[HN Gopher] $1 Microcontrollers (2017)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       $1 Microcontrollers (2017)
        
       Author : graderjs
       Score  : 158 points
       Date   : 2022-03-06 06:09 UTC (16 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (jaycarlson.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (jaycarlson.net)
        
       | hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
       | The Texas Instruments MSP430 is another good one to look at. At
       | one point, dev kits were available for under $10. It's a good
       | choice for low-power applications. Comes with a free IDE.
        
         | sgt wrote:
         | I have a few MSP430's, mostly the really lower end ones and I
         | have recently been wondering if it's really worth it for a
         | hobbyist.
         | 
         | The ESP's have low power modes as well, and can run off a tiny
         | battery, which was the primary strength of MSP.
         | 
         | Any thoughts? I like the MSP ecosystem and docs, but ESP also
         | shines there.
        
           | lpmay wrote:
           | It's up to hobbyists what's worth it to them, but the power
           | consumption of the ESP 8266/32 is not _really_ comparable to
           | the '430. "Deep sleep" mode on the ESP seems to be about
           | 20uA, an MSP430FR5969 can go to a 20nA LPM 4.5 mode (factor
           | of 1000 lower). Harder to compare in a HN comment, but active
           | mode power consumption is also in the MSP's favor for many
           | applications particularly when using the built in hardware
           | accelerators like LEA.
           | 
           | Of course the MSP430 doesn't have a WiFi modem or a giant
           | hobbyist community like the ESP, so I'm really not trying to
           | make an argument for which is "better" just trying to add
           | some contrast to the low power features you asked about.
        
             | sgt wrote:
             | Good point... my perception on power usage was absolutely
             | wrong.
             | 
             | MSP's are aging a bit though. At least the ones in my
             | drawer. Is the hw platform being actively developed or has
             | it plateau'd?
        
               | lpmay wrote:
               | I think the platform is very much still alive and
               | kicking. It is still the only uP platform I am aware of
               | which is available with embedded FRAM which is low power,
               | non volatile, extremely more write durable than flash and
               | rad hard. Again, maybe not top selling features for a
               | hobbyist project but absolutely compelling for certain
               | industrial use cases.
        
               | sgt wrote:
               | Thanks - you got me excited about MSP430 again. I am
               | wondering if I should build an AC motor controller for
               | fun, since I happen to have an AC motor on my bench.
        
         | auxym wrote:
         | TBH the rpi pico (rp2040 dev board) is hard to beat for the
         | price of 5$. Dual core ARM cortex-m0+ at 100 something MHz and
         | loads of ram and flash.
        
           | makapuf wrote:
           | Dont forget programmable io ports with their independent tiny
           | cores.
        
         | GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
         | I have been struggling to get TI's (free) Code Composer Studio
         | to recognize my MSP430FR2311 boards now on-and-off for months.
         | They 'upgrade' the code, and then I can't program my devices.
         | In fact, so far, I've spent more time trying to get the dev
         | environment to work than developing my code. Not Fun.
         | 
         | Very cool when it does work, tho. I'd prefer to pay a little
         | more for parts and get some English-based support.
         | 
         | I'll work through the Code Disposer Studio issues...again...
        
       | dvh wrote:
       | What's the cheapest way to get:
       | 
       | 44kHz ADC > FFT > some light computation (e.g. 1000
       | multiplications) > IFFT > DAC
        
         | sitkack wrote:
         | Cheapest on what axis?
         | 
         | Qty 1, including your time, a raspberry pi zero.
         | 
         | Qty 1000, not including your time, an FPGA with embedded
         | multipliers.
        
       | jahirul247 wrote:
        
         | tome wrote:
         | Wow, this might be the first spam I have ever seen on HN!
        
           | lsllc wrote:
           | The mods here are really, really good. I do occasionally see
           | spam & junk comments on HN, mostly early in the (US) morning,
           | but they clean it up quickly. It's one of the reasons I like
           | HN so much, it's very well curated.
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | mopsi wrote:
       | EEVblog had a video series about a 3 cent microcontroller:
       | https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=3+cent+microcon...
        
