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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How many episodes does The Amp Hour have?

The podcast currently has 745 episodes available.

The Amp Hour episodes:

September 03, 2018An Interview with Spencer Wright
The Prepared. It's both a weekly newsletter and an occasional podcast
0:02
Spencer claims he is a fake engineer since he was an english major
0:02
Grew up in the Hamptons doing construction
0:06
Dealing with subcontractors in the construction industry
0:06
Custom bicycle frames for $2K
0:07
Mahogany experience from the construction industry led to a job building custom robot doors for a beach house.
0:09
This is where he brought in his co-host on the prepared Zach Dunham to do audio design (Zach was a guest on this show on episode 350)
0:10
Later they brought in Todd Bailey to do the control electronics (Todd was a guest on this show on episode 194)
0:10
This trio decided to take the MIT online electronics course, 6.002x
0:12
Zach and Spencer built The Public Radio together, which they are still selling.
0:14
This is made and programmed by Worthington Assembly
0:14
Sourcing - finding parts for the robot doors
0:18
They worked out of an old Northrup Grumman facility that used to make jets
0:19
Choice paralysis
0:25
Spencer's full time job is at nTopology
0:27
They do 3D printing software for non-traditional uses.
0:27
We previously talked a little about 3D printing for non-traditional (rocket building at Relativity Space) uses with Brent and Bryce a couple episodes ago.
0:28
DMLS
0:29
Wrote about the titanium / metal powderbed fusion
0:30
CAD software designed for printing implants
0:33
Porous hip cup that bones can grow into.
0:35
Precision Castparts Corp
0:37
Acquired by Berkshire Hathaway in 2015
0:37
Flyknit shoes - Nike
0:39
Trend spotting
0:42
Reducing number of tollgates to bring a product to market
0:43
Procuring parts more easily - most software isn't great
0:43
MFG.com
0:46
Localization of manufacturing
0:48
US vs China
0:48
Insourcing manufacturing of the Public Radio
0:54
Work instructions using Tulip
0:54
Spencer talked to Rony from Tulip on The Prepared podcast
0:56
Spencer uses PartsBox.io to search for parts in his personal inventory
1:00
Find Spencer on most social media channels as pencerw
1:04
ThePrepared.org
1:05
nTopology.com
1:05
...more
1h 8min
August 27, 2018Proof Of Blink
Chris has decided to once again hang his shingle and do design consulting via his company, Analog Life, LLC
0:00
This is after a year at Hologram, who have changed directions on hardware, leading Chris to look for design opportunities elsewhere.
0:01
Art installation
0:02
Dave doesn't like consulting
0:12
Startups offering equity
0:17
"Proof of blink"
0:17
Things to do when you're stressed:
Write about how you're feeling
Talk to (your significant other)
Learn something new
Publish something
Go for a walk
Meditate
Go through your contacts, reach out to people you haven't talked to in a while
Read a book
Ponder the nature of the universe and how massive it is and how not much really matters after all
Think of ways to make a difference
Mentor younger engineers
Ask for advice from more experienced folks
Answer forum posts
Listen to music
Play some music
Post a funny tweet about electronics
Post a business idea to Twitter
Do a live stream
Create a silly piece of PCB art
Ask Twitter what they want to learn right now
Plan a training course
Listen to an off topic podcast or audiobook (fiction)
Do some pushups!
Drink a biiiiiig glass of water
0:24
Rightsizing
0:26
Magic smoke escape tag
0:27
110 GHz scope from Keysight
0:28
Shahriar visited the LeCroy factory to look at a previously "fastest scope" front runner (100 GHz)
0:30
Forum post about the inside of the scope
0:31
Dave is doing another meetup Weds Sept 5th
0:35
IMTS is coming up in Chicago. Chris will be doing a meetup with the folks from Bolt and there is a meetup at mHUB with former guest John Saunders.
0:36
Dave did a Live Stream trying out KiCad again
0:38
Dave is looking at a learning system using KiCad
0:44
Olimex does high end SBC boards using KiCad
0:45
Eagle moving upmarket
0:46
Altium Nexus
0:47
Traps in chips (EEVBlog #1115) showcases why it's important to read the datasheets
0:51
Bunnie's talk at ToorCamp
0:56
Finding bugs in datasheets
0:58
Goodfear badge
1:01
Leaded Zeppelin (see below)
1:02
Chris just put in a talk for Supercon. You should too!
