#199 – The 2014 Maker Faire Show - Traveling Technology Trangam

SPEAKER_00: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded May 19th, 2014. Episode 199. Traveling. Technology. Transgam.

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: Reporting from the scene of the crime.

Chris Gammell: The scene of the stupid friggin' trolley whistles and the rice-a-roni and the...

Dave Jones: Where are you? Where are you?

Chris Gammell: I'm in the 10th floor of a hotel in downtown San Francisco. Woohoo! Yeah. I was told not to stay in an Airbnb in the city. It's really expensive here right now. Right. Because it's not just Solid... So I'm here for SolidCon. And it's not just SolidCon, though.

Speaker ?: It's...

Chris Gammell: There's some Cisco thing. The guy asked me a check-in. You know, you can always tell when you get checked in at hotels. Like, oh, are you here for this? I'm like, no, I don't... No. It's a Cisco thing.

Dave Jones: No, I'm here for this tin pot thing called Maker Faire.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, so, yeah, I'm in downtown. And I was at Maker Faire. That was a good time. I'm sure we'll talk about that. But, yeah. Yeah. So there will be trolley whistles and ambulances in the background. I will apologize in advance.

Dave Jones: We've all been there, done that ad hoc recording studio. So you're using your little Samson Go mic?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And the new... So we have a new setup we're sending to our guests as well when I remember to schedule them. And so I finally... I've captured my own version of that. Hopefully this is what guests should sound like if they do everything right. I hope it sounds good or else that would be really dumb, right?

SPEAKER_00: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So you probably hear that my voice is gone, too. I've been... I was at the Bring a Hack dinner last night after Maker Faire. And, you know, hanging out at post-Maker type events. It's just, what do you work on? What do you work on? Let's talk about projects. Let's talk about electronics. Oh, my God. This is the... Like, honestly, it's like nerd. It was nerd mecca. It was awesome.

Dave Jones: That is a real problem, you know, when you are yapping all day. You know, if you're on a trade show booth or something like that and you're just continually talking to people all day, your voice does go. Right, right. And you're just ruined by the end of the day.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And if at the end of the day you're also having a couple of beers and you're talking a little louder because everybody else is talking a little louder, it kind of compounds that effect. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Beer is not good for the vocal cords, by the way. That's why... You shut your mouth, sir. Any true, you know, singer or anything does not drink before... Only has room temperature water before...

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. No orange juice. Definitely no orange juice. No orange juice. No alcohol.

Dave Jones: No milk. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Apparently, I'll never make it in broadcasting, Dave.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: But, yeah. I mean, it was great. So, Lane set it up for Mosh Park. He actually set the whole thing up this year. It was... The place turned out great. We probably had... So, they had us outside of first. Probably 25 people could fit out there.

Dave Jones: This is the hack. This is the...

Chris Gammell: Bring a hack, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Bring a hack. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: The one that... Jerry started this whole thing a couple years back and Lane kind of took over the setup this year. And I'm guessing we had about 120 people there last night. It was pretty insane.

Dave Jones: Wow. That's huge.

Chris Gammell: I mean, we took over half the restaurant. What?

Dave Jones: So, you just wander around and mingle? I take it you all wouldn't be sitting at one huge table and, oh, you know, waving to someone right down the other end at 120 people. You would never get to see everyone. That's one of the problems, too.

Chris Gammell: It was the problem. It was very difficult. I mean, like, I would... Basically, what I was doing, I was like... I talked to someone about two minutes and then, like, I'd see someone else and I would introduce the person I'm talking to to some... Usually, that other person and kind of just kind of bounce around. You know, because I wanted to see everyone. I mean, I saw one of my former bosses there. I saw... Like, one of my consulting bosses. I saw, you know, a bunch of guests there. Ron Kwan was there. Bunny. Ian. Jerry. All these people. You know, like, all of the maker crowd. But also, you know, a lot of... You know, a lot of the people. Alicia, Jeff. I mean, like, honestly, like, it was a really, really good crowd. So... And everybody brought something, too. So, that's even worse. Awesome. Because you want to talk about the project itself. You know, it's like, yeah, I want to catch up with these people. But really, I want to see what you have in your hand. You know, it's just...

Dave Jones: Right, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, it was great.

Dave Jones: And I assume that the more well-known faces, yeah. You know, you'd have a hard time getting to them. Because everyone would want to meet them. You know? Yeah. Whereas if you've got a face that isn't recognizable. You know, someone might have heard of you. But you don't have a recognizable face. Then, you know... Man, that's the best part. Does everyone have dorky name tags or what?

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no. No name tags.

Dave Jones: So, you've got to have dorky name tags to break the ice. That's important.

Chris Gammell: I don't think so. Usually, I would do it for... Like, I met a bunch of people. Like, Noah Zerkin, right? One of the... He was actually the guy... Noah is a wearables guy. And he's actually the one that took the picture of Sergey Brin wearing Google Glass on the train.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, like that first... Very first picture of Google Glass, right? And so, Noah does Glass stuff as well. But he's actually... You know, he's been doing wearables longer than that. And so, I saw him. And I'm like looking at him. I'm like... You know, that's what it usually was. Like, you know, you just look at somebody. You're like... You look a little different than your Twitter picture. But I'll ask anyways. You know? So, like... That happened. The same thing happened with, like, Zach from Upverter, right? I was looking at him. Right. He's wearing an Upverter shirt. He's got long hair. He's taller than I thought he would. You know? Like, it was just like that. Yeah, right. Just kind of... Same thing over and over. Mike Esty. Same thing. You know? Like... And just like... Unless you know someone, right? That's just how the human brain works. Unless you have that image of them actually in real life, you don't make that connection. It's tough to do. So... Yeah.

Dave Jones: And that's what happens if you've just got a text blog or a Twitter photo or something. Or, you know, people have only seen you in the odd photo. You know? Whereas I'm, you know, instantly recognizable because I'm on video. And you would be if people have been following you via video. But if they've just been following you via your Amp Hour photo, you know, then...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's one of those...

Chris Gammell: That was a thing. I always tell people to change your photo before you go to conferences, too. Because I had that weird, like, off-color one before where it was, like, blue and white and red. Yeah, yeah. And my hair looks red. And my hair is definitely not red. It was like a photo I modified. And that's stupid, right? You're never going to... Right. No, no, of course. You know, you should take a current photo right before you go to a conference. So, it's like, this is me. It's almost like, this is what I'll be wearing this day, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. This is what I'll be wearing. That makes sense. Totally. Yeah. You know?

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. But, you know, it's a little awkward at first. And usually, I guessed right. So, it was... Right. It was good. Cool. Good time.

Dave Jones: Although, you guys weren't hard to miss with that backpack thing sticking out of your bloody backpack. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, I was hanging out with the Hackaday guys because they're part of Supply Frame. And I've been working there part-time as well and the whole contest and everything. And so, Mike, the managing editor, he made this foam... It's called the Jolly Wrencher. It's the logo for Hackaday. And he was wearing it around. And I tell you, I think I'm going to be seeing more of that stuff at Maker Faire next year because it's so easy to be recognized. Like, honestly, people would walk up. It was literally... Yeah, yeah. It was brilliant. I mean, like, we were making fun of him beforehand. And by the way, Mike's last name is a C-S-Z-C-Z... Do you know how to say that?

Dave Jones: No, I cannot pronounce names. I don't even try.

Chris Gammell: It's Stish. Stish. Mike Stish. That's how you say it. There you go. Yeah. Pretty crazy, right? Anyways, Mike's great. And so, I got to hang out with him all weekend. And it was a lot of fun. We did a lot of videos and stuff like that. And much like podcasting, I always say podcasting is one of the biggest life hacks I've ever done. Between podcasting and...

Dave Jones: Oh, life hack. That's a...

Chris Gammell: That's a douchey term.

Dave Jones: There was an article about that. Somebody posted it somewhere. Like, stop calling everything a hack.

Chris Gammell: Sorry. You know? Life hack. How about this? It's a big secret. It's a not-so-secret secret, right? Podcasting and pretending you're media when you go to conferences, all of this stuff.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Totally.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Makes a huge difference. It's a way to meet people, right? It's an excuse to meet people. And at conferences, you know, like, so walking around Maker Faire, you know, it's no longer like, hey, can I hear about your project? It's like, hey, I'm from blank. Tell me about your project.

