#242 – Can't We All Just Get Arduino? - Tardiloquent Trademark Tirade

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded March 24th, 2015. Episode 242. Tardiloquent. Trademark. Tirade.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the AEV blog. And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. On the road again.

Chris Gammell: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Oh, you're supposed to keep going.

Dave Jones: You're in Pasadena. Pasadena. I've never been to Pasadena. Sounds nice.

Chris Gammell: Ah, City of Roses or something. Or the Rose Parade.

Dave Jones: Right, okay.

Chris Gammell: First time I came here I had no idea. And then someone was like, hey, this is the street that the Rose Parade goes down. I'm like, ah, that's why I've heard of it. There you go.

Dave Jones: And you were telling me that you're like three weeks at home, one week away. That's pretty much your life.

Chris Gammell: It's flexible, but it's been travel heavy. As you know, I keep tuning in from different locations. So, yeah, I get around these days, you know.

Dave Jones: The wonder of the internet is that I wouldn't know if you didn't tell me.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, if I didn't talk about what hotel I'm in or whatever. Right. Yeah. Right. Well, and that's the promise of the portal lab at some point, too. You know, if I needed to bring my lab with me, I can record wherever, and it's just a different backdrop. So that's a... And I have been thinking about the portal lab again, actually. I've...

Dave Jones: Yeah. As I said, like, the other month, I was thinking about it. I definitely still want to do it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So... The only thing that stunk about it the whole... The first time through was just, like, you know, having two suitcases. That's really the big problem. So if I could figure out a way...

Chris Gammell: It's annoying. If I just wore, like, one thing the whole time, that would be a lot better, but...

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well.

Dave Jones: Maybe you can, like... I mean now even thinking, like, it can be a smaller carry box or something that could go inside larger luggage. Like, it doesn't have to be a flight case in itself, if you know what I mean.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and, you know, so one of the things I was thinking about... So I don't know if I told you... Did I tell you about, like, how you got, like, Raspberry Pi 2, and I've been playing with that a little bit as well?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: So, okay. So one of the things I've been thinking about... So for contextual electronics, right? You know, I train people in electronics. I've always thought, like... You know, like, it'd be cool to do an on-site type course, but one of the big problems with that is everybody shows up, and the first two hours is always, well, do you have this driver installed? Do you have KaiCat installed, blah, blah, blah. So the idea with that would be... And I've talked to some friends about this. We've been working on this together a little bit. Basically, having just, like, a generic plug-in screen, and then just everybody works off of Raspberry Pi 2. And if you remember when Matt was on the show, Matt Richardson from Raspberry Pi, he talked to that, like... And I've tried it. KaiCat works A-OK on Raspberry Pi. And if, you know, even if you wanted to do other things, you know, Raspberry Pi 2s or other platforms are, you know, starting to run Windows 10 and other Windows projects as well.

Dave Jones: And you can even rock up somewhere and hand out SD cards and plug them in and go.

Chris Gammell: Oh, actually, no. I was actually thinking about bringing the entire setup. So what I did is I bought a Raspberry Pi 2, and I had a Raspberry Pi before that. But then, basically, I just bought... There's a $75 thing on Amazon where it's a 10-inch, 1280 by 800.

Dave Jones: Oh, you told me about the screen. Yes, yes, of course. The screen, yeah, yeah. The screen, which makes it happen. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. So that was going to be... So I've been working on designing a 3D-printed case for that. So then the idea with that, though, was basically taking that screen idea and then maybe not having it 3D-printed around it, but actually building that then into the suitcase. And that would definitely lower the profile because so much of the flag case right now, the Pelican case, is, you know, just foam in order to protect all the weight of the ragol.

Speaker ?: Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Of course. And the soldering iron, you're still going to have a soldering iron there, but you can get some smaller stuff. And so just trying to find compact equipment, you know, bringing a salier-type logic analyzer. I'm still looking for a decent scope and, you know, like a USB scope and stuff like that. So I've always thought, you know, so we've talked about this on the program as well, but, you know, we've talked about USB-connected scopes don't work, right? And why don't they work? Right. Because they... They don't have a user interface. Right, exactly. And so what I was... And so, like, the UI always stinks on them. What I was thinking, though, is why don't we just make a connected... Just make knobs that are dedicated for it, right? So you have a USB scope, you have a screen, but then just make...

Dave Jones: Then you buy a proper scope.

Chris Gammell: No, but that's the thing. Like, for this kind of thing, you wouldn't want that. I don't want a proper scope. I want a...

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, but you get in a very... Portable... Yeah, okay. But you get in a very niche...

Chris Gammell: Oh, of course. You're right. Right. But no, but that's always been the argument against it, right, is that there's no knobs and stuff like that. But if you had, like, a peripheral set that was basically just a control surface that was knobs or, you know, sliders or rotators, whatever you needed, basically, you could replicate a lot of the tactile nature that we like about oscilloscopes. And I started just kind of thinking about that and thinking through it. So the project is ongoing, but it is in the back of my mind. It's another one rattling around in the paint can upstairs. So... Got it. Yeah. But I think the portal app will come back.

Dave Jones: No reason why you couldn't make your own scope out of a Raspberry Pi, a USB, you know, scope front end and a knobby interface with that screen you're talking about. I mean, but...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: You know, but by the time you build a case out of it, well, that becomes a regular scope. But at least then you can run it as a platform to run other instruments as well. So...

Chris Gammell: Well, and that's what it comes down to. Like, and even like the Raspberry Pi as the back end, it doesn't really matter what it is. Like, there's a lot of other... So one of the things that people were posting after we had Matt on the show, and we've talked about Raspberry Pi in the past, I mean, like, there are a lot of other platforms out there. I mean, like, that are similar. There's, you know, stuff like that. And in the end, it's about the community and stuff like that. But it doesn't really matter for me on the guts so much as the functionality. And I think the key thing there is just having a flexible... You know, right now, the reason scope manufacturers are the way they are is because it's a case. They're selling one big thing, and it's all integrated. And they want it to be robust. And like, and for that, I thank them. You know, that's great. Not like I'm, you know, tossing a scope around. But I also don't want to have to search around my bench for the knobs that, you know, plug into the screen, that plug into the front end, that, you know, eventually probes my board. I don't want that. So, but I think for a travel situation, you do want that. You want to be able to be flexible. And, you know, that is a niche application, like you said, but I think it's an interesting one. So.

Dave Jones: Totally agree. Yep.

Chris Gammell: All right. So I think what people need to do... Here's what people need to do for me. But I was saying, I think of this. Thinking about this a little bit more generally as well, right? Like, there's no kind of standard, like an interface standard for that kind of thing. So if someone started defining like an interface standard for just a control surface, I mean, like, like kind of like a MIDI, like, you know, MIDI for, for instruments, but kind of like MIDI for test equipment. And then if you had, it doesn't have to be like a defined standard, just an ad hoc thing. Oh, no, I know. Calm down. I'm grinding.

Dave Jones: But just like an ad hoc thing, right?

Chris Gammell: So if it's always USB and it's always just, you know, pushing out the same signal when you turn a knob thing, I don't care how it is, right? But it's, I'm just saying that that would be interesting because when you start to think about all these piecemeal instruments that you start piecing together, right? Is, you know, you have a motion meter that maybe could talk to this thing and then you have another thing that's, you know, it, it starts to become an interesting and maybe headache inducing thing for Dave.

Dave Jones: Can I predict that this just is not going to happen? Of course you can. Of course you can. It's just going to epically fail. Okay. Of course. It's fine. It's my official prediction.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: But yeah, like I do understand, I understand your sentiment behind it. I really do. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think especially as we keep moving into an age of like everything connects to a smartphone, you know, like sometimes wires are nice and maybe, maybe this even would be like Bluetooth connected, but I don't, I don't know. It's just an interesting thought exercise. Hey, it, it got us through the first eight minutes of the amp hour. So, you know.

Dave Jones: It did. Totally nailed that first.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Gotcha suckers. We totally burned that eight minutes. You're never getting that eight minutes back. Brought to you by Chris's brain. Sorry. I'm sorry.

Dave Jones: So what other drivel can we come up with?

Dave Jones: We, we, we really don't talk about this shit before the show, folks. Really. That just came out of nowhere. It's just like we were, it's not like we got together before the show. Let's talk about the, the portable lab again. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. No.

