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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:
    Optimization Beast Feb 10, 2020
    Show notes
    • We have a sponsor and a new form of advertising this week. Here are some of the links mentioned:
      • Wave sign-up link (gets bonus entry)
      • The ESD Checklist
      • 4 easy ways to blow up your test gear
      • Can a cable electrically damage equipment?
    • Impersonation scam
    • Dave may be moving back to his old office park.
    • Working in constrained space
    • Chris mentioned that in Skunkworks they pushed to declassify some of their work because it was such a hassle.
    • The SR71 was actually the RS71 but it was written poorly and they worked to just change the designation.
    • Barrie Gilbert of ADI has passed away
    • Some videos of him teaching:
      • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQNJVtcFrCc
      • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sATM6gi7bn8
    • Computer History Museum
    • Chris had previously confused Dave's friend Doug Ford (the microphone maker) with Doug Self (an author about audio principles)
    • KiCon 2020 will be at CERN!
    • They have lots of events at CERN, including an upcoming one on analog computing.
    • Fermi is a national lab outside of Chicago
    • Astra is a new low payload, high frequency rocket startup out of the bay area.
    • Former guests have worked there, but weren't able to mention it previously.
      • Jeri Ellsworth (her most recent show talking about CastAR's flameout)
      • Todd Bailey
    • Chris just finished the Elon Musk Biography
    • We heard from our listeners about Starlink and were pointed at this fantastic animated video showing how it all will/might work.
    • COTW - The OnSemi (nee Fairchild Semiconductor) FSBB20CH60C
      • Is it technically a DIP? Since it has staggered pins
      • 2500V RMS
      • Designing for transients
    • Creepage and clearance
    • Putting a slot can help increase the creepage spec.
    • Creepage and clearance changes with altitude
    • How much time do you spend in various parts of your office/lab throughout a project?
    • Task switching
    • Chris was on Embedded.fm talking about firmware, it will be out later this week.
    • Former guest Ron Quan has a new book out about Troubleshooting. His past books were:
      • Build your own transistor radios
      • Electronics from the ground up
    Thanks to gideon for the picture of Domokun
    EcoWoke and Going Broke Feb 03, 2020
    Show notes
    • Dave and Chris have both read our Listener Survey feedback. We're going to bring back:
      • Chip of the Week (CotW)
      • Call in shows - possibly by using an answering machine equivalent (leave a voice message for us)
    • Starlink
    • The Art of Electronics X Chapters are now available
    • Chris admits he did not have Electro Magnetic Compatibility Engineering, the famous book by past guest Henry Ott
    • SQ3R
    • EEVblog reference - Easter egg - 9x.5
    • Aircon switching on
    • Coronavirus
    • Chris is once again dealing with pick and place machines (NeoDen4)
    • DHL are cutting back on deliveries due to the CoronaVirus
    • Our Chip of the Week is the TTP223, available via LCSC
    • Soft latching power circuit
    • Remote troubleshooting
    • When Dave sold kits in '95, people dialed for a price sheet by polling his fax machine
    • Particle is deprecating Mesh and will no longer produce the Xenon board
    • Scott Miller on The Amp Hour a second time talking about Product-As-A-Service (PaaS)
    • LastTissue thread on EEVblog forum
    • Hasan Minaj from Patriot Act talking about Greenwashing and the Fashion Industry
    • Eco-Woke
    • Fry's going broke?
    • Arduino Pro announced at CES, it has a dual-core Arm Cortex-M7 and Cortex-M4
    • John Teel of Predictable Designs tears down an Amazon Echo
    • Looking for an editor for the podcast! Please email relevant experience to editor@theamphour.com
    An Interview with Kendall Castor-Perry Jan 27, 2020
    Show notes

    Welcome Kendall Castor-Perry, the Filter Wizard!

