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:

An Interview with Mike Szczys Aug 13, 2018

Show notes

Welcome, Mike Szczys!

Mike is the Editor-in-Chief for Hackaday.com. Chris used to work with Mike at Supplyframe.
There's still time to enter the 2018 Hackaday Prize
Coverage from DEF CON 26
- The DC26 badge made by the tymkrs
- The QueerCon badge from DC26
Mike built the CoinOp badge
Chris built a Shitty Add-On, "This is not a camera"
Mike's past projects include
- 1 pixel pac man
- A blinky, hackable hat for DC22
Badgelife is a term that's been going on for a few years now, but includes crazy creations from teams like AndNotXor
The Hackaday Superconference is coming up!

Find Mike on Twitter or Hackaday.io

An Interview with Ben Einstein Aug 06, 2018

Show notes

This week’s show was sponsored by Arrow.com, who want to hear from engineers like you. They’re offering 30% off a first order for new customers and free overnight shipping for everyone. Check out their online selection for your next project!

Welcome Ben Einstein, founder of Bolt!

Bolt is a Pre-Seed
- 0h 1m 10s
Downtown Boston
- 0h 1m 47s
They started around 2011/2012
- 0h 2m 30s
Twiddle with atoms instead of bits
- 0h 3m 13s
Went to school in Boston
- 0h 3m 42s
Inherited a product consultancy
- 0h 3m 57s
Maury Ballstein
- 0h 7m 12s
Startup within a startup
- 0h 8m 6s
Lightbulb went off
- 0h 8m 28s
First iphone bluetooth accessory
- 0h 9m 6s
Sometimes the lucky thing is picking Apple instead of picking Palm
- 0h 10m 36s
Brad Feld of Foundry Group based out of Boulder CO
- 0h 13m 14s
Institutionalized hardware/software investing
- 0h 13m 48s
Makerbot/Sphero
- 0h 14m 0s
Invested in first fund
- 0h 15m 2s
Ben is a big introvert
- 0h 16m 59s
Trust and intimacy
- 0h 17m 41s
Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends"
- 0h 17m 50s
Raising Venture Capital (VC) wasn't right from first fund
- 0h 22m 41s
In early VC started where it was their money
- 0h 23m 52s
Vast majority is a management fee
- 0h 23m 58s
GP = General partner
- 0h 25m 19s
LP = Limited partner
- 0h 25m 29s
Why didn't this hardware model exist previously?
- 0h 26m 51s
Bill Gross at IdeaLab
- 0h 27m 6s
"Hardware by itself is not an attractive business"
- 0h 27m 39s
Software breaking out of the screen
- 0h 29m 26s
Number of companies pitching has increased
- 0h 31m 44s
Bolt.io
- 0h 32m 4s
Looking for companies that will be worth 100M in 5-7 years
- 0h 32m 55s
Early meetings with prototype
- 0h 33m 56s
Bolt provides an early investment with a 100K to 1M check
- 0h 34m 5s
Nutty things pitched
- 0h 35m 27s
Spherical iphone
- 0h 35m 58s
Only been around for 5 years
- 0h 36m 34s
They spend 18 months with companies
- 0h 41m 8s
80% of the founders at Bolt companies haven't done hardware
- 0h 43m 45s
The best companies are built from the best product, not just hardware
- 0h 44m 38s
They have a strong belief that companies should not build the perfect product
- 0h 46m 3s
Consumer vs industrial
- 0h 49m 3s
Everyone talks about consumer connected hardware companies
- 0h 50m 15s
20% are consumer
- 0h 50m 26s
Recurring revenue is a very strong theme.
- 0h 52m 9s
Why Juicero's press is so expensive
- 0h 56m 22s
AvE's take on the Juicero
- 0h 57m 32s
Product development
- 1h 1m 56s
Suggested reading: The Illustrated Guide To Product Development
- 1h 2m 4s
Suggested reading: The Complete Guide To Building Hardware Startup Teams
- 1h 3m 57s
Team is more than just the employees
- 1h 4m 0s
Teams coming in are 2-4 founders
- 1h 7m 30s
Proof of concept prototype
- 1h 7m 48s
Sometimes they invest in people instead of companies, like Mike Phillips from Sense
- 1h 8m 51s
Joe Bamburg from Sense has been on the show before.
- 1h 9m 11s
Tyler runs engineering at Bolt, former iPhone engineer
- 1h 12m 3s
Thinking about Industrial Design (ID) early on
- 1h 14m 0s
Prototyping engineers in the shop
- 1h 14m 8s
Tempo automation
- 1h 14m 45s
Dragon Innovation / Scott Miller
- 1h 15m 34s
A $200 Roomba vs a Dyson
- 1h 18m 46s
James Dyson on "How I Built This"
- 1h 19m 27s
Looks like / works like prototypes
- 1h 21m 20s
Engineering prototype
- 1h 21m 30s
How far are people expected to go on that check from Bolt?
- 1h 23m 36s
Silcon Valley (the show) is a farce and has truth
- 1h 26m 59s
Bolt is like the bumpers at the bowling alley
- 1h 35m 48s
Want to reach Ben? You can email him
- 1h 36m 35s
If you're looking to pitch, it's better to reach out via Bolt.io/pitch
- 1h 36m 45s
Follow Ben on Twitter as @BenEinstein
- 1h 37m 23s
Follow their fantastic blog as well!
- 1h 37m 59s.

