#190 – Let's Hear It For The Buoys - Vanishing Vessel Vexation

SPEAKER_00: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded March 24th, 2014. Episode 190. Vanishing Vessel Vexation.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV Blog.

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Dave Jones: Who has finally realized that I was right when I was saying that days blur into...

Chris Gammell: He wasn't just a lazy ass, folks. He was...

Dave Jones: Yeah, he didn't believe me when I told him, when you work for yourself and do, you know, what we're doing, days, yeah, no longer matter. And he went, ah, bullshit. You're not going to...

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just... Please say I was right. You were right. Yes, you were right.

Chris Gammell: I do agree. And I was telling Dave before the show, I actually, I was thinking about what he had said when this week, I was just like, ah, I can't get a... I don't want to sound like I'm complaining because I'm not. It's just I haven't got my bearings yet. And I'm just kind of trying to find my system. And I think when I talk to other people too, they kind of said the same thing when they made the change. It was just kind of finding a new rhythm because now it's not have to get to the office by 9 a.m. or whatever time you get in. Exactly.

Dave Jones: You can do anything you want.

Chris Gammell: Right. And that's good.

Dave Jones: Which you have to be careful because your mind goes into, oh, there's always tomorrow mode. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. And you're even just, you know, I'll do it later today even, right? And, you know, I'm still up till 2 in the morning.

Speaker ?: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: And then it never gets done. You always make an excuse. And you go, oh, no, I've got to do this now. And I'll do that tomorrow. And then it just, no.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, the other problem that I've been interacting with is that, you know, now that I'm trying to actually, you know, improve my workflow and figure out better ways to get stuff done. And, like, that's kind of its own deep, dark hole because, you know, how many different task keepers are there out there and different systems of ways of doing things. And it's just like…

Dave Jones: Doing things.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Actually, in the end, I don't think it matters as long as you have a system. Yeah. It doesn't matter what the system is.

Chris Gammell: Right. Consistency.

Dave Jones: To a certain extent, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Some ways are more efficient than others, but…

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Hey, you know.

Chris Gammell: I've been switching. So I've been trying out Evernote because everybody kind of raved about it and you kind of figure, well… What's Evernote? It's kind of like a… It's like a sync. It syncs up your different notes and ideas and stuff like that. And I really didn't have visibility into it until… I mean, it's been around since like 2006, 2007 or something like that. Right. I didn't have visibility until I saw it was a Google Glass app, right? It was like one of the first ones out there. I'm like…

SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: So I paid attention to it. And basically, it's like you can record audio, you can take a picture, and basically, you kind of just throw all of your jumbled ideas there. And then you can kind of sort the ideas into different folders. And so I've been trying that, but it's just like any new system you try. Even when you jump email programs or into new Twitter or something like that, it's just trying to get a handle on it. And again, consistency, like you said.

Dave Jones: And consistency in using it. Yeah, that's the thing. I need something like that because I'm always going, oh, I've got some ideas for something. So I'll write them down on a Post-it note. Exactly. And then I'll stick it in my pocket, and then it goes through the wash and just gets lost. Right. You know, it's just, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, apparently they have something where you can actually take a picture of a Post-it note specifically. I think this is right. Oh, nice. And then it'll capture that, and then it does OCR and everything too. So it's been around for a while.

Speaker ?: Oh, cool.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. I'll try that.

Chris Gammell: And it's got like some web snipping tool as well. So you're like looking at a web page, and you can look at it and basically just take a snapshot of it, just like a single click, and you kind of grab a piece of a web page. That's actually kind of like datasheet.net. I think we talked about that a while back on here. It's the same kind of thing. They do that for datasheets. Yeah. But Evernote does that for just whatever web page you're on. Instead of saving a link, it's like here's a picture of this really quick. Got it. And I don't know. I haven't really gotten into either yet, but it seems like a good idea.

Dave Jones: See, I need stuff like that because just the other day, I had like 20 tabs open on my browser with 20 different datasheets, right? I was trying to find a chip for a certain thing. And it's like, well, and then the machinery, and I just lost all those links. Like, oh, I just looked through those, and I can't remember the reasons why I thought that chip was good enough or I discounted it. Yeah, exactly. I just couldn't remember.

Chris Gammell: So my friend told me about datasheet.net, and actually I think someone wrote to us about it as well, and he was telling me he works with people overseas, and he'll have a couple of datasheets open. He'll kind of like snip different pieces out of it basically. Like he'll snip a schematic.

Dave Jones: A graph or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. And kind of he'll just piece together like his own story base with that and then kind of like here's what I need you to do basically and here's a little bit of markup on it, and then he'll send that to someone, and they'll get cranking on it, and then they can kind of work from there. Excellent. Pretty cool.

Dave Jones: I definitely need to invest in a system like that.

Chris Gammell: There's the problem, right? A system like that. That's always the problem.

Dave Jones: It's time and, yep, yep.

Chris Gammell: It's an interruption. It's like, well, why not just keep doing what I'm doing? Like, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Write on a post-it note. It'll work next time. It'll definitely work next time. Yeah, I lost the post-it note last time, but no, I'll take good care of it this time.

Chris Gammell: Well, hey, it's your whole CAD system, right? It is. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it just fails every time. Yeah. Yet I keep doing it. Yeah. You know, and it's just dumb, you know. Even just writing stuff on a whiteboard. Oh, I've got to walk to the other side of the room to write it on a whiteboard. I've got to find a pen, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's all too hard. Even writing on a post-it note is too hard. Oh, I've got to find a pen. Where is it? I can't find it.

Chris Gammell: If we had some kind of brain implant or something that we could do this, it would be so much easier. I know. Just a brain snapshot.

Dave Jones: There's got to be a Kickstarter there.

Chris Gammell: There's got to be. Well, there is a really... I always get grossed out from these articles, but IEEE was talking about it this week and talking about kind of what you need to do to put electronics into people. And I think I said it last time, I'll say it again. Don't put electronics in your bodies, folks.

Dave Jones: Unless you absolutely have to.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I guess so, yeah. Like a pacemaker or something. But even those.

Dave Jones: Yeah, or something like that.

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, if it saves your life, I'll have one. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah. I guess so. Yeah. And they're talking about that kind of stuff too, you know, putting in... Especially like brain stimulation, stuff like that. You know, if you... Oh, right. People with seizures and stuff like that, but it's still so invasive.

Dave Jones: Yeah, seizures and things like that, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I agree.

Dave Jones: Oh, but still, if it stops the seizures and you can lead a normal life, it's worth it.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Right. No, I don't doubt that it's a good thing. It just gets so frigging squeamish. I think what I always think about is those body modifiers or body modification people basically that do it themselves and it's just like... They're right. Like John Oxer. Yeah, exactly. Right. Or that person...

Dave Jones: He's famous for having the RFID chip and he's his palm.

Chris Gammell: Didn't someone put like an entire Arduino under their arm or something ridiculous like that? I don't know. I don't know. Oh, not meant to be. Yeah. Not meant to be. Yeah, it's just dumb. Well, and we're going to see this more though, right? I mean, quantified self is such a... By the way, stupid term. But you know, like tracking body stuff is really... People are really interested in that kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: But... And I guess you have to. Like I think about... Like I have a family member who's a type 2 diabetic. And you know, she has to track glucose and stuff like that. Right. That's still invasive even though it's external to the body. But I should assume it's... You know, they have insulin pumps and all that kind of electronics now too that can kind of regulate that stuff. But it's still just... Oh, it's so rough. You know? I don't know. There was a... Hey? There was a kickstart. It wasn't a kickstart. It was a... I don't think it was on the list. But it was a... What's the other one? Indiegogo campaign that raised like $500,000 or something like that.

Dave Jones: Indiegogo. It just makes my skin crawl every time I hear the word Indiegogo. It's just scam after scam it seems.

Chris Gammell: Right. It does seem like they would do more to kind of prevent that. I mean, get one person with common sense that actually looks at this stuff or even just get rid of the flexible funding. Like that alone would probably...

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. That alone would... Yeah. Yep. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: But it was a device that like it was supposed to sit on your skin and then like monitor your glucose level by, you know, some kind of interaction with your skin. And...

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I don't know how that works.

Dave Jones: Well, there's only a couple of things you can do. You can measure skin resistance or you can measure... Well, you can measure skin resistance temperature and if you shine some leads through, you can... Yeah, get the blood. You can get the, you know, like on your finger, you can get your blood pulse and all that sort of jazz.

Dave Jones: yeah,

Chris Gammell: the oximeter levels. Yeah. But yeah, this is saying that there's some new, brand new measurement and always that BS alarm kind of goes off in my head. It's like, oh, this brilliant new measurement. Why are you crowdfunding for it and why is that the first time we've heard about it?

Speaker ?: And,

Chris Gammell: oh yeah, it's only on IndieGo.

Dave Jones: No other big pharmaceutical company has a big medical device company has ever thought of it. No, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, scamsville like usual. Warning, yeah.

Dave Jones: We should have like, we've been talking about this from day one since we were doing this show, like a buzzer box, you know, like with different sound effects, you know, Oh, like a soundboard? that we can press, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, like,

Dave Jones: yeah, a soundboard, that's the word, you know,

Chris Gammell: like,

Dave Jones: bullshit. Warning, Will Robinson, warning, you know, insert all these things live into the show. Oh,

Chris Gammell: Dave, we got you, man, it's fine. It'd be, you know.

Dave Jones: It'd be completely tacky, it'd be awesome, it'd sit down, show down to a T.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Have, have you been following this MH370?