       | rajnathani wrote:
       | (2017)
        
       | ChuckMcM wrote:
       | Read this when it came out, it helped me to understand that with
       | modern silicon geometries or process nodes, computers are "free".
       | The largest part of the cost here is the packaging and testing of
       | individual parts.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | What I want more than $1 microcontrollers is a series of
       | controllers that goes from low price/low performance to higher
       | price/higher performance, but all programmable with the same
       | open-source software stack.
       | 
       | I don't want to read datasheets again whenever I need 100MHz more
       | clock speed, or 1mW less power consumption. Because reading
       | datasheets, at some point, feels like filling out tax forms.
        
         | not_the_fda wrote:
         | The STM32 line is as close as you will get with this. Its HAL
         | (Hardware Abstraction Layer) is MIT licensed and is very
         | similar across products. Products in the same family are nearly
         | pin compatible.
        
           | mmoskal wrote:
           | They are remarkably similar even at the register level - when
           | you program with the LL (low level) library that essentially
           | exposes hardware registers. I find LL easier to understand
           | and work with than HAL.
           | 
           | BTW the license is mostly BSD not MIT with some additional
           | libraries more restrictive.
        
           | timpattinson wrote:
           | Yeah, STM32 spans the range between the $1 and the STM32F7 at
           | 200Mhz
        
             | monocasa wrote:
             | Up to the H7 now that goes to 480mhz.
        
               | duskwuff wrote:
               | Some H7 parts are rated up to 550 MHz, and they'll
               | overclock well beyond that.
        
               | GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
               | ...which has 2.14 DMIPS/MHz = 1.027 BIPS (more than 1
               | instruction per nanosecond). Fast enough?
               | 
               | (BTW, when I see "mhz" I assume this means "milli-Hertz".
               | Similar when people say they have a 42b structure -- I
               | see this as a 42-bit structure. If I wanted to
               | communicate "42 byte structure" I'd abbreviate as "42B
               | structure". Capitals used judiciously transmit meaning
               | compactly.)
        
               | monocasa wrote:
               | FWIW, I've seen capitalization issues in datasheets. When
               | they're this ubiquitous, it's better to use it as an
               | opportunity to apply number sense as a sort of FEC for
               | verbal understanding. A 480 millihertz ARM doesn't really
               | make sense (if you were running at those rates, you're in
               | such a niche that it has ISA considerations where ARM
               | isn't a great option anymore). Similarly a 42 bit
               | structure on an ostensibly 8 bit machine doesn't make
               | sense. Yes it'd probably be a better world if everyone
               | was consistent, but blindly assuming that they are
               | doesn't really help anyone.
        
         | bloopernova wrote:
         | I've wanted something similar when shopping at Adafruit.
         | https://www.pcpartpicker.com has some pretty good search tools
         | that I wish more vendors would copy.
        
           | auxym wrote:
           | Digikey's parametric search is hard to beat.
        
       | not_the_fda wrote:
       | I don't think any of these are in stock. Whole industry kept
       | moving to higher cost parts as parts vanished.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | drewzero1 wrote:
       | I just came across this site on Friday when looking for a
       | possible replacement for some Digispark (ATTiny85 board) clones
       | at work to connect to some 5v relay modules. I'm not too invested
       | in the Arduino ecosystem at this point and am still looking into
       | other options, haven't finished reading through the whole list
       | yet.
        
         | cf141q5325 wrote:
         | I just used some attiny85 as a software based USB interface
         | with v-usb for interfacing with an atmega328p. I especially
         | love the DIP size, its amazing that i could solder the entire
         | thing learning about capacitors and pull up resistors in the
         | process. The use of multiple processors also allowed for some
         | security by design, having functionalities capsuled with
         | strictly defined directions of communication.
         | 
         | I think the ecosystem is really quite impressive with a really
         | low entry hurdle from a teaching perspective. It was possible
         | to get the power consumption of the atmega328p low enough for
         | battery operation even with just Arduino, giving an easy
         | introduction into prescalers and flags. From there you can step
         | deeper into the functionality of avrdude (shoutout to USBASP)
         | and standard AVR makefile projects with for example the
         | micronucleus bootloader.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | The Chinese company Espressif Systems is doing really well in
       | this area, with its ESP32 series.
        
