#419 – Feels over reals

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released December 9th, 2018. Episode 419. Feels Over Reels.

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: Hey, nerd.

Chris Gammell: Hey, nerd. What's going on?

Dave Jones: I believe you're broadcasting from the magnificent podcasting room at... Where is it? M-Hub?

Chris Gammell: M-Hub, yeah. I don't know if I should be giving that much cred to this place if this is their podcasting room. Yeah, it sounds like I'm inside the air conditioning, but no. So, hopefully people listening don't care or won't know about it.

Dave Jones: And this is the dedicated podcasting room?

Chris Gammell: Well, sort of. Kind of. It's the small room that they didn't know what else to do with. It's also the photography room and the video room.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay, right. So, they shoved a microphone in there.

Chris Gammell: Space is a premium here.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay, really? I thought it was a huge, enormous place.

Chris Gammell: It is, but a space that they can't charge for. That's the main thing. Got it.

Dave Jones: But don't you get, like, you pay your monthly fee and you get access to everything?

Chris Gammell: You do, yeah, yeah. But this is effectively like an office that can't be sold as an office. Got it. So, finding privacy at a shared space. The downside to shared spaces is you get access to everything. The downside to shared spaces is everybody else does too. Yeah, right. The other problem is that it's just people. You know, people are just loud.

Dave Jones: Oh, humans. Yeah, I hate humans.

Chris Gammell: And then some people happen to live in Australia, so it's 3 p.m. when we're recording. So, you know how it plays. Right, yeah. Yeah. So, I'm not going to be going home to my apartment to record right now. Yeah, so that's a small bit about stuff that's not important, you know.

Dave Jones: How much do you pay for your own little office-y thing? Because you've got your own dedicated desk, right? That's yours. No one else can, you know.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah, I pay $400 a month for the shared space, like a shared desk and space and all that other stuff.

Dave Jones: Oh, so it is a shared desk.

Chris Gammell: Well, no, the desk is mine. Oh, right. And then, like, so there's, like, I probably got, you know, one or two square meters of space total with, like, you know, storage and drawers and all that other stuff. You know, like any other desk of shared workspace. And then I have a rolling cart, and I think I've shown you a picture. That's where I keep, like, my lab effectively. Like, I move my whole lab over from my apartment, and that's, now I just roll out my lab when I need it.

Dave Jones: So is that your idea, or does everyone get a, do you get a rolly thing?

Chris Gammell: No, I had to pay for that, too. So that's another, like, $70.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. A month? Yeah. Oh, right. Oh, okay. Right. And they store it in a rolly area?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's actually, if you've ever, you know, so, like, when you go to, like, an assembly house. So this place used to be an assembly house. Right. And it was basically when they would set up jobs, when Motorola was here, they'd set up jobs, you know, they would basically pre-set. Yeah, so, like, all the cards would have your feeders on it, would have the parts loaded, everything like that. And then you just kind of roll it out, load up the machine, and go.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And that's what they're, that's what they stuck around from that. So now I use that as a, yeah, so it's anti-static and all that other stuff.

Dave Jones: Well, that totally makes sense. I mean, you can do a lot in a couple of square meters. I mean, my old lab was four square meters, right? Right, exactly.

Chris Gammell: You know, it's, yeah. Right, and then that's not even speaking to, like, the fact that I can roll, you know, I'm basically looking for places to store stuff and then kind of spread out as I need to. Yeah. When I'm actually working on things. Still haven't gotten the video recording piece down, but TBD. TBD.

Dave Jones: So do you have a storage facility as well?

Chris Gammell: No. No, that's it, man. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's it.

Chris Gammell: So I'm actually forced to throw stuff out, unlike some people.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, no, I've been starting to, I've been starting to get rid of some stuff. Yeah, oh yeah. How's the great purge going? Oh, well, it's a slow purge. Yeah. You know, it's a slow, it's a slow turn of the release valve, you know. Yeah, okay. Yep. So how's it going? Everything's still in boxes here.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, it's not like, I've been here how many weeks? Now in the new lab and I haven't taken stuff out of the boxes yet. It's like moving into a new house, you know, you just like a year later, two years later. Yeah. Yeah. Everything's in boxes in the garage, you know, which is pretty unproductive. I have sort of started to sort the odd thing, but I haven't, you know, really. Just the simple fact. The one thing I have done, because I use them a lot, is the leads, right? You know, or your banana plug to banana plug, banana plug to alligator clip, all that. You know, I've got those sorted out and hanging on the thing. And just that saves you so much time, you know. And sorting out the different types of those saves so much time. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's a good idea. You know, that's one thing that I still haven't gotten to realize. Right now I've used like Tupperware. You know, I say I bundle them up together.

Dave Jones: You bundle them up together and whack it. But then they're all tangled up and everything. And, you know. It's true. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think you've got to basically leave some room in there so it's not like as jam-packed as possible.

Dave Jones: Yeah, at the moment I don't have special hooks. I've just got them dangling over the different levels of shelves. So I've got three different shelf levels and I dangle them over the corner of that. And, you know, it's okay for now until I get something permanent.

Chris Gammell: I remember at one of my past jobs they would use like, there was like network cable like things to help your organizers. Yeah, yeah. So basically that would work okay as like a way to kind of organize as well.

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, I need that because then I need my – because at the moment I've only got my like banana and alligator clips sorted. I don't have like coax cables sorted and, you know, coax to other adapters and that sort of stuff sorted. So they're sort of, yeah, in the oddball boxes and yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And it's important. I mean like it's interesting too like seeing about like what you actually use every day versus what you use, you know, that once in a while thing. Exactly. Yeah. So I was actually – I was talking to someone about today about the 3D printer I have, right? And it's like that same thing about like it's midnight and you really need to start doing something. And, you know, like I could send it off to a 3D print service but it would be nice to actually start a 3D print at that point. You know, it's like one of those things where it's like – but the rest of the time that 3D printer is probably going to just kind of sit idle. Exactly.

Dave Jones: It sits there, it does nothing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The cost of just having that thing to be idle is pretty high but sometimes it's worth it. You know, that's the same argument for etching boards or anything else or, you know, having like really specialized test equipment too.

Dave Jones: Well, the price in quote marks is high when you're limited for space especially like you are. Yes. You know, and even I, I've got 100 square meters. I'm still limited for space. You know, there's only so much bench space.

Chris Gammell: You still have to make a choice at some point, right? Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Because, you know, a 3D printer takes up a lot of, you know, bench space and stuff like that. And then you've got to have it properly hooked up to a PC somewhere and that's probably not near your regular PC. So, you know, it's – yeah, it's just annoying. Like me, I haven't set up my soldering inspection bench yet, right? So I can't do video inspection of everything, anything. I just had to get my Mantis scope and just sort of, you know, temporarily hook it up to the bench so that I could actually use it so I could look at something. You know, so, yeah, it's really annoying. And then when you've got microscopes and stuff like that, you need dedicated PCs to do that especially like me if you're capturing video and doing something like that, right? All that's got to be set up. The last thing you want is to be cobbling together a microphone and a capture card and, you know, everything's – either it's set up or it's not, you know. And then if it's not, you just won't even bother using it. So, yeah, it's got to be perfectly set up. Yeah, that's true.

