#275 – No One Even Missed Us?

Chris Gammell: This is the F-Hour Podcast. Recorded November 19th, 2015. Episode 275. No one even missed us?

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

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

Dave Jones: Why do we bother? Everyone knows who we are.

Chris Gammell: Do they?

Dave Jones: Like, unless you're listening to this for the first time, and this is your first ever episode, in which case we apologize for the...

Chris Gammell: Chris Gammell was born a young man in Pennsylvania.

Dave Jones: Really? You were born in Pennsylvania?

Chris Gammell: I was, yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, there you go.

Chris Gammell: I won't say the city, in case, you know... In the cornfields or something, were you? Someone's trying to guess my security question somewhere.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay, and your mother's maiden name is... Right, right, right.

Chris Gammell: Chris's first pet was named blank. And his mother's maiden name... His mother, who used to be called... Blank, blank.

Dave Jones: Oh, goodness.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. They'll get you every time.

Dave Jones: Hey, our live show was a huge success. It was such a success.

Chris Gammell: It was such a success that we felt we couldn't even top it last week, and we just didn't record at all.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, that was it. We just went out on a high.

Chris Gammell: Just all over. You know, the thing that bugged me most is that no one mentioned it. It wasn't like, oh, Chris, Dave, where were you guys? It was like...

Dave Jones: I know, we just missed a week and not a single person. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I was asking around if people had missed it or anything like that. And most of them were like, oh, I'm guessing some of it was just, you know, BS. That's fine. I mean, I don't mind if people don't listen. But they're like, oh, yeah, I'm so many weeks behind. And I'm like, oh, okay. So, the official story is that last week was a catch-up week for everyone. So, you're welcome. Got to put that positive spin on it, you know?

Dave Jones: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. You were at the Hackaday conference-y thing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And you had Jack Gansel in your lab. How'd that go?

Dave Jones: I had Jack Gansel in my lab. It went awesome. And he dropped by for an hour or two on his holiday. So, thank you very much, Jack, if you're listening. And we shot an impromptu video for an hour. I saw that. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone loved it. Everyone thought of it. Best episode ever. Yeah. It's like, great. All that content. Thousand content. Yeah, right. I produced a thousand videos. And, you know, the best one ever is when Jack comes on and talks.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. It was like glimpsing into a potential future where, like, it looked really awkward with you sitting next to someone. I mean, obviously, you sit next to David when he's on your videos. But, like, doing interviews in person is such a different thing. You know? It's like, oh, crap. We have to look each other in the eye? Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, you know, yeah, because it's a different thing. Like, sometimes I've done, like, my, like, I've done interviews where, like, I'm behind the camera. Like, I do an introduction in front of the camera. Oh, right, right. But then I go sit behind and then you hear my voice behind the camera. Right.

Chris Gammell: You do that with DJ Delorey. Is that his name? Right?

Dave Jones: DJ Delorey.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Colin Mitchell, the, you know, four or five.

Dave Jones: Yep, yep. Part interview. Electro chip or whatever. Huge one. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Silicon chip. Yeah. No.

Dave Jones: Not silicon chip. Talking Electronics. Oh, sorry. Talking Electronics Magazine. Yeah. Yeah, that was, like, a five-parter and I was, like, behind the mic. Just sort of, you know. So you'd hear the mysterious voice. I don't know. Please tell me what you like, by the way. If you prefer, you know, like, me in front of the camera. I don't like it. I'm looking at it back. And it's, like, we're looking at each other, so we're not, there's a couple of things. We're looking at each other, so we're not addressing the camera. Yeah. You know, so it kind of is a bit more personal in that way.

Chris Gammell: I think the way to do it is to have two cameras and you kind of, that's what they do on, like, the Daily Show and stuff like that. They kind of, like, look over a shoulder at the other person. Yeah, I know.

Dave Jones: Well, I did actually set up a second camera as a backup. That sort of, but once again, it was still focused on the two of us. Right. Because I, you know, if the other camera goofed up for some reason. No. So, you know, no, he's off, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it was just a backup. And I thought about that. Oh, maybe I can splice in some footage and then I can, like, zoom into Jack's head because it was on an angle. So, like, actually looking towards him. So, I thought, no, I kind of considered that, that maybe I could splice in some footage of just, like, zoomed into his face, you know, so that, you know, and he's kind of looking to camera more. But I, you know, it was just too much work and I just couldn't be bothered. Yeah, man.

Chris Gammell: At a certain point, it's just two people chatting. So, that's good. Yeah, yeah. That's great he came by, though. I mean, did he? Yeah. Was this before? This was after he'd already given the course? I got about halfway through the video. Yes, yes, yes.

Dave Jones: He had just finished doing the course in Sydney and he was driving up to the Blue Mountains and, well, my place was on the way, so he dropped by and...

Chris Gammell: Nice.

Dave Jones: Yep. That's great. That's great. Then he was heading up to Queensland to do another one, I think, and then he was, yeah, heading back to Hawaii. Lucky bastard.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, got to get home somehow. Might as well go to the... Yeah. Go to there, you know? Worst places to go, yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, I'm a lucky bastard, too. I just choose not to and then grumble about it, you know. I could just piss off and, you know, just take six months off and just go. Yeah, true, true. Yeah. So... And the other thing is the audio, you know, because we're both sort of looking towards each other, we're not projecting our voice towards the microphone, you know, the shotgun mic, and I didn't bother wiring us both up. I didn't go to that effort. I just went, eh, shotgun, you know, near enough, you know, kind of thing. So, although I guess with hindsight, I probably should have, you know, put a mic, like, on the table between us or something like that, perhaps. That would have been better. And then I tried to use our friend the Levelator, the program that we use for this, right?

Speaker ?: Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: To level... You still use that to level our voices, don't you? Yep. Yep. Yeah, yeah. And you do it separately, right? You level your voice and then my voice track. And then mix...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and it compresses and it amplifies and it kind of just normalizes everything.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It normalizes everything. And, yeah, I tried that. I've used it on a few videos in the past where I've done stuff like this. And, you know, it's worked, but there was too much noise. There was too much background noise because I had my air... I've got an air purifier thing. It's low noise, but it was right next to the camera. And I forgot to switch it off so you could hear that hum. So when I put it through that program, it just... Yeah. It just didn't work that well. So I decided it was better to have soft talk because Jack's a lower talker. You know, I'm quite a loud talker.

Chris Gammell: I had noticed. I had noticed.

Dave Jones: What's the Simpsons character? You're like loud somebody?

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. No, that's on Dilbert, the loud guy.

Dave Jones: Oh, Dilbert. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, Dilbert. Loud.

Chris Gammell: Loud Larry or something like that?

Dave Jones: Loud Larry or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bah, bah, bah, bah.

Chris Gammell: Right?

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Yep. And, yeah, so I'm loud and Jack's a bit soft. So, you know, it...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, man, it can make a difference for sure for videos and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, it makes a big deal. Audio is not easy to get.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: You know, shooting stuff, you know, when I'm behind the camera, I've got it all sorted out, you know? It's like... Yeah. But when, yeah, you get impromptu stuff like that or I go out in the field, I do those, you know, trade show ones or something, it's like, oh, audio is so hard. Mm-hmm. So... Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Well, speaking of audio, so what did you... Did you end up going back and listening to any of the Colin show or no?

Dave Jones: I didn't, actually.

Chris Gammell: No. No. But, yeah, it did turn out pretty well. So, I think... Because I heard it while I was... That's true. You were there. Yeah, yeah. I was there. We will be doing that again. We have to figure out the frequency. Yeah. Someone suggested every quarter, maybe, like, so four times a year. That sounds like a good...

Dave Jones: More? Really? I thought every third week. I thought we should do, like... Oh, put it in the rotation. And that, yeah, we should do an interview, then we should do this crap, and then we do a Colin show and then interview. Because, like, you know, we tried to do that one-week interview, one-week ask, one-week interview, and that was tough to schedule enough people, you know. So, I think maybe... I think every third week. Maybe.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Well, that would be, like... What do you think? Once a month, at least. Sometimes... Some months we have two.

Dave Jones: Or maybe we should have a break. There you go. We've been doing this shit every week for five years. Maybe we should actually... No, no breaks. Come on, man. No.

Chris Gammell: No. You know we'll get lazy and we'll be... No. All right. So, maybe more, though. I'd love to hear from people, honestly. Like, I think the key thing is that we should be upfront that we're restricted on time. So, right now, we started recording tonight about 7 p.m. here. It's about 11 a.m. in Dave's time.

Dave Jones: It's smack in the middle of the day. So, this amp hour chews up a good more than half of my day.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. At least your morning into the lunchtime. And so... Yeah. And the big thing would be... So, that puts us at... It's sort of 11... 11... Sorry. 7 p.m. here means it's 4 p.m. in Pacific time. Right. Which means that... Right. In England right now, I believe it's... I believe they're four hours ahead of us.

