Welcome Øyvind Janbu, CTO of Energy Micro!

• Øyvind went to school in Trondheim where there are multiple schools and many tech companies based around them.
• Many early members, including the CEO, were part of ChipCon, which was later purchased by Texas Instruments.
• Energy Micro (EM) is mostly employee owned.
• Since EM is a fabless semiconductor company, the processing (manufacturing) is done primarily at TSMC.
• “Le Sense” is an homage to the movie Pulp Fiction, in the same scene where they mention the Royale with Cheese.
• Energy Micro has a VP of Simplicity, dedicated to making things easier for the customer.
• The radios coming from EM are a variety of radio standards, including Bluetooth Low Energy.
• The royalties of an ARM core are confidential, but ARM has more information about licensing in their annual reports.
• Some of the newest parts in the EM Gecko family use the ARM M0+ core, which many vendors are promoting right now for low power.
• The EM products have some unusual features, like DMA from an ADC while in sleep mode.
• Energy Micro publishes their longevity guarantee right on their website for all to see.
• Chips are available through distributors like Digikey and have been part of their strategy from day one.

Many thanks to Øyvind for being on our show and giving us more insight into chip companies. He was really straightforward with his answers and we hope you learned a lot from him. Please leave any additional questions in the comments and we’ll try to make sure the proper people answer them.

• We’ll be interviewing Øyvind Janbu, the CTO and co-founder of Energy Micro next week! We’ll have a separate post for asking him questions.
• Chris will be speaking at the Bay Area Maker Faire. If you’re going to be there, find a comfy chair and prepare for a snoozefest
• Second reminder for applying to the Lemnos Labs hardware incubator program, which will be closing soon.
• Our friend Alan Wolke did a really fun tour of his shop…through the screen of his oscilloscope! Lots of fun!
• Dave has finally figured out his MakerBot…with some help from his friends and by reading the (friggin) manual.
  
• Chris brings up a fun direct ink resist print using a vintage Epson printer. Great quality!
• Sometimes process adjustments are necessary to get more life out of a process node. Chris mentioned an Engineer Blogs post about Photolithography, but that actually doesn’t talk about the interference. There is a slide set from the University of Waterloo that does a good job explaining this process.
• Intel continues to win by being the bleeding edge process company. Will be interesting to see if they get into the foundry business.
• Dave mentioned the recently announced scandal involving Silverbrook in Australia, who have failed to produce output for many many years.
• Apparently it’s possible to print super caps with a Laser Scribe DVD burner:
  
• DigiKey instituted a visual catalog…online! Finally! Have they been listening to the show??
• LEDs that are going to be lighting up homes and workplaces almost were not possible. A researcher in the field explains the small margin on the bandgap required.
• Dave mentions Gazumping, which Chris had never heard of.
• Relays are a simple and yet crucial part of electronics. Chris was looking for cheap and small ones and was shown these from Omron. However, they didn’t fit the bill. Instead, we found out about new research into relay-like devices….on silicon! Wow!

Don’t forget to subscribe to us! We suggested Miro (Dave’s favorite for the desktop) and BeyondPod (Chris’s favorite for his Android phone). There are lots of great options out there, we just want to make sure you hear about new shows when they are posted! Thanks for subscribing!

Welcome, Tom LeMense!

• Tom is a grad of Michigan State University and has worked throughout the automotive electronics supply chain, including at Ford Electronics, Lear, TRW and a large automotive chip manufacturer.
• Prior to the work, he helped design the boards that detected the Top Quark at Fermi Lab.
• He recently got the boards he designed back, which were designed using ECL logic

Here’s what Tom wrote to us after the show about them:

Attached are some photos of a couple of the “D0″ (D-zero) equipment cards that I designed back in the late 1980′s for the Fermilab particle accelerator in Neperville, IL.  These were part of the experiment that confirmed the “top quark” and are closing in on the potential of the Higgs boson.  The Fermilab Tevatron and collider was shut down just last September, but there’s so much data that the physicists can continue to crunch, that they keep finding stuff.

 

I should have put a scale in the photos to make clear how large these are.  The floor tiles that they are resting upon are 12×12 inch (30x30cm). If you look at this photo, towards the bottom you can see blue-yellow racks – those house these cards (amongst others):

 

The “master timing generator” (MTG) was loaded with a whole slew of bipolar PAL’s to generate the weird trigger/transfer control signals required in the rest of the system.  6 layers, mixed TTL and ECL.  54 MHz accelerator ring resonance frequency, but skew was super critical so hence the ECL signal path and bipolar pals.

