#337 – Fake it till you make it

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded February 22nd, 2017. Episode 337. Fake it till you make it.

Dave Jones: Welcome to The Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the AEV blog. And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. What's up, nerd? Hello, nerd.

Chris Gammell: How are you?

Dave Jones: And fellow nerds. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yes. Our nerdle audience. What was it? Nerdle? Yes. Nerdle. All nerds and nerdles and aspiring nerds. Yes.

Dave Jones: A nerdle is an aspiring nerd. Yes.

Chris Gammell: That's a fledgling nerd. And someone said it should be nerdling. Whatever. We're overdoing it.

Dave Jones: No, I like nerdle.

Chris Gammell: I like nerdle too. It kind of sounds like turtle, right? Right, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: What's new? How you been?

Dave Jones: Busy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah? What's going on? More shipping? Shipping, shipping?

Dave Jones: More shipping.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. All sorts of stuff. Just business stuff and trying to get things done and trying not to be lazy about it.

Chris Gammell: Cool. Cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. That's half the fight.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. You've been building stuff? Anything? I guess we could start with that.

Dave Jones: I've been building. I'm about to probably do that this afternoon. I'm going to be doing it. Yeah. I'll be doing a PCB layout this afternoon.

Chris Gammell: Nice. What kind of stuff?

Dave Jones: That's a follow-on to my Hixi tube counter.

Chris Gammell: Oh, cool. Cool.

Dave Jones: Thingamabob.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I like that stuff.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. There's a lot of people who have been asking for that and fair enough.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's great. So, yeah. I just got a DigiKey order and that's always a nice day when you get the parts in, but I am still waiting for PCBs. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Because you can get your parts next day or same day.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. I don't pay for that stuff though. I mean, because I'm used on Oshpark. My standard setup is like Oshpark and DigiKey because I'm in the States. I mean, it's different everywhere. Yep. And, you know, I'll go other places if I need to.

Dave Jones: Who should I use for my new board? Because I don't get boards made that often these days.

Chris Gammell: And it's like... You could do a little bit of PCB shopper, isn't that the site?

Dave Jones: Yeah. PCB shopper or something like that. I don't know. I do like trying out new services. You're saying this is low.

Chris Gammell: This is low. It's not very important. And if it messes up... Oh, yeah. No, no.

Dave Jones: It's not important. But I don't want to wait a month for it.

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: Like I want it in like a week kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: And you're willing to pay for it? Because, I mean, honestly, that's what it comes down to.

Dave Jones: But it's like 50 bucks. It's like, you know, like something, you know, which is nothing really.

Chris Gammell: I've still gotten used to the Oshpark flow that I just... I don't even think... Like I don't even go investigate it. But I know there are some cheap... Some people tell me about that stuff too. Like, you know, you could go elsewhere and get it cheaper and, you know, get 10 boards from China and they'll ship them real fast and stuff like that. And it's true. It's... I'm just, you know, ain't broke, don't fix it.

Dave Jones: So how long do you wait for your Oshpark ones?

Chris Gammell: Most of the time it's about two weeks, depends. I mean, like they'll get placed on the panel the same day. Yeah. They did just announce... Oh, that's one of the items we have on here. They did just announce that their Swift service got moved up. So, yeah, I mean, as long as you're on like the two-layer panel, any board share, whatever the most common thing is, if you're on the most common part of a board share, then you'll obviously move up faster. You'll get through the... You don't have to wait.

Dave Jones: But like most of the cheap PCB factories in China, they board share, but you don't know it. Like... Right, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not part of their thing. It's like, you know, no, here's a quote for the board. It's, you know, 20 bucks or whatever and plus shipping or whatever. Right. You just get it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's not like the panel, like the fiberglass panel is like, they're like, oh, yeah, just, you know, won't charge much. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yeah, because, you know, because this is not a production thing. I just want one made. It's like, it is a one-off thing, you know, like, like normally I'll get, you know, like five made or something like that, you know, because I know it'll be... How big is it going to be?

Chris Gammell: I mean, is it going to be big? Two layer?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, it'll be a two layer thing. I can put it on one layer if I really wanted to, but there's no point because two layers are standard.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right.

Dave Jones: It's probably... Actually, it's probably about 25 centimeters wide. Okay. Let's say eight inches for you, Yanks or something.

Chris Gammell: I'm literally just putting it into PCB Fab or the shopper right now as we do this. Oh, right. Okay. 25 by what?

Dave Jones: Well, actually, that's what I've got to do this afternoon is get and measure the exact thing. Oh, yeah, it'll be maybe, yeah, 10, let's say 25 centimeters by 10 centimeters.

Chris Gammell: Number designs, yeah. Quantity. You only need one, right?

Dave Jones: We're doing live design work here on the... Yeah, right, right, right.

Chris Gammell: It is a great site. If people don't know about it, it is a great site and highly recommend it. Yeah, I just need one. Yeah. And there's reviews and stuff on there, too, so that's nice.

Dave Jones: How many... What is their list of different suppliers that they cross-checked?

Chris Gammell: The ones that popped out for you were Easy EDA, All PCB, Bay Area Circuit, Seed Studios, Shenzhen 2U, Elicro. I mean, a lot of these are PCBWay, Euro Circuits, like Dirty PCBs, that's Ian's thing. Yep. PCB Card. That's one that you used to like that, right? PCB Card?

Dave Jones: Yes. Oh, yeah, I used to. Yeah. They were like the first that came out to do low-cost PCBs via the web. Like, they were one of the first and it was groundbreaking when they first came out. And then they got swamped. Word, I can remember using them. And then, you know, six, nine months later, Word got around on the forums and stuff. Yeah, there was no YouTube back then. You know, it was... Well, you know, no YouTube channels. Not appreciably, right? Right, yeah. Right. Yeah, no. Basically, we didn't exist. Us electronics YouTubers didn't exist. And yeah, anyway, so Word got around on the forums or whatnot. And yeah, then they started to increase their... No, no, no. The first thing you notice is that you used to get them real quick. You used to, like, three days and it'd ship. You know, they'd say seven days, but it'd ship in three. And then there was five days. And then it was actually seven. And then occasionally they started to slip actually meeting their timelines. And they came out and said, yeah.

Chris Gammell: They pulled a Yogi Berra, huh? That place is so popular, no one goes there anymore. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And then the prices started to rise and everything. But I still liked them.

Chris Gammell: It was my familiar service. Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing. And that is the goal of any company that's doing, like, you know, bottom-up type stuff like that. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: But there's just so many.

Chris Gammell: There are. Well, that's great.

Dave Jones: It's just crazy.

Chris Gammell: We're in a gold maze for that. Looks like there's even one in Australia. That's interesting. Breadboard Killer? Do you know that?

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Boy, that's not cheap. Okay. But, I mean, yeah, you're going for a speed, so.

Dave Jones: And I think they're, yeah, I think they're two or three weeks or something like that. Yeah. So, I've actually met him. I interviewed him at the. Oh, cool.

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: At the Maker Faire. Yeah. Yep. Video is somewhere on my site. But, yeah. Get price. Default time. Here we go. What do I want? Seven business days, let's say. Ship to.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's not too bad.

Dave Jones: Australia.

Chris Gammell: Right. I mean, what is the shipping like just in general for China for you?

Dave Jones: I mean, like, is it DHL? $30, yeah. It's generally, yeah, $30 DHL.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's basically like a flat DHL, right? If you want it in a hurry. If you get like an EMS type service, then it can be cheaper. But most PCB suppliers won't use that. They'll use like, you know, FedEx, UPS, DHL kind of thing. Yeah. And I can use my own account, but it actually costs more. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like your business account kind of thing? Like your number?

