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:

July 16, 2012Ceramic capacitors & High end scopes - Kempt Kickstarter Kakorrhaphiophobia
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Dave has a new $140K oscilloscope in his lab! Amazing how he wouldn't use it normally.
Rental companies will happily rent you one for less.
Dave is getting a new MakerBot Repicator soon. One of the employees there printed a box for the uCurrent.
MakerBot was at ComicCon, where Seth Green seemed to like them.
Marcus of Little Bird electronics recently got VC funding for the Ninja Blocks, a successfully funded project on Kickstarter.
Will KS become a hunting ground for hungry VCs?
Nathan Seidle of Sparkfun recently wrote/spoke about "The Pit of Despair", when Kickstarter projects are big, but not big enough to quit your job.
Ian Daniher and Kevin Mehall of Nonolith Labs, wrote a response (after being used as an example "Pit") about the benefits of starting a company that way.
Elon Musk took some risks once he cashed out of PayPal:
Dave enjoyed the documentary called, "The Revenge of the Electric Car", which featured Elon.
Do you know how ceramic capacitors are made? Johnson Dielectrics details their process.
Library and BOM management is quite a hassle. How do you manage it?
The Component Organizeris a small, cross platform, open source application for managing BOMs and stock.
One of the interns at Octopart is working on "Historical Part Pricing" to let us know what parts cost over time.
Bob Dobkin agrees with Chris (ha! More in the other direction) about the importance of being connected to a fab.
Foundries are growing overall, but TSMC still is the most dominant player (by a lot!).
Will the Memristor deliver in 2014 as HP/Hynix says it will? Can it compete with entrenched technologies?
Next week on the show, Chris Anderson of Wired and DIYdrones. Get your questions in now! (or vote on others')
As Chris said at the end of the show, we would appreciate reviews and ratings wherever you can find us. The iTunes store is a good start. And don't forget, a great way to chat about the latest episode or anything else electronics that might be on your mind is on the Discuss Server. See you there!
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1h 7min
July 09, 2012An Interview with Philip Freidin - Xenodochial Xilinx Ex-Employee
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Welcome, Philip Freidin of Fliptronics!

(Philip and Chris face off with ESD guns before Maker Faire)
Philip has been in Silicon Valley for the past 27 years, working at AMD, Xilinx and for himself.
Back in Australia, Philip was an FAE for Intersil and AMD, among others.
At AMD, he became an architect on the AM29000, one of the first commercial RISC processors.
The other two were in the ACORN (by ARM) and the Fairchild Clipper.
No crazy instructions at ARM, but there is an EIEIO instruction in the wild. They also outlawed images in silicon after a guy's face messed up a mask set!
The precurser to the 29000 was the 2900, which was based on the Fairchild 74181 bit slice concept.
The 2900 was in machines such as the PDP11 and the VAX.
Philip joined Xilinx right when they were starting work on the XC4000 series.
He also helped architect the Virtex series parts and the early Spartan parts.
Any patent with Ross Freeman on it is brilliant, according to Philip.
Philip has a couple patents of his own, including the one for Dual Port RAM in an FPGA!
Dave was wondering if patents expiring in the FPGA industry will encourage other manufacturers to jump in. Philip says only if they have a laser focus.
Every FPGA manufacturer is fabless, so how do you get a process edge?
If you're interested in getting started, look up a tutorial on VHDL or Verilog, get your self a dev board (like the Papillo or similar) and download the tools from one of the big vendors. Then start using your imagination!
Any other questions not answered directly on the show (especially those asked on the Discuss Server) will be answered if they get 10 or more upvotes.
Update: Philip has posted an album of chips and has posted short blurbs about them.

Thanks to Philip for taking the time to share about his experiences! We hope to have him back on in the future to talk more about what he’s been doing since his time at Xilinx.

