#223 – Space Difficulties and Lost Heroes - Wanzing Workshop Whemmle

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded November 4th, 2014. Episode 223. Weinzing Workshop Wemo.

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

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

Dave Jones: That was said with assertion.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Authority. The only authority around Contextual Electronics these days. Right.

Dave Jones: How's all that going? Are you too busy working for your supply frame overlords?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, I'm focusing on getting the site out, but that's just about launch. So we'll be launching officially at Electronica.

Dave Jones: This is Parts.io.

Chris Gammell: Parts.io, right. Yep.

Dave Jones: So that's a big thing for them, is it?

Chris Gammell: For us, yes. I'm part of the machine now, yes. You're part of the machine, yeah. So yeah, I'll be at the Hackaday's having the party for announcing the Hackaday Prize, the winner to space.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's right. And that's in Germany too.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's on Thursday in Germany. So if people are going to Electronica, I highly recommend. I'll put a link up for getting tickets. It's free tickets.

Dave Jones: As in this Thursday? No, next Thursday. Next Thursday.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So this is, I leave Saturday and I get there Sunday to go just to fly to Germany. I've never flown to Europe before, so this is all new to me. It's, but yeah. So we'll be there Thursday night and there's a party and beer and food and talking about nerdy crap. Right.

Dave Jones: And German, you know, doing the German dancing and all the, you know. Sorry, I'm pitching, you know, in the, you know, the, are they Leidenhausen's or whatever.

Chris Gammell: I was thinking like, and now's the time on Dita when we dance. You know, that's good. Dita's dreams. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, goodness. Yes. Or, um, uh, um, in, uh, National Lampoon's European Vacation. Oh, yeah. I was doing the slapping, you know. Is that in Germany? It's in Munich. Munich, right. Oh, wait, you see the movie or the actual show? Yeah, no, the, yeah, the segment from the movie.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I don't, I don't, it's been a long time since I've seen that movie.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, same here.

Chris Gammell: Did you hear the reboot in that series though?

Dave Jones: Oh, really? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: National Lampoon's Vacation. Yeah, the guy that's in, uh, The Office, the, the US version of The Office and he was in like, uh. Oh, I don't watch it. Oh. He was in The Hangover and a bunch of other movies, but. Yeah, they're rebooting it apparently. We'll see how that goes. Wow. Okay. Good luck with that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It was pretty bad when it came out, so. Right. Like, but in a good sort of, you know, compelling watching sort of way. Campy. It's campy. Yeah. Campy?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, like campy humor. It's stupid. No, that's a Yankee term, obviously. All right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And you're taking my advice and going on holiday while you're over there.

Chris Gammell: I am, yeah. So, I'll be gone the whole second week going over to, um, Austria as well. So, I'll be, uh, I'll be around.

Dave Jones: You're finally coming to Australia. Excellent.

Chris Gammell: Not Australia. That's got to flip it around here, Dave.

Dave Jones: When are you going to convince Supply Frame that Australia is an important part of their business and you've got to come here?

Chris Gammell: Uh, you know, I don't know. For a holiday. Maybe, maybe if they're listening, they'll, they'll think of that. But I, I don't think, uh, you know, how much electronics is really down there, Dave? I know that a lot, we have a lot of great listeners there, but I feel like our listenership encompasses all of the electronics of Australia. And it's, you know, not that many.

Dave Jones: Well, I've got about, you know, 12% of my audience are Australian. Oh, okay. So, that's not bad. Yeah. There you go. Hmm. We've got a show here, which kind of has a few other people turn up, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You might have the Woz living there soon, right? That was in the news. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he might be teaching a course there or something as well. Yes, that's right.

Dave Jones: Here in Sydney.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, he's, well, yeah, he's been talking about it, but then there's talk that he's going to teach it via satellite or something, you know. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, yes, he has accepted a job at a local university here and, yep.

Chris Gammell: I feel like if you're that level of fame, it's like you don't really live anywhere anyways. You live mostly on airplanes.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, probably.

Chris Gammell: Plus, he's probably afraid to live there because he knows you'll stalk him and like.

Dave Jones: Well, all the reasons that he wanted to move here are now gone with the other government. You know, he praised our national broadband network and it's basically gone. And, you know, everything else about Australia that he liked is basically gone. And, yeah. That's a shame. Goodness.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well. So, yeah, if people want to meet up, I did get one or two emails already, but if I'll be around, I'll probably be tweeting at the show and I'll be around Austria, so.

Dave Jones: Well, you'd want to be at least tweeting. They're sending you all the way over there. Oh, yeah, no, yeah. I mean. Cover the show and blog the crap out of it.

Chris Gammell: No, I just meant like how to find me. That's the main thing. Yeah. So, yeah, that'll be fun. I'm excited. I don't know what else to say other than. It's, well, actually, I do know what to say. Well, I guess we mentioned this last time too. There's a ton of money already like swirling around that. And I've kind of been watching the hashtag on Twitter and just there's, it's so big. So, we'll see. Yeah, I know. Hopefully we have things to say other than that, but afterwards.

Dave Jones: You could tweet, I'm in hall number five or something, right? And then people still will not be able to find you.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's like an airplane hangar.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Actually, you could probably say, I'm at this booth for the next hour and they wouldn't be able to get there. Right. From somewhere else in the show within an hour. That's how big this thing is.

Chris Gammell: What is the biggest show you've been to?

Dave Jones: What, engineering show?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I guess any show.

Dave Jones: Well, it would probably be the C-Bit one that I did here in Sydney. I mean, that's, you know, but that's small by world standards. I mean, it's big by Australian standards. Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But yeah, tiny, you know.

Chris Gammell: I don't really know. I think the biggest like people event I've been to is probably like a maker fair or something like that. I mean, I've been to like music festivals and stuff, but it doesn't seem like this is as many people as it's just, you know, floor space. So.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's, yeah, it's floor space and booze. I don't know how many people attend over the, how many days does it go for?

Chris Gammell: It's four days. It's like, well, it's like three and a half days. It ends like half day on Friday. Yeah. But they said, I read somewhere it's like two or sorry, 700, sorry, 70,000 people, which didn't seem like as many as it could be.

Dave Jones: Well, that's not as many as a maker fair, for example. Right, right, right, right. One of the big maker fairs. So, you know, actually it gets to a point. I mean, how many exhibitors are there? Have you actually checked?

Chris Gammell: I have not looked yet. No, there's like this really old school looking site where they have all the listings.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because it gets to a point where the show is too big. It's actually pointless being there. Yeah. Apart from the fact that you can say you've been there and it's a junket for the company, so everyone loves going. Right. And companies go, oh yeah, I have to spend our marketing money on, you know, going to electronic. Yeah. Of course we do, you know. Yeah. And yet nobody visits you. Ten people visit your booth over the four days because it's so bloody big. You just, you know, I mean, at the smaller shows where you're still here in Sydney, right, you walk around and you visit every booth. Right. You can't do that at these shows. So you've got to only say that 10% of those crowd are going to walk by your booth. Not even that. You're probably lucky if you get that many walk by.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, and like, so my buddy who's been there once before, he was telling me like he hangs out in the displays building because that's kind of like the industry he works in. Right.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. So they do separate them into market segments.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they do. But then.

Dave Jones: I was going to say that. Yeah, they need to do that.

Chris Gammell: But then how much, I mean, like, I guess you could go around there and stuff like that. But then why not just have separate conferences for each, I guess, is a certain point. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That was going to be my point. It gets too big that you may as well have separate conferences. Yeah. Where you can, you know, stand out and get your core audience, you know, there. So it's worth your while to pay to go to this thing. Right. As in, as far as a stand goes. But, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's just, I think it's pissing money down the drain.

Chris Gammell: I was having conversations with some other people about it too. And it's just like how over time conferences, conferences specifically also like trade shows like this where it's more, you know, there are some educational aspects, but less so.