Chris Gammell: Uh, yeah, a little bit. Well, I keep seeing, uh, Greg Charvat.

Dave Jones: I'm obsessed with it, dude.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, Greg, Greg, our former guest and sometimes co-host, he's been on CNN a bunch and CBS, like all the, all the news channels around here, he's, keeps talking about radar. And, uh, so I, I keep seeing that on Facebook when that pops up, but I,

Dave Jones: at the end of the day, it wasn't radar that found, well, I think they're very, I think they have found it now. I think it's almost definitive that they've found it. They've, you know, like four or five separate different sightings of wreckage. And, you know, it's just a matter of getting a ship there and picking it up. I think. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like forgetting your kid at daycare. I, I, yeah, I just read this morning, woke up this morning and, uh, yeah, they had actually, you know, how they had sort of pinpointed from the satellite that it was on this, like arc that spread like a third of the way across the planet or something. Right. They said, it's somewhere on there. We're not sure what. Um, and eventually, apparently the mathematics bothans, um, at, uh,

Speaker ?: at,

Dave Jones: uh, the satellite company went, no, we can narrow it down further. And they realize using the Doppler shift of the frequency, they reanalyze the data and everything. Apparently they've never done this before. And they could definitively say it was South, IE in the Indian ocean towards Australia. And it was, and they can probably get it down within a hundred miles or a hundred kilometers. Right.

Chris Gammell: Which is huge because of how, how much land they were covering.

Dave Jones: Which is huge. But in terms of just, you know, picking it up on some old satellite and doing some mathematical analysis on the, on the fricking, you know, spectrum that, that they recorded from it. That's, that's amazing.

Chris Gammell: I know. It really, it is. And you know, I, I have to say, I, I've skipped a lot of the, I, you know, I catch the high, the high end, uh, the, the higher level headlines just because some of it you can't avoid, but I mean, Oh my God, the news media. I mean, like I, it is interesting, but the amount of just speculation here. Oh, it's crazy. I, so I, I can't, I can't do that, but, um, I mean, I was,

Dave Jones: but that's half the fun.

Chris Gammell: I get, well, it's not necessarily a fun situation. It is for me. Yeah. No, no,

Dave Jones: it's not, but from a, you know, just a mystery point of view, I suppose. Engineers love solving problems. That's true. Yeah. It's from the mysteries.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And also, you know, I think there's a lot of intrigue just from the whole, you know, like this is just a, what the hell's happening kind of thing as well. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And there's something new every day. Like just the other day, Oh, there were lithium, there was a cargo of lithium ion batteries on the plane that shouldn't have been there, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know?

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And there's the culprit. And you know, it's just something new every day. It's unbelievable.

Chris Gammell: I was amazed that they can, you know, lose planes and instruments. Like, you know, like how I don't understand.

Dave Jones: It's bizarre these days. Well, see, there were like three or four different methods of locating that plane on that plane. Right. And like, they all fail, like they all were shut down or failed in some way. So there was no shortage of redundancy on there. There could have been a couple more, for example, if they subscribe to the GPS pinging service with the satellites. Hey, you know, they would have had more accurate data. But, you know, at the end of the day, for some reason, all these multiple redundant, all these multiple separate systems failed.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. Well, did, so have they come back about that? Cause they kept saying, I remember at one point they were saying that all these must've been shut off specifically. And.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, it's anyone who's not, you know, anyone who doesn't want to go the conspiracy theory route, all the, all the airline pilots, they all say there was a fire. Something happened on the plane. There was a fire. It took out the systems. Right. And, you know, and they were so busy panicking, trying to keep the plane flying and everything. And, you know, getting down to the, getting down to altitude so they don't run out of oxygen.

Dave Jones: Right. You know, because if something like that happens and the cabin depressurizes, they've only got two minutes of oxygen to get down to a certain level.

Chris Gammell: otherwise they're all. In closed space. Right.

Dave Jones: And, and they've only got, yeah, two minutes worth of oxygen. So they have to get down. If they don't, well, they all go unconscious and the plane keeps flying on. It's original.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I see. I see. Yeah. See, I haven't, I haven't been following that closely. Yeah. Well, when people were talking about that though, they were talking about, you know, the, the whole, uh, taking, taking the systems down. And the question that kept coming up is like, well, but they said that that's possible. And like,

Dave Jones: yeah, it's possible, but there's no reason for it. No one's come up with any motive or anything. No, I know, but that's not my point. Why go there? No, no, but that's not my point.

Chris Gammell: Why, why is that possible? I don't understand that. That's what, like in terms of system design, it shouldn't be. Yeah. Why is that a switch that's possible for anyone outside of a, a technician on the ground? And you should know that by the time it takes off. Like that's the part that I didn't understand. Even if it, yeah, even if there was full motive,

Dave Jones: it should only be accessible from a hatch on the outside of the plane or something. Right. Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There should be a GPS, you know, transponder there that just cannot be switched off, has its own battery, everything, you know? So even if you reset, well, they think what may have happened is they may have, an emergency happened, fire, whatever. They went in and pulled all the circuit breakers, which actually shut off all the systems. because that was the only way that they could stop the spread of the fire or the problem or whatever it was. So they reckon that's one of the, one of the, that makes scenarios that could have happened. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's crazy, man.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I know, but, yeah,

Chris Gammell: so that's, that's, that's pretty bonkers. So that, that whole, that whole situation, just how, I mean, how planes lost and it's off, off, you know, this flight path and everything, but yeah, definitely. I did see the Doppler shift thing today and that was very cool math.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That was, that's the first time they've ever done it. And someone, you know, I can, I can imagine some engineer in his cubicle sort of poking his head over top. Um, Hey guys, I think I figured out a way we might be able to track it down and everyone's going, bullshit, go back to your cubicle, you know? Nerd. We'll handle it. Nerd. Yeah. And well, yeah, some, some nerd figured it out that, yeah, they could get it more accurate by analyzing and then correlating to ones that they know. Like if they didn't have reference aircraft that they knew exactly where they were to actually get the reference template to compare it to.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: That's how they did it. So yeah, fantastic.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that is cool. So, so then they'll be able to pick up pings from sonar and stuff like that eventually if they do find it too. Right.

Dave Jones: Speaking of which, uh,

Chris Gammell: my equipment that I help design and build will likely be used. Really? In that. So that's the sonar, sonar gram, sonar phone, something like that. What's it called?

Dave Jones: Sonar boys. The, yes, the Australian Navy Barra sonar boy. I, I worked on the Barra sonar boy project back in the, like sonar boy. Back in the nineties. Yeah. Sonar boy.

Chris Gammell: Oh, look at that. You should be on the news, man. You and Greg could like hang out on the news together.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, um, yeah, they'll be dropping those from the planes. Um, they've got more sensitive ones these days, but, um, I'm pretty sure that the sonar boys that I desire would be able to pick up the pings from the, uh, from, from the black box, but they are very deep. So then they're like, uh,

Chris Gammell: it's like a, uh, like a transponder. Then it basically, uh, it bounces a signal higher.

Dave Jones: The black box has a transponder. Right, right, right. But I mean,

Chris Gammell: they have to find it in the next week. It's going to be like, uh, it would basically, you know, it detected the signals there and then power up the signal and send it to a satellite or something. Is that the idea?

Dave Jones: No, no, it just sends out a ping in the water. Right,

Chris Gammell: but what happens when it finds the ping? That's what I mean. Like, these, these things that get.

Dave Jones: Well, the sonar boy has multiple hydrophones. It can detect the angle and the direction of the sound. So it knows.

Chris Gammell: But then it talks to some other.

Dave Jones: No, it doesn't talk to anything. No. Oh, well, no, it talks. It talks back to the plane.

Dave Jones: I found it. The sonar boy says I found it. And a little flag comes up. Yeah, exactly. I, I actually designed a little flag to pop up like this in the water. You know, great design, Dave.

Chris Gammell: Great design.

Dave Jones: Hey, it's fail safe. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Unless a shark eats it. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And,

Chris Gammell: bacon flag.

Dave Jones: No, no, the sonar boy transmits the data back to the plane. Okay. Okay. So it's a satellite. Or the boat, it was tossed out.

SPEAKER_01: Right.

Dave Jones: But they only work for four or eight hours and then it automatically scuttles itself to the bottom.

Chris Gammell: Ah, that's the one you were talking about the other week.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's cool, man.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. So military technology, you know, that's what it has to do because you don't want the Russian fishing trawlers coming around and find it and picking it up and figuring it, figuring out how your sonar works. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: They automatically sink themselves. Yeah. Yeah. I had a little circuit which, you know, timed out and burnt a resistor and actually just put current through a resistor which was taped or in a little pocket on the inside of the inflatable floaty bag that sits on the surface. And bingo, it burns a hole in the side and the thing sinks.

Chris Gammell: Down it goes. That's pretty funny. Yeah. Yeah, it is. I mean, as well, so we didn't really talk about this when it happened because it was about two weeks ago when we were doing our last show. I think it was just, I think we had just heard about it. But, but yeah, there were some free scale employees that were on the flight as well.

Dave Jones: there were like 20 of them. Yeah,

Chris Gammell: it was crazy.

Dave Jones: And of course, the conspiracy theories instantly came out that it was the competitors or they, or they, or they actually hijacked the plane to steal all their employees. That's ridiculous. Man, these people are wacko. Yeah. Really.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, I mean, even though it's provided intrigue and stuff like that, it's just, it is tragic. I mean, these kinds of things always.

Dave Jones: Yep. It's in these big companies, it's actually corporate. They will have corporate policies that say, you know, that limit the maximum number of executives that can fly on the same plane.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: This is common. This is common in any big company.

