#276 – Eating An Elephant

Chris Gammell: This is the F-Hour Podcast, recorded December 2nd, 2015. Episode 276, Eating an Elephant. Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Michael: And this is Michael with Programming Electronics Academy.

Chris Gammell: And this is Dan from Rheingold Heavy. Welcome, guys. This is my usual hangout group with these two guys. But Dave could make it tonight, and I wanted to talk about some awesome stuff like getting started in electronics, because that's actually something that Dave and I don't really talk about that much. So, welcome. Michael, whoops, geez. Just knocked a bunch of crap off my desk. Michael, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself to start with, and then, Dan, you can go after that.

Michael: All right. Well, first off, hey, I'm honored to be on the show. I've actually been listening to Amp Hour since, like, episode one. Whoa. Sorry. Yep. I know. No kidding. But, no, I've really enjoyed listening. So, my name's Michael. Yeah, give me a second here, Chris. I'm trying to...

Chris Gammell: Michael lives in my area, actually, as weird as that is. Michael lives nearby.

Michael: Yes, I know. That's why it was funny listening to the show. I'm like, because I just found it randomly on iTunes, and I'm listening. I'm like, whoa, this guy's from Cleveland? That's nuts.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Michael: So, and then, you know, I saw that you guys had the electronics meetup, so that was kind of fun to meet you up there, too. But, yeah, so my name's Mike, and I've run a website online where I teach people about learning Arduino.

Chris Gammell: Right. And you used to run a podcast as well. That's the... I did. I was surprised. I didn't know about that for a little while, so...

Michael: Yes, it was the Open Source Hardware Group website. That used to be the name of the company I was running until I just rebranded here recently. So, yeah. And so that's kind of what my angle is. I've been messing around with electronics for about a little bit over a decade, so...

Dave Jones: Awesome. Dan, how about you? Dan from Rheingold Heavy, and I, too, have been listening to the Amp Hour for seemingly ages and ages now. Too long, right. Yeah, for too long, exactly. I've been working and playing with electronics now for probably close to probably 15 years, maybe a little bit longer than that. I really got started when I was working down in Silicon Valley in IT, and you'd go into all the electronics shops, and you'd see the guys that were going through the resistor bins and going through the capacitor bins. And I really wanted to know what it was that they were doing with that stuff. And honestly, there was a little bit of envy in there. Like, I just work in IT, and those are the real technologists. You know, those are the guys that are working down on the bare metal. And I really, you know, was a little envious of that. I wanted to be that guy. So I started trying to teach myself as best I could, which involved getting, you know, as many books out of the library as I could and taking some classes out of the community college at Mission College down there in Santa Clara. But it never really clicked at the beginning. It was a struggle to really teach that stuff to myself, especially since I was working full time at the time. But, you know, you slowly work at it and work at it, and you set it down for a couple months or, in some cases, a couple of years. Yep. And you pick it back up because you read something somewhere and something starts to click. And that's how I sort of got to the point where I am now, where I am self-employed, making circuit boards and writing educational electronics content.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And people may remember Dan from – Dan was also on Embedded a while back. Yep. So that was a good show as well.

Dave Jones: And – You may have also seen me taking the trash out, apparently, at the Hackaday Supercon a couple of weekends ago.

Chris Gammell: Dan also works with me part-time on parts I own, stuff like that. So I get to hang out with him a lot. And, yeah, he was running around with a lot of trash at the Superconference. So, yeah. So what I wanted to talk about today, though – so Michael has a course about getting started with Arduino. Dan does a bunch of great tutorials about I2C and Spy and a bunch of boards that are around that and other educational-type boards. Obviously, I run contextual electronics, kind of all – we're kind of all in the same space. And that's why we hang out in the first place. We kind of have regular online meetings kind of just talking about the space. And the thing that I – as mentioned before the show is that it's been a – you know, you heard these guys say 10, 15 years apiece as well. But, you know, it's been a while since all of us have kind of been right at the beginning. But what we do have is we get to see how people we're teaching or working with or who are going through our tutorials, you know, what they're struggling with. And then, you know, there's always just the rediscovery, you know, jumping into a new topic. There's always that kind of stuff as well. So, I mean, Michael, I always think of the Arduino kind of as a launch point for a lot of that stuff in the first place. I mean, what are some of the early issues you see when people are getting started? I mean, are they just showing up with I have no idea about electronics or where are people coming in?

Michael: Right. No, that's a great question because I know like Arduino is really becoming a de facto entry point for, you know, people getting into electronics in a lot of cases. And like you were saying, it's like that curse of knowledge that you get. You've – at some point you just kind of know stuff and you forget, like you were saying, how difficult it was to kind of get a handle on that information. So, to be honest, and this is maybe a little off the wall, but I think a lot of times when you're coming into it, just having the right mindset about approaching something as ginormous as a field of electronics, it can be pretty darn intimidating. So, it's like kind of working through that intimidation and being like, you know what, can I really even get into this in the first place or is this just above me, period? Because I think some people or a lot of people, myself included, you might have like preconceived notions about, you know, am I a math person or am I a programming person or am I – you know, they just – for whatever reason, they have these thoughts, beliefs that, yeah, maybe this is a little too – I don't know, hard science kind of thing for me. But – so, I think just working past some of those issues is something that I see a lot of students have to do.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No, I've seen that as well and it feels like that's kind of the magical thing when people get to the point where they're like, oh, so I could just go try it. You know, it's just – yeah. Right. That is kind of the – it is a lot of mindset kind of stuff.

Michael: Yeah. I mean, it's – yeah, like celebrating failure basically. I mean, you can't – like if you approach any type of project, especially a beginner project with some expectation that, you know, things are going to actually go right, you know, you're off in left field because it so rarely goes right. You know, it's just that consistent determination of like, you know what, I'm going to see this through even though this is so freaking hard I want to smash my head against the wall kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. I mean, and Dan, you said you were coming from IT as well. I've seen some people come in from IT and I'm not sure – I don't think it's specific to the profession, but I see a lot of people for my course and, you know, just people that are getting started that want to jump into it that are coming from IT. Is there mindset stuff around that or is there anything – or is it more just everybody coming from everywhere?

Dave Jones: Well, my experience in IT, especially there in the last few years of my work in that field, didn't even really involve technology anymore. It was more, you know, negotiating cell phone contracts and managing, you know, a storage array network. You're not actually doing any engineering anymore. Or you're managing stuff that was designed at Dell and you spent, you know, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase it. But they put a lot of effort into the interfaces and into the designs. And honestly, electronics has gotten to the point now that in IT, you know, the dirty little secret is that it doesn't really break all that often anymore. Of course, when it does break, it breaks spectacularly. Silver rooms are fire again. But, you know, yeah, exactly. You get the fire axe failures, you know, where the way something breaks is because somebody went crazy and drove a fire axe into the face of your rack. So, from my part, the thing that I grew frustrated with was that there wasn't any real technology anymore. It was helping users uninstall adware from their laptops and, you know, like I said, negotiating cell phone contracts. But that's not engineering anymore. You know, that's not designing networks. That's not building out data centers. That was the stuff I really, really enjoyed. I think there's also a little bit of, you know, that sense of you get to touch technology, but you don't get to build with it. But if you're working in IT, that I consider IT to be exclusive from software development. So, if I'm in IT, I'm supporting the systems that the software developers are using. But I'm not particularly writing any code myself. Right. Yeah. Right.

Michael: And I guess I think, like, too, IT is such a big field. I imagine there's a whole – it just kind of matters where you fall in there, I would think.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And I remember, you know, along the way, there were some people that, you know, told me that I should specialize in specific areas like systems management. You know, I should be the guy that knows how to install software remotely across a network. And the idea of being that specialized never really appealed to me. I wanted to be more of the generalist of being able to see the whole picture about what was going on in the enterprise.

Chris Gammell: Well, there's interesting parallels now, too, as well. I mean, like, because it is interesting how electronics is moving not to that same level of hands-off kind of thing. But, you know, it is possible to jump in with not necessarily an Arduino, but maybe like a Raspberry Pi, right? So it can – you can get onto that, you can be in Linux, you can be playing with this piece of electronics, and it can feel like you're doing that kind of thing. But it's still pretty high level. And then it feels like the part that would be scary for me coming down through those layers of abstraction would be, you know, getting to the actual hardware, flipping the bits, you know, building a board to attach onto it, that kind of thing. That feels like that would be like a dead stop for me, you know, like if I was – if it was just living in the software world, got this piece of hardware, just like, okay, now I'm at the physical layer. Now what next, you know?