Dave Jones: There are conferences attached to these trade shows usually.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But like how even those are kind of starting to become less relevant just because it used to be that that was like the only way, you know, you had to go there and see people talk and because you needed to get the experts in a room and actually hear them speaking. Whereas now it's like, you know, there's YouTube, there's, there's, you know, webinars, there's many, many more ways to distribute this kind of information.

Dave Jones: There are, but are they using it? Most people aren't.

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Dave Jones: I, I, but even beyond that. Yeah, there's hacks like us using it, but no, like, you know, not, not, not the world expert in, you know, you know, lead physics or something, you know, like is not going to have a YouTube channel. Right.

Chris Gammell: But, and, and, well, they should, but no, I mean, I think this is more about, about like that even just the information is available online. Like, like before it was like the seminar was the only place to get that given a booklet about it. Yeah. And now it's like, well, a lot of this stuff is distributed and a lot of this stuff is, you know, basically you can, you can, you can find the information online at least. Yeah. Whereas before maybe that wasn't the case. So I don't know. I don't know. It's a, I'd be interested to hear if people are still going to lots of conferences and it'd be good to have, if there's one where it's like the amp hour will be there. You know what I mean?

Dave Jones: I've rarely gone to conferences cause they, I just find them boring. I just, you know, like, yeah, you got to sit through, oh, okay. I might. Yeah. That one was okay. And then you, you know, you got to sit through five crap ones to get one good one.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know? Yeah. I've kind of learned my lesson. I, you know, I, I drink lots of coffee to start with and when I'm chugging coffee at one of those things and I still can't, still can't keep my eyelids open. It's like.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's either the material is not right or I just shouldn't be in that kind of situation in the first place. You know, that's just not, not useful for me.

Dave Jones: But we also, we kind of. And most, most presenters don't know how to condense material down, says the expert of waffle me. But if I need to, if I prepare, I can get the information down. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And, and yeah. And a lot of them just don't know how to do that. Don't know how to deliver it efficiently. Yeah. You know, so, yep. That can lead to a lot of droopy eyelids.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Which I'm sure we're doing to people, so we don't need to talk about conferences anymore. So yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, enjoy Germany.

Chris Gammell: I will. And I just got an email back. We do have at least one guest for Dave lined up. We'll, I didn't actually mention it to him before the show, but.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Well, I'll let him know before the show and hopefully we'll find another one. Another guest host. I'm sure Dave can find somebody for the following week.

Dave Jones: Probably. Yep. Yeah. If not, I'll just do it myself and talk to myself.

Chris Gammell: Oh man. The getting Dave's head episode.

Dave Jones: That was my original concept. Yeah. That was my original concept before the EEV blog. The EEV blog was my second idea. Yeah. The first one was this radio show. And well, it wasn't, you know, it was like a podcast. I wanted to do an electronics podcast and I had my pro studio mic and everything, you know, and I sort of went, well, who's going to want to listen to, just listen to me waffle on? And I didn't think it would work. So I canned the idea.

Chris Gammell: Then you got out the webcam. Then I got out the 320 by 2 other webcam. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. There was an article about podcasting and just like the, how it's kind of coming into prominence now, back into prominence after 10 years now, how it's just kind of, and it's just all these different factors kind of leading together. Like a lot of cars have like Bluetooth or, you know, a lot of.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. With the phone integration, the smartphone integration, all that sort of stuff, it's getting easier to listen to the podcast and, you know, everyone's on like a high bandwidth plan and, you know, as in mobile plan and all that sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Right. And smartphones themselves too, but it used to be you had to load it onto an iPod and then listen to it. Now it's just. Yeah. Yeah. Like mine just goes out and grabs podcasts overnight. So yeah, it's pretty good. And speaking of podcasts, we should mention the passing of a Titan. There was. Yes. Sad news.

Dave Jones: One of your, one of your favorite podcasts.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. One of my heroes. Car Talk. Tom Maglioli. I think it is Maglioli. But yeah, Tom passed away yesterday. It was announced. So highly recommend if people have never gone to listen to Car Talk. Someone brought it up on Twitter the other day and they're like, Car Talk wasn't actually about cars. It was actually a show about troubleshooting. And. Just like the amp hour is not really about electronics. Right. Because you can't, you're not actually seeing anything, you know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's can't, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Although they always had the benefit if you, they actually have a, you know, they have a best of because they've done like 30 years of it. And so they had the best of people making, like replicating the car noises that their car was making. And I was thinking like, how, how would we do that for electronics? Like, just describe your scope trace to me. It's like a squiggle and then like a flat line and like a squiggle. So it doesn't quite work.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So. The closest we've got to that is a compilation of me saying, United States of America.

Chris Gammell: We do have that. We also have that creepy, the creepy thing where it's just us laughing.

Dave Jones: Oh, I haven't, I don't think I've heard that one.

Chris Gammell: Oh no. It's super creepy. Yeah. Someone took, someone took our, one of our shows, I think when Jeff was on, one of the shows you when Jeff was on and he cut out everything except the laughing. And so just one thing after another.

Dave Jones: Ah.

Chris Gammell: And it's, oh. Brilliant. It's so frightening. It's. Yeah. So.

Dave Jones: With my horrible laugh. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, no, it was just like, we just sound like we're insane. That's it. It like devolves into madness. But.

Dave Jones: You should see the, the, the, the, the scope trace of my laughter. It's extremely repetitive.

Chris Gammell: Is it really?

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's incredible. I think you could, you know. Why did you have that? Use it as a clock reference. You can, well, you know, like that, well, on the, on the, on the recording thing, every time I go to edit, I edit using the waveform.

Chris Gammell: Oh, oh, I see. I see.

Dave Jones: So, and, and you can see the laughter packets. You can see the packets of laughter. And it's, you know, because I've got this like motorboat like laugh.

Chris Gammell: Deterministic symbol, huh? Yeah. Signal.

Dave Jones: Oh, goodness.

Chris Gammell: I'm all self-conscious about laughing. This is terrible.

Dave Jones: Yep. Me too. But yeah, you got, got to give it up. We're in the, if you've got self-consciousness in this industry, you're screwed.

Chris Gammell: But yeah, that's one of my, one of my favorite parts about car talk too, was like, you could, I mean, you start listening. It's just, you can't help but laugh along with those guys. They got the, the heavy Boston accents and.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's awesome. So.

Dave Jones: They actually retired a couple of years ago, didn't they? Yeah. They stopped doing the show.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, they did. I think we might've mentioned that when it was off the air two years ago, but they still play reruns and you can, you can get all the old shows. And so they, you know, they still play all that stuff and highly, highly recommend it. It's a good, I mean, it really, it is, it is a troubleshooting show. It's, it's just, it's awesome.

Dave Jones: Are people going to be playing our show after we retire or we're dead?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. It does make you think about that, but we got a long, long way to go. I mean, they were doing like 30 years, Dave. It was like.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I know. That's crazy. We've done what? Four and a half.

Chris Gammell: Maybe? Four. Yeah. A little bit more than four. So we got a little.

Dave Jones: When is our, when is our fifth anniversary?

Chris Gammell: Oh, not till August.

Dave Jones: August next year. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Maybe we should actually meet up for the fifth anniversary.

Chris Gammell: Maybe. At some point. It'll happen. Right.

Dave Jones: Oh, goodness. Yep.

Chris Gammell: But yeah. Good stuff.

Dave Jones: All right. Can we actually get onto our list of crap?

Chris Gammell: Sure. Sure. What's.

Dave Jones: Oh, bloody hell. U-beam's back.

Chris Gammell: Oh. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh. They got 10 million. You know, I've done a blog expose of this U-beam rubbish. You know, wireless transmitting and charging you. They just got 10 million bucks in another round of investment funding. And are people this stupid, really? Anyway, there's a good post we'll link in about how, is his name Danny?

