#298 – Don't Turn It On, Don't Take It Apart

Dave Jones: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded May 11th, 2016. Episode 298. Don't turn it on, don't take it apart.

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

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

Dave Jones: What's up, nerd? It's just us again.

Chris Gammell: Hey, hey. Yeah, what's up, man?

Dave Jones: I've been fighting technology at every turn. It's what I do.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you know, Windows will do that to you.

Dave Jones: Oh, dear. Yeah, thank you. Everyone will say, I told you so. I told you so. You know.

Chris Gammell: What, you were switching over to 10? Is there anything?

Dave Jones: Yes. I've switched over to Windows 10 on all my machines except my main lab machine that I do all my editing on. That's my entire business, you know. So I didn't want to rock the boat on that machine.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I was going to say, you know there's a phrase about that. It's ain't broke, don't fix it kind of thing.

Dave Jones: If it ain't busted, don't fix it. But, yeah. You know, I mean, isn't the free, you know, sucking in. Isn't the free update, good date ending soon or something like that. And, you know, like in two years' time, I don't want to be, you know, left behind. And I've had no issues with any of my other machines. So, you know. What are you going to do, man? I thought I'd do it. And everyone screamed, no, don't do it. It's shit. Which is interesting because six months ago, everyone was going, oh, upgrade to Windows 10. It's the best thing since sliced bread. You know, it's fantastic. And now you do it and all of a sudden, nope. Everyone was, you know, no, don't do it. It'll ruin your life. And sure enough, it did. And which I'll talk about. And the other thing that people have changed their tune on is solid state drives. I did this the other, this happened a week or two back on this same machine, which my drive actually looked like it started to fail. I've got a solid state boot drive. Right? And it started to fail. And everyone went, oh, yeah, solid state drives are shit. You know, like, and I go, where the hell did this come from? You know, I've had nine out of ten solid state drives fail, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, you know, six, 12 months ago, everyone was saying switch to solid state disks.

Chris Gammell: Hate to tell you, Dave, you've already revealed the conclusion to this story last week.

Dave Jones: Did I?

Chris Gammell: It was the cable.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes, it was. Oh, did I? We were talking to Jake about it, remember? Yeah, it was the cable. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Because we were talking about, yeah, we were talking about flash.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Well, there you go. Yes, it was the cable. And so that's another example of where people just flip-flop between loving something and hating something, you know? And anyway.

Chris Gammell: I think the answer is don't listen to people. Yeah, I know. I thought you were good at that.

Dave Jones: Well, I didn't. I went and installed Windows 10 anyway. I didn't listen to anyone. And for some reason, no, there's something weird with it. It actually worked. The update worked. And I got in and everything looked hunky-dory. And then it said, oh, we need to update. No, one of my apps needed updating. I think it was one of my virus scanning software. And everyone's going, oh, there's your culprit. But anyway, so it said, oh, it's updated, reboot, you know, which I've done. Same software on all my other Windows machines. And it's done no problems. But I rebooted. And then all of a sudden, nope.

Chris Gammell: This episode of Windows Weekly brought to you by.

Dave Jones: And then Windows 10 has all these jazzy recovery modes and everything. There's like six options. And I tried all of them.

Chris Gammell: You know, this is why I don't get why people are still so stuck on this. I mean, well, no, no, no. I just mean like, okay, so we talk about workflow and stuff. And I was talking to some people about embedded tool flows as well. And like so much of it is still Windows-based. You know what I mean?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, no, of course. Everyone says, oh, what if you switch to Linux? No. Like half my software wouldn't work.

Chris Gammell: I know you don't like that. But I'm just saying from a tool perspective too, everything is still so based around. I don't know. It's just interesting how the programming talent. Of course it is.

Dave Jones: It's the world's dominant operating system for desktops. Of course it is. Of course all the tools are going to be on there.

Chris Gammell: But why just there? You know what I mean? Like, anyways.

Dave Jones: Well, I'm, you know, I don't know. I'm not a software developer. I don't know how hard it is to write, you know, program, massive big programs that are compatible with everything. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, no, no. I was talking to another friend about, we were talking a little bit about CAD programs too. And because just how that stuff kind of chases, not necessarily talent, but, you know, just like you're not going to get necessarily a CAD program that's going to be written for just Mac. Right? Actually, there is one. There's one called Copper. I think that's just for Mac. But that uses, like, an Eagle backend or something like that. But basically the idea being that for, like, those big kind of software programs that they basically, you know, they're based around talent as much, like software talent as much as anything else. So it's interesting how that.

Dave Jones: Which was a huge Altium problem. Right, right. You've talked about that in the past, right? You know, Altium was written in Delphi. Right. And it was originally written in Pascal when it was in the DOS version. Right. And a lot of this stuff is historical.

Chris Gammell: It was hard at the time though, right? It wasn't necessarily hot forever. Oh, yeah, of course.

Dave Jones: It was a fine choice at the time. And then 20 years, move forward 20 years. And, you know, I don't blame any company for not wanting to go, oh, well, it's, you know, that's now not the flavor of the month operating system. So we're going to change it. Or language, you know, so we're going to change it all. But, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can get stuck.

Chris Gammell: Definitely. And then you're stuck with your crazy update cycles like you're talking about. It's amazing though, just like how that stuff impacts us, like those workflow tools and everything. It's just like a daily thing. You know, it's like if, I don't know, would we put up with it if our soldering irons needed to be updated?

Dave Jones: Which can happen these days. There's a lot of USB connected soldering irons. Well, there's a few anyway, that have, you know, firmware updates.

Chris Gammell: Really? I have not seen that. I've heard about the USB ones, which I think are still a little bit chonky.

Dave Jones: Well, one's like my JBC brand, right? They've got like a firmware update over USB now.

Chris Gammell: And what do you update? Is there like a screen? A firmware? Or is there like heat profiles?

Dave Jones: I don't know. I don't know why. You know, extra features. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Features.

Dave Jones: Bug fixes, you know. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Excuse me. This bug, this bug, this bug, make sure it doesn't burst into flames. We fixed the bug. It won't start on fire. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I'm back to Windows 7 now. I did a disk image. I had a backup. I had like a whole disk image. So I just went back to that. After trying absolutely everything, that was the last resort. So yeah, back on Windows 7. Yep.

Chris Gammell: I have done that dance before myself and it is not one I'd like to do again.

Dave Jones: I have not. This is the first time ever I've recovered a Windows machine by restoring a boot image. So it's the first time ever in like 30 years or however long I've been running any sort of Windows, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. So yeah. There you go.

Chris Gammell: That's crazy.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Well, I've been dealing with some software stuff. I released my, speaking of cross-platform things, I released my new KiCad series. I don't know if you saw that.

Dave Jones: I did? Yep. Tweeting that everywhere?

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah, I guess I have been. Well, now this is like a mouth tweet, you know.

Dave Jones: So is this free or is it part of your course?

Chris Gammell: No, no, it's free. Oh, okay. Cool. It's actually, I realized that last time I didn't actually build the thing. So I made seven videos last time. I was just like, yeah, build it yourself, whatever. So I actually went through simulation and shopping for parts.

Dave Jones: And this is your problem, isn't it? This is a similar thing. You've got to keep updating that series to make it relevant.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because the software keeps changing, right? In terms of its GUI and its functionality and things like that. Yeah, they definitely change a lot of that stuff. Right.

Chris Gammell: And that's always a problem with CAD stuff in general, I suppose. Or really any program that's kind of GUI-based of like, oh, they moved this menu, this workflow is different, that kind of thing. So yeah, that can definitely ruin your Tuesday kind of thing, you know? I was like, oh, I can't do anything with this. Yes, but...

Dave Jones: You're a slave to the open source.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which... Right. Right. Yeah, that's what it is.

Dave Jones: There's a T-shirt in that. It's got it in some way, shape, or form. I guess. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: There was... My article was on Hacker News too, and of course there was everybody shouting about their favorite thing. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, but he's going to pick their own CAD program and that's fine.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. So there was a... What? So I was posted on Hacker News and everyone said, oh, I don't use that key CAD rubbish. Is that what... Yep. That was like, really? Yeah, try this. Try that. Try this. Try that. All right. What other names were thrown around?

Chris Gammell: Upverter. No, right. Yeah. Eagle. Yeah, of course. Altium. Yep. All right. Fritzing, which is surprising to me.

Dave Jones: Yes. Fritzing.

Chris Gammell: MeowCad.

Dave Jones: Meow.