Dave Jones: I can use my business account. I can just give them my account number and they can ship using my account. But it generally ends up being more expensive.

Chris Gammell: I have never gotten to the point. So, I have a number as well, I think, for both UPS and FedEx. And it's like, it's just like an accounting thing for me because it's like, I'm not shipping enough stuff to ever get a discount, you know?

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yeah. No, I've got a proper business. No, I'm doing big dollars with them these days. Right. Yeah, but it's still not as cheap. Like I ship from DigiKey. I thought I'd try this. You know, when I got my new account number, I was thrilled. Hey, I've got a DHL Pro business account, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And so, I had some parts shipped from DigiKey to here. And it was, yeah, it was more expensive than what, using my own account. And then it was for them just to ship it using their account. Right. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Because they've got the volume anyways. They get all the, they get the breaks, right? So.

Dave Jones: Hey, I'm up for, the cheapest one is $137 plus shipping.

Chris Gammell: That's the cheapest?

Dave Jones: Which is, what? PCBWay. That's the cheapest? PCBWay is the cheapest. How many did you put in? Really? Oh, sorry. They're going to give me five. So, they're going to give me five. But I actually put in one. Some of the others are one. I'm seeing $30 each. Yeah. One of them is $400 for one.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: Well, that's the kind of prices that I'm used to.

Chris Gammell: Well, not used to. That's what I started with. I remember the first thing I started, I used to do advanced PCB for everything. And it was like the two layer, five of each board. It's not a terrible special. You can get a lot on the board.

Dave Jones: But when I was a boy, you know, it was like, you know, a panel was $800.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. And it doesn't, that's what it would cost you to get a board.

Chris Gammell: And that's in $1,800 too, right? I mean, like you got to really. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That was money from 20 years ago. I said $1,800. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay. All right.

Dave Jones: Anyway, yeah, the late 80s, early 90s, you know, it was, yeah, it was $800 for a panel. And you had to panelize, you know, it doesn't matter how small or insignificant your board was. They, they would not share them. There was no shared PCB service, right? So you would pay for the board. So you'd get, so you'd throw your personal designs on. This is what you used to do, you know? So you get in a board made for work and you went, well, I'm paying for this anyway. So you got your own personal designs, just throw them on the panel, you know? So yeah. And, and you got all your personal boards made for free, which was kind of nice. Yeah. So, yeah. Anyway, PCB way at a hundred, it's 102 bucks for the boards for five. So they're 20 bucks each. And there's DHL shipping is 20 bucks. So 137. And that'd be US dollars.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it is. I was going to ask. Yeah. Cause it's pretty, it's a pretty weird.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Exchange rate right now. See, so for me to get, if I want that one board, just one board in a week, seven business day, that's business day. So like week and a half plus shipping.

Chris Gammell: So yours is showing different than mine. Cause I, maybe you put in something else I didn't see. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So I just put 25 by 10 centimeters, two layers, least expensive, cheapest, blah, blah. I just left all the defaults there. Yeah. Me too. Includes stencil. No, not required.

Chris Gammell: Oh, maybe it's just because the ship too. That's probably what it was. I don't know if I changed this. Yeah. No.

Dave Jones: It was shipped to Australia, but still. Anyway. Shipped to Austria. Yep. Exactly. Did you put seven business days? Did you put seven business days?

Chris Gammell: No, I didn't.

Speaker ?: So.

Dave Jones: Ah, there you go. That's why. Look, look, if I bump it up to 15 business days, right?

Chris Gammell: Oh, I see. So I'm looking at it based on the shipping time, but that's actually after, after the processing then, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. So if I, yeah, if I, if I want to wait 15 business days, easy EDA in China is the cheapest at $33 for five boards. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. No, 37. Yeah. $33 for five boards plus six bucks, 90 express. It's still 81 bucks. Yeah. US. Yeah, that's true. So I, I, I only need one of these. So you've got to remember, you know, that's like. Right. And then Seed Studio, that they're 55 bucks for five boards plus 11 bucks. Bucks postage. Um, anyway. Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I actually found out that.

Dave Jones: So I'm up for at least a hundred bucks or 150 bucks just to get this one board, mate.

Chris Gammell: Well, and so I saw on here, there's a tab now too for assembly, but I, I didn't realize that, um, there's a bunch of local companies around here that are bundling. And actually that workspace I'm working out of, mHub, uh, they have an onsite, I've been posting pictures of the equipment there, but the, um, they have an onsite picking place run by an outside company called Twisted Traces. Right. And, uh, and they're, they're doing the same thing with like a, uh, a bundled, bundled assembly. So you can get like one or two boards on a panel. And what it'll be is like, they're going to use like the open parts library. So you can just design in those parts. And then before they said before I was talking to Brian, the guy that runs it, he said before they actually put the whole thing through the oven, they'll let people come in and hand place. So the, the, the solder paste will be there, but then there's a manual pick and place. So you can like, yeah, you can go and put your special parts on that wouldn't necessarily be on the machine.

Dave Jones: Sit down and do it yourself. And what, then you go feed it in the oven because you can't leave it there. You've got to. Right.

Chris Gammell: They might actually run the whole thing through again. I'm actually not sure how that works, but like, because like the panel, if it's a panelized, right, if it's got six different designs on it, you have to wait for everybody to finish placing their parts. That could be detrimental, but, um.

Dave Jones: Well, solder paste has a limited, once you take it out and apply it to the board, you've got to put it in the oven within like four hours. Yeah. Right. You can't just leave it lying around for a couple of days with your parts on.

Chris Gammell: Just because it's got like VOC type.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Thingy. My bulb's in it. Right. Yeah. Something, something chemicals. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, but there'll be something like that in it. And I, I, I mean, I, I, I guarantee there are bundled, um, services like that. I just, I had never seen them. So, um, I'm excited about that.

Dave Jones: Anyway. So yeah. The reason that the people might be going, oh, Dave, you get this board cheaper, blah, blah, blah. The problem here is size. Okay. Right. Right. Like 25 centimeters by 10 centimeters is a large-ish board. Most people don't get, but you know, when you're talking, you know, most people are, you know, like in the hobby sort of area, they're just dicking around with little Arduino sides boards and yeah. Okay. You can get one at dirty PCBs for five bucks or something. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But you know, when you pay for board area.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, I mean, even so going back to Ash Park, right. So that'd be what, if it's a two layer, it's, that's three by 10 effectively. Right. Like almost three by 10, uh, in inches. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And then that's 30 square inches times five, that'd be 50 bucks a board. So. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. So the, and there, and yeah, that, that size versus the size trade-off is, is pretty large. So what is, for yours is big just because of the, uh, fitting in the case that you have or the. Yes. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It has to fit the object. Yeah. I'm using it as, yeah, as, yeah. Yeah. It's mounting all these eight segments on there. So you've got to, it has to be X wide to mount all these. Yeah. Yep. Things on. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, it's still, yeah, it's a material thing. Yeah. You got to.

Dave Jones: People will go, oh, make your own. Oh yeah, I probably could.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's true.

Dave Jones: You know, maybe I could make one, you know, but it is high voltage too.

Chris Gammell: So that's maybe less reason to mess around with that.

Dave Jones: That doesn't matter. It's only 180 volts. She'll be right.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Good, good luck, buddy. And that was the last we ever heard of Dave.