Chris Gammell: And then that just sits there then, right?

Dave Jones: And then it just sits there, yeah. Well, at my old lab, it was the lab PC so that was more convenient. But here – Oh, I see. Because I've got my office in the same thing, it's not going – well, it might still be the lab PC as in like, you know, controls instruments on the lab or does whatever, you know, does microscopes or maybe live shows if I ever get my live channel back. If I ever get approval. I told you I was banned, yeah, from the live shows.

Chris Gammell: I mean, why were you banned?

Dave Jones: I was banned. YouTube banned me because they – I got a strike on my second channel.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I have theories. I have theories.

Dave Jones: Right. I got a strike on my second channel because I uploaded a video completely innocently on the second channel of how to use your NAS box to download YouTube videos.

Chris Gammell: Oh, like a network-attached storage?

Dave Jones: Yeah, a network-attached storage, a RAID NAS box, right? So I found a way to do that. And, of course, it was an instructional how-to video and I need to legally download YouTube videos for my debunkings and other critique videos, right, for fair use purposes. Yet, they thought that's instructional content on teaching people how to pirate material. So, therefore, we're going to strike your channel and no live streaming for you, sir, for the next three months or any channel that you're associated with.

Chris Gammell: Wow. Busted, huh?

Dave Jones: Technically, if I went on somebody else's live channel, like if I joined in somebody else's live stream or something, they could shut down all of my channels. Because as part of the terms and conditions, you are not allowed to circumvent the live streaming ban by using another channel.

Chris Gammell: They're like, we don't want to see your stupid face on any of our live things regardless. It's unbelievable.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Wow. It's just nuts.

Chris Gammell: That's extreme. Yep. Yeah, getting into it with the YouTube folks, huh?

Dave Jones: Yep. Anyway, just this morning, just like two seconds before the show, I won my copyright claim against that French TV company. They can shove it up their ass. Yep. Sorry. Good for you, man. That's a swear word. Does that get a podcast changed to another level?

Chris Gammell: We've actually been explicitly listed for a long time. Really? I know that as an Aussie, you have a different standard of that than I do. But I figured it was just easier.

Dave Jones: What service? Oh, you voluntarily listed it.

Chris Gammell: I voluntarily listed it, yeah. So we are listed as explicit.

Dave Jones: Oh, explicit. Come on. It's just easier. That's ridiculous.

Chris Gammell: We have guests that come on and sometimes they want to swear and that's fine. Like, as a practice, I swear like a sailor myself. But like, as a practice, I don't because we've had people say that they listen in the car with their kids. They're poor kids. Right. I'm sorry, children, if you're listening right now.

Dave Jones: Subjected to us.

Chris Gammell: Uncle Chris and Uncle Dave are just angry old electronics people. I actually feel really bad when people are like, yeah, you know, like whenever we're driving somewhere, like, you know, me and my partner listen. And my partner's not into electronics at all, but they're very nice and they listen to it. I'm just like, oh, man. Yeah, I know. Sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

Dave Jones: I have to frequently apologize in person, you know, to said partners. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Yes, I get that all the time. I listen, you know, I can't help but listen to you, you know. Right, exactly. You're on in the background, man. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Sorry.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: Anyway. Cool. So what's been going on?

Dave Jones: Oh, what's been going on? I almost set the fire alarm off.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I saw your video. Yeah, I just released that. You did a 120 to 240, huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the old Weller soldering iron.

Chris Gammell: So how often do you check that? I always wonder about that. Like, I don't really have to think about it. I always think about the IEC. Like, whenever I see an IEC plug like you had on that Weller soldering iron, I always just assume that it has an internal transformer switcher, like SMPS or something. But I guess not.

Dave Jones: Well, the problem is you live in America. You live in a 120 volt. Is it 120 or 110 officially over there? Or does it vary?

Chris Gammell: It does vary. I think 120. One of them is like the RMS voltage.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Or something else. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Okay. Right. Anyway, 120.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but you're saying that, like, if I plug in a 240 thing here, which are less prevalent anyways. Yeah, it's just going to not blow up.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. You plug it in here. It's, yeah, it's a bit of an issue. So, like, buying used test gear on eBay and stuff like that is a pain in the butt because a lot of test gear cannot be switched or it has to be modified at the PCB level. I've done the odd video on that, you know, modifying some eBay test gear to work here and stuff like that. But stuff like soldering irons, they're fixed. They're fixed transformer, almost all of them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think it's good to, well, and that's why it's good to watch your video, too, I think. It's like, when you look inside a siren, there's not much there. You know, it's basically like a FET. It's a transformer to take it down.

Dave Jones: It's an SCR. So, they use an SCR. Yeah, they use an SCR to switch the AC. That's why.

Chris Gammell: So, they're not even, yeah, they're not even rectifying it then. No, no. And then it's just a heating element at the end and then a thermocouple. And then you just turn the SCR on and off, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's pretty damn safe. And it's also, like, how electric kettles work. That's also how, like, slow cookers work. You know, like, it's very, very common, right?

Dave Jones: Well, you know, some of them have, like, you know, the digitally ones have, you know, some smart, you know. Sure.

Chris Gammell: My Instant Pot is a little bit smarter, yes.

Dave Jones: You know, a little bit smarter. But generally, no. It's basically just an SCR and a, you know.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: Yep. And an AC transformer.

Chris Gammell: Are you using SCRs much or no?

Dave Jones: Oh, not really. But they're still, you know, the thing if you want to just, you know, power something, control the power. Right. To something simple like a heating element. I mean, geez. It doesn't, you know, like an AC transformer. Because you get AC from your mains, right? Right. So why not? It's cheap and simple and super reliable to just use the transformer to convert that to a lower voltage AC and then use an SCR. And it's basically just one part. And that's it. So you don't have to then convert the AC into DC and then you DC to AC conversion or do whatever or, you know. Mm-hmm. It's like, it's just infinitely easier just to use the fact that you've got AC available and then just switch it with an SCR. And then just control the duty cycle of your waveform going to your element or your light bulb or, you know, something like that. Easy peasy. Or your motor, you know, something like that. Motor control, you know, stuff like that. Drills.

Chris Gammell: Drills, really? I thought modern drills were doing other stuff. I thought they did like phase control. Oh, well, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, maybe I'm talking old school drills, old school variable drills, you know, just using SCR. Okay, I might be 30 years out of date.

Chris Gammell: I wouldn't. I mean, like, that's the thing. Like, why would I? I've never opened those things up because, like, first off, I usually need my drill, you know.

Dave Jones: You know, it's been the 1970s, you know. Right, right. So, yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Yes. Cool, cool. So, yes, I accidentally plugged it in because, as I said, the lab's not. I've set up. So, I just re- I needed a second soldering iron. So, I just reached into the box of all the soldering crap that we had. Oh, that weller will do, you know. Took it out. Just plugged it in. And within seconds, uh-uh. Smoke was billowing out. I mean, like, whoa. Thick as.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It was ridiculous.

