The Amp Hour

Latest Episodes:

An Interview with Matt Duff May 14, 2018

Show notes

Welcome, Matt Duff! Matt is the Precision Web Tools manager at Analog Devices. Listeners to the show will recognize us talking about Matt’s videos about instrumentation amplifiers on YouTube.

Matt started at National Instruments out of college.
- 0h 1m 6s
Consolidation of analog
- 0h 2m 25s
These days, there's less focus on absolute performance and more focus on ease of implementation.
- 0h 3m 17s
Innovators dilemma
- 0h 3m 33s
Process technologies at ADI
- 0h 5m 52s
Merging with Linear Tech
- 0h 7m 31s
LTspice
- 0h 9m 23s
Mike Engelhardt was on The Amp Hour
- 0h 9m 39s
Prior to web tools, Matt was an Apps engineer
- 0h 10m 20s
Amplifier videos
- 0h 13m 22s
Web tools
- 0h 16m 2s
Example of building analog filters
- 0h 17m 11s
Custom filter chips
- 0h 19m 26s
Digital vs analog filters
- 0h 21m 8s
Art of Electronics
- 0h 22m 51s
Filtering series of videos
- 0h 23m 3s
Chebyshev vs Butterworth
- 0h 24m 54s
analog.com/designtools
- 0h 26m 1s
http://www.analog.com/designtools/en/filterwizard/
- 0h 27m 50s
Control for cost
- 0h 34m 39s
SallenKey filter component
- 0h 37m 7s
Filtering reduces information, get a smaller ADC
- 0h 39m 6s
Filter tool has been around for a while
- 0h 41m 44s
http://playground.analog.com/
- 0h 42m 3s
Driving high end ADCs is tricky
- 0h 42m 29s
ADC switched capacitor design
- 0h 44m 3s
30 pF bucket
- 0h 45m 3s
Mixer spur
- 0h 51m 35s
ADI acquires Hittite
- 0h 51m 50s
In-amp diamond plot tool
- 0h 54m 44s
New datasheet tools for ADI parts
- 0h 56m 57s
Pace of web tech
- 1h 1m 45s
Web books are already out of place
- 1h 2m 16s
Some parts are so expensive tehy don't need web tools
- 1h 7m 28s
Reach Matt via the Analog.com feedback form or via email
- 1h 9m 23s

Only A Transmitter May 07, 2018

Show notes

Dave is a money launderer, according to currency fair
- 0:01:00
GST, VAT
- 0:02:00
Paying invoices for parts, orders
- 0:04:00
Capacitor Cartel
- 0:10:00
Government oversight
- 0:12:00
Is the supply chain getting ready to remove larger part sizes?
- 0:13:00
Choosing based on popularity
- 0:17:00
DIP ttl computer
- 0:18:00
Boldport (Saar was on The Amp Hour!)
- 0:23:00
Teraterm, Baud (Monitor)
- 0:25:00
RC micro oscillators
- 0:28:00
RTL SDR
- 0:33:00
SDR guests
- Mike Ossmann
- Derek Kozel
- Greg Charvat
The Osmo-FL2K and a doc about setting it up
- 0:39:00
Jammer
- 0:45:00
FCC
- 0:48:00
Inside the Hello Barbie
- 0:50:00
Milspec Apache
- 0:51:00
Elon Musk admits automation might not be the panacea
- 0:52:00
Espressif (ESP32, ESP8266) is starting a mesh protocol
- 0:27:00
Standards often started as proprietary protocols: SPI, I2C
- 0:58:00
1 wire by dallas
- 0:59:00
Madman Muntz was a used car salesman
- 1:00:00
After the show, Dave end up Muntzing the vintage computer!
- 1:02:00
Sam, the home chip fab guy we had on last week, recently updated his site with details about his latest build.
- 1:03:00