An Interview with Brent and Bryce Salmi Jul 30, 2018

Show notes

If you can't tell from the picture, Brent and Bryce are twins
- 0h 0m 57s
They both went to RIT and ended up working together at SpaceX
- 0h 1m 8s
They worked on AMSAT for their senior project
- 0h 2m 8s
Fox series cube sats
- 0h 2m 49s
AMSAT will make a plugin module
- 0h 3m 51s
Elona (sp?) grants
- 0h 4m 6s
1U cubesats
- 0h 5m 12s
AO40 - 600 kg satellite
- 0h 7m 29s
MPPT on github
- 0h 8m 24s
This actually was an analog computer to cut down on components that are susceptible to cosmic rays.
- 0h 10m 40s
It relies on feed forward
- 0h 10m 50s
Stateless design
- 0h 12m 43s
AO91
- 0h 13m 32s
AO92 - just under a year
- 0h 13m 36s
K2GEXT
- 0h 16m 52s
Balloon hipster
- 0h 17m 7s
For their balloon project, they prioritized reliability
- 0h 18m 31s
Used nail polish as conformal coat
- 0h 19m 45s
Fell through a thunderstorm
- 0h 20m 13s
Joined SpaceX mid-2013
- 0h 21m 27s
Around the time of C2 - First dragon mission
- 0h 21m 34s
1000 people when they joined
- 0h 22m 40s
F921 - upgraded version. This is the one outside of SpaceX as a monument.
- 0h 25m 25s
Engineering as an action sport
- 0h 28m 30s
Watching conspiracy videos about spacex
- 0h 28m 53s
Burning out
- 0h 30m 20s
What electronics are involved
- 0h 32m 44s
Rio Team
- 0h 32m 57s
Consumer parts vs aerospace parts
- 0h 34m 1s
Shaun from Planet episode
- 0h 35m 13s
MIL standard 1540
- 0h 36m 51s
NASA derating
- 0h 37m 39s
Guidance, nav, control
- 0h 39m 28s
Fault recovery
- 0h 39m 40s
Sensing the environment
- 0h 39m 58s
Pyrotechnics
- 0h 41m 26s
Frangible bolts
- 0h 41m 34s
RF telemtry
- 0h 42m 16s
Space race 3.0
- 0h 44m 59s
Lock step (is having 2 processors normally)
- 0h 47m 6s
Voting is having 3 systems
- 0h 47m 49s
Curiosity goes into safe mode
- 0h 48m 58s
Designing circuits at a very low level
- 0h 50m 58s
Understanding every way a circuit that is going to fail
- 0h 51m 12s
As engineers they're really paranoid now
- 0h 52m 1s
SMPS failure
- 0h 52m 55s
What is the margin of the components
- 0h 53m 17s
Derating = overspec'ing
- 0h 54m 52s
No one complains when it's lighter
- 0h 58m 56s
FaradayRF
- 1h 6m 56s
900 MHz digital radio
- 1h 9m 5s
Trying to make a platform for people to build on
- 1h 11m 0s
Delay tolerant network
- 1h 12m 7s
PSK31, FT8
- 1h 12m 53s
ISM band
- 1h 17m 8s
Article about differences
- 1h 17m 47s
APRS
- 1h 21m 28s
National projects
- 1h 21m 32s
SDR vs Faraday
- 1h 24m 5s
CC430 radio
- 1h 26m 53s
10-100kBaud
- 1h 27m 5s
goTenna
- 1h 33m 56s
TUN tap
- 1h 47m 39s
FaradayRF GitHub
- 1h 56m 13s
Relativity space in LA
- 1h 57m 40s
Aeon 1 engine
- 1h 58m 17s
Careers page
- 1h 58m 47s
Autonomous airplanes
- 2h 1m 55s
Richard Branson quote
- 2h 4m 36s
@kb1lqd
- 2h 6m 14s
@kb1lqc
- 2h 6m 32s
@relativityspace
- 2h 6m 55s

