#606 – Professional Scooter Charger

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released October 23rd, 2022. Episode 606. Professional Scooter Charger.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog. And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. How much is a smidge?

Chris Gammell: Smidge is 25 itty bitties.

Dave Jones: 25 itty bitties. Precisely 25 or rounded to 25?

Chris Gammell: You know, that's actually how they standardized on it was the 25 itty bitties.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. Just like the inch, huh? Just like your weird ass inch. Yeah. They just had to go, well, it's 25.4. And I've got that right, haven't I?

Chris Gammell: That is right. Yeah. 25.4 millimeters.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. They had to make it precisely because it wasn't always that. For those who don't know, the inch was not always precisely 25.4.

Chris Gammell: I mean, yeah. I think if there's one thing you could say about the inch is that it was never precise.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: I'm amazed that like, you know, NASA and like, you know, like they're most scientific things in the US are still moved over. But I think actually a lot of military stuff still drives the military and just like mechanical.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like the fractionals.

Dave Jones: Yep. Well, I.

Chris Gammell: Not for me. Thanks. I'll take metric any day of the week.

Dave Jones: Really? So you don't use any Imperial at all for boards anymore?

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. I don't. I'll do that in work. I'm sorry.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: I will absolutely insist that a temperature sensor spits out Celsius. And then I'll look at my phone and be like, what? What the hell does this mean? How hot is it outside? 23C. Is that hot or cold? I don't know. Yeah. So it's just. It's just. Yeah. You know, we all. We all got our things, you know. A smidge.

Dave Jones: All right. Because, yeah, we were. That came about because we were just testing our audio record levels just seconds before we started here and you were saying I was a bit hot. I was peaking.

Chris Gammell: A smidge.

Dave Jones: I was peaking a bit. And I turned it down a smidge, which isn't much. So a smidge on a. What is a smidge on a single turn pot, though? How many degrees? Degrees. As in, you know. Not degrees Celsius. But how many degrees? Radians. How many radians is a smidge on a control pot? On a single turn carbon control pot?

Chris Gammell: I'm always amazed that, you know, like I would open up the old stuff at Keithley and there would just be like literal pots in there. You know, that was like. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Pots. Yeah. Technicians just turning those things, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. They streamed them everywhere. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Not, not super precise in that way.

Dave Jones: I can't remember the last time I used a pot, though. Like, you know, in any sort of design. Oh, like.

Chris Gammell: I was going to say, I used one in my. I think I talked about on the show. Electric water heater. I have electric water heater here, which I'm. Right. Okay. Yep. But yeah, the control. Like, you know, I looked at the manual online because I just. It was set kind of low. And yeah. No, it's like. Like seriously, like a two cent pot. Controlling this. You know, whole thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I guess. I guess that's how you make money.

Dave Jones: Well, they're probably more than two cents because, you know, there's a lot of. I don't know, Dave.

Chris Gammell: These looked really, really cheap. Oh, right. Okay.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's like a one of those. So. So is it like a board trimmer or is it a pot? A potentiometer. Because a potentiometer is one. I would say one that has like the case and it's like panel mounted. That to me is. Right.

Chris Gammell: That. Okay. I see what you mean. Yeah. This is more like a trimmer. A trimmer.

Dave Jones: One of those PCB carbon. Yeah. That's right. The little. The blue square.

Chris Gammell: It was a blue square.

Dave Jones: Oh, fancy pantsy. Come on. That's the fancy. Are you talking about the version? The blue square one. The metal. I'm talking about. Yeah. The. The. The. The. The Bakelite. Base on it with just the carbon trace and then, then just the metal clip on top, which you then, which then has a little slit in when you put your screwdriver in and you. And yeah, you turn them. Yep. None of this enclosed blue enclosure rubbish. That's. Well, I mean. That's fine. That's modern. Can the Bakelite one cost?

Chris Gammell: That's probably only half a cent, you know?

Dave Jones: Right. Pots. Oh, good. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, increasingly I'm, I'm finding, you know, like, so, you know, my, my perspective has shifted a little bit in terms of like the, my outlook in the electronics industry. And mostly it's because of like the things that I'm working on, right? Like IOT things. Like most IOT things. Once the electronics are there and working and you know, there's not like complex stuff. It's like all of the focuses like past it. And I think about like putting, putting smart firmware.

Dave Jones: As in past the hardware you're talking about.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. Once the hardware is there, it's like, okay, you're, you're done. Don't touch it. You know, it's like, just get that, get the sensor reading or get the, you know, get this button press or whatever it is. Yeah. And then deal with all the other crap on the other side of it, right? The cloud side.

Dave Jones: The cloud side, not even on the firmware side anymore on the freaking cloud side.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's what I mean. Like I would put the firmware in the hardware, like once you have that firmware stuff pretty much set, but here's the other thing. I think it's a lot of it is the, the applications and maybe just the applications I'm looking at are relatively simple. But you think about like some of the biggest products that are out there that are like in this sector are like, you know, like they're scooters, these stupid scooters that are all over the streets where I live, Durham. And, you know, major cities in the U S I'm sure Sydney as well. There's nothing in there. It's like a modem. It's a motor speed controller maybe. And then like, that's it.

Dave Jones: And like a, like a, a, a, a battery charger, you know, no, the battery charger separate.

Chris Gammell: It's like third party. It's not connected. Like maybe you're monitoring the voltage, but you're not like, you're not doing the charging, you know, it's just like, Oh, is it charging or not? Yeah, it is. Okay. Because they're not charging them on the street. They're charging them. You know, some person comes. Yeah. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Where do they charge those things? Cause they just leave them lying around the street. So where, who the hell does someone come around in the night and charge them up? What the hell?

Chris Gammell: That's right. You, sometimes you'll, you'll see people like throwing them in the back of pickup trucks or Utes and yeah, take them to their house and plugging them into just standard chargers. Yeah. It's crazy.

Dave Jones: What do you mean? Take them to their house. Do people individually own these things or what?

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. So like, it's like, they're basically like the, the other side of the, you know, like so an Uber driver has like a customer. So they, they provide a service. Right. That's right. Yeah. So they get paid.

Dave Jones: So you're an Uber charger.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's right. You're a charge on demand. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Is there like a, like, is there a thing that you sign up for to become an Uber charger?

Chris Gammell: Well, not an Uber charger, but yeah, like a, yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, you know, the generic name, the Uber is now kind of like the Xerox of, you know, it's kind of like the, yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no, there is. You could, that would actually be pretty funny video to see what you should sign up for that in Sydney.

Dave Jones: That would be hilarious. Yes. Yeah. And that's why I'm, I'm curious to know, like, where do I sign up to become an Uber charger?

Chris Gammell: I think if you find, I don't know, what's, what are like the, the popular scooters in your, your area?

Dave Jones: Well, I don't know. See, cause I'm out in the suburbs. We don't have them out here. I don't even know. I can't even remember the last time I went into the CBD or the city as we can.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right, right, right. Yep.

Dave Jones: And no, last time I saw them, I was in, I was down in Canberra earlier this year. I was down in Canberra and walking through the main streets of Canberra. They were everywhere. They were just, you know, sitting there, you'd find one, you know, you'd find a dozen clumped on, you know, on a street corner or one just left in the middle of a car park somewhere, you know?

Chris Gammell: Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, but I don't know if, if we even have them in Sydney, I'm sure we, yeah, I mean, I literally don't know.

Chris Gammell: I would say a lot of the ride share apps are like, you know, partnering or buying companies that are scooter adjacent. So. Right. I'm amazed at some of the stuff that's out there these days. Like, just like the, like in, so I was in New York city a couple weekends ago. I was just, you know, hanging out with some buddies and like, you can rent like a moped and you can, you could just like rent a moped and get on it within like 30 seconds.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They, they had those in Canberra too. They had the scooters and the little sort of like they, you know, a little seedy moped-y thing.

Chris Gammell: I think I just, I feel like those are much more dangerous and I don't know, like you have to wear a helmet on those and you don't have to wear a helmet on the other scooters. I don't. Yeah. Right. It's, it's crazy to me. Like I would, I would not do that.

Dave Jones: They supply a helmet, but I saw everyone riding around with the, the helmet was just hanging off the handlebars, you know? So yeah. I guess nobody wants to put on a communal helmet, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Maybe. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's, that's probably it. Oh boy.