         | 4gotunameagain wrote:
         | ESPs are great value for money, but they are all kinda
         | hodgepodge and the datasheets / documentation / frameworks are
         | not the best.
         | 
         | You get what you pay for I guess :)
        
         | baybal2 wrote:
        
       | rmbyrro wrote:
       | It's amazing that humanity can produce this sort of hardware
       | under $1. This has implications that are more profound than
       | previous industrial revolutions.
       | 
       | In centuries from now, our time will be studied as a remarkably
       | revolutionary one.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | Given our love for destruction, and ongoing events, it will be
         | talked about the same way as we talk about Babylon, Egypt,
         | Sumerian, ancient Roman and Greece, Aztecs and Mayas.
        
         | 4ggr0 wrote:
         | I would argue that this kind of price is only doable because
         | people and resources are being exploited for it. Not
         | specifically only for these microcontrollers, but most our
         | consumer products in general.
         | 
         | In a worst case scenario, the resources for this $1
         | microcontroller were mined by an african child, barely earning
         | anything. These resources are then shipped to China(probably),
         | where people along the way don't earn much either. Except the
         | white collar workers managing it all, of course.
         | 
         | These controllers are then built in a factory, either by
         | robots, or low-earning workers. Then shipped to a warehouse.
         | 
         | For me, the fact that such things can be bought so cheaply is
         | not really an achievement if we look at how broken the supply
         | chains are if we consider the humans who are affected by them.
         | And also the environment which gets destroyed quite a bit.
         | 
         | I am of course talking from a moralist and empathical
         | perspective. What I am trying to say is, that this is only an
         | achievement because we accept or ignore the drastic
         | consequences.
        
           | amelius wrote:
           | The first step in solving these problems is getting the
           | accounting in place, so we know exactly who is paying what.
           | It is beyond me why we are not even doing that.
           | 
           | Anyway, we could solve these problems if we doubled the
           | price. And then it would still be an amazing achievement.
        
           | WaxedChewbacca wrote:
        
           | graderjs wrote:
           | I'm sure there's truth to that. But I also think a large
           | proportion of the price (and in general the plummeting price,
           | and apogee-ing performance of many high tech components, such
           | as batteries) is due not to exploitation, but to increases in
           | efficiency. The bequeathed legacy of the thousand accreted
           | technologies and improvements that have layered to produce
           | contemporary supply chains.
           | 
           | Of course... _everything_ we do today is based on
           | exploitation: 1000s of years of exploitation of humans,
           | frequently the worker and poorer classes ' labor, 100s of
           | years, and billions dead in war...all our achievements today
           | literally stand atop this ginormous pile of blood and
           | death... _but_ , _that_ ever-present historical reality
           | aside...I think a large proportion of the skyrocketing perf
           | and ocean-depth-plumbing prices of components is due to the
           | compounding and intersecting effects of all our technological
           | efficiencies.
        
           | asddubs wrote:
           | Also environmental damage that will cost to repair, offloaded
           | onto the government or even future generations
        
           | AussieWog93 wrote:
           | >I am of course talking from a moralist and empathical
           | perspective.
           | 
           | Speaking from a business and engineering perspective, I'd be
           | surprised if (even in an ideal world with no environmental
           | externalities or exploited third-world labourers) the cost of
           | the raw resources, shipping and e-waste processing were a
           | significant part of that $1.
           | 
           | We're literally talking about something 1/16 the size of a
           | postage stamp that gets stamped into a similarly tiny plastic
           | shell.
           | 
           | From my admittedly "peak mount stupid"[1] position as an
           | engineer that uses these things, I'd suspect that the biggest
           | contributors to that $1 figure come from the expert labour
           | required to both R&D the chips as well as run the machines
           | that manufacture them.
           | 
           | [1] http://theengineeringmanager.com/wp-
           | content/uploads/2017/12/...
        
