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:

#397.6 - An Interview with Matt Knight Jun 24, 2018

Show notes

Welcome, Matt Knight!

Matt is an EE and security researcher.
We have discussed his work on GRlora in the past, including a talk he gave at 33c3 about decoding LoRa.
Chris had previously met Matt at the Things Network conference in Amsterdam.
Matt's new project is the TumbleRF fuzzing project (TuRF for short). Matt will be giving a talk about this at DEF CON/BlackHat.
He is also working on new hardware for it called the Orthrus (named after the mythical creature)

#397.5 - An Interview with Loial from Krontech Jun 23, 2018

Show notes

Welcome Loial from Krontech.ca
Linus Tech Tips had been at Krontech recently.
We have previously interviewed David Kronstein who started Krontech.
Loial has been working on the demosaic function in the Chronos 1.4.
The watch above runs MicroPython
How to ADHD
Krontech is hiring! They're looking for low level Linux driver experts.

#397.3 - An Interview with Jared Boone of Sharebrained Jun 22, 2018

Show notes

Welcome Jared Boone of Sharebrained, makers of the PortaPack
Past guest mentioned
- Piotr Esden Tempski (also present during recording)
- Joe Fitz
- Derek Kozel
- Clifford Wolf

#397.2 - An Interview with Gareth from Greenpeace Jun 22, 2018

Show notes

Gareth is a freeelance technologist who has been working for Greenpeace for the past 6 years
His latest project involved tracking illegal fishing using Iridium satellites
Chris mentioned the book about launching the constellation called Eccentric Orbits.

#397.1 - An Interview with Monica Houston and Alessandra Nölting Jun 21, 2018

Show notes

Monica Houston and Alessandra Nölting both work at Hackster.io
We set sail for ToorCamp in Monica's boat, the Infinite Sloop

The Synergy Bus Jun 11, 2018

Show notes

Playing trombone
- 0:02
Assitive tech
- 0:02
Stingray
- 0:04
ToorCamp is coming up and Chris found out there will be phone service...to each tent! What?!
RJ11
- 0:05
Former guest of the show Fabienne (@fbz) was tweeting about how people should bring a POTS phone (Plain Old Telephone Service). The service is run by ShadyTel
- 0:06
Chris was looking on OpenSignal to see if there is cell coverage.
- 0:07
Orca Island
- 0:08
Sandlot S'mores scene
- 0:08
MS buys github
- 0:09
Local + sync
- 0:13
Huzzah32 by adafruit
- 0:17
Software implementation of i2c
- 0:18
"Shitty add on" is a 4 pin ad hoc standard started by Brian Benchoff for DEF CON badges.
- 0:20
Philips standard pullup resistor is 2k2
- 0:21
Dave had considered making an i2c product in the past
- 0:22
I2C article on Wiki
- 0:23
Slave addresses were assigned to manufacturers. They didn't think they would run out of numbers.
- 0:24
Philips cornering the tv market
- 0:25
How TVs work (SlowMo guys)
- 0:26
"The Synergy Bus"
- 0:27
Bill Gates' 640K quote
- 0:28
EEVblog uSupply UID address for signed driver
- 0:30
Get a free UID through the uart manufacturer
- 0:30
How to properly implement a "floating oscilloscope"
- 0:32
NACK vs ACK
- 0:34
Dangerous Prototypes Bus Pirate
- 0:38
A toaster timer ASIC!
- 0:42
Direct datasheet link (PT8A2511)
- 0:43
Is this better than a bi-metalic strip?
- 0:44
Edward Shin has hooked up a chip and got it working!
- 0:44
Dave has a toaster story, based upon a Usenet group
- 0:47
Ossic shuts down
- 0:55
Beautifully drawn USB C post
- 0:59
Ken Shirriff decaps a 76477 space invaders chip
- 1:00
Ken was also a guest on The Amp Hour in the past
- 1:01
Chris has been checking out coding guidelines after writing more code recently. Google has a C++ guideline.
- 1:02
Andy Rubin (mentioned in Jeri Ellsworth's most recent episode) is trying to sell off the Essential phone after burning through $100M
- 1:03
Chris will be hosting a meetup on Tuesday 6/12 in Chicago. Former guest of the show Noah Feehan will be there!
- 1:07

