The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

By The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)

A weekly podcast about the electronics industry. Occasional guests. Lots of laughs.... more

4.9

224224 ratings

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FAQs about The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast:

How many episodes does The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 435 episodes available.

The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast episodes:

February 12, 2025#688 – The Tandy Train
Tracking test equipment on one long homepage…the emporer of test equipment
If you track it, it’s not hoarding…it’s curation
Very specific piece of junk wood
Garage
Solar
Amber allows you to sell power back in Australia at some wild rates
Dave is trying out case design in OpenSCAD…it looks…ok
Pebble is returning to the world after Google open sourced the OS (kudos)
Andrew Witte, former CTO of Pebble, was a guest on the show
Tandy200
Annie Lennox on the train with her Tandy (see cover image)
Capacitive forming / reforming
Electric Dreams
Multimeter repair
Tandy teardown
...more
1h 11min
January 28, 2025#687 – The RP2350 with the Raspberry Pi Team
Welcome James Adams, Chris Boross, Liam Fraser, and Luke Wren!
The last time the RPi team was on the show was about the RP1 (#648)
The order of parts being released was RP2040->RP1->RP2350
Check out the datasheet for the RP2350
Learning from silicon
Security and power states
The part is a “Dual dual core”
The Arm side is a Dual M33
The RISC V side is a Hazard 3 processor, designed by Luke based on a previous processor called the Hazard 5
HB5
There is a mux on the core and you select which side you’re going to use at boot
There are 48 GPIO (but users always want more)
Chris Boross (first time on the show) is on the commercial team. He’s seing interesting applications for the RP2350 including devices that are using it for motor control.
They also have seen the part used in satellites because mRAM or masked ROM is less susceptible to radiation errors
The PIOs have changed, but are more evolutionary from the RP2040
The PIO allows you to create state machines that process inputs without processor interventions, basically like tiny cores
2 cores – 8 total
Interesting PIO applications
Luke still likes that DVI on 2040 that was discussed on the first episode they were on (#529)
CAN is possible
USB host / device
MII / RMII
ULPI – USB 2.0 Phy
The core frequency only increased 133 MHz -> 150 MHz. There is tougher timing with the M33
LVT – lower voltage threshhold
30 -> 40 pins
There are now variants listed on the RP2350 product page (but not in mass production) that include flash in the SOM package
RP2040 was one power domain
“Powerman” (and of course AVR Man)
Switched core
AON – always on
32 kHz
There is a C/C++ SDK that is the basis for other ports
Security is a focus for the RP2350
Bootrom in every chip
Secure boot
M33 features – secure / non-secure
RISC V PMP
RCP – Redundancy Coprocessor
Raspberry Pi had a challenge / bounty for getting the secret out of the RP2350 OTP with secure boot
One of the few silicon companies doing this sort of thing in public
Past guest Aedan Cullen was one of the hacks called “Hazardous threes”. He gave a talk about it at 38C3
Past guest Colin O’Flynn was also mentioned because collaboration around side channel attacks with the Chip Whisperer
IOActive used a FIB – Fine Ion Beam – and passive voltage contrast to capture an impressive image of a decapped chip (see the RPi post)
“Never want to see ‘novel technique’ in an email”
Improving the RP2350 silicon
How do you decide what to fix/leave?
Can it be changed in metal/vias?
SIO spinlock not being fixed
Chicken Bit
Filler cells are reprogrammable and help with fixes
It costs approximately $50K per layer to change (ostensibly because of the high costs of masks)
ULA – uncommitted logic array
Die shrink doesn’t seem to make sense
Will keep making each chip as long as 40 nm fabs are around
Thinking about the RP2040
The easiest way to get started is to use a Pico (RP2040) or a Pico 2 (RP2350). Both have connectivity options as well.
Raspberry Pi is now a public company! Doesn’t change much other than the business scrutiny.
