The Amp Hour

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An Interview with Jeri Ellsworth - Carnassial Chip Chemicals Jul 19, 2011

Show notes

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Our friend and previous guest, Jeri Ellsworth, returned to the show to talk about her latest projects. And holy wow, they are pretty great!

Jeri discusses the process of making transistors in your home using household chemicals, silicon wafers and a small kiln or oven. More info on her process of making the chips over at her recently created "JeriEllsworthJabber" channel.
The making of a silicon ingot (we called it a boule on the show)
Later, the Japanese industry perfected some of the processes.
These days, discoveries come in the form of creating an all organic processor.
In the silicon process used today, they are creating 20 nm line widths while still using 193 nm technology!
Jeri is talking to Intersil about doing some work for them. Dave mentions that it's important for chip companies to get their names out there
An EEVBlog forum member pointed out that the Fluke87 removed expired patents on the latest rev.
This Day In Nerd History: Intel was incorporated in 1968. The founders were Andy Grove, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce.
Jeri explains more about her Software Defined Radio mentioned on a previous episode of The Amp Hour.

Not as many links as usual, but that's because we were too busy talking about electronics (as requested!). Keep an eye here for a video later today.

Vafrous Video Vaniloquence Jul 12, 2011

Show notes

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql7J_tFBVfY

Our initial try of Google Plus “Hangouts”! Hopefully all the interuptions and the concentration on a new medium didn’t interrupt our usual shabby quality of podcast (thereby downgrading our rating to “godawful”). We had fun and hopefully will be able to use it to pull in guests in an easier way and somehow get back to the shabby quality everyone is used to!

This Week in Nerd History:
- Nikola Tesla was born and reddit was celebrating. There's a video explaining him to anyone who's never heard of him. Alternately, stick your finger in your electrical outlet, he's to thank!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEJNJ0rFSe8

- David Jones (fine, Bowie) recorded Space Oddity 5 days before the Apollo launch and released it on July 11th, 1969. He also played Nikola Tesla in "The Prestige"
Everything is in beta at Google, it seems. They recently cancelled their power meter and Microsoft followed suit with their "hohm" service a few weeks later.
Google+ is fun but do we need more social networks? Chris likes it for the video. Dave likes it for not being Facebook (like XKCD said it)
Last shuttle launch was this past week. Neil deGrasse Tyson had some choice words and showed obvious disappointment.
The open source DMM idea was advanced a bit further by a new member of the EEVforum. Great use of Google Sketchup.
The new DMM could use the recently released Open Hardware License instituted by CERN. The mailing list also says it's ok to say "Open Source Hardware".
Dino from Hackaweek of tried building the USB "cough switch" we discussed last time. Ended up learning a lot from a webinar about USB.
The Amp Hour has a YouTube account (but might not get used right away because of length restrictions on YouTube videos)
WTF?
- Cleveland apparently has a semiconductor company! Cool! It's called ER Semiconductor and they make image sensors.
The Phillipines is trying to boost their chip industry by sponsoring the design and manufacture of a new microprocessor, the Rizal.
Why bring the chip company to you when you can hire out of Silicon Valley? Huawei (out of China) is expanding a design center in SV.
May be due to the fact that manufacturing in China is less of a deal than previously, according to a recent Time Magazine article.
Shoutout:
- The ham community. Chris was cleaning out his inbox and amazed at how helpful the community of "elmers" is. Unfortunately, the community is shrinking and mentors don't create interest in subjects.
More videos like the one of Shatner explaining microcontrollers. Sponsored by Bell Labs and hosted at the AT&T tech channel.

The YouTube video of our show should be up shortly but can be found over at Dave's YouTube channel for EEVBlog.

555 Footstool by EMSL — **Callow Cough Coverups** Jul 05, 2011
Show notes

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What would be the best way to create a "cough switch" or "kill switch" for a USB based podcasting microphone?

EMSL created an AWESOME 555 Timer Footstool. Such a great replica!

Design Spark corrected us on what their new plugin does, in relation to Google Sketchup.

Dave is wondering what kind of criteria to use to evaluate all different CAD packages objectively. Let us know in the comments!

Harry from Robogaia linked here. He just started a new business from his home!

Richard (@SJGadgetGuy) also linked here from his new site. Thanks!

Dave recently fixed a Leapster for a friend's child.

