The Amp Hour

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Dave Is Back And Blogging! Oct 15, 2010

Show notes

Dave is back! And blogging from a hotel room, just like Chris did in episode 9 of the Amp Hour. He has lots of great videos he made at Renesas Dev Con and some good stories and experiences. On to the links!

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Shout outs!
- Thanks to Nathan from the Sober Newt for linking here!
- Thanks to Alan at From Orbit for linking here as well!
- Chris likes the wrist scope from Seeed studios. Dave says he wouldn't use it.
- Thanks again to Jeff from MightyOhm for helping us out last week. We look forward to having him on the show again sometime.
Tech News
- Arrow buys Nu Horizons, more consolidation in the distributor market.
- Actel bought by Microsemi, who wants to use the parts now that they might go obsolete?
- Farnell has an announcement on October 25th, we're guessing they'll just become Element14 officially.
- The BeagleBoard team has released the Panda Board!
- New Robot (video) podcast starting soon. Live hack every episode!
Discussion Points
- Microsoft has a new development platform called the Gadgeteer. Designed to work with .net.
- Dave is back from Renesas Dev Con! Check out EEVblog for all the latest videos!
- Chris visited his local hackerspace for the first time, the Maker's Alliance in Cleveland.
- Dave gave a preview of his talk with DJ Delore. Conversation about the Open Hardware definition. Why aren't open tools part of the open hardware definition?
  - Update not mentioned in show: EAGLE will have XML datafiles
  - Phil Torrone also discusses this may be a part of the 1.0 definition.
Rants
- The Gadgeteer mentioned above connects to Silverlight? Seriously? It's the antithesis of the open hardware movement! Gah! Plus the smallest program will be 64K? We don't like it so far.
- The IEEE has a crap article about social media. Not even going to link to it, they don't deserve it.

That's it for this episode. Keep your eye on EEVblog or YouTube, no videos of Dave's presentation yet but we'll be watching to see if he remembered to mention The Amp Hour!

Note: We still see random 502 and timeout errors which we think are still server side. Please keep trying to download the episode if it doesn’t work the first time.

Ardui...no Dave This Week? Oct 07, 2010

Show notes

NOTE: I apologize about the sound quality on this recording. Thanks to the Zoom H1 autogain (very bad thing) and recording in a cubby like desk at my house (nearly as bad as the autogain) I sound like a mouth breathing, key pounding cubby troll. I’m very sorry and I tried to fix it best I could. If you hear the occasional ramp up of background noise or mouth breathing, forgive me.

So did my Dave Jones impression fool you? No? I thought it was pretty bad as well. Dave is unfortunately under the weather and was not up to doing a show this week. In all honesty, he is rightly saving his voice for his upcoming trip to the US! Very exciting for him! And of course very exciting for Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory, as Dave Jones will be attending his taping! I know I’d be pumped!

Anyway, we were very lucky to have Jeff Keyzer of Mighty Ohm join me in Dave’s stead this week. Jeff explained more about his background during the show, so onto the links!

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Shoutouts!
- To you! Thanks to the 1000+ people that have listened to our podcasts!
- Thanks to Jon at TronixStuff for linking me to Silicon Chip magazine.
  - Jeff suggests Elektor magazine out of Europe. Similar style magazine.
- Thanks to William at HackersWorkbench for linking here!
Jeff was one of the first to receive an Arduino Uno board.
The ATmega8U2 is a big difference to the board, people are already hacking it.
It uses a USB to Serial stack written by Dean Camera.
Some issues but good response from the Arduino team.
"Getting Started with Arduino" by Massimo Banzi is a great starter book.
But not as great as Jeff's new book with Mitch Altman will be!
Getting young ladies involved in electronics is usually a matter of applications more than how it's taught.
How else can we get kids interested in STEM?
Who else can we get engineers interested in twitter? (BBC article on social media)

If we missed anything or if you have other magazines that are similar to Silicon Chip or Elektor, please leave them in the comments. Thanks again to Jeff for helping out this week!

NOTE: I apologize about the sound quality on this recording. Jeff actually went out of his way to try and get a good setup but then I go use my Zoom H1 with the autogain on (very bad thing) in a cubby like desk at my house (nearly as bad as the autogain). I’m very sorry and will try to fix it next week.