Chris Gammell: Supply helmet. All right.

Dave Jones: I've got to find out. I'll go around, I'll do a video. I go around at night collecting up all these scooters and see if I can make money from it.

Chris Gammell: You should. It'd be interesting to, to hear that experience.

Dave Jones: Oh God. That's, that's great. All right. All right. I'm going to check it out after this. All right.

Chris Gammell: Charger. Yeah. Yeah. Professional charger.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Speaking of electric hot waters, electric hot water thing, I've ordered a heat pump system. Currently we're gas hot water at home. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're moving over to it. You're talking about that in your, last time we talked, right?

Chris Gammell: Because you did the audit and you were saying. Yeah. The audit and stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah. We're switching up. I mean, we've wanted to do it for a long time. It's a much bigger tank. The tank we've got at the moment is tiny. In fact, we've been secretly hoping it would fail so that we'd have to replace, but the damn thing never has. And we just thought, oh no, look, it's just, you know, it's time to get one. Like, yeah, it's, it's like two and a half times bigger and it's a heat pump system. So it's got a coefficient of performance, a cop of like, I don't know, it's like seven or something. It's pretty amazing. Like an air con system. I have like four or five.

Chris Gammell: And apparently these things are like. So heat pump is like the opposite of an air conditioning, right? Sort of like a, sorry, you use the term differently. So I'm thinking of like an air conditioning cooler, right? So like a compressor system and.

Dave Jones: Here and an air con does both. We use a, a reverse cycle air con. We, we need to heat up and cool down here. So.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right, right. Well, and they have those here too. I just, I just don't use the term different. So, but I'm just saying. Right. In a, in a heat pump, like you're talking about it. It's basically just using a compressor, but it's putting the cold side outside in order to heat up the inside. That's right. Where the heater is. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So. Yeah. Yeah. There's a separate heat pump box with a gigantic big fan on it. Just, just like you'd get on an air con.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Yeah. It looks like one of those Panasonics or the ones that are out there.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. Cool.

Dave Jones: So I'll, I'll, I'll send you the link to the one I'm getting. Here we go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is like the relative power? I guess that's the other thing I don't know, especially when there's like things that are like, like, you know, gas based, you know, like gas has a particular heat output that is usually hard to match with electricity.

Dave Jones: Gas is pretty. Yeah. It's pretty hard to match this thing. I think takes about under a kilowatt. So like to actually heat. Right. So like, whereas a normal hot water system, like you can divide the coefficient of performance. So it'll take like seven, seven kilowatts or something like that. Right. Would be a typical just standard element, hot water system. Whereas this one, yeah, it takes under a kilowatt.

Chris Gammell: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. I think that's what I have. Mine's like, it's basically like a, like a big tea kettle, right? I mean, it's like a, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's just heating. Yeah. And so they're more efficient. So, yep. And, and it's got a timer on it so I can set it to time during the day. So I only use a solar output. Oh, cool. Okay. So it's, it's not smart, like my zappy charger. It's not tied. It doesn't have like a current transformer on there and only turns on when there's excess solar. You just have a timer based system, but you know, the sun's pretty reliable. You know, it does typically come up at, you know, at a set time, you know, yeah, it, it might be cloudy and everything else. Right. But it at least comes, at least comes up and sets at a pretty consistent time. So, um, you know, the, uh, laws of the universe have deemed it so.

Chris Gammell: The only thing that would be tough about this is if you ran out of hot water by the morning when you want to take an early shower, that would be.

Dave Jones: See, the thing is our lifestyle is we don't shower in the morning. So we shall, we do all our showering at, at night. So it's perfect. Like you use it during the day, you heat it up and then we use it at night.

Chris Gammell: Change your lifestyle. If you weren't like that, right. You'd be like, well, you're going to have hot water in the morning. I could, I could shift a little bit, you know, like.

Dave Jones: Well, it's a much bigger tank. Like, so, you know, it's been like two and a half times the size we currently got, which is absolutely tiny, which often runs out. You know, if, if we do take, you know, if we do use, we can actually run out. Yep.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes. Mrs. AEV blog, not happy when hot water runs out. So yeah. Yeah. But the whole idea is that, um, well, it, it does have like an instant override thing or something. So if you want to, you can walk outside and, you know, press the button, I guess. And it, it's not absolutely instant, but you can go right. You know, give me full power now, you know, I'm desperate kind of thing, but no.

Chris Gammell: Wait, does that mean it's completely detached from the grid too? Like it won't, it won't use grid power.

Dave Jones: Oh no, it'll, it'll take power from the grid. It will. That's where it's getting it from. But when you've got a solar system during the day, it, it doesn't know the difference whether or not you're taking it from your solar panels or from the grid, right? It's, it's, it's actually going to take it locally from your solar panels, which, which is how it physically happens. If you've got excess energy there. Yeah. And, and you can see that in your import and export meter. You know, if you're exporting energy to the grid, then you know that everything on site is consuming it from the solar. So yeah, you can physically see it on the direction of the grid current. So yeah, yeah, it's cool. So that's, it's made in Australia. Although the pump, the heat pump is a Japanese. So yeah. Yeah. I guess we don't do heat pumps.

Chris Gammell: What about like a payback period on that sort of thing? Cause that's always. See, I don't know.

Dave Jones: It's pretty pricey. It's about five grand, right? Oh wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's pretty pricey, but we do get, well, we, we can disconnect the gas entirely. So we'll have no gas, gas connection charge anymore and no gas usage charge, but gas is pretty cheap here at the moment.

Chris Gammell: For now. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing I have long term. Exactly. That's a bad bet. But yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, well, they have talked about some, some States here. I think Canberra, which is our capital. You've been there. Yes, I have. Yes. And we drive around parliament. We'll drive by and we drove by parliament house there. And yeah, Canberra has, they've, I think legislated that gas, new gas connections are not allowed. Like in the next couple of years.

Chris Gammell: That's increasingly common. So New York city is like that too. Right. Not where I live, but in New York city. And I think maybe in DC as well, any new construction can't get, you can't, I think you have to have some kind of like, maybe if you grandfathered an end for the building or something like that, but I have no idea how, I think almost everything's going to be electric, electric first.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Right. In the big cities. And it's at the city level. It's not like state or.

Dave Jones: Which is kind of silly because gas is incredibly efficient and it's not hugely polluting. Like it's, you know, gas is pretty good. Gas, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to use your dinosaur energy, gas is pretty good.

Chris Gammell: I agree with that. Yeah. I think that's, that's a good way to say it. Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, I think they're basically just trying to, they're trying to juice the market basically for high-end customers that could afford it otherwise. And then more people are making stuff. See, that's the problem.

Dave Jones: Like these things are expensive, right? Gas is cheap. You know, to buy a gas, you know, hot water system is incredibly cheap and they last forever. Right. Ours has lasted for 30 years. Right. It's still going. And it's, you know, it's, so it's simple. Whereas these heat pump systems and EVs and everything else that everyone, you know, governments want to push on to us. Right. Yeah. It's, it's only for the people that have, you know, decent means to afford this sort of stuff. It isn't for the people who are just scraping by. Oh, totally.

Chris Gammell: I think that's, I think it's just a way to.

Dave Jones: Let them eat cake. You know, I was the.

Chris Gammell: I don't think, I don't think it's about that. I think it really is about driving demand. Right. And you, you know, you legislate towards that sort of stuff, you know.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. No, that's what happened with solar panels here. Yeah. Exactly. Once they, they actually gave us 50 cents or it's no 60 cents per kilowatt hour feeding tariff and all these government subsidies. And so every, so now 35% of homes in this country have solar on them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like, it is the highest uptake in the world, I believe.

Chris Gammell: Right. And I bet a lot of them are doing the same kind of math that you are now right now. And then you're saying, well, I have this extra power now. What do I do with it? Oh, maybe I should switch it up. Maybe it doesn't make sense.

Dave Jones: Heat pump systems. Yeah. So, so we can afford the $5,000 to buy the heat pump system. So we can afford to take that financial hit now. And yeah, I did calculate it. It should pay back five, six years. Something like that. Six, six, maybe seven at a stretch.

