Alex is founder and CEO of Efficient Power Conversion, a leading manufacturer of GaN MOSFET’s.

Alex is also the inventor of the original Power MOSFET and HEXFET at International Rectifier.
Also, former CEO of International Rectifier (founded by his father!),
https://epc-co.com
We cover everything from inventing the power MOSFET on his first day on the job to silicon physics, AI data centres and humanoid robots. Enjoy.

The post #719 – Inventing the Power MOSFET with Alex Lidow first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Dr Barry Marshall won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease.

But Barry is also an electronics hobbyist and vintage HP and Tek oscilloscope and vintage computer enthusiast. He visited the EEVBlog lab and sat down with Dave for an impromptu discussion about all sorts of things.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2005/marshall/facts/

The post #709 – Nobel Prize Winner Dr Barry Marshall first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

A full 3 hour discussion with the legendary Lee Felsenstein, designer of the Osborne 1, SOL computer, VDM-1, Pennywhistle modem, and the inventor of social media. Covering everything from the Berkeley free speech movement, the counterculture movement, his career, through to Obsorne and how he invented social media with Community Memory.

His book: https://www.amazon.com/Me-My-Big-Idea…

https://felsensigns.com/

00:00 – Full 3 hour talk with Lee Felsenstein
08:24 – University of California at Berkeley, and the Free Speech Movement.
29:04 – First Junior Engineer job at Ampex
36:20 – The first hackathons with Richard Greenblatt
37:33 – Hackers, Heros of the computer revolution
1:03:36 – Techical career at Ampex
1:12:52 – Atari Computers and Steve Jobs, Nolan Bushnall, and Allan Alcorn
1:15:00 – He tried to pitch social media to Steve Jobs
1:22:15 – Designing the Pennywhistle 103 modem +
1:25:36 – Marty Spergel selling kits
1:31:53 – Steve Wozniak and how the Apple 1 is NOT a personal computer
1:43:42 – Osborne Computers
1:53:22 – Osborne 1 physical design
1:57:57 – Osborne 1 development timeline
2:01:19 – The Osborne Effect wasn’t what killed the company

The post #684 – Lee Felsenstein: The Computer Revolution & Counterculture first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Dan works for Inovor Technologies, an Australian company that designs and builds satellites entirely in-house!

Recently they designed and launched the aussie Kanyini satellite on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket
https://www.inovor.com.au/missions/

They design and build their own Flight computers, ADCS systems, UHF radios, Battery modules and Solar Arrays in Australia.

The post #679 – Satellite Design Engineering with Dan Esparon first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• Kathy Joseph from Kathy Loves Physics joins Dave on The Amp Hour to discuss history and physics. They end up discussing the intricate history of the development of the Cathode Ray Tube.
• Read Kathy’s Book The Lightning Tamers: https://tinyurl.com/TheLightningTamers
• Video of this recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnJ7mQ_Fo-8
• Forum: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-1577-history-of-cathode-ray-tubes-with-kathy-joseph/

The post #649 – History of the Cathode Ray Tube with Kathy Joseph first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

The post #647 – Dave hanging with Fran Blanche first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Dave and Ian Scott Johnston discuss the PDVS2mini DC Voltage Calibrator Source, production, China, CERN, ebay reselling, test gear, pick and place machines, assembly, automated test systems, and Youtube repair videos.

https://www.youtube.com/@UCtiK8QrcCrsjDXpKzB1PO1A

https://www.ianjohnston.com/

The post #643 – Calibration & Repair with Ian Johnston first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Fellow Aussie Toby Robb joins Dave to discuss everything related to mains power generation and transmission and his role as a linesman.

Ask Toby a question here:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/amphour/im-linesman-and-electrical-fitter-in-powerline-distribution-in-australia-ama/

Links:

TransGrid’s substation design standard https://www.transgrid.com.au/media/zgogqoqg/1-1-substation-primary-design-standard-rev-2.pdf

https://www.energy.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-08/2019_10_NSW_ServiceAndInstallationRulesOfNSW_underlined.pdf

The post #641 – Power Transmission with Toby Robb first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Dave talks with Steve Sanghi who was Microchip CEO for 31 years, now Executive Chair.