Dave Jones: Hi to all our- Hi to all my New Zealand viewers.

Chris Gammell: What? Thick as?

Dave Jones: Hi to all our New Zealand listeners. Thick as. Yeah. Thick as, bro. Sorry. Meh. No, I can't do a New Zealand accent. Can't do it. That's okay. That's okay. Fishing chops. No. Anyway. Yeah, the smoke came out thick as. At the bottom. Just in, like, just a huge blanket of smoke. Billowing. Huge blanket of smoke coming out. Right.

Chris Gammell: When I was looking at you, when you opened it up, too, it was like the- That was the, uh, the enamel coating melting off?

Dave Jones: It was- Oh, spoiler alert. But-

Chris Gammell: Oh, sorry.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Anyway. There's not much to that video, Dave. You basically said it's broken. Yeah. And then it showed the inside, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, yeah, I, like, I did- That's probably the last thing I expected was this transformer, you know, melting down, basically. All the enamel insulation on the wires just melting. It's like, eh, you know, kind of expected it to be a bit more robust. And I expect, like, you know, twice the voltage on the secondary side, right? So I expected something on the secondary side to blow, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so like a fuse or something would blow instead of- Well, it did, actually.

Dave Jones: A fuse did, but it actually started, like, it worked. You know, the display was flashing. It was doing something- Yeah, I saw that, yeah. When I had it plugged on. And, uh, yeah, it's- No, but nothing on the secondary side, uh, blue at all. The secondary side works fine. And it was the primary side that just melted down. And, uh, um, it's got to be, like, core, uh, the core actually saturated. Uh, this is the most likely scenario is that the core, if you don't know the magnetic, when a magnetic core of a transformer or an inductor saturates, it ceases to become an inductor or it becomes less effective in inductor and it, and it becomes a basically a DC resistant, like a coil, the, the resistance, the DC resistance of the coil or wire.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, you know, um, do the, do the calculations on that, you know, a hundred ohm primary across 240 volts or whatever. That's, you know, uh, chewing quite a bit of power that it has to dissipate. And, um, it, it just melted. It's melted off. And I'm talking within seconds. I'm not talking like leaving it there for minutes. So I just slowly warmed up and heated up. This was like within five or six seconds. It was all over red Rover and I was yanking out the, the, uh, IEC lead on the back. And as it turns out, it's not fused on the primary. So I can essentially dump an unlimited power. You can, because, you know, a PowerPoint's capable of delivering more than 2,400 watts here, here in Australia anyway. Right. I've got a 16 amp fuse, right? So it's capable of delivering 240 volts times 16 amps before the fuse, even the main, you know, fuse box. Right. Before the circuit breaker bros. Yeah. Circuit breaker starts to even think about blowing. Right. And all that energy can be dumped into that poor little transformer and, you know, yeah. And, and the thing is, it's probably a cascading failure because when that, when that enamel insulation melts, then the windings of the, um, transformer start maybe shorting together. Right. And then that lowers the resistance again, more power's delivered, more enamel short. Right. It's like a runaway then. And it's a snowballs. It's a thermal runaway. Yeah. And it just, it just destroyed that poor little primary.

Chris Gammell: I mean, could it have been like one of the primary windings had a weak, a weak bit of insulation in the first place?

Dave Jones: It may have started in a way. And that's what I've seen in traditional transformer phase before. I've seen like, uh, blow throughs and things like that where, you know, you'll see like a burn mark, but this thing just like melted down, like fairly evenly top and bottom.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Um, it was, yeah. Yeah. So, but it may have started like that and that, you know, who knows? Or the, but the primary side, the secondary side fuse actually popped. So maybe that had some kickback effect to the press. So it was probably maybe just surviving for a few seconds until the secondary side fuse actually popped. And then, and then that kicked back to the primary somehow and upset the apple cart and, and the primary just, yeah. Thermal runaway.

Chris Gammell: So. Yeah. It's weird that that wouldn't be part of like CE testing in the first place too. You'd think like, that's a pretty, I guess not common thing, but.

Dave Jones: Well, I've, I've raised the question. I just released a video, so I haven't looked at comments yet, but I've raised the question, like, is this legal to have a non-fused primary transformer? Is it illegal in any country? Like you almost think it's gotta be. Right? Because even like, um.

Chris Gammell: I'm trying to think of like, well, I guess I can look up schematics and stuff.

Dave Jones: Because if there's any overload failure like this, or if there's any breakdown in the transformer, there's nothing to stop all that energy being dumped on the, into the transformer and the thing catching a light. Nothing. That's what a fuse is for. Designed to stop these gross overloads. It's. Yeah. I think it's a huge design flaw. And a lot of transformers, sure enough, if you want to save some cost and you don't want to have the external wiring with the fuse holder and everything else, that's fair enough. That's why, um, a lot of companies, especially in little, uh, plug packs and things like that, right? Little mains, warwort plug packs, where they don't have room for a big external fuse, right? Because they're all mold and everything. You get the fuse actually built into the winding of the primary on the transformer.

Chris Gammell: So it'll just shorter. Right. It'll just like have it in line.

Dave Jones: It's, it's in, in, in line fuse as part of the winding. You can ask your transformer manufacturer to include an inline embedded fuse. And usually it's like, like a large value. So it's, you know, very unlikely to, uh, blow in just in regular use or little surges.

Chris Gammell: And so it'd be like a one-time thing as well. It's a one-time thing. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, you've got to, you, you, you, you cannot repair it. You cannot replace it. Because you've got to, it's embedded inside the windings and all the, you know, insulation tape and everything else. It's all in there. So you can't really repair a fusible transformer. But, uh, those are very common. In fact, there might even be mandatory inside plug packs. Does anyone know?

Chris Gammell: Um, I'm just trying to think of like, I mean, fuses are normally secondary side or normally primary side?

Dave Jones: No, they've got to be primary side because that's where the energy is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: So, but in this case, the, the Weller had extensive secondary side, secondary side protection. The designers were really thinking there. It was like, you know, it, it, it had a fuse on the PCB. Then it had another fuse on the output of the transformer. That one is the only one that blew. And then it had a poly switch, a massive poly switch in series with the fuse as well. So they had three layers of protection on the secondary, not a single layer of protection on the primary. It's nuts. It's almost as if, you know, the, the, the, uh, the system, like the, the PCB designer, everyone else, you know, got the secondary side.

Chris Gammell: They knew what they were getting from the, the transformer provided. They're like, well, we got to make sure.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's fine. We're going to make sure this is a nice, solid product. And it wasn't survived. Great. But then the, whoever was in charge of the primary side went, oh, we can shave a few cents off. We don't need a fuse. You know, she'll be right. So yeah. Well, and this is Weller. This is not some eBay special, right? Well, I've been around for 60 years or something.

Chris Gammell: Crazy. Well, I'm glad you're okay.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yeah. Thank you. Like, imagine if I just like plugged it in, turn my back and walked out to the bathroom or something. Right. Yeah. The whole place would have filled with smoke. It could have been, you know, fire, everything else.

Dave Jones: I could have like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Nuts. You could be talking to the ghost of Dave Jones right now.