Chris Gammell: You know, I did a payback on my, like, so solar here. I looked at solar and I had some people give me quotes and stuff like that. It was like 18 years. It was like really long time because of, because there's not many incentives in my state.

Dave Jones: There's not incentive. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And like the pay, you know, so like the, I have a newer house, so it's pretty efficient anyway. So don't use a ton of energy in the summer, which is always peak time. And so like, it's just like the bulk power coming from the grid is just a better deal. And so it's harder to make that math work. Right. Whereas if they spike the, if they spike the power, the energy costs a hundred percent, then like, oh, well that, that knocks that time down quite a bit.

Dave Jones: Exactly. But you've, you've, you've got a small roof though. I've seen your roof and it's like, like you can barely fit any, which is almost.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's a weird roof. I have a little bit more roof space because we did a little construction, but the real thing is my neighbor's tree.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So that is blocks probably. I don't know what the trade-off would be like. It blocks probably 9 AM to about 1130 AM, like pretty much all morning sun. Yeah. It blocks. So it's like, that's another thing that doesn't make any sense right now. Yeah. But if, if that ends up coming down at some point in the future, then yeah, it does make sense actually probably. So.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Just, just math. Just got to keep, you know, the only way out of the climate crisis is, is economics. Unfortunately, I think I don't know any other ways out.

Dave Jones: But I did actually get, there is actually government subsidies on this. So that, that figure I'm quoting is after the government subsidies. There's actually two government subsidies. I claim one is a state government, one's federal, I think something like that. They've got these schemes to, you know, so yeah, but it's still not cheap, right? It's still a pretty pricey system. Like I, for my original three kilowatt solar power system, I, I, I paid $5,000 and that included, that was nine, eight, nine years ago now, and that included the, uh, government rebates and stuff, you know, it's, but I've done a payback thing on that and it did pay back itself after five years, something like that, even though I bought a top of the line system.

Chris Gammell: So think about how much it paid back just in videos, just in videos, Dave, think about how much that paid back.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I know just in videos. Yeah. That, that doesn't include videos. So I actually have made a pretty, it probably paid itself off in a couple of years if you include the, yep. Well, I don't make much revenue from the videos, you know, a good video, I'll make, you know, a couple hundred bucks maybe, you know, but I guess if you make a dozen videos, it adds up.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I bet you have.

Dave Jones: Anyway. So yeah, I'll be making a video on this one. So there you go. So there you go. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: You just got to amortize your cost over videos.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. That's it. So yeah. And, and the good thing is, is I'll be like, I'll be able to measure the energy, you know, I get energy measurements of it and how much it takes. And then it would be interesting to compare it to the actual energy usage from the gas hot water system. But you can't really do that because you can't know, like, cause I know, I can't know how much water's being used. You would have to know. So to do the volumetric energy calculation for the gas heating, you would have to know the volume of water that you've used that it's, that's heating up. So, okay. You've used X amount and then the heat is turned on and it's got to, you know, heat up that, you know, and you've got to know the ambient temperatures. You've got to take that into account and, you know, the incoming water temperature, the Delta T and like, you know, you can do it in a lab. Like if you're actually designing this sort of product, you can do it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I thought about doing this sort of thing. I'm looking for like, you know, IOT kind of applications and like just monitoring, uh, like water flow. You probably want to put like an inline water meter.

Dave Jones: You would put an inline flow meter or something. You could do that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But I would think maybe even you do like an accelerometer and do like some associative type data. Maybe. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Accelerometer. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like measure vibration of coming through the pipe, that sort of thing that you can measure.

Dave Jones: How do you correlate?

Chris Gammell: It's a big data, Dave.

Dave Jones: Big data. Right.

Chris Gammell: That is, that is the magic wand of the, uh, of the space.

Dave Jones: You can extract any data you want as long as you have enough of it.

Chris Gammell: That's right. How do you make up for it? How do you make up for lack of knowledge? Volume. Volume.

Dave Jones: Oh God. No, no, no, no.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's true. Lack of knowledge. Volume.

Dave Jones: Oh God. How do you make money on free software? Volume.

Chris Gammell: Things that made my, uh, made my lack of knowledge very evident. Uh, your, uh, your show with Kathy last week was great, man. That was, she's awesome. Oh, cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, she's great. I had, I had fun. That's why it went for an hour. I, I didn't want to cut it at an hour and 40 minutes before, you know, holy crap. Like I said, it's going to be well over two hours and we do try to limit the show to an hour now, but I was, I was having so much fun. And then we'd only started, like we'd only, we only started to scratch the surface. So maybe we can get it back on and we can systematically go through the history rather than, you know.

Chris Gammell: Well, here's another thing. We need, we need to get some more reviews. She's only got eight ratings on Amazon or whatever your book review of choices. Okay. So, uh, $10 on, on Kindle. You can get it now. Go send some reviews her way.

Dave Jones: Yes. If you get it from a, please. Yes. Please review it.

Chris Gammell: Number one new release of electronics and technology. So that is a very narrow, that's a narrow category, but.

Dave Jones: Although I just heard on her, uh, Patreon, she did hit number one bestseller though, but I guess nobody's leaving a review.

Chris Gammell: But history. Well, that's what I said in history of engineering and technology. That's what I'm saying. That's a very narrow category.

Dave Jones: Right. But, but still, you know.

Chris Gammell: But still that's great. I mean, yeah, that's great.

Dave Jones: You can say you're a number one Amazon bestseller, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, it's, it's good. I'm really enjoying the book. Haven't finished it yet, but, um, yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right. We should take some bets. Who's going to finish this first? I just bought it and Dave's had it for like a week and a half. I bet I finish it first. What do you think? Yeah, definitely.

Dave Jones: Definitely. Yeah. I, I've just, yeah, I suck at reading books. That's right, man. Yep. I just don't have the attention span to sit down and do it anymore.

Chris Gammell: It's all about the Kindle at night. I can't do it. I would never be able to do it if it wasn't, if it wasn't for, uh, the Kindle at night. I wouldn't, I wouldn't read it all pretty much.

Dave Jones: Well, that's how I try and do it, but I find, oh, I'm just so tired. You know, I, I last 15 minutes, 15, 20 minutes, and then I'm done.

Chris Gammell: 15 minutes, they add up. That's all. That adds up. Let me tell you.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. Yeah. If I do it every night. Yeah. It does add up. But yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's the life, that's the life hack. Kindle goes under the pillow.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. But I can't do it for more than 20 minutes, probably. Oh no. No, definitely not.

Speaker ?: You know.

Dave Jones: Yep. Anyway. So there you go. I'll let you know. And, uh, there's, there's a lead time on these things. Apparently they're very popular. So, uh, made here in Australia. Yep. Cool. Yep. So I'll let you know. I'll be doing videos and we'll get some measurements, but yeah, I was, I was surprised by the, you know, the, how little power it takes, you know? So we, with a cop of like seven, I think it is. So. Yeah. Pretty amazing. Anyway. I didn't think they could get that high, but yeah. No, it's really good. Very impressed. Anyway. That'll give us some energy independence, you know? Yeah. Like, you know, the goal is to say that, you know, one of the side benefits, you know, if you want to put your conspiracy theory hat on is that, well, the government can't turn off my gas, you know, cause I don't use any. Right. I'll just generate it from my own solar panels. Screw you. You know, like, yep. Although.

Chris Gammell: I think just the price invariance is really nice. Yeah.

Dave Jones: The price variance. Yeah. People have, yeah. The government has said, yeah, prices are going up.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I think that that's pretty much, that's a, that's a new truism. I think generally, you know? Yeah.

Dave Jones: But if you're in, sorry to all our, I was going to say viewers, listeners in Europe who are just getting absolutely. Oh yeah. They're getting slammed. Screwed. It's just, yeah. It's like, you know, I think things haven't gone up 10, 20% inflation style. They've gone up, you know, hundreds of percent, multiple, 500%, like many hundreds of percents, even sometimes thousands. Some people have sent me on Twitter. They've sent me, you know, the actual numbers and it's just in their country and it's just horrific. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be unbelievable. Energy. It's all about the energy, man. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Who, who holds the energy holds the power.

Chris Gammell: I am really surprised. There are, I've been reading about startups that are like legit trying fusion stuff and

Dave Jones: yeah, come on.