Dave Jones: I'm from the world's biggest podcast engineering radio show.

Chris Gammell: Right. Of course. But even if it's not from, I'm from The Amp Hour. It's, I'm from this blog that sounds somewhat sort of official. Tell me about it, right? There's a whole different, I mean, it's just like human stuff, right? It's this whole idea of authority. And it's a great way to meet people easily. You know, honestly. I'm from, if it wasn't the EEV blog, I'm from the EDD blog, right? You know, I don't know. It doesn't matter. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't matter.

Dave Jones: You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And we'd love to talk to you about it. We'd love to interview you about it. You know, like that's just a great way to strike up a conversation. It's, you know, especially as a nerd, as an introvert, you know, having a crutch to lean on, right? When you have like, it's almost like a script. It's like, yeah, okay. And then once you get talking about projects, that whole feeling gets, you know, when you start to get into the electronics, you know, tell me about the processor on board or whatever. Then it's just flow, right? I mean, it's just talking to people about what you're always talking about, you know, or thinking about. So that's the best part of Maker Faire. I mean, hearing about these projects, man, there were some great ones. There were some great ones. Oh. So, yes, it's been a long weekend and it's not stopping. I'm here through Saturday. I mean, I'm in the Bay Area through Saturday. So.

Dave Jones: Excellent. Can we have a Jerry update? Where's she at with her Cast AR? Ah. Did you get to actually use it?

Chris Gammell: No. No. I still haven't. Fail. I mean, there was a line out the tent for the entire time and she's super big. I didn't see her until bring a hack, basically, until the dinner at the end. But I actually, I saw her on the first night as well, the Friday night dinner as well. And so she said they're like, they've got tooling just about done. So like all the plastics and stuff. I think she's on her third or fourth rev of the board. She keeps updating stuff. And I mean, it looks really good. I mean, she keeps compressing that chip and everything.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. She's doing good, though. I mean, her and Rick. I get to meet Rick finally, too. And Rick's real nice. Cool. But yeah, it was great. And so I was hanging out with Bunny a little bit last night. I don't know if you saw the Twitter pictures. Oh, I saw that.

Dave Jones: He got his hair cut or something. Because he. It was long hair. What? Was it all chopped off? Did he get shaved or what?

Chris Gammell: No. He said. So I don't know if it was actually a stretch. So Bunny's been doing this Novena project, right? And last I had talked to him, it was like 180 or 200,000.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it was like 100 and something K. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. And they had to hit 250. And I was like, oh, crap. In the past two days, they hit their goal. And then in the past two days, it jumped to 700,000. And I'm not sure if it was.

Dave Jones: It got linked somewhere, obviously, on some tech geeky blog, probably. Yeah, maybe. Or for him, and that's it.

Chris Gammell: Someone interviewed him, right?

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so I don't know if he added as an actual stretch goal or if it was like somebody just joked with. But he said he would cut his hair into a bob. You know what a bob is?

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's like that 1960s look that the women had, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, usually it's like shorter in the back. And then it kind of tapers forward. It's a little longer in the front. It's a very effeminate look. I mean, maybe there's men out there that have it. But anyways, he did it as a joke. And then he hit 700,000 that night. And the campaign ended. And so Lenore from Evil Mad Science, we got some scissors and she cut a bunch of his hair off. Nice. And he was, there may have been drinking involved. You're right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: It was great.

Dave Jones: Terrific stuff.

Chris Gammell: Lots of fun. And you know, man, so Marcus was here. Marcus Shappi. Yes, who we've had on the show. Yes. And I'd probably be hanging out with him later tonight, drinking with a bunch of Aussies in the area. And you're afraid, apparently. Yes.

Dave Jones: You're afraid to go drinking with a bunch of Aussies, you pussy. You pussy.

Chris Gammell: You pussy. Well, yeah. I mean, I think it's pretty well established that, you know, I'm not cut out for that kind of lifestyle.

Dave Jones: You talk the talk, but you don't walk the walk. That's right, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I enjoy one or two beers here and there.

Dave Jones: Beer, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I like beer. I don't like that much beer. Anyways, so Marcus was there and we were chatting about how you need to get your ass over there next year. Over here, rather. I guess it's here.

Dave Jones: Yeah, try doing it when you've got to. I bet you every single bloody person there is young and single and doesn't have a three-year-old.

Chris Gammell: No way, man. Ron Kwan was there, man. He's not young. He's finishing up his book. He was here and there's lots of people here.

Dave Jones: Does he have a three-year-old and does he live in Australia?

Chris Gammell: No, but there were a couple Aussies. Yeah. You have no excuse. Sorry.

Dave Jones: Eh.

Chris Gammell: I was meeting people from my course as well. Someone from Bolivia. Yeah, cool. Someone from Switzerland. It's just everyone. It was great.

Dave Jones: Excellent.

Chris Gammell: Nerd Mecca.

Dave Jones: But it almost sounds like it's too big. You know, there's too many people to see. So you don't get to spend quality time, you know, hanging out with, you know, everyone. Like, you know, imagine if I went there and there's like 15 people who have been on the Amp Hour show, right? And how do I get to meet and spend time with every single one of them?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's almost impossible. You know, shake their hand and say, hi, see you. I've got to go talk to the next person.

Chris Gammell: That is true, but I don't think there's a reason not to do something. I mean.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no, no. I'm just, yeah. It's the kind of thing I was getting that is, you know, like it's not the be all end all. Go in there and, you know, you get to hang out with 10,000 other people. It's almost too much. So I like the smaller shows, you know, where I can hang out and, you know, talk with someone for a solid hour.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No, no. I do agree with that. I definitely do. That is just a side effect of it. I mean, it's any conference, right? You can never meet everyone at a conference. A bigger conference. Same thing will happen at SolidCon. Same thing will happen at, you know, DEFCON. All those big, all the big ones, you know, there's all, you always have to prioritize. Like, I didn't catch any talks. I mean, like, that's always a problem, though. But it's kind of what you want to do and what you want to see. So you kind of just have to pick and choose. I mean, like, I remember I watched, I always want to watch coverage on, like, Tested of, like, Comic-Con, right? You know, like, that is such a huge, I mean, obviously, it's not electronics, but that's such a huge conference. And you can't, like, and they talk about that, too, where they say, you know, if you actually want to go to a talk, especially at something like that big, you have to wait in line for four hours, right? And you actually are giving up.

Dave Jones: Oh, and you miss the rest of the show.

Chris Gammell: And, I mean, there's always those small trade-offs, you know, if you want to catch a show with, you know, if you want to get a front row seat for something to make your fare, you do have to be there soon, you know? You have to, you know, prioritize. I think the only thing is, is that, you know, honestly, looking at it year to year, so I've been here two years ago now, and now, a lot of this stuff is the same. So, it is possible to prioritize, but you have to know that you're going to, you know, possibly come back. So, maybe someone oversees it. It would be tough, because you wouldn't have the opportunity to come back as much. I mean, but...

Dave Jones: See, well, that's the thing, right? If I went there, right, I would have to weigh up. It would probably come down to a choice about actually getting footage and covering the show, which people would expect me to do. Oh, Dave's going all the way to the US for the Maker Faire. You know, we expect, you know, top quality, half hour, polished video of the whole summary of the whole event. And, well, if I spend all day doing that, I don't have time to see things. I don't have time to meet and talk to people. You know, it's just, it's one of those trade-offs.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, you got to try and combine that as much as you can, right? And that's what me and Mike were doing mostly. We were trying to meet people we wanted to meet and see things we'd heard about already and stuff like that. Yep.

Dave Jones: So, you know, and they'd want to see interviews and they'd want to see everything else. So, yeah, that's, you know, from that aspect, I'm kind of glad I'm not going, you know, because it would just be so much work and pressure. Well, I think that's justification. Flat out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, okay.

Dave Jones: But you do know where I'm coming from, though.

