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:

Vecordious Vacation Variorum Feb 14, 2012

Show notes

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Chris is back from Hawaii, and we are joined once again by Jeff Keyzer of Mightyohm.com.

All about Sabaticals, and trying to get out of working for a living :->
We ridicule a Spray-On Antenna in a can!
We are reluctant to mention a new reality TV show called Top Engineer. Before auditioning, be sure to check out Joe Grand's experience with a Discovery Channel reality TV show.
The Mythbusters are producing a show called Unchained reaction
Jeff doesn't quite like the new $1300 Cube 3D Printer from 3D Systems, because they ain't playing the open source game. But it seems all Dave's predictions are coming true.
Dave is having 2nd thoughts about doing a through-hole PSU kit
Dave rants about several things, as per usual.
Jeff is headed to the Computer History Museum to check out the Jim Williams exhibit.
Jeff like this new book: Analog Circuit Design: A Tutorial Guide to Applications and Solutions

Next week on the show, we’ll have special guest Bunnie Huang! Get your questions in for him ASAP!

Jersey Jeff Jactitation Feb 07, 2012

Show notes

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Jeff has been travelling again:
He barely survived Berlin for New Years, what with their readily available fireworks, unlike Australia.
The Edison National Historic Park in New Jersey
Another surplus shop tour, including the TWR swap meet.
Will Detroit just make crappy cars again? or will they turn all Japanese?
Dave heard a big BANG on his desk, something smells fishy.
Jeff isn't too happy with TI's new MSP430 web based development environment
Will Raspberry Pie meet their $20 price target? Dave & Jeff think they might have a hard time.
There is a 6502 documentary in the works.

Electronics Flea Market — **Otiose Ontocyclic Opiniasters** Jan 30, 2012
Show notes
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Dave's choice of an Arduino as the brains of his new power supply is giving him strife.

They are manufacturing the 6502 again! Similar to how Rochester Electronics makes old parts.

"Programming (Hardware) is like sex: One mistake and you'll support it for the rest of your life!"

Chris is looking at a new project and considering new uC's and mp3 chips. Looked at Limor's (LadyAda's) Minty MP3 project and a few other projects people have done. Maybe MP3s aren't necessary?

People always have an opinion when it comes to programming!

The supply chain in the immediate area can affect electronics companies. Salary is a small part of keeping jobs "insourced".

Obama announced manufacturing initiatives as well, but are they realistic?

Dave was upset to learn about the *true* specs of the MCP4922.

What do you tell kids to study to be ready for jobs in 10 years? Dave got it right: whatever the field, be passionate. (Thanks to @Sheltoneer for the link)

Do the gray beards of SV have passion still? Why can't older engineers find jobs? Are there any "stable" engineering jobs?

If you can't find 'em, train 'em! Living Social is going to try and teach 24 software people from scratch. What criteria would be used to determine if you should teach someone hardware from scratch?

If you want to learn "startups" from scratch, check out Haxlr8r. You have until Jan 31st to apply for their hardware development program.

If you've got bare walls around your lab, Agilent is offering some fun posters (via reddit).

And by popular request from Dave, Weird Al's version of "I'll Sue Ya":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeXQBHLIPcw
*Thanks to Windell Oskay for the flea market picture!*

