IEEE Spectrum January, 2014 - 30

The Rise, Fall, and Rise
oF elecTRonics KiTs
Engineering will never outgrow hobbyists
Many older engineers first becaMe interested
in electronics through hobbies in their youth-assembling kits,
participating in amateur radio, or engaging in other experiments.
But I have wondered whether or not students entering engineering
today had the benefit of similar experience. * The 1970s and 1980s were
great times for electronics hobbyists. Heathkits were hot items, often newer
and of better quality than commercial equivalents, featuring the latest hi‑fi
stereo equipment, for example. I remember poring over the catalog and
rationalizing why I had to buy the newest widget. There were two memorable
moments associated with each Heathkit-opening the packaged kit, and finally
turning on the finished product. In between was kind of messy, but I thought
that the world would always be like that: soldering individual components
and connecting wires onto circuit boards. * It wasn't to be. Electronics
was in a state of rapid transition. Integrated circuits were displacing many
individual components, and surface‑mount assembly was moving beyond
hobbyist capability. Moreover, automated assembly meant commercial
products could be manufactured for less than packaging an equivalent kit.
By the early 1990s, Heathkit was out of business. * But integrated circuits
begat microprocessors, and a new era of hobby electronics began. The Altair
computer captured the fascination of many, who now could design and build
their own computers. Soon, though, commercial home computers hit the
market and lessened the incentives for building your own from scratch. For
some years thereafter hobbyists contented themselves mostly with buying
board‑level components to customize their machines. Nonetheless, it was
a heady time, and computer fairs blossomed.
30

|

Jan 2014

|

north american

|

SPectrUm.ieee.orG

oPinion

This era faded within about a decade.
Commercial PCs came down in price and
were bundled with hardware and software at
a price that couldn't be beat. Before long we
became users, rather than makers. Where,
now, was the hobby market to go?
But whenever it seems that there's nothing
left for the hobbyist, a new motif arises. In
2006 Eben Upton, at the University of Cam‑
bridge, lamented that in recent years new stu‑
dents had very little hands‑on experience with
electronics. So he started the project that led
to the Raspberry Pi computer. This little board
is about the size of a smartphone (on which
technology it is based). It is bare, inexpensive,
and, with all its input/output connections ex‑
posed, just begs for experimentation. You can
download free operating systems and install
them on a standard SD memory card. If you
mess something up, just put a new card in.
It is invigorating to see the Raspberry Pi
boot up with a Linux command‑line inter‑
face and a Python programming environ‑
ment. You can turn it into a Windows‑like
graphical browser or make it a media server,
but that feels like cheating. Instead of du‑
plicating what we already have, this beau‑
tiful little board seems destined for more
uniquely personal endeavors.
The Raspberry Pi has become a best
seller, as has a similar experimental board,
the Arduino microcontroller. A great num‑
ber of sensors, actuators, cameras, and
the like have quickly become available for
both. Innovative applications abound in
such domains as home automation and ro‑
botics, and the boards have already formed
the basis of several of IEEE Spectrum's Hands
On articles. Moreover, we could add to the
amateur mix the emergence of 3-D printers,
which are still rather a hobby item, though
on the cusp of commercialization.
So it seems that now there is much greater
capacity for creativity in hobby electronics
then there ever was when we were just fol‑
lowing the step‑by‑step soldering involved
in building a Heathkit. But I don't want to
demean Heathkit, because maybe it will
come back after all: In the source code of the
company's now minimally revived website is
a hidden survey about what kits customers
might like. I'm just not betting on it. n

Terry Perdue

reflectionS_BY roBert W. lUcKY
http://SPectrUm.ieee.orG
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum January, 2014