Once Every Couple Months Jul 23, 2018

Show notes

Chris got to hang out with Jeff Keyzer while in Seattle (he was on the show!)
- 0:01:00
There were other podcasts recording at ToorCamp. Past guest Alvaro of the Unnamed Reverse Engineering podcast was recording and the Darknet Diaries were also there.
- 0:02:00
Dave has been working on Custom LCDs. They were delivered and Dave got them tested.
- 0:03:00
Scotty from Strangeparts visited the JLC board house
- 0:09:00
PCBshopper is where we normally point people to find a good board house.
- 0:09:00
Dave made a "How to panelize" video
- 0:10:00
KiCad has an append tool
- 0:11:00
Chris tried out a gerber based tool called FAB3000
- 0:13:00
There's a tool that is open by a company called "This is not rocket science"
- 0:14:00
Chris will be using the NeoDen4 at mHUB
- 0:15:00
Chris will be giving a KiCad workshop at the Hardware Hacking Village at DEF CON
- 0:17:00
This will be similar to the 4.0 version of Getting to Blinky
- 7/18/2018 5:51 PM
eMeter teardown by YouTuber called "Play with junk"
- 0:19:00
KiCad 5 is on the way
- 0:21:00
It is able to read in EAGLE files, Chris was discussing OBD++
- 0:21:00
Altium crippling Circuit Maker with a random sleep timer?
- 0:22:00
Looks like Upverter will be taking over in the future anyway
- 0:25:00
Adafruit released CircuitPython 3
- 0:28:00
The US tariff on Chinese electronics and equipment went into effect on July 6th.
- 0:29:00
This was partially in response to stolen IP from Micron technologies
- 0:31:00
The Macrofab podcast had a good discussion on it and an article explaining how it might affect you.
- 0:32:00
Past guest Bunnie Huang also wrote about how this will impact hardware designers
- 0:33:00
Want to learn more about digital logic? Play the NAND game!
- 0:44:00
There's a new hacking game out called ExaPunks, made by the company of former guest Zach Barth (makers of Shenzhen I/O)
- 0:46:00
Zork
- 0:49:00
Mel Chua wrote about education for deaf engineers and the difficulties of teaching engineering in sign language
- 0:51:00
The Hackaday Superconference was announced! Submit a proposal to a great hw con
- 0:58:00
Arm may have been playing dirty with a site about the RISC-V instruction set. It has since been taken down and was hopefully a misunderstanding.
- 1:00:00

Photo by Eric Rothermel on Unsplash

An Interview with Steve Kreuzer Jul 16, 2018

Show notes

Welcome Dr Steven Kreuzer!

