#329 – Work on it for 10 years...

Eliseo White: Hello and welcome to Embedded. I'm Eliseo White, here with Christopher White.

Chris Gammell: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Eliseo White: This week we are joined by Chris Gammell from the Amp Hour.

Chris Gammell: On the Amp Hour. You're on the Amp Hour.

Eliseo White: To create a spectacle of a show.

Chris Gammell: You're on the Amp Hour. No, no, no.

Eliseo White: I'm pretty sure you're on Embedded.

Chris Gammell: Welcome to the Amp Hour.

Eliseo White: Welcome to Amp Hour.

Chris Gammell: This is where you say your show name or where you're from.

Eliseo White: I'm Eliseo White from Embedded FM.

Chris White: I'm Chris White, also from Embedded.fm.

Chris Gammell: I was thinking we could call this Enemy Cast. What do you think about that?

Eliseo White: I was going for Amp Betted.

Chris Gammell: Amp Betted? Oh, I like that. What about the Amp Hour?

Eliseo White: What?

Chris Gammell: The Emb Hour. The Emb Hour. I like that too. I'm running these down. Don't worry.

Eliseo White: Yeah. So for anybody who hasn't figured that out, the Enemy Podcasts have joined together this week in order to reduce our holiday, quote, workload. And this will be cross-posted to both.

Chris Gammell: I was just thinking this is actually 2016 taking a final spit in our eye, you know? You thought you've seen it all. Nope. You have to endure a mashing up of shows. So you have to hear Chris talking about Embedded stuff and Chris and Alicia talking about electronic stuff. And then, oh yeah. Yeah. And then opinions will fly.

Chris White: And then if you want to keep up with both shows, you have to listen to it twice. That's a good point. I think so. Oh, yeah.

Eliseo White: Oh, but I do have an Embedded FM announcement. Do you mind?

Chris White: Okay.

Eliseo White: So we are doing an Embedded FM party. It's mostly going to be a meet and greet with like two minute who are you things. And the goal is that you either wear a hat or bring a hack. It will be in Aptos, California. So you can go to Santa Cruz or to the Monterey Bay Aquarium before you come visit us from two to five. And there will be snacks and RSVPs.

Chris White: Two to five on what day?

Eliseo White: Oh, January 28th. The last Saturday in January of 2017. Just come randomly at two o'clock. RSVP instructions will be in our show notes. Maybe in the Empire show notes. But I'm not so sure. Yeah, I'll put them in two. I mean, we might need to be selective here.

Chris Gammell: Maybe I'll mess them up a little bit, you know? Maybe January 27th. Why not? No, January 28th. Maybe I'll just give your home a drink. Well, that sounds like fun. I think there's a chance I might be there. I think I mentioned that.

Eliseo White: That would be pretty cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It is not easy to get where you guys are. It's definitely, it's not Uberable. I've talked about that, unfortunately.

Eliseo White: No, no. But there will be people coming from the San Jose area. So you might be able to carpool from there. I don't know about San Francisco, but maybe. And I haven't gotten an RSVP from Berkeley, which I have to tell you is quite a way.

Chris Gammell: The entire college? Yeah, that's... They're bringing the pot cookies, the pot brownies. We can't fit that.

Eliseo White: But the traffic shouldn't be too bad.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, on a Saturday, right?

Eliseo White: In January.

Chris Gammell: I have been down there once and visited you guys, and it is a beautiful area, and you are a gracious host, and I'm sure this will be a wonderful event for all people. Yeah.

Eliseo White: It should be fun. And mostly it's so people can meet other people who are interesting. Yeah. I don't...

Chris Gammell: Do you guys have any resources for if they do want to carpool? Is there some way to contact one another?

Eliseo White: Why don't I actually manage to get an RSVP system set up first? I mean, have you used Eventbrite?

Chris Gammell: I have. Yeah, that's what we use for Supercon.

Eliseo White: That's probably what we'll use, and maybe we'll... Yeah. Anyway, yes, organization details will be organized later. They're all smart people.

Chris White: Eventbrite can figure it out for themselves. Yeah.

Eliseo White: Maybe we'll do an open thread on our blog, and people can organize themselves in the comments.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's a great idea. Okay. Well, that's very cool. Amp Hour announcements. Dave's not here. Dave's not here, man.

Eliseo White: I hear Dave's not ever coming back.

Chris Gammell: He's not coming back for the rest of the year. That's right. So, yeah, he'll be out. I'll be doing shows without him. He's going on vacation. I learned last minute, last show, during the show, while we talk with Mighty Home. Did he just find out at that point? He just came across the wire. Oh, my God, I'm going on vacation. The downsides of, you know, like, your respective co-hosts, you know, live in the same house. Mine lives 10,000 miles from me. So, there is a little bit of a...

Chris White: You'd be surprised how many vacations I'm not aware of.

Eliseo White: How was the show with Jeff last week?

Chris Gammell: That was wonderful. It was great catching up with Jeff. And actually, I was surprised. So, he was telling us all about his Bell Labs trip. He went to go to New Jersey. And he told us about, you know, visiting the different Bell Labs sites. And then I got surprised that I... At some point, I put it on my Amazon wish list. And I got that book under the Christmas tree this year. And so, I just started it. And it's just as good as he said. So, I'm very excited about that book. It's like a history of Shockley. And that's the only name I remember. But Shockley and...

Eliseo White: Shannon.

Chris Gammell: Oh, Shannon. That's right. Yeah. But the one they start with, it's really interesting kind of just hearing, like, the crossover stuff. Because I think maybe it's Kelly. That's his last name. But he... Like, they're like, oh, they're, like, following him. And you can tell he's going to be, you know, like, some big name at Bell Labs. But then it's like, oh, yeah, he's also the lab assistant for Millican with the oil job experiment. It's like, whoa. Like, okay. You know, it's just like the concentration of brain power is intense. Cool. I'm excited for that book.

Eliseo White: I'm excited for that episode. I haven't listened to it yet because I had to do a bunch of prep. But for other... Our show for other episodes.

Chris Gammell: How are you guys doing on podcast listening this year? Oh, my goodness.

Speaker ?: Are you...

Chris Gammell: We're... Upplesome. Yeah?

Eliseo White: I think he's asking what we listen to. Oh.

Chris Gammell: Not how we listen to it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm doing terribly with my listening this year. That's what I was really getting towards.

Chris White: I'm down from what I usually do. I have fewer opportunities to be not focused on something, I guess.

Eliseo White: Yeah. I am making it through about three quarters of a podcast a week, which means that I'm falling behind at a startling rate. And I am not caught up on anything. I'm going to have to declare bankruptcy and just restart. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think that's okay. And honestly, I think that that stuff, it comes back across, right? So, like... So, like, for... You know, I missed a couple of your shows. And then, like, I think someone else told me about when Alan was on. So I went back and listened to that one. And then there was... I think we were talking... You both and I were talking. And you mentioned one show. And I went back and listened to that one. And I think that just happens, too. You hear about kind of, like, the shows that are kind of worth kind of going back for specifically. And then you kind of get back in the groove. So...

Chris White: Yeah. I had a bunch I tried to start listening to that I just couldn't get into also. Some new ones. Because a lot of the ones I've listened to I've gotten a little tired of. Yeah. Some of the... Just more general tech ones.

Speaker ?: Oh, that's right.

Chris White: You did that post earlier.

Chris Gammell: You did, like, the post about all those different podcasts. I remember that was a pretty good post on your blog. Yeah. Yeah.

Eliseo White: You contributed to that, too. But it was good to have a list of all the things you could listen to. But then I had to admit that I wasn't looking to add anything.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. It happens, right? I was just listening to... Ezra Klein was just on the Tim Ferriss show. And so I was listening to that one. And he kind of talked about, like, that's how he gathers a lot of information these days, even though he's a journalist and he has his own podcast and stuff. And he said, like, he just kind of each morning he scrolls through and just kind of sees what's interesting. And that's what it's really come to. It's like there's so many podcasts out there. It's like you kind of really just look down and see what is interesting in the moment because what else are you going to do?

Chris White: Yeah. And it's like a podcast to become a magazine. You don't read the whole magazine necessarily. Right? So...

Eliseo White: Some people do. Some people are completists. And I think that's cool. And I am happy that one of our recent guests talked about listening at even faster rates. 1.8. Well, he was over 2.0. Or 2.0. Yeah. And I have climbed up to over 1.8. And for the podcasts that I'm listening to for the information, it's totally worth it. For the podcasts I listen to for the relaxation, it's defeating the purpose.

Chris White: I don't listen to much for information. I tend to read more for that. I don't know why. Listening to podcasts doesn't really sink in.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's more like... Because I take notes. It's like ricochet knowledge. You know? It's like... Like I just mentioned that Ezra Klein thing, right? Like that's just like one thing that I remembered from that entire show basically. You know? That's... Yeah. I've been reading... It's kind of weird how I've brainstormed that.

Eliseo White: A book about gaining expertise. It's called Peak. And it's by Anders Ericsson and Robert Poole. And one of the things that they said was that every time you hear information or read information, if you have had any exposure to it in the past, it's easier. And so podcasts for me are to some extent that initial information that I'm not getting all of. But when I come across it next time, it will feel a little more familiar and I'll sync up a little bit more than I would have if it had been totally cold.

Chris White: Oh, I've heard of that rather than I know what that is in detail.

Eliseo White: Yeah. I've heard of that, which is enough.

Chris Gammell: Right. Oh, so it like kind of makes your ears perk up and then you... So you'll pay more attention when it kind of... It's like the filtering mechanism that humans have or what?

Eliseo White: Learning the second time is always easier. And so if you can just do a crappy job of learning the first time, right?

Chris Gammell: Done.

Chris White: That's where I'm at with impedance. Hey, me too. I've heard of that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Eliseo White: Should we do lightning round? I know that's something we do on our show. You don't do on yours.

Chris Gammell: That's okay. I wrote a couple of questions down for you guys. Okay. All right. I don't have any in front of me.

Eliseo White: Well, you can use the one in the show notes and I'll use the one on our massive ring of random questions. So the first one, New Year's resolution?

Chris White: Get better at prototyping. 640 by 480.

Speaker ?: What?

Chris Gammell: I don't know what that means. Sorry.

Eliseo White: Resolution. 640 by 480. It's like a video resolution.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Eliseo White: It was a pun.

Chris Gammell: Was that a trick question? I feel like I'm being... No, no. That was my answer.

Eliseo White: That was Chris's answer. Oh.

Chris Gammell: I was answering the same question. I'm sorry.

Chris White: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Yeah. Okay.

Chris White: All right. What's your favorite fictional robot?

Chris Gammell: Bender.

Chris White: Ah. Bite my shiny metal...

Chris Gammell: Metal can.

Chris White: Yeah.

Eliseo White: Mine is R2-D2. Just for the record. I mean, BB-8 is wonderful, but... Mm-hmm.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm.

Eliseo White: I don't... R2-D2, man. Okay. Your turn, Chris Gammell.

Chris Gammell: Horowitz and Hill... Horowitz and Hill or Sedran Smith? Horowitz and Hill. Hmm. Did you know the other one?

Eliseo White: I looked at the other one, and it's an electronics book that I've never heard of, so I'm definitely...

