EEVblog #280 - Talking Electronics

[Spawn]

Don’t forget to visit Colin Mitchell’s webpage: www.talkingelectronics.com
He has really nice old school projects and a lot information for everyone in to electronics. Put it in to your bookmarks, believe me you will need it one day.

Follow this link for a play list with all 5 parts or watch them below one by one.

1. Talking Electronics - History	2. Talking Electronics - America
3. Talking Electronics - FM Bug Kits	4. Talking Electronics - The Internet And Learning
5. Talking Electronics - Old Hardware

How wonderful Dave, I think we are around same age and begin eighties till end eighties the kits where so popular and all my pocket money went in to those, I was visiting our local electronics shop at least twice a week to see if something new was there, the young seller from back than is running the shop now he took it over from the previous owner and whenever I visit him we talk a lot about old days, just like in this video. 

Magazines where for some reason a lot better than now days, I am not sure if it is a fact or my feeling about old days.

I really enjoyed watching this episode and from bottom of my heart I thank you for posting this one.

EDIT: All video's added.

[Bored@Work]

Magazines where for some reason a lot better than now days,

Yes, even Elektor was palatable in those days, while today ... Although Elektor was always ripping off people for the PCBs. They did print some PCB layouts in the magazine, but I don't remember if they ever told people how to turn a layout from the magazine into a PCB. But of course they told you how to order the PCB for lots of $$$.

One thing I fear is that all the piracy on the Internet will finally make publishing books and magazines so unattractive that we will face a shortage of good new books and new magazines in the future. Interestingly Colin was claiming one doesn't need books any more, because "everything" is on the Internet. Well, first, not everything is on the Internet. Second, what is there didn't just magically appear. It is either there because people learned it from some books and then put it there or because of piracy. Third, what is there is often wrong. Forth, especially wrong stuff seems to be copied on the Internet ad infinitum and getting a life of its own. Maybe because the stuff got wrong by oversimplification and now sounds so simple that everyone copies it.

[EEVblog]

Magazines where for some reason a lot better than now days, I am not sure if it is a fact or my feeling about old days.

They felt a lot better because that's one of the few information sources you had before the Internet came along.
We just take it for granted that we can Google something and find it in seconds these days.
Search Digikey and get datasheets and price on a few hundred thousands chips and parts instantly etc.
The worlds has changed since those days.

Dave.

[Rutger]

Yep, I remember the original Elektor in the Nederlands called Elektuur in the late 70's and 80's, but I have build several projects from the magazine that didn't work, so I don't think the quality was that great of the articles.  Also if you had any problem who did you ask for help? I much prefer today's fast and easy access to a lot of technical information. I would not like to go back to the old ways if you paid me.

[HLA-27b]

One thing I fear is that all the piracy on the Internet will finally make publishing books and magazines so unattractive that we will face a shortage of good new books and new magazines in the future. Interestingly Colin was claiming one doesn't need books any more, because "everything" is on the Internet. Well, first, not everything is on the Internet. Second, what is there didn't just magically appear. It is either there because people learned it from some books and then put it there or because of piracy. Third, what is there is often wrong. Forth, especially wrong stuff seems to be copied on the Internet ad infinitum and getting a life of its own. Maybe because the stuff got wrong by oversimplification and now sounds so simple that everyone copies it.

Not sure about this one BAW. The advent of the printed book was seen as a sort of piracy at the time but this is only a matter of changing the medium. The information wants to be out there and will leak one way or another. Not everything is on the internet - yes, but what is not out there tends to be ignored.
So we face a conundrum, not sharing leads to piracy, sharing leads to poverty, not writing leads to ignorance...
As Dogbert says - The real money is on the conference circuit.

[Spawn]

You are right about the media such as internet Dave, most things are one click away and it spoiled us when it comes to comparing magazines. Internet changed our lives in a good way and I think no one can deny that. Most of us hide away their printed media because they got pretty useless.

But I also agree with BoredAtWork about new Elektor and their so called PCB layout in their magazines last 7 years or even more, in” good old days” you could have a real PCB layout which you could copy and make your own but now days it is just too much commercial than it was before they just post a PCB like below and comment with “The high quality ready-made board is available from ElektorPCBservice.com”



And when we were at school if someone had a kit from Velleman or Kemo we all copied the PCB layout, which maybe was not fair to those companies but it was just normal thing to do in those days.

