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:

Kismetic Keithley Katowse Dec 06, 2011

Show notes

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Chris reveals (to those that did not already know) that he used to work at Keithley Instruments and recently left to go work at an unnamed company.
Chris has the whole week off! He wrote more about leaving his engineering job on Engineer Blogs.
Keithley was recently bought by Danaher, who also owns Tektronix, Fluke, Seabird and Beckman Coulter (among many many others).
If you're interested, be sure to get the Low Level Measurement Handbook, it's awesome!

Dave is planning on going to visit a calibration lab in Victoria.
Dave also has been shopping for his new lab (3D model here). first purchase? A JAMMA console! Don't tell the wife!
If you're short on cash but still want a SMU, check out the CEE from nonolith labs! It's an OSHW SMU!
If you need funding for your project, there's new legislation to legalize crowdsourcing in the US (in exchange for stock)
Found on reddit, this guy in front his bench embodies he badass vibe!
An honorary WOTW, highlighted by Paul Rako's blog on EDN: Barrie Gilbert of Analog Devices has an amazing lab!
Non-sequitor of the week and too good to pass up, back in April 2010 there was a man arrested at the LHC who claimed he was from the future!
Chris visited an EMSL party last night via telepresence (photos by @Grathio here: ESML open house Flickr set)
Speaking of the future (segue there), MIT has discovered how to translate electrical to optical info on-chip. Should amount to an even faster chip in the future!
From the EEVblog forums: why do scope traces always come in color? What about people who are color blind?
The low end of the Test and Measurement industry: Rigol has dropped the price of their 100 MHz scope (DS1102E) to the price previously used for the 1052E.
A bit of holiday awesome: Alan Yates (VK2ZAY) is doing a great series of videos called the "Advent Calendar of Electronics". One useful circuit per day until xmas! Amazing!
Shonky Product of the Week: A USB cable that is hand made? Cool. A USB cable that costs $3549? Not cool.
Extra Capacity:
- A non-shonky audio guru uses high voltage SiC FETs in the output stage of his audio amps! He also has some great tutorials.
- For all you hams out there (or future hams who are studying, like Chris is), there's a great kit you can purchase called the K2. The older kit is all through hole.

This week was a lot of fun! Chris wants to thank all of his former co-workers at Keithley! Hopefully one or two of them are listeners now!

An Interview with John Edmond - Luciferous LED Lucubrator Nov 29, 2011

Show notes

This weeks special guest is John Edmond, the co-founder and Director of Advanced Optoelectronics Technology at Cree, Inc in Durham, NC.

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John talks about the history of Cree and how they built the company with no venture capital. Awesome!
Lots of technical LED talk on manufacturing, Stokes loss, Haitz's law and chemistries involved in making LEDs.
Cree got one of their biggest breaks supplying the blue LEDs in the VW Beetle and Jetta's of the late 90s models.
How do you measure the light output of a LED? With an integrating sphere!
One competitive advantage Cree has (over China, for instance) is their Energy Star compliance.
In China, Cree has gained market share by buying COTCO four years back.
Cree also makes SiC FETs and Schottky diodes.
How many LED's can you fit on one wafer? How long does it take you to test them?
Will the war of the currents finally be won by Edison? Should we have DC power our homes for localized efficiencies?
Some of the other bulb manufacturers are GE, Osram (Sylvania) & Phillips. Some of the other LED manufacturers are Nichia, Avago and Osram.
Dave talks about doing the math on LED lighting for the new office and how the payback is 15 years. John claims something closer to 6 years.
John answers the million dollar question of when and how LED lighting will reach critical mass mainstream.
Those more interested in winning some of Cree's products (US only, unfortunately) can check out their contest site at Cree LED Revolution.

Many thanks to John for speaking on our show and for Ginny (Cree’s social media personality and the person behind the Cree Twitter account) for helping set it all up! It was a lot of fun!

Idiorhythmic IPC Inconcinnity Nov 22, 2011

Show notes

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Chris explains what he thinks Thanksgiving was about (or what he thought it was about, he's no historian).
The Daily Show had a segment about "Evacuation Day" and the history behind it.
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Happy Evacuation Day

