The Amp Hour #79 — Ludibrious Luxating Layout

Ludibrious Luxating Layout [ 1:06:37 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2210)

• Happy Chinese New Year! Find out how to say it on YouTube.
• Or how to say it as a hardware engineer!
• Dave wasn’t able to get parts from AliBaba.
• So is he a locavore now? Locatech? Ugh, terrible term. Dave’s new boards are from NZ! http://www.pcbzone.net
• Chris likes the LPKF S43, which can dispense solderpaste right after etching a board. If only he had 15k sitting around…
• Looking at beginning a startup? Look at localized funding sources. The Cleveland Foundation is an example in Chris’s hometown.
• A new kickstarter campaign is looking to fund $30K in the next 7 days for a board cutter project. Is it lack of interest in this niche-ier piece of gear that prevents us from seeing an OSHW version of one? This one looks a tad expensive but quite accurate! Love the capacitive mechanism for board sensing.
• The Open Source Ecology project has one on their roadmap. They were happy to hear from our expert listeners are now are looking for one more. Interested in helping with project management for the Universal Power Supply? Fill out the form below!
• TI came out with a new chip that allows users to easily add WiFi to anything.
• Dave got a creepy new webcam for his office.
• Vendors continue to chase boundaries, such as switching  speeds. Is millivolt switching a realistic goal for chips?
• Chip makers also keep chasing 3D processes in their continuing quest for nano devices.
• Kodak announced it’s going into bankruptcy protection last week. They’ll emerge as a niche player…because there’s always a niche, no matter how bad!
• On the EEVforum, “Aurora” clued everyone in to a free eBook available online about analog electronics from Leslie Green. Great resource!
• Chris found out that Sergio Franco, author of one of his other favorite books, “Design with Operational Amplifiers and Analog Integrated Circuits“ just released a new spiral bound book for a new class of his, “Analog Circuit Design: Discrete and Integrated“.
• Chris also found a copy of the 1987 Linear Technology Application Guide with AN1-AN21! What an awesome find! (though they’re all available here)
• Kent Lundberg (@DoctorAnalog) is reading all of Jim Williams’ old app notes and adding commentary on his site, “Reading Jim Williams“. Great to follow along!
• We now have all of our files going through LibSyn! Let us know if you have any issues with it. Thank you so much to our donors!
• Looking for a bit of fun? Check out these ridiculous “science” stockphotos.
• Brad Lyster writes in about a tutorial about laser cutting a solderpaste stencil from KiCAD.
• Dave likes being able to hold a proto or board in your hand. Chris wrote about how this is what keeps him motivated in engineering, just last night!

Thanks to Heidi & Matt for the Chinese New Year picture!

The Amp Hour — Alteritous Andy’s Absquatulation

Alteritous Andy's Absquatulation [ 1:08:03 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2428)

• Chris visited a FabLab today (not a fab!) to work on some projects and hang out with friends.
• Chris has also been reading Neil Gershenfeld’s book of the same name, FAB.
• Melbourne had its first MakerFaire, though Dave was not able to go, unfortunately.
• Dr. Howard Johnson offered rewards for finding errors in his book, much like Don Knuth did for his programming book.
• Chris is officially a ham! His callsign is KD8RND! (Dave is warming up his vocal chords)
• Do you prefer calling or emailing?
• Andy–PhotonicInduction on YouTube–announced he’s officially shutting down his YT channel (NSFW language possibly).
• Dave got and has unboxed his MakerBot Thing-o-matic. Chris met one of the 3D printing competitors today from MakerGear.
• This American Life on NPR had a great feature on how consumer products are made, specifically Apple stuff at Foxconn.
• OpenCores is now taking donations for their development of an Open RISC processor.
• Cory Doctorow had a good speech at 28c3 about the impending closing off of electronics systems in the future.
• A process engineer managed to sneak some fun stuff out of a fab:
• Dave is building a ArduCopter currently but new types of quads keep on getting released. The AR Parrot 2.0 has a 720P camera mounted on it and is only $300!
• Friend and IT Guru Alan Garfield was miffed that MicroChip doesn’t provide command line tools anymore. Are IDEs the only way, in the eyes of vendors?
• Chris is making videos for the soon-to-be-released CEE (started on KickStarter)
• Shonky Product of the Week:
• The HojoMotor is a perpetual energy motor based on permanent magnets (how original!). The video is frigg’n hilarious! Watch it before the site is shut down!
• Chip of the Week:
• Listener Clifford Wolfe writes in about the LMC6042 because of the 2 fA (typ) input bias current for sensitive applications.
• Chris also likes the LMP7721, which specs 3 fA typical (Chris mispoke, the max is actually 20 fA).
• Dave and Chris like any chip that offers an upgradable option (through binning or otherwise)!

Got questions? Comments? Let us know below!

The Amp Hour #77 — Winsome Waveform Wizardry

Winsome Waveform Wizardry [ 1:26:32 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3278)

• Welcome Dr. Howard Johnson!



