#413 – A House of FR4

Chris Gammell: This is the F-Hour Podcast. Released October 28th, 2018. Episode 413. A House of F-R-4.

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

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

Dave Jones: I'm almost a regular now.

Chris Gammell: I know, right? Two in a row. Three in a row. Three in a row? Yeah, three in a row. Yeah. No. No. Welcome back, Mr. Carter. What's up, buddy? How you been?

Dave Jones: Doing all right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Trying to, in the middle of a negotiating lab move. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's exciting.

Dave Jones: That's a pain in the ass.

Chris Gammell: A bit pain in the ass. I just did. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You'll notice that I said negotiating. I didn't say anything about doing any actual physical moving yet.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right. Yeah, I think that's the downside that you have to deal with. You have to actually get it all figured out first before you. It's not like you're trying to do a little bit more custom than most people would do. Like for me, I just go sign up at a place and see what you get, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's because I've got to tell them that I've got a lab. You know, because most people just like want an office and that's it, right? They just have desks and computers.

Chris Gammell: Computer, printer, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, and all the usual office furniture, right? And then you've got to, you know, explain to people because it's in the leash, you know? You're not allowed to have chemicals. You're not allowed to have, you know, like anything like that. Yes, uttering, right, yeah. Yeah, like I've got chemicals and yeah, I actually, you know, I solder things.

Chris Gammell: It's not like you're doing battery research or anything. You're not like blowing up with the ions, but still.

Dave Jones: Well, occasionally things have caught on fire in the lab, you know? Don't put that up front, man. No, I'm not putting that up front.

Chris Gammell: Don't tell them that one, you know?

Dave Jones: And I'm sure they won't listen to the amp hour, so it's all good.

Chris Gammell: Excellent, yes. Yep. Another, sorry all you real estate people out there.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Anyway, yeah, so you've got to, you know, make sure that's in so that your butt's covered, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yep. Yeah. Well, I think that's like one of those things where it's the, you know, we like to talk about electronics and all that other stuff, but it's the everything else that kind of gets in the way, right? It's like doing email. Tell me about it. Like when you're doing a business, right, it's thinking about how much time I actually get to bill for versus how much time I actually spend at the office versus, you know, like how much time I'm thinking about stuff too. It's just, it's a much, much less than I ever thought it would be.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Like maybe 70% of my time is just dealing with things, administrative stuff. Yeah. Yep. Yep. That's not easy. So I try and be productive. If you haven't noticed, I am back to my regular scheduled videos now.

Chris Gammell: I've seen Mailbag Mondays. They're actually on Mondays.

Dave Jones: Mailbag Monday. Tear down Tuesdays are on Tuesdays.

Chris Gammell: Oh, wow. You get a boot in the ass? What happened here?

Dave Jones: And maybe Fundamentals Fridays will come back to Friday. I like those, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's great, man.

Dave Jones: So anyway, we'll see.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Cool. Cool.

Dave Jones: That's the plan anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So that's one of the reasons for the lab reorg is because I want to be more productive. Yeah. Right. And you've been to both of my facilities here. Yep. Yep. I have a separate editing where I record this now, separate editing and office suite and logistics suite. Right. And it's a significant distance. Forum Hubble. Right. It's a significant distance from the lab. I can walk between them. Um, but you know, it, it like, so if I'm sitting here editing a video, did we talk about this the other week? Seems familiar.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. Oh, no. I'm going to repeat myself.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Could be.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yeah. If I'm sitting here editing a video, I can't just wander back.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, and go, oh, like, oh, there's one clip I want. And it's inconvenient to go, just like go back there and shoot that one clip and then come back here.

Chris Gammell: So just being in a lab situation, I think is, is very different. Uh, yes.

Dave Jones: If you sit in there and you've got all your stuff within reach, you can go, oh, I can do a quick 10 minute video of this, you know, thing or whatever. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, my, my last job that I was just previously at, it was like, I had to leave M hub where I work out of and like, it was moving away from the lab. And I was like, I don't know, like this, you know, like being, being far away from the gears, it's just like a familiarity type thing, you know? And so if you have the access to access to it, you can walk over. I remember, uh, one of my desks in my past jobs, I had my lab bench directly next to my desk. And I think that goes in the other directions actually. Uh, sometimes cause the computer is a little bit more distracting to the, the lab work. Sometimes having isolated lab work can be really good.

Dave Jones: Oh, just check the forum again. See if there's a good thing. Yeah, exactly. Right. Did they respond yet?

Chris Gammell: Right. I had a very important point that I was making.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Somebody was wrong on the internet. Exactly. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so I think it is, it's important to have a little bit of separation, but I mean, these days, I mean, probably one of my, some of my test gear is, is on my laptop. You know what I mean? Like some of my stuff is tied to this thing. So it's, you know, it's more about managing notifications and trying not to get distracted when you're, when you're deep in a, in a project and troubleshooting. But, but that can happen. Like, you know, we've got phones in our pockets too, right? It's just easily. Yeah. No, exactly.

Dave Jones: It makes no difference. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's good. I mean, it's good to, you're doing a little, a little, a little feng shui, huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Hey, I just thought of a project.

Chris Gammell: What's that?

Dave Jones: A cell phone jam, cell phone, God, bloody Americanized, mobile phone jammer that you can have in your lab that, you know, like it's, so it takes the outside distractions away.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. How do you deal with those things? I, you know, you can get like, you can get like those plugins for your computer that like turn off all the, all the, the distracting sites that are out there. You know, really?

Dave Jones: What is it? You like a USB stick or something? You plug it in?

Chris Gammell: Well, no, it's just usually like a Chrome plugin. So it's like you, so you go type in facebook.com or something and it's like, well, you say, bugger off. Yeah, exactly. It says, oh, you didn't, you didn't want to go for the, you're supposed to be concentrating the next 20 minutes. But the problem is I always have the passwords for everything.

Dave Jones: So it's almost like you need to pay someone to come in and do it for you.

Chris Gammell: If you really, if you really have struggles with it, these days, Facebook, I'm like, oh, okay. But, but still, yeah. Yeah. So what you need is you need your, your neighbor to jam your phone for you, you know, to jam the signals and deal with the FCC or whatever you guys have there. What is it called there?

Dave Jones: Uh, the, oh God, what is it? Yeah. It'll come to me.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Yes. We, we do have the FCC, FCC equivalent. Yeah. Yeah. It's the Australian communications management authorities at AMCA or something. AMCA. ACMA or something. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Do you have to do the same testing if you go through like certs and stuff like that?

Dave Jones: Uh, not here.

Chris Gammell: Like, I'm sure that like some of it's probably passed through. So if you get FCC, you probably. Yes.

Dave Jones: We have the CTIC. We have the CTIC requirement, which is equivalent to the FCC. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Part 15, whatever.