Ludibrious Luxating Layout Jan 24, 2012

Show notes

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Happy Chinese New Year! Find out how to say it on YouTube.
Or how to say it as a hardware engineer!
Dave wasn't able to get parts from AliBaba.
So is he a locavore now? Locatech? Ugh, terrible term. Dave's new boards are from NZ! http://www.pcbzone.net
Chris likes the LPKF S43, which can dispense solderpaste right after etching a board. If only he had 15k sitting around...
Looking at beginning a startup? Look at localized funding sources. The Cleveland Foundation is an example in Chris's hometown.
A new kickstarter campaign is looking to fund $30K in the next 7 days for a board cutter project. Is it lack of interest in this niche-ier piece of gear that prevents us from seeing an OSHW version of one? This one looks a tad expensive but quite accurate! Love the capacitive mechanism for board sensing.
The Open Source Ecology project has one on their roadmap. They were happy to hear from our expert listeners are now are looking for one more. Interested in helping with project management for the Universal Power Supply? Fill out the form below!
TI came out with a new chip that allows users to easily add WiFi to anything.
Dave got a creepy new webcam for his office.
Vendors continue to chase boundaries, such as switching speeds. Is millivolt switching a realistic goal for chips?
Chip makers also keep chasing 3D processes in their continuing quest for nano devices.
Kodak announced it's going into bankruptcy protection last week. They'll emerge as a niche player...because there's always a niche, no matter how bad!
On the EEVforum, "Aurora" clued everyone in to a free eBook available online about analog electronics from Leslie Green. Great resource!
Chris found out that Sergio Franco, author of one of his other favorite books, "Design with Operational Amplifiers and Analog Integrated Circuits" just released a new spiral bound book for a new class of his, "Analog Circuit Design: Discrete and Integrated".
Chris also found a copy of the 1987 Linear Technology Application Guide with AN1-AN21! What an awesome find! (though they're all available here)
Kent Lundberg (@DoctorAnalog) is reading all of Jim Williams' old app notes and adding commentary on his site, "Reading Jim Williams". Great to follow along!
We now have all of our files going through LibSyn! Let us know if you have any issues with it. Thank you so much to our donors!
Looking for a bit of fun? Check out these ridiculous "science" stockphotos.
Brad Lyster writes in about a tutorial about laser cutting a solderpaste stencil from KiCAD.
Dave likes being able to hold a proto or board in your hand. Chris wrote about how this is what keeps him motivated in engineering, just last night!

Thanks to Heidi & Matt for the Chinese New Year picture!

Alteritous Andy's Absquatulation Jan 17, 2012

Show notes

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Chris visited a FabLab today (not a fab!) to work on some projects and hang out with friends.
Chris has also been reading Neil Gershenfeld's book of the same name, FAB.
Melbourne had its first MakerFaire, though Dave was not able to go, unfortunately.
Dr. Howard Johnson offered rewards for finding errors in his book, much like Don Knuth did for his programming book.
Chris is officially a ham! His callsign is KD8RND! (Dave is warming up his vocal chords)
Do you prefer calling or emailing?
Andy--PhotonicInduction on YouTube--announced he's officially shutting down his YT channel (NSFW language possibly).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC-IYP1xjow
Dave got and has unboxed his MakerBot Thing-o-matic. Chris met one of the 3D printing competitors today from MakerGear.
This American Life on NPR had a great feature on how consumer products are made, specifically Apple stuff at Foxconn.
OpenCores is now taking donations for their development of an Open RISC processor.
Cory Doctorow had a good speech at 28c3 about the impending closing off of electronics systems in the future.
A process engineer managed to sneak some fun stuff out of a fab:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmrBs3BX9SQ
Dave is building a ArduCopter currently but new types of quads keep on getting released. The AR Parrot 2.0 has a 720P camera mounted on it and is only $300!
Friend and IT Guru Alan Garfield was miffed that MicroChip doesn't provide command line tools anymore. Are IDEs the only way, in the eyes of vendors?
Chris is making videos for the soon-to-be-released CEE (started on KickStarter)
Shonky Product of the Week:
- The HojoMotor is a perpetual energy motor based on permanent magnets (how original!). The video is frigg'n hilarious! Watch it before the site is shut down! ;-)
Chip of the Week:
- Listener Clifford Wolfe writes in about the LMC6042 because of the 2 fA (typ) input bias current for sensitive applications.
- Chris also likes the LMP7721, which specs 3 fA typical (Chris mispoke, the max is actually 20 fA).
- Dave and Chris like any chip that offers an upgradable option (through binning or otherwise)!

Got questions? Comments? Let us know below!

