eevBLAB #10 - Why Learn Basic Electronics?

hi welcome to another Evie Blair but this one comes from an amp our listener on the reddit forum and we actually answered this question on today's empower that we recorded this morning so jumping over to the amp hour if you want to listen to that and it'll actually be released tomorrow or something like that but I thought it'd make for an interesting Evie blab discussion here and it comes from a user called Vikash if I'm pronouncing that correctly and he's got a very interesting question um hello I'm genuinely confused what is the point of learning basic electronics today because you can get like really cheap Arduino is Right raspberry pi's processing platforms you can get electric in Wi-Fi modules Bluetooth modules for three you can get Wi-Fi modules for three dollars these days yes they're new you know the Arduino is a raspberry PI's aren't that cheap but there's a like a new chip kickstart of it like a nine dollar Linux computer basically hardware is pretty much you know almost free these days and you get plug-in shields and cards and all sorts of things to do create almost any project you can imagine Oh so it seems so easy it's a good question why if you can do all this stuff and with the ecosystems and the communities out there around all these things you've got source code libraries everything else to to do it all for you why bother actually learning hobby electronics what's the point and well the difference is do you want to be just a user of hardware or do you actually want to create something basically my definition of an electronics hobbyist is somebody who can actually do electronics plug-in you know a Wi-Fi module into an Arduino and then writing some code that's not electronics I'm sorry it just isn't but that being said well it comes down to the practicality of it well if I can do everything I want with all these boards and everything off the shelf and just write some code well why do I need to learn well there's some very good reasons for it the first one is that you what happens when something goes wrong what happens when it stops working sure you can go on the forums some forum and ask my Raspberry Pi doesn't work when I do this and maybe someone will come back with an answer but a real electronics hobbyist should be able to troubleshoot something like this so learning the basics in particular he mentioned why bother mucking around with LEDs and triple five timers on a breadboard for example well just flashing an LED what if you want to flush a hundred LEDs huh what about your power supply capacity just being able to calculate things what if there's not enough decoupling on your power rail how are you gonna troubleshoot that you just don't know right sure you can maybe get some off-the-shelf hardware to to do it and cross your fingers and hope it works but when it doesn't work that's when you need hobbyist electronics skills to be able to troubleshoot you have to understand you know you're just your basic stuff your Ohm's law your Kirchhoff's current law is your basic building block circuits your basic concepts like power supply decoupling and all that you know all that sort of stuff is becomes invaluable when you actually want to try and do something serious in electronics rather than just use electronics you just want to but when you want to actually create something and trust me it's not hard at all to come up with an idea that simply is not really that possible or really that elegant using just all this off-the-shelf how where stuff sure it's good for concepts and things like that getting things up and running really quickly it just got an idea you wanna you know you you know tweet when you're running out of toilet paper or something sure okay that sort of stuff possible but hey what happens when you want some sort of specialized interface some sort of specialized sense is something that hasn't been done before something where you might find that off-the-shelf code or whatever it doesn't work and you have to start doing stuff even writing your own code or more importantly designing your own electronics just changing a few little requirements can easily put you in the realm of well I've got to do some electronics I've got to know how basic interfaces and at work maybe how basic protocols work you know basic power supplies and can I supply enough power what a low dropout voltage regulator is why does my product fail when it my little gadget fail when it drops below a certain voltage wise ago erratic all that sort of stuff there's just countless things and Vikash specifically mentions that well assume that I'm not building hobbyist boards for explicit sale to consumers well okay that might be the case but what about if your your ideas really good to go wow I think I'll make ten of these maybe a hundred you know maybe you go on a forum and say oh yeah I'll make a couple of these and then a hundred people want it what do you do then how do you build it and that's the thing with electronics it's always comes down to electronics engineers we talked about this on the amp hour no matter how easy and modular and everything else electronics gets electronics design engineers still have to make the final product because final products generally have to be specifically tailored in some way you've got to do all your regular electronics engineering stuff you've got to lay out a proper PCB you've got to do your building materials you've got to do your research you're going to read data sheets you got to understand what the specifications are you've got to do design for testing design for manufacture all this sort of stuff and that can be just for a simple product even if you're making like ten of them it can be a real big deal so there is every reason to learn all these basic electronics taking a stripper five timer flashing your LED on the breadboard because you learn stuff and I've always said the best way to learn stuff is when you fail because if you just take your Raspberry Pi or your Arduino and you hook it up to your little Wi-Fi module here and you write some code and it all works and the biggest thing that might happen is your code doesn't work so you change the code what have you learned you have a learn electronics you're not an electronics hobbyist you're just basically a programmer using some off-the-shelf gadgets I don't even other if there is a word for that sort of you know person who does those sort of things it could be maker I don't know well it's not really making cuz you haven't made anything as such in terms of electronics anyway so what what good is that the whole point have been an electronics hobbyist is actually learning electronics this is application stuff this is not electronics and it won't get you very far away to get up a couple of simple you know gadgets working or something like that but beyond that you're completely screwed that's why it's vital to learn all your basic electronics and hey it's fun people do electronics for fun that they like playing around with breadboards and building stuff up if you just enjoy using your Arduino and hook it up with shield and making something well hey great more power to you right that's fine but it's not electronics and electronics on its own can be an end unto itself it can just be fun or you can actually use your electronics design skills that you can gain by playing around with breadboards and when things fail that is the way to do it as I said before the real learning with electronics comes from actually failing and then you have to troubleshoot stuff understand how things work go back to your building blocks or your fundamentals okay what's wrong here let's figure it out this traceless circuit out what am I doing wrong I didn't put enough decoupling on there all my regulator is drop it out I've got to use my test gear to measure all this stuff and that's electronics and that's why it's still very important in fact vital if your electronics hobbyist you've got to learn this sort of stuff you gotta learn your building blocks and your basics everything stems from that even making the simplest change to your thing you're just you're a little widget that you've thrown together with a couple of off-the-shelf modules the slightest change to that is going to require proper electronics hobbyists kills so yes well in today's world you can do an incredible amount of fantastic stuff without knowing any basic I'm le tranqs building blocks or any basic electronics knowledge at all you can't go any further than that and this is nothing new you can do this you know 20 years ago there were sort of like off-the-shelf solutions to put things together it's like for example you can design a whole automated tests s amount of all National Instruments are stuff for example in use LabVIEW with all its things and plugging all your National Instruments cards and hook things up and and just have it all work without knowing much of anything about electronics but when you want to do the slightest bit difference you want a different sort of interface or you might need a custom amplifier on the front end to do something you would you've got to go back to your fundamental electronics that's what it's all about so Nova cache it is not wasting your time to learn electronics fundamentals it is absolutely vital and it can open so many doors that you don't know need opening yet and you'll only come across those when you come across them and if you don't have the electronic skills to back it up you kind of have to eventually learn so yes get your breadboard get your triple v timer get your lead stick it on there I hope it doesn't work and you have to troubleshoot it because then you'll learn something so there you go I hope you like this blab if you've got a different opinion if you agree or disagree comments down below go for it catch you next time

