16 Feb
2010
16 Feb
'10
2:36 a.m.
Joachim Thiemann wrote:
On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 20:30, Chuck Guzis <cclist
at sydex.com> wrote:
Absolutely! And I think introducing more people and expanding the
community is a great thing for everyone. Make this stuff more
accessible is a great goal. Makes things cheaper, more available,
better supported. More documentation, more web sites, more blogs. It's
all good.
I think there is also a certain group of people (present company
excluded, of course) that don't want to allow the "newbies" in their
precious "club." They feel that by removing the barriers to entry
(maybe learning to solder, learning assembly language, learning basic
electronics) that their self-worth is somehow diluted because the end
goal is more easily attainable now w/o requiring these skills.
Talk to the old grouchy hams about adding no-code tech ham radio
licenses on your local repeater, if you want your ear beat for 1/2 hour.
I enjoy sort of the sparkfun-methodology ---- off the shelf breakout
boards, sensor modules, easily accessible headers for connecting things,
and so on. It allows you to leverage very advanced technologies by
providing an easy interface. Maybe that technology is GPS, or cellular,
or whatever.
For me, while learning this stuff is the real goal, it's nice to pick
and choose the challenges, and avoid the roadblocks to progress whenever
necessary.
Keith
With reference to Arudinos, someone wrote:
...
I never could see the point to those. It's much easier just build up
your device using the bare chip. If one of the big AVRs, such as one
of the XMegas, it might make some sense in helping to deal with
handling an SMT package, sort of the way the ARM stamps do.
It's the development environment: dead simple, "just works", etc. One
has to remember these are designed to be used by people with NO
electronics experience. And I think that's a good thing.