#335 – When the TV watches you

Chris Gammell: This is the Up Hour Podcast. Recorded February 8th, 2017. Episode 335. When the TV watches you.

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. What's up, nerd? Well, one of the results of... So, you know, I work from a shared workspace now, mHub. It's great. Turns out there's people there. Wow. Yeah. And the downside to people is that I got my first cold in like a year and a half. Right. Yes. Apparently humans...

Dave Jones: You're touching too many things. You need to be one of those germophobes who, you know, always carries around the antibacterial spray. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, I used to work in a fab. I would still get sick. It was always... It's never the clean environments. It's always, you know, eventually there's someone... Excuse me. Someone with kids nearby. And that's what ultimately... You know how it goes, right? Like there's... Eventually someone's got a kid and the kid is always a germ carrier and then that passes along the line. So... Ah, yeah. First one of the year. So... Awesome. What are you going to do? How you been?

Dave Jones: I'm all right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All's well down there? Same old, same old. Yeah? Okay.

Dave Jones: No, I'm super busy. I don't have enough hours. Need to optimize my efficiency. Your workflow.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Well, I saw a video with you this week with your shirt off. What the hell, man? Ain't nobody got time for that.

Dave Jones: Clickbait. Clickbait. Yeah, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: For who? For who?

Dave Jones: I don't know. I'd say, you know, it's a shock factor. You know, it's like shock factor. It was shocking.

Chris Gammell: Yes, that's right.

Dave Jones: You're right.

Chris Gammell: So what was that? I did watch most of that video.

Dave Jones: It was a mailbag episode and it was an ECG thing. You know, someone sent me an ECG kit. So I tried it out. And of course, you've got to stick the electrode things on you and stuff like that. And yeah, that was fun.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I was surprised at the amount of noise that you experienced when you were just kind of moving that thing around. But I guess there's a lot of cabling noise.

Dave Jones: Yeah, apparently when your muscles twitch and all sorts of things. And you probably got triboelectric affecting cables as well. Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Chris Gammell: Just from moving around.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But no, no. I think if you like twitch and stuff like that. But I thought like, you know, you see them put ECGs on. I don't know. I don't think I've. No, I've never had an ECG. Like in a doctor at a hospital or something. So I don't know. Do they ask you to stay completely still and don't do anything? Well, tell me about that.

Chris Gammell: I didn't actually see what the points you connected were though. So you did. Did you do ankles?

Dave Jones: Well, there's many different ways to do it. I use the three. There's a name for it. Wilcox something or other. Anyway, I use that like two down on the bottom stomach almost to the hip. Okay. Kind of thing. So two down there and one up on the right shoulder.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Because sometimes don't they do it like at your ankle as well? Like the lowest grounding point kind of thing?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You can do a leg. Yeah. You can do bottom of leg and stuff like that. There's many different ways depending on what result.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, that's just tough too. I mean, like that's like, I feel like that kind of biological stuff is such, you know, electronics seem the real world like that. I always, you know, I saw a lot of app notes about like just filter the crap out of it. But at the same time, you got these spikes, like you're trying to watch the ventricle, you know, electrical signals and all that. I don't know the names of it, but, you know, you're trying to see these pretty relatively fast signals compared to what you're trying to do there. And so the levels are just, it's crazy to kind of monitor that.

Dave Jones: Well, the entire musculoskeletal system is all electrical impulses. I mean, you know, like that's how it works. So it's going to interfere in some way. We're just bags of salt water, huh? Salt water and electricity. So, you know, if you twitch your muscles and things like that, you can actually pick that up. Ha ha.

Chris Gammell: Well, I beat that by not having any muscles, Dave.

Dave Jones: Right.

Speaker ?: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Got you again, biology. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Pays to be a wimpy nerd, huh?

Chris Gammell: That's right, man. That's right. Right. You know, the robots will take out the strong humans first, so. Oh, right. Right. Right. Exactly. So that's pretty cool though. And that was like a kit though, right? Like the, it was like a.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It was a kit. Well, it was, yeah, it was a crowd supply.

Chris Gammell: Oh, crowd supply. Cool.

Dave Jones: Kit. Yep. So. Yeah. I think it comes pre-assembled. Okay. It's like, it's not a kit. I think it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, like a kit, but like you're buying.

Dave Jones: Like a, the board is ready built.

Chris Gammell: ECG kit. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You're ready to start measuring. That's cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Stuff like that. So, yeah, but I was just surprised by the, like I've done it before and I've gotten similar sort of results on, but I'm always surprised by how touchy it is. You know, it's like.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You have to get it just right. And then if you're lucky and hold your tongue at the right angle, you might get the waveform you're after. Right. So you don't, that's the problem. Like, how do you know whether or not it's, it's the real heart waveform or whether or not it, you know, there was something else twitching at just that moment that caused a little blurt. Right. You know? Yep. Like you just, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: So. So honestly, my only real experience with that kind of stuff was that little finger ear thingy that I did for my blinky heart project. And even that, that's not even, that's not even electrically controlled. That's just, you know, shining light through the skin.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's a pulse oximeter. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: And, and for that, all it is really is, you know, like shining light through the skin and then kind of, but, but you still get the jostling effect. That's really the only, the only thing that's the same. Okay. Yeah. I don't know. It's, it's tough when you got that stuff hit in the real world, you know, like that's, that's what it really comes down to. So have you, have you, have you done design with that or no? Like, like, like bio design? No. No. Nope.

Dave Jones: Sure. Someone out there has, maybe we can get a bio design engineer on the show.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that would be great. Actually. If people know someone. Please, please write in. We do have a suggestions page for guests. If people don't know that we have like a, it's like a Google doc. You can kind of put in, if you know the person or how to get, get ahold of them or just generally suggest people. We like that. So.

Dave Jones: Well, I kind of, sort of have, I used to work for Cochlear. I did some consulting work for Cochlear. Oh, that's the one with the, the inserts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. The hearing implant and stuff. So I worked on their new generation stuff. That was just after I left Haltium. Yeah. I was doing some consulting work. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Not really. You know.

Chris Gammell: I'm always amazed with the, you know, those, what are they called? Hearing aids, right? Just the general hearing aids. I never really thought about it. Like, so I had a family member that got one and then kind of started doing the investigation and it's like, you got to switch out the batteries on those things every day or two. You know?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a big market in like the rechargeable systems. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: Rechargeables are newer, but even for a long time, they were just like, they, you would just buy like a hundred, a hundred small cells at a time. And when you think about it though, it was like from the analog signal processing perspective, it's like, no, that thing's on all the time. And it's always, you know, it's always getting some kind of signal and that, that just eats batteries. It's crazy.

Dave Jones: And it's probably doing DSP these days. These days for sure. You can fit DSP in, inside these tiny little hearing aids that go in your ear, you know, because that's where all the magic happens. Right. You know, otherwise it's crude. It's just, yeah, okay. You can do some filtering and some amplifying. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. I mean, yeah, you can, you can do like some, what's like some Bessel and some Butterworth and all that jazz. And yeah, I mean like, yeah, you could, you could do some kind of filtering, like you said, with op amps or, you know, you can get those small, but, but ultimately that's going to hit, unless you have some kind of activation filter where you turn off the circuit until you get some impulse that, and then that you might miss the beginning of a word or something. So it, it gets, it gets pretty tough. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm sure they're all DSP these days, you know, maybe the real super cheap ones aren't, but I'm sure the good brand ones are.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, that's another, if there's people listening that are in that field, we'd love any, any of the bio stuff. I think that's, that's very fascinating. I mean, because that's, you know, I, I, I look at it as a, you know, like, so like the boomer generation, right. They're all aging. They're probably median 55, age of 55 right now. Right. Or whatever the, maybe even older than that, but there's just so much, there's so going to be so many more products that come into the marketplace for that age group, because it's just such a consumer, large consumer group that there'll be more and more stuff like that. And then people living longer as well. You know, if you imagine that over time, you probably map the number of people that have hearing aids against age and it good, it goes pretty high in terms of percentage of population. So yeah.

