspiration, camaraderie, etc. available to anyone with a web browser more than compensates for the fact that I can't readily solder a surface-mount part. As just one example of hundreds, check out http://kinecthacks.net/.
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WireMan
1/27/2012 4:12 PM EST
Times have changed for chemistry experiments. I doubt an experimenter could just walk into a chemical supply house today and leave with bromine, thionyl chloride, sodium azide, and potassium chlorate. In the '60's, all you needed was cash and a way get your purchases home.
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EDA360 Insider
1/27/2012 5:22 PM EST
Bill,
I can understand why you say "both" but I say it's better, all better. I could not have said that five years ago, but now I can. Here's why:
1. Heathkit died and so did kitbuilding. I think Heathkit died for three reasons. First, the kinds of things you made from Heathkits (Ham gear, test equipment, TVs, consumer audio, computers) got a lot more complicated to the point that labor simply was not a factor and it became way, way more expensive to build the equipment than to buy it off the shelf. At the same time, components went to surface mount and became much harder to solder. Third, a lot of people became deathly afraid of the element lead, believing that you'd die if you just looked at it. For all those reasons, kitbuilding died.
Now, it's back. My favorite successor to Heathkit is Sparkfun in Boulder. You can buy kits that need to be soldered from them. They have retail space in the local Micro Center store and other places. They are aligned with the Maker movement and have large booths at Maker Faires. They post multiple geek-a-licious videos every week on their site. They sell many surface-mount components that might be otherwise unaccessible to hobbyists pre-soldered to experimenter boards. They post instructions for their kits online, so there's little reason in terms of publishing cost to not "go long" on the instructions. Other people have different preferences for the Heathkit mantle, such as Adafruit Industries. These companies are out there. Five years ago, they were not. Even Radio shack has noticed the Maker movement and has re-invigorated its parts business. Probably too late, but they're trying.
2. The Internet has supplanted Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics, and Modern Electronics magazines. You can get far more hobby-type info from Internet sources for zero cost that you ever could from the hobby magazines in the 1970s and 1980s. These resources a literally a Google away.
(End of Part 1)
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EDA360 Insider
1/27/2012 5:22 PM EST
(Part 2)
3. Movements like the Arduino put complex microcontroller technology in the hands of High School and Elementary School students. Unprecedented access to some very sophisticated technology.
4. The PC as a support tool along with open source software development tools means that any student can dip a toe into embedded programming on myriad processor architectures.
5. While it's true that we no longer get those luscious paper catalogs to drool over (Radio Shack, Allied, Newark, Mouser, Poly Paks, DigiKey, Jameco, Edmund Scientific, Auto World, etc.), we have the online equivalent. So we don't have Edmund Scientific any more but we have the likes of Surplus Shed, for example. Even those surplus stores that we used to make pilgrimages to now list a lot of their stuff online. There's no longer as much government surplus in stock, but new electronic components are comparatively dirt cheap--affordable by students. What you can't get retail or distribution, you can get on eBay from all over the world.
6. We're no longer alone in our houses. Help is available in myriad online forums.
7. The Maker movement has spurred the creation of TechShops, where you can get your hands on "real" tools like milling machines, laser and water-jet cutters, woodworking power tools, and a bunch of other tools you would never have access to unless you worked at a company with a machine shop.
So I say it's different and it's better. I remember in the "good old days" some people said they were worse than the real "good old days" when projects in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics sent you downstairs to the family shop where you had your own lathe and mini mill. I guarantee you I never had such tools. As a member of the TechShop, I do now.
So again, I think things are way, way better than they have ever been before, and that's from the perspective of a hobbyist who's been at it for more than 40 years.
--Steve Leibson
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David Ashton
1/27/2012 6:34 PM EST
Very good points Steve. You have to go with the changes, else you do get stuck in the view that it was better in the "good old days". The bottom line is Bill's bottom line: "As with most things in life, what you get out of it depends on what you are willing and able to put into it." That was true then and still is now.
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Work to Ride, RIde to Work
1/27/2012 7:22 PM EST
Don't forget about Nuts and Volts !! Cool magazine.
