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Welcome, Scott of the Great Scott YouTube channel!
- The channel started October of 2013. YouTube in Germany is more focused on gaming and non-electronics channels.
- Scott’s job training started in 2011. He works in the electrical power industry.
- Apprenticeship in Germany has a bunch of different names. One of them is einer ausbildung. The one that Scott did was duales studium.
- The electric longboard project was 10 – 20 hours of building/prep! The controller uses a wii numchuck and it communicates via an attiny85 (with an RF chip). The Xcarve was also used for the mechanical portion.
- German distributors
- Conrad.de has a component window, as well as other home automation type equipment.
- Scott buys most components on eBay.
- Chris asked if he had used Ragworm for boards.
- The mentioned 7 segment display project
- Scott is an expert soldering with perfboard (see the intro to each video as an example). The mapping program Lochmaster helps plan out spread it
- Audio amplifier video
- Scott’s town does not have any hackerspaces. CCC is held in Hamburg.
- Beginners are a larger portion of the audience. The recent electronics basics video goes over brushless motors. Scott things the Afrotechmods video on amps vs volts is a great start.
- Scott started with op amps and encourages users to do the same.
- The 555 timer contest was back in 2011. Analog Tom’s servo videos blew Chris away.
Many thanks to Scott for being on the show! You can follow @GreatScottLab on Twitter and support on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/GreatScott
Image via YouTube on Scott’s Patreon video
Oh dear. I agree with Scots assessment that German YouTube is a bit special. And the youth approaches YouTube mostly bi-langual anyway.
But with the rest, I find myself so much disagreeing with Scot it’s crazy. I think it might be a generational thing.
Hobby electronics is a HUGE thing in Germany. Lots of kit manufacturers and electronics magazines.
But it’s less connected and community focused. More top down.
Hackerspaces might be more of a computer hacker focused thing, which is a area Scot clearly knows very little. Saxony has multiple hacker spaces. (Which is I think where is from)
Buying parts is not so nice, because the businesses around that are often not well approachable for individuals. Farnell for example explicitly does no business with individuals. But there are tons of little online shops. (His eBay advice is sound though. If you stay under the taxable amounts)
Ah, and the educational system Chris referred to is the so called ‘dual system’ with is the standard modus of Apprenticeships. Apprentices are employed by a company but part time go to vocational school. (Similar things exist for higher schools exist too. But mostly more like a intern-ship system)
And it’s a great system, even though I have to say I learned very little when I went through it. But at least you have a national education standard and you learn something even if the company just uses you as cheap labour (illegal but not uncommon).
But despite me agreeing a lot. Good on you Scot. Keep it up.
I agree with you Tilman Baumann and I am sure it depends a lot on how you approach electronics. The CCC is big not only in germany but all over the world as far as I know but they are much more of a software hacker group maybe even one of the first ones that existed.
The have a some podcast as well, I listen to them regularly. http://chaosradio.ccc.de/
I have to agree with you Tilman. There are a lot closed comunities in Germany doing elctronic stuff. But they are not as huge as they are in the states.
I also went through the dual education system to get my bachelors degree in EE. But I diti it in Baden-Wuerttemberg. It sontrongly depends on your company and your preferences what you can get out of that program. The University tries to give you a lot of offportuinities to learn as well as some of the employers do.
I really do link the videos Scott puts out. As well as the Videos from Kondensatorschaden and TPAI. There needs to be more Content in German though. I tried a few years ago but could not keep it up with youtube. I have huge respect for all of those guys doing the work of producing videos on a weekly basis!
Yeah, the Chaos Computer Club has a long history but perhaps Scott just got started in different circles? In any case, everybody check them out at https://www.ccc.de/en/ and all the content from past congresses. It’s a treasure trove of cool work.
Another German electronics / hobbyist / tinkering YouTuber that incidentally also narrates in English is “The Post Apocalyptic Inventor”. You might get a kick out of his stuff, for example his in-depth SMPS tutorials. This part for example specifically concerns inductors and magnetic circuits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a21zh-obKWg
I haven’t watched Great Scott’s videos before but I’ll make sure to check out his inductor video now to compare their styles. 🙂
Looks like Scott is using the same “recipe” that I have used on my channel – Focus a bit more on the basics, keep videos short and sweet, emphasize the practical more than the math, etc. Although, I throw a bit more in about ham radio, etc. His channel is another that I hope to strive to emulate in terms of popularity, subs, etc.
Geez, let Scott know to not let the PCB cargo culters on YouTube to get to him. His PCB is fine. He’s got the important stuff, clock and decoupling are kept short. *Maybe*, the power/ground traces could be fatter and/or just planes, but he shows him measuring the total resistance across entire set of boards and it’s fine.
About the parts situation in Germany: Im not absolutely sure, but I think Scott is located somewhere in the eastern part of Germany, which has quite a different history (not only) in electronics.
In the former western part of Germany there was a huge electronics diy culture in the 70’s and 80’s which unfortunately died away a bit in the 90s. But a lot of those small electronic part stores survived until now. I live in a small town (population about 100000) and we’ve still got 2 small shops selling transistors and stuff. Ok, it might happen that you get an original TI 2n3444 handed out when asking for a mid-sized npn transistor (wiped away the dust of my 1960’s transistor books afterwards to get the datasheet 🙂 ) but you get all the basic stuff (breadboards, perfboards, soldering tin…).
Sadly, most of them still haven’t adapted new fresh air coming in from all that arduino/raspberry/iot stuff where business happens mostly in the internet.
But i think it’s not as bad as Scott said. We also have a Conrad store in the next town (which is, as Scott said, not so cheap when it comes to single parts. )
hey great sccot can i make a variable lab bench power supply with 555 timer and pointentmeter
then which should i use b22k 10 k or what