> I love fireflies. But in recent years, they stopped coming for reasons I don’t know. No tiny, glowing dots in the dark like they used to. I miss them more than I expected.
As I understand it, fireflies are vulnerable to lawn chemicals and light pollution. They spend something like 2 years as grubs and then a few weeks as adults above ground. Lawn/in-ground pesticides kill the grubs, and light pollution interferes with finding a mate.
30 years ago, when I moved to Houston, a 1910s-1920s residential area called the Heights was somewhat famous for its fireflies -- though longtime residents would tell you they were drastically diminished from what they'd been in the 60s or 70s.
The juxtaposition between the cleanliness of the software and the absolute travesty of a schematic is jarring. But it still works!
I applaud the author for wading into analog electronics. Pretty much everyone nowadays would just put a timer on a micro and be done in 2 minutes. No fun in that. There is something to be said about the minimal elegance of purely analog designs, and a special rewarding feeling for wrangling electrons in their native habit rather than their boxed up binary bins.
I think it depends on the ecosystem. It's true much of the "maker" community tends to embrace whatever solution is the cheapest, fastest and easiest to get something working out the door, but on the other hand, the DIY synth community tends to be the opposite (in my experience at least), favoring simple schematics and "back to basics" building, even sometimes going as far as trying to skip any sort of prebuilt ICs.
Yeah, for me, analog is the exciting domain — my undiscovered country. I have played with vacuum tubes as well and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Transistors were, for some reason, seemingly unknowable to me. But I made a kind of "transistor playground" [1] based around Forrest Mims III book [2] and then enjoyed playing with them.
Edit: actually, I had forgotten it was a transistor logic playground for I made for creating logic gates with transistors. Based on another Forrest Mims book: https://archive.org/details/engineersmininot00mims
I have a bag of attiny13a that cost me $0.20 per chip. It is fully self contained. Just add a very small capacitor, give it from 2.8V to 5V. And then you program it the way you want. You can even program and debug it via a single pin if you wish.
At this cost for a hobbyist it's just hard to beat. It can be anything you want it to be in a few lines of code.
I personally write Rust for it, not Arduino C++, but it would work just the same.
Honestly, it's the easiest onramp for people coming from a software background. Analog circuits are HARD, but rewarding. And as you ramp up to various ICs, things start to ~~~ make sense ~~~ in a wonderful way. Oh, and also the battery life!
Only tangentially related to the enthusiastic circuit hacking: the reason the author stopped seeing living fireflies may be the drastic, worldwide decline in insect populations, with biomass declining in the range of 2-10%/year[0].
Funnily enough, I moved to another apartment which is right by the main road (the sound pollution is driving me crazy, not recommended), and now I have an insect problem. Every night I am fighting moths and dragonflies. Never had an issue in my previous apartment. Both are deep in the city, although the current one has more greenery nearby.
This post made me feel things. In Phillip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", the inspiration for the movie Blade Runner, wild animals have died out due to the after-effects of war and most people can only afford electric animals as pets.
Here the ingenious circuit design and debugging to make an electronic firefly is made all the more poignant by the fact that artificial lighting disrupts firefly reproduction and communication,[0][1] meaning that LED light pollution at night is one of the main reasons firefly populations are declining.
I was programming well before I was learned anything about analog electronic circuits. I had the Radio Shack 160-in-one like anyone else and I could follow the directions but I didn't understand what was happening because I was thinking of it as an orderly pipeline, almost like a conveyor belt, where each component was doing a task. It wasn't until college when we studied LRC circuits in physics that it finally clicked for me. What the individual components do by themselves is not very interesting but it's their behavior when you put them together, that the magic happens. Essentially you are creating a vibration, a wave. You are creating a resonating system. Your waves can be in various dimensions like current and voltage. You can adjust the magnitude and frequency of the waves to perform useful tasks.
I had RadioShack's "ScienceFair"-brand (co-branded with RadioShack) "Advanced Electronics Lab - 300 projects" kit when I was very young. https://www.ebay.com/p/2254341989
I just found it again yesterday at a very old-school electronics shop. The kind of delightful place packed wall-to-wall & floor-to-ceiling with stuff where each category (test equipment, passive & active components, motors, motor drivers, audio, video, hobby-everything) is either super well organized (passive "jellybean" components) or a giant pile of eclectic offerings stretching across 40 years of technological history (test equipment).
