#273 – Part Choice Triathlon

Chris Gammell: This is the Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded October 28th, 2015. Episode 273. Part Choice Triathlon.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog. And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. I need to change my intro. It's boring.

Chris Gammell: Start a new brand, man. I did that for years.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Chris Gammell's Analog Life and ChipReport.TV and Electricous and a bunch of other crap that doesn't exist anymore.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I was going to say, how do all those work out for you?

Chris Gammell: Hey, man. But you had a go. That's amazing. Not everybody can be a winner on the first one, okay? All right. It's okay to keep trying. Yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. What's been happening? Oh, well, I went to-

Dave Jones: Well, I had two.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, what'd you go to? I went to an event last night. I went to- I saw people last night, Dave.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I went to the gym last night. I saw people.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, yeah. How's your knee? I saw your picture of your knee.

Dave Jones: I talked to a couple of them. Yeah, I'm hobbling around. Yeah. I'm doing all right.

Chris Gammell: You're getting old, man. What'd you do? I know.

Dave Jones: I spent most of yesterday. I spent most of yesterday. I went to the physio, the doctor, then to the medical center to get x-rays and ultrasounds and all sorts of things. Yeah. And yes, I did a gym injury to my knee.

Chris Gammell: Oh. Lifting too hard? Yes. Too much Pilates? No, no. Too much yoga?

Dave Jones: Spinning. Too much bike. Jumping and, you know, you're supposed to do 180 degree jumps. Yes. And well, you know, I'm, and being the enthusiastic person I am, I regularly do 360 degree jumps instead of 180. And yeah, I landed wrong. And well, yeah. No one saw that coming. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. No. Not at all.

Chris Gammell: My wife, my wife's grandfather has, has a phrase about that. He would say to you, he'd say, cause you know, he's like, he's a farmer in Ohio. He's like, you know, Dave, you're no spring chicken.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: That's a, I know the phrase. You know that phrase. Okay.

Chris Gammell: I never heard it before him. So yeah. Really? Maybe it's just a old person phrase.

Dave Jones: It's an old person phrase, which is why I've heard it. Yep. I like it though.

Chris Gammell: I like it a lot. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm no spring chicken. That's correct. But no, I think if anyone tried to land it the way I landed it last week, then yeah, something went, something's going to go snap. So yeah. Yep. Well, I wish you a speedy recovery.

Chris Gammell: And I, you know, next time.

Dave Jones: Well, I hope so. Cause in, in three weeks I've, I've got the tough mudder.

Chris Gammell: Oh. In three weeks. In three and a half weeks. I have to say, you've shifted to a weird hobby from, you know, working on electronics in your daytime and doing hobby electronics in your free time. Now your hobby electronics is your daytime and you're running through the mud. Free time is, yeah. In the free time. Doing obstacle racing. Yeah. In the mud. It's always mud. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Not always, not always.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. But usually, yes. Yeah. There's a lot of mud. That stuff's gross.

Dave Jones: So anyway, so I'm hoping to be fully recovered. Cool. Or at least recovered enough that I can push my way through it. Yeah. Through the 20 kilometers of, yep.

Chris Gammell: Dang.

Dave Jones: How many miles is that? Divide by 1.6.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. 15, 12, I don't know. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Cool, man. Well, good luck. Thanks. So I left my house yesterday, which is different for me.

Dave Jones: Very good. Okay. Where did you go?

Chris Gammell: And I went to an opening at my alma mater. So I went to Case Western Reserve, which is here downtown, you know, kind of closer to town in Cleveland. And our former guest-

Dave Jones: How far is that from your place? How close are you to the big smoke?

Chris Gammell: I'm kind of, I'm like a half hour drive from downtown most days, like no traffic, but where- That's probably the same as me then.

Dave Jones: So you're in the middle of the burbs, same as me.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You knew that.

Dave Jones: I mean, like, yeah, we're- It takes me half an hour for me to drive from here to the city. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. So what's that like? I mean, it's like 20, 22 miles for me, so whatever that is, kilometers. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's about 35 k's or something for me. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But the thing is, in the school I went to, it's like right in the middle. There's no highway access or anything like that. So-

Dave Jones: Ah, right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So-

Dave Jones: It's a pain in the ass.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. And that's fine. But so went back down there, though, talked to Larry. So Larry was on the show, I don't know, he's only our- He was like our second in-studio guests ever, because Martin also- Martin Lorton was also here. I guess we had Jeff when I was in a hotel room. But anyways. Right. So Larry's been- Since we've last talked to him, he has been raising money and donating his own money as well.

Dave Jones: People are going in. Larry, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, sorry. Larry Sears. And so he was on the show. I forget the name of the show. You know, it's one of the alliterative titles. But he's been raising money from donors and stuff like that. Raised about $35 million. They bought a building. Crikey. Yeah. Not a small amount of money. And a good chunk of that was him and his wife also donated. And-

Dave Jones: Well, it's good to have that money to donate.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But how the hell do you raise $35 million for a-

Chris Gammell: Well, I won't spoil it. Tell us what it is. Oh, right. So they bought a building. It's a seven-floor former cold storage building. When they used to store, like, luxury items for the rich of Cleveland, when rich people used to live in Cleveland.

Dave Jones: They actually bought it. They didn't rent it. They actually bought it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. So it's right on the campus, but it's been abandoned for years. And- Oh, okay. Knocked out some of the walls. Because it's Cleveland. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And you can, yeah, buy a- House for the price of a VCR. The price of a VCR. Yeah. Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: No, but this is a little different in- Down by the schools, you know, because that price goes up. Anyway, so they-

Dave Jones: Is it part of the university campus?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's right on campus. Yeah, it's right- Well, right on the edge of campus, I guess.

Dave Jones: So why would a big university like that have some derelict, rundown building, unused building on it?

Chris Gammell: You know, people hold out on selling stuff, or there's just no use for it for a long time, so-

Dave Jones: So did the university own it, or was it privately owned?

Chris Gammell: No, it was privately owned before that. It was right near, like, the train tracks, so it's weird. Anyways, so they bought it, and they turned it, basically, so it's seven floors of, like, a former storage building, so it's all, like, concrete walls, stuff like that. Seven floors, 50,000 square feet, which is, what did we calculate? 4,600 square meters? You punched it into Google, yeah. Yeah, 4,600 square meters of innovation space. And that includes- Wank word. Yeah, well, sorry.

Dave Jones: Wank phrase of the day.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and I think I brought it up on here before, though. But basically, last night was the opening. It's, you know, so it was, like, floors of metal shops, and wood shops, and electronic shops, and stuff like that. And, uh-

Dave Jones: That is 92 times the size of my lab.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, it's the biggest one I've heard of yet. I know that Georgia Tech has a really big one as well.

Dave Jones: How do you fill up that amount of space with stuff? How?

Chris Gammell: Well, that's the thing. It's not all stuff. So, they've got, like, a lot of, like, open workspace type areas, and then also a lot of, uh, uh, well, there's a lot of that isn't built out yet.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but even, how many floors was it?

Chris Gammell: Seven floors.

Dave Jones: Seven floors. How do you fill up seven floors? But even if you had them empty and used them as workspaces in quote marks, I mean, like-

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it was- Wow. It was not small, uh, for sure. And, um, and that's the thing. It's not full yet. Like, so even, it's not- Right, of course. It's not completely full yet. So, but then there's offices, stuff like that, and, you know, there's, like, a patent office- Not a patent office, but, like, an innovation or, like, a tech transfer office there, that kind of thing. So-

Dave Jones: So, so what's the idea? Is there staff running? I presume there's staff running this with this amount of money investment. Did they just build it and expect people to come, or- No, no, no. What's the-

Chris Gammell: They've actually had, like, a, uh, on-campus, like, reduced area. So it used to be, like, 4,000 square feet, whatever.

Dave Jones: Ah, right. Okay. So they're upgrading.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So the- Well, they've known about this for a while. And then, uh, so 4,000 is 370 square meters. Um, yeah. And so they've had staff- Still- And they've had equipment, stuff like that. But now they're just building- Yeah, I mean, they've been- Right. The plan has always been to this, so.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah, it's great. And, uh, you know, got to-

Dave Jones: I'm surprised they can get enough people to make it a viable business. I mean, who- Who would- Who would- Like, just from a business point of view, I know, like, this is fantastic, right? It's brilliant.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well.

Dave Jones: No, I mean- But who would invest in this? Where's the return?

Chris Gammell: There- No, it's a school. I mean, like, this is like- This is like alumni donation type stuff. I mean, it's not-

Dave Jones: Oh, okay, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not like- It's not like VC money or something like that.

Dave Jones: Oh, like VC, right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: But I did talk to them, so I know a couple- A bunch of the people there already, and I didn't realize it's actually open to the public, too. Like, that's what's crazy about it. So-

Dave Jones: Wow.

Chris Gammell: I might be recording from there or-

Dave Jones: But you have to join, though, right? You've got to- You've got to have a membership, right? Just like most other big hackerspaces.

Chris Gammell: Nope.

Speaker ?: Really?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, as far as I know, you don't have to- I was asking that, and I was like, well, what's the fees? Like, or do you have to be an alumni? Really? Yeah? Nope.

Dave Jones: Yeah?

Chris Gammell: Nope. You just have to be registered so that they have your info, and-

Dave Jones: Wow.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Wow.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: My hat's off to everyone who donated, and-

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. I mean, that's-

Dave Jones: Behind that, that's incredible.