Dave Jones: Where did that? It just, you know. Off the cuff, as they say. Yep. Yep. The only thing we did talk about that we were going to talk about on today's show, we probably should leave it for later because I reckon the second half of the show could be devoted to it and probably will be.

Chris Gammell: Or the third half. As click and clack would say. Rest in peace.

Dave Jones: Who's click and clack?

Chris Gammell: That was the, the car talk guys. Click and clack, the Tapper Brothers.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yeah. Oh, right. Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: I never heard them called that. I don't think. Tom and Ray. Right. Yeah. They always talked about the third half of the show. I loved it.

Dave Jones: Got it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So what, what other stuff apart from the big thing that's happened at the moment? Um, what other stuff can we talk about?

Chris Gammell: Well, uh, I've been cranking out some boards lately. How about you? I feel like I need to start challenging you to actually crank out some boards. No? I did find out today that all of my contextual...

Dave Jones: That's the job of, that's the job of my new, um, hire. You know?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. How's that going?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, you know, it's, uh, yeah, it's going good. He, um, uh, unfortunately can't work as many, um, hours. Um, but, um, yeah, no, it's going really well. You'll start seeing some of that in upcoming, uh, in upcoming videos. So yeah, he's really, um, uh, really good with, uh, 3D stuff, you know? So, and mechanical stuff and things like that. So you will certainly, we've already finished something. I mean, like his first day on the job was to produce a 3D case for something, which you'll see in an upcoming video. Um, yeah, we've already produced it. We just haven't, uh, sat down and he'll, um, yeah, we'll do some, cause we want to do some screen capture of how he designed all the 3D case and everything else.

Chris Gammell: So I might have to borrow him for that. I could use some help with that stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, I can, uh, I can hire him out to you at a, uh, at, at a fixed hourly rate where I take a commission. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: In turn, I have hired you out at a hundred dollars an hour. You get 10. That's right. That's a, that's a pretty standard model. That's a, that's the consulting model.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I know.

Dave Jones: That's, that's totally. Yeah. It's how every, you know, if you go to get your car repaired at the local service center, they'll charge you, you know, 80 bucks an hour labor or whatever. Is that guy who fixed your car getting 80 bucks an hour labor? No, no, it's not. You know, or you, or you hire a guy.

Chris Gammell: Go ahead.

Dave Jones: If you hire one of those, um, you know, contract design firms and they've got, you know, 10 employees there and they give it to one of their employees, they'll be charging you at an hourly rate. You know, is that employee getting charged that? No. You know, but he's the only one working on it. He or she. So yeah. Yeah. Standard practice. Unfortunately.

Chris Gammell: Overhead. Overhead folks. It's a thing. Yep. Margie. In this case, Dave's pockets. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. As I sit on my throne of cash.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Right. Right. So, uh, did you decide on, is the throne of cash buying a second, uh, Altium license or are you guys going to switch over?

Dave Jones: Uh, well, no, he's got his own Altium license. So there's no reason why we can't do that. No, we're not switching over anytime soon. Damn. And we, you know, and, um, only one of us is ever using it at any one time, you know? So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's true. Right. Right. Because what Dave's trying to say is he never does layout anymore.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. No, I don't have time to do that sort of crap anymore. No. Electronics.

Chris Gammell: Right. What is this?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: What are we talking about here?

Dave Jones: But no, I've actually been, um, uh, pleasantly surprised how easy it was having somebody here. Um, I thought, you know, the, the, the, the, the fear of course, as I may have mentioned before, was that like things would change once somebody's here while I'm shooting video, you know, or it'll, you know, people like, it'll like, I'll speak differently. I'll be more, you know, conscious about what I'm saying. And, you know, like, and somehow that like, I, I won't notice it, but the audience will, you know, the audience will go, Dave, you've changed somehow. Yeah. Nobody said that. And, you know, and Dave's been here for a couple of videos.

Chris Gammell: Who's around.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: And by the way, his name is Dave. So.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's good. So another Dave that uses Altium that is an Aussie. Uh. Yep. So what we're trying to say here is Dave has perfected cloning, folks. I'm just kidding. This guy can, this guy can do 3D design. Dave can. Yeah. He can do 3D design. Yeah. He can. Oh, that's really nice though. Uh, that's, that's cool. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's, it's a handy skill to have. I mean, that's why I put it on the, uh, job requirements. It wasn't a, you know, it wasn't a requirement of getting hired, of course, but you know, if somebody had those skills, it was nice. And then, you know, he came in for the first day and we're sitting here going, right, what can we do? I don't know. We're shrugging our shoulders and go, I know I've got this project that's been sitting around for ages and I had a crack at it. And I think, you know, it'd be quite easy. And then, oh, I had issues with all the 3D software I was using and I suck at it. And he goes, I can do that in two hours. You know? And it's like, beauty. Kids these days, huh? Like, okay, we're done. That's our first project. Yeah. Bloody kids in there. Solidworks, you know? And, uh. Oh, is that what it is? I was going to ask about that. Yeah, of course. He's a student, you know? So he's got like student licenses of Solidworks and, you know.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that is, that is nice. Yeah. You're seeing that a lot more. Actually, there was another one, you know? There's another program that just came out and I was, I forget what it's called now. And I know it's, it's, it's a 3D modeling kind of thing as well. Let me see if I can look it up as I actually talk. But the reason I, I heard about it. So it took three years to develop and it caught, they raised like $64 million or something crazy like that. What? And, and it's all browser based though. This is, this is a new CAD software. Uh, mechanical CAD.

Dave Jones: Oh, I think I heard about that. I, I kind of meant to try it. Yeah. What, what was it?

Chris Gammell: Oh, I know it's on, uh.

Dave Jones: This is great for a real radio.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. I think a, shape Smith. Something like that. Is it shape Smith? That turned, it turned up number two on.

Chris Gammell: It's not shape Smith. Someone, someone there is, is listening to the audience. They're going, it's blah, blah, blah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. I know. I just read it the other day. Like I'll sort, here we go. Oh, Google sought by time in the last month. And on shape.

Chris Gammell: That's it. Yep. It's on shape. That's right.

Dave Jones: On shape. There you go. There you go. The wonders of Google, uh, time search.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right, right, right. Yeah. So, and that's, and that's one where it's the same kind of thing where it's, okay, so it's interesting because it's, it's browser based and it's free upfront. Uh, and then, you know, they got all these sharing things.

Dave Jones: Cause I think. How are they, what's their model to make money though? I mean, they've got to make money. Otherwise it's pointless.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's the upsell. I mean, you can start for free and then eventually it's monthly. And then, you know, as you get more and more.

Dave Jones: How much can you do for free though? So that's the million dollar question, you know?

Chris Gammell: Uh, I think you can actually do quite a bit. So let's see. So they have a hundred, uh, so students and makers view and markup light duty pro stuff. So whatever that means. Oh, and you're limited on, on, on, uh, so it's the same kind of thing, you know, this is kind of like the ultimate thing as well, right? What they're doing where it's like, you know, uh, public is free private, private's not kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. That's it. Right. The same model. Well, you know, you can always make it public and then not tell anyone about it. And it's like, well, no one's going to go find it really. Are they?

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, that's the, that's the thing though. Like all of these things, it's like, yes, no one's going to find it, but you're also implicitly signing a document saying that this is their marketing material now. So you really, there's nowhere to hide. And I mean, rightfully so. Right. I mean, like if, like if you want to, if you want software and you want your stuff, if you want something free, yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's totally legit. So, um, I'm not against that. The thing that's interesting to me about this and, uh, is that it is all browser based, right? So, I mean, there's, there's, there's cat tools like this for electronics too, right? Like Upverter is all browser based similarly. And, um, and they're, they're, they're all very interesting tools to me. I mean, especially like the, the tech of how they do it and everything like that. It's, it's, it's very interesting.

