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:

An Interview with Andrew Seddon - Necessary Networked Novelty Feb 05, 2013

Show notes

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Welcome, Andrew Seddon of CircuitHub.com!

Founded the company with Jonathon Friedman, from across the Atlantic!
Andrew went to school in Leeds but left for a design position.
Previously worked for companies such as Turnsafe and Active RF and in his spare time worked on model rockets. Check out all of his past work on his personal site.
London is barren, but outlying areas of the UK do electronics. Hardware is stronger in Cambridge, with companies such as ARM and Cambridge Silicon Radio.
There is also the M4 corridor, west of London
Amateur electronics is growing in London. Shared spaces, Makerspaces and Hackerspaces allow for shared tools, which are a premium in expensive real estate areas.
Andrew and the team needed to learn web software and currently use CoffeeScript, a JavaScript stack
CircuitHub uses an online interface to create parts and then allows users to find and sync with the footprints and schematic symbols using Dropbox. The site creates parts compatible with 3 of the top PCB CAD programs available today and more are planned for the future.
Circuit hub is sponsoring hackathon along with yCombinator and Upverter (and more!)
How parts are handled depends on workplace culture and software packages. Altium and EAGLE handle associating footprints different and big companies might have a librarian whereas smaller companies may not.
Companies likely won't be revealing any information by pulling and sharing footprints from a central database, but trust will be an issue with larger companies.
They will be open sourcing all possible code and feeding it back to the community. You can view the team's work on GitHub.
The main tool will always be free. Revenue will come later by integrating with manufacturing.
The project started because Jon and Andrew were "scratching their own itch". They submitted a yCombinator application on deadline day.
Because it's strikingly difficult to get a visa for the US, even if you're a founder of a startup, they are operating out of Playa del Carmen for the next few months. The US has only recently considered any kind of legislation in this area (!?)
Andrew reluctantly agreed to some kind of gamification in order to encourage participation ("we'll see," he says). Chris cited the awesome Adafruit badges as a good example of this in action.

Be sure to head over to CircuitHub.com and start an account. You can start pulling in designs to your projects and submitting new footprints to the community.

You can follow Andrew on Twitter at @seddonandrew and can also follow @CircuitHub.

Boeing, PCBs & Startups - Awful Airplane Aeration Jan 29, 2013

Show notes

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Many thanks to our sponsor for this episode, Electronic Surplus! Check out this page on The Amp Hour to register for their giveaway and to click through to support the show!

National Instruments buys Digilent!
Though Chris doesn't use it much MATLAB is a nice high level math tool
Octave is the free version with less features and plugins.
Project Euler (pronounce "Oil-ehr ") is a place you can practice programming by solving math problems.
Marketing expert Seth Godin says he doesn't use Twitter because he's too busy making things. Touche, marketer.
Circuit hub is a place to download parts for all different types of CAD programs using DropBox. Looks great!
KiCAD Cloud is a place to pull KiCAD specific components, made by another listener (Joe Ferner)!
Would you start a company with a stranger you met through an online site? Founder dating is the place to do it (and engineers are highly desirable! Though probably sw).
There are more and more hardware startups. There are now hardware meetups all over the place.
Boeing has had some issues with their LiIon batteries. See the discussion in the EEVblog forum for more details.
Chris has been blogging about his new CNC machine at ChrisGammell.com
Dave did a video reviewing old ads in editions of Electronics Australia from the past 30 years http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgTF32aQJUo
The Hioki Calcu Hi Tester is a combination calculator and DMM!
Why can't any meter beat the Fluke 27's 1000 hour battery life?
How do you know where to draw the line on design? When to outsource and how much? Or are we all just oompa loompas?
If you want to give your boards a programatic and artistic flair, try out PCBmodE.
Akiba of FreakLabs.org, Bunnie Huang (former guest of The Amp Hour) and designers from the MIT Media Lab toured around Shenzhen visiting factories. Check out Akiba's great blogging about it!
The MeCam is a super low cost (<$50!) quadcopter with big promises. We'll see if they deliver.
Plastic injection molding is cool...and makes stuff so cheap.
Is Mexico the new China?

Remember, we'd love to hear from you if you're from the far corners of the earth! Please leave a comment below!

Image via Seattle Times

**An Interview with Brett Fox and Dr Jeroen Fonderie - Device Doubling Decretum** Jan 22, 2013
Show notes

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Welcome Brett Fox, CEO and Dr Jeroen Fonderie, VP of Engineering from the (relatively) new, yet quickly growing analog company, Touchstone Semiconductor!

