#508 – Doomed To The Flatland

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released September 13th, 2020. Episode 508, sponsored by Mauser Electronics. Doom to the Flatland.

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

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

Dave Jones: We're talking about things we don't miss doing. I was just mentioning, you sounded, just before the show, you sounded like you were dead asleep.

Chris Gammell: Dead to the world, yeah. Dead to the world.

Dave Jones: And tell us why.

Chris Gammell: Well, I spend a lot of the day placing 0402 components with tweezers. And it's part of the job. And yeah, it's just, so here's the positive of it. Like I get to listen to podcasts all the time. I listen to the interview with Lewis. I thought that was great. It's nice from a catch up, kind of turn my brain off point of view, but my brain's off. So that's quite a little low energy today, you know. So yeah.

Dave Jones: That is a great way to listen to podcasts. I mean, I haven't like sat in front of and built, like spent, you know, 10 hours under a Mantis microscope for quite some time now. So that is something I do not miss.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's low effort enough that you can like, you can actually listen to stuff and not like You can tune out.

Dave Jones: That's right. Yeah. Whereas most stuff, like if I'm working at the computer or something, I can't be listening to a podcast. Totally. It's too distracting, you know, it's like, but yeah, something like that I could certainly, but I just don't do it enough to, you know, be able to listen to podcasts like you do. Well, yeah. Podcast fiend.

Chris Gammell: Basically that. And so like my podcast times are walking the dog. Right. Who just looked up at me. He's like, what? Oh, time to go. Cleaning the house, driving, but I don't do that anymore. And then, yeah, like soldering things. And that's.

Dave Jones: Yep. Driving. Another thing I don't miss.

Chris Gammell: I don't. Oh, yeah. I don't miss.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. So travel too.

Chris Gammell: So like, you know, I just got back from travel and like, I don't miss traveling. Like I, here's the thing I miss. I miss like going to conferences and meeting nerds and like hanging out and geeking out over like boards and stuff like that. But if they were all in my hometown, like sign me up. Like, I don't want to get on planes and stay in hotels and be away from home and my wife and just like, you know, I want to just be in my stuff. You know, I like want to be here. And yeah. So I don't miss the, the travel part was nice. Of course. You know, especially when like companies paid for it, but.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's better when you're younger. But yeah. People say, oh, well, before the whole COVID thing. Oh, why don't I come to here? You know, go to the U S go to Europe. It's like, do you realize how long it is?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. But you never do it. So, I mean, like, I think they're saying like do it once. Yeah. You won't. You're used to. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, but yeah. It's a huge, and it's a huge thing. No, basically since I had kids. No, it's, it's just not a, you know, it isn't a thing. Right. That I really look forward to doing. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. I'll hop on a plane. I'll go to, you know, a trade show in Melbourne, or I'll go to a thing, you know, a conference at Queensland or something like that, you know, it's, but I'm not going to sit on a plane for 15 hours. I'll sit on a plane for a couple of hours.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Yeah. No. Don't miss it.

Chris Gammell: Well, I don't blame you on that one, but it's too bad. It's really too bad that the, you know, the one thing I thought was going to come out of the whole, you know, quarantine pandemic thing was going to be like better VR, AR technology type stuff. I haven't seen anything that like has improved, like the in-person meeting kind of.

Dave Jones: No, it's still dodgy Skype and Zoom. Yeah, exactly. It's still like with the crappy grainy webcam garbage, you know?

Chris Gammell: Well, not all. I mean, you and I can, you know, we can do better. Oh, we can do better. Yeah, exactly. But most people, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's just garbage. And people have no idea how to like, you know, half their heads chopped off or their, you know, they have no idea how to frame a camera. And, oh, geez. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I had a fun experience with that over the weekend. I was talking to my family and like, I have nephews and a niece and, and like, and so I was talking to my parents on their iPad and it was like on like the table as like, you know, they'd like put out like snacks for like the family that was all showing up there and I was talking to them. And, and then like my niece comes into the frame, she like shows up and comes into the frame and there's like cheese and crackers on the table there. And she's just like this giant, like just eating, inhaling cheese right into the camera just because of the angle it is. That's right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. People have zero awareness for zero camera awareness. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I still think, like I said, I think there's, you know, we made that joke on here a long time ago about like the, the idea of like a teddy bear with like a, you know, a face on it.

Dave Jones: Oh God. Yes. That was like a long time ago. We're going to do the telly bear or something. What was it called? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Whatever it was called. Right.

Dave Jones: Telly presence bear or something. Yeah. Yeah. So you could sit the bear in the conference room and you could telly presence. Yeah. We'll get it. We'll semi-serious about that. Weren't we? It was a fool's joke.

Chris Gammell: That was like a fool's joke or some silliness, but like there is still like, I don't know, telepresence is so creepy to me, but it's still like, it still sucks. You know, it's still like wanting to be able to just, even just be able to manipulate the camera, move it around. Like in that scenario where like, I don't want someone to have to move the camera around while there's, you know, a bunch of my family members in, in like one room. It's not a huge room. They're not all sitting at the end of a table. I would like to be able to actually like move my head around and be able to like, you know, that it just tracks the motion or something like that. It doesn't have to move. I don't have to like have a VR headset on or something like that. Literally just being able to pan a camera around would be nice, but you know, that's

Dave Jones: It's not even great in science fiction. You know, if you watch like various like science fiction movies and shows and stuff, it's like, it's not even that great in those.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. Like ready player one, maybe, but like, Oh yeah. That's so immersive.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. But that's, you know, that's a full, like that's helmet. Yeah, exactly. That's like, you know,

Chris Gammell: That's like you're living, living in that virtual space. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So.

Chris Gammell: I think the problem is it's just like expensive. So like I, and I started thinking through this too of like, well, what would it cost? So imagine you just had like a little motorized platform for, you know, an iPad, right? So just say you're just going to say it's literally just like a motorized turntable, but like, what are people willing to pay to have that sort of thing? And like, like a hundred bucks, right? It's like, okay, so now how much, how much of that can be just pure bomb costs and like what? $10, maybe, maybe 20. Right. And like, it's a consumer level thing. Then you also have to like factor in all the software that would go on top of that. And just like.

Dave Jones: And then you've got to line it all up and it's got to be like, you can't just whack it there and go. Right. If you've got, you know, if your iPad sitting in the middle of your boardroom table and it's on this spinny thing. Right. And then, you know, just think of the practicalities of that. You've got the, it's got to be lined up and framed for each person. It's got to know where each person is. Sure. You could do that in software with tracking and stuff like that, but then you've got the pan like, you know, you're like the person watching at the other end has got this, you know, constant panning bloody thing from as one person speaks, it's got to spin around to the person who's speaking. It's like, just think of the, like, you really need like a 360 camera. You need like instant to make it really your people would just get seasick. I get that. Yeah. Every time I go out and do a handheld camera footage, I get people complaining about being

Chris Gammell: seasick every time. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, the human, the human inner ear is not made for it.

Speaker ?: No.

Dave Jones: Well, and some people are just like, they just can't handle anything, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's true. Yep.

Dave Jones: And it's like, yeah, I'm, I'm actually watching the same footage going, what's the problem? I don't. And they go at all. It made me physically sick. It's like, you turn your steady cam on. I've got my steady cam on, you know? It's like, and you still get sick. It's like, pan slower. Okay. Yeah. You know? It's like, yeah, no. Yeah. You've got to, it has to be purpose design.

Chris Gammell: Right. And then, well, then in that case then, so then you think about, okay, well now we need to implement like a bunch of other, you know, either control algorithms or say like a, you know, even a DJI, like a, you know, the gimbals that are out there now, like those things are fantastic technology for, for super cheap. You know, like they make crazy motor driven, you know, all my camera gear obsession stuff. Like I watch these things that they just came out with new ones. It's like 500 bucks, but it can like, you know, steady cam, like a, like a, you know, two, three pound camera, like pretty heavy stuff. And like, but like, that's 500 bucks. And that's from DJI who's doing like high volume, you know, already got all the algorithms dialed in and stuff like that. So now you start thinking, I was like, oh man, like all this stuff. And it's like, it really starts to come into focus why this isn't a thing yet. You know, like people aren't willing to, and maybe there are some solutions out there. I don't deny that. It's just that it's not widespread because it's a lot cheaper to just have an iPad and just have it propped up and just doing its thing.

Dave Jones: I suspect that we might be doomed to that future. I mean, it's like flatland because I, I'm just thinking of the practicality. Of it. It's got to be purpose design. I can't visualize any just sort of cheap, generic, push the button and go solution that will be practical. That will be like really practical and solve all the problems.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm, I'm just not seeing it.

Chris Gammell: I think it would have to tie into a, you know, an existing platform, like an iPad or, or,

Dave Jones: you know, a generic consumer solution would have to, yes. It'd have to use the existing ridiculously powerful tech that we already carry around in our pocket. That's right. Or bank, right? Right.

Chris Gammell: For, for what, you know, five, $600. It's insane.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But by limiting yourself to that, you're limiting yourself to the ability. I think, I think there's no like real solution. As I said, like, it's just the physics of it. How can you, unless you can whip that camera around in 0.1 of a second. Yeah. How is it not going to be, you know, panning from one person to the next? Like, oh, right, right, right. Like, and, and then if two people start talking at the same time, how does the algorithm handle that? Does it suddenly zoom out and, and have two people talking at the same time? Cause you'd want that.

