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FPGAs, Robots & Thermocouples - Wampum's Wavering Worth Apr 17, 2013

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Thanks to our sponsor, Via Designer and the folks at Triad Semiconductor! Check out ViaDesigner.com/TheAmpHour for a free trial of the software for a year and start designing your custom, low cost ASIC for mixed signal designs!

Dave has been cleaning up his lab. Do you have a messy or clean lab? Send us pictures!
It seems like with the amount of stuff Dave grabs from the trash room, he could appear on the US show Hoarders one day.
It was tax day when Chris and Dave recorded. How do you deal with business income?
Gold has been dropping recently on the markets. Is that a good thing for buying connectors?
What about buying parts with lots of copper? Does that lower the Seebeck Effect, the primary mechanism in thermocouples? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYblSfpKRUk
Many chips are moving towards a copper metalization layer, not just high end processors anymore.
Dave and Chris both agree this is interesting tech, but is not moving towards chip printing.
When there are more robots, will there be less human resource issues? Will robot suicide be as big a problem at Foxconn as human worker suicide?
UBM has a slight shakeup lately. Test and Measurement World is shutting down.
EE Times no longer has a print edition and hasn't since the beginning of the year apparently. Design East (in Boston) has also been cancelled.
Though they are primarily going to an online model, Dave reminds bloggers to not sell out.
The MAKE Hardware Innovation Workshop has a great speaker list again this year. They're also taking applications for people to show off previously unshown prototypes to investors and others at the workshop. You have until April 19th to submit your idea.
If you're really looking to dig into a design, you can design an analog circuit in your garage for less than $3K (but you'll have to wait 4 months!)
How do you teach the importance of iteration?
Listeners asked about how to get started with FPGAs. Aside from pinging many of the resources already out there (Papilio, Xess, Digilent), Dave suggests to start with existing projects. Chris suggests to try and get ahold of softcore processor kits if you can afford them.
If none of those work for you, head over to the EEVblog forum and ask your specific questions
Kenny asks about choosing an op amp for a ultrasonic application.
App notes are hard! Dave's post about buying a new computer took 2.5 hours and that was without testing or graphs or anything!
This video about the origin of negative feedback, as told by its inventor, Harold Black is one of many awesome ones available on the ATT Tech Channel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFrxyJAtJ7U

The t-shirts are coming! Hopefully by this week or next! Thanks again to everyone for your patience!

Thanks to epSos.de for the picture of the gold coins.

Project Management, Lasers & Robots - Staunch Specialty Sanctanimity Apr 10, 2013

Show notes

[display_podcast] Many thanks to our sponsor, Triad Semiconductor! They are giving listeners of The Amp Hour a free 1-year trial of their ViaDesigner software (a $500 value)! Just enter the code 'amp100' at registration. Awesome!

Paul Otellini from Intel made $19 million last year.
The satisfaction of seeing something made is a good goal to shoot for in a job, maybe more so than money?
Dave will be doing an Ignite talk later this month. The last time Dave gave a talk (below) he just winged it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_ZhkT2E7Fw

Chris had a hard time writing his Maker Faire talk (and a harder time presenting it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1SjzItFMWQ

We've been going for 2.5 years now! Crazy!
Setting deadlines for yourself can be difficult http://pandodaily.com/2013/04/05/ten-websites-that-teach-coding-and-a-bunch-of-other-things/
5 tips from a former Apple hardware employee (mostly from the mfg side).
Dave has done a video showing the 2 layer board manufacturing process.

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

"Crisis couriers" is how Fedex started. "Why would anyone need a package in 24 hours?"
If you're into military tech, this new laser from the US Navy is terrifying and awesome. Lots of cool systems surely integrated to allow it to happen (Tracking, cooling, power, etc)
Mike Harrison has been playing with lower power lasers.
The PETMAN robot from Boston Dynamics is super creepy.
Markings have officially started disappearing from Yageo resistors. While this decision was likely driven by cost in high volume production, it hurts for prototyping.
Chris is disappointed current sources aren't real and how that can mess up SPICE sims.
Perhaps we should have a T shirt slogan: "Current sources aren't real"?
Should we bring back WotW? This week Jose writes in showing off his bench (which was confusing until we got to the messy pictures!).
Should we bring back CotW? This week we talk about the LT6110, a chip that helps compensate when pushing power over thin wires.
Dave and the EEVblog forum have been investigating wonky behavior in the LT3080 (which Dave used on his PSU). Maybe Bob Dobkin will write us another email about it? (a highlight of our radio show so far!)
What are the effects of top down design decisions, like this one in Russian metro card readers?

