#322 – World Trade Futurity (WTF)

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded November 9th, 2016. Episode 322. World Trade Futurity.

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 the F just happened?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. WTF. As was on the front page. WTF, mate.

Dave Jones: As was what was on the front page of the newspaper here in Australia, which we'll post a picture of because it's really cool. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Really cool. Yeah, minus the reasons it's on there.

Dave Jones: Anyway, let's not talk about how or why.

Chris Gammell: No. Okay, so we are going to talk a little bit about politics here. So if you're really... It's not going to be about politics. It's going to be what our new realities are. That's really what we're going to be talking about here. And I think that is...

Dave Jones: Engineering related. Engineering. Engineering related. As in industry related.

Chris Gammell: I will say from a... I don't state my political things often, and I won't really be talking about it here. I'd like to talk about the actual issues. Personally, I find Donald Trump very distasteful. I think... I think... But I understand some of our listeners, whatever. I'm sure fall on both sides of the spectrum. Blah, blah, blah. Who cares? We're going to talk about 2017. Things are probably going to change, including for the electronics industry. And that's really what we're here to talk about.

Dave Jones: So... In the US. And it will. It could have flow-on effects. Yeah, actually, it will. Yes, it will. Yeah. Yeah, well, that's if things go the way that... Poorly. You know, you have chosen poorly. That's right. It reminds me of the scene from... Yeah, the US did. Yes, it did. Yeah. The scene from the third indie movie, if you haven't seen it. Right. You have chosen. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So...

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah, you're probably more into this, because, you know, being a yank, you would have been bombarded with the issues. We're just, like, over here, we're just sitting, looking back, going, this is hilarious. So you would know more about what was intended, what Trump intended to bring in, and how does it relate to the industry?

Chris Gammell: Right. And, yeah, we only know based on campaign promises, but that's all we have to go on, so that's all I'm going to talk about.

Dave Jones: Let's assume that those things happen, even if he can get them passed, right?

Chris Gammell: Right. The main thing that I'm actually interested in is the potential trade stuff, right? So a lot of people voted in this election based on not wanting to have external trade from the U.S. to elsewhere, and because that ends up hurting localized factories and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: As in export, you mean?

Chris Gammell: Right. Export and import, right?

Dave Jones: But why would anyone want to stop exports? Exports are always a good thing. Why would anyone be against exporting products from your country? I don't understand that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, maybe it wasn't exports then. Maybe it was just imports.

Dave Jones: Right, as in Chinese import.

Chris Gammell: Right. The main idea being that there used to be a lot of factories in small towns in America, and a lot of those got hurt by international trade. And so that at least is the thesis for why this happened, and it is what it is. Fine, whatever. But one of the promises was that there would be a tariff of 40% with China. And so...

Dave Jones: For all imported Chinese products. That's what you're talking about.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. And that could obviously start a trade war, which would be a larger economic issue, but I'm actually just interested from the electronic side of things because... Well, so I talk to people about, you know, getting parts in different countries.

Speaker ?: I was going to say,

Dave Jones: is that just part... Is that finished products? Will it include parts? We just don't know.

Chris Gammell: Well, we don't know. But I assume it's on everything. And if it was on everything, then that would mean... And again, I don't know if that's true or not, but assume, worst case scenario, that was on everything. Everything goes through China. I mean, like, every packaging facility for electronics is in China. And so I assume maybe there's, like, you know, where the... You know, the head company is located versus where the manufacturing happens or whatever, whatever, whatever. But that could end up having a really big impact on part pricing, right?

Dave Jones: But there's all the companies and there's all the American companies who have their fabs in China. What happens there?

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. I have no idea. Maybe if you have a U.S. address or you're paying whatever, you know, like you're based in the U.S., maybe... Okay, then you might. Maybe that's enough. But it's not like... I guess the real question is, from my perspective, okay, so, yes, a lot of stuff has moved overseas, specifically to China, right? We've talked about China. We talk about China a lot. Yep. But I don't think anything like that is going to make it move back. It's not like, you know, like, so they talk about, oh, well, like the iPhone could be made in the U.S. It's like, well, yeah, it could, but not really. I mean, like, yes, in theory, you can make a high-end electronics device in the U.S. using the same manufacturing line, stuff like that, but it's actually more about the complex supply chain in the whole piece, specifically around the mechanical pieces as well. Like, that's what's really interesting to me. I just don't think... It's not like it's just going to snap back on overnight. In fact, what I know about U.S. machining and U.S. mechanical side of things is that a lot of that is propped up by military spending just because the only way that you can cover the overhead is to, you know, get these high-margin projects. Right. And so that's what I guess is the interesting question to me is, okay, so say we didn't just take the politics out of it, right? Fine, whatever. There's politics there. You're just trying to move a supply chain back stateside. Or any country, right? So Australia or Germany or whatever. How does that actually work? I don't know how that works, right? Because the cost basis for it all is ridiculously different.

Dave Jones: Got it.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I'm sure that at some point, they've talked about this in Australia too, right? They want to get manufacturing back because that brings a lot of jobs and all that stuff, but it's so often it's just monetary focused. So has there ever been any movement in Australia?

Dave Jones: There, yeah, has been. It's a lot of token crap. You know, they'll bring back it in one area and they'll crush it in some other area, you know, so overall we end up, yeah, going down the toilet. Right, it's a wash. Yeah, right. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Right. And so, I mean, so I think about like stuff like plastics, right? So plastics are a huge part of consumer electronics and stuff like that and the only real experience I've had with it in the past was like comparing costs of getting molds made. It was like, and I think I mentioned it on the show before. Yeah, it was like 30K was the best quote we got in the States. Yeah. And it was like 5K. And this is for single piece mold type of thing. It was 30K to 5K type of stuff. Wow. So just in terms of like availability and accessibility to machines and all this other stuff, like I don't know how, I don't think any of that matters. I don't think it matters with like import and all that. I think it's just, well, yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: Now I would like to bring up a tweet from Tesla 500 who hopefully will have on the show. Yeah. Yeah. Sooner or later. He has agreed to come on at some point. Anyway, he's working on a very new, very cool thermal camera. Like, sorry, not a thermal camera, high speed camera. He's actually designed and is going to manufacture his own high speed camera. Right? It's really cool. He's going to send me one. I'm going to do a tear down and it's going to be cool. And then he'll do like a crowdfunded thing, I think is the intention. Anyway, he tweeted, here we go. If Trump tears up the NAFTA, what's the NAFTA?

Chris Gammell: North American Free Trade Agreement. Free Trade Agreement. Okay. The 90s.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. So Trump has promised to tear that up.

Chris Gammell: The imports between, import export between Mexico, US and Canada. Right. Maybe one or two other small countries.

Dave Jones: Okay. So that's currently the situation. And he's in Canada, isn't he? He's Canadian. I don't know. Oh yeah, Vancouver. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So he's in Vancouver. So he tweeted that increased cost, cross border costs may sink his camera project in the long run. So that is disturbing. You know, that a little player like that, trying to develop their own high speed, you know, niche high speed camera, thinks that, you know, that could sink the entire project.