Thanks to James F Clay for the picture of the bus

An Interview with Luke Valenty Jun 04, 2018

Show notes

Luke just got back from Maker Faire Bay Area
- 0h 0m 48s
Arduino FPGA board
- 0h 1m 4s
Want lots of serial ports
- 0h 2m 59s
Porting sketches from one micro to another
- 0h 6m 30s
FPGAwars
- 0h 9m 41s
Remake of Pong
- 0h 10m 35s
Need tools for things to be simpler
- 0h 11m 22s
Tim Mithro Ansell
- 0h 11m 43s
Clifford Wolf who started project ICEstorm
- 0h 11m 51s
FPGAwars hashtag
- 0h 13m 0s
APio for building FPGAs
- 0h 13m 13s
Obijuan Academy
- 0h 13m 54s
Learning Verilog
- 0h 14m 44s
Data pipeline vs State machines and control
- 0h 16m 24s
Similar to an "if" statement on a micro
- 0h 16m 51s
Faster to write imperative code
- 0h 17m 14s
Serial port example
- 0h 18m 3s
Low power FPGA collects data, wakes up the micro and then transmits
- 0h 19m 24s
"You're not writing code any more, you're describing hardware"
- 0h 22m 6s
Wants to be able to take code and then sythesis in logic
- 0h 23m 43s
Why is FPGA needed in a world of cheap micros
- 0h 26m 58s
Amazing $1 microcontroller
- 0h 27m 27s
When should people switch to an FPGA
- Customized peripherals
- Being sure of the hardware that's going into micr
- FGPAs have room for change in the future (Especially if you think the protocol will change in the future)
- 0h 29m 54s
Chris has experienced this with a video recorder that sells digital upgrades.
- 0h 33m 1s
Also useful in test jigs to emulate hardware
- 0h 33m 6s
Explaining the hardware
- 0h 35m 40s
A series is 1.2x0.7
- 0h 36m 32s
Same size as Teensy
- 0h 36m 59s
Doesn't have the end pins like the Teensy
- 0h 39m 0s
Buy the boards on Tindie
- 0h 39m 44s
Difference between a and b series
- 0h 40m 57s
Bugblat tif
- 0h 41m 7s
Learned surface mount soldering
- 0h 44m 11s
Can find purchaseable boards and more on TinyFPGA.com
- 0h 45m 54s
Lattice Mach XO2
CPLD replacement
- 0h 46m 31s
No DSP blocks
- 0h 46m 39s
Might be able to fit a micro in A2
- 0h 47m 23s
A2 has a hard SPI block
- 0h 47m 52s
Put store up on tindie for A1
- 0h 48m 58s
Digilent clint cole
- 0h 49m 35s
Having a board on the shelf could help for projects/hackathons/when in a bind
- 0h 51m 22s
There used to be a B2
- 0h 52m 50s
USB connector is SMT
- 0h 53m 57s
BX board is 4 layer with BGA ICE40 81 ball 0.4 pitch
- 0h 54m 49s
Package is meant to be used in a high density interconnect
- 0h 55m 41s
B2 pins are mostly IO
- 0h 56m 34s
Leaves some pins tri-stated and breaks out the deep hard IP blocks
- 0h 57m 22s
Using PCBway with 4/4 process, via is 0.2 mm
- 0h 59m 49s
Wanted more IO for the Bx boards
- 1h 1m 16s
Squished pads narrower and elongated them
- 1h 1m 26s
Everything is on github
- 1h 1m 53s
Choose your side t-shirt
- 1h 3m 23s
Re-using pins like the SPI flash
- 1h 5m 4s
Once config is complete, the SPI is handed over to the user design
- 1h 6m 12s
Recommends moving to a larger package
- 1h 7m 30s
Decided not to do castellation
- 1h 9m 12s
B series guide
- 1h 9m 54s
BX has a different pin constraint file
- 1h 10m 46s
Recommends using APio on commandline
- 1h 11m 9s
IDE using Atom with APio plugin
- 1h 11m 18s
Using IceCube2 toolchain
- 1h 12m 4s
APio supports mostly pin constraints
- 1h 15m 17s
Symbiflow is the next gen of opensource tools
- 1h 16m 0s
FPGA_dave
- 1h 16m 56s
ECP5 will be the next FPGA
- 1h 17m 32s
Wants to use SERDES
- 1h 17m 47s
Targeting crowdfunding campaign in fall
- 1h 20m 1s
Currently have to preorder the BX, due in July
- 1h 20m 13s
B series has an USB in the FPGA fabric
- 1h 22m 20s
Gets enumerated as a serial port
- 1h 23m 6s
Users can pull in the USB device to their projects
- 1h 25m 0s
Can store metadata in the spi flash that talks to the programmer
- 1h 25m 38s
Like a map file + UID
- 1h 26m 1s
Dave Vandenbout XESS
- 1h 27m 35s
Professor in Egypt doing FPGA online compiler
- 1h 29m 36s
SDR radio people
- 1h 31m 6s
Hackaday Supercoference
- 1h 33m 14s
Ordered 1250 boards, 600 ordered
- 1h 36m 14s
TinyFPGA on Twitter, GitHub, Tindie. Luke is on Hackaday as lukevalenty
- 1h 36m 30s

Jeri Ellsworth and the demise of CastAR May 29, 2018

Show notes

TL;DR: Jeri Ellsworth is a hardware entrepreneur who has created homemade semiconductors on YouTube, is a self taught electronics guru and created AR technology at Valve. That technology was later spun out as CastAR, which shut down last year. In this episode (her 5th appearance on The Amp Hour), Jeri talks candidly about the experience.