Chris Gammell: I believe so. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Anyway, he's got a blog on Tumblr or something.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yeah. He's got, he's a physicist and he researches ultrasonics and he has a, you know, and he goes through the calculations, looked at their pattern, went through the calculations and went, it's just bullshit. And it's just, you know, like I can do this on the back of an envelope. It's just bullshit. It's not going to work. It's not practical. You know, to, to deliver the amount of power you need, like, like five watt charging power. It's just, it's just stupid. And any engineer knows this, right? Any engineer with any, any intuition at all knows it's just not practical. And, you know, and.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think we mentioned in the show before, what it ultimately came down to is like, yes, is it, is it completely impossible? No, you can do it. No, it's definitely possible. But you're going to hurt animals, right? You're going to, or you're going to be so wildly inefficient that the.

Dave Jones: It's just stupid. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And the technology is so complex. The beam steering and the whole.

Chris Gammell: Is a $2 USB cable. And it's like, that's what you're really going after.

Dave Jones: Not only a $2 USB cable, but a $20 wireless charging mat.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah, that too. That's right.

Dave Jones: You, you, you have to beat those two technologies and it's just not going to work. And people piss their money away in this. I reckon there's got to be a niche business for a, um, a niche startup business. Hey, for offering advice, practical advice to these batshit crazy investors. No. Because they, they obviously have no clue. No, there is no business. They don't want to hear it. Right.

Chris Gammell: And that's the real story here is that, uh, buckle in folks. Cause it's only going to get worse. I mean like this is not, this is whatever it is. Right. I think a lot of this is personality and they're, they're investing in the person and that's fine. Uh, but it's only going to get worse. Like it's, it's, it's already like really stupid. Like they're throwing stupid money after stupid money these days. So just ignore it and try the best you can. And if you are a company, try and, you know, tell a similarly, uh, nice PR marketing story so that people will throw their $10 million at you.

Dave Jones: Uh, cause it's a great gig if you can get it. If you can like, you know, play with somebody else's money for a couple of years, just developing some impractical thing, then Hey, why not? You know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And that's, and that's great.

Dave Jones: My hat's almost off to them, you know, as, as much as they are, you know, and they're not, uh, you know, like they're not, I hate to use the word cause they're not deliberate scammers. Right. They actually believe in this shit and that's their problem. Right. That, that, that, that's a, their problem. And also the reason that they get the money, right? Is cause they're so convincing that they can make, you know, they can make other people believe in their bullshit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So I, I hear more about this stuff. Granted, my main reference point for this whole thing is Silicon Valley, that HBO show, which is amazing. Right.

Dave Jones: I watched the first, I watched the first episode of that. You know what? It's not that good. So there's eight episodes. No, it is. Right. It's not that good. It is so good.

Chris Gammell: Oh my God. It's by, it's by Mike Judge, the guy that does Beavis and Butthead and Office Space and a bunch of other stuff. And I, I, I loved it. The first episode is a little slow, but it really, really gets good.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Yeah. Cause we both sat down and watched the third episode and we just went, nah, that just didn't

Chris Gammell: work. By the end, it's amazing. But, but so that's my main reference point. But I mean, like the thing is, the thing that you see, like the thing that I keep hearing over and over again, it's just like, yeah, that's pretty close. Yeah. That's pretty close. And it's just, it's really stupid. It's like all of it is really stupid right now. So like I said, buckle in folks, cause it's going to get worse. You're going to keep, we're going to keep seeing stupid stories like this and it's, you know, just, it is what it is. It's okay. They threw money after that. That's fine. And especially in hardware, that's the thing that's going to get really rough because you see this stuff already, right? They, they, you know, they'll throw, you know, 10 million, 20 million at like a, you know, another photo sharing app. It's like, okay, who cares? Right. But when it starts to be hardware and it's like, whoa, wait a second, we can actually.

Dave Jones: Well, cause that's the stuff we care about and we can vet it. We can, you know. Exactly. Right, right, right. We can tell if it's practical right off the bat almost.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. With a, with, with a software thing, like, and they talk about this too. It's like, until you actually start earning money, like your potential profit is infinity. Right. And that's. Yeah, yeah, right. And it's just as much as the, the imagination can, can, can dream up. And it's like, until you actually have something there with hardware, I feel like it's like, okay, well we can look at the component costs. We can look at, you know, the labor costs and do some estimates and then look at the actual physics because there's physics involved.

Dave Jones: Exactly. There's physics involved. That's right.

Chris Gammell: And that's, yeah, that's going to be.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah, it's, it, it is what it is.

Dave Jones: Speaking of physics. Yeah, let's do some good physics. Why did the, those two guys win, was it two guys, I think, won the Nobel Prize for developing the blue lead, yet the guy who actually developed the lead didn't win.

Chris Gammell: I think it was, it was three, it was three, three scientists. Oh, three. Okay, sorry.

Dave Jones: And anyway, there's an article in the IEEE Spectrum about the guy, Tom Roberts. No, sorry. That was the guy who took the photo of the guy. Oops. But again, Nick Holonyak Jr. He, he developed the widely credited as developing the first visible light lead. And yet he gets jack all, yet the guys who developed the blue lead. Yeah. Get, get the physics prize, which to me doesn't make sense because it's the, and he's, and the guy who developed the lead's probably got a point because I actually developed the technology that made the lead possible, yet they just developed a refinement of that, that allowed the consumer application, that the consumer application of white light, right? As in, you know, the white lead lights that we take for granted these days, because the development of the blue lead was essential to develop the white light, of course.

Chris Gammell: Right, because it's actually a blue, and people will remember from John Edmund of Cree being on the show, we've had some star power in the past. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I, you know, actually, I don't know enough of the history of the original LED stuff. Me neither. Yeah, LED stuff, so.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But still, I think it's a bit rough. Yeah, well, I mean. Now they come to think, I thought, like, you know, I went, yeah, awesome, the guys that developed the blue lead, they won the Nobel Prize in physics, woo-hoo! And then, yeah, this article comes out, yeah, what about the poor guy who developed the lead? You know?

Chris Gammell: Uh, well.

Dave Jones: That's, that's pretty major. That's pretty major, the lead.

Chris Gammell: Okay, so here's what I know about LEDs.

Dave Jones: Like the laser, right? Right, they, they gave the Nobel Prize in physics for the invention of the transistor. Yes. They gave it for the invention of the laser, didn't they?

Chris Gammell: I think. Don't know.

Dave Jones: From, okay, I'll have to double check that, but yeah, okay, for the laser. And the lead has got to be the next, you know?

Chris Gammell: Okay, so, so I'm going to go into, buckle in again, folks, because I'm going to start talking physics I don't know much about. But the way I remember LEDs is basically it emits a photon when it jumps a band gap. Is that, does that sound right? I don't.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, something like that. Yes, by the way, I just checked, yes, somebody won a Nobel Prize for the laser.

Chris Gammell: For the laser. Okay, so.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: But, I mean, there's always, I don't think I'm even going to try here. I mean, maybe, maybe the LED stuff is just, that was more incremental. I, I know the stuff with the blue LED was a totally new, a totally new material type because of the, the need to go on to the, the, was it gallium arsenide or gallium nitride? You know, basically.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but how much research was there already in, in LEDs before they cracked the blue LED? I mean, that was an awful amount.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I, I don't know. Yeah, you would have to know the incremental nature of it, I guess.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We don't, obviously.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: We can focus on the positive here, which is that the, you know, the blue LED adventures won the, the Nobel. That's, that's awesome. I mean, that's, that's great, right? I mean, and it is going to have very wide ranging effect.

Dave Jones: That brings up the topic. Have there been, how many physics Nobel Prizes have been to do with electronics? And I should know this because I've actually read a book. Well, granted, it was 20 years ago. I read a book of, um, that, that detailed every Nobel Prize winning, uh, physics invention. Huh. Um, and yeah, but it was, I read that 20 years ago. Um, almost to the, yes, it was exactly 20 years ago. 2004, I read that.