Chris Gammell: Technically, they both are, yeah. I have the first one. I've read the first one. I've heard of it. I'm sorry. I meant they were both electronics books, not that you... No, I'm sorry. Salier or Analog Discovery? Salier. Salier.

Eliseo White: Even now.

Chris Gammell: You've used them both?

Eliseo White: No, I haven't used Analog Discovery yet.

Chris Gammell: Should we? Yeah. No, I think it's... I've been using it more. It's... But it's Analog.

Chris White: What?

Chris Gammell: It says Analog in the title. No, it's a little... Alvaro just gave a talk about it. He was included that in his prototyping. So Alvaro has been on your show. Yes. And he did a talk at the San Francisco meetup I do, and he was just talking about firmware and hardware prototyping tools, and he had both of those in there. But I also use Analog Discovery too. But basically, it's like a two-channel scope. It's got a 16-channel logic analyzer. It's got AWG output, power supply sort of output, like a variable up to five volts. That's nice. So, yeah. It's a cool little box.

Eliseo White: USB-C?

Chris Gammell: No. No, it looks like regular USB-C. It doesn't stream. It's not streaming. Like the... Like the Salier.

Eliseo White: About 260 bucks. US.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Today. Unless you're a student. You can get like one... I think $199. What if we call students of the world? Yeah, I don't know how they do that. Yeah.

Eliseo White: I think it's just whether or not you're willing to say you are.

Chris Gammell: I like to learn things. Oh. Got it. Yeah. That's pretty cool. You can start your own .edu. Embedded.edu.

Eliseo White: That's got to be taken. Or we should get it right now.

Chris Gammell: Actually, it's... Yeah, it's hard to get. I think you need like an ABED accreditation or something. Some kind of accreditation to get a .edu.

Chris White: Yeah, I'm not sure. Like just give those out willy-nilly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Eliseo White: So you've used the Analong Discovery and you've used the Salier.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Is there much difference? Not for the same things though. Well, it's a real scope. I mean, well, not... A real scope being, you know, quote-unquote. But it's... I think the sampling method is a little bit closer to an oscilloscope than a Salier is.

Speaker ?: Okay.

Chris Gammell: So. Yeah. They're both... I mean, they're both... I mean, don't get me wrong. They're both great tools.

Eliseo White: Let's see. Okay. My next lightning round question. Something you did not want to learn or do that you're glad you got through.

Chris Gammell: All of programming. Saying I got through it though is not really true. I don't know. Yeah. Pointers. Let's go with pointers. I'll... Yeah. Again, I'm not sure I'm through it, quote-unquote. But, you know, I'm glad I learned it. And I hate it.

Eliseo White: Pointers are cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, sure.

Eliseo White: Pointers are like words.

Chris Gammell: What do you both answer for that one?

Chris White: Wait. I mean, is the point that I have to have looked back in retrospect and think I'm glad I learned that? Or just that I survived learning something?

Chris Gammell: I think you have to say you're glad you learned it, right? Oh, man. It's your question, isn't it? It's her question. Where am I?

Chris White: I was going to say chemistry. You're glad you learned chemistry? No. But, see, that was the part. Oh. You survived it? If I take the glad part out, I have a whole litany of answers.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think the glad would be the...

Chris White: Yep.

Eliseo White: For me, it would be ML.

Chris White: I don't know what that is.

Eliseo White: It's a...

Chris White: It's like XML without the X.

Eliseo White: And I thought at the time it was stupid. And now I still think it's sort of not useful to my career. But it got me started on the track of other languages do have some benefit, even if it's not readily apparent, which falls in line with the whole, there's no one true way. But sometimes I forget that because everybody should do it my way, damn it.

Chris Gammell: Right. It's a good reminder. Is that a markup language? Is that a markup or something else? No, it's something else.

Eliseo White: No, it's more Pascal-like.

Chris Gammell: It's old.

Eliseo White: It's old. This is not new. But it was one of those things that I just, kicking and screaming, did not want to learn because it was dumb.

Chris Gammell: That's how I feel about programming too. All right. I'm trying. All right.

Chris White: Let's try this one. Share a tip or trick you think everyone should know. How are these lightning questions? I don't know. They've gotten much more like sort of flashlight questions.

Chris Gammell: A tip or trick everyone should know. You touch the soldering iron to the pin and then apply solder to both.

Eliseo White: No, that's really useful. See, that's great. It's so easy to think you should just glop the solder onto the soldering iron and then somehow.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's not called a glopping iron. Yeah. Well, according to all the non-US listeners, it's also called a soldering iron. You don't pronounce the L. Oh, stupid yank. I get that one a lot. Yeah. I know there's an L in there. There's a lot of letters I don't pronounce, folks. Come on.

Chris White: Well, if the L wasn't there, we'd pronounce it soldering iron. Yeah, right. I mean, we are pronouncing the L. It's just kind of, you know, smearing into the rest of it. It's fine.

Chris Gammell: You know, I'm always fegoning interest in people telling me about letters that should be pronounced when they really don't need to be. Is that how you pronounce it? Fegoning? Yes. Fegoning?

Chris White: And Santa comes down the chimblee.

Eliseo White: My tip or trick that I think everyone should know is about map files, which is that map files are awesome.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's the one that lines up the memory locations and stuff. Is that right?

Eliseo White: Yeah. It's post compile and it's at the link stage. It not only creates an executable, your linker not only creates an executable, it also creates this file or it can create this file that tells you where it put everything. And it is so handy for figuring out like pointers have gone bad. So where did you start out? And then you find the bad pointer and then you look in the map file and it's there or you're out of memory or you're out of RAM. The map file just has all this information and nobody thinks to look there. But it's super cool.

Chris White: Yeah, that's great.

Eliseo White: Do you have one?

Chris White: Sure. C99 struct initializers. You don't have to fill in your struct with lots of painful like accessors later or just remembering the position of stuff. You can go brace and then dot and then the member name equals blah and then comma and then dot and then the next one. You look it up. C99 struct initializers.

Chris Gammell: C99.

Eliseo White: Something, something. Structure. Okay. Structure initializers.

Chris Gammell: Nice. Those are good tips for... Okay.

Eliseo White: Oh, here's a good one. Least favorite electrical component.

Chris Gammell: Um, I would say, uh, depletion mode FETs. Because all these years later, I just don't get them still. I'm terrible with, yeah. Yeah. Outside, like the normal stuff, I'm pretty bad. So. I don't like inductors.

Eliseo White: I don't like anything. Inductors? I don't like a ball grid array.

Chris White: That's not a component. All right. That's a package.

Eliseo White: Well, then a ball grid package. That's not a component. Fine. Resistors. I don't like resistors. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Any component that is sufficiently complex to require a BGA, like a FPGA. Right. Anything. Fine.

Chris White: I don't... That's it. Then you told me to do the ones in the notes. Now I've done them.

Eliseo White: Fine.

Speaker ?: Fine.

Chris White: You've got the whole thing over there. I've got nothing.

Chris Gammell: So I was... I think about your... So you always ask the question about the... What language do you think you should... What should be taught in school first? Oh, I like to ask that one. What is your standard answer for that?

Eliseo White: I like to ask that one after what language do you prefer to use? Because I like it when people have a different answer that they want to use from what they think should be taught. And it makes sense that there should be a difference between what should be taught first. I mean, personally, I think that Scratch should be taught and I think it should be taught in elementary school. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Well...

Eliseo White: Because it is a beautiful language that is really, truly a language and is so powerful and can be done... Can make things move. It can make stories. You can make videos and cartoons. And yet it is still truly, honestly a programming language. But it's not a language I've ever used for more than goofing off.

Chris Gammell: So what's your real answer to the question? Well, like what about if you say... You usually say intro to college, intro college class, right? Yeah. So is there a different answer then?

Eliseo White: Well, yeah, I guess it is a different... For a CS degree, then no Scratch. But if non-CS degree, I would still consider Scratch. It's still really useful. For a CS degree, I think C or C++. Because I think that you have to teach pointers early. It is not necessarily something people use a lot. But understanding how the microcontroller actually works makes everything else useful.

Chris White: Yeah, but most CS people aren't programming microcontrollers. Yeah, that's the problem.

Chris Gammell: CS people aren't computer engineering people. See, I think that's the real question too. It's like, should the CS people that are going to go work at Facebook be separated out from the people that are going to be working on low-level, low-power stuff? And it's like, that's always... I think eventually. I think eventually.

Chris White: I think that's a specialization that you probably should come to late in undergraduate. But I think they can be joined for the first couple of years.

Chris Gammell: And I think... So maybe there should be like a course, like an intro course to be like, intro to big machines. Intro to little machines. You know, that could be a way to separate them out.

Eliseo White: I guess an intro, intro Python. Because that is the most generically used across many...

Chris White: Where we went, we had to take the same intro CS course as the people who were non-CS majors or non-CS concentration people. And that was Pascal. So everybody took Pascal.

Eliseo White: I didn't take that class. But it was Pascal.

Chris White: Well, fine. You tested out of it or whatever.

Eliseo White: No.

Chris White: Then you didn't graduate.

Chris Gammell: So what about if it was not in a school? What if it was... What's the language that someone should start if they're not in a school?

Chris White: Python?

Eliseo White: Because I think about these things from my course, right? Python's a great language.

Chris Gammell: We got to pick something.

Eliseo White: Scratch is a great language. I'm not going to say... The Arduino processing is a fine language on the surface. It's... And once you get under the surface, you're in C++, which is pretty complicated, but you're under the surface, so it's okay.

Chris White: JavaScript people would probably say it's not a very good language, but it's easy to work with because everybody's got a browser.

Eliseo White: I guess so. I still prefer... Well, I prefer Python.

Chris White: Yeah. But yeah, none of those are really going to give you a sense of the machine.

Eliseo White: But you've been working on Python. How are you getting into pointers in Python? Or are those separate?

Chris Gammell: You're talking about me?

Eliseo White: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm not that deep. I've been working in MicroPython, first off, not Python. And I haven't been doing that much. But that's kind of what I was interested in. Because, I mean, like... So, like I said, my goal for 2017 is... Sorry, my resolution for 2017 is not 640 by 480. It is to get better prototyping. And that's kind of tied to the whole MicroPython thing. And I had Tony on the show to talk about that. And I just think, you know... I've shifted a lot of my thinking about all this stuff. I used to kind of push back against Arduino and whatever. But now it's just... I just need to get stuff done as fast as possible. And I don't know. I feel like it's kind of like that whole first pass, second pass thing you mentioned earlier, right? It's like maybe the first time through you're just implementing someone else's code. But then you notice that you're initializing variables. Or you're typing int before you type a variable name. You see a variable name. And then you just kind of notice that the next time around, you know, it just kind of triggers... I don't know.

Chris White: Yeah. I mean, if you're just trying to get stuff done, then C is not the way to go.

Eliseo White: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I would go C++ or Python for that. For a microcontroller-ish system. It would make more sense to me because you don't need to get that deep into it.

Chris White: Which? C++? C++?

Eliseo White: To do C. To do straight C. C++ only because that's what Embed and Arduino secretly are based on.

