• 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.

Happy New Year! We hope 2012 will be a great year for The Amp Hour and all of our listeners!

• We have a new theme by Paul Stevenson! We love it!
• Chris has a ham exam scheduled for next Sunday!
• Dave has been chasing a hum at his new studios, he took a spectrum snapshot of it.
• Chris has been preventing noise with his new “studio enhancement”



• Acoustics is a whole field of its own, but is often coupled to electronics. The AES is actually the Audio Engineering Society, not the Acoustical as Chris thought.
• Shoutouts:
• Randall Munroe wows us again with his cartoon about mnemonics to remember science terms, including crazy ones for SI prefixes and resistor color codes.
• A music/tech enthusiast made his old computer gear sing:
• Devin linked to us and put up a section to discuss The Amp Hour on the newly created OpSoFo, a place to talk about OSHW.
• Chris was contacted about a cool sounding job for testing analog chips. Do people want us to post jobs? No recruiters, of course.
• More on the discussion about engineering education, including a discussion on the EEVblog forums started by “Pete in Texas”.
• Chris thinks we should have remedial tinkering classes in colleges for more academically minded students (Chris would have needed these classes).
• The open source ecology project is looking for help designing their Universal Power Supply. If interested, please fill out the form at the end of this post. If you’ve never seen it, check out the TED video below.
• Once your 50 top machines are done, why not try making a DIY 1GHz scope probe? Could save you LOTS of money.
• Printing transistors could be a step closer with graphene suspended in polymer. Researchers at the University of Cambridge printed using a commercial printer.
• If that’s not quite your level, you can already print resist directly onto FR4 for making PCBs. There is a message board dedicated to doing this.
• A new site talks about the downfalls of having 90 degree turns on your PCB. We’ll verify with our guest next week, Dr. Howard Johnson.
• This Week in Nerd History:
• In 1813 in York England, many Luddites were convicted of destroying equipment in a factory; they believed it was responsible for job loss. 17 were put to death (yikes!) because it was a capital crime back then (Chris wasn’t laughing at people dying, but the ridiculousness of the situation). Many others were sent off to the English prison island…now known as Australia. Will we see similar rebellion against robots and the taking of jobs in the future? Will there be next generation Luddites?
• The EU is considering instituting engineering passport cards, so people can practice engineering in multiple countries. Do you think certifying engineers is a good idea?
• The electronics industry is set to grow 2.2% in 2012, according to Gartner. Hopefully these “noisy” predictions aren’t being used to cut jobs!

Looking forward to a great year! Please leave us some feedback in the comments section below!

Welcome to Ben Krasnow! (Also seen as bkraz333 on YouTube)

• We decided we had to have Ben on the show once we saw his crazy LED in a contact lens video:
• Ben started as a researcher/technician with a TMS lab, which led him to starting his own business, Mag Design and Engineering.
• That also led him to experiment with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for a YouTube video:
• This is just a single pulse, the commercial/research ones do a pulse train at roughly 30 Hz.
• Ben also has built a DIY Scanning Electron Microscope, with an oscilloscope used as a display:
• But now, Ben is getting out of the magnetics business and into the tinkering business.
• And once Ben is done for the day, he kicks back and either has a glass of argonated beer or a skewer of meat cooked on thermite.
• Google Patents is a great source of ideas of things to try in the shop.
• Apple was recently in the news for patenting fuel cell technology, a possible hint towards their future (or not, often patents are published to throw people off).
• Ben tells us about all the gear in his shop. Perhaps Dave’s new shop (below) could use some metal working equipment?
• The education system is broken. Ben believes that its far too academically focused and not practical enough.
• Perhaps there should be a “tinkering” degree? Travis Goodspeed is getting a PhD at Penn in Reverse Engineering, which he did on the Girltech IM me.
• Stanford is re-upping their free participation online courses (similar to their recent AI class), now offering CS 101, Machine Learning, Game Theory, Natural Language Processing, Probabilistic Graphical Models, Software Engineering for Software as a Service, Human-Computer Interfaces and more.
• MIT is continuing their classes as well, now also offering a certificate of completion, perhaps the first step towards educational reform.
• Hackerspaces are another possible avenue for educational reform. Ben lives near Noisebridge but hasn’t had the time to attend regularly.
• Ben prefers mechanical equipment and has other machines he wants before a 3D printer, which he demonstrates for elementary schoolers.
• Dave is getting a MakerBot soon! Awesome!
• Other chemistry-type videos on YouTube are great (though they get tagged as “dangerous” because it’s associated with bomb/meth making). Ben likes NerdRage’s Youtube channel.
• And at the end of the day, all of the electronics and chemistry videos are out-watched by his own cake-making videos!

