#545 – Fear of Banjos

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released June 6th, 2021. Episode 545. Fear of Banjos.

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. When was the last time you had a hard drive failure? Ooh, you know, I think I switched them out often enough that I haven't heard the click of test. Ooh, you haven't.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: But I think, not recently, but also a lot of them are SSDs. So usually the thing that happens to me is like I'm traveling and I'm carrying a portable one with me and it just gets banged around too much. And it's usually more like I break off a USB connector.

Dave Jones: More than you. Yeah, exactly. The drive dies. It's like failing. And you wouldn't carry a mechanical drive around considering that solid states. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I have like a super rugged one, like one of the orange ones. I forget the brand. But it's, yeah, it's old. So I don't really use it. You lost some stuff?

Dave Jones: Yes, yes. I lost my first hard drive last night. Yesterday, actually. I was editing a video, you know, which I do all my video editing on my NAS box, you know. Yeah. It's one of those four drive Synology NAS, you know, RAID things. Sure. You've got RAID 5 with the four drives and everything. And, yeah, all of a sudden my files aren't, like, copying. Like, they're stopping copying. I couldn't do anything. Like, I couldn't access the drives. And then I start hearing, yes, that dreaded click of death. The, like, and it's up in the cupboard. Like, you know, normally I can't hear it. Like, it's completely silent. Yet I could, you know, like, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. Kind of, you know, like you can do just that dreaded noise of the head dragging across or bouncing off the disk of the physical drive.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, does that matter then if you have a RAID configuration? Does that, doesn't it have backups in there or no?

Dave Jones: Yes. It saved me because I've got four drives in there. But I only get the capacity of three. So the, so it shares across all four. But the redundancy is, yeah, I've got a redundant drive. So it, my data's still, my data's still there. It's still back. It's still working. So once, once the, once the NAS figured out that the drive was failing, it actually, you know, took a couple of minutes to figure out, you know, something's wrong. Right. So it stopped accessing it. And then it finally just shut it down. And then once it shut it down and recognized that, then it went back to working again. But now I'm not running any redundant drive at all. So if another drive fails, I'm screwed. Right. I lose my, well, yes. Yes. I do lose my data. So yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Whatever's on that specific drive versus. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Because the data's spread across all three now. And, you know, so if I lose one, I can look like, yeah, I've actually, there's no way I can actually recover that or I can recover some. I think. I don't know. I'm not sure. It depends on the mechanism used.

Chris Gammell: I mean, if it's like a partial, yeah, if it's like a partial file or something, that'd be weird.

Dave Jones: But I, but I wouldn't.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Everyone stop. Don't leave comment down below. Yes. I do actually have an auto backed up. I've got my entire NASA array auto synced to the cloud. So it's, you know, so, so it is redundant.

Chris Gammell: So this is, this is some, some, you're, you're quite cautious. It seems like to have all of these different steps.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Like I ideally, if I wanted to get back up and running, like I'm not ultra paranoid. Like I know that like failures can actually cost me a lot of time. So if my main drive here fails on my machine, right. On my main windows editing machine, if that drive actually fails, I don't have that backed up anywhere near periodically. So I can't just like buy a new one, image it again and get back up and running in 10 minutes. Like I'm going to have to like reinstall windows, reinstall all the programs and stuff like that. But it's not a showstopper. Like I don't actually lose data. Right. So it's just like a time thing. It's how much effort you put into investing to make sure that when your system goes down, how fast you can get back up and running. So, yes. So I'm paranoid from the, from the fact that I, I won't lose data, but I could lose time. And you know, that's basically what I, I didn't lose any time here because I only lost a few minutes technically, but then I had to figure out, you know, what was going on. Then I had to like order a new drive and there was drama in that because it's a Western digital red and they were pulling some marketing, funny business. Western digital way back.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: If you don't know, there's a, there's different recording techniques, CBR versus MBR.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Is it like right levels? Is that kind of the idea? Yes.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They're right. The way they actually write the bits on there. And the CBR is the, is the good one. It just writes the data and that's it. But what they did is these NAS drives, they actually snuck in this different recording variation, which is SBR. I think I, am I getting it right? SMR. Sorry. SMR. CMR and SMR. God, everyone's going to leave the comments down below. Had a long night. ASMR is one of the ones too. Anyway. Yes. SMR, which is a different recording technique. Turn off the hard drive. You turn off the hard drive. SMR. And yeah, it's, it's a different recording technique. Wow. Right. Where it actually has to write three times or something because they're like, cause the bits are like the bits are overlapping. So when it writes one, it's got to like write the ones either side as well. And it slows it down. And they secretly introduced these models into their range without telling one, but anyone that they changed the recording method. But you know, the nerds figured it out and they had to admit it. Oh yeah. Sorry. You know, we did actually change, but you know, it's for the good of the users. Blah, blah. I don't know. Some marketing work like that. But anyway. Yeah. Yeah. But that, that wasn't what failed here. It was simply the hard drive failed after 26,000 hours. So like 2.8 years or something.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Of continuous operation.

Chris Gammell: I mean, probably a lot of years too, right? If like writing, writing, reading from doing like video type stuff. I'm sure there's a lot of write cycles.

Dave Jones: Technically it's within the warranty period. So I probably could get it changed, but everyone wants me to do a tear down of it. So I might actually sacrifice the warranty because you have to set it back. So I might actually sacrifice the warranty and actually tear it down just to see, you know, if there's any like physical grooves taken out of the disc or anything cool like that. Hope it's like completely trash. So it looks good, but yeah. Bastard, eh?

Chris Gammell: Well, I mean, hey man, has anyone suggested you just go completely onto the cloud? I mean, I'm sure that that's an option too.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, speaking of completely to the cloud, what for all my processing and everything else? No, thanks. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like doing cat on the cloud.

Chris Gammell: That's exactly what I want to talk about.

Dave Jones: So I thought you'd be getting into that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Do tell.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, so our friends over at Macrofab Engineering Podcast, Parker and Steven, they had Chris Church, one of the Macrofab founders, who's also been on the show here before. And one of the guys from one of the platform people from Altium. And, you know, I'm going to be honest, like he is saying all the right things in terms of like manufacturing intelligence and basically promoting vertical integration at Altium, right? That's his, that's his role basically to, and they have this new, they have two things that are going on. One is that they are, they're doing a Macrofab integration, which makes sense. But then the other one is that they actually invested in Macrofab, which is interesting as well. Usually that's like a, that's like them lining up the shot to eventually buy Macrofab. Right. They did with PCBNG. And I'm sure that, you know, that's, that's how you dip a toe in the water, that sort of thing. You get the inside look at the books, but so who knows if Macrofab might at some point be an Altium company, but that is neither here nor there right now. So this guy, I think Ted, I forget his name. Let me look it up. He was great though. I mean, like basically he is talking about all the right things, but he, he oversold it a little bit. So I wanted to kind of talk through some of the things he talked about. There's this service on the backend that they, that I didn't know about that basically a manufacturer could go in and, and push manufacturing data into, into a design. Right. So say you were using the Altium cloud thing, you could have, you could basically have a manufacturer comment like, Oh, Hey, that BGA is going to have some shadowing, some heat shadowing because it's a little bit too close to one of the caps or something like that. And that cap's going to definitely be a problematic thing. So it's like a, the idea being it's an instant design feedback.