• He has published two reference books that are a must-have for the field of high speed signal propagation:
• High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic
• High Speed Signal Propagation: Advanced Black Magic
• Howard hails from Twisp, WA.
• Martin Graham, the co-author of his book, was also his longtime mentor at ROLM.
• Howard teaches a class at Oxford every summer. He also teaches classes throughout the US, both in public and private forums.
• He also has published articles regularly at EDN and other technical magazines.
• Other things mentioned during the show:
• Chris mentioned his article about Bell Labs and the Trickle Down Techonomy.
• Howard mentioned how the Voyager Space Craft actually experienced some cosmic ray data corruption, though it doesn’t happen often on earth.
• As connectors get scale smaller, signals get better. However, on boards as traces get longer, they also need to get wider.
• To continue increasing the speed of modern day comms, Howard believes we need to move to Multi-Level Communication (as we always do with every medium).
• The limits of channel capacity are governed by the Shannon-Hartley Law (referred to as Shannon’s Theory on the show).
• In “The Early History of Data Networks” by Gerard J. Holzmann and Bjorn Pehrson (there’s a “synopsis” here…), they talk about torches being used in single and multichannel modes.
• Howard helped define the Gigabit Ethernet Standard (with no help from “Ernie”!)
• Howard suggests “The Theory and Practice of Modem” Design, by John Bingham as a good starter text on the subject of encoding and data transfer.
• If you need a place to talk about signal issues, check out the SI-list, part of freelists.org.
• The IEEE EMC society also is a great place to meet other designers.
• At EMC meetings, they often watch related videos, such as the ones on Howard’s website!
• Howard responded to silliness relating to claims of “skin effect in audio cables”.
• The 90 degree question: Is it wrong to make right angles on your board layout?
• This rule was propagated by microwave designers who were designing with 120 mil line widths.
• Your board already has tons of 90 degree turns…in the vias on your board.
• It’s the added material in a right angle turn (beyond the normal width of a trace)  that can add parasitic capacitance.

We had a wonderful time talking with Dr. Howard Johnson. It was great getting to know the kinds of work he does and the kinds of signal integrity problems he works with regularly. Please leave any questions you might have about the show or for Dr. Johnson in the comment section.

The Amp Hour #76 — Fremescent Floccose Fortification

#076 Fremescent Floccose Fortification [ 1:06:51 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2874)

Happy New Year! We hope 2012 will be a great year for The Amp Hour and all of our listeners!

• We have a new theme by Paul Stevenson! We love it!
• Chris has a ham exam scheduled for next Sunday!
• Dave has been chasing a hum at his new studios, he took a spectrum snapshot of it.
• Chris has been preventing noise with his new “studio enhancement”



• Acoustics is a whole field of its own, but is often coupled to electronics. The AES is actually the Audio Engineering Society, not the Acoustical as Chris thought.
• Shoutouts:
• Randall Munroe wows us again with his cartoon about mnemonics to remember science terms, including crazy ones for SI prefixes and resistor color codes.
• A music/tech enthusiast made his old computer gear sing:
• Devin linked to us and put up a section to discuss The Amp Hour on the newly created OpSoFo, a place to talk about OSHW.
• Chris was contacted about a cool sounding job for testing analog chips. Do people want us to post jobs? No recruiters, of course.
• More on the discussion about engineering education, including a discussion on the EEVblog forums started by “Pete in Texas”.
• Chris thinks we should have remedial tinkering classes in colleges for more academically minded students (Chris would have needed these classes).
• The open source ecology project is looking for help designing their Universal Power Supply. If interested, please fill out the form at the end of this post. If you’ve never seen it, check out the TED video below.
• Once your 50 top machines are done, why not try making a DIY 1GHz scope probe? Could save you LOTS of money.
• Printing transistors could be a step closer with graphene suspended in polymer. Researchers at the University of Cambridge printed using a commercial printer.
• If that’s not quite your level, you can already print resist directly onto FR4 for making PCBs. There is a message board dedicated to doing this.
• A new site talks about the downfalls of having 90 degree turns on your PCB. We’ll verify with our guest next week, Dr. Howard Johnson.
• This Week in Nerd History:
• In 1813 in York England, many Luddites were convicted of destroying equipment in a factory; they believed it was responsible for job loss. 17 were put to death (yikes!) because it was a capital crime back then (Chris wasn’t laughing at people dying, but the ridiculousness of the situation). Many others were sent off to the English prison island…now known as Australia. Will we see similar rebellion against robots and the taking of jobs in the future? Will there be next generation Luddites?
• The EU is considering instituting engineering passport cards, so people can practice engineering in multiple countries. Do you think certifying engineers is a good idea?
• The electronics industry is set to grow 2.2% in 2012, according to Gartner. Hopefully these “noisy” predictions aren’t being used to cut jobs!

Looking forward to a great year! Please leave us some feedback in the comments section below!