#585 – Return of the Trade Show Jedi

Paul: This is The Amp Hour Podcast, released April 10, 2022. Episode 585, Return of the Trade Show Jedi.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEVBlog. And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Paul: What's up, nerd? I'm on a deadline. Yes, you're on a deadline. It's 60 minutes. Timer is starting. So this is a true amp hour. And our editor said, hey, can you maybe do a couple shows that are like an hour? And I was like, yeah, I think our next one will be. The last one was an hour 45 with Paul, I think it was an hour and a half. So yeah, we've been sneaking up there. We all go with the power stuff.

Dave Jones: And we were so excited. I know.

Paul: This is good stuff, people.

Dave Jones: Have you checked the number of views on that one? I don't. I don't. I haven't looked at the stats yet.

Paul: No, I don't either. I have to see. I should probably do that at some point. Yep. I mean, we're here for us. Let's be honest. We're here for us. There's a couple of people that listen. We love all of you. Thank you for doing that. We're here for you. But if there are not throngs of you waiting in the wings, well. Well, we're still doing the same old thing. You know, 11 years strong. Right. So you've got a meeting after this.

Dave Jones: You've got like a virtual again?

Paul: Yeah. Virtual everything. You know, just a meeting. But it's someone around your time zone. So it's just how it all lines up. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Paul: What's new? What's been? Oh, you were just at electronics.

Dave Jones: Went to electronics. Yeah. Trade shows are open again. The world is back to normal. And yeah, it was great.

Paul: Quote unquote normal is the best we can do here.

Dave Jones: It was pretty normal. It was like, yeah, yeah. The general consensus was, yeah, I'm so over this crap. Yeah. Never again was the consensus. Yeah. Nah, this lockdown rubbish. Nope. Never again. So yeah, everyone was happy to be back. So that was really fun.

Paul: So, and looking at your videos, you are in the top, one of the top things that comes up for electronics on YouTube, at least.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay.

Paul: Yep. Was your last time there 2015 or previous?

Dave Jones: No, I would have done it in 2019, I think, maybe. Or didn't I go there? Oh, I might've been in Melbourne and I didn't go. Oh my gosh.

Paul: You have a video with Sagan being there in 2012. That's adorable.

Dave Jones: I think I might've had a stand then. That might've been the year I had a stand at the show.

Paul: I remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: I had a stand for two years. It was like.

Paul: Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. All right.

Paul: So. So anything different? I mean, like, you know, it's not the biggest trade show in the world, which is. No, no, it's pretty small. But is it, is it the same people over and over again? So it's like catching up with old friends or is it like.

Dave Jones: It's pretty much that. It's pretty much. Yeah. There's not. There's a few new ones I haven't seen before. And stuff, but no, yeah, it's pretty much catching up with, you know, everyone every year. That's, that's pretty much what it's for. Like. Yeah. That's his job. Yeah. You know, it's like to. Yeah. Maybe like to meet. You know, like salespeople you've been talking to, or, you know, engineering staff at the company you've been, you know, dealing with just on the phone or email or something like that. It's just, you know, or to just, yeah. Meet all contacts. And I think it's for them to talk to each other as well. You know, not just so much customers. It's for them to get together and, you know, Hey, how's. I was surprised by this.

Paul: As, as I, you know, as I started going to trade shows and like, you know, started becoming part of trade shows. And then now I'm still going to trade. And it's like, yeah, it's really is about, you know, setting up meetings and just like having a slate of meetings. And I just remember the first time someone was like, yeah, I'm in meetings all day at this conference. I was like, aren't you going to get to like. Yeah. Yeah. The fun part, you know? And they're like, well, no, that's actually, you know, I'm here to do work. I think the real thing there, I think, you know, like how they talk about like the, you know, if you, if you're, if you're not paying for something, you are the product. I think before I was the product. And then now I, I am more in the buyer sphere of that, right? Right. Buy the product, which is attention of engineers and such like that. So.

Dave Jones: Yep. Exactly. No, it's hard. It's hard, Dave. I know. I know. Yep. Got kid in everything. Wow. I know.

Paul: Yeah. I don't think my daughter will be coming at any trade shows with me, but I do have the two that I mentioned. I will be going to, and I want to hear more about electronics, of course, but I will be at Zephyr developer summit, which is in June. I'll actually be giving a talk and a presentation with my coworker.

Dave Jones: That's only for Zephyr aficionados.

Paul: Some people that are like, they're getting started.

Dave Jones: Well, given that Zephyr's in the name, I would imagine that it's a.

Paul: Yeah. You think that. I'll be honest, the content on the second and third day, the first day is supposed to be for people like kind of getting started. And that's when I'm really giving talks for people that are kind of getting into it. Yep. In a workshop. You know, you'll meet people and you'll learn interesting things, but yeah, it gets pretty deep pretty fast. So I, that is kind of, I'm kind of hoping to help influence this in future years where it's like, think about the users, you know, where's the Zephyr user conference? Because like, I, I'm never going to be a, you know, I think that's what they mean by Zephyr developer, but really it's like a lot of the people that are developing the core software that other, you know, open source software. And I'm like, man, that's, it's never, ever going to be. So, yeah. Anyways, that, and then I'll be in Germany at the end of June, Tronica, sorry, at Embedded World. And that's in Nuremberg. And that is the biggie.

Dave Jones: Is that, that's the biggest in the world, isn't it? For our industry, I think. Is that the.

Paul: I'd say Electronica is bigger. That is actually this year. Yes. In November. I was confusing the two. Yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Once again, in Germany, everything. In Germany. Yeah.

Paul: So they're about an hour apart from one another. Yeah. So I don't know if I'll be going to that one, but this one is Embedded World is a little bit more targeted. You know, Electronica is like, it's closer to like CES, in my opinion. I went back in 2014, no, 2014, I think. And it was like, oh, it was big. So I'm sure that we had shows back then, but yeah. Yeah. So Electronics, let's go back to that. What? The show? Yeah. I mean, like what you saw, which I saw, I posted your, your test stand video. I thought that was great. Yes. The test equipment video.

Dave Jones: We can talk about that later. We can talk about test jigs and stuff like that. Test jigs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Like I haven't done my main video yet. I'm going to edit that today, which is, you know, the main walk around with like, you know, having a look at stands and stuff like that. And there was just so much manufacturing. Like it's almost a mini manufacturing show. You know, there were like, like half of the companies there were either a contract manufacturer. They were selling contract, like they were selling machines to manufacture. You know, they were selling pick and place machines, selective soldering machines. There were three stands that have had selective soldering machines. Oh. Oh. Or inspection and, you know, production type stuff. There's stuff for production drills and things like that. You know, a company that's specialized in like these drills. If you've ever worked on a production line and like you have these drills.

