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Science

R.I.P for D.I.Y Or Long Live Open Source? 344

Posted by Hemos from the science-is-for-more-then-scientists dept.
Embedded Geek writes "Scientific American has an article on the decline of science hobbyists. It presents a long litany of woe you'd expect about the "Good Old Days" (the death of classic electronic tinkering magazines, Edmund Scientific's corporate changes, and the cancelation of SciAm's own "Amateur Scientist" column), but also discusses some of the real trends in technology that have caused these changes. Declining manufacturing costs now make it cheaper to buy a telescope, radio, or computer than to build one yourself. The increased complexity of our gadgets doesn't help either (Ever tried to fix surface mount components with a soldering iron at your kitchen table? Don't!!) "

Personally, I found the tranformation of science amateurs into "quasi-professionals" intriguing. The Society for Amateur Scientists now holds sessions on how to publish research and how to claim tax deductions for home laboratories. Also, amateur astronmers are making great strides in comet discovery. Being that most of the people in the open source movement are software professionals, it becomes easy to draw an analogy between it and tinkering of yore.
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R.I.P for D.I.Y Or Long Live Open Source? More

R.I.P for D.I.Y Or Long Live Open Source?

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  • A Bygone Era? Probably not. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by colmore ( 56499 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @11:07PM (#3347781) Journal
    Cheaper professional quality equipment doesn't mean an end to amateur science. It just means a refocus.

    Where 20 years ago, the efforts of the amateur were largely directed to the construction of equipment, now he or she can work at actual research.

    This is of course an extreme generalization, but just because the days of saudering irons and garages might be winding down, that doesn't mean that dedicated individuals outside of the academic and professional communities will no longer be contributing to the advancement of science.

    I will miss the amateur column in Sci Am though, I got a lot of good ideas from there.

    • Re:A Bygone Era? Probably not. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Stephen VanDahm ( 88206 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @11:49PM (#3347977)
      For some people, the construction of the equipment is the whole point. And while I'm sure some DIY hobbies are in decline, others have absolutely taken off in recent years.

      I never got into building electronic stuff, but I'm interested in building guitars [mimf.com]. Lately, I've been itching to build my own guitar amp. There is even a website [ax84.com] devoted to it. Thanks to the numerous web [frets.com] resources [jps.net] out there, I can learn to build all sorts of crazy things that I never could have figured out on my own.

      I suspect that the people that like soldering electronic gizmos together in their garage are still around, just doing different things. A surprising number of the amatuer guitar builders are techies, for instance. There's a whole lot of awesome stuff left to build, so I don't think that people are hanging up their soldering irons yet.

      Steve
    • I agree. As has been mentioned on here in the past, the days of the garage shop startups like hewlett/packard is long gone. With all of the specialized hardware and test equipment required to develop anything of any signifigance it would be crazy to think someone would finance it on their own. Back in the day you might be able to produce a good wirewrap of a then high-speed circuit but what about now? A lot of items need to go straight from computer design to PCB to make sure noise is low, propagation delays are matched, etc...

      My thinking is that the DIY people of this century will be working almost entirely in software. After all, the open source community is really just a community of DIYs.
      • I have had a hunch that it was slowing. I mean you can still do all the electronic tinkering you want. What I think is lacking is new Tools. I mean everyone has power supplies,oscilliscopes,DMM, and components. But I think what are also needed is some sort of Numerical Control for soldering VLSI/ULSI componenets onto boards, something that is impossible with a soldiering iron. That one tool If done cheaply and inexpensively could produce the break through to Electronic Hobbyist using DSP's, and uProcossors above the 6811 and Z80's. What could come after that?? Photo/chemical deposition of new circuits to buid new devices in your garage??? That would help as well. But if Amatuer engineering is on the decline than we in 5-7 years will see a massive shortage of electrical engineers at least from America. I don't know any EE today that wasn't into electronics as a hobby before they actually got their degree. Perhas it will be Robotics (not actual robots but just their industrial/numerical control counterparts) that will jump the gap and put modern technology back into the realm of the hobbyist?? Just my .02c Ben

        • Re:A Bygone Era? Probably not. (Score:4, Informative)

          by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @12:13PM (#3350960)
          I don't know any EE today that wasn't into electronics as a hobby before they actually got their degree.

          How old are these EE's? I'm a 28-year-old EE, and I'm the only EE I know who was into electronics before getting his degree (and still is a little). In fact, I'm the only EE I know who has any technical hobbies whatsoever (electronics, auto mechanics, OSS programming, Linux, etc.). And I work at a certain really huge processor manufacturer, where I'm surrounded by EE's (though none of them are over ~33).

          Trust me, for most engineers, engineering is just a way to make money, not something they do out of any huge interest in electronics. And if you're really interested in electronics and are considering getting into electrical engineering, don't. You'll be severely disappointed. I was.
      • What you're suggesting is that there will never again be another electronics company, and that we'll have to live with the giants we have now (that and startups out of college by rich peoples kids). While probably true, I have a hard time accepting that some entrepreneuring individual working out of a garage couldn't revolutionize the world once again.
    • I will miss the amateur column in Sci Am though, I got a lot of good ideas from there.
      I submit that it is not amateur scientists that are in decline, but Scientific American.

      With the loss of the Amateur Scientist column along with Connections (my two favorites), I find little left in the magazine (excluding the usual hand-waving fluff) to keep me coming back. I let my subscription lapse 6 months ago; every once in a while, I'll browse the monthly copy at the local B&N, but I have yet to find a compelling reason to buy.

      Meanwhile my home-built gravimeter sits quietly on the shelf, recording local feline Tachyon emissions...

  • Remember those electronic kits everyone had as a kid from Radio Shack? You know, you could build all sorts of neat things with capacitors and resistors and stuff. Who has those now? I want a really good one to play with.

    Anyone?

    • Re:Those Electronic Kits (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Who has those now?"

      A: Radio Shack.
    • Jameco Electronics [jameco.com] still has dozens of simple to moderate electronics kits, plus breadboards, complete selection of components, Basic Stamps, etc. They also have a modest selection of computer parts. Unlike some of their peers of the day, e.g., DigiKey [digikey.com] and Mouser Electronics [mouser.com], Jameco still caters to hobbyists*.

      If I remember right, Jameco's online site only has a subset of their inventory. For maximum browsing enjoyment, get their dead-tree catalog.

      Great company, highly recommended. I've ordered from them on and off since I was in high school, way back in the 70's. (That's back when people still played with electronics as a hobby, and Edmund Scientific had some of the coolest, most exotic stuff I'd ever seen.)

      *DigiKey and Mouser are more focused on commercial users, but they're great sources for hard-to-find parts, or a specific variant of a part.

    • Radioshack.com is closing out and there are some good deals as the discounts go as high as %80.

      I picked up two mini echo mixer kits for I think $8.00 each. The cool thing about it is that the
      Kits include two chips that are no longer being manufactured and as such to buy one of these chip,
      if you can find them will set you back $25.00

      I'll be modifying them to give me more effect than echo, like flanging and chorus.

      I also picked up a portable CD amp kit for really cheap.