Open Hardware and Self Publishing Sep 28, 2010

Show notes

Most of this week’s discussion revolved around open hardware. The summit definitely provided some interesting conversation points, explained below. If we missed any links, please leave them in the comments! [display_podcast]

Open hardware
- The open hardware summit was awesome! (writing for EEtimes at ESC Boston was cool too!)
- Videos aren't all online yet but Limor Fried's is on Adafruit (one of my favorites).
- I also really enjoyed the talk by John Wilbanks, VP of science at Creative Commons
Not-so-open hardware
- Nokia pundits lament not having a product visionary.
- They're really saying they want a Steve Jobs.
- Interesting historical footnote: lots of people at the open hardware summit had some of the most closed source products on the planet. Irony.
Self Publishing
- Wordpress.org is where you get the open source software, Wordpress.com does hosting.
- Silicon chip magazine -- The last electronics magazine from Australia.
- Microsoft Live spaces will not host it's own blogs anymore and they'll be pushed to Wordpress.
Low Power design
- Tascam DR-07 isn't winning any awards with Chris
The Akihabara Electronics Market in Japan
- Amazing tour of the amazing market.

Anything else we might have missed? Let us know in the comments!

From Boston In Boxers? Sep 21, 2010

Show notes

No, not in boxers, but definitely from Boston! On a $10 internet connection no less! Highway robbery! Next week we’ll do a round up of my trip to ESC Boston and the Open Hardware Summit, but for this week we stayed within the usual tech bounds. The links mentioned are below and as always, comments are welcome and encouraged!

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Shoutouts
- Can you find Dave in a tinfoil hat?
- Ben Heck's new show looks great! Nice job!
- Wired has a new (?) show as well. Dave doesn't like the intro stuff but the content is awesome! This clip is Chris Anderson documenting people from the DIY drones community.
- Speaking of, Quadcopter based control systems keep improving. Amazing!
Events
- Electronica is coming up in Munich, Germany in November. It's huge! If sponsors want to send an awesome radio duo, inquire within.
Discussion Points
- Jon from the EEV Blog forums asks about Absolute Maximum Ratings and when to use them.
Rant
- If you can come up with circuit ideas, the bar is pretty low at EDN apparently. We didn't see much special about a 7 segment hooked up to a LUT, but they paid for the idea!
  - We'll talk more about how to publish your ideas in the 10th episode of The Amp Hour. We can't believe we're almost to double digits!

That's all for now! There was more to the show, including quite a bit of true off-the-cuff content. If we missed any links, feel free to add them in the comments or let us know and we'll update the main page. Thanks for listening!

Layouts and Design-Outs Sep 14, 2010

Show notes

Thanks to all of those who filled out the optional survey. If you haven’t yet, there’s still time! Feel free to add your info!

We also took some of your advice (and some of our own) and veered back towards tech talk! Yay! And based on some other feedback we received, we also tried giving some more background on topics that might not be known to everybody. Hopefully we were understandable about any topics you might not have heard of before.

We’ll stick with the mostly-links format from last time, click on through to read about stuff we were gabbing on about!

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Events
- Chris is going to be at ESC Boston and the Open Hardware Summit in NYC. If you're going to be there, give him a shout!
Shoutouts
- Adafruit "Ask an Engineer" turns 1! Congrats!
- CMC put our logo on his page. Thanks for the support!
- Ben Heck has a new show sponsored by Element 14. Welcome to the podcast party!
Discussion Points
- How does someone go about becoming a PCB designer? Dave offers some tips based on his experience.
- Dave and Chris discuss the usefulness of Twitter
- We agree with Bob Pease's recent article about how helpful component engineers can be. Looking up parts is a full time job!
- The search for components got a littler harder now that FindChips.com got bought by some marketing business.
- Dave introduces "The Jones Diminishing Blog Law". Readership goes down by a decade per medium change.
Projects
- Mind hacking is new and AWESOME. Hackaday shows off a python library for the Emotiv headset and Hacked Gadgets showcases a the use of the Emotiv headset to record emotions. Unreal!

Love Robots and Pantyhose Screens Sep 08, 2010

Show notes

Due to time constraints this week, we’re going to try going back to a mostly link-based page. If you find yourself really longing for silly and extraneous commentary encapsulating the links, be sure to let us know in the comments! Curious about the title of the episode? Now you have to listen to the show!

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- The Pantyhose Screen!

