#195 – Guns and Mobile Labs - Nuanced Nomadic Non-essentials

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded April 21st, 2014. Episode 195. Nuanced. Nomadic. Non-essentials.

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. It's just us again this week, dude. Mm-hmm. Us and you and me and a Wydlar poster. Our respective Wydlar posters. I have one up now as well.

Dave Jones: Excellent. I haven't actually put mine up yet. I've got to mount it on a backboard and, you know, sort of jazz.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah, I'm terrible with posters. I'm always just like, you know, masking tape. It'll stick to the wall, right?

Dave Jones: Well, last time I tried to use bloody Blu-Tac stuff. You know, I tried to put Blu-Tac up. And it just falls. It's shit.

Chris Gammell: I've never gotten that stuff to work, ever. I think it's like, I'd expect it to work more in, like, warmer climates like yours. But it gets cold and it just immediately falls off.

Dave Jones: Right, right. Yeah, no, it was hopeless. It lasted like a day or two. And then, boom, all my posters just fell. And it leaves the Blu-Tac residue behind. You think I can get that crap off? No.

Chris Gammell: No. No.

Dave Jones: You've probably seen in my videos near my whiteboard all this blue crap on the wall. That's what the... That's what that is.

Chris Gammell: Well, man, you're going to have to paint when you leave now. You know, I guess you're the landlord too, but, you know, if you had a landlord, he would be pissed.

Dave Jones: And now I've... Good thing... Like, I didn't bother getting it off, so now I've covered up a lot of it with my new acoustic panels. Oh, there you go. That I've made, so, yeah. Right, right. Exactly. If you can't get rid of it, just cover it up. Like the old hole in the wall, you put a picture over it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn't be bothered patching that.

Chris Gammell: Start throwing your solder iron, you're getting angry or something, and put it through the wall. Yep. So you said you might get a new place. Is this... This is kind of new for you.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, it's not new. I did it three years ago.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but if you... What are you, like a turtle? You're going to just keep...

Speaker ?: You're going to just keep...

Chris Gammell: You're going to just keep... You're going to just keep upgrading your shell every year, every couple of years?

Dave Jones: Well, everyone does that with their job, don't they?

Chris Gammell: I suppose so. Yeah, I guess so.

Dave Jones: I think two, three years is the average time for someone in our industry to turn over their job, I think.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think that's probably the right number. That sounds about right. so now it's just bigger and better offices for you and leaving a trail of unoccupied commercial space you can sell out and rent out to people right?

Dave Jones: I can rent out to people that's right hopefully

Chris Gammell: Dave is the landlord now

Dave Jones: oh goodness what you should do is somehow

Chris Gammell: make sure they don't notice the blue tack when they move in right and then about six months later you're like what is this blue tack over here you just lost your security deposit oh goodness

Dave Jones: yes yes I'm thinking about it I just sort of made the spur of the moment well there were two decisions one was that yeah we're looking at sort of you know for investment you know financial sort of reasons we're looking at you know getting a commercial property and I thought well if we're going to do that why don't I instead of just you know buying one and then renting it out as an investment why don't I buy it and then move into it and you know step up use it myself

Chris Gammell: right

Dave Jones: and then rent out my current one why not

Chris Gammell: yeah well then you know that you you're only going to buy something you like and that's probably going to be a good indication that other people would like instead of just being like yeah someone will probably like this

Dave Jones: well maybe but you know well the other thing is is that it makes the choice easy like if I like because if I don't know if anyone's ever tried to buy an investment you know investment place an investment property you know

Chris Gammell: I'll speak for me no no

Dave Jones: right okay well it's an infinite well I've never done it myself well technically we got this as an investment but I moved into it you know so I'm basically doing that again and because there's otherwise there's just an infinite amount of choice but if your choice is based on what you want for yourself then it totally limits it down and just makes it makes it that much easier

Chris Gammell: oh you're saying it just narrows the field even like that it narrows the field

Dave Jones: yeah it just makes the choice a lot easier yeah rather than just having an infinite amount of choice you know

Chris Gammell: right

Dave Jones: see some people can do that

Chris Gammell: one person that's you know similar enough to you and they'll probably run it out afterwards well you got 110,000 subscribers on YouTube I'm sure one of them might want to you know

Dave Jones: you're right if anyone's once my old well I've got to find it you know I haven't even started looking right after the show I'm going to I'm going to go talk to the real estate agent and start looking but it's not looking good dude I mean it's bloody expensive well this is Sydney right

Chris Gammell: well Cleveland has got tons of investment properties I'm just saying you know for the price of a VCR yeah that's right yeah

Dave Jones: how much does a VCR cost these days

Chris Gammell: well they're antique items so you know 200 grand right right so they've gone up yeah yeah right so you were also talking about mechanical stuff that was the other thing that surprised me about this though

Dave Jones: see well here's the original idea right like a few weeks back I thought you know well a month ago or two months ago we started yeah talking about yeah we might you know get into hideous debt again and try and buy try and get an investment property right it's not like I've got money coming out my ears you know

Chris Gammell: right

Dave Jones: anyway and then I thought well if I'm going to upgrade why not get better internet you know so of course yeah you're always complaining about that yeah exactly moving to an office which is slightly bigger you know I'd also want an upgrade in size of course you know no point moving in the same size box and and but so that was my that was my requirement is that I'd look around and I'd search for something with you know a kick ass internet connection you think I could find one no

Chris Gammell: well you are in the back water so you know

Dave Jones: that idea went well because our national broadband network that they're installing right yeah there is not a single commercial office park in all business park in all of Sydney that has the national broadband network connected it's ridiculous the only place they're installing it is new housing estate so yeah I can go buy a new house in a new housing estate and I yeah and I can get 40 meg bits per second upload fantastic right

Chris Gammell: god that'd be awesome I know

Dave Jones: right kick ass

Chris Gammell: could you just do that and just be like well this house is now my office right

Dave Jones: this house is now my office hey well you could you know that's you know

Chris Gammell: and it's all like a fireman pole right you just you're good right I mean yeah

Dave Jones: I know that's my dream is to have a yeah a fireman everyone

Chris Gammell: Dave everyone yeah anyway

Dave Jones: so I I looked around you know because the national broadband network has got this map on their website showing exactly which areas are connected which areas will be connected etc and there was nothing

Chris Gammell: huh

Dave Jones: you know so well basically nothing so you know I went oh well screw that and then I got the idea of well I'm going to upgrade why don't I get a combined office and warehousey type space if you know the ones I mean usually like you know they're a big warehouse and you walk up the stairs to one of those here's a neat offices up top you know kind of thing so you've got yourself the big roller door you know you can bring really big stuff and you know all that sort of jazz sort of you know half and half kind of thing and and then I could actually set up like a real mechanical workshop and have real toys out there which is something I can't do here because this is a commercial office building you know it's you can't you know it's not like I can bring up big lathes and CNC machines you can't jackhammer inside an office park exactly you know I can't can't blow stuff up and you know things like that right and of course I can't do that at home I've got nothing at home you know I've got like a little toolbox you know that's that's the extent of my of my mechanical workshop at home and it's always been very disappointing so I can't you know go out and buy all these you know cool things you see on the auction sites you know oh look there's a you know there's a magnetic imaging resonance machine oh holy shit for 50 bucks but no you think I can get it no oh right right

Chris Gammell: well you yeah you wouldn't want that local Sydney man cut in half after he turns on magnet and a bunch of metal stuff was sitting behind him

Dave Jones: that's it

Chris Gammell: so does this mean though that you are going to be getting into like like like machining as well are we talking like heavy duty type stuff as well

Dave Jones: well I could right I mean I've got no plans right but when I've got a space like that you know I always see you know I go through the auction sites and I say oh yeah look at that CNC machine you know and then you know it's a thousand bucks and like holy crap you know I'd love to have that and learn how to you know play with these things but I've got nowhere to put it

Chris Gammell: am I mistaken in thinking that you made fun of me when I started learning machining I mean no I don't think so am I remembering this wrong I thought I remembered you making fun of me I don't know