Chris Gammell: I think that's what it's called. MeowCad. Fair enough. I went and looked at it and it's also open source. I gotta look it up now. Maybe it's supposed to be because it's like cat. MeowCad. MeowCat. Yeah, MeowCad. Right. No.

Dave Jones: But I do know, I got a friend who's called... His name is actually Meow.

Chris Gammell: How do you spell it?

Dave Jones: Meow. M-E-O-W. In fact, his name is Meow Meow. I kid you not.

Chris Gammell: I don't want to sound insensitive, but is he a furry? No.

Dave Jones: This is a real person. I've even interviewed him on the show before at the Maker Faire. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: I have to look this up now.

Dave Jones: Hello, Meow if you're listening.

Chris Gammell: Wow. Okay. Anyways, yeah. So, MeowCad is open source apparently, but it's not... It doesn't seem like many people are developing it. So, yeah. Right. There's a lot out there. You know, like there really are. There's...

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, I know. There's tons. There's dozens.

Chris Gammell: And, you know, I was talking to someone else that was a big Altium fan. You know what? I've just kind of given up on converting people because it's not worth it. When you are at the point where you're like, I don't want to pay for software anymore. Give me a call.

Dave Jones: People don't want to convert from their CAD tools. It's their CAD tool.

Chris Gammell: I've never... That was my response too. I was like, well, good luck's getting me to switch away from KiCad. I'm not going to do it, right? Right. And so, yeah, it's just not worth it.

Dave Jones: Because, you see, you've never really been... You've never really been tied to a CAD program, have you? Because you've never really been a PCB designer as such.

Chris Gammell: Oh, like that. No, definitely not. Yeah. No, that's not like my in it eight hours a day kind of thing. No, exactly.

Dave Jones: Did you even use a CAD tool at your jobs? I don't think you were laying out boards ever, were you? Or very rarely?

Chris Gammell: When I was, I was using KiCad, to be honest.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: I mean, because otherwise I'd have to get a light seat and...

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, no, of course.

Chris Gammell: Learn the flow. Yeah, exactly. Pads and Cadence Allegro were the two others that I had exposure to. I've used Eagle before too, but that was, again, doing my own thing. So, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: There you go. So, yeah. And you can't blame people for not wanting to switch. In fact, I wouldn't. My recommendation would, if your tool works for you, do not switch.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Just stick with it.

Chris Gammell: Right. I'm just going for the new people. So, I'm coming for you, people.

Dave Jones: So, this MeowCad, I'm sorry, I'm interested now. Is it yet another open source CAD tool? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, Gita's still out there.

Dave Jones: Is there a why? Is there like a why page? Like, why do we bother? Why didn't we just consolidate using KeyCad? Put our program and resources towards KeyCad?

Chris Gammell: I think because the UI. I mean, that's the thing. Like, that's a not built here kind of thing, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. Of course. You know, like, I can build it better. And that's actually, I think that's good. That's not a bad thing at all because it means that. But you can fork it.

Dave Jones: That's the thing. You can take all that existing functionality. If you don't like the UI, well, you change the UI. And then if everyone likes it, boom, they'll use your one. Yours will become the new de facto standard build, you know? Sure. Et cetera. Or however it works. I'll probably get taken to the task for a second.

Chris Gammell: But then you get back into that same thing we talked about before. If you're not using, like, WX widgets and OpenGL or whatever the current KeyCad thing is using, then, yeah, you've got to start. I don't know. Some people, like, just want to do it their way. And that's fine.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Is that? I mean, that's always going to be the inherent problem with open source software, isn't it? I mean, it's. Sure. I think it applies to hardware, though, too, right? Well, it does. People aren't going to consolidate. You know, it applies with hardware. People come up with these whiz-bang ideas that, oh, it'll be a standard open source hardware platform. And everyone will use it.

Chris Gammell: Buy this module, right? Dave, you should buy this module that I have. And say, no, I didn't make that. I don't trust that thing. And that's fine. You know, like, that's just, you know, it's a trade-off you make between trusting someone else's thing and doing it yourself. Some people are going to get to market faster with the trusting someone else's thing. And some people are going to get screwed by trusting the other person's thing. Right? You can never tell. Exactly. So it's just about that trade-off is what do I really value here? You know, when you, yeah, I don't know, when you really talk about, when you talk to, like, I get upset when people think there's only one way to do things. Oh, yeah. And that's, you know, you always need to look at the constraints. That's, like, the basis of engineering, right? It's what are the constraints.

Dave Jones: I've been dealing with that recently with my project. What's going on? My major project. And, oh, everything's, you know, ran out of memory. I want to change the process. I want to change, in fact, not just change the, but change the architecture. You know, like.

Chris Gammell: Now this is you pushing that or someone else is pushing that?

Dave Jones: No, they were pushing that. We want to move from pick to arm. And it'll take us two months to rewrite the software. I don't know why it'll take that long, but okay. You know, that's what they'll say. It'll take a month to two months to rewrite the software. But we think it's a good move. And then I try and ask.

Chris Gammell: That sounds low to me, to be honest. Don't you think?

Dave Jones: No. Well, no, it shouldn't be. Like, it's written in C, right? It's not like it's written in assembler. But, you know, I mean, it's not. No, I wouldn't expect.

Chris Gammell: You may have skipped past that comment there, but some people just threw up in their mouths a little bit.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but I.

Chris Gammell: You just cross-compile it, and, you know, you just target new hardware.

Dave Jones: But I've done this myself. I've switched from, you know, pick to Atmel, for example. Entirely different architectures. And it's not taking me two months to rewrite my code. You know? So, anyway.

Chris Gammell: Maybe I'm misunderstanding how big the code is and what it involves and everything. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, well.

Chris Gammell: I would think it would take longer than that. That would be my. If I was being asked, Chris, how long will it take for this leg of the project planning? I'd say six months minimum.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. Well, maybe the engineer added padding in there. Lots of padding. You know, it'll only take me two weeks, but I'll say two months. You know? So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oof, man. Well, I think what you should do is you should let them do it, but only for the sake of proving them wrong. Two months.

Dave Jones: Right. No, no, no.

Chris Gammell: Switch it back. Switch it back. We have.

Dave Jones: We switched it back. We've gone from a PIC-16 to a PIC-32. They now say, oh, no, we can do it with a PIC-32. Okay, that's good. But all the functionality isn't built in the chip, so now they have to, like, it doesn't have an LCD driver, for example, which is what we were using on the PIC-16. The PIC-16 was all integrated. It had, like, a 480-segment LCD driver in it. Right? Excuse me.

Chris Gammell: So, it's like almost going from, like, a micro-control to a micro-process. I mean, I know it's not actually that, but it's that level of you expect the PIC-32 to be, like, a workhorse and doing some heavy processing, and then you have everything else external. Exactly. Or co-processor.

Dave Jones: So, anyway, they claim that it's better. Once again, they can't really explain why, which is unusual, you know, like, because they're saying, oh, let's move, like, I suggested just move from the 64K PIC-16 to the 128K PIC-16 because their original complaint was that they've run out of memory and they can't add all the features, right, in the 64K. Yeah. Okay. Right?

Chris Gammell: So, that's a very reasonable solution from my vantage point?

Dave Jones: There's a PIN-compatible 128K part. So, I thought, just drop that in. And they never explained why they couldn't do that. Now, they're saying, well, we use 128K PIC-32, and we think that will be better than the 128K PIC-16.

Chris Gammell: Now, this brings up an interesting point. This is a company that's building other things, of which we won't say they are, but in general. So, I would be wondering, in the back of my mind, would be, how many other products are they building with a 128K PIC-32?

Dave Jones: I don't believe any that I'm going off. Okay. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: That would be my first guess, just because then you get the pricing advantage. You also get, like, if you could port code over. Yeah, I know. Of course. Yeah, totally. No, totally. Like, that's what's interesting about it. It's kind of like they're almost acting as, like, a design house for you. I mean, I guess they are kind of a design house, but they're acting as that for you.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, that's exactly what they are. Yeah. They're a design house. But, like, it's funny, you know. They always, like, they're saying in one breath that, oh, yeah, we've run out of code, and we can, you know, we need a bigger code, so I suggest just the bigger micro. And, oh, they can't explode why. That's not good enough. And then they say, oh, we're out of board space. You know, we can't fit anything more on the board. And then they're going, oh, but now we can move to the PIC-32 and have a separate LCD controller. Well, where did that magic board space come from? You know?

Dave Jones: Right, right, right, right.

