#213 – Travel Recaps and Altium Announcements - Artisinal Aussie Assemblage

Chris Gammell: This is the F-Hour Podcast, recorded August 18th, but aired August 26th, 2014. Episode 213. Artisanal Aussie Assemblage.

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

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

Dave Jones: Who's running on Wi-Fi?

Chris Gammell: No. Or phone? No. Phone. No? You're back. That was last week. I'm just slow and cursing the name of cable companies everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Who are you with? Which company are you with? Oh, Time Warner. The one who's supposed to merge with Comcast, which is probably a scheme that the devil himself could not hatch up a better scheme. Right? Right. Help me, Google Fiber. You're my only hope. Oh, man.

Dave Jones: Yeah, out comes Sergey Brin with his lightsaber. That's right. Yeah. Oh, goodness.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: All you need is Superman. Here I am to save the day. Did you hear about that Superman comic? It's going for like two million bucks or something?

Chris Gammell: I don't understand that crap. You know, like, all that collector stuff. I just, I don't get it. Yeah. But, I mean, yeah, it doesn't shock me that much. Right. It's all about supply and demand and curves and stuff, right? It's economics.

Dave Jones: And hype and, you know, everything. I should see their hype video for it. Yeah. It must have cost them a fortune to get someone to professionally shoot and edit and animate this video just for their eBay listing. You know, it's absolutely incredible. And they got the, you know, the head CEO or something of this, you know, rating agency that rates, you know, comic books, you know, and to come on and say, you know, this is great. Wank, wank, wank, wank, wank. And, you know, it's the greatest copy in the history of the human race and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And apparently the last one sold for two million bucks or something. And this one is like ten times better, apparently, because the pages are white, you know. Yeah. Well. The pages haven't gone yellow, you know. Jeez.

Chris Gammell: I guess you can't take it with you, huh? Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, that's right. Well, that's why the guy is selling it. The guy who owns this comic book store or something is realizing, well, you know, I should probably just, yep, jump on the bandwagon and sell it and take the cash.

Chris Gammell: What would be the analog for that for us? It would be like, you know, a first edition 555 timer or like.

Dave Jones: It would be an Apple One. Well, not really. The electronics. For the computer industry, it would be an Apple One.

Chris Gammell: Or like a Texco personally reassembled by Jim Williams or something like that. Right. I don't know what it would be. Well, yeah, it's pretty niche. It's signed inside.

Dave Jones: No, we just don't have the hype in our industry, do we? I mean, you know, there's like HP calculators, you know, like if you've got like a HP 35 with the red dot, you know, it's got to have the red dot on it. Right. And that one's worth, you know, 500 bucks more than the one without the red dot or something, you know. Eh.

Chris Gammell: You know, I was listening to a podcast last week and there was some like quote unquote expert on there and he's talking about how, oh, when HP was starting, they were really taking lots of risks. And he jumped to when they started making calculators. And he's like, and the HP 35 was this huge risk. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, you're skipping like a crap load of stuff there. I know that's probably when they started going commercial big time. But like, like you're not even going to mention the model 200. Like, come on, man. Like, how are you going to just skip all of the cool stuff in the middle there? Like, I don't know.

Dave Jones: I wonder how much, you know, like an original, you know, oven baked front panel model 200 would go for.

Chris Gammell: I bet, I bet those go for sale once in a while. I, uh, who had one of those? I think it might've been Alan Wolke had one on his bench. Someone had one. Okay.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. But it wasn't, you know, was it like, and were they serial numbered? Like, you know, is there serial number? I think they might be. I think they might be. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, his, whoever this was, I'm sorry. I don't remember who it was. Whoever it was, they had one and it was serial numbered. It was not, it was not an early one, but it was just, you know, an awesome factor. It might've been signed by Bill or Dave. I'm not sure.

Dave Jones: Right. Because they made, you know, I don't know what, hundreds of thousands of those, didn't they? And they, you know, sold them over like a decade or something. So, you know, I'm sure there's plenty out there.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's the difference, right? That's the difference between us and a comic, like comic books are art and they're low run, you know, especially when they get started, they're these low runs and they're not sure if they're going to make it. And then they spawn into these big series. Whereas, you know, you don't see things that are, you know, the early, early prototypes. Maybe if you had like a, maybe if Google Glass was ever popular and you got a hold of the early prototype type of stuff. I mean, I think that'd be the level you'd have to, you know, you have to be at the prototype stage because it would be so, such a low number of runs and so rare that that would be what we'd have to do here. So, yeah, I don't know.

Dave Jones: I don't know. Can anyone think of any parallels for our industry? Maybe like an original Jack, you know, the, well, the original, you know, Jack Kilby chip, you know, that didn't that go for auction some time ago?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That was, I don't know if that was the, the one, but there was something like that. Right. It was a copy or something. Someone corrected us. Yeah. Oh, did they? Okay. Yeah. But, yeah. All right. Well, you mentioned the Apple one and you said the powerhouse, that one where you gave a talk this weekend.

Dave Jones: I did give a talk. And I've got a, I've got a little bit of a video of the Apple one there.

Chris Gammell: Oh, cool. Cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Hopefully.

Chris Gammell: What is the difference for us youngins? What is the Apple one, Apple two? I mean, I know Apple two is the mass market one. That's the one that I've used, but.

Dave Jones: Apple two is the mass market one after they got their venture capital funding from the Intel guy. But no, the Apple one is the original, you know, wasn't Steve, you know, sold their van. You know, you know, was sold his HP calculator and, you know, jobs sold his van and everything. And they, and they got a loan from the, oh, no, they, they, they, that's right. They put everything on 30 day terms. So they bought all these parts and they had to sell them within 30 days to computer land who, who put it, you know, got an order for 200 or something. And they made, you know, a couple of hundred of these Apple ones. So in their garage. Yeah. And they hand build each one and they weren't serial numbered, by the way. That's a bit of a misconception. There are ones out there with numbers on them, but they were put on by the computer land store. They were like inventory tracking numbers. So there was no such thing as serial numbers on these early Apple ones. Anyway, it was just a board. It was just a bare board. There's a lot of people who say it was a kit, but it wasn't a kit. They came, actually, the board was fully assembled. And yeah, it didn't do much at all. It had a video where you could get a video card for it. You could get a tape interface thing for it. And that was about it.

Chris Gammell: Cool. So you got to see this thing like, like up close and personal. You didn't get to take it apart, obviously, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no. Well, it was behind the glass, you know, but I was inches away.

Chris Gammell: Sir, please stop licking the glass.