It was great getting to talk to Ben, even though Dave had some technical difficulties. We can’t wait to see what he’s cooking up next!

• Thanks to PStevenson for including us in his YouTube tribute song!
• DigiKey ended up sending me a classical music CD as part of my (jesting) Digi-Wish:
• 
• Dave often has to deal with filling out an export form when ordering from DigiKey or other vendors.
• He’s ordering parts for his new power supply kit, which should be out in a few more weeks.
• Chris thinks future designs won’t need to design in LCDs because they can pipe data to low cost, standardized tablets. Dave disagrees.
• Dave is in the middle of building benches for his new lab/office.
• Dave having issues with a “short circuit” on a single plane of copper, according to ITead Studios(?).
• There is a Mini Maker Faire coming to Melbourne, the first in Australia.
• And if you’re interested in all things Maker related, there is now a dedicated blog on Forbes.com about Makers.
• If you’re into 3D printing, there is a cheap one available as part of a Kickstarter project, the 2nd most funded project ever (thanks to @clothbot for the link).
• The first most funded project to date was the TikTok Watch Band, which Dave used as a model when he designed his next-gen calculator watch.
• Chris met a fellow alumni at a recent event who told him about the often-referenced Booz Allen study about money in R&D. Especially how this data gets misused as a reason/excuse to cut funding when this is a narrow-minded view of the data presented.
• Listener Adam Ward wrote in about a recent Hackaday article that focused on a rip-off product.
• If you’re thinking about moving production to China, keep the air-pollution in mind; it could affect the long term viability of your product.

Welcome back Jeff! Joining us for some holiday fun!

• Chris started a new engineering job today! Dave is getting the keys to his new lab today!
• 
• Jeff is attending DorkBot Austin tonight! Reminds Chris of PechaKucha.
• What should we call a group of nerds standing around? Chris likes the term, “a grumbling of nerds”.
• Dave hasn’t seen Altoid tins in the grocery stores, but has built projects in tic tac boxes, cassette cases and hammond cases.
• Chris just got a new BeagleBone to play with! It’s awesome!

• Digi-key is doing their Digi-Wish again this year, so you can ask for something out of their catalog.
• Chris wished for some of the classical CDs they stock at Digi-Key(?).
• What’s the difference between black and pink foam in electronics? One is conductive (black) and one is static resistant (pink)
• Our wishlists:
• Dave — A spectrum analyzer, likely one off of eBay. The Rigol ones are too much for Dave so he needs to go older.
• Chris — A sig gen like the newer Rigol DG1022 because a certain Aussie’s kit isn’t available anymore. Jeff and Dave say Chris isn’t wishing big enough.
• Jeff — Lots and lots of kits!
• The adafruit Icetube clock kit.
• The NixieKit NixieTherm thermometer kit (suggested by electroman-j).
• The Fun Cube Dongle kit.
• Jeff’s new Ham Callsign is W6OHM! Awesome! Dave wants VK2EEV (but has to get his license first!)
• Chris’s co-worker did a homebrew solution for programmable outdoor holiday lights, controlled by text message!
• We loved John DeCristafaro’s (@johngineer) post on displaying a holiday image on an old scope with a micro!
• Our past guest, Jeremy Blum was named the IEEE “New Face of College Engineering”!  Awesome! He will be featured during national eWeek.
• Itching to get your hands on an old micro? Try out the new Microbee Z80 kit, which is now available!
• This Day in Nerd History:
• As seen on today’s Google Doodle, it would have been Robert Noyce’s 84th birthday. He started Fairchild and Intel. Wow!
• It was on this day in 1901 that Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio transmissions. They had been transmitted from his large transmitting station in Poldhu Cornwall England and he had received them in St Johns Newfoundland. (thanks to Alan Wolke for the suggestions!)
• New contest from DesignSpark for using the ChipKit in an energy efficient application. Giving away 1000 ChipKits but you have to play by their rules.