Before we start, we were asked to mention: “The opinions and views expressed in this episode are those of Steve Kreuzer and do not in any way reflect the opinions and values of Exponent”

Background
- Steve and Chris went to high school together, Case Western Reserve together, ended up as roommates together in Austin and now work in similar industries.
  - 0h 1m 23s
- He got introduced to biomech via a program at Duke which later lead to grad school at UT Austin.
  - 0h 2m 22s
- He work at the (now former) GE appliance division (they were sold to Haier in 2016)
  - 0h 3m 49s
- At UT Austin, he worked on the effects of acceleration on cells.
  - 0h 5m 6s
- This included understand how proteins unfold.
  - 0h 7m 17s
- PhD program
  - 0h 8m 32s
- Difficulty of funding sources
  - 0h 8m 39s
- Salary of PhD
  - 0h 9m 50s
- Lots of simulation work
  - 0h 12m 14s
- Pharma seemed like the right path
  - 0h 12m 20s
Exponenet
- Ended up at Exponent, wanting to get a hand back into industry.
  - 0h 12m 44s
- Lots of people who work there are interdisciplinary
  - 0h 12m 52s
- Ended up in Menlo Park doing mechanical engineering work for them.
  - 0h 13m 40s
- This included lots of CFD and FEA (links below)
  - 0h 13m 55s
- Started working on Consumer Electronics devices
  - 0h 14m 15s
- Steve explained the types of companies that call Exponent
  - 0h 17m 12s
- Size of companies that call vary, but large companies all the way down to startups.
  - 0h 18m 15s
- Exponent deals with more specified problems rather than generics. They don't do design work, it's more working with existing, unique problems.
  - 0h 20m 13s
- One example is companies dealing with recalls.
  - 0h 22m 10s
- Consulted on the Samsung Galaxy battery fires.
  - 0h 22m 44s
- They helped identifying the problem.
  - 0h 23m 47s
- Could it have been caught by simulation?
  - 0h 26m 15s
- A big piece of prevention is reliability audits.
  - 0h 26m 25s
- Another large piece is understanding if things will go wrong by doing accelerated testing, which includes temperature cycling.
  - 0h 28m 10s
Working with Lithium Ion (and other types of batteries)
- Steve recommends to always use Battery management units
  - 0h 30m 12s
- Want to protect the cell from the environment
  - 0h 30m 52s
- 18650 packs
  - 0h 31m 51s
- Forces on the batteries
  - 0h 33m 47s
- Protecting environment from the cell
  - 0h 34m 31s
- Failing well
  - 0h 35m 0s
- Simulating thermal runaway of batteries
  - 0h 36m 10s
- Color maps of stresses using programs like Abaqus
  - 0h 38m 43s
- Ties into Solidworks
  - 0h 38m 57s
- Finite Element Analysis
  - 0h 39m 15s
- Testing allows you to assign material properties
  - 0h 41m 37s
- Test at their labs/facilities under a hood
  - 0h 43m 20s
- "Exponents model is that we shouldn't do anything that's standardized"
  - 0h 44m 0s
- Design an experiment where you recreate the worst case scenario
  - 0h 46m 1s
- MatWeb
  - 0h 47m 1s
- Reactive vs Proactive
  - 0h 51m 23s
- Decision to call Exponent is often based on internal reliability testing
  - 0h 52m 22s
BGAs and working with boards in consumer products
- Failures in thermal cycles
  - 0h 54m 32s
- Arrhenius Equation
  - 0h 55m 12s
- Computational Fluid Dynamics
  - 0h 55m 23s
- Was listening to episode with Dave about BGAs
  - 0h 55m 53s
- Have looked at the reflow process
  - 0h 57m 11s
- Viscoelasticity
  - 0h 57m 24s
- Thermal stresses plus drop scenario
  - 0h 59m 24s
- Simulating drops of PCBs inside enclosures
  - 1h 1m 9s
- How easily a die is getting rid of heat
  - 1h 4m 36s
- Human factors aspect of devices
  - 1h 6m 3s
- Sony laptop that was burning "laps"
  - 1h 6m 52s
- Lithium ion batteries getting thinner
  - 1h 9m 8s
- What is the output of CFD research? Suggestions around changes to airflow or design.
  - 1h 11m 29s
- Not as much publishing in their industry, because of
  - 1h 13m 19s
- Publishing usually happens around educating the public in a field
  - 1h 13m 32s
Contact
- Exponent is hiring! But with a caveat...need PhD
  - 1h 15m 54s
- You can email Steve directly if you have a problem you want a consultation on.
  - 1h 17m 5s
- Reach out to Steve on LinkedIn
  - 1h 17m 27s
- Follow him on Twitter if you want some sports updates.