Dave Jones: Oh, but that's the exciting stuff, man. That's flipping the bits. Oh, I agree. I mean, yeah. And working with registers, I mean, that's where the black magic happens. That's where, you know, where I bring the board that I had, you know, designed and submitted to Oshpark, and I brought that into my coworkers and showed them what I'd built that weekend. And their eyes are wide open. Like, you can – a person can just do such a thing? Like, yeah. Like, we're in the 21st century now. Some things actually do exist in the future now that are cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, that's like what Michael was talking about, too, you know, like just the mindset of, yes, you can do this stuff. You know, that is – so that's a big hurdle regardless of where you're coming from.

Michael: Yeah. And, you know, and kind of along that line, too, is kind of along the mindset thing. And you've mentioned it before on the show, Chris, but the expectation now for what you can do is such a high bar. So, for example, I used to teach a – or about a year ago, I was teaching a volunteer program to kids and just electronic stuff, right? And so, you know, it would – I kind of opened up the class with, okay, what do you guys want to build, you know, for like the coming months? And it would be like, oh, I want to make an iPhone. So do I. So do I, kids. That's for sure. I'm like, oh, right. You know, and it's like, yes, you know, you can do some really amazing stuff.

Chris Gammell: I imagine it even better being like, well, here's your ticket to Shenzhen. And we got you a great position in a – Right.

Michael: But it's – so, you know, you can do a lot of amazing things. And if you want to get down into those details, those – the registers and everything, it's like, you know, I don't know. It's an interesting way to go.

Dave Jones: Do any of the people that sign up for your course, do they have that sort of experience already? Do you get most people that are coming in with that sort of like, I've already dabbled in Arduino, but now I want to become the full-on addict?

Michael: Right. Actually, a lot of people – I get a huge range of people who come in. But a lot of people are actually like familiar with basic. Oh, yeah. And so they're trying to kind of pick up and understand Arduino a little bit. So I get that. I actually get a lot of really experienced programmers who are just trying to learn the physical side of it, basically. You know, kind of along the lines you were talking, Dan.

Chris Gammell: Well, let's talk about that. I mean, so, okay. So someone coming in might be 10, 15 years of doing software stuff. And the hardware, you know, putting a blinky strip on something or controlling a relay for, you know, the house, something like that. That feels, you know, there's enough draw there. And Arduino seems like the platform there. So is it – so for both of you, I mean, is it start with a project or is it start right to the board and start building a board? Like where do you always tell people to go?

Dave Jones: Well, you know, the hardest thing I always found when I was first learning electronics was that everything was presented to me, at least back then, in the form of theory. You know, you pick up a book on electronics and it was – here's Ohm's Law, you know, and then you go straight from Ohm's Law to – Right, right, RC Circuits. And you're like, okay. Chapter one of our electronics. Okay. Yeah. So now I know what susceptance is, but I still haven't plugged anything into a breadboard. And Moe's, man, Moe's. So, yeah, exactly. Absolutely. I – if I'm talking to somebody that's interested in this stuff, my recommendation to them is to find a sort of sandbox kit. Not something that – something that has a lot of variation and that has a lot of options, but still provides you with a guided path. So that you are – because you don't know what kind of problems you can solve until you understand what your tools can do. Yeah. You know?

Chris Gammell: So, recommendations on any specific ones or –

Dave Jones: Well, of course, the I2C and SBI education sheet. Of course, of course.

Chris Gammell: Well, seriously, though, like would that be something where you'd think someone would be like, oh, well, I'm just going to go learn a protocol or is it there's something before that for your stuff?

Dave Jones: For my part, I designed that first product, the I2C and SBI shield, specifically because I didn't want to cover the same basic electronics knowledge that everybody else was covering. You know, Michael is doing a fantastic job of doing that already. Why should I bother trying to compete in that space? That doesn't do me any good. It doesn't do Michael any good. But I wanted to explore the more sort of intermediate to advanced topics and not just on the surface, but get into them in greater detail. But again, it's sort of a tricky business, particularly for me, because you wind up being in this sort of area that if you're going to become an embedded designer or an embedded engineer, you're going to need to know how to analyze an I2C or SBI signal trace. But if you are just building your art installation for Burning Man, you just need to know how to use the library and you could frankly care less about what the clock signal is.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. So kind of like the diving down through the abstraction. Sometimes you don't need to, right? Sometimes it's, yeah, just use what's out there, buy a thing off the shelf. I know that was one of my big things where it's like, oh, I want to learn FPGAs, but I guess I got to build an FPGA board first. It's like, whoa, Chris. You know, because then you'll be like eight months down the line, you'll make no progress. And that whole time I should have been working on flipping a single bit in the software first and getting that small win and then kind of moving on. I mean, like, Michael, is that the, I mean, is it small wins? Is that the thing for you?

Michael: Yeah. I mean, I see, like, for me, the appeal is it's like I just want to know all things in the universe. Oh, okay. I'm really, I'm just, what I'm saying is like, I'm just really interested in a lot of those details. So, like, and I think a lot of people out there, too, are interested in those details. They, you know, they use the library and they can, you know, get the library running and understand the functions and, or they, maybe they kind of understand the functions. And, but it's like, I think almost everybody who does it at some level are like, well, what's down below that, that veil? You know, what's, what's really going on here? And so I think, you know, that more specific information really appeals to that desire that people have to really fully kind of understand how things are going. But it's kind of like you said, Chris, there's just so much, there is, I mean, there's just so much knowledge out there. At some point, you just have to kind of choose what you're going to focus on. And if you can do that, then you can really get deep. And before long, you know, you've, you know, you can, before long of like getting deep and getting specific on a topic, you find that you know a lot more about it than many other people who, who decided just to kind of, you know, you know, go with the library. Yeah, right. You know, do something else.

Chris Gammell: Spending the time and learning what's under the hood, that kind of thing. You know, I, I have a, I have like a anecdote about, I remember the first, you know, like before I was in the whole, you know, meeting people at hackerspace and stuff like that. Well, the first time I went to a hackerspace ever, I remember meeting someone, maybe I've mentioned on the show before, but I remember meeting someone and they had a 3D print, they had a cupcake, like one of the early maker bots. And they're like, I made this. I'm like, holy crap, you designed that whole thing. You did it. And then night went on a couple of beers later. And I was, and then someone mentioned like, no, no, it's a kit. And I'm like, oh, it's a kit. I can't believe they misrepresented themselves. But then a couple of years and, and some experience later, it's like, yeah, no, like that's still a big deal. Like that, like getting to that point of getting that kit working or getting, you know, like even starting from the point of a kit, like that not only gives you the experience, it gives you the, the finished, you know, like that, that is the place to start. And, and I kind of wish more people would have pushed that on me instead of me looking at it and being like, oh, I have to learn everything first before I can do anything. It's like, no, sometimes you can just go buy a kit and get started. And, and then you figure out what your struggles are.

Dave Jones: So, uh, I know I've, I've talked with you, Chris, that one of the things that, that I am particularly interested in is, is, uh, is building, uh, systems for men, for, for measuring, uh, scientific data in the oceans. Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yep.

Dave Jones: And, and I don't, where do you get started learning that sort of stuff?

Chris Gammell: I think you'd, you know, peel a resistor off like a reel and then you just drop it in the ocean. And see what happens.

Dave Jones: What next? Yeah. And come back three months later and see how corrupted it is. Uh, but you know, and I was, and I've been sort of tinkering this over. This was actually my, that was my, uh, my lead in, into electronics in the first place was wanting to build some sort of autonomous ocean going sensing thing. Yeah. That you could just drop in the water. It would drop underwater, sense a bunch of stuff, come back to the surface and blast that information. Of course, I wanted to do that in like 1998. And you wanted to, you wanted it to catch a tuna for you too.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Of course. Is that, was that? I mean, if you're going to be doing electronics in the ocean, you should get fresh sushi out of it. Yes. Right. Right. Yes. Um, so I, so, you know, this idea, this niggling desire has never gone away. And then I ran across the open ROV and I thought, well, what's the point in me trying to figure out how to do this stuff in a vacuum when there's a community of people out there that are already actively engaged in figuring this stuff out for themselves. Yes. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and especially if there's a kit, then I can build the kit. I can learn from the kit. And then I can, again, you know, I can, I can figure out what I can solve based on the tools that I've now learned how to use.

