#410 – Secret Buzzer Handshake

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released October 7th, 2018. Episode 410. Secret Buzzer Handshake.

Dave Jones: Welcome to The Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the AEV blog. And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. Electronics? You had a dropout there. Oh, no. Well, you did at my end. It wouldn't be at your end, but these pesky interwebs.

Chris Gammell: I was going to say, it could be my cold, too. My voice is dropping out because of, you know, the usual conference flu type of stuff. You go to a conference, you get a sickness, so.

Dave Jones: That's fun. It's like adult preschool, is it?

Chris Gammell: It's like, yeah, exactly. You meet new people, you have some cookies, maybe some juice.

Dave Jones: Right. A badge.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. You get a goodie bag. Yeah, it's great. And after all that, then you come home sick and you get everybody else you know sick, so.

Dave Jones: Nice.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, it's been great. So, you know, what are you going to do? I'm still going to more conferences, so.

Dave Jones: What conference was this?

Chris Gammell: This was the Open Hardware Summit. Open Hardware Summit. Oh, and actually, that did not even make the list. I should have put that on there. There is a new, there's like a new learning guide for if you want to certify your stuff as open source hardware. So that was a new thing that they launched.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. What's in the learning guide?

Chris Gammell: Ashwa.org. I'm sure they still have. Basically, it's good stuff, too. It's like, you know, there's like different types of licenses for different things. Of course. And you might want to license your hardware different than your documentation.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And so, I thought that was a great idea because there's just so many out there.

Dave Jones: Are they going almost down? But they'll never go as far as to take up my suggested letter-based, you know, creative comments space. They didn't go that far. But they kind of. No, but. Yeah, they definitely broke it out. Right, they broke it out. Okay, right. Yeah, I think that's smart, though. Okay. Yeah. Chinking the armor is starting to. Yes. Yes, Dave.

Chris Gammell: You're wearing them down by loving suggestions from 10,000 miles. Right. Good job. Good job, buddy. Good job. No worries. You're welcome. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Everyone.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, yeah. It was good comfort, though. You know, it's the reason I always go to that is a lot of good people doing interesting things.

Dave Jones: Is it still as big as what it used to be? Bigger?

Chris Gammell: It was never that big. I think it was probably three, four people. But we hyped it more.

Dave Jones: I guess that's the difference back when it first started.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think that's probably it.

Dave Jones: We sort of, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a big deal at the time. Oh, what? There's a conference for open source hardware? This must be a real thing, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right. Yep. Yeah. So, it was good, though. And, you know, it's weird to have some. I mean, there actually is like a framework around this stuff, and that's good. And I can't remember Michael's last name. The lawyer guy who's on the board. He's always been a really big advocate for this. I mean, the whole board is really good. So, yeah. I think it's, you know, it's kind of settled into a steady state. And now this is a nice thing to come out of it. So, definitely check out the 2.0 version if people are interested. Cool. I heard a rumor, but I did not see. Someone was asking if anyone was going to talk about the fact that a certification had been revoked. I had not actually heard about that. Oh, okay. Right. One. Officially been revoked. I thought you'd like that. Sounds like that. Just the right amount of intrigue for you to be like, oh, what's going on here? Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So, I didn't hear anything else about it, though. Right. Okay. So, right now it's just hearsay for me.

Dave Jones: Okay. Well, I'm going to have to do some investigative journalism. There we go. Dave. Find out. I'll Google it. Yeah. That's my investigative journalism. Yeah. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Exactly.

Dave Jones: Well, it's better than what most do. That's it.

Chris Gammell: That's actually, yeah. That's very true. Yeah. It is fair. Goodness. Yeah. So, yeah. That was good. And, you know, it got to me. So, like, you know, honestly, I go to London. I go to one of these conferences because I like meeting people. You're a people person. Yeah. Yes. I definitely like that stuff. But also, you know, to the benefit of the show, that's where I source a lot of potential guests from. Guests. Yeah. Excellent. Definitely. I got some. So, some good ones, too. We'll have them coming up. So, I'm excited about that.

Dave Jones: Fantastic.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. Yeah. I'm excited. But, you know, carried home a virus or two. Well done. Oh, well. Yeah. So, then, you know, because I was traveling, I was kind of out of it and didn't record an episode with a guest like I had planned to on the road. And, instead, got to be with a consultant together last week. And that turned out really well. It seemed like some people like that. What that led to today, though, was discussing with Dave, one of the other guys that was on the show there, about IEEE. And you said, you, Dave, you also had some thoughts about joining the IEEE as a consultant.

Dave Jones: No. I didn't say that. I mentioned I have something to say about the IEEE. I did say that. I didn't know you could join the IEEE as a consultant. What is this, like a different level? What is this? Is it? I thought there was just, like, member, senior member, the fellow. I thought they were just the levels.

Chris Gammell: I think it's member, honestly. Yeah. No, I think you're right. I think it's targeted at consultants because it's, like, you know, it's the idea of, like, a network and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Right. Oh, yes. Because it is very network-y, people-feely kind of organization. Yeah. I think that's the idea.

Chris Gammell: And they have, like, trainings and stuff like that. Yeah. And they have talks. What were your things that you wanted to say about this in general? Oh, no, no. I'm very curious now.

Dave Jones: It's nothing bad. It's just that I've been, like, a member. I've been a member of the IEEE member, in quote marks, is, like, an official level. You know, it's, like, the, it's sort of, like, the base level of the IEEE. I've been that way for, like, a decade or more. Oh, okay. And I thought, well, I should probably, like, level up, shouldn't I? To, like, senior, um, to senior member.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you're probably going to senior discounts elsewhere, right, Dave? Right. I'll pay that. Sorry. Boomtish. Old jokes. I mean, this is so lame. I'll pay it. It's going to keep happening. He's not that much older than me, folks. Anyways, yeah.

Dave Jones: I thought I'd become a senior member, and I had a look into it. This was, like, last month. I haven't done anything about it yet. But it's a convoluted process, apparently. You know, you've got to fill in all sorts of stuff. And I think you need, like, I think it might be, like, yeah, like three other senior members to recommend you or something. So, I don't, like, I don't know. I don't hang out with real people, right? So, I mean, that's, oh, this is hilarious. Someone who shall remain nameless said to me the other day, like, I said, oh, I talk to people on the internet all the time. And this person went, they're not real people. You don't talk to real people. So, sorry, everyone out there. You're not real people, apparently.

Chris Gammell: Whatever. They're real people. They're just behind a screen. Right.

Dave Jones: Nerds, you know.

Chris Gammell: Well, one of the things that happen when you become a senior member, I don't quite get it, you know. So, I should say I've never been a member. Even, like, student days where I think it was, like, 30 bucks. I was like, 30 bucks? 30 bucks. I got better things to do with 30 bucks.

Dave Jones: Imagine how much beer I can buy with 30 bucks.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. I could stretch that for weeks. Yeah. So, what do you get out of it?

Dave Jones: I mean, like, anything? Well, no, where you get access to the newsletter and stuff, which is quite good. Oh, okay. All right. I think you get access to, like, some of the online standards and stuff like that as well.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I, well, I was thinking about it today as I was thinking through this. I was like, you know, I recall talking about this at some point in the show. So, and it was, it was episode three, Dave. Episode three. It was eight years ago. It was episode three. We do not sound good. I think I was talking through a drum microphone at the time. Right.

Dave Jones: Yep. I literally am still talking. I am talking through a drum microphone now, the Rode M5. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's a drum mic. That's a good drum mic. It's a good drum mic. Okay. Not so good. Yeah. Got it. And, yeah. Yeah. It, I think we were talking about meetings or something. I think we were talking about meeting in person. So, you know, everything old is due again. Yeah. But the requirement to go to meetings and stuff like that. All that stuff I don't really care about. But I would be interested to hear if people are members. Yeah. You know, some people, I remember I talked to someone who was like a grad student or a postdoc or something like that. And they had mentioned, like, for some of the specialty subject stuff, you just can't really find that stuff elsewhere. So, like, I think it was like. Yeah, of course. Like, maybe someone with optics or something. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: They've got all these different groups as well. You can join, like, these specific groups. And you'll get their newsletter or their mailing list. You'll get invited to their talks. That's another thing. Like, you're getting. Like, because it's all, like, local chapter based. It's very. Yeah. It's very American, you know, sort of system in that respect.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it almost seems like fraternal.