Check out his new book, Up and to the Right. How Microchip was built into one of the biggest and most pofitable chip companies in the world.

In this episode we discussed:

• The early microcontrollers, ROM, EPROM, EEPROM, FLASH
• Semiconductor Fab’s and locations
• How the US Government CHIPS act is a golden handcuffs trap
• US/China rhetoric
• What really happened durign the covid supply chain crisis
• How 90% of medical devices use Microchip parts
• Lead times
• Respect for the chip manufacturers and supply chains
• Just-In-Time becomes Just-In-Case
• How the Toyota production system works and how it had to change
• The impacts of a potential war in Taiwan
• How does it make sense to make thousands of part variants?
• The secret to making part varients
• Why Microchip chose MIPS vs ARM
• Atmel didn’t make any money!
• Pricing discipline
• How buying Atmel almost didn’t happen, and how Dialog Semiconductor goofed it
• Draconian NDA terms
• Atmel was bloated
• RISC-V plans
• Customer Driven Obsolescence
• Foundry vs In-House limitations
• Open Source FPGA tools?
• Third party tool support
• Why not offer free optimised compilers?
• It’s all about black swan events, down cycles, pointy haired bosses, and how All your Cost Bases Beyong To Me
• Hobbyist vs professionals
• How Microchip is the largest aerospace chip maker in the world. Nothing leaves earth without a Microchip part in it.
• Radiation hardended parts
• Market value profitability
• Will Microchip ever get acquired
• Strained US vs China relations

The post #632 – Steve Sanghi – Microchip CEO for 31 Years! first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

The post #624 – Design & Manufacturing Consulting with Scott Williams from Xentronics first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Website: https://bit.ly/GoKathyLovesPhysics
Go Fund Me (for Audio book): https://bit.ly/DonateforAudiobook
Patreon: https://bit.ly/KathyLovesPhysicsPatreon

The post #605 – The Lightning Tamers with Kathy Joseph first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

The post #596 – Capacitor Schoopage with Ron Demcko from AVX first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Ben was a long time Altium employee and PCB and product specialist and still makes Altium tutorial videos on Youtube.
He has also worked for Autodesk on Fusion 360.
Ben now has his own consulting company Jordan DSP and co-hosts a regular live Youtube show with Bil Herd

Follow him on Twitter

The post #593 – Publicly Traded Hobby with Ben Jordan first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

The Frantone pedal as used by The Hives’ Nicholaus Arson and Vigilante Carlstroem  VIDEO

How VHS tapes are manufactured VIDEO

NOTE: This episode is also available as VIDEO

The post #586 – Fran Blanche Version 3 first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Mehdi Sadaghdar from the Electroboom Youtube channel joins Dave to talk about his hobby and professional background, and how he got started in Youtubing. Along with moving to Canada, the Iranian hobby movement, Maker spaces, commercial spaces, Linus Tech Tips and the infamous conflict between practical engineering and theoretical physics in electricity vs magnetism in his stoush with Professor Walter Lewin

The post #562 – Electroboom! first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

00:00 – Fran Blanche
02:00 – Fob watches
04:30 – Solar power and grids
08:00 – Green Power
11:10 – Fran Lab
14:00 – Commercial and mixed use buildings
16:30 – Youtube
17:15 – GoFundMe
19:30 – Woodworking shop & Storage
23:20 – Alan Bean paintings
26:40 – Next video
29:20 – Philly Lockdowns
35:25 – IEEE
36:40 – Engineering Groups
37:40 – Freemasons
39:15 – Engineering Rings, the Iron Ring
40:30 – Engineers Creed
44:00 – Old Electronics Smell, Smells, Elastomers & Outgassing
48:50 – Smithsonian drama
51:00 – The new space revival
52:30 – Accents and The Beatles
57:20 – LED displays in the 80s
1:01:40 – Film vs Tape
1:06:30 – Bogus old electronics display ads
1:10:50 – The Youtube Algorithm & Age
1:16:00 – eYoutubers & Webrings
1:21:15 – Fran’s Theory of Space Time

The post #540 – The Space Time Continuum with Fran Blanche first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Dave talks with the king of trashy youtube channels, Big Clive!