Dave Jones: Emissions thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Which means nothing here. Like if you get your product FCC certified here, that means absolutely nothing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. If you want to sell it in the US that it needs to be FCC certified.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. So we, we have a CTIC. Oh, well, it's not, it's changed its name from CTIC to bloody the C, the compliance mark or something. Okay. Yeah. I've done a video on this and I forget.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is. I mean, that's, I'm always surprised by that too. Cause when you think about like selling across the world, like some products have the, you know, the, the mark for every country, you know, they really got it. Oh yeah. That's yeah. That's crazy. That's a, that was a full time gig for sure. Yep. Yeah. So you'd think they'd start to standardize across, but I mean, the thing is like you have different frequency standards than we have here. So it's from a certain perspective, it makes sense that there wouldn't be the same standards body. You'd think there'd be like a general thing though, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Um, like as I've, I've mentioned, I did compliance video, as I said, and you know, in there, it's basically just like go to your test house and they will know which requirements are for which countries and which ones you need, which ones you shouldn't bother with, you know, for you, for your class of item and stuff like that. They'll, you know, and, and then you just go, right, hand over your money, test them for all applicable. Oh, that's the important stuff for sure. Yeah. And it's not just a matter of, you know, it's got to make sure it passes because these test houses won't bodge anything. They, you know, it's in, it's not in their best interest to, you know.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. Yeah. They fail you and bring you back the next time. Another, another 10 grand, please.

Dave Jones: Another 10 grand. Thank you very much. It's in their best interest to fail you. Right. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: They know how to do to get it done. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. They will do their best.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh boy.

Chris Gammell: I'll have to, I'll have to look at that. I don't remember that video, so I'll have to look at that.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. I've, I've done two. I've done one on the, yeah. All the, like the markings on product. I've done two about the markings on products and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: They've been very popular. So.

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: What else has been happening in the world in our week that we've.

Chris Gammell: Well, you, you, you recorded last week with Mike.

Dave Jones: I recorded last week and we were yapping on a bit. We were yapping on about Mike and Dave stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It was good. I liked it. Yeah. Yeah. You know. No, actually. I heard that you listened to it. I forgot you and Mike hadn't talked in so long. That's what, that was what was surprising to me.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Whereas you guys have met up a couple of times.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, I've, I've only talked to him once when we had, I think once. One time? Wow. Maybe two. I don't know. Did we have him on a second time on the show? But he's been on the show like four times, but at least two of them were with you. So. Yeah. At the, cause you're at some conference or something. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: One was in Belgrade and one was in London, I think. Right. Or something like that. But.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Dude, why is this on the list? Why is this on the amp hour list? I see it was edited. I see it was added by you.

Chris Gammell: What's that?

Dave Jones: The XPRIZE.

Chris Gammell: The Water Abundance XPRIZE? Oh, that was interesting.

Dave Jones: $1.5 million. What about it? It's not interesting. It's bullshit.

Chris Gammell: What? Oh, I didn't know. Is it bullshit? Really?

Dave Jones: I've done a, I've done a video debunking this stuff. As has Thunderf00t's done like 10 videos. And he actually just released a video last night.

Chris Gammell: I don't watch Thunderf00t. Sorry, buddy. Doing this. Okay. Well, I thought it was an interesting concept. But apparently. Debunk it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, it's bullshit. Right? It's impractical.

Chris Gammell: I don't doubt that. But so what?

Dave Jones: Like it works in quote marks. Just like you being works. Just like Energis works. Just like, you know, everything else works.

Chris Gammell: You thought I was like trolling you here? And I'm like, oh, Dave.

Dave Jones: Well, I just didn't. Yeah. I assumed that you just weren't aware that that was the case. Yeah. That you hadn't really thought about it. Because the problem with extracting water from the air is that it takes a metric butt ton of energy. That's an SI unit.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: And it's a phenomenal amount of energy. It just doesn't make it economical or practical. And then only, and then that only works in ideal conditions like really high humid environments. And the problem with high humid environments is that, well, what do you get in high humid environments? A lot of rain. Which is where you don't need a dehumidifier. And then you can't drink the water from it. So it's got to be filtered. So you've got to put more energy into it. TechCrunch got me again, apparently. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're just like. I listened.

Chris Gammell: I read like the top level, like, oh, this looks interesting. But.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Of course. And that's why it made. Yes. If you don't know, I actually, I did a couple of videos on this, which was the Water Seer. And then Popular Science Magazine, right? Which is, I guess, it's not a journal, right? But at least, you know, it's like got some modicum of responsibility, right? Because it's a science magazine, right? Won't say journal. And they published an article on the Water Seer, which is something that I and Thunderfoot had debunked, right? Which is like a thing that you bury underground and then it has a turbine on top and extracts water from the air. It does exactly this, right? The only problem is it doesn't work due to like the law of thermodynamics, you know, and basic soil chemistry and physics and, you know, all that sort of jazz. And anyway, they published this article in their magazine. Basically, just what all these media organizations do is just re-sprout the marketing copy from these companies, right? And they didn't put any critical analysis into it. And this is a science magazine. So I took them to task. I did a video and I didn't expect any response. But sure enough, a week later or whatever, they actually published a retraction in print of their article and said, hey, sorry, we didn't do our research. So I was quite proud of that.

Chris Gammell: Did they reference yours?

Dave Jones: I mentioned in a generic way, yes, I think. But I did a video and sent it to them specifically calling them out. And I was the only one who did that. So I assume it must be me. Anyway, they took another look at it and they went, yep, we agree. It's, you know, it's bullshit. They didn't use the word bullshit, but, you know, yeah. And they went, sorry, we retract our article. We, you know, should have put more research into it. And it's the same thing here.

Chris Gammell: Well, so the thing I'm surprised by about this, I thought the XPRIZE, I thought they would have done the, so they won $1.5 million for this thing.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: But.

Dave Jones: Well, hey, well, you know, things like the Fontas, right? Which is, you're aware of the Fontas, right? They went bankrupt.

Chris Gammell: I don't have time to look at all this stuff.

Dave Jones: It's my job.

Chris Gammell: I guess so, yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Anyway, the Fontas, once again, bastard.

Chris Gammell: I can see it here. It's the water bottle that fills itself up and it never goes dry.

Dave Jones: Self-flowing water bottle, yeah. And there's countless ones of these. And anyway, myself and Thunderfoot and others, quite a few others, debunked the Fontas. And, of course, they went bankrupt, as expected. But once again, they won a James Dyson award for this bullshit, right?

Chris Gammell: Jeez, man.

Dave Jones: It's like, you know, that's the problem, right?

Chris Gammell: You think you should spend your time, you know, Dave, you could just make up. It sounds like at this point, you could just make up prize names for, you know, things that could win millions of dollars at a time.

Dave Jones: Right. I know. It's just ridiculous because they don't put any critical analysis into it. They don't care whether it's practical. They just get with, you know, oh, the idea. They just need to show something.

Chris Gammell: That's the idea? Like, that's the...

Dave Jones: Well, no, no. But everyone wants to help people, right? So, oh, we want to help the thirsty people in Africa, you know, and in the desert region. So, let's extract water from the air. That'll work. Like, you know, and then all it needs is money and research. And no, you can't beat, you know, you cannot beat the laws of physics, Captain.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, you know, I was thinking about... I was listening to Bill Gates. I mean, I was listening to Bill Gates talk about the Gates Foundation, obviously. And, you know, you always... I always expect it to be like, oh, well, we, you know, we threw science at this thing and, you know, we're chasing down the DNA sequencing of A, B, and C and doing all this other stuff. And at the end of the day, it's like... Yeah. They have... They have taken... They and many other, you know, organizations have taken critical looks at, like, what needs to happen. And they're like, oh, well, what we do is we weigh children. And if they're underweight, then we give them protein. Yeah. You know, like, it's like... I know. It's pretty basic stuff. It's like... Yeah, yeah. It's just on the scale of things that are... And, you know, like, governments are doing this too, of course, right? There's tons of people that are doing this kind of thing. But, like, the solutions are not tech-focused at all.