      What am I gonna be using this stuff for?

      I made my own electric violin and Am making the case and electronic too.

      It looks really good and sounds good too. Now all I got to do is learn to play it.

      :)

    • Try Elenco [elenco.com]. I got a little kit to make a "clapper" (a led lights up when you clap). The box said I'd learn everything I needed to know as I went along, but I ended up just soddering everything together like it said and not actually learning much of anything. It was fun though. They have a phone bug kit that I want to get for sampling phone conversations. Everyone and his mother samples answering maching tapes, but I want the actual conversation! Anyways, I wound up getting Charles Ryan's "Basic Electricity" book, which has since taught me a lot.
  • Declining manufacturing costs now make it cheaper to buy a telescope, radio, or computer than to build one yourself.

    A telescope or a radio, perhaps, but it's still cheaper to build a computer youself, especially with free operating systems rather than $200+ ones. :)
    • A telescope or a radio, perhaps,

      I can personally vouch for the radio. It is MUCH cheaper to buy a cheap little AM/FM radio than to build one. Try running down to Radio Shack and buying up all the parts you need to build a decent-sounding radio for under $10 (breadboard or circuit board, it really doesn't matter).

      However, a good electronics technician has the ability to take an old broken stereo, yank all the good parts, and throw together a working model for a fraction of the cost of buying one. But then again, they generally end up looking something like this [seattlerobotics.org].
    • Ah, it seems you don't understand what 'building a computer' means. Twenty five years ago, building a computer involved soldering, and a lot of it. A friend of mine at work has an old Altair based computer he built, and he talks fondly about the day he made an RS-232 card for it so he could use a terminal to write programs.

      What you're talking about is ASSEMBLING a computer from pre-built components. That's like ordering french fries at a restaurant, pouring ketchup on them, then bragging about how you cooked them yourself.
      • Because everyone can afford the billion dollar CPU factories like AMD and Intel have, and we all can make a complicated circuit board (motherboard type) using simple chemicals and our kitchen sink.

        Tim
        • Nice veiled sarcasm. You don't need a silicon fab, never did. He didn't say that he lithographed his own custom chip, just soldered it to a board.

          Still, not being able to do a a decent pcb hurts. I'm trying to figure that one out. I'm thinking something along the lines of this. Someone like me (several someones is better than just me) spends the cash for a high end hobbyist pcb shop. Nothing quite professional, but enough to do nice surface mount quality boards, double-sided. I'm figuring the cost at something like $2000 for me, spread out over a period of months. Now, there are lots of things I want to build, and possibly even sell... but the designs will be some variant of open source. Now, if you have something you want to build, but can't afford $200 for a prototype pcb, you just open source it, through me. I send you a finished pcb at (or maybe even a little below, all depending) cost... you get something, we all get something. I can only design so much myself, so I get lots of help from people wanting other stuff... and we all get to buy or build hardware that the big corps would never make for us.

          Winners all around. Besides, I trick people into proof-reading all my crappy designs. ;-P They're not that bad, but I do need some help from time to time.
      • So... if you're going to assemble your own telescope, you grind the lenses yourself and fire the steel used to create the tubes? No... it's a matter of finding the parts and assembling them.

        Granted, "building a computer" is easier than it was 25 years ago, but you can't build your own motherboard with 20-odd conductive layers at home either. If you want to build a computer using a simple microprocessor you still can... it just won't be quite as useful as it once was.

        And I would dare say that Linux is enough of a hobbyist OS in some senses that learning all its ins and outs is just as challening and scientifically inventive as building an Altair was.
    • "Build a computer yourself" in this context does _not_ mean buying a motherboard, cpu, and peripherals and slapping them together.

      Homebuilding a PC today would cost far more in parts alone than buying a cheap clone at Walmart. Add to that the massive task of custom-designing hardware to run a modern CPU, memory, and IO, and you're talking _loads_ of work.

      Is it even possible? One could always recreate an old Altair project, but could a talented engineer homebuild a Pentium-based machine? Or is the support logic implicitly so complex that it must be implemented with custom chipsets?

      • but could a talented engineer homebuild a Pentium-based machine?

        I think it would probably be possible. What makes computers so complex is making them fast, not making them at all. It probably wouldn't be hard to TTL yourself a simple microcode assembly language, which would implement the Pentium instruction set. Just don't expect any speed records.

        You would probably also want to use standard I/O chips. It would probably would be pretty hard to implement a home-brew IDE controller, although it may not be as hard as I think if you will were willing to do some sort of software implementation on your home-brew CPU.

        It would be an amusing project. I wonder why more people don't do it for the hell of it. Anyone know of any projects like this?

      • Homebuilding a PC today would cost far more in parts alone than buying a cheap clone at Walmart.

        That reminds me of a story I heard a long time ago from a guy who once worked at a place that sold oscilliscope "kits". They'd buy cheap fully assembled scopes from Japan, carefully disassemble them, and package them up as do-it-yourself kits for hobbyists.

  • But, I refuse to buy a pre-built computer. I mean, sure, Compaq and Dell make some pretty decent pre-built machines (some which would be very difficult to build at home, such as the iPaq Legacy-Free system), but I would only use them as workstations in a business environment.

    For pre-built machines, tech support is usually pretty crummy (I can troubleshoot my own hardware problems, thank you very much), and everything is integrated on board. Sound card dies? Send the whole system in for repairs for a month to get it fixed. Personally, I'd rather just yank the SoundBlaster out of my machine and buy another, and install it in the same day.

    Don't get me wrong, pre-built machines have their place, but for the hardcore computer technicians, it is certainly not in their own home.
    • I totally agree. It's a machine-bonding kinda thing, hard to explain to people who've never done it and before I built my own computer I questioned it myself. Everyone around me (friends, family, the whole bit) kept asking how much money I actually saved by not buying something off the shelf, but it's really not about money, it's about getting in there and doing something yourself. And now they all ask me for computer help.

      I think the general population lacks the ability to analyze risks vs. rewards situations. Risk? About $800. Reward? You're smart now. If that's not enough for the average human to tackle new exciting things, I'm a bit concerned about where society is going.

      And on another issue, the parallel port is going to totally die soon unless we geeks keep dinking with it! Fire up those LEDs, minions! Okay, glad I got that out.
      • Everyone around me (friends, family, the whole bit) kept asking how much money I actually saved by not buying something off the shelf, but it's really not about money,

        Actually, if I may throw in a comment here... for me, many times, it is about the money. I can buy a pre-built decent quality machine for around $2,000. Or, I can take the machine I have right now, spend a couple hundred bucks on a new motherboard and processor, and have the same power of the $2,000 machine, with better quality (I know, because I hand-picked all the components myself!).

        What do I do with the old mobo and processor? Buy a cheap-ass empty case and throw it in, toss in some other components I've got laying around, and sell it to someone in my family for a few hundred bucks, with Linux and Windows both preinstalled.

        End cost for me? Usually negative! How much time did I spend doing all of that work? A few hours, but, I wouldn't call it work. "Work is what you do when you'd rather be doing something else." There's really nothing I'd rather be doing than yanking out PCI cards and troubleshooting USB devices.