1:05
Thanks to Tomás J. Sepúlveda for the picture of the blink man
...more
1h 8min
August 13, 2018An Interview with Mike Szczys
Welcome, Mike Szczys!
Mike is the Editor-in-Chief for Hackaday.com. Chris used to work with Mike at Supplyframe.
There's still time to enter the 2018 Hackaday Prize
Coverage from DEF CON 26
The DC26 badge made by the tymkrs
The QueerCon badge from DC26
Mike built the CoinOp badge
Chris built a Shitty Add-On, "This is not a camera"
Mike's past projects include
1 pixel pac man
A blinky, hackable hat for DC22
Badgelife is a term that's been going on for a few years now, but includes crazy creations from teams like AndNotXor
The Hackaday Superconference is coming up!
Find Mike on Twitter or Hackaday.io
...more
1h 19min
August 06, 2018An Interview with Ben Einstein
This week’s show was sponsored by Arrow.com, who want to hear from engineers like you. They’re offering 30% off a first order for new customers and free overnight shipping for everyone. Check out their online selection for your next project!
Welcome Ben Einstein, founder of Bolt!
Bolt is a Pre-Seed
0h 1m 10s
Downtown Boston
0h 1m 47s
They started around 2011/2012
0h 2m 30s
Twiddle with atoms instead of bits
0h 3m 13s
Went to school in Boston
0h 3m 42s
Inherited a product consultancy
0h 3m 57s
Maury Ballstein
0h 7m 12s
Startup within a startup
0h 8m 6s
Lightbulb went off
0h 8m 28s
First iphone bluetooth accessory
0h 9m 6s
Sometimes the lucky thing is picking Apple instead of picking Palm
0h 10m 36s
Brad Feld of Foundry Group based out of Boulder CO
0h 13m 14s
Institutionalized hardware/software investing
0h 13m 48s
Makerbot/Sphero
0h 14m 0s
Invested in first fund
0h 15m 2s
Ben is a big introvert
0h 16m 59s
Trust and intimacy
0h 17m 41s
Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends"
0h 17m 50s
Raising Venture Capital (VC) wasn't right from first fund
0h 22m 41s
In early VC started where it was their money
0h 23m 52s
Vast majority is a management fee
0h 23m 58s
GP = General partner
0h 25m 19s
LP = Limited partner
0h 25m 29s
Why didn't this hardware model exist previously?
0h 26m 51s
Bill Gross at IdeaLab
0h 27m 6s
"Hardware by itself is not an attractive business"
0h 27m 39s
Software breaking out of the screen
0h 29m 26s
Number of companies pitching has increased
0h 31m 44s
Bolt.io
0h 32m 4s
Looking for companies that will be worth 100M in 5-7 years
0h 32m 55s
Early meetings with prototype
0h 33m 56s
Bolt provides an early investment with a 100K to 1M check
0h 34m 5s
Nutty things pitched
0h 35m 27s
Spherical iphone
0h 35m 58s
Only been around for 5 years
0h 36m 34s
They spend 18 months with companies
0h 41m 8s
80% of the founders at Bolt companies haven't done hardware
0h 43m 45s
The best companies are built from the best product, not just hardware
0h 44m 38s
They have a strong belief that companies should not build the perfect product
0h 46m 3s
Consumer vs industrial
0h 49m 3s
Everyone talks about consumer connected hardware companies
0h 50m 15s
20% are consumer
0h 50m 26s
Recurring revenue is a very strong theme.
0h 52m 9s
Why Juicero's press is so expensive
0h 56m 22s
AvE's take on the Juicero
0h 57m 32s
Product development
1h 1m 56s
Suggested reading: The Illustrated Guide To Product Development
1h 2m 4s
Suggested reading: The Complete Guide To Building Hardware Startup Teams
1h 3m 57s
Team is more than just the employees
1h 4m 0s
Teams coming in are 2-4 founders
1h 7m 30s
Proof of concept prototype
1h 7m 48s
Sometimes they invest in people instead of companies, like Mike Phillips from Sense
1h 8m 51s
Joe Bamburg from Sense has been on the show before.
