The Amp Hour

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**The Amp Hour**

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

Latest Episodes:

Google Glass, Lean Startup and VotC - Initializing Instructed Interviews Jun 26, 2013

Show notes

Chris got his notice that he can pick up his Google Glass! Now to find the money for it...
If all works out, we'll have a meetup in NYC the weekend of July 6th.
We'll start giving away T-shirts for stories on the /r/TheAmpHour subreddit. Each story we talk about will be put into a drawing and drawn for a shirt.
You have to be careful with product definition. Woodshedding is easy when you ask large groups of people what they think.
Similarly, "Voice of the Customer" (VOC) can be stupid because even your target customers mostly say they want what they already have with incremental improvements.
So what can you do? Design and iterate...then show it off and do it again! (Chris realized after the fact that this is basically the ideas of The Lean Startup.
Dave calls this WYSIWYG engineering.
Google admitted their interview questions don't really do anything. Instead, the author of this TechCrunch article suggests you have a portfolio and weed people out with simple questions.
Should you put everything on your resume? Even if you're at a short run job? Dave says no, but Chris says you should explain and talk about what you could have done differently or if you were in charge.
MakerBot was bought by Stratasys for $403 million.
Is it possible to start an industrial hardware company these days? There is a lot of interest in hardware startups, but even Zach from HAXLR8R tweeted about not needing any more apps that turn on lights.
Tesla Motors is a possible example, except they had lots of government funding and Elon Musk's money. And old infrastructure to build on. (and of course, beautiful design and great engineering)
Energy Micro and Touchstone both started as fabless semiconductors because of the investment it takes to start a wafer fab. (links go to the shows where members of those companies were on The Amp Hour!)
Oh yeah, and Energy Micro was bought by Silicon Labs!
"Speaking of crack"... Dave doesn't know the difference between drugs, Chris suggests he would if he watched Breaking Bad.
Coffee is basically just legalized crack right? There was a lifehacker article recently called Beer for big ideas, coffee to get them done.
The next PCB type might be...cells? The next big market for electronics will be the body. IEEE Spectrum has an article about a pacemaker for your digestive system.
Shonky town of the week? There is a town in West Virginia where people can "escape electro magnetic exposure"
Dave says the inverter on the solar panel in that town will kick off some radiation. Chris suggests they lose efficiency and move to a sinusoidal waveform driving the transformer/switcher.
Heathkit is back...again? Maybe? We doubt it, but who knows?
We have a new idea! If you are interested in helping interview experienced people in the electronics industry and gather their stories, please let us know! This will be similar to Story Corps which is stored in the Library of Congress and airs on NPR.
We said that to send us an email (and you always can at chris@theamphour.com and dave@theamphour.com) But a better way is to fill out the survey below:

Solar, FPGAs and Maxim Integrated - Solar Shopper Sickness Jun 19, 2013

Show notes

Dave is under the weather this week, but we did a show anyway. How’s THAT for dedication?

Do you go into work when you're sick? What kind of policies should workplaces have?
Dave was automatically booted off the JayCar customer list!
Littlefuse is running a promo to take someone behind the scenes at NASA. US only, unfortunately.
Dave just had a solar panel array installed on his house! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGENVguQQmo
Solar will have a "calming" effect on grid because it will offload some of the peak power needs. This will also affect the economics of power generation.
Will the true implementation of the Internet of Things simply be when the Cat5 plug on the back of your appliance is unexciting?
Like many new technologies and the authors that write about them, the IoT follows the hype curve.
Google Glass and wearable tech is likely on that curve. There was a great teardown of Glass recently. No huge surprises for the hardware, only how much they're charging.
The teardown was done by Star Simpson who also tricked Chris into believing in the Tacocopter.
FPGAs have a community built around shared designs, located at OpenCores.org.
Now there is a Python library called MyHDL which aims to make FPGA more accessible to software programmers, similar to how C-to-Hardware compilers have done in the past. There is a good presentation giving an overview of the library.
One FPGA enthusiast thinks they will be a more widespread technology in the coming years, but Chris and Dave ultimately question the logic behind it (ha.).
CircuitLab has started charging for all levels of access, including the hobbyist level (even though it's a low price).
Dave posits that EAGLE would have never made it without the freemium level, nor the low cost license for getting into production.
Chris likes the machined beer can stencils exhibited on Hack A Day. Nice confluence of machining and electronics. stencils/
The ad-hoc Chip Of the Week is my Maxim Integrated. It's a new modem for doing powerline communications. This likely won't be for an IP levele connection, but it's still an interesting technology.
LT has a highly specialized and awesome looking part, a 20 bit, 500 ksps SAR ADC. But, of course, you'll pay out the nose for it!
Chris likes two subreddits: the new one with promise is /r/appnotes; the more established one with some great stuff posted is /r/PrintedCircuitBoards

