#1 – What's In A Name?

Dave Jones: Hi, I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog and with me is Chris Gamill from Chris Gamill's Analog Life. How are you doing, Chris? Good, Dave. How are you doing? Fantastic. We've decided to do an off-the-cuff radio show. I'm not sure why, but here we are doing a live radio show. Well, it's not live really. It's pre-recorded, but we are recording this as if it's a live show and I am doing this from Sydney, Australia, here in my study. I'm not in the EEV blog lab and Chris is in Cleveland, Ohio. Is that right, Chris?

Chris Gammell: That's right. Sitting in my basement. That's actually where I did my first podcast a couple weeks ago.

Dave Jones: That's right. You had some sort of podcast electronics learning type thing. How was that going?

Chris Gammell: It went pretty well. It was a little dry to start with. I ended up starting out real basic. If you go all the way back to the beginning, it gets a little rough. Also, you've got a good forum with having video because you can explain things. It's a little tougher with just audio, but I think our off-the-cuff talking about electronics and the real-world kind of thing here might suit it a little better. We'll see how this works out.

Dave Jones: Yeah, absolutely. It's an electronics radio show, by the way. Good point. It has no name at this stage. It's the no-name electronics show because we're just not creative enough to come up with a really catchy name. We'll open this up to people out there. If you've got a suggestion for the name of this electronics radio show, then by all means, send it in. Probably on the forum. Yeah, forum's good. Yeah, we don't have a dedicated website set up, but the idea is we'll give this thing a try, see if people like an electronics radio show, and if they do, well, we'll continue to do it and we'll set up a proper website and we'll do all that and we'll set up like an iTunes podcast as well.

Chris Gammell: Oh, is that how your readers get most of their info? Through the iTunes or through other stuff?

Dave Jones: Well, I've probably got about 1,500 people who subscribe to the podcast and probably about 60-odd percent of those do it through iTunes. Wow, that's pretty good. Yeah, they download my video through iTunes and it's quite large. The file sizes there are like 40 meg or something, 40, 50 meg for a 10, 15 minute show or something like that, so it's quite large. But yeah, I guess the idea with audio is that a lot of people just don't have the time to sit there and actually watch a video show. So I know that my drive time rant is fairly popular. There's a lot of people that hate it, but yeah, bugger them. As usual, there's some people that like it. So I was thinking maybe that would be better suited to a co-hosted radio show. Instead of listening to me rant on, you can have at least two people rant on. That's right, yeah. So here we go. We've got Chris who runs Chris Gammell's Analog Life blog website. If you haven't seen it, it's really quite good and Chris is into analog-y type stuff. And I, of course, do the Electronics Engineering video blog, which is all pretty just random stuff. There's some analog stuff in there, digital, and there's rants and all sorts of things. But I'm sure most of you listening to that already know that. Let's hope so. Unless this show gets like wildly popular. I don't know about that one. Ah, well.

Chris Gammell: You know, that's a good question though. How big do you think the hobbyist market is? I always wonder about that kind of thing. The hobbyist or even the professional market, you know, like who might even put this on during the day or in a car? I don't even know about that.

Dave Jones: Well, there's, of course, the hobbyist market was dying, you know, five, six, seven years ago. But now it's this hacker, maker slash, you know, kind of market. Oh, it's, I, you know, when you have like, you know, 150,000 people turn up to that maker fair in the US or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Don't remind me. You know, I'm actually, I'm actually, I got an event this week. There's actually the one up in Detroit this weekend. And, you know, I'm only a three hour drive from Detroit, but I can't go. And I'm just so, so sad that I can't make it up there. It just seems like it's going to be such a great event, especially in Detroit. I don't know if you've read anything about that one. It's just, it looks amazing.

Dave Jones: No, I haven't. Is that like a standard maker fair? Does it go around the country? Does it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know, there's only a couple events. There's some smaller ones out in Providence. And I think there's some other ones out in California, different towns. But this is the first time in Detroit. And it looks like, you know, they're kind of targeting it. They're calling it from Motor City to Maker City. That's what they call it. Ah, Nate. Nice. It looks like it's going to, and it's at the Henry Ford Museum. And so they got all the, you know, all the older innovation with automobiles and, you know, 60s when the, when it was really cranking around Detroit and stuff like that. And earlier, of course. But now the city's kind of dead. I mean, there's no really denying that. And so they're trying to bring the maker mentality to it. And there's a ton of uptake. That's the amazing thing. There's hacker spaces all over the place there. And actually a lot of, you know, with all the Michigan Tech and UMichigan and Michigan State, I believe. Forgive me. I don't really know a lot of colleges up there. But, you know, just such a huge, huge contingent of people that are already doing this kind of thing that it seemed it really fit.

Dave Jones: Excellent. I had no idea. I thought it was just based in, where is it? Silicon Valley. Where do they usually hold it? Where's the big one?

Chris Gammell: San Francisco is the main one.

Dave Jones: San Fran, yeah. Just outside San Fran somewhere. But, yeah, they get huge crowds. So I don't know how many people are going to turn up to ones in other cities. But it's very popular. So I'm sure they'll get, you know, at least 10,000 people show up. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I've been telling everyone about it.

Dave Jones: Imagine, I can't imagine doing anything like that here in Australia. I'd love to, you know, for there to be something like that. But we just don't have the mass of people here. It's, you know, I just can't see it working.

Chris Gammell: Well, the amazing thing is it's not just that it's like you need a mass of people. It's also that it promotes itself where, you know, you have this event and you promote it as like a family thing too because it really is. It's very family-based. And then you get all this exposure for children where, you know, they learn how to solder. They see all these awesome events. And then you have a whole new contingent. Like after this weekend, Detroit is going to have, say there are 10,000 people there and half of them are kids. You're going to have 5,000 kids that want to do engineering now. And I can't think of anything better that, you know, for engineering education or science education. You know, that's just, that's out of this world right there. You're not trying to.

Dave Jones: It's just.

Chris Gammell: Oh, go ahead.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's just incredible. Oh, yeah, we're dealing with this Skype thing. We've got a silly issue because we're both using Skype here at both ends. And if we both talk at the same time over each other, the Skype connection actually drops out. It just aborts for a second. And that's really disconcerting here in the headphones. So if you hear us do something retarded like that.

Chris Gammell: Or if you have any suggestions, that's also welcome. If you know any other programs that, you know, Skype's great because it's free. But if you know of any other programs, be sure to let us know.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. But, yeah, these hacker maker fairs, they're just incredible. I'm not sure how many people actually do, you know, that sort of hacker maker thing here in Australia. Maybe there's a whole, you know, secret society out there just begging for some maker show to, you know, somebody to put it on. The thought actually crossed my mind of me actually trying to run one or something. Just the other day, actually, I was thinking, geez, you know. But, yeah, I have no idea how to get something like that started. It requires contacts and a lot of money.