Dave Jones: Um, but the, the other thing I really care about, of course, before buying into this thing, i.e. buying it because you, you do have to buy into in quote marks, a free tool, right? Cause you've got to invest your time to learn it, right? You know, it's a big, you know, it's not free. A free tool is not free to you. You know, you're telling me Dave. Yes. Oh goodness. So yeah. And like, I, I, I'm not going to buy into this free tool if the, you know, if the next step up is like $2,000, right? It's like, if, if, if the next step up is 200 bucks, okay, I'm there. Right. But you know, it's the same thing with what Altium are doing with Circuit Studio at the moment. Right. It's all whatever the bloody latest thing is. It's like $3,000 or something. Right.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So Circuit Maker is the free maker one, the online thing that we've been talking about. And then there are other ones, which they're now selling through Element 14.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Um, which is going to be Element 14's high end CAD tool. Cause Eagle is now going to be like their low end pissant CAD tool. Right. So Element 14 wanted a higher end tool. So they convinced Altium to, uh, yeah, make this Circuit Studio for them. And it's like 3000 bucks or something. It's like, ah, screw that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, you know.

Chris Gammell: Hey man, it's. But I mean, at the same time, like a lot of these new ones as well, like, you know, it's like they're, they look more realistic, right? This one is a hundred bucks a month, but like, that's still 1200 bucks a year. You know, that's, that's legit. You know, that's a lot of.

Dave Jones: That's a fair bit of coin.

Chris Gammell: That's a lot of dough. Right. That's, that's ongoing. It's not like you're paying maintenance fees. No. It's like, yeah, you got that.

Dave Jones: Especially when you've got so many of these things, you know, everything might be, oh yeah, it's only 50 bucks a month or something. But then when you sign up to 20 things like that, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You got to start looking at your credit card signature.

Dave Jones: I'm seeing that all the time. Yeah. Exactly. It's like, why is my credit card statement so more? Because I'm signed up to 20 different $50 a month plans. It's just madness.

Chris Gammell: Get me off this planet. Dave subscribes to, uh, it's, it's oscilloscope porn magazines. That's what it is. He just tests, test equipment, sexy quarterly. Just Dave looking at the magazine. Oh man. Look at those probes.

Dave Jones: It's got to be a market for that. Yeah. It's got to be a market for a technical porn magazine.

Chris Gammell: Well, wait, hold on. It has to be. Are we talking about how you say that, uh, you know, certain test equipment is pornographic or you're saying something else because.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. Like, like we just open it like in these gorgeous centerfold photos of that, you know, the inside of these oscilloscopes or something, you know, like.

Chris Gammell: Oh, there you go. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like I reckon, I reckon people would sign up for that.

Chris Gammell: Maybe. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Nice. High glossy print. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Anyways. I think what we were trying to say is that mechanical CAD is difficult. Uh, right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And what I'm learning, well, I've always known this, but you know, it just reinforces it, right? The importance of making these tools available to students, right? Because I, you know, I see him, right? He's still a student at university, right? And he, like, he's a whiz at this, you know, SolidWorks stuff, right? And he's, you know, pretty darn good at, you know, at Altium. Why? Because they put, you know, they've got the student license, you know, and they learn this stuff and then they come out. What are they going to use when they come out? You know, he's trying to convince me to, oh, I'll teach you how to use SolidWorks, you know? And, and I'm going, yeah, okay, that's great. But then I've got to buy it, right?

Chris Gammell: It's like how many thousands of dollars is it? Yeah, exactly. Right?

Dave Jones: But, you know, he's, he's becoming, and exactly, he's doing free marketing. He's becoming the evangelist for SolidWorks, you know, because he thinks it's the duck's guts. And, well, okay, it is, you know, but once you've, you know, if you can afford it and you've invested the time, then yeah, it's, it's great. It's one of the best tools out there.

Chris Gammell: I, I do, I do notice that for a lot of this, you know, a lot of this, like, you know, like, like MathWorks as well. Like, you know, like people are like, oh yeah, you know, I have all these toolboxes and MathWorks. I'm like, dude, you're a student. Like, just, that's not, like, that would be like 20 grand for me. You know? I know, exactly. I can't, I can't do what you're doing. I'm using Octave right now.

Dave Jones: But he comes out so enthusiastic about this stuff. Just use this. Just use this. Because look how easy it is. And, you know, it's like, oh man. Yep. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Well, keep it up, folks.

Dave Jones: Hey, it works. It works.

Chris Gammell: Be in the educational markets. Yep. It's a high investment.

Dave Jones: No, so companies who aren't doing this are just, you know, crazy. They just, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think the thing is, it takes a lot, it takes a lot of resources too, you know? It's just, there's a lot of.

Dave Jones: Why? Why does it take any resources? Well, because. You just give them the tool. No, but. Or you give it to them for 20 bucks or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, there is that. But then you also have to cut deals. No, you do. You have to cut deals with, like, the universe. Maybe not as much as it used to be, but I remember. Well. In my school, it used to be, like, you'd have the download from the IT department, you know? Like, and maybe you can just do a code or something and you just prove that someone's a student. But it used to be. You had to actually cut deals with the actual universities and that would be a big thing. And then you think about the. Right. What you really want is you want to hook them with.

Dave Jones: All that stuff solvable.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But I'm just saying for if it's a small company, that's different than a big company. You know, small companies, that's more of a resource problem, I think. Like, so it's a little bit harder to solve. But then the big thing is the curriculum as well. Like, if you are student stuff. Yes. If you do that. You want to pair up that. Like my rant was last week. You actually want to pair up theory with practical. Yep. My friend was laughing at me about that I actually got so worked up over that and that you calm me down. Right. Okay. That's what he was. He was very, very bemused that you were the one to calm me down. Right.

Dave Jones: I'm not as crazy as people think.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. He's not. He's not, folks.

Dave Jones: Not as hyper.

Chris Gammell: He mellows. He mellows over time. Like a fine Australian scotch.

Dave Jones: Right. Do we do scotch here, do we?

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Bundan. I don't know. Do you?

Chris Gammell: Maybe you do. I don't know. I don't know. It's not called scotch. It might be Australian whiskey. Scotch only comes from Scotland.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: That makes sense. Yeah. Like I know. You know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So there was another thing I put on the list. Actually, TI just came up with a new educational program. Kind of targeted not towards, I don't think, towards students. And they had talked to me about this a little bit. But it was basically, you know, it's like there's some interesting analog content in there. And then I saw it and then I'm like, oh. But it uses that virtual bench from NI. Virtual bench, yeah. That multi-tool. Which I want to love except it's two grand and it's, you know. So it seems like. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay. Right. So they're.

Chris Gammell: Free course.

Dave Jones: Free hands-on training and lab videos needs a $2,000 software. Is that what you're saying? Well, no.

Chris Gammell: They said that it only, you only really need the board. Like you could use other test equipment. They have like a board that goes along. A $200 test board that goes along with it. Which is reasonable. Yeah. Okay. With jumpers and stuff like that. So, yeah. I mean, if you're looking to learn like in-depth analog, it's not. I mean, it's good. Like I poke through a little bit and it's good technical content. I think a lot of it, you know, there's a bunch of other videos on from other vendors on YouTube as well. That's also good. But, you know, it's nice to have all that stuff in one place because sometimes you just don't, especially with the analog stuff, you just don't know until you kind of get smacked in the face by a spec. And then you're like, oh, that's why that matters. That's going to sting. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Just like me feeding 10 volts into an op amp the other day and blowing the ass out. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. You posted that video. So, I watched some of it, but was there any resolution other than that?

Dave Jones: It was 10 minutes of waffle, yeah. No, I just fixed it. I just replaced the op amp and it worked again. It was just a nothing video. It was just one of those, oh, I might as well hit record. I've got to do this. Yeah. Right. Might as well make a fool out of myself. And, yep. Why not?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. The old school guys, they used to actually like, you know, they could just fix the output stage or something, right? When it's just, like in your case, it probably was a blown output stage, but it's like, well, don't really get to do that anymore.

Dave Jones: In this case, it was a blown input stage. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: Oh, was it input stage? Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Those bloody ESD protection diodes, you know.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Right, right. Just went up to the rail and overloaded it.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. And it went more than 0.6 volts above the rail. And, yep. It started to conduct and my voltage reference can supply like five watts or something, you know. So, yeah. Oh, Jesus. Sort of, you know, five watts into a, you know, into a tiny little SO8 packages. Yeah. Yeah. Or the tiny little diode inside the SO8 packages. Yeah. Smoking. Smoking. Smoking.