Dave Jones: It's about 11 p.m. or something, isn't it? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, it's 11 there.

Dave Jones: It's approaching midnight, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think this is one of the better crossover times in general. Yes. But, you know, as you go further and further east... So, if you're, like, in Germany then... I think the time zones are slightly different this time of year.

Dave Jones: I think Germany's tough, yeah. Germany is, like, a couple of hours ahead of... Like, two hours ahead of...

Chris Gammell: You can look it up right now. UK or something. So, if it's 7 p.m. here... Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: What time is it in...

Dave Jones: Because I get that when I do the live shows. I'm doing the live show at, you know, this time, like... You know, about this time, because it's, like, kind of, like, the ideal time... Yes. ...worldwide. And, yeah, people in Germany say, it's 2 a.m. here, and, you know...

Chris Gammell: Yes. Oh, so we're actually... So, I'm sorry. I'm five hours behind London. So, that's 12.13 a.m. right now there, and then 1.13 Germany. So, it'd have to be the late... The night owls in Germany, and then if you go further and further east, right? So, people in, like, kind of Eastern Europe into Russia... Yep. ...that'd be fewer and fewer. So, we do need to decide a time. Maybe we could try and go a little bit earlier here and then get the...

Dave Jones: It'd have to be earlier. Yeah. That's why I do... If I do live shows, it's going to be... Like, I do it, like, 9 a.m. or something. 9 a.m. Okay. 9 a.m. Or 8, I try and come in early. That's sort of, like, ideal.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Well, like Dave said, we'll try it again. We'll figure out the frequency. We'd love to hear from people in the comments. We had a lot of great comments before. I think the key thing that we need is just people to actually call in. You know? People like, oh, it was so great. And then we were kind of... We only had, like, five calls, and we aired all of them. That was great. But I think it's also something we have to hear.

Dave Jones: But we just had enough. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. And, yeah, we can't just rely on Twitter. We'd also have to have regular listeners call in and plan for it. That kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So we don't know if we just got lucky and we just got enough people call it in and then no one will ever call in again. Like, that could certainly happen. That's a risk, you know?

Chris Gammell: Definitely. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Speaking of live shows, I'm finally getting off my big fat ass. And, well, it's not that big and fat. It's more like a lazy ass than a big fat ass. Just saying. Just clarifying. And finally setting up my live bench. My live bench. Like, I'm actually, I've set up, I've now trying to set up a dedicated bench where I've got, like, all my, I'm going to have my soldering gear on that bench. So I'm moving my soldering gear. So I've got, I'm going to have my Togano microscope. I'm going to have my new Mantis Elite cam microscope. So I've got both of those on there. I've got my previous high-end editing PC under there. So I can capture the real-time Togano footage from my Togano microscope at 60, full HD at 60 frames per second. And I've got a webcam set up on there. So it's going to be like a dedicated live show bench. So that, you know, at a moment's notice, I can just switch on that computer and go live. And then I've got access to both of my microscopes. So I can mix those in, you know. Nice. And do all that sort of jazz. And, yeah, the webcam's going to be there. So it's going to be set up. And, you know. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Cool, man. That's good. That's the plan.

Dave Jones: Although, like I said last night, I was here late. I decided to finish it instead of going to the gym. And I thought, I'm almost there. Hooked up my Togano microscope. You know, I plugged it in. Got the drivers installed. Down, blah, blah, blah. Going to start recording. And the recording quality is shit. I don't know what's going on.

Chris Gammell: What does that show up as? Does it appear as a webcam or what?

Dave Jones: The Togano microscope. It's, hey, I've got a physical HDMI capture card. So it's HDMI out of the camera. And I've got like a hardware compression HDMI capture card inside the computer.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: So it doesn't. But you can actually run a driver and it can appear as a streaming camera device. So then I can stream that live if I want to. Or I can capture it and I can choose. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, but yeah. For some reason, like it's the awful compression. Like, I don't know what the, it used to work on my old bench, on my old machine, but now I've got a new machine with the, I download the software fresh and nothing works anymore. I hate computers. Hate them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, that's, so what? So that microscope is built to basically just go straight into a monitor. Is that kind of the idea?

Dave Jones: Is that most people use it for? Yes. Well, it's got two outputs. It's actually got HDMI output. It's got USB 3 output. And so I might actually try the USB 3 now, but it's not as flexible, but that's really, that's, you really need high end processing to capture that. So whereas the hardware, the HDMI hardware compression card is better and I can stream that. I don't think I can stream the USB camera version. So, you know, and it worked before, so I should be able to get it working again. So it's just, something's gone wrong. And the other thing. And the other thing.

Chris Gammell: And another thing.

Dave Jones: Now, you know, I got this gorgeous new 25 inch Dell monitor, you know, one of these 2500 resolution by, you know, 1400, you know, not, not, not quite 4k, but, you know, get in there. And I thought, oh, I'll use that as my main editing monitor. Right. So I put it in here and it's just, no, it just didn't work. It's like unusable because it's such high resolution that the font is, if you go for a hundred percent scaling, the font is too small. Right. So you can't read it. Right. Because it's only a 25 inch monitor. Right. So, you know, so the font goes smaller. Yeah. Windows has like scaling and stuff like that where you can scale the size of the font, but half the programs don't work with it. The fonts look funny and your web browser looks funny. And my forum does, looks funny. It's got some weird chopped off thing on it. It's like, oh, no. So I've ditched it. This gorgeous higher resolution calibrated, color calibrated monitor. Right. It even came with a color calibration certificate.

Chris Gammell: I imagine you, you sitting there with like a color calibrated monitor doing layout and 16 colors, you know, black background.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Things that were made for CAD, old CAD computers.

Dave Jones: I do video for a living, you know, thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: All right. Right.

Dave Jones: And, you know, where color's important, you know. And anyway, so I've ditched it. I've got, no, I've gone back to my full HD 24 inch. Like, it's just, it's better. Like, greater resolution is not necessarily better. I'm sorry. You know, except if it was a big monitor. If it was a big 30 inch, like I used to have at Altium. You know, everyone had like 30 inch monitors back then. That was a big deal five years ago. Yeah. Those aren't cheap. They're still not cheap. Five, six years ago. No, no, they're still not cheap. But back then though, it cost like 2000 bucks a pop or something. And, yeah. And, yeah. It works great when you've got a 30 inch monitor. But, yeah. Scaling in windows. And then I go on Twitter and complain about it. And everyone goes, oh, yeah. Scaling in windows sucks. Don't. Don't do it. It's like, okay. Yeah, thanks. So, bloody computers. It's shit. And now I'm actually, I plugged my old monitor back in. And now I'm using, because I'm using a HDMI cable, it can't even expand it to the full screen of the monitor. So, I've got to go back to a DVI cable. So, after this show, I'm going to fix that. And, uh, I hate computers. I just want to ditch all technology.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think you're, I think you're thinking it, to be honest. I mean, like, you probably could get 90% of the way.

Dave Jones: But I don't want 90% of the way.

Chris Gammell: People care more about getting something rather than something perfect.

Dave Jones: No. No. I.

Chris Gammell: No, you care more.

Dave Jones: No, it saves my sanity, right? No, this is the same thing.

Speaker ?: I have to deal with this shit.

Chris Gammell: This is the same thing we do with circuit boards, right? I mean, like, sometimes it matters that every single thing's perfect. But sometimes you just got to get that thing out of there, you know? You just got to get it.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Sometimes you just get it out. But that's, no, but that's not. No, but you're talking, no. You're like a manager's nightmare. No, I know. A product like that is different to a tool. No, no, I have to fix this thing first. No, no, no.

Chris Gammell: I have to fix this thing.

Dave Jones: No, look. No, you've got to differentiate between the tools you use every day and a product. It is different. I'm talking about a tool.

Chris Gammell: It doesn't sound like you're using a product. It sounds like you're futzing around with the twiddly knobs on a product.

Dave Jones: Come on. You know what I mean. Come on. You must understand what I'm talking about.

Chris Gammell: I know what you're saying, but this is...

Dave Jones: It's like saying, right? It's like when I'm editing my videos, right? I've got a script which handles all the transcoding and everything like that. You're saying I shouldn't have bothered actually doing all that because 90 or 95% of the way and I should just continue to do it manually for the rest of my life.

Chris Gammell: No, that's not what I'm saying at all.

Dave Jones: I shouldn't have an optimized tool. Well, that's what I'm talking about.

Chris Gammell: I'm saying you shouldn't stop everything in your... I mean, this is the same thing with every tool, like workflow and tool chain and stuff like that. You shouldn't stop everything you do to go and perfect it. I mean, it's okay over time if you keep modifying it, but I used to do this kind of thing too.

Dave Jones: Who's talking about stopping everything?

Chris Gammell: Well, I don't know.

Dave Jones: I was joking saying that I'm going to give it all up and go bush. Come on.