Yes Rutger they had some issues in Elektuur projects and next month they published some fix for it, but I can’t remember anything that didn’t work at all, maybe I just didn’t build one with a big issue. I am not talking about going back to those days, of course not, but what I like to see is when I buy a magazine I want the whole thing not some picture of a PCB and a comment to get it from their PCB shop, that was the whole idea to get such a magazine in first place when they got published those days.

[pickle9000]

If there was an 8x10 pcb with as many projects as you could fit on it, would you buy the magazine for 35 bucks. Would you pay the 35 bucks to get the board sent to you and download the magazine (no paper)?

Remember Electronics Today Circuit File?

I think that if for example you had a beginners issue with pulsers, logic probe, headphone amp, simple variable power supply and so on you would have a winner. Another issue for people interested in micros and so on. You can fit a great deal on a board that size. It would be great value.

Even with what I see on this board you could fill up a pcb that size in no time. If Dave sold an 8x10 board with the eevblog forum greatest free hits, would you buy it, and how much would you pay? No instructions, no support, you'd have to do that yourself.

...mike

[Spawn]

No instructions, no support, you'd have to do that yourself.

Well Mike, I don’t want to rain in your parade but you can forget about that part, indeed internet is great but it has also down side, like making “kids” now days lazy, there will be always someone asking stuff which is already explained even if it is just two topics below their own topics.

For example: Buying a scope and asking here how to operate it without reading anything in the manual. In my opinion someone with that attitude does not earn the privilege to have oscilloscope, but yeah I am old fashion when it comes this kind a things

[EEVblog]

No instructions, no support, you'd have to do that yourself.

Well Mike, I don’t want to rain in your parade but you can forget about that part, indeed internet is great but it has also down side, like making “kids” now days lazy, there will be always someone asking stuff which is already explained even if it is just two topics below their own topics.

At least the "lazy" kids stand a better chance of staying in the game now!
"Lazy" kids pre-internet would have never taken up any form of electronics at all.

Dave.

[bullet308]

The near-universal  availability of information is no substitute for having the intellect to make use of it.  I tutor in a college computer lab for part of my living, and I cannot count the number of times in a day that I have to say, "open a browser and use Google". Are you stuck on using the syntax of some obscure MS Excel formula? PLUG IT INTO GOOGLE! Its not like you are the first person to ever have this problem!  The student: "Oh, really?" 

But I hate the word "lazy". Its a sloppy, stigmatizing way of saying 'unmotivated" that is often-times not deserved.

The really lazy ones are the folks in education that cannot figure out that the entire paradigm has shifted away from how-much-crap-can-you-pack-into-your-skull to how-can-you-best-utilize-that-crap-that-is-OUTSIDE-of-your-skull.  Beyond a certain point, having "facts" crammed into your brain is not very useful as compared to being able to know how to select, find and process information that is stored someplace like the Wikipedia, or the EEVBlog, for that matter.

[T4P]

The best collection of information online is all at EEVBlog ... really.
Actually, i have been recommending my (course) mates and lecturers to come over the EEVBlog forums and the Dave's EEVBlog tube

OH sure i forgot something, lecturers are the ones who won't agree to this and won't agree to that

[Bored@Work]

Not sure about this one BAW. The advent of the printed book was seen as a sort of piracy at the time but this is only a matter of changing the medium. The information wants to be out there and will leak one way or another. Not everything is on the internet - yes, but what is not out there tends to be ignored.
So we face a conundrum, not sharing leads to piracy, sharing leads to poverty, not writing leads to ignorance...
As Dogbert says - The real money is on the conference circuit.

The question is how do you motivate the good, or even brilliant people, to structure, codify and release their knowledge? It takes many years to acquire deep knowledge in some subject, then it takes more years to write a good, comprehensive textbook. It takes talent. If we reach the point that those with the talent and the knowledge no longer want to write books, we have a big problem. Then we have managed to cut off our own air supply, the source that feeds the Internet.

I do not buy into this "information wants to be free" thing. Simple information wants to be free, because there are enough doofus who copy it piecemeal, and add their own pointless spin to it. But complex information needs to be dragged out, it refuses to come out on its own.