Events
- Chris will be at ESC Boston
- And the Open Hardware Summit!
- Dave is going the BrizTube!
Shoutouts
- Shoutout from Jason! Thanks!
- Thanks to Jon from Freetronics for the Arduino kit! Having tons of fun with it!
Tech News
- Hynix will begin production of the HP memristor
- Digikey is huge! One billion dollars!
Tech Discussions
- Jim Williams: Analog Badass
- Modularity in practice at Buglabs
- Talking SPICE simulators and mentioned the experience of Flying Flux
Rants
- Iranian walking robot
- Clay Shirky's book about Cognitive Surplus
- Dave's followup to the calling out the IEEE about their Kindle review
- Dave's experience with Digikey reminds him of the Tenacious D song The Government Totally Sucks!

They're not in order, but hopefully all of the links are included that we mentioned. If we're missing any, please let us know in the comments.

And finally, thanks to the folks over at The Conversations Network; The Levelator seems to have cured ALL of our sound woes! Holy moly was it easy and effective at making us sound good! Many thanks to George Graves for giving us the heads up!

Girl Power Aug 24, 2010

Show notes

Today’s show got a little heated, it’s true. We went over a lot of things, but none more than a recent campaign to try and get more young women interested in engineering…in a not-so-great way. We welcome all debate about the issue in the comments or a link to a discussion elsewhere. We also covered a lot of other industry thoughts. On all these topics, please be sure to let us know if you like the direction the show is moving or not. We just like hearing from you.

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Shoutouts
- (Found on Hacked Gadget's humongous list of links) Tech Dirt is a great site for a lot of internet type issues...just be careful, it'll make you really mad at lawyers and entitled-feeling people around the world. The example story is about professor who says 24 hour news should get protections so people can't link to it. NEWSFLASH: The internet is good for weirdos like Dave and Chris and bad for people trying to make money the same way newspapers were run 50 years ago.
- Kickstarter...is awesome. Crowdfunding/microfunding for all types of artistic and technical endeavors.The new Lasersaur project was funded ($20,000!) through Kickstarter. Be sure to click through and check out all the awesome projects that are on the horizon. You can help fund them and maybe get a cool souvenir.
Tech News
- Stanford change solar cell design with a new process paradigm "photon enhanced thermionic emission," semiconducting material with a thin layer of the metal cesium. High temp, could reach up to 60% percent efficiency! (Currently around 30% in some academic settings)
- Chips are still hard to get! Dave mentions that the big distributors such as Digikey and Mouser seem to be keeping up though. We also point out the importance of designing with part availability in mind.
- Money trickling back to chip startups. There will always be money flowing to where venture capitalists can see a return on their investment. The real problem is bootstrapping a chip start up is next to impossible so funding is one of the only options available. We also referenced the reader comments from last time concerning making 10 micron feature size chips at home and encouraged people to give it a shot. Who are we to say what people can or can't do.
- Margery Conner (EDN) links us through to a theregister.co.uk story about the cluelessness of people who want to "go green". It's amazing how little people understand about the scale difference of mW, W, kW and MW.
- Design News is just announcing the TI launchpad. Is the hobbyist industry going to lead the professional industry?
Rants
- Dave dislikes the EDN Survey, done by Canon Communications and KMPS group. Why do they do surveys like that?
- A horrible concept for a new reality show about women in engineering.
  - Women shouldn't need to be enticed with "style" to buy into engineering. That just makes it stereotypical, regardless of women wanting to preserve "identity".
  - They should encourage young women with programs like MAKE, encouraging curiosity in the sciences from a young age.
  - Instead, show women regardless of how they look or dress doing really awesome things!
  - Model it off people like Jeri Ellsworth and Kari Byron. Focus on what you can do with engineering and sciences, not that it needs to be "stylish".
- Why do the people closest to the money get paid the most? Is this a fundamental problem with engineering (salary at least)?
Projects
- At Jeff Keyzer's request (talking about projects): Chris's idea for a simple temp controlled wire (DC based, no AC supplies so we don't need relays). Basically just a copper wire with known resistance and a power FET (or many paralleled FETs) with a PID controller. Saw that Lady Ada built a PID for their reflow oven so that could be a good starting point.
- No updates on Dave's mysterious project!
Discussion Points
- Transformers vs. switchers. Are the former headed out? We don't want to say "the transformer is dead" of course...we're not Chris Anderson talking about the web or anything (sorry, couldn't resist!)... But there seems to be more focus on the switching side of things because of portability of devices.
- Fake Caps!

