The Amp Hour

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DIP projects, OSHW & Trade Booths - Demonstrative DIP Dacrygelosis Sep 04, 2012

Show notes

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Unfortunately, our guest had to cancel for the evening. Hopefully he can be on sometime in the near future. Thank you to all who posted questions!

Dave is off to a trade show next week. If you're in Australia, try and find him at the Electronex show! The Amp Hour is (technically) exhibiting! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfFKcz7Z_0Y
The Raspberry Pi foundation has had a bit of a run in...with an idiot.
Wired posted about the upcoming rise in minimum wages in Shenzhen. Will this ultimately affect the electronics ecosystem there?
Did you know: The NSA has their own chip fab?
Dave's USB power supply was finally pushed towards fruition thanks to the Electronex show.
The board has the OSHW logo on it. We don't know the current status, but there was a scuffle about the licensing of the logo.
The 2012 OHS is coming up soon!
TI just finished up an analog design contest. There are a bunch of cool entries posted on YouTube.
We need a Kickstarter for an OSHW project for a simple PCB mill or etchant. Something dead simple. Why? Because DIP isn't coming back. Ever. Get on it, people!
Perhaps there's a PCB mill in with the auction of NASA surplus electronics? If anyone goes, let us know!

You can add your out stories or ideas to our subreddit (/r/TheAmpHour) any time. Remember, it could save us in the event of a jettisoned guest! Add away!

neil_armstrong — **Armstrong, Camenzind & Museums - Outstanding Oneirophoros Obituaries** Aug 27, 2012
Show notes

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We lost two greats in the past week, Neil Armstrong and Hans Camenzind.

*Oneirophoros -- n. Bringer of Dreams*

Chris has been continuing his Chip Report TV project, check out the video below for the "buck fiddy" reference (Starting at about 6 minutes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2kycKTbz_U&t=5m47s

XKCD has a comic about the number of people that have set foot on another planet diminishing.

Jeff Hammerbacher was a former facebook employee quoted on BusinessWeek.com as saying, *"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads," he says. "That sucks."*

Our links for the show now live at reddit.com/r/theamphour. Much like the discuss server, you can add, vote and comment on each story for the coming shows.

The spinnaker chip and associated boards were made to help model the human brain. That's a lotta chips.

DARPA is looking into analog computers as a next generation computing platform.

Dave enjoyed the "NASA and we know it video", lampooning the lander crew and their quirks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFvNhsWMU0c

With ever increasing costs and needs for high volume chips, will large companies "insource" their chip manufacturing? Unlikely.

The Apple and Samsung court case is over and was annoying.

The 21st annual obfuscated C contest has started and runs until Sept 14th. Dave thinks this is a waste of time.

This is done in hardware as well sometimes. People put in fake circuits either on the board or in an ASIC.

Sometimes code doesn't need to be obfuscated, like for people that don't know how to properly write code. The Engineering Commons discussed scientists and non-programmers writing code.

Chris has been working with the BeagleBone, trying to make a hardware development platform.

Dave thinks the Bus Pirate might work for simple SPI communication.

Other times, the best digital platform is the one you used last time.

And the best development board is your final production board, with the assumption it might just be wrong.

OSRAM has developed a footprint to make it more compatible with competitors devices.

Old school Motorola modules for TVs made footprint matching with common tubes impossible (starting about 12:50 or so) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X89j8XZGgqA#t=771s

Speaking of tough to find parts, EMSL showcases a 23kV, 15A fuse. Wowsa!

If you're a Tesla fan, The Oatmeal is helping raise money for a Tesla museum. Donate and get cool stuff!

Or check out The Oatmeal's (*raunchy*) comparison of Edison and Tesla.

Be sure to check out our new subreddit for The Amp Hour to see any stories we didn't get to and contribute your own for upcoming shows!

Early_Case_Days — **An Interview with Larry Sears - Hexagram Hardware Holism** Aug 20, 2012
Show notes

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Welcome, Larry Sears!

Our first in-studio guest ever!