Chris Gammell: Huh. That's 10 years ago.

Dave Jones: And, uh, yeah. Hmm. Sorry. 2000. Sorry, 1994.

Chris Gammell: 94. Wow.

Dave Jones: 94. 94, I read that book. Yep. Anyway, if anyone knows, or there's a list, there's a Wikipedia list and I'm scrolling through it right now. If physics, uh, Nobel prize inventions, the neutron cosmic radiation, the positron, the diffraction of electrons by crystals, the cyclotron, the Pauli principle, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But how many of them are related to.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you have to get down towards the bottom, right? Cause I mean. Right. Yeah. Transistors were what? 50, 40s or 50s. Yeah. Man. My history is not very good.

Dave Jones: 47, isn't it? The transistor?

Chris Gammell: Uh, was it? Jeez, we should know this. Come on. I don't know. Does it really matter? I mean, okay. So like, so like you were mentioning the, you know, the, them adding on, obviously, you know, like, yes, everybody builds on the shoulders of giants. Right. But like, right. Everything still has to be taken. Like, yeah, of course you have to look at the things that came before it. But when I'm working on electronics today, do I need to care about the history of how I got there? I mean, like I have to respect it, but I don't have to.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

Chris Gammell: Memorize it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's not something that they test you on in, uh, in school. Is it? It's like, when was the transistor invented? You know, it's not something that.

Chris Gammell: It's not in the, uh, history classes. No. Yeah. Well, it's not in the. Everybody takes the American history classes, right? Just like, I'm sure you took American history classes, right?

Dave Jones: Engineering courses I'm talking about. Sorry?

Chris Gammell: I said you probably took American history classes, right, Dave?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Of course. I know all about it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: The only thing I know about American history comes from movies, probably. Yeah, probably.

Chris Gammell: The only thing I know about Australian history is usually used as a joke about Australians, so. Right.

Dave Jones: Oh, goodness. Eh.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, uh.

Dave Jones: Sorry, I'm looking it up. No, that's okay. 1947, I was right. You got it. I was right. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Well, we should mention.

Dave Jones: My credibility remains intact.

Chris Gammell: Whatever low bar we have already.

Dave Jones: There. Yay.

Chris Gammell: Oh, dear. Yep. So, continuing on the physics trend and moving away from the Chris and Dave don't know any history stuff, write your complaints in about history on the Amp Hour to history at embedded.fm. There was a piece of news that was revealed, finally, after having him on as a guest for, what, four or five times now? Dr. Greg Shervon. Really?

Dave Jones: That many times?

Chris Gammell: It's been a couple. Maybe only three or four, but it's been a couple. All right. finally we finally found out what Greg has been working on and it's pretty nifty so this is another thing

Dave Jones: speaking about pouring a buttload of money into something

Chris Gammell: so it's basically it's going to be ultrasound on a chip and so tons of high frequency switching but on a chip so you can start to do you know monitoring internal of the body external of the body and just really

Dave Jones: at this stage though there's no prototype it's just well not that they're showing it's just yeah we got a hundred million dollars and we're developing this and you know and they've got a patent application and you know of course they do and stuff like that so in fact the only concept drawings they have come from their patent by the looks of it so you know right you know whether or not it actually comes to fruition we'll see hope it does yeah

Chris Gammell: well and I think when Greg was on the show he was talking about some of the the chip stuff that they were doing and and I remember wondering when when I talked to him about you know what because you know his his background is radar and stuff like that yeah I didn't know what that meant for for low-level chip stuff other than you know you're probably not going to be doing anything low power anything portable like this you know like on an FPGA so you do have to do custom custom logic custom everything on board uh yep yeah so

Dave Jones: yeah I don't think his expertise will be on the physics side of the stuff I'm assuming that they've got they've hired physicists and all that sort of jazz to do that although I don't remember Greg's background I'm sure they're hiring him for the practical implementation aspect of the hardware

Chris Gammell: yeah well jazz like that yeah and a lot of the test setup I think as well like so right people remember that he did the the seeing through radar or the seeing through the walls radar type of stuff and uh he wrote that book and uh oh that's why you don't know he's been on the show that many times because uh usually he comes down when you're not here wait I'm not here

Dave Jones: he's your go-to guy these days

Chris Gammell: yeah him and Mike are the two all right uh so yeah uh but he did so he did a lot of that radar stuff at Lincoln Lab um which is at MIT and now he's doing this stuff so very cool things cool

Dave Jones: yep and I guess that yeah they need someone to build a practical thing because at the moment they've got Jack Hall but here is and they've got a hundred million dollars funding by the way um the guy who's yeah he's a serial entrepreneur and he's uh Rothberg his name is um Jonathan Rothberg who's formed a couple of DNA companies and sold them for like you know half a billion dollars and stuff like that he's just doing another one and uh

Chris Gammell: yep right well and we hear a hundred million and it's like that sounds like a ton of money but if you're doing I mean effectively they're doing chip startup right so

Dave Jones: this is where yeah but this is where I went I support this sort of money being spent right is in this sort of research

Chris Gammell: yeah right

Dave Jones: right not just some bullshit practical wireless charging wank

Chris Gammell: right

Dave Jones: this is this is where I want to see

Chris Gammell: money spent all the the regulatory type of stuff that you have to put up with for for medical stuff so there's probably a you know big chunk of money that needs to go into that and all the testing and yeah but just

Dave Jones: just the fundamental physics of this you know fantastic right

Chris Gammell: yeah right

Dave Jones: this is great so yeah so even if it turns out to be not that practical um the just the you know well see what happens that's the thing right what happens when a company like this gets a hundred million dollars that any university research department can only you know that's their you know wet dreams right when they get this sort of money what happens to the research if the thing all fails do they release it does it just you know get lost in the annals of time all that fantastic research that somebody could then build upon to you know what happens when private ventures private research ventures like this fail

Chris Gammell: uh well I think usually these kind of things are based on I mean I'm sure they're doing research and a lot of the you know the magic around implementing but I I mean do you think they're doing a lot of like new research research that's

Dave Jones: oh yeah I think they are I think they are

Chris Gammell: maybe I mean there's always these different levels right so there's like there's the the base level research right which would be like discovering ultrasound and then there's implementing it right that would be the initial thing would be like one one level and then and that's and there's innovation there and then there's also uh minifying it and making it more power efficient and getting better software algorithms and stuff around that there's innovation there

Dave Jones: oh I don't yeah I don't separate those by too much

Chris Gammell: no

Dave Jones: I mean you know

Chris Gammell: maybe I don't know I'm sure that like we were saying before everything's based upon you know prior research but it's yeah it's a question of how much how much new stuff they have to do I'd be

Dave Jones: anyway the bottom line is you know I mean what happens when if this thing fails not that I'm hoping it will it's just a general question about private funding of any sort of research like this like look there's no way they need a hundred million bucks to you know get a prototype working if the technology is so easy right so they've got to be doing advanced fundamental stuff

Chris Gammell: well they said they already have a prototype in the in the article oh okay imaging a penny yeah right uh right but yeah

Dave Jones: but how far advanced is it like you know

Chris Gammell: yeah well I don't know but a hundred million is what you need for you know getting into silicon getting getting that kind of stuff that's where it's right oh yeah that's expensive yeah so it's uh it's I'm sure a lot of that will go towards that and so like we have examples of this at least in the chip industry as well right so we saw uh touchstone which went out of business probably a year ago now right they ended up just selling off their uh their portfolio uh

Dave Jones: right so you think that's what happened here they're summited by their assets and then yeah

Chris Gammell: I mean you try and salvage some of it especially if you're taking on debt or anything like that and then yeah yeah you do what you can but hmm in terms of what happens to the money I mean that money's just gone it's just like that's it then you know that's