Cultural Differences Aug 19, 2010

Show notes

Now that Dave and I have been trying to get some thoughts together a bit prior to the show (though the show itself is still quite "off the cuff"), we have some topics we can list out for you. You can use it either while listening, after you've completed listening, or hell, you can forego hearing Dave and I completely! I mean with an Ohioan and an Aussie, that's a lot of nasally voices, eh?

Anyway, see below for a quick outline of what we've talked about and links to the things we've been talking about. If you hear anything we've missed, be sure to add it into the comments section, along with your questions or thoughts. Any suggestions for future shows should be placed on The Amp Hour Suggestions Page so that we can easily separate it out and talk alllllll about you during our next show. Looking forward to seeing all your comments and if you haven't yet, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed using some of the links in the upper right hand corner of this site.

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Shout outs:
- Cherish's Response to our thoughts on the IEEE
  - Maybe our differences are academia vs. non-academia?
  - IEEE Spectrum falls short on their eReader review (Dave uses more dramatic language!)
    - Two sentences of review per device? Perhaps they need to watch one of Dave's gratuitous DMM reviews to see how it's done!
    - And WTF don't they mention really important basic stuff like battery life?
    - Dave would want to take the eReaders to take them apart, but it might be as destructive as "Will It Blend"
- Let's Talk Geek, a technology podcast out of South Africa
  - Are boards really that much more expensive in South Africa?
  - What are board costs across the world?
  - Chris tries to talk like an Aussie, as he was chastised in The Amp Hour #3
  - The effect of higher fuel prices on the global electronics industry
General Discussion:
- The Maker All-Stars
  - Mitch Altman and Jimmie P Rodgers are touring the mid-west, visiting Hackerspaces.
  - Bre Pettis -- Sudo Make Me a Sandwich
  - Chris Anderson
  - DIY Drones has a new project started by Jani Hirvinen, the ArduCopter. It's an open source kit for an easy to assemble quadcopter based on the Arduino platform! Awesome!
- Can DIY "stuff" replace Walmart someday? Using fablabs at home?
  - Dave laments the potential loss of PeopleOfWalmart.com
  - Chris has been to a fablab at MC^2 STEM school in Cleveland
  - Dave talks about Creative Commons licenses and how they have help shape the open source hardware market.
Followup from last time:
- CEO Mark Hurd may actually get 40 million in severence, not just 30.
- The shareholders of HP are filing suit because firing Hurd really...HURD the stock price...get it??
Listener Comments:
- Dave's take on the Woz and why he enjoys talking about him
  - Dave suggests reading the autobiography, iWoz
- Should a listener bother trying to work with discrete components at home?
  - A resounding yes! Discrete components aren't going away any time soon, nor is it possible to only use ASIC-type components.
  - Troubleshooting is another important skill to learn that is almost alwasy required with discrete components.
    - Discussion of techniques, including some that are the basis of a book "Troubleshooting" by David Agans (first reviewed by Jack Ganssle). EDIT: I mentioned Mighty Ohm's review of "Debugging" in the show and thought it wasn't there...turns out it was!
- Alternate show name from our listener Roger...The 3600 Colombs!
  - For those that don't get it, an ampere is a measure of 1 Colomb/second. There are 3600 seconds in an hour so The Amp Hour would be equivalent to The 3600 Colombs. Clever!

Remember to please leave any feedback (especially on the outline format) or questions in the comment section. Thanks for listening and reading!

HP, IEEE, and Human Interface Aug 10, 2010

Show notes

Greetings from the official new home of The Amp Hour! The new theme is installed (and being revised as we speak/read) and the latest episode of the radio show is directly below. We spanned topics from HP to IEEE to human interface design…in the usual meandering format. Questions for you, our listener would be, do you enjoy this format? Too rambly? Not rambly enough? Don’t enjoy our new theme on this page? We want to hear it all below in the comments section of this page. Have a suggestion for a topic for next time? Leave it on the aptly-named “Suggestions” page of this site.

Notice in those little orange buttons in the upper right hand corner of the site? Jump on over and add our feed to your RSS reader. It’s a much easier way to get ahold of our content and so you’ll be the first on your block to listen to our newest podcast (usually up on Monday or Tuesday depending on your timezone). And tell your friends!

As always, any comments or questions about this episode, leave them in the comments section below! Thanks for listening!

LINKS:

The HP and David Jones sex scandals Dave at the HP garage Eye-Mario by Waterloo Labs

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