Speaker ?: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Well, like there was nobody in there, you know, like this was before the Palace Museum opened, you know. So I was just wondering, yeah, it's probably worth, I don't know, half a million bucks, you know. It's just sitting there. Really?

Chris Gammell: Do you think it's that much?

Dave Jones: I think the last one sold for something like that. It was like 300,000 pounds or something, which, you know, oh, yeah. Dang. Yeah, these things are, oh, yeah. Because there's only apparently, well, according to Wiki, if memory serves me correctly, there's only six working, no one working copies. I'm not sure if this one actually works, but there's six no one ones that actually boot. And there's like 40 or 50 or something left in the world out of the couple of hundred. They don't know where the other ones went to. They probably just got tossed out or whatever.

Chris Gammell: That's like the most expensive blue smoke ever if you let the smoke out. Yep. Anyway, it'd be really cool if I could. Pretty deep boys because you're never getting that again.

Dave Jones: I wonder if they'll let me fondle it and power it up maybe. That'd make an awesome video. I'm going to have to check on that. That might, yeah. Yeah. Or a very expensive blooper reel. Imagine if I blew up an Apple One. Imagine what the fanboys would do.

Chris Gammell: Do you take Amex? Yeah. Anything?

Dave Jones: So, I'd either be a hero and my video goes viral because I'm powering it up an old Apple One or it'll go viral anyway. But I'd have pitchforks on my front doorstep. Yeah. So, yeah. I'm not sure. I thought it was loaned to them from there. But I heard, I haven't spoken about it, but I heard one of the Powerhouse Museum guys mentioned that it's theirs. So, I'm not sure.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway, they're pretty rare. One in Sydney here if you want to go have a look. It's very cool.

Chris Gammell: Cool, man. So, how did the talk go? So, you were giving a talk with the, what was it, Blue something? Blue Chili? Is that it?

Dave Jones: Sebastian, yeah. The CEO of Blue Chili. Yes. And that went fairly well. It was just a random.

Chris Gammell: Hobnobo with CEOs, huh, Dave?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. And it was, yeah, it was just a random, you know, off the cuff thing. He just answered me, asked questions and stuff and we bantered back and forth. Anyway, the video will be going up online eventually. And thank you for everyone who turned up. It was a reasonably full auditorium. So, that was good.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I saw 5,000, the numbers, the 5,000 people attended.

Dave Jones: Yeah, about 5,000 people attended, something like that. So, you know, that's pretty good. I'm not sure, you know, what percentage of those were just coming to the Powerhouse Museum anyway and they had no idea what a make affair was because it's all part of the general entry, you know. So, they would have their, like, normal numbers every weekend. But, like, it was raining. Here in Sydney, it was pretty awful weather, which is very uncharacteristic, even in wintertime. But, yeah, anyway, there were people, like, I've got this time lapse of, like, you know, there's people outside and there's a time lapse of all people coming in. And even an hour after it started, there's this huge, massive line right out the door and around the courtyard and down the stairs to try and get into the place. It was, yeah, it was packed.

Chris Gammell: So, no surprises, though?

Dave Jones: In terms of what, stuff there?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I don't know. Like, so I think about 7 to make it fair twice now. And to be honest, I mean, like, I still enjoy it. I love seeing the people. But, like, you know, there's some repeating time to time.

Dave Jones: Oh, there was, that's what happened here. Like, it was cool. It was much cooler the first time for me because it was all new. Whereas there, there are a lot of the same stuff here this time. So, please forgive my lack of enthusiasm if I don't put it all on video. Anyway. Right. Yeah. No, no, but it was good, you know. It was a bit different to last time. They didn't have, like, any outdoors type stuff. Like, last time they were, like, launching rockets and things like that outside and, you know, stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: The guy's car alarm stopped at the time.

Dave Jones: But you've got to understand, this is a mini maker fair. It is not a maker fair. It's a mini maker fair. And there is a huge characteristic difference between the two. So, in terms of scale, you know. Oh, yeah. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think there's only three maker fairs now, right? There's only Rome, San Francisco, and New York are the only official ones. Detroit was an official one. Yeah, but it's not anymore.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? Why? Did they do something wrong?

Chris Gammell: Uh, no, I think probably just because, you know, like, if you can only draw so many people and you expect, you know, it's just about resources, I'm sure. You know, like, this is all talking out of my butt. But, you know, like, Detroit is a limited-sized city, right? It's, I think, two million in the metropolitan area. And if you're not going to get enough people down there, right, it's tough. And if you're going to spend a lot, a lot of money for promoting, and you're going to not get as many people coming in the middle, right? We're in the middle. Right. So.

Dave Jones: Yep. Got it.

Chris Gammell: Probably won't be a Sydney Fair, or Maker Faire, Perth, with all apologies to Perth again. No, no. Or what's in the middle there?

Dave Jones: Well, there probably won't be a Maker Faire Sydney. And in fact, I've got a talk on this. The organiser of the Sydney Maker Faire, I've got a talk where he discusses all this sort of stuff. And, you know, it's just not possible to have a Maker Faire, a full official Maker Faire at the Powerhouse Museum. It's just not big enough. You know, the museum can't cater for, you know, 50,000 people or whatever. You know, it's not, you need huge, big, you know, exhibition centres. So, which, well, they happen to be building next door at the moment. They just demolished the old exhibition centre in Sydney here, and they're building this whole new one. It's going to be massive and, you know, being at modern, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, maybe one day, when that's all done, we can have a full-on Maker Faire. But I don't know if there's enough people here who'd be interested in it, you know. So, and you can't exactly rely on people flying in from overseas, you know. Hey, let's spend a couple of grand to go all the way to Australia to attend the Sydney Maker Faire, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man, I was looking at tickets again the other day. It's like $2,300 to fly out there from here and out right now.

Dave Jones: Whoa, is it? Really?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Wow. Well, you can get your new employer to take up the tab there. Always spend someone else's money if you can.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's nice, yeah. Maybe, maybe.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but no, it's certainly not cheap.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that is tough. I mean, I think the next big one is September, is the one in New York, and then, excuse me, the October one is in Rome, but that's also with the Open Hardware Summit, which, they actually, I don't know if we talked about it. Oh, they're combining it, are they? Well, they're not combining it, but I think they planned it because they also wanted to get people in the area and everything like that. Right. Well, that makes sense. They did post a speakers list, and it's not the usual crowd for Open Hardware. I mean, there are some familiar faces there, but it actually looks like a broader swath of people, like some unfamiliar names, which is cool. Mostly European or what? Yeah, the ones that I didn't recognize were definitely European. I mean, so, that's good though. I mean, that's really good.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no. That's the whole idea, right? Otherwise, yeah, it just becomes the same, you know, conference every year, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, that's good.

