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The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast — Natural Sciences
The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

A weekly podcast about the electronics industry. Occasional guests. Lots of laughs.

Copyright: Copyright © The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast 2020

Latest Episodes:

#706 – Leading Edge Analog with Joren Vaes Oct 18, 2025

Welcome Joren Vaes, design engineer at SOFICS

Simulation is critical when designing analog devices based on a PDK from the fab

Parasitics are significant, especially with new nodes having upwards of 16 metal layers

Chris complained about a class where the professor made them draw planar structures with graph paper with colored pencils

Large fabs on leading edge nodes have 1800 page textbook of rules

Because the constraints get tighter, that book gets longer for each node

2 nm mass production on finfet currently with TSMC

22 was the last classic cmos

Finfet, looks like a devil

‘gate all around’ / nanosheet

CFET (complementary field effect transistor) is next

Joren really gets Maxwells Equations…as you have to at super high speeds

SOFICS are making phy’s / IP blocks

Amplifiers that are DC to 50 GHz

Making a datasheet for the resulting IP block

Joren got his PhD working on millimeter wave applications

It’s all just physics

Using coils to impedance match between layers

Reflecting off of different materials at angles is Snells law (not lorentz equation) and that extends to different materials at different wavelengths

Cables are very lossy at 100 GHz…dBs per cm

Parasitics impact every part of the design process

Wireline community – name for the high speed interfaces, including research in the space

Most transistor threshhold voltages that Joren works with are … 750 mV!

Voltage dependent drc rules

Electromigration – holes in wires from electrons

ESD is a big part of the business, and a large source of parasitics

New product development for IP blocks

Working with customers and Foundry at the 2 nm node

Design companies need to be paying 100s of thousands to software providers

After, it goes to spice and schedmatic

Joren decides whether to jump in on layout

LVS – layout vs schematic

Parasitic extraction (spice netlist)

PDKs define how you can do the layout stage

Lower cost tools exist but more expensive tools have tooling that tells you when you’re violating DRC

3 main vendors

Cadence

Synopsis

Siemens (Caliber)

Foundries soemtimes only support one tool

Doing test wafers allows testing of structures. They often get MPW at a discount from the fab (since they’re often testing new processes as well)

How do they test with packaging options?

‘low speed’ can be die bonded or pcb mounted

high speed does on wafer probing (with veeeery expensive probes)

Check out Sofics.com for more info on the company. They also have a blog with a great name.

Follow or connect with Joren on LinkedIn

#705 – Psst…Hey buddy, wanna buy an Octopus? Oct 09, 2025

Contextual Electronics is “still a thing”.

Sydney hosted the International Astronautical Congress (IAC). The IAC is the “big space event of the year,” held annually in a different city.

Chris noted that US space funding seems low, leading some friends to move from NASA to private industry.

Dave recorded two walkaround videos: a 30-minute bird’s eye view using a GoPro on a pole and a physical hour-long walkaround.

Large companies had private stands, while smaller, two-man companies had sub-booths within their country’s larger rented stand (e.g., South Africa, Germany, Poland).

Niche companies included those selling “space connectors,” described as regular connectors sold at potentially 10 times the price to space customers.

Australia had a large presence, with stands for the country and individual states (Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania) hosting local niche space gear firms.

Dave toured a new, completely mobile Mission Control facility built into a semi-trailer van. This unit is designed as a generic platform with screens, server racks, and redundant power, allowing any space company to install their own servers and operate anywhere in Australia.

An Australian company specialized in “Space lube” (lubricants for satellites and actuators), necessary because water-based lubricants would boil off or freeze up and cause gear to seize.

Chris has a new “quasi obsession” with the old technology of DIN rail. He is using 3D printers to mount development boards onto DIN rail to organize his desk.

DIN rail is common in Australia and Europe for electrical switchboards and automation equipment (PLCs, power supplies).

Dave sent a photo of “Fish Pointer’s” organized desk, which Chris identified as using “Gridfinity,” an ad hoc, modular standard popular in the 3D printing community, often associated with Zack Friedman of Voidstar Labs.

Dave runs a Creality K1 3D printer that is networked, allowing him to control and print remotely.

Chris purchased a filament dryer for only $42 to combat the issue of filament going brittle due to moisture.

Dave recounted his attempt to sort 330 tins of salvaged parts (feet, spacers, grommets) from vintage test gear.

The space industry is currently “so hot” due to private funding, unlike the “dead” industry 10 to 15 years ago.

It is now easy to book a payload slot on a launch vehicle like SpaceX. Dave said that Firefly was actually “begging” people to put payloads on its Moonlander to help fund the mission, though that’s source unknown. It was supported by CPLS as part of NASA.

The Commodore Corporation recently changed hands, and a consortium of enthusiasts released a new Commodore 64 Ultimate, featuring a transparent keyboard PCB signed by original designers, including Jerry Ellsworth. The appeal is nostalgia, as modern chips far outperform the 6510 CPU it uses.

Chris bought a split, ergonomic Corne V4 keyboard (RP2040 chip) from AliExpress for $68. The key feature is working with Vial, a pleasant web serial-based app for reconfiguring key mappings. Dave stated he hates split keyboards and rechargeable keyboards that only last a week.

Dave is installing 75 kWh of beefy outdoor battery packs (800-900 kg total) received “free” due to a government subsidy.

He poured a new, completely reinforced concrete slab rated for over 1,500 kg to support the batteries on a flat surface, using pre-welded mesh instead of tying rebar.

The new system includes an 8 kW inverter. Dave intends to install a changeover switch to run the house off the batteries if the power grid fails. Dave noted he mainly wants the “warm fuzzy” feeling of running his entire house on solar and batteries.

#704 – Applied Embedded Electronics with Jerry Twomey Oct 03, 2025

Welcome Jerry Twomey (Effective Electrons) author of the book, Applied Embedded Electronics: Design Essentials for Robust Systems. Chris first heard Jerry on Embedded.fm last year.

Jerry’s Background and Book Motivation: Jerry shares his quick history, moving from the Boston area to San Jose (Silicon Valley) and eventually to San Diego, where he has worked across diverse sectors including consumer electronics, aerospace, defense projects, DARPA research, and medical electronics. His book focuses on how to develop robust systems, providing guidance that is timeless rather than applications manuals that quickly become outdated.

The Analog Problem: Although modern systems may be digital end-to-end, Jerry emphasizes that the predominant causes of failure and design difficulties are often analog in nature. Academic study often teaches ideal signals but neglects real-world issues like inductance, noise, and cross-coupling.

Consulting Experience & Troubleshooting: Jerry discusses being called in to fix systems that failed strenuous regulatory testing for medical devices, where reliability is first and foremost (similar to an aerospace way of thinking). Failures often stemmed from basic issues like a lack of ESD protection, absence of error correction in data streams, insufficient detection of errors, and common mode noise rejection problems.

High-Speed Data and Signal Integrity: At high data rates, communication becomes a “communications channel problem,” not truly a digital one. When bits are underneath a tenth of a nanosecond, the communication turns into multiple standing wave transitions. The two primary limits on performance are rise and fall times and distance traveled.

Real-World Applications: Jerry has worked extensively on medical devices, including early-generation Dexcom glucose monitoring systems (two on-body monitors and a hospital insulin pump/monitor), and a wearable EEG monitor. He also worked on a system that required packing five video cameras into an endoscope distal head, measuring 11 mm in diameter and 13 mm long.

Architecting Systems and Identifying Bottlenecks: When starting a new project, Jerry suggests defining needs and interfaces and looking at the system as a black box. Engineering time should focus on the bottleneck—the hardest part of the system. For medical implantables, this might be minimizing power consumption down to virtually nothing, which could take up 90% of the effort.

Power System Design: Jerry advises purchasing commercial AC-to-DC converters due to competitive pricing. He notes that switching supplies (buck converters) commonly introduce noise that can lead to EMI failures or corrupt sensitive analog front ends. A classic case of “digital thinking in an analog scenario” is when a sensitive analog front end is powered by a noisy switching converter.

Working with Embedded Teams: Jerry prefers guiding embedded teams toward “self-discovery,” using bench time and empirical measurement (such as comparing grounds on a scope) to demonstrate non-ideal connections and grounding issues. He advises against the “seagull manager” approach.

Grounding Best Practices: For integrated circuits (chips), designs must be fully differential because securing a good hard ground reference is impossible. On singular circuit boards, a common uncut ground plane (dedicated ground plane, often multiple layers stitched together with vias) is the recommended approach. Cutting the ground plane is discouraged as it can create a slot antenna, increasing the signal radiating from the board by about 7 dB. Jerry has published rules on grounding.

Engineering Intuition vs. LLMs: Jerry notes that intuition is gathered through painful learning experiences and guidance from experienced designers. He expresses concern over the reliance on LLMs (Language Learning Models), which, while improving, can confidently provide incorrect answers, especially regarding complex topics like signal grounding.