Chris Gammell: I can tell you this. I remember my first... So I went into college not having programmed at all. And I remember my first day of intro to programming class. And holy moly, that was a rough experience. I just... I didn't even know what I was looking at, you know? And I had that book with ants. You hadn't done anything beforehand. Yeah. Do you remember the book with ants? Yeah, the book with ants. Yeah, I think so. I think I remember what that is. It was not that great. Some people loved it, but I... Yeah.

Eliseo White: I went to college and I was... I didn't know that they were sending me to a summer school because I was so underprepared for the college I went to. And the summer school had calculus, which I had had in high school. But when I got to the class, I didn't know what the flattened S symbol was. So clearly I had missed some part of calculus, like the second half. And at the same summer camp, they had programming. And they did the intro to CS programming that Chris was talking about. But it was different during the summer. And it was obvious. It was like the math was the hardest thing I had ever seen. And they had all these stupid limits and the mean value theorem. And it was so hard. And then we'd go into the CS class and I'd be like, this is how the world works. This makes so much sense to me. This is so trivially easy. And I'd see other people struggle and not understand. It was like my brain was wired for computers. And I was so lucky because I would have failed both classes and I would have been out of there right away.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know. I just feel like... So, I mean, this is obviously an educational argument in general. But I just... I remember a lot of strife in my own life about like, why are we learning all this stuff? And it's like, yeah, eventually you need to learn that stuff. But obviously, I've turned that around a little bit. And I think that, you know, it's more important to just do stuff to start with. But that's kind of what you're talking about with like seeing the code up front. Right? I mean, like seeing it kind of was understanding it before you dug into the... What is the background of all programming, right?

Eliseo White: No. No, no, really. It was... Anything they said in that class, it was not a struggle.

Chris Gammell: That's great.

Eliseo White: And it was so fortunate. And I have met people who did that in chemistry and biology and other things. And it was like, it was like I found my language. The one reason that I always tell people to try lots of stuff, because there may be something out there that is somehow your innate ability. To be fair, my mom pointed out years later that they had given me a computer when I was pretty young. I mean, like seven or 10 age. And that I had done lots of programming then for about two years. And then after that...

Chris Gammell: Did you do the basic entry stuff? Yes. Or what were you doing then?

Eliseo White: It was all the basic stuff. And it was trying to figure out even some of the games. Like playing Lemonade is really a programming problem, if you think about it that way. And all of the strategy games are in some way...

Chris White: What is Lemonade? Sorry. I don't know what that is. Lemonade stand. You run a lemonade stand. You set the prices. Oh, I see.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So you're not saying on a computer. It's not a computer game that I missed. It is a computer game. And you missed it.

Eliseo White: And you missed it.

Chris Gammell: But it was from late 70s. So don't feel bad. Okay. You know, I think that resurfaced as a drug dealer game on my TI-83 calculator. I remember that game. Sounds probable and sad at the same time. Terrible. Yeah. Especially because it was a really fun game. I mean... Sorry.

Eliseo White: Yeah. So I did feel very at home programming. But it is possible that that is, again, back to doing it twice. I didn't even remember that I had that computer for a few years.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Eliseo White: If it was taken away again.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So what about if that question became not about what programming language should be taught in intro class? It should be... Or what if it was on the electronic side? It would be like, where should you start for the electronic side of things?

Eliseo White: I think you should have to answer that. I mean...

Chris Gammell: It's a question I'm still... You're the guest on the Amp Hour.

Eliseo White: I mean, I still don't know where to start with electronics sometimes. I get these great ideas for fantastic, amazing boards and implementations. And then I sit down and think, what is the first step? And my first step is, you know what I should do? I should call it doubly.

Chris Gammell: Really?

Eliseo White: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I know I can draw a schematic by hand. And I know I have many versions of Eagle installed. None of which I can use because I just installed a new one and then get to that part of the tutorial. And then I give up for the day and six months later I install a new one. There's a problem.

Chris White: You're an Eagle. That's true. I don't know. My first exposure to electronics was when I was a little kid doing hammer... Little heat kit things. Yeah. And I had some little electronics kit, but I didn't really learn anything and it didn't stick. And the next formal exposure, I think, was in college physics, where there's a small section where they go through basic circuits and Ohm's Law and Kirchkov's Laws and all that stuff. And that didn't stick.

Eliseo White: Well, that was part of E&M. None of E&M stuck.

Chris White: Thanks. Spiritual cow, eating milk in all directions. So, yeah. I mean, it's still a bit of a mystery, all of that stuff. I don't know how I would suggest somebody teach that differently. I mean... I mean, I think...

Chris Gammell: I would think that these days it's like... So, my first step is usually... So, when people ask me that, like outside of college at least, I say, go get an Arduino. Like, honestly, because the first thing you should do is blink the LED on the Arduino. But then if that doesn't get your motor going, then that's fine. But then you should have to do it with something else. And then you should switch to a tricolor LED. And then you should switch to... You know, like... It's like, really, you gotta... Until you... Until the person asks, wait, why does the resistor matter? Right? That kind of... I guess even an Arduino kind of doesn't. But... Yeah.

Chris White: That's kind of my worry is now you can just buy a microcontroller and hook up 3.3 or 5 to it. And you're pretty much off to the races. And then you can... You know... You can learn about pull-ups. But that's just a trick, right? Or about current limiting resistors for LEDs. You don't have to know what that really means.

Eliseo White: Well, there's so many times...

Chris White: And you can't build on top of that, right? With that knowledge, you can't go and... Oh, I need an analog circuit to do X. Well, you're screwed.

Eliseo White: And there's so many times that you can do 3 volts or 5 volts. And your system will work with whichever one is wrong for a little while. Sometimes. Yeah. And the weather's right. And yet, if you don't understand that basic part, how do you go further?

Chris White: Well, you can understand that without being able to understand any other kind of analog circuit.

Eliseo White: Well, I mean, I have used a 5-volt Arduino with 3 volts, like opto-isolators. And it looks fine. But I know that that's not a good long-term product solution. That's a fine prototype in my desk and occasionally, except stuff goes wrong. But I know it's not a good idea. But I can't explain why it's not a good idea. And I don't know how to get from where I am to being able to explain that. Because once I get into analog things like that, it just... Oh, we put in a level shifter. Yeah, but that's not satisfactory.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I would say that the... I mean, I think those are two separate issues, right? One is like a troubleshooting thing, like you're talking about with like, why should or I shouldn't do these certain things. But the other one is, I think what Chris said is the... When are these other solutions even needed, right? And that's usually the stuff that I see people doing interesting things with, where I'm like, oh, wow, you're trying that. There's way better ways to do these kind of things, right? Oh, yeah. So actually, my friend was just asking me the other day. He's like, well, I want to do a PWM circuit, but like, how do I... And obviously, it's very easy with a microcontroller, but sometimes you don't want to do a microcontroller. And it's like, well, so how would both of you do a PWM circuit? If you needed to just have a... Say you wanted to change a PWM duty cycle with like a potentiometer, how would you go about doing that kind of thing?

Chris White: I feel like I'm in a final that I haven't gone to class for, and that's one of the questions. And I'm just staring at that question going, God, I've made so many poor choices.

Eliseo White: I would pick up the Forrest Mims book that sits by my desk. I don't remember which it is, probably the intro to electronics. And I would look through it for a rectifier. And then I would try to change the frequency of the rectifier.

Chris White: What are you rectifying?

Eliseo White: He wanted a square wave. I mean, he said PWM, right? So I can't just make it different levels. Otherwise, it would be like a potentiometer.

Chris White: A rectifier takes AC and turns it into DC. You want something that takes DC and turns it into AC.

Eliseo White: Right. An anti-rectifier? Is that what that's called?

Chris White: It's called an inverter.

Eliseo White: See, but I'm sure that Mims would put them on the same page for me, right?

Chris White: Well, I mean, I'd start with some sort of oscillator, but then it wouldn't give me a square wave.

Eliseo White: Yeah, we want to change the frequency of the oscillator. But then I would be like, why do you want a PWM? Why don't you just have direct drive at different levels? Wouldn't that be easier? Because that's just a pot and a resistor hooked up in some magical configuration that I don't really know.

Chris White: Because maybe the device you're driving doesn't work at a lower voltage.

Chris Gammell: Well, okay, so there's voltage, then there's frequency, and then there's duty cycle, right? Right, right. So there's all three different things.

Chris White: I mean, but she's talking about this being DC. If your PWM's RMS comes out to 0.8 volts, the device still might do something. But if you give it 0.8 volts DC, it might not, right?

Chris Gammell: I'm just talking about generating a square wave signal. I know.

Chris White: We're trying to get away from that because neither of us know the answer.

Chris Gammell: So we're just talking about other stuff. Oh, that's okay. No, so this was a problem that was posed to me that I was like, oh, normally I would just, you know, like it's easy to throw a microcontroller at that, right? That's especially, you know, even, so you ask like a first-year college student that, right? And the first thing they're going to say is like, oh, I'll just, you know, analog read into an Arduino, and then PWM analog out onto whatever one of the pins is, right? Simple, right? Heck yeah, I can totally do that. Yeah, I can do that. Right, 100%. And that is sufficient, right?

Eliseo White: Although PWM on Arduino is yucky, but still.

Chris Gammell: Right, but the main thing being that that is actually quite a satisfactory answer until you put qualifiers on it. It's like, oh, well, you can't use a microcontroller. Okay, fine.

Chris White: Well, it's kind of like, I mean, that answer is kind of like, I need to carry this flower pot from my backyard to my front yard. The correct answer is, you know, maybe a wheelbarrow. But the Arduino answer is, well, I buy a truck, and I drive it down to my backyard, and I drive over everything in my house. At the end of it, I own a truck that doesn't do anything. I can do other things. Well, I can, but I don't need it to do anything else for that project.

Chris Gammell: But it might, yeah, it might waste a lot of gasoline, and yeah. But like, so that's like, but that was just simply an example of where an analog solution might be required or might be better than another thing. And my answer, by the way, was take a comparator on the input. The one input is just a reference voltage. The other side, you put in a triangle wave, and then basically with the reference level, you can change the square wave output, right? Because it's going to, when the triangle wave crosses that reference voltage, then it's going to flip high or low to the rails. Sure, but where'd you get the triangle wave, Chris? Seems like you're going to... The triangle wave is simple to generate, so...

Chris White: Pointers are trivial. Yeah, yeah. The answer is easy and left as an exercise to the reader. Right.

Chris Gammell: So, okay, so another thing that happened, though. So, actually, so you both know Mike Stish, right? Mm-hmm. Yes. Hackaday Mike. And so Mike is the editor of Hackaday, the managing editor of Hackaday. And so I interact with him at my job, and we did this really fun thing called an unconference at work when I was out there last time. And so it was just everybody... I talked about MicroPython and basically the things I didn't know about and the things I've been struggling with. Mike actually did this really cool thing. I think he's going to end up writing about it eventually. But he just went back and was just doing analog circuits just using single transistors at a time. And he was building little Christmas trees and stuff like that. And honestly, I think that that's the best kind of stuff. If you do actually want to learn analog, like honestly, I mean, on any... I'd say five to six days out of the week, you know, I'm still pretty confused by transistors. You know, I can use them. I've used them a lot, but like...

Chris White: Well, you can't see inside them. They're opaque, so...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, so are...

Chris White: You can't see the little...