Thanks to the Boston Public Library for the somewhat creepy clown picture.

the-oshpark-difference-small — **An Interview with Laen - Purple PCB Philosophy** Jun 12, 2013
Show notes

Welcome, Laen of OSHpark.com!

*Now that...is artwork!*

OSHPark is out of Portland, OR. The original business grew out of DorkbotPDX and started in December of 2009.

The tech scene is still big in "The Silicon Forest", which grew out of Tektronix. Others include Intel, Maxim Integrated, Xerox and more.

The early orders went to Advanced Circuits and was only about 1 panel/month. All orders were packaged by Laen and depaneled after they came back.

Currently, OSHPark has 4 fabs but might expand more in the near future (maybe Europe?).

Even the faster Chinese board houses with a 3 day turn and 2 day shipping matched going domestic. And the quality was generally higher at the US houses.

The purple soldermask is characteristic of OSHpark and Laen needs to order for some of the fabs.

Though it's very expensive, it's possible to do multicolored soldermask. Dave's friend did a 7 color (double sided!) Apple logo.

Laen recently purchased the BatchPCB service from Sparkfun

The OSHpark.com website frontend was designed by James Harton of resistor.io.

Former guest Ian Daniher got his start in electronics from interacting with Laen and the Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories (Windell and Lenore). Being sent the TGIMBOEJ sealed his fate.

The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronic Junk (TGIMBOEJ) doesn't seem to be moving anymore. Perhaps we should start seeding next boxes?

Even the IPC is now metric...but not convention! Trace/Width limits for PCBs is still stated in mil/thous.

The OSHpark service/fabs can do 5mil line, 5 mil space, 10 mil drill, 4 mil annual ring on the 4 layer boards (referred to as 5/5). The 2 layer board is 6/6.

The pads are all plated as ENIG.

The math for how these boards are put together is really interesting. Laen created an animated GIF showing how the boards are refactored to optimize placement on a panel.

People use the service for all kinds of projects. Each panel has at least one tube project. Many more are being used for front panels.

The mix of CAD software varies over time, but KiCAD seems to be the top spot, followed closely by EAGLE, Altium and then a wide variety of others.

There are more these days from online tools, including Circuits.io, which is partnered with OSHpark.

A future feature will be OSHW sharing...if you have other boards on the same panel your board is on that are OSHW, you'll be able to see them and maybe even order them.

OSHPark Competition is from:

Seeed Studios

ITead

Sunstone

Advanced Circuits.

There is a list comparing many of the different services and how to optimize for cost/size. Quality is top priority at OSHpark though.

When Laen is trying out a new fab house, he sends them this crazy board (preview below, link to the huge image), dubbed the "bastard coupon" by Chris.

A standard PCB panel is 18" x 24".

Dave has done videos before about piecing together panels and getting them fabbed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXE_dh38HjU

OSHPark is hiring! Send Laen an email at Laen@oshpark.com if you're interested in helping.

Thanks to Laen for being on the show and providing all the awesome info and images! We highly recommend people go check out the service and upload a board today!
If you’re interested in the “sponsor” this week, check out ContextualElectronics.com

Contextual Electronics, ClubJameco and Solderpaste - Lifelong Learning Likelihood Jun 05, 2013

Show notes

Many thanks to our sponsor, Club Jameco, for their continued support. Go to ClubJameco.com/TheAmpHour to see the morse code kit mentioned on the show and to support the show.

