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:

May 07, 2012Gnomic Gazumping Gobemouche
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We'll be interviewing Øyvind Janbu, the CTO and co-founder of Energy Micro next week! We'll have a separate post for asking him questions.
Chris will be speaking at the Bay Area Maker Faire. If you're going to be there, find a comfy chair and prepare for a snoozefest ;-)
Second reminder for applying to the Lemnos Labs hardware incubator program, which will be closing soon.
Our friend Alan Wolke did a really fun tour of his shop...through the screen of his oscilloscope! Lots of fun!
Dave has finally figured out his MakerBot...with some help from his friends and by reading the (friggin) manual.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omtmtJelm9M
Chris brings up a fun direct ink resist print using a vintage Epson printer. Great quality!
Sometimes process adjustments are necessary to get more life out of a process node. Chris mentioned an Engineer Blogs post about Photolithography, but that actually doesn't talk about the interference. There is a slide set from the University of Waterloo that does a good job explaining this process.
Intel continues to win by being the bleeding edge process company. Will be interesting to see if they get into the foundry business.
Dave mentioned the recently announced scandal involving Silverbrook in Australia, who have failed to produce output for many many years.
Apparently it's possible to print super caps with a Laser Scribe DVD burner:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oEFwyoWKXo
DigiKey instituted a visual catalog...online! Finally! Have they been listening to the show??
LEDs that are going to be lighting up homes and workplaces almost were not possible. A researcher in the field explains the small margin on the bandgap required.
Dave mentions Gazumping, which Chris had never heard of.
Relays are a simple and yet crucial part of electronics. Chris was looking for cheap and small ones and was shown these from Omron. However, they didn't fit the bill. Instead, we found out about new research into relay-like devices....on silicon! Wow!
Don't forget to subscribe to us! We suggested Miro (Dave's favorite for the desktop) and BeyondPod (Chris's favorite for his Android phone). There are lots of great options out there, we just want to make sure you hear about new shows when they are posted! Thanks for subscribing!
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1h 12min
May 01, 2012An Interview with Tom LeMense - Cacaesthestic Chronometric Carriwitchet
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Welcome, Tom LeMense!
Tom is a grad of Michigan State University and has worked throughout the automotive electronics supply chain, including at Ford Electronics, Lear, TRW and a large automotive chip manufacturer.
Prior to the work, he helped design the boards that detected the Top Quark at Fermi Lab.
He recently got the boards he designed back, which were designed using ECL logic
Here's what Tom wrote to us after the show about them:
Attached are some photos of a couple of the "D0" (D-zero) equipment cards that I designed back in the late 1980's for the Fermilab particle accelerator in Neperville, IL. These were part of the experiment that confirmed the "top quark" and are closing in on the potential of the Higgs boson. The Fermilab Tevatron and collider was shut down just last September, but there's so much data that the physicists can continue to crunch, that they keep finding stuff.

I should have put a scale in the photos to make clear how large these are. The floor tiles that they are resting upon are 12x12 inch (30x30cm). If you look at this photo, towards the bottom you can see blue-yellow racks - those house these cards (amongst others):

The “master timing generator” (MTG) was loaded with a whole slew of bipolar PAL’s to generate the weird trigger/transfer control signals required in the rest of the system. 6 layers, mixed TTL and ECL. 54 MHz accelerator ring resonance frequency, but skew was super critical so hence the ECL signal path and bipolar pals.

The closeup of the MTG shows the whimsical icon (recognize it if you’ve ever read Mad magazine’s “Spy vs. Spy” cartoon) that I got to stamp on all my creations. We all had an icon. There was a surfer guy, a fleur-de-lis, the RCA victor dog, etc. Gotta love working in a university environment, funded by the US Department of Energy…

The Calorimeter Trigger Backplane was my PCB layout masterpiece - those interconnect signals aren’t simply bussed - there’s a very complicated interconnect scheme between them to reflect the physical layout of the calorimeter detectors. PCB is 16 layers, 4 plane layers, the remaining 12 are signal layers with the differential ECL traces between, with all attempts made to control the impedance of the interconnect (ECL likes 100 ohm Z0). Blind and buried vias were used as well. I recall the day we sent out the magnetic tape reel (!) with the gerber data to the only company that returned a bid on the job - we commented that we could either order two of these backplanes, or go and buy a new Chevy Corvette - each PCB was about $11K in 1988 dollars, IIRC.

