#551 – Feed the Mouse

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Release July 25th, 2021. Episode 551. Feed the Mouse.

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

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

Dave Jones: Using StreamYard. We're doing video. Yes, we are. So if you want to watch this, yep, you can look at... Where are we? What's the Amp Hour on YouTube? Although we still have two channels, don't we?

Chris Gammell: Sort of, kind of.

Dave Jones: Yeah, one of them is like...

Chris Gammell: I don't think anyone's seen the old one. We have an old one, but no one's seen that.

Dave Jones: Technically, it exists.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so on our Amp Hour, the Amp Hour YouTube every week uploads the audio. So if you just wanted to listen, you could do that. Now we're also going to have a video thing. Well, maybe not every week, but we're trying it for now. Yep. And we are featuring... I don't know if... The old logo. The old globe logo.

Dave Jones: The old Cleveland. Yeah, Cleveland and Sydney. Cleveland from a decade ago.

Chris Gammell: Connecting around the globe. Oh, yeah. Yep. That's my handiwork right there, so...

Dave Jones: It was clear... Where did you go after Cleveland? It wasn't... Was it straight to Chicago from Cleveland? Yeah, Cleveland to Chicago. Yeah, it was. Okay. Seems like there was another one in there somewhere. It's been five years now.

Chris Gammell: Five years in a month, so... Yep. And then I'll...

Dave Jones: And you officially have your new house.

Chris Gammell: I do, yeah. Closed up on it. Congratulations. Thank you.

Dave Jones: Though you had a few issues.

Chris Gammell: I did, yeah. I'm probably not going to talk about those on the air, but... No, no. No. But it was not... Real estate, not my favorite.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: There's some fun stories. If people ever catch me at a meetup, I'll tell some of those at a meetup. Just say you want to hear about real estate, but yeah. Back into the world of stressing about other things like moving and setting up labs and all that stuff, so...

Dave Jones: Got it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And all sorts of the crap which we have on our list this week.

Chris Gammell: We do have a lot of stuff. I got more than this even. What would you like to start with, though, Dave?

Dave Jones: Rip NTSC.

Chris Gammell: Rip... Oh, it's dead. That's right. Yes, it's dead. It's dead. It's finally dead. I was thinking you were talking about how you used to rip DVDs or rip audio things. Right. And yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Nope. Nope.

Chris Gammell: It's gone. It's gone.

Dave Jones: Rest in peace. Yeah. NTSC. It's like PAL here in Australia.

Chris Gammell: Surely you have some stories about NTSC, right? I mean, you must have worked with it at some point, huh?

Dave Jones: Yep. Never twice the same color. That's what it stands for.

Chris Gammell: I've never heard that before. No, really? You've never heard that. I never really dealt with it. Right. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Video. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And it's NTSC. What's the other one? The other scan. It's like scan type, right? That's kind of like what it refers to.

Dave Jones: Yep. And there's PAL. We didn't use that here. It was PAL. Phased Array. Hmm. Yeah. Interesting. Oh, God. What does the L stand for?

Chris Gammell: PAL. Lines?

Dave Jones: Oh, Phased Array Line or something. God. Now, that's embarrassing.

Chris Gammell: So now we have to look it up. We have to look it up. Actually, people are going to see all of our... All of our stuff. I could switch over to Dave searching for stuff now.

Dave Jones: Oh, Phased Array Line. Of course. Phased Array Line. Phased Array.

Chris Gammell: What we're going to talk about later with Starlink. Right. Yes. Yeah. It was on your brain. It was on your brain. Yep.

Dave Jones: It was. There you go. Because it's been like, God, eight years or something. I've done a video when they switched off the PAL system here. Like, I was there live watching the TV, watching the telly, watching the idiot boxes as it went to a dot and then just static. Nice. Which was great.

Chris Gammell: That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a Hackaday article. Yep. Yeah. The thing about video and really just CRTs and all the scanning types and stuff like that, it always seemed so magical to me. And I actually really appreciated it. Someone sat down with me once and just was like, well, no, it's just like a high frequency amplifier. They're just amplifying signals and just going across the screen and stuff like that. And I can't say I still understand it.

Dave Jones: There's lots of trickery, especially when you started doing color and stuff like that. It was relatively easy when they had just a grayscale, black and white. Right. But then they had to introduce color while keeping backward compatibility. And it's just absolutely incredible how they did that. And that's how, you know, the different PAL and NTSC differ in the way they implement those sort of things and how NTSC technically has shittier color and, you know. Does it really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Hence the joke, NTSC. Got it. Never the same color. Twice the same color. Yeah. It just implements color differently.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So, yeah. And they're complex. What determined, like, where PAL was or NTSC? That was just like a, was that just like how PAL is different and different? Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. It's just a regional standard. PAL came from Europe, I believe. And we picked that up here in, because, you know, we're a colony. We're a British colony. That's right.

Chris Gammell: We were just talking about that before the show. I've been watching The Crown and they just got to the part where they're going to Australia. It's great. Oh, man. I love that show.

Dave Jones: Really? Yeah. Chris is a monarchist. There you go.

Chris Gammell: I wouldn't say that, but I am a fan of historical fiction of various types and very large Netflix budgets. So, if that makes me a monarchist, I'd say the monarchy in this case is Netflix. Right. Okay. Yes. Yep.

Dave Jones: I have to admit, though, oh, gee, I feel completely dirty. I've given my money to the mouse. I've given my money to the mouse. Oh, really? I've got Disney Plus. I've got Disney Plus because the kids are so into Star Wars and Marvel stuff. I had no choice but to get bloody Disney Plus. And I've got to admit, geez, they've got a lot of shit on there, like as in good shit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. One of my coworkers at a former job, he used to always talk. I probably mentioned this on the show at some point, but John, one of my former coworkers, love the guy. But every year, he'd be like, he's like, Chris, I got some bad news. I'm like, John, what's going on? He's like, I'm taking the family on vacation. I'm like, oh, that doesn't sound so bad. He's like, no, I've got to go feed the mouse. Right. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: Bloody Disney.

Chris Gammell: I still figure that this is what's finally going to get Dave back to the States again, is he's going to bring his family to go feed the mouse in Orlando, Florida. You've got to go to Disneyland. Close enough. I'll drive down and hang out. Yeah. And we'll all melt in the Florida sun.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It might happen. Yeah. Yeah. Disneyland. I've been to Disneyland. It's great. You know? Yeah. I'd love to take the kids, but you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, it's. Yeah. It's only a little ways away. Yeah. Yeah. You guys are. Yeah. So.

Dave Jones: Well, we always said that we'll wait until they're old enough to actually remember it. So Huxley at the moment, six. So probably, yeah, another couple of years. So it might time up well with the, when the world reopens, you know? Yeah. That's good.

Chris Gammell: Cool. Yeah. All right. Here we go. Amp Hour meetup at the Magic Kingdom. Right. At the Magic Kingdom. Oh, man. I don't think we can afford it. Yeah. They'd be like, well, I guess, you know, it would fit in. There's, you know, there's always like the parades with all like the blinking lights and stuff like that. And then you go to nerd meetups and there's all the blinking lights and they'd be like, oh, that just must be part of the show. You know? Oh, I miss meetups. So I actually just came from a meetup. I'm winding down my M Hub membership because I'm leaving town and I got to catch their barbecue. And I had a couple conversations. I was meeting with real people in the real world. Oh, boy. Novel. Boy, do I miss that. Novel. Yeah. Very novel. Very. Yep. You know, some of it I don't miss. I had some conversations about investment and I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, right. They were fine. But like I kind of like what I expected meetups. Right. Yeah. But mostly it was a bunch of nerds and I love meeting nerds and I hope to meet more nerds in North Carolina and do something down there when I'm down there.

Dave Jones: Excellent.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It was actually interesting because it's like we had some good conversations around like just like what networking actually means. And, you know, we've talked about it here too. It's like, you know, I always had this really negative connotation to it. But what I really think about is like the stuff I was doing. I was just going and geeking out with other nerds and then trying to keep in touch with them later. Right. That's. Yeah. So I always try and encourage the introverted among us to at least go bring a project.

