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 23, 2017The Endless Y2K
Longtime HP/Agilent/Keysight engineer John Kenny showed up at Dave's lab to chat for a bit
Dave has tasked David with setting up a new EEVblog meetup.
Bootloader on the 121GW
Konami code
Never trust an engineer with a clean workbench
Dave has room to set up a Pick an Place kit, the liteplacer
MacroFab is opening a new facility in Mexico. Chris talked about this more on the Macrofab podcast.
Chris signed himself up for some manufacturing pain this week when his 0402 boards come back
OpenGL mode in KiCad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvjP5iIQqR8
Mike Harrison is making the Superconference badge
The Krack vulnerability
Our favorite twitter account is back at it again:
https://twitter.com/internetofshit/status/920412301655773184
Snake plissken 666 in Escape from LA
Should IoT devices self terminate? Dave was going to 555 circuit that kills itself
Dave and David are looking at making a custom LCD for the uSupply.
Babelfish headphones!
The Woz is starting an educational site called WozU
Circuit Python 2.1 is out!
Is the C language dying? Nope!
Image credit: Matthew Hurst
...more
1h 16min
October 15, 2017An interview with Alvaro and Jen from the URE Podcast
Welcome, Alvaro and Jen from the Unnamed Reverse Engineering (URE) podcast
They were both inspired by Micah's coastermelt videos
Both have worked in consumer electronics places, such as Amazon and Apple.
Paul's reaction video
OTA
High volumes enables early access to new chips but also sometimes means errata on that new silicon.
Consumer electronics makes heavy use of reference designs
Empathy driven design (Chris Svec on embedded.fm)
BSP = board support package
Alvaro mentioned previous guests Mark and Joe from Saleae
The early shows of the URE feature
Dmitry Greenberg
Micah Elizabeth Scott (Scanlime)
SiliconPr0n
Mountainview Reverse Engineering meetup
Zachtronics episode
Find Alvaro at alvarop.com / @alvaroprieto
Find Jen at rebelbot.com / @rebelbotjen
...more
1h 9min
October 02, 2017Secret Squirrel
Chris was at Maker Faire last weekend and will be at the Open Hardware Summit this week.
Jim Williams app note 28 about thermocouples
Dave is still investigating the LT3780 among other chips.
The PC/104 standard was before Arduino or other modern dev boards. Dave has been playing around with one he found in his collection. This uses the ISA bus standard.
The early ones Dave developed on had a 386.
These ran DOS programs. Dave often ran Novell DOS.
The best ones had "disk on chip" from m-systems
Chris was impressed with the shrunk down System on Module (OSD355x) that's on the Beagle Pocket.
We've had Jason Kridner on the show before but will hopefully chat with him again soon.
Gene Kranz was a NASA flight director. Gene Frantz did the Speak and Spell and helped found Octavo systems
Two fish were in a tank
Bart Dring (formerly of Inventables) built some crazy robots for a local Chicago meetup.
Andrew Witte (CTO of Pebble) was formerly on the show
Working on Pebble taught Eric Micgovsky about hardware.
Gerry from Civionics
Former guest Zach Dunham (who works at Kickstarter) has a new podcast called The Prepared.
AvE did a video about the BioLite charger/stove and using conformal coating on it.
Image courtesy of Rick and Morty, s03e08
...more
1h 12min
September 25, 2017An Interview with Ken Shirriff
Welcome Ken Shirriff from Righto.com!
Ken uses a metallugical microscope and the hyugens software package to stitch together the images.
Inside fake RAM chips
Armour etch will remove the top layer of oxide
Analyzing a vintage 8008
Mining bitcoin with pencil and paper. Ken made a video of this as well.
Mining bitcoin on a Xerox Alto!
Xerox Alto , precursor to (all computers, but also the) Xerox Star
Alan Kay
yCombinator contacted Ken to rebuild theirs.
The IBM 1401 demo lab
Living computer museum in Seattle
Smalltalk -
BCPL
The 76477 sound chip
Integrated Injection Logic
Day 31 of restoration
The Alto had the first version of tons of modern computer peripherals:
Mouse
Laser Printer
Ethernet
Ken displayed his work at the recent VCF
They found a disk with an early version of Voice over IP!
Bell Labs discovering big bang (microwave background radiation)
Sinclair calculator simulator
Ken was inspired by the Visual 6502
CuriousMarc is a YouTube channel that followed the Alto rebuild
TI Calculator simulator
Ken uses lots of patents like this one from TI
There are interesting things happening in Mac chargers (and the ripoffs)
DS2413 1-Wire switch
iPad chargers were interesting as well
Sprite_tm talking about FTDI parts
Ken also tears down vintage parts like the 555
Figured out transistors on die from books, LT Spice
Transfluxors - core memory
Read more on righto.com or follow Ken on Twitter as @KenShirriff
...more
1h 15min
September 18, 2017A Total 360
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHctCxCBBrY
Dave's multimeter is using an STM32 part with an LCD driver
He will selling the ring binder sheets soon.
