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.