Chris Gammell: Of course. Yeah, I mean, I do. It's fine. But, yeah, it's been good. I mean, I saw a lot of interesting new tools. Actually, there's some posted on our links as well. What else was on there? So we have our links from this week. We figured, Dave and I figured that, you know, we would be talking mostly about this kind of stuff and everything. And, oh, geez, where is this thing now? There we go. And Volt Set, so I got to see them. Volt Set's a new cell phone tablet. Basically, it's a multimeter connected multimeter. Oh, yet another one.

Dave Jones: Yeah, how many of those have there been now?

Chris Gammell: I know of three. So I know of...

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's at least three or four. This would be the fourth one, I think, that I'm aware of.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so I know of Redfish. That was one from a couple years ago, actually, because that was when I was still at Keeflee. I remember seeing that one. And then Mushimeter, and I got to meet Eric. Yep. The guy that does the Mushimeter at Maker Faire. And then Volt Set's a new one. And I only got to talk to their marketing person. I didn't get to talk to the technical person. Ah, well, I got that. Yeah. I mean, it was nice.

Dave Jones: They have a marketing person?

Chris Gammell: I think it's probably a business person. You know, I think it was like a three-person team.

Dave Jones: Right. So they've got capital funding from somewhere if they've got someone like that on the staff, so to speak, in quote marks.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think there's a lot of this stuff with people starting with teams. You're starting with teams versus a bad idea, starting with a startup team.

Dave Jones: See, that seems to be like the way everyone's doing it. You know, all of these colleges now, as you call them in the U.S., have got, you know, these courses, these entrepreneurial courses, right? And everyone takes them thinking, oh, yeah, I'll get rich. I'll be the next Google. You know, and then they go off and they start these companies. And they think that the only way to start them is to get capital and then get an advertising person, get a, you know, get a PR person and get a business manager, get a CEO and get a, like, goodness. How about just, you know, working late nights and producing a product, you know, and then seeing where it goes. I'm sorry. Yeah. Starting to bug me a little bit.

Chris Gammell: Well, you know, actually, so I learned about this a little. So I've been reading about this and talking to people about this a little bit more. I didn't realize, actually, maybe we've talked about this on the show before, but some of that stuff, actually, you need to have, like, like, I always kind of got bugged by, like, the fact that someone calls himself a CEO, right? It's like, okay, I started a company. I'm the CEO. Well, actually, that's actually a thing. I'm the CEO. Right, that's a corporate structure thing. You need to have, like, that actual title. And I didn't realize that. Maybe, and we may have talked about this before on the show.

Dave Jones: I am officially the director of my company.

Chris Gammell: Right, because, yeah, there's different titles and different corporate structures across the world, right? Yes, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, so legally, I have to be the director. I'm Director Jones, you know. Right, right.

Chris Gammell: But you don't have to put that on your LinkedIn profile, right? No, I don't. I guess that's the real, that's like the real test these days, you know. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. So I was looking at the Volt set thing, and I was talking to the guy last night, and obviously he wasn't the technical person, so, but he didn't, so we were talking about, I asked how many digits it was, right? It's a DMM, right? Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. And they don't actually spec it like that, and I was kind of curious about that. I mean, they talk about accuracy.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because it's a data logger. People do these things as data loggers and then call it a multimeter, or they call it an oscilloscope, where really it's just a, you know, they've just got a 16-bit ADC in there, and it's just a data logger, and they don't really treat it as a multimeter as such. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and they're doing 0.05%, and it's like, okay, I mean, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I feel like 0.1% these days is kind of, I know that's across temperature and everything else as well, but, you know. So it seems okay. I don't know. I don't think I'd get it myself, but I don't even know what the lowest level is. The lowest level looks like it's 80 bucks if you backed it right away. Yeah, so. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's probably okay for what it is. It's like all those things, you know. They're not, it's not designed as a multimeter replacement, you know. If you think it is, you're, you know, you're just crazy. Right. It's not. It's a, you know, it's a multimeter attachment for your tablet. It's not a replacement for a proper multimeter.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, it is what it is, and it tries to do multiple things, you know. It's not just a multimeter. I'm sure it does download everything else.

Chris Gammell: Right, well, yeah, you kind of have to have that, right? I mean, so for Contextual Electronics, we've been using the EX330 based on actually your recommendation, the $50 multimeter shootout. Yeah. And there's some weird stuff with it. But, I mean, like for 50 bucks, it's, you know, it does a lot of stuff. It has a lot of features in it. It is a good.

Dave Jones: It's nice and rugged, and it's tiny. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: It's, yeah. And, and I like it so far. I mean, but, yeah. So, that's your baseline then, right? And then it has a little display on it. So, you have to add all the fancy schmancy, the graphical stuff on top of it, or else, why not just get that?

Dave Jones: To make it worthwhile of hooking up to your phone. Otherwise, what's the point? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. Yeah. And, I mean, yeah. I don't personally know what the benefit of a phone connected thing is. I mean, I guess, same with the Mushi meter as well. So, I've talked to Eric about this as well. You know, it's like, I guess the data logging stuff, and Mushi does two channel and stuff like that. But, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, it's great when you need that hands-free, you know, wireless remote kind of thing. Just like the Fluke 233, you know, with its removable display. Yeah, the attachable. It's the same thing. But, for everyday use, no, it's useless, right? Right, yeah. It's just more trouble than it's worth. But, when... The clip on and leave it. But, it's invaluable for those times. Yeah. Right. But, it's invaluable for those times when you need that hands-free.

Chris Gammell: Right. And, the hands-free is kind of like... And, that actually is a good situation for a data log, like you said, you know. Yeah, of course. You're hooking it up, you're walking away, and you want to come back and see what kind of data it's crapped out versus, you know, I'm touching these two things, what is the voltage between these two pros, or across these two pros, right? Right.

Dave Jones: Most of the time, I don't have to do data logging. I rarely do data logging. But, when you do, you've got to have a tool that does the job, right? Yeah. So, it's one of those.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, it's usually clunky to do it with the smaller, you know, display-based stuff, right? Unless you have some kind of weird export or, you know, SD card craziness. So...

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: See, to me, a lot of the time, that would be fine. Like, I use a... I don't need a wireless display type thing. I can just use my regular multimeter that has data logging in. I just set the logging mode. I put it there, and I come back, and I upload the data, and, you know, everything's hunky-dory. I don't have to view it in real time. Yeah. You know, on a display and on my phone. All that sort of jazz. But, I can appreciate how some people might. Anyway. Yeah. Shall we talk about your portable lab? Oh, sure. You took it with you. You got it finished. How'd it go? I did.

Chris Gammell: It's good. I have video of the build. I haven't uploaded the video yet, though. Cool. So, I ended up changing the format. Before, it was kind of like opening like a book. So, like, it's a case. It's about two feet by a foot and a half, or...

Dave Jones: It's a pretty big-ass case. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, yeah, it is. It's pretty sizable. It's pretty deep, actually, as well. And, actually, so I had taken it home last week. Did we talk about it last week? I don't think we did. No. With Mike? Was that last week? Yeah, that was last week. Did we? I don't think we talked about it much. But, anyways, I had taken it home last weekend to try it. Just kind of to take it with me somewhere and see how it goes and everything. And, basically, the way I had the foam cut out and everything, I had it so that when you open the case, it kind of sat like an open book on the surface. And then you could pull out the tools and use them and everything. And then, based on, I think, your suggestion, and then a couple people on Twitter as well, I had complained about, oh, a work surface. I don't have a static mat or anti-static mat, rather. And so I started thinking about it. And someone suggested, well, why don't you mount something in there? And so I did that. So I went out and I got a scroll saw and I got some plywood. And, basically, I screwed in a piece of plywood cut to shape in the lid.

Dave Jones: Oh, you screwed it into the plastic?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's actually standoffs in there.