Chris Gammell: See, if people are over there, I would recommend going. And you're still going? I am going to be there.

Dave Jones: You're going to Rome?

Chris Gammell: No, I'm not going to that. I'm going to be at Electronica, which is the following month. Germany. So, it wasn't quite worth it.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Although, the same weekend of, not the same weekend, I guess, but the, so that October first time frame, like the fourth, that's the Hackaday 10th anniversary. So, if people are in the LA area, I'll be out there probably. Yeah. And we'll have speakers and stuff like that for.

Dave Jones: Excellent. Yeah. 10 years?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man.

Dave Jones: Wow. 10 years. Okay. Didn't think it was that old. Jeez. YouTube isn't even 10 years old.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's, what, eight years old now, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. 2006. It turned eight the other, yeah, it's like eight and a half or something. Something like that, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's weird thinking about life pre-YouTube, isn't it?

Dave Jones: I know. It's just, you know, pre-YouTube, pre-Google, you know, all that sort of jazz. It's just, yeah. Yep. Scary. Now, well, you know, youngsters don't even remember pre-Kickstarter now. You know? I mean... Right. Like... Oh, goodness. Yep. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Youngins.

Dave Jones: Night-i.

Chris Gammell: So, I gave a talk. Where at? A while back. Out in... So, we have a hardware meetup in... So, this is going to happen a couple times now, or more than once. I'm going to be back out in San Francisco next month. The amp power has now devolved into me and Dave talking about travel schedules. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Well, your travel schedules.

Chris Gammell: I do have some electronics to talk about here, too. Yeah. So, the last one, I was at the supply frame in Hackaday. I... We had a meetup on a Thursday night. I mentioned that last show, right? So, I was doing a talk. Right. So, I actually did give a talk about KiCad, and I got KiCad running, and I will out myself as a sometimes Mac user. Sure. Bum, bum, bum. Yuppie. Yeah, I know. I work for a web company now. I have to, right? But, no. So, the tough thing is that if people are up on their KiCad lore, there is no stable build for Mac at all. There's one that works, but even the one I have, the early one, it does not work well. It still crashes. So, I had to, like, install a virtual machine and get it up and running on Ubuntu. So, I got it up and running, and I got to try out the new features, the push and shove router. I think you've seen that.

Dave Jones: Well, I haven't played. I've seen video of it. I haven't played with it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Altium has that, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And there's some big news there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You'll get to that. KiCad first, man. Okay. All right. All right. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah. So, talk one, okay. I mean, I got to show it off. There's really not much else to say. But we're going to have another meetup. I'll be back out there for the hardware workshop, which is like a hardware startup thing next month. There's like a bunch of speakers and stuff. So, I'll be out there and attending that. And we're going to have another meetup around then. So, keep your ears open, I suppose. I guess. All right, Dave. Now you can go. Right. What is your big news?

Dave Jones: Well, this is what I alluded to last week at the end of last week's show. Yep. Yep. And, yes. It's how I have tweeted it. Yes, it is an exclusive here on the Amp Hour. Well, apart from my tweet.

Chris Gammell: Are you allowed to talk about this? That's the thing we should check into. So, we're not getting a cease and desist later?

Dave Jones: No, no. I am allowed to talk. They said I could talk about it. There's some things I can't talk about. But, no. We can't. No. They are releasing a free version of software, finally, as they originally promised. Yeah, it was going to come out like a year ago, which I thought was imminent. Everyone thought it was imminent. That was the rumor going around like a year ago. And that's why I rushed to do that video I did back then, you know, because I thought it was a couple of weeks away. You know, my top five, you know, tips for Altium. Oh, right, right, right. You know, yeah, about how not to screw it up. And, well, as it turns out, they actually watched that. And as much as they didn't like me, they went, yeah, we're probably not quite on the right track. So, they held off. And now they've finally decided, yeah, we're going to do it properly. And, yes, it's coming out. I'm not going to tell you an exact date or anything like that or too many details. But, yeah, it is free. I have seen it. I haven't actually played with it, but I have seen it on a conference call. They have shown it to me and told me the details. And it does look like they're going in the right direction. Let's just say that much.

Chris Gammell: So, this is the worst news I've had in months. Not because I'm worried about KiCad. Right. And not because of any other reason other than Dave gets to think that he did this. Right. Yeah. Worst news ever.

Dave Jones: I like to think I had a hand in guide in it. And, well, see, I still think Altium don't like me. But they figured that, look, I was going to talk about it anyway. And they also wanted my feedback on the concept before they released it. And, yeah, so they showed it to me early. And, yeah, trust me, they're on the right track, I think. Yep. Some people won't be happy. There's the odd part of it that I'm not, you know, too happy about. But, overall, yes, definitely heading in the right direction, I think, people are assuming it works. Of course. I haven't played with it yet. Remains to be seen, yeah. Yeah, yeah, of course. But, no, they could be on a real winner here. So, yes.

Chris Gammell: Well, we'll see. That's good, man.

Dave Jones: People won't have to wait too much longer, hopefully. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Now, the real question for me is, will a free version like this get all the people in China to stop stealing licenses?

Dave Jones: I don't know. So, you know, because it is a new program, okay? That rumor is true. It is not just Altium Designer, you know, with a license restriction in there to limit the number of layers and, you know, error and stuff like that. No, it's not entirely new. I'm sure it's based on, I don't know about the code details, but I'm sure it's based on, you know, some AD code. And it will, the functionality will apparently be like Altium Designer, but the user interface is designed, they are targeting, they are specifically targeting the maker, you know, hobbyist maker sort of movement. So, yeah. So, they really needed to dumb it down. Which I said in my original video was a dumb thing to do, like, you know, very silly thing to do. Because just from a company resources perspective, now they have to maintain two different programs, right? I'm not sure how different they are in terms of code base, but hey, you know, you've still got to maintain two different programs. So, that taxes the company from a resources point of view. But I can understand why they did it, because Altium's not, you know, not the most user-friendly package in terms of getting stuff. You know, once you know it, it's, you know, it's reasonably good. But the learning curve there for the beginner is not, yeah, isn't fantastic. So, they've changed the Google.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I've talked to someone about Altium and they said, they're like, oh yeah, well, there's like, sometimes there's like context menus that are like three layers deep. They're three layers deep. Click, click, click, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep, and there's multiple ways to do things and they're not in logical locations and stuff like that, yeah. So, anyway, the new version, the new GUI is designed to be, you know, really beginner friendly. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: That's great, man. I can't wait to see that. That's going to be really cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah, same here. Yeah, I can't wait to actually play with the thing. So, yep, hopefully. So, yeah, it won't be too much longer, you know. They are targeting, let's just say they are targeting release this year. So, you won't, hopefully you shouldn't have to wait until next year to get your hands on it.