Dave Jones: Must, because we're living longer as a species.

Chris Gammell: So yeah. Not to mention like, I mean, hell, I probably lost a shitload of my hearing just from being a drummer and a guitarist and a piano player. Right. And then you think about like just the rock and roll age, right? I mean, like, so like all the people that are in the boomer era, we're also listening to their amps really loud and yeah, they're hearing screwed. Rock on. Yeah. Right. Exactly. There is a market opportunity there, folks. Yeah. Hey, guess what? Oh, go ahead. Yeah. What? What?

Dave Jones: I met a listener in the lift, the building here the other day. Really?

Chris Gammell: Wait, a listener but not a viewer?

Dave Jones: He kind of views a bit, but mostly an amp hour listener.

Chris Gammell: Oh, hey. Well.

Dave Jones: I was in the lift. I was there with Huxley and he went, you're Dave Jones. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh-huh. That's correct. Yes.

Dave Jones: And yeah, I assumed he knew me from the blog, but no, the air power.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Dave Jones: So there you go.

Chris Gammell: Another one. That's great, man. What does he do?

Dave Jones: Tech in some audio field, I think it was. Uh-huh. Yeah. Something like that or some audio, yeah. Something like that.

Chris Gammell: The listens while soldering crowd. That's a strong crowd. I think we've got our listening while soldering crowd. We've got our listening while driving crowd. We've got a list. Shore commuting. Shore commuting, yeah. Right. And then the dog walkers, the dishwashers, the gym goers, all the. So welcome to all of you. Hello. We're in your ears. Oh, what?

Dave Jones: 10,000? How many are we up to now? 15,000. 15,000? 15,000? 15,000? Wow. Awesome.

Chris Gammell: Definitely.

Dave Jones: We still don't make a cent from it.

Chris Gammell: No, that's okay.

Dave Jones: Although we kind of do. Our patron supporters. Oh, sure. But we spend like that on the gear and stuff. So we have a little booty. But I don't think we've ever taken money out of it.

Chris Gammell: No, I don't think so.

Dave Jones: No. Why?

Chris Gammell: I've been doing biology stuff as well. Do you tell? I'm growing algae. Did I tell you about that?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So I've been growing algae. I kind of started a new YouTube project. I'm not really going to talk about that here. But basically, I've been growing algae just for fun. And now I'm working. As you do? Yeah, exactly. I've just always been really. So, okay. Maybe I should just announce it. So basically, we had that Science Not Silence episode two episodes ago. And basically, I've just been looking for this creative outlet. I've been very frustrated. People can figure that out very easily. I've been looking for this creative outlet. And I'm very concerned about the environment. And I found out about this thing called the Azolla event. Have you ever heard of that? No. So 50 million years ago, there was this like fern-like algae thing that basically absorbed a bunch of carbon. And then as the algae died, it kind of sunk to the bottom of the ocean. So it was like floating on these freshwater oceans, effectively, near the Arctic.

Dave Jones: Oh, so then it became a carbon trap. That's right. At the bottom of the ocean.

Chris Gammell: That was actually credited with moving the earth from a hothouse to an ice house.

Dave Jones: Ah, okay. That started in ice age when? How long ago?

Chris Gammell: 50 million years ago. So they talked about the PPMs. It was like 3,300 PPMs for CO2 to like 600. I got all this from Wikipedia. And I was reading this and I was like, oh, wow, this is just really interesting, cool, whatever. And so I started thinking about it and I was like, well, I mean, maybe there's opportunity there. I don't know. But what I really realized is that I don't know anything about biology. Like, I mean, I don't know if I've ever told my story on here, but I was chased away from biology at a very young age. Did I ever tell that story or no? No. Okay. So I was in bio class in ninth grade, right? First day of biology.

Dave Jones: Something scarred in for life. Here we go.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So first day of biology class.

Dave Jones: They made you cut a frog.

Chris Gammell: It was an earthworm. And first thing that happens is the teacher says, okay, everybody pair up. And everybody paired up except for me. So I'm already odd man out, right? I'm by myself.

Dave Jones: Because you're the nerd in the class. No. Well, yes.

Chris Gammell: I mean, yes, I was the nerd, but no, but no, that's not the only reason, Dave. But yes, I was the nerd. And that's, okay. And so I'm by myself. And then the teacher says, okay, everybody, pull out your scalpels. We're going to make our first cut into the earthworm, right? And already I'm grossed out because they're these, you know, these, you know, six inch earthworms. Oh, they're dead or alive. They're dead. They're in embalming fluid, whatever. Right. And you know, you're doing your thing. You know, you have to cut them open and look at the different pieces, whatever. But the first thing I do is I grab the scalpel and I grab the cover. And I'm trying to like illustrate it here. I grab the edge of the cover where my finger kind of wraps around the bottom edge of the cover. And I pulled the scalpel out and I immediately sliced my finger up. And I was like, well, that's it. I'm done. I'll never be a doctor. I'm never gonna do anything biology related. And then I went to the nurse and got a tentative shot. And, you know, that was the end of that.

Dave Jones: And then you went on to wield a soldering iron.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. This is dangerous. Right. Well, you know, you can at least, at least if you sear your skin, you seal it shut, you know, and it's like cauterizing versus opening. Yeah. Okay. So. Right. So that was my story about biology. And so, I mean, like, honestly, I just never was really that interested in it. And I don't know anything about it. And so I started looking at this thing. There's all an event, I think, that's really interesting. And so I was like, you know what? I should grow some algae in my apartment. That's normal, right? Completely normal. Yeah. And so I started, I got a kit. There's an Amazon kit. It's nice. It's, who's it from? Algae Research Supply in Carlsbad, California. I got the little booklet here. And I now I.

Dave Jones: A penny, Carlsbad? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And so I've got a microscope that I, I was watching Micah's channel and she's got a microscope, a little USB mic and I was, a microscope. And I was, you know, playing with that thing. And that's great for like soldering and stuff. But now I'm able to also like look at tiny algae too. And that's great. You know, like that's okay. So now I can look at algae as well. And so I got this little kit. And, but what I'm also doing is also, you know, monitoring things like pH and electrical conductivity and temperature. And basically I'm now building the circuits to, to go and monitor all the crap that biological stuff does. So, so that's my new project.

Dave Jones: And there's a kit and new business coming soon.

Chris Gammell: I don't know about new business, but I mean, what I really want to do is like, I also want to do like CO2 monitoring and stuff like that. And, uh, uh, you know, just watch, I, I, like I said, I don't know anything about how, um, I don't know anything about how plants grow. I don't really know anything about like nutrition and monitoring and all that other stuff. And, uh, I have worked with former CE students, uh, contextual electronics students about like, um, you know, working on hydroponics and stuff like that. And so kind of borrowing some of those circuits and using that knowledge to move forward. So have you done stuff like that or no?

Dave Jones: No, I haven't. But don't get me started.

Chris Gammell: Well, electrical conductivity measurement is actually one of, one of the things that I did not expect is like, that is a really interesting measurement actually. Have you never heard of that? Electrical conductivity? Well, in, in like a solution though. I mean, yes, you know what a conductivity is, but like. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's actually electrolyte conductivity, but, but basically you, you pump an AC, so you generate an AC signal, you pump it into a liquid and then you use the, the probe, that goes into that liquid as the feedback element on it, on a, just like a simple, uh, non-inverting amplifier. And so, um, it acts as the feedback element. And so what you basically do is then you, you see from point A to point B, you see how your, um, your signal grows, right? Uh, yeah. Grows or shrinks or, I think you can go in either direction actually. But basically, that doesn't sound right. But basically the, the, the, the, the solution acts as a feed, as a feedback element in, in the op amp loop. If I'm illustrating that with words correctly.