Thanks to MightyOhm for the picture of Philip and Chris.
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1h 23min
July 02, 2012Gouging Green Gardyloo
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This week on the show we covered everything from energy to electronics. Some of the links go to the associated pages on The Discussion Server, but any page that has a link to an external site can be accessed at the title link at the top of that page.
Australia just enacted their carbon tax.
Holden (sister company of Chevy) is releasing the Volt in Australia.
MIT professor, Donald Sadoway has invented the "liquid metal" battery using salts and technology and thinking from aluminium smelters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sddb0Khx0yA
A recent article from The Economist talks about pulp/paper byproduct being turned into cathodes.
Google announced and showed off their Project Glass (a set of Heads Up Display glasses). The scale of technology made Chris nervous.
ASDF asked on our Suggestions page whether a project run without a large managerial deadline can be shipped on time.
Analog Devices is partnering with TSMC to utilize their new process. What is an analog company that doesn't control their process though?
Renesas could be taken over by KKR, the same company that tore NXP apart.
SPECIAL OFFER! CircuitCellar and Elektor are offering discount magazine subscriptions for listeners of The Amp Hour in celebration of CC's 25th anniversary!
Dave wanted a custom case but really wanted to know the price up front. He found PolyCase (of Avon, OH!) who gave him ballpark pricing.
Chris wants the same kind of ballpark pricing to happen for electronics distributors.
BlackMagic Design released a new high end video camera.
On the Discuss Server, Tim asked about who has used XMOS in projects before (and if you have, we'd still love to hear from you on the Discuss Forum). Software Defined Silicon seems like an interesting idea but we're not sure about price/features.
Listener of the show, Mike Kershaw is working on a new OSHW ZigBee based hw/sw project called the KisBee that should allow protocol analyzing and having other things built on top of it. Looks great!
The Retro Computing Roundtable Podcast is a new (to us at least) podcast about old school computers.
Though we've probably mentioned it once before, if you've never seen the Visual 6502, it's pretty cool!
Chip Of The Week:
The BQ25504 is a late comer to the "green" market (didn't we abandon the planet in 2009?) but this part is pretty cool for doing single cell energy harvesting. It has an input impedance matching network and only takes 330 nA when it's off. Plus it's got a ridiculously low cold start voltage (330 mV) and once started it can run on 80 mV and charge a battery or super cap. Crazy crazy. More discussion about it here.
There is a company called "Mean Well" that has been around since 1982. What is the funniest electronics company name you've ever heard of?

Next week on the show, we’ll have Philip Freidin of Fliptronics. He was an architect of the RISC (AM29000) and Bit-Slice (AM2900/29300) products at AMD and FPGAs at Xilinx (XC4000, Virtex, Virtex2, Virtex4, Spartan).
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1h 7min
June 25, 2012An Interview with Matt Ettus - Quality Quadrature Quidam
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Welcome, Matt Ettus!
Matt started and still runs Ettus Research, now a 12 person Software Defined Radio (SDR) company located in the Bay Area
Matt got interested in SDR through the GNU radio project.
He got his start working at Bluetooth and GPS type startups.
In 2010, National Instruments acquired Ettus Research and they continue to run quite autonomously.
The main projects of Ettus Research revolve around the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP). There are multiple flavors of this device.
The newest products mainly use Spartan3A FPGAs, though previously they ran with Altera Cyclone I's.
These radios have MIMO capability, meaning they have multiple inputs and multiple outputs.
The USRPs can mimic the cellphone base stations that talk to the devices we have in our pockets and the femtocells that are becoming more and more commercially available.
This device was used to spoof security personnels' phones at DEFCON....and it worked!
There were once cores from the OpenCores website, but now most of that work is done in house. And it's open source!f
The Xilinx Zynq7000 now has a ($1400!) dev kits for reconfigurable SDR development.
Many thanks to Matt Ettus for stopping by and to everyone who asked questions over in the new Discussion Forum. If you have more questions or want to continue the conversation, head over there and start a new thread!