Dave Jones: So, without actually talking, because I'm talking through a third party, right? So, without actually talking to the B and they're talking to the designer, and if I could speak Korean, I'm sure I could, then, you know, then, yeah, it's, you know, like, trying to get information back and forth like that is just really difficult. You know, it's not their fault. It's just a, you know, it's a...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's just how the system's set up right now. I mean, that's...

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, yeah, exactly. I'm dealing with through another company. I'm sourcing 101, effectively, right? I mean, like... Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, how do you skip past and just start talking to the designer? That's the real question, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, well, I can't. I don't think, well, you know.

Chris Gammell: I've dealt with this before where it was like, when you finally... If you finally can do it, if you finally can skip past and talk... Oh, yeah, no, totally. It's like magic, you know? I know, exactly. Everything's sold in five minutes. Like, talking to the guy that's on the floor doing the testing. When I got that guy's email and I was like, can you just send me a picture of what you're looking at? And he sent me a picture of the board. I'm like, oh. Fixed. Problem fixed. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Obvious.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah, I've thought about that before just for general and business. You know, like, the business around electronics. Obviously, business is... I won't say similar everywhere, but it's, you know, there are similar issues in many different types of businesses. But in electronics, so much... It's thinking about, like, the build process and the design process and stuff like that. When you think about, like, the entire, like, middle management layer at, like, big companies, literally all they're there for is just communicating, right? Exactly. Why do you all sit in a conference room, like, talking about, you know, what are the updates on the status? It's so that people can understand what's going on, right? So that they can then reference that later. And why do you, you know, like, why do you send all those emails to everybody? It's just because of the communication piece. There really is no, like... You know, like, some... I think the engineer in me says, like, well, if you put everything on a wiki and people just check the wiki all the time, you know, but it's like, even that, there is no perfect way. So much of business is just the struggle around making sure the right people have the right amount of information and not too much information so that, you know, the middle manager two departments over is like, oh, you can't do that, blah, blah, blah. You know, like, it's just, it's so much, that's so much of what business is and so much of where the struggles lie, right? Because when you mess that stuff up, you could be like, oh, no, no, no, I set a 2K resistor. You put a 200 ohm resistor and now the board's on fire, you know? So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if there's software people listening that could figure that shit out, but that'd be really good, you know? I know that everybody's trying, but, yeah, it's not easy.

Dave Jones: Management's job is to do two things, and I'm sure I have all the management experts tell me otherwise, but it's communication and it's resource allocation and resource management, I guess, if you could, you know, call it that way. You know, oh, no, you can't work on that because this is a higher priority. You know, you've got to do this, you know, like, blah, blah, blah, and all that sort of crap. And no, you can't just go talk to Johnny because he's busy on, you know, something else, and that'll disrupt the schedule. Right, right, and that's a time resource type of thing. And my Gantt chart says that'll just screw everything up, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Frigging Gantt charts. Gantt charts, yeah. Oh, yep. You know, I do like, okay, so I... I've got to admit they're handy. I like the idea of them. I don't like how they're usually executed, but I do like the idea just of, like, so, like, just from a supply chain perspective of, like, okay, we know that there is no possible way that we're going to get a chip in less than eight weeks because, guess what? That silicon is still sand. Exactly.

Dave Jones: And then that, and then you can... Then you can tie in dependencies to that. Okay, we can't get the silicon, therefore we can't do X, X, and X, and so they have to move on the timeline after that, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and, I mean, like, that stuff does make sense, but I think it usually gets bastardized into, like, well, design will take four months, production will take four months, testing will take four days, and then we'll do meetings for, like, three years. I don't know. Obviously, that was stupid, but, you know, like, it's just, like, it's the generic use of it that usually stinks, but in general, like, yeah, resource planning, like, okay, we know eight-week minimum lead time, you're not getting around that, that is very useful, so.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So are you, like, a manager now? I was just thinking about this as we were talking about that, too, because I've never really had a management position.

Dave Jones: I, no, I'm still, well, no, because I'm not saying who's doing what, and, well, you know, I'm not...

Chris Gammell: I mean, you are, but you're kind of doing it with your dollars, right? I mean, that's...

Dave Jones: Well, no, I'm not... Well, that's the other thing. People say, oh, why don't you just tell them to do this? Well, I'm not paying.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Right, they're the ones who are paying for this, so I'm not paying for it. So if you were in a normal situation where you were doing a full contract, you would be able to say... Oh, yeah, no.

Dave Jones: If I was, yeah, no, if I was the customer who was paying with my own money to develop this, oh, yeah, I would be down, I would be demanding to speak to the designer. You'd be in career right now. To the designer, yeah. No, I want the designer here now, and I'll sort this shit out, you know.

Chris Gammell: Okay, so that is definitely a specific... That's a special case, then. Yeah. That's probably... Yeah. Hopefully not normally the case.

Dave Jones: No, but I'm driving the checks, I'm driving the specs, checking the schematics, coming up with, oh, no, this can't work, or why have you put that in there? And no, I think, oh, we can optimize parts this way, you know, et cetera.

Chris Gammell: You're paying in time and expertise, basically. Yeah. And opinion. Very much. Finally, you're turning opinion... Yes. You're turning opinion... Yes. It's not just the Empire on the EV blog anymore, Dave. It's turning opinion into real-world, tangible goods. Yeah. Congratulations, you've figured it out.

Dave Jones: But because I'm not, once again, I'm not paying, I can't always get my way. I feel like I can't always, you know, demand that, Dave. Oh, no, no, no.

Chris Gammell: You can have your opinion, Dave. It just has to stay in Sydney. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's been a funny experience. I haven't quite been in this position before. It's quite unusual.

Chris Gammell: I think that's pretty unique, to be honest. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: No, yes. Yes, I think it is. Yeah. Having a company design something for you that you aren't paying for is kind of, yeah, that you didn't, you know... There is a contract in place, but, you know, like, it's pretty flexible. Yeah, you're, like,

Chris Gammell: licensing yourself and your opinions. That's interesting, though. No, no, just kind of thinking about management in general, too. I mean, like I said, I've never really done that, so I can't imagine it's fun. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Can I mention that people have actually seen this now. People have seen my product, and my supporters have actually seen this. Oh, cool. So, yes, yes, the company did, because they want other people's opinions as well. They want community opinion and stuff like that. And interestingly, I may have changed my tune on the open source aspect, right? I originally wanted this... This is a... Well, in this specific case, right? We've glanced down this road before. Because, like, I really wanted this to be open source.

Chris Gammell: And headlining open source hardware some of this year is David Jones.

Dave Jones: Yeah, never mind. No, sorry. Cancel that. Sorry. You have to get a refund. Dave's not turning up. And, no, but people have put good arguments forth why it shouldn't be. So I'd love to hear them.

Chris Gammell: I'd love to hear them.

Dave Jones: Well, it's actually on the... It's on the forum. I can point you to the forum. It's not a supportive forum. You know, Dave,

Chris Gammell: this is an audio format. I don't know if you know about that. I know. I'm sure people would love to go to your forum, like usual. And have a read.

Dave Jones: But we can link it in. But, like, here we go, right? I really wanted this to be open source. I thought that would be a huge differentiator because there's already hundreds of products like this on the market, right?

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: And it's like, well, if it's not open source, then meh, it's just another... It's just another product in a sea of products, right? And, sure, it might have a few little feature differentiations and it's got my name on it, etc. But, apart from that, you know, like, meh. But if it could be open source, it would be the industry's first open source thing from a professional test equipment company.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I got all that stuff. Tell me what made you change your mind. That's the interesting thing I think here.

Dave Jones: Right. So, but then people started, you know, talking about, oh, they're, you know, there's, even though I didn't think huge amount, but on the safety side of things, right, the compliance side of things, the fact that the company may not like their code being released public in terms of scrutinized, for example, not saying that's poor code, but, you know, like, they may not, you know, there may be reasons why they may not want that. Sorry, I'm trying to think of all the, all the arguments now. I haven't got it in front of me. Oh, that's okay. And, uh...

Chris Gammell: I think these are just general open source versus... So, one, I think that, yeah, open source is definitely opening yourself up to scrutiny.

Dave Jones: It is. The big one is that, well, there's a couple of big ones. A is, like, people made... The kind of argument is that, well, this is a tool designed to do a specific job, and the hardware doesn't really have a huge amount of flexibility in it to add new stuff. I mean, you know, all the stuff that's already... All the features that are already... Most of the features that are already in there have already been added, right? They're already in there to begin with. So, what can people add by making it open source? Somebody might come up with a clever idea, but, you know, like... You know, it's just polishing... I'm not going to say polishing a turd.

