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This week focused more on electronics! Think we talk about something too much or too little? Let us know in the comments!

• Chris finally got a chair and wowsa does it make a difference!



• Finding parts online can be tough with distractions, apparently extended internet use can affect the brain. What’s a datasheet hunter to do?
• If you’re still a USENET junkie, Dave is on the sci.electronics.design (accessible through Google Groups).
• Shoutout to Junko Yoshida for some of the great articles she writes. Really enjoyed the piece on “The Land of the Rising Silence” when she visited Japan.
• Students in the US can get Amazon Prime for a year (Chris got 1-night shipped his chair for $4). Dave dislikes how they won’t ship anything but  books to Oz.
• Dave has been looking for the lowest power 16+ bit A/D converter he could find. All told he found 2412 from over 24 different companies. Crazy!
• COTW: The AD7691 from Analog Devices.  18 bits and only 108uW @ 8kHz. Wowsa!
• Speaking of low power, our friends from Touchstone Semi have been getting some press from their initial announcements. They’re 2nd sourcing components from Maxim IC…hopefully without any issues.
• Design Spark has a new plugin for their free CAD software that allows 3D models (incorporated in version 2) to be exported to Google Sketchup. Cool!
• With the CADspan plugin for Google Sketchup and 3D printing, it’s conceivably possible to make an entire prototype for <$100.
• Dave looking for preferences on CAD packages for future OSHW projects. Your opinion?
• Have there been any large-scale open source hardware projects? Chris and Dave can’t think of any.
• Obama announces robot initiative. Only $70 million but the idea is great. Won’t be creating jobs anytime soon though!
• This Day in Nerd History:
  • June 26th (oops!) – Maurice Wilkes was born. Founding father of many microcomputing principles and techniques (in the ’40s, no less!)
  • June 27th — The inaugural run of the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives.
    June 28th – Milan, Italy inaugurated the first central European electricity power station.
• Lightning Round:
  • Company gets approval to store your Facebook data for future employers to look at. Yipes!
  • The patent system in the US gets approval in the house. If signed into law, it’d be “First to file” instead of “First to invent’.

That’s all for this week. Be sure to leave us some comments and find us on Twitter or Facebook!

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Though it’s been a sad week for the field of analog engineering, we want to honor Bob Pease and Jim Williams’ passing. They were wonderful educators, engineers and people and we felt honored to even talk about them on the show. Please share any comments you might have about either of these two great men in the comments section.

• Chris just returned from a friend’s wedding and wrote an engineer’s guide to Vegas.
• Ivan Hamilton was nice enough to send along a copy of Silicon Chip magazine. It’s a great! Ivan has some great projects of his own on his website!
• Bob Pease died while driving home from Jim Williams funeral, doubling the loss of great analog engineers.
  • Paul Rako has a touching obituary and a comment section with many people sharing fun stories from the past
  • Bill Schweber also has a great piece about Bob, along with the story we read on air about how he resigned from Philbrick.
  • If you’re in the Bay Area and would like to attend, EDN is remembering both Bob and Jim, tomorrow, June 21st.
• If you’re looking for a feed-only option to find out when the latest Amp Hour is posted, check out The Amp Hour twitter account.
• If twitter isn’t enough, we could buy a Top Level Domain (TLD) for $185,000. How about theshow.theamphour? or We’re.nerds?
• Friend of the show, Jeri Ellsworth, has been working on a great Software Defined Radio in recent videos. Chris tries to explain (wiki does better).
• The price of LEDs to drop 90% in 4 years? How?
• Dave needs a new camera. Is he at the high end? Or does he need to go higher?
• Perhaps he should buy a pair of these videocamera sunglasses, being funded by Kickstarter.  Could be a good way around this Apple DRM-at-concerts idea, recently patented.
• New Android-specific processor being made by a fabless house in China? Could be similar to the ill-fated Java-based processor idea.
• Other chip companies playing nice? AMD and ARM striking up deals to make chips talk better.
• Get free copies of AutoDesk to get started with their software.  Good for the hobbyists!
• Other hobbyists are heading out to space! Awesome!

We’ll keep Jim and Bob’s families in our hearts. Be sure to read some of their old app notes (mentioned in the show) or watch some old videos (also mentioned in the show) to remember just how awesome they both were!

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• Very sad news, Jim Williams of LTC analog fame has suddenly passed away
• The Art of Electronics 3rd Edition is the Duke Nukem Forever of the electronics industry.
• Jeff reminisces about his old Commodore Amiga and mentions the Amiga on an FPGA, and Dave talks about Jamma consoles.
• Agilent impress with their response to the U1272A Multimeter problem.
• Malcolm Faed took Dave for a ride in the Mitsubishi iMiEV Electric car.
• Jeff revealed he went for a spin in the new Nissan LEAF a few weeks back.
• Talk about the excellent documentary Who Killed The Electric Car?
• Apple are planing a new 12,000 employee “Mothership” Headquarters on the old HP Building campus.
• Steve Jobs lobbyed for it personally at a Cupertino Council Meeting:

• Dave hates the “virtual event” promotion UBM Electronics and EEtimes are doing for The Woz’s ESC Fireside chat
  (link not added out of protest)
• Dave mentioned the 20-30% first year salary fee Headhunters get for new hires. How much do they charge in your country?
• Are 8bit Micro’s dead? Why not use a 32bit ARM chip instead?
• Jeff has been playing with the Papilio FPGA Board and the XprotoLab

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The Amp Hour has a new server! Let us know if it is working ok for you.

• Daniel Garrido linked here from his project site. Some great projects over there! (sorry if I butchered your name!)
• Open Hardware Summit is on again this year and are looking for entries for presentations.
• Bre Pettis of Makerbot will be on The Colbert Report. Fun interviews, Chris liked the Dean Kamen interview.
• Dave re-worked the EEVforum because he was not allowed to start a forum with ‘Altium’ in the name.
• Are Autorouters getting any better? Dave has seen the post from ‘Silicon Farmer’ before, comparing autorouters vs manual.
• Windell from ESML told Chris about Toporouter. It looks ‘wiggly’, but apparently works well.
• Australia and the US seems to have quite a few differences culturally when it comes to higher education. What is college/Uni like in your part of the world?
• Peter Thiel is offering $100K to 20 students if they drop out of school and start a business.
• Another way students to get $100K: Win the DARPA DIY Drones competition.
• Chris and Dave correct their silliness about a camshaft vs. a driveshaft.
• And even though we don’t know much about cars, Top Gear and Car Talk are some of our favorite shows!
• Dave has an offer to ride in an iMiev next week. Cool!
• Chris talked to another Aussie last week and he mentioned a board in 2×3″. The metrification of Australia took more than 10 years to complete!
• Dave spent several days looking through 22 different manufacturers web sites and almost 400 devices for a suitable Lithium Ion charger chip!
• Would be much easier for reading datasheets with something like this. S0 cool!
• COTW: The AD633 is an analog multiplier and has a great application section of the datasheet. How did Chris not know about these??