Dave Jones: It's a fraternity type thing. You know, the New South Wales chapter, you know, which is my local chapter. They organize. They all organize, like, local talks. They get experts in. I've been to a couple of them. And, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, yeah. It's the thing. Like, a lot of the stuff that is in there, I don't actually mind that much. Like, going to hear people speak or going to meet other people. That's all my wheelhouse. But, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. No, it's definitely worth joining. I'm a member.

Chris Gammell: Is it like the Masons of.

Dave Jones: The Masons, right. It involves goats and, you know. Secret handshakes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, of course. Of course. The secret handshake. You go to a meeting and the secret handshake is everybody's wearing a buzzer on their hand. Right. Yeah. You know those joke buzzers? Yeah, yeah. If you don't hit 120 volts, you're not a member. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I actually, there's a documentary on the Freemasons on Netflix. And I watched a good lot of it. I was bored, you know. I was just flicking through Netflix. And, oh, there it is. The free. And it was surprisingly open and boring. And, you know.

Chris Gammell: Not nearly conspiratorial enough for your taste.

Chris Gammell: No, totally not. Totally not.

Dave Jones: So, I was quite disappointed. And, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, speaking of conspiratorial. They figured out what's going on with that observatory. I don't know if you saw that article. Yes, I did. I tweeted. It was not good. It was bad.

Dave Jones: I haven't read the article, but I heard when the news first broke. It's about child porn, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, it was basically a contract janitor. Yeah. Yeah. It's stupid. But, yeah. They needed to shut down because they wanted to catch the guy. Yeah. And I'm glad they did. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And they couldn't tell because there might have been other people involved. Right. That's why they couldn't tell anyone. Right, right, right. You know, because they're usually in a secretive ring or whatever, you know. Right.

Chris Gammell: Creepy people being creepy.

Dave Jones: Yep. And, yeah. Apparently, he was bringing in his laptop. Not a very smart dude. You know, he thought he was smart by not downloading the stuff at his own home. So, he brought in his laptop into the thing, plugged into the, you know, tapped into the Wi-Fi at the observatory and downloaded it all there and shared it all there. You know, and like, jeez, as if they're not going to, like.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You work there, dude. Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, hopefully he's in jail for a very, very long time.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yep.

Chris Gammell: I'm to hacker things.

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, I'm very disappointed by that, quite frankly.

Chris Gammell: I wanted it to be. You wanted aliens, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I wanted aliens. I wanted the sun to be blowing up or something. You know, I wanted something exciting.

Chris Gammell: You know, Dave, I think I can say with certainty, someday, someday the sun will blow up. Thanks. You're welcome. You'll be, you know, part of the Google at that point, you know, or whatever the digital future is.

Dave Jones: Right. Right. I'll be downloadable. You can download me as an avatar. You can download. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: It's kind of creepy to think that, like, YouTubers, and really just any, you know, digital footprint in the first place, like, it'll last a lot longer than we will, you know.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: People will be watching my BZR 4032 Kaiket videos, you know, long after I'm gone.

Dave Jones: At what point, at what point did we reach where, I guess you could say it was the age of the internet, but not quite. At what point, what year did we, I'm sure we're already there, where pretty much everything online will now be saved for the future, almost. Oh, you mean like the backups on backups kind of thing? Backups on backups thing. Yeah. It won't be lost now kind of thing. Like, at what point did we reach that? You know, because all the stuff from, you know, that was on television in the 80s or something, you know, that hasn't been digitized.

Dave Jones: It was just on tapes. Physical tapes. Yeah, physical tapes and stuff like that. It's, you know, yeah, it might be in some museum or someone's basement somewhere, but, you know. Right.

Chris Gammell: But does it really exist then?

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, that's right. So, it might be from like, you know, 2000 onwards or, you know, it might be 2010 onwards or something where people in 200 years time that, you know, can look for all this information instantly online through their retina implanted thingamabobs, right? So, we'll, you know, basically the world started existing in 2010, I guess, you know. Yeah. It makes you wonder, huh?

Chris Gammell: I guess that's when the show started too. So, you know, we got that going for us. Awesome. All right. I've actually thought about, I was thinking about that because you said you usually do just like Dropbox for revision control on PCBs and stuff like that, right?

Dave Jones: Well, I don't. Well, it's there, but I've never had to use it as such.

Chris Gammell: You never had to do the backups, but I'm just saying that like, that's like one of your systems, right? Right. Yeah. So, I was thinking about that because, okay, so, because it's like one of those live update systems, thinking about like, so now you're moving a trace from point A to point B and you just, you hit save and the file updates and then the change is usually a delta, but I think with binaries, I don't know if it can, maybe it saves a whole file again, right? I think it does. So, you hit, yeah. So, you hit save and it's, let's just say it's a 10 megabyte file. So, there is some small delta between the two, but to the system it's fine. But then two seconds later, you hit save again. Does that mean that that 10 megabyte file is like saved in perpetuity? So, like, is that some of the digital cruft that we'll take along with us until the end

Dave Jones: of the heat death of the universe? 99% of it's probably just duplicated crap. I mean, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's just like changes and small stuff. Like, I think about that for revision control, like how much data is out there just around small changes, you know? It's kind of crazy. But there's not going to be any way to clean it up, I don't think.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, if you go into, like, your Altium backup directory or whatever, you know, your projects and backup, there's just thousands of files, you know? Every time, like, if I'm copying stuff over, I'm just looking at all this, oh, my God, look at all these backup files. Like, it used to, I don't know if it still does it with the latest version, because I'm one or two behind. But, like, it just keeps saving every time you save a change. It creates a mirror image backup file. And you end up with thousands if you're a serial saver like I am, you know? Oh, I am too. I don't trust anything. You know?

Chris Gammell: Like, you just hit control save every time you do something.

Dave Jones: And you end up with thousands of backup files of your PCB in the backup subdirectory. And that takes up, I find, you know, when I'm, like, zipping something, when I'm zipping up a project, right, I find that most of the space is taken with all those backup files.

Chris Gammell: Right. Because, I mean, how big is a PCB file in the first place, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, it's big, right?

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: Well, it's quite big. Like, you know, you work on any decent form.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, for that stuff, yes. Some of the stuff I'm doing is not. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's just, it's crazy. You know, I can end up with a couple of hundred meg of backup PCB files.

Chris Gammell: Right. And it's just no chance you're going to use that stuff. No. No, exactly. Why would you step it back 500 steps, you know? Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. It's nuts. Man, that's, that is, I wonder if that, I don't even know if there would be a reason to fix that, but it's just kind of weird to think about, like, works in progress as a significant portion of, you know, I'm sure that this is not relevant to a lot of, you know, to the digital future, right? Right. Right. Gobs and gobs of storage regardless, but it's just kind of freaky to think about, like, like just the small changes being saved. So at some point, you know, in Alien Civilization, you know, they go and find your, your archive, right? And they're like, let's see how Dave laid out boards. Let's see, let's see the decisions he made. It's like, it's like archeology for, for circuit boards. Alien nerds. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh dearie.

Chris Gammell: Anyway. Speaking of PCBs, I had some questions about that for you, for your PCB expertise. Right. And I, I did find myself thinking that I was like, oh man, I wish Dave would have written that book like he was talking about. Yeah. Like I said, maybe we'll keep, maybe we'll keep pushing you for it.

Dave Jones: I can, I don't even know what your question is. Well, but I know what the answer is. It depends.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Well, that's boring. Sorry. But that's usually the answer. It's like, you know. Yeah. So, okay. So I've got a decently sized PCB, probably six, seven inches across.

Dave Jones: I was going to say quantify, quantify Chris. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yes. So six, seven inches across.

Dave Jones: Inches, inches. Come on.

Chris Gammell: Sorry. Sorry.

Dave Jones: PCB dimensions are in millimeters.

Chris Gammell: 15 to 20, 15 to 18 millimeters, centimeters rather. That's not big. Jeez. 150 to, well, I know it's not, it's not super big, but I'm just saying that like, so what it really is is I think because of the scale, like, so I'm doing like a, so it's got a, you know, it's got a QFN part on it. And so you're kind of like doing the fiddly bits of around the QFN to get all the, the V is dropped and the, the, the wires out. And then, but then there was some of those traces are going all the way across the board.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And, and some of these cases they're going all the way across the board and then they're plugging into a connector. Right. And it's just the connectors hanging out there and it's doing this thing. And so I'm like kind of looking at it and I'm like, you know, it's just a lot of dangling wires out there. And so I was just thinking, I was wondering about what your general recommendation is when you do have longer runs of wire and best practices around, you know, they're not really stubs cause they're going to be plugged into things. So you'd think that, you know, if they're properly terminated or whatever's on the other end of that plug should hopefully take care of it. But if, if you put anything in there or if you do anything to help with signal integrity, I guess.