Chris Gammell: Right. And I mean, that's just like, you know, the president and the vice president of the States can't, can't be on the same transport as well.

Dave Jones: A plane. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because if they go down, well, you know, it's the speaker of the house. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. We used, we used to joke about that at work that, you know, we'd all go out to lunch and we'd have enough people there in a car, driving a lunch to take down the whole product line. And you think about it. I mean, like a tragedy is still tragedy, but like that could severely impact a company. Right. I mean, if you think about. Oh, totally. Knowledge leaders within a company, you know, like there's usually that one guy who, you know, he's just does a lot of important stuff and it's all stuck in his brain. And for some reason, you know, he's too worked up to, to ever document it or anything like that, or he just can't be replaced because of how he, he or she did their work. And that's it, man.

Dave Jones: It's very rare that a company go down due to one person, but you know, you knock out, you know, most of your top people and well, it's all over red Rover.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Well, yeah, I don't think it would, you know, it's not like the whole thing would fall apart unless they're, you know, doing like hot fixes every day, but it's like, if you know, the product might not have any future after that, then though, right. If they're, if they're the ones who are the architects and everything, it's just, it's, that's, that's it then. So.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yes. It's very, it's, it's, uh, we're sad to hear that. So hopefully, hopefully the conclusion will come up soon. That's kind of the, that's what everyone's waiting for. Well,

Dave Jones: they'd better make it soon because that transport and I only works for another week tops or something like that. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Otherwise, and then it's, yeah, then it turns off. Actually, they're not quite sure because you know, what temperature is the, you know, the water is very cold. It limits the battery life and, you know, all sorts of stuff and there's variability in that. Yeah. And there's variability in, in any battery capacity at a certain temperature, you know, you characterize one, well, that may not be how the one other one operates. It might be, you know, five days less battery life or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm always amazed too. Like, I mean, you think about these search, these search parties that are going out too, like, and just like, they've been talking about how rough the waters have been, but man, the ocean is a big, scary place. You know, like, it's not, it's not,

Dave Jones: the other interesting thing I read this morning, some Australian researcher did his PhD thesis on exactly this, right? Oh yeah. What he did is he actually went out to the Indian ocean, almost where the plane was, like not far away, actually, like six months ago. And he dropped, um, multiple sonoboys in the same location, right? Like that was just meters apart. Okay. And they would then drift apart hundreds of hundreds of kilometers per day. Oh jeez. Wow. So they wouldn't even stay together. That's how chaotic the currents are. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And the currents are just taking things everywhere, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Everywhere. It's just completely chaotic.

Chris Gammell: I've seen, I've seen, uh, Finding Nemo. I know about the, uh, East Australian current or whatever it is. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. EAC. You guys got some crazy oceans down there. Yeah. You guys should come experience the, the currents of Lake Erie. It's a pretty intense up here. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Indy, no, but it's so far in the middle of bloody nowhere.

Chris Gammell: I know.

Dave Jones: Like, it's like a five hour flight from, from Perth, which is already in the middle of nowhere. It's like 12 from you, isn't it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, you know, yeah, something like that. If I was to fly to this location, yeah, it's like 10 or 12 hours away. It's in the middle of bloody nowhere. So they fly out there. They spend like five hours flying down there. They can only search for a maximum of two hours. Then they've got to spend five hours flying back.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right.

Dave Jones: What a shit job.

Chris Gammell: Really. Yeah. That's a long commute. Oh man.

Dave Jones: Yep. Especially in the back of a bloody, you know, P3 Orion or something like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Some cargo plane with just a bunch of equipment. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's not exactly a business class.

Chris Gammell: No, not quite.

Dave Jones: It's not even, at that point, you'd be praying for cattle class, you know, please can I have cattle class right at the back near the toilet? Right. Right. No recline. That'd be luxury.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Speaking of flying, I'm going to be, I changed, I changed the plans around. I'm, I'm going out to EE live this year.

Dave Jones: What's EE live?

Chris Gammell: It used to be ESC. The, Oh, ESC, right. Design West as well. ESC, Silicon Valley. Okay. So I will be out there.

Dave Jones: I was invited to that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. So it's a shorter, shorter flight for me. Slightly, slightly shorter. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's only 15 hours for me.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Short, short 15 hours. So, yeah, I, I'm definitely terrified of flying now. You know, try to, try to put it on your mind, but it's, you know, it's there right now. And it's, it's stupid, right? It's no different statistically. It's stupid. Yeah. Yeah. But, man. Yeah. So I'll be out there though. And, so I'm not sure if, I'm guessing a couple of listeners will be out there. I know Alicia will be out there speaking. We talked to her about that when she was on the show. I think, you know, a couple of other past guests are bunnies, bunnies, bunny Huang's given the keynote as well.

Chris Gammell: Oh, hopefully we'll get to meet up with him as well. And if, if there aren't any planned events, I will be tweeting about meetups somewhere. So nothing, nothing solid yet, but it's always good to try and get together and meet up and stuff.

Dave Jones: So this is the one in San Jose.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yep. Yep. Yep. I'll be out there.

Dave Jones: It's at the McHenry adventure, uh, McHenry, McHenry.

Chris Gammell: Uh, yeah. Something convention center. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The one right in downtown next to the computer history museum. So,

Dave Jones: yep. Been there. Got the t-shirt.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Good.

Dave Jones: No, it's not, it's not next to the computer history museum. That's, that's in bloody whoop whoop.

Chris Gammell: Nuh-uh. They moved it.

Dave Jones: Oh, I think so. it was not the McHenry event, um, convention center then.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no. The, the convention, you're right. It is that convention center. It's right downtown though. And I'm pretty sure the computer history museum is right there too.

Dave Jones: No, it's not the computer history. I had to get a bloody, I had to get a bus and they walk for an hour to get to the computer history. Really? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Did you go to the right one? I thought I saw it like right across the, street. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I, I, uh, computer history museum. I think you're wrong. Oh, mountain view. I think you're wrong, dude. I think I am wrong. You're right. So what the hell's right there?

Dave Jones: There you go. See, I know, I know San Jose better than you. Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: You're really, uh, hurting my feelings there now that I've been there twice. Right. Oh, okay. What the heck was I thinking about? There's something right in downtown, uh, San Jose. I'm not sure what it is. So. There's something there. And I saw that last time too.

Dave Jones: There's a science museum, which is just across the road.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Maybe that, maybe that's what I'm thinking of. But, uh,

Dave Jones: right. Anywho, I'll be there. There's the, uh, children's, um, near, uh, was way. If you go down was way, it's named after the was, of course. Um, that's just down the road. I can even tell you that it's a South of the McHenry, uh, sorry, uh, Southwest of the McHenry adventure, uh, adventure center, convention center. Um, it's Southwest of there was way. And that's the children's science museum or something. It's the children's science museum. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: What the heck was I thinking of? Okay. Well, it must be something. Oh, the tech museum of innovation. That's what I'm looking at. That's what I was thinking of.

Dave Jones: The tech museum of innovation. That's the one that's across the road.

Chris Gammell: What is that? Do you know or no?

Dave Jones: Uh, yeah, it's not that impressive. Um, they've got this really cool, uh, uh, you know, the rolly ball machines out the front. I'm sure I can find a photo. I've got a photo of it somewhere. And you know, they've got one, you know, in a big glass cabinet and they've got like a hundred rolly steel balls rolling down big contraptions. I love those things.

Chris Gammell: I stand there watching for hours. Okay. I know what you're talking about. I don't know what the word is for me. It's like an ultimate machine kind of thing or whatever those are called. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. There's a name for it. And arms move and balls flip and move from one thing and roll. And yep. Yeah, it's great. And little conveyor belts taken back up the top. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. It's fun to watch. Sure.

Dave Jones: There's a word for those things. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, that's out the front. I went inside. It's not that. I just went, meh, you know, so. Okay. Don't feel bad if you miss it. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Uh, yeah. So I'll be in the area though. And, uh, if people want to meet up, give me a shout. Uh, we'll maybe have a amp hour meetup somewhere. If not, I'll probably find the, uh, whoever's closest, uh, you know, giving beer on the show floor or whatever, you know, you can always find, find one of those, the show floor beer, beer booths. That's all that matters.

Dave Jones: You should have your own, uh, booth and you know, you should be, have your own, uh, homebrew there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Uh, you know, that's not a bad idea. Uh, I don't homebrew, so that might be kind of tough. I might not make the, the cutoff. It's in about a week.

Dave Jones: So I thought you homebrew.

Chris Gammell: No, I never got into that. I, I leave that up to others. A lot of people do that though. Um,

Dave Jones: right.

Chris Gammell: I can't, uh, if I had that much beer in my house, Dave, it'd be a very bad thing. They're right. Yeah. So. Okay. It'd be bad. Uh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Hey, big thing that happened since we, last on the show.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, uh, yeah, get out your bingo cards, folks. There's probably lots of wank words in here. I know what this is. Spark fun.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Multimeters. Come on. Everybody's probably heard about this by now, right? I'm always interested. Like, you know, we talk about this stuff, but obviously it's, it's kind of been talked about a bit. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it, it is textbook reply from fluke. If you haven't heard about it, uh, I'll give you the skinny spark fun, um, tried to import 2000 multimeters, little $15 ones, probably cost them five bucks a pop, right? Straight out of China. Like they're spark fun branded and, you know, they've carefully chosen it to be, you know, economical and suitable for, suitable for beginners, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, they've been selling for ages.