Chris Gammell: You were thinking like autofile. I was thinking like, I would just have controls of it. Like literally I would just be able to press arrow keys or something like that.

Dave Jones: Oh no, of course. Yeah. You can do it manually. I'm, I'm talking about like fully automated solutions that just work that any dumb ass can use and nobody has to control, you know, magically sci-fi works. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. And I've, I've seen some of that stuff. Like, so there's some conference solutions that are out there that are like that, but yeah. And they didn't work that. I mean, like the thing, I think Samsung might've had that and that was back in, I was there 06, 07. So like, even then they had it and I'm sure it was very, very fancy and very expensive, but yeah, it, it still didn't go that great. And it's kind of disconcerting too, when you're on the receiving and you're like, seeing this camera, like, you know, snap between different people and you're like, Oh my God, like, what is it doing? You know, it's got that kind of server.

Dave Jones: And then they try and talk at the same time. Then it snaps back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Right. Right. And it's like, yeah, because with telepresence, as people no doubt aware with our show, it's like, we're on the other sides of the planet. We can't see each other. There's no visual cues. We're going to talk over ourselves and guess it's, it's just one of those things, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, we've dialed it in Dave. Come on 10 years.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Yeah. We get, you know, we get no K at it, but it still happens.

Chris Gammell: It's like, well, that's why I have an editor too, you know?

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, exactly. That helps. But how do you do that in real time? I don't know. See?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: There's another layer of complexity that may not be practically solvable.

Chris Gammell: Well, if it's like a steampunk future, then you have like a, you know, you have like a digital assistant that's doing that for you. Right. You know, the person behind the curtain or something.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So speaking of things behind the curtain, probably a bad segue, but you were also talking about this like amazing tech in our pocket. I got to see this amazing x-ray machine that my workspace has, and I got to check it out today. And, and one of the operators was showing me, he had scanned like a PI zero and like, oh man, like it was like high end, like super crazy scanning of like, you know, BGA voiding and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: I was going to say, this is a specific BGA machine, right? This is like, no, that's its purpose. No.

Chris Gammell: It's not even specific to BGA. It's, it's a full 360 degree x-ray reconstruction. And so basically you can scan in and re-slice all the way through everything that's in there. And so basically you're showing me like all the contrasting you can do. And he basically like slid all the way from the top through the bottom and showed like-

Dave Jones: Oh, that's pornographic.

Chris Gammell: It was really, really cool. I'll have to see if they're published.

Dave Jones: How much does that cost?

Chris Gammell: I have my question too. He said upwards of 900k.

Dave Jones: I was going to say it's like mid six digits.

Chris Gammell: Like, yeah. Yeah. I thought, I thought it was going to be the, I thought it was going to be multiple millions,

Dave Jones: but yeah, it is super cool. Ah, right. So this is the new super low cost version at 900k. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So yeah.

Dave Jones: How, how does it, um, does it move the camera or does it move the object?

Chris Gammell: It moves. So it has a rotational table. So it has like an A, I guess that's A. Okay.

Dave Jones: So it's moving the object. It's not spinning the camera around it.

Chris Gammell: It's right. So he said that like, it's, you have to put the object at like an odd non-orthogonal angle so that you don't, you know, so if you're looking like straight down at a part, you might have, or say the example he gave was like, if you're looking at BGAs and you're looking at it from side on. Right. So like looking down the row of, you know, I mean, you might see daylight between the rows of BGAs of the balls on a BGA. He said, that's actually a bad angle because then the, the, the balls would, the front ball would basically block the, any, any electrons from getting to the back ball or whatever the rays are coming in there. And so basically he showed that there's like the weird kind of angle that you're trying to do and you're trying to like rotate it at this angle and, and basically to get as many, as many paths through, right. Cause there's going to be basically when you're, you're slicing through this thing, you're going to be, you're going to get, you're trying, you're trying to get stuff through, right. So the metal is going to block some of it and it's going to, some of this stuff is going to absorb at different, at different energies and stuff like that. So he showed this weird angle that you're doing it and then you rotate the whole thing and that's to try and get the, the electrons. Is it electrons? I don't even know. I guess it's x-rays. So it's, yeah. It's photons, not photons.

Dave Jones: We're not physicists. Just let's just shut up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hand waving. Embarrass ourselves. Right. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Chris hand waves this way. Yeah. But then it, it reconstructs everything and like, oh my God, the computers that were in there to, to reconstruct everything. It was so cool.

Dave Jones: So, so this is your shared workspace, right?

Chris Gammell: That's right. So this was actually a corporate sponsor who installed it there.

Dave Jones: I was going to say who paid for that. Cause that's a huge capital expenditure. I mean, that's just like, that's what, so it's, so it's on loan or is it, or was it bought by the.

Chris Gammell: Like a primary use is of the, the person, the company that put it in there. Right. And, uh, and then, but then there's some opportunities to use it outside of that. And I was like, okay. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So there's a big company using your shared space. They like buy a big part of your space or something. Do they?

Chris Gammell: They're a corporate sponsor there. And then they basically bought enough space to be able to put this thing in there. And it is kind of closed off from, for most people. And only, there's only like a couple operators of it, but.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. So you can't just wander up. It's not for the general plebs like, like you to use. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Right. I'd have to go to the people that do it, ask very, very nicely and say, Hey, can you scan my board? And, uh, but yeah, it was really cool too. Cause I didn't actually realize that the, uh, this, I guess it's not a sip, but it was like, whatever the, the module that's on like a PI zero, it has an internal, like a circuit board internally that does the reroutes all from the silicon. And so the silicon goes up to bond wires. That's what I expected, but then it actually goes down to a second layer. The silicon kind of seemed pretty transparent to these rays and, and, you know, there's different contrasts you can play with. We didn't do too much of it, but you know, you basically, depending on how you change the contrast, you could change what was actually showing up there. Obviously metal was super easy to see, but like, you know, bond wires are super tiny and, you know, gold is different than, you know, or whatever the material is that bonding there. Hmm. So yeah, it was, it was really neat though. And I'll try and get more details and see if they'll post any videos of it. Cause I think, you know, like that, if it is something they plan to offer as a service, that would be, you know, good pro. Of course.

Dave Jones: Now I'm, I'm interested in the company that's, you know, like sponsoring like their own space in this, uh, is this because it's cheaper for them than renting their own space or they, or I assume it's like, it's, it's gotta be a financial reason that it's like cheaper for that rather than like buy all these machines themselves, all the CNC machines, the 3d machine, you know, everything, all these x-ray things. Like, uh, basically they get already by buying into this space, they get all the base stuff they need. And only if they need specific things, do they then buy those for themselves. So it works out cheaper than renting their own space, renting their own employees, that kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think it's really the infrastructure too. You would think about like, you know, having like three, this thing needs like three phase power and it's just like, it's a beast of a machine. And so if you're thinking about like, oh, well we could just put this like x-ray, this is just yes on my part, but like we're gonna put this x-ray machine like in our office, right? So if you have like commercial office space, you might be able to get it in, you have the building might be okay with it, but then like plumbing in three phase power and all the other crap that you might need there. Like that's already in M hubs. So like no big deal there.

Dave Jones: And, and they might have, the company might have just mainly like engineers working at computers or whatever, and they don't have room for like a big industrial type lab. Exactly. So it's cheaper to sort of rent out something like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's always interesting where sometimes you'll find like, like kind of more gritty office space within like, you know, buried in the bowels of like a commercial building. You might actually have like a, you know, a gritty kind of like machine shop type thing, but it is harder to find, I think, especially if you're, you know, it's a city center. So it's not like,

Dave Jones: Oh, and if you're in a building like mine, it's, it's simply not an option. If you're in like an A grade commercial office building, like I am, yes, I can have an electronics lab, but I can't, you know, go and install like a CNC machine in here. It's like, it's just not, uh, you know, my, my lease doesn't cover that sort of stuff. And it's not conducive to, you know, this thing is like, yeah, I can't get three phase power. Well, no, maybe I could, but like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. But then you, the noise and all the, yeah, you wouldn't, you wouldn't want to put it there. You'd put it somewhere else. Yeah. I heard, I heard you, you and Lewis talking about this. He'd, he'd be able to maybe install it, but he'd have to do it all himself.

Dave Jones: Well, it's, you need that. You then need a mixed use present, uh, mixed use premises. And that's what, uh, we've been talking about this on the forum and various, uh, places about, because of course I'm moving back to my old lab and it's basically, uh, office spaces all the way down, like turtles all the way down. Everyone's downsizing, which is really interesting. I would not be wanting to be left holding the bag on a large commercial office space at the moment. Everyone I know is downsizing. So it's really interesting, but, uh, yeah, we're talking about like these mixed use stuff and generally here, like in my couple of business parks around here, it's either commercial A grade office space like this in a big office tower where there's just no option for any sort of mechanical type stuff to happen. Maybe you could have a drill press and that's about it. Or it's like a giant, you know, big cavernous, you know, 20 meter high ceiling warehouse thing with, if you're lucky, it'll have one of those like elevated office spaces, you know, where you walk up the stairs and have like, you know, a, a crappy little 20 square meter office for a couple of desks, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: And yeah, so it's either one or the other, very rare. Do you get like, you know, like 80% office space and then 20%, you know, like in industrial type thing. There is one building in this entire park that actually splits it in half almost. So you get half big ceiling, concrete pit industrial type thing with the big doors. And the other half is like really A grade office space. So you just like wander from the, you know, the dirty area to the clean area. So yeah, it's quite rare though.

