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    Natural Sciences

    The Amp Hour

    The Amp Hour is a weekly conversation about electronics and the people who design them.

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    Copyright: Copyright © The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast 2020

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    Latest Episodes:
    Intelligent Routing with Sergiy Nesterenko Apr 03, 2023
    Show notes

    Welcome Sergiy Nesterenko of Quilter.ai!

    • Just prior to recording, Chris saw that Dave had been talking about a different "AI autorouter"
    • Configuration on Quilter is currently pretty simple (not a lot
    • Sergiy worked at SpaceX in 2014 doing a bunch of boards for testing
    • "PCBs were the tail end of the design, so it became the critical path"
    • Check out some of the public designs on the Quliter Blog
    • Quilter has remade the schematic of the OpenMV camera. This reworked board is indicative of the kinds of boards they can handle.
    • Generally sub-300 MHz, Sub 2A
    • Quilter has a full time EE on staff who helps try out different designs and give feedback.
    • They can parellelize designs by sending them off to a cluster for processing.
    • Chris noted that it felt similar to Place and Route on an FPGA.
    • Quilter doesn't currently enforce "octolinear traces", so the traces aren't straight lines.
    • It makes it possible to detect generative designs, like on the "QPlayer" example
    • The toold helps by defining manufacturing constraints for you, specifically around available board houses.
    • Cost of compute
    • How do you balance the problem of knowledge? Chris and Dave discussed this for newer engineers in episode 625
    • "What is the job of a PCB?" (perfectly replicate a schematic)
    • Quilter is doing additional checks, including solving for Maxwell's equations and Thermodynamics
    • There are decisions to make within the routing algorithm, ie. Should they enforce "star ground"?
    • When starting out, there was skepticism around code compilers! But over time people came to trust them more and more.
    • How can you try out Quilter? Sign up for waitlist! The best candidat designs will be:
      • Sub 2000 pins
      • sub 100 parts
      • sub 100Mhz
      • sub 2A
      • Open source designs
    • All the boards on the site have no human input
    • When trying out the service, many customers don't trust the first board (but later they start to)
    • Spits boards back out as the same file format, they currently support KiCad, Altium, Eagle
    • NASA story designing S band antenna
    • When starting with new boards, the tool will import outlines by parsing layers in KiCad / Altium / Eagle.
    • Reconsidering different elemetns of a design (constraints)
    • Relaxing constraints (physics)
    • Software models
    • Why don't some of these tools exist in layout software? Specifically simulation and physics engines.
    • Many do! (Ansys, TDK, etc). Often the cost isn't justified for simpler boards, so people go without.
    • Feeding back real world squishiness into the model
    • Costs - Not yet set, but there will be different tiers for hobbyists and open source designs. Sergiy mentioned $50/month for non-enterprise, but it seems like it's much too early to tell.
    • Check out more on the site at quilter.ai
    Gremlins in the machine Mar 27, 2023
    Show notes
    • Dave had alarms going off just prior to recording
    • SVB
    • There was a post for a "Prompt Engineer" paying $335K in SF
    • Who fixes things created with AI when they break? What if no one knows how it all works?
    • Coaching around learning electronics
    • Louis Rossman talking about rungs of the economic ladder missing
    • Super Troopers
    • ARM is considering changing how they charge for their IP (linking to Ray Ozzie's LinkedIn post because it was how Chris learned about the article and because clicking through from LinkedIn actually lets you read the article, whereas direct linking doesn't...for some reason)
    Gordon Moore passed away between when we recorded and posted, otherwise we would have obviously mentioned it. We will discuss his life and legacy on the next show with the two of us.
    Design & Manufacturing Consulting with Scott Williams from Xentronics Mar 19, 2023
    Show notes

    Scott Williams from Xentronics in Melbourne joins Dave to discuss setting up and running a design and manufacturing consulting business.