Dave Jones: Go to meetups. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Go to meetups. Yeah. That's that's all. And then keep in touch.

Dave Jones: I had to convince quite a few people to go to the meetups that I used to run. You know, a grand total of two of them or whatever it was. More than zero. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And yeah, I, I, and everyone was glad. Like I, they thanked me afterwards. They said, oh, you know, there were some people who were like, oh, I don't know about these. I don't like meeting people. I said, look, just trying to convince them to turn up. And they turned up and they had a great time, you know, and they thanked me.

Chris Gammell: So, so, you know, I convinced Dave and Dave convinced them. And so pretty much I'm, you know, convincing everyone. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It is the type of people though. I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's fellow nerds. Like I, I've been to quite a few of the official YouTube meetups. Right. Back when they, they were a thing. And I just, you know, you'd think I had to have something in common with them, but I don't really like, you know, yeah, yeah. It's not, you know, I enjoy chatting to people and stuff, but it, but it just isn't the same. It's just not the same energy. Right. I mean, it's like, I mean, no, it's, I don't think if you and I were like hopping on the

Chris Gammell: horn and talking for the past 11 years about YouTube is like, that would just kind of, but I think when you're like, when you're really into something and you can talk about it and geek out. And if there's someone brings a project, oh man, I actually forgot to bring a board. I meant to bring a board, but I'm out of practice. Okay. Right. Oh, well in the future. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: So I guess I'll ask, what are you building these days? Anything?

Dave Jones: What am I building? Oh, I'm building something on a breadboard at the moment. I'm about to shoot a video after this. Well, it's a transistor and a relay, dude.

Chris Gammell: Oh, Hey, look, my last breadboard. I can actually show my breadboard. This is the stuff that you wouldn't see on the, uh, you know, so I'm doing this for, you know, some of my day job stuff, but like, boy, you want to see some, you want to see some dogs breakfast soldering. I did some barrel board. Oh, it's not going to focus. Oh, focus, you bastard. It's real bad. It was just like the fastest thing I could do. It doesn't matter as long as it works. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Electrons don't care. No.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, I have breadboarding. It gets the job done sometimes. Yeah. As long as people know the, uh, the restrictions, you know, like relays, slow stuff, no big deal. You know, it's kind of having that like, it's like electronics epochs, right? You need to know like, uh, epic. How do you say E P O C H that epic or epoch? No. Epic. Right.

Dave Jones: No. Is this some sort of acronym? I don't, I'm not aware of.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's like, uh, different eras of time.

Dave Jones: Oh, epoch. Right. As in, right. As in an era. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But like, uh, like having different timescales of like electronics of like, you know, human interaction times or computer interaction times or like, you know, you know, just kind of having that as a, uh, as a relative measure, I think is really important. When I was getting started in electronics, I remember like thinking like, oh, everything's super, super fast, but then you go and like interact with a Q you go and interact with like AC power and you're not just, you're not going to switch it that fast because you don't need to, or it's really expensive to do that. That sort of thing versus maybe sensor feedback. You might need 30 Hertz, but you don't need to try and push it to 3000 Hertz because you probably don't need that level of fidelity. You know, just kind of like that as like a general knowledge of that sort of thing. So yeah.

Dave Jones: And I posted a photo of my relay on the breadboard on Twitter and everyone just assumed because it was a big hunk and you know, it's a fairly decent little chunky 10 amp, you know, 240 volt relay. Everyone thought I was going to be putting mains through it. It's like, no, you can't put mains on breadboard. Can't do it. Can't be done. And I, well, what, what, yes, you actually can, uh, mains. We, you know, you could technically, yeah, it actually can be done.

Chris Gammell: There's, there's the next video after that Dave. You just start melting. Right.

Dave Jones: I just ramp up the voltage until it, until we get arch over on a breadboard. That's what people actually, that's probably a quick second channel video. I might do that. I might just, yeah.

Chris Gammell: How far can you ramp up a breadboard between sockets?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Cool. Done. All right.

Chris Gammell: That's great.

Dave Jones: Yep. You, you didn't ask why am I putting a transistor and a relay?

Chris Gammell: Why are you putting in a transistor and a relay on a board? What are you switching?

Dave Jones: Because I, I didn't have a time to do this. It was follow on from my previous tutorial video on inductors. Uh, well, I covered capacitors, inductors, and what was the damn video?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I've, I've been missing videos lately. I really miss the email subscription on YouTube. I really miss a lot of stuff these days. All right. The algorithm is not sending me videos.

Dave Jones: Nope. DC circuit transient fundamentals. Of course.

Chris Gammell: Of course.

Dave Jones: Transient fundamentals. Geez. I, you know, it just wouldn't come.

Chris Gammell: Are you doing like kickbacks and stuff like that for a relay?

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. Fly back. Yeah. Free wheeling diodes on a relay. So I'm going to show the measurement. Yeah. Cause the video was already 39 minutes long. So I was going to put a demo at the end of it, but I went, no, that's too long. So I'll save that for a separate one. So I'll show, um, yeah. How transients happen on, uh, relays in inductive kickbacks.

Chris Gammell: I'm pretty sure I, that I, I've been messing with a, a switching circuit that was powering, uh, Raspberry Pi CM4 and CM4 went, uh, kaput. Ah, right. And I'm pretty sure it was because of the switching circuit in front of it. I think it had, I, you know, I was already pretty close to the voltage limit on the CM4. And then I think a little bit of a spiky spikies. Uh, I think I probably put it over the edge.

Dave Jones: Is this the one built in or, or it's an external one you're using?

Chris Gammell: This is an external, like an external power switching circuit. Got it. That then goes in. Yeah. Cause the Pi CM4 takes a five volt and then that bucks it down to 3.3. Right. But it don't, it don't buck no more. It's, uh, it's bucking dead. Uh, brilliant.

Dave Jones: Yep. All right.

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: So yeah, that's what I'm doing.

Chris Gammell: I'm going to say, you know, what will resist high voltages is a plastic, uh, microcontroller, Dave plastic microcontroller, ultra minimalist Cortex M zero base sock with 128 bytes of Ram and 466, 456 bytes of ROM. So arm did a printed circuit. Basically they did a, but they did a full arm Cortex M zero inside of that.

Dave Jones: Okay. I thought you were going to talk about the chip printer thing, which is another link we had this week.

Dave Jones: Yeah. There's a, yes, there's a chip printer that there's a trolling chip printer. He's back. Hmm. Someone's trolling us.

Chris Gammell: Uh, yes.

Dave Jones: And, uh, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Now this is, so this is actually plastic transistors, you know, which is something that, you know, you can go and read research papers. You can do this for a while. Basically it's polymer based, polymer based transistors, but they actually put it together enough of them together to make a Cortex M zero plus M zero, just an M zero. It's an M zero with like a bunch of stuff stripped out and they're calling it the plastic arm, which is, you know, that's super cool.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They're talking about this being like the future of IOT and all that stuff. And I'm sure there will be some niche applications for this sort of thing. But what I think about is just the, the amount of optimization you need to do like that is very, you know, they just like the scale differences of where things are going these days. You know, you get like a cortex, a whatever, that's just like super powerful. You don't care, you know, you care about memory, but you really care about memories running Linux. It's right. You know, it's got all this functionality. And then on the other end is like this, you know, dinky little Cortex M zero and it's super optimized, which it's always, there's always been there, but, but there's still new

Dave Jones: frontiers. It's a four bit version. I thought the M zero was like 32 bit.

Chris Gammell: I think they probably, they probably had to really mess with things, you know, then

Dave Jones: it's not an M zero anymore. Is it? It's a, it's a something else. They'd have to call it something else. Wouldn't I?

Chris Gammell: I couldn't tell you what defines an M zero. I figured it would be a register set kind of thing that would define an M zero more than

Dave Jones: the, yeah. Well, yeah, but the register set is made up, is going to vary based on the architecture, right? And if you just suddenly change it from a, I don't know, I don't know. That's weird. That's weird. All right. All right. Anyway, it's got 2300 transistors in it was fabricated 10 micron process technology.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. I see what you're reading wrong here. Oh, let's we can, we can zoom in. It says the first commercially produced processor was a modest four bit CPU with 2300 transistors.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Sorry. I'm, I'm, I'm out of date. Am I? Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's okay. Right. Yeah. So I didn't, I, yeah. I, okay.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. So they're talking about the four double O four or something. Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think so. Okay. Silly me. 10 micron. Try and get one of those made these days. 10 micron where they're actually still like, uh, you know, the width of a human hair.