• Chris reveals (to those that did not already know) that he used to work at Keithley Instruments and recently left to go work at an unnamed company.
• Chris has the whole week off! He wrote more about leaving his engineering job on Engineer Blogs.
• Keithley was recently bought by Danaher, who also owns Tektronix, Fluke, Seabird and Beckman Coulter (among many many others).
• If you’re interested, be sure to get the Low Level Measurement Handbook, it’s awesome!

• Dave is planning on going to visit a calibration lab in Victoria.
• Dave also has been shopping for his new lab (3D model here). first purchase? A JAMMA console! Don’t tell the wife!
• If you’re short on cash but still want a SMU, check out the CEE from nonolith labs! It’s an OSHW SMU!
• If you need funding for your project, there’s new legislation to legalize crowdsourcing in the US (in exchange for stock)
• Found on reddit, this guy in front his bench embodies he badass vibe!
• An honorary WOTW, highlighted by Paul Rako’s blog on EDN: Barrie Gilbert of Analog Devices has an amazing lab!
• Non-sequitor of the week and too good to pass up, back in April 2010 there was a man arrested at the LHC who claimed he was from the future!
• Chris visited an EMSL party last night via telepresence (photos by @Grathio here: ESML open house Flickr set)
• Speaking of the future (segue there), MIT has discovered how to translate electrical to optical info on-chip. Should amount to an even faster chip in the future!
• From the EEVblog forums: why do scope traces always come in color? What about people who are color blind?
• The low end of the Test and Measurement industry: Rigol has dropped the price of their 100 MHz scope (DS1102E) to the price previously used for the 1052E.
• A bit of holiday awesome: Alan Yates (VK2ZAY) is doing a great series of videos called the “Advent Calendar of Electronics“. One useful circuit per day until xmas! Amazing!
• Shonky Product of the Week: A USB cable that is hand made? Cool. A USB cable that costs $3549? Not cool.
• Extra Capacity:
• A non-shonky audio guru uses high voltage SiC FETs in the output stage of his audio amps! He also has some great tutorials.
• For all you hams out there (or future hams who are studying, like Chris is), there’s a great kit you can purchase called the K2. The older kit is all through hole.

This week was a lot of fun! Chris wants to thank all of his former co-workers at Keithley! Hopefully one or two of them are listeners now!

• 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!

• Chris explains what he thinks Thanksgiving was about (or what he thought it was about, he’s no historian).
• The Daily Show had a segment about “Evacuation Day” and the history behind it.

• The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
  Happy Evacuation Day
  www.thedailyshow.com
  Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

• Ask our listeners: How many hours do you work in a work week? How much is the norm in your country of origin?
• Chris’s friend Dave wrote about the surprises of going full time as a consultant.
• Dave mentions that on the software side, jobs on sites like Elance are underbid  by overseas contractors.
• Chris loves an article from an IT consultant with some tips on how to be a good consultant to hire.
• Though Dave did not show much interest in ham radio in general, he did decide to go hang out with them!
• Chris is still looking for more people to join him in getting a license by the end of the year!
• If you want to study, there are study sites and practice exams out there.
• Chris has been looking at buying a snowblower and has looked at making it autonomous. There is even an autonomous snowplow competition!
• Perhaps this is a future venture for iRobot and their Roomba platform?
• Dave’s office is ready for some wall hangings (post-approval from the wife, of course). He should hang up the Widlar poster!
• The_Axis wrote in about their reuse of PCBs as tail stabilizers for a homemade rocket!
• Eric the Embedded HW Guy wrote a post on EEweb about a homebrew solder smoke fume extractor.
• Our occasional co-host Jeff Keyzer (@mightyohm) set up a Flickr photo pool with pictures of electronics benches. Add yours today!
• Chip of the Week:
• Gleaned from the /r/nicechips subreddit, the ATtiny10 is a (tiny!) SOT23-6, 8-bit microcontroller with integrated flash (1K), SRAM (32B), ADC (4 channels/8 bit) and a lot more. Crazy!
• Is there a standard footprint repository where someone can find IPC standard footprints (and maybe some of the odd ones too)?
• On Ask An Engineer this week, Chris wrote in with a question about KiCAD and Limor and Phil were hopeful about the emerging XML standard from EAGLE, that it would open up the ecosystem.
• Bunnie Huang of Chumby writes about buying an iPhone schematic on the street in Shenzhen and using it to source cheap parts. Chris calls this Coattailing.
• Apparently phone makers need to recoup costs in the first few months of sales of their product because they are so quickly overtaken by the newest phones.

