#326 – Magical Fire Bags

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded December 7th, 2016. Episode 326. Magical Fire Bags.

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. What's up, nerd? Freezing my ass off. Turns out, yeah. Turns out you have to be in a basement to be really cold.

Dave Jones: Basement? I thought your new apartment didn't have a basement.

Chris Gammell: No, no, I used to be in a basement, but you don't need to be in one to get to be cold. That's what I'm saying. Got it. It's cold everywhere around here. To which people say, Chicago, of course, right.

Dave Jones: No shit Sherlock. Is that what they say?

Chris Gammell: Right, yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Right. Right. Yep. Nope, sorry. Met a lot of good people here yesterday. I had my first meetup, which I saw the photos. At the beginning of last show. Yeah. Yep. And, yeah, it was great. I mean, great crowd, great. You know, it's interesting just kind of here, you know, until people really come out of the world of work, you don't even know what industry is around. But, like, there's some prosthetics people. Inventables is here, which is the, they make the Carvy and the X-Carve. Yep. There's special effects people, and there were general hardware people, and a couple people from that M-Hub space around here. So, overall.

Dave Jones: So, how do you, like, do you just, like, turn up and, like, you know, just hang around until someone talks to you, or do you talk to someone, or is there some sort of formal, do you have some sort of formal thing where everyone introduces themselves, or wears name tags, or whatever? No.

Chris Gammell: No, definitely not. No, you mean, like, the anatomy of a drinking meetup like this?

Dave Jones: Yes. I think name tags are a good thing. I really do. Name and where you're from.

Chris Gammell: I don't think that's as important. Oh, look, my radiator just kicked on. So, you'll hear that probably. Some hissing. So, charming. I think it's not as important with name tags as much as, like, if people have projects, they'll just introduce themselves because they want to hear about the project, right? So, if you have... Right. And, honestly, that's how I was there first, and the only reason people even knew who I was is because I had that blinky heart that I made, and I just had it, like, pulsing on the bar. Right.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Just you need some kind of way to start things and then...

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's, you know, but, like, if you look back to the old Homebrew Computer Club, for example, you know, they had, like, a formal... Lee, what's his name? Lee Felsenstein ran that, and he would, like, conduct things from the front. You know, they had it in... What university's hall was it? They had it in one of the theatres or whatever, and, you know, and he would, like, you know, call people down, and they'd give a little, you know, five-minute spiel on whatever they're working on and stuff like that, and he'd, like, conduct the thing. Yeah, that's another way to...

Chris Gammell: I mean, that's, like, how I do the San Francisco meetup that I run.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay, right. That's a lot more formal, and it's... It's more formal, yeah.

Chris Gammell: There's actual talks and stuff like... Right. Yeah, and, I mean, there are different ways of doing it. I always recommend that people do the informal thing, though, because it's so much less intimidating, right? Someone might say, oh, I have to talk. I'm not going to show up.

Dave Jones: No, but it can be intimidating for people who aren't... who don't... can't just approach people and start, hi, how are you doing? You know, I'm such and such.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, usually I'm there drinking a beer already, so I'm like, hey, come on in.

Dave Jones: Right, but, you know, like, usually there's no one free around, and you don't want to butt in to, like, two other people who are deeply in conversation, and usually there's two or three people, you know, like, people are in their little subgroups, you know, and then you suddenly walk in and go, right, who do I talk to? Well, I can't just butt in, you know? What, do you just hang around to other people and listen for a while and look at a bad spell?

Chris Gammell: Are you asking because you're actually going to do a meetup or what?

Dave Jones: I don't know. I might. I just... You've said that for years now. Like, I've been to, like, YouTube events and stuff like that. It's a similar sort of thing. You turn up. I don't know anyone, right? I don't have a clue. But, yes, we have everything in common. We're all YouTubers. And, yeah, we've got name tags and stuff, but I still don't know them from a bar of soap, right?

Chris Gammell: Are you asking me, like, how to talk to people, Dave? Because this is a longer conversation. We might need more than an hour here. I'm just saying.

Dave Jones: No, what's the... Like, no, seriously. Like, you walk in and everyone's in their groups, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, everyone's talking to someone. And you can't just, like, go and walk up to two people talking and go, hi, how are you doing? I'm Dave. Like, because they're, like, I think that's a bit rude, right? They're talking. So, you've got to wait until there's, like, another free person hanging around at the food table or something before you can walk up and go, hi, how are you doing? You know, it's like... Anyway. You're right. We shouldn't do this at all because of that. No, I just find them awkward. That's all. I really do.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, they're a little awkward at first, but, like, you know, then it usually turns out fine.

Dave Jones: Sure, but then how does everyone meet everyone? You know, it's almost like you need, like, a speed date, kind of, you know? Sort of. Like, sit down, like, five minute, you know, talking to everyone. You know, it's, like, just to break the ice kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Look, we talk about it all the time, but if you have a project, people will come up and then they'll just listen over your shoulder. And then it's like you're going to be demoing that. I think that's just the way to do it. You encourage as many people as you can. And, like, out of the 25 people that showed up last night, probably 15 to 20 had projects to show. That breaks the ice immediately. Right.

Dave Jones: So, as the organiser, do you see people come in and immediately go up and say, hi, come on, welcome in, and this is, you know? If I can recognise that. If I was running, right. If I was, well, at least, you know, because everyone knows you're organising it, right? So, you should be looking out for new people coming in. You can usually spot them a mile away, right? So, if I was to do this, I'd probably go, I'd probably do it that way. You know, if somebody's, if we're all in there and somebody comes in, then I'd go get them, bring them in and, you know, hi, how you doing? Who are you? And then I'd introduce them to everyone and then, you know, I don't know. Maybe.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Well, you give that a shot. You let me know how that goes. Because then you've done a meet-up and then you're good. Right. You know, you've got about four months until I come and do one for you, so. Right. Okay.

Dave Jones: Well, no, the new office building I'm in now has a meet-up room, like has a meeting room. And I've been thinking, but it's tight. It's pissing.

Chris Gammell: Do it at a pub, man. That's the way to do it.

Dave Jones: I don't know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's just casual. Casual. People want to talk to one another. Most people want to talk to one another or they want to hear about projects. Those two things together, you'll be fine. So anyways, thanks to everyone who did come out last night. I did miss one person and I apologized about that, but. See? Otherwise, it was good. See?

Dave Jones: You missed someone. Someone was there and you didn't even say hi.

Chris Gammell: It was early, so. Anywho. Yep. More.

Dave Jones: This is how you suck eggs, Chris. Anyway. Hey, man. At least I'm trying. At least I'm trying. No, no. No, it's good. No, it's good.

Chris Gammell: I have a humble request because I'm an idiot. Oh, okay. People may recall that I.

Dave Jones: A humble request of me or of the audience?

Chris Gammell: Of the audience, yeah. I posted this t-shirt that I made and was really excited about. Ah, the bodge one? Yeah, the bodge one.

Dave Jones: Even I've got a bodge t-shirt.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't have one because I was an idiot and didn't order one the last time. Didn't order your own t-shirt. Yeah, I didn't order one.

Dave Jones: So you need enough people to buy it so it gets made again.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, it's fun. Do you like the shirt? I mean, I don't know. Is it any good? It's all right. Yeah, it's all right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's like, it's kind of, yeah, it's kind of subtle. Nobody's going to know, you know. I don't get too many stares wearing it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well, it's not a big, it's not a big layout or something, I suppose, but. Anyway. Anyways, so I'm going to, I'll repost it on the subreddit, so.

Dave Jones: All right, buy the shirt so that Chris doesn't feel like an idiot.

Chris Gammell: I probably still will, but at least I'll have a story to tell with it, so. What's been going on with you? What's new in Aussie land?

Dave Jones: I've been making videos. I've been doing stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, what did I see? You made one about ERC. Is that right?

