The Amp Hour

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Natural Sciences
**The Amp Hour**

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

Latest Episodes:

Product Lifecycle Management with Michael Corr Feb 14, 2022

Show notes

Welcome, Michael Corr of Duro!

Chris met Michael when he was still working at a drone startup in SF
Wendover Productions video about drone delivery
After that he did consulting for a while and then started Duro
PLM stands for "Product Lifecycle Management". If you have used a system that has change orders, it was likely a PLM.
Chris first experienced this as paper tracking at a co-op in mid 2000's
Michael wants the process to be more like Pull Requests in software revision control.
It can be tough dealing with binaries when doing revision control.
There are other differences when comparing hardware vs software revision control.
Separations of engineer from buyers means there's less insight into supply chain woes
Purchasing changes once you go to production
Michael got started in R&D at SRI (Stanford Research Institute)
He then moved to a high volume manufacturing job and was surprised at the differences. Notably the cost benefit of spending time costing down a BOM another 10 cents.
Chris maintains that this is why hardware engineers are cheapskates
Another problem in the industry is that tools aren't interoperable, requiring meta layers like Duro.
DFM and DFA are tough to do because there is a "wall" between manufacturing and engineering.
Mechanical examples
Michael says having quick iteration is another similarlity with a more desirable process: Agile feedback loops
What does a release process look like?
Where is the source of truth? To avoid the manufacturer using the wrong attachment, Duro sends a link instead of an attachment
Tying into ERP systems that purchasing deparments might use.
Tying into MES software package integrations for companies doing their own manufacturing (like on the shop floor)
The problems are everywhere: big companies might be able to move faster, but it's by grinding with tools like spreadsheets
When Michael moved to LA, he started mentoring at a hardware accelerator program
When do people start using PLM systems? Chris thinks it should be "Two boards and an interconnect"
Michael says it's important to start using PLM ASAP, at the very least to start using a part numbering system. This was a similar opinion that Jan Rychter (PartsBox) had about management systems.

A literal trainwreck Feb 07, 2022

Show notes

There was some light “popping” happening throughout this episode on Chris’s mic, due to new hardware configuration. Apologies.

A train watching group posted a video of a train crash/derailment. There was also a YouTube feed of the cleanup.
Chris was on vacation and visited the Wilmington Railroad Museum
Model train gauges: XO gauge, N gauge, Z Gauge
Train in a briefcase
Dave has a video with his friend Doug Ford reviewing audio decisions on trains
Intel will be building new fabs in...Ohio? Chris wonders about the talent factor given the lack of other chip manufacturing in the midwest
Dave is upset about IndieGoGo campaigns that are fleecing people for money
SigFox (a paid LoRa network based out of France) is filing for bankruptcy. What happens to people on their networks?
The Apple AirTag is an ad-hoc asset tracking network that relies on a very prevalent network effect (iPhones everywhere)
Other LoRaWAN networks are springing up, most notably Helium (which has a crypto currency associated with it) and Sidewalk (which has an Amazon associated with it)
Wendover Productions explains cellular networks
Eccentric Orbits was a book about building (and saving) the Iridium satellite network
After posting last week's episode on Twitter, we were asking "Can you reverse engineer an open source product?"
Chris is now on Linux Mint 20.3, possibly the source of the popping sound during this episode (also stupidly had an external hard drive plugged into the same USB extender that may have impacted the USB mic)
How is it that Windows based tutorials still show Teraterm as the best way to connect to serial ports for hardware?
StrongBad Techno

Thanks to Geoff Henson for the photo of the train

New Life Skills with Joe Grand Jan 31, 2022

Show notes

Welcome back, Joe Grand!