After leaving Micrel, Brett was an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR).

Touchstone was officially formed in 2010 with Brett, Joeren and Adolfo Garcia.

Invested in by Gill Cogan of Opus Capital and Pierre Lamond of Khosla Venturers. $12 million starting captial (which isn't much for an IC company!). Gill was an original investor in Maxim, Pierre was a co-founder of National and was involved in funding LT. Wowsa!

They use TSMC, among other foundries. They have worked with Rick Cassidy, the North America head of TSMC, which helps facilitate a startup relationship.

The foundries provide the designer Process Design Kits (PDKs) which are then used with Cadence toolsets.

Surprisingly, people have asked for original designs, in addition to part crosses.

Part crosses (and the basis of starting the company) was to provide alternate sources for harder to get Maxim parts.

When hiring, they hope the designers will have experience taping out a chip, usually requiring many years of experience.

While no one will ever replace Jim Williams, Touchstone has a full apps team (and they're hiring more!) working on new notes.

The name "Touchstone" was chosen after consulting a thesaurus for the word "Maxim"!

They seek patents that can be used offensively or defensively, at the circuit level.

Touchstone has to wait for technologies to enter the foundry before they can begin designing for them. There will be a new design center working on developing Graphene, as reported by EE Times Europe.

Chris gets bad news that two executives from a chip company don't think a chip printer is feasible. Ouch.

Packaging keeps getting smaller, the Touchstone Demo Board program should help getting up and running quickly.

Touchstone does a die bank, which helps hedge against high demand at a low cost.

Working remotely is difficult. Monolithic systems has tried this, with designers in Asia and management in the US.

You can follow Touchstone Semiconductor on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. Thanks to Brett and Jeroen for stopping by The Amp Hour to talk shop!

FPGA, Xess, 32 Bit - Quirky Qualitative Questions Jan 08, 2013

Show notes

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3d Printers are here to stay, at the very least as prototyping tools.
OSHW's true test will be a large company continuing to stay completely open as they grow.
Sparkfun has had some growing pains with their Free Day, which is a shame; that was a really cool program!
How do can electronics survive extreme cold? Start by keeping them dry!
Should you learn about FPGAs? Or 32 bit processors? We think the former in a classroom setting and the latter on your own online.
Online, there are resources like Xess and the Papillio
Why do power supplies hum? Vibration of the components.
The mechanical part of components can also lead to drift.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP3Z_N8IkQQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq-1vTQzM4E
Eric's was the one mentioned in episode 116 as a request from his lady.
Schaum's Outlines help people learn or relearn topics in a condensed format.
The Art of Electronics is always a good place to re-learn basics (and advanced topics). Maybe not the best for beginners.
We now have a page where you can leave suggestions for which guests we should invite on The Amp Hour. Special shoutouts to people that can introduce us!
Sometimes learning just takes time and a bunch of experinece. This is the ethos behind Learn Python The Hard Way.
The key to electronics was well put by Jeri:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhQ7d3BK3KQ

Though this was a show dedicated to just Q&A, you're always welcome to ask questions on the show. The best place is on the /r/TheAmpHour subreddit or contact us. We love audio and video questions!

Thanks to ARM Climate Research Facility for the picture!

eReaders, datasheets & board assembly - Yearly Yeasty Yapping Dec 18, 2012

Show notes

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Our last show of 2012! Thanks for another wonderful year!

Chris has been holiday shopping on Amazon. Merry Booksmas!
Dave likes shopping the smaller stores through Abebooks.
Getting bound versions of the Linear Tech Application Handbooks are enough to fight over! You can get all the PDFs from the handbooks on Archive.org.
Will books become the new LPs? Where only collectors bother? Different speeds of LPs changes the bandwidth of the recording.
Paper is still preferred for datasheets, but many people try out tablets.
Chris's friend suggested the Onyx M92 as a large screen version (with the ability to write on the screen). Looks like a good option for datasheets.
Balancing design and purchasing is tough. EBN has a good article about The Art of Concurrent Design.
TI has changed the status of the Stellaris Cortex M3 parts they inherited when they acquired Luminary Micro. They are now listed as NRND or "Not Recommended for New Designs". Death knell! (eventually)
ARM has so many variations, it's really hard to keep up! Should we blame them though? Or the companies that buy the IP?
The Freescale debt is so unsustainable that the CEO has mentioned they'll be "Focusing" in 2013. Said another way, they'll End Of Life (EOL) a bunch of products. Same goes for NXP and STMicro.
ST and Renesas might get a reprieve since the country they're based in might bail them out. Japan has already restructured debt for Renesas and France might for ST at any time. Too big to fail in chips?
Bunnie is working on an awesome open source hardware laptop. Dave thinks it will find further use as a high powered dev board.
Zach "Hoeken" Smith, who was on The Amp Hour episode #121, posted a link to a desktop Pick and Place on TaoBao. The video is very impressive!
The Kick project from Kickstarter has decided to move production back from China after 2 failed attempts. Chris and Dave discuss the value of manufacturing locally, even at higher cost.
Students in Florida might get a break in tuition for studying engineering. What will this do for engineering enrollment?
There are 5 realistic predictions for disruptive products in 2012 on the new tech site, Quartz. Were there any missed?
We're on break until the 2013! Leave your questions, comments and suggestions on TheAmpHour.com or on the /r/TheAmpHour subreddit. Let us know about the projects you're working on!
We will have transcriptions available for select shows. Thank you to all of our wonderful sponsors for making this possible! If you're interested in donating, check out our Donation page on TheAmpHour.com.

