The Amp Hour

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Contests, Ham Radio & TWIT.tv - Ham, Spam, Thank You Ma'am May 10, 2011

Show notes

[display_podcast] Lots of fun and lots of discussion points this week! We talked about schools, contests, more contests, ham radio, 3D transistors and our first Chip of the Week!

New-ish podcast about scientific computing. We found out about it when Ayah and Alicia from the Open Hardware Summit were on there.
Jason Struble (@strube09) linked here from his new page!
So did Steve Mackaay from his site about electronics and tool making!
Seeed studio (makers of the DSO Nano and other projects) are lowering their board costs.
Dave dislikes getting press releases from PR agencies, especially when they don't have links to the press release itself! Regardless, we still managed to spread the word thatElement14 is integrating some board manufacturers into their site and the popular CadSOFT EAGLE tool.
Dave and Chris are still down on the interface that Element14 and others use as their social media platform. If you don't like it, email some people at Element14 or leave feedback to let them know.
Facebook more effective than Twitter? We wouldn't know because we don't have a Facebook page (yet). Please leave your thoughts on the matter below.
Googler in the house! Welcome Ian, and thanks for letting us know you're here!
Chris is considering getting his ham license to start building radios. Tips appreciated!
As mentioned on the Low SWR podcast, Leo Laporte is starting a new show with Bob Heil of Heil Sound (microphones and other audio gear).
Leo announced their theme song was composed by Joe Walsh (of the Eagles)...who is also a ham!
New shows should be easy for Leo in his brand new, badass space!
Previously mentioned Touchstone Semi just announced a design contest using their new component, the TS1001.
- Confusion about how much power can be used. Less than .8V? That's the minimum rail voltage! Please clarify!
- Confusion about why they are collecting designs. Encourage people to open source the designs! (OSHW is the license of choice!)
Dave got third place in the My Tektronix Scope contest! Thanks for all the votes!
Intel announced their 3D transistor structure for the 22nm node. Check out the pictures for more understanding of how they work.
Chip of the Week: The LT4000, a fancy battery charge controller we noticed in Electronics Weekly magazine that uses the compensation pin on a DC/DC controller to control how the battery should be charged. A complex and intriguing solution for battery problems!
Should colleges charge more for engineering degrees? The "logic", as explained by University of Nebraska at Lincoln, is that engineering grads make more after graduation.
An awesome hack (via reddit) using an AVR as an RFID tag, by taking advantage of the input pins protection diodes to rectify incident power. Great article, great site!

Wowsa! That was a lot! But DON'T PANIC!

Chris and his recording setup — **An Interview with Jeff Keyzer - Exhilarating ESC Escapades** May 04, 2011
Show notes

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This week is another three person episode! Chris & Migthyohm Jeff are jury-rigged up in a hotel room at the ESC conference.

New startup kit business Nerds Like Us

Sebastian (@sgtech) linked to us on his blog

Chris & Jeff visited Halted Electronics & Weird Stuff

Dave retold the Robert Cringely's DEFCON hacker conference story

DealExtreme are selling ripoff's of an Adafruit kit

Dave talks about a Sydney TAFE initiative to get high school girls into electronics, and the inevitable boy vs girl argument starts.

Talk about support networks for consultants. Dave announced he is also now a consultant.

Talk about the Noisebridge Hackerspace.

The In-House Google Hacker Space

Philips are using proprietary AAA batteries

TI are now using Ramtron FRAM.

Chris recording in the Hotel room at the Hilton:

Adafruit, Chip heist, Hackerspaces - The Kit Conniption Apr 26, 2011

Show notes

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This week focused mainly around building a kit business, namely keeping costs down, keeping revenues in check and how to license your project.

