The Amp Hour

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

Natural Sciences
**The Amp Hour**

The Amp Hour is a weekly conversation about electronics and the people who design them.

Latest Episodes:

Cores, Digikey, Electronic Design - The Commercial Competitor Commencement Mar 01, 2011

Show notes

[display_podcast]

WotW
- Dino (who now has a uStream channel for his workshop)
- Mitch (@mitpatterson)
  - Bench with etching tools laid out
  - Panorama of home lab
Shoutouts
- DigiKey and Electronic Design Magazine have a new show!
Rants
- DigiKey and Electronic Design Magazine have a new show!
- We don't want to register for new shows or for engineering calculator apps for phones.
- The people who claim to have an idea that will "make millions" but want you to build it for them...because they can't.
Follow-Up
- Intel 14nm fab going to be made possible with new EUV tools.
Discussion Points
- Intel wants to charge to upgrade the performance of your existing CPU.
- Europe wants the chip fabs to come back. Apparently, they just figured out that manufacturing is important.
- Why are 9V batteries still common in cheapo DMMs?

As a reminder for those interested, the 555 Contest ends tomorrow, March 1st at 11:59 pm EST! Get your entries in now!

Freescale, Hackerspaces, Printable Electronics - Publish Popular Parts Please! Feb 23, 2011

Show notes

[display_podcast] Chris apologizes for the poor audio quality on his end, it was a new setup (again) while the bench is being finished.

What's your favorite movie about engineering? Piggybacking on an article by Bill Schewber article from EEtimes.
Bjork pulls apart a TV and tells us about it. WTF.
- "You shouldn't let poets lie to you"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75WFTHpOw8Y

Intel's new fab is going down to 14nm! Holy hell!
- Why Arizona? Why not somewhere with water? Like Cleveland! (we promise, the water isn't on fire anymore)
NY wants to bring an engineering school and high tech to NYC? If cost was no issue, perhaps?
Dave reviews another scope and we talk about system level design

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os1agF35jxU

The battle rages on! An updated roadmap for printed electronics! Chris tells Dave to look for low cost fares to the US!
You can print wax masks for chips now, perhaps another good step for etching.
A new podcast exists for hackerspaces, and not just on iTunes as we said in the show.
Another shout out and place to hang out, the Savage Circuits chat is on the 1st and 3rd Fridays of the month.
None of these are as big as the Engadget TV show. How do they get so many people? Good for them!
Dave talks about an article he read about a mathematician that predicts lottery tickets.
Freescale going public again after having been private for less than 4 years. Are chip companies too big to fail?

A new Amp Hour initiative:

Chip companies should publish their most popular parts. This would allow smaller manufacturers to target chips they know aren’t going away any time soon. This would help on price and longevity of the part for the designer and would allow manufacturing efficiencies for the chip maker as more people gravitate towards these more popular parts. Think about it, chip companies!

Agilent, Analog, Cold Fusion - Funding Fusion Is Not Futile Feb 16, 2011

Show notes

[display_podcast]

WOTW
- Kibi (a WOTW alum!) send in pictures of a past bench! And a past beefy power amplifier!
- Jeremy Blum (@sciguy14) submitted pictures of his work workbench on his personal site! Great toaster SMT reflow!
- Not submitted, but Steve Liebson did a video interview with Jim Williams and we get to see Jim's lab.

Events
- Analog aficionados meeting out in Silicon Valley. Sounds awesome!
Rant
- TI is SO thoughtful to let us upload videos for them to keep! Wow, thanks guys!
Discussion Points
- Dave did a review of the new Agilent Scope! Great teardown!
- Agilent moving manufacturing for low end back into the US. Is this a new trend?
- Karl's documentary still isn't done, but will be an interesting look into local electronics manufacturing in Australia.
- Science funding is under threat in the US, but Obama is pushing for more funding in next year's budget.
- Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains why science funding is important regardless.
- New wireless system for cell phones called "LightRadio" could get rid of towers.
- Dave turned down his wireless router, but does he have ElectroMagnetic sensitivity?
- Cold fusion is back in the news. Dave thinks it's viable in <20 years, based on a documentary he saw recently.
- Microchip is selling already programmed parts under different part numbers. Cool idea!
- At the recent SavageCircuits chat, EOD asked our opinion of the Parallax Propeller.
WTF
- DigiKey sent Dave a catalog?? And from Switzerland no less!
Ferudun Yurdabak emailed Dave with a photo is his old 555 timer chip, the exact same batch as Dave's one - amazing coincidence after 34 years!