We hardly ever (never?) get to all the links we'd like to. You can find the other links on our subreddit or comment on or submit your own! If you like the show, also please remember to give us reviews on iTunes and to leave comments below, on the subreddit or on the EEVblog forum. Thanks!

Many thanks to krossbow for the picture showing us just how green the grass can be.

Google Glass & Adafruit - Obtaining Ostentatious Oculiforms Apr 03, 2013

Show notes

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Chris was notified (2x) that he has the opportunity to purchase Google Glass...for $1500. Dave and Chris Mims are both confused about this.
There is news that Foxconn is planning on building them in the United States.
Is it worthwhile to support your local economy for that reason alone? Or should the focus be on the business?
Could Chris pay with a bag of pennies or dimes? The former would weight 900+ lbs! The latter, 75.
Avoirdupois is a unit of measurement that neither Dave nor Chris had ever heard of.
Chris just got back from a long weekend in NYC, where he got a tour of ITP, NYC Resistor and Adafruit. Thanks to everyone who showed him around!
TinkerCAD is shutting down and moving on. Are other cloud apps at risk as well?
Take a moment of silence the next time you read the Errata section of a datasheet. It's likely that many hours were lost to discover it.
Dave and Chris (and Jeff!) made the EE Times twitter list. ~~Durn shame that they've erected a registration wall.~~ UPDATE: The registration wall is no longer triggering for us.
The tech content is still the best stuff on EE Times/EDN. Chris liked this article about ADCs and the specifics of ENOB/SINAD/etc, in addition to the classic articles by Bonnie Baker in the "Baker's Dozen" series.
Video tutorials are also a great way to promote products. Teach us and we'll consider your product more often (the applications model). Chris enjoys the videos by Matt Duff of Analog Devices.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEV7l66D6Ys

Dave has seen tech videos gone wrong, specifically the over produced and expensive Altium Tech Tonight clips

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-68sAwNLRA

The survey results are in and the winners have been chosen (listen to the last ten minutes to hear the winners). Keep an eye out for the summary of the survey later this week. And congrats to our winners!

Thanks to Cesar Harada for the picture of the impromptu Google Glass...

An Interview with Ryan Brown - Effortless Equipment Extensibility Mar 27, 2013

Show notes

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Welcome, Ryan Brown of National Instruments!

Ryan is the second guest from NI and actually introduced us to Matt Ettus, who was on the show previously.
As a co-op, Ryan worked on the 6552 and the 6542.
These days, Ryan is a lead on the FlexRIO platform, which allows people to build products onto of the NI ecosystem.
Ryan's products are mostly based on Xilinx FPGAs, which are now moving to the Vivado build platform.
Dr. James Truchard sometimes stops by desks and asks engineers what they're working on. He also gives keynotes most years at NI Week

The connector selection is something that haunts you throughout the project.
Sparkfun is now selling kits that includes an Arduino plus LabView.
LabView is big/bulky because it has to simultaneously encompass people that want to dig deep into the hardware (listeners of this show) and people who just want to output a graph of whatever data their sensor is outputting.
Because it's such a large complex sysstem, design reviews are difficult but crucial to keep the system running.;
Ryan visited and climbed the Greenbank telescope as part of his work!
Aracebo is the large dish built into the ground that is featured in Goldeneye from the James Bond movies. Chris is more familiar from the N64 Goldeneye game.
Austin is a town with lots of hardware: Dell, Freescale, AMD, Samsung and more!
The SXSW Interactive festival was a couple weeks ago and had lots of focus on hardware startups.
Ryan runs the ATXHW meetup group, which had a few events during SXSW.
They take cues from the Ruby on Rails group in Austin, which is also very active.
During the meetups, they do sessions about different hw aspects, such as Rapid Prototyping.
One big name group out of Austin is Supermechanical, makers of the successful Kickstarter project, Twine. However, they started much smaller with projects that involved a wallet with an actuator to make it harder to open and a big QR code table.
Others who regularly participate are Jack Minardi (who won the February YCombinator/Upverter hackathon for his glove project) and the Sapphire OS mesh network.
No stranger to digging into projects, Ryan's halloween project for Roomba costumes (see top picture and video below).