Chris Gammell: Oh, of course. Right. I mean, like any kind of added cost there. So I think, I think that's a kind of an interesting piece is just, well, okay. So we know from the electronics industry, right? So how about this? I used, I used to work at Samsung, which was in Austin. We would source all of our wafers from Japan. We'd have equipment from all over the world, including Japan, Germany, U S all over the place. And that would be in the fab chemical stuff from all over the place. Right. Just, just looking at the supply chain of a, of a, a piece of memory. Right. Yep. At the end, we'd have a wafer that was a finished tested wafer, right? With flash on it, which would then get sent back to Korea for future stuff. Yeah. And we can send out to like the Philippines or China or somewhere to get die cut and,

Dave Jones: and actually packaged and tested. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And then ship back to the U S sometimes or ship directly to manufacturers. Right. And that's just the, the, the thing of one chip. So I,

Dave Jones: I don't know. That's crazy. I mean, and that's not going to go away. It's not like that's going to magically bring everything back to the U S. I mean, you can't fight this. You can't fight globalization. That's what I wonder too,

Chris Gammell: is like what, what is even possible? So like, I have a friend that works in military electronics and they really struggle with being able to source, like even you can't like buy capacitors. I mean, you could buy some specialty capacitors in the U S, but like buying, uh, I don't, I don't know any, any places that are like making, uh, surface mount capacitors for just generic electronics. Right. Right. Right. And so the scale up necessary would be really, really insane. Uh,

Dave Jones: it's just, yeah, I, yeah, this is going to be bad if they try and implement this. It, it, you can't win. I don't, I don't see a way to, you know, right. Yeah. Set up all these import, you know, tariffs and everything else and make it work. It's just, you know, you're going to lose out eventually somewhere else, you know? Yes. It might keep somebody happy. You know, like we, we talk about this all the time in Australia with, you know, uh, you know, farm subsidies for the farmers and, you know, imports and all that, you know, to help our farmers out, you know, and stuff like that, which is an admirable thing, right? You know, we can't lose our farming for goodness sake, you know, um,

Chris Gammell: cause then you're dependent on a lot of people. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, but ultimately you're going to lose out somewhere else. You know, you've got to figure out another way to compete. It's, it's like trying to stop pirates, right? It's like trying to stop piracy. You can't, right? You know, it just, no matter how hard you try in whatever area, you're just going to lose the fight. So you need to come to terms with the fact, okay, that happens, right? Let's figure out a different way to make our money. You know, like,

Chris Gammell: yeah,

Dave Jones: you just have to deal with it. Um, and I think it's not too different. Yeah. Yeah. The business model needs to change. Yep. Right.

Chris Gammell: And yeah. So I, I think that's, I honestly, like I'm upset about what happened. I think it's not great personally, but, um, the rest of it is really, oh, it's 45%. Sorry. Um, it's just, that's the proposed tariff, but.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. All right. Wow. Jeez. That's yeah.

Chris Gammell: Um, anyway,

Dave Jones: we don't know yet, even if this will pass or what it will be, you know, I like, I, I,

Dave Jones: I, I, a lot of people are rightly scared here, but you have to remember that, uh, as everyone seems to forget in this is that, uh, the captain of the ship in America, it's a bloody big ship and with a very small rudder. Um, there's almost, and there's only so much the captain can do. So, you know, how much damage the captain can do? That's diving into politics stuff too.

Chris Gammell: it is. But I, I think the thing I think about is that like, okay, so again, I, I'm not huge. I'm not, I'm not happy about this at all, but what I do know is that there's a lot of people, maybe even some of our audience that like, they are, they made this decision based on, you know, jobs disappearing, all that other stuff. I think that is another interesting thing is like, okay, what do jobs look like in the future? Right. Because, um, you know, there are a lot of these small towns where they got wiped out because they had a factory, you know, they don't kind of thing. And, um, it's also, I mean, another interesting piece is what happens when that same thing happens in China, right? Because even China has, uh, jobs moving to lower cost countries as well. And so it just kind of is going to hop around.

Dave Jones: And is it only going to be China or is it going to be every country outside America? Like, this will impact me, right? If there was, if they assume there was a 45% import tariff from stuff not made in the U S, then that means I've, you know, my U S price that I've got, I get my menu product manufactured here in Australia and I ship it to the U S. If that's suddenly gone up by 45%, that's, you know, yeah. Right. And your stuff is already not particularly low cost either. It's not, it's not low cost, you know, it's like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's interesting. I wonder if it would be like,

Dave Jones: I just have to stop selling to the U S or the price would be so crazy that no, and then that would reflect badly on me. Oh, why is it so expensive? Well, it's not my fault.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Yeah. It is a big, I mean, yeah, it's a big marketplace.

Dave Jones: So yeah. Huge. Anyway, Oh, that's a huge can of worms.

Chris Gammell: It's a big old turd. That's, that's for sure. Yep.

Dave Jones: Anyway. And then, well, they're thinking about bringing back the TTP. They say Obama might push, try and push that through before he leaves now. And well,

Chris Gammell: yeah, I don't, I don't quite understand that stuff.

Dave Jones: Nobody does. Cause it's secret. Oh man. Don't get me started. Anyway. Okay. Yeah. Electronics. Shall we?

Chris Gammell: So we, we mentioned that it's, uh, it's, yeah, it's,

Speaker ?: it's,

Chris Gammell: it's not changing. So, uh, the one thing I was thinking about, I was trying, I was trying so hard last night to be positive. And, and it's like, you know what? I kind of reaffirmed that I want to work on things that help people. And, um, I have had some, some people, uh, write to me about my pro bono idea. I would like to reiterate that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. How do you think that's been a couple of weeks? So there are a couple of people who wanted to take you up on that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There's a couple of people I've talked to and a couple of people I've worked with already just doing, you know, some calls and stuff like that, design reviews. Um, so that's good. And I'd like to.

Dave Jones: Actual phone calls. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

Chris Gammell: So I know they're doing that and it's been good for, you know, lots of exposure and stuff like that for seeing new ideas and seeing what people are working on and what's needed. So, uh, I would just like to reiterate that it's out there.

Dave Jones: It's a secret plan to steal everyone's idea. If it's really, really good.

Chris Gammell: I have no, no plans for that.

Dave Jones: But, but what if it's really, really good and you can make a billion dollars from it?

Chris Gammell: Uh, yeah, I don't think those, things exist. Right. Yeah, I know. They're pretty rare. At least not with what, what capabilities I have.

Dave Jones: Unfortunately, there's so many people who think, and I get these emails all the time, you know, I've got this billion dollar idea and I'm going, you know, and I'm going, no, you don't do. Sorry. And it's like, you don't understand. I've done, I've researched it and I'm right. It's like, yeah, no, you're not. Right. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oops. Yep. Hmm. Um, yeah. So, so I'm out there. So that's still happening. I'm out there. Yep. Yep. Okay.

Dave Jones: Chris will help you out. Yeah. I would love to do something like that if I had the time. No, time is my most precious resource. I'm afraid.

Chris Gammell: I've been thinking about that too, for like prototyping and stuff. So, uh, I got to hang out with Tony, uh, who works at Adafruit, uh, over the weekend. I was at, I did, I worked on Supercon, which is why we didn't have a show last week. Mind you. Uh, sorry about that. Uh, I just, and Dave's like, Hey, you ready to do the call? And I'm like, no, no, I can't, I can't. Uh, um, yeah. So, sorry about that. Uh, but these things happen. Uh, but anyways, hanging out with Tony and he was talking about MicroPython and as like a prototyping tool. And I've been really interested. I'm going to see if we can try and get them on here, uh, to talk about it some more.

Dave Jones: What's MicroPython? It's a little embedded version of Python.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. And it also can implement like, uh, C calls and stuff like that for doing like a fast timing. So anyways, it's very interesting. I, I talked to him a little bit about it, uh, at Open Hardware Summit, but I, I've been watching some of his videos as well. And I'll link that video in. Um, so the thing I've been thinking about, right. So, and the reason I bring this up is because, you know, like, uh, especially for prototyping, um, it's so important to just get something out there, right? The, the first thing, you know, it's kind of like that top down idea, like the most important thing is just to get a thing in hand and working. And then, yeah, it's going to be slow. It's going to be chunky at first.