Chris Gammell: There was a, there was a best of post today on Reddit and it was talking about like what, what it was like before the internet. And it was talking about, oh, well, you know, if you, the person was mentioning like if, if your family had a medical question, it was like, well, your uncle is a doctor. We'll have to wait till we see him so we can ask him or we'll have to call him, that kind of thing. And you think about it now and it's like, no, no, no. Why would you wait? You know, you just go type it in. But the same kind of thing where now, not only do you have access to that, you have these super concentrated, like the open ROV, like there's a community there, you know, like that. And, and then there's people that have very recently started dropping electronics into the water and, and like, yeah, you can go ask them the same questions. And, and just like the, the amazing, how, how different it is from 10 years ago kind of thing. Or, well, what was it? I guess 17 years ago for 98, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, you know, one of the, the, one of the, the classes I took out at mission college was, uh, the electronics calculations class. And I thought, oh man, we're really going to get into it now. We're going to be, we're going to be into the, the nitty gritty of, of all these different formulas that I've been seeing. And, uh, and I got into the class and the teacher literally wrote the keystrokes for your calculator on the whiteboard. He would like draw a little box and then put the number in it and then draw another little box and put a number in it and then draw a little box and put the plus sign in it. And it, it was the most stunningly boring class I've ever taken. Uh, and, and coincidentally the only class I ever got a hundred percent in, because how could you not pass that class with a hundred percent? Right. Right. Um, but that's not that, in my opinion, that's not how you learn this sort of stuff. You know, you've got to, you've got to start with a small window. Do something first.

Michael: Yeah, I agree. Just, uh, if you can just start doing something, um, kind of get over that, I don't know, that initial fear of like, yep, this is just too much for me and just try something. And you know what, a kit, you know, maybe some people would frown upon a kit, but man, a kit, I think a lot of people started a kit. I mean, I've done plenty of kits. I really kind of enjoy them. Um, so I think you're right there too, Chris. Yeah, no.

Chris Gammell: And I think, I think with your stuff, so I've seen Michael's course obviously, but the, um, the thing that I actually like about yours is, it's not just an exercise, right? So it could just be a servo, but you actually do stuff around it where it's kind of more, uh, what's the one you have like a slot machine or something? Like you have an overlay for stuff.

Michael: Right. Yeah. And it's really just, so, cause, and you're, I mean, you're big on this too, Chris, but it's like, you can't, I feel like, I feel like you really can't teach anybody anything. People, people can't be taught. They have to learn for themselves. Ooh. There's a strong assertion. For someone that's making his living, uh, teaching people. Well, I know, but what I'm, what I'm saying is like, what I'm saying is the student, the student is really got to, they've got to take the onus that the student has to say, I mean, they could be presented the very best information in the world, but to really integrate that information into you, you know, to have it like in your brain and to be able to use it on a practical level, you have to be able to use it. You have to, you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to do more than like score some answer on a quiz. You know, that it's not, that's not what this is about. This is about like, okay, so I've learned, I've learned some information, but can I actually apply it? And so, um, I, I mean, to me, that's what is, uh, that's kind of where I'm, what I'm talking about. So all the, so I focus a lot on like challenges, you know, so you have a concept and then you just, you do a practical example to kind of force and stretch yourself to, to really make sure that you, do I actually understand it? I mean, and the measure is, can I, can I do this? If I can't do it, then you know what, back to the, back to the drawing board. Cause I didn't, I didn't quite fully understand it.

Dave Jones: Do you have a specific structure for your, for your course, Michael? Like what's, what's the entry point? What's the first thing somebody does when they, when they, when they take your course? Um, oh, that's a good question.

Michael: Okay. So I, so I actually, I kind of start and I'm actually in the, I'm in the process of reshooting a lot of the course right now. I'm kind of coming up with the second edition, but, um, and, and I've, I've been doing the course for about three years. So I've put a lot of thought into how students move through the course and where people are successful. A lot of the questions have come up. So I actually start the course right now with, uh, talking about mindset a little bit and talking about that. You know what this, there's nothing easy about it. There's nothing necessarily simple about it. It's, um, it's really what, what, what approach are you going to take when something's not working right? Oh, that's good.

Chris Gammell: And I just, you know, and that's, or is it kind of pretty in depth?

Michael: No, I mean, that's, that's kind of the synopsis. It's basically like, Hey, this is, this isn't easy. You know what I mean? But that doesn't mean that you can't do this. It doesn't mean that, um, so I basically, I try to bring, at some point people are getting into electronics for a reason, right? They, they sign up for the course for a reason. And maybe they had some like really cool project in mind, right? And they want to build it, or maybe they want to help somebody out with some, something. And they have this thought in mind. And when they first get in, that thought is all golden and shiny and like kind of exciting. But then as those, you know, as kind of the difficulties pile on maybe, and, and maybe they lose sight of the reason why they got into it. So I just try to help people. Hey, remember why you actually got into this? Um, because, and I don't know about you guys, but I call it dusty book syndrome. Like I've got all these things that I want to learn about. I buy the book, you know, and then there it sits on my shelf. It collects dust. I pull it off like, you know, a year later and I'm like, I open it up. I'm like, oh, this book is sweet. I can't wait to start reading this. And then it's like, you know, it's, you know, where your priorities are and stuff, all that kind of thing. So I try to get people away from the dusty book syndrome. I, you know, I try to like really motivate people to, to do it. So I have these little motivational things throughout the course to, you know, make, make sure I'm bringing people back. But I think that doesn't totally answer your question, Dan. That is kind of where I start though with the mindset. Cause I personally think it's pretty important, but.

Chris Gammell: So it sounds like a momentum thing almost too. Like you need to just kind of just keep making small bits of progress, that kind of thing.

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. And that's what I think is good about the challenges. I try, I try not to make them too difficult, but I also force people. It's not like a regurgitation of the lesson. Usually it's usually you have to like think a little, you know, you got to think on your own a bit. So, but.

Dave Jones: Sorry, that's the, that's the difference between, uh, between putting a course together and writing a tutorial. If you're writing a tutorial, you're putting a recipe together and you're telling somebody how to get from point A to point B. Uh, but if you're, if you're putting a course together, you have to demand of the person that's taking the course that they put the things that they're learning to practical use for themselves. That is a very good distinction, Dan. Thank you. Thank you. I just came up with it. Copyrighted. All right. There we go. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, okay. So let's talk about, let's talk about some more of the, the practical and digging into that kind of stuff. I mean, so, um, you know, Dan, you had mentioned starting with Ohm's law. Uh, yes or no?

Dave Jones: Is that absolutely. You should start with Ohm's law. You absolutely. Well, I mean, you got to start with, with blinking an led or something like that, but you can't go more than two or three steps into electronics without knowing Ohm's law. You just can't because the, you know, that's like trying to, trying to learn how to speak without, you know, knowing how to, you know, ask where the food is, where the beer is and where the restroom is. That's right. You know? Yes. You got, you got to know these sort of basic things before you can branch out to doing anything, you know, of, of any particular snazzy interest. You've got to understand, you know, voltage and current and resistance. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But so how do you, okay. So, you know, we were talking about motivation. We're talking about momentum here. How, okay. So maybe someone's not particularly mathy or doesn't want to just do equations, stuff like that. So what's a, what's a good exercise for making sure you understand that kind of thing?

Dave Jones: I think the, the calculating the resistance you're going to need for different types of LEDs is exactly the sort of practical thing that requires Ohm's law. Gotcha. You know? Yep. That is that you're, you're going to blink the LED, but you got to understand what that resistor is, is doing there and why that resistor is the size that it is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's a, that's a good one. You know, and that was one example I was thinking of as well. But the problem with that then is explaining to someone what a drop is in all of this stuff, you know, like a lot of the stuff that I run into when I'm trying to explain it to someone, it's like, Oh, well, it's just a voltage drop. And then you, you look at someone that you're trying to explain this to, and they're, they're just kind of like glazed over because there's so much jargon as well. So. There is a ton. Yep. So how do you get past that stuff then? So, so when you're teaching or when, when people are learning more, more specifically, you know, how do you, how do people start to learn these terms that are, I mean, arguably be very, I mean, there are a lot of times based on physics, right? Like a drop is based on potential voltage differences, you know, like they're, they're based on band gaps, all this stuff, you know, like an energy level higher and lower, you know, that's the drop. So how do you do it without getting down into the physical level?