Dave Jones: Well, I could do it myself just as a, like, cause I haven't made my own boards for years. I could dig out my old, uh, UV box or I can just shove it out in the sun. It's, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's Australia and it's summertime, you know. That's true. Right. The board might melt, but you know. And, uh, yeah, I could maybe do that. Maybe I could, yeah. Maybe that is a process instead of, yeah. So maybe I'll try and get it on a single sided. Yeah. I'll do my best. Add a few links because, you know, like I don't want to be making my own. Well, then I could make it into a video or how to make your own double sided board. You've got to align that. It's not that much. It's not much extra work. It's just fussy. Yeah. You know? So, yeah. Especially if you want to do the videos and whatnot. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right. I don't miss those days of making my own boards. I really don't. I can't imagine you would. I mean, that's, that's even, even at 80 bucks. I mean, you'll spend more in your time, right? Oh, yeah, no. That takes more than an hour.

Dave Jones: No, no, exactly. So that's, but if I can make a video out of it, then hey, you know.

Chris Gammell: Sure, sure.

Dave Jones: That's a reason to do it. But no. Right.

Chris Gammell: But this is, we're now talking about the scourge of being a video blogger, right? You think you can't do anything without having a camera on. Turn everything into content. Yeah, right. That's, that's the downside. It is. Yeah. I've been building a new board. Actually, I got, I got inspired by a student, but I talked last time, not last week, but last time about that header that I've been using. And some people asked about it. There was a video last time in the show notes from that. So a couple, two shows ago. But, but I've been thinking about it and I've been thinking about doing some like industrial style boxes. And I've been looking at RS485, which I think you've said you've used in the past, right? Yeah. I've used RS485. Yeah. So I was wondering, and I asked on Twitter as well, but like, what do you do for cabling for that?

Dave Jones: I've used custom cabling before. It's gone through the couple of times I've done it. It's gone through the product under test.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. Yeah. Oh, you're saying that it like actually plugged into the, so they plugged into the product

Dave Jones: that we were testing and popped out the other end of the product 150 meters down the line. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Gotcha. Right, right, right. So the, so the product actually had for RS485 on it as well.

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no. The product had wiring and we were simply talking to the other end of it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, interesting. Okay.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, it's a product, very product specific thing.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And that's, and that's kind of what, you know, there was a lot of answers and I do appreciate, you know, that that's, that's what I like about Twitter actually, like putting those kind of questions out and just kind of getting a range of answers. But some, everyone pretty much landed between like, like single pair shielded. Single twisted pair shielded. Yeah, exactly. Right. And, and you can get that.

Dave Jones: It doesn't have to be shielded, but.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And shield is just nice, but you don't have to. And then you ground one end or whatever. And I was really hoping that Mike Harrison would eventually respond and he did. Cause I know he does, he does RS485 for a lot of his lighting stuff. And, and if people don't know too, I remember, I remember the first time I heard about it, I'm like, well, why would you use that over RS232? And it's just.

Dave Jones: Oh, dude. It's better.

Chris Gammell: It's just way better. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's differential. It's more, more voltage tolerant usually.

Chris Gammell: Yep. It digs. So, so the differential, you can dig the signal out better. I think it's higher speed. Is that right?

Dave Jones: Oh God. Now you're stretching my memory.

Chris Gammell: So the things I know about it is that it's like, you can go a very long distance. Basically it's just speed is, is inversely proportional to distance, right? So the distance goes up, the speed has to go down. But most times when you're even using that kind of stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Just cause there's more capacity for the cables and stuff like that. There's more capacitance on the line. Yep.

Dave Jones: That determines the slew rate you can slew at. Yeah. And what I. Slew rate you can slew at. That doesn't make sense. Everyone knows what I mean.

Chris Gammell: It's slewy. Yeah. Let's call up slew John B. Sorry. So what I landed on though, and what a couple of people suggested, what I was thinking about is that I think I'm going to do a cat five. And I got, that's another thing that I got in my, my little box of goodies from DigiKeers. That's very common. I got some, I got some, I got some header, or sorry, some RJ45 headers. And then I'll just. Yep. Heaps of people do that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: RJ45. That's very common. A lot of the products I tear down. Oh yeah. I use RJ45 connectors for RS232 comms between units.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Okay. I remember Keithley used to have some.

Dave Jones: RS485.

Chris Gammell: Some, some kind of, they, I always get confused because it was RJ45 and you just kind of get used to thinking ethernet. And ethernet. Right. It's not. No, no.

Dave Jones: I've used RJ45 a lot in custom stuff and it ain't ethernet.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. You can try to be ethernet. It's just.

Dave Jones: Because it's standard. It's cheap. You can buy the cables off the shelf. They're already terminated. Right. Even some of them are. The cables are super high quality. Yeah. They're, they're characterized. They're, you know. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. Well, they said, people were saying online that they're on Twitter rather that they don't go too far. Right. With, they don't, they don't try and push that too far, but I'm really not going too far. It's more about just the volume. But the number one thing.

Dave Jones: You can easily go a hundred meters with RS2, RS485 over, or a 422 over, over ethernet cable.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, yeah. And that would be the absolute max I would probably do anyways. So. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. I'm just, I'm just interested in this stuff just to try it out and, and yeah. So, I don't know. It's interesting. Cabling. All that stuff. But, oh, that was the main thing I was going to say is my number one, my number one requirement was I'm not making a goddamn cable. Right. Yeah. Of course. I do not make custom cables anymore. No, no. And it's, it's interesting when I, when I talk to people that are doing products, like, well, and eventually we'll just make a custom cable. And then like these alarm bells are like going off my head. And I'm like, you know, like you do not want to do that. And almost, I can't think of a single situation where it's not worth the engineering effort to try and do like board to board or condense it all to a single board or anything like that. Like, I mean, you do a lot of teardowns, anything with cabling in it, that increases the cost and complexity, right? Oh yeah, of course.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it does.

Chris Gammell: And it's, it's normal in a lot of products, but that's just because they're trying to pack so much crap in there that getting it all onto a single board is unreliable or almost impossible.

Dave Jones: So you've just got a single point to point app. You don't have like a multi-drop configuration or anything?

Chris Gammell: I think I might do multi-drop. You mean like a daisy chain type thing? Like a...

Dave Jones: They're not daisy chain. They're all on the bus, all in parallel kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, but I mean, you could have two connectors on one board and then, you know, like each drop could have, could pass the signal along to the next thing, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, if you want to re-drive it, but generally...

Chris Gammell: I don't think so. So if you think about, okay, so if you have a master on one end, right? And then, and that is cabled now to device number two and device number two has an input port and an output port. It has the resistor that is there, right? Because you need the...

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. No, it depends on whether or not you're sending a signal to one unit and then that signal is going to reprocess it and send it to the next one. No, no, sorry.

Chris Gammell: It would still be a bus, 100%. It would still be a bus, right? So you'd have multiple... Yeah, all those signals would be on, I think, if this is right. Maybe this is good to talk about, but as far as I know, they would all be on this. They would have the same potential on the input connector and the output connector, right? Because you'd want to be able to pass it down the line. If people don't know about the protocol as well, it's like basically, it's similar, kind of similar to, well, it's very similar to CAN bus, right? Where it's everybody's sitting in a line or almost kind of like I squared C as well.

Dave Jones: Well, no, no, no. But RS-485 and 422 is not a protocol. It's a physical layer.

Chris Gammell: Right, it's a physical layer.

Dave Jones: It's a physical layer. You have to implement your own protocol.

Chris Gammell: Right. But for me, it would just be very simple. I mean, like it would not be anything fancy, you know? Yep.

Dave Jones: Well, it depends. Like if you've got one transmitter and just a bunch of receivers, then it's easy. But when you've got multiple devices that want to talk on the bus, you're going to have collision avoidance and everything else, right? No, yeah.

Chris Gammell: This would be very simple for me. It would be, you know, one master, multiple slave kind of thing.

Dave Jones: So the slaves don't even transmit back?

Chris Gammell: Only if they're asked to, you know what I mean? Like you could send.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. And then in that case, you have an address on each one. The easiest way to do it is to have an address and you go, okay, you've won.

