[omnicognate]

"Syndrome", "guilt", "fear", "failed", "worse".

It's a hobby. There's no wrong way to do it. Have a budget and do what makes you happy. If that's accumulating gadgets, accumulate with joy. It's not an illness.

Another reason for what the article calls Gear Acquisition Syndrome, if not for Gear Fabrication Syndrome, is the nature of the learning curve for some things. For example, I'm learning electronics, slowly. Slowly because I have children and a stressful full-time job. A while ago I bought an oscilloscope. I don't really need an oscilloscope and it's possible I never will. I'm just hooking up 555 timers and trying to get my head round the mysteries of inductance at this stage. The machine is occasionally marginally useful, but mostly I get it out for the sake of fiddling with it.

Does this mean I just bought it for the thrill of owning it? I certainly felt that thrill when it arrived, but I bought it to learn how to use it, as part of the larger project of "learning electronics". My slow progress means it may be a long time before I'm doing things that really require it, but if and when that time comes I'll be ready, with the device and the knowledge to use it correctly (and not blow it up! [1]). I don't know how far I'll get in learning and applying this stuff, but learning the tools is a major part of it, and rewarding in itself.

[1] https://youtu.be/xaELqAo4kkQ?feature=shared

[GuB-42]

Gear Acquisition Syndrome is tied to compulsive buying and hording, both are recognized illnesses (in ICD-11).

Of course, just buying an oscilloscope in the course of learning electronics is not getting you in psychiatry. I mean, it is part of the basic toolkit, plus, you are actually using it. But if you start buying 5 different soldering irons with 10 different types of solder, every kind of pliers known to man, some very specific tool for some obscure use case you don't have, etc... it can negatively impact your quality of life, for example because of the clutter.

[bluescrn]

> Gear Acquisition Syndrome is tied to compulsive buying and hording, both are recognized illnesses (in ICD-11).

Which is a long way from 'throwing some disposable income at a hobby'.

If your 'gear acquisition' is getting you in debt, or excessively cluttering your home, you may have a problem. But otherwise, if you can afford it, and it's giving you some satisfaction to collect and fiddle with it, then why not?

Spending, say, $25k on hobby gear might seem excessive. But people don't get shamed for spending far more than that replacing/upgrading cars when they've got a perfectly decent one already.

And if you're buying quality gear, whether it's tools or musical instruments/equipment, it's likely to have a lifetime of several decades, it's not like you're buying junk that'll end up on a mountain of e-waste in a couple of years time.

[xattt]

> If your 'gear acquisition' is getting you in debt, or excessively cluttering your home, you may have a problem.

Hoarding syndrome happens gradually. It may appear normal for a while to an outside observer, until it’s not.

I think the hallmark of problematic collection would be how much someone holds onto a device when physical constraints for their home are met.

[samus]

People are treated when they or the people around them can no longer turn a blind eye to the problem. But it can have a very negative impact on people's lives long before it becomes clinically relevant. Just alone considering the vast amounts of time and money that go down the drain.

Similar to how it has long been recognized that modern lifestyle has a negative impact on our physical health if we are not mindful of it, we should start paying attention to mental health. The COVID Lockdowns were a wakeup call for many people.

[squarepizza]

> But people don't get shamed for spending far more than that replacing/upgrading cars when they've got a perfectly decent one already.

They should, considering the personal and external costs. Car lust keeps people on treadmills of debt. Manufacturing big metal blocks on wheels is not friendly for the physical and social environment either.

[eternityforest]

The wrong way to do a hobby is if it doesn't actually bring you or anyone else any happiness, which in extremely GAS/GFS cases seems to be possible.

An Oscilloscope is a pretty reasonable thing even for a beginner, it's totally unnecessary but it does make things easier, it's something you'll probably actually use.

I had GAS/GFS pretty bad when I first got into electronics. Most of the stuff I regret buying was all pretty simple though. Cables can be a real big offender. I hate nonstandard cables with obscure connectors because they take up so much space for one function!

