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I got into Maker Faire and making things, then I ran out of time. I had to learn Kubernetes. My kids were interested then they weren’t. My son is very technical and expressed interest in robotics, but he keeps coming back to game development and blender, and that is fantastic. I have a half dozen micro boards gathering dust for projects I was going to Make. I guess I haven’t seen value enough in my daily life from my little creations, and fundamentally making something novel is remarkably difficult. I’d really like to wire that gear up with MaxMSP or processing and make some beautiful sonic spaces, but for now it stays on the shelf. Is this just me or did something fundamental of that kind of experience undermine the maker movement in general?


Counter experience that still echos a lot of the same themes: I started tinkering with electronics around 2011, the typical beginner Arduino projects with the starter kit you've all seen-- it was enjoyable and I learned a lot, but never made anything that went beyond a toy or learning demo. By 2014 I was gainfully employed and had a little more disposable income so I gravitated towards freestyle and racing quadcopters which I've continued to enjoy through today. My lab and expertise have continued to grow every step of the way, and I've been excited to implement some very basic home automation on my own with ESP8266 kits now that I'm a homeowner. Realistically there isn't much "maker" related things I would see value in beyond commodity tools and a 3d printer, but vendors with FPV electronics touting cool new features or enhanced functionality have a reliable track record of cracking my wallet open. I suspect this is a broader feeling and contributed to Maker Faire struggling to find a niche with reasonable margins amid a race to the bottom in the associated hardware.

Ultimately I suspect Arduino boards gathering dust on the self are the overwhelming majority. People are either interested in it and rapidly move on to more specialized applications (Hobbyist multi-rotor electronics quickly graduated from 8bit AVRs to 32 bit ARMs) or they aren't and the dev kits find room in the closet.


I feel much the same way; I decided I needed a "project" when our child was born and I was looking at finding some things to do while enjoying paternity leave.

I figured I'd either learn android-development, or hardware-stuff. Bought an Arduino kit and never looked back. In my limited experience people dabble at such things then move on, or give it up entirely there isn't too much of a middle-ground.

I still dabble with ESP8266 things two years later; most recently I hooked up a simple 433Mhz radio-receiver to a board, and wrote some code to receive/understand/decode the radio-broadcasts a cheap off-the-shelf wireless temperature/humidity-sensor transmits. This allows me to log the temperature/humidity of our sauna.

Usually I'd wire up a sensor of my own, but I figured it would be less-risky to use an off-the-shelf sensor/transmitter. The idea of mixing steamy saunas with a USB-PSU was a dangerous one, and I even balked at using a rechargeable battery.

There aren't many things I buy for my hobby/practice, just random sensors, or accessories. Most of the time I just order them from AliExpress and take the time-hit waiting for them to arrive.


Basically the same stuff for me-- ESP8266 reading a humidity sensor and flipping a 115v outlet controller on or off for the dehumidifier in my basement. The built in humidity sensor is either hilariously inaccurate or is reading dryer than ambient exhaust air, so having a remote sensor is helpful.

It's all fun stuff and of some usefulness to me personally, but I don't think much of anything I've done has any professional applicability; other than generalized familiarity with electronics and components I wouldn't feel comfortable producing a real product.

Are there actually consumer electronics out there that are just arduino examples glued together?


>Are there actually consumer electronics out there that are just arduino examples glued together?

A lot of the existing power-switches that can be toggled with an app / radio-button are little more than an ESP8266 and a relay. The sonoff-line of smart-switches would be the obvious example.

Sonoff also make and sell RF<->WiFi bridges, but I guess the target market is already hackers rather than consumers for things like that.

Otherwise I've seen a few wifi-controllable LED-strips, and similar things that I'm pretty sure are identical in terms of hardware to what I've built. You can see some crowdfunded projects are just scaled-up home-toys too.

I'm struggling to think of better examples, but I'm sure they exist! In terms of product though it's interesting to evolve something from a bundle of junk loosely coupled to being a thing in a pretty case which can be enjoyed by others. I setup a trivial display to show tram-departures from outside my house, which the whole family uses now and loves. It went from a cardboard-box with a pile of stuff in it to a 3d-printed display, and then later I added the ability for it to be controlled via a HTTP-server, running as an Access-Point when it was initially setup. The whole thing became very very user-friendly. (But at the same time the only real user is ourselves, and trying to sell it would be a bit difficult.)


Most Arduinos are just fancy ATmega breakout boards, and ATmegas are used in some production electronics. You can most certainly prototype consumer electronics with Arduinos and then design production hardware after you've proven the concept.