We were recently reviewing our stats and our hourlong(ish) program has been downloaded almost 500,000 times. What does that mean in totals?
- 36.1 million amp-hour-minutes
- 600,000 amp-hour-hours
- 25070 amp-hour-days
- 68.7 amp-hour-years
- That's a lot of listening! Thanks to all of you! And if reading is of more interest than listening, we now have select transcripts available.
Chris has a new project that hopefully will be helpful to people looking to progress in their electronics learning journey. It's called Contextual Electronics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEbu3h5FBZI
Dave has been working on Fundamental Fridays videos that are the talk of the town! Lots of great information to digest!
Dave got a new Samson microphone that has some heft. He'll be using it while talking about whatever is under his microscope.
What is the cheapest you can deck out your lab with decent test equipment?
Dave got a great deal on a Keithley 2015, which he currently reviewed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiXMKgxx_Oc
Heathkit might be coming back...again? They have (had?) a survey on their site but no indication they'll be coming back. There was an EDN article about it and one of the commenters made a great point that it used to be cheaper to build your own equipment. Not the case these days!
Former guests of The Amp Hour, Zach "Hoeken" Smith and Ian of Dangerous Prototypes both have a desktop pick and place. We got an email from the manufacturer Neodentech (update: there is now NeoDen USA for easier interactions for people in the States) that they are now exporting them, though the website looks hard to navigate.
Sometimes it's easier just to get a foot-controlled solderpaste dispenser that is a syringe.
Chris uploaded some videos since he returned from Dayton. One from Hamvention walking around and talking to friends and vendors. Also one video where he walks around marveling at the planes inside the US Air Force Museum
Former guest Greg Charvat (also featured in the hamvention video above) took the R390A radio he got at the swap meet and turned it from just a receiver to a transceiver using a homebuilt transmitter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kAfVfgEm74
Boldport (previously mentioned for the "artistic PCB software") made a board in the spirit of Bob Pease, with the diagram drawn into the silkscreen.
Chris got a part wrong, it wasn't an amplifier, it was a voltage to frequency converter, the LM331 (designed by Pease)
Chris maintains this isn't needed as much these days because you can either pass signals over a digital isolator (0ut of an A/D converter) or you can put a micro on the other side of an isolation barrier (like a transformer). Obviously this isn't the only application, jeez Chris.
Altera has an app note about doing layout for 100 Gbps transmission of data(!). In reality, this is 4 parallel 28 Gbps transceivers, but still! Crazy!
There are TONS of signal integrity considerations when moving up to those data speeds. Listen to the show with expert Howard Johnson for more about this topic.
Dave has had to troubleshoot and tweak these parts before, trying to optimize the bit error rate.
Sometimes you can isolate problems by switching between a hot air pencil and cooler spray. In a pinch, you can turn over a can of compressed air and use whatever drips out.
6.4 EAGLE has integration with LTSpice, according to the release notes from January 2013. Has anyone tried this functionality?
Looking for a new podcast? Chris really likes Innovation Hub. They had a great show about robots recently.

If you like the show, please consider giving us a review on iTunes! This helps us show up in their index. Thanks!

Thank you to Steven Groves for the picture of the 75-in-1 kit!

TechnicalIllusionsTeam — **An interview with Jeri Ellsworth - Absorptive Augmented Actuality** May 29, 2013
Show notes

**Welcome back, Jeri Ellsworth!**

And welcome people who don’t normally listen to the show; if you came to hear Jeri, you won’t be disappointed! (until you hear Dave and Chris). Regardless, if you like what you hear and have interest in electronics (making them, not just using them), you can subscribe to our RSS feed or through our iTunes Podcast Feed.

**For those interested, there is also now a transcript available for episode 147**

Jeri has joined us on past shows, in fact, she was our first guest on episode 35! The second time she was on the show (episode 52), she told us all about her home chip making escapades.

Jeri and her partner Rick's new company is called Technical Illusions. This company started after they were both laid off from Valve, the game company where they had previously been working on this technology.

They recently revealed the castAR at Maker Faire in the San Mateo, CA.

The Technical Illusion team is only 5 people full time right now, but they had many friends and cohorts along to help out during the show:

Rick is able to quickly prototype new interactions and games by using Lua, the scripting language.

Currently, Jeri is using Altera FPGAs for development and TI serializers to get the data to and from the video processor, but will eventually move to a metalized gate array. More expensive on a per-piece price than a fully custom chip but cheaper mask sets (for the photolithography part of semiconductor processing)

The playing surface is a retroreflective surface, similar to what is on road signs and what the Apollo left on the surface of the moon.

The sweet spot for viewing the games is at 100 Hz. They currently run the glasses at 120 Hz.

The glasses and the absolute head tracking allow you to experience parallax, which you cannot do with 3D movies currently.

The glasses hook up to phones through USB on the go. This allows the phone to act as a host or a device.