Chris Gammell: So, that's the why bother? That's the why bother?

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's almost like it's why bother? Because you don't... It's not like somebody's going to take it and turn it into the world's best firmware, and...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I don't think that's actually ever the point, though. So, I think you have to go back to why... Other than novelty, you were talking about novelty. Other than novelty, why do you even want it to be open source in the first place? I think it's derivative works that are interesting, right?

Dave Jones: Well, yes. Well, A, is because it's cool, right? And B, yes, I'll admit that, yeah, it'd probably sell more, right? It's better marketing.

Chris Gammell: Okay, marketing's another valid reason, I think, but... Marketing's another valid reason. I think another one there, too, that it should be stated, but probably is not in the best interest of this maker, of the person making it for you, is that it's going to commoditize the hardware, right? That is totally a huge piece.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: And opening up...

Dave Jones: They were actually quite concerned about, yeah, somebody ripping off the whole thing. Sure. And, you know...

Chris Gammell: Valid and persistent arguments against open source, yeah.

Dave Jones: But I came back with a valid argument that, in fact, it can actually help you protect your product. I don't know if I agree with that, but... You can... Yeah, here we go. Because you can actually... Of course, you attach a license to your code, right? So it's C-C-B-Y-S-A, right? Sure. For example, which is, you know, you must give the company attribution and you must... And if you, if you be in another company, take this product and, you know, take all this... All these design files and the code and everything else and make your own product, then you have to put... You have to give back to the community under the same license, right?

Chris Gammell: Or else what?

Dave Jones: Or else you can legally sue them, right? Yeah, but that won't happen. No, but you are legally protected, right?

Chris Gammell: No, you're not.

Dave Jones: What?

Chris Gammell: I mean, you're only... This is just like patent law. You're only as protected as you're willing to prosecute and I don't think that...

Dave Jones: Of course, but... But, you know, by going closed source, you're not protecting your product either because it's trivial to reverse engineer a product.

Dave Jones: No.

Dave Jones: Even if you code protect your microcontroller, you can just get the code... I don't think that's a valid argument.

Chris Gammell: I think because the different... You have to just use it in a relative sense, right? It's open versus closed. It may not be trivial to... It may be trivial to reverse engineer a product, which I think is an arguable thing, but... But when you compare it against something that's completely open, just ready for the taking, then no, it's not... No, but it's not ready

Dave Jones: for the taking. It's not like the CAD files are being out there. It's not like the PCB files are out there. It's not like they can just turn key and a Chinese factory spits out, you know, a million clones. Oh, it's just the code? It's just the code and the schematic, right? Oh, okay. It's just the code and the schematic. No, no, it's not like, well, here's our complete bill of materials with a list of all of our suppliers and our prices and here's our CAD files and here's our tooling and we get it from Wanhang Lo tooling company so you can just... And here's the contact there. You can just call them up and order, you know, it's not like that, right?

Chris Gammell: Well, we have... I don't think that's particularly open then, to be honest.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but...

Chris Gammell: I don't think you have to give the name of your suppliers for sure or the costing on your bomb. I think that kind of stuff is competitive advantage of the supply chain.

Dave Jones: You cannot call it... Well, you cannot use the open source hardware logo, right? If you don't give your CAD files and everything else, you can't call it that but it's still open hardware, right? You're still releasing the schematic and the source code.

Chris Gammell: Sure, it's definitely a lot more open than other stuff.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: But you were talking about marketing as a thing and I think that ultimately...

Dave Jones: Oh, it's a big thing. I think, yeah. I think...

Chris Gammell: I'm saying that you can't market it as much because that's not quite as...

Dave Jones: Oh, no, yeah. And you'll get people but, yeah, people will go, oh, but I can get the source code. I can change it. You would get 2012

Chris Gammell: Chris and Dave yelling at you. No, no, no.

Dave Jones: Look, people are not going to want to make hardware variations on this, right? They are not going to go, well, I don't quite like the case. I'm going to design a different case. It's just not going to happen.

Chris Gammell: I don't disagree with you, man, but I just don't think that that's really the point. You know what I mean? You could use these arguments anytime. It's so... They're valid arguments. I have no horse in this race. I don't really care. No, exactly. And the fact... The only thing is that you said it might be, so that's the only reason you're answering these questions in the first place, so, okay, it's not.

Dave Jones: No, anyway, I want to make it open because, A, it's cool, right? And, B, it might... You know, some people might be interested in it. Oh, I don't quite like the way the software works. I'd rather have...

Chris Gammell: I think the code would definitely be targetable for... Yeah, I mean, that kind of stuff is... Sure, that makes sense.

Dave Jones: Well, that was it. It was going to be the code and the schematic. That was it. Oh, cool. You know? Like, that's what we're going to make open. And now, people have made some good arguments that, well, there's just no point. Like, so few people... Like, so few features are going to get added because it's just the hardware's not capable of having new features that, you know... Yeah. Like, yeah, you might get somebody make a more slightly polished version of the firmware, you know, that maybe has an extra feature or two, but it's just not... It's just not worth the grief that goes along with the actually releasing the code. So, I don't know. And they might have... They may not be allowed to. They may have code segments that come from some other license that, you know, you can't... I don't know. That just can't be done.

Chris Gammell: I think the safety one's actually kind of interesting. So you're going to get this thing certified? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're going to get it certified. Yeah, certified

Dave Jones: and independently tested, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So how does that change if you open that up? I don't know.

Dave Jones: I don't know. I don't think it does. Like, I think just from a purely practical aspect, it's like a product is sold as meeting a compliance standard, right? And obviously, if then, if you go change it yourself, then that, you know, that company can't be taken to task legally because, well, you're the one who modified your own product, you know?

Chris Gammell: Oh, man. You know what would be the ultimate irony is if you slapped no user serviceable parts on the inside of this box.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, I know. Stick around there. But either way, like, it's...

Chris Gammell: Don't turn it on. Right. Don't take it apart.

Dave Jones: Pretty much it comes down, like, the thing, the question comes down to the firmware.

Chris Gammell: I found a title for the week. Oh, dear.

Dave Jones: It comes down to the firmware. Should we release the firmware or not? Right? I think you should.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, if you can, you should. That would probably be the most likely target of people modifying in the first place. And I think that actually could go back to the company in a beneficial way.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but I'm trying to explain there are good reasons. I'm now thinking, well, there are good reasons not to release the firmware. True.

Chris Gammell: There's always been good reasons not to.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, you know, or release it in a different way, for example, like, release it, like, make the high-level stuff available for people who want to change their features, but the low-level stuff, code, is like just a module. It's a, you know, DLL type.

Chris Gammell: Well, you know what you could do is you could just say, if you want to change the firmware, give me a call. I'll send you the firmware.

Dave Jones: NDA. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Not an NDA. Everyone could do that. I think there's a difference between broadly distributing something and being like, yeah, you can mess with this. Right.

Dave Jones: Well, no, no, no. If I was going to release, no. Private GitHub repo. No, no, that's stupid. You either release it under a license, so you've got control of it, or you don't. I mean, that's, no. I think just giving it to someone, I trust you not to release it. No, that's just bullshit. No. No, it's just dumb. Okay. Yep. I don't like that at all.

Chris Gammell: Well, good luck with your decision. I think you'll, I think you'll do fine. You'll, you're going to do great.

Dave Jones: Well, well, the other thing is, is that you can always do it later. You don't have to make the decision now. It's like, well, if you know, like, yeah, it's not a, you know, it isn't a make or break thing. So,

Chris Gammell: you know,

Dave Jones: it doesn't affect anyone except the ultimate people who buy it, you know, and yeah, I think labeling it, you know, saying it's open source, here's the firmware would probably sell a few more units. You know, it's more marketable. People will go, Oh, I can modify my own firmware. That's great. You know,

Chris Gammell: even though I can buy a $35 computer. That's great. Oh, I can buy a $5 computer. That's great. Oh, I can buy an open source of this. That's great. Yeah, no, I've heard that one. I've actually said that one myself quite a bit. And it works. That's how marketing works. Yeah, you're right. People don't use it, right?

Dave Jones: They buy their 30 buck raspberry pie and they never use it. They just buy it because it's cheap. Same thing here. People will buy this thing because, well, they like the fact that it's the first open source version, you know, maybe I'll, you know, but only 0.1% do, you know, take advantage of it. Anyway. Well,

Chris Gammell: I think that your community will be well equipped to mess with that stuff if you decide to.