1h 9m 11s
Tyler runs engineering at Bolt, former iPhone engineer
1h 12m 3s
Thinking about Industrial Design (ID) early on
1h 14m 0s
Prototyping engineers in the shop
1h 14m 8s
Tempo automation
1h 14m 45s
Dragon Innovation / Scott Miller
1h 15m 34s
A $200 Roomba vs a Dyson
1h 18m 46s
James Dyson on "How I Built This"
1h 19m 27s
Looks like / works like prototypes
1h 21m 20s
Engineering prototype
1h 21m 30s
How far are people expected to go on that check from Bolt?
1h 23m 36s
Silcon Valley (the show) is a farce and has truth
1h 26m 59s
Bolt is like the bumpers at the bowling alley
1h 35m 48s
Want to reach Ben? You can email him
1h 36m 35s
If you're looking to pitch, it's better to reach out via Bolt.io/pitch
1h 36m 45s
Follow Ben on Twitter as @BenEinstein
1h 37m 23s
Follow their fantastic blog as well!
1h 37m 59s.
...more
1h 37min
July 30, 2018An Interview with Brent and Bryce Salmi
If you can't tell from the picture, Brent and Bryce are twins
0h 0m 57s
They both went to RIT and ended up working together at SpaceX
0h 1m 8s
They worked on AMSAT for their senior project
0h 2m 8s
Fox series cube sats
0h 2m 49s
AMSAT will make a plugin module
0h 3m 51s
Elona (sp?) grants
0h 4m 6s
1U cubesats
0h 5m 12s
AO40 - 600 kg satellite
0h 7m 29s
MPPT on github
0h 8m 24s
This actually was an analog computer to cut down on components that are susceptible to cosmic rays.
0h 10m 40s
It relies on feed forward
0h 10m 50s
Stateless design
0h 12m 43s
AO91
0h 13m 32s
AO92 - just under a year
0h 13m 36s
K2GEXT
0h 16m 52s
Balloon hipster
0h 17m 7s
For their balloon project, they prioritized reliability
0h 18m 31s
Used nail polish as conformal coat
0h 19m 45s
Fell through a thunderstorm
0h 20m 13s
Joined SpaceX mid-2013
0h 21m 27s
Around the time of C2 - First dragon mission
0h 21m 34s
1000 people when they joined
0h 22m 40s
F921 - upgraded version. This is the one outside of SpaceX as a monument.
0h 25m 25s
Engineering as an action sport
0h 28m 30s
Watching conspiracy videos about spacex
0h 28m 53s
Burning out
0h 30m 20s
What electronics are involved
0h 32m 44s
Rio Team
0h 32m 57s
Consumer parts vs aerospace parts
0h 34m 1s
Shaun from Planet episode
0h 35m 13s
MIL standard 1540
0h 36m 51s
NASA derating
0h 37m 39s
Guidance, nav, control
0h 39m 28s
Fault recovery
0h 39m 40s
Sensing the environment
0h 39m 58s
Pyrotechnics
0h 41m 26s
Frangible bolts
0h 41m 34s
RF telemtry
0h 42m 16s
Space race 3.0
0h 44m 59s
Lock step (is having 2 processors normally)
0h 47m 6s
Voting is having 3 systems
0h 47m 49s
Curiosity goes into safe mode
0h 48m 58s
Designing circuits at a very low level
0h 50m 58s
Understanding every way a circuit that is going to fail
0h 51m 12s
As engineers they're really paranoid now
0h 52m 1s
SMPS failure
0h 52m 55s
What is the margin of the components
0h 53m 17s
Derating = overspec'ing
0h 54m 52s
No one complains when it's lighter
0h 58m 56s
FaradayRF
1h 6m 56s
900 MHz digital radio
1h 9m 5s
Trying to make a platform for people to build on
1h 11m 0s
Delay tolerant network
1h 12m 7s
PSK31, FT8
1h 12m 53s
ISM band
1h 17m 8s
Article about differences
1h 17m 47s
APRS
1h 21m 28s
National projects
1h 21m 32s
SDR vs Faraday
1h 24m 5s
CC430 radio
1h 26m 53s
10-100kBaud
1h 27m 5s
goTenna
1h 33m 56s
TUN tap
1h 47m 39s
FaradayRF GitHub
1h 56m 13s
Relativity space in LA
1h 57m 40s
Aeon 1 engine
1h 58m 17s
Careers page
1h 58m 47s
Autonomous airplanes
2h 1m 55s
Richard Branson quote
2h 4m 36s
@kb1lqd
2h 6m 14s
@kb1lqc
2h 6m 32s
@relativityspace
2h 6m 55s
...more
2h 5min
July 23, 2018Once Every Couple Months
Chris got to hang out with Jeff Keyzer while in Seattle (he was on the show!)