Chris Gammell: And another thing that I got in my kit for the first time in a long time I've ordered was dip switches. And that was another thing I wanted to talk about.

Dave Jones: Dip switches to set the address manually. I like dip. I'm a dip switch fan. Yeah. I like switches.

Chris Gammell: They are not cheap, man. They are, you know. No. No, they're not at all. I know.

Dave Jones: Big bomb item cost, you know, especially if you get the decent quality ones.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I don't really know how to judge that. I mean, like, I got like the piano, they call them piano keys. So they kind of flip up or down. Oh, yeah. I don't know if that would be good. I'm just doing it as a first thing. I mean, you could always do it. That was the thing I wanted to kind of mention on here too is like you can do it with what? You can do it with like selectively populated resistors, stuff like that. You could have a unique ID chip, but then you have to do some kind of discovery of each device that's out in the bar.

Dave Jones: And then you've got to program each board separately. Or a lot of the time you can put in what I've done in the past also is to put in an ID chip that's already pre-programmed with a random ID. You used to be able to buy this from Maxim. Like Dallas makes sense, right? Yeah, yeah. Dallas slash Maxim. The one wire. These ID chips. Yeah. We use those extensively in our products. And they're great. Factory laser program with a random.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: No two chips of the same code. Right.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah, they're like 24-bit chips and they'll guarantee that you'll never see the same number twice or something.

Dave Jones: But then you've still got to identify that.

Chris Gammell: You've just got to read it back and then, you know. Right, exactly. Unit ABC123 is different than ABC124, but you have to tell it, well, you want to talk to 124. Right. And that gets a little bit more complicated.

Dave Jones: We use those at Altium as well. Every board had a one wire ID chip on it.

Chris Gammell: Really? That's interesting.

Dave Jones: Yeah, every board, you know, because the Altium hardware board was like a modular plug-in thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's how we identify when you plugged in a board. Every board manufactured had a Dallas one wire ID chip on it.

Chris Gammell: And like label each board then and say you are, how did it know that it was a FPGA board versus like a sensor board?

Dave Jones: We actually had a test jig to program them. So, at the factory we would, so, you know, after the boards manufactured, we'd plug it in the programming jig and we'd tell it. And the ID chip also had some eSquared Prom in it as well, right? So, not only did it have its own unique serial number for each chip, but also had that eSquared Prom ID, you know, only like 10 bytes or something. It wasn't much, right? But it was enough to put like a product ID code in there. So, we would put in the ID code, the product number for that board. So, you know that you plugged in, okay, it's a PB4. You know, we know that's a soundboard, you know. So, the system knew, read that code out and knew that that was a soundboard. And then you could put in multiple ones because it could identify based on the serial number.

Chris Gammell: That's interesting. So, were there ever issues with that though or no?

Dave Jones: No, no, that was, no, it was a nice system. And it was a one wire bus. So, you could just whack them all in parallel and it would, you know, read all these when it started up. When it started up, it would, you know, read and identify all the boards. So, yeah, it was sweet. So, it was easy to implement on the PCB side of things as well. Because you just needed a single pin and that just paralleled across all your boards, all of your expansion connectors, everything else. So, yeah, worked well.

Chris Gammell: That's pretty cool. Yeah, I don't know. It's added cost, of course, and complexity. But that is definitely an issue that I'm sure listeners have had to deal with too, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. These chips were 50 cent a pop, you know. Yeah. So, yeah, it adds to the bond cost.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Or whatever. But, no, it's cool. It was just, I liked them. I was a bit of a fanboy, those chips.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No, they're great. I mean, that's, I think. Chip of the week. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: I can't remember the Dallas DS24. Yeah. 24.04. DS24. I'm going to see if I remember. Going off the old. Here we go.

Chris Gammell: The crusty parts of the brain, huh?

Dave Jones: No, that's the dual port memory plus 24. Hang on. No, that's a real-time clock. No, I'm getting confused. No.

Chris Gammell: No. Well, he's getting old, folks. DS24.01.

Dave Jones: 24.01. There you go.

Chris Gammell: You were pretty close, actually. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I was. Yeah. That's cool. In fact, I think there's several in that series. So, you know, 24.0 whatever.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. Oh, great.

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: Hang on. I need to know how much eSquare Promit's got in it now.

Chris Gammell: Oh. You mean, like, I don't. You think you could, like, write other stuff into it? Like?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we did. That's what I was talking about. Oh, okay. We would write the product ID in there. We would write the model number so you could identify the difference between an FPGA board and a peripheral board. I thought you were storing it on a different, I'm sorry. I thought you meant you were storing it on a different. No, no, no, no. Same. No. That's what was great about this chip. Not only does it have a built-in unique 64-bit registration number.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But it's got, how much? E-Square Prom. Come on.

Chris Gammell: Hmm.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yeah, it's got some E-Square Promit.

Chris Gammell: So are you saying that you would program this chip on the... Yes. You would program the chip separate from the device then as well? No, no, no. Or you would program the device?

Dave Jones: No, we would solder it on the board first. Okay, you would. So yeah, we get our boards manufactured and then assembled and then we would plug the board because it had like an expansion connector. So we'd plug it into a test jig and then we'd actually program all those boards. We had like a big array of them. You could plug them all in and program them. Yeah. Yeah. Huh.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's very cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, like I learned all this stuff in industry. I didn't, I never really heard about any kind of this kind of stuff in school or anywhere else. I mean, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Of course you're not. There's an infinite number of chip solutions out there that of course you would never learn about.

Chris Gammell: No, I'm sorry. I mean, like even just like the method, like the fact that you need, you know, like, okay, I'm on a bus. I need a unique ID, that kind of stuff. Like that, that kind of just general, like, so now, I mean, whenever I think about a bus now, it's like, I mean, I guess people learn that when they're doing like I2C type stuff as well. You need to have unique addresses for each part that you're talking to. But it's just, you know, something different.

Dave Jones: It's only when you need something, that's when you go out and search and you find all these cool things and different ways to do it. There's more than one way to skin this cat.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, I had a, I was looking through some of the subreddits, but then also I was actually advising a college kid from my alma mater. And, you know, they're kind of all asking the same thing. I don't think we're quite into the panic season yet, but I'm sure we're getting there. Panic season? Well, you know, like their friends are, I don't know, my friends all got jobs before I did, so I was panicked. About now. Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I guess. So all the good ones are going to be taken.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, like a lot of the superstars that I knew all had job offers before Christmas break, right? My last year. So, yeah, I guess I was kind of freaking out by now. But don't freak out. We're going to help you out here. So I was thinking about, like the common question is just like, oh, what could I be doing, right? And that's kind of the question and some of the email that I was kind of writing back to this guy as well and stuff like that. So I kind of thought about like what would it be, what should an EE who's looking to get a job by May of 18 months from the point of thinking about it, right? So like Christmas break of junior year, what should an EE be doing, right, in order to be getting that job so that they're going to their graduation parties and getting drunk without any cares in the world? Well, you've got to have a project you've done. Exactly, right. That's obviously that's it. That's number one for sure.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I would say that, you know, documenting it online, you know, like a personal portfolio site, stuff like that, that's all good too. And that's what I was telling the student too about like, you know, like I saw the resume, I saw the cover letter, all that stuff. But I asked, you know, where's the portfolio? How do I find your actual work? And, you know, you could do that a lot of places. So, you know, websites too. I think it's good to have a personal website, but.

Dave Jones: Oh, you don't necessarily have to have it. No, no, no. You just take your project along to.

Chris Gammell: That's true too.

Dave Jones: The interview. But then again, how can people see your stuff at the resume stage? Right. Before you get to the interview, right?