Chris Gammell: You know, I never knew it was actually the O'Reilly people that started all this. You know, I knew that Make was run by some larger corporation, but I didn't realize it was O'Reilly Publishing. You know, the guys that do, you know, like Linux in a handshell, all the in a handshell programming books.

Dave Jones: Oh, I didn't know about that at all. I have no idea who O'Reilly Publishing is. So there you go. I guess it's a geeky thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, if you ever see any of those programming books with like the really well-looking animals drawn on the cover. You know, there's like different animals for every book.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I think I may have crossed paths with one of those ones. But, yeah, okay, so they're the ones who run Make. Yeah. I think didn't Make buy out, oh, it's on the tip of my tongue. They bought out one of the electronics magazines. Oh, I didn't know about that. No, sorry, that was Elektor being bought out by, no, I think Elektor magazine bought out Circuit Seller, I think. Oh. Sorry, that's what I'm thinking of. Yeah. So Circuit Seller hasn't changed as a result, but it ultimately might because it was actually bought out by them.

Chris Gammell: You know, I was never exposed to Circuit Seller before. I went to ESC in Chicago and I had never seen, I had heard of Circuit Seller. I'd never read it though. And I didn't realize it's an embedded magazine. I always thought it was, you know, you hear Circuit Seller, you think, I always think like discrete kind of stuff on a board. But I was surprised it's an embedded magazine.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe that's how it possibly started out. Steve Sessier, I don't know how to pronounce his last name. It's rather convoluted, but he's the one who actually started it. And yeah, I think possibly, I didn't read it way back in the day because we didn't get that here in Australia back in the 80s. I think it started late 80s or something like that. Yeah. And yeah, but it, I guess, eventually merged into this embedded magazine. So, and it's a really quite a good one. Yeah. And they have all sorts of design contests and things like that. Or they used to, I haven't seen a new design contest for quite some time, but they were famous for their design contests.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really?

Dave Jones: Yeah. There's a few guys out there who have made full-on careers out of winning these design contests in Circuit Seller. Wow.

Chris Gammell: That's like the eating contest of the circuit world, huh? Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: How many, you know, how many hot dogs can you stuff down in a minute? Yeah. How many contests can you win? And yeah, they were serious, you know, serious prizes, serious money, you know, 5,000, 10,000.

Chris Gammell: I saw that, actually, the Make Magazine guys, they're doing that too. They've been pairing up with other, I think, magazine people. I'm not sure who it was, like Design News or EE Times, EDM, one of those guys. So, I don't know. It's cool. I like them. I've never had the gumption to enter one, but maybe in the future, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, absolutely. Those, yeah, I think I saw one of their Make Design contests or something. They're only offering like 1,000 or 2,000. It's not a huge first prize. Maybe they're being a bit skint there. I don't know. You do it for the glory. Turnover and revenue. I suspect they're doing pretty darn well. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, what are we going to talk about on this log, Chris? Any idea?

Chris Gammell: Well, you told me not to tell you. I don't know. So, totally off the cuff.

Dave Jones: It's totally off the cuff. We weren't going to tell each other what. We were just going to throw ideas into the hat and then we discuss them because we don't want some scripted, rehearsed log. You know, that'll probably come across as just being a bit lame. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, actually, one thing I was going to ask you about because you mentioned iTunes before was just kind of, I don't know if you've ever talked about it on your video blog, just your take on Apple. I saw recently that they're like either the second biggest now or like one of the biggest chip buyers in the world. And it's just like, I know people love talking about Apple. I don't really like talking about them from a software perspective, but it's just interesting to me about where they've gone. And I just want to know your take on it.

Dave Jones: Yeah, from the electronics design industry point of view, Apple is the number one customer that all the chip makers want. Well, it's a double edged sword. They want to have their products in Apple because they're so popular, but they're so demanding. I've heard they will, you know, they will absolutely demand that you lock up your production lines just for them and the secrecy issues and, and all the other rigmarole, which goes with dealing with Apple and Steve Jobs's personality. You know, it's yeah. Yeah. A lot of the manufacturers, there's actually a shortage at the moment of some capacitors or, or some other issue. And that's being blamed a lot on not necessarily Apple, but these major customers who absolutely demand, you know, they'll have, they'll, they'll actually bring out a new product and then they'll demand that you, that you give them all of your stock, you know, everything that comes off the production line. So all the other customers just get, you know, booted down the line. So, um, I think I posted that on the forum somewhere, or I think I tweeted that there's some shortage in, uh, in capacitors again or something, just, just like back in the nineties, there was the famous, uh, tantalum capacitor shortage. I think it was the nineties. Um, but yeah, that can, um, those sorts of things can, um, happen, you know, one, one, one, uh, customer just soaking up, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's soaking up the whole lot. Well, that's crazy. I think it's, I think it's a couple of things too. I don't, I don't think it's just the, uh, the one customer thing. I think it's also the, the fact that there was a recession and it was like, what, September of 09, something like that, whatever, or no, it was 08, I guess. And, uh, you know, everybody started to slow down. They said, all right, we're not going to make any more products, but sell everything in the, in the backlog. So they sold everything. They're not making anything new. And then when they kind of picked back up, they all said, Hey, we need new products. We need more of the old products even. And they said, sorry, we can't do anything. All of we, first off, we fired all the workers. Second off, we don't have any, we don't have any back stock. And third off, we can't start a fab back up that quick. We just shut down an entire fab. So there's like these really macro things that, you know, affect a lot of people. And it, it's crazy how it really affected everyone. And it's, and it's still resonating back and forth. It's almost like a control, it's like a control loop, really. You know, like you cut out, you cut out one thing and the whole thing starts to oscillate. And that's what's happening now. We'll probably have an oversupply in the near future and then back again. But like I said, I don't know how much we want to talk about industry and supply stuff. That gets a little boring, but it affects people.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it does. I've got a few industry news items here. And so you want to get into some news items?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, sure. Why not, man?

Dave Jones: All right. Well, let's hit it. I just get news emailed to me every day. And Freescale, who manufacture microcontrollers, among other things, they're $7.6 billion in debt. But that's not unusual in the industry. You'll find that most of the semiconductor makers are, even though the semiconductor industry is actually on a mini boom at the moment, most of them can't even keep up with sales and things like that. There's all these semiconductor companies in massive debt. And they only, Freescale only made a loss of $538 million this second quarter. Yay! Yay! Round of applause for Freescale. There you go. Yeah, it's tough, man.