Joe was one of our earliest guests on episode 60 of The Amp Hour!
Since we last talked to Joe (10 years ago!) he has moved from SF to Portland.
Joe still does some media stuff (like on Prototype This), but also does occasional product design and more commonly hardware security training. Different types of companies want to hire Joe, but many of them are government adjacent or large corporations.
Joe developed and released the JTAGulator back in 2013
Some of the first electronic conference badges were Joe's making, including badges at DEF CON 14 through DEF CON 18
He didn't think he'd ever do that again but Jeff (the Dark Tangent) who runs DEF CON asked Joe to make the badges for DC China 1.
Joe also agreed to make the badges for DEF CON 27, which was built with custom gemstones
Surplus Gizmos
After a year of working on badges, Joe realized he was burned out. This coincided with the start of the pandemic. Daily meditation and time off helped him recover.
When Joe started to get interested in electronics again, he created a "pizza compass" for WIRED.
Joe posted about that and other fun creations on his YouTube Channel
His most recent video is about reverse engineering a Trezor wallet to recover $2M in crypto currency
The Trezor uses a STM32F2
Joe followed other work on reverse engineering wallets by past guests Colin O'Flynn and Wallet.fail (a team made up of Josh Datko, Dmitry Nedospasov, and Thomas Roth)
He used the ChipWhisperer to do fault injection / glitching
Thomas Roth has a low cost RP2040 tool
There was also a Verge article about the hack
How can engineers make secure products?
- Threat modeling
- Follow guidelines like OWASP and FIPS140
Joe has a past conference talk about industry standards, best practices, and recommendations for embedded system security called, "Every cloud has a silver lining"
Looking to get in touch with Joe?
- Contact him on the Grand Idea Studio contact page
- Contact him on the offspec.io page for cryptocurrency recovery specific requests
- Ping him on Twitter (@JoeGrand)

Mixed Signal Education with Philip Salmony Jan 18, 2022

Show notes

Welcome to Philip Salmony of Phil’s Lab YouTube channel

Phil's Lab YouTube channel, started in 2020
The STM32 KiCad video when Chris learned of the channel
Jim Williams app note about thermocouple app note
Discrete
Book
devttys0 channel
Jim Williams questions
Mixed signal
Akiba and Chris talking about Jazz
Philip is not only a hardware consultant, he also works at a drone startup in Denmark.
Philip learned KiCad through friend
Level of people coming in?
Z-Transform
Philip likes working on electronics that have an effect on music
Part shortage
Philip is building a new board with the Xilinx Zynq
Zynq toolchain
Eurocircuits
Sign up for the course!
- Course overview
- Course purchase page

Technology Instruction with Charlie Larrabee Jan 10, 2022

Show notes

Chris knows Charlie from going to college together. Charlie inspired Chris to dive deeper into electronics.
Charlie got started with a RadioShack 130 in 1 kit (apparently Sparkfun still sells these!)
RadioShack training showed Charlie that they were more interested in selling batteries and phone subscriptions. Now they're selling Cryptocurrencies? (ugh)
What do aspiring electronics students do now that there are no stores?
Kids seem to like Snap Circuits
Charlie was teaching with the Microbit but has switched to Adafruit's Circuit Playground
Classrooms can sign up to talk with the space station, at least for a few more years. The ISS is going to be decommissioned at some point (no plans before 2028) and then might be replaced by private stations.
Communication for students between 6 and 14 can vary wildly.
For many kids, it's about tying learning back to the top level.
Wimsherst generator / machine
How do you teach things that are less intuitive, like programming? Make things as visual as possible
There are lots of teaching resources on Code.org
Abstraction isn't possible before young brains reach a certain age / developmental level.
Learning good habits
"Kids these days"
Linking technology to modern examples: How do children understand an iPad and compare it to the electronics they work on in class?
Chris talked about Consumption vs Creation
A handheld Spectrum Analyzer (SA) is a great way for young people to understand radio
Charlie is a ham radio enthusiast and enjoys DXing
Outside of teaching, Charlie also works on designs with vacuum tubes. He also has a project mimicing non-linearities of tubes using JFETs.
Building resiliance hapeens when you build confidence
Interactions with parents
Commonsense.org helps parents and teachers understand how children can safely interact with elements of the internet.
Positive Discipline
Charlie is now teaching with CircuitPython on the CircuitPlayground. There is an experimental module with uses WebUSB to program the boards, which enables them to use Chromebooks for development (commonly used in US schools)
Line folllower that reads colors
Chris asked Charlie about developing electronics and attempting to sell into the education ecosystem. Their mutual classmate (and former guest) Zach Fredin did this with the NeuroBytes
Olimex makes a $4 (6) robot kit
Find Charlie online
- QRZ.com
- larrabeelabs.com
- ssesh.org

Rube Goldbergs in Spaaaace Jan 02, 2022

Show notes

Image Credit: The Springfield Visual Journal

Prototyping
The JWST has launched! Watch its progress here
Rube Goldberg Machines

https://twitter.com/sjvn/status/1475886485761101828

Hard gold
Firewire
Flatflex
Ladder logic
"uppey goey"
KiCad V6 was released on December 25th, 2021
A new part from little known semi company (WCH) is using a RISC V core with a Bluetooth LE front end. Might be cheap? TBD
PIC32 used a MIPS core
Electro-Pyrotechnic Initiator

Keyzermas All The Way Dec 20, 2021

Show notes

Welcome back, Jeff Keyzer AKA Mightyohm!

