Circuit Break - A MacroFab Podcast

• Stephen
  • Nasty Analog Oscillations 
    • Opamps are drama queens of electronics
    • Solved the oscillation with a small capacitor in the feedback loop to lower the frequency of the feedback
• Parker
  • Waiting on circuit boards to be built for the DAC Article
  • Reworking the Knowledge Base here at the FAB 
    • Suggestions for topics are welcome!
• RFO
  • Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years
    • Trajectory Correction Maneuver or TCM thrusters
    • TCM's where only used for continuous firing mode and not used to angle the craft which requires controlled burst firing
    • Engineers used decades-old data and examined the software that was coded in an outdated assembler language to figure out how to test the TCMs
    • Electric propulsion coaxial
  • 0306 Capacitor Size 
    • Odd capacitor size
    • Same dimensions as a 0603 but hamburger style
    • For reducing the parasitic inductance by shortening the current loops in circuits
    • AVX product brief on low inductance chip capacitors
  • A Concise Guide to Ceramic Capacitor Types
    • Covers the different classes of capacitors
    • “why does Y5V even exist?”
  • Four Levels of project transcendence 
    • 5th level is starting a lifetime of projects every month but only abandon them after ordering all the parts and supplies for said projects
• Announcements
  • Twitter Chat INFO 
    • April 6th Friday at 1PM CST
  • Meetup Info 
    • Parker Key Parts of an Arduino
    • Trey German will talk about taking off-shelf enclosures and customizing them. Shout out to @yertnamreg
    • https://twitter.com/yertnamreg?lang=en
  • Houston Hardware Happy Hour 
    • First Thursday of each month
    • May 3rd at Slowpokes
    • Bring hacks and hang out

• Stephen
  • AutoDesk Fusion 360
  • Fusion 360 Tutorial by Lars Christensen
• Parker
  • Getting the PCM5122 DAC to talk to an Arduino
    • analogRead FAST 
      • Cuts the number of cycles needed to do an Analog read on the Arduino platform
      • Albert van Dalen - AVDWEB
  • Beer Brewing Electrical Box
• RFO
  • Flat-Earther launches himself into sky in steam-powered rocket
    • "Mad" Mike Hughes
    • 350miles an hour
    • ~1850 feet up
    • Previously mentioned on EP #96: I Expect You To be Bored Mr. Bond
    • Video!
  • Ideas for summer projects for students

Tags: Arduino, AutoDesk Fusion 360, AVDWEB, Beer Brewing, electronics podcast, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, Mad Mike Hughes, MEP, PCM5122, Podcast

• Bruce Hamby
  • Attorney with the Hamby Law Firm
  • The Hamby Law Firm focuses on patents, intellectual property, trademarks and business law
  • Has been an attorney in the Houston region for over 15 years
• Own your Brand
  • One of first things to consider when bringing a product to market
  • What is the difference between a trademark and a copyright?
  • Register trademarks in U.S. and Internationally
  • Name is important as tt denotes source and ensures that your name is legitimate and authentic
  • Don’t just protect your brand, protect your ideas
  • United States Patent and Trademark Offices (USPTO)
  • International filings
• Own your Technology
  • Patents
  • Establish ownership
  • Making sure it’s a quality patent to give you the most protection
  • Open Source? Licensing
  • Owning Your Tech in Other Countries
  • China and your intellectual property
• Establish Freedom to Operate
  • Crucial step that shouldn’t be overlooked - listen to the reasons why
  • Reading/evaluating patents
  • How to conduct IP searches and evaluate if you infringe on a patent
  • Should you even look at other patents?
  • Is it illegal to try to patent something that you know is not original?

Meet with Bruce Hamby next week at the MacroFab Hardware Meetup!