• 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!

• Great comics from OhmArt! Be sure to check them out and buy some of their merchandise!
• Tales from the cube talks about a label over an EPROM…has anyone seen this article?
• Bill Schweber wrote about the persistence and insanity of engineers chasing problems.
• Katie Luper is a former lawyer going back to school for EE! That’s different…and awesome!
• You can be a winner at the ACE awards! If you pay…
• The Dangerous Prototypes 7400 Contest is over! (or is it? Dave wasn’t sure)
• We need more engineers in popular culture! Scotty (James Doohan) tells that over HALF of the Milwaukee school of engineering listed him as an inspiration for them joining the program.
• Dean Kamen talks about the role of innovation and why we need people to solve problems…not create jobs.
• 31% of new grads don’t have jobs?! Crazy. Also, this survey says that the majority of new hires make <$30k. Is this realistic in your area?
• Chip of the Week:
• Maxwell’s HNS-1000 Nuclear Event Detector…know when there’s a nuclear event with a chip!
• NXP puts an ARM Cortex M0 in a DIP package!
• Potential art for Dave’s new office? A toilet made out of PCBs!
• Extra Charge Capacity:
• A recent hour-long tribute to Jim Williams at the Computer History Museum.
• Old news for Dave, but RS232 transmitted over a wet string!

• Happy Halloween! Has anyone heard of people giving away circuits as a Halloween?
• Did you know: CR2032 batteries reference the size of the battery? Chris didn’t!
• The BeagleBoard folks just released the BeagleBone! It looks great! Also, kudos to the folks at TI, especially those on the team.
• Dave has a deposit in on the new place!
• CadSoft is releasing EAGLE 6 soon! It will now use XML data.
• Chris is working on KiCAD tutorials right now:
• Download KiCAD for Windows, Mac or Linux.
• The XML data on EAGLE 6 will help with diff-ing files. EMSL has a great article on the usefulness of visual diffs.
• If people know of a good system for FPGA project revision control, please let us know.
• Dave is a judge for the Dangerous Prototypes 7400 Contest! Lots of great entries so far!
• The IEEE sent out a note to their email alert recipients about the less-than-desirable title for a recent email:

• In brighter and awesomer news, The White House has a video encouraging young female scientists and engineers to “Start Breaking Stuff!“. Great advice!
• India has waaaaay more schools than they need for engineering students.
• Robots are getting creepier and are now walking upright. The petman robot from Boston Dynamics…one step closer to the Terminator!
• Reminds Dave of one of the robots from his childhood favorite show The Thunderbirds.
• Robots are also useful, like the agrarobots in this recent hackaday post.
• They’re also a career opportunity as more and more jobs are taken over by robots.
• Silicon Valley is looking for software talent as well, even outside of those with degrees. Learn on the job, right? Perhaps going from high school to “the pros” is a good way to entice engineering extracurriculars in school?
• Or perhaps SV should adopt a model more like Germany’s apprentice system and co-develop curriculum with schools.

