#380 – Just Terrestrial and Space Things

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Release February 18th, 2018. Episode 380. Just terrestrial and space things.

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Dave Jones: What's up, nerd? Hey, buddy.

Chris Gammell: Just being you, huh? No guests, no nothing. Nothing but the future. And we're building the future right here. No. Sorry, crickets, crickets. Well, let's start at the top with giving some shit away. How about that?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Let's give some shit away. Why not?

Chris Gammell: So Keysight slash Agilent slash HP is doing their Scope Month again.

Dave Jones: Well, it's not called Scope Month.

Chris Gammell: Oh, sorry. That's right. They changed the name. It's formerly known as Sports Scope Month. Yeah. Yes.

Dave Jones: I don't know. It's called something. I can't remember.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, they're giving stuff away again.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Our buddy Daniel over there, who also does the... They have a podcast as well. But Daniel said, yeah, we can give away another 1,000x. So that's great. How are we going to do it? We are going to bring back the Amp Hour listener survey. What? Yeah. You can go and it's basically... We just want to know demographics about who's listening, what you guys do, what else we should know, how we're doing, all that stuff. So fill it out to the best of your ability. We'll put a... If you don't want to enter, you can still do the survey.

Dave Jones: But leave out your email address.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We won't require that. And we'll have a field for if you want to be entered. If not, we'd still love to hear from you, honestly. We always appreciate hearing that. And it's really nice to...

Dave Jones: It can be completely anonymous.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: And we do like reading the comments.

Chris Gammell: We do. And positive and negative. So that's great. Yeah. So we'll be doing that and we'll give it away in a couple of weeks. So we'll announce that as well. Cool. All right. That was easy. Yeah.

Dave Jones: What are they giving us?

Chris Gammell: 1000X. Oh.

Dave Jones: Just the one?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Just the one. Oh. Okay. It's still a scope. It's still a nice scope. Yeah. I think we've done a couple in the past. Yeah. Sweet.

Dave Jones: I don't think they're actually giving scopes... Well, they are giving scopes away this time. But from what they've told me is that there's these big bundles now.

Dave Jones: Right, right, right. So there's less stuff being given away. Like, you know, before it was like, what, a scope a day plus... Scope a day. Yeah. You know, so there were like... Well, there was a scope.

Chris Gammell: It was a 1000X per day. And then it was like one or two big ones as well. Right.

Dave Jones: And then one or two bigger ones. But now they're... I don't know if they're doing the one a day thing. I think it's just like these big bundles. And wow. They're like... And one of them's an RF bundle. So I think you might even be able to choose whether or not you want like the RF bundle, which comes with like a FieldFox, that sexy FieldFox RF... Oh, yeah. That's a great... Analyzer and stuff. And they're worth like 20, 30 grand or something. Yeah. Yeah. Like serious. And plus you get like a power supply and a scope. And like you get practically a whole high-end lab. Mm-hmm. Yep. Very cool. So awesome. That's great. That's great. I don't know what they're giving me. I think they... Yeah. I think they want to give me something. They're giving you the boot, man. Yeah. That's fine. Don't need them. Right. Don't need anyone.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So thanks to Daniel. And we'll... YouTube keep giving me the boot. You know? Oh, I know, right? They keep demonetizing all that? Yeah. Yeah. What's going... What's why?

Dave Jones: Have you seen that? I keep a forum thread.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: Of... I can't say... Sorry, buddy. I'm sure you don't follow the forum thread of all my demonetization. But no. No. Just to document it. You know? Sure. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I just had another one this morning. I just tweeted. So I'm... Someone said that they were sick of me tweeting all the demonetization. It's like... It's a big thing happening and people want to know. So I'm just documenting it. Yeah. I saw Cody has that same thing happening too. Yeah. Yeah. Is his channel reinstated?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I mostly see it through your stuff. So I don't really actually know.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: I think it might have been because I think I saw a new video come up on his channel. So I assume it was remonetized. But yeah. Like not only my primary channel, but my secondary channel as well. It's like every second video now has been demonetized.

Chris Gammell: Maybe they actually started watching. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: But interestingly, a lot of people said... Like I had a video that was... That had... Like I hadn't actually released it yet. It had no keywords.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I did see this. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it had no title. The title was just 00012, which was the file name of the card. You know, the file name from the memory card that I uploaded. So it had nothing to go by. The algorithm had nothing to go by except what I said in the video, basically. And they didn't have a custom thumbnail or anything. And so everyone said, oh, and that was demonetized. And everyone said, oh, it must be the stupid speech converter bot. And then I actually looked at it. It's actually really... It actually... So I looked. I downloaded what it actually translated my voice to. And it was actually pretty spot on this time. Really? Even with the accent? Yeah. And even with the accent. So I think it's getting better. It was only a couple of minutes video. Or words. One of the two, you know. Right. Well, it's only like a minute long video. But I think it got everything. Word for word. So I was impressed. And there was nothing in there that was... That I would deem...

Chris Gammell: Ah, but what about in Spanish?

Dave Jones: Controversial. Right. Okay. Hola. Hola.

Chris Gammell: Minamoy Dave.

Dave Jones: What?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I don't know. I actually know Spanish, but... Right.

Dave Jones: Was that even Spanish?

Chris Gammell: No, it was. I was trying to say, like, my name is Dave. Oh, okay. Right.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Please don't correct my Spanish. I don't care. I mean, I do care, but it's not... This is not the place. And that was fascinating, so... Yeah.

Dave Jones: A lot of people say I'm just... I constantly complain about it. It's like, meh, whatever. You know, like, no, I'm just documenting it. And because I'm not...

Chris Gammell: A lot of people say I'm constantly complaining. And I say, and another thing.

Dave Jones: It's not complaining. Hey, that's a t-shirt. Yeah, right. I'm not complaining. I'm documenting.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, there you go.

Dave Jones: Or something along those lines.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, so yeah, no, I'm just keeping track. Because I want to know, like, in a year's time, how many of my videos were demonetized, you know?

Chris Gammell: So it's funny.

Dave Jones: But I'm not losing, for those who have asked, and many have asked, no, I don't think I'm losing money. Like, some other channels have lost, like, 95% of their income or something. I've got so many videos that, like, back catalog that gets searched for and watched that it doesn't seem to impact me much, if at all.

Chris Gammell: He's going to be okay. Don't worry, folks. I'll survive. Yeah, right. But also, you know, buy a DMM if you really want to, you know, if you want to support Dave. Yeah. How are the DMMs?

Dave Jones: My new one you're talking about?

Chris Gammell: I mean, just, yeah, the whole thing. How is the status?

Dave Jones: Well, no, it's up in the air. Like, we're just waiting. We're twiddling our thumbs at the moment. Well, not quite, because we're building a hardware test rig to test the range switch. I posted this video on my second channel. Oh, I saw that video. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're improving that by adding a contact resistance data logger and stuff like that to it today.

Chris Gammell: So tell me about what that is. So that's going through each stage of the test, basically? It's like kind of switching to voltage, putting voltage on there or what?

Dave Jones: No, no, no. It's just that we actually bodge in some wires on the back of the range switch contacts, and we have them coming out, and we measure the contact resistance. Oh, okay, okay.

Chris Gammell: So this isn't like an institute, like a production test. This is just a...

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no. This is just to test the longevity of the range switch. Got it, got it. Just for kicks, you know. Yeah. Oh, cool. So, yeah. Yeah. So we're doing that. And I cycle. I left it running overnight for 50,000 cycles, and I was very surprised. I said it didn't do anything.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure your neighbors love you. Yeah, well, it doesn't make much noise. What is that clicking? What is that clicking? Yeah, no, that's... Anyway, so... I always like those kind of rigs, too, of like...

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, yeah. They're great fun.

Chris Gammell: Someone working on like an automotive one was like... They were doing like the... I think it was like door closers or door locks, and...

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. And they just stand there, and the robot just opens and closes the door a thousand times.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they get it like in the millions, you know? It's like really...

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's, you know, and it's just like the real world, like, interaction, too. It's not like you can just, you know, automate it like with a relay board or something. You really need to do it like you're doing here, so...

Dave Jones: Yeah, we used to do that all the time at companies I've worked for, you know, especially with connectors and stuff like that. Yeah, of course. You know, you'd want to make... Insertions and everything. Especially with custom connectors. You design a custom connector. You want to design a rig that just inserts this thing, you know?