Dave Jones: They are not high tech. They are not high tech. They don't need it, right?

Chris Gammell: I mean, like, the things... No, no. And I think I mentioned that on here before.

Dave Jones: They need water, housing, education, power.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. You know. Yeah, and how do you get water? Not from the air. You probably...

Dave Jones: They need clean food and water, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You clean up the source and you go dig a deeper well or whatever. Yeah, right. And it's very frustrating, Dave.

Dave Jones: Well, the solution to the water is not hard. You pump it in from regions that have water. Right. Pumps and pipes are relatively cheap compared to everything else. Right, exactly. So it's just you've got to put the money... If you're going to put the money in, put it into that sort of infrastructure.

Chris Gammell: Right, yep.

Dave Jones: You know.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: So...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it was just a recent update on... He was on Ezra Klein's podcast doing... I think he does, like, a tour pretty much now whenever they put out a report. But it's always... It's just... Yeah, no, no. It comes down to basics for us. That's what they talk about. It's just...

Dave Jones: That's why I'm sure we talked about this way back at the start of The Amp Hour. It was the one laptop per child.

Chris Gammell: Ah, yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, it's like they don't need a laptop. They need freaking clean drinking water and food that's, you know, abundant, nutritious food. That's what they need.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. And I didn't even think about that stuff. Like, the one that we were talking about was, like, you know, if you're malnourished, then your brain development is down, too. And it's just like, oh, yeah, of course. Right. I mean, like... But it's just like... Right. It's these systemic issues that are, like, that's the... You know, it's fixing a lot of those things before you need to move up the hierarchy and get to the point where you need a laptop, you know?

Dave Jones: Well, is that a problem with us engineers? Totally. You see it as a technical solution rather than a simple logistic solution? Yep. We overthink it?

Chris Gammell: I think that's totally it. Yeah. I mean, like, I want to throw electronics at every problem I see, but that is really the issue, really the right thing. And if I look at the, you know, if I look at the consulting gigs that I have and have bid on and, you know, everything is... It's the top of the hierarchy, right? It's the top of Maslow's hierarchy. It's like fixing things that are interesting and things that I like working on, of course, but it's just... It's not like... It's not going to... You know, you're not building someone's house out of an FR4, right?

Dave Jones: This is how we ended up with the internet of shit, right? Is that, like, we'll solve a problem. I need to turn my lights off. Well, you don't put electronics into it. You put a switch in a more convenient location. I mean...

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. It's not rocket science. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. I'm actually... Ooh. I'm in that world now. I'm in the... I'm... I do IoT stuff, Dave. Yeah. I'm growing. Not really.

Dave Jones: Growing, growing, growing. Well, you're just a gun for hire. You do what people pay. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's the thing. But, like, that's where...

Dave Jones: Is there anything you won't work on? Is there anything you would, like... Like, even if it's technically interesting, would you refuse to work on it?

Chris Gammell: Yes. There was a drug-based project that I was not interested in recently.

Dave Jones: Okay. Without giving away details, are you able to say what sort of thing was... What sort of drug?

Chris Gammell: No, it was just a recreational drug thing. That's all I can say. Oh, right. Okay. Right. Okay. Yeah. I mean, like, I'm just not interested in enhancing that industry.

Dave Jones: In helping out that. Yeah. But you're not necessarily against it, but you don't want to help it out. Exactly. Exactly right.

Chris Gammell: And I don't want to spend my time thinking about that stuff every day. Yeah. Right. There's... Sure. There's other problems to be solved.

Dave Jones: Uh-huh.

Chris Gammell: And I'm not saying everything I work on is, like, 100%, like, you know, saving the world type of thing. Some of it's just interesting technically, and some of it's dealing with that. Uh-huh. But, yeah. You're not going to build a house out of FR4. You know what I mean? Right. So.

Dave Jones: There's an idea.

Chris Gammell: No, don't do it.

Dave Jones: What do you...

Chris Gammell: Maybe, like, a gingerbread house, you know? Like, a small one.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I will say, and I will put this out there again, I did end up starting that consulting forum that I mentioned.

Dave Jones: Excellent.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And it's been going great. Yeah. There's about, like, 40, 50 people on there. Wow. Okay. So if people are interested, it's specific to people who are doing consulting part-time or full-time. Yep. But there's a forum, and I will... Form for a forum, and I will list that forum again, and if people are interested in participating, it's been a good way to kind of get some questions. Questions answered. So if you're in that world, let me know.

Dave Jones: So how does it work? Do, like, does somebody post something on the forum and say, hey, I've got this client who needs this mechanical engineering job. I know Jack all about this. Who wants to do it? Is that...

Chris Gammell: A little more high-level than that. It'd be more like... So I'm in a spot where I don't know... So, like, I've done that kind of thing where I'm like, oh, I don't know how to find a mechanical engineer, right? So I'm not looking to find a mechanical engineer necessarily on here. It's more like, how do I... So, like, here's an example. I posted about dealing with vacation as a consultant, right? Like, how do I do that? Oh, yeah, of course. I've never done that before, right? And so it was kind of just asking for advice from other people. You know, do you completely go dark? Do you ask around? You know, like, do you tell your... Obviously, you tell your clients, but do you answer the phone? And what's an emergency? What is an emergency? That kind of thing. And had some really good responses and that kind of thing. So, like, that's like a very high-level thing, but there's also more specific stuff as well. Cool. Yeah. So it's been great. It's been great. There's a nice group on there. And they're all amp-powered listeners. I'm sure some of them are listening right now. Hello. Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining.

Dave Jones: Is it like an email-based list or is it a forum that you have to go to?

Chris Gammell: It's a discourse forum. So it'll send you... That's like the...

Dave Jones: Yeah. Sorry, I haven't used discourse forums. It's okay.

Chris Gammell: It's like what I use for the Kaiket forum as well. Yeah, yeah. I know. Yeah. So it basically sends a summary or like... It's like mailing list mode if you want to. So you can even respond. Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: You have optional mailing list.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Okay. Yeah. Got it. Mailing lists are kind of weird. I don't know. I'm still on some mailing lists.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but if it's a forum that you don't visit every day and it's low enough volume...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: ...then it's probably not a bad way to go.