Dave Jones: I don't think so I don't think I made fun of you

Chris Gammell: okay alright alright well so okay so the first plan is to buy a bunch of junk online and then learn how to use it afterwards and I'm sure there would be like

Dave Jones: no the first step is to actually find a place that I can afford

Chris Gammell: I guess you could start doing I mean if you really wanted to then you could start upgrading you know pick and place type stuff as well I mean you could always find that kind of stuff as well

Dave Jones: yeah like you know pick up like I can't even use my reflow oven here in the office right because the smell is just too bad right there's no ability to you know get fume extraction in here you know just stuff like that I just can't do I can't use chemicals in here I can't etch my own boards I can't you know do all that sort of jazz it's just it's just impossible you can't do that in a commercial office environment I can you know I shouldn't even be soldering in here you know really

Chris Gammell: oh wow

Dave Jones: well you know well at a lot of companies you are not it's against the OH&S rules you're not allowed to solder in a in a reticulated air conditioned office environment

Chris Gammell: oh because it's the air recomes back through

Dave Jones: the air recirculates yeah and stuff like that yeah so hmm huh

Chris Gammell: I didn't I didn't know that yeah what about those you know they got those filter pads in the back of the solder fan thing don't those do everything

Dave Jones: yeah that's right I was looking at this I'm like

Chris Gammell: that's it that's what we're doing here that's what we're doing yeah okay

Dave Jones: so anyway you're like so I have no idea but once you've got the space you would come up with ideas you know that's the thing I'm thinking okay alright alright

Chris Gammell: so buy a lot of buy a lot of stuff fill in the space and then

Dave Jones: yep that's it and then redo it yeah okay right okay

Chris Gammell: so it's kind of like now right yeah

Dave Jones: yeah exactly yeah I just buy shit to play with you know right

Chris Gammell: right it's fun that's good okay

Dave Jones: why not

Chris Gammell: but hey hey man if you're going to do it anyways I think that makes a lot of sense that's a good idea and I'm sure there's a lot of cool stuff you can do

Dave Jones: isn't that everyone's dream is just to have a really well kitted out lab with lots of cool toys that they just dick around with

Chris Gammell: yeah oh yeah

Dave Jones: even if you don't do anything practical with it they just you know they just cool and dick around with

Chris Gammell: you're just like oh yeah I know I could I could build anything I need to even though I don't have anything to build right now yeah yeah

Dave Jones: exactly exactly well why did you buy why did you buy your CNC machine I mean you know

Chris Gammell: yeah well yeah exactly I mean right

Dave Jones: you just wanted to play around with one right

Chris Gammell: uh yeah yeah I wanted to learn how to machine metal

Dave Jones: you probably had some end goal or you maybe had some you know idea of what maybe what you might use it for but ultimately it's just a toy right to play around with yeah

Chris Gammell: right now it's definitely still a toy it's uh there's nothing else happening with it right right now much like you everything comes in steps right I mean first step start an online electronics course next stop next step figure it out after the first step right speaking of steps

Dave Jones: you've got a big step coming up don't you that you won't even tell me about you bastard

Chris Gammell: oh yeah there's something big coming up uh but I did I did take a step already uh I'm working uh part time for a company called Supply Frame and uh and it's been great actually so that's why I've been traveling a lot um out to like LA and stuff like that and uh working with them and basically working on like uh new websites to work with the supply chain type stuff so basically making finding parts easier so you know obviously you know fine chips so they own fine chips they own Hackaday and stuff like that so

Dave Jones: they uh they sponsor by Forum

Chris Gammell: that's right yeah that's right yeah so um yeah it's been great so far so you basically

Dave Jones: consult for them pretty much yeah

Chris Gammell: right right right yeah right so yeah it's like part time and uh it's been really good I mean great people and and you know the the data that's out there like like I've never been a data guy but just like the amount of data that's like available and like the stuff that you can learn about about parts and and how to find new parts that way and and how to find like better price parts and stuff like that it's just crazy so I'm gonna be doing a lot of stuff with that and kind of like helping develop new tools for that kind of thing and like Dave alluded to yeah there's something big coming up so uh yeah I'm excited about that and I will mention it

Speaker ?: and that's in what

Dave Jones: a few weeks well in yeah

Chris Gammell: yeah in a few yeah in two weeks we got a guest show next week so I'll mention it on the show in two weeks maybe I'll tell Dave before then maybe probably not though uh but yeah so I've been traveling a lot more though because of this and like I said it's been a really good experience um but so I've been traveling and obviously I'm also doing the the course um and the course I'm in I'm in moving into the second week of contextual electronics and so you know you're talking about uh you know a big stationary lab well what I've been starting to think about is like well what if I'm traveling and and like like like maker fair right maker fair is in the middle of yeah you want a portable lab of the course and exactly I need a portable lab I need some way to be actually be able to work on the road and um and I've been kind of researching this thing and it's tough right I mean I'm sure you've looked at this kind of idea before I mean yep yep like just yeah like in a suitcase

Dave Jones: kind of thing you know that that has a lab power supply it's got an oscilloscope it's got a multimeter it's got a soldering iron you know and all your basic yeah

Chris Gammell: you know hand tools and stuff like that so the nice thing the nice thing is the bench buddy the thing that we're developing uh for for contextual electronics is actually would fit really well in there right it's like it's a multi-tool right it's supposed to have all that stuff and so that would fit really well but then you're right like the the soldering iron and having you know dmms and everything else and everything you need for you know working on electronics right um and I think I could figure that stuff out right there's pelican cases if I needed to I could go big I could you know I could I could I can do this right I know I can it's a matter of money and how much hassle I want when I'm actually you know rolling stuff around if I'm gonna rent a car or not yeah and um but the thing that gets me is how do I get through airport security unmolested tell us so I was thinking about this I was walking the dogs with my wife and thinking about it and I'm like and I was thinking you know the only thing I've ever heard where they can't where you can lock your luggage and they can't open it is when you have a gun that is the only time that they that you are legally you legally have you have to lock your luggage they actually are not allowed to have a key for that everything else they are allowed to cut the lock off or anything like that so I was I was joking around with my wife about that and then I was talking to some friends about it and someone sent me a site and there's a guy that does this right and he so he goes to conferences and all this other stuff and he packs he packs heat basically and like and it like and I was I was thinking about it and the first thing I thought about I was like oh man Dave's gonna have a field day with this Americans packing guns to keep things safe right

Dave Jones: of course well you can't go to hamvention with that they ban you there's a gun ban

Chris Gammell: at hamvention yeah that's coming up the first year it's changed right but then I actually I started remembering and I remember reading about this in the past that I had just forgotten about it where photographers would do the same thing they would pack a starter pistol in with their camera gear because same kind of thing happened they would they would pack these you know $5,000 lenses and they get broken and so they started packing starter pistols because starter pistols count as guns ah

Dave Jones: starter's right yeah yeah

Chris Gammell: and and they're cheaper and everything else and yep

Dave Jones: and they're not really a gun right you can't kill people so you can you know

Chris Gammell: you could but it'd be really hard you could right yeah

Dave Jones: you'd have to shoot them in the eye or something yeah exactly yeah

Chris Gammell: it'd be bad bad right but yeah so this has been the first time I've ever legitimately considered buying a gun

Dave Jones: you yanks just to get around the fact that your TSA sucks and you live in a security you know you live in a police state so the so the answer for you yanks is always more guns more guns that's always the answer there it is there's the response folks

Chris Gammell: I knew it

Dave Jones: well am I not wrong

Chris Gammell: no you're totally no you're totally right and I wouldn't even say I wouldn't even say police state though it's kabuki theater right I mean like you know there's still stuff that happens and I mean some of it you know it discourages this stuff but yeah I mean so basically this is for checking your luggage right I wouldn't be able to carry it on obviously right of course but yeah I mean and it's serious

Dave Jones: well you wouldn't well you wouldn't be able to carry on any electronics lab anyway pretty much I mean imagine trying to get it through this scanner