Dave Jones: The design stage as, as you're laying it out.

Chris Gammell: At the design stage. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's the thought.

Dave Jones: Well, I can, I can think of one problem there. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, and so that's the idea, right? It's yeah. I should pull up the, the name of this. I forget the name of the service right now, but that's where like, it started to kind of overstep a little bit or like all of these, it was like very utopian in that way. And like, I also want to live in that utopia. Yep. Right. So that's really the comments I wanted to make here about, about that utopian vision that they, they painted, which I think are great. But some of the realities that roll into that, that were not discussed were things like, well, you can have your manufacturer give you this feedback about all of these different things. And then you can have this direct, you know, so you're going to place a component somewhere and you have this intelligence about whether or not you should do this thing. And the one thing that was not asked, unfortunately, is like, what about when you don't have a manufacturer? That is like, that was like the number one thing that I think about.

Dave Jones: Or you've got multiple manufacturers or. Right. Exactly. And the first thing that immediately came to my mind is data security. Like a lot of the time there are countless companies who simply do not want the manufacturer to see their design data. It's like, no, here's the Gerber file. The PCB manufacturer gets the Gerber file and the test house gets, you know, various test file. The manufacturer gets test files and things like that, but they don't get your design files, you know? So I can't think of anything worse than having some third party manufacturer looking over as you're actually doing your design early in your design phase.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think there, yeah, I guess there is, there is a level of trust there. I, you know, the whole, like, keep the things off the cloud, if that's like the tax you're taking, I'm not sure. Well, I think the cloud is as secure as USB stick or as an email. And they actually make that point as well. And I, I think that's well, that's well stated. Like, you know, email is not the most secure thing anyways. You know, maybe you do secure storage or like a, what are the Microsoft calls their thing, like SharePoint, you know, maybe you do that sort of thing. But at some point there is going to be knowledge transferred. I think the real thing is that right now people feel more comfortable pushing out Gerbers and bombs and maybe even like OBD to OBD. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I always give that up every time. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think it's ODB to files because it's like, there, there's still a lot of data in there, but it's not like you can completely reverse engineer the whole thing. Yeah. And so the thing that the, this, the backend stuff is called Nexar. And like I said, it's, it's an interesting idea and I like it, but I'm just, I'm always curious about like how much is actually going to be able to be pushed back up the chain. And that's, that's what I've always been interested in. I, they kind of, again, overstated a little bit, you know, about being able to do this on the part side of things on like the pricing and all that other stuff. I've always wanted the pricing stuff. I don't think this quite gets at the same. It seemed like there was really two, two separate things. One was like getting the part pricing at the time of design. I want that a hundred percent. I want that right now. Right. That's the reason I worked at supply frame back in the day. I want, I want that information right now because I want to know if something's like super risky. I want to know. Yeah. But it's risky.

Dave Jones: I mean, the design cycle could be like nine months or something. It's like, oh yeah, it was a great price and availability nine months ago. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But I could, you know, you could start to look at things like, uh, what is the vendor score in terms of like on-time deliveries and similar stuff like that, right? You could have that.

Dave Jones: Vendorscore.com.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Or similar things, you know, but like, it's so tough to make the decisions. Like you said, nine months out that like any, any kind of like advantage you can get for what that's going to look like, I think is very beneficial. And I don't think that this Nexar thing is going to do it. Uh, I think the Nexar thing is actually tied more into like the manufacturing. So it's tied to Altium 365, which is this big new push. I'm sure you've heard about as well. Basically it's pushing a lot of your data to the cloud, syncing it locally, but then getting kind of this tie in with other devices or sorry, other manufacturers, other suppliers, that sort of thing. And it does make sense for them, but it's also like a closed ecosystem in that way.

Dave Jones: Oh, look, as all, as with all these features, there are people who will think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. And other people think, no, this is just dumb. Leave me out of it. You know, like this is no advantage. In fact, it's a detriment to my business. You know, like I'm not going to touch it with a barge pole. Right. It's like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think, I think one of the biggest problems there is just the fact that, oh, geez, my dog doesn't like me. I'm not a fan of the cloud. Yes. He gets, he gets upset about cloud processing. Let me tell you.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it's, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So I think, you know, I, I'm interested to see where all this is going. I'm interested to see, do you see like the Ultium 365 stuff? I've heard some anecdotal things about getting stuff pushed into there. It's kind of difficult, but you know, that's, that could just be early, early access kind of thing. Like who knows what that's ultimately going to be like. I don't know if you're, I guess you have an older version. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, I don't keep up to date without him anymore. Sorry. So, you know, yeah, I've heard of it, but I don't, yeah, I don't follow it. I'm not on the forums anymore. It's not, you know, don't have my ear to the ground.

Chris Gammell: They booted you out.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Think technically I'm still banned from the Ultium forum. Oh boy. Yeah. It's funny.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So anyways, I think it's definitely worth the listen. You know, if Ultium's doing it, hopefully other people are doing it. I think that, you know, there is a lot of room for this kind of thing. I'm curious to know if it's going to just be like a subset of manufacturers that are out there that are playing in this, in this playground and, you know, like the next hour playground and stuff like that. And I'm sure that as more join, it'll become, you know, like network effect type of thing. So that might be a positive thing, but I just think, you know, so like they listed actually on their site, like they currently have 5,000 and they have 5,000 companies on Ultium 365. I don't know how many people are actually using Nexar, but like, you know, if you don't have, unless you have the choice to, for every manufacturer to do that, it's less, you know, it's always that chicken and egg thing. Yeah. Until everybody is using it. Yep. Nobody wants to use it sort of thing. So, yeah. But I hope that, I hope that, you know, the promise of this is, is very interesting. And so I'm not against it. No, it's not for everyone. Well, it's not for me either.

Dave Jones: Always like, you know, there's no one perfect way to do design. Anyone who thinks so is an absolute fool, you know, and, and they'll be proven a fool every time, time and time again. So unfortunately it's, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think, I think like you said, like the, there's going to be some people that are really into it. And I think the ones that do go into it like full bore, you know, they're going to really, they are going to benefit from that sort of thing. So anyways, like I said, it's worth a listen.

Dave Jones: And they'll try and convince you that it's, you know, the only way to do it. It's just like, I can remember when you suddenly learned the benefits of Git, you know, you were like, oh my God, Git. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Let me tell you, man, I'm still, I'm still, I'm still riding high on that one. I mean, it still sucks. It sucks every single day that I use it. Right. You're still riding high on the benefit. I like it too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Preach. Preach. Boy, I've got a segue to this, to a movie I watched last night kind of thing to do with a cloud and data. And well, it actually, it's about AI actually. Have you seen X machina? I don't know how to pronounce it.

Chris Gammell: Machina. Yeah. X machina. It's machina. I have not seen it.

Dave Jones: Is that how you pronounce it?

Chris Gammell: Machina. Right. Yeah. Or machina. I usually hear X machina.

Dave Jones: I can't believe I haven't watched it. It's like seven years old or something. And I only just watched it last night. And the spoiler alert for those who, you know, it's because it's really good. I haven't seen it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, sorry. You haven't. I haven't seen it. Oh, you have not seen it.

Dave Jones: Okay. Well, I can, I can. Well, it's about AI. All right. It's well, I'm going to have to. Sorry, dude. Let me guess. The computers win. I have to be spoiled because well, you know, it's even not talk about it or, you know, do you want me to keep going?