Chris Gammell: And we should stop Dave before he talks about it anymore.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know, otherwise I'm going to give something away.

Chris Gammell: Keep going, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I might give something away. Anyway, I was quite happy with what they, basically, they, you know, they let me have a look at it and told me all about it. And they were waiting for me to, you know, go, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. What the hell did you do that for? And, you know, but there was hardly any of that. So, yep, my initial gut reaction is winner. Cool. Let's hope it just works. Yep. Because Altium is famous for their bugs, you know. So, let's see how it works. Anyway, yep. Yeah. It's going to be good.

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: I'm excited because, you know, I was borderline about to make the big move to Kikad. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Kikad almost lost a potential.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: There's still hope, folks. There's still hope.

Dave Jones: Well, I'll probably still do it. But, you know, I'm so, I've been using Altium for, you know, 20 plus years, you know. I don't want to change. So, anyway.

Chris Gammell: Grumpy old man, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. Oh, well, you know, it's a tool, you know. Why, you know, it's a tool to get a job done, right? At the end of the day, all these things, you know, it doesn't matter whether you use Linux, you use Windows, you use Mac, it's, or whatever, and then whatever compiler you use to do your stuff, it's a tool to get a job done, right? So, arguing over which one's better is just, you know, stupid, really. It's the one that you personally like and use to get a job done. That's it. End of story.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Not completely sure I agree. I did put up my talk from SolidCon. I put up my slides from that.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, let's argue then. Let's go. What else are we here for? Exactly. Well, come on, give us your spiel.

Chris Gammell: Well, so, I mean, but like, this comes back to the same argument we've had in the past, not the same argument, but the same discussion we've had in the past, right? If you put out a piece of hardware that's open source hardware, I guess now there's possibly less licensing restrictions, but I guess it comes down to the level of openness, right? That's kind of what it came down to. That's what my talk was about is like, where does the level of openness stop, right? And like we've talked about before, it's always going to be a sliding scale. And, you know, like Design Made in Eagle can still work if, you know, all this stuff is, you know, within the licensed area. But, you know, if you were making something in Altium previously and you couldn't open up the files without Altium, that was definitely a hindrance. And now, I don't know.

Dave Jones: But a hindrance, but that's the thing, a hindrance for who, right? Because I'm sure you'll agree with me that 99.99% of people buying open hardware products don't actually want to play around. Don't touch it. They just want a finished product and they want the warm fuzzy knowing that it's open hardware. Right?

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. I do agree with that. And I mentioned that in the talk as well. But, yeah, I don't know. It's just kind of like what it comes down to and where that does happen. I mean, so this has been beat to death.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, it has. And basically, with this new Altium release, it's going to put, in fact, I will say it's going to be better positioned than Eagle in this respect. So, from the point of view that you're talking about here, Altium will be more open than Eagle in that respect. Yeah. Because Eagle, of course, you can't do any commercial stuff at all without paying the license, paying your 50 bucks or whatever and things like that.

Chris Gammell: I put in there a practical test. So, like a test that I, just like a practical test. I don't even know if I came up with this. But basically, can one person in the world build what you built? Right? So, that's like when you talk about open source hardware, if I finish the design and give it to you, what kind of hoops do you have to jump through? Like, is it, like, do you have to have an agreement with the chip vendor? Right? Like, so, like, even the Raspberry Pi is not open source hardware, right? You know, like having to deal with Broadcom. That would never work. Right. Right. Okay. And having to buy a license of Altium Designer, that would not work.

Dave Jones: Or Eagle, right? If your board is bigger than 160 millimeters or whatever it is, well, tough tits. Right, right. You've got to buy a $500,000 version of Eagle. And then it instantly becomes non-open, right? Because you don't have to pay that money.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Yeah. So, that's like, it's where all the lines are drawn and everything there. And then, yeah. So, yeah. It seems like this new Altium thing could help pass that test. Obviously, I'm jaded, but...

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, of course. No, but, no. Ultimately, if you're talking PCB openness, the only, you know... Well, those people who complain about KiCat as well. Isn't there that... Oh, no. It must be... What's the other open source PCB one?

Chris Gammell: Jeter.

Dave Jones: Jeter. Yes. Apparently. Isn't there some difference between them? And some people say, oh, Jeter's the only true open... Oh, probably. You know, there's some technicality there or something. I don't know. So, yeah. But, no. It's, you know... I mean... If you want to, you know, take it to that level, then, you know... Altium's not good enough. Eagle's none of the commercial packages are good enough. But I just think that's dumb. You know? I mean... No. It's crazy. If it... You know, if it's affordable enough, I can understand, you know... If it's like Altium design and you've got to pay 10 grand for the top package... Or you've got to pay, you know, $1,000 for the top package of Eagle... Then, okay. You know, fine. It's not really, you know, open. But if you only have to pay, you know, $50 or something... Then, you know, eh, it's good enough.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I've started taking that... I've been surprised that lately I've been taking that tact with software as well. Whereas before, I would have, you know, dug my feet in and been like... No. I'm never... I shouldn't have to pay for anything, you know. These days, I'm just like... I just want it to work, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. I know. Oh, yeah. You'll happily pay the $50 or $100 to make it work... To get something that works, right? Rather than dicking around.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, these days, yes.

Dave Jones: Anyway, how's your new KeyCAD forum going?

Chris Gammell: Good. Real good, actually. I really like this software. Right. I haven't used it, sorry. That's okay. But it's good. I mean, it's probably like 100 users so far. You know, there's always that fall off, but... Yep.

Dave Jones: Well, 100 users is a decent critical mass, though.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So... Hmm.

Dave Jones: Hopefully, that's enough to keep things going.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think so. I mean, like, it's like probably like five to ten questions a day kind of thing. I mean, like... Hmm. But I don't know. I don't know how fast this kind of grows. So... The things I like about it, though, like, so, like, it's like, you know, you drop a picture on top of the text box, and it just, like, once you have... So, like, there's all these trust levels in this program. So, it's kind of like... Right. Right. You can't post until you do certain... Until you read so many posts, or... Oh, really? Okay. Right. A human way of proving that you're not a spam bot. Got it. And... It's great. I mean, like, we've only had one problem so far. And...

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm.