Chris Gammell: I'm just really surprised people still go to sites every day. Like I don't... I mean, I know that you do that for the forum, for the eeve blog forum and that makes sense because there's so many... Well, I mean, even other people are there every day because there's just so much traffic. Yeah. Yeah. There's very few sites that I go to every single day. You know what I mean? Right. Maybe Reddit, you know? Twitter. Okay. That kind of thing. Well, TweetDeck or whatever. But yeah. I mean, like... Yep. ...that's just how a lot of the web has changed, I think, too. You know, I used to go to blogs. You know what I mean? Like there were blogs I would check... Oh, right. Yeah, of course. Yeah. I would check certain blogs every single day, you know? Or like Hackaday. Like I still see a lot of Hackaday articles, of course, and I get email newsletters, but I don't go to Hackaday every day, but a lot of people still do. So, you know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Everyone likes their information in different... Fed in different ways. They do. They do. Yeah. So there's no one thing to rule them all.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I agree. Speaking of going to Hackaday, I will be at the super conference, not this weekend, but next weekend. That's crazy. I guess by this weekend, it'll already have been posted by then.

Dave Jones: Why is it crazy?

Chris Gammell: It's almost November, Dave. Oh, yeah. Okay. Where the hell did that go? Granted. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Oh, man. Which means it's almost 2019. You know what I mean? Like it's just like, holy...

Dave Jones: I didn't know that Hackaday super conference was November. I didn't know that November was Hackaday.

Chris Gammell: Well, next weekend is November, Dave. So keep an eye out. It's coming for you, you know? And November around there, it's nice, I'm sure. November around here, it's not as nice. So, yeah. Got it. Yeah. So I got to write my talk and stuff.

Dave Jones: All right.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Other things happening on our list. Boldport is changing. Why are Boldport changing? What are they changing to?

Chris Gammell: So it's switching away from a monthly subscription. Like you sign up and you get a thing in the mail every month. Now it's more like less frequent, but basically you pay for each one and that kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: Right. So, yeah. And I think it's just like more in-depth projects, right?

Dave Jones: I don't... That's bound to... I don't like to put a jinx on them, but I think that model is bound to fail. People like signing up once and then they forget about it. Like, and it just happens. So if you sign up or, you know, well, no, but they like, you know, if it's a monthly recurring thing or whatever... Oh, you certainly want to put it on autopilot. And they send a kit. People like autopilot.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Whereas if people have to, like, if they get like an email each month and say, hey, this kit's available, please buy it each time. Yeah. That's going to be... I don't like to say destined not to work, but I think it's going to... It's just different, I think. I think that's what it really comes down to. It's different. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I haven't read the reasoning why they're changing, so it might make sense.

Chris Gammell: So, I mean, basically there are going to be more in-depth projects, though, too. And I think that's the idea. Oh, okay. And so if people don't know, when you join Bullpour Club, you actually get access to the community as well, which is great. Right. Cool. And so they switched over to Discourse instead of Slack, and so now they're at a Discourse forum. And so Discord, sorry, Discord chat channel, and that's what Adafruit uses as well. And basically it's like a nice chat room for, you know, getting projects done and that kind of thing and working together on projects like this. So, yeah, I think it's going to be great. I mean, I think that the existing projects are limited in terms of, you know, like it was because it was a fixed price, there was like a fixed amount of how much you could do in terms of what SAR could actually put on board. So, like, it was pretty much a fixed bomb cost. And so you think about it from that perspective, it actually, you know, you have less that you can do on a board. Of course, you're restricted, yeah. Yeah. And so some of them were blinky projects and some of them were more intricate, but, you know, then they had to be more creative. But, you know, working within a cost constraint can be interesting, but eventually, you know, I think that this will, the cost will go up and down with the actual material cost now, which is kind of cool. And yeah, I think it actually might be a little harder for SAR, but I mean, I've seen his designs and you've seen his designs and those are some killer designs. So if people haven't checked it out ever, I think it's a great way to get started soldering. I think it's a great way to get other people interested in soldering.

Dave Jones: Actually, that would have been cool for Sagan.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Oh, I saw that. I saw Sagan started soldering. Yes. Yeah.

Dave Jones: He did his first thing and everyone was impressed.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So what does one do when starting to teach a six-year-old? Sagan now? Six?

Dave Jones: Seven. Seven.

Chris Gammell: Oh, geez.

Dave Jones: I didn't teach it. Well, you know, I just taught him the safety things, but I, you know, like one minute, you know, like and a demo of how to do it. This is the hot end. This is the not hot end. Because, yeah. Because I wanted him to sort of like, you know, learn to, rather than do a half hour instructional thing with you, I wanted him to just do it. Right?

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: And, you know, and he'll learn from, you know, learn as we go. So it was literally like safety instruction and then like a minute, like here is, you know, you hold it, you know, flat. I explained, you know, the tip had to be flat and on there so it makes contact and then you just feed the solder in and then I just said, go for it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And the video you see is him literally doing it for the first time.

Chris Gammell: Oh, wow.

Dave Jones: And, yeah. That's great. Yeah. So I was very impressed.

Chris Gammell: The natural man. Yep. Hmm. I'm sorry, Dave. He's got the knack.

Dave Jones: He's got the knack. Yeah. Yep. I'm afraid so. Yeah. Oh, boy. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Oh, man.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Like where people think I might, you know, extensively teach him and stuff like it. No. You know? Yeah. Like as, as we do, as we build more stuff together. Sure. Of course. Yeah. I'll teach, you know, I'll, I'll start refining his process and stuff like that. But I didn't want to bombard him with everything right up front. I think that's wrong. It's just like, you know, here, heat up joint, trying to play solder and see what happens.

Chris Gammell: I think, I think a lot of the time too, when people are getting started, they, they, they try and like do everything at once. So they try and hold the component and hold the PCB and hold the soldering and hold the, hold the solder. It's like, well, no, you need to make sure that you're, you know, you're all set to go and you understand like heat transfer and, you know, as much as like hold it here for a little bit longer. And it's a lot easier. Don't. Yep. And like, so Sagan's at a good place because you have a good soldering iron. Whereas most people, when they start, it's like, you know, Radio Shack, Firebrand, you know, like that kind of thing is not as good. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: But for the stuff we were doing, it makes no difference really. A lot of people say, oh yeah, he's so good because of the good iron. It's, you know, come on. No, no, no.

Chris Gammell: I'm just saying that like, not that it's such a good iron. I'm saying that it's not a terrible iron. You know what I mean? Like.

Dave Jones: It's not a terrible iron.

Chris Gammell: So like when you, when you go to like an event and they're doing like soldering in a tent and people have been abusing an iron all day long and it, you know, it barely, it barely melts solder anymore. It's like, okay, that, that's a little bit different.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But anything temperature control is going to work. It's going to do the same business. Oh, I know. That's what I'm saying.

Chris Gammell: Most people when they start aren't using temperature control. That's what I'm saying.

Dave Jones: Well, there's your problem. Yeah, of course. Of course. Like even I started on a temperature control sign. It was one of those, you know, 240 volt, you know, mains straight into the thing with a little pot on it that you had to adjust with the screwdriver, right? You fancy, Mr. Fancy Fancy here. Oh yeah. Yeah. That was my first. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I'm not sure how regulated the temperature was. Didn't have any ability to measure it, but, you know. But still, right.

Chris Gammell: I mean, if it's at a, you know, if it's at a three and it doesn't work, you turn up to four. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Dave Jones: That's right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No, I mean, and that's, yeah, that's a lot better. So.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. But, you know, I got compensated for that. By using lead-free solder, you know. So, you know, a lot of people said, ah, you know, sacrilege. Well. Should be, you know, should be lead. You work up to that, you know. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I wanted to ask you about a tweet you had earlier in the week. Oh. This.