The pocket multimeter Japan is not cheap, but will be for sale outside of Japan
What do you call the stage after a Proof-of-concept but before a prototype? Chris is going with "One-off build"
The uSupply shall return!
GreatScott did a video about building a small bench supply using a LTC3780 module
Dave has done a multimeter input protection videos (including PTC/NTC)
Jason Cerundulo was on the show talking USB C in the past
Matt Duff made videos for ADI in the past we liked.
The Engineering Mind used to be our go-to reference for corporate comms going well, but it's long passed.
Bob Pease had a show
Diyode
This Country Feeds the World (article about modern agtech in the Netherlands)
Bunnie and Snowden worked together on monitoring iPhones
Strange Parts adds a headphone jack to an iPhone
The PCH Newsletter announces funding on startups
John Deere restricts firmware on their tractors...even when you bought them
We mention the Apple announcements because they impact sensors in the future.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
...more
1h 18min
September 11, 2017An Interview with Jeroen Domburg (Sprite_tm)
Welcome, Jeroen Domburg (Sprite_tm)
An early hack that gained notoriety was turning an optical mouse sensor into camera. This article ended up Slashdotted.
Sprite used to write for elektor as well.
His project site (Spritesmods.com) became his portfolio. This helped him move from consulting to working directly for a small broadcast mfg that later was absorbed by the Grass Valley Group.
Ra Link - > OpenWRT
The ESP8266 grew out of Espressif's product line meant for "Serial to WiFi"
Early Hackaday articles helped to spread the popularity of the chip.
The Leaked SDK was actually a Windows VM with a compiler for Xtensa core
GCC already existed for for xtensa because it was a product line from Tensilica.
There was less support for smaller cores (windowed registers)
Sprite caught Espressif's attention when he wrote a webserver for it to handle wifi passwords (start as access points, enter info, turn into a device the hooks into the network). He also helped with lag issues with the chip wake up time.
He took a holiday to Beijing and Shanghai before deciding to join the team.
ESP IDF
The ESP32 is multicore
You can interact with the ESP using Javascript, Lua, uPython (and more)
Sprite has learned how to speak "taxi Chinese" but is working on language.
The ESP31 was the beta for the ESP32, Sprite ported a sega emulator to it
8266 is a spinoff of 8089, which was more of a wifi front end.
ESP32 wanted to design it for IoT, so the peripheral set is much more extensive and meant for sensor based devices.
It's an even split on whether people use the module vs chip.
The chips run FreeRTOS
The ESP32 started with Async multiprocessing (AMP) but later was made synchronous by sharing some of the memory space between the cores.
It's a standard BSD socket set, so users can drop their code into the SDK.
It's not worth cloning WiFi chips like they did with FTDI...any indirect replication of the functionality would be a unique solution.
Talks
Snake
Tamogatchi
Gameboy
Find Sprite online!
GitHub
Twitter
IRC
Image courtesy of the @hackaday twitter feed
...more
1h 19min
September 05, 2017Mergers and People Acquisitions
Chris will be joining Hologram as a developer advocate. Past discussions around 3G projects were people like Akiba, Gerry and Brandon (wifi connectivity)
Dave wants to see a chart of data update rate on wifi vs 3g (and how it impacts battery).
Chris and Dave both use Sendy. which is a front end for Amazon SES.
Acquisitions!
Altium has bought Upverter. Upverter was on The Amp Hour in 2013. Dave is excited about the eeConcierge service.
Dragon Innovation was bought by Avnet. Scott Miller was on the show back in 2012.
IXYS was bought by Littelfuse. They paid $750M.
Dave got fuse quotes from a Japanese mfg that were 1/5th the cost of list fuses! These are what you can buy on his site in multipacks.
121GW meter will be released on October 20th. It will surely sell out, make sure you're on Dave's mailing list!
Dave will be launching another Kickstarter. Chris suggested he does Kickstarter Gold like Zach Dunham did.
People are building DIY Powerwalls at home. Tesla is selling theirs at a lower cost than we thought.
Plethora wrote about why crowdfunded projects fail.
Dave was contacted by the new owner of Lily Drones threatening legal action over the trademark. Dave had made a video about it while on vacation. The "Nominative Fair Use" case with NKOTB guides judicial action over this.
AvE did a review of the Cubiio, but was talking about the laser but not the manufacturability.
Chris wrote about "Solo Engineers" and was really thinking about the campaign/design that David Kronstein (Tesla500) ran for the Chronos 1.4 camera.
Andy Gelme almost got in trouble with the LiFX bulb because of the stretch goals. This changed the rules on KS that you need a real project.
Sonos is bricking speakers if you don't accept their terms and conditions.
There is a pacemaker with 250K units in the field that requires a firmware update.
An engineer was sentenced to 40 months in prison for meddling with emissions output on Volkswagon vehicles. No word yet on the executives going to jail.
