Say a techie hobby

[RoGeorge]

Apart from electronics, what other science or tech hobbies would be fun to do at home?

[JPortici]

woodworking, mechanics are the two i like (but practice way too little)

[Kim Christensen]

Well, there's the whole RC world... (Remote controlled models)
Some people like 3D printing their own CAD models/things.
You can make all kind of gadgets out of metal or wood the traditional way.
Depends on how much room you have to work with.

[thephil]

• Computer programming
• Data analysis
• Woodworking
• Welding
• Smartassing

And blogging about all of the above.

[magic]

Computers here, as above, though that's just more electronics

Servicing 20th century technology like bicycles or microscopes can be interesting, and it's definitely not electronics, for once. Or DIY optics.

[Miti]

I’ve tried:

Electronics
RC
Woodworking
Watch repair
3D printing, mostly fiddling with the printers than printing

They all gave me great satisfaction for awhile and then got bored. I give everything up for awhile and then recycle.

[RoGeorge]

Depends on how much room you have

About one room of the apartment for the hobbies only.  Though, that's in a city, and with neighbors in the same building.  So no heavy machinery, no high noise, no fume-hoods, etc.

[themadhippy]

chemistry and microbiology,although some call it home brewing

[Alex Eisenhut]

Well, there's the whole RC world... (Remote controlled models)

Small crawlers are fun.

[TimFox]

Photography: either film-based or digital.

[coppice]

Apart from electronics, what other science or tech hobbies would be fun to do at home?

Are you driven my more crafty things, or more intellectually things?

[RoGeorge]

As long as it's interesting or rewarding, anything goes.

My preference would be for something that can be experimented with, or applied in practice to solve a problem.  For example, won't mind struggling with some abstract math as long as that will help with implementing some cool DSP effects.  OTOH, studying chess, or string theory, or collecting coins won't be my kind of fun.

Not interested in blogging, or in showing what I'm working, either.
Whenever I do that, it usually takes longer than the activity itself.

I guess what I'm seeking the most is the beginner's hype of discovering something new.

[tszaboo]

Model trains. You can pick up an old set for next to nothing to refurbish it, spend a lot of time on the electrification of everything, or buy the new shiny trains that have bells and whistles (literally).

[Andy Chee]

Interested in creating music?

Forget the classical instruments.  I'm thinking of loopers and trackers.

[Postal2]

... Forget the classical instruments.  I'm thinking of loopers and trackers. ...

My project made 25 years ago on FastTracker 2.

The archive contains an XM file. You can quickly play it without visual effects using this thing:
https://www.berotracker.de/downloads/BeRoTinyPlayer/BeRoTinyPlayer.exe

[brucehoult]

Apart from electronics, what other science or tech hobbies would be fun to do at home?

Make content for OF. Very technical. Cameras, editing, lighting....

No, I won't subscribe.

[Kim Christensen]

One thing had fun doing was learning how to make a very simple game in Unity (2D/3D game engine). I basically followed some YouTube tutorials about Unity and then some others about programming in C#. Kept me occupied during the pandemic, but I never took it that far.

[RoGeorge]

Interested in creating music?

Forget the classical instruments.  I'm thinking of loopers and trackers.

Nice! 


My making music skills are, well..., not particularly high:

 

That video was made during my very first steps into the FPGA world.  The panel with that numerical pad is from an office printer, which I've reversed engineer to hijack its FPGA (a Xilinx Spartan 2E with 50k gates).  Wanted to learn FPGA and didn't have any devboard (they were expensive).  That was a very fun project.  Posted at the time about it on a Romanian forum.

Later, Hackaday found out and linked to that Ro thread on their blog https://hackaday.com/2017/02/27/printer-scrap-becomes-fpga-devboard/ .  Made a promise to translate that Romanian thread one day, but never did it so far.  Meanwhile, the pics hosting website went belly up, the Ro forum changed into something else, and eventually it all became yet another broken link.

Last week stumbled on some pics from a 2012 backup, including those with the FPGA board, and started to post a Google translated version here, on EEVblog.  So here's a shameless plug of that, because "musical instrument"  :

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/fpga/the-blair-witch-story-of-my-first-fpga-devboard-made-from-a-printer-front-panel/
(work in progress, a few more translated posts to come)

[Picuino]

Web page design.

[hans]

Build your own Airbus/Boeing cockpit replica and self-teach to fly on VATSIM in a A320 or 737.

[RoGeorge]

Anybody into making small robots?

[SiliconWizard]

Build your own Airbus/Boeing cockpit replica and self-teach to fly on VATSIM in a A320 or 737.

Or build your own model replica of the 737 MAX with a similar MCAS.

[Infraviolet]

"Anybody into making small robots?"
Yes, but in practice i spend my time designing susbsystems for small robots, without ever quite coming up with enough of an idea for a specific task for a specific robot to do, to ever design a fully assembled system. I did build complete small robots back when I took my PhD though.

[DavidAlfa]

Mechanics too. Recently fitted a big turbo to my italian 5-cylinder JTDm engine, aiming for 280-300hp and 550-600Nm.
Boosting to 2.2bar, but definitely needs a bigger intercooler!

[Postal2]

Anybody into making small robots?

I have one like this.
https://hobbyking.com/en_us/mini-biped-interactive-robot-kit.html