Michael: Right. Cause yeah, I mean, it's, it, it can all become a rabbit hole too. Cause you can quickly dive really deep into that stuff. And, um, yeah, that's a great question.

Dave Jones: Um, I, I sort of, I, I come at it from the, the, the standpoint of holes. As soon as anything I need to explain to someone starts talking about electrons and holes, that's where I stop. Yeah. Right. Right. You know, because you don't, for the, I'm, I'm not trying to teach people that are going to go out and, and build, you know, semiconductors. I'm talking to guys that, that want to make, you know, large scale LED arrays blink rather than just, you know, one or two, or they want to, they want to interface with, with a more complicated sensor with like an IMU or something like that. And they really need to understand the timing of it. But at some point you just got to stop and go, you know what, if, if you really want to understand that stuff, that's what Wikipedia is for. Yeah. Right. Okay.

Michael: Right. Yeah. You know, and, and there's something to be said about kind of knowing something because when you're just starting off, like you said, Chris, some of these concepts are, they're just kind of difficult to understand or they're just, you know, they're weird. It's not like, you know, it's, it's all just a rather amazing phenomenon. I think personally, and try to wrap your head around that. It, it might, some of the stuff just might be fuzzy period. Um, and I think at some point you kind of have to be comfortable with the fact that like, okay, well, I think I get it enough and, and allow yourself kind of let go of the fact that, okay, maybe I don't have this like 99.9%, but I think I have it enough that I can move on to the next step. Yeah. And then, you know, that next step kind of, you know, maybe that clears up some of the, the stuff that was vague before and you just kind of.

Chris Gammell: Kind of sit in the uncomfortable position of, the uncomfortable position and like just kind of live with, live with the discomfort rather. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's like another skill you need. So you teach people how to use, uh, how to use KiCad and, and how to design circuit boards, but you're not teaching them how to write KiCad, you know? Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Right. You know, you, you, you're, you're, you're definitely putting a stopping point on what it takes to design a circuit board on what it takes to, to, to design electronics. Yeah. You know, there's, there's, there's sort of an accepted starting point there.

Chris Gammell: Right. Or even, yeah, there's, there's tons. Yeah. There's always levels of abstraction. That's one of them where it's just, okay, we're just going to deal with the circuit board. Sure. You know, one example I was thinking of Dan is when you, so Dan did a thing where he broke down a lot of the different pieces of an Arduino, because it's kind of this common, common, uh, board that a lot of people know and stuff like that. And what was it? Was it the, the, the, the ESR of a capacitor? Was that what you were working on? I remember you and I, you kept asking me questions about this stuff and I was like, I don't, I don't know. And for me, it was, it was just, I just ignored all this stuff and, and you were going really deep and that seems like another problem where it's, you can like the rabbit hole, like Michael mentioned.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It was the, uh, it was the output capacitor for the, the 3.3 volt, uh, regulator on the Arduino. I was looking at the data sheet and, and everything's fine. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. And then it gets into, to the, how you spec the capacitor for the, for the output. And it, it basically said, you know, you, you, you can use, uh, ceramic capacitors for this. You don't have to go with a tantalum or an electrolytic or something like that, but you have to make sure that you match this specific ESR.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And I, and I remember asking you, uh, like, how do I, how do I calculate the ESR?

Chris Gammell: Which we should also say is equivalent series resistance, which is another equivalence. Yeah. Right. Sometimes it's an acronym. Sometimes it's, you know, we should need to know what it is, but yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So how do you, what, how do you actually calculate what the equivalent series resistance is going to be for this capacitor, but specifically in this application, because the data sheet for the capacitor tells me that it's all frequency based, which makes sense. But the, but the data sheet for the LDO didn't mention anything about frequency at all. It just said, you have to be within this, this, this range of, of resistance and you'll be fine. And I think you, you told me something along the lines of just ignore it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Also, we should mention as well, LDO is low dropout. Yeah. Low dropout. Low dropout.

Speaker ?: Low dropout.

Chris Gammell: Low dropout. Low dropout.

Dave Jones: Usually they're, yeah. LDO regulators, linear regulators. Wow. Yeah. And I, and then I, then I mentioned one of the, another word that I'm adding to my lexicon of, of places that I'll get to and stop trying to explain things, which was, was it polls? Polls and zeros. Like it was, yeah. Yeah. Polls and zeros. Yeah. Polls and zeros and holes. These are three things that, that I am just, I'm putting, yeah, I'm putting my, my foot in the, in the, I'm putting my stake in the ground right now saying that, that I will, I am choosing not to understand these things ever in my life. I don't see any reason to.

Chris Gammell: You know, from my perspective, so I, you know, I started, I know I mentioned on the show before, but I started electronics really in the academic setting and then kind of learned the other stuff later. And, you know, there is, you think polls and zeros are hard when you actually have a use for them when it's just math. I mean, like, I remember just being like, what, why? Like, oh yeah, if there's polls on the left side of the plane, left hand of the plane, then it oscillates and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, but who, what, where is this? This isn't real to me. And like, literally, literally, it was just an equation. And, and that's kind of my background and why you need the, if you were going to dive into it, then you need the practical, right? You need to know, someone has to some point be like, this is important because blank, you got to find the why, right? And no one ever did that for me.

Dave Jones: So would, would you say that there has been distinct value in your formal education in, in the world of electronics that you have, that you have found yourself in over the last 15 years?

Chris Gammell: That's hard to say, man, because I didn't do it the other way. Right. I mean, I only can compare myself to people that went in the other direction. So, um, I, I value my education in general, but, um, I don't, I don't know. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Cause I, cause that's something that I I'm curious about. If I had ever gone down the path of getting an EE, you know, what, what, what would my experience be like now, as opposed to having, you know, taught myself all this stuff myself. Yeah. You know, and, and I, and I run into things and I imagine that this has got to be the same sort of thing that either my students or your students or Michael's students run into is that you can have deep understanding of something and not have any idea that there's a blind spot just to your left. Yeah. Because you just couldn't know it.

Chris Gammell: Right. I think the thing is for, um, for a lot of this stuff, like, I think the reason that college programs got along so well for so long was that the kids that were going into EE were hams, you know, they were doing stuff beforehand. Right. And I was not that. Right. I was not building stuff on my own. I didn't have any mentors that were getting me in electronics. And so they had that kind of that tribally learned knowledge, you know, there, and there was interest there. And then it's like, okay, now let's go learn the math. But there was that stuff beforehand. And I think that's still the case that the people that were in my programs that did really well often had that, you know, and even talking to Dave, Dave had that as well. He had the, the, the other stuff before he went to university and things like that to learn the math side of things. Um, so if that's there, then yeah. But I think that then, then it's a question of, okay, well, what about the people that are just starting out? Like the, you know, someone in high school who's learning this stuff, then what? You know, then, then that means that they're by definition, not, not learn, starting with the math either.

Dave Jones: Would you write, would you actively encourage somebody to go get their EE? Sure.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But figure out if you want to go first. That was the other problem is that all the people in my, like my program had like a 30% survival rate just in general, you know, because they tried to weed people out just with math. And that's a terrible way to read, weed people out. You weed people out with, do you care about electronics? Do you care about electrons and holes? And luckily I did. I mean, honestly, I was lucky that it kept being interesting because a lot of people that might have eventually enjoyed it, they got scared off by the math. And that, and that's, that's the sad part. So, yeah. Uh, so yeah, poles and zeros, man. Poles and zeros.

Dave Jones: Which is funny because how much math do you actually do on a daily basis?

Chris Gammell: No, if I do, it's usually using online calculators or something like that, you know? Exactly, yeah. That's the other, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, like, Michael, is there, is there any math on, on the, on the Arduino side? I mean, programming usually has it, but.

Michael: Right, yeah. So, I mean, just, you know, regular Ohm's laws, calculations and stuff, which is just basic, you know, really basic math. That's, that's as deep as I get into it, just, you know, working through that type of thing. And it's, see, I personally enjoy, I enjoy mathematics. So I, like, I think if, if you can approach, and I mean, this is kind of going off on a tangent here, but if you can approach the math and think of the math as like a tool, you know, kind of frame it in your mind that way, then I think that can actually be kind of exciting. Because you can really start doing some neat stuff, especially on the programming side, if you kind of embrace, embrace some of the math side of it. Yeah. It's kind of fun. But, yeah. Yeah, well, the programming stuff too.