• Jeff’s new setup is on Flickr! As are the pictures of his new cases for the Geiger Counter kit.
• He cut out the new cases at the ATXHackerspace using the ULS laser cutter.
• There’s a new Design News Radio Show. You can listen…if you trade all your information.
• Dave prefers using off-the-shelf cases from DigiKey.
• Chris brought up the recent news from Xerox PARC and Thinfilm. They announced 20 bits of printable memory from organic transistors. Chris recognized this is not the print-at-home revolution he is looking for (but it’s a good first step!)
• The term “baud’ used in communications comes from Baudot Codes used in telegraphy. Chris learned about it in the context of Radioteletype (RTTY while studying for a HAM exam.
• Farts cause seismic issues.
• Hackerspaces should install Ham radio stations.
• Jeff suggests reading/following along in The Electronics of Radio by Daniel Rutledge.
• He also is building a Norcal40 kit along with the book. This is a standard kit used in college electronic classes.
• The IEEE refuses to publish papers already in the public domain. Why do people use the IEEE still? Couldn’t people publish outside the IEEE?
• Jeff has found it useful, especially for older (more general) topics. He read about the Early Effect in issues from the early semiconductor days.
• China back in the news for stopping the sale of rare earth elements to outside countries, for a month! But why? To increase prices, silly!
• The US is responding with research dollars for a program called REACT to try and reduce dependence upon these rare earth elements.
• Shonky Product of the Week:
• From listener Wilhelm: The Fostac Maximus will harmonize your electro-smog. Just don’t forget to give it a few months to kick in!

• We had some network problems the last few weeks. If you have more problems, post them to the EEV Blog Forum thread on the topic.
• Agilent has a firmware upgrade for their 3000 series scopes, Dave is claiming a victory!
• Dave and Chris were both on the Tymkrs ZombieTech podcast. Lots of fun.
• Eric the Embedded Hardware Guy mentioned us in his article in the EE Web magazine.
• Dennis Machida, the garage engineer, mentioned us on his site. Thanks!
• Ben Rampling wrote in to let us know about a new part of reddit, /r/nicechips! It’s like a perpetual Chip of the Week! Awesome!
• How are ADCs different if they’re audio or precision? Dave explains his use of seismic ADCs.
• Part packages continue their relentless march towards infinitely small! Chris posts pictures of the parts in his Google+ album.
• New low power micro announced from ST in conjunction with MIT researchers. It has 0.54V turn on for some of the transistors…crazy!
• Hackers and DIYers are taking the matters of their electric car diagnostics into their own hands and reverse engineering the firmware.
• Dave (with the help of the EEV Blog forum) found the Micro OTP FPGA from Silego. Cool idea for a toolbox part.
• The co-inventor of C and UNIX, Dennis Ritchie, has passed away. He did a lot for the industry and the world!
• Now they have training for socially awkward students…to learn not to  be so awkward.
• Chris found a new picture  at the computer history museum of Bob Widlar that is fantastic.
• There is also a fun exhibit online of analog computers.
• Still one of those socially awkward nerds but want to be among others like you? Go on a Geek Cruise!

• Dave lost the bid for a lab which we discussed last week.
• Shoutouts:
• Jim Williams’ desk is moving to the Computer History Museum. Chris wants to turn it into a wishing well.
• EE Web continues to publish some intriguing interviews with people throughout the industry. We especially liked these two weirdos. Great format for a portal as well.
• Sesame Street is taking on STEM topics and teaching engineering! As Elmo seems to say: Yaaaaay!
• A fourth Open Source Hardware Company has gotten funding, this time Ayah Bdeir and her company Little Bits. Also relevant, there was an article from Phil Torrone, talking to Bre Pettis of MakerBot and their recent round of funding.
• David Manners on Electronics Weekly writes about the growing gap and competitive advantage of large fabs…and how that will jack up the price of chips.
• TI has decided to give away some of their chips and award senior projects that use 3 or more in a design with up to $10k. We see it more as a way for them to recruit new talent.
• When do you decide (monetarily) to start working on a low sales-volume product to refresh it?
• India launches a $45 dollar tablet ($35 after subsidies). Is it real and how did they actually get the cost that low?
• Memristors are supposed to be in production by 2013 (and likely expensive) in a joint venture between HP and Hynix. It’s weird that they are a whole new component that could be designed into new products, as well as the math that goes along with it.
• This week’s history is an entire site, devoted to transistor history. How cool is that?! Be sure to check out the oral histories with some of the inventors of key chips.
• Shonky Product of the Week:
• The AMPilizer. A capacitor in a box! It’s based around the idea of Power Factor Correction, but this should not be required in homes (esp. where Dave lives, as they don’t charge for apparent power).