Dave Jones: Well, I, this is a PCB layout, PCB design is 90% layout. So I'd be asking, why are you running them right across the board? Is there a reason? And usually more often than not, it's split into like, yeah, digi placement. Why are you running them? Right across the board. And why do you have those connectors if you've got, yeah. Yeah. Right. So why? That's the first question.

Chris Gammell: Just because there's a lot of big stuff. So it's a lot of small wires hooking up to a lot of big connectors, like a range of big connectors. So think about this as almost like a breakout for a, for a QFN micro that basically just kind of needs to have connectors all over the place. And so it's, it's bringing it to multiple places. Right.

Dave Jones: But why do they have to be on opposite sides of the board? Is it an input output flow thing?

Chris Gammell: No, no. It's just because the stack up of, of the multiple, the stack ups of the multiple connectors requires that they, they just can't overlap. You know what I mean?

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: So it's just, it's just a, yeah. Right. It's just a.

Dave Jones: So that's the first part of that question is. No, that's a great question. You try and minimize, you know, you rethink, well, why am I running traces right across the board? The last thing a PCB layout designer wants to do is have traces going right across the board. Because that screws your routing. That absolutely screws it up completely.

Chris Gammell: Oh, sure, sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. You're saying for like interference with other traces and then also.

Dave Jones: It's just, it just blocks your routing. It means that you've got to drop. Because usually, you know, you're going to be running traces all in one direction on one side and all in one direction on the other side. Right. Right. That's generally how you're going to try and be running them. And if you, but that's, you know, it doesn't always work like that. So you're running traces higgledy-piggledy in the end when you're trying to get it all done. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You're saying if there's, especially if there's no, if there's no rhyme or reason to it, right? If you're just throwing stuff down. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So if you're splitting your board in two effectively by running those traces right across, that's bad design practice. You want to do everything humanly possible to minimize that as a first rule. But sometimes you can't.

Chris Gammell: I think, I think I'm actually okay on that side of things. So some of these things are actually multiple connecting. I know this is tough to do without me actually saying what it is, but I can't really say. And so like, this is connecting to multiple points in the board as well. So some of these traces are running and connecting to multiple things. Okay.

Dave Jones: So it's a multi-drop thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I think, I think that like from the actual organization, like it's not, I'm actually, I've got all the layout done and it's, I think it's okay. Okay. And I'll be able to talk about it eventually, I think. So, but the general concern is that like, so thinking about like interference and, you know, like these are big traces that are running along the board. And thinking almost about. Well, are they analog? Next question. Analog or digital? Yes. They're both. Oh, they're both.

Dave Jones: Analog and digital. Well, don't run side by side. Okay. Sure. If you're running them as a bus, right? Yep. If you're running them as a bus, because long lines equals cross-talk by way of mutual capacitance between them.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. Right. So often you'll separate, if you're going to do that, run a guard trace right between them. Yep. Right. That's where, you know, you would run a third trace. So if you've got a digital line and an analog line side by side, you want to run right across the board and you want to keep them together. Yep. Because you do want to keep them together to minimize your overall board area loss in terms of routing space. That's right. Then you make a third trace that's a ground trace right between them. Yep. So then you've got the capacitance to ground, not capacitance coupling to the other thing.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right.

Dave Jones: And, and on top of that.

Chris Gammell: Ground plane. Always have a ground plane.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. Well, no, that's the thing, right? You don't just run the ground trace because it's going to be, by nature of being a thin trace running right across the board, right? It's quite high in inductance, right? Yep. Because it's a long wire, effectively. So you want to be dropping vias at multiple points along there as well, just to keep that a low inductance ground to ground, to your ground plane, right? Yep. So you don't just run one trace. Oh, I'm set. I've got a ground trace right between there and I'm running at 30 centimeters across my board. It's like, no, that's bad. You know, you want to, you need to drop it down at multiple points.

Chris Gammell: That's good advice too. Yeah. You wouldn't want it to go back to the point.

Dave Jones: No, no, you don't want to have to go right back to one side and then, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: There may occasionally be reasons why you might want it to do that, but as a general rule, no. You want a nice, solid, straight down to your ground plane.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah, so it is a four-layer board and I think that helps too, you know, so it's got a ground

Dave Jones: It's pretty much mandatory when you start running huge, big traces across the board like this.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I mean, I guess, I guess I always just think about like, so, so that some of these traces are going to be running like, you know, a decently high-speed bus, 10 megahertz bus or something like that. And so, uh, thinking about like stubs and, you know, the usual reflections in the line, stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Oh, but are they that quick that you'd have to worry about any of that?

Chris Gammell: No, I mean, probably not. But I, you know, like, again, I'm just kind of like looking at this and second guessing myself. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, right. I mean, and thinking about best practices around that stuff of, of, well, what should I be doing? You know, should I be terminating? Should I be doing controlled impedance? Should I be doing, you know, uh, stuff like that? And, and maybe it's just not fast enough for that to even matter.

Dave Jones: Well, you'd have to quantify that for us.

Chris Gammell: I mean, like I said, 10 megahertz and below probably.

Dave Jones: Oh, I did it right now.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's, I don't think it's going to be anything like, it's not super high-speed bus and, um, anything like that, but, but still, again, just second guessing myself.

Dave Jones: No, no, it's fine. She'll be right, mate. No worries. Okay. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's good to know. Uh, what do you, uh, did you always have like a, do you have like a go-to resource when you're like, when you're second guessing yourself or are you just kind of?

Dave Jones: No, not, not really.

Chris Gammell: Not doing that at this point in your career?

Dave Jones: No. Okay. Nope. I've, I've always been the PCB guy, so it's not like I can go to another PCB guy and, you know.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you could, but I meant more of a book if you had like a book or a resource thing like that. Nope. Got it. Okay. I've got a couple, I've got a couple PCB books, but, uh, nothing, nothing I'd recommend.

Speaker ?: Nothing you'd recommend?

Chris Gammell: I mean like nothing that's like, oh, this is, this is groundbreaking. It's groundbreaking throughout the whole book, you know? Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, there's, you know, Howard Johnson's, you know, handbook of black magic, you know, and stuff like that, which has a lot of, uh, PCB, you know, high speed piece of it, but you're not there. You're not, you're not, you know, 10 megahertz, you know, digital stuff running across the board is not there, you know? Um, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And I've, uh, I, so former guest of the show, Hank Zumberland, uh, I always go back to his stuff whenever it's like ADC stuff. So that's about like splitting grounds and, and things like that. Cause I used to always, so like when I was doing analog and digital stuff, I would always, always separate the grounds. And these days I've stopped doing that as much, you know, and having like a single ground tie point. These days I usually do a single ground, make sure that all my parts are, are put in the right place so that they're not, you know, that the ground returns aren't crossing through something else. And then I'll, I'll cut out some of that ground actually, uh, so that the ground path, uh, doesn't allow like high speed noise to kind of bleed over, you know, there's, so there's still a path, but it doesn't.

Dave Jones: Well, you are separating your grounds by doing that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, sure, sure, sure. I just mean that like, they're not different nets, you know, because that's also, usually that leads to like a single, a single point of, of ground connection. And it's like, that can be good, but I don't like that as much as I used to. So.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's, uh, yeah. That's one thing I had to do a lot was physically, although they're the same ground, they're electrically the same ground. If you put a multimeter on them and you buzz it out, it's zero ohms, right? Right. But for a piece of speed.

Chris Gammell: Because that's your DMM is slowly connecting between the two, right? Descending current through it. Right, yes. Some slow speed. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So they're electrically connected, but on the schematic, they have to be different nets. And then you, you actually have a part on your schematic, which is like a shorting link. And then you join the two ground, you know. Analog ground, digital ground, or digital one and digital two. Because sometimes it's not just analog and digital. It can be, you know, separate digital ground planes or separate analog ground planes or whatnot. And, and it wouldn't be uncommon to have four or five different, you know, separate grounds on one board.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And they're all tied back. But then you've got to put in the jumper and then you put notes on your schematic saying, well, where's that got to be? But, you know, that's sort of hard to explain. It's kind of, you know, that's why it's better if the piece of person who does the schematic lays out the board as well, because they just know what the hell they're doing.