Chris Gammell: Oh, man. That's fine. Oh, dearie. See, you are doing electronics sometimes, sort of. No.

Dave Jones: When it's... Sometimes, sort of. It's to do with production, though.

Chris Gammell: I've been on a tear. I'm a PCB per month now. That's my new schedule.

Dave Jones: Wow. Yeah. Wow. Nice. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Wish I could. Build and design. Wish I could. Build and design. Yep. Yep. KiCat. KiCat. I did a thing on KiCat and GitHub, if you ever want to get into that.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: You know, once you get into KiCat and then getting into GitHub, but I'm big on the GitHub thing now. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No. Yes, I know. We all know. Yeah. Keep rubbing it in. It's changed your life and, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right. It does my laundry. It washes my dogs. It, you know.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. Yep. And every day you pray to, you know, the great GitHub god.

Chris Gammell: To the Linus Torvalds statue. Thank you for Git. Great provider. Thank you for Git, you Git.

Dave Jones: Nice. All right. We've pissed away half the show. Let's get serious. Let's talk about something topical.

Chris Gammell: You're like, oh, Dave sees the 30-minute mark. We just crossed it. Now we're cool. Now we're cool. So go ahead, Dave. What would you like to talk about this week?

Dave Jones: Well, we have to. I know this is like, this combines two or three of the biggest wank word bingo items, you know, on our show. But this is important. This is pretty huge, right? This is important stuff. I don't know if it's huge. I think it's interesting. I don't know if it's huge. Well, it's, yeah, it's very interesting because it's who it is, right? And they're the token. They're the poster child for open source hardware. Who am I talking about? Arduino. Of course I'm talking about Arduino, right? Of course. They're, you know, this is right. This is the, you know, it is, as I said, the poster child for open source hardware. And here it is. They're going to lawyer town.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Right.

Dave Jones: Against their co-founder. One of their co-founders over the trademark for Arduino. And apparently they don't own it. By then let's. It's a big, long story. And we'll provide all the links to the stories and the court case and everything down below. So you can check it out yourself. But, so forgive us if we get something wrong here, you know. So we're flapping our arms around. Well, I am anyway. And. I'm not as enthused about this. Okay. Right. Okay. So you're going to have to put up with me for the next half hour. No, it's okay.

Chris Gammell: I think it's important, especially in the context. I think, I think up front we should state that, you know, like even from what open source hardware as a term, you know, it's changed over the years since we started talking about it and before we even started the show that it's been talked about and stuff like that. And so it is, it's interesting seeing this stuff. It has become more popular. It's changed in terms of definition. There's a, there's open source hardware association that's, you know, sprung up around it as well. And like all of these things. Yeah. And now it's kind of hitting the thing, you know, it's hitting a.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I think there's lots of important things to be learned from this too. Yeah. So, you know, or there ultimately will be once. Well, it could take years for the dust to settle on this one. So anyway, it could have. Yeah. What happened is the Arduino team who everyone knows is the Arduino team, right? It was five founding members. I won't go through all their names because I can't pronounce a lot of them. Anyway. One of them who I will have to try and pronounce his name, Gianluca Martino. Sorry. That was actually pretty decent.

Chris Gammell: I think that was right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Right. Anyway, he's one of the five co-founders of Arduino, right? Back in 2008 or whatever. Right. They founded the company, these five guys. And yes, they formed a company and everything else, blah, blah, blah. Started doing trademarks, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, which we'll get into. Anyway, so this guy, Gianluca Martino, he is basically, there's now a lawsuit, okay? Between four of the, i.e. Arduino, what everyone knows is Arduino, the American, they're actually an American company. Yeah, LLC, which is Limited Liability Corporation. They're an LLC. They're incorporated in the U.S., but I think they're an Italian corporation. But anyway, the lawsuit's in America, right? So that has big consequences too. Anyway, so what everyone knows is the Arduino LLC company who own the arduino.cc website, right? They're the ones who do all the development, everything else, okay? They are now suing their former co-founder, Gianluca Martino, who has another company, Arduino. Where is it?

Chris Gammell: SRP, something like that?

Dave Jones: SRL or something? Arduino.

Chris Gammell: It's the Italian LLC corporation, some kind of structure.

Dave Jones: It's the Italian corporation, right? So this is the guy, okay, this founder, he's the guy who makes all the Arduino boards, right? Who, you know, when you buy your Arduino board, it's made in Italy. It's made by this guy's company, right? They used to be called Smart Projects or something like that. I think they're now officially changed their name. Anyway, so one of the five co-founders, the reason he's a co-founder, I guess, is that he had a manufacturing company, right? So my voice is starting to go. Anyway, he is the guy who manufactures all the Artoinos. And now, if you believe, you have to go read the story, if you believe Passamo Banzi's side of the story, because at the moment he is the only, I'll be up front, he's the only one who has told his side of the story, right? This Martino guy has not told his side of the story. So we're getting one side of it.

Chris Gammell: Correct.

Dave Jones: But I'm taking way too long to get to the point here, aren't I?

Chris Gammell: Yes, well, I'm shocked about that.

Dave Jones: Oh, I know, I know. Because it is a story. If you go read it, it's long and convoluted. Anyway, this Martino guy, he owns Arduino.org, right? And he is the one who manufactures all the, officially manufactures all the Arduino boards. He is now saying he is refusing to pay royalties to Arduino LLC, i.e. the other four founders. And apparently, he is the guy who owns the trademark. Arduino. The word Arduino. In Italy. He owns the trademark. In Italy. And this is... Sorry?

Chris Gammell: What was that? There's a different trademark law in every country. And so Arduino.cc, or LLC rather, they own it in the U.S. and Germany and one or two other countries.

Dave Jones: Apparently they don't. Apparently they don't. Is it?

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Somebody on the forum said no, that's not correct. Anyway, if you believe people on forums. Anyway, I don't know. Anyway, when they formed the company, Arduino, the five of them, they all signed a contract that said the company will own the rights to the trademark. Okay? So everything was fine and dandy, apparently. But this Martino guy apparently went off in his own accord and without telling the other founders, he went and trademarked Arduino in Italy. So apparently he legally owns the trademark for... Or him and his company, or his company, legally owns the trademark for the word Arduino in Italy. So now he's claiming that, yeah, he doesn't have to pay royalties for squat. And anyway, there's a huge split in the... Between the founded members and with this... Basically, it's a battle between Arduino.cc and Arduino.org. That's basically what it comes down to. So, and yeah, they're suing.

Chris Gammell: People are angry and there's money involved.

Dave Jones: There's money involved. Anyway, go read the story. We have only heard Hasamo Banzi's side of the story. There's a big article in Make. You can read it in his own words. And apparently, the way he tells it, this guy went behind all the founders' backs and registered the trademark on his own. But see, the thing is, they haven't just found out about this, right? They've known about this for years. In fact, they found out like a year after they formed the company, they found out this guy went and trademarked the word Arduino on his own without telling the other founders. And they found out. And apparently, they've been trying to sort it out for like four or five years. And this whole thing's been brewing. And it gets worse than that. Arduino... But when I... Okay. I mean Arduino CC. What everyone knows is the Arduino group, right? They have not been receiving royalties for the last 12 months. This guy, smart, who owns smart projects, he stopped paying royalties 12 months ago. And apparently, you know, they've kept it quiet and they tried to sort things out. And it's like, this thing's been going on for years. And all of a sudden, they've gone public.

Chris Gammell: I think we should get to the wonky, the wonk pundit side of things and what this actually means. Because I think that's all the things that... That's all that we really know.

Dave Jones: What it means, right?

Chris Gammell: All we really have here, Dave, is our opinion. So why don't we get to that part?

Dave Jones: Oh, well, okay. Well, the fact is, as Hasimo says in the article, if you have bought an Arduino in the last 12 months thinking that the money by buying an official Arduino goes towards them, i.e. the developers of the Arduino environment, i.e. Arduino.cc, then you are wrong. All the money went into this other guy's pocket and they haven't seen a cent of it. Right. So that's... Okay, so that's not what I was thinking of.

Chris Gammell: I was actually thinking of, here's what I get from this. One.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Okay, go. International law is messed up because there's... Oh, I'm tired. This is going to be fought in multiple courtrooms over stupidness. And my personal opinion is that more money is going to go to... No, no, no.