Dave Jones: right

Chris Gammell: then the investors lose and then that stinks

Dave Jones: well in in this case everyone loses because this is you know a really important sort of product you know ultrasound it's basically like an you know it allows like you know like an iPhone sized ultrasound machine basically although ultrasound machines are pretty small these days

Chris Gammell: they do keep shrinking I saw one from GE it was pretty small

Dave Jones: yeah they're you know so how much smaller does it need to be are they going for low cost as well as um anyway it's a new way of doing ultrasound it's not just miniaturizing existing transducers and stuff like that it's you know I think it's a totally new method of um doing the transducer arrays and stuff like that so anyway

Chris Gammell: yeah hmm cool

Dave Jones: all right I guess that's his

Chris Gammell: full-time gig now right yeah yeah and he said he posted something to the thing about so November 13th he's going to be doing a speaker series and he'll be down there so people are in New York City uh the people that actually host that uh startup for Combinator I think is like their ah right the name of their startup group but um so Greg said

Dave Jones: oh is is this where the money came through

Chris Gammell: I don't know but uh yeah so Greg said I'll actually be there though so people want to hang out with him and he's hosting some panel right so cool cool cool cool good stuff good stuff Greg uh what have you been doing with electronics lately me

Dave Jones: have time to do electronics opening opening packages surely you jest yeah surely you jest

Chris Gammell: yeah

Dave Jones: hmm hey DNA can carry current speaking on the research side of things

Chris Gammell: yeah

Dave Jones: I think that's fascinating researchers at the university of uh the Hebrew University Institute of Chemistry um and nanoscience and nanotech blah blah blah um they've found that DNA can carry current yeah a promising step towards molecular electronics they say right I think that's just a fascinating insight

Chris Gammell: who needs who needs a chip machine at home when you can just mix together some kind of goo and then it it sets up the circuit for you there you

Dave Jones: go they got um they were measuring tens of picot amps up to 100 picot amps over distances ranging tens of nanometers to more than 100 nanometers wow how do you even probe that crap I mean

Chris Gammell: yeah test structures

Dave Jones: oh goodness you know that that's where the art is the art is actually taking the measurement you know the that's just incredible yeah

Chris Gammell: yeah those test rigs can be really really crazy we should do stuff like that not like on dna but you know that kind of low current stuff yeah it's not hard

Dave Jones: to measure those low currents but you know the fact that you can isolate it to a dna molecule is just wow yeah that's true right you know

Chris Gammell: you have to like grow it across some kind of structure

Dave Jones: structure and then embed you know micro positioners and all that to probe them and you know yeah that's crazy incredible anyway i love it i love the photo in the article though he's like you know this guy's there with his he's got something on the computer and then behind him is a couple of instruments and he's got like a little cheap ass you know $300 oscilloscope but on top of that he's got a couple of Keithley 2400 SMUs and something yeah a couple of SMUs but that's that's basically it you know that's their entire lab yeah well which is all which is all you need really

Chris Gammell: well yeah and you see that a lot though too you see you see a lot of phd types getting getting a lot done with not much not much like super fancy equipment obviously the Keithley stuff's pretty interesting but yeah yeah no you don't need yeah it's just about repeatability as i said

Dave Jones: yeah and it's all yeah it's all in the physical process of separating that dna molecule and then probing the damn sucker

Chris Gammell: yeah

Dave Jones: you can just picture it you know you just picture it he's there with the right tongue angle come on you bastard no i missed it oh he wigged no you know that's yeah that's great

Chris Gammell: yeah

Dave Jones: howdy

Chris Gammell: so i'm doing some uh i did some probing and cutting and uh a couple of other things at home a couple or last week i suppose oh is this the iron man thing yeah it's totally not so we're going from uh you know big important things like ultrasound and dna to probably the least important things in the world like halloween costumes

Dave Jones: and what's this fluff you got on your face what's this goatee thing

Chris Gammell: oh so i was so i went to this weird like it was like a party but it was like a cocktail party for halloween and so you had to like dress up and right yeah you had to like actually be dressed couldn't be wearing like a i don't know uh so i went as tony stark at a cocktail party right and so i made it yeah right yeah so i had to try the beard thing and that was not not very great but

Dave Jones: how long did it take to cultivate that

Chris Gammell: oh two weeks maybe i don't know

Dave Jones: two weeks oh is that all right yeah

Chris Gammell: yeah

Dave Jones: right yeah

Chris Gammell: but uh i actually got into uh using my milligan mostly for the plastic i found um someone had given me some machining plastic and so that was great because it actually got me back into cutting with that stuff and you know i had started with with metal when i was doing machining and yep i i think i mean i posted a couple videos about how terrible the process was just because i didn't really do enough reading on it and i mean i got a lot of great feedback from people but um but this machining plastic was awesome it was like a hard right uh i don't even know what give us the actual night for the material yeah i don't i don't know the name because it was given to me so i don't know it was it's kind of like the stuff used for like like when you have people like making fixtures for you you know for like holding holding down fixtures and stuff like that yep so that kind of plastic yeah yep uh but yeah that stuff was great to work with so awesome made a little chess piece but then what i started to do then is i started to uh try out machining with the i wanted to cut out the circuit board as well so i actually you know laid it out in ki-cad and then i found this uh this uh script that basically on in linux it'll uh it'll convert it'll convert a uh gerber straight to g-code so the g-code is actually what controls the the xy movement of the of the router and excellent it worked great i mean like the the code is awesome and it worked really well it's all it's all posted the code the big problem was i broke all my drill

Dave Jones: bits what you broke your drill bits i mean not my drill bits my

Chris Gammell: milling bits yeah so i had like really i had it on like yeah just i didn't have the right ones on hand so ended up running out of time and just hacking the whole thing together on like a piece of cardboard so nice work yeah you know you gotta gotta do what you gotta do right right

Dave Jones: but yeah it was bloody halloween i hate halloween yeah

Chris Gammell: i know why do you hate halloween i don't get it oh

Dave Jones: it's just bullshit commercial american stuff that's infested in australia and it pisses me off

Chris Gammell: hate it but it's fun the end no you get to dress up as things yeah well

Dave Jones: that's fine can we have a bloody dress up day where we don't call it halloween oh okay i'm cool with

Chris Gammell: that man yep you just don't like that the it's like all commercialized and candy based it's

Dave Jones: commercial american yep crap we just don't want that stuff infest in our country

Chris Gammell: thank you very much gotcha oh okay i see how it is i see how it is

Dave Jones: well how would you like it if we bought some of our customs over there you know you'd go oh we don't want this australian bullshit

Chris Gammell: steve we have outback steakhouse

Dave Jones: yeah my apologies for the outback steakhouse i i have eaten at the outback steakhouse in america

Chris Gammell: so oh really yeah it's not that great

Dave Jones: oh you know the food's all right it's just cringeworthy you know i know it really is the alice springs burger or something you know i don't know it's

Chris Gammell: just it's very stereotypical yeah much like our our how we started the show talking about germany and european vacation and ah detour's dream you

Dave Jones: wouldn't know what else bugs me you wouldn't know what else bugs me i think that's what we're american accents here in australia trying to say g'day you know really oh no or no worries no worries you know like because like where i live and work here we we have the hillsong church right and that is infested by you bloody american teenagers right all the parents send their kids to here right to go to hillsong church and it's you know they've got a school as well like a youth program or yeah yeah it's bullshit so everyone who works in the shops around here is a bloody american teenager and like no worry you know i i can't do an american no worries but and and they're all and of course because they're all going to hillsong church they're all religious so they usually come from the southern states right i don't want to generalize but it's true right so they've got those southern accents i

Chris Gammell: love southern accents man i

Dave Jones: think they're great i i i don't mind but when they when you just get served at the local shopping center here and they say no worries or you know and it's just oh i just god i just want to slap them i'm sorry i just can't handle it oh that's funny like i get too much american every week with you on the show i know right well yeah yeah you

