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**The Amp Hour**

The Amp Hour is a weekly conversation about electronics and the people who design them.

Latest Episodes:

An Interview with Forrest Mims - Snell Solisequious Scientist Nov 13, 2013

Show notes

"Life is a science fair project" - Forrest Mims

Welcome, Forrest Mims!

Forrest got started with his soapbox racer headlamp. He later moved on to crystal radios and a lafayette radio. He was never a fan of tubes though.
He started building hobby electronics in late 60s early 70s, such as a rocket control system. These landed him in publications like Model Rocketry Magazine .
Launching rockets from the racetrack and the top of his apartment in Vietnam, he got into a little bit of trouble (especially when the MP came looking for attackers!).
After the war, he founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) with Ed Roberts. This would later be the company that debuted the Altair 8800.
Early fans of those computers included Paul Allen and Bill Gates, the former donating a bunch of the history to the New Mexico Museum of Nat'l History. There is a picture there of Forrest's wife typing up the manual after Forrest wrote it.
The reason the Altair got so much attention was because it was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics Magazine. This magazine had circulation of 400-600K people. It was edited by Les Solomon. Bill Yates wrote the article (note the 'Y', not a 'G').
Forrest saw LEDs in Electronics magazine and contacted Dr Ed Bonnin at Texas Instruments. They cost $365 per LED!
With the donated LEDs, Forrest built an infrared travel aid for the blind, which worked like sonor.
In later projects, Forrest built a music box that had alien sounds and was featured on Johnny Carson.
He left the air force and became a parking lot attendant at the airport. This is where he wrote his first book on LEDs.
His second book was published by Howard Sams and Company and was about optoelectronics.
When Forrest started writing for Radio Shack, Dave Gunzel encouraged him to model the books after his handlettered lab notebooks.
Forrest tested circuits 4 times to make sure he didn't miss anything or have bad assumptions. This lead to very low numbers of errors in the books where he did the quadruple checking.
In 1988 he decided to make a proposal to Scientific American to write for the Amateur Scientist column. He wrote for them for just 3 issues due to conflicts with the publisher.
Forrest has been collecting 25 years of ozone data (or will hit 25 next year!)
Each year he travels to Mauna Loa in Hawaii to calibrate his equipment.
Forrest's research clashed with results from a NASA sattelite. Once NASA found and corrected their mistake, the research landed him a publication in Nature and the Rolex Prize.

Forrest Mims, 1993 Rolex Laureate from Rolex Awards for Enterprise on Vimeo.

Later, NASA asked Forrest to give a talk entitled, "Doing Earth Science on a Shoestring Budget"
After collaborating, Forrest and Brent Holbin (an atmospheric scientist with NASA) published a second paper in Nature, this one about UV monitoring.
Amateur publications are not common in Nature or elsewhere but Forrest would like to see more citizen scientists. He co-founded the Citizens Scientist League
These days, Forrest is interested in making music from data. He is also the inventor of the Atari Punk Console, a popular project for hobbyists.
Past writings about music include a piece for MAKE magazine that show how to translate the data in tree rings into music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2g3scrcg20
Chris suggested a video that shows and plays data set sorting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPRA0W1kECg
Chris also mentioned how Baba O'Riley by The Who was based off biometric data (for which the song was named) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2KRpRMSu4g
A listener wrote in about how hobbyists are making replicas of the Altairs. Forrest likes that there is still so much interest.
Forrest wrote a book about his experience in the industry called Siliconections (1986).
He also wrote a TON of other books!
Radio Shack dropped the books and the electronics followed (2003ish). However, the electronics learning labs will be back in stores this year.
The resurgence in hobbyist electronics really excites Forrest. He says, "The Maker Movement is phenomenal" and has a column in MAKE Magazine.
He is also a fan of Nuts and Volts magazine.
All of Forrests' kids were into science. Based upon his daughter's experience with the robotics club and associated competitions, he is proposing a new type of robotics competition, based on the idea of a Mars Rover type of simulation.
The vote is in: Forrest says "Five Fifty Five". See what other listeners voted for on our survey many moons ago.
Forrest thinks Hans Camenzind did a great service by inventing the 555 timer and is also a fan of Hans' book. Hans sadly passed away last year.