Chris Gammell: So, it's cool. The thing we've been talking about, and I've been talking about this on Twitter a bunch as well. I mean, like, so one of the problems that we have with the Kaiket stuff is that, you know, there's no stable builds like we've talked about on the show before. So, the plan is, like, within the next month or two, if nothing comes up, we're just going to dump some... We're going to build and dump versions onto Kaiket.info, and at least have a benchmark there, you know, then you can have a...

Chris Gammell: You know, even if you just know it's a standard build, it's done on the same day every month, or the same day of every month, right? And then you can enumerate any errors that pop up. Mm-hmm. Might not be the best idea. You know, going into it, at least, it's not going to be listed as stable, but it's just a regular build. Right.

Dave Jones: It's... Right. Okay. So, it hasn't been, like, verified by a small community and then given the stable stamp of approval.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, because the problem is there's no way... So, like, if we pick... So, it goes in, like, version numbers, right? So, BZR, the one I built on Ubuntu. I built it from Source, actually. I was pretty proud of myself. I can follow directions. Well done. It... It... That was 5.067. I think they're on... I think the latest latest is, like, 5.078. So, I was, like, maybe 10, 10, 15 releases behind. But those are, like, small releases, right? Right. And... Ah, crap. Where was I going with this? Uh...

Dave Jones: I don't know, but it sounds bloody complicated.

Chris Gammell: Playback. Yeah. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Sounds kind of like, you know, like you're, like, a week out of date and you're already 15 releases behind or something. You know, it's just...

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's what it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just crazy. So, like, so, say we even built, right? So, we build, like, 50... 5.0.5.0, right? And we verify it and we say there's these errors. If there's not a way for us to feed back this stuff to the developers, right? In a normal software flow, I would think you'd have a pre-release. People would check it, right? They would feed... They'd do QA on it. They'd feed it back to the developers. Right, yeah, yeah. And then they would do an official release, right? And if there's not that, then you can't do it. So, yeah, I don't know. It's, like, this weird outside position. And it's fine, right? You know, like, I'm a booster for the program. If that's the best I can do, if I give people a place to talk about it, I don't care, right? I mean, that's good enough. And the interesting thing, I said I got this new version working. It looks almost the same. Like, there's not appreciable, like, GUI differences. So, in that case, I just tell people build the old stuff or use the old stuff for now until there's something better and verified.

Dave Jones: So, I'm waiting for the day when somebody comes on board with some money for this thing so that, you know, like, somebody can, you know, be paid. Like, their full-time job is sort of, you know, taking care of this sort of stuff, doing this sort of stuff. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, and like you mentioned in the past, I mean, CERN has jumped in and they're also taking donations for doing that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Hmm. Yeah. And the best thing you can do with that money is to hire one or two people full-time, you know, just to, you know, just to, you know, test the absolute crap out of it and then go, yes, this is the official stable version. Here you go. Here's the official release. Here's the, you know, the nice Windows setup program and the whole, you know, shebang.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Here's the interesting thing is going to be, I think, so for the next version of Contextual Electronics, I think, so I'm going to be doing the same course and the same videos and everything. But I'm going to have like an alternate track where I do everything in the latest version of KiCad and all the videos. So, like, I'll have like a running version of that and then all, and that allows me to error check all of my past videos. And then I'll also be able to rebuild it in the new version and kind of track alongside it while people are taking the course. And it'll just be confusing as hell, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, really. Well, I mean, like, this is like for any CAD program, right? I mean, like, so when do you upgrade, right? So, I mean, you have to deal with this at Altium, but I've had that where, you know, you have boards that are in an old program, they're in a new program. You know, you have stuff. Like, I was between, I don't even remember the versions, but I was using DX Designer in the past. And there was like a big upgrade where it changed from like a file-based system where everything is stored in like a text-based plain text file. And then it moved to a database and you just couldn't edit anything anymore.

Dave Jones: Well, they're huge changes, which are rarely done in big commercial packages, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So. Well, in KiCad, it switched the footprint style switched, right? The extension changed. Right. I mean, there are big changes, so. But, I mean, like, this is not a problem that is, you know, confined to just me, right? Anytime there's a big upheaval, where do you, you know, how do you do that? Do you redo all your old designs? Like, I remember at a past company, we were still, we would get stuck because the actual CAD program went obsolete, right? The people doing it just stopped using it. And we were just stuck with Gerbers. And there were, you know, and then you have to manually edit Gerbers then and try and like, you know, not break anything. You know, like you're basically doing, you're doing like a Paint Shop Pro at that point, right? I mean, you're basically connecting stuff in the copper, right? And that's how it used to be done. But what else can you do?

Dave Jones: We didn't have a huge drama with that at Altium. As you know, I was in the hardware group, right? And, you know, us hardware group, we were trying to design real hardware using the Altium tool, of course. And, but they would want us to use, you know, the latest daily build and stuff like that. So, you know, on the one. You've dealt with this, yeah. Yeah. So, and, you know, very rarely did, you know, we use a daily build to do like serious work, right? Actually designing real boards and then all of a sudden they go, oops, no, you shouldn't have, you know, done that because we accidentally corrupted the file format or something like that. But in the rare instances that did happen, well, we could just go to the developers. But I just spent, look, two days worth of work, you know, laying out this board and you're telling me it's in the wrong file format. And they just, you know, wrote a little script to, you know, convert it between old and new and everything's hunky-dory. So I can't remember actually ever losing any work, you know, from doing that. But that was, that was certainly a challenge, you know, using like a daily build, which may or may not actually work, you know, to do real work is, yeah, a bit scary. But you sort of got to trust it in the end that, you know, you know, you weren't going to lose all your work.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's nice when the developer lives down the street from you. I do. Down the hall, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. You know, all you've got to do is lean over your cubicle, you know, and fix it for me, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a problem. But anyway. It's good to have friends in software either way. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: As much as we love hardware.

Dave Jones: But in the end, I've got to admit that, yeah, the hardware group did get a bit jack of doing the daily build thing, you know. It was much better. Yeah, it gets tired, right?

Chris Gammell: I mean, sometimes you want a tool, right? You don't want a project. You want a tool. That's the same thing that was told to me about CNC machines. Right.

Dave Jones: Exactly. So we would all get to a version that we trust, you know. It'd have like the least number of bugs in it, and we'd just like stick with that, you know. Right. Just, you know, because look, I've got a head down bum up for the next two weeks, you know, laying out this eight layer board, you know. I really don't want the, you know, any disruptions of daily builds and stuff like that. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. Hmm.

Dave Jones: Good fun. Good times.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man.

Dave Jones: We've got a whole bunch of, if we haven't rattled off enough wank word bingo words yet, we've got a whole bunch of them here on the Reddit thread, dude. Oh, they're on the way, folks. Yeah. There's women in engineering. There's marketing versus engineering. There's internet of things. Yeah. Oh, man.