Dave Jones: Oh, there's standoffs, is there?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Wow. Now, the thing I found, though, is that the, so this plastic is actually really, the reason it's so good at being rugged is actually not because it's hard. It's actually because it's soft. It actually absorbs it. It's a polymer. It's a polymer plastic, yes. Exactly. It's some kind of, like, foam. It's an impact-resistant polymer. Yeah, it's like they got different foam cells and stuff like that. And so what happened was I got these screws that I was using. And at first, I'm like, wow, I just got this a lot. You know, I drilled through the board, this board I cut out, and I marked it, and I thought I got everything right. Yep. And I screwed through it, right, through these pre-drilled holes. And I'm like, wow, this is all been great. Well, it turns out that this screw I was using was actually self-tapping, and it just went right through the actual boss. I was off by a little bit. And so that was actually a really big problem. I started screwing into the actual plastic versus in the holes that were in the boss, right, or the riser thingy. So I finally got the alignment right, but once it's in there, I mean, it's in there. And then basically I had gotten an anti-static mat, like some Amazon Rosewill mat, and I just cut that to size. And then I cut, and then I screwed that into the wood then. And then the idea eventually would be that I could mount actual power supplies and stuff to the wood and through the mat, basically. Oh, okay, right. Bench buddy is meant to be that kind of thing, so it actually has screw holes and everything. I could screw that directly down. And then possibly even getting what I'm really thinking about doing next is doing like a 5-volt boost, like 5 to 30. Yeah, yeah. So I have plus and minus 30, and I could maybe even then do another power supply like that.

Dave Jones: Using the space under the wood, because there's standoffs there, right? So you've got a space under there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Is that what you're talking about? I was actually thinking above the wood. There's actually still a lip. Oh, okay. So if you think about the case actually has a lip of about probably – Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah. Probably about 4 or 5 inches or whatever. Yeah, it's deep. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty deep. And so with the wood and the standoffs, there's another probably 2 to 3 inches yet. It takes about half of it. And so I could probably get something mounted to that, you know, a low-profile board. You know, thinking about just like a boost converter or something like that. And then probably not a boost, but actually like a push-pull through a transformer actually to push different voltages, you know, so I can get plus-minus rails. And then, you know, I can control the edges so I can get a cleaner power supply because that's usually a big deal there. But the thing is, like, I'm using the ATX power supply, like the actual connector right now. And I wanted it for the plus-minus 12 volts. That's the real reason I used it in the first place. But that's actually only one or two amps per rail. It's not actually much.

Dave Jones: Only.

Chris Gammell: Still pretty good, dude. That's 12 watts. Yeah, that's true, I guess. But I use that already for the bench body, right? I can just use the linear regulator and get that down pretty easy. What I really want to do is go the other direction, right? So the supply itself, I mean, this is a 550-watt off-the-shelf ATX power supply. It costs 20 bucks. And it's surprisingly quiet. I mean, like, it's – like, I've measured it, loaded, unloaded. I mean, like, it's – like, I can – and then I've been hearing from all the course members as well. Like, they're like, oh, I've got this 20-year-old supply, and it's super noisy. And I'm like, you know, it's just basically all of these low-cost companies are taking advantage of better switching technology for offline switchers. And now I get this benefit as well. And the idea would be, though, you know, use the plus or minus 12 just in the bench body, but then take a 5-volt, which has, like, 20 or 30 amps behind it, like something – some serious frigging current behind it. And then taking that and boosting that up and, you know, taking a boost maybe – or push-pull probably so I can get another bipolar rail and then have some serious current as well. And then the current would be limited by how much the transformer would be able to do. You know, get a low-profile transformer and plug all that stuff in. And then you have a setup where it's like, you know, 100 bucks. You have a couple different rails. You have, you know, the bench buddy. And, you know, it would be – Sure. So, yeah. I'm dreaming like crazy. Sounds good. Yeah. Of course, the bench buddy's not finished yet, but – Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it made it there without a gun.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. That's another thing. Yeah. So, I actually ended up getting TSA-approved locks, which seemed kind of stupid.

Dave Jones: They are stupid. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, basically, like, these little cable locks from Master Lock. And then they have, like, a master key on the bottom, like a skeleton key, effectively, that the TSA has. And then they can unlock it and look in there if they need to. But what I did is I actually followed Steve Hofer's advice. And I put a note in there and I said, hello, TSA. Here's all the things you'll find in here. And, you know, yada, yada, yada. It sounds stupid. I felt really stupid writing it. But it's just – Jesus. Thanks, San Francisco. You are so noisy.

Dave Jones: Somebody just got shot and murdered with him.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Apparently. Yeah. Some hipster got shot for not having the right iPhone. Right. But what I did is – so, yeah, I put that note in there. And basically what happened, though, is I saw the thing go through. They put it through a scanner actually outside so I could actually see it go through. Right. And it got through fine. I don't know.

Dave Jones: So, they didn't open it up or anything? At least at that point they didn't bother.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's the thing I don't know. Apparently they sometimes zip tie it when they do open it up. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Honestly, I mean, so I know this sounds bad, but like –

Dave Jones: Well, you would know because they have to put a note inside, don't they?

Chris Gammell: They do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the locks are there not for the TSA because they're actually not allowed to be there. They'll clip a lock off basically. Honestly, the locks are there for the baggage handlers. That sounds kind of stupid, but that's the only other place that it would be, right? I mean, TSA obviously could steal stuff still or they could mess with stuff or they could break stuff. But with these kind of locks, they can do that anyway.

Dave Jones: They're a bit – they're probably a bit higher paid and they don't need to. Is that what you're getting at?

Chris Gammell: No, I don't know. I mean, I was talking to people on Twitter about it too and they said, well, it basically could be anyone that could do this, right? It very much could be the TSA that breaks stuff or steals stuff. But at least in Cleveland Airport, I saw them.

Dave Jones: That reminds me of the Chappelle Corby case, but I shouldn't get into that because that's very Australian specific.

Chris Gammell: Okay, yeah, yeah. Trust me. So anyways, so yeah, that's good. We can talk over the show about that. At least so this first time. I mean, honestly, it's going to be a numbers game, right? If I ship this thing 100 times, it's very likely that one or two times I'm going to have a very bad experience. And even that thing we linked a bunch – a couple of episodes ago when we were talking about this stuff. Or maybe you won't.

Dave Jones: Maybe you won't. Maybe you're just assuming that you will and based on just hype and myth that there's rampant theft, 5% of luggage gets broken into or something like that. That's not necessarily true.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Show me the data. Show me the data.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right, right. Well, yeah, you're right. I mean, people that are stolen from are likely to write about it and talk about it. Exactly.

Dave Jones: So you only hear the bad cases. You don't hear the millions of good ones.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Or probably mediocre ones. Let's be honest, Dave.

Dave Jones: Okay, well, yeah. I had a wonderful experience with my baggage handle and I rate him five stars.

Chris Gammell: Dave, let me tell you, I love the TSA. They treated me, when they stuck their hand on my pants the other day, it was so gentle.

Dave Jones: Did they? Seriously?

Chris Gammell: No. I'm just saying.

Dave Jones: Did you get one of these pat-downs? Have you ever had one of these TSA pat-downs?

Chris Gammell: No, but who did I fly? I flew with someone that, they did the, I think it might have been Lane, actually, two years ago. I think it was Lane, actually. He said he didn't want to go through the scanner and he just said, I would like to be, you know, whatever. And they gave him a pat-down and he, yeah, it was fine. I mean, yeah, you're right. You do hear about the bad stuff only, but I think, you know, statistically, if you go long enough, if you fly enough flights, you're going to have a bad experience, right? But that's true about anything.

Dave Jones: You're going to have lost luggage. You're going to have something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you fly enough flights, you're going to be in a plane crash, right? I mean, let's be honest about it.

Dave Jones: Or you're going to meet some grumpy TSA official and then you write about it and then that becomes the norm, right?

Chris Gammell: Right, but at the same time, I think it's still good to have, you know, some kind of way against it. Anyway, so the locks seem like, it seems like a good solution for now. We'll see. I mean, if I get 100 flights and on the 100 flight, someone opens up my stuff and breaks my scope and everything else, the stuff that's in there, in terms of the value I get from having my lab with me, of those 99 before it, it probably is worth it. And that's the reason I'm using low-cost stuff, too.

Dave Jones: It's already written off, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And if I was sending my MDO 3000 with me, I would probably not. I would probably get an insurance policy and everything else. But no, I am not sending that with me. Have you got your MDO 3000? I got it the day or two, I got two days before I left and I didn't have time to play with it much. I opened it.

Dave Jones: You didn't have time to even unpack it.