Dave Jones: No, it's only being 41. Apparently, as far as I know, there's only one lawsuit. Right now. And it's in America.

Chris Gammell: Right. Believe me, Dave.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but let's not speculate.

Chris Gammell: Let's just... Come on, man. I know. But I'm just saying that international law gets really messy really quickly because there's just different jurisdictions and all that other stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Two.

Chris Gammell: Here's the other thing I think. Okay. This is a downside because this now is a precedent for other people to be more...

Dave Jones: A downside for who?

Chris Gammell: For future projects because now people are going to say, well...

Dave Jones: A downside for the open source hardware movement.

Chris Gammell: Correct. Because it's like, well, now... Right. Well, we should be careful. We should protect ourselves. Sometimes playing fast and loose with this kind of stuff is great. Because it's like, who gives a shit? We don't know if this is going to be a thing. If it starts out where it's like, oh, well, let's make sure we have all of our contracts signed and everything like that. Like, that is a number one way to make sure that nothing ever happens.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: The first time that, like, oh, hey, do you want to work on this project with me? Yeah, I'd love to. It's really great. Oh, well, I need you to sign this NDA. Screw you, man. Get out of my face. You know, it's just like... Yeah, exactly. As soon as it becomes this thing where it's like, oh, well, there could be... It could be great fame and fortune. And I'm telling you, if that would have happened up front, then no one would ever have heard of Arduino. So that's kind of the main point that I'm getting at with that is it's just there's messiness here now. Oh, well, no.

Dave Jones: These guys formed a company and had the idea for trademark from day one.

Chris Gammell: That's fine. But what I'm saying is they didn't put as much focus on it.

Speaker ?: Oh, well, no.

Dave Jones: Actually, that's not quite true. Okay. I take that back.

Chris Gammell: What I'm saying is there's not as much focus on it. And if there was as much focus on it and there was all these roadblocks in the way, I think that that could have negatively impacted. Yep. And I think the same thing happens true for a lot of stuff, right? When the big legal issues become a big thing up front, it doesn't necessarily stop a project, but it slows it down, especially if there's momentum.

Dave Jones: The interesting thing is it's been to their detriment. In fact, it seems that the original four founders, i.e. Arduino.cc, have been so nice over all these years, letting this other guy, this other founder, get away with owning the trademark when he shouldn't have, that they've just gone, they seem to have just gone along with it and not told anyone and just happily promoted the community and everything else, which is admirable. I mean, it's fantastic, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, because they want to build stuff. I mean, like, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. They just wanted to build stuff, but ultimately it now has come out that they have been screwed over. Right.

Chris Gammell: And that's what I'm saying is that people are going to point at that and say, oh, see, you should have covered your ass. You know, like, that's what always happens. And, oh, well, we should cover our ass. We should make sure we have legal stuff in place. And it's like, ugh. Just go build. Which is why. Yeah, it sucks.

Dave Jones: Which is why I think they're setting the wrong precedent for the community by engaging lawyers. A, because it won't work. I don't know about that. They will go bankrupt before it happened. I don't know about that. No, because they should just walk away. I don't know about that. They should just go, this guy screwed us over. Fine. Let's just change direction, figure out how to make money some other way.

Chris Gammell: I don't know about that.

Dave Jones: That's why you think that they should spend millions of dollars because that's what it'll take for somebody to win a trademark court case in the U.S. And I have that on good authority.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really? Oh, you've talked to your brother online?

Dave Jones: It'll take years. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. We all know it was Phil. Okay, let's just say it. Come on. It was Phil. Patent and trademark law. I know.

Chris Gammell: It sucks. They are not going to get it. It's big money. You're right.

Dave Jones: It'll take years. And both of these companies will go bankrupt before somebody wins. For somebody to win this, they'll have to get a financial backer that comes in and backs them financially for the court case. Or somebody has to just go, I've had enough. I'm pulling out.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think that that would be the first thing is try and settle this messiness out of court as much as you can.

Dave Jones: Well, they've spent five years trying to settle it, apparently.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but not with money necessarily. You know what I mean? Right.

Dave Jones: Right. Not with lawyers. Right. That seems, yeah. Mediators. They finally engage lawyers or something. I mean, like that's. After expensive mediators. Right. Yeah, well, that's fine. I don't have any money to sue you, but I threaten to sue you. Here's a lawyer. A letter from a lawyer I paid 500 bucks for.

Chris Gammell: At some point, you and I are going to sue each other for something. Let's be honest. Come on. No, I'm not. Well, I'm going to be suing you.

Dave Jones: Because I'm not stupid enough to throw money down the drain like that.

Chris Gammell: Guy, can you imagine? How would that even work? If I tried to sue you, I don't even know what it would be. Like, okay, so say you and I were fighting over the amp hour name. God knows why. Right. Right. Yeah, right. How does that even work, though, across jurisdictions like that? It's just like, oh, well.

Dave Jones: It doesn't. It's just ridiculous. It's bullshit. That's why you'd be mad not to just walk away.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So if that's what you mean by walk away, like, we have trademark here, you have trademark there, we don't really care. I guess so. But then, I don't know. Like, because, okay, let's keep going with this. Let's keep going with this. Let's not. No, let's keep going with this example, though, right? So I guess the only thing I could think about with that would be, so if Dave Jones has the amp hour registered in Australia, and I have the amp hour registered in the States, I think the only argument there, and maybe this has been stated somewhere, would be if I truly think that I own the amp hour worldwide, right? Right. Which I don't think that, Dave.

Dave Jones: I don't give a shit if you're thinking or not. It doesn't matter a rat's ass to me.

Chris Gammell: Because then it's like you have contrasting brands across the world, right? So it's like Dave's selling the amp hour t-shirts in Australia, and they also say Chris sucks on it. You know, like something like that. Right. I don't know. Right. You're right. That is speculation.

Dave Jones: So you sue me for selling t-shirts. Come on. Let's not get into hypotheticals. Anyway, that's just going to spiral.

Chris Gammell: That hypothetical. We'll get into other hypotheticals. That's how we do on the show.

Dave Jones: Because we have ourselves a real court case, right? So this puts the Arduino group, by the Arduino group, I mean the original four founders, Arduino CE, CC, okay? Who are the developers of the software, right? They're the ones who do the core of the development. I know it's open source and anyone can do it. Anyone can develop it. But in the real world, that's not how it works, right? Right. Right. It usually comes down to one or two core people.

Chris Gammell: So this brings up points three and four that I'd like to make. Okay. Point three is obvious, right? But it's money makes things messy, right? And in hardware, money is also necessary. Yeah, yeah. Because we need to build stuff. It's not like this is just an open source software project where it's like, okay, you have to pay for developers' time, but they can all donate. Right? No. Yeah. People have to eat, right? Yeah. Yeah, you have to do that. But I'm just saying like, in order to purchase boards, you need actual capital. Whereas, you know, you could have... Yes. You're not going to have donated stuff. You could have, in theory, a donated open source software project. In reality, you probably can't because of resources and stuff like that. But there are physical goods here.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, there are. But that's another interesting point about this case is that I'll call them smart projects. Even that's their old name, right? Okay. So the company that manufactures the boards, they claim to have an exclusive agreement with the Arduino company, right, for exclusive manufacture of Arduino boards. So it's not like the Arduino group can go and say, well, screw that. We'll just go make our own boards. We'll go to another manufacturer. Apparently, they don't have that luxury. Why they signed an exclusive manufacturing agreement to begin with, that's probably fail number one right there. I mean, that's just... You're not thinking of it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Whatever. No big deal. Right? I mean, like...

Dave Jones: Right. But anyway, so they can't sell boards. And they're not making royalties, apparently. But this is where, like, the whole thing is really convoluted. If you believe some of the talk on the forum... And, you know, this is not confirmed... Which Dave does. Some of the larger distributors, right? I.e. I'm talking like SparkFun and, you know, your Art of Fruits and those sort of ones, apparently have sort of been paying a royalty directly to the Arduino group instead of the royalty to the smart projects group who actually make the boards. And there's some convoluted arrangement with some distributors or something like that. So I think they still might be getting some income from that. But anyway, yeah. It's this huge split between the guy who makes the Arduino boards and what everyone knows as the Arduino developers who develop the software and are the public face, right? Because everyone knows Hasimo Banzi, right? He's like the public face, isn't he? I mean, he's the big, you know... And the bounty voice. He is the Arduino brand, so to speak. Right, right. Right? Part of the deal. So, you know, he's the one who goes to conferences, gives all the talks, always in the public eye, right? Nobody knows about the guy who actually manufactures the boards, right? He's like nobody as far as the community is concerned. Maybe. So, you know, I'm speaking broadly here.