Chris Gammell: Well, and I was talking to, I was talking to a very successful engineer as well. And they were mentioning that they got their job at this very interesting place because of a side project. Right. And that was interesting too. Right. Of like. Yep. It happens every single day. Right. I mean, like it's always, it doesn't have to necessarily be related. Yeah. Yeah. So other things I was thinking though, as well, as like starting to go to like meetup groups and network, you know, that is depending on if you want to live, live where you are. Right. You said you always talk about Australia. You guys kind of stick around where, where you grew up usually, but that's not necessarily the case, but, but definitely finding.

Dave Jones: No, but that's the vast majority of people do that here in Australia. Right. And just kind of. If you were, if you were born in Sydney, you go to uni in Sydney. If you're born in Western Sydney, you probably go to Western Sydney university, you know, like it just, yeah. Gotcha.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's a thing here. And then, and then wherever you want to end up living afterwards. Or look for a job, you know, like it's good to, you know, it's tough, right? I mean, it's tough for the whole networking piece, but especially if you're not on site, but you're going to find out about the coolest, like least well-known jobs if you're actually there. So if you're looking to move somewhere, definitely get, get there, crash on a friend's couch, get to some meetups, you know, like talk to people and then, and then go back home and start sending them links to your profile, your, uh, your portfolio and stuff like that. I'd think, you know, and of course, bring your stuff to the meetups.

Dave Jones: But of course, yeah, just have a project you've done and finished complete. That's it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, and that's, that's what we ask. It's not much.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. And it can start. I mean, like, you know, it's, it's like, if you're not even sure where to start, just start. Honestly, I was telling someone the other day that like, um, so like, uh, bold port stuff, right? Like just get into the, get into the flow of just be soldering kits and, you know, like just use it as your relaxation type thing just to get, to get building stuff. Right. It's just kind of that muscle you got to keep working and keep pushing stuff out. And then eventually they'll get more complex. It doesn't have to be like, you don't have to wait for the, like that, that groundbreaking idea. You know, you just have to build something like you're saying, because.

Dave Jones: You're, you're pushing for a segue here, aren't you?

Chris Gammell: Uh, not, but we could mention that, I guess.

Dave Jones: The two things, you mentioned meetups and bold port and there's a bold port electronics meetup in London.

Chris Gammell: Dave, I can't even help it when I, when I do a segue like that, you know, I'm just, I consider the whole world when I start talking. I ruined the surprise, did I? Well, that's fine. No? Yeah. So, uh, sorry, I was doing a meetup in, in London. Uh, so that'd be good. I don't know what else to say there.

Dave Jones: That's it. That's all we need to say. Right.

Chris Gammell: Uh, I will say, uh, Dave still hasn't done a meetup. Maybe that's something to say. No, I still haven't done one. Right. I'm going to Australia eventually. So, you know, eventually Dave will be found at a meetup. It's just, you know, he just won't have planned it. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: No, I won't have. But well, I'm hopefully like, is it next week that I'm going to meet?

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Dave Jones: Someone who we've had on recently?

Chris Gammell: Oh, maybe. I don't know. I don't, I don't remember when he was coming up.

Dave Jones: It's in my calendar somewhere. Yeah. I can't remember. Anyway. Anyway, they're coming to Australia. I won't say who it is. Follow my Twitter and you'll, I'll post a selfie with them. Gotcha. Yeah. That's the plan.

Chris Gammell: So any other, uh, aspiring EE by junior year things? Anything else you would think other than a project?

Dave Jones: No, just do a project. No, you can.

Chris Gammell: I would say, I would put an asterisk on that though. I would put it outside of your senior project as well. Right?

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yes, of course. No, it has to be of your own, has to be off your own bat. Yeah. As we say. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: For sure.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Uh, actually, oh, someone else wrote, I didn't even realize someone else wrote, uh, wrote in, uh, on the subreddit, but also they said robotics team, ham radio club, tutoring, undergrad research. Yeah. Those things are all good. And the thing I would point out too. Yeah. Is that, um, you know, like we're saying, I'm saying 18 months out, but if it's, if you're two months out, right. Which some people would be right now, it doesn't matter. Start right now too. If you're, if you're, if you've been graduated for two years, it doesn't matter. Just go like Dave's saying, just go build something. And that's.

Dave Jones: You could get, get a project done in two months. Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So.

Dave Jones: But it has to be your original. So like maybe just take an existing design, modify it. Sure. You know, if you, if you're that short of time.

Chris Gammell: Right. You know, then, um, if you're just uncomfortable, just, like I said, just build something or follow it. Yeah. Like rebuild something else, like modify, like you're saying, like get some kits, just that.

Dave Jones: That's the hardware equivalent of fake it till you make it.

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

Dave Jones: Is to get, take somebody else's complex looking design, you know, modern, you know, if it's open source, right. You've got all the PCB files, you've got the schematics, everything else, modify it, add a few little bells and whistles yourself. Don't copy it. Right. Cause that's cheating. You might get found out. Right. But, you know, make a few changes.

Chris Gammell: I mean, even, even the, the act of building. No, no, you could. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, the act of building, it can be things. So you can, but what I'm saying is.

Chris Gammell: Just be prepared to talk about what you did versus what you followed along.

Dave Jones: Exactly. As long as you can talk the talk. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I agree with that.

Dave Jones: People will ask you, if you bring something in.

Dave Jones: Yes. That's correct. People will ask you questions about it. They won't go, oh, that's nice.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Well, maybe the.

Chris Gammell: Right. But if they do that, you don't want to work there. No, that's right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. So, hey, you can do that, you know? And the, and the fact is you can get a, a much more complex design done in much shorter time. You know, if you started your own, you know, software defined radio from scratch, you're not going to get it done in two months.

Chris Gammell: You don't need to lay out that, you know, 600 pin BGA, FPGA. Right. No, that's right. Right. Maybe start with a plug-in board for like a Pipulio or whatever the other, you know, one of those digital boards or something. Yeah. So.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: I mean, and preferably something where you've laid out your own board. I don't want to see, oh, it's better than nothing. Right. If you bring like an Arduino hooked up with wires hanging off into something else.

Chris Gammell: If you made a shield, right? I mean, that's cool. If you made the shield, that's good.

Dave Jones: I know if you made the shield and everything else, but yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Like if you, you know, did a bunch of 7.4 series logic or something like that on a breadboard, that's interesting too.

Dave Jones: But I would prefer to see an integrated solution.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: Right. Rather than just an add-on board on top of it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The more snazzy it is, the better, the more, the more heads will turn, I think. So. Yep. And good luck to everybody out there. It's, it's a slog. Oh, I don't miss that at all. If you, you know, something's better than nothing. So if you, you know, if you get a job, it's not your last job. You know, you can always try and move later, but try and stay in the industry you want to be in. Yep. If you can.

Dave Jones: All right. All right. What else have we got this week? We've got, you want to talk about yet another 3D printer on Kickstarter that's failed?

Chris Gammell: I don't really want to.

Dave Jones: No? No.

Chris Gammell: We can. I mean, I don't really want to. The Tico, 3 million bucks. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's the same classic story. You know, they, they actually did deliver some. Yeah. They had like 60,000 backers or something. I don't know, 14,000 backers or something.

Chris Gammell: I mean, 3 million is a lot to raise, I got to say.

