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

4.9

226226 ratings

Download on the App Store

Download on the App Store

Get it on Google Play

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 31, 2011Texas Instruments, OPA & Chevy Volt - Nerdy Neuroelectronic Neurosis
[display_podcast]
Dave is a daddy! Congrats to him! See Dave’s intro video to his new “project” below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzrtEYmuQJQ
If you have suggestions for who to have on the show, check out the thread on the EEVblog forum (or leave comments below)
Should the Jones' be worried about electromagnetic radiation sensitivity for the baby? Only if they're whack-jobs!
Cell phone radiation studies have been inconclusive, but why risk it?
New podcast out there from EEjournal. More podcast goodness to fill up your day! Should The Amp Hour double up 2x per week? Let us know!
Lucas Weakley, a WOTW alum, has linked here from his site. Thanks!
Is the tech bubble rising again? LinkedIn valued at $9 Billion! Craziness.
Still, hardware maker Freescale IPO'd at $1B after being previously sold for $17B. Nice job, bankers.
Should we care more about finance and politics as engineers? Those who make policy hold our fate in their hands.
World's smallest 3D printer (via adafruit). 50 micron resolution on the printing. Perhaps another small step towards printable electronics?
As medical electronics continue to shrink, perhaps they can use the small 3d printer mentioned above. The IEEE did a study of "convergent technologies".
Brian Fuller of EEtimes (EElife) is driving a Volt across the country! Pretty awesome gig, though we're not sure why it'll take 12 months. Perhaps the 90 mile range of the batteries?
Instead, he should drag race it by "slamming current", like the car White Lightning does in order to beat the pants off expensive cars. 1200 amps!
Chip of the Week: The op amp OPA171. A good all-around op amp with a tiny footprint, low power and really good specs!
How vigilant are people with their ESD protection? Dave caught flak on YouTube but figures no one is perfect with ESD, especially at home. Do you follow proper ESD procedures in your lab? Let us know in the comments!
...more
1h 6min
May 24, 2011BASIC, Chip companies & Robots - Pernicious Projects, Puppies in Peril
[display_podcast]
This week it’s back to just Dave and Chris…almost feels weird without more people! We’ll get more guests on soon.
Dave is in his studio with freshly made acoustic panels!
Throughout the week, Chris has been mistaking BAMF to mean "Badass MotherF*#$%@!" when in fact they've been talking about the Bay Area Maker Faire. Whoops!
The Hamvention also happened in Dayton. If you know of local electronic "Flea Markets" be sure to let us know in the comments!
The IEEE Spectrum had a special issue out about robots, it was a great read!
A full size personal robot? It might be cheap and a game changer, but still looks like an air filter. It reminds Dave of the Omnibot from the 1980's
Whatever happened to BattleBots? New competition is RoboGames, with many of the same elements. Good for getting kids excited/involved!
How many Multimeters does one man/woman need? Excavatoree from the EEVforum shows off his collection! (and has another 88 meters that aren't shown!)
The Maximite is a new board with a single PIC chip that has a BASIC interpreter for beginner projects.
Maker of the BASIC STAMP, Parallax, is now selling their Propeller chip by itself. And from the looks of it, they have LOTS of stock.
The Touchstone Semi contest mentioned in episode 42 of The Amp Hour have revised their contest rules. They aren't using the OSHW license unfortunately.
Corporate lawyers? As bad as corporate finance perhaps?
Intel announced that there are multiple phones being released in 2012 with Intel embedded chipsets. They recognize the market but aren't dominating like they do in PCs.
Google is moving into the car business and wants to be able to have computers drive cars in Nevada!
Maxim recently(?) changed their slogan to "Innovation Delivered". The second part is what they're not known for historically. What perceptions do you have of chip companies??
Our forgotten shoutout for the week, (Maker)Dino is up to his 8th HackAWeek episode! Great job!
Dave's continuing his trend of calling people out for bogus numbers! Getup.org in Australia didn't do their research!
Chip of the Week: The LT3080, a great "toolbelt" part that allows you to make programmable current or voltage sources quite easily.
As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the episode and anything we might have missed! Thanks! PS. To be clear, no puppies were hurt in the taping of tonight's episode.
...more
1h 5min
May 17, 2011An Interview with Jeff Keyzer and Jeremy Blum - Audacious Arduino Arguments
This week we have our first 4 person Amp Hour! Welcome to the Ed McMahon of The Amp Hour, Jeff Keyzer, and the young star of the maker scene, Jeremy Blum!
[display_podcast]
Happy birthday to Jeremy!
How do people say "Arduino"?
Friend of the show and 555 contest entrant, Jason Pruitt linked here recently from his new site. Thanks!
Alan did a great "thank you" video for the 555 contest.
Many of Jeremy's friends are going to internships over the summer for "financial engineering" (blech), similar to what we have discussed before. CJ Gervasi recently wrote about how this could be good for the financial services sector but we think it'll corrupt them all!
Lots of fun links about weather balloons and ham radio!
Alvaro wrote in about a balloon that got to 116,000 feet! Woo!
Troy Rank wrote in about a balloon documentary about a 2 day journey to find a balloon.
And Bob Kochis wrote in about a balloon carrying a geiger counter, ostensibly to measure radiation in the upper atmosphere.
XKCD mentions how much radiation you get while on an airplane.
Bob also wrote in about a new X Prize to create a "tricorder" like device that could diagnose anyone.
Google announces their ADK (Android Developers Kit) for all new phones and tablets.
Microchip announces a partnership with Digilent to create a PIC based version of the Arduino (sans trademark, of course)
Jeff will be at the Bay Area Maker Faire next week, judging the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge.