Limits to Moore’s Law: CMOS scaling is approaching physical limits, likely unable to go below 10 or 11 nanometers. Modern performance gains are achieved through more parallel processing, not significantly faster clock rates, which have plateaued around 5 GHz due to parasitics and timing limitations. Jerry’s article discusses this topic.

RISC Architectures: The industry benefits from migrating to RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architectures (like ARM) because they eliminate useless architecture and transistors associated with complex instruction sets (like x86).

Find Jerry on Effective Electrons and on LinkedIn

#703 – Building wafer.space with Tim Ansell Sep 25, 2025

Welcome back Tim Ansell!

Tim’s past appearances and previous work

Discussing Tomu on 375

Discussing Fomu on 456.3

Discussing the open source PDK on 501

Tim’s previous work at Google involved releasing a manufacturable open-source PDK (Process Development Kit), which contains the fundamental information needed to create integrated circuits.

Key open-source tools discussed include OpenROAD (a backend compiler for IC design) and Open Lane (an end-to-end suite turning chip descriptions (RTL) into manufacturing data (GDS)). Andreas had been on the show talking about his work on OpenROAD. Not discussed on the show but after Efabless went away, Open Lane has been replaced with LibreLane.

Efabless, a VC-backed startup, shut down in early 2025 due to investor disagreements. Efabless previously provided pooled manufacturing access (similar to OSH Park for PCBs) using the SKY130 process from Skywater in Minnesota.

A Skywater run costs $200k–$300k, which Efabless divided by 40 to reach roughly a $10k price point per slot.

Tiny Tapeout

Matt Venn’s Tiny Tapeout program further subdivides the manufacturing costs, making it the cheapest way to create custom silicon, typically costing around $300 per design.

Tiny Tapeout lowers the barrier to entry, allowing people to “just try it and see if you like it,” similar to writing a “hello world” program.

The program has already processed almost 3,000 projects, demonstrating high community demand when costs are low.

Despite limitations, advanced projects are possible: a developer taped out a Linux capable SOC using open-source tools and the Tiny Tapeout space.

Introducing Wafer Space

Tim started Wafer Space, based in Singapore, to provide community access to open-source manufacturing after Efabless ceased operations.

Wafer Space focuses on the GF180MCU PDK (Global Foundries 180 nm process), which is a much cheaper technology manufactured in Singapore.

The core offering is a low-volume production run: $7,000 USD gets you 1,000 chips back. This volume is enough for prototyping and shipping a small product (e.g., 500 units).

The design envelope area is 3.8 x 5 mm (20 mm squared) using the 180 nm process.

Interested parties should sign up via the Crowd Supply page. The deadline for purchase is the November 28th and submissions are due by December 3rd, with delivery by March 15th.

Manufacturing & Packaging

By default, customers receive bare silicon die

Tim is working with PCB manufacturers (like JLC PCB, PCB Way, Seed Studio) to offer Chip on Board (COB) wire bonding assembly onto custom PCBs (think black epoxy blob on a PCB)

COB packaging is significantly cheaper (sub-$2) than standard packaging houses (which often charge around $7 per chip).

This approach also provides faster iteration speed, as PCB manufacturers offer quick turnaround times (sometimes 3 days) compared to typical packaging houses (3 months)

Getting Started & Resources

If you are new to chip design, starting with Tiny Tapeout’s click and drag tools is highly recommended. Matt Venn previously talked/sang about Siliwiz

More advanced tools include Verilog and VHDL (coding style) or KLayout and Magic (drawing shapes, similar to PCB design).

To follow the project or seek help, join the Wafer Space Discord

New services offering open-source silicon manufacturing include IHP (Europe/130 nm) and Chip Foundry (US/Skywater), increasing ecosystem resiliency.

Website: Wafer.space

Sign up on the CrowdSupply campaign

#702 – Test Point Accupuncture Sep 15, 2025

Dave bought a lemon laptop

Chris officially has solar that is installed, working, and is effectively an appliance at this point…

Duke Energy and North Carolina nuclear mix

The impact of batteries on the grid

The Duck Curve is something Chris and Ari discussed on ep650

Open circuit voltage on panels

Dave did a repair on a tennis ball machine

Chris designed a board with test points too small

Accupuncture jbc

High cost vs low cost rework tweezers

Nanofix YouTube Channel

Tested

Ugly multimeter review

#701 – Electric Propulsion with Todd Bailey Aug 22, 2025

Welcome back Todd Bailey of Starlight Engines, now Muon Space! (11 years later)

Todd was on Episode 194 of The Amp Hour, when he was consulting in the art and design space and building instruments like Where the Party At (WTPA). He was designing ‘robot doors’ for Calvin Klein’s house, discussed last time.

Through Andy Reitano, Todd learned about a role at Lockheed Martin (a US defence company) working on sonar for submarines.

“What a good job is”

Fun

Lucrative

Skills / teach you

Todd, Andy, and other Lockheed Martin friends worked on the VEC9 discussed in ep194

Clearance was required to work on sonar

Military electronics had some differences from his past work, but Todd was interestingly complementary of requirements driven design / waterfall

Chris and Todd were hanging out in a bar before he moved over to working on space and Todd mentioned he wanted to be Zefram Cochrane and do interesting things that matter (in space).

Star Trek First Contact (gah, I said generations)

Past guest Shawn Meehan talked to Todd and that’s how he started working at the “stealth space startup” at the time

Astra

HBO (not Netflix) special called Wild Wild Space

Other past guests of the show who were at Astra include Charles Aylward and Jeri Ellsworth

Silicon Valley Startup

“When the heavens went on sale” (book)

Commercial space by SpaceX

Rocket Lab was second

“Fail on stage”

Booster state of that rocket motor control

Electric turbo pump

Delphin engine

Cryogenic / feedback was hard

Alameda indoor test facility

Meant to fit in shipping container (8×8.5×40 ft)

System design and market requirements (launches don’t want small rockets)

Working remote

No place like home Jim Williams essay

Leaving Astra

Staying in the trenches

Rocket Lab

3rd stage “Kick stage, now known as “Photon“

Things you can work on in space

Radios

Sensors

Power

Electric propulsion (EP)

Apollo fusion – Alex Zannos (Contemporary) and Mike Cassidy (CEO)

After working on fusion didn’t have legs, they switched to working on Hall effect thrusters

“Low earth orbit is 50% of the way to anywhere in the solar system”

Rocket equation

Stage fires then falls off

Kick stage is 3rd stage

Accelerating an ion beam

Delta V book

Rocket efficiency

“Seconds of ISP” How much mass do you use to go distance

Asteroid mining

Who buys EP?

SpaceX built their own Argon thruster

Torque rods / reaction wheels

Apollo successfully pivoted

Acquired by Astra space / finished the apollo constellation engine

In 2022, Todd and his cofounder Mark Hopkins started Starlight Engines after some initial proof points and then fundraising

Had opinions about EP

Goebels and Katz textbooks about EP

Busek electric propulsion is a family business that has tried all kinds of EP. Run by Vlad Ruby & son Pete.

Starlight is based on solid Zinc propellant

Traditionally it’s Xenon

“The honda civic of hall effect sensor systems”

The atomic mass of Zinc is light

“Lickable EP”

Discharge converter runs the ion beam

Custom magnetics

300W – 800W

28V spacecraft bus

“Plume divergence”

Need to go from solid to gas

Cathode is a thermionic emitter “Like a tube amp”, it emits to boil off electrons

Zinc gets caught in electron cloud, knocks an electron off to make ions, ejected from a positively charged plate nearby.

Novel propellent is a differentiator

Starlight had a scrappy factor, like they built their own vacuum chamber (for 15K!)

The device is not known to be operational in space yet (they sell it but don’t operate it, so it’d be tough to know)

“Give the first one away”

Have sold 4 propulsion systems

Muon space needed a propulsion system and instead decided to buy the company. They weren’t put off by “two guys in a garage and contractors”.

Muon builds things like fire detection satellites

For more info about their past work and see pictures of the plumes, check out Starlightengines.com

To see the new things they’ll be working on, check out Muon space

#700 – Beware of the Overachievers Aug 07, 2025

Dave is starting a new project for a lab timer called the uTimer

Timelapse

Geerling videos about clocks

Mitxela clock

Transflective displays

Dave is looking at LCDs like this one

Dropping Rs vs Ls

Font chip

.5mm pin pitch on the connectors

Chris is making a new breakout board that is effectively a sensors shield for a Bluetooth chip. It’s the first time he’s using the service and it was a pleasant completely hands-off experience.

Mike Harrison USB C barrel jack

JLC DFM plugin for KiCad

Python script to pull EasyEDA parts into KiCad

Chris is designing around this $3 board with an nRF52840A

de minimus tariff exemptions are gone in the us

North Korea is putting forward software engineering candidates that are actually teams of workers

Mini PC production at BeeLink

Stephen Hawes on The Amp Hour

Stephen documented the process of getting the Opulo v4 through certification

Chris has solar install issues

Dave is dealing with removing downpipes

Dave is getting battery extension 50 kWh

#699 – CircuitHub, 12 Years Later with Andrew Seddon Aug 01, 2025

Welcome Back, Andrew Seddon! Founder and CEO of CircuitHub.