0:01:00
There were other podcasts recording at ToorCamp. Past guest Alvaro of the Unnamed Reverse Engineering podcast was recording and the Darknet Diaries were also there.
0:02:00
Dave has been working on Custom LCDs. They were delivered and Dave got them tested.
0:03:00
Scotty from Strangeparts visited the JLC board house
0:09:00
PCBshopper is where we normally point people to find a good board house.
0:09:00
Dave made a "How to panelize" video
0:10:00
KiCad has an append tool
0:11:00
Chris tried out a gerber based tool called FAB3000
0:13:00
There's a tool that is open by a company called "This is not rocket science"
0:14:00
Chris will be using the NeoDen4 at mHUB
0:15:00
Chris will be giving a KiCad workshop at the Hardware Hacking Village at DEF CON
0:17:00
This will be similar to the 4.0 version of Getting to Blinky
7/18/2018 5:51 PM
eMeter teardown by YouTuber called "Play with junk"
0:19:00
KiCad 5 is on the way
0:21:00
It is able to read in EAGLE files, Chris was discussing OBD++
0:21:00
Altium crippling Circuit Maker with a random sleep timer?
0:22:00
Looks like Upverter will be taking over in the future anyway
0:25:00
Adafruit released CircuitPython 3
0:28:00
The US tariff on Chinese electronics and equipment went into effect on July 6th.
0:29:00
This was partially in response to stolen IP from Micron technologies
0:31:00
The Macrofab podcast had a good discussion on it and an article explaining how it might affect you.
0:32:00
Past guest Bunnie Huang also wrote about how this will impact hardware designers
0:33:00
Want to learn more about digital logic? Play the NAND game!
0:44:00
There's a new hacking game out called ExaPunks, made by the company of former guest Zach Barth (makers of Shenzhen I/O)
0:46:00
Zork
0:49:00
Mel Chua wrote about education for deaf engineers and the difficulties of teaching engineering in sign language
0:51:00
The Hackaday Superconference was announced! Submit a proposal to a great hw con
0:58:00
Arm may have been playing dirty with a site about the RISC-V instruction set. It has since been taken down and was hopefully a misunderstanding.
1:00:00
Photo by Eric Rothermel on Unsplash
...more
1h 4min
July 16, 2018An Interview with Steve Kreuzer
Welcome Dr Steven Kreuzer!
Before we start, we were asked to mention: “The opinions and views expressed in this episode are those of Steve Kreuzer and do not in any way reflect the opinions and values of Exponent”
Background
Steve and Chris went to high school together, Case Western Reserve together, ended up as roommates together in Austin and now work in similar industries.
0h 1m 23s
He got introduced to biomech via a program at Duke which later lead to grad school at UT Austin.
0h 2m 22s
He work at the (now former) GE appliance division (they were sold to Haier in 2016)
0h 3m 49s
At UT Austin, he worked on the effects of acceleration on cells.
0h 5m 6s
This included understand how proteins unfold.
0h 7m 17s
PhD program
0h 8m 32s
Difficulty of funding sources
0h 8m 39s
Salary of PhD
0h 9m 50s
Lots of simulation work
0h 12m 14s
Pharma seemed like the right path
0h 12m 20s
Exponenet
Ended up at Exponent, wanting to get a hand back into industry.
0h 12m 44s
Lots of people who work there are interdisciplinary
0h 12m 52s
Ended up in Menlo Park doing mechanical engineering work for them.
0h 13m 40s
This included lots of CFD and FEA (links below)
0h 13m 55s
Started working on Consumer Electronics devices
0h 14m 15s
Steve explained the types of companies that call Exponent
0h 17m 12s
Size of companies that call vary, but large companies all the way down to startups.
0h 18m 15s
Exponent deals with more specified problems rather than generics. They don't do design work, it's more working with existing, unique problems.
0h 20m 13s
One example is companies dealing with recalls.
0h 22m 10s
Consulted on the Samsung Galaxy battery fires.
0h 22m 44s
They helped identifying the problem.
0h 23m 47s
Could it have been caught by simulation?
0h 26m 15s
A big piece of prevention is reliability audits.
