#486 – Medical Kits, They're The Future

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Release March 29th, 2020. Episode 486. Medical kids, they're the future.

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. In lockdown. In lockdown. Okay, so here's the thing. Every podcast that's out there has talked about COVID-19 or coronavirus. We're going to have to mention it. I just don't want the whole show to be about it because I literally, I'm like deleting podcasts. I can't listen to them. I can't hear any more about it. So let's get it all out and then we'll switch gears and we'll be done with it and talk about something else.

Dave Jones: Okay, no worries.

Chris Gammell: How you doing?

Dave Jones: I am still at the lab. You're at home, are you?

Chris Gammell: I am, yeah. Even though, so my workspace, M Hub, is somehow got an exemption and is, I could go in, but my partner asked me not to and I'm heeding her wishes and it's just.

Dave Jones: Right, okay, yep.

Chris Gammell: So I have moved labs in the past few weeks because of this. I have moved my entire lab here, basically.

Dave Jones: Right, so the whole thing. Well, you didn't have a huge amount. It's not like you had a 50 square meter lab to move and work benches and, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's mostly like test gear and soldering equipment and I was able to optimize. So my partner and I have a, like a roof deck area that we kind of, it's like an outdoor indoor kind of thing. And there's like an indoor spot. There's like a bar and all winter we don't use it. Luckily, it's warming up a little bit.

Dave Jones: Ah, right.

Chris Gammell: I have completely commandeered the bar. The bar is now. He's working from the bar. Is now a soldering station. Yeah. It's, I'll post a picture or I'll add a picture to the show notes. It's, I was pretty proud of that. But otherwise, it's been, it's been a little rough. Yeah. How about you? I mean, you got, you got kiddos at home. A lot of people I'm sure have kiddos at home.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They've been home this week and it's just, yeah, I lost track of days. I didn't know today was recording day, which is not the first time that's happened, but it's just, yeah, I just, yeah. Losing track because it's so chaotic at the moment. Yeah. Although I, I rode my bike here this morning. I'm trying to ride my bike because the gyms are shut. So obviously, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, uh, and it's, it's, it's, it's a ghost town.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know if you saw my tweet, tweet about this, but I, uh, I woke up the other day and I like had, I had like body aches and I was like, oh my God, this is like a, this is like a symptom.

Dave Jones: This is it.

Chris Gammell: And then I remembered that in my delirium of being in the house for so long, Dave, I did a workout. I did a workout in my house with my partner and that's why I was so sore. It wasn't any symptom at all. It was, it was a symptom of my being out of shape.

Dave Jones: Well, again, keep a lookout for the, uh, EV blog lab workout. I'm going to record a lab workout.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Those transformers, man, they're dense. They really, they'll give you some resistance. A resistance workout. There you go. There, there, there it is. The resistance workout. They can give you some reluctance. So I treat every workout, Dave, as reluctantly.

Dave Jones: Oh, love it. So everything's, um, just shut down and stuff. Although I was still getting deliveries. The only person I interact with is the DHL guy. Although one of the manufacturers, one of the manufacturers did come over yesterday and they want, cause they wanted to do an instrument swap. I've got an old, uh, one and they wanted to, well, not an instrument, a board, a test board. And they wanted to swap it for some reason. So it's like, yeah, here you go. Thanks. Bye.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Do not stick around. You're, you're not invited in for tea.

Dave Jones: That's it. Yeah. Now, you know, normally they'd come in and we'd chat about the test equipment market for like hours and yeah, but no, not going to happen.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's good. I mean, it's good. You're doing it right. You're doing it right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, yeah. And like, I was thinking about like two weeks ago when we were talking, like it was a very different, even from a week ago from, it's just, it all, it all moved pretty fast. So, um, hope everybody out there is staying safe. Hope your families are safe. I mean, hope you're staying inside. You're supposed to do that. Um, you know, yeah.

Dave Jones: We can knock this thing on the head shortly. Yeah. Except for O'Reilly, apparently. O'Reilly, they've shut down their events business, which is not, uh, not unexpected, I guess. What, what events did they run? I mean, they're, they're, they're a huge organization. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, uh, people, people might remember that they ran the solid conference. That was a, that was a couple of years ago. And that only ran for two, two and a half years. Solid. Is that like a solid works? What is that? No, it was just solid. It was like, uh, uh, John Bruner was one of the guys that ran it. And, uh, it was like this cool, like kind of hardware meets software. Kind of, they were, they were kind of picking up on that idea. I really liked it because it was kind of this cross, you know, usually conferences are pretty deep. And so I like the ones that are more broad focused, like the super conference or things like that. And it didn't do that well for them, unfortunately. Oh, it didn't. Okay. It wasn't consistently, you know, and. Conference businesses, like the big conferences are, are interesting. I talked to John a little bit about this after the fact. As in the design cons and stuff you're talking about?

Dave Jones: The, the big events you're talking about?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Exactly. And so, uh, John, I believe last I talked to John, he was working for, what's the SLA printer company? The one at MIT.

Dave Jones: Form Labs.

Chris Gammell: Anyways. Oh, Form Labs. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he was working for, I'm not sure if he's still working for them. Anyways, I talked to him about, you know, his experience running the conference and it was interesting because he just talked about like, it's such a big event and they're, they're so, they have such high expenses. You know, I always like looked at the cost of a O'Reilly event. It's like, you know, $2,000 to go to it. And, you know, some people pay that, some people pay less or whatever. Right. But it's really, they're targeting companies that have training budgets. So if they're not getting the people with training budgets, if they're not getting corporate sponsorships on top of it, it's like multimillion dollar affairs to do that kind of thing. And they can swing really hard too, if you don't get the attendance up. And so it's a big bet for them. And so I could see that, you know, O'Reilly shutting it down. This is probably a huge hit for them if they don't have the pricing to keep it going. Like you think about how much it would take if you're running a $2 million conference, you could probably at front, you know, a million dollars just to get everything set up, you know, everything. So it's a, it's a, it's a big business. So it's unfortunate because they're still running like Strata conference is one of the big ones, like a data thing that's data analysis and stuff like that. And they do a bunch of software ones still. So they're still around. They're doing well, they aren't anymore because they've, they shut down the events business. Just the events. Yeah. I mean, they're still around as the book publisher and as the media group. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So yeah, it's unfortunate. But they were, they were doing hardware stuff anyway. So they were kind of out of my field of view, you know.

Dave Jones: Right. But therein lies opportunity folks in all this chaos and mayhem. Yeah. On the other side of this, there is going to be opportunities for those who are perhaps out of work and keen to do something. Start a new business, start a new direction. There'll be opportunities galore. I can assure you.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think you're right.

Dave Jones: So get your thinking caps on and, and have a look at things that have shut down because they will pick up again. We will, you know, but all these, you know, all these larger companies might or medium-sized companies, the larger companies will probably survive, but the medium-sized sort of companies, a lot of those will shut down and there'll be opportunities.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I think that, I think they'll come back in a different manner and different styles and stuff like that too. Right. I think that on the conference side of things, I've been targeting personally, like smaller conferences anyways, just because I think that you get to talk to more of the people there. It's more personal, but I think that's going to be more of a, maybe not a trend, but that's something that I always look for anyways. And there's probably the opportunity you're talking about, I think will probably pop up as like, people are dipping a toe back into it. You know, companies might still be scared of it, but individuals might be able to run smaller conferences and, you know, bootstrap their way up.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And I'm not just talking about conferences, of course, I'm talking about all aspects of the industry, you know, every little niche that, uh, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And we talked about it last time, two weeks ago, and like, there are a lot of conferences that are going virtual and I'm not a huge fan.

Dave Jones: No, no, they, no, no. Engineer, it's been proven over the years that engineers despise online, uh, webinars, webinars, right? Every company thinks, you know, that was the webinar craze. And then they go, why, why are only, why is only one or two engineers turning up to our webinars? It's because they suck, dude.

Chris Gammell: It's like, well, yeah, there's production stuff for sure. But I, but actually I, I think about it for conferences specifically. Like the reason I go to conferences are honestly, it's not the content. I mean, like the content is important and I'll usually step into a couple of things there, but the reason I go and you know, it's not every engineer, you're not going to be surprised by this is the people, right? I want to meet people specifically now. It's like, like the virtual conferences are like, okay, well, we're going to stream this one person giving a talk. And it's like, I could have watched that on video.

Dave Jones: It's the one time a year when, you know, the reclusive, uh, always self-isolating, by the way engineers have been self-isolating decades before it became trendy. Right. Yeah. And that's, it's the one time of the year that they come out of their shell and, you know, you know, like a, like a deer in headlights, they go out to the real world and they, you know, actually talk to other humans, you know, it's, uh, yeah. Yeah. And it's like in a year's time, two years time, like people will have totally forgotten about that. People will be getting this whole thing and they'll be getting back to their regular lives and they'll be going back to events and stuff, you know, because we'll have a vaccine or whatever and everything will be hunky dory and no one will be worried about this anymore.

Chris Gammell: You know, so Alistair Allen, uh, wrote about this a little bit on Twitter as well. And it's like, so he works remote, I work remote. And like, a lot of the times it's like events are kind of the only time to actually like be in person with, you know, people that you might be interacting with or friends with online, you know, you and I are probably not going to meet in person again until it's some kind of event that you go to and I'll fly there or similar kind of thing. Right. I mean, or I go back to Australia.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's hard because it's a long way. It is.

Chris Gammell: Well, and I think you get, you get network effects though, too, of like multiple people. You could see more than just one person. Yep. Yeah, that's right. If you get sick and you can't make it there, I could always, well, there's four of the people that I could see as well or meet new people.

Dave Jones: So, oh, offense, Chris, but if I'm going, if I'm going to fly all the way to the U S in a virus tube, then I'm going to make the most of it. And I'm going to go to meet hundreds of people. Not just you. That's fair, man. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: That's fair.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: I mean, and now I'm just going to, you know, sock you in the nose when I see you, you know?

Dave Jones: Well, that's it. Well, same with you. You generously flew all the way to Australia and, you know, and we met up, but you went to, you know, other. No, exactly. There were many others. Yeah. So, and you held many other conferences, but anyway, yeah, it'll all get back to a normal. So I don't think the events industry is going to change. It'll, you know, be hit on the head for a couple of years because like companies like O'Reilly, but they might realize, you know, cause they'll still be around as a company and they go, Ooh, people want it. You know, there'll be, as you said, like people will be dipping their toes back in small time events and things like that. And all of a sudden, bam, one or two big companies will do the big events again, see people flock back as they almost certainly will. And they'll go in all the, you know, existing companies around these go, Ooh, it's a thing again. Let's go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. There's money. I mean, yeah, there's always things pop up when there's money, you know, like.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway, there's not much money in the events business though, is there?

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: It's a bit of a hard grind. So yeah, I'd probably pick something else if you're keen on starting a new business, but anyway, it can work.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, I think we are going to, so you kind of alluded to this too. I think we are going to see some, some layoffs and hopefully not as much in the engineering sector, but I've talked to a couple of people that have already lost jobs and our heart goes out to them. Hopefully that's very temporary as well. I, you know, I've talked to some clients and they've talked about like, Oh, well, we're just watching our cash position. And that kind of feels like 2008 where it was like, everybody just kind of clams up and they're like, until we know cash is coming in, there's no cash going out. It's like, Oh, here we go again.

Dave Jones: So yeah. Everyone's going into cash. That's yeah. Yep. They're selling everything. Right. So it's a fire sale. So once again, opportunities on the other side, I mentioned this last couple of weeks ago on the podcast.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you're right. I think that, that there are, you know, opportunities to squeak out stuff in the margins and find new opportunities for people that are like, obviously there's a lot of medical opportunities right now, but I think there's other industries that are going to pop up too. So it's got to keep your eyes out and, you know, maybe consult on the side or do some, some small stuff, you know, see what you can do.

Dave Jones: Actually, this was discussed on the forum just last night, the EV blog forum, that is the only, the best forum.

Chris Gammell: No, yes. Yeah, of course.

Dave Jones: It was discussed. People talking about, you know, the, there's so many people I've lost count of the number of people who've now contacted me over the last couple of weeks saying, Dave, you should work on an open source ventilator. It's like, well, I'm not, I mean, I have no idea how a ventilator even works. Like I would, I would just bum around doing more harm than good. Like I'll, I'll leave it to the people who have a clue. You know, I'm not a mechanical engineer, you know, I'm not a sort of, yeah. If you need a board done, call me.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But anyway, yes, I am actually helping out on a virus detection kit. Oh, great. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Oh, so Mhub, my workspace is doing like a, you know, there's a bunch of, there's obviously a ton, there's a Hackaday article about it. We'll link in, you know, there's, there are a bunch of people working on like open source, broadly available, you know, low cost designs. Yeah. Mhub, same kind of thing where I work. They, they're doing like a joint effort and same thing. I was like, well, until the mechanicals kind of figured out, I'm like, just give me a call when you need to control something, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Give me a call. Anyway. So they were talking on the forum, everyone talking about, oh, how there's, you know, they've loosened the medical requirements. Like medical is normally one of them apart from probably aviation or something, you know, is the most regulated industry out there. Right. The, the red tape is enormous. It's absolutely enormous. You know, it's, oh, it's just mind numbing. The amount of red tape involved in that. Yeah. And, and they've loosened all that right now so that, you know, they've loosened the regulation so that you can push these, like do it yourself, regulators and things like that into these settings without thing. And people are going, oh, it's a new revolution. Get into this. And it's like, no, as soon as this thing's over in six months or whatever. This is very temporary. As soon as it's over, you will be regulated out of business. It's like, yeah, it's, yeah. I'd be careful. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: A lot of people are not like doing it for money. You know, it's not like this is a business opportunity.

Dave Jones: It's like, oh, but no, I think that's what some people are hinting at on the forum. It's like, oh, you can like do start, do a new startup business, you know, getting in and doing medical stuff and things like that. And it's like, no, you're going to come a gutter in six, 12 months time.

Chris Gammell: There's been, there's been a couple episodes of embedded, I think, where they've talked about like regulation on code and, you know, FDA specific usually, but like, you know, the type of code you need to write.

Dave Jones: And like every line of, for those that don't know every line, I can't remember the name of it, but there's a standard for it where every line of code has to be vetted and reviewed. Yeah. Literally. And, and you pay per line of code. It's like, I think the industry rule of thumb is like one, $1 per line of code. So if you've got 10,000 lines of code to have it reviewed, it's like 10 grand to pay someone to do it. So yeah, it's a good gig. If you get it, there's a gig you can get into code review. No, you know, mind numbing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Trust me. That's the thing. Yeah. I believe it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. And FDA, FDA in the States is really, really stringent. And like, I remember, uh, who was it? So one of my, one of my college buddies, he was working at a company that was doing stuff in the medical space and he just talked about how they just wouldn't change anything. So I was like, well, what are you doing? Yeah. He's like, well, we figure out when we have to change things and then we change things, but otherwise we don't change anything. Everyone becomes an obsolescence engineer. Yeah. Pretty. Yeah. I think that's right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's, it's, it's maintenance obsolescence. Yeah. This part's gone obsolete. Oh, let's spend the six months sourcing this new transistor.

Chris Gammell: You know, trust me, I've been there. I've worked on. Yeah. I mean, like it makes a lot of sense from a business perspective and like, uh, you know, and like even the regulations, I get why they're there, but damn, like it just sounds terrible.

Dave Jones: And if you're used to like nine months or even, you know, you're more traditional, like nine months in the startup scene kind of thing, or you're more traditional 18 months, uh, product design life cycle from concept to, to production, try, try the medical field. They're five plus years. Right. Product life cycles. Right. It's, it's enormous. So, you know, I've, I've worked on medical, uh, stuff that is like, it will not come out for the next five, six, seven years. Like it is like leading edge now. And by the time it comes out, it's kind of, it's maybe a little bit behind, but they're already working on the one, the generation beyond that. And they've got, yeah, they have to, like, they still work on a new one every 18 months kind of thing, but they sort of keep it in the pipeline. And so to speak, so they might have two or even three generations ahead that they're actually working on and they're still selling the first generation or whatever. So, cause the life cycles are so long product development cycles, especially for anything that's implanted, for example, which is some of the stuff I was working on. Right. Right. Right. You know, if it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that one's like really serious stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Don't want to mess with that.

Dave Jones: But no, you can get it from, you know, Joe Bloggs startup around the corner, you know, you can get your new implantable heart pacemaker, you know, go for it. If it's a 3D printed case. It's actually, it's actually DIY.

Chris Gammell: You got to actually like.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. You got to solve it yourself. Sell it as a kit. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, medical kits. That's the future.

Dave Jones: Hey, here's another weird thing I've noticed this week. I, there is currently a shredder truck out the front as in one, like a big, you know, truck with a big shredding machine at the back that comes around and shreds your stuff on site kind of thing. You know, shred your paper or you see, you know, your secure documents and stuff like that. That's the fourth one I've seen this week from my window. Someone's getting audited. There's a lot of, no, like different companies, different companies. So I think there's multiple companies either going out of business or, or like going into lockdown mode and they want to shred all their secret documents or something. But yeah, it's the fourth different shredder truck I've seen this week.

Chris Gammell: Like also, also tax season, you know, tax season here at least tax season.

Dave Jones: I said, Oh, tax season. Sorry. Yeah. These are audio codecs are a bit dodgy. Sometimes we can't, you know, syllables don't. The, the, the, the odd syllable gets dropped. Tax season. No, it's not tax season here.

Chris Gammell: Okay. All right.

Dave Jones: So you guys have taxed twice a year, right? Is that the thing? Like at the end of, no. One time a year. You have a calendar fund. You have a calendar tax year, don't you? That's right. Yep. Which finishes at December. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's the, uh, personal and some corporations. Okay. So then other, other corporations have different tax windows and stuff like that. And then there's a delayed one as well. So, um, and actually this year, so this year it's actually coming up in about 25 days is the, is the deadline, but it got extended three months. So. Ah, okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: As you, I got my first stimulus yesterday. I got my first government stimulus. Yes. Congratulations me. I got 35 bucks. Um, it's, uh, I had, I had no idea. It was like, um, apparently because I do a lot of foreign exchange trading, right? I'm buying and buying goods, um, shipping goods overseas and stuff. Right. So I've got to buy it in us dollars. So I've got to exchange currency all the time, huge amounts. Oh yeah. To buy large amounts of stock. And so I use a foreign currency exchange service and I've got a business account with them and everything else. And I, they just sent me an email back last night saying, Hey, here's your 35 bucks back. There's like 15% off or something. The government's giving 15% off transaction fees for international foreign exchange transactions. So yay. I guess it's going to be bigger in the U S it's going to be bigger in the U S but, uh, yeah, you guys are going to get, um, although the big businesses get the most of the 6 trillion. Yeah. It's currently 8 trillion total. Yeah. Yeah. Cause they've already spent 2, 2 trillion. So there's another 6 coming. So get a slice of that pie folks. Cause it's your pie. Anyway, you're paying for it. Hmm. This pie tastes familiar. It's my own money. Yeah. I think I had this pie in my wallet earlier today. Or it's coming from all the other tax plebs out there. Hmm. That's tasty. Oh goodness. Anyway. Ah, yeah. Yeah. Ah, suckers who pay tax. Yeah. All the, all the big wigs laughing from their tax, tax havens. Oh boy. Anyway. Yeah. Let's not go there. Tax time. Anyway, tax is, um, both personal and businesses. The first of July is the start of the new financial year. Yeah. Anyway, that's boring.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of going overseas, I made a mistake. What? I was like, I was looking for a new cable. I was getting a custom. I wanted, I'm getting a custom cable made and I, uh, put my email into Alibaba. And so I was like contacting, you know, I basically put in like the request for quote. I was actually contacting a specific vendor. And then I put in a request for quote and I woke up this morning and I had like six emails and like a meeting scheduled. And I was like, what, what just happened here? And it was like outside of any of the, you know, it's supposed to be like on the Alibaba on the platform and stuff.

Dave Jones: Oh, so you did it. So you did like a public request instead of a private quote request or something like that.

Chris Gammell: How does that work? So if you like find a, you know, a thing you like on like Alibaba, right. You can, so in this case I was sourcing a cable and I basically needed just a shorter, shorter version of that cable. And I've done this before. It's, it's great. It's easy, right? You find someone who makes custom cabling or not even custom cabling. Just like you find a cable that weird looking cable that is close to what you need. You basically write to them and say, Hey, can you customize? They say, yes, we can. There's a minimum.

Dave Jones: That's another revolution in the, quiet revolution in the industry. You know, if you think your $1 PCBs are impressive. Yeah. Go and go and get your custom cables, which was, you know, when I was a boy, geez, getting a custom cable. Oh man. Oh no, sirree. Bob, that'll be a thousand dollars tool. Yeah. Thousand dollars tool in please.

Chris Gammell: You got to see what their capabilities are. Do they have the right connectors? And in this case now you're literally just, you're just kind of searching around for like, Oh, I need like a two millimeter JST. Okay. No problem. How many pins, you know? Like what is the.

Dave Jones: Yep. You can literally do a napkin sketch and, and take a photo with your phone, send that to them and they'll make it for you. You know, it's like, Oh man.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. And I did that the first time. And what I found was easier is actually, I said, Hey, can you actually send me the drawing for this? The one that I'm looking at online. So if you find someone who already has a part out there, you ask for the drawing, they send it to you, no problem. And then you just mark it up. And then you say, actually, I don't want this length to be 20 centimeters. I want it to be 10 centimeters.

Dave Jones: And you can do that even if it's not their cable, if it's not their particular one, but they just get the data sheet from somewhere else and you mark it up. And I guess so.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, usually they have a cable drawing though. I mean, like that's, you know, a lot of these companies do and it's great.

Dave Jones: And so, so, so you find the nearest equivalent one that you want, find that supplier and then go, Hey.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So the example from the first time I did it was, uh, it was like a, a USB, I just needed a USB, a type, you know, like plugs into a normal USB jack. And then I didn't want it to go to like a micro or mini B, you know, I wanted it to be from USB a to just a connector. And I didn't care what the connector was either. I just needed it to plug into a board without plugging into, I didn't want to put down like a USB header. Cause I didn't have the height. Just a little four pin molex or something. Exactly. Exactly. And so like, I just found one that was like fine. And I was like, okay. And I made sure I could source the, you know, it was like a pretty generic. I think it was a two millimeter, um, pitch connector. I found the family that was fine. And then I just, uh, I asked for the length to change and they're like, yeah, that's no problem. We do this all the time. So it was great. What sort of volume did you have to get? Well, and that's the other thing I, you know, I offered to pay for the sample. I feel like that's a, that's a big thing. It's just, I said like, look, I'll pay for the sample. I do want samples and I wanted like five. And they said, yeah, no problem. It was like five. I think it was like for like 30 bucks for the samples and other 30 bucks for shipping. And so no less. Nope. Yeah, we do. And you know, cheap is chips. Yeah. It was great. Um, yeah, yeah, exactly. It really is. Right. I mean, like, like you said, there's no tooling or nothing like that. Cause they're already tooled up for it. So it was great. Brilliant. But the problem this time is, so what you can do on Alibaba as well, as you can basically say, well, I just submitted this quote or this, you know, request for this type of, you know, usually because you're searching for a product type, right? In this case, we'll just use the USB example again. They like, Hey, Chris was looking for a USB cable. That's like this. And then you, after you submit the thing, after you submit the request to the people who actually make it, they say, do you want to RFQ it? Right. And basically then it goes out to the broader world.

Dave Jones: And RFQ is request for quote folks. For those who don't know. Yeah. That's good. Industry speak. We have to explain our acronyms. That was one of the things from our feedback is that, you know, we have to explain stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yep. And, uh, yeah. And so, uh, you had a request for quote. And then in that case, it's basically, it's kind of like an open market then. And people look at it and they can offer you services, but then they also find you, find your email all over the internet and, uh, and email you. Yeah. So. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the downside. Custom stuff. It's a lot easier. Like you said.

Dave Jones: No, it's, it's great. You can get custom almost everything these days. So it's incredible.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's a revolution folks. I'll probably release this before this goes, this podcast goes out, but I actually, I had gotten, I've shown you this, the, uh, the custom like led neon. I think I showed you that.

Dave Jones: Oh yes. Right. Oh, that was ages ago.

Chris Gammell: Oh, the contextual electronics logo. I know. Yeah. I literally just plugged it in for the first time. Oh, I've got that. Finally, finally.

Dave Jones: You were amazed by that, that they just did. Oh, look, we will do a custom thing for you. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you literally, I sent them an SVG and they're like, yeah, yeah, they're great. They're great. Yeah. You just send an SVG and they're like, and like what color. Okay. And then it's done. It's like a hundred, 180 bucks shipped, I think, or something like that, you know, for effectively like a custom neon sign around here would probably be a couple thousand dollars. So sweet. I'm going to have to get one.

Dave Jones: So they could do like, is any, any color is any limitations on the, I don't know about neon. Is there like limitations on the color palette you can get?

Chris Gammell: This is an actual neon. So I should, I should say it's not, so it's actually like, it's basically like LEDs encased in like vinyl that are like shining through a, like a diffused material. Right. So it's like a white LED and then they, they can put different color things over top. And, but that's like way cheaper because actual neon, then, you know, you need thousands of volts and you need to have. And you have to form, form glass and yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it's, it's beautiful. Like I really love the look of neon, but it's like, it's just way out of my price range. So this is like way cheaper. And then this one, they just mounted on laser cut acrylic. And so that's why it's so cheap. Sweet. Yeah. You should get one. I'll send you my, I send you my people, Dave.

Dave Jones: Send me the link again. Cause I, I, I, I know you did at the time, but I've, yep. Um, that's buried away in the stupid hangout chats thing that we do. Yeah. Right. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of products, can we have a, uh, product update? Did it, did it, did it, did it, did it product update? Scammy product update.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I thought this was going to be your product.

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not, no, no, it's not, not my product. Um, you know, shonky product of the week. Um, we will revisit the, uh, solace. Um, speaking of glass as well. Beautiful segue. Solace glass. Um, the graphene heater. If you remember that one.

Chris Gammell: I don't remember that one. Can you jog my memory?

Dave Jones: The solace heater. Eric, it's got graphene. Anyway, it was a Kickstarter Indiegogo. And it's, it's this whiz bang heater. That was like 400% more efficient than other heaters because it had graphene in it. It had woo woo graphene, you know? So they say, you know, oh, it's 400%. You know, I can't remember the exact numbers anyway. Yeah. I did a busting video on it and this was like two years ago or something now. And someone just posted an update on the forum where the comments on the Indiegogo page is that, um, customers, multiple customers have had them like explode the actual glass sheets because they're like, they're really funky looking like they're like big panels, right? They're like a meter by a meter or something, you know, big, big square glass panels. And they look really like they're like slimline. They're designed to like be decorative and you hang them on your wall and things like that. Right. And apparently so big glass sheets, they started shattering and exploding. Like, like they, cause they're like heating them up and cooling them down. I saw, yeah, something like that. So, um, yeah, let that be a lesson to you. If you're going to like sell a funky product with glass, just be careful. You know what, you know what the heck you're doing? Cause they probably just, oh, glass is glass. Right. No, they didn't. They didn't get the, obviously didn't get the special type they needed. And these things are exploding with glass. It's like exploding out and shattering everywhere. So, wow.

Chris Gammell: So remind me like what it was again. It was, so it was graphene, but was it actually graphene or was it just like.

Dave Jones: They reckon they've got a graphene paste. So it's like, so it's a regular heating element, right? So they have like a heating element and then they, then they spread all this woo woo graphene paste over it. Right. And then sandwich the glass sheets on, on either side of the element and the graphene paste. Right. So it's like one of these infrared panel heaters, right? So it's an infrared panel here that, that you either, you know, stand on the floor or you hang on the walls designed to be, you know, decorative and things like that. And, um, yeah, because apparently there's some research paper somewhere that says graphene is 400% more efficient or whatever it is. I can't remember the exact efficient, you know? And of course there's always a kernel of truth in, in these things, but they claim that if

Chris Gammell: they stretch that as far as they can get it, right.

Dave Jones: Stretch as far as they get it. And of course it's no more efficient at all than a regular heat. So it's a complete bullshit, but yeah, anyway, there's so lots of these things and they just shattering because, uh, you know, when you don't know what you're doing with actual materials, that's a, that's a huge thing. And of course it's, as you said, it's heating up, it's cooling down and all this glass is eventually shattering. So whoopsie. Anyway, I think it's just glorious.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, fitting, fitting end. Speaking of heating things up, I took the plunge this past week, Dave, and I am, uh, I am a lead free shop. Finally. I know that like some people are going to be like rolling their eyes and huffing and saying, I can't believe it took you so long, but I'm actually, I'm committed to it. I am finally 2020 is lead free year for me.

Dave Jones: Let me guess. Are she who must be obeyed demanded that you get rid of lead?

Chris Gammell: No, no, actually.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Right. No. Yeah. Yeah. This is no, it makes sense having the home too. No, this is actually just because I felt like I should have done this a long time ago. So, um, yep. I followed, I followed, uh, Greg Davil's, uh, suggestions on, on paste and, uh, got the GC10, which is actually a really lame product name, but it's, it's pretty good paced. Uh, GC stands for game changer. Oh God.

Dave Jones: Oh, geez. Real grown.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, but yeah, GC10 is, uh, the type of pace and it's really nice. So it's like, he talked about it when he was on the show last in January, it's like shelf stable. You don't have to refrigerate it at all.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? I didn't know that. Oh, I should get something.

Chris Gammell: It's a game changer, Dave.

Dave Jones: Right. Obviously.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. It's, it was a hundred. So I got it from DigiKey. It was $145 for a tube.

Dave Jones: Ooh. For a, for a, like a 50 gram tube or something. No, 900 grams. Okay. Okay. Well, that's a lot. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. But still, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it doesn't expire. Right.

Chris Gammell: Is there expiry date or is it? It does. No, it does expire, but it's like five. I think it's like three or four years.

Dave Jones: Okay. That's, that's awesome. Yeah. I might. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think the real thing I need to do is parcel it out and sell it to some friends and just kind of defray the cost across people. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I just don't use it enough, you know, so I've got some in the fridge, but it's probably expired by now. Every time I go to use it, like it's, it's just expired. It's like, Oh God. Yeah. You can use expired paste. It's not like, you know, but it becomes less and less effective.

Chris Gammell: Right. And I, I, I was in a bad spot for a lot of that stuff. I was using old paste and it just kept burning me, you know, not burning like that. I mean, it, uh, it just kept having really bad reflow and it just looked really, really bad and, you know, bad conductivity and stuff like that. So.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Having this is going to, you know, help with that kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Right. So he's still going through lead withdrawal symptoms or.

Chris Gammell: No, I'm, I'm doing, I'm doing great.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You're doing okay. Okay. There are support groups out there for you, Chris, you know, there are.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: If you need emotional support in this, uh, in this, in this time of need, you know, reach out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's, uh, it's been okay though. Once I got, I had to like rework the profile on the oven and stuff like that. Like I didn't.

Dave Jones: Right. No, of course you have to tweak it. You got to experiment and figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But there wasn't like really good guidelines. Like, so, you know, you always see the curves, but they didn't really, it doesn't translate as well to like the, uh, machines that I was using. So like I was using two different machines. The first one I put it through was like a three zone, like a conveyor belt style. Right. And so, and it's just got like PID controllers for a top. There's like three on the top, three heaters on the top, two heaters on the bottom. And so there's like a preheat zone and then there's like a soak zone. And then there's like a, a reflow zone. Right. That's kind of the, part of the idea of these, but like, there's no speed changes. Right. That you can't like be like, oh, well it should be longer in the soak zone.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? So I can't speed up the conveyor or, or whatever.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, how would you do that? Right. Cause you'd have to have, you have to track where every board is and it's, or you'd have to have multiple conveyor belts. This is just one conveyor belt.

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah. True. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: I don't want to like turn up the temperature too much or all like scorch components. And so, yeah, it just didn't like, I put it through the first time thinking, you know, I think there was like some guidelines on the one I was using. Right. And I put it up to the temperatures that were suggested and it was just, it was just wrong, you know? And, and like nothing had reflowed. And, but the problem was then I had already like evaporated all of the flux that was in the solder paste. And so I tried putting it through again. It was, so that board actually ended getting hand, hand, hand reflowed with a hot air pencil.

Dave Jones: Oh, I was going to say, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It was real bad. All right. But then, but then there's another one at the workspace I'm at where it's like, you know, there's actual, like it's a tablet and you can like define the different zones. And you know, there's like a, there's a slow ramp and then there's a soak, heat soak, then there's a reflow and then there's like a cool off. Right. Yeah. And I didn't realize it. So I was talking, I was actually chatting with Greg. He was very nice for this time. And he mentioned that the, and he does it with just like a toaster oven, which is awesome, but did not help me at all.

Dave Jones: All right. And got one of those newfangled professional machines. There's your problem.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, yeah, kind of. And, and so I, I was trying to follow like, like the GC 10 data sheet was like, well, it doesn't just give you a recommendation. It's like, here's the different profiles and what the joints look like. It's like, I just want an answer, you know, and there's no one online that's like, here, I'm using the same machine as you, Chris, and here's the same paste and here's the answer, you know? So you had to, like you said, you had to play around. So it turns out long soak, like longer than I thought it would be. So it's like, I think it was like 140 seconds of like a heat soak to really get it to the right temperature and then a shorter, like a 60 second actual reflow at 235 or 240. Yep. But in the data sheet, they said like 250.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, and that's going to vary. If you've got like a two ounce copper board, right? For example, it's going to take longer. If you've got larger thermal mass components, it's going to take longer. If you've got a mix, one of the horrible things is having a mix of large, really large thermal mass components and really small thermal mass components, because, Ooh, it's almost worth only putting through like the low thermal or like either doing a two pass thing or actually just hand soldering the large thermal mass components, you know, because they require such a long soaking time that you're going to damage the smaller thermal mass components.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. It's, there's an art in doing this properly. And yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. I always read about like shadowing too, like a heat shadowing and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Heat shadowing is a thing. Yep. And once again, that depends on the type of oven that you've got. If you've just got an infrared oven, which is like a radiated thing, which is like the solace heater, right? And so it's just a bunch of like solace heater plates and plates above. And it's just, you know, and it's just radiating down. Whereas if you've got one of the, one of the gaseous ones that can circulate and things like the vapor phase, that's the term I was looking for. If you've got a vapor phase oven that can do it, but also you can get shadowing in the vapor phase as well, because it's, if it's circulating, if it's like, if it's a random, depends if it's a random circulatory thing or whether or not it's a, you know, just a one way flow circulatory thing. And it's, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. This boys and girls is why we have manufacturing engineers.

Dave Jones: This is why just give it to people who, who know these machines intimately just.

Chris Gammell: Well, and yeah, so this was a neoden, like a cheapo, the conveyor oven was like that. And it's like, ah, okay. I mean, it gets it done. You know, like when I put like, like I said, when I put leaded boards through, it was fine because it was just really forgiving.

Dave Jones: They were much more tolerant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's the trick.

Chris Gammell: Ah, well. Yep.

Dave Jones: Price you pay for being eco-friendly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. How dare I? How dare I?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, well.

Chris Gammell: Actually, the last thing about the reflow, it was like, so I was doing that all last week. You know, like the whole, the whole week I was trying to get stuff done. I was trying to get like the boards. So basically I knew that the shutdown was coming in Chicago. I knew it was going to happen. And I was like, I have to, I can't do reflow at home. So I have to get it done. I can do rework. I can do, you know, firmware program. That stuff's great from home. So finally, like Thursday night, the shutdown starts on Friday. Thursday night I finished at like 6 p.m. All right. Nice. Pack up all my, all my gear. You know, I had a car, packed up all my gear, like racing to get home, get everything out, walk into my house, say hi to my partner. And then I'm like, I left the goddamn boards in the oven.

Dave Jones: Oh, no.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Well done. Well done. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Was the oven off or was the. It was. Yeah. It was in the cool down phase. It was cool down phase. Okay. Because if you don't know, those things come out like hotter than pizza. They're piping hot. Screaming hot. And you have to, yeah, don't touch them. Don't just go, oh, look at, you know, because you see it all the time. You get like managers and other marketing people come around the line and they are inspecting stuff. And then they go, oh, this is a nice board coming out and they go to pick it up and burn their hands. What a bunch of dicks.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Dave Jones: So interesting tidbit of the week. Okay. New segment. Yeah. Whatever. Anyway. No, it's just, it's fascinating. I did a tear down of a power supply. Right. One of the new, yeah. New Roden Schwartz. Oh, I saw that.

Chris Gammell: That was great. I think I posted that on the subreddit, the LLC. The resident mode.

Dave Jones: The resident mode controller. Now I just assumed it was a resident mode controller. Right. But I don't think it is. As several people in the YouTube comment, like most people did it. Most people just assumed that I was correct and it was a resident mode controller. Right. Because it's everything kind of fitted. But if you actually put your thinking cap on for five minutes, as I usually don't do when I'm recording videos. Right. They're just off the cuff. I don't know, really.

Chris Gammell: It's editing when he does that folks.

Dave Jones: Well, I didn't say categorically in the video. In my defense, I didn't categorically claim it was a resident mode converter. I said, it looks like it's a resident mode controller. Because I didn't tear down the whole product so I could see the components on the other side. I didn't reverse engineer it. It just, you know, looked like it. And it used transistors, specific MOSFETs in there that actually are purpose designed for resonant mode controllers. So it kind of all fitted, you know. Anyway, I don't think it is. And some people have asked me to actually pull the whole board out and actually reverse engineer it. Because I suspect that one other person suspected this. I think they may be there right. Is that it could be a full shifted phase bridge. And this got me thinking, the interesting tidbit is how many variations of power supplies there are. Most people would not know them all. I guarantee.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Even super experienced engineers could not name every single topology of power supply. You know, people might be able to name, okay, buck, boost, flyback. You know, then they might be struggling. A few people might say CEPIC. You know, they might say.

Dave Jones: CUC. Yeah, right. There's a whole bunch of.

Chris Gammell: That's only because I'm like, I was like, how do you even say that? It's C-U-K and that's pronounced CUC. Yep. Yep. Exactly. CUC is how it's. That's not it. It's CUC. No, it's CUC. It's CUC. Okay. Well, I'm going to look it up while you keep talking about power supplies. Okay.

Dave Jones: It's CUC. Just like it's a bode plot.

Chris Gammell: I'm just. Okay. Totally troll it. CUC. No, it's CUC. It's here. It's on. It's on Wikipedia. Although I guess I have to kind of side with you too. Once again, here in Australia, it's CUC. It says. It says. It says it's pronounced CUC. It says it's CUC on Wikipedia. So I can't necessarily. I can't. That's not definitive. Because you. You have. Because you.

Dave Jones: You do know that I was correct in that it is. You know. CUC. So.

Chris Gammell: Whatever.

Dave Jones: Yep. Not Kai. Okay.

Chris Gammell: So there's a lot of types of power supplies you're saying.

Dave Jones: And there's tons of different. You know, how many people would be able to pull. Phase shifted full bridge out of their backside. Right.

Chris Gammell: Not many. Unless you've actually. Probably power supply designers. Right. And that's actually something I was thinking about. Yeah. As you were like. As you were reviewing all that stuff too. And like. I've been. I just got to. I just got through the inductor chapter of. The X chapters from Art of Electronics. And like. Man. It's just like. You guys start going to transformers and inductors and all that stuff. That's what power supply designers are doing all day. All day. Every day. Yeah. Yep. And it's just like. Diving back in. Not even diving back in. Just like. Viewing again from. From afar. It's like. Oh. I forgot. I forgot all this stuff even exists. You know. I know. Exactly. Yeah. You had that chart. You had that chart in your review too. Where it was showing the different resonances. And the different loads that it had on the inductors. I think. Like you in that app note you were looking at. And it was really good. But like. I don't know. I haven't looked at power supply design in a long time. This is.

Dave Jones: Like. This is stuff you simply do not learn. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well you do. But. But if you're a power supply designer.

Dave Jones: Well. Hands up if you had a specific power supply design course at uni. Right. Nobody. Right. Crickets. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You might learn buck and boost in a couple of. You know. Topologies or something like that. Maybe. If you're lucky. Yeah. Right. I know courses where you don't learn any of that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think there's some. I forget who was. Someone was on the show. And they said that there was. There was a really good program at one of the University of Texas schools. I want to say UT Dallas.

Dave Jones: Oh. I'm sure there are specific classes that'll. You know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It was like basically the professor was a power supply designer. And like. And it was like. Oh. You're going to learn what they know. You know. So that's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Exactly. But no. But Joe. Joe blogs. You know. Engineering degree. In every country around the world. Is not going to teach you. 15 different types of. Bloody power supply topologies. Right. They just. You know. There's so much other crap to learn. It's like. Why are they even going to bother with that? You're lucky if they teach you what buck and boost is.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Dave Jones: You might get it in an ancillary way. You know. Oh. By the way. This is. You know. How. Like. You might get it as an example. In a. Magnetics. You know. You're learning magnetics. And you might get that as an example. Thing. Or something like that. Maybe. It's not like. Yeah. You know. It's not like engineers are going to do power supply design courses.

Chris Gammell: Right. There's a Burr Brown. Power supply design course. Burr Brown. Yeah. I know. R.I.P. Yep. But they actually still call it. I think they still call it the Burr Brown power supply design course. And I got to go through that. I think I've talked about it on the show before. But. They still do actual seminars. Based on the old. The design books and stuff like that. Yep.

Dave Jones: I went to Walter Jung's course. He's. He's one of the gurus. Was it analog devices? Yep. Yep. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was great. I've still got the notes from that. Still got the book notes. I don't know if you can get those online or not. But. Yeah. That was absolutely terrific. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep. Speaking of analog devices. There is a new analog dialogue. One of our favorites here. This is an interesting app note from Bruce Hemp. The contactless fluid level measurements using a reflectometer chip. And this is something I. This is something we actually talked to Akiba about from Freak Labs. I don't know how many years ago now. I think it was 2016 actually. And so I'll link that show in. But basically he was doing doing measurement for like a UN project. I think it was where like they were. They were making sure they weren't dumping sewage in Egypt. And so they actually like measured the trucks and stuff like that. But this is basically a way to measure. This is a similar kind of application. At least. How do you measure the. Fluid level. Height. Height of fluid. And. Yeah. And basically this is doing that using one of their chips. And. Yeah. It's pretty cool. It's basically. You impedance match using a transformer. And then. I think you drive like a single pulse through it. And then that. Kind of bounces back. Based on. Based on the. The height of the tank. Kind of thing. So it's a time of flight thing. Not. A hundred percent sure. Right. But. It's in the app note. So. All right. All right. Link it in. Down below. Yeah. Yeah. We'll link it in.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Even though there is no down below in a podcast. Cause people just typically have their podcast automatically fed to.

Chris Gammell: On our link page. On our. Our wonderful. Links page. So. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So do we still have the app? Do we still have the amp hour app? Is that still a thing?

Chris Gammell: Oh. That's a great question. That was actually done by the.

Dave Jones: It was. It was automatically. We didn't pay to have it done. Yeah. It was. It was like you sign up for our Libsyn thing. And we automatically got an app or something. Didn't we?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I think you had to pay like 99 cents for whoever was making that app. But. It was really just a way to listen. To the amp. I mean. It was like. Any podcast app. Was probably better than that was. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It was a bit gimmicky. I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Probably better to just. Go with. The. Just the pod. A podcast app. You know. People were already listening. They don't need. They don't need. The advice. They already got here. So. Unless you're listening on the web. In which case. You know. There are podcast apps. Look in your phone. You know. iPhones. Android. Whatever. I use podcast addict. These days. I like that. It's for Android. It's pretty good. Cool. Yeah. So we're talking about learning a little bit as well. Are you doing any learning in your lockdown days? Are you.

Dave Jones: Not learning as such. I'm going to do some experimenting again. I'm going to. I'm going to revisit my alkaline battery test. Oh. Cool. My. As in. Alkaline leakage.

Speaker ?: !

Dave Jones: Test. Because. If you don't know. Last time. I spent like. I did this long-term experiment. Nine months. Tested all these different brands of alkaline batteries. To see if I can get any of them to leak. And of course. The result was null. It was a null result.

Chris Gammell: Fluid leaking, right? You're not. Fluid leaking. Yes. Okay.

Dave Jones: It's actually. It's actually potassium hydroxide. That leaks. Leaks from the battery. And then that mixes with carbon dioxide in the air. To form all that. Horrible crystalline.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. The crustiness.

Dave Jones: Crystalline. The crusty. White crystalline structure. So. Yeah. So I've got another bunch of. Batteries here. And I thought. Because I. Last time. I. I put too heavy a load on there. I. I put a 47 ohm resistor on there. And. Apparently that just. Like. Drained them too quickly. And they didn't have time. To build up enough pressure inside. Over a long enough time period. For them to force out the potassium hydroxide. Through the negative end seal. Which is where it. Gives. If you wonder why. Batteries always leak at the negative end. It's because that's where the. Um. That's where the rubber seal is. That's where the rubber or plastic seal is. And that's where the pressure leaks out.

Chris Gammell: What is the actual. Like. Physical mechanism. That's happening. So it's. It's from a high load. Or a low load. It's from a low load. At once.

Dave Jones: Once it gets towards the end of. Uh. Charge. So once it's lost most of its charge. That's when. When you get slow leakage. That's when the pressure starts to build up. In the battery. Apparently. This is. This is from what I can gather. There's. You know. Not a huge amount of research out there. But from what I can gather.

Chris Gammell: It's. Well there probably is like. Inside of Energizer. And you know. Like not. Yeah. Not publicly available. Like. How to make. Oh yeah. It's not. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's. Once again. Yeah. Yeah. You've got to be a chemistry. Not only a chemistry expert. You've got to be a battery manufacturing.

Chris Gammell: Electrochemistry. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Electrochemistry research scientist. Or something. You know. So there's probably only a handful of people in the world. Who really know about this stuff. And. It's. It's. It's the pressure build up. Um. When the batteries are almost fully. Or practically fully discharged. Apparently that's. The pressure starts going up and up. And if you've got a bad seal. Which you'll get on X percentage of the bill. Of the manufacturing bell curve. Right. They're all not going to have a perfect seal. Some are just going to be. You know. Um. So. So it's about a control thing. That's why some brands like Duracell or Vata. Or someone else might get a bad rep. For. They. They leak more than other brands. For example. Because their process control may not be. As. You know. Good. In. In terms of the seal. And so. So the pressure builds up. And if the seal doesn't hold. Um. Then the potassium hydroxide leaks out. And. Yeah. That mixes with the air. And. Yep.

Chris Gammell: And then your remote. Your remote has a bunch of crap in there. You got to scrub the terminals.

Dave Jones: And scrub. If. If you get to it in time. Because then you have to put a mild acid on it. You've got to put like a. Oh. Lemon juice. You can put lemon juice. Is that like a. That. Nulls out that. Um. God. Tell I'm not a chemist. It. Um. Yes. It. Gets rid of the acid. It. Neutralizes the base. No. That's the word I was looking. Neutralizes the acid. I need to get Mrs. EV blog on. Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. And. Luckily she doesn't listen. She'd be horrified. Anyway. So. Who the hell did I marry? In two. Is it two. Two hours a day. He's got. He's in. He's in tutoring. With. Yeah. Chemistry tutoring. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. So. Yes. So. That. It. Then. Yeah. It forms an acid. So. Then it eats away your battery terminals. And that's where the problem is. Like. You know. You get all these corroded terminals. And if you don't get to it in time. And actually. Neutralize it. With some sort of thing.

Chris Gammell: They'll go bad for. For good.

Dave Jones: They'll go bad. And they'll just break off. And rot away.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Once your battery terminals are screwed. You. You know. Pay in the ass to replace those sort of things. So. Yep. Hmm. Anyway. So. I'm going to do another test. Where. I'm going to. Basically. I might do like. Several different ones. Because I don't know precisely. Which is the best method. For maximizing my chances of getting leakage. It's not like I can guarantee. And make something leak. Right. It's. It's. It's sheer statistics of. You know. Can I actually get one to leak. And it's like. I don't know. I might get a null result again. So. I'll tell you in six months time. Whether or not it works. So. I might get like several. I might discharge one. To like 90%. And I might have like four different types. Discharge one to 90%. And then just leave it. At 90%. With no load at all. Then I might discharge one to 100%. But then again. What does 100% mean? Like. What does. Like. Because there's.

Chris Gammell: To one volt. Or like 0.5 volts. Or what does it add?

Dave Jones: To. Normally 0.8. Is where most of it drops off. Although 0.5. Is technically. Where like 99.99% of the energy. But then you've got chemistry recovery. Right. I can't remember the exact term. But you've got. I've. You know. You can. They can actually recover. Part of the charge. So it's not like it's. Like. It's not like. And it depends on how fast you discharge them. As to how much charge you can actually recover. So the voltage might have dropped down to 0.5 volts. So it's effectively dead. And you've used 100% of its charge. But then. Depending on the discharge rate. You remove the load. And it can actually. Regather some of that. Charge. Because of. How. Battery chemistry works. You know.

Chris Gammell: Because of ions and stuff.

Dave Jones: All that magic. Woo woo. Yep. Right. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: Well that's actually real. That's real. That's real science. That's not woo woo. Woo woo is like that. That. That. No. No. Exactly.

Dave Jones: I know. I buy. In. When I say woo woo. In regards to engineering. I. It's usually something that I don't understand. You know. So. Got it. Got it. So. You know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. So. Yeah. Anyway. So I might do like four different types. And then each brand. So I've got like 12, 15 different brands or something. And then I might do like four of each. In four different configurations. And oh. Duh. And then I just leave it for six months. The world's most boring experiment.

Chris Gammell: I would think it'd be better to like. Fast discharge a bunch of them. Because it all happens at the end though.

Dave Jones: Oh no. Yeah. Yeah. No. That's. That's. I'm definitely going to do. Either 90% or 100%. Discharge first. All right. So. Oh you are. Okay. That's a given. Because I was just thinking like.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Having like a current source. Or like a current load. You know. And just draw it down. So that it's consistent. And a high draw. And then. Then you know when it gets to the point. You know. One volt. Or point eight volts. Or whatever it is. Yep. Then you start. That's what I plan on doing. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Well I could. But it's like one photo every day. Kind of. You know. Time lapse. Yeah. Totally.

Chris Gammell: Totally.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And I thought about that. But I'm always moving shit around. And you know. It's like. Will it. Will it hold up for six. Will the time lapse hold up for six months? Will a thing. Bloody crash or something. I don't know. Again. I don't even know if I've got a timer long enough to do that. Right. I've got. Yeah. That's a good point. Those little GoPro-y clone type cameras. They do have time lapse functions. I do have those.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But yeah. It's like. And then imagine if you left it there. And if you didn't set it up right. Imagine coming back in six months and going. Oh. Damn.

Chris Gammell: I mean. You could just watch it too. You could just. You know. Take a picture every day.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. So. Yeah. Yeah. You could just leave a camera every day. And then just power it up and manually press the shutter and take a photo. But. You know. But the problem is. I've got so many of them. Right. I got. Like. There's so many. Like. How do you.

Chris Gammell: I figured they'd all be like in one spot. I thought they would.

Dave Jones: Well. I was going to. Well. Before I separated them all into separate boxes. So I had an individual box for each one. Sort of. Like. With a seal. So that it. Simulated being inside a product. Because I thought. Like. There may be some. And when the gas vents. It might. Like. Build up inside. The product or something. And. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So. Yeah. You can tell. I got no clue.

Chris Gammell: I've watched your videos on alkaline stuff in the past. And. I really don't. Know much about them. Other than. You know. My use as a consumer. I don't. Yeah. I don't really know. Same. You know. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting. To. To see. Like how. And I think. Jack Gansel's done some. Some drawdown. Like. He did. He did some. Like. Charting of stuff. At least. I think of. Voltages. And stuff like that. So.

Dave Jones: Anyway. I am. I am determined to eventually get one of these bastards to leak. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You can do it man. I believe in you.

Dave Jones: I can do it. You know. It might take me five years. But. God damn it.

Chris Gammell: I'm going to do it. It's like watching paint dry. But in. You know. Just watching. Watching. Watching. Battery. Fluid dry. Crystallized.

Dave Jones: Anyway. So that's. Yeah. I might. So I'm going to do that for the rest of today. I'm going to set that up. And discharge them. Don't know how long it's going to take to discharge all these batteries. So. I got a lot. A lot to do. So. Like I can string them all in series. Right. But then. I've got to set. Like. And then I can set a constant current discharge of like a hundred milliamps or something. Right. So I can do that. But then. Like. Some of them. Like they're not all the same capacity. Right. So then some of them might actually reverse charge. And so I'd have to monitor the cell voltage on each one. It's not like I can go. Okay. I've got 12 in series. And or 10. In series. And then 10 times 0.8. So I cut it off when it reaches eight volts or something. It's like. Well. One of the cells could have already reversed. Right. So. If you don't know. Batteries can actually reverse charge. You can actually get a negative voltage on a battery. If they're in series inside your product. If you. This is why the manufacturers say. Don't mix and match. You know. Instructions for your products. Say don't mix and match. You know. Half. Half dead cells. With full dead cells. Because if you do that. And I showed this. I demoed this. That's. That's one of the results I did get in my previous video. Was that some of the batteries would actually reverse voltage. Because what happens is one. Because they got different charge rates. So as you discharge them. The one that was only half full. Has now got no charge left in it. So the other battery actually starts to reverse charge. That already dead battery. So it actually reverse charges it. And you end up with an actual negative voltage. On the battery. It's actually quite fascinating. So next time you take old batteries out of a product. Actually measure them. And you might find. If you're lucky. That one of them is actually negative. So. Right. Yeah. It's cool. And no. That doesn't cause leakage. Doing that. So apparently. Got it. That changes the chemical process or something. And I don't know. Yep. It's all too hard. I'm just going to suck it and see. It's one of these things that I really don't know what I'm doing. You know. Yeah. I've done some research. And I know that. It mostly happens when. At the end of charge. When the pressure builds up. So. Do a few variations. Cross my fingers. And. We'll see. But. Murphy will get me. Guaranteed. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: I saw a tweet earlier this week. People who are in Europe. Apparently. Minimum VAT. Has changed. And. Oh. That's not good. So basically. They used to be like. You could get something under 22 euro.

Dave Jones: Ah. And you wouldn't pay VAT. Okay. So you could buy your cheap ass boards. And you could. From China. And you wouldn't pay VAT.

Chris Gammell: And the process. Well the processing fees are apparently what really gets you. Because like. It would be like. You'd have a. You know. A 20. 20 euro thing. But then it'd be like. Like. DHL would. Attack on a 10. 10 euro. Processing. Handling charge. If it's. If they have to charge for VAT. And so. Right. I think it's going to move down. But. Just so people aren't surprised about it. It sucks. I mean. It really sucks. But. Apparently. Maybe write to your. Legislators too. But that's going to suck for people that are like. Buying. Cheap stuff from. AliExpress. Or Alibaba. Or whatever. So. Just so people know.

Dave Jones: Okay. So. When did that change happen? Because I had somebody complain about this. Just. This week.

Chris Gammell: Uh. I saw this. Tweet. Yeah. It was on the 19th. So last week. So. There's an Elector article as well.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Oh. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: It's January 1st. Uh. January 1st. 2021. Maybe. That doesn't seem right. Because that's still a while. But. Yeah. I'll link the article. It's.

Dave Jones: Okay. Right. So it may not have happened yet. Is what you're saying?

Chris Gammell: Uh. It may not have. Yeah.

Dave Jones: In that case. That's our future news of the week.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Right.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Also. Coronavirus is a vaccine.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes. It's just been announced. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Next year. Chris won a Nobel Prize for something. Oh boy.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Right. And I finally got my back in battery leakage results. That's right. Right. Yeah. And the winner is. Dave. Dave got it. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Dave got a energizer to leak a little bit.

Dave Jones: Oh boy.

Chris Gammell: All right, man. Well, hey. Stay safe. Keep your family safe. And to all our listeners. Hope you all stay healthy in isolation. Indeed.

Dave Jones: Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, talk to you next week. Catch you next time.

Speaker ?: Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you.