Andrew was first on episode 131 of The Amp Hour

CircuitHub has a partnership with Worthington Assembly

Worthington and CircuitHub host the Pick Place Podcast

Mimicing silicon manufacturing

Common parts library

Setting the factory up to have only 50k SKUs in house for speed of loading / attrition

Driving people to 2000 parts was the original intent, but didn’t hit the mark

Level of production needs to be high

Many parts need to work in conjunction

Reflow

PnP

Throughhole

Selective soldering

Inspection

Need to solve for the whole setup. Making smt 10x better doesn’t make overall 10x better

Starlink manufcaturing localy

PCB fabs in the US, 50 left, getting rolled up under Private Equity (as are things like machine shops)

AI with VCs

How it impacts the electronics industries

KiCad

More AI stuff

Automation on checking

Still humans involved

PDKs for chip companies

File checking / JLC

Types of customers

10 largest companies on the planets

It’s individuals who order and try it out, that often becomes a repeat business thing

Customers / types of boards / size of orders

More startups who also want production

Future serving lower cost areas

Proto service 2-4 layer black soldermask (unlisted)

See the CircuitHub capabilities

Going high volume

People making weekly or monthly units and spreading it out

Spinning up custom in-house high volume

Flattenting the price curve

Tariffs

New customers approaching them because of it

Can consumer be done in the US?

#698 – Hardware Security with Matt Brown Jul 17, 2025

Welcome Matt Brown of Brown Fine Security!

Matt has been reverse engineering a “smart” smoker controller that talks back to AWS IOT

Jeff Geerling talking about his dishwasher

Storing private keys on the device??

Threat models

Key rotation

What is the best case scenario for an IoT device?

Secure boot / trust zone

Keys encrypt flash storage

Chris has designed in the ATECC608 before

Replacing Certificate Authority (CA) cert in grill firmware

Matt has a Linux hardware / reverse engineering background

Flash is always external

Ghidra / idapro / binwalk

Security cameras are 99% linux based (battery based cameras might be embedded)

Best practices

Encrypted firmware

hidden uart / jtag

Keys

Are linux devices “worth more” to a security researcher?

CVSS risk scoring system

Attack vector

Vulnerabilities are better if it can be a remote executed

Linux devices have more compute

Bluetoothe LE

Ability to enumerate

Scale reverse engineering

Chris has discussed the silliness of a bluetooth toothbrush on the show before

Tools / Software of the trade

xgeku firmware reader

picoemp

PCBite

Saleae

SDR USRP B200

Universal radio hacker

Stick-to-it-ness

Matt just came back from hardwear.io, one of his new favorite conferences

Find Matt at the embedded systems village at DEF CON

Follow Matt via his YouTube channel

Matt has a new IoT Security newsletter starting up

#697 – LEDs Everywhere with Tim from Mitxela Jul 08, 2025

Welcome Tim from Mitxela!

Introduced by Mike Harrison, past guest of the show

Fluid pendant

Volumetric display

London hackspace

https://matthias-research.github.io/pages/tenMinutePhysics/index.html

FLIP in Blender

CHNT36ta Pick and place doing 0201

Precision Clock

Sewing machine (check out that GIF!)

Secret life of machines – Tim Hunkin

Isaac Singer

Tim has many Lathe projects on the hardware projects page

Flag Steam Engine

Learn how to machine from MrPete222’s YouTube channel

Schlock Mercenary (Comic)

Sprite tm on The Amp Hour

Gameboy advance link cable

Writing a gameboy emulator

Emulators got him into electronics

No$ (“nocash”) emulator

AVR instruction set

MIDI

CNLohr on The Amp Hour

https://mitxela.com/projects/slide2

Forcing

brainfuck (language)

quop

movfuscator

Puzzles

Spacechem (Game)

Zach Barth of Zachtronics on The Amp Hour

babaisu

LED errings

watchdog timer allows ridiculously low power

1 way loader

autobauding

Find all of Tim’s projects on mitxela.com

Watch the latest videos on the mitxela youtube

#696 – It Works With Option Number 5 Jun 19, 2025

Dave found a wrist mounted DMM that looks…inadvisable

We’ll discuss the survey results next time!

Florin Cocos of VoltLog

Great Scott

Sam Aldaher on the show last week

Gerald Undone did a studio tour with Captain Disillusionment

Short videos

Dave using a go-pro on a bike

Separate gyro file to stabilize

D-y hybrid inverter

Chart

Remote shell

Cline

Chris is finally getting solar

open energy monitor

Emporia vue

Sense

We talked with Joe Bamberg when he worked there

Driving back from canberra

Ben Krasnow makin’ magnets!

Bluetooth videos

#695 – Making The Invisible, Visible with Sam Aldhaher Jun 04, 2025

Welcome Sam Aldhaher, power engineer and 3D graphic artist!

Sam has always been interested in art…and power engineering

He primarily works in Blender and has been for 5-6 years

Inputs and outputs

Starting from Altium / KiCad for eCAD

Blender doesn’t accept step files, it works with meshes like STL

KiCad -> Blender is a good flow, as there are add-ons to import KiCad

Making a good visulalization is all about lighting, materials

Building library of models

Modeling magnetic fields

Research in wireless power

openEMS vtk format

The marjority of tooling is glued together with python

ElectroMag Nodes – Sam‘s tool – $1

Right hand rule

Developing intuition

Elmer finite element solver

Past guest Katerina Galitskaya also visualized RF and talked about the differences of testingi n a chamber vs building a visualization

FastHenry is inductance tool that was created in 80s at MIT for wirebonds. Didn’t have a visualization front end, like SPICE

3D whiteboard

Using Blender to prototype and then taking it to other tools (CST, Ansys)

Validating on the bench with an impedance analyzer

Simulating power loss is difficult

Quality factor

“CAD is too perfect”

Adding surface imperfections

Node system is similar to simulink, adding blocks (Chris also thought this sounded like the effects in Davinci Resolve)

Lighting

Making the background dark means you don’t need to have far field details

Tutorials

Blender Guru – how to make a donut

Sam’s video about how to draw components on a PCB in Blender

Doing the same with Geometry nodes in Blender

Ability to create things procedurally

How to create ICs in Blender

Using LLMs for python glue code

What is a shader?

HardOps tool, simplifies workflow (shuffle button)

Visualizing an Inverted F antenna in Blender

Remembering that videos are just still frames in order

Electric fields propagating on the antenna itself

Radiated electric fields (red and blue and black)

OpenEMS generates GBs of data

Blender geomtry goes out to OpenEMS so it’s geometrically linked

What if it was a ceramic antenna instead of a metal inverted F?

Simulating 60 GHz from a radar chipset

Meshing – sample points in space

simulating points in time

Impacts of stubs / squares on microwaves

Human Hand Interaction with 60GHz Electromagnetic waves

SAR simulations – how much heat do you generate

Simulating motor windings on a PCB

The above was a collaboration with past guest Carl Bugeja

When to switch from near field (electro) vs far field (openEMS)

Calculating values with inductance calculator

FastHenry tool on Github

Sam’s work on artstation

ZS smart watch

Fast track if listeners want to get better at this art

Learn blender – donut

KiCad -> Blender reference

Play with geometries nodes (ElectroMag Nodes, Fast Henry)

Find Sam on social

LinkedIn

Twitter/X

YouTube

Instagram

EEVblog forum

#694 – Voltage, Vibes, and VOCs May 22, 2025

We are doing a 2025 listener survey! Answer the survey and put in your email to win one of three Jumperless OG units donated by Kevin Cappuccio (past guest of the show). Last day to input is June 1st.

This episode was recorded Monday the 12th, which has implications on discussions.

Dave recently returned from Melbourne for Dave’s recent visit to Electronex.

Dave saw past guest Scott Williams there (he has been interviewed by both Dave and Chris). Scott’s company Xentronics is also a Golioth partner

They discussed service providers in the electronics industry at including turnkey solutions (concept to production and marketing) versus services only (firmware, PCB layout, CAD).

The choice of show for a service provider might depend on the customer vertical (e.g., medical expo for medical device design).

Farmers are described as rough clients due to being cost-constrained, needing durable solutions for harsh environments, and being unforgiving of downtime.

The Australian Manufacturing Week was unexpectedly enormous, dwarfing the electronics show in scale and attendance, with lines up to 40 minutes long just to get in.

The manufacturing show featured “Heavy Metal” manufacturing, like laser cutters, sheet metal benders, and giant machines cutting thick steel, which Dave found more exciting than the electronics demos.

They discussed the scale of manufacturing equipment, comparing it to shows like IMTS in Chicago with multi-story machining centers and machines weighing hundreds of tons.

Australia manufactures things like steel, large steel structures (bridges), and large custom parts like excavator scoops.