For reference, the WTF soundclip comes from here: End Of The World

DJ and Jazzy Jeff Feb 09, 2011

Show notes

[display_podcast]

This week on The Amp Hour, Dave and Mightyohm Jeff Keyzer join forces to talk about:

Jeri was naughty and got thrown out of the Designcon conference!
Workbench of the Week from SnakeBite & Jeff's buddy Tony
The new one-stop EE shop, EEweb.com
Jeff rants about Eagle and the lack of IPC footrints
Forest Mims autobiography: Siliconnections: Coming of Age in the Electronic Era
Job interviews techniques of employers
Ridiculous packaging from HP and Newark
And how to sneak into a trade show

Dave's 1976 555 Timer - 34 Years old! — **Bowie and The Brown Note** Feb 02, 2011
Show notes

[display_podcast]

The 555 contest continues onward! Everyone is getting excited! Dave's classic 1976 vintage Signetics 555 timer chip (which he destroyed! RIP). Can anyone beat it?

WOTW

William

L-shaped bench photos

Laurence White

Photo tour of the workshop

Mr. J from Boston

Home workbench

Radio gear

Rants

Dave doesn't like how all those cupcakes he's sending to US Senators have been blasted with high energy rays!

Shoutouts

Dino Segovis linked here from his site!

MAKE has a new live show! Great production value!

Discussion Points

Dave plays the lotto!

Plastic transistors are improving in the lab...could help for future printable electronics.

Using lasers in board/chip construction followup:

@chrisindallas alerts us to PBeam technology for chips

And laser board cutters are already available for £80K

Cherish notes there are external forces pushing new methods to reduce chemicals in processing

Perhaps the economy is picking up? NI plans to increase headcount 19% next year.

ADI and NI have a free SPICE package that is pretty fancy. Bloated software but Chris liked it at first glance.

Microchip still charges $900 for open-source software you can download and compile for free.

Intel had a bit of a snafu with one of their latest chips. Time for heads to roll? Or is it a $700 million lesson like at IBM back in the day? (thanks to Eduardo for the link!)

Videos

David Bowie's Space Oddity

The Brown Note (Noise) episode on South Park

Mythbuster's investigation of the (busted) brown note theory

Super Awesome Sylvia

WTF, mate?

Another Gammell on YouTube has some cool soldering videos

555 Contest, Computer Museum, Octopart - The Green Pen Hornswoggle Jan 25, 2011

Show notes

[display_podcast]

Shoutouts
- Thanks to Mitch (@mitpatterson) for linking to us from his site!
- Alexander linked here too and asked about what to do when family and friends might not be interested in hearing about your latest project.
- Octopart now indexes Digikey as well!
- Electronics porn! Hi res photos of an old Microchip part.
  - Light can get into lots of parts and mess them up, not just the ones that are supposed to get erased.
WOTW
- Kibi
- Darren Landrum
Discussion
- Stories of audiofools: Green pens to "increase the audio fidelity" of CDs? Ha!
- Jeff from Mighty Ohm posted some awesome pictures of the computer museum down in Austin
- Chris and Jeri Ellsworth started a 555 design contest! Check out the contest site for more details and be sure to start your designs! The deadline is March 1st.
- Zombie magazines! Is Popular Electronics coming back to life? Many veterans remember it fondly, Dave included!

The Ben & Jeri Show Jan 18, 2011

Show notes

[display_podcast]