Chris Gammell: I opened it, I sniffed it, I did the...

Dave Jones: You sniffed it and yeah, twirled some knobs and yeah. Did you get the one gig version?

Chris Gammell: I did. Oh my God, dude.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they're giving those away like candy.

Chris Gammell: So backstory for people.

Dave Jones: You had another advantage of being a blogger.

Chris Gammell: I think so, yeah. So I got an email from Tektronix and a very nice person there, Amy. Basically, they said, you know, we want to get our stuff out there. And I'm like, yeah. I told them, I said, you know, I can't use this for contextual electronics. I want to use low-cost stuff. And I've actually been really happy with the low-cost stuff that we've been using, you know, across the spectrum. But, you know, and they still said they want to send it to me. I said, that's very generous. Of course, I will accept that. And it is, I mean, it's beautiful, right? We've talked about it on the show. You've tried one out. It's a beautiful scope. And, you know, how could I turn that down? It's honestly, that's the best scope I've ever had. But that's a pretty low bar for me, at least. I mean, I think the Rigol was the best scope I had before that. So because analog guys don't need much, you know. I know.

Dave Jones: Well, you know. Honestly, what I would... Look, most people don't need much.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. And what I would need is something like, what is it, LaCroix has, like a 12-bit scope versus an 8-bit, you know, like that kind of stuff. Like, I don't need... I need resolution. I don't need super high speed. If there's super high speed noise, you know, if I'm using a SAR ADC... Or not a SAR, sorry. Sigma Delta ADC in the first place, I'm integrating all that noise out in the first place, right? You know, like... You're right. You know, like it's just like... It's not that it's not relevant. Because it is relevant, but it's just like, sometimes you just don't want to know.

Dave Jones: So... Exactly.

Chris Gammell: So now I'm going to be super paranoid if I could see like high frequency signals coming through. So...

Dave Jones: Well, then don't get the Agilent then, because I've done videos on that and why the Agilent is noisier, because it's faster. It shows up in noise. And some people don't like that. I know. Okay. Rightly so.

Chris Gammell: Right. So, yeah. So I used to work at Keith Lee, right? And because they're a Cleveland company, they actually... I remember this specifically. I remember the first time I walked in the lab in my college, because we were in Cleveland, they donated a bunch of Keith Lee DMMs, right? And I remember trying it out. I had never used a Keith Lee before that, obviously, because I couldn't afford it. And I'm trying it out, and then they actually had an HP 34... Was it 34100 or something? I don't remember the low-end six and a half digit HP scope from back in the day.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: 34410A. Yeah, that's it. Yep, exactly. Yep. And so we had them side by side, and people chose the HP every time. And it was because it updated slower. It's so stupid, right? I mean, like...

Dave Jones: Right, okay. It doesn't actually mean it.

Chris Gammell: It's not realistic, right? I know. I mean, like... But people chose it every time because it had these nice, you know, blocky-looking letters, and it was a slower signal in quote marks, right? Yeah. It's so dumb. But, like, it's just this stupid human nature type thing, you know?

Dave Jones: Exactly. I know. It's... Oh, goodness. So, yeah. I don't know. Classic.

Chris Gammell: So, yes. I would not bring an MD-03. I don't think I'd ever bring that with me on the road, right? I mean, like, that's... That's... That's a...

Dave Jones: See, I get complaints about this. Like, oh, why do you use all this high-end gear? Well, it's because I have it, you know? They say, you're setting a bad example because...

Chris Gammell: Dave, why do you climb that mountain?

Dave Jones: Because it's there. So, I'm supposed to struggle, you know? Apparently, I'm supposed to, you know, solder together things with a plumber's iron and... Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, honestly, that's a trade-off I had to make for the course. I did that. I did that.

Dave Jones: Of course. Yeah. I went lower.

Chris Gammell: And because I wanted to show that there is stuff out there, right? I mean, I'm using a...

Dave Jones: I would do the same thing. If I was doing such a course and I was promoting it to beginners... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, I used the EX330 like you talk about in your video. I used the AOUE937, which is the... I think the one that got knocked off by that super low-end one that you reviewed, right? The...

Dave Jones: Oh, the $16 one, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right, right. I mean, they all look the same, but they're all... Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think the AOUE is actually a knockoff of something. It's not... Is it a HACO? Or... I don't know. Because the HACO is blue. There's maybe the... Anyways...

Dave Jones: Anyway, they're all a rip-off of something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And then I used the Gabotronics X-Mini Lab, right? Which is a little 200 kilohertz breadboard base...

Dave Jones: Oscilloscope-y plug-in. Scope-y.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, scope-y. I don't really call it a scope. But then it's got a little logic analyzer. It's got an AWG. It's got a protocol. I mean, like, that thing is... It's great. I love it, actually. I mean, like, it's a great little tool. I mean, it really is. It's the same kind of thing. If I was using the Bus Pirate instead, right? The Dangerous Prototypes Bus Pirate. Right. You know, they're constrained in what they can do. But oftentimes, it covers 80% of the people that are going to use it in the first place, right? Yeah. Those 80% shouldn't probably buy the MDO 3000, right? They're going to buy it when they need it, right? That's how I operate. That's how a lot of people operate. You know, when you need it, you really need it. And that's when that, you know, many, many thousands of dollar price tag makes a lot of sense. You know, it's just, okay, I need it because I'm using something leading edge and I'm going to go...

Dave Jones: But then again, the test equipment revolution in the last six, seven years has meant you can get a lot of bang for your buck. You know, you can buy a 500 buck scope and wow, you know, the shit it can do is phenomenal.

Chris Gammell: That's true. But I think the, you know, I've thought about this before as well. I think about the assumption was that, you know, the march of technology would mean that the higher and higher frequency would be necessary for the masses, right? But in general, the masses are still, you know, sub 100 megahertz. You know, that's one of the problems. That's what a lot of test equipment manufacturers are dealing with is that what most people need, you know, as this base broadens, you know, there's more people that need simpler stuff. But there is still a large crowd that needs the fancy stuff. And so they move up into the fancy area, right? So the key three Ys, six and a half, seven and a half, eight and a half digit of DMMs. There are people that need that, but there's a lot more people that need a three and a half, right? And so they...

Dave Jones: I'll probably... I'll tell you why.

Chris Gammell: Go ahead.

Dave Jones: I'll tell you why. Because...

Chris Gammell: Because you can't get a nine and a half digit DMM?

Dave Jones: It's because the reason people don't need that for the high-end stuff is because the high-end stuff is generally you buy a chip off the shelf and it works, right? How many times, right? If you're implementing a HDMI interface or a USB 3.0, how many times are you actually going to have to probe that USB 3 signal? You won't, right? Because you're buying an off-the-shelf chip. You follow the design rules.

Speaker ?: I don't know, man.

Dave Jones: That's a bad example. You follow the traces to the connector.

Chris Gammell: That's a bad example, given Mike being on the show last week. He said that stuff's all buggy, but...

Dave Jones: Right. Well, you know.

Chris Gammell: Let's go with HDMI, though. Yeah, I'll go for HDMI.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. No, let's just go USB 2 or H2, right? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Go for something that's a mature technology. Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, yeah. You buy a chip off the shelf and it works. All that stuff's hidden from you because the fact of the matter is that to truly debug that stuff properly and measure it and quantify it, the march of technology doesn't get any better. You still need a two gig differential probe, right? Right. You still need like a fed input probe, right? You know, like that stuff is niche and is always going to be expensive. It's not going to become mainstream. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. I agree.

Dave Jones: Right. So, and most of the time you're going to be dealing with, oh, does the power supply, does this switch in power supply work? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: To the chip, right? Because the chip's already debugged. Somebody at the higher level's taken care of that. And standard system electronics engineering, you're just bolting together stuff. So you only need to do the day-to-day stuff. Is there a signal there? Yes. No. Does the power supply work? Yes. No. Okay. Everything else is bloody software.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. That's good. That's a really good point.

Dave Jones: You know? It's like, eh. That's why these high-end tools have not become mainstream.