Dave Jones: And then you're a final later. Yeah,

Chris Gammell: exactly. And then you, I mean, like the thing is, then that's, that's the kind of thing where like you, okay, so you have this general construct and then you pay an embedded expert, right? Right. You call Alicia and you, you know, you pay an embedded expert to make it fast because then it's like locked in with the idea, right? It's the same thing we talk about with like manufacturing. You don't start building a manufacturing line until you have a final product. You wouldn't start, you know, if you're still changing components, you wouldn't build out your assembly line. That would be silly. Um, and so I think it kind of think about it like that for code as well. Because, you know, in the past we've talked about, Oh, well, uh, we, we've talked about like the Tesla too and how that's like JavaScript based and it's really slow, but also, you know, but it's the same kind of thing. It's just a prototyping platform to start with. Yes. Some people are going to try and make it into a, a larger thing over time, but you know, you know, people usually will continue to try and use the tools that they like. But from a prototyping standpoint, I think it's really interesting, especially because like it uses a STM 32 F4, I think. Right. And, um, you know, you're just throwing, throwing, uh, cheap chips at things, you know, it's like, that's not cheap, cheap, but it's pretty cheap.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Sorry for my lack of enthusiasm. It doesn't like meh, you know, another embedded environment. Yeah. Oh no,

Chris Gammell: no, no. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. I mean, yeah. I, uh,

Dave Jones: for all you fanboys out there who think this is a duck's guts, I'm, I'm sure. No, no, no, you're right. It's,

Chris Gammell: it's the same as an Arduino type platform or any, anything else like scripting type stuff or just really, but, but the thing that I'm talking about is my, my mindset change around like, uh, get it done first and then go back and refine it. Right. I've been thinking a lot about like, so I've been, you know, for my course and stuff like that,

Dave Jones: I've been thinking about learning methods.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But you know, if you go do it in this, you know, language is a big thing. If you go and do it in this embedded Python thingy, right. And then you go, Oh, okay. We want to refine it later. Do you have to scrap all that? Cause Python wasn't the, you know, the fastest way to do it. And your product needs to be fast. Do you have to scrap all the effort you put into that code and redo it? Like a product architecture. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. Uh, that's a good question. I don't, I don't know. Um,

Dave Jones: because sometimes that, that matters a lot. Sometimes, you know, the key element of your product is going to be speed, for example, or, you know, like, sure. And, and if you get your, um, people might come a gutter on this. They might do a Kickstarter campaign. Oh, look at my prototype. It's fantastic. And yeah, I've done it in Python or I don't know. It's Python quick. I have no idea, but let's just assume. No,

Chris Gammell: no, it's definitely not. It's not at all.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Let's just assume it's a slower interpreted, slow as a wet week or whatever. And, you know, you show it off and then you think, Oh yeah, no, trust us. The final product will be whiz bang. And then, no, it's not. You just can't do it. You can't get the speed. You hope you would, or something like that. You just come a gutter.

Chris Gammell: I guess so. I mean, I guess, I guess, so you're thinking about this from past projects you've done, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, always. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But I mean,

Dave Jones: like so things I can envisage happening, you know, it's,

Chris Gammell: I guess so. I don't know. I think like sometimes,

Dave Jones: sometimes the product in hand is not, I, I agree with the sentiment, but sometimes having a product in hand, it means nothing, right? If you haven't met, if you haven't demonstrated a key goal of what your product was going to do. Yeah. You might have something in your hand that flashes lights and feels good. But if you haven't actually solved a key problem, which may come up in your design at that stage, well, your project could be for naught.

Chris Gammell: Sure. That's like a product design type of argument, right? It's like, what are your, what are your true constraints and stuff like that? But I think that when, when I think about like product, it depends where you're starting from, right? Of course. If you're, if you're starting from a place where you're like doing video to like, you know, high bandwidth video to start with, you're probably not going to start like this, right? You're going to start somewhere a little bit closer to the end with like FPGAs or something. So yes, it's not, this is not a panacea of course.

Dave Jones: The high speed camera that Tesla 500 is working on might be a classic example of this. You know, it's all about the architecture and how you, and the data throughput and everything else. Right. You know, you can hook up a sensor to a microcontroller and get a photo out of it. Right. And go, Hey, look, here's my high speed camera. It'll, but trust me, the final production version will be super quick. You know,

Chris Gammell: right. When I think about it too, like some of, some of it depends on, uh, so like, it sounds like Tesla 500 is working on something that's a, a high end kind of, not a corner case, but you know, like towards a higher end type of thing. yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. And so versus this kind of stuff is for, yeah, you're like, you're talking about, you know, quickly getting sensors talking and stuff like that. So yeah, they are, they are definitely different. And different constraints. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Speaking of which, did you see the, um, spectrum photo I got printed in my mailbag? You probably haven't watched my mailbag.

Chris Gammell: No. What was it?

Dave Jones: You remember that big, uh, spectrum, the electromagnetic spectrum poster? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. From the bell labs. I've got two of those a zero printed, and they look superb. I've got one on the wall behind me. So it'd be used as a backdrop for my, um, you know, webcam talking head videos. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's a sweet poster.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We're, uh, so like, what would it, if I was going to go and try and get that printed, like what, what kind of place would do that? Someone did it for you?

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. I, and a zero print shop printed it for 20 bucks, you know? Oh,

Chris Gammell: that's not bad. I know.

Dave Jones: A zero. If you don't, if you yankster, I don't really know what A zero is, right? A zero is like, uh, 1.1 meters wide.

Chris Gammell: Oh, sorry. About four feet wide. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like four feet wide or whatever. Okay.

Chris Gammell: So this would be like a plotter would have been like an old plotter kind of does that.

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no, no. It's a, no, I mean like just the print size. Yeah. One of those, yeah, yeah. One of those wide format printers. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yep. So you pay per length of real. So, so the width doesn't matter because they have to waste that material anyway. So if you print like a big landscape, um, on its side, you, you only pay for the height of the landscape image. Whereas if you took that same landscape and printed it in portrait format, you would waste all that white space on the side and you'd pay five times the cost. Oh, really? You'd be using more paper from the roll, you know, cause it's like roll based paper.

Chris Gammell: So cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway, awesome.

Chris Gammell: So does this mean you're going to be, uh, using some more of the spectrum now or what?

Dave Jones: I just like it. It's a awesome. Freaking poster.

Chris Gammell: No, that's cool. That's cool.

Dave Jones: Yep. Anyway,

Chris Gammell: uh, at super con, I got to talk to the, uh, Brent and Bryce about the Faraday RF, which you'd mentioned on here before. I think. Did we, we talked about a little bit. Yeah. Um, I got to see it as well. Um, but, uh, that was interesting too. Uh, that was using, so that uses ISM band and I didn't quite get it before, but I, the idea is it basically is like opening up machine to machine communication on the ISM band, if I'm thinking about it correctly. So basically you'd interface to this board. It could use, you could use ISM band, uh, to transmit data between multiple devices. And it's like the 33 centimeter ISM band. So.

Dave Jones: Right. And what's the advantage of that over any other wireless solution?

Chris Gammell: I think because what's an open band. Um,

Dave Jones: right.

Chris Gammell: And so, but it's also, it's like a hand band, I think.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: And, um, so it's just like more flexible. You can play around with it more stuff like that. Hopefully I'm, I'm saying things right. I don't actually know. I did talk to them for a while, but yeah. Um, but thought I'd bring it up again. It's cool looking board.

Dave Jones: Cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So I was at super con, uh, and I got, there was, uh, man, I can't wait for some of these talks to come out. Um,

Dave Jones: sweet. They will all be up on the channel, won't they?

Chris Gammell: They, yeah, they'll all be up on the heck a day, uh, YouTube channel eventually. Cool. Um, some of the highlights, um, so Akiba actually, so we talked about, uh, China manufacturing stuff. Akiba was there, got to meet him in person. That was great. Um, he did, he talked about, uh, Shenzhen manufacturing and stuff like that. Some really interesting stuff too. Like, um, he mentioned the, you ever seen on eBay, like the 72 cent price that a lot of things have?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Maybe it's his US base.

Dave Jones: 72 cents. Okay. Right. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: There's a lot of, a lot of things. And, and so he backtraced what it was actually. Yeah. And so that's about, he said it's like maybe 76 cents, 72 cents, something like that. It's basically five RMB, which is just the shipping price. Right. And it's, there was like some agreement that with eBay, specifically with eBay, that shippers can ship from the China post to almost any other worldwide post. Yeah. For like five RMB. Wow. And so, yeah, it's crazy, right?

