[TriEmbed] Learning (Electronics Engineering) Curve

[Burr Sutter]

"Anything we can do to get Real Stuff in the hands of kids and adults is
what matters.  If you have
any ideas on how I can help with that, let me know."

I feel that this paradigm is upon us.  The massive upsurge of the Arduino
ecosystem, the Raspberry Pi universe (Kano ready for the masses),
LittleBits and Lego Mindstorms is creating of new generation of adults/kids
who are touching electronics for the very first time.     A percentage of
those individuals will wish to then design/craft real products for sale on
kickstarter, design custom embedded solutions for enterprise customers or
simply bring clean drinking water to remote villages.

I think it is time to start describing the path from "maker" to
production-ready "engineer" - perhaps describing "engineer" as
- product designer/engineer - some one who wishes to sell 50,000 units of
some new widget
- systems integrator/embedded "design house" - building custom solutions
for large organizations (.gov, .edu, .com)
- engineers for a better world - helping to fix fundamental challenges that
impact our world (read Hieroglyph)




On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 10:38 AM, Terry King <terry at terryking.us> wrote:

> QUOTE:
> For one thing, university bookstores need to start carrying maker products
> to reduce the
> engineering learning curve.
> /QUOTE
>
> I am VERY happy to say that every incoming Electrical Engineering and
> Computer Science student at
> the University of Connecticut goes to the campus bookstore and buys this
> kit:
>
> http://arduino-info.wikispaces.com/YourDuinoEngStarter
>
> I sold them 800 of those kits last year and they just told me another 800
> this year. Some other
> Universities use it also.
>
> This is my happy revenge for 1960 when I dropped OUT of Uconn because I
> realized they weren't
> going to let me TOUCH anything electrical until Senior year.  So 55 years
> later, it's the way I
> wanted it to be back then :-)
>
> 100 years ago, A. C. Gilbert patented the erector set:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erector_Set
>
> My friend Mark and I called him ..'the Old Man'.  Mark's father Dick was
> Sales Manager of AC
> Gilbert and on weekends we'd go down to the idle factory. The Old Man
> would be puttering around in
> the back, Making Things. There were bins and bins of PARTS to make
> American Flyer Trains and
> Erector Sets. Sometimes the Old Man would pull some part out of a bin,
> hand it to us and say "Hey
> Kid, What's That?".  "Uh, we'd say. that's an armature for something..
> maybe a train engine".
> "OK, so what's THIS?" Another part.  The Old Man gave us PARTS, He never
> said "I'm going to teach
> you something." He and Dick would look at us and laugh.  We would make
> stuff out of parts. Mark
> put together the 'truck' of an American Flyer Diesel Locomotive that we
> ran by itself on the
> tracks in Marks bedroom. It went like hell, especially after we put two
> transformers in series.
>
> I was years later before I realized how much people like the Old Man and
> my Dad's Ham Radio
> buddies went out of their way and put stuff in the hands of us kids. I am
> SO happy to be building
> Erector Sets in the Science Fiction Future of 2015.
>
> Anything we can do to get Real Stuff in the hands of kids and adults is
> what matters.  If you have
> any ideas on how I can help with that, let me know.
>
> Regards, Terry King
> ...In the Woods in Vermont USA
> terry at terryking.us
>
> -The One who Dies with the most Parts LOSES. What do you need??
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Triangle, NC Embedded Computing mailing list
> TriEmbed at triembed.org
> http://mail.triembed.org/mailman/listinfo/triembed_triembed.org
> TriEmbed web site: http://TriEmbed.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.triembed.org/pipermail/triembed_triembed.org/attachments/20150416/92ce57fe/attachment.htm>