• Stephen
  • "Slow Start" or soft start circuits
  • Bulk capacitance is killing the power supply for the new synth design
  • Capacitance Multiplier
• Parker
  • Badge Design for DefCon 
    • NFC Belt Buckle
    • Lots of LEDs of course
    • Digital Logic Analyzer?
    • Hacker Utility Belt design for DC27?
• RFO
  • Saleae Logic Pro improvment
    • Performance Boost!
    • Latest Update unlocked all of the USB 3.0 Bandwidth for a 50% gain
  • Tented verse non tented vias 
    • Pros and Cons?
    • How to Define them?

Tags: Badge Design, Brown Note, Capacitance Multiplyer, electronics podcast, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, Mega Zeus, MEP, Podcast, Saleae Logic, Soft Start, Tented Vias

• Stephen
  • Ribbon Microphone 
    • Turn it into a Hackaday.io project?
    • Make a USB microphone from scratch? 
      • PCM2912A
      • Talked about this IC on a previous episode of the MEP
      • Datasheet
  • Stephen will be in Denver next week 
    • Contact Info
• Parker
  • Test results of the PCM5122 Audio DACs
    • Covered in a previous episode of the MEP
    • Ceramic caps sound better? 
      • Sound is subjective
  • PinHeck REV8 Update 
    • PCM5122
    • Running I2C and I2S on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 
      • Have to run them on alternate pins
    • Looking into the source code for the dtoverlays to figure out how to pass the correct overrides 
      • dtoverlay=i2c1-bcm2708,sda1_pin=44,scl1_pin=45,pin_func=6
      • dtoverlay=i2s-gpio28-31
    • REV8 will be used as a test mule for PinoTaur
• RFO
  • Shortage of Passive Parts 
    • Hackaday article
    • MacroFab article
  • Juicero already found at a Goodwill Store
    • Selling for $40 verse the original price of $700
  • Why is the boardhouse putting on a UL mark on my PCB? 
    • The mark means UL recognized which means that it is a component that can be used as a part of UL listed product

Tags: electronics podcast, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MEP, Podcast

• AND!XOR
  • Check out the previous MEP EP#69 Incognito Mode for the last time the AND!XOR group was on the podcast
• Bitstr3m
  • Did the Android mobile application for the DEFCON 25 badge
• Zapp
  • Does the hardware design.
• HyR0n
  • Embedded software, puzzles, ect
• DEFCON 25 RECAP
  • Last years badge details
    • Hunter S Thompson as Bender,
    • bender on a bender
    • Botnet
    • Changing voltage regulators mid manufacturing run
    • QFN design on PCB
    • Iterative prototyping
  • HotFix to patch BLE exploit
  • Hacking IoT Vodka
  • Badge Sales
• DEFCON 26 new Badge details
  • Hardware or Software secrets? 
    • Double down on botnet
  • Lessons learned to apply to the new badge? 
    • WS2812Bs do not reflow well
    • QFN design on PCB is critical
    • Implement OTA updates
    • Iterative prototyping
    • I2C
• Looking forward to this year?
  • Not flashing badges three times
  • Going to hacker jeopardy
  • Want to see more people hacking badges

Tags: electronics podcast, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MEP, Podcast

• Stephen
  • Midi Woes
  • Atleast the Teensy is fast
• Parker
  • DAC testing update
    • Interesting results looking at the spectrum analysis of the DACs
    • Film caps suppress harmonics better but let more low end frequency through
    • "Audio" grade parts have a higher response over the frequency band
    • All the DAC load outs have a flat frequency response
    • Blind testing resulted in listeners picking the cheaper passive load out for the DAC saying it sounded more "spacious"/"open"/"dynamic" compared to the film caps.
• Rapid Fire Opinion R.F.O.
  • Discrete Pong Project Goes Big, Adds a Player 
    • Two-player color Pong game with audio completely from discrete components
    • EEVBlog build thread
  • Stealth Winners of the new iPhoneX 
    • PCB Sandwich
    • mSAP 
      • modified semi-additive processes for PCB assembly
      • Can get traces down to .6 to .4mils
      • PDF with good diagrams on how mSAP works
  • Is coding required for Electrical Engineering? 
    • Get on our Slack channel and join the conversation!

