The Amp Hour

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**The Amp Hour**

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

Latest Episodes:

Arduino's Invisible Touch with Massimo Banzi Jun 17, 2026

Show notes

Welcome, Massimo Banzi of SuperModerno and co-founder of Arduino

Introduction and SuperModerno: Massimo introduces himself as a "friendly nerd" and discusses his new project, SuperModerno
The project aims to explain the "behind the scenes" of technology to prevent people from becoming "slaves to the platform"
The History of Technology: Massimo expresses his passion for technology's history, emphasizing non-American innovators to show Europeans they can also lead in technology, citing the UK-based origins of the Arm processor
The Legacy of Olivetti: He highlights Olivetti (founded in 1908), which moved from typewriters to creating the Programma 101, the first desktop computer used by NASA to compute orbits for the Apollo program
Design as a Differentiator: Olivetti was the first tech company to apply design to everything (products, posters, and architecture)
This inspired Massimo’s concept of the "invisible touch", the idea that consistent, intentional design creates a unique connection with users and gives a company a competitive edge
The Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII): Massimo's path led him to IDII, located in the former Olivetti research building, where he transitioned from a two-week sabbatical to a four-year stay
Learning by Making: To help students with no electronics background, Massimo drew on how he learned as a seven-year-old ("learning by making") to remove the friction of interacting with technology
The Founding Team: He met Tom Igoe (ITP) and David Cuartielles, and they realized students were afraid to be creative because they feared "blowing up" expensive tools like the Basic Stamp
The "Pizza and a Beer" Price Point: Massimo aimed for a hardware cost of 20 Euros, roughly what a student would spend on a pizza and a beer, to encourage experimentation
Building the Platform: Along with David Mellis, the team adapted Processing (a language for artists) by "surgically" replacing Java with C++ to create the Arduino IDE
Ivrea Manufacturing: Leveraging the industrial base of Ivrea and Torino (the "Detroit of Italy"), Massimo was able to find local PCB manufacturers and assemblers just a short drive away
From Hacking to AVR: Massimo’s early work involved hacking satellite TV PIC chips for soccer fans, but mentor Bill Verplank encouraged him to use AVR microcontrollers because they could be programmed simply in C
Enabling Creators: Massimo shares stories of how Arduino enabled others, such as Josef Prusa, who started with Arduino as a teenager before building his global open-source 3D printer company
The Innovation of Simplicity: Massimo argues that Arduino's true innovation is the user experience
This is measured by the "Time to First Blink", the goal for a user to go from downloading software to blinking an LED in five minutes
Standardization and "The Core": Arduino became an ad-hoc standard by providing a compatibility layer across different microcontrollers
Massimo believes in having a "small slice of a really large pie" by allowing other architectures to work within the ecosystem
Hardware Architecture and the "Lasagna": Inspired by the PC104 format, the board uses a layered approach where modules stack like a lasagna
The "Shield of a King": The name Arduino comes from King Arduino of Ivrea; David Cuartielles suggested that since the board was named after a king, the add-on modules should be called "Shields"
Hardware Design Choices: The board fits a credit card size (to stay within the free version of Eagle software) and is blue because that color was thought to be less tiring for workers' eyes
Happy Accidents: The unique shape was chosen to be "ourselves instead of everyone else"
During the design process, Massimo inadvertently moved a connector by half a step, creating an offset header that they kept for consistency after the first few thousand were made
The Discovery of Auto-Reset: During a workshop in Germany, Massimo solved the frustration of manual resets by soldering a capacitor to the DTR pin, allowing the software to trigger the reset automatically
The US Market and Legal Battles: Tom Igoe’s adoption of Arduino at NYU helped the US become the project's single biggest market
This growth led to a difficult legal battle for control of the brand against a former partner
Support from Arm: Massimo credits Arm Ltd (and CEO Simon Segars) for providing the strategic support that allowed the founders to regain control of the company. Massimo believes this is the first time he has talked about the role of Arm in the difficult legal process.
Industrial and AI Expansion: Partnerships with Intel and Microsoft (Windows 10 IoT) led to early forays into TinyML (AI on small boards) back in 2017
The Qualcomm Acquisition: In October 2025, Qualcomm acquired Arduino, which Massimo sees as essential for bringing "advanced silicon" into the family to handle the increasing complexity of technology
The "Arduino Formula" and Layering: Massimo views Arduino as a formula for simplification that can be applied to anything, including complex Linux machines like the Uno Q
This is achieved by building in layers, where beginners use high-level abstractions and experts can "strip away" layers to reach the bare metal
The Future Vision: Massimo looks forward to the "Arduino Formula" being applied to new fields, stating he is waiting for someone to develop an "Arduino for biology" using CRISPR and DNA technology

The Secret Life of Circuits with lcamtuf / Michał Zalewski Jun 04, 2026

Show notes

Welcome Michał Zalewski, AKA lcamtuf!

