#564 – Pavlovian Cheapskates

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast.

Unknown: First one of the people found.

Chris Gammell: Released October 31st, 2021.

Speaker ?: Spooky.

Chris Gammell: Episode 564. Pavlovian Cheapskates. Welcome to the Macrofab Engineering Podcast. I am your guest, Chris Gammell. And we are your hosts, Parker Dolman.

Stephen Craig: And Stephen Craig. This is episode 300.

Parker Dolman: Woo! Yay! We made it.

Stephen Craig: Congrats.

Parker Dolman: Thank you, Chris. We did it. This is some kind of a milestone.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Numerology and stuff. So that, do you guys hit in 50 a year? I mean, like, so is that six years as well, roughly?

Parker Dolman: Yeah.

Stephen Craig: I think we're having our fifth anniversary at the beginning of February next year. So 2022 is the fifth anniversary, I think.

Parker Dolman: I mean, that doesn't check out with the math, right?

Chris Gammell: Or is it six?

Parker Dolman: Well, 300 divided by 52.

Chris Gammell: So we average, and the Amp Hour, which I think we're going to also be posting this as the Amp Hour. So, well, hello, Amp Hour. We do about 50 a year. You know, like, we take a couple off and we do a couple repeats and whatever. So, yeah.

Parker Dolman: Well, we've recorded once a week continuously for 300 episodes. I've missed two out of that because of travel and a work event. But Parker's been here for 300 episodes once a week for 300 weeks. So that's almost six years.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. Our first episode was February 12, 2016. Wow. Yeah. That's great. There we go. We're doing it.

Chris Gammell: And people are still listening to it. And still listening and still like it. You guys still like doing it? It's like, well, I think you guys were saying before we started recording, it's like, you know, you just get to, you know, come here, shoot the breeze.

Stephen Craig: It's a lot of fun. It was one of those things where we started the podcast as just a way to generate content because it's easier to do a podcast than to write an engineering article. Oh, tell me about it. I think I have an article that I need to finish and it's like two years old now. Wow. And so, yeah. And we thought, Steve and I thought that we would get to like maybe episode 25 and then like Chris Church, the other founder of MacFab, would just like pull the plug. Yeah. Like he's like, no, this is dumb. Pull the plug.

Parker Dolman: No, this is dumb. But I remember we started and the amp hour was already well established. You're on 500 something at this point. I think what, 563? This will be 564. This is 564. Yeah. So you were already in the 200s when we started. And I remember looking at that and being like, oh, 200 something episodes. Like we'll never get anywhere near that point. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Time marches on, guys. You know. Yeah. Time marches on. It's not been kind to me. Well, so it's been 210 episodes since I've been here. What's been what's been the happy haps? What's what's been going on?

Stephen Craig: Let's just ignore like the last year and a half.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Stephen Craig: OK. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's still that's only like 90 episodes. So that's only like 90 episodes.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Man, it's been crazy at Macrofab. Like the. So last last year, even during COVID, we were at like 50 some odd employees. We just crossed Hong with check slack. See how many people we have right now. I think it's like 120. 127 people. Yeah. So you're definitely.

Chris Gammell: I figure that number is called. But like, you know, that number where you can't like you literally can't know everybody's name in a group. And it's like that starts to impact things. It's about 55. 55 is that's that's your number. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's I think it's 150. It's like Morgan's number or something like that. I don't remember what it is. But.

Stephen Craig: Oh, I'm still talking about Macrofab.

Chris Gammell: Like.

Stephen Craig: Oh, yeah. When we hit about 55 employees, like I couldn't remember everyone's name anymore.

Chris Gammell: Who is that? Yeah. Oh, it's even tougher to like hiring during pandemic times, too. And it's just like, you know, people are onboarding because they have to be. And it's just just a normal thing that has to happen. And I don't know it. First off, it really sucks for the people coming in because it's really hard to like make solid connections with someone. And and like, I don't know, like feeling comfortable, like asking someone for a favor when you haven't met them in person. It's just tough to do. It's like, I don't know what they're like. So you just got to like force people together.

Parker Dolman: Otherwise, it's been interesting because we're doing we do manufacturing where I'm at and we've hired plenty of people throughout COVID time. And, you know, we're having a Zoom call in this interview and we're sitting there saying like, we're probably going to see each other maybe once a week kind of thing. You're going to drive in, pick up parts in a bin and drive them home. And then if you have questions, we'll talk. And and it's just a completely different paradigm. And in fact, we just hired two new people last week or two weeks ago, actually. And I'm forcing it where it's like we're having a barbecue in the parking lot because the last the last group of people, the first time they met the owner of the company was at the Christmas party just because of COVID, you know, and and it was just one of the things I was like, no, we got to change that.

Chris Gammell: I mean, yeah, there's just some some fundamental human things that you just can't get past. And I don't know, like I think so. Like I'm working with some teams that are like overseas even. And I'm just like, when are we going to I don't know when the borders are going to open back up and like when I could see people. And so, yeah, you just got to force the issue as much as you can. I mean, if you can't if you can't have the barbecue in the parking lot, you got to you got to do something else. You know, I don't know.

Parker Dolman: Yeah, I've really appreciated that about the owner of my company. He's put a kind of a cap on the on employees. He doesn't really want to go past 20 employees at the at the company. We very easily could, but he doesn't want to go past that because he wants to be able to at least know everyone's name. And he takes he puts effort into spending time with all of his employees. He'll he'll go one on one with you to go get a beer just to see how you doing. How's everything going? And he just really fears this concept of like, I don't know who my employees are. I just signed their paycheck.

Chris Gammell: Problem is with staying at 20 employees. If you grow big enough, it's like, well, you you've got a 37 hour work day tomorrow.

Parker Dolman: So trust me, we're all feeling that because like, yeah, the company grows and sometimes it even grows when you're not even intending it for it to grow. It just does. And it grows and it's like, oh, OK, so you have two options. Hire more people or figure out a way to be more efficient. And sometimes both of those are really difficult. And it kind of goes to that whole the idea. I've talked to Parker about this a bunch. We've worked with people in the past who are like the way they surmounted a problem is they just say, oh, I'll work harder. Yeah. And that that does work harder for most people just amounts to. I'll put more hours into a thing.

Chris Gammell: And that's exactly what it is, Steven.

Parker Dolman: Well, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Two months from now, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown.

Parker Dolman: Like what always goes through my mind is like someone who's like, I'm working hard. It's like you see them at their desk and they're just like, oh, like grunting. Like this is hard. Steam is coming out of their ears.

Unknown: What does that even mean? Like it doesn't mean a new layout so hard. Yeah. Yeah. Don't go over there. Steve is working hard.

Stephen Craig: They have to call IT department and get a new keyboard because they coded so hard.

Parker Dolman: Yeah. Working hard is just a goofy term, if you ask me, because it just amounts to somebody being like, well, I'll work overtime. You can only do that for so much.

Stephen Craig: There is a way of saying it as becoming more efficient at your job is a thing. Um, if you know a little bit of scripting and have some, it's funny.

Chris Gammell: But in times of stress though, like I, the last thing I'm thinking is like efficiency or like figuring things out and like doing things better. It's more just like, oh God, just, you know, like I talk about like thrash mode. That's what I, that's what I always do. It's like when I'm like feeling, it's like, you know, like you got your, your adrenaline's really going. You're just like, oh, I just got to freaking figure this out. Oh, I don't know. Try this. I got to try it again. Oh, try it again. Try it again. Try it. It's just, and you're like, you get yourself in a hole and. And you can't get out. Yeah, you can't.