Jigish linked to us from his site. Thanks!
The Nottingham Hackerspace, Nottinghack, was pushed out of their old space and needs help funding a new one.
Can hackerspaces thrive in a non-urban setting?
$37 Million worth of flash chips were stolen! And the dumdums were caught when they tried to sell them! Facebook has the details behind a new datacenter online. Looks like quite the fun engineering problem to get it all powered.
Chris is going to ESC and will be reporting for Element 14. Also doing some video from the show floor with Jeri Ellsworth.
Jonathon Straub wondering about the merits of starting a kit business for his board etching controller entry for the 555 contest.
Dave was offered $1000 to do videos walking people through the aspects of board design, start to finish.
What kind of license should be used for home projects? Here at The Amp Hour, we like the Open Source Hardware License or sometimes the CC-NC license.
- Ladyada of adafruit has an older article of the benefits of OSHW over CC-NC
More IP cases being pushed in China, but not to anyones benefit.
Texas Instruments has been "deputizing" people to be unofficial spokespersons for the company on social media outlets. Could have some interesting side effects, but they need to keep it laissez-faire.

Dan Pink, Dual Core, level translators - Mumble Mumbo Jumbo Apr 19, 2011

Show notes

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A few audio snafus this week, but we decided to leave them in for the “real experience”. We’ll get it eventually.

- Chris and Jeri are broadcasting a live video show to announce the 555 contest winners.
- Dave is stressing about the Tektronix contest. He's trailing in votes!
- Jeremy Blum was featured on The Discovery Channel! Awesome!
- Dave hates standby power consumption. The Agilent 3000 series scope has 6.5W standby power!
- Chris missed out on the trend of NerdCore Rap!
  - Chris found out about Dual Core from the recent tweets about Notacon in Cleveland.
  - Dave enjoys the movie, Nerdcore Rising about MC Frontalot.
  - MC Frontalot's most recent video.
- Chris has been reading Dan Pink books lately, because of the video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

- Dave enjoys the TI TXB0104 voltage level translator and had a fun time trying to troubleshoot the circuit.

And the Article explaining some of the mysteries

The MathWorks has released a C compiler for MATLAB code for translating designs. Won't this hurt young engineers?
China starts to feel some outsourcing pain as Foxconn looks to move some manufacturing over to Brazil. (the mistakenly posted UMC story is here)

An Interview with Jeff Keyzer - Comical Keyzer Comes a-Callin' Apr 13, 2011

Show notes

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Jeff Keyzer of Mightyohm.com joins us this week to talk electronics and his new comic book!

Jeff Keyzer and Mitch Altman and Andie Nordgren just put out a comic book called "Soldering is easy!". Great resource for those just starting out and a preview of a book to be published later this year.
Jeff will be at the Bay Area Maker Faire next month, teaching classes.
He also will be at the Choas Communication Camp in Germany later this year (the place where the Hackerspace was born).
Chris found out about all this from the Hackerspaces Mailing List.
Dave is unabashedly asking people to vote for him in the Tektronix Scope Contest! Dave's video is about the piezoelectric effect in probes.
Henrik (@hspalm), one of our WOTW alums, writes in about his new project to characterize DIY shipping costs. Could be a good launchpad for a wiki-type site and drive some change at these organizations.
Digikey has a new community that seems destined to flop right out of the gate.
Instead, they should try to be more like AVRfreaks or BeagleBoard, which are more targeted and detached from the company.
Electric Vehicles
- Chris had the opportunity to hear Bob Simpson, of EVdrive.com, talk about his conversion and upcoming business venture.
- New idea is V2G or Vehicle-2-Grid, uses cars as load balancing while they are parked in the garage. Don Tuite has a good rebuttal to the practicality of this in a recent Electronic Design article.
- Why doesn't the Toyota Prius have plug-in capability?
Dave is putting up new lighting in the lab. LED for total lumens needed is still impractical. Dave went with fluorescent to cost and light output.
And finally, in the WTF column, the US Navy is working on a new lighting scheme: a laser weapon! Good gravy!

EEVblog, National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments - The Chinese Clairvoyancy Apr 06, 2011

Show notes

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Whoa! Some big news this week!