Did you notice that a lot of electronics articles on the Internet stop at the point where it starts to get difficult? Did you notice that web pages tend to be short, so neither the author or the readers with a short attention span are overwhelmed?

This piecemeal, simple stuff only, collection of information on the great garbage dump called the Internet is a real problem. It fosters simple how-to style "solutions", often try-and-error style - if you have exactly symptom X, try solution A, B, and C, in that order. That does not foster understanding the subject sufficiently to make your own conclusions. And it does not foster creativity. E.g. I find the Arduino "artist" movement one of the most uncreative movements in electronics. Everything dumbed down, everything served piecemeal, everything just following pre-made recipes, everything just copying and endless iterations of the same few things. No real teaching of understanding. And the target audience doesn't want to understand.

But I hate the word "lazy". Its a sloppy, stigmatizing way of saying 'unmotivated" that is often-times not deserved.

So you subscribe to the school of thought that one is not supposed to tell stupid people they are stupid, or lazy people they are lazy? And that they will all become mass murders if you tell them the truth? And that it is perfectly OK they feel entitled to everything without the need to put anything of their own in? And that it is OK to be lazy, because some eduction clown didn't sufficiently motivate / amuse / entertain to become active and learn?

The really lazy ones are the folks in education that cannot figure out that the entire paradigm has shifted away from how-much-crap-can-you-pack-into-your-skull to how-can-you-best-utilize-that-crap-that-is-OUTSIDE-of-your-skull.

Please explain how "that crap that is OUTSIDE", i.e. stuff on the Internet, is supposed happen to end up on the Internet? How it is supposed to be enhanced, get better and more complete once the "just google some fragments of it" paradigm has driven out those with the talent to structure and explain complex things?

The best you can hope from the "just google it" people is endless iterations of existing material.

[HLA-27b]

The question is how do you motivate the good, or even brilliant people, to structure, codify and release their knowledge? It takes many years to acquire deep knowledge in some subject, then it takes more years to write a good, comprehensive textbook. It takes talent. If we reach the point that those with the talent and the knowledge no longer want to write books, we have a big problem. Then we have managed to cut off our own air supply, the source that feeds the Internet.

There is a current debate among scientists, who are an arguably creative and knowledgeable bunch, that following scientific papers is becoming disproportionately more expensive due to ongoing division of the journals into smaller and smaller subfields. This is a marketing trick on the side of the publishers to increase profits which leads to increased cost to scientific institutions and also to most work to remain buried into some archive. So the scientists themselves are pretty well motivated and do want their work to be shared and disseminated but there is a middleman who is preventing this. There is some work going on I believe towards getting rid of the middlemen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serials_crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_journal

I do not buy into this "information wants to be free" thing. Simple information wants to be free, because there are enough doofus who copy it piecemeal, and add their own pointless spin to it. But complex information needs to be dragged out, it refuses to come out on its own.

Did you notice that a lot of electronics articles on the Internet stop at the point where it starts to get difficult? Did you notice that web pages tend to be short, so neither the author or the readers with a short attention span are overwhelmed?

This piecemeal, simple stuff only, collection of information on the great garbage dump called the Internet is a real problem. It fosters simple how-to style "solutions", often try-and-error style - if you have exactly symptom X, try solution A, B, and C, in that order. That does not foster understanding the subject sufficiently to make your own conclusions. And it does not foster creativity. E.g. I find the Arduino "artist" movement one of the most uncreative movements in electronics. Everything dumbed down, everything served piecemeal, everything just following pre-made recipes, everything just copying and endless iterations of the same few things. No real teaching of understanding. And the target audience doesn't want to understand.

You are talking about blogging aren't you, the most pointless shuffling of manure there ever was. It is not what I mean by "information wants to be free" rather it is that exploiting the public by means hiding information is a common pattern these days both for companies and governments, a sort of extortion. The society tries to liberate as much information as possible, ideally journalists are supposed to do that with governments and hackers are supposed to do the same on electronics.

[david77]

I remember I once wanted to take an electronics book out from our local library and the lady at the till refused to lend it to me because I was too young and the stuff in there was too dangerous for a kid. That must have been in 1992-93 when I was 11 or 12 years old. I went home and complained to my mum who had some very strong words with the library manager. Had no problems with them from then on  .