Chris Gammell: Those things are getting so big. Like the fabs and everything. I mean, one piece of equipment might cost you $50 million. And it's just to the point where, you know, like, actually, you mentioned Jerry Ellsworth before. Ellsworth, yeah. Yeah, and she made her own chips, right? I mean, she's made MOSFETs in her garage or wherever she made them.

Dave Jones: In her garage, yeah.

Chris Gammell: But it's just to the point where you can't make anything without tons of money. And so it's reassuring to see people trying it. I mean, it really is, especially for transistors and stuff that's so important. But, man, just some of that, like $50 million for a single piece of equipment, that's outrageous. And then you've got to put hundreds of them in there and you start running up the bill pretty fast.

Dave Jones: Yeah, and that's why these companies are all in debt. Because they've, you know, they've lashed out on these fab plants before the financial crisis hit. And, you know, they're just, and or poorly managed or, you know, something like that. And, yeah, they're just in massive debt. So I expect to maybe see some more consolidation in the market, more companies merging, if that's possible. You know, there's just been so many mergers over the last five years or something like that. It's just crazy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and they start getting so big, too, that it's just almost untenable to, like, try and talk to these guys. Because then you have the apples talking to them and you're like, hey, can I get some parts? They're like, ah, sorry, they're all going to Apple.

Dave Jones: Yeah, bugger off. Thank you very much. Yeah, see you later. It's nuts. And there's companies that are still trying to go public as well, you know. There's a couple of semiconductor makers out there and they're trying to get shareholder, you know, investment return by going public. Well, good luck with that. It's just crazy. Yeah. And other interesting news. I was reading the microchip. The microchip's the company. I was reading their financial statement for last year. I don't want to go into industry financials. But they actually itemized the number of development tools sold, which is really quite fascinating. Yeah. And it was 45,000 tools for the last quarter. So there you go. It gives you an insight into how many development tools a company like that actually ship.

Chris Gammell: So that's good. Then you can just tell everyone out there, you know, you've got a one in 45,000 chance of getting a kit. There you go. And hopefully, you're part of the free slice, you know, hopefully you're getting a free kit for some reason or another.

Dave Jones: Well, now that raises the cynical part of me thinks that this new TI launchpad development. Ah, yes. I'm sure you've heard of that. Yes, the $4.30 FedExed to your door development kit. If you haven't heard about that, TI are trying to corner the entry-level microcontroller market by offering a complete development tool, including, you know, free C compiler and third-party C compiler and everything else shipped to your door for $4.30.

Chris Gammell: It's a good deal. It's ridiculous. It is. But it's like, what are you going to do with it then? You know, like I've read about it and, you know, I've read about it, comparing it to Arduino and compare it even to PIC and everything else. And it's, you know, it's a kind of a hobbled process. I mean, I think it was on your forum too. You know, like it's kind of a hobbled processor and it's not compatible with Arduino and there's a lot of complaints about it. But still, it's like $4.00. You're going to get a lot of people just saying, well, I'll take it.

Dave Jones: Well, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I know for a fact that they manufactured at least 10,000 of them in the first run. Wow. So, you know, I'm sure they will do more than 45,000 of those to match microchip. Now, as I was saying, the cynical person in me might think that they did this just as a stunt so that they could put that sort of sales figures for development tools into their financial returns. So, but that's just being a bit, no, surely not. They wouldn't do that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, no, no. Who would? No one would ever lie on a balance sheet. Never, ever, ever.

Dave Jones: No, no, it's all about supporting the hobbyist and getting your chips out there. That's right. Yeah. It is a brilliant marketing ploy. I mean, they're practically giving it away. And I, even to Australia, I ordered three of them and I just got them just last week. And they FedExed three of them to my door for $12. You know, it's just unbelievable. That's pretty good. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's kind of the, have you ever heard of that, the guy that wrote The Long Tail, Chris Anderson, have you ever heard of that book? It's called Free. I believe it's called Free. Yeah, no, I haven't. You know, I keep going back to it and it is a book basically about the free economy. It's called, you know, like the economy, free economy. And how that's the new model because, because of the internet, people expect to be free, things to be free. They say, give me things first. They're, they're used to the Googles of the world that have been giving them these unbelievable apps for nothing. They're used to the, well, not iPhones, but like the, you know, a lot of the app markets, getting certain things for free. Or hardware, even getting things for free. And, and how that's an actual, like recognized business model now. Give it to them first. And then hopefully they'll come back and they'll like what you have and they'll develop with it and all that other stuff. And it's, I haven't read the book yet, but it's on my list of things to get in there. And it's just, it's just an amazing model because how do you, how do you go pitch that if you're trying to sell this as a business? What we're going to do is give everything away first.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Well, yeah, there's actually nothing really new in that concept in the electronics industry. You know, companies being given away data books back in the old day, you know, they would, some of these data books will cost like, you know, 50 or a hundred dollars to print or something. They're so massive, they were like, you know, 1500 pages and they would give those away for free. And I think some companies still do, you know, they give away data sheets and they're, you know, so I guess the concept's not new, but yeah, with the new apples of the world, sorry, the, the other companies, Google and ones like that, they're just giving everything away. And it's just, yeah, it's, you know, the old carrot and stick kind of, you know, that, well, you can catch the carrot, but you know, it's a very small carrot. And I hope you're going to come in and reel you in and buy some more of those carrots.

Chris Gammell: So have you tried out your board yet?

Dave Jones: No, I haven't. I haven't fired it up yet. I was going to do an unboxing on the EAV blog because I know people hate unboxings and I hate them myself. So I was going to do one just to, I was going to do rather unusual unboxing of it. So there you go.

Chris Gammell: You're going to have like one of those snake, like a peanut can where the snake pops out.

Dave Jones: And the snake pops out.

Chris Gammell: Oh, and it's empty. Four dollars and it's empty. Sorry.

Dave Jones: 30 cents and all you get's a cardboard box. Goodness. Other news. I got a new computer at work. Oh yeah. And window. Yeah. My first time using windows seven, but the amazing thing was it's a brand new Dell. It's like a Dell precision 3500 or something. Real whiz bang.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Super fast Zen on processor machine or something. I don't know. Yeah. I'm just not Linux penguin geeky enough to keep up with that sort of thing these days. But the amazing thing was, is that it came with not only a serial port, believe it or not, but a parallel port.

Chris Gammell: This is a desktop or a, this is a desktop.

Dave Jones: This is a desktop. I was absolutely shocked. I didn't know that. I thought they dropped at least the parallel port many years ago. I thought it was, you know, you virtually couldn't buy a new main board that had a parallel port on it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's a, well, I mean, you're not using it for printing or anything though.

