The Amp Hour

Latest Episodes:

The Last Line of Defense Jul 06, 2021

Show notes

Today’s episode is sponsored by InspectAR! Check out their latest version of the tool to improve your remote troubleshooting, working with manufacturing partners, or just learning more about the circuit boards on your bench.

Heat events in the world. The Pacific Northwest (PNW) has breaking records.
Solar + battery might make a lot of sense for areas prone to weather events.
Dave made a video on clipping the power due to microinverters and moving up to 8 kW
Chris will be starting from a blank room for his new lab
Dave shared a rare photo of his old workshed.
Lighting in the lab
Call / mute button
8 bit guy studio build
Chris has been working on a water resistant product. He has been targeting an IP rated case with an o-ring and cable glands
Double o-rings and grease help for high pressure environments
Nic Bingham talking about preparing electronics for deep underwater
IP 67 standards
Re-enterable potting
Dave is planning to do a teardown on an early 2000s Kodak digital camera
Sparkfun hooks a patent troll
Silicon Valley's episode about patent trolls
Mota group tried to take down Dave's videos (and others) of a drone that went bust. Dave responded in another video about the takedown notice.

Photo by ciboulette from Pexels

Open Source Mindset with Michael Gielda Jun 29, 2021

Show notes

Welcome back, Michael Gielda of Antmicro!

Michael was on episode 519 talking about simulating embedded hardware using Renode
He returned to talk about other projects that Antmicro is working on, especially those that are open source. The open source projects are indexed on the Antmicro Open Source Portal.
Very niche stuff might be closed source, but people are surprised by what others might be interested in (if it were open sourced)
Renode was the topic of our last interview
AI is a new target of open source work. Antmicro recently released the Kenning framework
Why another standard? Relevant XKCD
Testing & benchmarking different AI models/frameworks across platforms from different vendors e.g. Nvidia, Modivius or Google Coral
Black boxes are bad for users
LLVM has hundreds of people looking at the project
CHIPS Alliance
Brian Faith from QuickLogic,first ever FPGA vendor to adapt open source flow
Sammy Cheung from Efinix
Interchange format for FPGA tooling
Virtex Ultrascale PCIe
What happens when a proprietary licensed company goes bankrupt?
Renode is being used for pre-silicon SoC development
Covered Renode-based CI’s in previous episode
Open source toolchain stuff
RISC-V: The ISA is common, but the cores are different.
What is the center of gravity in the RISC V world? Many people are using SiFive.
SiFive uses Chisel
ETH Zurich – another center of gravity - cores written in SystemVerilog
Place for diversity
- Chisel (e.g. Antmicro's DMA core)
- SystemVerilog - enabling use of SystemVerilog code in open source tools
- UVM – Universal Verification Methodology - recent progress with dynamic scheduling in Verilator
- Migen
Zephyr bluetooth
Abstraction as a response to chip shortage
What if you wanted to do a fully open source flow? Let’s do a contrived security camera design example:
- Xilinx 7 series or Lattice ECP5 or Crosslink-NX
- Open source HWhw board using the Nvidia Jetson, manufactured by past guest Chris Osterwood
- VexRiscv
- Linux + LiteX
- LiteDRAM
- Ethernet core – everything but the phy
- Co simulate with Verilator
- Renode
Episodes for open source toolchain
- Tim
- Claire
- Piotr
Cutting down on iteration
Chris mentions a past job that had 6 hour build cycles
Accelerating workflows using compute power and parallelizing dev processes
Working with GCP & building custom self-hosted GitHub runners
Chip design using AI (Google)
Scalenode
ARVSOM
BeagleV
DC-SCM FPGA-based board management controller
Open Compute Project
Row Hammer
Interested in working with Antmicro? Get in touch!

