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DIY Warriors Saluted And Sought
WaveDave writes "I have found some really inspiring pages out there by folks who are hacking together amazingly cool low-cost hardware/software/etc projects (reminiscent of the old homebrew computer club days). With the cost of IC's, sensors, microcontrollers, and PC's falling through the floor, we've entered a time where the barriers to entry on hacking neat projects are lower than they've ever been. There are a lot of indicators of the excitement in these projects, including the recent announcement of the upcoming Make Magazine from O'Reilly. Initially blown away by Matthias Wandel's projects, I've begun to put together a small collection of links to other creative DIY-ers out there, as well as resources for finding parts, getting stuff made (like PCB's and machined stuff). My current list is here - what are some of your favorite creatives and resources?"
Just remember people, there truely is no such thing as an Alpha Geek, so share 'em if you got 'em. But check your ego at the door for a more pleasant experience for everyone, yourself included. TIA for the links.
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
One of my good Professors here at RIT introduced me and gets copies of the magazine Circuit Cellar. They are a complete computer hobbyist magazine -- very, very good. They have everything from radio controlled robots to how to add USB to your embedded project.
Circuit Cellar
They also host contests constantly which give out free hardware for those with good design ideas! Great for those student needs!
In some ways, DIY electronics is getting harder. Lot's of logic parts are long out of production and getting harder to find. Those that are still in production are packaged in hobbyist-unfriendly ways (e.g. BGA). I know you can work with these packages with various gyrations, but it's a long way from the straightforward ease of DIPs and wire-wrap.
That's because you had to. And in those times those that were not experts at it (read: most everyone) ran risks: Starving, accidents, etc. Our social structure supports specialization so we can concentrate our time on things we enjoy or improve our own specialization. I like to tackle projects around the house, but I positively hate plumbing. It is to my benefit that I can call an expert if I'm over my head rather than being stuck with my shoddy plumbing efforts.
Building PCs from scratch was cool when there were no PCs at Walmart. But today...much like building a horseless carriage, or a vacuum-tube radio.
This is the same way electric motors used to be cool. I remember when I was a wee lad that every handyman had a few electric motors lying about, one big one usually strapped to the workbench, with a bunch of belts to power a number of different devices. Motors were still fairly expensive and bulky, so they tended to dominate the workbench.
Then electric motors became completely ubiquitous, and they mostly vanished from sight, embedded into everyday devices, hair dryers, coffee grinders, RC Cars. What became interesting was not the motor itself, but all the cool and unexpected things you could do with it once it got cheap enough, and small enough.
So yeah, a DIYer could sit down today and build a motor (or a computer) completely from scratch, but it becomes an exercise in nostalgia, like hand-crafting a canoe, or building a replica of the Wright Brothers plane. Which is cool in it's own way, but somewhat eccentric.
So the moder-day DIYer, like the scientist in Cronenberg's "The Fly," we find ourselves in the role of sythesists, taking off-the-shelf parts to make interesting & unusual new gizmos, or taking an existing technology and bringing it into the realm of the handyman's workshop.
What were you expecting?
I'm not yet 30 and I remember the flame wars on Usenet. I regularly lurked the homebrew groups there about 8 to 10 years ago--just before and during the time I was putting together a simple wire-wrapped system consisting of an M68K and mostly 74LS series logic chips. There were two noteworthy camps:
1. The Gods of the geek world--those who'd pat you on the head and say "nice beginner project--good luck and keep it up son" at the site of project like mine. These were the types who could've been founding members of the Homebrew club back in the day, and figured REAL men didn't need a stinkin' processor to make a PC--just a bunch of SSI TTL Logic. If you really wanted to test your mettle you built it using discrete transistors.
2. The AOL generation of "home brewers" who fancied themselves experts becasue they could screw a 486 Motherboard and some cards into a PC case...they were the "home builders" and endlessly posted questions about BIOS configuration, jumper settings and IRQ conflicts.
Sadly, despite the fact that it was stated loudly and clearly in the FAQ and repeatedly in flame posts what the group was intended for, AND despite a group being put together for bome built DOS PCs, the second group still drowned out the first--DRAM refresh circuitry and address decoding was beyond their comprehension, but cross-posting was not.
Now homebrew seems to mean adding backlit LCD status panels, neon lights, cut-out windows and a coat of day-glo Tremclad. This is a fun hobby to be sure and I enjoy what comes out of it as much as I enjoy going to car shows. However, it isn't really homebrew to me. Cramming an ITX motherboard into as many odd containers as possible just doesn't have the same mystique...