Dave Jones: No, no, exactly. The old parallel port projects. Cause I used to be really big into parallel port projects and things like that, but I haven't used one for years, but the serial port on a machine is still very handy. Cause there's still a lot of, you know, there's a lot of development tools out there and things that, you know, will only work with serial ports.

Chris Gammell: How about hyperterminal? How long has that been around? I mean, that, that must've been with windows 3.1 and that's still, you know, that's still the output, the standard output for a lot of, a lot of micro boards, you know?

Dave Jones: Absolutely. Absolutely. Everyone's still using the, you know, the ANSI 9600, you know, 8N1 sort of interface into hyperterminal.

Chris Gammell: That stuff sticks around, you know? And like you love talking about test equipment. I worked in test, I work in test equipment talking about like GPIB. I mean, how is that still around? I don't.

Dave Jones: Oh, I know. It's just incredible that you can still buy new gear, you know, for the likes of Agilent and still got GPIB on it. It's just unbelievable. So yeah. Does anyone still use GPIB? I guess they do, you know?

Chris Gammell: Industry. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, well, my last job, we were still using GPIB and windows 3.1 and that was only three years ago, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It sticks around. That's the thing. Well, the thing with windows 3.1 is, is that it, it boots on a modern machine. It boots practically instantly. Oh yeah. Like within, you know, a second. So if you've got a bit of, um, you know, we, we had gear, which we'd roll out on trolleys on industrial computers out into the production line and these things had to boot. Well, it'd be an advantage to boot real quick.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, um, windows 3.1 still did it. And the good thing was, is it didn't have big swap files and things. So you could just switch the machine off without shutting it down, you know, going through that silly windows shutdown process. So you could just switch the machine off and you didn't corrupt your hard drive or your files. And it, you know, it, it just suited the task really perfectly. So I'm sure there's still other people out there using windows 3.1.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know, I've written about that kind of thing before too. You don't really always think about it, but you know, even the, the, the MSP four thirties of today, you know, that kind of thing goes into like a thermostat or something like that. That's going to be around, that might be around in 15 years. And how do you really design for that kind of thing? I actually, I had a article up on here, uh, Bob piece, you know, Bob piece, the, uh, one of the analog gurus from that formerly from national. And, uh, he's, he's written about long-term stability, you know, and he, and he actually is talking about how it's not that important for him because you know, a lot of the, uh, it's, it's really on the, on the big products that they spec it out, you know? So if you have an op amp, they don't care how much it drifts over time, but Over time, over 10 years. Yeah. Right. But, but that actually affects a lot of things because, you know, we have a very throwaway culture, but in industry, you know, like real industrial environments, that kind of stuff matters. So if you're using a 3.1 computer, you know, windows 3.1, you might care that your op amp has drifted, you know, 5,000 PPM, something like that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, absolutely. I mean, I've, I've had, um, issues, not, not so much on the, uh, drift side of things, but just on the supply side of things, getting customers, um, cause I've been involved in designing, uh, projects for the military and things like that. And really you, you have to guarantee 10, 15 year, uh, lifespans on, on actually supporting these products. So you've actually got to try and get written, um, uh, you know, statements from the suppliers saying, yes, we, we will still support this chip in 10 or 15 years time. And it's like extracting teeth. Oh yeah. It's just, oh, it's, you know, the interesting thing is, you can eventually do it.

Chris Gammell: The interesting thing is like, there's actually businesses built upon that. If you ever heard of, uh, like Rochester electronics, you ever heard of them?

Dave Jones: Oh yes. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They actually, that they make a business out of that. They'll, they'll take a chip and they'll, they'll replicate it for you because it's not made anymore. And so they're, and so it's either that, or you take your, your chances with the China market and you know, you're probably, you know, 75% of the time you're getting these counterfeit parts that just say, you know, if you're looking for an LM 741, assuming that everyone obviously probably won't. Uh, but you're just getting a chip now that says LM 741 and it's actually inside. It's some, you know, it's a LM 317 and you're getting a power regulator and, and, and you're up, you're up a creek.

Dave Jones: Exactly. There's, there's a lot of that, uh, gray market stuff going around and that's the, that's a risk of buying on the components on the gray market from these huge Hong Kong, um, you know, uh, one stop shop, one hung low shops. It's, uh, yeah, that's, that's a real advantage. So, you know, it's, that's it. Well, that's the advantage of buying from, you know, Mausa, DigiKey and Farnells and, you know, authorized distributors and stuff like that. You're pretty much guaranteed.

Chris Gammell: Have you ever gotten any, any, uh, Chinese counterfeit parts?

Dave Jones: Ah, oh, not for a very long time though. We had, uh, transistors back in the early nineties. We had some fake power transistors. Um, but no, I, I really haven't been caught out by that. I try and avoid the gray market if possible. It's really, um, usually I, a lot of the products I design, sorry, um, you know, cost isn't really an issue, um, cause we're not manufacturing, you know, um, you know, a hundred thousand or a million of these items. We're going to manufacture, you know, 500 or something like that. So, you know, it's sort of a different market.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's just interesting to me that, I mean, there's such a, there's such a need for certain parts that people will go to that extent. And sometimes, you know, like, I don't know about how the, how the power transistor worked out for you, but you know, you get a part that doesn't have any silicon inside it. You just have a TO220 package and you might have, you might have a little fire on your hands.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And, um, yeah, with the, with the power transistor, um, thing that, that that's interesting because they were actually genuine silicon in there, but they were undersized. So, um, you know, and that's important for a power transistor because you buy a power transistor expecting it to dissipate, you know, 50 Watts or something. Yeah. And they put these tiny little dies in there and they can only handle five Watts. So you put them in your product and they might work for a week, but then they fail when your product gets out in the field. So you're, uh, so the, so the cost isn't just the cost of that part and fitting it. It's cost of going out to the field and actually repairing it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And which is a major thing really.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it really is. Cause then you hurt your reputation and everything too.

Dave Jones: Oh, your reputation dies and the service cost is just, yeah. Oh yeah. It's just through, through the roof. So yeah, you know, use gray market components at your own risk.