[tinhead]

The question is how do you motivate the good, or even brilliant people, to structure, codify and release their knowledge? It takes many years to acquire deep knowledge in some subject, then it takes more years to write a good, comprehensive textbook. It takes talent. If we reach the point that those with the talent and the knowledge no longer want to write books, we have a big problem. Then we have managed to cut off our own air supply, the source that feeds the Internet.

I do not buy into this "information wants to be free" thing. Simple information wants to be free, because there are enough doofus who copy it piecemeal, and add their own pointless spin to it. But complex information needs to be dragged out, it refuses to come out on its own.

Did you notice that a lot of electronics articles on the Internet stop at the point where it starts to get difficult? Did you notice that web pages tend to be short, so neither the author or the readers with a short attention span are overwhelmed?

This piecemeal, simple stuff only, collection of information on the great garbage dump called the Internet is a real problem. It fosters simple how-to style "solutions", often try-and-error style - if you have exactly symptom X, try solution A, B, and C, in that order. That does not foster understanding the subject sufficiently to make your own conclusions. And it does not foster creativity. E.g. I find the Arduino "artist" movement one of the most uncreative movements in electronics. Everything dumbed down, everything served piecemeal, everything just following pre-made recipes, everything just copying and endless iterations of the same few things. No real teaching of understanding. And the target audience doesn't want to understand.

full ack on that.

[Bored@Work]

There is a current debate among scientists, who are an arguably creative and knowledgeable bunch, that following scientific papers is becoming disproportionately more expensive due to ongoing division of the journals into smaller and smaller subfields.

Yes, the scientific community is working on solving their unique problem.s Scientists don't get money for publishing scientific papers, but have to pay for getting scientific magazines with the papers of other scientists.  In the past publishers provided a valuable service by helping to share ideas between scientists in a controlled way. But these days publishers became to greedy for the service they provide. They essentially sell the scientist community back their own ideas they got for free from then. And that is indeed a situation which can be fixed with the Internet.

But that situation is unique to the scientist community. Scientists are not used to get paid by publishers and don't expect to get paid by the Internet.

What I am talking about is different. I am talking about engineering books.  Most scientific publications are hard to read and hard to understand by the average engineer. It takes someone to bridge that gap. The special kind of engineer or scientist with the talent, skills and knowledge to reduce abstract scientific research to practical use and record that in a book or other media, thoroughly treating the subject. So other engineers can understand and apply it, teachers can teach it to students, etc. And these authors need to be motivated to put the hard work and time into writing.

You are talking about blogging aren't you,

No, because that would include this EEVblog video blog thing, you might have heard of it For me a blog is just information which is presented by using a simplified content management system, called blog software. It says nothing about the contents and the value of the information.

What I mean is, for example, that the world doesn't need yet another presentation how the ideal op amp works. There are thousands of these presentations out there. I don't care if such a page has been hand-crafted or written using blog software.

It is not what I mean by "information wants to be free" rather it is that exploiting the public by means hiding information is a common pattern these days both for companies and governments, a sort of extortion.

One argument of the "information wants to be free" proponents is that hiding information won't work in the long term because it gets cheaper and cheaper to distribute information, and government and companies are therefore fighting a lost battle.

However, what they miss is that information you can't comprehend because it is too complex, even if free, is not information, for you but just data. If we lose those who can translate information so we can understand it, we just end up in a see of data.

The society tries to liberate as much information as possible,

The society tries to liberate simple information or simple to transform and interpret information. It shies away from the complex information it can't make sense of.

[Spawn]

At least the "lazy" kids stand a better chance of staying in the game now!
"Lazy" kids pre-internet would have never taken up any form of electronics at all.

Dave, I am talking about people who don’t even do a single research before they ask things on forums, they want everything handed over in a golden plate. Indeed some of them improve themselves but still 10% (just a number in my head) won’t make it easily, because of their laziness  and yes like you said they have better media than we ever seen in eighties and have also better change to improve them self.