Chris Gammell: And there's news every week. I know, but I'm just saying like the fact that it keeps getting funding, how does it keep getting funding? Dave?

Dave Jones: I guess a lot of things get funding, but the, the dream people buy into the dream, you know? It would be nice though. How did people fund Theranos? You know? Yeah. How did they fund? That's true. Yeah. V truck startup. That was a fraud. You know, how do they like, it's, it's the dream. People buy into the dream.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: How'd they fund you being? They buy into the dream, you know, solar roadways, they buy into the dream.

Chris Gammell: I don't think it was VC. Was that VC funded?

Dave Jones: Which one? Solar roadways. Solar roadways. It sounded like they were. Government. Government bought into the dream, but that's just, you know, virtue signaling. So yeah. Yeah. The actual politicians don't have dreams. They just.

Chris Gammell: A bit of, a bit of a kerfuffle about this. So we've talked on the show about how $54 billion in the U S, uh, many, much of which is going towards building a $20 billion Intel factory in Ohio. Right. We talked about that. We were pretty excited about that on here. It turns out. Warning. Warning.

Dave Jones: Warning. We're, uh, laying people off. What do you know? Welcome to capitalism. You know, like it's yeah. Welcome to a publicly listed company that has to make a profit. You know? I mean, it's not magic. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think the share market slumps, the company has to make cuts. Right. Yeah. Yeah. The end. Right. It doesn't matter what the government is spending.

Chris Gammell: Right. I think, I think the thing that's not stated in this article, or maybe it was stated. I mean, so they're talking about mostly like the, the fact that like the Intel Ohio site doesn't, uh, doesn't match with the people that are laying off, blah, blah, blah. Totally legit. Yeah. That's a, that's a good argument. But I feel like understated in a lot of these things is like, they're not doing this just like, you know, they're talking about like investment and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, this is, this is all because of China. This is like a hundred percent. Everything, every single dollar spent in the U S on a new fab is because like, oh yeah, China, China's given Taiwan the, the big stink eye right now, you know, like have us

Dave Jones: by the short and curlies, you know? Yeah. Right. Exactly. They're, they're, they're really, they were happy to do that before when, when the status quo was a little bit in their favor. As soon as it starts to shift a little bit, they go, oh geez, that's, I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable now. Yeah. Yeah. I think I want control of my own balls now. Yeah. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: Here's the thing that I was thinking about the people that are not catching enough shit about all this stuff. And, uh, is all of the people that sent this work over to TSMC in the first place, right? All of the NBA playbook, uh, goofballs.

Dave Jones: Every company that offshore.

Chris Gammell: That said, yeah, I mean like, man, they're really, it hasn't come up once, but like, oh, what did you think was going to happen? Like, of course it was. And like, you know, they'll all come back and say, well, what else were we supposed to do? Our costs were going up and blah, blah, blah. It's like, yeah, it's called investment folks. You got to just give up a little bit in order to hold on to your own, your own destiny. Like, man, I know I'm not a CEO. I don't think like a CEO. I will never be a CEO aside from, you know, Chris Gammell incorporated. And like, that's fine. I'm not, I'm not a Silicon executive, but, but damn, what'd you think was going to happen? You know?

Dave Jones: Well, it's the same with the Brexit thing. It's like, well, if you hand over your country to unelected European parliament, what do you think's going to happen? Okay. But yeah, and yes, there's going to be costing getting that sovereignty back. Right. A lot, a lot of people go, oh, look how much Brexit's cost in. Right. It's like, yeah, all the Brexit has come out and you know, yeah, you're not going to agree. A whole bunch of people are going to spam the comments and, you know, not agree.

Chris Gammell: I don't think that's the same situation. That's what I'm really saying. No, but it's kind of, it's similar parallels. Sure. If you're giving up control to a centralized authority, but they still had like central, some input into that authority. Right. So I think you can see how that's a little different there. If you're going to a third party company in a different country with no input, you're just a customer. I know. Right. I know.

Dave Jones: I just want to share the parallels.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Some parallels. So here's one that I would maybe say is like, if you go, if you were like had in-house HR as a company, right. And you say, we're going to do all of our own payroll. We're going to, you know, deal with our own healthcare benefits in the US, which of course, you know, do other places. If you're going to, you know, deal with all of the complaints or whatever. And now you say, we're going to completely outsource it to like, you know, just some third party company. And then it's like, oh, and by the way, that company just got bought. And we don't like the new ownership of that external HR company. That like, what did you think was going to happen? Right. It's like, that is the cost.

Dave Jones: You can insert any business thing there. I guess any, any third party. It could be manufacturing anything.

Chris Gammell: It could be anything. Yeah. That's true. That's true. Everything should be vertically integrated, Dave. That's what I'm trying to say. Right. Okay.

Dave Jones: Every company should do it all themselves.

Chris Gammell: Chris just got fired as the CEO. So that's.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I get it. I get that there are, there are constraints and costs and all that other stuff, but like, you know, in some of these cases, I'm just upset that it left in the first place.

Dave Jones: And there is pain to get it all back. And that is the thing, whether it's a whole country or whether it's a, whether it's a, you know, little manufacturing line, whether it's a HR department, whether it's a sales department, whether it's a, you know, accounting department, you can offshore your accounting to somebody else and then, you know, right.

Chris Gammell: Sure. Sure. Sure. I think the thing that's also in there though, is like the knowledge, the tribal knowledge that comes out of that, or that is lost in that transition. It doesn't come back as, as easily. Right. Like you might be able to bring back investment, whatever.

Dave Jones: It, it, it almost grows in you. It almost grows new from scratch. Not, not quite from scratch, but it, it, you know, it doesn't just magically come back and be the same as what it was.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think that's right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So like, I think about like the, so the, the thing I'm really talking about that, that got me kind of in my hyper hyper mode here is, was when there was, I think it must've been like 2012, 2013. It was when I think analog devices and TI, maybe it was a little later than that, but like analog devices and TI both announced within a relatively short time span where they said, we're not going to develop any more analog nodes in house. We're going to mostly shift to TSMC. I might be getting that wrong. If you're a TI or, you know, analog devices, you can tell me I'm wrong, whatever. But I remember there was a bunch of new stories about that. And it was like, they're going to lose that. They just aren't going to know how to make their own analog nodes that are, that is the differentiator. That was the whole thing. Like why, how do you differentiate? And the answer is they don't care. They just needed to make more parts. And maybe that was the right business decision. But, you know, when you lose that, that knowledge of how to do that tweaking of the, the process node and you outsource all that to other people, like you're going to pay the price at some point. I think, I think they're going to pay that coming back as well. Right. They still have some of the knowledge, but I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, you have to define what the right business decision is in quote marks. Is it short term? Is it long term? You can say, oh yeah, it's right in the short term.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: And then you can completely come a gut. Yeah, exactly. I got my bonus and I was out of there and I, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And yeah. So, yep. But there's always a price to be paid for buying back in, so to speak.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Into anything really, you know, like, you know, the same thing happens with your investments. If you panic sell or something, you know, there's, you know, it might've been a good decision at the time, but longterm you might go, oh, I should have just held onto them. You know, that was like a dumb move. Right. But it would seem right at the time and you pat yourself on the back and then, you know, then, yep. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: There's tons of parallels like that in life. So, and business.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Business. Business.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Can we talk about hobbies?

Chris Gammell: Sure. What? Do you have hobbies? I don't have any hobbies.

Chris Gammell: Reading.

Dave Jones: This is one of my hobbies. You're listening to one of my hobbies right now.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah. That, that, I mean, I would say like electronics is kind of like a broad hobby for me, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't have. Yeah. Anyways, go ahead.

Dave Jones: Anyway. There was an, I'm, I'm probably going to make a video on this today. I think a, a blab video because this come from a EV blog forum thread. Oh, I bought the link of the English. You'd have to read the whole lot, but basically somebody posted is the Rigol MSO 5000 scope overkill for a hobbyist. So I'd like to raise the question. At what point does an instrument become overkill for a hobbyist?

Chris Gammell: Huh. That is a, I will actually say. That is a classic, that is a classic Amp Hour discussion topic.