Parker Dolman: You know, I'm going to use that next time when, when, when we have a big problem and someone's like, yeah, we just need to work hard. Be like, no, no thrash mode. That's no thrash mode. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: Cause it's one of those things where, cause sometimes where you do have like a little bit of a break and you can like maybe write a little piece of like a script that helps your, helps your job out or whatever. Cause the worst thing that can happen is you write that script and you never, ever use it again. That's right. Yeah. So you made this all this efficiency and never get to use it again. That's right. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: Like the idea of working hard or working extra, extra time in this like thrash mode, I think is actually valuable for like a quick short period of time. Like you could surge and work hard to write that script that makes everything really simple, you know, down the line, but nobody can just withstand like this complete surge of working hard. I'm using air quotes here indefinitely.

Stephen Craig: Well, I mean, that's the entire thing with, um, past couple of years in the video game industry with crunch. Oh, it's, um, it's where, well, it was a month. Well, you say the last month, but what was happening with these video game developers was they were in crunch mode for years. And so developers, software developers are in, are working 70, 80 hours of just working hard. Right. And, and then it just explodes. What's interesting though, is that's kind of been like the dirty little secret of like the video game industry of developing video games. Um, what's interesting. We're seeing the same kind of thing happening with all industries because of COVID.

Parker Dolman: Yeah.

Stephen Craig: Cause we have what massive layout people just saying, fuck it. I'm not even working anymore. Right.

Chris Gammell: And yeah, yeah. There's a huge, a lot of people quitting and the, the great, uh, it's the great quitting or something. There's a bunch of, you know, fancy articles about it. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: The great, it's not recession, but it's another hard word. Resignation maybe. Resignation. I think it's what they used.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. You guys know anyone, anyone in your circles doing that? Basically. Yeah. I, I, I haven't heard it in the electronics industry much. I mean, I don't know if it's maybe it's a.

Parker Dolman: I've only, I've only, I've only, I've only, I've only, I've only seen people leave for, um, wage issues. Oh, sure. Because they've looked at, they've looked at during COVID brought a lot of introspective, um, thought where you could look back and be like, what am I doing with my life?

Chris Gammell: Uh, you know, and then some of them YOLO, some of them YOLO. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: Yeah. Right. And then, uh, yeah, it's like, okay, so maybe I really like my job, but it's just not paying the bills and being at home 24 hours a day is making me really look into that. So maybe I trade, um, you know, a job I really enjoy for a higher pay, you know?

Stephen Craig: Yeah. Or the, uh, you know, some places are going or moving back to everyone in office and people really enjoyed the work from home, which for me, I got really after six months of working from home, I was ready to go back to the office. But for some people that have family kids, you know, which totally makes sense actually from working from home.

Chris Gammell: Like, well, I know the rate I'm currently in my home office and, uh, I have been very lucky. The house that I've, I've just moved. I don't know if you guys heard that I'm in Durham, North Carolina now. Um, and, uh, so I'm very lucky to like have an office here. And I was like really excited to also like join a shared workspace like I did in Chicago. But then I realized I was like, wait, but all my tools are in the lab. You know, it's like, I have to have like non, non hardware days to really like make sense to go into the, the workspace. Even though I want to, you know, I want to meet people. I've obviously got a lot. I'm trying to build a new network here and stuff like that. But yeah, it's, uh, uh, you know, I'm tied. I'm, I'm married to my electronics guys and also my wife. So don't tell her I said that about the electronics.

Parker Dolman: You got the order wrong there.

Chris Gammell: That's I did. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: Yeah. So, so I, I was in the office all of COVID because I, I had to, uh, I was considered essential because I was running, um, some of our manufacturing machines there. And, uh, since COVID has opened up, I've, um, I've, I've trained people to do my job and now I work from home as often as I can. And it's amazing. It's so great. So it's just completely opposite from everyone. But I've, my productivity has gone through the roof because of that.

Chris Gammell: That's great. Yeah. I mean, like unbroken time is like super important to me, like as well, like just to have like a three hour block of just, you know, but it happens here too. Like, you know, zoom meetings, whatever. It's just like, I need to, you know, if I'm doing a layout, I need to be able to do it for a couple hours to like get into it and get in that mode and get in the flow and whatever. If I'm God forbid writing code, I need to like work myself up to it, you know, get a pack of smokes and, you know, really call myself down and get myself amped up with a pot of coffee. And then, you know, I don't know.

Parker Dolman: An entire pot. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Parker Dolman: I'd be, I'd be curious because I'm the same way.

Stephen Craig: Coding for you, Chris, is an emotional rollercoaster.

Chris Gammell: That is true. Words have never been spoken. Parker.

Parker Dolman: I'm really curious from our listeners, if you put it up in the, in the Slack channel, if you're the same way, I'm exactly the same way with that, with that Chris, I can't, I can't just get into layout mode for 10 minutes. I have to get into layout mode for half a day. And, and I've, I've even been known to put a song, a single song on repeat and listen to it over and over and over. And for, and like, I'm not really listening to the song. It's just has me in this like layout zone kind of thing and, and being at home and being away from, I hate to say this cause it's like, everyone knows what I mean, but it's, this is a little bit mean. Uh, but like being away from dumb questions and, and dumb questions are those things where like, look, I've asked a bazillion dumb questions in my life. But if you, if, if somebody doesn't have the ability to just walk into your office and ask that dumb question, they'll find a way to figure it out. It's just, if you're the person that can like answer that quickly, they'll just go that, that route. And trust me, I'm the person that goes that route as well. But it's, I, I've, I've found that COVID has actually been really fantastic for that. People are so much more self-sufficient because they have to be not because there's just like someone with the answers one door down.

Chris Gammell: Well, I feel like that goes in both directions too, because like, you know, organizations have to be, you know, the remote first, which many are becoming that way or shifted that way, at least during COVID is like, you got to document better. Whereas like before it was like, well, I'll just go ask Steven again. I'll just go ask Steven again. Oh, that's Parker again. You know, like, and it's just like, and now it's like, you guys also have to document the thing so that people can find it later. Um, and it's a little bit more hassle, but I don't know. No, I, I, ultimately.

Stephen Craig: I would say about a third of my job is documentation. And, uh, the, uh, I think my, my biggest response now is copy pasting links from our documentation to that person. Yeah. That's the, that's the answers in here. Bless, bless your heart. Answers in there. Here you go, darling. I'm honestly really close on thinking about writing a Slack bot that if someone, if it finds a sentence towards me with a question mark at the end, it just, it searches that into our, our, our knowledge base. And that is so perfectly results.

Parker Dolman: Parker, that is, that is like the most passive aggressive engineer thing you could do.

Stephen Craig: Cause then it would just be like me just copy pasting links still.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: I, I didn't just have a couple of hand like, Hey, the answers in this article, give me another message if you needed more help.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: But make like four or five different revisions of that sentence and just randomly picks one. Bingo. Bingo.

Chris Gammell: Actually, I, uh, I'm not a big fan of the program itself, but I am a big fan of the idea. Uh, one of the companies I worked with is, uh, uses this thing called loom L O O M. And basically it's like five minute limit, but you can record little videos and like snippets and stuff like that of yourself and whatever. And, uh, I really liked that for like sharing ideas and like, basically it's like having many meetings without having to actually then be like, Oh, and what do you think? What do you think? It's like, no, here's just my information. Leave me alone. And, you know, and then you just go off and do your next thing. So that's kind of a cool idea. Um, the, you know, the software itself is just okay. But the, the, the, I, the concept is, and actually I think Slack just stole it. Uh, they do it now for like, you know, snippets in Slack as well.

Stephen Craig: So yeah, there's like huddles too. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Stephen Craig: You can do like a quick hangout. Basically I Google hang out basically with anyone that's in that Slack channel. Um, which is, it's kind of nice. Um, yeah.