Speaker ?: Yep. But anyways, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So they're doing a plastic based transistors and, uh, yeah, it's pretty neat.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: You know, research papers. Right. But maybe, maybe this is moving us towards printable chip printer.

Dave Jones: Nope. Nope.

Chris Gammell: Nope.

Dave Jones: Nope. Sorry. So whoever was trolling us on, uh, about the chip printer thing. Nope. No, I'm still going to stand by it 20 years time. What you'll still be buying on digi key and mouse series and fun else is, uh, is your regular silicon.

Chris Gammell: I mean, the startup thing. So like this is reference. The, the trolly one is referencing a, uh, you know, uh, super research kind of thing. It's like, uh, there's going to be stuff like this for a while, right? They're going to be referencing. Yeah, of course. But I think there are some, you know, it's moving towards commercialization and, and viability is, uh, is more interesting to me as well. Much to Dave's delight. So, uh, uh, yeah.

Dave Jones: It'll be a niche for foreseeable future for the rest of my career. I think it'll be a niche.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, that's, that's, that's my prediction. I'm saying 20 years, I'm saying in 20 years, we still will be getting silicon.

Chris Gammell: I just figured you're going to, uh, retire in a, you know, five years or something. Yeah. Right.

Speaker ?: The rest of your career.

Chris Gammell: Well, you heard it here first, first folks. If there is a chip printer, Dave will retire that day.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Yes.

Chris Gammell: I will retire. I will eat my hat.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Yep. Nah, I was, I was right. I was right. I was right 10 years ago and damn it. I'm still going to be right in another 10 years time. I'm telling you.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Well, 10 years seems like about the time it'll take for the, uh, the supply chain to iron itself out. There was a post on the EV blog forum about this saying all their posts are on hold and yeah, I feel it, man.

Dave Jones: I, uh, all their posts, no, all their projects are on hold. Sorry. Yes. That's right. This is RX8 pilot. Mm-hmm. RX8. Oh, don't, don't share my screen. Yeah. Yeah. Mine's got IP. I'm not logged in. So it shows extra info. We don't need to show any ads here either. Right. Okay. Sorry. I've got to pay the bills somehow, you know?

Chris Gammell: Hey man, whatever you do, you know? Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Says the amp hour who takes advertising. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes. Anyway, RX8 pilot says, I, we will quote, I love electronics and I do it for fun and for a living. Well, what I'm about is that current state of the supply chain is so draining that I am dreading any electronics work. Of the three major professional projects I've been working on for over a year, all are on indefinite hold. first tried part substitutions, but then altering the design based on parts. But at some point he was just figured he was just chasing his tail with zero guarantee of production quantities. So it kills the bottom line and destroys his interests. How many small businesses are turning into dust with these problems? Anyone looking for a career change right now? So he's like, he's really unfortunate.

Chris Gammell: I think some of it is like, I've, I've had thoughts about this of just, you know, it is a good time to be working on firmware versus hardware, right? Just because you can always keep improving firmware, right? There's always more to do.

Dave Jones: There's like, what's it going to run on?

Chris Gammell: What is your, what is your magic firmware going to run on when you can't? That's a good question. The dev, dev boards or right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because micros are the things that have been hit. You know, one of the things that's been hit the most, I don't think there's anything that's been harder hit than micros. Is there?

Chris Gammell: But I, I think other things, I think there's just, I was, again, I was just talking to someone at the meetup about this and they said like, when it, once, you know, the, the stuff that you thought was out of stock that came back and then just something else disappears.

Dave Jones: You're right. Okay. Yep.

Chris Gammell: One of them, one of the people I talked to said that they were paying like 30 cents for a part and they just had to get through their production run and they were paying $28 for that same part.

Dave Jones: $28 for the same part.

Chris Gammell: $28. I mean, it's just like, okay. Wow. Okay. I mean like.

Dave Jones: Yep. Well, well, well, if you have to, it's better. I was actually discussing. What's the cost of not doing it, right? Well, that's right and I was discussing this on another thread on the EV blog forum. I'm yeah, pretty sure it wasn't this one. And I've actually got, I, that's going to be a video. I was going to work on it yesterday, but things happened and I've got a list in front of me. It's one of my rare things. We're going to leave of, of different. I'm going to show different strategies for actually, actually designing things and modifying your products for, to avoid part shortages and things like that. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, and some of them are full redesigns, right? That's, that sucks. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Some are, but yeah. So what I was, what I was discussing with somebody on the forum, sorry, I forget who it is, but. I, I suggested possibly that a, you know, a, a mod board or something like that with a different type of chip and, or even shipping a, replacing the part he could get. No, replacing the part with a smaller spec version. So it was a micro and it had two gig of memory. It was so a really high end micro. And I said, but he said, you can get the one gig version. And I said, well, why did you know, if you can, if you can modify your software, so it just squeezes into one gig. So it fits, you know, so you can ship something and then put it on a daughter board. So then later you can actually send for free to your customers, an upgrade board with the two gig part on it.

Chris Gammell: And then, you know, it's all good.

Dave Jones: And he said, no, it's well, that's, that's possible, but it's likely cheaper to just go to the gray market and pay 10 times the price for the two gig chip than it is to design the daughter board.

Chris Gammell: Like what, what is the cost of an upgrade? What is the cost of a customer reinstalling something? What is the cost of a failure, right? All of these things.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: So in the case of going from, so two gigs of flash or two gigs of Ram?

Dave Jones: Two gigs of, I assume that's flash.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So, okay. So in that case specifically going from two gigs of flash to one gig of flash, right? That's significant, but that might actually prevent you from not being able to store an additional firmware image in there for like a firmware upgrade. So you might lose a firmware upgrade. There's not much that would make you get rid of that. Right. I mean, like, that's crazy.

Dave Jones: That's right. That, that, that kills your product functionality. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But you know, there's all these things that may not work for someone else, but that might be the solution for, you know, someone else's project.

Chris Gammell: So I think you definitely gotta be creative in this scenario. You gotta really, it sucks. It really sucks.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I've got listed like seven different things you can do.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: It's much more flexible. Of course, if you're at the design stage, then if you're, you know, if your product's already made and it's already shipping or you've got a thousand of them in stock and you've got to, you know, or you've got a thousand blank boards or whatever, and you've got to, you know, ship them. And that sucks. Yeah. It just sucks. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So anyways, we agree with RX8 pilot. This is, it, it, it is not fun right now. And it's tough to tell someone to like get into electronics, you know, like maybe if you could get a dev board and get some sensors, you know, like maybe, maybe make things more modular. Oh, Dave's got a visitor in his background. Yep. I've got a visitor. Shipping person is here. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You won't see them.

Chris Gammell: See, people think Dave's this, you know, gruff, gruff engineer. He's just, he's just this friendly neighborhood employer. That's it. That's it. Yeah. There goes your rep, Dave. Ha ha. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I've expanded. I've officially got my storage unit. Yeah, man.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. I've seen photos of that. That's exciting. So how much crap do you have in there?

Dave Jones: I've got some at the moment. Have you seen my infinite ring of power? My infinite power ring?

Chris Gammell: The thing on the floor that was like batteries or something?

Dave Jones: No, they're actually double adapters. They're mains double adapters. Oh, got it. Yeah. And I've got like 330 of them or something. And I put them into an infinite ring. So we'll.

Chris Gammell: Why do you have that many? Do you have that many power points that you could? Or is this you collecting over time?

Dave Jones: No, I actually saved them from the dumpster. They're in the dumpster.

Chris Gammell: Saved them from the dumpster. Yeah. Yeah. I think he failed to put them out of their misery. That's what he's really saying here, folks.