        Oh, and on the parallel port thing, I don't use my parallel port on my main computer, but my workstation and laptop like to talk via parallel null-modem cable. A lot cheaper than buying a new laptop with eth0 installed (it's a Compaq LTE Elite 4/40CX, 486/40Mhz with 20Mb of RAM. The thing rocks the DOS games, baby!)

  • Telescope-building is not astronomy (Score:3, Informative)

    by Macrobat ( 318224 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @11:13PM (#3347805)
    I have a friend who owns two telescopes and two pairs of high-powered binoculars. We've gone out and scoped out the rings of Saturn, comet Ikeya-Zhang, and solar activity (with really strong filters). The availability of cheap telescopes does not mean the end of amateur astronomy, it means the end of amateur telescope-building.

    I forget who said it, but it bears repeating: "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." It's the same thing. If my friend's interests were with tinkering with lenses and long metal tubes, he'd be doing that.

    If there were some special need he had that no manufacturer met, some special lens he needed, maybe this would be an issue. But companies stay in business by providing what their customers want. Especially when their customers are chiefly hobbyists.

    • Two points: First, the Astroscan telescope shown on the front page of the Edmund Scientific site is TOP NOTCH STUFF for a beginner. It's super simple to use, the optics are superb, and it's an incredible bargain at $400-$450 for the scope with tripod. It looks strange, but form follows function.

      Second, you're exactly right that telescope building is much different than astronomy. I'm in the Austin Astronomical Society, and we've got a few scope builders in the club. Trouble is, they hardly come to the meetings, and they don't bring their scopes. At the observing field, we can have more than 50 scopes on a clear summer night, and 99% of those are various commercial scopes: Meades, Celestrons, Obsessions, various small commercial dobs. By and large, these telescopes cost less than what it would take to build a similar instrument. Perhaps the best deals available right now are the 10 inch dobs. Meade makes a good one for less than $500 I believe.
      Orion Telescopes makes the best one available for $599 -link here [telescope.com]. At those prices, there's absolutely no reason at all for an amateur to build their own telescope. 20 or 30 years ago, many people built their own scopes because a quality 10 inch reflector would cost approximately what a brand new car cost. That's all changed, and astronomy has become a lot more open to newcomers.

    • The availability of cheap telescopes does not mean the end of amateur astronomy, it means the end of amateur telescope-building.
      I don't agree. The cost of a high quality telescope is still higher than a home-built telescope of the same quality. If you build a scope yourself, it will cost you a lot of time, but most materials are available at reasonable prices. Plus, building your own telescope gives you total control over the quality and design. With some effort, you will be able to build a telescope which outperforms most commercial telescopes.

      You can build a telescope mostly from parts you find at a dumpster: some pieces of wood for the base, a cardboard tube, a piece of glass... Take a look at the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers [sfsidewalk...nomers.org]' website, for example.

      People have made high-quality optical paraboloidal mirrors from scrap glass, glass candle holders, trepanned discs cut from CRT-tubes, etcetera. I have ground and polished a 7" glass disc into a shape which surface deviates no more than 40 nanometer from an ideal paraboloid. All this takes is a lot of time and patience, and some basic materials. Remember: the first telescopes were built 300 years ago.

      The Amateur Telescope Making community is very much alive, try a google query [google.com] with these words.

      If you're interested in building a telescope, optionally including grinding and polishing your own optics, join the Amateur Telescope Makers mailing list [attbi.com].

  • seems to me... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by vena ( 318873 )
    it seems to me that the internet has come in where hobby tinker mags left off. there's TONS of information available on home-built electronics, not only free but providing easy access to the originator in case you have trouble. just email the person and get it from the horse's mouth.

  • Some folks at Extreme Tech [extremetech.com] also said that DIY computers will be dead [extremetech.com] with more or less the same reasons. Is this a trend or what?

    • Some folks at Extreme Tech [extremetech.com] also said that DIY computers will be dead [extremetech.com] with more or less the same reasons. Is this a trend or what?


      They're dead already. Its just a matter of snapping together pre-built modules. Sure more stuff will get built onto the motherboard, but thats been happening for a while. Remember when you had to get a seperate IO card for serial/parallel ports, IDE, floppy, etc.?

      Either way its a far cry from soldering your own system together.
      • The state computer technology mean that the factory equipment to do the equivalent of "soldering your own system together" is generally not within the cost range of any amateur. You can still solder together your own computer, if you feel like digging up some ancient technology. Otherwiser, you need to get the multiple layer motherboards and the CPUs that require a billion dollar fab plant from someone else.

        Tim
        • The state computer technology mean that the factory equipment to do the equivalent of "soldering your own system together" is generally not within the cost range of any amateur.

          I didn't say otherwise. Even with ancient technology its certainly beyond MY feeble means. But I think people who put their own systems together from OEM parts need to understand how little it is that we are really doing. Its not that different from buying a box from Dell or whoever (aside from saving money, that is).

  • Home laboratories. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15, 2002 @11:16PM (#3347824)
    I did what the Society for Amateur scientists suggests and set up a home laboratory i collect tax deductions on. Setting up a home laboratory is easy, you can have fun with it, and make some profit as well. I'm a big proponent of it. I do research with mine. In chemistry. Chemistry research.

    It of course has nothing to do with Ecstasy at all.

    What? the DanceSafe Bumper stickers? Um.. i just, uh.. support their cause and all. That's all. Excuse me, i have to go now.

  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Sure, they still have resistors, caps, leds, wire and some breadboards, but the majority of what they sell is cheap-ass phones, and radio controlled toys. Radio shack has become a crappy Best Buy without name brands ('cept RCA, an I won't even go there..;)

    I have a Radio Shack a block away from my house, and every time I go in, it's an educational experience.

    For them.

    I have to explain the difference between ether cable and telephone wiring.

    Um. I don't need any help. I know your store better than you do. :P

    • That's certainly true of the stores, but http://www.radioshack.com [radioshack.com] might surprise you. They have got a SERIOUSLY good web operation. Check it out if you haven't already.
    • You are absolutely correct!!!!

      Can't even find the audio cables I need and when I patchwork what they have together.... it don't work due to shoddy manufacturing.

      They used to be alot better.
    • Sadly, many of the radio shacks in Canada (or so I've seen and been told by RS Managers) have stopped stocking even basic parts like resistors and capacitors. The only wire they carry is good for cars, tv and satellites. I can't even find wire wrap wire (or the tool) in many of them anymore.

      Breadboards? At $20 each (when they sold 'em) don't even get me started...

      If you're lucky you can sometimes get switches there.

      Does it _really_ cost that much to have an inventory of these penny-parts that they can't afford to stock them?
  • I paid the down payment on my first house with designs I breadboarded with stuff from Frys ... now days they're still stocking the same baggies of bits the had 10 years ago - when they were state of the art.