Larry is currently an adjunct lecturer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (Chris' alma mater)

After school, he was a teaching assistant and soon after started a design and build company called Hexagram.

One of the earlier products was working on the MeisterMatic600, a computerized embroidery machine

Since he wanted to develop a turnkey, proprietary product for someone, he chose gas meter reading.

Initially, the wired device required a person to walk up to a wall and take a reading

Later, they "bet the farm" on the STAR system, which worked with cellphones and low frequency RF

Hexagram was bought by ESCO in 2006

Shortly thereafter, Larry set up an endowment to ensure students would have a place to tinker.

Larry is working on a new project at Case, think[box] (previously mentioned in episode 53 of The Amp Hour)

This will be a makerspace/incubator/classroom housed in a 50K+ sq ft building.

Many thanks to Larry for making the trip to Chris's house for the interview! You can reach him at Sears@case.edu
*Thanks to Larry and Case.edu for the images.*

Hexagram_HQ — **An Interview with Larry Sears - Hexagram Hardware Holism** Aug 20, 2012
Show notes

[display_podcast]

Welcome, Larry Sears!

Our first in-studio guest ever!

Larry is currently an adjunct lecturer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (Chris' alma mater)

After school, he was a teaching assistant and soon after started a design and build company called Hexagram.

One of the earlier products was working on the MeisterMatic600, a computerized embroidery machine

Since he wanted to develop a turnkey, proprietary product for someone, he chose gas meter reading.

Initially, the wired device required a person to walk up to a wall and take a reading

Later, they "bet the farm" on the STAR system, which worked with cellphones and low frequency RF

Hexagram was bought by ESCO in 2006

Shortly thereafter, Larry set up an endowment to ensure students would have a place to tinker.

Larry is working on a new project at Case, think[box] (previously mentioned in episode 53 of The Amp Hour)

This will be a makerspace/incubator/classroom housed in a 50K+ sq ft building.

Many thanks to Larry for making the trip to Chris's house for the interview! You can reach him at Sears@case.edu
*Thanks to Larry and Case.edu for the images.*

Converting to Metric -- XKCD — **Mars, Makerbot & Power Outages - Reprobate Replicator Replication** Aug 13, 2012
Show notes

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The curiosity has landed! And the crowd goes wild!

The electronics onboard are quite rugged, but kinda pokey.

They wrote more than 2.5 million lines of C, 500,000 just for the landing!

Does this mean more kids will learn C? Chris is dismayed his alma mater is teaching LabView as "programming" (though it's good for other stuff!)

Maybe if Curiosity had crashed due to unit conversion again, they would finally push metric in the US? *(Thanks to Randal Monroe...for everything he's ever done)*

Chris is sorry for the mess with the servers. It should be fixed now.

Dave did a new video about "The Unwritten Rules of Open Source Hardware" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOUaoLjrNPo

The video was kicked off by the Tangibot project on Kickstarter, a clone of the MakerBot (pictured, top)

Akiba of Freaklabs wrote an interesting piece about this as well.

Dave and Chris might take the "paid commenting" model public. A new Kickstarter project!

Chris has backed the 99 percent invisible podcast (a great podcast about design and architecture), which raised $170K on Kickstarter.

The top 10 chips for power aren't all names you'd expect. High volume parts aren't always accessible to small run electronics.

The India Blackout may have been caused by an upgrade, in addition to the usual stealing of power.

There will be a lot more growth in the power sector in coming years. IEEE Spectrum says that's where the jobs are (or will be).

Chris learned that to do isolated power, you don't need a flyback per se. You can use a regular buck controller/converter, a transformer and an isolator.

Sick of Kickstarter yet? Too bad! Go check out this rideable hexapod robot. The bumper sticker is awesome.

Well, we'll see how the server holds up this week. Don't be afraid to give us a shout when the server is down, either by email or twitter. Until then, try out the new comment system (installed per some of the requests in the feedback from all of you)! *Thanks to retrocactus for the MakerBot photo*

An interview with Tony Long - Millimeter Microwave Magician Aug 06, 2012

Show notes

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Welcome, Tony Long (@mmwave) of ReactanceLabs.com!