...more
1h 36min
January 21, 2025#686 – A Benchtop Pick and Place with Stephen Hawes
Welcome, Stephen Hawes!
Chris interviewed Stephen back in 2020 for his second episode of The Contextual Electronics Podcast. It was when Stephen was still working at Formlabs and the Lumen/Opulo were a glimmer in his eye.
The Lumen v4 is a Benchtop Pick and Place machine that works with OpenPNP
Where are we in relation to reprap?
Powered feeders
Videos about eeprom
KiCad pos file
Can reliably place 0402
Lumen v4 product page
Motherboard of v4
Running Marlin FW
Head has two heads/nozzles
Compare the Lumen to other methods (hand placed, paying for assembly)
OHM (Open Hardware Manufacturing) podcast
What industries are open?
Thea Flowers (of Winterbloom synth fame) just joined the team
Microscope
Other tools
Space constraints
Stephen does a great job talking through many experiments and upcoming features on his youtube channel
Prototyping PCBs with a fiber laser
Micronix
Making PCBs on a 3D printer (hack session with Stephen’s former employer)
Timon (Skerutsch) makes double sided PCBs by inserting enameled wire through drilled holes
Is this the year you should get a Pick and Place? Stephen won’t say yes (but I will)
...more
1h 16min
December 23, 2024#685 – Data Provenance in the Home, Server, and Fab
Home assistant
Homelab subreddit
Solar assistant
proxmox
CarPlay / android auto
NUCs
Video Interview with Lee (since posted as #684 of TAH)
25K pound amplifier repair and associated EEVblog forum post
Louis Rossman also talking about the copyright claim
How the Fairlight CMI changed Music
Read more here
Synths / woodworking are hobbies that will eat all free cash flow (and Chris is considering the latter…)
Pat Gelsinger has stepped down / retired / been forced out at Intel
Intel will now have co-CEOs. As past guest Luke Wren wrote on Mastodon, “Based on historical trends I predict the number of Intel co-CEOs will double every two years“
Startup in Ohio will apparently be making Quectel parts for the US market. We expect to see lots of silliness like this in the next few years because of forthcoming tariffs…
...more
1h 7min
December 10, 2024 #684 – Lee Felsenstein: The Computer Revolution & Counterculture
A full 3 hour discussion with the legendary Lee Felsenstein, designer of the Osborne 1, SOL computer, VDM-1, Pennywhistle modem, and the inventor of social media. Covering everything from the Berkeley free speech movement, the counterculture movement, his career, through to Obsorne and how he invented social media with Community Memory.
His book: https://www.amazon.com/Me-My-Big-Idea…
https://felsensigns.com/
00:00 – Full 3 hour talk with Lee Felsenstein
08:24 – University of California at Berkeley, and the Free Speech Movement.
29:04 – First Junior Engineer job at Ampex
36:20 – The first hackathons with Richard Greenblatt
37:33 – Hackers, Heros of the computer revolution
1:03:36 – Techical career at Ampex
1:12:52 – Atari Computers and Steve Jobs, Nolan Bushnall, and Allan Alcorn
1:15:00 – He tried to pitch social media to Steve Jobs
1:22:15 – Designing the Pennywhistle 103 modem +
1:25:36 – Marty Spergel selling kits
1:31:53 – Steve Wozniak and how the Apple 1 is NOT a personal computer
1:43:42 – Osborne Computers
1:53:22 – Osborne 1 physical design
1:57:57 – Osborne 1 development timeline
2:01:19 – The Osborne Effect wasn’t what killed the company
...more
0min
November 20, 2024#683 – Troubleshooting is the skill
AI tools for helping with coding (but NOT layout, amirite)
Troubleshooting as a skillset
Stick meme
Dave got an updated electrical box
Home assistant
Keith Burzinski episode (ESPhome)
Toothbrush show
Andreas Spiess discussing Bluetooth proxy
Ian Scott Johnson DIY home automation
Electrarc240 reviews every element of a linear power supply
India power cables
Buried cables
Spotify is bricking the Car Thing but others are trying to save it
“injurnear”
Chris recently developed and coded up a cellular connected relay board for a Smart Locker application
...more
1h 3min
November 06, 2024#682 – Your Mind Is The Tool
Chris has been troubleshooting a PCB with a dead short on inner layers (put in by board house by mistake)
Don’t Touch My Gerbers shirt