0h 26m 25s
Another large piece is understanding if things will go wrong by doing accelerated testing, which includes temperature cycling.
0h 28m 10s
Working with Lithium Ion (and other types of batteries)
Steve recommends to always use Battery management units
0h 30m 12s
Want to protect the cell from the environment
0h 30m 52s
18650 packs
0h 31m 51s
Forces on the batteries
0h 33m 47s
Protecting environment from the cell
0h 34m 31s
Failing well
0h 35m 0s
Simulating thermal runaway of batteries
0h 36m 10s
Color maps of stresses using programs like Abaqus
0h 38m 43s
Ties into Solidworks
0h 38m 57s
Finite Element Analysis
0h 39m 15s
Testing allows you to assign material properties
0h 41m 37s
Test at their labs/facilities under a hood
0h 43m 20s
"Exponents model is that we shouldn't do anything that's standardized"
0h 44m 0s
Design an experiment where you recreate the worst case scenario
0h 46m 1s
MatWeb
0h 47m 1s
Reactive vs Proactive
0h 51m 23s
Decision to call Exponent is often based on internal reliability testing
0h 52m 22s
BGAs and working with boards in consumer products
Failures in thermal cycles
0h 54m 32s
Arrhenius Equation
0h 55m 12s
Computational Fluid Dynamics
0h 55m 23s
Was listening to episode with Dave about BGAs
0h 55m 53s
Have looked at the reflow process
0h 57m 11s
Viscoelasticity
0h 57m 24s
Thermal stresses plus drop scenario
0h 59m 24s
Simulating drops of PCBs inside enclosures
1h 1m 9s
How easily a die is getting rid of heat
1h 4m 36s
Human factors aspect of devices
1h 6m 3s
Sony laptop that was burning "laps"
1h 6m 52s
Lithium ion batteries getting thinner
1h 9m 8s
What is the output of CFD research? Suggestions around changes to airflow or design.
1h 11m 29s
Not as much publishing in their industry, because of
1h 13m 19s
Publishing usually happens around educating the public in a field
1h 13m 32s
Contact
Exponent is hiring! But with a caveat...need PhD
1h 15m 54s
You can email Steve directly if you have a problem you want a consultation on.
1h 17m 5s
Reach out to Steve on LinkedIn
1h 17m 27s
Follow him on Twitter if you want some sports updates.
...more
1h 19min
July 09, 2018An Interview with Felix Rusu
Felix has been running LowPowerLab since 2011 after a career in software engineering and attending school at ASU.
While evaluating RF modules, he started with RFM12B, now obsolete
RFM69
Chip from Semtech (but custom packaged for HopeRF)
Module by HopeRF
Also can use RFM95/96 with LPL devices for LoRa projects
Range for RFM69 is a couple hundred meters to a couple kilometers
Battery life is about 1-2 years without lots of tweaking to the code
Moteinos are the main product, they can be customized with modules and flash.
These are based off the Arduino Uno and use an Microchip (Atmel) 328P for the processing. A newer version uses the SAMD21.
The power can get down below 10 uA while sleeping, including radios. During transmit, the power is in the 10s of milliamps.
There is an RFM69 library that gets you started quickly using the RF side of things
The community has many resources including tutorials and a forum.
Felix recommends starting with the Mailbox Project which uses the MotionMote kit.
...more
1h 24min
June 26, 2018#397.10 - An Interview with Jeremy Hong
Jeremy Hong does reverse engineering during the day and has an RF addiction all the time.
He stepped away from ToorCamp so he could see a demo of his favorite electronic warfare plane, the EA-18G growler (picured above)
During his time at Wright State, he did a 40 layer PCB design with DDR RAM and a Zynq.
Jeremy recently picked up a 20 GHz spectrum analyzer from the flea market at Hamvention, which is held in Dayton OH every year.
VHDL was invented at Wright Patterson AFB.
Check out Jeremy's homepage, JHongElectronics
...more
32min
June 25, 2018#397.9 - An Interview with Dominic Spill
Dominic Spill is a software engineer at Great Scott Gadgets.
He and Mike got started working together based on a Bluetooth library Dominic put online 7ish years ago. This fed into the Ubertooth product.
See all of Dominic's repositories on Github
Dominic is helping head up the content side of ElectroMagnetic Field (EMF)
...more
34min

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How many episodes does The Amp Hour have?

The podcast currently has 745 episodes available.

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