#285 – Something's Serially Wrong Here

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded February 3rd, 2016. Episode 285. Something serially wrong here.

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

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

Dave Jones: What happened last week?

Chris Gammell: Last week I was traveling and you were on a different time zone than me.

Dave Jones: And you just decided to do the show without me. I'm doing the show without you.

Chris Gammell: I found myself a YouTuber. I talked to a YouTuber, okay? I checked that box. We're fine.

Dave Jones: I did.

Chris Gammell: I was a little sad that you couldn't talk with him because I know that, well, I know you wanted to talk to you.

Dave Jones: Well, you didn't invite me.

Chris Gammell: It wouldn't have worked out, man. It was like, we recorded at like 11 a.m. on a Sunday. Oh, which is what here? Yeah, it's like 5 a.m. Oh, right. Yeah, okay. Something like that. I don't even know.

Dave Jones: Just not going to work.

Chris Gammell: Sorry, sorry.

Dave Jones: Oh, well.

Chris Gammell: Chris went rogue. I went rogue.

Dave Jones: Seems like forever that we haven't done a show.

Chris Gammell: Well, didn't we do one the week before that? Maybe. No, no, no. There was another interview.

Dave Jones: There was something else. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, for me anyway, it feels like forever.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, before that was John Ellis for years. Yep.

Dave Jones: That's right.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Well, we're here now, so now what?

Dave Jones: There must be a ton of stuff. Well, I don't know. Well, I can start out with what I got five minutes before the show started on my email.

Chris Gammell: What is that? Wait, wait, wait. Was it a, did you win millions of dollars? All that you need to do is lure them some money?

Dave Jones: Right from a Nigerian prince. Right, yeah. No, I thought.

Chris Gammell: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Was it, did someone want to build you a Bluetooth speaker?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: You don't get those emails? I get those emails all the time. Oh, right. Hello, sir. We would like to build you a Bluetooth speaker.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes, I used to get that when I was kickstarting, when I was crowdfunding projects, you know. Yes. Yeah. I still get them occasionally. Okay. And I got, you know, another free energy one, you know, zero point energy email and yeah. Yeah. Just a regular. Yeah. All the regular stuff. Thursday. But then I got someone, I got one from a lawyer and I went, oh, here we go. It's a cease and desist letter. Nice. Done something, you know, like so my eyes were about to roll over and got, you know, like, yeah, you know, things fill my head about, oh God, what have I said now?

Chris Gammell: See folks, he can feel remorse at once in a while, you know.

Dave Jones: Oh no, no. It'd be sheer laughter at anyone trying to sue me for anything I say.

Chris Gammell: That's true. I guess you can't really sue for that kind of stuff.

Dave Jones: No, because libel, every, libel, no. People really, you know, you got to understand people think you can, you know, oh, it's slander. It's libel. No, only if it's not true. Sorry. If your product is, and, and if it's not an opinion. Right. So if my opinion is your product is shit, then sorry, you can't sue me. You know, like that's my professional. Right. And it's not like you're making a, yeah, false proof claims or something. No, not making false claims. Yeah, exactly. So yeah. Good luck to anyone who wants to sue me in that regard. But anyway, so, so I opened it up, you know, ready for a laugh and, oh no, it's just one of these, um, uh, boring. Would you like me to read it?

Chris Gammell: Uh, sure.

Dave Jones: I'll leave names out. Okay. Sure. We are presently acting for an electronics company who is the defendant in county court proceedings. I didn't know we had county court proceedings here. This is an Australian thing.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Sure. Yep.

Dave Jones: Um, some of the key issues essential to the dispute relate to aspects of alleged defects of control boards, soldering, light assemblies, the misters and driver boards. Are they going to ask you to be an expert witness? Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, no way.

Dave Jones: Our client has become aware of your expertise in this area and we were writing to ascertain whether or not you were in a position to assist our client by provision of expert advice for a trial to be held in August.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So I'm going to give you the same, I know you already know what to do, but I'm going to give you the same advice I give everybody else who doesn't want to do a job. Don't say no. Just quote them a price and make sure it's really high. Right.

Dave Jones: Right. No, I just.

Chris Gammell: Really high. Okay. So if you've ever asked me if I wanted to do work and I told you, oh yeah, it's only $1,200 an hour. It's just that I don't want to do your job. I mean.

Dave Jones: Right. I just. Nah. I just went, sorry, not interested. Oh, come on.

Chris Gammell: Everybody's got a price, man. What would it take?

Dave Jones: I don't have a price. Come on.

Chris Gammell: Everybody's got a price, Dave. No. $10,000 an hour. No. A million dollars an hour. No. A billion dollars an hour.

Dave Jones: No. Piss off.

Chris Gammell: I don't believe you in the slightest, but.

Dave Jones: Because I'm a practical person. I know. Come on. It's just. Like, just say no. It's like, because they will engage you and then they'll try and negotiate or do whatever. Once you give them. No. They'll just waste. Piss away your time. It's not worth it.

Chris Gammell: Dude, at a billion dollars an hour, I'll let someone waste my time. One hour is all I need. You know.

Dave Jones: They're not going to pay you a billion dollars an hour. You just. You just. They're just going to continue to pester you. It's like, no. Go away. You know.

Chris Gammell: Like. All right. Well. Sorry, Dave. You're going to miss out. All people that have a billion dollar per hour jobs should call. Right. Right. Chris Gammell in Cleveland.

Dave Jones: We'll have you on the Amp Hour. That's right. Have you got a billion dollar an hour job? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. We don't. We don't take sponsorship anymore. We don't have paid guests on here. But, you know, for a billion dollars for one Amp Hour episode. I'd consider it Elon. It's fine. Right. Give us a call. Yep.

Dave Jones: Man, that's. And here we go. In order to gauge whether or not your expertise is appropriately suited to the case, we would appreciate receiving a copy of your CV and or education and employment history and any other relevant notes relating to your particular area of expertise. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Chris Gammell: Man. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, so I know, like, so like Jack, Jack Ansell's been on the show and Jack has done the kind of stuff before. Yeah. He's been several of those. Michael Barr's another embedded guy who writes, he writes about a lot of stuff. He, remember we talked about him for the unintended acceleration that Toyotas were going through and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Yep. It does not seem like fun work. I got to say.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no, no. It's not. That's why I do.

Chris Gammell: High paid for sure. I think it, I mean, not, not a billion dollars an hour, but I think, you know, a couple, couple hundred bucks an hour, like three, $400 an hour could be, you know, at the high

Dave Jones: end. I, I had won once and it was like, um, you know, I, I turned them down, you know, sorry, I'm not interested. And like, they got so offended. It's like, we're going to pay you a very generous retainer. Don't like how, why, why are you turning this down? We will pay you very generously. Like, dude, I'm not interested. Piss off. Like, you know.

Chris Gammell: Because lawyers.

Dave Jones: They could, they honestly could not believe somebody would turn down paying work. Like, it, like, it, it baffled them. Like, it's, yeah, I've got better things to do with my time, you know?

Chris Gammell: I mean, but yeah, I don't know. I, I, I don't like being too disparaging towards lawyers, but I think a lot of people get into it for the money. So I could see that there would be that mindset of, but money, you know, but money. Right. Yeah. What's wrong? There's money here. No. You know?

Dave Jones: It's like, no, the amount of jobs I turned down is, you know, God, every week, you know, somebody wants me to do something. No. Sorry. You know? Don't have time enough to make my own content, let alone, you know, be a per hour, go back to per hour consulting for someone else, you know? Like, nah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well. Not going to happen.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: When YouTube goes away, maybe I have to consider it again. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. You know, if it all goes bust, then yep, I'll have to go back to contract work. Yeah. I'll be taking everything. Right.

Chris Gammell: So, three weeks, what have you been doing other than turning, breaking lawyers' hearts?

Dave Jones: I have been trying to get a new bloody shopping cart up and running on my website. Oh, I saw your tweet about that. Because I've got my new multimeter that I'm...

Chris Gammell: Well, is that officially released? Is that what we're...

Dave Jones: Well, the rebadged one is officially released.

Chris Gammell: Gotcha. Cool. Yep.

Dave Jones: And... Yep. Yes. How soon is that going to be out? It's already out. Some people have ordered it. The funny thing is, right, I... Like, I wanted to wait until I had this shopping cart all set up on my website. Because as I've mentioned before, I'm moving away from Shopify, right? So, I want it integrated on my website, everything else, blah, blah, blah. Right? But... So, I'm setting up this WooCommerce, which is, like, the biggest WordPress, you know... Yeah. ...one out there, right? What?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Pass. You don't like it? No, it's just super... I've dealt with it. I don't really like it.