           | dtgriscom wrote:
           | I share your concerns, but I doubt the materials are a major
           | component of the cost of goods for these.
        
         | baybal2 wrote:
         | In fact, even $1 microcontrollers are considered very expensive
         | by industry standards.
         | 
         | Cheapest micros hovered around 10 cents mark before the
         | semiconductor crisis.
         | 
         | Some Padauk micros go for single cents.
        
           | agumonkey wrote:
           | 10cents dual core 32 bits arch ?
        
             | throwaway81523 wrote:
             | The 10 cent mcus that I know of are 8 bitters, which is
             | fine for plenty of purposes.
        
         | supercucklchaim wrote:
         | I find it amazing as well, now we can sleep at night knowing
         | progress will potently progress.
        
       | oxplot wrote:
       | Be careful spending time writing software/firmware for chips that
       | may disappear tomorrow. Cost of the chip itself isn't everything,
       | in fact it's one of the least important things if you're looking
       | at long term cost. This is especially relevant in the current
       | chip shortage climate which has made this point quite salient.
       | 
       | Whether it's a hobby project or a high volume production project,
       | you don't want hundreds of hours of your time spent developing
       | for it to go down the drain. In case of a hobby project, it
       | probably means the one or two units you made are all that you're
       | ever going to make. In case of a product you built in high
       | volumes, it means a large gap in sales and lost revenue while you
       | re-do the firmware for a new chip.
        
         | R0b0t1 wrote:
         | This is a real concern. A lot of these offerings are not useful
         | now because they are not ARM (or, soon, RISC-V). Even with
         | instruction set match, moving between vendors is a huge issue.
        
       | fouc wrote:
       | Maybe this is a dumb question, but are any of these cheap
       | microcontrollers able to run Win 98? Or am I misunderstanding
       | what microcontrollers can do?
        
         | R0b0t1 wrote:
         | Generally a microcontroller has no MMU. A microprocessor may
         | mean the same thing. The industry term for something with an
         | MMU is an application processor (Cortex-A). There are other
         | terms that can be used, but it will need to be specified.
         | 
         | There is some fuzzy area between MMU-less, small processors,
         | and processors with no MMU but large enough to run Linux in a
         | MMU-less way.
        
           | fouc wrote:
           | Interesting! Any idea how hard is it to include an MMU? Or
           | better yet, what's the cheapest application processor?
        
             | R0b0t1 wrote:
             | It's not very hard at all. The issue is exclusively
             | licensing fees.
             | 
             | Cheapest depends. There are Allwinner parts that are $2?
             | But with the move to RISC-V, we will see costs decrease
             | further, probably so that a Linux-capable part is just as
             | expensive or cheaper than an MCU.
             | 
             | Whenever possible I reach for a part that can run Linux,
             | because most of any embedded task nowadays is connectivity.
             | A lot of parts include a microcontroller on the same die
             | for realtime tasks.
        
         | zozbot234 wrote:
         | There are some recent x86 SoC's which basically implement i586
         | and have been made to run both MS-DOG and Windows 9x. Commonly
         | used by retro- and vintage computing hobbyists. None that would
         | cost $1, though.
        
         | hungryforcodes wrote:
         | https://hackaday.com/2021/07/28/emulating-the-ibm-pc-on-an-e...
        