Dave Jones: I just released that this morning. I have no idea. YouTube's screwing up. I swear YouTube is not announcing things properly. I did like a live contest draw the other day and a live show tacked on the end of that. Haven't done one for ages. And half the people out there said I was not notified that you went live. It's like, what the? You know, and yeah. Anyway, it's been happening a lot with YouTube lately. That's too bad. Painting the part. But yeah, I've been doing a project, my little counter display project, and it's not getting that many views. It's not, you know.

Chris Gammell: Wait, is this new?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, it's new. I'm up to part three.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I missed this. I'm sorry.

Dave Jones: Yes. Oh.

Chris Gammell: And what's, what is the, what is the basis of it? Like, what's it for?

Dave Jones: I'm not going to tell you what it's for.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's just a counter though? It's like a big display counter?

Dave Jones: It's a, it's a display counter using Russian IN12 Nixie tubes.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: Very cool.

Chris Gammell: This isn't like the idea where I said you should have a counter behind you when you do EEV blab videos so that it, it turns off.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. That could do that. Yeah. Whatever happened to the EEV? Yeah. I thought that was a good idea way back.

Chris Gammell: Me too, yeah. EEV, well, no,

Dave Jones: I did end up doing EEV black. Yeah, I know. And I still do it occasionally. No, no, no, but my idea

Chris Gammell: was to have it just shoot out the IR

Dave Jones: and turn it off automatically. Yeah, and count turned off automatically. And I did do that.

Chris Gammell: It's interesting how that stuff motivates too because, so I do that a little bit with the two minute videos I used to do, but like not really. I don't actually have it shut off. But there's this, this thing, I've been writing more articles lately and there's this thing called the most dangerous writing app dot com, I think it's called. And? After, so like you can set it like three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes, whatever. If you stop typing for five seconds, it erases everything you've done.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. I was going to say, right. It's great.

Chris Gammell: It like slowly starts getting red and then it just erases all of it.

Dave Jones: So you're just hitting spice, back spice, spice, back spice, spice, back spice. Yeah, actually, I think

Chris Gammell: you can do that. There's something called like a difficult mode or something and I think it doesn't count those. Right, doesn't be right.

Speaker ?: You actually have to be

Chris Gammell: typing characters, I think.

Dave Jones: Real words, real comprehensible words.

Chris Gammell: It motivates you though, I'll tell you. Right, yeah, yeah. It's great, yeah.

Dave Jones: No, I can dig it. Yeah. But yeah, it was like in the end, I thought it was too forced and, you know, distractive, I think. Gotcha. Possibly. Okay. So, hmm.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Anyway. That's right. Yep. So, Nixie's tubes though, so that's like the 100, did you build the supply yourself or what?

Dave Jones: No, no, somebody sent one in the mailbag.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay, cool. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: That's how I got the inspiration. Somebody sent me eight tubes along with the high voltage power supply in there and yeah, I thought, oh yeah, why not?

Chris Gammell: Did you get popped yet?

Dave Jones: Popped.

Chris Gammell: Popped by the high voltage?

Dave Jones: As in shocked?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Popped, you know, like popped.

Dave Jones: No, popped. No, I don't know this terminology.

Chris Gammell: I just did. Yeah. Sorry. Nope. It's okay. But have you gotten shocked yet?

Dave Jones: No, I haven't. Yeah. What, you think I'm stupid?

Chris Gammell: Accidents happen.

Dave Jones: They do. And I'm surprised they don't because, you know, I'm like I'm waving my hands around trying to watch the camcorder screen and I'm turning the high voltage supply off and on and all these exposed wirings on the breadboard and everything else and, you know. Yeah, I'm surprised. I haven't caught one yet. Probably happened. But anyway, I finished my, you know, exposed breadboard videos. So it's all good now. I survived.

Chris Gammell: Okay. That's good.

Dave Jones: Yep. So anyway, I'm doing a multi-part series where I build that project up. Oh, cool. Okay.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Dave Jones: So it's up to part three. Next step will be the PCB and then I'll get that manufactured and then video after that will be assembly and then the programming and testing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yep. I am using one of those little, which we talked about the other week, the ESP8266 Arduino environment version of that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah? Oh, cool. And that's just going to like set up the time?

Dave Jones: You talked about the Art of Fruit Huzzah one. Yeah. Right? It's basically, I believe it's like the same chip, but it's just. Yeah. So that's the Espressif chip. It's not Art of Fruit. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Is it? Yeah. So Espressif and that's where if people don't Sprite TM.

Dave Jones: So that's different to the ESP8266.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. So that's the company that makes the chipset that's on the ESP8266, which is a module that then goes on the Huzzah board from Adafruit. So you can buy just a module yourself, but then usually you'll have to, you know, you'll have to program the firmware image onto the module, which has. Okay. Or I think you can just buy the, I guess mine's in the other room, but you can just buy the, you can just buy the chip or you can just buy the metal can module, like the FCC type there. Okay. There's nothing tested, I guess.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, I'm using the WeMOS module, the WeMOS D1 mini. Okay. Yeah. And that's got like other

Chris Gammell: stuff on it or what?

Dave Jones: And no, it's just one of these ESP8266 chips on a little interface board, which you plug into the Arduino environment because the Arduino environment supports now has a compiler for the 8266 apparently. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: There's a couple of different ways you can program those things. Now I remember at the beginning it was like, at the beginning it was just like C and Lua, I think. And then the Arduino, there was an Arduino thing for it. And now I've been talking about the MicroPython stuff and there's a couple other ones just because it's, it's cheap, you know, it's really cheap.

Dave Jones: And the reason I chose, I mean, I could have chosen absolutely any Internet of Things solution, you know, Wi-Fi solution for this, anything that has Wi-Fi in it and a Micro. Yeah. But the reason I chose this one is because somebody's already done on their web page, there's actually a 16-year-old kid who's done this. No, it's awesome. Yeah. It's awesome. So I mean, he has basically the code for almost the exact thing I want to do and it uses this WeMOS D1 module. So I went, there's my choice made, you know, I don't want to have to re-spin the, why, why, why should I re-spin the wheel learning how to do all this web programming shit from scratch and APIs and calling, you know, I'm hopeless at all that web programming stuff. Right. You know, I know I should force myself to learn it, but you know, I just want to get this thing made. I think what you're doing

Chris Gammell: is you start with the right step where it's like you, you start with a working app. It's like, okay, I have this on the Internet.

Dave Jones: I code that works. Here it is. So I duplicate the code and I just wire and then all I've basically got to do is the only code I've got to write is my own custom interface to drive my serial driver chips. That's it. Yeah. You know, but apart from that, all of the other API stuff is all the same. All the web interface and all that crap is all done. Yeah. Right. So yeah, all that hard work. So. So how is it going to

Chris Gammell: interact with the, so, so the thing that I was actually interested in with the ESP is that it, so it can act as an access point, which means that like, I'm not saying this is you, I think you know this, but.

Dave Jones: I'm not using it as an access point. I'm using it as a, to pull information from the web. Right. As a device.

Chris Gammell: So you are, so like I, yeah, so there's one mode where it's, it acts as the access point. So like your phone can hook into the network that says ESP, you know, network name, whatever.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: But you're, you're actually programming it so that you hook it into your Wi-Fi network and then it sits as a device.

Dave Jones: It sits as a device. It's like a little, it's another computer hooked onto my Wi-Fi network.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. And so, and then what are you, what are you interacting with that with?

Dave Jones: I won't tell you. That's going to be the big reveal in the final video. I'm going to pull some information from the internet and I'm going to display it.

Chris Gammell: Interesting. Okay. That's great. Awesome.

Dave Jones: I'll tell you after the show.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yes. That's cool. Yeah. Cause I mean, so like, cause I mean, we've, we've talked, I mean, we've been talking more and more about these internet devices and stuff like that. And I think it's like, so like, at least for me, like understanding these different pieces of like, okay, so now you and I are using it in the same way. We're both hooked in from the device onto our network. Right. And then it's like, okay, so now for me, at least it's like, if I'm on, if I'm on my internal routers, wifi, right. And the 192.168, whatever the address is, the 10.0, whatever mine is, then I can hook to that with like a serial term or whatever. But then the thing that I think that we, we have talked about in the past, like with like, like Adafruit has Adafruit.io and then there's like the electric imp and then there's the, I've thought

Dave Jones: about using the imp, but you know, like, yeah, but no,

Chris Gammell: who's the other one though? The, there's the other Arduino based one, which is, they just raised like $10 million too.

