Circuits and Creativity

Thread Starter

sircuit

Joined Dec 1, 2011
16
Hi, this is my first post in this forum, just discovered via a yacy search for "richard stallman" this great book, then from reading in this book, this forum, which seems to be huge.

After the introduction now to the topic of my first post: What do you think about creativity and circuits? And what would you call the most creative way of dealing with circuits? Learning, studying, developing, experimenting, testing, flying over circuits? Maybe you can see the creativity aspect also in my nickname. :)
 

thatoneguy

Joined Feb 19, 2009
6,359
All parts of electronics in practice involve creativity. Thinking outside the box, how to work around the fact your idea needs a part that in unobtanium, etc.

Troubleshooting is creativity at it's finest, you need to know the fundamentals of what you are working on, from a lawnmower to a circuit, and decide how to make it work again, which means finding out what made it not work.

If you read a lot of the threads here, you'll realize there's a thousand ways to skin a cat. Some just make more of a mess than others.
 

Thread Starter

sircuit

Joined Dec 1, 2011
16
Thinking outside the box, yes, the question is what defines exactly the limits of the box. Troubleshooting is a negative consequence of bad work done by others, why having a trouble, better would be non-trouble-enjoyment. I am not known in this field, but is it possible to develop circuits which observe other circuits, if they work well, if not showing the problem area? Kind of hierarchical circuits, higher hierarchies observing lower hieararchy circuits.

For sure I will read more in this forum, I am quite happy having found this forum.
 

thatoneguy

Joined Feb 19, 2009
6,359
"The Box" is the standard set of walls that learning basic electronics usually instill into students. Yes, it all needs to be known, but it took me 15 years to ignore 'rules' and rewrite 'checklists' for certain things from college, but in that time, the entire world of electronics has also changed from mostly analog to mostly digital.

Outside the box is when you break some of the rules of digital to get nifty and desired analog effects, generally stuff like that, but much of it has been done and named now. New things still pop up, but nothing like 30 years ago.
 

RiJoRI

Joined Aug 15, 2007
536
Hello & welcome!

"Troubleshooting is a negative consequence of bad work done by others..."

(Or by yourself!! :p ) Not necessarily. Parts do wear out over time, unless you wish to spend a LOT of money to develop a "perfect" part. Look at it like this: you develop a perfect gizmo guaranteed to operate for 500 years. I develop a similar gizmo guaranteed to operate for 10 years. My parts cost is 1/100th your parts cost, so I sell my gizmo to the general public for 1/10th your cost. I will sell more gizmos than you do. And make more money. And if this gizmo was a 5Mb hard drive...

"is it possible to develop circuits which observe other circuits, if they work well, if not showing the problem area?"

Sure. Look at modern cars, which monitor certain systems in the car itself. Or look at old computers. Each RAM location had 8 data bits, and a parity bit to ensure the data was correct. EXCEPT 11% (1 of 9) parity errors were a result of the parity bit being bad! :eek:

Good questions!

--Rich
 

GetDeviceInfo

Joined Jun 7, 2009
2,192
is it possible to develop circuits which observe other circuits, if they work well, if not showing the problem area? Kind of hierarchical circuits, higher hierarchies observing lower hieararchy circuits.
this is actually quite common. With the soft logic virtually replacing hard logic, it has become standard practice.
 
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