You are right about the lazy kids pre internet, most of my collage friends didn’t make it, out of a class with 12 youngsters only me and another guy is still in electrics the other 10 are doing totally different things. Problem in the Netherlands is that youngsters don’t do electronics in eighties where the classes not full and now days classes are still not full, if you compare this to metal workers and car technique the numbers are really low, like now with my son he is also doing electronics and his class is so tiny he has to share class with other kids doing totally different education, whilst the metal en structure classes are full which they have to split in two.

But I hate the word "lazy". It’s a sloppy, stigmatizing way of saying 'unmotivated" that is often-times not deserved.

Why? And no it was not my intention to say they are “unmotivated” why would I? I am talking about laziness the word we know as it is. Just like me asking my wife to grab my beer when I could get myself while we sit in same room. A unmotivated person won’t come here and ask things to learn something because they are already unmotivated why would they come here in first place, here again I am comparing with my beer, if I was unmotivated I wouldn’t want to drink that beer, I want it but I am just too lazy grab myself (this matter of speaking of course, and I am not a alcoholic btw )
So I don’t understand when word “lazy” became “unmotivated” in my opinion totally two different things.

[bullet308]

But I hate the word "lazy". Its a sloppy, stigmatizing way of saying 'unmotivated" that is often-times not deserved.

So you subscribe to the school of thought that one is not supposed to tell stupid people they are stupid, or lazy people they are lazy? And that they will all become mass murders if you tell them the truth? And that it is perfectly OK they feel entitled to everything without the need to put anything of their own in? And that it is OK to be lazy, because some eduction clown didn't sufficiently motivate / amuse / entertain to become active and learn?

The really lazy ones are the folks in education that cannot figure out that the entire paradigm has shifted away from how-much-crap-can-you-pack-into-your-skull to how-can-you-best-utilize-that-crap-that-is-OUTSIDE-of-your-skull.

Please explain how "that crap that is OUTSIDE", i.e. stuff on the Internet, is supposed happen to end up on the Internet? How it is supposed to be enhanced, get better and more complete once the "just google some fragments of it" paradigm has driven out those with the talent to structure and explain complex things?

The best you can hope from the "just google it" people is endless iterations of existing material.
[/quote]

Not much point in telling people they are "stupid". That simply sets them up to sell themselves short, which is entirely too common a problem. Same thing with "lazy".  Instead of calling people names, why not simply offer them up the material as best you can and then assess them on how well they learned it? I understand what you are saying, though The problem is not that we are not telling enough people they are stupid, but rather we are dumbing down the assessment of what they have learned for reasons that have little to do with what needs to be learned in order to be proficient.  Just teach the material, set the standard and  hold them to it. They will either get it or not. They will then either be able to perform or not. 

As for the "just Google it" bit, what you are talking about is what is referred to in the education business as "higher-order Blooms", which stems from Bloom's Taxonomy, a way of grading just how complex an intellectual activity is. The higher order ones include things like synthesis and creativity, lower order ones things like remembering and understanding.

The trick is to match the level of "Blooms" with the material to be learned. Another thing about them is that they tend to build upon one another. In electronics, for instance, things you might want to remember include stuff like Ohm's Law and things you might want to understand include what Ohm's Law is supposed to capture, the relationship between resistance, voltage and current. On the high-end, you might use things like Ohm's Law to design and build a new type of audio amplifier or some such.

The thing is, in this new world of ours, you may not have to memorize so much stuff like Ohms Law, as it is generally going to be available on the Internet at any time, but you will still have to understand that it relates to resistance, voltage and current and how that applies to designing and building more and more complex circuits. You may not need to memorize how to, for instance, measure inductance in a component using a pair of vacuum tube voltage meters in the absence of an LCR meter, but it sure as hell is useful to be able to look it up when needed. I don't have a LCR meter but I do have a pair of old VTVMs, and knowing how to use Google got me an old military TM that told me how to do it "the old fashioned way". But then, it certainly was helpful to look up the Wikipedia definition of "inductor" and the formulas associated with induction...

So, its all about applying the right set of tools to the job, and knowing when to apply them. "Just Google it" is a great answer for looking up Ohm's Law, but it will only buy you so much when designing the great multi-million dollar widget. One builds on the other.

Sorry for rambling on.

[Psi]

Hehe, There's a bit in part 2 around 10minutes where he has just started to go on a rant about things in America and then there's an editing cut.

Coincidence?

Makes me wonder what was cut.