 

The closeup of the MTG shows the whimsical icon (recognize it if you’ve ever read Mad magazine’s “Spy vs. Spy” cartoon) that I got to stamp on all my creations.  We all had an icon.  There was a surfer guy, a fleur-de-lis, the RCA victor dog, etc.  Gotta love working in a university environment, funded by the US Department of Energy…

 

The Calorimeter Trigger Backplane was my PCB layout masterpiece – those interconnect signals aren’t simply bussed – there’s a very complicated interconnect scheme between them to reflect the physical layout of the calorimeter detectors.  PCB is 16 layers, 4 plane layers, the remaining 12 are signal layers with the differential ECL traces between, with all attempts made to control the impedance of the interconnect (ECL likes 100 ohm Z0).  Blind and buried vias were used as well.  I recall the day we sent out the magnetic tape reel (!) with the gerber data to the only company that returned a bid on the job – we commented that we could either order two of these backplanes, or go and buy a new Chevy Corvette – each PCB was about $11K in 1988 dollars, IIRC.

 

These were designed on an Intergraph CAD workstation, based upon a VAX 11/750 minicomputer, dual 20-something-inch monitors, 2-foot x 4 foot electromagnetic mouse+digitizer, etc.  Pretty heavy duty stuff for a dumbass college student to be using!  I became a complete CAD snob after that experience.

• In recent news, Cray (the supercomputing company) was bought by Intel.
• Tom got his start in RF working on the Super Regenerative circuit. He sent us a great scan of a 1922 article from Armstrong about the Super Regen Circuit.
• Armstrong also invented the Super Heterodyne circuit.
• For those interested in automotive testing, Tom sent us a link to a paper Ford published about their EMC testing requirements.
• We also talked about the automotive supply chain and how the chip vendors are required to do stringent temperature testing and guarantee parts for 10 years.
• Cars primarily use the CAN bus to communicate these days, though they also use the lower cost LIN bus in more places where it’s less critical.
• Dave was thinking about the previously discussed news about BugLabs pairing with Ford on opening up their infotainment system.
• We announced the Lemnos Labs hardware incubator program, which is closing its applications in 2 weeks. While we don’t know a lot about the program, people encouraging hardware sound good to us!

Thanks again to Tom for being a guest on our show. It was great getting his insight into the world of automotive electronics. If you have any questions for him, please leave them in the comments!

Update: Tom has capitulated and joined Twitter since we recorded the show. Hooray! Find him on there as @TomLeMense!

Another round with the MightyOhm! Welcome back Jeff!

• Jeff has a new job! He’ll be joining Valve as a hardware designer in June!
• There is a handbook for working at Valve that was previously released online.
• Additionally, another employee wrote about the culture of working at Valve.
• Jeff highlights the importance of networking. Chris has written about this before, specifically for engineers.
• In getting a new job, it’s becoming increasingly important to show a portfolio of sorts. Jeff does this by documenting his projects on his MightyOhm website.
• Jeff’s kit business will continue but may need to be outsourced to a third party.
• Kickstarter is getting bigger, as are the projects. The Pebble watch is now at $6 million dollars (and counting) and has 26 days left.
• Ian of Dangerous Prototypes visit the SEG market in Shenzhen and show off the true power of a large electronics ecosystem/supply chain.
  
• New type of patent agreement out of the engineering group at Twitter. States that patents will only be used defensively and continue to be used in the same manner wherever those patents go.
• Speaking of legal issues, a seemingly bogus lawsuit is being claimed against (many) companies that sell vacuum tubes with mercury in them…that they have mercury in them! Shocker! See more from this Hack-a-Day post and accompanying law filing.

It was great having Jeff back on the show and we can’t wait to see what he develops while at Valve. We wish him the best of luck!

Thanks to sigma for the picture of the valve.

• Logic analyzers use state analysis and timing analysis. They also can do state triggering.
• Ask the listeners: What is the craziest errata you’ve ever seen?
• Dave went and picked up 100 kg of Electronics Australia magazines.
  