These were designed on an Intergraph CAD workstation, based upon a VAX 11/750 minicomputer, dual 20-something-inch monitors, 2-foot x 4 foot electromagnetic mouse+digitizer, etc. Pretty heavy duty stuff for a dumbass college student to be using! I became a complete CAD snob after that experience.
In recent news, Cray (the supercomputing company) was bought by Intel.
Tom got his start in RF working on the Super Regenerative circuit. He sent us a great scan of a 1922 article from Armstrong about the Super Regen Circuit.
Armstrong also invented the Super Heterodyne circuit.
For those interested in automotive testing, Tom sent us a link to a paper Ford published about their EMC testing requirements.
We also talked about the automotive supply chain and how the chip vendors are required to do stringent temperature testing and guarantee parts for 10 years.
Cars primarily use the CAN bus to communicate these days, though they also use the lower cost LIN bus in more places where it's less critical.
Dave was thinking about the previously discussed news about BugLabs pairing with Ford on opening up their infotainment system.
We announced the Lemnos Labs hardware incubator program, which is closing its applications in 2 weeks. While we don't know a lot about the program, people encouraging hardware sound good to us!
Thanks again to Tom for being a guest on our show. It was great getting his insight into the world of automotive electronics. If you have any questions for him, please leave them in the comments!
Update: Tom has capitulated and joined Twitter since we recorded the show. Hooray! Find him on there as @TomLeMense!
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1h 26min
April 23, 2012Vellicate Videogame Vocation
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Another round with the MightyOhm! Welcome back Jeff!
Jeff has a new job! He'll be joining Valve as a hardware designer in June!
There is a handbook for working at Valve that was previously released online.
Additionally, another employee wrote about the culture of working at Valve.
Jeff highlights the importance of networking. Chris has written about this before, specifically for engineers.
In getting a new job, it's becoming increasingly important to show a portfolio of sorts. Jeff does this by documenting his projects on his MightyOhm website.
Jeff's kit business will continue but may need to be outsourced to a third party.
Kickstarter is getting bigger, as are the projects. The Pebble watch is now at $6 million dollars (and counting) and has 26 days left.
Ian of Dangerous Prototypes visit the SEG market in Shenzhen and show off the true power of a large electronics ecosystem/supply chain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBtRJc-z05k
New type of patent agreement out of the engineering group at Twitter. States that patents will only be used defensively and continue to be used in the same manner wherever those patents go.
Speaking of legal issues, a seemingly bogus lawsuit is being claimed against (many) companies that sell vacuum tubes with mercury in them...that they have mercury in them! Shocker! See more from this Hack-a-Day post and accompanying law filing.

It was great having Jeff back on the show and we can’t wait to see what he develops while at Valve. We wish him the best of luck!

Thanks to sigma for the picture of the valve.
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1h 10min
April 16, 2012Idiographical Interconnect Intorsion
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Logic analyzers use state analysis and timing analysis. They also can do state triggering.
Ask the listeners: What is the craziest errata you've ever seen?
Dave went and picked up 100 kg of Electronics Australia magazines.
Chris still gets tripped up by rules of thumb for the metric system. XKCD has a brilliant chart of different ways of remembering amounts.
The CSIRO are trying out a new wireless data system that can transmit over 10 Gbps!
They also are the rightful inventors of WiFi and receive royalty checks for people that use the standard.
We don't like companies that only defend patents (like Intellectual Ventures) but if they roll the money back into research, that's ok!
Dave was watching a TV special on a software lock technology company that took on Microsoft...and won! (well, settled)
OSHW Association was announced recently. They will be a registered 501c3 corporation.
Followup from the other week: The Raspberry Pi made it through EMC testing and will be manufactured and sold now. Andrew Back does a first look at a beta unit, connecting it up to a vintage CRT monitor.
What other hobbies have home labs? Most chemists are afraid to have labs at home because they might be accused of devious behavior.
Though they still have a ways to go, plastic electronics are getting lower impedance and are still printable.
Molex has mini-fit crimp terminals that have a 1500 mating cycles at 13 amps!
What are your connector design considerations?
Chip of the Week:
The Linear Technology LTC4366 (yes, LT again). It's a chip that can detect and protect against incoming surges. It's programmable for time and over voltages. Plus it can float on your rails! Cool!
Got anything we've missed? Want to hear something different on The Amp Hour? Let us know in the comments! And be sure to subscribe to make sure you're getting the latest episodes right when they're released!
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1h 11min
April 09, 2012Chaffered Chocolate Coemption
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Dave and Chris discuss the after-Easter candy/chocolate sales. And many other cultural differences.
Injection molding plastics is an art and a necessary skill for high run products. Have you ever worked on molds?
Chris has a new podcast about general engineering topics. This will free his brain to talk more circuits on The Amp Hour!
Dave likes the new OSHW RC controller by Gizmo For You. Design files can be found at OS-RC.com.
Kent Lundberg is still working through Jim Williams' app notes. There is a great "best-of" page that points out the key ones to read.
Though it's still just a rumor, the DARPA grand challenge that could be forthcoming sounds awesome. Robots to save people...then conquer them all?
Is there any use still for Germanium Diodes? Interesting uses in an old Sylvania manual. Have they been supplanted by Schottkey and other low drop variants? Or does an application still exist that requires them?
Jack Ganssle calls out a similarly awesome old book for playing with BJT circuits. Lots of great applications for trying out analog circuits.
Do you go to expensive conferences on your company's dollar? Would you go to the forthcoming Hardware Innovation Workshop for $775?
Conferences are good for networking, if nothing else. Chris recommends, "Never Eat Alone" by Keith Ferrazzi, a book on how to do just that.
Chris used CircuitLab to share a SPICE-like circuit with a friend to illustrate a point. If you want to see the Low Pass Filter Chris entered into the program, see here.
If you're interested in sharing schematics (KiCAD only right now) in a more interactive way than PDFs, Circuit Bee is an option.
Chris was trying to illustrate Bode Plots for the friend. Pronounced "Boh-Dee", according to his (impressive!) wikipedia page.
If you're interested in analog filtering, specifically Sallen Key Filters, check out this app note from TI.
We have a winner from last week's contest, Lorin Tauss! Though it was not requisite, the chip he suggested was great and was this week's CotW!
Chip of the Week
The AD8555 by Analog Devices is a zero-drift, digitally programmable sensor signal amplifier. You can tweak offsets with a DAC and clamp at a specified input voltage. Pretty cool!
Switch mode power supplies (SMPS) are a topic most younger engineers (Chris included) take a while to get accustomed to (especially when starting with a linear regulator or similar). There was a great application note by Microchip about the basics of SMPS and the different topologies that are available.
Dave has talked about the differences (and similarities!) between SMPS and Linear Regulators before on EEVblog:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM7t1Mpu7s4
Thanks to Patrick Nouhailler for the Easter candy picture!
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1h 8min
April 01, 2012The Amp Hour #88.5 -- Telematic Tested Tacenda
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Chris and Dave have some big news about the show!
Tested.com