Chris Gammell: get two weeks off yay so another bit of uh uh at home i thought this one was interesting too uh so this is another bit of at home i haven't tried this out yet uh obviously i've been working on my my thermal oven it's kind of sitting dormant in pieces but um all right someone posted i think it was in the the show notes two weeks ago yeah it was uh uh hacking a vinyl cutter actually to use to cut out solder paste stencils oh it was actually jeremy it was actually a guy that's in cleveland uh he was the one who posted it um but yeah it's it's a it's a similar kind of uh script where you basically will will take your gerbers and then turn it you know have you seen those 2d vinyl cutters before you ever

Dave Jones: seen those yeah yeah yeah they're they're cool you can buy them you can buy you can buy little commercial ones yeah they're actually quite

Chris Gammell: right yeah like a lot of a lot of crafting and like stuff like that yeah yeah yeah crafting and uh jeremy said they're pretty cheap too aren't they yeah they're like 100 bucks

Dave Jones: i think they're not all right i i should just get one for the you know yeah

Chris Gammell: i mean it seems like a cool little thing so so uh it was a couple weeks ago

Dave Jones: damn it now you've got me on ebay and i'm gonna bloody go oh yeah of course if i need more junk here yeah right right yeah right here we

Chris Gammell: go ebay yeah yeah yeah yeah what is it like a

Dave Jones: vinyl cutter or a craft cutter or something yeah it

Chris Gammell: was like a hundred bucks uh so what's it called it's called the uh silhouette portrait or cameo basically it's it looks very similar to like an old they're not even old one it's just an inkjet cutter with like you know just the the uh the single axis where the carriage moves across and then instead of ink coming out it just has a cutting head and so yep uh uh jeremy said you can do 0603 and uh sc74-6 which i think is

Dave Jones: right what's that oh hang on sat 23 there's a huge there's a huge like stand-up flatbed like a huge flatbed like roller plotter like a meter wide one oh yeah secondhand and it's dirt cheap oh yeah those are actually good for sorry yeah

Chris Gammell: those are good for like harvesting the uh the the drives in those you can oh

Dave Jones: yeah yeah yeah they're very

Chris Gammell: cool the old pen plotters and stuff like that yep yep see

Dave Jones: what you can do there's lots of them i'll tell you what yeah man there's a lot of them these are secondhand and new this is how projects are born

Chris Gammell: you know this is this is the worst this is the worst thing because it'll uh but yeah it was pretty cool though and uh so you can actually you know do not like super fine pitch stuff but do some right smaller i actually saw on when i was watching some of those those machining videos as well i saw a guy that was he just cut out like you know real uh thin stainless and he just milled out his own um solder paste stencils as well so right yeah i mean you can do a lot of stuff it's it's great they're pretty pretty cheap stuff so i so like i said i haven't i haven't uh my my machining was on hold because of the uh the lack of of milling bits so i i am always on the lookout for for cheap ones for especially for this kind of stuff for like carving um but yep actually there was a there was a kickstarter not a kickstarter was a kickstarter uh instructables um not instructables sorry inventables i always get those confused inventables i know right inventables is actually out of chicago they uh but they just uh started a new campaign called for carvy and that's another one there uh it's a kickstarter going right now so it's 15 days left similar kind of thing it's just for you know mostly 2d machining it can do a little bit um a little bit of z axis stuff they're also the ones who do the shapeoko so people have probably heard of that one before all right um which was basically like just an xy um gantry where you just kind of strapped in a routing bit but this one's actually a little bit more finished and stuff like that and looks like you can get it for like 2000 maybe a little a little bit more um but the cool thing about them is they they have a new web-based uh what's called cam you're telling the story i know sorry i did my brain fart there because there's cad right cad is uh computer-assisted design and cam is computer computer-assisted machining which is similar to these scripts where it's basically you know you need to tell something needs to tell the stepper motors which direction you know how many pulses in one direction or the another to go right and actually doing that is this terrible process and um you know there's a lot of software out there's a lot of his computer you know it's it's windows based stuff like that i have a couple that i use um and so they actually moved to the browser which is pretty interesting because you know it's there so it's all server side uh processing and stuff like that so i haven't tried it out yet but it looks pretty interesting for you know pretty simple looking machining type stuff so yeah i might have i might have re-caught you know the winter the winter virus that is machining so oh boy looks like a fun project

Dave Jones: reflow oven says not a there's yet another kickstarter project for a reflow oven controller didn't we we talked about one a couple of weeks back and there's another one yep yep well and i mean they're

Chris Gammell: diamond doesn't they're they're not terribly

Dave Jones: they're the new 3d printers of

Chris Gammell: i wouldn't say that they're more like a arduino shields basically i mean like they're i mean what are they they're they're they're basically a a micro uh thermocouple input

Dave Jones: micro with a thermocouple and an lcd and a couple of buttons right and

Chris Gammell: then some kind of yeah you just need digital output because you're just driving usually you're just driving you know uh there's a

Dave Jones: relays or something one single digital output that just turns the heater off and on that's it yeah there is and then the rest is just

Chris Gammell: software so that's i mean it's good though that means that the cost will come down on those and make it easier for people to do it um this one that was on here though which one i can't find it now sorry uh oven yeah i think this is the one where these guys actually do they actually have a really good tutorial on building your own as well um right so if you go to the comment section on on uh the subreddit i post the link there as well um so basically if you want to just build your own from scratch even just like how to disassemble these um these ovens and like it was they actually use the exact same one i have so i'm going to be using this and actually insulating it and trying to you know because they they create hot spots with these really crappy uh heating elements oh yeah so hmm so yeah it's all about uh louis we can just build up a you know get a vinyl cutter get a get a toaster oven get a milling machine and you still really can't do two layer boards uh

Dave Jones: yeah exactly let alone chips yeah

Chris Gammell: right oh come on that's that was a bit of a dig of course it was

Dave Jones: people expect it yeah that's actually a comprehensive tutorial they've got there on how to modify ovens and stuff yeah wow that's that's very impressive

Chris Gammell: jeez i like that it's really nice and actually that was part of their their kickstarter actually has like more of a kit style so if you want to just kind of follow the directions and get all the stuff they'll send you everything so that's another thing with the the reflow so it's it's nice

Dave Jones: what's all this gold uh reflective stuff they've put inside the oven

Chris Gammell: yeah so that's like thermal tape to kind of try and try and get it uh more uniform so basically instead of like you know like just a straight aluminum inside something will actually try and reflect some of the heat back in so

Dave Jones: hmm wonder how effective that is it'd be interesting to see see the results on that

Chris Gammell: oh yeah to do like a side by side kind of thing

Dave Jones: yeah yeah yep

Chris Gammell: yeah i don't know man i'm i'm still uh

Dave Jones: reflector gold tape

Chris Gammell: yeah

Dave Jones: hmm i need to still build one before

Chris Gammell: before i uh right yeah i can evaluate uh the effectiveness of tape hmm

Dave Jones: i might do that i might get a roll of reflector gold and then do a before and after thermal profile of uh my oven yeah

Chris Gammell: yeah that'd be good yeah see how it changes that'd be interesting have you and you said you haven't used that lately

Dave Jones: oh well no yeah haven't designed much you know

Chris Gammell: you'll get there

Dave Jones: yeah

Chris Gammell: uh did you see mike's uh thermal camera tear down

Dave Jones: oh yes the uh the what's it called

Chris Gammell: the seek the seek thermal the seek i happen to have one in my hand as well i got i got one for my camera as well or my phone as well

Dave Jones: cool wasn't wasn't that exciting because it's like yeah it's just a little plug in for you know

Chris Gammell: yeah but i mean that's the thing like this is all about accessibility right i mean like i think about the first thermal camera i used was at work and it was like four thousand dollars right and now it's like