How can you get started with microwave RF? Tony wrote a post about that!
Dave couldn't make it today, he's out geeking out about the Curiosity landing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4iFAUz5DGg
The different parts of the atmosphere absorb 1+ GHz at different levels.
There is a broad range of 1+ GHz bands available to ham operators.
Tony will be shown on the TWiT show HamNation, which was filmed at the "Tune Up Day" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es75riu6Xnw&feature=g-all-u
He is also part of the San Bernadino Microwave Society.
Some of the chips on board are made by Hittite, TriQuint, MiniCircuits
Wire bonding video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQP9J4iYYtA
Tony posted a BUNCH of photos (links go to the Flickr galleries)
- His 47 GHz build
- His 79 GHz build
Tony is about to start selling a kit of the frequency synthesizer kit! Next will be a multiplier, though likely not a kit.

Many thanks to Tony for being on the show this week! He was great! Check out his products and buy them! And get involved in the hobby!

Tektronix, ChipReport.tv, & the Signal Path - Temperative Tegmen Temperature Jul 30, 2012

Show notes

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We continue our “every other week” tradition (a guest one week, just Dave and Chris the next) with lots of news and projects!

Chris has a new project and affiliation -- ChipReport.tv! (Links at the end of the video to subscribe) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auSEgID1zQc
The "Still Untitled Adam Savage Project" on Tested.com is pretty good!
Shahriar from The Signal Path super-cools an LED...and it changes color! Awesome!
Temperature can affect your designs...but do we really need to worry about it?
Tom LeMense might say so, having worked on automobile designs.
The Olympics have started! There are some cool engineering design questions regarding timing and video.
Analog Devices and Digilent released a DMM/Oscilloscope board for relatively cheap (esp if you're a student). Dave doesn't like it.
Even though Chris would argue this is a further push towards using off the shelf tablets for scopes, the Antipasto Hardware Blog says to utilize custom Android tablets, if at all.
Some butthead is buying up all the copyright to Heathkit schematics and is pursuing any left online.
Digikey now has a schematic tool built in...but why doesn't it interface to CAD programs?
Do you watch the financial health of a company when making decisions to design in a part? ST Micro is running out of cash.
There is a database of chip logos that can help you find out which chips you're looking at.
Mike's Electric Stuff has a video of entire boards with rebadged chips from a military computer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55z_0BYb5is&feature=plcp
ARM is working with TSMC to develop sub 20nm designs...does this mean ARM might make a chip one day? What stops them?
Tektronix is accepting feedback on their products via a new site...and want video reviews?
Duane Benson of Screaming Circuits is writing articles detailing his first impressions about learning FPGAs.
Erin "RobotGrrl" has a great video showing a timelapse of a curvy board layout. Mesmerizing! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDO5W7bX03E
Dave used to do tape layouts by hand!
If you're doing a manhattan technique build, there is a great technique for creating "islands" on the copper clad.

That's all for this week. If you enjoy the show, we would love it if you gave us a review on iTunes! It really helps new people find the podcast. Or tell your friends! Thanks!

An Interview with Chris Anderson - Deambulatory Daedal Drones Jul 23, 2012

Show notes

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Welcome, Chris Anderson (@chr1sa)!

Chris is the editor of Wired and has been for 11 years. He is also a co-Founder of DIY drones, a 20,000+ strong community of UAV enthusiasts and also runs the commercial arm, 3D robotics! He has also written books about the growth of the internet including The Long Tail and Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Later this year he will be releasing a book about the Maker Movement called, “Makers: The New Industrial Revolution”.