Chris Gammell: Of course.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: We're not speaking hypotheticals, just broadly. Just broadly. All right. So the fourth thing I'd like to bring out...

Dave Jones: No, no. Wait, wait, wait, wait. There's another interesting fact. Okay. Another interesting fact.

Chris Gammell: You're all about facts here, Dave. Smart projects. I want to speculate. I want to be a wonk. Come on, man.

Dave Jones: I'm a pundit. No, no. Because this is in... This is... Go and read the court documents for the court claims. It's fascinating. It's got the pictures. It's got the whole story in there, right? But the company who now claim rights to the Arduino trademark and are manufacturing the boards, they actually print on their boxes, or they used to. I'm sure they'll remove it pretty quick. Is that manufactured under license to the Arduino LLC group or whatever. It's like, we admit that we manufacture it under license to them, from them. So it's... Even though now they're claiming that they own all the rights to do it, when they print on their own box contradictory information to that. Anyway, I found that fascinating. Anyway, what's your third or fourth point?

Chris Gammell: Fourth point. Fourth point is interesting because I think that... So if you watched any of the old open source hardware talks as well, or I mean, you're really just mostly talking about other things, is talking about... Well, okay, so what... If you're doing open source hardware, what is your protection, right? What is your protection against people ripping off your design? And literally the only thing they said was their protection was trademark. And it's like, oh. Yeah. Yeah. Oh.

Dave Jones: Because that's always been a big thing. I know. That's it. That's all there is. That's always been a big thing with the Arduino brand, right? Because they were very strict about who could... You know, they would go after people on eBay and everything. If you, you know, manufactured a board, you know, a clone board, which you're allowed to do because it's open source hardware. But if you use the Arduino name or logo on there, you know, they'd come down on you like a ton of bricks. I think they have every right to do that. And everyone thinks that's okay, you know? It's their trademark. It's their name.

Chris Gammell: It's kind of baked into the ethos of the open source hardware stuff. It's like, yeah. It is. You can't use my name. You can build on it. Right. And that's why it's interesting.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No. I've been involved in exactly the same thing, right? I've done some open source hardware stuff and people have come to me, Dave, can we manufacture our own microcurrents? Can we manufacture our own micro rulers, right? Everything else. I said, fine, go ahead. You know, it's open source hardware. I totally support you doing that. Just don't use my name. Don't use and don't put EEV blog on it because it's not mine. Okay. I don't want people coming to me for support for something that you've manufactured.

Chris Gammell: It's not quality control by you.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Exactly.

Dave Jones: No, exactly. It's not controlled by me. So just, I'm happy for it, but just, you know, and it's like, I even had people complain once in terms of the ruler, right? I released the files for it, right? I released the PCB and Gerber files for it. This is the original single-sided ruler. And I only released the top layer. I didn't release the bottom layer. And everyone went, why? You know, you can't do that. That's against the open source hardware rules, blah, blah, blah. And I went, the only thing on the back is my name. So, you know, like, and you want to go manufacture this commercially, that's fine. You're allowed to do that. But why do you need that extra layer that has just my name and logo on it? Like, why? And they went, but, but, but, but, that's the rules. Like, I went, yeah, sure. Okay, here it is. Fine. But just don't put my name on it. Thank you very much. It's just ridiculous. Right? Yeah. It's just, anyway, crazy stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, yeah, I think, yeah, everyone understands that, yeah, sort of one of the ways to make your money in the open source hardware movement is to, in the industry, is to protect, A, protect your trademark or name, you know? And that's, I think everyone accepts that as a perfectly acceptable thing. Yeah. So. Well, one thing. Yeah. And, you're right. They're claiming that the only thing they have was their name. And now they're saying, well, we didn't, we never actually owned that name. This other guy did. This other founder who manufactures the boards did. And yet, for the last, what, five or six years, they've been going around claiming, well, we own the name. We have the trademark.

Chris Gammell: I'm pretty sure they own it in the States, Dave. I'm pretty sure. You think? Maybe I'm wrong.

Dave Jones: Okay. I'm pretty sure, yeah, they own it in the States, but not in Italy. If that's okay.

Chris Gammell: I thought. But, again.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, if that is the case, that's what I thought at first, until somebody on the forum corrected me, but I haven't verified that. But if that's the case, why would they sue them? Why wouldn't? Because, remember, it is not the smart projects guy suing Arduino. It's Arduino suing the smart projects guy. Well, okay.

Chris Gammell: So, this is one thing that I learned about trademark recently.

Dave Jones: Hang on. Yeah, yeah. So, if they own the US trademark and the trademark in other countries, except Italy, or in a good lot of countries, why bother? Why wouldn't you just go, well, screw, he can have it in Italy. We're not going to waste a cent on lawyers just to win Italy. That's madness. And you would raise it in Italy. You would raise the court case in Italy, not in the US. If you already own the trademark in the US, why would you have the court case in the US? It's madness.

Chris Gammell: Here's what I understand about trademark, is that you need to, in order to maintain a trademark, you need to enforce it. So, if someone does impinge your trademark, you need to sue them, or else it doesn't show that you're enforcing it. I think.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but. But these boards are being sold in the US, Dave. This guy, this other guy.

Chris Gammell: They're being sold in the US. That's what I'm saying.

Dave Jones: Okay. Right. Right. All right.

Chris Gammell: So, again, this is, this is our, like, this is our conjecture because we're not lawyers and we don't ever know.

Dave Jones: No, and we haven't read all the details of this thing. I mean, we can't even agree on that.

Chris Gammell: Welcome to the Empire Law Podcast. For the next hour, you're going to want to scoop out your own eyeballs in your ears with a spoon. Okay.

Dave Jones: Okay. So, you think that's, that, that's plausible. You think that was what could be happening here is that. Well, that's kind of the same. They do own the US trademark, but they're selling it and this other company is selling it in the US and not paying them royalties as they should.

Chris Gammell: I mean, that's all I can think. Like.

Dave Jones: Okay. Well, that, that's, that's fine. Let's just run with that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I've already decided.

Dave Jones: Uh, you know. But, you know, like, oh, but. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. That noise you're making. That's how I'm thinking about talking about this anymore.

Dave Jones: I know. It's going to shake out how it's going to shake out. It's like any time you engage lawyers.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yes. You're totally right. But it's big money stuff. I mean, this is what it comes down to. It's big money because this is. Oh, it's. I mean, for certain reasons too, right? I mean, the, the foundation is the, the Arduino foundation, the States is, you know, they have other funding activities and stuff like that. I think it, you know, pays salaries, whatever. I mean, there's money involved, right? Money makes things messy.

Dave Jones: There's money involved because they, they, they have to eat. I don't know how many employees they have, but yeah, they've got to eat. Right. So, um, I don't, oh, it's just such a mess. It's just such a mess.

Chris Gammell: And all this for some software and an eight bit development board. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I don't know. It's just, uh, and if they go like this is the lawyers are just going to suck them both dry. They're just going to suck them dry. And it would not surprise me if in a couple of years time we are saying on the show, cause we'll be here in our rocking chairs. We're going, I told you so. They shouldn't have never engaged the lawyers because they're both bankrupt and, you know, and gone under and, you know, things have changed. Anyway, you've got to agree. This is a huge deal, right? This is like a, this is the poster child for the open source hardware movement. And it's gotten to this point where, you know, founders are suing each other.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know. I think in a long enough timeline, this kind of thing always happens. That's cynical.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's probably inevitable. And there's, and there's talk about, um, well, the Arduino group wanted to expand and the other guy didn't or something. And that was a part, a big part of their beef. And, you know, they, they wanted to get external funding in and the guy who manufactures the boards didn't. And, and, you know, there's lots of. Okay.