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

Stephen Craig: Yeah. It's not mine either. I'm actually kind of, so we've talked about this before, um, moving off of Slack and well, not as a company, but as a, the, uh, community for MacFab engineering podcast and going to discord.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Cause that seems to be like the, the hotness or it's okay. Yeah. Community driven stuff. There's a lot, there's a lot out there. It's just not that, you know, it's just like, how do you pay attention to them? You know? Exactly.

Parker Dolman: Well, and if we were to, you know, if we were to shift right now, you know, we've got six, 700 people in our, in our Slack channel for the podcast. If we were to shift that would drop to a hundred, you know, and we'd have to, we'd have to restart. So yeah.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. That's the only downside, but Hey, let's go, just, let's just go back to hip chat.

Parker Dolman: Hip chat. Oh, that's classic.

Chris Gammell: On the, you know, so Dave and I talked about the collab tools last week on the Amp Hour. Uh, have you guys taken any hot, hot takes on, on collaborative tools? Any, uh, what are you doing for layout these days? I guess that's what I was about. This is stuff. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: This is around EDA, like collaborative EDA. Oh, um, man, I'm still using Eagle and I'm trying to, I'm actually been learning Altium.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: Attempting to learn Altium. No, they have some collaboration tools in there. I haven't even touched that yet. Um, cause Altium is a, of all the EDA tools I've used, it is completely different than anything else I've ever used before.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really?

Stephen Craig: Yeah.

Parker Dolman: I think it's, it's worked out to be fairly serendipitous cause I started using dip trace back in, uh, 2013 and, uh, and I got pretty, I got proficient at it, um, until I came to this job, which this job uses dip trace 100%. And I've noticed that what's interesting is in the synthesizer community, uh, dip trace is kind of a standard. Uh, so it just worked out that I was able to plug right in pretty easily with it. So that's, that's been my main I've, but, um,

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I was like, I liked dip trace. It's, it's nice. I mean, like, it's, you know, it's very straight ahead. It was always like really straightforward as a, as a platform. I thought.

Parker Dolman: Every, yeah, it doesn't like, it tries really hard to make the user interface, not engineering. And, and actually I really appreciate that. Um, but we do have some customers that use Altium and some that use key CAD. So I have to kind of bounce around or KiCAD. I'm not sure which way it is. Nope. Yep. Okay. Either or, right. It's an amazing shirt. Yeah. Your shirt doesn't even answer for me.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. Um, I know at Macrofib I use, I pretty much have to be at least, I wouldn't say proficient, but I at least navigate pretty much every single EDA tool. That's useful. Our customers use everything. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Got it. Yeah. I, yeah. I mean, I think the real question is just like, if you were, I don't know how much you guys have to like work with other people on layout stuff. That's the.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. Cause that would be more on like, for me, it's just, I get stuff from customers or it's my own design stuff. I don't really collaborate with other, uh, layout engineers.

Parker Dolman: Well, okay. So we have two main designers at work myself and the owner, and, uh, we both are proficient at, at dip trace and, uh, we mainly try not to step on each other's toes. So if there's a project that I'm working on, it is 100% mine, unless the owner needs to massage it for whatever reason, uh, into our system or whatever he's going with. And sometimes he'll kick me stuff over for a review, but we've, we've, we've argued it out enough that, uh, I have a method and he has a method and they plug in okay enough that we, uh, don't have mistakes, but like simple things like I prefer soak screen on my boards and he doesn't, uh, in terms of reference designators, I like having reference designators and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: So I'm not in camp. Yeah. But yeah. But yeah, these are just, that's just personality at that point. Right. I mean, it's like, yeah.

Parker Dolman: And it's really funny because like the people down the stream in our manufacturing line without even being told, they can look at a board and know who it came from. Like, of course, the soak screen thing. I was about to ask is, but even if they just look at the traces, they could be like, I know who made this board.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's like, it's like your handwriting effectively. Right. I mean, yeah, there's a fingerprint. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting for sure.

Parker Dolman: I would love to, I've never, I've, I've heard it's out there. I've never experienced it, but I'd love to see a multi-seat, uh, concurrent EDA tool where multiple people are working at the same time. I, I think that would just be chaos.

Chris Gammell: I feel like that's like, that's like engineering porn. That's like what people think that it's like, that it like, that's needed, you know? And it's like, that's not how it normally happens. Let me tell you about the birds and the bees.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. I was about to say, that's like, if you pitch that and made that work, you'd get so much VC funding. Yeah, exactly. But no engineer would actually use it.

Chris Gammell: I just think about it at like the, you know, like, well, so, so Parker, I'm sure you see this a lot in macrofab too. Like the, like CAD is so often done at an institutional level. I guess, Steven, you're even just talking about it, right? You went into a company and it's like, the CAD stuff is already decided. It was decided 15 years ago. And by the, you know, the pile of designs that are already made. So it's like, all right, you know, so then, so the, uh, uh, engineer Bob was in the chat here is talking about like KaiCad at home, all team at work. Right. So that's how, that's how that split sometimes starts happening. And that makes a lot of sense where, you know, you could, you know, if you're doing your own thing, you're starting from design zero and you get to just go and, you know, use whatever you want, but you just have to use what they use at work. And that might be Altium. It might be Eagle. It might be God help you. Orcad. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: All three of us, we've, you've used Orcad, right, Chris? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's a, uh, I've used the only the schematic capture the, the, the, I was never allowed to do the layout.

Parker Dolman: Oh, allowed.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, you had to have the dongle, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: Uh, I've, I've Parker and I both dealt with it and, and it was a nightmare.

Chris Gammell: Mm hmm. Yeah. I don't know how any company functions with that piece of software. The dedicated people. That's, I mean, I think that's what it comes down to. It's like, it's, it's like another structural thing. You have to have people in, in, and then in there. And then, so now you have someone who has a job based on Orcad. They're probably very proficient at it. Right. No, no doubt about that. You can get stuff done if you need to. Right. And then they do. Right. I mean, like the, some of the biggest design houses use it. And then it's like, all right, now we're going to have an engineering review. And should we switch to another thing? And the guy who's like, who has Orcad designer on his business cards, like I vote no.

Parker Dolman: I had a sales guy spell it out to me one time. Cause I actually purchased Orcad for a previous company. Cause the, the, the engineering manager just said, go buy a copy of Orcad. So I just did. And, and the, the sales guy came in after we had it for a month or so. And I was, I looked him straight in the face. I was like, this software is horrible. And, and like, and, and I, I, I used it in front of him and I was like, why does it do this? Why did it? And he was like, look, let me just be honest with you. He's like, your company, you have one seat of this. He's like, you're kind of a small fry. He's like the old gray beard engineers at this other place that have 50 seats. They're the guys we pay attention to. And all their engineers are in their late, you know, in their mid to late sixties. And they're the guys when they say jump, we say how high. And it's just like, oh, good Lord. So. Okay, cool. So I'm getting screwed.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, that's not, that is not, that is not limited to EDA either. Right. I mean, like, I mean, every time, uh, a past company of mine that was in the test equipment industry, uh, talked about taking off a G-Pib port. Uh, let me tell you, every, every arm was thrown in the air. Oh my God, we can't get rid of G-Pib. It is, it's the needed modern, modern interface that every user wants. I feel like you have to say that. Well, they all, they all have equipment that has it on it. Well, that's because nobody took it off that old equipment.