Chris Gammell: All right. All right. No. Keep going. Yes.

Dave Jones: Because it's interesting. Anyway, I'll try and keep it as simple as possible. It's about this guy who's like a Mark Zuckerberg, Sergei Brin. He's like, he founded like the world's biggest search engine company, like Google, right? Except they call it Blue Book or something, right? Anyway, so it's his world's biggest search engine company. They've got everyone's data, right? You know, they know everything about you and everything else. Anyway, he develops these AI, this AI robot, right? Which is like he hires one of him, he gets one of his employees to come in to his big, you know, compound where he lives alone with this AI robot he's developed. And he tries to do the Turing test with it. I won't tell you anything more about the story.

Chris Gammell: You find a turtle and it's on its back.

Dave Jones: But the interesting thing was that the search engine data, the interesting way that he put it was that the search engine data is not what people are thinking. It's not what people are thinking. It's how people think. And that is how he used all that data to develop the AI. Because search engine is not just what people are thinking at the time. It's actually really, if you look at it at a deep level, it's how people think and how people operate. So that's why he was able to take all that data and create this, you know, AI that, this killer AI. So anyway, I thought that was very, very interesting and sort of a profound thought is that all this stuff we're putting online is not just what we're thinking. It's how we're thinking.

Chris Gammell: Ah, yeah. I mean, I do think that the system itself also ends up impacting things. So just to use Google as an example, right? I might be thinking like in my head, I might be thinking like I could really go for a sandwich right now. Or like my tummy, my tummy's grumbling or, you know, like I'm real hungry and the behavior ends up changing into sandwich shop Chicago, right? That's what I would search. You know, like it's different than like the actual, you know, there is some translation layer there as well. But like, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's what we're thinking is what I'm thinking is hungry. And I guess they could reverse engineer that sandwich shop Chicago. I'm trying to optimize for the best results.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: You know, maybe other people don't do that sort of thing, but I'm just trying to find, I'm just trying to find a damn sandwich, you know?

Dave Jones: I know it's not like, that's not how it actually works. Right. But, but it's interesting. I thought it was an interesting way to think about it anyway. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, so like to relate it back to the part data stuff, I think that there, you know, like it might be, you choose the same capacitor every single time, but it's like, but yeah, if you could somehow then extrapolate and look back and say like, see like, oh, but why, why are you choosing that capacitor? Or, you know, like you could start to like draw trends out like that sort of thing. And I think that, I think that is what companies like this are trying to do.

Dave Jones: A company like, I'm not saying they will, but could a company like Altium start selling that data just like Facebook sell their data, right? Safe, Facebook sell your data, right? That's, that's how they make money. Right. That's all, that's all the big scandal thing, right? They sell your anonymous data, right? They, they anonymize it. So that's how they make, makes it all legal. Right. But could they, a company like Altium, if they've got all that design data on the cloud, then on sell that data anonymized, of course, to the component manufacturers and going, oh, look, like everyone's using this new version of this ARM chip. Oh, everyone's, everyone's using a hundred mic 0603 caps for some reason at the moment. Geez, you better start ramping up on the production of those.

Chris Gammell: So I've thought about this a lot. I've actually thought about the, during my supply from days, I did think about this a lot. And I think there's actually an even more interesting question there, which is, would you want them to sell it? And that sounds like kind of crazy.

Dave Jones: You could almost say yes, as long as it's anonymized, because then you're going to get the data. Well, you, you think the supplier is going, oh, Chris Gammell is going to use this part. Geez, I better ramp up production, you know?

Chris Gammell: Okay. There's, yeah, there's maybe that, right? But if, if someone is at the design stage, right? If I'm like searching around for an op amp and say a supplier frame or an Altium, whatever, they know that I'm searching through these op amp libraries and I'm looking, say, say like it was a completely integrated thing in a CAD tool. And I'm looking there and I'm looking through all the specs. I'm trying to find it. On the one hand, it might be a very annoying thing to, to, for my phone to ring and for an FAE or salesperson to be like, let me drop by and buy a lunch and like, and tell you about all the new parts. Right. However.

Dave Jones: And I totally didn't know that you were working on this design. Wink, wink. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But, but if it was above board, right? No, but if it was above board, like, honestly, like, but at the same time, that is so super creepy. But what if you opted in for it? This is what I'm saying, Dave. What if you opted in for it?

Dave Jones: Minutes after you started searching a part, you get a call from your bloody local supplier.

Chris Gammell: What if you opted in for it and it's not a call from a supplier? What if it's a bidding thing right at that point? Everyone starts bidding. It's Maxim and TI and, and, and at ADI, the three of them put in a bid. They're like, Hey, look, here's, here's the bet. Right now. I know that you're looking for an op amp and it has to have these specs. Here's our best bet at what it's going to be. You can go and check it and you say, yep, that's good. And they say, here's the best price I can give you. Now, like at that point, it completely changes. Right. And there is this like tit for tat kind of like data exchange there. It's like, yeah, you know what I'm looking for. It is at the time.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But they can't do this at the micro level to a million design engineers across the planet.

Chris Gammell: Sure. You could. These are computers, Dave. Like, I mean, like it wouldn't be a human. Okay. But if there was a bot. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't like it. No, I don't want to interact with a freaking bot.

Chris Gammell: I know you don't like it, but I'm just saying that there, there is a potential where there could be, there is an upside to potentially opting into a system like that. And I know it's a counter to what we usually say on this program, right? We usually are like, Oh, don't track me. And like, it is creepy to be tracked like that. But if you do opt in, if you leaned into it at that point, there could be, there could be benefits. That's all I'm saying. Because I used to think about those benefits. Well, I'm going to take it one step further.

Dave Jones: And I'm going to say that a company like Altium could generate revenue by not just selling that sort of stuff, but by having suppliers bid to push their components up the search engine rankings within the tool. Because they totally don't do that right now.

Chris Gammell: I mean, Dave, they do that already.

Dave Jones: Really? Oh yeah. Am I behind the times?

Chris Gammell: Not just, not just Altium, not just Octo, so it's Octo part, right? You go to Octo part and you search for, you search for, let's do it right now. You go to Octo part, you search for generic part.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't use that tool to search for generic parts. So I don't know. I usually, I don't know what it looks like on the API side of things, right?

Chris Gammell: But I go top in, type in op amp, right? And it pops something up and the first, I don't know. Yeah. So I typed in op amp and the first five results are TI. Right. I'm willing to bet, I'm willing to bet the TI paid for that ranking because, oh, here we go. Distributor links are sponsored.

Dave Jones: Well, they, they, they do bring in X tens of millions of dollars a year from Octo part. And that's not just the ads. Sure. There's no way there's no ads. I mean, this is, well, no, they get affiliate links. These are ads.

Chris Gammell: I mean, that's, that's the thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So like you click through to a TI or a Digicure mouse or whatever. There'll be an exchange of value.

Dave Jones: Well, I just typed in op amp to Octo part and I got microchip. What?

Chris Gammell: Well, there you go. Maybe TI wants my business more. Are you signed in or not?

Dave Jones: I just got a pick 20. I just typed in op amp and I got a pick 24.

Chris Gammell: What? Did you put a space? Oh yeah. You put, put a space in there. Op.