Dave Jones: To what end? Why don't you just measure the conductivity?

Chris Gammell: You mean just like putting a, two probes of a, uh, uh, cause it has to be an AC signal versus DC signal?

Dave Jones: Oh yeah, no, but you can get AC, yep. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, this is basically just building your own piece of test equipment. That's, that's what.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but you can do that. Like an LCR meter will do that. It'll measure.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Interesting. Okay.

Dave Jones: The impedance at, you know, a hundred kilohertz, 10 kilohertz. What, what, uh, frequencies are we talking about here?

Chris Gammell: Uh, I think it's, it's not much. I mean, it's like a couple kilohertz, I think. Right. So it's, yeah, it's not much, but yeah, that's a good point. Actually, I should compare that to like an LCR meter. I don't think I actually own an LCR meter or if I've, do I own an LCR meter? This is sad. I don't think I do. Truly sad. I'm sorry. I mean, what, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Get an LCR meter.

Chris Gammell: Okay. I will.

Dave Jones: Amazon. You're obsessed with Amazon. Just order it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's a good point.

Dave Jones: Have you got one of those voice activated Amazon things? We can order it right now. Right.

Chris Gammell: Have you heard about that? Have you heard about that thing where, uh, Alexa, order an LCR meter, which means right now if people are listening on their speakers, then it's going to go order an LCR meter from them.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Uh, we can do this all show. Yeah, that's right. Right. Yeah. No, there, there was like, I think there was like a TV program where. Yes, there was. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Something like that. And they, it was a dollhouse, I think. I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alexa, go order me a dollhouse. And apparently. Gotta be careful. A whole bunch of people.

Chris Gammell: Gotta be careful.

Dave Jones: That's the dumbest thing ever. I mean, it's just.

Chris Gammell: Whatever. Stupid.

Dave Jones: Why?

Chris Gammell: Either fun to play with.

Dave Jones: Why does it have to be, why does it have to be that easy to order something? I mean.

Chris Gammell: I don't, I don't have one yet. I don't know. Like. I have, I have. Okay. Google.

Dave Jones: Things can get too simple that they become a detriment.

Chris Gammell: Uh, sure. Yeah.

Dave Jones: If, if that makes sense. That's, you know. I don't know what it was.

Chris Gammell: Did you hear that?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Oh. I heard something. Yeah. I said, I said, okay, Google. And then it, it, it, it responded. Your phone. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. See, I don't have that as disabled.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, anyways. So, I'm getting into the biology stuff. Uh, that's interesting to me. So, um. Cool. Yeah. Doing a little bit of YouTube stuff about it too.

Dave Jones: More adventures in biology in future episodes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know, another thing I'm doing with it, um, which I'm not sure if it's interesting. Um, so I'm, I'm basically borrowing some circuits, but I have this new idea too. Um, and it's not, it's not new by any, any stretch, but, um. But, uh, I have this standardized header that I'm putting on everything that I'm doing from now on. And, um, it's like a 20 pin header and it's keyed. So it's got two volts and I'll, I'll put a link. I'll, let me put a note to, to put a link in as well. Um, uh, but, uh, it's keyed in order to, uh, you know, so you can't switch it around and stuff like that. But it, you know, it's just basically simple breakouts for analog pins and, you know, really nothing different than like an, uh, Arduino header other than, uh, or, or other similar, you know, standardized headers. It's just really compact. And, uh, but basically the idea is just put it on a board. So if I find a circuit that I like, or I want to do a breakout or anything like that, basically you can handle, I'd say 90% of the stuff that I normally do, you know, analog input, spy, I squared C, serial, stuff like that. And just a nice little compact 20 pin header, two by 10. Uh, so it's a standard one inch by 0.2 inch across. And now I can throw it on just about any circuit board and it's pretty standard. It's called the CE header. So. Sweet. Yeah. You ever do anything like that or no? I mean, that's.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's yeah. Modular based. Yeah, exactly. I've done those sort of stuff in test gear and things like that. I mean, does it persist?

Chris Gammell: I guess, I guess that's the real question is, does it persist? I mean, you, do you still use it or I don't know, it's probably coming to a lot of times.

Dave Jones: If, uh, if it was warranted. Yeah. I would still do it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But you know, you're not doing anything like that now though.

Dave Jones: No, not at the moment. Okay.

Chris Gammell: That's cool. Yeah. So just, uh, playing around with that stuff and, uh, yeah, quite a, quite a few of the, um,

Dave Jones: uh, development board companies do that, you know? Yeah, that's true. They have like a standardized header and they, and then they've got like 50 add-on boards that all plug into the standardized header.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think like, uh, PMOD is one of those. And, uh, there's, yeah, there's a couple like that. You know, the one that isn't like that, but it should be is the Grove connector. The, uh, Seed Studio does their Grove connector. Right. And there's like no rhyme or reason to it. I mean, like there's a power pin, a ground pin, and then like either two digitals or two analogs or something or other, but it's like, there's no keying. There's nothing that like stops you from plugging a digital into an analog. I don't, maybe I just don't understand it, but like that, that Grove stuff doesn't make any sense to me. It's like, you still have to know what's what.

Dave Jones: I think TG Lint have one as well, don't they?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's the PMOD. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's the PMOD, is it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I think they're PMOD. Yeah.

Dave Jones: They're the PMOD. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And, uh, but the Seed. Quite a lot.

Dave Jones: I've, I've seen a lot of them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I mean, and, and don't get me wrong. I mean, I, I like the, I like the Seed Studios, they're the, um, the Grove stuff because then they sell the cables and the headers real cheap. You know, they're just two millimeter JSTs, but, uh, but the cables are assembled, which is like the, I think I mentioned that on the show before. That's, that's the magic. So we have. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah.

Dave Jones: But I'm, uh, what, what have we got this week? News wise.

Chris Gammell: Oh, um, well, a couple of things. Um, uh, NXP. Uh, they, uh, there, there is a new chip company. And it's not a merger. No, it's not. Well, it's a divesting. So it's like basically, you know, compression and expansion.

Dave Jones: So if there's something not merging there. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There, there are no startups here, but it is a, it's a new, it's, it's what you're going to do is you're going to see this in the marketplace. You can be like, what the hell is that? And then eventually you'll go look it up and be like, oh, okay. So next period is the new NXP spinoff. Basically all of it.

Dave Jones: Sorry, but that name sucks.

Chris Gammell: Oh, they paid millions for that. I guarantee it. They paid some terrible naming consultants. Something somewhere.

Dave Jones: I know. It was like that, that would come out of a week long brainstorming tiger team. Oh yeah. Freaking wank session. You know, Nexperia. Like, oh my God. Yep. Oh, cause it's NXP and Nexperia. Oh God. No. Shoot me now.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Well, some, some family somewhere, you know, is skiing next to that. I'm sure. Right.

Dave Jones: Does, has anyone been through that? Like a name thing? I've, I've, I've been through that.

Chris Gammell: Um, I mean, we've all been through that with, uh, Agilent to Keysight to whatever.

Dave Jones: Uh, yeah, but we didn't, you know, we didn't have it. Have you, have you ever been in, in it when you had a say in it?

Chris Gammell: Oh, come on. Engineers never have a say in that. Come on.