Parker Dolman: Like, that's, that's fantastic. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, that's just, I mean, that's, I think, I think it, one of the things that points out to me is just like, there is hyper-specialization in our industry, right? And people need very specific things. And then you have companies that are servicing these niches, not even niches, but just like these hyper-specified, you know, they have this lane and if you try and go outside that lane, it is really tough. And, you know, I feel bad. Sometimes I feel bad, uh, disparaging people who are trying something new, which is what I was doing last week. It was a startup who was trying to do something new and like, you know, good on them. Honestly, like I'm glad that they're trying something new. So it's not for me, but, but there might be other new engineers, right? It really all comes down to like, whoa, what's the eject rate of the gray beards? You know, like we need to really just hit that eject button a little more often. How old is your audience guys? I don't know about my audience. I mean, I love the gray beards. I love them.

Stephen Craig: Well, it was, it's, it's, uh, the, the phrase I really like or, or sentence, I guess is, uh, tradition. Cause you know, everyone like goes on about traditions. Tradition. So, so Orcat is like the tradition at a company, right? Well, traditions are just peer pressure from dead people. So I've not heard that before. That's fantastic.

Chris Gammell: I like that. Yeah. That's great.

Stephen Craig: So it's, it's, yeah. Trying looking at different software. I mean, it's also cause I've, I've, I've used like four different ED, like made boards with four different EDA tools over my short career so far. Um, I wish I was better at, at ChiCAD, ChiCAD, um, than I am. I'm awful at it still. I still can't get my, my brain around its interface. Um, but I try real quick tangent.

Parker Dolman: I still cannot figure out origins in ChiCAD. I, I, I had, I had to panelize a board and then, uh, create, uh, create a pick and place file for our assembly team and just trying to tell them where zero zero was, was a headache.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's top left.

Parker Dolman: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's in the top left. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: It's top left, but they don't work in top left. That's right. My pick and place team. So it's like, uh, it's yeah.

Chris Gammell: The V six that's fixed. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: The, um, okay. Yeah. When we started Macfab, I actually was the person who wrote one of the first parsers for ChiCAD for our platform. And yeah, it was cause we were, the industry is bottom left, uh, corner of the board is zero zero. And so that was one of the first things I had to figure out was, okay, where's, where are these numbers coming from? Oh, it's top left.

Chris Gammell: And so you have to figure out what the board of the sheet as well. Oh, the sheet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: Yeah. All of, all of my whys are negative and they're big and I don't know why.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Stephen Craig: And then going in and basically finding where the, where your board is at and all that kind of stuff. And then just doing some, you know, then you can easily figure it out. But it was one of those. That was actually my first introduction to ChiCAD. So that was a lot of fun. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's getting there guys. It's getting there. A couple more years, a couple more years.

Parker Dolman: I had to, I took a customer's board and they gave it to us for a DFM and I, well, it was, it was a board assembly. So it was three PCBs. And within a day or two, I had, you know, them, I had them panelized up. I had all the, all the correct manufacturing files spit out and things like that. But I feel like I was only able to do that because I had knowledge of other EDA tools and I had done that on other EDA tools. If I was doing that from scratch, it would have been like, oh my God, what am I doing here?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Parker Dolman: Cause like, yeah, I knew what I needed at the end. So I just had to figure out how to make ChiCAD do that thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really excited. I mean, like one thing I get excited about with, with ChiCAD in general is like the, is the influx of software people. Like, I think that people that have like, like CICD type of stuff, like I'm really interested in that sort of thing, you know? So like at some point, if I hit save, it would be really cool that it goes and checks everything on the board and like, you know, all the way through to the export. Like that would be, that would be the best case scenario if I, or maybe not save, but you know, I do a commit. Um, and like, and I think there are a lot of people pushing that kind of methodology generally. And then just other Python scripting gurus that are making things capable for me, possible for me that I am not capable of. So that's, that's also really important.

Stephen Craig: I think the most exciting thing about ChiCAD is how fast, uh, new features get added to it. Yeah. Um, and how quickly it's, it's, it's also, I guess you could, from the ORCAD perspective, it's a bad thing because things change. Ah, yeah. But from the other side of the spectrum, it's a great thing because it's rapidly changing and rapidly evolving.

Chris Gammell: And yeah, I feel like the interface stuff is, that's where it usually, that's when things fall apart, when people get upset, right? They're like, Oh, I don't want to, where did, where did my button go? You know? Like that's always like, Oh man.

Stephen Craig: So we had that happen at Macrofab is on the admin side, we, a button got moved around and no one told anyone where the button went. I think that was actually this morning. April fools.

Parker Dolman: See, see what did, with dip trace, they, they, they, they lead you with a carrot and they'll give you a smaller revisions, like 3.1, 3.2. And they just keep feeding you those. And then they'll put everything into this beautiful 4.0 package and be like, well, it's $300 to upgrade to 4.0. And it's like, Oh, I have to, cause all of these features are awesome. And we've been asking for years for them.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Autodesk on the other hand, just takes a big bite out of your wallet every month.

Parker Dolman: That's true. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, you know, industry, industry, isn't it fun?

Parker Dolman: I guess nothing we've said here is new, right?

Chris Gammell: No. Well, it's 300 episodes for you guys and 560 for us. I mean, like it's, we're going to, we're going to get some repeats on, on here. One thing I probably didn't bring up last time on episode 90, the development board guilt. I'll show you, I should go read those notes too. Um, so I, since, since the last time we recorded, I started using EFM eight parts. Talk about modern guys. Let me tell you an 80 51 core. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: You're using a sleepy B. I am not using a sleepy B. I was using a laser B laser. Oh, laser. Yeah. Oh, top of the laser B. Yeah. Well, you know, uh, I wanted the four Dax. That's where that came from. And, uh, having four Dax is pretty important, uh, for my, for my scenario. Uh, but I know Parker, I think when, after I, I, so I, I first chose it because, uh, uh, Ken, no, not Ken, Ken.

Parker Dolman: What? Over at Parallax?

Chris Gammell: No, not Ken. No, he would try to get you to do a prop.

Parker Dolman: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No. Um, who am I thinking of? Uh, $1 microcontroller guy. Sorry.

Stephen Craig: $1. Engineer Bob. Jay Carlson. Jay Carlson. So engineer Bob in chat says the 8051 is the Orcat of the CPU world. That is, that is a great comparison. Because there's so much. It'll never die. It'll never die. There's so much code written for that microcontroller core.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm. That is. Yeah. Uh, so, uh, Jay Carlson had wrote, who wrote the $1 microcontroller, the amazing $1 microcontroller. You guys have surely read that article. Um, yes. He turned me on to that laser B part and I started looking at it and I needed four Dax sometime later and I was like, oh wow, this hits it. And so, but then I like started like trying to learn it and the only things I could find were posts from Parker and posts from Jay. I was like, oh boy. This, you know, you're in a bad spot. It's, it's not quite as bad as when you're like doing a Google search and you find your own questions. Own stuff. That has been unanswered for, for years. That's, that's also bad. I've done that one before too. Or, or the blog posts you've written on the topic that you have now forgotten many years later. That's also. Yeah. I've done that.

Parker Dolman: We've mentioned this multiple times. You also run into that stack overflow or stack exchange, whatever. Or that, that forum post where somebody posted the problem. And then the last, very last thing was I found a solution. And then they don't say anything. No answer. And that's it.

Chris Gammell: Thanks. Gone like a fart in the wind. Yeah. So yeah, it's, it's been an interesting journey. I think they're going to keep it alive. It's, you know, it's interesting the days of the chip shortage. It's like, yeah, I guess there's, there's a big product line. So it's still kind of around, but it's not getting any better. It's not getting any other features. That's for sure. So yeah, it's interesting to, to write. Are you still doing stuff with that Parker or no?