The Arduino IDE is also compatible with various other microcontrollers, including the STM32 family which are extremely widely used in production electronics. Typically their production code isn't written with the Arduino tools but you can most certainly prototype with it.


The programmable mechanical keyboards are going that way.

Some of the newer ones can trace their lineage pretty directly to Arduino clones running TMK/QMK firmwares. The commercial version is usually going to cut out as much of the Arduino bits as possible and go for a soldered on microcontroller once you're building for sale.


Check out Banggood.com - almost anything you might think to make they probably already make and sell, plus they will sell you just the parts.


There are plenty of real world examples. An Arduino is merely a beginner friendly packaging for an AVR chip. In fact, you can pull out the AVR chip on some Arduino boards, and then you're free to program it yourself, provided you set up your own bootloader.

You'll find AVR chips controlling many, many devices in the wild. My Lulzbot 3d printer uses an ATMega for instance.


I'm one of those "rapidly move on to specialized applications" people who never moved on. :-) My Arduino is gathering dust but somewhere along the line I became a ham radio operator and my world changed dramatically after that. So I'm really thankful to DIY, maker, and hacker culture for all of the encouragement, tools, and tutorials that helped me get to a very happy place indeed.


What about your world has changed due to being an HRO?


Well. I appreciate the opportunity to reminisce. :-) It's only been 2 years for me, but:

First I became a local volunteer for ultramarathons, health care emergency exercises, things like that.

Next I developed a bunch of communications standards to support people in wildfire-type emergencies.

Then I just got really involved in learning about radio tech that uses the internet, and started working on a webSDR project to get a local server set up.

In between all of that I've participated in some ARISS SSTV events via the International Space Station and have some nifty commemoration certificates on my wall.

And finally I made a bunch of new friends and became part of a group that actually mostly observes a really high standard of communications decency and loves to support learning and technology. Through the community I've befriended astronomers, cops, engineers, firemen, physicists, all of those things I idolized as a kid.

This is to say nothing of the gadgetry, the ability to reach out across the world using any number of methods. Randomly getting in touch with a Japanese radio operator whose daughter lives just down the street from where I used to live in Japan. Talking to a Hugh from Ireland and telling him about my son who is also named Hugh. Getting my kids on the air and asking a bunch of radio operators across the US to take turns wishing them a happy birthday just for fun. Knowing they're enjoying it too. Fun little moments like that.


But most stuff at Maker Faire and in the Maker scene in general is in a quite unfinished state. It's easy to get inspired by all the Arduino stuff because it's there. But what about the move advanced things? Of course you could meet some people at Makerfaire who did this kind of stuff, but that was rare. I wish they would have had a clearer concept for that.


I've noticed that it's hard to get really great returns on maker projects. Maybe it's my impatience but software provides me something immediate that's cool and useful. Besides, debugging software is worlds easier for me than debugging circuitry. Also, why are microcontrollers stuck in the C++ world? Stuff like CircuitPython is changing that, but it's not that ubiquitous. I'd love an ergonomic and mature Rust ecosystem on Arduinos, or even a gasp JavaScript runtime. Shouldn't chips be fast enough for this? I'd love to run some basic web stuff on an Arduino.

Adafruit has been driving a lot of usable, rewarding electronics. They've been pushing LEDS (mostly WS2812 and APA102) in usable, prepackaged form factors. I really love their LED strips that are already diffused. They're beautiful and immediately usable. They're a little expensive, but I use their products to try out my ideas. But besides them there's not a lot of companies who make physical hardware appealing and available.

Side-note, why aren't there LED strips with a 3.3v logic level??? Almost all microcontrollers have a 3.3v logic level but APA102/WS2812 have a 5v logic level. Very annoying to convert.


For battery powered applications, you want power efficiency, which often means using “portable assembly” (aka C/c++).

A lot of micro-controllers are run from batteries, especially high-volume products, so there’s always going to be a pull towards power efficient languages, even if your app has wall power available.

Second heeen’s comment on using 3V3 directly. I built Halloween costumes that ran directly off an 18650 powering the Arduino and driving the APA102 LED strings. No issues as the batteries ran from 4.2+ to 3.7 or less volts. If it was life safety, I’d care, but for blinkenlights, I’m willing to push outside the datasheet.


I've been enjoying controlling LEDs via python with raspberry pi. There are good libraries available and it's easy to connect the LEDs to anything else you want to do in python.

Specifically check out bibliopixel for controlling LEDs in python. https://maniacallabs.github.io/BiblioPixel/


Hey I'm building a hardware company to address affordable housing 10x faster than existing approaches, read a bunch of your comments and they seem really insightful. Want to get coffee? Shoot me an email if you're interested at Pbadger27<at>gmail.com


C++, hell, I’d say C. The more abstraction, the less reliability. My group would never use anything but C in our embedded projects. I think it’s the “move fast, break stuff” attitude of non-embedded developers that has poisoned everything.


