Average Man is Dead, Long Live Average Maker

After 5-6 years of running this blog, I’ve decided it’s time for a change…again!

I say ‘again’ because I seem to have a habit of regularly changing my site layout, logos, colours and templates. It’s not about that this time, but it does make me wonder if I enjoy playing with websites more than I do the Raspberry Pi – which brings me on to the reason that I’m changing…

It Was All About The Pi…

It’s clear that I’m a fan of the Raspberry Pi, I always will be. However, my dedicated focus and interest in the board has deteriorated over the last couple of years.

I started out in 2012/2013 when the Pi first came out, and it was the only board I’d heard of at that time. However, as my interest in electronics grew, it was impossible not to notice other similar products.

I still own my first Raspberry Pi, the original Model B

Arduino was the other big name in the game, so naturally I spotted that straight away. A few Pi copycat boards came out too, as well as some lesser-known products such as the pcDuino. Most of these didn’t get much attention from me as they required different coding languages – and I was already struggling with Python!

That seemed to be the theme online too – people appeared to be into the Pi, the Arduino or a mix of the two. There wasn’t much talk of other products, and this was reflected in the online stores as well – everything was Pi Pi Pi.

Then it Wasn’t…

Then something happened, something changed.

Over the last couple of years people seem to have adopted a whole range of new boards, including myself. I’m sitting here with a Node MCU, Wemos, CHIP (now closed), Onion Omega, Arduino and DigiSpark next to my keyboard.

But why? When did we suddenly start accepting new hardware in such a big way? What caused it?

I have some thoughts on that – all just my opinion of course…

All the toys: There’s a lot of new faces joining the Raspberry Pi in the maker isle

1) Did we get bored?

Remember the buzz when the first Raspberry Pi was released?

I couldn’t wait to light an LED or buy one of the very few add-on boards available. Just like my marriage, it was all new, sexy and exciting at first (sorry Claire, it was just too good a comparison to make).

Now what do we have? 6 years down the line there are 3000 Raspberry Pi blogs, 9000 add-on boards, 4000 cases and everyone from every angle wanting some of the action. I’m exaggerating those numbers, but you get the message.

The problem with all this is that the ideas dry up. I’m seeing less new projects, less new ideas and less new products that offer something different.

All in all – I’m getting a little bored of the Pi (the limitations of my abilities don’t help either). It’s still got that ‘first love’ appeal, but I feel like I’ve been limiting myself to one device for too long.

I can only take so many more LED projects or add-on boards…I’ve seen them too many times now!

2) IoT Came Along

I can’t remember exactly when it was, but one day I woke up and suddenly the term IoT (Internet of Things) was being thrown around here, there and everywhere.

Everyone from my boss to my baker was talking about ‘internet connected things’. Nothing like a buzz word to push some products and sell a few books eh?!

IoT – for me – highlighted the need for small, low-power, internet connected boards that could run on batteries for a decent stretch. At the time I don’t think the Pi Zero was around, so my Model B suddenly appeared chunky, hungry and somewhat excessive with its full operating system.

Is this why people started looking at tiny boards like the ESP8266 for their projects? Was this the first distraction away from our Pis?

Could ESP8266-based boards like this Node MCU be distraction away from the Pi?

3) The Micro:bit Boom

When the Micro:bit came out, I felt an almost nervous and hostile atmosphere in the air. My social networks and personal conversations seemed to focus on how this new board from the BBC would steal a big chunk of customers away from the Raspberry Pi.

I’m still not sure if that really happened – most people I know have both, but I do wonder if it acted as yet another reminder that there are other boards out there to play with.

The Micro:bit. Not something that ever seemed to attract my attention, possibly due to the younger target audience. Image courtesy of http://microbit.org

4) Nothing New

Despite the release of the fantastic Pi Zero, and despite constantly improving and updating the Raspberry Pi without raising prices (the Pi 3 B+ is a good recent example), the key features of the boards stay mostly the same – meaning we can only really make similar projects.

It’s the iPhone thing all over again – a bit of revolution at first, but over time new versions are based around tweaks and improvements. The Pi and the iPhone maintain their huge fan-base of course, and still release nothing but excellent products, but some of us get a bit bored of the same old same old.

The original Pi Zero – an incredible board for £5. It offered a new way to play, but only to a point.

The Death of Average Man

This is where I try to link things up. You will have seen that I have changed the name, domain and logo for my site. I’ve said goodbye to Average Man Vs Raspberry Pi, and hello to Average Maker!

After 5-6 fun years, Average Man is officially dead, along with that ridiculously long URL (funeral dates TBC).

Using the wayback machine (http://archive.org/web/) is a fun way of viewing a snapshot of your website from the past. This is from 2014.

Does it change anything to my blog? No, not massively.

I’m still going to write about the Raspberry Pi, and before this change I had written about Arduino and Node MCUs etc anyway. However, with my old domain up for renewal, it was kind of good timing to make the change that I had thought about making for so long.

When my site was named and aimed at the Raspberry Pi, I felt like I had to focus on the Pi at all times. Anything else felt ‘off topic’ and ‘not what my followers would expect’. I know, it’s really silly, but there’s this weird sense of freedom now.

I like the term ‘Maker’ because it includes not just the Pi – not even just electronics boards – but everything else around it as well. Making a robot chassis from MDF – Maker. Trying your hand at wearables – Maker. 3D printing, laser cutting even tinkering in the shed – Maker!

What now?

Now it’s about time I did some writing!

Last year was very light on this blog as I had a house to renovate and a new-born baby to worry about. This year has had a bit of a ‘weird’ start, but with my blog’s new focus I’m really looking forward to sharing a wider range of tinkerage with you guys.

I’ve got a few things to sort out to update the blog and re-categorise things, but after that, it’s makin’ time!

Average Man Rich