Chris Gammell: Well.

Dave Jones: Where do we start?

Chris Gammell: We don't have to talk about marketing versus engineering. I found out that that was a video that I was, I giggled at it, right? And then I got a message from them on Twitter, like, oh, thanks for liking our video. We're a company that makes videos to try and get people to click on them about engineering. Oh, what? Really? Yeah. And you got tuped. May it be struck from the record. Yeah, boo. I don't care for making me laugh.

Dave Jones: Right. So, they, you know, like those companies who, I get emailed all the time, you know, oh, we'd like to do a sponsored blog post, you know? Yeah, boo. And, oh, boo. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. We'll create any content you like, you know, as long as you link back to us and I piss off.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Let's wash that terrible taste out of our mouth with something that's actually pretty awesome. So, over at Evil Mad Scientist Labs, Lenore and Wendell's company, and then Eric, oh, crap, I forgot his last name. The guy who did the other discreet stuff. Basically, they have, they did this discreet 555 timer a while back, and now they have a discreet 741. Yep. Right. Which is great. I think this is a great way, you know, because especially, like, when you look at the structure, I mean, like, you know, a 741 op amp, they're leaky, but, you know, like, what, 10 millivolts of average of voltage offset and stuff like that. But, like, it's been around a long time, and it's built, you know, it's BJT process, and, like, but it's, like, the structure really doesn't change, right? You know, you have a differential balance on the front end, and then, you know, you have amplifier and stuff like that, and all the current sources and everything like that. Yeah. It's just a good way to learn about that stuff. And that's really the reason to do this kind of thing. And not only that, you know, we've talked about pattern matching before, like, how that's a big part of electronics is kind of seeing patterns, right? Every time you see an inverting op amp, it's pretty obvious, right? I mean, you start to just kind of see the matrix in that way. It doesn't look like a bunch of resistors. It's, you know, in a triangle, it's now inverting op amp, and it becomes a block. Same kind of thing here, right? When you start to see this, you see, you know, and then sometimes you'll see someone put, like, you know.

Dave Jones: You see a current, there's a current mirror. There's a current source. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. You see, like, you see that differential input with, like, now someone did it with JFES to try and get lower input bias and stuff like that. Like, all of these things, you see them over and over and over again. They're these themes that you see, basically. And that's a great reason to pick one of these up and kind of really dig into it. And the best part about this is that you can actually go in and probe that thing. That's really cool. I mean, you could have done that on LT Spice at any point, right? But doing it in real life is great. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Plus, you know, we love evil mad science folks, so they're great. And it looks like a giant ship. Yep. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. They love their laser cutter over there. They do. Yeah. Okay, so no more marketing video stuff. We got the good stuff in with the 741. What about this other stuff, the IoT things? Because this is, I think this is pretty interesting and important. Mostly because I had a friend contact me the other day and saying him and his wife were thinking about taking my course because they're interested in starting a hardware company. Ah, there you go. And these are people who are not necessarily doing hardware in the past, right? So, you know, there are people that are outside the field that are interested in moving in. They're not far outside the field by any stretch. Right. You know, people are starting to see dollar signs, so let's talk about the dollar signs.

Dave Jones: $15 million, which is not much. In today, you know, it's not nest level, you know, which is the holy grail of stupidness.

Chris Gammell: This is not bought for. This is raised money. Oh, sorry, sorry. Yes, yes. It's an investment.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So, Electric Imp raised $15 million from Foxconn, right, which is a big deal. And others. Because Foxconn.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, Foxconn are the ones who make Apple products. We did have Brandon on the show. We did. Like 10 or 15 shows ago. I got to meet him at that event that I was at. He was there. Right. So, I got to meet him and talk to him for a little bit. But, yeah, they're, I mean, that's basically, like, ramping them like crazy, right? I mean, that's. Right.

Dave Jones: And apparently, the founder puts some more of his own money in.

Chris Gammell: Right. Always a big sign.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, yeah, he's one of the co-founders of Nest. So, he had a, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Had a whole.

Chris Gammell: Helps when you have money in the bank, yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Yes, it does.

Chris Gammell: Well, and so, we talked to Brandon about this a little bit as well, right? So, we talked to him about. He mentioned that the Imp03, right? The thing where they're partnering with Murata. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Make that little tiny module thing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. And that's the thing it's going to take, right? So, you know, you think about scaling up big time, right? It takes a lot of money, right? You've got to. If you're prototyping products and everything like that, when you're prototyping in silicon, even if they take off some of the costs.

Dave Jones: This isn't just components on a board. This isn't just an Arduino, right? It's a, you know, there's innovative manufacturing technology that goes into making these modules, you know, and you need to team up with one of the big players. You need serious money, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And so, and their big move is trying to, so like they partner with Quirky a lot. We've mentioned on the show before, they're the ones who are doing. So, Quirky's partnered with GE, right? So, GE's a huge name, right? Oh, yeah. And Quirky uses a lot of electric imp to connect their stuff. So, yeah. I mean, Quirky are the ones that we mentioned last week with the, someone putting wire shark on a egg tray, right? Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: I would put electric imp at the most likely to succeed level in this Internet of Things module business at the moment. There's quite a few players out there, but I'd probably put those at the, as the most viable to succeed.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think they have a lot of interest for sure. I mean, we talked to Brandon, obviously they know a lot of their stuff. They know the power stuff, right? That's what Brandon talked about a lot.

Dave Jones: They know that, yeah. They know the low power stuff. That's a big deal. They've got that tiny form factor stuff, you know? They got like built into the SD card and now they've got the Murata module and stuff like that. Yeah, you know.

Chris Gammell: Have you tried out the Squirrel programming language yet?

Dave Jones: No, I haven't. No? I tried a little bit. I have to get one of the kits. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay. I got mine blinking, so that's good.

Dave Jones: All right. Well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how much. So I can't make a blink.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know how much the closed nature of it. I mean, this is what it ultimately comes down to, right? Like, so we talked about the server side is not open, right? So it lives on their servers. Right, right. And I'm guessing if you gave them a big enough chunk of cash, they would set it up on your server so it didn't have to go through their servers. That's just a guess. I don't know if that's actually true. And yeah, so I mean, that's kind of the reality. But I think a lot more people will hand off that control, for better or worse, in order to get stuff to market quickly and stuff that is low power and everything else.

Dave Jones: That's a given. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. I say now as a Mac user. Right. Oh, the shame. Oh, goodness.

Dave Jones: When did you bitch in about the Mac, you couldn't make it do stuff?