Thanks to Quinn Norton for the picture of Matt
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1h 17min
June 18, 2012Bonkers Birthday Badinage
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Our 100th episode! Thank you so much to everyone who has continued listening and supporting us! And thanks to Jeff Keyzer for helping us continue broadcasting each week!
Happy (recent) Birthday Dave! What an awesome cake! And a video documenting the details!
The Amp Hour has an updated server!
We also have a brand new Discussion Server (http://discuss.theamphour.com) to try and promote more community among our listeners. We want you all to get to know one another. Check out that link or the "Discuss" link at the top of the page!
Car Talk is going off the air soon after 25+ years of radio. Sad!
Miroslav Batek has this great idea for stick-on labels for micros with the pinout!
Dave will have a booth at the upcoming Electronex show in Sydney. What should he do at his booth?
The Canton Fair coming up in China will have over 210,000 buyers. Wow!!
Fabs are being built all over the world. TSMC just announced they're building a 450mm fab for $8-10B! That's a lot of money!
Speaking of large chip companies, Intel's head of mobile dismissed ARM as a competitor recently. Really? Where are the phones with Intel chips?
Looking for old semi equipment? Alvaro let us know about the used semi equipment you can buy from Texas Instruments online. Someone call Jeri!
Got some old machines? Make some analog chips! Fab processes move down the chain from digital to analog, as laid out by a VP from TI, Dr. Venu Menon. He was being interviewed by our guest from last week, Steve Leibson.
Graduating from school soon? Looking for work? One of our listeners, Cody Shaw, wrote in about his 555 business card.
@Laen has recently transitioned the Dorkbot PCB service over to OSHPark! Check out the new site!
Fluxor from Engineer Blogs wrote a few weeks back about his interview style for new engineers. The main lesson? Know your basics!
Dave got a $30, 7" TFT-based eReader. Chris reiterated his point of view about abstracting interfaces for devices.
Sensationalizing technology in the media: CNBC reports on the "Backdoor" put into an Actel FPGA.
Through Silicon Vias are crazy. Texas Instruments is now doing trying them on their 28 nm process. Dave did a video about orders of magnitude:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjvIy04PwYI
Chip of the Week!
TI (really the now-defunct National Semi--you can tell by the part name) now have a controller to create a GaN based Buck controller (for high temperature, high voltage or fast switching), the LM5113 GaN Controller. It's amazing how delicate these devices are for being able to handle so much voltage across them!
Thanks for listening for the past 100 episodes! We appreciate it so much!
Be sure to drop by the Discussion Area and get to know one another! See you there!
Thanks to kcgiessen for the party soundclip!
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1h 10min
June 11, 2012An Interview with Steve Leibson - Impavid Ideopraxist Insider
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Welcome, Steve Leibson!
Steve and Chris share an alma mater, Case Western Reserve University.
Steve started his career at HP, working on the HP9825 (which Steve keeps history on).
The SOL20, an S-100 based on the Z80.
Came with a high quality keyboard made by Cherry and had sideboards made of Walnut.
A video of a re-build of a SOL20
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt8gXLlfB5c
Like many people, Steve has an opinion on the split of HP and Agilent.
Next Steve began writing. He eventually became the editor in chief of EDN magazine!
He also the was the VP of Content and the Editor in Chief at Microprocessor Report.
Steve bounced between writing and working at CAD companies, like Cadnetix. That later merged with DAISY systems. The merger of the two was a "fiasco".
After all the mergers and moves, Steve ended up running the Denali Memory Report and as a marketer at Cadence when they acquired Denali in 2010. Steve now regularly writes for the EDA360 Insider Blog.
Steve recently attended the Design Automation Conference, which is now in its 49th year!
Startups are still a possibility according to Steve; in fact, they can be quite profitable if you find the right niche.
Leibson’s Law says that it takes 10 years for any disruptive technology to be adopted by designers. That rule of thumb is based on decades of observation and includes the adoption of transistors, ICs, microprocessors, C for embedded design, etc.
Steve worked on an infomercial with Leonard Nimoy as an expert for e-Commerce and touch screens...or whatever they needed him to be an expert on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owo8kcaT-8s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGDdfAD3ICw
Thanks again to Steve for being on our show! It was a great insight into the EDA world!
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1h 20min
June 04, 2012Proemial Passive Poiesis
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Back to normal this week but no shortage of electronics to talk about!
Dave was dismayed by the combination of sexism and insulting engineers in advertising.
Chris was dismayed by how fast (technology related) disinformation can be spread without any regard for details or fact.
Chris and Dave were both interested in some of the test equipment around the labs in The Avengers (link via @HilaryLustig).
LeCroy was bought out by Teledyne.
Chris thinks the same thing will happen as it does in other industries: Companies like Oscium (the iPhone/iPad scope company) will have bottom-up innovation and overtake the larger players.
Dave is trying out 3rd party manufacturing and selling for non-Aussie sales of the uCurrent.
Ian of Dangerous Prototypes recaps his MFBA talk about the different options electronics companies have for selling their product
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifTaGRTPwLc
The USB Power Supply on Kickstarter was announced around the same time as Dave announced his USB power supply. Should Dave try and get his on Kickstarter as well? What are the marketing implications?
A second version of the IOIO was announced, even after being superseded by the Android Development Kit (ADK).
4 bit micros still exist and are designed into consumer products, such as the one that Dave found in his Braun toothbrush, the EM6682 by EM MicroElectronic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJgKfTW53uo
The Zed Board is a development board for the newly release Zynq7000 from Xilinx. It's a dual core A9 with logic wrapped around it...but who can afford to design it into a product?
Chip(s) of the Week!
The LT5400 is a set of high quality matched resistors from Linear Tech.
Texas Instruments now sells matched nexFETs in their PowerBlock packaging.
Linear Tech just announced the LTC4359, an ideal diode control chip.
The TPD1E6B06 is an ESD diode, likely one that TI pulled out of its IP bag.

