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:

July 17, 2013Arduino, IndiGoGo and Hack-a-Day - Doodad Dealer Dancing
Thank you to our sponsor NetBurner! If you want to get your ethernet device up and running quickly, check them out. For a listener discount, go to NetBurner.com/TheAmpHour
The Amp Hour will be having a meetup in NYC on July 19th at 7 pm. More details in the subreddit. Dave had to regretfully decline.
Want to get freaked out without meeting Chris in person? Listen to "The Amp Hour minus The Amp Hour" to hear Dave, Chris and Jeff...laughing...and not much else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dESWV27chqs#at=19
Hack-a-Day is trying to raise money to buy the domain off the current owner and make it a non-profit.
If you'd rather waste your money, check out this IndieGoGo campaign for a "phone with no transistors, battery or radio waves". So...a rock?
A much more useful and realistic project to back is this refactoring of Arduino boards to make them cheaper for non-profits to buy. Do non-profits hurt open source? Or is it just part of the ecosystem?
This lower cost option was a similar question with the Tangibot, but there was much more profit motive there.
If you've bought a bunch of Arduinos and want to learn more about them, former guest of the show Jeremy Blum, just published a book on Arduino. John Boxall also has one.
One thing you can't get anymore is paper databooks. But you can get catalogs, regardless of whether or not you want them
Digikey has been trying their Dynamic Catalog. Chris still prefers Google Image search. Dave cautions against certain search terms.
Chris is doing the vendor dance once again, empowered by more realistic knowledge. He can't imagine moving million-piece orders.
Have you had special attention due to huge volumes before? We know that some of our audience is in the consumer industry, which would be those volumes.
Sometimes to get a product out the door, you need to ask for help from vendors or distributors. It's a delicate balance of asking for help and not having them design in every part you use.
You can put your eggs in one basket for vendors, or for CAD programs. The latter seems necessary no matter which you pick.
Switching to online tools seems like it would require the biggest leap (because you don't know it'll be there forever like a piece of software). Upverter's sharing features has been tempting Chris lately, especially the fork feature (similar to GitHub). They have also been showcasing products you can fork and start changing.
We have been moving to cloud/online stuff as well. We've slowly been uploading our past episodes to our YouTube channel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqlX9Ubpb_g
Chip of the Week: The LT3081 1.5 amp linear regulator with a few other fiddly bits. This is an update to the LT3080 that Dave had issues with.
Jeff Rowberg of BlueGiga will be on the show next week. Ask him all your Bluetooth and WiFi module questions on the subreddit!
If you're in NYC, please come hang out!
Thanks to Ed Yourdon for the tango picture.
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1h 17min
July 10, 2013An Interview with Ryan O'Hara - Keyed, Kerfed Kapton
[display_podcast]
Welcome, Ryan O’Hara of Ohararp.com!
Ryan is a mechanical engineer who has crossed into the electrical domain in various ways.
His PhD work was research around robots that fly like bees. It was also featured on NPR in the US. Later he studied wings similar to the Manduca Sexta.
Since graduating, Ryan has continued to serve in the US Air Force.
He used to live down in Dayton, where Chris recently attended Hamvention.
To construct tiny wings, Ryan used the ablation feature available with the LPKF ProtoLaserU3, a UV (355 nm) laser device. These days Ryan uses a CO2 laser, which burns more than ablating.
The wing material was partially made from FR1500. See the entire material stack up here (pdf).
The robot insect was controlled by custom ASIC (metalized gate array), similar to what Jeri Ellsworth is doing for the CastAR.
Ryan achieved his lift targets for the robot by employing biomimicry. Why not let nature do the heavy lifting?
Later he did consulting work ,which he got through publishing some open projects. One was glacier monitoring, using a low cost device.
This is how he got into learning about the need for stencils and the different materials used to construct them. Limor from adafruit did a tutorial using info from Ryan.