Chris Gammell: Well, and this is a growing trend, actually. So, prior to Case, the biggest one I had heard about was at Georgia Tech, and Georgia Tech has one that is very big as- I'm not sure quite how big it is, but it's in a very similar style and size, I believe. So, and Georgia Tech's like top, you know, top engineering school as well. So, I'm not sure what it's called. Innovation Lab? Something like that? You know, they all have similar stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it usually involves innovation in the title.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. But, you know, it'll be interesting. I think, ultimately, the thing that it comes down to is, for all this stuff, like you mentioned, it's staffing, right? Because staffing is really important to make sure that people are being safe first off. But then, you know, just even just knowing how to, like, utilize a tool, right? I mean, like, there's a big difference from, like, understanding what, like, a milling machine is and actually understanding first off. Oh, yeah. I think the next step is how to use it. And then the next step, which is, like, the higher level function of, like, well, what can you really use this for, right? Right, yeah.

Dave Jones: No, you can't just open a space and fill it with stuff and expect people to come in and magically use it. Right, yeah. I mean, you know.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah. I mean, I think that that happens a lot, though, to be honest. I mean, like, it does. No, it does.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Which is why I said you've got to have staff there. You know, it's got to be staffed. You've got to, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and almost like, and it's got to be, like, a certain mindset, too. It's not just, like, and so, like I said, I know some of the staff there. They're really good. I mean, it's, but it's, like, about, it's almost like you need to have mentors there as well, right? Because.

Dave Jones: Yeah, of course. No, I'm, yeah, that's what I mean by staff. You know, not just, you know, some front desk receptionist who takes down your name when you come in. Right. You know, like. Right. No, I'm talking about, yeah. Right. Well, I mean, like, so I know a lot of people. With a great beard there. So you can go up to them.

Chris Gammell: With, like, contextual electronics and stuff like that. Even a lot of people say, well, like, what? I don't even know what I, what the range of things that I can build. You know, like, that's one of the harder things to understand, too. Like, well, I can see the example projects out there. But then kind of going outside those areas and being like, oh, well, I think I could build this thing. And, like, even just getting to the point where it's like, I think I could do X and I'm willing to go try it. Sometimes having someone there to just be like, yeah, I mean, go try it. And then, you know, I'll kind of help bound of the things that we know. Like, there's a lot of steps in there. And there's a lot of kind of bolstering people's confidence enough to the point where they feel like they could build something, you know, and then testing it out and stuff like that. That was really nondescript. But, you know, people could build stuff, but they don't know.

Dave Jones: So this is the biggest such space in the U.S.?

Chris Gammell: Well, no. I don't know. That's my question. I don't know. It's the biggest one I've heard about.

Dave Jones: It's got to be one of the biggest. Right. And it's in Cleveland.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. Well, I mean, like, so, like, I don't know. Tech shop's really big, too. That's the thing. Like, all the tech shops that are around the world.

Dave Jones: Have they got, I don't think there's one in Australia, is there?

Chris Gammell: Tech shops?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't think so.

Dave Jones: It's like a franchise, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So that is a for-profit thing. And, yeah. So as far as I know, there's one, there's like three in the Bay Area. There's one in Pittsburgh. There's one in Detroit. There used to be one in North Carolina. I think that one closed. There's one in Austin.

Dave Jones: And tech shop is a commercial thing, right? Correct. It's a for-profit thing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's like you pay like $100 or $125 a month.

Dave Jones: To be a member. Yeah. And you can come in and use the stuff. Right. Oh, here we go. Locations.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And this one's saying 15,000 square feet for the tech shop.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. So they say Chandler, Arizona, Mid-Peninsula, San Francisco, San Jose, Detroit, St. Louis. I didn't know about that one. Pittsburgh, Austin. Actually, the Austin one is the one that's built onto like a Lowe's, which is like a hardware store. Oh, okay. And then DC.

Dave Jones: Lowe's here is a clothing store.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Yeah. It's an enterprising family. Right. Oh, St. Louis isn't open yet. That's why. So, yeah. So St. Louis and LA are closed. Okay.

Dave Jones: So we don't have one of those here.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And, I mean, they keep opening them, but, yeah, not Cleveland. So, but who cares now? So, yeah. I don't know. Very cool. Who was I talking to about this recently? I was talking to a friend about this. I forget who it was, though. And they're saying like, it almost comes down to like, well, what is the point really of like hackerspace as makerspace, a lot of that stuff. Like a lot of it feels like the community kind of set up and some of it's the equipment. But, you know, we've talked about that on the show before, too. Like a lot of people just want the equipment on their basement or like they can afford it themselves so they don't really need it, you know?

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: So it's kind of that weird mix between like, like obviously at a school or if you're living in a dorm room, that's way different because you need access. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No. It's, it requires a certain type of person to join a space like this and get the most use out of it because you've got to be conveniently located to it.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: You know, you've got to like, you know, me, I can't go join. Yeah. Yeah. I could have one here in Sydney and I'm not going to join it because I, you know, I'm just not going to be able to get there.

Dave Jones: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, it's just, yeah. Yeah. So. Unfortunately, that's the unfortunate aspect of these things. You know, you've got to build it around a community and that's usually like a university type, you know. Yeah. We've got people living in dorms and things like that. They're on campus. They just wander over. Well, and I think cities, cities too, right? Because like, if you don't have, you know, the space. Yeah. Yeah. CBDs. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But yeah. So yeah. Sydney's just different in that respect, I think.

Speaker ?: So.

Dave Jones: Then what? We do have kind of ones like this. I mean, you know, Sydney has robots and dinosaurs, which is the local hackerspace and things like that. Uh huh. Um, but yeah, it's, you know, not terribly, you know, nothing in Sydney is terribly convenient to get to. Oh, right. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Uh.

Chris Gammell: Well, we'll see. I'll, uh, I'll probably be heading down there a couple of times at least. I've never, I've never been a fan of the drive down there, but it's definitely worth it. Right.

Dave Jones: But if you need to use a laser cutter or something, you're. Yeah. Grabbing the keys and off you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Well, especially for things like, so have you done much, uh, stenciling, stuff like that? Stenciling. This is like a solder paste stencils. Oh, right. I've done a few. Yeah. Yeah. I mean like that kind of stuff. Like if you just, if you need one real quick, like I've been, I've been meaning to assemble a board, but I keep forgetting to send out for the stencil and like I could do it by just, you know, like dabbing. So you end up hand soldering the damn thing. Well, not even hand soldering, but just like dabbing on solder paste and then kind of mushing it together. And it's like, it works, but I've already had this board before and it bridges like crazy when I, when I reflow it. So really I should get a stencil, but I've just been, I keep, like I said, I just keep forgetting. Yeah. Yeah. And having a laser cutter. I mean like, so like, like I've used Osh stencils before and I really liked that service. It's a great service. Um, and I think. But you've got to wait for it. Right. Exactly. And it's, it's actually pretty fast too. I mean, like it's a couple of days, but it's.

Dave Jones: But still it's a couple of days. It's a couple of days.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. And like, so if I can, you know, if I could trade a, you know, hour worth of driving and then the cost of materials, it's like, oh, well then I'm done, you know? And, uh, and I did spy at this space. I knew that they had it, but I've never used one before. Excuse me. And they do have an LPKF there too. And. Cool. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Have you ever used one of those? I've, I've, like I said, I've never used one.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. Yeah. They're very nice.

Chris Gammell: The laser one or the, or the milling one?

Dave Jones: No, no. The mill. Yeah. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah. So people who don't know LPKF is like a, are they Norway?

Dave Jones: They're like the Rolls. They're like the Rolls Royce brand of, uh, um, PCB. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Machines, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right. And then, yeah, they're like 20 grand, 40 grand.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They like start at 10 grand and go up, you know? Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Versus like an other mill, which can do pretty decent stuff, but, but like, it's going to be, you know, 10 mil minimum type stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like LPKF actually has.

Dave Jones: And they can do plate through holes. Yeah. Exactly. They can do solder masks. All sorts of fancy.

Chris Gammell: Crazy stuff like that. And it's like, okay. Right. Really that. Yeah. I don't think it's 20. I'm not 20 grand desperate, but you know, maybe two grand desperate, you know, that might be nice.

Dave Jones: Do they have a pick and place machine?

Chris Gammell: They don't. Uh, but I don't think that's, I don't know. Like that's interesting from a, a prototyping standpoint. Like, do you really need one for like, you know, if you're, if you're planning on everything being a prototype, do you really need a pick and place machine?

Dave Jones: Well, no. Well, see, no.

Chris Gammell: Maybe like one of those manual places, you know, like just to steady your hands.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. One of those manual placing machines. Yep. Yep. That'd be handy. Yeah. Those are nice. See, but that, that's interesting. Like, yeah. Should such a space have a pick and place machine? Cause almost by definition, pick and place machine, you know, to warrant using it and learning the time to use it, programming it, getting everything in reels, loading it all up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're talking production, commercial production quantities.

Chris Gammell: Right. And that's when it really pays off anyways. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But should people who are doing commercial production quantities be using such a space? Oh, that's good. That's a good question. Are you allowed to use this space for commercial, you know? Yeah. If you're a commercial company.

Chris Gammell: Well, so I've seen, I mean, I've seen some, uh, what was it? Oh, there was a video a while back with Robert Scoble, who I'm not a huge fan of, but he was doing a tour of Tech Shop and they were talking to a guy and the guy was basically like, you know, he did everything right. He was reserving machine time on like one of the mills and he was like, he was doing small production runs, like 10 or 20 pieces at a time type of thing. But it was all still, you know, it was still hand loading the stock piece and cutting it, stuff like that. And it's like, I don't know, that kind of thing. But then I've also talked to people in the past where they're like, I feel like if you have a product that's being used on like a laser cutter, like that often like the super expensive or the super, uh, popular pieces of equipment, if you're like chunking out huge blocks to, you know, make a piece of your production line, you know, gear, I don't know. I think that's kind of shady.