Thanks to Serge Costa for the transmitter image

An Interview with Sam Zeloof Apr 30, 2018

Show notes

Welcome Sam Zeloof!
Sam is graduating high school soon, he's currently finishing up his senior year.
Sam started the process of making semiconductors in his garage 1.5 years ago
- 0h 1m 15s
Sam was inspired by Jeri Ellsworth's videos
- 0h 2m 45s
He'll be attending Carnegie Mellon University in the fall.
- 0h 8m 7s
Book: Microchip Fabrication by Peter Van Zant
- 0h 10m 23s
Chemicals are hardest to get
- 0h 12m 21s
HF in contained in Whink Rust Cleaner
- 0h 12m 40s
Stump remover
- 0h 12m 54s
Boric Acid is in roach killer
- 0h 12m 59s
Sam gives a tour of his lab
- 0h 14m 10s
Recently finished version of a Dual PMOS differential amplifier!
- 0h 15m 49s
UPDATE: Sam has published about his recently completed IC
Added SEM
- 0h 16m 3s
Wasn't an option to buy a vapor deposition machine, needed to build
- 0h 17m 43s
It was PVD, not CVD
- 0h 18m 9s
Sputtering aluminum
- 0h 18m 59s
Mean Free Path
- 0h 20m 26s
Follow along with the slides Sam prepared for a recent showcase of his work in Newark at the Trenton computer fest
- 0h 20m 52s
Start with wafer, buy off eBay
- 0h 24m 48s
Check resistivity
- 0h 25m 10s
Might be obvious, but Sam is not in a clean room
- 0h 27m 13s
Both Sam and Chris have worked in a Class 100 clean room
- 0h 28m 10s
UDC internship working on organic LED processes
- 0h 28m 18s
Oxidizing layer
- 0h 29m 43s
Photolithography
- 0h 30m 9s
Silicon gate vs metal gate
- 0h 31m 36s
Self aligned gate
- 0h 32m 14s
4 mask set
- 0h 33m 3s
What is doping?
- 0h 33m 42s
Electrons and holes. Talking about holes makes understanding organic semiconductors easier.
- 0h 35m 37s
Dopants are ppm and ppb
- 0h 37m 55s
Phosphine and diborane
- 0h 38m 49s
Adding chemicals and then diffusing
- 0h 41m 14s
Hardest piece to find is the furnace
- 0h 41m 26s
HF acid
- 0h 46m 26s
HF etching of photoresist/oxide
- 0h 49m 26s
Adhesion promoter HMDS
- 0h 50m 13s
Spinning on the dopants
- 0h 53m 40s
Spin coating allows uniform application
- 0h 54m 0s
Migration of dopants down into the lattice
- 0h 54m 52s
Get rid of thick oxide
- 0h 57m 12s
Grow gate oxide
- 0h 57m 25s
Field oxide is 5000-10000A
- 0h 57m 49s
Gate oxide is 500 A
- 0h 58m 11s
Alignment on wafers
- 0h 59m 43s
Doing photolithography with a projector
- 1h 0m 49s
Mike Harrison talking about projectors
- 1h 2m 26s
EUV 13nm
- 1h 2m 39s
Double Patterning
- 1h 3m 20s
Scored corner and do y = mx + b
- 1h 6m 30s
Grateful dead bears
- 1h 8m 25s
Zeloof Semiconductor
- 1h 9m 57s
Thinner layers you dilute etchant
- 1h 10m 45s
Curve tracer
- 1h 12m 1s
Polished surface is tough for probing
- 1h 12m 48s
Make a 4 pin pogo tester
- 1h 13m 2s
3rd masking step (contact)
- 1h 14m 28s
Metalization
- 1h 15m 30s
Everything is shorted
- 1h 15m 36s
Need to expose the traces that are remaining
- 1h 15m 42s
How many transistors are you making?
- 1h 16m 33s
Dual differential amplifier
- 1h 17m 40s
With larger feature sizes if it looks good, i'ts going to work
- 1h 18m 26s
CMP
- 1h 19m 35s
Little Lisa slurry
- 1h 19m 54s
Silane and CVD isn't an option
- 1h 21m 6s
Polysilicon enables more types/more intricate transistos
- 1h 21m 35s
Max output swing isn't possible with metal gate
- 1h 22m 17s
Itsy Chipsy chip service
- 1h 28m 1s
Design tools - Magic VLSI
- 1h 28m 41s
Drawing block of transistors
- 1h 29m 17s
QFlow
- 1h 29m 34s
Going from Verilog to masks
- 1h 30m 4s
MOSIS
- 1h 33m 36s
Wirebonder in process
- 1h 34m 25s
Former guest Tony Long might have one?
- 1h 34m 54s
CMU has a new cleanroom and Sam will be allowed to work there as a freshman
- 1h 36m 8s
Find Sam on YouTube, Twitter and via email
- 1h 37m 46s