His mechanical background came in handy. Ryan recommends the Protomold draft tutorials to learn more about the importance when molding plastic.
The thickness of the stencil is a standard 3.5/1000th inch.
Kapton has about 100 uses before the smaller features start to fall apart. One thing that lowers the life span is using a metal spatula to spread solder paste. Ryan suggests using a credit card/hotel key card instead.
Ryan suggests the Sparkfun tutorial about paste/stencils.
Jeff Rowberg from BlueGiga has been working on the KeyGlove recently. He also got it to work with Google Glass (hey, Chris was excited).
Glass has the invensense MPU-9150, a 9 axis motion tracking device.
LEDs capture Ryan's attention, as well as his kids and some Christmas decoration enthusiasts. He started a new boutique company, RGB-123.
Ryan picked up a Quad PnP to do in-house assembly as a value-added solution for consulting clients.
He got a refurbished machine and feeders from GoPPM, a dangerous site since Ryan is a self-confessed tool junkie.
He also had help from Twitter. @AutoSportLabs and others helped to narrow it down.
Dave interacted with the PnP that did his boards in the video where he visited his assembly house:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHNpayYhBvM
Everyone favors surface mount for automation reasons, but Chris recently saw a tiny solder pot for tinning wires.
Moving to a full time maker business is a big decision, but Dave says it shouldn't be a hard one.
Ryan was nice enough to mention Chris's upcoming program, Contextual Electronics.
Thanks again to Ryan for being on the show! He's offering a coupon to all interested listeners. Use the coupon code "amphour20" - Coupon is for 20% off Kapton stencils and expires 16 Jul 2013.
Find Ryan on Twitter at @ohararp
Image credit: Ohararp.com
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1h 23min
July 03, 2013Firmware, Netburner and Semiconductors - Chris's Capitalism Colloquy
As much as electronics is about the technology, knowing the basics behind businesses can be important to having the capital to keep making fun projects and gadgets that can impact the world.
HackaDay is looking for a new home (and a new editor). Jason Calcanis is looking to sell it to move onto something else and Caleb Kraft (former editor-in-chief) is moving on to other projects.
Dave has been having a heckuva time getting his MakerBot firmware to work. He can't get ahold of a simple AVRdude EXE file.
Sometimes there aren't steady builds because they expect you to build it yourself. This stems from firmware repositories and the idea that you should have access to the source code.
What firmware revision control do you use? Dave and Chris have both used SVN but haven't dove into Git (which seems to be the defacto standard these days).
The Microsoft architect who was the first paid traveler into space was Charles Simonyi
But why go to space when you can just have your picture taken up there? The ARKYD telescope was funded on Kickstarter to the tune of $1.5M!
Hardware is hard...who knew?
Investing is hard too!
Chris has been thinking about low capital businesses. Topping the list are software and brands...which is why VCs love them. Chris also thinks mining, but Dave has seen the large up front capital outlays.
There is a rise in one-person million dollar businesses (but not really, since some of it is outsourcing tasks)
Thanks to our sponsor this week, NetBurner! Check out their offer for 20% off dev boards for listeners. Go to NetBurner.com/theamphour
The Leap Motion is surprisingly mostly software and then IR LEDs. Mike Hord from Sparkfun shows off the hardware and the current consumption.
The "Systemization" of chips continues, with vendors pulling in more and more of the design. This is driving the Internet of Things.
Chip of the Week: A Bluetooth Chip from Dialog Semiconductor, the DA14580. This rivals TI's CC254x and Nordic Semiconductor's nRF51822.
If you don't want to buy an SoC that has everything on board, you can grab a design from TI's precision library.
Or you could go learn how to be an IC designer. But how? The question was asked on the EEVblog forum recently. (hint: slowly and with good credentials)
Tektronix is headed to the fab for their next generation ADC SoC (which is the heart of real time scopes). They are tapping the 350 GHz SiGe IBM Process (WOWZA!).
