Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Welcome, Bunnie Huang!

• Bunnie is the hardware designer behind the Chumby family of products.
• He also wrote a book about his experience of Hacking the Xbox. He got a little help from some friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
• He also recently released the NeTV, which was met with some DMCA resistance due to the method in which he injects pixels.
• You can get chumby/NeTV hacker kits over at adafruit.
• He gets to go to some of the electronics markets, such as the SEG market in Shenzhen.
• Ian from Dangerous Prototypes went to the Japanese version of this market recently:
• While in the SEG market, you can even buy an iPhone schematic!
• Bunnie discussed Moore’s law (and the breakdown thereof) at the OSHW conference and we discussed on episode 61 of The Amp Hour (with Jeff!), around 20 minutes in.
• We asked why he decided to use Marvell chips, as opposed to a more open chip company like Freescale (in relative terms).

Thanks again to Bunnie for taking the time to talk about his work and his philosophy on design. We hope you all enjoyed listening as much as we enjoyed talking to him! Please leave any unanswered questions in the comments and we’ll try to follow up by next week!

Note: We changed the encoded volume of the podcast so we don’t blow anyone’s eardrums out when they jump from their favorite NPR podcast (Car Talk, duh) to ours or whatever else you’re listening to. Sorry if this has been an issue in the past.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

• Sparkfun is having a soldering contest!
• Just like paying for FedEx, people are almost always willing to pay for faster service.
• Dave is working on his MakerBot directly after recording the show today.
• Chris is off on a trip to go do a technology transfer on Monday. Dave has done this in Germany once before.
• Mike Demler linked here from the new newsletter he’s editing for Open Systems Media.
• There’s a new site called EE Forest that linked to us (or did at one point, looks like it might have changed).
• If you liked Leslie Green’s book mentioned on here a few weeks back, be sure to donate and support him.
• MIT is offering their intro circuits course for free online…and you can get a certificate from it.
• Dan Pink’s eBook tells you to try doing things reverse of normal in order to innovate…Chris liked the education example.
• Simon from the EEVblog forum found some fishiness with regards to Element14′s adwords for KiCAD.
• Chris is working on his own KiCAD design and has been using a written tutorial to get parts made and figure stuff out.
• Erin (@RobotGrrl) did a great CAD comparison piece a few weeks back of all the different CAD programs.
• She points people to Wayne and Layne’s KiCAD tutorial.
• Is the future of employment all freelancing? Chris thinks so (if US insurance gets a bit better). The HBR asks about “crowd sourced labor”.
• Do you work at a shared workplace…for your everyday job? What kind of place is it? How does it work for you?
• The Sydney Hackerspace moved a little closer to Dave, who is now considering it a bit more. Jeff let us know he stepped away from the Austin space.
• Age matters, even in startups (however, older = higher success rate). Both Dave and Chris still have a chance to be successful when they get older!
• Chris got proper mad at the Mint blog for talking about investing in whiskey. Invest in people who are making stuff, folks.
• Is there value in starting up domestic chip/electronics/PCB facilities in the event that things go very wrong in China? Protests are on the rise and there is (always) risk that something could go wrong.

Did we miss something? Did our ranting and raving this week get you as worked up as Chris was? Let us know in the comments!

Next week, Bunnie Huang will be on the show! (for real this time) Get your questions in now!

Thanks to Uwe Hermann for the KiCAD photo!

Hi Everyone,

Last week we asked for your questions for Bunnie Huang. Good news! You get another week!

It turns out I (Chris here) didn’t look at the calendar nor my email with Bunnie about him being on the show on the 27th, not the 20th. So you get one more week to think up questions. Talk about a highly anticipated show, eh?

Anyway, thanks to everyone who has written in so far. And sorry about the confusion! Dave and I will be recording the show as usual this week, so keep an eye out for episode 83 soon!

~Chris & Dave

Prolific hacker and maker Bunnie Huang, founder of Chumby, will be on the show next week. Our timezones don’t line up well, so there may be a possibility of glitches and/or rescheduling, but we want our listeners to be able to ask him questions!

So what do you want us to ask Bunnie about? Already on the docket is his latest fight surrounding his new neTV device and doing so without violating the DMCA. We also want his perspective about working directly with suppliers in Singapore (his hometown) and mainland China. And his perspective on the Open Source Hardware scene, which he is a large part of, will of course be a topic of discussion.

Bunnie is a smart, accomplished hardware designer, so ask away in the comments section below!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

• All about Sabaticals, and trying to get out of working for a living :->
• We ridicule a Spray-On Antenna in a can!
• We are reluctant to mention a new reality TV show called Top Engineer. Before auditioning, be sure to check out Joe Grand’s experience with a Discovery Channel reality TV show.
• The Mythbusters are producing a show called Unchained reaction
• Jeff doesn’t quite like the new $1300 Cube 3D Printer from 3D Systems, because they ain’t playing the open source game. But it seems all Dave’s predictions are coming true.
• Dave is having 2nd thoughts about doing a through-hole PSU kit
• Dave rants about several things, as per usual.
• Jeff is headed to the Computer History Museum to check out the Jim Williams exhibit.
• Jeff like this new book: Analog Circuit Design: A Tutorial Guide to Applications and Solutions

Next week on the show, we’ll have special guest Bunnie Huang! Get your questions in for him ASAP!