Dave is conducting environmental air quality tests in his office, measuring formaldehyde, CO2, and other factors. He has to run his air conditioning for one of the test conditions.

The environmental monitor measures temperature, pressure, humidity, VOCs, noise, carbon dioxide, formaldehyde, PM2.5 particulate matter, and radiation. The radiation sensor uses a tube requiring 381 volts.

XKCD graphic showing relative radiation

Dave observes large formaldehyde spikes every time he opens his door, which go down within about 10 minutes. His CO2 levels are typically 800-900 ppm.

The AC unit cycling is visible in the humidity measurements.

Chris asks about the availability of affordable VOC sensors now. Dave believes his monitor uses a common sensor like the BME680.

Chris explains that the availability of affordable VOC sensors is linked to FEMA trailers after Hurricane Katrina, where high formaldehyde levels caused illness, leading to regulations and subsequently more affordable sensors. Modern VOC sensors often measure gas resistivity in ohms.

Some PM2.5 sensors use a fan and a laser to detect particles.

Dave saw small desktop lathes at the manufacturing show and was tempted to buy one for $800.

Chris explains the difference between a mill and a lathe. Potential uses for a lathe are discussed, including making knobs.

Chris advises against buying a personal machining tool like a lathe or mill unless you need parts immediately, suggesting using online services instead, as getting $800 of value from occasional use is difficult.

Dave jokingly suggests a lathe might be useful for “zombie apocalypse manufacturing”, or more darkly, for making gun barrels.

Chris mentions his past experience with a mill, which he traded for a 3D printer kit. He now prefers “it just works” solutions.

They discuss receiving free 3D resin printers and the difficulty of finding uses for them unless you are already skilled in 3D modeling.

Discussion shifts to the recent drop in tariffs between China and the US. Dave believes this will lead to lots of manufacturing coming back to the US, citing announcements from car companies and others (but providing no sources). Chris found this CBS article after the fact, but it’s light on details.

NPR covered how tariffs are impacting Digikey and Thief River Falls

Chris is skeptical that the tariff drops or initiatives like the CHIPS Act will cause significant, long-term shifts in the global supply chain, especially for components like capacitors or packaged semiconductors.

The complexities of building fabs and the long lead times are mentioned in relation to the CHIPS Act.

Chris recommends a YouTube channel about shipping and logistics and mentions MarineTraffic.com for tracking live global shipping data.

Dave mentions issues with Bluetooth data dropouts and incorrect values on a new Brymen BM787 multimeter.

Dave recently made a video about Test Controller, a free Java-based program that automates hundreds of test instruments (multimeters, power supplies, loads) via serial interfaces. It allows scripting and custom driver creation.

Dave considers using Test Controller and multiple instruments with his microscope PC for overlaying data on video.

Chris introduces the concept of “vibe coding,” which means letting AI do the coding. You act as a product manager providing requirements and feedback.

Dave has used AI for coding before and is interested in using it for his next project due to infrequent coding leading to needing to relearn tools. He suggests using it for a simple timer project, especially for annoying tasks like generating fonts.

Chris is using AI for a location-sharing web app prototype for a meetup. He describes the experience of watching the AI modify files and interact with tools as “trippy”. He uses “Claude credits” for this.

They discuss AI as a new tool. Chris expresses concern about how students learning to code today will develop troubleshooting skills if AI does much of the basic work.

Dave received a new piece of high-end test equipment: a Microtest Impedance Analyzer (model 6632). This is distinct from an LCR meter and can measure the entire frequency impedance sweep up to 10 MHz (for the model received).

The impedance analyzer can be used to characterize components like PCB inductors, assess bypass capacitor performance on boards, or measure materials like piezoelectric substrates. It can also show admittance circles and DC bias characteristics.

Chris mentioned that past guest Carl Bugeja would benefit from a tool like the impedance analyzer

Dave notes the impedance analyzer is very specific and requires special fixturing. It supports open, short, and load compensation.

Dave also recently received a heavy GW Instek AC power source, which can be used for power line simulation (adding spikes, dropouts, etc.) to test products.

Trying out generating show notes using NotebookLM from Google. We’d love your feedback in the comments.

#693 – Small Scale Electronics Manufacturing with Colin O’Flynn May 13, 2025

Welcome back Dr Colin O’Flynn of Dalhousie University and New AE tech!

Colin has been on the show twice before

Episode 239 in 2015

Episode 552 in 2021

Colin continues to publish/do research around side channel attacks

Now he’s targeting different ports / Jitter measurements

JTAGulator

RF Mixer

Side channel with power

Can you fix it on a chip?

Targeting an SD Card port because there’s a clock

Other clocked things like displays / RF

State of hardware security

RPi episode (RP2350)

OpenTitan

Root of Trust

Episode with Laura Abbott from Oxide

Open vs closed about security

Guidelines for what to care about like in the ARM PSA

UK gov’t

Lowrisc Sonata System

CHERI / CHERIot

Secure / non-secure

Artix 7 FPGA

Mouser bonded area

Pick and place experiments

Charm High / Neoden

Failing on fast turn

Person running production

Recovering from Covid shortages

Airtag teardown

ESP32 HCI supposed vulnerability (and response)

Colin is writing a book about small scale production

Sign up to learn more about the book when its available!

Students “Kids these days”

ChatGPT in the classroom

Check out Colin’s blog for more info!

#692 – Like a steam engine in your house Apr 15, 2025

We are doing a 2025 listener survey! Answer the survey and put in your email to win one of three Jumperless OG units donated by Kevin Cappuccio (past guest of the show) Note: this was corrected from the original, these are not v5 units, they are the original Jumperless units. Apologies for the confusion ~CG

Chris signed on to get solar installed

He’ll be taking advantage of Duke Energy’s PowerPair, a program to get a bulk amount for the battery and ongoing payments to act as a virtual power plant.

Telsa Powerwall 3 Teardown

Australian politicians are proposing money for batteries for everyone in Australia

Peter Walkinson batteries

CATL batteries

Back powering off a Chevy Bolt

AC battery power

Peaker plant

Check out the rates for peak power in New South Wales (high!)

Base load

Chris is working on a new series for tiny hardware

nRF52840

With careful planning, it’s possible to get a “0.4 mm pitch” (found out it’s actually 0.35 mm!) onto the JLC 6 layer process because they now allow via in pad.

Jumperless v5 episode (though as a reminder, we’re giving away the OG versions, not the v5)

Dave review of Jumperless (mailbag video)

We are doing a 2025 listener survey and added some new questions

Slow trigger

R&S version

Laminated cheat sheet

Jeff Geerling Bosch video

The Tariffs in the US are an absolute mess. Since recording they have been downgraded, but they are definitely still going to have some outsized influece on the electronics world.

Chris thinks that it makes more sense to race to the bottom of available parts (like the new $0.10 CH572 with Bluetooth), pay the tariff, and put in more time and effort on the software. Not that Chris is the intended audience, but also that it’s not going to have the effect that is

Ghostbusters song

#691 – System Designer Lets You Try Every Part with Michael Gielda Mar 24, 2025

Welcome back (for a third time!) Michael Gielda of Antmicro

Michael and Chris usually see each other around the Zephyr booth at Embedded World, but not this year

Antmicro continues to work on Zephyr, which targets hardware using Devicetree

Renode

Mult-node

testing code

aethero

Data center in space

Cosmic shielding corporation

Tying the simulation to reality

How do you know an actuation has happened

RESD – Renode sensor data format

Drone data example

Finding and testing the variety of use cases

Borderline criteria

Fuzzing

Kenning AutoML

Anomaly detection on an MCU with Kenning

Co-op example

Adding

System designer

Environment al board

Aerocore2 STM

Camera

Checking on the pin / assignment problem

Supporting vendors that have good support / open source

ADI plugins for Zephyr

Root of Trust Caliptra

Interested in Antmicro services and products? Check out offering.antmicro.com

#690 – Clap on, clap off, lights flicker Mar 12, 2025

Meetup.com doubled their prices so the 3H Triangle group moved to Luma (same is true for SF, Seattle)

Note taking apps after Evernote was gutted: Joplin, Obsidian

Battery leakage in a DMM

Causes of leak

The PCB of a Tonie box with an SD card glued in place. Board has an ESP32-S3. (Product page)

Design decisions – Latched / unlatched EEVblog video

Pulse stretcher

3rd mode ‘break on open’

Chris is working on a design inspired by the Apple AirTag

Golioth just launched Bluetooth support (recorded prior to this announcement)

It has an nRF52840 and NFC onboard, with a bunch of sensors.