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's a big shift, man. It's...

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: You know, I had this conversation, though, when I was out there before we had this meetup the other night. So I got to meet with someone who was, you know, a hardware and software developer, right? He was doing both. And really bright guy. But, you know, we were talking about CAD programs, right? So we were talking about CAD programs. We do talk about this, not just on the Amp Hour. But, you know, when you think about KiCad, you think about, like, Altium never had a Windows version. Or only had a Windows version, rather. Yep. And you think about, you know, what it is in the future. Yeah, maybe, you know, maybe it does go, like, up for their style because people want to be able to do it on whatever platform they're on, right? Maybe you want to do it from an Android tablet, right? God help you. You know, like, I don't know how that would work. But, like, that's the thing. Like, you know, these, basically, like, the givens in hardware are no longer given, right? That's kind of the thing. Right. So, same thing with Electric Imp, right? I mean, like, maybe people are willing to give up this stuff. Maybe the idea of having full stack control is no longer a given, right? I mean, people are willing to hand that stuff off. With the knowledge that, yeah, there's some trade-offs. Your egg trade might have Wireshark on it. Yeah. Still makes me laugh. Boy.

Dave Jones: Anyway, excellent news for them. Yeah, congrats to them. Good luck.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's good. And I wish them all the best. I mean, there's not a lot. So, there was an article we had on a while back talking about basically the standards wars that are going to happen, right? Because right now, there's lots of different ways to connect to stuff and everything else. Eventually, something's going to fall into place, right? There's going to be a lot of different methods and ways of connecting to things and protocols and stuff like that. But eventually, something's going to stick. So, it'll be interesting to see what actually does.

Dave Jones: Well, apparently, one of the big issues is that for the Internet of Things to take off and work, it actually needs IP version 6 take up. Oh, really? With the original, yeah, they can't stick with the original IP version 4, which we've been using on the Internet for the last, you know, 30 years.

Chris Gammell: That's right, just because of the number of devices, right? The number of devices is limited.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because IP version 4 is limited to 32 bits, a 32-bit address. So, you've only got like 4 billion addresses or whatever. But the Internet of Things, the IP version 6 is 128-bit. So, yeah, apparently required. And I read something the other day that there's only like a 1% take up at the moment of IP 6. So, across the Internet. So, yeah, apparently that's important and that's vital for the success. That is important. But it's going to happen, you know. It's going to happen. Well, yeah, of course, right.

Chris Gammell: When someone says, yeah, you can't get it, either that or the market for IPv4 addresses will go like Superman comic books. Right. Bringing it all back, Dave. Bringing it all back.

Dave Jones: We've got this lovely address. It's 123.123.123. And, you know, hey, it'll never come up again. You missed the set.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird thinking about that stuff. Just when you get used to it, it all changes around again. Oh. The Samsung is another one that, so they bought SmartThings. I don't know if we've ever talked about them before, but that's kind of like the SmartThings was meant to be like the thing that sits in your house and kind of manages all the crap inside the house.

Dave Jones: Like, it's like the... No.

Chris Gammell: File. Everything on Bluetooth, everything on Ant, everything on 6-low pan or whatever that is. And, you know, you can just see it over and over and over again. And people being like, okay, you know, every platform is like, well, we're the standard now, right? It's kind of like who stands up and yells the loudest and grows the fastest. And that's what they want to be, right? So they create this gateway and then everything goes through them. And, okay, well, yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't know. The right tool for the job is always going to win out, you know?

Chris Gammell: I don't know what the right tool for that job is, though, Dave. I mean, like, that's the thing. So when it comes down to it, does everything need to get directly onto a Wi-Fi network, right? I mean, like, what if you replace your Wi-Fi router with a smart router, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's why I don't like this whole Internet of Things thing. People just, you know, think that everything's going to be connected. They're not. You know? The most efficient way to turn your lights off and on is always going to be a freaking switch on your wall. You know? It's like...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely the easiest way for a human. Exactly. For sure. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But the idea is that, you know, like, energy savings. Oh, that's the idea.

Chris Gammell: Nah. It's like, eventually, if there was... You know, Australia's big on, like... It used to be big on green energy before Abbott. Nothing said for the United States. Right. But, I mean, like, you know, you could imagine that, you know, somewhere that's still into that stuff, right? So, like, I don't know, Norway? I don't know. You know, if there was something like that where it's energy efficiency type stuff, eventually it would need to be centrally controlled and... I don't know, Dave. Like...

Dave Jones: No. It's a solution looking for a problem.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Often.

Chris Gammell: I don't like it. Speaking of a solution looking for a problem... Next. Did you ever... Did you ever do any DSP stuff? There was actually this really good guide that was... Someone posted it to the subreddit. Tony W. Posted it. But a guide to DSP, basically. You ever used to do any stuff with that?

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's a free book, dude. I posted that, like, years ago on my blog. Like, four years ago or something.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's been a long time ago? Okay. It's been around a long, long time. It's still good stuff. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a free book. Yeah. Go and download it. It's awesome. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Have you ever done DSP stuff before, though?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. I've done TMS 320 DSP stuff. Nice. Back in the day. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Cool, cool. I was thinking about... I was talking to someone about this... Go ahead.

Dave Jones: No, no, go.

Chris Gammell: Well, I was talking to someone over the week... Or last week about that with... I was like, oh, well... I used to do DSP stuff on FPGAs. And I kind of sat back and I thought about it. And I'm like, no. No, MATLAB used to do DSP stuff for FPGAs. You know, it was like that... You're right. That tool chain of, like... You know, like, I'd made, like, the fancy math models. And they weren't that fancy. Really, my boss made them. And I kind of tested them. Right. And then they got translated to FPGA code... Or VHDL, in that case. And then you kind of wrap around it with code. And it's awesome. I mean, it's still awesome. But, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Kind of like how...

Dave Jones: Well, FPGAs have DSP blocks in them.

Chris Gammell: They do.

Dave Jones: So they can do... You know, they can do the fast multiplication and all that sort of jazz. Right. So... Right. Yep. Oh, yeah. They're awesome.

Chris Gammell: And the parallel... Yeah, yeah. Right. So... Right. But my point was, I feel like I've done DSP stuff, but I haven't... You know, like... And the other thing is, like, when you say DSP, right? A lot of people think, oh, you've used a DSP processor, which means you've taken algorithms that are, you know, FIR filters, and you've translated them into C, you've run through the loop, and really DSP filters are just... Or DSP processors are just processors on crack, right? I mean, they just run super fast.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They've got specific... Just like the FPGAs. They've got specific hardware cores that do, you know, an FFT, you know, matrix, you know, or they, you know, they do a fast multiplication and 128-bit multiplication, all in hardware in a single cycle. You know, that's what a DSP does. Yeah, there's nothing... Apart from that, there's nothing fancy.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So, when you wrote that stuff, when you wrote, like, C code for TMS 320, was that, like, you would have a specific function you would call because it was optimized for, like, a...