Chris Gammell: Have you ever looked at the inside of a power transistor, like the, the layout of one before?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. They're, yeah, they're just a really big ass, um, die with, um, I haven't looked at the actual die. You know, I haven't looked under a microscope, but you know, you, you saw the top can off it and you can actually see the huge die in there with the big bond wires. I have nice big thick ones in these power transistors and yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I had actually never looked in, I had never looked inside of one, but I, I had, I had taken a seminar at one point and, uh, I think it was international rectifier or someone like that. They had a, a sheet about it. And I didn't realize that power transistors aren't actually, I always thought it was like one huge transistor, you know, like really large features or whatever like that. But it's actually more often, it's a lot of transistors sitting in parallel and they play a lot of really cool games with that stuff. So I don't know how many, how many of the people that usually watch your show are doing like silicon design, but that stuff is just, I mean the, the tricks they play to, to get more work out of the same kind of, uh, process topologies, like the same silicon levels and everything. It's just amazing what they do with that stuff.

Dave Jones: Oh, absolutely. I am, you know, I have no real idea about the, uh, about the silicon level manufacturing industry. That's, you know, not something we have here in Australia and I've never really been involved in that. But yeah, some of the stuff they do, my hat's off to them. It's just amazing what they can do on silicon. It's just a whole different ball game to just the macro level electronics design. You know, it's totally different.

Chris Gammell: So what about your, your design in general? Are you doing a lot of, uh, I mean, when you're doing designs these days, are you doing a lot of, uh, transistor based, not obviously on a chip, but are you doing more discrete stuff or more bigger stuff? Like, uh, I don't want to ask you too much about your work, but, uh, you know, even when you're doing hobby product projects, you know, are you doing a lot of, uh, Arduino kind of stuff or are you doing more, uh, you know, building like a transistor output stage, that kind of thing?

Dave Jones: Oh, no, I'm, I'm rarely doing just, uh, like a raw analog discrete, um, thing. It usually always involves a micro and, and bunch of other specialized devices and things like that. So yeah, I don't, I don't do much, uh, much discrete work, you know, just, just building up an audio amp or something doesn't really, uh, do it for me anymore. So I, I love all these specialized chips that come out now. I know it's a bit of a cop out to do something with a specialized chip, but you know, they just, oh, they're so tempting. You know, you get like a, you might get some, you know, a power monitor chip for a dollar or something. And, oh, it's just, whereas, whereas to do that before required a whole board of circuitry, you know, it's just, oh.

Chris Gammell: I saw on the day that had a preamp actually integrated into it. It was like a preamp early stage, you know, and had all the transistors, all these really nicely biased bipolar transistors, like in a preamp or before an op amp, and then actually went right into an op amp and then it could drive this output stage. And so, yeah, I mean, I agree with you most of the time, unfortunately for, for analog type people, which, you know, sometimes it's a lot more fun to, to play around the transistors. The, uh, you know, some of those chips are just, they're, they're unbelievable and they're tested to however many cycles out and, and heat tested and temperature, you know, like everything kind of testing you ever need and every data point you'd ever need on a data sheet. So I, I understand the temptation.

Dave Jones: It just. Yeah. Well, well, it's all about time to market, isn't it? I mean, if, if you're designing a product that, that is ultimately going to be taken to market, which is different from just dicking around with hobby stuff, you know, then, you know, it's to use these off the shelf chips that are already proven and characterized, you know, over temperature. It's just, yeah, there really isn't any contest. It's, it's, in the end, it just kind of all comes down to, can you buy the chip in quantity? Oh yeah. Um, you know, that, that's the main, you know, you might be able to get it, you know, they might have five in stock at Mouser or something, but you know, that doesn't help you when you want to build 10,000 of them and there's a 40 week lead time, sir. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That happens a lot these days. It's actually kind of, kind of interesting with the, uh, the hobbyist, like where the hobbyist meets the, the industry side of things, because I never realized, you know, I, I went, basically straight, straight into industry and, and I, I do a little bit of hobbyist stuff on the side, but nothing that I can speak of to, you know, like enough projects to really get a good feel for it. And you know, some of the op amps I use, I saw you at a Twitter, uh, Twitter, uh, tweet, sorry, tweet the other day. Yes. Uh, about, about having an op amp be the most expensive piece of your design. Well, I, I have op amps that I'm, I'm using all the time that are $5 and, and sometimes that's the, the raw cost of an entire design that hobbyists are using. And I'm just blown away with the, some of the things that they're able to do, like even the Arduino kits and stuff like that. But just the, keeping the cost in mind is, is, is really tough. And, uh, either you've got deep pockets or you're, you're really, really being innovative about what kind of parts you use in your, in your hobby designs to really, to really, uh, get, get a lot out of them, get a lot of mileage.

Dave Jones: Well, that's the thing I'm working on a design at the moment. You could say it's a hobby design, but I do plan to take it, uh, uh, into, uh, sale. It's going to be an open source hardware thing. I won't, um, say what it is probably a few people on the forum might've heard me mention it before, but, um, yeah, it's all about, um, cost optimization and choosing the right parts that are a available and be the lowest cost. And it changes your design. Um, you know, you go, right. Oh, I love that chip. It's only 10 cents, but I can't get it. So I'm going to have to use the 50 cent chip. And then that flows on and changes the rest of your design. And the, the number of times I've rehashed this design to try and shave, you know, uh, 20 cents off, off the cost is just, you know, it's just absolutely phenomenal.

Chris Gammell: If you're eating, really?

Dave Jones: Well, because yeah, ultimately that's going to come out of my pocket because if I manufacture a thousand of these and I can save a dollar per unit, that's a thousand dollars, you know, in my pocket. Oh yeah. You know, essentially. So yeah, it's, you know, so shaving cents off here and there and come out with innovative ways to avoid using a part and minimizing the number of parts and using a PCB as a front panel. And, you know, just, just doing all sorts of other little, um, tricks in your design. You can bring the cost down a lot, but, um, the, the hobbyist sort of, you know, those, those Arduinos, they're really cheap because you don't have to worry about an external case or anything like that. You just manufacture the board and snap them off the panel, you know? So yeah, there's a, there's a, you know, but if you want to make a product look good and things like that, then, you know, and yeah, at the moment, the most expensive part in my design is a little quad op amp and it's a bottom of the range op amp, but at least you get four of them.

Chris Gammell: That's good.

Dave Jones: You get four for your $1.50. Yeah. But you know, it's, you know, it's a rail to rail precision op amp and yeah, you've just, ah, it's crazy. Well, no, I lie. There is one more expensive thing, which is going to be the punched box. The, the, the box is actually only a dollar for it, but to get, you know, three holes punched in it is another $2.70, sir. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: That's a lot. That's, those are some expensive holes right there.

Dave Jones: Exactly. I'm thinking about actually building up, building up a punch machine myself and actually just punching the damn holes out of the box. Cause it is so expensive. So, ah, it's just, yeah, it's crazy.