Chris Gammell: There's a whole lot more transistors in there, so... Yeah. But, you know, and like... But that's the kind of thing where it's like once you get to the point where you actually do want to learn that stuff. I think that's actually when it does make a lot of sense.

Chris White: Well, that's advice that I don't take from myself, right? Because whenever anybody asks, how do I learn a new programming language? Or how do I learn a new programming technique? Yeah, right. It's like, okay, well, you find a project you want to do and do it. You're not going to learn it from a book sitting and reading about...

Chris Gammell: Unless the project... Unless the book gives you a really good project that you're really into.

Chris White: Oh, sure, sure, sure. But, you know, when I was a kid, I tried to learn a lot of this stuff just by reading textbooks. I was like, wow, that didn't stick at all. Why don't I know this? I read this book. So I think that's definitely probably true of everything in electronics, too. It's like, okay, make some stuff and make some mistakes and, yeah, learn by doing.

Eliseo White: On the other side, having gotten frustrated with electronics and whatnot and having tried to explain why schematics didn't work, I did actually sit down with the Forrest Mims book and read through it and take notes and try to... You know, he would say, I'm going to build this circuit and I would try to build that circuit from the information he gave me in my head on paper and then I would translate to what he had. And I learned a lot. I gained a lot of confidence, but I didn't use it. And so now I'm back to kind of knowing where some of these things are and not being able to have them off the top of my head. So I don't think books are useless. No, I wasn't saying they were useless. It's really nice sometimes to have the information organized.

Chris White: I don't think they're useless. I think you need to do both.

Eliseo White: Yeah. I think that if I had done that book and also put the hardware in the right spots and lit up the lights and kept building on that, it would have stuck and it would have been great. It was just, I went back to programming or whatever other hobby came from.

Chris Gammell: Well, and so I've heard you both talk about capacitors and how those kind of puzzle you at various times. No, that's a joke. Believe me, I know how capacitors work. Well, I don't know how they work, but I'm more like implementation and stuff like that. It's more like mental models. I think it's the bypass capacitor joke, right?

Eliseo White: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Is it really? I mean, I believe I'm hearing it wrong.

Eliseo White: That we had many, many people write in explaining bypass capacitors to us. And I do sort of understand them. But it is still at the point of, okay, I understand we need them. And I understand if things go badly, how to add more. But from a blank design, I don't know how many to put in other than what the data sheet says. As many as are needed. As many as are needed. Exactly. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: As many as are needed, but no more. Right. No, tons more. Come on. They're cheap. Yeah.

Eliseo White: I mean, I treat them like salt. They're good to have everywhere.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's right. I get a little frustrated when I have people ask me, like, well, what's the answer? And I'm just, you know, to some question, I'm like, I have no idea. You know, it's like, I feel like there's, I don't know, I hope it's okay that I say that sometimes.

Chris White: Well, I think that's a misunderstanding of expertise, right? If you're an expert in a particular discipline, everyone thinks you have the ability to just answer any question immediately. When sometimes questions are actually, you know, that's a giant word problem. And yes, I know how to solve it, but I don't really want to right now.

Eliseo White: Somebody asked me to do a firmware update on their processor. And I'm like, well, you have about 57 options. And since you're on that processor, there are about 30 of them you can just eliminate because it's just not worth it. But it leaves you still with 27 options and there are lots of good reasons for them.

Chris Gammell: I feel like the right answer to that is to hand them your rate sheet and be like, yeah, that's how much I charge per hour, right? I mean, I don't know.

Eliseo White: No, sometimes people email us and they make good blog posts.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that helps. Yeah. How's the blog going? I remember warning you of my engineer blog's run out where I ran out of motivation for it. Is it still? I ran out of motivation immediately. Okay.

Eliseo White: One down. You never really, you didn't sign up for it.

Chris White: I also didn't really sign up for it.

Eliseo White: Okay. So the blog is going well. It depends on what the goals of the blog are. I tried to convince myself and my two other blog writers, Andre Cicak and Chris Svek, that the goal is only partially for listeners. A large part of it is to practice writing and to practice explaining these fairly complex embedded systems points in a way that you could then just pull them up when you need them, whether you're in a meeting or whether you're teaching a class or whatever. So if we all agree that the goal is to practice writing and practice putting these things out there, then it's a great success. We've all done really well. That's good. If the goal is to rule the world through getting lots of people to read the blog, we still need to work on it. We're not great on that.

Eliseo White: It's a lot more content. It is totally free. There are no ads. There's no blinking because I can't stand blinking. But it is a lot of good stuff. Andre is doing ST discovery board, Cortex M4F. And so he's going to have a lot of good features. He can implement big stuff. And Svek is doing MSP430. And he's looking at things from a very low-level microcontroller perspective, even assembly. Not necessarily that you need to write an assembly, but that you should know what's happening down there. So they're doing a great job. I kind of bop in and out answering questions from listeners or working on my own set of projects. Or even adding some things like Andre did a bunch of things on UARTs. And then I posted, well, what good is a UART? And put up code for a command console. And I really liked that because it made a whole bundle. And someone can look at it and say, oh, that's what it's for. And then six months later, they may have to do this for their job. And they know where to go. And so it's a place. But yeah, it's a giant time suck. Yes. Yes, you did warn me that it would be a giant time suck. And it is, in fact.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's still a repository, though. That's what's nice.

Eliseo White: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you never know if it's going to be valuable or anything like that. But I totally agree that if it's not internally driven, you're never going to. Yeah, you'll never make it.

Eliseo White: And we've all shared editing duties. Yes. And editing somebody else's work, especially if you have to do it in a way that you know they're going to edit yours and you want to be friends after, it's really useful and valuable to affecting your own writing. My writing has gotten better because I know that if I hassle one of them about explaining things in an inverted way or you start out complicated and you get simple, if I do that in my writing, they will totally call me on it because it's not the way you teach things. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know if I've... I may have mentioned it on past shows, but I've been using this thing. I've been writing a little bit more, but not as much as I hopefully will be in the new year. But there's this thing called HemingwayApp.com. Have you ever seen that? Oh, yes. I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah. And if you... Yes. Yeah.

Eliseo White: And if you write too complicated, it highlights and says, this sentence is way more complicated. Just be direct.

Chris White: Now, that's not the one where if you don't keep typing, it deletes everything you've written.

Chris Gammell: No, that's different. No, I mentioned that one. Yeah. No, no. That's the most dangerous... Or you guys told me about that, I think. Or someone on the... I think it was a forum told me about that. Yeah. Chris did. But yeah, that one is very motivating. And I have mentioned that on the show. I know. That's the one... Yeah. That's very motivating. But no, this is more about like it highlights colors and like adverbs aren't... They just tell you to always get rid of adverbs, right? Just because they don't really actually add that much for clear writing. And then it actually gives you a readability score, which, you know, this is not like super unique. There are other readability type things out there, but this is just one that really resonated with me. So I use it. I downloaded the offline app for... And it really gamifies it. That's what's really fun. And it's like, oh, that sentence is hard to read. I'm going to try again. Because, I don't know. I used to think that like writing was, you know, trying to sound smart, but it's really about just trying to get... Like you said, trying to get the idea across is often the hardest thing, you know? And I don't know.

Chris White: Yeah, well, it depends on the kind of writing. Technical writing, yeah. Being flowery is not an advantage.

Eliseo White: Unless you're in a patent.

Chris White: Oh, God.

Eliseo White: And then your goal for the Hemingway app is to be all read.

Chris Gammell: That's true. Yeah, they could make the opposite of it, right?

Eliseo White: So here's a question for you. I know you have written a lot in the past on your blog. And I know you do some writing for contextual electronics. And now you have this goal to write more. Why? I mean, why is writing important to you?

Chris Gammell: Well, part of it is for my job. So that's just part of that. I mean, it's just part of what I'm doing for that. But I think one of the things that's nice is it kind of just gives the... So I'll answer that with a different non-writing answer. So like one thing that I really like about Google Photos is that it... Throughout, you know, it does like the backup sync. And like iPhotos does that stuff too, where it just backs up all your stuff. I have a really bad memory and kind of like where I am at any point in life. You know, like where I was, who I was with, all that stuff. Like my memory just doesn't work that well. And using the Photos app for that is really useful. I think similarly, writing, you know, having regular writing kind of puts a line in the sand and says, this is the stuff I believe in, this is what I'm working on, that is important, right? It's kind of just... It's important to make a case even if you end up having to go back and correct it. I think that that... It solidifies opinions and makes you think critically about it. So...

Eliseo White: The self-analysis, the introspection part? Is that...

Chris Gammell: The navel gazing, yes. Okay. I don't know. I think that's right. I think it's more just about... Yeah, critical thinking around issues so that I'm not just spouting on the empire with Dave. I don't know.

Chris White: No, writing is a very different process. And, you know, there's been a lot of studies about how people take notes and how, you know, if you actually take notes that things stick better. And that's not even writing necessarily. It's just using a different pathway to reinforce information. But, yeah, it's completely different from sitting and, you know, noodling in your own thoughts to actually putting something down on paper. There's a whole bunch of things that happen in your brain that are different than if you're just sitting and thinking or shooting the breeze with somebody.

Chris Gammell: I think there's other positive examples of that, like, that are not necessarily just writing, but it's almost just like the social proofing side of things. Like, GitHub, I think, is a great example of, like, it's not like bragging, but it's just, here's my work. You know, it's just regular. That chart is one of the most motivating things for some people of just like, today was a dark green day, right? And it's like, that's a good day. It's not that that's the only measure of progress. It's like making lots of commits is not the only way you can measure progress. However, it does show you weren't just sitting in meetings all day, right? And I know one thing is that sitting in meetings all day is not a good use of time. So even if it's just saying that what I wasn't doing is kind of interesting.

Eliseo White: And in addition to that and the introspection, teaching something is a great way to learn it. I mean, to truly learn it. And writing something down is a way of teaching what you were thinking about it. And so it's like you learning your own thoughts.

Chris Gammell: I mean, teaching is terrifying, right? Yes. It's just, it really is. It's like, oh, well, here's the thing I just said, and I'm pretending to be an expert. And then it's very, I've had a couple of times where I've made a video and then I rewatch it and I'm like, that is 100% wrong. Like I'm watching, I'm like, this is the worst, like that is just not even close, you know? And then I go and re-record it and no one's the wiser except for me. But then I definitely learned at that time, right? I mean, it kind of makes me stay up late at night thinking about what I didn't correct, but we'll leave that out.

Eliseo White: How is contextual electronics doing?

Chris Gammell: It's going to, it slowed down a lot during my move, to be honest, in terms of just my content. The other instructors were still making stuff, but yeah. So 2017 is the refocusing on skills, actually. I think maybe I mentioned on the show before, but got a new site up and running and that's looking good. And yeah, so new stuff, new stuff on the way, new bench at home, you know? I did catch myself playing that game of like, you know, do you have any friends or maybe if either of you have ever done this, they're like, oh, I'll start running when I get a treadmill. Yes. Yeah. No, I do that.

Chris White: I actually do that with music a lot or I used to. It's like, oh, well, this isn't working. Maybe I'll get a different piece of gear and then I'll be better. Right. Or it won't work until I get a new piece of gear. Which my wife is looking at me askance right over my shoulder to my new piece of gear, which. Oh no. Which has enabled me to play.