Dave Jones: I actually like it. I think it works quite well for my purposes. Okay. Yeah. Anyway. Everyone's needs are different. So, yeah, I've been doing that. So, I was setting it up, you know, doing it in private, you know, like on the website without releasing links or anything like that. And all of a sudden, orders started rolling in. Someone found it, huh? And I'm like, what? And, like, somebody posted it on the forum. And I'm going, like, what? Yeah, somebody posted the link, which was an active link, but because, you know, it wasn't on my menu or anything else, no one could find it. And I'm going, how the hell did you find this?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know? And they finally replied, oh, I saw it on Facebook. And I'm like, what? And it turns out, yeah, it's treated when I published a product.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it looks like a post. Because it's WordPress.

Dave Jones: It treated it as a post. Even though it didn't go to anything on my website, the back end of WordPress treated it as a post. And I've got an automated script that every time I post something, it posts it to Facebook because I don't want to waste my time manually posting to Facebook. So, I just auto post every new post. Did I? Yeah. And that's how. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: I told you about my silly project here, right? The one where it was just the blinks, you know, so you go to a link and it just blinks a different light to try and alert me if I needed to go upstairs and let the dogs out. Oh, right. Yes. Yep. Did I tell you about the fact that it was, I put it on my site and it was public and no? Did I tell you about that? I thought I was being really clever.

Dave Jones: And people started blinking the light.

Chris Gammell: No, no. I thought I was being really clever. And I'm like, oh, I can create my own short link. And it'll just basically forward that link to, you know, basically to the electric imp, the link that created whatever color it needed to pass down to the Wi-Fi device. Okay, cool. Well, it wasn't people though. It was, I... Oh, it was bots. It was Google. Google was crawling my link.

Dave Jones: Google crawler.

Chris Gammell: I kept going upstairs and I'm like, what the hell's going on up here?

Dave Jones: Like, why?

Chris Gammell: Does the dog need to go out? Like, no, no. It's just, what's going on? I don't know. Like...

Dave Jones: It's the internet of robot crawlers.

Chris Gammell: That's right. It's right. It was AI trolling me, you know? It was... Yeah. Nice. That's why you don't put public links on the internet, folks.

Dave Jones: Has... We always should put it out there. Has anyone else had unintended public consequences like that? Where you've, you know? Yeah. Like my one where you didn't realize you had published something. Like, somebody's found something that you wanted to keep secret.

Chris Gammell: There was a post this week about this, actually. It was... So all of these different companies are so jazzed about making, you know, internet-connected cameras and stuff like that. Well, on Ars Technica...

Dave Jones: Yeah, you can tell what gesture I'm making at the moment. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: But on Ars Technica, basically they said there's a search engine now because all of these things have the same defaults. So there's just a crawler out there just going through all these web addresses, you know, is port 4000 open or whatever the port is. Ah, right. And they're unsecured. And it's just like people's nanny cams and it's super creepy.

Dave Jones: Oh, wow. Yeah, I didn't read it, but I saw the title of that. Yeah. That is so creepy.

Chris Gammell: Like, I mean, I really never thought about the security side of things. Yeah, it was a flaw.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it was a flaw in some brand of security camera or something, wasn't it?

Chris Gammell: No. I mean, yes, there has been that too, but this is just... Right. It's not even that. It's just there's so little attention to security because people are like, oh, well, it's on a local internet, that kind of thing. Right. This is going to keep happening is people, you know, like if you're buying a $50 device and you're like, oh, it's a web connected light bulb. Like, come on. You're not going to be putting tons of security on that thing because it's a light bulb. And then eventually that just keeps traveling down the line. And then, oh, yeah, you got a web camera. Only you know the links, so you're fine.

Dave Jones: Well, you've got a camera in your smart TV, you know, you've got a camera in your smartphone, you know, like, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. Yeah. Kind of creepy, got to say. Nice.

Dave Jones: Have you seen the new X-Files?

Chris Gammell: I have not, no.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's like, it's all about, you know, the modern security, you know, the new security state and everything like that. Of course, it's about aliens, too, you know.

Chris Gammell: Of course. Of course.

Dave Jones: Which is, you know, because it's X-Files, right. Right. But, you know, like how it's, you know, oh, there is no real alien. Well, no, I won't. No, I won't get into spoilers.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, don't give it away. Come on, man. No, no, no.

Dave Jones: But, yeah, like, you know, it's all, like, I've only watched the first episode so far, but, yeah, you can tell, like, it's all going to be about, you know, and Fox Mulder, like, has some tape over the, you know, over the camera on his computer. I started doing that.

Chris Gammell: I cover up cameras. I mean, like, come on, it's like, it's very unlikely, but I can be a little paranoid sometimes. Why not?

Dave Jones: Well, I've got a camera in my lab. Anyone can watch me anytime at all.

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But you know that, right? At least it's like, that's a knowledgeable, if you think your cameras are always off, it's like, eh, I don't know. But anyways, over on the...

Dave Jones: So which cameras do you cover up? Your notebook and...

Chris Gammell: Well, my notebook, I just close it, and that's fine.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: But, yeah, like, I have, well, you know, all of my recording stuff is just straight webcam. I have webcams everywhere. And so there's one just pointing at me when I'm on my computer downstairs, and it really just kind of creeps me out. That's amazing. Right. You know? It's like having, you know, it's like having blinds for your... You know, you don't just leave your windows open when you're just watching TV or something, right? Well, some people might, but I don't. And so it's just turning that off, and... All right. Then I'm fine. Over on the subreddit where we posted this, someone at Kowalski71 had talked about the same thing happening in the auto industry as well. And basically, like, just because people are coming... Like, some of this is just a symptom of coming to the market really quick, right? It's, you know, not paying attention to it. Consumers don't give a crap. That kind of thing. Yeah. It's just... It's... This is a consequence of moving fast and breaking things. In this case, your privacy is the thing that gets broken. So... Yep. Good luck with that. I mean, but...

Dave Jones: People won't care until something serious happens to them. Right. Of course. People just won't care.

Chris Gammell: Until people that are malicious, you know, are targeting certain people anyways, right? I mean, like... Right. Yeah. Super rich people might not... Might, you know, avoid this kind of thing because they're like, oh, well, I could get robbed because they'll know... You know, you could use a Nest thermostat, right?

Dave Jones: But... Yeah. Well, if I was a celebrity or something like that... Oh, definitely that. Yeah. Like, yeah, you would be probably pretty paranoid because there'd be so many people out there. Right.

Chris Gammell: But then eventually, over time, you know, like, it becomes... There'll be some... Eventually, at some point, there'll be a security vulnerability where it's worth it to, you know, to attack the populace. Just like happens with, you know, people say, oh, well, why does anyone care about my stupid Windows 95 computer? It's like, well, yours doesn't matter, but yours in an array of many other things, then maybe that's valuable to someone, you know, that kind of thing. So...

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: If they still run on a Windows 95 machine at a nuclear silo or something like that, then, you know, let's... Yep.

Chris Gammell: I just don't think... What was it talking about today? Well, it's probably better, isn't it? It was another Reddit thread that said, I think until 1977, one of the nuclear codes was 0000.

Dave Jones: Yeah, 0000. That is so crazy. Yeah, launch code. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yes. I'm... To this day, the most amazing fact that I know is that... The most amazing thing that I can think of is that we... Like, there has not been some sort of crazy person just launching nuke or whatever, you know? It's just... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, let's keep that trend going, folks. I like that one. Let's just keep on... Yeah, I know. Keep on keeping on there. Yeah, that's good. Oh, dear. Yeah. Yes.

Dave Jones: I can whack a John F. Kennedy quote in there.

Chris Gammell: Of course. If you can. I don't know. Like, this is a lot of stuff that I think that, you know, relevant to us, right? So we talk about... Right. Well, you and I are not particularly good at hooking things onto the internet, but a lot of our listeners are.

Dave Jones: No, we're not. Yep.