Chris Gammell: Did you add, like, noise to it so that it also, like, changes the angles and stuff? Like, insertion angles changes?

Dave Jones: Oh, insertion. No, we basically rely on the dickiness of the jig to kind of...

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes...

Dave Jones: Do that, you know? Right. It depends how precise you want to machine and engineer the thing, and then you can add, you know, once... And then you can add a precise known amount of noise, or you can just slam it together. Bam, bam, bam. Right. And then, you know, like, which kind of simulates the way people would normally do it, kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Murphy takes care of you eventually, huh? Right, yeah.

Dave Jones: And that's kind of what we're doing with the range switch test here. That's good. It's like, you know, we're just, like, it's very loosey-goosey on there, so it's not, like, tight-gripped on there, so it's not, like, really firm, precise turning. It's kind of, you know, a real loosey-goosey thing that was kind of hopefully simulates, you know, people just turning it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because people don't turn it the same way every time, so... Right, right. Sometimes they're frustrated. A lot of different forces. Yeah, exactly. Right. It's at different angles, whatever, so...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that makes sense.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Well, cool. Very cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So we're working on that, but yeah, no, it's the Chinese New Year, of course. Is that over yet? I don't think it's started yet.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it hasn't started yet? I mean, also, isn't your stuff made in Korea? Not for nothing. No, yeah, but... I mean, the Olympics are going on.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but no, South Korea, well, the company was doing the Chinese New Year thing, too, so I'm not sure what the deal is.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really? Might as well just take it off, I guess, if you can't get your supplier stuff in. Right. Yeah, I think it just... I think it was, like, last week it started. Right. I'm sorry if I don't actually know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, I haven't looked up the exact dates, but anyway, that impacts things and, you know. Yeah, yeah. So, unfortunately, this stuff just takes time, you know? It's like people think that we can fix this in a matter of days. No, you know, like weeks and weeks at minimum, you know? And then, you know, it could take a month or more, you know? Yeah. And, like, it's, you know, people expect updates every day. It's, well, here's an update to tell you there's no update. We're still working on it, you know? Like, I don't really want to do that, so, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Speaker ?: Cool.

Dave Jones: Like, we're just sort of, yeah, waiting for some replies back there. They're meeting with the chipset supplier for a thing that we're looking at and, you know, stuff just, like, yeah, takes time, unfortunately.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, certain, I mean, like, no offense, but I doubt you're getting the attention of chip manufacturers either.

Dave Jones: Yes, I am. No. Yeah. I am personally corresponding with Hycon Tech, the chipset manufacturer of the HY3131 multimeter chipset. I'm going here. And they wrote custom documents for me, too.

Chris Gammell: Oh, look at this. They're awesome. I was thinking more like the ADIs of the world, but okay. Oh, no. No. I mean, yeah. No, but, you know. But still, like, that's good.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No.

Chris Gammell: Was that the one that you were having trouble with, though?

Dave Jones: Oh, we're having issues with, you know, software potential issues. But, you know, this chip has so many registers and operational modes and internal switching muxes. And, like, if you go look at the data sheet for it, it's one complex beast. And, you know, if you don't drive it right, then, you know, your software can completely screw things up, you know, or give subtle errors because you didn't use the right input mux path, you know, and it came from somewhere else. And it kind of sort of worked, but it's not, you know. Right.

Chris Gammell: Do you have that data sheet online somewhere? Or do you have to just go?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I can send you a link. The HY3131.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Well, just type it in. Oh, I think I found it, actually. Yeah. HY3131. It's just on Google. Okay. Yeah. I'll link that in, too. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a data sheet. And there's also an application note that goes along with it, which lists all the internal muxes in when you choose, you know, a particular range. This is how you should arrange the internal muxes. But you don't have to. There's lots of customization. You can, you know. There's got to be 50 internal muxes in this thing, you know, that can switch anything. Right, right, right. That's how you get the versatility.

Chris Gammell: It's like a switch fabric almost, right? Yeah, yeah. Almost. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's got multiple internal. Are you and David actually pinging these registers or no?

Dave Jones: No, we're not. Okay. So, yeah. And that's the problem here, right?

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

Dave Jones: Well, no. No, the problem is why it's taking so long is because we don't have controller on it. It's not like, oh, somebody reports a bug. Right. Dave and I are working on it. Oh, I see. I see. Right, yes. We can't really do a thing.

Chris Gammell: You're at the mercy of their response time.

Dave Jones: And they've got. And priorities. And they've got noodles of products to support and, you know, like we're just, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, could you ask if you could start writing the firmware or no?

Dave Jones: Oh, well, there's nothing stopping us. We could write our own firmware.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right? There you go. But just write in our own app. We, like they wrote, they originally wrote an app. We've discussed this before. And then we decided, nah, that app's pretty shit. We're just going to write our own from scratch. And David thought it'd take, oh, yeah, it'll take me a week. You know, I can write our own app. Yeah. Two months later. A couple of months. Two, three months later. Yeah. No, it's, you know, and it's not even finished. It's just kind of. No, no. It's there. It's a basic thing. Yeah. And I can't imagine if we went down the firmware route. If we went, oh, well, okay, screw this.

Chris Gammell: Well, it depends if you had starting firmware though, too, right? That makes a load of difference.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but, well, no, like, well, I wouldn't be doing it. David would be doing it. And he's looked at, we do have this firmware source code. And he's going, no, I would do it. I'd totally write it from scratch. It was, you know, because it's not the way he would write it. There'd be more trouble in trying to maintain it. You know, he said, like, you know, it's.

Chris Gammell: Maybe you should chip him off to a real company for a couple of years. And you can see how it really is, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: I don't like how this big company is doing this thing. I'm going to do it myself. Yeah. I think we have to have him back on here when I'm on here now.

Dave Jones: And, you know, and it's just, yeah, it's totally different to how he would write the firmware. Yeah, right. And it's just like. Right.

Chris Gammell: If you have that choice, it's a great choice to have. That's true. Yes.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Okay. But then again, let's say David wrote it, right? And then he leaves, right? Sure. And somebody else comes along and maintains it. They'd go the same thing. They'd go, oh, shit, I don't like the way this guy's written it. Jeez, I can't understand a damn thing. I'm going to write it again from scratch my way. Or at least, you know, you'd use some of it. Like, you know, the LCD driving. No, I think he'd probably end up rewriting the whole lot of it. Just piss him off.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Well.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. I mean.

Chris Gammell: You have a new question to ask in interviews. Yeah. How do you feel about other people's firmware?

Dave Jones: Yeah. No. And he tells stories about, you know, marking other people's, you know, like marking people's software at uni and stuff like that, you know. And. Okay. Yeah. It's like, fail. You didn't do the way I do it. Fail. Oh, man. Okay. Well, not quite. I'm exaggerating. Right. I get it. It's cool. Yeah. Everyone does it differently. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Definitely.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, this looks like a cool little chipset, though. I mean. Yeah. I'm looking at the. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's why you use these multimeter chipsets. It's got three built-in ADCs. It's got 20 zillion.

Chris Gammell: Are these chips hard to source, like, just from a distribution? Or.

Dave Jones: You. I don't think you'd be able to buy that from a catalog distributor, that one. It's just. It's such a specialized chip. Yeah. It's only used in multimeters, and why would someone want a one-off? You know. Right. You just don't. It's not.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm just looking at. It looks like. It looks like the shady sites have it, and that's about it. Hkinventory.com. Right. Okay.

Dave Jones: Well, they claim they might have it. Right. Right. They know a guy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They know a guy.

Dave Jones: Right. They know somebody. By the way, folks. That's a great.

Chris Gammell: That's a great way to just sanity check yourself. Right. You know, there's the octoparts and the fine chips of the world, but you can also just type into Google, part number, buy. And if you don't get, like, seven results right away.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You're in. Yeah. But sometimes you have no choice. Like, if you're developing a multimeter like we were, we're not going to roll it from scratch. You use an off-the-shelf multimeter chipset. Sure. No, no, no. There's three or four on the market to choose from. Right.

Chris Gammell: And you've done enough teardowns, and you've seen it all. And, like, yeah, it makes a ton of sense. Especially, like, in the price range you're in, right? I mean, like, you're not going to change that radically. Oh, yeah, no, definitely. No.