Dave Jones: No, we do. I, I worked at a company where, uh, you know, not the name of the company. We will change names four times, but we were like bored out. And yeah, we didn't really have a say in the name of the new company, but, um, new products, they would actually put it to a, um, you know, a suggestion thing. Yeah. You know, you, you put in the suggestion for your name and then, you know, it gets down to like, and they'd choose, but ultimately, you know, someone chooses from like the top five or something. Right. Right. You know, most popular, but yeah, you know, so you do kind of, you know, if you have a funky enough name, we'll make it in the top five and you can have it picked for the new product.

Chris Gammell: Like Bodie McBoatface. Bodie McBoatface. That's it.

Dave Jones: That is so bullshit that they didn't go ahead with that.

Chris Gammell: I know. Yeah. That was, if people don't know, that was like a, I mean, they, this happens a lot. Anytime everyone's like, oh, we're going to do an internet contest for a name. Bad idea, folks. Bad idea. Don't do it. You're going to get some dumb ass suggestions.

Dave Jones: And they're going to get voted. The dumb riggers. Of course. Right.

Chris Gammell: Someone's going to figure it out that it's, it's more fun to troll like that. And then, yeah. Yeah. Bodie McBoatface becomes a reality.

Dave Jones: And then it goes viral on Facebook. Right. Exactly. Yeah. If people don't know, there was some big shipping company or something and they were doing this new ship. Or was it, no, it was like a survey ship or something. Something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think it was a survey ship. Something like that.

Dave Jones: And yeah. Like a, you know, government survey ship or something. Was it English or something?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I don't remember actually. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, they, yeah. Internet contest, you know, the winner, the most popular online voted name. That'll be the new name for this boat. And somebody put Bodie McBoatface and it went viral on Facebook and everywhere else. So everyone voted for Bodie McBoatface and it beat all the others like three to one or something. And they said, oh no, we can't name our boat Bodie McBoatface. You know, like bullshit. Not with that attitude, you can't. Exactly. Bastards. Anyway, they, they did, um, name one of the ocean bottom. Like, I think it was one of like a, yeah, it was like a survey ship that has like little autonomous drones that go under the, you know, little submarine things. And they named one of the submarines Bodie McBoatface.

Chris Gammell: Really?

Dave Jones: One of the little, yeah, automated submarine.

Chris Gammell: Oh, like a, uh, like a discovery sub kind of thing. Yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So they named that Bodie McBoatface and not the real ship. They called it something, you know, and they just went, nah, we're just going to pick

Dave Jones: Right, right.

Chris Gammell: We're going to call this the infinity or something. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker ?: God.

Dave Jones: If you're going to do that, go through with it.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Dave Jones: Everyone's going to remember that boat now, you know? Well, they won't now, but they would have. It was called Bodie McBoatface. That's gold.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, let that be a lesson too. Yeah. But yeah, Nexperia, please. Anyway, what's it all about? NXP has spun off what?

Chris Gammell: So it's their, uh, it is their, like passives and stuff like that. Basically they sold.

Dave Jones: Discreet, Logic, and MOSFET.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So if you need like a, you know, a 74 series chip that's still getting made, stuff like that, or, uh, I think even like the FETs, like something, you know, they make some nice FETs. Um, so, but it's basically, you know, NXP is Philips and who else was there?

Dave Jones: Oh God. Who was they?

Chris Gammell: Freescale is also in there now.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So Nexperia is basically, I think the old Philips stuff that wasn't NXP, that wasn't the LPC family stuff. So yeah, just keep an eye out.

Dave Jones: $85 billion annually. What the?

Chris Gammell: No. Where do you see that?

Dave Jones: It's, it's in the, about Nexperia. Nexperia is a dedicated global leader.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's volume.

Dave Jones: Oh, oh, volume. God, high volume. Yes, sorry. Oh, geez. I was gonna say.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. It says 2.75 billion for, actually this is kind of interesting math now, right? So it says 3 billion for, uh, 2.75 billion for the, uh, that's what they paid for it. They, they, uh, put out 85 billion parts per year. Uh, so the average cost of these parts is not high.

Dave Jones: That, that is a Boaty McBoat face load of chips.

Chris Gammell: Yes, yes. Ah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: 11,000 employees. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, what are you gonna do? You know, conglomerate's gonna conglom. And deglom.

Dave Jones: And then, and deglom. Is that the official terminology?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, sure, sure, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Do we give a shit anymore? I mean. No, I mean.

Chris Gammell: No, come on. I mean, like, you know, you do it the same way I do, right? It's like.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, do you really care? I mean, like, yes, when you finally get down to it, if you're buying like a nice op amp, yes, you probably look at the, at the, especially if you're looking for like very specific specs, you might look at the, the, uh, the brand. But like most of the time, like, do you care if you're buying a diode from Diode Zinc? I mean, like. Nope. It's a parametric search.

Dave Jones: Parametric search.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. I mean, like, as long as it's like. Whoever pops out on top. Right, exactly. And if you can, if they're, if they can hit the specs, which is, you know, you kind of are assuming at a certain point, but like, if they can hit the specs, I have no brand loyalty to diode manufacturers unless, unless it's some like 1200 volt, you know, if I was buying like a 1200 volt silicon carbide, it's like, okay, then yeah, I really care. Right. Like, what was that one that you showed?

Dave Jones: We had to, we had to do that.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: We were, cause we were in a very specific niche industry where the brand of the chip you used mattered to the customer.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really?

Dave Jones: Uh huh. Yes.

Chris Gammell: To the, to your customer you're saying? So like.

Dave Jones: Yes. To our, to our, like one, like one of three potential customers. Wait, so why did they care? They cared because it was the industry. There was a Motorola, was it Motorola? God, I can't remember. Motorola and, um, uh, Cirrus Logic.

Chris Gammell: Uh huh.

Dave Jones: Right. And they make like, there are probably two, maybe there's a third one at the time that may, yeah, I think there was, I think there was three companies in the world that made these leading edge 24. Oh, the ADCs. You mentioned this before. Low data rate ADCs. Yeah. Yeah. That cost a couple of hundred US bucks a pop. Right. Yeah. And the, the customer, like, yeah, we're, we're designing our new system, our new product, you know, which we're evaluating these ADCs, which one is going to give us the best performance, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And we learned that, you know, if you use the wrong brand of chip, the customer is going to shake their head and go, nah, we don't trust that.

Chris Gammell: Right. Does that mean that they're getting advertised to by the chip manufacturers though? Like the end customer?

Dave Jones: No, it's just a, it's just a warm fuzzy from 30 years ago, you know, because the industry is just filled with all these old graybeards, you know, and they don't trust anything else. You know, like the Cirrus Logic, by the way, was the Ducks guts, right? That's the one everyone trusted. Right. So all these others, you know, big players tried to come in and, oh, we want a slice of that market and it's going to, you know, basically they failed because, uh, no, the, the brand loyalty to Cirrus Logic was so large that, you know, nobody trusted anything else.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's interesting. It was weird. I mean, does that happen these days? I don't really know. Maybe in the, like the audio industry, like maybe, I don't know, like, oh, well, that has to have that certain DAC or something, but.

Dave Jones: Yeah, possibly something like that. I don't really know. I'm sure in the audio fool industry, which we'll get into. Oh yeah. Is that a segue?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I saw your story about that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Is that a segue? Sure, sure. Go ahead. Let's segue. Anyway, um, somebody posted on the, uh, EEV blog forum this morning and I linked it in about how can you, uh, how can you prove that expensive audio file speaker cables are bullshit by measuring them?

Chris Gammell: So. Right. LCR meter. It's all coming back around. Yep.

Dave Jones: And my argument is.

Chris Gammell: Alexa, buy an LCR meter.

Dave Jones: Buy a monster cable.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right, right.