An Interview with Ian Lesnet - Bus Buccaneer Builder Dec 11, 2012

Show notes

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For those interested, there is now a transcript available for episode 125.

Welcome, Ian from Dangerous Prototypes!

Ian created the Bus Pirate and was later convinced to start selling it while he was a contributor to Hack a Day.
It and all the other Dangerous Prototypes parts are sold through Seeed Studio, in Shenzhen China.
All Dangerous Prototypes hardware is OSHW and is not released under a license. They consider it to be public domain.
Ian got re-started on hardware while in grad school working on Berkeley Smartdust (with TinyOS), which was not user friendly at the time.
These days Ian has been travelling to many of the Maker Faires around the world and showcasing the marketplaces and the hackerspaces nearby on YouTube.
He recently interviewed Mitch from Hackvana about navigating the Shenzhen supply chain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlbC9GSv5jY
Ian has a made presentation about how to get your open hardware manufactured, based on a talk given at Maker Faires and elsewhere http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifTaGRTPwLc
The PIC24 has programmable pins for reassignment after layout. Convenient!
The Bus Blaster is a product that allows you to debug your JTAG chain.
The ATX power supply breakout board turns your old computer supplies into a low cost bench supply!
If you'd like to get a case for your designs, you can now use the Dangerous Prototypes standardized "Sick of Beige" Case, based on their standardized board outlines.
There is work done for the open source USB stack, since USB stacks have a sketchy history http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pegVYODsn4
The 7400 Series Logic competition was a success this year, but may be put on hold for a while. Next year might be a test equipment design competition!

Thanks again to Ian for stopping by the show! If you're interested in learning more about the company or contributing, stop over to Dangerous Prototypes. You can possibly even pick up a free PCB!

SpaceX, Enclosures & Startups - Urging Unemployment Ullagone Dec 04, 2012

Show notes

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This week on the show we cover our usual stomping ground topics, including some of our favorites like chip printing and complaining about former employers.

Tektronix just released another basic scope, adding to what Dave says is an arsenal of outdated scopes.
The Atlantic magazine talks about the new trend of in sourcing,versus the MBA Playbook™ approved method of outsourcing which was so en vogue for all those years.
Dave points out a video alerting president Obama to the lack of advanced physics education in the USA. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGL22PTIOAM
President of National Instruments, Dr. James Truchard, talks about the lack of engineering graduates and how that will affect industry. Shouldn't this means salaries are increasing?
The show TerraNova demonstrated a chip printer, similar to what Chris has dreamed about (and threatened to just go make, if no one else will).
If Elon Musk complete his mission to send 80,000 people to a colony on Mars, would we need a chip printer out there?
If you'd like to buy a piece of the Hubble space telescope history, you can buy some heavy equipment for $75K on eBay.
Ageism continues to be a problem in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the technology world. Some people are going to extremes by dying their hair and getting plastic surgery to hide the fact that they are older.
Resumes are a key part of getting hired into any new firm. Dave and Chris have lots of tips for getting yours noticed.
if you can get a hiring manager to do you a favor, you have more likelihood of being viewed favorably by that manager. This is a result of the human condition known as "the Ben Franklin effect".
Jeremy Blum in former guest of The Amp Hour has a great example resume that people should check out.
Chris promotes the benefits of stalking on LinkedIn even if that sounds creepy.
An episode of The Engineering Commons talked about the importance of influence in the workplace and in getting hired.
Altium's Board of Directors finally removed the president, Nick Martin. They will now go back to "their core" and focus on the layout tool like we all care about.
Chris has been trying to reteach himself programming specifically C programming. It is not going well.
Why do startups always seem to have food and who pays for it? Doesn't this just mean they want you to work more hours?
If you do work at a startup, you likely will have a higher than average salary for some reason or another. Perhaps because there is venture-capital money to go around?
Why are enclosures always the hardest part of electronics designs?
Tesla Motors is raising the cost of their latest model S. While this doesn't happen often in electronics, it has happened before for Tesla.