It won’t work with FindMy

nroot tag

Linus video about M4 Mini

Jeff Geerling talking about storage

MKBHD iPhone16e

NTN

Keyfinders

The Clapper

SAW filters

Dave’s talk at UNSW (months ago)

How did you learn about oscilloscopes without the internet

AC power issues – brownout? need to scope power

Scale of electricity

#689 – A Jumperless Breadboard with Kevin Cappuccio Feb 26, 2025

Welcome Kevin Cappuccio, creator of the Jumperless Breadboard (v5 and before)

Check out the Jumperless v5 on Crowd Supply

OG Jumperless Video

This update shows a bunch of images with the breadboard off

3M whitelabels their breadboards (because of the adhesive?)

Breadboard spring clips

Spring clips (in 3D)

Elecrow

369

CH446Q, a clone of Zarlink MT88161

FPAA

Resistance of the traces

BSky

Schematic

CLOSS network

Power Op Amps

+/- 9V supply

Or just all the parts laid out in one pic

Layers/routing

Probe circuit

Bus Pirate adapter

Raspberry Pi adapter

Interface

Full color WJP 3d printing (and on X)

Zephyr shells

You can still buy these on CrowdSupply

Repos

https://github.com/Architeuthis-Flux/JumperlessV5

https://github.com/Architeuthis-Flux/Jumperless

https://github.com/Architeuthis-Flux/breadWare

Follow Kevin online

Bsky

Mastodon

Discord

#688 – The Tandy Train Feb 12, 2025

Tracking test equipment on one long homepage…the emporer of test equipment

If you track it, it’s not hoarding…it’s curation

Very specific piece of junk wood

Garage

Solar

Amber allows you to sell power back in Australia at some wild rates

Dave is trying out case design in OpenSCAD…it looks…ok

Pebble is returning to the world after Google open sourced the OS (kudos)

Andrew Witte, former CTO of Pebble, was a guest on the show

Tandy200

Annie Lennox on the train with her Tandy (see cover image)

Capacitive forming / reforming

Electric Dreams

Multimeter repair

Tandy teardown

#688 – The Tandy Train Feb 12, 2025

Tracking test equipment on one long homepage…the emporer of test equipment

If you track it, it’s not hoarding…it’s curation

Very specific piece of junk wood

Garage

Solar

Amber allows you to sell power back in Australia at some wild rates

Dave is trying out case design in OpenSCAD…it looks…ok

Pebble is returning to the world after Google open sourced the OS (kudos)

Andrew Witte, former CTO of Pebble, was a guest on the show

Tandy200

Annie Lennox on the train with her Tandy (see cover image)

Capacitive forming / reforming

Electric Dreams

Multimeter repair

Tandy teardown

#687 – The RP2350 with the Raspberry Pi Team Jan 28, 2025

Welcome James Adams, Chris Boross, Liam Fraser, and Luke Wren!

The last time the RPi team was on the show was about the RP1 (#648)

The order of parts being released was RP2040->RP1->RP2350

Check out the datasheet for the RP2350

Learning from silicon

Security and power states

The part is a “Dual dual core”

The Arm side is a Dual M33

The RISC V side is a Hazard 3 processor, designed by Luke based on a previous processor called the Hazard 5

HB5

There is a mux on the core and you select which side you’re going to use at boot

There are 48 GPIO (but users always want more)

Chris Boross (first time on the show) is on the commercial team. He’s seing interesting applications for the RP2350 including devices that are using it for motor control.

They also have seen the part used in satellites because mRAM or masked ROM is less susceptible to radiation errors

The PIOs have changed, but are more evolutionary from the RP2040

The PIO allows you to create state machines that process inputs without processor interventions, basically like tiny cores

2 cores – 8 total

Interesting PIO applications

Luke still likes that DVI on 2040 that was discussed on the first episode they were on (#529)

CAN is possible

USB host / device

MII / RMII

ULPI – USB 2.0 Phy

The core frequency only increased 133 MHz -> 150 MHz. There is tougher timing with the M33

LVT – lower voltage threshhold

30 -> 40 pins

There are now variants listed on the RP2350 product page (but not in mass production) that include flash in the SOM package

RP2040 was one power domain

“Powerman” (and of course AVR Man)

Switched core

AON – always on

32 kHz

There is a C/C++ SDK that is the basis for other ports

Security is a focus for the RP2350

Bootrom in every chip

Secure boot

M33 features – secure / non-secure

RISC V PMP

RCP – Redundancy Coprocessor

Raspberry Pi had a challenge / bounty for getting the secret out of the RP2350 OTP with secure boot

One of the few silicon companies doing this sort of thing in public

Past guest Aedan Cullen was one of the hacks called “Hazardous threes”. He gave a talk about it at 38C3

Past guest Colin O’Flynn was also mentioned because collaboration around side channel attacks with the Chip Whisperer

IOActive used a FIB – Fine Ion Beam – and passive voltage contrast to capture an impressive image of a decapped chip (see the RPi post)

“Never want to see ‘novel technique’ in an email”

Improving the RP2350 silicon

How do you decide what to fix/leave?

Can it be changed in metal/vias?

SIO spinlock not being fixed

Chicken Bit

Filler cells are reprogrammable and help with fixes

It costs approximately $50K per layer to change (ostensibly because of the high costs of masks)

ULA – uncommitted logic array

Die shrink doesn’t seem to make sense

Will keep making each chip as long as 40 nm fabs are around

Thinking about the RP2040

The easiest way to get started is to use a Pico (RP2040) or a Pico 2 (RP2350). Both have connectivity options as well.

Raspberry Pi is now a public company! Doesn’t change much other than the business scrutiny.

#686 – A Benchtop Pick and Place with Stephen Hawes Jan 21, 2025

Welcome, Stephen Hawes!

Chris interviewed Stephen back in 2020 for his second episode of The Contextual Electronics Podcast. It was when Stephen was still working at Formlabs and the Lumen/Opulo were a glimmer in his eye.

The Lumen v4 is a Benchtop Pick and Place machine that works with OpenPNP

Where are we in relation to reprap?

Powered feeders

Videos about eeprom

KiCad pos file

Can reliably place 0402

Lumen v4 product page

Motherboard of v4

Running Marlin FW

Head has two heads/nozzles

Compare the Lumen to other methods (hand placed, paying for assembly)

OHM (Open Hardware Manufacturing) podcast

What industries are open?

Thea Flowers (of Winterbloom synth fame) just joined the team

Microscope

Other tools

Space constraints

Stephen does a great job talking through many experiments and upcoming features on his youtube channel

Prototyping PCBs with a fiber laser

Micronix

Making PCBs on a 3D printer (hack session with Stephen’s former employer)

Timon (Skerutsch) makes double sided PCBs by inserting enameled wire through drilled holes

Is this the year you should get a Pick and Place? Stephen won’t say yes (but I will)

#685 – Data Provenance in the Home, Server, and Fab Dec 23, 2024

Home assistant

Homelab subreddit

Solar assistant

proxmox

CarPlay / android auto

NUCs

Video Interview with Lee (since posted as #684 of TAH)

25K pound amplifier repair and associated EEVblog forum post

Louis Rossman also talking about the copyright claim

How the Fairlight CMI changed Music

Read more here

Synths / woodworking are hobbies that will eat all free cash flow (and Chris is considering the latter…)

Pat Gelsinger has stepped down / retired / been forced out at Intel

Intel will now have co-CEOs. As past guest Luke Wren wrote on Mastodon, “Based on historical trends I predict the number of Intel co-CEOs will double every two years“

Startup in Ohio will apparently be making Quectel parts for the US market. We expect to see lots of silliness like this in the next few years because of forthcoming tariffs…

#684 – Lee Felsenstein: The Computer Revolution & Counterculture Dec 10, 2024
A full 3 hour discussion with the legendary Lee Felsenstein, designer of the Osborne 1, SOL computer, VDM-1, Pennywhistle modem, and the inventor of social media. Covering everything from the Berkeley free speech movement, the counterculture movement, his career, through to Obsorne and how he invented social media with Community Memory.