Dave Jones: You're hogging the gear. I mean.

Chris Gammell: Like if I started a stencil business and then went to this, this space that's nearby and started cutting stencils for people there, that's kind of shady, right? You know, that's kind of taking advantage of a community resource. It's almost like the, uh.

Dave Jones: It is, but it, it also has some benefit in that people are actually using it. There's people there. It looks like a vibrant space and maybe that person can help out somebody else because they've got experience using that machine. You know, it's like. That's true.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Well, that's almost like a tragedy of the commons type of thing. Do you know that, that phrase?

Dave Jones: Uh, no, but I understand. I think I know what you're getting at.

Chris Gammell: So the tragedy of the commons, actually, which inspired the name for the engineering commons, which was not tied to tragedy. Oh, right. Okay. But the tragedy of the commons is often talked about like if, if, uh, you have a centralized patch of grass in, in a, in a town, you know, like an old school town. Right. And you have multiple. Like a park. Yeah. Like a park or something like that. And then you have. Right. Uh, multiple sheep farmers. Right. And sheep, whatever. Yeah. People who have sheep.

Dave Jones: Sheep aficionados. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Sheep fan boys. Uh, and then they're allowed to.

Dave Jones: I do all our New Zealand listeners.

Chris Gammell: Or Welch. Come on, let's be. All right.

Dave Jones: Yes, I know Australia has more sheep than New Zealand. Shut up. It's, you have to rub, you know, something.

Chris Gammell: Anyways, uh, and then they're allowed to, or goats, whatever. And they're allowed to graze their animals there. Right. That the tragedy of the commons is that the, the incentive is for one, for each person to do that as much as possible because it's a community resource that is shared by everyone. Uh, and so one person, you know, because it's a free resource, one person will be incentivized to basically take advantage of that. And because of that, it'll automatically become abused because all people try and get as much of it out of it as they can. And then they'll basically destroy that patch of grass because there's no sharing and there's no care for like regrowth, that kind of thing. So, and you know, that's environmental type stuff as well. You know, like there's these, the tragedy of the commons is, is referenced a lot. So, um, it's just shared resources and how they get abused.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, that, that's what it comes down to, doesn't it? I mean, if you're like, if I was running a, you know, a place like this, a space like this and you know, the pick and play and I had a pick and place machine, it was sitting there unused. Then, you know, like, yeah, if you're a commercial, like come in and use it, you know, like why not? It's a shame to have it sitting there doing nothing. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yep. I want to be, you know. If you put limits on something like that, then the people would be like, oh, it's not worth it. I can't get enough done in the two hour blocks.

Dave Jones: It's just not worth it. So they don't come in. So it's, it remains unused. You know, it's like.

Chris Gammell: Did you used to have, when you were working at other companies, did you used to have like a shared, a shared, uh, part bin type of thing?

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. We would have a company lab. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Did you have someone managing that?

Dave Jones: Uh, at yes. At two, at least two, maybe three companies I've worked at. Yes. We would have a lab manager who would keep all the stuff stocked and everything.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, that's what I feel like that's a necessity too. Cause I remember at one of the companies I worked at, there was, you know, they, so we, we did the system where you had like the drawers. So we had drawers and then they were just metal tins that had parts just loosen those basically. Right. And, you know, and then when it gets to the point where that's empty, you had to go back. This was where they had manufacturing on site. You could go back to the, you know, and request parts and fill it back up and stuff like that. But we never had anyone who was in charge of it. And so basically you'd be prototyping, prototyping, prototyping, go open a tin, looking for a linear regulator, open it up. Oh, this is empty. Wah. Yeah, exactly. You know, like that's, that's like one of those things where it's like, it's, it's incentive. Everyone's incentivized to basically take from the, that, that centralized repository, but not necessarily replenish it because of the overhead that that causes for that individual. And so you need, you need someone to actually do that for, you know, you need a.

Dave Jones: Oh, of course. Yeah. It needs to be actively managed. Otherwise, no, it, you know.

Chris Gammell: And you could say, oh, well, we tell our engineers to refill it, but come on.

Dave Jones: But no, nobody does it, right? Nobody does it. It's like, oh yeah, there's one left, you know, like that's good enough. So you walk away because you don't have time, right? Because you've got your, you know, you've got your jobs to do. So you need to take the part you need and then bugger off. You know, you can't then just go spend another bloody hour filling out a purchase request to, you know, buy more parts.

Chris Gammell: This happens to, you know, solos and individuals all the time too, right? Oh yeah. Past Chris screws future Chris all the time.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. All the time.

Chris Gammell: You know, I was about to build three boards and I only had one part left and that was all past Chris. That guy did not order me new parts.

Dave Jones: Right. And at the companies we've worked at, it's better actually if you have a production parts bin. Because, you know, often we'll have two at some companies I've worked at. We'll have like the R&D.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Lab, right? Which has its own parts and stocks and things like that. But then we'll have the production facility. It'll have its own parts and stuff that we're using for production. And, you know, usually you can go to the production bins and take stuff out of there. Yeah. If you need them. Because they're actively managed every day. Right. That's what manufacturing people are great at actually.

Chris Gammell: They're like really, really good at that. I get in trouble a lot because I was not great at it.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So you wouldn't feel bad about taking something from the production bin because, you know.

Chris Gammell: As long as you fill out the piece of paper, fill it in the system. As long as you do everything, dot every I, cross every T, you're fine. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, and the danger with the system you're talking about, because I've done that too, is that you have a prototype that gets, you know, basically it's like, all right, it's built and we're on this huge tight schedule and everything. And we used all the R&D parts and stuff like that. Or we use the sample parts bin because people will just come and drop off binders full of components, you know, just like resistors, caps, stuff like that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We would do that. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be very common. Like, you know, reps come around or we'd just personally. All of these things. And then you'd, you know, you wouldn't hoard them. You'd go put them in the lab. Right. In the communal lab. Of course. Right, right, right. When you got these kits.

Chris Gammell: But then it gets put in, you know, oh, I need a, you know, a 0.1 microfarad cap and I've put it. I mean, obviously this is a very, you know, jelly bean example, but you put it into the design and everything's tested and everything's ready to go and your boss goes, okay, can we go to production? And you're like, oh, but that part's not really in the system yet. So I should probably retest and. Yeah. Sorry. So. Yeah. Yeah. Oops.

Dave Jones: Fun, fun, fun. Well. So would you. So what's the answer? Would you have a pick and place machine? Would you let commercial people use it? Let us know in the comments.

Chris Gammell: Oh, like add a shared space type of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Cause when you've got a huge, a massive space like that and you've got 35 million bucks or whatever it is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Holy crap. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think it depends on the expectations, right? I mean, like, I think there is that interesting underlying expectation of like, oh, well, someone's going to bring a product out of here. Right. But. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, it'd be nice from the, speaking of the pick and place, it'd be nice to have it just as a learning tool so people could actually learn what it's like and how they work and what the issues are.

Chris Gammell: And how terrible it'll be and how many late nights there will be and how much hair you'll tear out.

Dave Jones: You could have one of your staff, people who's an expert on using it and they, every month they can run a workshop. This is how you use a pick and place machine.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know? So that you can go and talk turkey to your assembler, right?

Chris Gammell: Or job interviews or anything like that, right?

Dave Jones: Anything like that, right? Yeah. So I think they should have one. Yeah. Just purely from an educational standpoint.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. I feel like I went to Case like a couple of years too early or the school, the school I went to.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Because I mean, like Larry was there, he donated all that money and the lab got super awesome. He started teaching that class. Yeah. After I left. That's insane. Now this thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I wonder though, like, I wonder about like, you know, past Chris, you know, I've been thinking about past Chris. I don't think it would have taken advantage to be honest. I mean, like, it's like, I was talking to some other people there because there's, you know, there was a range of like educational type people there.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But you weren't really a hobbyist, were you? No. No, exactly. That's what I mean. Like. That's the difference. You were just one of those, you know, 90%, 95% of engineering students who just did the engineering course. Because, you know. It looked interesting. You know. Where's the beer? You know, like. Where's the beer?

Chris Gammell: Hey, I would have been like that no matter what. Come on, Dave.

Dave Jones: You know. Yeah. Yeah. But you weren't a hobbyist, but now you're a hobbyist. Right? I think that's. You're an enthusiast or, you know. I think I'm just, I'm really into it. You're doing spare time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: And now you are, which is, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Which is great, but you weren't like that. Well, what I mean, though, is like, so you can have, you know, a huge space like this. You can have tons of tools. But ultimately, like one of the pieces that's missing, and even like we said with the projects and stuff like that, you don't even know what's possible. Like I think, so I was talking to someone. We were sitting there staring at the DeLorean because they bought a DeLorean to this thing. It was all, you know, prettied up, like back to the future. And we're sitting there.