Thanks to Jeff and Jeremy for sitting in with us this week! If you’ve got comments about anything we discussed on this week’s show, let us know in the comments (or hit me, Dave, Jeff or Jeremy up on Twitter). Be sure to subscribe using the buttons in the upper right corner (RSS or email) to be alerted as soon as the next episode is released. Thanks for listening!
...more
1h 7min
May 10, 2011Contests, Ham Radio & TWIT.tv - Ham, Spam, Thank You Ma'am
[display_podcast] Lots of fun and lots of discussion points this week! We talked about schools, contests, more contests, ham radio, 3D transistors and our first Chip of the Week!
New-ish podcast about scientific computing. We found out about it when Ayah and Alicia from the Open Hardware Summit were on there.
Jason Struble (@strube09) linked here from his new page!
So did Steve Mackaay from his site about electronics and tool making!
Seeed studio (makers of the DSO Nano and other projects) are lowering their board costs.
Dave dislikes getting press releases from PR agencies, especially when they don't have links to the press release itself! Regardless, we still managed to spread the word thatElement14 is integrating some board manufacturers into their site and the popular CadSOFT EAGLE tool.
Dave and Chris are still down on the interface that Element14 and others use as their social media platform. If you don't like it, email some people at Element14 or leave feedback to let them know.
Facebook more effective than Twitter? We wouldn't know because we don't have a Facebook page (yet). Please leave your thoughts on the matter below.
Googler in the house! Welcome Ian, and thanks for letting us know you're here!
Chris is considering getting his ham license to start building radios. Tips appreciated!
As mentioned on the Low SWR podcast, Leo Laporte is starting a new show with Bob Heil of Heil Sound (microphones and other audio gear).
Leo announced their theme song was composed by Joe Walsh (of the Eagles)...who is also a ham!
New shows should be easy for Leo in his brand new, badass space!
Previously mentioned Touchstone Semi just announced a design contest using their new component, the TS1001.
Confusion about how much power can be used. Less than .8V? That's the minimum rail voltage! Please clarify!
Confusion about why they are collecting designs. Encourage people to open source the designs! (OSHW is the license of choice!)
Dave got third place in the My Tektronix Scope contest! Thanks for all the votes!
Intel announced their 3D transistor structure for the 22nm node. Check out the pictures for more understanding of how they work.
Chip of the Week: The LT4000, a fancy battery charge controller we noticed in Electronics Weekly magazine that uses the compensation pin on a DC/DC controller to control how the battery should be charged. A complex and intriguing solution for battery problems!
Should colleges charge more for engineering degrees? The "logic", as explained by University of Nebraska at Lincoln, is that engineering grads make more after graduation.
An awesome hack (via reddit) using an AVR as an RFID tag, by taking advantage of the input pins protection diodes to rectify incident power. Great article, great site!
Wowsa! That was a lot! But DON'T PANIC!
...more
1h 4min
May 04, 2011An Interview with Jeff Keyzer - Exhilarating ESC Escapades
[display_podcast]
This week is another three person episode! Chris & Migthyohm Jeff are jury-rigged up in a hotel room at the ESC conference.
New startup kit business Nerds Like Us
Sebastian (@sgtech) linked to us on his blog
Chris & Jeff visited Halted Electronics & Weird Stuff
Dave retold the Robert Cringely's DEFCON hacker conference story
DealExtreme are selling ripoff's of an Adafruit kit
Dave talks about a Sydney TAFE initiative to get high school girls into electronics, and the inevitable boy vs girl argument starts.
Talk about support networks for consultants. Dave announced he is also now a consultant.
Talk about the Noisebridge Hackerspace.
The In-House Google Hacker Space
Philips are using proprietary AAA batteries
TI are now using Ramtron FRAM.
Chris recording in the Hotel room at the Hilton:
...more
1h 10min
April 26, 2011Adafruit, Chip heist, Hackerspaces - The Kit Conniption
[display_podcast]
This week focused mainly around building a kit business, namely keeping costs down, keeping revenues in check and how to license your project.
Jigish linked to us from his site. Thanks!
The Nottingham Hackerspace, Nottinghack, was pushed out of their old space and needs help funding a new one.
Can hackerspaces thrive in a non-urban setting?
$37 Million worth of flash chips were stolen! And the dumdums were caught when they tried to sell them!
Facebook has the details behind a new datacenter online. Looks like quite the fun engineering problem to get it all powered.
Chris is going to ESC and will be reporting for Element 14. Also doing some video from the show floor with Jeri Ellsworth.
Jonathon Straub wondering about the merits of starting a kit business for his board etching controller entry for the 555 contest.
Dave was offered $1000 to do videos walking people through the aspects of board design, start to finish.
What kind of license should be used for home projects? Here at The Amp Hour, we like the Open Source Hardware License or sometimes the CC-NC license.
Ladyada of adafruit has an older article of the benefits of OSHW over CC-NC
More IP cases being pushed in China, but not to anyones benefit.
Texas Instruments has been "deputizing" people to be unofficial spokespersons for the company on social media outlets. Could have some interesting side effects, but they need to keep it laissez-faire.
...more
1h 4min
April 19, 2011Dan Pink, Dual Core, level translators - Mumble Mumbo Jumbo
[display_podcast]
A few audio snafus this week, but we decided to leave them in for the “real experience”. We’ll get it eventually.
Chris and Jeri are broadcasting a live video show to announce the 555 contest winners.
Dave is stressing about the Tektronix contest. He's trailing in votes!
Jeremy Blum was featured on The Discovery Channel! Awesome!
Dave hates standby power consumption. The Agilent 3000 series scope has 6.5W standby power!
Chris missed out on the trend of NerdCore Rap!
Chris found out about Dual Core from the recent tweets about Notacon in Cleveland.
Dave enjoys the movie, Nerdcore Rising about MC Frontalot.
MC Frontalot's most recent video.