The lcamtuf Substack is where Michał is writing most these days
Chris first found and geeked out about the CNC guide on the lcamtuf original site (discussed many times here)
Michał is interested in the craft of teaching electronics
He recently published The Secret Life of Circuits with No Starch Press
- Use the code AMPHOUR26 for 30% off The Secret Life of Circuits valid from June 1st through June 30th
- It was announced on his blog here
Deriving fomulas from basic trigonometry sometimes bugs people who think electronics should only work with calculus
Software geeks follow the site, often getting lots of attention on Hacker News
Row hammer DRAM
There were no Information Security degrees in the early days, so the field was made up of folks with backgrounds in math and EEs
Fuzzing for security
SMBC cartoon for blming humans
Books
Security stuff (including books on the subject) ages over time, as opposed to electronics
On the subjects of Calculators (and Michał's collection)
- Calculators are a footnote in the history of computing, but still intriguing
- Dead ends in calculators
- CRT displays on calculators
- Nixie tubes
- Discrete moving into logic gates into processors
- Mechanical calculators are rare and get a high price online
Working with transistors
The Secret Life of Circuits start with FET based transistors vs BJT
BJTs are often right after diode chapter because of the multiple junctions in an NPN, but that doesn't make it easier to understand
Projects
- A recent project involved making a clock out of current meters
- Woodworking and AI example
- Want to see all lcamtuf articles in one place?
- Sokoban
- Sir box-a-lot

**All Heat, No Useful Work** May 25, 2026
Show notes

Chris just got back from a work trip to Madrid

He also got to hang out with Matt Venn (and coworker Mike Szczys) in Valencia

Dave has a new data center going in across the street

Chris enjoyed this episode of Prof G Markets where they talked about the impact of data centers on power and the rise of "behind the meter" generation

Dave without internet for a week. Chris has had multiday losses after fiber has been cut in his neighborhood.

Humanoid robots...on a plane!

Chris has been working on 0201 components on a tiny Bluetooth board

The Iran War and subsequent rise in petroleum product sourcing issues is starting to impact the PCB industry

PCBs we are used to ordering at low cost (JLC, PCBway, etc) are normally loss leaders to get larger business later

Chris found his low cost microscope from Florin/Voltlog trinocular video

lcamtuf will be on the show soon, Chris bought a CNC mill because of a single webpage of his making

TagMod board is a new breakout Chris made for injecting power through a 10 pin TagConnect cable.

NXP devboards somehow have LEDs as bright as the sun

Dave has been revisiting his solar analytics (update: he figured out he's getting charged more too!)

Chris has been working at Canonical (makers of Ubuntu, new owners of Golioth) for a few months now. That was the trip to Spain.

Dogfooding your own product

Chris created a backronym: "Application Level Program Optimization" or... ALPO

Chris built a new vibe coded project for talking to Zephyr devices using Web Serial and passing firmware packages over SMP

CI/CD

Debian now requires "fully reproducable" builds to harden against supply chain attacks

Veritasium video about Linux bug

BeagleBoard's Back with Jason Kridner May 07, 2026

Show notes

Welcome back, Jason Kridner!

Jason has previously been on the show
- Episode 59 (!)
- Episode 378 alongside Robert Nelson
The BeagleY AI was the first board that mimic'ed the RPi form factor
PocketBeagle 2 is still a small altoid tin form factor with a new processor
The Zepto is a new product targeting a $1 price point for microcontrollers
Many boards in the Beagle catalog now run Zephyr, and BeagleBoard.org recently joined The Zephyr Project as members and contributors
Click Brand is the official bards from MikroElectronika that implement the open source Mikrobus
Chris started using Mikrobus while designing early prototypes of the BeagleConnect Freedom
The Freedom board talks over wireless to boards like the BeaglePlay
Application spaces for different boards
FPGA based board
Cheeseburger robot? Well yes, but also Cheeseburger robot
Mitchells vs the machine
Krazam
Click boarfds now have eeprom / ClickID as a 1-wire identifier with a uuid
Beagleplay has 802.15.4
Project ARA popularized the idea of Greybus
MotoMods from Motorola was another implementation that worked on the Moto Z
Using Freedom for prototyping
WebAssembly
...on microcontrollers?
Jason says he doesn't really like MCUboot
Entering the linux ecosystem
bb-imager
Techlab is a way to easily extend peripherals for the PocketBeagle
Known working targets
Michael Welling designed the baconbits mini cape as a learning platform
The BeagleBadge is a new formfactor shown in the title image for this episode. It runs on a new low cost TI part running Linux and yes... it runs Doom
The Badge can also talk on Meshtastic
Working with the memory shortage
Bao - Bunie and Xobs
Bella / Gem
Beagle5fire
RISC V boards
RV32 Claire
Find Beagle and Jason online
- Schedule a meeting with Jason
- There is also a Discord
- And a Zulip instance
- You can get Beagle merch