Dave Jones: You've got 35 million bucks and they can afford to hire a DeLorean for the day. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Just for a night. It was a party prop. Yeah. Yeah. But I was sitting there talking to someone staring at this thing. And I was talking to him and, you know, this guy was mentioning his kids. And we were talking about like, you know, I had mentioned, I brought the same thing up of like, well, you know, I didn't even know like what was possible. When I was going to school, I didn't even know it was possible. Like I didn't know that what I was doing was possible. And then I stopped and I'm like, well, what I'm doing currently wasn't possible back then. Or like what you're doing was not possible back then because YouTube didn't exist then. And the same thing is going to happen in another 10 years is that there's going to be other electronics jobs or just jobs in general where it's just, I don't know, it just doesn't exist yet. And, and it's like almost that that needs to be an upfront thing where it's like, let's just kind of audit some of the jobs that are out there. I don't, I don't know. Like, or like I think about all of our guests, right? So like people like Jerry who, you know, like Jerry's making these AR headsets, right? Or, or Sean, who's working on the, the, um, the satellite things and imaging the earth, stuff like that. Or Ben, who's Ben Krasnow, who's doing all the everything. Science-y singers. Doing everything. Also on YouTube, right? And it's just like, but like all of these things where it's like, none of this stuff, I mean, existed, but in very, very different forms. You know, you could say, oh, well, video games existed before Jerry got there, but not what she's doing. And, you know, space existed before Sean and the planet people were working on that stuff, but now not that cheap. You know, like, I don't know. It's just, it's so hard for people to get a grasp on that. And I could tell them to listen to the amp hour, but that's kind of a hard sell. You know, it's like, oh, well, you should just listen to this podcast.

Dave Jones: Well, but has, has the revolution happened? I mean, the, the revolution was the communications revolution, the internet, the, the connectivity, the online commerce. That's, you know, that, that's already done. That's done. That's the difference between when I was a boy and people now, right?

Chris Gammell: I mean, Dave, revolutions have been happening for years. Years and years and years. You would go someone, you know, so you're roughly 10 years older than me, go 10 years older than you. And it's like, it's almost like getting into the.

Dave Jones: Tell us what's, what's the next revolution going to be? Chip printers.

Chris Gammell: Ah, low blow. I think, honestly, I think, I think low cost robotics. I think that's going to be huge. I mean, just automation in general, you could just say automation in general. You could say the actual implementation of connected devices. You know, we're already kind of in the midst of that. We've been talking about that the past two shows. Um, you know, any, anything on the hype curve really.

Dave Jones: Like for, yeah. Well, for example, like 10 years ago, right? Laser cutters. Who the hell had a laser cutter?

Chris Gammell: Right. Right.

Dave Jones: Nobody. Right. Big industrial, you know, Ford had them to make, you know, customer. They cost a million dollars. Right. Right. Yeah. For their plant to, you know, build cars and shit. Yeah. For like prototyping and stuff like that. Right. Of course.

Chris Gammell: Because it was just post prohibitive. Of course. Right. Yeah. And I don't know, like bio, bio hacking and, uh, like electronics, like electronics, and, uh, you know, get put together with, uh, with, uh, DNA, stuff like that. Like, I mean, like that 10 years from now, yeah. Sign me up. You know, that's, that's the next thing, you know, like, I don't know. I, I, like, like literally I'm looking at the hype curve right now and we've talked about the hype curve before and this has internet of things at the peak of the hype curve right now. Oh God. But honestly, like this is actually good. This is, this is, you know, this, this is done by Gartner. This is one of the hype curves, but it's done by Gartner and they kind of just put different points and where they are on the hype curve. And like, that's, that's good. I mean, that's good stuff to have here. I mean, you could say 10 years ago, how about just software defined radio, right? I mean, like we've had lots of people on the show about like Mike, Mike Osman, who's always on. Of course that.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Oh, crud. I can't remember his name now. The guy that's at NI. Ooh, I apologize. Anyways.

Dave Jones: Because we, we, we, we didn't have the processing. We didn't have the, you know, the cheap R and Y band with R and Y. Yeah. Front chipsets and stuff, you know, it's like, yeah, exactly. So that's, that's completely changed.

Chris Gammell: But like, I mean, like thinking about all of this stuff, like even just pointing to this one idea, the hype curve and being like, yeah, just check this out once in a while and see where things are and, you know, even just go dive into the Wikipedia pages of each one, you know, like that, that, then that maybe that's a good job in five years.

Dave Jones: I don't see anything as big, nearly as big as an, like to the order of magnitude as the communications revolution, the internet.

Chris Gammell: I think the bio stuff, honestly, that, that stuff is like, I, we, well, first off, we should use this as a, as a target for, for guests as well. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But that, but that's just like an individual technology, like, like, like software defined radio. Like it's just like an individual niche.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No, I'm saying that's, that's a small thing for electronics, but that's a huge thing in general, just like the bio revolution.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. But that's, yeah, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something that makes our industry different.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: In the way it operates. Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Uh, well.

Chris Gammell: If you, if you know what I mean. No, I see what you're saying. Like you're saying just in electronics.

Dave Jones: I, yeah, I get that. Yeah. You know, that's why I'm saying the revolution has already happened. You know, like I don't think Sagan in 20 years time. Okay. Right. Or, or when Sagan's 10, for example, and then when he's 30, I don't think he'll be saying, Oh, you remember when I was like, we didn't have, you know, like he's got the internet, he's got the communications revolution. Like what's the next thing of that scale, if you know what I'm talking about. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I know what you mean. But like, honestly, Dave, like we can't predict that. Like who predicted the internet? No, I know. But you admit what it would say. It sounds like you're saying is that there won't be anything like that. You're just saying you have no idea what it is, right?

Dave Jones: I'm saying yes. I can't think of anything. That's, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know.

Dave Jones: We're not big thinking enough. No. Anyway. If we were. In other news.

Chris Gammell: We'd be really rich.

Dave Jones: Right. In other news. In other news. What's another news? Two weeks ago. Yeah. Well, two weeks ago, we talked about analog devices buying Maxim.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Wah.

Chris Gammell: Well, this isn't fixed. This week, two weeks later.

Dave Jones: No, but two weeks later, now we're talking, now we're going to talk about Texas Instruments buying Maxim.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like.

Chris Gammell: Oh, so original TI buying someone else. Oh, come on. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. That'll be.

Dave Jones: Kids, stop fighting over the little chip company and come inside.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Poor Maxim, you know, or maybe it's good for Maxim, right? Because they'll get top dollar.

Chris Gammell: Let's see. They're valued at $12 billion. Good Lord. That's a lot of money.

Dave Jones: It is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But they must be in trouble, right? If they're, you know. I mean, they're on the block. That's what we talked about before. They must be on the blocks. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know.

Dave Jones: So, anyway. Yes, there's a Bloomberg article about TI said to be in talks to acquire Maxim. Maxim has also received interest from analog devices. Yeah. That was two weeks ago. Yeah. Maxim. And they say, part of the headline, Maxim may not sell if it can't get a high premium from the buyer. So, they're really, you know, hey, we're Maxim. This is, I mean, like, honestly, this is all finance weenies. Can't buy us cheap.

Chris Gammell: This is CEOs and finance weenies. Oh, yeah. Of course, it's got nothing to do with.

Dave Jones: It's got nothing, nothing to do with the chip business.

Chris Gammell: And what we talked about before, though. So, we talked about it a little bit before the show. Well, I was talking about it. Like, I've gone back and started using Webbench again, and I just went straight there. Right. And it's like, honestly, at a certain point, it's like, with all these big companies, it's like, I know, like, I run a site that shows you across all the parts and all that stuff, right? But like, if you just want one place, you know what I mean? Like, so I just went to Webbench, and I was like, well, what's the difference? You know, they're so big. It's like, Big Monolith Corporation is the same as Big Monolith Corporation. I'll just go to one of their, you know, tools, that kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. No, that's, it's a perfectly adequate engineering solution.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, it's not like I'm worried that, like, TI will stop making chips tomorrow, or ADI will stop making chips tomorrow, or Intel will stop making chips tomorrow. They might change their name, or they might buy other people, and that causes a name change, but, yeah. Doesn't really affect me that much. I don't know.

Dave Jones: So, there you go. Yeah. Maybe in two weeks' time, we'll, yep.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Or a law fall over when, you know, Microchip tried to buy Atmel, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it all just, eh, it all just fell apart.

Chris Gammell: Well, someone else bought Atmel, didn't they?

Dave Jones: Oh, did they? Oh, God, I can't remember.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they're being sold. Atmel sells? I thought they were, were they the ones that got bought by Dialog? Dialog.

Dave Jones: Dialog, yes. Dialog bought Atmel, of course. Oh, didn't we talk about that, like, last month or two, a couple months back? Yeah, that just, I mean, yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Has it happened? Did it happen?

Chris Gammell: I think it's in the-

Dave Jones: I think it's, was it a done deal?

Chris Gammell: I don't care.

Dave Jones: Yes. Honestly, like, it doesn't matter. Well, who the hell's Dialog, you know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's the German auto, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Dialog is nobody, right? Right, yeah. So it is Dialog, 4.6 billion. Brand recognition, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Who cares? Honestly, like, who cares?

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, you probably care if you're a fanboy, right?

Chris Gammell: Well, you know what I care about, Dave, is as we go towards the singularity of one huge chip company, what happens when the one huge chip company doesn't make the thing you want anymore? What do you need? What do you need, Dave? Tell me, what do you need, Dave? Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right, you need that product that, you need that, yes, that machine that is just not capable

Chris Gammell: of actually working. Not yet. 10 years time. Get Sagan working on it. 10 years still. Jesus.

Dave Jones: You're shorting your time frame. It was 20 years. The bet was 20 years. We've only been on the air for five years.

Chris Gammell: It feels like 10 years has already passed. It's been five years. Holy crap, it's been five years. Oh, man.