    • Working on filters after high school and saw a "Wireman wanted" sign at Kemo.
    • Stayed for 21 years, but got started sweeping the floors.
    • Heath Robinson vs Rube Goldberg
    • Learned out of databooks
    • Where do you point people for filters?
      • Not the Active Filter cookbook, though many would recommend it.
      • Circuit theory courses online
      • Starting with a scope
    • Parents owned a big house, rented out rooms, tenants would need help with record players
    • Moog's ladder filter, which is a voltage controlled filter
    • Kemo was general purpose lab instruments.
    • Filters requirements were moving faster than the engineer knowledge.
    • The days where you had to have filtering in front of a sampling ADC
    • Moved to Burr Brown to work on DACs
    • PCM1704
    • Filtering at the front end is only if you want really want super low noise or if there is a wide bandwidth front end
    • Broadly speaking the filtering has gone inside chips
    • "My job has always been to chase signals around"
    • A transducer is a piece of instantiated physics that turns a signal into a datastream
    • "Think of me as the Van Helsing of electronic design"
    • Information theory
    • SERDES
    • Using power supply instead of a voltage reference on DACs.
    • Then Kendall went to work at Cypress Semiconductor (makers of the PSOC among other things)
    • Doug Self
    • Making your own resistor could be a source of distortion
    • SPICE isn't bound by physics
    • Paul Rako
    • When you add components you lose the systems thinking for your design
    • Bob Pease skeptical of simulation (Paul wrote about what he really felt later)
    • SAPWIN - symbolic analyzer
    • FIR filter
    • "Pessimal signal" (opposite of "optimal" because it's pessimistic)
    • KHN - state variable filter
    • Prototyping using SPICE
    • Karl Popper
    • Disproof is the only thing the matters
    • Eric Bogatin's rules for engineers
    • Different types of filters
    • Monte Carlo analysis
    • Cypress active in the USB Audio space...the microphone we sent to Kendall may have had a chip in it he helped design!
    • Synchronous mode of USB audio
    • Follow the #FilterWizard on LinkedIn (or follow his profile page) or check out his published articles on Planet Analog
    An Interview with Christina Cyr Jan 20, 2020
    Show notes

    Welcome Christina Cyr, CEO of dToor and the Cyrcle Phone

    • This was their 5th year at CES. Mostly hanging out at Eureka Park, which is the startup area
    • 2 years ago saw companies doing encryption for voice data because of creepy speakers, now they have gone mainstream.
    • Startups are only allowed to be there for 2 years.
    • This year dToor got coverage on BBC, CNET, The Daily Mail
    • Enclosure company didn't finish, so Christina 3D printed
    • CTA is Consumer Technology Association. $97 to join and worth it.
    • Wyze cameras, selling for $19.99
    • Random connections from having a booth
    • Christina works out of WeWork. Previously she was at Extra Slice in Bellevue, wanted a landline (LAN connection) for older builds of linux
    • Metrix Create, Sodo also shut down
    • Volunteers at their booth:
      • Aileen McGraw, WeWork Labs Manager
      • Xuny Haley, CoMotion Labs Manager
      • Nalin Chuapetcharasopon, Crowdfunding Expert
      • Anna Chuapetcharasopon, EdTech Consultant
    • Former guest Scotty Allen dropped by.
    • How did this phone get started?
    • Phone wasn't fitting in a pocket in 2014
    • People wouldn't take cardboard prototypes seriously
    • Decided to use Seeed Studio's phone kit with a different "skin"
    • Presented as a phone for women, that was a mistake
    • Featured in the telegraph out of context
    • Demographics were 50/50
    • Marketing tech products to women
    • Apple Watch is taking the place of similar kind of role
    • Joel Telling (3D printing nerd) goes to the hospital, after his watch alerted him to tachycardia
    • Unity (software)
    • The 4G version of the phone has
      • Dual SIM
      • Two headphone jacks
      • Qualcomm Snapdragon
      • Transitioning from micro-b to USB-C
    • Working with vendors
    • 4 vendors that have the snapdragon
    • Tier 1 and Tier 2 companies
    • Vendors want to hear 100K units
    • Navigating working with vendors
    • Looking at doing testing in China for FCC
    • Dealing with Tariffs, as batteries and LCDs are coming directly from suppliers
    • CES Tech Talk - Caught in the Crossfire: How Tariffs Impact Tech with Austere Sage Chandler, Vice President—International Trade, Consumer Technology Association (CTA)
    • Harmonized Tariff Code
    • Different goods have different Tariffs
    • Should have been an LLC instead of an S Corp or C Corp
    • NRE for a completely custom display is $6M!
    • Circular display is off the shelf, with 800x800 outer dimensions
    • The 4G LTE phone will have a "tangential foot" (see image below)
    • Module comes with Android 9
    • Christina put together a document for hardware startups in Seattle, might be useful to listeners even if not in Seattle
    • Cyrclephone.com
    • @CyrChristina
    An Interview with Nash Reilly Jan 13, 2020
    Show notes

    Welcome, Nash Reilly of Sonos!