Dave Jones: Or at least a very poor Dave Jones just outside staring at a building on fire and wondering if his insurance is up to date. I only saved my microphone. Oh, God. It could happen one day. I could do the video of shame where I'm out the front with the fire engines attending and yeah, that was me.

Dave Jones: Right. You know.

Chris Gammell: There's your April Fool's joke right there, Dave. Yeah, right. Too real. Too real.

Dave Jones: Yeah. The Altium lab building burns down. Is that the Altium building burns down? Is that the next? Yeah. Yeah. That's the one.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway, please let us know, listeners, if you know. Like, for sure, don't go, oh, yeah, that's illegal. You know, like, give us the legislation or whatever, you know, pointers to it that if, is it illegal to have a non-fused primary in any product these days? Hmm. Anyway, not happy. Definitely. Thumbs down to Weller. Next.

Chris Gammell: The one that I'm excited about that's on the list this week is this, the Laura Sip. Did you see that thing? Nope. So, a little bit down, ultra low power, Laura Sip. This is kind of like, I mean, I'm personally interested in this because I've been trying some Laura projects and stuff like that. Yes, I know. Yeah. But, I think it's interesting just because, you know, further integration of, like, thing plus thing plus thing. In this case, it'd be, like, microcontroller plus, there's no, I guess there's not really any sensors in here. But, this is basically pulling, you know, pulling the radio in now to, and basically, single chip solutions at this point. So, in this case, it's a, it's a Cortex-R0, I think.

Dave Jones: And, for those who don't know, that's what Sip stands for. It's a system in package. That's right. So, yeah. So, it's a Laura LAN system, which I've done a video on and you've probably done some stuff on too. Yeah. And, yeah, it's, it's all that in a chip, is it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, well, so the Laura WAN is a stack, right? So, that's actually the software layer. So, in this case, it's like talking about the, the, the controller. So, I'm guessing the microcontroller. So, I'm actually getting one of these boards to try it out because I'm very interested in this. But, so, in this case, it, you know, it has the microcontroller. It has the memory, enough memory there. And then, it also has the radio on board, which is the, the key part here, right? So, like, previously, Semtech were the only people that had these radios because they actually bought out the company that made Laura and then have commercialized and they've owned the IP. But now they licensed it to microchip, too. And so, that's kind of the big thing. They actually announced this at that conference I went to last February. They announced that they were doing something like this. It took them this long to actually get it out. This was announced.

Dave Jones: Well, and there's an argument. There's a side argument here, which is in the first paragraph of the article, in that, like, it's supposed to be an open standard. But they're arguing, like, how open is the standard if, like, Semtech control the technology that goes into the radios.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that has been the argument against it the entire time, I think.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: But I think it's also similar to the things we've talked about, like, at what level does something stop being open, right? Yeah, I know. So, it's kind of like that same thing. In this case, I was like, well, the radio, okay.

Dave Jones: Even your most staunch open source hardware advocates, you know, your absolute traditional ones, you know, have to admit that there's, you know, some things that are just, oh, it's only available from one supplier, you know, that's it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, and usually it starts like that. I mean, like, even when we look at, like, iSquirt C started as a, what, Motorola standard? Philips. Philips. Yeah, I always get that wrong. And, yeah, I mean, like, it's the same kind of thing. But if it's popular enough, then it basically other people start asking for it, and the company's paid to license it and that kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Or they just call it two-wire instead of iSquirt C.

Chris Gammell: Or two-wire. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So, in this case, I mean, so I'm excited about it just because it's an even smaller package. I mean, Laura already was pretty low power. You know, Cortex, I had not used, I had not really used any Cortex-R stuff. And I just recently learned what some of the differences were. Did you know that there's different families, A, R, and M, which are kind of related to ARM? Nope. Who was talking about it? I don't remember what it was. But it was basically, like, there was, like, A is, like, the high power. R is, like, the middle power, I guess. And M is for mobile, so.

Dave Jones: Right. I don't follow it that closely to, you know, to know that sort of jazz.

Chris Gammell: But I guess this one is actually, I guess they're calling them different things. I don't know. It's Cortex-M0+. So it's, like, you know, the same kind of thing that you see everywhere else. And, like, it's all abstracted anyways from software. So, I don't know. I'm just excited about this, like, just doing, like, smaller and smaller nodes. Right. Because it's, that's kind of, obviously, the trend that's going on, right? So I've been doing this where I've been working on a project where it was, like, you know, it had batteries. It had a separate module. It had a different chip. It was all kind of further and further apart. And now I could shrink down to 6x6 plus antennas and everything else. So that's kind of cool. Yeah. So, and then, like, the, I still haven't done much for the Things Network. That's the one that you were talking about, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, the Things Network. That's the one you convinced me to go, oh, it's easy. Just buy this kit and it'll work. And it didn't work because I'm in Australia. You know, that's, and that's what it did. Was that why it didn't work? No, it didn't work.

Chris Gammell: I figured it was because it was software-based and you were like, oh, okay.

Dave Jones: No, no, no. It literally didn't work.

Chris Gammell: So what was being, I thought there was stuff being used down the street.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, no, they were cobbled together. It wasn't like, they were all hacked together. Like, to get, to get my supposedly off-the-shelf solution work, my expensive off-the-shelf solution working, it, we needed a custom recompile of the whole OS-y thing or something. And, you know, some people offered to do it and things like that, which was very nice. But, you know, like, it just ruined the whole experience for me. You know, you were telling me and other people were telling me. You thought it was just going to be plug and play kind of thing. And plug and play. And I had these sensors on this, you know, low-power network. I thought that would be cool. And then it, you know, then, you know, people came in and just started, oh, no, you've got to do this, do this, do this, as if it's like trivial sort of stuff that they were talking about. It wasn't. It was talking about, like, recompiling the bloody kernel and, you know, like, that's when, yeah, my eyes just rolled in the back of my head.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, not very Dave-friendly type things, right? Yeah. No, it's not. No, because that stuff doesn't interest me.

Dave Jones: You know. Well, it might, you know, it could potentially, you know, if I had a need for it. But I just wanted to play around with, you know, a thing. I just wanted to play around and, hey, that's cool. And then go on to something else. And, you know, I don't want to spend a month learning the intricacies of the system and how to recompile kernels and, you know, silly, you know. And someone very kindly offered to come out to the lab and do it all for me. I mean, it might be good for you.

Chris Gammell: I'm just saying, you know, to have to go.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it could be. But I've got so many things to do that, you know, I can't just spend, you know, weeks on something like that. So, yep. Unfortunately. As much as I'd like, there's so many things I'd love to spend, have an infinite amount of time to spend time on. Right? And hack around with. I don't mind doing that. But ultimately, you know, I've got to make a living. And there's so many things I'm interested in. Well, you know. Got to make your business. Get on to something else. We've done our business episode. It's all good. Anyway, Laura Ryan. Woo. Yep.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, anyways, I'm going to try and build something with this. So this is, yeah. So I think that's going to be interesting, just trying out this small chip.

Dave Jones: Are you going to do something custom, like custom board with the chip? Or are you just going to hack into the chip? So I'm going to get the dev kit to start with.