Paul: Oh, you're talking about like the torque control ones that like come down from the ceiling.

Dave Jones: That hang down from the ceiling. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul: Cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's just like half manufacturing stuff.

Paul: Is there a push in Australia right now to bring more manufacturing back? I mean, you guys have some, but I don't think you're first.

Dave Jones: That's kind of the vibe. And I spoke to quite a few people who said, oh yeah, you should come visit our country. We've got our country. Our company. I'm here. We've got pick and place machines and everything. Like, it's like every tin pot company seems to have their own in-house manufacturing now. So yeah, it seems to be a thing.

Paul: None of them have parts. Right. No one has parts.

Dave Jones: But everyone's doing their manufacturing in the house because they realize the value of it. You know, sure, you have to put some capital investment and then some labor investment into, you know, training people to use the machines and stuff like that. But once you do that, yeah, you can get some really excellent in-house manufacturing and all the advantages that comes with that in terms of, you know, being able to control the process and fix anything immediately and things like that. So yeah. Yeah. It's a big deal. Yeah.

Paul: That's a great push. I actually, you know, I'm all for that. I think that localization of manufacturing, especially when like, you know, what is the, so like if the costs are creeping up other places because of currency or, you know, just all the world stuff that we talk about on here. If that is the case and it's like, if you're going to be at someone else's mercy, maybe it is worth it to bring that stuff in-house. You know, there's a lot of hassle there, of course, but you know, some of that upfront investment could pay off in tight times, assuming you can get parts. Exactly. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, it was great. That's a great move up. And like, I think even, even just from a selfish, like, oh, well, Dave might get to go to more places and film things and, you know, like that benefits all of us. So that's great. Exactly.

Dave Jones: So yes, I had quite a few offers to, you know, actually go to companies and shoot their manufacturing facilities and stuff like that. So yeah. That's great. So subscribe to my EEV Discover channel. Oh, okay. All right. Which is where that stuff might, will probably be, I think. Okay. Cool, cool. I had all this COVID crap's over with, you know, I can get back to actually go to places and film stuff again. It's great.

Paul: Yeah. So how did that feel? Was it like weird? I don't know how much, how socially you've been otherwise, but was it good to be like back out among the people?

Dave Jones: No, that's probably like, that's the first like major thing I've been to actually since, you know, the whole COVID thing started. So yeah. How about you?

Paul: Is that the first, you know? I have been to, there's, there's a group here in town called Riot, which I'm not sure if I mentioned Raleigh IoT. So Raleigh is like the city about 20 miles away from here. So easily drivable. And they host a bunch of stuff. I went to a developer day there. And yeah, I mean, like I was, I was jibber jabbering like a fool. Like I was just like so excited to talk to people about technology. And I'm just like, and then this and that, this and that. And they're like, who are you? I'm like, I'm new here. So yeah, I mean, it's, no, I, I'm extremely excited. And I've, you know, I've scheduled there. Sorry. I've, I've set up this meetup group, but I haven't scheduled one yet. So that's, that's probably the next step.

Dave Jones: Well, that's what, you know, a few people told me when's the next major meetup, you know, am I going to schedule like another, another meetup thing? And yeah, probably. So.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. So it's all happening, but it really felt good to be back out there, you know, doing stuff. And, you know, so yeah, my first major event and I want to do more again, but we don't have much here. So I don't know. I have to go visit companies and stuff like that.

Paul: That's a good start. Right now you gotta, you gotta go dig for the, the true, the, the, the deep stories. Yeah. That's good.

Dave Jones: Yep. Anyway, speaking of the manufacturing, yes, the test jigs, custom test jigs. So we'll link you the video down below. And for those who don't know, if you've never worked in a production environment where you have to test your boards, you know, cause like, well, there's times when I've worked at companies where we, we haven't done this in house, but we've made the test jigs and then we send them off to the manufacturer. I've, I've actually done this myself. My microcurrent, right. I've designed these test jigs and then I ship the test jigs off to the manufacturing house and the manufacturing house have just a little, you, you know, they set aside like a little part of their manufacturing floor just to test your boards and stuff. If you're a large enough customer, you know, they'll like set aside like a whole, you know, section of their huge warehouse thing to, you know, set up your test jigs permanently. And then they'll test the boards as they come straight out of the oven. They'll, you know, whack them in your test boards, which is generally a, uh, pogo pin head of nails. It's like a bed of nails type thing that comes down and there's many different ways to do it. There's like countless variations to do it. And anyway, you have to watch the video to see, you know, they had like a fairly complicated one. There was a dedicated, like a floor standing machine that had, I think 470 pogo pins on the bottom. And then on the top, it actually had a light pipes coming out. It also had some probes on the top of thing. And then it had light, but a fiber optic light pipes coming out to test the leads on your board because people don't realize, yeah, if your board has leads, somebody has got to test them. You've either got to test them using your eyeball. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: You're either using the Mark one eyeball, which is not recommended because, uh, you know, people can just get lazy and go, Oh yeah, I think it was on, you know, or if you've got a whole bunch of leads, like you, you often can't tell if, if just one's off, right. You know, if you're supposed to have, Oh, there's 10 leads there and you know, one's off or something like, it's often hard to tell. And, and it's slow as well, obviously, cause you've got to have a human and then you're going to verify it. And you know, it basically the rule of designing automated production test jig is if you can take the human out of the loop, do it. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You, you do not rely on user input to press a button and go pass fail. Cause they'll just pass every time, even though it fails because they don't want the hassle of, I don't know, dealing with the failed units or something. Right. So yeah, you've got to have an automated, that's hence the reason you do an automated system is so that not, not only can it generate a report, this board, yeah, it passed all these, you know, 300 tests here, but then, you know, it's done because, you know, it's, it's completely automated. The user has no input apart from, you know, actually shoving the machine, you know, actually closing the lid on the thing. Like you have to fit the board in there, you close the lid and you hit the button and that's, you know, and then it goes through its automated test suites and things. And then it spits out a report. Although I have had instance where they have actually faked it. They just use the same board over and over again, you know? Really? Yeah. Yes. Yes. And we wonder why all these boards were failing.

Paul: Was there not like, oh my God.

Dave Jones: Well, cause you always have a golden board there, right? What's, what's called a golden board, which is your, you know, you, you either use that to, if you've got a system that learns, especially like, you know, if it's measuring the resistance of points on the board and stuff like that, like you'll have a golden board, no one good board, and then that will be there and they can often, and there's nothing to stop them taking that board and put it in and actually pretending that that one's a fast board. So yeah.