    • Chris and Nash met at OSHWA 2018
    • Nash is from Montana and went to engineering school at Montana State University.
    • His first job out of school was at Micron over in Boise, doing SO DIMM testing for large scale customers.
    • He actually tested for things like Cosmic Ray strikes, discussed many times on this show.
    • Interned at Sonos when it was 100 people
    • Watching how the vendors change their tune as you get volume up
    • His role at Sonos started in sustaining engineering
    • Making sure supply chain is stable
    • Spent 4-5 weeks per year in China, even had to leave vacation to fly to China.
    • "Type 2 fun"
    • Smoke jumpers for Intel
    • Hank Zumbahlen episode
    • Staying well grounded
    • Lee Hill's Silent Solutions
    • I2S clocks hurt emissions, are often a problem during testing.
    • Blog post about emissions
    • Solutions for I2S clocks
      • Changing the output impedance of your driver
      • Put a small external RC filter
    • Howard Johnson on the podcast
    • First 20 pages of the Black Magic book
    • Most DACs/ADCs aren't as finicky as they used to be
    • I2S is just SPI in one direction
    • Sigma Delta DACs
    • Oversampling and modulating in the reverse direction
    • THD is like a noise measure, but also has distortion
    • Audio Precision test equipment
    • Analog Dialogue
    • Charty Party
    • 30 ms for it to be instantaneous to a human
    • Humans are more sensitive to phase delta
    • Latency is constant for digital signals
    • 3rd edition of AoE
    • ADI AN-283
    • The Way Things Work
    • How do you maintain quality over low quality speakers that are out there?
    • Clicks and pops
    • "A class D amplifier is just a motor driver with an LC on the output"
    • Layout starts to impact things
    • Chapter 8 of AoE for low noise design
    • Sonos Port
    • 20 people in his group, including digital, analog, layout
    • Current project has 10 people in total or so
    • 1600 total people working at Sonos
    • Sonos Amp
    • Had to do a custom class D amplifier
    • Needed to design in real time control
    • Sonos use Linux computers internally for the high level control
    • Microcontrollers for controlling other elements of the design faster
    • Nash is in charge of making sure the digital section is put together well and writing test plans
    • An example schedule: December start (talking with vendors), April schematic, June testing
    • For the Sonos Move, Nash worked on an earlier incarnation.
    • Nash's main site/blog
    • Find him on reddit
    • Nash is @cushychicken
    An Interview with Greg Davill Jan 06, 2020
    Show notes

    Welcome once again to Greg Davill!

    • We had Greg on the show briefly during KiCon, episode 440.2, but we barely scratched the surface of the projects he's working on. Greg showcases a lot of his work on Twitter, so take a look at the selected tweets below, that correspond to the things we discussed while recording. And of course...follow Greg on Twitter!
    https://twitter.com/GregDavill/status/1206900677403799552

    https://twitter.com/GregDavill/status/1206759536901517312

    https://twitter.com/GregDavill/status/1206394482951778304

    https://twitter.com/GregDavill/status/1205711263277314049

    https://twitter.com/GregDavill/status/1195971522017386497

    https://twitter.com/GregDavill/status/1195366568110149632

    https://twitter.com/GregDavill/status/1195357079919190016

    https://twitter.com/GregDavill/status/1177761749384101889

    https://twitter.com/GregDavill/status/1211067399975448576

    https://github.com/gregdavill?tab=repositories

    https://twitter.com/GregDavill/status/1210712753620553728

    An Interview with Chuck Peddle (Repeat, in memoriam) Dec 30, 2019
    Show notes

    This is a re-airing of our episode with Chuck Peddle, recorded in March of 2015.