If you're in New York City, Chris is planning a meetup for Friday the 19th in the city (he picks up his Google Glass the following day). Also, if you want to win a t-shirt, submit links or ideas to The Amp Hour Subreddit.
Thanks to Bryan Champ for the picture of the “Capitalism Works For Me!” sign.
...more
1h 18min
June 26, 2013Google Glass, Lean Startup and VotC - Initializing Instructed Interviews
Chris got his notice that he can pick up his Google Glass! Now to find the money for it...
If all works out, we'll have a meetup in NYC the weekend of July 6th.
We'll start giving away T-shirts for stories on the /r/TheAmpHour subreddit. Each story we talk about will be put into a drawing and drawn for a shirt.
You have to be careful with product definition. Woodshedding is easy when you ask large groups of people what they think.
Similarly, "Voice of the Customer" (VOC) can be stupid because even your target customers mostly say they want what they already have with incremental improvements.
So what can you do? Design and iterate...then show it off and do it again! (Chris realized after the fact that this is basically the ideas of The Lean Startup.
Dave calls this WYSIWYG engineering.
Google admitted their interview questions don't really do anything. Instead, the author of this TechCrunch article suggests you have a portfolio and weed people out with simple questions.
Should you put everything on your resume? Even if you're at a short run job? Dave says no, but Chris says you should explain and talk about what you could have done differently or if you were in charge.
MakerBot was bought by Stratasys for $403 million.
Is it possible to start an industrial hardware company these days? There is a lot of interest in hardware startups, but even Zach from HAXLR8R tweeted about not needing any more apps that turn on lights.
Tesla Motors is a possible example, except they had lots of government funding and Elon Musk's money. And old infrastructure to build on. (and of course, beautiful design and great engineering)
Energy Micro and Touchstone both started as fabless semiconductors because of the investment it takes to start a wafer fab. (links go to the shows where members of those companies were on The Amp Hour!)
Oh yeah, and Energy Micro was bought by Silicon Labs!
"Speaking of crack"... Dave doesn't know the difference between drugs, Chris suggests he would if he watched Breaking Bad.
Coffee is basically just legalized crack right? There was a lifehacker article recently called Beer for big ideas, coffee to get them done.
The next PCB type might be...cells? The next big market for electronics will be the body. IEEE Spectrum has an article about a pacemaker for your digestive system.
Shonky town of the week? There is a town in West Virginia where people can "escape electro magnetic exposure"
Dave says the inverter on the solar panel in that town will kick off some radiation. Chris suggests they lose efficiency and move to a sinusoidal waveform driving the transformer/switcher.
Heathkit is back...again? Maybe? We doubt it, but who knows?
We have a new idea! If you are interested in helping interview experienced people in the electronics industry and gather their stories, please let us know! This will be similar to Story Corps which is stored in the Library of Congress and airs on NPR.
We said that to send us an email (and you always can at [email protected] and [email protected]) But a better way is to fill out the survey below:
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1h 20min
June 19, 2013Solar, FPGAs and Maxim Integrated - Solar Shopper Sickness
Dave is under the weather this week, but we did a show anyway. How’s THAT for dedication?
Do you go into work when you're sick? What kind of policies should workplaces have?
Dave was automatically booted off the JayCar customer list!
Littlefuse is running a promo to take someone behind the scenes at NASA. US only, unfortunately.
Dave just had a solar panel array installed on his house!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGENVguQQmo
Solar will have a "calming" effect on grid because it will offload some of the peak power needs. This will also affect the economics of power generation.
Will the true implementation of the Internet of Things simply be when the Cat5 plug on the back of your appliance is unexciting?
Like many new technologies and the authors that write about them, the IoT follows the hype curve.
Google Glass and wearable tech is likely on that curve. There was a great teardown of Glass recently. No huge surprises for the hardware, only how much they're charging.
The teardown was done by Star Simpson who also tricked Chris into believing in the Tacocopter.
FPGAs have a community built around shared designs, located at OpenCores.org.