Chris Gammell: So I think the takeaways here are, it's going to get messy, right? I mean, like anything that gets big, gets messy, right? Because there's money involved.

Dave Jones: It's certainly going to get worse from here.

Chris Gammell: Because there's going to be lawyers involved and everything like that. It's just because it's a big thing. And that, so I think anyone out there who's listening and planning on starting a big thing, uh, yeah, get ready for messy, right? I mean, like, like there's not, it's not like this is like exclusive to just this though, too, right? Like, like that entire movie, the, like one of my favorite movies, the social network, right? That Sorkin, Aaron Sorkin movie. Right. It was brilliant, but it's all about a court case over similarly trait, you know, ownership issues.

Dave Jones: And, but yeah, see, and this thing you were talking about, you know, if you don't defend your trademark, you lose it. Well, it's not like the trademark people are actively coming along. Oh, have you been infringed this week? And have you defended it? You could have, they could have just ignored this and not started anything. I, and still, they would still have that. No.

Chris Gammell: Because then when it gets worse and then they go to violate, because that's what happens, Dave. Someone goes and violates it for real the next time in the States, right? I know. Someone starts Arduino down the street from them and then they say, oh, we're going to sell this stuff. And then they say, did you enforce your trademark? And then the guy who starts it down the street says, oh, they do it in Italy. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Dave Jones: Okay. Lawyer, lawyer, lawyer. That only comes into play if it reaches the real in-depth stages of a trademark lawsuit, right? Which it would. It does not stop you, which they do not have the money to do. I'm telling you, this Arduino group do not have the money to defend. Neither groups have the money to win this lawsuit. They don't. That's a fact, right? It's going to cost hundreds of thousands to seven digits plus to win this lawsuit unless somebody pulls out or a compromise is made, right? They don't have the money. So this does not stop you threatening other people. If there's an eBay seller who starts selling your boards with the Arduino label on it, you pay you a couple hundred bucks. You get your lawyers to send them a thing. Hey, we have the trademark. Boom. And they'll usually back down because nobody wants to fight a trademark lawsuit, right? So it's either all in or it's a thinly veiled, you know, defense, right?

Chris Gammell: It's a threat, right? Yeah. It's the illusion of authority.

Dave Jones: It's just like having a patent, right? Yeah. It's exactly like having a patent. If somebody does your thing, you go, I've got a patent on this, right? So you send them a threatening letter from your lawyer. And, well, they either back down or they go, screw you, I've got 10 million bucks in the bank. I'm going to take you on, right? You're hoping that they back down because you don't have the money to fight it. And that's what they could have done here. They could have just ignored this.

Chris Gammell: We're going to call this game lawyer chicken.

Dave Jones: And they could have just gone off and got the boards manufactured on their own. That might have been against the contract. But then they could fight that in law. And that would have been much cheaper to fight than fighting a trademark suit. So, anyway, somebody's doomed. Well, the entire Arduino thing is just going to fall to pieces because, I don't know. We're all doomed.

Chris Gammell: But it's, I mean, like, honestly.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's messy. And we only have one side of the story. But that's true, too. That's the thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, all we have is the article from Hasamo Banzi on the Make blog and the lawsuit itself. You can go read the claims that Arduino Group are claiming against this other mob. And I, to be honest, haven't read them all yet because it's like 38 pages or something. Yeah. It's like, yeah, it's very yawn-worthy. But there's some juicy stuff in there. I mean, you know, they talk about, in the lawsuit, they actually talk about, in the claims, they talk about how the company was formed, where, you know, on which date, in which year. And, you know, they had this agreement in place, blah, blah, blah. It's, you know, the whole history's there. It's quite fascinating. So, hmm. Do we have any predictions about what's going to happen?

Chris Gammell: I'm up, man. I got nothing. No, he's not game. Yeah, I'm just not. I'm having trouble with this whole thing. I don't know. Like, I'm never going to do anything that big. So, until I sue Dave for the Amp Hour trademark, it's not going to be irrelevant to me. Right.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure this is big.

Dave Jones: Huge deal. And here's the other thing, right? All of the community support is going to be behind the original Arduino group and the developers and Hasamo Banzi, right? Nobody knows who this guy is, this other guy is. Nobody cares, right? And he's the only one talking, right? Hasamo Banzi's the only one talking. And when you're the only one talking, you know, you control the game, right? So, they have that going for them. Um, but apparently, yeah, they don't have Arduinos to sell anymore. They're not making money from any Arduino sold, apparently. Um, something like that. So, where's their money coming from? I don't know. Um, but they, they seem to be pushing on, they're pushing through it as if nothing's happening. Um, it's, it's a rather weird, rather weird story. I can't help but be fascinated by it. I'm sorry.

Chris Gammell: I know. Well, you've gotten more interested in the business side of things anyways, though. I think that's probably why you're...

Dave Jones: No, I just find it, just from a community point of view, you know? I find it absolutely fascinating. I think the only thing that this does to me... Hang on.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: What?

Chris Gammell: Oh, Dave, you dare talk over me. Yep, you want me to go on, or are you going to say something? I'm going to sue you for the amp art notes.

Dave Jones: You're going to sue my ass. I'm going to sue my Australian ass.

Chris Gammell: You ever seen that South Park episode? Where the, uh, the Scientology thing? Oh my god. At the end. We're going to sue you. We're going to sue you so hard. And then the end credits, it's all like, you know, the end credits of South Park's all like, John Smith, Jane Smith. Like all of the writers.

Dave Jones: Right. Right. Yeah, that's funny. It was great. Yeah. That's hilarious. All right. I don't remember what I was going to say now.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I know what it was. I'm surprised it wasn't Joseph Smith. Just talking about this stuff, it's just like, all it is, is it's just like, it strikes fear into my heart that at some point we would have a lawsuit about this kind of stuff, right? I mean, like, that's the thing. Like, it's just...

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. I know. That's what bugs me about it. It's sad.

Chris Gammell: Like, my buddy's been sued.

Dave Jones: And the other shitty...

Chris Gammell: Really? Before. Yeah, he's a doctor. I mean, so he's, you know, malpractice suits are just like... Well, they get sued all the time.

Dave Jones: That's why they have... That's why they pay 50 grand a year insurance or whatever, you know? Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, exactly. But it's just... It's demoralizing, you know? It's just like... No, yeah. Totally. Yeah. Not that there aren't legit cases, but it's just like, in general, it's just like all of this stuff. It's just... I was just talking to someone else who was getting off a huge lawsuit after this kind of stuff. And it's just like, man...

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's terrible.

Speaker ?: Nuts.

Dave Jones: Nuts. You know? Did I tell you about neighbours of family, friends?

Chris Gammell: No. No, no.

Dave Jones: They sued each other over a back fence. You know? It was like... Started out as a minor people over a back fence, right? You know? Oh, it's... You know? Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah. They were apparently good friends. You know? They were good neighbours. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, you know, some fence or drainage thing happened or something. Yep. And then, like, five years later and, like, you know, $150,000 in the hole for lawyer's fees. And it's gotten so bad that they're now hiring another lawyer to sue the previous lawyer because he didn't do a good enough job. And it's like... And they're pouring more money down this... So, you know, it's like... And they're hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Just walk away. Just move. Just do something. I don't know. But anyway, it's ridiculous. But the other shitty thing is, is what happens to the community here, right? Because I can see people going, well, I was buying these official Arduinos thinking that I was supporting Massimo Banzi and the other developers. But now that's... Now you're telling me that's not the case? And do I even support the official Arduino brand anymore? Who's this other guy who's from Smart Projects, he's manufacturing these boards? I don't know him. Why should I...

Chris Gammell: We'll stay in partial there, Dave.

Dave Jones: You're buying official Arduino to go support him?

Speaker ?: What?

Dave Jones: What?

Chris Gammell: Is it staying in partial? In partial? We don't know both sides of the story. But there's this other guy.

Dave Jones: No, I know. This is a fact, right? I'll eat my hat if I'm wrong and that everyone knows who this other guy is. Everyone who buys Arduinos knows what this other guy is and knows the difference between Arduino CC and Arduino.org. I bet you a million bucks they don't. Most people, when they think of Arduino, they think of Massimo, Banzi and the other key software developers and Arduino, yep, and those guys. And yeah. And right? That's who they think of when they think of Arduino. And they think that when they... Well, they hope when they're buying a genuine Arduino that that's where their money's going. Otherwise, why bother? Why don't you just, you know, buy your $5 one on eBay, right?