I bought it for nostalgia, and I might fix it up or even upgrade it to give to my niece when she's old enough. But looking through it confirmed something I'd long suspected:
1) Things like LRC circuits don't make sense without an oscilloscope. I have one now but REALLY wish I had one as a kid, even a crazy-cheap incredibly low quality one would have been amazing.
2) The book was VERY poorly written, seemed rushed and minimally thoughtful - there was no real explanation of fundamentals that could be used to drive creativity and exploration. I wish I'd had a book which explained concepts better. I didn't start understanding electronics in any interesting way until I took calculus-based electromagnetic physics in college.
Using the kit was mainly fun for me to blow up old-school red LED's. It gave me familiarity with electronics schematic symbols, breadboards, and some very basic tinkering. That young childhood familiarity made me much more comfortable around electrical pursuits throughout my life.
> Things like LRC circuits don't make sense without an oscilloscope. I have one now but REALLY wish I had one as a kid, even a crazy-cheap incredibly low quality one would have been amazing.
Yes. Especially since oscilloscopes now start at $43 at WalMart.[1] $36 on Amazon. There are $12 oscilloscopes on Alibaba. Bandwidth is low, but plenty for audio, motors, etc.
Here's an electronics kit recommended on Reddit.[2] That plus a cheap scope and you can
do most of the basics. All for under $100.
I cannot say enough good things about this store. I've been a customer for many years and have never been disappointed. You can find things cheaper online, but for a kid without a credit card these guys are great. They even have a brick and mortar store for local pickup.
I hold a BSc in electrical engineering and even I still don't fully understand how circuits work, especially the ones that involve transistors. I tried various mental models to think about the "flow" of current/electrons, but nothing works 100% of the time. Maybe that's just how my brain works: I like algorithmic thinking (A → B → C) as opposed to holding the entire circuit in my mind and solving for V or I.
I have a B.S. and M.S in EE. In undergrad, I took a class where we had to solve a different problem using a new analog circuit each week. At first, we could only use BJTs, resistors, and capacitors. Eventually, we made 555 timers from discrete transistors and "unlocked" that IC for future use. At some point we were allowed to use opamps and other ICs as well.
This class was the hardest class I have ever taken in my life but it really gave me an intuitive understanding of analog electronics that I still have 20 years later.
I don't there there is any quick substitute for just putting in the work. All these posts about AI learning are the same. The magic isn't AI, but the motivation to learn. The AI might help some folks get more excited about the process, though.
This sounds incredible and makes me want to go through a similar learning process. I don’t suppose anyone could recommend a book or course along these lines?
I suppose the BEng in Electronic Engineering I did is more in line with this sort of thing. I did Electrical Engineering (BEng) too but that was more power and control, motors, etc, it didn't really crossover much into this territory.
As an aside, the disappearance of insects is noticeable elsewhere. I'm a big fishing guy, have been my whole life. Many old-timers I know have commented on the lack of insects.
We've all noticed that certain flies and lures have stopped working, or at least, have significantly reduced efficacy. We think it's because for at least several generations (fish have short lifespans), they haven't been exposed to those insects.
I've heard that too. But, from my experience, it's mostly insecticides: people want mosquito-free and flea-free (and ants, roaches etc) yards, and spray/spread poison that kills them. Unfortunately, it kills everything. I cancelled my yard service and noticed that birds started coming back, chasing the food supply. Butterflies cover my lantana, and I see fireflies at night.
I live in Minnesota and the struggle is tough. Either my yard is completely unenjoyable for the family due to mosquitoes and deer flies some years or I kill 50 insects that I don’t want for every one that I do.
I put up deer fly traps every year and that helps, but this year in particular has been awful for both them and mosquitoes. Luckily for the bugs my sprayer is broken and I haven’t had time to fix it.
I deliberately avoid the place on our property where fireflies are, on the years that I do spray. We really need a better solution.