Dave Jones: Well, I wasn't doing it at the assembly level, you know? Okay. I rarely got down to that. You know, only, like, maybe one little subroutine or something that was ultra-critical or something like that. But, no, otherwise, you're using, you know, supplied libraries. You know, you're not going to write your own, you know, fur filter from scratch or something like that. You know, you just... Oh, okay, okay. You use the available library.

Chris Gammell: So, like, when the compiler sees that function, it's going to put it in the right assembly to use the block? Yes.

Dave Jones: To use the block, it already has the stuff pre-compiled to, you know, to use those blocks and things like that. So, to use the processor in its, you know, optimum way. So... Gotcha. Yep. So, you just use it like any other micro. It just becomes a super fast micro for doing math stuff. That's basically what a DSP is. There's no difference. You know? Nice. Something that would take a hundred cycles on a regular, you know, an ARM chip, you know, takes a single cycle or a couple of cycles on a DSP. You know? You need to multiply 228-bit numbers. No problem. You know? Single cycle. Boom. Right.

Chris Gammell: That's awesome. Yeah. Math. Yeah. Yay, math. Yeah. So, this is... I mean, this has a lot of the stuff. I mean, this is pretty much like a standard textbook, right? I mean, like, it covers a lot of the fundamentals and things like that. But it's good to know, right? I mean, Z-Transforms, yeah? Yeah, right. Yeah. No, thanks. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You used to do audio stuff, didn't you? Didn't you do, like, hearing aids or something like that at one point?

Dave Jones: I have... Well, I've... Technically, I have done... I've worked for Cochlear. Yes. But no, I have to know. The audio stuff is... Yeah, I've done a ton of audio stuff in the seismic field.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's right. You did... Yeah, that's right. The underwater stuff, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. The underwater, so in water, you know. Basically, anywhere from DC to 2 kilohertz, that's the, you know... Right. That's high frequency, 2 kilohertz, you know, in the seismic domain.

Chris Gammell: In my head, I'm imagining Dory from Finding Nemo being like, Do you speak whale?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I love that term. So, Dave does, though. Yeah. So, if you ever need to talk to a whale in... Do you speak whale? Yes. He also lives at P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way, right? Right, yeah. Oh, goodness.

Dave Jones: Great show, though.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, cool, man. I think we made it through. We didn't cover everything, I don't think, but... Oh, come on.

Dave Jones: We didn't even cover women in engineering.

Chris Gammell: I didn't read this one. That's why...

Dave Jones: All right. Okay. Well, you put it on here, didn't you?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't always read what I post. Right. I mean, this is... I mean, this makes sense, though. I mean, like, from... Basically, it's like... Even if you have the numbers going into, you know, in engineering programs and stuff like that, it's no guarantee because work cultures and misogyny and stuff like that can push people out, right? Right. Push women out of the field. And, yeah, I mean, if there's... I don't know. It's a tough field regardless, right? But it's...

Dave Jones: Well, they're saying 40% of women with engineering degrees either leave the profession or never enter the field. Well... Right. I want to put that in perspective because of the... You know, I reckon that, well, probably 40% of men with engineering degrees never enter the profession either. So you've got to...

Chris Gammell: I do agree. You need a control there, right? Yeah, exactly. You have to compare it because that does sound extreme, of course.

Dave Jones: Yeah, you have to normalize the figure out to the same level as men. And they haven't done that here.

Chris Gammell: I don't know what they count as well, right? So a lot of times, like, you know, if someone goes from an engineering program into a sales job, right? Like one of my friends from school, he was in my engineering program. And then within, like, two years, he was selling me stuff, right? He was actually selling me... And he was great at what he did because he had the background. But he didn't have engineer in his title at all, right? Right. So does that count? I mean, like, engineering, nearby engineering. He was making double the money I was. I know that. Right. Well, there you go.

Dave Jones: Who's doing it wrong?

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's up to, you know... And he had the skill set for it, for sure. He was great. So I don't know how those numbers work. But that's not to say that, you know, this is wrong at all, right? I mean, like, this is... No, I...

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's a bros club sometimes, right? I mean, like, I've been at lunch tables. I've been in, you know, I've been in engineering companies. Like, you know, it's... Yeah. I've heard talk of how things used to be at engineering companies, right? Exactly. I mean, like, it was just... Especially when you have people coming through the older culture, too. It doesn't excuse it in the slightest. But it just, you know, that feeds into the culture as well. So I could see how that definitely affects things. So the question is, how do we change it, right? I mean, like, that's...

Dave Jones: Well, if you're a woman, don't complain about it. Just go in there and change it, you know? I mean...

Chris Gammell: That's a tough one, Dave.

Dave Jones: Well, look, I mean, you know, you can't expect... It doesn't... You know, it's not just women in engineering. It's whatever, you know? You can't just expect, you know, a whole industry to, you know... Like, a culture. We're not talking about industry here. We're almost talking about culture. You know? And, well, the way to change culture is not to bitch about it and say, oh, we need, you know, legislation to change. Just get in there and do cool stuff and change it. Earn people's respect. Well, I think that also comes to us, though, too. You know? Don't think that you're entitled to, you know, something. Just because you're...

Chris Gammell: But I think that what ultimately comes down to is that it's kind of on the... You know, like, it's kind of a cultural shift happens across many people, right? So it's also... Yeah. You know, not that you or I work in a workplace anymore, but, you know, it's encouraging that kind of thing, talking about it on here, right? Yeah, that's right. You know?

Dave Jones: It's important. Exactly. And just, you know, calling out shit where you see it, right? Of course, yeah. If you're, you know, seeing somebody give a woman, you know, or anyone a hard time, you know? It doesn't have to be a woman. It could be any, you know? It could be some newbie who's, you know, come in and if they're giving them a hard time, go and, you know, slap them over the head. You know? Cut them a break. It's, I... The...

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: The, uh, women thing is a red herring here, I suspect.

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure I completely agree with that, but... I don't know. I will say it's a complex issue, which is why I didn't want to take it up at the end of the show. So...

Dave Jones: There you go. All right.

Chris Gammell: All right. Yeah. Well, we will cover this and many other topics in future weeks, but Dave, for now, good talking to you.

Dave Jones: See ya.

Chris Gammell: See ya.