Dave Jones: yeah yeah yeah

Chris Gammell: you know 200 bucks it's still not cheap but it's you know it's that's pretty awesome to have especially if you're doing something like a you know a reflow oven or something like that you're trying to say you're trying to find a place where you need to pull more tape right i don't know right so it was it was interesting to see like how little stuff was in there too i mean like just

Dave Jones: oh yeah it's yeah it has the sensor and a micro and usb interface and that's about it yeah i mean jeez you know i'm also interested much all the magic's in the sensor

Chris Gammell: oh yeah right exactly it's like a it's like a material scientist game now well and plus these micros are i mean they're everywhere right like that was what an stm32 in there i mean like those are just crazy powerful for how cheap they are so yep it's awesome uh i didn't the thing i didn't realize though is that these that phones have started doing this usb on the go stuff i because i mean like when you think about it there really wasn't many like and i don't know how high bandwidth it was or it is rather but for a while there was no real way to get signals out other than like a bluetooth connection you know what i mean like you couldn't right yep get signals back out so i wonder if that's gonna end up doing the same kind of thing of like opening opening phones back up to doing even more stuff right like a lot of the a lot of the products that are out there right now are bluetooth i think because that did abstract that interface out but that's still necessarily limited by power and you know bandwidth

Dave Jones: the usb on the go really didn't take off that hugely did it

Chris Gammell: yeah i mean

Dave Jones: in terms of you know plug-in accessories and stuff like that

Chris Gammell: what you mean for phones or just in general

Dave Jones: yeah yeah no for phones

Chris Gammell: well that's that thing it hasn't it was only been in recent phones that's that's what i'm saying is that like

Dave Jones: oh i thought it'd been around for a

Chris Gammell: reasonable amount of time well no it has it has been the the protocol has been around for a while but that's what i'm saying is like like if you plug this into an older android phone it won't work because it can't it can't do that uh reversal of the you know because then it has to basically flip the the transmit lines the data and and transmit receive right and it has to actually do that and determine who's master who's slave that kind of stuff and then it also has to supply power uh so that

Dave Jones: was i don't even offhand i don't even know if my nexus 4 has usb on the go

Chris Gammell: well the only reason i know my because i don't have anything that needs to plug in yeah the only reason you know is yeah the only reason i know is because it works

Dave Jones: it works exactly yeah yeah yeah i think mike mike had to buy a different phone didn't he or something i think so yeah

Chris Gammell: something like that yep but yeah it's uh it's i mean i i think that's that could be really cool because well as we've talked about in the past uh i i think that uh you know phones and tablets being as like the uh you know the slotted in kind of actually being able to use them as a replaceable or like a headless display type of you know you know what i mean right yeah that's really necessary it wasn't possible before because you know display data is really really heavy in terms of data wise and now if there's a way to

Dave Jones: do it see it'd be perfect for something like a thermal oven like like this right just have a usb cable coming out of your thermal oven you plug your phone into it boom there's the you know there's the display it can show the profile graph yeah yep everything else

Chris Gammell: you know yeah well and that's the other thing that's interesting too is that um looking at where there's where there's a lot of like available talent right like when when you if you can start to write uh you know firmware to basically get the sensor data out to a web type interface you start to open up you know you think about all the people that are interested in hardware but might be uh you know web software people right basically there's so much talent there if you're you know if you're it's if you're thinking about where these talent pools are you know there's there are firmware people there are you know embedded you know basically like low level c but also even higher level c like c plus plus type stuff those it feels like that kind of stuff is starting to go away a little bit more right seeing this like on the uh like on the ki cat project right so i i finally started subscribing to the the the developer list and stuff like that and it's like that stuff's all it's still graphically based but it's you know it's it's os level it's actually writing applications where there's so much talent and so much availability of talent around like web stuff now that it you know it starts to shift that way and it's like yeah you know right so you start to you start to limit the user base so now if you have like a product that can get all of this data you write good firmware you get all this data into like a web context and then you get people that can write interfaces around it and continually update it that's that's i think projects that are going to do really well so i think so

Dave Jones: don't disagree at all

Chris Gammell: there's a first it is so uh what do you think of this hoverboard it is uh

Dave Jones: well it does

Chris Gammell: it works

Dave Jones: hover right it works um i tweeted a link to a video of uh no less than buzz aldrin writing the thing yep and what the hell is it with the helmet come on right we're talking about a freaking you know fighter test pilot right who's in his 80s you know the first man he lands on the moon and he's got to wear a freaking helmet to stand on a hoverboard

Chris Gammell: that is not there for buzz that's there for the company that's paying buzz

Dave Jones: if i was buzz i would have turned up and i said i'm freaking buzz older and i'm not wearing that stupid helmet piss off

Chris Gammell: maybe

Dave Jones: and they would have went okay buzz i mean maybe but i don't know man it's just yeah anyway yeah apparently it's as loud as a bloody vacuum cleaner yeah well it's using like

Chris Gammell: so it's using like eddy currents right i mean that basically how yeah yeah yeah it's it's uh levitating

Dave Jones: plus there's some air cushioning as well i think happening

Chris Gammell: oh okay

Dave Jones: um so i think that's where the noise comes from and that and that and that helps cool it as well or something like that interesting believe um so yeah yeah yeah so it's a combination of those two so it only works on a metal surface of course so

Chris Gammell: it is very neat it's uh

Dave Jones: yeah yeah not super practical

Chris Gammell: yet but uh yep you know

Dave Jones: no yep

Chris Gammell: it works yeah

Dave Jones: well i'm so surprised somebody hasn't done this a long time ago i mean you know there's nothing rocket science about it

Chris Gammell: yeah

Dave Jones: you know if you if you get enough current through that damn thing it's gonna you know it's gonna lift up

Chris Gammell: yep

Dave Jones: it's gonna levitate yeah

Chris Gammell: well speaking of buzz and rockets uh or space and rockets oh did you watch that thing oh

Dave Jones: oh oh that was

Chris Gammell: that was hard to watch it was painful and yet i was simultaneously like you know just like that much explosion it was you know it's somewhat exciting right i mean it's just big explosion from a yeah yeah right you know just the inner pyro

Dave Jones: then when you realize it sets back the commercial uh space yeah

Chris Gammell: and it was two of them too that's what was crazy i mean it was it was the the antarist rocket and then also the spaceship 2 from virgin yep so uh yeah it was crazy

Dave Jones: yeah and that's oh man um which reminds me um the judging for the uh final round judging

Chris Gammell: mm-hmm you gotta do that

Dave Jones: for the hackaday prize yeah i've gotta do it like by tomorrow don't i or by today or something

Chris Gammell: yeah by tomorrow you're gonna kick my ass i will i will send you a nasty email sir

Dave Jones: oh oh as if i don't get nasty emails yeah right

Chris Gammell: i will i will send you a normal email

Dave Jones: a polite one and i'll have no choice but to go oh jeez he was so polite i must do

Chris Gammell: it those midwesterners and their their down-home family values yeah goodness

Dave Jones: anyway um what chance have they have got getting into space now if i was i'd be start to take the cash prize

Chris Gammell: oh yeah well maybe i don't know

Dave Jones: cash equivalent yeah

Chris Gammell: yeah

Dave Jones: because that's what they were going to go on right they were going to go on virgin galactic right

Chris Gammell: or somebody else there's still time i mean it's basically yeah well it's it's up to the contestants

Dave Jones: is there any time limit on when you have to take it

Chris Gammell: uh it's 2017 in the in the thing

Dave Jones: 2017 oh well they're not gonna it's no it's almost 2015 they're not gonna get back on track by 2017 ah you never know but

Chris Gammell: yeah we'll see

Dave Jones: it's it's it's set them back at least a couple of years right you just mean because of the

Chris Gammell: build of the of the actual the ship or you mean because of the just the safety precautions