Chris also started the Geek Dad Blog, now run as an official Wired Blog.
With his own children, 3D printing doll house furniture is a regularly enjoyed activity.
Chris has had many of the early 3D printers and currently has a MakerBot Thingomatic.
Dave recently got a Replicator (and promptly broke it) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTuL_nKSKFg&feature=plcp
The next round of 3D printers might move towards SLA-like lasered resins, similar to this recent kickstarter project.
Chris believes there are more than one "Pit of Despair" as stated by Nathan Seidle of SparkFun
- As stated last week, there was also a followup piece called "The Pit of Opportunity" (not mentioned on today's show)
The DIY Drones community had help from Andrew Tridgell of the Samba project and Jono Bacon of the Ubuntu project (and author of "The Art of Community")
Tim O'Reilly calls this the Architecture of Participation
DIY Drones is seeing more cloners, some in China (though there are great contributors from China as well)
Manufacturing for 3D Robotics is done in San Diego, CA and Tijuana, Mexico.
Co-Founder Jordi Muñoz now runs the day to day operations of the commercial arm.
There is a mysterious release planned for later this week, but we didn't want to invoke the Osborne Effect.
3D robotics has its own brand of rf mesh (as opposed to the Xbee) called the 3DR radio based on the Hope RF HM-TRP module.
Chris does not think they would have used Kickstarter when beginning 3D robotics.
Arduino is moving to an ARM for their next revision in the Arduino Due.
The ArduCopter platform actually still has processing power to spare because of the offloading and multiple chips on board.
The Invensense MPU6000 does a lot of processing which helps offload the main processor.
The next round of innovation will be machine learning so that drones are more aware of their surroundings and PID loop tweaking won't be as difficult.
Chris has a new book coming out in October called, "Makers: The New Industrial Revolution".
- Makers allow for The Long Tail of manufacturing things. Whereas a large company might not see a reason to make something, now people are empowered to make it in small quantities and distribute it via the internet.
To find out more about Chris, check out his wiki page (or edit it) or just Google him.

Many thanks again to Chris for stopping by The Amp Hour. Please leave comments here or on the Discuss Forum and let us know what you thought! Also consider signing up for the DIY Drones community or subscribing to their feed to get the latest news in this exciting field.

Thanks to Joi Ito for the image

**Ceramic capacitors & High end scopes - Kempt Kickstarter Kakorrhaphiophobia** Jul 16, 2012
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Dave has a new $140K oscilloscope in his lab! Amazing how he wouldn't use it normally.

Rental companies will happily rent you one for less.

Dave is getting a new MakerBot Repicator soon. One of the employees there printed a box for the uCurrent.

MakerBot was at ComicCon, where Seth Green seemed to like them.

Marcus of Little Bird electronics recently got VC funding for the Ninja Blocks, a successfully funded project on Kickstarter.

Will KS become a hunting ground for hungry VCs?

Nathan Seidle of Sparkfun recently wrote/spoke about "The Pit of Despair", when Kickstarter projects are big, but not big enough to quit your job.

Ian Daniher and Kevin Mehall of Nonolith Labs, wrote a response (after being used as an example "Pit") about the benefits of starting a company that way.

Elon Musk took some risks once he cashed out of PayPal:

Dave enjoyed the documentary called, "The Revenge of the Electric Car", which featured Elon.

Do you know how ceramic capacitors are made? Johnson Dielectrics details their process.

Library and BOM management is quite a hassle. How do you manage it?

The Component Organizeris a small, cross platform, open source application for managing BOMs and stock.

One of the interns at Octopart is working on "Historical Part Pricing" to let us know what parts cost over time.

Bob Dobkin agrees with Chris (ha! More in the other direction) about the importance of being connected to a fab.

Foundries are growing overall, but TSMC still is the most dominant player (by a lot!).

Will the Memristor deliver in 2014 as HP/Hynix says it will? Can it compete with entrenched technologies?

Next week on the show, Chris Anderson of Wired and DIYdrones. Get your questions in now! (or vote on others')

As Chris said at the end of the show, we would appreciate reviews and ratings wherever you can find us. The iTunes store is a good start. And don't forget, a great way to chat about the latest episode or anything else electronics that might be on your mind is on the Discuss Server. See you there!

An Interview with Philip Freidin - Xenodochial Xilinx Ex-Employee Jul 09, 2012

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Welcome, Philip Freidin of Fliptronics!