Tags: Coding in Electrical Engineering, electronics podcast, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MEP, MIDI, mSAP, PCB Sandwich, PCM5122, Podcast, Pong, Teensy

• Stephen
  • Melted Solid State Relay in electric brewery setup 
    • "Finally gave up the smoke"
    • New SSR is rated for 40A
    • Installed a blower fan on the heatsink for extra protection
  • GFCI Breakers 
    • Monitors current on both legs of the circuit and makes sure they are within 5mA of each other
    • Parker is going to use a SPA 240V 50A GFCI setup for his brewery setup
• Parker
  • DAC board update 
    • PCM5122 based DAC design
    • Same chip as what is on the HiFiberry DAC+
    • Had to change out the in series resistors from 1K Ohm to 27 Ohm resistors to get the communication to work
    • Digital Logic Analyzer Verse Oscilloscope
  • Soldering Iron ownership history
• R.F.O.
  • PCM2912A USB microphone chip 
    • USB Interface, Mono Microphone Input and Stereo Headphone Output
  • Found in a Datasheet for LAN9514 pg 15
    • When disabling port power, the driver will actively drive a ‘0’
  • The BenHeck show is losing its host
  • Adventures in Autorouting
    • /r/electronics thread
    • It is definitely written by a software person
    • They do not take in account RF noise, stability, power return and ground loops
    • “Imagine today’s standard 4 layer boards routinely being fit into 2 layers without any human effort.”

Tags: electronics podcast, GFCI Breakers, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MEP, PCM2912A, PCM5122, Podcast

• John Teel
  • Founder of Predictable Designs, a company which helps startups, makers, and small companies develop new electronic products
  • An award-winning design engineer for Texas Instruments (TI) where John designed numerous successful microchips which are found inside millions of popular tech products
  • Predictable Designs 
    • Making product development process as predictable as possible
    • Predicting the pitfalls and costs, with a focus on the initial stages of product development
  • Common questions people ask 
    • How much will it cost to develop and manufacture my electronics product?
    • How long will it take to get my product on the market?
    • I don't have tons of money, so how can I get my product to market?
    • I don't have any product development experience, so how can I get my product to market?
  • Common mistakes made by new hardware entrepreneurs 
    • Underestimating the complexity and time to develop a manufacturable product
    • Scalability of a product from prototype to mass production.
    • Jumping head first into full product design without an understanding of the steps and costs that lie ahead
    • Over focus on product development without enough early focus on marketing

Tags: electronics podcast, John Teel, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MEP, Podcast, Predictable Designs

• Stephen
  • Community Dice 
    • Matt Parker - Standup Maths 
    • Thingiverse
    • Shapeways 
  • What’s the highest frequency signal a home gamer can generate? (square and sin waves?)
• Parker
  • New Engineering Article 
    • 3 Steps to Planning Parts Selection for Your Next Electronic Hardware Product
  • Raspberry Pi Compute Module Motherboard 
    • Continuation from the Compute Module board from last year
    • Added the PCM5122 audio DAC
    • Learning about USB HUB design 
      • TUSB2046B
      • TPS2044 for overcurrent protection 
        • Only rated for 500mA
      • USB spec says only 120uF cap per hub required but 100uF per port is recommended with low ESR
      • USB DM/DP signals require around 27 ohm termination resistors
      • Optional filter of 22pF recommended for EMI suppression
      • This creates a “low pass” filter with a cut off of 267.9 MHz 
        • 12M bit/sec full Speed USB 12MHz, well under this cut off
• Rapid Fire Opinion (R.F.O.)
  • Mouser now Authorized Distributor for Espressif
    • They make the ESP8266 Wifi stuff
  • FPGA Dev boards 
    • Arrows $30 FPGA Board
      • Altera MAX 10
      • Built in USB programming
    • TinyFPGA Lattice
      • $12  but requires a $9 programmer
• MacroFab is Hiring!
  • Apply here

Tags: electronics podcast, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MEP, MOSFET, Podcast, TinyFPGA