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EDA360 Insider
1/28/2012 1:55 PM EST
Not only Nuts and Volts, but some great Australian electronics hobbyist magazines still exist like Silicon Chip.
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WKetel
1/27/2012 7:56 PM EST
Some things are better now, projects can go together without such a challenge of needing heater power and high voltage power. But now a lot of folks think that you need a microcontroller to blink a light. All of the Ardunio stuff needs a computer and programmer to do anything at all, and one big question is will those parts be available next year. I can still buy the same tubes used in 1962, can you buy a replacement processor for the little one you bought in 2007? Five years ago? Back a while, it was easy to salvage good parts from used equipment, have you unsoldered a 16pin IC without a fairly specialized setup recently? So some things are better, some things are worse, a few things are much worse. But life goes on and we handle it.
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zeeglen
1/28/2012 8:27 PM EST
@"But now a lot of folks think that you need a microcontroller to blink a light."
A while back I had a test engineer design a fixture that needed a sine wave generator. He used a square wave clock, digital counter chain, Eprom loaded with sine table, and a D to A converter.
Seems he had never heard of a Wien bridge or phase shift oscillator, or even a square to sine diode array.
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David Ashton
1/27/2012 8:06 PM EST
@ "...have you unsoldered a 16pin IC without a fairly specialized setup recently?"
A hot air gun is the tool to use. You can usually get even 40-pin ICs out without much trouble. I even unsolder small SMD ICs (SOICs) and have built some SMD boards myself. So you CAN use this stuff.
I kinda liked valves (tubes). You put together a valve project and you got a real sense of accomplishment. But things move on....
I agree with your comment about putting a microcontroller in everything. I was looking for a spot welder design and got through about 10 with microcontrollers in them before I found one without. A variable voltage supply, a BIIIG capacitor and a BIIG SCR is all it takes.
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zeeglen
1/28/2012 9:15 PM EST
Right you are. Hot air takes a bit more skill, but less chance of buggering up the pcb, and other than specialty soldering iron tips is the only way to desolder ICs with pins on all four sides.
Peronally I prefer to use small nippers to cut each pin first, then unsolder the remains one at a time. Guaranteed no damage to the pcb.
Tubes glowed nicely in the dark. A transistor that glows in the dark is toast :)
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David Ashton
1/28/2012 10:57 PM EST
Sorry, I took WKetel's comment to mean salvaging chips off boards. That's easy. As you say Glen, getting them off without buggering up the board is more difficult. DILs are not too bad, up to 16 pins a solder sucker will get them loose enough to get off, usually...then put a socket in to guarantee that chip never fails again! 40 pins - you got a problem..... SMDs you can sometimes get off with hot air from the top, without overheating things tooo much... but I've never done much SMD rework.
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EdV1022
1/28/2012 11:19 PM EST
I cut the leads with a fresh xacto knife blade and then wipe the remains with a soldering iron. I also found 3.5X mag reading glasses at the dollar store which makes the whole operation up close and personal. Fortunately not to the point the I can feel the soldering iron heat tanning my face.
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watsonm05
2/1/2012 8:09 AM EST
For removing surface mount ICs I've used Chip Quik (http://www.chipquik.com/).
It works great, preserves the PCB (if that's what you want) and preserves the IC (if that's what you want). Plus it's available a bunch of distributers or directly from Chop Quik.
No Financial Interest - just a satisfied suctomer.
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David Ashton
2/1/2012 1:28 PM EST
The link does not work unless you cut and paste it using only what's written above - seems to happen a lot these days - Naomi??
try this, might work
http://www.chipquik.com
Looks like a good product though - the videos are amazing.
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David Ashton
2/1/2012 1:36 PM EST
Mine seems to work, might be to do with being on a separate line?
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zeeglen
2/1/2012 2:32 PM EST
Yes, good videos for a crash course in soldering.
Not mentioned is the need for some fluxes to be rinsed off under hot running water, otherwise they can cause slight electrical leakage that plays havoc with high impedance analog circuits. Have seen boards failed after a few years because the flux was not completely cleaned off during manufacture and absorbed moisture, a good washing and problems gone.