Chris Gammell: You know. I agree. That's just not always practical.

Dave Jones: No, it's not always practical, but yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's in an ideal world. That's, that's what you want. So.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. Yeah. Well, cool. Thanks, man. That's, that's good. No worries. Good reassurance. She'll be right, mate. It's my. Yeah. Yeah. So actually this, this actually kind of leads into the next point too. I want a place to ask people that stuff too, which is, you know, me being. A big forum. Yeah. Some of that stuff. But I don't always want to ask on the big forum like that. Why? Yeah. Some of that's good because sometimes it's more sensitive. You know what I mean? So like how much can you really share there if it's.

Dave Jones: So anyways, so you want a bunch of private contracting people who are sworn to secrecy through your secret goat organization.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Secret goat. Yes. You have to make secret goat noises. So anyways, I'm going to put, so I talked about this last week on the show too of like there. Yeah. Like the forum's good, but that's very open. The EV blog forum. Yeah. I'm going to figure out something. So I'm just going to set up right now. I'm just going to set up a forum, a forum, F-O-R-M, not F-O. Or U-M. So like just a Google Docs form. If people are interested, you know, they could fill that out. Basically, the thinking is like needing a verified body. I guess I will act as that for now. And let's see if anybody does it.

Dave Jones: Chris wants a bunch of free consultants to check his work.

Chris Gammell: I mean, here's the real thing. Yes, the checking work would be nice, but it's also like I'd love to have a group of people that like I could send work to. So like when I hear about something, I can't do it. That's kind of what we talked about last week. It's like who do you call when you need a reference on? Right. Exactly. And how do you build that trust? And it's like, I think you build that trust through. Oh, hang on.

Dave Jones: I have to do a Ghostbusters quote. Sometimes shit happens. Someone's got to deal with it. And who are you going to call?

Chris Gammell: That's right, Dave. I just.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters.

Dave Jones: Sorry, I'm a fan. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, it's good. It's good. That's on my need to rewatch it stuff list. So anyways, if people listened last week to the consulting episode, they'll probably, you can, if you haven't heard it, you can go back and listen to that too. So I will have a form if people want to fill that out. If not, it's okay too. And, you know, we'll take care to make sure your identities are secure. Right.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Dave Jones: You want a secret squirrel club? All right. I do. Yes. Yes. Excellent.

Chris Gammell: So I think that's all my stuff other than the Twitter stuff. So what else should we talk about today?

Dave Jones: We've got a ton of stuff on the list.

Chris Gammell: There is a lot of stuff on the list.

Dave Jones: And the IEEE, once again, a hold in a soldering world's best hand solderer contest championship. Oh, the IPC thing? Yeah. Yeah. Like in two people will show up, you know. It's like, yeah, I'm the best in the world, you know. Yeah. Okay. Pat on the back for you.

Chris Gammell: It's the best in hand soldering. Good on you. Yeah, that's a little bit weird, but I would go watch it, to be honest. You know, this will probably be a little bit less. Where is it at? January 29th. Oh. I'm guessing.

Dave Jones: It's at the IPC Apex Expo.

Chris Gammell: I've never been to that one.

Dave Jones: Is that Asia Pacific? No? Where is it? San Diego Convention Center. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: Knock yourself out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That'd be something to put on your resume. World's best hand solderer. World champion hand solderer. Actually, at the meetup the other day, the students I was talking to, I can't remember which union they were from, and they were, like, showing me their work. They were, like, well, they actually pulled out their phone. They said, oh, I did this. There's this soldering challenge, and look what I soldered with my TS-100 soldering iron. You know, I did these 0201 parts, and it's like, okay, great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, then there's the misery edition as well. Yeah. It was, like, a little circular board, right?

Dave Jones: I don't know. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Yeah, that's the one that we did at, that's the one that they did at tour camp, and people were doing that with, like, the really crappy, they were still voltage controlled, but they were really, really bad soldering iron.

Dave Jones: I think the whole idea was not the fact that you could solder that, right? Uh-huh. It was the fact that you could do it with the crappiest iron possible. Like, you know, look, I did this with a cigarette lighter and a, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: I think that was the intention behind the soldering challenge thing.

Chris Gammell: Right. That they had. Well, they did that at tour camp where they also said, though, every two components, you had to drink a beer in between.

Dave Jones: Right, okay.

Chris Gammell: And so, by the end, it was loud. It was very loud at the end. Right. Oh, dear. Yeah. Yeah. Sad. It was fun. No. It was funny. Yeah, that's a fun thing. There's also a misery edition where I think you do an 001, or sorry, 01, 005. That's the smallest one you have to do. Right. So, it's like a little blinking at mega, or at ATtiny on there, and then it just drives the blinky LEDs. That's how you tell if you're working or not. Got it. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, the chip's fried to buggery, but yeah, as long as it works. Oh, yeah, yeah. Don't zoom in on it.

Chris Gammell: You don't want to see what that looks like.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. Yeah, so. Oh. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Have you been following the Haibusa probe? The landing on the asteroid? Oh, is that the one that landed on the asteroid? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, asteroid, right. I've seen the one where, like, the five video, or the images came back, and they said it was a video, but it was very sparse.

Dave Jones: That was probably, oh, right. Yes, like, from the surface, on the surface. It was like.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: The camera on the surface. Yeah. It took this video as the thing rotated, and you can see the sun go set on the asteroid. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So what about, I actually, I didn't, I mean, I saw that it was happening, but I didn't really pay much attention.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I did a live stream when it originally approached the, and was supposed to go in. And it was as boring as bat poo, unfortunately. So I held this live show, and it was like nothing happened. So we ended up just, I don't know, talking politics for two hours on the live show. Oh, man. And it's not like a NASA, you know, Mars landing thing where it's, you know, like, they didn't have an official live stream for it. There's just no meat, like, you know, all they've got is a Twitter account, which like updates once every couple of hours and said, I'm 50 meters. Like last we heard, we're 50 meters from the astronaut, from the asteroid. We're 50 meters from it, and we're waiting for the next tweet, and the next tweet doesn't come for like six hours, you know, and it's like, ugh. It was boring.

Chris Gammell: They're not doing their media thing very well.

Dave Jones: Anyway, no, they don't. No, the Japanese, they're more secretive. You know, if something goes wrong, I guess they don't want to be embarrassed, right? So they don't want to, you know, hang their balls out there on the chopping block for the world to, you know, yep.

Chris Gammell: I mean, that's a pretty big one. I mean, to actually have... Pretty big set of balls? No, it's pretty tough to land on a... It's a pretty big accomplishment if you can do it, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's great.

Chris Gammell: And a pretty big failure, you know, I guess.

Dave Jones: I want one of the shirts. I want one of the Shirtgate shirts. I should have got one at the time.

Chris Gammell: What does it say?

Dave Jones: Shirtgate. You remember Shirtgate?

Chris Gammell: I don't, Dave. Sorry.

Dave Jones: Oh, dude. What is Shirtgate? What was the previous European Space Agency one that landed? The first one ever to land on an asteroid. And it... Oh, God. Now I'm embarrassed. USA or something? Yeah. European Space Agency? Anyway, it was...

Chris Gammell: Why would they call it Shirtgate, though? That's such a dumb name.

Dave Jones: Well, because everything's gate, right? Every time there's, like, something blows up, it's like... Sure, sure. It's something gate, as in goes back to Watergate, right? Right. And... Which is way before your time. And anyway, Matt Taylor, who is a... He was, like, the head... He was, like, the head community outreach scientist for this group that landed... The first one ever to land on an asteroid. Like, they caught up with their probe, caught up with their astronaut, they landed on it. And anyway, he was... You know, they're all celebrating and everything, and he's the one on camera, like, you know, talking to the, you know, the media and everything about it. And he wore this shirt that had scantily clad animated women on it, right? Scantily clad characters and all that. And, of course...

Chris Gammell: Poor taste either way.

Dave Jones: Whatever. You know, anyway, it was fine. It's not like there were, you know... It wasn't nudity or anything. Anyway, all these scantily clad... You know, yeah, it was very... And he's all heavily tattooed. You know, he's even got a tattoo of the lander on him, you know, on his leg. And, you know, like, really cool guy, right? And, uh...

Speaker ?: And...

Chris Gammell: Yes, dude. Really cool guy, yes.