• Chris still gets tripped up by rules of thumb for the metric system. XKCD has a brilliant chart of different ways of remembering amounts.
• The CSIRO are trying out a new wireless data system that can transmit over 10 Gbps! 
• They also are the rightful inventors of WiFi and receive royalty checks for people that use the standard.
• We don’t like companies that only defend patents (like Intellectual Ventures) but if they roll the money back into research, that’s ok!
• Dave was watching a TV special on a software lock technology company that took on Microsoft…and won! (well, settled)
• OSHW Association was announced recently.  They will be a registered 501c3 corporation.
• Followup from the other week: The Raspberry Pi made it through EMC testing and will be manufactured and sold now. Andrew Back does a first look at a beta unit, connecting it up to a vintage CRT monitor.
• What other hobbies have home labs? Most chemists are afraid to have labs at home because they might be accused of devious behavior.
• Though they still have a ways to go, plastic electronics are getting lower impedance and are still printable.
• Molex has mini-fit crimp terminals that have a 1500 mating cycles at 13 amps!
• What are your connector design considerations?
• Chip of the Week:
• The Linear Technology LTC4366 (yes, LT again).  It’s a chip that can detect and protect against incoming surges. It’s programmable for time and over voltages. Plus it can float on your rails! Cool!

Got anything we’ve missed? Want to hear something different on The Amp Hour? Let us know in the comments! And be sure to subscribe to make sure you’re getting the latest episodes right when they’re released!

• Dave and Chris discuss the after-Easter candy/chocolate sales. And many other cultural differences.
• Injection molding plastics is an art and a necessary skill for high run products. Have you ever worked on molds?
• Chris has a new podcast about general engineering topics. This will free his brain to talk more circuits on The Amp Hour!
• Dave likes the new OSHW RC controller by Gizmo For You. Design files can be found at OS-RC.com.
• Kent Lundberg is still working through Jim Williams’ app notes. There is a great “best-of” page that points out the key ones to read.
• Though it’s still just a rumor, the DARPA grand challenge that could be  forthcoming sounds awesome. Robots to save people…then conquer them all?
• Is there any use still for Germanium Diodes? Interesting uses in an old Sylvania manual. Have they been supplanted by Schottkey and other low drop variants? Or does an application still exist that requires them?
• Jack Ganssle calls out a similarly awesome old book for playing with BJT circuits. Lots of great applications for trying out analog circuits.
• Do you go to expensive conferences on your company’s dollar? Would you go to the forthcoming Hardware Innovation Workshop for $775?
• Conferences are good for networking, if nothing else. Chris recommends, “Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi, a book on how to do just that.
• Chris used CircuitLab to share a SPICE-like circuit with a friend to illustrate a point. If you want to see the Low Pass Filter Chris entered into the program, see here.
• If you’re interested in sharing schematics (KiCAD only right now) in a more interactive way than PDFs, Circuit Bee is an option.
• Chris was trying to illustrate Bode Plots for the friend. Pronounced “Boh-Dee”, according to his (impressive!) wikipedia page.
• If you’re interested in analog filtering, specifically Sallen Key Filters, check out this app note from TI.
• We have a winner from last week’s contest, Lorin Tauss! Though it was not requisite, the chip he suggested was great and was this week’s CotW!
• Chip of the Week
• The AD8555 by Analog Devices is a zero-drift, digitally programmable sensor signal amplifier. You can tweak offsets with a DAC and clamp at a specified input voltage. Pretty cool!
• Switch mode power supplies (SMPS) are a topic most younger engineers (Chris included) take a while to get accustomed to (especially when starting with a linear regulator or similar). There was a great application note by Microchip about the basics of SMPS and the different topologies that are available.
• Dave has talked about the differences (and similarities!) between SMPS and Linear Regulators before on EEVblog:
  

Thanks to Patrick Nouhailler for the Easter candy picture!

• April fool’s joke went a little too well. We are not joining Tested.com but we appreciate all the congratulations we received (we’ll pretend it was for our superior acting skills…)
• There are other (much better) April Fool’s Jokes out there, especially from back in the day. Paul Rako goes over a bunch of fun ones from the heyday of National and LT. And Bob Pease’s site has the classic fake datasheet from Signetics, the Write-Only-Memory.
• Were you fooled by our foolery? Dave also had a separate trick involving laser probes from Extech
  