Great segment on PBS about the Maker movement and how it can help education.

More sexist marketing for electronics, this time from PCB Pool.

Cool walkthrough tour of Advanced Circuits board house on Base2.us. Shows just how many steps are required to make a board!

The printed electronics battle rages on! Dave may have won the battle but Chris will win the war!

A recent(?) announcement about a pen that can draw conductive lines between components.

A recent IEEE Spectrum article discusses a soup of suspended nanotubes could help fabricate new transistors.

Datasheet of the week! A Hammond Mfg datasheet has a rotating 3D model built into the datasheet. Cool!

EEVblog forum members working on an open source DMM. Need to watch out for Kickstarter pitfalls.

EE Times article about a recent TI conference showcases the technology they'll be focusing on (and likely other competitors will follow suit):

Medical electronics, especially for personal instrumentation (would you like a portable ultrasound unit to see where your vein is, before we stick in that needle?)

Touch responsive and touch-feedback haptics for communications and entertainment devices (feel that screen vibrate locally, as you strum the virtual guitar strings)

Microcontroller-based digital power control (so long, analog closed loops)

Power management for photovoltaic panels, portable batteries, and electric and hybrid electric vehicles (EVs, HEVs)

Smart energy grids, power monitoring and home appliances

Advanced motor control, with smarter algorithms and with improved drivers and FETs

"Soundbar" electronics for turnkey home-audio system designs

Data acquisition ICs and subsystems for harsh environments, -55⁰C to +210⁰C (definitely not for the "casual" board designer)

Superspeed USB (USB 3.0) transceivers, which push the standard to 5.0 Gsps raw data-transfer rate (10× USB 2.0) while improving power efficiency, maintaining backwards compatibility, and enhancing data-transfer efficiency

Analog Devices, Design Spark - Unusual Usenet Usurpation Jun 28, 2011

Show notes

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This week focused more on electronics! Think we talk about something too much or too little? Let us know in the comments!

- Chris finally got a chair and wowsa does it make a difference!

Finding parts online can be tough with distractions, apparently extended internet use can affect the brain. What's a datasheet hunter to do?
If you're still a USENET junkie, Dave is on the sci.electronics.design (accessible through Google Groups).
Shoutout to Junko Yoshida for some of the great articles she writes. Really enjoyed the piece on "The Land of the Rising Silence" when she visited Japan.
Students in the US can get Amazon Prime for a year (Chris got 1-night shipped his chair for $4). Dave dislikes how they won't ship anything but books to Oz.
Dave has been looking for the lowest power 16+ bit A/D converter he could find. All told he found 2412 from over 24 different companies. Crazy!
COTW: The AD7691 from Analog Devices. 18 bits and only 108uW @ 8kHz. Wowsa!
Speaking of low power, our friends from Touchstone Semi have been getting some press from their initial announcements. They're 2nd sourcing components from Maxim IC...hopefully without any issues.
Design Spark has a new plugin for their free CAD software that allows 3D models (incorporated in version 2) to be exported to Google Sketchup. Cool!
With the CADspan plugin for Google Sketchup and 3D printing, it's conceivably possible to make an entire prototype for <$100.
Dave looking for preferences on CAD packages for future OSHW projects. Your opinion?
Have there been any large-scale open source hardware projects? Chris and Dave can't think of any.
Obama announces robot initiative. Only $70 million but the idea is great. Won't be creating jobs anytime soon though!
This Day in Nerd History:
- June 26th (oops!) -- Maurice Wilkes was born. Founding father of many microcomputing principles and techniques (in the '40s, no less!)
- June 27th -- The inaugural run of the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives. June 28th -- Milan, Italy inaugurated the first central European electricity power station.
Lightning Round:
- Company gets approval to store your Facebook data for future employers to look at. Yipes!
- The patent system in the US gets approval in the house. If signed into law, it'd be "First to file" instead of "First to invent'.

That's all for this week. Be sure to leave us some comments and find us on Twitter or Facebook!

**Bob Pease, Jim Williams - Posthumous Pease Porridge** Jun 21, 2011
Show notes

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Though it’s been a sad week for the field of analog engineering, we want to honor Bob Pease and Jim Williams’ passing. They were wonderful educators, engineers and people and we felt honored to even talk about them on the show. Please share any comments you might have about either of these two great men in the comments section.