Chris Gammell: right well yeah and so so Steve Hofer actually has a post about this on his site and I'll link it in there but basically his thing is like if you label everything and you have a note in there please don't mess up my stuff you know please don't you know like basically if you're nice about it and you just kind of like you don't get angry you know you kind of stay in a zen state you can do it but it's still a hassle or you could check your baggage through but they still might scan it and open it up and mess with your stuff and my main thing is just I just want it to get there right and some people say oh well you could ship it too right you could ship your stuff

Dave Jones: oh of course yeah courier yeah

Chris Gammell: yeah right and that's another way to do it and that's very legitimate

Dave Jones: and then it's guaranteed to get there it's got tracking you know the whole thing

Chris Gammell: right but but then you have to like ship it to a hotel and I don't know like maybe that's better but you know maybe a gun maybe a gun's the way to do it too I'm just very intrigued by the idea I don't know I'm just intrigued by it

Dave Jones: yanks your minds are just incredible how you think

Chris Gammell: well thank you Dave that's so nice of you to say so I was talking to someone when I was out when I was out at EE Live there was a startup that actually was doing some kind of some kind of like retrofit for guns for police officers so it could tell when the gun was shot or fired or shot or reloaded or dropped or anything like that actually a really really cool startup but the guy was telling me about that too and he said he said that he had talked to a gun salesperson and basically you know you talk about like like extra special handling right so this gun salesperson had you know done all the right things and checked all his bags through and the bag didn't show up right you or me or Joe Blow or anyone else your bag doesn't show up they say oh we'll ship it to you right well his bag didn't show up and he had ATF agents like standing over the baggage guy and making sure his bag got there right I mean like yeah right

Dave Jones: exactly because it's got a bloody AR-15 rifle in it you know

Chris Gammell: I don't think it had that but yeah I mean

Dave Jones: well are they going to do that for a starter pistol do they care what's in there do you have to declare what type of gun or are you just like it's a starter you know

Chris Gammell: I don't think so you have to say if there's ammo with it and then that makes things different but if it's just basically it's if it's just like a tracked gun you know it has a serial number on it that's ultimately what matters and right and basically what you do is you show you know you show that it's in there you put a special tag on it you show that it's locked and then it gets there

Dave Jones: you have to show so you've got to open it up and show them that there's a gun in there

Chris Gammell: yes right right right and there's like a form

Dave Jones: so you've got to turn up to the airport and you know flash your gun yeah yeah yeah

Chris Gammell: and so there's this really actually this great site about it too just because it's this tech guy that's done this and he basically his story was he had traveled and he basically put the approved locks on you know you can lock your luggage normally but basically he got a bunch of stuff stolen and broken and he said you know what that's it that's it and that's what it comes down to you could totally do that right but you know that it's just it's just it's just a life hack right I mean this is just one way to ensure that your stuff's gonna be have a different handling criteria than otherwise and and I'm really interested in it I have no interest in guns

Dave Jones: yeah but you're promoting the system Dave it's already there though right you're perpetuating oh come on well what's I mean like come on

Chris Gammell: I mean yes maybe it perpetuates the system but it's there for a reason right it's better than asking people to I mean like it's like saying that okay people aren't gonna have guns oh you just can't have guns okay but that's that's like that's just ignoring reality right I mean people in America do have guns

Dave Jones: that's why you yanks are in the situation that you're in

Chris Gammell: maybe

Dave Jones: and which is totally different to every other country on the planet that's why you guys are in your position because it's it your society this is how your society thinks

Chris Gammell: well I don't really care about the political issues right now Dave all I care about is my gear getting there safely I don't care about owning guns I don't care about anything else I care about my gear getting there safely and if that means that I have to do a workaround to make sure of that right if there was if there was a way if there was listen if there was a way that I could pay 20 extra bucks and the same thing would happen right I would do that well it's called courier and maybe that's shipping maybe it is

Dave Jones: well then just bloody ship the thing

Chris Gammell: well maybe I will I mean I I want to try a bunch of different things but I just think I think this is just a really interesting life hack and I know there's a lot of you know a lot of opinions around guns but I don't care right now that's not the point you know I don't think it's you know better or worse okay

Dave Jones: so so what type of gun would you get

Chris Gammell: the cheapest kind I could right

Dave Jones: one of those Saturday night specials right yeah it was

Chris Gammell: I was on like a sporting goods site and I was like and I was looking at it and it looks

Dave Jones: now you're on gun shopping sites no it wasn't gun shop Dave it was like

Chris Gammell: it was like it was like like an outdoor store you know

Dave Jones: yeah it was Walmart

Chris Gammell: right yeah it wasn't Walmart but whatever it was but it was like and it looked like a gun but I'm pretty sure when you look at dimensions and it was like and it said it's like fits in the palm of your hand or something super tiny you know dude

Dave Jones: 3D print it 3D print it

Chris Gammell: there you go yeah and then you can get

Dave Jones: arrested for owning an illegal firearm right at least in some states other states they don't give a shit

Chris Gammell: you know right right yeah I should have known this would have taken a dark turn but Dave let me tell you I don't have any opinion on guns other than I'm interested in how this can help me hack around the system and I think I think it's really interesting nah I think you're crazy just ship the bloody thing yeah maybe you're right too and that's the other question right maybe it's too much hassle when you get there right

Dave Jones: get an account with FedEx or something and then just you know

Chris Gammell: oh yeah I have one yeah

Dave Jones: but I mean

Chris Gammell: it's the same kind of thing right it's about like okay so you could ship it somewhere and it says it's delivered and then it just disappears right there's no like who is there to

Dave Jones: you ship stuff to hotels it's not gonna vanish

Chris Gammell: I don't know that I mean

Dave Jones: have a bit more faith in the human race really

Chris Gammell: okay sure

Dave Jones: unbelievable

Chris Gammell: well okay so beyond beyond the gun thing and beyond the shipping of stuff there is there's actually some there was an interesting one on who was this oh this is the guy he's actually doing a kickstarter thing as well but he has a post about he actually has a full a full SMT workstation and he actually built in a microscope into it too he actually has a binocular microscope built in it's like a nice it's a nice little setup here it's two like metal cases I don't know if he I've got it open

Dave Jones: yeah yeah he's put them into like an aluminium flight case kind of thing

Chris Gammell: yeah like they're just cheapies from Harbor Freight but yeah

Dave Jones: and it's got like a wooden work surface I assume you lift that up and there's tools underneath that work surface right that's where you keep the tools yep

Chris Gammell: yeah it seems like it's got everything you need yeah he's got a little scope in there

Dave Jones: yeah

Chris Gammell: yeah

Dave Jones: that's a neat yeah I would love to do something like that as like a as a build you know like as a yeah right I don't know when I'd ever use it but just the fact of doing it and figuring out how to do it optimally would make a real interesting video you know

Chris Gammell: right this kind of reminds me so I've been I've been really like obsessing

Dave Jones: it's kind of like a Ben Hex style build

Chris Gammell: yeah right right yeah Ben did that portable 3D printer actually

Dave Jones: the portable 3D printer and stuff like that yeah it's a similar sort of thing

Chris Gammell: and it's it's almost like I've been really into like the whole tiny house movement I think I've mentioned that to you yeah yeah you have and it's I love it because it's like it's the whole thing is like you know you live in these less than 200 square foot houses and stuff like that and basically my engineer brain goes crazy because it's this amazing set of constraints you know and it's the same kind of thing here where it's like you're trying to optimize every bit of space and

Dave Jones: yep

Chris Gammell: I think with me it probably would just end up being messy

Speaker ?: there's so many people

Dave Jones: who would want these you know people living in dorm rooms I hear all the time you know you actually live in dorm rooms crazy and you and I hear it all the time look I haven't even got room for an oscilloscope you know like well gee yeah well that is always a problem where you can keep it under the bed slip it pull it out and boom there's your little portable workshop yeah