AI Tooling with Matt Liberty and Luke Beno Apr 23, 2026

Show notes

Welcome back Matt Liberty (Joulescope) and Luke Beno (Werewolf.us)

Matt has been a guest on episodes 527 and 607
Luke was a guest on episode 272
Luke launched a new cable manufacturing and power supply company in the US called Werewolf.us
Matt is working on the JS320
We discussed how PartsBox is a great ERP solution but Matt and Luke decided to go fully custom with Claude Code. Jan Rychter was a guest on episode 542
We discussed the differences with Product Lifecycle Maintenance. Michael Corr of the recently acquired Duro Labs was on episode 577
CAM workflow
A fully verticalized PCB factory is something Jonathan Hirschmann talked about on episode 299
Jeff Bezos is investing 100B in a fund that is looking at automation in the factory using AI
Matt recently had success with Claude Code and verilog programming
Saleae for hardware in the loop using their APIs
Other tools to check out
- pyelf
- pdfdk blast
- superpowers skill (by past guest at Teardown Jesse Vincent)
Luke used OpenClaw to power a chat agent in his ERP system
Working with distributors
TI backlog
Chris recently learned that Digikey has a developer API
Cocotb verification framework (in Python)
Luke is working on vision experiments for inhouse developed AOI solutions

Chip Design for Fun (and Waffles) with Julia Desmazes Apr 09, 2026

Show notes

Welcome Julia Desmazes of Tales on The Wire

Follow along with the blog post we discuss Two Weeks Until Tapeout
- Matt Venn - TinyTapeout - Episode 616 and 672
- Andreas Olofsson - openroad/openlane - Episode 254 and 650
- Tim Ansell - Wafer.space - Episode 375, 501, and 703
JTAG
How do you know that tooling is or isn't working?
Accelerator
Rabbithole with floating point (post updated after recording)
BFloat16
Follow Julia on GitHubhttps://github.com/Essenceia
Kapla (official website, not the much cheaper alibaba version):
Dimity Grinberg personal blog

Hyper Growth and OpenClaw Interns Apr 01, 2026

Show notes

Canonical (the makers of Ubuntu) acquired Golioth, meaning Chris is moving from a 12-person startup to an organization of over 1,200 people
Dave found this chart of Canonical products on wikipedia to be useful
An increase in professional travel from zero weeks to six weeks per year following the acquisition, including "sprints" in cities like London
The naming convention for Ubuntu releases (Year.Month) and the importance of Long Term Support (LTS) versions for backporting security vulnerabilities
Ubuntu Core’s role in embedded Linux devices, utilizing an immutable kernel and "snaps" for field update
Dave believes he influenced the Emergency Situation Surcharge at DHL after asking why it is still happening
Dave’s transition to a "Hipster Dave" persona, complete with a secondhand Mac and a goatee
The implementation of OpenClaw, a scripting service that interfaces with LLMs to act as an "automated intern" for repetitive administrative tasks
Chris really likes this video showing how to use OpenClaw
Using OpenClaw to automate forum registration approvals to combat high volumes of bot activity
The security implications of AI agents, emphasizing that they should be treated like interns with limited access to sensitive data and separate accounts
ARM released its first physical server chip, measuring approximately 70mm, marking a shift from a pure IP company to a hardware competitor.
The Super Micro CEO smuggling scandal, where the founder was accused of smuggling $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia chips.
The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and its requirement for nearly all CE-marked electronic products to be updatable by December 2027.
Potential impacts of the CRA on one-time programmable (OTP) devices and the necessity of maintaining firmware support for five years post-product life.
SpaceX’s plans for a "Terafab" a manufacturing facility ten times larger than a Gigafactory designed to verticalize the entire supply chain from silicon wafers to final packaging.
- Editor's note: despite cool tech stuff happening, Elon is...so lame.
NASA’s cancellation of the Lunar Gateway project in favor of a direct path to establishing a moon base within the next five to seven years.
Pop culture recommendations including the series For All Mankind and The Expanse, along with the book Delta V.

Inventing the Power MOSFET with Alex Lidow Mar 20, 2026

Show notes

Alex is founder and CEO of Efficient Power Conversion, a leading manufacturer of GaN MOSFET’s.

Alex is also the inventor of the original Power MOSFET and HEXFET at International Rectifier. Also, former CEO of International Rectifier (founded by his father!), https://epc-co.com We cover everything from inventing the power MOSFET on his first day on the job to silicon physics, AI data centres and humanoid robots. Enjoy.