Welcome back, Jeri! Past shows here:
- 35 - The Ternary Tussle
- 52 - Carnassial Chip Chemicals
- 147 - Absorptive Augmented Actuality
- 173 - Intense Illusion Introduction
Ham radio
- 0h 1m 10s
License
- 0h 1m 34s
Ham shed
- 0h 3m 33s
Jeri background
- 0h 4m 32s
CastAR
- 0h 6m 35s
AR at Valve
- 0h 9m 49s
CastAR based on retro from a headset
- 0h 10m 25s
Kickstarter campaign
- 0h 12m 16s
Move to Silicon Valley
- 0h 18m 45s
Raised 15M from Playground.global
- 0h 18m 51s
Tools at Playground
- 0h 19m 57s
Giving the KS money back
- 0h 21m 12s
Jason Cerundulo was a CastAR engineer who was on The Amp Hour in the past.
- 0h 21m 58s
Out goes the startup CEO
- 0h 23m 19s
Acquiring game studios
- 0h 25m 9s
20->90 people
- 0h 25m 16s
70 people were non engineering
- 0h 26m 45s
Found some bugs in proto1
- 0h 27m 19s
Proto2.5
- 0h 27m 48s
Technical Illusions
- 0h 30m 4s
Getting names
- 0h 32m 18s
"Bumblebloggel"
- 0h 33m 5s
Additional naming exercises
- 0h 35m 36s
"Jillion"
- 0h 39m 55s
2nd from last rebranding
- 0h 41m 18s
"VoyageAR"
- 0h 41m 52s
"SiteCast"
- 0h 43m 3s
Thomas Middleditch (CEO of Pied Piper on HBO's "Silicon Valley") stopped by
- 0h 44m 22s
Randy Pitchford
- 0h 44m 31s
Eggplant...is a color?
- 0h 45m 34s
Scopely logo
- 0h 46m 4s
EVT hardware
- 0h 47m 29s
Face crusher
- 0h 47m 49s
Shooting for $299 MSRP
- 0h 51m 6s
Price of box
- 0h 52m 39s
Never found a model
- 0h 53m 43s
Mind snappers (12-18 year olds who use Snapchat and play Minecraft)
- 0h 54m 0s
Fundraising
- 0h 55m 27s
Series B
- 0h 55m 33s
Fall 2016
- 0h 56m 13s
Zone of insolvency
- 0h 57m 54s
Down round
- 0h 58m 4s
Jason going to China
- 1h 3m 6s
Co-founder rapport
- 1h 9m 36s
Don't raise too much money
- 1h 9m 43s
Would never do an incubator because of the "drive by opinions"
- 1h 10m 30s
Lot of second guessing
- 1h 14m 4s
Leadership was misaligned
- 1h 14m 46s
Dave bid on the Dick Smith assets with a blind bid
- 1h 18m 12s
All of CastAR was on a hard drive (the important stuff)
- 1h 22m 5s
Plastic molds and tooling might exist in China
- 1h 24m 18s
Getting assets/patents back
- 1h 25m 51s
Castar.com was lost to squatters
- 1h 26m 50s
CastAR's final tweet
- 1h 28m 8s
Rick (co-founder) ended up going to Unity
- 1h 29m 34s
Jeri's new company has the old assets and new investors
- 1h 29m 43s
One is a strategic manufacturer
- 1h 30m 3s
Angel investors
- 1h 32m 20s
Jeri said, "Koombayah let's do this"
- 1h 33m 13s
Jeri tells a parable
- 1h 35m 18s
Working on Rockets
- 1h 37m 12s
alameda rocket company
- 1h 38m 37s
Rocket startups
- 1h 39m 37s
Project loon
- 1h 40m 4s
One of the nightmares for a VC is that a company turns into a lifestyle company
- 1h 44m 56s
two types of hardware startups
- 1.) GoPro (brand play, easy to develop)
- 2.) Technically focused
  - 1h 47m 53s
Touchstone Semiconductor (a now defunct chip startup) was on show
- 1h 49m 1s
Ham radio
- 1h 52m 46s
Jeri has been building a huge loop antenna
- 1h 53m 26s
Tuning radio up the dial
- 1h 54m 29s
6000-10000V antennas
- 1h 54m 57s
Stealth transceiver
- 1h 57m 2s
Nerd cruise
- 1h 57m 16s
Radiation King Euk Amplifier
- 1h 58m 19s

Photo credit: Amy Herndon

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