WOTW
- None! C'mon people! But we did hear that some people have been building benches, such as John S. Can't wait to see them!
- Chris is planning a new bench as well! And has been doodling in Google Sketchup to get an idea of what he wants:
Shoutout
- Many well wishes to any listeners in Brisbane (CRAZY flooding videos if you hadn't seen it). If your lab got hurt and we can help find you some new gear, please give us a shout.
- There's a new site in town that gathers together engineering bloggers, similar to ScienceBlogs.org. The site is called EngineerBlogs.org and is looking for writers if you meet a small set of criteria.
Discussion Points
- One of our listeners Mike Cowgill was venting on his site about The Ben Heck show and that it's not more inclusive of a larger viewing audience.
- He also wondered why someone like Dave or Jeri (and her new video series) weren't picked up by Element 14.
- But Jeremy Blum was recently tapped to do a new video series with Element 14.
- Element 14 is starting to sell Arduino's from their store. The beginning of price wars?
- Arduino? Open Source? Stop talking about them! Glossywhite from the EEVblog forum wrote about how he's sick of those terms.
- TI is trying (and possibly succeeding) in busting into the market though...with all their free stuff!
- And back to the debate about printing chips, why not use lasers instead (once they perfect the board cutting version)? Much more accurate than printing.
- Analog Devices and the Analogue Dialogue is still turning out great content. This month, there's a helpful article about choosing capacitors for linear regulators.
- Other resources from ADI suggested by listener Carmen were the Op Amp Applications Handbook and the Data Conversion Handbook (both awesome and free).
- US President Obama has been talking about Engineers, whereas past presidents have lumped them in with scientists.

NASA, WOTW & Modular Design - The NASA Nostalgia Jan 11, 2011

Show notes

[display_podcast]

WotW
- JP Wack from Santiago, Chile
  - Bench with awesome labels!
  - Other work
- Troy Rank from Rochester, NY
  - Bench page
- Stynus from Belgium
Followup
- The 6502 was laid out by hand by one person!
- A new study out found that ASUS was the most environmentally friendly company of large commercial manufacturers.
Suggestions
- Eddie suggested we were being hypocritical for railing against eWaste and promoting CFLs simultaneously. Chris and Dave want to have low power DC in the home to cut down on ballast electronics needed.
Discussion Point
- CES is going on this week but is way commercial. Who cares?
- Listener Brian J Hoskins is designing what he hopes will be a universal interface for instrumentation on a helium balloon he is designing.
- Is anyone younger than 30 still wearing watches these days?
- VOTE FOR DAVE in the iiNet Top Geek competition! (no need to sign up, just click the VOTE button!

EDIT: A new user-made promotional video about NASA (credit goes to reddit). Inspiring and beautiful:

http://www.youtube.com/v/oY59wZdCDo0

And one that’s much more rock and roll:

http://www.youtube.com/v/NXkuo1yihjs

Solar Cells, SparkFun, TSMC - The Detroit Debunking Jan 05, 2011

Show notes

[display_podcast]

Shoutouts
- Sparkfun has a new "grab bag" program for all their pick and place cast off parts. Could be some good pickins!
Rants
- Why does the IEEE still charge membership fees to unemployed engineers? And why does the cutoff for waiving the fee occur at 13k(and below)? Is that a realistic point at which people start being able to pay dues?
Discussion Points
- - California gives 100W incandescent bulbs the boot!
    - The mentioned EETimes article explaining the switcher circuit innards of a CFL
  - Why do LCR meters (like the kind Dave reviewed) output 6 digits of "resolution" through USB when only 3 are displayed on the device screen?
  - Electronic junk is back in the public eye. There is some research starting on the topic, but in the mean time 3rd world countries are still burning circuit boards to get the precious metals from them.
  - New site about electronic waste and recycling by the people that brought you "The Story of Stuff"
http://www.youtube.com/v/sW_7i6T_H78
- - And what contributes to electronics junk more than putting electronics in everything? While this can be a boon to new products, is it oversupply of cheap chips or actual consumer demand of the new functionality?
  - TSMC is planning a solar cell manufacturing plant in Mississippi. Good for the local economy (1k jobs, $500M invested). Are we nearing an inflection point where lower income areas in American labor (plus deals from local gov'ts) can compete?
  - New list out about trends in 2011 from JWT. Topping the Amp Hour's pick's from that list are: 3D printing (#1), Microbusinesses (#51), NFC (#56), Self-powered devices (#76) and Tap to pay (#88).
  - Also on the list was Detroit and the transformation it's going through currently, as documented in Requiem for Detroit.
http://www.youtube.com/v/yIgC5whSP8E
- Not all predictions go well...Ray Kurzweil responds to the scorching review in the latest issue of the IEEE Spectrum.
- And since we like IEEE Spectrum so much, we wanted to go over their list from a few months back about the top 25 chips of all time. Really great reading.
WOTW
- Ack! Sorry! We didn't get to it this week! Thanks to the submissions, we'll promise to do those first thing next week.