Thanks to Alvaro for the pictures of the resistors!
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1h 9min
May 28, 2012An Interview with Eben Upton - Morbus Moilsome MakerFaire
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Welcome, Eben Upton of the Raspberry Pi Project!
Chris just got back from Maker Faire!
Is there a stigma against "Makers" by engineers by profession? There's an article at Engineer Blogs about this subject.
There was an article from the Drive for Innovation stating the engineer's dislike for Makers as well.
No one recognized Chris because of his Twitter picture.
Chris built a 555 boost converter for his bring-along project that then powered some HB LEDs.
Jeff (MightyOhm) was there presenting his open source hardware Geiger counter and showing it off at his booth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_3SVE0CQqw
The commerce side of Maker Faire was really comfortable, it was different than conferences, where you should use fake emails and probably don't want to buy from anyone.
We'll be shooting for a guest every other week from now on, feel free to call us on it if you don't hear one.
The crew from Dangerous Prototypes did a fun video on "How To" for Maker Faire. Look for Chris and Bunnie at 1:20 and then Chris later around the 5 minute mark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39xX4xi0Uh8

Thanks to Eben for talking to Chris during Maker Faire! And thanks to Element14 for helping set up the interview. It was tons of fun.
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1h 5min
May 21, 2012Senseless Saccadic Shemozzle
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Chris is off to Makerfaire in San Fran
Dave loves his Classic Messenger bag
The East Gipslands MakerSpace is starting up, and they have rented a HUGE space. See the Walkthrough
People don't want smart meters on their houses.
OrCAD now has an online marketplace, where you can download footprints and "apps"
Mayhew Labs have a nice online 3D Gerber viewer
New package announce by NXPs. Jeez, can't they get smaller?
I have a job, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do!
Map of ee jobs in the US
Environmental protection: What is it for? How is it done? When is it necessary?
Chip Of The Week - STM6524
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1h 6min
May 14, 2012An Interview with Øyvind Janbu - Feracious Fabless Facilitator
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Welcome Øyvind Janbu, CTO of Energy Micro!
Øyvind went to school in Trondheim where there are multiple schools and many tech companies based around them.
Many early members, including the CEO, were part of ChipCon, which was later purchased by Texas Instruments.
Energy Micro (EM) is mostly employee owned.
Since EM is a fabless semiconductor company, the processing (manufacturing) is done primarily at TSMC.
"Le Sense" is an homage to the movie Pulp Fiction, in the same scene where they mention the Royale with Cheese.
Energy Micro has a VP of Simplicity, dedicated to making things easier for the customer.
The radios coming from EM are a variety of radio standards, including Bluetooth Low Energy.
The royalties of an ARM core are confidential, but ARM has more information about licensing in their annual reports.
Some of the newest parts in the EM Gecko family use the ARM M0+ core, which many vendors are promoting right now for low power.
The EM products have some unusual features, like DMA from an ADC while in sleep mode.
Energy Micro publishes their longevity guarantee right on their website for all to see.
Chips are available through distributors like Digikey and have been part of their strategy from day one.

Many thanks to Øyvind for being on our show and giving us more insight into chip companies. He was really straightforward with his answers and we hope you learned a lot from him. Please leave any additional questions in the comments and we’ll try to make sure the proper people answer them.
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1h 17min

FAQs about The Amp Hour:

How many episodes does The Amp Hour have?

The podcast currently has 745 episodes available.

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