Dave Jones: Yeah, absolutely. He's cool, you know. Anyway, he's one of the project scientists. And he landed on an asteroid. And there was this big article in The Verge or some other ridiculous, you know, online thing that said, I don't care that you landed on an asteroid. Your shirt is sexist. And then the whole internet blew up, right? And, yeah, anyway, it was a huge deal at the time. I can't believe you didn't hear about it.

Chris Gammell: Shirtgate. It's almost like it doesn't matter at all compared to the science that happened. But I guess I didn't hear about the science that happened either.

Dave Jones: Anyway, yeah, it was great, you know. And, yeah, so I wanted to... And now it's just, oh, land on an asteroid again? You know? Yeah, it's been done. It's crazy. That is the... Yeah, I know.

Chris Gammell: That's the world we live in.

Dave Jones: Like, you know, this thing's hurtling through space at, you know, 300,000, you know, kilometres an hour or something. And they catch up with it and orbit it. You know, it's only... These things are only tiny. They're only, like, you know, 500 metres across, you know, something like that.

Chris Gammell: The asteroids are, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And they catch up with it at, you know, a couple hundred thousand kilometres an hour and then orbit it and then land on it. And anyway, this Hayabusa 2 probe, the original mission, Hayabusa 1, didn't succeed. Like, you know, it failed. It had issues. Anyway, this new one, it's like... They've got, like, five different landers. Like, this is the second time it's landed and they've got these little, like, 30 centimetre round things that hop on the surface, these little things. And it's a sample return mission as well. So now it's going back in, I believe. It's got another lander that's now doing chemical, like, scientific analysis on the surface. And then it's going to scoop up some of the asteroid and actually send it back to Earth. It's fantastic. So it's got, like, the margin for error on this thing was, you know, incredibly small. You know, you multiply the number of different landers you've got. It's like a little, you know, hovership kind of thing. Like, it goes in and then deploys all these multiple landers. It's just incredible.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's super cool.

Dave Jones: They really went for broke. It's not like, oh, we're going to have one lander. That's hard enough. You know? But no, we're going to have, like, four of them.

Chris Gammell: That's awesome.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's crazy. Yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome crazy.

Chris Gammell: How do we get older than one of those people? We need to, you know, find one of those scientists, you know?

Dave Jones: Well, we'd have to speak Japanese, I guess, to begin with. Because, yeah, there's not much. Like, they do have their Twitter feed and stuff. There was a live. They actually had a live feed, which I didn't see. Probably because I was sleeping. But, yeah. So, yeah, there we go. We've got shots of the control room. Oh, there's a press conference. Yeah, it's got translations and stuff. Yeah, it's got a translator and stuff like that. So, yeah, I'm sure if we wanted to get somebody from that team, we'd probably have to speak Japanese. Okay. Well, anyway, it's very cool.

Chris Gammell: I'll start learning, too. It will be cool. Yeah, it's very cool.

Dave Jones: But, you know, this tiny little handle, it's like, what is it? Or is it 15 centimetres across? It's absolutely tiny. And it, like, has these little, and it just hops. It's got these little legs and it just, like, has a little gyrator in it and it just spins that up and that makes it hop from one location to the next.

Chris Gammell: That's super cool. It's great. It's very cool. It sounds like biomimicry, almost, like, where it's, like, trying to be like a frog or something similar.

Dave Jones: Right, yeah, it's doing something, yeah, like that. And you don't need much force at all. If that motor spins up too fast, it reaches escape velocity and the thing just jumps off the surface.

Chris Gammell: You're still in space pretty much, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's very little gravity holding that thing in. Like, I don't know about this one, but the original one, the Shirtgate one, it actually had, like, an explosive bolt and hook that when it touched down on the surface, it would fire these explosive bolts and these tethers that would then hold it to the surface because the gravity was so small that, you know, it was so difficult to just hold it there just through, like, you couldn't just land. And, you know, because if you hit it, even at, like, 0.1 mile an hour or something, if you hit it, it would just bounce back off the surface, like it, you know, and then bounce back into space. Like, it was that little gravity. It's just insane. So, anyway, I love the technology.

Chris Gammell: Like a little tiny drone, but not really a drone, you know?

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. Anyway, I think it's very good.

Chris Gammell: Obviously, they're going to use rotors in space, you know, that kind of thing, but yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they use gyrators. If people don't know how they orbit satellites and they don't use, like, rocket vector thrusters, you know, they actually use gyroscopic wheels and they spin them up. And the inertia of the wheel makes the satellite spin. So that's how they do it. So, yep. Very cool. Did you read? Oh, was it? It was on one of the YouTubers. Was it? No, it wasn't Astrum. It was, maybe it was Scott. It was Scott Manley. Scott Manley. So if you look for his video, he talks, he often does space stuff. He's got a huge, he's a big YouTuber and just talks about, you know, space stuff. And he was talking about how all these gyroscopic wheels in these satellites were failing. You know, they sent up a whole bunch of satellites and they all started, like, a year later or something, they all started to, like, all the wheels in them started to gum up and stick and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Uh-huh.

Dave Jones: And so they investigated. And don't quote me. I'd have to watch it again. But what they discovered was the problem in these gyroscopic wheels and why they were all failing is that the cosmic rays were hitting the internal, was it ceramic bearings or something? Or some, like, hitting the bearings or something. And that was due to the composition of the material used in them. It was making these little micro cracks or something in the bearings or something like this. And it would, you know, it would get slower and slower until they actually jammed up, until all these bearings jammed up in space. And they, you know, they figured out what was causing it. It's really fascinating.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's crazy. You know? I mean, like, yeah, material science stuff they do.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Like, who would have thought that, I believe it's cosmic rays, that cosmic rays would cause, you know, you talk about cosmic rays and semiconductors and how you have to radiation harden your chips and stuff like that because it flips bits, you know. If it goes in and hits a small memory array, you know, you can start flipping bits in your memory and then, you know, your stuff crashes. Of course.

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: All that sort of stuff. We've talked about that several times, I'm sure. But, you know, who would have thought that it would apply to mechanical bearings that, you know, that rotate the spacecraft. It's like, yeah, absolutely fascinating. So I'll try and get a link to that and we'll link that one in. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That'd be great.

Dave Jones: Anyway, very cool. Are you going to go watch First Man?

Chris Gammell: I, uh, no.

Dave Jones: No, you just don't care about space, do you?

Chris Gammell: I mean, I do, but like, I don't know. I don't really watch as many things anymore, so that's the other thing. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's all right. You don't have to care. It's okay, Chris.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I do care. It's just that there's a lot of things out there. Yeah, no, right.

Dave Jones: There's a lot of more interesting things to care about, like meetups and stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, people are interesting. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Also interesting, so, and kind of, one of the reasons I was asking about drones is that there was this really interesting video from a drone battery factory. Have you ever seen how batteries are made?

Dave Jones: I've kind of seen bits and pieces here and there. Why would it be a drone battery company? Why wouldn't it just be a battery company?

Chris Gammell: You mean like versus just like a regular battery?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I don't know why they'd make, you said it's a drone battery company. That doesn't make sense to me. A battery company makes sense. A drone battery company doesn't.

Chris Gammell: The answer is it is just a battery company. But the real problem is that the guy who recorded it is a drone YouTube channel. A drone. Right. Yeah. Got it. When you're a drone enthusiast, everything. Everything's a drone. A battery factory becomes a drone battery factory. A drone battery factory. Right. Right. A capacitor factory becomes a drone capacitor factory.

Dave Jones: A factory. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Got it. So, that's why. But yeah, I had never really seen how these things were made. I mean, like the stacking up. Is this on the list? It is. I mean, it's called Inside the Drone Battery Factory. Eight days ago from today. And it basically, you know, like the different processes they have. Basically, they're kind of making these stamp out. And especially because they have different custom shapes. That was what was interesting to me as well. Is like, it's not really standard sizes. You know, so they basically do these aluminum stack ups. I assume that there's probably, it's probably what? Like metal and ceramic in between. But then they basically make these individual like pads. And they've got two terminals on them. They tin the terminals. And they're like these thin, thin sheets that they then compress together. And then the pads on the end, they then like basically fuse together as well.