Dave Jones: It is a classic one. And I don't think we've ever had it. Now, my argument is going to be from my video today, even though I don't write scripts, I pretty much know what I'm going to say. I think about it on the drive-in. I just think about it on the fly, but you know, this is pretty, you know, what comes out on my video is pretty much the thought that pops into my head. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So what I think. Well, give us a, give us a range here too, because I think some of it is price dependent. Yes. Some of it is tax dependent.

Dave Jones: And that's one, that's what I wanted to talk about. Right. Is for an oscilloscope. Right. The traditional, when I was a boy, the, the traditional entry level price was 800 bucks. Right. 800 bucks got me Aussie bucks. I'm talking right. Got me my first dual channel, 20 megahertz analog scope. Right. Decent brand. Right. Dual channel, 20 megahertz.

Chris Gammell: I think that is interesting to lock it to a price point as well, because the, the caliber of what you can buy for that price changes over time as well. It's generally that much, much better.

Dave Jones: That's what I'm going to get into. Yes. And then when digital scopes came out, the first really affordable hobbyist digital scope was the Rigol 10, uh, 1052E.

Dave Jones: 1052E. Right. The DS1052E, which I also bought. And that was shock horror, about $800. Right. Once it reaches that price point. Right. Right. And, uh, then, right. But now, okay. Let's, let's, let's talk about this particular case. Right. With the Rigol MSO 500. How much does that cost? About 800 bucks. Yankee bucks. This is right. And it's a pretty high end scope for 800 bucks and you can hack it and you can get the logic analyzer and you can get everything else in the function gen and you can get the extra bandwidth. You can hack the thing. Right. But the base model is only 800 bucks. Right. But the new benchmark, the new benchmark in the 5074 is cheaper than the 5072.

Chris Gammell: The four channels cheaper than the two channel. That's weird. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, I have to check that out. All right. That's interesting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. It is $800. I was just looking at it. Right.

Dave Jones: 800 bucks. But then actually going back to the Rigol 1052e, right? That was 800 bucks, but then that almost halved to like 400 bucks and it's still about 400 bucks. Not that one, but the 1054Z, which is a four channel version is about 400 bucks. Right. So that's it. So 400 US dollars is about the entry level price point for a decent hobbyist scope. You can get cheaper. You can get like a, you know, a hand tech or an old one, two channel giant. Exactly. The price difference there doesn't really justify it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's like, it's like a cliff. You have to, you have to scale.

Dave Jones: You've got to scale. I think. Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm.

Chris Gammell: Cause I think there's some, there are some like legitimate things about like either having a, you know, front end ADC or, you know, just even like the plastics and everything that's in there, power supply, whatever. So yeah.

Dave Jones: And usability things and bugs. There's a whole bunch of things. Right. And it's four and it's two channel versus four channel, you know, whereas I think nobody should be buying a two channel scope anymore. Right. A four channels has become like the minimum, especially when you can get one for like 400 bucks. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: And we should say as well, like this becomes $400 is still a stretch for a lot of people.

Dave Jones: It's still a stretch for a lot of people. Sure. And, and in that particular case, I would say, yeah, there's nothing wrong with a 200 buck cheap. Right. Yeah. But if you can, I would sort of set that minimum threshold. I would climb that wall, do whatever you can to climb that wall to get that 400 bucks scope.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And yeah. And, and really as much as an analog fan boy as I am. Right. No, there's not, it's not worth getting that 50 buck analog scope. Right. Sure enough. If you can pick one up for 50 bucks or free. Yeah. Maybe.

Chris Gammell: I tried doing that when I was, uh, I was trying to like looking through like all the super low end scopes when I was starting contextual electronics and it was like nothing. There's nothing there. It was like, you know, a hundred kilohertz max. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, it's those little toy things, you know, it's those little pocket toy things. And yeah, some people rave about those and they're just, no, they're just crap. They're really not worth it.

Chris Gammell: Because especially if you're a beginner, that's the other thing is that like, if you're a beginner, Oh, it's frustrating. You're going to be, you're going to be like, you're going to run into things like anti-alising and just other stuff. Oh yeah, no. You're going to just be out of your league just from the start because you're, you've got subpar equipment. You're trying to visualize stuff. You're trying to buy a project. You're trying to buy a tool. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: And they're so tedious to use. Have you ever tried to use one? Oh, they're so fiddly and Oh, just garbage. And they're just, no. I tried to teach with them, Dave. Don't do it. Anyway. So, and, and they're not really getting any better. So no, I would say, right. 400 bucks entry level. Now, can you say that the $800 one is now overkill? I don't think so. I would probably put my, my argument will be that I would say overkill for hobbyist use would be once you enter the four digit range. Right. Now there's a huge jump between a two channel cheapy no-namer and that four channel Rigol or Siglin. Right. At, at, at 400 bucks. There's a, you know, a really good jump there. Right. Yeah. And there's a kind of a decent jump from 400 to 800 bucks. You get the much bigger screen, touch screen interface. You get higher sample rates. You get more memory. You get, you know, so there's nicer sort of stuff. So you can argue that, okay, if you want to make the jump to the 800 buck level, then that's okay. But the interesting thing is just for a general use scope, a $400 scope that, that four channel Rigol or Siglin scope. Right. For 400 bucks. That is going to do you literally forever for general use. Right. Now I'm talking just general daily use, their regular requirements. You just want to look at a signal. Right. It is going to do the job fantastically forever. Right. It doesn't go obsolete.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think the only thing.

Dave Jones: If you have specific, unless you have specific, I'm talking general use. Right. I'm not talking specific requirements. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: As long as you're not like hoping to have the, you can't like 1054 Z doesn't have a built in.

Dave Jones: Logic analyzer.

Chris Gammell: Logic analyzer. So. Correct. You can't upgrade there, but you could always supplement that. There are cheaper logic analyzers.

Dave Jones: Oh, you can get a USB based logic analyzer and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Mixed signal. But that's something you buy up front, which is another reason why you might go for the $800 one, for example.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Versus the $400 one.

Speaker ?: I think.

Dave Jones: But as I, but I'm talking about just an everyday use scope, you probably, you know, that'll last you forever. Or you could go up front and say, Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'll just, I'll spend a bit more coin. I'll spend the 800 bucks and get the.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you get another 50 mega or 20 megahertz and, you know, maybe slightly higher quality. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But no, you get a larger screen, greater resolution, touchscreen. You get maybe more decoders and stuff like that. And you can hack these things. And you can hack it. And you get a higher sample rate and, you know, all sorts of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think I, I have never, when I've had, I've had some high end scopes and I had a 1054Z before I gave mine away. And, you know, it was my daily driver anyways, cause it was just simpler to use. It was just like, okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'll just use this.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But I would argue that I, once you're spending over a thousand bucks on a scope, that, that is over. I would say that's overkill for overkill for whom, for whom?

Chris Gammell: No, for hobby.

Dave Jones: Just, just as a general hobbyist. Okay. I'm, I'm interested in electronics. I'm setting up a lab and you know, like you wouldn't go and spend, you know, a couple of thousand bucks on a scope.

Chris Gammell: No, it's just, cause you've got so many other things to buy as well. That's the thing that I think is, you know, people don't take it in, they take it in isolation. Like, oh, I can afford a $1,200 scope. It's like, yeah, but you want to buy a, you know, decent power supply and, you know, a nice DMM and a like, you know, maybe an, and, you know, source meter.

Dave Jones: And you want to buy a fume extractor and you want to buy all sorts of tires and ESD matting and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You want to buy a mill. You want to buy a screwdrivers and a thermal camera and a, you know, all sorts of use.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it really doesn't stop. It doesn't stop.

Dave Jones: It doesn't stop. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you would be in agreement that maybe it stops at that four digit.

Chris Gammell: I think, I mean, it's going to depend on people's budget, of course. Right. It depends.

Dave Jones: But I would say, yeah. Once you go over that, you're getting, what are you getting? You're paying for extra bandwidth.

Chris Gammell: I think that might be the way to say it is there might be certain corners of the hobby, right. Where you say, actually, you do need to get.

Dave Jones: There's always corners. There's always corners. Right. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: But I'm saying that it's worthwhile to, to actually lay that out and say, well, when are you going to have to spend more, more on a scope versus otherwise? Right. I would say like, if you're doing, I mean, if you're doing RF stuff, you're already, you better open your wallet.