         | ivoras wrote:
         | Things called "microcontrollers" usually have these properties:
         | 
         | * They are actually CPUs, but with very weak feature sets
         | related to desktop & scientific computing
         | 
         | * They may or may not have hardware to do any kind of advanced
         | computation, starting with plain old multiplication and
         | division of integers (addition and subtraction of integers is
         | enough for what they do). Yes you read this correctly. The vast
         | majority of 8-bit microcontrollers cannot even do division or
         | even multiplication in hardware.
         | 
         | * They run with clocks from kilohertz to low megahertz
         | 
         | * They might be 8-bit, 16-bit or 32-bit, with rarity going up
         | as the bitness goes up. There's a ton of 8-bit microntrollers,
         | and 32-bit are much rarer. 64-bit ones are very very rare,
         | since if you need that processing width, you might as well go
         | for a single-board-computer like a Raspberry Pi.
         | 
         | * They are used to DIRECTLY drive other hardware, not in an
         | abstract way. They literally regulate voltages on their pins to
         | make stuff happen with connected hardware.
         | 
         | * They might have RAM space ranging from a couple of BYTES
         | (yes, BYTES, see e.g. this one having 32 bytes of RAM:
         | https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/ATTINY9#) to a couple
         | of hundreds of kilobytes. It's very rare to have a
         | microcontroller with a megabyte or more of RAM, because, as
         | before, in that case you might as well just use a full-featured
         | desktop-ish CPU.
         | 
         | * They are usually lacking a special bit of hardware called a
         | MMU (Memory Management Unit) which is used by "real" operating
         | systems like Linux and Windows to manage process isolation and
         | many other useful things related to memory. If you need a MMU,
         | again, just use a SBC.
         | 
         | So where do we use microcontrollers? Well, what do you think
         | happens in your garage or car keyfob when you click on the
         | buttons? What tells your microwave when to finish and with
         | which power level to nuke your food? What drives your electric
         | toothbrush? Your car's gas valves? Microcontrollers, that's
         | what.
         | 
         | They are currently (or have been a few years ago) so cheap we
         | can readily add a microcontroller to every toilet paper leaf,
         | and it would only bring the price of a roll up by a dollar or
         | so. What's stopping us to do just that is the sorry state of
         | current batteries and energy harvesting in general - those
         | technologies simply are not as developed (yet).
         | 
         | So, no, you wouldn't describe a chip which can run Windows 98
         | as a "microcontroller".
        
         | detaro wrote:
         | None have a PC-architecture (x86+other HW standards), so no,
         | they aren't. It would be possible to make a microcontroller
         | that can, but nobody does. Intel did make a few experiments
         | with x86 microcontrollers, but even those were afaik not PC-
         | like enough, because you generally don't want a lot of those
         | things in a microcontroller.
        
       | vegadw wrote:
       | The author, Jay Carlson, is a really rad guy. I've got a few
       | stereoscopic camera boards of his floating around that I happened
       | to run into and a few emails later I had them up and running!
        
       | throwaway81523 wrote:
       | This is a good article but it's a few years old, and out of date
       | now. I can't see its date with my current adblock settings. It
       | would be great if someone could find it and put it in the title.
       | 
       | There are stupendously powerful $1 microcontrollers now,
       | including the RP2040 (dual core cortex m0+ with 264KB ram on the
       | chip), ESP32-S2 (Espressif core with 400k of ram and wifi), and
       | ESP32-C3 with wifi and RISC-V core and again something like 400k
       | of ram.
       | 
       | Jay Carlson also has a series about microcontrollers as cheap as
       | THREE CENTS, i.e. the famous Padauk 3 cent MCU:
       | 
       | https://jaycarlson.net/2019/09/06/whats-up-with-these-3-cent...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | genezeta wrote:
         | > It would be great if someone could find it and put it in the
         | title.
         | 
         | There's no publication date -nor anything marking it as updated
         | at any time afterwards- on the article itself, but first
         | comments are from _November 2017_ and passing references in the
         | article point to  "end of 2017" too.
        
         | coupdejarnac wrote:
         | Those are the three micros I use for projects/products, too. A
         | while back I bought a few hundred of the Padauk chips with the
         | intent of doing a small manufacturing run of a side project,
         | but I haven't seen them in stock at the normal places for a
         | while. It looks like the lead time for cheap micros in general
         | is about a year.
        
         | pb82 wrote:
         | The article about the Padauk is interesting. Especially the
         | description of the FPPA feature. Multiple CPU contexts? This
         | sounds suspiciously like SMT to me which would be a total
         | novelty for a micro controller (afaik).
        
           | sokoloff wrote:
           | ESP32 was released August 2016. I'm not even sure it was the
           | first.
        