Dave Jones: So anyway, if you want to have your say on it, there's a, we'll link in the forum thread for it and you can discuss to your heart's content. Should it be, should I release my new product open source or not? I think it's a given that the schematic will be released. I think that like, cause there's no, you know, like, because anyone can reverse engineer the schematic in a day.

Chris Gammell: Because otherwise you would just do your own teardown of your own product. Yeah, no,

Dave Jones: it's like, it's stupid. Like it's not going to then, you know, the numbers aren't going to be rubbed off the chips, you know? So I think it's a given the schematic will be, you know, available for the thing. I can't see why not. And I can't see the manufacturer having a problem with that. So, um, but I think what they're stuck on is the source code. They're a bit, yeah.

Chris Gammell: They get how much, how much of, uh, you know, when you start to really look at competitive advantage, especially in the age of China and everything. And, you know, like it's not hard to, you know, if you can get the schematics just about anywhere, if you can figure out what the parts are, you're through, you know, some sweat and toil. Um, like what is really the competitive advantage? There's code, right? That is definitely one piece. And maybe that's an argument against. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But code is easily stolen.

Chris Gammell: I think the real one is just, I think the real one is just, uh, pricing to be honest.

Dave Jones: Like it's pricing and your name as well, you know?

Chris Gammell: Oh, sure. Branding. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's a good point. Uh, but those two things are like some of the biggest pieces of like, Oh yeah, I can get these chips cheaper because I'm buying so many of them. I get it cheaper than anyone else. I have a somewhat veiled supply chain. Maybe I have an agreement with a, a vendor that they'll only sell a certain part to me. So it becomes like the purple screw.

Dave Jones: And it depends how tangible, like how tangible is not the right word. I'm trying to think of the right word here. And I'll try and explain it. How like it take the Arduino, for example, what is the difference between a genuine Arduino and one of the clone ones or whatever you want to call them? Right. Nothing. Cause it's a bare board with parts on it. Right. Yeah. It's branding. It's branding. Right. Cause there's nothing else. Right. Whereas something like my product, for example, what's the difference? If somebody, let's say I released mine, it was open source, right. Or at least the firmware and some company cloned the thing. Right. They didn't have the original CAD file. So they would have had to redo that themselves. It didn't have the original PCB layout. It would be different. It'd feel like a different product. The, you know, it wouldn't use the same plastics. It'd feel different. Maybe there's switches that feel different, you know, cause they're manufactured differently. Maybe they're looser or they're not as, you know, like, you know, and the PCB layout would be different cause they wouldn't exactly copy it.

Chris Gammell: Right. I think that, I think that actually is tied into branding though too, because like part of a brand is just like the quality, right?

Dave Jones: So if you think about it, that's right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Because if you get burned on a certain piece of gear that you buy, you're probably not going to buy it again, unless it was so cheap that you're like, man, whatever, you know, like,

Dave Jones: but it's easier to clone just a bare board, for example, at, uh, with high quality than it is to clone an entire product with plastics and, and sockets, you know, custom sockets and things.

Chris Gammell: So like a discussion of complexity you're saying, right? So just cloning in a complex product is much more.

Dave Jones: Cloning in complexity. Whereas it's just a bare board PCB. Well, you know, like anyone can churn that out with the same quality or even better quality than what you've got, but a bit of complex product that has many mechanical and other aspects to it. Right. That is,

Chris Gammell: what you're trying to say is you would probably buy a Bardoino over an Arduino instead of buying an e-phone over an iPhone. Correct. Correct. And I think every,

Dave Jones: I think the majority would be the same. Would they not?

Chris Gammell: I think you're, you're right. Yeah. No, I think that complexity. So you're saying that complexity could almost be a competitive advantage. Make something, make yourself a turbo encabulator and you will have a defensible product.

Dave Jones: Oh, goodness.

Chris Gammell: Oh man. What a, what a weird industry though, huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. Why the hell are we in it?

Chris Gammell: I just got to notice that, uh, the product that I got a U S patent for two years ago, just got its European patents. Yeah. The company I no longer work for.

Dave Jones: Twilling my finger around, you know? Yeah, no,

Chris Gammell: I know. Seriously. Like, but like, that's, that's also how it works, right? That's like, uh, I guess that's another competitive advantage of it. It's just lawyers. Screw lawyers. No offense to any lawyers out there. You might be a nice person, but screw lawyers. Yeah. Yep. All right.

Dave Jones: Can we talk about something else?

Chris Gammell: Sure. Uh, let's talk about the one you don't want to talk about. Before we jump into that, I want to talk about something else. That's actually kind of nice. I don't know. It's still kind of in this. So I actually bought a, I bought a module that I thought was actually ripped off. I didn't, I didn't think it was ripped off. I thought it was just unlabeled. I got lucky and it was just a desperation move really. So I bought this, um, this heartbeat, uh, sensor module and, uh, I saw it on spark fun and then I couldn't find it anywhere on prime and I need to get it before I leave on Friday. Right. Or Saturday rather. So I was like, uh, I don't want to do this, but I did it right. That's convenience. There's another competitive advantage. Having your stuff in Amazon. Uh, yeah. Anyway, so you bought this board. Luckily it turned out that the, the, the one that, uh, uh, that spark fun actually licenses from the same people. So it's actually all good. Um, but just kind of the whole buying a module. So I gave a talk about this. My talk got released, but I've kind of had some, some, uh, some weird feelings about like, like I've internalized that I work in electronics, right? But now that I've kind of, uh, you bought a module and you feel dude. I bought a module. Yeah. Well, and it's, it's because of time. I want to actually,

Dave Jones: of course,

Chris Gammell: I want to make a thing. I have a, basically I want to get something done before maker fair. And I'm like, ah, I don't want to do this, but it's, it's hacketry time. You know what I mean? Like, no,

Dave Jones: that's perfectly the case where you would do that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I totally agree. And actually I think it's, I think this is actually a thing that I need to train out of myself because like this, this thing works fine. I mean, it did. Of course it's, it's great. It's, it's done. It, it definitely works. You know what I mean? Like, so this is actually the, the struggle that I've had is that like my first instinct is to be like, Oh, I need to build a pulse, you know, pulse meter type thing. Time to go to digi key, build it myself, you know, like, and that's,

Dave Jones: I might have to make that. I might have to do that very shortly. I'm on the bench at the moment. I'm doing a hacking of a product, right? Yeah. And it's actually not going to, it's weird anyway. Maybe you'll find out when I finish the video. And I'm going to need a, like a little in between, like, like I have to mod in like a little board to make change, like to plug into an SPI bus, right? It has to like go in series with an SPI bus and then translate the commands and, and do stuff like that. Right. And I was just thinking, Oh yeah. You know, like I wouldn't roll my own. I just like, I'll bugger it. I'll feel, I'll, even though I'll feel dirty, I'll just use a little Arduino mini or something, you know, like, like, you know, like who cares, right? It's there. It's, it's just done, right? I'm not just going to go get my own little pick or at mail or something and then build up a board and then, you know, and then code it from scratch. You know, like, no. Yeah. You know,

Chris Gammell: like, right. No, no, no. I think this is, this is actually a good topic for us to talk about because it's, it is like, it's like a mindset thing, but it's actually around electronics of like, ah, I shouldn't be doing this. I am a, you know, an electronics designer.

Dave Jones: I'm a professional electronics designer. I can do everything. You know, like, this is actually the same.

Chris Gammell: No, we actually talked about this earlier too, right? This is the same of like, I need to redo the entire CAD program myself, right? It's like, no, wrong. So yeah, no, no, I think, and actually, so the talk I gave was actually about, uh, that you should do this, especially when you're starting because I have seen more video,

Dave Jones: by the way. Oh,

Chris Gammell: you watched it. Oh, wow. Thank you. Um, but then you dive down later. Basically, that's the idea is that like, once you're ready and you're like, oh, this thing can't, you know, I've got it working. It's hacked together. This can't do what I need. Um, then you start building your own, that kind of thing. And then you have a good example to build off of. And you know what to, like, you wouldn't go and design, even in your case with this, uh, product that you're building, you wouldn't go and design it. You haven't designed it from the bottom up. You're basically saying to people, let me work with you and we can, you know, change the couple of things that we want to make better. And, but we're starting from a, you know, a top piece that already pretty much a design that kind of already works. Oh no,

Dave Jones: actually, sorry. Bad example. No, we're starting from scratch. Yeah. Yeah. No, this is not based on any existing design. No, sorry. Well, I will,

Chris Gammell: I will talk that one up to you've seen enough, uh, you've seen enough products to, to know what you do want. So maybe that is a little different. Right. Well, okay. But it's also not going to be done anytime soon either. Right. So that's it.