Dave Jones: Space amp. Oh, but piss off.

Chris Gammell: That's just, that's just, that's just a search term. I don't know. That's rubbish. But if you.

Dave Jones: Op amp. One word.

Chris Gammell: Okay. That doesn't matter. But, but what I'm saying is this happens more places than you'd think. This also happens if you go to Mauser, if you go to Digikey, if you go to Farnell, if you go to RS, actually, if you go to RS and Farnell, they are the craptastic, the most craptastic distributors. They are on my shit list right now. I'm so mad at them both because they promote that they have parts and then they do not. And boy, that nothing will piss me off more.

Dave Jones: Well, then there's a box there that says in stock. Dude, ticket.

Chris Gammell: Where? Where?

Dave Jones: On these, on every distributor's website, there's a box that says you can only search for in stock parts.

Chris Gammell: It had stock. I clicked buy. The transaction went through. And then I got an email four days later from Newark that said, nope, sorry. Those actually don't exist.

Dave Jones: Don't tell me that I didn't tick the in stock box. Because I've never had that.

Chris Gammell: This is not user error because it's happened to me before too. That happened also when I ordered the first CM4s that I had ordered, the compute modules.

Dave Jones: They are listing parts from alternative suppliers now, but that is indicated.

Chris Gammell: Nope. Nope. Wrong.

Dave Jones: You're saying that these companies have claimed to have stock in their warehouse when they don't.

Chris Gammell: Yes. That's their entire business model. You would think they would do it right. You would think they would do it right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyone else? Has anyone else out there in our audience had that issue where you were guaranteed, like it said, local stock delivery today. And then you've clicked it. You've put it in your thing. You've done your checkout. And then they've come back days later and said, sorry, we don't have that.

Chris Gammell: Yep. I've heard that happening at Mauser. I've heard it happening at DigiKey. Then this must be a new thing. I've heard it happening at Newark. I think what it is, is basically it's an invoice or not an invoice thing. It's a...

Dave Jones: I just find this stunning because these companies built their entire reputation over decades on in-stock availability. Why would they suddenly change that? Hey, man.

Chris Gammell: It is. These are some terrible times. That's why. I mean, yeah. I mean, but it's... What's it called when you have to go and check all the stock in your stock room? My brain is not working lately. No.

Dave Jones: That's what it's called here, stock take. You have to do a yearly stock take if you're a business to see what stock you have on hand.

Dave Jones: That's the equivalent term.

Chris Gammell: Stock take versus... Yeah. Yeah. Whatever it is here. Oh, man. My brain is just completely...

Dave Jones: I can't believe they're doing that. I can't believe... That destroys their reputation overnight. That absolutely destroys it.

Chris Gammell: I'm mad because it's benefiting me. I'm mad because I can't get parts that I was damn sure that I was purchasing.

Dave Jones: Oh, I just... I won't believe it until I see it.

Chris Gammell: I've seen people talk about it on Twitter, on the consulting forum. Well, you should order more parts. You're going to feel the pain. That's it. Feel the lightning, man. All right. Feel the damn lightning.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No.

Chris Gammell: You know how you're usually the upset, angry one? This is my turn. I am the upset, angry one. Yeah. I'm me and along with everyone else who's trying to buy goddamn parts. I'm not...

Dave Jones: Still not going to believe it.

Chris Gammell: Not... Terrible. Yeah. Well, then go build something. Go try and build something on your bench. Order a bunch of parts. You'll see. All right. You'll see, man. You'll all see. Anywho, back to people selling your information. They're doing it. It's happening. There's listings that happen on DigiKey and otherwise. Like, a bunch of revenue happens on the DigiKeys and the Mouses of the world by getting promoted listing because how does a TI beat out a Maxim or... No, I don't know.

Dave Jones: If you go to your DigiKeys or your Mouses, when you do the listing, it's not popped up by who's paying for that listing. It pops up based on the default sort setting that you've got.

Chris Gammell: Nope. I mean, yes, but also not always. I know what you're saying. Like, you're saying that you can, like, force the issue. But I'm saying that there is a marketing arm at DigiKey. There's a marketing arm at Mouser. Oh, I have no idea. There's a marketing arm at all of these distributors. And that includes search rankings. I just, I know it because I used to be in that world. So, like, you can't tell me I don't know a thing that I know. You know, like, there's... Yeah. It's like... And it's like, it's fine, right? I mean, it's like, if you are truly looking for a filtered component, right? If you're filtering all the way down to, like, a certain spec, who cares? Right? But you're not, they're not trying to find you at that point. But they're, if you're, like, listing for a generic component, yeah. Like, they're going to try and get that ranking. And they're going to try and move up in the rank order. So. And so, who cares? Right? I mean, like, that... All of these things are, like... Like I said, it's this interesting, like, push-pull of, like, what is the benefit to the user versus the data that gets generated from it? Like I said, I think there should... I would love to see a complete opt-in where I... Maybe I do. Maybe someone tracks all of my data as I'm doing design, but I get preferential pricing. I get FAE support. I get, like, a bunch of stuff there. I want that. I want to try it, at least. I don't need to do it. Maybe I don't want to do it for everything. Maybe my client wouldn't let me do it for everything. But I would love to give that a shot. Because how else do you get support these days? Do you have to be huge? Right. You know, in order to get, like, some kind of... How do you find out about a new sensor when you're searching for another sensor? It's like, maybe there's an ad that gets sold against that, a search term or something. But, like, I want to know when there's a sensor that... Maybe I'm searching for a sensor because it's in my design and I wanted... You know, I just need to use that same sensor. Or, but maybe it's 15 years old and it's getting ready for a die shrink or it's getting ready to go, you know, end of life. And I would love to hear... Maybe I'm at somewhere in my design where I would love to hear about a new sensor that just got released and it's smaller and it's cheaper and it's lower power. You know, and I just wouldn't have known about it otherwise. So, like, there are benefits on both sides of this side of things. But there's no way to do it right now. It's all kind of behind the curtain as far as I'm convinced.

Dave Jones: I don't know. Good luck.

Chris Gammell: Got me all worked up, Dave. Good luck. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. I don't know. What's the answer? There is none.

Chris Gammell: There is none.

Dave Jones: No, I can... Once again, I can think of... Sure. Like, in an ideal world, like, yes, you just... In fact, geez, you want somebody else to do your entire design for you, don't you? It's like, oh, you start, you know, come up with this idea. So, you open your CAD program and you start doing your schematic and then, you know, a million other bots and people come in and, you go, no, you want to use this part, this part, this part, this part, this part, this part, because it's available, boom, boom, boom, boom. And your design's done in 10 minutes and then you push your manufacturing button out of pops, right? But, you know, it's like, eh, sure. Okay. Sure. I mean... That'd be great, right?

Chris Gammell: I mean, sometimes you don't need that much, you know, like, maybe you just need a thing, you know? Like, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Boy, I don't know. It's not easy. There's just so many... There's just way too many... Even if you thought this was the greatest thing in the world, there's just so many permutations and combinations of, you know, requirements and circumstances that it's not going to be ideal for every case. You're just like... Some things you're just going to go, no, bugger off. I don't want to... I'm doing it this way. Piss off. Like, it's, you know...