Dave Jones: I mean, there's some higher-end meters that roll their own, like the Keysight. You know, the hot. I need the bench meters.

Chris Gammell: They do, like, dual-slope type stuff, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: They develop their own chipsets and stuff like that. Right. But for a low-to-mid-range multimeter, you just wouldn't do that. It's just not economical. Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, you pay for better resistors. You pay for nicer analog switches, everything like that, right? Yeah. Lower-league job amps. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Specsmanship. And it's done for. The engineering's done for you, mostly. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's great. But as I said, yeah, no, the firmware is complex. Mm-hmm. Yep. Very complex to how to use these chipsets properly. That's why they have to go see them and talk about, you know, issues and things like that.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Yep. Well, I am getting back into the firmware game right now. Me, Dave. And? And it's scary as shit. Yeah, what sort of firmware? It's a little M0 chip. I am being assisted by coworkers, of course. But it's a little M0 chip.

Dave Jones: Oh, this is not personally. This is at work.

Chris Gammell: No, this is for work, yeah. All right. So, yeah. Got a little M0 chip, though. You know, basically just twiddling with existing firmware, unlike some people. Right. Yeah. You know, like just trying new features and moving pins around and stuff like that. So, nothing too fancy. But got some new hardware that I've built. And, yeah, getting that out in the world, you know? Cool. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, did we mention on the last show we did about somebody reverse engineered the 121GW firmware?

Chris Gammell: I don't think we did.

Dave Jones: Oh. Like, I haven't released a source code and we don't plan on. The company doesn't want us to release a source code, right? For various reasons. But somebody went, screw that. I'm going to take the binary file, the actual, you know, binary image file. I'm going to decompile that, reverse engineer it. And they've started their own custom EV blog multimeter firmware thread. And it's basically reverse engineered almost every routine in the multimeter from the binary file.

Chris Gammell: Well, there you go. That's your starting point right there.

Dave Jones: Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Chris Gammell: Well, why not? I mean, like...

Dave Jones: I know. You know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, you don't have a license agreement, like, with, you know, your manufacturer to do that. But you can't stop them. So, you know.

Dave Jones: No, no, no. In fact, we fully encourage it. Yeah, it's great. You know, if you want to...

Chris Gammell: I mean, they know that they have the data sheet. Well, we're going to share the data sheet. It's an STM32, right? So, there's nothing fancy there. Yeah, no. You don't hide the JTAG programming pins, I'm guessing, right? So, none of that stuff's problematic. No, no, no.

Dave Jones: They're just soldering a header if you want. Right. And the schematics there.

Chris Gammell: And then if you compile down too, right? Once you have the compiled image, you just load it on the SD card, which is another thing.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Bingo. Bingo, bango, boingo. You're done, man. Yeah, that's great. It's unbelievable. Custom hacketry. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Awesome.

Dave Jones: And he was actually fixing bugs.

Chris Gammell: Well, there you go.

Dave Jones: By recompiling this. And he didn't even have... The amazing thing is he didn't even have a multimeter.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's weird.

Dave Jones: He didn't even have one. And he went, right, I've decompiled it. I've fixed... I figured out how it works. I fixed a bug. Here it is. He gave a firmware image back. And we and others tried it and we went, yeah, that works. It's great. Like, oh, God, unbelievable. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like, that's some... That decompiling stuff is... Top shelf level. It's very cool.

Dave Jones: Packing skills. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Neat. Unbelievable. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: That's great, man. You got a little army of nerds.

Dave Jones: That's great. Yeah. Never count them out. Right. It's brilliant. You can't stop them. Sorry, I forget the user's name. I would have... Forum user's name. Mm-hmm. I would have credited them. What else is happening?

Chris Gammell: Well, I've been going to a lot of conferences. Just got back from those. Didn't talk to those... Talk about those last week, but... Went to FOSDEM. I don't know if... I don't know that.

Dave Jones: Is that the one that was on Twitter? The photo was on Twitter where the guy standing in the background, like, giving you the funny... You know, I made a joke on Twitter of you. Somebody posted a photo of you on the stand with people talking to you, and there was this guy in the background with a look on his face.

Chris Gammell: That was the other one, yeah. Oh, right. Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

Dave Jones: It was like, this guy's talking... This Gabble guy's talking shit. Right, right. I was showing hardware, and there was someone, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Caught with a funny face in the background. That's great. No, it wasn't that. No, FOSDEM is the open source developers conference in Europe, and that was in Brussels. Right. And so that's like, you know, Python developers are there, GNU Radio, KiCad, you know...

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Like, all the Linux distributions, all that stuff. So this was a lot, a lot of software people, and it was great. I got to meet the whole KiCad team, and, you know...

Dave Jones: How do they pronounce it?

Chris Gammell: They say KiCad.

Dave Jones: Ah, there you go. They say KiCad. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm in good...

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I haven't fought that one for a long time, buddy.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: You know my whole thing with that, right?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: People who say KiCad, usually I can tell that they've watched my videos once or twice.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Got it.

Chris Gammell: At this point, it's, you know, it's just a way to tell in the wild. Yeah, I don't really care.

Dave Jones: It's a bit of social engineering, huh? Right, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Unintentional, but yes. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, the KiCad project is going swimmingly. Excellent. Yeah, interesting stuff in five. We shared... There's a video where Wayne, the project lead, was sharing what the stuff that's coming, and, you know, looks good. Yeah, well, I'm not as enthused about the... They're putting, like, simulation in there, which is like...

Dave Jones: Ah, yeah, no, there's so many better. No, focus, focus, focus.

Chris Gammell: That seems like a bit of a distraction. Yeah. But, you know, whatever. It's, you know, it's effectively free, right? It's like it's implementing a, you know, a Spice engine in there. Obviously, there's troubles with it, but, you know, with difficulties with it, rather. But, you know, they're working on it, and that's fine. But the big ones, I think, are in five. They're changing some of the schematic stuff around, which I won't give the details because it's very specific to the package. But they're also, like, the Eagle imports is, like, really, really strong. Okay. So, Wayne actually does a demo of importing an Eagle project without any issues. So, it needs to be tested better. But, you know, basically, interoperability, I think, between all of these things is really good.

Dave Jones: Nobody ever expects a perfect importer. Exactly. If you do, you're an idiot. Yeah, I think you're right. You're just, like, you've got... No, come on, you know. Like, if you need to convert something, there's got to be some work involved.

Chris Gammell: Right, I agree. And if it's not work in the actual, like, redoing of something, it should definitely be in the verification that it's right. Right, of course. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that's a good feature just because, you know, there's a lot of projects out there. And I think, generally, interoperability, there's no standard format anywhere, right? Yep. And it'd be nice if there was, but that's kind of a pipe dream. So, in the absence of that, converters are great because, as you and I say all the time, it's not likely that you're going to convert someone, you know, just being like, oh, you shouldn't use this package. You should use this other package here. Yeah, right. You know? So, as we talked about with John last week and the MCAT side of things, right? Yep. Yeah. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Speaking of CAD, there are some former Altium people now working on Eagle, which is very interesting. Yeah. Just because Altium gave everyone the boot, you know? Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Who else did they give the boot, Dave?

Dave Jones: And speaking of which, David was using the latest, he downloaded the latest version of Altium, whatever it is, 18 or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, 18.

Dave Jones: Crap, yeah. The other day, I haven't downloaded, I've still got 17. And he downloaded it the other day and he's, because he's working on the microcurrent, sorry, micro supply board and stuff. And he's just kicking and screaming and like all the bugs in it and stuff. He's just going, I can't do this. Like basic routing doesn't, basic smart routing doesn't work. And, oh, they've broken stuff again.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: And they've changed all the menus, apparently.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, you'll get people upset about that no matter what. I mean, like it could be the, you know, the best new UX, UI thing in the world and people will just be like, you moved my button. Why'd you do that?