    Artisanal Crystals Mar 13, 2023
    Show notes
    • Statistically less safe prototypes
    • Artisanal crystal
    • "Too good for the job"
    • Story about boost converters
    • Dave video current consumption
    • NGA100
    • Dick Smith chat
    • Beagle Play and Beagle Connect were recently released
    • Linus Tech Tips studio
    • mHUB moving
    • Fran newspaper story (still think it's on Fran's patreon page only)
    • Live/work spaces
    • Shipstation
    • Shipping with Southwest (or other airlines)
    • Wendover video about the logistics of cargo carriers during COVID
    • New RPi global shutter camera
    • The death of Europe's last electronics giant (Philips)
    Yes, today's intro was done by a robot, Chris is stuck in an airport again on the way to Embedded World
    Building Firmware and Hardware for Trade Shows with Mike Szczys Mar 06, 2023
    Show notes
    • Mike and Chris work together at Golioth, Mike agreed to join Chris this week after Chris forgot to schedule a guest because of working on demos for Embedded World 23
    • Mike was on TAH episode 403 at DEFCON 26 talking about Badgelife
    • Backlit LEDs
    • Mike was the Editor in Chief at Hackaday for 9 years, he was there a total of 13 years
    • Remoticon happened twice during the pandemic
    • Supercon returned in November 2022
    • The Zephyr Project
    • Mike loves manifest files (or has come to love them)
    • Marti Bolivar - Macrobatics
    • Zephyr Devicetree
    • FreeRTOS - Brian Amos
    • Zephyr The Linux Foundation
    • Nordic chose Zephyr as their go-to RTOS / Ecosystem (they build the Nordic Connect SDK on top of Zephyr)
    • Beginner content in Zephyr (check the sample and test folder in Zephyr)
    • Benjamin (new Zephyr DevRel) is interested in getting the Wio Terminal supported
    • Sensor subsystem in Zephyr
    • Kconfig
    • Zephyr shells
    • ESP-IDF
    • Mike was recently on Robert Ferenec's YouTube channel building an IoT solution live
    • Command line vs IDE
    • VScode plugins help bridge the gapo
    • The Adafruit MagTag
    • EPaper displays often are lacking docs
    • Pimoroni badger
    • Mike created an i2c listener which uses PIO for i2c. It passes received commands up to the Micropython layer.
    • Marshalling
    • Micropython allows you to use things like Hershey font files
    • Jared Wolff was on the show talking about the nRF9160 feather (and Zephyr)
    • Find Mike on Mastodon at @szcyzs@chaos.social
    • Mike's personal site is jumptuck.com
    The Magic of Calipers Feb 27, 2023
    Show notes
    • Dave had a protracted battle with GitHub/Lab but found a way to upload files with drag and drop
    • IoT Devices that have IP addresses
    • eInk doesn't seem super prevalent these days in products but has advanced a long way
    • Repurposing grocery store displays
    • If you'll be at Embedded World, Saber from PCB Arts (episode 608) will be holding an event on Wednesday 3/15 (free to attend, need to register)
    • Calipers
    • Capliper videos
    • Jimmie Rogers tattoo
    • Sam Zeloof is starting a company to fab chip fabs with Jim Keller. They have raised $15M, from OpenAI(?)
    • Former guests Matt Venn and Uri Shaked recently released SiliWiz. It helps students to learn how silicon transistors work (and therefore how ASICs are built)
    • Mike Englehardt is no longer at ADI (who acquired LT) working on LTSpice. His website says he is working on a new simulator to be released in May of this year.
    • Chris often defaults to Falstad simulator for easy circuits.
    • Dave is having ChatGPT write a program for him
    • Botsplaining
    • Past guest Andreas Spiess did a recent video about OpenMQTTGateway which helps you to listen to 433 devices with an ESP32.
    • KiCad 7.0 was released
    • The Mother of all Demos (Doug Engelbart)
    Engineering Education with Dr Don Wilcher Feb 20, 2023
    Show notes

    Welcome, Dr Don Wilcher! He joins us right as he’s about to release a new book, M5 Stack Electronic Blueprints

    • He worked at Willow Run early in his career (facility now closed)
    • Henry Ford Community College
    • Larry Sears
    • Having joy in the courses
    • The Knack
    • John Davis joined on a previous episode to talk about Industrial machines
    • What is a PLC?
    • Relay ladder logic
    • Industrial Computer vs Controller
    • Scan loop on a PLC
    • XIC / XIO
    • A Distributed Control System (DCS) networks many controllers together
    • Don taught a blueprint reading class
    • Chris asked about why connectors are drawn the way they are
    • Later in his career, Don moved from the industrial space to design in cars
    • Wiring harness
    • Body controller module
    • CAFE laws - California Air Fuel Economy
    • 68hc11
    • Wetting current for switches
    • CAN
    • Cigarette lighters in cars
    • Don was working on the (Jeep) Grand Cherokee
    • Decoding CAN with a scope
    • Packard electric connectors
    • Cars have a "shower curtain" for water in the door
    • Don got his PhD and switched to education
    • He taugh courses like
      • Electric Circuits 1 / 2
      • Intro to robotics
      • Automated system and diagnosis
      • Electronics Industrial Maintenance
    • Instructors putting bugs into the system to test students
    • PLCs still reign supreme
    • Arduino recently released the Opta, which is targeted at the industrial market
    • Don writes for Control.com
    • OpenPLC is software that can run on a variety of accessible platforms (like ESP32/Arduino/etc)
    • Industrial I/O
    • OpenPLC based on IEC spec (61131-3)
    • Different programming styles of programming
    • Blackhat (movie) with Chris Hemsworth
    • Stuxnet worm
    • He wrote and article about using OpenPLC with Arduino
    • Dr Don has a new book that was just released! The M5 stack book
    • Continuing Education Courses
    • IEEE certificate
    • Dr Don will be speaking at the Embedded Online conference coming up in April
    Super Tecmo Bug Feb 13, 2023
    Show notes
    • Thunderfoot AI Video about ChatGPT
    • Prototyping tools: Chris has been laser cutting using Ponoko (and Inkscape). 3D modeling + low cost 3D print services means you could make some amazing stuff.
    • Dave has been finding bugs will doing scope testing
    • FFTs in scopes
    • Series 2 tektronix
    • There's no concept of a Bug Bounty in the hardware world.
    • The BM786 will have a flash micro in new versions, it was previously one-time-programmable (OTP)
    • Past guest of the show Jay Carlson (ep 515) wrote a new post about the cheapest flash micro you can buy (it's not the RV32). Jay has previously written about the $1 Micro and Embedded Linux.
    • What is the most complex prototype you could you build for $100? There should be a contest!
    • "The Amp Hour $100 prototype index"
    • FedEx took
    • Coral microcontroller dev board for machine learning applications
    • Dave is building a RetroPie with his kids (they can play Tecmo Super Bowl!)
    • The electric Mustang SUV has a mile of extra wire harness.
    • What is a wiring harness? Here's an article about a simple harness install on a classic Mustang
    • Enphase has bidirectional charging for a house. Unstated: your car needs to support it
    • LightYear Zero company went bankrupt (shock, horror)
    • Carbon Offsets - Wendover
    • Carbon Offsets - Last Week Tonight (John Oliver)
    • ESG investing - A good Planet Money episode about it
    • Saber from PCB Arts (ep 608) will be holding a meetup on Wednesday March 15th during Embedded World! If you'll be at Embedded World, let Chris know!
    • Tesla are removing AM radio...maybe because of the antenna? AM/FM chipsets are available in single silicon packages
    Refrigerators and Robots with Amitabh Shrivastava Feb 06, 2023
    Show notes