             | throwaway81523 wrote:
             | The ESP32 has two separate cores, not SMT. But look at the
             | Parallax Propeller which goes back quite a long way. Also
             | the Padauk is not exactly SMT afaict. It's more like time
             | slicing. The idea of SMT in eg. an x86 is that one thread
             | can run while another is blocked waiting for memory.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | addaon wrote:
               | Sounds like a barrel processor [1], used to hide latency
               | of individual instructions to allow code to be written
               | without having to think as much about instruction
               | scheduling / dependencies.
               | 
               | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_processor
        
               | sitkack wrote:
               | The Xmos chips give the programmer virtual time sliced
               | contexts over one or more hardware core(s). Say you have
               | a 400 Mhz base clock and 4 threads, each one would see
               | the wall clock time advance at 100 Mhz. This is useful
               | for having concurrent realtime operations on each
               | hardware thread w/o having to resort to trickery.
               | 
               | These chips are ideal for DSP, phased arrays and beam
               | forming. Most of their devkits are centered around voice
               | applications.
               | 
               | https://www.xmos.ai/documentation/XM-014363-PC-5/html/arc
               | h-h...
               | 
               | https://www.xmos.ai/download/xCORE-Array-Microphone-
               | Product-...
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | AussieWog93 wrote:
         | >RP2040
         | 
         | Wow, that's an incredibly capable chip for the price!
        
           | jhallenworld wrote:
           | It has an interesting trade-off: no internal flash. But I've
           | found that I add a SPI-flash chip to the MCU in many designs,
           | so it's a reasonable choice.
           | 
           | NXP has rt1020 (Cortex-M7, no flash), or rt1024, which is
           | same but 4 MB flash in the package- it's connected to the
           | SPI-flash controller of the rt1020 core, so I think it's a
           | multi-die package.
        
           | throwaway81523 wrote:
           | Look at the even more capable and comparably priced ESP32-S2
           | and ESP32-C3.
        
           | amelius wrote:
           | How fast is the serial interface over USB? (What you need if
           | you want to connect it to a normal PC)
        
             | opencl wrote:
             | The RP2040 actually has built in 12Mbps USB 1.1, no serial
             | bridge required. But if you do want to use a serial to USB
             | bridge the max baud rate is 921600.
        
         | nanis wrote:
         | <script type='application/ld+json' class='yoast-schema-graph
         | ...          "datePublished":"2017-07-17T01:31:05-05:00",
         | "dateModified":"2017-11-18T18:07:56-06:00"}]}
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | waschl wrote:
       | Semi-related: Since few months I am digging into tinkering and
       | electronics. It's really great to learn about modern era
       | solutions which enable cool projects with low entry barrier.
       | 
       | However, I happen to learn about new solutions (new sensors,
       | actors, boards, ICs) more randomly than systematically. I tried
       | to google for databases, blogs or news outlets, but couldn't find
       | anything suited for my consumerish needs. Going through hundreds
       | of pages for similar products on online shops also didn't yield
       | any good output. Do you guys know any such source? How do you
       | keep yourself updated on interesting new products on the market?
        
         | iudqnolq wrote:
         | (total noob) I like looking at the components adadruit builds
         | in-house. For most of them they have open-sourced the
         | schematics, and you can then look up the building blocks on
         | sites like DigiKey.
        
         | HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
         | Usually if you have accounts at the major distributors(Arrow,
         | Digi-Key, Newark, etc.), you'll get occasional updates passed
         | on from some of the manufacturers whose parts they sell. But
         | those are typically not the hobbyist/consumer items you may be
         | looking for.
         | 
         | Perhaps sign up for a SparkFun account? I get a lot of OSHW and
         | new module information from them.
        
       | deepsquirrelnet wrote:
       | I've used a lot of micros as a hobbyist, and many on this list.
       | For my time and money, I like the PSOC, even though the author
       | pretty much dismisses them.
       | 
       | PSOC always seems to be what I need. I've used it to read CCDs
       | (timing is very strict, and works much better on the SOC than in
       | software). I've made capacitive soil moisture sensors using the
       | capsense. The psoc5 has good options for USB devices.
       | 
       | But I don't make things to mass produce, so $1 has no appeal to
       | me. $10 dev board is fine for me, if it does what I need it to
       | do. There's a lot to love about the PSOC, but if you ignore all
       | of the things they do that these other microcontrollers don't do,
       | it might not look great by comparison. Also they have a
       | development environment that is free and easy enough to learn
       | that it doesn't require living in datasheets.
        