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. But he screamed about there's something, you know, they took away the custom key shortcuts or something. Oh, got it, got it. So like, ugh.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Jeez. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep. Well, yeah, I think, you know, we've talked about it in the past. I think Eagle's getting a lot of great improvements too. So it'll be interesting to see what they all do. And I think, you know, you got to pay for it, but it's, you know, it's cheaper than Altium. I think the features, you know, I think features are catching up and I think Kaiket features are doing well too. So please don't tell me I should use a different, you know, I don't care. Right. Dave doesn't care. Nobody cares what you use or what you think you should use. This is just, yeah, where we're at. So, and oh, so this is an announcement I have. I am actually, I don't know how I'm going to do this, maybe a forum or something, but I'm actually looking for people that are using Kaiket in manufacturing. So actually making boards, actually manufacturing stuff. One reason is that I'm starting to actually do Neoden pick and play stuff personally. And then also just generally like how people use it because I think, you know, I was talking to the team and it's interesting, you know, having, being able to talk to them. It's interesting, you know, what they're focused on. And I don't want to necessarily try and influence it myself because I'm only one person. But, you know, if you could talk to a bunch of people about how are you using Kaiket as, you know, or any package really. And in a true manufacturing sense, there's things that make it easier, harder. Like, you know.

Dave Jones: Are you nudging towards having it support the hardware directly? Having it support the pick and place machine directly? No.

Chris Gammell: No, I would never do that. Okay. Why?

Dave Jones: Altium tried that.

Chris Gammell: No, I don't think that's a good idea, actually. I mean, like, I think having like a realistic way, like a flexible output format is good, right? So like X, Y, or S is pretty standard. You know, X position, Y position, rotation, and what's the S? No, I don't know what S is. Maybe, oh, side. That's what it is. So X, Y, rotation, and side, right? That's X, Y, or S. And like, you know, if you can like change that and manipulate it and like it's easy to use, that's all I really care about. Like everything else, because then on the side of the machine, there's always going to be integration pieces anyways. So it's like, just make it a flexible format so that I can save my form, you know, whatever the Neoden wants, I can then have that as an output, right? As like a specified output. Got it. Yeah. Definitely not like directly driving it. Like if you think that's the real thing, if you think there's no, like you said, if you think there's no work involved, you're, it's a pipe dream, right? You just don't know that there's going to be work. So yeah, if you're doing manufacturing, I'd love to talk to you and just kind of get use cases and stuff like that. So I'll have a form. Please let me know. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Cool.

Dave Jones: Why wouldn't you use the existing forum?

Chris Gammell: The Kaiket forum? Yeah. Because if you ask a general group something, it's different than if you ask a targeted group something. Right. You know, opinions are like something. Belly buttons. Everyone's got one. Everyone's got one. Yeah. All right. Let's say belly buttons. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Why?

Chris Gammell: It's just... Is someone going to demonetize us? It's less, yeah. It's less, it's less crude. But anyways, yeah. Yeah. I just would, I don't want to do it there. So yeah. You know, just looking to chat with people.

Dave Jones: Got it.

Chris Gammell: The picture you were talking about was at the Things Conference. Right. Yes. And that is a Laura Wan conference that I went to in Amsterdam. And first off, have you been to Amsterdam? No, I haven't. It is a goddamn charming city. I mean, not because of the pot or the prostitutes, but because of the canals and just, it's just a beautiful city. Um, so, uh, so, and met a lot of great people there. But the conference was really interesting because, well, I mean, I had, uh, so, uh, you know, an interview many weeks, a couple weeks ago was Richard, uh, who works at TWTG and they actually make a gateway for this, for this Things Network and didn't know much about it. And he's the one who told me about the conference and that's why I went out there. And it's just really interesting, but learned a lot more about Laura and learned a lot more about Laura Wan. And now I'm going to ask Dave what he knows about these things.

Speaker ?: Nothing.

Chris Gammell: Nothing at all?

Dave Jones: Not really.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Uh, how about other 900 megahertz type radios? Actually, I don't even know. In Australia, what is the Citizen Band stuff? Or not Citizen Band, but, um, uh, like the open bands there.

Dave Jones: Could be, uh, what's my wireless mics? I know that my wireless mic, a 400, a 460, 490, yeah, something like that. Yeah, so there's 430. I think we might have a 900 as well, but

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: I do know that our wireless mics are an entirely different market to overseas ones.

Chris Gammell: Oh, interesting. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so 433, so like looking at these Laura modules, I, I, like, I don't know the, the difference. I don't use my ham license very well. Uh, so 433 is like one of the standard modules, uh, and then, uh, 868 and 915. And so those are some of the standard frequencies you can use throughout the world. Like all my stuff is 915, but in Europe it's 868. So like, um, I think, I think there's a mode switch in there. Like it's close enough that like the oscillator, you can switch it over or something, but yeah.

Speaker ?: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Um, yeah, so it's interesting. It's an interesting protocol. Basically it uses a chirp, which is not, which is like, uh, from, you know, basically it was inspired by radar. And, uh, so basically increasing frequency, it's like a zero and decreasing frequency, it's one or opposite that. But basically the idea is that it's, you know, it's going between these two frequencies and, you know, people can go listen to this show with Richard too. That's probably a much better way to do it. Um, and, uh, and that's just the physical protocol, right? Right. Does that make sense? Yeah. Uh, and then the thing that I still didn't get when I went there is that all of that stuff is completely separate from what this conference cared about. Right. So basically they just, they assume that the chips work. That's what's crazy about it. Okay. Yeah. And then again, what Richard was explaining that it still didn't sink in even after I was, you know, after the show with him. Um, but the idea is it's basically, it's like an internet. It's, it's like literally like an internet where it, they, they do peering between different networks even now. Like that's another thing they're going to be doing. So basically like, so you have a sensor there in Australia, right? And that's, that's changes to make a little more realistic. I have a sensor here in Chicago, right? And it talks to a local tower and basically it goes back to a server and then it goes to wherever it wants to go, right? Wherever it needs to go.

Dave Jones: It gets verified. It talks to a local, what? 900 megahertz tower.

Chris Gammell: Like a gateway. Yeah. So basically individuals make these gateways. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, and who, who is maintaining, who's operating these towers?

Chris Gammell: Um, basically individuals. That's at least on these, this public network. Oh, okay. Right. Yeah. So the, called the things network is this public network. So there's only like three.

Dave Jones: So you can, you can have your module, like you can stick it up on your roof and it becomes

Chris Gammell: a node. Uh, you'd want to put a gateway up on the roof. Like it's like a router effectively. Right. So it's basically like a thing about like a wifi router. Right. And that's up on your roof, but it gets really long distance. That's what's crazy about it. So, so like if I had one up on my roof, it could, it could in theory cover a lot of Chicago.

Dave Jones: Really? Wow. Yeah. Okay. So you don't need too many people to join in.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Exactly. Yep. Yeah. And so the idea is that like when it, uh, so.

Dave Jones: Is it like a map?

Chris Gammell: There is. Yeah. So that's, that's the thing networks map. Yeah. Uh, if you go to. Things network map. Yeah. Um, and so, yeah, and you can see in Chicago, there's like three, three providers right now. And the idea is that like this one's public, right. And it's open and it's free or whatever, but now they're also like, so the things network is, has like a for-profit arm as well, where they're going to start offering service, private services, whatever. I think that's interesting. Um.

Dave Jones: Here we go. I'm just looking at Sydney now. I'm on the things network map. Yeah. Okay. There's not one out near me. Wow. I could have my own node.

Chris Gammell: Right. You could have your own gateway basically.

Dave Jones: A gateway. So how do I get like a universal gateway to help?

Chris Gammell: So the one that, the one that the, the things network official one that, that Richard was working on too is sold by, I think, uh, Farnell. So. Oh, really? Yeah. It's, it's like 300 bucks. So maybe 400 Australian dollars.

Dave Jones: Still, that's all right. I can, I can do that and, you know, it makes a video. Might be interesting. Yeah. I like the idea of setting up a node.

Chris Gammell: Right. So the reason I say it's, it's, it's becoming more internet. Like, and this is what's interesting about it is that. So now, okay. So I have mine, I have my, my node, which is an, you know, it's just a little temperature sensor that say is the node. Right. And it's saying the temperature is five, the temperature is five, whatever. Right. It's going to a gateway that's here in Chicago, which then gets verified as being allowed on the network. And it gets passed to the gate, to the, to the network and whatever. Right. It goes to a, you know, a server that says, that displays it on a screen for me. Right. Or I can access from the internet. The idea though, is that the way they're making it more internet-like is that on the backend in the future stuff is they're going to start peering. And peering is basically what internet providers do. I mean, like, I don't really get the internet, but.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, I don't.

Chris Gammell: Right. They, they actually.