Chris Gammell: And it is a big concern. I mean, like, if you go to DEF CON now, like, that was actually something that... That was kind of the first... I went to a couple talks. It was, you know, kind of going over this stuff. And obviously, we had Mike Osman on the show a lot and other people that are doing security type stuff. And yeah, I mean, it's important. But man, you don't even really think about it until something bad happens normally. You know, like, some people are very security forward, and that's great. But usually that, you know, there is an added cost to that because there's, you know, further testing, you need, you know, better code, that kind of thing. And at the end of the day, if anyone tries hard enough, they're probably going to break your system anyways. It's just a matter of... Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: How important it is to them to do it.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. So, you know, it's about gauging that. And some people don't have a choice, right? You know, thinking about, like, people that are working on, like, medical stuff and airline stuff. I know that a lot of that stuff, like, on Chris and Alicia's podcast, like, they talk about some of this stuff as well. And we've heard other places too. But yeah, not a lot of analog security going on.

Dave Jones: Right. You know, and you always hear the, you know, stories when they come out about how vulnerable something is, and you just go, holy shit, if somebody actually realized that vulnerability was there, how many would have taken advantage of it? Like, what, you know, what havoc could they have, you know, done if they just tried, you know, and knew it was there? It's scary.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You hear it all the time.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, yeah. And usually it's, I mean, usually it is much more complex systems that can do a lot more crazy things than what we're usually talking about. So there is that. But yeah, it's definitely scary a little bit. So buy our services and we can protect you. Right. That's usually what proceeds, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. But you work up to that point and then you try and sell someone something.

Dave Jones: Speaking of somebody trying to sell someone something, I like this one.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Bunny has done, he's doing this guide, essential guide to electronics in Shenzhen. It's a book. Yeah. And he's crowdfunding it. It looks really good.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Well, so we've had Akiba on the show now twice and Bunny on the show once and we've talked to both of them about, you know, the markets and other people about the markets, stuff like that. And yeah, it's just, I mean, this is just kind of, it seems like it's going to be a very centralized place to do it. So it's.

Dave Jones: And it looks like the book. You go to Shenzhen, arm with this book, and it's got like all the phrases in there and like you can like, not only, you know, how much is this and stuff like that, but like down to like, you know, capacitor tolerance and stuff like that. You can actually, you know, you can talk Turkey with these, with the Chinese people on the stand.

Chris Gammell: Talk Turkey. I've never heard that phrase before, Dave. Really? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. What is it? Is it? There you go. I mean, it means you can talk a common language.

Chris Gammell: Is it just because when Aussies keep talking faster and faster, you start sounding like

Dave Jones: No. No. What are you talking about? We're trying to talk faster and straight. Yeah, right, right. No, I know I was right. Right. No. Talk Turkey means to find a common language. Gotcha. You know, to speak somebody else's language, even though you don't speak their language. Right. You know, that kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. You're both on the same wavelength, you know. Yeah. Oh, man. And you can do that. It looks so good.

Chris Gammell: This thing's raised $3,000 since I posted it to The Amp Hour subreddit, too. Oh, right. I think it'll be fine. I think it's going to be okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't think he needs the publicity anyway. We'll link it in down below. So if you want, I might just get one just in case I end up going to Shenzhen in the future. Have you still not been? No. No, I've not been. Me neither.

Chris Gammell: I'm trying to go this year.

Dave Jones: No, I've been to Shanghai.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right, right.

Dave Jones: And I've been to Hong Kong, but I have not been to Shenzhen.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, we'll see. I'm trying this year. I'm trying to get to China, and I'm trying to get to Australia. We'll see on both counts. Woo-hoo! Yeah. We will see, maybe. Maybe it'd be easier if you just went to China, man. I could just meet you there.

Dave Jones: Right. We'd meet halfway. Yeah. Well, we'll see.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah. Well, you keep building stuff, too. It seems like it'll be a good fit for you, right? Yeah, yeah. Although it's Korea, we found out last time, right? Yes. Yes.

Dave Jones: It is going to be made in Korea. Right. That's right. Yep. Anyway. So, there you go. So, that's what I've been... Yeah. So, I was... Yeah, I've been busy setting up a shopping cart and stuff like that for my new products. And everyone says, why don't I drop ship? You know, just drop ship. And it's like, oh, you know, like I've got to probably hire someone anyway to take care of all the logistics of doing that. Like, just at the moment, I actually have products come in from four different countries. Right? I get stuff made here in Australia. I get stuff made in... Getting stuff made in South Korea. I'm getting stuff made in China. I'm getting stuff made, you know, all over the place.

Chris Gammell: Did you say New Zealand, too? Don't you get your boards there or something? I remember you said something about New Zealand at one point.

Chris Gammell: No, I was getting my boards there. Oh, you were. Oh, okay. Yeah, gotcha.

Dave Jones: But, you know, it's like, yeah, I could. And then, you know, it's just the logistics of it and everything else. And then I'm just another drop shipper, you know? It's like, meh.

Chris Gammell: It's true. It's true. I ran smack into a... I thought I was going to get caught up in Chinese New Year.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: I had ordered some stuff long distance.

Dave Jones: Which starts on the 15th, is it? Am I not mistaken?

Chris Gammell: It's definitely... I know February rolls around and I'm usually starting to sweat. You're right. Yeah, yeah. How about this? If you make it to February... If you're listening to this right now and you're like, oh, I should really check into that, you're already screwed. So don't... No.

Dave Jones: Well, you've probably got another week left, tops.

Chris Gammell: Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. But come on. All the rush orders are going through right now.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's right. The other country is Taiwan. And of course, I had my Taiwanese manufacturer of the multimeter, they emailed me and said, yeah, we're shutting down. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, yeah. So it's not just China.

Chris Gammell: I think we should just take a break too, man. That's what I'm saying. Like, why not? Right? I mean, it's our industry. We're... Just celebrate the new year.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: So it should be engineering week and we should all just...

Chris Gammell: Engineering month. Come on. Month. Right. We can just make it electronics month. Let's be honest. Let's just make it electronics month.

Dave Jones: Engineering new year. We'll just... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I like that. Ooh. Nice.

Speaker ?: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Not to... You know, of course, there's a cultural tradition there too. It's not that we're trying to co-op that. It's just that why not, you know...

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: If, you know, life gives you a factory shutdown for a month... What date would you have it on? Have a holiday, right?

Dave Jones: What date would you have it on? Bob Pease's birthday or something? You know, it'd start like a...

Chris Gammell: What, if you're outside of this, you mean? Like a...

Dave Jones: What do you mean?

Chris Gammell: Like you're saying... What date? You're saying a day? You're just going to say... First you said a week, now you're saying a day.

Dave Jones: It has to have a day. Like the Chinese new year have... You know, it's in February for some cultural reason. I don't know what, right? But if we were going to have engineering new year, we would have to pick a date.

Chris Gammell: That's true. Yeah. No, it's February 8th. I just looked up on... Thank you, Google. Right. Sure. Yeah. We should pick a date. That's what I'm saying. What should it be? Well, I would think it would be in the same area, right? Or no. You're saying we should just pick a date. Like National Oatmeal Day or National Red Sox Day. You know, there's all these stupid days that...

Dave Jones: National Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. Exactly. Stupid days. Yar. Yeah, I don't have a date, so we'll think about it. Maybe we can gather some comments, you know. We'll build a groundswell, grassroots, yada, yada, yada.

Dave Jones: Right. And then we'll have a website and make it all official and put it on... Oh, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You've got to have a website. You've got to have a website.

Dave Jones: Wikipedia. Because if it's not on Wikipedia, it doesn't exist, you know. I mostly agree with that, yeah. Yeah. Yep. All right.

Chris Gammell: I don't exist. I don't exist.

Dave Jones: Oh, by the way, I've been... Just a little aside. A little update. I've been slowly updating all of my videos to Vimeo.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah? Why's that?

Dave Jones: Yes. Well, I've always wanted to have like a backup, you know, just in case YouTube, you know, shut down my channel or something, which is happening a lot lately. There's a lot of big YouTubers out there that have been shut down and stuff like that. And it's not good, you know. It's not good. So, like, yeah, I want like a backup. And for other people who can't access YouTube and things like that, or they want a higher quality version. Gotcha, gotcha. Or insert... Or they hate YouTube. Insert reason here, you know, like kind of thing. So, yes, I'm uploading, mass uploading all my videos to Vimeo. It should be... Well, it's currently... It's processed a couple of hundred already, but yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. That's a lot of data juice. Yep.

Dave Jones: It is. That's a lot of bits. I had to actually put them on a portable hard drive and give it to somebody else who had an infinite internet connection. Oh, wow. You know, like, whereas I could not do it here, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: And I had to get the big plan, the top tierist plan for a year in order to mass upload all of my previous ones. Otherwise, it would have been limited to 20 gig a week, which sounds like a lot. But that's only like eight videos a week or something. So, imagine how long it would take me to upload 800 videos at eight videos a week, you know, like... Yeah, that's a lot.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, we did that same thing when we moved over to Libsyn for the podcast.