There are other players in the Augmented Reality space, but no where near the price point they're going for. In the Virtual Reality space, the OculusRift is a high profile example (at a similarly low cost)

Technical Illusions will be seeking patents, in order to attract some investment. They will be starting a Kickstarter in the near future.

**Today's episode was sponsored by element14. Check out their community support, product info and ways to purchase a wide range of popular dev boards, including Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black.** *Photos of Jeri and the Technical Illusions team by Alvaro Prieto, friend of the show and great photographer!*

TheAmpHour_Hamvention_Meetup — **Hamvention, Arduino and Intel - Burdensome Background Battology** May 22, 2013
Show notes

A new t-shirt idea? Dave didn't understand the reference to "All your base are belong to us"

Dave's op amp problem turned out to be from the rails (or so he says!). The "burden of experience" had him testing (and had Chris guessing) at all the wacky things it COULD be before checking what it actually was.

Learning how to read schematics comes with time. Bob Pease schematics were notorious for being hard to read.

Would there be interest in doing obfuscated circuit contests?

Chris just got back from Hamvention, down in Dayton OH. It was great!There was a meetup on Saturday evening, where some t-shirt wearing listeners came to hang out. They were awesome!
*Thanks to Bill Boyer (far right) for the picture!*

Former guests of the show Greg Charvat and Kent Lundberg were both at Hamvention! (Greg is the tall one in blue in the back in the picture above)

eBay significantly reduced the flea market from its former glory, but the selection was still pretty wide. And there were over 24K people in attendance!

Dave used to buy test equipment overseas and resell locally.

Chris feels terrible for forgetting his name, but the awesome person in red directly behind Chris in the picture gifted him a challenge coin, a really cool tradition in military circles.

Mystery solved! It was Michael Hill! He also was the one who left his Ray Bans. Two for one!

Dave says coins are a traditionally hidden and traded item between geocaching teams.

Perhaps Dave should include a collectible coins as a donation level in his yet-to-be-announced Pozzible campaign?

Thanks to our sponsor for this show, Club Jameco! Go to http://ClubJameco.com/TheAmpHour to see the J-bot kit discussed this week and to learn more about submitting your own kit idea for fun and profit!

Arduino had some announcements at Maker Faire this week: They will be releasing a branded robot kit and a wifi based Arduino called the Yún. It will have a co-processor running a version of Linux and a wifi stack.

Jeri Ellsworth and business partner Rick Johnson announce their new project spun out from Valve at Maker Faire.

MAKE (and the MakerShed) will be expanding its offering and its partnership with Radio Shack.

Former guest, Jack Ganssle, has a great newsletter called The Embedded Muse. Someone wrote in about Partkeepr, a linux based inventory tracking system.

How do you manage your parts? Will anyone build a vending machine for parts for Chris? Kickstarter, anyone?

Bunnie did a great teardown of the Formlabs Form1. Can't wait to hear more about the low cost SLA printer.

The Intel Science Fair winners have been announced. The media over-extrapolated the chemistry project of the first runner-up, saying she created a device allowing a cell phone to charge in 20 seconds. She clarifies in an interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LahFsj6bLI&feature=youtu.be&t=1m24s

The cost of school is still very prohibitive and really handcuffs many people with debt afterwards.

A new program has been announced between Georgia Tech (a top 5 engineering school), Udacity and AT&T. They will be offering a Master's Degree in CS for less than $7,000!

Rapid Fire News!

Tinkercad is back! They were acquired by AutoDesk and will be opening up the platform again!

Former guest Andrew Seddon and the Circuit Hub team announced they now have support for KiCAD! Whee!

theonetruestickman (on reddit) submitted his workbench for WBotW. Looks like a really neat space!

~~**Lost and found: At the end of the meetup at Hamvention, Chris found a pair of Ray Bans. If you lost a pair, please send an email to chris@theamphour.com.**~~

PCB Mills, SDR and Oscilloscopes - Flaunting Furbelow Fanciness May 15, 2013

Show notes

Thanks to our sponsors at Club Jameco! Head over to The Amp Hour section of their site to see the kit we discussed this week and to find out more about submitting a kit for a coupon or for revenue if it's chosen by the community.