Chris Gammell: Right. Much to their chagrin. But I think that the feet, you know, they also benefit from the stuff that gets added onto it, right? They get to add like the fancy software around it and that kind of benefits stuff as well. So it's, yeah, it's a trade-off, right? I mean, you get some of the fanciness in order to, but you lose some of the market that needs the fanciness, right? That's kind of the struggle. Cool. So I did see, I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it. I'm going to say it anyways. I did see the first, I saw a tablet-based wireless scope. A tablet-based wireless scope.

Dave Jones: Oh, this is the, oh yeah, the company, what's their name? They're a Chinese company, right?

Chris Gammell: No. Oh, so maybe we should compare notes here. So I saw someone else. This is a German company. They're a big kit maker. I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to say it. It was Velomon. It was Velomon, the kit maker. Right. They have a, it's coming out soon. It's a, I'm guessing it must be Bluetooth or something. But basically it talks to a scope or talks to a tablet and it's all wireless. The scope is obviously isolated because it's battery-based.

Chris Gammell: It can do 10 megahertz per channel and it'll talk to the scope. I mean, like, I think the isolation is an interesting thing, right? I mean, you kind of remove the galvanic isolation requirements because you're, you're going to

Dave Jones: Yeah, but does it have like real knobs on it? And, and does the tablet sort of slot into it? In which case it's not a real scope as we, you know, a proper bench scope. Right, right, right, right. It's a, it's a box. It just becomes a wireless instead of, it becomes like another PC-based scope. It is. It's wireless instead of using USB 2.

Chris Gammell: That's a closer, that's a closer approximation.

Dave Jones: So yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, it's another USB, it's another PC.

Chris Gammell: It's a USB scope without the USB, right? With wireless USB. Yeah. But I mean, it's still cool though, right? I mean, it's, it's still cool.

Dave Jones: If you want something like that, sure.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think there are, I mean, again, like with the data logger type of thing, right?

Dave Jones: Of course there's people, there's a market for everything.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there was a, so you think about, I mean, honestly, you think about like an isolated situation where you need to go further than even galvanic would. Like, you know, you could do this with like a transformer, right? You can isolate stuff, you know, to hundreds, thousands of volts, even with transformers. But, you know, you need to do, so say you're, obviously, Arc Attack is here, right? They're doing like the super fancy Tesla coils type of stuff, you know, 10,000 volts and more. If you need to do that kind of stuff, but your floats, your scope's going to float up on top of that, then yeah, you can do that, right? You can, you can float everything up around there. So that, that's, that becomes worthwhile at that point, right? It's, it's a 10 megahertz scope. It might be on top of a hundred megahertz or, you know, you know. Of course, you need the right tool for the job.

Dave Jones: There's countless handheld scopes on the market that'll do that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But it's not, it's probably not the best I always maintain. It's not the best choice for an everyday use scope. There is something to be said for just plugging it in, pressing the power button and it works and there's knobs there and the screen's building. You don't have to worry about, oh, where's my tablet? Because you end up using your bloody tablet for something else. It's sitting somewhere else. Oh, I left it at home. I left it in my bag. Where is it? Oh, it's not charged. Oh, like, you know, come on. Right? Right. It's, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man.

Dave Jones: It's not for everyday use.

Chris Gammell: No, and I think the assumption is that it's always going to be pretty niche in order to, you know, it's these corner cases of what people need, but I think it's still interesting, right? I mean, because that's going to push the whole thing forward. Honestly, what it's going to probably do is it's going to push the big boys to kind of integrate that stuff and then they'll have a tablet in the front that they can pull out and, you know, and then you're wrong because I'm right. So that's what I liked about it. Oh, dude.

Dave Jones: That's right. That was a big setup.

Chris Gammell: Let's see. Other things that I was interested in. So the same kind of field of things, but not really in terms of the isolation. There was a guy there that had, you know, like those little like Bobcat front loader thingies, you know, it can like scoop up dirt and stuff like that. Yep. This guy had an electric one that was completely remote controlled. So you think about like the Fukushima disaster and he didn't be able to clean up the radiation. Like totally closed system, totally battery powered, and he was controlling with a remote control. Holy crap. It was like a Tonka truck on crack. Nice. It was so awesome. So I had to hold myself back to ask him if I could drive.

Dave Jones: It was so cool though.

Chris Gammell: And a lot of the, I finally met the other mill people, you know, other mill. I think we've talked about it on here before.

Dave Jones: Oh, have we?

Chris Gammell: It's like, it looks kind of like, it's kind of about the size of like a cupcake, the old 3D printers or so. Right. It does, it's a, they say it's a CNC mill, but really the main, the main thing that I would see it for is kind of a board router. And that's obviously one of the things they kind of use as like board router and like jewelry. Right. But then they, so the thing that's interesting is that they have really fancy software to go straight from Eagle to board routing. Nice. Five by five by two and kind of just getting that software experience where it's not, not the shitty cam process that, you know, once you, you know, if you actually go use an old school, you know, if you're routing a copper clad board in order to get like a circuit, that, that was, I don't know, have you, have you done that before?

Dave Jones: In what, why?

Chris Gammell: So you like, you take copper clad and then there's a little, a little engraving bit and you kind of cut away it so that you get the isolation channels and you ever done that before?

Dave Jones: Oh, I've sort of done a few, yeah, by, by head. I've scraped it. I've scraped ones out by head.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So this would be like humans. I've been a human CNC.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this would be like that.

Dave Jones: For RF stuff. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right. Right. So this is, so I've used, I've used a, a CNC in the past. It's, it's like a router table effectively. You know, it's the, the Z height on the drill and the, on the milling bit actually doesn't have much. It doesn't actually raise that much, maybe like one or two inches, but, but basically it's great for these plain, large planer things. You know, it can do, you know, a wide area of cutting circuit boards and stuff like that. And it's all copper clad. This is how the LPKFs work. You've seen those before?

Dave Jones: The LPKFs. Yes. Yes. I've used those.

Chris Gammell: And, and so basically this is kind of like that, but a lower, lower cost. LPKFs very, very fancy and expensive. Oh yeah. Like 10 grand or so or something like that. Oh yeah. Plus. Yeah. That's the base model. Yeah. Yeah. But these guys, so they, they, they were a Kickstarter and then they've, they work out around here, but they have this, honestly, it's, it's about the software, right? Again, it's about the software where you have, you have, you know, they go straight, they, they target the Eagle, they go straight from Eagle and basically it's a one click import and, and they start cutting a PCB. And for the amount of people that are using Eagle, that actually is really, really powerful, right? You know, you have to, you just go straight to it.

Dave Jones: Is it, is it only Eagle? Cause I'd be very disappointed if it's only Eagle.

Chris Gammell: I think they started with Eagle. I doubt it's only Eagle for longterm though. You know, it's, you, you capture the, the main part of the market. Yeah. Of course. What you're targeting, right? They're, they're kind of going for the hobbyist ones. So that starts to make sense. And they can do jewelry and they can do everything. You know, they can do like, they basically low, uh, you know, the lower end CNC is like the non professional ones, the hobbyist and prosumer ones. They can do aluminum. They can, they can do light aluminum. They can do brass. They can do, uh, they can do PCBs. They can do wood, that kind of stuff.

Speaker ?: So.

Dave Jones: And what's the name of this thing again?

Chris Gammell: That's the other mill. Other mill. Yeah. The one that I was really excited about though, was the carbide. So the company's carbide 3d, the actual mill is called the nomad. This is one, if you're going to get this, so this is a desktop one, Dave, actually, because you were actually thinking about getting this, this is one you should do. So I'm really excited about this. I've used the software before. The guy that wrote mesh cam, which is like this bad-ass cam software. So if people don't know CAD, CAD is like solid works or sketch up or anything else, anything that spits out like an STL or similar type of a file, then you have to push that into a cam file or cam program. And basically that takes this design file, right? You have like the, the shape of like a, of like a book, right? You're, you're trying to replicate a book in wood, right? So you, you have your design file and CAD and then you push that to cam and the cam basically tells the machine, you know, which direction to move the tool in order to cut. Right. And there's similar kind of things for 3d printers. And so mesh cam is a cam software that's actually really nice. I mean, it's, I've used it before and I've used it for, for my mill. Um, and the guy that wrote it is part of this project. So it's like super tightly integrated and, and they have like a just ton of really nice, it's a little price here. It's like, I think it's like 3,500 bucks. Uh, but it does like eight, eight inches by eight inches by three inches. And, and it can do some pretty fancy stuff. And they have like, so part of the stuff in the software, they can actually do, uh, two sided stuff. So you can do machine on one side, flip it over a machine on the other side and it's all aligned. And it's, uh, it's just, it's killer. So I'm really, really, that, that was probably one of my favorite. I mean, obviously I'm into machining, but that was one of my favorite things at Maker Faire besides the, the Tonka truck thing.