Layout Review with Zachariah Peterson Mar 11, 2026

Show notes

Welcome Zachariah Peterson of Northwest Engineering Solutions!

Zach listed the various places people can find his work, including
- The Altium YouTube channel
- Zach's YouTube channel
- His personal technical blog
- The Altium Blog
- various industry conferences like PCB West 01:10
Zach mentions that he has been creating video content and seminars for several years, traveling to places like Denmark to teach high-speed design. 01:10
They discuss the recent acquisition of Altium by Renesas and how the company is trying to balance enterprise features with the needs of individual users. 03:15
He notes that the pricing for professional design software has recently become more accessible for freelancers and consultants. 11:15
He suggests that learning the fundamentals of EMC is one of the best ways for an engineer to become more valuable in the industry. 14:00
He warns against relying solely on semiconductor data sheets for EMC guidance because they often contain outdated or incorrect information. 18:45
They talk about the massive costs and delays that happen when a product fails its initial testing runs in a lab. 21:00
Zach shares how his background in applied physics and lasers made it easier for him to transition into high-speed RF and digital design. 25:15
He explains that he relies on mental models and specialized software tools more than solving complex equations by hand on a daily basis. 27:00
He stresses the importance of understanding the physical manufacturing process, such as how circuit boards are pressed and laminated. 30:00
They discuss the common problem of engineers over-specifying expensive materials when a cheaper option would work perfectly fine. 32:45
Zach predicts that the most useful AI tools will eventually be built directly into existing PCB design software rather than living in separate browser tabs. 35:30
He shares how he uses AI to quickly find generic part numbers, which saves him a lot of tedious manual searching. 42:00
He compares different AI design tools, noting that some generate schematics from data sheets while others use proven building blocks. 46:30
He describes an internal tool he is building to help him search through and reuse circuitry from his own past projects. 49:30
He admits he isn't a fan of code-based schematics because he prefers graphical tools and doesn't consider himself a professional coder. 51:00
He tells the story of how his popular one-minute design reviews started as a spontaneous way to manage the many requests he receives on LinkedIn. 54:00
He points out that many designers fail to use their software's built-in design rule checks, leading to thousands of avoidable errors. 58:45
They talk about the decline of mentorship in the industry and the risk of companies losing important tribal knowledge as senior engineers retire. 61:15
Zach shares his goals for the coming year, including a deeper focus on manufacturing nuances and advanced EMC testing standards. 66:00
He encourages engineers of all levels to attend industry conferences like PCB West and DesignCon to learn directly from experts. 70:00
They conclude the episode by sharing where listeners can find more of his technical articles and videos online. 1:02:30

Back on the road in '26 Mar 04, 2026

Show notes

Chris will be having a meetup in London March 8th, 2026 click here for more info. He will also be at Embedded World the following week at various events.
Dave is also headed to a meetup in Sydney that he has presented at in the past.
The "lazy man move" for meetup organizers: scheduling events within walking distance of home to simplify travel logistics.
Chris provides details on his latest high-density hardware project, a 22mm circular board packed with 0201 components, Bluetooth, and a suite of sensors, noting a move from BGA to QFN for better assembly reliability.
There is significant skepticism regarding "solid-state transformers" and tech articles claiming they will replace the traditional power grid, with the hosts citing efficiency losses that become massive at megawatt scales.
A fascinating look into global supply chains reveals how a single AI prompt can be traced back through layers of manufacturing to sugarcane fermentation and high-purity quartz mines in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.
The creeping normalization of biometric face scanning in public spaces, from water park lockers to international airport terminals.
The marketing tactics behind Donut Lab’s solid-state battery claims, explaining how "independent third-party testing" can be carefully hand-picked to avoid industry standards. They want us to talk about it like this
The nuances of UL certification explains how companies sometimes use specific lab reports to imply broader official endorsements that do not actually exist.
Dave shares his experience watching the show Silicon Valley with his son and discusses the "hideous accuracy" of the Australian public service comedy Utopia.
The pros and cons of modular hardware are debated, covering the Framework laptop’s "Ship of Theseus" repairability model versus high-end gaming tablets like the Asus ROG Flow Z13.
Dave’s viral social media quest for the best Linux distribution leads to a consensus on Linux Mint as the top choice for beginners, fueling the ongoing joke about the "Year of the Linux Desktop".
Recent industry news highlights the release candidate for KiCad 10 and the discovery of a three-cent Paduk microcontroller performing auxiliary functions inside Rode wireless microphones.
Pimoroni did extreme an cooling project back in 2024 that successfully overclocked the RP2350 microcontroller to 800 MHz. We just found out about it from a post from Jeff Geerling.

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