Dave Jones: Get the underlying infrastructure here.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. The servers at these big server places, they peer, right? They actually pass networks, or they pass packets between them and they actually have sometimes physical connections instead of going through these public gateways. And so, but they're going to start peering. So now I, with my node, travel to Australia, right? And I walk by your gateway that you set up.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it goes there and you, and you verify that it's on this, you know, general network, right? It's verified as a things network packet, but it's local to Sydney. And so now you pass it back, you say, oh, well, this is from Chicago. And it passes it back to the server over the real internet infrastructure. And then it passes it back to the server, whatever. The idea being that if you had these networks now that are local, you could also start to peer them with, you know, other cities, other areas, whatever. And you can also do that with private networks. So they're going to start doing public private peering as well. Right. So now if the things network goes and sets up a new private network for you, they, and my packet hits it as I, you know, say I'm driving across Iowa now, and there's some private farmer network out there.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. That was set up by the things, by someone. Right. And it's peered to a public network. Now, even if I hit that tower effectively, it'll get peered back through the, through the internet fabric back to my server.

Dave Jones: Hmm. So are there any security issues? Like if I put this note in? Right. Right. No, but like, like, seriously, I don't want people to, you know, suddenly drive by and be able to access my machine or something, you know?

Chris Gammell: Oh, I don't think it would be like that. Honestly, I think it would be like, um, okay. So the security stuff is like, uh, you have to verify, I don't get much of this stuff to be honest, but you have to verify against.

Dave Jones: I don't care if somebody can access my sensor or something, you know, like I don't really care about that, but I care about like my actual machine security.

Chris Gammell: So this actually is a standalone device. So basically you would just plug it into your router and yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But the router is connected to my machine also. So technically there, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But this is also on a different frequency too. Right. So it's not like, it's not like wifi. Right. So you would be, so basically someone would have to, so to, to quote unquote hack it. Right. And there were some security talks there too, which was interesting. Um, to, to, to quote unquote hack it. Right. You'd have to be transmitting via LoRa protocol, right. So via the LoRa Phi, which is like the, you know, the, the increasing frequency, decreasing frequency, which is not a fast thing either. Right. You can't really send that much data. Then you'd have to verify on the network as a, you know, false packet, right. That, you know, that it's allowed to be there. So it doesn't get thrown away. And then somehow it also have to direct itself through your network router and then bounce back out to a public IP on your network router to get to your computer. So I think it's pretty unlikely. So.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay, cool. I think. All right. Well, I'm gonna, I might have a play around with this and set up my own node.

Chris Gammell: But yeah, I think you should. Um, and the interesting thing, so you can also do point to point and that's what I've been playing with. Um, but I might try and do point to

Dave Jones: point between my two, um, my office and my lab. Yeah. That'd be interesting.

Chris Gammell: That'd be a great test. Right. Yep. Yeah. And looking at it like on a, you know, spectrum analyzer, you could see the waterfall stuff too. Um, I got my hack RF working. I could talk about that too. Uh, uh, and, um, yeah. And so, but what I would recommend is Andreas Spies. I think that's how you say his channel name. The, uh, the Swiss guy. This is the Swiss guy on YouTube. Uh, he does, he has a ton of videos about hardware on, uh, Laura stuff. And this is really why it's interesting is because it's just, it's frigging cheap. So I just bought two modules from China. So get this.

Dave Jones: Well, the, the nodes are cheap, but the gateways aren't. The gateways are not cheap. Correct. Is there one standard gateway? Like if I just bought a buy a Laura gateway, will it do the job or are they different competing, you know, architecture things or something?

Chris Gammell: If you buy it. So the gate, so here, here's the thing that people don't like about all this stuff is that it's all owned by Semtech. Semtech owns all the IP. A microchip makes some stuff too. And I think they're going to be putting some more stuff on.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I can see the microchip stuff here. Yeah. So, but Semtech owns all the IP.

Chris Gammell: Someone does, some people don't like that. That's fine. I, I don't know what to tell you. Like that's how a lot of this stuff works. So, okay. Um, and yeah, and that's fine. You can, you know, you can take that however you want to, but now I've lost my train of thought.

Dave Jones: Wow. 861 bucks for a Laura developing kit from RS components.

Chris Gammell: I, I would not do that.

Dave Jones: Wow.

Chris Gammell: I'm trying to find this. God damn, where is this gateway?

Dave Jones: Anyway, um, they're actually, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm looking, I'm looking at a, uh, drag, Dragino gateway and it's 95 bucks. Okay. Australian for the internet of things store. Uh huh. Um, is that what I need? Like, no,

Chris Gammell: I'm trying to find it here. Here it is. TTN GW 868. Here we go. Let me send this to you over.

Dave Jones: Well, why can't I buy this Laura gateway? I mean, you can, but why would you? So like,

Chris Gammell: this is the one specific that we were talking about on the show the other week. Right. So

Dave Jones: I just sent you this. So 250 pounds that I just sent you compatible. They are. Yes. So,

Chris Gammell: well, Dragino, this says $95. Oh, you're trying to go cheap on it. I think you said it was 800. I mean, you know, so like, I don't know, I don't know. Maybe, uh, this might work, but there's, that's the thing. There's lots of software layers on top of this hardware layer, right? So this is a hardware layer and it's very unimportant. That's the thing that I'm getting out of all this stuff. The, the hardware stuff, once you get it plugged in and working, it becomes, it's a software problem. So that's what to know about the gateway. That's what I know.

Dave Jones: See, that's an EU only one. Okay. There's other ones then. I, you'll have to look,

Chris Gammell: I don't know what your frequencies are there. Okay. But back to this other thing. If you go watch Andrea Spies' channel, uh, and I'll, I'll link videos to it. He linked me to these two things. So it's, and this is interesting from the electronics perspective too. It has Allura chip on it, right? So it has the SX-1278 or something like that. So the actual physical layer chip, it's got an ESP 80 or ESP 32. It's got a battery charger. It's got an antenna and it's got an OLED screen and it costs how much? Tell us the price, son. Tell me, I'm guess, guess how much that costs? I don't know. 15 bucks. Oh, I was going to say 20. Yeah. 15 bucks. That's crazy, man. Like how, what is this industry we're in? So I don't have them yet. They're, they're on the slow boat from

Dave Jones: China right now, but. So that allows you to do a tad interface stuff too. I mean, that's an ESP.

Chris Gammell: I mean, so the ESP 32. So we've, you know, we've, we, uh, uh, you know, we've, we've had your own on the show, right? Uh, talking about the ESP 32. That's a very capable chipset with lots of more hardware than you and I personally will ever need. Right. Interface to any sensor, you know, power side, who knows, but like, uh, but then it's got this physical layer. So that now has Laura Bluetooth wifi, right? And all of the processing stuff and our toss, whatever you want on there, 15 bucks plus a screen. Right. Right. That's nuts. And then this thing can basically hook into one of these gateways and you have connectivity from very far away. Not saying it's reliable necessarily, but you know, that's what is crazy to me is like the, the people that are, it's just open. Like the people that I met there were just like, so I met these guys from, um, uh, from Macedonia, right? So like near Serbia and, uh, um, Bosnia and whatever, right down that, that way in Eastern Europe. And they're like, yeah, we just, you know, we're setting up sensor networks throughout the country. I was like, what? They're like, yeah, it's just cheap. You know, why not? Why not? Just dump me in the middle of a bush

Dave Jones: and power them by solar cell and I mean, yeah, that's, that's what it's kind of getting to. So like, it's very interesting. I don't know. That's cool. Now is, so is this a way way to get sensors and internet of things, things on the internet, but being lower power than say, just go in 3G, you know, GSM kind of stuff. It's definitely lower power. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So no, the new 4G stuff is going to be much lower power, but I still don't think it'll be as low power as this. Right. Okay. So like, so obviously, you know, I should say I work for a cellular company. Uh, okay. Uh, exactly. That's, that's what I'm talking about, right?

Dave Jones: You work for a company that, that sells internet of things, solutions that just connect to the

Chris Gammell: internet, right? From anywhere. Right. And that is a big difference. Right. So like, so this is like, uh, if you wanted to get directly to a sensor and you want to have a cell module on it, you could do that. Right. It would just be like, and it would just be there. Right.