Chris has a new rig in the mail. Should help future Amp Hour podcasts.
Dave officially has left his day-job at Altium (never before spoken directly on air before!).
The company is moving to China, as stated in their official press release.
In other news, Texas Instruments has bought National Semiconductor!
Likely due to some of National's past history and decision making.
Some companies keep their computers off the internet, similar to the Iran computers that STILL got a virus (here's a TED talk about that hacking mentioned on here before)
April Fool's Jokes!
- Dave pulled a fast one over on everyone about the 555 timer.
- Brian Fuller of EEtimes/EElife about Obama replacing his cabinet
  In a stunning policy move, President Barack Obama reshuffled his entire cabinet today, replacing the existing members entirely with engineers from industry and academia.
  “This move to change the makeup of my cabinet is long overdue,” Obama said. “For too long Washington has been dominated by insiders who have no notion of things like Planck’s Constant or Moore’s Law, who wouldn’t know an IC chip from a potato chip, who can’t distinguish electronics design from fashion design. This is change we can believe in.”
  
  “Our country’s economy, indeed its future, rests in the hands of engineers, the very professionals who invent the future. It’s time for that to be reflected in the highest circles of power,” Obama said, noting that countries such as China and Egypt have heavy engineering representation among their political cabinets.
  
  <POOF!> And then I woke up and it was April 1st!
  - Chris is not sure why this tricked him so well...
- Sparkfun talks about their soldering iron kit (which requires another soldering iron)
Dave apologizes to Jeri for a mis-speak during last week's episode
No more design contests for Chris, Dave or Jeri this year, but listener Gary has a great idea for a 12F629 based contest. If people are interested, tell Microchip their customers are interested in competing!

Big Business Buffoonery Mar 29, 2011

Show notes

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No guests this week, but lots of rants and items! Suggest future guests you’d like to hear either in the comments section or on the Suggestions Page.

Mike Cowgill is building an LCR meter. Looks like a really cool build!
Welcome to Adam Ward, who recently started a new site and gave us a nice plug. Good luck with the new projects!
Why did National Instruments do away with An Engineering Mind? We would have loved to see that continue and they wasted a good brand.
Friends don't let friends go into finance. An article about how engineers started coming back to design, but are trending towards trading garbage CDOs.
Dave has a bird problem, but doesn't like how Americans all want him to shoot the birds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMEAUXa3RAI

Listener Patrick York writes in about a great site showing off all of the old RadioShack catalogs! Awesome bit of nerd history.
Eduardo writes in about how HP open sourced one of their financial calculators. Dave already know about and talked about it way back in the fledgling days of EEVBlog.
Who needs a calculator? Endolith on Electronics StackExchange writes about how Wolfram Alpha can easily convert between units. And give you some awesome bonus calculations.
Hameg released a new scope weeks after the Agilent one Dave reviewed. Why do things seem to come out at the same time?
Touchstone Semi, a new analog chip company popped up on Twitter and is pushing new niche products.
Hackaday looking for a full time hacker, though not for much money! At least in California. Would equate to earning 9-12k in Cleveland.
- MakerDino started a new site in response to show he'll do it for free: HackAWeek!
Design Contests:
- The 555Contest is wrapping up this week (judging)
- Dave is judging the Renesas Rx Design Contest. They only got 30 entries, but it's a different type of contest.

An Interview with Jeri Ellsworth - The Ternary Tussle Mar 22, 2011

Show notes

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The Amp Hour – Now with 100% more guests! Welcome, Jeri Ellsworth!