Dave Jones: Yes, that's right. Yeah, we paid a one-off thing, didn't we, to upload and pre-upload all our existing content. And then once you've done that, then yes, those data cap limits are fine, you know. Mm-hmm. Yep. So, hmm. Yep. Anyway, so there will eventually be on a Vimeo.com, EEV blog. They will eventually be there. And they should be in higher quality. I'm uploading my original... Well, not my original rendered version, but my original transcoded version, which I upload to YouTube. And Vimeo is a higher quality playback system. So, they should actually be slightly better quality. Cool. Yeah. Because you might be surprised how much quality YouTube actually drops.

Chris Gammell: I don't... I'm not a high-def person, so I don't care. Right, okay. Yeah, sorry. I don't need to see you in any higher def. I mean...

Dave Jones: No, no, you don't need to see my high-def.

Chris Gammell: Usually audio is enough for me, buddy. Sorry. Right, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's bad enough.

Chris Gammell: I've been digging into Class D amplifiers. You do anything with those ever? Not really. No, I've never had a need to do Class D. I mean, it's kind of crazy because, like, they're... I mean, they're everywhere and the same kind of thing, where it's just I've never needed to before. And finally got a project for...

Dave Jones: Why are you doing Class D?

Chris Gammell: For the course.

Dave Jones: All right, okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so basically making a sound... You know, like, we could easily buy an off-the-shelf thing. Like, there's no doubt about that. But, you know, it's more fun to make things and break things. So that's what we're doing. Of course.

Dave Jones: But you're using an off-the-shelf Class D amplifier chip, right? You're not...

Chris Gammell: Correct, yeah.

Dave Jones: You're not rolling your own with your own... Trannies, right?

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no. I thought about... Actually, I didn't think about doing that for Class D just because I don't know anything about it. But I was actually thinking about doing that for... Not the charge controller, but, like, a fuel gauge on a lithium-ion. So, like, just tracking current as it goes through, that kind of thing. Like, that kind of stuff. Like, there is all... I mean, like, honestly, in all this stuff, you could find off-the-shelf chips for anything, right? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That's something Maxim's always been very famous for, like, making super specific chips and then maybe not being able to get them all the time. Not being able to get them all the time. Ooh, low blow. But, you know, like, it's that buy-it-or-make-it kind of thing. A lot of times, like, oh, my God, the one that... Like, LT makes those timer blocks things, right? Like, literally, they make a one-shot chip. It's like, come on, guys. But for some people, that is totally the answer, you know?

Dave Jones: Exactly, because it's one square millimeter, whereas normally you'd have to use a chip, you know, some other...

Dave Jones: And it just works. ...in a 7.4 HC version with external parts. Yeah, it just works. Yeah, it just works.

Chris Gammell: It's out of the box. You plop it down. Great. Exactly. But sometimes it's... Well, it's always more... It's usually... Not always. It's sometimes more fun to make it yourself. Right. And, yeah, so some of those things that there are actually, like, building those things out, like... And we were considering that for, like, H-bridges as well, but, like, eh. Right. You know, like... Yeah. There's...

Dave Jones: So, class D amps.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: They're all about efficiency, aren't they? Because they're switching amplifiers. They are. None of these linear... None of these linear rubbish.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah. I mean, but basically the idea is you bring in an audio signal, you chop it up with a sawtooth wave, and then it becomes effectively a PWM signal, and then you drive... The audiophiles have just... I know, right.

Dave Jones: They're like, oh, but the high frequencies! No!

Chris Gammell: And then you just put an LC filter on the output. But, yeah, like, thinking about that stuff, like, you know, filtering is not an easy topic. I think that that was one thing that I struggled with, because you're pulling in a lot of frequency stuff versus, you know, frequency domain versus time domain kind of things, and that's kind of difficult. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm just kind of digging through that and trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing and teach it. And I'm teaching it as well. But, you know... Yep. Sometimes it's about teaching... Well, it's an apprenticeship, right? So it's... Right. Learning as I learn. And learning, yes. Got it. Yep. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: You've been talking to Martin too much, isn't that his motto? You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, sort of.

Dave Jones: Learn as I learn or something, kind of.

Chris Gammell: Is that his... I don't know if that's his motto.

Dave Jones: Oh, kind of. It's not motto, but...

Chris Gammell: I will ask him tomorrow. I have a meet-up with him. Cool. So... Beer. Beer, yeah. That's always a good question over beer. But the bigger question is, have you started a meet-up yet? Huh?

Dave Jones: No, I have not.

Chris Gammell: Oh. Oh, Dave.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Don't forget. Humans.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know.

Chris Gammell: They like talking over beers, even if they don't drink beer.

Dave Jones: Maybe, yeah. I'll get off my ass one day and do something.

Chris Gammell: It's literally like posting one thing. I will be here. But I've been saying that for like four years or something. I know. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, goodness.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. What else is happening? What else is happening? Well, the reason... Yep. Go ahead.

Dave Jones: Oh, God. Yeah, we're getting like...

Chris Gammell: No, we don't have to.

Dave Jones: Do we have to?

Chris Gammell: No, we don't have to, I'm saying. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Is this...

Dave Jones: I'm probably... I'm thinking what you're thinking.

Chris Gammell: Is this FTDI? Is that what you're thinking?

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no, no. I didn't think about that one. Oh, shit, you want to talk about that. No, okay. I didn't think about that one. Damn. They're so stupid. That company, seriously. They are just so... So I saw you posted the link to your forum. They blocked me. They blocked me on Twitter.

Chris Gammell: What?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Did they block me too?

Dave Jones: I actually tweeted a screen capture of... Yeah, they blocked me. They're blocking anyone on Twitter who dares mention FTDI Gate 2.0. Right? And, like, how stupid do you have to be?

Chris Gammell: I do want to say one thing. I think that I did not agree what they did last time, but I also think that last time was a bit of a pylon. Pylon? Yeah, you know what I mean. Just, like... Lay in the groundwork? No, not a pylon. Sorry.

Dave Jones: Sorry, right. That's what I'm thinking of, like, building something.

Chris Gammell: No, like a dog pile. Like, everybody kept jumping in the pylon and getting more and more critical.

Speaker ?: Oh, a pylon.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right. Yeah, sorry.

Dave Jones: It was a pylon. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Damn these compression internet audio compression algorithms. Yeah. Right. That's my Yankee accent, Dave. Right. Yeah, yeah. No. But, no, I think last time... You know, I was reading about just kind of, like, internet bullying, stuff like that, and it kind of fit a similar kind of thing, you know? Like, there are different levels of all that stuff, but it felt similar.

Dave Jones: You thought there was too much hate over what they did?

Chris Gammell: Yes. Because, I mean, some of the stuff is... Okay, well, anyways.

Dave Jones: No, they deserved everything they got. Okay. And what they did was a ridiculously stupid move, and they deserved everything they got, just like what happened to the Fine Brothers.

Chris Gammell: I don't want to talk about that.

Dave Jones: Actually, actually, we'll talk about that after this. No, I don't want to talk about that at all.

Dave Jones: I just... No, no, no. No, there's...

Chris Gammell: Come on, stay on track here, Dave. Electronics. Electronics.

Dave Jones: No, there's an interesting aspect to that. Anyway, which I'll get to. I don't want to talk about it. Anyway, FTD... Well, I do. Screw it. This is half my show.

Chris Gammell: So Dave's going to talk about what he wants to talk about. I'm going to talk about what I'm going to talk about.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right. We're going to talk over the top of each other. Two separate audio tracks, you have one in the left, we'll just split it. We'll just split yours in the left. That would be the worst. Earphone and mine in the right. That would be the worst. We could do that as like an April Fool's episode or something. We could have like...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, like when someone plays a music track over another music track, like my head explodes. It'd be so annoying, yeah. I don't like that at all.

Dave Jones: I think we have to experiment with that and see how bad it really is. That'd be great. Anyway, FTDI, I can't believe you thought that people were too harsh on them. I think they deserved every bit of criticism they got.

Chris Gammell: Well, anyways, we should explain what is going on this time. So what's the difference?

Dave Jones: Well, I don't think anyone... Like, I don't think the verdict's in yet. Whereas before, they were deliberately bricking chips, right? Right.

Chris Gammell: So they were like overriding some one of the fields in there or something like that.