That's all for this week. Please try to give us a rating in iTunes if you haven't already. Or check this out over on Twitter or any other variety of social networks out there.

Thanks to Yanec for the picture of the resume cloud.

An Interview with Jon Oxer - Innoxious Implant Innovator Nov 27, 2012

Show notes

[display_podcast] Welcome, Jonathan Oxer!

Thanks to our sponsor, Club Jameco. To see the kit featured this week and to learn more about their program, check out http://ClubJameco.com/TheAmpHour.
Jon has held positions and started companies in both hardware and software.
His current company, Internet Vision Technologies, has over 20 employees and software based.
Jon helps to organize the Arduino Mini Conf, which occurs on the first day of the Australian Linux Conf
Jon's main venture (and most directly interesting to this show) is Freetronics, an electronics kit development and manufacturing operation.
From his first company, he has learned to focus on the core for business, similar to what is discussed in The Lean Startup.
Their most popular kit is the EtherTen, based upon the Arduino platform but with integrated Ethernet.
When working on electronics, Jon prefers the TAPR license.
They also work on Power over Ethernet (PoE) devices, because it was something Jon dream up for his house.
Jon's blog about his house and his centralized home automation system is Super House TV.
This is also the name of his YouTube channel where you can find a range of videos, including a response to our show! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHN7o0Tzqcw&feature=plcp
In order to get into his house, Jon installed an RFID chip...in his arm! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXVIzIGoMuQ&feature=watch_response_rev
DIY Biohacking is a new trend, some even putting magnets in their fingers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-Dv6dDtdcs
Jon has written a few books, including Hacking Ubuntu and Practical Arduino.
He is also a member of the Melbourne Hackerspace
At one point, Jon hacked his car and decided to start a site called Geek My Ride for other car-hacking enthusiasts. This is also his most popular YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqZj4ArrlhA&feature=plcp
And if he weren't busy enough recently, Jon has been participating in the ArduSat project, working on their payload. This is an evolution of the CubeSat program.

You can find Jon online at his site (well, sites) or on Twitter under the handles @JonOxer, @SuperHouseTV and @Freetronics.

Processors, CEOs & Soldering irons - Plentiful Perfunctory Programs Nov 20, 2012

Show notes

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For those interested, there is also now a transcript available for episode 122.

Thanks to our sponsor, Club Jameco. To check out the Forrest Mims kit we featured this week, involving the Atari Punk Console, check out http://ClubJameco.com/TheAmpHour. Thanks!
Buzz Aldrin is pissed. Great front cover of the MIT Technology Review.
Dave is pissed too. Why does it always come down to one number? Agilent gets dinged for not meeting shareholder expectations while still performing ok. Why are the tech and products left out?
TI is giving the ax to the OMAP line (unless they end up selling it).
EDN asks whether ARM will eventually take over. Chris asks whether it should. Dave says it won't happen anyway.
Jason Kridner (former guest of The Amp Hour) states that it will not affect the BeagleBoard-xM nor the BeagleBone.
The CEO of Intel, Paul Otellini, is retiring.
And unfortunately, Hakko has decided to retire the FX-888.
Listener @einball had a terrible time at the Electronica show out in Munich, due to discrimination based on how he was dressed.. Is there a different expectation of fashion at tech shows in Europe?
Dave recently reviewed the 4000x series scopes from Agilent http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhAWwomKRaE&feature=plcp
He also conveniently left out the fact that you can control/view signals with a tablet!
Upverter 2.0 was recently released, they now have in browser schematic and layout.
Previously discussed circuits.io is on a similar mission, including trying out back end integration so you can buy boards and parts directly.
Chris isn't too big a fan of TinkerCAD or any program that is very basic simply because it's running in the browser. Maybe he's missing something?
Did you know the "-ND" on Digikey part numbers comes from the legacy, "No Discount" tag from their catalog days?
Dave didn't like the recent upgrade from the Beta to the full time version of 123D from Autodesk.