Dave Jones: Oh, did they? Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: The ones who do with, oh particle. Yeah. So they used to be.

Dave Jones: Particle?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They used to be called something else. Spark. They used to be called Spark.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. They used to be called Spark.

Chris Gammell: And now they're called.

Dave Jones: Is that spark.io thing? I think it was spark.io? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Something like that. And they ended up changing their name because there's so many things that were called Spark, but yeah. Right. So because.

Dave Jones: And they chose particle?

Dave Jones: I'm sure it's partially about

Chris Gammell: what you can, you know, get named for or whatever. But anyway, so they make the photon and they make the electron and those are like Wi-Fi or 3G based modules that then have like an AT, AT mega 30, 328 on them as well. So you can use them like an Arduino. But they also have.

Dave Jones: Raspberry Pi to it and whatever.

Chris Gammell: I guess. Yeah, probably. Well, that's what I'm looking

Dave Jones: on the website. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Oh, no, no, no. That's their new. They just announced that. They just announced that they actually. So they. So that's what I was going to is they have. They have an interface layer. Right. So if you wanted to do. If you wanted to have. And I think we mentioned this on the show before. If you want to have like 100 devices out there, there's stuff that'll. There's there's like a server side that will then go and manage all those devices. So now if it's pushing data up to a network that's going to collect all that data. Kind of like when we had Luke on the show. He does analog dot IO. It was kind of like that services or sorry. He used a similar type service. Then he displayed all that stuff.

Dave Jones: Right. So they've got their own service platform thing. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Like it's like a data collection platform. And so that's what I'm getting at is like that is that is the missing piece. That is like the next layer of the Internet.

Dave Jones: And we talked about that. And as soon as they go out of business, your product stops working. Right. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: And so that's that's what I was going to segue into is that we have another thing where that service layer is going to go away because the company behind it is failing or well got bought.

Dave Jones: And it's probably the big name out there in the smartwatch business. Pebble.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. It's unfortunate.

Dave Jones: You could say Pebble almost started the smartwatch, you know, the modern smartwatch, you know, hype. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think they definitely were the most successful commercially for Yeah. And they did great on Kickstarter and we had Andrew on the show. People don't remember Andrew Witte, the CTO, is on the show. I haven't talked to him in a while, but we'll try and get in contact with him at some point. But yeah, it's unfortunately they just they just sold. They just announced that they were getting bought by Fitbit. Fitbit. Yep. For only 40 million dollars, which means it's pretty much like a it's pittance for like how much money they raised.

Dave Jones: It is because and here is the thing. There's a Hackaday article which we'll link to. Who wrote that? Alistair Allen. I assume you know Alistair.

Chris Gammell: I do. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, sorry. Alistair.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. With a D. Alistair used to also write for Make as well.

Dave Jones: Okay. Right. Anyway, yes, there's an interesting article here on how they turned down, Pebble turned down 740 million dollars to be bought out by Citizen. I mean, Citizen, a great watch company, right? One of the like why? Like what went through their mind to think that they were so big and so important that they would turn down a 740 million dollar from Citizen?

Chris Gammell: Like I actually didn't even know that was a watch company as I should have. But yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. You know, you never know.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it could be it wasn't the right fit or something. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, it's no. That is just that is the.

Chris Gammell: That is a lot of dough.

Dave Jones: That is the epitome of stupid. Like that is like. I mean, you don't have all the information. No, come on. Yeah. But come on. I mean, like I can understand. That's a lot of money to turn down. That's for sure. If you turned it down on principle because you hated Citizen or something like that. But I doubt they did. Right. I think that I think I'm going to guess here. Wild speculation. But I think I'm probably 80% correct. Is that they thought that it was a bad offer and they were worth more because they're pebble. You know, they were so built up by their own hype that they they turned it down and it was stupid. And before and after that, boom, they just and then they turned down an offer of 70 million dollars by Intel earlier this year. And oops. And now they sold out for like 20, 30 million to Fitbit finally because now their balls are on the chopping block and well there. So they could have took taken 740 million bucks. Let this be a lesson to you people. If you have this new fad Kickstarter, which Pebble was, and you get that you become the industry standard or whatever. Don't think you're irreplaceable. You're just a fad smartwatch and take the money on the table. Especially when it's 740 million dollars. Right. It's like, you know, very few companies can afford to will do better than that. When you get a huge offer like that, you know, you have to be the next Google. You have to be the next, you know, Uber or something. You know, you've got to be next Facebook. Somebody that huge. I mean, just because you have a smartwatch. No, I'm sorry. That's not right.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right, right.

Dave Jones: No, they should.

Chris Gammell: I was reading an article today actually from Bryce who runs the Indie VC. He's a, it's like a small, they fund smaller companies and stuff like that. But he was talking about like the hype from that. And, and like how. The hype from what? Oh, just like how it keeps getting worse and worse and worse. And he, what did he say? He said, you don't, oh, you, you don't need a master plan. You just need to start. He says, he says that he sat. He sits through all these meetings where everybody says, you know, it's going to be a billion dollar market. He says, I probably sat in eight unicorn presentations recently. Meaning that they, you know, they're supposed to be unicorns, whatever. And five of them.

Dave Jones: People don't know. Unicorns are a billion dollar valued company.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: That's what a unicorn is.

Chris Gammell: He said, and five of them use the word trillion. I don't think I had heard the word trillion in an investor presentation before that day.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And five, right. And then five of them come along because they get so hyped up that they're going to be worth so much.

Chris Gammell: Right. That is, that is the downside. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like, yeah, no.

Chris Gammell: And actually, I do like what he says here too. He's like, he's like, you know, like a lot of the big companies that you do hear about, you know, even the Ubers and stuff like that, they start small. Right. I mean, we talk about that a lot too, right. Yeah. Especially with hardware, you know, they, and, and, you know, to be fair, Pebble too. Right. I mean, like Eric, the founder was starting watches before, you know, before they started raising money in Kickstarter or anything like that. They, they were just building stuff they wanted to build. Eric was a watch designer. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: But no, like this is like, you make smart watches. That's all your company does. Okay. They're kind of all right, you know, but Hey, there's many others out there. And then you get an offer by one of the world's biggest watch companies for 740 million. And you think that's a bad deal. Like, it just, you know, I.

Chris Gammell: Well, so the other thing is that they, so they, so I don't know if people saw the recent, the most recent Kickstarter, they did a third Kickstarter and they were kind of doing it. So the reason Alistair wrote about a, the platform is because there's other stuff in there, which is kind of interesting. And so there's like a, there's a, um, uh, a strap, um, like a smart strap basically. And so like introducing other sensors and stuff like that. Actually like really interesting stuff. There's the Pebble time as well, which is, I think just like just the module itself. And so these were like platform level things where you could, you didn't have to just make it into a watch. You could make it into like a, a service, right? You know, you could have, you could use these small modules to talk to one another or talk to the, talk to the central servers and stuff like that. But once again, now we're at the point where those servers are not really good. There was a second article about those are going away.

Dave Jones: Yes. Fitbit have announced that, yeah, they'll basically be no longer supporting the Pebble watch pretty much. Um, that's, you know, basically what they're saying, isn't it? So it's like, yeah, they stuck it in

Chris Gammell: there that like eventually the servers are going to, um, they're going to go get shut down. Even if they don't get shut down right away, they're going to be less reliable. There's not going to be, you know, if you don't have good, um, you know, network engineers watching that stuff, those, you know, there's, it's not really bit rot, but it's just like they fall into disrepair even just because everything else moves on.

Dave Jones: Where is the 20, 30 million dollars value in Pebble then?