Dave Jones: For writing the PI... What's the name of the register? PID. Is it PID? Something like that, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Something like that, yeah. UID maybe?

Dave Jones: I mean, I don't know. Someone will correct us, yeah. Yeah. I'm not into all the USB protocol stuff. Anyway, yeah. That, yeah. They were setting that to zero or something, which actually bricks. So unless you've got a tool to physically reprogram it, it bricks that device. It can brick consumer devices, you know? Right. Like, crazy stuff.

Chris Gammell: And the argument against that, and I think that the, you know, like a lot of times people are like, well, it's not their hardware and they have the right to do that. And it's like, that's fine. But the thing we talked about on here too is like, come on, you're... There's a lot of unsuspecting consumers out there too. Exactly. It's not like this is like a pro tool.

Dave Jones: That's why I reckon they deserved everything they got.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Anyway, this time, apparently this is not new. It's just that somebody kicked up a stink about it. Gotcha. And it's being talked about now. So this could be more of a beat up than the previous one, I think. Because what they... This is off the top of my head. I haven't investigated, so I could be wrong. But they're outputting... They first thought they were outputting... If it detects a counterfeit... If the driver, FTDI driver, detects a counterfeit chip, then it puts out random text. Yeah. A random data on the transmit and receive pins. And the person who originally discovered this, even though it's not new, it's been in the driver for a long time, thought that, you know, oh, this is bad. Because, yeah, it could potentially damage a device, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. If you overwrote the wrong region or something like that.

Dave Jones: If that device is not expecting that data and you're sending garbage data. As it turns out, it's not actually garbage data. It's a string which says this is not a genuine device or something. So it keeps sending that string. But then why? Why send that on the transmit and receive RS-232 pins? Why? Why not just... The driver detects it's a blank chip. It doesn't talk to it. That's it. End of story. Right? Or it says a message to the user, I can't talk to this chip because it's fake or whatever. Why deliberately put that text on the transmit and receive pins? I think, I believe that's what's happening. And if that's the case, it's just stupid. It's just like, just more dickheadedness on their part. Like, they just don't get it. They just don't get it. And their response to both of these situations shows they're completely clueless. It's the worst response you could possibly do. Start blocking people who mention it. Yay, way to go. Instead of trying to engage people and stuff like that. Like, nah. Idiots. Idiots. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and so, yeah, I remember the last time too, there was something there.

Dave Jones: They, I think they only backed down once Microsoft actually cancelled their, you know, driver, their old driver from the auto update or something. So, you know, like, I don't get it. They're just like, how can companies be so clueless about, you know, their reputation and everything? I, I just don't get it. Yeah. Anyway, that brings us to what I want to talk about, the Fine Brothers. And if you don't know about what the Fine Brothers did, we can, I don't know, maybe we'll link in. Chris won't want to link in something down below. No, I definitely don't want to link in. Right, yeah. Anyway, so, no, I don't want to actually talk about the, the actual thing themselves. They tried to, anyway, they tried to trademark certain terms and certain, that they could use to enforce, uh, trademark, uh, disputes on YouTube. So they could get everyone's videos flagged and taken down. So they tried to trademark all this. And, and, well, I've, I've never seen a more douchish looking.

Chris Gammell: Douchish, huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah, douchish. I've just invented a new word. Just the way they tried to explain it in their video. It's like, it was the sleaziest kind of douchiest explanation possible. Anyway, and then they did a follow-up video trying to explain themselves, which is even douchier again. Like, anyway, the whole, the internet melted down and they lost, because they've got like 15 million subscribers. And they started losing subscribers at a rate of 10,000 per hour at one point. And there was actually a live feed. Somebody actually put up on a live feed on YouTube. And you can sit there and watch their subscribers drop in real time. It was hilarious. And so, yeah, how to destroy your reputation in one video. Anyway, the point is, they finally came out after all this backlash. And they did something I did not expect them to do. They went, not only did they say sorry, but they went, we are now cancelling all of our trademarks. We were so wrong. We are the only way we can get people to trust us again. We're cancelling all our trademarks. We'll no longer enforce them. Paperwork's been filed, you know, and we will not flag videos ever again. Blah, blah, blah. It was a complete turnaround. And you've got to, you've got to admire them for that. Like, they just realised that what they were doing was so potentially douche-ish that, and, you know, like, gives them, you know, the power of God on YouTube to, like, take down practically any video out there that does anything similar to their style. And they just, yeah, they just realised that it was so wrong. And they actually cancelled their trademarks. I'm stunned. So this is what I'm saying, right? This is how you respond to something that you've done, right? Whereas FTDI...

Chris Gammell: Sure, right. So when you finally mess up, you're saying you have to go all the way.

Dave Jones: You have to go all the way.

Chris Gammell: You, Dave. When you mess up. When you mess up.

Dave Jones: I always admit I'm wrong. I do it all the time.

Chris Gammell: Sometimes you dig your heels in. A little bit.

Dave Jones: What?

Chris Gammell: A little bit.

Dave Jones: I get what?

Chris Gammell: That's the thing. You're not, you haven't had a big enough mess up yet. You'll get there. Don't worry, man. You work towards that. You have to keep getting more and more famous. And then you have the breakdown on camera. Right. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Right. But no, this is how you respond. I actually, they went much further than what I thought would be a reasonable response. Right? I, you know, I didn't expect them to completely drop the trademarks or whatever. I, you know, that was, that was stunning. And they canceled their entire program. I thought they'd somehow try and, you know, keep it going, you know, because they must have invested so much time, money and energy into this new React World program, multi-channel network that they wanted to form. The whole thing just canceled.

Chris Gammell: Like, like, wow. Are we back to my half of the program again yet? Are we, are we done with your half of the program?

Dave Jones: Anyway, I think it was a good example of how to salvage your reputation. Okay.

Chris Gammell: So let's tie this, let's tie this, let's tie this, uh, this package up with a bow and then throw it in the ocean.

Dave Jones: You don't agree that that's a good example?

Chris Gammell: So what, what would FTDI have to do then to, to have a similar response? Maybe that's, maybe that's the right way to, to bring this back full circle.

Dave Jones: Come out and say, yes, it was incredibly stupid of us to do this. And yeah, like we're not going to do us and do it again. We're taking it, removing all that. I personal guarantee.

Chris Gammell: We're open sourcing our windows software or something like that.

Dave Jones: Maybe something like that. Yeah. Something like that perhaps. Or, you know, like, and we're putting these measures in place. A lot of criticism they got from the previous FTDI gate 1.0, I guess. The original one is that like they, you know, they're talking about all these counterfeits and how it's the big problem. Yeah. People understand that. But what are you doing towards, you know, stopping counterfeits flooding the market? You're doing it the wrong way. You know, so, so they just did it their way or nothing. Right. They, they, they didn't figure out some innovative, I don't know. I, I suggested put holographic, embed holographic things on your chip. So, you know, they're genuine or something like, I don't know, come up with something smart. You know, you're the industry leaders in, you know, bloody chips like this.

Chris Gammell: Making USB into cereal. Yeah. You're right.

Dave Jones: You know, yeah. You guys come up with something, you know, you're the geniuses in this, right?

Chris Gammell: I don't remember what.

Dave Jones: But they did nothing, basically. I remember. They essentially didn't even apologize. It was a really dicky response, if I remember correctly.

Chris Gammell: Hmm.

Dave Jones: It was, you know, I did do a video on it and I just went, this is a pathetic response, you know, something like that.

Chris Gammell: Well, PR still matters, I suppose. And, you know, good software. It does. Yada, yada, yada.

Dave Jones: No. No. Companies have to admit when they're wrong. And yes, the power of the internet won. You know, the market won. Well, that's the thing, though. I don't think it did because people are still using it. Well, no, in terms of the Fine Brothers I'm talking about.

Chris Gammell: Oh, sure. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Because that's what I was going to ask is like last time I remember everybody talking about, oh, there's all these alternatives and I didn't know. I mean, I didn't really see any, you know, there weren't any like,

Dave Jones: Well, I knew about them. I've used the odd one, you know. No, no, no.

Chris Gammell: I know there are, but it's not like they've like, it's not like it's not a big enough thing where people are like, oh, no big deal. Whatever. We're using this other thing, right?

Dave Jones: A lot of people refuse to use, still refuse to use FTDI chips.

Chris Gammell: Well, I'm trying to ask what should I be using instead because I just put one on my board. So I'm part of the problem here, Dave.