Dave Jones: And my argument is you can't, there is no possible way that you can measure anything that will convince an audio file that there's no difference in those cables.

Chris Gammell: Well, if you just fire up your turbo and calculator, Dave, I think you'd be able to.

Dave Jones: Turbo and calculator. Yeah. Right. Now it comes down to psychoacoustics. It's the only way, the only way possible to, um, you know, slap the audio fools over the face with a wet fish is to get the best audio fools in the industry. The most respected ones. Right. You know, I don't know who they are. I'm not. Yeah, me neither. Yeah. I don't read audio fool monthly. You know, anyway, I'm sure there's, you know, people that, you know, the best in the business that people respect and to do a true double blind experiment.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And that's the only way. And there's still going to be skeptics, but who cares? Honestly. Like, yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: But that's the only way to convince everyone, but they'll never do it.

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: Right. Because they, they know deep down that they won't be able to do it. You know, they claim that, oh, I can hear the scan line frequency of a CRT through three walls. You know, that's how good my hearing is.

Chris Gammell: So what is the testing that this, uh, that this, uh, forum member did?

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no. They're just asking, how can I, what measurements can I do? And it's like, you can't.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right.

Dave Jones: You can't. It will not convince them.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: It will not, never, not in a million years, because their argument always comes back to you have to listen to it. And actually I agree. Right. It's like, like the engineer in me knows it's bullshit. You do the measurements. It's going to be identical. But I think it's a very good argument because it's a subjective thing. Sure. Right. So the only way to debunk it is to, by doing a double blind subjective experiment. Measurements don't matter at all.

Chris Gammell: Ah, right, right. Logic.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We're not in an age of logic anymore, Dave.

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no, no. And yeah. So that's the only way to do it. Yeah. Um, anyway, some people don't agree. You know, some people think, oh, you just measure it and, you know, they must understand. Just back them over the head with their report. No, it's a, no, their argument's actually very sound. Ha. Pun intended. Ah, yeah. I get it. Er, er. And yeah, because you have to listen to it. Yeah. And James Randi, um, do you know James Randi?

Chris Gammell: I do not, no.

Dave Jones: Oh, dude.

Chris Gammell: Why should I know James Randi?

Dave Jones: James Randi, legend.

Chris Gammell: Of?

Dave Jones: The amazing Randi. Magician, debunker, skeptic, world famous. Anyway, there's a doco on him. Go watch it. Okay. Um, it's awesome. Where's the doco?

Chris Gammell: Is it on YouTube?

Dave Jones: Um, I don't know where it's been showing.

Chris Gammell: It's somewhere online. Okay.

Dave Jones: Anyway, anyway, um, that's where the amazing meeting comes from. He originated the amazing meeting, which is a yearly get together of all worldwide skeptics. You know, it's like the biggest skeptic meeting in the world. Anyway, he's a famous magician and then became a famous debunker.

Chris Gammell: Oh, interesting.

Dave Jones: And he had the James Randi million dollar prize, right? He's got the James Randi foundation.

Chris Gammell: You've mentioned this before, I think. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And for 30 years or something, he's been offering 20 years or something. He's been offering a million dollar prize to anyone who can prove any sort of, you know, paranormal phenomenon, you know. Right. And he actually.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you've definitely mentioned this before then.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And he took on speaker cables once. He said, I'm extending the prize to anyone who can prove that they're cryogenically frozen, you know, snake oil rubbed on by nude virgin speaker cables. Yep. Can make a difference in true scientific double blind experiments. A million bucks. Turn up.

Chris Gammell: Easy. Easy money, folks.

Dave Jones: Easy money. Nobody took him up on it.

Chris Gammell: Weird how that works. Nobody.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. Right? Yeah. It could have been easy million bucks for these so-called audio fool experts. Anyway. Yeah. So that's why. Yep. Anyway, no one's ever. I think he's dropped it now. I think he just like gave up because like no one's claimed it in like 25 years or something. Right. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: Anyway. Well, yeah. Don't bother arguing with that one, huh? I mean, like, I don't know. I thought the, I thought the, we already figured out that this. Stuff happened. I mean, that this, that audio fools were paying for things unnecessarily, you know?

Dave Jones: But no, see, the problem is it's a real thing, right? If you spend $10,000 on a speaker cable, you will actually hear the difference. You will. I guarantee it.

Chris Gammell: Well, okay. So, sure. Yes. And, and I've said to family members before that like, you know, you know, they were, they were definitely like provably feeling placebo effects. Exactly. And it's like, even if you pay for a placebo effect, if it makes you feel better at a certain point, you're paying for something that quote unquote works, but. Exactly. But don't try and tell me that it's going to work on me.

Dave Jones: No, that's right. Just don't expect me to hear the difference. You will hear the difference. You will hear the difference.

Chris Gammell: You're going to love this thing. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And, and it's, it's very real, you know, voices in your head are very real to you, not to anyone else.

Chris Gammell: I hear an Aussie in my head right now. Is that very real, Dave? Yeah, yeah. I don't know. All of our listeners do too. We have a common sickness.

Dave Jones: I would like to reveal now after what, seven and a half years and 300 and whatever episodes episodes. 335. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You're not real?

Dave Jones: Yes. No, I am a, I am a cheering machine.

Chris Gammell: Well, that saves me a trip to Australia, I suppose. Someone has said that. They said, what if Dave doesn't actually exist? And I'm like, well, that would be a very advanced simulation. Yeah. Yeah. I still need to plan my trip. I'm getting there. I'll get there eventually. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah. We'll see. If you see me and Dave standing next to each other, it may be computer generated or it might be real, you know, whatever you want to believe.

Dave Jones: You can't tell we photoshopped these days.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Like that terrible Photoshop picture of us standing next to one another in your lab, even though it's like we're the same height and we're definitely not the same height. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Speaking of things that don't appear as they seem, well, there's been a lot of strife about jobs and stuff like that. And, well, there's an article this week from ZME Science, which I actually don't know what the heck that site is, but it's basically talking about automation in China. And they talked about, let's see, the title is Chinese factory replaces 90% of human workers with robots. Production rises by 250%. Defects drop by 80%. We are so screwed, man. Like, you want to talk about- It's started. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's started.

Chris Gammell: I think the thing, so I was talking to someone about this earlier.

Dave Jones: What factory is it? What factory is it?

Chris Gammell: Um, because that, that, that matters. That's true. It does matter. And it does look like it's an automotive factory. Oh, it's cars. Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: Oh, they've been automated for 40 years.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Um, but, I mean, as that starts to balance more, right, that's really where, like, this is the measure that people should be watching, in my opinion, right? And, and maybe that's a good point. Like, you need the asterix of, like, you need to, like, chart it for different industries. So, like, clothing manufacturer and, um, wiring harnesses and all that other stuff. You know, like, if you could chart percentages of factories that are automated, because even things like, like wiring harnesses, a lot of those are still not automated in the States. I mean, there are pieces that are automated within that, like the, the crimping and stuff like that. But you still have people handling wires and, like, high dexterity stuff is different, as far as I can tell. Um, right. But, uh, but yeah, uh, it's still, you know, like, when it, when it starts to chase out, like, lower cost labor like that, I mean, it's just, that's where, that's where we're going to see more and more stuff. And I, I don't know, I'm, I'm very interested about that. I think that that, you know, like, like we talked to, um, oh crap, Jerry last week, you know, he mentioned that stuff too. And, um, uh, automation is just going to be, well, we've talked about that a lot on here, I suppose. But automation is, is a big, a big disruptor for employment over time. And, uh.

Dave Jones: It is, but we've, we've had the technology for a long time. Right. And you could argue that, you know, I'm not going to like, it'll get worse, I guess, is the terminology, you know, there'll be more robots to do things, but we've like, this is not new tech, right? No, no, no.