Chris Gammell: You know, that's an interesting point. You said about the trade-offs and stuff and, you know, you always see people asking about that kind of thing on forums and, and everywhere. Like, Hey, I'm a student and I'm really trying to get into engineering and, you know, one of the things I needed to know or, or what do I have to look forward to? And, and, you know, that's, that's one of the things that, that I always think about engineering is it's, it's all about trade-offs. You, sometimes you're going to have someone shouting in your ear, but you really got to kind of try and balance. It's, well, if it needs more power, it's going to get hotter, but if it needs less power, I need a more expensive chip or there's, and so that, that kind of balancing is kind of one of those like skills that you, you don't ever really hear about in school because it's always, I mean, well, sometimes it's project-based, but if it's, if it's lab-based, it's more like, well, here you have to do this, this, and this, and this. But if it's project-based, you, when, or when you get, get into more project-based kind of things like how you're designing that, that item, you really have to start playing around and, and, and optimizing things. And that, that's a big deal, you know?

Dave Jones: Oh yeah, that's a huge aspect of engineering, which, you know, all these beginners coming out of university and whatnot, they just have no, no actual clue about. And, you know, and there's a famous saying in engineering, it's engineering is the art of building something with stuff you can get, you know, and it's.

Chris Gammell: I've never heard that one.

Dave Jones: And it's, yeah, and it's, and, but it's not only stuff you can get, it's stuff you can get at the right price, you know? Yeah. And there, and there's a whole art in just, you know, you would be amazed at the amount of work that goes into producing just an Arduino board or something like that, that's, you know, optimized down in cost. Oh yeah. You know?

Chris Gammell: Like, like if say you can get a 10K resistor for two cents, but you can get a 5K resistor for four, for five cents, right? Well, if you put, if you put two 10, 10 Ks in parallel, you have a 5K resistor, but now you just saved a cent. And if you're making a million of them, that's, uh, what, $10,000. So maybe you want to do that.

Dave Jones: Exactly. And it's, uh, there's another aspect of electronics design is bomb, uh, optimization, parts optimization. Like if you need, say your design uses, you know, 10, um, 10, uh, 2N, triple, two, triple, two, triple, two, double, two, double, two transistors or something like that. And then you need one diode in your design. It's actually better to, um, wire one of those transistors as a diode to, you know, so that you, so that you're not, so you don't have to buy a whole reel of diodes, you know, 5,000 diodes on a reel and then take up another slot in your, um, SMD, you know, in the SMD machine. Because if you, you know, if you've got, you know, 30 different parts, then you'll, you need a machine that has 30 different reels on the SMD line to manufacture it efficiently. So, you know, there's all these trade-offs which, um, flow down there and bomb optimization is just going around. And as you say, you know, if you've got a 5K, you need a 5K resistor, but you use, you know, 110 Ks in, in your design, it's just much easier to put those two 10 Ks in parallel.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, yeah. And it's amazing too about the, uh, you know, you talked about like having, having a fab and I don't think a lot of hobbyists out there would have their own kind of fabrication facilities, but, but you're, you're probably making lower volume kind of things. And, and you need to have all these parts and you think about, so like pretend now that you're a hobbyist and you say, okay, I've got this great product and I want to try and sell it. Well, that's great. But if you want to sell a hundred of them and each one costs a hundred bucks and costs you a hundred bucks to make, then this $10,000, you got to plop down on the table just to get your money, just to, just get your product out the door. And how do you do that? And then if you start cutting down to, y'all have only built five boards, well, then you have to deal with delays and well, maybe more people want them. So it's, it's really an interesting trade-off of, uh, you know, I'm not on the business side of things that much, but that kind of stuff is, is a big deal.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, I've, I've done my own kits before, you know, I've sold kits and I'm thinking about getting it in back into it. As I said, I've got this new design, which hopefully will come out. It'll be open source. And I, you know, I, I think I can sell, you know, many, many thousands of these.

Chris Gammell: And, um, if only you had some kind of forum to sell these from, if only I had some sort

Dave Jones: of forum and ready market to, there you go. We'll figure it out. Don't worry. Yeah. I've, I've, I've only got 5,000 viewers on the EAB blog. So there you go.

Chris Gammell: All right. That's good. Yeah. It's, it's amazing watching like the spark. You know, I was, I was watching the, the numbers and like the spark funds and the Ada fruits and all those guys, their, their sales are going through the roof. And you think, you know, I've, I know that college campuses are, are getting, are getting these kinds of kits now too. And it's just like, you know, some of these are very viable businesses. They're people are making a living at it and it's, it's awesome. You know?

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. I mean, well, well, spark fund are pulling in. Um, I saw a, there's a, uh, sort of a short, um, a doco thing on, um, uh, art of fruits, uh, website. How now, um, all of these, you know, startup open source hardware companies and, and spark fund, I think are pulling in over $10 million a year now. It's unbelievable. That's a lot of dollars. Actually. Oh, and, um, and, um, art of fruits, almost a million dollars a year now. Wow. Just, just a two person business out of the, you know, out of a rented shopping somewhere. It's just, you know, a million dollars just selling little, uh, open source hobbyist. Yeah. And there's all these other examples. There's about a dozen companies that have broken this million dollar mark, just selling, you know, open source hobby kits.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But it's not easy. I don't think it's easy. Oh, no. I think that, uh, that's an important thing to point out that it's like, whoa, they, they, they are moving a lot of product and they're, they're working, they're working there, but I'm sure you know about that too.

Dave Jones: You know, there's probably, yeah, it's all about, uh, volume and you know, no, thanks. Yeah. Oh, there's nothing worse. And, you know, I've, I've shipped, you know, and there's some like my, um, you know, my scientific calculator watch I sold, you know, hundreds of those and just packing and shipping them. And, oh, it's just, yeah, it's really quite, uh, really quite frustrating. So, um, anyway, I'm a glutton for punishment. So I'm going to go back into that, uh, sort of market. I think I've got a little winning product, which I might bring back to market and, um, yeah, we'll, uh, see what happens. But, um, yeah, I mean, anyone out there can actually give it a go. You know, they can, if they come up with a good idea for a good product, they could sell, you know, a thousand, 10,000 of them. Yeah. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's not that hard at all, but it, it does require a good product, a good idea, lots of luck being first and things like that. And, um, you know.

Chris Gammell: And I think, you know, the thing to point out is to definitely not go to those people that say, Hey, do you have an idea? Come to us and we'll sell it for you. Those people, those people are not your friends. Do not go to them.