Chris Gammell: We know what these are. I mean, these.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They just been rebadged. There's some other model, you know, one of the market.

Chris Gammell: You're going to find something exactly like this and it's going to have 14 different badges. Right.

Dave Jones: Exactly. But Hey, it gets the spark fun badge on. Anyway, they've imported these before. Apparently no problem. Sold them. But this 2000, they got a letter from the customs department saying, uh, we will not let these into the country. Uh, you've been busted. It's violating flukes, uh, trademark slash trade dress, um, uh, order that we've got, which says, you know, these multimeters are not to be imported into this country and, uh, tough tits. What would you like us to do with them? We can ship them back or we can destroy them at your cost. Right. Take your pick.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because, because they're yellow or because they have a yellow holster.

Chris Gammell: It's the holster. What do you, what do you mean by holster? You mean,

Dave Jones: it's the holster, the, the, you know, the holster around the outside, the rubber boot, as you guys might call them.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. I think holster, I think like a carrying case, like a, like a cowboy. Oh no, no, no, no. Sorry. We call it. Well,

Dave Jones: even flute call it a holster.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Okay.

Dave Jones: Right. It's, it's the yellow boot, rubber boot, which goes around the outside of the meter. And that is flukes trade dress. It's not a trademark. Let, uh, be, we have to be, uh, rather clear. People think this is a trademark issue. It's not strictly so. It's actually trade dress. And what that means is that your, your company, yeah, your company has a history of selling something that looks a certain way. Your reputation is built on something, be it in this case, the, the yellow holster, the yellow outline with a dark colored meter. Fluke have been selling those since, um, I did, I did my research since, uh, nine, 1988. Um,

SPEAKER_01: okay.

Dave Jones: So with the fluke 80 series, which was the first to have that. And they've been doing that ever since, but they only trademarked it in 2000 and it was granted in 2003, but it's not specifically a trademark. As I said, it's trade dress, trade dress. So yes, fluke put in, uh, I can't remember the exact term. I'd have to look it up, but they put in a basically got, no, they, here it is. They, they got a trade commission exclusion order, um, which basically tells the customs department, you know, to be on the lookout for any multimeters. And they listed like a dozen different brands. Spark fund weren't one of them, but they listed, you know,

Chris Gammell: like 10 different brands. Yeah. There's someone whose job it is to look for this stuff, right? DMM comes into country. Here's a list of things that you should look for. Right. Which is kind of crazy.

Dave Jones: So it's a trade commission exclusion order. So technically the customs are supposed to check all multimeters that come into the country because fluke is so important and special that they warrant, yeah, a waste of your taxpayer dollars to do that. Right. So, right. I'm glad it's not my tax dollars. I'll be kicking up more of a stink. And yeah. And apparently, yeah, like this one, this shipment was big enough to get on the radar. Somebody checked. Hey, you know, somebody was really doing their job well. And they checked and said, no, sorry, this kind of meets this exclusion order. It's a, it's got a yellow holster with a grayish colored charcoal colored meter or black meter. And sorry. Wah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So,

Chris Gammell: yeah.

Dave Jones: Um, I, I guess my question would be,

Chris Gammell: okay, so now you and I decide to get a, uh, this is ridiculous example, but you and I decide to get a trade dress restriction on Amp Hour t-shirts, right? The black Amp Hour t-shirt and any Amp Hour t-shirts that come into the country that, or, you know, anyone who does that.

Dave Jones: That would be a trade mark.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Because it's more than trade dress.

Dave Jones: No, it's a better example would be my micro current. Okay.

Chris Gammell: That's a good example.

Dave Jones: Get, say a, a trade dress on a red PCB used as a front panel panel in a black box. That's so dumb. Mounted on a black box, right? Yeah. I know, but you could, right? I don't think you can do it here in Australia, right? It's a, it's a Yankee thing. Okay. It's a, it's a lawyer thing,

Chris Gammell: right? I mean, this is obviously, and it's also going to be big company, right? You're going to have to have some kind of enforcement and you have, to probably pay lots of legal fees and.

Dave Jones: Well, see, that's the thing. Trade dress, because it's not really a trademark issue. It is more based on, well, you know, we will sue you after the fact, you know, we will, you know, look, we've got it. We don't necessarily have a trademark, which shows the exact thing. You haven't copied our meter, but you've copied the look, you know, it's, it's the famous, you know, Microsoft look and feel, you know, the Apple Microsoft look and feel case. It's a similar sort of thing.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. The curved corners and all that other crap.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Curved corners and buttons or a tablet or whatever, you know, similar sort of, yeah, similar sort of thing. And, but in this case, there's a mechanism in the U S as part of this, you know, trade exclusion order thing, which allows you to, you know, basically try and get things excluded from the country automatically. So that's just,

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I don't know how to feel about it. And,

Dave Jones: and the thing is, this has not been tested in court, right? You know, trade dress is not like a trademark. It's not like you've copied their logo and it's absolutely obvious and you're going to lose that court case. It's probably, if SparkFun had enough money, they could probably challenge this and, you know, they might stand a good chance of winning maybe.

Chris Gammell: And right. So the thing flukes counting on is that other big companies. So Agilent's not going to ever have a big yellow meter or DMM, right? That's tech. Tektronix did.

Dave Jones: Tektronix did. Yeah, but then they bought the other famous case, which I've linked to before. I'll see if I can find the link. Tektronix used to sell the, I've got one right here. It's the, um, uh, well, the eight 70 or something. And it was a yellow, no, it was a black meter in a yellow holster. Right. And fluke wave the wave, their finger at them or their lawyers did and said, you can't do that. And tech went, okay, we'll change it to a blue holster. And they changed it to a blue holster.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It happened. This is documented. I don't know how far it made it in terms of court. I don't think it actually made it to court. I think tech just backed down and went, okay, we do, there's no, there's no spending the money on. We'll just change it to blue. So they did. So I've got two identical Tektronix multimeters here. One's got a yellow holster. One's got a blue holster. And they changed it. Because fluke threatened them, which, you know, like, it's, you can kind of sort of understand, right? From a, you, you, you want to protect your brand and you want to protect your look. And, you know, fluke is saying, Hey, we're doing this to protect you. You know, we're doing this for you, the customer, because you might be confused. You're, you're so dumb. You might confuse a $10 cheapie Shenzhen market meter with our quality fluke. And you go use it and kill yourself. Guys, you know, we're protecting you.

Chris Gammell: Those people at the trade booth, they're just giving away fluke 87s. Yeah, right, guys. Look again. That's, that's flake. That's flake 182. Right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: This is why, like anyone in the, this is not freaking, you know, the redneck consumer industry, right? Right. Dumb people buying these. These are, you know, they're, they're skilled practitioners in the field. Right.

Chris Gammell: Buying these. That are paying for that extra digit or paying for the, you know, that other feature. And they know they're paying for it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And, and that's why I think there would be a good challenge. You'd stand a good chance, chance of winning a challenge to this because fluke would have to prove that, you know, the person, the, you know, the average person buying these would be confused. And the answer is, I don't think they would.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, they know exactly what they're buying. They're buying a cheap Chinese meter. Right.

Chris Gammell: And they're buying it because it's cheap. Right. Because, yeah, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. And they know it's not a fluke. Well,

Chris Gammell: let's get to the response and move on from this because I think we're spending too much time on lawyer stuff as well.

Dave Jones: We are.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So what's the response, Dave?

Dave Jones: The response is fluke came out and said, Oh yes, we love spark fun and we support the educational community. Rah, rah, wank, wank. I don't have it here in front of me, but yeah, fluke said, yes, we will give you free meters more than the value of the $30,000. It's going to cost you to scrap these things, even though it's only going to cost them like less than 10 grand or something because they buy them for peanuts. Anyway, uh, yeah, we will give you these multi meters and you can do whatever you want with them. Hint, hint, which means you will give them away. Otherwise you'll look like the bad guys and not fluke. Right. It was a brilliant, you know, it was, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: It's textbook.

Chris Gammell: It's textbook. And that's, yeah, that's what it is. Someone textbook. Someone is patting themselves on the back.

SPEAKER_01: They didn't fix the problem. We had a social media response this year, guys. Yay. Yay. We responded to controversy. We got our brand back. Yay. Yay.

Chris Gammell: Okay, cool. Well,

Dave Jones: and, and it may, and of course, and they, they didn't back down. They said, we will continue to vigorously, you know, I'm paraphrasing vigorously protect our trademark because it's protecting you, the customer, rah, rah, rah, you know, and, but we will give these meters for free because we support and, and, you know, spark fun and the engine and the educational community. And so spark fun actually let and were left, um, you know, they got the raw end of the stick here. A, the problem wasn't fixed, right? Fluke didn't say, oh, sorry, no, you can keep the meters. No, no, no, no, no. Yeah. You have to destroy them. Right. Or you have to do whatever you want with them. Um, no, we won't, you know, we won't talk to customers and let the meters come in, you know, so that they can go to, so that you can give them to hobbyists to, no, no, they fail. So they're not, so spark fun are out the, however much it costs them to buy these meters.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Uh, plus they have to give the flukes away. You know, they can't sell them. Fluke didn't say that they couldn't sell them. Oh, right. Of course, spark fun would, would have looked like the bad guy. Right. So yeah. So the fluke, uh, press release was worded in a, you know, not so subtle way that sort of hinted that spark fun should give these away. Otherwise you'll be bad.

Chris Gammell: I know this is, this is so dumb. This is, so spark fun lose all around pretty much. I know.