Links are always available throughout the week on our subreddit /r/TheAmpHour or follow our twitter account @TheAmpHour
Thanks to the Wikimedia Commons for the merge sign
...more
1h 13min
August 29, 2017An Interview with Rick Altherr
Welcome, Rick Altherr (@kc8apf)
Rick works on the platform team at Google, designing firmware and software for the servers that go into hyperscale datacenters. He does not discuss specific Google stuff.
Chris was surprised when Rick walked into a meetup carrying the Zaius server under his arm.
The standard 1U rack size is 19". This is the first of many standardizations that have happened over the years.
You can purchase a slot, a rack, an entire cage or a building. Each comes with an increasing amount of logistical questions and potential for customization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uvdPDXaBPc
Engineers are following "Scale out" architecture these days.
Kubernetes
Gluster
Reed-solomon codes
MTBF of hardware
Your [server hardware] product is not truly shipped until it has caught fire at a datacenter
These servers are part of the Open Compute project, which includes many large companies in the tech space.
Two of the popular designs are the Leopard and the Zaius
The Zaius has 2 Power9 processors, 48V rails, point of load converters that take the voltage down to 0.8V, and slots for 32 sticks of RAM. You can view all the design files on GitHub.
PUE - power usage effectiveness
Hot isle/cold isle
Lights out management type system
Open Stack
Kubernetes
MaaS
OpenBMC - Chassis manager
NCSI - connect the ethernet
IMPI - controlled by DMTF
Project olympus motherboard microsoft
You can just...BUY...these servers from the Open Compute project.
Go on a 360 degree tour of the datacenters at Google
Read more about Google's datacenters here.
Decisions are made on metrics like "People per megawatt" (how much management is required) and "Build vs buy" (is there a solution already in the marketplace).
Finding a job: search for terms like "Datacenter", "Platform", or ping Rick via DM for mentoring and/or practice interviewing
Rick gave a great talk at HDDG about monitoring engines called "Knock knock: Add more fuel"
You can find Rick on Twitter or GitHub
Occasional barks during the show provided by Rick's new puppy! :-D
https://twitter.com/kc8apf/status/901932715754217472
...more
1h 39min
August 21, 2017An Interview with Piotr Esden-Tempski
Welcome, Piotr Esden Tempski (@esden)
Piotr got started with autopilots, Paparazzi UAV. These were initially made for ENAC
The models (Lisa-/S,/M, /MX) are different sizes and have different capabilities.
These platforms are built with STM32 (as are many of Piotr's other projects)
His programming language of choice? Common LISP (listen to him on Embedded.fm for more about this)
The Black Magic Probe came out of the autopilot projects and a collaboration with Gareth McMullin
Buy the BlackMagic here and the 1Bitsy here
This tool supplants OpenOCD, instead allowing the user to connect to the GDB Interface via this hardware pathway.
A key component is LibOpenCM3, an open source ARM cortex M library
SIMD - single instruction multiple data
Risk V5 - SiFive
Interested in learning? Work through and mess with the existing examples for the 1Bitsy!
Platform.io is an online IDE for multiple platforms, including Arduino.
redare2 - live debugging
sublime text
Atom text editor
ARM Debug Interface Five (ADIV5)
The 1bitsy DEFCON Badge -- the 1bitsy 1up (hardware design files) -- was using parallel to LCD, so the frame rate was nearly 80 fps
Teensy vs 1bitsy -- Similar tact, different approach to debug options.
KiCad files are in repo
Where to find Piotr (and sometimes Gareth)
black-magic.org
1bitsquared.com
1bitsy.org
On twitter: @esden
gitter.im
...more
1h 50min
August 14, 2017The Internet of Septage (with Akiba)
Welcome back, Akiba from Freaklabs
Contextual Electronics members now get the "academic pricing" on the Analog Discovery 2. That device is made by Digilent. We had Clint Cole on the show in the in the past.
Akiba just got back from Europe for vacation. Prior to that he was working on a World Bank/Egyptian Government project instrumenting waste systems to prevent dumping.
The project uses 3G modules, simcom 5320e
Of course this topic made us think of the @InternetOfShit twitter account.
The field radio Akiba favors is a point to point 802.15.4 radio.
This is instead of using LoRa, which is a 900 Mhz sensor protocol by Semtec
Ubiquity long range
The septage project was build on similar technology as the rice field monitoring project Akiba has been working on for a few years now.
Akiba's next project will be drones, possibly working with agriculture.
During reboot of multiple product, Akiba is planning on organizing into product lines
IEEE ACM article (behind a paywall, unfortunately)
During a discussion of lifestyle businesses, Chris mentioned the book the E-myth. In it, they talk about "primary aim"
While discussing the AD2, Akiba mentioned $50 test fixtures in china (see images below)
Chris wrote about solo engineers.
Beers in akiba's workshop
Dangerous prototypes now offers Dirty Cables and Dirty Decapping
Follow Akiba on Twitter as @freaklabs
Thanks to gtzecosan for the image of the septic system
...more
1h 30min

FAQs about The Amp Hour:

How many episodes does The Amp Hour have?

The podcast currently has 745 episodes available.

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