Dave Jones: Well, the microchip one seems to be the sort of preferred go-to one, the 2200 or something, is it? I don't know.

Chris Gammell: 2200, like a...

Dave Jones: The MCP 2200, if I'm remembering right. I probably got that wrong. Okay. MCP, have I got it wrong?

Chris Gammell: But it's the same kind of thing.

Dave Jones: I got it right. Yes. MCP 2200. It's a USB bridge. Yep. Okay. Yeah, the interesting thing about that, though, is it's not actually a custom chip. The MCP 2200 is a PIC micro. Yeah. A PIC micro with a... It's actually a pre-programmed PIC micro with a different part number on it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Which I think is clever. Yeah, that's great.

Chris Gammell: That's what I want. I don't want to be... I know. I mean, that's the reason you put one down in the first place is to just get past that. You know? That's all that really matters. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So that one's reasonably priced and works well, apparently. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: You know. Yeah, there are Cypress make another one and there's a few other players.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, and you know, every board with an animal part on it, I'm sure they'll start using this MCP 2200 eventually, too. So... Too soon, Chris. Too soon. Yeah. There you go. It's a yes. Okay. Well, that's good. So... We... Come on. You crapped on and you wanted to... We were mentioned, actually. We were mentioned? Yeah. So I...

Dave Jones: We got a shout out somewhere away?

Chris Gammell: Well, kind of, sort of. I had written into Innovation Hub a while back and basically, based on the results of the survey, I kind of just mentioned that and asked her to talk about diversity in tech and thought she'd be real well equipped for that. And so that was a good discussion over there. So she gave us a shout out. It was cool. So... Okay. Do we have a link? Yes, there will be a link. So that's good.

Dave Jones: There'll be a link down below, as always. Down below.

Chris Gammell: Down below. Right. Yes. Yeah. Right. Unless you're listening on headphones, don't look down. There's nothing there.

Dave Jones: No, you'll walk into a wall or something.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Yep. I saw this US Bionics thing. Have you seen this thing yet?

Dave Jones: US Bionics.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So it's basically, it's for paraplegics. There's really nothing else here.

Dave Jones: Right. These exoskeletons. I didn't think this is new.

Chris Gammell: It's not new. Well, that's the thing. Like the actual, you know, the concept of an exoskeleton is not new at all. I think what it really is, it's just, we're starting to hit this, you know, this sweet spot of, you know, battery densities have gone up a little bit, but really more so...

Dave Jones: Process, real-time processing power for sensor feedback and motor control. Oh, yeah. Blah, blah, blah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. A thousand times better. And then, you know, but like the motors and the batteries, they're not like, you know, it's not like these are super lightweight or anything like that. But yeah, I think it's that all those other pieces are starting to get there. And really the big thing is the cost coming down. Right. And so that's what these guys are going for is lower cost. And, you know, it's a really awesome cause too. And I mean, like it's, you know, for helping people regain mobility, stuff like that. I think it's just interesting. You know, they have this thing about, well, I am not the suit. That's like their spokespeople talking about it. And, you know, basically it's not like, it's not, it's just an assistive device. But also this is like the best, the best of both worlds as well, because it's kind of this, it's an assistive technology, but it's also using a lot of the advances in robotics as well, because there are, you know, it's like, instead, you're not, you're not typing in, you're not typing in like coordinates or, or the, you know, the reverse kinematics, you know, that kind of stuff. You're, it's basically just sensing what you, you know, what your leg would be doing normally and then trying to amplify that and move it forward. Right. So if you're trying to start to bend, you know, if you start to move forward, that kind of thing, it can sense that and, you know, help you, help you move forward using, using like gyros and stuff like that. So.

Dave Jones: And you can work for them. They've got a couple of positions open. They've got an EE position open.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They want somebody who can do layout and board layout and stepper motor controllers and jazz like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man.

Dave Jones: And some travel might be required. As I said, if you're young and single and you can get a job with travel, do it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. That's the way to do it.

Dave Jones: And they don't care. Requirements. BS, MS, or PhD in EE or equivalent. Excellent. They just don't care. You can have it as long as you layout boards. Right. Can you layout boards? Yes, no. Right. Right. Right. Interview. Right. Right. You know, it's great. And they're looking for a controls engineer, too. So if you're into controls and things like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: We don't often have jobs here on The Amp Hour, but there you go.

Chris Gammell: Nope.

Dave Jones: Somebody, one of our listeners might, you know, be, oh, I'd love to work on exoskeletons and exoskeleton robots and stuff. Well, here's your chance.

Chris Gammell: So speaking of boards, I've been talking to Jonathan Hirschman, I think his last name is. And so if you remember the Pico press, it was like a little, it looks like a caulk gun for solder paste.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, I have one here.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I do, too. I use it all the time, actually, for boards and stuff. I don't even know. I don't think he makes it anymore. I'm not sure about that. But he started a new thing called PCBNG. Have you heard about that? No. So basically, it's kind of like taking the concepts of Osh Park of like just pricing by volume or by area, rather, like so board area, and then applying that to assembly, which is kind of crazy. Yeah. But I think it actually might work. And I'm not sure what the actual pricing is. Let's see if he writes it on. I've heard some early pricing. But oh, yeah, he has a calculator there. And so let's see. So one, let's change the numbers here a little bit. So sorry for the Imperial stuff. But one inch by two inch board. Let's just make it one by one.

Dave Jones: Have you got a link for this thing?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, sure. So it's PCB.ng.

Speaker ?: Oh, here we go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. I see it. You got that. Okay. I see it. Yeah. So it says one square inch board with $6 in parts, single sided assembly, the early. So usually it's going to be $9 per square inch for the assembly.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And then basically, but right now it's half off. And so you have to buy six boards. So, you know, depending on, I mean, and the thing that's crazy is you don't need, the density is not actually an issue. So like you can try and go as dense as possible. Like I saw in Hackaday, did you see they had the square inch contest? You see that thing? I thought that was kind of fun.

Dave Jones: No, okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Do anything you want in one square inch.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Like what can you actually get done in one square inch? And it's actually, it's actually a really interesting design constraint. Right. So, so same kind of thing here. So you're applying now one square inch.

Dave Jones: Oh, I've got one that might fit in that. I've got an old design, which might fit into that.

Chris Gammell: I think the contest is over. I'm sorry, Dave.

Dave Jones: Oh, my old micro RGB.

Chris Gammell: What's that?

Dave Jones: Oh, it was a RGB matrix module before all flashy RGB lights became all the rage. Oh, right. It was going to be a modular thing. And it was like, it had a embedded controller on the back of a, an eight by eight RGB led matrix. Oh, cool. Like a tiny one. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Not, not a big one, but like a little tiny one. I think it might be close to an inch by an inch. Huh. And, um, yeah. And, uh, yeah. Controller on the back and you could cascade them together and blah, blah, blah. So, yeah. So I made a few protos and, uh, but, um, yeah, I never really, I don't know. I moved on to some other project and it just sort of languished. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Some people really, uh, really go for like the, they like doing the, you know, optimizing for space kind of thing. Me, I'm like, I space it out, make it easy to solder. I'm fine with that. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: No, I'm, I, I love fit to envelope design. That's one of my.

Chris Gammell: Fit to envelope. What does that mean?

Dave Jones: Fit to envelope. It means you're given a constraint.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I was thinking like a paper envelope, but yeah. You just mean like a physical, a 3d envelope.

Dave Jones: And then how can I fit the electronics into here? You know, that's, I love those sorts of challenges.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you do. It's great fun. I mean, that's probably just your layout stuff. I, I, I just want to get it done.

Dave Jones: Right. No, see, I've, I've always been involved in that with, you know, lots of military things and stuff like that I've done. Um, you know, like you have unusual constraints sometimes.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right.

Dave Jones: That you've got to fit things in. You can't put everything into a nine inch rack and a, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, you know, coming from the analog world, they don't make parts super small. So, um, sometimes you gotta. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so 63 bucks for, so that'd be like, so what, so, uh, 10 bucks a board, 10 bucks, 10. Hang on.

Dave Jones: But do you have, like, is there, like, there's other companies that do similar sort of, you know, cheap assembly kind of stuff. Yeah, so I think. Like this, but are you limited to the parts you can use? Because it's, it's all about the pick and what they can fit on their pick and place machine, right?

Chris Gammell: I don't think so. Uh, so there was a couple of guidelines. Well, then how does it work?

Dave Jones: There's got to be a constraint there.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure. There, no, there, there is a guideline here somewhere.