Chris has been reading Dan Pink books lately, because of the video below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Dave enjoys the TI TXB0104 voltage level translator and had a fun time trying to troubleshoot the circuit.
And the Article explaining some of the mysteries
The MathWorks has released a C compiler for MATLAB code for translating designs. Won't this hurt young engineers?
China starts to feel some outsourcing pain as Foxconn looks to move some manufacturing over to Brazil. (the mistakenly posted UMC story is here)
...more
1h 7min
April 13, 2011An Interview with Jeff Keyzer - Comical Keyzer Comes a-Callin'
[display_podcast]
Jeff Keyzer of Mightyohm.com joins us this week to talk electronics and his new comic book!
Jeff Keyzer and Mitch Altman and Andie Nordgren just put out a comic book called "Soldering is easy!". Great resource for those just starting out and a preview of a book to be published later this year.
Jeff will be at the Bay Area Maker Faire next month, teaching classes.
He also will be at the Choas Communication Camp in Germany later this year (the place where the Hackerspace was born).
Chris found out about all this from the Hackerspaces Mailing List.
Dave is unabashedly asking people to vote for him in the Tektronix Scope Contest! Dave's video is about the piezoelectric effect in probes.
Henrik (@hspalm), one of our WOTW alums, writes in about his new project to characterize DIY shipping costs. Could be a good launchpad for a wiki-type site and drive some change at these organizations.
Digikey has a new community that seems destined to flop right out of the gate.
Instead, they should try to be more like AVRfreaks or BeagleBoard, which are more targeted and detached from the company.
Electric Vehicles
Chris had the opportunity to hear Bob Simpson, of EVdrive.com, talk about his conversion and upcoming business venture.
New idea is V2G or Vehicle-2-Grid, uses cars as load balancing while they are parked in the garage. Don Tuite has a good rebuttal to the practicality of this in a recent Electronic Design article.
Why doesn't the Toyota Prius have plug-in capability?
Dave is putting up new lighting in the lab. LED for total lumens needed is still impractical. Dave went with fluorescent to cost and light output.
And finally, in the WTF column, the US Navy is working on a new lighting scheme: a laser weapon! Good gravy!
...more
1h 7min
April 06, 2011EEVblog, National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments - The Chinese Clairvoyancy
[display_podcast]
Whoa! Some big news this week!
Chris has a new rig in the mail. Should help future Amp Hour podcasts.
Dave officially has left his day-job at Altium (never before spoken directly on air before!).
The company is moving to China, as stated in their official press release.
In other news, Texas Instruments has bought National Semiconductor!
Likely due to some of National's past history and decision making.
Some companies keep their computers off the internet, similar to the Iran computers that STILL got a virus (here's a TED talk about that hacking mentioned on here before)
April Fool's Jokes!
Dave pulled a fast one over on everyone about the 555 timer.
Brian Fuller of EEtimes/EElife about Obama replacing his cabinet
In a stunning policy move, President Barack Obama reshuffled his entire cabinet today, replacing the existing members entirely with engineers from industry and academia.
“This move to change the makeup of my cabinet is long overdue,” Obama said. “For too long Washington has been dominated by insiders who have no notion of things like Planck’s Constant or Moore’s Law, who wouldn’t know an IC chip from a potato chip, who can’t distinguish electronics design from fashion design. This is change we can believe in.”
“Our country’s economy, indeed its future, rests in the hands of engineers, the very professionals who invent the future. It’s time for that to be reflected in the highest circles of power,” Obama said, noting that countries such as China and Egypt have heavy engineering representation among their political cabinets.
And then I woke up and it was April 1st!
Chris is not sure why this tricked him so well...
Sparkfun talks about their soldering iron kit (which requires another soldering iron)
Dave apologizes to Jeri for a mis-speak during last week's episode
No more design contests for Chris, Dave or Jeri this year, but listener Gary has a great idea for a 12F629 based contest. If people are interested, tell Microchip their customers are interested in competing!
...more
1h 5min
March 29, 2011Big Business Buffoonery
[display_podcast]
No guests this week, but lots of rants and items! Suggest future guests you’d like to hear either in the comments section or on the Suggestions Page.
Mike Cowgill is building an LCR meter. Looks like a really cool build!
Welcome to Adam Ward, who recently started a new site and gave us a nice plug. Good luck with the new projects!
Why did National Instruments do away with An Engineering Mind? We would have loved to see that continue and they wasted a good brand.
Friends don't let friends go into finance. An article about how engineers started coming back to design, but are trending towards trading garbage CDOs.
Dave has a bird problem, but doesn't like how Americans all want him to shoot the birds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMEAUXa3RAI
Listener Patrick York writes in about a great site showing off all of the old RadioShack catalogs! Awesome bit of nerd history.
Eduardo writes in about how HP open sourced one of their financial calculators. Dave already know about and talked about it way back in the fledgling days of EEVBlog.
Who needs a calculator? Endolith on Electronics StackExchange writes about how Wolfram Alpha can easily convert between units. And give you some awesome bonus calculations.
Hameg released a new scope weeks after the Agilent one Dave reviewed. Why do things seem to come out at the same time?
Touchstone Semi, a new analog chip company popped up on Twitter and is pushing new niche products.
Hackaday looking for a full time hacker, though not for much money! At least in California. Would equate to earning 9-12k in Cleveland.
MakerDino started a new site in response to show he'll do it for free: HackAWeek!
Design Contests:
The 555Contest is wrapping up this week (judging)
Dave is judging the Renesas Rx Design Contest. They only got 30 entries, but it's a different type of contest.
...more
1h 4min