Paul: That's a reason not to use those like vinyl barcode stickers. Cause you can just scan the, you can scan the board that's quote unquote under test. You need to read the UID from the chip. That's the important thing.

Dave Jones: That's it. That's how we've done it in the past. We've actually designed in specific serial ID chips onto the board. So that, that, that its sole purpose is to track that board. Right. Yeah. No, it's super useful. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul: And a lot of micros do that by default now too. You just got to like read out a certain register.

Dave Jones: There's some, yeah, there's some micros out there with a laser individual serial numbers. Isn't there like.

Paul: I'd say the majority of the ones that I see these days, like the, not even secure. Like I'd say just any, like even like a 8051 board that I was using had it. What else? I mean, I think a lot of the Cortex M anything almost always has one in there.

Dave Jones: So really it's got an individual serial number. Yeah.

Paul: Cause they got to serialize stuff too. Right. You think about like, they need to be able to tell chip one from chip two when they're, when they're doing automated testing on their side. So I think they just carried that through.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Paul: Right. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Paul: Fair enough. And a micro. I don't think, you know, like op amps less so. Right. But like micro. Oh, no, no, no.

Dave Jones: You can't do that. That's why you would put a dedicated serial number chip on the board. And then that's harder to, yeah. Fake that. So like here's the test report. It's got the serial number on it. The serial number is on the board and Bob's your uncle. Right. So.

Paul: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: And, and then often you would put a, a, because you can't read like, cause you can't visually see that serial number on the board. So you often print out part of the manufacturing process will be to print out a serial number, you know, barcode label that matches the internal code of the chip or whatever. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Hmm.

Dave Jones: Or you can program your automated testing. Like if there's an E squared prom on the board, you can program the automated testing to actually write the serial number to the board and then, you know, it's blank or whatever. So you write it in there. There's an E squared prom somewhere, either it's built into your micro or it's somewhere else on your board. And yeah, you can individually. And then the test software just increments the serial number each time you do a new board.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And then you can track that through the entire process. And yeah. Although I was talking about in the video, how when you've got, you know, hundreds of these pogo pins, right? Each pogo pin is, you know, tens or hundreds of grams of force, right? Oh, yeah. To actually put the thing down. So if you've got a couple of hundred pins, right? That's a lot of force on your board. And if you don't design these jigs properly, what I mentioned in the video is that you can crack your board. You can get component micro cracking, especially multi-layer ceramic caps, of course. You know, I've done videos on that.

Paul: Yeah, right where the metal hits the ceramic. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And you can get all sorts of issues and it may pass, right? So your board goes into the test, you close the thing down, all your pogo pins come down, or you go onto all the test points, you run your automated test and it works fine. And then when you lift the pins back off, that's actually, you know, the board flexes back and that's what does the cracking. And then, so you've just cracked your freshly test, a hundred percent, you know, totally tested board and it's just, and it goes out and it's cracked or it has a long-term failure mode, for example, that, that, that just fails in the field or fails with temperature or fails with stress or only fails when you screw it into the product or something like that because of the mounting points or, you know, there's just, yeah. Okay. So you've got to design these things, right? It's a real art form. So, yep. Tricky business. Anyway, fun stuff. Have a watch of the video. It wasn't that in, in depth. It's only 10 minutes long and just, you know, just generally talking about that sort of stuff. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul: It's good. I think it's for people that haven't, you know, if you haven't ever been in manufacturing before or seen it, that's a great, it's a great overview. And those are some pretty, they were like, they look very expensive to be honest. They look like some very high areas. Oh yeah, yeah. Not cheap. Yep. Not what I normally think of that, that many poker pins, that many tests, but they were also showcasing their capabilities.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. No, of course. And, and, and they weren't even that complex ones, you know, even the one I talked about with, you know, the 470 pins and the fiber optic light pipes going over to actually test the LEDs and stuff like that, that one was like, yeah, okay. It's reasonably complicated, but that's not like a real high end one. Like, you know, they can get really complicated. As I said before, I've done like automated handling ones where you actually design an entire table sized tester that actually manually handle, like you, you actually have the boards and you put them into these shoots things. So you load up these cartridges and kind of things with all the boards and then you put the cartridge, then you have all the cartridges there and you put them in to the machine and then a little piston comes through and it shoves the board out and then it moves it along the, like the conveyor, not, not a conveyor belt, but like moves along the rails kind of thing. And then puts it automatically puts it under the head of nails tester, which then comes down with a hydraulic thing, comes down, probes it, runs its test, lifts it up, shoots the board out and then puts it into a pass fail bin, you know, a little flipper thing, which, you know, reject and it goes off into the reject bin and stuff like that. So you can, you know, fully automate the handling, the physical handling of it too. So you, you would do that for really high volume stuff. Yeah. So that's great. Really cool stuff. So if you want to get into test engineering, it's not as boring as you think.

Paul: Oh, I don't know. You know, the one thing that actually did pop out of that video was when he's like, and here is visual studio code. We, uh, we, we still code in visual basic. It's like, Oh yeah, that's, that's, uh, that is the language of test jigs that I remember to test, testing stands. And your problem is. Oh, no, thanks. Yeah. Visual basic.

Dave Jones: What's the basic.

Paul: Come on, Dave.

Dave Jones: It's fine.

Paul: It's just old.

Dave Jones: It. So what, what's the actual problem with it? Nothing. Right. No, no.

Paul: The other one I wanted to complain about more was national instruments. What's their stuff? Lab view. That's the other one. Lab, lab, lab, lab. Many test stands run lab view. So you gotta, you gotta pay that tax and, uh, use that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. The lab view tax. And that includes the tax to the lab view specialist who only knows lab view inside and

Paul: out, you know? And their hardware. I mean, and so they sell hardware now too. And their header hardware is really like, they make great hardware. They make. Oh yeah. But it's super expensive. Pixie form factor. But yeah, they're just, they're just raking it in. So.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul: Good for them. Good for them. But, uh.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. But it's really good stuff. Right. You know, it's real. Like if, if you, you know.

Paul: They were former competitors. I think I feel negative, you know, feels. Right. I still carry that with me for some reason. You know, I carry, carry all this weight with me. The hatred of the deep. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The hatred of national instruments.

Paul: Isn't it interesting how, like, I don't know if maybe you have that. I don't know. Maybe if you're like, oh, mentor graphics from your Altium days or, you know, whatever.

Dave Jones: Ah, no, not really.