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook
Ask our listeners: How many hours do you work in a work week? How much is the norm in your country of origin?
Chris's friend Dave wrote about the surprises of going full time as a consultant.
Dave mentions that on the software side, jobs on sites like Elance are underbid by overseas contractors.
Chris loves an article from an IT consultant with some tips on how to be a good consultant to hire.
Though Dave did not show much interest in ham radio in general, he did decide to go hang out with them!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysv4SNLwM20
Chris is still looking for more people to join him in getting a license by the end of the year!
If you want to study, there are study sites and practice exams out there.
Chris has been looking at buying a snowblower and has looked at making it autonomous. There is even an autonomous snowplow competition!
Perhaps this is a future venture for iRobot and their Roomba platform?
Dave's office is ready for some wall hangings (post-approval from the wife, of course). He should hang up the Widlar poster!
The_Axis wrote in about their reuse of PCBs as tail stabilizers for a homemade rocket!
Eric the Embedded HW Guy wrote a post on EEweb about a homebrew solder smoke fume extractor.
Our occasional co-host Jeff Keyzer (@mightyohm) set up a Flickr photo pool with pictures of electronics benches. Add yours today!
Chip of the Week:
- Gleaned from the /r/nicechips subreddit, the ATtiny10 is a (tiny!) SOT23-6, 8-bit microcontroller with integrated flash (1K), SRAM (32B), ADC (4 channels/8 bit) and a lot more. Crazy!
Is there a standard footprint repository where someone can find IPC standard footprints (and maybe some of the odd ones too)?
On Ask An Engineer this week, Chris wrote in with a question about KiCAD and Limor and Phil were hopeful about the emerging XML standard from EAGLE, that it would open up the ecosystem.
Bunnie Huang of Chumby writes about buying an iPhone schematic on the street in Shenzhen and using it to source cheap parts. Chris calls this Coattailing.
Apparently phone makers need to recoup costs in the first few months of sales of their product because they are so quickly overtaken by the newest phones.

Next week, we will have John Edmond, the CTO of Cree, on the show! Wow! If you have a question for him or would like to suggest something for the show, either leave a comment on this page, the suggestion page, email us, send Chris or Dave a tweet or leave a comment on our brand new Google+ page for The Amp Hour.

Control loops & Flying probers - Quassating Quadcopter Quantophrenia Nov 15, 2011

Show notes

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Chris has been issued a challenge to get his (ham) technician's license by the new year. Can he do it? Do 10 others want to do it with him? If so, we can get Dave to sing on air! (or can we?)
Dave has a beef with the Agilent U1272A's data export capabilities. Perhaps Dave should append his own RS232 port like in a recent HackADay post?

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

The Tyne Metropolitan College in England have apparently ripped off Dave's PCB tutorial document and erased all the copyright info and attribution. Lame!
Flying probers are crazy to watch! See the video below, starting at 42s in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5q-XIrUK7w&t=42s

India is predicting electronics imports to top $400B per year in 10 years and want to mandate local production.
China, on the other hand, wants to move to a knowledge economy (and get rid of manufacturing in the process?). They also want 100 hackerspaces in Shanghai.
Dave has started his build of an ArduCopter, bought from Hobby King. Their shopping cart plays on human nature and an engineer's need to optimize.
Chris hates chasing problems around control loops. They're interesting, but frustrating.
From the EEVblog forums: should electronics be more math-centric? Chris and Dave don't think so.
This is how Jim Williams taught as well, with less focus on the rote memorization.
Engineering seems to attract people that are in it just for the money sometimes (they don't last). WSJ has a great breakdown of salaries (in the US).
According to Wired, the CEO of Ponoko is predicting printable circuit boards in <24 months. Dave doesn't think it's possible based on solder temps.
There's been lots of focus on 3d Printing lately, especially in the NYT. One article about The Wild West economy that will rise from the printer availability and another about the possibility of high quality 3D printing coming to a big box retailer near you.
This Day in Nerd History
- The dry cell battery was patented by Carl Gassner...in 1887! Good gravy, batteries have been around for a long time!

Be sure to add The Amp Hour on Google+ or subscribe to our RSS feed so you always know when our latest episode is posted! Or follow Chris or Dave on Twitter!

Radiation Chips & Old Package Types - Technocratic Toilet Troubleshooting Nov 08, 2011

Show notes

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Great comics from OhmArt! Be sure to check them out and buy some of their merchandise!
Tales from the cube talks about a label over an EPROM...has anyone seen this article?
Bill Schweber wrote about the persistence and insanity of engineers chasing problems.
Katie Luper is a former lawyer going back to school for EE! That's different...and awesome!
You can be a winner at the ACE awards! If you pay...
The Dangerous Prototypes 7400 Contest is over! (or is it? Dave wasn't sure)
We need more engineers in popular culture! Scotty (James Doohan) tells that over HALF of the Milwaukee school of engineering listed him as an inspiration for them joining the program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqedcvB8MKw#t=46s

Dean Kamen talks about the role of innovation and why we need people to solve problems...not create jobs.
31% of new grads don't have jobs?! Crazy. Also, this survey says that the majority of new hires make <$30k. Is this realistic in your area?
Chip of the Week:
- Maxwell's HNS-1000 Nuclear Event Detector...know when there's a nuclear event with a chip!
- NXP puts an ARM Cortex M0 in a DIP package!
Potential art for Dave's new office? A toilet made out of PCBs!
Extra Charge Capacity:
- A recent hour-long tribute to Jim Williams at the Computer History Museum.
- Old news for Dave, but RS232 transmitted over a wet string!