Please leave thoughts, comments and circuit diagrams in the show comment section! Thanks for listening!

• Dave is buying a new place! It’s not a house in Cleveland, nor a Castle in Europe, but he’ll be doing nerdy things there!
• And as Dave likes to say, at least it’s not Detroit (with all apologies to Detroiters out there).
• Dave”s new place is walkable, unlike the campuses of Silicon Valley and the live-in campuses of parts of China (well, you can walk if you live there).
• What does Dave need to get for his new shop? Let us know in the comments!
• Chris thinks he should get a Shop Bot…only $7k! (and up).
• Patrick writes in about his projects, BuildYourCNC.com and the Pick And Place spinoff, redFrog. Comparisons of the action below:
• redFrog (starts at 4:25):
• SparkFun’s MC384:
• And what can only be described as a “machine gun” pick and place (by Fuji)
• Dave and Chris favor an IR reflow oven on eBay or on Amazon over the hotplate method of reflowing boards.
• Upgrading from 300 mm to 450 mm wafer processing equipment could cost up to $7 Billion! Yowsa!
• I guess the $4 Billion Intel is pumping into upstate NY will only get them half a fab?
• Government military spending allows for things like the Boston Dynamics Alpha Dog.
• Shonky Product of the Week:
• The Blackbody, by Lessloss. What a heap of crap! Read all the things it can do, it’s precious.
• The downside to the “Financialization of everything”. The loss of talent to financial engineering.
• This Day in Nerd History:
• The true (and vindicated) inventor of the first computer, John Atanasoff, was born (in 1903).  The Atanasoff-Berry computer was built in 1937-42 at Iowa State University by Atanasoff and a graduate student, Clifford Berry, it introduced the ideas of binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, and logic circuits.

That’s all for this week. Be sure to leave us comments on anything you heard: good, bad or indifferent.

NOTE: Yes, there were some audio issues this week in the first half of the show. We’ll get back to our better quality next week, sorry for the ears we offend.

Lots of fun this week as we get back to the old format of Chris and Dave just shooting the breeze. Hope you enjoy it and please let us know what you thought in the comments!

• Chris spent the last week recruiting at MIT and wrote about the experince of recruiting at a top tier engineering school on EB.
• One of the students there built a particle accelerator as a high school student! Awesome!
• A new show stereotyping and pitting nerds against one another is looking for people to cast on their show. Yuck, not what we need for STEM.
• Shoutouts:
• Gary Servin linked here from his relatively new site. Thanks Gary! We love it when people put our logo on their site!
• Jon Oxer, founder of Freetronics, did a video response to the ongoing chip-fab-at-home debate. It’s a well measured look at both sides and he gets to participate in the conversation. We definitely enjoyed the fact that people can respond to our ongoing battle (or any other comments we make) in this manner.
• Dave visited the Melbourne Hackerspace and they have an unofficial WOTW in the video.
• TI and National are officially one company. We’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.
• Listener Niels Mosley asked about how to pick op amps when there are so many out there. Chris’ answer? Carefully.
• A new part from Microchip pairs an 8 bit micro with reconfigurable logic and a few other fun bits (like an NCO).
• More on the printable electronics front: Lars Herlogsson from Linkoping University in Sweden published papers about new organic, printable transistors with gate geometries down to 100 nm. Awesome!
• Chip of the Week!
• Dave picks out our top pick of chips this week: The LT1512, a SEPIC topology, multi-chemistry battery charging circuit.
• A new part for solar installations, a 50 mV diode that can pass up to 20A. Cool for solar cell installations.
• Chris didn’t know about this (apparently) Open Source Logic Analyzer. Dave doesn’t like that it’s built on an off-the-shelf development board.
• Some fun breadboarding tips from ProtoStack. We especially liked the part with the SD card plugging into a breadboard!
• This Day in Nerd History:
• In 1922, Dr. Albert Taylor and Leo Young at the Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory near Washington, D.C., demonstrated that if a ship passed through a radio wave being broadcast between two stations, that ship could be detected, the essentials of radar.