“Is there an AI tool that will fix this for me?” … No
Chris dumped a bunch of current in the board and looked at it with this thermal camera
6.5 digit DMM to track down shorts
Etching problems in the old days
100% etest
Adding rails to PCBs for production
Reddit discussion thread: why not work on a product? That is, Dave, the wise one.
Videos
Live stream issues
Post from Twitter: Is 2 layers all you really need? This person thinks so, or is trying to convince themselves as much.
Armchair quarterbacking
Ian Johnston replacing the display on an 8.5 digit DMM
Jack Ganssle has posted his final newsletter (The Embedded Muse)…happy retirement! Jack has been on the show twice:
Episode 54 (!)
Episode 489
Ward Christensen, Inventor of BBS and XModem, (and former listener of the show!) has passed away
Dave is interviewing Lee Felstenstein for our next episode
...more
1h 8min
October 31, 2024#681 – Compact High Speed Design with Lukas Henkel
Welcome Lukas Henkel of OV Tech GmbH, a product design firm based in Nuremburg Germany!
Miniturization and the limits of miniturization
Price is a constraint
Using standard PCB tech (off the shelf)
Open source SIP
Steps
Conventional pcbs / components
Silicon inductors embedded in boards
Bonded Bare dies / stacked
Need volume to make it work
Requirements to fit into ______
iMX8 ULP – 0.4mm CSP
SIP Footprint
Module abstraction layer talk
Framework laptop
Software support / BSP
SIP will be different than PiMX8
Crowdsupply campaign launching 2-3 weeks and delivery in Dec/Jan
OpenSource laptop
CM4 vs PiMX8
SPI Flash with backup partition
Secure element SE050
Footprint for coral tpu and Halo 8
Trying to solve the problem of vision use cases
Marketing using layout / products but also making money on it
Katerina show
Visualizing simulations
Developing intuition
OpenEMS
Usability is based on python scripting
Using Blender for heat map
BVTKNodes uses .vtk file output
Multiphysics solvers
Things that drive Lukas
For HDI, Thinking in 3D / 2.5D and being able to visualize
Layers ranging from 4 to 18
Any layer design for SIP
Wurth electroncis for high density “any layer stackup”
Article series on altium for the open laptop
Follow Lukas on LinkedIn
Lukas also was a co-founder of PCB Arts. We had his cofounder Saber on the show in the past.
...more
1h 7min
October 21, 2024#680 – Catching Rockets with Musk Sticks
Starship 5 landed on chopsticks! (you know, in case you have been offline for 2 weeks)
Dave’s EV had a stuck cable
Portable charger is surprisingly good
CCS Charging standard
Fast charge 36/50 kW
MKBHD Chevy Silverado review
JLC is now offering silkscreen QR codes to have individually marked boards

That’s the board that Chris has been designing on a livestream each week
1 wire UID (pioneered by Dallas, then Maxim, now Analog…le sigh)
Dave is selling a new Bryman multimeter, the BM2257 (teardown photos)
Chris just returned from Embedded World North America, doing a demo at the Joulescope booth
Chris also gave a talk at the Zephyr meetup which will be released in a few weeks
Hackaday article about their comment section and project/article feedback
References
Musk Sticks
NC floods might impact the supply chain due to Spruce Pine NC being a source for quartz. We didn’t read this article, but it was a better explainer than we had at the time.
Meshtastic objects to the proposed FCC changes
...more
1h 10min
October 11, 2024 #679 – Satellite Design Engineering with Dan Esparon
Dan Esparon from Inovor Technologies in South Australia joins Dave to discuss all about the engineering of designing and launching satellites!
Dan works for Inovor Technologies, an Australian company that designs and builds satellites entirely in-house!
Recently they designed and launched the aussie Kanyini satellite on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket
https://www.inovor.com.au/missions/
They design and build their own Flight computers, ADCS systems, UHF radios, Battery modules and Solar Arrays in Australia.
...more
0min

FAQs about The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast:

How many episodes does The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 435 episodes available.

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