Digital electronics is far easier and requires less parts, but analog can still be really light on parts.

Electronics GAS seems to come in the form of "Big ideas" driven by bulk discounts. It's easy to imagine yourself doing ten projects over the next few years, all using some common set of parts.

But then some new and better thing comes out, and your pile of XT60 extension cords you made is forgotten.

The problem got so bad for me that I pretty much just chose to stop messing with random parts and instead explore the limits of what can be done with extremely common stuff.

Like, one time I bought some RCA jacks because it seemed like a good idea to use for switch inputs and the like.

But 2.1mm power jacks are even more common, and I can use resistors to protect against accidentally plugging in a wall wart to a sensor port.

Everyone likes lab power supplies, but can I redesign my circuit to run on a USB-C breakout trigger module? I've already got phone chargers laying around.

0.1" headers aren't perfect. It's easy to mis-connect something. It's easy to come up with some new unified standard for using JST connectors that will make all your stuff compatible... but then you have a project that doesn't work well with it...

When I first saw a commercial install made of random Amazon modules, I thought "They shoulda made a PCB" and I had all these ideas.... but then I realized that when the random Amazon modules breaks, I can swap it in a few minutes, and fix it later if I want.

With a custom board, I can't fix it at all until I've first discovered how it works, which will probably take an hour just to find out what pin does what when the documentation is gone....

Now I mostly start every project with an ESP32 module and go from there!

[alright2565]

I relate a lot with this. Especially cables--what an absolute nightmare, especially when you need to interface with commercial devices that have standardized on a different cabling standard!

I have learned about Mini-PV connectors, which are compatible with P=2.54mm headers and do not loosen up over time: https://www.mattmillman.com/info/crimpconnectors/dupont-and-...

> When I first saw a commercial install made of random Amazon modules, I thought "They shoulda made a PCB" and I had all these ideas.... but then I realized that when the random Amazon modules breaks, I can swap it in a few minutes, and fix it later if I want.

I can see this, and I've definitely created custom circuit boards for devices that I only need one of & would be straightforward to build with random modules.

But at the same time, for a commercial product or a product where quantities of > 10 exist, making a circuit board makes a lot of sense, introduces a lot of reliability and saves significant cost. It's really not hard anymore to make a PCB, and there's so much opportunity for error & poor connections when assembling things from Amazon crap.

[eternityforest]

Once you get to 10, or even 1 if it's a handheld (a pocket is a very rough environment) a PCB makes sense.

PCBs easy to make, and probably worth it a lot of the time, but there's also some pretty nice module options. Seems like going straight for PLCs is pretty common these days.

Mini-PV looks really nice! I'll have to check that out!

For dealing with commercial stuff on random cable standards, a lot of the time I'll get a pigtail and use Wago lever nuts to connect it to a longer cable, so it's easy to swap out stuff and make up whatever cable I need at the moment.

I've ever wagoed an 0.1" pigtail before, it works fine as long you keep the big heavy thing you're wagoing it to from pulling too hard.

Some people seem to like bananas for quick connections in the lab... but they are so easy to get wrong. A cheap banana plug last I checked was kind of bad.

[123pie123]

I've still not used my oscilloscope (properly - measuriung some DC value when I couldn't find my multimeter doesn't count??)

I find a good circuit simulator helps in speeding up the hassle in 'probing' electronics - there's many out there, I do like this one though https://www.falstad.com/circuit/

[wkjagt]

I feel almost the same about my oscilloscope but it did help me debug an i2c implementation that would have been very painful to debug otherwise. I could have done that with a much cheaper logic analyzer though. Most of the time the oscilloscope sits unused but sometimes I'm happy to have it when I want to very something simple like a clock signal on an old 8 bit computer. I'm really only scratching the surface of what it can do though with these simple use cases.