Dr Howard Johnson — **An Interview with Dr. Howard Johnson - Winsome Waveform Wizardry** Jan 10, 2012
Show notes

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Welcome Dr. Howard Johnson!

He has published two reference books that are a must-have for the field of high speed signal propagation:

High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic

High Speed Signal Propagation: Advanced Black Magic

Howard hails from Twisp, WA.

Martin Graham, the co-author of his book, was also his longtime mentor at ROLM.

Howard teaches a class at Oxford every summer. He also teaches classes throughout the US, both in public and private forums.

He also has published articles regularly at EDN and other technical magazines.

Other things mentioned during the show:

Chris mentioned his article about Bell Labs and the Trickle Down Techonomy.

Howard mentioned how the Voyager Space Craft actually experienced some cosmic ray data corruption, though it doesn't happen often on earth.

As connectors get scale smaller, signals get better. However, on boards as traces get longer, they also need to get wider.

To continue increasing the speed of modern day comms, Howard believes we need to move to Multi-Level Communication (as we always do with every medium).

The limits of channel capacity are governed by the Shannon-Hartley Law (referred to as Shannon's Theory on the show).

In "The Early History of Data Networks" by Gerard J. Holzmann and Bjorn Pehrson (there's a "synopsis" here...), they talk about torches being used in single and multichannel modes.

Howard helped define the Gigabit Ethernet Standard (with no help from "Ernie"!)

Howard suggests "The Theory and Practice of Modem" Design, by John Bingham as a good starter text on the subject of encoding and data transfer.

If you need a place to talk about signal issues, check out the SI-list, part of freelists.org.

The IEEE EMC society also is a great place to meet other designers.

At EMC meetings, they often watch related videos, such as the ones on Howard's website!

Howard responded to silliness relating to claims of "skin effect in audio cables".

The 90 degree question: Is it wrong to make right angles on your board layout?

This rule was propagated by microwave designers who were designing with 120 mil line widths.

Your board already has *tons* of 90 degree turns...in the vias on your board.

It's the added material in a right angle turn (beyond the normal width of a trace) that can add parasitic capacitance.

We had a wonderful time talking with Dr. Howard Johnson. It was great getting to know the kinds of work he does and the kinds of signal integrity problems he works with regularly. Please leave any questions you might have about the show or for Dr. Johnson in the comment section.

Fremescent Floccose Fortification Jan 03, 2012

Show notes

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Happy New Year! We hope 2012 will be a great year for The Amp Hour and all of our listeners!

- We have a new theme by Paul Stevenson! We love it!
- Chris has a ham exam scheduled for next Sunday!
- Dave has been chasing a hum at his new studios, he took a spectrum snapshot of it.
- Chris has been preventing noise with his new "studio enhancement"

- Acoustics is a whole field of its own, but is often coupled to electronics. The AES is actually the Audio Engineering Society, not the Acoustical as Chris thought.
- Shoutouts:
  - Randall Munroe wows us again with his cartoon about mnemonics to remember science terms, including crazy ones for SI prefixes and resistor color codes.
  - A music/tech enthusiast made his old computer gear sing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w68qZ8JvBds

- - Devin linked to us and put up a section to discuss The Amp Hour on the newly created OpSoFo, a place to talk about OSHW.
  - Chris was contacted about a cool sounding job for testing analog chips. Do people want us to post jobs? No recruiters, of course.
- More on the discussion about engineering education, including a discussion on the EEVblog forums started by "Pete in Texas".
- Chris thinks we should have remedial tinkering classes in colleges for more academically minded students (Chris would have needed these classes).
- The open source ecology project is looking for help designing their Universal Power Supply. If interested, please fill out the form at the end of this post. If you've never seen it, check out the TED video below.