    View the notes from the original episode here.

    We chose to re-air the episode because Chuck passed away earlier this month (Hackaday, NYtimes, Engadget, Team6502) and this is one of our favorite episodes. We look forward to more great interviews like this one in 2020!

    Keyzermas Vacation Dec 23, 2019
    Show notes

    Hip hip hooray for Keyzermas Vacation!

    • Jeff has been attending a lot of events in 2019
      • CES
      • DesignCon
      • IEEE EMC in New Orleans
      • Chaos Camp
      • Teardown
      • Superconference
    • Jeff is no longer at Valve, since February of 2019.
    • He's been spending his time learning Solidworks and updating his Altium knowledge/license.
    • Why Solidworks vs Fusion?
    • The new normal of using different tools within companies, especially with groups inside of companies acting like startups
    • David is moving on to greener pastures, so Dave will be doing software for the uSupply. This was the genesis behind the install video of tools.
    • Sci.py is over 1 GB
    • Chris was asking on twitter what people are looking to learn. What about you?
    • "Jeff's Makin Widgets"
    • Everyone should have a 3D printer
    • Wants to work on flex and rigid flex
    • Losing skills once leaving the big companies
    • What is this thing subreddit
    • SMA and 3.5 mm connectors
    • EMC far field vs near field
    • Up close is a magnetic field (H field)
    • It doesn't become EMC until a certain distance from the board
    • Based on the wavelength of the frequency
    • CISPA
    • "The antenna is just a piece of bent metal"
    • Antenna we discussed
    • EMC crash cart in Henry Ott's book
    • At the symposium Jeff was at a session on low cost tools
    • EMC society in Seattle
    • Dave has been inside Australia's largest chamber_
    • Using firmware to reduce EMC issues
    • Minimum pieces of flair
    • If you design it not to emit, you are not going to be susceptible
    • Keeping loops tight
    • Qi charging
    • Jeff working on cars
    • Metal casting
    • Bob Simpson on The Amp Hour talking about converting his BMW
    • Sinclair C5
    • Tom Lee
    • 2019 was the year of long lead time for components
    • How long will through hole components stick around?
    • Find Jeff on various parts of the internet:
      • Twitter
      • Mightyohm.com
      • Instagram
      • See all of Jeff's appearances on The Amp Hour on our special category for him on the website!
    An Interview with Matt Berggren Dec 16, 2019
    Show notes

    Welcome, Matt Berggren! Matt is a Director at Autodesk for the Fusion 360 product team.

