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 Ken Shirriff Sep 25, 2017

Show notes

Welcome Ken Shirriff from Righto.com!

Ken uses a metallugical microscope and the hyugens software package to stitch together the images.
Inside fake RAM chips
Armour etch will remove the top layer of oxide
Analyzing a vintage 8008
Mining bitcoin with pencil and paper. Ken made a video of this as well.
Mining bitcoin on a Xerox Alto!
Xerox Alto , precursor to (all computers, but also the) Xerox Star
Alan Kay
yCombinator contacted Ken to rebuild theirs.
The IBM 1401 demo lab
Living computer museum in Seattle
Smalltalk -
BCPL
The 76477 sound chip
Integrated Injection Logic
Day 31 of restoration
The Alto had the first version of tons of modern computer peripherals:
- Mouse
- Laser Printer
- Ethernet
Ken displayed his work at the recent VCF
They found a disk with an early version of Voice over IP!
Bell Labs discovering big bang (microwave background radiation)
Sinclair calculator simulator
Ken was inspired by the Visual 6502
CuriousMarc is a YouTube channel that followed the Alto rebuild
TI Calculator simulator
Ken uses lots of patents like this one from TI
There are interesting things happening in Mac chargers (and the ripoffs)
DS2413 1-Wire switch
iPad chargers were interesting as well
Sprite_tm talking about FTDI parts
Ken also tears down vintage parts like the 555
Figured out transistors on die from books, LT Spice
Transfluxors - core memory
Read more on righto.com or follow Ken on Twitter as @KenShirriff

A Total 360 Sep 18, 2017

Show notes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHctCxCBBrY

Dave's multimeter is using an STM32 part with an LCD driver
He will selling the ring binder sheets soon.
The pocket multimeter Japan is not cheap, but will be for sale outside of Japan
What do you call the stage after a Proof-of-concept but before a prototype? Chris is going with "One-off build"
The uSupply shall return!
GreatScott did a video about building a small bench supply using a LTC3780 module
Dave has done a multimeter input protection videos (including PTC/NTC)
Jason Cerundulo was on the show talking USB C in the past
Matt Duff made videos for ADI in the past we liked.
The Engineering Mind used to be our go-to reference for corporate comms going well, but it's long passed.
Bob Pease had a show
Diyode
This Country Feeds the World (article about modern agtech in the Netherlands)
Bunnie and Snowden worked together on monitoring iPhones
Strange Parts adds a headphone jack to an iPhone
The PCH Newsletter announces funding on startups
John Deere restricts firmware on their tractors...even when you bought them
We mention the Apple announcements because they impact sensors in the future.

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An Interview with Jeroen Domburg (Sprite_tm) Sep 11, 2017

Show notes

Welcome, Jeroen Domburg (Sprite_tm)

An early hack that gained notoriety was turning an optical mouse sensor into camera. This article ended up Slashdotted.
Sprite used to write for elektor as well.
His project site (Spritesmods.com) became his portfolio. This helped him move from consulting to working directly for a small broadcast mfg that later was absorbed by the Grass Valley Group.
Ra Link - > OpenWRT
The ESP8266 grew out of Espressif's product line meant for "Serial to WiFi"
Early Hackaday articles helped to spread the popularity of the chip.
The Leaked SDK was actually a Windows VM with a compiler for Xtensa core
GCC already existed for for xtensa because it was a product line from Tensilica.
There was less support for smaller cores (windowed registers)
Sprite caught Espressif's attention when he wrote a webserver for it to handle wifi passwords (start as access points, enter info, turn into a device the hooks into the network). He also helped with lag issues with the chip wake up time.
He took a holiday to Beijing and Shanghai before deciding to join the team.
ESP IDF
The ESP32 is multicore
You can interact with the ESP using Javascript, Lua, uPython (and more)
Sprite has learned how to speak "taxi Chinese" but is working on language.
The ESP31 was the beta for the ESP32, Sprite ported a sega emulator to it
8266 is a spinoff of 8089, which was more of a wifi front end.
ESP32 wanted to design it for IoT, so the peripheral set is much more extensive and meant for sensor based devices.
It's an even split on whether people use the module vs chip.
The chips run FreeRTOS
The ESP32 started with Async multiprocessing (AMP) but later was made synchronous by sharing some of the memory space between the cores.
It's a standard BSD socket set, so users can drop their code into the SDK.
It's not worth cloning WiFi chips like they did with FTDI...any indirect replication of the functionality would be a unique solution.
Talks
- Snake
- Tamogatchi
- Gameboy
Find Sprite online!
- GitHub
- Twitter
- IRC