Chris Gammell: But I'm going to try and build, like, an actual custom. Yeah. So moving along. Next thing.

Dave Jones: And we've got Micro Semi adding risk processes to FPGAs. To the Polar Fire?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: What the hell is the Polar Fire family FPGAs?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they got their new families. Who?

Dave Jones: Yeah, but which manufacturer is it?

Chris Gammell: Micro Semi. So there's four microcontroller. Oh. Or sorry, FPGA vendors. There's Altera slash Intel at Xilinx. There's Lattice. And then there's Micro Semi. They used to be Actel. Remember?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Oh, right. Of course. Right. Okay. If you just, yeah. If they just said Actel, I would have known. But anyway, I hadn't heard of the Polar Fire. Or if it was the Actel. Or if they used some other previous name that Actel have used, I would have known. But I hadn't heard of the Polar Fire family. Okay. Actel. Right. Got it. I'll probably still keep calling Actel for, you know, the next deck.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that works. Yeah. Just like Agilent or HP. Exactly. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: Boy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So basically, this is a new, this is one of the RISC-V chips. So, I don't know. It's interesting. It's, and, you know, I think we've cleared it up on here before, but if people don't know that RISC-V is actually the, it's the instruction set architecture. It's not an individual chip. Right. So this is like saying. Well, same as R. X86. Right.

Dave Jones: Well, RISC-V is a specific implementation of a RISC processor, of a generic RISC architecture. I mean, it's a.

Chris Gammell: Of a RISC-based architecture. Right. But it is a, it is the, it defines the instruction set. So the, I believe that's right. Like the ISA, not the, not the actual chip itself.

Dave Jones: Well.

Chris Gammell: And someone is probably screaming at the radio right now. Sorry about that.

Dave Jones: Because RISC-V is a, is a, is a foundation. Like it's, you know, they control it all. So they're, you know, they're in also in Lattice as well, I think. Lattice or Lattice. Well, that's the thing.

Chris Gammell: So like a lot of these, you could, you could go and, you know, put these into custom logic, but I think now they're starting to design them in as hard logic.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: I've seen so many more like FPGA things, but I still like, I was, you know, like I still struggle to, well, I still struggle to tell people like what they should do as their first FPGA project, you know? What would you tell someone?

Dave Jones: Like it's, it's pointless to flash a lead. I think if you're going to go to FPGA, you need something that, you know, is not really easily doable on a microcontroller. Right. So I think you need some sort of, you know, big paralleled thing. Um, or some, you know, like, like serial decoding, real time serial decoding logic or, you know, something like that. I mean, sure. Like if you just want to get up to speed with the tool chain, okay. You just get one of the, uh, you know, the dev, uh, kits or whatever. And they've, you know, all the example code and stuff like that. And it's, or you could run a soft core processor, but like, you know, I, I don't know. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I think if you're developing, so like, say you had, you wanted to build your own like small processor, right. You wanted to like make something from scratch that, that would be a great way to do it. Obviously. Of course.

Dave Jones: But how many people want to do that? Right.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: None. Right. It's, it's, it rounds down to zero. Uh, yes.

Chris Gammell: Uh, yeah. It rounds down. Yeah. I agree with that. Right.

Dave Jones: Right. It is not 1%, right. It's like, it's like, it's on the low side of 1%, like it's on the lower half of a half percent. So it rounds down, I reckon.

Chris Gammell: I would think like, uh, so we had talked to James, uh, Bruton when he was on the show, like talking about like, he had like a bunch and bunch of serial buses, right? Basically. Right.

Dave Jones: That's a thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. He could implement like a bunch and bunch of serial buses.

Dave Jones: Yes. If you needed like, you know, five, I can remember back in the day that, um, I needed, like four or five serial ports or something. It was a lot of serial ports. I needed like a UARTs, you know, a lot of UARTs and I needed it all in the one micro like, and the only micro on the market was the rabbit 2000.

Chris Gammell: What is that?

Dave Jones: So I used the rabbit 2000. I think it was the 2000. It's, it's, it's the rabbit. It's its own architecture. It had its own very cool real time operating system as well. It was very nice. I don't know if they're still going.

Chris Gammell: I think I've, I've seen the, uh, they got bought by Digi international.

Dave Jones: Who's Digi international?

Chris Gammell: I think they're the ones who do XP radios. Is that right?

Dave Jones: Oh.

Chris Gammell: I think they're up in Minneapolis.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So can you still buy the rabbits? Can you still?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Apparently you can. I didn't know that. There you go. I didn't know what it was until just now. So there you go.

Dave Jones: Rabbit 2000 processor. Yeah. So I implemented an entire, um, you know, project around this, um, a huge project around this, uh, rabbit 2000.

Chris Gammell: This is based off the original Z82.

Dave Jones: So yes, it is. But it's, I, but they wrote it from scroll out. They wrote their own architecture, but they designed their own CPU architecture. And yeah, yeah. It's a complete. Yeah. But yeah, it's similar. It has similar stuff to the Z80. And, uh, but yeah, no, the good thing about it was, as I said, like it came with its own real time C operating system, which was so easy to use. Even a dummy like me could implement a real time operating system, you know, that had, you know, a proper real time, uh, cause back then, well, I think it's still the case these days. Don't real time operating systems are third party things. You got to pay a lot of money for them, you know, like, yeah, you can get a bunch of

Chris Gammell: open source ones now. Oh, well, yeah.

Dave Jones: There's open source. Back then there was no such thing. Don't think there's such a thing as an open source one. Um, and, uh, cause I'm talking the, like the nine, late nineties, maybe something like that early two thousands.

Chris Gammell: Anyway, you were just saying it's still the case. I don't think it's still the case. Oh no. No. So like Zephyr is like an example of like, uh, RTOS for IOT stuff. And yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. But they're much more mature now, but you know, like back then, if you wanted one, you bought one, right. And it costs thousands of dollars to buy a license for this, you know. For a real time operating system and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Right. Uh, Gene, uh, Gene, what's his name? Would sell you the, he would give you the book for free, but then say the, the real time operating system.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: But, but, but this just came with it. Like, and it was so simple. Like all you did is like turn on a switch in the, in, in the software or something. And it was like, boom, there it is real time. Oh, yes. You know, it was great.

Chris Gammell: Nice. That's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So it was all, it was all, uh, terministic and you know, you had the deterministic timing and all the rest of it, you know? And so, yeah, it was fantastic for, you know, a complex system that, you know, needed all these multiple serial ports and there was interrupts coming in and, you know, whatnot and processing all that different data. So anyway, that was pretty cool. And they came on these little modules. Like you, you could buy the chip, but you know, it was actually a processor. It wasn't a microcontroller. So it needed external RAM. Did it have external RAM? Not sure. Anyway. Um, but yeah, it's, so you bought it as a module. You could buy the chip, but you know, you just get a module and you plug it onto your board and it had the SRAM on there and you know, the work. So, yep. Nice. That's great. Rabbit, hands up if you've used the Rabbit. Rabbit, am I the only one in existence that used the Rabbit processor? No, surely someone else used it. They actually got up to that. Did they get up to that? What is it? The Rabbit 5000? Oh my goodness. I might have to go back to the Rabbit. I've still got some rabbits lying around. You can still pull them from the boards and I wonder if it still works. I wonder if I can still compile the code. Oh, it was for a, um, um, a, uh, cable tester project, which had, I designed my own LCR meter module. It was a relay switching matrix module. It was a complete measurement system all in one. Whereas before we, we had like a rack, we had a whole rack and it had like, you know, agilent, um, you know, LCR, fluke LCR meters, agilent insulation resistance test, high voltage insulation resistors, testers, and all sorts of, you know, and we all connected more with GPIB and hooked it up to a PC. Well, we need to shrink that down into one small little can. So, you know, yeah. So I needed something to control the whole kit and caboodle. And yep, I was, I did look at, uh, PC 104 standard. So, you know, the little square form factor, you know, right. Yeah. I think we mentioned that in the show before. Yeah. I've done a video on that, which has been very popular. And, uh, yeah, I thought, you know, I was, I was looking at that. I did experiment with that and, you know, it was like. You know, it was a bit big and, you know, I don't know. I didn't want yet another PC platform. So I decided to go completely embedded with the rabbit 2000. I think it just had enough memory at the time, you know, nice. But yeah, anyway, it was cool. That's great, man. Yeah. Yep. Projects of yesteryear. It did work in the end, but I think, but I think we only ended up making a run of 10 of them. So, you know, after all that development, yeah, well, yeah, we'll make, make 10. And that's, that's all she wrote. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Um, there was, I forgot to tell you, there was a link that came in from, uh, the tweet I'd sent out. Uh, this is from Mike's electric stuff. Let me send you a link here. This is about the, uh, basically them jailbreaking, uh, there's replacement boards to, to like, if you find a scooter on the street in a random, random city, have you seen electric scooters? Yeah. The electric scooters that are like popping up all over the States. Have you heard about that?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. So there's all these terrible startups that are basically valued at gajillions of dollars for what is effectively a scooter sharing. So they're electric scooters made by Xiaomi and, uh, they have cellular modems on them. And then basically you scan a little barcode on them and, uh, and then it unlocks the, the drive on that, on that. And then you can ride this electric scooter.

Dave Jones: It is the same as the GoGet service here. I tweeted the other week that I used a GoGet thing and I've got this access card and you swipe it on the front of the car and it opens the car. The keys are already in the ignition and you just drive it away. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, yeah, that's like, there's a lot of driver services like that here too, but that's a car based one.

Dave Jones: This is car based. This is for scooters. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And when I say electric scooters, this is like, like a razor scooter, but with like a, like a hub motor on it.

Dave Jones: Right. So, so do you return them to like charging stations and you got to plug them in or?

Chris Gammell: I can't believe you haven't seen all the internet memes about how people are upset about this. Okay. No. So basically they litter the streets and then basically at night the vans drive around, pick them up and then go charge them. Right. And so this is, this is what, this is what they.

Dave Jones: So people just leave them lying around.

Chris Gammell: Oh, totally. Like they're like laying in the streets, they're on sidewalks, they're just everywhere.

Dave Jones: So how do I find them and they got like a GPS in them and they can track them?

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yep. Yeah. That's also how you know, like if you're near one. Oh, okay. So the same thing happens for bike share, right? So there's also like bike share where you can do the same thing and it's just like cheapo lock. Um, and, but that's actually pedal, you know, pedal power instead of electric power.

Dave Jones: Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: They have e-bikes now. It was like, so when I was out in Seattle, I wrote an e-bike like that, which is awesome. Uh, but the same thing at some point, someone's got to go and pick that thing up and, and charge it because there's no magical chargers there.

Dave Jones: I am going to link you. I watched a video the, uh, just last week about, do you hear about the bike sharing problem in China?

Chris Gammell: Of course. Yeah. Angus.

Dave Jones: Have you seen the photos?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So Angus, one of the guys that works for, um, uh, Espressif, uh, who lives down in Melbourne, he, uh, he, he had actually written about it and there's a bunch of pictures just like the stacks and stacks and stacks. Yeah. That's not a, that's not a particularly new thing, but it's, uh, it's, it's amazing to see, right?

Dave Jones: It's incredible to see the photos of like literally tens of thousands of bikes stacked on top of each other.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: It's, uh, they, they, they physically throw them into a big pile and they build up thousands and thousands of them. And there's like, and there's like 20 or 50 competing companies trying to get and trying to make their bikes and trying to get their bikes to the top of the stack.

Chris Gammell: Literally to the top of the stack. Right. I think it's the figurative top of the stack in that case. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is, this is the exact same service. Basically a lot, a lot of the bike companies that were here are also doing scooters now. And so like bird and scoot or not scoot, uh, bird and, uh, lime and like all these companies, they're like, they've raised so much money. It's insane. It's like the, yeah, it's really stupid, but, uh, the scooters themselves cost like 600 bucks and like, you know, in terms of the parts that are internal to them there, you know, it's a bunch of basically in the stock that you hold on, you know, like whatever you call it, like the handles you hold onto, that's all just batteries through there. There's a controller board, there's a hub motor and you know, they're not particularly safe, but they are kind of cool. And, uh, and so basically this, this link that, uh, Mike Harrison sent over was how to, how to basically take one you quote unquote find and, uh, and then you could repurpose it. You basically swap out the board and.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But that's actually stealing the, the, the, the company owns that. Um, that is, that is technically theft.

Chris Gammell: I don't know how that works. Yeah. I don't know.

Dave Jones: No, you can't just like, that is, that's technically theft.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Sorry.

Chris Gammell: I have seen an unofficial teardown happening, uh, after, after one was found. So.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. But the whole idea is that you can leave it anywhere.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. And the whole problem is that people do. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And they're so cheap to the company. Like they're buying them in bulk that they, uh.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So then, then they're not going to pursue you for stealing one of their things. If you do a teardown video, take one and, you know, do a teardown video of it and modify it or whatever, I'm sure they're not going to come after you, but technically, you know, you're stealing that company's product. Yeah. I, I, I, I, so we can't really endorse that.

Chris Gammell: I can't endorse stealing, but I can, if, uh, if you were to find one, I don't know. Like, I don't know how it works. I don't know what the official, uh, thing is. And it's just interesting that there is a, basically a secondary market now for things that people hated, you know, so. Right. Something. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but it's, it's, it's literally the same as going, oh, I don't like taxis. This taxi driver's just left his cab here. I'm just going to, I'm just going to take that. I'm just going to take that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: Taxi, right? It is literally no different.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: It's just, it's just the sheer scale and cost and the lower cost of the item. That's it. That's the only difference.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. I'm not saying I endorse stealing. That's not what I'm saying here.

Dave Jones: You were quite excited about this.

Chris Gammell: I'm just saying that there is an interesting electronics in the wild, uh, situation happening.

Dave Jones: It's, it's different. For example, I've got one of those, um, uh, weather things, you know, one of those weather, um, uh, the, not boys. That's not the correct term. What's the, you know, the ones that go up on the balloons. They go up on the balloons. Oh, okay. Sure, sure. Uh, oh, I can't remember the name. It's a sond, sond, uh, they're a weather radio sond thing, right?

Chris Gammell: Sond, like S-O-N-D?

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yes. I've never, I've never heard that term, but.

Dave Jones: I think it's like, I don't know, French or something. I don't know what the, yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. It means sounder. It means, you know, it like it sends out a signal, right? Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. And, and they actually release tens of thousands of those around the world every day. Mm. Um, and, and they're just completely disposable. Like if you find one, it's yours basically, you know, they, they just, you know, they're, they're fully disposable. Mm. So it's, it's a different kind of thing, you know? Yeah. So, and there's people who go around and they actually hunt them down. They actually.

Chris Gammell: Oh really? Oh, it's like a, it's like a subculture kind of thing?

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's a subculture thing. Yeah. They have their vans, you know, fitted out with, and with special antennas and receivers and stuff and they go hunt them down live as they land and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool.

Chris Gammell: What do they have on board? And you said you have one?

Dave Jones: Yes. I, yes, I have one. It's, it's a very low power, uh, transmit RF transmitter. I can't remember what frequency. And, um, and they have, you know, temperature sensor, humidity sensor, pressure sensor, that kind of stuff. So I've wanted to be meaning to do a special on it, like a video, not just tearing it down, but actually anyway, I won't spoil it. Okay. So yeah. It's on my list.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Don't steal folks. Don't steal. That's what Dave says. Yeah. Dave says don't steal. Electric scooters. Hey, stuff in dumpsters are fair. If a scooter was in the dumpster, probably fair game. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So what happens if I walk along and I throw a scooter in a dumpster?

Dave Jones: Well, that's the dilemma, isn't it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I don't know.

Dave Jones: What? So if you deliberately find one, put it in the dumpster. This is not an ethics podcast.

Dave Jones: And then take it out of the dumpster.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right, right. Does that transform it into a, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Does it, yeah. Does it instantly make it legal to, yeah.

Dave Jones: We'll have to join up with a legal podcast and then, yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: I don't think we should. No. Oh, goodness.

Dave Jones: So what else have you been building lately? I did. A lab? Not much. Not much. I've been dealing with crap. I've got micro supply, microcurrent manufacturing issues and just business issues, which we talked about last time. And it's just, yeah, all sorts of craps happening at once, which means I have very little time to actually work on projects or stuff like that. I am working on a new microcurrent version of that. So, yeah. But that's a, yeah, it's a slow thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm trying to think of the things I'm allowed to talk about, too, of like the.

Dave Jones: You're allowed to talk about?

Chris Gammell: Well, I just mean like I have consulting work that I do. Yes. But I'm not allowed to talk about a lot of it now. And so, yeah. Did I tell you I ended up using the Picket Place again?

Dave Jones: You were going to.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, I did use it again. And there is actually a Neoden. Maybe I mentioned this two weeks ago, but there's a Neoden USA version now.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We talked about that the other week. I think I did mention that.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's interesting. You know, like it's so like taking a closer look inside the Neoden. It's more like a pick and play. It's more like a CNC machine that I gave it kind of credit for in the past. And everything else is just kind of details in there. You know, it's it really is like. So, some of my CNC experience kind of matters, but it's the hard thing that I've been dealing with is just, you know, understanding like vacuum systems now as well. And like, like how to like the repeatability pieces are just really what's what's difficult about all of that. Explain. Well, just like. So, like you're picking out of a piece of tape. So, this is a solved problem a lot of places. Right. I mean, like this is a you can go and buy a better machine. But with a similar machine, it's now it's like, okay, so now you basically pull back the the tape, the the lead on the tape. And then you have an exposed pocket and then you have to grab the thing out of there. And now it's all about like, okay, how long do you actually linger on it? So, like assuming your nozzles and the right point and it's calibrated to be exactly in the right place all the time, then like, do you have enough suction? Do you release at the right time? Basically, like, and these things are all dialable in. Right. And it's like actually something you can and should do. And now it's like basically doing that for each and every component. That's where it gets a little more.

Dave Jones: If you've got to set the the suction time and pressure for each component, that's that's painful. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There's like defaults for everything, but it's not necessarily it's not necessarily going to work for everything.

Dave Jones: It'd be nice if it was like smart if it if it realized, okay, I've just tried three resistors in a row or three of this part in a row and all of them are fallen off because it knows it'll take it over to the camera. So it knows if it's fallen off or it can detect the change in the pressure. Okay, it's fallen off. I need some more pressure or something like that. Or, you know, or the alignment of the pad is off. Right. The little suction cup. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. Right. Thing is off or, you know, but I so, yeah, in theory, as you said, like a better quality machine can take care of that for you. You know, in in theory, it should be completely the machine should completely figure it out on its own.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. But that's I think usually there's a human behind it in most cases anyways. Right. So that's like a set it up once and then forget it. Right. But the, you know, the different weights of the parts and then this isn't a super high cost thing. So. So the long story short is that.

Dave Jones: What's been your part yield?

Chris Gammell: Well, so I was doing like a bunch of LEDs and I also figured out that my solder paste application was different across the panel that I did. So I panelized a board and then at the bottom of the panel, I just like, I was like, man, LEDs just aren't placing the bottom of that board. And then finally it was finished and I pulled it out. I'm like, oh yeah, there's no paste down there. So they were just all fine. Yeah. It was just, I just didn't scrape that part of it.

Dave Jones: How did you get no paste at all?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know. You know, it's like the, I think it was the.

Dave Jones: You didn't scrape the entire panel. I guess so.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I don't know what happened. Like I thought it was, I thought it was all good. But, um, that's funny. Yeah. So I am trying to find a better way to like replicate. So make like a really repeatable, um, jig for that stuff. There is like a jig to, you know, lower your, your stencil and stuff like that. And they make, they make them, right. It's not like that's a new problem to solve, but it's just, I'm not gonna buy one on my own. And so I've always find like, um, the alignments, the first problem and then like getting it consistent over time is the next problem. And then the actual application is kind of a, a bit of an art itself too. I was a little bummed. The, I thought I had put the, um, I had thought I had put the, you know, like the, I put the registration holes on the actual panel. Like, so like in three of the corners, I actually put drill holes. And then I, I swear that I put that on, I transferred that through to my, um, my laser cut file and then they took it out. And I was like, cause I was going to use that as the actual, like, it's like a peg registration inside.

Dave Jones: Your laser cut file for what?

Chris Gammell: So like the, from the, uh, for the, for the stencil. For what? For the stencil. So like the.

Dave Jones: Oh, you're, you're actually cutting your own stencils, are you?

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no. I, I had put the, I had put the hole to cut out the, that same registration hole on the, on the paste layer. Right. So I had all my components.

Dave Jones: On the stencil. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And then I had this big, these three big holes that I was going to use as like a way to just register. Like, like to really think about it, like having like a set of pegs would be the best. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you basically slide the whole stencil over top of these three pegs and then it's automatically aligned. Uh huh.

Dave Jones: And then it's, and then you, then you know, it's aligned. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. And they took them off. I was like, what the hell? So. Next time.