Chris Gammell: right right right right yeah yeah that's it exactly like you might have a great table but if you have to repack everything every time that's really disruptive

Dave Jones: exactly no that's really disruptive so how do you so what requirement do you set does everything have to be battery powered or you know can you zip out a mains cord from it you know zip it out like a vacuum cleaner you know have it cool it up inside and

Chris Gammell: I don't think you know you don't have to go off grid with this Dave I mean like that would be you'd have to go to a butane solder gun at that point wouldn't you

Dave Jones: oh yeah of course yeah well you can well a butane or a or a DC powered solder and iron and then you can carry around a

Chris Gammell: friggin car battery yeah I know you gotta carry around

Dave Jones: a lit acid battery keep it charged up and everything yeah no I think I think you would have to limit limit it to a mains thing

Chris Gammell: Dave doesn't want people to be able to carry guns around but he'd like to carry around this 40 pound block of acid

Dave Jones: I think this is really neat you know like custom cutouts in the foam I always love that I always love me too yeah pelican cases yeah pelican cases and cutting foam because we used to do that a lot for shipping you know especially in our seismic industry all the test gear we had to go off site you know and we had to you know test on the back of a ship or we had to test in a in a factory or a warehouse or a dock somewhere and we'd always build in you know test instruments into you know these fancy cases and stuff and it was great

Chris Gammell: yeah it's good fun

Dave Jones: and you can do like and you make your own custom length mains leads you know that are just long enough you know so that it it goes you know snakes with inside the case and it's just all

Chris Gammell: oh yeah all beautiful

Dave Jones: yeah yeah huh oh yeah you don't just use a regular one meter length of mains cable and then just have all the cords flapping all over the place oh I see

Chris Gammell: I see no no

Dave Jones: you actually custom make them to the exact length huh you know yeah

Chris Gammell: well yeah that does sound I mean yeah it's like it's I'm trying to think it's not like uh uh bonsai trees there's some other thing where it's like you know you have like everything you know that whole like idea of like everything in its right place kind of idea I feel like it's a Japanese type of you know like organizational system I don't remember what it's called though yeah

Dave Jones: okay yeah there's probably a name for it

Chris Gammell: so yeah I think I think this will be I mean and there's a lot of posts online about this kind of thing as well oh I'm

Dave Jones: yeah there's a lot of people who've done it and everyone has a different take on it you know right

Chris Gammell: right

Dave Jones: yep

Chris Gammell: hmm yeah so I'd have to uh you know I think I think another piece of this too is kind of it's kind of interesting seeing how we're we're moving over time right with like laptops and tablets and all this other stuff and uh you know like throwing a tablet in there might be an interesting thing as well um you know it I'm guessing if I'm traveling somewhere I'd probably have a laptop still but you know if you really want to go extreme you know you put in a tablet into it or something like that

Dave Jones: see for me as far as the microscope goes see I wouldn't put an optical microscope in there I'd be tempted to somehow use like a a digital microscope with a little tablet tablet-y type screen in there or something like that

Chris Gammell: oh that's a good idea

Dave Jones: and and and then you could use the tablet of course as you know like an internet connection with your data sheets and everything else and stuff like that right yeah yeah yeah

Chris Gammell: oh yeah that's a great idea yeah so there's the reason I bring up tablets is um someone mentioned this on twitter actually uh but there's a

Dave Jones: well and then oh sorry and then of course once you've got that infrastructure in place then you start looking at those little uh usb scopes and things like that maybe in instead of a real scope perhaps you know because you're so constrained yeah if you want to go super light right i mean if you yeah

Chris Gammell: you don't want the infrastructure of like a full power supply

Dave Jones: well a a scope is probably the biggest thing you'd ever put in one of these things right it'd be your biggest item so well you know that's one of the uh one of the um things where a portable scope actually could be a huge advantage

Chris Gammell: that's true i don't think i haven't seen so you know i was looking around at scopes and stuff like that and i didn't see i mean there's the osseum that's the one i've seen with the works with ipads yeah there's nothing

Dave Jones: a couple of them out there i think but anyway yeah it's not a huge selection but that comes down to your requirements that you set yourself right you can go well i want a sort of at least semi-professional kind of level you know yeah capability in this thing which means you've got to have a real scope right you don't have a dicky usb scope right

Chris Gammell: you know there's uh so for for organs actually so uh not human organs but uh uh like pianos right like hammond hammond organs um you know they're they're these big like consoles made out of walnut and so like rock musicians they wouldn't actually some of them cart these things around but others they actually chop them up and they put them into travel cases kind of the same idea and that would be interesting right you take you take a scope that you have and you refactor it into your form factor here right so so that you get the the super high end you know sampling chips on board and and you know you can you can shrink down the power supply you know maybe you have a more modern power supply you can fit in or you need to like readjust it right that that that would be interesting you know just trying to do that stuff and then having having a replaceable screen right dave that's what i'm saying right oh goodness yeah but

Dave Jones: yeah no this is now now you've got me wanting to do this now i want to do this as a project you know but i yeah i put all the work into it and it makes one one video out of it you know so that's a lot of work to

Chris Gammell: well no it'd be a couple builds i'm sure that'd be a good build

Dave Jones: well yeah i could i could do a multiple build video you know like a you know here's all my requirements and i'm gonna you know build this here's my case selection and you know here's me building all the custom internals for the case and etc etc

Chris Gammell: right yeah yeah yeah

Dave Jones: you know you you build a custom size esd mat to fit in there you know one of the oh yeah one of the work mat surfaces you know one of those you know i probably you have you

Chris Gammell: know you have like a retractable cord on the side you just like you just plug into the into the mains uh the earth ground right yeah yeah exactly i like

Dave Jones: that i you know it's yeah now you've got me wanting i know after doing this you bastard as if i didn't have enough shit to work on

Chris Gammell: yeah right i was gonna say the next step would be you have to travel anywhere right right i buy labs that are that are you know walking distance from my house yeah that's right

Dave Jones: you can finally bring

Chris Gammell: your lab home with you again though right i guess that would be one thing you could work at

Dave Jones: home yeah yeah that's cool that's yeah you know or i could just build it and then you know auction it off or something you know it could be one of those you know yeah but

Chris Gammell: actually ben does that uh they do that um yeah yeah yeah they do

Dave Jones: that yep yeah they they do that they auction off his builds you know yeah it's cool well they don't auction them off they actually give them away i think you know you enter a drawer to you know give it away but yeah and i think

Chris Gammell: he might have actually i might have to look at his stuff again i think he might have done a portable bench at one point in addition to the portable 3d printer could

Dave Jones: have yeah yeah likely very likely but yeah there you

Chris Gammell: go so this uh this tablet thing though um someone recommended it on twitter uh and there's actually so it's a spice app right and it's i'm like at first i'm like oh this is gonna whatever you know like who cares

Dave Jones: right diamond doesn't

Chris Gammell: well yeah and and you know like it's like okay i have lt spice i'm fine but actually what's interesting about this is not i mean it's just using a spice i'm pretty sure it's using a spice engine on the back end but the interesting thing is actually um how how it it illustrates current flow it actually shows like current flowing through i mean at least it's showing it on the the demo stuff but like flowing through leds and stuff like that and actually you know where where it's going from which point which other point and this is the first one where i'm like oh okay this this is where like you know yeah you know like some of the the ui designers and and kind of getting a hold of this stuff this could be really really interesting so there's there's a free version as an android

Dave Jones: based as in a visual learning tool yeah i can i can picture this being quite good yeah right yeah

Chris Gammell: exactly i mean like because that's a hard thing to do right you look at a schematic right i remember this as i was you know coming up right you look at a schematic you see lines going everywhere and it's like well which direction are those lines going you know it's like oh well where where is the current going you know and it's that's a tough concept to learn and so this kind of showing that actually could really really be useful um during the learning process so i haven't had a chance

Dave Jones: to try it because i what's the name of this

Chris Gammell: thing uh it's called every circuit um every circuit and there's so there's a free version and then the paid version is 10 bucks i think which is uh awesome yeah which is yeah it's nothing

