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:

October 07, 2019An Interview with Jonathan Georgino
Welcome, Jonathan Georgino of Binho!
The Binho is a USB host adapter targeted at manufacturing floors, but also can help people quickly talk to devices using i2c, serial, SPI and GPIO.
There are a couple of options out there for manufacturing: Some are robust and expensive, others are hobbyist
Using scripts and adapters for production line programming
Career started at GE in St Marys, working on a CAN sensors
Got a Saleae logic analyzer, wrote to Mark and Joe, went to go work with them.
Mark and Joe were on episode 237 of The Amp Hour
Helped to design the Logic 8, 8 pro and 16.
Jonathan took away that products should be a pleasure to use, easy to understand
Making it accessible in multiple ways
Mark recently talked to Limor about the Saleae
After Saleae, Jonathan went to go work at the Wonder Workshop (WW)
Other consumer Robot startups having a hard time. We talked about Anki on episode 441.
WW focuses on the educational market, where you need to be prepared for 1 year sales cycle and need a curriculum for the teachers who will be using it.
Blockly or Scratch to program the robots
Variables are tough for kids to understand (or big kids, like Chris).
When designing for the educational market, need to design for robustness and compliance testing
Testing comes out of the IEC standards, with different ones for each country.
Partnered with toy manufacturer in China to make the robots.
Jonathan was only EE up until production
Dash has 12 different PCBs, with one that has 3 processors and 2 SPI flashes on board.
Blockly is an open source project from Google
"Changing careers is the best way to learn and grow"
After WW, Jonathan moved to Zola, who are doing off grid for African countries.
He got to visit Tanzania and see the product in action. There wasn't as much needed on the EE side of things.
Then he joined Pi, now Spansive
They were working on a wireless charging device using A4WP, banking on new phones adapting it as a standard (it wasn't)
The experience in China manufacturing was that there are devices available but they are low cost and have janky UI.
Most popular on the market are from Total Phase
Can connect to Binho using Python API or any application that can pass in ASCII characters
Can hook into any of the existing tools
Some people are using a Raspberry Pi for testing
Under the hood it's an m0, with protection for overcurrent
Also have a GUI
Built in Xojo to be cross platform
Use pip to install binho host adapter
Jonathan advises you to put your pins onto the board the first time your board is made
Continuous integration for firmware
Rigol has python libraries, as does the Saleae. These might be python on top of GPIB.
Check out Jonathan's personal site and the Binho site.
...more
1h
September 30, 2019Rubber Ducking
Chris has been reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", among other things
Debugging with GDB
Jay Carlson on Embedded.fm
The Amazing $1 Microcontroller
EEVblog2 video with David, using volatile inside interrupt routines
Rubber ducking
Keeping notebooks
A scan of an engineer's notebook from 1978 while designing the Atari 400 and 800
Grass Valley Group, later merged with Tek
Chuck Peddle interview
Dave's video about engineering notebooks about a PC based logic analyzer
What are modern versions of lab notebooks? Evernote? One note?
Feature Phone from Germany (CCCamp)
The $8.70 "mystery item" was in fact a Process Meter (DMM with a constant source built in)
Boston Dynamics is now commercially selling their Spot robot
Buying industrial robot
Former guest James Bruton
Re-using stuff you know
Former guest Jeri Ellsworth is crowdfunding the Tilt5 project. She talked about this on episode 394, specifically how CastAR burned out and how she was buying the assets to restart as Tilt5.
Being disciplined during troubleshooting
Thanks to evarinaldiphotography for the rubber ducky photo
...more
1h 2min
September 23, 2019An Interview with Tom Lee
Welcome Dr Thomas (Tom) Lee of the Microwave Integrated Circuits Lab (SMIrC) at Stanford University!
This episode is sponsored by Rohde and Schwarz. Check out AskAnEngineer.us for more info about their value line test equipment.
Tom is friends with two past guests, Jeri Ellsworth and Kent Lundberg
Tom owns a LOT of scopes (200 or so)
First scope was a Heathkit
The Tek 485 had nice user design
"I didn't like an intermediate layer."
John Addis and Wink Gross designed the important parts of the 485
The 485 added a superfast square wave to the front panel important for calibrating a 350 MHz scope
Protection circuits
Tom got started in electronics fixing TVs
He then went to work for the founders of Wavetek (but not directly for the company) with people like Joe Deavenport
Tom went to MIT and worked under Jim Roberge (check out the video series where Jim is lecturing on-camera)
He proposed a thesis that was the world's first integrated CMOS radio
Marvin Minsky
"The thesis doesn't change the world...it changes you"
CMOS was considered crap, was mostly used for wristwatches and calculators
Other types of MOS and BJT circuits were considered to be much better.