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EDA360 Insider
1/28/2012 1:53 PM EST
" But now a lot of folks think that you need a microcontroller to blink a light."
Have you priced a small microcontroller versus a 555 and its associated passives lately? The microcontroller not only wins, it can implement several blink modes for no incremental cost. However, I have purchased Radio Shack experimenter kits for my nephew that will blink a light without a microcontroller.
As for the tubes you could get in 1962, you cannot buy the same ones because all US tube manufacturers and most European tube manufacturers no longer make these products. Perhaps you can get Eastern European or Chinese equivalents to some of the old tube types, but you cannot get the "same tubes" except as antique "new old stock." Besides, why would I ever want to teach tube design to new experimenters? So they can sell products to self-delusional audiophiles, perhaps?
I got into electronics back in the 1970s so I could be "leading edge." Otherwise, I'd have gone into the antique radio restoration realm. There's nothing wrong with that, it's a nice hobby. But it's not what a lot of us wanted to do.
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EREBUS
1/28/2012 6:38 PM EST
I would say its about the same. Yes you cannot deal directly with components like we used to, but the ability to buy modules and wire them together lets you do much more detailed projects than I ever thought about doing in the 1970's. Plus the DYI spirit is alive and well. If you are still interested, go the the Element14 web site. The exchanges there are very informative and you can learn new things to mod every day.
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EdV1022
1/28/2012 11:30 PM EST
The internet makes DIY better because it isn't so much DIY as it is LDIT "Let's Do It Together."
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Haldor
1/30/2012 9:28 AM EST
Development kits from the IC vendors make for an embarrassment of riches. You can buy a complete 8051 processor development kit including PCB, IDE and hardware debugger for $70 from Silicon Labs.
http://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/Pages/C8051F300DK.aspx
If you are really cost constrained you can get one of their tool-stick development setups for $25.
http://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/Pages/ToolStick.aspx
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mike.seiler
1/30/2012 3:04 PM EST
I don't think it's ever been been better for the diy'er. I can remember as a kid wanting to learn electronics and having a go at making a ram expansion cartridge for my vic20. The only way to get the knowledge was from books and magazines. But you had to know which books. I bought the wrong ones and never got anywhere. My cartridge when I think aboout it was pretty neat in that I etched it myself and soldered it together but it failed to work. The circuit was wrong. And I didn't really take an interest again until many years later.
Today the internet has brought the information to your fingertips. It doesn't matter if one webpage doesn't have the info you need you just move on and look at the next search result.
You don't need to wait a month or more for an answer to your question in a magazine. You can have the answer in a day if not the hour on internet forums.
There are many more places to buy your parts today and prices have dropped in comparison to 30 years ago.
There are multi-million dollar companies popping up from the thirst for diy parts and knowledge.
And Bill you are right those those publications are your competitiors as well as all the diy industry. Because if the diy crowd can find it too easy to find materials and information to build their dreams, why would they need an engineer?
I don't think it's ever looked brighter.
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David Ashton
1/30/2012 5:03 PM EST
Maybe that's what we've lost...the availability of anything (parts and information" has maybe made it too easy. When things were more difficult to get, you got more of a sense of accomplishment out of geting something finished and working?
You're right Mike, it has never looked brighter... so why do so many of todays kids so rarely do anything outside video games and TV?
That said, I was privileged to judge the IGen Led Challenge recently and it was good to see these kids so enthusiastic about getting to grips with electronics (and doing it very well in most cases).
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Toad.
2/2/2012 11:07 AM EST
My first purchase from Edmunds was a 0.5mw HeNe laser tube in 1973. Built the power supply from a Popular Electronics magazine. The thing resembled one of the devices from a Frankenstien movie. It used a massive power transformer out of an old color TV and an automotive igntion coil. All mounted to tin chasis that was 10" x 14".
I don't think there are many moments in my life more satisfying than when I powered it up for the first time and got a beam! That was just really cool.
A lot sure has changed! About the only thing I can say I really miss is being able to walk into the local electronics parts house and dig through their "surplus" bins for that great piece that would inspire my next project, or just get me dreaming.