Halloween 2012 - Roomba Costumes with Synchronized LED RIngs from Ryan Brown on Vimeo.

Ryan and a couple others are early members of the Austin TechShop, the first of which to be co-located with a big box hardware store (Lowe's).
National Instruments is also starting a pilot program with TechShop to provide hardware and LabView licenses at a reduced cost, as described in this video by Mark Hatch (of TS).
Waterloo Labs is another group made up of NI'ers, who work on fun projects to promote STEM. They are well known for the iPhone driven car, the EyeMario System and most recently for real life Mario Cart.

Ryan suggests a couple different BBQ for when visiting Austin (though he failed to mention the old standby of The Saltlick...which technically isn't in Austin): Franklin on 11th, Stiles Switch and Manns Smokehouse BBQ (believe Chris, you haven't lived until you've gotten the meat sweats from Texas BBQ).

Thanks again to Ryan for being on the show! It was great hearing about all his experiences and getting a taste for National Instruments. Don't forget! If you'd like to take The Amp Hour listener survey for 2013 and put your name in to win a t-shirt, do so before we do the drawing next week! (multiple winners)

Mars, System Design & NAND - Mercurial Mars Mission Mar 20, 2013

Show notes

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This post was meant to post the evening of 3/19 (EST) but for some reason it didn’t post until this morning.

Dave has lost a bunch of footage because of camera problems.
They're looking for volunteers to live (and die) on Mars. What kind of electronics would you bring?
Dave has been reading, "The Case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin
System design is important. Could they design with enough interchangeable parts to avoid the square air filter in the circular air filter hole problem like on Apollo 13?

When big projects are on the line, different groups hear different things and have different prorities, like on this tree swing.
A new part from Microchip called the BodyCom allows you to use your body as the communication medium.
The NAND computer looks complex! Is it worth it for you to build one too?
The lightning detector breakout module from Tautic.
Perhaps the needed new DfX item will be DfS? Design for Sharing!
Chris has been troubleshooting SPI recently and fighting with the different modes.
A new site called CircuitLava hopes to be a marketplace for designs? Sign up to be an early contributor.
If you're making boards at home, you can check out the new $2K PickNPlace called Board Forge, powered by a Raspberry Pi.
Ian from Dangerous Prototypes has a different PnP he picked up in China.

Bunnie Huang released his book, "Hacking The Xbox" for free in honor of Aaron Schwarz.

Don't forget to fill out The Amp Hour 2013 Listener Survey for a chance to win a t-shirt! And to tell us what you think, we really appreciate it! Thanks to TJ Blackwell for the CC Mars Mashup picture...awesome!

Hardware, Surveys and Giveaways - Radular Rental Ranting Mar 13, 2013

Show notes

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The patent company Dave interviewed with was Silverbrook
Do you release your BOM to vendors, distributors and others, even with an NDA?
Sometimes it's a tradeoff with how much info you can release. The Raspberry Pi project needed to hold some info back in order to protect distributors that were getting them pricing that allowed them to succeed.
There are shades of gray in how you do your manufacturing and how much info you release for your OSHW project. Dave reminds us of the unwritten rules of OSHW:

There is a new non-profit dedicated to geting more people to learn how to code called Code.org. Kind of odd video, but great intentions!
Hardware will still be necessary though (and hopefully high paying!). This stuff always ebbs and flows like the boom in hiring IT professionals in the 90s.
SXSW has a bunch of startups that are focusing on hardware!
MakerBot is one of the prominent hw companies there this week, as well as past guest of The Amp Hour, Jeremy Blum.
Jeremy was not only making fun quips about the silliness of social media startups down there, but also has been working on the newly announced MakerBot 3D scanner.
A recent article from The Economist talks about how sacks of potatoes can be used to simulate human beings sitting in airplane seats for RF testing.
Another Economist article mentioned the sharing economy, citing established companies like AirBnB and RideShare and many new software entrants to the market.
Could this kind of thing exist for Test and Measurement equipment?
Dave says it already does for T&M rental companies, but he doesn't think it's a great business.
Speaking of sharing, Intel will soon be acting as a foundry for Altera, which could have other large scale implications for the company.
Is it stealing hardware if you bought the lowest end model and unlock other functionality that was built in (poorly)? Check out the EEVblog forum thread that brought up this topic.
The White House recently responded about the legality of unlocking cell phones, which could have implications for other things we buy.
Would Rigol have sold as many scopes if certain people hadn't talked about how to unlock the 100 MHz mode?

The Engibous contest from TI is starting again soon for college students. Win up to $10K...and maybe a job.
Chris has finally begun cutting metal on his milling machine!

This can be the prize for Dave's potential design contest!
Found on Hacker News: Another site that is dedicated to decapping chips and seeing what is inside of them.
Please fill out The 2013 Amp Hour Listener Survey! Enter for a chance to win a newly designed t-shirt from The Amp Hour!

Thanks to justephens for the rental sign

An Interview with Mike Harrison - X-ray Examining Xenogogue Mar 05, 2013

Show notes

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Welcome Mike Harrison of Mike’s Electric Stuff and White Wing Logic!

Mike's YouTube channel and videos are likely how many of our listeners know who Mike is.
Mike has been featured on our show in the past, both as the contributor of the show's name and sending in photos of his awesome bench!
He started in a repair department, where he learned to troubleshoot and prank people!
Later jobs included early IT work with early IBM PCs.
While at that job, he started designing with the BBC Micro (based on the 6502 CPU) and for the ACORN (now ARM) Archimedes family.
Many programs Mike writes to interface with lower level stuff is in Visual Basic 6 (now defunct). Chris says there is a downgrade path from .NET.
He got started with PICs when they were transitioning from Mask ROM parts to One Time Programmable (OTP) parts and a customer needed an alarm system that could output different types of alarms.
Mike is also a registered consultant with Microchip, which has netted him a job or two in the past.
He got started with LEDs at Dorkbot in London
The arts have gotten a boost in London from the Section 106 planning development, which mandates all money spent on building must have some portion go to development (including the Arts).
Mike's lab has a pick and place machine in the lab (cost around £8K) which he wrote software to optimize.
He uses PCAD and does the layout first (!)
Mike has worked on multiple UFO projects, including one in Gdansk, Poland and one in Seattle for Halo 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uynq2cs1xeU
The UK scene, especially the art and architecture scene, is vibrant right now.
Working with "Technology Will Save Us", Mike designed the Lumiphone (a soldering project with LEDs and Theramin that costs less than £3) and the Bright Eyes Glasses, which was a Kickstarter campaign.
Mike is obviously known for his great teardown videos! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osAKuPGhK3I
The baggage X-ray machine took a friend and a van to haul back to his shop...and he broke even on the project! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPyE29ABmoA
A more recent project has 2106 LEDs and 2106 PICs, one per LED. This new design could have issues if Microchip has supply chain problems, as Steve Sanghi's letter about lead times seems to suggest.
Mike thinks a good way to get into art is to make your own. He cited the quadcopter stage show.
See the silly emails Mike has gotten over the years at his "Muppet alert" page.
You can find Mike on Twitter at @Mikelectricstuf

Many thanks to Mike for taking the time to speak with us!