Chris Gammell: They're showing KUKA robots, right? I mean, these are, yeah, you're right. KUKA has been around for a long time. Maybe B has been around for a long time. Like these are, yeah, these are industrial robots that are definitely. Yeah. They're just being implemented, but it's the, it's not even the technology availability, right? That's, that's actually not what I'm, I'm interested in personally. It's the economic balance, right? Because like when you actually pull the trigger on doing that, like someone's doing a calculation, they're saying, okay, three shifts of workers, you know, six, seven days a week, whatever it is, or, uh, you know, what, uh, Jerry said about 21 shifts at that place that he was going to. So like say 21 shifts times however many, you know, how much you pay them per hour times eight hours or whatever it is, you know, you're just doing that math. And eventually you start to find some balance point where you're like, oh, we should just put a robot in. Right. I mean, like that's where, and those are not cheap robots. And so, no, no, no. Right. But they're still following, following. And then as other robots come in. So I don't know, whenever I see these stories, I say the same thing. Don't worry about your job, folks. Just learn to build robots. Like that's all you got to do. Simple, simple. Just learn to build robots. Or learn to fix them or. Or learn to program them. Program them or maintain them. Whatever you want to do. Something, something robots. Yeah. Something, something automation really.

Dave Jones: Because it's hard to get data like this. You know, you don't see it very often, right? Where a factory has replaced 90% of the human. You know, they actually put numbers in here. 90% production rises by 250. Defects drop by 80. I mean, usually they keep, a lot of companies keep this stuff internal. Right. I mean, any company that's the least bit smart, when they automate something, they measure the efficiency of that. Right. You know, the results of that automation and compare it to make sure it came out on top. You know, but.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. A lot of people just don't release this data publicly.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And someone did post from last week too, that CGP, CGP Grey. See, have I seen that right? I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yes. CGP Grey. Yeah. Yep.

Chris Gammell: And it's about automation. We've posted it before. Go watch it again. Get terrified again. I love that video.

Dave Jones: I don't think I've watched CGP's Greys on automation.

Chris Gammell: Humans Need Not Apply. That's, that's a pretty famous one. It's got lots of views. Yeah. Really? It's, it's, it's really well done. I mean, like, it's just, it's such a very.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. All these videos. When we were on holidays, I introduced my family to his channel. Oh really? Oh wow. And we just sat there and binge watched.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. A whole bunch on the smart TV, you know.

Chris Gammell: Oh, the smart TV. Of course. The smart TV. Which is a segue. Oh my God. Good one. Was it watching you? Probably. Yeah. Wow. Who was talking about that? Someone, someone did mention, was it Osman? I think, I think it might've been when you were out of the.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Chris Gammell: When Mike, when Mike and Demetri are on the show. Mike Osman. They were, they were talking about, they put tape over the cameras and.

Dave Jones: He, he admitted, you know, he's a security, cyber security expert. Right. And yeah, he, he admitted, we, we asked him in a previous show, if you haven't listened to it. And he admitted, yeah, he's paranoid about it. And he puts tape over cameras on smart TVs and stuff.

Chris Gammell: I unplugged my TV last time I was in a hotel. When he goes to a hotel room. I was in a hotel, I unplugged my TV. Really? Yeah. Dude, you know what? I don't need, I don't need nobody. You know, this body, Dave, this is. Should not be. It's worth too much, you know. Like it's, you can't just, you don't, I don't just give this stuff away for free. You know what I'm saying? Unlike some people putting their, their shirtless pictures on the internet, like you. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I've got a smart TV and I don't, you know, I like my Netflix button on it. It's got the Netflix button. Oh yeah. You don't have to worry with other boxes, you know, like sure. You can make it more secure by having another dedicated box that you've set up to stream Netflix and all that sort of jazz, you know, but.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I mean, like, I mean, hell we were just, we were messing around with Alexa by an LCR meter. Yeah. Right. You think people have figured it out yet? You know, we should do that. What we should really do is Alexa, buy an EEV blog DMM, right? Or what's the one that, what's yours called? Yeah. Yeah. The BM 245 or whatever it is. Like the.

Dave Jones: The BM 235.

Chris Gammell: 235. Alexa, buy a BM 235. Yeah. That's what we should really do. Get you some kickbacks here, Dave. Brilliant. Yeah. And, but you know, like there's stuff always listening, right? And, and I don't know if you saw it, SparkFun actually made a thing where they made a kill switch and it's like, that probably is the right call, you know? Like it's like.

Dave Jones: A kill switch for what? Smart TVs.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so basically it's like. How does that work? It's a, it was a particle photon or electron, one of the two, but basically it was an app or maybe it was voice control. I don't, I don't remember. There's some other, there was some secondary control mechanism that basically just cut a relay to the power for the Amazon Echo so that you couldn't listen anymore. It would, you know, or you either cut the power, you cut the internet connection, whatever.

Dave Jones: Now you do realize that you carry around a smartphone every day. Exactly. Well, there's no difference to a smart TV.

Chris Gammell: I was listening to me as well. Um, I was listening to a macro fab. They were talking about that. They made a good point though. Like in terms of like battery life, you know, so like we were talking about with the, um, the, uh, hearing aid thing, right? To actually be listening all the time, it would be really difficult, right? The way that it does, most of these phones do it these days is there's a secondary processor that's just in a low power mode, just listening for the keyword, which I'm not going to say to kick my phone off again. But you know, like that it's, it's low bandwidth to actually, you know, it's not, it's not always piping your audio back. That would be hard. But, uh, uh, an Amazon Echo, it's plugged in, it's, it's connected to your wifi. Like that could be piped back. Same thing with the TV. It's plugged in. It's wall power. Anything with wall power and especially with an ethernet cable. Yeah. You better watch out, you know?

Dave Jones: And there was an EV blog forum thread on this. Um, somebody got busted in the UK. Uh, was it LG or somebody? Sorry, I didn't have it ready. But, um, yeah, the smart TV was reporting back stuff that it shouldn't like real time listening in or whatever. And that's against the law in the UK or whatever.

Chris Gammell: Unless it's the government. Yeah. They've got more CCTV there than just about any other country.

Dave Jones: But yes, they do.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Uh.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Man. Yep. Yeah. Hmm. I don't know. I, I don't know the balance point on all this stuff. Like, I saw this really good presentation about tails. I don't know. Have you heard about tails?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: It's like, uh.

Dave Jones: Tails as in like an animal tail? No. It's an acronym.

Chris Gammell: Or a tail as in a story? No, tail. I'm sorry. It is like animal. It's spelled like animal tail. T-A-I-L-S. Right. Uh, it's an acronym. It's a, um, it is a Linux distro that I think Snowden uses it or someone like that. But basically it's like. Right. You run your entire operating system off this. I got a 64 gig one of those little stubby USB drives. Yep. 64 gigs on that thing. And I've been meaning to install tails on it. But basically you run, you run your entire operating system off that. And then when you power it on a computer, it just goes away. You know, it resets every time. Right. And, um, and then it's got Tor built in and all that stuff. And it's like, I don't, I don't know the balance point. Right. I don't think, uh, I don't know how paranoid I need to get about this stuff. But at a certain point when it gets that easy, when it's like your TV's plugged in and it's got all those smarts and it's not secured, you know, I don't know.

Dave Jones: If it's got advantage from my everyday life, like, like the Netflix button, I don't want to have to dick around with another fricking stupid box and a PC and everything. You know, I hit that Netflix button and Netflix comes up. My smart TV with the one, with the one remote control. That's all I want. You know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But what if it's also watching your kids? I mean, like, that's what I mean. Like, I don't know. Like all of these things, like, yes, there's really worst case scenarios.