Chris Gammell: Where is it? Probably patents and design and I don't know. Probably. And don't forget the, um, um, the employees. I mean, like, yeah, true, but

Dave Jones: they're probably, or going to go bugger this. I'll just wait for my six month, I mean, you know, thing and then I'll bugger off.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I, I, I mean, I, that's all speculation on my part. I don't know, but, um, it's just, it is, it's a shame, right? I mean, that's what it comes down to.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's anyway, take the money on table people. That's all I was saying.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yeah. So there's two things to that story.

Chris Gammell: But like I said, uh, we had Andrew on the show and that was a pretty good show too. I remember. So yeah. Um, go back.

Dave Jones: Which leads us to the rise and fall of the 3d printer industry.

Chris Gammell: Other people we've had on the show.

Dave Jones: Yes. Um, yes, we have had, uh, Zach, haven't we?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes. Um, co-founder of MakerBot and there's a huge article. It's absolutely enormous on backchannel.com. I've never seen backchannel.com before, but anyway, it's the rise and fall of the every man tycoon. And of course they're talking about, uh, Brie, uh, Pettis, the founder of, uh, MakerBot and massively long article on how, you know, the rise and rise and then the sort of eventual flop of MakerBot.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, I think it was the every man tycoon referring to Brie. I thought they were referring to like anyone could be like a making stuff for themselves, like become a tycoon of printed things.

Dave Jones: Printed things or something like yeah. So I haven't read the whole article. It's, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep. It's, uh, you know, it is an interesting history and, and, uh, did you ever end up watching the, the documentary?

Dave Jones: No, I don't think so. I think I started and then.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah. It's on Netflix and it's, you know, I thought I was really worried cause I had seen it, um, uh, debuted at MakerFair. Like there was like a, they showed parts of it and they had like a Q and A with the filmmaker and it seemed really fluffy and I was really not looking forward to it. Then I just clicked over to it one day and it ended up, it was actually really good. I mean, it was like, you know, it was a good documentary. They got lots of voices in there. Um, you know, and it's the same kind of thing of like these same stories of hype and all this, you know, like I think a lot of people that are listening probably know people, you know, they know the story, they know people that work there and it's like, you know, there's a lot of stuff that went hat went on, but it's just at the end of the day, when you start scaling to these different levels, it's, um, it gets really tough. You know, it, it gets tough because it's tough in any company, even, you know, an insurance company that big is, is just as hard as a hardware company just because of the people aspects. But then there's the, the fact that they're, you know, with MakerBot or even, you know, even Pebble, right? It's that they're making things for a crowd that doesn't really seem to exist, right?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: You know, like there's only...

Dave Jones: Well, they, 3D printers could become the next Cabbage Patch doll, you know, that everyone must have at Christmas, you know, but there's just like, there are, they're still too finicky and they're still too expensive and that's not easily solvable. People thought it would, right? People thought like a couple of years back, even, you know, we were probably talking about every second week on the Amp Hour, oh, they're going to be $100 and everyone's going to have one in the Christmas stocking. They're going to be so ubiquitous and like, no. I mean, they're, you know, you can't reduce the complexity of a 3D printer, you know, to have a reliable 3D printer that works properly, there's, you know, you have to put so much engineering into it that it's, you know, we have not seen the $100 printer.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's that people, most people just don't need them, you know, like. No, exactly. They don't need them.

Dave Jones: They're a cute toy, but they're slow, you know, so you can't make, you can't instantly make them. I know.

Chris Gammell: I have one. When's the last time you used yours, Dave?

Dave Jones: Well, a couple of months back, but.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes, it just did not live up to the hype and part of that is just that people were overestimating what engineering, you know, could do, right? The, you know, you can't just magically simplify a 3D printer and make it, you know, you can't just apply money and time and make it a hundred times faster, a hundred times more reliable, a hundred times simpler. You can't. You know, it's just not happening, right? You still got the XY motors that move around. You still got the, you still got to heat up the bloody plastic. You still got to feed it from a thing with the head and extruder nozzle and it's got to work reliably. And then the platform has to be level and you've got to get all the alignment and the stepper motors don't, can't slip and they can only work at a certain speed and, and you want to, you know, people thought these would be in everyone's Christmas stocking for a hundred bucks.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, it is a reason it hasn't happened. And it was just stupid to think it would, but so many people thought they would.

Chris Gammell: We were part of it, I'm sure. So we were talking about it too.

Dave Jones: So maybe, but you know, I, anyway, you know, yeah, it's still a big market. It's probably as big as they said it would be, you know, it's a $2 billion market or something like that, but it's not, you know, hasn't made it down to the every, every person.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: So fail. So fail. Do we have any more fail on the list?

Chris Gammell: Oh, I'm sure we do.

Dave Jones: I like this. This is interesting. This is on Ken Shearer's blog. And just the headline just makes you think the Intel x86 documentation has more pages of documentation than the 6502 has transistors.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: I just like that. Just like my mind.

Chris Gammell: That's the one from 2011 too.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. It's an old post, but we just somehow just seen it. I, 2013. Oh, no, no. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: No, not, not the, no, it's 2013. No, that's the 2011 manual. So.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yes. The 2011 manual. Yeah. It could be even huger now. So. Yeah. Yep. So as, as a comparison, the 6502 has 3510 transistors. Yeah. Or actually maybe as many as 9000 depending on the variant or something, I think. But yeah, that many pages of documentation.

Chris Gammell: And that's, so I think a while ago, maybe, maybe on the list, I don't know where it is, but people were asking why, why do people still care about it? You know, like there's still, well, I guess, no, it wasn't the 6502. It was the.

Dave Jones: Right. The 8051.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. 8051. Right. And so, but it's, you know, it's, that is a lot of places. Right. So even if you look at like that, what's the TI module, the CC2540, I think. I think in there it has 8051 core and it's like other places.

Dave Jones: Oh, TI is variant of 8051 core. It's because the patents have expired. You don't have to pay a license fee to anyone. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But I mean, it's also worse and it's well known. And like, there's just lots of things like that where it's, it is still accessible and it's still, you know, you can, you know, there's people out there that write assembly for it and you know, it's, it's workable. Right. Whereas. You know, the, the new stuff, it's like, well, you have to have a compiler and you got to, you know, do all the way through and, and stuff like that. And it's just a more heavy handed thing. So that introduces new things. Right. It's, it's almost like I ain't broke don't fix it. Peace.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That is a lot of pages though. It's ridiculous. It's going to be boring too. Huh?

Dave Jones: Imagine like you're in charge of that documentation. Like, holy crap. You know, like how many people have they got working on that? It's just ridiculous. You know? Yeah. It just reminds me of the old, uh, uh, the old Maxim data books. Do you remember the Maxim data books?

Chris Gammell: Dave, I actually never used a real data book in my, in my life. I I've seen them. I've flipped through them, but I've never actually used one in Ernest. So, so tell me about them. You're serious. Yeah. What do I need a data book for?

Dave Jones: How did you become the co-host of the Amp Hour? I don't understand this. You're right.

Chris Gammell: I am announcing my resignation, uh, December 7th, 2016 at 6.50 PM Central Standard Time. I am resigning of the Amp Hour. Good luck posting this. I don't even know how to anymore.

Dave Jones: It would be a struggle.

Chris Gammell: Anyways, go ahead. Yeah. I'm not old. I'm not as old.

Dave Jones: PDF and the web, you know, we're talking, you know, almost into the late nineties, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, it is.

Dave Jones: Mid, mid, at least mid nineties, right? Before sort of, you know, it started, people started to think, you know, people, when did PDF come out? It was before that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, when did the format come out? Yeah. It's when it came out. It's before that. I'm sure.

Dave Jones: So anyway, anyway, it wasn't until the late nineties. Anyway. So Maxim were coming out with 500 chips every year, which was a plus. That was like the, that was a slow year, you know, 500 new chips. And that was one of the reasons why they couldn't ship it. You know, Maxim got their famous reputation for never being able to supply parts. You know, if you, if you built in a Maxim, you know, people, engineers to this day will never touch Maxim chips because of that. They were burnt by that back in the nineties, you know? Yep. And supply availability. That'll be 50 weeks lead time, sir. Thank you very much. Yeah. I'm not kidding. That was, you know.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you're not, you're not saying that for me.