Chris Gammell: Sure, but have a switch. Have, like, a no track switch. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Incognito window. Incognito window in your CAD program. Sure.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: I mean, opt-in, opt-out, whatever. I don't care. I'm just saying there should be an opt-in. There's no current opt-in of, like, I want to go full bore, give me a bunch of support by tracking my designs.

Dave Jones: Has anyone ever tried Control-Shift-N in Altium? Will that get you into privacy mode? Yeah, probably not, yeah. Coming in the 2022 edition. Yeah, right, right. Oh, goodness. I don't know. Anyway. Yep. Next. Enough of this cloud shit. You know, AI and bloody paid bots. Grown.

Chris Gammell: Well, something completely different is that I'm moving. Oh, yes.

Dave Jones: You are moving. Tell people where you are currently and where you're thinking about moving to.

Chris Gammell: I live in downtown Chicago. I'm about four blocks from the Sears Tower, now Willis Tower, or Big Willie. Big Willie. And I'm moving to North Carolina. Big Willie. Yeah. I love it. My wife calls it that. It's pretty funny. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So, I love Chicago. It's great. But, you know, people know that I just had a child. And we're looking to go somewhere warmer. So, as far as warm places in the United States that aren't completely ridiculously expensive, like San Diego.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: There's, like, San Diego. There's Austin. And there's, like, the Research Triangle.

Dave Jones: Miami isn't there? Is that a bit?

Chris Gammell: I don't think Miami is. I mean, the software.

Dave Jones: No, but in terms of war, in terms of weather.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well, yeah, yeah. I need to be around nerds, though. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I need to. So, we're going to Research Triangle. So, that's Durham, you know, near Raleigh. So, yeah. If people are around there, I'll be starting up a meetup or continuing on a meetup down there.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: So, keep an eye out now that people are in person.

Dave Jones: And as I mentioned to you, who you didn't know about, Eli, the computer guy, he went up and moved there.

Chris Gammell: And he's formed a maker space there. No, no, no. He's further west. Oh, he's further. So, he's closer to where Martin lives.

Speaker ?: Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: Right. So, Martin lives near Asheville.

Dave Jones: Martin Lawton, we're talking about. Yep.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yes. I think he's told people that publicly. Yeah. But that's where Eli, the computer guy, is. So, that's about two, three hours away.

Speaker ?: Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: Oh, geez. That's a long way. So, I'll be able to drive over and see Martin. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Asheville's great, though. Like, it's got a small tech scene, but not the size that I like.

Dave Jones: So, you haven't found a place yet.

Chris Gammell: I have not found a place yet.

Dave Jones: Because the market's just gone insane. And you go, we'll bid on that. Oh, sorry. Somebody's already bid.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I shouldn't laugh. Sorry. It's just, it's the same here. It's pretty.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's like, let's talk about Australia. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: I told you this 12 months ago, and I think you said, oh, that'll never happen here. And then six months later, Chris is coming back. Oh, well, shit, it happened here.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I remember when I was there, it was still pretty bonkers then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just, you know, it's continued to be bonkers.

Dave Jones: Well, it actually dipped down for a while. In 2018 there, we actually hit a peak and it went down. My suburb actually dropped 18, near 20%, right? Oh, wow. It actually dropped a lot. It was the bottom of the barrel. That was rock bottom. And, you know, everyone was worried. And, yep. So houses can't fall. Yeah, bullshit. Yeah, they went down. And then, of course, nobody predicted that the whole COVID thing would actually lead to an absolute boom in house price. Everyone thought everyone would be super conservative on the fiscal side of things. But everyone, no, money's so cheap that, you know, it's just, no, bugger. They want the space and work from home.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's a pretty good, there's a good video from Wendover Productions about this sort of thing. We'll link in. I do like Wendover. That was also about just general shortages. Yeah, they also talked about like chips and stuff like that. And it's just not just COVID, which is interesting. So from a sourcing perspective and just how it affects things. Yeah, it's a great watch. So, yeah, so I mean, I had a sad day a couple weeks ago, taking my lab down, putting in boxes.

Dave Jones: So you currently don't have a lab? Converting that. You're currently labless?

Chris Gammell: I am currently, yeah, I'm without lab. You know, I have a lot of portable equipment now.

Chris Gammell: And I have things in boxes I can access.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I have a little USB scope and a microscope, a USB oscilloscope and a multimeter.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I got my analog discovery too. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Not much else.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, I could pull stuff out of the boxes, right? So I made sure that like when I was packing, I was very clearly like, this is the soldering box. This is the test equipment box.

Dave Jones: I may need that at a moment's notice, you know. Yeah, yeah. That's right.

Chris Gammell: And I did like a manifest system for all the boxes. So everything's numbered. And so I can just go and like pull a numbered box and know what's in there. So that's really helpful.

Dave Jones: Jeez. How many boxes did you end up with?

Chris Gammell: I'm at 55 currently.

Dave Jones: 55 boxes. Yeah. That's actually probably not many, I guess.

Chris Gammell: No, they're all hidden in the house. So this is actually before, you know, it's like the house is for sale now or the condo is for sale now. And so it's like all the small stuff is packed away. All the big stuff's still out. You know, you have to pretend like you don't actually live here.

Dave Jones: That's like the big thing for apparently for selling a house. I'm going to tell everyone about the place that you excitedly sent me a link to the other week. Oh, man.

Chris Gammell: And you said, oh, I've got to have this.

Dave Jones: Look at the workshop. Holy crap.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it was like a 1,200 square foot workshop, like a 120 square meter workshop. It was insane.

Dave Jones: And it had a two bedroom apartment on top of it. You know, like just that you could turn into video editing, you know, a recording room and everything if you really wanted to. Like, you know, editing room. Right, right. Or rent it out so you can actually afford the place. Yeah, right. That was the plan. Because it was expensive. Well, it was expensive for that part of the US anyway. It was like, hey, chum, chum, chum.

Chris Gammell: It's expensive in general, I thought. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's all relatively exposed. But yeah, I mean, it's tough. I mean, like, so now kind of searching around and like, you know, trying to figure out, you know, I'm used to like, well, I used to be used to having a shared workspace. So like trying to navigate, do I have a shared workspace? Do I try and get my own workspace?

Dave Jones: Oh, you're thinking about going away from that. You're thinking about, no, I want it all to myself.

Chris Gammell: So I've had my own workspace for a year now, year plus.

Dave Jones: None of this communism rubbish I want. So I'm going to hoard it all myself.

Chris Gammell: I would actually be, I would, I think a best case scenario for me would be a like a locked room, like a.

Dave Jones: A locked, a locked windowless room. Just leave me alone.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no, no, no. I want like a, the big problem is being able to lock up your gear, right? So I don't want to just leave my gear out, like on a bench.

Dave Jones: Jeez, what place are you moving to? What? Oh, are you talking about at home or in a shared space?

Chris Gammell: No, sorry, a shared space. Yeah. So like, yeah. So you were talking about shared versus, versus like going private and having my own space. Like in a best case scenario, I'd rather, I'd rather be around, I'd love being around people. And I, you know, I want to, but I want to be able to like close the door, concentrate, keep my stuff safe, keep my client projects. Yeah. You know, out of, out of the public eye. But then when I walk out the door, I want to be able to like talk to people.

Dave Jones: Could you do that at one of the places you were in? Was it the Chicago one where you could technically, well, you, you could, you didn't, but you could technically hire your own room if you had enough money.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. You could, you could do that sort of thing, but it's still, it was still like glass. So you could still kind of see everything that was there.