Dave Jones: It's turned off most of the time. It's only turned on when we want to watch the TV.

Chris Gammell: Do you actually power down the switch to it? I mean, like those things usually have, like they're usually just operating. Most TVs don't actually switch off anymore, you know?

Dave Jones: Oh, no. It's a standby. Because it, it, it needs a remote, but it draws less than a watt. It draws like half a watt.

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Dave Jones: So, you know.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure there are much better podcasts to listen to about all this stuff, right? Like security now.

Dave Jones: I greatly doubt, at half a watt, that it's streaming, that it's actually watching a camera in real time. Yeah, but if it's listening, I mean. And streaming back via, via Wi-Fi or Ethernet with half a watt. I don't think it's doing that. Right, but what about, I don't know. No, it's not. Come on.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. I agree with your power assessment there, Dave. I'm just saying that, like, there's no reason they couldn't just turn on and not turn the screen on. You know what I mean? Like, these are effectively computers all over the place, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, it could, but come on. Is it? Okay, I'll leave a power monitor on it for a week.

Chris Gammell: That, that's probably, yeah, that's probably the right call. I mean, like, that would be ultimately, like, that's the way to tell, is like, when are there spikes and all that other stuff. And, um, I don't know. I'm, I'm not, like, particularly paranoid about that stuff. But, uh, I, I have been thinking more about, like.

Dave Jones: As it says the man who goes into a hotel room, the first thing he does is pull the TV out of the spot.

Chris Gammell: It was not the first thing. It was like, I read this article and then I went and unplugged the TV. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It was like, just the timing was right. And, I don't know. I don't like hotels. Bathroom?

Dave Jones: Unplugged TV. Yeah. You're doing it in the wrong order. You don't want to watch them and listening to you in the bathroom. So, as soon as you come in the door, TV, pull it out, then go to the bathroom. Good point.

Chris Gammell: Well, the other thing is I don't ever, I don't know. I don't ever use the TVs in hotel rooms anymore anyways. I just, you know, use the computer. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I don't know. I've got a cover of my webcam right now. I've got a lot of webcams. I cover them all up. So, that's all I know. But they're still listening. Possibly, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It reminds me of, um, uh, Die Hard 4.

Chris Gammell: Is that like the fire sale one?

Dave Jones: Yeah, John McClane. That's the fire sale one. Where John McClane puts his hand over the webcam. Oh, yeah. And, you know, and the guy goes, you know, I can still hear you. Yeah, right. That's great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that was, that was pretty good.

Dave Jones: Is that Timex watching a digital age? That's right. Is that?

Chris Gammell: It's me and you, buddy. It's me and you. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Uh, well, how do we combat against this stuff, Dave? You don't. I would say with open source. You just resign to the fact. With open source. Is that, is that a good, is that a good, uh. If you're trying to segue to something, sure. Yeah, yeah. Olimex. So, Olimex, uh, at Fosdem. So, last week was Fosdem, which is free and open source. It's something, something. It was in, I think, Brussels or something like that. Um, but Olimex, um, announced an open source. It's called the DIY laptop. And, uh.

Dave Jones: Oh, look. I hate this.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: The, who, did, did, did you put this link in?

Chris Gammell: This is, yeah, I went to the GitHub. You know what I mean?

Dave Jones: Because all you've linked to is like a GitHub repository. And you don't know how to use GitHub still. I freaking hate this.

Chris Gammell: You still don't know how to use GitHub. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But, like, it's bullshit. I want a page with a freaking photo or something. Like, I don't want a freaking GitHub repository to just look at. Like, all I want to do is see what it looks like. I'm really bad with. I've got a GitHub repository. And most people don't even bother to put in. Oh, this is the deep thing, too.

Chris Gammell: This is actually going to the board. An image. If you click DIY laptop. No, that's actually not much better. Never mind. Usually there's, like, a top level page if you click DIY laptop.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, it's bullshit.

Chris Gammell: There's no link or anything. You're right. So, if you search DIY laptop. GitHub is shit. No, you can make, you can make these read, read, read me documents. I'm terrible about this. I never do that stuff. Um, but you can make these pretty web pages.

Dave Jones: But I don't want to have to click on a reb, read me. All I want to do is freaking.

Chris Gammell: So, go to their webpage, olimax.com slash products slash DIY space laptop. Um, that's how you do it. Um. Ah. Yeah. Uh, but it's based on a, uh, if you wanted to see in the hardware folder, uh, it's based on a, uh, what is it? The 64, uh, A64. So, it's a type of.

Dave Jones: There we go. Okay. Right. Right. So, how do they do, like, the case and everything? Like, how do they do all the mechanical stuff? Keyboard, case?

Chris Gammell: I assume they're just sourcing that stuff. I don't, I'm not sure. Uh, but I assume they're just sourcing all that stuff from a, a normal, you know, just a general vendor. Right? But.

Dave Jones: I, I don't know why you need to build your own.

Chris Gammell: Well, we've covered this stuff a lot.

Dave Jones: Like, there's, like, you know, you've already got polished professional hardware out there at cheap, you know, at, you know, surely it's not going to be any cheaper to do it yourself. No. So.

Chris Gammell: It's never about cheaper though with this stuff. I think it's more. Yeah, but. I think, well, I think there's a couple of things. One is, can you do it? Right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, but. Okay. Right? There's an argument there, but like, it's once, like, most people are just going to buy this. They're not going to build it themselves. They're not going to modify it themselves. So what's the point? I mean, a laptop is just a base computer platform. It's all about the software. So what you talked about before with, you know, running your own custom, you know, installation of whatever it is that's secure. Oh, tails and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, tails and doesn't, right? That's where the action is. Sure. Right? It's not necessarily in hardware. I mean, hats off to them for doing that. I even thought about this, right? I thought about producing the world's thinnest tablet, right? And I, you know, did some investigation into it and it's like, eh, you know, one of those projects that started and ended on a weekend. And, you know, so hats off to them.

Chris Gammell: No hardware was hurt in this process. No. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: But, yeah. Well. Sorry, I don't see the point.

Chris Gammell: Dave, I don't think you're the target market here though, either. Right? I mean, like, there's also like the... So, I mean... Well, but I should be. Isn't there a recent story? No, I don't think so. I think it's actually the... I think it's more the security market, to be honest.

Dave Jones: Well, that's what I'm saying. Why? What? You know, it's not like they have magic stuff in the hardware spying on you, right? It's all about what software you run on top. So, if you nuke... If you buy a Dell laptop and then nuke it, right? It's not like, oh, the NSA's installed secret spy bloody thing with its own software running inside your Dell notebook. No. It's just bloody hardware. Well, I think... It's a dumb hardware sitting there waiting for the OS, right? Unless you talk about firmware. Unless you want to get paranoid about, you know, oh, in the Phoenix biases. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? But... Well, there's always these different levels. You're right about... Have they written their own bias for this? Or are they using an off-the-shelf, you know, Phoenix boot bias or something, right? I don't know, Dave. I don't know these things, but I'm just saying that... Have they vetted that? Come on! So many questions.

Chris Gammell: Podantic. I need, like, a cowbell for when you're being pedantic.

Dave Jones: Well, so aren't I the target audience for this thing?

Chris Gammell: Pedantic. Pedantic. Hey, of course I am. So, therefore, aren't I the target...

Dave Jones: Shouldn't I be the target audience for this?

Chris Gammell: I don't think you're a target market for this. You don't even use Linux, Dave.

Dave Jones: It's for pedantic people.