Thousands Of Dependencies Jun 22, 2021

Show notes

Dave has more computer woes. He still "shops" from the dumpster room though!
Chris has been working with NodeJS which has so many dependencies it stresses him out
Altium rejected a bid from Autodesk
Jon Evans, one of the lead KiCad devs, is an upcoming guest on Chris's other podcast for Contextual Electronics.
Solidworks is made by Dassault Systems (who also make military gear?)
Solidworks rebadges Altium as "Solidworks PCB"
Past guest (and co-worker of both Chris and Dave!) Matt Berggren is one of the leading product developers at Autodesk PCB.
The LM3914 display driver
Past guest Philip Fredin made a "DIP conversion" package using a PCB and stamped metal
Toyota Production System
Stopping the line in TPS
Continuous integration / continuous deployment
Apparently Tesla is doing some form of this with their cars?
Chris got to catch up with past guest Sam Zeloof, who is nearing the end of undergrad (already!). He mentioned the cost of a lithography machine (EUV) is near $100M
Bosch has a new semiconductor plant for making sensors
TinyML on microcontrollers
Past guest Brian Faith talked about doing something like this using their platform SensiML
Popping a 5000A fuse

Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels

Fear of Banjos Jun 07, 2021

Show notes

Dave has been dealing with a hard drive failure
They were set up in a RAID5 configuration, but it's still risky for data loss/corruption
SMR, CMR
Macrofab took investment from Altium recently
The Macrofab Engineering Podcast had the head of ecosystem partnerships on the show talking about manufacturing data.
Dave was surprised to learn that chip manufacturers pay for search rankings on distributor sites
Ex macchina (movie) portrays AI
Chris believes there would be benefis to opting in to some data stuff from distributors
Chris is moving to the Research Triangle (RTP) area of North Carolina from Chicago. He currently lives a few blocks from Big Willie (The Willis Tower)
Eli The Computer guy is down in Asheville (2.5-3 hours away from RTP), as well as past guest and friend of the show Martin Lorton
Wendover Productions on why there are so many shortages
The "Research Triangle" area is near Raleigh (NC State), Durham (Duke), and Chapel Hill (UNC Chapel Hill) and their associated Universities.
You can roughly translate 10 square feet to 1 square meter. Chris found a garage/lab that had a 1200 sq ft lab/garage/shop with an apartment above it
Dave shows off other peoples' labs during mailbag videos
Jeff Keyzer has been rehabbing old HP gear. Chris sent his 8753D to be cared for during the move.
Matterport scans do a 3D capture of real estate for sale. Check out the "dollhouse view" for maximum effect.
Chris has started working with Golioth, a new IoT startup by Jonathan Beri. Jon was on episode 526 talking about what makes IoT difficult, where he hinted at Golioth. Chris joined after some discussions around helping out.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the images of the banjos

Standardizing Manufacturing with Pete Staples Jun 02, 2021

Show notes

Today’s episode is sponsored by Mouser Electronics. They are on the show talking about predictive maintenance this week and how the technology will change industries like automotive and industrial processing. To learn more, check out TheAmpHour.com/predictive.

Welcome Pete Staples of Blue Clover Devices!