http://bigclive.com/

Big Clive Live 

• All about running the trashiest channel on youtube
• His production and editing style
• The amazing technology in professional studio lighting
• COB LED arrays
• Laser LED headlights
• Are products designed to fail?
• The long life Dubai lamp
• Blue LED’s
• Failing Tesla LCD screen
• Dodgy LCD connectors
• Trying to generate ozone using a ceramic capacitor
• Capacitor dielectrics
• Living on the Isle of Man

The post #539 – The King of Trash with Big Clive first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Bruce Simpson from the Xjet Youtube channel joins Dave to discuss RC aircraft and creating an international incident by developing a DIY cruise missle!
He runs the world’s longest running blog website!
He’s on Twitter

• Pulsejet vs Xjet technology
• A visit from the New Zealand intelligence agency
• V1 vs V2 German missle technology
• Using electrostatic gradient and thermal grading for maintaining altitude
• Tricopters
• What keeps a quadcopter in the air?
• CAA in NZ trying to shut him down and regulation red tape
• DJI drones and Geofencing
• DJI firmware bricking
• Tradeoff of rotor numbers. Octocopters vs Hex vs Quad
• Shrouded blades and the Coanda effect
• Beating Betz’s Law
• The futility of hydrogen powered cars
• The absurdity of magnetic fuel savers, 5G USB shields and other scams
• FPV vs Line of Sight flying
• Video transmission technology and bandwidth
• Model jet turbine engines vs full scale
• Parkinson’s disease and management strategies

The post #538 – Missle Man with Bruce Simson first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Louis Rossmann from Rossmann Repair Group joins Dave to discuss Right To Repair legislation and repairability of products, and setting up an industry standard for independent repair.
Also moving his business, realestate, and Louis’s thoughts about what will happen to New York.
Louis’s Youtube Channel.
Right to Repair petition in Australia.

The post #507 – Right To Repair with Louis Rossmann first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

And are Mouser breaching customer confidentiality?

The post #224 – Meracious Mike Manuduction first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

The post #96 – Senseless Saccadic Shemozzle first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• 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!

The post #82 – Vecordious Vacation Variorum first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Whilst Chris is on his belated honeymoon, regular cohort Jeff Keyzer from Mightohm.com takes over.
• Jeff has been travelling again:
• He barely survived Berlin for New Years, what with their readily available fireworks, unlike Australia.
• The Edison National Historic Park in New Jersey
• Another surplus shop tour, including the TWR swap meet.
• Will Detroit just make crappy cars again? or will they turn all Japanese?
• Dave heard a big BANG on his desk, something smells fishy.
• Jeff isn’t too happy with TI’s new MSP430 web based development environment
• Will Raspberry Pie meet their $20 price target? Dave & Jeff think they might have a hard time.
• There is a 6502 documentary in the works.

The post #81 – Jersey Jeff Jactitation first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• John talks about the history of Cree and how they built the company with no venture capital. Awesome!
• Lots of technical LED talk on manufacturing, Stokes loss, Haitz’s law and  chemistries involved in making LEDs.
• Cree got one of their biggest breaks supplying the blue LEDs in the VW Beetle and Jetta’s of the late 90s models.
• How do you measure the light output of a LED? With an integrating sphere!
• One competitive advantage Cree has (over China, for instance) is their Energy Star compliance.
• In China, Cree has gained market share by buying COTCO four years back.
• Cree also makes SiC FETs and Schottky diodes.
• How many LED’s can you fit on one wafer? How long does it take you to test them?
• Will the war of the currents finally be won by Edison? Should we have DC power our homes for localized efficiencies?
• Some of the other bulb manufacturers are GE, Osram (Sylvania) & Phillips. Some of the other LED manufacturers are Nichia, Avago and Osram.
• Dave talks about doing the math on LED lighting for the new office and how the payback is 15 years. John claims something closer to 6 years.
• John answers the million dollar question of when and how LED lighting will reach critical mass mainstream.
• Those more interested in winning some of Cree’s products (US only, unfortunately) can check out their contest site at Cree LED Revolution.