Dave Jones: I'm going to do a video on it because I want to know, can you actually power something through 330 double adapters? Like what's the drop? What is the drop? Like I want to. I need to know. That's a good point, actually. I need to know how many, you know, how many power boards can you string together? I'm going to find out. So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's great. Anyway. So that can, maybe that's going to be the name of this episode, the infinite power ring. Infinite. Infinite power ring or something. The ring of fire. Yes, it would be the ring of fire. Anyway. And it can be the profile photo for this. It can be the thumbnail. There you go. Got it. All right. Cool.

Chris Gammell: All right. What else we got?

Dave Jones: Come on.

Chris Gammell: What else is on this list that I liked? Ah, the Luna. Luna. Yeah. So this is a new project that's out there. And this is made by former guests of the show, Great Scott Gadgets. So Michael Hossman from Great Scott Gadgets has been on the show. And some of the other employees have been there too. This is pretty cool. So this is still fundraising. I've heard about this for a while. And it's basically like a USB analyzer using the open source tool chain on a lattice. I think it's an ECP5. ECP5? I actually, I guess I could show everyone this.

Dave Jones: It's a LFE5U12F, whatever the heck that is. That's the number on the front.

Chris Gammell: I don't know which one that is. Yep. I figured that might be the ECP5. Anyways, it uses the open tool chain, which we've talked about a ton on the show before. And so if you're looking to get into, if you're looking to get into FPJs, this would be a good fit. This is a $99 board. So, you know, reasonable, not cheap, not super expensive. But the real thing is if you're doing, I've always been like kind of afraid to dig into, like to do a super custom USB. I kind of just always. Yeah, because it's a pain in the ass. Hook up D plus, D minus, and just, you know, cross my fingers and hope for the best, right? Because if something doesn't enumerate or if it doesn't.

Dave Jones: Or you just end up using serial. You just end up going using an RS-232 USB to serial, you know, an FT-232 chip or something. Because it's just. Yeah, exactly. It's just totally familiar. You can look at the packets on a scope, you know, it's just like. Right. You know. Although you can do that for USB. Yeah, so when something goes wrong in that case. Yeah, it's just easier. Right, right, right. You know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and Jay Carlson on YouTube, on YouTube, on Twitter had mentioned that, you know, there are some capabilities for inspecting packets as they come into, like, Linux and stuff like that. But if you're not doing Linux, if say you're doing, like, a small embedded device, but you also want it to have USB. You know, this is basically, like, this is effectively a man in the middle kind of attack, not attack, but like an analyzer, right? So it's basically you're talking to one side of this thing. It's passing the packet through, but also reading it and pushing that the other side. Yep. And so in that way, as you push through some bad packets or whatever, it'll help you to analyze it.

Dave Jones: Is it just an analyzer or can you modify packets and send them out?

Chris Gammell: I believe there's a way to modify as well.

Dave Jones: Right. So you can do, like, a man in the middle kind of thing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Right. And does it use... I'm trying to find the software here. Oh, yeah. Okay. No, I see the software. Okay. It's actually got...

Chris Gammell: Meddler in the middle. Right. Got it.

Dave Jones: Right. So it actually has custom software which displays all your packets and whatnot. Hex interface. Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yep. Cool bananas. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I think this is going to be a great toolkit. You know, I think about my ABC board. You know, that's got some USB... I've had some USB problems on that before. Yep. And I think at the purely physical layer, you'll still need to... I'm not sure how much capability there is for, you know, say you had, like, a stub trace on one of your USB lines and it was really impacting it. But that's USB 3.0 would matter more than 2.0, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, this does not do signal integrity. This is not going to tell you that you've got a signal integrity problem. No, no, no, no, no. This is just packet-based. Yep.

Chris Gammell: But what they talk about is the Beagle 480 and the LaCroix Mercury. So these are basically tools you can buy off the shelf. You can buy from Keysight, LaCroix, Beagle. They're all these tools that basically allow you to do it, but they're expensive. And, you know, they compare and contrast further down.

Dave Jones: I've actually got one. I've got a USB analyzer and it's, yeah, it's thousands of dollars worth. Yeah. Some company sent it into the mailbag for review or something. But it's, yeah, like thousands of dollars. And the software is complex. It comes with it, you know. So will this only do USB 2 or does it do up to USB 3? I think it's only 2, yeah, because doing USB 3 is really hard.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think it's 2 up to high speed, though, so the 480. Oh, they have it on here.

Dave Jones: They do up to the 480 USB 2, right?

Chris Gammell: That's right, yeah, which would be the expense of the Beagle 480, which is like $1,300.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so. Cool. Cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, it's nice that there's a lower cost solution. How much is this going to cost? It's $149 for the kit. With a case. That's with a funky case. But it's only, it's under $100 for, that's very impressive for a USB tool. And it's all open saucy, is it? Is it all? That's right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so, and if you're doing stuff with the FPGA stuff, you can use, so some of the software on there, FaceDancer, that's, I think, Kate's software, or is that maybe Micah's software? I don't remember. Luna. Luna is some of the other stuff that they have from Grade Scott, so they have, like, their plug-in boards, so it's like the Grade Scott 1 or something like that. Right. But anyways, they have a whole suite of boards out there, but this is, yeah, I think it's going to be good. We'll see how it goes. It lasts until the 26th of August, so get it now while it's hot.

Dave Jones: Yep. Nice. Nice. I like it. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Chris Gammell: Have you used that one you've had on site? Yes. Oh, cool.

Dave Jones: Yes, I've had to use it. So, and yeah, they're complicated beasts, so it's like, you know, yeah, that's why I don't blame anyone for avoiding anything to do with USB, unless you're converting it to RS-232 or something like that. And you don't need to, unless your product needs the data rate, you're actually better off just using an FT-232 chip and converting it to serial. Seriously, like, it'll just make your life much easier. Yeah. Unless, I guess, you do USB all the time, and then it's just bread and butter stuff for you, and it's so easy for you. But I would not recommend the average person, if they just need to transfer, like, you know, console type data or something like that from their product via the USB, then, yeah, RS-232 is just easier. And then on the other end, you can use a terminal, and then the customer can just use a terminal program. They don't have to, you know, have any sort of custom software. Because once you're using USB, like, actual USB protocol, then you have to have custom software. There's no generic USB software that I'm aware of that you can, you know, you can't just extract, you know, a text string out of it or something. You know, it's just, it just isn't something that you can do.

Chris Gammell: I'm going to be out of my depth here, but I know that, like, if you do USB to serial, you will need, say you want to load up new firmware, you'll have to have a bootloader on the micro, at least.

Dave Jones: Yeah, if you want to do firmware update over USB.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I was just going to say, if some of the, if you have new USB native, I think you might be able to push stuff without, you know, you need, like you said, you need software on the host side.

Dave Jones: But you can do both. You can, there's no reason why you can't do both. If you, if you've got a micro that supports firmware updating over USB, which some of them do, right? You just put, you know, like there's a pin, like there's a pin that you can strap when you power on or whatever, and that'll put it into bootloader mode. Right. Some of them will do it via serial, but others will do it via USB, I believe. So there's no reason why you can't put an FT, FT 232 in parallel with that as well, and then feed that into the serial pins of your micro. There's no reason why you can't do both. I don't think. I'm sure people will correct me, but I reckon that's, I reckon that's possible. I reckon you can have your cake and eat it too there.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. Speaking of FPGAs, you had posted this link. I started reading it. I didn't get too far in it, but the FPGA designer who didn't get a job. So what, what was this?

Dave Jones: Scroll right to the end. That, that just gives you the skinny.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Well, let me, let me pull it up. The bottom line.

Chris Gammell: If you aren't interested in learning using formal methods, my recommendation. Okay, I see. So, so basically this was someone that was looking to hire a young engineer and he basically, the stuff I had read so far is that he was kind of putting him to the test and. He, he, he, he was testing him. Yes. Yeah. And that young engineer kind of just opted out and said, nah, this isn't for me or said, I'm not into this sort of thing. That sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Yes. Well, he was doing on behalf of a client, the, the client, cause he was the FPGA expert for a client. Right. And the client doesn't know about hiring FPGA people. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. So he was like a front facing kind of thing. And he was.