Now there is a Python library called MyHDL which aims to make FPGA more accessible to software programmers, similar to how C-to-Hardware compilers have done in the past. There is a good presentation giving an overview of the library.
One FPGA enthusiast thinks they will be a more widespread technology in the coming years, but Chris and Dave ultimately question the logic behind it (ha.).
CircuitLab has started charging for all levels of access, including the hobbyist level (even though it's a low price).
Dave posits that EAGLE would have never made it without the freemium level, nor the low cost license for getting into production.
Chris likes the machined beer can stencils exhibited on Hack A Day. Nice confluence of machining and electronics. stencils/
The ad-hoc Chip Of the Week is my Maxim Integrated. It's a new modem for doing powerline communications. This likely won't be for an IP levele connection, but it's still an interesting technology.
LT has a highly specialized and awesome looking part, a 20 bit, 500 ksps SAR ADC. But, of course, you'll pay out the nose for it!
Chris likes two subreddits: the new one with promise is /r/appnotes; the more established one with some great stuff posted is /r/PrintedCircuitBoards
Thanks to the Boston Public Library for the somewhat creepy clown picture.
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1h 10min
June 12, 2013An Interview with Laen - Purple PCB Philosophy
Welcome, Laen of OSHpark.com!
Now that...is artwork!
OSHPark is out of Portland, OR. The original business grew out of DorkbotPDX and started in December of 2009.
The tech scene is still big in "The Silicon Forest", which grew out of Tektronix. Others include Intel, Maxim Integrated, Xerox and more.
The early orders went to Advanced Circuits and was only about 1 panel/month. All orders were packaged by Laen and depaneled after they came back.
Currently, OSHPark has 4 fabs but might expand more in the near future (maybe Europe?).
Even the faster Chinese board houses with a 3 day turn and 2 day shipping matched going domestic. And the quality was generally higher at the US houses.
The purple soldermask is characteristic of OSHpark and Laen needs to order for some of the fabs.
Though it's very expensive, it's possible to do multicolored soldermask. Dave's friend did a 7 color (double sided!) Apple logo.
Laen recently purchased the BatchPCB service from Sparkfun
The OSHpark.com website frontend was designed by James Harton of resistor.io.
Former guest Ian Daniher got his start in electronics from interacting with Laen and the Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories (Windell and Lenore). Being sent the TGIMBOEJ sealed his fate.
The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronic Junk (TGIMBOEJ) doesn't seem to be moving anymore. Perhaps we should start seeding next boxes?
Even the IPC is now metric...but not convention! Trace/Width limits for PCBs is still stated in mil/thous.
The OSHpark service/fabs can do 5mil line, 5 mil space, 10 mil drill, 4 mil annual ring on the 4 layer boards (referred to as 5/5). The 2 layer board is 6/6.
The pads are all plated as ENIG.
The math for how these boards are put together is really interesting. Laen created an animated GIF showing how the boards are refactored to optimize placement on a panel.
People use the service for all kinds of projects. Each panel has at least one tube project. Many more are being used for front panels.
The mix of CAD software varies over time, but KiCAD seems to be the top spot, followed closely by EAGLE, Altium and then a wide variety of others.
There are more these days from online tools, including Circuits.io, which is partnered with OSHpark.
A future feature will be OSHW sharing...if you have other boards on the same panel your board is on that are OSHW, you'll be able to see them and maybe even order them.
OSHPark Competition is from:
Seeed Studios
ITead
Sunstone
Advanced Circuits.
There is a list comparing many of the different services and how to optimize for cost/size. Quality is top priority at OSHpark though.
When Laen is trying out a new fab house, he sends them this crazy board (preview below, link to the huge image), dubbed the "bastard coupon" by Chris.
A standard PCB panel is 18" x 24".
Dave has done videos before about piecing together panels and getting them fabbed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXE_dh38HjU
OSHPark is hiring! Send Laen an email at [email protected] if you're interested in helping.