Paul: Not really. Yeah. I don't know. But I, I still have, just because like you hear these stories and you're like, oh yeah, it's just another company trying to do their thing. You know, it's just like. All right. Yeah. Oh, well. Uh, I was asking on Twitter actually around trade shows. This is definitely a trade show show. I was asking because I am in charge of making some demos and stuff. So I was curious about what makes for a good demo. And I thought I'd ask you here. What makes for a good trade show demo? A memorable one. I had asked on Twitter and a lot of people gave me very old examples, but some very interesting ones.

Dave Jones: Okay. Well, they're interactive for a start. They've got to be, you know, you've got to be able to like do stuff with it. Yep. Yep. Like, you know, you've got to be able to, I don't know, send it an SMS message and, you know, here's a text, text to this number and watch, watch the magic happen. You know, I don't know. Something like that. Right. So yeah. Lots of blinky lights, of course. Blinky lights. I think that's good. Yeah.

Paul: I think depending on the, uh, you know, if you have a screen, depending maybe, you know,

Dave Jones: it, it, it doesn't have to be active. Like in, in my video, you're going to see, uh, the, uh, WAGO stand. They do industrial connectors, right? WAGO, you know, pin like, you know, the. Expensive. All sorts. They do everything. Oh yeah. WAGO. Yeah.

Paul: They're like Phoenix and, uh, Weidmuller.

Dave Jones: They're like Phoenix contact. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, yep. And they just, their stand, I thought was really impressive because it had like every single connector there up on the board and you can see every, you know, it wasn't a way in a glass case, you know, like they hide it away in a glass. Like, you know, it was on a nice, beautiful board and it had all these infographics as well. They, they had spent a lot of coin actually designing those infographic displays and stuff like that and showed the real applications that they're used in. That's true.

Paul: And especially for connectors, I feel like it's such a, I mean, you know, we could go search on a distributor site all day long, but there is nothing like my favorite thing in the world, which I still miss is when people would roll in the suitcase full of connectors and you just palm through it, you know, definitely mentioned it on here before, but like, so like if you have to go to a trade show for that, that's great actually. But, you know, uh, yeah. So that's a good one.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I hate when they're, they're away there inside a glass case. It's like, Ooh, look at all those mill connectors in there. Ooh. You know, but like you can't touchy feely.

Paul: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, it's like, too much gold, too much gold. Right.

Paul: I'm actually just more worried these days that you're just going to take one for your project because people are. Right.

Dave Jones: Well, that's the best freebie bowl was at the test stand. I don't go for the freebies. That we talked about there. They had a bowl full of pogo pins. Okay. That's not bad. Bowl full of pogo pins. That's pretty cool. That's, that's on point.

Paul: Although, although truly on point because it's on point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was great. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I just think about like, so I stopped and I thought about like, so I just asked, like I said, because I'm trying to make some memorable demos and I, I literally couldn't not remember a single demo.

Speaker ?: Right.

Paul: That I've been at. And it's like, Oh, maybe just none of them are. And you just have to do the best you can and like try and start conversations with it. But like, you know, some of the stuff people actually pass past guests of the show. I believe that's the same Mark. Yeah. Same Mark. Past guests of the show said, uh, back at ESC or embedded system conference, TI was giving out dev kits, but only exchange for other dev kits. You had, they had to leave with STM. They left with a huge bin of STM 32 dev kits that ST was handing out. So people came and traded then the STM 32 dev kits for a TI dev kit.

Dave Jones: That was nice.

Paul: That's pretty good. Yeah. That's a, that'd be great.

Dave Jones: Like a big, a big sign that says, uh, trading your dodgy STM dev kit here for two TI kits, you know, or something like that.

Paul: It was no longer allowed after that, but, uh, I gotta say, you know, it's kind of e-waste,

Dave Jones: but, uh, how can it not be allowed? Screw that.

Paul: Cause basically I'm sure that one of, I'm sure ST complained and, you know, they gave out this stuff.

Dave Jones: Well, suck it up. You come up with a better bloody, you know, ST should come up with a better thing next time. All fairs or fair at the trade show. I reckon.

Paul: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's just, nah, that's bullshit. Come on. Come on. No, like, and other ones, like, like real high level applications. Like I've seen, uh, like they'll build like a, uh, uh, racing simulator car thing. Right. So they'll be, you know, if you're into in, in industrial controls or something, you know, like you will build like a, a racing simulator, you know, so you can sit in the seat and then you could drive the car and the, you know, and the hydrolicy things move and, you know,

Paul: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: All that sort of stuff. They're really cool. You have people lining up to have a go at that.

Paul: I don't, uh, I don't have budget for that. So no. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Paul: A little bit more, a little bit more limited, but, uh, okay. Yep.

Dave Jones: That, uh, draws them in.

Paul: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I, I, I don't, I don't recommend the Altium route. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Altium. Yeah. Have the, uh, bunny, you know, the, yeah. Anyway. Maybe, maybe that can be the, uh, photo for this episode. Nope. Nope. Definitely not. No. Okay. Yep.

Paul: Uh, yeah. There's some, uh, some older, old, old school, uh, sales methods that I don't, uh, I don't particularly approve of. Yeah. Yeah. So anyways, I, it's tough. It's tough. I think it's tough to, to figure out how to do this stuff and, you know, swag and swag. I don't really, I don't go for swag, but I, I don't know, like I'm doing it all from my perspective too. So it's also like what, uh, what other people want, what versus what I want. So I, I'm more in the, if I'm actually walking up to a trade show stand, I want to like quickly figure out what it's about so that I'm not like sitting there, like staring at it for 20 minutes. And then finally, like someone walks up and like, Oh, you have any questions? You're like, I, I don't know what you do. I'm sorry.

Chris Gammell: What is it you say you do here? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, my, when I had my stand, right. I, I just had a, uh, three, I had a 3d printer cause kind of 3d printers were like still a kind of novel thing back then, you know?

Paul: So, so I had a 3d printer actually. Probably not 2019 then. Just as a call back to earlier, probably not 2019.

Dave Jones: No. When I actually had a stand in 2012 or something, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I would have a 3d printer there, just actually printing stuff and people would just be standing around just watching the 3d printer. And I'd have three little, you know, you could actually take one of the 3d printed things and I would be running. I would have, I set up headphones. Like I had a multiple headphone amplifier. So you could put the headphones on and you could watch my videos, you know? So I had some choice videos there and people could, you know, put the headphones on and you know, stuff like that. Yeah. That's good. Yeah.

Paul: I mean, you're right. I think you're right. Like some level of interactivity, you know, really just, like I said, I think it's to really just promote questions and get people talking. Right. That's really the main thing.