Dave Jones: But this is cheaper. Laura is a cheap way. If you've got hundreds of sensors, you don't want

Chris Gammell: them all with a GSM gateway. Right. Exactly. Right. So chewing power, chewing costs, chewing connection. Guess what I'm building right now, Dave? So I'm building a 4G to Laura gateway. Right. So that's one of the, one of the, I'm building a ton of hardware actually, which is kind of fun. Uh, I'm back into it and it's really great. Um, but yeah, so it's, and it's, and it's not going to be anything fancy on my end, right? It's going to be a 4G board that I've built attached to, uh, uh, Adafruit, uh, feather, right. With, with the Laura stuff on there. Right. So it's going to have, uh, M zero running circuit Python. It's going to have, you know, so all this stuff is out there and that's one way to do it. Uh, there's also the, um, the Pycom. Pycom makes this thing called the 5Py, which is, has five, five radios on it. So it has a Laura chip. Uh, it can do Sigfox as well, which is kind of dying. Uh, it can do cellular, uh, 3G and then it can do wifi and Bluetooth. All right. And it's like 50 euro or something. So, so, um, I'm going to get into it. Yeah, no, I think, I mean, that's the thing. I think that's why so many people are interested in it because it's, it's on the same level as like the ESP 8266 where it's so damn cheap, you know, people are just like, Oh, and now it's low power as well. ESP is not that low power. Right. Right. So now it's low power. You can put it out in a field, right? You could pattern it powered off a battery, solar, whatever. Um, and you can just, and you could send a bunch of these things back to a gateway. You could write yourself if you wanted to, but that's also the difference, right? So like if, so if, so Dave, if you were going to have, say you had 50 sensors around your office park, right? And they're all going back to a gateway. You could, you could make that gateway, right? Right. And, and you could write all that software. This basically, but then you would have to then control that whole software chain all the way back up. Right. So basically you'd have a gateway that would aggregate all the data coming from your 50 nodes. And then, you know, with Python, whatever, you could pass it up to a server, either through wifi or cellular, however you wanted to do that. And that's the kind of thing that I'm doing, right? What I was trying to figure out at this conference and what it's doing already is that there's all this software stack on top of it. So that now if you're 50 nodes, we're actually on your 50 nodes on your car and you were driving to Melbourne, right? Yeah. And then you've saw another, you know, quote unquote tower, then it would be able to talk through that to this other, this other network. Yep. Yep. And that's the big difference. Got it. As far as I can understand.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. I just found one near me in Sydney that has, that uses this module I just sent you, but it uses, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a concentrator. Yep. What's, oh, it's a gateway

Chris Gammell: concentrator. Yeah. So these are all gateways. And this is what Richard was trying to get to too. And I do recommend people go and listen to that show with Richard. Like I said, it took me, it took me a while to, to figure it out, honestly, but they were using this thing at, they were, there was a workshop at this conference where they were actually using this. So then you could put software on top of a Raspberry Pi, right? So this is showing basically a Raspberry Pi connected to this RAK831, which is, you know, the radio part of all this stuff. So the Raspberry Pi would actually have all the software and all that stack. And then it would talk through the headers. There's a conversion board to this header for the RAK831. Hmm. And that XSX1301 is the, on this part that, well, Link and Dave showed me, that actually is the chip from Semtech that is a gateway chip. Right. So you don't need to use that one, but that one can actually handle all the frequencies.

Dave Jones: Well, how many, if Semtech are the only ones who do it, don't they only have one gateway chip

Chris Gammell: or do they have? No, they have a couple. Yeah. They have a couple of versions.

Dave Jones: Because like it's different power levels. Yeah. But are they all compatible?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. So they all talk the LoRa, you know,

Dave Jones: frequency hopping thingy. Right. Okay. Right. So as long as you've got a LoRa

Chris Gammell: WAN gateway, it should be compatible. Right. And it's almost like, it's almost kind of weird too. It's like, so the physical layer, right? So like 900 megahertz is open band. What are they called? ISM band? I think it's ISM. Industrial scientific measurement, whatever. I think it's ISM band stuff, right? So it's all ISM. But you can just, I mean, you can be on that spectrum, right? So like, that's what lots of radios do. 802.15.4 is another one where basically that's a protocol, I think, that's over top of this, you know, this actual physical layer, right? It's happening at this frequency of 900 megahertz or 915 or whatever your local one is. But then there's a protocol there to actually handle the packets and interface and whatever. LoRa is just another version of that protocol, I believe. And people have been trying to correct me and I'm sure I'm still wrong, but that's as far as I understand it. And I think Sigfox is another one that's also in that band. And it's just another version of that. The difference being that where the money is, it is different. Like, so Sigfox, all of the quote unquote towers are paid for by Sigfox. You have to pay a fee to get

Dave Jones: onto those. So, whoo. IOT, huh? Interesting. All right. Well, yeah, I might set up a node. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's, yeah, it's, it's interesting. It's, you know, it's still, it's low power. Uh, you know, it's, that's, you know, you still need to, you still need to know. It's all like, okay, if people are worried right now, they're like, oh, I'm never gonna, they're gonna figure out RF. I'm not gonna figure out all this stuff. Usually a lot of these pieces you don't have to care about, you know, like the, yeah, of course. Like, it's just, you know, it's like basically. You buy a solution. Right. You buy a solution, you buy a module, you plop it down, you have a library, like that stuff, you know, this, the, a lot of the things that I'm doing still are still like the analog interface into this thing, you know, and your power, uh, power management is still a huge thing, right? Being able to manage battery stuff and solar stuff now too, and energy harvesting.

Dave Jones: So, right. There's a lot of stuff out there. All right. What else have we got? Uh, well,

Chris Gammell: Oh, I was going to actually go back on something I've said. What? So I've been around, so now I'm in this, this world of like all these software people doing Raspberry Pi stuff. I've seen tons of Raspberry Pis. Yep. And one thing I've been realizing, I also, uh, I've been watching Mick Makes, uh, that YouTube channel. He's an Aussie, uh, who does, uh, roundups of like new boards and all this stuff. I really like it actually. I recommend subscribing. Uh, so single board computers though, all of them put the Raspberry Pi header on there. So I think I'm going to go back on what I've said in the past. And I think that's becoming a more standardized interface. Right.

Dave Jones: And it's not as big a deal as I thought it was going to be. Just from an IO point of view.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Now you're, you're, you know, you have to be careful that like if you are basing on a Raspbian and that's not compiled for like some orange pie or banana pie or whatever the hell board you decide to buy. Yeah. You're going to have to write new software for that stuff. But, but that's kind of becoming a, that 40 pin header is kind of becoming a standard interface. Right. Yep. Which is, was unexpected to me. And so that kind of goes back on what I've said. You know, it's like, yeah, I, I still maintain, you shouldn't, like you shouldn't say I'm designing with a Raspberry Pi, but if you have a Raspberry Pi, you're not as up a creek as you might be otherwise. Right. It's got it. Yeah. It's closer to a PC 104, like you've said in the past,

Dave Jones: right? Got it. Yes. Okay. Except it's kind of a de facto standard. Yeah, exactly. It's not, it's not a standard. Industry defined. Yeah, exactly. It's not, you know, there's no working group. Right. Exactly. You know, there's companies working on it. Right. Right. And it's,

Chris Gammell: yeah, it's like an Arduino header as well, right? You see those, you still see that pin spacing thing, whatever. And there is a new entrant into the market now. I think the Adafruit Feather is becoming a new quasi standard, right? No? You're not going to take the bait? Sorry. Come on, man. You didn't even see the news. All right. So anyways, Particle announced that they have a new set of boards coming out, the Particle Mesh, and that is based on the, Adafruit Feather layout. Okay. So I think that's a great idea. It's got like- And that's just a dual in line header. It's dual in line, but it's standard with a battery charger on it too, right? So it's basically saying- Right. Okay. All of your products in this form factor are probably going to need a LiPo, right? And that is really smart. And, you know, it's great for doing mobile projects and then you can, you know, so then your power source is basically the same thing where you, you know, maybe you put solar in there instead and then off you go.

Dave Jones: So Feather is the form factor. Yes. And every, so they've got, I'm looking at, they've got, they've got a LoRa radio, they've got a Arduino one, they've got an ESP32 one. Yep. They've got a, and M0 log, you know, just an M0 one.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Data logger as well. Right. Yep. Data logger. So that's what Lemoore and the team have been doing for, you know, a couple of years now, I think, is this form factor. You know, it's got a great, it's got a great set of breakouts too. It's, you know, it's got all the digital and analog.