Chris Gammell: I didn't mean that. I just mean that if you're spending all this time on it, then I don't know. That's...

Dave Jones: What? How long did you spend setting up your optimized rig for shooting all your videos?

Chris Gammell: Over time. Sure. A lot of time. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. And that's what I'm doing. That's what I'm doing. You know?

Chris Gammell: It sounded to me like you're like, no, no, no. Everything stops.

Dave Jones: No, I'm not going to stop shooting videos for a month until everything's perfect.

Chris Gammell: Gotcha.

Dave Jones: No, of course not. No, but I'm not going to live with a bloody monitor, my main monitor in front of me that has a horrible looking front and font and it's going to ruin my eyes and I should scrimp. Like, bullshit. Right? No, I'm going to fix that right now. I'm not going to leave that for a couple of months. Bugger it.

Chris Gammell: Gotcha. Gotcha.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Thank you.

Chris Gammell: Okay. You do that.

Dave Jones: Can we talk about some shit? Sure. Other than, you know.

Chris Gammell: Would you like to hear about Supercon?

Dave Jones: Tell us about Supercon and how much a wonderful success it was. You organizer, you.

Chris Gammell: You interviewed Jack Gansel. I actually interviewed Grant Imahara on stage. Do you have video? There will be video of everything, actually. Yeah. Really nice video, too.

Dave Jones: How did you get Grant there? Obviously paid him. It's a paid appearance.

Chris Gammell: Mouser sponsored him. So, you know, he does a lot of that stuff. He's a, yeah.

Dave Jones: Mouser are paying him a buttload, I'm sure. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Not sure about that. But, yeah. So, they sponsored him showing up. And he was great. I mean, I had met him before. He's doing it wrong. But, he was, you know. Yeah. He did a great job. So, very charming.

Dave Jones: Speaking of which, Mythbusters is finished.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah. There was the announcement about that, huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Although, I mean, so, he's not on there anymore anyways, but.

Dave Jones: No, no. They, yeah. They fired them, like, a couple years ago.

Chris Gammell: Two years ago, yeah.

Dave Jones: Is it? Is it two years ago now?

Chris Gammell: It's been, I think. Holy crap. Well, it was, like, this current running season, which is the last, and then last season. So, yeah. They announced it before last season, I believe.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. I, I actually, I gotta admit, I haven't watched it for a long time. I, like.

Chris Gammell: I don't, I don't have cable, so.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I haven't watched it since, like, episode, like, season eight or something. I don't know. What are they up to? Season 12 or something.

Chris Gammell: It's pretty, yeah. It's pretty up there.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I've been meaning to, like, yeah, do a whole, like, binge watch, you know. Mm-hmm.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, I probably have to do that now, that they're finished.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Or this last, they're finished shooting. This last season will be their last one.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. And there was actually, there was a nice article that we had up on the.

Dave Jones: There is.

Chris Gammell: On the Amp Hour subreddit as well. It was kind of like, and it's, you know, there's some really interesting stuff in that article that they can't necessarily correlate to Mythbusters, but, you know, like. Right. The fact that there actually is, you know, more interest in science and stuff like that. Like, how do you correlate any of that stuff? You could say, oh, you know, Bill Nye and, like, you know, like all of these popular cultural references as well. But I had pulled out a quote. It said, best of all, a study conducted by researchers at UCLA found the number of college freshmen enrolling in STEM majors has climbed nearly 50% since 2005. Yep. If a few more kids today want to be, grow up to be Elon Musk or settle on Mars and cure cancer, we have Adam and Jamie partly to thank for that.

Dave Jones: Which is... I totally agree. Yeah, yeah. I think they had a huge influence. Yeah. And it's hard to judge, you know. Right, right. Maybe you could, you know, do surveys of every, you know, technical person who goes, who, you know, starts university and goes, you know, were you inspired by Mythbusters or something? I'm sure all of them have seen it. Like...

Chris Gammell: Right. But even still, like, if they mention it, you know, how big of an influence it was. Right. Maybe it was just one small thing that got them to say, oh, I want to try this one thing. And then that did it. And it's like, where do you really apply the interest?

Dave Jones: You know, like, not many people have, like, a sudden epiphany, is it? You know, like you watch Mythbusters and go, oh, you start shaking and go, oh, my life has changed. I'm going to become an engineer. You know, like, it doesn't happen like that.

Chris Gammell: And that's when Dave decided, I shall be a nerd.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, it doesn't happen like that. You know, I grew up with, you know, shows, you know, curiosity show and stuff like that. But, you know, it's not like I watched that and went, you know, I'm going to become a, you

Chris Gammell: know, an engineer. Right. No, it's more about trends, right? So you watch one thing and then you say, oh, well, that's kind of interesting. Maybe go watch some YouTube videos these days. And it leads to another. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because that interests you and you start watching. It's a rabbit hole, right? And then eventually you're like. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: I wonder about quantum mechanics and. Yeah. Yeah. All downhill from there.

Dave Jones: So. Yeah. So they've are. I think their influence is massive.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Massive. Yeah, definitely. I think it's bigger than Bill Nye, the science guy and, you know.

Chris Gammell: I think Bill Nye had a huge influence too, though. I mean, like, that's the kind of thing where you only get it a couple years on.

Dave Jones: We never got Bill Nye here. Like, I'd never heard of Bill Nye. I'd never, ever heard of him before, like, five years ago or something. Right.

Chris Gammell: But that could also just be an exposure thing, too, because just. Exactly. But. More readily available these days.

Dave Jones: But Mythbusters is worldwide. Mythbusters is truly worldwide.

Chris Gammell: Well, and also their production company is Australian, so that helps, I'm sure.

Dave Jones: Not necessarily.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure it helps a little.

Dave Jones: No, it's, you know. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: No, they're just huge. It was like, it was such a huge show. I don't think Bill Nye's show, I don't even know what Bill Nye's show was called. Like.

Chris Gammell: Bill Nye, the science guy? Really?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, I see. I don't know. Seriously, I've never watched it. Bill Nye, the science guy. I've never watched it. It has never been on TV here. Ever. Right? Yeah. It just wasn't syndicated enough. Right. Like, it wasn't as popular.

Chris Gammell: Syndication, yeah. That stuff does matter.

Dave Jones: Worldwide. Yeah, it matters. It's huge.

Chris Gammell: Kind of makes you wonder, like, so will that kind of thing happen again, too? Obviously, you know, YouTube, we've heard of this YouTube thing. Right. But will that kind of thing happen again? Because, you know, you think about just the accessibility. Now, if it's like a, if a consumer has to go out and seek out this stuff first, that's different than, you know, if it's like, oh, I go watch a channel, I like stuff on the channel, and then this is one thing on that channel that I really like. So, just like the influence of media changing again, or continuing to change, I suppose.

Dave Jones: I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I guess we'll tell in about, what, five, ten years when people are like, oh, Dave's retiring. It had a big influence on me. Why?

Dave Jones: I actually get that all the time, and I'm sure it's something Adam and Jamie get all the, well, I know for a fact it's something they get all the time. Oh, you inspired me to, you know, do this, and I get that all the time, and it's great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right, exactly.

Dave Jones: It's one of the huge reasons I do this. It's probably the biggest reason.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man, you were brought up, you were a bullet point in a talk that I saw, the final talk of the Super Conference. Oh, was I?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That goes on my tombstone. He was a bullet point in a talk.

Chris Gammell: Dave Jones with a bullet. What talk was this? It was Nick Sayre talking about DFM. So, I forget which. Oh, okay. Yep. Something in the hundreds of yours.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. Nick is one of the YouTubers, I believe, who was influenced by my channel. In fact, I'd like to say most of the electronics channels out there were somehow, at least partially

Speaker ?: influenced.

Chris Gammell: Well, don't pat yourself on the back too hard, man. You'll pull something.

Dave Jones: I might. I might. Somehow. No one's going to pat me on the back for her, you know.

Chris Gammell: Might as well do it myself. It's a long-ass drive out there, yeah.

Dave Jones: No, but I actually get this. I get, you know. Yeah, I'm sure you do. Everyone. You know, all the content producers. Yeah. I can't think of one that hasn't at least, you know, thanked me. I don't think so. It's good. Awesome.

Chris Gammell: Hey, man. We're one big happy family.

Dave Jones: We are indeed.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. All those talks will be eventually on video. Man, you know Sprite TM, one of the other judges? Or maybe he wasn't a judge this year. Yeah, he might not have been a judge this year. But he gave like a quasi keynote about the Tamagotchi singularity. Holy crap. What's that? Yeah. So, it was like he created like, he created servers to basically do replication models of Tamagotchi's where like instead of having, you know what Tamagotchi is?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. It's a little. It's like a little hand toy. You got to keep pushing the button. Otherwise, it dies.