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no. Yeah. No.

Chris Gammell: So I'd like wanted so that you could see out.

Dave Jones: See out, but not see in. Watch all the other humans, but don't let them see you. Yeah. Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I want to be like around nerds, you know, like that's like a, that's like a thing. I want to be around nerds.

Dave Jones: But only when you want to be around the nerds. And you don't want them to be around you when you don't want them to. So you're a. Yeah, exactly. Typical selfish nerd. Yep. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Bring it on. That's that. I will take that. I will take that title. Absolutely. Every day.

Dave Jones: Well, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty much universal, isn't it? I mean, I hate to stereotype, but stereotypes are real for a reason, you know?

Chris Gammell: I mean, I think that being able to close the door and concentrate is very important for me. Right. I, I don't know. So no, no spaces like that, unfortunately where I'm going, but.

Dave Jones: Guess why? I don't have a full-time employee anymore, you know? Well, it's, you know, it's not that I was so sick of him that I got rid of him, you know? You mean that's why you didn't hire another person after he left? After he left. Yeah. And, and, and for the last. You tried that experiment. It was good. Well, both of us agree. Like for the last probably six or nine months that he was working here, this is David too. We, we sort of came to the agreement that, oh yeah, it's probably best if we just, if he just works from home all the time, you know? And I just work here on my own. You know, it was just, I don't know. It was just easier if we both did that. Humans in your space. It's so weird. So yeah, I almost didn't see him for, you know, six months or something. It was, yeah. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. And that was all pre-COVID too. So I think that's not like, not like he was working from home because he had to. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, it was just, you know, just seemed better for everyone. You know, we both just liked working. Right.

Chris Gammell: And I think that's, that's important to be like, figure out how teams work best. And, you know, sometimes you just get together once a week or maybe once a month or every couple months, you know, like that's, yeah. Figure out what works for you. So yeah, things work for me. Usually when I can see people that I don't have any obligation to see every day, that I can close the door, you know, it's. Well, you know.

Dave Jones: Is your wife aware of this proclivity? Oh, she doesn't count.

Chris Gammell: This is technical people. I see her every day. I like, I like her a lot, you know. And that's the thing. We don't talk about technical stuff either.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. I don't talk about, you know, even, even blogging, you know, like I might occasionally come home and tell her what I, you know, video I worked on today, but it's like, oh yeah. You know, like she doesn't watch my content, doesn't care really, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. The details aren't important. It's more about how it affected you as a person. Oh yeah. How to shit day to day. How you relate to other people, right? Yep. Right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: This is why I'm home late today. Cause my hard drive failed, you know, like. Right. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Sorry, dear. I like, like, I like, I have to go back tonight to finish the video because my hard drive failed today. You know, it's not like I'm going back cause I don't want to be there with you. It's like, you know. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, a lot to navigate still, you know, figuring out, uh, you know, like a new scene, a new electronics meetup scene. Like I said, I'll be starting that and then seeing if I want to have a separate space.

Dave Jones: Which city is it again that you're targeting?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So like, so like research triangle is like a Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill is kind of like the triangle as far as I understand it. Yeah. And there's a bunch of other stuff around there too. I mean, there's other like suburbs and you know, it's pretty spread out down there.

Dave Jones: And how big is this research triangle? What's the distance between those?

Chris Gammell: I'd say like, it's about it with like no traffic at like full speed on a highway. It's probably 20 to 30 minutes between each spot.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. That's yeah. That's not. So it's size of Sydney almost.

Chris Gammell: So like 10, 10 to. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think Sydney is bigger.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: But Raleigh is real big. So that's just the one. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: I see it now. Yeah. Raleigh, Durham. Oh yeah. And sorry. The other one is.

Chris Gammell: Uh, Chapel Hill.

Dave Jones: Right. Don't see that one, but yeah. Raleigh and Durham. Jeez. They're right next to each other. Down and to the left. Yeah. That's a stone's throw. Really? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we'll see. We'll see how that is. I'm sure there's some nerves in the area. Actually, um, Cree, uh, we had John Edmund on here back in the day. Uh, Cree is based on. So, and then one of my, then the HR department of my former, uh, ABB company, uh, is down in Apex, which is outside of Raleigh. So there's like a lot of suburbs there. So, and then, uh, Apple starting a new thousand person facility, Google starting a thousand person facility. So it's got to get done.

Dave Jones: This sounds like a thing. Thousand person facility.

Chris Gammell: A thing.

Dave Jones: Is this like a new trend? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's just like them opening up. No, like it's an opening up like research centers. Right. So they, they try, you know, they're, they grow so big that they're not centralizing in one campus anymore. Right. So Apple has many, many campuses and basically anywhere, anywhere there's like a tech center or usually, usually that's based around universities as well. So that's usually a strong indicator, but like Google has a big New York presence. Google has a big, you know, obviously mountain views where their headquarters is. They have a Boulder, Colorado resources. You know, they just, they just have satellite satellite groups.

Dave Jones: Hadjik. Right. I just found out that, well, I knew that they had a Sydney presence, something in Sydney, like they're a Melbourne company. They're from Melbourne, but, uh, I, they, they, they do have like a Sydney group and this Sydney group does the digital logic FPGA stuff, apparently. So, and they, and one of the people from there actually holds a, holds a meetup.org thing. Apparently.

Chris Gammell: Oh, nice. Dave's going to get social. All right.

Dave Jones: So, yep. I don't know if it's still running, but you know, it was anyway. Yeah. Well, yeah. During this time. Those meetup things, they, yeah. Fell by the wayside a bit. But, uh, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: As they do during global pandemics.

Dave Jones: So, is there a big, uh, uni there? Is there a big university? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So that's really what the triangle.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So it's, uh, NC State is in Raleigh. Uh, that's North Carolina State. There's UNC Chapel Hill, which is in Chapel Hill. And then Duke University is in, uh, is in Durham. So those are, that's, I think what defines the triangle. And then there's, you know, a lot of research that happens around there. And then RTP is the research triangle park.

Dave Jones: That's, that's not very South. That's still pretty North. Are you sure the weather's good enough there?

Chris Gammell: That's about as far South as I can handle.

Dave Jones: Didn't let me know, Julian Banjos, right? Is that the right? Yeah, that's right. Is there a phobia for like a fear of Julian Banjos? Is there a word for the phobia of that? Or is that too stereotypical?

Chris Gammell: I bet there is a fear of Banjos. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Anyway, North Carolina folks is where it's all happening. That's where you want to move to. Raise up. Yep. I thought everyone, dude, everyone was moving to Texas, Florida.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, Austin's a great town. I used to live there. I loved it, but it's, uh, it's a little too hot for me. And, um, it's really isolated too. Like it's in the middle of, you know, it's like takes a while to get anywhere from there. So yeah.

Dave Jones: Cool. Oh, well, good luck finding a place. So what is, what is the minimum? Let, let's, let's go minimum square footage for you yanks. What's the minimum square footage you need for, uh, like your workshop? Because like, the thing is like you, you yanks are weird. It's like every house in America has a basement. Like I just don't get it. That's just not a thing here. Um, uh, that's not true.

