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What If Your Electronic Parts Were More Like Legos? (electricdollarstore.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader beckman101 writes:
This week Electric Dollar Store opened its doors, selling interchangeable postage-stamp sized I2C-based modules for prices between $1.00 and $1.80. The modules include lights, buzzers, counters and sensors — the range is aimed at electronic makers. These aren't manufacturing rejects shipping from Asia — they're assembled, tested and shipped from a small farming town in California, where winter labor is cheap.
All the code for the project is BSD licensed.
The project is a spin-off from the popular open-source I2CDriver hardware debugger.
All the code for the project is BSD licensed.
The project is a spin-off from the popular open-source I2CDriver hardware debugger.
It will hurt more when I step on them?
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
Little Bits:
https://littlebits.com/
Gakken EX:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Snap Circuits:
https://www.elenco.com/brand/s...
Then there are the domain specific building block electronics - Arduino shields, raspberry pi blocks, MakerBlocks, mBot modules...
And, of course, all the modules for Mindstorms, both from LEGO and third-party.
These look kind of neat, though. Price is right!
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
There is nothing making electronics manufacturing financially impossible in America, and manual labour costs are nowhere as important as some believe.
In fact, there are major electronics makers even in Africa and Pakistan.
America's problem there has nothing to do with costs, but spoiled silver spooned "business elites" who don't count anything, but money falling into their mouths by themselves "a good business case"
The plural of Lego is Lego.
We already imagined that as kids in the 80s.
I'm certain, our grandparents did too, on their first mainframe/supercomputer.
And back then, for most parts, they were! Backplane, bus, cards for anything, peripherals for anything else.
The thing is, that integrating ALL the things and disabling what you don't need just became cheaper.
But it quickly became a trap too, since the buses and modularity were done away with too! So you could not even do it if you wanted!
I still imagine a backplane-like system with cards emerging out of the Raspberry Pi headers and stacking shields.
And a similar back-"spine" system for mobile phone sized devices, where the bus is in the center and it's like a ribcage where you snap in the modules, and close the lid/battery/display/keyboard back side.
My point is: Ee dreamt about this for a long time, but until now, for-profit lock-in and cheap mass-manufacturing always prevented it.
So unless you have a novel was to counter those underlying problems... no dice.
I like the idea and what the store has to offer so far but there are only 16 products. Come back when you have hundreds. Most of the sensors are I2C which is awesome for Arduino. Your boards are all simply the same size, they do not physically connect like legos or have any system of interconnect other than using solder and pins which makes it no better than breadboarding. Calling them electronic legos is going way too far. Look into using pogo headers or magnetic snap together modules. The intention of a modular IC system has been done before and done better. I want to say it was Google Learn that had a good system of modular snap together boards for educators in school systems. Using a breadboard and dupont wires looks easier than using your system. Please don't take this as all negative, there is obviously a flaw in your system when using breadboard and dupont wires seems more appealing for fast prototyping. Your modular system needs more thought put into it. I do like the square form factor of the boards, they are nice size that you can stuff more advanced components onto in the future like a tiny audio amp, battery charger, or LED driver. Web store is nice, congrats on getting that up and running. It's a start!
Like processors and main memory ones.
Ald if they are all the same size, where are the ready-made cases? (Modules with external interfaces should have a faceplate included.)
That's what I would have started with.
I guess they are trying to be a cheaper Arduino store. As it's not funny if the stupid CO2 or oxygen sensor for your $5 computer costs more than $50.
I mean, these guys won't be about writing EDS on PCBs for long - not once the real big 'EDS' coughs a few lawyers in their direction.
Clearly didn't research trademarks. Clearly relying on a shit PCB autorouter.
Good idea though, badly implemented.
These look pretty neat. Probably worth having a bunch kicking around to save on a lot of faff for the odd one of and/or experiment. Much like arduinos. I probably won't get many though since for my hobby electronics I like doing things by hand, especially doing analogue things. But I only like doing the bits I find personally interesting by hand.
I expect we'll get some people ragging on makers inn this thread though because we always get that, especially arduinos.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Did the lack of anything damning in the Mueller report lead you down that path?
So I'm greatful a website finally caters to me by presenting a title and menu that is 15cm high on my screen and scales all normal text to size 32. You know ... because I read Slashdot from the other side of the room and all.
Suddenly IC's are lego bricks, in revolutionary marketing-copy strategy.
Combining all of these sensor capabilities with a 128 core Jetson Nano should offer some interesting monitoring opportunities.
It would be really awesome to build a community around this.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Holy hell, I thought you were exaggerating... https://shop.littlebits.com/collections/bits/products/bright-led
having a huge tunnel up my ass
I'm on it.
Sincerely,
Elon Musk
Boring Co.
It has resulted in trials and prison sentences left right and center, it's being kept secret and you think there wasn't anything damning? How's the weather under the Trump ass? I bet it stinks, but you like it.
If you are trying to solder stuff yourself at home. It would make life a whole lot easier for me if certain IC's were available as SOIC or PDIP even. Hard enough to get the damn things working at times without having to check under a microscope to make sure you soldered the damn thing right.
electronics is not so hardware oriented anymore
simply because anything done by specific hardware in the past has been sucked into your phone or simply obsolete
I tend to go adafruit for stuff like this, they have way way way more selection. I picked up a GPS that is on a board that talks over RS232. Hooked right up to my pi. There are others as well, like digikey etc for practically any part you need, just not presoldered. For hobbyists, I'd say the biggest problem are SMC's. They are less expensive but require much higher skill levels and equip.