Dave Jones: That's the sign. That's just nuts.

Chris Gammell: Right. So, um, yeah, no, that was just really good talk. And then, uh, actually, so there, there may have been a couple amp hour guests there. Uh, uh, Alan Yates. Yes. Yes.

Dave Jones: I saw that he was there. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So he was there. Um, and he was the first talk actually. And he talked about the, uh, the lighthouse that he designed for the, the, for valve. And, uh, man, that math quickly went over my head. Yeah. Right. People didn't hear.

Dave Jones: How to lose an audience in one slide. No, no, no, no. He had people,

Chris Gammell: he had people, uh, uh, you know, really engaged with it. It was just like me, I, I, yeah, I quickly lost track of what was going on there. Right. Um, he actually, he was on embedded a while back and I think I mentioned that, but he gave a good explanation there, but this would actually have visuals with it too. So, so you don't need to listen to embedded. You can just watch this video. I'm kidding. You should, you could also check that out. Um, so it, and it's just really interesting to hear about the, uh, the challenges of, of like, uh, the, the angle, right. Cause it's like this rotating laser basically. And then the, is it the arc lengths of, you know, resolution that you get out of it. So just really cool stuff. And they, they built all their stuff from, they were prototyping just with cheap stuff off of eBay as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I saw it. Yeah. I've seen him do a video on that. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It was really cool. Um, and those were most of the talks I saw. Oh, crystal Gordon was another good one. She did one about, um, about, uh, like perception, sensing and perception biologically. Really cool stuff. Um, I can go down the list, but I, I, I honestly, I was running around so much. I didn't see a lot. So, uh, people should, yeah, it was really, uh, it was great because we had like this back alley between the two buildings that we were at.

Dave Jones: I saw that. It looked, it looked dodgy as, you know?

Chris Gammell: No, it was great, man. It was really great. That was like, you know, like, okay. So like, you know, you and I talk about, we're so antisocial, whatever. But like when you're at a conference and when you're with nerds and people are showing their projects off, like we've talked about in the past, that part was great. I mean like that, you really can't, I don't know. That was, that was by far the best part. Um, just sitting around and talking about projects and stuff. So it was a really good crowd and it was, it was a lot of fun.

Dave Jones: Why are you not at electronica?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I was planning to go, huh? Uh, I was,

Dave Jones: have, have you been to that before?

Chris Gammell: I was there. Yeah. Two years ago. Oh, right. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We, we, uh, the, the first time the Hackaday prize went off, um, we announced the winner there. Oh, that's right. Yes, of course. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Um,

Dave Jones: yes, I was invited.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: I think I was invited. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And, and it was cool. You know, like that one was an interesting trade show too. Like I, I didn't expect it to be, have you been, you haven't been? No,

Dave Jones: no, no, it's huge.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's really big. Physically huge. Yeah. Yeah. It's like seven, six or seven, like of these huge, huge halls. Yep. And, uh, but it's not like there's a lot to show off. Right. So I'd mentioned that, that, that trade show I went to here was like the huge, um, machines, like the, uh, milling machines and lathes and stuff like that. Like that was showing stuff off. Right. Like you had these huge machines doing things all day long, moving parts, making things, awesomeness, right? You go to electronica and it's like, you know, Samsung's there, but like, what are they showing?

Dave Jones: Like a stand, right? With a bunch of people in suits, you know, like, right, exactly.

Chris Gammell: And it, but it's like huge, I mean like really, really big stand and then any tiny chip, you know, it's like, Oh, there it is. Cool. Some of them have projects, stuff like that, but it's, uh, ultimately.

Dave Jones: Okay. It's more of a business thing. You think very,

Chris Gammell: very much so. Yeah. Everybody's wearing suits. And I think part of that is the German business culture as well. Um, it's a little bit more formal, which is fine. I didn't realize going in, but, um, I'm sure there's some people out there right now. And I'd like to go back at some point just cause the thing I didn't do the last time I was there, which I'd like to do again is there's a lot of vendors. Like, so they'll have like a whole China section, right? They'll bring vendors in. Right. Like, I think, I think maybe the state pays for it. And, uh, interesting. Okay. Right. Cause it, and then, so they have like small vendors there that you wouldn't normally get to unless you're going to China, but then they also have that for other countries too. And, uh, interesting. And that, that kind of stuff's important. You know, you can get face to face connections. You can see if people are dodgy or not, you know what I mean? Like there is, there is still a lot of value in, uh, look at someone in the eye, talking to them about their business and, and, and seeing if they're worth doing business with kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Right. If they're dodgy as or.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Yep. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, I'm not sure if it's worth going to Germany for, but you know. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's a long, it's a long haul. How far is it from the U S to Germany?

Chris Gammell: Uh, there's a nonstop to Munich from here. It's like an eight and a half hour flight. Oh, is that all? Yeah. From Chicago. It would have been 12 from, from LA. So. Yeah. No, it's not like Australia. No,

Dave Jones: it's not 30 hours each way.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. That would have been tough.

Dave Jones: What else have we got? Hey, we've got acquisitions galore. Again, you wouldn't think there's anyone left. And we keep saying that every week.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You do wonder.

Dave Jones: So, who's bought who? I don't think we, we were arguing on this before the show, whether or not we've mentioned it last time. Yeah. Uh, but, uh, Qualcomm are buying NXP.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: For, uh, just $47 billion, you know,

Chris Gammell: just a small amount. Yeah. So I had thought we might've mentioned that it was possibly going to happen, but it definitely is happening now.

Dave Jones: It does ring a bell anyway. It's, yeah, it's happening. And, uh, yeah, so meh, whatever. So now Qualcomm,

Chris Gammell: but it's also, they, well, so like NXP used to be Philips, right? Unbelievable.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Um, and then, but then they had also bought Freescale recently. So now, I wonder if they even changed the stationary at Freescale. Oh, like,

Dave Jones: they haven't had time to change the stationary. They've already been. Yeah. Yeah. Re-sold to someone else. It's just nuts. And in other news.

Chris Gammell: I had actually a, a very, very kind listener who has to remain anonymous, who sent me some linear tech gear before all their stuff changes over. Oh, right. Cool. I now have a shirt and a mug and I appreciate the hell out of that. Yep. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Of course, I'll probably end up spilling the coffee on the shirt and then it'll all be, you know. Yeah, no,

Dave Jones: then NXP, I have no love for NXP. They're not one of the oldies, you know, like, meh, whatever. But still, you know, it's just more consolidation, more consolidation. Um, speaking of which, uh, who's the latest casualty?

Chris Gammell: Lattice.

Dave Jones: Lattice. Lattice. I like Lattice Semiconductor. Really? I've used their parts before. I liked them. I like their stuff. What about,

Chris Gammell: what do you like about them?

Dave Jones: I just like that they were like, you know, the small player. They were like the underdog? Yeah, the little underdog and I like their parts, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, uh, yeah, I even wrote a, a, a compiler back in the day for one of their, um, insert in system programmable, uh, switches. Stuff like, it was like a visual programming tool. So I wrote that, which then compiled the, uh, bit file, which then, you know, downloaded to the chip because there wasn't anything available. And, you know, I thought that was cool. Um,

Chris Gammell: yeah. And so this is, so Lattice has the ice 40, which is that one that we've talked about in the past with the open source tool chain and all that other stuff. They sold to a private equity firm. It doesn't seem like that's a shit. I mean, like, I don't think that actually affects that much. And they didn't sell for much 1.4 billion. I mean, I, yes, that's a lot of money, but not compared to the other stuff. I mean, you know, right. Um, it'll just be interesting if a management chain change ends up, you know, affecting the ability to, I guess they reverse engineered that, that tool chain anyways though. Right.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So,

Dave Jones: um, they will. Anyway,

Chris Gammell: I believe. Um, but yeah, so like running down the list of FPGA companies, I think Xilinx is the only one that's still on their own. So Xilinx is still on their own.