    To be fair PCI has a lot to do with it - too much overhead in the bus interface - before the advent of pci you could wirewrap a NuBus or ISA card with a few jelly-beans

  • History of the column (Score:4, Interesting)

    by young-earth ( 560521 ) <slash-young-eart ... m ['oos' in gap]> on Monday April 15, 2002 @11:20PM (#3347850)
    From this page [tinkersguild.com], a very nice history of the column in SciAm (though it was apparently a bit optimistic at the end of the piece):

    A Brief History of
    "The Amateur Scientist"

    Albert Ingalls
    "The Amateur Scientist" traces its pedigree to 1928, when famed astronomer Albert Ingalls began the column as "The Backyard Astronomer." Ingalls told amateurs how they could get personally involved in astronomy by building professional-quality instruments and carry out cutting-edge observations. Eventually Ingalls chose to broaden the column's scope to include "how-to's" from all fields of science. When he did, he also changed the department's name to "The Amateur Scientist."

    C. L. Stong
    Ingalls wrote his column for almost 30 years. When he died in 1954 the publisher selected C. L. Stong to continue the feature. Stong was an electrical engineer for Westinghouse and a master tinkerer who brilliantly extended the column, frequently peppering it with extremely sophisticated projects including home-built lasers and atom smashers. Many working professional scientists say that they first got hooked on science through Stong's amazing columns.
    In 1960 Stong compiled a book titled The Amateur Scientist, (Simon and Schuster) the only collection of articles that has ever been published from this column. However, limited to paper and ink, Stong could only fit in 57 projects. Despite being only a partial anthology, never being advertised in Scientific American , and appearing long before the rise of home schooling, Stong's book sold over 10,000 copies. It went out of print in 1972 and is much sought after today by amateur scientists.

    Jearl Walker
    Stong ran the department for over 20 years until he died in 1977. In 1978, Scientific American hired Jearl Walker, Ph.D. to take over. Walker had caught the publisher's attention thanks to The Flying Circus of Physics, a book Walker wrote which highlighted the fascinating physics of the everyday world. Under Walker's stewardship "The Amateur Scientist" presented fewer how-to projects, and instead focused on the physics of common phenomena. Walker's columns are still frequently consulted by educators and students alike.
    Walker resigned from Scientific American in 1990 after 12 years. Collectively, Ingalls, Stong and Walker account for 90 percent of all articles.

    Forrest Mims
    After Walker left, Scientific American decided to rededicate the column to hands-on projects and so they hired Forrest Mims III, a renowned writer of books for Radio Shack and an accomplished amateur scientist. They quickly learned, however, that Mims was an supporter of so-called Scientific Creationism, a movement that attempts to include the creation story of Genesis in biology curricula as a scientifically viable account of human origins. Not wanting to be perceived as supporting Creationism, Scientific American fired Mims. Mims charged religious discrimination and the story was carried through most major US news outlets.
    Although the incident didn't diminish Scientific American's commitment to the column, it did make them gun-shy about hiring another amateur scientist to write it. But professionals tend to be too narrowly focused in their own disciplines. The publisher invited many potential columnists to submit individual articles, and most of these were published under "The Amateur Scientist." But the magazine was unable to find anyone with both professional credentials and the incredible breadth of science knowledge necessary to recapture the popularity the column enjoyed under Stong and Ingalls. And without a regular columnist, the department languished, appearing only sporadically between 1990 and 1995. Most Scientific American readers stopped looking for it when they got a new magazine.

    Shawn Carlson
    In 1995 the editorial staff discovered the Society for Amateur Scientists. It's Founder and Executive Director was Dr. Shawn Carlson, a physicist and established science writer who had left academe a year earlier to devote his career to helping amateur scientists. Dr. Carlson took over the column in November of that year and immediately returned the column's focus to cutting-edge projects that amateurs can do inexpensively at home. Today, over 1 million Scientific American readers turn to "The Amateur Scientist" every month. The column has never been more popular.
    • They quickly learned, however, that Mims was an supporter of so-called Scientific Creationism, a movement that attempts to include the creation story of Genesis in biology curricula as a scientifically viable account of human origins.

      This is actually a pretty sad story [uh.edu]. Mims's treatment at the hands of Scientific American is an atrocity on par with anything the medieval Catholics could have come up with, at least without resorting to pitchforks and thumbscrews. They certainly guaranteed that at least one agnostic (myself) will never burden their subscription department with correspondence.

    • Forrest Mims (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dmaxwell ( 43234 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @08:18AM (#3349307)
      SciAm's behaivor was completely uncalled for. Mims is a very credible source for electronic's hobbiests. His pencil drawn handbooks contain technical writing that is as clear and succinct as I've ever seen.

      I would not take Mims seriously speaking as a creationist or Intelligent Designer or whatever they are going to call it next week. However, I take him very very seriously when it comes to electronics. Fair is fair, and there is nothing inappropriate about recognizing his electronics competence.

      SciAm tarnished themselves by not recognizing this and gave creationists one hell of a talking point. Shame on them.

  • Wrong! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by asmithmd1 ( 239950 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @11:22PM (#3347858) Homepage Journal
    This guy is way off base. With everyone making web sites about their personal interests and starting email lists and web rings there may be less of a need for mass market magazines but the people are still out there (and way more available) if you look just a little bit.
    You can't buy one of these! Actually ... if you want to Email me

  • FIY (fix it yourself) is also in decline (Score:3, Insightful)

    by slam smith ( 61863 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @11:22PM (#3347863) Homepage
    I remember when I was a kid, people actually used to be able to fix thier own TV's and stereo's. My parents had this really cool stereo that included a circuit diagram. (Who does that anymore?) Now adays it requires special training and tools to fix some of these things, IF you can even find spare parts. And if you do there isn't any guarentee that the parts will even be cheaper, than the cost of a new one. The compressor on my fridge goes out. I get a quote for $540 to fix it. I only paid 560 dollars for the thing brand new. I ended up buying a new one. The picture tube goes out on my TV. Well I didn't try to have it fixed. I just bought a new one.

    The scale of economics in building consumer devices in 3rd world countries is so great that it isn't really worth the cost of having them repaired. It's often cheaper to buy an new one, and even if it isn't the new features available in the latest devices still make it worthwhile.
    • My parents had this really cool stereo that included a circuit diagram. (Who does that anymore?)

      Audio equipment manufacturers. Both my Mackie mixer and my Fender amp came with circuit diagrams. They're not much good to me now, but hopefully sooner or later I'll know enough about the stuff to be able to fix or tweak them myself. The Mackie even gives you instructions on how to do a couple basic hacks! I've also heard that a lot of people who go to music school build their own amps and speakers.