Dave Jones: Is it a controversial tweet?

Chris Gammell: No, not this time.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Okay. The first printed IC magazine project. Where did you find this?

Dave Jones: As where all great things are found, the EEV blog forum.

Chris Gammell: I figured that. I mean, so who found it then? Maybe it's a better, maybe I should start asking that instead. What's the deal here, Dave?

Dave Jones: Sorry. I can't recall exactly who posted it to the EEV blog forum. Anyway, it's an article in Electronics Australia magazine from 74, is it? Yeah. 1974-ish. Oh, here, I'll send you the link. Anyway, yes, it's an article published in Electronics Australia magazine. Someone scanned it in. Yeah. And, oh, there we go. You've linked me to it. Thank you. Let's have a look. So I know what I'm talking about. Yes. And it's from good old Dick Smith. Yeah. Tricky Dick Smith. Right. It's actually an ad. It's actually a full-page advert sort of kind of disguised as an article kind of thing. And it's like, stupendous IC breakthrough, you know, print your own integrated circuit. And it was like, hey, you've got to remember, this is- Print-a-grated. All right. Oh, yes. Print-a-grated. And it's called the PRIC.

Chris Gammell: The P-R-I-C. Yes.

Dave Jones: Right. It's called the PRIC, as in Dick Smith and PRIC. Get it? Yeah. You know? Got it. Yeah. Classic. Right. Yeah. Anyway. It's great. And you've got to remember, this is back in the age when you, the way you made PCBs was, A, you made them yourself, because that was the only way to make them. Sure. And B, they printed one-to-one scale artwork in the magazine.

Chris Gammell: Oh, for actually making a circuit board instead.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I see. For actually imaging the circuit board. So, they would print one-to-one size, the PCB in the magazine, and then you would photo, you know, you would do your photo transfer process from the magazine. Right? That's how you made boards. So, they've done the same thing here with an integrated circuit. And you're supposed to, like, cut this thing out from the magazine and then put it through some chemicals and then attach your wires to it. What is this, like an April Fool's thing?

Chris Gammell: What the hell's going on here?

Dave Jones: Of course it's April Fool's. It's from April 19th. It's from the April 1974 edition. Oh, my God. Yeah. Dick Smith was a practical joker. He's famous for it. And, yeah, this was disguised as an article. That's ridiculous. Yeah. A lot of people actually cut this thing out and try to decide. Like, and it's got instructions. You cut it out. You put it through these solutions of various chemicals to treat it. And then you try and attach wires to your – of course, they say you can't solder the wires to the paper. So, you've got to actually, you know, hold it down with tape. You know, you've got to – Good Lord. It's great. Good Lord. It's great. Great, great prank. I guess so. One of the ones that sticks in my memory for the age. A little early in the season, Dave, I understand. Yes. One of the ones that rings a bell is they had this construction article. Once again, it was in the April edition of Electronics Australia, I think it was. May have been Electronics Today International. I'm not sure. Anyway, a project article, how to build the world's best speaker cable. And what they were is mercury-filled speaker cables. So, you would actually get a garden hose. So, they'd give you instructions, you know, go buy this diameter garden hose from the local hardware store with these fit-ins and everything. Stand on top of your house so that, you know, the garden hose is downwards and fill it up with liquid mercury, you know. And then put the end caps on and it sounds phenomenal. The fluid, the liquid mercury is just, it just sounds brilliant, you know. So, yeah. Mercury-filled speaker cables.

Chris Gammell: Wow. Okay.

Dave Jones: Anyway, that was obviously taking the piss out of the, you know, the audio fool industry. Got it. Got it. Which was still around, which was around back then.

Chris Gammell: Right, of course it was.

Dave Jones: This was probably from the 80s, this one.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well. That's hilarious. Literally for the April Fool's jokes, Dave.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's great. It's great. I couldn't resist sharing that. Yeah. It's brilliant.

Chris Gammell: That's good.

Dave Jones: The prick.

Chris Gammell: Hopefully.

Dave Jones: That could be the, can that be the title of today's episode?

Speaker ?: No, it cannot.

Dave Jones: Actually, no. Dave's prick. Dave, no. No? No, definitely not. Okay. Such a wuss.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: All right. Next.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: The fall of PIC microcontrollers.

Chris Gammell: So this was a discussion. Someone actually emailed me about this and I asked them to post it on the forum.

Dave Jones: All right. And they did mention, yeah, yes. It's on The Amp Hour Reddit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And, you know, I don't have any experience with PIC, really. So I thought that would be a good one for you.

Dave Jones: Can we read their posts so we put it in context? I am a new Reddit user but an avid listener. Thank you. I was wondering where would there be a podcast discussing PIC microcontrollers? Well, we're about to do it now for you. I have used a few 12F and 16F for some personal projects. I would like to know when they stopped becoming so popular. Start to become. Their advantage, their advantages and disadvantages and if they could ever regain the hobbyist audience. As an EE college student, when I asked my peers if they have used PIC microchip microcontrollers, not a single person knows what I'm talking about but almost every single person has worked with Arduino, which is, of course, the Atmel processor. Only my professors seem to have knowledge regarding them. Excellent discussion.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: Point.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Shall we?

Chris Gammell: You start, buddy, because like I said, I mean, like, yeah.

Dave Jones: You can sense that I'm about to jump into. Yeah. Let me grab a drink first. Okay. Okay. First of all, I would be willing to bet that probably 80% to 90% plus of those people who use the Arduinos have no idea it even has an Atmel microcontroller.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. For starters. We should disambiguate as well because there's not an Arduino microcontroller. The Arduino is the standard and the IDE on top of it.

Dave Jones: Yes, it is. But it's become so generic that it doesn't, you know.

Chris Gammell: But I'm just saying that there was even a PIC32 had an Arduino compatible thing for a while, right?

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. I've got one. I've got one. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, like, it's... So, that's why I'm saying it's important to disambiguate as well.

Dave Jones: Yes, it is. Yeah. That's a very important point to make. But when people talk about Arduino, they generally talk about the Atmel implementation. Sure. Not that it matters because it doesn't matter. Because as I said, most of those students would not know that it contains an Atmel.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's right.

Dave Jones: And, or, you know, it could even be an ARM. You can get an ARM-based Arduino as well.

Chris Gammell: You can use an Espressif. I mean, like, there's translators from many different... Yes, I know. I've used those. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Sure. Right. So, the problem with the Arduino is that it's higher level and it abstracts out the microcontroller. And that's the problem. That's the point here. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. It totally abstracts it out. Now, when you're talking about microcontrollers, has it lost... Well, let's go back. Way back. Ah, yes. Back in the day. I think we're talking 92-ish, right? I think we're talking 92. Please correct me if I'm wrong. My memory's always a bit rusty. And, basically, PIC made microcontrollers what we know today. Did you say 92? Because before that, about 92, maybe.

Chris Gammell: On the PIC wiki page, I will say this. The first parts of the family were available in 1976.