Dave Jones: Except for the advertising, because they probably got more in advertising for this than, you know, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Chris Gammell: I suppose so. Yeah. Right. In the industry. I'm so sick of this already. I mean, it really is, right? It's like, okay, whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Exactly. Anyway, classic response from fluke textbook came direct from their CEO, you know?

Chris Gammell: Uh, I guess the real question is, okay, so fluke, you're protecting your trademark and your trade dress, whatever. What have you done for me lately? What's your new meter? Right. I mean, that's all I care about. I mean, honestly, exactly. Okay. This, this stuff is a blip. I, I can't, I can't find any, I can't muster any enthusiasm about this. I saw it, you know, of course, but yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And SparkFun. Me neither.

Dave Jones: I was going to do a rant on it, but then they responded too quickly.

Speaker ?: Yeah,

Chris Gammell: I'm surprised SparkFun actually didn't have a red multimeter, because I mean, they have red everything. I mean, they have red boards and, you know, like all this stuff. Yeah,

Dave Jones: exactly. That's their logo.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So maybe it's just a, you know, that's probably what's going to happen next. You know, that's probably what I would do. And, uh, good for them, you know, brand everything if you want to. All right. Back to other stuff.

Dave Jones: It actually came with a red probe and a red cardboard backing.

Chris Gammell: Oh, there you go. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Does that count? Right. No, but yeah, you would think that they would have the SparkFun red holster or something.

Chris Gammell: I have a question for you, uh, because I've been struggling with this actually. What is the, and I know, I already know what your response is going to be, but I'm going to tell you no to that too. What is the cheapest oscilloscope you can find?

Dave Jones: The cheap, well, what are you talking about when you say oscilloscope? Like we're talking brand new.

Chris Gammell: Uh, uh, I, okay. Well, that's what I figured you're going to say. Yeah. You're going to say, Oh, go buy an analog scope off eBay. Right. And, and I, no, no. Yeah. I, I need some,

Dave Jones: it's an open-ended question. I need more. Okay. So,

Chris Gammell: so here's the real situation I I'm trying to find. So I have, you know, a bunch of people signed up, signing up for session one B of contextual electronics. Right. And basically I need to have,

Dave Jones: you have to recommend,

Chris Gammell: I need to have a standard one, right? Cause the real problem, it's actually not a problem of finding a good one. It's, it's having a good one standard and, and, uh, and available so that, you know, if everybody has it, then when you start troubleshooting, you need to start from the same point of, okay, well, did you do this step one? Right. And so I, I've started evaluating them and I just, Oh man, this low end.

Dave Jones: Your eyes rolled in the back of your head. It's tough. I know. It's tough. I know.

Chris Gammell: So it's crazy. What do you got for me?

Dave Jones: And we're talking bench here, right? We're talking bench,

Chris Gammell: bench or handheld. I mean, really whatever's cheap. I honestly, it's a, it's a, it's a cost issue, right? I mean, like what is the, I mean, obviously, you know, you're, you, you talk about the DS 1052. Well,

Dave Jones: then the cheapest ones like a DEO Nano or some little toy thing.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, and that's the thing.

Dave Jones: It's little sub hundred dollar toys.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so that's what I've been evaluating. I don't know. Have you ever looked at those at all or no?

Dave Jones: Yeah. They're shit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Uh, they're like, there's just, they're just toys, you know, they fit an incredibly small niche where you can't afford more than a hundred bucks and you want digital storage and you want it to fit in your pocket or your bag.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no, no. I want to see a signal. Yes, yes, yes. No, I want to see a one megahertz signal or less. I mean, honestly, I don't care about anything more than that. In fact, I'm actually saying I want to throw away scope. I want to, I want to have to the point where.

Dave Jones: Then that's, then that's your ticket. That's the one you get.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Speaker ?: Damn.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, I have a DSO Nano in front of me. I have a hand tech. You ever looked at these hand tech USB scopes? I've tried this out as well. yes. Yep. Yep. You like it? No, nothing. Yes. No.

Dave Jones: Which, which model are you talking about?

Chris Gammell: It's the lowest end one, the 6022, the BE.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. No, I haven't actually seen that in the flesh.

Chris Gammell: So it's a 20 megahertz. In the flesh.

Dave Jones: No, that's pretty expensive, isn't it? That one's not cheap.

Chris Gammell: It's like 80 bucks. Oh, really? Yeah, there's a 20 megahertz one. The only problem though is that it's, so they give you Windows tools for it. And I've, I've tried it out. And I put like Siggen into it and stuff like that. It's, you know, it picks it up. It's fine. And it does up to what? 35 volts, I think. So it's not like it's going to bust if you do like two volts. But the real problem is that people, Linux or Mac, right? I mean, this is, this is a legitimate case where it's like, okay, if it's only going to be Windows, that's, that's a much higher cost. And, you know,

Dave Jones: why do you need that? It's, it's a handheld scope. It's got its own screen. What are you? No, no, no.

Chris Gammell: This is a USB scope, man. Oh,

Dave Jones: USB. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I figured I'd get you going on that one. I was going from handheld to USB.

Chris Gammell: And I've looked at kits and everything else, but you know,

Dave Jones: spiraling down the toilet.

Chris Gammell: I know, exactly. Well, that's what it comes down to, right? I mean, like,

Dave Jones: yeah, yeah. I know. Like people want magic. They, you know,

Chris Gammell: right. And you got to pay for quality, right?

Dave Jones: They want some fantastic scope for a hundred bucks. I'm sorry. You're not going to get one. I don't want a fantastic.

Chris Gammell: I want a, I want a scope for a hundred bucks. That's honestly what it comes down to.

Dave Jones: Well, then that's all you're going to get. You got to get a scope. It might display a waveform kind of, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know. There's, I guess there's still room in the market for innovation. I mean, the thing is like a lot of stuff, there's a lot of crap out there, right? I mean, there, there is, there's some, some stuff out there. Like I, you know, I looked at that, what's the one that, the Gabotronics as well. There was that little tiny scope as well. Oh, yes,

Dave Jones: yes. The little one that sits on a breadboard. Yeah. Right, right, right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Dave Jones: Right. And I mean like, honestly,

Chris Gammell: for the stuff I'm doing, you know, it's not, I just need to see some kind of movement. Right. I mean, that's, that's the low end that I, I'm dealing with. And, you know, it's, it's a,

Dave Jones: well, then that might do the job, that little module. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So you're not going to help me here, huh? You, you and your $20,000, uh, scopes that you get gifted.

Dave Jones: I've, I've helped you. I've said that.

Chris Gammell: You're screwed.

Dave Jones: You, you've already identified the ones that are suitable and that's it. Yeah. There's nothing magically better, you know? I'm sorry.

Chris Gammell: If there's anyone else out there that knows of a sub $100 scope,

Dave Jones: you can use your sound card.

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: You want cheap? Use your bloody sound card.

Chris Gammell: Who has a sound card? Are you saying like a mic input? You're saying? Yeah, mic input. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Which is AC only. It's going to be AC coupled. So you forget about DC on there.

Dave Jones: you know, usually, no, usually the way you do it is you get a sound card, you modify it for DC input. So you bypass the AC coupling caps. Yep. And you put an amplifier front end, you know, you will amplifier slash attenuate a front end. You can, you can buy a kit from like Jaycar.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right, right, right.

Dave Jones: That, you know, is a front end for your sound card. It's got a couple of knobs that, you know, can set the range and all that sort of stuff. And you plug a standard one mic probe into it.

Chris Gammell: Huh. Yeah. Yep. Damn it. I don't know. It's, it's just, it's tough, right? Because I like, you know, people,

Dave Jones: it's not tough. Just pick one. They're, they're all equally shit. Yeah. Well, no, no,

Chris Gammell: the tough part is, is just pick the lowest cost one is asking people to pay for the course and then pay for parts and pay for, you know, like, and pay for gear if they don't have it as well. Right. That's kind of the real problem is that, you know, like everybody's dealt with this listeners, you know, you're getting started up, right? You got to build your stuff up, right?

Dave Jones: Everyone bought their first scope, of course.

Chris Gammell: Right. And you got to, you know, you got to kind of get to that point. And it's a tough sell when it's like, you know, trying to tell someone, oh, well, just, you know, start with a $400 scope, right? I, I have a Rigol. I enjoy it. Like, it's a good scope.

Dave Jones: I started with an $800 scope.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I saved up all my money.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You still have it?

Dave Jones: When, when I was a kid, no. What was it? I sold it a long time ago. It was a, Kikisui COS 5020.

Chris Gammell: Kikisui, huh?

Dave Jones: 20 megahertz dual channel.

Chris Gammell: Nice. Scope. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Because I didn't know anyone to get a hand-me-down.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, yeah. And that would be the best case, right? You know,

Dave Jones: or anything. I just didn't know anyone. Right. So I had to, you know, I worked my ass off when I was a kid. Yep. Earning pocket. I saved all up and I bought an $800 scope, like when I was like 13 or something.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, and it is a testament to how much more accessible the, the field is now too, that there is even an option for an $80 scope. there's a,

Dave Jones: that, that was the most affordable option back then.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: You know, or no, maybe five, 600 was like the cheap, you know, you could get like a single channel 10 megahertz, I think for like 600 bucks. But I, I, you know, I, I was proud that I'd saved up the money and I could afford a real, you know, proper 20 megahertz. Dual Channel.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. And you probably, uh, use the hell out of that thing, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. And I, I can remember I went to the trip. I was so proud. I hopped on the train. I went all the way to the city to David Reed electronics in the city. Yeah. Cause that was the only place you could buy it. You know, there was none of this mail order credit card online shit. When I was a boy. Yeah,

Chris Gammell: exactly.