(Philip and Chris face off with ESD guns before Maker Faire)

Philip has been in Silicon Valley for the past 27 years, working at AMD, Xilinx and for himself.
Back in Australia, Philip was an FAE for Intersil and AMD, among others.
At AMD, he became an architect on the AM29000, one of the first commercial RISC processors.
The other two were in the ACORN (by ARM) and the Fairchild Clipper.
No crazy instructions at ARM, but there is an EIEIO instruction in the wild. They also outlawed images in silicon after a guy's face messed up a mask set!
The precurser to the 29000 was the 2900, which was based on the Fairchild 74181 bit slice concept.
The 2900 was in machines such as the PDP11 and the VAX. Philip joined Xilinx right when they were starting work on the XC4000 series.
He also helped architect the Virtex series parts and the early Spartan parts.
Any patent with Ross Freeman on it is brilliant, according to Philip.
Philip has a couple patents of his own, including the one for Dual Port RAM in an FPGA!
Dave was wondering if patents expiring in the FPGA industry will encourage other manufacturers to jump in. Philip says only if they have a laser focus.
Every FPGA manufacturer is fabless, so how do you get a process edge?
If you're interested in getting started, look up a tutorial on VHDL or Verilog, get your self a dev board (like the Papillo or similar) and download the tools from one of the big vendors. Then start using your imagination!
Any other questions not answered directly on the show (especially those asked on the Discuss Server) will be answered if they get 10 or more upvotes.
Update: Philip has posted an album of chips and has posted short blurbs about them.

Thanks to Philip for taking the time to share about his experiences! We hope to have him back on in the future to talk more about what he’s been doing since his time at Xilinx.

Thanks to MightyOhm for the picture of Philip and Chris.

Gouging Green Gardyloo Jul 02, 2012

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This week on the show we covered everything from energy to electronics. Some of the links go to the associated pages on The Discussion Server, but any page that has a link to an external site can be accessed at the title link at the top of that page.

Australia just enacted their carbon tax.
Holden (sister company of Chevy) is releasing the Volt in Australia.
MIT professor, Donald Sadoway has invented the "liquid metal" battery using salts and technology and thinking from aluminium smelters http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sddb0Khx0yA
A recent article from The Economist talks about pulp/paper byproduct being turned into cathodes.
Google announced and showed off their Project Glass (a set of Heads Up Display glasses). The scale of technology made Chris nervous.
ASDF asked on our Suggestions page whether a project run without a large managerial deadline can be shipped on time.
Analog Devices is partnering with TSMC to utilize their new process. What is an analog company that doesn't control their process though?
Renesas could be taken over by KKR, the same company that tore NXP apart.
SPECIAL OFFER! CircuitCellar and Elektor are offering discount magazine subscriptions for listeners of The Amp Hour in celebration of CC's 25th anniversary!
Dave wanted a custom case but really wanted to know the price up front. He found PolyCase (of Avon, OH!) who gave him ballpark pricing.
Chris wants the same kind of ballpark pricing to happen for electronics distributors.
BlackMagic Design released a new high end video camera.
On the Discuss Server, Tim asked about who has used XMOS in projects before (and if you have, we'd still love to hear from you on the Discuss Forum). Software Defined Silicon seems like an interesting idea but we're not sure about price/features.
Listener of the show, Mike Kershaw is working on a new OSHW ZigBee based hw/sw project called the KisBee that should allow protocol analyzing and having other things built on top of it. Looks great!
The Retro Computing Roundtable Podcast is a new (to us at least) podcast about old school computers.
Though we've probably mentioned it once before, if you've never seen the Visual 6502, it's pretty cool!
Chip Of The Week:
- The BQ25504 is a late comer to the "green" market (didn't we abandon the planet in 2009?) but this part is pretty cool for doing single cell energy harvesting. It has an input impedance matching network and only takes 330 nA when it's off. Plus it's got a ridiculously low cold start voltage (330 mV) and once started it can run on 80 mV and charge a battery or super cap. Crazy crazy. More discussion about it here.
There is a company called "Mean Well" that has been around since 1982. What is the funniest electronics company name you've ever heard of?