Dave Jones: Yes, I know. But I'm getting to this point. Got it, got it. I'm getting to this point. Yes, correct. They were general instruments back then. Right. Okay. They were genius.

Chris Gammell: That sounds familiar, like we've talked about it on here before.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we have talked about it before. Now, the thing is, the popularity for the current microcontroller hobbyist craze, where hobbyists could really start effectively using microcontrollers, before about 92, I'm going to say, it was super expensive to do, right? You paid your thousand plus dollars for your development kit or whatever, right? It was not low cost, right? It was really expensive to get into microcontrollers. Microcontrollers were around, for sure. They've been around for a long time, but very expensive to do. And they weren't reprogrammable.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right? Yep. They were one-time programmable, or you bought the expensive EEPROM part where you had to UV erase it, right? So you'd use the EEPROM one for development, and then for your project, you'd use a one-time programmable. But microchip, PIC, came out with the 16C84 at the time, which was the E-squared PROM. It had E-squared PROM in it. You could reprogram it electrically.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right? This was a phenomenal breakthrough, and you could use a low-cost program, like a program that just hooked up to the serial port, right? This was like phenomenal breakthrough. And this is what enabled low-cost microcontroller access for the hobbyists. And then they came out with the 16F84, which was the Flash version, but it did the same thing, but it used Flash instead of E-squared PROM. Anyway, that's where it all started. So that's why microchip became sort of like the de facto industry standard in the hobbyist world, you know, because they were the first to introduce reprogrammable microcontrollers with a cheap hobbyist programming interface. Yeah. And yeah, that's why they got so popular. So that's the history of that. And then, of course, everyone else jumped on the bandwanger. You could get your TI. And then Zilog came along with their ones. They were a bit popular for the time. They're basically dead in the water now. No one uses those. And then there were, you know, your, you know, maybe MSPs, you know, came along and, you know, your TI parts and other ones came along and then Atmel came out and they had a similar system. And, you know, but PIC was pretty much the go-to thing if you wanted to do micros before Arduino came along and abstracted all that out. Right.

Chris Gammell: And basically, I mean, so PICs are all C-based, right? I mean, like that's the...

Dave Jones: And PICs are just raw microcontrollers. Yeah, microcontrollers. You can program in Assembler or C. Yeah. Or C or any other.

Chris Gammell: Right. And I think that's another distinction here is that when people are doing Arduino, they're not only moving up like a hardware abstraction layer, they're also usually using a higher level language, which is like a different, slightly different version of C++, right? I mean, that is...

Dave Jones: Well, no, it's still C. It's still C. It's just everything's abstracted out for you. So you've got... So rather than use the direct instruction to write to the IO port, you call up an already written routine, which is just a C routine, which writes to the port for you. Right. So once again, it's higher level abstracted. Not only higher level abstraction in terms of knowing what the processor is, but higher level abstraction in terms of writing to IO. Sure. And stuff like that. That's why the Arduino system, you can put any processor in there. It doesn't matter what the processor is. And you and your Arduino program still works. It'll still work every time because you write to the... You use the digital IO write routine to write to IO. So it doesn't matter whether it's an Atmel, a PIC, an ARM, or an MSP430 or expressive or whatever it is. It doesn't matter. Yep. So your Arduino program still works. So that's the thing. And there's a... It's still C. Like, Arduino, if you look at the code, and you can actually go see the code of the routines you're calling, it all still... It's all still C. It's just compiled with C compiled. And there is some C++. It may have subsets of C++. There are some.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I know there are.

Dave Jones: Yeah, anyway. Well, that's fine, right? I just... I know. It's insane.

Chris Gammell: At a certain point, who cares, right? Right.

Dave Jones: Right. Exactly. And that's the thing. It doesn't... Like, it just doesn't matter that you're programming in that interface.

Chris Gammell: It's just... Well, I think the thing... So, okay. So the questioner, PlaidX, was asking, why have they stopped becoming so popular? They're advantaged and disadvantaged. Could they ever regain the hobbyist audience? Maybe? Maybe?

Dave Jones: Well, there's so many. There are so many out there. Yeah. Like, Pic's had their time. They are still popular, right? Pic is still sold in their billions. Yes. Right. Right? They're just like... But when you look at the hobbyist level, what projects people are making on the EAV blog forum are making on this other blog or on this YouTube channel or this Artifruit thing or this, you know, insert other, you know, platform here? What are people using? Well, they're using Arduinos. They're using, you know, expressive chip module-y things. You know, they're using...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, some people are moving up the stack. Oh, that's some stuff. They're going up the Raspberry Pi. They give us BeagleBones, stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. I think that's the thing. It's a fragmentation thing. Obviously, the industry is getting bigger as well. So I think the sub-question here is, will Pic ever become dominant again? Where the... I don't think so.

Dave Jones: Well, no. I think... Just like no other individual micro will become dominant. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: Maybe families of micros, you could start saying, yeah, if you say, like, Cortex M3 is 0 and M3 and M4. Something like that. Yeah, those maybe are. But at the end of the day, most of the people that this person is talking about, the college students that are using Arduino, they're using it because it's the same to them, right? Some are...

Dave Jones: Well, it's less effort. Right. That's why they're using it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's less knowledge of each thing, right?

Dave Jones: Is there slightly more effort required to do any individual micro? It doesn't matter where it's arm, Atmel, Pic, MSP430, 8051, doesn't matter. They all have a base level of complicatedness that you hurdle, that you have to jump over before your lead flashes.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. So, you know... Yeah, that's right. Whereas... And that's why people use these other platforms. And the fact that you can buy an Arduino for, what, a couple of bucks on eBay delivered? Two bucks.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Two bucks on eBay delivered? Like, it's just... You know, and it's got that high-level abstraction. It's a no-brainer. It's the same cost as a single pick from mouse or a digi-key.

Chris Gammell: Right. And Dave and I have long since been like, yeah, great, bring it on. More people, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. People can go back and listen to us saying... You know, like, right? But at the same time, more people are coming in. And I think that, again, what this person's asking is, when are my fellow students going to get down into the lower-level registers? That's the question. Right? Yes, that's the question. And the answer is, I think, when they have to, right?

Dave Jones: When they have to, which is, the answer is, when you're talking about studying, the answer is people may never get back there. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Right. They're going to go off and do software stuff. And the micro they have that has an Arduino IDE works great for what they're doing, right? They're turning some blinds on. It works great. They bodged it together. Awesome. That's what they needed it for. Now, if they're going to make a product that's going to be battery-powered and needs to sleep and have sleep currents and nano-amps and do X, Y, and Z and process algorithms and do all this other stuff, well, they're going to learn. They're going to get down into the sea or they're going to move up the level.

Dave Jones: You have to. You're forced to.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. So we're going to restate your question. It's not, yeah. When are people going to do low-level hardware design? When they have to or when they want to. And it sounds like you want to. And that's cool, actually.

Dave Jones: Or are they going to, I think he's talking about more from a university educational point of view, too? And I think the horse has bolted there.

Chris Gammell: That's a new one, Dave. Eight years in, I've never heard that one.

Dave Jones: Really?

Chris Gammell: The horse has bolted.

Dave Jones: The horse has bolted.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Like the jig is up? Is that what it is?