Dave Jones: He was a front facing. So he was like weeding out. Yeah. The people. And, and he does FPGA tutorials as well. You know, you can buy courses, you can buy his courses and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Right.

Dave Jones: And yeah. So he teaches FPGA fundamentals like, like, and processes, the proper processes. That's, that's his thing, you know, is that he's all about proper processes for development, for, for hardware, hardware development. Right. And FPGA and digital development. Right. Yeah. He had someone who he deliberately had an example where it was faulty and the person had to debug it and fix it. Right. They had to fix this faulty VHDL example, Verilog or whatever it was, you know, had to fix this example. And they deemed that to be doing the, the person rejected doing it, refused to do it, do it. Cause they wanted to do design work in quote marks. Yeah. And they thought that this was verification work, that this was, you know, actually beneath them. That, you know, without realizing that this was a test, you know, look, no, you'll get a real design work. I'm testing that you can do this sort of stuff cause it's important. And this, this digital designer who advertise themselves as a specific digital designer, didn't want to do this verification and fixing work.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It is interesting. I mean, I think it's, some of it is like, you know, there's definitely some ego in here and there's expectations in here. Oh yeah. Totally. I'll be honest. Like coming out of school, I thought I was going to be like designing all new things. Right. And it's just like, you know, some of that's just, that was bad expectations. Right. It was like, Oh, you know, Chris is going to go and look for a job as a design engineer and it's in the title. So I should be able to design stuff. Right. But design stuff. And yeah. Yeah. So, uh, who was I talking to? I was talking to someone recently that was talking about like, you know, just the amount of time that you're actually doing design versus something else. It's, it's minuscule. Yeah. You know, like it's just all, especially in a corporate job where there's overhead and meetings and, and everything else. It's just, that's just not a big part of what you do. Unfortunately, you see, first off, I think it's like, you should cherish it. And in the, in this case, like, I think it's the stuff that leads up to it too, is like, you need to be able to test. You need to be able to test your own work, let alone, you know, someone else's work.

Dave Jones: And, and in this particular case, you need to be able to debug something and get it working. Yeah. I mean, and that's, this person refused to do that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: They just went, no, I'm a design engineer. I don't do verification and debugging. Mm-hmm . It's like, well, okay. Right, right.

Chris Gammell: Good luck with that. Does your, does your design work the first time, every time? Yeah, exactly. I wish someone would have told me that, that like just the importance of debugging, you know, like it's, it's a tough thing to, you know, like the debugging is its own skill, right? It's its own thing. Right. And some people are very good at it and young Chris was not and current Chris is a little better, you know, and it's more logical than I would have guessed too, right? It's more like a, it's more of a controlled process. Like I think the best debuggers are the people that have seen a lot of things, obviously, right? The olds, like yourself, Dave.

Dave Jones: Mm-hmm .

Chris Gammell: Yep . I was a boy. That's right. Yeah. So I think seeing a lot of things is really important. I think being, maybe not regimented, but like being calm. Like for me, I, I still freak out sometimes and, and, and that kind of thrashing is just not that useful. So like having, having kind of a process of your own process, whatever it is, is important. Yeah. And then doing logical deductions from that. It's almost, it's more like a Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmesian than anything else, right? Yes. You know, trying to make logical connections based on that.

Dave Jones: Unfortunately, debugging is also one of those things. I've covered this in many of my repair videos as well. It's also repair.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Totally. Yeah. Repair and debugging, same thing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Sure. Pretty much. I think that's right. You actually, you know, touch the soldering iron to it at the end.

Dave Jones: Right. You actually physically. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you have to do that with debugging as well. It's true. You've got to hack things. You've got to get, okay, I don't have any, the best way to debug this. To break it. Is to solder a lead onto a pin. Yeah. And change the firmware so it flashes this when it goes into routines and stuff like that, you know. Right. Or hook on an LCD. Sure. I wouldn't be the first person who to debug something has hacked in an LCD and then added some LCD code to my project and then, cause then it can output strings, you know. It can output, like, well you can do that on a serial port and then you scope. I just think like a little LCD.

Chris Gammell: Sure. It's more, the turnaround time might be faster, might be more, you know, heads up kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Or you might build that in from the start. Sure. You might build that in from the start. If you're a designer who goes, oh yeah, it'll be handy to have like a secret pins on there. You've got spare pins or take them to a header that goes off to an LCD or something and you

Chris Gammell: know. Yeah. Someone was talking about that with like a, the first thing they do on a digital project, it might've been an embedded FM or someone like that, somewhere like that. But they talked about the first thing they do in an embedded project is they create their own console so that you basically can set up console commands from there. And I just like never really thought to do that. That's a great idea. You know, just have it respond over serial. You know, you can always do output, but why not take some input too, right? Actually have some standardization there.

Dave Jones: Mm-hmm. Although when he is a, so when I was a boy, you often didn't have the luxury of that because you're designing for a low memory footprint micro, like a PIC 16 F84, it might have one or two K of memory. And just including the S print F function so that you can output a serial string that, that uses one, one, one K of memory just for the S S print F function.

Chris Gammell: I was going to say we're past those days, but then I was like, Oh, actually, we talked about plastic, plastic controllers at the beginning. So like those people that are debugging that they're, they're screwed. You know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: You can't, yeah, you can't do it. And, and you'll, you'll learn the hard way. Geez. You know, the, the, these routines that do these trivial things take up a lot of space. That's right. That's right. Yep. Anyway, I was, um, what was I talking about? I was mentioning that. Yeah. During the repair, uh, debug process, I still can't remember what I'm going to say. I'm just waffling until it, I know it's going to pop into my head.

Chris Gammell: That's okay. I got something to say. So I think another thing is, is something that obviously comes up on your channel and other channels like, uh, having a solid grasp of testing tools as well. Right. I mean, I think that having, you know, maybe, maybe your favorites, but like, you know, the presence of mind to be able to walk up to a couple different types of test equipment. Maybe you don't own it, but maybe you, you know, you can navigate menus, right. That might be something that, you know, just trying to figure these things out is an important skill set as well. And then maybe having your own tools that you have go back to each and every time as well. Yep.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: I agree.

Dave Jones: And often you can rent tools. If, if, if, yes, I do remember what I was going to say. Great. Yeah. When you're debugging or repairing stuff like this, sometimes too much knowledge is a bad thing. Sure. Like, because you go, cause your mind will just go, Oh, it can't possibly be, you know, you'll like, you can't, it's very difficult for an experienced design engineer, an experienced repair person to go from, you know, like to actually follow strict process from, okay, first thing is I'll check. I'll smell. Right. Something like that. Um, Nope. And anyway, go through a strict process. Right.

Chris Gammell: I think, Oh man, all these interruptions here. Sorry.

Dave Jones: The phone's ringing and it's, it's fine. It's okay.

Chris Gammell: It's just, I think, I think you don't have to have strict process, but I think, I think one of the things that I think about is, you know, do whatever you want. Maybe, maybe your past having strict process, but I think one thing, one like process thing would be to track your changes. Right. So for me, the thing that has been a centering force in my life is just to write a stream of consciousness journal. Every time I'm doing it, like, here's what I tried. Did it work? No. Did it work? No. Right. And that, that kind of thing, it doesn't have to be regimented of like, first you check the power, then you check the serial bus, then you know, then you check the thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But you can, as I was going to, yeah, as I was saying, the more experience you get, the more things that you will tend to skip because your mind is going, no, it can't possibly be that. But sometimes you're going to come and guts her and it will be that. Yeah. It will be that in a subtle way that you haven't encountered before. And, you know, so you, you can spend days, hours, days, weeks actually debugging something because you skipped a simple step that you thought was so simple. It can't possibly be that, but it was in some other often obscure way.