Once your 50 top machines are done, why not try making a DIY 1GHz scope probe? Could save you LOTS of money.
Printing transistors could be a step closer with graphene suspended in polymer. Researchers at the University of Cambridge printed using a commercial printer.
If that's not quite your level, you can already print resist directly onto FR4 for making PCBs. There is a message board dedicated to doing this.
A new site talks about the downfalls of having 90 degree turns on your PCB. We'll verify with our guest next week, Dr. Howard Johnson.
This Week in Nerd History:
- In 1813 in York England, many Luddites were convicted of destroying equipment in a factory; they believed it was responsible for job loss. 17 were put to death (yikes!) because it was a capital crime back then (Chris wasn't laughing at people dying, but the ridiculousness of the situation). Many others were sent off to the English prison island...now known as Australia. Will we see similar rebellion against robots and the taking of jobs in the future? Will there be next generation Luddites?
The EU is considering instituting engineering passport cards, so people can practice engineering in multiple countries. Do you think certifying engineers is a good idea?
The electronics industry is set to grow 2.2% in 2012, according to Gartner. Hopefully these "noisy" predictions aren't being used to cut jobs!

Looking forward to a great year! Please leave us some feedback in the comments section below! Loading...

An Interview with Ben Krasnow - Sprauncy Saccadic Spintherism Dec 27, 2011

Show notes

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Welcome to Ben Krasnow! (Also seen as bkraz333 on YouTube)

- We decided we had to have Ben on the show once we saw his crazy LED in a contact lens video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHECpEhJdB8

- Ben started as a researcher/technician with a TMS lab, which led him to starting his own business, Mag Design and Engineering.
- That also led him to experiment with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for a YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUW7dQ92yDU

- This is just a single pulse, the commercial/research ones do a pulse train at roughly 30 Hz.
- Ben also has built a DIY Scanning Electron Microscope, with an oscilloscope used as a display:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdjYVF4a6iU

- But now, Ben is getting out of the magnetics business and into the tinkering business.
- And once Ben is done for the day, he kicks back and either has a glass of argonated beer or a skewer of meat cooked on thermite.
- Google Patents is a great source of ideas of things to try in the shop.
- Apple was recently in the news for patenting fuel cell technology, a possible hint towards their future (or not, often patents are published to throw people off).
- Ben tells us about all the gear in his shop. Perhaps Dave's new shop (below) could use some metal working equipment?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ZTjwRCO8g

- The education system is broken. Ben believes that its far too academically focused and not practical enough.
- Perhaps there should be a "tinkering" degree? Travis Goodspeed is getting a PhD at Penn in Reverse Engineering, which he did on the Girltech IM me.
- Stanford is re-upping their free participation online courses (similar to their recent AI class), now offering CS 101, Machine Learning, Game Theory, Natural Language Processing, Probabilistic Graphical Models, Software Engineering for Software as a Service, Human-Computer Interfaces and more.
- MIT is continuing their classes as well, now also offering a certificate of completion, perhaps the first step towards educational reform.
- Hackerspaces are another possible avenue for educational reform. Ben lives near Noisebridge but hasn't had the time to attend regularly.
- Ben prefers mechanical equipment and has other machines he wants before a 3D printer, which he demonstrates for elementary schoolers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDRh3X4zprg

Dave is getting a MakerBot soon! Awesome!
Other chemistry-type videos on YouTube are great (though they get tagged as "dangerous" because it's associated with bomb/meth making). Ben likes NerdRage's Youtube channel.
And at the end of the day, all of the electronics and chemistry videos are out-watched by his own cake-making videos!

It was great getting to talk to Ben, even though Dave had some technical difficulties. We can’t wait to see what he’s cooking up next!

Younker Youtube Yarling Dec 20, 2011

Show notes

[display_podcast] Thank you, thank you to all of our donors. We are currently shopping for Virtual Private Servers and will hopefully have zippy web service by the end of the calendar year! If you're still interested in joining the cause and helping out, please check out our Donation page. Thanks again!