Dave Jones: It looks like most, it looks like all the other products in the market, you know, like, no, it's not some radically different look and feel. No, it's,

Chris Gammell: but I just feel like that's such a big piece of like, like I, you know, like even with like kits, like I, I often encounter people and I, I used to be like this too. It's like, Oh, I don't want to build a kit. I want to design something completely myself. And it's like, no, man, you got to just go do it. You know, just go make the mistakes when you're, when you have, you talk about constraints, right? Your constraints are, you have to build that thing at the end instead of, you have to build anything in the universe. You know what I mean? Like at least, at least you have an end goal to work towards, you know, like that's, that's a, that's a big difference. So yeah, it's a,

Dave Jones: it's a module. He feels dirty.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know. It's, it's just about, it's just about shifting the mindset. And the thing is a lot of people are already in this boat. Like they're already, like a lot of people coming in from like the software world too. They're just like, well, I want to just find something that works and I get it to work. Well,

Dave Jones: they don't have the mindset that we do because they don't have the engineering background. Right. They go, of course I'm going to use an Arduino or this module and that module and plug them together. Like how else would you do it? You know? Right. Like, yeah, it's,

Chris Gammell: no, no, no, no. And it's, it's interesting too, because I used to work with a couple of engineers that were very much like this. And then one of them came up to me one day and he's like, yeah, I got this idea for a product. And he told me all about the product idea and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the way to the end. And then he's like, and I'm like, so like, what does the interface look like? And you know, like, what is it? He's like, oh, well, it's like a blinking led at the end. And I'm like, you know, the underlying tech is cool. And I know that's the stuff you focused on and that's really interesting, but it's just like, no one cares about that because you're jumping into a marketplace that has all these other things where people are just bodging modules together with fancy displays. And you're already left in the dust. You know what I mean? It's just like, yeah, you can still work on your interesting piece, but you still have to use all these other modules to make it a viable product too. And, and he tried to make everything from the, the, from the base level where he was even making the interface where the interface shouldn't, he shouldn't have even considered touching it. You know what I mean? Like an led, come on. It's like bad idea, dude. So, yeah, ah, that's, that's my piece about, uh, yeah, top down. I, I have, I have a long way to go with it. It actually changes some other things about the way I run my course and stuff too. So, okay, cool. Interesting.

Dave Jones: Excellent. So we'll link in your video for those who haven't seen it. Although I'm sure we mentioned it last week, didn't we?

Chris Gammell: Uh, maybe. So you're having a second suck of the sav. When Jake was on, we mentioned it. I don't think so. Oh,

Dave Jones: I don't know. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. Okay. So you wanted to talk about something that I didn't want to talk about, but we're going to talk about it.

Dave Jones: So I don't know why you don't want to talk about it. It's, it's fascinating and you're just scared. You're just a wuss. I'm scared.

Chris Gammell: I just think that this is such a overblown topic of like, this is like one of those things where, okay. So if someone stopped listening right now, they wouldn't know anything of what we're talking about. Some people are already guessing what it is, but they wouldn't know anything what we're talking about. And I, I think there, there was a, do you ever used to watch the show scrubs?

Dave Jones: No. Oh, right. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. There's, there was,

Chris Gammell: there was the, the mean doctor, Dr. Cox, he says, he says, I don't hate you. I nothing you. Right. That's what this is. It's I nothing this, this company.

Dave Jones: You just don't want it to exist because it's so stupid. You just, it's so stupid. Ignore it. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it's just like, and there's been so much media about it in the first place that it doesn't deserve more focus.

Dave Jones: Right. No, but something interesting has come up, which makes it, we're going to do it anyways. It makes it a topic. It makes it a very good topic of conversation.

Chris Gammell: You know, Dave, I would talk about it just because you want to talk about it because you're my friend and I want to talk to you about it. Oh, go ahead, buddy.

Dave Jones: All right. You beam. Our favorite shonky product. You beam.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. And ordinarily I wouldn't talk about it again, which is why I haven't done the video. Right. I like, I've had a lot of technical content come my way. Let's say, um, that has been trying to encourage me to write a, um, a, you know, do a video. Definitive reference video for why this is full of crap. And I'm going, Oh, look, I just don't care enough anymore. You know, like maybe two years ago when I wrote that blog article. Yeah. You know, but now I just, yeah, I just don't care. So that's why I haven't done the video years.

Chris Gammell: Really?

Dave Jones: Oh yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I know.

Chris Gammell: You should have like a, uh, you know, like how they used to do on like World War II planes when they like shot other planes out of the sky, they kind of had the stamps. Yeah. Like we could do that with like logos. You know what I mean?

Dave Jones: Uh, hang on. I'll find you an exact date. Here we go. Here's my U beam. A lot of people don't know that I spoke up against U beam. It was, Oh, here we go. August 7th, 2014. So it's not quite two years ago, but we're getting right. Anyway. So yeah, I haven't bothered doing this video. Um, but as it turns out, um, the, this is why it's interesting because the vice, former vice president, uh, now confirmed the former vice president of engineering at U beam, uh, has left obviously, and is now speaking up and has a blog page, um, where, um, yeah, he's going to town, um, on U beam and why it doesn't work. And, uh, but more interestingly, um, the reasons I agree with the interesting thing, right? Yeah. This is the interesting part. Uh, we'll actually link like it's a blog. So there's multiple posts, but there's one post in particular explaining why he, why would you go work there in the first place? If you know, it's bullshit, right? You know, this product is never going to work.

Chris Gammell: This guy basically has the bone of feed days. He, he is, he understands ultrasonics. He understood all that other stuff.

Dave Jones: This is a world expert in ultrasonics. Right. And, you know, and, and, and you beam have able, have been able to attract the, you know, the, like the world's best ultrasonic experts. Right. Which,

Chris Gammell: which also lends credence to the idea as well. Right. That was trumpeted as, uh, we have this great idea. Here's all these experts. Exactly.

Dave Jones: It, it must be under something. It must work because we've enticed all these experts. Why would they come otherwise? And he gives a detailed explanation of why it's because he wanted to go work on a cool tech. Go figure a nerd wants to go work on cool tech. Who would have thought? Right.

Chris Gammell: The hopes of cool tech, even if, if there, it's not confirmed, right? Like a challenging problem.

Dave Jones: And it's somebody else's funded. But the main reason is that he wanted to go work with the head, the chief, the CTO. Um, and you know, there's names here, right? Uh, won't, won't bother naming. So it probably doesn't mean anything. You can go read if you want to find the names. And, uh, uh, yeah, the chief tech, he wanted to go work with that chief technical officer because he thought he was, you know, the coolest guy on the planet. He wanted to go work for him. And then in turn, other people wanted to go work for this guy because they thought he was cool. And, and bingo.

Chris Gammell: We talked about this two weeks ago. Didn't we? We said we, and many times in the past, you go work somewhere because you find people that are smarter than you. Right. I mean,

Dave Jones: that's smarter than you. And you want to go work on. Yeah. I mean, and there was probably, you know, at the time, like if you're in the ultrasonics business, there's probably no cooler place to work. And yeah, if you ignore the bullshit premise of the whole thing, right. And well, the, the, the impractical, uh, premise of the whole thing.

Chris Gammell: Are you trying to say physics, Dave? No,

Dave Jones: it works from a physics point of view. It's an engineering point of view is why it fails. Uh, it's a practical, it works like a physical. Well, I can, it depends how you want to define it, but it works, right. It's just that it doesn't give you enough power output, right. There's too many losses, which, which to me becomes an engineering problem, right? The, the physics of it works. You can charge a phone.

Chris Gammell: So you're saying if you, if you like super cooled stuff and you didn't worry about.

Dave Jones: If you pump enough power into it and you have it close enough and you have your beam concentrated enough and you have efficient enough transduces, you can do it. Right.

Chris Gammell: Versus a widely rolled out platform. Okay. Okay. I'll give you that. So it's possible.

Dave Jones: It doesn't break the laws of physics. And that's the, you know, and that's always the thing that, uh, Meredith Perry has been saying, who's the right.

Chris Gammell: And so the challenge then is doing it within, within a reasonable amount of cost and doing it.