    Welcome Amitabh Shrivastava of Refrigediro.org and Tinkrmind!

    • Amitabh moved from Physics into Engineering. He did an internship at Brandeis for astophysics and radio astronomy and realized astrophysics mostly coding these days.
    • Kit for teaching teachers in India
    • There was a limited Electronics scene in India. Amitabh grew up in Bangalore (Bengaluru)
    • Manufacturing in India has been growing, including in the silicon space. Chris used to work at a place that had a CM in Bangalore.
    • Gaming startup making tag games using LoRa
    • XBee
    • Logistics company that tracked 2 wheelers. Their breakout product was a laser scanner for packages.
    • Amitabh went to ITP at NYU, which is a technology and art crossover program. Past guest of the show Matt Richardson also went there.
    • Creative aspects vs technical aspects.
    • Amitabh enjoyed consulting for other artist, much like past guests Mike Harrison and Todd Bailey discussed.
    • Programmable Air is a kit that allows people to more easily build soft robots and use pumps.
    • Chris and Amitabh met at Teardown 2019. That was also the event where Chris recorded with Joshua and Zach, before recording again this year.
    • A "jammer gripper" is a soft robot that allows you to pick up arbitrarily shaped objects using friction.
    • "Backpack inflatable car" from Otherlab
    • Open Source Project
    • Programmable Air was crowdfunded on Crowd Supply. As such, it's still available on Mouser.
    • The valves in the kit were meant for keurig machines. Spec sheets are super basic for mechanical components.
    • Chris saw Amitabh at Supercon 22 wearing a backpack refrigerator. It's called "Refrigediro"
    • Amitabh gave a talk about the project at Hackaday Supercon 2022
    • The source of the name is "Harry potter and the methods of rational thinking"
    • Refrigeration is an old industry
    • PV=nRT
    • Kipp Bradford and Adam Savage video on building tiny refrigeration.
    • Other uses for small scale refrigeration is vaccine storage, cold chain storage.
    • Ammonia refrigeration allows you to keep things cold with a fire.
    • Gradient window cooler is a heat pump with a cool form factor. Not shipping yet though?
    • Modding an icemaker
    • Follow Amitabh on Instagram or YouTube for his latest experiments and builds. Follow him most places as "Tinkrmind"
    Conference Room Innovation Jan 30, 2023
    Show notes
    • It was Australia Day when Dave and Chris recorded
    • The pinnacle of stereaming services: The Amp Hour+
    • Chris just got a new solar quote for his house, the roof shape is still too weird to make it a good option.
    • Thunderbirds episode
    • Solar city panels starting on fire
    • Dave is looking at upgrading his solar again, including with DC batteries
    • Span.io is working on smart circuit breaker boxes
    • The Grid book
    • Sydney program to use homeowners' batteries
    • How many times has this guy gotten laid off? (the one scamming for 8-10 engineering jobs at a time)
    • Big layoffs are hitting the likes of Google, MS, Amazon
    • In Australia, this is called "being made redundant" or "retrenchment"
    • Conference room innovation for speakerphones
    • Tom Scott got to visit and walk on the Parkes Telescope (of The Dish fame)
    • Tour of the switch
    • Dave has timelapse video of the dish moving
    • Dave got to blinky with the RV32, the $0.10 RISC V processor
    • Self Soldering Circuits from Carl Bugeja
    • Water cooling inside PCBs
    • Coin cell cutout on a PCB
    Previous 1 10 11 12 13 14 76 Next

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