    • Of course it isn't complete though. The other day I started to vacuum the basement. The cleaner wasn't picking up much, so I examined the underside. The roller had a lot of threads and hair and stuff stuck to it. So I started to clean it. While I was cleaning it, the belt came off right in my hand. It had snapped, which explained why it wasn't working very well. I had never serviced a vacuum cleaner before. I examined the plastic cover, and much to my delight it was designed to snap off with the aid of a flat-bladed screwdriver. There were even handly little pictograms cast into the plastic that showed you where to pry. Once I had the motor shaft exposed, I knew I could replace the belt--if only I could find the right part. Here's the good part. I went to Fischer's Hardware [springfield.va.us]. Not only is DIY and the mom-n-pop hardware store not dead, the mom-n-pop hardware store with no web presence of its own and nothing more than a listing with the chamber of commerce is not dead either. Fischer's has been in Springfield as long as I can remember, and I can remember a lot longer than I care to say. But wait, it gets better. Fischer's staff, unlike the huge box store staff, is always helpful. So I was not the least bit reluctant to walk in there with a broken belt and get either a replacement or a referral to someone who had a replacement (they referred for the fan motor for our bathroom). The guy in the vacuum department didn't have an official Hoover parts guide. When I said "do you need the model number" he gave me this look and said "don't get me started on model numbers". He took out some similar sized belts and started comparing them. When he found a close match, he handed me a Eureka belt and said "You can try this, and if it doesn't work use the yellow pages, get the part number from the mfct..." In other words, what I was too lazy to do in the first place and went to Fischer's to avoid doing. You can't get real-world expertise, honesty, and common sense like that from Home Depot. The belt was $2.18 and well... I had a coupon for $2.00. This was a no-brainer. Not having to track down a "genuine hoover part" was worth an $0.18 gamble. So I bought the little belt, got it home, and installed it. It was a little wider than the original belt, but it fit. The cleaner works fine now. I ran it for a good 15 minutes and there was no smoke or anything. Hopefully this fix will last, and even if it only lasts a few months I will happily buy another belt from the vacuum-cleaner hacker at Fischer's. That might cost more in the short run, but if Fischer's ever went away it would be a priceless loss.

    • You can still try. A lot of times stuff will break down cause of really stupid shit like a little broken wire. I always open stuff up and try to fix it.

      The only thing I won't mess with are TVs/Monitors, cause I've heard too many horror stories about dastardly amounts of electricity seeking escape through the unfortunate amateur repairman.

      Tim

  • Muscle wire and super-magnets (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Caractacus Potts ( 74726 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @11:24PM (#3347872)

    I've actually been doing more hobby stuff lately. Having more disposable income than your average kid makes a difference. Another difference nowadays is the greater variety of cool gadgets available and the Internet for obtaining them. I actually took time out of my busy weekend to build a flashlight out of super-magnets, some copper wire, and a couple white LEDs. To see the plans, look here [creative-science.org.uk]. Next weekend, I think I'll do something with muscle wire [robotbooks.com]. Oh, and those 100 ball bearings I just won on eBay, just wait and see...
  • I remember a day where almost every popular computer mag, PC Magazine, PC Week, the now-defunct Compute, etc. had source code listings in the back that you typed in yourself, usually in Assembly language. They weren't toy programs either, but usually useful utilities, like file managers, text editors, games, etc. Not commercial quality, but still amazing for something that you could enter in by hand.

    Those listings, despite being a pain to enter and debug, taught me most of my early programming and software design knowledge before I formally learned it in school, and probably did so for others.

    Now, none of the general mags have software you can program yourself. Not even the programmer mags like Dr. Dobbs journal have full working apps anymore, just little code snippets.

    Anyone else miss those days?
    • The ability to automate complexity in order to make it simple to use over and over is the task of programming but the task of automating that process has been lacking.

      It's not that we don't know what the collection of functionality needed is to make this possible on a broad scale, from typicaly users to hard core autocoders...

      for a beginning point of autocoding [mindpsring.com] See the nine action constants ...

      This is a field really open for fresh blood as the old blood has to much vested interest in the way things are done and also to set in their ways.

      Where autocoding can be found in industry is in areospace. Funny but you'd think it would be more kitchen table and evolve from there. Perhaps that suggest it's time to bring it to the kitchen table.

      It's not that kitchen table scientist have slowed, but more a matter of what to explore and experiment with next, as it's clear alot has already been done to the point of cheap throwaway stuff what what we have had on the kitchen table in the not so distant past.

      We just need new subject matter to deal with. Autocoding and user level automation is ready.

  • Ironic of Sciam... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by UberNex ( 525816 )
    Honestly Sci Am did enough to kill off thier once good Am Scientist page in the last few years. Once this article was great and had some really good ideas, but ever since the feature's author got his "genius" grant quality control went way way way down. Really the last year or three of the series all they had were a bunch of very difficult to pull off experiemnets (not a problem, it's nice to see some dedication), but also did not even produce the results they were supposed to. Sheesh, the guys didn't even bother looking at the data they produced. Most of thier detection of things uch as "gravitatinal pull of the moon" or "Geomagetic microulsations" were all equiptment atrifacts and not even real data. Yurk.
  • When I was in high school (circa 1981), I borrowed an old, book-sized anthology of "Amateur Scientist" columns from a friend.

    That sucker never saw my friend's house again -- the stuff you could make was incredible, and clearly from a time before anyone thought about suing authors for writing potentially injurous copy.

    You could build (I kid you not):

    • your own X-ray machine (strong enough to kill mice!) out of old radio tubes;
    • your own rocket (5 feet high! Made of metal!) powered by oh-so-explosive powered zinc; and
    • even use an interestingly shaped chamber (can't remember the name, dammit!) to turn a stream of pressurized air into two streams -- one very chilled and one very hot -- using nothing more than the shape of the cylinder.

    (The latter, now that I think of it, would make a great case-cooling system. Gotta go to the garage and find that book...

    • your own rocket (5 feet high! Made of metal!) powered by oh-so-explosive powered zinc

      Isn't this how they started off in October Sky? [imdb.com]
    • The chamber is known as a vortex tube the German name is the WhirbelRohr.

      Basically, you have a cylinder with both ends sealed off, on each end you attach a narrow length of pipe, one tube has a large hole goin through into the cylinder, the other has a smaller hole, slightly smaller. Both of these holes are axially placed. Now you add another tube to the side of cylinder, but placed so that it enters at a tangent, this also has a hole into the cylinder.
      Now force air into the tube on the side, as the air is injected tangentally to the cylinder, the air will swirl around around it eventually gets to the center. Pressure variations inside the cylinder will seperate the air into hot and cold, hot will come out of one pipe and cold the other.
      This device will also produce a strange noise, any attempt to cancel this noise will stop the device from functioning.

      Further details can be found Here [amasci.com]
      I have been considering using this in a cooling mod but as my parents complain enough about the current noise, I don't think I'll push my luck any further. Besides, steps need to be taken to handle condensation on the cold tube.

      Building the device to ideal measurements will get you some very cold air:

      >compressed air at room temperature (20 C) could
      >in principle be cooled to about -258 C, a mere
      >15 degrees above absolute zero! (The
      >corresponding temperature of the hot side would
      >have been 80
      >C.)

    • * even use an interestingly shaped chamber (can't remember the name, dammit!) to turn a stream of pressurized air into two streams -- one very chilled and one very hot -- using nothing more than the shape of the cylinder.

      Thats a Hilsch Vortex Tube. A friend of mine made one out of brass in college. (This back when a computer maintenance shop required a lathe.) It works, but it's an inefficient refrigerator. The basic idea is to centrifugally separate fast-moving and slow-moving atoms, like Maxwell's Daemon. It doesn't violate conservation of energy, although the proof of that is involved.

