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R.I.P for D.I.Y Or Long Live Open Source?
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.
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.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
This siteis kind of interesting, it has a number of homemade recipes for building bizarre science stuff.
My favorite is the cloud chamber , with this device you can observe radioactive particles. You can actually see the curly little vapor trails that particle scientists observe in major accelerators.
There's also a modification for observing cosmic rays, high energy particles that are zipping through you by the thousands every second.
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
bash$
dobplans
Build Your Own 4 Inch Dobsonian Telescope
Telescope Making
Dobsonian Evolution
Small Dob Web Site
I built my own Dobsonian!!
> (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.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
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
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.)
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.
/. than in any books.
/. but I would never have guessed that you could Stream RealAudio from a Commodore 64?!!!!!. 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.
I have however, see more interesting DIY here at
What is more DIY than building your own No click mouse or how about Mini PCs w/o fans?
Admittedly you won't see the actual plans hosted on
Anytime you wanna see DIY just go to the Hardware section.
It's right under your nose (which is under your CRT bloodshot eyes)
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.
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!!
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!!!
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.
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' 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 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.
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.
http://www.theheathkitshop.com/
heathkit is out of business, this site might help finding the components, etc
There is a lot of amateur engineers working on gadgets to improve the lives of people with disabilities. The market is often small but the rewards are tremendous. Enablemart shows has a lot of stuff that was invented in garages and small shops.
Watching Cowboy Bebop in my jammies, eating a bowl of Shreddies.
Thought it was worth mentioning, poptronics
January 2002 issue is in pdf format on the front page
-Faust