Dave Jones: And besides the big Tonka truck.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, uh, yeah. So if you're, if you're really thinking about, uh, the, the, the CAD stuff.

Dave Jones: Well, I'm thinking about small tools for here. Cause I'm staying in my existing 50 square meter lab here. No, I know. But this would be like little tools.

Chris Gammell: This would be like the side, you know, like the area you have where you have your, um, your microscope and everything, it kind of swings over and it's like probably like a, like a meter square, right? It's probably about a meter square. Yeah. That's about how much room it would take.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. Well, that's a lot of room.

Chris Gammell: No, it's not. Come on. You got a ton of room. I mean, you could put it on the end of a bench. That's what I'm saying.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. I've only got so much bench space.

Chris Gammell: Right. But then you'd have instant boards. I mean, that's, that's freaking awesome. I don't know. I obviously it's a toy. Send me the link. Send me the link. Yeah. I will. I will. It's, uh, yeah. So, uh.

Dave Jones: I don't know. I'm, I'm looking at this other mill thing and it looks quite sexy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh no. That's, that was nice too. Uh, I just like it from the, I think like if I was going to like put them on a spectrum, like other mills kind of like, like more towards if I was just doing PCBs and I was definitely an Eagle, I would definitely, I would go with other mill. I think it's a little, a little pricier than I thought it would be.

Dave Jones: It supports Gerber as well.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it does. Okay. So that, that's what I was. Okay, good. Um, yeah, that's right. Cause they said BRD, BRD or Gerber. You're right about that. Um, but then if I wanted to go into the actual machining stuff and getting like both, you know, kind of getting more of it, I would probably, and I wanted to do stuff with a little bit bigger. I would probably, and plus the other thing that I don't think the other mill does, and I know that this is kind of esoteric for people that haven't done machining before, but like one of the hard things about machining is knowing where the, where your drill bit or your end mill stops, where it actually, where it starts and stops, where the end of it is. And so it's called indexing, right? And the Nomad has that built in and it's just, it's awesome. I mean, like it's just, you know, it's built by machinists, right? I mean, that's kind of, or, you know, hobbyist machinists really, but it's, so basically it's what I would have gotten if I didn't get my take. So it's all doable. It's all, it's all the same kind of stuff, but it's, it's just what you want to do with it. So. Yep. Oh, so much stuff to see.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Oh, so what, I haven't asked you, we're about 55 minutes in. What the hell have you been up to, man?

Dave Jones: What the hell have I been up to? Everything but producing videos. I'm, I'm, I'm slowly working my way to, well, I'm not far off, having my new live show set up.

Chris Gammell: Ooh. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes. Um.

Chris Gammell: So what does that entail?

Dave Jones: Because, yeah, I'm, yeah, well, I'm going to be, because like, you know, rather than just have one crappy webcam and then just, you know, do it. I've got, right. Two top quality Canon camcorders, right. And they've got HDMI outputs. And I've also got that Tagano microscope, which is HDMI output, right. So these are all full HD. And so I figured, well, I've got this new internet bandwidth, right. Why don't I capture this HDMI from these cameras and from my microscope?

Chris Gammell: I was going to say that you sound, you sound very, very high bandwidth today. I don't know if people could hear it, but you sound super high.

Chris Gammell: I was. High bandwidth. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: High bandwidth.

Dave Jones: And, um, boy. Yeah. Anyway. Um, and I figured I would ditch you stream, right. And I'd go for YouTube live. Right. So I did a test yesterday.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

Dave Jones: And I used YouTube live using, uh, wire, uh, cast, which is software, which is free. If you're, if you're, if you use it with, uh, YouTube, right. And it's like a production video production switching software. Okay. So I can plug in all these HDMI captured cameras, including my microscope into this software, into a PC, into this software. And I can automatically produce live shows in real time and record them locally as well as stream them to YouTube live all in, you know, all in full HD.

Chris Gammell: That's great, man. I know. Yeah. So basically what Dave's saying here is he's going to start a television station all Dave, all the time, 24 seven, beamed across the planet. Yeah. Unless he's sleeping or shopping eBay.

Dave Jones: That's the, that's the plan is that, yeah, my cameras will be all permanently set up. They'll be all permanently wired into a, uh, well, except for my main camera, which I'll still use for shooting my regular videos. It'll be sort of free to roam.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But yeah, I'll, I'll have my secondary B camera, which is almost as good, permanently wired up into all that. My microscope will be permanently wired in and, uh, I'll be able to, um, just go bang. I want to produce a live show. You know, I get something in, I get a new box in something from eBay or something. I can do a live unboxing of it with no setup at all. I can just switch on, bang, go live full HD.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: And the advantage of YouTube live is that, um, uh, my audience, you know, I've got like 130,000 subscribers. They automatically get notified in my subscription, in their subscription feed that I'm going live. Like I did a test yesterday. Right. And I, I just wanted to test the software. So I, I didn't tell anyone. I didn't want to interact with anyone. I just wanted to test how the system works. He's still in here, folks.

Chris Gammell: I didn't want to talk to anyone.

Dave Jones: And within five minutes of pressing the live button, I, I had 150 people show up. Jeez, man. Because they, they, they, it automatically got announced on my feed.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And there I was. And then I ended up doing a live impromptu one hour live show.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Do a little dance. He's got a top hat.

Dave Jones: As always, there's horrible lag with these systems. Like some, it ranged anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute. Wow. You know, lag. It was, it was pretty awful. But people were viewing this thing, uh, you know, in, in full, well, it was only set as 1280 by 720. It wasn't full HD yet, but I can certainly do that. Mm-hmm. Um, and I'll stream in my desktop as well and I'll switch in between them and, you know.

Chris Gammell: That's fancy, man.

Dave Jones: It's, I know. It's good. So, I just need to get a few more items. It's like the Truman Show, but for Dave. It's like the Truman Show, but for Dave.

Chris Gammell: You just need to start installing cameras in your house and your car and everything else. Yeah, you're right.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I, I will have a 24-7 cam set up in the corner of the lab and that'll be streaming video all the time. That's right, folks.

Chris Gammell: Any time of day, you can watch Dave scratching his ass. That's it.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. So, I'm sticking with where my audience base is, which is on YouTube. And, well, you know, YouTube Live may have its faults, but, hey, it's there. Yeah, no, that's really smart.

Chris Gammell: And you know what? It makes total sense. It'll make you more of a cultural icon, including, did you see, did you see Ben's, Ben Heck? I did. He did. I did.

Dave Jones: I sent in the audio files that, which came from the, which I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I didn't do, actually. So, credit for the audio captures goes to somebody on Jerry's old live show. Right. You know. In the forum. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Or on the, or, yeah, that was the Fat Man in the Circuit. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. Somebody captured all that. So, all those audio quotes come from, like, my first 30 videos or something. And I, so, yeah. Yeah. Anyway. He's.

Chris Gammell: The cow says. That was basically those old toys where the, the, you pull a lever and the thing spins around and it goes to Dave saying, instead of a cow says, it's, you know, some kind of.

Dave Jones: You're a dickhead. Yeah. Crikey. Look at that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I got to see it. I met, I saw Ben last night. I met him. I met him once before. But I got to see it live. It was, it was good times. Good times.

Dave Jones: He's going to send me that so I can give it away to one of my viewers. Yeah. I don't know who would want it, but yeah. Apparently. Be surprised, I'm sure.

Chris Gammell: He's going to send it to me. Yeah. So. Did you see my new t-shirt design last night?

Dave Jones: Yes, I did. Yes. Very good.

Chris Gammell: What do you think? You like it?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. But you're, you're not going to sell it.