Thanks to Laen for being on the show and providing all the awesome info and images! We highly recommend people go check out the service and upload a board today!
If you’re interested in the “sponsor” this week, check out ContextualElectronics.com
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1h 18min
June 05, 2013Contextual Electronics, ClubJameco and Solderpaste - Lifelong Learning Likelihood
Many thanks to our sponsor, Club Jameco, for their continued support. Go to ClubJameco.com/TheAmpHour to see the morse code kit mentioned on the show and to support the show.
We were recently reviewing our stats and our hourlong(ish) program has been downloaded almost 500,000 times. What does that mean in totals?
36.1 million amp-hour-minutes
600,000 amp-hour-hours
25070 amp-hour-days
68.7 amp-hour-years
That's a lot of listening! Thanks to all of you! And if reading is of more interest than listening, we now have select transcripts available.
Chris has a new project that hopefully will be helpful to people looking to progress in their electronics learning journey. It's called Contextual Electronics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEbu3h5FBZI
Dave has been working on Fundamental Fridays videos that are the talk of the town! Lots of great information to digest!
Dave got a new Samson microphone that has some heft. He'll be using it while talking about whatever is under his microscope.
What is the cheapest you can deck out your lab with decent test equipment?
Dave got a great deal on a Keithley 2015, which he currently reviewed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiXMKgxx_Oc
Heathkit might be coming back...again? They have (had?) a survey on their site but no indication they'll be coming back. There was an EDN article about it and one of the commenters made a great point that it used to be cheaper to build your own equipment. Not the case these days!
Former guests of The Amp Hour, Zach "Hoeken" Smith and Ian of Dangerous Prototypes both have a desktop pick and place. We got an email from the manufacturer Neodentech (update: there is now NeoDen USA for easier interactions for people in the States) that they are now exporting them, though the website looks hard to navigate.
Sometimes it's easier just to get a foot-controlled solderpaste dispenser that is a syringe.
Chris uploaded some videos since he returned from Dayton. One from Hamvention walking around and talking to friends and vendors. Also one video where he walks around marveling at the planes inside the US Air Force Museum
Former guest Greg Charvat (also featured in the hamvention video above) took the R390A radio he got at the swap meet and turned it from just a receiver to a transceiver using a homebuilt transmitter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kAfVfgEm74
Boldport (previously mentioned for the "artistic PCB software") made a board in the spirit of Bob Pease, with the diagram drawn into the silkscreen.
Chris got a part wrong, it wasn't an amplifier, it was a voltage to frequency converter, the LM331 (designed by Pease)
Chris maintains this isn't needed as much these days because you can either pass signals over a digital isolator (0ut of an A/D converter) or you can put a micro on the other side of an isolation barrier (like a transformer). Obviously this isn't the only application, jeez Chris.
Altera has an app note about doing layout for 100 Gbps transmission of data(!). In reality, this is 4 parallel 28 Gbps transceivers, but still! Crazy!
There are TONS of signal integrity considerations when moving up to those data speeds. Listen to the show with expert Howard Johnson for more about this topic.
Dave has had to troubleshoot and tweak these parts before, trying to optimize the bit error rate.
Sometimes you can isolate problems by switching between a hot air pencil and cooler spray. In a pinch, you can turn over a can of compressed air and use whatever drips out.
6.4 EAGLE has integration with LTSpice, according to the release notes from January 2013. Has anyone tried this functionality?
Looking for a new podcast? Chris really likes Innovation Hub. They had a great show about robots recently.
If you like the show, please consider giving us a review on iTunes! This helps us show up in their index. Thanks!
Thank you to Steven Groves for the picture of the 75-in-1 kit!
...more
1h 19min
May 29, 2013An interview with Jeri Ellsworth - Absorptive Augmented Actuality
Welcome back, Jeri Ellsworth!