Chris Gammell: Most people need either warehouse or, or office. Yes.

Dave Jones: They don't need both. Yeah. It's us weirdos that kind of need, you know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But we could work in the, I mean, we could, we could work in the, in the dark, you know, we could work in the big warehouse space. I was actually remembering this.

Dave Jones: I could, but it's, it's terrible.

Chris Gammell: Like, you know, it was so, I was actually, so on, on the road trip I was on, we, uh, there was a song, it was a Lenny Kravitz song that came on and it was like all these memories came flooding back to me because it was the one CD that I had in the fourth industrial bay that I was sitting back in by myself with like a single desk lamp while I was like troubleshooting a fixture. And I would have this one CD and I snuck speakers in there and I would just play this one CD over and over and over again while I was troubleshooting a basic program. And so like, you know, you hear this one song, you're like, oh God, I remember.

Dave Jones: Is this at, um, Samsung?

Chris Gammell: This, no, this is at, uh, audio pack. My first co-op internship. Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: How, how long were you there? I haven't heard of that one.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that was the very first job I had. So that was, uh, January of 2004. Uh, and then I kind of stuck around. So like I did like a seven month co-op it's called. So it's like, you actually like don't do school, you work full time.

Dave Jones: But this is part of your degree, right? This is part of like, it's a work experience component.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Yeah. So this is actually why I, this, that reason. And also because of the financial aid, that's why I chose the school I went to because the co-op was such an important piece of it, you know, like, right.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: The threat of my life is very similar.

Dave Jones: Some of them don't have any, you just do four years of, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They say, oh, you'll get an internship over the summer if you want to. And it's like, no, no, no, no. Right. I wanted to, I wanted to work. I got sold on that real early and I wanted to work and get that experience. And God damn, I am lucky about that because like, I just remember like, I remember like talking to engineers there and like, they would just like, look at me like, what do you, you know, like, I didn't remember it was like a transimpedance amplifier and like one of the mechanical engineers who was barely doing electronics, he just like, like rattled this off. And I'm just like, I'm like sitting there staring and I'm like, oh my God, he's the best electronics person I've ever met in my life.

Dave Jones: And he's a mechanical engineer.

Chris Gammell: I just, yeah, I just didn't, I just, you know, it was just like such a level set of like how little I knew. Yeah. You know, I had had like, you know, like one or two electronics courses in college and like all the rest were like, you know, general courses. Yeah. This was like, no, you are in the middle of it. And yeah, I, I highly, if there's any students out there listening, I highly, highly, highly recommend it. It's like, yeah, you're going to take a little bit longer to graduate. Right. So it was a five-year program instead of four, but like four is so arbitrary anyways. Like, why is it four? Why not two? Why not one? You know, like, you know what I mean? Like, there's not like any reason for that. And it's like, okay, so I did an extra semester, but I also, you know, made a buttload of money. I actually kept working when I was still in school. So I would, you know, I did those seven months and then I actually stayed on for another four or five months. Yeah. It was just, it was great.

Dave Jones: Wow.

Chris Gammell: It was such a weird company too. We made like, it was just like audio amplifiers for gas masks and firefighter suits.

Dave Jones: That's important.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Very important. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because you got to communicate when you're inside, you know, these gas masks and, and the audio has to be good. And there's lots of order. There's lots of challenges there.

Chris Gammell: It's true. Yeah. And I learned when I was there that the way that they used to, I was like, well, what did they do before they had like electronics and amplifiers? And one of the guys put on a mask and then he started shouting at me and I'm like, I can't hear you. And then he lifted up the mask and he started shouting at me again. And I'm like, that's what they did. Yeah. They, they lifted their masks up so they could talk. He's like, yeah, that's, that's all they can do. You know, like you want to breathe. You know, you just shout it, you take a deep breath and then you shout and then you'd put the mask back on, you know?

Dave Jones: That reminds me of the video I've done with Doug Ford, who's a former head designer at road microphones and Jan's audio. Yeah. And he used to, he, he did a video. Well, I think we did a teardown and then he explained the design. He taught out his own product and then he explained it was the audio amplifier system and distribution system for trains. And, you know, and, and he explains why trains sound like this. First stop, central, next stop. And he explained why it actually sounds like this. And I, you know, so that was donkey's years ago. We'll have to link that one in because it's fascinating. And it's a similar thing. Like you'd have that muffled sound to sort the mask, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Yeah. Intelligibility. So, so Dave Young, who was a guest of Alden Kizzen too. So Dave Young is like longtime friend of mine. We met the first day of co-op and we've known each other ever since. He's a consultant now too. And we talk like every day he's been on the show. He's been, he was on the consultant impedance matching episodes too. And yeah, so we, we met the first day and, and the, the thing that we joked about on the show when he was first on here was a thing called intelligibility testing. Right. That was like a big thing. But what you do is you put on gas mask, you'd have this amplifier on there. And then literally you'd read a list of words and it would just be like circle the word bat. Yeah. Circle the word cat. And you're just trying to get vowels through because there was no like characterization. Like these days you'd think there'd be some kind of way to like, you know, just characterize, you could characterize.

Dave Jones: Some sort of DSP magic to do that. Yeah, exactly. You would think it'd compensate for the, for the acoustics of the mask or something.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. But there was some requirement that was like, no, you need like 60 dB white noise. And so we'd have a speaker in the middle of the room and you'd sit on the other side of the room and circle things on paper. It was terrible, but you know, the experience was amazing overall. Yeah. So.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's not just sticking a microphone inside a mask and, you know, Bob's your uncle. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, it's, yeah. There's a lot of art and science. You could do a PhD thesis on, you know, and, and algorithm for that kind of thing. I mean, it's just, yeah. Wow. Unbelievable. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Audio stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then like, this is what's crazy too, is like, it was like all in this one area. Oh, actually, no, nevermind. The, my second co-op was at Bird RF. And like for the longest time, you know, I worked at this place called Bird RF, which is like, they do like large RF loads and stuff like that. Right. Like for load testing. And it was like right up the street from Keefley. And like, so basically between Keefley and Bird and like, I ended up living up the street from there too. And then like, you know, uh, audio pack wasn't that far. I like, I like stayed within like the same, like probably five mile radius within Cleveland. And, you know, there's not a ton of tech in Cleveland, but I tried to hit all the ones that I knew there. So nice.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And I didn't learn any RF when I was there. That was what I was really getting at. Cause I've just learned anything about RF. I basically learned it much later. So.

Dave Jones: Back, back to the, uh, back to the electronics at uni thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Just people don't realize how little electronics you actually learn in an electrical engineering course.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like, you know, you'd be surprised how little actual practical electronics you learn.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I, you know, I was thinking about this recently too. I, some of the things I wish I would have gotten deeper into that are like actually really interesting to me now. We're like the semiconductor physics classes. Like, I think that's actually really interesting, but like they just pushed it so soon. It's fascinating. Yeah. It was based on the physics curriculum. It was like, oh, well you got to know, you know, electrons and holes and electrons and holes. I was like, what the hell is a hole? You know? You know, and, and yeah, you're totally right though. Like I, and I, we didn't even get that stuff until almost junior year, like, like sophomore, junior year. It was like when they started doing that stuff. So I was there for three semesters before anything. Yeah. I took more Japanese before I took, you know, electronics. So.

Dave Jones: So I, and there's huge variabilities in countries, in universities, within countries. It's just, you know, a massive variability. Like I learned civil engineering and mechanical engineering in the first year, because, you know, it's like just in case you wanted to change. Right. Because, you know, because most people coming in aren't like us, right. They aren't hobbyists. Right. Although you weren't really a hobbyist. I wasn't like you. Yeah. No, you're, you're one of the strange ones who's. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, I'm one of the normal ones. I think. I think you're one of the strange ones.

Dave Jones: One of the normal ones, but strange in that you didn't have a hobby background before going in engineering at uni. And afterwards you actually have a passion for it. Oh, sure. That, that's rare. I call that lucky.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think the fact that I like, I guessed in like my junior, senior year of high school that I'm like, ah, electronics sounds great. Like I like this. I think it'll be physics. I loved physics. Like, like, and I just got damn lucky, you know, like that really was that, that it stuck. Right. Cause I have friends that went in other directions or people that, you know, people that still don't know what they want to do it, you know, in the mid thirties. So like, come on. Like, yeah.

Dave Jones: No, I, I still know EEs that, you know, had no hobby background, but they went and they did their EE degree and they're still working in EE, but like, they just, like, they just meh. Like they just don't care about it. They don't, you know, it's just a job to them. Like they don't, they, they wouldn't watch a single video or read a single thing outside of work. And even when they're inside of work, it's just getting the job done, you know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And some people. Zero passion for it. Right. But I, but I also wonder like people like that too, like, I hope they find their thing at some point, but you know, some people just aren't into stuff like that. Like, they're just like, well, I just love fishing though. I want to go fishing. You know, like that's the thing that I do. And it's like, yeah, well, you're not going to get paid to go, you know, very, very few people get paid to go fishing. Yeah, exactly. So yeah. I mean, like, it's just, you know, just kind of what tickles our, our neurons, I suppose.