We’re joined once again from our friend Jeff Keyzer of MightyOhm.com, calling in from NYC. He is wrapping up weeks of travel, most recently at the Open Hardware Summit and the World Maker Faire. Welcome once again Jeff!

• Chris is a married man! Sorry all you throngs of lady-listeners to The Amp Hour, this nerd is taken! Would you marry an engineer?
• Chris will also be in Boston for the coming week. If you’re around give him a shout!
• Dave just got back from his trip to Melbourne. He saw lots of great stuff, to be explained in future videos. But check out his latest video about cell phone SAR testing.
• Also on the schedule was an interview with Colin Mitchell of Talking Electronics.
• Great presentations from Bunnie Huang about the future of Open Hardware and from Amanda “w0z” Wozniak about the importance of documentation.
• Some other captured videos are available on the side bar of the OHS ustream page.
• Shoutout: A short news-based podcast called “This Week in Engineering” popped onto Chris’ radar.
• Jeff also mentioned the Open Source Hardware Junkies podcast, which neither Chris nor Dave knew about.
• Chris was at the ICSCRM conference last week, one focused on GaN and SiC devices. Pretty cool future for power and switching applications!
• Jeff mentioned the importance of these more exotic, non-standard materials entering the market, like when Dr Shuji Nakamura used GaN to create a blue light LED.
• Chip of the Week: Well, really package of the week. The International Rectifier DirectFET2 package is really cool! It’s a flip-chip die in a tiny metal can that allows heat sinking on both the top and the bottom.
• Listener Ben Rampling sent in an amazing video for our Shonky Product of the Week segment. The guy in the video is claiming your being bombarded with deadly radiation, as shown on his 0-1KHz FFT plot that zeroes out when he puts his feet on a grounded surface and his wrist on a grounded mouse pad. A must watch for ridiculous product claims!

Another episode flown by the seats of our collective pants. Hear something you did or didn’t like? Let us know in the comments!

Welcome to our guest this week, Joe Grand! Hardware hacker, electrical engineer and former TV host! (but not a washout as Joe was saying)

• Joe gave us a behind the scenes look at being part of a TV show (all the design docs here). His 13 episode show was Prototype This on The Discovery Channel.
• There are some clips available on The Discovery Channel’s YouTube channel or some behind the scenes footage on Joe’s YouTube channel (example below).

• Joe was an early members of The L0pht, a hacking group out of Boston throughout the 90s (Joe’s handle was “Kingpin”)
• Corporate influence and commercializing the company hurt the group later.
• We wonder if the recently announced BugLabs collaboration with Ford will have a similar effect on the OSHW nature of their devices.
• Joe still stays in touch with some from the group, including Mudge, who is now a program director for DARPA trying to get funding for quick turn solutions from hackerspaces, called Cyber Fast Track.
• Aside from hacking days, Joe has debuted and licensed multiple designs to other companies, including:
• Emic Text-to-Speech Module
• The yet-to-be-released Low Cost Laser Range Finder. The build log is here and it’s predicted to be coming out next week.
• DEFCON 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 badges
• We also talked to Joe about manufacturing and where he does his, prompted by multiple articles about smaller companies moving manufacturing back to the US. Joe has used:
• Sonic Manufacturing in the Bay Area.
• E-Teknet in China and the US
• The Boston Consulting Group has predicted a resurgence in manufacturing in the US in the next 5 years.
• Shoutout: MakerBot TV just started, a weekly show about using a MakerBot! Awesome!
• This Week In Nerd History: On this day in 1958, Jack Kilby demonstrated his invention of a miniaturized electronic circuit to his boss at TI. This was recognized as the first integrated circuit to be built and operated. This was not the first transistor ever invented (as Chris wrongly stated).
• Dave took a picture of his ad-hoc recording studio:

Wow…kind of a long episode this week (but totally worth it), due to having TWO guests on the show! Jason Kridner of the BeagleBoard Project and Texas Instruments and our regular co-co-host, Jeff Keyzer of MightyOhm.com.