An Interview with Felix Rusu Jul 09, 2018

Show notes

Felix has been running LowPowerLab since 2011 after a career in software engineering and attending school at ASU.
While evaluating RF modules, he started with RFM12B, now obsolete
RFM69
- Chip from Semtech (but custom packaged for HopeRF)
- Module by HopeRF
Also can use RFM95/96 with LPL devices for LoRa projects
Range for RFM69 is a couple hundred meters to a couple kilometers
Battery life is about 1-2 years without lots of tweaking to the code
Moteinos are the main product, they can be customized with modules and flash.
These are based off the Arduino Uno and use an Microchip (Atmel) 328P for the processing. A newer version uses the SAMD21.
The power can get down below 10 uA while sleeping, including radios. During transmit, the power is in the 10s of milliamps.
There is an RFM69 library that gets you started quickly using the RF side of things
The community has many resources including tutorials and a forum.
Felix recommends starting with the Mailbox Project which uses the MotionMote kit.

#397.10 - An Interview with Jeremy Hong Jun 26, 2018

Show notes

Jeremy Hong does reverse engineering during the day and has an RF addiction all the time.
He stepped away from ToorCamp so he could see a demo of his favorite electronic warfare plane, the EA-18G growler (picured above)
During his time at Wright State, he did a 40 layer PCB design with DDR RAM and a Zynq.
Jeremy recently picked up a 20 GHz spectrum analyzer from the flea market at Hamvention, which is held in Dayton OH every year.
VHDL was invented at Wright Patterson AFB.
Check out Jeremy's homepage, JHongElectronics

#397.9 - An Interview with Dominic Spill Jun 25, 2018

Show notes

Dominic Spill is a software engineer at Great Scott Gadgets.
He and Mike got started working together based on a Bluetooth library Dominic put online 7ish years ago. This fed into the Ubertooth product.
See all of Dominic's repositories on Github
Dominic is helping head up the content side of ElectroMagnetic Field (EMF)

#397.8 - An Interview with Chris Gerlinsky Jun 25, 2018

Show notes

Chris Gerlinsky is an embedded engineer/hacker
He got his start working on Satellite/Pay TV and cracking encryption on set top boxes.
He gave a talk at 33C3 about reverse engineering the protocol on a Motorola set top box. It was also covered on Hackaday.
Chris works in his garage on automotive equipment reverse engineering the protocols. He often decaps and inspects chips in order to extract encryption keys.

#397.7 - Impedance Matching with Jeff Keyzer and Michael Ossmann Jun 25, 2018

Show notes

Mike Ossmann and Jeff Keyzer join the show at the same time!

Mike and the Great Scott Gadgets crew made Creme Brulee for the entire camp, more than 650 servings!
Chris later had a Creme Brulee delivered via tacocopter
They also designed the firefly badge, that used the jar.
Jeff is making more kits these days and also repairing old sports cars.
We discussed learning KiCad and generally the difficulties of learning electronics and software.
Alvaro ended up kidnapping Mike when the episode was over...

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