Dave Jones: There's a huge number of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Spy, I, C, whatever. Huge number of boards. And so Particle basically said, yeah, we're going to do that too. And then they kind of, you know, hop into the ecosystem. You get all the, all the display boards, you get all that stuff. So it's good thinking, you know? So. Cool. Yeah. And Particle just announced that there's, so they're basically, they're using the NRF 52 chip, which is a new Bluetooth five chip. So this is becoming the IOT hour. I'm sorry about that. I promise it won't be every week folks. But yeah, so they're going to be meshing with Bluetooth. So I didn't realize that Bluetooth actually has a meshing capability. There's a spec. This is again, like different layers of software, right? So there's like Bluetooth uses 2.4, I think. Yeah, it does. Yeah. Okay. And then there's, there's the protocol on top of it. And then above, and then if Alicia's listening right now, she's just, she's cringing. Uh, uh, and then there's, there's further software on top of that, but basically the meshing now that they're doing, that Particle's doing is, is based on thread, open thread, I think.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And so that's another layer above that then, right? So it's Bluetooth, but then they're implementing this thread thing to basically mesh so that now when you have 10 Bluetooth devices in a, you know, in a room, they all kind of forward packets to one another. They, they enumerate themselves, all that, that fun software stuff that they like doing, you know? Right. So. Cool. Yeah.

Dave Jones: All right. That's the internet of things hour. That's right. Thanks for joining.

Chris Gammell: I mean.

Dave Jones: All right. Let's, let's get on the other side.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So we got to the hype curve, right? I mean, like, I think, I think we're on the other side of it. Maybe, maybe not. Obviously I work at one, so I see it a lot more, but it's damn cheap these days, man. I mean, like, it's really cheap.

Dave Jones: You're still going.

Chris Gammell: I know. All right. Sorry.

Dave Jones: Next thing you know, we'll be talking about I, I, I, Oda.

Chris Gammell: I, Oda. Oh God. The, uh. I, Oda. The blockchain thingy.

Dave Jones: The blockchain internet of things.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There was an article about that. We didn't actually have that, but it's, it's not allowed for IOT apparently.

Dave Jones: What do you mean it's not allowed for IOT?

Chris Gammell: There was some article I saw about that where it says if you use it for it, you're like, you're null and void.

Dave Jones: You're null and void by who?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I don't know how any of this stuff works, Dave.

Dave Jones: The fear of IOT is that it's internet of, it's, it's, it's the solution for the internet of things. And, uh, and it uses the, uh, Tangle instead. Actually, it's not a blockchain.

Chris Gammell: Oh God.

Dave Jones: IOT uses the Tangle.

Chris Gammell: The Tangle.

Dave Jones: It's the Tangle. It's different to blockchain. Right. Anyway, I won't get into it. Are you, are you getting into it? I, I, I'm kind of into IOT a little bit. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh. Anyway. Another one bites the dust, man. That stuff. I can't, I can't, I can't handle anyone. I mean like all that blockchain stuff.

Dave Jones: Anyway, no, it's very, um, it's, it's not practical at the moment. It's like, it's just yet another altcoin basically. Um, yeah, but it's.

Chris Gammell: Dave's looking for investment opportunities. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yeah, no, it's got issues. It's got practical implementation issues. Right. Um, yep. Yep. So. All right. Back to our list. Anyway. Uh, huge news. Huge. Fellow blogger. Fellow blogger. Ben Heck is, um, have we had him on the?

Chris Gammell: No, not yet. We should catch him before he leaves. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Haven't, haven't had him on. Jeez. Um, yeah, he's, um, Gonski.

Chris Gammell: In June. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, in June is, okay. How many more? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Anyway, he, he has announced that he's, uh, he's, yeah, he's done. He's retiring. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I didn't realize it's been so, it's almost been 10 years. Like it's, it's crazy. He's been doing it, doing a long time. So yeah. Tons of videos, tons of stuff out there, tons of hacks. Yeah. So yeah.

Dave Jones: I, I don't blame him because it's a phenomenally high pressure job to produce content on a regular basis. Um, especially builds and things like that.

Chris Gammell: You're right. Exactly. Exactly. And they talked about that in the video that they switched. I didn't actually realize this year they switched to just doing three builds in the season, as they say. Yes. In the season or whatever. Yeah. Which is smart. Yeah. They'll make other videos. Yeah. But yeah, I think that.

Dave Jones: Why put extra pressure on yourself.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure that some of our listeners here have gotten into the, got into the hardware space because of Ben and his team. Yeah. And yeah, they do really good stuff. So, uh, yeah. And they're looking for a new Ben now as well.

Dave Jones: They are looking for a new Ben. Heck, they've just announced. Yes. Which I didn't, I, I suspected they might be.

Chris Gammell: Maybe Dave can be the new Ben.

Dave Jones: No, thanks. They approached me way back when they approached Ben. Right, right. And I said no. But yeah.

Chris Gammell: So yeah, it'll be interesting to see what he does next too. Because he's, you know, he's hacker extraordinaire in the Midwest, might I add.

Dave Jones: Woot. I think he's going to work on it. I think he mentioned in the video he's doing, he's just going to work on some films and other stuff. Just some hobby stuff or something like that. But yeah.

Chris Gammell: People like him are not going to, they, they, they aren't left for wanting a job long. If they, if they want one, they could find one.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well. Good luck to Ben. Good luck to Ben. And good luck to whoever. Yeah. Tries to fill those shoes. Whoever wants to now suck on the corporate tees of, of Element 14.

Chris Gammell: Well, you know, it's, it's, I think Ben outlasted Element 14, right? They're on by Abnet now. Well, it's a job, right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yep. It's, because yeah, no, they've got to, I, yeah, they'd keep going. Because they've got to fulfill their, their key performance indicator for social media. You know, they've got to, they've got to tick that box every month. How many views did we get? And they've got to report that up the chain to, you know, so they've got a huge budget. Yeah. For this sort of stuff. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Like, for those who think it's just Ben.

Chris Gammell: To their benefit, to their benefit, they're, they're, they're sponsoring stuff. That's, that's a good thing. So.

Dave Jones: Well, of course, if you want to do that, if, if you can, if you want to make a full-time job out of that, by all means, go for it. Yeah. Right. Right. Just, just be aware that, yeah, you are, yes, you're not working for yourself. You know, it's not like they're just going to give you money and you can do anything you like. It's, you know, it's, they'll be driving the thing.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. But they are looking and, and I think it's, it's the only valid way to do it. They are looking for people to produce an actual, not an episode, but a, you know, a video. Yeah. It's like a trail video. Of them building. Yeah. Yeah. You've got, you've got two, they'll send you a kit. Yeah. So you send in your proposal or whatever. And then if they choose you, they'll send you a kit. So they, I don't know, they might give them to 20 different people or something. And then, uh, you've got two weeks to build and, and shoot a video. Yeah. So it's sort of like a trial by fire. And, and that's the only way to do it. You know, that's the only way to find someone who's suitable for something like this. Yep. And, and out of those 20, you'll probably only get one that's like really suitable.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: If you're lucky. Like I, I doubt that, you know, people might think that they can do this kind of stuff, but you know, to, to have all, to tick all the right boxes. Um, is hard. Yeah. You know?

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. You gotta be personal on camera. You gotta learn production stuff. You gotta be personal on camera. I think they're going to have more production stuff though. More production staff than, you know, someone starting out by themselves. Right. Oh, no, no. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Of course. But, you know.

Chris Gammell: But I think that, you know, there is that whole, you know, like we've talked about in the past too, of like, uh, that kind of authenticity, like, you know, like, no offense, Dave, you don't have the best production values. Obviously you have, you have good camera skills and everything, but it's the, the realness also makes it, you know, real, right? That's what people like about it.

Dave Jones: That's, that's my style. I don't put huge production. I put just enough to make a polished video. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: And I think that's actually the right way to do it. Whereas that is the downside to having like a production staff is like, oh, well we have to get this right and that right. And then, you know, so.

Dave Jones: And it's gotta be the same look and feel every time. Right. Whereas my videos aren't the same look and feel every time. Right. There's always subtle or even major differences, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: So. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, definitely. Hmm. Cool. Well, good luck to, yeah, everyone. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Whoever wants to take over that mantle. Yeah. So.