• Some of Jason’s favorite projects for the BeagleBoard are robotics, including some that utilize the libfreenect library.
• Jason sees the BeagleBoard getting smaller and cheaper in the future, trending towards other projects like Raspberry Pi
• The Gadgeteer (from Microsoft) doesn’t appear to be open source hardware, but is a way for .NET programmers to start with hardware.
• Though the hardware may not be OSHW, the .NET Micro Framework is FOSS. And using .NET on Linux  is a possibility in part by Miguel de Icaza.
• Jason’s next project with the BeagleBoard will be to remove the need for his iPad for his retro gaming interface system, the iCade.
• Due to frustration over a broken 40 pin zif socket Jeff went out and bought and fell in love with a Hakko 808 desoldering station.
• Jason has seen some crazy BGA mods. Send in pictures of your favorite board mods to be featured on the show.
• Software on the BeagleBoard is pretty varied. The Angstrom Distribution is based upon similar code to WebOS, the main software of the temporarily cheap and available HP touchpads.
• Roel Adriaans took The Amp Hour Bingo concept to a new level! Follow along when you listen to the show!
• Bill Porter did an unconventional thing: he proposed to his girlfriend by hijacking her PCB panel order from @Laen!
• A new competition in the works: a 7400 logic series competition from Dangerous Protoypes!
• Jeff had a great time at the Chaos Communication Camp, held outside of Berlin Germany. Check out his photos on the MightyOhm Flickr Page.
• There was a talk about sending hackers (in satellite or human form) to space in the near future.
• Jeff compared it to Burning Man, the annual art festival in the desert of the US.
• Jeff was selling his Geiger Counter kit at the CCC and will continue to at the NY Maker Faire.
• Why isn’t there overnight camping at any of the MakerFaire events?

•  Chris has a new mic! An AT2020 USB microphone. Dave uses a Samson C01U USB microphone.
• The Jacksonville police mistake LED lightbulbs for a bomb! Whoops!
• Shonky Product of the Week:
• The ADE651, a scam bomb detector. Similar to a dowsing rod…in that it’s full of crap!
• Shoutouts:
• Fake EE Quips has created a bingo game to play along with during The Amp Hour.
• Tymkrs has created a new podcast called “ZombieTech” as part of their broad range of educational material.
• Another site for electronic education called The Signal Path. Similar format to Dave’s videos, they’re great for learning about electronic components.
• DIY Drones has a fun (unlisted video) that shows a (possibly fake?) electronic human-scale multicopter. The guy driving it wasn’t being very safe, but we’re glad he’s ok.
• Dave wishes we could talk about it more, but he wanted to remind people about the Tektronix announcement coming up in a few hours (from when the swhow was taped). Dave may or may not have something to say about it soon.
• Rumor about TI selling the OMAP family to Intel or Broadcom. Junko Yoshida (the EIC) was upset they took so long to respond (because they don’t regularly participate?).
• TI has a new app out for all their products. Speaking of, Chris just got a Nook and has Android unlocked on it, but probably won’t put electronics apps on it. Do you use mobile apps from vendors?
• High voltage electronics and a funny accent? Yes please! Great (dangerous) videos from PhotonicInduction!
• We’ve talked about Kickstarter before on here and the viability of HW projects. Geekscape describes an unfortunate scam on Kickstarter for a project that sounded pretty cool (and too good to be true)
• Prizes were ridiculous, but didn’t compare to the money required to get the top prizes in the the MC Frontalot Kickstarter Campaign that recently completed.
• This Day In Nerd History: 
• Charles Kettering, an American engineer whose 140 patents included the electric starter, car lighting and ignition systems. Later had the General Motors Institute named after him (now Kettering University).  Vice president and director of research for General Motors Corp. (1920-47).
• Are robots going mainstream? At $285K per robot, probably not. But it’s a good step forward. Dave is building a Microbric robot at home for fun.
• Should green cards be stapled to diplomas? Could help with the exodus of skilled workers back to their home countries and instead entice them to start companies in the US (or wherever they are educated).