Chris Gammell: I feel like the, then a healthy kind of check on yourself is like, one thing that I try and tell myself when I am in it deep up to here, as you can see, if you're watching the video, is check your assumptions, right? That's always the, the, the big one to go back to. Right. So, and like literally listing them out too. That's another one. Like I assume that serial is running at 19, 200 or 90, you know, like, and, and, and like, and like, and sometimes that's like rubber duck debugging. Measure it.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. Exactly. I've, I've, I've done that many times. Why isn't my scope decoding the serial string? I've got it set to the right board rate. Mm-hmm. And then when you finally real, you know, you get desperate enough that you go in there and actually measure the time and calculate the actual clock rate. And you go, Oh geez, that's the wrong board rate. Yeah. You know, it's not. You're like looking around and you're like, Oh, nobody saw it. Nobody saw it. It's cool. Nobody saw it. I spent, you know, hours on this and stuff like that. Or, or, or some things, you know, uh, well, when you enter the hardware, you know, this doesn't happen in the software. Whoa. I'm not going to say, say it doesn't happen in the software realm. Cause it could under some obscure circumstances, intermittent faults. Hmm. Is there such a thing as an intermittent software fault? I can kind of imagine a scenario where it might be possible where you, your compiler might give you a different result each time. Although, I bet you can also have hardware problems manifest themselves as intermittent software problems. Sure. I'm talking about now assuming the hardware is perfect.

Chris Gammell: You shouldn't like, is a machine completely repeatable every single time? Yes.

Dave Jones: Every single time. Yeah. Or, you know, you're getting cosmic rays bombard or you get electro.

Chris Gammell: Well, all of this, all of those things that are like. EMI interference and stuff. You know, is it, is it always hardware then? That is the randomness, right? Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yes. Is the answer. Yes. It's, you know, it's, it's going to be. It's always our fault.

Chris Gammell: I guess.

Dave Jones: Yep. Us hardware designers. But you know, like sometimes, yeah, in the hardware realm, especially in the repair realm, I've done a video where I tested, I went through my methodical process. I tested the power supplies. They're all fine. It turns out it was the power supply. It was just an intermittent problem with a diode bridge after it heated up.

Chris Gammell: Mm.

Dave Jones: The, the little bond wire inside the diode would lift off. Yeah. And then it would half rectify and then it would, it'd cause the rail to drop. And, you know, but, but you didn't see that because you meant where you measured it. Yeah. And, and, and, and unless you're continually measuring it, that's where, like I ended up using two scopes. I think I ended up having like eight channels or something, just measuring all the different rails at once. Yeah. Just continuously monitoring them. And sure enough, one of them eventually dropped out. I think.

Chris Gammell: That's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it comes down to being methodical, tracking your progress, documenting after the fact. And to give myself my own segue here, documentation. Holy crap. Did you see this thing? The embedded resume. Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I saw this thing on, I think it was on Reddit or similar. Yeah. I saw it on Twitter. I think. Yeah. Someone was trying to get a job. I don't know if he has in the meantime, basically he built, he built a thing as a resume item and then he called it embedded resume.com. And it's great.

Dave Jones: Does the thing actually do anything? It actually doesn't matter. The point is, it doesn't matter if it does anything or not.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think it does because he was trying to do like fully capable, like it has software on it and stuff like that. But yeah, I think, yeah, I think if you truly documented your failures as well, that, that could be, you know, its own, its own thing. Uh, but yeah, uh, this is Aaron.

Dave Jones: Was it did the resume, I wonder if the resume idea came like, I'm going to build this for my, you know, for my resume or whether or not he just build it and then went, Oh, that's a great resume thing.

Chris Gammell: So I just assumed that he's, he's currently listening to the amp hour and, uh, you know, he hears us talk about, you know, projects as a resume builder and yeah, I assume. Who is it? Aaron Vorce's name is Aaron. Aaron Vorce is on the top of the thing here.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. Great. And we've mentioned this countless times over the years. I've mentioned in my videos countless times is that the best thing you can do is, is publish your stuff.

Chris Gammell: I think it's changed, right? I mean like there's, I don't know how many magazines are out there that are published in these days, but this is self published.

Dave Jones: There's actually, no, there are still magazines out there.

Chris Gammell: Who reads those though? Like, you know what I mean? Like this is a way to get it out there. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's the fact that you get published in there is the point. You can put it on your resume.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah. I think we're going to agree to disagree. I think, I mean, I think that this has as much value as anything. You know what I mean? This is a more in depth thing. Well, it does, but anyone, yeah.

Dave Jones: But any, but technically anyone can like publish anything on their own website, right? It can be garbage. Nobody knows your dog on the internet.

Chris Gammell: Is that the, is that the joke you're hearing here?

Dave Jones: Yeah. But if you get it published in one of the respected trade magazines, then you're vetted. It's, it's vetted by your peers, right?

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: So, you know, I guess so it is. I mean, it is, but it's like, it's, it's been vetted.

Chris Gammell: It has been vetted, but I, I, I put, I put my faith in myself, Dave, not some external entity.

Dave Jones: No, but I'm talking about appearances from what other experienced people in the industry. Oh, they'll go, Oh, it's published. Like anyone can whack something on their website. I mean, but right. And it, and it could be, no, we're publishing about this right now.

Chris Gammell: I'm just saying that like, this has greater, greater reach than a, a, a, a magazine's going to have.

Dave Jones: It does, but it's not about reach. It's about credibility also. Right. Which is what I'm talking about. If you've been published in one of the journals that has, in my opinion, that has more credibility than just publishing on your own website or, or it can, it depends on the person, right? It depends on the person who's reading your resume. Right.

Chris Gammell: Sure. Sure. What do you think folks?

Dave Jones: I agree, but that's, well, I, well, I know for a fact that I would slight be slightly more impressed if you went to the effort to get something published in a magazine than if you just put it on your website. I'm still going to be impressed that you put it on your website. Fantastic. You're still better than 99% of the other applicants.

Chris Gammell: I would say this has a benefit of having more in depth. You can go deeper here, right? You can have, of course you can. Sure more depth of knowledge. Of course you can.

Dave Jones: I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that it's more in depth because it's published. I'm not saying, I'm just saying it has a bit more credibility. Dave's into gatekeepers.

Chris Gammell: That's what he's saying. Gatekeepers are important. And once you get past them.

Dave Jones: No, I, well, they have an extra layer of credibility.

Chris Gammell: I think what Dave's really saying here is, I got published in magazines and I want people to think magazines are it.

Dave Jones: I can't believe you're actually arguing this. I'm not saying, I'm specifically saying magazines. To some people potentially.

Chris Gammell: What about like Hackaday or Hackster or equivalent?

Dave Jones: Oh, they, they'll publish anything. Well, they just read, no, they just, they're, they're just blogs that republish other blogs, right? They just like link magazines or just, Hey, Hey, things that publish what people send in to be published. Yes. But they actually test the projects and they, uh, you know, vet the, so what people could see here is me making my, yeah, I'm not, I'm not into it. Fine. That's it. I know for a fact that there are people out there who will add more credibility that you've been published in a magazine or you've been published in the other. Or you've been published in the I triple E or you've been published in the I triple E. Oh, wait a second. We didn't say I triple E. No, no, no, no. You can't, you can't suddenly just lower and raise, raise the bar.

Chris Gammell: I, dude, you were talking about like hobby. I mean, my voice is giving out. You've been arguing. I, uh, yeah. If it's like an I triple E journal, are you saying like a journal?

Dave Jones: No. Well, now he's, now he's going, Oh yes, there is a bar, but it's gotta be really high. I'm just saying that's different than a, that's different than a magazine.

Chris Gammell: It's not.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: Come on.

Dave Jones: All right. Nah. Bullshit. Right. So you admit, you admit that there are people out there who will think that getting published in I triple E is more credible. There are employees out there who will think that's more credible getting published in the I triple E than having on your website.

Chris Gammell: I will admit that.

Dave Jones: You have to agree. You've just made that argument. I don't have to agree, but I do. I'm also making that. Yeah. I'm making the argument that there are also people out there who will say the same thing for getting it published in a magazine as well.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: They will be more impressed. It's just a fact.

Chris Gammell: Sorry, dude. I know people like now, now time for my truism test. There are people out there who agree that the depth of a website are going to have more interest and I am one of them.

Dave Jones: I totally agree with you.

Chris Gammell: In depth analysis than a magazine. I totally agree with you. All right.

Dave Jones: That is not.

Chris Gammell: It's a different argument.