Chris Gammell: Right. So, he took it from the hardware realm, put it into the software realm and created like these like servers. No, like a farm rather. Where like there's all these different generations and over time they would evolve and all this crazy stuff. And then he ended up putting it back onto hardware. And it was just like the whole talk was just insane. So, definitely.

Dave Jones: Reminds me of like the game of life and stuff like that. Yeah. Right, right, right. That kind of thing. 60s and 70s, you know, that was the big thing. Yep. Very similar.

Chris Gammell: So, I don't think I announced that on here either, but I actually designed the badge for the conference as well.

Dave Jones: Well done. Thank you. What kind of badge was it?

Chris Gammell: It was a passive badge.

Dave Jones: What is a passive badge? What is that?

Chris Gammell: I didn't have any components on it. So, it was really more like aesthetic. It was like the conference logo and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: It was like some sort of proto board, was it? Or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, well, it was like the front was all like these squiggly lines called truché patterns, which are like... Remember when Fabian was on the show and she talked about like genetic algorithms?

Dave Jones: Yeah, the mathematical algorithm patterns. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I finally understand what the hell she was talking about. It took me making something with them in order to do it. Right. So, there's this pattern where like basically there's a zero form and there's a one form and all you have to do is like just replicate it in different versions. They all fit together no matter what. But basically if you have like 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 in different rows and like it depends on how you end up modulating that pattern actually significantly changes the look of the overall thing when you zoom back.

Dave Jones: Got it. And how did you generate this pattern? Did you use a program to generate some sort of image with ones and zeros? I don't...

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. This one was just a fixed one because all the PCBs had to be the same. But the idea is that no matter what then, every badge also can kind of be put side by side and it becomes continuous because they all automatically fit together.

Dave Jones: Oh, got it.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, that was the front side.

Dave Jones: So, you could actually stick them all up on a wall and have one bigger pattern. Yes. Is that? Exactly. Exactly. Oh.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. And that was personally gratifying just because I understand what the heck this scarf I'm going to be getting is all about.

Dave Jones: Right. There was talk about hacking the thing though. How can you hack it if it's just a bare board? Right.

Chris Gammell: So, that was the front side and that was like the squiggles were like... The squiggles were exposed copper and stuff like that. What I did then is I took a via and I put a via between each of the squiggles. There was like a centralized area and so that was like a through-hole grid of points on the back. So, I didn't relieve the solder mask around the via on the front side, but I did around the back side and...

Dave Jones: So, you could make contact with these strips on the front.

Chris Gammell: Yes, exactly. Yeah. And I don't know if anyone actually did that, but you could have. And then where there was actually writing on the front side, I didn't want to put holes through, so I just made like a grid of squares for doing surface mount prototyping. I don't know. I'll put pictures up and stuff like that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We need a high-res photo, please. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And so, then we're like, well, we should just have a contest. And then so, people... So, we basically put together three... We had three categories of contest. Best dead bug, best blinky, and then most over the top. Right. And holy crap. So, did you... Holy crap.

Dave Jones: So, did you just like provide a whole bunch of parts, a big junk bin and people...

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, we had a bunch of parts, and then a bunch of the vendors like, you know, gave dev boards and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Ah, okay. Right. But... Right.

Chris Gammell: I mean, like the most... Okay. So, I'll tell you about the three that were...

Dave Jones: Example of the... Yeah, okay.

Chris Gammell: So, the three winners. So, the best... What was... Oh, the best blinky. The guy... Scratch made a POV display using... So, he basically... And so, then he... During the judging section, he was spinning this badge around, and it spelled out Hackaday. Okay. And so, he had gotten within... And this is like... I mean, like this is like seriously like eight hours max of modding. Right. You know, they're starting from scratch. And so, like this guy had eight hours and a micro and a bunch of LEDs and stuff like that, and he made a POV display that spelled out Hackaday and stuff like that. So, that was fantastic, and that made the crowd go wild. Sweet.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Nerds.

Chris Gammell: The best dead bug was actually two of the speakers that were there, David and Shani Prucci, were both giving talks. And what they did is they had... They basically took some of the NAND logic we had, and then they made a single... They made a key, basically, and then they did a transmitter and receiver. So, one badge talked to the other badge, so they could send CW commands with a little paddle on the one badge, and it talked to the other badge, and that had an earpiece on it. And that could receive during the talk. The idea was like, oh, we can talk during the talks from across the room. So, that was amazing. And then, the one that really tripped me out, though, I forget the guy's name. I'm sure it'll be posted somewhere. But basically, he had taken Paul Stoffegrin's Arduino audio workshop earlier in the day. And so, according to people that I asked after the fact, he hadn't had any experience with this stuff before. Maybe that's true. Maybe it's not. I don't... It doesn't matter. This was amazing. So, basically, he had, like, an audio receiver and generator. Basically, it could display... It could output, you know, sine waves at any frequency, or a bunch of different frequencies. It could receive audio and then do a bunch of things. And then, he made a spectrum analyzer. And then, he actually output that to a screen. But the thing that tripped me out most was then he recorded the spectrum of a Hackaday logo. So, basically, if you... Like, whatever the spectrum you could receive was. And then, he played the sound next to the thing. And then, the logo scrolled across the screen.

Dave Jones: Oh, no way.

Chris Gammell: It was, like... Wow. Yeah, that's mind-blowing. Like, there's a video on Twitter that I'll share that's just, like, holy crap balls. Like... And, like, again, like, eight hours. Like, I... And I'd seen him throughout the... So, we did that, like, during the night, like, during the party. Because we were trying to figure out what to do during a party when you're a bunch of... You know, it's not like we're going to dance or anything like that. And so, a lot of people were modding. And, you know, we were drinking beers and stuff like that. And chatting. But we weren't going to dance. And...

Dave Jones: You sound disappointed.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. I'm just saying that, like, that's a matter-of-fact thing. Like, I've been to other events before. Like, other tech events. And it's, like... They put on music. They expect dancing. And it's, like, I did. Sorry. I just want to...

Speaker ?: Yeah, no.

Chris Gammell: It's not going to... Yeah. It's not going to happen. But I think this was a good fit. It's like eight hours, man. Like, and I saw him throughout the night. And I'd seen the different incarnations. And he just kept getting more and more insane. So, yeah. Awesome. Nutty. Nutty, nutty, nutty. So, yes. That was...

Dave Jones: It was a success.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know, I...

Dave Jones: Is this the first conference you've organized?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, the first conference, for sure. Yeah. Right. Not the first event. And it wasn't... I mean, there was a lot of people that were helping, so...

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Any traps for young players?

Chris Gammell: You know, I was thinking about you. And you're like, oh, I'm going to set it up.

Dave Jones: Set up this hacking camp conference. Yeah. Don't do it. I'm a fool.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. Do it. But just hire a lot of help. You know, I tried to do a lot of stuff myself. And like even... You know, and I think the thing is, like, people will self-organize. And like, this is not a new lesson. It's just one that I was hard... It took me a little longer to learn. Like the badge modding thing. Like, that was really people entertaining themselves. You just kind of gave them the prompting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know? And I think it's like that. You know, if you go too fancy and too programmed, it'll be a disappointment because you'll spend all this time, you know, trying to make it super...

Dave Jones: Yeah. Organized. No. I think it's just like, turn up, have a bunch of... Like, here's a bunch of stuff in a box to hack. Go away. Just, you know, like... Right. And then just form... You know, and then... Yeah. When you start having formal presentations and other things, no, you're better off just getting everyone to turn up and just mingle. Right. When I think...

Chris Gammell: I think the thing is like... So, the thing we've talked about in the past is that it's like... So, engineering is all about kind of dealing with and overcoming constraints or doing the best within the set of constraints you have. I think the best contests and the best events are really just saying, here's the constraints and making those realistic and making them clear. Right. And stuff like that. Yep. You know, like... And then giving... Yeah. Then, like you said, you know, bringing the box of stuff. That's kind of the most important thing. And then, yeah, you trust people. They're going to do something cool. So, yeah. Right. I don't know. I'm... Like I said, I'll definitely be there, man. If you do that. I think you should.

Dave Jones: If you do it. Right.

Chris Gammell: If you do it. I'll see what I can do. I'm not doing it. Right.

Dave Jones: You're not helping. I'm not. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: I may show up in, like, in a camper as well. I don't know if I'm going to ready... I'm ready to sleep on the ground in Australia, but...

Dave Jones: Right. Because, yeah, the snakes will eat you and the spiders will... Snakes and the spiders and the drop bears. Yep. Well, is that something that Hackaday want to sponsor? Oh, yeah. Maybe we can do something down under.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Just...

Dave Jones: Well, some master's got to pay for it, you know. It's not going to be me.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So...

Chris Gammell: Good luck. Good luck.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Come on. You missed a big hot shot there.

Chris Gammell: I can ask, but I don't... I don't think... I don't think that's going to fly, buddy. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's not going to fly. All right. Yep.

Chris Gammell: We have stuff from a while ago.