Dave Jones: So, although I've got to give props to the ones who just no Fs given their stand is completely empty and it's, and it's one person, a piece of white sheet.

Paul: And they're just like, you better talk to me.

Dave Jones: You know, you want to, and there's two stools there and that's it. Right. Then there's just a table with two stools or sometimes it's just a chair, right? It's just one chair in there. Like it doesn't even have a guest chair.

Paul: I just think it's always like, did your stuff get lost in the mail? I mean, like, what, what is the thought here? I mean, I guess they're just trying to start conversation.

Dave Jones: No, they're just there to have, they're just there to have meetings with clients. That's it. And, you know, I guess, I don't know, but yep.

Paul: So I guess we're right back where we started in 2019, Dave, or whenever the trade shows cut off, I guess 2020 might've had trade shows, but I don't remember any of them.

Dave Jones: No, I don't think there are any, like we almost had it here. We almost, actually both, both years, we almost had it. Cause it was in September. It's normally in September, the electronics trade show and September in 2020 here. We were pretty, we were almost practically COVID free, I think in September. And it was like, oh, and there was like one case or something. And then it like got canceled or something. There was like one, one case in all of Sydney or Melbourne or something. And it just, yeah. And they canceled it. So, and then almost the next year, I think like they had advertised a date and everything and like, they were, you know, you could register to attend. And then nah, it was like, yeah. Last minute cancellation. I think like, you know, days before or something or a week before. So yeah, that was, that was really annoying. Yep.

Paul: Back to it though. Yep.

Dave Jones: Not one toss given this year. It was like, yep, it's on. Nope. Back to normal. Everyone's had enough. And yeah. And all the big stuff. Like I, I love watching. Yeah. People were telling me stories about how, you know, especially at the bigger trade show, like the really huge ones, like you're going to in Germany, how during a pack up time, it's literally dangerous to be there because of the forklifts just going everywhere at full speed. And it's like, they, you know, they were telling stories about how, you know, cars were getting like, like forked, I guess. Right. They were getting like, like forks straight through the side of a car because, you know, they're just running around like, you know.

Paul: There's Aussie man videos about that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Headless chickens. And it's just, yeah, it's just the mad scramble to pack up. It's, you know. Yeah. It's going to hit the pub. Yep. Yeah. It's good fun. But yeah, it's especially difficult when you've got, you know, large pick and place machines and stuff like that, you know, to transport, you know, huge stuff. So yeah, it's a big deal.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And then when I was at a trade show in the US, I was on the Altium stand. It's like, oh, no, you, you can't do that. Labor, labor workers only, you know, sorry, union, union workers only, you know. Oh, no, you can't plug, plug that in. No, union worker has to be there to. That's right. That's right. Yeah.

Paul: Yeah. No, it's a, it's unbelievable. Unbelievable. It's a very special situation. And expensive.

Dave Jones: Oh God. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It isn't cheap to go to one of these trade shows, you know, like a stand here at our small trade show is like, I think four or $5,000, you know, isn't cheap.

Paul: I thought you meant like travel.

Dave Jones: Like I, oh, and travel as well. Yeah. That, that, that often costs more.

Paul: I don't know what the hell is going on when San Francisco that week that I'm supposed to be out there, but I paid a lot more than normal for getting out there. So.

Dave Jones: Oh yes. They will up their rates. They will know that there's a conference on and they'll, the local hotels will up their rates. Yep. That's an old school trick.

Paul: Yep. Yep. Totally.

Dave Jones: Yep. Bastards. So. The, the key to doing that is to book like six months out. Like you, you know, it's going to be on or something. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as soon as the date comes out, you know, then you book boom. Yep. Yep. So anyway, good luck.

Paul: Thanks. Thanks. I'll be hopefully doing a meetup out there too. There's also hardware.io is happening. I think around that same time. And I talked to past guest Joe Grand. I think he's going to be out there. And RSA is also that week up in San Francisco, which is why I think it's so expensive. But, uh, I, I will be down in mountain view at the computer history museum. Actually. I don't know if we mentioned that. Oh, excellent.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yeah. I think we started to talk about that.

Paul: And I edited it out because I didn't think it had been announced yet. Right. But that's where the Zephyr thing will be.

Dave Jones: Right.

Paul: And, uh, I've never been there. So you've been, uh, I'm excited to check it out. Hopefully. Yep.

Dave Jones: I'd love to go there again because they got more better stuff now.

Paul: History keeps happening. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Right. Yeah.

Paul: We're making history right now, Dave.

Dave Jones: Right now. Yes. They'll be playing the amp hour at the local museum.

Paul: Can you imagine if I walked, if I just snuck in like a tiny Bluetooth speaker that was just playing the amp hour with like a, just like a sticker on it. Right. A little plaque that I just like, you know, like, uh, I don't, I don't think that's going to fly, but you know, you never know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I reckon you can blast it out from the trade show stand. Yep.

Paul: Oh, no, no, I actually meant sneaking into the museum. No, no. Well, you can do it on the trade show stand. You know, like you put it on like a Microsoft something or else. Yep. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: That's the equivalent of going to a modern art museum and just leaving something on the floor in the corner and a little sign there and people just gather around it.

Paul: Ooh, like, you know, like, or like the guy that like, like, uh, there was like the piece of art that was like a banana with a piece of duct tape, like to the wall. Yes. Banana. And then the guy ate it and that was like performance art.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Paul: Oh God. We're just combining art and electronics. It's the art of electronics.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Okay. I'll pay that. Oh boy. Anyway.

Paul: Well, what's a non trade show news. Uh, it's been a couple of weeks since we've chatted. I guess we talked to Paul two weeks ago. Uh, so three weeks since we last chatted.

Dave Jones: Well, there's some stuff on the list. Do we really want to talk about some of the stuff? You know, the, you know, you know, it involves Joe Biden, you know, the defense for EV batteries. It's like, yeah, that's okay.

Paul: I actually wanted to talk about the ant micro board. So ant micro we've had on the show before.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Why is this got 18 thumbs up? What is this ant micro board?

Paul: So ant micro is the, they do a bunch of, so Michael Gale has been on the show twice before. Dave, I don't believe you're talking. Yeah. You didn't speak with him in the time, but ant micro does. So they're based out of Poland. They do a bunch of like contract work, but also very open source focused. I thought this was going to be something different at first. So the title is open source, uh, ant micro releases open source hardware, Snapdragon 845 baseboard design, design with KICAD. I didn't read it obviously because it has baseboard.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Paul: Cause it has baseboard in the name. I'm going to ignore that. But I thought they were actually going to be putting a Snapdragon 845 and doing the layout with KICAD. And that is not the case. This is a module that you can buy from quick tell. Uh, so like these kind of off the shelf Android, it's like Android and on a board kind of thing. So instead of like, instead of designing an entire cell phone, you basically buy the processor part of the cell phone and then you do all the breakout. So like a very, very high powered raspberry pi CM4, you can buy these from quick tell as well. Yeah. They got a bunch of camera inputs and stuff like that. It's all just like, you know, high density connector. And then you do the pairs out to nippy pairs out to the camera and stuff like that. So, right.

