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We continue our “every other week” tradition (a guest one week, just Dave and Chris the next) with lots of news and projects!

• Chris has a new project and affiliation — ChipReport.tv! (Links at the end of the video to subscribe)
  
• The “Still Untitled Adam Savage Project” on Tested.com is pretty good!
• Shahriar from The Signal Path super-cools an LED…and it changes color! Awesome!
• Temperature can affect your designs…but do we really need to worry about it?
• Tom LeMense might say so, having worked on automobile designs.
• The Olympics have started! There are some cool engineering design questions regarding timing and video.
• Analog Devices and Digilent released a DMM/Oscilloscope board for relatively cheap (esp if you’re a student). Dave doesn’t like it.
• Even though Chris would argue this is a further push towards using off the shelf tablets for scopes, the Antipasto Hardware Blog says to utilize custom Android tablets, if at all.
• Some butthead is buying up all the copyright to Heathkit schematics and is pursuing any left online.
• Digikey now has a schematic tool built in…but why doesn’t it interface to CAD programs?
• Do you watch the financial health of a company when making decisions to design in a part? ST Micro is running out of cash.
• There is a database of chip logos that can help you find out which chips you’re looking at.
• Mike’s Electric Stuff has a video of entire boards with rebadged chips from a military computer:
  
• ARM is working with TSMC to develop sub 20nm designs…does this mean ARM might make a chip one day? What stops them?
• Tektronix is accepting feedback on their products via a new site…and want video reviews?
• Duane Benson of Screaming Circuits is writing articles detailing his first impressions about learning FPGAs. 
• Erin “RobotGrrl” has a great video showing a timelapse of a curvy board layout. Mesmerizing!
  
• Dave used to do tape layouts by hand!
• If you’re doing a manhattan technique build, there is a great technique for creating “islands” on the copper clad.

That’s all for this week. If you enjoy the show, we would love it if you gave us a review on iTunes! It really helps new people find the podcast. Or tell your friends! Thanks!

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Jeff Keyzer of Mightyohm.com joins us this week to talk electronics and his new comic book!

• Jeff Keyzer and Mitch Altman and Andie Nordgren just put out a comic book called “Soldering is easy!”. Great resource for those just starting out and a preview of a book to be published later this year.
• Jeff will be at the Bay Area Maker Faire next month, teaching classes.
• He also will be at the Choas Communication Camp in Germany later this year (the place where the Hackerspace was born).
• Chris found out about all this from the Hackerspaces Mailing List.
• Dave is unabashedly asking people to vote for him in the Tektronix Scope Contest! Dave’s video is about the piezoelectric effect in probes.
• Henrik (@hspalm), one of our WOTW alums, writes in about his new project to characterize DIY shipping costs. Could be a good launchpad for a wiki-type site and drive some change at these organizations.
• Digikey has a new community that seems destined to flop right out of the gate.
• Instead, they should try to be more like AVRfreaks or BeagleBoard, which are more targeted and detached from the company.
• Electric Vehicles
  • Chris had the opportunity to hear Bob Simpson, of EVdrive.com, talk about his conversion and upcoming business venture.
  • New idea is V2G or Vehicle-2-Grid, uses cars as load balancing while they are parked in the garage. Don Tuite has a good rebuttal to the practicality of this in a recent Electronic Design article.
  • Why doesn’t the Toyota Prius have plug-in capability?
• Dave is putting up new lighting in the lab. LED for total lumens needed is still impractical. Dave went with fluorescent to cost and light output.
• And finally, in the WTF column, the US Navy is working on a new  lighting scheme: a laser weapon! Good gravy!