Dave Jones: I don't know if you have that in the U S but, um, a couple of years back here in, um, here in, uh, Sydney on the radio all the time, you'd have these ads, you know, if you've got an invention, come to us and we'll, you know, invent help. We'll market your invention and, uh, give me a break. All they do is, um, make you sign up for ridiculous, expensive patents. And they, they take a huge cut out of it and, uh, slap you on the back and take your money and off you go. Yep. Exactly. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So just to caution people out there, don't, don't, uh, well, first off, if you have a really good idea, don't, don't give it away. And second off, don't, don't trust people. Don't, if someone's asking for your money and they're not actually going to give you something in return, like a awesome kit in the near future, like Dave might, uh, be sure, be sure to be, to be wary.

Dave Jones: Oh, absolutely. Just, just go in and do it yourself. I mean, you know, these days you can actually manufacture, you know, just 50 upfront or something like that. It's, you know, it's, it's surprisingly inexpensive or inexpensive to, um, you know, actually get a kit. But, you know, obviously if, you know, if your kit of parts, you know, each one costs a hundred dollars, as, as you said before, then that's, you know, that requires significant outlay. But my new kit is like, you know, $15 in parts or even, you know, $10 in volume and things like that. So, you know, it's not that, so I can go out and, you know, I can put the money up and get a couple of hundred manufactured upfront with very little risk.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's good. Yeah. You know, I, I was wondering about the, uh, have you heard about like the local kind of movement and how, I mean, that's, that's kind of, that kind of feeds into it. Like, uh, I know a lot of people are talking about, well, everything's still available these days and eventually it'll move to the point where everything will be manufactured locally. What do you think about that? Do you think that'll ever happen? I don't know.

Dave Jones: Oh, manufactured locally. No, that's, you know, that's, that's a, that's a pipe dream. You know, China, you still can't beat China for price and things like that. Um, you know, R and D yes. And small scale production. Yeah. Like my previous kits, I've actually had them hand built, um, here in Australia, a guy hand solders them. You know, I didn't bother with getting reels of components and mass assembling. So I used a guy, you know, he works reasonably cheap and hand solders them and yeah, so you can do that. But ultimately once you go to volume and things like that, you know, it's impossible to beat China, unfortunately. And, uh, and then there's India up and coming, which will be the next China and, and so on and so forth.

Chris Gammell: It's amazing too, because the China's there, I mean like the, the people in China are actually doing the same thing. They're actually hand soldering. It's just the, the, the labor costs are so low and, and they're so efficient at it that it just, it pushes right through. It's, it's, it's sad, but I mean, that's just kind of how it is right now, unfortunately.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's just the way it is. Yeah. There are still a lot of products out there. There's still, um, you know, hand assembled surprisingly, but, um, they, they are now getting, you know, every, uh, good boards that are well designed will be mass, you know, mass assembled by machine and, um, those sorts of things. So yeah, they, they just, so, you know, I've, I've been over there and been to their factories and they're just, you know, they're just so efficient and, you know, oh, it's just, and, and the parts, of course, they've got the ready-made gray market over there. So, you know, if your design uses generic parts, then, you know, there's, um, there's one famous, um, supplier of blank PCBs who will actually give you free parts. Um, you know, if you've got, yeah, they will, I can't remember their name off the top of my head. I'm sure it'll come to me, but, um, yeah, if, if, if you actually buy a bare board from them, get a board manufacturer, they will give you free connectors, free resistors. I think there's a couple of ICs they'll give you for free and yeah, they'll effectively give you all the parts and they'll assemble it for free as well.

Chris Gammell: Whoa.

Dave Jones: So yeah, which is, which is crazy. I can't believe I can't remember their name, but, um, that's okay.

Chris Gammell: That's, that's free. That's free advertising. They don't need, I'm sure. Yeah, that's free advertising. They're giving stuff away for free.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but I've, I've gone to them for, uh, quotes and they're not, yeah, they, you know, it's okay for like a one-off or something like that, but if you try and get a hundred made from them, they're not particularly cheap. And in some cases they, they did an itemized bomb for me of cost of my parts and some of them were more expensive than DigiKey. It was crazy. I'm like, what? You know, you're obviously, you know, some parts were, you know, free, they were dirt cheap, but others, they were, God knows what markup they were making on them. Cause yeah, I can get them cheaper from DigiKey or Farnell's here in Australia. It was crazy. So yeah, I was going to ask you about that.

Chris Gammell: Is there like a big discrepancy? I mean, I don't know how much exposure you had to the Australia market versus the U.S. market. I didn't, I didn't really know how much, uh, how much the difference is there. You got the DigiKeys there and the, the Mousers, but are there, are there suppliers there that you have that U.S. people wouldn't know about? I don't even know.

Dave Jones: Um, no, Farnell and RS are the two big ones here in Australia. There's a few others, but they just, you know, they're really just small time players. Farnell and RS are the two big, which everyone's heard of. Uh, RS is a U.K. company and Farnell, well, Farnell's a U.K. They're both U.K. companies actually. Um, yeah. And, um, yeah, they're the two big ones here. And their prices used to be astronomical compared to Mouser and DigiKey, but, um, now there's so much competition. Um, Farnell's now actually, um, I believe in Singapore, I think it is, they've got a whole team of people at Farnell's working on going through the DigiKey catalog and matching price on all their products. So they're slowly doing it. So all of these components are like, yeah, all these components on Farnell's, you'll see that are actually coming through. They'll actually match DigiKey price and they'll do it live. So they'll, you know, if DigiKey change their price, Farnell will change their price. And that's their, um, that's what they're actually trying to do. And then RS are trying to now compete with, cause Farnell did that RS competing with them. And then, and now Farnell offer free, free delivery in Australia for any volume, any, uh, cost. So you can order one, one single one cent part and they'll courier it to your door for free.

Chris Gammell: And so you just do that for fun to mess with them, huh?

Dave Jones: I just do that for fun. Yeah. Tip to, tip to the delivery guy. I actually tweeted. Yes. I actually tweeted that the other day that, uh, Farnell didn't ship me my part and I went, I went feral on them and they, they actually went crazy. They, they, it went all the way to Farnell UK to top management over there. And they phoned somebody here at 10 o'clock at night saying, Dave Jones wants his part in the morning. And sure enough, I had it. He's got a show. Watch out.

Chris Gammell: He's got a show.

Dave Jones: Yes. I've got an audience. And, um, yeah, so the, they really fix that quick smart. And there, there was a problem with their system. They couldn't, I paid by credit card and they couldn't, um, uh, they couldn't deliver. So cause my company hadn't paid the account for that month or something. So they shut us out and yeah.

Chris Gammell: Now, didn't you say that, uh, RS is the one that, didn't they just start that new design spark?

Dave Jones: Was that the one you started design spark? Yeah. If you haven't heard of it, um, RS design spark, you know, dot com or whatever, just Google it. And, um, they've got free PCB design software now, which, um, is competing with, um, Eagle.

