This week we have our first 4 person Amp Hour! Welcome to the Ed McMahon of The Amp Hour, Jeff Keyzer, and the young star of the maker scene, Jeremy Blum!

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• Happy birthday to Jeremy!
• How do people say “Arduino”?
• Friend of the show and 555 contest entrant, Jason Pruitt linked here recently from his new site. Thanks!
• Alan did a great “thank you” video for the 555 contest.
• Many of Jeremy’s friends are going to internships over the summer for “financial engineering” (blech), similar to what we have discussed before. CJ Gervasi recently wrote about how this could be good for the financial services sector but we think it’ll corrupt them all!
• Lots of fun links about weather balloons and ham radio!
  • Alvaro wrote in about a balloon that got to 116,000 feet! Woo!
  • Troy Rank wrote in about a balloon documentary about a 2 day journey to find a balloon.
  • And Bob Kochis wrote in about a  balloon carrying a geiger counter, ostensibly to measure radiation in the upper atmosphere.
  • XKCD mentions how much radiation you get while on an airplane.
• Bob also wrote in about a new X Prize to create a “tricorder” like device that could diagnose anyone.
• Google announces their ADK (Android Developers Kit) for all new phones and tablets.
• Microchip announces a partnership with Digilent to create a PIC based version of the Arduino (sans trademark, of course)
• Jeff will be at the Bay Area Maker Faire next week, judging the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge.

Thanks to Jeff and Jeremy for sitting in with us this week! If you’ve got comments about anything we discussed on this week’s show, let us know in the comments (or hit me, Dave, Jeff or Jeremy up on Twitter).  Be sure to subscribe using the buttons in the upper right corner (RSS or email) to be alerted as soon as the next episode is released.  Thanks for listening!

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Chris apologizes for the poor audio quality on his end, it was a new setup (again) while the bench is being finished.

• What’s your favorite movie about engineering? Piggybacking on an article by Bill Schewber article from EEtimes.
• Bjork pulls apart a TV and tells us about it. WTF.
  • “You shouldn’t let poets lie to you”
• Intel’s new fab is going down to 14nm! Holy hell!
  • Why Arizona? Why not somewhere with water? Like Cleveland! (we promise, the water isn’t on fire anymore)
• NY wants to bring an engineering school and high tech to NYC? If cost was no issue, perhaps?
• Dave reviews another scope and we talk about system level design
• The battle rages on! An updated roadmap for printed electronics! Chris tells Dave to look for low cost fares to the US!
• You can print wax masks for chips now, perhaps another good step for etching.
• A new podcast exists for hackerspaces, and not just on iTunes as we said in the show.
• Another shout out and place to hang out, the Savage Circuits chat is on the 1st and 3rd Fridays of the month.
• None of these are as big as the Engadget TV show. How do they get so many people? Good for them!
• Dave talks about an article he read about a mathematician that predicts lottery tickets.
• Freescale going public again after having been private for less than 4 years. Are chip companies too big to fail?

A new Amp Hour initiative:

Chip companies should publish their most popular parts. This would allow smaller manufacturers to target chips they know aren’t going away any time soon. This would help on price and longevity of the part for the designer and would allow manufacturing efficiencies for the chip maker as more people gravitate towards these more popular parts. Think about it, chip companies!

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• WOTW
  • Kibi (a WOTW alum!) send in pictures of a past bench! And a past beefy power amplifier!
  • Jeremy Blum (@sciguy14) submitted pictures of his work workbench on his personal site! Great toaster SMT reflow!
  • Not submitted, but Steve Liebson did a video interview with Jim Williams and we get to see Jim’s lab.

• Events
  • Analog aficionados meeting out in Silicon Valley. Sounds awesome!
• Rant
  • TI is SO thoughtful to let us upload videos for them to keep! Wow, thanks guys!
• Discussion Points
  • Dave did a review of the new Agilent Scope! Great teardown!
  • Agilent moving manufacturing for low end back into the US. Is this a new trend?
  • Karl’s documentary still isn’t done, but will be an interesting look into local electronics manufacturing in Australia.
  • Science funding is under threat in the US, but Obama is pushing for more funding in next year’s budget.
  • Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains why science funding is important regardless.
  • New wireless system for cell phones called “LightRadio” could get rid of towers.
  • Dave turned down his wireless router, but does he have ElectroMagnetic sensitivity?
  • Cold fusion is back in the news. Dave thinks it’s viable in <20 years, based on a documentary he saw recently.
  • Microchip is selling already programmed parts under different part numbers. Cool idea!
  • At the recent SavageCircuits chat, EOD asked our opinion of the Parallax Propeller.
• WTF
  • DigiKey sent Dave a catalog?? And from Switzerland no less!

  Ferudun Yurdabak emailed Dave with a photo is his old 555 timer chip, the exact same batch as Dave’s one – amazing coincidence after 34 years!
  

For reference, the WTF soundclip comes from here: End Of The World

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• Shoutouts
  • Thanks to Mitch (@mitpatterson) for linking to us from his site!
  • Alexander linked here too and asked about what to do when family and friends might not be interested in hearing about your latest project.
  • Octopart now indexes Digikey as well!
  • Electronics porn! Hi res photos of an old Microchip part.
    • Light can get into lots of parts and mess them up, not just the ones that are supposed to get erased.
• WOTW
  • Kibi
    • Workbench (clean)
    • Computer desk
    • Workbench (messy)
    • Current source
  • Darren Landrum
    • Bench Overview
    • Some tools
    • Under the bench
    • The audio bench
    • The YouTube guided tour!
• Discussion
  • Stories of audiofools: Green pens to “increase the audio fidelity” of CDs? Ha!
  • Jeff from Mighty Ohm posted some awesome pictures of the computer museum down in Austin
  • Chris and Jeri Ellsworth started a 555 design contest! Check out the contest site for more details and be sure to start your designs! The deadline is March 1st.
  • Zombie magazines! Is Popular Electronics coming back to life? Many veterans remember it fondly, Dave included!