Dave Jones: Oh, goodness. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, like I said, I've been using Webbench again. So, people may recall that I was really against Webbench. I think it was like when- Why? I don't remember why you were against it. It was super janky. It was just like, I don't know, like, it felt like it was like a- do you remember like an old video games? Well, I don't know how much- do you ever play video games when- Yeah, yeah. So, like the old video games where it was like, you would be, you'd be like, you know, the side-scroller video games. And then- Right. You know, the little character would be going across the screen. And you'd be like, oh, well, that must be the door because that bush is differently colored than the rest of the scenery.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: You know? Like, that's what- I'm not following the- You're not- Okay, so like, because the way that the backgrounds are drawn in video games, oftentimes the piece that moved would look different than the background, right? Right. That's kind of what it used to feel like on Webbench.

Dave Jones: But what was your exact problem? What was your-

Chris Gammell: The problem was that it felt super manufactured. You know, they had all these dials and like graphs and it made it look like- it made it look like it was like a, you know, it was calculating anything. But in fact, it was just a skin over top of something that had three options in the first place. And you could click one, two, or three. And- but that's all it did. And then the rest was like a background that looked like a control panel. Right. Does that make sense?

Dave Jones: Are you saying it didn't instill confidence in you because it looked-

Chris Gammell: I'm saying that it, yeah, like they tried to make it look like it did all these different things, but it was all just- Right. A sheet of paper. And then only one or two things happened. You know?

Dave Jones: Right. Right. What am I trying to say it like? I don't-

Chris Gammell: Video games feels like a- I think maybe if I wasn't talking to you, if I was talking to other video game people, like, I don't know, it just feels like it felt like a sham. That's what I'm trying to say. It felt like a sham. And like, it's not that the data behind it was bad. It just didn't feel like there was that many options. And so I went back and tried it, and I can't tell if it's me that's changed. Like, I'm just more accepting of- Right. Web interfaces, or if they actually put more functionality in, which I think is the case.

Dave Jones: Or you just figured out how to use it.

Chris Gammell: Or that could be the case as well. But like, you know, so they actually do simulations now. They actually, you know, send it to the Spice Engine, some central server. They do thermal simulations, stuff like that. Like, it seems like it actually does stuff. I'm not saying it's particularly useful for me, but, you know, it just feels like there's more calculation on the back end. And it does feel more useful.

Dave Jones: And you're talking about the specific power supply stuff, right? Oh, yeah. Because if people don't know, Webbench does a ton of different stuff.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, they have like a filter designer and a bunch of other LED designers, stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Power architect for FPGAs and, you know, like, LED designer. Right. Like thermal simulation. I mean, it's just, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and I don't need any of that other- I mean, obviously, I'm not doing FPGA design or anything like that anymore.

Dave Jones: It does filters, clocks, and analog front-end design. Yeah, like that stuff, take it or leave it right now. I mean, voltage references. All right.

Chris Gammell: But the other stuff that I'm doing, like, I'm just doing, you know, it's not, you know, picking out- So I've been doing this stuff for contextual electronics and just trying to find boost converters, boost converters, stuff like that. It's just getting to the point where there's just so much stuff out there, you know? And then when you get all the way to the point where- I mean, this is kind of the selling point of any tool that gives you the rest of the stuff. By the time you actually pick the part, the everything else, like, so- So, like, I remember older parts that I, you know, older switchers that I used to use. You know, maybe you standardize them apart, but then you get into it. And it's like, I've seen things that have, like, 30 pretty in-depth equations, you know? And you've got to calculate, you know, the inductor peak current, and then you've got to actually go find the inductor. Yeah, yeah, oh, that's nasty. Once you find the inductor, then you have the, you know, the DC resistance of that thing.

Dave Jones: That reminds me of a video I did way, way back, like, you know, number 20 or something. And, yeah, I had this whiteboard, I had my whiteboard filled with all these equations just for this simple DC to DC converter.

Chris Gammell: Right, and it doesn't feel that simple anymore, right? No, no, exactly.

Dave Jones: It was ridiculously complex. You know, how to use this basic, you know, it was the MC, what is it, 34? Oh, God, mental block.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: What's the jelly bean, you know, DC to DC converter that's been horribly inefficient that's been around for 30 years?

Chris Gammell: I don't know, Dave, I've only been around for 10 myself.

Dave Jones: 34.06.0 or something. Anyway. And, yeah, I did all the equations for that, and it was like, and there were so many of them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it looked like the most hideously complicated whiteboard in history.

Chris Gammell: Right, and it's like, usually it's like there's five equations and four unknowns or ten equations and nine unknowns, and it's like, what the hell, man? Like, you know, especially like a lot of the parts have got, a lot of the switchers across all the vendors have gotten more and more integrated where they, you know, they pull, like, a lot of them, first off, a lot of them have pulled in the, they've gone from, let me get this right, controllers to converters, right? It's controllers have external FETs, converters have internal FETs. Correct. And because of the increase, because of just better fab technology, stuff like that, they can, a lot of them can handle more current on the actual die, and so they pull the FET internal and they become converters, and that is great, actually, because that saves, because that's a huge part of those equations, usually, you know, because you have the-

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, it's a single chip solution. It's another part you don't have to spec in.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, exactly. It's just, you know, done. And then, well, and then all those other things that are part of FETs of, you know, on-state resistance, and then the gate capacitance, stuff like that, you don't have to really worry about that until you get into the higher, you know, if you're going high power, you still have to usually do that. You have to go to controllers versus converters, but yeah, removing that element simplifies a lot of things, but not everything. You know, it's still really important to pick the inductor and have all the caps set up right, and, you know, especially if you're using, like, if you're not using ceramic capacitors. I mean, I throw ceramics at everything now because ceramics keep getting better as well, so. They do. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: So, needless to say, it's gotten better, but it's still, you know, it can still be, it's like you get to the fit, it's like running an Ironman, right? It's like you finish swimming the four miles of finding your part, and then it's like, you know, time to hop on that bike for 120 miles, whatever the hell those crazy people do, you know? And then you do that, and then you get to the end of the bike part, and you're like, all right, I'm done. And it's like, now you get to test it and run that marathon. Right? You know? Like, yeah. So. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. So, it's good now. It's all good.

Chris Gammell: It's getting better. Well, that's the thing. You're a Webbench fanboy. Well, not even Webbench fanboy, but just like, you know, if you standardize on one vendor, often that's just another layer that you remove, right? Because if you start. Of course. Comparing, you know, TI to Maxim to ADI to everybody else, to LT to anyone else, right? It's like, I don't know. Like, you got to evaluate all those others.

Dave Jones: It's the ability to navigate their website and find parts. Every bloody manufacturer's website is different. Yeah. And if you always stick to one, well, you get intimately familiar with their website and how to find parts and what they've got. Yeah. You know, or using their Webbench tool or whatever. Right. Exactly. And, you know, it just makes your life easier and quicker.

Chris Gammell: Right. And everything goes great until you get to, that's like running the whole Ironman and then you get to the end and you cross that finish line and then your purchaser is standing there with a bat. And they're like, you single source the component, you piece of crap. Yeah. But I don't know. Like, all these parts these days, like, unless you go super modular and like, you know, have, oh, well, power in, power out type of thing. And there's some amorphous block in the middle. Block. Yeah. And then, you know, I can swap it out for any vendor's parts I want to, as long as it conforms to the spec. It's like, yeah, you can do that. And some people do. And it's definitely that lowers your risk for a lot of stuff. But that increases the hassle factor like 100x because now you got to have an actual modular solution.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Or you got to pay more and actually buy a modular solution. People actually.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's a given that it's a more expensive solution. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. Like, have you ever, did you ever do that? You ever buy the DC to DC modules? Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I used to do it all the time because when. Oh, we've talked about that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. When I'm designing a piece of production test gear, you know, they say, right, we need a bit of production test gear that does this. Yeah. Right. I'm not going to dick around designing a DC to DC converter. Are you shitting me? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: I got better things to do with my time. Right. Than design a DC to DC converter. So I'm going to pay 50 bucks. I have to figure out how to write code again.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like, yeah, exactly. I, so I'm going, I'm just going to go to Farnell's or, you know, not local, whoever. Yeah. Right. You know, because budget's not an issue. Right. And I'm going to buy the $50 DC to DC converter brick instead of rolling it. Yeah. I know I can go buy the chip and the inductor and the MOSFET and everything else for five and the diode for five bucks. Right. But it's not worth my time. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Right. I don't want that hassle. I don't want to, in one month's time when I've got to show this thing at the, uh, at the design review meeting. Right. I, I don't want to have to stand up and say, oh, sorry, I hadn't finished it. I haven't finished it because, you know, oh, my DC to DC converter failed and I had to re-spin my board and I spent all my time on that. Yeah. Murphy got me and, you know, I don't want that. Yeah. I'm going to pay 50 bucks for that converter brick. Yep. Thank you very much. Yeah. Jeez. You know, it's nothing. Only 50? Give me a hundred.

Chris Gammell: I'll buy the best one.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I know. Cause what's my time charged at? Yeah. You know, a hundred bucks an hour at the company. Yep. You know, easily. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Oh, at least. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So you just, you know, and how many hours, even if you're the most competent DC to DC converter designer in the world, how long, how many hours does it take you to roll a DC to DC converter solution?

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, you can't, you can't do it in an hour. Right. From, from go to whoa.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think there's, there are some chips out there that do that now, like the micro modules from LT and, you know, the simple switchers from TI, stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But they're.