Intel, EPA & Brown Field - Google's Ground Gurgitation Feb 26, 2013

Show notes

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Chris is leaving The Engineering Commons after the next episode. If you're interested in trying out, email him at chris@theamphour.com
Google has found some old chemicals under one of their facilities in Silicon Valley; a legacy of past chip fabs. What kind of chemicals have you encountered at work? Dave used to work around lots of Isopar-M and Chris used to work in a fab. If the sites are bad enough, they are deemed Superfund Sites (in the US)
Cleveland's burning Cuyahoga River was a key reason that the US instated the EPA (the second time it caught on fire). For those interested, this is the delicious beer that Chris mentioned, Burning River IPA (even better when poured at the local brewery, come visit!).
Martin Lorton will be moving back to Cleveland this summer from South Africa! Whee! Another nerd in Cleveland! Check out his prolific YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQOVaju24DI
There is a documentary (similar to the Silicon Valley one mentioned last week) that covers the history of Tektronix and how it impacted the Portland area.
Dave published and sold three different versions of a PC based scope. The mark3 page also has videos where Dave talks about the kit.
There is a headless scope project in the works that uses a Cubieboard and a BeagleBone to link to your Android as the head unit.
100 MSPS ADC chips aren't hard to come by these days. 10-15 years ago, that was top of the line!
While reading about Clayton Christiansen and his upcoming book, "The Capitalist's Dilemma", Chris found out that Intel was influenced by the book (thesis, really) and that helped lead to the (lower end) Celeron processor.
Intel is holding a "business" competition for people in Europe.
It's not just bailing on industries that can be disastrous; the Helsinki Bus Station Theory talks about persistence and how it's required for creatives.
Koenigsegg makes some really fast, awesome cars. They also make their own CAD software...? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvHDdNzqdTs
Please folks, don't use autorouters.
Auto electronics will provide lots more opportunities for sensors and interfaces in the coming years. Why not cars that talk to one another?
Code reviews, as summed up by Scott Adams: Code Mocking.
Dave Vandenbout of Xess has a great tutorial (which apparently "sucked donkeys" to write) about getting started with programmable logic in, "FPGAs!? Now What?" New chapter added recently.
The US Patent Office will be changing their rules on March 16th, 2013 to a "first to file" system.
Steve Hoefer had some great Valentine's Day cards based on patents.
Jack Ganssle did a Valentine's Day teardown of a "personal astable multivibrator".

Thanks to FabSurplus.com for the picture of the old machine.

Melbourne, Hackerspace & Calibration - Vacuuous Vortex Verification Feb 12, 2013

Show notes

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Dave is back from his trip to Melbourne and has lots of calibration stories!

There is a new documentary out about Alan Turing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GaKUAGSmmw
However, you need to request that it come to your city.
PBS has a new documentary about Silicon Valley that looks amazing! Multiple parts.
Dave visited the Agilent Melbourne Standards and Calibration Lab http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JID8bS2-skg
And many more videos, which will be posted to Dave's EEVblog channel throughout the week
Dave also visited the Melbourbe hackerspace http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhVpdQPbji0
Andy Gelme, who is part of the LiFX bulb team was showing Dave around and Alex Bradbury of Raspberry Pi was there as well.
The Raspberry Pi team will soon be releasing a camera module to use with OpenCV.
Dave and Chris haven't dug into their RPi's yet, but Chris has bought Matt Richardson's book on getting started. Now to find the book on how to get started on the book!
What do you do to ensure proper bring up of new boards? Power, test points, code, etc?
Fran Blanche did a great video reverse engineering the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC) of the Saturn V rocket! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0HC8bBCdgk
Dave saw an article about the quirk found in the electronics on the Pioneer Spacecraft in a recent IEEE Spectrum edition.
Interested in following along with Kent Lundberg's prototyping class, discussed on The Amp Hour previously? You can follow the assignments and writeups on the class blog!
If you're interested in learning more about MOS transistors (namely their physics), check out a new MOOC class on Coursera about MOS devices.
Where should school start and stop? How can we better give context for schooling?

If you want to see upcoming links or stuff we didn't get to this week, check out /r/TheAmpHour. If you like the show, please consider giving us a review on iTunes! Thanks!

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