Chris Gammell: Well, that, yeah.

Dave Jones: And be done with it. And that's a big part. That's a big part of the Arduino community is the supporters out there who support the genuine Arduino brand and the distributors who only carry the genuine Arduino brands, et cetera.

Chris Gammell: Right? Yep, yep.

Dave Jones: And that's, you know, and all these people have been screwed over now, essentially, because their money's gone probably not to where they really thought it was going. So even though it is to one of the original founders, but I argue that that's not where they intended their money and their support to go. So it's fascinating. Yeah, no, it could change the DMX for sure.

Chris Gammell: But I think that maybe...

Dave Jones: Oh, it has already, I think.

Chris Gammell: I don't know about that.

Dave Jones: So, you know, anyway, we haven't heard any official response from any of the major distributors and things like that yet, as far as I'm aware of, in terms of what they're, who's, you know, whose side they're going to take or if they're going to take any side or, you know, whether or not they're just going to keep their mouth shut and just keep selling official Arduinos and, you know, I don't know. It's, man, it's nasty stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Can we talk about anything else? Can we have like a palate cleanser here? Like a palate cleanser?

Dave Jones: No, because our show's up. No. We're pissed away. Keep going. No, come on, man. I was just me ranting on about... Let's have some happy news.

Chris Gammell: What?

Dave Jones: I don't know. There's never any happy news. 1,200 jobs. Entropy, dude. Entropy. There's just like, like the world's just going to shit. I'm sorry. It's just, it's just the way it is. It's the universe. It's, you know. Fight, fight the entropy, folks. Yeah. No, well, yeah. There's more consolidation in the semiconductor industry. Bloody, what's her name? Bought what's her name? We mentioned that two weeks ago, but yes, somebody else, what's her name? Has bought Vitesse. Who the hell bought Vitesse? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Who owns that? MicroSemi. Yeah. They're the ones who bought Actel. So they, most people know them for Actel these days.

Dave Jones: They bought Actel and now they've bought Vitesse. And Vitesse, I used to use their Ethernet chipsets, you know. And, yeah. And Cypress and Spansion. I think that's pretty much all they do. I don't think they, yeah. And there's, yeah, so huge more consolidation. Yorn. Like every second week, we're having a consolidation. Transformation. News announcement. Yep. And it feels like we should consolidate. Maybe the Amp Hour should consolidate with, like, another podcast or something. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: The Amp Hour. Seems fitting. The way the industry's going. And Spark Gap. And now we'll have six people talking at the same time on a mumble server. Oh, boy.

Dave Jones: Oh, your mumble server is going to crap.

Chris Gammell: Mine is? Hello. Oh. Well, see? There we go. That's the problem. You'll break it up there.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, see?

Chris Gammell: They're probably trying to dial in right now, man.

Dave Jones: I reckon we cash out now while we're strong. What do you think?

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Yeah, the top of the market. Top of our game.

Dave Jones: That's it. We're the world's number one engineering podcast. Let's cash out.

Chris Gammell: But Dave, I own the trademark in the States, man. You got to pay me my royalties.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but I've got the domain name, I think. Don't I?

Chris Gammell: You do. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's true. We're screwed.

Dave Jones: And, yeah, well, anyway.

Chris Gammell: So, how about this as something interesting and kind of weird? I was listening to another podcast, the Tim Ferriss podcast. I don't know if you ever read his book, The 4-Hour Workweek and 4-Hour Body and all these other terrible titles. But they're basically like self-help books type of things, but kind of about business or fitness and that kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah, you're really into that sort of thing.

Chris Gammell: So, anyways, he had this interesting guy out who's like all about psychedelic drugs. And I posted the link, but basically around 55 minutes or so. They talked about an experiment back in the 60s where they would give these guys psychedelics. And they would be like people who were like, you know, so like mushrooms or acid and stuff like that. But they were working on, they were like Silicon Valley engineers. And they would bring them in. And they said that some, I don't know what they were talking about, like the actual like, some kind of property of these psychedelics, you know, caused extreme concentration. But they said because these guys were already like really deep into a problem but couldn't figure it out, basically like these guys were taking drugs and then solving circuit equations or like, you know, making circuit diagrams. This was the example they gave. I was like listening to it. I'm just like.

Dave Jones: With drawings of pink elephants on them. Well, yeah. And I was just wondering. That's why Jim Williams was so good. That explains the drawings at the end of the data sheets.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. And that's what I was wondering.

Chris Gammell: He was on psychedelics. Which parts have we been using this whole time that have been solved by like, you know, a tab of acid or like, you know, a mushroom cap or two.

Dave Jones: The 555 timer. That's right. You know, the 741. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, Widelaw used to party. So, I don't know. I thought it was actually a really interesting episode overall. But that specifically caught my ear. You know, it was just. Right.

Dave Jones: Were there any downsides to the acid trips or was it just 100% better performance?

Chris Gammell: You know, so I've actually. So, I don't do drugs. But I've actually done a flotation tank before.

Dave Jones: Says all people who do drugs. Right. Of course. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Denial.

Dave Jones: Oh, but you've been into a flotation tank. Right. While you were sucking pure oxygen. And, you know, getting acupuncture.

Chris Gammell: No, sorry. Right. And I had those crystals on my chest. And what else? I had a magnetic bracelet on. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's it.

Chris Gammell: Listening to.

Dave Jones: While you were whale sounds. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Right.

Chris Gammell: And I'd grown my hair out and threads. Anyways. No, actually, I had done that once before. And it was interesting because I had read about it and, you know, basically, like they look at people when you go in an isolation tank, you know, your brain kind of kicks into like hyperdrive because, you know, you're just, you don't have to process all the sensations that your body's normally. You know, like we're basically big sensor processes, right? We have skin. We have sight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stuff like that. And basically, you take all that stuff away because you isolate someone in water and temperature and stuff like that. And your brain's like, oh, hey, what do I think about now? And so the one time I did it, though, I was actually thinking about control loops. Just the whole time. I couldn't stop thinking about control loops for some reason. I was just sitting in there for like 70 minutes. I was floating in this tank just thinking about control loops. It was really weird. But it was something I was working on at the time.

Dave Jones: Don't you do that on the toilet like everyone else? I mean.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but that's 70 minutes, man. I mean, that's a lot.

Dave Jones: That's a lot of burritos. Oh, gosh.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But it was actually really interesting. I mean, like, but like, I mean, I think that's probably the closest I've come to like a, you know, a drug type experience like that where it was. But it was like, you know, like my brain was doing, you know, you kind of get out of your own way in terms of that kind of stuff. And same kind of thing. Like thinking, like, did I come up with ideas in the shower or stuff like that? Or, you know, if you're on the can thinking about stuff, it's just having, you know, quiet, reflective time to think about circuits. It's interesting. And then if they're doing it psychedelically as well, it's just kind of people getting out of their own way. So I thought it was very interesting. We finally hit the bottom with the toilet jokes.

Dave Jones: Really, that's just, that's pathetic. Can we give up now, please?

Chris Gammell: How are we doing here? Oh, yeah. We're almost at like one, one and a quarter. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker ?: Oh, God.

Chris Gammell: That was so, so much time. We had, that was at least a palate cleanser, right? We laughed about something versus cry. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, goodness. We'll be back next, we'll be back next week, folks, with a lawyer.

Chris Gammell: My lawyer will be here. Dave's lawyer will be here. We'll just be discussing the terms.

Dave Jones: And all our opinions will be vetted. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. Everything's redacted. It's just everything. Dave, I'd like to say. Oh, my lawyer says I can't say that, actually. But I would like to say. Oh, he says I can't say that either. Oh, goodness. All right, man. Well, don't get sued in the next week before I talk to you.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: Talk to you later.

Dave Jones: See ya.

Chris Gammell: So you're not the prophet, huh? You made me look stupid. I'm going to sue you, too. Well, fine. Go ahead and sue me. I will. I'll sue you in England. You are so sued, kid. Well, go on, then. Sue me. We're going to. Okay, good. Do it. I'm not scared of you. Sue me. I'm not scared of you.