Dave Jones: and no the safety they have to re-engineer the whole thing you know sure after the apollo 1 fire how did it how long did it take them to get apollo um 8 up and the first manned crew i'm offhand might have been a year or two but still i mean that was with the entire resources of the whole world and the fear of the cold war and the ruskies beating them blah blah blah yeah and um yeah and it still took a couple of years to re-engineer you know the apollo after the apollo 1 fire

Chris Gammell: uh yeah i don't

Dave Jones: know man get back on track this is a similar sort of thing right they have to go back and went well what failed we're gonna re-engineer find out what failed that might be hard enough and then re-engineer the whole thing so it doesn't happen so yeah space shuttle in the o-ring was it a couple of years space shuttle in the o-ring like to think they're they're gonna do it any quicker than a couple of years is i think

Chris Gammell: foolish maybe uh anyway i think personally i probably would have taken the money i probably shouldn't have said

Dave Jones: that that's basically what i'm saying take take the money if you win the hackaday prize take the money right because otherwise you could be left holding an empty bag right if there is no trip to space within no that

Chris Gammell: would never no that wouldn't happen why not because at the end you just take the money you know right anyway anyways uh the thing i want to mention about the antaris is that uh sean who was on the show when uh it was just me and sean you weren't uh on that show yep but he talked about the flock of the planet the planet labs flocks right so those are uh the or they call them sorry doves doves are like the name of the satellites and flock 1d 26 of them were on that

Dave Jones: rocket oh no

Chris Gammell: yeah so and like that's the thing like you know like i said i i you know my inner pyro was excited and especially because i knew there was no one on board right that's the absolute most important thing but then you think about that too right and it's because it wasn't just it's not just planet labs there's other commercial uh you know yeah there's just a lot of money involved there that's what is crazy about it right there's just tons of money involved in that kind of space stuff and uh

Dave Jones: well they're all insured right i mean the the these dove satellites would have been insured

Chris Gammell: right maybe i don't know i why do you start that conversation

Dave Jones: oh we've got no money left for insurance let's just cross our fingers and hope she goes up

Chris Gammell: they're well funded but it's uh i i don't know we might have to email sean and ask i don't know if you'll be able to answer that but uh how do you do that it's like so uh i got the umbrella

Dave Jones: policy you pay a huge premium most of these satellites they put up they are insured really and it cost them like yeah it'll cost them like 50 million bucks for insurance no you know because it's a because the risk is high oh yeah 50 no these come well i'm not sure the exact number but how i mean i'm sure a lot

Chris Gammell: right a lot of money but not 50 yeah yeah

Dave Jones: no i don't know but it's you know how much though i'm going to google how much does it cost to ensure a satellite launch

Chris Gammell: yeah how much does it cost when you strap your uh your livelihood to the top of uh explosive yeah exactly yeah so that is that really sucks though because i mean like so like even like sean was telling us on the show right so you know there's a

Dave Jones: wiki there's a wiki page satellite insurance here it is okay which is about 20 insurers worldwide participate sorry this will be our last thing for the show

Chris Gammell: our last reading of wikipedia for the day after this folks you have to go and read your own damn wikipedia articles

Dave Jones: come on i want a figure i want a figure i want a typical figure come on you bastards oh i don't see a figure well what i

Chris Gammell: was saying is that uh anyway the the the redeeming thing is that sean talked about uh you know they do quick turn you know he said that they have to sit on the launch pad for a while but they they do pretty quick turns on their satellites so even if they could probably go and manufacture the same round of of uh hardware they probably even won't they probably just move on to the next one because they kind of have that yeah that process going got it so yeah that does that really sucks uh so i'm sorry to hear that but like i said glad that no one is uh no one got hurt i'm very sad to hear wiki yeah

Dave Jones: about the damn you wikipedia i'm now surfing and reading a paper estimating satellite insurance liabilities

Chris Gammell: there's like people that do that yeah there's

Dave Jones: people that do that this is the master class society of actuaries yeah yeah right the ones who do this right they're they're a bunch of funsters right they get together and they write papers on on how to you know calculate satellite insurance right and space debris and salvage potential oh i hear it it's all here oh

Chris Gammell: yes yeah it's crazy and

Dave Jones: it's only it's only oh it's only 38 pages long that's not too bad and there's graphs and stuff oh i like graphs big fan of graphs hmm anyway there goes my day yep jeez dude i'd be much more productive without wikipedia that's right

Chris Gammell: it's a sickness what is this uh you'd posted a thing a while back like an e-book about uh certifications or something like that for

Dave Jones: makers oh right yes yes we've got i think we've got some to give away yes there's a e-book about um uh how you know hackers hardware engineers can uh get their products uh

Chris Gammell: certified okay so this is

Dave Jones: like you know electromagnetic conformity all all that

Chris Gammell: sort of stuff oh okay so it's fcc ce stuff like that yep yep all that sort of

Dave Jones: stuff is it in the list is it in the reddit list here it's in there yeah if it's yeah we'll have to anyway um i think we've got five free e-books to give away oh he's given us a code to uh give away five free e-books anyway you can go and buy the e-book if you don't um how can we give those away how

Chris Gammell: about the uh first person first five people to tweet this episode link with the hashtag e-book yeah okay

Dave Jones: fine yeah yep yep we'll send you a uh promo code to yeah get a free e-book yep very cool i've got the email somewhere i'm sure he sent us a yep code anyway yep we'll

Chris Gammell: do that neat neat neat yeah that's good too because that man uh so when eric was on the show uh and you've got to

Dave Jones: tweet the amp hour do you have to tweet the amp hour oh that

Chris Gammell: would help so i could find it yeah yeah so include the amp hour link to the show and the hashtag e-book right yep you have to touch your nose pat pat your head stand on one leg shout how much you love like a dog while wearing the amp hour t-shirt which should be here monday uh uh dear yeah but yeah this is an easy stuff

Dave Jones: round of t-shirts did we get

Chris Gammell: another round uh yes you were going to list it again i i did list it it did get out uh i don't think

Dave Jones: is is is this the sand colored one

Chris Gammell: no this is black so we will do sand again in the future uh

Dave Jones: yep because they they do auto relist um well no you can what you can do is that you can go to the link even if you've missed the campaign you can sign you can put your name down yep sign up and if 15 people sign up then they automatically print the shirts again so we don't have to actually run the campaign again yeah right thing that happens it'll open it

Chris Gammell: so it's kind of groovy so yep yeah i got a sweatshirt i'm pumped about that very cool yeah yeah it's freezing here right it's summertime well no it's

Dave Jones: not summertime here but it's you know

Chris Gammell: yep getting close see that's when i need to come visit is when like like the depths of right the depths of

Dave Jones: winter and it's beautiful over here february but even even the depths of winter here is beautiful so yeah

Chris Gammell: rub it in rub it in buddy yep all right we're way over time we are uh yeah so if anyone's in germany please be sure to look me up and go to the hackaday party that'll be fun and sweet have fun enjoy dave playing waltzy matilda for you for the next two weeks cool all right talk to you

Dave Jones: then catch you next time well it's

Chris Gammell: happened again you've wasted another hour listening to the amp hour our public opinion pollster is paul murky of murky research assisted by statistician marge and avera our customer care representative is haywood jibuzzoff our personal makeup artist is bud tugley dave's personal anger management coach is kirsten hollard our personal hygiene advisor from the tokyo office is o takashawa complaint line operator is leave on hold our podcast reviewer is kent stand and noise director of three stooges studies is lee iapoca the portion of the show today on the south pole birds was done by staff onithologist marshida penguins normal amp hour theme music done by paul i don't play banjo stevenson and though we're working on hiring away the chief counsel of dewey cheatham and how the incomparable hugh lewis dewey he'll actually be defending tom in the afterlife for causing so many near crashes due to making us all laugh so hard while listening along in the car

Dave Jones: happens in the car

Speaker ?: happens in the car