Chris Gammell: I mean, so like, so in terms of the stuff that I learned in university that, you know, was put to me as, oh, you're going to need to know this specifically like Laplace transforms, right? Oh, this makes solving RLC circuits much easier, circuits with resistors, inductors, and capacitors, right? And yes, it does, but Spice makes that even easier. And I'm not saying that you should start with Spice, but honestly, Spice is doing these approximations of Laplace transforms. And, and a lot of times it's, it's important to know that stuff, but it, you know, it, I can't say what it would be like without the base knowledge of that. But no, no employer where you're going to be, if you're thinking about doing this as an employment type thing, no one's going to wait for you to go solve your problem and, and redo it. Like you need to learn it, but it's not really going to be useful on an everyday basis because you just got to get, get stuff done. So, yeah.

Michael: Yeah. And I guess where it kind of comes in is Chris, you having done that, um, when you go and you use, you know, LT Spice, you, you kind of have an underlying knowledge there of, of what, maybe you don't know that calculate, you know, it's been a while. You don't know that calculation exactly that's going on or whatever, but you have a, uh, an underlying knowledge there that, that I wouldn't have using it. And so I feel like you might, you would having that, uh, education that you did have, you would have an advantage because you might see where, well, maybe this is where I could, you know, you'd know your limits of how to use it a little better, I guess. I just, you see what I'm saying?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I know what you mean. And I think that, I think that of all the things that have been most useful to me, you know, I've talked about it on here before, like mantras and, and so mantras were like things that like, uh, that at, at Keithley, like the, the engineers there would be, you know, so they would just be like, uh, uh, V equals LDI DT, right? That's right. I think that's right. Right. So inductance is times the, the fast change in currents. Right. So that, and that's basically, that describes a ton of things like how, how boost converters work. And that helps explain how relay kickbacks work, you know, and like, but it's really about internalizing the, what's happening, what's happening in the physics. And I think that that can happen before you dive into the math. And again, I'm coming at it from one direction. You guys are coming at it from another, but, um, you know, it's ultimately the, the everyday useful stuff is understanding when you see an inductor and you see, okay, if there's current going through that inductor and a switch shuts off somewhere, I'm going to have a voltage spike. Like that's explained by V equals LDI DT, right? DI DT being, you know, changes in current quickly. Um, so that, I mean, that's the important part, but, you know, getting to that point is there's a lot of paths there.

Dave Jones: There, there's, there's something very fundamental that I, I remember I, it was almost a physical sensation when it for me was when I stopped thinking about electronics in terms of, you know, nine volts and ground or 12 volts and ground and started thinking of it in terms of levels of potential. Oh yeah. Okay. But, but, but no one taught that to me. I never read that anywhere. It wasn't covered in any book. It wasn't covered in a tutorial. There's certainly no instructable about it. It's just the way I think you start to evolve in your thinking about things.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, when I started thinking that, uh, you know, I, it's not a matter of this capacity, like the, I was just helping somebody today, uh, understand the, the reset circuit on the, on the Arduino a little bit better. And I discovered that I was trying to explain it to him in terms of potential rather than in terms of voltages and that it, it made more sense explaining it in that manner rather than, uh, the way I probably would have tried to explain it, you know, five or six years ago.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So yeah, for me, that was switching over to thinking everything is current. Like that was a big one for me because, you know, I, I used to think, oh, well, what's the voltage here? What's the voltage there? But it's really about, well, if you have current flowing into a capacitor, right, you're going to see the voltage slowly rise. That's going to be, uh, you know, as the capacitor fills up with charge, uh, because current's flowing into it, that's when your voltage rises. And like, you know, before the way I was taught it was, oh, well, voltage just changes over time. It's a, it's an integral, you know, or sorry. Yeah. It's an integral. Yeah. And so you integrate, integrate charge. That's the math part of it. And it's like, well, sure. But what happens if I think about current moving to different parts of the circuit, you know, or current flowing into the input to an op amp? Oh, no, no, no. It doesn't flow in there. Yeah, it does. I mean, like there's, there's leakage current there, you know, like, and, but you're right. And this is kind of what Michael was saying too. It's like, this is where the persistence is. It's, it's, it's just sticking with it until your brain just creates its own mental model, right? That's, you have to teach yourself.

Michael: Yeah. And I think probably everybody has a, you know, a slightly different model of what, uh, you know, of how they're understanding it and what's working best for them, given their, you know, how, how they got into electronics in the first place and, you know, all those, all those things.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So along those lines, I've been trying to think of what is the, what is the best way of, of approaching this entire thing? Like, how do you, how do you, what path do you follow to get somebody actively engaged both in the long run and in the short term so that they keep coming back? Uh, obviously, you know, from a, from a, from a personal benefit, from the standpoint of they keep coming back and they keep buying boards or they keep consuming my content, but more philosophically, how do they keep coming back because they're interested in what it is that they're learning? Um, and I, and I, I've keyed on, on three things that I think all will wind up working hand in hand. And it's very fortunate that they all start with E because then I can, oh yeah, I can, I can, I can write a whole book now because I've come up with the three E's. There's three sections. Here we go. Exactly. Yeah. Dan gives the outline. So the first one is exploration, right? Is that you have to be interested in exploring the topic in the first place. But you know, that's, that's the, that's the getting lost down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia. That's, that's your exploring. You're, you're, you're learning about. Oh, like a joyful exploration almost, right? Yeah, exactly. You're excited about that. You're learning new things. You're, you're thinking of things that you never really thought of before, or you're thinking of things that you have previously thought of, but you're thinking of them in a new way. Uh, you were, you were learning. Oh my God, it running a microcontroller is not outside the scope of things that I can possibly do. This is an approachable thing that can be a very powerful thing, but you're exploring. You're not really understanding it yet. You're just seeing what the bounds are of what these things are. So that's the first one. Then there's education. So you move from the exploration into the education. Now you've, you've decided that this thing that you've explored is worth your time and effort and money because we're all adults here and it turns out you can learn anything you want, but chances are you got to pay to learn it. Yeah. At least for the hardware and everything else.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. There's lots of free tutorials online, but yeah, learning hardware requires hardware.

Michael: Right. Right. You know, and it's, but value and cost are, are, you know, it's not necessarily just cash. It's also time. I mean, absolutely. The time, you know, sometimes you can, if you're willing to pay some money, you can, um, you know, you can devote four years and go to college and, and kind of be zoned in or you can buy a course and, or, you know, you can spend a lot of, a lot of other time. Just, I don't know, perusing.

Dave Jones: Well, right. If you know where I'm going. In a very real example, you can, you can choose that when you're done, you know, managing storage array network all day that you're going to go home and you're going to dedicate an hour and a half or two hours of your life to watching Chris's videos on how to design electronics. Because that was important to me. I wanted to learn how to use KiCat. I wanted to learn how to design circuit boards. So you make not just the investment in money, but, but for all of us, it's the investment in time. That's, that's, that's even more critical at that point. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: So, so the third E is, is ears, right? So you have to avail your ears and listen to Chris talk about KiCat for a couple hours.

Dave Jones: No, the, the third E is enjoyment. Is that, so you, you explored this topic, you've educated yourself, you've learned something about it. Like, well, you've gone through all this effort. Now you've got to enjoy it. You've got to go do those things that you are now capable of doing. Right. So, so these are the, those are the three things that I'm, that I am particular, particularly want to focus on.

Chris Gammell: I have another E in there. That's actually pretty important. What's that? Explosion. Explosion. Like, honestly, like that, that's a big part. Like I want people to be safe, but like, like at some point you're going to be like, all right, it's time to turn on the power supply and this might go puff. Right. I mean, it might, it might, it might pop some caps and, and, or you might not even be prepared to say that. You're just saying it's turning on the power supply and then it does go puff. And it's like, but that's, that's important too.

Dave Jones: That's it. That's interesting. Actually. Uh, that would be an interesting thing to put together is a circuit board that's designed to fail. Oh, I like that. Yeah. But you teach people how to troubleshoot what failed.

Chris Gammell: I like that too.

Michael: Yeah. That's kind of a neat idea. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, troubleshooting is a huge piece of it.