Just to be clear, if we go outside right now we instantly have multiple deer flies trying to land on us and bite, which is only a distraction for the mosquitoes. Without swatting I’d probably get a mosquito bite a minute midday or maybe 5-10 a minute at 7pm.
> so I searched the web and found tinkercad.com has a circuit simulator where you can drag and drop all the components and see if and how it works. It worked for simple circuits, but for mine, the astable multivibrator, it didn’t for some reason. I tried falstad.com/circuit; the same thing happened. It also didn’t work. I searched the web for the reason, and I’ve noticed that sometimes these simulators don’t work well for complex circuits.
If anyone knows of a hobby-grade circuit design and simulation software (on macos! or online), I'd be so grateful to have it mentioned. I've tried kicad, diylc, fritzing, and a few other options, and nothing really "works". It's like the minds of people who created these are broken in a certain tragic way that just does not yield itself to making useable software.
The holy grail for me would be something that allows to design the electronic, then spatial aspects of circuits -- from testing the functionality, to making the board (and bonus points for stripboard support!)
The naive programmer in me wants to assume, "It can't possibly be that hard to simulate a circuit," and get to work on prototyping my own simulation engine but the fact that this apparently has not ben adequately solved yet gives me pause.
As a practicing EE and naive programmer, It is pretty hard to build a simulation engine for electronics and even harder to build a performant engine. SPICE does this with huge matrices of differential equations and math tricks.
Theres an interesting article by Mike Engelhardt (author of LTspice) which gives hints on the details of their implementation.
It depends on what level of detail you want the simulation to have. Boolean logic is easy. Analog circuits operating in certain (very limited) domains are straightforward. But - noting that what follows is well out of the realm of my experience - in other domains you have to account for things like RF characteristics and quantum effects in the semiconductors.
Imagine trying to simulate something that used water in tubes to implement logic, except it's analog logic and there's resonance and some of the joints start leaking when they exceed a certain pressure and etc.
For hobby use I have found it best to do circuit design and simulation in different pieces of software. LTspice for simulation and KiCad or EasyEDA for PCB design.
Fully agree that your mind has to be a particular type of broken to click with all of these. I love LTspice for its simulation tools, for example the ability to vary a component value over time in a transient simulation, but it is a software that fights you at every turn when you try to learn it.
Astable means that it keeping switching, like a clock signal, as opposed to a lightswitch which is bistable (will stay where it is in either position)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivibrator
Readit News
Light pollution, and even more: pesticides.
Population of all insects fall dramatically.
"Three-quarters of flying insects in nature reserves across Germany have vanished in 25 years" - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/18/warning-...
Doesn’t seem to happen anymore…
By 20 years ago, they were almost entirely gone.
I applaud the author for wading into analog electronics. Pretty much everyone nowadays would just put a timer on a micro and be done in 2 minutes. No fun in that. There is something to be said about the minimal elegance of purely analog designs, and a special rewarding feeling for wrangling electrons in their native habit rather than their boxed up binary bins.
I think it depends on the ecosystem. It's true much of the "maker" community tends to embrace whatever solution is the cheapest, fastest and easiest to get something working out the door, but on the other hand, the DIY synth community tends to be the opposite (in my experience at least), favoring simple schematics and "back to basics" building, even sometimes going as far as trying to skip any sort of prebuilt ICs.
Transistors were, for some reason, seemingly unknowable to me. But I made a kind of "transistor playground" [1] based around Forrest Mims III book [2] and then enjoyed playing with them.
[1] https://imgur.com/a/dChq4AZ
[2] https://archive.org/details/forrest-mims-basic-semiconductor...
Edit: actually, I had forgotten it was a transistor logic playground for I made for creating logic gates with transistors. Based on another Forrest Mims book: https://archive.org/details/engineersmininot00mims
For £3.50 you can get an ESP32 module with WiFi and Bluetooth (e.g. https://thepihut.com/products/esp32-c3-mini-development-boar...)
(A regular Arduino board might still be the best choice if you're just learning/tinkering though)
At this cost for a hobbyist it's just hard to beat. It can be anything you want it to be in a few lines of code.
I personally write Rust for it, not Arduino C++, but it would work just the same.
I've got dozens of them in my electronics drawers I don't really use anymore since ESP32 dev boards are so cheap and capable for home projects.