Chris just returned from a friend's wedding and wrote an engineer's guide to Vegas.

Ivan Hamilton was nice enough to send along a copy of Silicon Chip magazine. It's a great! Ivan has some great projects of his own on his website!

Bob Pease died while driving home from Jim Williams funeral, doubling the loss of great analog engineers.

Paul Rako has a touching obituary and a comment section with many people sharing fun stories from the past

Bill Schweber also has a great piece about Bob, along with the story we read on air about how he resigned from Philbrick.

If you're in the Bay Area and would like to attend, EDN is remembering both Bob and Jim, tomorrow, June 21st.

If you're looking for a feed-only option to find out when the latest Amp Hour is posted, check out The Amp Hour twitter account.

If twitter isn't enough, we could buy a Top Level Domain (TLD) for $185,000. How about theshow.theamphour? or We're.nerds?

Friend of the show, Jeri Ellsworth, has been working on a great Software Defined Radio in recent videos. Chris tries to explain (wiki does better).

The price of LEDs to drop 90% in 4 years? How?

Dave needs a new camera. Is he at the high end? Or does he need to go higher?

Perhaps he should buy a pair of these videocamera sunglasses, being funded by Kickstarter. Could be a good way around this Apple DRM-at-concerts idea, recently patented.

New Android-specific processor being made by a fabless house in China? Could be similar to the ill-fated Java-based processor idea.

Other chip companies playing nice? AMD and ARM striking up deals to make chips talk better.

Get free copies of AutoDesk to get started with their software. Good for the hobbyists!

Other hobbyists are heading out to space! Awesome!

We’ll keep Jim and Bob’s families in our hearts. Be sure to read some of their old app notes (mentioned in the show) or watch some old videos (also mentioned in the show) to remember just how awesome they both were!

Apple HQ and Vintage Arcade Games - The Mothership Manifesto Jun 15, 2011

Show notes

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Very sad news, Jim Williams of LTC analog fame has suddenly passed away
The Art of Electronics 3rd Edition is the Duke Nukem Forever of the electronics industry.
Jeff reminisces about his old Commodore Amiga and mentions the Amiga on an FPGA, and Dave talks about Jamma consoles.
Agilent impress with their response to the U1272A Multimeter problem.
Malcolm Faed took Dave for a ride in the Mitsubishi iMiEV Electric car.
Jeff revealed he went for a spin in the new Nissan LEAF a few weeks back.
Talk about the excellent documentary Who Killed The Electric Car?
Apple are planing a new 12,000 employee "Mothership" Headquarters on the old HP Building campus.
Steve Jobs lobbyed for it personally at a Cupertino Council Meeting:
Dave hates the "virtual event" promotion UBM Electronics and EEtimes are doing for The Woz's ESC Fireside chat (link not added out of protest)
Dave mentioned the 20-30% first year salary fee Headhunters get for new hires. How much do they charge in your country?
Are 8bit Micro's dead? Why not use a 32bit ARM chip instead?
Jeff has been playing with the Papilio FPGA Board and the XprotoLab

Autorouter, Datasheets & Obscure Chips - Cloddish Collegiate Conversations Jun 07, 2011

Show notes

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The Amp Hour has a new server! Let us know if it is working ok for you.

Daniel Garrido linked here from his project site. Some great projects over there! (sorry if I butchered your name!)
Open Hardware Summit is on again this year and are looking for entries for presentations.
Bre Pettis of Makerbot will be on The Colbert Report. Fun interviews, Chris liked the Dean Kamen interview.
Dave re-worked the EEVforum because he was not allowed to start a forum with 'Altium' in the name.
Are Autorouters getting any better? Dave has seen the post from 'Silicon Farmer' before, comparing autorouters vs manual.
Windell from ESML told Chris about Toporouter. It looks 'wiggly', but apparently works well.
Australia and the US seems to have quite a few differences culturally when it comes to higher education. What is college/Uni like in your part of the world?
Peter Thiel is offering $100K to 20 students if they drop out of school and start a business.
Another way students to get $100K: Win the DARPA DIY Drones competition.
Chris and Dave correct their silliness about a camshaft vs. a driveshaft.
And even though we don't know much about cars, Top Gear and Car Talk are some of our favorite shows!
Dave has an offer to ride in an iMiev next week. Cool!
Chris talked to another Aussie last week and he mentioned a board in 2x3". The metrification of Australia took more than 10 years to complete!
Dave spent several days looking through 22 different manufacturers web sites and almost 400 devices for a suitable Lithium Ion charger chip!
Would be much easier for reading datasheets with something like this. S0 cool!
COTW: The AD633 is an analog multiplier and has a great application section of the datasheet. How did Chris not know about these??