Hint: The Amp Hour could soon involve more explosions…

Thanks to LVCHEN for the picture of Jamie and Adam!
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8min
March 26, 2012Yonderly Yodeling Yobbos
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Chris is back in the basement!
How do our listeners deal with having to be in two locations with work?
Thanks to one of our most generous benefactors, Maurice! We are able to do more on this show because of people like him. If others are interested in donating, they can do so on our donation page.
Sick of Dilbert-like meetings that drag on? Pop up this online timer to estimate how much $/s is being wasted in the meeting!
Former guest and friend of the show, Jack Ganssle's salary survey is out and points out interesting datapoints in the consulting side of EE. His newsletter is a great resource as well!
Salary can flatten out as you get older. Chris has written about salary expectations for electrical engineers before.
Margery Conner rightfully calls out Sony for their ridiculous plug for metering and gating wall power. Who would buy that?
They talked about charging electric vehicles on the Science Friday podcast and the need for electrical distribution, but didn't mention the cost aspect.
Someone made a Back to the Future quadcopter! Serves multiple interests on The Amp Hour!
Great video on how reed switches are made (to later go into reed relays).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhUt7VyMKT4
Another article on the basics, there was a wonderful article about re-using transformers on EDN.
Dave has been using DIPtrace while trying out non-Altium commercial packages. Support Dave by buying a license through his site!
Chris has been talking with people about how to best maintain a public repository of part databases.
Stewart Allen has started a GitHub repo to use and contribute KiCAD symbols and footprints.
CJ Gervasi has started a Wordpress based site to get vetted parts and footprints.
In the end, you'll have to decide if any of these work for you, based on your needs and levels of customization.
Should Dave design his PSU for lefties? Chris (a southpaw himself) doesn't think so.
Richard ("amspire") on the EEVblog forums is rebuilding Dave's design in an all-analog, all-discrete version. The control loops are causing him some...headaches.
Ian and the Dangerous Prototypes crew visit another market, this one in Seoul:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_wa2MPbCAM
Chip of the Week:
The INA219 from Texas Instruments (the Burr-Brown arm). A great I2C output high side current monitor that Dave designed into his PSU.
Chris is looking for a better way to find parts than parametric search. Some people on twitter suggested the Adafruit Component Database (good for hobby stuff).
If you're into HV and enjoy (safely!) playing with transformers, check out this great video found via reddit on how to harvest them from microwaves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRoPHKpCYmg
That's all for this week, be sure to subscribe to the feed or find us on the multitudes of social networks in order to be the first to hear about the new shows being posted.