• Not fooling about this one: Photonic Induction is back! Well, at least his videos!
• Dave is about to cross his 3-year anniversary of the EEVblog!
• Our pal Dino just completed his one year quest at Hackaweek! He finished it out with a great oscilloscope-like laser project.
• Another scope, Claudio of the Amateur Engineer is making a homebrew oscilloscope!
• Did you know: The unit of the reciprocal of inductance is the “yrneh”? That’s “henry” spelled backwards.
• Wall street isn’t just hiring code monkeys. They also build some pretty impressive hardware. Even if you’re not a fan of the work the computer will eventually be doing, the architecture is impressive:
  
• We finally bring up the Raspberry Pi again on our show. But from the skeptical point of view. Will they be able to push out the boards at the price point they stated? ($35) Olimex on “The Back Shed” forums lays out a good case against it (via reddit).
• If you’re interested in building your own boards and are looking for an arduino-like project, check out the VinciDuino. It’s a way to practice your SMD soldering and wind up with an 8-bit based Arduino (based off the forthcoming “Leonardo” platform).
• Are you a fan of OSHW, like we are? If not, you’d likely have stopped listening by now to us Check out the OSHW community survey over at adafruit.
• Great video of Brian Fuller’s Drive for Innovation at their stop…where they tore the car apart! Over 100 micros and 288 batteries. Lots and lots of Freescale processors.
• Do you primarily use microcontrollers in your projects? Or microprocessors?
• In the push to get more consumer-like experiences, Freescale continues to move away from their Coldfire line and towards ARM based products. This new one has a second core dedicated to “iPhone-like” features (which require more memory).
• Regulation in the US means you have to PAY to see the standards! Pretty crazy, right? How is that enforceable? Turns out…it isn’t!
• Giveaway! Sponsored by Freetronics. Win an EtherMega board. Just email us with “contest” in the title to theamphour@gmail.com. Let us know your favorite chip, hopefully one we’ve never heard of before. Added bonus, we might use it as Chip of the Week in the future! We’ll mention you if we do!
• Chip of the Week
• ST Micro released (?) a new EEPROM that can be programmed by RF (more specifically NFC). Would be great for packages/project boxes you cannot open and need to upgrade the firmware.
• This Day In Nerd History
• The first mobile phone made a call in 1973, by Martin Cooper of Motorola. The phone was 10 inches in height, 3 inches deep and an inch-and-a-half wide and weighed 30-oz. Cooper has said “The battery lifetime was 20 minutes, but that wasn’t really a big problem because you couldn’t hold that phone up for that long.”

That’s all for this week. We promise not to pull any more legs until next April 1! Thanks for playing along!

Picture used and modified under CC from the BadAstronomy Flickr page. Thanks Phil!

Chris and Dave have some big news about the show!

• Tested.com

Hint: The Amp Hour could soon involve more explosions…

Thanks to LVCHEN for the picture of Jamie and Adam!

• Chris is back in the basement!
• How  do our listeners deal with having to be in two locations with work?
• Thanks to one of our most generous benefactors, Maurice! We are able to do more on this show because of people like him. If others are interested in donating, they can do so on our donation page.
• Sick of Dilbert-like meetings that drag on? Pop up this online timer to estimate how much $/s is being wasted in the meeting!
• Former guest and friend of the show, Jack Ganssle’s salary survey is out and points out interesting datapoints in the consulting side of EE. His newsletter is a great resource as well!
• Salary can flatten out as you get older. Chris has written about salary expectations for electrical engineers before.
• Margery Conner rightfully calls out Sony for their ridiculous plug for metering and gating wall power. Who would buy that?
• They talked about charging electric vehicles on the Science Friday podcast and the need for electrical distribution, but didn’t mention the cost aspect.
• Someone made a Back to the Future quadcopter! Serves multiple interests on The Amp Hour!
• Great video on how reed switches are made (to later go into reed relays).
• Another article on the basics, there was a wonderful article about re-using transformers on EDN.
• Dave has been using DIPtrace while trying out non-Altium commercial packages. Support Dave by buying a license through his site!
• Chris has been talking with people about how to best maintain a public repository of part databases.
• Stewart Allen has started a GitHub repo to use and contribute KiCAD symbols and footprints.
• CJ Gervasi has started a WordPress based site to get vetted parts and footprints.
• In the end, you’ll have to decide if any of these work for you, based on your needs and levels of customization.
• Should Dave design his PSU for lefties? Chris (a southpaw himself) doesn’t think so.
• Richard (“amspire”) on the EEVblog forums is rebuilding Dave’s design in an all-analog, all-discrete version. The control loops are causing him some…headaches.
• Ian and the Dangerous Prototypes crew visit another market, this one in Seoul:
• Chip of the Week:
• The INA219 from Texas Instruments (the Burr-Brown arm). A great I2C output high side current monitor that Dave designed into his PSU.
• Chris is looking for a better way to find parts than parametric search. Some people on twitter suggested the Adafruit Component Database (good for hobby stuff).
• If you’re into HV and enjoy (safely!) playing with transformers, check out this great video found via reddit on how to harvest them from microwaves:

That’s all for this week, be sure to subscribe to the feed or find us on the multitudes of social networks in order to be the first to hear about the new shows being posted.