Chris Gammell: Got it.

Paul: So ant micro did the baseboard. I thought they did the whole board. I was really excited to see a layout in KICAD using, you know, like for like a 20 layer board to a thing, but that's all still on the module. So, but still, you know, very fancy board and you can, you know, you can glean a lot from this thing. So it's like a very nice, nicely laid out high density board, but cool. I was, I was hoping to see the 845 because that's, cause like Snapdragon, so like Snapdragon, that's what's in a lot of modern mobile phones. Right. So that's like, you know, many Android phones just are in, in this family and, and I've never really seen boards like that. So I don't, I don't even know you've done high density stuff, probably not even at this mobile yet, but yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what it looks like.

Dave Jones: Well, I haven't downloaded the files and opened it up, but yeah, it looks pretty dense.

Paul: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But yeah, it's a shame. It's just the baseboard.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe there'll be something else. I think it's like, you gotta, you know, sign your, sign your life away. If you want to get like the actual, like quick tell or not a Qualcomm rather. It's like a Qualcomm part.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. I think, yeah. They're loyaled up to the eyeballs. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Great.

Paul: But if there's anyone out there that has an open source design that happens to have all the Qualcomm parts on it, I'd love to hear about it.

Dave Jones: Cool bananas. All right. Well, you linked in, you're just a Wendover productions fan boy. Oh, totally. Every, every second week you'll link in the latest Wendover productions. If you haven't watched it yet. No, I haven't. Not this one.

Paul: I mean, if you haven't watched Wendover ever, you need to watch. Oh yeah. No. Yeah. I mean, like, just like, I think it hits all like the, the stuff, like it's about trains and airplanes. So basically like, they like talk to a little kid and they're like, what are all the toys that you like? And then I'm going to make, I'm going to make videos about the logistics of the big kid versions, you know? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I know. It's, they're very addictive videos to watch. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul: This was about corn. It kind of felt like the. Corn. Yeah. I, yeah.

Dave Jones: I just like, you know, I, I like corn. Like normally someone asks you, would you like to watch a video on corn farming? Corn. Like, no, thanks. Okay. Thanks, but no thanks. But no, when you know, it's a Wendover production, you know, you know, it's going to be absolutely fascinating. So. Yeah.

Paul: And I think just generally the ag tech sector in general too, like, you know, so there's another video I linked in the comments there too. Ag tech. Ag tech. Agriculture technology.

Dave Jones: Agricultural technology. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul: Yeah. And, uh, yeah, I mean, I think it's just, it's a fascinating space because one is basically like if you took all of the guts, not even all of probably extends even more extensive requirements from an industrial, you know, like inside a factory, maybe not like a steel processing plant or something, but you know, it's got the same kind of things. It's got the same temp ranges you have to deal with. It's got the same static discharge you have to deal with. Like basically it is, it is the industrial sector, but it's out in nature. Yeah. And so all of the electronics kind of have to deal with the same things. And it's just a really interesting solution space. It's also not a very, it's a pretty closed off solution space because there's such big players and there's such big money in it. Oh yes.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Paul: So, you know, I've seen some startups in that area and it's been interesting kind of seeing how they try and play there. They're, they're, they're also selling to like extremely skeptical people also known as farmers. Right. So like, you know, so like things that, that like, I don't ever really think about, but like the, you know, just the margin, you know, if you're trying to sell a piece of technology to a farmer and they're like on super razor thin margins, it has to have like worked perfectly every single time. And it, you know, it can't be that expensive and it has to be like so elegant and simple that it's like, okay, it just does its thing without you even thinking about it. So I don't know. It's a, it's a, it's interesting. And like, and then, and then there is the super high end as well. Right. So like these guys are driving, you know, sometimes million dollar pieces of equipment as well. Like the John Deere stuff and all of these, like fix.

Chris Gammell: Of course.

Paul: That's right. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Paul: But like, that's big, big money. Right. And like really big tech in there too. And like, I don't know, it's, it's just a really interesting solution space. And also like you're in the middle of the field. So it's like, often you can't get cellular. So you might have to go satellite or you might have to, you know. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: They have their own local networks and stuff like that. If you want to get fancy and they'll like, and they're, aren't they like planting crops with like drones now, you know, they've got these, you know, quadcopters that fly around and they can, you know. Yeah.

Paul: I think it is possible to do that. I think it's, you know, that's not the. No, it's not. It's the majority. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's not the majority. But if you've got some niche thing, maybe it's, you know, that works for you, you know, that's your thing. So yeah.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's just an interesting space. Destin from Smarter Every Day also has one. I also link that one. I'll link that in here too, as well. That's just about green silos.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. I've seen that one. Yeah. That's absolutely fascinating. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul: So yeah. It's very niche, but it's really important, right? This stuff falls over and we're all starving within a couple of weeks. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh boy. All right. All right. What else have we got? Come on.

Paul: Australia warns of a critical shortage of engineers.

Dave Jones: Did that make the list? Oh, yes, it did. Way back.

Paul: It did. Yes.

Dave Jones: I originally, yeah, posted this when it came out and yeah, great. Thanks.

Paul: What do you think about this, Dave? I mean, going back to the manufacturing thing that you're talking about, if there was a surge in manufacturing, like that would become a limiting factor, right? Oh, yes. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Paul: That's scale your local workforce. Then that's like, okay, well, unless you're willing to then, you know, open up visas and, you know, bring in external talent, then it's like, what else are you going to do? There's only so far that automation goes, you know, and even when you have automation in the form of a pick and place machine, somebody's got to run it. Exactly.

Dave Jones: But when you're talking about engineers, right? When you get a headline like this, Australia warns of a critical shortage of engineers, right? A, it's not the first time. And B, it's like, what type of engineers? Us poorly, us lowly ranked electronics engineers, we're like, man, nobody really thinks about we're probably the least type of engineer. Who would be the least type of engineer?

Paul: I'm not making that call.

Dave Jones: That Joe Average would think about. I wouldn't like, you know, because you talk about engineer, you talk about, oh, someone who builds bridges, who builds buildings, who, you know, who builds roads, you know, a civil engineer, you...