I think today the hunt for parts or info is not really a problem any more. Now it's going through the tons of kits, chips, transducers, spec sheets and software tools till you land on something that trips your trigger.
Lots have changed but I believe it's still the "hunt" that drive's us on. Well at least me any ways.
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David Ashton
2/6/2012 3:43 AM EST
@"About the only thing I can say I really miss is being able to walk into the local electronics parts house and dig through their "surplus" bins"...
Too right! I used to love that. There are still the odd ones around here, in particular there is a chain Dick Smith in Aussie that used to be a great electronics parts shop, then it got bought out and now they only do TVs, PCs, cameras.... but occasionally they find some electronic bits in their storeroom and put them out for next to nothing. Picked up some good breadboards, heatsinks etc at rock bottom prices.
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me
2/3/2012 1:36 PM EST
This is the golden age of DIY, enabled by fast infomation exchange and low cost manufacturing capabilities stand by in China. Garage innovators can quickly become manufacturers and make a killing in the market place.
The price of kits need to come down more, from a few thousand dollars to a few hundered and less. You will see wonders.
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Rob Best
2/8/2012 10:24 AM EST
BTW what ever happened to Dad and son mentoring ? Maybe the culture of engineering should be passed on to children from the parents ? Like the "good old days" of Heathkit, amateur radio, and electronic kits. Many of the top engineers I know had such mentoring backgrounds as kids. Unfortunately, I watched our cultural decay for decades now. Whole families "vegging out" in front of the TV,internet,video games and don't forget a glut of porn.Despite this leisure drunk society with its many bursts of elations the kids and parents still seem to be more sad and lost than ever as time goes on. We've lost our ability to find lasting joy in constructive things such as solving a difficult math/physics problems in homework books. In fact kids that do find joy in equation solving are scorned and mocked as geeks whilst great honor is given to football thugs. Question is what to do? Answer: Dads get involved with the joy of training your kids. Also join or start a "high tech oriented" ham club. You may ask what's high tech in ham radio ?. Well AMSAT, space balloons, Moon bounce (EME), Meteor scatter, Laser comm. and the such. Of course there are many ways of using digital techniques in ham. But far more neglected and brain challenging is the analog side. Building amplifiers, Impedance matching, UHF/EHF engineering and much more. EE should be a way a life for family and community not some dead zombie like science. No wonder why so many EE's hate their jobs. They missed out on the family and fun part. I lament you if that's the case with you.Perhaps it's not too late! Rather than fret over our countries demise why not start something today ?I don't think throwing more tax (or inflated dollars) at the problem will get us very far. The solution is grassroots in nature. Love and good works are not very expensive. It's more about attitude. Saving our innovative American heritage is not some grievous duty. It's a ton of fun!
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Rob Best
2/8/2012 11:08 AM EST
P.S.
I just couldn't help but paste highly relevant YouTube links. These links demonstrating a point of a core issues with developing future DIY EE hobby kids into mature EE grown-ups in America:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfX7Ya-vF0Q
and don't ever forget this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpGJbooFq1c&feature=related
The "occupiers" worldwide might want to reflect and look inside their hearts and see if they see a bit of "Veruca Darling" inside themselves :)
And in conclusion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuIPe6hZT3k
73's
Rob -KC9LGS
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DrDagor
2/23/2012 12:07 PM EST
Agree with the "best of times / worst of times" view. And it's true not just of DIY but of prototyping in general.
The Worst:
- Super tiny parts -- try hand soldering BGAs and fine pitch QFNs in one off prototypes. (But try SchmartBoard)
- Elimination of the kit market by highly integrated, low cost commercial products.
- Distribution set up for big firms buying thousands of tape and reel parts.
- Rising cost of passive components.
Best:
- Low cost, highly integrated, amazing active components.
- PSOCs like the Cypress family, PIC and friends.
- Incredible low cost or free tools like Eagle and PSPICE.
- IC and MEMS level sensors like Hall Effect and pressure sensors.
- The Internet and the Laser Printer!
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