Dave Jones: I went in there and I took the money out of the, uh, took the money out of the machine. Yeah. I paid cash. Nice. I paid cash for my 20 megahertz dual channel scope.

Chris Gammell: Wow. Dang, man.

Dave Jones: But they didn't have any stock. I was so disappointed. They had, they, they had to deliver it to me. Oh man, that was devastating. That last waiting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, ah, yes. Those were the days. Oh goodness.

Chris Gammell: Well, uh, what was your first scope? Uh, first scope was a, uh,

Dave Jones: yeah, but you're different. You started when you were like 20.

Dave Jones: exactly. Yeah. So, I mean,

Chris Gammell: I had scopes at work before I had one at home. Right. So that's the difference.

Dave Jones: Yeah. There you go. So, okay. Fail. All right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Not a fail. It's just a different circumstance, man. That's why, that's why you're better at this shit than me, you know?

Dave Jones: I've been doing it longer.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Well, this is so, uh, speaking of the, the real hardware engineer syndrome, did you read this thing about the, uh, the real, uh, programmer syndrome? Did you, uh, no catch that one? So basically it was this thing, it was, it was going around Reddit a while back. And basically, you know, it's, and it's, it's something that we've probably all felt. It's like, uh, you know, it's an imposter syndrome basically for technology. Right. So you always look around, you think your coworkers are doing more work. You think they're working harder. You think they're doing better. Right. And then basically that, that helps drive you. And sometimes it drives people to the point of, of, you know, burnout, overwork, that kind of thing. And, uh, and so there's just, you know, there's just a lot of coverage about that. This, you know, there's these memes that kind of pop up. Pop up through, uh, through the internet and stuff, but you know, I, I, I, I had asked on, on Reddit if this exists in electronics too. Right. I mean, and it's,

Dave Jones: Oh, totally.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think, I think so. I mean, you look at like, like watching YouTube videos, right? Like watching your videos or Alan's or Jerry's or, I mean, anyone on YouTube and you, you know, you, you look at these videos, you're like, Oh my God.

Dave Jones: There's always someone doing better stuff.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Or if you watch like Hackaday, right? You're like, Holy crap. Everybody's doing projects right now. And I can't even get out of bed in the morning. Yeah. I know. It's so cool. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Every time somebody else up, one of the other electronics video bloggers uploads a video, I go, Oh, look at that. Shit. You know, isn't that good? Yeah. It's, yeah. How did they do? Oh, look at all the work they put into that. Oh shit. I couldn't possibly do that. Right. You know, right. Well, like Scott talked about inclination, they're so dedicated to it. Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, like Scott talked about his soldering video too. Like you, we had that on the show, right? I guess, you know, you guys are talking about the soldering videos and comparing, stats and everything like that. And Scott's like, yeah, he said he worked on it for a hundred hours.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Mine, mine, I slapped mine together in, in bloody, you know, an hour or two. Right. But he went, did a proper course, got all the right tools and, and did it professionally with all the best tools and everything. Like shit. You know, I threw mine together in half an hour. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like, you know, and yeah, his was better, you know, because of it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. And that's, and so, so, uh, uh, Bob, a delay, Bob, bad delay. Uh, on Reddit. I hate those usernames. I always say his real names. Anyways, uh, he, he wrote about that too, you know, and basically how there's always something new to learn as well. Right. I mean, that's the, that's one of the best things about electronics is that, you know, there's, there's always another field to jump into. Right. I mean, I, I've been kind of getting the itch for RF lately and, you know, like FPGAs are always at the back of my mind and, you know, it's just like there's, and there's always programming and everything else. And, but that also kind of feeds into that same thing of like, Oh, I don't know anything. I got to keep going. And that's even before you get depth on one product, you know, one field or you try and jump into another. It's just a terrible feeling. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. It's totally real. Yeah. Not, not just programming. You can do about it except do what you enjoy doing. And, you know, that's it.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: I would try and compete. Trying to compete is just, I don't know, but if that drives you, if that's the thing that drives you, okay, but you know, fine. So be it. But no, I think, you know, I, ideally you shouldn't try and compete. You should do your own thing. Do what you enjoy is always the first option. I think.

Chris Gammell: Yes, I agree. I agree.

Dave Jones: And if it's not as advanced as what somebody else is doing, well, so what, you know, if it isn't as cool, well, so what, at least you're enjoyed, you enjoy doing it.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. I think I wish I would.

Dave Jones: Hey, some people, some people enjoy competing, right? Oh, I'm going to make a better video than that guy. I'm going to design a cooler project than him. I'm going to, you know, my thing's going to be twice as fast or half the power as that guy over there. You know? Yeah. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: So be it.

Chris Gammell: So someone also asked on the, the subreddit about, uh, arm school change. Speaking of things that I have no idea about, uh, cause people are, uh, doing that kind of stuff, I guess. Uh, I, do you, do you do any arm stuff at all? I, that's another one that's just like, not,

Dave Jones: not really. No, no,

Chris Gammell: I don't even know where to start with that stuff. So some people in our audience knows about, know about that thing. So, uh,

Dave Jones: why is it any different to any regular microcontroller? It's not exactly the bloody same. Except when you go, um, typically you're more often than not probably going to go into the high level stuff. You know, you're probably choosing arm processor because you want to run a, yeah. And operating system. You want to drive a big graphical display and you want to network and you want to do this and that jazz.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I guess, I don't know. Well, I guess, you know, Alicia was talking about that a couple of weeks ago though, too. She was talking about doing bare metal stuff on, I think that's where this question came from was talking about that. Oh yeah,

Dave Jones: no, there'll be the fan boys out there. Cause they, oh, they're, eh, man, they are fanatical. The ones who think, oh no, like, you know, pick an Atmel are dead. Why use an 8-bit micro when you can throw a 50 cent, you know, an LPC, right? into everything. Yeah,

Chris Gammell: Cortex M something or other, right? Yeah,

Dave Jones: exactly. And they're, they're, yeah, pretty fanatical. So now, no doubt we'll get complaints.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's one thing we can always guarantee, right Dave? No doubt. Talk to the hand. Yeah, no doubt we'll get complaints. Well, there are some good, Alvaro wrote some, some resources and stuff as well. For, for compiling and stuff like that. So, definitely worth checking out. I guess, I don't know. Just another thing that goes on the list. Put it into Evernote. Add it to the list of things to learn.

Dave Jones: I'm going to try that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: What is the, what is this myth of science and engineering shortage?

Chris Gammell: Oh, you know, same old, same old. Yeah, same old shit. Oh, there's not enough engineers. Yeah, no jobs, even though that people keep talking about it. I don't know. That's not,

Dave Jones: I, there's, is, is there no jobs or there's not enough engineers to fill them?

Chris Gammell: No, the myth is that there's not enough engineers to fill them. Basically. Right. Okay.

Dave Jones: And of course, in the industry, it's complete opposite. Everyone goes, Oh, there's not enough jobs out there.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Exactly. You know, I think I got lucky with that one. Because honestly, you know, you mentioned that I didn't do, you know, hobbyist stuff as a kid. You're totally right about that. And I think I got lucky. I don't think I followed it for the, you know, I always thought that there would be some kind of jobs in electronics. Right. But it's not like I was doing it because of the timing. In fact, I think it all dipped off when I started, I started school in 2001. And I think, you know, like the late nineties, when a lot of the networking stuff was really kicking up, that all fell off by that.

Dave Jones: You started school in 2001.

Chris Gammell: Yes. College.

Dave Jones: I got my first professional job in 1989.

Chris Gammell: Well, you're old.

Chris Gammell: uh,

Dave Jones: shit, I am.

Chris Gammell: So you've had a, you know, you've had a faster start than me, man. Um, yeah. So, um, where was it going? You threw me off. Uh, but you know, like any, anything, like if you follow any kind of those job trends, or anything like that, like where are the jobs and trying to get jobs based on that?

SPEAKER_01: Oh, they're, you're screwed. You know, like you're screwed no matter what.

Chris Gammell: I know. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta do it for enjoying it. And then based on, you know, because if you don't enjoy it, everyone did that. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: In the computer industry, you're around maybe the late nineties. I think the fad was all network. You get your network certification, right? And you're earning $200,000. Right. You're sitting pretty, just plugging cables in. Right. You, you get your Cisco certification, all that sort of jazz. And you know, that was all the rage back then. And the, well, yeah, the market just, yeah, it worked for a couple of years and then the market just absolutely tanked. Yep. You know, all these overqualified freaking cables stuffers, you know?

Chris Gammell: Oh, right. Yeah. I know running, running, pulling cable through conduit kind of thing. Oh,

Dave Jones: exactly. Yep. Yeah. And that, and that, and the wages plummeted, but, and then it became, oh, right. Then there became just oversaturated of people. Yeah. Number of people who would do it. It went from a shortage of people to absolute glut of people. And then the, you know, the wages went down by like, you know, 60, 70% or something. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, and so the same kind of topic actually did come up, uh, in this article about, uh, I, of course I, I was, my, my, my, my, my,

Chris Gammell: my,

Chris Gammell: my,

Chris Gammell: my, my,

Chris Gammell: my, my, my, my,

Chris Gammell: my, my, my, my, my,

Chris Gammell: my,

Chris Gammell: my,

Chris Gammell: uh, basically now that there was a lower cost option. And, and basically because the MBAs and the finance people weren't, the, the bean counters are in charge. Basically, they move stuff to the absolute lowest cost country without any thought to consequence. And basically there's a, there's a whole article. It's all, it's in Boston review. It's actually quite a good article talking about, you know, basically the stockholder pressures and stuff like that basically pushed all this stuff off. And it's not that it's right or wrong. It just did. Um, and basically that's, that's what drove a lot of manufacturing out of the U S or not Australia and stuff like that, just because chasing lowest cost countries. And now, now that it's slowed down in terms of where it moves, right? It's, you know, it's, I don't hear too much about things moving to Thailand. Right. And now it's just like, right. Shenzhen's get more expensive. Right. And it's still there. Hey guys, it's still there. So, uh, yeah, it's kind of,

Dave Jones: here's an interesting thought that just occurred to me.