Paul: In my experience, it's usually, it depends on the person you're talking to, right? Oh, no, of course.

Dave Jones: I'm talking Joe Average. Come on. Joe Average.

Paul: I know. But is Joe Average like in construction? Then he's going to be like, oh, yeah, civil engineer. No, come on. You know, like, I don't know. That's what I mean. I think like it's based on their personal context. I guess, but... Joe Average.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's true. When I tell people I'm an engineer, I get some people ask me what type, you know? And yeah, and then they'll tell me, you know, and or I'll get, or they'll simply say, oh, is that a civil engineer or is that an electronics engineer? People actually know.

Paul: I stopped actually saying I'm an engineer. Did you know that? I don't know if I've told you that. When you introduce yourself, you say engineer first.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Paul: I tell people specifically, try this next time. Say, I design electronics.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Paul: I think that is the most succinct way. And then be immediately follow up with, they're going to say, what kind of electronics? And I say, industrial electronics, because that's basically then they know that I'm not designing their cell phone or their TV or anything else like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I say, I design electronics. It's industrial electronics. Sometimes it connects to the internet. And like, okay, cool. And then they stop talking.

Dave Jones: And then end of story. Yeah. Yeah. They don't hassle you anymore. Yeah, exactly. Rather than ask you if you can fix their iPhone. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to.

Paul: Yeah. I don't want to get there. So yeah, I think, I think that's a succinct way to say. That's what I do.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, speaking of that, segues nicely into one of the reasons. Well, not one of the reasons, but one of the ironic things about this. Australia warns of critical shortage of engineers, because you mentioned you don't call yourself an engineer, right? Sure. The government, officially, well, in the state of Victoria, it's coming to New South Wales. I think it might be coming to Queensland, like the different states here. This is old news. We've talked about this for- Yeah, no, this is old news, right? But in Victoria, it's official. Yeah, you cannot call yourself an engineer anymore, right? No, no.

Paul: It's been official in Victoria for years, I thought. I remember talking about this on the show a couple of years ago. Yeah. Okay. All right. All right.

Dave Jones: Yes. No, we did talk about it on the show. Yes.

Paul: Oh, okay. All right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, but I'm just saying the irony of it, right? Oh, we've got a shortage of engineers, but then they introduced legislation to say, oh, you're not allowed to call yourself an engineer. Oh, I see.

Paul: I see.

Dave Jones: Even though you design electronics, as you say, right? Oh, no. You're not allowed to call yourself an engineer though, right?

Paul: Oh, well.

Dave Jones: So anyway, I just think that's irony overload.

Paul: I'm going to change my mind. I'll call myself an engineer. I don't care about that.

Speaker ?: Right?

Dave Jones: I just think it's irony overload, right?

Paul: Oh, I see. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That, yeah, shortage of engineers and that you introduce legislation to, you know, make it a hurdle to get into the engineering industry or to even, you know, you've been working in it your whole life and no, you can't call yourself an engineer anymore because you refuse to pay the dues to the freaking engineers Australia. Right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: No. Screw you. It's like, you know. Anyway, so I looked into the numbers for this, right? Okay. Because I thought, oh, well, you know, usually to solve this problem, oh, we'll just import them, right? Usually from India.

Paul: That is a solution.

Dave Jones: And this is EAV blog said this, right? Because she works at a government agency. She works with a lot of engineers, right? We're talking like civil, you know, type, you know, engineers here, right? And she says all of them are Indian. Like almost all of them. Like they import engineers from India because there's just not enough here. Right? They can't get enough graduates who want to work in that sort of field. Right? So they import them from India. And I actually looked at the numbers. Right? And India produces, can't remember that. Yeah. 1.5 million graduate engineers per year.

Paul: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's five times more than we have engineers total in this country.

Paul: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And they produce that many every, five times more than we have total every year.

Paul: Oh yeah. It's a different game. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think China as well. And like, yeah, no, it's.

Dave Jones: Why do I don't know about China? Because it's hard. It's.

Paul: China. They've said a million. I remember the number.

Dave Jones: It's hard to get to a higher level education there, isn't it? No. Or something. But India, it's like, oh, it's like you're expected to get an engineering degree. It's like, that's like base level. You know? It's like.

Paul: Yeah. I think it's, I mean, I think it's great. Like I'm, I'm very pro, pro immigration overall. I think, I think that's awesome. Especially like, I think if you, you know, if, if you need, if you need the help, right? Why not? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, you've got no choice, right?

Paul: Yeah. Right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Paul: No, your choice is to slow everything down and say like, oh, we're going to do less expansion, less whatever. So that's, I think the choice.

Dave Jones: Anyway, they have a plan and we can link in the report. They've got a plan securing the future of Australia's engineering workforce. And they've got a, you know, they've set up a committee, the go eight committee, the, the group of eight, the group of eight committee, which is various universities. Yes. Various universities who've got together and I don't know, they've got some, you know, 50 page plan or something.

Paul: You know, what'd be interesting is they never talk about it. Like they always say like, oh, well, we're going to like invest more in education and stuff like that. But like, they never talk about like, well, let's do, let's do a parental education campaign. Like, here's why you might want your child to be an engineer. Right. You know, or not, whatever. But like, I never hear that like proposed as a thing, you know, like let's do a PR campaign about, you know, where engineers are valuable in society. That sort of thing. It's just like, it's always very focused on the educational piece, which is ultimately like the gating thing. I think, especially if it's, it's, uh, you know, accreditation based or whatever, if it, you know, in certain, in certain areas like civil where there's certification and requirements like that, fine, whatever. But like, you still don't ever usually hear about the, like the kind of the PR aspect of it. The best they've got for PR, Dave, you know what the best PR is? What? It's us. Sorry, man. Us. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We're not, we're not helping, you know, I'm sure the parents are listening to our podcast. Yeah. We need to play it in schools. It needs to be compulsory.

Paul: Yeah. Oh yeah. There's, there's our market.

Dave Jones: I just searched the, uh, the plan document for the word parent and it's not in there. So, you know, yeah, exactly.

Paul: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Paul: Well, good luck to them.

Dave Jones: I hope they, I hope they obviously need to hire us to, um, yep.

Paul: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Paul: I mean, there's just more Aussie engineers. One of my favorite engineers is an Aussie.

Dave Jones: Thank you very much.

Paul: Oh, it's not you. Oh, damn.