The USB DVB-T (such as this one sold on Amazon) is a great way to learn more about the radio spectrum, even without a ham license (because you're only receiving signals, not sending them). The software defined radio inside works with programs like SDRsharp (Windows) or GQRX (Mac, Linux). Thanks to Matt Richardson's video for alerting us to this!
If you haven't seen Commander Chris Hadfield doing "Space Oddity" by David Bowie (from the ISS!), you're missing out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDChKgoETo0
"At least we're not Detroit!" is no longer valid. They have a new Robocop statue. And a rapidly recovering auto sector!
Not from Detroit, but from Michigan (Grand Rapids), thegeekgroup.org have a great YouTube channel with lots of well produced videos on electronics and machining.
A promotional video from DASIX was recently posted online. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i9tl7gz3hY
Chris has been shopping for a scope and finally realized the value of the upgradable firmware (it looks "cheaper" initially).
Dave and the EEVblog forum were discussing why the "Alt Trig" was removed from modern oscilloscopes.
Former guest Alan Wolke surmised that the free frame capability allows you to "trigger" by freezing the screen with a long capture window. He also explained it in one of his videos from a year and a half ago http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4IxbF0oFRE
PCBweb is one of the first CAD tools with a built in Digikey library. The online tool also looks nice (though there is no desktop analog yet).
Thingsquare Code allows for you to compile and distribute your code online (and track revisions). The reason this makes sense is because you're already buying into their platform.
SapphireOS is an Internet of Things campaign that just launched on Kickstarter. This was also mentioned by Ryan Brown when he was on the show.
And speaking of Kickstarter, the Othermill is a PCB milling machine with a 4"x5"x2" pocket. OK for many boards you'd want to do at home, but chemical etching could do the same for many things (though you could also engrave with the Othermill). Chris dove more into machining but has a tool capable of still making PCBs (1 mil accuracy).
What kind of PCB artwork have you seen? Anything as crazy as these?
Jeremy Hong sent in a picture of his basement lair, which looks great!
Harrymj from the /r/TheAmpHour subreddit submitted the lab he works in at Stanford for the solar car team. Nice gear and a bonus Delorean!

Be sure to take pictures with other if you're attending Maker Faire or Hamvention!

Thanks to Richard Cox for the pictures of where all our future programs will live…in the cloud!

An Interview with Bob Davidson - Hoodied HP Hijinks May 08, 2013

Show notes

For those interested, there is now a transcript available of Episode 144

Welcome, Bob Davidson of Ambient Sensors!

One of their current project is a concussion detector built in to the chin strap of football helmets.
This involves testing with a "head banger" that can impart forces up to 150G's!
They use a MEMS accelerometer and a low cost microprocessor, in order to try and make it affordable for high schools. The processor can assess the likelihood of the impact meeting the head injury criterion.
Bob got his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and did his undergrad at Johns Hopkins University (in xray astronomy!). A full listing of Bob's past work can be found on the About page of the Ambient Sensors site.
He is also now an adjunct professor at Boise State University, teaching engineering stats, finite element analysis and electromagnetics.
For a good portion of his career so far, Bob worked in research at HP in the hard disk division.
In the early days the plattens were spun using washing machine motors! They weren't cheap either, 400 MB for $25K!
Bob has been a ham radio operator since '67. His callsign (and twitter handle) is WA7IUT
Early boards were done using tape on paper, so he is amazed at the ability to make boards these days (using tools like EAGLE). Some of the ones he has been making have Bluetooth Low Energy.
Modules such as the Bluegiga BLE112 prevent needing to get a product recertified for FCC compliance. Jeff Rowberg has been really helpful in getting Bob started.
These modules can act as a serial peripheral or can act as a standalone using BG Script.
Bob's startup in the early 2000's was a consumer product for high end entertainment. They pivoted to working with security cameras.
Back at HP, one of Bob's patent's covers the method of how they measured the disk during rotation. They used heterodyne interferometry phase measurement. Crazy. Bob also had a publication about this, “Applications of Heterodyne Interferometry to Disc Drive Technology”
During Clayton Christiansen's PhD work which later became, "The Innovator's Dilemma", Clayton shadowed Bob. The march of progress in disk drives was one of the main topics in that book.
Bob was an early user of ARPAnet, the precursor to the modern internet. He was upset when they started commercializing it.
For low cost test equipment, Dave's comparison video of the new and old Rigol scope has Bob tempted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TSr9nFN1GU
Bob is a fan of OSHW and has attended the Open Hardware Summit in the past. This coming year it will be in Boston.
Some of his projects to give back to the community involve energy harvesting. This was implemented in a project monitoring a grape vineyard.
Back in Vietnam days, Bob was a member of the Military Auxiliary Radio Program, helping patch soldiers back to loved ones at home.