Eliseo White: An immense amount of gear.

Chris White: Which has enabled me to play a lot more. So it's a separate thing. What is it? What is it? It's an electronic drum set that I can play at all hours. Oh, that's fun though. And I wasn't practicing because it's, my regular drums are too loud and I'm afraid of neighbors.

Chris Gammell: I think that's a, I think that's a big deal. I, I switched to it from an acoustic upright piano to a keyboard just for that same reason. I have headphones and stuff because you kind of like look around, you're like, dang, this is really making a lot of noise. Yes. Yes.

Eliseo White: But it made it hard to buy him stuff for Christmas because he'd already blew the Christmas budget on his drums.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right. What? New sticks, brushes, you know.

Eliseo White: Oh no, I tortured him instead. It was great.

Chris White: She designed a puzzle hunt that occupied three hours of my Christmas morning. Yes. Really? Oh, can we hear about this? This is, this is very fun. Yeah. So she, she distributed clues all around town. And so. A town? Yeah. So we, we unwrapped presents. She handed me her last presents and it had a little thing around its neck. It was a dinosaur ornament and it was the first clue and I had to follow that to the next clue and do the whole thing. And I stepped in a puddle and had to come back and change my shoes and.

Eliseo White: It would only have been under a mile. It would be, yeah. Except there was one clue that I thought he knew that.

Chris White: So there was a, a, a summation clue. I had to add up all these other clues to get a final number and I got the final number and it was not anything I recognized. So I just threw it in Google Maps, right? Oh, it must be an address. So I threw it in Google Maps and it pops up. Oh, that, that's that place we go to all the time. Okay. That makes sense.

Eliseo White: A little garden center that I like a lot.

Chris White: So, uh, that's the only match. And that's three quarters of a mile away. Well, that's kind of far, but that's not, she did say she'd wandered over there the other day. So maybe she left the clue there then. And so, yeah, I went a mile and a half out of my way.

Eliseo White: It was our PO box number, which I write a lot because I, that's what I use. Yeah.

Chris White: Which was actually like 500 yards from where it was. But it was pretty fun. And you know, she spent a lot of time on it. It was amazing.

Eliseo White: It was fun.

Chris White: It was fun to do.

Chris Gammell: I was extremely, extremely tired. What was, what was at the end of the rainbow? Is it?

Eliseo White: Um, just one more little gift. You know? Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: So the gift was the, was the hunt. Yeah. Yeah.

Eliseo White: Yeah. Because he, he blew his budget on the drums. And so I, I see. My goal was to spend all of the angst and energy I would have put into the drums to buying the gift into doing something else. And so that led to. Right.

Chris White: And of course this will lead to escalation for the rest of.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Your lives together. Yeah. Yeah. So Alicia, did you get anything fun?

Eliseo White: Uh, did I get anything fun? I got a giant pile of tweezers.

Chris Gammell: Whoa. What, what constitutes a pile of tweezers? And that sounds dangerous by the way.

Eliseo White: There were more.

Chris Gammell: Seven. You got seven. I got you seven tweezers.

Eliseo White: It seems like a bigger pile than that.

Chris White: No, it was only seven.

Eliseo White: Okay. Um, but I'm always, I'm always losing our good electronic tweezers. And so now we have more. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I, I, I am of the, the mind that, um, I don't buy good ones. I buy as cheap as possible and, and just assume they're going to go bad. Like, you know, like you can get like the super, super sturdy tipped, like Swiss steel, whatever. Yeah. I don't, I don't do those at all. These weren't. Are these fancy?

Eliseo White: These were just up from that. I don't think they were super fancy.

Chris White: They were really, really fancy. Really? Very expensive. Yeah. This is, this is. They came from. Dangerous. Dangerous territory. They came from this little town in Azerbaijan that specializes in tweezers. Gotcha. It's called tweez, tweez, tweez, tweezle town.

Eliseo White: Tweezestown?

Chris White: Twizzleton.

Eliseo White: I don't think that's right.

Chris Gammell: I, oh, seven piece. Oh, this is $12. Come on, Chris. I was looking at the one that I got. It's a seven, seven piece precision antistatic ESD. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was going to just, I was going to actually put the ones in because I actually do like the ones that I got there. It was just like a little kit, like a little kit where they're all came together. Pick snore on Amazon. Great. I'll put the link in. You got some other stuff. Because I just got a bunch.

Eliseo White: You got some other stuff. I got some great stuff. So do you remember The Way Things Work? It was a book that came out. How Things. Is it The Way Things Work?

Chris Gammell: I have that as a coffee table book. Yes. Well, it's in my- Did you know there's a new version? It's one of my only books on display. Yes.

Eliseo White: There's a new, I did, I was unaware that there was a new version and it covers things like E Ink and is updated. I just, yeah. So I got that. I'm really excited about that.

Chris Gammell: It still has the mammoths, right? Because that's like the only part that really matters. Yeah. Yeah.

Eliseo White: Yeah. Of course. You need the mammoths.

Chris White: How do mammoths work? They don't anymore. That's the answer.

Chris Gammell: I do remember that had CD-ROMs. I remember it had CD-ROMs in the original. Or not even at the original, but whatever the version I have. It had CD-ROMs was one. And I did look back through it and there was one that was like, whoa, that's dating itself. It was VCRs. I don't know.

Eliseo White: It described beta VCRs.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It was something that was like, oh, okay. Well, it's not. And then you look, it's like, oh, 1993 or two or whatever it was. And it made sense for the time, but that's fun.

Eliseo White: And we got a Flybricks. You got me a Flybricks. What's that? So this was one of the guests we had on our show where they wanted to build a science, technology, engineering, math platform to talk about how things fly. Because going beyond robotics. And so it's Lego based and it's got motors and then it's got a controller and you can update the code on the controller. And you can have update motors and it's got a controller so you can fly it. Although supposedly you can fly it on your phone too. I don't think we've tried the Bluetooth version yet. But it's just. It's cool. Legos. Flying Legos.

Chris White: It's very hard to fly. Yes. Coming from actually flying drones a lot, it's not that easy. Although it's kind of small so you're tempted to fly it inside, which always makes things more difficult. But yeah. Does it bust apart like Legos or what? Oh, that's the best part.

Eliseo White: I mean, you build it, which isn't that hard. And then you fly it, which is pretty hard. And you rebuild it. And then it falls apart. I mean, just like, it's like there's some satisfaction with the total destruction of your drone, especially if you know you can put it back together.

Chris White: Yeah. I want Ben Krasno's high speed camera to crash it into something. Oh, yeah. The only trouble with that is the motors are little, really tiny DC motors. And they have these little leads coming off, pigtail leads coming off. And it's really easy for the motors to grab the wires when it crashes. Oh, and do the little twist up thing. Yeah. So, but, you know. And it's all open source. So the software you can go play with and change the parameters or rewrite the whole thing if you want it.

Eliseo White: I mean, as a way to learn how control loops work, I'm totally fascinated. Yeah.

Chris White: And it has, you can make a quadcopter with it or a hexacopter or an octocopter.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah. That sounds pretty cool. Yeah.

Eliseo White: What about you? What did you get?

Chris Gammell: Mostly books. Yeah. What was the other book? I got the Andy Grove book, too. Only the Paranoids Survived.

Chris White: Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Another book. Yeah. And then a couple of piano books. And, yeah, that's about it. I mean, nothing. And, you know, clothes and blah, blah, blah. So, no, I actually, I stopped asking for technology stuff for my, like, for my family. Like, sure, they have my Amazon wish list. But even still, it's like, it seems silly to have stuff on there for, that I could write off. You know what I mean? Yes.

Eliseo White: So, yes, Chris and I are.

Chris Gammell: I put in a fruit order today for, like, a hundred bucks for myself, for, like, for stuff I'm working on. So, it's like, that's just as easy, right?

Eliseo White: Yeah. And because you have contextual electronics, you can write that off. And it's a big discount. But if your parents got it for you, then it just makes more sense. And then you get the part you want and not last year's part. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The new resistors this year are really, really hot. Hey, I do other stuff. Come on. I'm kidding. I have an ESP8266. That's the new hotness, right?

Chris White: Nope. I think that's the old hotness. No, it's the ESP32. Dang. Oh, it's the new one. I know.

Eliseo White: Yeah, there is a new ESP. There's a new Nordic module that's pretty cute. Yeah. The NRF52.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Eliseo White: What else is neat? I don't know. I haven't quite gotten into this year's. I mean, there's Cortex-M4F everywhere.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Eliseo White: I don't know that.

Chris Gammell: So, I've actually been, I've been, so I've been keeping an eye on chipsets just because I've been playing around with MicroPython. And I, one of the things that I mentioned I did a presentation on too. And one of the things that I, that it came down to is like, oh, this is pretty limited because, you know, the builds are different for every platform and there's only like six platforms. And so, it's basically like choosing any other platform of like Raspberry Pi or, you know, obviously Raspberry Pi has full-blown Python and stuff like that. But, you know, it has its same limitations. But I have been paying attention to more chipsets because of that. Because you'd have to just drop that exact same thing on there, like modules effectively.

Eliseo White: There are more modules. There are more modules coming out. More modules. I mean, like the NRF 52s have modules. 51s have modules. The ESP has modules. And those are sometimes because it's FCC certified and that makes life much easier for production. But it just seems like it's easier to do more modules unless you have a very low power situation. And then you're probably building your board again.

Chris Gammell: Well, no, no, no. I actually mean not even modules like that. I mean like stuff that, that MicroPython is actually built for. Like there's, the build is different for every, every device. So like, unless it has that on there. Oh, I see what you're saying.

Chris White: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So there's only like six even modules that I can use. So there's like the ESP 8266. But then I think it has to be a very specific STM32. Right. F30, F4 something. F4 7? I don't know. Sure. But.

Chris White: Yeah, it has to have support for all the right peripherals and things.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, exactly. And that's, and that was way more limiting. Not, it's not limiting, but it's just, it's more constrained than I thought it was. It's okay. It's just prototyping. But whereas I thought it was, you know, the promise of MicroPython was like the ability to prototype on your own hardware. Yeah. That would be really tough.

Eliseo White: Yeah. You know, there's a lot of that going around. That it looks like it's going to be an easy prototype platform, but it turns out you have to port it to your hardware first. And that is an untenable problem if all you wanted to do was prototype.

Chris White: Yeah. Well, I think that's the case with most of these non-C embedded things like the node supporting microcontrollers or JavaScript based ones. They're all, okay, we made it work for this. So, I hope you like it. I hope you like this because that's all you get.

Chris Gammell: Well, and we've seen this a lot. I think we've seen this a lot too. So, I know a couple of people that have built stuff on top of like, I mean, it's much larger in scope and size and stuff. But like people that build products that are using BeagleBone Blacks in them, right? Because they want a Linux computer and all the peripherals and stuff like that, right? So, they just build the little whatever they call theirs. Is it capes? Yes. I don't remember. Yeah? BeagleBone has capes. But then, but that just kind of pushes the problem back to production level where it's like, oh, crap, now we have to put a $45 component to this. Yeah. And it's like that's then where the problem is. I don't know. I think the people that are probably doing this best, not the best, but the biggest promise of it is like the next thing has been thinking about it with that new module they did where they basically broke out their processor and said, oh, by the way, we're a module too. Like I think in 2017 we'll see more of that because, and you know, Raspberry Pi has tried it with the little SoDim module. Yeah. BeagleBone, I think, has done it with the, they have a program for buying parts and stuff. But that jump to actually making that one of something to even 10 of something becomes like, holy crap. It's really bad.