Blue Clover Devices (BCD) is "The IOT ODM"
ODMs are a flavor of CM where they do more of the design work
Busy EEs use their services to take on more of the design work
Most products are on a 9 month cycle. Some smaller designs (like a recent SiFive dev board) are shorter timelines.
Facilities:
- Started in LA
- Shenzhen
- Now have an SF office (where Pete is located)
They reluctantly started mfg in China, because CMs wouldn't take on the work.
The factory started with "Screwdriver work" (assembly), but have moved on to PCBA and precision cable
Core of workers help to mentor younger workers
Pete took an MBA class in operations but he didn't expect the difficulties with manufacturing
Container party
Taking stuff to china: comes down to economics. Doing it for products making less than $1M per year doesn't make much sense.
Learn manufacturing locally first.
Pete checked out CMs in the bay area and didn't think they could add much value otherwise.
Devices like the LPKF and Nano Dimension Dragon Fly aren't good substitutes for a PCB house
BCD's flagship product is the PLT
- PLT200 - targets IoT devices like nRF52 (described in Embedded.fm episode)
- PLT300 - targets Linux devices
The PLT acts as a bridge between developers and factory
Programming and testing devices on a line
Internally:
- Programmable power supply
- Souped up JLink
- DMM
  - Volage
  - Current
  - Freq counter
- Linux computer
- UART interaction as well
- CAN bus
Many test stands are Labview based, so they are tied to that location
With the PLT, can have one in the US and one in the factory
Revision control and using CI/CD
Not built for design validation (like NI or test equipment mfg)
How does PLT talk back?
- PLT cloud - a portal to manage devices
- Needs to be a secure connection
- Slack app integration
The PLT hooks to the ICT (In Circuit Tester)
Supports 48 digital and 45 analog test points
The cassette is custom, but can be used again with future designs
Webhooks allow for pulling serial numbers
Box is enrolled to an organization
PLTs used in China
- Not blocked, but network isn't always reliable
- Needs internet to work
YAML test script
Different steps might be connecting up to the PLT
Test Plan Reference
Scanner / label printer works at a lower level than Jan was talking about on the show
Release can be Zebra label format
How is data being used?
Example: product with 3 circuit boards
Gage R&R
PLT running Zephyr and linux
Trends: things are going up market and have more Linux in them. There will still be a separation due to power, cost.
Blue Clover is working on having less environmental impact after the pandemic
- Working with people in the climate neutral community
- Food and apparel have talked about sourcing their materials
Check out bcdevices.com for more info
Twitter @petestaples
To get a free USB cable: email pete@bcdevices.com

Cassette decks have browsers? May 24, 2021

Show notes

Apple released the AirTag, which is for asset tracking. People on twitter are reverse engineering them, including former guest Colin O'Flynn:
- https://twitter.com/colinoflynn/status/1391168784271032320
- khttps://twitter.com/0x31337/status/1395064352785399808
- https://twitter.com/ghidraninja/status/1392185552502501377
Bluetooth COVID tracing apps
iFixit AirTag teardown
Sidewalk Labs is a group at Google. Sidewalk is a new technology using LoRa available from Amazon.
CNSA just landed on Mars.
Airbags vs powered descent
For F-150 Lightning is coming and will be able to power your home.
Vehicle to Load (V2L)
Hyundai Ioniq 5 is coming soon
Higher charge rate cables have liquid cooling
Buying cars
Car shops servicing EVs...will they end up listening to The Amp Hour instead of Car Talk?? (no)
Dave is in the midst of an audio amp repair. It's a VFD failure. Part 1, Part 2.
Service manual
Right to repair summit in Canberra
Chris has been to Canberra with Dave back in 2016!
Zephyr developer summit
Supplyframe was bought by Siemens for $700M
Itchy and Scratchy Money
Zach 'Hoeken' Smith moved to the beach upon cashing out from Makerbot
KiCad / Altium library setup
"Choice leads to suffering" ~ Yoda, probably
Dogfooding
Audacity telemetry

Component Management with Jan Rychter May 17, 2021

Show notes

Welcome Jan Rychter of PartsBox!