Thanks again to Bob for being on the show! We're excited to see what he works on next!

PCBs, Tektronix & Ham Radio - Habitual Handicraft Hangups May 01, 2013

Show notes

Lots of old, awesome ads for computers! Definitely a different age of advertising and definitions of good taste.
There is rumor that there will be a Mad Men like show written to take place during the early days of NASA!
Magazines used to attach project PCBs to the covers. Dave says this technique was started by Colin Mitchell of Talking Electronics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXWRLNq8OCU
This also used to happen with CDs/Cassettes/disks for video game and software magazines (later on).
We will now be publishing our RSS feed to Twitter and Facebook of links for /r/TheAmpHour
We are using a site called IFTTT (If this, then that), which also has implication for connected devices and the internet of things. Thanks to Nick Pinkston of the /r/hwstartups subreddit for the advice on how to set it up!
Do we have a moral imperative to sourcing from places that treat their workers well? The link is now broken to the original article asking this question, but it refers to the recent collapse of a factory in Bangladesh. Do we as designers have the ability and the drive to go to ethical workplaces? Or does that hurt countries even more?
Moreover, is the SMD nature of electronics manufacturing becoming such that low cost countries don't matter as much anymore?
One thing you need no matter where you manufacture is an engineer optimizing for the pick and place maching. Changing footprints to optimize speed and accuracy of part placement is common...Dave used to do it!
Speaking of SMD, why having through-hole parts (pth) gone away yet? Cost is an obvious one, as pointed out by Windell from EMSL on reddit. Kitmaking is another one.
Another t-shirt in the works? "I'm not cheap, I'm optimizing my engineering solution"
Cost can be relative. This new shield for helping to learn on the Arduino is retailing (with the Arduino) for $60, whereas a Raspberry Pi goes for $35. Volume explains a lot of the disparity, but not all.
newcomers-byob/
Former guest of the show, Zach "Hoeken" Smith has been working like crazy on his BotQueue project. As a regular creator, he suggests that people go for publishing online to protect ideas vs trying to patent them.
A throwback version of Shonky Product of the Week! The old standby of fearing the radiation in your phone...and paying through the nose to "protect yourself".
Tuomas writes in about his poorly lit, messy bench. The perfect prototype of what we expect from a bench! He also has great projects posted to his blog, be sure to check those out.
And since Chris can't determine which scope is which, he asked former guest of the show Alan Wolke to do a walking tour of his Tek-laden bench on his wonderfully informative and entertaining YouTube channel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94mOGNe5kfo
Chris is gearing up for Hamvention in Dayton. He bought a Handi-Talkie (HT) radio from Amazon, the Baofeng UV-5R+.
How can we branch out from the necessity of narrow of experiences of careers? Recruiters favor experience in very similar fields because that's what employers ask for!
Have you made any radical shifts within the technical side of electronics? What kind of shift have you made? Let us know in the comments!
Dave found out about a new ST Micro part called a "lab on a chip". These kinds of disease detection circuits aren't super new, but biological processes are becoming more common on silicon.
Biology also might help make the next generation of silicon chips: DNA based lithography allows researchers to etch graphene!
At the end of their advertising run, we'd like to thank Triad Semiconductor and the ViaDesigner team for sponsoring us! If you haven't yet, be sure to check out the FREE software you can get access to for a year (actually 13 months) at ViaDesigner.com/TheAmpHour

Yi-Electrical — **Kickstarter, IndieGoGo & Ignite - Jasperated Jimswinger Jobbery** Apr 24, 2013
Show notes
[display_podcast]**Thanks to our continuing sponsor, Triad Semiconductor! They make a lot of what we're doing possible! Check out ViaDesigner.com/TheAmpHour to get a free year subscription!**

We have a t-shirt, which you can now buy! Get in on the low cost initial purchase, buy before April 29th!

We hired a couple freelancers off of People Per Hour to do our artwork (and previously our transcriptions). Quality often correlates with price! We decided not to go with 99 Designs, though that's another good option.

T-shirts should arive in time for both Hamvention and Maker Faire. Please wear them! Find other listeners!

The Dayton Hamvention (sponsored by DARA) will be a huge set of events and a swap meet that will make the Wyong field day that Dave attended look like a garage sale!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWrFqvRvC4k

Chris will try to check out the museum at ~~Edwards~~ Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Chris will be on the lookout for mullets in Dayton. They and rat tails characterize wonky hairstyles from the 80s.