Dave Jones: Definition of engineering, right? Right. Yes. You're right. Making a practical product, right? Yeah. And making it repeatable and making it safe and yada yada. Right. So it's not possible, right? So from an engineering point of view, it's just bullshit. Um, but, but, you know, it's working on some of the world's best ultrasonic beam formers, you know, they, they did their own ASIC for goodness, sake to actually, you know, I presume it does all the beam. Oh yeah. Yeah. They rolled their own ASIC. Um, in fact, uh, Meredith tweeted a photo of the ASIC before she took it down. Um, somebody must've tapped her on the shoulder and said, uh, Ooh, you shouldn't post a photo of the ASIC. So she, she posted a photo of the ASIC and, uh, somebody copied it. Um, Oh really? Where is it? The photo is still available. Yeah. I will have to find this. Yeah. It's probably on the, it's probably on the forum thread somewhere. And, uh, anyway, um, yes. And so he explains why they went to work. It was basically the people. They wanted to work with other cool nerds and all the cool nerds were, you know, one, one person started working there and then others joined in, even though they all knew it was bullshit, you know? And like, well, I can't speak for anyone else other than the guy who's has spoken for himself, which is the former vice president of engineering. Right. Who says, yeah, you know, in, you know, in, uh, in a roundabout way, says, yeah, like he goes through the math and everything. One of the blog posts, right? Why it's bullshit. And, uh, well, why it's not going to be practical and it's not going to work as they claim. And so, yeah, that's why they go there. Anyway, I thought it was fascinating and you should read it. It's a really good article. But the other interesting thing is that tech crunch who started, who almost started all this you being craze, right? Um, they have come, there is now just today, a, uh, just this morning it popped up. Um, they are now writing an article critical and pointing to this blog post and going, Oh yeah, we were always skeptical or some crap like that. And it's bullshit, you know, because the owner of tech crunch owns the tech crunch base or whatever it is. And like, which is a funding platform, which are an investor in you beam, which is why tech. Oh, that's right.

Chris Gammell: They have a social, they have a social media arm. They have. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And so tech crunch, social media, that's why they've always gotten the scoop on the latest thing. They've always written positive, positive articles about you beam is because the owner of tech crunch is an investor. In you be right. But now interestingly, they, uh,

Chris Gammell: the, uh, yeah, that fun guy.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. I don't know. Anyway, I don't know his name. Yeah. Yeah. Once again, he's a nothing. I don't care. Yeah, exactly. I,

Chris Gammell: I also nothing him. I, I have no, uh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. And so this is why it's interesting. So this is why I brought it up again, because the VP of engineering has come out and we, which is confirmed by the way. Um, he is the vice president, was the vice president of engineering. And, uh, the guy, uh, Lee Gomes from the IEEE who wrote, uh, the IEEE spectrum article against you beam. That was an excellent article. That was the best article ever written on you beam. And it was so critical of it. And rightly so they got everything, right. Lee Gomes did an excellent article. Um,

Chris Gammell: wait, this is on IEEE.

Dave Jones: This is on the IEEE spectrums website. Yes. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Huge. I must've read that one at one point. I remember reading something. Link it back in anyway.

Chris Gammell: There was a blogger post or something at one point. One of the first ones that you started talking about too. There was one before yours.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes, it was. And that one got linked famously. That was, you know, why I, the title was why you being represents everything that's wrong with Silicon Valley or something.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I'll try and find that one too.

Dave Jones: It was some, uh, physics guy. Yeah. It was some physics guy who wrote it. Yeah. And, uh, and then everyone jumped on him as like, Oh, you don't know what you're talking about. And it was right. You know, anyway, Lee Gomes did this excellent article in the IEEE, very well researched. He actually, you know, did all the proper journalist stuff. He actually contacted people and, you know, talked to people even off the record and everything. He actually, you know, called up people and, and journalism, huh? Right. Yeah. Real journalism, right? What the hell? Go figure. I know.

Chris Gammell: Can I see this as a listicle, please? Top 24 reasons you beam probably won't succeed. You won't believe number 14. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh God. I get sucked into clicking on that shit.

Chris Gammell: There's a reason people do it. It works. You know what I mean?

Dave Jones: It works. I know. I know. Anyway. So yeah, Lee Gomes wrote this awesome article and he has now confirmed that, yes, this guy is the former, is who he says he is. He is the former vice president of engineering.

Chris Gammell: I think even, okay. So even outside of this stuff, so we had already written this off as, yeah, whatever. Right. Outside of that, I think that the, the article that he wrote, the one that you pointed to is totally legit. And I think that, you know, like going somewhere for other talent, he also mentioned, you know, awesome test gear, right? Being well-funded. Oh yeah. That's also valid. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You get all the coolest toys. Yep.

Chris Gammell: But I think that it just shows it like, I mean, any, I would think any startup you'd go in with your eyes open, hopefully of just like, yeah, this could be totally BS, I guess. I mean like it's unproven technology, right?

Dave Jones: Not so much BS, but it could fail, right? The odds of fail. Yes. That's a better way to say it. But you don't care because it's, you know, you get to work on cool stuff. It's an open checkbook almost. And you know, like it's fun and exciting. It's exciting. You work with fun,

Chris Gammell: cool people. Yeah, that's exactly. I don't blame someone for that kind of stuff.

Dave Jones: No, no. So anyway, it's interesting to have it, but in this particular case, you know, engineers know things are bullshit, right? Engineers have a finely honed bullshit detector, right? And most do anyway. And yeah, and this is the first time I've probably ever seen it, you know, explained why you would go work for a company. Well,

Chris Gammell: and so like this guy was writing about how he followed the CTO too, which means that it's kind of interesting that like, so say now you want to start a company, say you had, say you had a black box technology, what you really need like is a strong technical lead to basically recruit other people. That guy's basically, or girl is basically a linchpin for the rest of your engineering team. You know what I mean? Like that's a, that's a huge piece that you can, you can kind of sidestep other things. If you just kind of, if you can finally convince Dave Jones to join your startup. So what Dave's trying to say is email him at startup at eevblog.com. And Dave will join your startup today for the right amount of cash.

Dave Jones: Many have tried. I probably get an email a month saying, yeah, will you come join our startup? Like, we'll, you know, look, we will give you 20%, blah, blah, blah, you know, like, and 20% of nothing is right. Yeah. Exactly. Why do you think I've turned it down? And there's been nothing interesting. Like, you know, I'm like, if somebody came along and said, Hey, we want your name behind this.

Chris Gammell: So that other people internet connected socks.

Dave Jones: It's how I did. It gets down to that level. Yes. That, that, that here at Tofi,

Chris Gammell: we really think that your feet should be well connected. You need to, you need to understand how much am I sweating? Am I running too fast?

Dave Jones: That is not far off some of the products that I've been pitched.

Chris Gammell: Nothing, very few things shock me anymore, Dave. At least around our industry and what people think is a viable business. Oh my goodness. I'd also like to say, uh, I love that there are people trying all these hardware startups, but man, like so much, so many things, like there's so many things that people need in their lives that are hardware related and no startup is doing it. You know what I mean? Like, because usually the things that people need in their life, like more affordable transportation and, you know, lower cost energy, like solar panels and stuff.

Dave Jones: I don't want to work on hard practical stuff like that. Well,

Chris Gammell: it's just, yeah, no, it's just the scale of it, right? The complexity. And obviously, like we talked about earlier, the, the barrier to entry that is posed by that complexity, right? Like it's, it's crazy. And so it becomes like, well, we're an internet connected sensor and you can talk to it with your smartphone. Only works with iPhone 6s. You know? It's like, oh, okay, well, good luck with that. You know? Actually,

Dave Jones: the other interesting point about this Ubeam thing is that, well, I've kind of had a little bit of similar sort of experience here. Like I, everyone knows I used to work it out to you, right? And, you did? Yeah. And of course, I thought that their direction was bullshit, right? That their whole FPGA is the future, right? I knew that was bullshit. I knew it wouldn't work, right? And, and, and I knew their $4,000 FPGA demo board that, that I was working on would not sell. I knew it, right?

Chris Gammell: How did you know it, Dave? Are you some kind of prognosticator? Can you, can I hire you as my CTO at my startup?