FAQs about The Amp Hour:

How many episodes does The Amp Hour have?

The podcast currently has 745 episodes available.

More shows like The Amp Hour

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source by Changelog Media

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

289 Listeners

This Week in Tech (Audio) by TWiT

This Week in Tech (Audio)

3,061 Listeners

Security Now (Audio) by TWiT

Security Now (Audio)

2,009 Listeners

Software Engineering Daily by Software Engineering Daily

Software Engineering Daily

626 Listeners

Talk Python To Me by Michael Kennedy

Talk Python To Me

583 Listeners

SpyCast by SpyCast

SpyCast

1,534 Listeners

SANS Internet Stormcenter Daily Cyber Security Podcast (Stormcast) by Johannes B. Ullrich

SANS Internet Stormcenter Daily Cyber Security Podcast (Stormcast)

648 Listeners

Embedded by Logical Elegance

Embedded

190 Listeners

Smashing Security by Graham Cluley

Smashing Security

317 Listeners

Darknet Diaries by Jack Rhysider

Darknet Diaries

8,051 Listeners

Physics World Weekly Podcast by Physics World

Physics World Weekly Podcast

77 Listeners

Practical AI by Daniel Whitenack and Chris Benson

Practical AI

208 Listeners

Hackaday Podcast by Hackaday

Hackaday Podcast

64 Listeners

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast by Latent.Space

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast

101 Listeners

Robinson's Podcast by Robinson Erhardt

Robinson's Podcast

265 Listeners