His book: https://www.amazon.com/Me-My-Big-Idea…

https://felsensigns.com/

00:00 – Full 3 hour talk with Lee Felsenstein
08:24 – University of California at Berkeley, and the Free Speech Movement.
29:04 – First Junior Engineer job at Ampex
36:20 – The first hackathons with Richard Greenblatt
37:33 – Hackers, Heros of the computer revolution
1:03:36 – Techical career at Ampex
1:12:52 – Atari Computers and Steve Jobs, Nolan Bushnall, and Allan Alcorn
1:15:00 – He tried to pitch social media to Steve Jobs
1:22:15 – Designing the Pennywhistle 103 modem +
1:25:36 – Marty Spergel selling kits
1:31:53 – Steve Wozniak and how the Apple 1 is NOT a personal computer
1:43:42 – Osborne Computers
1:53:22 – Osborne 1 physical design
1:57:57 – Osborne 1 development timeline
2:01:19 – The Osborne Effect wasn’t what killed the company

#683 – Troubleshooting is the skill Nov 20, 2024

AI tools for helping with coding (but NOT layout, amirite)

Troubleshooting as a skillset

Stick meme

Dave got an updated electrical box

Home assistant

Keith Burzinski episode (ESPhome)

Toothbrush show

Andreas Spiess discussing Bluetooth proxy

Ian Scott Johnson DIY home automation

Electrarc240 reviews every element of a linear power supply

India power cables

Buried cables

Spotify is bricking the Car Thing but others are trying to save it

“injurnear”

Chris recently developed and coded up a cellular connected relay board for a Smart Locker application

#683 – Troubleshooting is the skill Nov 20, 2024

AI tools for helping with coding (but NOT layout, amirite)

Troubleshooting as a skillset

Stick meme

Dave got an updated electrical box

Home assistant

Keith Burzinski episode (ESPhome)

Toothbrush show

Andreas Spiess discussing Bluetooth proxy

Ian Scott Johnson DIY home automation

Electrarc240 reviews every element of a linear power supply

India power cables

Buried cables

Spotify is bricking the Car Thing but others are trying to save it

“injurnear”

Chris recently developed and coded up a cellular connected relay board for a Smart Locker application

#682 – Your Mind Is The Tool Nov 06, 2024

Chris has been troubleshooting a PCB with a dead short on inner layers (put in by board house by mistake)

Don’t Touch My Gerbers shirt

“Is there an AI tool that will fix this for me?” … No

Chris dumped a bunch of current in the board and looked at it with this thermal camera

6.5 digit DMM to track down shorts

Etching problems in the old days

100% etest

Adding rails to PCBs for production

Reddit discussion thread: why not work on a product? That is, Dave, the wise one.

Videos

Live stream issues

Post from Twitter: Is 2 layers all you really need? This person thinks so, or is trying to convince themselves as much.

Armchair quarterbacking

Ian Johnston replacing the display on an 8.5 digit DMM

Jack Ganssle has posted his final newsletter (The Embedded Muse)…happy retirement! Jack has been on the show twice:

Episode 54 (!)

Episode 489

Ward Christensen, Inventor of BBS and XModem, (and former listener of the show!) has passed away

Dave is interviewing Lee Felstenstein for our next episode

#681 – Compact High Speed Design with Lukas Henkel Oct 31, 2024

Welcome Lukas Henkel of OV Tech GmbH, a product design firm based in Nuremburg Germany!

Miniturization and the limits of miniturization

Price is a constraint

Using standard PCB tech (off the shelf)

Open source SIP

Steps

Conventional pcbs / components

Silicon inductors embedded in boards

Bonded Bare dies / stacked

Need volume to make it work

Requirements to fit into ______

iMX8 ULP – 0.4mm CSP

SIP Footprint

Module abstraction layer talk

Framework laptop

Software support / BSP

SIP will be different than PiMX8

Crowdsupply campaign launching 2-3 weeks and delivery in Dec/Jan

OpenSource laptop

CM4 vs PiMX8

SPI Flash with backup partition

Secure element SE050

Footprint for coral tpu and Halo 8

Trying to solve the problem of vision use cases

Marketing using layout / products but also making money on it

Katerina show

Visualizing simulations

Developing intuition

OpenEMS

Usability is based on python scripting

Using Blender for heat map

BVTKNodes uses .vtk file output

Multiphysics solvers

Things that drive Lukas

For HDI, Thinking in 3D / 2.5D and being able to visualize

Layers ranging from 4 to 18

Any layer design for SIP

Wurth electroncis for high density “any layer stackup”

Article series on altium for the open laptop

Follow Lukas on LinkedIn

Lukas also was a co-founder of PCB Arts. We had his cofounder Saber on the show in the past.

#680 – Catching Rockets with Musk Sticks Oct 21, 2024

Starship 5 landed on chopsticks! (you know, in case you have been offline for 2 weeks)

Dave’s EV had a stuck cable

Portable charger is surprisingly good

CCS Charging standard

Fast charge 36/50 kW

MKBHD Chevy Silverado review

JLC is now offering silkscreen QR codes to have individually marked boards

That’s the board that Chris has been designing on a livestream each week

1 wire UID (pioneered by Dallas, then Maxim, now Analog…le sigh)

Dave is selling a new Bryman multimeter, the BM2257 (teardown photos)

Chris just returned from Embedded World North America, doing a demo at the Joulescope booth

Chris also gave a talk at the Zephyr meetup which will be released in a few weeks

Hackaday article about their comment section and project/article feedback

References

Musk Sticks

NC floods might impact the supply chain due to Spruce Pine NC being a source for quartz. We didn’t read this article, but it was a better explainer than we had at the time.

Meshtastic objects to the proposed FCC changes

#680 – Catching Rockets with Musk Sticks Oct 21, 2024

Starship 5 landed on chopsticks! (you know, in case you have been offline for 2 weeks)

Dave’s EV had a stuck cable

Portable charger is surprisingly good

CCS Charging standard

Fast charge 36/50 kW

MKBHD Chevy Silverado review

JLC is now offering silkscreen QR codes to have individually marked boards

That’s the board that Chris has been designing on a livestream each week

1 wire UID (pioneered by Dallas, then Maxim, now Analog…le sigh)

Dave is selling a new Bryman multimeter, the BM2257 (teardown photos)

Chris just returned from Embedded World North America, doing a demo at the Joulescope booth

Chris also gave a talk at the Zephyr meetup which will be released in a few weeks

Hackaday article about their comment section and project/article feedback

References

Musk Sticks

NC floods might impact the supply chain due to Spruce Pine NC being a source for quartz. We didn’t read this article, but it was a better explainer than we had at the time.

Meshtastic objects to the proposed FCC changes

#679 – Satellite Design Engineering with Dan Esparon Oct 11, 2024
Dan Esparon from Inovor Technologies in South Australia joins Dave to discuss all about the engineering of designing and launching satellites!

Dan works for Inovor Technologies, an Australian company that designs and builds satellites entirely in-house!

Recently they designed and launched the aussie Kanyini satellite on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket
https://www.inovor.com.au/missions/

They design and build their own Flight computers, ADCS systems, UHF radios, Battery modules and Solar Arrays in Australia.

#678 – All About Antennas with Katerina Galitskaya Oct 01, 2024

Welcome Katerina Galitskaya!

Chris started following Katerina’s antenna posts on LinkedIn

Monopole vs dipole

Lower frequences are harder bc longer wavelength

PCB size half of frequency

Place antenta on the shorter side

How to ruin your PCB

When to go to a antenna engineer?

Where will the device be?

Antenna environment

Start from vacuum, start adding elements

Dummies in the lab. The one in the episode photo is a dummy head filled with liquid (?!)

SAR – Specific Absorption rate

Simulation vs lab work (dimensions)

Anechoic chamber

When to go with custom antenna?

Buying off the shelf antenna?

New Airpods with fancy 3D antenna

Ben’s video about laser sintered antennas

MIMO / Beamforming

the failed promises of 5G

When to simulate

Some open source programs out there (“EMSee”?)

Simulating vs visualizing

Most of the time it’s not about vizualizing fields

What is the iteration elements of the antenna?

Satellite antenna design

Good to go external

Thinking about the dielectric const of case

Follow Katerina on LinkedIn!

#677 – Watt Is The Deal Sep 23, 2024

Spam calls

Keysight released the HD3, a 14 bit ADC oscilloscope (teardown video)

Chris will be at Embedded World North America, please let him know if you’ll be there!

Chris will be at the Joulescope stand along with former guest Matt Liberty

This is one of the only tradeshows for general electronics in the US, Embedded Systems Conference went away many years ago. Chris, Dave, and Jeff (yesssah!) recorded at ESC in episode 41!

Bootstrapping new conferences

Cellular power modes

Dave old GSM video

PSM / eDRX

ALT1350

Dave got a smart meter on his home setup

EDMI

EEVblog forum post about leaky power bill

Maybe a trickle

Chris has been trying out Meshtastic, which is based on LoRa. Check out Jeff Geerling’s video for a good overview.

meshtastic subreddit

People posting about airplanes flying overhead (example post) like ham radio contacts

Meshmap

#676 – Moving House (And Lab) Sep 03, 2024

Chris has been moving house, which partially explains the terrible audio problems the past few episodes…

For a lab, Chris believes in

Lots of wire shelving (with epoxy coating)

Everything on wheels (including shelving and workbenches)

As much storage as you can get

Chris has been doing livestreams of hardware design for Golioth.

The module he is designing is called the Drachm (“dram”)

The hardware Chris has been working on for the past 2 years is now open source

Flox video with machine learning on a camera also featured Chris

Altium finalized their acquisition by Renesas. The price already went up (discussed previously)

Raspberry Pi released the RP2350 while we were away

Inductor polarity on the RPi Pico 2

RP2350 Datasheet

You can choose the processors you want (Dual m33, dual RISC V)

Microchip was offline due to …. HACKERS

Dave has been trying out a new home battery storage system

NMC vs LFP

Reverse cycle

There have been lots of layoffs in tech, including 15K (!) at Intel

Layoffs.fyi

Being sued for a battery review? Say it aint so

#675 – Changing Course with Shawn Hymel Aug 09, 2024

Welcome Shawn Hymel!