Dave Jones: Well, here's where you go to secondhand old used, right? If, if you want bandwidth, like if you want a one gig bandwidth scope, for example, go to the used market, right? There's lots of old, yeah. Because you're not going to use that as your daily driver.

Chris Gammell: Right. I get it. But what I'm saying is like, you need to say, because this is often people asking this at the beginning, I feel you, you have to be very explicit because they say, oh, I do want to do RF. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. When do you, you know, what are you really going to be doing every day?

Dave Jones: What are you really going to be doing with RF? You're probably going to be using a module, right? You're probably going to be using a pre-certified module, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I think it's, I think it's really about like, I don't know, people tried to tell me this when I was getting started as well and I didn't listen at all. Right. I mean, like, like nobody's going to actually listen. It's fine. Of course. We're just up here talking. It's no big deal. But I'm just saying like, I think it's really about drawing lines around when you actually do need to get outside of that, that realm of, you know, the 50 megahertz scope, you know? So it's like, all right, are you actually clocking? You need to see the analog signals for your hundred megahertz microcontroller. Are you sure you can't get away with a digital, you know, a logic, a logic analyzer? Like, you sure you can't get away with that? Maybe you can. Have you thought about it? Have you tried it? Like, have you looked it up online? Here's some resources, you know, like those kinds of things. That's where, that's where I feel like you just need to really like beat people over the head with it, you know?

Dave Jones: But even those four channel entry level 400 buck scopes, they're 200 meg bandwidth, right? You can hack them to 200 meg bandwidth. And that's, you know.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's plenty for general use, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: In fact, you know, once you start talking 500 meg, right? That's the limit of actual passive probes, right? Pretty much. So, okay, okay, Tektronix do actually make a one gig passive probe, okay? The new Roden-Schwartz, I just got the new Roden-Schwartz MXO. That's a 1.5 gig scope, right? I've got it sitting on my bench right now. I'm pointing at it, even though this is radio. I'm pointing at it. And it comes with 750 meg probes because that's the passive probe limit, right? You've got to go to exotic active probes pretty much at the 500 meg, you know. That's kind of like the limit. Yeah. So, you know, it's like, eh.

Chris Gammell: And a beginner never needs that. I mean, I just, you know.

Dave Jones: No, right?

Chris Gammell: It's almost like, you know, we need to have like an application form where it's like, all right, state your case. Why do you think you need this?

Dave Jones: Why do you want to buy this oscilloscope? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Why do you think you need this extra, you know, state your case here. We're going to tell you why you're wrong, probably. You might be right. I mean, like there might be some corner cases that are right, but it's going to be the exception, not the rule. So that's great.

Dave Jones: And we'll send it up the management ladder and they may approve the purchase. This oscilloscope. Yes. But yeah. Okay. So yeah, I would say, yep. Pretty much if you're spending over 800 bucks, definitely over a thousand bucks on a scope, that is overkill. Yeah. That is overkill. How much do you spend on a multimeter? I reckon you're spending more than a couple hundred bucks on a multimeter overkill.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I get most of my multimeter secondhand from Dave's shipping, shipping snafus. So still happening. I don't, yeah. All of, almost all of my equipment is secondhand at this point. And then like all of my Keith Lee gear was secondhand. I would got gifted some, you know, obviously we're in a special scenario.

Dave Jones: Oh, we're in. Yeah. Well, like companies give me stuff, you know, it's like, you know, it's just one of the

Chris Gammell: perks of being a YouTuber, I guess. I think the only thing I'm looking at my bench right now, I think the only thing that I, the only thing I spent like higher than average money on that I'm really glad I did was my Thermaltronics soldering iron. That was a good purchase. And it wasn't that much. I mean, like it was a lot for soldering iron versus like what a beginner needs, but I really like it and I think it's good. And it's, you know, it's like a JBC. What is the, you know, the other, oh, it's a Metcal clone.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: And I have like cheapy Chinese stuff otherwise, right? Like my camera and screens are cheap and what else do you need? You know, I barely do electronics anymore.

Dave Jones: Somebody just linked that. Somebody just sent me a link to a Heiko released a new soldering iron. It looks, looks pretty good. It's like 400 Watts or something, you know, it's pretty decent. Then I checked the price. It's like a thousand us bucks. Right. It's like, geez, you know, maybe 900 bucks on special as like, well, that's overkill. Okay. Yeah. It's probably a knife, very nice soldering. I'm sure it is, but you know, it's, it's, it's not for a hobbyist to be buying. Yeah, exactly. When you get into like high-end soldering iron. Much better value to be had.

Chris Gammell: You know. It's all about like production, like instant hot, like super precise temperature dialed in sort of thing. You know, like, yeah, I don't, is it cartridge style or is it, is it dial style?

Dave Jones: Yes. It's a, no, well it's dial. You can dial in the temperature, but it uses a direct heat tip. Oh, okay. Yep. Yep. No, it's not a, a curie point temperature tip swapping thing. No.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I like that. I prefer that personally.

Dave Jones: Really? I don't.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. It's so easy. Oh man. I want simplicity in my life, Dave.

Dave Jones: No. Simplicity. Simplicity is turning a knob, dude. No way. Simplicity is not changing your tip because I'm going to change from this identical chip to this identical tip just because it's got a different temperature. That's vastly harder than.

Chris Gammell: Who changes it because of the temperature? You change because of the tip style. And then it's just right there. It's dialed in. You're good to go. It's great. No.

Dave Jones: No. Yeah. No. I like being able to tweak the temperature for special jobs.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well.

Dave Jones: Yep. Nope.

Chris Gammell: Agree to disagree. You know what I need to upgrade is my hot glue gun. That's what needs an upgrade.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I've got a shit hot glue gun. I don't have like a real top.

Chris Gammell: It's like one of those things where you look at it and you're like, ah, how often do I need this? And then when you're in the middle of it, you're just like pumping hot glue into something. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I got one of those $5 hardware store jobs. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: There's a lot of stuff like that, you know? Yeah. Like I should have more X-Acto knife blades around, you know?

Dave Jones: Like stuff that I use like all the time, you know? Yep.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well.

Dave Jones: You know. A decent set of pliers, you know? Like a nice brand set of pliers, you know? Cutters. Yeah. Yeah. Nice set of flush cutters.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I like flush cutters. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's what people should start with. You should be like, here's the checklist. Once you have these, you know, like once you get to this, it's like a video game where you have to like earn your way up. And then finally you're like, you do an unlock on the oscilloscope.

Dave Jones: Didn't I do a video on flush cutters? What are the best electronic side cutters? Yes, I did. I can link it in. What are the, I thought I did. It was, it was, it was part of my live show. So I extracted the rant from my live show. There it is there. Yeah. Top electronic side cutters. I was going to get EV blog branded side cutters actually.

Chris Gammell: Do they really differentiate that much? I mean, if they don't snap off in your hand, I feel like they're, they're not terrible. Right.

Dave Jones: They're not terrible.

Chris Gammell: I have low needs as well. Like, yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Well, I've got good brand ones and I've got crap brand ones in the crap brand ones are the ones you use for like cutting stuff. You really shouldn't be cutting with them. Yeah, exactly. Like metal cans and you know, stuff like that. Right. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: You should be using tin snips or something.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I should use tin snips, but nah, let's get my side cutters to cut this RF can off. You know, and then you wonder why they chip and blunt and the jaws don't close. You know what I wish I would have?

Chris Gammell: I wish I had more of around my lab. I actually had this thought earlier this week as I was trying to do it is like, I never have enough 2.54 millimeter or 2.5, 25.4 millimeter or point. No, it's 2.54 millimeter or 0.1 inch headers. Right. Like I just never have enough of those around and they're always buried in project boxes, but I should have just like one box. That's just like headers. You'll need to solder stuff to other stuff. That's like what I really need.

Dave Jones: That is one of the things that I have in my dedicated, uh, rotary, uh, parts drawer. I've got pin headers, right. I've got, you know, right angle pin headers, straight pin headers, right. They're in dedicated drawers. They're not in my project bags. I would not keep those in my project. That's the kind of stuff I wouldn't keep in a project bag. Like that, that, that goes straight to the pool room as we say here and the pool room being your, your, your rotating parts cabinet, you know?