Dave Jones: We have lots of stuff from a while ago. Yeah. Yeah. Let's finish off the show. We've got, like, 25 minutes left or something. Yeah. Let's finish off with...

Chris Gammell: I was interested by the TI thing. Did you see that thing? The TI kills the student sample program?

Dave Jones: They've killed the student thing? Yeah. Yeah. Why?

Chris Gammell: Money. I mean, so someone posted the... Dr. Locke on Twitter posted the sample change... Or the policy change. Yeah. I'm not sure why. I mean, like, you'd think that that... I'm guessing it's just they're not getting the... Right. ...return on investment that they expect. But, you know, kind of like talking about, like, the Mythbusters thing like we were before. You know, that's one of those things where it's just... You're not going to see that stuff directly. You know? Like...

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no. It's intangible.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know? It's like, yeah, it's something you've got to do with the belief that it's going to ultimately pay dividends. It's... It's... These things, unfortunately, always get canned at these big companies because it's not quantifiable. Right? You can't...

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Yep. You know, you can't get a KPI for it, a key performance indicator. You can't get a number out of it. Yeah. Right? All they see it, all management see it is as a drain on money. Well, where's our return on that investment? You can't show it.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, and especially when there's, like, a management change as well, that'll always... Because, you know, it's like, all right, we're going to go through the books. What's going on with this one? You know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. This isn't making any money. What the hell are we doing this for? Canceled. Right. Like, yeah, they don't see the bigger picture.

Chris Gammell: I think the thing that we should talk about is not necessarily whining about this. We should just... Someone, uh... Someone, uh... On Reddit, uh... Said exactly what I would say, too. It's... This is when you figure out that, uh, starting a company is shockingly easy. And you don't need to have an LLC or anything like that. So, uh, you know, you can have a company. And I think so... Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Again, you know, uh, I'm not a lawyer. And this is just my experience. But in the U.S., you can have... You can have and register a company and have a loss for, I think, three to five years before you get in trouble for it.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Our tax man doesn't like you making a loss year after year. Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's just usually because of tax shelter and stuff like that. But even, like, the stuff that I did... So, I have an LLC. And I know that there's business stuff different everywhere. And I do make money, so that helps. But, um... You know, it's... It is worth having that. I mean, but if... You know, you need an LLC probably if... Or you could go even more extreme to, like, an S-Corp. If you... If you... You know, you were making money, especially if you have partners, anything like that, you should have legal agreements around it. But otherwise, you can just be a sole proprietor in the United States and just be doing business as your company name. And, and like, and like this person says, you know, the big thing is having a website, having your own domain, chris at, you know, randomwebsiteco.com. Yeah, it's, you know, it's a good place. We always talk on here about portfolios and stuff like that. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: No, you should... You know, it's just...

Chris Gammell: It's good to promote yourself if you want to be built. If you're building stuff anyways, you may eventually want to sell it. If you eventually want to sell it, you're probably going to want to shuttle people back to your website. You may want to have a mailing list. Have a website has a presence.

Dave Jones: I got, you know, I got my first business name when I was, you know, registered business name. I was like 17 or something, you know, I got my first registered business name, you know. And like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And I know what it is because of, it's on our, it used to be on our domain registration.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. And yes. Yeah. And it will follow you around. We should say that too. So don't make it like... No, my old website with the name is still out there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: And it's, I, yeah, it's like, it costs like, I don't know what the time, like cost like 70 bucks to register the business name and you got it for like five years or something. And it's like, yeah. Oh, interesting. You could do lots of stuff when you had the business name, you know. And you're peer professional.

Chris Gammell: You don't even have to have that here. It's well, so like, yeah, you, I guess you do need to check the...

Dave Jones: You don't have to. It's like here, it's only if you earn over, like if your business, if you're like a one man band business, like self, you know, a sole, a sole trader, as they call it here, you can earn up to like 80 grand a year before they force you to have a business, you know, like name and everything else. Right.

Chris Gammell: And it can be kind of fun to, to be honest. I mean, it can be kind of fun, you know, coming with logos, stuff like that. Like, you know, it's great to put logos on your PCBs and just kind of make them stand out. Yeah. It's just... No, it's fun.

Dave Jones: If anything, it's fun. And it makes you feel professional and good. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: It's like, yeah. Boy, feeling professional never felt so fun.

Dave Jones: I was actually, the other day, I don't know how I got there. I saw it somewhere. I was actually almost tempted to set up an LLC company in, is it Wyoming? Is that one of the big, is that one of the major states there where you set up like, you know, tax haven corporations and stuff like that?

Chris Gammell: The big one here is Delaware. That's the big one.

Dave Jones: It is Delaware, but yeah, there's this other one. I think it's Wyoming. Okay. And Wyoming, like there's an official like government website where you just go in and they handle everything for you. If you're a foreigner, that you can just come in and they'll handle like everything and you can set up your company. You can get a bank account. You can get a social, I don't know if you get a social security number, but you get everything needed and you get an official address in the US.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's called an EIN, is employer identification number.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. And I thought, you know, and it was like, it was cheap and it seems so easy to set up. I thought, yeah, I could have a corporation in the US. You know, like just, I have no idea what I'd use it for, but you know.

Chris Gammell: You could call it EEV blog East. Right. E-E-V-E.

Dave Jones: Oh dear. East or West? You guys are behind us. So it must be West. I've got to go West, you know.

Chris Gammell: You fly East to get here, buddy.

Dave Jones: You can't jump across that time zone. Yeah, I do fly East to get there, but technically the way the world rotates, you know, like you guys are behind.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but yeah, I guess we do call China the Far East, but then we fly West to get there, so.

Dave Jones: Right, okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no, I guess you're right, because you would call it West, because it'd be like, because it's usually called like Western, the Western world, that kind of thing, right? So.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't, well. Head West, young man.

Chris Gammell: That's what you need to do. Right.

Dave Jones: Right. So I need to set up my tax haven, do I?

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Well, that's where you could have a camping event too, in Wyoming. That's a great camping state.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So I've heard, yes. Well, so on the website, they were extolling the virtues of how wonderful and beautiful the state is, you know? Yeah. Set up your company here, and oh, we've got mountains and streams, and you know, like, yeah. I was sold, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. It's beautiful. It's beautiful up there. Yeah. I think that's Jackson Hole is up there too. That's like one of the big ski resorts, stuff like that, so.

Dave Jones: Ah, right. Okay. There you go. So, you know, maybe I will.

Chris Gammell: Do it.

Dave Jones: Maybe next time we talk, I'll have a.

Chris Gammell: Do it.

Dave Jones: An American corporation. Nice. Yeah, so then maybe like I can, you know, run like an American Kickstarter or something. You know, like there's probably a bunch of things that I've never even thought of that having a U.S. presence might actually be helpful, so.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, a lot of companies do that in other countries too, right? I mean, like Apple, all of Apple stuff. Oh, I know what I can do. Goes to Ireland.

Dave Jones: Oh, I'll never have to bank another Amazon check.

Chris Gammell: There you go.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. Oh, shit. I think I'm going to do it just for that. Oh, bloody Amazon.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: If you don't have a U.S. bank account, you're screwed. You've got to. Oh, it's just so bad.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. I think I'll do it just to make my life less stress-free. Okay. In that regard. All right. Just thought of that. All right.

Chris Gammell: So the long and the short of it is, if you're a student and you need parts and you want to get samples, I mean, this is good outside of just TI as well. A lot of companies, a lot of chip companies will go for this kind of thing. So I'm not saying to lie about your EAU, which is estimated annual usage, but you can. You can push the envelope, maybe.

Dave Jones: Be optimistic. Be optimistic.

Chris Gammell: I could sell 5,000 units on Kickstarter. Who knows? I could. That's right.

Dave Jones: That's right. You know? So, yeah. Do it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: One article I'm not sure if we covered last time, I don't think so, was the heist of Dick Smith. Did we talk about that?

Chris Gammell: We didn't, but that was really pretty financially thing, right? I mean, it was...

Dave Jones: It is financially thing, but it's relevant to Australians. But, yeah, I'll just mention it for one minute. Just go read how Dick Smith, a famous electronics company here in Australia, who were owned by a big food chain here anyway. Don't ask. Long story. How they got... How this company of ex-bankers just, like, heisted this company. It's just a brilliant read. Just go read the article. Yeah. You know, the only thing... It's great.

Chris Gammell: It's relevant because this is kind of a reason to run away when a lot of companies... Like, I really worried about this kind of thing when Freescale got picked up by... Do you remember when they got taken private?

Dave Jones: Yes. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think it was Blackstone, private equity. And, like, you know, a lot of times it is that. You know, like, they see all this value that they can sell off. They sell off all the fabs and, you know, they start changing management out to make it more friendly and stuff like that. And they're just squeezing the juice out of that orange, man. Like, it's just... They don't give a crap.

