The Amp Hour

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

The Amp Hour is a weekly conversation about electronics and the people who design them.... more

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FAQs about The Amp Hour:

How many episodes does The Amp Hour have?

The podcast currently has 745 episodes available.

The Amp Hour episodes:

September 27, 2021Occam's Engineering Razor
Dave has been troubleshooting his solar panel's lower output
Occam's (engineering) razor
Timelapse capture of the sun hitting the panels
Data from the inverter shows a 20% output drop
Lots of theories about what it could be. Micro cracks, like in the MJLorton video?
Nope, turns out it was the TV antenna
Chris and his wife were discussing their daughter's education and the desire for a child to be curious and rigorous
Chris gave the example of Ben Krasnow's video about putting traces onto plastic (which is normally made by a company by past guest Andreas Spiess)
Article about someone leaving STEM Field because they didn't like not knowing. "The importance of stupidity in scientific research"
Troubleshooting
During Dave's recent mailbag video, he reviews the Xdevs workbench
Jay Carlson also posted about workbenches/shops, specifically using the tray method for organizing projects
Adam Savage's tour of Grant Imahara's shop (RIP)
Chris has been trying out different screw mounting methods with his 3D printing (thermal set, printing a nut into it, screw direct into plastic)
Intel likely won't be making auto chips
List of different semiconductor fabricaiton facilities
Demos over deadlines
GANTT (waterfall) vs Agile
Razor photo by Erik Mclean from Pexels
...more
1h 6min
September 20, 2021Toasted Marshmallow Connectors
Thanks to our sponsor Mouser Electronics. This week Chris and Paul discuss Industrial Automation during the ad break.
Thanks, as always, to our wonderful Patrons! You can join the crowd at Patreon.com/TheAmpHour
Chris just got a T962a to do some reflow in his new lab.
Baking out moisture can be important for components
Chris has a Croxel KIOTE-11 outside his office tracking temperature
Upgrading a T962A on past guest Piotr Esden-Tempski's forum
We're interested in why there isn't a mid-range oven available. Perhaps this vapor phase oven is a good option?
Chris used to have a Whizoo ControlLeo v2, you can buy the v3 pre-assembled for $1200
Dave has made a video on melted connectors
"Silicon is just a rock we tricked into thinking"
Sir Clive Sinclair has passed away
Sinclair pocket calculator
ZX80 Spectrum
Cost optimization is a different, yet important, type of innvoation. The Raspberry Pi team (interview with Embedded group) is a modern day torch bearer in that way.
Nanovolt design challenge discussed on the EEVblog forum. Check out the rules on the official competition page.
Marco Reps video on "Why is this 31 year old multimeter unrivaled?" (the HP3458A)
Gravity can impact your frequency measurement, Dave made a video about it
...more
1h 12min
September 13, 2021Generic Nodes with Orkhan Amiraslanov
Welcome, Orkhan Amiraslanov (@azerimaker) from The Things Industries!
LoRa
LoRaWAN
Class A, B, C Devices
Richard Ginus (TWTG) came on the show to discuss LoRa based products
ThingsUNO
ThingsNode
JP Norair also worked on LoRaWAN systems, but talked about some of the limitations.
The Things Stack
The Things Network
Orkhan is originally from Azerbijian and studied industrial automation and process control.
He went to a German research center for AI for graduate work
While there, his masters thesis involved large (64x64 cm display) Electroluminescent (EL) displays driven by an FPGA
Similar to how Ben Krasnow's EL displays work (but larger)
SAMR34
SX1276
Xplained board
Orkhan learned KiCad 2014
The radio module has a 0.5 mm pitch BGA, but he was able to get it fabbed by oshpark!
The form factor Orkhan uses most often is the (adafruit) Feather pinout.
Atmel software framework
Atmel Studio
Ported to PlatformIO
ElectronicCats
Putting device credentials onto device
Spreading factor
Orkhan said "kB" on the show, but later corrected. Here are the official number
51 usable bytes for the slowest data rates, SF10, SF11 and SF12 on 125kHz
115 bytes for SF9 on 125kHz
~222 usable bytes for faster rates, SF7 and SF8 on 125kHz (and SF7 on 250kHz)
Andreas Spiess reached 149 kM with LoRa
A weather balloon got 750 kM
Fair use policy mandates no more than 1% transmitting time.
Common uses for LoRaWAN is Industry / Smart City
Reiner van der Lee made the Vinduino, who Chris met during early Supercon
Device Marketplace
Wienke is the CEO of The Things Industries called Orkhan to work on The Generic Node
STM32WL
Semtech licensed the SX1276, so the ST part is a SIP, not a SOC (chips connected by wires)
Two version: single/dual core
Dual Cortex M4 / M0+
Open source
Power on the Generic Node
300 nA quiescent buck
Designed to be low power
1.8 uA in sleep mode
Used the Otii to measure sleep/transmit power
CE testing output power
100 mW / 14 dBm in the EU
US is 22 dBm (FCC testing)
Created multiple outputs to allow different channels
Generic Node Pricing:
Probably will be $70 for low volume
Hoping to get to $40 for future higher volume pricing
Fractus antenna
There will be a Virtual Conference about The Generic Node
The Things Conference in Amsterdam
Generic Node SDK
Clock sourcing with ST
TCXO was a problematic sourcing part
Find Orkhan online
@AzeriMaker
Makertronika Blog
Email: [email protected]
Livestream available here:

https://youtu.be/cvGaDz7wZag
...more
1h 10min
September 07, 2021Firmware for Hardware Engineers with Phillip Johnston
Welcome Phillip Johnston of Embedded Artistry!
Phillip was on episode 290 of Embedded.fm
Phillip's firmware experience started at a military contractor. He also had a programming background from high school.
The minimum product is a bootloader and has remote firmware update capabilities
General guidelines and design methodologies for writing better firmware
Separation of concerns: break things down smaller
How to hide information
Loosely coupled to the hardware
"How can I make this smaller?"
"Can I test this without the hardware?"
Either James Grenning / Jacob Beningo talk about "There is no spoon" and hardware is just another dependency.
Flex paging system example
Recorded data over the radio
Continuous Integration (CI)/ Continuous Deployment (CD)
Test Driven Development (TDD) is a well known software engineering concept that James Grenning teaches for embedded development
Start sketching out on the computer first
What interfaces do I need to create
Interface with sensors using a direct interface from the desktop like the Aardvark
Isolating someone else's code into its own box
Writing it using x86 based GCC or CLang
Forces you to think about dependencies
Lager data episode with Akbar (hardware in the loop testing)
Setting up tests
E&O insurance
What does a test suite look like?
Phillip uses Jenkins for his build system, but there is also GitHub actions, circleCI, travis
Hardware in the loop test
When should people start CI?
Need to build from command line
Automated systems allows you to leverage yourself
Embedded Artistry has Courses that teach people how to build systems for their embedded systems
Design for Change is an upcoming course
Putting the pipeline in place
Start by checking code on the server
Having a shell on the device
What does 'best' look like?
Mixed metaphors in software
Dealing with multiple PCB builds
Dwigt
What happens when the complexity goes up (networking interface)?
Testing in more difficult environments
nRF5 SDK to Zephyr
Treat an RTOS like any other dependency
Zephyr
Low power seems to be lacking
Links from Embedded Artistry that our listeners might find useful, not already linked above:
Embedded Artistry
Welcome - for people unfamiliar with us, this is a great place to start
For Beginners - mentioned in the podcast
Newsletter - we send out a monthly industry update along with other embedded-related emails
Course Library
Membership Information
Consulting
...more
1h 20min
August 31, 2021 Timing is Everything
Dave and Chris celebrate their 555th show by doing a live Q&A recording. There was also a video version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO0aY0c2_pA
...more
1h 48min
August 24, 2021 An Interview with Alan Wolke (Re-broadcast)
For the original show notes (and much more active comment section) check out the original page: https://theamphour.com/theamphour-117-undulating-utensil-utility/
To listen to all episodes in your podcast listener back to episode one, use the LibSyn feed (our hosting platform): https://theamphour.libsyn.com/
Interested in joining us on 8/26 (find your local time here) on the air? Submit requests to join and questions here: [email protected]
...more
1h 28min
August 16, 2021PLEASE be a die shrink
After using it for his move, Chris realized he was co-dependent with label printer (QL-1050)
USB A (was wrong, Chris was actually talking about USB Type B recepticles)
Barnaclues broke off a USB connection and Dave cheered him on to try out soldering it back on
Chris has been trying out putting M.2 modules and connectors and posting about his learnings on Twitter. The discussion was inspired by work from @timonsku, who was a guest on The Contextual Electronics podcast.
Some companies like Blues Wireless and Sparkfun's MicroMod don't use the actual standard, they just use the low cost connector.
This is commonly done with re-using low cost cables (DB9, ethernet, etc)
Andy Weir has a new book out called Project Hail Mary
Firefox movie
M.2 on Wiki
PCIe is meant to be 85 ohm characteristic impedance. This is different than USB (90 ohms) and many ethernet connections (100 ohms)
Error rate
Dave showed that the BM786 multimeter can be factory reprogrammed and viewers got upset
Is 121GW is the most open DMM?
Humans are the problem
Past guest Nash Reilly wrote about why he might not be releasing a v2 of the bFunc. It's a good discussion of the economics of hardware (which Dave has made a video about in the past) and how the test equipment market has special considerations.
Saleae does a lot of value-add in terms of software. We had Mark and Joe on the show when they were moving towards the Logic Pro line.
Dave's 10 MHz DDS function generator
AD9837