Sipping Coulombs Apr 23, 2018

Show notes

Media feeds Woodstock Wire
- +0:01 mins
Integromat
- +0:03 mins
IFTTT / Zapier
- +0:04 mins
Maintenance
- +0:05 mins
CHIP has shut down (with no official announcement)
- +0:06 mins
Olimex is working on a new Allwinner board
- +0:09 mins
Unique hardware
- +0:11 mins
6 (7) minute abs
- +0:12 mins
Espressif
- +0:13 mins
Production limits on multimeters/uCurrent
- +0:14 mins
Dave's likeness stolen for Indiegogo
- +0:20 mins
EEVflog
- +0:22 mins
Check out the original/official DEF CON badges and last year's unofficial ones
- +0:23 mins
Macrofab #109
- +0:24 mins
Pin trading for olympics
- +0:25 mins
Car Hacking village
- +0:26 mins
Joe Grand
- +0:27 mins
Hackaday badge round up post
- +0:28 mins
Addie, Whisk0r of TYMKRS did the badge for CypherCon
- +0:29 mins
Low power discussion
- +0:30 mins
We-Charge: Wireless charging
- +0:34 mins
Someone is wrong on the internet
- +0:35 mins
Rayton solar
- +0:37 mins
Jackson on embedded.fm talking with Elecia and Chris about BLE
- +0:45 mins
Sipping coulombs
- +0:47 mins
Capacity of battery
- +0:48 mins
Self discharge
- +0:49 mins
Primary vs secondary battery (cell)
- +0:50 mins
CR2032 has 20 ohm in line
- +0:51 mins
Dave's video about battery capacity
- +0:52 mins
Batteroo chipset die shots
- +0:57 mins
University custom asic debunk
- +1:00 mins
Button subreddit
- +1:00 mins
Want us to do another call in show? Let us know in the comments!

An Interview with Earl Sharpe and Collin Kidder Apr 16, 2018

Show notes

Welcome Earl Sharpe and Collin Kidder of Macchina!

Macchina M2
- 0h 0m 47s
Car hacker
- 0h 1m 29s
Collin works on DIY electric vehicles
- 0h 2m 1s
OBD2 was introduced around 1996
- 0h 6m 56s
2009 can bus
- 0h 10m 47s
K line, L line, LIN
- 0h 11m 43s
Freescale CAN
- 0h 13m 24s
CAN developed by Bosch
- 0h 13m 42s
CAN FD
- 0h 14m 26s
CAN is differential
- 0h 16m 17s
CAN vs LIN
- 0h 17m 9s
LIN is slower/cheaper
- 0h 17m 31s
LIN isn't always on OBD2
- 0h 18m 31s
OBD2 standard
- 0h 19m 5s
Diagnostic data depends on the mfg
- 0h 21m 7s
Under the hood version
- 0h 21m 30s
Engine ECU
- 0h 22m 17s
ECU, BCU (Body Control Unit/module)
- 0h 22m 57s
Tesla has a main brainbox
- 0h 26m 9s
Dealing with every flavor that's out there
- 0h 29m 20s
Standards changing between model years
- 0h 31m 41s
Reverse engineering
- 0h 33m 17s
XBee standard
- 0h 40m 23s
Arduino compatible
- 0h 41m 19s
Modular
- 0h 42m 18s
CAN Bus library for Due
- 0h 43m 19s
ELM327
- 0h 46m 3s
Apps like Torque
- 0h 46m 12s
Meta data is mostly the ID
- 0h 47m 4s
2048 message IDs
- 0h 47m 12s
Tesla ID 15 is steering
- 0h 47m 27s
Savvy CAN
- 0h 48m 20s
Playing back messages
- 0h 50m 21s
4700 messages per second
- 0h 52m 26s
What can you see/control on the bus?
- 0h 56m 2s
Drive by wire
- 0h 58m 34s
Encoded / checksum on the bus message
- 1h 2m 12s
Replay attacks / counter bytes
- 1h 3m 37s
John Deere firmware hacking
- 1h 5m 22s
Rebuilder has to rebuild airbag
- 1h 6m 31s
Getting started with the M2
- 1h 9m 42s
Car Hackers Handguide
- 1h 10m 1s
Looking at RPM (as a project)
- 1h 10m 50s
Making a heads up display
- 1h 12m 8s
Self driving cars
- 1h 13m 38s
Bob Lutz SAE -- brands will become the app maker (Uber/lyft)
- 1h 14m 58s
LIDAR on the CAN bus?
- 1h 16m 8s
FlexRay standard is way faster - 10MBit
- 1h 16m 16s
Infotainment system
- 1h 18m 8s
Jeep hacking happened via the radio
- 1h 19m 21s
Security concerns
- 1h 21m 37s
Find them online!
- Macchina.cc
- @MacchinaCC
- Forum