Dave Jones: Yes, because battery efficiency is not that word. Battery capacity is all about surface area. Just like a capacitor. You know, and so that's why you have to have hundreds of layers in there. Just like multi-layer ceramic capacitors. Sure, sure, sure. That's their name. MLCC is multi-layer. Because they have to be multi-layer to get the capacity. Same thing with battery. You've got to have the, you know, the metal layer. You've got to have the electrolyte material. And you've got to have a ton of surface area. And repeat over and over parallel all those. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I guess I just never really thought of the actual, I mean, the actual manufacturing process. And like the fact that there's so many people in the loop too. It's also very interesting. Like, you know, obviously, you know, this is being made by, you know, these are bespoke batteries pretty much and higher volume. And just the, you know, they have a lot of custom machines that they're using. So anyways, it's a fascinating tour. So I highly recommend people check that out. The thing that always, I'm always reminded of is that like, even with like lots of interesting automation, lots of machine tools, lots of interesting things that are happening there. Like at the end of the day, like, but by the end of the video, you're like, oh yeah, I've seen this stuff before. Right. You're saying that pretty much about, about the same thing that you've just seen, you know, that you've been watching the video of. And it's like manufacturing quickly, even though it's very interesting at the beginning, it quickly becomes monotonous and, you know, similar over time. And yeah, it's, it's tough, right? Because that's when the hard work, once the interesting stuff stops, you know, it's like you need to figure out how to improve the efficiency 3% in a manufacturing setup versus, versus, you know, like, ooh, more robots, more, you know, how do, how do we put in a new robot here? It's like, well, no, that's probably not as important as like, how do you get higher throughput in a vacuum system or whatever, whatever the problem is. So, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, but that's, it's very cool. Yeah. And they're all like these custom machines. Everything's custom made to, you know, do these. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's a lot of 80, 20 extrusion type stuff. And yeah, each, each thing you're doing, you're basically having a machine builder come in and you're like, all right, well, we need it to press down here. It's like, okay, we can do that. You know, here's the, here's the linear actuator. Here's the thing, you know, well, yeah, it's just, that's, that's how factories are made.

Dave Jones: But they manually stack the sheets. They manually stack the sheets to form the battery. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just watching it now. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Jeez. Yeah. There's a lot of hand operations.

Chris Gammell: And then the electrolytic isn't actually inserted to the, like, so again, like that's, you know, like I've, you know, I've looked at battery chemistries before. I've looked at how this stuff is on paper, but, and I've obviously held these things in my hand, but I've just never considered how you would actually go about making one. And like the fact that the electrolytic doesn't go in till the end, it's like, oh, okay. Yeah. That makes sense, I guess. But I didn't really know what was in there either. So. Right. And this is only one way to do it too. There's different types of manufacturing.

Speaker ?: Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: Everyone has their own secret sauce.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: So, you know, that's why there's crap China batteries and there's good China batteries, you know, like this. Like the top brand ones are better, you know, like the variability. Does he show the testing? Does there, is there like the nail test?

Chris Gammell: Not the nail test, but there's. Not the nail. No. There's like charging. Like I said, they charge every battery. So like that kind of stuff. All right. Like pre-charge and. Oh, got it. All right. Yeah. I was talking to someone at a, at a large consumer electronics company and, uh, and they said you would be surprised how often custom batteries become a thing. Oh yeah. Because it's. Yeah. Especially when you have like, like, uh, industrial designers who want to make this like sleek looking thing. Exactly. Yeah. Right. You, you only have, you only have, you know, millimeters if that of space and it's like, yeah, you just got to fit as much battery as you can into that space. And if that space is a, you know, an S shape, you're getting an S shape battery because that's all you have available to you. And you're also doing like computational fluid dynamics to make sure that the heat is getting out of the processor or whatever, whatever it is. Right. And it's like just stuff that I've never really considered before because why would you, why would you have a custom battery in most scenarios? And it's like, well, when you're making millions of something, you can do whatever you want.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: That's it. I mean, not whatever you don't want, but like, because the investment upfront is because either way you're tooling up for like lots and lots of units. Like, like that was, that's always surprising to me when people say like, oh, we'll just make something custom. Like, why would you do that? That's so expensive. They're like, well, not if you, not if you're doing it either way, you know? So.

Dave Jones: I'm just looking at the video. Sorry, from a guy who comes from a test engineering background. I'm just checking out the test, the huge test rigs they got. Absolutely. Like, it's just insane.

Chris Gammell: Like the racks and racks of equipment to charge it and test it. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I want to know what their contingency is because statistically you're going to have one catch on fire. Right. It's just like sooner or later. Like, what do you do?

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. I mean, you must just have like shutdown zones and like evacuation procedures and stuff like that. Yeah. And you probably don't have the sound on, but they, they have like, they have drills where they're like, they're basically going to take breaks and they all kind of get up and walk around and inspect the factory and stuff like that. Like every 20, 30 minutes or something like that. Yeah. Because it's an inherently dangerous factory. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So. Well, the other thing too is these shows like, you know, like obviously in China, a lot of the, you know, a lot of the employers provide housing for their workers. Oh, right. Okay. The battery factory is right next to the dorms. It's like, oh, okay. I wouldn't feel great about that. That's your life. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You go from, walk from one building to the next.

Chris Gammell: So I wish them the best. I hope they're very safe about that stuff. But.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So anyways, I love those kinds of videos. If people have other suggestions, please post them in the subreddit. I love factory tours, stuff like that. Because like I said, yeah, it becomes drudgery after, you know, a couple minutes in a factory. Yeah. But at the beginning, oh my God. Like, I want to see how that stuff's made. That's always, that's always interesting.

Dave Jones: Oh, they've got a corporate kitchen. The big corporate kitchen where everyone. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, the factories I've been to in China, they've had to, no, they weren't this big. You had to go out and fend for yourself at lunchtime. Oh, really? You had to go down to local markets and yeah. It's like dodgy as.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But I've got a factory tour coming up. Oh yeah, where at? I don't know if I told you. Yeah. Road. Oh, nice. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: In Australia.

Dave Jones: Yes. Road's here in Sydney. They're designed and manufactured here in Sydney. I was going to go earlier, but they said that they're installing this new, like, world-class injection molding system or something. So, you know, the place is a bit hectic at the moment. So please wait until they finish that. And so I'm waiting. So probably, yeah, sometime this month, I guess. Yeah. Nice. Should be finished.

Chris Gammell: I think about making microphones. Like, I know how some microphone types are made. You know, like, they're effectively capacitors that are, you know, modulated by air pressure. And some of them are like, that's condenser. Isn't that what that is? Right?

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: But again, like, I don't know what you do. You tell me right now, what do you go make this thing? I'd be like, all right, well, I guess I'll make a capacitor to start with. Right. And then, yeah. Yeah. But, yeah. And so a lot of that is. It's that secret sauce or that tribal knowledge, you know, it's over time.

Dave Jones: Exactly. But Rode don't just make microphones. I mean, I'm using a Rode audio interface here. So all their PCBs are all assembled here, all their cases and everything. Like, I believe, like, everything's done here.

Chris Gammell: You know what that says to me, Dave? What? That audio stuff has a significant margin. If it's being made in Sydney, it has a significant margin. Probably. Yeah. But, I mean, like, they do. They have a good brand. I mean, they make quality products, too. They're one of the world's top brands. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Rode are one of the top brands. Yeah. You know, you pay a bit of a premium for them, but, you know. Well, they get knocked off right away, too. Not astronomical.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, it'll be interesting to, if you don't mind me, you know, throwing you a couple questions there, I'd be interested to know what percentage of stuff is made in-house versus out-of-house, right? Because. Oh, yes. Yep. I, you know, I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Oh, I'm sure there's some stuff that's going to, yeah. Exactly. Make things out of it. Like, the intro stuff, like, why would you possibly make that in Australia? Yep. You know, basically, you just white-label stuff. You know, you do quality control on it, but, like, you basically, you find a good supplier, you white-label their stuff, and you say.

Dave Jones: Like, do they make their own cables in-house? Like, I just got one of the Rode lapel microphones, and it's got, like, and it's this super ultra-thin cable, but it's got, like, Kevlar windings in it, and everything, like, you know. Oh, like carbon fiber?

Chris Gammell: It's like weed, kind of. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, you can strangle someone with it, you know. Oh, great. And with this tiny little, like, less than millimeter diameter. Well, I actually posted, I actually tweeted a photo of the warning in the box. Don't put it around your neck. Oh, okay. Because you'll strangle, because you'll literally kill yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's Kevlar, you know. Right. And I'm just like, yeah, one of my questions would be, like, do you actually make this cable in-house, you know? Right, of course. Do you have a cable-making line, you know? Yeah. Like, stuff like that, right? It's like, yeah, how much is done there? So. Yeah. And they've got so many products. I'd have to, you know, go through their entire catalog of all their products and, you know, to find out which. That's great, though.