Dave Jones: And they, you know, how do you release this information? There was no internet. Okay. There basically was, or there was no, you know, PDF and all that as we know it today. You know, websites and stuff like that. So how do you release it? You printed a new data book and you could, if you were releasing 500 plus new chips a year, you could not just keep making your data book bigger and bigger, right? Because every year you'd get 500 data sheets. Every data sheet is like 20, 30 pages.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right.

Dave Jones: Do the math. Right. So one. So one. So one. Yeah. So just one six. So they had, I think, six monthly releases of new chips. Please, someone correct me. I'm sorry. I don't have my Maxim data books anymore. Um, but they would, you know, they would release a new, okay. This is the, you know, uh, this is the, um, 1991 Maxim data book June, you know, like, or, you know, first quarter or something release. And they would release these every, so you got the latest one. Woohoo. The new one. What new chips have come out? Right. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: It was incredible. Right.

Chris Gammell: But there was a lot of, well, it's not repeat. I mean, I guess it's all necessary information, but it's not like a lot of that's like pin. I mean, I guess that's probably the Intel thing too. It's like pin outs and, and the different variations on everything. It's like generated data as much as it is like raw, you know, like application data and things like that. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, no, this was, yeah. They also had their app note stuff and things like that. New releases. Yeah. It's like, anyway, it was nuts. It was nuts and trying to keep up. So you had to have the whole volume set. Otherwise you, you know, over spread over years. Otherwise you couldn't get the information on these chips. I mean, it's just nuts. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, I mean, this is just, I mean, and, and the interesting thing to me is that there, there never really was a abstraction layer for the, I guess there has been sort of, but, but thinking about like, there's still, we still use linear, linear regulators, right? It's not like we're like, you know, there still are, there still are all of the available low level components as well as them being integrated into higher level, like higher abstraction layers of like, what's that one I always think about that, that ADU CM 350. I think I mentioned on the show before. That's like the one I always think about where it's like, Oh, it's an analog front end. And it's, which has like an A to D and. Yeah. It's got everything. And inputs and current source outputs. And the kitchen sink. Right. And then it's got like a Cortex M3 and it's got like an RF chip in there. And like, it's like all this stuff. And, you know, only because it's so many individual pieces, but even like the Intel stuff, you know, they, if you look at an old board, they kept integrating more and more of the individual chips as well.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Point being though, that you can still buy all the low level chips pretty much, right. They're still available as onesie twosie, you know, you can still get a linear regulator. You can still get a display, you know, or a shift register or stuff like that.

Dave Jones: That's how modern electronics still works. Right. Right. Right. But heck look inside a modern smartphone, you know, you'd think the art, you know, the epitome of, you know, consolidation and automation and integration. Right. Have a look at how many different little tiny little blobs are on there.

Chris Gammell: That's true.

Dave Jones: A hell of a lot.

Chris Gammell: They are putting them into bigger black blobs. But like, you know, there's like PMICs.

Dave Jones: They are, but still, but even with all, that's what I'm saying, even with all that integration, right, they'll still have 50 chips inside that thing.

Chris Gammell: That's true. Right. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Because, you know, little onesies here and there to do this and that, you know, heck, heck, you need five regulators just to do the, just to run a bloody call these days. Right. Exactly. You know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if it's like a reason to be nostalgic, but it is nice that there's, there are still those tools out there to kind of dig into the low. I mean, people still are needed for like working with those level, lower level things, especially for lower power and stuff.

Dave Jones: Dude, I just got an idea for a reality TV show.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Take a bunch of young engineers, like all under 25 or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Uh-huh.

Dave Jones: And lock them in a lab.

Chris Gammell: Uh-huh.

Dave Jones: And.

Chris Gammell: You're not allowed out until you make a cell phone to call your way out or something.

Dave Jones: You have no internet.

Chris Gammell: Good Lord, man.

Dave Jones: No internet. You have to be able to get your information from, yep. Yep. How do you do it? You wouldn't be able to do a thing, right?

Chris Gammell: That would actually, that would be really interesting. So like, okay, so here's, here's how you can do it on a small level. You could just do it as a hackathon, right? Right. So like, you have to study everything beforehand, but yeah, like the locked room, or you could, uh, you ever, you hear about those, um, those rooms where you have to like break out of them. You know what I'm talking about?

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They're like the, you know, people go to these, they're kind of like, they're not haunted houses, but they're like puzzle rooms. You gotta, you gotta like figure out your way out. Got it. But yeah, that would be interesting with like an engineering based one. I think I've seen, I actually met someone around here that was doing one with, it wasn't, I don't think it was like necessarily like code based, but it was definitely like puzzle, the puzzle itself. We used a keypad and, you know, like you had to use programmable elements to do that stuff. So, yeah, I like it. I like that idea. That's a, that is a novel, a novel hackathon.

Dave Jones: There was a time kiddies and it wasn't that long ago.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And yours truly lived through that era where you could not just Google, like there was no such thing. There was no such thing and you couldn't download data sheets. You didn't like, didn't exist.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Uh, yep.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Dave Jones: I used to work at a company where, oh, the big resource. Oh my God. It was the, um, they had scans of the data books on

Chris Gammell: Microfish?

Dave Jones: No, no. Hundreds of floppy disks.

Chris Gammell: Oh, nice.

Dave Jones: Right. It was, what was it? It was the Hinton. Would it even, would even Google know about it? I think it was the Hinton HIS system or something. I don't know. Uh, yeah. Anyway, it was scans of every data book that had ever been done. Right. And it was on hundreds and hundreds of floppy disks. Like you actually.

Chris Gammell: This is like a service you buy. You basically get the.

Dave Jones: You, you, you rent this service. Yeah. You couldn't actually buy it. You, you rent it. And they will send you a, a computer that's already set up with the software on there. And a whole, and like, and like I, about 300, 500 floppy disks. Wow. And it had all these scans. So there was like an index disk or there was a couple of index disks. So you would search the index disk to try and find the part number you were after, you know? And, and I think it may have had some parametric stuff perhaps, which was pretty advanced wizardry for its day. And so you search the chip and it says insert disk number 382. So you'd find that through your floppy. You'd put in that and clunk, clunk, clunk. It takes a couple of minutes to load up. Bingo. Up pops your data sheet and you could print it. Holy crap. That was, that was nothing short of a miracle. Like a black magic.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man.

Dave Jones: Mind blowing. I'm telling you. Yet, you know. Yeah. It's like people would look at that and just go, what the freak?

Chris Gammell: Right. I do wonder like, what are the logistics of like, there isn't even paper stuff these days. Like maybe you could do it where you like you, maybe if you did a hackathon like that, you'd have to like give them the equivalent. You'd have to give them data books. You'd have to give them the equivalent of data books. You could just have like a server where the only thing you could hook into is that, but then there's no, there's no stack overflow. There's no EEV blog forum. There's no. Right. There's no, there's nothing. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. There's no, no, there's no web pages. You can't just Google a salute. You can't just Google, you know, Nixie tube schematic. Right. Right. You know, like, and bingo up pots of a thousand schematics.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Well, so the thing I was getting at with this is that there actually is a simple quote unquote machine that was on our list this week. Someone wrote in about it. It's the, I don't know how to say it. Quebec, maybe QIBC. Um, but basically it's an interesting, um, so it's a one bit, one instruction transistor based CPU. And the documentation is actually really nice. For the diehards. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So it's, um, where is it? I don't see this on the list.

Chris Gammell: Um. Is it too far down? 32 on my list.

Dave Jones: Oh, 32. No wonder. Q-I-B-E-C. There it is. Right.

Chris Gammell: So, um, and there is a video about it now too, so you can kind of, uh, get into it some more. And, uh, you know, the interesting. What's that? Q-B-E-C. Pronounced Q-B-E-C. Is that how you said it? But it was, uh, I'm going to butcher his name too. M-I-C-I? M-I-C-I? I'm not sure. Sorry. Uh, but it's, uh, educational CPU though. And, but basically the interesting thing is, you know, and there's a bunch of background fundamental stuff, you know, the whole water analogy, which I guess we don't really talk about much on here, but some people don't like, I personally, I like it. I think it's, it's useful for visualizing electricity. Yep. And, um, uh, yeah. And so this is like, I mean, the documentation is really nice, but it's like, you can just watch a transition, uh, uh, an instruction kind of go all the way through and handle that stuff. So.