Dave Jones: In this case, yes, it was a private equity firm who bought it. But it was the way they did it and the way they made the company who they bought it from pay for it. It was like... Like, it was one of the best... Like, I wish I was this smart. You know? Like...

Chris Gammell: See, I don't read it like that at all. I read it as, like, these people add absolutely nothing to the world.

Dave Jones: Oh, no. They... I totally agree.

Chris Gammell: And they're just harvesting... Like, they literally left the company in shambles.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I mean... Yeah, yeah. No, they... Oh, they... And then they took it public. And so they bought it as a private equity acquisition. And then they took the company public. They fleeced all the mum and dad investors who... Oh, yeah. Dick Smith is a famous name here, right? Oh, yeah. I'll invest in Dick Smith shares. And it was a total sham. Yeah. And everyone lost, you know? Like... Oh, yeah. No, they're total leeches. But just from... I... You know? Just from the... You know? The financial aspect of it. It is a brilliant play. And it's totally legal. You know? Like... And... I... I was just in awe of how they were able to do this. I... I... I don't believe they should be able to do it. It's totally unethical. They're a bunch of bastards. But I'm... I can still be in awe at their ability to do it, though. Yeah. So...

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: There you go. LinkedIn, down below.

Chris Gammell: Uh... Well, I don't know where to go for that. We do have...

Dave Jones: Well, no. Hey, there's another huge acquisition.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I was going to say that, yeah.

Dave Jones: Acquisition of the month. You know? Yeah. Like... On... On... On Semiconductor. This one just came through straight off the teletype. On Semiconductor have agreed, or... Or they're going to acquire Fairchild.

Chris Gammell: Now, I would be interested to... I don't really care about Fairchild anymore. I think they've been going down the toilet for years.

Dave Jones: Ah, Fairchild or... Yeah. No offense to them. Not offense to the engineers that work there.

Speaker ?: No, no, no.

Dave Jones: But they're not high profile. Like, yeah, you might buy a Fairchild transistor or diode or something, but, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, no, they have switchers and they have opium portfolio and stuff like that. But, like, it was always very underwhelming. They were always behind the times. Yeah, no, it's not... I would be interested to hear your opinion on Fairchild back in the day, though. Because people don't know that... So, Fairchild is... I'm not that old. No, I know. You should be asking Jack, not me. Well, even Jack, though. I mean, like... No, I mean, this is like... Fairchild is... People should know the history of Fairchild. That's where the Traders 8 came from. Yes. You know, that's like... Yes. Or that's what they made, rather. They... The Traders 8 left... Shoot. It was named after the guy. Schotky? Is that it? Shockley.

Dave Jones: Yes, yes. Shockley. Semiconductor.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah, so it was Shockley. And then the Trader State left there. They went to Fairchild. Then Fairchild is the one that, like... There's that family tree, which I know we've talked about before. The family tree from Fairchild. Fairchild is, like... Is the papa.

Dave Jones: Is the spawn of all Silicon Valley. You know, it's like...

Chris Gammell: That's Intel, and that's, you know, National, and like a bunch of them. And then they all spawned from those.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And now it's all collapsing back down. This is like the big... If Fairchild was the big bang, we are now entering into the... Whatever the... Big crunch. Yeah, the big crunch. Whatever's going to happen at the end of the universe, right?

Dave Jones: Well, it's either the big crunch or the big freeze.

Chris Gammell: Big freeze. Yeah, I've heard that one too. Right. The universe... Which side of the fence do you sit on? It started with a bang, but it will end with a whimper.

Dave Jones: It will end with a whimper, yes. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah, so Fairchild was awesome. But actually, I'm actually just interested in your opinion when you first... When they first kind of came into your radar. Because obviously that was after they kind of already peaked as well in the early days. So what's your feeling about them?

Dave Jones: I remember Fairchild mostly from passive parts. You know, like... Or, you know, transistors. Stuff like that. Gotcha. Don't... I really have not used many Fairchild ICs and stuff like that. Yeah. So... But back in the day, they made, you know, the Dux Guts transistors and, you know, power trannies and things like that.

Chris Gammell: Gotcha. Right. So you were always more on the... Now, when you say transistors too, you mean power transistors or just any transistors?

Dave Jones: Oh, I'm talking power. You know, like... Yeah. You're more, you know, specialist niche kind of ones, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. Makes you wonder. Do you think they're going to keep the name? I don't know if they mentioned it in the article.

Dave Jones: I don't. I still have not finished reading the whole article because we just got this before the show. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Like, to me, Fairchild is... I hate to say it, but it's kind of like a dead brand. Like, it doesn't... Like, I'm not going to go, oh, yeah, it's Fairchild, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they're the... Yeah, I always trust Fairchild parts. I trust them, right. Yeah, it's a trust thing. That's totally right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I just use so few Fairchild... Yeah, they might pop up here and there, but it's not like, oh, yeah, I'm going to use Fairchild because I trust them. You know, they're the parts I've always used, you know.

Chris Gammell: But it also could be... It could be the industries that we've been in as well, right? They did a lot of automotive and audio and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, no. It's just... Yeah, they just weren't on our particular radar, so...

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, so... Another one bites the dust.

Dave Jones: It is, you know. And, yeah, they're into optical... Like, what are they making the analog and mixed signal market? They make amplifiers, they make battery protection ICs, you know, haptic drivers, signal conditioning.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, like I said, I've had their... I think they were the ones who gave me a port... Oh, no, I'm thinking Intersil, actually. I'm confusing Intersil.

Dave Jones: There's another name, you know, which was big back in the day, you know. Right, right. Every multimeter had an Intersil, you know, the 7603 or whatever it is. You know, Intersil IC in it, right? Now, the Ducks guys now, like, who cares about Intersil parts? No one.

Chris Gammell: Right, well, and it's a branding thing and a pricing thing, and, man, it's just not... Yeah. ...not an easy place to be, of course, so...

Dave Jones: But they're a multi-billion dollar business, so they're selling to somebody. It's just not maybe Joe Average Engineer. It's, you know, yeah, they're selling into... It's just like, what was the company that bought the other week? Who's that unknown company who bought...

Chris Gammell: Oh, Dialog bought Atmel.

Dave Jones: Dialog. Who the hell uses Dialog parts, right? Yeah, automotive people. Nobody.

Chris Gammell: Right, yeah.

Dave Jones: Right? You know, but you'd never heard of them. They're a brand which basically doesn't exist, yet they're in every iPhone. They're in every, you know, in everything. They're a huge...

Chris Gammell: Oh, was it iPhones? I thought it was... There was one that was automotive.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, yeah. Then they're in iPhones. They make, like, the power management chips in iPhones. All the specialized power management chips, they have to generate, you know, 20 different voltage rails. Yeah. You know?

Chris Gammell: I think it'll be interesting when it's, like, okay, the trade show floor is now open. You can go in there and it's just, like, one booth. Boy, I tell you, the swag keeps getting worse. The final company just changes its name to Chip Company.

Dave Jones: Oh, goodness. Yeah. I shouldn't laugh, but, yeah, it's, like... No, it's not going to be that. It's just going to be that it's going to be... The consolidation is...

Chris Gammell: It's going to be Chinese chip companies, honestly. I mean, like, even... So, on Hackaday, there was an article about the ESP32, which I think we've mentioned when we heard about it, because there was a tweet about it. Yes, yes, that's right. We do. But they finally announced more of the specs, some of that kind of thing. It's going to have, like, dual processors and Bluetooth now and that kind of thing. And, like, you know, it's probably going to be cheap. There's not really many details about it yet, so it's going to have to wait. But, you know, like, even just the ESP8266, I mean, that thing's already disrupting a lot of this stuff, comparing it to, like, CC3000 or something like that from TI or, you know, some of the other Wi-Fi modules that are out there. Yeah, it's stupid and small. Not stupid. That's the wrong word. But it's simple because, you know, I have to use the AT commands. It's simple and it's, you know, maybe a little clumsy. It's not, like, super high level. But, you know, sometimes that's, not sometimes, that's always the path. It's always the innovator's dilemma from the bottom up, right? It's just going to be that super cheap, tiny stuff that keeps getting better. Right. You know, and now there's bigger and bigger targets for the other people to hit, you know. On Semiconductor's now bigger and Dialog's now bigger and everybody else is bigger and start nibbling at some heels, man.

Dave Jones: Before long, we won't have to do a parametric search for manufacturer on DigiKey. They'll just drop the, you know. Oh, man. Because, you know, that's, like, as we're talking about, you know, trust and confidence. It's, like, often I will go, well, I'm going to sort, you know, when I'm doing my parametric search on DigiKey and Mouser, right, I'll go, you know, I trust that brand, right? Oh, yeah, parts, bloody IO, whatever it is you've got, right? Right. Don't use it. Sorry, dude. And, yeah, I go, right, I'm going to sort by manufacturer. You know, I often do that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, oh, I'm going to see what T I have got, you know, like.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. You'll just take out the cruft. You won't, the super small ones that you maybe never heard of, you'll just ignore them. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, trust is a big deal for sure. It's interesting.