Dave Jones: And how does it work? You ship them the parts and they just do it? And they're doing it by hand at the moment? How does it, like, try to drum up business? No, it's still in beta.

Chris Gammell: I'm not even sure about that stuff. Right. Okay. Um, sorry. I don't have all the answers here, Dave. But, uh. Okay. Well, there you go. There were some. Um, so one of the things is it's, it's surface mount only. I think the smallest they'll do is 0402. And I think they said BGA for now, but it might change. I saw, I saw this.

Dave Jones: If it's surface mount only, then they must be pick and placing it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so. Yes.

Dave Jones: But yeah. But do you have to ship them the reels? Can you ship them? Can you just cut tape and they can handle those? Can you, like, tubes, like, you know, trays? Oh, I think they said no tubes.

Chris Gammell: I remember, I'm trying to just do this from memory. So that's why, sorry. I'm trying to remember from memory. But I will hopefully find it here eventually.

Dave Jones: I'm trying to free up some space in the lab to finally build my pick and place machine.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's right. You have one. I forgot about that.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. I have a kit. Yes. And we do want to build it so people out there know we haven't forgotten. It's just a matter of, you know, we need to dedicate a bench to it for, like, weeks. You know, maybe a month or something. You know, like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, and if you like it forever, right?

Dave Jones: Right. So, yeah. So I'm actually in the process of trying to find more space at the moment, not only in the lab, but outside the lab, too. So, yeah, I could go build it down in the bunker.

Chris Gammell: I was going to say, what about, like, carts? Do you ever do, like, cart systems? I mean, maybe that's not great for a pick and place, but I don't know how big is this thing. A cart? Yeah, like building it onto a cart so it's movable so you can get out of the way.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. So you can, yeah, yeah, yeah, platform. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. Exactly. Just basically a small bench with wheels, you know, not as sturdy.

Dave Jones: Well, it kind of is that. I mean, you've got to buy. I do have to actually buy a board to mount this thing on. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So then you just mount the board onto a cart and then it's rollable.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, but I don't have room for the cart. Like, you know, it's like, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well.

Dave Jones: No, I'll just devote a bench to it. You should definitely get rid of some other crap, too, you know. Yeah, I know. I know. I'm working on it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. Anyway. How soon will happen? Soon? Soon?

Dave Jones: Well, David's coming in today and we're going to talk about reorganizing the lab and doing various things. Yeah, I know. A lot of luck. Yeah, because we're so constrained here. It's like, you know. People come in here and go, wow, this is a big lab and look at all the benches you've got.

Chris Gammell: And, you know.

Dave Jones: It's just. No, no, no. I know what you mean. Sorry. It's just so many different things happening. You know, it's just.

Chris Gammell: What was I looking at? I was looking at. There was some organizational video that someone had all of these tools and every tool had a perfect spot for it. And I'm like.

Dave Jones: There's a name for that, yeah.

Chris Gammell: What?

Dave Jones: There's a name for doing that sort of thing.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. It's called Not What I Do.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: I mean, that's the thing. Like, even in a best case scenario like that, right? I mean, like, there are some people that are very organized and I'm super not envious because I won't ever do that. I mean, it's just. It's awesome that they are. But even in the best case scenario, even if you have a place for every tool and everything you have, there's just a clutter factor, too. Like, sometimes you're just going to be in the middle of a project and you have tons of stuff on your bench.

Dave Jones: Well, that's what happens here. Like. Yeah, exactly. I can have my tools organized to the hilt, but that's not going to help me when I've got five different things that are currently under. Yeah. You know, it's like, yes, I need a different bench for every new thing that comes in. Right. You know, stuff's constantly coming in here and it's like, well, it's got to sit on the floor, you know, because I can't. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Of course.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yep. Even though I might have, I think I might have seven benches here in the lab or something. Which sounds like a lot.

Chris Gammell: It is a lot, actually.

Dave Jones: One, two, three, four, five, six. I've got eight. I've got eight benches here.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Which sounds like a lot, but one's a packing and shipping. One's a solder. Right. One's a mechanical type bench. Three are electronic benches. One is the mailbag bench where I have to shoot the mailbag video. Another is Dave's desk. You know, like.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You just boot out the youngin', man. Just be like, oh, well. Right. Work when you can find space. Yes.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I am actually trying to find, to get all the packing and shipping out of here, I'm actually trying to find another space. But Murphy gets you every time. It's like, yeah. Did I mention how. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You mentioned that last time, I think.

Dave Jones: Last time, how I just, I was going to move the lab next door and I missed out. Well, I, there's another one that's very close by. It looks like I'm going to miss out on that one. There's another one nearby. I'm going to miss out on that one. Yikes. It's like, yet when I don't want it, it seems like, oh, there's a ton available. Oh, yeah. Right. And there's, yeah. Yeah. So bad.

Chris Gammell: Just, anyway. That's real estate in general, I think.

Speaker ?: So.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So I might, to get something, I might have to actually pay a premium and, you know, I'm a bit of a tight ass.

Chris Gammell: Yes. You know. As engineers are. That's fine.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. That's just a bit against my nature. Yeah. You know, it's like, you want how much per square meter? That's the most expensive in the whole business park. Well, do you want it or not? Right. Right. You know, it's like really close and it's like ideal, but it's the most expensive thing in the park. You know, like, holy crap. Yeah. You know, like, I would just, like, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing that I'm paying the highest rate of anyone in the park, you know, for, just because it's, you know, convenient. And, uh, yeah. Anyway. So. Ah, decisions, decisions. We are starting. Is anyone else like that? Has anyone else had similar issues where you bought something? You know, I, like, got this place four years ago now. Yeah. More than four years ago. And it was like, it seemed really big at the time. And then, you know, you don't think down the track and you go, geez, I'm kind of stuck. And it's like hard to really pick, pack up and move the entire lab to a bigger place. You know, that's so disruptive.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, you know, so now I'm sort of looking at halfway measures where I can, uh, half here and half somewhere else. And, oh, it's just, it's a mess. Is anyone else caught between a rock and a hard place like that?

Chris Gammell: I mean, that sounds like, that sounds like a lot of real estate, this stuff though, too, you know? Like, family members I've had who bought a small house or smaller house.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yeah, of course.

Chris Gammell: They have a second, third kid and they're like, oh, time to move. That was dumb.

Dave Jones: Well, don't talk to me about that. Yep. We're, we're, we're building.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. Adding on.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. Well, you gotta. I know. Stop having kids, man. Jeez. He's only got two. Yeah, well, for now. Speaking of bringing new things into the world, what did you think of the, oh man, that was, that was a stretch. Uh, what do you think of this, uh, wireless oscilloscope? Uh, I can hear the groan, the pre-groan happening.

Dave Jones: I have not seen it. Where is it? It's not in the link. It's called aeroscope.

Chris Gammell: It's a aeroscope.

Dave Jones: Oh, sorry. I didn't look down far enough.

Chris Gammell: So actually, I know John. I met him in San Francisco and, well, re-met him in San Francisco. He went to my school, actually.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's a pen probey type thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but look at the spec. I mean, like, I think it's actually, I actually really, I like it. And, uh, I don't know. We'll see. It's, so, the specs are 100 megahertz bandwidth, analog. 500 mega samples.

Dave Jones: Yeah, let me guess, it connects to your phone.

Chris Gammell: It does. And I asked about that. When I saw him, I asked about it. And it was like, whoa, wait a second. How is it going to do that? But basically, it's sending back, I think all of the samples are already compressed. So it's not sending back a data stream. It's sending back.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no, no. You would have to compress it. You wouldn't be able to get data faster.

Chris Gammell: Right, so it's not going to be like an analog, not an analog stream. It's not going to be like a bit stream. It's, I think, I could be wrong here. It's going to be basically the full 8-bit signal, so for whatever range you're on. Right, so it'll pass the range. I think, down to the scope, the handheld scope thingy. And then, you know, whatever the range you're on, you'll be able to. So if you're on the 20 millivolt range, it'll.

Dave Jones: Go ahead.

Chris Gammell: I can hear the incredulity.

Dave Jones: Well, no, like, these have their niche uses. I think, yeah. What I don't like, I don't know if they're doing it. I'm not talking about the aeroscope, right. But some people, like, oh, this is the only oscilloscope you're going to need. Oh, wow. Get one of these things. It's bullshit. No, but I think maybe it's a starting scope.

Chris Gammell: That kind of thing. I mean, like, it could depend.