Michael: Um, but. Is, is it, you don't. Dan, is that what you're going to say when you build, you build a board that fails? Oh, actually I did that on purpose. You're a, that's a great strategy. That's what I got.

Chris Gammell: There was a, there was a footprint that was wrong on the, the first contextual electronics board that, uh, that was a soldering practice, uh, thing. Dan, Dan, of course. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's exactly what I was thinking.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And, and, and you were going to teach us how to use bodge wires too. That's why you decided not to include that, uh, that oscillator. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? And boy did I learn.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And, but it is important, right? I mean, like not that. I mean, yeah. Not that I wanted. That's what it's really about. Not that I wanted to mess it up.

Dave Jones: Uh, it's just that you're going to. Absolutely. That was, that was honestly some of the, some of the best experience was figuring out because I, I designed my own bench buddy alongside the bench buddy that came with the class. So when it came time to get that oscillator on there, my board was completely different from the board that, that all the other students were using. And I had to sit there and figure out myself, how am I going to get this thing soldered down? Because all my footprints were entirely in, in different locations. So trying to find those pads was, was significantly tricky.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. What about, so we kind of got away from the, the rabbit hole. Um, but I think that's actually really important. So like understanding what you need to know, what, what do you guys think about that? Like how, how do you decide if something, if you should go down the rabbit hole, if you should go to the Wikipedia hole, or if you should just kind of scuttle through it, you know what I mean? Like scuttle past it, I suppose. Yeah.

Michael: I guess part of it depends on the context of, you know, why you're learning in the first place. So if, um, you know, I was helping a guy out the other day who was doing this art demonstration, uh, you know, ingenuity fest up in Cleveland. Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Michael: Yep. He, uh, he was doing a demonstration up there and he wanted to have this like capacitive touch thing with his art display. And, um, he reached out to me and asked for some help anyway. So he was, he, you know, he kind of knew some about electronics and knew some stuff about programming, but I mean, his real goal, he just wanted this thing up and running and he wanted me to assist him with it, you know, kind of show him what needed to happen. So, um, for him, you know, the rabbit holes didn't mean too much, you know, he just needed to get, to get to a, an end point really. But, um, if, uh, you know, kind of back to the ease, if you really enjoy it and you, you like that exploration, then, um, I think it just matters how much time you have on your, on your hands. You know, if you, I, I personally love just, you know, I don't know, learning about stuff, you know, spending a lot of time learning about stuff, even if I don't necessarily need to, need to do it. But yeah.

Chris Gammell: So you're willing to, to push out the, the date of when something finishes just because you want to enjoy the time around that.

Michael: Right. Yeah. And I guess it just matters again, what is, what is your real goal? Like, uh, like, uh, people taking, uh, my course, for example, I'm, you know, is there, is there a goal to just hit complete on the last lesson or is their goal to say, you know, or like, okay, I want to finish this in three months or I want to finish this in six months or, or do they want to say, you know, I don't really care when I finish this. I just want to, I want to, you know, transform what I know internally. Um, and it doesn't really matter how long it's going to take me kind of thing. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, it's tough too, because so I, you know, people always ask me kind of like, what, what books should I have? Right. And of course I always recommend the art of electronics, but then I kind of pause usually and I'm like, but don't try and read front to back. Like use the table of contents and just one at a time, man, just, yeah, one, one thing at a time or just browse the, the stupid circuits. You know, the part of the book I'm talking about there, the, uh, the don't do this circuits.

Dave Jones: I, I don't actually have a copy. Oh no. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like in sections like three and four, two, three and four, and maybe even later, cause it's changed around with the third edition. Um, but he, he, it's like specifically for op amps, there's, there's a section where it's like, it's just two or three pages of bad circuits. Like he says, do not do this. It doesn't say anything. They don't say anything else about it. It's great. And it's like, well, I could do that. And you can, but it's not smart. And that's kind of the idea where you just kind of look at it and you noodle on it and you noodle on it. And then you go read, you come back and you know, you leave the book for a while, you come back and you're like, oh, that's a terrible idea. And now I know why, you know? And yeah. Where do you, where do you guys go for the, for your, your resources? I mean, where, where do you guys find stuff online or in books or whatever?

Dave Jones: Hackaday.io chat. Oh yeah? Yeah. I, I contact this dude named Chris Gammell.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that doesn't count.

Michael: Well, you know, actually that kind of counts a little bit. Cause for me, I, like I have a mentor, like I consider him an electronics mentor and he's, he's not quite gray haired, but he's getting pretty close. And oh my gosh, it is just the most amazing asset to have somebody who's personable, who you can ask questions that you don't even know how to ask the question on, on Google. You know, you, you don't even really understand what you need to ask. But I, I just, I, I, uh, I'd known the gentleman for a while. He, we, we actually worked together, but I didn't know until about three years ago that he was, yeah. He actually owns a, an electronics company, you know, he like does, um, embedded stuff for a living. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, so, I mean, I can call him all the time and just kind of explain what I'm thinking in my head and it can be like, nope, you're totally wrong, Mike. You know? And, and he can be frank like that and he can be like, you know, and to boot, he's a really good teacher too. He explains things well, but man, I just, I love that. And also, um, so, I mean that, that's kind of a step away from, you know, books and online media, um, because you're actually interacting with, right. That is really great. And then, and then also I really like, you know, you and I are both involved in that electronics meetup and, um, I mean, I, I enjoy going and I usually learn something when I go. Um, and so I think that's, that's really nice too, just to be able to kind of bounce some of those thoughts and questions off of people. Um, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like a social group where you can kind of. Yeah. And, and, and, well, like Dan mentioned too, there is online stuff where you can, you can get even just like a chat based, you know, like there's like the hack chat, hacker chat on Hackaday IO. Um, but there's other stuff like that. There's IRC stuff like that where, you know, some people are going to be sitting in there and just kind of helping people out and even having it as an IRC versus having it as a, you know, a message board. It's different, you know, it's, it's, it is a little bit, it's a step closer to the personal side of things.

Michael: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I, uh, you know, I try to be relatively active inside the, the Arduino subreddit on Reddit. Yeah. Um, because that's where a lot of people come with those, they, they ask the same questions over and over and over again. Uh, and if you go into the, the, the forums on the Arduino.cc website, there is some seriously virulent people in there that are ready to smack you down for, you know, for not searching the forum or something like that. You know what? Everybody just needs to lay the hell off. Just chill out. Yeah.

Michael: Isn't, isn't that kind of forum in general though? Yeah. I think forums in general are pretty, can be pretty.

Chris Gammell: Forums are definitely power structured, you know, or power distributions rather. There's always super users and then there's, yeah. And then there's, you know, like long tail users that are just, I have one question every once in a while. And like you said, if you ask the same thing someone else has, God forbid.

Dave Jones: Yeah. God forbid that somebody should, should ask a question and want information. I mean, you know, oh my God, he wants to learn something. How horrible that he, that he wants to learn the same thing this other person did.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Uh, so I, I try to be active in there and help other people out if I see something that I know I'm able to help them with. Um, but for myself, I think I mentioned on, uh, on embedded. FM that I've got this, this theory now that my, my level of understanding for something is inversely proportional to the amount of browser tabs that I have open trying to explain it to me. Right. Yep. You know, and, uh, and I, I don't think there's actually been any topic that I haven't managed to find a way to explain to myself or find some resource that will teach it to me. Uh, other than, well, I take that back that, that whole ESR thing for the capacitor. I'd never really got an answer to, uh, what I did wind up doing was just ignoring it. I just, I was like, uh.

Chris Gammell: Which is the great advice that you had, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Which was the advice I got at the very beginning. And if only I'd listened, I could have saved myself so many hours. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. No, I mean, but there's, there's still like, there's still value in going down and trying to, going down that rabbit hole and trying to figure that stuff out. Right. You probably found out a lot of other stuff about capacitors and even just how data sheets are written, that kind of thing. So, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you learn a lot of serendipitous information that might in fact help you out a lot later, but you just wouldn't know it in the first place. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Michael: Yep.

Chris Gammell: I don't know that. I think the toughest part is when you, like, like Michael said, the, when you don't know what it is, you know, that's when you don't know what you're actually asking, that's, that's usually the hard part. So that's why I like an IRC where you can kind of like keep, keep pinging and just like, well, is it this or this or this, you know, like it kind of looks like this thing that I've seen before. I don't know.

