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• Shoutouts
  • Rich Hoeg of The Northstar Nerd, linked to us from his podcast page! Be sure to check out the others on there!
  • To Google Sketchup! For offering electro-nerds the opportunity to do 3D modeling (easily!). They have a new contest in conjunction with Ponoko (thanks to @dustynrobots for the link). Check it out if interested in winning free software and stuff.

  Dave has used eMachineShop

• Rants
  • An applications engineering job working with Labview requires a PhD?
  • IEEE Salary Service isn’t included with membership fees?? What am I paying for? How are they any better than an eBook company??
  • CadSoft EAGLE needs a new pricing structure. Perhaps @element14 could take a look at it and make more sense of it? Why not charge by the layer instead of the geography??
• Discussion Point
  • A second edition of the NPR story on Hackerspaces played over the weekend. Mentions how MakerBot started out of NYCresistor (and the BotCave!)
  • In an age of increasing hardware abstraction, is it better to be a generalist or a specialist?
  • Jeri has a new video up about her (TSA Body Scanner) backscatter project. Trying to make a Hot Wheels radar gun into a 10 GHz local oscillator. This video is the first in the series and explains the background of radar.
  • Dave & Chris butt heads over whether or not it will be possible to make your own practical chips at home in the future. Dave calls bullshit, Chris calls why not dude.
  • New gesture software for the TI MSP430 Chronos watch. Cool idea!
  • Medical devices are capable of very small form factors, such as this wand/iPhone combo for ultrasound.
  • Renewable energy investment is politically/militarily driven in Isreal. Planning $500 million in investment in the next few years…wean everyone off oil and some of their adversaries have less money!
    • Dave likes the plan in Australia to be 100% renewable by 2020.
    • The molten salt method of storing energy could really help.

We’re still looking for submissions for Workplace (and now Workbench) of the week. If you don’t, we’ll keep posting pictures of Chris in silly hats in my lab. Please email or leave a comment on the WOTW page!

Chris and his recently re-setup lab

Thanks for listening! And let us know what you think of the music (don’t worry, Chris can take it!)

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• Shoutouts
  • Dave’s $50 shootout is cited in Adafruit now carrying the Extech meter. Cool! There’s also mention of it on extech site.
  • NPR did a piece covering hackerspaces. Likely many have heard about it , but it’s good coverage of the burgeoning trend.
  • All About Circuits is a great resource if you’ve never seen it. Huge forum, great open textbook.
• Discussion Points
  • Is it feasible to open a fab that only makes discontinued chips. Places like Rochester Electronics and Lansdale both do it, but at very high cost.
  • Dave says there are still stores in Australia that sell electronics like Jaycar and Altronics. Chris doesn’t know of any in Ohio.
    Jaycar even sponsor a big Rugby League Football team
    • However, Freetronix posted to their Twitter that they will get their gear into some shops, it’s likely the ones listed above. Congrats!
  • Where to buy stuff online? If there are no more storefront eShops, where to go?
    • Elexp, as suggested by LadyAda
    • Electronics Goldmine
    • Futurlec
    • Electronics Surplus (in Cleveland)
    • BG Micro
    • Alltronics
    • Many thanks to Sam of Maker’s Alliance in Cleveland! Great suggestions!
  • An EEVBlog user got a super nice Tek scope off Craigslist. Should he sell it, buy a cheaper one and profit?
  • Different parts of the world have standard NPN/PNP parts (as well as other types of parts).
    • North America is the 2N3904/2N3906
    • Europe and Australia is the BC547/BC548
    • Japan is 2SC1815
    • Thanks to Wikipedia for the info about transistors (don’t forget to donate while you’re there!)
  • Chris has found the value of plotting realistic timelines in his projects and also trying to figure out the all important “requirements” for the project, one of Jack Ganssle’s favorite topics in his writing.
  • Dave continues to work on his secret project but might trot out the demo soon.
• New Segment: Workplace of the Week!
  • We’ll have a dedicated page to workplace of the week where we keep track of people that write to us.
  • Send in your pictures, what kind of work you do and anything else you’d like to tell us about your work place. The stranger the better!
  • This week was inadvertently The Riverside Robotics Class from Chattaroy Washington!
    • They had written to Dave previously and became the first chosen. We’ll post pictures later if we get any from them. They are a HS electronics club that works on robotics! Awesome to see HS students working with electronics.
  • Interested in being the next workplace of the week? Let us know!

Thanks for listening!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

• Shoutouts
  • Solder Smoke is back! Bill is out in the HAM shack, broadcasting podcasts for all. Go catch the latest one!
  • A podcast about DIY Drones, check it out and hear the most about the developing industry of unmanned personal drones!
• Rants
  • Chris loves the Webench tool from National Semiconductor…he just wishes there was a “prototype option”.
  • Dave was right, and not a bit afraid to tell everyone. Open Source Hardware (not just “Open Hardware”) is the correct terminology…it’s on the license!
  • Why can’t Amazon pay people globally? It’s preventing Dave from retiring sooner! And if you live in Colorado, North Carolina or Rhode Island you are screwed.
• Discussion Points
  • What do you say? .001uF or 1nF? Not getting into another 555 timer debate, but still it’s interesting.
  • How much time should be put into simulating in SPICE?
  • Apparently Oman needs electrical engineers that can speak Mandarin. Guess China is doing some work there?
  • Free energy schemes are only free to those that run them, don’t get fooled (no link, they don’t deserve the press).
  • Lots of component talk around Dave’s video about designing for manufacturability.
  • Jeff from Mighty Ohm found that if you call the IEEE, they’ll stop sending worthless insurance offers and junk mail.
  • There’s a new movie about an electrical engineer to be done by the guy that directed “The Blind Side”.
  • The story of how Nathan Seidle got started with Spark Fun. A great read and similar to the Apple guys and how they bootstrapped their first products.

Here’s the big summary:

And by region:

North America:

South America:

Africa:

Europe:

Australia/NZ/Pacific:

Asia:

Thanks to everyone who participated. It was fun to see how people around the world call their chips. And wow! You guys are from all over! It’s really awesome and makes the world feel like a smaller, better place. Thanks again!