Chris Gammell: What's that?

Dave Jones: Uh, we possibly come in towards a glut of electronics people, just like that networking thing happened with the, the new hacker maker craze, right? Every man and his dog and girls, um, are doing electronics, right? Everyone's doing electronics. Is there going to be a glut of people looking for electronics jobs out there with, you know, they've done some electronics and they think, well, I can go in the industry and get a job.

Chris Gammell: Uh, I think maybe not. I think you're right. I think you're totally right. If there, if there was all of the people that worked on electronics, went out tomorrow and started looking for jobs and wanted to find a job that works on electronics,

Dave Jones: then wages would plummet. Not even wages would plummet. They just,

Chris Gammell: no one would find anything. I think that's, you know, but I think,

Dave Jones: and wages would plummet as a consequence because companies are always, they will shoot, companies will shoot themselves in the foot. They won't pay good money to hire someone good. They will pay low money to hire someone shit. And, you know, who can barely do the job and then they'll just make do. With that person. Although I'll hire two of those people and make up for it. Same thing. You know, it still costs less than a really good one. Right. Yeah. Right. And yeah, that's what, that's what companies will do. Cause it's all bottom line.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Stuff. And that's what happened to the network industry. Instead of hiring, you know, good people, they just, Oh, you've got your Cisco certification. You must be good. I'll hire you. But there was such, such a glut. They just, you know, the prices just plummeted.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think, you just went down, you know, it's very possible. I think if you, if you, if you looked at companies that were looking for people that were good with an Arduino, I think, yeah, you'd be right. I mean, I think you'd find that. But then I think about, you know, how many different niches there are. I mean,

Dave Jones: yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, there's only so many people that have written complicated programs for, you know, certain micros, you know, like, but, and that's usually how companies search for that kind of thing. So I, Oh, totally. Yeah. Um,

Dave Jones: if, if those newbies out there who are looking for a job, what it basically comes down to very common in the industry, any smart company will do this. Even, even the dumb ones really will do this to a certain extent is, yeah, if they need someone to program, um, microcontrollers, well, they want somebody who's programmed, um, microcontrollers. They don't want somebody who's programmed, pick microcontrollers. Often that's not good enough. They're going to hire the, um, well, they're going to,

Chris Gammell: they're going to use programs that search through resume banks that search for keywords. Search through resume banks. Yeah. I think the real question there though,

Dave Jones: I don't have all the keywords in there.

Chris Gammell: Is if you want that job, right? I think that ultimately is, you know, I don't know. It's, it's tough for me to say, um, I don't know. That is a, that is a very good question, Dave. I don't think, I don't know. I think it, so say you're like, you're a new grad right now, right? And you just finished an E E degree. Um, the reasons to be concerned are if you don't give a crap, right? If you just want a job, right? Yeah. Then you should be concerned. Um, but if you're interested in it and you're, you know, working on stuff outside of school or outside of work, I think, you know, people are going to be falling all over themselves. So I don't know. I, I guess the real question is, is there, um, is there a, a point, an inflection point where there are less electronics needed? Right. And.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, I mean, they're always going to be needed, but it's always, you know, because everything's in a chip these days. It's, it's, it's plugging chips together, following app notes, that kind of. Right, right, right, right. Electronics, you know, that is so. Right. Yeah. It's systems integration, systems engineering, that kind of stuff. Um, you know, but I, I, I think you nailed it with the phrase, um, there are always, or there's so many niche areas. Yeah. Right. That, so I don't think it's going to happen. I don't, I don't think there's going to be an issue here because the people who've programmed their Arduino or they're, you know, just a hobbyist mucking around, they're not going to get the job that requires, you know, an arm. Right. Or a FPGA or something like that. They're not going to hire, you know, they, they want someone with those specific skills, probably more and more these days.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right, right, right. Perhaps. Well, you know, so I, I gave a talk, was it last weekend in Iowa and I was, I was giving, I was doing out lots of advice, you know, always be wary of people giving out advice, but, but basically, I mean, you, one of the, one of the points I made is that the most loyal you can be to a company is to give your, your hard work. Right. And I might even gotten that from you. I'm not sure. Uh, but that's how you, how loyal you should be to a company, I think. And I think, I think this day and age and how, how this, you know, this whole finance gutted manufacturing thing and just how, how the whole corporate structures are these days as well. I think, you know, I think young and old and, you know, medium aged engineers, uh, they need to be working on their careers and working on themselves and keeping an eye out and basically, you know, developing their own skills, keeping an eye out for trends and basically being prepared to, you know, not necessarily work for yourself, but being in the business of, of looking out for yourself, right? No, one's looking out for you.

Dave Jones: Well, technically no one ever has. See, well, that's not being loyal to the company, is it? And here is, and I don't think you should be loyal to the company. Well, because they're not going to be loyal to you. Right. Right. As you said, you've got to be out there learning stuff just in case you get the ass. Yeah. From the company. Cause they're not going to be loyal to you. I guarantee you that. Right.

Chris Gammell: No, I, no, I,

Dave Jones: that's one thing you can guarantee. Right. No. And I, I said, I said that. So you have to be out there learning all this sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That will be of use in your next job.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You're always looking ahead.

Chris Gammell: The reason I don't like saying, uh, you shouldn't be loyal to a company. Be it. There's always a star there. Right. Because it's not like you should be, you know, putting your hand into the, you know, the, the money pot. Right. It's, it's not that it's, you know, that's why I say the, the best loyalty you can give is your hard work while you're there. You're, you're working hard. You're giving it all, giving, giving it your all, but you're also, you know, your eyes are open, right? You're not, uh, you know, of course, you know, eventually someone's going to tap you on the shoulder and say, we figured out some other way to do this. You're not needed anymore. And so if you're just doing one task over and over and over again, you should probably take a step back and say, what else am I learning? You know, am I learning at work? If I can't learn at work, can I learn outside of work? Right. You always talk about that. Can your design jollies at home. And that's just important. I mean, that's just developing yourself as a professionally developing yourself. Right. And, um,

Dave Jones: yep.

Chris Gammell: If you do that stuff, I think, you know, I, who's going to tell you, no then. Right. Oh, sorry. Sorry. You can't work here anymore. Then you turn around and say, okay, well I'll go work on this stuff somewhere else. Or I'll go work for myself. And, you know, it's just like, okay.

Dave Jones: I've had companies that I've interviewed.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: At, they specifically said that. In fact, I could, uh, name them. Silverbrook.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Shit.

Dave Jones: That's a nutcase. Silverbrook. Yeah. Right. Seriously. You would, they would ask you that at the interview. Do you work on any stuff out? And of course you say, yeah, of course I did. Look what I look. My resume is full of shit. I've worked on on the outside. And they go, you can't do that anymore.

Chris Gammell: And it's like, okay. Screw you, buddy. Oh, you know what? I stopped five minutes ago, by the way. What are you going to do? You're going to send a camera home with me? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like, and yeah, and it got, I've probably talked about this on the show before, but I'll bring it up again. It got so batshit crazy that I actually went into specific cases with them. I said, well, okay, look, if I decide to write a book on gardening. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. I, you know, I just pulled that out of my ass, right? Right. I want to write a book on gardening. Would I be allowed to do that? No. That's ridiculous. No, you're not allowed to do it. Seriously. That's how bad they were.

Chris Gammell: Did you ask him for a list of what you are allowed to do at home?

Dave Jones: I basically said, well, what can I do? And they just all, they, they didn't answer. They all just shook their head. Watch TV.

Chris Gammell: You could watch TV like we do.

Speaker ?: And, and,

Dave Jones: and I actually, I remember saying to him, I remember, don't just shake your head, you know, give me an answer. Cause at this point I was, you know, I was ready to walk out. Yeah. Right. It was bullshit. You know, and don't just shake your head at me. And they all just continue to shake their head at me. It's like, it's ridiculous. Thanks for your time. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's ridiculous, man.

Dave Jones: Unbelievable.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah, I, I, I, I think I'm not worried. I mean, like if you're worried, you know, people are worried, like I get these pangs of fear sometimes too. And I think I mentioned on the show before, when you feel that kind of fear, when you feel that kind of fear about like your job or something else, it means something needs to change, right? It needs to change. You need to change your, you're thinking about it. I think so. Or what you're doing about it. You know, like you can't just sit there and fear and, you know, it's, it's, but I, I'm not worried about people that spend their spare time listening to us. They're probably, they probably care a little bit about electronics. So I'm not, I'm not necessarily worried about them. Golden rule folks have that screw you money at the ready. That too. Yeah. That's, that's a great, that's a great point.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: What was the other one on here that I wanted to mention?

Dave Jones: Oh, hurry it up. We're 10 minutes over. Ah, whatever.

Chris Gammell: No, actually this is kind of relevant too. So, so New York times wrote about this as well.

Dave Jones: Everything's relevant. It's the amp hour.