C++ is a trash language; somebody said it's object orientation is like trying to make an octopus by stapling four more legs on a puppy. It allows devs to abstract to the point of absurdity and obfuscates intention. C is much more hygenic, imo.


In my experience you can drive ws2811 with 3.3v, the signal gets conditioned after the first led.


I’ll be honest - if I had nothing but time and a paid off house, I’d be sorely tempted to just tinker for a while. The bay is no place to do that though - it’s too expensive.


I live in flyover country, with a paid off house, and good income. If you don’t have a mortgage, then it will be medical insurance (which costs just a much). If not that, the college savings, which is also equivalent.


So true. The rent forces you to be on the hamster wheel.


It USED to be the place to experiment. Now it’s the place to try to make money before the landlords get you.


This is likely severely limiting the innovation output of that area. You need breathing space to do groundbreaking stuff.


Check out the Arduino Leonardo for your son. It can emulate a USB HID input device (keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc). So your son can create custom controllers for his games. Just map GPIO to keys & analog pins to xyz scrolling & you’re off & running :-)


Will do! He’s already gotten into a second keyboard for macros and attempting to repurpose a semi-broke game pad. This will be right up his alley!


I had a similar experience until I realized how many other hobbies exist among friends and family that I could apply the knowledge to. I worked with my brother and cousin to add “push to” functionality to their homebuilt telescopes using IC linear magnetic encoders, which are so small they can be embedded in pockets in the wood, making for a much more integrated and beautiful scope than is possible with off the shelf products. Now making a more robust version of a similar gizmo to instrument my brother’s millwork shop. Then a wireless temperature/fan regulator for my grill. Guitar (or keyboard) effect pedals make for an endless series of wonderful, creative projects as well. In other words, all stuff we’d be doing anyway, to which the widget hacking adds an extra dimension of improvement and interest. As a kid I imagine I would have loved to build weird game controllers with my dad. Or customized RC airplanes.

I hope companies like osh park, sparkfun and so on never go the way of radio shack.


I think (perhaps unfairly) that these fun hardware projects are often parents like ourselves harking back to a day when exactly that sort of thing was absolutely fascinating... but that's not the world we live in now. Which one is going to be more rewarding: building a smartphone, or making an app? It's the latter.

That's not to say hardware stuff can't thrive, just perhaps not at the scale venture capital would require.


> Which one is going to be more rewarding: building a smartphone, or making an app?

The counterpoint to this would be: if your child built an app and showed it to their friends, would they be impressed? How about if they built a smartphone?


They'd probably be more impressed with the app. They could all download it to their phone and use it together!


But they already have dozens of similar social apps... it would need to be unique, not just another chat app.


Time is also my problem (I have 3 childs). I also think that the amount of effort needed to produce something with enough polish to be useful (software or hardware) is very high.

IMHO, the quick pace at which everything change is a major cause of this complexity. Even for professional products, for example it is already difficult to find hardware supported by redhat 6. As opposite, see the effect of stability of arduino or ne555.


Your job made you take time out of your regular workday? How many hours are you working, weekly?


The world needs more good software than another person making toy electronics IMO.

I see them as a hobby for electronics people, non-programmer computer types, or just for fun for anyone. But given a choice between some cute electronic that won't leave my house and building a web or github based side project that thousands of people could potentially use, I'd go with the latter every time.

I say that after giving up on my own gaming electronics thing I was building until I realized my time could be better spent and I could buy a finished one from China for half the price.


>> The world needs more good software than another person making toy electronics.

Rather sad to read that electronics is thought of as a toy. It is the "body" which software runs on. I agree cute electronics is probably not that useful but the are many others.


Perhaps it's because you need to invest so much more time to make something useful in hardware. In software it's still possible to make small useful projects.


Hardware is, well, hard. But the kits available can make it much easier and more approachable. You just need to learn the ecosystem -- like learning a computer language and development environment.


In the embedded world, electronics is a useful skill. Also RF design or low power design are very valuable skills.


You kind of seem to miss the major point of stuff being a hobby or interest in the first place. For other people the enjoyment comes from the process of making and understanding, not necessarily having a shiny end product.

For hobby projects (both software and hardware) I generally don't care if they leave my house or if one or thousands see them, that's something I do for me, not to fulfill some hypothetical need of the world.


> The world needs more good software than another person making toy electronics [..]

I'd be just as happy to see my kids getting interested in electronics as coding.




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