Shawn will be transitioning out Developer Relations at Edge Impulse. He will now be building courses full time. (this was recorded before Shawn announced his departure)

He want’s to be like a Professor, which partially explains his signature bowtie

Should people go into content? What about Developer Relations more specifically?

New courses will include FreeCAD and 3D printing and will be published by Digikey

Part design in FreeCAD

0.22 in Mango Jelly

Learning modeling vs learning an actual program

Scoffolding

Making a Zephyr course

Zephyr / Golioth training

Ecosystem vs RTOS

Workshop at Harvard

Trying to train on hardware

What should engineers know about ML

Andrew Ng’s course on Coursera

Updated for NumPy / Python

Understand Neural Networks

Can treat them as a black box

More important to understand statistics and data science

Hot dog / not hot dog (silicon valley)

Model zoos

Hugging Face

Coprocessing on U55 – U85

ToorCamp

Michael Cheich

Robert Ferenec

Marketing courses

Running

You can find Shawn as ShawnHymel on most social

Twitter

LinkedIn

Mastodon

Bluesky

TikTok

Instagram

You can also check out his site, shawnhymel.com

#674 – Turtles as a Service Jul 25, 2024

Murphy

More efficient with cooled panels

Battery storage solution

Server rack batteries

Chris has been doing hardware Livestreams

Geofence

n8n, Similar to Zapier, IFTTT

Home assistant

EE Grad wants some insight on new tech

https://4dsystems.com.au/

Scott Williams of Xentronix recorded with Dave and then Chris

Saw at Electronex

My Cousin Vinny

Embedded World North America is happening in Austin in October. There is a vendor map now.

Voltnuts

Open source book

Tiny Tapeout

Tantalum Caps from AliExpress

What’s next for ASML

Ben Krasnow printing PCB traces again

#673 – Lifelong Learning with Bitluni Jul 15, 2024

Welcome, Matthias Balwierz / Bitluni / Luni!

Midi pedals

Old projects

LED walls

Dunning kruger

Sonar scanner

Aliens

Romulus

Lifelong learning

Beamforming

Previously had worked on something similar in the medical field but didn’t realize it was the same tech

ESP32

Gowin FPGA

Video generation / crt control

R2R

cnlohr videos for making PCBs

ESP32 VGA

PCB mill

Failing

Tiny Tapeout bringing down costs like PCBs

Jeri doing “home etching” (making silicon at home)

Building the meme project on TT02

GIF construction set

Almost like a ROM on board, on each clock it exposes the next byte on paralell output

Luni hasn’t submitted to each tiny tapeout but is building a new project

Browser assembler that runs in the handheld gaming: “Luni-Asm”

cpu + gpu to get vector output

Bitluni live youtube / Bitluni – twitch happens Weds at 8 pm CEST

Community helps

Writing memory controllers

Bus master because internal SRAM is so expensive

Expense of flash/ram is in IP

People running test structures the tiles

FPGAs, Gowin – 9K standard up to 25k

Gabriel / Lushay Labs – Tutorials for FPGAs

HDMI connector

Some IP blocks from Gowin

Yosys support

VS code tools and simulation

Gowin FPGA designer

Learning clock domains

Moving back to art

Demoscene came from the cracker scene

Different categories / limits

4K category only allows 4K of memory for images and sound (generated)

White demo competitions

Contact

bitluni

github

twitch

#672 – Silicon Revolution with Matt Venn Jun 30, 2024

Welcome back, Matt Venn of the Zero to Asic Course and Tiny Tapeout!

(Due to illness and some life stuff happening, my recording setup was crap. Apologies. I also leaned heavily on Matt’s notes, so some of the following links will be out of order. Think of it like an ad hoc scavenger hunt…fun!)

Matt was last on the show on episode 616, about 18 months ago

Tiny Tapeout has continued, now working on it’s 8th run. the 5th run is shipping soon.

Uri Shaked made Wokwi compatible with making chip designs and then compiling them to verilog for later processing by open source tools

12 bit SAR ADC on TT07

linux capable riscv

Analog ASIC design with digital standard cells!

We had previously posted Matt’s review of 2023 and aims for 2024

Siliwiz

ASIC inside synchrotron

Touring IHP (Germany) facilities

Interview with Nordic Semi designer

People are building analog structures on Tiny Tapeout

There’s a new course on Zero to Asic that will be about Analog (sign up for the waitlist)

There are some new tools being developed

surfer – browser based waveform

moosic – logic locking plugin for yosys

eqy – formal equivalence checking

Matt will be doing a TT workshop at supercon 2024

TT08 will have a demoscene competition – VGA and sound output – what’s the coolest thing you can fit in 1 tile? You have until Sept 6th 2024 to submit!

Not discussed, but on the list and interesting!

Silicon Supply Chains with Ed Conway

An early analog design (temp sensor) on TT03

Get TT quality stickers

#671 – NDA Sideshow Jun 20, 2024

Sideshow Bob (simpsons)

HERIC Inverter Review

Fraunhofer

HERIC inverter

Dave’s video about the CH32V003

Charles episode

Altium is increasing the price of their product (by 2x??)

HITECH compiler from Microchip

Newfound Warp13

Webrings, Blog roll, StumbleUpon

Dontronics amazing site

#671 – NDA Sideshow Jun 20, 2024

Sideshow Bob (simpsons)

HERIC Inverter Review

Fraunhofer

HERIC inverter

Dave’s video about the CH32V003

Charles episode

Altium is increasing the price of their product (by 2x??)

HITECH compiler from Microchip

Newfound Warp13

Webrings, Blog roll, StumbleUpon

Dontronics amazing site

#670 – Engineering Careers with Circuit Break & James Lewis Jun 14, 2024

Check out the Circuit Break Podcast for show notes

Parker Dillman

Stephen Kraig

James Lewis

#669 – Freelance PCB Design with Petr Dvorak Jun 07, 2024

Welcome Petr Dvorak of Beny Devices

A to Z book about KiCad

fancygit

lazygit

gitlol

Customer types

Brno – 30% of electron microscopes

What is changing in electron microscopes? Higher voltage, no noise

Electrostatic steering

Transitioning to freelancing

Regulations for freelancer vs employer

Petr is a prolific poster of electronics content on his LinkedIn

Show your work – Austin Kleon

3 years to get first client

1 month buffer of posts on LinkedIn

Building repetitions

Outliers / 10000 hours

Lists of projects

Constraints helping new engineers trying to learn electronics

8×32 pixel displays

Petr in Shenzhen

Gallup – top strength is learning

Personality types

Contact

Get a free eBook about KiCad on beny-devices.eu

Follow Petr on LinkedIn

#668 – 50.0000 Ohms May 31, 2024

Mistakes in house repair for partners

Architectural Lighting

Power quality

Repairing a $4500 DAC

Invisible computers

Cal Newport on AI

AI shortform

USB C Spec

Tester

“50.0000 ohms”

HDMI Layout guide (ADI)

Bit Error Rate

My voice is my passport

Fake Dave

Hackers

War Games

Captain Crunch no longer welcome at DEF CON

Wifi (WLAN) Location API

Polar Semi gets CHIPS act money

#667 – Long Distance with CNLohr-a May 23, 2024

Welcome back, CNLohr!

CNLohr was on the last episode talking about the CH32V003 part and the CH32V003fun library

Charlieplexed errings

Fast iteration

Lohr-a…LoRa…get it?

LoRa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIdHBDSQHyw

Started in January 2024 with discussions with mustardtiger / Frank

Charles had done Wifi long range before

Also FM from ATTINY85

Ethernet + AM

Radio signals without radios

USB

Harmonics

LolRa

Upchirps / downchirps

903.825 – 903.975 mhz

Michael Ossmann talk

LoRa doesn’t do code matching

JP Norair talking about LoRaWAN / DASH7

Tool / emulator for the airwaves

3 lines of the repo

Tool to create tables

There are two 2 lookup tables (up and downchirps)

Table is different for differnet spreading factors and base frequencies

Andreas Spiess LoRa/LoRaWAN distance attempts

Spreading Factor — can’t past SF10 on this setup for unknown reason

AirSpy

Matt Knight

LoRaWAN — protocol vs network

The Things Network / Helium

Activation by personalization

Nesting dolls of encryption

New parts CH32V002 (also, -005, -006. -007)

Charles is excited about the op amp on the CH32V006 that has 64 MHz GBW

CH32V203 – 144 MHz – $0.24, has usb xcvr

CH32X035 is self clocking – best low cost option for USB

All are supported in library now

Community – CNLohr discord

Porting examples for the parts using the technical reference manual

MNIST database – handwriting recognition system

Announcement post on CNX about the new parts

It’s possible to hook up parts directly through the 1 pin SWIO, so you can hot-load firmware

Writing code onto a “scratch pad”

Want to see more CNLohr experiements online?