Dave Jones: right free almost yeah yeah yeah yeah it's nothing

Chris Gammell: you know although i i i do have that mental block i know a lot of apple people like it's like priced in where like they just buy apps you know it's like oh no big deal for android for some reason i just yeah i'm like oh well why isn't everything free but it's kind of silly right yeah yeah it's dumb yeah so uh yeah so this is on the the to checkout list and i was thinking about this for you know because of this this mobile build idea um trying to try this thing out it does

Dave Jones: look pretty cool and you can get lots of awesome visualizations and this looks very impressive very colorful it's very colorful that's for sure right and uh you know there's sort of all these things glow and you know the current paths glow and change color and you know do all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff so yeah it's very nice yeah the good thing about that is that it doesn't have to really be like a kick-ass spice engine you know it just has to do the basics because it's just a learning tool you know no um no one who seriously wants a spice tool would use this right it's a you know yeah

Chris Gammell: right right right yeah this is i'm sure this is on par with like the uh what's that one online uh oh i've forgotten oh the web-based one yeah yeah there's a couple there's a couple web-based simulators that do the same kind of thing you know and uh yeah i mean they're they're good they get the the general idea but yeah you're not going to use it to you know design your next no i see right i mean you're gonna yeah which is what a lot of the spice i mean if people don't know that's what spice was designed for right i mean you're doing was spice is it meant for modeling semiconductor physics and that's a lot different than what a lot of a lot of people use it

Dave Jones: for part of its name right integrated what's it stand

Chris Gammell: for i don't know it's an integrated circuit environment is that the ice yeah yeah something that's the ice yes right well you know we should work the plug-in now so we're gonna have next week uh mike englehart from lt spice uh uh so he's like the guru there you go your tech yep he's gonna be on our show next week so excellent we will ask him all about spice here

Dave Jones: you go sim it spice stands for simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis oh there we go all right there you go that's a spice yeah that's what it was designed to do it was yeah it was not designed for macro level circuit design it was designed for silicon based integrated circuits you know yep definitely yeah they just expanded that out so you know what

Chris Gammell: is your history with spice over time have you used have used them all i

Dave Jones: wouldn't say i've used them all um i've used it you know a handful of them maybe over the last 20 odd years

Chris Gammell: yeah yeah okay i i just wonder if you've seen you know if you've seen them improve over time too because i mean it's interesting right i mean this is effectively a commoditized version of it now right it's being on a on a free app market and that's just interesting seeing how it's changed

Dave Jones: over time and well i get you know and it it originally is a command line tool and it still is right the the spice engine that you're talking about is is just that it is a command line tool you feed in a netlet you know a a text for file and you know which has all the commands which has the netlist and everything in it and and it executes it and regardless of what spice program you're using they're just a wrapper around that they're just a pretty wrapper so all the innovation has gone around the wrapper i mean the the spice engine hasn't changed much in since the 70s when the bloody thing was invented i don't think it's changed a huge amount anyway well i think

Chris Gammell: there's convergence stuff like they're getting better oh yeah no no there's

Dave Jones: yeah there's been improvements in the algorithm but ultimately you know the you know it it doesn't really go hugely notice where where all the improvements have been are always been in the gooey how easy is it to use that's always been the the question you would ask with the spice tool how easy can i draw my circuit right how easy can i get results how easy can i get waveforms up right that's you know

Chris Gammell: yeah that's yeah oh yeah definitely yeah so we'll be asking all about that next week and people can submit their own lt spice questions as well so we'll get to that terrific next week

Dave Jones: yeah because he's like the only guy that works on it right i don't i don't

Chris Gammell: know we'll have to ask him about that i he used the main guy i don't know if he's the only used to be yeah well i

Dave Jones: think it started out as a fun thing he was working on on the side and then they caught on oh this is popular is it

Chris Gammell: yeah yeah i love it i'm excited yeah

Dave Jones: exactly but lt spice hey lt spice is not the easiest to use it's by far not the easiest spice tool i've ever used you know so yeah i i like it is it is the one i use but yeah it's not that easy to drive especially for first timers it's not that it's not that easy and intuitive you know things like these apps we've been talking about right they're infinitely easier infinitely easier to use so yep there's lots of traps for young players hmm but lt spice is like a professional level tool you know you can use it for serious business you know it's not it's not designed for the average joe to come up and you know just you know throw in a few components and it works right yeah

Chris Gammell: right right right yeah i uh i saw it uh paul rako was writing about it when he was uh still at edn or e times whatever he said he talked to a maximum designer who uses it every day

Dave Jones: right hilarious yeah doesn't doesn't every company have their own flavor of it now ti have their own

Chris Gammell: one don't they and uh they were all licensing different ones um all right oh

Dave Jones: yeah i remember we talked about that a couple weeks back yeah yeah we did that's

Chris Gammell: uh analog up drop theirs and that they were using ni's and then that's still available but it's yeah it was you know it's like they they kind of buy their their way out of it which is you know whatever if they don't want to focus on it but um yeah you know they all have solutions and there's always the you know like uh i think orcad has it whatever piece but whoever owns p spice yeah yeah

Dave Jones: yeah so maybe yeah yeah and um uh it's bloody hell there's so many of them yeah right they're a dime a dozen news what's news well it's old news but it's hilarious news google record all of the nest um that well they they they stopped uh they they stopped shipping them the nest uh oh really yeah man you hate nest no it's just hilarious to follow it's just hilarious to follow because there's no way it's worth the billions and billions you know it's just it's just ridiculous it's data man i'm

Chris Gammell: telling you data is where it's at

Dave Jones: i'm indoctrinated now no no i was watching i think it was a stand-up comedian so i can't remember who the name will not come to me anyway they were doing they were talking about this sort of thing you know and and these big buyouts for these companies that are you know and practically like they've got no tangible product worth anything really all that you know and they spend billions and billions of dollars and it may be that they're talking about facebook or something and uh you know facebook yeah like oculus or something iipo or something like that i'll talking about this sort of stuff and they went you know if you know facebook is worth 14 billion dollars imagine what are you what a company with a real product would be worth you know it's like yeah and it's true you know all these companies that are just in the cloud and you know bullshit and just and the valuations are just in la la land right and they don't and we were talking about this the other week you know when somebody buys a company with uh you know real fabs and everything that makes chips that actually makes real tangible stuff and has real tangible assets right that's worth money yeah right

Chris Gammell: well we think so right we're hardware guys i mean we're exactly and what do we know

Dave Jones: i know and some of those cheaper things are cheap in comparison to all the hype surrounding you know this huge it's just a bubble again right it's gonna burst again well right all the all this tech bubble's gonna burst there's an interesting

Chris Gammell: piece of news this week too um so talking about hardware and especially a lot of these companies that are not necessarily like like you know google is has done hardware in the past obviously they have the um the x team which is doing hardware that's like google glass and a couple others um but like other teams are other companies are doing this too right so nike had started up a fuel band team right and that was right you know a wearable device wearables are very big right now too and it basically they're all

Dave Jones: yep

Chris Gammell: yeah and uh who else intel bought a uh some wearable company for like 100 million or something as well all right and so nike had this i think they actually started started this team uh but basically it was you know wearable tracker and it worked with an iphone but it didn't work with android and basically there was news this week that they just kind of shut it the whole operation rather you know they just said no we're done yeah yeah because yeah

Dave Jones: because they bought it because it was all the hype and their share price you know jumps and because it was the in thing to do a year or two back right so they did it and now they realize that's just you know never going to make money on this just kill it

Chris Gammell: right well that's going to be interesting to see you know especially in the wearables market it's going to happen to

Dave Jones: nest come on it's going to happen to nest yeah well i didn't finish my story did you hear why they actually are stopped they you know stopped uh selling it uh no because right it's it you can wave your hands at it right to actually control the thing right i didn't know that so yeah yeah it's got so i don't know it's got some sensor in it i don't know anyway apparently you know gesture based thing and apparently if you wave your arms the wrong way it turns off your smoke alarm right oh this is for the