And welcome people who don’t normally listen to the show; if you came to hear Jeri, you won’t be disappointed! (until you hear Dave and Chris). Regardless, if you like what you hear and have interest in electronics (making them, not just using them), you can subscribe to our RSS feed or through our iTunes Podcast Feed.
For those interested, there is also now a transcript available for episode 147
Jeri has joined us on past shows, in fact, she was our first guest on episode 35! The second time she was on the show (episode 52), she told us all about her home chip making escapades.
Jeri and her partner Rick's new company is called Technical Illusions. This company started after they were both laid off from Valve, the game company where they had previously been working on this technology.
They recently revealed the castAR at Maker Faire in the San Mateo, CA.
The Technical Illusion team is only 5 people full time right now, but they had many friends and cohorts along to help out during the show:
Rick is able to quickly prototype new interactions and games by using Lua, the scripting language.
Currently, Jeri is using Altera FPGAs for development and TI serializers to get the data to and from the video processor, but will eventually move to a metalized gate array. More expensive on a per-piece price than a fully custom chip but cheaper mask sets (for the photolithography part of semiconductor processing)
The playing surface is a retroreflective surface, similar to what is on road signs and what the Apollo left on the surface of the moon.
The sweet spot for viewing the games is at 100 Hz. They currently run the glasses at 120 Hz.
The glasses and the absolute head tracking allow you to experience parallax, which you cannot do with 3D movies currently.
The glasses hook up to phones through USB on the go. This allows the phone to act as a host or a device.
There are other players in the Augmented Reality space, but no where near the price point they're going for. In the Virtual Reality space, the OculusRift is a high profile example (at a similarly low cost)
Technical Illusions will be seeking patents, in order to attract some investment. They will be starting a Kickstarter in the near future.
Today's episode was sponsored by element14. Check out their community support, product info and ways to purchase a wide range of popular dev boards, including Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black.
Photos of Jeri and the Technical Illusions team by Alvaro Prieto, friend of the show and great photographer!
...more
2h 7min
May 22, 2013Hamvention, Arduino and Intel - Burdensome Background Battology
A new t-shirt idea? Dave didn't understand the reference to "All your base are belong to us"
Dave's op amp problem turned out to be from the rails (or so he says!). The "burden of experience" had him testing (and had Chris guessing) at all the wacky things it COULD be before checking what it actually was.
Learning how to read schematics comes with time. Bob Pease schematics were notorious for being hard to read.
Would there be interest in doing obfuscated circuit contests?
Chris just got back from Hamvention, down in Dayton OH. It was great!There was a meetup on Saturday evening, where some t-shirt wearing listeners came to hang out. They were awesome!
Thanks to Bill Boyer (far right) for the picture!
Former guests of the show Greg Charvat and Kent Lundberg were both at Hamvention! (Greg is the tall one in blue in the back in the picture above)
eBay significantly reduced the flea market from its former glory, but the selection was still pretty wide. And there were over 24K people in attendance!
Dave used to buy test equipment overseas and resell locally.
Chris feels terrible for forgetting his name, but the awesome person in red directly behind Chris in the picture gifted him a challenge coin, a really cool tradition in military circles.
Mystery solved! It was Michael Hill! He also was the one who left his Ray Bans. Two for one!
Dave says coins are a traditionally hidden and traded item between geocaching teams.
Perhaps Dave should include a collectible coins as a donation level in his yet-to-be-announced Pozzible campaign?
Thanks to our sponsor for this show, Club Jameco! Go to http://ClubJameco.com/TheAmpHour to see the J-bot kit discussed this week and to learn more about submitting your own kit idea for fun and profit!
Arduino had some announcements at Maker Faire this week: They will be releasing a branded robot kit and a wifi based Arduino called the Yún. It will have a co-processor running a version of Linux and a wifi stack.
Jeri Ellsworth and business partner Rick Johnson announce their new project spun out from Valve at Maker Faire.
MAKE (and the MakerShed) will be expanding its offering and its partnership with Radio Shack.