Dave Jones: But then you, of course, I don't recommend everyone do that because you can miss some parts that are ideal for your project when you do that. Don't use that as your sole searching method because, you know, that's not right.

Chris Gammell: Right, and even from a, you know, from a sourcing perspective too, right? I mean, like, if you were like, oh, well, I just use one vendor's parts. It's like that one vendor might take you to the cleaners pricing wise or if that one vendor has a fab problem one month, you're kind of screwed. I mean, it's not like parts are swappable as they used to be, but yeah, it's nutty.

Dave Jones: No, because everything's application specific these days. It's getting much more application specific, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it makes you wonder.

Dave Jones: People crap on about ARM, you know. Oh, the good thing about ARM is that you can move from one manufacturer to it. It's bullshit.

Chris Gammell: Right, that's totally. I mean, you can't. No, you can. It's just that it's still a headache. Well, you can, but there's still a ton of pain.

Dave Jones: Yeah, there's still a ton of pain involved, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right, I think that requires you to basically write super clean code from the beginning anyways.

Dave Jones: Super clean code. Well, try getting two pinouts the same on two different ARM chips from two different manufacturers.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd still have to remap everything.

Dave Jones: I mean, you might still have to re-spin your board.

Chris Gammell: Well, but I mean, that's not as big a deal from the code perspective, right? Because like if you have, you know, you could have a pin mapping table that just, as long as your layout's fine, you can then shuffle your pins there. But you need to make sure you have all the same peripherals then, right? That's kind of the tough part.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Chris Gammell: It's like, oh, this chip only has six ADCs instead of eight, and I was using seven.

Dave Jones: They're 10-bit instead of 12-bit, and oh, they don't have the same noise performance, and oh, the same library doesn't work. Right. I've got to use another library. Oh, this new library's buggy.

Chris Gammell: Right. It's not quite a redesign, but it's not fun.

Dave Jones: It's not something you want to do. Right. It's not something you can re-spin in a week, you know, usually. Right, definitely not. It's a lot of pain.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, hmm.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of code, there was another article that is not even close to new. Right. In fact, if you click on the site, you're like, oh, yeah, that's not new. But I was reading about how Go, so Go turned six, I think, the Google-based language that was apparently supposed to be, you know, the successor to... I've never heard of it, I don't think. Oh, no? Okay. So, it's like, it's supposed to be, let's say, successor to C, and you know, there's a bunch that talk about that kind of thing. There's Go, and that can get pretty low level, and then...

Dave Jones: Who the hell uses Go?

Chris Gammell: You know, so I've seen a couple projects. So, there's a project called the GoBot, which is kind of like a high... So, the robot's written in Go, but they still need to run on, like, higher-end stuff, like BeagleBones and stuff like that. But those things are so cheap anyways, that it's not as big a deal, you know, when you think about it? You know, like, throwing a $40, $50 board in there, not a big deal. And then, that really makes it accessible for people that are coming from the software world, especially if you already know Go from the higher-level stuff, right?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: What I didn't know is that D is a programming language, apparently. Did you know... What? Yeah, D. No. Yeah, and that's supposed to... That's another one that's supposed to be a successor for C. And then, of course, C++ is still...

Dave Jones: Sorry, I'm just rolling my eyes now. You know, you can... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, and, I mean, we've talked about this before with, you know, C is still kind of reigns supreme in the low end, the low side of things. And I'm sure that Alicia and Chris could come on here and tell us a lot more about that than we would ever be able to speak about with any authority. Where was I going with that? So, C is still around, and it's still always going to be around. Not always going to be, but it's, you know, there's... It's like there... It doesn't... Not like a language dies, it just becomes less used, you know, because there's still Fortran stuff around. There's still Pascal stuff around.

Dave Jones: What's your point?

Chris Gammell: What is my point? The thing that was interesting in this article that was not related to this at all is that Go is now compiled in Go, right? So, Go was first written in C in order to try and replicate a lot of the functionality and get it down to that low level.

Dave Jones: Sounds very forth-like to me. Well, every language has this, right?

Chris Gammell: Eventually, you have to bootstrap any language. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I didn't get how that's done. And so, there's this article from Rayno.org. And it looks like a text document, because it basically is. And it talks about how to do it. It talks about how to basically start from the low level. And, you know, you write stuff in hex, and you're doing machine code, and you basically make a couple small commands. And then, you know, you compile that. And then, you know, then you have these commands. And then you can write a compiler, a small compiler. And then you write a bigger compiler. And it's just like, holy crap. I mean, like, this is kind of the level where I think about people coming into the field, myself included, where I'm never going to have to do this. No one has to do this.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no, no, no. But understanding stuff. It's like knowing how chips are made. You know, it's like you just don't need to know it, really.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, exactly. Or, yeah, you're not caring about, like, the implant doping on a mic, on a fat. No, no, exactly. On your Intel i7, right? No, that's right. On a single fat. But, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, you're right. And it's all about levels of abstraction. But, like, at some point, someone has to know this stuff, right? If you ever want to make a better. Of course. A better language or a better system, there still has to be that gray beard or someone who's like, well, I know how to get all the way to the bottom. And this is kind of one way to learn about it. And, you know, there's benefits to knowing how to go from the bottom up, too, because you might. Like, so the best firmware engineer I've ever worked with, he would just, like, you know. He would be disassembling everything and he'd be like, nope, didn't like what the compiler did here. Right. You know, he was, you know, a bit anal about it. But he got stuff running super fast because he could then go in and optimize and just rip out what the compiler's doing. Or even rewrite the C in order to get the compiler to do what he actually wanted in assembly. You know, because he knew that would be faster. And, you know, getting to that point is you need to know that low-level stuff. So I'm not saying I'm going to do it, but I thought maybe some of our listening audience might like it.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So good luck, folks. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Sorry, my care factor is almost zero. I get it. For these new languages.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, and that's the thing. I think one of the problems is it kind of contributes to the not – I don't know if we have this as much in hardware, but, like, the not made here syndrome. Do you know that one?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So that happens a lot of software companies and it's like, well, why should we buy an off-the-shelf thing when we can just build it ourself? And that can be problematic. You know, it's usually because engineers like a challenge and they want to build their own thing even though – Right. Of course. You never really know all of the problems until you start building something. So that's kind of one of the ideas there. So things I learned from this is that D is a programming language. It's not very popular. You think? Yeah.

Dave Jones: God.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There was another article that I'll link it. It was a comparison of Go, Rust, and D as the potential successors for C. It was on Quora, I believe.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but C in what area?

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, that's the problem.

Dave Jones: You know, not in our embedded world. No, it's just not going to happen.

Chris Gammell: No, that's what they were saying. And it was that. I mean, like –

Dave Jones: Oh.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Come on. I don't have any – You know it's not going to happen.

Chris Gammell: I know it's probably not going to happen. There will be some people that do it. But, like, that's kind of the thing. Like, all of these things have – they're all about – they're not all about, but they're usually about groundswell, right? You know, it'll start where someone will say, oh, well, no way. And then eventually, you know, because of something about it or the time is right, you know, it's the right tool for the job for one certain thing, and that one certain thing becomes really important. Like, if there was a language that allowed – you know, say the ESP8266 was the chip from now on forever, right? Right. And there was some new language that –

Dave Jones: That worked with it and you had to use it. Yeah. Right. Then maybe that would be it. Well, that's the thing. It always comes down to the have to use it kind of thing. Like, if you want to learn embedded programming and you want to get a job as an embedded programmer, you need to know C. That has to be the thing. There's no point learning Go or D.

Chris Gammell: Well, maybe eventually, but you should probably also know C, right? If you're just doing the one thing, that's going to be rough.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's a critical mass thing, you know? It's like –

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but that's not always going to be true, you know, Dave? I mean, like, that's – like, we could say that, but it's – and it's probably true in the short term, but it's probably not true forever.

Dave Jones: Well, no. You'd be foolish to say it's true for the next hundred years, you know, but – Right.

Chris Gammell: So, at some point, some other language would have to come up and replace it, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We're probably not going back to machine – just, you know, handwritten assembly and machine code. Right. Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: Oh, God. I don't know. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: I think there is benefits –

Dave Jones: Can we stop talking about programming languages? Sorry.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: No interest in them, really.

Chris Gammell: Well, it was kind of related, though, too, because – so, there was a new – I didn't actually put it on the list, but there's a new milling – board milling machine out there, and I totally forget the name of it. It's a new Kickstarter out about it.

Dave Jones: I'm sorry. Can I yawn? Sorry to the people who are running this. I'm sure it's a good Kickstarter, but you're like – yeah. They're like 3D printer Kickstarters now.