Dave Jones: One bit. Oh my goodness.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. It's, you wouldn't, you wouldn't make an actual computer. I don't know if you're like it, but it's good for, it's good for, uh, for educational stuff. Right.

Dave Jones: Well, we've talked about that on here before and whether the worth of learning computer architecture these days, you know, and stuff with so much other stuff to learn.

Chris Gammell: Well, we talked about it when there was that huge, uh, that room sized computer. Right. And that was like replicating.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. But this is a little bit more like at the fundamental side of things. So like there, I mean, like I think they're all very interesting. I think what you and I came down to is that we didn't want to, but we're lazy anyways. So. Yep. We're probably not a good example. Right. I think it's interesting as like, uh, you know, if you're, if you're going to be doing this stuff anyways, it's good to have an idea of, you know, how multiplexers work, how, how data latches work, you know, all the different addressing and stuff like that, that actually does, it does make a lot of sense to have this. And I think this is, this is a good, a good starting point for this. So, um, yeah. Let's see.

Dave Jones: Another story I like, um, this week is that it got all the rage a couple of months back. The, um, Samsung, um, Galaxy Note 7.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: And why it exploded. I lost count of the number of people who've asked me to do a video on this. And it's like, a, well, I didn't have a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 and you couldn't seem to be able to buy one. Um, and, and, and B, I assumed that it would be, um, an internal structure problem with the battery. And that's what everyone was saying. You know, look, it's like a manufacturing issue with the battery and it's internally shored in and boom. Um, but this article, um, is actually an inspection teardown of the Galaxy Note 7. And, um, what their, their conclusion by a company that does these inspection teardown things, you know, for companies there, it's like a, a professional paid service you can have, you know, that reverse engineers and, you know, breaks down products and stuff, um, or something like that. And they took it apart and they came to the conclusion that it is, there wasn't enough margin in the physical design of the battery.

Chris Gammell: Physical margin.

Dave Jones: You're saying like, uh, physical margin, tolerance, because, because lithium ion batteries swell, right? And during the charging process, you know, they're exothermic, boom, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And, uh, there are apparently, you know, some rules of thumb in the industry about how much slack around a lithium ion battery you have to leave, um, you know, to, to account for that, uh, pressure, the swelling when it charges and stuff like, you know, um, when it does that, but in this case, they've got, it's in a, is it a machined aluminium case or something? The Galaxy Note 7 is like a high end phone. It's not plastic.

Chris Gammell: And you can even see from like the up close images, you can see the tooling marks on some of these, some of the corners there and stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So it's got all these little sharp corners and everything. And it's, and the tolerances in there are like lesser one, one tolerance is less than 0.1 millimetres on one end, 0.3 millimetres, 0.5 millimetres, tiny tolerances. So they jam this battery in because they had to make, you know, because Samsung were under pressure to compete in terms of battery life. So they really pushed the boundaries of, um, you know, those design limits, those tolerances and, uh, trying to get there, you know, cause they've got a relatively small battery in here. So they had to, or small space for the battery. So they had to, you know, try and squeeze as much capacity in there as they possibly could because, you know, phone capacity, battery capacity is everything these days. Right, right, right, right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And for me, especially, I, I hate when my phone goes, I know it sucks. As I, as I was telling someone because I don't have a car anymore, I was like, you know, my phone is also my car. Cause that's how I call Uber. So yeah, it's, it's a big deal for me.

Dave Jones: You haven't had one of those driverless Ubers, have you? Are they in your city?

Chris Gammell: No, those are, I think they're just in Pittsburgh right now.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Or maybe in California too, but.

Dave Jones: Are they actually driverless?

Chris Gammell: Uh, I've only heard rumors.

Dave Jones: Are they behind the wheel?

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

Dave Jones: Well, go there, man.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I probably won't. Yeah. It's no season. Yeah, I probably, I probably won't. I probably won't. Anyway.

Dave Jones: So yeah, Samsung pushed this and they, it came and bit them on the ass. They didn't get away with it. And the, you know, not many of these phones exploded by the way. It's, you know, it's like a relatively small number, but yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The consequences of it. The consequence to the brand was a lot higher than the, yeah. Yeah. I mean, glad, it's glad, good. No one got hurt. Well, I don't know if people that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, if the battery, if they didn't catch, yeah. If the battery didn't catch on fire, if they just swelled up and, you know, and, and just failed, then, you know, as a lot of cheap ones do, then that's no problem. Right. It wouldn't have, they wouldn't have recalled it or whatever. They would have just, I don't know, fixed it. But why, why they couldn't fix it. And the interesting thing is, is they actually put, they, they said they fixed the problem. And I think they said it was the battery itself, the manufacturing of the battery or something. Yeah. Yeah. And they re-released it. They, they actually sent people replacement units and the replacement units were catching on fire. Right. Once again, very few of them, but hey, once the first replacement unit catches on fire, you know, you're. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's almost a confidence game at that point, right? It's. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, it's totally. Right. Yeah. No, it's shot. It only takes the one. Yeah. It only takes the one to ruin your company reputation. And so what, so it makes me think like, you know, if they knew they were trying to jam the capacity, why didn't the replacement units have a smaller battery with more physical.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's possible they didn't. I mean, you've probably done that before, right? Like where you're trying to fix a production problem and you're like, I mean, granted this is much higher scale production, but I've, I've done this as well, where it's like, you think you fixed it. You think you fixed it. Nope.

Dave Jones: Right. And it was no, it was something else. It was like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Red herring kind of thing where.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes. Yes. You thought you'd fixed it because, because you breathed on something and it worked. Exactly. And, but you did something and you thought that made the difference and aha. And you, and you being engineers, we can come up with plausible explanations to anything, right? Yeah. We, our, our imaginations are too active, you know? Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: I could, and I could try and talk my word out of a paper bag as the saying goes for people who can't, but in my case, it just leads me right into a different bag. Exactly. Oh man.

Dave Jones: And yeah, we've all been there, done that. And.

Chris Gammell: I had that for months once. I had that for months. Months. It was like, you, you know, like when you're trying everything. Yeah. This is like, if, you know, obviously, uh, I feel like, you know, car talk is our spirit animal around here. Obviously they're no longer with us. And, uh, but like you hear about their stuff too, where like people are like, well, if I just, uh, you know, open the hood of the car and then start it and then I close it, then it, then it doesn't stall. And then they just always would go like, what made you do that to start with?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I know.

Chris Gammell: You know.

Dave Jones: I was just trying random shit. You know?

Chris Gammell: Exactly. And I've had the same situation where like we were hitting like one specific component with like a hot air pencil and then like knocked it back in tolerance or out of tolerance. Then you hit it with the cooling spray and then that knocked it back in tolerance. And it wasn't that, it wasn't even that part of the board at all. You know? It was just.

Dave Jones: Right. Yep. It was something else. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's called flailing folks. That's called flailing. I have a long history of it. Oh man.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's an interesting article. And an interesting hypothesis about what's causing the Galaxy Note 7.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: Tolerance. There's no tolerance in there to help the battery expand and stuff like that. So when the battery, that's the thing. If you've got a rigid enclosure, like it wouldn't have happened with a plastic enclosure because plastic's got give on it. Right. Whereas if you've got a machined aluminium enclosure, aluminum for you yanks, and a nice machined pocket that it fits into, there's no giving that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Right. It doesn't flex.

Dave Jones: It doesn't flex. It doesn't give. Right. Unless you've got a hydraulic press or something. So, you know.

Chris Gammell: That's a different issue, Dave. I know.