Dave Jones: No, no. Oh. I don't know. I mean, it depends on price, too, of course. Well, of course. Well, I don't think this one's going to be particularly cheap. 100 meg analog bandwidth, 500 meg samples per second. It's not one of those, you know, one of those, what's the name of the DSO Nano? You know, it's not Nano.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I am not a big fan of those. Not at all.

Dave Jones: No, it's, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I.

Dave Jones: Yeah, as they said, like, working on troubleshooting stuff when you're not on the bench, okay? Right, so robots and. And they give examples of drones. Yeah, drones. Stuff like that, yeah. You know, you're out in the field and your drones, you know, you're trying to hack it. You're fine, you know? Great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I actually, I also like that the, this, I don't even know if it says it on here.

Dave Jones: Well, there's no spec. Are there any specs?

Chris Gammell: Again, I've seen this thing, but.

Dave Jones: Has it got a decent, has it got a decent, oh, the problem with all these is that you usually don't do a decent front end in terms of the attenuation, you know, the.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think, well, I don't know about that, but.

Dave Jones: How many ranges has it gotten? Blah, blah, blah.

Chris Gammell: Ranges.

Dave Jones: It's got a two hour battery life. It uses Bluetooth smart. What's Bluetooth smart?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's like the newest one, I think. Like the highest bandwidth one.

Dave Jones: Oh, God, okay. Right, I'm not obviously keeping up to date. Well, so the thing that I like about it is the. I've got a new product that has Bluetooth. Have I, I'm using Bluetooth low energy. Is that like so, you know, 2014?

Chris Gammell: No, I think it's, I think Bluetooth. I'm going to talk out of my butt here, but I think Bluetooth smart is the low energy protocol, but then like some kind of.

Dave Jones: So you're saying it is low energy, so I am out of date. No, no, no, you're not sure out of date.

Chris Gammell: I think this is like the 4.1. I think that's what it is. So like your Bluetooth low energy is 4.0, I think, and then smart is 4.1.

Dave Jones: Yes, I'm out of date. So you're telling me I'm out of date.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yes, yes. I didn't really think you were going to be a leading edge. Sorry.

Dave Jones: Unbelievable. I don't know. Product's not even out yet.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well. Bluetooth smart branding. Oh, no, no. So it's just a, it is a logo to clarify the compatibility between new low energy devices and other Bluetooth devices. So I guess it does both. Yes. It indicates a dual mode device compatible with both classic and low energy. So that's what it means.

Dave Jones: Right. That's kind of nice. Right.

Chris Gammell: Anyways, the thing that I like about this is the probe is actually, it plugs into SMA connector. So then the idea being that you could make it extensible for other things as well. Obviously.

Dave Jones: Right. You could use it. You could have a traditional scope probe and just plug it in using an SMA to BNC adapter.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So I like that.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. No, I do like that as well.

Chris Gammell: Like I said, I've seen it. It looks cool, but I haven't seen it. Like I've seen like the physical model and stuff like that. It, you know, remains to be seen, but I think it could be, could be very interesting. So we'll see what the price point is and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Okay. Cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, lugging, I'm sure you've done this. You've probably taken scopes out to field tests, right?

Dave Jones: I've lugged scopes out to field tests, yes. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, that's, it's necessary sometimes, especially if you need like the, you know, the high resolution stuff. But man, it's not fun.

Dave Jones: I lugged a scope out to the field. You young whippersnapper should do the same thing.

Chris Gammell: We took tube scopes and we brought four generators.

Dave Jones: And roasted marshmallows over them. Smartphones. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, you know, I never mind another, you know, having another useful tool in the tool belt is not a bad thing. So.

Dave Jones: Right. What else have we got? Oh, can we, yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, I know what you're talking about now. No, we're not doing it. No, don't even. I didn't post that. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Everyone wants me to do a video on it.

Chris Gammell: No, I don't do it, man. It's so, it's so over the.

Dave Jones: You don't think I should do a video. Everyone, like every second man and his dog. I know.

Chris Gammell: It's so dumb.

Dave Jones: Like. Yeah, I know. I know. It's like.

Chris Gammell: I think we should even not even say it here. We should just let people go and figure it out. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, okay. Well, the last one. What is this online education that MIT dean or something has gone off on a tangent and formed their own school or something? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Basically a new research university, but basically no grades. It sounds kind of. Kind of.

Dave Jones: No grades and no lectures or something.

Chris Gammell: And no majors as well. Right.

Dave Jones: You know, and this is. And it's all project based or something.

Chris Gammell: Uh, I didn't see that part, but probably. I mean, obviously I'm interested in this. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It says the cornerstone. I don't know how far this is, right? This is, you know, I think this might be at the announcement level kind of thing, but it's interesting.

Dave Jones: It's the cornerstone. Yes. The project based learning is the cornerstone of her vision. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, where do you think she got the idea for that, man? Come on. Right. You're talking to me. Right. Yeah. No. It's great. I mean, this is like, this is the kind of stuff you want to see.

Dave Jones: Um, but yeah, I, I like immediately want to know the technicalities of it. How do, how do you sign? Like what projects do you work on? How do you sign up? How do you like?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yes.

Dave Jones: How does it work?

Chris Gammell: Like Dave, I'll tell you all about it.

Dave Jones: It's a research thing, right? But it's like a research university as well. So. Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's the real thing.

Dave Jones: Do companies come in and pay for projects and then there's a pool of people, researchers who work on it or what? Like.

Chris Gammell: Well, obviously we talked about a lot of this stuff with John as well. You know, like the research versus the education side of things. And, um, yeah, it's, uh.

Dave Jones: I have not digested enough to comment. Um.

Chris Gammell: Well, um. Yeah. I think that this is usually, you know, so the reason that this is news in the first place, right? Because anyone could go and, anyone can go and start an online educational program. This is actually not online. So it doesn't matter. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Any nerd in his. Any nerd in his basement. Dog in his basement. Yeah. Can start a. Um.

Chris Gammell: No, I think it's, it's because she is the, uh, Dean of Graduate. Education at MIT. Right. It's like that. That's the reason.

Dave Jones: Oh, she was, but she threw it in, threw in the towel to go do this apparently.

Chris Gammell: So I don't know. I think we're going to see a shakeup in education. I don't think it's going to be me. Uh, I'm sure someone like this is a lot more likely. Uh. She may as well give up now, dude.

Dave Jones: That's not a very positive attitude, is it? Uh, my, my course is not going to amount to anything. I'm not saying my course is bad.

Chris Gammell: I'm saying that I don't think that my course is going to take down the traditional education model. Whereas, whereas I think that's usually the thing that this is going for. And actually, uh, actually that is something interesting to mention as well. So Udacity, which is, uh, Sebastian Thruns. So he was the guy that started Google X.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Um, and now that's Astro Teller's there. Anyways, so he's the one who started that and then he left and he started Udacity, which is his online program. A lot of people do it. But man, they are doing some crazy stuff where like they're trying to do nano degrees, they're called, where, you know, basically you pay and, and you go.

Dave Jones: You pay and you get your degree. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but no, but then they, they do, they do some other interesting things like, um, if you complete your degree in 12 months, they give you half your money back, which I think is very interesting.

Dave Jones: Wow. That's a bit novel, I guess.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, that's not a lot of schools are doing that. And then they, they just announced the other week. I saw them again. They, they started cause they're trying to push real hard at like, oh, we can teach people online to, to obviously in this case, it's right. Like front end code, stuff like that, you know, remains to be seen. But then now they also announced, um, like having career counselors that are basically like doing like job placements for people that are learning online. So, and I mean, we've heard in the past too, of like Google and everybody dropping their educational requirements as well. But, uh, I don't know. It's weird. It's a weird, it's a weird change. We'll see how it actually shakes out. I don't, I don't know if it'll actually, I don't know if that's the model that'll shake out. And I don't know if this could happen for hardware, but, uh, it's, there's some weird stuff happening in education.

Dave Jones: The times, they are a changing. They are. I mean. Can we, can we finish it off by adding the song at the, can you edit the song in at the end?

Chris Gammell: Sure. I love that song. The times. Bob Dylan. Yeah. Like, like we're just like done now. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. We're done. Just.

Chris Gammell: Just like you said, the times are a changing and then it rolled right into the song.

Dave Jones: Here's Bob Dylan.

Chris Gammell: I thought it was already planned.

Dave Jones: Oh.

Chris Gammell: Cool man. Well. Catch you next time. Yeah. See you next week.

Chris Gammell: Outro Music