Many thanks to John for speaking on our show and for Ginny (Cree’s social media personality and the person behind the Cree Twitter account) for helping set it all up! It was a lot of fun!

The post #71 – An Interview with John Edmond – Luciferous LED Lucubrator first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• Chris has been issued a challenge to get his (ham) technician’s license by the new year. Can he do it? Do 10 others want to do it with him? If so, we can get Dave to sing on air! (or can we?)
• Dave has a beef with the Agilent U1272A‘s data export capabilities. Perhaps Dave should append his own RS232 port like in a recent HackADay post?

• The Tyne Metropolitan College in England have apparently ripped off Dave’s PCB tutorial document and erased all the copyright info and attribution. Lame!
• Flying probers are crazy to watch! See the video below, starting at 42s in.

• India is predicting electronics imports to top $400B per year in 10 years and want to mandate local production.
• China, on the other hand, wants to move to a knowledge economy (and get rid of manufacturing in the process?). They also want 100 hackerspaces in Shanghai.
• Dave has started his build of an ArduCopter, bought from Hobby King. Their shopping cart plays on human nature and an engineer’s need to optimize.
• Chris hates chasing problems around control loops. They’re interesting, but frustrating.
• From the EEVblog forums: should electronics be more math-centric? Chris and Dave don’t think so.
• This is how Jim Williams taught as well, with less focus on the rote memorization.
• Engineering seems to attract people that are in it just for the money sometimes (they don’t last). WSJ has a great breakdown of salaries (in the US).
• According to Wired, the CEO of Ponoko is predicting printable circuit boards in <24 months. Dave doesn’t think it’s possible based on solder temps.
• There’s been lots of focus on 3d Printing lately, especially in the NYT. One article about The Wild West economy that will rise from the printer availability and another about the possibility of high quality 3D printing coming to a big box retailer near you.
• This Day in Nerd History
  • The dry cell battery was patented by Carl Gassner…in 1887! Good gravy, batteries have been around for a long time!

The post #69 – Control loops & Flying probers – Quassating Quadcopter Quantophrenia first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

The post #47 – Apple HQ and Vintage Arcade Games – The Mothership Manifesto first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• Mike Cowgill is building an LCR meter. Looks like a really cool build!
• Welcome to Adam Ward, who recently started a new site and gave us a nice plug. Good luck with the new projects!
• Why did National Instruments do away with An Engineering Mind? We would have loved to see that continue and they wasted a good brand.
• Friends don’t let friends go into finance. An article about how engineers started coming back to design, but are trending towards trading garbage CDOs.
• Dave has a bird problem, but doesn’t like how Americans all want him to shoot the birds.

• Listener Patrick York writes in about a great site showing off all of the old RadioShack catalogs! Awesome bit of nerd history.
• Eduardo writes in about how HP open sourced one of their financial calculators. Dave already know about and talked about it way back in the fledgling days of EEVBlog.
• Who needs a calculator? Endolith on Electronics StackExchange writes about how Wolfram Alpha can easily convert between units. And give you some awesome bonus calculations.
• Hameg released a new scope weeks after the Agilent one Dave reviewed. Why do things seem to come out at the same time?
• Touchstone Semi, a new analog chip company popped up on Twitter and is pushing new niche products.
• Hackaday looking for a full time hacker, though not for much money! At least in California. Would equate to earning 9-12k in Cleveland.
  • MakerDino started a new site in response to show he’ll do it for free: HackAWeek!
• Design Contests:
  • The 555Contest is wrapping up this week (judging)
  • Dave is judging the Renesas Rx Design Contest. They only got 30 entries, but it’s a different type of contest.

The post #36 – Big Business Buffoonery first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• Jeri was naughty and got thrown out of the Designcon conference!
• Workbench of the Week from SnakeBite & Jeff’s buddy Tony
• The new one-stop EE shop, EEweb.com
• Jeff rants about Eagle and the lack of IPC footrints
• Forest Mims autobiography:
  Siliconnections: Coming of Age in the Electronic Era
• Job interviews techniques of employers
• Ridiculous packaging from HP and Newark
• And how to sneak into a trade show

The post #29 – DJ and Jazzy Jeff first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.