Some test companies get better results by binning. There is a maker who measures LTZ1000 and bins/trims them as a business, selling the output.
Sometimes their competitive advantage is scale: buy more parts (especially fancy custom parts) and you can get more margin.
Vishay is removing the laser markings from precision resistors
Getting Product Change Notifications can be stressful. We find ourselves opening emails uttering, "PLEASE be a die shrink"
AOI - Automated Optical Inspection
ESP32-H2 will have support for 802.15.4, thread, ZigBee. The ESP32-C3 is out now and has a single core RISC V processor. Chris thinks this is the first RISC V many people will get.
Former guest Bil Herd released a book about his time at Commodore
Former guest Chris Denney does a podcast for Worthington Assembly (with Circuit Hub). They just did an episode about "Small PCB layout decisions that have a significant impact on assembly", which was really great!
Thanks to Gene Han for the photo of the wafers
...more
1h 6min
August 10, 2021Debunking with Shahriar
Welcome Back Shahriar! Other episodes here.
https://theamphour.com/228-an-interview-with-shahriar-from-the-signal-path-quisquous-quivering-quadripole/
https://theamphour.com/430-shahriar-discusses-5g/
Show notes
00:00 - Shahriar from The Signal Path
16:05 - Using 6G technology to fuse radar mapping and data transfer
18:45 - Product design in research
20:45 - Angstrom level chip design & Moore's Law.
23:54 - Silicon Germanium and Silicon on Sapphire technology
26:58 - Gallium Nitride & Marketing BS
30:05 - The Limits of Debunking
32:20 - Scams you can't debunk. Flat earthers. And the erosion of confidence in science
35:04 - From burning witches to burning rocket fuel
35:51 - Youtube and Facebook algorithms. Publisher vs Platform
39:12 - Should you even debunk?
44:21 - Famous people who spak out & Cancel Culture
47:51 - How to teach critical thinking
51:00 - Credibility of sources
53:54 - Energy Saver BS
56:45 - Wifi protection BS
58:34 - A well educated public
1:03:14 - Authorities going bad
1:07:32 - Teching kids critical thinking skills
Video version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj3lD8glbHM&t=4s
...more
1h 13min
August 02, 2021Shouting at chips with Colin O'Flynn
Welcome back, Colin O’Flynn of NewAE Technology! He was last on the show for episode 239 in 2015, as he was releasing the Chip Whisperer
We recorded this all on video as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRGPltf0KBg
Colin is an assistant professor at Dalhousie University, where he got his PhD. He is moving out of that role (and likely into a role as an Adjunct) as of 8/31. Private sector, FTW!
Side channel analysis
Colin has been testing the security of the doorlocks on his new building
Samy Kamkar was on episode 308, and is now working on a smart doorlock system.
Jon Beri (ep 526) also mentioned doorlock security and the vertical nature of the industry
The point of university
Colin is doing remote training for Black Hat this year.
Getting access to the pins on the Apple AirTag
"Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey, What's really inside Apple's U1 Chip"
Apple U1 Chip
advancedsecurity.training
Meetups
The new(er) Chip Shouter kit is for Fault Injection
Colin tried it on early Trezor wallets
It's surprising there isn't a stamp of approval like a UL certification for embedded device security.
How can you test your product for security issues?
The ARM PSA is a self checklist and certification program.
Colin has been working on The Hardware Hacking Handbook with Jasper van Woudenberg. The book is due out in November.
Smart Locks - Schlage
Starlink dish
Ransomware for IoT
Dumping firmware
Unlocking firmware
Sourcing woes
ChipWhisperer Husky is coming out soon, keep an eye on Crowd Supply for the latest news about the
Colin has been using his Desktop PNP less often
How should you get started? Try the ChipWhisperer Nano
Colin is taking Matt Venn's Zero to ASIC course
...more
1h 5min
July 26, 2021Feed the Mouse
Want to WATCH this week’s episode?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai_U6cVa35A
Subcribe to get future videos!
NTSC is dead
The Crown
Meeting nerds
Mains on breadboards
DC transient fundaments - Capacitors and inductors
PlasticARM
All my projects are on hold
Storage space
LUNA is currently crowdfunding
Michael Ossmann has been on The Amp Hour many times
The FPGA designer who didn't get the job
Repair
Test tools
Embedded Resume (a project site to help a young engineer get a job)
Bluetooth COVID test
Woz is behind Right To Repair
iFixit
As always, you can check out /r/theamphour for any links we didn't talk about or to post links for us to talk about next time!
Image thanks to @slworking on Flickr
...more
1h 10min

FAQs about The Amp Hour:

How many episodes does The Amp Hour have?

The podcast currently has 745 episodes available.

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