Dave Jones: And we happen to find a way to make a living from it. So, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, in my case, I made a full-time living from making educational YouTube videos, you know? Right. Right. Yeah, man. How lucky is that? Jesus. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's, it's, it's a growing field, but it's still pretty, pretty narrow slice of the, slice of the world. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's not too many.

Chris Gammell: Here on the Amp Hour, we're working with sponsors who are interested in educating our listeners. Today, we're hearing again from Paul Gulotta from Mauser Electronics. And he's going to give some examples about how artificial intelligence, or AI, is doing good for the world. I asked Paul to start by defining AI.

Chris Gammell: Artificial intelligence is this ability to do this human-like capability of interacting with the world, receiving whatever the response are, and then adjusting in a positive direction and, and on our own, almost acting, if you will, under its own direction, even though it has this external programming where you're not looking for feedback from outside sources because it's happening so fast. You can't, you can't wait for the human. It just decides on its own, takes a measurement, sees, infers what it should do, makes the adjustments, makes the adjustments.

Chris Gammell: So how does this apply to the electronics world?

Chris Gammell: More recent developments include things like vision processing units or, or VPUs. There's processors now that are getting embedded with AI abilities inside of them so that you can go and develop and fine tune and deploy convolutional neural networks, also called CNNs, to do things like real-time inferencing. This is an emulation of how human intelligence works, how human thinking does, where it goes in, looks at something, makes adjustments, gets feedback, and changes variables to improve towards a better output.

Chris Gammell: Could you tell me a little bit more about why Mauser is looking at this? This seems like a very, very high-level, broad topic.

Chris Gammell: Well, like I said, my job as a technology specialist is to look out into the future. Mauser is committing to being the distributor of electronic components and solutions that is at the cutting edge, at the forefront of all the technologies involved with electronics and associated technologies. We identified artificial intelligence several years ago as one of these very, very large macro trends. And so because of that, we are interested in all the changes that are afoot with our suppliers. We have a wide variety of ways that we can help people. That includes being able to provide technology products like embedded systems. An embedded system, a computer system, kind of a combination of a computer processor, some memory, input, output, peripheral devices, and such, that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electrical system. So we supply those solutions, which can be quite complicated.

Chris Gammell: To learn more about how Mauser Electronics is teaching their customers about artificial intelligence, check out theamphour.com slash MauserAI. That's theamphour.com slash M-O-U-S-E-R-A-I. You can download a free e-book all about artificial intelligence and learn how it might impact some of your future projects. And now back to the show. I got my boards back. So speaking of things that I've been making videos about, so I made all my boards. I think maybe I mentioned it last time we talked, but I actually ended up treating myself over my vacation time. And I got my boards assembled and they're back. And they are their beauties.

Dave Jones: By treating yourself, you meant you got some other poor bastard to assemble them.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, yeah. I paid for domestic, expensive assembly.

Dave Jones: Right. Were they machine assembled or hand assembled?

Chris Gammell: They were machine assembled, yep.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yep. How much of a premium was that? And if you compare it to your time, let's say your time's a hundred, let's make an even hundred bucks an hour.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So I went with Screaming Circuits, who has been a past advertiser in the show. I should be upfront about that. No special price or anything like that. But I know Dwayne and I know the team there and I like what they, I've actually used them before. So good stuff. And I think it was about 250 bucks a board, like in terms of assembly. So it was a little bit cheaper than I thought. It was going to be about 300, but I actually had counted wrong in terms of the number of parts that are like on the top and bottom, whatever. Yeah. And so about 250.

Dave Jones: How did you count wrong? Your software spits out the bomb count. You know what it really was?

Chris Gammell: It's like, so like there's a bomb plugin for KiCad and it like, at the bottom, it says like 170 total components. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I've used that bomb plugin. It's freaking awesome.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Right. And so it says 191, you know, total components and it said 71 uniques. And I was like, oh, great. So I went and plugged that into, you know, Screaming Circuits. They basically do all their pricing based on that. And then like one of the people there, they, she emails me and she's like, you know that you only have 50 on here, right? I'm like, uh, no, it says 71 at the bottom. And she's like, well, if you look at the rows, it's only, you know, row two through 51. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: So what? Is that a bug? What, what's the deal?

Chris Gammell: It, it, uh, it ignores all the, the DNPs it takes out. And so I had a bunch of DNPs and it says there are 71 total uniques, but yeah, you didn't put them all on here. So. Oops. Yeah. Well, it saved me a bunch of money. So that was nice. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, and they could probably put it on the one machine instead of in the single pass. Cause if machines haven't got 60 feeders, I've done a video on this, you know, and, and you've got 61 parts. It's like, oops.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Right. There's like, you know, 61 unique parts. I mean, like different parts. Cause every unique part has to have a reel in the machine and the machine only has so many reels. So you've either got to put it through several series machines or put it through the same machine twice.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, but, uh, the, the proto service at screaming circuits is a little different. They actually, they do tape and reel, but they don't, they require, they can do cut tape fine. Right. So they do like these fancy holders that are just like off to the side and they basically like, they like index.

Dave Jones: Oh, flat holders. So it's a lot of, is it a flat? Exactly. Yeah. So yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's a little bit more, you know, hands-on whatever, but, um, yeah, it's, it's real nice for that kind of stuff. And so you don't have to, you don't have to send in reels. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay. Or they don't have to re re reel them. If you buy those cut tapes from DigiKey, your, your assemble is going to be a bit miffed at you because then they've got to get a reel and they've physically then got to attach tape and like sticky tape and then tape it in there and turn it, turn that cut tape back into a reel. So then they can put it and it has needs leader on it. So then they can put it into their pick and place machine. And they're going to charge you for that and be really, they're going to charge you and

Chris Gammell: just be like, well, go get a Mauser reel or a Digi reel or whatever.

Dave Jones: And you just, the Mauser or Digi reel does. That's why. Yeah. If you get them pick and place machine, don't buy the cut tape. There's three options at DigiKey and Mauser and Element 14 and all that. Do Element 14 do reels? Do they like do the Digi reel?

Speaker ?: I think so.

Chris Gammell: I haven't, I haven't used them in a while.

Dave Jones: I've never bought one from them. I bought them from Mauser and DigiKey, but anyway, yeah, there's three options. You can buy a full reel, which, you know, you've got to buy like four, however many parts it is, like 4,000 or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. 20,000 if it's an 0201 reel.

Dave Jones: Or, yeah, or, or if you're lucky, somebody on Twitter posted this. I can't remember who it was, but I think I retweeted and commented that they got all this packaging. They bought like two chips from DigiKey and they got all this packaging. Like they were in our trays, right? These giant trays. And they sent them these giant trays for their two chips. And they wondered, you know, this is wasteful. It's like, well, you're the one who ordered the last two chips. So you got stuck with the game, with the packaging garbage, which they would have had to throw out. So they just ship it in the giant tray because you ordered the last two chips. So it's the same with the reel. If you get lucky and there's a, you know, 850 parts left on that reel and you order 850, they'll ship you the whole reel. Usually, you know, so that's okay. Or you can choose a DigiReeel or a Mauser reel, which is they will actually, yeah, cut off and then re-reel, they'll do that job that your assembler would have done for you. And I think it's $8 a reel. I think it's $8.

Chris Gammell: Seven last I looked, but it might be up to eight now.

Dave Jones: And the third is cut tape, which you just get the tape. They pull it off and they cut it and they give it to you.

Chris Gammell: You got to put like some wastage on there too. So like the 10% of the least.

Dave Jones: So you got to order, yep. 5%, 10% depends on the, which can add up. If you've got an expensive resistor, you know, if you've got a 30 cent resistor and you need, you know, a dollar resistor, it's a real precision jobby.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. I was, I was calculating the total cost on all this stuff. And like the prototypes are about $500 prototypes at the end of the day. Each board. Each board. Yeah. So like the assembly costs, the boards, the parts, and the real, the real stinker that I always forget about, but always gets me. So I have some quick tell modems on there. So they've got cellular modems. And like the real, the real stinker of it is, is like I got five modems and for some reason, quick tell only ships on a courier account, fine, whatever, but they only ship overnight international.

Dave Jones: Sorry. Modem.

Chris Gammell: Sorry. Like a cellular, it's like a module that basically is, can talk to a cell tower.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about like a, like a dial up modem.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Sorry. I'd use that term interchangeably. They're much smarter than just a modem, but like, basically it's, it's, yeah, basically it's a, it's a cell tower interface chip effectively. Right. So, but, but you just talk to it over a serial, right? So like if, if you, if you, have you worked with cell modems modules before either?

Dave Jones: Yes, I have. It's like a serial in RF out magic happens serial back out the other end. It's magic. You know, it's, it's a wireless serial link basically.