Dave Jones: They, they took them off.

Chris Gammell: Really? I got to double check. I am, I am like 85% certain that I put them on there. You know, sometimes, sometimes like the board houses are very nice and they, they fix my errors. Uh, and sometimes they do stuff that I, I'm not a huge fan of. I thought there might've also been like, uh, they couldn't cut a big enough hole or something.

Dave Jones: That's why we need the t-shirt. Don't touch my Gerbers. You know. That's good. Don't touch my Gerbers. Just, yeah. We were going to do that. Was that one of the ones? Years ago.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. I don't remember that one.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That was one of them. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: A lot of t-shirts over the years. Don't touch my Gerbers.

Dave Jones: Because you know, like, it's right. Yeah. Yeah. True.

Chris Gammell: Uh, so, uh, the, the yield was okay on that. So basically what happened a bunch. So like the LEDs were pretty good.

Dave Jones: Can you quantify okay?

Chris Gammell: I would probably put it at like without much setup, probably 95% accuracy. Okay. Now with the amount of, I probably placed 1200 plus LEDs that day just in one, one panel. So like it was, you know, pretty significant and I had, I fixed them all before it actually went into the oven. You know, the big things were like, I had a lot of them where they were actually flipping up on their side. And then even though Neoden has a vision, you know, I can tell that like there's a square. It did not register that, Hey, this is on its side. Actually, this isn't actually a square. It's more like a, you know, multi-sided polygon, uh, because it's got the lens on it. Um, so I didn't, uh, it didn't, it didn't quite figure that out. Love it. So, but otherwise it was, I think, okay. Mostly it helped that I just slowed everything down. So I'm still bullish on the idea. It's just the, uh, I didn't quite have enough time to keep chunking through and trying different things there. So there's a couple of us trying to set up like a wiki and, and write, write about it and, uh, get some tips and tricks. It's not a huge community yet. You know what I mean?

Dave Jones: Next thing you know, you'll be running the, you'll be running another forum.

Chris Gammell: I know another forum, another conference. Why not? Come on, man. Why stop there? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Why not? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Have you had people sign up for the talks?

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Yeah. It's been good so far. Uh, probably about, uh, 15 people have signed up for talks. We're still looking for more obviously. And what I'm really, I mean, I guess I probably should have said the last few, but I'm really, what I'm really trying to get at is like, should it be a one day or two day conference? Um, and, uh, I think it's going to be two day. Um, the 26th and 27th of April.

Dave Jones: Right. Um, but if you're thinking about even talks on both or is one talks and one lectures, because some people might, might just want to turn up for the talks or they might just want to turn up for the, the, some hands on thing or something.

Chris Gammell: Uh, lectures being like a workshop kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Well, no, the talks. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. You said like lectures and talks. I usually equate the two. Um, yeah, I, I mean, it's going to be a mix of like workshops, talks. So do I.

Dave Jones: A lecture is a talk.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I think it's going to be all those things. And then, and then like round tables too of like, you know, how do you do things better? Um, because I think it's a lot of, you know, best practices and some of it will be about electronics. Most of it will be about Chi-Cad, but, um, you know, it's a lot of stuff, as you know, I'm sure you, you may know this, Dave, uh, you know, the, uh, living in your, your CAD program, you know, it, uh, there's a lot of like best practices that you can learn from other people, you know?

Dave Jones: Uh-huh. Yeah. Hey, are you going to have a contest, a layout contest? I don't know. Give, give everyone a secret file and have, have, have like a prize, have like somebody, I'm sure you can find somebody to sponsor a decent prize for a, you know, the best who lays out the board the fastest and the neatest. Maybe you can have it judged or you can have, you know, just simply first, first past the post.

Chris Gammell: Huh. So fastest and neatest. That's, that's an interesting idea. Uh, any other?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Cause, yeah. Cause there's two different, you know, so you, you can decide whether or not you, you want to shoot for the fastest, whether you think, oh, I know all the keyboard shortcuts. I'm the fastest in the West.

Chris Gammell: Oh, just getting to zero, like to zero, uh, to zero on like grass nest. Zero nets. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's an interesting idea.

Dave Jones: And then you could probably judge and then judge like who's got the neatest looking, you know, who's got the nicest looking layout.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They did that. And everyone gets the file, you know, at the same time, here it is, grab it from the

Chris Gammell: server, you know, like, yeah. And then there could be like the, what was that? There's like the equivalent of like the C obfuscation, but for, for layout, like the most circuitous circuit.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's like, this is a 24 layer board, uh, and it's connecting a single led through a one resistor. Uh, yep. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: That's it. Yep. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That would be kind of tough to do online, but I think that, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think that'd be cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And then you could have like a, and then you could, you know, it's something that people could boast about, you know, look, I, I, I won the, you know, key cad layout contest. Yeah. And actually make it a thing.

Chris Gammell: I like that a lot, Dave. I definitely, I'm definitely, you know what, we're going to call that the Dave Jones contest.

Dave Jones: Excellent.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. All right. The Dave Jones invitational.

Dave Jones: Sounds good.

Chris Gammell: Like golf tournaments, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But then I've got to invite people, right? They all have to be approved if it's an invitational. So you can't call it an invitational. But yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, it can't be the, I mean, if you're, if you're, your Saturn Aaron would have burnt down, we could have been the Dave Jones Memorial. But you know, since you survived, then yeah, we're not going to do that.

Dave Jones: Right. Oh boy. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. That sounds good.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So like stuff like that. And, and like I said, more talks is, you know, if people have talks ideas, would love to hear them. And then there'll be more details after that. And you know, it'll be a good bunch of nerds. So much of the certain folks are coming over and I don't know. I don't know how much I've mentioned last time, but.

Dave Jones: Oh, they're coming all the way over. I'm very excited. They're flying in, are they?

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm. Yep. From Switzerland. Yep.

Dave Jones: That's whose, whose tax dollars is paying for that junket.

Dave Jones: Someone's tax dollars is paying for it, I'm sure.

Chris Gammell: La, la, la, la, la, la. Yeah. Well, there's donation money too. So I'm not sure. We'll see how that all works out. All right. Speaking of events, there is one other event I wanted to mention. 3H has been going in lots of different cities. So now there are, I don't know how many, but there's one here. There's one in Houston. There was one in Austin. There was going to be one in Melbourne, but they didn't get back to me. One in New York, but they didn't get back to me. But Seattle's a big one. And we're always looking for more. And I'm sorry if I missed any, but there's going to be one in San Francisco now. I hear that they make electronics here once in a while. So hop on your favorite liberated electric scooter and ride on down to the heart of our happy hour in San Francisco. Step one, hack your scooter. Step two, bring it to the meetup. Oh God, I don't want to know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's great.

Chris Gammell: I think that's where the most ire happens because that's where all the startups are. But yeah. Like Dave says, don't steal. Do something else.

Dave Jones: Or as long as it doesn't feel like stealing to you, as long as your conscience is clean. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Right. It's what's in your heart, you know? It's what's in your heart. Right.

Dave Jones: Feels over reels. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: All right, man. Well, we'll talk to you soon. Catch you next time. See ya.

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