Chris Gammell: Awesome. Uh, okay. So let's talk about other news items. We didn't actually catch this one, but you know, it was kind of, it was kind of in the news a little bit. The, the rocket thing. Oh, the rocket thing. Yeah. You know. Oh my God. You're, are you gonna, really, you're gonna downplay it? You're like, oh, whatever. I'm so, I'm so over space.

Dave Jones: I miss the launch. I listen. I miss the launch. No. Really?

Chris Gammell: It's pretty cool. Oh, that's too bad.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I just didn't know. I just didn't. I knew it was coming up, but I, I, I don't know why I was busy or whatever. And I didn't actually. Yeah. So I mean, I like a, like an hour later, people are tweeting all this shit and I went, oh, there's a car in orbit. Oh. Yeah. That was great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's cool. Just another day. Just another day. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well we should, so to make it relevant to this show, uh, we should share the, uh, it was on Instagram. Uh, Elon Musk shared the circuit board where it says.

Dave Jones: Was that done by Vincent?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I don't know who did it.

Dave Jones: Cause, cause he's the head PCB designer at Tesla.

Chris Gammell: Well, that'd be a good question to ask. Yeah. So it says made on earth by humans though. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. Yeah. Classic.

Dave Jones: Great. Anyway. Yeah. There's a car going out to a long, um, heliocentric orbit. Yeah. Past Mars. Like wood.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. Hang out.

Dave Jones: It'll be there for a million years.

Chris Gammell: Is that the cupia belt out there?

Dave Jones: Uh, you know, that's not the, no, the, no, the cutie, um, no, it's not the cupia belt. No, the cupia belt's beyond, uh, Pluto.

Chris Gammell: Oh, oh, oh. So this is just like an asteroid belt in the middle there. Yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's going out near the asteroid belt or something. Got it. Got it. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: Oh, oh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Kuiper, Kuiper belt. Sorry. Kuiper belt. Kuiper belt. Right. Yes. I said that one. Kuiper belt. The Kuiper belt. That's the one that we talked to Richard about when we were in Canberra, right?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Cool. Okay. Yeah. Well, either way, that's frigging awesome. And I mean, really, I mean, the, the car was cool, but I mean, that synchronized landing was like.

Dave Jones: Yeah. The synchronized landing. That was like electric sacks.

Chris Gammell: I mean, come on, man. That was just like.

Dave Jones: Have you seen the interviews where he seriously did not expect it to work?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, that's great.

Dave Jones: He seriously did. Like he thought the, you know, odds are the rocket's just going to blow up.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because people think it's just a Falcon 9, you know, two Falcon 9 strapped together on a central bigger Falcon 9. No, they redesigned the whole blinking lot almost.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really? I didn't know that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, it's. He, there's a talk, I think, where he goes through and what stuff was changed. It was almost everything.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, it was absolutely remarkable about what they changed.

Chris Gammell: I would like to take a second. You know, so as far as much coverage as there was about Elon Musk, obviously he's the, you know, the figurehead. Let's, let's, let's, let's give a little, little shout out to all the engineers that were there too. I mean, obviously. All the engineers that made it happen. Yeah, exactly. I mean, like that's what people, I mean, obviously the, the mainstream media won't get it, right? They're not going to be like, oh, well, there's, you know, hundreds and thousands of people that are, you know, making this stuff happen. But like some of them might be listening to this and you guys frigging rock. So, uh.

Dave Jones: You want to know who it's probably down to these days?

Chris Gammell: Um.

Dave Jones: I, as much as I don't, you know, I don't want to take away from the hardware engineers, of course, but the software engineers, the sim, apparently from what I'm hearing is that the, the simulation software is so good at, at, uh, SpaceX now that it's, it, it's at the Boeing level where, you know, they can design an entire plane, like an entire 747 level, you know, an Airbus A380 or whatever on paper. And it simply rolls off the production line and flies perfectly. Yeah, right. Simulating.

Speaker ?: Right? What? What?

Chris Gammell: Well, we did, we tweaked the spec over here and, uh, presto.

Dave Jones: I'm sorry. What was so funny?

Chris Gammell: I mean, come on, Dave, you know, I mean, yes, I agree. The simulation is great, but like it just rolls off the line and it works.

Dave Jones: No, no, come on. But you know what I mean? It's like, like the odds of it working first go is now so high that it's actually not surprising that this one worked first go.

Chris Gammell: All right. That's what I'm talking about. I'm just, I'm, I, I, I have no gauge. I have no gauge on that, honestly.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: So if you say it, Dave, you know what? I'm going to believe you.

Dave Jones: Fine. Good.

Chris Gammell: Dave Jones knows software engineers.

Dave Jones: No, it's just that, come on. Look, you must know the industry and the technology is, that's what they do. Like planes fly first go these days. Like you don't see a new high end plane crash. Right. That is correct.

Chris Gammell: And it was based on many years of crashes though as well. Right.

Dave Jones: Yes. And same with, same with rocketry and everything else. You know, they've been refining them for like 60 years or whatever. And now they can, you know, it's, it's, Elon was a bit pessimistic there. You know, I think that, you know, everything's gotten so good that they can, you know, as he said, it went just like the simulation.

Chris Gammell: The middle one blew up.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, the middle, yeah, the middle one didn't land properly. It didn't blow up. It, it ran out of.

Chris Gammell: It hit the deck at 300 miles per hour, Dave. Yep. It blew up. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. I get, I get what you're saying. And yes, the, the, the level of software integration is.

Dave Jones: Yes, the level of software. Is crazy. Simulation is getting so good. Yeah, man. It's so amazing. Kerbal, kerbal, man. This kind of stuff. It's a, no, it's way beyond kerbal.

Chris Gammell: I know.

Dave Jones: It's, they can simulate almost every, every mechanical aspect of this thing, you know, and, and it's just, it's just remarkable. Yeah. So I'd love to see an insight into that, into the simulation stuff that they've got. Yeah. So.

Chris Gammell: Good luck.

Dave Jones: Well, you know. Sorry, kids.

Chris Gammell: I signed away your lives. I wanted to see the simulation. Yep. Yes. No, I am missing an arm and a leg as well.

Dave Jones: And, and that may be the key to their future success.

Chris Gammell: The, your kids?

Dave Jones: Is this. No, they're, they're SpaceX's future success. Oh, sure, sure. Right?

Chris Gammell: I mean, yeah.

Dave Jones: It's not just the engineering. It's the software simulation as well. Sure. Sure it is. Of almost every aspect of the design.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, anyway, I just think that's very cool.

Chris Gammell: It is very cool. Anything else on our list we should be covering? Anything you got coming up?

Dave Jones: Uh.

Chris Gammell: Are you going to do that meetup?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Eventually. I'm just like. No, I'm going to go with John.

Chris Gammell: You're going to John's? You're going to at least get out of the house, man? Come on. John's? John Saunders. We had him on the show last week. Oh, right.

Dave Jones: That's in, yeah. Whatever it is. March 9th, I think. I might even have it already in my schedule. I don't know. Something like that.

Chris Gammell: Anti-social nerd.

Dave Jones: I know. I just, like, I got a lot of shit happening at the moment.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I got a lot of shit happening. You know. Right.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: You literally can go and just get free content there, man. You just show up. You bring a cam. You're like, hey, I'm Dave. And everyone's like, I'd love to talk to you, Dave. And you're like, oh, cool. Yep. Like, hey, here's the video. Sure. Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: All right. I'll do my best.

Chris Gammell: He'll do his best. There you go. There's other good links on the show this week.

Dave Jones: Don't forget. You do remember that I completely forgot today's show. I didn't even know what day it was.

Chris Gammell: I did know that, yes. Yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: You know, I was like four hours after we were supposed to start recording. You messaged me or something and said, hey, you know, what's going on?

Chris Gammell: I'm a very flexible person. I, you know, I would like to talk to my old friend about, you know, electronics and whatever and whatnot.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because I simply forgot what day it was. You know, I don't keep track of what day it was.

Chris Gammell: He's just in it too deep, folks. He's in it too deep. Open in his mail.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Anyway. All right. I'm done. I'm going to get back to work.

Chris Gammell: Okay. If people, don't forget, if you want to win that scope, we'll have a survey in the show notes. Don't forget to do that. Cool bananas. Yes. Cool.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: See you.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Dave Jones: Bye.

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