Chris Gammell: That's, that's exactly right. Yeah. And it's like, that's also how like, like, uh, XB modules work too. Like, they're just like these, you know, usually if they're, well, in the case of cellular modules, if you're using the serial and you don't have it mapped as a certain type of data port, it's usually just AT commands, right? Literally like, like AT plus, you know? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I've used these so many times in, uh, wireless production test gear. Cause it's just so easy. Cause it's so easy to implement like a serial port in your micro controller. Right. And code. It's just like, like, it's really easy. And then you don't have to muck around with the RF. You buy these modules and it's like, you're connecting two things with a physical serial cable.

Chris Gammell: So that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of crap in between, but yeah, it can be as nice as that if it, if it works out. And, uh, yeah, so, um, I don't remember where I was going with that, but you're mentioning

Dave Jones: that like available. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Modems versus modules versus yeah. Shipping. So like, yeah, the modules were like 15 and you know, the production price is going to be like eight, 10 bucks, something like that. But it's, uh, you know, so it's more for low volume, fine, whatever. But then another like a hundred dollars in shipping just for these five modems to come to the U S and then I have to bounce them back out to the, you know, the assembler. And so it's like, Oh, well that's, that's actually like, okay. Now it's like a $30 modem, like, you know, instead of 15 and like, yeah, like that just really ups the cost and you know, like all of the overhead stuff. And like, so in the same case of like, if you had to do digi reels, seven bucks per reel doesn't sound that bad in single quantities, but if you have 50 uniques and you need 50 digi reels, that's another 350 bucks on top. And then it's like, okay, well now we're, now we're talking some real money here. You know, like it's really, uh, yeah.

Dave Jones: So, so did you, did that eat into your profit or did you pass the charge on to the customer client?

Chris Gammell: Uh, Dave, I am the customer.

Dave Jones: Oh, I thought, I thought this was for a client job.

Chris Gammell: No, no, this is very, this is very different for me. So this is the board that I've been designing for, um, contextual electronics, but it's basically

Dave Jones: electronics board.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Right. Right. So it's, uh, you know, I'm going to put it maybe on tindy at some point, but right now it's just in test phase, but the idea is basically it's a, it's a starter board. Yeah. Yeah. You've seen it. Right. So it's basically a, it's like a starter board for all of future clients of like, you know, it's got a cell modem, it's got Bluetooth, it's got all the power handling, all that stuff. It's got interface. And then I can just slap a daughter card onto it and it basically just becomes whatever the daughter card is. That's kind of the idea.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, uh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Uh, so it was worth, so you, uh, are you going to continue to do that because, oh, I didn't have to assemble that bastard and I shouldn't have picked O4O2s. It's like when you're assembling and you're going, oh, I shouldn't have picked O4O2s.

Chris Gammell: You know, it's interesting. The O4O2 thing. I'm actually, I'm okay with that. Mostly. You're okay with it? My eyes are still doing okay with that.

Dave Jones: So do you do it by eye or do you use a lamp? Do you use like a Maggie lamp or something?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I still, as long as I have good lighting, I can still do it by hand.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: And since I mostly cut out caffeine out of my life, like my hands are much steadier than they used to be.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Uh, yeah. So that part's been okay. You know, it's a lot of time and you know, you can get more dense. So you have a lot more parts. Yeah. No, I think that, that part's okay.

Dave Jones: Would you, uh, reflow those or would you, uh, individually hand solder?

Chris Gammell: Uh, the O4O2s in general.

Dave Jones: Oh, just the whole board. Like, would you actually get it, do a stencil and reflow it?

Chris Gammell: Oh, um, I would. Yeah. So the real reason I ended up sending, aside from the timing working out where I wanted to treat myself while I was away, there is this stinker of a part on the NRF 52840. It's a AQFN. So it's like basically like two rows of BGA with like a huge center pad. And I'm really nervous about it.

Dave Jones: No, that's just evil. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. If I have access to an x-ray in the future, I might be a little bit more confident about it, but, um, yeah, I was, I was like, that's something you have to reflow.

Dave Jones: Like you can't hand solder that.

Chris Gammell: Like, oh, that's right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, no, you can. Like I've done a video where, uh, these sorts of packages, you can actually, if it's got a thermal pad, that's really handy. Cause then you can drop Vs down to the bottom side. You can have a big exposed pad on the bottom. Then you can get your solder and iron on the bottom side and then heat that up. And then that will actually then flow through the bond wires and actually heat up the, uh, you know, heat up the pads around it under the chip.

Chris Gammell: So you can do it if you have like a board preheater too. I feel like that's a board preheater.

Dave Jones: It helps.

Chris Gammell: You just pretend all the pads and then you just kind of put a shitload of flux on there and, you know, pray. But the thing was, I didn't want to do that on the first one. Right. I want to make sure that I haven't made other stupid mistakes first.

Dave Jones: Just send it to an assembler. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And so another interesting thing. So like looking at domestic versus, um, uh, uh, international, you know, overseas and like, Dave, let me tell you, man, like it's like, like I said, I love screaming circuits. Like they were great, but like PCB way was like, I got a quote. It was like, I think 30 bucks instead of 300. It was like a 10 X difference. And I was like, Oh wow. You know, I didn't want to, at the time I was like, I don't really want to deal with, you know, like sending parts overseas, worrying about customs, like, you know, like timing issues, whatever.

Dave Jones: And there's a big issue with delays at the moment. Yeah. Things, you know? Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: And so like, it wasn't worth it for me this time, but like in the future, eh, you know, like, okay. Yeah. If I got like much more time and I've got the design ironed out, like, you know, I could go there. I could go to a bunch of other places internationally. That's not a big deal.

Dave Jones: So, but if you pass on the cost under a client, I'd, I'd go local because you can.

Chris Gammell: Well, again, I am the client Dave.

Dave Jones: So if, you know, yeah, but I'm saying, but you've also got your side business doing client stuff, right?

Chris Gammell: Oh, sure.

Dave Jones: Sure. So, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think that, yeah, I think that is like a, I think it's not like, I don't think it's an underhanded, like passing it off. Right. Like it's a, it's a true quality, you know, communication turnaround times kind of thing. Like, you know, I think, I think, yeah, you're right. It's, it's worth, it's worth paying that, that premium until you need to go, you know, high volume. So, and even high volume, you could probably find some stuff domestically. It's just not the services that I was, you know, you know, none of the tempo or, you know, circuit hub or all any of those, you know, PCB and G.

Dave Jones: This is, this reminds me of a, a link you sent me like a couple of weeks ago. You sent me, oh, look at this. Oh, this looks sexy as, and it's a, a $4,000 hand pick and place machine. It's like, it's got.

Chris Gammell: I sent you this? Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm sure it was you. I don't think so, Dave. I'm sure it was you. Oh, no, no. Sorry. I'm mistaken. It was, it was, it was David. It was my former employee, David.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Sorry.

Dave Jones: Which kind of, no worries.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's great. What is it? What is it? What's the matter of it?

Dave Jones: Oh, I'll see if I can hang on. I'll see if I can find it. Hang on. Hang on.

Chris Gammell: So we have one of those. There's one of those at, uh, at M hub and the downside to it. So the interesting thing is like, it's got like a table that like kind of helps smooth out your motion and stuff like that for doing hand pick and place. And it's got like a rotation. It's basically got a, like a small suction element. Basically it's true. It's like a true pick and place where it's got a suction element, but the needle's not that good. And like, I don't know, like it doesn't seem it's though it's a man corp. That's the one that I've, that I've used.

Dave Jones: Yeah. This one is, I just sent you the link. It's a, this is a vortex.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Vortex. Uh, and it's a manual pick. You would think looking at it, Oh, that looks like a simple pick and place machine. And it kind of is because it's got like real type things. It's even got like, uh, you know, uh, tubes. You can put the tubes of parts and stuff like that. It's got like, you know, 16 feeders on it or something. And then, but it's basically an X, Y table with like this, uh, manual, like it's got a thumb press on the top. And then that activates the suction thing. Oh, cool. And then you, you basically just move it. So you're using your arm. Your arm is the pick and place machine. So you move it over, put it over the controller, press the button suction. And, you know, human, it's like, you know, and for hand placing it's, you know, if you just want to get the job done then and there, you don't want to dick around programming and loading a machine that it's, you know, but, but that's as niche as it gets. I mean, really. And it's like, it's like $4,000.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think so. Also, if you're making a machine like this, wouldn't you show like something smaller than a SOIC 16? It's like, man, that's not the hard ones. You know? Yeah, exactly. I know it's actually because of like the, the photo and it's like, it's easy to show, but yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And there'll be a lot of people out there, the aficionados of do it yourself, pick and place machines going like, why would you even, why does this thing even exist? You know, if you go into that sort of effort, just put a motor on there and a camera and it's a place machine, right? And a pump.

Chris Gammell: Like I totally get like the man, the, the draw to the pick and so I had, I talked to Steven Hawes, who was building his own DIY one. He was on the contextual electronics podcast and like, he's building a DIY one and I love following his progress. And he's like, you know, he's kind of like building up his skills too. So he's like been like building more and more interesting equipment too. And like, he even says, he's like, look, this isn't really, you know, he's doing it for the project. He doesn't, you know, he, he wants to pick and place machine eventually, but like, yeah, like, it's still, if there was a way that it actually programmed itself easily. Well then, then a lot of people are out of jobs, I think, because yeah, that would be, that would be the, you know, the arc of the covenant. He's being realistic.

Dave Jones: He's being realistic and is admitting that it's, it's, it's a neat toy, but it's not really that practical. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, he's, he's, he's like improving over time.