Dave Jones: Cause Altera got bought by Intel.

Chris Gammell: Intel. Right. Uh, what's it called? You, Actel got bought by MicroSemi. Now they just go by MicroSemi.

Dave Jones: MicroSemi. That's right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And now Lattice is this, although I think Lattice is going to keep their name.

Dave Jones: I think they'll keep it. Yeah. I think, I think that's not a big deal. It was just a, yep. Sort of like an internal sellout kind of thing. It's not like being gobbled up by a larger entity.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: So hopefully anyway, that's the, yep. So here you go. I'll send you the link to my, uh, uh, software.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you like the year old, was it? Oh, alternate zone. Yeah. It's still around.

Dave Jones: I'm surprised the server's still up and running. And this was like a visual, uh, programming interface. You could, uh, um, yeah, flip and toggle all the bits inside, visually program it. So you didn't have to script it or anything like that. Oh,

Chris Gammell: it was like back when, uh, people were actually doing like gate level stuff on their, yeah.

Dave Jones: When you were doing gate level stuff and you could, yes.

Chris Gammell: And I remember that with the, uh, Altera stuff. That's how I got started with the FJS2 where they had like that, what was it called? Quartus Max 2 or something like that? Yes. The Max 2 software.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Quartus. Yes. The Quartus software. And, uh, yep. And I was doing, um, I was actually hand laying out my CPLDs. As in laying out where things went on the silicon. Cause back in the day, uh, that was a lattice by the way. Yes, it was a lattice. Um, I don't know if we've got any screen captures of that. No, probably not. Yeah. But lattice had a visual programming tool. Yes. You could do like, you know, high definition language, which was just coming in back then. Um, but you know, it was just easier to actually, um, route your stuff manually. Like, like, you know how your FPGAs are always, auto routed, right? Like nobody routes himself.

Chris Gammell: The place and route thing. Exactly.

Dave Jones: The place and route thing. I placed a route, routed myself because I wanted to extract every last bit of routing efficiency from this CPLD. And I did like, you know, I, I put it through the auto router and said, nah, can't do it. And I went bullshit. I'll show you. That's right. So I went in there.

Chris Gammell: Roll up your sleeves. Here, hold my beer.

Dave Jones: And you could actually say, I, right. I want that flip flop in that cell over there. And I want to route that to here. And I routed the entire chip manually, visually. And yeah, I fitted it with one, like one gate to spare. And I'm like, like so proud, you know, it was like, yeah, that was fantastic. You know, because that was a cheaper chip, you know, otherwise it would have had to step up to the next chip, which was like double the price, you know, right.

Dave Jones: just because the router couldn't fit it in.

Chris Gammell: the Python thing, isn't it? Like, it's like you were taking the time, you had this finalized design, you were optimizing it for that lower cost thing. And that, that totally makes sense at that point. Right. But if you were prototyping, you wouldn't start from the CPLD, the low, small CPLD. You'd probably start with a bigger one and hopefully size down.

Dave Jones: It's so cheap now, right. Silicon's so cheap and readily available. You don't, you know, care about file size anymore. It's all, you know, number of gates. Some people do. Some people still do. And like, you know, in massive volume stuff, yeah, you know, you can save a cent or two by using a smaller micro instead of the larger one, which has a larger die and more memory. You know, you can, you can actually save cents. And that matters when you're making a million of something or hundreds of thousands of something. Right. Right. Exactly. Well,

Chris Gammell: this is like the, you know, we've had Todd Bailey on before we have Jerry on other tour designers that are out there too. Like they understand, I guess Alicia was a tour designer too. You know, like when you really get to those extremes, you start to pack it all in as much as you can, just because the lower the cost, the less you can charge for it. It's kind of crazy. Absolutely. Exactly. So, you know,

Dave Jones: yeah, I was at the point where I was making hundreds of thousands of boards and you would literally, um, do a, um, what is it? What is it called? A, a, a, a Munson technique. So you would use the Munson technique. Munson technique. Is this,

Chris Gammell: that's not the thing where you flick the caps off, is it?

Dave Jones: You, where you flick the caps off until your product stops working and then put the last cap back or the last component back.

Chris Gammell: I remember hearing about that. I didn't know that. Munson technique. Yes. Oh, uh,

Dave Jones: crazy old man months. What is it? Um, it's on wiki months. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, we'll put it in and yeah, like you would do that because each capacitor was like, you know, well back in the day, you know, they were like cents. They weren't, you know, 0.01 cents. They were, you know, cents each. And like, and if you make a, you know, 300,000 boards, which is what I was doing. If you could eliminate one capacitor, that was a big deal, right? That, that saved X amount of cost. It was worth my time to try and engineer this thing to remove one capacitor.

Chris Gammell: Right. You know, I can, I can, I can easily spend times B times C is less than Dave's hourly rate times how many hours it takes. By how many hours, you know,

Dave Jones: I could work for 40 hours to remove, you know, work to figure out how to remove one, one capacitor and it was worthwhile.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know,

Dave Jones: it's a big deal. Definitely. Anyway, Munson.

Chris Gammell: Interesting.

Dave Jones: Kind of. It's, yeah, it's kind of like, you know, it's, it's optimization. It's a little bit more sloppy. It's more just try and see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah, exactly. So, no, but that's.

Chris Gammell: Um, my, my friend, Jose, who lives around here, he told me about a chip that's quasi programmable that I had never heard. I had never even heard of this company before. I just sent you the link. Right. Um, I, I can't say it's the chip of the week, but have you ever seen this thing? Siligo? Siligo? Siligo.

Dave Jones: I've probably have it on my mailbag. That's the one I'm thinking of. Is it the analog one? Yep. I've had these. Yes. The, the green pack. Yes. I've had it on my mailbag several times. Actually. They, they keep sending them to me. They send them to you. Interesting. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I've got some, like a little, uh, these are tiny little things too. The package is like, it's an STQFN 20. And it's like, if you sneeze, you've, you've, you've lost this thing.

Chris Gammell: Right. If you inhale too much, you are now programmable.

Dave Jones: And they, they, they, they actually, it came with the development board actually comes with a little zero insertion, insertion force socket with a pin pitch of like 0.25 millimeters or something ridiculous. And so you can put the little chip, the little wafer scale chip in there. Right. Well, it's not wafer. It's, you know, anyway, it's tiny. Um, yeah. Oh, sorry. It's 0.4 millimeter pin pitch, this one. Right. So it's a big one. You know, 0.4 millimeters. And yeah, so you put it in this zero insertion force socket and then it breaks it out to a 0.1 inch header. Great. You know, like, yeah, but they don't make any other package. Um, no, right. Right. No, no, this is meant for people. Yeah. No, yeah. Chip of the week. If people haven't seen it, they're, um, basically a, uh, micro, um, controller. What, what, um, well, no, they're programmable, but they have like, so they have like, yeah,

Chris Gammell: there's a state machine on board. There's the eight state state machine. There's oscillators.

Dave Jones: But they've got some RAM as well. Um, and they've got, yeah, they've got oscillators. They've got programmable delays, uh, power on resets, but they've got, uh, analog stuff. So they've got analog comparators. They've got, uh, filters, uh, filters, um, and, uh, combinatorial logic. So it's kind of like a, uh, programmable logic device mixed with analog stuff. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. A little bit analog, like, like comparator type stuff. Yeah. Nothing like, nothing like super crazy. It's not like there's,

Dave Jones: but there's some comparators and there's some filters and there's, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So no, it's, I just, it's, it's like, it's an interesting one of those like toolbox chips, you know?

Dave Jones: Very interesting thing. Yeah. And if you've got a niche product, but once again, it's, it's one of those things. Would I design this into a product? Right.