Eliseo White: Well, that goes back to what I was saying about modules is that there are now people who are building those modules for some processors and they're making it generic-ish.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Okay.

Eliseo White: But yeah, CircuitCo will take your, your cape and merge it with a BeagleBone. But of course, that's not going to be as cheap as if you do it yourself.

Chris Gammell: Right. Probably. Yep.

Eliseo White: CircuitCo makes BeagleBone.

Chris Gammell: A lot of people make BeagleBone. They do, and so does Element 14 now. Oh, great. Whoever their CM is. I forgot about that, the name. But yeah, I need to have Jason back on the show at some point. I talked to him after Open Harbor Summit. It's good to catch up with him. They're all, I mean, that's great. I mean, there's, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of like, you know, groups like BeagleBone. I mean, the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the BeagleBone Foundation. Like, I'm really glad that there's these groups that are doing this stuff. That actually is, I think, really important because it drives a lot of education pieces as well. But then you merge it into the manufacturing pieces. Like, oh man, it gets, oof, manufacturing stuff is still, well.

Eliseo White: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Eliseo White: Definitely non-trivial.

Chris Gammell: That is what I'll be trying to solve in 2017 as well.

Chris White: Well, that's a problem. It's going to get worse and better at the same time because all that stuff's going to get cheaper and it's going to get even more tempting to start with it. Yeah. Manufacturing difficulty is always going to be there because, you know, you're just not buying something from a store and marking it up and adding your software. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yep. What are you both excited for about the new year as we go into it?

Eliseo White: Hmm. I mean, there's a lot of things I'm excited about. Ah, I'm starting to new contracts.

Chris Gammell: How about technology stuff? But I can't really talk about my new contracts. Technology stuff.

Eliseo White: No, not so much that. I think we're going to get, we're finally going to join the real 3D printer people.

Chris White: Yes. After not making the cheap 3D printer do anything useful at all, we're going to take that lesson and spend more money on one.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Chris White: Thanks.

Chris Gammell: What are you going to do?

Chris White: What are you going to get? I think we're looking at the Lulzbot mini right now, which seems to have, as far as these things go, seems the most out of the box kind of works.

Eliseo White: We have a monoprice mini after Brian Benshoff wrote up that they were not, that they were actually a pretty good deal for 200 bucks. Cheap experiment, yeah. And we got a few things out of that, but the...

Chris Gammell: What do you want to build? That's really the question.

Chris White: So I have airplane parts for my radio control planes and stuff that I would love to be able to build.

Chris Gammell: So do you use like MakeXYZ or anything like that? What's that? That's like the service where other people in the area have printers. Oh, no. And you just...

Chris White: No, you know, if I... What are people? Ew. There's a... Well, not that so much, but there's a kind of a barrier to entry of that, of like... I'm very easily... What about like Shapeways? Dissuading. Yeah, Shapeways, but you know...

Chris Gammell: So this is the exact same argument that I was given when I got my mill. And I should have listened to it, of course. And I'm now passing along to both of you. And yeah, yeah. You won't listen to it either. And that's fine because I like toys and you like toys. And I have a 3D printer. And you know, it's like, of course I didn't listen. But maybe if one person listening. Print five things on Shapeways first. Yeah. Yeah. That would be a good test.

Eliseo White: That was always my bar. And then that Monoprice came in so cheap. And I was like, fine. And then having spent a week looking at Thingverse things that I actually wanted to print. And I wanted to have. That was when I... You found something? Oh, they were... Well, putting together that puzzle thing. I wanted at each step of the puzzle for him to actually solve a physical puzzle. Like they have these... Oh, man. These clip-out dinosaur things. Yeah. And so you had to... So they're mostly flat. And they're like 30-minute prints. They aren't really huge. But they clip apart and then you have this ridiculous dinosaur skeleton. Or there were little airplanes that looked like that. I could get into that. And I wanted to send some Christmas ornaments to various people. And they would be, you know, modified for us or them. And I just... I got to the point where I had been in that. You should just buy something from Shapeways five times before you're serious to consider this. But having played with the printer and having spent some time on Thingiverse. There's stuff there that I would want to do. And I think that if I had the printer and was able to print those things, I would start modifying them. And I think that that is how I'm going to learn to do CAD. I don't think my plan of learning to do CAD in order to build some complicated thing is a good thing. I should learn to do CAD so that I can modify that. And then I will have it. And it will be a much easier path.

Chris Gammell: That's a good idea. I mean, it's tough with the CAD stuff. I don't know. Starting from an STL is always tough. Because it's just a wireframe. You want to have the parameters. But you might be able to... What are you trying to learn?

Eliseo White: Just generally, you know, how to modify it. How to put my initials on it. Stupid crap like that. How to take a puzzle that I don't think goes together as well as it might. And modify it so it's a little better. And post it back to Thingiverse as a derivative. And nothing important. I mean, I'm not doing it...

Chris Gammell: No, no. I meant what kind of software.

Eliseo White: Oh. I would probably go for the Fusion 360 because there's so many tutorials. And if I ever do want to do it professionally, that is a better skill set.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you'll learn some things quickly about that as well.

Eliseo White: So this may be a terrible plan.

Chris Gammell: No, it's not a bad plan. It's just that starting from STLs means that you'll have... So it's basically like... What would the equivalent be? It's not quite like having the bit file. It would be like... Having the assembly. It would be like having the assembly. Yeah. Yeah. When you expected C. And then... Yeah.

Eliseo White: Well, there are some Thingiverse things that seem to have more files.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But those are usually SCAD, unfortunately. I don't know. I've never actually seen a Fusion 360. But, you know, you might be able to go in the... The Fusion 360 has that like shared cloud thingy. That might... That actually might be. Because if you have a parametric model, that... I totally agree that like taking an existing parametric model and like modifying it or adding to it, that first off shows you why parametric modeling is so important in the first place. Because you're like, oh, it said five millimeters. And then I typed in seven millimeters. And then everything that was based on that seven millimeters adjusted. Right. And it's magical. And you go, oh my God. Yeah. It's really awesome.

Eliseo White: So other things I'm excited about. VR. Because we've mentioned this on our show a few times. I did not expect to fall in love with VR this year. I did not.

Chris Gammell: What year did you expect to fall in love with it? Never.

Eliseo White: My vision is pretty poor. I figured that was never going to be something that worked for me. I get car sick in parking lots.

Chris White: Oh God.

Eliseo White: And so I figured that virtual reality was always going to be vomitorium.

Chris White: Title. It's part of the experience.

Eliseo White: And yet Chris got the Vive VR set and he was playing with it and he said, you should try this. And I said, okay, but if I feel queasy, I'm taking it off. And I took off the helmet and I said, no, no, no. This should not be in your office where you play games. It should be in the living room because I want to play with it all the time. And I have racked up more hours.

Chris Gammell: Okay. I was going to want, I was wondering about that too. Like, is that something that you use more often?

Chris White: Yeah. She tends to use it for exercise where I tend to play games more. So. Okay. And the games, I don't know. I, well, yeah, they're kind of different experiences. It's all exercise with that thing though. Even the games are exercise. Yeah, of course. To a certain degree. So I can't do it for as long as I would sit and play a first person shooter five years ago or something.

Chris Gammell: Right. But that's probably a good thing overall too. Yeah. As I experience. Yeah. I am excited about that. I think the, the learning opportunities and just the, I think, I think, well, I tried at your house. I visited both of you and the, I was very grateful to get to try it. And, but I think, I think you pointed out the, the experience, it's not just games. It's also experiences. Yeah. And that, that part really stuck with me. And I think that that, you know, from a learning opportunity and all that other stuff, I think that that's, that's what really excites me. I mean, games are fun, but.

Chris White: I've seen a number of YouTube videos where they take them to like nursing homes.

Eliseo White: Yeah.

Chris White: And they'll recreate somebody's experience from when they were younger. Like, oh, this person always wanted, like, always liked to go to this particular beach. Okay. We, we got that set up and they'll put it on somebody who's in their eighties or nineties and their faces will just, they'll just be amazed because they're re-experiencing something they never thought they would experience. There's all sorts of stuff like that.

Eliseo White: Well, there's that Google Maps thing that's new.

Chris White: Yeah. Google just came out with Google Earth or Google. Oh yeah. Google Earth for it. Yeah.

Eliseo White: And I kept wanting to do the street view. I wanted to go to Paris and walk around and that's not what it is yet.

Chris White: Yeah.

Eliseo White: But it's a yet. Oh. It will be. There will be a time when I can go visit the Lourdes.

Chris White: Well, you can visit it. You're just, it's not as detailed at the street level as street view is.

Eliseo White: No, it's, it's the top level. It's the satellite view. But I mean, they've taken, they've taken the cameras all the way through that museum.

Chris White: Right. Oh, inside. Yeah.

Eliseo White: So I want, I want to go walk there. And, um, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So just like the changing face of tourism. Yes. That idea.

Eliseo White: Um, and if anybody's thinking about getting a treadmill or an exercise bike, I would seriously look at VR too. Nice. Because it is great exercise.

Chris Gammell: That's awesome.

Eliseo White: And really fun.

Chris Gammell: That's, and they're coming out with, it's probably, I mean, it's cheaper than a, uh, most treadmills too.

Chris White: So they're coming out with wireless for it this year, which apparently actually works. So kind of interested to see how that goes.

Eliseo White: Oh yeah. When that cable's gone, that'll be nice.

Chris White: Yeah. Things I am excited about, whatever SpaceX or Tesla is up to next year. Um, not necessarily from a consumer point of view, just, you know, SpaceX is always doing cool stuff and they're going to get back to flight in January. And, uh, Tesla's doing the self-driving stuff more and more. So be interested to see how that comes up against the realities of regulation and stuff.

Eliseo White: You had that video today you showed me where the Tesla had a, had an alert when the car ahead of the car that it was following. So two cars ahead braked suddenly and the car in front of it hit the car ahead of it. But the Tesla had already had the collision warning and the people that had already started slowing down. It was like, Hey, those people are going to crash and you really, you should slow down now because you don't really want to be part of that. And it was, it ended up being a three car crash.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Eliseo White: It was amazing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But the Tesla wasn't part of it, right? No.

Eliseo White: The Tesla wasn't part of it because the Tesla said, Hey, uh, we should slow down.

Chris Gammell: Probably would have. It's like the Tesla was part of it, but it knew it was coming. They were paying attention. Fantastic. They would have stopped anyway. Yeah. That's good.

Eliseo White: Yeah. I mean, they did have time to stop, but they would have stopped a lot closer.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Chris White: Any other year I would probably say I was interested in whatever Apple was doing, but I'm completely not interested in Apple. They've succeeded in completely alienating me this year.

Eliseo White: Is this the first podcast with my new non-Apple computer?

Chris White: No, you've done a couple.

Eliseo White: Oh, have I?