Chris Gammell: But they're expensive too. Yeah. Still. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They're expensive too. So you might as well go for the brick. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I agree. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, you know, and there it is. It's all in the one module. It's got four pins. It's got two on the input. It's got two on the output. Right.

Chris Gammell: And sometimes they're isolated. That's great.

Dave Jones: And it's got, and it's got perform, and it's already got the performance curves. I can cut and paste those performance curves into my, into my documentation. I don't have to test it. Yeah. Right. It's brilliant. Yeah, man. Although back when I was a boy.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Here we go. All right. Before the internet. Right. You would, you would actually go to the photocopier. You would actually photocopy the, you know, the data book. Right. Because you had data, you know, now there's PDF rubbish. Right. So you had to photocopy the data book. You'd, you'd get the page. You'd actually cut out the graph.

Chris Gammell: Uh-huh.

Dave Jones: You know, you'd actually cut it out. Right. And, and then you'd stick it. You'd get some glue. And then you'd stick it onto the graph sheet. Yeah. Because we, at, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm just imagining like when, back when people had glue sticks at their desk. Seriously. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, yes. A glue stick was how you did your documentation. Right. We would, because we'd do everything on these A3 graph paper sheets. Right. You know, the ruled, you know, the five millimeter ruled grids. Right. The graph sheets. Everything, you know, with the ring. And when we had these A3 ring binders. And each project had, you know, 50. I'm not, you know, exaggerating. It had 50 ring binders, you know. So if I was working on my thing, working on my new production test jig or whatever it is. Right. New, new design. I would start a new ring binder. Right. Yeah. Like, you know. And it'd be, and it'd have a whole number system. Like, like the, you know. Like a lab notebook almost. Like our company equivalent. Yeah. The Dewey Decimal number system. Right. We'd have our own numbering system. Right. Yeah. And that was, seriously, that's how you did stuff. And then you write revision one on it. Right. And then you put it in. And then you stick all your graphs in. And then you write. You'd hand write. Okay. You would actually, I'd get a pencil and, you know, hand write on this thing. And then you sign and date the page. You know. And then you'd put it. Then you'd register it. You'd put it in the ring binder. And then when you wanted to do Rev 2. Well, you photocopied Rev 1. And then you make the hand changes. And then you sign that. And then you mark that as Rev 2. And then you. The photocopier and the glue stick was. You know.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right.

Dave Jones: They were your tools of choice.

Chris Gammell: Oh, man. I used to have. Sorry for that. That's right.

Dave Jones: See, you've never done that, have you?

Chris Gammell: I've never done that. But I had to deal with. So a bunch of the old data sheets that I used would be like scanned copied of. Scan copies of photocopied like, you know, multiple times. Oh, the horrible quality. Yeah. And they're always like, they're always like, like off kilter. They're a little bit, you know, not square to the page. Stuff like that. Yeah. Oh, man. Those times were dumb. All the brown parts. Yeah. That was really dumb. Yeah. Ain't no OCRing that stuff.

Dave Jones: No chance. Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah. So anyway, that was fun back in the day. Does anyone else have any story? I have. You know, I. I can't believe you have any nostalgia for that. There are people older than me.

Chris Gammell: Like, none at all. Like, how could you possibly. None.

Dave Jones: Right. Like, no. No. It was, you know. It was horrible. But you didn't know any different. We didn't know the internet was coming. Right. Right. We had no idea. Right. Oh, well, yes. The internet was around, but I'm talking the web, you know, and PDFs and, you know, like the internet as we know it. Yeah. Kind of thing. You know, I was.

Chris Gammell: So I was talking to my wife about, about different business types the other day. She's like a business minded person. Right. Yeah. And we were talking about, you know, just business margins and stuff like that for the business she works for. And then we were like, oh, I can get worse. So you can go supermarkets at like 10% margin. And then I was like, I know one worse. You could get, like, you'd be like a component distributor and you get like 2% margin or lower. And then I started talking about like how in the old days, this is obviously way before my time, but in the old days, it wasn't 2%. It was like 10 or 20%. And that's when, that was like the data book days that you talk about when people would shop around data books. And there was actually small distributors that don't really exist anymore because they can't survive on 2% margins. No. Only the big guys can.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Right. And so, I don't know, just thinking about those nostalgic days of, not nostalgic, but like, just like the difference in the industry over time, a lot of that is tied to those margins and how much money there was actually flowing to different entities and stuff like that. So, I mean, even with these big mergers, you know, each, every time, every time a company buys another company, they become bigger. That allows them to produce more chips at a lower margin, you know, because, and then they also up their fab capacity, stuff like that. It's all, that's all for a reason because they want to get the, you know, the, the, uh, what's it called? Economy of scales, stuff like that. And, and, you know, especially in a fab that really matters there. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Because ultimately they're a business that is answerable only to one person, the shareholders. And they've got to show that compound of growth and, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Their, their, their job is not to design better chips, really. It is, you know. To sell more chips. It is, and innovate. It's just to get more margin. Yeah. Out of the chips they make, you know, like. Yeah. And to sell more in general. And to do both, you know, the smart companies do both, of course, you know, because they, but, you know, like, ah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Definitely.

Dave Jones: The Danaher business technique. The Danaher business system.

Chris Gammell: I don't think Danaher is in the chip fab business, so.

Dave Jones: No, but, you know, that's what they specialize in, you know. Yeah. Yeah. That's why they're such a great, that's why the share market love them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because they know how to milk every last cent out of every company they buy. Yeah. You know. And, um, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Moo. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Can we change the topic a bit?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, sure.

Dave Jones: Even though we're almost up. I'll probably have to talk about this. It's pretty controversial.

Chris Gammell: Which one?

Dave Jones: Are you ready for it? I have not clued you up about this. Okay. And you may not be aware of it, but we have to talk about Siglant, I think.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. It's important. So, Siglant is a. I didn't put it on the list. The test equipment maker, right?

Dave Jones: A test equipment manufacturer, scopes. You know, multimeters, power supplies, function gens, right? Yeah, they make really, you know, decent, low-cost gear. They're getting better all the time. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You've reviewed a couple, right?

Dave Jones: I've reviewed a couple of their, yeah, products recently. And, yeah, now it's certainly getting better. But they have been caught with their pants down. Oh? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. The EEV blog forum has exploded, has absolutely exploded. Because I might have to call the thread up, actually, so I get his name right. But EEV blog forum user, I'm here. It's okay. Old school tech corner.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Mr. Old school tech corner from the US. He bought a Siglant function generator, right? I'll tell you the story. Bought a Siglant function generator and decided to sell it. I'm not sure why he sold it, right? So he put it up on eBay.

Chris Gammell: Uh-huh.

Dave Jones: And, you know, brand, like, as new kind of thing, you know, because he'd hardly used it. So, you know, it's kind of selling it as new. And he got, eBay took the listing down.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: And it turns out Siglant have or had an active policy to go search for things on eBay. If you're selling them at too low a price, they will get, you know, they'll smack eBay with a, you know, cease and desist digital DMC. There's some, you know, trademark infringement, whatever. There's some debate over what it actually is they did. Uh-huh. They told eBay, but eBay took down the listing. And, yep. Oops. There was a huge shitstorm. It's currently up to 44 pages on the EEV blog forum. I don't know if that's a good measure. It's a good measure of the controversy it's creating. Right? And there's, like, 20 posts per page or something, 25 posts per page or something, right? It's really exploded. And, um, Siglant have profusely apologized, et cetera, et cetera, that, you know, oh, we thought it was brand new, you know, and, oh, we thought you were, like, or it was a fake, actually. Sorry. They thought it was a... Well, I don't know. Excuse me if I get the exact details right. They thought it was a fake product and they're getting it taken down. But the real reason, um, is that they actually have an active policy to, uh, you know, to, to protect the margin of their dealers. Right? So they go after people on eBay. Yeah. Um, selling things cheaply. But that's not that uncommon, though. Even though that's completely legal. No, that's not uncommon. No, it's not uncommon. It's not uncommon. But it's not, it doesn't make it right.

Chris Gammell: Well, so the reason that they do it, though, is because, yeah, there, I mean, a lot of times there is a minimum price that is set for, for products, right?

Dave Jones: For the dealers. Yes. Yeah. Right. Yes. But in many countries, it's illegal to tell a dealer what, including here in Australia, including, uh, to tell them what price they can sell it.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. Or, but usually it's what price they can advertise at.

Chris Gammell: Right. And then they could sell it lower.

Dave Jones: So they can sell it cheaper privately under the tape, right? Yeah. If they want to sell it cheaper and make no money, that's their business, right? But you're not allowed to advertise cheaper. Right. Well, that's how cars go too, though.

Chris Gammell: I mean, a lot of cars are like that as well.

Dave Jones: But, but that's authorized dealers, right? That's authorized dealers. What we're talking about here is unauthorized dealers. Say me, right? Dave Jones, I decide, oh, I reckon I can make some money selling these siglets. Right. And I go buy them from Alibaba or wherever. Right. I go buy them from wherever. It doesn't matter who, which gray market seller I buy them from, or even from an official dealer. If I can buy them cheap enough and resell them locally for a profit at a cheaper rate than what you can buy it for from the official dealer, they can't stop me. There is no law to stop me doing that. Right. But Siglin are going around telling eBay, like putting in requests to eBay to get my listing taken down. Right. That's pretty lame.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's lame. Right. It is like, that's probably the best description, right? That it's lame. It's, it's, it's pathetic. Like, you know, they, they are probably, you know, there's debate over whether or not it's lead. They can legally do it and all that sort of jazz, but who cares? You know, like it's just lame. Right. They shouldn't be doing this. And they're being caught with their pants down. They've apologized. The listing's gone back up eventually after, you know, a huge battle. And, uh, but still their, their reputation has taken a big hit over this one.