       | voakbasda wrote:
       | I stopped tinkering with electronics despite being a full-time
       | embedded software engineer. I have designed small boards, but I
       | only know enough EE to get myself in trouble. I prefer working
       | with EEs that know their stuff, where our skills can compliment
       | each others'.
       | 
       | I no longer work on "hobby" projects; such things become an
       | albatross around my neck. If you deploy a hobby project in your
       | life, you must maintain it. Forever. For that time cost, I want
       | to work on a product that could go into production and pay for
       | its own maintenance.
       | 
       | Unfortunately, I cannot stand being around people anymore. I had
       | my entire life savings stolen by an ex, with the government's
       | help. When I tried to open back up and make new friends after
       | that shit show was over, I was drugged and raped by the first guy
       | that I invited into my house in over two years; he was never even
       | arrested for what he did. And after over 25 years, I stopped
       | playing music, because those "friends" all actively abandoned me
       | when I decided to start carrying a sidearm daily. Collectively,
       | these events destroyed my belief in the just rule of law and the
       | goodness of humanity.
       | 
       | Overall, the above factors make me read articles like this with a
       | mixture of excitement and possibility combined with depression
       | and hopelessness. I do not have the resources for a side project,
       | financially or emotionally. I cannot design and launch a side
       | project, even though I am fully capable and that is what I most
       | want to do.
        
         | monkmartinez wrote:
         | Wow... Please, please talk to your PCP about these events and
         | feelings. If you want help sorting through this, may I suggest;
         | https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/cognitive-beha...
        
         | oxplot wrote:
         | > If you deploy a hobby project in your life, you must maintain
         | it. Forever.
         | 
         | Perhaps your definition of hobby is different to mine, but
         | hobby projects are exactly the kind you can abandon in a
         | heartbeat. No long term customers, no guarantees, no
         | obligations. In fact, we hear about countless HW and SW
         | projects being abandoned left and right, right here on HN on
         | regular basis.
         | 
         | > For that time cost, I want to work on a product that could go
         | into production and pay for its own maintenance.
         | 
         | Hobby and high volume production aren't necessarily mutually
         | exclusive.
         | 
         | I wanted to build a custom board to use USB-C power in my
         | projects. Except the cost of a dozen boards assembled was quite
         | high. So I made a thousand or so to subsidize the cost of
         | development and production for myself. The chip I used went out
         | stock (global chip shortage related) but until it did, my
         | "hobby" project paid for itself and actually made me a small
         | profit as well.
        
         | gmassman wrote:
         | I'm sorry to hear about your loss of faith in humanity.
         | Especially hearing how you don't play music with others
         | anymore. I'm a musician and not being able to make music with
         | my friends would be a huge loss.
         | 
         | I hope you find peace and healing. People often suck, but they
         | can also be beautiful if given the chance. And you deserve that
         | chance.
        
         | randrews wrote:
         | You don't mention where you live, but that last one suggests to
         | me that you might consider moving to a different part of the
         | country: I know several people, including myself, who carry
         | sidearms. Where I live, everyone can do it, some people do do
         | it, but no one gets upset by it or cares that much.
        
         | 0_____0 wrote:
         | Sounds like you've had a series of incredibly traumatic
         | experiences. I'm sorry to hear that, and I hope that you're
         | able to find your way into friendships and relationships that
         | allow you to trust again.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | > I no longer work on "hobby" projects; such things become an
         | albatross around my neck. If you deploy a hobby project in your
         | life, you must maintain it. Forever.
         | 
         | Alternatively: If you do something yourself, you get the option
         | to be able to maintain it forever. If you buy something, the
         | vendor will probably stop caring the moment the sale completes;
         | any maintenance you want to do yourself becomes a reverse
         | engineering effort as your work into a system that you didn't
         | design.
        
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