Texas Instruments, OPA & Chevy Volt - Nerdy Neuroelectronic Neurosis May 31, 2011

Show notes

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Dave is a daddy! Congrats to him! See Dave’s intro video to his new “project” below.

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

If you have suggestions for who to have on the show, check out the thread on the EEVblog forum (or leave comments below)
Should the Jones' be worried about electromagnetic radiation sensitivity for the baby? Only if they're whack-jobs!
Cell phone radiation studies have been inconclusive, but why risk it?
New podcast out there from EEjournal. More podcast goodness to fill up your day! Should The Amp Hour double up 2x per week? Let us know!
Lucas Weakley, a WOTW alum, has linked here from his site. Thanks!
Is the tech bubble rising again? LinkedIn valued at $9 Billion! Craziness.
Still, hardware maker Freescale IPO'd at $1B after being previously sold for $17B. Nice job, bankers.
Should we care more about finance and politics as engineers? Those who make policy hold our fate in their hands.
World's smallest 3D printer (via adafruit). 50 micron resolution on the printing. Perhaps another small step towards printable electronics?
As medical electronics continue to shrink, perhaps they can use the small 3d printer mentioned above. The IEEE did a study of "convergent technologies".
Brian Fuller of EEtimes (EElife) is driving a Volt across the country! Pretty awesome gig, though we're not sure why it'll take 12 months. Perhaps the 90 mile range of the batteries?
Instead, he should drag race it by "slamming current", like the car White Lightning does in order to beat the pants off expensive cars. 1200 amps!
Chip of the Week: The op amp OPA171. A good all-around op amp with a tiny footprint, low power and really good specs!
How vigilant are people with their ESD protection? Dave caught flak on YouTube but figures no one is perfect with ESD, especially at home. Do you follow proper ESD procedures in your lab? Let us know in the comments!

Dave's recording studio — **BASIC, Chip companies & Robots - Pernicious Projects, Puppies in Peril** May 24, 2011
Show notes

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This week it’s back to just Dave and Chris…almost feels weird without more people! We’ll get more guests on soon.

Dave is in his studio with freshly made acoustic panels!

Throughout the week, Chris has been mistaking BAMF to mean "Badass MotherF*#$%@!" when in fact they've been talking about the Bay Area Maker Faire. Whoops!

The Hamvention also happened in Dayton. If you know of local electronic "Flea Markets" be sure to let us know in the comments!

The IEEE Spectrum had a special issue out about robots, it was a great read!

A full size personal robot? It might be cheap and a game changer, but still looks like an air filter. It reminds Dave of the Omnibot from the 1980's

Whatever happened to BattleBots? New competition is RoboGames, with many of the same elements. Good for getting kids excited/involved!

How many Multimeters does one man/woman need? Excavatoree from the EEVforum shows off his collection! (and has another 88 meters that aren't shown!)

The Maximite is a new board with a single PIC chip that has a BASIC interpreter for beginner projects.

Maker of the BASIC STAMP, Parallax, is now selling their Propeller chip by itself. And from the looks of it, they have LOTS of stock.

The Touchstone Semi contest mentioned in episode 42 of The Amp Hour have revised their contest rules. They aren't using the OSHW license unfortunately.

Corporate lawyers? As bad as corporate finance perhaps?

Intel announced that there are multiple phones being released in 2012 with Intel embedded chipsets. They recognize the market but aren't dominating like they do in PCs.

Google is moving into the car business and wants to be able to have computers drive cars in Nevada!

Maxim recently(?) changed their slogan to "Innovation Delivered". The second part is what they're not known for historically. What perceptions do you have of chip companies??

Our forgotten shoutout for the week, (Maker)Dino is up to his 8th HackAWeek episode! Great job!

Dave's continuing his trend of calling people out for bogus numbers! Getup.org in Australia didn't do their research!