Dave Jones: That's a lot. They, they got a lot of money, right? Yeah. 3 million bucks. And they basically, well, they, they delivered, I think they delivered about 4,000 units, but they went, eh, pretty dodgy, right? But at least they delivered something, but they, they bought, they spent all their money up front buying all these bulk parts. And that was, they said that was one of the biggest mistakes they make is when they got the money, they went, oh yeah, we're pretty cocky and confident. We have purchasing power now. Yeah. We're purchasing power. Our design's good enough. Let's go buy all these bulk items. And they ordered 16,000, um, sets of almost every component. And they only ever shipped 4,000.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Um, and so that's a lot of, you know, cash just sitting there. That's a lot of, you know, you can't use it. You can't pay people's wages. We here have some components.

Chris Gammell: I was watching, uh, this 2000 ESP 8266 for MagFest is another link that they put on there.

Dave Jones: That was, what's MagFest?

Chris Gammell: Uh, it was like music, art and games. So basically it was like a blinky badge, but it was for like an outside conference type thing. And, uh, so it's a CN lore, Charles lore. Um, uh, it was a really good video. I mean, it was interesting kind of like all this stuff, but they mentioned like same kind of thing where there was, they said like 15,000 like push buttons sitting on a desk somewhere in China. Right. Yeah. Where the footprint was wrong. And it was like, Oh, Ooh, I, yeah, just, yeah. You know, it's just short timeline kind of stuff. You know, that's, yeah. Yep. Yep. Ooh. Uh, yeah. Nightmares. Oh goodness. But the badge look really cool. And they, they did a, they did a cool video where they put it like out on the lawn and, uh, did like a wifi signal strength thing. So very cool.

Dave Jones: Anyway, let that be a lesson to you. The other lesson to come from this one is that, uh, shall I try and quote them here? Um, they basically said that they thought that they could fix their hardware problems in software. Just add more bits, Dave.

Chris Gammell: Come on, man.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Did they say how?

Chris Gammell: Like, like what? Like, uh, like, uh, like, uh, well, okay.

Dave Jones: Like there's a 3D printer. No, they didn't really say how, but like, it's a 3D printer, right? So belts and motors move and you get slippage and you get other things, right? So you can potentially fix some of that in software by either driving it slower, driving it more carefully. I don't know. Whatever. Right? Averaging. Averaging is the answer. And they went, nah, that didn't, that helped, but not enough to make it a real polished product. And yeah, duh. Right. So they jumped into it. So they, they were the two big lessons and they basically, uh, man, there's some things

Chris Gammell: you just can't get around like that. I mean, like, I know that like, like, but like mechanical tolerances, stuff like that. Like at a certain point, you're just going to run in, you're going to run into physics, you know, like, you know, like repeatability is like such an important, especially in mechanical processes like that. It's such an important thing. And it's like, yeah, you could do something six times and you could try and average it out. But unless you have, then you need like some kind of like outside thing to monitor. Like you need like an encoder wheel then. Right. If you say you're doing like, say you have a servo that's not very.

Dave Jones: You need feedback. You need positional feedback. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Something. And it's like, that just increases complexity and lowers the speed.

Dave Jones: It's an entirely different design. Right. You know, and it's like, and it's, and the 3D printer though, is the classic example of where you can build your prototype and you can get a false sense of completion, you know, like, yeah. Okay. You build your prototype. You might even build five of them. All right. Right. And, and, and they print out and everything. And you really, you're so excited by the fact that at work that you miss like, oh, you know, look, the layers aren't, oh, this layer. They're peeled off. Oh, you know, like, oh, that's just a, we can just tweak that in software. You know, that'll, we'll just. Wait, so it wasn't like that though?

Chris Gammell: It wasn't like sourcing stuff? I always figure sourcing stuff is another thing that's like, let's see this.

Dave Jones: Well, it is, but I'm just using this as an example, a classic case where the devil is in the detail of a polished product. You know, it's not something you can just fob off, you know, or like, or, or go, oh yeah, you know, we can fix that later or something like that. You know, it really has to be solidly nailed down from the get go before you push that order button. Whereas a lot of electronics is different to that.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. So, you know.

Chris Gammell: Three million dollars.

Dave Jones: If you whack an FPGA in there, okay, right. You can fix things in, you know, VHD or later. Right. Kind of thing. Right. Right. There's a, there's, there's a lot you can do. Right.

Chris Gammell: But then you also have to hope that your, your users can change the firmware. Yeah. Right. Ooh. Yee. Yep. Yeah. So wait, this was a hundred, this is a $180 printer though. $180.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Something. I, what was it? Okay.

Chris Gammell: So this was already a foregone conclusion. This was going to fail.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. No. It's a, we've talked about that before. Many times. Yeah. Many times where you can't physically make a product for that. Right. You just can't do it.

Chris Gammell: And ship it and support your staff and everything else.

Dave Jones: It was never going to work.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It was $180, $180 3D printer. And. Ugh. God. Who, who, whoever did that article years ago that we talked about by saying you can't do a sub $300 3D printer. And they were like, and they went through the math of why you can't. And they're bang on. You know.

Chris Gammell: They're from Niagara Falls, New York. Buffalonian fail. I don't know if they call themselves Buffalonians. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, they thought they could get around all those limitations by simplifying. It's all one big 3D extruded case and it's like a triangle shape. So it's, they thought they had solved the problem of cheap printers. And, you know, what?

Chris Gammell: Well, Valiant Tri. Devil's in the detail. You know, 16,000 people made the wrong decision. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I mean, on the other hand. We may have even called this one back when it first came out. We probably. We may have even said it would fail.

Chris Gammell: Whatever. Yeah. Another one. Bites the dust. Dust. Bum, bum. Bum. Bum. Bum. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Can we talk about another Kickstarter?

Chris Gammell: Um.

Dave Jones: Which is interesting. It's got 12, it's got 12 days to go.

Chris Gammell: Which one?

Dave Jones: But I, I don't know. The Chip Easy. The electronics component organizer. Oh, that thing looked ridiculous.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't, I was not a huge fan of that.

Dave Jones: I was not a huge fan of it. But they've raised 12 grand of their 20 grand goal. It's like, it's, it looks like a regular component cabinet. Right. But each drawer is motorized.

Chris Gammell: It's just really, really complex for what it is.

Dave Jones: And, yeah. And actually has a lead next to each drawer, which can flash. And then it hooks up. It must hook up to a PC. I believe it must hook up to a PC. Yeah, it does. Because there's a software layer too. Right. Yeah. And then you program what, you know, your parts go in each bin for like a production kind of environment. And I can't think of a more narrow niche.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Right. This is, this is. Right. This is, this could, this actually, okay, here's the, here's the idea. This something like this, it seems like it actually is well done. It is manufactured. Oh, yeah. No, no. I think it's well done. It's just, it's just not needed. Right. I mean, like it's.

Dave Jones: It's a cool product looking for a market. Exactly. Right.

Chris Gammell: And if they took this idea and they shopped, like if you did this for, and maybe this already exists for industrial markets. Oh, no, no. Like a tool case and stuff like that.

Speaker ?: It does.

Chris Gammell: I've used these systems before. Oh, okay. No, no.

Dave Jones: I've used, we used to use these, big companies use these systems when you've got thousands and thousands of parts and components and you would have a component store and they would have these automated things, you know, tray and software behind it. So then you, I want this part. So you go down to the store. This is before the days of the internet. And you walk down to the store, you'd fill out your slip, you know, that I want, you know, an extra one of these chips because, you know, I'm repairing some military board. Right. And they, you know, they go away. And 10 minutes later, they come back and they put it into the system. It, it rolls the big, you know, huge, big rollers with all the bins in it. So it automatically goes to the right bin and then pops it out.

Chris Gammell: See, I still don't think that that's, I mean, that's still like, that's just, you had more money to put towards that. I still don't think it's needed. Oh yeah. You know what I mean? Like at a certain point, there is some balance point of like having some guy minding the store and knowing that it's like, well, it's in, what I do is I go to bin 42E and I, you know, I marked down that I'm selling Dave one of these. It's like, oh, paper, you know, okay.