Speaker ?: All right.

Chris White: Wait, you're, you're both off the platform? Oh no, I'm not off the platform. I'm not off the platform. I don't think I can actually leave the platform, but, uh.

Eliseo White: But dear Apple, we had a big check planned for you.

Chris White: I'm not throwing big money at them. Let's put it that way.

Chris Gammell: Gotcha. Yeah, no, it makes sense. I think that's probably going to be, hopefully people, yeah, well, we'll see, we'll see what happens. Yeah.

Chris White: Actually, we're interested in seeing what Microsoft is up to and they seem to be doing some

Chris Gammell: cool hardware. Yeah, they've been doing some good stuff, I guess. Yeah.

Eliseo White: What about you? What hardware, what are you interested in? What are you excited about?

Chris Gammell: So I've been, um, I've been very nervous about the environment, um, since certain recent events. Uh, and I still am. And I think that there's a lot of important stuff that needs to happen with that. But the thing that I am most excited about is the, like, I fly a lot now, right? And I, I still get super excited whenever I see a field of wind turbines and I still get excited when I see a, uh, uh, solar field and stuff like that. And I know that living in California, you probably see that a lot more on houses and stuff like that anyways, but I am super excited about just the plummeting cost of solar, especially, um, I just think that it's, so actually, so I'm in, I'm at my parents' house in Buffalo right now too. And, uh, Mr. Musk also, yeah, Mr. Musk also has a project out here so that we used to be, used to be solar city, but then now it merged with Tesla again. Right. Um, and they have the biggest solar panel factory in the States will be opening here. Um, so that's, that's a good news. They just inked some, I just was watching local news with my parents. Uh, that was fun. Uh, but they were talking about, they just inked some news, some deal with Panasonic too. So, um, just in general, I think that the availability of solar, I talked to Martin Lorton about that stuff a lot too. And, um, I don't know, it's just, yeah, that's, that feels like future stuff to me. And I think we're moving into that regardless of other, uh, global politics stuff. And that feels really good. And I'm happy about that.

Chris White: I totally agree with you. And I think, yeah, solar is exciting and it's exciting because it's not something that can really be stopped. It's not like, yeah, you can, you can will the world to go back to something that's more expensive and dirtier. Right. And once solar reaches a certain power point, a certain cost per watt, it really doesn't matter what anybody does. Right. That's, that's what the market's going to do.

Chris Gammell: And, and, and that's always been, that's always been the thing too. It's like, it's always about getting to that economic point where it's not like some, like, don't make it a political issue anymore. Right. Just make it when it just becomes a pure economic issue. That is the best case scenario. Yes. Right. When, when farmer Joe is telling me the same thing as, you know, metropolitan Pete, like that's, that's the best case scenario because they're both looking out for themselves and like, that's, that's what I want. That's what I've always wanted. So the fact that we're moving into that realm, fantastic. I'm really excited about that. Um, and other stuff that I'm excited about, even though I talk about how disrupted it'll be is, I mean, automation, man, I don't know where that train's going, but it is going somewhere fast and it is going to be messy. And, uh, I think that also drives in, that goes into self-driving cars and stuff, but.

Chris White: Oh, self-driving cars. So, I mean, think of all the truckers in 10 years. That's a big industry that's gone.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's that, uh, there's that book by the MIT guys, the, um, crap. I forget what the, the guy had a really funny name, but he talks about that whole thing about how disruptive that'll be to the transportation industry. It's, I'm not looking for like economic strife. I just, I just don't know where it's going. And I will reiterate that like robotics, automation, you know, people listening to the amp hour, it's like you're in the electronics field. That is, you know, that's your bread and butter right there. Right. That is, I think sensor systems as well on, on, um, self-driving cars is a big field of opportunity for our listening audience. But, um, automation in general, like if you haven't started your company, start it now. You know what I mean? Like it's just, it's a really big deal. So, yep. That's my, that's my stuff.

Eliseo White: So what are you working on these days?

Chris Gammell: Uh, so I am actually working on a prototype with a friend in the automation industry, um, for just a, uh, proof concept for a simple, uh, thermocouple measuring device kind of thing. And, uh, but I'm going to do it in MicroPython too, just to see if how fast I can get it done. So.

Speaker ?: Neat.

Chris Gammell: That's what I'm doing just to see how many, how few lines of code it'll be and how easily it'll get implemented. And then I'll call, call both of you to make it into a real product for me. The, the firmware.

Chris White: Sure. What were you thinking?

Chris Gammell: No. Yeah. We talked about that a little bit, didn't we? The, uh, taking and, well, you said that both of you get the, you get the inquiries about, Hey, I have an Arduino project. Yeah. Oh man. I have an Arduino project. I want to make this product.

Eliseo White: I have an Arduino project. I want to decrease the battery by 4X or, or by, I want it to be one quarter.

Chris Gammell: The power, yeah.

Eliseo White: Yeah. And I want it to last for six times longer than it has ever lasted before. It crashes intermittently and I don't know why. And production starts next week. And, um, yeah, my rate for that scenario is much higher than my normal rate. Just in case anybody wonders.

Chris White: Well, it's so insidious because they go to investors and it's working. It's fine. Look, it works. It's in, it's, it's right. It's in the same form. We're going to ship it. The electronics work, the software, it's all working except it's, you know.

Eliseo White: You know, firmware update doesn't work, but that's just a feature.

Chris White: That's just details.

Chris Gammell: Right. Ship a thousand and then we'll fix it. Yeah. With a programming cable. We'll send a programming cable. And an engineer. Yeah. Right. It's like one of those, uh, shrinky dinks that, uh, you know, you add water and then it, uh, expands into an engineer. Great.

Eliseo White: I do think that that is an exciting area of growth for our industry because many of the things we used to, that seemed magic before are becoming more commonplace and more people can do them. But that step, that step between, uh, having a prototype and having something you can ship seems bigger than it did last year. Maybe because the bar of having a prototype has gotten lower.

Chris White: Yeah.

Eliseo White: And yet the bar of having something you can ship isn't changed. So it's, it's a bigger distance.

Chris White: When that bar changes, that's when we're out of jobs.

Eliseo White: Yes.

Speaker ?: Yes.

Chris Gammell: I don't think, I honestly, do you, do you actually fear being out of jobs as firmware engineers?

Chris White: Not for at least, uh, 10 or 15 years probably.

Eliseo White: Yeah. I don't fear not having a job. I, I fear getting bored of what I have. That's a separate issue. That's a separate issue and much scarier.

Chris Gammell: Agree.

Eliseo White: Because I do feel like for the last two years I have seen the same projects over and over again. Right. I mean, sensors have gotten cheaper and BLE has gotten cheaper and can we please stop sticking sensors on BLE and shoving them on bodies? Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Hey, it sells. They skip all the, the cool sensors too, right? Like no one has used that, uh, that LDC 1000.

Speaker ?: What is that one?

Chris Gammell: You know that one? Mm-mm. It's the inductive, uh, it's the inductive converter from TI. It like, uh, tells you when, it basically, it's just an inductor, like a resonant coil inductor. And then it tells when metal's nearby it. I just figured like someone would put that with a Bluetooth. I don't know what they would use it for, but it feels like that. It's a stud finder. I don't know. Yeah. Like a mini, mini stud finder.

Eliseo White: There was this whole branch of MEM sensors that were going to be chemical sensors.

Chris White: Yeah.

Eliseo White: And I don't feel like those have reached their promise. I wanted, I wanted a lot of those.

Chris White: Yeah. There were entire reactive, uh, little, uh, yeah. Chemical reactors on a chip that they were coming out with and to do detection of various gases and things.

Eliseo White: I feel like that stalled.

Chris White: I don't know if it's stalled necessarily or if it's really expensive and it's only in,

Eliseo White: you know, lab equipment.

Chris Gammell: That's. Well, that's tough too when there's like, if it's not all silicon on, on the chip, right? Cause then it gets really, yeah. If you can make everything out of silicon, that is just a processing. It's just a simple, you know, couple extra steps of processing of the file. Um, but, uh, yeah, if there's other stuff on there, it's, that can get fancy and weird.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: What, uh, what are both you building?

Chris White: I. That you could talk about. Um, well, I'm still, my, my airplane is in parts. I put an autopilot on it, which I haven't tried out yet.

Chris Gammell: Oh, cool.

Chris White: Um, cause, uh, last time I flew it and got some good video, I got a little far away and it decided that it wasn't cooperating with my control anymore for a couple of seconds.

Eliseo White: And you were flying over the ocean at the time. Yes. So it was a little more exciting. Right. Right.

Chris White: Right. So I would like it to come back instead of just decide to take a, a roll and dive. Um. Oh no.

Eliseo White: And then you've been more spent. I've been doing a lot of music. You've been spending a lot of your jobs. Yeah. My brother and. And not just the music part, but getting them set up and getting them tuned the way you want.

Chris White: Yeah. And I've been practicing a lot. My brother and I are working on, uh, uh, on some, some tunes. So that's occupying a lot more time than technology. New, uh, embedded theme song coming out? I keep thinking about that, but I don't have any good ideas for that. So probably sometime.

Eliseo White: Let's see. What have I been working on?

Chris White: Calculus.

Eliseo White: Yes. Well, I, I was trying to play with 3d printer. Um.

Chris Gammell: Calculus. What's, what's calculus? Is that.

Eliseo White: Well, I, so I took, uh, most of December off and, uh, decided that I wanted to learn something and I spent a little time doing code stuff just so I had more code. More stuff in my GitHub repository. But what I really wanted to do was to work on calculus. I want to be able to look at a calculus problem and be able to solve it. It is just always annoyed me that I feel dumb about integration. It has been 20 years since I didn't know what that S symbol meant. And I know what it means, but I'm still not good at it.

Chris White: You know, that was my entire rationale for going to grad school, right? I, I. God damn it. I don't understand physics. Well, I'll just go get another degree.

Eliseo White: So I picked up, I asked my math prof.

Chris Gammell: Weird decision points in your lives. Yes.

Eliseo White: I asked my math prof sister-in-law if there were any good books thinking I'd buy one. And she, she pointed me towards these, this free book online that is designed more for people who care about applications than about theory. So it's not so much proofs as it is. You have a sand trickling in at three centimeters per second.

Chris Gammell: Word problems. Yes. Yeah.

Eliseo White: And massive amounts of word problems. And I, I'm working on it and I enjoy it. I don't, I read, I read a biography of Ada Lovelace and it said she liked to do calculus problems in her free time. And I'm like, that's so cool. That's such a nerdy thing. I wish I could do that. And then, then, then those words kind of reverberated in my head. Like, I wish I could do, why aren't you? So.

Chris Gammell: Right. So you're going to share the name of this book, right?

Eliseo White: Oh, um, gosh, really? Cause, uh, I don't know the name of it.

Chris Gammell: You can't say free calculus book online and then it would be like, no!

Eliseo White: Transcendental problems. I mean, the whole name is terrifying. Uh, but yes, I will, uh, talk to Christopher for a second.

Chris Gammell: Hey, Chris. Hey. So, uh, how's it going? What kind of music do you play again? I don't know if, well, so people that don't listen to Embedded.