Stephen Craig: The, if I may, no, we love the, the big project I've been working on is, you know, pinball controller stuff. And we're using a AT mega Sam D.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So I looked at those. They're just expensive though. I mean, like, so they, they have DACs on them and that's nice. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: Well, when you, when they're hard to find.

Chris Gammell: Well, that definitely. That's everything.

Stephen Craig: That's a microcontroller right now.

Parker Dolman: Although, although I'm looking at, I'm looking at one of the big players right now and you can go out and buy an EFM eight right now and you can buy some of them.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah. And there is some pin compatibility. You might be downgrading in terms of what you have on board, but yeah.

Stephen Craig: No, EFM eights are great. The, the reason why is the, we picked, we picked the Sam D because they actually, for the price point and the features we needed, it was actually really good for it. Yeah. And the EFM eights just didn't really have the features that we wanted. I'd rather right now be in the EFM eight boat if I could, because you can actually buy them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. Right. Right. Right. It's also like you can buy parallax propellers right now. Someone's laughing about that all the way to the bank. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Stephen Craig: Now I actually know my current hardware project I'm working on now, I'm actually using a parallax propeller because I have a tray of them and I'm only going to build a couple of them.

Chris Gammell: Nice.

Stephen Craig: Why not?

Chris Gammell: What is up with the propeller? I, I, I kind of forget it exists. And then sometimes I'm like, Oh yeah. Cogs. Cogs are a thing. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: There's a prop two now.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I knew that. Yeah. That finally exists. Ken and chip were on this podcast. What? I remember. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: It came on a while ago. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. A year and a half ago at this point. Um, was that during COVID or, or right before it? I can't remember. Oh, that was before it. Yeah. Um, I do, I finally got a prop to dev board, uh, about a year ago and it's, uh, cause now they support like C cause it used to be just spin and then assembly spins like there was their own language. And I actually, that was actually the first embedded language I really learned. And I actually, I really like it. Um, and then I went on to learn C and then assembly and all that good stuff. Yeah. But now there's C for it, but I actually still find myself writing spin code cause I find it faster to write it that way.

Chris Gammell: Is it like a scripting language? What is it? I mean, I, I remember hearing about it.

Stephen Craig: It's, it's a, if I recall, it's like, it's, it's like more like Python where it's, it's runtime.

Chris Gammell: Okay. That's not compiled. It's colorful.

Parker Dolman: I remember that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Colorful, like actual colors. Like there's like, yeah.

Parker Dolman: Like in, in their IDE, like it colors.

Stephen Craig: Oh, it's just like your variables are here and this is going to make your variable block a different color.

Parker Dolman: It's actually, it's actually kind of weird growing up. I had a Bible. I, this is a super weird tangent, but I had a Bible that was like, depending on what was being said, it would color it. And so if this is prophecy would be this color. If it's Jesus speaking would be this color. If it was Satan speaking, it'd be this color. And programming and spin just makes me think of like, I'm coding prophecy right now.

Chris Gammell: I'm just imagining someone colorblind being like, oh man, this devil says some weird shit, you know? Yeah. Love thy neighbor. Yeah. Right. Everything's confusing. Why is it all in gray? Yeah. Not to make fun. I'm not making fun of people with color, colorblindness. Of course. Just that, that's a interesting crossover. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: That, that Bible and spin has a, has a fatal flaw for colorblind people. I guess.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's a real thing for design. Yeah. I mean like high contrast design is important for, for colorblindness. For sure. Yeah. No, I've never tried. I, I have to say, I don't think I will. Um, I'm a little.

Stephen Craig: Oh, it's an oddity. It's a hundred percent an oddity.

Chris Gammell: But they're still around. I mean, that's, what's weird. Like, so are they educational? Are the people designing into products?

Stephen Craig: Um, I mean, our, my first pinball controller, which we built a couple thousand of it ran up, had a parallax appreller on it. Um, it's a really $8 micro processor. Yeah. It's, it's expensive.

Parker Dolman: Well, the new one's $12, isn't it?

Stephen Craig: I think so. Yeah. But the new one is just, what it can do is just amazing. Like, oh yeah. So on the new one, I think there's like 64 pins. I hope general purpose IO pins and each one can be a DAC or an ADC.

Parker Dolman: Yeah.

Stephen Craig: It's, it's bonk. Like the peripherals in that thing is just crazy.

Parker Dolman: It really is like the anything chip.

Stephen Craig: Uh, like you can, but you have to code it that way. Cause like you have to force it.

Parker Dolman: Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: Where like you have, like you set up a DAC or like you, like you just set up some registers and then the hardware does its thing. It's actually more kind of like an FPGA in terms of you have to write that stuff in code to make like you turn, you turn a cog into a, a, a, a, a, what would be a good example?

Chris Gammell: It feels like block configuration. Like you're saying, like you're saying, this cog is a blank and then it does this function. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: It does this functionality. Yeah. Um, but they can do a lot more than that, but that's just a good way to think about it.

Parker Dolman: You know what? One of the big downfalls is I'm actually looking at it on Mouser right now. A prop two dev board is $130. And, uh, and that's not like horrible or anything like that, but if you're like a do it yourself or, or if you're like a get into entry level guy, $130 dev board to just have access to the processor is steep. Uh, steep, right?

Chris Gammell: Hmm. Well, maybe that begs the question guys is DIY dead, dead, dead, dead.

Parker Dolman: 40 minutes in and we reach our topic. Yeah, we did. Yeah. We got there. We got there.

Chris Gammell: We did it. I mean, we're kind of circling around it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's an interesting, I mean like around the, I don't know, like, uh, so first off.

Stephen Craig: So I think we, I think we have to have our binary answers first. No, no.

Parker Dolman: Maybe. That's not binary. I'm analog. What can I say? It's tertiary. I'm going to go with, uh, no. No. Hmm. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Uh, no, I don't. Yeah. I, I think it's, uh, the reason it came, why, why did it come, it came up around like kind of like maker culture or stuff like that we were kind of talking about. But I think that the, you know, it's kind of never been easier to do DIY stuff. I think it's just more of, is it romanticized as much? I think that is a, uh, that's a, so is the romanticization of DIY dead? I hope so. Because like, you know, like, oh, you can start your business making 3D printers. Like, that's gone. Yeah. Um, great. Cool. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: It needs to. Right. Yeah. It needs to be gone.

Stephen Craig: It's interesting where, I think it depends. I think the mass market ability. This is like, look at Maker Faire because Maker Faire is gone. Um, especially, uh, I wish like San Mateo was a lot of fun, but like, I think what happened there is they, the idea of big companies coming in to sponsor makers, I think is over.

Chris Gammell: Um, big companies like Microsoft coming in and sponsor. The Google tent or the, yeah, the Microsoft, the Barnes and Noble tent. That was my favorite. That's when, you know, that an event is doomed. It's like our biggest sponsor is Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble. Are you a maker? Read about it on paper. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: I remember when Autodesk was, was the premier sponsor at Maker Faire for San Mateo. And that was, that was, they had a bonkers booth. Yeah. That was when they launched a Autodesk 123D, which turned into Fusion.

Chris Gammell: Oh, interesting.

Stephen Craig: But, uh, oh, so. Craft Lab in chat says, maybe it's because of COVID and there's no maker fairs for people to obsess over trying to show off their hacks. Well, okay. Wait.

Chris Gammell: COVID though. So. Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: That brings up a problem. Like, are you just making it so you can show it off to people? And at that point, is it just like social media DIY or are you actually trying to solve something? You know?