Dave Jones: I don't know. One of the, one of the best pieces of advice that I ever got from you, Chris, um, was to look for, like you, you search for a specific topic, like, uh, like I'm, I'm looking for, for a, uh, uh, lipo battery charger circuit right now and I've completely ignored anything that is text-based on Google now and I go straight to image search.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's fantastic. Right. Like if I'm searching for a part number, throw that into Google. I don't care what anybody wrote about it. I want to know if you published a schematic and then I'll go straight to that right there.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: And that, that tends to be the way that I'm, that I'm solving a lot of problems right now. Like this thing, I'm, I'm trying to, to, to pull this El Cheapo battery charger apart and it's got some, some weird no name brand device marking on there. And, uh, and I'm just, you know, I'm going into, to Google and I'm searching not for, for, uh, for a, for a manufacturer name or a part number. I'm searching for charge controller in a SOT 23.5 and show me any schematic that's, that's tagged like that, you know?

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Yeah. And any luck? No, nothing.

Dave Jones: Uh, no, this is a, this is a total mystery part.

Chris Gammell: Uh, but I, well, that's tough too. When you, yeah, I think I saw you tweeted about searching by a package code or package, which like on a SOT 23-5, you can't really fit a lot of letters on there.

Dave Jones: Well, and the thing that's killing me is that the, uh, the package marking on this particular SOT 23-5 is 5OT dash, I think like 513. So I kept looking at it going, did they just literally call this part SOT dash 513? Like they just, it's just a bogus part. They just sold it down so that they could use the footprint. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's tough too. And that's another thing that I think a lot of people come in with. So just kind of thinking about the, the no name parts, stuff like that. Another thing that I, I struggled with when I was getting started was thinking everything is this super cheap, you know, like Chinese level of, you know, like, like if you start with electronics and you're like, oh, well, I'm going to open up a toy and think that I'm going to understand that. Well, like that's a super cost optimized thing where they're ripping caps off the board and there's not a lot of educational meat there versus if you find something that's a little bit more expensive, you might be able to find a replicated app note circuit, something like that. And then that's where you're going to really find your, the useful information, you know?

Dave Jones: Well, I think that's, you can, you can definitely find the more reliable theory if you, if you pull apart a more expensive product, but if you pull that cheap stuff apart, that's designed to work four or five times, you can learn about how to make something just work. Once. You know, exactly. Like I need to get this to work. And who knew that you could use a resistor in that way, you know, like, like they, they didn't decide to actually use it as a resistor. They just soldered it on edge to provide like a physical balance so that this pot doesn't wiggle around. Oh yeah. I've seen that before. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like, like that, that sort of weird stuff is the sort of stuff you'll find in that, in that cheaper, that, that sort of commodity level electronics.

Chris Gammell: So thinking about manufacturing, thinking about building circuits, stuff like that, what, when do you, when do you guys suggest that people start building, building their own circuits, branching out from a kid or branching out from a, from, you know, maybe even just a dev board that someone else built and you bought. When, when, when, when is it time to, to jump out of the nest?

Michael: That's a good question. I, it might just depend on each, you know, on, on people's situation, but I, I would definitely say that it is, it is worth, worth doing, you know, and taking that leap and, and learning that stuff.

Dave Jones: Um, well, there's, yeah, that's a, I'd say there's, there is, there is value. There is inherent value in taking a circuit that you have on a breadboard, even if it's just a, a, you know, a, a Larson scanner with a, with a five, nine, five shift register and transferring that to a soldered project, like just a piece of perf board and figuring out how to make those connections happen on the perf board, because you're not going to do it right. You're going to make mistakes and when you make mistakes, that's when you're really, that's when you're teaching yourself is when you're troubleshooting that.

Chris Gammell: I think there's, those are pretty low cost mistakes because you can fix it with solder and extra wire and stuff, right?

Dave Jones: Exactly. And the, and the series of components that you're using are probably, you know, maybe $5 worth and, and, uh, and you didn't have to, to, you know, spend $5 per square inch to get a board from Osh Park. Uh, you know, you, although where does anybody go to buy perf board nowadays? Like where would you go in Cleveland to buy perf board? I would go to Fry's here in, in Yolo County, but.

Chris Gammell: We have a micro center up in a little bit North of me. That's, and they carry a lot of kits and stuff now, but even still, I wouldn't do, I'd go online. I'd go, go to DigiKey or, you know, Mouser or something. Right.

Dave Jones: Man, I just, I don't, for some reason, I just can't bring myself to do that. I, I, that even, even with Amazon prime, I, I refuse to wait 48 hours to receive anything. Oh. Like if I want, if I want perf board, I want perf board now and I want to be soldering by the end of the day. So I'll, I'll drive, you know, 45 minutes to Sacramento to go buy a $5, you know, stupid perf board that I probably won't have time to play with anyway.

Michael: Especially once you figure in California traffic, then it's like, you should have just had it on Amazon prime.

Dave Jones: Well, Dan's in the middle of nowhere, so that helps. Exactly. Yeah. My 45 minutes to Sacramento is 45 minutes with a lead foot on the accelerator. Yeah, it's 45 miles. Yeah, exactly. There is, there is nothing between me and Sacramento except for, I think, wheat fields, rice paddies, uh, and, and Davis, California. So that's pretty much it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's, uh, I, I, I think that, that brings up a good point too, of having that physical store, you know, when you, we talk about mentors as well, you know, you could be a place to pick, find a, find a mentors as well. You know, maybe just someone to chat with and ask a silly question or two too, that can help, but not everybody has that. I mean, it's not like surplus stores or what they once were. So that, that kind of hurts.

Michael: Yeah. Like, like you could ever even go into a radio shack and ask a question.

Chris Gammell: Well, first step is finding one. And then second step is finding one with a knowledgeable staff person.

Michael: They might know the skews. Well, you probably, you know, you probably know where the parts are better than, than they do sometimes.

Dave Jones: Oh, are you kidding? I, no, I've, I've spent time in the radio shack in Hollywood when I was living there, resorting out their passives bin. Right. Right. That's probably an remarkably embarrassing admission. No way, man. You were public service. I was performing a public service.

Speaker ?: That's right.

Dave Jones: That was a public service. Yeah. If I ever get arrested, that's what I'm going to ask my public service to be, to go to Fry's and sort out all their damn, uh, uh, kits. Plister pack resistors. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh. Yeah. So, okay. So let's, let's get to the last of it then. Uh, so someone is listening and hasn't picked up. So they're listening, they're casual listener, but they're ready. They're, they're now inspired based on what you guys have said. What do they go online or go out and buy right now and start doing? We could say Michael's course or Dan's board, but let's step outside of that. What is the thing that they should buy and go for?

Michael: Um, all right. So they, they're interested in electronics. They want to get into electronics specifically, or they want to get into, I mean, they're I mean, electronics, such a, a broad, I mean, they're interested in like microcontrollers

Chris Gammell: or they, well, let's just say electronics in general. Step one.

Michael: I mean, I think soldering is a good place to start. I mean, it's not sexy per se, but I, I don't know. I, I think soldering is a good, a good entry point. So soldering what though? Yeah. I mean, well, like a kit probably just get a learn to solder kit. And, uh, and, and that's not, I mean, cause the soldering iron, a cheap soldering iron is cheap and, uh, get just one of those soldering kits. And I think that's a fun place to start. It's, you know, kind of like a, a physical thing. So you got your hands on it. Yeah. Um, I don't know. Okay. Dan, what do you think?

Dave Jones: Well, uh, I think that, that there are, that it's a, there's a pothole waiting for the, the prospective student that wants to start learning this stuff, uh, in that if you don't have a clear goal in mind, it's hard to have, it's hard to know what to do once you get to an ending point. Like, okay, so I've soldered this thing. Well, now what? Um, I think if you have something like an Arduino or raspberry pie or, or beagle bone, something that, that, that provides a basic entry point, but upon which you can expand, I think that is, that is, that is particularly valuable. Um, before, before Arduino's existed, I think going down the, the kit route, uh, was, would have been incredibly valuable because then you get your hands on all these, these different passives and the, and the analog side of stuff. But I mean, I, I look at my own desk right now and, and I don't have, I don't have the room or the time for, for that necessarily. Um, but I've always got room for, you know, one more little USB device to sit on my desk that can make an led blink. And, uh, you know, like, like, uh, Alicia says, uh, with embedded.fm that, you know, the blinking led is the hello world of electronics. Yep. Right. So, um, if you're, if you want to learn electronics, uh, I would highly recommend finding something that's going to either make a motor move or is going to make an led blink. Like, like, uh, you want to see the electrons that you're controlling change something in the physical world.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: That's, that's the magic right there.