Tom used MOSIS, the IC bundling service mentioned on this program before.
Didn't have PDKs
Magic from Berkeley allowed Tom to see the DRC errors as they happened.
He ended up building an FM radio...without any inductors!
Made gyrators into inductors
Moved to Analog Devices where he learned a lot from Barrie Gilbert and Paul Brokaw
Moving back to California and went to work for a startup RAMBUS
Stanford wanted someone to do RF and give a first class on RF chip design
Tom started in 1994 and started the first microwave IC lab.
Tom and his grad students created the first GPS CMOS receiver
Used to be 1 GHz and above is microwave
Many of Tom's students are (truly) seeing Maxwell's equations for real for the first time
What are the mental models?
Tom said he "inflicts history on students". This is also in the early chapters of Tom's book, Planar Microwave Engineering
Maxwell didn't use vector calculus, he used quaternian form.
Every course Tom teaches has a lab, including his undergrad lab which involves copper tape and making a radio.
A lot of faculty have never built stuff
He is now working with students on mmwave and 5G (because that's where a lot of the research dollars are right now)
Beamforming to get aggregate bandwidth
Printed electronics for power delivery, serving devices that are in the mW level not the W level
Feature sizes of CMOS
Tom is on the board of Xilinx
Tom is taking a year sabbatical and working on a book about instrumentation
He hopes to ask many of the creators about the secrets inside the test equipment he often is reverse engineering
Jim Williams told him to buy a rubidium clock (standard) at a flea market.
Worked at DARPA, where his office funded development of a chip scale atomic clock
That chip subsequently released a bit of smoke in the space station...
Read more about Tom's research on his group's website
...more
1h 15min
September 16, 2019An Interview with Ken Burns
Welcome Ken Burns of TinyCircuits!
TinyCircuits is located in North East Ohio (NEO), in Akron.
Ken also attended the University of Akron
Decided to stay in the Midwest
Past guest Todd Bailey talked about going to a job for working with graybeards
Ken used to work for Avid, which was later bought by Avnet/E14.
Since it's a design shop, he got to try out different types of electronics.
This included learning the entire process and taking it to a CM.
Wireless HART developed by Rosemount (now Emerson), based on 802.15.4
MACtek made a PC based interface device for wireless HART
Dust networks bought by LT
The standard uses a negotiated time for when to wake up to save power.
Pepperl and Fuchs bought out Mactek
Decided to leave Avid to start a company
Wanted to make a smart sensor platform
This was late 2000s (2008), so Arduino was getting started
TinyDuino (and the other boards with the same form factor) is 20x20 mm
TinyCircuits have launched 3 kickstarters
Digispark was 2 months prior
This was early kickstarter days. His Kickstarter video recorded rough.
The stretch goal was to do mfg, inspired by companies like Dimension Engineering
Couldn't have done it otherwise because of the volumes being low per board
Kickstarter money worked as seed money
Design was done, but the manufacturing all the problem
Example system is a processor board + USB shield + GPS (for tracking cats)
Was in MAKE magazine for that kit
Everything is open source
Didn't need as many feeders as they got for the PNP machine.
Bought a used machine
Machine was from 1996
It had 80 feeders included and was bought with the reflow oven
All delivered for 25K
Juki
Started with 0402
Bought it from a company that was reputable
A month of tinkering to get it started
The bigger learning curve is making consistent product
"Paste is by far the most critical step in the process"
Yields started at 40%
Need to use fresh paste every time
Yield is 99% now
Dek 265 helped make things more consistent. Got it a year after original stuff for $3K
They are now running with a Panasonic SP60
Got a new PNP 2 years ago, also from Juki.
New machines allows small runs or big runs
Allows testing of a lot of different products
It's gotten much cheaper to send it out than when they started.
Doing manufacturing allows you to do a higher mix, which might be cost prohibitive with sending out to a CM.
TinyCircuits has done some CM work where it makes sense. Ken says they're not going to offer ISO9001 or anything.
It makes sense if the customer wants something custom designed
Robotic golf caddy
Chris asked what customers are asking for at TInyCircuits.
Roadmap is higher end stuff
Whiskers are breakout sensors.
They are now funding on Kickstarter!
5 pin input mux allows you to talk to different versions of the same sensor (up to 16)
Dealing with the Tariff
Selling batteries on digikey
"18650 is the biggest thing we sell on eBay"
Selling on digikey and mouser
Johnny 5 / firmata (used by past guest Jason Huggins)
Latest stuff supports circuit python
Little Bits sold to Sphero for unknown amount after raising $70M.
Working with group out of MIT
tinycircuits.com
They work out of the old Goodrich plant in Akron
...more
1h 34min
September 09, 2019Dotty Ernest Annty Frost