Chris Gammell: I think, yeah, all things go, all things, you know, move towards commercialization, right? Any kind of like, any kind of excitement that happens is people are going to be like, oh, I could maybe make that into a business opportunity. You know? Like, and I'm not, I am not immune to this myself, you know? Like, uh, uh, so I think that what happens then, I think what specifically with maker fair and maybe more broadly in the industry is like. Like, people started doing that and then they, they're like, I'm a maker. And then they're like, I'm making a maker business. And then they're like, I'm making money off my maker business. And then maker fair is like, okay, cool. Now you have to pay us to be here. And they're like, whoa, we're gone. You know? Like, and it's just like, and so.

Parker Dolman: Not cool, man. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: Not cool.

Chris Gammell: You know, the ethos of me making money.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. No, but the thing about that is trying to make money off people who DIY. Because most reason why there's, there's two groups of people who DIY. One, you're doing it to save money. And one, you're, you just enjoy doing it. I would say the group that enjoys DIY just to do it is a lot smaller than the people who do it to save money.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's interesting.

Stephen Craig: This is, this is like, we're talking about DIY. So I like, I want to, I want to fix the plumbing under my sink.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So you're not saying like, I'm posting my project to Instructables. You're like, I'm just getting it done. Because I have to. I'm not hiring a professional.

Stephen Craig: I'm not hiring a professional. I'm going to fix my toilet myself. Yeah. You know, I'm going to fix, that's a DIY project.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. That's right.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Stephen Craig: So I would say that segment is way larger of a segment of the DIY community. And so when you have these.

Chris Gammell: I wouldn't have put the, you know, the, the toilet fixtures in the DIY in, in my head, it wasn't in that camp, but it's probably because we're talking about Maker Faire already.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. Yeah. But that's what I'm getting at is we're. Pitching to the DIY community. You're trying to pitch to people who don't like to spend a lot of money. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'd say that more broadly as well, the hardware engineers are cheapskates. I mean, like.

Stephen Craig: Oh yeah. I mean, we're talking about $1 microcontrollers and we're like, man, is that, is that, can we get a 50 cent microcontroller?

Chris Gammell: I mean, the thing is like, there are some very real implications from saving money. I can make more things. I can, you know, I get to fund like, and like some like actual like business things too. Like I can fund my business for longer because I make more margin per board. So like being a cheapskate actually leads to my company's longevity. You know?

Parker Dolman: How many design meetings have you guys been in though, where you're proposing something new and people are just saying like, well, that's going to raise the cost of this by 20 cents, you know? And like the bean counters are going to, you know, beat us with a whip if we, if we add 20 cents to this. So like, yeah, I mean, we're kind of, we're, we're trained to think about that. Conditioned. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Right. We are Pavlovian in our cheapskateness.

Stephen Craig: Right. Yeah. I mean, who, so pre supply chain issue, you would go online search. I need a 10 K 0 6 0 3. And you would me click the, a sort by price ascend. That's right. Yeah. I will still do it.

Parker Dolman: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Stephen Craig: I think nowadays you click that in stock button too.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There's that. And then it was also like, then there's also that like mental switch of like, well, I'm not sure I should really, even though they're the cheapest, like getting resistors from Bob's resistor shed, uh, you know, like, you know, like buying some like off brand, who knows what, then it's like, okay, so maybe if I've been burned enough times, I'll, I'll think twice, but yeah, most of the time. Yeah. Sign me up for the cheapest. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's just how the industry goes. Right. I mean, that's also what drives Moore's law, everything else. Right. It's not, people aren't doubling their transistor count every 18 months or whatever it's actually doing these days. Uh, you know, it's not because of, because it's fun to make things smaller. You know, I have friends in the chip industry. It is a slog. It sucks. Uh, it's like, no, we need to make money and keep up or else we're dead. But, you know, yeah.

Parker Dolman: Well, and, and with component shortages nowadays, I think that kind of cuts a line down, down the middle. Yeah. Like there's shortages. You can't find things. Yeah. So, so it kind of cores out this middle section of industry, right? You have big players that can throw their weight around and can, uh, spin up fabs or, or convince people to make stuff for them. Or you have the really, really small guy that's making five of something and can sit there and hunt and find for five things on eBay and buy them and make his little project. But in between there, you have this really, like you have the people who are sweating every day saying like, I need 300 microcontrollers and I can't find them.

Chris Gammell: You know? Yeah. I hope I can outsmart someone by buying when DigiKey is like, just happens to have the parts on hand in that window.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. Yeah. That happened against, against me on Sam D21s. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You got, you got, you got sniped.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. Someone, someone sent me like, Hey, DigiKey's got 2,500 of these. I'm like, perfect. That's a year of production. I'll be good to go. 10 minutes later, I'm on DigiKey's website. Already gone. This goose egg. Who sailed away.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: I bet you that box didn't hit DigiKey's warehouse before it was out the door going again.

Parker Dolman: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and that goes, that goes exactly to what you were saying, Chris, with a commercialization. Like if you're a DIY guy and you kind of have that idea where it's like, Oh, I've got this cool concept for a widget and maybe it can make me some money someday. You're looking at chip shortage and be like, why even try right now to make it into something more? I might as well just make one for my house and that's fun and cool. And there we go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's, it's going to be interesting to see what companies make it up. I mean, not interesting. It's sad and terrible and everything else, but like, you know, there, there is going to be a reckoning because of this. You know, some companies are just going to maybe not close up shop, but maybe they'll shift their business model or whatever. And it's like, yeah, I, I don't know many people who are like, I'm really looking to get into dev boards right now. You know, you know where the money is? $20 breakout boards.

Parker Dolman: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I haven't looked in a while. Um, has, has the technology section on places like Indiegogo and Kickstarter? Is that, is that significantly different given chip shortages and things? Or are we seeing tons of delays? I get way more emails.

Stephen Craig: I get way more marketing emails from them. Oh, okay. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I, uh, I only really follow crowd supply. Uh, I don't really follow Indiegogo and Kickstarter cause of past just, I can't, uh, yeah, I just, it's just not, I think it's just lower signal. Like I feel like the, you know, like crowd supply pretty good, you know, some stuff I'm just like, okay, come on. But you know, pretty good, you know, cause it's, cause it's pretty niche Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Yeah. If I had to rate them, you know, Indiegogo is the lowest and, and crowd supplies the best, I think. So.

Parker Dolman: Well, I'm just wondering if, if, if you were to look at the data behind stuff that's, uh, available on, on any of those platforms right now, are you seeing lots of people saying like, Hey, delays, Hey, we're, you know, whatever. Or if you were to even see like the backend of people who were interested in opening a new campaign and saying like, I'm going to hold off. Like how much is that? Let's see. All right.

Stephen Craig: We're probably seeing a ton of that. When we had Chris craft on a couple of weeks ago, he mentioned that on, at least on, um, let's see other one. The one, the craft, uh, website.

Chris Gammell: Oh, um, the blue box macaroni and cheese.

Stephen Craig: No, no, it's Etsy, Etsy. Uh, or, uh, Etsy and, uh, Pinterest.

Parker Dolman: Oh, Tindy. Tindy.