Chris Gammell: So like that. And another one I had recently was mating plugging cables, right? So if I want to bodge like a two pin cable onto something, so I don't want to like solder directly to it. Or if I do, I want to solder it once and then, you know, put hot snot all over it and just, you know, like hot glue it down and then never, ever touch it again. But I do want to have it pluggable. I want to have a mating two pin pluggable pair there, right? So like batteries or a switch or something like that. And I don't have enough of those around either. I'm always scrounging for like, like pre, like I need to get like the pre-crimped wires inserted into the two pin headers of different sizes. That's like when I need, I need to like outfit my lab with that stuff. But it's like one of those things where like, when do you go and just, you know, nobody's going on digi-key to shop for, you know, just the connectors. Ooh, yeah. I'm going to connector shop and this is exciting, you know? All right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. I've, that's why I just sent you a link to my under, under bench storage shelves, right? And little trays that will, they're actually rather large trays that pull out. And I've, I've pretty, you know, like I started out by having like half of them have like cables and stuff in them. Some other had like camera gear and other stuff, but I've slowly transitioned to almost all of them being cables of some description. You know, I've got, I've got three different types of, of banana cables. I've got, I've got the four millimeter banana jack to four millimeters. I've got the four millimeters to, uh, alligator clips. I've got alligator clips to alligator clips. And I've got, you know, like, and then I've got mains and then I've got straight main, I've got regular mains cables. Then I've got weird ass mains cables. And then I've got measurement mains cables, which are, you know, death leads with bare ends or, you know, or they've got four millimeter banana plugs on them that, that plug into energy monitors and all sorts of stuff. And then I've got a multimeter leads section. Then I've got an exotic multimeter lead section, which has little, you know, parrot clips and other little, you know, like various exotic things for clipping onto stuff. And I, I've just like transitioned over to almost all the drawers. It's just some sort of connecting lead. It's just like, you know, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's like the daily driver type of stuff that you need. Yeah. You just need to have around, right? Yeah. And you need it. It's so frustrating.

Dave Jones: You know, if it's not there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think the hard part there is putting it back in the container when you're done.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. I'm bad at that. Yeah. I just leave it. Oh, I just leave it on the bench there. Cause I might need it tomorrow. No, put it back in the bloody tray. You know, you idiot. And yeah. Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: This is what we need generic robots for is just to clean up our labs for us.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Clean up the lab. Yeah. I'd definitely buy one of those. Sure. They would be great at that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh boy. I thought about maybe getting like a student or something in just to organize my lab. Like.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you wouldn't know where anything it is then.

Dave Jones: Huh?

Chris Gammell: You wouldn't know where anything is then. If they're, if they're doing all the organizing. Yeah. But it's. Yeah. But it's.

Dave Jones: They'll be labeled. Right. It'd all be sorted. Like getting stuff out of my old project bags and putting that, you know, filling up my shelf. Right. It's, it's a week's work. Just, you know, sorting stuff into my rotating parts cabinet. Right. It's just.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You just need to take a week off.

Dave Jones: Put on a good audio book. I know. And do it yourself.

Chris Gammell: You know, like go into like, like Zen organization mode. I know. I say this because I will never, ever do this myself. Although I did shove a bunch of stuff in my lab into one corner. So that's. I'm going to count that as funny.

Dave Jones: I just posted a, an exclusive video actually over on my Odyssey channel. If you're following me on Odyssey, I'll put exclusive videos over there. One of them just this week is that cleaning up my bunker. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I saw that and I can't believe people watch that crap. I'm going to be honest.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: You watched him do what?

Speaker ?: Yep.

Dave Jones: Well, you didn't actually see me cleaning the bathrooms. I basically went through the boxes of what was all tossed on the floor and stuff. I basically went through stuff that was there. Bad marketing on your part.

Chris Gammell: I got to say. Right. It sounded like you were just cleaning up.

Dave Jones: No, I was not cleaning up. I basically went through all. I showed you what's in a lot of the boxes and just random shit. And then I showed you the after. Oh, here it is. I magically cleaned it all up.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it feels so good. Oh, it feels so good. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. And that happens here in the lab, but I'd never take a week off. I just, oh, I can't do it. But, you know, if I take like half a day, often I've taken half a day to sort of like, you know, clean up things and sort things and organize things. It always feels pretty good, but I should go for the full Monty, you know. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You might hire someone you're saying, right?

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. It'd probably, yeah. I don't know. But, yeah, it'd take me, like, if I did it myself, yes. I would have to take a week off. I'd have to just go, look, that's it. Sorry. I'm not looking at YouTube. I'm shutting it all down. And I'm going to take a week, you know. Yeah. So, yeah, it's painful. Just can't, you know.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Speak, not speaking of anything. I just saw something that I wanted to talk about before we wrap up. Did you happen to see the Hackaday badge that will be at the Supercon that I will be at in a couple weeks? And I'm very excited about.

Dave Jones: I did see it. It popped up on Twitter somewhere. Isn't it, like, gone old school and it's just got LEDs and gates and stuff or something?

Chris Gammell: It's a custom processor. It's a 4-bit CPU.

Dave Jones: A 4-bit CPU. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: And you can basically put, you can, like, manually enter all the commands using the push buttons on the front. And then you can, like, watch it go through the various stages of processing and stuff like that. And all I can think is, boy, I'm not going to do anything with that. But it looks cool.

Dave Jones: What have they done it with? I haven't got the link here. What have they done? Is it done with, like, 4,000 series? Or is it?

Chris Gammell: In the recording.

Dave Jones: Oh. Oh, yeah. Right. There it is.

Chris Gammell: It is done on a PIC24, I believe.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's not that same. What? No. That's not.

Chris Gammell: But, but, but, but, but, but, but. But, what? Matt Venn of A to Z, basics A to Z, the course that teaches you how to design stuff. He's got a prize going right now for people that want to potentially redesign that 4-bit CPU in silicon, in open silicon. So he'll get it in one of the slots, and also he'll give you, like, a free membership of the course, I think.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. So they've, but for those who want a visual picture of this, on the front of the board is, like, little, like, sea of gates, right? It's got different sort of gates. It's got, like, a full adder. It's got an accumulator and stuff like this, right? And, you know, so it's got, and then it's got the move instructions, the add instructions, and all that sort of stuff, right? But they've just simulated, like, they've simulated a 4-bit processor inside a PIC. It's almost sacrilege, you know?

Chris Gammell: I think it would be pretty hard to build otherwise.

Dave Jones: It would be pretty hard to build on there, yes. I totally agree. You would, and that would be pretty dense.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. If it was actually built out of discrete logic. But I expected maybe FPGA or, you know, a CPLD. Yeah, that's another thing that could be on there. Sure, sure, sure. Or something, you know? I kind of, you know, to have a sequential processor simulate another processor is kind of like,

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's a simulation thing. But really, it's about getting people to use, you know, like, assembly and stuff like that, which is, you know. Yeah. I should really dig into it, but we'll see how I do. There is a way to load it from a computer, so you don't have to actually type everything in.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Effectively, like, switches like it used to be, but damn.

Dave Jones: And then it's got a big array of LEDs for, is that mapping the memory?

Chris Gammell: On the far right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Is that mapping the memory on the LEDs? It's a display as well. On page two?

Chris Gammell: That's a display, I believe. And I think you can individually address.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. That's an output display. That's right. So that's not viewing the internal register. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That'll be like the screen, effectively. Right.

Dave Jones: You know, that sort of thing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: A lot of LEDs. A lot of LEDs.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it is very cool. I like it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So we'll see how that goes. Yeah. I will be giving a talk at Supercon called the One Engineer Dev Shop.

Dave Jones: That kind of gives it all away.

Chris Gammell: It kind of does, huh? Yeah, there's no...

Dave Jones: The answer is maybe. Maybe what?

Chris Gammell: Maybe it's possible. I forget what the title is, actually. I think it'll be announced soon, and then I'll be able to remember what I proposed.

Dave Jones: Is there a synopsis?

Chris Gammell: Basically, that it's easier than ever to become a one-person dev shop and how you do that. So instead of having like a multi-person company, like how much of a prototype or proof of concept you can get out the door as a one-person dev shop. So it'll be like resources and pitfalls and things like that. It'll be a lot of practical stuff, hands-on stuff that I've done in the past. It's a short talk.