Chris Gammell: smoke alarm okay right yeah it's just

Dave Jones: like it's just it's got stupid written all over it it's just face palm hang on you know it is just ridiculous yeah you put a bloody you know pyroelectric you you put a sensor in a thing with a couple of op amps and a nine volt battery job done yeah like there is no reason to go high tech with this shit it's just see i wouldn't just do it for the sake of it

Chris Gammell: i mean i i wouldn't discount it for that i mean i think there there could be other applications because they were trying to roll other stuff in there right that's what that's what the ultimate thing is to it i i wouldn't buy it myself yeah right exactly it's stupid it's a fad no this is going to keep happening right you were we're going to keep getting upset about this but this is going to keep happening everybody's going to step up to the plate and say i have the platform right look at me i have a

Dave Jones: platform for your home every time kiss will always win right all these smart light bulbs being controlled by your bloody iphone no people just want a bloody switch on the wall it's always

Chris Gammell: going to win well i think people always want to pay less i think in general price usually wins unless there's some other thing there right i mean i of course i say this is a cheapskate so i'm not sure i'm never i'm never going to buy one of these led bulbs unless it's the same price as everything else right i mean or not led bulbs but like the multicolor bulbs i would buy it if there's if there was a reason if i think it's going to last a long time or you know i think there's some other benefit but just because just because i can switch it on from my smartphone and have you know barry white star playing right you know like right it's

Dave Jones: pointless you you you aren't going to do that right because it's a wank right you just want to turn your lights off and on right well i i'm torn i feel like convenient to have a permanent switch on the bloody wall well no that's i think that's a backwards look at it turn off the

Chris Gammell: lights no no that's that's that's a

Dave Jones: backwards look now it's always going to be niche i'm not saying it's useless right some people are going to have a need or desire no one is ever going to

Chris Gammell: get rid of their buggies and their buggy whips what do we need these newfangled automobiles for i mean that's what you sound like right now dave i mean like there is no there is a reason that people might get rid of it for for usability's sake but what i'm saying is

Dave Jones: saying there's not i'm saying mainstream is always going to be keep it simple stupid mainstream is always going to be want it going to want it as

Chris Gammell: dumb as possible i disagree uh with a caveat of i think they'll keep it simple as long as it's affordable right i think that's just the i think that's what it comes down to you know people buy what's affordable and they're not going to pay extra unless there's unless there's some actual benefit right this is my inner

Dave Jones: economist i'll tell you what even if i got all led bulbs in my you know multi-colored rgb bulbs all throughout my if it was free and i had to control it from my phone i wouldn't want it okay even if they were paying me we i'll pay you a thousand bucks and we'll come around we'll install all rgb bulbs in your house but you have to control it with your smart phone i'd tell them to piss off right okay i do agree with that

Chris Gammell: i do agree no i do agree with that if that was the only way of doing it yeah that'd be that'd be ridiculous right it'd be it'd be as good of just not having lights at all right because then if your phone dies you yeah yeah that that's silly but i think that that's never the only way of doing it right like even the thermostats and the smoke detectors and the nest stuff it's still usable right in its base form it's still usable it's really overpriced but it's usable unless

Dave Jones: you wave your hands in the wrong way and then it accidentally switches off and you don't know it and then your house burns down and you die yeah but that's

Chris Gammell: something that's broken that's that's something that's broken right we're talking about a couple different things here one is usability one is does it work and another is is is like uh uh cost right all of these three things

Dave Jones: like the other is does it is it having a wank for the sake of having a wank yeah that's a cost the nest alarm is i mean it's it's just ridiculous yeah i

Chris Gammell: think i think that's a cost thing no all right well uh we we've reached an impasse dave will not be buying any nest products i think everybody is pretty shocked by that so you know okay how about this would you buy a laundry folding robot

Dave Jones: i would rather pay a human to fold my laundry

Chris Gammell: yeah but the the robot has so cool right right i don't fold my laundry there you go yeah

Dave Jones: i have no need

Chris Gammell: right yeah when everything's a t-shirt every day is uh is wrinkle day i've been learning that one good too the benefits of never leaving my basement

Dave Jones: yeah it also changes when you have kids we we have a room where we just dump clothes nice that's it yeah these clothes get dumped on a bed and then if anything they might be sorted into piles that's organization yeah

Chris Gammell: well i i i this is a this is a project from uh uc berkeley and this is actually the first uh time i saw the so the pr2 is the uh it's a open source robot from well actually i don't know if the robot's open source uh but it uses the uh the open source robot operating system ross right ross yeah it's from uh i believe it's willow garage is the is the group that actually develops the hardware and then uh you know people buy it and they develop for it and it's it's i mean it's cool to see it's you know it's i'm not worried about the terminator coming to fold my laundry anytime soon but uh you know it's just there's baby steps baby steps

Dave Jones: is it is it one of those ridiculous things like using an auto router to route a board you spend more time setting it up than you're saving actual time

Chris Gammell: is it one of those i think that's probably that's probably a good comparison because it's like like the 90 case yeah anything not anything but you know that's not the hard part the hard part is like okay it could it could fold a t-shirt all the time but what happens when you know your your wetsuit comes through right you know and like then it's like this new corner case and and that's what it that's what humans are good at it's a one-off yeah yeah yeah the one-off right that's that's the human thing's good at right they just kind of figure it out and they they do it as best they can and then they move on whereas a robot it's

Dave Jones: just like a pick-and-place machine often yeah if you're doing a hundred boards you know or it might be worth setting up your pick-and-place machine but if you're doing 10 boards you know often it's not worth your time you're better off just doing it right doing it by hand yeah yeah

Chris Gammell: that's a separate thing right i mean if you had the intelligence in a robot that it was doing that i mean really well that comes down to is economics again right if you're just buying a robot just to fold laundry and you fold laundry once a week yeah that's stupid right um especially if

Dave Jones: it doesn't do it well right but if you but if you're running a lot of gyms laundry folding service exactly

Chris Gammell: right right yeah and then it'll works its way down yeah right there's actually a interesting uh a graphic i saw too and it's just talking about the kind of the current state of robots in 2014 right because i i'm actually reading this this freaking awesome book right now uh it's called the second machine age you ever heard of that book right uh it's two mit guys eric benyolfson and i forget the other guy's name uh but basically it's

Dave Jones: what happened to the first machine age

Chris Gammell: the first machine age was actually based on the uh combustion engine oh

Dave Jones: right okay was a combustion engine

Chris Gammell: maybe a steam engine actually but basically the idea was steam right yeah the first machine age was replacing human labor right yes right which would have been the steam age yep yeah right steam and then moving into the the combustion engine i mean really they're the same kind of thing right they're they're built on the same principles of just spinning something or you know translating motion and replacing human labor yeah um the second machine age is doing the same thing but with uh with computers and and basically replacing uh human processing and stuff like that and what that's actually going to do in

Dave Jones: intelligent senses vision in intelligent vision and uh yeah yeah definitely

Chris Gammell: that stuff i mean and then moving into robotics but then also um you know even like automation like a lot of automation stuff and and not the stuff that you typically think of like i think i hear of automation i think factory automation right like robots and right you know uh uh like uh pick and place and you know like uh the robots we had in the fab and stuff like that but but even automation like like tax software right so so turbo tax it prompts you with all these things you put in stuff yourself and basically right automation it's basically automating the task of filing taxes whereas before you would hand an accountant all your tax stuff and um yeah you know like that kind of stuff as well replace mostly like a lot of uh you know job replacement and stuff like that and how it's going to affect us and man it's just the the thing that really strikes me about this book i keep telling people about this so they talk about the um you know you've ever heard the the chess board the guy that invented chess there's a pair a parable about the guy that invented chess um and basically he the guy that he went to the chess yeah it's a it's a parable um but basically but i thought chess was