Chris Gammell: I am going to sell it because I gave. Oh, you are. So when, when Bunny cut his hair off, I gave the shirt to Sean or Zobbs, the guy that does a lot of the, the Linux programming stuff. Right. I gave it to Sean and so I no longer have it. So I need my own t-shirt now. So I am going to, I'll put it up on Teespring. I'll keep it, I'll keep it low cost and, and I need to find the files, but I'll, I'll post it on the Empire when we do that. The shirt is, uh, basically it was, it says never, never, never largely in, uh, never trust the auto router. And, uh, and then it's a picture of a very poorly auto routed circuit that, uh, it's actually the Bench Buddy, my, my circuit from Contextual Electronics.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: A little bit messed up.

Dave Jones: I, I, I had a similar, um, shirt design, which I uploaded, but I never got it done. Um, and it was supposed to be, because it was too many colors. It was like a, and it was going to be like an auto router. Oh yeah. Yeah. T-shirt. So, yep. I'll send you the link after the, uh, after the show. I'll show you that. Yeah. It was, it was too fancy. Basically. It had too many colors. It had too many, like it was an eight layer board and it looked like sort of, it was like blurred around the outside. So it looked like you had circuitry inside you. Really? It was like, you're looking inside you and there's a board inside you. Oh, I like that. That's great.

Chris Gammell: That was the idea of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So.

Chris Gammell: Oh, cool.

Dave Jones: But they said, oh, we can't make that. It's got too many colors. You know, gee, thanks.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That is the downside of shirts and, and anything printed like that. They usually, they start, they start getting grumpy when you, when you're doing crazy. Exactly. So yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway, that's it for today's show because we both need to bugger off and it's been an hour. So. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Is there anything else?

Dave Jones: Why not keep it until an hour today?

Chris Gammell: An hour? That's so weird, Dave. I don't know, man.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. Go figure. Anyway. So, but what, so you spent one day at Maker Faire. It's a two day event. Two days at Maker Faire. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I was there Saturday, Sunday. I was there. Well, Friday night is like the pre thing because I give a talk as well. Right. Yeah. So I was there Friday night and then Saturday, Sunday, the crowds were all there. And then today I got up here and now I'm in San Francisco for a week. So.

Dave Jones: Cool. One of my favorite cities, San Fran. Love it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's nice. It's a little pricey. Little pricey.

Dave Jones: What exactly are you doing there for a week? Yeah. It's expensive.

Chris Gammell: Well, I'll be working in my tiny hotel room on Context Electronics. I have my lab with me, obviously. And then I'll be at SolidCon Wednesday and Thursday giving a talk.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. So you've got to kill time, basically. You're just killing time between SolidCon. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm doing some other work around here, too. So, yeah. But mostly, you know, electronics and meeting people and conference.

Chris Gammell: And then flying home.

Dave Jones: Because that's your gig these days. It's weird. With supply frame, pretty much. It's just hobnobbing around the place. Yeah. Talking to people, isn't it?

Chris Gammell: Well, I'll talk more about that when I can talk more about that. But, yeah. It's been good. A lot of meeting interesting folks. So that's good. You know, it's funny. I took an Uber today, right? So I took an Uber, like the car ride. You know what that is?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: So basically, it's like an app on your phone. And basically, it calls a car that's like a cab, effectively. Like it tells it. You use the GPS on your phone. And the car shows up. And basically, you know, it picks you up.

Dave Jones: Car or a cab?

Chris Gammell: It's a car. It's not a taxi cab. It's not a medallion like a lot of the cities are. They tie in with the New York cabs. But they don't do that in a lot of other cities. But basically, it's like people, right? It's people. You don't have to be a professional cab driver. You don't have to go through any kind of weird training.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yes. Yeah. There was talk about that here. And all the cab drivers got up in arms. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. So, there's a lot of strife about that. But the idea is that basically anyone can do it. Especially UberX, which is the cheaper version. It's not like a fancy black car. So, it was just... I rode in a Camry today, right? Like Toyota Camry. Yeah. Just standard car.

Dave Jones: So, some stranger comes and picks you up on what? You pay them $10 or something? How does it work? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: And it's all credit card based on the back end. So, that kind of stuff.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. So, there's no cash exchange. There was no cash involved. Right.

Chris Gammell: You don't have to... The tip's already included. I mean, it's great.

Dave Jones: Right. So, you just put into your app that I'm now here because it knows where you are with GPS. I want to go here.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: And somebody goes, well, I'm on the way. Yep. Exactly. Is that how it works? Yep. Right.

Chris Gammell: And so, the guy I was talking to today, though, he's like, yeah, you know, I got laid off. I was in IT for 13 years. I started doing this and I love it. And I was talking about it. I told him what I do and I'm like...

Speaker ?: Okay.

Dave Jones: So, he's doing it full time.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I told him, like, I'm teaching a course online. And I'm like, you know, it was one of those things where it's like, you know, five years ago, neither of us would have been able to do what we're doing right now. Right? I mean, like, I'm working... Exactly.

Dave Jones: Same here. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, and that's more and more... People don't understand YouTube, even YouTube is what, eight, nine years old? Eight years old. It was 2006. It had its... Yeah. It had its eighth birthday or something. Yeah. Like, it's not that old. That's crazy. Yeah. How do you... Can people remember a world without YouTube? Let alone a world without internet? Right.

Chris Gammell: Or even the early days of YouTube when it wasn't... It was literally cat videos, you know, nothing else.

Dave Jones: And they're all 320 by 200. Yeah. And that was HD. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, you know, I encourage you to go back and look at your early videos there, buddy. Yeah, I know. But, I mean, yeah, you're totally right. I mean, like, and just, you know, a short amount of time. And it's just... Yeah. You know, all this... It's crazy. It's just change. And it seems like it's accelerating. Maybe it's just perception. But it's, you know, I was...

Dave Jones: Oh, no. It's accelerating. It's gone... As we said, it's gone from nothing. Yeah. There was not a single person in the world making money from online videos 10 years ago. Yeah. Right? Yeah, I was listening to a thing with... And now, well, people are making millions of dollars.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. And I was listening to a thing with Thomas Friedman. You know, he's a New York Times article, a columnist. He wrote The World is Flat. And he was doing an interview and he's like, go back and read that. Because it was written in 2004. He said, I had to go back and read it when I was writing my most recent book. And he said, I flipped the index and I looked up Facebook and it wasn't there. Yeah. You know?

SPEAKER_00: It's just like, holy shit.

Chris Gammell: It's just like, yeah, that doesn't exist. You know, like, it's just like how these things affect our lives these days. You know, there's always been this churn, but it's just, it feels different, you know? Maybe it's always been like this, but for now, we're allowed to marvel at it. So, anyways, I should go off and take an Uber to my dinner, my dinner reservation. So, cool.

Dave Jones: So, does this thing always work? Does somebody eventually always show up or does it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's a lot of drama with it where there's like surge pricing. If everybody needs a cab at once, they charge more. Oh, okay. But in general, I mean, I've had positive.

Dave Jones: Like as if, as in everyone's coming out of a show or something. There's 10,000 people pouring out of a stadium.

Chris Gammell: I would say like New Year's Eve, right? Everybody needs a cab ride home. Right. Of course. Drinking champagne. Yeah, like that. That would be like an example. But anyways, yeah, it's, you should read. It's a cool service. I mean, this is, and people now, they use Uber as an example for other stuff, right? They say it for like, like if it was like test equipment, right? They'd say, oh, this is, I have a new startup called Testy. And, which would be a terrible.

Dave Jones: It's the Uber of test equipment.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. But that would be a terrible name. Don't anyone start a startup called Testy. Testy.

Dave Jones: Or the plural version.

Chris Gammell: Testy. Testy.

Chris Gammell: We're 10. We're 10 year olds.

Dave Jones: It's probably already taken. Testy. Testy.com is no doubt taken.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it probably is. Or probably the L-Y domain, the Testy, right?

SPEAKER_00: Oh, man.

Chris Gammell: All right, Dave. Well, we will make more, more wiener jokes next week. How about that? Catch you then. All right, man. See ya. x x

Speaker ?: We'll see you next time.