Thanks to PStevenson for including us in his YouTube tribute song!
DigiKey ended up sending me a classical music CD as part of my (jesting) Digi-Wish:
Dave often has to deal with filling out an export form when ordering from DigiKey or other vendors.
He's ordering parts for his new power supply kit, which should be out in a few more weeks.
Chris thinks future designs won't need to design in LCDs because they can pipe data to low cost, standardized tablets. Dave disagrees.
Dave is in the middle of building benches for his new lab/office.
Dave having issues with a "short circuit" on a single plane of copper, according to ITead Studios(?).
There is a Mini Maker Faire coming to Melbourne, the first in Australia.
And if you're interested in all things Maker related, there is now a dedicated blog on Forbes.com about Makers.
If you're into 3D printing, there is a cheap one available as part of a Kickstarter project, the 2nd most funded project ever (thanks to @clothbot for the link).
The first most funded project to date was the TikTok Watch Band, which Dave used as a model when he designed his next-gen calculator watch.
Chris met a fellow alumni at a recent event who told him about the often-referenced Booz Allen study about money in R&D. Especially how this data gets misused as a reason/excuse to cut funding when this is a narrow-minded view of the data presented.
Listener Adam Ward wrote in about a recent Hackaday article that focused on a rip-off product.
If you're thinking about moving production to China, keep the air-pollution in mind; it could affect the long term viability of your product.

Dilbert.com — **Horrisonous Holiday Habromania** Dec 13, 2011
Show notes

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Welcome back Jeff! Joining us for some holiday fun!

Chris started a new engineering job today! Dave is getting the keys to his new lab today!

Jeff is attending DorkBot Austin tonight! Reminds Chris of PechaKucha.

What should we call a group of nerds standing around? Chris likes the term, "a grumbling of nerds".

Dave hasn't seen Altoid tins in the grocery stores, but has built projects in tic tac boxes, cassette cases and hammond cases.

Chris just got a new BeagleBone to play with! It's awesome!

Digi-key is doing their Digi-Wish again this year, so you can ask for something out of their catalog.

Chris wished for some of the classical CDs they stock at Digi-Key(?).

What's the difference between black and pink foam in electronics? One is conductive (black) and one is static resistant (pink)

Our wishlists:

Dave -- A spectrum analyzer, likely one off of eBay. The Rigol ones are too much for Dave so he needs to go older.

Chris -- A sig gen like the newer Rigol DG1022 because a certain Aussie's kit isn't available anymore. Jeff and Dave say Chris isn't wishing big enough.

Jeff -- Lots and lots of kits!

The adafruit Icetube clock kit.

The NixieKit NixieTherm thermometer kit (suggested by electroman-j).

The Fun Cube Dongle kit.

Jeff's new Ham Callsign is W6OHM! Awesome! Dave wants VK2EEV (but has to get his license first!)

Chris's co-worker did a homebrew solution for programmable outdoor holiday lights, controlled by text message!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77bTCBb8apc

We loved John DeCristafaro's (@johngineer) post on displaying a holiday image on an old scope with a micro!

Our past guest, Jeremy Blum was named the IEEE "New Face of College Engineering"! Awesome! He will be featured during national eWeek.

Itching to get your hands on an old micro? Try out the new Microbee Z80 kit, which is now available!

This Day in Nerd History:

As seen on today's Google Doodle, it would have been Robert Noyce's 84th birthday. He started Fairchild and Intel. Wow!

It was on this day in 1901 that Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio transmissions. They had been transmitted from his large transmitting station in Poldhu Cornwall England and he had received them in St Johns Newfoundland. (thanks to Alan Wolke for the suggestions!)

New contest from DesignSpark for using the ChipKit in an energy efficient application. Giving away 1000 ChipKits but you have to play by their rules.

Happy holidays to everyone! We'll have one more episode before Christmas but we wanted to make sure we could give you gift ideas now. If the holiday mood strikes you and you're interested in joining our cause of spreading electronics-nerdery the world over, The Amp Hour is now taking donations. This will help us buy more bandwidth and develop content for the show. We appreciate any and all help you might be able to give.

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