Dave Jones: There's like niche uses, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that like, I think the, the example he gave us, like he wants to be able to like turn it on when he goes to bed and he like comes back and a couple of boards are done. And like, that is, that is totally a achievable goal, I think.

Dave Jones: And like, oh, it's achievable, but how much time and effort you put into doing that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But, but like, again, if you, but if it's low cost enough, then too, you can maybe have a couple of them, you know, like, and it, you know, there's always these, these, it is going to be corner cases, of course, but like, you know, but for a maker space, it might make sense. And for, you know, his situation makes sense, makes sense. And like, like I said, I totally get the draw because like I said, I spent five hours today, hunched over a board. And if a machine could have done that, I was actually sitting right next to a machine that in theory could have done that, but I didn't want to, I don't mess around. I've made that mistake.

Dave Jones: I keep going back to the classic example for having your own pick and place machine. Mike from Mike's electric stuff, right? Because his, his, his niche is designing LED things, right? These large, like, you know, meter long boards and all sorts of, right? All sorts of stuff, right? And they just got thousands and thousands of LEDs on them. And he literally uses, he reuses everything. So his pick and place machine is just permanently loaded with all the stuff he, all the parts he needs. Like he uses the same microchip pick that he's been using for the last 15, 20 years, you know? No, he upgraded.

Chris Gammell: Oh, he upgraded. Yeah. He's done a pick 32 now, I think. Oh, he's right.

Dave Jones: Okay. Well, I stand corrected anyway.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure he still has the pick 16 in there too.

Chris Gammell: There's 16, right. Pick 18, whatever.

Dave Jones: And anyway, so he's like, and he's got all these just permanently loaded his machine. And when a new client comes along, cause it's all word of mouth, right? So when a new client comes around, I need this new arty farty LED thing. He goes, yep, no worries. It's got to have, you know, 10 million LEDs on it and I'll have it by, have it to you by next week. The reason he can do it is because yeah, everything's in place. All the infrastructures in place, all these, you know, all these schematic footprint components, they're all tied into the machine. He's written scripts to automatically program it and, you know, all sorts of stuff. It's just highly automated because he's in that one niche. Whereas if he suddenly went to, you know, designing other types of boards for other clients that do totally different things, it all starts falling apart. All falls apart. Right? Yep. Totally. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We need to come up with an excuse to get, I mean, not that we needed an excuse, but we need a reason to have Mike back on because we haven't talked to him too much. You're right. Yes.

Dave Jones: Yep. Absolutely. So we can, yep. Extol the virtues if he's picking place machine yet again.

Chris Gammell: Just pick his brain, really. I mean, like, you know, talking to that guy.

Dave Jones: Yep. I think he's currently working on a meter wide board or something. Oh my God. On, on Twitter. It's like, yeah, he's got these weird ass. Cause all these arty farty things, they, they have to be weird ass. Right.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If it's not different, why are they doing it? Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, he's, he's like the only one in the UK who's ever made like a meter long board and he had to find a specific board house that could do it, you know? And it's like, you know, yeah, it's just crazy stuff. Yeah. Oh boy.

Chris Gammell: I posted his, uh, he did a teardown recently of an underwater radio. I thought that was kind of close to your old space. I saw that. Yep. Yep. Yeah. That was pretty fun.

Dave Jones: Yes. I've, yes. Had a dabble in that. It was interesting.

Chris Gammell: The, the point he made about the connectors kind of self sealing with like the, from the pressure of the water. I thought that was an interesting point. I never really thought about that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, that works in the underwater marine seismic thing that that's why they're all rubberized. They're all a vulcanized rubber or whatever. I don't know the exact, you know, type, but when they mate together it, yeah, it forms it. You know, you, you often, before you, uh, put these connectors together, you'll actually, uh, grease them up. Right. So you'll fill it full of like, you know, grease gel type stuff. And then you'll slam the connectors together and the rubber just, you know, completely forms a watertight seal.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: It's just, yeah, it's great. So.

Chris Gammell: There was a talk that one of the things I used to host, I'm sure I mentioned it before, but it was back in 2017 and it was Nick Bingham. And he talked about like super, super deep dive. Like he was working on the stuff with, uh, James Cameron, like the Marianas trench stuff. I'm sure I mentioned on the show before, but I'll bring it up again. And like hearing about like the stuff that you need to think about with like, like capacitors imploding, like just like the pressures and components. Yeah. Yeah. It's just stuff that like is so corner case for electronics in general. It was a really, it was a really interesting talk. So I'll post that in the notes too. I always think about that. Yep. Cause they were like making, they were making custom things too.

Dave Jones: If you've got a mirror air or moisture bubble trapped inside your quad flat pack, you are

Chris Gammell: screwed.

Dave Jones: That thing's going to explode. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like, as the pressure.

Chris Gammell: Implode probably.

Dave Jones: Or implode or whatever. Yeah. It's yeah. It's going to do something bad. Yeah. Something bad is going to happen.

Chris Gammell: That's bad.

Dave Jones: It's going to ruin your day and somebody is going to die at the bottom of the ocean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's serious business.

Chris Gammell: So. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Probably even more so than space. Like, like really deep underwater. Well, because like pressure is like, you know, space is like just cold vacuum. You can deal with that. Right. Dealing with pressure is hard.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like keep, keep pressure out is like the bottom of the ocean.

Chris Gammell: Right. I mean, like it can keep going to higher and higher levels. Right. Whereas like once you're at vacuum, you're at vacuum, you know, like not that, not that space is easy. Don't, don't get us wrong here.

Dave Jones: No. I can, I can remember many hours spent hunched over a press of pressure vessel. We used to have giant pressure vessels. Like I'm talking like a meter wide. So, you know, three foot wide or something. Four foot wide. Yep. Pressure vessels. And all of our equipment would, you know, you'd have like custom racks built in there to like put your equipment in. And then you'd have a proper penetrators to get like test signals in and out and stuff like that. And these giant, you know, high hydraulic pressure vessels. And, you know, you'd stand back, you'd close the gate and the big arm and then, you know, it'd come down, then it'd seal. And then these big locking, you know, things. And it would go down to like, you know, 2000 meters pressure and stuff like that. And these things were, these things were serious bits of kit. You know, if you don't, if you didn't use them right, you could kill yourself. Oh, totally. It's like, yeah. And, uh.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The interns weren't allowed to play with that one. I bet.

Dave Jones: You had to go through the training course and you had to, you know, yeah. It's, uh, and yeah. And just testing stuff, underwater pressure stuff is like, you know, it's really a big deal. So even like, even when you go down like a couple of hundred meters, it start getting serious pressure. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: What kind of pressure would they see at like a couple of meters?

Dave Jones: Oh, I can't remember how many, 10, 10 bar or something.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Rings a bell. This is 25 years ago. This is like 20, 20 years ago now. Right. So yeah, this was 90 mid nineties kind of thing. Uh, what's a 20 bar in meters. Sorry. 10, 10, 10, 10 bar in meters.

Chris Gammell: My, uh, my brain thinks in PSI, which is real dumb.

Dave Jones: 101 meters is 10 bars. There you go. So yeah, that's right. A bar every 10 meters. Roughly.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Of course. Yeah. Metric would make sense like that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Although it's not, it's not spot on. It's 101.97. So 10, 10 bar to 101.97.

Chris Gammell: So is there some with atmospheres too or no? Is, isn't like atmospheres, the SI unit? I don't remember.

Dave Jones: Oh, I don't know. But anyway, one, one, one bar is, uh, 10.2. Millie H. Millie. M. M. H.

Dave Jones: H. G. Oh, okay. Water. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like a water column.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. So yeah. I, God, it's so long ago.

Chris Gammell: Why do, Dave, why do engineering students spend the first two years learning about other stuff?

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. I'm just thinking back to physics class.

Chris Gammell: I'm like, oh, this is all SI stuff. I know.

Dave Jones: We just go, but you wouldn't learn bars in, you know.

Chris Gammell: We didn't remember it. So like, who cares?

Dave Jones: No, exactly. Right. Yeah. Right. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: To go back to that real quick. There are some programs that do, they do like, like auditing of like different fields and like electronics and stuff like that. And they'll do like small project type stuff. Obviously this is going to be Chris talking about how he loves project-based education, but I think that's great just to like go out and try a bunch of like Olin is one that I think of, of course, Olin, Olin college is, is like one of the best experiential education for engineering, I think. But like they do like an auditing course, I believe, and there's some other schools that do auditing courses and early ones. So again, if you're a student-

Dave Jones: What does auditing course mean? What does that-

Chris Gammell: So like they would do like a project course where it would be like, go build, you know, a little Bluetooth thingy, you know, use an Arduino, right? And that would be like a college course, right? For people that have never done it before, they're like, just see if you like this a little bit.

Dave Jones: Right. But why is it called auditing?

Chris Gammell: Because you'd be like, you'd be trying out these different things. You'd also maybe go and design something in a mechanical, you know, you'd be trying, you'd be auditing all these different-

Dave Jones: That's a weird use of the word. Yeah. I totally get it, but that sounds like a weird-

Chris Gammell: That might be my vocab that's wrong. Okay. But it's like, it's basically, you know, you're, you're basically trying out all these different fields. It's like a, it's like a poo-poo platter or a smorgasbord of different engineering disciplines.