Former guest, Jack Ganssle, has a great newsletter called The Embedded Muse. Someone wrote in about Partkeepr, a linux based inventory tracking system.
How do you manage your parts? Will anyone build a vending machine for parts for Chris? Kickstarter, anyone?
Bunnie did a great teardown of the Formlabs Form1. Can't wait to hear more about the low cost SLA printer.
The Intel Science Fair winners have been announced. The media over-extrapolated the chemistry project of the first runner-up, saying she created a device allowing a cell phone to charge in 20 seconds. She clarifies in an interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LahFsj6bLI&feature=youtu.be&t=1m24s
The cost of school is still very prohibitive and really handcuffs many people with debt afterwards.
A new program has been announced between Georgia Tech (a top 5 engineering school), Udacity and AT&T. They will be offering a Master's Degree in CS for less than $7,000!
Rapid Fire News!
Tinkercad is back! They were acquired by AutoDesk and will be opening up the platform again!
Former guest Andrew Seddon and the Circuit Hub team announced they now have support for KiCAD! Whee!
theonetruestickman (on reddit) submitted his workbench for WBotW. Looks like a really neat space!
Lost and found: At the end of the meetup at Hamvention, Chris found a pair of Ray Bans. If you lost a pair, please send an email to [email protected].
...more
1h 25min
May 15, 2013PCB Mills, SDR and Oscilloscopes - Flaunting Furbelow Fanciness
Thanks to our sponsors at Club Jameco! Head over to The Amp Hour section of their site to see the kit we discussed this week and to find out more about submitting a kit for a coupon or for revenue if it's chosen by the community.
The USB DVB-T (such as this one sold on Amazon) is a great way to learn more about the radio spectrum, even without a ham license (because you're only receiving signals, not sending them). The software defined radio inside works with programs like SDRsharp (Windows) or GQRX (Mac, Linux). Thanks to Matt Richardson's video for alerting us to this!
If you haven't seen Commander Chris Hadfield doing "Space Oddity" by David Bowie (from the ISS!), you're missing out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDChKgoETo0
"At least we're not Detroit!" is no longer valid. They have a new Robocop statue. And a rapidly recovering auto sector!
Not from Detroit, but from Michigan (Grand Rapids), thegeekgroup.org have a great YouTube channel with lots of well produced videos on electronics and machining.
A promotional video from DASIX was recently posted online.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i9tl7gz3hY
Chris has been shopping for a scope and finally realized the value of the upgradable firmware (it looks "cheaper" initially).
Dave and the EEVblog forum were discussing why the "Alt Trig" was removed from modern oscilloscopes.
Former guest Alan Wolke surmised that the free frame capability allows you to "trigger" by freezing the screen with a long capture window. He also explained it in one of his videos from a year and a half ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4IxbF0oFRE
PCBweb is one of the first CAD tools with a built in Digikey library. The online tool also looks nice (though there is no desktop analog yet).
Thingsquare Code allows for you to compile and distribute your code online (and track revisions). The reason this makes sense is because you're already buying into their platform.
SapphireOS is an Internet of Things campaign that just launched on Kickstarter. This was also mentioned by Ryan Brown when he was on the show.
And speaking of Kickstarter, the Othermill is a PCB milling machine with a 4"x5"x2" pocket. OK for many boards you'd want to do at home, but chemical etching could do the same for many things (though you could also engrave with the Othermill). Chris dove more into machining but has a tool capable of still making PCBs (1 mil accuracy).
What kind of PCB artwork have you seen? Anything as crazy as these?
Jeremy Hong sent in a picture of his basement lair, which looks great!
Harrymj from the /r/TheAmpHour subreddit submitted the lab he works in at Stanford for the solar car team. Nice gear and a bonus Delorean!
Be sure to take pictures with other if you're attending Maker Faire or Hamvention!
Thanks to Richard Cox for the pictures of where all our future programs will live…in the cloud!
...more
1h 21min

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