Dave Jones: like a thousand years old yeah right

Chris Gammell: that's the idea it's that's why it's a parable because it's they they don't know who it is so basically he went to the king and he presented this game or the emperor whatever and he said right right um uh you know i i give you this this uh chess board all i ask is that you give me uh you know a grain of rice for each uh for each square and then you double you double it for each next square right right and then you get to the end you basically get to yeah uh 64 and it's more rice the amount of rice would be the size of mount everest that's the idea yes of course more rice than has ever been produced or ever will be basically and basically though the tipping point is is at uh 32 at the 32nd square and the way the guys talk about they actually talk about uh moore's law and in the doubling of technology right and the 32nd square in terms of generations of doublings actually happened in 2006 and that just like thumped me in the chest like you know like you start thinking about what happened because they're talking you know they they talk about a lot of stuff that they've done

Dave Jones: like they went based on what metric based on what uh generations of doublings has it gone up by two to the power of oh oh you're talking about moore's law like the first transistor right yeah exactly right so

Chris Gammell: from right right so the first generation

Dave Jones: is one right so the first one was one transistor on a chip and then two four eight

Chris Gammell: right right and you think about i mean like so think back to 2006 right which is now eight years ago right i was reminded this that i have to get my passport redone soon uh and i mean there's a lot of stuff i mean like you know smartphones and and like they they mentioned the self-driving car but robots and just like you know a span of eight years and how much stuff happened in that amount of time it's it's pretty significant right compared to the eight years before and the eight years before that that kind of thing and um i don't know it's just it's it's it's crazy to me i mean like i mean so that that's that's what kind of really got me that's what dug me into this book and i'm i'm only about uh halfway to three quarters of the way through so far so i got some more and it's pretty economics see but uh

Dave Jones: it's a freaking awesome book you you love

Chris Gammell: that sort of stuff oh man this yeah this is my wheelhouse i freaking like because it's not it's not it ties together like like economics but then also technology and then also like yeah like like it even has a section at the end like how you can benefit from this like that's the chapter started like how freaking awesome is that yep so i'll let you guys know i'll have something else to sell next week oh goodness why we start oh because so there's this uh but actually there's a there's an infographic about this that that um i posted this week as well and it's talking about 20 at 2014 and all of the robots that there are and basically how you know what the current state of it is right so there's 1.2 industrial million industrial robots there's a robot pharmacist there's self-driving cars there's uh you know military tech stuff like that and you know just kind of seeing this stuff changing over time and how how it's going to end up affecting us in the future and how you can learn more about them and stuff like that uh very cool so excellent future's bright man i'm excited robots till they kill us

Dave Jones: that's it yeah oh boy yeah speaking of passports you're going to uh the german show aren't you this year i am yeah i'll be going to electronica um yeah yeah so

Chris Gammell: that's that's in november uh and that yeah that's what the passport's for actually that's what i was thinking about and um yeah i'm excited man that's gonna be huge we talked about that two years ago it's a massive because you were you were thinking about maybe going to that two years ago uh right yeah i was yeah maybe maybe and then we started talking about how long it takes for you to get that i didn't realize that that's like one of the longest flights for you so

Dave Jones: that's it's pretty much the longest flight on the planet yeah yeah from sydney to uh yeah hamburg or something

Chris Gammell: yep yeah that's that's rough and it's not cheap either that's the other thing i mean that's yeah so but i mean i've never been to europe so i i have no idea what to expect i mean right yeah

Dave Jones: yep well it's much shorter for you what is it a 10 12 hour flight or something i

Chris Gammell: think it's like eight actually yeah eight eight from new york oh yeah oh easy easy yeah yep not a problem yeah so uh and then uh the other thing is uh they just announced a couple weeks ago the open hardware summit will be in rome this year um so that's been oh really yeah

Dave Jones: because it's been in the same it's always been in the same location hasn't

Chris Gammell: it uh first two years it was at the new york hall of science last year it was at

Dave Jones: mit yeah but it's all in the u.s right it's

Chris Gammell: all yeah yeah in the northeast yeah so definitely same area well that that's

Dave Jones: weird that it's gone to rome uh not that

Chris Gammell: weird uh arduino's made about uh you know like a couple like 50 miles from

Dave Jones: there so i think that okay they're driving it okay they're probably no it's

Chris Gammell: not driving but it's just like you know you got to move that stuff around too right i mean if you really want to if you want to get different groups of people showing up too right that's i think you know some people will travel for it and you gotta move you gotta move it around right so hopefully next time

Dave Jones: you might get a bit stale if everyone's oh it's still in the u.s again it's all the same people coming back it's all the same people talking it's all yeah

Chris Gammell: right exactly i mean if it's if it's the same conference every year that does get i mean they can change a

Dave Jones: little bit but yeah i don't see i've i've i've turned down a couple of trips because well it's the same conference in the same hotel in the same location what's the right like i've been there before like yawn you know right like like it's okay if it's local right you know or if it's in melbourne yeah okay right i'll i'll go there but i'm not traveling halfway around the planet to go to the same hotel in the same bloody you know the same conference with the same people and you know it's like right yeah

Chris Gammell: and then you have the same problem that like they uh you know a lot of like like uh music bands run into this right like it's like uh do you keep playing the same stuff and then you know you're called a sellout or do you do you innovate and and and risk uh alienating your all of your fans right i mean it's the same kind of problem yeah that's right and it's not just music but it's a lot of stuff yep so yeah it's uh who knows who knows man and and maybe those beats i mean maybe they'll keep moving it i know you know it probably makes sense to you know send it over china at one point and um right yeah of course yeah the summit i've gone two times now two

Dave Jones: times i think yep yeah so you've been twice yeah uh i haven't i haven't been

Chris Gammell: once well you should go man you'll get

Dave Jones: out there eventually to an international maker fair i've never been no no no

Chris Gammell: we'll get him once dave builds this you know once dave builds this mobile lab he'll have no choice but to travel okay with a gun uh yep yep once i get

Dave Jones: the bug again you probably won't be able to stop me you know like i i just don't i don't have the travel you know you're just getting the travel bug right so you're going woo you know well especially to new places i know you've been a bit down on oh i've been traveling a lot you know yeah well yeah you know ebbs and

Chris Gammell: flows yep yep i'm kind of a home body

Dave Jones: so but but to go somewhere new and exciting that is that is always fun you

Chris Gammell: know right yeah exactly people see new things try new foods like that's drink

Dave Jones: new beers right see try to see i know to me that's nothing like it's trying new food and eating you like that's that does not interest me at all you know and that's

Chris Gammell: my days in shape folks and i'm a big fatty fat fat

Dave Jones: no it's just i it's like you're eating food as a necessary thing to survive you

Chris Gammell: know yeah i've always wished i could look at food like that i just i can't some

Dave Jones: people do like it's like some people do that right they just go on holiday to food or to eat or shop right like well

Chris Gammell: shopping that's stupid

Dave Jones: see i still i think the same thing about food as well it's just stupid yeah well food just eating just gets in the way of seeing shit

Chris Gammell: you know i guess so i mean

Dave Jones: what i've got to stop and have lunch no i'm you know i'll often starve on a holiday you know because i'm too busy like on on the go seeing stuff oh skip skip lunch day i can't stop to eat lunch you know i'll just

Chris Gammell: dave life is the journey it's not the destination man that's you gotta chill out man yeah so maybe yeah so maybe this thing will end up in china actually so the um the there was just a maker fair in shenzhen actually um yes yes it was did you see the thing uh that ian set up ian from dangerous prototypes

Dave Jones: no what did he set up he set

Chris Gammell: up a um a bga reballing seminar

Dave Jones: so right yes yes so it was with the

Chris Gammell: mobile phone manufacturers in uh within in the markets and yeah you know

Dave Jones: go ahead they're the ones who reball bga is right in front of you on their glass countertop you know yeah as you