Chris Gammell: So be there, you know, the low end of marketing, the low end of electronic stuff is actually really interesting. I think, you know, like all of that super low cost type of stuff, because like, right. At a certain point, someone's going to go shady, right? They're either going to use counterfeit components. Right. They're not going to put anything inside the box. It's not at all. You know, like the, it's, I don't know. I feel like some of this is just kind of goes with the territory of like, oh, you're buying a really cheap scope. Yeah. You might have some weirdness there. I don't know.

Dave Jones: And the, the other thing is, you know, one of their excuses was, oh, we're trying to protect you, the customer, you know, by, you know, but not potentially getting fake goods. Well, thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: I don't hold that against them though. I wouldn't hold that against them.

Dave Jones: But I don't know. It's just a bullshit excuse. Right. I know that's what I mean.

Chris Gammell: But I wouldn't hold it against them. That's how I would, I wouldn't hold it against them.

Dave Jones: It's, it's just, it's just a shitty thing to do and they shouldn't be doing it. Like, you know, going after people selling stuff on eBay. It's just, you know, like. I think. Yeah. If, if, if they are pretending, if, if they, if they are pretending to be an authorized dealer, yeah, definitely go after them. Right. Shut them down.

Chris Gammell: No, no. I mean the misplaced aggressions on your part. I think I, I don't really, I don't care about this at all.

Dave Jones: No, I am not alone. There are, there is 44 pages of vitriol on the EV blog forum.

Chris Gammell: Steve, there's pages and pages of vitriol over the internet. I just, I don't care about this at all. Like, it's just. Okay.

Dave Jones: Well. I mean, you don't have to, but a lot of people do. You guys are playing with like. This is why.

Chris Gammell: Like, this is, this is, I don't, I don't think this is.

Dave Jones: But this is why I've, I've raised it because the community has decided this is a pretty shitty thing to do. And.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: Hence why there's such talk about it on the forum. It's the biggest thing going on the forum at the moment. Everyone's talking about it.

Chris Gammell: Everyone's got an opinion. The biggest thing on the forum is not the biggest thing that I care about. I'll tell you that.

Speaker ?: No.

Dave Jones: Well, you don't have to care. I don't care about all the stuff you talk about. That's true. That's true. I'm just. Let's talk about robots a little bit, Dave. I'm just raising this. Right. I'm just raising it because it's a, you know, it's a topical thing. So there you go. Sure. Anyway. I'm sure that there's.

Chris Gammell: Down below. Some people that will care about this. Somewhere.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Uh.

Dave Jones: Well, there's a lot of people on there who have said, right, I'm never buying Siglin again. Yeah. But that's so much.

Chris Gammell: This is mentality too, right? It's so easy to say that. And then like. It is. And then someone's like, oh, well, I need a cheap scope. So.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. So they end up going and buying it. Yeah. Anyway. I'm not saying that anyone's wrong.

Chris Gammell: I'm just saying that it's just like. I don't know. This is why I don't care about the. Like. Like you're all into the test equipment, like brokering, you know, like having all this test equipment stuff as well. Yes. Yeah. If it works, it works. That's all I care about. Just get me to the, you know, like I.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So.

Dave Jones: Okay. I didn't say you have to care. Yeah. Just bought it. I know.

Chris Gammell: I don't mean. I don't mean to downplay your, your stuff. I don't mean to downplay that you bringing this up. I'm just saying that like in general, like all the test equipment stuff, I'm just like, ah, I don't know. Like I've said this before. I don't, I don't.

Dave Jones: But this is not about test equipment. Really. It's about. Yeah. It's about retailing.

Dave Jones: Trying to, you know, companies trying to shut down other people, you know, it's like, it's just, just concentrate on making good quality stuff at a good price. Don't dick around with doing shitty stuff like this, you know? Okay. Searching eBay and putting in reports and getting people flagged and taken down, you know? Like just, just don't do it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I mean, just, yeah. Concentrate on building good test gear. Thank you. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I was listening to another podcast about, it was Reply All, which is one of the Gimlet media. Anyways, it's a podcast. No idea. But they were, they did, I think it was them. They did an interview with a guy, Ripoff Report. Um, and how basically like, it's like a site where people can complain about, you know, shady practices like this. Oh, right. And stuff like that.

Speaker ?: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yes. And just now on the internet, it's like, sometimes there's just no recourse. So like the guy that runs Ripoff Report won't take anything down. And.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Yes. Yeah. So like anything that's there. Even if it, so even if someone was falsely accused. Exactly. So.

Chris Gammell: So if someone, if someone said, oh, well, Dave, Dave made a micro supply that had nothing in it, right. There's no way for you to have recourse, that kind of thing. So like. Got it. Everything internet.

Dave Jones: Except, except to go on there and explain.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You're not allowed to.

Dave Jones: Right. I, I'm free. Just like someone is free to, you know, talk bullshit on there. I'm free to go on there and defend myself.

Chris Gammell: You know. There's actually no recourse for it. That's what I'm saying.

Dave Jones: What? I can't go. What? So it's not a for, it's not like a, I, I can't reply. Is that what you're saying? Right.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Somebody can post something there and it's gospel and nobody can talk and it can't be discussed.

Chris Gammell: I think, or maybe it is, but you have to pay for it. Sounds like a shitty website. Yeah. But it's really well indexed. So, yeah. All right. So next time.

Dave Jones: Well, that's kind, is that kind of like an Amazon review? You know, if you get a bad Amazon review, you know, that, that can be like the death of a company or a product. Right. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Like internet does that kind of thing. Who was it? You know.

Dave Jones: I heard, who, oh, I heard it just last week or something. Somebody, some big company was actually paying people to go and, and change their bad review. Oh, that's right. It was, um, no, no, no. It was, it was some, some, some hotel chain here in Australia or something. It might be an international hotel chain. You know, there's on, there's online hotel review, you know, um, things. Yeah. They were actually actively going to people who had written bad reviews about them and offering the money to change their review to a good one because they didn't want the bad. Yeah, man.

Chris Gammell: It can affect business a lot.

Dave Jones: Like it can really affect it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, like it's, it's crazy how fast the time. I mean, like, that's what I mean though. Like how, like, you know, like the, you said 44 pages of people vitriol. Right. I mean, like the tide could turn pretty fast. Uh, you know, like.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. It's, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know.

Dave Jones: But hey, no, like I am, you know, as a person who runs a forum where potentially people can say libel, you know. Yeah. Liabeless.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's the right word. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Things, right. You know, look, I'm, you know, I, I will take stuff down if people have overstepped the mark or they're making false accusations and stuff like that. I, you know, if somebody reports it. Yeah. Then I will consider taking that down. Certainly. Yeah. Um, you know, that's part of my responsibility. You know, I don't want to run, you know, a forum that's a complete, and you know, that ends up like 4chan or something. Exactly. It's complete nutter free for all. You know, like.

Chris Gammell: You say complete nutter or complete nutter because both are accurate.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Yes, exactly. I'm sorry 4chan. Don't touch the amp power.com. We're sorry. You guys are crazy. We've just got our own thread.

Dave Jones: Right. We'll be. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Silly.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of, uh, 4chan and places where illegal activity happens, uh, this is from a while ago. This is from last week, but, uh, there was, so basically, you know, chip and pin.

Dave Jones: Last week is now, last week is now a while ago.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. So, you know, chip and pin, how that's finally coming to the United States. You guys, you and Australia and the EU has had it for a long time. We've had it for a decade. Yeah. So we finally have it here. But basically, the title of this artist's technique article is, how a criminal ring defeated the secure chip and pin credit cards. And you go into it, and it's like, they had to solder. And it's like, well, at least, at least the criminals are soldering.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's win for electronics. That's right. Exactly. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Maybe they're breaking the law, but, you know.

Dave Jones: Well, don't we always say we don't care how people get into electronics as long as they get into it. Right.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. So, you know, break the law by soldering. At least you know how to solder. And then when you go to jail, you can teach all your jailmates how to solder as well.

Dave Jones: So, what's the deal? So, I won't mention the U.S. prison system. No, please don't. Yeah. Privatization. That's terrible. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Are they, is there much take up?

Chris Gammell: Is there much?

Dave Jones: There. With the Luddite U.S. who are still using checks to buy the groceries.

Chris Gammell: Oh, actually, so October 1st was the official switchover, but apparently January 1st is like the hard switchover where everyone will use it. But, so.

Dave Jones: Oh, so they're actually mandating they'll. All of my credit cards have been replaced. They'll must use it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. So, it's good. I mean, it's good.

Chris Gammell: And it's, so people don't know. Basically what it is, it does like an authentication though. It has like a, I think there's like a hash on board, right? There's a small, there's a small chip on board, which basically. There's an encrypted. Yeah. It passes an encrypted thing. I'm not sure of the mechanism. It decodes it, yada, yada, yada. It does a authentication. Yeah. But the weird thing here is that we don't, we don't have to put in a code. You guys do, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's the whole, that's why it's called chip and pin. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, we're not.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, no, no, no, no, we don't. I'll stand corrected. Anything under $100, right? We've got like RFID in them as well as the chip, right? Yeah. So, you can actually tap it. You can actually tap and go. Right. Right? And it's really, you know, it's super quick. Like, you don't even have, if you've only got one of these in your wallet, so it doesn't interfere with another one. You don't even have to get the card out of your wallet. You just tap it. Nice. And boom. Yeah. It's paid for, right? Anything under $100, yeah. And it's widespread. I'd say probably the majority of places I use now have tap and go. Oh, that's cool. As well as the, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And that's like a really, that's a really.