    • Matt was a key player in the EAGLE acquisition
    • These days Matt is focused on doing electronics design natively in Fusion
    • HSM was integrated into Fusion
    • Acquisition happened on Brexit, June 2016 (which impacted currency, having bought EAGLE from a British company)
    • Matt also is in charge of Tinkercad, 123D, and Circuitsio.
    • Circuitsio (now part of Tinkercad) is electronics design in the browser. It's somewhere between Fritzing and Upverter in terms of capabilities.
    • The circuit simulator is the main piece.
    • Tinkercad is 3D modeling in the browser
    • Circuitsio does ATMEGA instruction timing and can also simulate esp8266.
    • Good use case with teachers
    • Some examples of mixed electronics/mechanical to put a coin cell into a 3D model
    • Fusion has mesh to boundary representation converter
    • Matt got started in Ham Radio and electric guitar.
    • Dad, Uncles, and their friends worked on Zenith
    • IR remote controls came out of their lab
    • Matt started at Microwave Communications Incorporated (MCI), the phone company
    • World Com bought MCI
    • Bernie Ebber of WorldCom helped break up the Bells
    • Landed out in CA, started working in EDA
    • PCAD with Accel EDA
    • FPGA Journal Kevin Morris, "Engineers are in constant fear of being found out"
    • Started doing roadshow and customer facing stuff
    • Matt found out the vast majority of boards:
      • 6 layers or less
      • Ship less than 50k units
      • Don't use blind/buried vias
    • BGAs weren't approved for flight until 2007
    • Emails project from General Atomics
    • Meeting with cross section of customers gave a wide view of industry
    • Protel became Altium
    • PCad and Protel were competing internally
    • Analog Aficionados (next one is coming up Feb 15th)
    • Matt used to work with Dave too!
    • Lived in Australia and then moved to Shanghai
    • Rabbit semiconductor
    • Matt used to work for McDonalds earlier in his career
    • Started business in China in 2012, after Altium.
    • 30 Million people in Shanghai, more than Australia
    • McDonalds was an early pioneer in getting connectivity working
    • China was thinking about how to connect infrastructure
    • After Matt's time in China, he joined Supplyframe where he and Chris met and worked together.
    • They helped start the first Hackaday Superconference
    • In 2016, Matt joined Autodesk and helped broker the deal for CadSoft EAGLE.
    • Autodesk conversation, "What would we do with data we understand about customers?"
    • Data isn't as useful in aggregate
    • Grouping of tools in EAGLE
    • What was the community reception to EAGLE?
    • "People didn't use EAGLE for the UI"
    • Native compilation for EAGLE was CentOS
    • The solderpaste layer is called "cream" because the layer names wanted to be called by the first two letters in the command line. You can type "tc" to start on that layer.
    • The core of EAGLE was very robust and put together well
    • Always developing for a new base of users, the ones who decide to re-up. This is especially true for subscription.
    • "The relationship means I constantly have to convince people that they should spend more money with me"
    • Making foundational changes to make long lead time problems go away.
    • Matt will not yet give a date for release (of Fusion Electronics)
    • Mechanical world has a lot of things missing in the electronics world
    • Added spline curves for board shape definitions
    • Fusion Electronics will be different than EAGLE.
    • The major shift in mechanical design has been parametric on a timeline continuum.
    • Similar to the Tinkercad example earlier in the show, modifying the component pieces means everything gets passed downstream.
    • The current EAGLE to fusion converter inserts the pcb and components into the timeline
    • Assumption is that the transition CAN happen more often, not that it will.
    • Sculpting in Fusion
    • Starting to do thermal analysis, need to be able to capture all of the copper
    • Solid body vs mesh
    • Solid body copper means they're introducing 10000 edges, but it's still performant at high levels
    • Thermal simulations
    • "How do you know you have the right number of vias"
    • Quick route on EAGLE
    • The ability to re-route means you can move components and it will re-route
    • Demo video from Autodesk University
    • Get in touch with Matt on Twitter at @technolomaniac
    • We have some screenshots below, but there will be more demo videos coming soon
    Just Add Salt Dec 09, 2019
    Show notes
    • Holidays coming up!
    • Chris is planning on making a reference design when things are slow
    • Chris just bought a HP 8753D
    • Neither Dave nor Chris has paid 4 digits for test gear recently
    • Shahriar regularly buys and repairs high cost gear.
    • Some VNA cal kits go for $1800
    • Dave just got some transfer standard capacitors. They're 60 years old and still cost $50-$100 each.
    • Test gear anonymous thread on EEVblog forum
    • Chris joined a mailing list about fixing up HP/Agilent/Keysight gear
    • Mailing list australia
    • Dave tracks forums just by leaving tabs open
    • Discord/Slack/Discourse are all kind of a mess for tracking what's going on.
    • Teddy running the BranchEducation about how do PCBs work
    • He's got the knack
    • 747 simulator videos
    • STM32 tool install video
    • Jason Kridner & Robert Nelson episode
    • Writing firmware
    • "I'm a thrasher"
    • Konrad Beckmann's advice on Twitter
    • The new "AI" solution for getting PCBs designed...
    • Dave is doing (actually already posted) a textbook review
    • The X Chapters of Art of Electronics - Expanded chapters
    • "The whole blinkin lot"
    • Floyd, Malveno, Smith
    • Dave is a "Floyd man"
    • Former guest Jeremy Blum just released the second edition of Exploring Arduino
    • Favorite episodes
      • Chuck Peddle
      • Tom Lee
      • Jeri Ellsworth
      • Dave and Shahriar (5G)
    Thanks to onefox for the image of salt
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