BeagleBoard successors, CAD & Robots - Haussmannized Halloween Hypostrophe Nov 01, 2011

Show notes

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Happy Halloween! Has anyone heard of people giving away circuits as a Halloween?
Did you know: CR2032 batteries reference the size of the battery? Chris didn't!
The BeagleBoard folks just released the BeagleBone! It looks great! Also, kudos to the folks at TI, especially those on the team.
Dave has a deposit in on the new place!
CadSoft is releasing EAGLE 6 soon! It will now use XML data.
Chris is working on KiCAD tutorials right now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu7P3L3hvo4

Download KiCAD for Windows, Mac or Linux.
The XML data on EAGLE 6 will help with diff-ing files. EMSL has a great article on the usefulness of visual diffs.
If people know of a good system for FPGA project revision control, please let us know.
Dave is a judge for the Dangerous Prototypes 7400 Contest! Lots of great entries so far!
The IEEE sent out a note to their email alert recipients about the less-than-desirable title for a recent email:

Please accept our sincere apologies for the headline in today's Tech Alert: "With the Arduino, Now Even Your Mom Can Program." The actual title of the article is "The Making of Arduino."

I’m an IEEE member, and a mom, and the headline was inexcusable, a lazy, sexist cliché that should have never seen the light of day. Today we are instituting an additional headline review process that will apply to all future Tech Alerts so that such insipid and offensive headlines never find their way into your in-box.

In brighter and awesomer news, The White House has a video encouraging young female scientists and engineers to "Start Breaking Stuff!". Great advice!
India has waaaaay more schools than they need for engineering students.
Robots are getting creepier and are now walking upright. The petman robot from Boston Dynamics...one step closer to the Terminator!
Reminds Dave of one of the robots from his childhood favorite show The Thunderbirds.
Robots are also useful, like the agrarobots in this recent hackaday post.
They're also a career opportunity as more and more jobs are taken over by robots.
Silicon Valley is looking for software talent as well, even outside of those with degrees. Learn on the job, right? Perhaps going from high school to "the pros" is a good way to entice engineering extracurriculars in school?
Or perhaps SV should adopt a model more like Germany's apprentice system and co-develop curriculum with schools.

Don't forget, you can reach Chris or Dave on twitter or can leave a comment on this entry!

Magnets, China & IEEE - Xenomorphic Xerox Xebec Oct 25, 2011

Show notes

[display_podcast] Welcome back Jeff!

Jeff's new setup is on Flickr! As are the pictures of his new cases for the Geiger Counter kit.
He cut out the new cases at the ATXHackerspace using the ULS laser cutter.
There's a new Design News Radio Show. You can listen...if you trade all your information.
Dave prefers using off-the-shelf cases from DigiKey.
Chris brought up the recent news from Xerox PARC and Thinfilm. They announced 20 bits of printable memory from organic transistors. Chris recognized this is not the print-at-home revolution he is looking for (but it's a good first step!)
The term "baud' used in communications comes from Baudot Codes used in telegraphy. Chris learned about it in the context of Radioteletype (RTTY while studying for a HAM exam.
Farts cause seismic issues.
Hackerspaces should install Ham radio stations.
Jeff suggests reading/following along in The Electronics of Radio by Daniel Rutledge.
He also is building a Norcal40 kit along with the book. This is a standard kit used in college electronic classes.
The IEEE refuses to publish papers already in the public domain. Why do people use the IEEE still? Couldn't people publish outside the IEEE?
Jeff has found it useful, especially for older (more general) topics. He read about the Early Effect in issues from the early semiconductor days.
China back in the news for stopping the sale of rare earth elements to outside countries, for a month! But why? To increase prices, silly!
The US is responding with research dollars for a program called REACT to try and reduce dependence upon these rare earth elements.
Shonky Product of the Week:
- From listener Wilhelm: The Fostac Maximus will harmonize your electro-smog. Just don't forget to give it a few months to kick in!

As always you can reach Jeff on twitter at @mightyohm (not mighty om, as Chris said in the show), Chris at @Chris_Gammell and Dave at @eevblog. Be sure to leave comments and questions in the comment section!