Chris Gammell: Actually, that's, that's usually dependent on the, uh, like the geography. And so if there's like a, if it's built on bedrock, it's impossible to put a basement in. You'd have to like dynamite blast it out. And so, but, uh, usually location-based like, so like Chicago is very basement. A lot of those houses have basements. In North Carolina, I've seen very few. Okay. I think because it's pretty mountainous. Basically, if you look at like, if you look at how the glaciers happen. So like the glaciers kind of stopped, uh, around like West Virginia, Pennsylvania or so. And then everything below that. So everything North of that is like real flat, right? Cause the glaciers scraped it as they receded. Everything below that though, actually are, you know, hilly or, you know, moderately hilly. And then there's other flatter regions, but North Carolina is real hilly, but anything that's super hilly usually is built on top of bed. It's got like the bedrock there as well.

Dave Jones: So interesting. So minimum square footage.

Chris Gammell: I can tell you what I used to be. And I have a drawing of my current place. So I had, I had a spot that was five and a half by nine and a half feet and I had everything packed in everything packed into that. Yeah, but you don't want that. Come on.

Dave Jones: So what's, you know.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I don't want that, but I've had that. But you don't want it again. I mean, yeah. Bigger's better in that case. Yeah. I mean, I can get by with, I guess that's what, that's 50 square feet or five square meters, right? I could.

Dave Jones: Well, I've got 50 square meters in 500 square feet.

Chris Gammell: Is it 10 X if people don't, can't do that math in their head? It's about 10 X.

Dave Jones: I think it's nine point something, something like that. But yeah, it's basically, yeah. Basically 500 square feet is what I've got at the moment. Where I was renting before, I was renting over a thousand square feet. I was renting a hundred square meters. So that's almost 1100 square feet. So yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. It's hard to say, right? It's kind of how you use it, how they use the space too, right?

Dave Jones: Well, do you want mechanical stuff in there as well? Or do you just want it as an electronics lab?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think for me, it's a electronics lab and filming area. Because that makes the difference. Just being able to do those.

Dave Jones: I mean, I can't, but I do packing and shipping in here as well. Right. So it's like, you know, it's pretty squeezy. So 500 square feet with packing and shipping and six benches or five benches or whatever and a big editing desk and everything. That's pretty squeezy.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you've got a lot of stuff too, honestly. I mean, like that's.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: Mine is not a working lab in quote marks. It's like, it's designed for just random shooting of, you know, random videos. Gears always moving every day. Like that's why there's no one setup here. Like I don't have like a dedicated bench. I can just go to and everything's set up. It's like, I'm always moving stuff. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: So I have, I have different requirements, but you know, for, for those who, because I, I do this on my, when I do mailbag, I have, I have people submit in a lab and I put it up on the big screen behind me and stuff like that. And so I showcase people's labs and you know, most of them like, I really only need a couple of benches for, you know, for a decent electronics lab where you do, you know, most of your work as long as it's set up and dedicated. It's.

Chris Gammell: I think it depends on what you're doing too, right? I mean, like how many scopes do people really need? Well, it's like, if you're, if you're doing like motor stuff, you might need something on every winding and you might not have one of those eight channel scopes. And it's like, okay, so maybe you have a couple of scopes or, you know, if you need a lot of concurrent measurements, then yeah, you're going to need a lot of scopes. Or if you have other crazy equipment, I mailed, I mailed, uh, Mr. Mighty home, uh, Jeff Kaiser is currently babysitting my 87. I figured it was, I figured it was cheaper to just mail it to him than to try and get someone to move it.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The box was so big. It was like a three foot by two foot box. You know? Yeah. Uh, it was 85 pounds. So. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, Jeff's got it.

Dave Jones: And he's not going to give it back. Bye bye.

Chris Gammell: I don't know if he is actually. Yeah. Seems like he's enjoying it though. He's actually restoring, uh, he's been tweeting about it too. He's been restoring another, another thing.

Dave Jones: I, I seen that. Yeah. Like he's been, uh, bleaching his keys and everything. He's, you know, yep. Yeah. Jeez. They turned up nice though.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. I didn't see that.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. You've seen the before and after photos of his bleached keys. You know, you know, you get that, uh, you know, yellow bromine yellowing of the,

Chris Gammell: yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Stuff. And yeah, it's, uh, yeah, I came up really nice, really schmick. It's like a bought one. So very impressive. Jeez. That's a shit ton of work. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It definitely is. Yeah. He's breaking it all the way down basically.

Dave Jones: He's building it up from scratch. Yeah. Don't think I'd have the patience.

Chris Gammell: So yeah. I don't know about a minimum square footage or square meterage.

Dave Jones: Look, I, I, I reckon you'd need two 50 square feet for a lab. I would, I would put that as a minimum. Right. Cause they're like two 50 that that's 23 square meters. Like that's not, that's not that big. Right. It's big enough for a couple of benches and a desk.

Chris Gammell: I've seen people make a lot of things. Oh yeah. No, no, totally.

Dave Jones: I used to come from four or four square meters. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. For me, it's the big thing is like project storage. Oh yes.

Dave Jones: If you're working on lots of parts, as I was going to say before, if you're like, you know,

Chris Gammell: a, uh, you're going to say, I got assembler, Greg dabble. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You're assembling lots of boards. You're doing lots of different projects and all sorts of stuff like that. Then yeah, you're right. You need like tubs and tubs and tubs and tubs and you know, you need space for 50 tubs.

Chris Gammell: And I have that right now. I mean, I have, I have like a lot of shelves that are just holding components and project, uh, you know, uh, my client projects, things like that. Yeah. And I, if I could optimize for that, like if I could have like a, one of those like elevators that like rotates. Yeah. We actually have one of these. We have one of those at work. Where you can like, yeah. Yeah. You know, if you could have something like that where you could store it and then it would just kind of go away and it's like very vertically efficient, like that would be killer. But, uh, you know.

Dave Jones: Unfortunately, we, we couldn't use it ourselves. The engineers couldn't use it. We had a priest who would operate the machine. Yeah. You know, and you would, you would go up to the window, please, sir. May I have, you know, part X, please check, checking out part 44. And then grumble and go off. And then five minutes later. That's right. Oh, they're always, they're always grumpy. They're always grumpy. Yep. And then. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: They're like a librarian, but like mixed with like a machine shop, like, uh, you know, guru, you know, like a, like an AVE plus a librarian.

Dave Jones: And if you turned up with, without your anti-static lab coat, holy shit.

Chris Gammell: Oh my gosh. How dare you? How dare you, sir.

Dave Jones: Sacrifice into the temple without, uh.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: Without your religious garb on. Without paying tribute.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And we're, we're, we're deadly serious folks. This is, you know, if you've never worked in a company like this, that, that has one of these. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I feel like any kind of controlled thing, you know, it's usually to, to the grumpy people's credit, it's usually because it got abused. Yeah. A couple of times. And they've had a deal with the fallout from it. They seem everyone's going. They catch all the shit from like the boss and being like, what happened to all this stock? Why isn't it here? Well, you know, Dave snuck in and he stole a bunch of stock. Well, don't let him do it anymore or else it's your, it's your job, sir. And then they get all grumpy.

Dave Jones: Oh, love it. Love it. Yes. Memories.

Chris Gammell: Memories of messing with people.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I'm telling you at 250 square foot minimum. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Well, I can make less work. Yeah, you could, but no, you want that. If you're buying Dave, I'm going to, I'm going to let you, I'm going to go for it. That's great. Excellent. That's great. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. So would, would you like it to be in the house or like separate? Were you? No.