Dave Jones: So, have your cards got the RFID thing in them? I'm sure they do, but we don't. You can usually see, like, the wires around the outside. You can usually tell.

Chris Gammell: Let's see. I've got my wallet here. No? Yeah. Kind of hard to tell on this one.

Dave Jones: Right. Because, well, there's some of them that are, like, a bit see-through. Yeah. Some of the Amex ones are see-through, right? They actually like to show you the antenna. Yeah. The Amex.

Chris Gammell: I had an old Amex that had that, too. Which is cool. Right. I mean, that's all passive. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. People then say, oh, well, you should put tinfoil in your wallet. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. It's like, yeah. Right. It's interesting how that stuff works, though. I don't know, though. Honestly, I haven't looked into the usage too much, but I do know it's coming to the state. I mean, it's on the way.

Dave Jones: Right, right. So every... Right. So, but how many places you've been to actually have it, have the capability to use it?

Chris Gammell: Like, almost all of them have the new readers now with the slide-in.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: But not all of them use it yet. That's what I'm saying. Like, some of them start in October, but all of them will by January, basically. Got it. So... Yeah. Yeah, it'll be really interesting to see how that changes stuff.

Dave Jones: Well, it's only last year here that... Or was it this year? Early this year that they did away with the signing, the signature thing. Oh, that's good. You can no longer accept a signature as, you know... Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's cool. It's cool. That's been completely done away.

Chris Gammell: I mean, like, really, the pin, it almost looks like a SIM card type of pad, right? But... Yeah. Yeah, it's just a little piece of silicon. There's actually... In this article, you can see a shot of the silicon as well. There's, like, an x-ray shot, so... Pretty neat.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. No, we've had these for a decade. Right. Sorry, dude. Have you had hackers soldering to get around them?

Dave Jones: It's like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. You hear about these things, but...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I know.

Dave Jones: Like, it's not like, oh, a million people lost all their money. Right, right, right, right.

Chris Gammell: That happens in the digital realm more anyways.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Yeah, there might be an occasional article where, oh, you know, some hacker has gotten into a service station, which is a petrol gas station, I guess you'd call it, and they secretly replaced the pin machine with another one. Yeah, spoofer. Like, they actually swapped it over, yeah, while the person wasn't looking, and then they came and, you know, stole, you know. And it's usually detected in a few days, and, like, you know, 50 people or 100 people have been scanned. Right, right. Like, it's... Yep. Yeah. You know. It's like those ATM...

Chris Gammell: It's so much work, you know.

Dave Jones: ...skimming machines, right? Yeah, like those ATM skimming machines, though. Yeah. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, same thing, except that does it magnetically, right? That's the stripe.

Dave Jones: Yes, well, it gets the stripe, and then they use a video, a secret hidden camera to record your pin number or type in your name. Ah, right, right. And these things usually last for a day before the, you know, people come back in, the scammers come back in and take it back out, because otherwise it gets found.

Chris Gammell: Oh, because they store it, you're saying. Like, they store it locally.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they... Yeah, yeah. So they store... The whole idea is that they store the card as it's going into the machine, so they've got the swipe. Yeah. And then they can... Yeah, but they can't be... When you've got the chip and pin thing, you know, they can't do that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right, so...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, because you actually need the authentication piece of it, so...

Dave Jones: Yeah, but the whole idea is they don't use it to buy stuff. They use... They go to the ATM machine and take out money. That's what they do. Ah. So all you need to do that is the thing on the back, right, is the magnetic swipe. So they scan the magnetic swipe, and they've got the camera set up. They hide a camera in there that looks down at the keypad so they can see your pin number you type in as well. Right. And then bingo. So they leave it there for a day, and, you know, there's 50 people use the machine. So they come back in, take it away, and bingo, they've got 50 cards with 50 machines. They go back to the ATM, and they make a card, you know. Yeah. You can easily buy a $10, you know, card... Straight programmer, yeah. Swiper and blank cards on eBay. Yep. And, yeah, they go stick it in, and, yep, and they withdraw, you know, the eight, you know, less than $1,000 maximum or whatever from each person, and bam, you know.

Chris Gammell: Bob's your uncle, I believe you say.

Dave Jones: Bob's your uncle. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right, one last thing. I know that we're getting out of time here. We're over time. No, one last thing, because as a former guest, so Philip, who's been on the show before, have you seen this OSH chip thing that he did? So it's on the list.

Dave Jones: I have not seen OSH chip.

Chris Gammell: So basically he took Cortex-M0 with a Bluetooth.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes, it's a little dip thing. It's a little dip package.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and then he converted it into a dip, and I've actually seen it at work. It's really fun because, like, so the demo Philip was showing me was basically, like, he put, like, a serial signal into one of the pins, and then he had another chip. And basically he can just create a pipe between pins. And so you had a serial signal coming into one pin, and then it, like, bounced between that chip and the other chip, and then it went out the pin on the other chip. And it's just, like, it seems really, like, that, obviously that was a very simple example, but it's just, like, oh, it's magical. It's magical.

Dave Jones: Magic, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, like, if people can't visualize, well, of course you can't visualize it. We haven't told you yet. It's basically a 16-pin dip, 2, 4, 6, 8, yep, 16-pin dip package, tiny little board. So it fits in your breadboard as a regular dip chip. Yeah. And it's got an ARM Cortex-M0 on it plus a Bluetooth low-energy ant.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, 2.4 gig radio that can have the stack.

Dave Jones: 4 gig thing-o. Yeah. Yeah, with a little antenna, all in a 16-pin dip chip. Right. And it's just pretty cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so-

Dave Jones: Why don't they go the whole hog and actually encapsulate it?

Chris Gammell: Oh, like, to- I think the polymide might be kind of a tough process. Making a board's one thing, but dipping it in polymide is a little bit more.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's kind of cool. Yeah, no, it's great.

Chris Gammell: It's great. I like it. Yeah, so I think Philips, we heard about this via Twitter. I mean, I've seen it before in person, but I think Philips on the verge of shipping, I think, or has shipped. So I wanted to mention it. It's pretty fun. So, but yeah, tiny, tiny, tiny parts. You know, like thinking about what's actually inside the dip package.

Dave Jones: But it's all about the software environment for it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like, you know, how do you use it? Like, does it come pre-programmed with, you know, like, is it an Arduino-y type?

Chris Gammell: Oh, right, like drag and drop almost.

Dave Jones: Library interface kind of thing. Like, how easy is it to use? Like, yeah, I mean, yeah, you can have a board with an R micro and a transceiver chip and antenna on it. But meh, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'm sure we'll, we talk to Philip every once in a while, so I'm sure we'll hear from him more about this as well. But it's a great little form factor.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's cool. Yeah. It's very, very cute.

Chris Gammell: Very. I'm surprised people are still using breadboards, to be honest. Like, I know that it's still super simple with, you know, if you have the parts and everything, but like, damn, they are not great.

Dave Jones: You just answered your own question.

Chris Gammell: Right. Just because people have the parts still, you're saying, or?

Dave Jones: The parts and it's simple.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, I get that part. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I don't know. I don't have the parts, though. That's the thing. I've never, I've never, I mean, I don't stock through-hole parts in my lab. I have 1K and 10K resistors for like bodging, but don't.

Dave Jones: Right, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know?

Dave Jones: Right. No, it's, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Not all of us were offered an entire through-hole lab, Dave. Which you didn't even take.

Dave Jones: No, I didn't take it.

Chris Gammell: It was still, it was still.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Yeah, I could have bought it all for 500 bucks.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. I mean, like, and it's just, I don't think, like, I don't tell anyone that they should do that these days either. You know, you can get it. You can, it's good for some prototyping stuff, but most of the time it's like, man, just dead bug it or, you know, cut a board or something. Manhattan style. I don't know. Like, there's a lot of reasons. There's a lot of ways, so.

Dave Jones: And that segues very nicely into, I will mention that my new product is almost here.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yes.

Dave Jones: But I'm not going to say what it is.

Chris Gammell: I will. No, I won't.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's kind of cool. Yeah. No, I've seen it. It's very useful.

Chris Gammell: I think it'll be great.

Dave Jones: You think it's useful? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think it's going to be really useful.

Dave Jones: Would you buy some? Would you buy some?

Chris Gammell: I think so. I think.

Dave Jones: There you go. Yeah. Nice. All right. Excellent. All right. It's coming. My samples are on the way. So I've got photos at the moment. I actually tweeted a manufacturing photo of it. And yes.

Chris Gammell: But I'm. Treasure hunt time. We'll see.

Dave Jones: Hopefully. Yeah. Hopefully it's right. You know, you can't see enough detail in the photos to know that they've done it right. So until you actually get it in your hands. Right. And, you know, actually try it and, you know, actually fondle it and play with it. Nothing beats hands-on fondling. No.

Chris Gammell: That's right, folks. Dave Jones says nothing beats hands-on fondling.

Dave Jones: I am a fondler. Yep. Yep. I'm a product fiddler. Yep.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, with that, we are going to sign off before Dave incriminates himself anymore. Talk to you next week. Catch you next time.

Chris Gammell: Catch you next time. Yep. I'm a product fiddler. Yep.

Dave Jones: I am a fondler.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Nothing beats hands-on fondling.

Chris Gammell: No.