Thanks to Tapir Girl for the yodeling picture
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1h 5min
March 19, 2012An Interview with Ian Daniher - Nascent Nonolith Numquid
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Welcome, Ian Daniher of Nonolith Labs!
Ian was one of two developers on the CEE, a USB analog multitool.
This was kicked off as a Kickstarter Project, which more than trebled their funding goal!
They also pitched the idea to Imagine K12, a funding source similar to Y Combinator (but for educational purposes).
They assembled much of their Kickstarter kits in house (the mechanical sections at least):
Hardware startups are definitely different than the app "startups" that seem to pop up all over the landscape lately.
3D Printing Consortium Rep Rap had a successful funding drive through the Kickstarter alternative, Indie Go Go.
HAXLR8R (mentioned on the show a few times before) is actively investing in hardware.
The Startup Bus was a set of buses the drove to SXSW from different cities, "creating apps" on the way. Oof.
The US based JOBS act could potentially inject more startup capital into the market. Now individual investors can invest up to $10,000 in a company in exchange for stock (up to $1 million).
While the JOBS act could have potential abuse, Kickstarter has similar issues as well. A drones project was cancelled when the product to be delivered was in question.
Another dicey looking project was the bluetooth DVM (or iVoltmeter) , based upon what is promised and the relatively low cost.
Is the CEE test equipment? Ian calls it "Cavalier Instrumentation"
Rigol does call themselves test equipment and are now selling a 2000-series scope (or will be, eventually), a long awaited successor to their 1052E model.
Chip of the Week:
The Atmel ATXMEGA32A4U, used on the CEE (which Chris then decided to use on his project).
NOTE: For those who asked, the Open Source Hardware Definition. Point 4, you cannot call your product "Open Source Hardware" or "Open Hardware" if you use any form of Non-Commercial clause in a license, nor can you use the OSHW logo.
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1h 5min
March 14, 2012 The Amp Hour Theme Song
We’ve had a few requests for the files behind The Amp Hour Theme Music. This was generously donated by one of our listeners, Paul Stevenson. You can find the file here on our LibSyn server. All we ask is that you don’t misuse the music or put it to something without Paul’s permission (i.e. Please don’t go creating The Bizarro Amp Hour Show or something like that).
Paul also wrote a version with words, also available on our LibSyn server. It’s titled, Chloroform The Amps. Here’s a version on YouTube if you don’t want to download and/or see the lyrics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buKg2eAX4Z0

Thanks again to Paul and we hope everyone enjoys the music!
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1min
March 12, 2012Emolumental Evaluation Emporetics
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Survey Results are in! Thanks to the 330 or so people that participated! (Results will show up in a separate post)
Australia lost the SKA to South Africa.
Chris is going to this year's Bay Area Maker Faire! If you're going to be there, let him know!
For our European listeners, Future electronics (the distributor) has a program where you can get dev boards if you trade your information. Decent mount of vendors participating.
Today's show centered around the different types of sales people, Chris has written about this before at Engineer Blogs.
When is it OK to hang out with vendors? Is there an ethical limit to what you should agree to? Is just lunch OK?
IBM creates a quasi-off-the-shelf Terabit Transceiver for network communications at under 5W power. Way outside the range of everyday networking but a good sign for the future!
Altera had a press release this week about their built in optical transceiver.
This is in line with much of the module-based electronics that are being developed by chip vendors these days.
Printed electronics on a machine that cost less than $10K! Does Chris win? Thanks to Cherish from Engineer Blogs for pointing it out!
Want micro machines to go along with your printed chips? Try a printed dragon fly, on a print platform the size of a business card!
ZombieTech.tv did a great interview with James Neal (@laen), who runs the DorkbotPDX service (the purple boards).
Dave has his MakerBot working and printing! He was happy he had to repair the machine so he now knows how it works and what to watch for.
And the recently posted video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdC7kTT-nN4
Dave is getting custom bean bags made for his office made with a custom fabric (if you're interested, you can easily purchase it here):
Chris has been struggling with KiCAD but learning as he goes, similar to the struggles Dave has been having.
Dave used to have to do actual tape out on old boards and could do negative patterns in his head!
COTW:
A new(?) chip from Analog Devices, ADM1166, can monitor 10 different power rails and store the continuous voltages for readback after a failure. Can also throw alarms and coordinate power sequencing. Cool chip!
Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, was sick of people emailing him with "better" punchlines to his comics. He now allows you to add your own ending to a comic strip (registration required, however).
If you're still interested in participating in the survey, please see episode 85 to get to the form. If you have any other feedback, you can reach us on Twitter (that's really just the feed, Chris and Dave are both on there as well), Google+, Facebook or email us at [email protected].
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1h 13min

FAQs about The Amp Hour:

How many episodes does The Amp Hour have?

The podcast currently has 745 episodes available.

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