Chris Gammell: No. Separate would be great. Yeah. So if it doesn't. Maybe you've heard during the show, there was a dog barking and baby crying and yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Would you.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like build one from scratch or do you want kids like finding one? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I've always.

Dave Jones: Finding one's tough. Like, like, like a nice place that you like that happens to have also a nice big lab out the back. You know, it's like, no. Yeah. They usually got some grotty old garage, you know, which is just the crap, you know? So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think the real problem is just that that gets real expensive real fast. I mean, that expensive place that I showed you, like it was expensive for a reason. Like the, the guy that owned it, he was, he built it all himself. He got it all permitted.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's very schmick. Oh, it was so schmick. Oh yeah. Oh, it was so nice. It was all like. Can we put up a photo of it maybe?

Chris Gammell: He did sealed concrete floors.

Dave Jones: No. I don't think. Yeah. I don't think so. No, that gives away. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We don't own that photo. So, but yeah, it was really nice. I'm very jealous of whoever ended up getting it, but, and I found another place that was a, you know, like, so I've been keeping an eye on these things of like workshops or like secondary spaces. Pro tip.

Dave Jones: Pro tip. Yeah. It's just put search terms, search term watch lists for keywords like that, like workshop, you know, separate space or, you know.

Chris Gammell: ADU. Yeah.

Dave Jones: What's, what's an ADU?

Chris Gammell: ADU is like another one. Additional Domestic Unit. Oh God. ADU is like a, so like that apartment over top of, oh yeah, I didn't know it until this process started. So.

Dave Jones: Or, or even something like a loft or something like that, you know, that has like a, you know, but they usually get hot and you know, they're like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's true. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: Well, good luck.

Chris Gammell: Well.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Thanks man. It's, it's a tough gig. It's a not fun time. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: In 12 months time, folks, Chris will still be out of a rented Airbnb in somewhere. In the North Carolina area.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Oh my God.

Dave Jones: Because you're, you're selling your house at the moment. So you're going to get booted out. Right. So if somebody buys it.

Chris Gammell: Well, assuming it sells. Yeah. Somebody gives you the money. You're. 45 day close. You're out of there. Right.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Yep. Yep. Dave.

Chris Gammell: I'm moving. I'm moving to. Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: Yep. Come to Australia. Are we still letting people in? I don't know. We're not allowed. We're not allowed. I don't know that much. We're a penal colony. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's right.

Chris Gammell: That's right. You're not stuck in here with me. You're not. I'm not stuck in here with you. You're stuck in here with me.

Dave Jones: All you have to do is spend two weeks in quarantine and then you're free as a bird. Yeah. There you go. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: There you go. That's cool. I'm vaxxed. I'm free now too.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I know. Yeah. One last thing I want to mention. John Barry, who we had on the show, he released his company in a interesting turn of events. They became a client and I'm actually allowed to like talk about it. So I'm going to be doing stuff with them. And so that was one of the episodes, one of the things we had on the list here. It's called Goliath and it's built on top of Zephyr. So obviously you've heard me talking about Zephyr nonstop on here, but I will be doing more Zephyr stuff for work and I can talk about it. Sweet. So that's kind of exciting.

Dave Jones: So this was in the contract, was it? You are allowed to talk about it publicly or is it? Yeah. That's right. Was it actually in there? Was it, or was it just like a handshake thing?

Chris Gammell: It was not, yeah, it was just a handshake thing. So, I mean, I think it benefits them for me to talk about it too, but I'm excited about it. So it's a, it's a cool new program. Excellent. And yeah, you know, building hardware for, for exciting new purposes. It's very IOTE. So you probably don't care about it, but, but, but the Zephyr stuff's cool.

Dave Jones: And I, I think I mentioned, I think I mentioned certain people, certain applications. Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. The, the Zephyr stuff, that conference is coming up. I mentioned that I think two weeks ago and people can go and check it out. Not just Goliath, but Zephyr too. And I don't know, I'm just really curious about where all this stuff goes. Cause I was just talking to a friend who used Minute, which is a Apache one. He really liked that. I've talked to, I think Alvaro Cretto from a reverse engineering podcast. He also liked that in the past. And just like how all that stuff plays out, you know, Amazon's got free, owns free RTOS. Microsoft owns thread. Is it thread? Never heard of it. But like, there's all these different players too. And like, just how it's all going to kind of come down. It's just really interesting.

Dave Jones: Cool bananas. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Dave Jones: How am I powers up?

Chris Gammell: All right, man. Well, I'm going to go clean my house so that people can come and walk through it in a couple of days. And then I'm going to go and try and find a house of my own. Hopefully with the big shop.

Dave Jones: Can you, do you think you can do a lot of that remotely? I mean, cause it's an entirely different state from where you are, right? You can't really like hop in a car and drive from Chicago to North Carolina. Can you easily? How many?

Chris Gammell: Do what remotely? Like look for a house.

Dave Jones: Search for a house or do you think you have to go to fly down there for a couple of weeks? I've been looking for four months.

Chris Gammell: I've put in five bids. I mean, like there's, yeah, I've, I've been doing zoom calls to try and look through houses. Yeah. If people have seen Matterport, actually I got to, they did that at my place. It's this camera that shows up and they just do like, it's like a, it's like a Google, you know, street view or whatever, but inside your house.

Dave Jones: We have those here. That's common in our, in our, you know, you pay extra for it, you know, but somebody comes in and does, so you can walk through the house. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. Exactly. It's very nice. Yeah. So you're really, really get a good feel for it. So yeah. Although, although it has the wide angle lens, so everything looks bigger than it is. Yeah. So yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of software magic in there to try and like reverse connect the, you know, unfish eye of the image, but pretty cool. Pretty cool thing.

Dave Jones: Yep. So no, I think there's nothing like having boots on the ground though.

Chris Gammell: Oh. Yep. Yeah. You know, you don't get, you know, you don't get walking in through a digital thing is, boy, this house stinks.

Dave Jones: This house stinks and all this paint's cracked and you know, you can't really like. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: This, this, this smell does not smell like it's going to come out. What the hell's in this carpet?

Dave Jones: You know, like. That's right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes. Exactly. And then, and then you can't go like crawling under the house and, you know, crawling in the roof space and, you know, all that sort of jazz, you know, checking out the pipes and the guttering and, you know, roof and all that sort of thing. Yep. Yep. Tough business, mate.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Oh, good luck. I'm sure it'll take, like, it's, yeah, probably not going to be easy. I expect in many months time, you'll still be, you might, I hate to say it, but you might, yeah, you might still be looking. The current frenzied market, unless money's no object with your newfound gig.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No, that's not how that works. I mean.

Dave Jones: Oh, well. Yep. All right, man. Okay. Talk to you soon. Catch you next time.

Chris Gammell: It might be a hot real estate market, but you can still buy a plot of land in the utopian commune of Ampour fandom. There's lots of space to put up your electronics troubleshooting yurt on either My Young Lane, Elvesworth Boulevard, or Davild Drive. Grab a drum and join the Kumbaya Circle at patreon.com slash Ampour. An extra special thanks to the day to my daughter, who let me sleep enough that I had a shot at recording one of these silly outros. We'll see you next time.