Microfichery Apr 09, 2018

Show notes

+0:01
- Sleepy Dave
+0:03
- Giveaway was last week!
+0:04
- Dave's getting final spec sheets for his custom LCD
+0:05
- Open loop requirements on spec'ing brand new parts for manufacturing
+0:11
- System problems with LED
+0:12
- Losing projects in home lab.
+0:12
- Kickstarter for labeling projects with RFID.
+0:13
- The Chipeasy Storage Solution
+0:14
- Reordering lab
+0:15
- Dumpster hacking
+0:18
- Firing olllld thrusters
+0:19
- Dave did a bunch of videos with Richard at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex.
+0:20
- Follow @Nascom1 for space updates
+0:21
- Steve Leibson Interview
+0:22
- Help save Tek history
+0:23
- Dewey decimal system
+0:25
- HP Archives destroyed in wildfire
+0:27
- TRS 80 Trash Talk
+0:30
- Archive.org magazines
+0:33
- Apple planning to use their own chips for new macs
+0:34
- Intel selling Wind River
+0:35
- Foxconn buying Belkin
+0:38
- Scott Shawcroft talked about compiled vs interpreted languages and the comments section was helpful too!
+0:39
- Tesla recall over a rusty bolt
+0:43
- Dave made a video about the Tesla LIDAR fail
+0:47
- Claire (nee Clifford) Wolf talked about LIDAR not working for self driving cars
+0:51
- Interview with Tom Lemense
+0:55
- Chip printer
+0:56
- 3H meetups - email me
+0:57
- You can buy teeshirts today!
+0:58
- See our potential logo designs
+0:59
- Dental video (blech)
- Knee video (blech)
+1:00
- Bonus links!

Thanks to wikipedia for the picture of the microfiche!

An Interview with John Davis Mar 26, 2018

Show notes

Welcome, John Davis! He is a sales engineer who owns/runs Paul Davis Automation, a rep company in Cleveland Ohio focused on the industrial automation space. John also uses his hands-on sales experience to develop accessible industrial electronics for his company Three ML, LLC.

This week notes will be a bit different. I was able to take notes that are roughly timestamped! Let us know if these are useful or accurate. They are links where relevant:

Mechatronics 0h 2m 58s
John is a Manufacturer's rep 0h 4m 7s
Chris had written about the difference between sales and mkt rep 0h 4m 52s
Distributors 0h 6m 51s
John's first sales experience was in retail selling bicycles 0h 13m 29s
How do you make money? 0h 15m 4s
Amazon affiliate is a type of "affiliate marketing" 0h 17m 8s
Ladder logic 0h 24m 5s
Relay logic 0h 24m 34s
PLC software 0h 25m 56s
Fiberglass plant 0h 28m 55s
Automation is key 0h 30m 57s
manufacturing in us, germany 0h 31m 55s
cost of switching/upgrading 0h 33m 58s
Shampoo, hamburger buns 0h 36m 38s
Push the button story (which I may have mis-attributed!). Here's Sam's product I mentioned. 0h 38m 51s
Most installs are incremental upgrades 0h 40m 8s
Rockwell encompass 0h 40m 36s
Encompass partner producs 0h 41m 15s
Industrial networks 0h 43m 56s
Different types of real time 0h 48m 53s
Ethernet Industrial Protocol (IP), Profinet, Ethercat 0h 49m 18s
RS485, ModBus 0h 51m 3s
three-ml 0h 53m 42s
The line between value and problem solving 0h 54m 17s
Industrial raspberry pi 0h 57m 16s
Industrial IoT 1h 0m 37s
Medium voltage switchgear 1h 2m 20s
Monitoring bus bar temp 1h 3m 16s
7M electricity bill / month 1h 4m 33s
Machine Pix twitter account 1h 5m 56s
Vendor relationships are important 1h 6m 20s
Daemon, which inspired DC Darknet 1h 9m 7s
Going into sales 1h 12m 27s
"There is no specification for how to do sales" 1h 18m 13s
Reach John on twitter at @johnprdavis 1h 20m 0s