Dave Jones: Are you talking about actually doing it all yourself, or are you talking about having a network of other people to help you out?

Chris Gammell: Doing a lot of it yourself, but that's the other thing about it is like, where do you draw the line there as well?

Dave Jones: Right, right.

Chris Gammell: If you're working with a CM, you have a team. Well, to be my own worst enemy here, you're basically outsourcing your work to a team of manufacturers. Much like TI executives, I like to outsource my work to a CM. I can't afford TSMC, okay? Yeah, so basically though, you know, like saying that like the design portion is still on you, but it's broader than just doing the, because you're expected to do more of the product design than it used to be, right? So it's not just the PCB anymore. Maybe you're doing more of the programming, you're doing more of the design, you're doing more of the website stuff. And just that you can really broaden out from there because of these different tools that are available. And, you know, and that there are pitfalls around it.

Dave Jones: Well, that sounds interesting. Will this be recorded?

Chris Gammell: Of course, of course. Every talk is recorded. It'll probably be a couple weeks before that's out.

Chris Gammell: Of course.

Chris Gammell: And then I'm also giving another talk the same week, and I should really get through writing on these talks, at All Things Open, which is near me in Raleigh, North Carolina. And I'll be doing demos that same night. So that's November 1st. If you're in the Triangle area, stop on by. It's a free event by Riot, which is Raleigh IoT Group. And basically, it's at the Raleigh Convention Center from like 5 to 8. I'll be showing off some hardware. Cool. Cool bananas. Also, giving a training because why quit there, Dave? We're doing a training at Supercon as well. And that'll be using that virtualized server that I talked about last time we talked.

Dave Jones: Is this a free training course or is this a paid training course?

Chris Gammell: The training is paid, but just paying for the hardware.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so you have to have a Supercon ticket, but that's at Supercon.

Dave Jones: Got it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I think you're just paying for some or all of the hardware, and then the training is free otherwise.

Dave Jones: Beauty.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's a busy couple of weeks coming up for me. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: How long does it take you to prep one of these presentations, or do you kind of put a hard-ass effort in it, thinking that you can get up there and sort of something will happen on the day. You can wing it.

Chris Gammell: You know, luckily, on the talk I'm giving here in Raleigh, I've given that talk about four or five times before, which is a new thing for me, but I'm very excited about because it gets a lot easier each time. The Hackaday talk is only 25 minutes, and I could basically, I could soft shoe for about 20 minutes and then. Yeah, right. So it's just about making the slides and getting that ready to go. Yeah, right. Yeah. So.

Dave Jones: Cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So you don't actually rehearse anything. You just kind of like do the slide deck and you kind of, yeah, that'll prompt me. That slide will prompt me to say X, you know.

Chris Gammell: It has been getting easier as I have more experience. Oh, yeah. I used to get extremely nervous before talks. And as I do more talks and as I just have more kind of general knowledge about the space, it gets easier over time. So my suggestion for all of you out there is if you can just front load all your talks early in your career. So you really get it out of the way and you'll start to understand more and then you can feel better later.

Dave Jones: You can get all the embarrassment out of the way. That's right.

Chris Gammell: You know, just start really small, you know.

Dave Jones: That's right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Oh, yeah. I'd still, I'd like to do something like that here, but there's nothing here. Like there's nothing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. You look pretty far away, buddy.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. And there's just like, there's just doesn't seem to be any. Well, no, maybe there's no, I know. I'll take that back because I know there are some meetup groups. There are kind of like, you know, techie meetup groups where you could go and give a talk if you wanted to. I'm sure if you actually approach them and say, hey, I want to give a presentation to all eight people who show up, you know, but there's no like, you know, but that's kind of like I'm young because I've actually given talks at, you know, to like, eight people. Right. It's like, yeah. And, but no, if you wanted something bigger scale, then there's just, I don't think there's anything here. I could be wrong. Please send me an email. If you know, there is something here.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, please do. I did a remote conference. That was just a couple of days ago. The Espressif. Espressif did a DevCon, they called it. And so I was part of that as well. So you could do remote stuff, but like remote conference, like they did a nice job. But, you know, the best part of conferences is not the talks, you know, it's like going and hanging out with people. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, you've, you've seen in my videos when I do our yearly show here, right? The electronics show. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Exactly.

Dave Jones: Right. And, you know, they, they have talks and stuff like that, but you go in there and like, you're lucky if it hits double digits. Yeah. Right. People. I mean, maybe if I gave a talk and I actually announced it and stuff. Yeah. We, you know, they might fill it out maybe, which I have done at a acre fair. One time I did a talk at a, when we had a make a fair, we don't even have that anymore. Right. I gave a talk and a make a fair. I announced I was going to be there and that was packed out. Right. That was like standing room only. That's, I recorded that somewhere. It's on one of my channels somewhere long time ago, but yeah, we don't even have that anymore. So maybe I could fill out a room, but you know, Joe Average is not going to be there. Kind of without, without an existing established audience, isn't going to, you know, fill out a room, unfortunately.

Chris Gammell: All right. Here we go, Dave. Here we go. Well, I just typed in electronics conference, Australia, December 2nd, international conference on electrical engineering and electronics. Sounds like you just, you just signed up for that. Let's see what else.

Dave Jones: 10 people who turn up to that. Right. Show me.

Chris Gammell: Send me a link. Send me a link. International conference on big data, IOT, and something else that got cut off.

Dave Jones: Oh God.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Internet international conference on advances in power. Sounds like you have a lot of like academic conferences. You know, this is, this is all the academic departments. Yeah. They're like, you know, where do we want to go? How about, can we get a free flight to Sydney? I bet we could.

Dave Jones: Definitely. There's always the IEEE, you know, there's always, you know, they have a branch in every state here, you know, and they, they give talks. I've been to some IEEE talks, but once again, you know, it's 10 people.

Chris Gammell: You just put international in the conference, Dave. You have to be international. The international is in the title, so it has to be.

Dave Jones: Right. Right. Yeah. Send me a link. Where is it?

Chris Gammell: All right.

Chris Gammell: Let's see.

Chris Gammell: Let's see. Oh, you want to like right now? I thought you meant for later. Yeah. No, no, no. I want it right now. Oh yeah. Let's see if that, it's just a Google link. So I don't know if that's going to work.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Electronics is on there.

Dave Jones: International conference on embedded electronics engineering. Who's that run by? Who's it run by? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know how to get to these conference index. Yeah.

Dave Jones: More info.

Chris Gammell: Waset.org. Waset.org. Who?

Dave Jones: Waset.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, this is an old looking site. I don't know who Waset is. Okay. There's a program in Sydney. All right. There's a, look. Waset. What? The definitive resource for trusted open science.

Chris Gammell: That sounds legit.

Dave Jones: That even sounds legit. Or totally like wacky. Like, you know, those, the definitive, you know, those websites that, you know, like those journals that claim to be, you know, and they hold conferences for like wacky energy stuff and things like that. Yeah. But, yeah.

Chris Gammell: One thing I actually have heard is like, there's a Linux conference down there in January, I think normally. Yeah. That's one.

Dave Jones: I've never been to that. And yeah, it moves locations.

Chris Gammell: John Oxler goes to that maybe?

Dave Jones: He goes to that. He's given talks, I think, at that. Yeah. Yeah. John Oxler's. He's even like organized. Yeah. I think he organized the electronics part of it because normally like it's a Linux thing, but there's sort of an electronics-y kind of branch. And I think John Oxler sort of helped found that or something. So they have like a little, you know, cohort of people who turn up just for that, just for that, or people who have, who they like the Linux, but they also have an interest in hardware. You know, so there is like a little hardware spinoff element to that. Right. So it's possible, but yeah, there's nothing big. Like, there's nothing like, I don't know what to give a talk on anyway.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. There was an open hardware. Yeah. That was it. Andy Gelman, John Oxler did the open hardware mini-conf as part of that. Andy.

Dave Jones: Yep. That's right. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, if that happens again, you should, you should try to. Yeah. I should try and rock up. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Do something. Anyway, that's our amp hour this week.

Chris Gammell: That is. Yeah. Definitely. You got to run. I got to run. I'm out of here, dude. All right. Have a good week. Catch you next time. See you next time.

Chris Gammell: Bye.

Speaker ?: We'll be right back.