Chris White: So, uh, so the band I was in with my brother a while ago was sort of roots rock. So, uh, surf and blues rock kind of stuff. Nothing really after 1975 sort of style. Although we had to do a lot of original things. Um, lately he's been writing a lot of kind of guitar instrumentals, which are more in the Van Halen kind of realm of things. So I've been putting drums on those for him and, and bass and stuff. So, uh, he...

Chris Gammell: You ever thought of building your own, like, uh, MIDI triggers for drums and stuff?

Chris White: You know, I'm at, I thought about the things like that and, uh, I'm getting to the point where I'm tired of... I just want to use stuff instead of build stuff. Yeah, yeah. You know, so... Yeah, no, no, no. I get that. I get that. Um, there was a point at which I stopped being interested in Linux because I realized I was no longer interested in tweaking and customizing things and I just wanted stuff that worked. So I've kind of come to that with, with music. Although, on the other hand, I have thought about adding, you know, onesie-twosie, building onesie-twosie triggers or, or some sort of weird instrument that only I understand or something like that. Um, but for stuff I can just buy, I'm just gonna buy it. Right. Um, that's cool. But yeah, no, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's been fun and I haven't, I haven't played that much in a few years since I left the band. So this has given me an opportunity to start practicing again and, and realize how much I've lost.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's the same, it's almost the exact same problem as like, if you don't have that final... Yes. ...thing that you want to build, right, for electronics or software or whatever you're doing, right? It's the same thing, but like now you, if you don't have the band, there's, you know, there's less reason to be... Yeah, the band was like... That sounds really terrible.

Chris White: ...taking up six to seven hours a week of, I had to do this. Right. And it's like, well, now it's hard to get my butt down here and practice for three or four hours just by myself.

Chris Gammell: Right. And so that's actually a link that I wanted to bring up too. The, um, there was, I had posted a link in the show notes that we had done beforehand, but there was a, um, there was this really good... So I love this site, Raptitude. It's been going for a couple of years, but, uh, and then there's another one from Asimov, uh, Asimov, the, um, the, uh, science fiction writer. Right. And it was just about, about, you know, it's kind of like just in either case, right? Once you do have that problem or the thing you want to solve or the thing you want to build, it's just about spending the time. Right. And that's kind of the thing I've been struggling with for a lot of my life where I'm like, oh, I'm looking for the shortcut. I'm looking for the, you know, what is that, that one trick that I can do to get better at this thing?

Chris White: It's like, damn, Chris, you want to get better at that one, that one, that one book that will teach you the right way.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. I remember actually from music too. I remember I got, I waited for the guitar, right? I was like, oh, I'm going to get this one guitar and I got it. I got it. I finally got it after months of saving and I'm like, and I played it and it sounded just like the other guitar I had. Exactly. What happened? And then my friend picked it up and he made it sound beautiful. And it was like the most like codifying moment where it was like, oh, right. He practices a lot more than me. That's what I should be doing the whole time. Right. It's like, it's more about the, it's not the wand, it's a magician kind of thing.

Chris White: Yeah. It was the same story about Ted Nugent and Van Halen. Ted Nugent visited Van Halen in his studio and was really excited because he was going to finally play it through Van Halen's equipment and sound like Van Halen. And he picked up the guitar and he played it and he's like, wait, I still sound like me. I don't sound like you. It's like, yep. That's because it's not, it's not the equipment, it's the hands.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. I mean, and that's, that's the same thing for looking at other people's code. Right. Or in this case, the, the raptitude thing I'm talking about is like reading quicker, right? That's what he was talking about. And it's just, you just got to spend the time, right? It's just like, dang, it's, it sucks, the reality of it, but it's also freeing. So.

Chris White: Yeah. So the important part of spending the time is learning to make that not boring, finding ways to spend the time and enjoy doing that. That's the real hard part.

Chris Gammell: I think if you, if you, if you're working towards that, that final product too, I think that, that helps, right? If you're, so if you, well, you guys have the model price 3D printer, right? If you really needed that little widget for whatever you needed for, eventually you're going to make the 3D printer work, right? I mean, that's, and I know you did, but you also just keep going through it and going through it and going through it. And that'll, you'll get better at the end from it. So.

Eliseo White: There is.

Chris Gammell: You can also buy your way out of it.

Eliseo White: Yes. And.

Chris White: There's limits sometimes, right? Do I want to be a 3D printer maintenance expert? No. So. Right.

Eliseo White: And, and I hit that limit last, last week or whenever I was really playing with it, that.

Chris White: Yeah.

Eliseo White: I, I realized that this wasn't how I wanted to spend my time. I would rather go buy other things for my puzzle game than to do this for another hour. And it, it wasn't even that there wasn't material. I mean, people have written about this printer. They have all kinds of advice. Some of it's even useful. But, uh, I, I was sick of sitting there watching it print and fail.

Chris White: Well, that's the other problem is you can't really tell if anything you've done has worked for hours.

Eliseo White: I feel like so much like hand waving. There's so much voodoo.

Chris White: So what's the book?

Eliseo White: Um, it is.

Chris White: Oh yeah. Lisa's back.

Eliseo White: It's called Single Variable Calculus, Early Transcendentals, um, from David Gouchard. So transcendentalism wasn't it? Uh, but this came from the aimmath.org, AmericanInstituteOfMath.org. And they have a list of online free textbooks that are approved for use in classrooms. And they have calculus. They've got linear algebra, which I know is one that Chris always says that's something you should be good at.

Chris Gammell: For engineers. Liberal arts math. That's, I like that one. What? Liberal arts math. That's the first one on the list, too.

Eliseo White: Um, but mathematical computing, they're just textbooks. That's cool. And many of these textbooks you've, you search, like the one I'm using, which is the first one under calculus. Uh, if you search for the problem online, you not only get the answer, you get it worked out, which is great. Cause.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's awesome.

Eliseo White: Sometimes, I mean, if I go through and I do a bunch of problems and if I can't figure out how to get the answer in the back of the book, I do want to know why. Um, but this, this does involve a lot of time of just sitting there working on it. And there is no shortcut. Or if there is, the end product is not as good. The goal here is to learn stuff, not just to have done stuff.

Chris Gammell: You never hear people like, I have the, I have the solution to all your problems. Work on this for 10 years and you'll figure it out. Exactly. You know what I'm saying?

Eliseo White: Okay. If you've never heard somebody say that, let me say it right now. I have the solution to your problem. Work on it for 10 years.

Chris Gammell: What if it's like a clogged drain? Work by it for me for $19.95 a month. For 10 years. For 10 years. Yeah, yeah. Actually, the, the, the partial truth there is that, you know, I sort of tried to do that, but yeah. Well, no. We'll leave that out. We'll edit that out, right? Yeah. But even that, I mean, if you don't put the time in, it's not going to matter. It's a class. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, sadly, that's what learning comes down to.

Eliseo White: No, I don't think, you're trying to teach something and teaching is hard. I mean, and teaching helps you learn it better. We've, we've covered it all. I think we should end the podcast soon because clearly we've covered it all. Yeah. Also, I'm hungry.

Speaker ?: Okay.

Eliseo White: Well, okay. What else did you want to talk about? I did like this, this medium article about Asimov. That was pretty cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. He was, he was prolific. I didn't, I didn't realize how much he wrote. He's incredible. It's a, yeah.

Eliseo White: And he wrote not only the fiction, he wrote about science in a way that was so approachable. Yeah. That's awesome.

Chris Gammell: If you want to. I can't say I've actually ever read Asimov. I know that's really, I'm sure Dave would be yelling at me if he was here, but. Oh my God. No. It's a good try. It was a good try. Give it about 10 years. Your Aussie accent will get better.

Eliseo White: I like Asimov. He's a really good author. But I grew up on him, so, you know. Yeah. Of course I was going to like him. All right. All right. Christopher, do you have any other questions? I don't have any hands.

Chris White: Oh, questions.

Eliseo White: What? I have to, I'm heading back to our outline.

Chris White: I thought we were on the Amp Hour. Where's his outline?

Eliseo White: Uh, let's see. Chris Gammell, do you have any last thoughts you'd like to leave us with?

Chris Gammell: Uh, we did go through the Amp Hour links on the subreddit, so we can just do that now. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Rapid fire. No, it's fine. No. I got it right here. There are a lot of great links. We'll talk, I'm sure we'll talk about those in later, in later weeks.

Chris White: The iPhoto Analysis of the Revolutionary 8008 Microprocessor.

Eliseo White: Alan Yates discussing how the Valve lighthouses work. No, you should just come listen to our podcast, because that was one of my favorites this year.

Chris Gammell: No, it's on YouTube. Kids like YouTube. I've referenced that like three or four times, so, on this show.

Eliseo White: The AirPods get zero of 10 iFixit repairability and have bad solder joints on their BGA. Wow.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they're really bad. I don't know. This is cool. People can check out the subreddit. They can check out your Patreon, which is patreon.com slash embedded, right? That is true.

Eliseo White: Yeah. And they can check out your Patreon.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Eliseo White: Which is... Oh.

Chris Gammell: Slash the EF hour. Me?

Eliseo White: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Where can they find your Twitter?

Eliseo White: For Embedded, it's Embedded FM. For me, it's Logical Elegance.

Chris White: Oh, I'm Stony Monster. Sure.

Chris Gammell: You should have like a voice that you do with that, like, rawr, I'm Stony Monster.

Chris White: Yeah, it would come out like Elmo or something.

Chris Gammell: Dony Monster. Well, all those links on the Amp Hour subreddit also get tweeted out on the Amp Hour Twitter, so that's another good thing. So, you can follow that. I would not recommend following me or Dave on Twitter. What? What? Yeah. There's nothing good there. There's nothing good there.

Eliseo White: I follow you on Twitter. You have amusing things sometimes.

Chris Gammell: Sometimes.

Eliseo White: Hey, given how many people I have unfollowed in the last three months...

Chris Gammell: There's a 2017 thing. Build more stuff, be on social media less, man. Yes. I don't... I've been already doing that, and I don't miss it. Feel better about yourself. Stop going to social media. Yeah. Feel better about everything. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for being on the show. I appreciate it, and... Thanks for being on our show. Keep up the good work of 2017. Yes.

Eliseo White: It has been fun talking to you. And thank you to Chris Gammell for being on the Amp Hour. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to Chris Gammell for probably editing this. Wee! And, of course, thank you for listening to the Embedded Hour. The Amp Hour. The Amp Hour. The Amp Hour. The Amp Hour Embedded Holiday Spectacle. Spectacle.

Chris Gammell: Spectacle. Yeah, it's been a spectacle.

Chris White: That was just water, right? Yes.

Chris Gammell: All right. We'll talk to you in the new year.

Eliseo White: Have a good one.

Chris Gammell: Talk to you later, Chris.

Eliseo White: Bye. Bye. Bye. Embedded is an independently produced radio show that focuses on the many aspects of engineering.

Chris Gammell: But we're kind of only electronics.

Eliseo White: It is a production of Logical Elegance, an embedded software consulting company in California.

Chris Gammell: And we don't have a company.

Eliseo White: If there are advertisements in the show, we did not put them there and do not receive money from them. We didn't put any ads either. At this time, our sponsors are Logical Elegance and listeners like you.

Chris Gammell: And this week, the Amp Hour. Right? Bye.