    • Heh! :-)

      I have an similar book myself but meant for a younger group - I'm not sure how far back it dates, but I think it was my Dad's as a kid - "101 things a boy can do".

      I can't remember too many of them , but for example one of the 101 things a boy can do is make a paper volcano that spews forth hot "lava" made out of some nasty toxic mercury compound that I guess pharmacists were happy to sell to young boys back then.
  • The increased complexity of our gadgets doesn't help either

    Or the (un)availability of not-so-complex devices. (1)

    It's easier to make a funny thing with a cheap Motorola 6800 or a Zilog Z80 than with a Intel586 or AMD K7. Both for the hardware side (it's only 40 pins and 2MHz) as for the software side (just a couple of registers).

    Also, how "easy" is it these days to add an self-developped extensionboard into your computer? The P2000T and MSX had some nice eurocard extension-slots with an easy to use bus. Heck, you even got the full specifications of everything when you bought the computer.

    (1) When I told this on IRC some people responded that I still can mail-order Z80s for AUS$ 20,- (same price as the i386 :-)
    • Are you kidding? www.jameco.com lists z80's for $1.29 apiece. You can even get the nice 20mhz qfp z80 for $12 something.
    • It's easier to make a funny thing with a cheap Motorola 6800 or a Zilog Z80 than with a Intel586 or AMD K7. Both for the hardware side (it's only 40 pins and 2MHz) as for the software side (just a couple of registers).

      You can buy a host of programmable microcontrollers from a variety of vendors; check Digikey's catalog for a sampling. Many of these should adequately substitute for a Z80.

      Also, how "easy" is it these days to add an self-developped extensionboard into your computer?

      Not that hard.

      I was building a project driven off of a parallel port a couple of weeks back. These won't go away for a few years yet, and you can clock them as slowly as you want to.

      You can also still find motherboards with ISA slots for new machines; at 8 MHz or so, you could certainly put something together with a microcontroller and discrete logic that would fit in a standard system.

      If parallel ports and ISA slots disappear down the road... there will be legacy support for the 10 MBit version of USB for quite a while, and the controller for that is simple enough that you could easily build one with a microcontroller and some glue logic.

      In summary, I don't think there will be a problem any time soon.

  • The DIY spirit is still alive for this guy... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ryu2 ( 89645 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @11:32PM (#3347906) Homepage Journal
    DIY nuclear reactor [findarticles.com], no joke.

    He almost turned his backyard into a federal toxic waste site, and shortened his life by 5 years or so, but hey, it almost worked! :-)

    • Ah, yes... the infamous "Radioactive Boy Scout."

      He even made Slashdot [slashdot.org] nearly a year ago.

      Back then, he was enlisted in the Navy... If I figure right, his first term should be up by now. Anyone have a status update for us? How's he doing? (Pathwalker [slashdot.org], perhaps you have an inside track? You went to high school with him... [slashdot.org])

      Certainly one of the dirtier home science projects... at least from a radiological point of view. Look on the bright side, though: At least he got help cleaning it up!

    • Has anyone else read this and felt extreme sympathy for the 17 year old kid who tried to build a breeder reactor? The guy had endless amounts of curiousity and intelligence and his story ends rather dissapointingly.

      I apologize for giving anything away from the above article, but I don't understand why he wasn't recruited into some of the nation's top research labs doing positive things for society. Hell, I'd put him in a research lab with gobs of funding doing whatever the hell he wants....

      Intelligence is a terrible thing to waste.

  • I disagree. (Score:5, Informative)

    by red_gnom ( 545555 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @11:35PM (#3347919)
    I strongly disagree that it is cheaper to buy a telescope, than to make it by yourself. There is no way "ready to buy" telescopes could come close to the quality of image you can get with home made dobsonian telescopes in the same price category.

    dobplans [aol.com]

    Build Your Own 4 Inch Dobsonian Telescope [lymax.com]

    Telescope Making [efn.org]

    Dobsonian Evolution [aol.com]

    Small Dob Web Site [bellsouth.net]

    I built my own Dobsonian!! [moonlightsys.com]

    • For me it's not the price it's the fact that I live in a highly light-polluted city. From my back yard on the average night I could probably only see the 20 brightest stars. Maybe 50.

      I'd also love to get into alternative power, but my property is filled with tall trees, meaning I can use neither solar panels (shade) nor wind turbines (turbulence).

      The city has turned me into a collector, not a creator.

    • Re:I disagree. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pease1 ( 134187 )
      I agree to disagree. I've built many telescopes [ladyandtramp.com] over the past 20 years and almost always build them cheaper then I could have bought them.

      There are more manufacturers out there, now. That's a good thing since people who don't have the time can at least get in the hobby and even contribute to science.

      And anyone who complains they aren't into astronomy because they live in the city and have to deal with light pollution, doesn't understand the hobby, the science and the technology completely.

      You can build your own telescope, your own CCD camera [willbell.com], and a cheap PC to run it and do some great science [homestead.com] and take some great pretty pictures [highenergyastro.com] all from a very light polluted area.

  • Soldering Surface Mount isn't that hard. (Score:3, Informative)

    by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Monday April 15, 2002 @11:39PM (#3347934) Homepage Journal
    > (Ever tried to fix surface mount components with a soldering iron at your kitchen table? Don't!!)

    I've always found that working with SMT is easier than through hole. You have gravity on your side. It will hold the component on the pad while you tack it in place.

    Just use a decent soldering iron that has a small enough tip and don't make the mistake of using too small a tip. A too small tip doesn't hold enough heat to flow the solder onto larger SMT pins.

    Also make good use of brush on flux and desolder braid. They are your friends when reworking SMT boards.

    When laying out your own PCB, SMT components let you get away with drilling far fewer holes and zero ohm resistors let you 'jump' over tracks without using vias.

    When it comes to probing, all your signals are generally available on one side. Most SMT parts (except BGA and LCC styles) don't shroud their leads like stand-up electrolytics and transistors do.

    One of the primary barriers to messing with this sort of stuff in America is the crappiness of component supply for the hobbyist. I have yet to see anything that comes close to the likes of Radio Spares or Farnell in the UK.

    • Yup surface mount soldering really isn't that hard once you've done it a few times. I always used a temp-controlled solder iron with a very fine tip. I burnt through tips fairly often, but having that precise control of the heat was needed. Never really used extra flux, but solder wick was a life-saver. So was the dental pick that I used to gently pry up the corners of chips while blasting away with a heat gun (yes, the same type that is used to remove paint). With some ultra-fine solder, I could solder the chip on so clean it hardly looked like it had been replaced. Ahh the good old days! :^)
  • You can't get many supplies for the hobbyist lab anymore. Lawyers and politicians have made it too difficult.
    "Sorry can't sell you that, could be used to make illegal drugs." or "Sorry we don't sell that; you could get hurt and sue us." and "We use to sell that but can't anymore, forbids it."
    And let's not forget the ever-present terrorist threat. Anyone with chemicals in their household more elaborate than vinegar must be working with terrorists.