[EEVblog]

Dave, I am talking about people who don’t even do a single research before they ask things on forums, they want everything handed over in a golden plate. Indeed some of them improve themselves but still 10% (just a number in my head) won’t make it easily, because of their laziness  and yes like you said they have better media than we ever seen in eighties and have also better change to improve them self.

I see those as separate issues.
What I was talking about was that the internet and new hacking/making scene has meant a LOT more kids are getting into electronics in some form or another, and that's a good thing. Yet there seems to be this big argument that the power of the Internet has also made then lazier.
Whether or not the internet has made them lazy is another issues entirely, but I have experienced the same sheer laziness pre-internet too. Not only in normal schools, but technical schools and universities too, and people who responded to my projects by (snail) mail, on old BBS forums etc. It's nothing new to me at all.

Dave.

[vxp036000]

Honestly, while getting people into electronics is a great for the hobby, the market for EEs is saturated.  The pay has dropped over the years, jobs are going oversees, and there is virtually no job security.  I tell people to get a technical degree so they can get a decent paying job, but get out of the rat race ASAP.  The few jobs left in my country are in academia or business development.  There is no room left for "real" EE jobs around here.

[EEVblog]

Not much point in telling people they are "stupid". That simply sets them up to sell themselves short, which is entirely too common a problem. Same thing with "lazy".  Instead of calling people names, why not simply offer them up the material as best you can and then assess them on how well they learned it?

Sometimes I think people have to earn such a detailed response. It takes someone a lot of time and effort to serve up good information in a usable way, and if you like doing that sort of stuff for anyone regardless of how they approach you, then of course that's terrific. But what happens when it's completely wasted on them? Would have been better to just point them to some existing material first?
This is why I now have a policy of not replying to personal technical email enquiries, I direct them to the forum, so that not only can other people help them as well, but then the information becomes publicly available for others to find as well, and contributes to that knowledge pool of "just google it" pointers.
And sometimes teaching people how to find information instead of just giving it and explaining it to them can be a much better approach. So the "just googe this" response can actually teach them a lot.

Dave.

[bullet308]

I don't blame you for not offering up personal responses for technical questions. It would be insane for you to manage, and inefficient and ultimately less effective in getting them the right answer for their needs than submitting it to a forum, just as you say. Hell, you can still jump in and offer up an answer if you want to.  To not leverage this thing called the Internet, which is all about the collection and redistribution of information, would be madness. And, as you say, directing such things to the forum does nothing but enhance the nutritional quality of the sea of information we all swim in together.

I suppose what we have to differentiate here is between teaching people stuff and teaching people how to think, two very different tasks, the latter of which is largely (but not entirely) beyond the purview of a specialized forum like this.  They say one definition of an intellectual is his/her ability to hold two contrary ideas in mind at the same time without the cognitive dissonance disabling them. I suppose one way to teach how to think is exercises that force them to work with those contrasting ideas in just that way. Its easy to do when teaching history, since history is full of conflicting interpretations and clashes of ideas. In electronics and engineering...not sure how that works.

Facts are the building blocks of knowledge. Knowing where the blocks are does you a limited amount of good if you don't know how to stack and weave them correctly, but then, knowing how to stack and weave blocks that are not available is even less useful. "Just Google it" gets you the building blocks and teaching people how to get those blocks is extremely valuable. The rest is going to be largely up to them, and how much they care to learn.

The hacker/maker thing is similar except it it offers the advantage of providing immediate sensory feedback, which is invaluable for many learners. Just because most of them produce derivative and not-very-creative work does not make it a useless exercise by any means. Just making a bigger slice of the public more technology, science, engineering and just plain logic-aware is an invaluable thing, by my estimation.

Further, those that go on to get their proper bona fides as engineers and learn of the fancy-schmancy math will find that it gives them a real leg up over the kids that were good in math and figured engineers make good money, so why not,  but have never melted a drop of solder in their lives. Win-win-win. Putting up with another boring-ass assortment of blinky LED projects along the way is a small price to pay, I figure...

[Spawn]

Videos and information added to first post. 

[firewalker]

Dave, how does it fell to meet an actual "hero" from your childhood? Anxious? Afraid that he could be different than what you thought?

I believe that that you left the interview with a big smile stuck on your face. 

Alexander.