Dave Jones: It is. It's a different argument. Of course you can publish more on your website.

Chris Gammell: But like you said, there's people out there. Of course there's people out there. There's people out there that think everything.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yep. I'm talking about credibility. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I can't believe you even.

Dave Jones: In the end, I got you. In the end, you finally agreed that there was credibility, that there was an issue involving credibility. And I'm not saying that this guy's thing is not credible. I think it's fantastic that he's published on this. And yes, it would be infinitely better than if it was published in a magazine. It looks there's much more greater information, like available for this thing. And it's fantastic. Yep. Yep. But he could also get it published in a magazine.

Chris Gammell: He also could get it published in a magazine. That is correct. So you heard it here first, Aaron. Get this printed on dead tree or else. No.

Dave Jones: Actually, no. In this particular case, I don't see any value to getting it published in a magazine. It's just not a magazine project, really. Yeah. Got it. It's not, you know.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Okie dokie. Well, Aaron, we love your project. And I, I, I'm interested in this as a, you know, I think we've talked about portfolios on here a lot before. I think this is interesting because it's a specific, it's a, it's got its own URL. So that's kind of interesting. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's not just like aaronforrest.com, but yeah, right.

Dave Jones: Right. That's just to have a dedicated, that that's kind of the novel thing about this. Like I've seen stuff like this before, but it's on their website with dozens of other projects, you know, it's just yet another project. Whereas this is specifically. Yeah. Like the standalone nature of it. And marketed as an online resume. That's right.

Chris Gammell: And somewhere on this site, I figure where it is, but he actually talks about which companies he's targeting as well. So he's specifically sending it to like, like a space X or a, I forget who, who else he sent it to, but it was, you know, some big, big names, but it's a, yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. He's, he's mentioned who he sent it, who he sent it to. And he's talked about the journey and stuff like that as well. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and he's also penalized it for production and.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's a complete turnkey. Yeah. Like it's, you know, it's from go to woe. It's very cool. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So the novel aspect of this is really the marketing. Yeah. I think so. Specifically. Yeah. Which is great. That's a great idea. I just got the idea. Could there be like a central resume, essential website, electronicsresumes.com or something, where you publish your project and it's like, that is the place to publish, but you can just do it on your own website.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you could do it on like a hackster or hackaday.io as well. Right. So.

Dave Jones: Yeah. If you did this, let's just assume you set up a website like that and everyone publishes their projects on there. This is what I can do. Then that could be a central source. Potentially, if you're looking for people, you go to this one site and you look through, okay, I need something. One with, you know, FPGA schools. So you look through the category of FPGA projects and I go, Oh, I really liked that project. I'm going to contact that person. Mm-hmm.

Chris Gammell: So yeah. Do you pull the projects down though? And they're not looking. I mean, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's, it's possible that that could be a good idea. That, that could be a thing. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I feel like marketplace systems too, like they always kind of get, not bastardized, but they get like, you lower the value, right? So if you publish something like this by itself on your own, maybe even on just on your own site, chrisgamel.com or alternate zone, whatever the old site you had, right? Like that's kind of a standalone thing. It like lives there. But if it's now like one project among a thousand and they get like intrinsically compared, right? And so that's maybe a little bit less valuable, right?

Dave Jones: It's less valuable. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So I agree.

Dave Jones: Cool. Anyway, we like it. One thing I don't like, can I tell you something I don't like?

Chris Gammell: Dave, what don't you like? Tell me.

Dave Jones: This gets the loser product of the year award. Okay.

Chris Gammell: We're going to switch to Dave's screen here.

Dave Jones: Oh, hang on. Are we? Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: All right. Oh yeah. This thing, this is great. Oh, this is, yeah. No, it is not great. I hate this. It's a home. It's the Illume. Illume. Illume.

Chris Gammell: Is that the company? I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. E double L U M E. It's COVID-19 home test. Yeah. Right. And it's a little electronic stick. Which, fine. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, fine. Right. Home test. Right. Of course it's got an app, right? Of course. Which actually connects. And of course they want all the permissions in the world and they will report you to the government if you test positive. That's right. Right. And they'll geolocate you. Beside all that. Right? Yeah. Yeah. They'll geolocate you and they'll come around. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Like the guys in ET will come in like, bust in your home and put you in the tubes.

Dave Jones: It's just like the scene in, yes, just like the scene in ET. ! Yeah. Which is, you know, they come around like you're an alien and you've got, yep.

Chris Gammell: How much of our audience hasn't seen ET at this point? ET, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Anyway, maybe, cause it's, you know, it's like 30 years old or something. Yeah. Oh yeah. At least. ET is like more, more, 35 or something.

Chris Gammell: So anyway.

Dave Jones: Oh, he's going to look it up. Right. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: The thing I hate about this is that it's single use disposable. Yes. Right.

Chris Gammell: So this is a $40 test. It's a $40 test.

Dave Jones: I don't care about the price, right? Yeah. The fact that it's single use, it's a plastic thing. Yes. It has a, like a coin cell battery in it. It's got a, what is it? An, it's got a Nordic semiconductor. NRF. NRF. 52, 810. 52, 810. For those playing along at home. So it connects via the, via the Bluetooth to your phone and everything. Yep.

Chris Gammell: That is the low, that's the low end of that, of that family. Yep. So the 840 is what I got on my board. That's like a more. Yeah. Right. The 810s.

Dave Jones: Full use disposable thing. And the LH, the thing that I find really annoying with this, if there was no other way to do it, like, okay, maybe you can make the argument that, well, you have to, right? But the fact of the matter is, all it does, there's many of these things, there's ones with little LCDs and stuff like that that pop up and people have torn these down before. And they're really annoying. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Foon on Twitter did the, uh, pregnancy test. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We covered that. That's it. The, uh, pregnancy test one. Yeah. We've covered that. And it, this is doing the same thing. There's a test strip inside there, right? Yeah. People who are watching the video version can see this, the test strip. And I presume all it does is like shines a lead through that to determine which color it turns or whatever. I don't know the exact details, but yeah, you can, you don't need the electronics. You could have just had the stick, which with a paper sheet that said, or instructions that just say, if it turns red, you're positive. Right.

Chris Gammell: Exactly.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's totally redundant.

Chris Gammell: So the question is why do it, right? Why, why do they do this?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Because marketing, because they can.

Chris Gammell: I think marketing is one thing. And I think margin is the other. I think you can charge.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's 40 bucks for this test.

Chris Gammell: So this board probably costs a dollar, right? Maybe. Yeah, exactly. You can charge it like that. Yeah. Whereas how much can you charge for a paper strip? Like 10 bucks. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Like, I don't know what it would be. Yeah, exactly. The margin is probably larger.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So you can differentiate, like Dave said, like that would be the marketing side. And then the margin you can charge for $40, you might be making 30 bucks a test, but.

Dave Jones: And then you can harvest everyone's info too. That too. Right. Because the app wants every permission on the planet.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. Exactly. Yeah. It's disgusting.

Chris Gammell: Just imagine. Yeah. Connected devices, huh?

Dave Jones: You're part of this evil world, Chris.

Chris Gammell: I'm not part of this, man. This is, I couldn't do this. This is. Yeah, but you're part of this internet of things. This isn't internet. I mean, this is a phone is the internet part, right? Well, I know. It's not. I mean, there is possible you could do nasty stuff regardless, but it's on, you know, you could.

Dave Jones: Just, yeah. The thing that pisses me off is that it's not required at all. The electronics is totally redundant. Yeah. Really. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And imagine the embodied energy. And we love useless electronics around here, right? We, we, we love silly things, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: But, but at least they have, at least you can use them more than once generally. Yeah, right. You know, they're, they're, they're not disposable. I can understand like disposable things that have really important uses. Like, you know, those balloon things, you know, the weather balloon. Oh sure. Well, I've published on my videos and you can get like a, like once again, you can get like a starter kit. I think I told him my video kits. My video is a starter kits are falling from the sky. You know, they're, they're, they're literally falling from the sky, like a starter kit and a microcontroller controller kit lands in the backyard, you know? Yeah. But yeah, but there's absolutely no need for this. And imagine the embodied energy, which goes into producing this, to producing the battery, the, the semiconductors, the PCBs, the, the plastics and everything else. Every component on here has a massive supply chain and, and all the embodied energy that goes into producing all these supplies.