C vs. assembly language. Jeri still uses asm, Dave has in the past but favors C, C stands for Chris, that's good enough for him.
Management of projects could improve projects, but not much can help code reviews.
Jeremy is done (for now) with his Arduino videos. More types of uC's to come!
Jeri's encounter with misogynistic bus gadget maker continues. Peter Bartok really dug quite a hole.
Continuing of misogyny in the electronics world, Edmund Optics' new catalog has made a stir, just like the one 4 years ago.
Chris hates that the first thing tech magazines started doing was talking about supply shortages (as people were being pronounced dead and missing).
Dave thinks being female will help you stand out in the job marketplace. Jeri suggests to stand out in any other way possible. She also mentions how much more difficult it is once in a workplace.
Bad way to stand out: being a white collar criminal. Tyco execs sent to jail and have huge fines for embezzling over $600 million. May explain the name change to TE Connectivity.
New Kickstarter project has first proto boards in: An open source USB protocol analyzer. Sextupled the funding request (!) and looks to be a great project.
- Fund your favorite project, likely found under the "Technology" section of KickStarter.
- The Australian version of KickStarter is called Pozible.
Looks like another Open Hardware Summit is on the horizon, set up by the wonderful folks at BugLabs.
Go Gear Go!
- Dino suggests a printed sticker breakout board called Protoflex. Pretty cool! (and expensive)
- Alan Yates (@vk2zay) suggests a set of SMD component boxes for storing teeny tiny parts.
There's a whole conference for printable electronics!
Jeri is considering printing her own chips, much like the folks the referenced her on video.

AD620, DesignSpark, Instrumentation Amplifier - The Rant Rhetorical Mar 15, 2011

Show notes

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Chris has a new bench!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l7y-67xRo4

New podcasts!
- Vintage Volts is a podcast about electronics "back in the day" by Jeff Salzman.
- The BeagleCast is a new podcast from the folks at BeagleBoard.org.
Jaime (@jpwack) is the awesome dude who put together the text and processing behind the final Widlar poster.
Tell your favorite chip vendor to get on Twitter!
Dave doesn't like that Atmel uses a broken system to download programs. Shouldn't have to re-register for each download.
Instrumentation amps are powering future applications of EEGs as a control device. One exampled discussed was the AD620.
Why is Tyco switching to TE Connectivity? Re-branding is a waste of time!
RS DesignSpark recently released their 2.0 software version. Also, we found out that RS = Allied.
What will happen when the world runs out of jobs? NYT article on the falling demand for brains. Has already happened for lawyers.

Bob Widlar, Electronic Design, FIRST Robotics - Monday, Meta Monday Mar 08, 2011

Show notes

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Protip: If you don’t understand the title, think U2…

Corrections
- It was Electronic Design, not Design News with the new radio show we mentioned last week. Sorry!
WotW (our last?)
- Lucas Weakley writes from Florida to show off his bench and some kind of device in a pelican case.
- Our first female WotW submission, Irmi from Austria! She shows off her bench.
Soliciting feedback!
- We want to hear your thoughts about changes to the show!
  - Should we bother with a live section? A chat room?
  - What do people think about some small sponsorships of the show so we can use the money for improvements?
  - A project show off/cry for help segment?
- Please leave your thoughts in the comments below or on the EEVblog forum page about this topic.

Suggestion from a listener

- Natalie Portman used to be a nerd! Awesome! She was an Intel semi-finalist. Check out the video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ64G7AYsFw

Rants
- Why do the likes of EDN and EETimes think pop ups are effective? Tell your chip suppliers to not advertise like this with them anymore!
- Nor buying covers of magazines for that matter. Silicon Chip Magazine is known to expressly forbid this.
- Chris hates how the defacto prize in competitions is an iPad these days.
Discussion Points
- - Dave likes the new boards he ordered from ITead. Cheap and decent!
  - "The New Cool" by Neal Bascomb is a book about the FIRST Robotics competition. Great interview on the Diane Rehm show with the author and Dean Kamen, the contest founder and head of DEKA research.
  - Should apprenticeship be a path towards engineering? Discussion with the author of "Shopclass as Soulcraft" on Boston public radio.
  - While talking about the process of "Muntzing" a board (systematically taking off components to reduce cost), we also talked about Bob Widlar and Paul Rako's recent article. Here's Chris' poster idea for all aspiring chip designers to hang on their cube wall.
A high res version for printing

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