Silego, ADCs & Seismic Detection - Dave's Dingo Dystocia Oct 18, 2011

Show notes

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We had some network problems the last few weeks. If you have more problems, post them to the EEV Blog Forum thread on the topic.
Agilent has a firmware upgrade for their 3000 series scopes, Dave is claiming a victory!
Dave and Chris were both on the Tymkrs ZombieTech podcast. Lots of fun.
Eric the Embedded Hardware Guy mentioned us in his article in the EE Web magazine.
Dennis Machida, the garage engineer, mentioned us on his site. Thanks!
Ben Rampling wrote in to let us know about a new part of reddit, /r/nicechips! It's like a perpetual Chip of the Week! Awesome!
How are ADCs different if they're audio or precision? Dave explains his use of seismic ADCs.
Part packages continue their relentless march towards infinitely small! Chris posts pictures of the parts in his Google+ album.
New low power micro announced from ST in conjunction with MIT researchers. It has 0.54V turn on for some of the transistors...crazy!
Hackers and DIYers are taking the matters of their electric car diagnostics into their own hands and reverse engineering the firmware.
Dave (with the help of the EEV Blog forum) found the Micro OTP FPGA from Silego. Cool idea for a toolbox part.
The co-inventor of C and UNIX, Dennis Ritchie, has passed away. He did a lot for the industry and the world!
Now they have training for socially awkward students...to learn not to be so awkward.
Chris found a new picture at the computer history museum of Bob Widlar that is fantastic.
There is also a fun exhibit online of analog computers.
Still one of those socially awkward nerds but want to be among others like you? Go on a Geek Cruise!

OSHW, Makerbot & Memristo - Maundering Memristor Mathematicaster Oct 11, 2011

Show notes

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Dave lost the bid for a lab which we discussed last week. :-(
Shoutouts:
- Jim Williams' desk is moving to the Computer History Museum. Chris wants to turn it into a wishing well.
- EE Web continues to publish some intriguing interviews with people throughout the industry. We especially liked these two weirdos. Great format for a portal as well.
Sesame Street is taking on STEM topics and teaching engineering! As Elmo seems to say: Yaaaaay!
A fourth Open Source Hardware Company has gotten funding, this time Ayah Bdeir and her company Little Bits. Also relevant, there was an article from Phil Torrone, talking to Bre Pettis of MakerBot and their recent round of funding.
David Manners on Electronics Weekly writes about the growing gap and competitive advantage of large fabs...and how that will jack up the price of chips.
TI has decided to give away some of their chips and award senior projects that use 3 or more in a design with up to $10k. We see it more as a way for them to recruit new talent.
When do you decide (monetarily) to start working on a low sales-volume product to refresh it?
India launches a $45 dollar tablet ($35 after subsidies). Is it real and how did they actually get the cost that low?
Memristors are supposed to be in production by 2013 (and likely expensive) in a joint venture between HP and Hynix. It's weird that they are a whole new component that could be designed into new products, as well as the math that goes along with it.
This week's history is an entire site, devoted to transistor history. How cool is that?! Be sure to check out the oral histories with some of the inventors of key chips.
Shonky Product of the Week:
- The AMPilizer. A capacitor in a box! It's based around the idea of Power Factor Correction, but this should not be required in homes (esp. where Dave lives, as they don't charge for apparent power).

Please leave thoughts, comments and circuit diagrams in the show comment section! Thanks for listening!

Shop bots, 450 mm fabs & redFrog - Pick and Place Palillogy Oct 04, 2011

Show notes

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Dave is buying a new place! It's not a house in Cleveland, nor a Castle in Europe, but he'll be doing nerdy things there!
And as Dave likes to say, at least it's not Detroit (with all apologies to Detroiters out there).

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

Dave''s new place is walkable, unlike the campuses of Silicon Valley and the live-in campuses of parts of China (well, you can walk if you live there).
What does Dave need to get for his new shop? Let us know in the comments!
Chris thinks he should get a Shop Bot...only $7k! (and up).
Patrick writes in about his projects, BuildYourCNC.com and the Pick And Place spinoff, redFrog. Comparisons of the action below:

redFrog (starts at 4:25):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVlad7l9HvI

SparkFun’s MC384:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn0EKtLOVx4

And what can only be described as a “machine gun” pick and place (by Fuji)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7w5OUXwTZs

Dave and Chris favor an IR reflow oven on eBay or on Amazon over the hotplate method of reflowing boards.

Upgrading from 300 mm to 450 mm wafer processing equipment could cost up to $7 Billion! Yowsa!
I guess the $4 Billion Intel is pumping into upstate NY will only get them half a fab?
Government military spending allows for things like the Boston Dynamics Alpha Dog.
Shonky Product of the Week:
- The Blackbody, by Lessloss. What a heap of crap! Read all the things it can do, it's precious.
The downside to the "Financialization of everything". The loss of talent to financial engineering.
This Day in Nerd History:
- The true (and vindicated) inventor of the first computer, John Atanasoff, was born (in 1903). The Atanasoff-Berry computer was built in 1937-42 at Iowa State University by Atanasoff and a graduate student, Clifford Berry, it introduced the ideas of binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, and logic circuits.

That's all for this week. Be sure to leave us comments on anything you heard: good, bad or indifferent.

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