Chris Gammell: So I think that one thing that we're going to see a, a surge of new people coming in just because, um, there's the $5 Raspberry Pi zero was just released. And I think that's kind of the price point where it's like, oh yeah, I'll buy one just because, you know, that's like the tack on thing. It's like, yeah, why wouldn't you? Um, so I think that'll be interesting. And then projects. So you're saying like, if you had a Raspberry Pi zero, you get a header breakout or you make a header breakout and then you tie it to some LEDs and just solder that together, write some code or find some code and get those blinking.

Dave Jones: And, and I would hope that there, that there are any number of tutorials that would be out there to help you get to that point. Right. That's the X, that's the exploration part. You're not looking for the, like, I want to turn it on and now I'm going to learn how to, you know, do X and then Y and then Z. No, no, no. The hell with that. I want to turn it on and I want to make something happen.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So you're saying, yeah. First step is buy the $5 board, buy the $20 kit that goes with it.

Dave Jones: Irony. And do something fun with it. Yeah. Right. You know, do something cool with it. And then if that fires your imagination, then, then, and you're the sort of person that's inclined to do that. And I would imagine that chances are, if you're a listener to the amp hour, you're the sort of person that would be inclined to want to know why it's doing the thing that it's doing, not just being comfortable with the fact that it does something when you tell it to do it.

Chris Gammell: It's not just the, uh, it's not the, the finished product that you're buying. You're buying the experience along the way. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I've been saying this phrase a lot lately, uh, but it's, it's definitely not my phrase. It's how do you, how do you, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. One bite at a time, man. That's what a lot of this stuff is, you know, like that's just the.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And maybe, and maybe it doesn't matter where you start, but that you just in fact start. Yeah. You know, you just in fact take a step, get, get something going. Yes. Well, I think that. That's, that's what's important.

Dave Jones: That's what you were getting at when you were talking about mindset, Michael, is that, uh, the, the important thing is to want to do it in the first place.

Michael: Right.

Chris Gammell: And I mean, I think, I think one of my big stumbling blocks when I was getting started too, it's like, oh, I need to create something unique in my own. So no, no, no, no, no, no. At the beginning, it's okay. It's okay to buy a kid or it's okay to copy someone else's circuit. It's okay to, you're going to find so many pitfalls along the way, just doing a kit and just making sure you have the right parts in the right place and the right diodes in the right direction kind of stuff. Or, you know, like, just don't worry about being unique. Just get something hands on. And I think that's, that's going to take you pretty far.

Michael: Yeah. I mean, it's like the, uh, you, you have that great idea or whatever, and then it's not like the internet doesn't already have that idea. So it's like, that can sometimes feel a little demotivating, but it shouldn't because it's, you know, you, like you were just saying, Chris, you learned so much just doing, just doing the things. It doesn't matter if, if it's been done a thousand times by, you know, a thousand other people, you're going to learn a ton kind of going through it yourself.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And then eventually it's, you know, it's also, it's, it's like music too, right? You know, you start out, you learn, if you're learning piano, you don't start by trying to compose a piece. You start by learning Bach, you know, or, you know, something simple, you know, simplified versions and you kind of work your way up. And then eventually you start to modify and you start to play on different themes and you try different things and you piece together different sounds that you've heard. And then eventually you start to, if you wanted to, you, then you can, you can create your own sound, but you don't start just, well, some people do, but it sounds terrible. You're not going to, you're not going to, you're not going to last long in my opinion, if you're just banging on the keys. It's, it's a lot more fun if you take some time, follow some other people's footsteps and then start to play on the different themes. And it's important that, so I, I'm obviously playing piano right now, I'm learning, but it's important to, you know, to have that baseline. And then, you know, it feels good to play a song, you know, to have that finished song where it's like, oh, someone else listens. They're like, is that a song? Is it, is that, you know, Moonlight Sonata? I, I know what that song is. And you say, yes, I played that song. It's not like someone's like, oh, well, you didn't write it. Right. Way to go, genius. Call me when you, call me when you've created a classic, a classic police piano music that is played all over the world.

Dave Jones: Oh man, that's brilliant. That's, that's the exact, that's, that's exactly what I would want to say to every person that was criticizing that poor kid about not having actually built the clock himself.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, he's not, he's not building a clock. Come on, give him a break.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That, that story didn't turn out as well as I hoped it would. No. But, but now that they're suing the school, I don't know. Anyway, I don't want to talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I, I agree with the sentiment where it's like, yeah, if you're criticizing for that, for that piece of it, it's like, come on. Yeah. Yeah. So, what are you, what is your Moonlight Sonata, Michael and Dan? What, what are you guys working on next? Because we should probably wrap up here soon.

Michael: Well, like I said, like I mentioned earlier, I'm working on the, I'm just really pushing, getting, working on the second edition of my course. So, that's what I'm up to lately. A lot of shooting video, a lot of thinking deeply about curriculum and that type of thing. So, that's what I'm really been up to lately.

Chris Gammell: Nice.

Dave Jones: And I am, I'm really focusing on the, sort of the, the education and the enjoyment aspect right now. I'm pushing a little bit into the electronics basics with a, sort of a basics education shield. Um, but I'm also putting together a, uh, a board that is a little desktop, uh, graphic equalizer display, like little, you know, dancing lights to the music sort of thing.

Chris Gammell: Oh, nice.

Dave Jones: Um, but probably the, the coolest thing, and I just got the boards back maybe half an hour before we started recording. Um, I put together this thing that I'm calling the snow bot, which is, uh, which is a little ornament. Uh, although it's going to have a, uh, a lithium polymer battery on the back of it. So, I don't necessarily recommend hanging this inside a very dry Christmas tree. Yeah, Christmas vacation style with the tree going up. Yeah, exactly. Um, but it's, it's a, it's a PCB of an, of an octagonal snowman, uh, with a, with a Larson scanner for an eye and a potentiometer for a nose, uh, and detachable arms that you can solder in place. Um, and, uh, and hopefully, uh, a boost converter on the back that's going to work beautifully. Um, and then you will have your own personal little snow bot. And what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to give this design away, um, with the bomb so that, uh, so that anybody can build this themselves if they want to. But, uh, I just got to make sure the boost converter works first.

Chris Gammell: That's good. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's great. And we'll maybe post pictures of it. If there's a preview, we can do that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Gammell: Awesome. Yeah. And we'll definitely post links to Michael's course, uh, to Dan's tutorials. Uh, but thanks guys. Uh, any last, any last thoughts for, for the show, uh, for the audience?

Michael: No, I can't. Uh, just thanks again for having me on. It was, uh, it's exciting to be on the show.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And, uh, I, I'm, I'm really grateful to have this, this chance to, uh, to talk to your audience. The, uh, the only thing I would, I would want to add is, is what I told Alicia's audience, uh, is that don't be scared of this. You know, if you're going to fry something, go ahead and fry it. I mean, so you, so you destroy a $5 microcontroller, go get another one. It's not getting more expensive, right? Right. Exactly. Right. You know, don't, don't, don't allow yourself to be intimidated by this stuff. Uh, it is, some of it is truly difficult. Some of this stuff is going to require you to be very diligent and very intelligent about the way that you approach it. But the reward that you're going to, to get the, the, the way you're going to feel having actually learned some of this stuff is going to be very, very, very gratifying and, and potentially very rewarding in other ways. You get to make snowman, uh, Larson scanner ornaments.

Chris Gammell: Absolutely. There you go. How cool is that? Awesome. All right, guys. Thanks again. We'll talk to you soon. Cool. Cool. See you, Chris. Bye.

Chris Gammell: Bye.

Michael: When I first got into electronics, I did it out of necessity. I had to solder something in my car.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Right.

Michael: And, uh, I had no idea to solder. So I had my next door neighbor do it. And apparently he didn't have that much experience either.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, my car burned down.

Michael: Well, actually the car started smoking. We had put the electrolytic capacitor on backwards in this transmission.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That story might go in the outro.