Stephen Craig: That's where a lot of people are closing their shops because they just can't get parts. Yeah. They'll just come back whenever. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: Yeah. I'm sure Tindy's in flux quite a bit. Mm.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think the real thing is that people, people should probably be raising their prices, but I think there's also resistance to that. You know, it's just like, oh, I, I shouldn't do that. I want to, you know, so like, okay, so now we're back to this DIY ethos, right? I think I want things to be cheap. I think things should be cheap when I sell them, but then it's like, okay, but you're not getting as much margins. You're not going to stick around. And so it's just like, that's going to hurt. That kind of hurts everyone. I feel like, you know, I feel like you've got to raise your prices on a pretty regular basis too. And, uh, you know, I feel like people in the DIY, uh, space might be more willing to, uh, self-flagellate in the, in the business sense of the word, uh, rather than, rather than like look like they're gouging customers. You know, it's just like the price increases are just a natural part of, well, other industries, at least maybe not our industry. Usually, uh, I remember there was a, a, uh, uh, FAE I used to work with. He's like, yeah, only industry where every year the parts get cheaper, you know, same function parts are supposed to get cheaper though. It's like, oh shit. Yeah. I didn't think about that. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: I guess, you know, I haven't, I haven't thought about that. The DIY community in thinking that the stuff that they should get for cheaper, they should also be able to apply, supply things for cheaper where that just isn't making sense right now.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Um, I mean, I, I've seen a more than one, uh, like, oh, we're sorry, we have to raise prices. And it's like, of course you do. Like everybody has to raise, you know, like that's just a, I think that happens. I think that.

Parker Dolman: Two to three percent per year is pretty expected.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, if you're going to have, I mean like, so yeah, if you just have the inflation cost of like, you know, assembly services that come through, maybe there's some efficiencies through a macro fab or similar, but like, you know, there's just going to be price increases. Maybe if you even just have an office, you know, like things are going to go up. So I don't know. I feel like, uh, I feel like that's one of the, one of the downsides is that like, there's just a lot of, uh, kind of emotion tied up in it, you know, like because you were cheapskates and yeah, that sort of thing.

Stephen Craig: Well, I think we, we, I guess I got two things here is so on that gamble is we, we also look at it as a, well, if it was $40, I would, I would just spend my own micro controller board and spend $25, right? Myself and assemble it myself on my bench. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so that, that we get that in our brain and go, that is the worst. That is always wrong. It's always wrong, but we always had that mentality.

Parker Dolman: Oh yeah, for sure. I can do that cheaper.

Stephen Craig: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That whole, I can do it cheaper and we're the ones selling the product. I'll just spend like 16 hours on the weekend and I'll just like, it's so cheap. Yeah. It's so cheap. Then I'll build one. I think I'm fine.

Stephen Craig: Buy everything quantity one. Yeah. I think I'm finally getting to the point old enough where I'm starting to realize time is important. So figuring that out in projects. But then two is on Steven with, I'm not, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in inflation, but if you look at the actual inflation for like the past 10, 15 years, it's been pretty flat until now.

Chris Gammell: Yes. That's right. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: And so it's like, it's been that two, 3% and then it went to like this. It actually, sometimes it had dipped down. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: Dipped down a little bit. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: And so there's, I'm not going to be, tend to be an expert, but you know, there's a lot of people like freaking out over like inflation stuff, but it's like, well, if you actually draw the linear line from way back then, we're still not even up to it yet. That's right. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: Last year dipped really hard. So it looks like it's way worse than it actually is.

Stephen Craig: Oh, I see. Possibly. But the maker, this whole maker commercialization stuff has really, maker and DIY has existed for a long time, but it's really become the like maker fair and the forefront and being news kind of things.

Chris Gammell: It's really been the last 10 years during that period of flattening of stuff, flattening. And I think one thing that contributes to that too, is just like the China ecosystem coming online, growing so huge. Right. So like, if you really think at like 2000, you know, China was like not a, you know, it was obviously it was a market for low cost assembly, stuff like that, but just like the dominance in the electronics industry and just the flattening of costs, I think because of the volume there and like the, you know, taking over a lot of the assembly that's happening and just like all the things that were there and that, how that contributed to the low, you know, just the lower cost of goods overall in the, you know, in certain parts of the world, of course, we're all in the States. Um, and then how that then played into the maker movement as well. Right. So then now people are saying, Hey, I, as a individual, I can go and take stuff maybe over to China even, and, you know, harvest some of that value as well. And then that starts to go away because, well, other brands are doing the same thing or whatever. And it just gets harder and harder to do that. And the costs of imports started to go up as well. So yeah, that, that could, I feel like you got an economics paper there, Parker. Maybe, maybe you might have, you might be halfway to a PhD, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: He's got to finish his one article that he's writing for two years. That's right. The last two years. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: If that, if that maps, then he'll, you know, by the time he's in his mid eighties, he might have gotten that PhD.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. I might get the done. The, um, also think about is when was the first time you could, did you buy a prototype piece, just a bare PCB that was under a hundred dollars?

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: When was like 2006, seven ish? Maybe that was mine. When I bought a prototype from, it was PCB cart.com, which still exists.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Stephen Craig: But that was like the first time I ordered a board from China and, uh, it was under a hundred bucks. As a college student, I could barely afford that. So.

Parker Dolman: Well, now, now when a board is like 10 bucks, it's that's expensive. Right. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. I think that, that totally enables that enabled a lot of things. Right. I mean, like, uh, as, uh, you know, someone who's trying to build a board business out of that is where like a assembled PCB business out of that is it's more possible than maybe it would have been back in 2005 or 2000. So, yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah. My first, the first boards I got were, I think, advanced, advanced circuits out of Colorado.

Parker Dolman: Right down the street from me.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Just, uh, purchased by, uh, what's them names? Uh, Tempo. And, uh. Yep. No solder mask. Just. Oh, yeah.

Parker Dolman: Uh, Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf Pf

Stephen Craig: I think those were still over a hundred dollars. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. They were not cheap for what they were.

Stephen Craig: No. Yeah. So yeah, the, I think the, what would they call it now? Democratization, the PCB pricing from China.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so certain things came out of like the, the D you know, if we, if we conflate DIY with like maker culture and just kind of like, I think like digitally enabled stuff too, like being able to, you know, like when we order boards from China, it is not because we're calling China at, you know, seven at night here. And it's seven in the morning there it's because we ordered online and when they get in, they just make the stuff and whatever. No big deal. Yeah. And, but just like that, that digital front end for services, man, that is sweet. I hope that never, ever goes away. I don't want to talk to another goddamn human ever again. And, you know, I know we're on macro fab podcast, so macro fab doing things right. I don't want to talk to Parker ever again. I'm just kidding. No, no, no. When Mike,

Parker Dolman: when Mac first started, I remember that being a selling point where they were like, you're an engineer. You want to make something and you want to just input your data. You want to be in control of your data and you don't want to talk to anyone. Mac fab allows you to be an engineer. Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: Sign me up for that all day long. I don't know. It was awesome. I want to talk to people after work. And I, I think the real thing is I don't want to go back and forth. That's the real thing. Uh, I recently ordered laser cut acrylic on Pinoco, which is, you know, been around a long time. Uh, very different service than when I'm last remembered hearing about it, looking at whatever. It was so easy that it was just like, I'm an illustrator. 20 minutes later, I've ordered things and then it just shows up. And it was like, Oh my God, this is like, like, I don't have to join a maker space. I don't have to get into the politics of a maker space to get access to a laser cutter. Like, do I really have to get training for this machine? That's right. Yeah. Uh, so, um, cool. I, more of that, more of that. I want to be right people.

Parker Dolman: Just the other day, I use the service to order, um, some, uh, some JST assembled cables. So basically XH style connectors with, uh, uh, wires in between effectively. That's it. And I use an online service that allowed me to pick my connectors, pick the colors, pick the length and just press buy. And they shipped yesterday. And I haven't talked to a single person.