Chris Gammell: Uh, uh, so if this is, so they wrote about Silicon Valley's youth problem, right? This is the same kind of thing, right? So, so this might be, you know, more akin to your, your question about makers and everything. I like that. Right. So basically there's like the old guard and the new guard. The old guard is, you know, like these big industrial and, and large scale corporations basically working on, you know, big projects, big, important projects. And then, but people, you know, the young people don't want to go work there, right? They want to go work in, the hot new startups. And basically, how do you keep, you know, how do you keep your, how do you keep your talent fresh? Right. And this probably also feeds into that whole, Oh, there's no jobs or there are way too many jobs, um, kind of dichotomy because, well, there's jobs. It's just, no one wants to work there or they're not paying enough or, you know, yada, yada, yada, yada. And, uh,

Dave Jones: I love the cartoon they've got on this page. There's a, there's a man with a, you know, nicely dressed, you know, and he's carrying his notebook and he's telling this young kid, when will you make something that matters? And the young kid's there with his hoodie and his mobile phone, his sneakers. And he says, when will you make something cool? You know, I just think that sums it up. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's nice. Yeah. I mean, it's true, right? I mean, like it's when you tell someone, like, I think about, I forget who was talking about it, but they, you know, they talked about how they wanted, I think it was a podcast. Maybe it was, uh, it might've, it might've been embedded at FM. They were talking about, um, wanting to go work at NASA, right? And how their friends went off to go working on these hot startups. And basically he stuck around at NASA, right? And, and that's, you know, that's, that's a perfect example, right? NASA, you want to go work at NASA, you better put in five years if you want to make any kind of impact at all. And if you really want to make impact, stay there 25 or 30 years, right? Because exactly the timelines are just insane. It's, it's mind numbing testing and retesting and all this, you know, like that's just, that's just how these big, important projects work. You have to be sure. And the, you know, the whole California culture and, oh yes, we move jobs every six months. It's like, okay, yeah, that's great, but you're not going to, you know, how much impact you're going to have in that time. That's what it comes down to. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Usually zero, usually bugger all, because in most cases you're going to fail at that startup. That startup's going to fail.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Or the product never makes it or just dies. You know, that's, that's like 90% of the time. Yeah. You know, the percentage is huge. The percentage of startups, which actually make a useful product that people, you know, and, and actually succeed is, is very small. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, I'm really interested. I mean, so like, obviously this whole hardware startup trend is, is, is very interesting. I have watched this a bit, you know, like the subreddit and everything like that.

Dave Jones: But you only hear about the successes. You don't hear about the failures.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, you do once in a while. I mean, if you can, if you can find, if you want to just go look at like their, their announcement list of, here's all of our new class at our hardware accelerator. And then who haven't I heard from in a couple months? It's okay. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Right. But there's no announcement that, okay, we're closing our doors unless they were already pretty big. But I just think about, you know, like it's, it's a tough hardware. I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it. It's, it's hard to get traction. Right. And, and like to, to build up and all that other stuff, you know, like they're like, we've talked to Scott Miller from dragon, right? Dragon helps a lot of companies build this stuff up. But like dragon would technically be like an industrial company, right? They have people who've been there and have relationships established. Basically there's, you know, hardware startups that come to them are tapping into that, into that, that ecosystem already. Right. And that's, that's kind of the only way to really get that accelerating traction kind of thing. Otherwise, you know, if you're starting from scratch, like how many hardware startups know, like purchasing the ins and outs of purchasing, right? I mean like, okay, exactly. You don't want to get screwed on, on a reel of resistors or a reel of, you know, microcontrollers. Okay. Now what? Yeah. So it's, it's tough. I don't know why I got into that. Why did I start talking about that? I don't know. Well, I think it's just going to be interesting because we'll see, we're going to see more of this. Obviously it's not going to be a trend that goes away and it's, you know, we're going to see more of this. We're going to talk about it in the empire more. So get ready folks.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You think it's a sustainable model though, all this hardware startup trend, is it going to, in 20 years time, are, you know, graduates all going to be lusting after going after the hardware startup or are they going to go, Oh no, it's going to be much safer to go to NASA and,

Chris Gammell: Oh, you know,

Dave Jones: at a big company or.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I don't know. I think. Yeah. So what I always think about it, it's hard to call. Right. Well, we talked about that. So we mentioned the quote unquote quantified self devices and just think about how many are out there now. Right. It's like, okay, there can be more of those. And I think, I just, okay. So I think about like the devices that are in the market and what else is going to be in the market? It's like, okay, sensor plus Bluetooth chip plus app. Okay. How many sensors are out there? How many, how many cases are out there? Right. I mean, it's just like, okay,

Dave Jones: not everyone. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So we're going to have to move to higher levels of complexity, but then you lose, you lose that kind of growth factor and that acceleration that VCs like. And yeah,

Dave Jones: you can't just slap a prototype together, whack it up on a Kickstarter and yeah. And Bob's your uncle.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. No, it requires years of research and, and R and D to, you know, come up with something really innovative. Right. So like once outside of these little sensor, I don't want to say they're easy. They're not easy.

Chris Gammell: Like there, there, there, there's interesting stuff going on there, but once, once that market, once people get kind of like, okay, I have devices that are attached to my phone. I'm getting sick of, you know, my pile of stuff. Right. There's a, uh, uh, Rachel, I forget her last name. She's, she wore around like 20 of those. Like there's like, she literally wore 20 of them. Um, wow. Yeah. And, and you can learn a lot from that, right? They're all different. They all, they're all different. Whatever. Okay. Uh, but, uh,

Dave Jones: and it gets down to the point where they're so pointless, you're not going to wear any.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, and it's just, it's another, it's just, you know, like removing towards just the phone doing everything or, you know, how many screens do you have? Right. And there's all these just ebbs and flows of how many devices people can tolerate. And okay. So we're at that point then. And then what? Well, okay. Now, now your home has the same kind of thing. Okay. Well, we have, you know, 10 connected devices in the home. Okay. And then what? And then, you know, the trend just kind of keeps going like that. Um, it may be, it won't run out of steam. I don't, I don't really know. To what end? Yeah. I don't know, man. I, well, it'll give us things to complain about for years, years into the future. I'm sure. Yeah,

Dave Jones: of course. So the,

Chris Gammell: another brain connected device guys, this one goes in through your eyeball.

Dave Jones: You're rocking. There's another star. It's a hardware startup and it's biomedical and it,

SPEAKER_01: it's on your telephone. Yeah. I remember when phones were used for calling people.

Dave Jones: That was a good impression of a, of a redneck sitting on his front porch.

Chris Gammell: We, uh, we should try and do some, uh, chips of the week in the, in the near future. We haven't done that in a while. I haven't. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah. True.

Chris Gammell: I don't have any on the list this time. So.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll think of something for next time.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, definitely. Uh, anything else this week? I got to watch your video from this week. Your, uh, your power supply ripple. Noise source one. Yeah. That'd look good.

Dave Jones: Fundamentals Friday. Yep. That was another one. That was supposed to be quick. Yeah. You know, I thought, Oh, it'll be a 10 minute video, you know, 47 minutes later or something. Oh, shit. You know, I've got to stop doing that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, we'll, we'll link it in in case people haven't seen it, but, uh, it's good. Come on. That, that people love that stuff, even though if they say they don't, that that's good stuff.

Dave Jones: That's, that's, yeah, I, I, I don't get as much feedback on them. Yeah. I know. You know, people, I know people do like, well,

Chris Gammell: it's the little tiny connected device. Right. And this is the, this is the beefy needs some, you know, need to dig into it. Right. That's the, that's the important stuff, right? The important stuff can be boring and it takes a while.

Dave Jones: Well, no, see, here's the thing, right? That I re I know the reason why the fundamental Fridays aren't as popular, right? People love the concept, right? When I first floated the concept, Oh, I got 10 million thumbs up and people thought this was the greatest thing in the history of the EV log, you know? And they're all so excited. They're wetting their pants over the thought of a new thing every Friday. Right. And, um, and no, the reason it didn't pan out like that is because, uh, because the video is never what they wanted.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right. It has math.

Dave Jones: Odds are it's only going to appeal to, yeah, they were expecting, I don't know, a tutorial on FPGAs and it's not, it's some, it's bloody power supply noise and they didn't want that.

Chris Gammell: but I do FPGAs.

Dave Jones: Right. So they get disappointed and they go, well, I'm not going to comment on that. Watch it anyways. It's good for you.

Chris Gammell: I'm going to eat your vegetables and watch Dave talk about stuff.

Dave Jones: I know that people, they watch less, right? I know they don't even bother clicking play, but something with broader appeal, like a mailbag or maybe even a teardown or some other thing. Yeah. It's,

Dave Jones: you know,

Speaker ?: it's,

Dave Jones: you know, it's,

Speaker ?: you know,

Dave Jones: it's,

Speaker ?: you know,

Dave Jones: it's,

Dave Jones: it's, it's,

Dave Jones: it's, it's,

Dave Jones: it's, it's, it's just, it's just a basic fact of fruit.

Chris Gammell: And the key for you is to ignore the whole thing works. And to just do cool stuff. Well, yeah, of course.

Dave Jones: I know. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: So,

Dave Jones: you know, and you know so half of the comments on my noise video will be can you do a video on fpgas or on bitcoin rf signal something like yeah whatever

Chris Gammell: don't worry man i use them i link to them from contextual electronics it's great you're doing half my work for me yeah cool not all the work oh all right man well uh not sure who we'll have on next week another surprise another surprise like usual all right see you then catch you next time