Thanks to Tapir Girl for the yodeling picture

Welcome, Ian Daniher of Nonolith Labs!

• Ian was one of two developers on the CEE, a USB analog multitool.
• This was kicked off as a Kickstarter Project, which more than trebled their funding goal!
• They also pitched the idea to Imagine K12, a funding source similar to Y Combinator (but for educational purposes).
• They assembled much of their Kickstarter kits in house (the mechanical sections at least):
• 
• 
• Hardware startups are definitely different than the app “startups” that seem to pop up all over the landscape lately.
• 3D Printing Consortium Rep Rap had a successful funding drive through the Kickstarter alternative, Indie Go Go.
• HAXLR8R (mentioned on the show a few times before) is actively investing in hardware.
• The Startup Bus was a set of buses the drove to SXSW from different cities, “creating apps” on the way. Oof.
• The US based JOBS act could potentially inject more startup capital into the market. Now individual investors can invest up to $10,000 in a company in exchange for stock (up to $1 million).
• While the JOBS act could have potential abuse, Kickstarter has similar issues as well. A drones project was cancelled when the product to be delivered was in question.
• Another dicey looking project was the bluetooth DVM (or iVoltmeter) , based upon what is promised and the relatively low cost.
• Is the CEE test equipment? Ian calls it “Cavalier Instrumentation”
• Rigol does call themselves test equipment and are now selling a 2000-series scope (or will be, eventually), a long awaited successor to their 1052E model.
• Chip of the Week: 
• The Atmel ATXMEGA32A4U, used on the CEE (which Chris then decided to use on his project).

NOTE: For those who asked, the Open Source Hardware Definition. Point 4, you cannot call your product “Open Source Hardware” or “Open Hardware” if you use any form of Non-Commercial clause in a license, nor can you use the OSHW logo.

Paul also wrote a version with words, also available on our LibSyn server. It’s titled, Chloroform The Amps. Here’s a version on YouTube if you don’t want to download and/or see the lyrics:

Thanks again to Paul and we hope everyone enjoys the music!

• Survey Results are in! Thanks to the 330 or so people that participated! (Results will show up in a separate post)
• Australia lost the SKA to South Africa.
• Chris is going to this year’s Bay Area Maker Faire! If you’re going to be there, let him know!
• For our European listeners, Future electronics (the distributor) has a program where you can get dev boards if you trade your information. Decent mount of vendors participating.
• Today’s show centered around the different types of sales people, Chris has written about this before at Engineer Blogs.
• When is it OK to hang out with vendors? Is there an ethical limit to what you should agree to? Is just lunch OK?
• IBM creates a quasi-off-the-shelf Terabit Transceiver for network communications at under 5W power. Way outside the range of everyday networking but a good sign for the future!
• Altera had a press release this week about their built in optical transceiver.
• This is in line with much of the module-based electronics that are being developed by chip vendors these days.
• Printed electronics on a machine that cost less than $10K! Does Chris win? Thanks to Cherish from Engineer Blogs for pointing it out!
• Want micro machines to go along with your printed chips? Try a printed dragon fly, on a print platform the size of a business  card!
• ZombieTech.tv did a great interview with James Neal (@laen), who runs the DorkbotPDX service (the purple boards).
• Dave has his MakerBot working and printing! He was happy he had to repair the machine so he now knows how it works and what to watch for.
• 
• And the recently posted video!
• Dave is getting custom bean bags made for his office made with a custom fabric (if you’re interested, you can easily purchase it here):
• 
• Chris has been struggling with KiCAD but learning as he goes, similar to the struggles Dave has been having.
• 
• Dave used to have to do actual tape out on old boards and could do negative patterns in his head!
• COTW:
• A new(?) chip from Analog Devices, ADM1166, can monitor 10 different power rails and store the continuous voltages for readback after a failure. Can also throw alarms and coordinate power sequencing. Cool chip!
• Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, was sick of people emailing him with “better” punchlines to his comics. He now allows you to add your own ending to a comic strip (registration required, however).