**Chip of the Week:** The LT3080, a great "toolbelt" part that allows you to make programmable current or voltage sources quite easily.

As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the episode and anything we might have missed! Thanks! PS. To be clear, no puppies were hurt in the taping of tonight's episode.

88Multimeters-Excavatoree — **BASIC, Chip companies & Robots - Pernicious Projects, Puppies in Peril** May 24, 2011
Show notes

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This week it’s back to just Dave and Chris…almost feels weird without more people! We’ll get more guests on soon.

Dave is in his studio with freshly made acoustic panels!

Throughout the week, Chris has been mistaking BAMF to mean "Badass MotherF*#$%@!" when in fact they've been talking about the Bay Area Maker Faire. Whoops!

The Hamvention also happened in Dayton. If you know of local electronic "Flea Markets" be sure to let us know in the comments!

The IEEE Spectrum had a special issue out about robots, it was a great read!

A full size personal robot? It might be cheap and a game changer, but still looks like an air filter. It reminds Dave of the Omnibot from the 1980's

Whatever happened to BattleBots? New competition is RoboGames, with many of the same elements. Good for getting kids excited/involved!

How many Multimeters does one man/woman need? Excavatoree from the EEVforum shows off his collection! (and has another 88 meters that aren't shown!)

The Maximite is a new board with a single PIC chip that has a BASIC interpreter for beginner projects.

Maker of the BASIC STAMP, Parallax, is now selling their Propeller chip by itself. And from the looks of it, they have LOTS of stock.

The Touchstone Semi contest mentioned in episode 42 of The Amp Hour have revised their contest rules. They aren't using the OSHW license unfortunately.

Corporate lawyers? As bad as corporate finance perhaps?

Intel announced that there are multiple phones being released in 2012 with Intel embedded chipsets. They recognize the market but aren't dominating like they do in PCs.

Google is moving into the car business and wants to be able to have computers drive cars in Nevada!

Maxim recently(?) changed their slogan to "Innovation Delivered". The second part is what they're not known for historically. What perceptions do you have of chip companies??

Our forgotten shoutout for the week, (Maker)Dino is up to his 8th HackAWeek episode! Great job!

Dave's continuing his trend of calling people out for bogus numbers! Getup.org in Australia didn't do their research!

**Chip of the Week:** The LT3080, a great "toolbelt" part that allows you to make programmable current or voltage sources quite easily.

As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the episode and anything we might have missed! Thanks! PS. To be clear, no puppies were hurt in the taping of tonight's episode.

An Interview with Jeff Keyzer and Jeremy Blum - Audacious Arduino Arguments May 17, 2011

Show notes

This week we have our first 4 person Amp Hour! Welcome to the Ed McMahon of The Amp Hour, Jeff Keyzer, and the young star of the maker scene, Jeremy Blum!

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Happy birthday to Jeremy!
How do people say "Arduino"?
Friend of the show and 555 contest entrant, Jason Pruitt linked here recently from his new site. Thanks!
Alan did a great "thank you" video for the 555 contest.
Many of Jeremy's friends are going to internships over the summer for "financial engineering" (blech), similar to what we have discussed before. CJ Gervasi recently wrote about how this could be good for the financial services sector but we think it'll corrupt them all!
Lots of fun links about weather balloons and ham radio!
- Alvaro wrote in about a balloon that got to 116,000 feet! Woo!
- Troy Rank wrote in about a balloon documentary about a 2 day journey to find a balloon.
- And Bob Kochis wrote in about a balloon carrying a geiger counter, ostensibly to measure radiation in the upper atmosphere.
- XKCD mentions how much radiation you get while on an airplane.
Bob also wrote in about a new X Prize to create a "tricorder" like device that could diagnose anyone.
Google announces their ADK (Android Developers Kit) for all new phones and tablets.
Microchip announces a partnership with Digilent to create a PIC based version of the Arduino (sans trademark, of course)
Jeff will be at the Bay Area Maker Faire next week, judging the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge.

Thanks to Jeff and Jeremy for sitting in with us this week! If you’ve got comments about anything we discussed on this week’s show, let us know in the comments (or hit me, Dave, Jeff or Jeremy up on Twitter). Be sure to subscribe using the buttons in the upper right corner (RSS or email) to be alerted as soon as the next episode is released. Thanks for listening!

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