Jan started PartsBox (PB) because it's critical to know where parts are when doing assembly on a small scale. It also helps users save money on parts over time.
PB is free for hobbyists, and users are split between hobbyist and business. The businesses are mostly small to medium sized businesses
Medical device startups are also common users because they need to track their documentation (traceability) closely from the beginning, including what parts are used on each design.
PB can replace MRP / ERP systems used at larger companies. PB ties in the purchasing element, though on a smaller scale.
Ordering parts affects the finished goods margin, mostly due to the the concept of "cost" of an individual component on an assembly. How do you account for things like attrition parameters?
There is BOM pricing functionality, including handling things like:
- Multiple currencies
- Minimum order quantities (MOQs)
- Managing multiple BOMs
- Substitutes
Customer Part Numbers (CPN) are called Meta-Parts on PB.
Part Identity
Jan is a proponent of GS1, which is a standardized unique identifier system used for foods.
Since the electronics industry doesn't standardize on this, manufacturers end up playing tricks
You can follow along with an example workflow (we'll use this for all examples in the show)
The idea of "part location" includes pick and place machines.
PB users have PnP machines taht fit in a garage, not a room
Default part source selection
The traceability is important for companies that need to do medical tracking for
When getting started with PB, don't inventory everything.
Storage doesn't need to be by category
Former guest Dan Hienzsch has been tweeting about consolidating parts
USB barcode scanner
Ordering from PB to a distributor website
A label printer will help you label various boxes and bags, but you'll need to export to CSV and print in a batch because printers don't work with the web platform.
The "multistage build" feature, allows tracking project status as different steps are applied
Custom labels only when needed
Schroedinger-esque parts
Why is it online?
- Cross platform
- Always available
- Works better as a business
Jan's background is in software, but he builds electronics for fun.
He loves interacting with engineers, who give him "very real feedback"
Low stock report
Meta parts in times of shortages
Multiple shipments
Medical tracking
Lot control
Not all parts are "fungible"
Physical diff would allow you to know when one board had one lot of components vs another.
There may be future integrations with InspectAR
Part attrition
Advanced build system
Subassembly parts
Project versioning is TBD. That would require change orders and a much larger set of features like a PLM has, Arena as an example.
Working with CMs
First need to create the part / Meta-part
Linked Part is anything with an MPN that is searchable in Octopart. An example using TPS61161DRV
Find out more and chack out the demo on PartsBox.com
Follow on Twitter @PartsBoxIO

Chip Shortage Denier May 10, 2021

Show notes

Chris is back from paternity leave
FMLA
The previously mentioned consultant course was put on hold
In Embedded episode 369, someone asked about consulting after only 5 years, Chris thinks it's possible, but with different expectations
Already a consultant? You can apply for the consulting forum
1099s vs W2
Chip availability continues to be terrible
Dave likens it to a FIFO buffer
Chris learned "Yeah Nah" Ozzy Man
Bryman CEO Email
Chris mentioned getting "Swooped" on parts recently (bought out from under him). r00tkillah suggested calling this "Reeling"
Jay Carlson recommends only ordering PCBs when the parts are in hand. Chris will be doing this from now on.
Former guest Matt Venn is running the ZeroToASIC course, teaching people how to design chips. He has been doing interviews with people taking the course and participating in the Skywater shuttle run.
In this recent Zero To Asic interview with Dan Rodriguez, they mention the Ultimate Gameboy Talk at 33c3
This extremely application specific toaster chip has a "bagel pin", possibly mentioned on the show before?
Relay computer
LG dryer sending 1GB data back to servers per day
Printf debugging

The Space Time Continuum with Fran Blanche May 05, 2021

Show notes

Dave talks with Fran Blanche about, well, everything including her theory on the space time continuum!

00:00 - Fran Blanche 02:00 - Fob watches 04:30 - Solar power and grids 08:00 - Green Power 11:10 - Fran Lab 14:00 - Commercial and mixed use buildings 16:30 - Youtube 17:15 - GoFundMe 19:30 - Woodworking shop & Storage 23:20 - Alan Bean paintings 26:40 - Next video 29:20 - Philly Lockdowns 35:25 - IEEE 36:40 - Engineering Groups 37:40 - Freemasons 39:15 - Engineering Rings, the Iron Ring 40:30 - Engineers Creed 44:00 - Old Electronics Smell, Smells, Elastomers & Outgassing 48:50 - Smithsonian drama 51:00 - The new space revival 52:30 - Accents and The Beatles 57:20 - LED displays in the 80s 1:01:40 - Film vs Tape 1:06:30 - Bogus old electronics display ads 1:10:50 - The Youtube Algorithm & Age 1:16:00 - eYoutubers & Webrings 1:21:15 - Fran’s Theory of Space Time