Jeff has been consulting, including back at Valve working on a part of the Steam Deck
CES Con-Flu
Dead projects
Sirenza Microdevices
Portfolio sites - Dave's friend Steve Hale has been documenting for decades!
RIFA caps
Jeff had to replace them to get his HP35665A working
RIFA - "Replace If Found Always"
X class capacitor
The HP35665A is good for lower frequency analysis, including shock and vibe
App notes
3560A
Dave made a video about Coherence recently that was in this realm
Kemet / Yageo still makes RIFA
Modal Analysis
Charge amplifier
Voltage dependence of capacitors
LTT
Jeff has been trying to attend events that are able to happen in Seattle, like the recent 3H holiday party
Museum in Bellingham - Spark museum
James Lewis talks about bandwidth vs sample rate on a recent video
Bunnie writes about "Fixing a small corner of the supply chain"

Electric Fields, Son. Dec 06, 2021

Show notes

- Dave and other YouTubers have been making reaction/explainer videos about Veritasium's video, "The Big Misconception about Electricity"
- Feynman lectures
- How electricity gets to you (Wendover)
- World's largest solar array using HVDC
- Photonicinduction
- Electric Buses
- Linus Tech Tips is growing their lab (and business)
- Do career prospects change for people above 40 in the hardware industry? How is it different from the software industry, discussed on hacker news?
- Chris recently went full-time at a startup called Golioth. Not mentioned on the show, but Chris also wrote about it here.
  - Started by former guest Jonathan Beri
  - Golioth is built to work with Zephyr RTOS currently.
  - In a former episode, Chris talked about hiring Bilal to write drivers for cellular modems, but that still wouldn't hook into databases, it just throws MQTT packets at a server.
  - Chris was able to build a proof-of-concept using cellular modems in 3 hours total.
- Sam Feller (former Engineer Blogs writer) wrote about keeping in touch using a CRM.
- Amazon Re:Invent is offering private 5G networks in factories

YouTube to Consulting with Florin of Voltlog Nov 29, 2021

Show notes

This episode was sponsored by Mouser Electronics. Check out TheAmpHour.com/immersive for more information about Immersive Technology and how it might change your engineering workflow.

Welcome, Florin of the Voltlog YouTube Channel!

Florin is a YouTuber and consulting engineer based out of Romania.
Chris has many of the low cost finds that Florin discusses on his channel, often on the "In The Mail" segments. His focus on low cost comes from the hassle of importing and paying VAT on equipment.
Florin likes that Mouser allows him to pay the taxes up front.
He got into electronics early and eventually ended up selling dev boards to his school based on the PIC32.
After school, he went to work in the automotive space, including for Continental
Florin once met up with past guest Andreas Spiess, while he was visiting Romania.
Automotive videos come from his general interest in cars but also working on automotive chips for Freescale in France from 2011-2012

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m2UW_pron4

ECU
The ESP32 CanLite has GPIO in addition to LIN/CAN
CAN bus is a protocol, without any requirements on the formatting of the message (or frame)
The parts (and the entire product) would need to work over a wide temp range to be useful in a car long term.
What are users doing with the CanLite?
- Grabbing info from car
- Interfacing with CAN
We have discussed CAN bus with Macchina on the show before
CAN works with a "lowest wins" bus topology.
Florin is also consulting when he's not making videos. People find him via YouTube.
He has had 3 Different labs, in his latest, he made a custom workbench:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmjLSHljyD4

IoT
Florin recently got into ham radio (callsign: YO4VLT) and built a UHF repeater/gateway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EprSIw-5l6w

His new office also has a Tasmota floor heater, so he built a control board for it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZS3ggG0QJI

Looking for gift ideas for the holidays? Florin has you covered:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3mq0lt7Vlw

Chris asked for 2 recommendations off the list:
- Cheap option: a metal plunger for syringes for dispensing paste or flux
- More expensive, but still around #100: a Uni-T waveform generator:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgDaWwS72QQ

Find Florin online:
- YouTube
- Twitter
- Tindie

Automated Transcript

The transcript is autogenerated from Zencastr, our recording software. We attach no guarantees to its accuracy, but offer it as a way to make the show more accessible: 568 - Voltlog - Auto-Transcript

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