Channel: EEVblog

Views: 201,783

Keywords: arduino, electronics, learning, why, question, off-the-shelf, hobbyist

Id: zyuRcsM0gjI

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/blueblast88]

He is spot on. I have been doing Dave's definition of electronics as a hobby for 9 years now. I started with LEDs 555s and ohms law. I have taught a friend who wanted to jump straight to raspberry pi and arduino. And i told him that you can but it will cause you more trouble and you will rely on forums way too much. You will be making something without understanding how it works. I taught him what I consider the right way and he is thanking me every day and asking the right questions. The ones you don't ask when you get an arduino in the mail and don't know how to solder.

I know so many people who just look up a wiring diagram (lets be honest they aren't schematics they are pictures of boards with colorful lines) and program it to dance. That's great. But don't tell people you know electronics. You know how to build a lego set. Not manufacture and design the legos.

[u/poly15]

At the end of the video when Dave mentions "I hope you build something and it doesn't work", reminds me of when I was in school, and the teachers made us throw bad electronics back into the bins so that other students might use them and have to troubleshoot their circuit themselves.

[u/1wiseguy]

Dave pretty much says it.

It's awesome what you can create these days with off the shelf stuff like Arduinos. But a problem with that is when people believe that everything can be created that way. Somebody still has to design stuff, even stuff like Arduino boards.

[u/fredlllll]

he should make a video "how not to be an obnoxious cunt when debunking stuff". i cringe so hard when he is trying to debunk something. i know where he is coming from, but the way he presents it just makes it hard to watch, and from my perspective less believable and professional

[u/PadOfStone]

To quote one of my lab engineers during my bachelor in electronics "things should blow up, you should fail and learn from it"

[u/elSporkoGrande]

He raised some interesting points and I agree to a degree, but does he always come across this smug? just hook up an Arduino just write some code. Writing good code is not as easy as he dismisses here.

[u/tuxlovesyou]

I love that Aussie :)

[u/human_bean_]

I'm not seeing Dave making his own semiconductors from silicon. Just saying.

[u/HamburgerDude]

The amount of people in the broader software and IT industry that do not know a lick of basic electronics is quite scary.

I suspect a lot of the ignorance has to come from the 90s when software and the Internet was going to be the magic bullet alone or at least taught that way. There was really no good electronic kits you could get your hands on and RadioShack was always selling cell phones and the like. Maybe a school book fair had a few limited kits but they wouldn't have taught you much as they were basically overpriced toys. If you were a bit more savvy when you were older you could have built a computer but all you needed to know was how much power your graphics and CPU was going to consume and how to properly cool something with fans and heat sinks...etc.

Something like a modding your own console with a mod chip was a scary job even if they made it easy with no SMD experience needed.

This naivety exists because there was a total lack of interest in teaching electronics to youngsters for a time basically. Maybe the novelty of the Internet brought fourth that attitude? All that has thankfully changed though and that attitude is totally gone.