Granted, you can almost get a microcontroller for that price…
Deleted Comment
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_population...
Here the ingenious circuit design and debugging to make an electronic firefly is made all the more poignant by the fact that artificial lighting disrupts firefly reproduction and communication,[0][1] meaning that LED light pollution at night is one of the main reasons firefly populations are declining.
[0] https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4557 [1] https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.220468
I just found it again yesterday at a very old-school electronics shop. The kind of delightful place packed wall-to-wall & floor-to-ceiling with stuff where each category (test equipment, passive & active components, motors, motor drivers, audio, video, hobby-everything) is either super well organized (passive "jellybean" components) or a giant pile of eclectic offerings stretching across 40 years of technological history (test equipment).
I bought it for nostalgia, and I might fix it up or even upgrade it to give to my niece when she's old enough. But looking through it confirmed something I'd long suspected:
1) Things like LRC circuits don't make sense without an oscilloscope. I have one now but REALLY wish I had one as a kid, even a crazy-cheap incredibly low quality one would have been amazing.
2) The book was VERY poorly written, seemed rushed and minimally thoughtful - there was no real explanation of fundamentals that could be used to drive creativity and exploration. I wish I'd had a book which explained concepts better. I didn't start understanding electronics in any interesting way until I took calculus-based electromagnetic physics in college.
Using the kit was mainly fun for me to blow up old-school red LED's. It gave me familiarity with electronics schematic symbols, breadboards, and some very basic tinkering. That young childhood familiarity made me much more comfortable around electrical pursuits throughout my life.
Yes. Especially since oscilloscopes now start at $43 at WalMart.[1] $36 on Amazon. There are $12 oscilloscopes on Alibaba. Bandwidth is low, but plenty for audio, motors, etc.
Here's an electronics kit recommended on Reddit.[2] That plus a cheap scope and you can do most of the basics. All for under $100.
[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Osdhezcn-Pocket-Size-Oscilloscope...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/1k06mpz/sho...
https://tekshack.com/collections/educational
https://www.electronics123.com/
https://www.electronics123.com/contactus
I did put together a lot of Radio Shack project-in-a-boxes though.
This class was the hardest class I have ever taken in my life but it really gave me an intuitive understanding of analog electronics that I still have 20 years later.
I don't there there is any quick substitute for just putting in the work. All these posts about AI learning are the same. The magic isn't AI, but the motivation to learn. The AI might help some folks get more excited about the process, though.
We've all noticed that certain flies and lures have stopped working, or at least, have significantly reduced efficacy. We think it's because for at least several generations (fish have short lifespans), they haven't been exposed to those insects.
I put up deer fly traps every year and that helps, but this year in particular has been awful for both them and mosquitoes. Luckily for the bugs my sprayer is broken and I haven’t had time to fix it.
I deliberately avoid the place on our property where fireflies are, on the years that I do spray. We really need a better solution.
Just to be clear, if we go outside right now we instantly have multiple deer flies trying to land on us and bite, which is only a distraction for the mosquitoes. Without swatting I’d probably get a mosquito bite a minute midday or maybe 5-10 a minute at 7pm.
If anyone knows of a hobby-grade circuit design and simulation software (on macos! or online), I'd be so grateful to have it mentioned. I've tried kicad, diylc, fritzing, and a few other options, and nothing really "works". It's like the minds of people who created these are broken in a certain tragic way that just does not yield itself to making useable software.
The holy grail for me would be something that allows to design the electronic, then spatial aspects of circuits -- from testing the functionality, to making the board (and bonus points for stripboard support!)
Theres an interesting article by Mike Engelhardt (author of LTspice) which gives hints on the details of their implementation.
https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/tech...
Imagine trying to simulate something that used water in tubes to implement logic, except it's analog logic and there's resonance and some of the joints start leaking when they exceed a certain pressure and etc.
LT-spice is just a graphical front end to make SPICE easier to use.
Yeah, analog is hard.
Fully agree that your mind has to be a particular type of broken to click with all of these. I love LTspice for its simulation tools, for example the ability to vary a component value over time in a transient simulation, but it is a software that fights you at every turn when you try to learn it.
come again?