Image courtesy of the @hackaday twitter feed

Mergers and People Acquisitions Sep 05, 2017

Show notes

Chris will be joining Hologram as a developer advocate. Past discussions around 3G projects were people like Akiba, Gerry and Brandon (wifi connectivity)
Dave wants to see a chart of data update rate on wifi vs 3g (and how it impacts battery).
Chris and Dave both use Sendy. which is a front end for Amazon SES.
Acquisitions!
- Altium has bought Upverter. Upverter was on The Amp Hour in 2013. Dave is excited about the eeConcierge service.
- Dragon Innovation was bought by Avnet. Scott Miller was on the show back in 2012.
- IXYS was bought by Littelfuse. They paid $750M.
Dave got fuse quotes from a Japanese mfg that were 1/5th the cost of list fuses! These are what you can buy on his site in multipacks.
121GW meter will be released on October 20th. It will surely sell out, make sure you're on Dave's mailing list!
Dave will be launching another Kickstarter. Chris suggested he does Kickstarter Gold like Zach Dunham did.
People are building DIY Powerwalls at home. Tesla is selling theirs at a lower cost than we thought.
Plethora wrote about why crowdfunded projects fail.
Dave was contacted by the new owner of Lily Drones threatening legal action over the trademark. Dave had made a video about it while on vacation. The "Nominative Fair Use" case with NKOTB guides judicial action over this.
AvE did a review of the Cubiio, but was talking about the laser but not the manufacturability.
Chris wrote about "Solo Engineers" and was really thinking about the campaign/design that David Kronstein (Tesla500) ran for the Chronos 1.4 camera.
Andy Gelme almost got in trouble with the LiFX bulb because of the stretch goals. This changed the rules on KS that you need a real project.
Sonos is bricking speakers if you don't accept their terms and conditions.
There is a pacemaker with 250K units in the field that requires a firmware update.
An engineer was sentenced to 40 months in prison for meddling with emissions output on Volkswagon vehicles. No word yet on the executives going to jail.

Links are always available throughout the week on our subreddit /r/TheAmpHour or follow our twitter account @TheAmpHour Thanks to the Wikimedia Commons for the merge sign

An Interview with Rick Altherr Aug 29, 2017

Show notes

Welcome, Rick Altherr (@kc8apf)

Rick works on the platform team at Google, designing firmware and software for the servers that go into hyperscale datacenters. He does not discuss specific Google stuff.
Chris was surprised when Rick walked into a meetup carrying the Zaius server under his arm.
The standard 1U rack size is 19". This is the first of many standardizations that have happened over the years.
You can purchase a slot, a rack, an entire cage or a building. Each comes with an increasing amount of logistical questions and potential for customization.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uvdPDXaBPc

Engineers are following "Scale out" architecture these days.
Kubernetes
Gluster
Reed-solomon codes
MTBF of hardware
Your [server hardware] product is not truly shipped until it has caught fire at a datacenter
These servers are part of the Open Compute project, which includes many large companies in the tech space.
Two of the popular designs are the Leopard and the Zaius
The Zaius has 2 Power9 processors, 48V rails, point of load converters that take the voltage down to 0.8V, and slots for 32 sticks of RAM. You can view all the design files on GitHub.
PUE - power usage effectiveness
Hot isle/cold isle
Lights out management type system
- Open Stack
- Kubernetes
- MaaS
OpenBMC - Chassis manager
NCSI - connect the ethernet
IMPI - controlled by DMTF
Project olympus motherboard microsoft
You can just...BUY...these servers from the Open Compute project.
Go on a 360 degree tour of the datacenters at Google
Read more about Google's datacenters here.
Decisions are made on metrics like "People per megawatt" (how much management is required) and "Build vs buy" (is there a solution already in the marketplace).
Finding a job: search for terms like "Datacenter", "Platform", or ping Rick via DM for mentoring and/or practice interviewing
Rick gave a great talk at HDDG about monitoring engines called "Knock knock: Add more fuel"
You can find Rick on Twitter or GitHub

Occasional barks during the show provided by Rick's new puppy! :-D

https://twitter.com/kc8apf/status/901932715754217472

An Interview with Piotr Esden-Tempski Aug 21, 2017

Show notes

Welcome, Piotr Esden Tempski (@esden)

Piotr got started with autopilots, Paparazzi UAV. These were initially made for ENAC
The models (Lisa-/S,/M, /MX) are different sizes and have different capabilities.
These platforms are built with STM32 (as are many of Piotr's other projects)
His programming language of choice? Common LISP (listen to him on Embedded.fm for more about this)
The Black Magic Probe came out of the autopilot projects and a collaboration with Gareth McMullin
- Buy the BlackMagic here and the 1Bitsy here
This tool supplants OpenOCD, instead allowing the user to connect to the GDB Interface via this hardware pathway.
A key component is LibOpenCM3, an open source ARM cortex M library
SIMD - single instruction multiple data
Risk V5 - SiFive
Interested in learning? Work through and mess with the existing examples for the 1Bitsy!
Platform.io is an online IDE for multiple platforms, including Arduino.
redare2 - live debugging
sublime text
Atom text editor
ARM Debug Interface Five (ADIV5)
The 1bitsy DEFCON Badge -- the 1bitsy 1up (hardware design files) -- was using parallel to LCD, so the frame rate was nearly 80 fps
Teensy vs 1bitsy -- Similar tact, different approach to debug options.
KiCad files are in repo
Where to find Piotr (and sometimes Gareth)
- black-magic.org
- 1bitsquared.com
- 1bitsy.org
- On twitter: @esden
- gitter.im

**The Internet of Septage (with Akiba)** Aug 14, 2017
Show notes

Welcome back, Akiba from Freaklabs

**Contextual Electronics members now get the "academic pricing" on the Analog Discovery 2. That device is made by Digilent. We had Clint Cole on the show in the in the past.**

Akiba just got back from Europe for vacation. Prior to that he was working on a World Bank/Egyptian Government project instrumenting waste systems to prevent dumping.