Chris Gammell: right right right right i mean these guys are like wizards and uh you know so they get to so basically they saw all the tips and tricks from guys that are yeah and they're they're not doing it with much i mean like they're doing you know they have stencils and stuff like that but it's it's there's not much to it so yeah it's you know it's it's it's crazy so and i think so i was talking to ian on skype the other day and um he said the craziest thing about it that blew my mind is that they use what was it it was a no flux or dry flux or dry solder paste i think that's what it was it was dry solder paste does that sound right can you even get dry solder paste i it was something it was something dry i remember i remember the word dry uh right well

Dave Jones: there's well there's gel based so no

Chris Gammell: that wouldn't work because the idea was that it didn't stick to the stem right so you you use a stencil to basically it didn't stick stencil all the balls and then you know you heat it up and then they form up into little little tiny balls of solder yeah and there's something about not sticking to the stencil and that was just like right i don't even i would never try this right so uh but yeah apparently like 40 people went to the the thing and and and ian said uh they're they might try and do it again in the future and i'd i'd love to do that that'd be cool as

Dave Jones: hell oh yeah yeah that'd be awesome

Chris Gammell: yeah so very cool uh and it's good to hear from him again too i i it seemed like he you know he he's uh i think he moved his business or something over there and uh right okay and so he's been doing lots of cool stuff though and so keep an eye on dangerous prototypes folks they're doing cool things actually they did they did they they had this other thing the um where the hell was it it was like a yeah pcb routing for open source hardware uh so dirty circuits.com is actually uh by them and basically they'll they'll actually route a board for you if you want them to um and then they also started some pcb service as well so kind of like doing that kind of stuff as

Dave Jones: well they don't do it themselves though they outsource it to somebody else and they just had all the transaction and yeah i think so don't they yeah right

Chris Gammell: right but he said he had i mean the site says they have people in house too so you know that's great right yeah cool cool so very cool and uh yeah keep and i'm obviously dangerous prototypes been doing cool stuff for a long time so i like those guys they're great

Dave Jones: are pcb layout designers and endangered species

Chris Gammell: ah that's a good question um so this was max maxfield uh who wrote this article clive i didn't i didn't uh understand the title at first did you understand this

Dave Jones: i have not read the article i've just read the title are pcb layout designers

Chris Gammell: and endangered species yeah so i thought it was like you know is it like the end of layout right there's no one to do layout because i was thinking oh auto

Dave Jones: router he's talking about here we go there have been a spate of recent announcements about astoundingly cunning pcb layout technology um by you know a lot of your high-end um you know makers of the high-end yeah right of course and you know your mentor graphics of the world and ones like that apparently they've got these new whiz bang layout yeah yeah sure sure but no no no no no no no no no no no no yeah no yeah no the answer is no like

Chris Gammell: people that are just doing layout right so so this is this is what you started doing is that right is this how you started i've

Dave Jones: like well i didn't start but i have been a full-time company's full-time pcb designer yeah so okay all the designs would come to me you know there'd be a whole bunch of design like i'd also do you know it wasn't just my only uh well it wasn't my only job i also did some design work as well but right if if anyone had a board to lay out in the company it would come to me oh okay okay yeah yeah right and so yeah i've worked at places

Chris Gammell: where there's been like a couple people that were doing just just doing layouts yeah yeah and um absolutely and so that's that's who he's talking about here right i was i was thinking when i first glanced that i was like oh well are they getting rid of like layout thinking like oh auto routers are getting better and stuff like that that's a load of malarkey that'll no no if that happens it probably will be past the time when i'm working on boards ever again

Dave Jones: no there's lots of advantages to having the same person the same department do your layouts over and over and and your schematics and stuff like that they've got all the libraries down pat they're going to have you use consistent you know libraries and they're going to use consistent layout techniques they're going to use consistent uh bed of nails test point yeah you know systems there there's a lot of advantage to you know they they know what parts are in the inventory so they're going to reuse parts and stuff like that they'll handle the bombs and all that sort of stuff and there's lots of advantages to standardizing on the person or the or at least the procedure for doing oh yeah definitely

Chris Gammell: that i think outside of that too is i mean so the the designers i've always worked with they just knew way more than i ever would know right i mean like yeah impedance matching and you know like routing out channels and stuff like like all of just the the really tough stuff and pcb layout right they that they live that they breathed it right i mean that's why you're probably so good at it right i mean like you just you know it because you have to go

Dave Jones: figure it out i did it all day every day and then you intimately know your board manufacturing know what their limitations are you know the capabilities are all that sort of stuff whereas you know if joe blog's engineer comes along oh i got a new circuit i'm gonna lay out a board and then you you know it's unmanufacturable right you know because they they just didn't know they just didn't know that yeah they might be a very good pcb design engineer but if you don't know your limitations and capabilities of your system and your suppliers and your manufacturers and everything else your assemblers then well you're going to get a shitty product out the other end or you risk getting a shitty product so right

Chris Gammell: definitely well i think i think max is asking a question i mean it's a good question here actually because i think i think traditionally the the traditional role where it's like every single board had to go through um you're on the the cad group and stuff like that that's that's definitely not happening right this is just a stratification of experience in well no but i mean like experiences right i mean but i mean like people can go grab ki cat or eagle or something like that and they can go push aboard oshpark right i mean unless unless a company put something in place where you can't do that i'm saying that that stuff's available now right you can do it you can do small stuff without without you know rocking the boat uh whereas in the past when it was like you had to have a five thousand dollar seat you had to go to the you know and get a full you know prototype run done with five hundred and some dollars right five hundred thousand

Dave Jones: dollars you know yeah yeah right exactly so so i think people forget that's the way it used to be you know it was five hundred a thousand bucks to spin a board right people are so used to you know all the you know you can get one for 20 bucks if you wait a couple of weeks you know yeah yeah games totally changed right

Chris Gammell: definitely and yeah and i think i think that's what i think that's what he's bringing up here and and it's like i think it's just a what it ultimately is is just more people doing layout stuff i think that actually is going to increase the need for like the expertise because you know there's there's still specialized tools people will standardize on the lower end tools like the kai cats and eagles and stuff like that uh for just the small stuff and then there's no reason to even learn it if it's like oh well i've got this guy by company who uses the you know the the cadence stuff or uses the ultium stuff and they're really really good with it and they can do all the fancy key strokes and fanciness right yeah that's going to stick around i think but it's not going to be a growth industry it's not going to be like we need you know thousands and thousands of new pcb layout designers right it's we need experts that's actually another thing in that book well people i love that book it's actually so this is kind of interesting here too because basically the idea is if you're not first you're last right so if you're not if you're not at the top right it's all power law distribution stuff if you're not in the short head right of like you get all you know basically you get all of the work right you're the apples where you're selling all the computers you're the you know you're you're selling all the ipods and stuff like that um you know you're the you're the you're the top of your field you're getting all the requests you're automatically last right there is no silver medal that's kind of the idea in this new economy that we're living in and i think that this kind of fits into that right if you're not if you're not the top pcb designer who's like sought after right doing the very fanciest stuff then you're you're doing nothing right you're not going to be doing some small little board with a ten thousand dollar design package so right okay i love that book i gotta finish it so i can speak about it with more authority you can reread it yeah

Dave Jones: so then you can have a wank over the next book that you get obsessed with

Chris Gammell: dude i love reading i love reading and pretending i know what i'm talking about

Dave Jones: like it's like every book you read changes your life you know like oh no then you know i gotta change my life i've gotta do all this stuff it makes so much sense if i just do this i'll be rich and famous and

Chris Gammell: probably not but you know right you know

Dave Jones: well yeah you still have something to

Chris Gammell: talk about on the show how about that exactly

Dave Jones: oh boy you're just a cynical old man man

Chris Gammell: you you need to reinvigorate yourself with a new office and a new a new lab built into a suitcase that's what you need to do

Dave Jones: i'm gonna go do that right now because we're over time i'm going going down the road i'm gonna talk to the real estate agent and

Chris Gammell: good yep good stuff man well good luck in your search well just like you

Dave Jones: reading these books nothing will come of it well whatever you heard it here first

Chris Gammell: yeah people can get their questions in for mike of lt spice we'll have a reddit post about that so be sure to do that for next week cool talk to you then bye you