Chris spent too much of his camp working on giving a talk
Dave winged it when he spoke at a Renesas 2010 event
Dave recorded at the hotel room afterwards
At Disneyland Star Wars you can build your own droid
James Meigs of Popular Mechanics
RF slides
The talk Chris gave at CCCamp is now posted as well
Hank Zumbalen on The Amp Hour
App note "Staying Well Grounded"
Book on RF layout
Scotty from Strangeparts JLC video
Does anyone know of a standalone loss leader factory?
Dave building the programmer for the 3 cent micro
$10B lost to trade war so far for Electronics Manufacturers
Tariff
During the show we found it acts like VAT or GST, it's added to the end product/delivery area
ie. Dave does not get charged Tariff even though he gets parts coming from China via the US
Chris has started seeking out tutoring
Mentorship
Dave learning French and German
The term "Professional Engineer" will be a protected term in Victoria (Australia)
Wi-Fi was invented at CSIRO
How to to pronounce various hexadecimal numbers, incluing 0xDEAF ("dotty ernest annty frost")
Thanks to fdecomite for the picture of "Hexadecimal in the outdoors"
...more
1h 4min
September 04, 2019#456.3 - Discussing Fomu with Tim Ansell and Sean Cross
Welcome Tim “Mithro” Ansell, Sean “Xobs” Cross and (returning co-host) Michael Ossmann!
Past guest appearances
Tim Ansell on #375
Michael Ossmann on #440.2 (at KiCon), among many other episodes (search for Michael Ossmann in past episodes)
Sean did the firmware on the Novena, an open source laptop he designed with Bunnie. We discussed this on episode #336.
Tim and Sean are working on the Fomu, discussed on the show after Chris took the workshop at Teardown.
Dave later was asking Chris about why open source and RISC V is relevant (on episode #449), which he struggled to voice. This episode discussed the relevance of these technologies.
There was a recent CS update about the Fomu going to camp, including a talk that Sean gave about the Fomu.
...more
1h 11min
September 01, 2019#456.2 - Crossover Camp with Hackaday and Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcasts
We recorded this live at CCCamp 2019. The featured image is a shot of camp at night.
This crossover episode features the following two podcasts
The Hackaday Podcast
The Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast
With guests
Alvaro Prieto
Mike Szczys
Elliot Williams
...more
42min
August 28, 2019#456.1 - An Interview with Schneider and Rahix of the Card10 Badge Team (CCCamp 2019)
Chris and Alvaro (UNRE), talked with Schneider and Rahix of the Card10 badge team at CCCamp 2019. This was the first of a few interviews done at camp.
Wiki page about the badge. It is assembled from two individual boards:
The Fundamental Board
The Harmonic Board
Schneider has worked on the past 2 badges
Rad1o (2015)
R0ket (2011)
Sensors on board:
Temp, humidity, etc - BME680
9 axis, sensor fusion - BHI160
Magnetometer - BMM150
ECG - MAX30001
Pulse sensor - MAX86150
Join the conversation on their IRC channel: freenode.net#card10badge
Thanks to @szczys for the picture of the badge!
...more
1h
August 19, 2019Bill and Dave's Excellent Equipment
Dave reviewed the Vion multimeter...and was a bit underwhelmed.
What percentage of dev boards are used?
The multimeter chip
GPIB
Robby Newell shared a sweet testing setup
Lock in amplifiers
Raw research stuff
Jitter analyzer
$200 scope? Chris has a friend who claimed the DS1054Z is lower priced now.
Rigol rolled their own ASIC, the Phoenix chipset, doesn't have boxcar average
This is a rolling average after the ADC, higher ENOB
Why digital scopes look noisy
Jeri Ellsworth in her first Amp Hour interview said she wanted to skip the country after messing up a mask ROM
The US Navy will replace touchscreen controls
Dave interviewed John Kenney from Keysight (linked video is part 1 of 4)
Chris realized the parts he talked about in #453 were actually NCNR parts (non-cancellable non-returnable)
Returning parts
Ordering parts for long lead times
Shootout of 10 cent micros
It was actually the SDCC compiler for the 3 cent micro
GigaDevice parts (link to LCSC) are STM32 replacement components.
These are not exactly a new phenomenon, Dangerous Proto posted (a link to a site) about it nearly 2 years ago
Zeptobars also did a die shot of one of the parts
...more
1h 12min
August 12, 2019An Interview with MG (Mike Grover)
Welcome, MG (Mike Grover)!
Check out all of MG's exploits on his site mg.lol
There is a compilation video that is awesome/terrifying for all the things that cable implants can do
The "peanut gallery" during recording was Piotr and Joe Fitz.
Joe FitzPatrick was a guest on episode 346
Piotr has been a guest (or host!) on the following episodes:
356
409
423
440.2
450
We were helping out with a training at Black Hat called Applied Physical Attacks 3 and 4
MG managed to use his mill with soldermask to get some really impressive results!
Including things like...BGAs! (holy crap)
The video about "hardware addiction"
...more
53min

FAQs about The Amp Hour:

How many episodes does The Amp Hour have?

The podcast currently has 745 episodes available.

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