Chris Gammell: And that's online too, isn't it? Yes.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes.

Chris Gammell: It's, and, um, like an online design tool, I think.

Dave Jones: Um, no, it's, it's downloadable. They might, I don't know if they have a online version. It's, you know, download, but you've got to sign up. You've got to sign up to their website to get it for free or something. So they want that database of people, you know, that's the trap, you know, you've got to, yeah, you've got to sign up to their website and then they'll give you the license to use the software for free and it's, um, um, you know, and it's not, um, and there's no limits to it. There's no limit to the size of the board or number of components, I believe, as opposed to, um, Eagle, which is Eagles, you know, the, the de facto standard in the open source hardware industry, because they've had a free version available for a long time, but it's limited in size. One, one schematic sheet, you know, tiny, a small size of the board, double sided and, um, yeah, new RS design spark software. Um, there's no limits. So hopefully that will, um, push, um, Farnell's who now own Eagle because Farnell bought out Eagle, which I think is a German company. That's right. And, um, yeah, and hopefully that will push them to, um, up their free version. So, you know, um, I don't think RS design spark really stands the chance of unseating Google, uh, Google, Eagle.

Chris Gammell: Neither, neither Google nor Eagle. No.

Dave Jones: Um, I don't think they stand a chance of unseating them from that de facto standard position. Everyone's just so entrenched with, um, Eagle as far as, um, the hobbyist, you know, open source market goes, but, um, yeah, it could, um, spur them on to, um, hopefully, um, give everyone a better version for free. So, um, only good can come from this, I guess.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I saw on, uh, I was on design spark the other day. I hadn't really heard of it much, but, uh, you know, I think it just started back in March or something like that, but I saw that they're actually looking for bloggers right now. And I'm always looking for new people to read, you know, stuff that people are writing. And so, so maybe people out there want to start blogging for them or blogging for themselves too. And, and I'll, I'll read anything really. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Um, but yeah, um, but yeah, I'm, I'm actually, um, constantly approached by, um, with the high profile of my blog. Now I'm actually approached by the likes of design. I won't name names, but the likes of these companies that, uh, that have all these, um, uh, you know, uh, online communities and things like that. And they're looking for content. They're fishing around for content. So yeah, they're all contacting me. Hey, you know, can you write for us, et cetera, et cetera. And well, I won't go into the details, but, um, yeah, they're, um, yes, they are fishing around for content. So anyone who wants a, um, an audience, I'm not sure how large it really is, you know, with those websites, you know, Farnell's element 14.

Chris Gammell: And yeah, you know, it doesn't really matter for me. I just want to see more people out there writing about stuff and, and don't get me wrong. There's a lot of people out there writing about it. I love it. I mean, I, the people that I read, like I read the, you know, even in the places that like the make magazines are pulling like the make blog that's pulling from and like the, the eight of fruit blogs pulling from, or just all the blogs out there are pulling from, uh, yeah, I love reading that stuff. So, you know, if, if you're out there and you're listening and, and you have an inkling to write, shoot me an email, shoot Dave an email, let us know about it. If we do another radio show, we could talk about it. That was another thing that I wanted to do is highlight. Awesome. Awesome.

Chris Gammell: Writing out there. Awesome. Projects out there.

Dave Jones: Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I've got no problems. We can give a shout out to, you know, new, uh, new, uh, people out there who are starting up, you know, they've got a new blog or something like that by all means. Um, as long as it's not a video blog, cause I don't want any competition. Thank you very much. I've, I've, I've cornered that engineering video market and I don't want to name names,

Chris Gammell: but I've heard of some other ones. I don't want to name names.

Dave Jones: So, you know, there are a couple out there who try and compete, but yeah, I'm number one. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no tooting of horns around here.

Dave Jones: No tooting of horns. And yes, I don't have tickets on myself. No, but I, you know, but that's the thing, you know, I started out with, you know, I didn't think anyone would listen to me. I mean, watch me. Sorry. And, uh, you know, I started out, I just put it on the Oz electronics forum, upload to YouTube and 10 people watched it. Oh yeah, great. I've got 10 people. Woo hoo. You know? And, um, I thought, ah, you know, I'd be stoked if I had a hundred people, but you know, now I've got 5,000 regular viewers and, and, but it doesn't come instantly. If you're a new blogger out there and you start up, you know, you've just got to stick to it. You've just got to work at it. And, uh, cause audiences don't just come, you know, overnight like that. You know, I always hated that term.

Chris Gammell: I hate the term blogger. I really do. I avoided it at all costs. I say writer. I don't know about you, but I, well, you can't, I guess you'd be videographer.

Dave Jones: Well, it's a vlogger, which I hate, which is not blogger. It's video. Yes. Vlogger. I really hate that term. Blogger is not too bad because it is a buzzword and everyone knows it. So you get a bit more credibility if you're a, well, these days, you know, if you're a blogger, I guess, um, you know, as opposed to a writer, it's a bit old fashioned, but yeah, I can, I can definitely see where you're coming from there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, hopefully we'll see some people stepping into the spotlight soon enough and pushing us out. That that'd be great. That's what I'm, that's what I'm looking for.

Dave Jones: Yeah, absolutely. So if you've got anything else you want to throw into the hat on this episode, how long we've been going for? There you go. It's been going for an hour already.

Chris Gammell: Good timing. I don't know. Maybe we should just cut it off here and save the rest for next time. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yep. We probably should. I think it's probably an hour show is, you know, good enough. I, I don't think we can do much in, well, we can do a lot in half hour, but, um, I, I anticipate the shows would probably be an hour each. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And plus you got to get to work. So.

Dave Jones: Well, exactly. Yeah. I've got to get to work soon. So, um, yeah, I do have to pay the bills and, um, yeah. All right. Well, let's call it quits. And, um, that's our first show, which without a name, the no name electronics show. So if you've got good ideas for the name, please, um, jump on the EEV blog forum and, um, I'll set up a separate, um, area on there where people can talk about the show. And if people like it and it's successful, we'll, um, get a, you know, a name for it, a website, uh, its own dedicated iTunes and podcast. And we'll go from there.

Chris Gammell: And even if people don't like it and it's successful, then we'll, you know, if people just want to rail against it, that's good too, you know?

Dave Jones: Well, even, yeah. Even if people don't like it, we might just still do it because, well, it's fun for us.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I get to piss people off, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, we're certainly not going to make any money from it. So, you know, it's all done for the love of it. That's right. So. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, thanks, Chris. It's been good.

Chris Gammell: Thanks, Dave. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's fun talking. Yeah. And we'll catch everyone next time. See ya. Bye-bye.