Interest check: electronics education
◀ Prev | 2026-01-02, access: Public | Next ▶
electronics meta In 2026 I'm shifting the focus of my business away from Eurorack synthesizer modules. During 2025 I basically had the level of sales per month that I would need to have per day in order to survive. That's not sustainable and it's not something that I can fix with one new product or one new ad campaign. It's time to be in a different business.
The one thing I consistently hear from my synthesizer customers is that they value my "educational" content, such as the postings I make on my synth-related Web log and even the technical descriptions included in the manuals of my products. It's great to be doing something people like; but not so great when I can't successfully turn that appreciation into sales of my products. If I am to survive, I need to get a closer alignment between what my customers value and what they pay for.
So, one idea I'm exploring as a new direction for 2026 as I phase out sales of synthesizer modules, is making some educational videos about electronics and posting them here. To date Matthew Explains has been mostly about machine learning and AI, and it's clear there is still demand for that; but it seems at least reasonable to hope that there will be people who want to learn about electronics in a video format.
Now, it would be nice, of course, if I could work out a way to have viewers pay me a monthly fee for access to the electronics videos. But it's quite possible that it would make more sense for many, or all, of them to be available free of charge. That's not a firmly decided point and I'm willing to think of a lot of different options on how best to make this stuff available. It is a firm requirement that I need to make money somehow, because that's the point - synthesizer modules have collapsed since COVID and the trade war, and were never really enough for me to live on anyway. I can't spend time making electronics videos unless I'm going to be paid, one way or another. But there are many options here. I could give away video lectures for free if they help me sell something else.
What I don't think is up for negotiation is that if I'm going to be posting educational electronics videos, then I will be posting them here - not in a place like Patreon, YouTube, or Vimeo - and viewers will have to create an account and log in. I can't see a way that it would make any sense for me, given the other things I'm already committed to doing, to make serious electronics videos and post them on a platform I don't own, or without a login requirement.
I've found it difficult, even with the AI videos where I think this point is an easier "sell," and even for free-of-charge content, to convince potential viewers that creating an account is really something they want to do. I don't know why that is, but it's a fact that has to be faced. Many people I'd talk to who say they'd like to see something, lose interest when they find out they're going to have to log in to get it. So the question here isn't, are you willing to say you want to watch electronics videos?, but, are you willing to log in to watch electronics videos?
To help get an accurate gauge on that, you'll have to log in to write a reply on this entry. But I'm changing my usual practice by making comments visible even without a login.
So, tell me in the comments below: do you want to log in and watch electronics videos? If you do, do you have a more specific idea of what you'd like to learn about electronics in a video format?
Access level to read comments: Public
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Upon further consideration, I am interested in functional metals and how their physics interplay with/determine the resonance structures of components in analog electrical networks and eventually applications back and forth between ML and analog computing. Digital is a dead end in many regards for ML, imho, and knowing which elements of a robot brain are most valuable at a given moment might be better informed by knowing the base enhancement each offers over a dead rock.
I certainly would. A solid grounding in electronics is always something I’ve wanted.
Personally, I have little interest in electronics content and even less in precious metals content. Love the ML content though, and am trying to get caught up on the new posts as it's been a busy season.
Actually, part of the reason I'm still able to pay rent at all at this point, is that in 2025 my investments in precious and rare-earth metals did very well. I can't depend on such things happening every year, of course. But an off-the-wall idea, probably unwise, would be that maybe I could write a for-pay subscription newsletter about *that*.