Dave Jones: But yeah. Anyway, I just think it's, yeah. Those, those just numbers are staggering. They're just the sheer numbers of like compared to different countries are just unbelievable. Unbelievable. So yeah. Anyway, we'll link that in down below. If you've got a whiz bang ideas, how to, uh, do this, but like, as I said, it's not the first time like it's happened before. And yeah, they just keeps on happening. Critical shortage of engineers, but yeah, it could be tied into that. Like stuff is coming back here, you know, manufacturing, but you know, they're, they're really talking about like construction really. Like that's the big thing they're talking about, you know, we need to construct more bloody houses so that they can go up, you know, a hundred times in value. And, uh, yeah, we need to build more, you know, 50 story apartment blocks, you know, so that people can live in little cubicles, you know, glass and glass and stuff like that. So it's, you know, I actually electronics. Nope. The word electronics does not appear in this document once.

Paul: Oh boy. All right.

Dave Jones: How about electrical? I'll settle for electrical.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, no. Nothing. The word, word electrical does not appear in here once, but, um, yep.

Paul: But does civil, I mean, like does.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. Civil appears. Civil's all over. Great. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's, it's about building stuff. You know, I don't think they even care about electronics. Do they?

Chris Gammell: Please think of the electronics engineers. I don't know how to code. Oh boy. Yep. I shouldn't have passed statics. I don't know why bridges stand up.

Paul: Oh man.

Chris Gammell: Oh boy. Yeah.

Paul: A friend bought my daughter a ABCs of engineering book and, uh, it's fantastic. Uh, you know, it's like a is for ampere and. Oh, okay. Right. Oh, I didn't know.

Dave Jones: It's really a great book. Right. That's cool.

Paul: And there's one for like, I think F is for force and it's got like a suspension bridge. And I'm just like looking at it. Tell my daughter, I'm like, I, I actually don't know how this works.

Chris Gammell: I don't know how this works. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Paul: I know. I know gravity is down and, uh, something is that there's some arrows in the other direction.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's a vector going down this way and there's other vector things going this way. And I, I don't know, just use your finger and point around and yeah. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: God, we're hopeless. Aren't we? Us poor electronics engineers. No, no wonder we don't get the recognition. That's right. That's right. We don't deserve. No respect. No, no. Cause you know, everything, yeah. All the electronic gadgets you have, they just magically come out of China. Right. That's just, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Unbelievable. Anyway. Uh, last news, which has been in here for a while, I guess. Mercedes will accept full. We've talked about this on before, which is the autopilot driving thing. Mercedes will now accept full legal responsibility for the vehicle. When a driver pilot is active. That's a big step. That is that, that, that really puts skin in the game.

Paul: I was going to say, that's putting your money, literal money where your mouth is or your money where your code is.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's like, that's a big deal. So I don't know anything about the Mercedes.

Paul: Maybe they're basing it on the idea that, uh, no one can afford a Mercedes with autopilot on it, you know?

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Well, I, I, I don't know what drive pilot is. Like, is it equivalent to the Tesla one? Is it like a smart, uh, cruise control thing? Right. It's moving towards a. So it's not full autonomous driving, right?

Paul: You're right. I think it's more like that.

Dave Jones: Is that a camera only system or has that got like lidars and stuff?

Paul: It doesn't look like it from the photos, but you know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But they could be hidden away somewhere. I don't know. Yeah. Because, you know, there's a big debate. Oh, didn't that come out? Did I see a tweet yesterday or something that Toyota have decided to go with Tesla's camera only system? That's a big deal. But there's a lot of people that are going the camera only system is, it's going to come a gutter. It's not going to be that good.

Paul: Yeah. I've heard both. I've heard both sides of that. I've heard people saying like, well, the LIDAR is just not reliable enough and, you know, everything's moving to camera because of the costs and fewer moving parts and stuff like that. But I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, people always go back to the fallback argument is that, oh, humans just have eyeballs and that's it, right? Humans just have two cameras and that's it, right? That's true. Sure. You know, so therefore.

Paul: Pretty good.

Dave Jones: If our AI is smart enough, literally two cameras should be enough, right? And it's like, nah, it's no, no, they're overestimating the ability of AI and software and everything else and edge cases. And no, it's just, like I said, 20 plus years away, it's still not going to be there. You know, it's not.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We'll see. We'll see. I said that 10 years ago. I said, I think I said 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and I'm still saying 20 years. It's like fusion. All right. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Fusion. We, we, like, we, within our lifetimes.

Paul: I have a friend working at a fusion company. I have a, I have a friend working at a fusion company.

Dave Jones: Excellent. Excellent.

Paul: Maybe you made that joke.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. You made the 30 years away joke. What's the 30 years away joke? There was, yeah, somebody's did an excellent YouTube video, which keeps popping up, even though I've already bloody watched it, about, yeah, he works in the fusion industry and he did this video, why fusion is not going to be a thing. So maybe we should try and get him on the show.

Paul: My sci-fi books have something to say about that, Dave.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. Yeah.

Paul: Now we're going to get the stars.

Dave Jones: No, everyone's talking about gravity drives now, you know? Gravity drives. Oh, yeah. We can make, like, if you can warp the gravity in front of a spaceship, you can just, you know?

Paul: Yeah. Sounds easy. Sounds easy.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. So we have top men working on it right now. Top men. Who? Top men. Yes. Oh, boy. Anyway.

Paul: Our amp power's almost up. We've got a minute left. Have you got a last minute thing? I have something. It's kind of worky, but I've been working on thread stuff. What's worky? Yeah, worky. Worky. Work in progress. I'm doing it. No, I'm doing it at work. That's the thing. Oh. Right. Thread. It's a cool thing. I had not seen it before. Thread. Yeah. Basically, it allows Bluetooth sensors, effectively Bluetooth sensors like the NRF52840 to have an IP address so you can actually, like, have it talk to the internet. I had not seen that before. Obviously, it's not new at all. None of this stuff is new. I don't do anything new. Right. But having an IP address on, like, super, super tiny things, I'm very excited about. So, hoping to make some tiny little sensors that can talk to the internet.

Dave Jones: This is IPv6, obviously. That's right. Because haven't we run completely out of V4s or something? Yeah.

Paul: I think V4s are pretty solidly put. But, yeah. No, it's cool stuff. So, I'll let you know if I figure out more about it. But, yeah. It's great. I like it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, it just went over the one hour mark. I saw it just tick over. Not including the intro, but where we go.

Paul: Oh, well, my timer has a minute 40 left. Yeah, that's the thing. I think the intro. So, we actually beat the clock by a minute and a half. So, if you have anything you'd like to say, Dave, you can let it out now.

Dave Jones: No, should we just leave early? Because we can.

Paul: Oh, leave early. Yeah, I guess we're the boss. Yeah, bugger. We're in charge here. See ya. Catch you next time.

Speaker ?: Bye. !