Dave Jones: So you've got the battery in that pocket and it swells up and it can't push against the wall. So where does it give? It gives internally. And the layers, once again, to get the capacity of the battery up, the internal layers have to be thinner and thinner and thinner between the insulation in there. Right. Right. That's how you get surface area is how you get capacity in batteries.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. So they have-

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: You can either do that by adding more layers or adding some kind of coating that adds some kind of weird pockets. It's unusulate.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: A dielectric thing or micro nano pockets.

Dave Jones: Exactly. You know, that gives more surface area, you know, roughs up the surface. Right. So it gives, you know, nano surface.

Chris Gammell: That's like the etching type stuff as well, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And the same thing for capacitors as well, you know, to get, you know, your hundred that you take for granted, your 100 microfarad, 0805, 6 volt, you know, Z, Y, Z, what is it? Y, U dielectric. That's absolutely-

Chris Gammell: The V, V, V, V, not very good dielectric, whatever it is.

Dave Jones: Exactly. And to get that capacitance in there, they've had to put so many layers and make the dielectric so crap that, you know, like there are trade-offs and that's what they've done here. They've traded off that extra capacity in the battery with the physical layers. So then when it swells up due to the charging or use, it then puts pressure on those layers and punches through. And once you've punched through and shored out layers, woof, you're- Woof. Yeah. There's a lot of capacity in there and yep, that's how it can catch on fire. The current is enormous and your external battery protection circuitry is not going to help you one bit.

Chris Gammell: Right. Either. I forget who wrote in. Someone wrote in, the first time we started talking about this, someone wrote in, and I think I've mentioned it since, but they gave me my new, my favorite phrase of 2016, which is, batteries are basically magical fire bags.

Dave Jones: They're magical fire bags. Which is true, right?

Chris Gammell: I mean, they're just, they're storing energy in there and they become magical fire bags.

Dave Jones: Lithium batteries are, yeah, they're exothermic.

Chris Gammell: That was Colin. Colin wrote in about that. Yeah. So, Colin wrote in, did a bunch of stuff about this, so I think he's battery. Oh, we talked about the, oh, you weren't on that time. Sorry. It was, it was when I was talking to the, the Macrofab folks. We started, we talked about it there. So, yeah. Apparently Parker said, it's not like batteries get bigger as they charge. And Colin says, yes, they do. So, so. Yeah. Lithium. It's a whole, it's a whole field, right? I mean, it really is. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: No, it's a big science behind all this. There's lots of engineering science behind a humble battery. Yep. Yep. Massive.

Chris Gammell: I will, some of the links that he included, I will include as well. I'll add some of these links to our, our show notes about, about batteries. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Hey, what's this about Obama moves to block Chinese acquisition of a German chip maker? What's the deal there?

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's, that wasn't as, that was just a sensational highlight. No, it's, it's a, it's a military technology thing. I didn't, I didn't realize about that. Oh, okay. Right. So it's actually, I mean, so that's just like countries being countries, you know. Yep. Got it. I don't even understand how that would work, honestly, but, you know. But it is like, it is at the level where it's like these companies are so big. It's just, you know, I don't want to talk about that stuff. I've been doing really well. I've just been isolating myself from the news. I've been doing so much better, Dave. Oh, man. Right. I'm just going to head in the sand for four years. Yeah. Awesome. Great. See you in four. All right.

Dave Jones: You poor bastard. All you poor bastards.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. What was the one I wanted to talk about? So there's been a bunch of stuff that have been, all the talks from Supercon, right? So I was involved with Supercon. You may notice a lot of familiar faces there. I may have asked a bunch of people that have been on the show to help present at Supercon. Yeah, I think. And it's worked out great. But, so Nadia's was great.

Dave Jones: A, you know them for a start. And B, you know that they want to tell their story.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, C, I'll ask them to do a talk at Supercon. And odds are they'll say yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's great. It's, uh... Podcasting is the greatest life hack ever. I get to meet all these people I shouldn't have met, you know? So, it works out great.

Dave Jones: Well, it works out great if you're in the U.S.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It works out really poorly for you. Or anywhere else where the action is. It's been terrible for you. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. But anyways, Akiba talks about Shenzhen. I was just watching that one today. Nadia talked about setting up a lab and sourcing stuff while they were at a conference in Shenzhen. And then Sprite, who I mentioned before, who works at Espressif, and we were hoping to have on the show at some point. He talks about that Game Boy. Did you watch that Game Boy thing? The micro Game Boy?

Dave Jones: Nope.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's fantastic talk. And then finally, the one that I wanted to talk about was Ben. Ben Krasnow did a... You know, we all know Ben from his channel. Of course. And he did that bullet time one of the camera that David made. Dave was on last week. And that was a fantastic video.

Dave Jones: That was great. Episode.

Chris Gammell: But I've watched Ben's video about like three times. Just because I love like... So, you know, we've talked to him before. We've had him on a show a long time ago. But he talks about just like the prototyping stuff. And I didn't realize that like they just prototype off of eBay. You know? It's just like... So, when they were... I know Alan talked about this when he was on Embedded. Alan Yates. But they would just like grab like lasers off of like old CD players and DVD players rather. And like use that for prototyping the...

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: The lighthouse and stuff like that. I mean, I don't think about that. Like who thinks... I don't think to do that like application level prototyping. But that is so awesome of these proof of concepts. You know? They're trying to... I always go straight...

Dave Jones: Where else are you going to get stuff from?

Chris Gammell: See, that's my problem is I always think I'm like, oh, well, we have to go build our own board. Right?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Like that's where my mind jumps to. And it's like, well, that's slow. That's really slow. If you're trying to just prove out the general physics concept.

Dave Jones: Oh, we have to go build our own laser driver to drive this laser module that I got from this commercial company. Right. You know, when you can just go to eBay for 10 bucks and you've got your laser drive board and your laser module.

Chris Gammell: Right. But I mean, that's like a practice. You know, that's a thing that all the best people do, right? I mean, obviously, you watch Ben's channel and you know he already does this kind of stuff where he's prototyping and he's taking a scientific method to prototyping with these off-the-shelf devices. And it's fantastic to watch, but it's just like, man, like that as a method is just really powerful. And I wanted to call that out here because I don't do that. I mean, like, you know, like it's like, you know, it's smart, right? I mean, if you look at prototyping, it's like you should duct tape stuff together and see if it even makes any sense. But that's something that I want to work on for myself of just like, okay, I want to see if it's even. So I study all this stuff for product, right? And so like I've been doing all these website things and product stuff and they talk about like the most important thing is getting anything in front of the customer right away. And sometimes you're the customer and sometimes your coworkers are the customer. Sometimes the customer is the customer. But that's basically what this is. It's like, you know, it doesn't – you shouldn't go develop something for six months. And at the end they're like, I don't want that, you know? Right. But that happens a lot, right? Where it's like –

Dave Jones: Totally.

Chris Gammell: You know, like you're trying to be secretive about it. You're like, oh, well, I have to hide all this stuff. And it's like, no, just there are no interesting ideas anymore. Get the idea out there first and then go back and revise and make it special for your situation. So I don't know. I just – I really like that talk a lot. It was really good.

Dave Jones: Anyway, he made an x-ray backscatter machine with parts on eBay.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah. Right. Very cool. Which is crazy. Yeah, that's an older video too. A couple years old, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, is it? Okay.

Chris Gammell: I think so. Yeah, because when that – when they were doing backscatter with the actual – at the airport security.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes, at the airport it was. Yeah, and Jerry did one as well. Jerry did sort of – again, not really – kind of. It was different.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I thought that was – that was using like the radar stuff, wasn't it, or something?

Dave Jones: Yeah, that was using – yeah, something like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, anyways, good talks. More coming up. Sweet. I didn't get to watch any of them at the actual thing, so it's good for me. Oh, right. Why? Why?