Dave Jones: Hang on. You can't just drop poo-poo platter in the middle of the amp hour and not get, not get quite, what's a poo-poo platter?

Chris Gammell: Poo-poo platter was like the, the multi dish platter that like Chinese American restaurants, I'm sure it's not ethnically correct, but like, it was like, it was like the smorgasbord of like, if you went to like a Chinese American restaurant, the poo-poo platter would be like a little bit of everything. You know, you'd be, I don't, P-U-P-U. Make sure I'm looking this up right. But I just always-

Dave Jones: Okay. Not P-O-O. Okay. Right. So poo-poo platter. Like poo is like a Chinese word or something.

Chris Gammell: A typical poo-poo platter as found in American Chinese cuisine might include an egg roll, spare ribs, chicken wings, chicken fingers, beef teriyaki, skewered beef, fried wontons, crab rangoon, and fried shrimp. All of which are like not Chinese food. Right. Of course. Yeah. This is like American, Chinese, deep fried. Like, have you ever had crab rangoon before? Do you know what that is?

Dave Jones: No, I have no idea.

Chris Gammell: It's basically like fried dough around like fake crab and like cream cheese. I don't know how it became a thing.

Dave Jones: So American sounds very American.

Chris Gammell: It sounds like something you would eat at like a, you know, like an Arkansas like state fair, you know? Right. People eat that up around here. Let me tell you. I have not had like really, really bad Chinese food, like American Chinese food in a long time. But this, this makes like, this is like a callback. I got to go. Right. Yeah. It's, it's real bad. Oh boy. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Yeah. There's going to be lots of comments from our, our Asian audience.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure. I'm sorry. Yeah. Like I said, it's Asian, it's, it's Chinese American food. It's not like, this is not, I did not even come close to saying that this is a, you know, true Chinese food.

Dave Jones: We have Australian Chinese and Australian Thai. If you go to a Thai restaurant here, it's not Thai food. It's Australianized Thai. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: It's like, you know. I mean, it's all fast food anyway. Right. It's like, yeah. And it's, and it's delicious and it's deep fried. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Wow. We learned something new here on the air pounder.

Chris Gammell: Poo poo platter.

Dave Jones: Poo poo platter.

Chris Gammell: At least I got it right. I was worried. I was, as you were laughing and I was like, oh crap, did I say this wrong?

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Yeah. It sounds like something that my kids would say, you know, because like kids, like, like kids, boys are into, you know, eight year old boys are into poo poo. This tastes like a poo poo platter. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: You know, you can teach that to them and now they're going to love you for it.

Dave Jones: Because everything's a poo joke. Everything's a fart joke. Everything's a bum joke. You know, like. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Totally. Yep. That's about the age my nephews are at too. Right. Yeah. Very, very similar. Yes. Yep.

Dave Jones: I think that's pretty universal around the world. Poo and bum jokes. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's still kind of funny at my age.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Of course. And then that's when your wife just rolls their eyes. That's right. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: You're a newly married person, you?

Chris Gammell: That's right. Right. Got a wife now. Congratulations, by the way. Yep. Yep. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yep. Yep. All in shame. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know. I was told I was not supposed to ever refer to her as that. Oh, right. Okay.

Dave Jones: I'm in trouble.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. We had a real good time. We hiked all over, you know, social distance, national park kind of thing. And, but yeah, got to hike some amazing trails, saw some glaciers. Yep. I saw the photos. Yeah. I'll post the, the Instagram link if people are interested. Lots of, you know, mountain ranges and fuzzy goats.

Dave Jones: Oh, I don't follow you on Instagram. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: I think I only follow like two people on Instagram. It's like, like I do use Instagram now. I'm actually trying to post. There's still no one program that really posts to both at the same time, Instagram and Twitter. So I post them differently because they're, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. They're in some wall.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Whatever. They don't work together. They're fine.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Their APIs don't work or something. Yeah. Anyway. Yep. Hmm.

Chris Gammell: We are running out of time, but I did want to mention KyCon is kind of happening this year. It's a little different. I'm going to be hosting all the developers. So there's like 12 developers now, which is great. Uh, and we're just going to have like two one hour conversations just about kind of what's next. And, um, and there will be some announcements and, you know, people can show up and ask questions and stuff like that. So that's coming up on October 3rd. So if people are interested, um, there's a signup on the KyCon page, which I will link in and, um, you know, you can watch it after the fact too. It's not a big deal. But if you want to participate live and there's also a hashtag on Twitter, I forget what it is, but I will post it here. You want to ask questions about V6, which is coming. So lots of, yeah, lots of fun stuff coming. I noticed you were, did you use KyCon again for something recently? Yes. I usually something recently.

Dave Jones: I wanted to have a little bit of a rant about that if I may shortly. Sure. Sure. Sure. Quickly.

Chris Gammell: Maybe I could bring it up on the KyCon, you know?

Dave Jones: See, cause I, I knew that DigiKey had released a, uh, uh, KeyCad library. Yeah. Yeah. Library. Right. So I thought, oh, right. Because I needed specific, right. I just wanted footprints. Cause I was doing that demo thing, right. I was doing that demo video, you know, the three ways to fail at PCB design.

Chris Gammell: Uh, is this the one where it was the unnamed person who was me?

Dave Jones: Yes. The unnamed person who was maybe you.

Chris Gammell: It was definitely me.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: At first I was kind of like upset about it. I was like, well, you know. It's good. It's teaching other people. And yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. It's like, chill out. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm learning. I'm learning.

Dave Jones: You weren't named specifically. Anyway. Well, we talked about it on the show for goodness sake, didn't we? I mean. Yeah, we did. Yeah. Anyway. So, yeah. So I thought, because I needed the specific footprint, right. I need specific, you know, footprints. And I thought I'd use KeyCad just because, you know. And so, yeah. So I thought, oh, I'll just download this. And like, I realized that the DigiKey, well, I, it was hard to install. It wasn't easy to install that library. It wasn't true. Like, you can't just go install library. Like, it's not like, well, I had to put in some manually.

Chris Gammell: You downloaded it and then you got to find it and put it in the right place.

Dave Jones: That's right. That was annoying.

Chris Gammell: It gets easier over time. But yeah, that is still, that's still totally weakness. That's probably the number one thing that's brought up as a weakness. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Library management is just tough. It's getting a little better in v6, but it's still. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Still the same. Yeah. Anyway. So I found that annoying, especially for some. Yeah. As you said, if you're used to it, you know exactly what to do, but I had to go and read tutorials on how to do it. Like, you know.

Chris Gammell: You know, there's a video about how to install the DigiKey library. Just so you know.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. I think I might've even looked at that or something. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Anyway, so I installed that and then realized, oh, it's not all the parts. I thought like, you know, it's like all the parts.

Chris Gammell: And they're all atomic too. That's the other thing. So like, because you need to attach. So atomic being like a one footprint, one symbol, one 3D model, right? Instead of having the Altium or the KiCad way of doing it where they're decoupled from one another, because in DigiKey, you want to have it where, you know, it's a specific part. So I'm putting down an LM317 ABCD. And then, you know, there's also an LM317 DEFG, right? And it's like, those are actually different footprints. So you need to actually have two different, completely different things that are separate in the layout program and the schematic program.

Dave Jones: Yep. Right. Anyway, I was disappointed that it didn't have everything. I thought, oh, yeah, I'll start using KiCad. Like, oh, you know, and because it's got all the DigiKey parts, it's magic. It's not, it's like, no, it's under like a thousand parts or something.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yep. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's manually made by, by some of the DigiKey engineers.

Dave Jones: Which is great, right? It's manually made. But then I just like, I was kind of like deflated. I went, oh, you know, like, oh, I saw, you know. Yep. Yep. And of course, guaranteed by the laws of Murphy. The one you wanted was not there.

Chris Gammell: Of course. Like guaranteed, right?

Dave Jones: You know, it's like, oh, so yeah, I was really let down by that. So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That is rough.

Dave Jones: So I was let down twice. I was let down by the difficulty in installing the library. And then the fact that library only had like a thousand parts.

Chris Gammell: So there is a BGA generator. If that is easier for you in the future.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes. That, that would have been much easier. That, that would have been the thing that.

Chris Gammell: It's a really weird spot too. It's like.

Dave Jones: I think I tried to look. I thought there might've been a component generator. I tried to look for it and I couldn't find it.

Chris Gammell: It's a bit in a weird place. Is it? It's not. Well, it's just not labeled well. So it's like. Right. So if you pull up the, I think it's the footprint maker. So you have to go to the foot. My computer's locking up now, of course.

Dave Jones: I think I tried to use the footprint maker and, and I went in and couldn't find it immediately. So I did.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I mean, that's, yeah, that's how it goes. Right. Right. Yeah. And then once you're in there, then there's like a way to do, you know, different BGA parts. You can generate other things. They're not, I'm not sure if they're Jetic based or I'm not sure if they're standard like that or anything like that, but they work. Okay. Oh, here we go. Yeah. So it's, so it's, there's, if you go into the footprint editor, there's new library, ad library, new footprint, create footprint and create footprint is the one that is the, that's the actual generator. And it's like, no, that should just be a, it should say generator or something like that. So there's BGA, circular pad, FPC, stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Okay. Cool. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: All right. I just didn't look hard enough, I guess.