You can find Forrest online on Twitter at @fmims, on Facebook under Forrest Mims III and on his website about his science research, ForrestMims.org. Many thanks to this living legend for being on The Amp Hour!

Image courtesy of Wikipedia. Don’t forget to donate!

What defines an engineer? - Job Judging Jeremiad Nov 06, 2013

Show notes

What defines an engineer? Who is allowed to call themselves one? Also, how people debug and lots of new podcasts!

We have lots of guests lined up for the rest of this year and into next! It's going to be a couple of great interviews (with some blather each week in between!)
There are new podcasts on the block as well!
- Embedded.fm is an embedded podcast now working past 25 episodes.
- The S.T.E.A.M. power podcast is a bit more broad and sciencey than the embedded one, but still good! Also past 25 episodes.
- (Forgotten to mention) Lemnos Labs, the hardware accelerator, now has a podcast interviewing members of the accelerator.
- (Forgotten to mention) Two of the guys from Microsoft (though the show isn't affiliate at all) discuss embedded electronics and other tech news on The Unitialized Show.
Dave has been on a quest for truth lately, he's been investigating the current carrying of vias http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPm-qMyNwpo
Do we have any Chinese listeners? What is the wage disparity really like these days for top engineers? (We assume any listeners to The Amp Hour are the top engineers)
Dave was watching an ABC (au) documentary on pay in New Jersey. He was shocked at how little service staff make (before tips).
Chris thinks you need to be super persistent when trying to find a job. You need to make people realize you don't want to talk to HR.
Jack Ganssle makes a great point about debugging (based on another article about increasing complexity of systems [paywall]) and how good debuggers (people, not machines), record their steps and are deliberate in their actions. You know, like hardware people have to be. Are you good about your rigor while debugging?
Chris learned over the weekend about the high cost of crappy tools. Especially the time cost (and frustration).
Dave has experienced this in the paste with a solder sucker he immediately needed to repair. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vva2t21sOAs
If you buy something with lame assembly but good components, you can mod it later. The Sieg X2 and X3 (milliing machine) are a good example of this.
A solid and low cost tool you might want to pick up is a hand-activated solderpaste dispenser. Chris and Dave haven't ever done reflow at home (but have at work).
Don't stick electronics under your skin, folks. It's really gross (WARNING: Disturbing images)
Is a modular phone really going to happen? Even if Motorola says it's going to happen, it doesn't mean it will make it commecially. The cost is usually in the connectors.
Celebrity news? Really? Well yeah, because Lenovo is saying that Ashton Kutcher is an engineer. Chris is upset because it is likely he'll be a marketer, not an engineer.
However, since engineers don't have board certification (specifically for electronics), there are no repercussions for someone calling themselves and engineer.
Our guest next week is the one and only Forrest Mims! Get your questions in for us to ask him on the show next week!

Thanks to the Seattle Municipal Archives for the picture of old school nerds!

An Interview with Vincent Himpe - Escaped Electron Elocution Oct 30, 2013

Show notes

Welcome, Vincent Himpe of Silicon Valley Garage!

Belgian kits - Velleman, German kits - Operaman
Won Rotary Club contest for 2 month, got an internship in Finland with Salcomp/Nokia
D2MAC chip - Analog HD chip - 1989
Vincent says he wasn't for school, ended up helping people with their senior projects.
Had to do mandatory military service, started a job as a maintenance tech at a fab in Oudenaarde around 1993. OnSemi owns the facility today.
Vincent's first online name was Ping00751. He had a well known document about the fledgling protocol for i2c.
The company he was working for was absorbed by Alcatel (later acquired by Lucent).
Team of 7, invented DSL/ADSL
The early boards used a very heavy duty I960 CPU and a bunch of ASICs to squeeze out performance from a 16 MHz clock.
The systems also used Indeo video, which had a whopping 320x240 resolution.
The ADC had an ~17.4MHz clock with 16 bit ADC output with a 4 bit opcode
Xilinx FPGA 95 - learned verilog, the program wasn't called ISE (Exemplar logic)
Started using Altera (Max Plus) -> later Quartus2
AstroPhysicist starts at the lab
At Alcatel in 2000, there were 216,000 people working there
Started using Protel/Altium in 93 (Dave did in 89)
Bought a pick and place for the lab
After all the layoffs in early 2000s/dot com crash, employment at Alcatel was down to 40,000
Sold the fab/design team to ST Micro
Exar chip 2206, designed to be used with 2211. Similar to MAX038. Both are obsolete not, yet people still clamor for them.
Rochester Electronics could keep making them, but likely won't unless you're a military customer.
Vincent bought 6 different PM2811's off eBay and were sold ot someone for their firmware. This allowed the buyer to not need to recertify his test rig.
Chris referenced an article on artificial intelligence, how the basis is usually grounded in patern recogintion based on past experience.
"Signature DMMs" will give you a coded output for possible failure modes.
Vincent doesn't use Magic/IRSIM, nor is he a fan of KiCad.
The 6502/8051 is used because...it's royalty free.

Though we couldn't possibly capture ALL of the awesomeness that Vincent talked about on the show, the audio file can! Be sure to take the time to listen to all 3+ hours!

TI-AC-Induction-BlockDiagram — **Specialized and/or Open Source Test Gear and Dev Boards - Vacation Videography Vorboten** Oct 23, 2013
Show notes

Chris and Dave talk about all manner of test instrument, both specialized and open source. Also interest in moving big heavy machines, friends starting Kickstarters and innovation continuing into mid-life and beyond!

Dave is back from his vacation driving around Australia! He got to visit "The Dish" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF3EnUzynhg

Specialized equipment is often a mystery except to people in the field it was intended for.

Chris listed a Source Measure Unit and a Network Analyzer

Dave has been collecting Dynamic Signal Analyzers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwiZROj3SSI

What about you?

Different geographic regions have different specialties.

Chris has a new project using Variable Frequency Drives and AC Induction motors. They're amazing!

Block diagrams show how much electronics are involved in modifying line level 3 phase signals (image courtesy TI.com)

Even though it was discussed by Henry Ott when he was on the show and Bob Simpson when he was on the show, Chris didn't realize these are what powers a lot of the electric vehicles on the road.

Chris will be giving a talk about all the open source tools and platforms that power his every day life. Check out this reddit thread for a listing of the tools.

Ryan O'Hara will be doing a new project and will be using the stamp with The Amp Hour logo shown at the top of the episode.

Jeri has launched her Kickstarter for the CastAR! It has already hit the funding goal and will continue to try and raise money.

We'll have Jeri on the show as she gets towards the DfM portion.

Dev kits are important for getting a jump start on your design and providing proof to your boss that you can get something done.

Google Glass and Segway aren't useful in their intended ways...but have great niche utilizations.

The new Adafruit Bluefruit board sends keyboard commands by pulling down a single pin. Very cool!

Bluetooth 4.0 is useful because it allows you to abstract out iPhone hardware (and their closed ecosystem).

People don't do anything useful after 35? Tons of successful people respond on Quora.

Is innovation still possible in regular electronics?

Next week on the show we'll have Vincent Himpe of Silicon Valley Garage, ask your questions for him on our subreddit. He sent Dave a huge box of awesome fab stuff http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0WEx0Gwk1E

An Interview with Adam Wolf - Brick & Board Biuners Oct 16, 2013

Show notes

Welcome Adam Wolf of Wayne and Layne!

Wayne and Layne started when Adam and Matthew met...back in 6th grade in Minnesota! Later they both attended the University of Minnesota.
Adam now works at Digi, the makers of Xbee. More specifically, he works helping people develop embedded solutions at Etherios (formerly Spectrum).
One of the projects he worked on for an extended period was Android. It's useful to quickly bolt a GUI onto a product.
Chris has briefly played with Android using one of the Liquidware dev kits.
Adam and Matthew developed the Bricktronics shield to offer a low cost entry to combining Lego and Arduino. This was designed with John Baichtal, who co-wrote The Cult of Lego.
The kit is based on the huge interest in Lego Mindstorms. There are 550 teams FIRST Lego Robotics teams that compete each year...in Minnesota alone! How crazy is that??
The standard kit includes the NXT, which has an ARM SAM 9 chip on board. The newer EV3 runs full Linux.
Wayne and Layne had problems with audience culture clash at the beginning, especially before their book MAKE: Lego and Arduino Projects was fully released to the public.
Adam is not a member of the KiCad Dev team; however, he does a nightly build of KiCad and helps guide others to doing the same.
He also watches the dev mailing list regularly (an act all in and of itself) and noted that there is talk about change in library lookup (possibly online libraries and immediately EAGLE compatibility)
This stems from people being paid to work on KiCad, such as the awesome people at CERN. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxHDAHpR5Ls
There are many new features in the pipeline, it's all about whether you want to try them out in your test builds.
Adam and Matthew recently were featured at an event that helps promote STEM for women in Africa. Their Blinky POV kit was featured and has been built all of the world. 10s of thousands have now been sold!
Another popular W&L product is the video game shield, which uses Wii nunchucks to control a B&W video output.
The nunchuck uses i2c, but the problem is they're always at the same address since they're normally connected to a Wii controller.
Newer projects work with the ChipKit PIC32 Arduino compatible board. There is also compatibility with theFubarino mini and the Fubarino sd.
These were developed in conjuction with Brian Schmalz who works with Sparkfun and sells some stuff through their store.
The new boards can handle audio by storing it in SRAM and doing some manipulation of memory locations.
Microchip makes i2c and a SPI SRAM that makes it easy to bolt more memory on (compared to squeezing down to an Arduino's tiny memory)
Adam's personal (somewhat dormant) site is FeelsLikeBurning.com. He also regularly updates his Google+ page (especially at the beginning of the year).
Adam and Matthew are also offering a special offer to listeners of The Amp Hour. Go to WayneAndLayne.com/TAH and enter the code "tahoct" for 10% off kits.

Many thanks to Adam for being on the show! Next time we'll have Dave and Matthew as well!

Also, if you haven’t yet, don’t forget to buy a white version of our logo t-shirt from The Amp Hour! The campaign ends on Thursday!

Prior Art, Wafer Fabs and Guns - Whimsical Wafer Waffling Oct 09, 2013

Show notes

Dave is amused that the Dayton Hamvention mentions that guns aren't allowed
We have a new t-shirt crowdfunding campaign! Get yours today!
Dave got a great gift from Vincent Himpe (future guest of The Amp Hour!), including a bunny suit and a ton of fab equipment and wafers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0WEx0Gwk1E
Chris used to work with that kind of stuff at a previous job, though he made memory stuff, not logic.
The fab equipment world is getting a little smaller/less diverse now that Tokyo Electron and Applied Materials are merging.
Are there many young hardware teams out there? Especially for large projects like new chip companies?
Once example Chris thought of is the T essel team, who were recently funded using the new Dragon Innovation crowdfunding program.
Crowdfunding has another member in the "bamboozle" category, the I ce ID. Why do people think that their business needs will be funded by people?
There is an awesome program at the Seattle area hackerspace (Metrixcreate) called Circuit Church. It's on a Sunday evening for $30 and you make a circuit board by the end using a LPKF rapid prototyping machine.
Designs need a benevolent overlord (or as Dave says, a dictator). Toyota had a chief engineer, who makes all the final decisions on a particular model.
What are the ethics of meeting with vendors and sharing your ideas? Are you bound to only tell those ideas to one vendor?
Do podcasts count as prior art, to be used in patent cases?
Johngineer took some beautiful up close photos of some decapped chips.
Chris enjoys watching solder melt under high magnification. Dave informed him this is called the plastic region.
The Arduino family and community just got a little bigger with Intel and TI now having co-developed boards. Would you pay an extra $30 for an Intel chip on board?
Dave asks about the US shutdown. It does indeed affect science and technology companies. Closer to home, it affects getting your products approved for FCC testing.
Chip of the Week: The LT2338-18 is an 18 bit, 1 MSPS, +/- 12.5V part needing only a 5V rail. At a bargain price of $30...
Chris also likes the Maxim Beyond-the-rails™ parts because of the charge pump inside, even if their trademark is dumb. Well, most of them are.
Popular Science is turning off their comment section. While their explanation of saying comments influence opinions was a bit brash, Chris enjoyed this piece linked to him by Steve Hoefer (@Grathio) about why another web denizen (@scalzi) turned off the comment section.
There is a new Internet of Things podcast from GigaOm. The IoT field is starting to exit the realm of tinkerer and into the realm of gadgeteer.
The FAA now allows electronics below 10,000 ft. It only took 25 years or so to get that one sorted out!
Sparkfun recenly put all their OSHW designs onto Upverter. This is great to quickly be able to browse and clone their work for your own projects.
Intel isn't just creating open source projects these days, they're also throwing their money around...to the tune of 50K boards for their new Intel Galileo
Next week on the show, Dave will be gone but Chris will be talking to Adam and Matthew of Wayne and Layne! Get your questions in for them over on the subreddit!

An Interview with Henry Ott - Forced FCC Filtering Oct 02, 2013

Show notes

Welcome, Henry Ott!

With a home base in NJ, Henry has been teaching classes about Electro Magnetic Compliance (EMC) for almost 30 years! It's a mix of private and public sessions, the most recent public one being in Dearborn, MI.
It's a 3 day class. Henry is the only instructor and has an assistant who helps him set up and schedule classes.
The primary topics revolve around cabling/grounding/shielding/mixed signal/noise. Interested? Check out his books!
He start in analog design and got into EMC it by accident while working at Bell Labs in NJ.
During the early part of his career, solid state devices were just coming into vogue, meaning Henry experienced the birth of silicon and its spread in the industry.
The culture of Bell Labs was special in research and Henry also saw it while he was in development. He recommends "The Idea Factory" to learn more about the history there.
As he dug deeper into EMC, he started a continuing education program after seeking out one about noise. He recognized the need for a course/class on noise/interference.
This also was when he started his work on the first edition of Noise Reduction Techniques in Electronic Systems (1977). The second (and current) edition came out in 1989.
He developed much of the content while at Bell Labs and later when he saw problems in consulting.
There are lots of EMC books on the market but Henry recommends his "3 book mini library"
- His newest book (2009), Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineering
- A book by (former guest of the show) Dr Howard Johnson and Dr Martin Graham - High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic
- A book by Hall, Hall, McCall - High Speed Digital System Design
Over on the subreddit, fews asked about resonant cavities.
Hardware wise, Henry suggests a good set of loop probes to help determine where there might be emissions. He also likes the Rigol 815 spectrum analyzer.
10 ways to maximize the emissions from your product. Two examples are interrupting the return current and improper termination.
Dr Clayton Paul, who recently passed away, used to teach students by having them create a digital project and then showing how they couldn't sell the product because of EMC.
Lots of problems are coming from variable AC Motor drives. These are prevalent in electric vehicles.
Cars don't come under FCC but they are 40 dB less than gov't requirements.
Radiated vs conducted: Radiated is above 30 mhz, conducted is less than 30 Mhz.
Designing a shielded box isn't easy, it's about the apertures. Cables still go in and out and are a source of errors. You need to limit the size of the seams. Additionally, the mains are a great antenna and need to be tested.
Power line filtering can help reduce this problem but 90% of the time it's not a power line filter problem, it's mechanical.
Henry is an IEEE Life member. The IEEE formed in 1963 when the AIEE (American Institute for EEs) and the IRE (Institute for radio engineers) combined.
Are we reaching the upper boundary of electronics? Henry thinks we are for FR4 (based on operating frequency) but is hopeful for optical interconnects.

Thanks to Henry for being on The Amp Hour and sharing his vast knowledge and stories about EMC. We highly recommend you check out the Henry Ott Consultants page on the web to learn more about Henry and the field of EMC.

Agilent's New Name, Molex's New Owner and PCB artwork - Nonsensical Naming Neolatry Sep 25, 2013

Show notes

Chris is up to 75 videos for Contextual Electronics
Dave doesn't like to eat or hang out with co-workers when on travel, they slow him down!
Agilent is changing names...again! The last name change (from HP) came in 1999.
Rebranding is messy. Chris experienced this at CWRU when they implemented paperclips as a new (expensive) logo.
Rebranding also doesn't matter...just build good stuff and people will associate it with your product.
We came up with some names on the subreddit that Agilent should consider. Chris's favorite was Rigol 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Dave suggests they buy out the company B&D (Bill and Dave)
Altium got their name from a technology in their trademark portfolio.
Avago was another spin out from HP.
Chris couldn't recall if former guest Bob Davidson's division had spun out or just petered out.
Now looking for talented Amp Hour listeners!
- Former guest Ryan Brown (formerly at NI, now at Oculus) is looking for hw engineers to build VR equipment.
- Rober wrote in about the drone company/startup called Airware and how they need EEs.
Dave was interviewed by University of NSW students. They all take Entrepreneurship classes now...which don't seem particularly realistic.
Chris referenced an interview about how professors always encourage students to be professors...even though there aren't any tenure track positions.
DesignNews just released their 2013 Salary Survey (registration required).
Interestingly, PhDs don't make much more than BSE/MSE engineers.
Dave was also interviewed for the "Makers at Work" eBook, now avaialble at Amazon.
Molex has been bought by the Koch brother's corporation. Will this matter? Who knows? Molex is known for a lot of types of connectors, but Dave yelled at Chris for not knowing the DIN 41612 standard connector (which Chris knew, just not by name)
Saar over at BoldPort is making absolutely gorgeous PCB art using his new Python/SVG program. We had previously seen this for the "My Favorite Programming Language Is Solder" tribute to Bob Pease. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oobckHKnlNo
Chip of the Week: TI came out with a new part that sensor-izes a metal detection circuit, the LDC1000.
Alan Yates made a great video that showed similar behavior using off the shelf components: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifg1JUgByFc
One great trend is that dev boards (like the LDC1000 board) continue to be low cost. This is a much much better use of marketing dollars than paying Mayim Bialik (who is awesome, no doubt) to talk abou zombies. What a waste.
The Peachy is a new low cost (<$100!) 3D printer using SLA technologies.
More impressive are some of the "out of the box" inventions that really help keep costs low: using the sound cards, using salt water as the Z axis, creating a mirror drive from scratch.
Quick links:
- Chris signed up for the Coursera course about Power Electronics.
- The FDA is loosening up rules about medical apps.
- Australia's science minister was fired due to their new government (which Dave doesn't like)
- Alan Wolke released a great video about DIY tuning/matching of HF antennas.
- Mike Sczyzc wrote in about how Bill Meara wrote a post about ham radio being a great hacking hobby.

Next week on the show, we'll have legendary EMC consultant Henry Ott! We're very excited to have him on the show! Get your questions in for him on the subreddit! We'll also be launching a crowdfunding campaign for a white version of The Amp Hour t-shirt. Keep an eye on the site for that!

Thanks to Wikipedia for the picture of the Molex ATX connector

Interview with the Upverter Founders - Ramiform Reciprocity Raconteurs Sep 18, 2013

Show notes

Welcome, Upverter!

Upverter was started by Zak, Steve and Mike, formerly roommates at the University of Waterloo. They are making a "multplayer" online CAD tool built on HTML5 and JavaScript.
They really want to be the Git for hardware.
They started by looking at gEDA and trying to pull it into the browser.
An alternate business plan was to create radar for pirate ships (?)
Their initial funding gave them 4 months of runway. Then they joined yCombinator in December of 2010. Help was given by Yuri Milner's Start Fund.
They announced their official seed round...on The Amp Hour!
Dave asked the difference between Angels vs Venture Capitalists as investors.
They released the first rev in the Fall of 2011 to some good reception...but no users. It was deemed a good response for half baked product.
Backend part processing is done with Octopart.
The biggest designs and most interesting designs are private on Upverter...and some are done by large corporate clients (a recent change).
Collaboration is Upverter's strength, Chris enjoys the d esign review tool. Dave is maybe willing to try it (maybe).
In the BOM section, you can hook into BOM/PCB ordering.
Offering a PCB layout service (with engineers in India) was an experiment to see who the customers were.
Competition abounds! There are 25 competitors that Zak tracks and that has increased from 2 competitors in the last 18 months!
Chris points out his new acronym: YASTOTW...Yet Another Schematic Tool On The Web...in this case he was talking about iSchematics.
Upverter compares their eventual acceptance to how Google Docs is now commonplace.
If you're developing OSHW on Upverter, you can use any license you want.
Eventually, they will look at hardware libraries/Reuseable hardware blocks, mostly for large vertical companies, such as ones that have a bunch of reference designs with their own internal parts.
Upverter thinks having a money based marketplace for these hardware libraries kills collaboration because it incentivizes not sharing.
This is also the reason that they don't have a marketplace for kits...money disincentivizes open source.
If people are interested, they can develop on Upverter and sell kits on Tindie. Collaborations with them might be possible in the future.
Mike talks about Sparkfun's stories about open source, like the ones told by the engineering team when they were on the show.
Version control (GitHub) vs source control (Upverter)
Upverter stores each move/change, down to the point where you can go playback the entire design creation.
The Stats:
- 10s of forks per week
- 18000 designs or so
- 12000 users so far
Don't need to log in in order to play around with the interface. They want people to be able to get a feel for it without giving info.
Where is their competition?
- Collaboration: GitHub, NFS, SVN
- EDA/Simulation: Altium, CircuitLab, Web based tools
- Data repositories: Octopart, Digikey
Upverter is expanding! They just hired a 12th employee, an EE whose title is a "Customer Success" engineer.
Want to be lucky #13? There are currently 1 sw and 1 hw job open. Email jobs@upverter.com with your info.