Chris Gammell: Uh, I don't know. I think that's, I think it's single source, right? Yeah. Well,

Dave Jones: no, that's fine. But the fact that it's single source, right? You're combining a whole bunch of, you know, jelly bean analog comparators and jelly bean logic into this one device from a small company, right? It's not an NXP or a, you know, or something, right? It's not a big company. That's a good point. Right? That's a good point. Do you take the risk? Um,

Chris Gammell: right.

Dave Jones: You would have to have, yeah, the, you know, the benefits would have to outweigh the potential risk of them discontinuing or them going bust and this product not being available in five years time. Right. And it depends on the lifespan of your product. If I was developing back when I was developing my stuff, or the military, right? Where they had to have by contract, like a 10, 20 year service life. Right. We, I would not, as a designer, I was not allowed to use a chip like this.

Chris Gammell: Right. Oh, really? Yeah. No, because we,

Dave Jones: we, we needed written, uh, written, um, um, you know, uh, what's the word? Not authority written. Oh,

Chris Gammell: like the 10 year contract. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I've written documents from those component manufacturers saying, if it was single source guaranteeing from them that they would still support this chip in 10 years time.

Chris Gammell: Right. You know, it's basically a license to sue kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. Yeah. Basically. And if they went bust or, or whatever, yeah, we could actually sue their, um, you know, sue them as part of their, you know, winding up stuff and we'd get, yeah. Oh yeah. You, you,

Chris Gammell: you recoup some costs. Yeah. Even though you still, you up a, up a creek for that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Of course you would, but at least, yeah. And that's what we had to do. You know, I wouldn't have been allowed to use a cool chip like this. Um, which is,

Chris Gammell: which was often a pain in the ass. That is a, that is a good question too. Like, is it, is it worth it? Um, I think, you know, given the size of this thing and the amount of crap they, they crammed in there. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No,

Dave Jones: it's great. No, if you're developing something that's ultra tiny, this would be the, this would be the only way to go. You know, if that was your, the goal of your product was to make it ultra tiny and you had to include some jelly bean logic plus some analog stuff, which normally takes up a lot of room.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Right. Then, Hey, this is, this is gold, you know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I just remembered another talk that I got to attend, which I was really looking forward to was, uh, at, at Supercon was, uh, Ken Schuriff. Yeah. And, uh, he's the one who does righto.com and, and he showed inside a, a 7805. I think it's on a site. There was a bunch of like simulators he has on there too, that I didn't realize, but, um, he, uh, he showed the die size on a 7805. I was like, holy crap, that's small. You know, it's like in the big metal package, big metal can, but it's still. Yeah,

Dave Jones: it's in the TO220. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. It's still, oh no, I think this is even like a TO3, uh, like the, the actual metal, right. The big TO3. Super heat sink. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, yep. You know, like, it's not like they're going to change, you know, they're getting the heat out the same as much as they want to anyways, right? It's not like they're making more silicon because of it. So.

Dave Jones: I can remember when the, when the first scandal started happening with the fake transistors, you know, in the TO3 packages, this was before the days of eBay and before the days of the internet and everything else. And, you know, word got around in the magazines that there were fake, you know, transistors on the market coming out of, uh, not China. Cause China wasn't a thing at the time. They were coming out of Taiwan or Japan or somewhere, you know, Taiwan or something like that. And, uh, and yeah, and they would have, you know, Oh, it'd be a, trust me, it's a genuine three O double five, you know, from Motorola. Right. And then you slice the can open. You physically, I cut, physically cut the can open. And you can tell because it used a little tiny piece, ant die in there, you know, and you go, no, this ain't genuine. You know, you didn't need your microscope to look at the die level to know it was a fake, you know, they're putting some piddly other little die in there.

Dave Jones: you know, cause these were expensive transistors, you know, they were 10, 20 bucks a pop, you know, high power ones that you're using your amplifiers. Right. These were, you know, really, you know, fairly critical, expensive parts. And you could say, you know, buy them cheap from some guy in a trench coat in the back alley. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, little tiny dies. Anyway, that just reminded me of that. Fun times.

Chris Gammell: Not missing those days. Right. I mean, like,

Dave Jones: Oh, well, it still happens. You know, you buy them on eBay now, but it's just that everyone knows about it now. You know, back then it was a, you know, it was all you.

Chris Gammell: I guess it would be harder to share about it too. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

Dave Jones: No, you could, all you do is you write a letter to the editor, you know, of the local magazine, you know, and you spread it that way. That was the only way to spread the news. Really?

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Ah, when I was a boy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I, I, I don't, I don't, I understand that it still happens, but I don't see any nostalgia for those days. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. No,

Dave Jones: it's no, same here. You know, like I wouldn't trade the communications revolution for anything, you know, the internet revolution. Yep. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That makes me old.

Chris Gammell: I saw, I was one of those calls that I was working on. Uh, we were talking about EMI concerns and stuff like that. And this is a very old document and I'm sure you've seen it before, but I had actually never seen it's from 99, but there's a TI document for reduced EMI. Have you ever seen that before?

Dave Jones: Oh, probably.

Chris Gammell: I probably, it's like an old app.

Dave Jones: I probably haven't had a version printed of the, you know, the book or whatever.

Chris Gammell: No, I think this is just an app note. It's only.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. 19 pages. that's fairly recent. Yeah. 99. Jeez. That's.

Chris Gammell: I mean, so, I mean, you've written about, did you write about this kind of stuff when your PCB guide thing or no?

Dave Jones: No, not as such. Like this is specifically. Specifically for EMI. Yeah. No, I think I hinted at it. Maybe. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's just interesting to me. Like when there's, I mean, they, and they even talk about at the top, they, they say, they say the document does not explain the whys of a given technique. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Intended as a reference document, not a teaching aid. So like, yeah, you should still learn the underlying, you know, physics of everything. Why things are, you know, why inductors matter, why low inductance matters for, for free speed signals, stuff like that. Yeah. Um, why,

Dave Jones: why start point grounding matters, why, why loop area matters, you know, loop areas, everything in EMI reduction. Um, I, yeah, I just,

Chris Gammell: I still think it's interesting that this stuff, it's still, there's still not like a single definitive. I mean, like, so we've had Henry Ott on the show as well. Um, and we've had, who else? Uh, Eric Boguton. Yep. On the show. I'm forgetting names already. You know, so we've had like people talking about, uh, Howard Johnson's been on the show. Howard Johnson, I was going to say. Yeah, exactly. He's written the Bible on it. I mean, people can definitely go back and listen to all this stuff, but it's still not like, there's not like one way to do things either. Oh, no, no, no.

Dave Jones: There's the, and each design is, has a unique problem almost, you know, it's like, this guy try and does your generic rules and stuff like that, you know, and, and this one's only board level. So it doesn't, I don't think this one talks about a slew rates and stuff like that. Right. Which is another way to avoid, um, EMI.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, a lot of, uh, that's why if you, um, go, you know, if you're into building PCs and stuff like that, you go into the bias setups, our modern biases have EMI reduction, right. Oh really? I didn't know. Yeah. They will have a jitter, right. You can control the, they can, you can add, you can introduce jitter to your clock signal, right? That's one of the bias options. Another one is to reduce, I think it might be in the bias. Anyway, it's in several, um, chips, you know, like picks and at meals and arms and things like that. You know, you know, some of your more advanced, uh, um, micros will have a slew rate reduction, uh, option. Throw a cap in the loop or something to slow down.

Dave Jones: no, no, no. Well, yeah, it basically, yeah, it's slow. It slows down the edge of the output. Instead of having a super fast rising edge, it'll just take the, slow it down just a tad.

Chris Gammell: Right. And that also hurts your power, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, that helps you, it hurts your speed and other. No,

Chris Gammell: I mean like it, cause it's going through the transition region on a, on a, on a MOSFET cause then it burns more power as it transitions.

Dave Jones: Oh, it could, but generally the advantage you get from lower slew rate, ultimately it might be lower power because when, when you slew something, you're slewing a capacitive trace and that takes a little gulp of current every time you transition. So the, so the slower, it's a trade off. The slower you make your, um, your transition, the less impulse current goes into your capacitive trace, right? So the lower average power, so it's actually going to lower your power, but then you, as you mentioned, you get to a point where you, a two slower slew rate, which actually I might be doing a fundamental, um, Friday on, I've already half shot it. I might be doing it tomorrow. Um, I might, no, I might go finish it off this afternoon. Anyway, it's going to talk about this a bit. Um, and in fact, it demos it. I've built, I've already built up a little circuit to demo it. Um, where, where your spoiler alert, turn off now, if you want to watch my video, um, you slew it, um, you, you know, make that transition slower. And then you, um, the, the chips you're driving, even, you know, it could be a transition. Uh, it could be a, sorry, a MOSFET. What did you talk about? You talked about a MOSFET. Yeah. Just like driving a MOSFET slower. Yes, exactly. Um, so that can be a disadvantage, but driving other chips, um, if they don't have Schmidt trigger inputs, which is what my video is going to be all about, uh, then you can cause header stability in the things. And the, and the circuitry just goes crazy. Right. And I actually demo this. It's,

Chris Gammell: it's right. If you had like a two, two or three pin bus, one pin is somewhere between the logic levels. Another one is not kind of thing.

Dave Jones: And it gets into the physics of how, you know, the, you know, the dyes, you know, laid out and manufactured and all that sort of jazz and how that works at the die level, you know? Right. Um, but yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yes. So all this stuff,

Dave Jones: I just think can be bad, but they can also be good.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Well, that's the thing. So like there's all these guidelines, right? There's, and like there, there's sort of rules of thumb, but it's like when, when, so especially when I'm working with people that are getting started, it's like, you know, people are looking for hard and fast rules and it's like, Oh, well, well, yeah, sometimes it's this and sometimes it's not. Sometimes you have to try it.

Dave Jones: When it comes to EMI, I always say the number one rule is loop area. Loop area is number one. Sure. And how that manifests itself, um, on your physical implementation. Visualizing where the, where the current's going and returning. Where the current's going through the power supply, through your chip, through the ground plane, through the traces, through the power traces. And, you know, and then how does it work at different frequencies? Because at low frequencies, it's coming from your bulk power supply capacitors, right on the other side of the board. At higher frequencies, it's coming from your bypass capacitor on your chip. You know, that is your loop area. So your loop area widens as, as the frequency drops, so to speak.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. I wish I could.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm like visually making the hand gestures now, you know, so I've had a whiteboard.

Chris Gammell: And if you just check out Dave's whiteboard right now, new listeners may be very confused with the fact that this is an audio program.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Speaker ?: I know.

Dave Jones: And I'm waving my hand. So, yes, I'd love to. Actually, I have explained it. I've done a whole video on bypassing.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Well, we will link that in as well.

Dave Jones: Yes. Which I, I think I explained it in there. I don't know. It's number 500 or something. And I, I,

Chris Gammell: I, I think half a YouTube lifetime ago. Yeah, exactly. I forget. Anyway,

Dave Jones: that was a very comprehensive. Yeah. Anyway, it's very comprehensive on bypassing and why you put multiple capacities in parallel and stuff like that. And loop barrier changes and all that sort of jazz. And that has EMI impacts with EMI and everything else. Anyway. Yeah. This is a pretty cool app note. Yes. I have seen it before. I believe. Cool. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's nice to, I mean, do you, do you save app notes on your computer? Do you like have locals or no?

Dave Jones: No, no. I, I, I used to back when, you know, it was like internet connections were dodgy and stuff, but now, no, I don't, I don't do it anymore. It's just, yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh no. Occasionally like I've got like a folder for a specific project. And if there's a, I do have like a PDF folder, but I don't comprehend, you know, I add a few things, you know, especially like a hard to get data sheet or something, you know, like, or an NDA one or something, you know, like something you can't readily get or something that, that took me ages to search for, you know, and I, and I don't want to go through that pain again, but if it's just a data sheet for a, you know, a seven four, seven four chip, you know, like, right. No, I'm not going to add it.

Chris Gammell: Well, I've always wondered like, so do you use Evernote at all? Do you use that? Oh,

Dave Jones: I've got it installed and I used to use it, but I've stopped using it for like the last year or something.

Chris Gammell: So I really like it from the perspective, you know, and it's like Dropbox Evernote. Yeah. Like Evernote is more on the tech side, but it's, you know, similar. Like you have a locally sync copy that then updates in the background, that kind of thing. But it also often tracks the revision. So I like it for notes because I'll be like on a plane and I'll write a note and then it'll sync on the backend. Once I get a wifi connection again, that kind of thing. But if I need to, I have access on a plane.

Dave Jones: I didn't use it for notes. I used it for like links to data sheets and, and, and sites, you know, and various websites and stuff.

Chris Gammell: Right. But it doesn't actually save the localized. So like the, what I'm going to get into it is like,

Dave Jones: is it an option to save it or something? You can save it as a PDF. Oh no, you can save PDFs locally. That's right. I think it gives you the option. If you give it a link to a PDF.

Chris Gammell: What I'd really like is like a service. And I guess I'm asking if people know about this kind of thing, like give it a link, like Dave says, like give it a link to a data sheet, have it watch that link over time. And then like increment it. Because like, one of the things that we talk about is like, you ever gotten burned by an errata? Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: And then sometimes like the vendors just sneak it in, you know, they just like, Oh yeah, no, no, no. You should have checked the errata. It changed from data sheet, rev J to K. It's like, well, screw you guys. No one told me, you know, like, and like there, I think DigiKey or some, some services try and notify you that stuff, but.

Dave Jones: I occasionally still get notifications from DigiKey and Mouser about parts I worked on two companies ago, you know, like. Yeah. But that's for like obsolescence, not for errata. That's for obsolescence. Yeah. It's not for errata, unfortunately.

Chris Gammell: And I would just, if there is something like this, I would love to be able to just point at a data sheet on like TI or analog.com or something like that. And then it watches that. And then it alerts me.

Dave Jones: I know what we can call it.

Chris Gammell: What's that?

Dave Jones: Sneaky bastard alert.com. Is that taken? I don't know. Sneaky bastard alert.com. And it keeps track of all the PDFs. And if the sneaky bastards come along and make a change. Right.

Chris Gammell: If you needed to, you could always do SBA electronics or something like that. Oh, okay. Anyway. Yeah. But if people do know of a service like that, I'd love to know. I mean, like I know.

Dave Jones: There probably is something. Yeah. Hmm.

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

Dave Jones: I've got a recollection that there is. Well, there's so like. Some manufacturer offered a service like that.

Chris Gammell: So my company does datasheet.net, supply frame does. And that was kind of like a clip and save kind of thing, but it wasn't like watch it over time. Well,

Dave Jones: why don't you get them to add that? Come on, Mr. Product Manager.

Chris Gammell: Maybe I will. I would love to know if there's something out there though first. Right. I mean, like if it's.

Dave Jones: To see if you're wasting your time or not. And then you can just. See if I can trust them. Or you can just buy the company.

Chris Gammell: That's another option, I suppose. Yeah. I can't personally know. But yeah. Right. No, I just think that's a cool idea. Like, you know, Evernote for. Yep. Data sheets kind of thing. Right. Because we don't really think about it. Like that, that is. There's no reason that, that to expect. Like I, I, it's very similar to you. I, I use Google as a, you know, a search engine within data sheets. I use it as a way to look up data sheets, but sometimes they just disappear. Right. And.

Dave Jones: But then is, is it you becoming a lazy designer? Then it's like, it's your job as a designer to, before you go into production, you check this sort of stuff, you know, you make sure it's, you know.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I'm not saying just from the errata piece. I'm just saying that like, it's more of like a documentary. It's a presentation piece really. Right. I mean, it's like.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So I don't know. Maybe, maybe it is a good idea, but if people know about a tool, I'd love to hear about it. What else is on here? Anything else? We got all that stuff. That's good. Oh,

Dave Jones: yeah, we have to, oh, this is so cool. A satellite from 1967. Oh, that was cool. Just switched on again. Holy crap. I like, that was great. I love it.

Chris Gammell: This is, so the comment says it was 2012 where this actually happened. Oh, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But I, but it's a recent article. So somebody, yeah, I don't know. Picked up some old news. Anyway, it was very cool. It was from 1967. And this satellite, it went up and it didn't go into the correct orbit. It was tumbling or whatever. And they lost contact with it. And yeah, what? 40 years later, 35 years. After 46 years, it started transmitting again after 46 years. It just happened to, it's still out there. It's still tumbling. And it just happened to tumble in the right orientation where the solar panels got enough power. And, and it was aligned to transmit back and it started transmitting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That, that makes me like thinking about electronics being alive and active for 46 years. It's kind of gives me heartburn, you know, like,

Dave Jones: yep. I'm hoping to do a video on this, but I have to travel some distance to do it.

Chris Gammell: What are you going to go? You come to the U S?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: But I still have to travel quite some distance to do it. And yeah, so I have had it set up before and then I had my knee surgery and, you know,

Chris Gammell: Oh, I gotcha.

Dave Jones: So I've got to reset it up. Yep. But hopefully that'll happen.

Chris Gammell: Cool. Yeah. That kind of space stuff is. Yeah. It's great. There, there was one other talk at the end of super con by a guy, Steve Collins, who's at JPL. And he actually like wrote stuff that's on the, was it discovery? What's the one that's out? No. What's the one that's on Mars right now? But he was just talking about all the, all the things. Is it curiosity? I always forget the name. Sorry. The, all the things that go wrong in space. It was really good. It was a really good talk. So that's another one to keep an eye out for. Very cool. Again, these are just the ones that I saw. So lots of smart people. Good people.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: All right, man.

Dave Jones: Did, did you watch the new, the latest Mars landing? No. The, the European probe? Sorry. What's it's, Oh God, what's its name?

Speaker ?: Oh,

Dave Jones: I didn't know that even happened. Mars direct. Sorry. Oh God. Hang on.

Chris Gammell: How recent was it? Oh,

Dave Jones: last month.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I actually stayed up to like four in the morning to watch it.

Chris Gammell: So, Exo Mars.

Dave Jones: Exo Mars. Thank you. Yes. Exo Mars. Yeah. It's a two part mission. Exo Mars is the, is the satellite, which is going to orbit Mars, which, you know, checks out its climate and all, all sorts of jazz. And then the, what's the rover? What's the lander called?

Chris Gammell: Uh, stationary lander. I don't know. I'm just, I'm just hearing about this stuff. So I don't know. Anyway. Yes. Oh, it's test stationary. Schiaparelli, like the crater.

Dave Jones: Schiaparelli. Yes. The, yes. The, um, Schiaparelli probe. And it, um, yeah, it was, they didn't really expect it to work. Cause it's like European space agencies, uh, first shot at landing on Mars, you know, like, is it, or is it the second shot? Anyway, they, they, they were just testing technology. Uh huh. To actually land rovers on Mars. So it wasn't really like a serious mission. It, it, it only had like a 24 hour lifespan or something. It was like running from its own internal batteries and it was just going to land and transmit for a few hours and, you know, say, Hey, I landed and everything worked.

Chris Gammell: And then be lonely on the planet for the rest of life. exactly.

Dave Jones: For the rest of eternity. And, um,

Chris Gammell: that XKCD commercial or a comic, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Which one's that? We'll have to find it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, there's the one where it's like, it was the, the one that was before the last U S landing where it was, it was just sitting there, um, transmitting back for years and years and years. Um,

Dave Jones: so before that happened, I watched, um, uh, the Mars movie. Yeah. What is it?

Chris Gammell: Uh, I don't know. Uh, the Martian, the Martian. Thank you. God. Mental block. The Martian.

Dave Jones: Uh, yeah, I watched that before, you know, at midnight, I started watching the Martian and then 2 AM at, uh, anyway, yeah, it, it failed. Um, spoiler alert. Um,

Chris Gammell: well,

Dave Jones: yeah. Anyway, um, no, like it went through the atmosphere, the, uh, the parachutes deployed. So the heat shield worked, then the parachutes deployed and then it was supposed to, and then the probe released or something and the retro rockets fired. So everything was looking good. And then like a minute from touchdown, it was under its own powered control. So it was like, you know, a rocket powered descent, you know, same as, same as the curiosity, same as the, uh, Viking landers and all those sorts of ones. So it was under its own powered descent. And then it suddenly shut off its engines and plummeted. Like, and, and they've got some photos of it from the orbiter. Yeah. This little splattered dot on the surface. Oops. Anyway, um, it, it mostly worked. Um,

Chris Gammell: yeah. Looks like there, I'll, I'll link to that. There's, there are videos on the, uh, ESA, which is the European space agency.

Dave Jones: So I was disappointed by the lack of hype.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like, you know, you can, you remember the curiosity landing, right? That was like, I did a video. I remember how you, you skipped a show so that you could go. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. They what bloody. Australian, um, the Sydney observatory ran a delayed, a five minute delayed feed on the thing.

Chris Gammell: That happened to me with the Cubs, if it makes you feel any better. I, I found out on Twitter that the Cubs had won. Oh, right. Okay. Well, my care factor is pretty zip on that. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. No, I can, no, I can appreciate the underdog winning anyway. Yeah. The, the, the hype, the hype for that was just so awesome. Right. And this one, it just like, and, and they tried to have like a lot, like I watch, I was watching their live program, you know, and I thought, Oh my God, this is the most boring thing I've ever seen in my life. You know? Oh, you want like an MC?

Chris Gammell: You should volunteer to be an MC.

Dave Jones: I know. They just like, and they tried to be enthusiastic, but no, like, nah, complete fail on the, on the marketing side. Yeah. No, they, they just don't know how to run the hype. Like, like the, like the guys did for the Curiosity Rover, you know? Like, yeah. Anyway. Yeah. I was a bit disappointed by that because it doesn't happen very often that we have a,

Chris Gammell: Mars landing. So I mean, but like, even like the, wasn't it like the, even the shuttle launches eventually, you know, people would still go to them, but they weren't.

Chris Gammell: right. Yeah. No,

Dave Jones: it was only the diehards. Yeah. It was,

Chris Gammell: yeah,

Dave Jones: it became routine.

Chris Gammell: So I think, I think it's just the, the, the hedonic treadmill, right? We acclimate to everything, including awesome stuff like space. Right.

Dave Jones: But then again, like we've landed probes on Mars before, it's not a big deal, but the amount of height, they, they just did it right. I don't know what magic is source. Well, it was all the animations that they had, but the XO Mars one had animations too, but they were pretty lame, you know? And, and the fact that you can follow it live with the program, you know, you could actually, you know, you install a program on your computer and you could actually follow the landing live and it animated the whole thing for you. And it was just the amount of hype surrounding it was just phenomenal. And it worked. It was great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Europeans. Europeans. Europeans.

Chris Gammell: Well, let's just chalk it up to hopefully next time it'll be a successful landing and a hyped up event. Maybe, maybe they can, maybe they can bring you in for it, buddy.

Dave Jones: Right. Yep. I'll happily MC it.

Chris Gammell: Cool. Hmm. All right. Well, that was a positive, I think we started negative, but, uh, I think we, we ended on a positive note.

Dave Jones: By telling Europe to up their game,

Chris Gammell: up their game. Right. Um, I think that, uh, I would encourage other people that are feeling down like me, focus on creating stuff and helping people. I think you're going to be doing good. Uh, Dave, it's always good chatting with you. Uh, I think that was, that helped me too. I think I feel a lot better.

Dave Jones: Excellent. All right. Cool. Even with my cynical attitude. I know. People aren't getting cynicism at the moment. They're just not, they're too emotionally charged to understand cynical points of view.

Chris Gammell: Well, I'm sure they'll get there. Yeah. All right. We'll talk next week.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.