Dave just did his Ignite talk in Sydney about videoblogging

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwAVYbV5rLk

It was started by Bre Pettis (of MakerBot) and Brady Forrest in Seattle in 2006.

Seth Godin has a good post on how to do concise, impactful presentations.

Do crowdfunded tech projects sometimes bamboozle people? The EEVblog forum is skeptical of the Mu Optics hosted on IndieGoGo.

Chris reminds everyone that EEstor still hasn't delivered (and likely never will).

Bamboozling is one of the major drawbacks of the yet-to-be-implemented JOBS act in the US, which allows small investment by individual investors.

The ZionEyez project is another failure, with definite overtones of shadiness.

Projects that are simply late (yet still promise to deliver) have some pundits claiming that Silicon Valley's hardware renaissance is stalling.

Bunnie has been finding some interesting stuff in the China marketplace, this time a $12 cell phone.

Chris worries that super low cost hardware will affect all of us from an employment perspective, but Dave assures him that very little employment comes from the consumer space.

What about you? Do you work in consumer electronics? If not, which field do you work in? Check out our survey at the bottom of this post.

The new Beaglebone Black looks great! It's now $45 to get closer to the price of the Raspberry Pi and has many many more I/O. Chris is lukewarm on the Cloud9 IDE and Bonescript.

Light pens were how people used to interact with screens and persisted where Chris used to work in the fab.

Bill and Mara got married in the geekiest way: They soldered as part of their vows! Awesome!

WBotW!

Chris

Yi

Jan

Survey! What kind of industry do you work in?

Please consider supporting the show by buying one of our t-shirts! More colors/designs will be available soon.

Yi Mechanical — **Kickstarter, IndieGoGo & Ignite - Jasperated Jimswinger Jobbery** Apr 24, 2013
Show notes
[display_podcast]**Thanks to our continuing sponsor, Triad Semiconductor! They make a lot of what we're doing possible! Check out ViaDesigner.com/TheAmpHour to get a free year subscription!**

We have a t-shirt, which you can now buy! Get in on the low cost initial purchase, buy before April 29th!

We hired a couple freelancers off of People Per Hour to do our artwork (and previously our transcriptions). Quality often correlates with price! We decided not to go with 99 Designs, though that's another good option.

T-shirts should arive in time for both Hamvention and Maker Faire. Please wear them! Find other listeners!

The Dayton Hamvention (sponsored by DARA) will be a huge set of events and a swap meet that will make the Wyong field day that Dave attended look like a garage sale!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWrFqvRvC4k

Chris will try to check out the museum at ~~Edwards~~ Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Chris will be on the lookout for mullets in Dayton. They and rat tails characterize wonky hairstyles from the 80s.

Dave just did his Ignite talk in Sydney about videoblogging

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwAVYbV5rLk

It was started by Bre Pettis (of MakerBot) and Brady Forrest in Seattle in 2006.

Seth Godin has a good post on how to do concise, impactful presentations.

Do crowdfunded tech projects sometimes bamboozle people? The EEVblog forum is skeptical of the Mu Optics hosted on IndieGoGo.

Chris reminds everyone that EEstor still hasn't delivered (and likely never will).

Bamboozling is one of the major drawbacks of the yet-to-be-implemented JOBS act in the US, which allows small investment by individual investors.

The ZionEyez project is another failure, with definite overtones of shadiness.

Projects that are simply late (yet still promise to deliver) have some pundits claiming that Silicon Valley's hardware renaissance is stalling.

Bunnie has been finding some interesting stuff in the China marketplace, this time a $12 cell phone.

Chris worries that super low cost hardware will affect all of us from an employment perspective, but Dave assures him that very little employment comes from the consumer space.

What about you? Do you work in consumer electronics? If not, which field do you work in? Check out our survey at the bottom of this post.

The new Beaglebone Black looks great! It's now $45 to get closer to the price of the Raspberry Pi and has many many more I/O. Chris is lukewarm on the Cloud9 IDE and Bonescript.

Light pens were how people used to interact with screens and persisted where Chris used to work in the fab.

Bill and Mara got married in the geekiest way: They soldered as part of their vows! Awesome!

WBotW!

Chris

Yi

Jan

Survey! What kind of industry do you work in?

Please consider supporting the show by buying one of our t-shirts! More colors/designs will be available soon.

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