Chris Gammell: Right. And you also didn't have to make a engineering drawing of it. I mean, like bingo are important, but boy, they are a stupid process for like translate. It's like, like Steven knows he wants this color of wire here. Like, so we have to put it in a PDF to know this. Like, no, it's not like you're like specking a brand new color of wire. That's going to go all the way back to the plastic manufacturer that then coats, you know, stranded 24 gauge wire or something, you know, like honestly,

Parker Dolman: I swear PD, uh, engineering drawings, not just PDF, sorry. Engineering drawings have traditionally just been a club that you can beat your manufacturer with when they get it wrong. No, I swear to God, I'm not, I'm not trying to be like mean about it, but like, that's what it is. Like you didn't follow the drawing. Like, you know, it's like,

Chris Gammell: it's like, it's like the bill of sale for like, uh, yeah. For like your specs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what it is. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: And then you get those drawings that are just almost black with text and just so much information that there's no way anyone could read it and actually get it right.

Stephen Craig: And no one's ever read it. No one's someone, some engineer made it in like 84 and it's because copy and paste on each, each layout page and no one reads it. And so they send notes. Yeah. But then they send you the actual specifications and it doesn't match that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I see. You see that all the time, right? Every single day.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. I've had it called out to me where they're like, um, yeah, you sent in this drawing. This, this isn't what you ordered. You know that? I'm like, Oh yeah, I didn't mean to do that.

Parker Dolman: I actually, I, I had some, I had some guys just the other day. Um, I'm getting some plastic parts made right now. And, uh, so, uh, I'm getting them injection molded. Well, they come out of the mold and, and plastic shrinks a little bit. So, uh, I gave, some tolerances for, for shrinkage allowance on, on my drawing. But the, the place was asking, Hey, you know, we're, we're seeing X number show up on all the parts that we've manufactured. Would you mind changing the drawing such that the nominal is now the shrink part? I'm like, well, no, I'm not going to put that because now whenever I leave the company and someone else needs to go and get another mold made, they're now going to make the mold for the new shrunk size. And it's going to shrink again. And you're going to ask them to change the drawings. So,

Stephen Craig: in a hundred years, your part is like, it just keeps getting smaller.

Chris Gammell: Did you, um, I've mentioned this on the empire before, but, uh, I love the Boba verse books. Have you guys ever read those or do you know what they are on? Is,

Stephen Craig: is that the, is that the, where they put someone's brain in a satellite? That's right. Yep. Yeah. Okay.

Chris Gammell: So basically an engineer, he dies, they freeze his brain, they make him into a consciousness, but the whole, yeah, he goes out to space. Yeah. So he's, there's a really, yeah. He becomes an AI basically. That's right. Yeah. That's a satellite. Think about it. But he always talks about like, uh, you know, like in this very, very fictional, although hard science fiction, uh, in this very fictional future, uh, he has access to like matter compilers and that kind of thing. And I feel like that is like, that is the ultimate. And that's also like in a diamond age. If you read Neil Stevenson too, like it's all matter compiler. That's like, that's like the ultimate pinnacle for what we're talking about here. It's like, I don't want, now we're not talking about like, like color wire. We're talking about like, Oh, I'll build that where myself. Thank you very much. I will get the PVC, you know, replicators. Pull it up atom by atom. And yeah,

Stephen Craig: I'm going to, I'm going to make this Steven seafoam green colored.

Parker Dolman: Yep. Yeah. I like that. I mean, we're frankly, even though we're, we're talking about, uh, different processes, we're actually not super far away from that in terms of silicon. Like we're getting close to atomic level, uh, transistors where like, like some of the gates are, you know, measured in tens of atoms. Like you're, you're getting close to being like, well, there's not like a different way we can stack all these things, you know, even though we're talking about like a subtractive process in, in a lot of ways, but, but yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, this is like, uh, you know, add additive is like, they're saying like atom by atom sort of thing. It's just, right. I don't think we're going to get there anytime soon, but, uh, yeah.

Parker Dolman: Well, I mean, I'm in, in terms of, in terms of manipulating the universe, I'm, I'm saying we have a process that is, uh, on that scale.

Chris Gammell: We're on the path you're saying, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Parker Dolman: That, that was always one of the weirdest parts about, um, some of my semiconductor physics classes where we had to deal in angstroms and units that are close to the size of atoms. And it's like, we just threw that around on our homework. Like it was nothing. And I'm like, wait, no, like we're talking about like the smallest of small.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. It's like being really zoomed in on a CAD drawing, you know, and you're like, Oh, it's no big deal. It's just like, you know, 20 nanometers. No big deal. And you zoom out. You're like, Oh my God. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's funny. We have a, we have a CNC at work that we, uh, we have to run a calibration on and we have a Reneshop, a Ruby tip probe on it that measures down to one nanometer. And, uh, and, and one of the person, one of the people I'm training on it, she, I've given her some specs in terms of when you're calibrating the machine, you should see numbers like this. And she's like, Hey, it's reading like 12 nanometers. Is that good or bad? And I'm like, it's 12 nanometers here. Like, like start thinking about the scale of these things. Like, yes, I've given you parameters for these kinds of things where like 12 is like, around the edge of it, but like also stop and think like, what is 12 nanometers? You know, in a manufacturing scale where we're like screwing things together, 12 nanometers is, yeah, we're talking fine.

Chris Gammell: Uh, I did see, uh, Oh, okay. They, uh, they already answered on the chat. Someone was asking about the, uh, the book. So nevermind. They've already, they figured it out.

Stephen Craig: They figured it out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. That's, uh, I think I've, I listened to the audio books. I couldn't remember what, what the Bob a verse was. I think I think I'm only listening to the first book.

Chris Gammell: Is there the first one that was actually called we are legion. We are Bob. Yeah. We are all the series. The series is called Bob a verse. Okay.

Parker Dolman: That's B O B I verse. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's right. Okay. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: Not Bob a or Bob.

Chris Gammell: I actually, I really recommend the voice actor on the, uh, the audio books are awesome too. Yeah. I really liked the first book. So yeah. Yeah. There's four now. And he got, uh, he's actually an engineer, not, not surprisingly. The author was an engineer and now is full-time author. So kind of like Andy Weir style.

Parker Dolman: So how long have these been around for? Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Five to 10 years. Not, not like a ton of time, not like classic, but you know, yeah. Very cool. I like them. Yeah.

Stephen Craig: I'd recommend at least the first one. Cause I, that's one I have experience with. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right. Yeah. Um, is there anything else we should talk about guys? We, we hit an hour here. I don't know how long you're usually recording these days. Usually about an hour. Um, that's our thing. You can't do that.

Parker Dolman: We're the, we're the amp a little bit longer than an hour.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. So it was funny about that is we first, when we started this podcast, it was like 15 minutes and we're going to be done. Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dolman: Yeah.

Stephen Craig: And then it kept growing, kept growing. I mean, there's so much to say, you know? Well, I think in the beginning is, I think we were trying to differentiate us a lot from the other podcasts, like the amp hour at the time and just grew into our own style. Like it just, that's just what happens. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so 300 more, 300 more episodes. Yes. Hopefully we'll have, we'll have gamble back on, on 600. Okay. Actually, no, we'll have you back. We'll have you back on way sooner than that.

Parker Dolman: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, well, do you guys need anything? Yeah. I'm always there. I'm, you know, building hardware. So let me know if people need help with hardware. Yeah. So are you doing a contract work then?

Stephen Craig: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I do. I do consulting for people. the, one of my clients is public and it's pretty cool. It's called Goliath. So that's like a IOT interface. Kind of startup. And so like I make IOT thingies now. It's pretty great. Awesome.

Stephen Craig: Yeah. So there is one thing you can do for me, Gamble. Yes. Sign out our podcast.

Chris Gammell: This was the macro fab engineering podcast. And I was your guest, Chris Gammell, but also like a host because I'm the host of the amp hour. And this is also being posted on the amp hour. And thank you to our guests who are also the hosts. Parker Dillman.

Parker Dolman: And Steven Craig. Later, everyone. Take it easy. administered in administered in administered administered in administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered