#506 – Hipster Fodder

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released August 24th, 2020. Episode 506. Hipster fodder.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog. And I'm Chris Campbell of Contextual Electronics.

Chris Gammell: Can't remember this time this early. Yeah, I know. We're recording like a week early. For a very good reason, though. I'm going to be gone for like three weeks.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. You're out of here. Go and walk about.

Chris Gammell: Go and walk about. I'm also, you know, getting married and this is actually my honeymoon. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I'm very excited. Good. Well, Dave, you have a guest you'll have and I think I have one. Hopefully. Yep. In the can as well. So we should continue shows, but there is a possible surface interruption. If so, well, it's for good reason. I think we'll be good. We can handle it. Yeah, I think so too. So what's going on over there in Aussie land?

Dave Jones: I'm still in the process of moving, you know, usual crap.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, slow and steady wins the race, especially when you're, there is no race.

Dave Jones: Well, this brings up an interesting point with all the, you know, chaos and mayhem. He's chaos, I mayhem. It's, you get, you don't get it, do you?

Chris Gammell: No, sorry.

Dave Jones: Never watch Lethal Weapon.

Chris Gammell: Oh, no, no.

Dave Jones: No, you've never watched Lethal Weapon. Oh, well, there you go. Anyway, so yeah, it's an interesting decision because it's an interesting time because of all the chaos and mayhem going around and all the massive loss of business and everything. I've started to notice here in my local business park, like I've been here for 10 years now, right? So that's a long time to get to see trends of office space, right? Because mine's your typical business office park. It's not an industrial type office park. It's more like all just corporate office tower.

Chris Gammell: Lawyers and startups.

Dave Jones: Yeah, lawyers and real estate agents and yeah, whatever, you know, insurance brokers and whatnot. Yeah. All that sort of jazz and yeah, lowly old me. So anyway. Well, we do have ResMed here, you know, ResMed. So we do manufacturing here. ResMed is a huge Aussie. They do sleep apnea devices, you know. Oh, okay. Like CPAP. They're one of the world. Yeah, CPAP stuff. They're one of the world leaders in that sort of thing. And they're in this business park. Oh, cool. Yeah. But apart from that, you know, it's pretty much. That's where a lot of my former colleagues went. They call it the ResMed retirement village because it's one of those places you go to, you have a job for life. You know, you have one of those, you know, big, big, huge monolith of a company.

Chris Gammell: I always wondered how I would fare in one of those places. Like if I would get bored.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but you've worked in Keithley, you know. You've worked in Samsung. Yeah, that's true.

Chris Gammell: It was kind of like, well, Samsung was like a higher pitch kind of. But like, yeah, Keithley was kind of not super fast paced. Yeah, there was like long cycles and yeah, 30 year veterans there, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: Anyway, ResMed retirement village. Anyway, what was I getting at? Yes. So I've been here long enough.

Chris Gammell: Ten your cycle. Ten your cycle.

Dave Jones: So I've been long enough here to see trends and things like that. So I'm now seeing record numbers of office vacancies and for sale signs. Prices aren't dropping. If you want to buy a place, prices don't seem to have dropped. I've mentioned before that like in the last four years since they put in the train line here, like prices just like doubled or went up, you know, two and a half, you know, 250, 300%, something like that. Prices just went crazy. And they don't seem to be coming down yet. But yeah, there's lots of vacancies. So, and this, this comes about because I've talked about this privately with my supporters, right? On the forum and on Patreon as well. And I asked for a poll because I found, because I'm moving out of here, right? My lease is up end of October, right? So I've got to be out of here. I don't want to renew it for another year or two years or whatever. Cause it's, it's pricey, right? It's like, you know, it's, it's like $46,000 a year, right? To be here, right? That's a lot of coin, right?

Chris Gammell: That is a lot of coin. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, but that was offset by the fact that I was renting out my, my, my old lab, right? So I was getting income from that, but they moved it. Right. So it didn't seem like that big of a burden, you know, it sounds like a lot and it is, right? It is a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Business expense. And it feels like it's.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, I've got a window and stuff, you know, so it's like, you know, anyway. So, but that was when I had David working for me full time and I had, I've also got a part-time logistics person as well, handles, handles the packaging and shipping, you know, so we had like two and a half people in here. So a hundred square meters that I've got at the moment sounds, you know, like it's, you know, nice and comfortable. And now that I don't have a full-time employee anymore, it's pretty much just me here. I realized that this hundred square meters I'm paying for, I'm paying good money for is like, it's, you know, it's pretty much wasted, especially when I cleaned up stuff and I go, wow, I do actually have a lot of space. You can see the floor.

Chris Gammell: You can see how much floor space you have. Right.

Dave Jones: Exactly. And I go, yeah, this is just, you know, look, and, and my lease was my two, I've been here for two years. So my lease was coming up and I have an extension in the lease where I can, you know, they can't throw me out. I can choose to extend it. But I've got to make that choice. So I've got to sign up for another longer term lease.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So I've got to make that decision now, or I had to make that decision a while back because you've got to give them three months notice, et cetera. So yeah. So I decided, no, I'll look, look, I'll leave and I'll figure out what else to do. Either go back to my old lab or rent a, like a slightly smaller space, you know? So, and I was going to move back to my old lab, but I just found like a really nice space, which I had my eye on for the last decade. It's become available. It's available. It's one of, but there's vacancies everywhere. There's like four, five in this building. There's five in my old lab building. There's four in this other building that I'm talking about now. And it's my old one where I did my editing in which you've been to with the view of the mountains.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That was, yeah, that was, that's got like seven vacancies or something. So there's no shortage of, no shortage of places available. So anyway, so yeah, I can pick and choose, although finding a good one is hard, you know, one that's suitable, of course. But anyway, I found a real nice one. It's got like floor to ceiling windows and it's got like lots of trees outside and you can see, you know. Anyway, just kind of.

Chris Gammell: I like, I like to watch the squirrels. Squirrels.

Dave Jones: I like to watch the squirrels. Oh, it reminds me of the squirrel on the wire from Ferris Bueller.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, he opens the windows and the squirrel runs across and that was a fake squirrel on a, on a line. Cause they could, they had a real squirrel, but they couldn't prompt it to do the thing. So they had to pull over and get a fake one and just pull it, pull it across on a stream. Oh man. You know, anyway, sorry. They just popped in my head. Yeah. So, you know, and, and it's a reasonable price. It's 70 square meters. So it's sort of like halfway between my old 50 square meter lab and this one at a hundred. So it's sort of, you know, nice and an extra 20 meters goes along, 20 square meters goes a long way. And I thought, oh, look, should I go sign up for another long-term lease and hire that, you know, rent that place and then try and rent out my old one. But the problem is, as I said, so many vacancies.

Chris Gammell: Right. Trying to get anyone to rent out your old one would be tough.

Dave Jones: Rent out my old, my, especially when it's windowless and there's new buildings in this park, which I'm not kidding. Like there's a new building in this park, which has a commercial office building, but it's also does restaurants and residential and stuff. It's got a putting green on the top. It's got a huge infinity pool, which overlooks the mountains. It's got a gym. It's got an outdoor cinema. This is all on the roof. Like, you know, it's kind of anyway, not on the roof.

Chris Gammell: It's kind of sounds like a startup or something, you know, you need to, yeah, it's like, it's

Dave Jones: one of those things. Get the concierge and get the concierge service in the foyer. And, you know, it's all sort of wanky. And, you know, so you're trying to compete against all these ones that at least have a window.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So I suspect that I'm not going to be able to rent that out. So anyway, Mrs. EV blog, she says, no, just move back to the old one and back to the dungeon, David. Yep. And we'll just bide our time, hoard the cash and, you know, save the money. And we'll, if we see one pop up for sale at a bargain basement price, then we might actually upgrade. We might buy a, you know, a bigger one with a window. So, and yeah, anyway, and sell the old one. So that's the plan. So yeah, that's, you know, there's a lot of big decisions to be made there. You know, do you sort of, you know, spend the extra coin and get something that you like, you know, get something that makes you feel good or do you, you know, save the cash in these hard times? And, and, and it was, I took a poll and it was split about 50, 50 down the middle. Half the people said, no, no, you know, you wouldn't actually make it.

Chris Gammell: A decision based on.

Dave Jones: No, I wouldn't, but it's always fun to do. You know, I, I just like, yeah, we, we all know that the real decision lies with Mrs. EEV. That's right.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: Yep. So yeah. So I think I'll, no, I'll just move back to the old place. I don't want to sign up for a new. And the thing is I own it. Right. Every time I walk in there, I go like, I effing own this. Like, you know, no one can do Jack or I can do anything I damn well like.

Chris Gammell: Well, you still have neighbors. So, you know.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, I still have neighbors, you know. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You still, you gotta, you gotta do that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But I, I kind of feel, you know, renting the place. I've rented two different, uh, lab slash offices now. And it's like, eh, it just doesn't feel the same. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It feels like, oh, you can't touch the walls. You can't, you know, you gotta be careful. You spill something on the carpet, you know, cause you'll just have to pay to replace it. Right.

Chris Gammell: You can't, you can't have a huge party and trash the place either. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Rockstar style. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, speaking, speaking of, uh, signing up for things again, I am actually, uh, I forgot to mention this before the show, but I have, uh, I have once again signed up for things. I have signed up for tutoring again. This is a new, a new topic and new tutors. So I have, I have signed up for that. Uh, basically I tried something new based on a friend's suggestion where basically I just posted on Upwork and, uh, I like posted, posted a job on Upwork to basically show me how to do things. Yep. And, uh, and that's what I'm doing now. It's a, it's an interesting idea. I don't know. I don't know how it's going to work out, but I ended up hiring some, uh, two, two guys out of India to show me some stuff with free RTOS and it's been pretty good so far. So.

Dave Jones: Excellent. So, so did you get flooded with responses or was it? Yeah. Have you been on Upwork ever before? No, no, I've never. No. I might've taken a look at it, but I've never really used it.

Chris Gammell: So like I've talked to some people about like kind of getting started on there, like, you know, get some early work and you know, you can't charge a huge amount, but, uh, but some people, I mean, some people are, some people are charging upwards of like 200 bucks an hour on there. Wow. It's interesting. It's like, it really runs, runs the gamut from like 10 bucks an hour. You know, like if you have electronic, I was just looking at electronic space, but like some people are charging 10 bucks an hour and usually are in, you know, lower cost of living areas. Some people are charging 200 bucks an hour and it's like, it is all over the map. Yeah. And, uh, and so it's interesting cause then you get to see. So first, the first thing that strikes me about it is you go in and you're like, wow, there's just a lot of talented people out here just in general, because everybody posts their, they all post their portfolio. They all post their experience and things like that. And, you know, there's always a little bit of bluster. Okay.

Dave Jones: So you can like down, download their portfolio of stuff. Can you, is it like a PDF or something? What are you?

Chris Gammell: Uh, some of them have like links to like Google drive and some of them just have photos and some of them have like testimonials, but you know, in general, it's, it's kind of all over the map and you can kind of find people in different spaces. And, uh, and so yeah, seeing like people doing, you know, some people are, I was mostly looking for firmware as well. So I think it was very specific to that, but some of the people that do firmware also did circuit boards. So, you know, I'd see that in the profile.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But yeah. And like all over the place. So I had like people in, uh, let's see, I had one in Egypt, uh, two or three from India, one from Pakistan, one from Poland, one from Bosnia. I'm seeing a trend here, Chris. What's that?

Dave Jones: Well, this is what I've heard is that this is a race to the bottom. It's pretty much, you know, your lower socioeconomic. Sure.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Not necessarily quality, but definitely. Yeah. I think cost of living areas are, yeah, it's yeah. But I think the other thing too, is that, yeah, you wouldn't get on there. I mean, like if you're trying to charge, if you're like a, what it really comes down to is marketing, I think is like, cause if you're basically, uh, you know, you're trying to build a brand and you, you know, you offer these services, you basically are saying that I charge a premium, but I'm worth it because of this, this, and this, and you don't go on a market system where you have all these comparisons against you. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So I don't post any, I don't post any work of mine on there. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But you're saying there are people, there are premium people on there like that who actually charge a premium price, but in general, it's a race to the bottom. Is that right?

Chris Gammell: I, I think, yeah, well, I think so. I mean, I think, I think really you could, uh, I think I was looking for that because I was looking for like affordable tutoring because I'm looking for stuff that's like at the beginning of the process. Right. So it could have just been that I was looking for, you know, simple enough stuff that yeah, then people. Right.

Dave Jones: You didn't need a premium 30 year guru in RTOS. Exactly. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: If you, if you had like a, if you were like, Hey, I need to do like, uh, you know, a 20 gigahertz design. I mean, first off, it might not, you might not find anyone on, on Upwork, but you might, and you might find someone that's, you know, charging 200, 250 bucks an hour or something like that. So it really is, you know, dependent on what you need to do, I think as well.

Dave Jones: Right. Oh, totally. Yeah. Is there, so what, what are the main platforms for this? Are there other platforms that do the same thing? I mean, there's, you know, Fiverr and stuff like that. Is that the same thing?

Chris Gammell: So Fiverr, Fiverr is, when I think about Fiverr, it's more like a pre, uh, preset. It's like a pre-feek menu, like a pre-feek menu. Pre-can thing.

Dave Jones: It's like, I will design your logo for 20 bucks, you know, kind of thing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And like, and then it's basically it's a, because it's like a bid proposal, you try and get as much out of it as you can, but you, you have pretty low expectations. Really, you know, if you really want to have lots of expectations on Fiverr. Well, I mean, you won't have like, even you won't have that many revisions.

Dave Jones: It's right in the name, like it's right in the name. Right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: It's five bucks, you know. And so I've used Fiverr before and I was, I was pretty underwhelmed, you know, because it's just, so I was doing like, I tried to get like a animation for like a stream, you know, like that's, I thought that was pretty straight ahead. That's something. Oh yeah, no, of course. That's pretty straightforward to get. Yeah. And I, you know, I tried low balling and it just, you know, and I even did like then and like, what they really do is then they do upgrades on there on Fiverr. So you might like go and say, I want a logo, but oh, actually I want three logos to choose from. Yeah. And it's like, you know, and that's another 20 bucks and whatever. Yeah. It adds up. Yeah. Yeah. It's basically, it's just, there's just people trying to churn, churn through the low, the low end work and then trying to like upsell on other stuff. And then on Fiverr too, it's like, do you want to leave a tip for your person? The person that does work for you? It's like, oh, that's, I did not expect that.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Okay. They hit you that at the end of the.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I think anyways, I would rather just hire someone hourly, but the hard thing is always like the reason that you really want to hire someone is because you know, they're going to get it done the right the first time. And, and that, you know, you have confidence that it's competent work and it's almost just impossible to do that from a market system. Right. You can't possibly prove yourself well enough on a market system. Whereas if, you know, if someone recommends a consultant to me to do some work for me, I'm like, oh, well they've, they've done this specific thing.

Dave Jones: They've done this for Joe blogs.

Chris Gammell: So yeah, exactly. For a friend. Well, like say you suggested someone to me, it's like, oh, they've done this work for Dave. He, he vouches for them. He's seen their work. He's worked with them. He knows that they're easy to work with and that they're efficient, all these other things. And it's just like, there's that human element. That's really, really hard, I think, to replicate on a marketplace system. That all said, I've been giving it a shot. I mean, yeah, someone's got to give a shot at some point. So the guys that I'm giving a shot to have been very good so far.

Dave Jones: Excellent.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah.

Dave Jones: See, that's something that I want to get into as well. Like I want to, you know, hire people to do similar kind of things and, you know, and possibly even teach me to do stuff as well. So I might be looking for similar things and hence why, you know, I think it's better to, you know, hoard, hoard the cash, you know, so that I have money in the business to do this sort of thing, you know, so I can spend money on services like this.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think the, the thing that was most exciting, I really started to think about it. Like, okay, so, you know, you can effectively learn anything like, and, and this has been really, uh, has, has come to the forefront for, for my style specifically. Like, so I've been looking at this free RTOS code and these, these two guys that are helping me out, basically them just like walking through examples with me for something. It just like unlock two guys.

Dave Jones: Are you, Oh, sorry. Wait, why is there two? Are you hedging your bets? That one's totally. Yeah. If one sucks. Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I actually had three. And the first one, actually one already fell off because they said they were an individual, but they're actually, uh, like there was a product man, project manager. And it was like a group of four and it's like, I, I just want to deal with the individual that I'm talking to.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Of course. No. Yeah. You don't want to, they're obviously some service farm or something. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, yeah. For want of a better term.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, I'd say like a professional group would be the nice way to say it. Right. Okay. And it's like, and it was, it was like, I was talking to the project manager and he's like, yeah, we have two hardware guys or sorry, one hardware person, two firmware people and like an Apple and a Android app developer. And from that perspective, like I actually like really get it. Like, can you imagine like going to a group like that and being, and not having any like experience in hardware or anything and just being like.

Dave Jones: Yes. And then they've got somebody to do the job, but yeah, you'll, you'll go into us. Yeah. It's a different thing to what you want. You just want to deal with an individual. You want all the money to go to the individual. That's right. And you want to deal with the individual. You just don't want any fluff.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yep. Yeah. And I want like direct experience. That's the other thing too. Like I want a direct experience in free RTOS on NRF 52. Right. That's what I was specifically looking for.

Dave Jones: And that's what I ended up getting, which is, and you found someone that's, that's pretty specific.

Chris Gammell: Right. I mean, no, I found people that were like, you know, multiple years of experience just doing that. Like based on, and then some of the jobs are listed on their profile as having like, Hey, you know, this guy had done this job for me using free RTOS on an NRF 52. So like that, from that perspective, that is the benefit of a marketplace system. Right.

Dave Jones: Oh, of course. Yeah. See, I would have thought, I would have guessed if you said to me, ha, I'm going to go to WeWork and I'm going to find someone who does free RTOS and are, you know, on this chip. And I go, nah, the odds of finding that are zip.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's pretty popular, but yeah. I mean, yeah, you're right. It's, it is, it is very specific.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: But yeah. So like, I started like thinking about it, like, man, like think of all the things you could learn, especially because them just kind of like working me through this stuff. And I think I have to have a very specific expectation on like, you know, how they teach, but in terms of like me being able to just ask questions, like it's almost like a, you know, having like a really intelligent Google. Right. But it's just that person with their experience.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: You know, just hiring a piano teacher anyways. Right. Like most of the time when I had, when I had a piano teacher, I've talked about this when I hired firmware people last time, it worked out really well, I think too, because it was like, I ran into a problem and I want to like build up my questions over the week and then talk to them on my weekly sessions and like, just get all the questions out. And sometimes that, that question list goes away because it's, I'm just, you know, I find the answer some other way or whatever, but having that as a backstop, it like, it was really good for my learning style.

Dave Jones: The thing here is though, is that just because somebody is brilliant at doing a job does not mean they can teach it. Even if they think they can, right. They, oh yeah, I can teach you. This look, oh, no worries. You know, I'll teach you this in 10 minutes. And it's like, no, they're just shit at teaching. They just like, it's a, it's a specific skill. You know, there's nothing wrong like with somebody who can't teach. That's fine. You know, you can be the most brilliant person in the world. Right. But you can't teach. You could be Einstein, but if you're not a good teacher, you know, then that's, yeah, it doesn't automatically translate.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think that's on the learner. And I think I have a little advantage in this way because I've read a lot of books about education theory. And like, you know, like I teach others and I think that like, I have very specific stuff where I want to do it. Like, yeah, if someone was just like, yeah, I'm just going to talk at you for an hour. I'm that's not going to help me specifically my, my learning style, but because I know my learning style, because I know like I need to have hands-on examples. No one is surprised by this. You'd have hands-on examples. I need to have, me to be able to ask directed questions after the fact. And yeah, I think it's.

Dave Jones: You've, you've almost got to try. If you can't, like it's, I'd say it's reasonably rare to find somebody who can, who, a teacher who can actually read what, sort of understand naturally what you want. They can get a gist for what you want and what your, you know, how it's, you know, as, as they go along, how, how to tailor, adapt and tailor it to your specific circumstance. I think that's particularly rare. So it, it probably falls upon the, the student to actually have that skill to try and extract it out of them rather than, you know, you can't just assume that they're going to be good at giving you what you want. You've got to extract it out.

Chris Gammell: So I agree. I agree. Yeah. I think. And the other thing too, is like breaking down, breaking down, you know, like when you really get into like skills and things like that too, like breaking things down into like component parts, that's also very difficult. And again, like that, that's what the best teachers do. They recognize like, Oh, Chris is always having problems with this type of, you know, C code. And like, I should really go in, like assign him some drills around that so that he can, and then like, you know, structuring drills. And that's really like the best parts of like educational theory. I think not the best parts, but like, that is a key, key element. And I think that's the, the piece where a lot of people would just be like, Oh, well, you suck at this thing. You should not suck at this anymore. Okay.

Dave Jones: And, and it can work both ways. It can work because the, either the, it can work because the teacher sucks or it can be worked because the student sucks at, you know, it's sort of all both, you know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I wouldn't, I wouldn't assume if you're thinking about doing this sort of stuff that you're going to have a positive result like Chris has. So.

Chris Gammell: Well, maybe. Yeah. I mean, I think it's worth trying.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, no, it's certainly worth trying, but don't be surprised if, you know, somebody doesn't give you exactly what you want.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think the other thing that's been interesting about this experience specifically is that like both the first time I did this, you know, however many months ago that was, and I guess I'm probably was like almost a year ago now. And then this time, this time was even better because the first time I did, I, you know, I put out a call like, Hey, I think I want to get some tutoring help. And like all these people were very, very nice. And they said, Oh, I want to, you don't have to pay for it. You know, I'll just show you some things. And I want a very specific skin in the game paid contract kind of thing. I want it to be like a piano lesson. I show up, we go through things. I leave. I give you money when I leave. You know what I mean? Like it needs to be like very transactional. Yep. And I, and it has to be like very regular, I think as well that again, just, just for my style. And I think being able to like have, there's been no marketplace for this sort of thing. And it's basically, I'm just kind of bending the marketplace really, which is for work. I get that. Like people, you know, want full-time work and I get that, but it's basically bending that market towards a more learning bent kind of thing. And I think that's kind of interesting, but I'm curious for you, Dave, what are you looking to learn?

Dave Jones: Well, I'll just, I'll, we'll get onto that in a minute.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: So I just want to extend on that point there. I've like had maintaining my forum, for example, you know, I've got a, I've got a, you know, a penguin nerd who maintains my websites and my servers and my forum and, you know, everything else for me. And he was doing that just because he's a fan and he's a user of the forum, right? He's been doing that for Knicks, right? And I thought, you know, I eventually like thought, nah, look, I, I should be paying him to do this. Right. Because that's actually his, his, his professional job. He's actually doing, you know, he's maintaining service and things like that. So I contacted him the other, a couple of months back and I said, Hey, you know, look, I really should be, I'd feel better if I was paying you for this, you know? So it's more, you know, like, and as you know, a similar sort of situation, you said, Oh, they had people offer to, uh, you know, help you out for free. It's like, eh, thanks.

Chris Gammell: You know, but you wanted it more sort of, I think you want to, you want to lever to pull, you want a knob to turn, like you want to be able to have something where you, you know, if you have, if you have no, if you have no monetary exchange, you have no power in this, in the transaction. Right.

Dave Jones: Yes, exactly. And I felt guilty. Like, right. Well, there's that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the forum falls over at midnight, you know, I feel guilty, you know, contacting him and say, Hey, you know, the forums, you know, it's like, so yeah. Yeah. So I ended up, you know, and he said, no, look, I'm happy. And he happened to still do it, you know, for free and stuff like that. And I said, no, look, I really want to pay, you know? Yeah. So yeah. Yep. So I'm paying someone.

Chris Gammell: I think that kind of like transactional thing too. I think it's, yeah, it's, it's changed my outlook on, I think it's also because like I'm getting paid by the hour now too. And like, I specifically because of that. So yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Changes things. Yeah. This contracting gig, huh?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, Dave, come on. What are you going to learn? I want to know.

Dave Jones: Oh, I did. Well, there's all sorts of things. I want to learn a CAD. I want to learn mechanical CAD.

Chris Gammell: Oh, mechanical. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Mechanical CAD. That's one of the things I want to learn.

Chris Gammell: I think that's actually a really good one to start with too, because there's a very clear difference, right? In that case. And you could say the same thing for my stuff too. There are tons of tutorials out there, right? And you can go and follow those tutorials. However, that's a very different experience. I think like people would say, well, why wouldn't you just go use the tutorial? But that's a different experience. I think.

Dave Jones: I can imagine it is. Yeah. Rather than sitting on a Skype call, sharing a desktop with someone talking in real time and going, oh, why did you go? Oh, is this option up here? Oh, can you do it this way? And they'll go, no. And they'll explain why. And it's like, oh, you know, that's just like, yeah, you can't beat that instant feedback.

Chris Gammell: Right. And there's literally things in there that you could not Google for if you tried your entire life. You could spend every waking second trying to figure out how to Google for like, why does a fillet need to be this, you know, like this minimum radius or something silly like that, right? Right. But you can just literally ask in that case.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And you can have the response back in seconds, you know? Yeah. It's just, yeah, there's no beat in that. So yeah, it's well worth paying for.

Chris Gammell: What else? Come on.

Dave Jones: What? Okay.

Chris Gammell: I wish I could learn. So I've been trying to figure this out. I wish I could get better. Maybe not. I don't need it. Maybe I don't need a tutor. I'd really like to tutor. But like, I want to get better at applying solder paste. And I've thought actually, I'd really like a low cost solder paste application machine using a standard stencil.

Dave Jones: I posted on my forum a couple of months back. Did you really? Does anyone know about like a low-ish cost, you know, automated, you know? Squeegee robot. Yeah. The thing with the pedal and the pump, right? You know, it's got a pedal on the floor. So, you know, one of those and it, you know, it comes up and it dispenses your, and it gives you a set amount of solder paste each time, or you can dial in how much solder paste you want. And it'll, you know. Okay.

Chris Gammell: So you're saying syringe method. You're saying like that.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, what one were you talking about? I was talking about squeegeeing, squeegeeing very, you know, like how, like when you send it off to like a full panel off to assembly house, they have the machine that squeegees like robotically. The squeegee.

Dave Jones: I've got videos of that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: And it's like, yeah, we'll, we'll link that into it. It's super, it's super conformal, not conformal. It's a super. Consistent. Like level. Yeah. Consistent. That's it. And yes, I suck at that.

Dave Jones: But, but you can't adjust. The only way you can adjust that is to literally adjust the thickness of the stencil and all the aperture opening.

Chris Gammell: Right. This is not those problems though. The problem is that it's, it's the, it's the fixturing. That's the problem. Like, so the fixturing.

Dave Jones: The fixturing where you tape it down.

Chris Gammell: I know. I just, I suck at that apparently. Like, like, so this is. I think part of the problem is, and maybe the part of the problem is I, I continue to order. I keep getting scared of frameless stencils because I've sliced my fingers so badly. So many times. Oh, right. Okay. On the stainless. So I started just ordering the, the frame stencils then. And then there's a, uh, at M hub.

Dave Jones: But they're harder to use. Cause they're like, they've got frames on them and it's like, you've got a, like, no, it's the frame. Um, the frameless ones are easier because all you do I've shown a video showing this. You just get some blank PCB scraps, which forms an L shaped thing and your wedge board in there. So it's the same thickness. And then your wedge board in, you tape it all down and then you tape your stencil on top because then it's all, cause you don't want it going over the edge stencil going over the edges of the ball. Cause then it bows up. Right. So you want it, you want it all flat and then you tape it all down and then you swipe it across. If your little plastic squidgy credit card or your little, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I know. I just, I want, I, I want to use, I want the frames to be better. I want the frame ones to be better. I guess maybe that's the real problem is that I keep getting the frame ones, but like for those, I still.

Dave Jones: But they're so big and. I mean, they're made for machines, right? I want like a little cost machine. They're made for the big machine. Oh no, you don't want it. No, you don't want to go that far.

Chris Gammell: That's. Well, I have a machine. So at M hub, they have like, not a machine. It's just like literally just the counterweighted like thing that basically clamp it in. And then it, you know, it kind of like levers down over top of the boards. Right. And I keep trying that, but like, yeah. So maybe the real answer here is Chris should just use a frameless stencil, but. Yes.

Dave Jones: That would be my advice. Frameless stencil and just have a dedicated bunch of, you know, PCBs on a, like on, on a board that you can just put away when you're not using a hard board, when you're not using it and then tape it all down. And it's, it, it really is quite easy, but yeah, you've got to do it. Like you can't do it half assed. As I said, you can't just put your board on your bench and, you know, stick it down with a bit of blue tack or something and tape, and then put your stencil over the top of that. Cause it just bows off the edges. You've got to have a nice thing that keeps it all completely flat. Otherwise you get a bleed, you know, if it's, if there's any bow at all in your stencil, then you'll get the pace going underneath and it just, I just wish it was all easier.

Chris Gammell: That's what I'm really trying to say, Dave. I just want it to be. It's, you know, there is, there is a solder paste printer. I want, I want that.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, they're, they're very nice. The solder paste dispensing machines. Yeah. I think you can get one for like 10 grand or something. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's yeah. Yeah. But they're very slow. Like they're, they're designed for like, you know, thousand pin BGA rework type things, you know, where it, okay, you need to do a thousand dots and you don't want to do a custom stencil for it. So you just, you just program it in or shove your Gerbers in there and it, and it, you know, solder paste your, you know, and then it just dispenses. It's an XY table, which goes around and then just dispenses a set amount on each pad. And it's like, it's very flexible, but it's very slow. You know, it takes ages. So it's not, you know, it's good for like one-off prototypes and things, but apart from that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't, you wouldn't use it on a production level.

Dave Jones: No, no. Or even small volume production, like 10, you know, if you're doing 10 boards, it's like, you know, yeah. So that's not really a thing. I don't think you'll find anyone with their own automated solder paste dispensing machine, like XY table dispensing machine. It's just, yeah. Because it is easy using solder paste stencils is easy, but you've just got to go to the effort to have like a, just a dedicated board set up that does the job.

Chris Gammell: You know, I think maybe what I really need to do is to start taping the edge of my stencils so that I don't slice my finger open. Cause I have really sliced the crap out of my, it wasn't even my finger. It was my hand. Pay attention. Oh, it was terrible.

Dave Jones: Come on. You're not in kindy anymore.

Chris Gammell: You're, I mean, it was just how they, how they were sitting in like the, my roll around cart at work and like, yeah, I just slammed right into it and slice.

Dave Jones: Oh dear. Oh dear.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yep. All right. Can we talk about lost information?

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: Because, come on, that was a little bit more excitement, Chris, a little bit more excitement. Yeah. Dave, let's talk about lost information. Why the hell are we talking about it already? Come on. Oh, because, oh, well, we got sidetracked on bloody learning again, didn't we? On other stuff. Damn it.

Chris Gammell: How are we talking about learning?

Dave Jones: We just recycle the same stuff. Anyway, yeah, this lost, the sheer volume of lost information out there hit, hit home the other day when I thought, hey, there's this old 1980s circuit, circuit textbook.

Chris Gammell: Finally, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Oh, you do. Okay. Right.

Dave Jones: I thought we discussed this briefly before the show. Yeah. My brain. Yeah. All right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Anyways, go ahead. Sorry.

Dave Jones: Anyway, this was brought home to me by, there's this 80s textbook. You know, circuit design textbook out there, which has been out of print since the late 80s. Right. And I thought, hey, you know, and I sort of had a look around for it. I couldn't find it anywhere. Like I have a physical copy of it. Right. And it couldn't find it anywhere. There's no PDFs. There's no nothing. Right. There's the odd reference to it. You can't even get like a screenshot of the front cover. Right. There's absolutely nothing out there.

Chris Gammell: I equated it to like when a record company decides not to put a vinyl album onto them. They don't digitize it. And then you just.

Dave Jones: They don't digitize it. It's stuck in the vinyl world forever.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: It's, you know, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's hipster fodder, Dave. It's hipster fodder.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. There's 10,000 copies out there, but they're in, you know, basement drawers. As long as they last.

Chris Gammell: You know, they're there until they're gone.

Dave Jones: Anyway. So I thought, hey, you know, it'd be cool if I like maybe could get rights in because I kind of liked it. So, and I thought it'd be a good basis for a textbook that I could, hey, maybe I could like get rights to republish that and let like, and then add onto it and extend it and actually publish a textbook, you know? Yeah. Actually, actually published a book. So I contacted the, well, I tried to find the author, could not find the author anywhere. Right. Couldn't find any information. I spent some time on it. And so I contacted the publisher and they're, they're around still an Australian publisher. I contacted them and they said, we don't know anything about this. It's like, huh? It's like, this was 30 years ago, 35 years ago. We don't, I'm sorry. But yeah, try and find the author, you know? So I spent more time finding the author, finally found the author. I was thrilled. And then I went, oh, and then I found some information on another book he published, which had his age in there. He was born in 1930. And it was like, oh, okay. I'm doing the running numbers in my head. If he's still around, he's 90. Right. Anyway, I finally found, he lives here in Sydney. Right. And I finally found, I finally found his address and I found a phone number. So I went, damn it. I'm going to cut like, and, and it's a retirement, you know, it's like a retirement place, you know? And so I thought, oh, bugger it. I'll call this up. And I called up the number and it was him. I got him. That's great. He's still here. I finally found him. And yep, he's 90 years old. And anyway, absolutely fantastic.

Chris Gammell: So what's his, what's his backstory?

Dave Jones: Oh, uh, backstory is, um, you know, an old engineer used to, um, teach electronics here in, um, Sydney. And yeah, yeah. He's a former teacher and he wrote this textbook, uh, way, way back in the eighties. Since then he's gone on to write a few alternative physics books, let's say, you know, he's gotten into, you know, like, yeah, like I'm, I'm going to prove there's, you know, like Einstein was wrong kind of, you know, or something, something like that, you know, anyway, he's got some theory and he's published some other book about, yeah. Alternative physics that explains. Alternative physics. Yeah. All right. You know, there is an ether. Well, he's got a, you know, he's got some new theory about anyway. I don't know exact details, but I thought that was funny.

Chris Gammell: Wait, the circuit book sounds good. So let's just stick on that.

Dave Jones: Anyway. So yeah, the circuit book. And so I, so I talked to him and he said, oh yeah, they actually contracted me to actually write that book. The publishing company contracted him to write it, but technically he still holds the copyright, but they hold the publishing rights. And then there's probably so. And there's a person who did the illustrations. They were probably contracted by, they'd hold copyright on those. And then they were contracted by the publishing company. And so anyway, so he said, oh, look, sorry, I can't really do anything for you. You're going to have to, you know, talk to the publishing company. Really, they're the ones who probably like have republishing rights or whatever still, you know? So I went back to them and they, and I gave them all the contact details and they said, look, nah, look, it's so old. We have like no idea if we'd have any of the original information. And really they didn't even know who to contact within the company who would even know if they still had the old files or knew anything about the contract that they signed with him or anything like that.

Chris Gammell: Do they even have the paper, the literal paper that is still there?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Or, you know, back in, what, what, what was in mid 85? I know you weren't even born then, were you? I was born then. Yes. Oh, you were born then, but yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Not, not very conscious. Not very computer literate back then. That's right. Yes. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, so it would have been like maybe WordStar, maybe on DOS.

Chris Gammell: Oh, because it was actually a publishing, publishing program like that. It wasn't like a, like a traditional layout or anything like that. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, it was a, yeah. I, well, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Like typeset or something like that, you know?

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. How they do all typeset. No, it says in the book, actually, it says typeset in times, English times or something. So maybe it was, you know, I like how, what format would all the drawings have been in? How would they have, would they have used a desktop, would even desktop publishing programs around then? Like, you know, barely.

Chris Gammell: Right. Would they have gone to a, you know, a publishing company for EE textbooks as well? Like, yeah. Oh, it's just. Are the drawings are hand drawn or are they what?

Dave Jones: No, no. They look computer, you know, drafted, you know? Okay. So yeah, they just like, they just threw their hands up and went, look, you know, nah, sorry. Like too hard. Let's just not go there. And then they said, look, if you want to publish a book, we'll just like, you know, let's start from scratch. So yeah. So yes, I am thinking about writing a textbook from scratch now. So yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, geez. There you go. That's how it happens, I suppose. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's, that's how it happens, you know? So yeah, I'm a bit excited about that now. So anyway, but that, that's lost information, right? How many things that weren't, you know, we, we used to, okay, if it doesn't turn up in Google, it doesn't exist.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. It's like, have you ever worked at a company that had, well, I'm sure you have, but like the, you know, you go back and back and back and like the, the PLM or like the system that has like all the digitalized, digital drawings. And at a certain point you're like, oh, all these are just scanned. There's, there's nothing that you know, like, and, and then sometimes it's just a reference to a file cabinet and you're like, oh, okay. I guess I'm going into the cabinets. Dude.

Dave Jones: I'm, I'm serious. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That was, that was half of my career. That was it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Look, it wasn't that long ago. I'm talking mid early two thousands. Right. Where, so we're talking within the last 20 years, I've worked at big military companies who were, yes, we had these, like everything was done on these A3 size graph sheets. Right. Hand, hand drawn on these A, you know, and you would stick things in. So you, you do things on computers. Right. So you'd like, you know, you draw your circuits and everything, but you would even, you would even, you would print them out and then you would stick them. You would glue them onto these graph sheets, which all had, you know, numbered. And it was all like a, it wasn't a Dewey desktop system, but they.

Chris Gammell: But like a.

Dave Jones: No, no, no. These were giant project folders. Right. So a project had these dedicated folders, each section, you know, each subsection would have its own folder and things like that. And you would have to put all the original information. And then we had archivist people whose job was to actually duplicate those. So, so you had a master set of documents and folders, and then you would have the duplicate set. So if you just wanted to go look something up and maybe, you know, have a play with it, take it back to your desk or whatever, you would get the duplicate set. Cause the master set is the master set. You know, it's like, you know, you don't touch the master set unless you put in new information into it. Right. And then the archivist would keep these copies up to date. Right. And different teams that have their own copies of all these, like, like dozens of these huge A3 size. I don't know what that is in you weird Yankee format, but probably tabloid, like 11 by 17

Chris Gammell: or similar.

Dave Jones: Tabloid by 17 sounds right. Yeah. Yeah. Large tabloid.

Chris Gammell: What's the A3 actual size? Do you know?

Dave Jones: I don't know. It's like two A2s, right?

Chris Gammell: Is that how it goes?

Dave Jones: It's half an A2.

Chris Gammell: Half an A2. Oh, A2 equals size.

Dave Jones: Two A3s equals an A2.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, then that's probably the size of an eight by eight and a half by 11. And then if that's the, yeah, A2 is probably like a tabloid. Yeah. It's a stupid system. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I forget the exact size. Anyway. Yeah. It's, it's larger than a, it's double the size of a standard, you know, A4.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Sheet. Anyway. So yeah, these large folders and everything. This was like, this was within the last 20 years. This is in the 2000s, right? We still had this. Even though we did everything, did stuff on computer, it would ultimately be archived and stored in physical form in these binders. Yeah. Because that's just, that's just the system they had. You know, that's just how it's done.

Chris Gammell: You're not saying it's just because it's a military contract. You're saying it's because they just needed paper records for some reason.

Dave Jones: Oh, they needed paper records and that's how they've always done it. And that was probably how they're audited when, when, you know, the military come around and audit, you know, that we're doing things right. You know, you've got to show them that you have all the project folders. And if there, anything's, uh, you know, secret, they would go in the cabinet, they would go in the locked cabinets, you know, if anything was classified secret or whatever, you know, it's all.

Chris Gammell: I have, I have an acquaintance who works in a military program and he actually works in one of those rooms where like no document leaves the room. You want to work on a document? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have to be in the room to work on the document. And there's like four computers in there. And I was like, it's like the room in, uh, the first mission impossible, you know, where the, like the floor turns, turns his color. And he's like, yeah, it's pretty much like that actually.

Dave Jones: Yep. It's all. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's pretty cool. And kind of, that sounds like terrible, but, but you get a lot of, a lot of work done like that. Like there's no, there's no checking your phone. There's no checking the, you know, distractions.

Dave Jones: No, there's no windows to look out of. There's no, you know, exactly.

Chris Gammell: See, there you go, Dave. That's why you go back to the window.

Dave Jones: I know that I was just about to say, that's why I have to go back to the old lab. There's no window. I'm looking out the window right now. I'm just staring out the window. I know. Wasted time, man. Wasted time. Totally wasted seconds there.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right.

Dave Jones: Yep. Seconds of productive time that I could be writing my textbook, you know. That's right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh boy. It'll be interesting to hear if you go through with that. That's something I would. Yeah. I'd say start, start with a short one, you know, start with a short one. Yeah. Right. Work your way up to it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: See, this way, this is why I thought, you know, I can cheat the system. I could take an existing one, which I thought was okay. And then, you know, which is out of print and nobody cares about it anymore. And I can sort of extend that and build on that.

Chris Gammell: Breathe new life into it.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. You know, that'd give me the jumpstart. Oh, look, I'm 50% finished. Because I just, yeah. Right off the bat, that would have been nice. But yeah. Lost information. So yeah. Like if I went back to that company now, I reckon they wouldn't have scanned in any of that.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Like they wouldn't have scanned it to. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, if you would have to go back, you know, and you would have to go back and physically, I'm sure that like, they would not have tossed those out. Definitely. Like they would still be like archive properly, but you could, and you could get them. But yeah. I mean, they're, they're just physical paper copies. Yeah. Yeah. And that's it. They're the master copies. Yeah. Glue, glue and scissors were my main, two main tools at that company. You know? Yeah. Seriously. I was just, yep.

Chris Gammell: Well, speaking of military companies, you would, we had, we have a link on the show notes today about SBIR and, and you hadn't heard of it before. And it's kind of interesting. It's, this is called, you know, it's a very sensationalized title called how to access the America seed fund, the $3 billion SBIR program. But you'd, you'd never heard of SBIR before.

Dave Jones: No. What's the sample?

Chris Gammell: Small business innovation research. Right. And basically there's a mandate somewhere in government code for the U S that basically some amount of research can't just go to big military contractors or, you know, large contractors. In general, it has to actually go to a small business. And then I think there's also some, some, some regulations too, to try and, you know, minority owned women owned businesses as well, veteran owned businesses. So it basically helps to spread R and D money to like, to companies that wouldn't get a shot otherwise. Smaller companies.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's a really good idea.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's actually really good. Although three, three billions are dropping the bucket compared to what. Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. Right.

Chris Gammell: But it's a big deal to like small companies, but it's not a big deal to like the big companies. And yeah, it's the first time I'd heard about this, I actually brought it up on the show before, but it was the first technical conference I'd ever gone to. Like I, I went, came to Chicago for the sensors conference and he was like ESC and the sensors conference was here. And they used to have a Chicago version. And I got on a bus from Cleveland. I paid for it all myself. And I, you know, pretended, I pretended the amp hour was enough of a journalistic enterprise. And they're like, so like a podcast, huh? Okay. Well, can you show us your traffic? I'm like, okay. And they're like, yeah. Oh, really? You have to show them your traffic. Wow. It's fine. Whatever. And then they give me a free pass and yeah, I get to go in. And so one of the sensor expo things, I remember sitting in this thing in this presentation and it was a guy who was doing, I think it was an 802.15.4, you know, sensors, but they were on, they were stress sensors on the rotors of a helicopter. So these things actually whipped around at, at the, you know, helicopter frequency. And then they transmitted back the actual stress on the helicopter. And the guy was talking about how like, yeah, this is an SBIR grant. And you know, that's, these are like Apache Tomahawk helicopters or something like that. And I was just like, that is so cool. First off, you would never think to have that, that yourself anyways. You never like be like, no, I guess I'll just look at carbon fiber, stress and strain on a Apache helicopter, you know, the rotor. And then also the fact that it was funded. Yeah. That's like super cool in both directions. So that was my first exposure to it. And then I started asking around about it. And I think it was Greg Charvat who told me the best way to do it is to get as a, like a subcontractor on another SBIR grant, right? Because it's so hard to get your foot in the door. Once you get one, you'll start to get more. But that first one is really, really hard to do. And so if you can be a subcontractor, first off, you'd work with someone who already knows what they're doing. But then also I think you can refer to that in future ones and saying, I was a sub on SBIR, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, whatever the number is.

Speaker ?: Got it.

Chris Gammell: And yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You've got your bona fides.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yep. Nice. And so then there's different phases, pretty standard kind of like development process, basically phase one, two, three. And basically, let's see, it's awards range from tens of thousands over $200,000. And it's like a short proof of concept. And then there's like a two-year period, like a longer. And then finally, phase three is like actually making it in mass production. And it's not just military either. There's also like NIH grants. I think some of them go through there, like the Institutes of Health and similar, like, you know, it's usually technology focused. And it's hard, but you can go and actually look up what's on there. Oh, NASA, NOAA, the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, DOE, Energy. So like there's tons of really cool things on there. And some of them are so specific that it'll like, it'll knock your socks off. So yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, the NIST is on there. NIST.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The Institute of Standards and Technology.

Dave Jones: National Institute of Standards. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's closed.

Dave Jones: Oh. Oh. Boo-hoo. 2020 phase one. Well, 2020 is half over, I guess. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: There was like a clearing site that I remember looking at at one point. It was like a .gov site. And like, you can just like scroll down it. Oh, yeah. SBIR.gov. And you can just like scroll down all of the opportunities that are on there. And like, there is some wonky stuff out there. So it's fun to go look at. And usually you need to have like a pretty sizable team too. So it's definitely.

Dave Jones: But be careful. It's what you want. Like, don't just go for the money grab. Be careful it's something that you do actually want to do. And can, you know, do. Because I actually thought about applying for a grant once. It was for a, it was a video, like a film, you know, film industry grant. Oh, okay. Yeah. And it was, you know, anyone who wants to do some sort of documentary type thing. So I thought, you know, so I discussed it with Carl von Moller, who does the state of electronics. He's a filmmaker. Right. That's right. So I thought, hey, you know, maybe we can team up. We could. Yeah. Because he's a professional filmmaker. So he's got the bona fides to, you know, me. I just make crappy YouTube videos. Yeah. Right. Right. And, you know, and we discussed actually going around the country, actually doing some sort of, we didn't really have an idea, but some sort of documentary on the electronics industry or, or the, I don't know, engineering industry or something, you know. So, you know, we thought about doing this and then we sort of realized, okay, if we get our $150,000, shit, we're going to actually have to do this. Which means we both have to like, like take time off, travel around the country, which, which would be fun. Right. But, but we've both got families. We've both got other commitments. Right. We can't just like, and then in the end we realized, oh shit, no, it's like, it's six to nine months, you know, full-time work or something to do all this. And like, and we just can't do it, even if we got the grant. Right. Right. So, you know, it's just like, yeah, it'd be fun, but like, it's just not practical. Cool. So we sort of, yeah, went, nah, nah. So yeah, bummer. So just be careful what you wish for, I guess, you know, then you might have to go through it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The, I was trying to think of other people who've done this before. So Zach Ferdin and Joe Berto, who did the NeuroTinker. He was, Zach was a episode 330. He also got an SBIR and he did like educational. So basically they did like a Neuron toy basically for educational toy. And yeah, so that was cool. And I think that was an educational grant. And then I think Michael Osman as well. I think the, I think the Hack RF one or maybe the Uber Tooth one, one of those I think was also on an SBIR grant. But yeah, it's just kind of cool because it's, it is, he's kind of open. Sometimes they're kind of open like, and.

Dave Jones: Well, that was going to be my question. Like, because this is public funding, right? Do, do the results of the, you know, the research or the thing, like, can you use it for commercial purposes? Or do you have to be, or does it have to be published open? You know, can you do, do all the thing and then keep it a secret and then become a billionaire?

Chris Gammell: No, I don't think you can keep it a secret and become a billionaire. You probably could become a billionaire, but I think it's usually, I think you retain the rights. I think you retain the rights to the actual invention and things like that. You can file patents against it. I could be wrong. Oh, really?

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. All right. But I'm pretty sure you retain the rights, but I think they have exclusive contract to it for a certain amount of time. Okay. Got it. Yeah. So, so basically that you have to provide it for the, the entity that, you know, is funding you, of course, but then I think you can then spend it off.

Dave Jones: Right. So if they, so you have to, you give them first rights and then they probably, if they turn it, I would be guessing if they turn it down, then you're free to go elsewhere. Or. Yeah. It's the famous Apple thing. Like it's the famous, you know, Steve Jobs worked at HP and his contract at Hewlett Packard. He worked in the calculator department at HP actually designing calculator chips. And his, his contract with Hewlett Packard said that every, you know, that he has to give them first rights to ideas that he comes up with. Right. So then, so of course he had designed the Apple one. Right. And then he, and then he realized, oh crap, we can't just go make this. I have to give the, I have to give the rights to the, well, the first rights to Hewlett Packard. So he took in his Apple one into Hewlett Packard and put it on the desk in front of him and said, this is my computer that I invented. Do you want this? And it was secretly hoping they'd say no. And they went, nah, nah, fine. Yeah. Go away. You know? And anyway, yes. So. Yep. HP actually. Yeah. They, they turned down the Apple one, but he legally had to give them first rights. So maybe similar sort of thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm not sure. Yeah. So I would, I would recommend, I think it's interesting just to kind of go and browse through the SBIR.gov just to see what, kind of see what's out there too. Like see what people are looking for.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So it's kind of cool. And it could be, could be a good way to fund research for your company. Usually it's going to be, you know, you're going to have a company first. It's not like you're going to, most people aren't forming companies and then building this stuff. So.

Dave Jones: Right. So can you approach them with a, just some.

Chris Gammell: Like a proposal.

Dave Jones: Far out there idea. Or is there a list of stuff they want done?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The list of stuff is like the SBIR.gov.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. So, so there's specific things. So you can't. Right. So you can't. Some of them are more open-ended though. Interesting. Right. Oh, okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: So like, so Zach and Joe, they did one where it was like, I think on a pretty open, like like STEM education. Right. And so they got funded through that. And then, oh, that was another thing. So I remember Zach said that there was limitations on how much they could then pay their subcontractors as well. And I think there are, there are some pretty stringent standards there. So you can't like go and. I think the reason they have those standards is because, you know, someone wins a grant. And they, they go and hire a contractor.

Dave Jones: On Fiverr. Well, no, no. The other direction. The, the other direction.