  • I don't believe so. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cdf12345 ( 412812 )
    This is complete opposite of the article in Newsweek article I just read. The "welcome back to sillicon valley" issue. Which basically stated that the fall in the economy and the layoff of thousdand of workers in the tech field would allow many people with skills time to mess with current technology. They are predicting an increase in innovation like tech boom in the early to mid 90s. The interesting thing is that sure, there are less magazines dedicated to "tinkering" however I believe they have been replaced by various websites which are much cheaper to produce and maintain.

    One example was the 802.11 wireless standard, how over the last few years what was considered junk bandwidth was embraced by radio hobbiests and made cheap by innovative manufacturing.

    I believe that while the economy was good, everyone had a "look what I can get for free" mentality. Now that we've seen the downturn, I believe we see a more "What cool things can I do with the tech I already have" attitude.

    I know presonally I've found myself doing that recently.

    So to say DIY is dead, I believe it was hibernating, and it's about to wake back up for spring.
  • Sure, you can do it at home. Here's how. [pegasustech.com] All you need is a stereo microscope, a hot air soldering station, and really good tweezers. A few thousand dollars, but not too bad. And you have to have custom PC boards made for everything, which you do by designing them with a PC board layout program and having them manufactured by a prototype house. About $100 a pop.

    Soldering irons will just barely work. [avocetsystems.com] Reliable work requires a hot-air soldering station, with a set of air guides for every shape of chip you're dealing with. And you probably have to take a soldering course to get your skills up to par.

    Last year, I finally gave up hardware and boxed up the electronics tools and parts.

  • In the early 1980's, writing addin functions for things like Lotus 1-2-3 and the like was a big deal. PC-Mag had debug scripts for users to create their own scripts for nifty little utilities.

    Now-a-days, macros are hived off to another area, and we're supposed to learn VirusBasic for Applications, and their woofy interface and use long commands like "CallApplicationFunctionInExcel()" in order to do any automation.

    Basically, I just leave VBA for the script kiddies now. Never could make head nor tail of it.

    On the other hand, leave me alone with some REXX and a ascii format, and since it's my baby, I understand it and make it do nice things.

    Still, my hobbyist science is plowing into new world research :), so there's plenty of noonosphere to claim.

  • Amateur radio (Score:3, Insightful)

    by OverCode@work ( 196386 ) <.overcode. .at. .gmail.com.> on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @12:01AM (#3348016) Homepage
    This is hitting amateur radio hard. Most hams purchase their equipment these days; it's nearly impossible to obtain modern levels of performance on home built transceivers. (Well, that's a generalization; antennas are often homebuilt, and some diehards do build their own rigs.)

    Why would people trade images with SSTV (slow scan TV, basically a codec for TV-resolution images sent over the radio) when they can email jpegs? For the most part, the people who do it are just in it for entertainment, not utility.

    There is still room for tweaking; in fact, the amateur radio community strongly encourages it. Radios still usually come with complete schematics (pages and pages of schematics, in the case of some of the larger units in the local radio club's shack). But it's pretty uncommon to pull out the soldering iron these days and work on the actual equipment.

    Better or worse? Neither. There will always be a small segment of the population that finds any given field (astronomy, radio, etc) exciting. New technology will just change their focus, but the interest is unlikely to go away.

    -John, KG4RUO

    • Re:Amateur radio (Score:2, Informative)

      by Shortwave ( 2793 )
      That's true for most of amateur radio like you said. But go check out the QRP guys. They are truly the next revolution. Making it real again.

      The receiver section in the Red Hot 20 I just built pretty much holds it own or kicks the crap out of anything that is commercial. The designer just kicked butt. Plus, I learned a ton about RF electronics.

      [redhotradio.com]
      Red Hot Radio


      Plus don't get me started about the K2. High performance direct conversion receiver that has some serious mojo....and I'm going build it next!! yeehaw!!

      [elecraft.com]
      K2 and Elecraft site


      Go check out the QRP guys. Get on QRP-L or just go through the archives on the web. Those guys are just RF ninja masters (well, at least a few of them).

      The commercial guys never get it. They want to build stuff that is all things to all people.

      Melt Solder!!!
      Snort Rosin!!!

  • Difficulty is relative... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ChrisKnight ( 16039 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @12:14AM (#3348058) Homepage
    > (Ever tried to fix surface mount components
    > with a soldering iron at your kitchen table?
    > Don't!!)

    Why not?

    I just soldered a couple of surface mount memory chips into my Tivo. Sure, the days of using a $12 Radio Shack soldering iron are long gone, but there are inexpensive Weller soldering irons that are well suited to todays ambitions hobiest.

    Telling someone not to make that surface mount repair is adding to the very problem you are complaining about. Don't encourage people to be afraid to experiment and learn. You may not be able to make that repair, but that doesn't mean someone else can't.

    -Chris
  • ... just shifted to different areas.

    The essential learning aspect of the hobbyist modality is captured pretty well by the LEGO Mindstorms robotics toys(?). While it's true that machine language is a lost art, as is the construction of simple electronic devices, there are new frontiers available today that were not practical in days gone by.

    Maybe in another decade or two we'll have do-it-yourself genetic tinkering...
  • I, like most of us here at /. , used to be an electronics enthusiast. I remember TAB books and books on crystal radios and so on.

    I have however, see more interesting DIY here at /. than in any books.

    What is more DIY than building your own No click mouse [slashdot.org] or how about Mini PCs w/o fans [slashdot.org]?

    Admittedly you won't see the actual plans hosted on /. but I would never have guessed that you could Stream RealAudio from a Commodore 64?!!!!! [slashdot.org]. I wouldn't even know such a thing could be done until stumbling across at /. and seeing some geek blazing trails that are SO far out to be unbelievable sometimes (like anything with a C64!) That's more original and trail blazing than any of the old "build your own radio set" projects.

    Anytime you wanna see DIY just go to the Hardware [slashdot.org] section.

    It's right under your nose (which is under your CRT bloodshot eyes)
  • "Declining manufacturing costs now make it cheaper to buy a telescope, radio, or computer than to build one yourself."

    It has always been cheaper to buy things like radios than to make them. Otherwise people would make them and sell them for less than the market price, and the market price would go down.

    Cheaply available components that result from better manufacturing methods etc. allow children and hobbyists to perform more complex experiments and create more elaborate designs than was ever possible before.

    If you get yourself a programmable logic developper's kit, you can design, with the same tools as professionals, anything from internet routers to microcomputers to cell phones and just abotu anything your heart desires, including specialized scientific analysis equipement.

    try: http://www.latticesemi.com/

    They also provide an analog version. wiring a digital and an analog programmable device together gives you the flexibility to design just about any sub-100 Mhz device out there. Heck I'm sure you could procure some old schematics for ancient CPU's and actaully make them yourself.


