Engineers are naturally cautious - electronics does not lend itself to hacking.
Having said that, I have a friend who scares the hell out of me doing really stupid things with electronics - massively overdriving transistors, virtually no design other than vague ideas from forums and he does get away with it a remarkable amount of the time. I have tried to make him at least apply V=IR and P=IV but he's too impatient.
Needless to say he destroys a lot of components.
Electronics 'Hacking' seems to be a new thing - to me at least - anyone else know people like that?
Electronics 'Hacking' seems to be a new thing - to me at least - anyone else know people like that?
You can get away with some stuff by "rule of thumb"; ie, using 220 or 330 ohm current limiting resistors for LEDs, using 470 ohm to 1K base limit resistors on transistors, if things get too hot, add a heatsink, change the resistors to higher values, use a larger transistor.
Good enough to get a working circuit on a breadboard, but not for something permanent. For that, one should really think about what they are wanting, look at the datasheets, and do a real design.
Basically what your friend is doing is similar to what you see in the software development community; there are some that just "hack it together", and it typically works; maybe even beautifully - but woe to the next programmer who has to add something or maintain it in some manner. Generally there is a huge lack of comments or any other documentation for the code; sometimes the code can be so arcane it can feel like how the person who wrote it "thinks".
Then there are those who ask questions, plan the process out, write pseudocode, document the process flow (perhaps with flowcharts), designs the GUI and functionality, etc - long before the actual coding starts; then when they code it, they take notes on the code, add comments that make sense and describe what is going on (as opposed to comments that say something like "this sets the variable xyz to i+1" - as if you couldn't see that) - and generally, what comes out of the process is close or identical to what was designed. It may still have bugs, but the next guy to come around to coding on it won't have as big of a problem deciphering it.
Now - if your friend starts to play around with high-voltage circuitry, or messing around with TVs or CRTs - watch out. If you don't know what you are doing there, you can easily send yourself to the hospital, or to the morgue.
BTW - something you might look up, analogous to "electronic hacking" as you put it - is something called "circuit bending"; typically, it applies to those who perform mods to electronic sound-making toys (like cheap electronic synth keyboards, speak-n-spells, etc); to make them make really weird noises and such. Most of these guys just randomly probe the device, and if they find something that seems "nice" to their ear, they mod it at that point. Rarely do they consult any kind of schematic or diagrams, or even understand what they are doing (the masters of "circuit bending", though - do go to the effort to figure it out; they turn out some interesting stuff).
Often there is more than "black box functionality" to be considered. In commercial cases, and in safety critical applications, most important questions are:
Can the thing do any harm? (if handled according to spec; if handled outside of spec)
Is is maintainable?
Is its design understandable?
Is it endurable? Under which environmental conditions?
(There is more...)
Of course all those question come with: In which degree? In many cases there are standards and regulations for this! Adhering to those "extra-functional" recommendations is one aspect of "professional work". (E.g. The Titanic was equipped according to such regulations concerning the number of lifeboats!)
The other aspect is "good functional design". This needs an UNDERSTANDING of why things work in the first place. In very few cases this understanding can be implicit ("in the sub conscience mind" so to speak); we call such a person "genius". But generally you have to undergo a more or less hard apprenticeship to get it.
This applies to all areas, cooking e.g.
However some areas are more friendly to mis-design than others. Software will generally do no harm to you if you do not understand how to program (it fact it is the"raison-d'etre" of a forum like this)
Also electronics is not so dangerous as generally thougt. Things often level out because Ohms Law does not exist. (Metal resistors increase their resistance when warming up, thus decreasing the current flowing -> stabilizing feedback.) High voltage does little harm when the current is low, e.t.c.
Talking of cooking, you do smell or taste when things are un-eadible (unless tricked by funny "add-ons")
I actually enjoy the design part - drawing schematics, mulling over different approaches, minimising the component count. But if you dont have the training, there is a lot to learn and part of the way you learn is by getting stuck in and trying things out.
The other thing to consider is what is the cost of failure. There are not many components that you are likely to use that cost more than a few dollars. Even if you think you have killed your Arduino board, its quite likely you have just killed an output transistor on the AT Mega ($5). Erm yes I have done that.
If its just a project for yourself and its never going to be built by anyone else, then there is not much harm in overdriving components and exceeding their tolerances. If the project fails after a while, then that just means you get a chance to play with it again and improve it.
You'll also learn something too. Even if its just 'do a bit more design to avoid frustration'
Electronics 'Hacking' seems to be a new thing - to me at least - anyone else know people like that?
Only everyone I went to school with that got started in electronics this way. I don't understand why you would call this a "new" thing. Most engineers I know that are EEs who love what they do, started this way.
I suppose there is a group other there who have no interest in expanding their knowledge. But doesn't any hobby have this group? Software was already mentioned. What about people who modify their cars with no thoughts to safety? Chefs who just throw stuff together? Or Golfers that just go out and hit a ball?
Maybe its a sign of my age. I used to do electronics as a teenager in the late 70's and then you just followed a design in 'Practical Electronics' etc. I certainly did't think about straying from the design. Then I went to uni and learnt how to do it properly only to go and work in software for 20 years!
I come back to it now for fun and find people ready to just give it a try! Bend the electronics to their will, mod things anyway they like.
Its great to see really. The 'fearless - if it breaks it breaks' attitude.
Sorry to hear that. When I was a teenager, I was "bending" calculators to improve their speed. I didn't know what a capacitor was, but I figured out which values gave the best performance/battery life trade off. I also learned how much classmates were willing to pay for upgrades.