I'm conflicted. On the one hand, things like this (and Arduino, and RPi, and so on) make things more accessible to the 'masses' -- but on the other hand, it seems like it's 'dumbing down electronics', taking away any requirement that you actually learn how electronics works at the component level.
I can't easily count how many people (probably teenagers, really; this is the internet, who can tell?) were spending inordinate amounts of time just getting an Arduino (or similar microcontroller-based toy) to make an LED blink, or something similar, and they would talk about how they were 'doing electronics'; contradict them, and with a straight face, not kidding with you, would claim that "if it doesn't use a microcontroller, it's not electronics", and how 'analog electronics is old fashioned and obsolete, no one uses that stuff anymore'. I kid you not. Meanwhile they'd need an Instructible and a YouTube how-to video to build a basic crystal radio, and they'd be utterly clueless as to how it works -- assuming that is you could convince them that it would even work and that you weren't trying to troll them (less than half a dozen parts and no microcontroller? How does it do anything?).
Someone else mentioned 'Lectron', from back in the 1980's; my brother had some of those, although I was never allowed to mess with them. Some might argue those were on the same level as what we're discussing here, but the fact of the matter is, those were just 'sanitized' versions of discrete components, eliminating the need for soldering or any sort of solderless breadboarding, you still had to understand electronics enough to make something work.
It looks like these are circuit boards that require soldering.
How is that anything like legos? Or, more like legos than any of the other bazallion circuit board modules being sold?
Legos are legos cause they don't require tools, are semi-permanent (easily reconfigurable), and structually similar so their possible configurations are exponential.
These might meet the 3rd. Looks like they all follow 4 wire interface, providing exponential combinations. But really what makes lego is having all three "lego pillars". Many things have 1 or 2 of them.
... would they hurt like hell if you stepped on them by accident?
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
The problem today with having digital electronics as a hobby is not hardware-related, it's simply thinking up useful things to do. How many times have you seen someone ask "I got this Arduino/Rasberry Pi (as a gift, in a contest, some other way), what can I do with it?"... If you can buy from China sources, the prices of most common components is very very inexpensive. Chinese Arduino clones cost $2-$3, and for just a few dollars more you can get boards with other processors that are much faster and have more memory--assuming you write a program that needs either of those things. Display screens cost $3, basic GPS chips cost $1, various wifi/wireless chips cost $3, CCD cameras cost $3, laser rangefinders cost $8, a cell phone radio (requires a SIM) costs $8.
I do think that the main reason for the popularity of Arduino is that both the hardware and the software were made specifically to be easy to use.
Interest/sales of a given processor or IC tend to pick up a lot after there is an Arduino IDE board definition or library for it.
I suspect that people assume that if they cannot get the "professional" dev environment to work, they assume they can still get it to work in the Arduino IDE.
No, it didn't. Anyone can be imprisoned with a subpoena trap. When you're selected for punishment, everything you say will be twisted to be a lie. But don't worry, the NY Times told you they were all horrible people... The same organization pushing Chinese propaganda so arrogantly that they have pinyin characters in the front page.
Of the thirty-some indictments, a few resulted in guilty pleas, a few folks have been sentenced to prison, for crimes ranging from process crimes (lying to an investigator about a meeting the investigator has a transcript of, for example) or cheating on your taxes years before the election, and over two dozen "never gonna result in convictions" charges against Russians that spewed misinformation on the internet.
Wow. Don't see any collusion. Don't see Obstruction of Justice.
Democrats think meeting with a woman that offers opposition research on Hillary is collusion with a foreign state, yet see no issue with funneling campaign money to a law firm, mis-reporting that payment as for "legal advice", and having the lawyers hire a research firm, which in-turn hires a former foreign intelligence officer who in-turn meets with and pays officials in the Kremlin for opposition research on Hillary's opponent Trump.
Apparently opposition research from foreign sources is only illegal if they offer it for free - by paying for it, it suddenly becomes "OK".
Got it.
Ken
Don't forget the Lectron blocks.
Bruce Perens.
Get the bloody spelling right!
After visiting the site I'm not sure who these are targeted to. They are far too simplistic for the average electronics enthusiast and, in my opinion, a bit too complex for the novice. The soldering aspect is odd for a product targeted to beginners, especially tiny 4.7k surface mount resistors.
When I was a kid I begged for every one of the electronics kits Radio Shack sold in the 80's. My favorite, of course, was the 300-in-1 kit with so many items to play with. The spring clips used on these kits made wiring the parts together a breeze. Perhaps this product would be more suited to something similar.
I love the idea of electronic kits to teach young minds. The Radio Shack kits eventually led me to a career in aviation electronics and later into the IT field. While others were struggling to learn transistor theory in school I had already mastered it thanks to these kits. It's awesome to see companies keeping this spirit alive.
They've always been like Legos! Even back in the late 70's / early 80's... Yeah, you may have had some pull up resistors, or other crappy discrete glue, analog/linear bullshit in between something, but...
Now get off my lawn!
I have none that I know of--yet, but when I do I hope I don't find them by stepping on them like Lego.
lego rocks!