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• WotW
  • Dino (who now has a uStream channel for his workshop)
    • Modular bench
    • Bench with dresser drawers
    • Bench with old Tek scope!
  • Mitch (@mitpatterson)
    • Bench with etching tools laid out
    • Panorama of home lab
• Shoutouts
  • DigiKey and Electronic Design Magazine have a new show!
• Rants
  • DigiKey and Electronic Design Magazine have a new show!
  • We don’t want to register for new shows or for engineering calculator apps for phones.
  • The people who claim to have an idea that will “make millions” but want you to build it for them…because they can’t.
• Follow-Up
  • Intel 14nm fab going to be made possible with new EUV tools.
• Discussion Points
  • Intel wants to charge to upgrade the performance of your existing CPU.
  • Europe wants the chip fabs to come back. Apparently, they just figured out that manufacturing is important.
  • Why are 9V batteries still common in cheapo DMMs?

As a reminder for those interested, the 555 Contest ends tomorrow, March 1st at 11:59 pm EST! Get your entries in now!

We wanted to try out a title similar to the style of The Big Bang Theory…we love it!

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• Shoutout
  • Another Ham-like video podcast called Amateur Logic. We like it! Thanks to the queen of science videos (Jeri) for the link!
  • Dave got scooped! Afrotechmods did an AWESOME video about ultracaps. He arc welded a coin!

• ShoutDown
  • Even though it’s Chris’ favorite news source, NPR recently used Dave’s Kindle teardown video without attribution! Booo.
• WotW
  • Frank from (cold!) Finland
    • View 1 of the bench
    • View 2 of the bench (-1 point for not being in the shot!)
  • Nathan from ASoberNewt (website, not a place)
    • The bench by itself
    • And Nathan in the shot while in the garage
• Follow Up
  • More about last week’s discussion about PhD’s: they only make 3% more on average than those with a Master’s, according to a recent article from The Economist. Monetarily, PhD’s don’t seem worth it (though they may be otherwise)
• Discussion Points
  • Is there a competitive advantage to being a squeaky wheel? Dave’s new videos got good responses from DigiKey and Maxim.
  • Matt from the Antipasto Hardware Blog talks at length about the need for continued innovation in the Open Source Hardware Community.
  • In the US, they are opening up the FM bands for the first time to non-commercial enterprises. Can Dave and Chris buy their way onto the airwaves?
  • There is also more talk about the Nearfield Communication capabilities of cellphones in the near future, as led by Google. There’s an open standard, but how much will be accessible to the user/hacker/maker?
  • More tech executive foolishness. Some were caught “consulting” while holding a high ranking position in a company. What a bunch of dopes!
  • Dave doesn’t want to work anymore. He would much rather retire now and do electronics as a hobby, who’s in?

An early submission from @wa7iut:

Due to time constraints this week, we’re going to try going back to a mostly link-based page. If you find yourself really longing for silly and extraneous commentary encapsulating the links, be sure to let us know in the comments! Curious about the title of the episode? Now you have to listen to the show!

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• The Pantyhose Screen!



• Events
  • Chris will be at ESC Boston
  • And the Open Hardware Summit!
  • Dave is going the BrizTube!
• Shoutouts
  • Shoutout from Jason! Thanks!
  • Thanks to Jon from Freetronics for the Arduino kit! Having tons of fun with it!
• Tech News
  • Hynix will begin production of the HP memristor
  • Digikey is huge! One billion dollars!
• Tech Discussions
  • Jim Williams: Analog Badass
  • Modularity in practice at Buglabs
  • Talking SPICE simulators and mentioned the experience of Flying Flux
• Rants
  • Iranian walking robot
  • Clay Shirky’s book about Cognitive Surplus
  • Dave’s followup to the calling out the IEEE about their Kindle review
  • Dave’s experience with Digikey reminds him of the Tenacious D song The Government Totally Sucks!

They’re not in order, but hopefully all of the links are included that we mentioned. If we’re missing any, please let us know in the comments.

And finally, thanks to the folks over at The Conversations Network; The Levelator seems to have cured ALL of our sound woes! Holy moly was it easy and effective at making us sound good! Many thanks to George Graves for giving us the heads up!