Dave Jones: Yeah, you're right. The horse has bolted. No, it's more like, no, it's, no, the jig is up isn't really the same metaphor.

Chris Gammell: So what does the horse has bolted mean? Like it's.

Dave Jones: Well, the horse has bolted. Like the horse has left the gate. You can't catch the horse again. There's no way you're going to get the horse back in the barrio. The cat's out of the bag, you're saying. Right? Yeah. The cat's out of the bag. You know. Okay. Yep. Right. So. Yeah, I agree. I don't know. I agree. I didn't think that was an Australian expression. It's probably not.

Chris Gammell: I probably just don't know it.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And I think, yeah, I think that's the main thing. It's like, don't worry about it. You know, like I think that I've been dealing with this personally, actually. It's like, I'm trying to figure out what my platforms are going to be. Because I've got 30 dev boards on my desk.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, see, that's insane.

Chris Gammell: And it's irresponsible, actually, as a consultant, to be like, well, any of these will work. And it's, no, no, no, no, no, no. You come to me. I give you a solution based on, I have one solution for Wi-Fi, one solution for Bluetooth, one solution for low power, one solution for flexible. And maybe that's still too many. You should have, yeah. Exactly. You know. Yeah. But that's the idea. You can turn around and quickly do stuff, you know.

Dave Jones: That's what Mike and I talked about last week and we talked about on previous episodes, is that the reason he uses PIC is because he's always used PIC. And he's great at it. And that's what he's so familiar with.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: That he just, you know, like, and he's already got code written and he does the same projects over and over. They're all these lead-based things. He's already got the whole infrastructure in place. Yep. And that's why he can turn out projects so quickly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Right? Turn them around. Right.

Chris Gammell: And honestly, I think the other interesting thing is that, you know, as much as we talk about it on here and other people talk about it on the EEV blog forum and stuff like that, clients don't care, you know. Most of the time, if they're hiring you, they can't do it themselves. If they could, they would have just done it.

Dave Jones: Exactly. So they're generally not going to say, you must use a PIC because, et cetera.

Chris Gammell: They want the job done and fast and reliably.

Dave Jones: Yep. And that often happens at companies. People wonder how do companies, you know, companies will typically standardize on their own processor solution in-house. Sure. Be it PIC, Apmel, Motorola, whatever it is, right? And people will go, well, how did they get, how did they decide on that? It's not like they went and exhaustively evaluated them all. No, it's because probably the first person they hired to do it knew that platform and took it with them. And that's what they started using. And then the next employees come along and that original employee is long since gone. But the history of that. Right, right. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: And then the technical weight of changing something, the debt, or not the debt, but the switching cost is so high. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It just isn't worth it. So, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like occasionally you'll get, you know, a new employee that comes in and goes, look, this is not going to work. We have to use this tool. We have to go through the pain. But trying to convince management of that is really difficult. I mean, like usually. To make that change.

Chris Gammell: When I've ever been part of those conversations, it's like part X is obsolete. We cannot buy it anymore. We have one year of parts left. We must switch in that time. And they're like, okay, fine. We will finally.

Dave Jones: Fine. And then that'll get them. But if you're arguing based on technical merit, it's like. It's a non-issue. It's falling on deaf ears. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's not worth arguing. And I think that's why when you have a salesperson who sniffs an actual experience, an actual like opportunity, like say there is an obsolescence and there's a possibility to switch, like that's going to last another 10 years. You know, if the company's sticking around, like one win like that could equal lots of dollars.

Speaker ?: So.

Chris Gammell: Right. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: And there's, once again, there's industry segments. It's like, if you go in the automotive industry. Free scale. Right. You're going to find your free scale parts. Right. You know, like those ex-Motorola.

Chris Gammell: Because you go to like, you go to a microchip and you're like, I want four, I want four LIN controllers and two CAN controllers. And they're like, huh? We've got one part that has one CAN controller. Good luck. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

Dave Jones: And, and like all the, and the software certification is, is huge for those sorts of things. And they're just, you know, and the platform certifications and everything else in there. That's just what that industry uses, you know? And it's, yeah, it's just the way it is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, I will say, great question. I'm glad they asked that on the, on the subreddit. I hope other people do that as well in the future. Because.

Dave Jones: So, unfortunately, it's not something that really had a black and white answer there. It was. Yeah. You know, it's more complicated than that. But yeah, unfortunately, it's, it's the same with all education. It's like, there's so many things you need to learn. And it's like, are they suddenly going to bring back a call? We, we need to bring back fundamental skills in learning how to use, implement individual microcontrollers. There's almost no point. Because like, it's like the one you choose is not the one you might use in industry anyway. So, yeah, you could say, okay, we'll use ARM. Because everyone's using ARM. Okay. Well, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think it's, I think it's important to use something specific. If you keep it completely abstract, I think that that doesn't help at all. Because then people are like, well, this doesn't seem to apply at all. But I think that if you're at least going in and learning a thing and trying to then, you know, go through the actual motions of designing a thing or, you know, like, so if you're designing with a pick and you like picks and, but you learn, you're really learning is like how to talk to registers. And how to write C code that's legible. And, you know, like how to do all those other things, how to interface with hardware, how to troubleshoot hardware when you've written the code for it. Like, those are all the skills that you're really learning. And it's not a pick. And that's important that, you know, if you just said, well, we're going to use a micro, you know, generic microcontroller simulator. It's like, no, no, no, that's not actually useful. The useful thing is digging in and learning all these things and figuring out what you do or don't like about it. And then taking that to the next thing and maybe you are going to use a Cortex-M0 next time. Maybe you'll be using a, you know, dual core, like, expressive style ESP32. You know, like, it's just about, but having that starting place is really important too. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: And it depends what the course's aim is. If the aim is to learn about DSP or, you know, or some other, like, control theory or something else, right, you're not going to, like, go, okay, we're going to start with this blank microcontroller. And we're first going to write all the initialization routines and then we're going to write all the register initialization. Then we're going to do the timing and the IOS set. Like, and, oh, like, it's boring. It's bad shit.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Right? And then, right? And people are going to go, oh, this is just, oh, too hard. I don't like this. I hate microcontrollers. Whereas if you start with something, a platform like an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi, that just works. Right? Then you can do more higher level stuff quickly and you get more satisfaction and the students feel like they've accomplished more, more easily. And they go, hey, engineering's not that hard. You know? And, like.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And there's, of course, the proponents out there that don't like that. You know, engineering should be hard, damn it. Right. It was hard when I was a boy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. But, you know, it's pros and cons.

Chris Gammell: We just want more listeners here, so we can make it easy. Right. We have a very specific agenda here. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So one thing I will say. We don't care what you learn as long as you listen.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. So if people are interested in picks in general, like, there is the micro, sorry, the microchip masters, I think is the thing it's called, right?

Dave Jones: The program?

Chris Gammell: No, the masters is the conference that they do.

Dave Jones: Oh, the conference. Okay. No, I'm confusing that with the microchip certified professional thing. Oh, I see. Right. Yeah. Yeah, the masters. Which is a certification.