Chris Gammell: No, you don't use Linux. You're not going to want to use an open-source laptop. There's no way that Windows is compiling for this thing. Maybe Windows 10 if they eventually, you know, because they're doing a little bit better with that stuff, but...

Dave Jones: But no, sorry. I don't see what advantage the hardware gives having your own do-it-yourself hardware from a security aspect point of view. If that's how they're trying to sell this thing, oh, look, it's all do-it-yourself. You can check it out that, you know, the NSA hasn't installed spyware on it. Then I don't see the point. Well, maybe I'm just missing the point.

Chris Gammell: But the thing I'm excited about, they announced this at FASDEM. They announced it with, at the same time as, like, a lot of the KiCAD stuff that's happening, or KiCAD, as Wayne calls it. And also, there's a link for the new... So, FASDEM, they were also talking about, you know, obviously, I'm very interested in KiCAD. And there was announcements about future directions and all that stuff, and Wayne, the project lead, gave an update on that. So, if you're a KiCAD fan, which some of you might be now, whereas you weren't before, yeah, there's some updates. And Olumex is one of the... I mean, they're doing some of the fanciest stuff out there, I think. You know, like, these are... At least, at the very least, it's a very high-end, high-complexity board using KiCAD.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, I'm off. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Hats off.

Chris Gammell: Now the hats are off. Now the hats are off.

Dave Jones: Well, no, I took my hat off right at the start before I then laid into them.

Chris Gammell: Right? You weren't even wearing a hat. I'm actually wearing a KiCAD hat right now. You don't even know.

Dave Jones: Are you wearing a black hat, white hat, or gray hat?

Chris Gammell: It's a blue hat. It's a blue hat. It's a lead hat, Dave. It's a lead hat.

Dave Jones: What does that mean?

Chris Gammell: You're turned blue because you're not getting enough oxygen? What's a blue hat? It means my hat's actually blue. It's a KiCAD hat. I made a hat.

Dave Jones: Yes. Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: Merch. Right. No, I just took an Adafruit. I didn't tell you about that? No. I just took a bunch of... So, I love the Adafruit patches. They make a bunch of patches with... They're kind of like Boy Scout, Girl Scout patches for Python or soldering and stuff like that. I made two hats. One with the KiCAD patch, which my friends hate. And then another one with a... I made a hat with a little oscilloscope patch on it. I love it. It's a black hat with a little oscilloscope on the front. No one knows what it is. It's great. So, yeah. It's like $9 to make your own hat.

Dave Jones: Okay. Now, back to this laptop. Yeah. I'm looking through the GitHub repository. The hardware is like... I mean...

Chris Gammell: Do you know what you're looking at, Dave?

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah. Well, kind of.

Chris Gammell: Have you used KiCAD recently? It's in KiCAD, right?

Dave Jones: KiCAD, KiCAD is a PCB package. Sure. Where's all the mechanical stuff? I want to know where all that's coming from.

Speaker ?: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: So, you're saying... Where's the guts of it? Where's the keyboard? Where's the cooling pipes? Where's the bloody, you know, the custom heatsink things to get... Because a laptop's all about heat extraction. It's quite complex to get that right. You know, it's all about thermal design. Where's all that stuff? It's great to do an open source board, of course. That's awesome. But where's the rest of it?

Chris Gammell: Let's see. Six days ago, ZDNet wrote about it.

Dave Jones: Did they just buy a laptop, a generic laptop case on Alibaba and then just gut it and...

Chris Gammell: Let's see. Final design. Design a PCB around the...

Dave Jones: I need more information, damn it.

Chris Gammell: I probably posted the wrong thing. Oh, there's instructions. Found instructions. Here we go. All right. I will send Dave the instructions now. We're going to read instructions together. You know what's really fun? Reading instructions. Yeah. And I will link these instructions in. We won't actually read them here. Did he? Yeah. But...

Dave Jones: I am suddenly getting that IKEA buzz, you know.

Chris Gammell: The IKEA buzz? Oh, like when you...

Dave Jones: The instructions. Lego buzz. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Instructions. Oh, yeah. Step by step. Nothing better than that. All right. You look at that. Let's move on to the next thing because we should probably wrap up here. Yeah. We should wrap up.

Dave Jones: I think we're done.

Chris Gammell: We're done and dusted. Actually, we got most things here. What else?

Dave Jones: The most important thing is where does the name come from? Yep.

Chris Gammell: Which one? Oh, you're saying from the directions. Yep. I really liked Great Scott's video this week. I don't know if you watched it. The Make Your Own Lithium-Ion Battery Pack. Nope. And he shows he's trying to spot weld with a homemade spot welder. Oh, the tabs on the end of it. Yeah. And then he ends up soldering it. It's great. I mean, that kind of stuff is great for making... So I imagine something like if you were building a laptop, if you were making... If you need a power source, those... What are they? The 18560s? I forget the numbers on those things. But the standard lithium cell that the Tesla's using and stuff.

Dave Jones: Here we go. This is exciting. The laptop is modular, which means there are a number of possibilities to expand it. We have several ideas in mind to add FPGA for digital storage oscilloscope, logic analyzer, and turn it into a powerful lab in the one laptop. That's pretty groovy.

Chris Gammell: That's cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. One day of this.

Chris Gammell: Well, maybe this is a good time to also announce our guest for next week, who we can talk to about open source laptops. It's a... Go? Yes. Is it pronounced Bonnie Hong? Oh, no. It's Bunny Hong. Bunny's going to be back on the show talking about his new book and, you know...

Dave Jones: Haven't had him on for like five years or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, suing the US government and lots of other fun stuff. He'll be dialing in from his home in Singapore. People will probably see him pop up a couple places because he is releasing that hardware hacking book. With Edward Snowden? No. Or is that a different one? No, no, no. That's the case. Sorry. The lawsuit is with Snowden, I believe. Lawsuit. Right. Okay. We'll actually do some research probably at some point. Yep. Maybe five, ten minutes before the show. And yeah, so Bunny will be on the show next week and we're excited to talk to him again. Yeah, it's been a while. Has it really been five years? Probably. It was episode 83 or 84 or something. Okay. Pretty low.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Probably four years ago or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, four years sounds like. Yeah. But still, he was one of our earlier guests, so...

Speaker ?: Yep.

Chris Gammell: We're not running out of guests. We're not. I promise. It's just, you know, when they have a book, you gotta come back. They're in for a fun time. They gotta come back, so yeah. Yeah. That's great.

Dave Jones: What else? Anything else we should talk about this week, Dave? Nope, except I'm looking inside the laptop. There's a lot of room left.

Chris Gammell: So you're gonna build something for it now? That's what you're saying? You wanna... You've swapped from, this is stupid, we should never do this, to, ooh, I wanna help.

Dave Jones: I'm surprised at the main... Well, the main part, like, it doesn't look like it's very powerful. It's not like it's running like an Intel i7 or something. No, it's running like an ARM.

Chris Gammell: It's an all-winner A64. It's an all-winner ARM thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Which is the, you know, one of the lower costs. Those are in a lot of tablets these days. It's called an A64, but...

Dave Jones: You can buy a $10 four-core 1.2-gig board with an all-winner processor for $10. Right, yeah. I mean, you know.

Chris Gammell: But, I mean, it's basically like building a lower-cost tablet, you know, and then building with a keyboard, though, that still has some benefits, you know, I think. So...

Dave Jones: Right. Cool.

Chris Gammell: All right, man. Well, uh... We done. Yeah. Good one. Uh...

Dave Jones: Yeah, yes. High five.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Go! Ha ha ha. We'll be back next week, and we'll be talking to Bunny. So, if people wanna ask questions, they could post... Just post on the, uh... Well, I'll start a post on Reddit, and they can ask questions there. Awesome. Catch you next time. See ya.