Dave Jones: You were too busy. I was running around like a chicken, yeah. I mean like – Oh, right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: My head cut off. That's what it is. All right. Let's see. So, other links, because we're starting to run up against our time. Have you seen this one bitsy in Blackmagic Probe? I just heard about it from Alicia the other day. Nope. So, basically, it's like an open version of a hardware debugger for ARM stuff. So, that's funny. On Kickstarter right now, it's got three weeks left. Pretty interesting. I have – they gave away one bitsy at the – I was just using that. It's actually – you know, it's a pretty simple breakout for a higher-end STM32, like an F4 chip. Right. So, that's good on its own, but it's actually – I was explained by the embedded folks that it's about the – it's actually about the hardware debug stuff for ARM chips. And so, that's actually what's interesting. Instead of having to go through, like, you know, a Kyle or a – what are some of those other debug, you know, like Greenhills or whoever it is. So, that's interesting. Let's see. What else?

Dave Jones: Yeah, debuggers don't excite me. No.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I don't know, but it's important. Yeah, no. For those who float your boat, of course. Right, right. That's cool. I can dig it. There's that Nikola – another car company named after Tesla, but it's called Nikola. And they're doing a semi-truck that's hydrogen electric based. Come on.

Dave Jones: Like, pick a freaking original name. I mean, goodness. Like, you know, it was bad enough Tesla.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It was bad enough.

Dave Jones: You know, like, oh.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Nikola Motors. I mean, oh.

Chris Gammell: There's others out there. I think there's one that's, like, named after Watt, I think, too. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, they've got a hydrogen electric semi-truck.

Chris Gammell: Right. That's interesting. I think that, you know, like –

Dave Jones: What they do, they're not sure which technology is going to be. They're going to be the winner?

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. It's a hydrogen fuel cell that then charges batteries that then drive the motor. Oh, okay. Right. But it's all about the range, right? So that's what it comes down to.

Dave Jones: So it is a fully electric truck. It just uses the –

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Right. It's just you wouldn't ever be able to charge something that large in the first place. Something that – right.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Right. And that's – I mean, honestly, I think that that kind of, like, hybrid model anyways is interesting even for, like, a Tesla, right? Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: The olden – the olden – does the olden Volt work like that? Which of the – which of the commercial cars? Yeah, the Volt does, yeah. So the Volt gets – The Volt does, yes. The Volt is a pure electric –

Chris Gammell: It only has charge for, like, 40 miles, I think.

Dave Jones: 40 miles, but it's got a fuel tank, which then drives a generator, which –

Chris Gammell: Exactly, yeah.

Dave Jones: – charges the battery, which can get you, like, 500 miles or something. Right, exactly.

Chris Gammell: And that's – and that – I think that, like – I think that's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, because most of the time – That's Chevy here, by the way. Chevy is holding. Oh, Chevy. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, it's just a shame that they're too expensive here, you know? They are.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they're expensive everywhere. Yeah, they're very expensive. They're, like, $60,000 there, aren't they? Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay. Well, not as expensive as the $150,000 Tesla. Right.

Chris Gammell: I think you guys just have import stuff anyways. Yeah, we have import issues. But they're still pricey around here. So, I think Chevy's got another one that's coming out in 2017 that's – I forget what it's called. But it's supposed to be, like, sub $30,000 in the States without subsidy. With subsidy? I don't know. But, like, exciting times either way. So, that's good.

Dave Jones: They've sold – they've got 7,000 truck orders.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Valued at $2.3 billion. Wow.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, that's on the books. But, I mean, until they deliver.

Dave Jones: Well, they've paid their $1,500 deposit, you know? Like, it's not much to pony up if you're buying a truck that's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, presumably.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think – so, like, that's really interesting, too. Because if you start – if you have a new truck entrant – the thing that interests me about all this is actually not even the electric piece. It's that, like, I think that a car – a truck that's more towards electric – obviously, there are the environmental implications, and I think that's important. But, like, a car – or a truck, rather, that's more towards electric and is just outside of, like, the existing manufacturers that has – is more prone to have autopilot in it. And I think that is a big deal. When trucks go autopilot, that's huge, right? And if you had a really high –

Dave Jones: It's a huge amount of carnage. That's what it is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, for jobs and stuff like that, you mean? Or for safety?

Dave Jones: No, for safety. I mean, a truck to – you know, is plowing down the motorway at, you know, 110. Yeah. K, yeah. Yeah. K, yeah. Right, right. Which is the maximum speedy. 65 mile per hour. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Anyway. I think, yeah.

Chris Gammell: But I think from, like, a jobs perspective, I think from a safety perspective. And if you have – imagine, like, at night, imagine, like, if you had an autopilot truck that could go – I think they said it had some kind of crazy range. You could just – it could just keep going, right? Yep. It doesn't have to stop, right? There's no –

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, yeah, because the problem at the moment is the humans.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, like, they have to stop. There are laws about truck – well, at least in this country, there are laws. Yeah, yeah. Like, you can't, you know, be hyped up on drugs and drive 12 hours straight, right? There are laws against that.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, for valid reasons.

Chris Gammell: Right, and so if you imagine that, like, a truck only has to stop to refuel and then it just keeps going. Exactly. That's a big deal for logistics and everything else because that's a huge piece of the state's logistics. Yes. Yeah. So that's a big one. There was another one about – oh, about automation. There's another article about automation that we can post that is about technology and not trade, blah, blah, blah. We've talked about that two or three episodes ago. Meh. Yeah. We're done. Yeah, I think so. People can always go on our subreddit. We post links there. We got to, like, 40 links. We didn't even complain about the toaster oven, Dave, the $1,500 toaster oven. Oh, was that on there? That was.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I tweeted that somewhere along the line, I think. That's just another example of –

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Just, like, the sheer stupidity of the venture capital people to think that that would be an investment worthier put in. How much was it? How much money did they get?

Chris Gammell: Oh, they were – if I know. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Oh, for this toaster oven. That, like, oh, my God. And once again, it was on Paul What's-He's-Nuts blog, ex-U-Beam guy. He does an excellent blog on venture capital startup. I knew you were talking about. Yep. And, yes. Anyway, we'll link it in down below. And it's, like, another –

Chris Gammell: $30 million VC capital.

Dave Jones: $30 million to invest in an $1,100 toaster oven or whatever it is that is, of course, hooked up to your app. And it cooks things – Like, it's a freaking toaster. Like, oh, God. Yeah. And, anyway, he destroys it in his blog article. It's great.

Chris Gammell: So, speaking of cooking and VC, next week we'll be talking with Avidan Ross, who runs Root.vc. It's a hardware VC company. Right. And so we'll be talking with him. And so people have questions. So he gave a talk at Supercon as well about cooking a pizza in 45 seconds, but he also happens to be a VC. And he's hardware-focused and one of the best out there as far as I know. And, actually, he invested in Particle and that Instrumental, which did that teardown of the phone and stuff. So there's been threads all throughout this episode. But we'll be talking to him next week, and we'll have a thread if people have questions about raising money or specifically in hardware. Cool. And we can talk about this probably next week, too. Awesome. Excellent. All right, man. Well, right in with your questions. Oh, if people haven't shared last week's episode, I don't know if Dave even heard me enter that before the episode. What we did last week, if you share the episode and you send proof of it to contestattheamphour.com, you get entered in the drawing for the signed copy of Art of Electronics. There have been some very creative ones. One was a picture of a phone. I don't know how he took a picture of a phone, but he forced his coworker to listen to the amp hour while driving from Perth to somewhere else. And you know that's not a short drive.

Dave Jones: Gold. No, no. Perth to anywhere is not a short drive.

Chris Gammell: That was awesome. That's great. Creativity is rewarded. So thank you.

Dave Jones: Brilliant. Yep. All right. So yes, as always, thanks to our Patreon supporters.

Chris Gammell: Of course.

Dave Jones: And you can, as we don't mention it much, but you can follow us on YouTube. Is our auto-updating things still working on YouTube?

Chris Gammell: It is, yeah. Yeah, if you prefer YouTube.

Dave Jones: Because I found, don't tell you this, I found that my auto Facebook update plugin for WordPress hasn't been working for six months. Oh, yeah. Nobody told me. I just didn't notice. Yeah. It's like.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, automation, man. I guess. That's the problem. It lulls you to sleep and then you're.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. And then it stops working and you don't realize. And then, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Hopeless. All right. Well, talk to you next week.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Speaker ?: Bye. Bye. Thank you.