These are the golden Years of electronics hacking. The house diy hacker can get their hands on virtually any type of part that he or she might desire, as well as for not much money. two economic factors underlie this garden of electronic Eden that we’re living in. Economies of scale make the parts cheap: when a factory turns out the exact same MEMS accelerometer chip for numerous millions of cell phones, their configuration as well as other fixed costs are spread across all of these chips, as well as a $40 million factory ends up only costing $0.50 per system sold.
But the unsung hero of the present diy paradise is exactly how so many different parts are available, as well as from so many different suppliers, many of them on the other side of the globe. “The Internet” you say, as if that explains it. Well, that’s not wrong, however it’s deeper than that. The reason that we have so much to select from is that the marginal expense of range has fallen, as well as keeping that many niche products as well as firms have ended up being profitable where before they weren’t.
So let’s take a few minutes to sing the praises of the most important, as well as sometimes overlooked, facet of the diy economic climate over the last twenty years: the falling marginal expense of variety.
The long Tail
You may like foreign-language movies of the late 1960s, or perhaps you’re into DC-DC changing step-up power supplies. (Or, like us, both!) None of these classifications are likely to offer in addition to the newest superhero film or cell phone. The former are examples of niche products that only rate of interest a little fraction of the public, in contrast to blockbusters which have a wider appeal.
Around the turn of the century, there were video rental stores where they had physical stock of VHS cassette tapes on rows as well as rows of shelves. These stores had to pay rent, as well as you might quite quickly divide up the lease on a square foot of retail area by the footprint of some VHS cassettes on a shelf, as well as figure out exactly how much it expense a video rental store per month to keep any type of provided title in stock. one of the last, as well as largest of these video rental store chains was named, coincidentally “Blockbuster”.
Spider-Man vs Andrei Rublev
And that’s what they kept in stock: blockbusters. since the extra expense of stocking any type of video was the same, Blockbuster didn’t have to believe extremely difficult about the option between filling their shelves with Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man versus a copy of Andrei Rublev, perhaps one of the very best movies of all time. If the marginal expense of stocking one more video, to utilize the economist’s term for the expense of adding or creating an extra unit, was higher than the amount of money they expected to make on any type of provided title, it wasn’t on their shelves, even though there were more niche titles than blockbusters.
Then along came Netflix. They kept videos on CDs, without the cases, in warehouses where lease was cheap. The marginal expense of adding one more title was quite close to zero. as well as all of a sudden, I might lease all of the Tarkovsky movies since Netflix might still make money off me. now that videos are provided as data, the marginal expense is extremely close to zero, as well as you can watch the strangest things imaginable. even in extremely little quantities, when the marginal expense of range is low enough, it’s worth it for Netflix to cater to everyone.
In situation you believe this short article has totally lost its relevance to Hackaday, feel totally free to re-read the above paragraphs, however substitute Radio Shack for Blockbuster. exactly how much shelf area were they going to be able to profitably dedicate to resistors versus cell phones or batteries? keep in mind exactly how we utilized to grumble about the weak parts selection? That’s exactly how a movie nerd felt walking into Blockbuster. however if Radio Shack was Blockbuster, who is the diy electronics Netflix?
DIY.
When company types believe of the “Long Tail” disagreement above, most popularly advanced with [Chris Anderson]’s book of the exact same name, they believe about the firms that capitalize on these decreasing marginal costs of range to snap up additional business. While one title may be rented millions of times, there may likewise be millions of titles that are only going to be rented a few times. If the expense of bring a niche title was low enough, there would be millions of dollars to be made by renting out these “long tail” videos when you added them all together.
Amazon as well as Netflix were the poster kids of the mid-2000s. however eBay, Alibaba, Etsy, as well as Banggood are in the exact same boat, if not even much better exemplars. exactly how much does it expense Etsy to add one more supplier of hand-sculpted, breakfast-shaped rings? Nothing, so they add one more seller as well as m더 많은 물건을 중개로 돈을 더 많이 먹는다.
우리 Diyers는이 긴 꼬리 사업의 모든 것의 큰 수혜자입니다. 2002 년에 적절한 DC-DC 벅 컨버터를 만드는 중국에서 공장을 발견하는 데 일주일이 걸립니다. 이제 몇 번의 클릭이 필요합니다. 그 결과 새로운 휴대 전화 또는 체력 추적기 시계의 규모에 대한 차단 단지 블록버스터가 아닌 놀라운 범위는뿐만 아니라 생산자가 제공하는 것이뿐만 아니라 제공되는 의미가 있음을 알 수 있습니다. 수량 하나. 이는 수량 중 하나에서 그들을 구입할 수 있음을 의미합니다. 감사합니다 eBay, Alibaba, 또는 뭐든간에.
원래 [허스키], 공공 도메인드에는 틈새 안에 틈새가 있습니다. DC-DC 컨버터는 Arduino와 마찬가지로 대량 생산 된 항목입니다. 가장 가까운 것은 우리 비트 세계에서 블록버스터에 가장 가까운 것입니다. 그것은 eBay 또는 Tindie (우리의 대단한, 공급 틀, 2 년 전에 구입 한 우리의 대단한 공급 프레임)과 같은 범위의 한계 비용을 활용하거나 여분의 판매자를 등록하거나 일회성 위젯을 경매하는 것과 같은 사업을 멈추지 않습니다. …에 그뿐만 아니라 자기 회전 인코더 또는 거의 모든 것에 대한 브레이크 아웃 보드를 얻을 수 있음을 의미합니다. 디자이너의 손에 의해 조립됩니다.
확실히, 맨손으로 회전 인코더를 저렴하게 만드는 대량 생산입니다. 그러나 우리가 마찬가지로 우리가 부품에 손을 떼지 않으면 집 해커에 어떤 것을 의미하지는 않습니다. 그것은 틈새 기업에 대한 이익을 얻는 것뿐만 아니라 우리에게 접근 할 수있는 이익을 얻는 것이뿐만 아니라 우리에게 접근 할 수있는 이득을 얻는 것이뿐만 아니라 처음으로 제품을 제공하는 제품을 제공합니다. 우리 가이 변화로부터이기는 것뿐만 아니라, 괴짜 브레이크 아웃 보드의 해커 소비자뿐만 아니라 소규모 사업을 시작할 수있는 해커 기업가가 될 수 있습니다.
규모의 경제 – 이전의 것보다 훨씬 적은 비용이 들지 않는 똑같은 것의 추가 시스템은 ESP8266 모듈의 낮은 저렴한 비용으로 책임을 져야합니다. 그러나 interwebs에서 사용할 수있는 추가 제품을 나열하는 사업을 수행하는 데 필요한 비용이 감소하는 것은 우리를 다양하게 얻을 수 있습니다. 미래를 바라 보면서, 저축을 계속하는 것 이외의 범위의 한계 비용을 볼 수는 없습니다. 이것들은 영광스러운 시간입니다!