Thanks to Zak and Steve and Mike for being on the show. It was really awesome hearing about the tools that they're working on developing and the focus on sharing. It's going to be a great tool for Open Hardware and sharing in the future (or today!). Be sure to try out their service and let us know what you think in the comments!

Thanks to good ol’ Wikipedia for the image of the Upverter Founders (Don’t forget to donate!)

Discussing The Open Hardware Summit With MightyOhm - Ostrobogulous Openness Occasion Sep 11, 2013

Show notes

Jeff is back to talk about the Open Hardware Summit with Chris! YESSAH.

A few former guests were at the summit, including Ryan O'Hara of Ohararp. He was getting along grand with Brent of OSHstencils.com. Frenemies! :-D
The event was held at the Kresge Auditorium at MIT.
Didn't make it to the OHSummit? You should be able to see the talks soon! (not available yet, will try to update when the link is live)
The night before the summit, we had a tour of Bolt (the hardware accelerator) and had a meetup at the Meadhall.
After the event on Friday night, Chris got to visit Artisan's Asylum, where he finally saw Stompy, the Giant, Rideable Hexapod Robot!
On Saturday Jeff visited the MIT museum. It was a great reminder of prototyping methods throughout the years.
They also have modern inventions in there, such as the MakeyMakey.
The 2013 OSHW Goodie Bag was great this year. Dave and Chris both had a design in there, the uRuler and The Amp Hour Breakout Board (shown above), respectively.
Chris had a bit of a snafu with the soldermask relief, but the OSHpark fab must have fixed it because it wasn't on every board! This can be good...or very very bad (good in this case)
Low cost tools continue to get better. The Parallela project was laid out with EAGLE and has multiple BGAs on board.
Really there are some features that are only available on the high end tools, but some creep in to the low end ones as well.
Jeff loves the PCBs that are reference material as well, such as the uRuler, the Octopart footprint example/resistor color coder and the Sparkfun Silkscreen example board.
If you're interested in seeing/downloading/making the files for The Amp Hour Breakout Board, they're available on GitHub now. Chris is getting into GitHub for KiCAD files (finally).
Robert Spitzenfeld wrote a script for GitHub that allows you to do visual diffs, by generating gerbers for each layer and overlaying different versions.
Jeff is very excited about what we talked about last week with Michael Ossmann, the Hack RF project. He's getting one and will learn more about SDR.
Chris has recognized that when he has the feeling of threatened, it likely means its something he should be learning. An example would be firmware (or GitHub!) for an analog person because of the increasing levels of integration in silicon.
Knobs are going away in RF products because SDR and the variety of digital interfacing now available on rigs.
Jeff will be at TAPR in Seattle in two weekends.
There is a meetup in Cleveland this Thursday, 9/12/2013. It's called Charged Conversation and will be hosted with Martin Lorton.
Having a meetup in your city? Let us know and we'll promote it!
Next week on the show, we'll have Upverter on to talk about online CAD tools and the sharing capabilities of their platform. You can see Chris participating in an online build with them for their activity tracker. Ask your questions for them here!
Chris also uploaded the rest of his pictures from his trip to his Flickr stream.

It was great to have Jeff back on the show! We hope he'll be able to stop by again soon to talk with Chris and Dave together!