Dave Jones: Or you just sort them into categories. You have a whole, you know, stand full of ones that just have chips, a whole stand full of one that just have passives, you know, and like you can organize, you know, and you just look through, you have them in sequential order of value or something, you know, it's like, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, this is. So there is, and I'm sure that it could, you know, like, like find a market or something, but I just, I don't think, I will never have this in my lab. I know that. That's what I'm really getting at.

Dave Jones: I cannot see where their market is. It's so narrow that, yeah, I can sell them, selling a few and well, they've got 42 backers, you know, I'm not sure how much this thing is. It's like, yeah, it's 369 early bird, 400 bucks. So you've got to be willing to pay 400 bucks for a, what, 40 drawer parts cabinet that costs 20 bucks.

Chris Gammell: I forgot that I commented on this. I said, I could buy a lot of binders for $400, right? I mean, like I could buy a lot of raw materials and organization methods.

Dave Jones: Yeah. From, from China on eBay. Now you just buy all these kits of parts, you know, and they already come pre labeled, pre sorted. And so, you know, granted it's a very neat solution, but it's just.

Chris Gammell: Well, and there's other people doing this kind of thing too. Like, uh, what's it called? It's called, uh, parts something. Cause it's very similar to parts IO. It's parts box that IO, I think, or something like that. But it was basically like, you know, there's been other stuff like that. Um, uh, that inventory management for the lab. Right. So just, I want to know that when I've built 30 of the boards that I'm, I'm used to building, you know, it's like an MRP system. Right. And, uh, I've, I've, I'm now short or I'm, I've five resistors away of being out of zero ohm resistors or whatever it is. Right. Uh, that's it. Yeah. Parts box that IO. That's the one. And so it's.

Dave Jones: And to automatically order them for you. Right. And like, I thought this thing has the potential to automatically order things for you, but

Chris Gammell: you can do that just with software. Right. I mean, either way, I mean, if you're scanning in, you know, you can do it with like the labels from DigiKey or anyone else. Right. Where you're just like, oh, you're about to run out of component, whatever. Um.

Dave Jones: Well, the, the, one of the other problems with this is just the fiddliness of it. Like each, actually each drawer has like 40 drawers in it. Sorry. It actually has like 500 or something, but you know, they're, they're little like one inch by one inch cube slots where you're supposed to put your SMD parts, right? So you're supposed to take your SMD parts off the tape and put them in here. I mean, maybe you can reconfigure the drawers. I'm not sure, but you know, like that's just, no, that's just not how you want to do it.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, and I think that all this stuff, it's just like, when you get to the point where you actually do need something like this, it's going to, the scale is going to be so much more, right? You're, you're, there's a lot of overhead for these kind of, any of these systems, there's a lot of overhead.

Dave Jones: Oh, there's always overhead. And so there's that, there's that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. That, that balance point.

Dave Jones: Any form of organization has overhead.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Exactly right. Yeah. So yeah. Well, I hope that.

Dave Jones: As evidenced by the guy who did the video, you know, that he had that, he had that component collection that I went to see once.

Chris Gammell: Yes, that's right. Oh man. That was a lot of, that was a lot of parts.

Dave Jones: That was, that was incredible. Right. That was incredible. And he had it all on a spreadsheet. He had this huge, massive master spreadsheet.

Chris Gammell: Did you ever find out how much he was building with that stuff? I mean, like, that's the other thing.

Dave Jones: Like people that are, he did actually contact me. Oh, he did. He saw the video and he contacted me and he didn't, I didn't hear back from him. So I think he wanted to tell me the history of it or something. But anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, I think that's a certain, certain thing is like people sometimes optimize for the system. Like they like, they like building the system in that case. Right. Great.

Dave Jones: Right. Oh yeah. No, he just enjoyed building the system and hey, great. More power to him. That was fantastic. Right. Then that was his hobby. Yeah. Right. Exactly. The fact that, I think he was in the parts business or something as well, you know, selling like, like parts for obsolete gear and stuff like that. Right. Right. Right. You know, so I'm sure it helped in that respect, but that was just his hobby, you know, to do that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: That's fine. Anyway. Yeah. Like at what point, like, you know, I can imagine coming up with this Kickstarter idea, right? But at what point do you call it quits? You know, do you go, like we talked about this last week with Bunny, right? How he came up with this idea for the, you know, the keyboard. Yeah. Right, right, right. The encryption keyboard, right? And he worked on it for months and months full time. And then he finally reached the point where he went, no, I have to say, this is not going to work. This is not going to sell. It's not going to, no one's going to buy this. And I have to just, you know, give up on it. And I know it's hard giving up on your baby, but sometimes it's like, you know.

Chris Gammell: Notice we haven't heard anything about Dave's kids recently. So he's probably done the same thing with his children. So don't give up on your kids, Dave. That's not cool. It's not. Yeah. No, yeah. I mean, it is tough. I mean, like.

Dave Jones: Have people out there given up on a project like Bunny did, you know, worked on it forever, six months and just given up and went, nah, you know. Yeah. I've done it.

Chris Gammell: I've done quite a few, you know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And well, there's a good lot of mine that just I've lost interest, but others, no, I've deliberately said, nah, this isn't going to work. And I just, yeah.

Chris Gammell: The clean break's good, I think. It's better than like, oh, I'll get back to it someday. It's like, no, it's done. Right. Maybe I'll cannibalize some of the pieces for it. But yeah. That's tough. I mean, especially with all this stuff where there's money involved and, you know, there's funding and whatever.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't know how many people are involved in this and what, if it's a startup or what. Yeah. You know, but I don't know. Like, hats off to them. They've produced what looks like a nice, good-looking product, right? Yeah. Yeah. Just that has almost no market. Yeah. Unfortunately. That's the unfortunate thing. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: So, like, on one hand, I'm torn. Like, you know, I don't want to, you know, I'm not trying to lay into them, right? Like, it's just.

Chris Gammell: Well, what we're saying is we don't want this. This isn't for us. So, that's what we know.

Dave Jones: No, no. It's not. And, you know, based on my experience, I can't see how many people would want it. Yeah. But I could be wrong. I'd love to be proven wrong, you know? And this thing sells like hotcakes and it solves everyone's problems. But, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, I'm torn between, you know, even not saying, just ignoring these and not saying anything or using it as an example to show people how, you know, you can just go, you know, you can have the blinkers on and go down and think, oh, this is a great product. This is a great product. This is a great product. And if I build it, they will come. You know, sometimes they won't come.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. Well, I could talk about that.

Dave Jones: How do you know that? I mean, for me, it's based on my.

Chris Gammell: Well, actually, I was going to mention that. There is a book that I've been reading.

Dave Jones: Decades and decades in the business, right?

Chris Gammell: Actually, it was not that that I was going to say is that there's a book called Content Incorporate or Inc. Content Inc.

Dave Jones: You've always got a book recommendation.

Chris Gammell: I always got a book. I know. It's always like a marketing pukey business book, too. And this one's pretty bad. Right. But basically, the idea is you build the, you know, like, so let's use Mr. Jones here as a case study, right? You build the audience first, which is always the hard part. And then eventually, what the audience wants pops out, right? That's kind of like the modern thing. It's not the only way to do it. It's not the best way to do it necessarily. But it is a, you know, if you can do that and build the audience and get the people to talk back and, like, be like, well, what we really need is the blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, right? That is, that's hard to do, right? I mean, or that is super valuable.

Dave Jones: And everyone wants a different blank, blank, blank.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. You still have to distill that down to whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know. I think it's an interesting idea. I mean, I think it is a very contemporary idea because, well, there's a lot of stuff out there, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So.