Chris Gammell: I mean, that's, that's a tough thing to find, honestly. So. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Good. There is a new Snap EDA. Friends over at Snap EDA just announced their, they have a plugin now too. So I've been using Snap once in a while. And yeah, there's, there's not just Snap. There's EE librarian. There's ultra librarian or EE concierge rather. I think it's the, the, what is their names? The ones who got bought by Altium. They make Upverter. Upverter.

Dave Jones: Upverter. Is it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Upverter. They, they had a generator as well. They had like a, you know, you could pay to get them generated. And like, when I started, you know, we talked about this a little bit with the getting the board assembled. Like, it's like 20, 30 bucks for a part. And I was like, oh man, like you really start to do the math. You're like, yeah, that from a time-wise perspective, it's a complicated enough part. And if they guarantee it's like, yeah. And if it's going to have a 3d model too, like that actually. Okay. Maybe, you know, and there's a bunch of services like this out there now. So it's like, yep. I like that. Yeah. I still haven't like gotten into that flow, but I know some people who were like professionally, they just kind of like have an account and they're just like, you know, there's all the different ones out there. Bam, bam, bam. And they just click, click, click, click. And they come back, you know, in a couple hours the next day and it's ready to go. And it's like, oh.

Dave Jones: Oh, I totally would have done. Well, we did have that like at Altium internally. Like we wouldn't be like us. Well, we, no, we do a lot of libraries ourselves, but the 3d models, right? Because Altium, you know, we were like the 3d model into it. Like the 3d model thing was kind of new at the time. So we had to, all our parts had to be precisely 3d modeled and everything. Right. So we'd have mechanical engineers that did that. We'd have library people who specialized in making 3d models. And it was like, oh, that was great. So you just, you know, send them the number and they'd, you know, and bingo. An hour later came back your nice 3d model and you just whack that in your part.

Chris Gammell: And ah, beautiful. That's real nice. I've gotten very comfortable with very, not comfortable, very dependent upon 3d models. And yeah, it's.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Why can whoever's in charge of like, uh, putting together the build for key CAD, can they like, just like get all the latest libraries like key CAD and these snap EDAs and just get all the biggies out there and just bundle them with the stock install. That'd be nice. Like.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, well, there is, so like the latest build pulls, pulls in the, the GitHub controlled official KiCAD library. So there are librarians now. And so it does pull that in.

Dave Jones: But can they also pull in like the, like the big ones, like the, uh, you know, the seed ones and the. Oh, I see. The is in doesn't JLC have one as well. There's like, I don't know, all these companies, all these like assembly and, and distribution companies that have all these libraries. So it'd be nice if they were all in court or at least, you know, a half a dozen of them don't get every tin pot one, but at least get all the major ones. Everyone's heard of kind of thing. So.

Chris Gammell: I think one of, I'm not very up to date on the V6. What's coming. But one thing that I did talk to Seth and Wayne about, I think there's a marketplace coming. And so I think that might be like a click to install kind of thing that's on the way. And that actually might be the best solution in the future where it's just like, oh, I want the snappy DA thing. Click. Oh, I want the, you know, the seed library. Click. That would be the best case scenario. So yeah. I'll ask about that though. That's a good idea. I mean, like it's.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That'd be fantastic.

Chris Gammell: Like, you know, like having that, that like centralized system where it's just, you don't have to maybe, maybe don't pull everything. Cause you know, like even though I think the KiCad libraries are like six or seven gigs, but being able to.

Dave Jones: At least have a, like, yeah. If there's a like third party menu option or something like that just says import, you know, and then yeah, sure. The links might get broken eventually, but you know, you just keep that up to date. So if it just, yeah. I want to install the DigiKey plugin. Yeah. Yeah. I please install the DigiKey plugin one click and boom. Yeah. Yeah. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's always, that is always the balance point of like something that's like open source, but like, you know, still centralized and like, you know, there's, there's always that push pull of that. But I think the, from a ease of use kind of, you know, that's, I think a great power of Altium, right. It's like that it is, you know, if you buy into that ecosystem, be like, you're there, you just have it, you know, and it's, you're good to go. So.

Dave Jones: Yep. But I think that's one of the features that everyone could agree is like useful for almost everyone, you know, it's like being able to call in libraries.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. No one's like, Oh no, no, no. I want to do this. I'd like to spend my weekends, please. And I think some people are like, well, I don't want to like depend on someone else and like get something messed up. But I understand that that is like a risk aversion, but I don't think that people are like, you know, really particular about their wanting to like, Oh no, no, no. I need to have my own line widths. They have to be perfect. So the kerning on my, my text has to be really, really good. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: All right. Can we finish off the show with a bench of the week?

Chris Gammell: Sure. Sure. Is this the one that was in the background of your. No, that was a great, that was a great.

Dave Jones: You're being stuck into the mindset of electronics benches.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. What about optical benches? Ooh, optical bench. What does that mean?

Dave Jones: It's, it's in our list. It's in our list. Have a look at it. The optics table from hell. This was posted on Twitter by a Dr. Carl's Brown. He's a physicist. He's a physicist at UC Berkeley, a postdoc, Yale PhD. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Doesn't sound very smart. What? I said, he doesn't sound very, he sounds very, very smart. That's what I was saying. Right. Right. Yeah. He's a physicist at Berkeley, Yale, Brown, like all these things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Anyway, he posted this image on Twitter of the optics table from hell. It's got optics tables on top of optics tables with vertical optics tables.

Chris Gammell: This is insane.

Dave Jones: And he, he didn't build all this. It's like being built by various students over the years. And they just, it's, it's like the Holy grail. You do not touch it.

Chris Gammell: This is like the Jim Williams of optic tables.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is, yes. This is the Jim Williams of optic tables. Yes.

Chris Gammell: That is so awesome. What does one use an optics table? This is for like building setups for like, like bending light and stuff like that. Yes.

Dave Jones: Bending light, filtering light. So yeah, it's all to do with, you know, various measurements of different types and you've got to bend them, filter them, split them, recombine them, you know, and for various like physics experiments and things like that. Wow. So yeah, I think in, in the Twitter thread, he does actually go through and explain what some of it does, I think, but it's just, it's insane. Yeah. For those who don't know, and, and optics table is basically a real ridiculously heavy, like couple of hundred kilo metal table. That is like precisely machined flat. Yeah. And it, and it doesn't move. It's got any vibration feet. It doesn't vibrate. It's like, you know, so this huge stable physical metal platform that just has a whole bunch of machine threaded holes all over it. It's like Swiss cheese.

Chris Gammell: It's like a, it's like a pegboard, but basically like, like horizontal.

Dave Jones: It's like a pegboard for, yep. And then you screw in all of your optics, lasers, your lenses, your beam splitters, your beam combiners, your measurement things. And then you, yeah. And so you bounce lasers all around these tables. I'm sure you've seen it in like movies and.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Right.

Dave Jones: You know, weird science.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It allows you to get in there and, you know, just, you know, tweak. Oh, I want to move that filter in and out so you can physically just drop it in and out. And, you know, yeah. That is super cool.

Chris Gammell: Do you know what the spacing is on those tables? Like, is it like a standard, like 10, 10 centimeters or something like that? Or.

Dave Jones: I, I got no idea between the holes. It looks like maybe an inch or something. I don't know. Oh no. Maybe less. I don't know. I'm sure there is a standard.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever it is. I'm sure there's a metric in an Imperial and. Yep. They argue about that too.

Dave Jones: Yep. I'm sure they do. Our optic brethren. Yeah. Right. Yep.

Chris Gammell: You know, every time someone brings up this, like, like Jerry Ellsworth would always talk about optics with, you know, like when she was explaining, like the, you know, the VR, AR kind of stuff too. And like, it is like a whole other world to me. And we've had one or two other people on the show who've talked about it, but man, I just like, I don't get it. I got to dig into that at some point. It seems like a very expensive thing to get into, but it's.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's a very expensive hobby. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Well, someday.

Dave Jones: My Phil, Phil, my brother-in-law, patent attorney, brother-in-law here, he's an optical physicist. That's what he got his PhD in. Oh yeah. Okay. Physics. And he, he wants an optics table in his home. Yeah. But the wife, I think has vetoed the optics table.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. What are you going to use it for?

Dave Jones: I don't know. I just want to play with lasers and shit.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: I'll find a use eventually. That was not a compelling enough reason. I just want to play with lasers and shit.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Oh my God. Didn't, didn't fly. Yep. I'm afraid. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, maybe we'll have to ping Dr. Brown here and see, see if there's a reason for him to be on the show. That might be interesting to hear from him. Like, wow.

Dave Jones: That's, that's, yeah. It's nuts.

Chris Gammell: That's a great, that's a great photo.

Dave Jones: I love it. And it's also packed in too. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Done. Right. Yep. Yep. All right. That's it. Well, talk to you next time. No, wait. I say something else. What do I say? I'll see you later. You don't know.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Chris Gammell: Keep on zapping.

Dave Jones: After all these years, you still haven't gotten outro right. Electrons ho. Oh God. The current be flowing. Why do I feel like Julian Banjos are about to come in? Zippity, zippity, zippity. All right.