Chris Gammell: I'm looking forward to seeing that stuff. So, they're going to let you, like, film and everything, too?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, wow.

Dave Jones: So, well, I don't know how much, you know, that they might. Yeah, but even something would be good. I might get there and they go, no, no, no, no. You know? So, I don't know how open they're going to be. Yeah, please come into our showroom, Mr. Jones.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Anyway, they seem quite excited to have me. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's great. You know, somebody higher up's going to put the foot down when I actually get there. I don't know. So, we'll find out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's cool. That's cool.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Before we step away from batteries, I'm going to send you a tweet about the safety of batteries. I just sent you the link for it.

Dave Jones: That's just what I wanted.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Thank you. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Did you see this one?

Dave Jones: I saw that. I retweeted it. It's hilarious. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Basically, someone was buying a battery from China and you're not supposed to ship batteries from China. I don't know how shipping works.

Dave Jones: Yes. You're not supposed to ship lithium batteries by air or whatever. By air. It has to go on a special charter flight. Right.

Chris Gammell: So, this one instead had a bunch of resistors shrink wrapped around it. And it says, dear buyer, please, you open it. Battery is in it because China is difficult to slip in or something like that.

Dave Jones: Dude, and China is difficult to ship a battery. So, I have to use resistors to pack it. It is safe to use resistors for packing. Thanks for your understanding. And it's literally a battery wrapped in resistors.

Chris Gammell: It's just wrapped in resistors. Oh, it's so good.

Dave Jones: It's just gold.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you got to give them some points for ingenuity. But, you know, safety, probably a zero. So, I'm going to maybe say minus four. You know? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because if people don't know, a lot of stuff travels on commercial flights. Every time you take a commercial flight.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Like you'd say the cargo hold.

Dave Jones: Yeah. The cargo hold is half full of cheap shit from China. Or is it half empty? You know? Or is it half empty? Yes. No one knows.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: It makes a difference for the fuel calculations.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Anyway. Yeah, that's true. The pilot knows. The pilot knows.

Dave Jones: I'm sure the pilot must know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: But, yeah. Like, you know, and that was one of the reasons that they say, you know, like theorize may have brought down several flights that they haven't, you know, discovered the problem. Is that they had, oh, yes, look at the manifest. They actually had, you know, a ton of lithium batteries in the hold of that commercial flight. Right? And it's like, yeah, if one of them shorts and, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, I was just flying with a bunch of batteries because of my camera gear. And they're like, make you take them out and carry them with you. And they're like, yeah, they have to go in the cabin. I'm like, I don't want that shit in here with me. Yeah, I know. Right? I guess you could put them out or do something. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, you can deal with the fire if it happens in the cabin, I guess. But, yeah. Yeah. But if you don't know, they actually do have explosion and fireproof containers that they put them in in the hold. So, in theory, if something explodes or catches fire in a bag in the luggage compartment, it's self-contained and should only destroy that thing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You figure if you vacuum sealed it, right, you're not going to get more oxygen, right? You need oxygen for this, right? Still? It's still oxygen-related? Yeah. It is fire, so it needs oxygen, right?

Dave Jones: Some of them do. Others, there's enough internal stuff internal to fuel the chemical fire. Got it. Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Chemical fires. Great.

Dave Jones: Or whatever. Don't quote me. I'm no expert in that field.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Story of our life. Speaking of cheap stuff from China, one of our favorite topics, and I saw you had basically, you had written about, oh, actually, you were very nice. You said, you mentioned my name when you were talking about the Neoden. I saw you were talking to them at Electronics.

Dave Jones: Oh, did I mention your name?

Chris Gammell: I think so, at some point.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. In what way did I mention your name?

Chris Gammell: I think you said Mr. Gamble in the USA is using one of these, or something like that.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, I remember that. That's right. Yeah. That's right.

Chris Gammell: But there's an interesting one. So this was also at the Open Hardware Summit, because Nate from SparkFun's been using this thing, and then Colin from who I was visiting up in Canada also has one of these things, the CHMT36VA. Basically, it's... What is it? It's a pick-and-place. So it's a tabletop pick-and-place. Here, I'll send you the link.

Dave Jones: Tell me the number again. CHT.

Chris Gammell: CHMT.

Dave Jones: CHMT.

Chris Gammell: CHMT36VA.

Dave Jones: CHMT36VA. It pops up in Google. Straight away. Right. Oh, Aliexpress. Yeah. So it's like... Oh, this is similar to the... Oh, this is just like the... This is just another version of the... What is it? The 3005 or 2005 or whatever it is? Okay. Oh, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, people have been talking about... Yeah, it's just another version. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's the same form factor. Yep. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Got it. All the cheap pick-and-place... I saw it in person, and it was pretty decent. Like, the hardware looks nice. It was just basically the software was kind of crap. Does it have vision? It does. Yeah, it has up and down. Right. Okay. And for $2,800, it's like pretty cheap. Yeah. And so the thing is, though, that Open P&P...

Dave Jones: $3,500.

Chris Gammell: What? Australian dollars? No. Aussie?

Dave Jones: Yankee bucks.

Chris Gammell: Aussie kroners? Yankee bucks. Canadian donor?

Dave Jones: So that's about $5,000 Australian. Okay. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, I heard it was $2,800. Maybe it's... Oh, you know, maybe it's gone up, actually, because of the tariff. Well, the tariff wouldn't matter for you, though.

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

Chris Gammell: You know, that's bugging me. DigiKey and other places are now mentioning they're, like, tariff applied. And it's like... Yes. Look, I know it's a thing, and I hate it. But you don't need to remind me of it. Just, like, pretend the prices are higher. They're like, yeah, it's not us.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's even nicer that they're taking care of it, like, that it's on that side of things, right? Like, I assume that otherwise I'd have to pay it through, like, a...

Dave Jones: So it happened that quick. I'm surprised it happened. Like, I heard the announcement they're going to have tariffs, and next thing you know, it's, like, next month. Like, DigiKey and Mouser could change their website.

Chris Gammell: In July, it was, like, it was, like, pending. And I think it was because as the new stuff came in, so as old stuff went out of stock, like, basically stuff they bought, they only passed through the tariffs on the stuff that they buy. So, like, they had something pending delivery.

Dave Jones: I don't know how things happen that quickly, though, with government. Well, the thing is, there's money involved, Dave. Like, important laws and stuff like that. Yeah, but how does, like, legislation change that quickly? Like, I thought it was a long, laborious...

Chris Gammell: I don't think that was legislation. I think that was actually just a dictum. So, that's why.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but...

Chris Gammell: This wasn't, like, legislative. It didn't go through Congress.

Dave Jones: Then how is it, in effect, in law?

Chris Gammell: I don't know the ins and outs of the legal system, either. I just know that there is a tariff now. And I think the, uh... I think... I think El Presidente is allowed to levy tariffs. And, uh... Yeah.

Dave Jones: Sounds... Yeah, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Something's stupid. Yes, I agree. Sounds dodgy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's tiny pick-and-place machines. Yeah, like, meh. You know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think it's... I mean, I just think it's interesting because, basically, they... They cracked the firmware on it. And now they're opening... Trying to open it up, the ecosystem with OpenPNP software. Oh, okay. Right. So, that's kind of the interesting thing to me. So... And Nate was giving a talk about that, too.

Dave Jones: Why? Because the software that comes with it is crap? Is that the...

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Oh, okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. So, the hardware works okay. Yeah, it's the thing.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's... You know, it's a bunch of, what, ball screws and, like, probably stepper motors and whatever's there. But then you need to have a driver board and you need to have some hardware there. And, basically, this is a value add on top of it. And it's like... Right. So, the hardware maker doesn't lose anything. In fact, they're probably going to sell more units, to be honest. Yep. And now it's... If it is an open project, then, and more people buy it, that's kind of cool. Right. I know. I struggle with the Neodent software. So, I wouldn't mind if that stuff went open as well. And, like I said, it's, you know, it's good... It is good hardware. It's a well-built machine, from what I can tell. So, it scares the bejesus out of each other.

Dave Jones: It still doesn't change the value equation.

Chris Gammell: No, of course. Yeah, you're totally right about that. You're... Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: People think that this is going to be a magical thing that solves all their problems. No. You know.