Chris Gammell: Not to mention, this is why you can't get a 52 810. God damn it.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're going into these bloody disposable single use test strips. Yeah. Like, yeah, piss off. Yeah. Like, you know, like, yeah, that absolutely sucks. I hate it.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: It's disgusting. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm calling it out.

Dave Jones: Yep. These, these actually should be banned. They, I, I, I believe they should be banned. I'm, you know, I, I am as libertarian pro, you know, freedom as you get, but I think this is a disgusting product that should not. You know, there's, I, I can't see a use case. I can't see maybe cause it automatically contacts the authorities, but then you've got the whole authoritarian, you know, tracking.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: Sure. And it's like, and I'm against that as well. Sure. So it's like, you know, I'm, I'm against this product in virtually every way.

Chris Gammell: So Dave, Dave saying he doesn't want microchips injected into the COVID testing process. See what I did there? See what I did there? Yeah. I know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Very good. What if your phone is 5G?

Chris Gammell: Oh my God. Oh, let's go.

Dave Jones: The five, I was going to say the five, the five, the five, five G reception is amazing. Good Lord.

Chris Gammell: Good Lord. Yeah. Nrf 52, five, five. Oh God. Anyway, sorry. Silly.

Dave Jones: I love a good, uh, conspiracy. Oh, imagine, imagine if the conspiracy theory, you know, the people who, oh, the government's tracking me, imagine like, you know, they could really get hold of this. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's absolutely. I think there's other people in the thread calling saying it should be banned and stuff like that. It's just, it's just disgusting from an environmental point of view.

Chris Gammell: It's not my, not my favorite.

Dave Jones: But then again, I am pro libertarian, you know, freedom to do whatever you want. So, you know, if you want to sell this to suckers, well, you know, and kill the environment at the same time.

Chris Gammell: We should get some e-waste people on here at some point. Like, you know, I think about like. That would be good. I think about, uh, the stuff that I've built, you know, like the prototypes that didn't work. Some of them are ending up in a landfill. Right.

Dave Jones: And yeah, yeah, of course.

Chris Gammell: I tell myself that like the things that I build, I try and build things that I believe in and that are going to help the world and that are hopefully have longevity.

Dave Jones: That's a one, but that is a one off and it's leading towards a goal of producing a useful product. That's right. That's I, so I've got no, you know, I got no problems with, you know, doing, doing 10 spins of a board and stuff like that. Yeah, I know.

Chris Gammell: But it's just a moral. It's a one off thing. It's a moral dilemma. Right. I mean, like it is something that's part of our industry. It's something that we, we gloss over a little bit. You know, I collect a lot of e-waste. You save e-waste. Dave, you're, you're the, you know, the savior of much e-waste, right? Right. Right. I try and save as much as I can and I give it away. There's your excuse. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No.

Chris Gammell: Did we talk about, I think last time we were on, did we talk about Lewis and speaking of less waste and less stuff as you know, you'd repair it, but did we talk last time about

Dave Jones: Right to repair.

Chris Gammell: Right to repair. Yeah. We've talked about that a couple of times, but now that the was is on board.

Dave Jones: The was is on board and Australia is a thing. Now I've got videos on my second channel and also the main channel video.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's right. You did the conference, right?

Dave Jones: Kyle, Kyle with iFixit. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I, I, I upload on my main channel a video with Kyle talking. He's, he's great. Yeah. I highly recommend watching that video. Kyle iFixit talk about the right to repair and stuff like that. It's fantastic. So we actually had our first conference here, here in Australia. Yeah. Which I couldn't go to cause we're locked down.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: But all, all the full, full videos are over on my second channel. So.

Chris Gammell: Great. We will link to those. Yeah. Repair is important, right? For having, for reducing e-waste, right? I mean like for reducing some of the stuff that we do, you know, like the, yeah. Yeah. We should, yeah, we'll hopefully cover that in the future here on the show.

Dave Jones: The, the interesting thing about, and was, wasn't on, not, he's not just on board. The fact that he told the story about how for at least 10 years, Apple was, Apple was an open source company. Right. It was complete like, you know, you, you got the schematics for the Apple II. You know, you got these schematics for the Apple one, the Apple II, right? All the service information, all the code listings, the, the ROM dumps, the, for the basic and everything else. It was completely open source and completely repairable. Yeah. So that's, you know, yeah. And there's no reason why a company can't take that stance and actually be successful. You know, come on. It's like, no, I, I think there's, there's heaps of industries. Yep.

Chris Gammell: I was rubbing my fingers together. People couldn't see that, but I was, I was saying money, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: As if releasing a PDF schematic for your new Apple fruity iPhone or whatever is going to, you know, help people copy it. It's not right. They're, they're gonna, there's already bloody Apple, you know, iPhone clones in the, you know, the Shenzhen market. Right. So it's not going to help them in any way, really. Mm-hmm . It's just, nah, it's just dumb. There's, you know, companies are going to figure this out eventually that this is a differentiator. And once a few start doing it, others will jump on board as well.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That'd be interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I got to watch. I started watching some of the Kyle at iFixit. I haven't watched the other ones yet, but you have a couple on there, right? You have a couple other.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. They're, I, I, I, you do like a rebroadcast. And then, and then there's a full transmitter and then there's the full panel. Oh, there's a full, full day, full day panel discussion of four. And it's in four different parts. Great. So it's like the full six hours or something worth of footage. If you want to watch the whole thing. Great.

Chris Gammell: Just like being there.

Dave Jones: So, yep. Just like being there.

Chris Gammell: Just like you all who are watching this for an hour and seven minutes. It feels like you're in the room with Dave and I. Yep.

Dave Jones: Even though we're many, many miles apart.

Chris Gammell: The lab. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Your room. You still got that boring backdrop. I do. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Come on.

Dave Jones: At least I've got some, at least I've got a back to the future poster. Come on. I mean, you know. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well. I will be, yeah. A couple more weeks. When, when are you moving? A couple more weeks. Yeah.

Dave Jones: A couple more weeks. Yeah. We'll see. How long will it take you to set up your lab?

Chris Gammell: These are great questions, Dave. Great questions. Yep. I have, I have the entire week blocked off.

Dave Jones: Which comes first? The, does the lab come first or does the recording studio come first? Uh. I better take this.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: It's the lab. No, no, no. I'll let it. No. It's all right.

Chris Gammell: Phone. If you can hear that.

Dave Jones: I can, yeah.

Chris Gammell: We can, yes.

Dave Jones: Definitely hear it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think, I think lab first is cause I gotta get, you know, I was just telling someone about this. I just recommended the, uh, Zoom H1, which is the travel mic that both Dave and I use. That's a, you know, handheld mic. Yep. I just recommended it to a friend and I was telling him how many episodes of the Amp Hour have been recorded with a shoe being used as the, uh, as, as, as the tripod for it. So, yep. Yep. Yep. So, anywhere, anywhere can be a lab if you want it to be. Or anywhere recording studio rather. And a, uh, sock as well.

Dave Jones: That's right. As a pop filter. That's right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The battle days. I don't miss traveling Dave. I gotta say. Oh, I can remember that.

Dave Jones: I was looking through some photos like a couple of months back and I found a photo of the old, when I used to record the Amp Hour at home. Oh yeah. And, and, and I had the gigantic couch pillows up to try and, you know, created like a little

Chris Gammell: igloo for the microphone. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For the microphone using a giant couch pillows. Yeah. Oh boy.

Chris Gammell: Those were the days. Yes, they were. Yep. Well, cool. Good times are ahead of us, man. Uh, I am excited for the future, especially cause real estate's done now. So that's really exciting.

Dave Jones: Excellent. Now, now, now you, as I said, I sent you before, all you, all you need now is the American flag and a shotgun.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Get off my lawn.

Dave Jones: My lawn. Well, congratulations. Yeah, thanks. New homeowner.

Chris Gammell: We'll talk to you from the new dig soon. Bye everyone.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Speaker ?: Bye. Bye.