Chris Gammell: So that already happened for 2018. But I think it'll be happening again. Oh, there's ones in different parts. Yeah. So there's other ones coming up in Buenos Aires, Brazil, Seoul. So it looks like they're all over the world. China, Taiwan. So they are all over the world. But basically, they're just like training conferences and stuff like that. But if you're really into that, then go and, you know, find that community.

Dave Jones: I've been to a couple of those types of things. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And I think that's good, though, right? So some people are really into the low-level architecture and those specific parts. And yeah, go and do it.

Dave Jones: It's just that they're teaching that less and less, you know. Like, what stuff did you learn? What stuff were you taught? What platforms? What micro?

Chris Gammell: I mean, I did some 8051 stuff. You're talking about in school specifically? Yeah. Yeah. So 8051 stuff. And then also, so like Altera's, what was it, Quartus 2 on the Max 2000, I think, for like programmable logic and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And that was about it. So, I mean, I did more analog hardware in school. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I was like, you know, Z80 and 6502. Yeah. You know, it was like, you know, even though they were kind of obsolete at the time, but that's what they were still teaching.

Speaker ?: Yeah, of course.

Dave Jones: Right. You know, it was like, yeah, like, you know, microcontrollers were around, but they still weren't teaching us microcontrollers. They were teaching us microprocessors. Right. You know, here's the memory bus. Yeah. Here's the data bus. And usually that stuff does lag, actually.

Chris Gammell: It does usually lag. Oh, yeah. It lags. Yeah. It lags a lot. Because the training programs are like, you know, and because schools buy stuff and then they try and get the most out of it they can. So. So. Of course. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's really difficult to write good educational course material. You know, it takes a lot of effort to write it. So if they want to say, okay, we're going to suddenly teach, yeah, pick microcontrollers. You know, it's like, holy crap. You know, somebody's got to write all that material. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. And build a lab.

Dave Jones: And debug it and refine it and do everything. Yeah. Labs and practical demo projects and like.

Chris Gammell: That's why it's not cheap either.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So. Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think the real answer though is, you know, like that's the, you know, the teach stuff they teach in class is definitely different than the stuff you're going to learn on your own. Right. So if you're building this stuff on your own. Yeah, for sure. Great. I mean, like that's awesome. Um, that's where you're going to really learn this stuff anyways. I think it's really going to really learn the ins and outs of the architecture you like or don't like. Right. So, um, do stuff outside class. That's important. You know, do more stuff and build out a portfolio and all that fun, fun things. So.

Dave Jones: Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: One thing I was.

Dave Jones: All right. What's the last stuff?

Chris Gammell: Well, I was going to say one thing about the microchip masters is I know they have their, uh, microchips down in Phoenix. And I was going to say there is a new Phoenix 3H meetup. So we'll link to that. Um, so that's the hardware happy hour, um, down in Phoenix.

Dave Jones: Excellent.

Chris Gammell: Arizona. Are you going to have another meetup?

Dave Jones: I was going to go to a meetup last night, but I had personal stuff and I couldn't go. No, it wasn't an EV blog meetup, but there was another impromptu meetup with like every, everyone was going.

Chris Gammell: The Sydney nerds, the Sydney nerds.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It was, it was, yeah, it wasn't an official get together, but everyone was messaging me and saying, Oh, Dave, are you going? Have you heard about it? Are you going? Everyone's going to be there. And I couldn't go. So yeah. Um, but yeah, I'll, I'll have another meetup because that was fun. But you know, I think like more than every six months is too often. Got it. Okay.

Chris Gammell: You know, more time work on projects to show off. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Otherwise it, you know, cause you're going to get the same people turned. You know, it's up every time, almost, you know, probably 80%. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: You know, kind of thing. So yeah. You know, if you had a monthly, it'd be, I think it'd be pretty boring.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, it's okay. I think, you know, it's, it depends though. Like it depends like how social it is versus how much it's project based. Usually I'm on like a two month cadence. Well, that's it.

Dave Jones: There is one in Sydney. There's like the Raspberry Pi meetup and they have it every month. month, I believe. And they get like 40, 50 people.

Speaker ?: Got it.

Dave Jones: Got it. You know, but they're all like, it's kind of like, yeah, they're all working on stuff. It's more of a, it's more of a, a hacker space kind of thing. Got it. Okay. Than a, than an actual meetup. Whereas mine's like just a, you know, meetup, just meet people. Have a drink.

Chris Gammell: Show off. Get stuff. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. Um, I guess the last thing is, what was I going to say? There was a, oh, a meetup. Yeah. I got to hang out with Joe Grant and Joe Fitz, uh, past guests of the Empire last night. Excellent. Yes. That was great. And, um, they were both quoted in that, um, in that, uh, tiny chip to infiltrate U.S. companies thing.

Dave Jones: Oh God. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: Um, what, what were there? Did you speak to them about it? What were their opinions?

Chris Gammell: I don't think I'm allowed to repeat anything they told me, but it's, uh, it does not as it appeared. I don't know if, do we talk about that on here at all?

Dave Jones: No, but it sounds like, I'm a now of the opinion that show me, show me the pics. No pun intended. Show me the pics or it didn't happen.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Like that. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, show me the proof.

Dave Jones: Right. I, I, I'm now asking for proof. Yeah. Like, you know, I, I think this is blowing out.

Chris Gammell: It sounded like really big news when it first came out and. Exactly.

Dave Jones: And I think it's all more, it's more beat up than anything else. Yeah. So.

Chris Gammell: I think it's very, well, let's see on Reddit, there's 117 postings of the same article. So.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, see, see the problem is, is that once engineers like us, right. Hear this story, our mind goes into, oh, here's five different ways they can do this. So we analyze it from, rather than go. Wait, really? Yeah. Let's actually take a look at the case here. Like, is it real first? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, it's, it's like just the debunking stuff. They see the idea and their mind goes, oh, how can we make this work? Yes. Rather than step back and go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's a great way to say.

Dave Jones: Does it actually, is it practical? Yeah. Should you even bother? Right. You know.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: So. Yeah. So.

Chris Gammell: It sounds like, I would say if people are interested in this kind of stuff, it sounds like there will be a lot more focus on it. I think they are on a panel about it. I'll have to edit this out if it's not actually true. I'll check before I post. But they're on a panel talking about chip implants, which is kind of what this is about, at B-Sides Portland, which is coming up in a couple weeks, or soon, maybe this coming week.

Dave Jones: What's B-Sides? It's like a. Is that a, sounds like some venture capital. It does.

Chris Gammell: No, it's like B-Sides is like the, that's from the old LP days when you would have like. Yes, I know. Yeah. Right. So it's, it's like the secondary conference. So there's usually like B-Sides Las Vegas happens in between Black Hat and DEF CON. What does the conference focus on? Security. It's security focused.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Hardware security. Yes. Just generally. InfoSec. InfoSec. But then there is hardware stuff.

Chris Gammell: InfoSec. Yeah. B-Sides Portland is coming up very soon. Got it. B-Sides PDX is happening October 26th and 27th. So it's probably already happened actually by the time this comes out. Sorry. Yeah. It has. My bad. We'll link to the video when we can. How about that? Oh, D&D. All right, Dave. We'll talk soon.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Speaker ?: We'll see you next time.