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June 13th, 2008 admin

What Is an Electronics Hobbyist?

Electronics hobbyists, just like all other hobbyists, could be anybody you pass on the streets. Some are aspiring beginners who don’t have any traditional training. Others are professional electrical engineers with years of experience and training. It doesn’t matter where they come from, they all share a passion for electronic devices.

Quite a few hobbyists got started with the old Heathkits, or by taking apart electronics to see their insides. They loved building robots, radios, remote controlled cars and planes, and other do it yourself projects. Small-scale printed circuit board manufacturing and other technology advances have made imagination practically the only roadblock to electronics hobbying and invention.

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History of Electronics as Hobby
For the elder electronics enthusiast, the name Heath really strikes a chord. Starting in the 30′s and continuing until the 80′s, Heath produced various electronics kits called Heathkits. These kits covered anything from model planes to ham radios. Three generations of hobbyists knew them as a source of fun and inspiration for their hobby.

The 1960′s were the pinnacle of electronics hobbyists where their numbers grew into the hundreds of thousands. The people who thought of electronics as a hobby in the 60′s later became the people who would invent and design many of our modern day electronic devices.

The Present and Future of Electronics Hobbyists
Now that electronics are so tiny, complex, and inexpensive there just aren’t that many people who think of tinkering with electronics as a hobby. Nowadays, it is simply less expensive to go purchase new electronics than try to take them apart and repair them.

We probably will not see electronics hobbyists go away all together. They will just change as the technology changes. In the days when hardware was hard to come by, inventors focused on constructing new devices. Now that hardware is plentiful, people have been concentrated on the programming and software that drives it. This makes the modern computer hacker the heir to electronics hobbyists of yesterday.

Those who used to love designing, building and testing their homemade electronics have also been able to adapt with today’s technological advancements. They aren’t using Heathkits anymore. They are utilizing the various current technologies to design and build their own devices. Things like CAD programs have enabled inventors to design custom printed circuit boards that will operate just about any electronic device they can think of. It is just as common for a hobbyist to place a PCB order as it is for those big electronic manufacturing giants.

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Electronics hobbyists are keeping the spirit of invention alive and well even if the hobby is not as recognizable as it once was.