Speaker ?: Yeah, oh, it's called – yeah.

Dave Jones: Like, there's just so many of them.

Chris Gammell: So, it's Prometheus is the name of it. There's a Kickstarter about it, that kind of thing.

Dave Jones: And I'm like – And what's their angle?

Chris Gammell: It's a board milling machine.

Dave Jones: It's a board milling machine? Yes. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Does it have any novel features? Not really. Or is it just another board milling machine? Well, no, the reason it's relevant – Is it low cost?

Dave Jones: Is it modular? Is it – I don't know. Could it do double layer boards? You know? What's the – sell it to me.

Chris Gammell: I can't. Well, that's the point. I mean, like – But the thing that was the most interesting about it is that – so, they're making this board-making machine. Yeah. Which is cool. But the thing that was most interesting to me is that they're attaching and maybe mandating – I'm not sure about the mandating – but, like, in the video, they show that they wrote their own layout tool for it. Like, it's like a click and drag. No. Fail. I'm sorry. Well, no. And that's the point. That's what I'm saying.

Dave Jones: Without even having – like, my hat's off to them. Fantastic work. Very impressive. But, no. Nobody wants to use a custom layout tool to do their board so that they can have it made on this. When they'll just have to go read – lay out the board in some other package to get it made. Right. No. Right. No.

Chris Gammell: That's what I mean. Like, yeah. I mean, like, that's a thing where it's, like, a custom-made tool that might seem okay in the short term.

Dave Jones: Oh, they're partnering with Upverter. They're partnering with Upverter.

Chris Gammell: It's not Upverter, though. That's the thing. It's a different –

Dave Jones: Yeah, but they're there. It's a big – Well, then why have they got Upverter on the – they've got Zippy Robotics plus Upverter announcing our partnership.

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Dave Jones: Blah, blah, blah. What? So they're using Upverter.

Chris Gammell: It didn't look like – no, it's Zippy PCB, it's called.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but if you scroll down. I know what you're talking about, Dave.

Chris Gammell: I'm just saying that it's not showing the video. That's all I know, so.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Oh, right. I haven't watched the video. Sorry. Anyway, announcing our partnership.

Chris Gammell: So it looks like a cool little machine, but that's the part where it's like – that's the part that doesn't make sense to me. And maybe I'm wrong and I'm willing to be corrected, but whatever. Like, the machine looks really nice. But, you know, that feels like that not made here kind of thing where it's like, oh, well, we also need to make the –

Dave Jones: And we also have to write our own, yeah, like –

Chris Gammell: Yeah, CAD package. And like –

Dave Jones: CAD package from scratch. And there's just so many of them. Like, just, like, don't. My advice to anyone who wants to do something like this, no, partner up. Like, I think they're smart to partner with Upverter.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, and if that was going to be it, that would be good, yeah. I mean, they have a good tool. That would be good. We've had them on the show, right? Yeah, they're doing fine. Right.

Dave Jones: So, you know, partner with somebody else who's done that. Like, don't waste your time and effort writing your own CAD tool. It's just – no.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Jeez.

Chris Gammell: Well, I feel like it's always one of those things where it's like, you know, I don't know about you, but I hear this a lot where someone's like, oh, no, no, that's easy. You know, you hear an engineer say that and you're like, oh.

Dave Jones: Hang on. Yeah, look, here it is. Sorry. Sorry. We recommend Upverter as the professional EDA tool of choice for people using Prometheus. Like –

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: So why – yeah. Like, just – don't worry about your own tool. Maybe that was after the video was made. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. It seems like a new thing, maybe. But – hmm. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: I was still – I was talking to a friend over the week. So I got to try the other mil and stuff like that too. And I actually – I really like the other mil. Like, this one looks good as well. This says it can do 7 mil. I don't believe that until I see it. But if it can, then that's pretty good. But still not as good as a –

Dave Jones: No, as a professionally made board.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No.

Dave Jones: I can etch my own boards with 7,000. Easy. Right. So, you know, like –

Chris Gammell: Well, and that's what I was saying to my friend. I was like, I wonder if we're – I mean, okay. We've obviously had this conversation a lot about, yeah, it's worth it to send it out and just get it made pro. But I wonder if there's – because there is a reason to have, you know, something like this. I mean, like, the benefits of having a quick turn board kind of thing like this are really great. I mean, like, it's really nice to be able to – Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. You know, we both know that. We've both done quick turnaround and stuff like that. And it's better than paying –

Dave Jones: But you've got to have the need for it. You've got to have the need.

Chris Gammell: Right. And – But what I was wondering is if there's a place in the market for some kind of acid etching solution that is not super crazy expensive or dangerous.

Dave Jones: I think there is probably – yeah, I think there's probably a niche thing out there for a really innovative, polished, you know, professional way to make your own boards chemically and make it less messy and fussy for people. I don't know what that approach would be. But, you know, I –

Chris Gammell: Yeah, something like an inkjet style maybe where it's spraying down acid or something. I mean, the problem is with acid, it's just – I mean, it's an acid. Yeah. I don't know. It's going to eat the container too.

Dave Jones: Yeah, there's some magic – yeah, there's some magic box. You just pour the chemicals in and it does its magic and you feed in the – you know, I don't know. But, you know, somebody clever could come up with something there and have a, you know, a nice niche little business there selling quick turn chemically etched boards.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and that might – because, I mean, that's the main thing. So, we were discussing – so, we were discussing the 10 mil limit that's on other mil. Other mil. And, you know, that's – for a lot of boards, that's great. But, like, any of the new footprints, it's like, no, I mean, like, footprints aren't getting bigger. So, you at least need to have a breakout then. So, unless – the other option there is if, you know, if more chip companies start just attaching samples to breakout boards, you know, that would be one way. And I'd like to see that. But, you know, as we talked about earlier in the show, it's not like they're looking to spend more money on samples for – so, I don't know.

Dave Jones: The issue with milling machines is that they're not actually that quick and they're messy, they're noisy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, like – and they don't produce the same board, you know, like because they're a – you know, they don't etch away all the dead copper. You know, it's like –

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. Right, right.

Dave Jones: You know, it's just not quite the same board as you would get with a, you know, professionally – well, even like a head etched one. You know, I used to make my own double-sided boards, you know, and it wasn't that hard. You know, I'd expose both sides of the PCB. All you've got to do is – it's easy, trivial to line up the two masks for each side, the two photo masks, and then put it between – wedge it between some glass and then expose one side, expose the other, and etch it. And bingo, you've got this, you know, 8-8 thou easily professionally etched board. All you've got to do is actually drill the holes in it.

Chris Gammell: Right. That's it. And then attach if you've drilled the holes. If you're doing vias, right?

Dave Jones: If you're doing vias and things like that, yeah. That could be a bit harder, you know. Like, especially if a via was under a chip, you know, you would have to, like, solder the via first through and then put the chip on it.

Speaker ?: Yeah, right, right.

Dave Jones: For sure. Kind of thing, you know. So, yeah. But still, you know, I – yeah. I think I would prefer that. I would prefer to have a proper chemically etched homemade board than a milled board.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Well, and if you're doing something like a – if you're doing something like a inkjet style, you also, in theory, would be able to lay down a layer of solder mask at the end, which is also just as critical for a lot of boards and stuff, so.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes. That'd be nice. Like, for somebody to somehow automate and or make that process easy, I think, you know, I would buy one. Whereas I don't know if I would buy a milling machine. A, you know, a PCB miller. I'm not sure if I would. Noisy, messy. I don't want – you know. I don't want that in my nice, clean office slash lab here, you know.

Chris Gammell: I was a total idiot. What? My friend was helping me mill a board on another mill, and then there was a bunch of FR1 plus copper dust on top of it, and the back thing was on, and I blew into the thing, and it all just came right back out of my face.

Dave Jones: Oh!

Chris Gammell: She's like, oh, I'm so stupid. Rip my contacts out real fast and flush my eyes out. I was fine. Oh, my God. I thought I was going to go blind. Oh, man. Such an idiot. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So there you go. That's our show. We're 15 minutes over.

Chris Gammell: Indeed. All right. Well, there's a lot of other links on the subreddit. You can check them out there. There is. We will be discussing whether or not we do – keep an eye out. We may do a call-in show next week. We'll see. We might. It's coming up on the holiday. We might. Who knows? That could be kind of dicey. But it might work.

Dave Jones: Right. All right. I'm going back to finish my live bench. Bench.

Chris Gammell: And then registering a company in Wyoming.

Dave Jones: And register a company in Wyoming and release my pre-done video. I actually have a Fundamentals Friday pre-done. I've had it for a week. Wow. Those who are on Patreon have already seen it. Wow. And I will release that tomorrow. Yeah. This week has been like a sort of a – like do other things than make videos week kind of thing. So, yep. Getting stuff done.

Chris Gammell: Nice.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right, man. See you next week.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time. Bye.

Speaker ?: Outro Music