  • Now how can you honestly say D.I.Y. is dead when young boy scouts are still doing things like this for their badges =)

    http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/n1782_v297/ 21281407/p1/article.jhtml [findarticles.com]

    (on a serious note, I agree with the article - and it's a very sad trend to see happen)

  • Monorails, Web Sites, and Open Source (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GroundBounce ( 20126 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @01:08AM (#3348233)
    It's interesting that an article about R.I.P D.Y.I should fall so close on the heals of an article about a guy who just built a monorail in his back yard! [slashdot.org]

    I think D.Y.I is alive and well, just in a different form. Yes, I grew up in the late '60s and early '70s fixing TV's, scavenging electronics parts from the dumpster of the local electronics store (yes, there were more than just Radio Shacks selling electronic components back then), and building my own transmitters, receivers, and light organs (anyone remember those!).

    As much as I've tried to interest my son and his friends in doing these things, they're just not as interested in these kinds of things. Instead, they designs web pages for their teachers, write computer programs to do everything from keeping track of homework to helping practice martial arts, fix computers for their friends, and of course, play lots of games (not all computer, they play chess too). My son also wants to build a zero-emission solar-charged electric go-kart; in my day a simple gas powered one would have sufficed - we didn't care much about pollution or fuel economy back then.

    The point is that the economics and complexity of electronic equipment has changed the types of things that modern hobbyists are interested in, but it has not eliminated the urge for people to experement with new things. Hobbyists are now more interested in solving larger, more global technical problems rather than the simpler gadgets we used to build. How this will change things in the long term, I don't know. When I was studying for my EE degree 25-30 years ago, many of my classmates were people who had tinkered extensively with electronics when they were younger. Today, I imagine that's not the case, but OTOH in computer science classes, there are probably *more* previous tinkerers than in the 'old days'; 30 years ago it was rare for someone to have had experience with anything more than a calculator in high school.

    As for open source, the trend for a lot of hobbyist activity to occur in software areas can only help.
  • but given how they are now so cheap with the economy in a downturn, buying a couple turned out to be a better deal.

  • Opencores (Score:2, Interesting)

    by femto ( 459605 )
    D.I.Y. isn't dead. It just moved to OpenCores [opencores.org], and other sites like it. Come along and give us a hand!
  • Man, I am so-oo sorry for ripping off the cliche'd Mastercard commercial, but it so fits my 'second childhood' story:
    • Same model as my first computer: Down from $2500 to a mere $20 or less.
    • Book: Hardware interfacing for the (Apple, 8080, Z80, 6502, 6809, 8088, 8086, etc...): $2 on ebay or a computer show.
    • Chips, resistors, led's, relays and everything else your heart desires: About ten seconds of salary apiece for salvage, $5 for the ones I can't live without.

    • The freedom to try anything I want, 'cuz now I can afford to replace it if I let out the magic blue smoke [astrian.net]?

      Priceless.

    D.I.Y. is dead!? Horsehockey! [google.com] Nothing could be further from the truth. I've been a personal computer 'hobbyist' for over 20 years and a quick guess is that the list of what I'd do if I just had time is quadrupling each year. Ditto every other techno-geek I know.

    We're not all building Ham radios and grinding our own telescope lenses, but that's because we're so busy building our own aparatus for whatever interests us using the building blocks of the digital generation. 90% of my projects have nearly nothing to do with pre-1970's devices.

    And when something DOES?-- well, ten seconds after I got my first Dobsonian 'scope, I began thinking how cool it'd be to rig it up with photocells, servos, a database and a real-time webserver so I could stargaze last night's sky any time I wanted (like at lunch!?). And two-thirds of how I'd do that isn't available from Edmunds. What's more, ten more seconds of searching on google (webcam astronomer) got me two such devices already implemented.

    Folks are building their own fuel cells and hooking 'em to bikes [mhtx.com], making wireless network antennas, turbocharged generators, stereo-to-PC integration devices, in-car-computers, personal VTOL aircraft [moller.com], and more!

    We're all still experimenting. That's what hacking is, in my book. We're just caught up in 'new' areas of discovery.

    Oh, and Open Source has little to do with the urge to experiment. They may coincide, but either can live just fine exclusively of one another.

  • Tinkering just shifted to other fields (Score:4, Interesting)

    by elflet ( 570757 ) <elflet @ n e x t q uestion.net> on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @01:47AM (#3348362)
    While feeling ther demise of electronic tinkering -- my son doesn't mess around with electronics and science the way I did as a child -- I realized the tinkering has gone into other areas. We build robots with Lego Mindstorms. We design model rockets with Rocksim [apogeerockets.com] and fly with a local club. We design electronic payloads together -- he comes up with the concept for the booster, and I refine it while figuring out how to fit in the electronics. (We're currently mounting lights inside a Shrox [shrox.com] Alien 8 for night flying.)

    Adult "born again rocketeers" are building larger, faster, and more powerful rockets -- and the kids are following suit.

    In all these cases, we've taken the manufacturing boom and used it to support our hobbies. It's not the same as tinkering with low-level parts and raw materials, but in the end you still learn a whole lot about physics, materials science, electronics, etc.

  • My DIY experience has greatly *increased* with all the new trends and technologies (and cheaper old ones). I mean.. 10 years ago, could you buy a perfectly good 100Mhz. storage oscilloscope in an online auction for $100? Or instantly access spec sheets on just about any IC ever produced? Or discuss circuit design technique on public mailing lists with electrical engineers around the world?

    DIY isn't going away.. it's getting more advanced and more exciting! (and yes, SMD soldering is very muchpractical for the home hobbyist with about $50 of the right tools)

  • I did hear a while ago... (Score:4, Funny)

    by LadyLucky ( 546115 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @05:55AM (#3349029) Homepage
    About a DIY operating system, but I'm danged if I can remember what it was called.

  • Hogwash! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LionKimbro ( 200000 ) on Tuesday April 16, 2002 @10:08AM (#3349843) Homepage
    Evidently, the something-for-everyone model epitomized by Heathkit and the Amateur Scientist column can't compete anymore. Specialized sources and Internet newsgroups cater to each skill level. But much of the mentoring and serendipity that the diverse community of amateurs offered has been lost. It is hard not to regret its passing.

    What an idiot. We have just largely stopped using magazines in light of the Internet.

    I've [gsu.edu] learned [tpub.com] almost [gsnu.ac.kr] everything [doctronics.co.uk] I know [ualberta.ca] about [amasci.com] electronics [ibiblio.org] from the Internet.

    Look at these books! [ibiblio.org] Look at them! All Free, as in Liberty AND No-Cost. These are some of the very best books I have found on electronics, on-line or off. Forest Mims the Third, eat your heart out.

    Do we want to talk about mentoring and serendipity?

    It was out of frustration that I compiled Lessons in Electric Circuits from notes and ideas I had been collecting for years. My primary goal was to put readable, high-quality information into the hands of my students, but a secondary goal was to make the book as affordable as possible. Over the years, I had experienced the benefit of receiving free instruction and encouragement in my pursuit of learning electronics from many people, including several teachers of mine in elementary and high school. Their selfless assistance played a key role in my own studies, paving the way for a rewarding career and fascinating hobby. If only I could extend the gift of their help by giving to other people what they gave to me . . .

    There you go.

    If anything, I'd say that amateur science and learning and construction is more popular now, because it is more accessible.

    It just doesn't take the form of magazine articles.

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