Chris Gammell: So like they hire their friend for 500 bucks an hour and they're like, oh, we're out of money now. You know? Okay. So there's actually a cap on how much they could pay for contractors as well.

Dave Jones: Got it. So you don't rort the system. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Rorting the system is up, is only allowed for the big boys.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Exactly. But you got to really become a military contractor. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But before you can rort the system properly. That's right. And legally. Yes. You can't. No. Small fry. Not allowed. Exactly. No.

Chris Gammell: Please come back, sir. When you have a thousand employees and, you know, many large buildings.

Dave Jones: And you've greased a few. That's right. Politicians. You know? Oh boy. Yeah. And, and we aren't even joking. Like. No, it's. Like. It's that sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Out of our pay grade. How about that? Yep.

Dave Jones: Yes. The old, uh, $800 hammer, you know, and $500 toilet seat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh boy. One of my good buddies. I think I mentioned him on the show. He's a purchasing agent for a large contract. I wish he could come and talk. He would just never come. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh God. I get to hear a lot of great stories and it's, it's awesome.

Dave Jones: Can we have one example, please, Chris? No, I can't.

Chris Gammell: I really can't. No, sorry.

Dave Jones: The $200 resistor, you know? Yeah. Come on. We need a. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But it's special. It's, you know, it was.

Chris Gammell: I think you and I have probably have enough stories like that too, though. Like, I mean, the $900 connector that I used to use for, you know, for connecting to military radios and, you know, like I'm sure you did too. You know, like it's just.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Yeah. But they were all like, even though, yeah, like, you know, a thousand dollar connector. Sure. But these were like custom designed and custom made.

Chris Gammell: How do you know the toilet and this hammer and the toilet seat and the hammer weren't custom, Dave? Come on.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, you know, yeah, true. Yep. Yeah. Because an ordinary hammer just wouldn't have worked, you know? Right. So you had to go fully custom. Yep. It's just. Jeez. You know. No. So I know. I don't think I've actually encountered rorting like that. I don't think it's ever happened at the level that I've ever worked at. Okay. Well, that's good. That's good.

Chris Gammell: Something to look forward to.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, because like everything, because the stuff we were doing, everything had to be custom. Right. So there was always a massive premium for that. So, you know, you couldn't use an off the shelf, off, off the shelf connector for this and that, you know, for various like reasons that have to be, you know, the product's very specific, you know, it's not something that, you know, you use on your desk, you know, it's.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Let's get to a couple other links before we cut off here. This one is just purely awesome, but there's a new YouTube channel that I found and, and it has really cool videos. And this one is specifically called fully charged show. And it's like a podcast about, or like a video channel about like electric vehicles.

Dave Jones: Not new. It's been going for years. It's hosted by. What's his name?

Chris Gammell: Sorry. No, no.

Dave Jones: What's Leland? Apparently he's like a, he's been on, was he on red dwarf or something? He was like one of the, like, he's an actor. Or something.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: I think. Anyway. Yeah. He does this. Yeah. Please go on. He does this show. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Well, anyways, the thing that I was specifically interested in is like these new delivery trucks called Arrival. Yep. And basically it's just like this, the size and scale of like electric fuel. It's hard to kind of tell how much it's like marketing hype versus, you know, like how many are actually being produced, but like they're, you know, like,

Dave Jones: but it does actually exist. It physically exists. It's been made in America. Anyway, if you don't know, the show is all about electric cars. So it's specifically electric car show.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And there's a lot of cool stuff out there, but yeah, I,

Dave Jones: and there's this company. Yeah. There's this new,

Chris Gammell: new to me, new to me.

Dave Jones: There's this new company that I, that just got a contract for 10,000 electric vans.

Chris Gammell: Right. For UPS.

Dave Jones: Wow. UPS. Wow. What a score. What a score, but don't they look great? I want one.

Chris Gammell: I mean,

Dave Jones: they're designed like buses. Oh yeah. They're like little mini buses kind of.

Chris Gammell: Super ergonomic and stuff like that. And like, and I, the stats were kind of interesting too, because they were talking about like the, the delivery like distances were, it was only like, you know, like 40 miles or whatever that is in kilometers with 60 kilometers, something like that. Or is that the other direction? I don't know. 65, something like that. Yeah. And it was like over like very short distances where actually like, Oh, that makes a lot more sense than I would have guessed. Like I, I always assumed that like driving around a city, they have tons and tons and tons of stops, but it's actually much, many fewer than I thought it would be. And so like for, in terms of like range for a truck like this, it actually is potentially doable. I, yeah, I guess I always assumed that they had a lot, like a lot more coverage area. So that's kind of cool. And then, you know, it's just like the whole, they keep saying like skateboard. I watched a bunch of their videos. They keep talking about the skateboard design. That's like the standard thing these days, like a Tesla or any other, you know, car does as well, where it's just the entire floor is all batteries. Yeah. Apparently that's, that's like a standard design now. So anyway,

Dave Jones: I want one of these and I want to convert it into a mobile lab.

Chris Gammell: Just because there you go. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Dude, mate, it's just, it just, it looks so schmick. You got to see this thing. I mean, and yeah, it's a real thing. And they just got a contract to build 10,000 of them in the U S California. Is it? Are they another California company? I'm not sure. Yeah. I didn't know where they were.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Um, yeah. Fantastic.

Chris Gammell: Oh no, wait. Oh no, there's a different one. There's, there was one that was like in, it was outside of Chicago. There was a different, uh, car that's, uh, there, you know, they just use old, you know, just like Tesla did. They just take over old, uh, petrol based, uh, you know, car assembly, uh, plants. Yeah. Right. Yeah, exactly. And so, uh, but this one, yeah, I don't think this one was Chicago. So,

Dave Jones: right. Anyway, this one started from scratch. Um, so this company like, uh, well, they're doing these like van kind of things at the moment, but they've got, you know, many different types. You can like, you can actually approach them. If you've like, uh, got a big enough, like they don't sell to the consumer yet, but they're, you know, so they're focusing on, uh, specific cups to customers who have specific large scale needs, like, like the courier companies, your DHLs, your UPSs, you know, and all that sort of stuff who need, you know, 10,000 trucks to drive around. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You have a fleet of vehicles. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And they're focusing on that. And they actually won the contract to get 10,000, making 10,000 electric fans. Yes.

Chris Gammell: It's great.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's just absolutely brilliant. Yeah. I love this thing. And it's just,

Chris Gammell: um, yeah. And so on the topic of batteries too, there was a pretty good app known on DigiKey. It doesn't really say who's wrote it. I thought it might've been written by Maxim, but it's actually just a, it shows kind of like a, kind of a, this is a suggested by a friend and former guest of the show, Dan Hinch, but it's, uh, you know, it's, uh, shows like some of the chemistry and why some of the, voltages exist. I'm sure you've covered this kind of stuff before, but I've done a video,

Dave Jones: many videos on, uh, okay. Lithium ion battery charging technology and stuff like that. Yep. Yeah. I have a whole playlist. A playlist. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Well, we'll link in the playlist for lithium batteries. That's about it for me, Dave. Any, anything else?

Dave Jones: Nah, it's done. Amp hours up.

Chris Gammell: All right. I'll be back in a few weeks and Dave will be here in the meantime.

Dave Jones: Yep. Catch you next time. See ya.

Dave Jones: See ya.

Speaker ?: See ya. administered in administered administered in