If you’re still interested in participating in the survey, please see episode 85 to get to the form. If you have any other feedback, you can reach us on Twitter (that’s really just the feed, Chris and Dave are both on there as well), Google+, Facebook or email us at theamphour@gmail.com.

• New (or previously unannounced) Podcasts:
• Engineer Vs Designer, a podcast about 3D printing, CAD and the conflict between engineers and designers. They have a competition in process to win a MakerBot Replicator.
• IEEE Spectrum Podcast — Host Steven Cherry talks to industry veterans in 10-15 minute clips about all manner of industry topics.
• Story Collider — A mashup of science and comedy, this podcast has a different person talking each show about funny stories involving science.
• We’ll add a section on the website for other podcasts we like
• HAXLR8R is rolling! And we helped inform one of the participants! Tom from Boulder ElectroRide was accepted and is now writing about his experience on a new blog. Star Simpson, another member of the HAXLR8R program, is keeping a journal of her travels as well. Both are super interesting!
• So glad that there are hardware startups…and people are starting to notice!
• Lattice has a new logo…and it could mess up your ability to spot one of their parts until you learn the new logo. If you need to spot old logos, check out this site.
• Dave’s video about the anti static bag myth was passed down the chain by Element14 and they should be using the correct bags now.
• BoredAtWork writes on the EEVBlog Forum about the silliness of pricing when it’s just a software upgrade, but Chris and Dave understand the reality behind it. You need margin in order to work on next generation stuff!
• Chris Anderson wrote a series on “Maker Businesses” and makes a similar point. You need to charge 2.4x your costs in order to maintain business! (i.e. $10 in parts means you have to charge $24).
• Business Week writes about the true cost of low cost products: managers beholden to shareholders chasing the rock bottom prices will not have time and resources to focus on a good product.
• Chris uses Dropbox  to maintain CAD files across computers/platforms.
• New web-based SPICE program available for the NerdKits guys. It’s called Circuit Lab and has some great features!
• This Week In Nerd History
• In 1977, the first Freon-cooled Cray-1 supercomputer, costing $19,000,000, was shipped to Los Alamos Laboratories, NM. It was 133 MegaFlops. The A4 processor in an iPhone is 34 MegaFlops!
• Chip of the Week
• Dave likes the LT3600, a 15V, 1.5A Synchronous, Rail-to-Rail, Single Resistor, Step-Down Regulator (whew!)

Thanks to kafkan for the radio tower picture

Please fill out the survey!

If you hit submit, scroll back up to see the confirmation notice.

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.

• 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!

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

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!

• 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!

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.

• Dave’s choice of an Arduino as the brains of his new power supply is giving him strife.
• They are manufacturing the 6502 again! Similar to how Rochester Electronics makes old parts.
• “Programming (Hardware) is like sex: One mistake and you’ll support it for the rest of your life!”
• Chris is looking at a new project and considering new uC’s and mp3 chips. Looked at Limor’s (LadyAda’s) Minty MP3 project and a few other projects people have done. Maybe MP3s aren’t necessary?
• People always have an opinion when it comes to programming!
• The supply chain in the immediate area can affect electronics companies. Salary is a small part of keeping jobs “insourced”.
• Obama announced manufacturing initiatives as well, but are they realistic?
• Dave was upset to learn about the true specs of the MCP4922.
• What do you tell kids to study to be ready for jobs in 10 years? Dave got it right: whatever the field, be passionate. (Thanks to @Sheltoneer for the link)
• Do the gray beards of SV have passion still? Why can’t older engineers find jobs? Are there any “stable” engineering jobs?
• If you can’t find ‘em, train ‘em! Living Social is going to try and teach 24 software people from scratch. What criteria would be used to determine if you should teach someone hardware from scratch?
• If you want to learn “startups” from scratch, check out Haxlr8r. You have until Jan 31st to apply for their hardware development program.
• If you’ve got bare walls around your lab, Agilent is offering some fun posters (via reddit).
• And by popular request from Dave, Weird Al’s version of “I’ll Sue Ya”:

Thanks to Windell Oskay for the flea market picture!

• 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!

• 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!

• 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.