Chris Gammell: I mean, the thing I think about is, like... So, I remember I was... So, I did, like, my LEDs for one of my boards on there. And it was, like, a ton of LEDs. And that was fine. It was all the same part. But, like, then it went to the point where I had the... You know, I was like, oh, I should also put, like, the... The boost converter I have that's on there. Right? It was a little... You know, it was just, like, a SAT 23-5 or something like that. Yeah. It was something small and simple, whatever. I was like, I only bought 10 of those because that was $20. Right? They're $2. And it's like, I'm not buying a reel of components. So, unless you're at the stage where you're buying thousands and thousands of dollars of components.

Dave Jones: That's why you buy Digi reels and Mouser reels. That they only have 10 parts on there. But then they have a leader tape. But then the machine ends up just wasting half of them anyway. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: And so, I'm like, unless you're good at that stuff, you got to really be careful. It really can add up. And...

Dave Jones: Yeah. And then you end up hand soldering them anyway. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: And so, at that point, like, it was easier for me to, like... So, I still stenciled it on. I did all the LED stuff that I wanted to do. And then, you know, board came out of the pick and place. And there was a couple of, you know, spots open with head solder paste on. And I'm like, oh, hand placed. Right? And, like, that's better. But it's still not a reason to get a pick and place.

Dave Jones: Well, there are several online places now that will actually make your prototype boards for you. Not only... Like, you send them not only your Gerber files. They'll make you bare boards. But you send them your digi-key parts list. And you send them your, you know, your pick and place information. And, well, they won't pick and place it. They'll just hand solder it. Right? And bingo. You know, a finished board comes back for, like, $100.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's great. Right? I think that's totally a way to do it. Right? It's like...

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's basically hiring an intern, but it's through a website.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And they probably are doing that all day long, so they're actually good at it instead of an intern.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right. Yeah. They're very efficient. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, yeah. No, I think that's great. I think that's great. And, like, you talk to anyone in, like, you know, living in Shenzhen, they're like, yeah, I just... Like, Akiba talked about that a bunch. Like, yeah, I just get someone to hand play stuff. It's great. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: No, exactly. Yep. Oh, did you see my tweet the other day? $2.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I did see that.

Dave Jones: $2 for 10 PCBs.

Chris Gammell: I know. And $20 in shipping.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but I sprung for the courier shipping. Oh, for the fast stuff. I see. I could have got cheaper, but I paid $20 to get the... Yeah, you know, I think all this stuff is, like...

Chris Gammell: DHL shipping. This is what, again, what people are talking about in Shenzhen, you know, like, this is the same thing you could get over there. It's just that now the systems are optimized enough that those costs are just passing through instead of, you know, stacking up on top of it. So, yeah. It's unbelievable. Like... It's crazy.

Dave Jones: It's just...

Chris Gammell: Did you watch... Did you watch that? Do we... We probably... I know we talked about it on the show. I think we talked... You and I talked about it, but it was when Scotty from Strange Parts did... Oh, yes. It was a JLC.

Dave Jones: Went through JLC, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I haven't watched... I still haven't watched the whole thing.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it was good. I mean, like, it was a little... It was... I mean, obviously, they invited him there, and it was, you know, a sponsor video, whatever, but it was still a good look. It was, like, an inside look at a factory, so that was interesting. Mm-hmm. What do you think happens to all those films that they use for exposure?

Dave Jones: Oh, they do... Well, most places, they will keep them, just in case you do the repeat order and you won't pay the tool in charge again. That's how a professional... Like, you know, a professional, professional... Let's just say high-end. ...PCB place does it. High-end. Well, no, a non-prot... That's how a non-prototype... Oh, got it, got it. ...PCB house does it, right? They will keep all their films, right? Yeah. So that, you know... Because that...

Chris Gammell: I was just wondering, like... So, like, obviously, like, a lot of those are... You know, they're not going to be used again, but, like, do they... Oh, yes, no.

Dave Jones: At a prototype house, they won't be, but at a production house, right? Yes. Because the world has changed, right? Look, 15 years ago, there were very few prototype PCB places.

Chris Gammell: Getting a $2 set of PCBs is ridiculous to think about.

Dave Jones: No, it was unheard of. It was, like, $800 to get one board, right? Because you got it done at a production house, and they had to... And getting the films made was very expensive, you know, photographic presses. Now they've got these, you know, laser printer things, and they just print out the film, you know, like it's nothing, like on a sheet of paper, you know? But, yeah, no, it was... It used to be a very expensive process, and they'd keep their films, because that was a large part of the tooling cost was the film. Oh, really?

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. That was most of it. And, yeah, so they'd keep them, just in case you're, you know, you do your repeat order. So, yeah. Or they had a policy of, like, keeping them for, like, two years or something, and then they'd dispose of them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, they would often tell you that. Right, because if you are doing repeat orders, right, if you're doing thousands of boards at a time, then why wouldn't you reuse this? Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. But... Yeah, so if you don't... I just wonder what happens to the prototype ones. That's what's weird to me.

Dave Jones: Oh, the prototype ones are probably gone. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But, I mean, that's what I'm asking. Oh, no, no, no.

Dave Jones: In fact, they must have to throw them out. They have to.

Chris Gammell: Because they're catalyzing them, otherwise.

Dave Jones: No, no, no. Because there's multiple, you know, the only reason you can get your 10 boards for $2 is because you share a panel space with 100 other customers, right? Oh, yeah, right. And they're not going to redo that panel with 100 other customers if you just order your one. It doesn't work.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right? It doesn't work like that. So, there's no reason at all to keep them. They would dispose of them. Totally. Every time. Yep. Guarantee it. Guaranteed. Because there's no reason. Like, unless you had the 100 same customers or multiple customers come back that just so happened to share that random panel. At the same time, it just doesn't happen. Right. They're not going to reprint that one panel for you with 199 other customers just so you can get your one board again. They will simply redo your board. They'll re-image your, re-mask your board and put it on a new panel. Yeah. On a new artwork film. If you happen to reorder that board, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But I'm asking, do you think they throw them out or do you think they recycle them? That's actually what I was asking.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. It's China, I'm sure. They throw them out. No, they do. In some provinces, they have strict laws for recycling and stuff like that. But I don't know. Don't know.

Chris Gammell: Of all the things that I wanted to see in that tour, that was one of the things. Yeah, right. Oh, well. Well, yeah. I had that Scotty to go back. Too bad. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.

Dave Jones: I heard a few complaints about that video. A lot of people didn't like it.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's the internet, Dave.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm sure there'll be complaints about my tour of the road factory. I was going to say, there'll be complaints about the show, even. You know?

Chris Gammell: Like, there's always complaints.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's okay. You do the best you can. Anyway.

Dave Jones: Oh, Amp Hour is up. Well and truly. It's way up. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, I do want a yay or nay. Should I go for the senior? Just because I can level up. Should I go for the senior IEEE thing?

Chris Gammell: I think you should and then you should lord it over people. Be like, when people approach you and they say, oh, you're Dave Jones? You're like, excuse me. I'm Dave Jones, senior IEEE member. Sign all your emails like that.

Dave Jones: Right, right. Yeah. Should I do it for kicks? Like, because they do give you, you know, the official letters that you can use after your name, you know.

Chris Gammell: Oh, there you go. Wank, wank. Yeah. Yeah, right, right. Yep.

Dave Jones: So, for extra wankery, should I go for the senior IEEE thing? And if I do, yeah, I do believe I need like at least like three other senior members to shout you out.

Chris Gammell: You said tattoos are cool, Dave, so, you know.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So, senior member.

Dave Jones: Oh, dear.

Chris Gammell: I say yes. I say yes. We'll let the listeners weigh in.

Dave Jones: Right. Let Dave know in the comment section. I'll need some people to vouch for me.

Chris Gammell: Got it. So, you know. I'm sure we can get a couple. All right, buddy. Well, there's a couple of links that we didn't get to, but I'm sure that people can go and find them on our subreddit. We also tweet all the time. And we also tweet from The Amp Hour subreddit. So, if you want to see that stuff, you can see that stuff, too.

Dave Jones: You're still not Facebooking?

Chris Gammell: I do that for personal stuff. I don't do it for, and even then, yeah. Not a fan of it.

Dave Jones: You don't Instagram? Are you on Instagram?

Chris Gammell: I do Instagram, but mostly when I travel. What about you? Yeah, I guess you do. It's personal crap. You do photos. No, I don't.

Dave Jones: No, I used to Instagram. I don't do it anymore. Got it. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's just Twitter and Reddit and, yeah. Email, I suppose. All right, man. Cool. We'll talk to you soon.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Dave Jones: Bye.

Speaker ?: Bye. We'll be right back.