The project uses 3G modules, simcom 5320e

Of course this topic made us think of the @InternetOfShit twitter account.

The field radio Akiba favors is a point to point 802.15.4 radio.

This is instead of using LoRa, which is a 900 Mhz sensor protocol by Semtec

Ubiquity long range

The septage project was build on similar technology as the rice field monitoring project Akiba has been working on for a few years now.

Akiba's next project will be drones, possibly working with agriculture.

During reboot of multiple product, Akiba is planning on organizing into product lines

IEEE ACM article (behind a paywall, unfortunately)

During a discussion of lifestyle businesses, Chris mentioned the book the E-myth. In it, they talk about "primary aim"

While discussing the AD2, Akiba mentioned $50 test fixtures in china (see images below)

Chris wrote about solo engineers.

Beers in akiba's workshop

Dangerous prototypes now offers Dirty Cables and Dirty Decapping

Follow Akiba on Twitter as @freaklabs

*Thanks to gtzecosan for the image of the septic system*

A Meeting Of The Davids Aug 06, 2017

Show notes

Chris is on vacation, so David (Ledger) is filling in. Hear all about the goings-on at the EEVblog world headquarters and also throughout the larger electronics industry. Show notes will return next week. See the /r/TheAmpHour subreddit for links to some of the things they discussed.

IoT Degree Jul 25, 2017

Show notes

The security bot the went in the drink
Watching robots fall over
When the Boston Dynamics robot finds his voice
Dave reviewed a Trezor wallet
Bitcoin pizza day
$25 multimeter
Chris has been playing with the Analog Discovery 2. Another user made a curve tracer with one.
List of electronics youtubers on eevblog forum
Clamping zener in transistors (EEVblog1000)
Dave is doing self-imposed contest judging to give away a scope.
Should you be desoldering parts? If you're starting out? Probably.
Why's it called "contextual" electronics?
Glass is back!
Particle raised 20M
IoT Degree
Naomi (@RealSexyCyborg) tweeted about the a new innovation...a library.
You should be following the Internet of Shit on twitter
TechCrunch wrote about a new metal printer raising 120M. But it's still a prototyping tool.
350kW solution by porsche. It needs to be efficient! We had posted about this 99% efficient inverter.

Conning with Michael Ossmann Jul 18, 2017

Show notes

Welcome back, Michael Ossmann of Great Scott Gadgets! (his last appearance was on episode #318)

Mike didn't know the HackRF has a subreddit. But he did know about the IRC (Freenode) and the mailing list.
XKCD talked about slack hooking to other services and venn diagrams.
Great Scott Gadgets has interns! One of them maintains 6502.org.
Conferences coming up: Black Hat, B-Sides, Defcon
The GreatFET / GoodFET / BusPirate is meant for interfacing software to the real world. There will soon be expansion boards.
The HackRF1 was used for the badge at at CCC. People are still using it because the toolchain is similar for badge as HackRF.
Dominic Spill and Mike will be presenting at BlackHat.
They're currently working on spectrum monitoring tools. These are different than the PortaPak waterfall view, instead sweeping across 6GHz.
It uses a software called qspectrum analyzer.
Spectrum analyzers (and the math behind them) is the reason for calling it "Contextual" electronics.
They are also working with ShinySDR.
Silicon Valley pineapple episode
Direct sequence spread spectrum
Information theory
GPS uses a lot of code matching to "dig the signal out of the noise"
There is now spoofing/simulation for GPS. This reminded Chris of the plot in ~~GoldenEye~~ Tomorrow Never Dies.
Paper about "GPS software attacks"
Mike will be joining the other hardware security trainers in San Francisco. They have all been guests on The Amp Hour! There is now a CFP for training participants to get free admission and present during lunch one of the days.
Mike will be at DefCon (so will Chris). There was a recent review of the andnotxor badge on Hackaday.
DC Darknet is a challenge for learning new skills, including building up a badge.
There are a bunch of "villages" targeted at different subjects.
- Hardware hacking village
- Wireless village
- ICS village
DefconTV is the talks being streamed to hotel rooms throughout the conference.
Nate from Sparkfun will be giving a talk.
Two of the hackers mentioned were Marina Krotofil and Alexander Bolshev
The HackRF had a hit piece done against it in the DailyMail!
Daisho is still being (slowly) considered. The device core ported from Altera to Xilinx with project Tim Videos mythro Numato Opsis. They also have an Open FPGA standard.
They're developing a new "neighbor" for the GreatFET with level shifting capabilities. It uses Silego's GreenPak chips.
GreenPak published their bitstream and Andrew Zonenberg has been developing an open source tool for hdl synthesis.
Method for reprogramming - in datasheets look development section ("on chip emulation")
GSG is now working on SDR for infrared.
The OHS schedule was recently published. That will be held in Denver in October.