Youtube.com/cnlohr

discord: cnlohr reach out for invite

Github

#666 – Good Energy Citizen May 08, 2024

Sickness

Starliner scrub

Boeing and the Dark Age of American Manufacturing

Toolkit for flying

Search industry

A380

EUV in semiconductors

EV vs PHEV vs ICE

Tesla sending emails to suppliers after laying off the Supercharger team

powerledger / POWR

Virtual power plant

DEYE inverter

Buying repacked batteries

AC Battery vs DC battery

Hybrid inverter

Colin Furze

TSMC running into problems with work culter after moving to US (Arizona)

Marketplace piece about jobs at semi plans in AZ

996

Photos of the new Samsung Fab going up on Google Maps

Chris asked on Mastodon about the best time to charge an EV

Duck Curve, which Chris first learned about on episode for 630

The costs of different aspects of a chip fab

#665 – Really long needle nose pliers Apr 25, 2024

Analog Cochlear Detectors

Voyager I is back online

Sustaining engineering

Bobiverse books

Chandra telescope

Embedded World

Embedded World US in October

Trade shows in US

Travel budgets

Z80 obsolete notice

Rabbit instruction set

Dave trying out the Jumperless breadboard (lights up)

Uri

Robert Nelson

Bluetooth

Sigrok

Zephyr LLEXT

ZMK

#664 – Simulating doors falling off Apr 04, 2024

Chris will be at Embedded World 24 next week

Bluetooth standard messages like HT, HR

Early bluetooth devices (were terrible)

WiBree (?)

Sequans deal with Renesas fell apart

There was a Sequans modem on the PyCom FiPy

The low power ISM network Chris couldn’t remember was SigFox

Synopsis acquired Ansys (back in January)

Here comes the flood of Plugin Hybrids

Dave’s sick car – 2010 Nissan dualis – Second channel

New Espressif ESP32-P4 is getting ready to release

Bitluni makes custom silicon (spoilers!)

Past guest Pete Bevelaqua has a new Kickstarter where he’s passing power through a window (up to 30 mm thick)

Top 10 Hobby Components (PartsBox) – submitted by former guest Jan Rychter

Top 5 transistor video

New BealgleBoard.org board isn’t in the BeagleBone form factor

#663 – Motors on PCBs with Carl Bugeja Mar 26, 2024

Welcome Carl Bugeja!

Carl lives and works in Malta

He got started with robotics at his university

Carl recently announced he would be launching a new company

The company is called Microbots and they will sell components and kits for building similar projects to what Carl shows on his channel

BigHero6 reference

https://microbots.io/products/flatflap

Max PCB temp is 130C

Driven by series resistance of coil

Tg value of PCBs

A circuit that can solder itself

How hot can a Flex PCB get?

Batch vs raster

Do you math?

Tryng to get the perfect temperatures and dealing with flex materials

Dealing with manufacturing differnces

Scanning PCB Coils with X-Rays

Sending PCB specs

Incoming inspection and testing

Testing boards with resistance

Time flap produce

User testing

Drive circuits – How do you evaluate?

Don’t build your own H Bridge

Optimizing for size

Is Carl looking for other features?

Building libraries for driver

Foldable 4 wheeled robot , an all one PCB

ESP32-C3, connected to playstation remote

Boston Dynamics uncanny valley

Gathering on social

Top down vs bottom up (start at the top)

Prior to YouTube, Carl worked at a startup

Drones – 2 prop

Bluetooth tags

Later he moved to the automotive industry

Concept vehicles

Software

What’s in Malta?

Building a remote electronics business

Remote actuators on a PCB

Microbots Flexar Driver

Driving down the price per cell

Similar to how they drove down the cost of LCD displays

Pixel, voxel, moxel, maxel?

Flipdots

PCB Actuation

Find Carl on YouTube and Instagram, and check out his work on the new Microbots site!

#662 – The non-Stinky Car Mar 20, 2024

Chris got a Chevy Bolt (2023 1LT) The model has since been discontinued

11 kW charging using a level 2 charger

Flappy paddle to recapture battery (instead of the brake)

Ioniq 5/6

Aptera

Marques Brownlee reviews the Prius

V2G is avaialble as a software upgrade to the Nissan Leaf

2nd channel abs bypass

Microbit v2

Robot video with Huxley

Software updates on a door handle

Chris is playing around with 20V DeWalt batteries

Battery fast charger schematic

Bosch adapter

Vmount batteries, as explained by Caleb of DSLR Video Shooter

Sony batteries

Dave’s tutorial on charging

Chris might try out OnShape

If you’re interested in helping model some battery stuff (or know someone who can), please email chrisgammell@golioth.io

Sony battery lab hack

#661 – Blogging Electronics with Pallav Aggarwal Mar 11, 2024

Welcome Pallav Aggarwal of CAPUF Embedded!

Chris enjoyed Pallav’s series on learning the ch32v003 – fun vs HAL

Ambiq Apollo

Decision trees when considering hardware vs firmware

Expensive to do software and stuff

Order some of the boards Pallav created on Evelta

India ecosystem for hw

India industry

CAPUF team size

Pallav shares teardowns on YouTube

reducing complexity

Reviewing customer designs and removing 40%

RP2040 in usb debuggers

Efficiency consulting

Over indexing on form and fit during rev 1

Troubleshoot: Joulescope / Saleae / Static analyzer

Pallav has a page where he tracks AI tools for PCB creation

There’s another page where he tracks AI modules / chips

DevRel as a service

Nordic

Check out Capuf.in for more info on Pallav’s consulting or reach out via email

#660 – My Toothbrush Is Broadcasting Mar 05, 2024

Promise of smart home

Electronic keypad

Keyfob

Proxmark

Oral B bluetooth toothbrush

Braun toothbrush teardown

Solar road shutdown

Smart mains socket tester

ch32v003 testing success

Samy keylogger

Startups in Germany (can any German listeners verify?)

Diyode mag is shutting down

KiCad 8 was released! James Lewis did a good overview video

SPICE in CAD

Composite amplifier

Zephyr 3.6 release

Altera

#659 – Altium…Acquired! Feb 20, 2024

Renesas buying Altium

Altium bought Octopart in 2017

Tasking debugger

Cloud focus after reorg

History of Protel / Altium – started in 1985 by Nick Martin

Turbo Pascal

CAD tool for windows in 90s

protel99

Altium Buys Morfik in 2010

Nick booted out

After the reorg, the stock steadily grew

You can watch the Renesas/Altium announcement on Zoom

There is also a slide deck available

Dave linked an article from the financial press in Austrailia

Zuken

Altera is apparently spinning back out

Steve Liebsen on The Amp Hour

Intel is getting a $10B chunk of the CHIPS act money

Steve Sanghi (Microchip) discussed the act when he was on the show

Synergy flavored milk

Other properties we forgot were part of Altium:

Circuit Studio

Upverter (formerly on the show!)

Gumstix

Autotrax – Taylor’s version (DEX PCB just…took the name?)

#658 – Uncle Al’s Eating Garbage Again Feb 13, 2024

AI tools for recording

32 bit recording

Pool robot

Home assistant

Power points in the ceiling in Dave’s office park

CH32V003 board

CNLohr episode

rv003usb library

Mike Harrison doing a video about a CH32V003 standalone programmer

nRF24

Low cost modules Chris bought on Amazon

Samy Kamkar on the show

Samy talk about balloons

Drone shows

Time difference of distances

Dave’s video about HP atomic clocks

XKCD Radiation Dose Chart

DTCXO

In the Bond movies they’re not nerds

LCD and fonts

AI pin

Vision Pro

iFixit teardown

Chris will be at Embedded World again this year, come say hi!

#657 – Automating the Home with Keith Burzinski Feb 05, 2024

Welcome Keith Burzinski of Nabu Casa and the ESPhome project!

Nabu Casa is a commercial venture that supports the open source Home Assistant (HA) project

Hardware

Home assistant allows your smart home to not require an outside connection, which is crucial to breaking free of large cloud providers.

Chris just got a Zigbee dongle and switched outlet working in under a minute on HA

Automation and triggers

Users share their automation routines on the HA subreddit

mmwave detecting heartbeat

What is esphome?

Abstraction / using YAML for business logic

Deciding when to go custom

Keith got started doing a PR for an IR remote

Nixie clocks

Boldport / Saar

Getting hooked on SMT builds

Keith made an STM32 based Tube Clock that Chris was very impressed by at a Chicago meetup

Keith reworked the sensing for his HVAC by fusing multiple custom sensor boards

Presence sensor – mmwave + IR sensor

Geodesic dome

Tiny fresnel lenses on low cost PIR sensors

Fixing thermostat in apt

Creating a network of temp sensors and weighing

SRE = site reliability engineer

Nabu Casa cloud service

The year of the voice

Home assistant YouTube

Hardware: Blue, yellow, green

How often are people reprogramming their devices

ESPhome discord

ESPhome.io

See devices that can be reprogrammed to work with ESPhome

Reddits

ESPhome

Homeassistant

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