Dave Jones: Because I, the reason, I'll tell you exactly the reason why I have a brain. You know? Because of common sense? And, and I have thoughts. You know, like I can reason, you know, and, and anyway, I was another person in the hardware, uh, group there left, you know, like actually he sort of got me to join, you know? And then he left like six months later, go, yeah, this is bullshit. You know, I'm leaving. I don't want any more of this. And he wanted me to come with him at a new company, you know? And he said, come and join me at this new company. And I went, no, I've only been here six months, you know, like I'm, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, you know? And like, I think it can get better. And, you know, like, yeah, I thought that I could make change, you know, like I thought I could reason them out of this. I can change it from within. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: I can be the change agent. That's right. David L Jones, change agent.

Dave Jones: And then, no, you just realize that you get beat over the head with a club. So just shut up. Double O nerd. You slowly learn that. You know, and, and I liked the people I was working with and hey, you know, it's yeah. Once again, we hadn't like an open budget and like, and I remember the burger day in the cafeteria. You were a very big fan of burger. Burger day.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It was just a nice, it was just a good place to work and good people to work with. And, you know, and, and flexible and, you know, there were no bullshit meetings and they were like, like it was, it was an enjoyable place to work, which is why I stayed there for four years. You know, even though I fundamentally thought their direction was stupid, you know? And,

Chris Gammell: well, you know, I mean, people, first off, people are going to dislike their job at some point. So it's like, you could do that and you can keep doing that for a while. Like I know people that have strung it along for 10 years and they're still complaining, but it's just like, you know, like, but there is something about obviously keeping them there. Either they don't think they can find out of it. They don't have a job or they like the people they're working with. And, and those are all valid. It's just a choice that they make. Yep. You know, they could go get a job at some crap company that pays them nothing and, but has an exciting idea or whatever they want to optimize for. So, yeah, I don't, I don't think anyone should hold that against you or anyone else. No, no,

Dave Jones: no, totally. No, but it's interesting to see it explained, to finally see it explained. Yeah. It's great. I reckon, you know, hats off to, uh, the former VP of, uh, Ubeam for actually coming out and yeah, explaining why it's great. Anyway,

Chris Gammell: I think you'll hear us say about Ubeam.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Because it's just going to die from this point. It's just,

Chris Gammell: it's gone. You know, I, you know, thinking back to the, uh, let's, we should go through, we should have like a list, you know, we should do, we should have like a memorial sometime in the outro, you know, like, no, no, not a page. Like we're just like slowly reading the names. Ubeam. EE store. Right. Uh, I'm sure this does. What's the one with the gills that you posted about? You posted about the gill thing.

Dave Jones: Uh, yeah, Triton gills. Yeah. Yeah. They, they, they finally pulled that by the way. Yeah. They did finally pull it and re like within, like at the last hour, they, you know, it only had days or something left to fund and they,

Chris Gammell: the, the peachy, peachy printer. Uh, well, that was just, I just saw on Hackett. I did it today that the peachy printer, uh, flopped, you know, like all of these things at the end of the day, it's like, yeah, well, what were we really expecting here? Brought that one on ourselves. Oh man. Oh, the, uh, the coolest cooler.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. The coolest cooler and other, you know, like there's so many of them, you know, and, and some, but some of them are quite different. Some are legitimate scams, right? I'm sure you know which ones are legitimate scams. Others are, are just, they're ridiculously impractical, you know, bad engineering decisions. Yeah. Like just bad luck.

Chris Gammell: Right. I mean, like there is actually those.

Dave Jones: Others are, yeah, bad management. Others are, you know, like they just couldn't handle it. You know, they got too much money and forgetting,

Chris Gammell: forgetting to do any engineering at all whatsoever. Yeah,

Speaker ?: exactly.

Chris Gammell: Or not, oh, that's what we meant to do.

Dave Jones: Realizing that engineering is hard, you know, and like, yeah, yeah, yeah. The list is endless. It's great. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Now, I also feel like in the same breath, I feel like we should, you know, whenever, whenever I catch myself laughing and being jovial with you and other people about, about these things, I feel a little bad. Sometimes we should still, like the people that are legit, that are not scamming people, eh, you're trying. That's something, you know, like that is something.

Dave Jones: I think we should, I think there should be a website where people can, well, a master list can be kept, like, you know, fundingfailures.com. That's a good idea. You should go make that. Yeah, I should, I should make that.

Chris Gammell: If you'd like Dave to be the CTO of your startup, fundingfailures.com, email startup at evvlog.com. Oh man.

Dave Jones: That'd be great. I might not get old.

Chris Gammell: I might keep doing that.

Dave Jones: Somebody needs to keep a record of these.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you're, you're the guy, man. You're the guy.

Speaker ?: I'm the guy,

Chris Gammell: shit.

Dave Jones: Another task.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Surely someone in the community could do that. Yes. Yeah. Just put it up on your forum. Someone will do it.

Dave Jones: Maybe my new employee can do it.

Chris Gammell: There you go. All right. Has the new employee started?

Dave Jones: Yes, he has. Tiernan. Say hi to Tiernan. You probably won't see him. He doesn't really, you know,

Chris Gammell: he's not a, he's more of a back of the house instead of front of the house kind of person.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway, he's doing packing and shipping and will be doing other stuff for me. So yeah.

Chris Gammell: Look at, look at little Davey Jones building out his empire. Oh, Oh, Oh man. Yeah. It's. Well, Dave's growing up so fast. You know, and that's actually another thing I was thinking about when you're talking about Ultium, like, all right. Yeah. It didn't work out, but like, look what it led to. I mean, like they're actually, Oh yeah, you hung on maybe longer than you, you, you should not even should have. Then maybe you were happy there the whole time, but in the end,

Dave Jones: well, I wasn't, as I said, I wanted to leave in the end. I, it was, right. Of course. But I'm just saying that like, I didn't cry. I, I actually,

Chris Gammell: but like that, that, that frustration, right. That kind of frustration there also was when you were starting up your blog and everything, right? Yes. So correct. That, you know, you were, you were doing that stuff to scratch your own itch, keep technical and keep doing stuff that you wanted to do on your own. And that's, so what we're trying to say people is that if you really want a good idea for the future, go get a really shitty job.

Dave Jones: Right. Cause that'll, yeah, that'll give you incentive to do your own stuff.

Chris Gammell: I didn't have a, a, a bad job, but I was just unsatisfied. That's why I started my course. It was the exact same reason, man. Right.

Dave Jones: So it's, and at every job I've worked, it's not that I'm unsatisfied that I worked on my own stuff. I'm just a nerd. I work on my own stuff, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right. But also it might add, it might've put you more in the mood to get a camera or do other things about it.

Dave Jones: Yep. Cool.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yep.

Dave Jones: That's it.

Chris Gammell: All right. Anything else on our list? We should see, just double check on the list. Anything, anything, anything, anything. Oh, speaking of startups, most people didn't like this, but I loved it. Alicia made this, uh, thing about stock options. She like drew, drew about these pictures with, for a snow white. It's great. I think people should definitely go check that out. So even though there are sworn enemy over at embedded, I like that one. Uh,

Dave Jones: and a Japanese satellite failed because of a software update. You know,

Chris Gammell: that was fun.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know what else we would say about it. No, no, that's, you know, shit happens. Do that, right? Do that better next time, guys. Hey, Japan.

Dave Jones: Try harder. Cypress bought some internet of things. Bullshit. I don't know. Yeah. Who cares?

Chris Gammell: People can follow our subreddit, uh, the amp hour, r slash r slash the amp hour and add to it if they'd like.

Dave Jones: And you look, you complained about me mentioning you being, but it got 11 thumbs up. Like, you know, no, no, no, no. This is,

Chris Gammell: this is, this is, this is how Buzzfeed editorial meetings go. Well, we gave them the list of 24 ways to, uh, you know, give your dog a Brazilian wax, but, uh, everybody clicked on it. You know, so we should do more of those listicles. Uh,

Dave Jones: that is,

Chris Gammell: but even more positive, Dave,

Dave Jones: right. But even more people wanted us to talk about the Japanese satellite that failed. And well, okay. You know,

Chris Gammell: I don't care. I mean, like I, I shouldn't have said that out loud. At the end of the day, I think the best shows are the ones like today where we're talking about projects and electronics and stuff like that. If we just did the most popular articles, like that is, that is the, right.

Dave Jones: It's Buzzfeed.

Chris Gammell: It's the tragedy. Is that the tragedy? That's not the tragedy of the commons, but that's like, that's just chasing the, the most, the lowest common denominator. Right. So got it. We define the agenda, David. Right. We are the deciders of the deciding. Chris has been on talking too long. I'm getting loopy. All right. So talk to you next week. Catch you next time. All right. Next week. See you.

Chris Gammell: door oh man i hated those guys