Dave Jones: Well, and I've been thinking about this recently with my, you know, debunking videos.

Chris Gammell: Which I'm not a huge fan of, I've got to say. Well.

Dave Jones: Sorry. Well, okay. Well, you can, after I finish this, you can tell us why. Right, right. And they have traditionally been one of my more most popular videos. You know, the Batteriser, the Solar Roads, everything else, right? They've been incredibly popular. Uh-huh. But some of them aren't. And it's like, so it's not that, oh, I do a debunking video, it's going to be popular. Some of them are not popular. And it's sort of hard to tell which ones are and aren't. Or will and will not be. Yeah. You know, so it's like, you know, there's people out there going, oh, I don't, you know, I didn't like this one.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Or whatever. Okay, but I liked the previous two you did. Well, you know, what's changed? It's just the subject matter I'm talking about.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it could be the inkling of whether, you know, like if something looks like, if you hear something enough times, you're like, oh, all these people are talking about it. And then it makes you angry because you don't think it's going to work. And then someone verifies that, right? They're like validating your own inkling.

Dave Jones: And some people have said, oh, no, like this was just a waste of everyone's time. It's, of course, it's obviously bunk. Why did you even bother doing a video on this? Like, oh, okay, you know, right? Because I found it interesting.

Chris Gammell: That's what I always say. Why did you even bother, Dave?

Dave Jones: Okay, so why don't you like my debunking videos?

Chris Gammell: Oh, I like when you build stuff. I like building and, you know, looking inside stuff. Right. Debunking just feels like, I don't know. I don't really care about it. That's just personal. It's literally just personal taste. Low-hanging fruit?

Dave Jones: Is it like, is it because you don't like seeing people called out? Or you think it's a waste of my time?

Chris Gammell: No, it's a waste of my time.

Dave Jones: I don't care about your time. That you don't watch, you know. Yeah, exactly. Clearly in the title, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no, yeah, I didn't say that. I'm just saying that's why I don't like them.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay, cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's not that I don't like you. I like you as a person, Dave. Don't worry about that. I've been talking to you for frigging seven years. Yeah. You get less for murder. I know, right. Come down to Australia, punch you right in the nose, and then just leave. Our former co-host gave me a hug. Who? Oh, Kaiser. That guy's a big softie. Come on, man.

Dave Jones: He's a big teddy bear.

Chris Gammell: He's a big teddy bear. That's right. I give him hugs, too. Yes, sir. I will have a hug, sir.

Dave Jones: So when we meet, what would you like? A big hug? A big sloppy kiss?

Chris Gammell: A crisp high five. A handshake at a distance? Yeah.

Dave Jones: A crisp American high five with a woo?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Did you like a big woo?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We could have someone film it. We could jump at the same time and be like a freeze frame, you know? Right. Oh, goodness. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. All right. What have we got? Last minute stuff. Last minute stuff.

Chris Gammell: Well, former guest, Dave Vandenbout, wrote a cool video, or sorry, a cool post about some of the stuff he's doing with KiCad and tying together. Is it KiCad? Maybe it's not KiCad. Sorry. It's just about automating capacitor placement and stuff like that on boards, right? Like the things where you're doing a lot of it, right? So he's trying to, and that is tough, right? Especially for FPGAs when you have, you know, you have sometimes upward, like 100 decoupling caps, stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But I love that detail stuff. I wouldn't want to automate that. I love stroking my non-beard and going, oh, yeah, I'm going to put a bypass cap there because I've got the power of the designer. I see. I see.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Like, no, I wouldn't want that automated. Hell no.

Chris Gammell: Well.

Dave Jones: No. Okay. Sorry. I'm just like. That's okay. No, it's my design. I'm going to know. I'm going to say where I put the damn traces.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, actually, I think this is actually the schematic level.

Chris Gammell: Sorry, I think this is the schematic level. So it's just connecting. I mean, it's just connecting by the nets, right? So, yeah. Oh, right. Okay. But I always like Dave's posts, though. And he's doing KiCad stuff, so, in general. So, one thing we don't have on the list, but we are allowed to mention, is the upcoming contest that you kind of hinted at in one of your videos.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. I did a sneak peek at the new KiCad scope. Yeah. Yes.

Chris Gammell: So we will be helping out with some of that stuff. And people should get ready. There will be a buttload of scopes to win that you may have or may not have already seen. So that will have more.

Dave Jones: We have some for the Amp Hour specifically.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and we will have some for, yeah. And we'll have our own giveaways as well. But there will be, like, general giveaway stuff coming up. I think it's, like, the video contests. So, rev your engines. We'll have more details. We'll link to that stuff in the subreddit once it's out.

Dave Jones: And we will be judges in the... That's right.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: In the... Yes. Because it was a schmuzzle last year where it was internet voting. And, of course, you know, Boaty McBoatface won it. Yeah. Right. And everyone... Exactly what we talked about two weeks ago. Yep. And everyone got in an uproar. Rightly so. You know, it was... Yeah. People were buying votes and that sort of crap. No. So, panel... Our decision will be final.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yes. In charge. I like that. Yeah. Other things. Well, we had Zach on a while ago, but I am... Again, I cannot understand it, but whatever. There is another video game for making hardware. He's done another one. No, it's not Zach. That's what's crazy. It's a different publisher.

Dave Jones: Oh, sorry. All right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: MHRD. It's like you actually... It says you're designing various hardware circuits in a hardware description language. When does this stop being a game?

Dave Jones: So, this is actually a thing now, right? With two different companies doing it. This is a thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: This is a genre. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think that's the idea. It's like, this is a genre. Right. What did he call it? I forget what that is. Zach called the game. They were called like Zachisms or something like that. It was something like that. Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But it says, welcome to MicroHard. Become a hardware engineer. Join the hardware startup MicroHard. Immerse yourself in the technology of the 80s and disrupt the tech industry. So...

Dave Jones: That's great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's not like...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's crazy.

Dave Jones: It's brilliant. Like, why wouldn't you want to play that?

Chris Gammell: Again, we still want to hear from you. If anyone ever sees Zaktronics or now this one or anything else on a resume, you have to screenshot it and send it. You don't have to send us all the resume, right? Yes, please. Yeah. There's privacy stuff.

Speaker ?: No, no, no.

Chris Gammell: Just screenshot us the bit. We need to hear about that because it's going to happen. And it's going to be one of our listeners reading these resumes and they'll know.

Dave Jones: I'm like number one and we'll have contests, you know? Yeah. Right. I'm the world, you know, the world expert in playing whatever. MicroHard. Yeah. That's crazy. I'm like the world champion in MicroHard. Right.

Chris Gammell: That's really weird. Yeah.

Dave Jones: What's the world come and do?

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Dave Jones: I don't know. Yep.

Chris Gammell: We'll find out next week. Yeah, I think we will. Yeah, I guess there's other links on the subreddit like usual. Thanks to our Patreon people as always.

Dave Jones: Do we have anyone on for next week?

Chris Gammell: We sort of do. I'll tell you about it after the show.

Dave Jones: No. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm always the last to know.

Chris Gammell: Yes, that's right. People, there are a couple of people that have been like, I'm still working on the site, but if you click the title of the post, there are notes. Every week, there's notes. So if you're like, I wonder what this link was. I've had a couple of people ask me what links were for the header thing I was talking about earlier in the show, but also other stuff. There are show notes. So please check those out. And if we're missing anything, post in the comments. So that's all I got. Sweet.

Dave Jones: That's all I got. I'm done.

Chris Gammell: All right, man. Well, thanks. Go do something useful. Yeah. Go make a Nixie thing, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right. Talk to you next week.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Chris Gammell: So for next week.