#627 – Works on my machine

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released April 9th, 2023. Episode 627. Works on my machine.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog. And I'm Chris Campbell of Contextual Electronics.

Chris Gammell: Is it the end of Moore's Law? It is the end of Moore. I'm not sure. I think it's already. I think we already hit the end of Moore's Law. I think it's. I think so. Can we officially say it's gone? Well, I mean, there's a lot of pieces on the internet about it being dead for a long time now.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes. Sadly, Gordon Moore. Yes. Gordon E. Moore passed away. It was just after we recorded the last episode, I think. It was 19. That's right. Oh, what an innings.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Good.

Dave Jones: As we say here in Australia.

Chris Gammell: Uh-huh. Got it.

Dave Jones: That wouldn't be a phrase in the US because it has to do with cricket.

Chris Gammell: Right. I mean, people could say it about baseball, I suppose, here. But no, they don't.

Dave Jones: Oh, there's innings in baseball, right?

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. All right. No, they don't. It's not a. Yeah. Not a saying here.

Dave Jones: Okay. There you go.

Chris Gammell: But yeah, 94. It's a long, very influential career.

Dave Jones: What was he doing in his later years? Do you have any idea?

Chris Gammell: No. No? No. You?

Dave Jones: No. No idea. That's why I'm asking. Otherwise, I would have said, oh, yeah, he's been working. He was still working until he was working at the startup. No. No. Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah. So, yeah. Does, do, do engineers actually retire? Oh. I just saw this on Twitter before I logged on. They're going, oh, no one's, you know, because the financial situation today, you know, no one's ever going to be able to retire. And I'm going, and then I just thought to myself, well, I'm probably never going to actually retire. I can't imagine just sitting around doing nothing. Like.

Chris Gammell: I literally was having this conversation today as well on a section I'm part of. There's someone who actually is retiring.

Dave Jones: Are they an engineer?

Chris Gammell: They are. Yep. Yep. Exactly.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. At a ripe old age of what?

Chris Gammell: 70, I think.

Dave Jones: Oh, I see. Right. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So like, yeah. Long, long career. And yeah, I think, I don't know. I learned that after I was kind of musing on all this stuff, but it was just the same kind of thing of like, what am I going to do if I ever retire? You know, like, first off, if I, if I can ever retire, hopefully so. And, you know, I'm pretty frugal. I save my money.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But what, you've got to define retirement for an engineer. I mean. That's the real thing. Right. For me, defining retirement for an engineer means I've got enough money that I don't have to actually do anything. Right. But my hobbies don't die. I still keep doing my hobbies.

Chris Gammell: Right. I think that's what it comes down to. Like, will I stop doing electronics? Yeah. I mean, yes. I'm sure at some point I'll, the interest will wane and, you know, or my eyesight will get so bad or my hands will, you know, I won't be able to solder anymore. My hand, you know, like my health will fail me at some point.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But you can always do something. The good thing about engineering is that, well. True. True. You know, electronics engineering is that you can, you know, even if you can't, okay, your hands are shaky, you've got Parkinson's and you can't solder anymore or something, you know, if it's that bad or something like that, or, you know, your eyesight's so far gone that you can't see, you know, you can at least still like, I don't know. Do simulations if you wanted to. Yeah, exactly. I know. You can still do research and you can still, yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Accessibility mode on a computer. You know, you still could do, yeah. Coding if you wanted, if you wanted to. I think, yeah, what it really comes down to is probably, you know, in the later years, if I'm still interested in it. Yeah. I don't know. It's interesting to think about. I think about my other hobbies and which are minimal right now. My main hobby is raising a child.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I can see you. I can see you straying from the path. You're not as hardcore as, you know, myself because you weren't an early hobbyist, right? You sort of went, oh yeah, I'll do engineering at uni.

Chris Gammell: We're going to do a little, do we want to do some comparisons about electronics work in the past six months?

Dave Jones: True, but I wager that I'll be doing it a hell of a lot longer than you will. I mean, yeah. I reckon I will still have the hobby when you're long. Here's the other thing.

Chris Gammell: You're a lot healthier than I am generally, so you probably will have better health. People don't, I don't know, people probably know like how much you work out. Like you're a very healthy, health conscious person. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I am, I am not, I'm not like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But you're not like obese or, you know, it's not like you're unhealthy. You just don't, you know, you're not hardcore.

Chris Gammell: That's not one of my hobbies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It isn't one of your hobbies. Yeah. That's right.

Chris Gammell: High intensity training. Yeah. That's true. Exactly. That's true.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, I just got back from the gym. I just had a shower before this because I was just sweating like a pig coming back from the gym and I did it last night as well. Yeah. So I like in, within 24 hours I've done two hardcore high intensity workouts.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. If you wanted to compare between you and I of the last time that one of us did a workout. Yeah. Right. I think that would be very disparate as well. I generally do agree. You're right. You started as a hobbyist. You have, you know, had your professional career. You will probably continue as a hobbyist a long time from now. Yep. I do agree with your assessment generally.

Dave Jones: Even if I'm not doing the daily engineering thing, right? It's still, you know, there's something, there's some interesting engineering thing that I'm reading or thinking about daily. And I don't think that'll never be the case. Right. I don't, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know if I'll give up the mindset, but I might give up the mechanics.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So.

Dave Jones: Well, this, I've got an interesting segue for that because I just released on my second channel, if you haven't seen it, I went to the Manly Warringah Radio Society last week and they held a vintage kit evening. Okay. And I was invited as kind of the.

Chris Gammell: If you want. If you want a crowd that is into electronics, Linzer, there are many later years. You go to a ham radio. You go to a ham meetup. Yes.

Speaker ?: That's right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Spot the average age. I was the youngster there. Like, you know. Oh, man. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh. Son, you got some dark hair on your head there. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. It's like.

Chris Gammell: I'm half gray. Yeah. Yeah. We said you got a lot of dark hair on your head there.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I think there were four females there. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. That's. That's. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So Warringah is an area. Is that right?

Dave Jones: It's an area in Sydney. Yeah. Manly Warringah. It's the northern beaches. Sort of like. Okay. Yeah. Cool.

Chris Gammell: What got you out there?

Dave Jones: Well, I've actually been there before. I've shot videos. My mate, Mal. Oh, yeah. He actually invited me.

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. And of course, my mate, Tricky Dick Smith was going to be there. So, yeah. I did see the photo that you posted. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. He was the other guest. So him and I judged the displays and I actually took in some vintage stuff and I couldn't vote for myself, of course. But, of course, you know, I had my collection of vintage kits and things like that. And yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, run it out. What did we see? I mean, obviously we can go watch the video. I'll link the video in. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You can go watch the video. Yep. And tons of like old school, you know, hand receivers, like, you know, do it yourself kits. I bought in my vintage Intel kit from the 1970s. I built in some of the projects that I famously built in Electronics Australia magazine and stuff like that. I bought in my old Tandy kits and things. Nice. Nice. Yep. Yep. And we finally got Dick Smith after 55 years to hold up a Tandy beach ball.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: Right. That's just an in joke for everyone who understands the rivalry between Dick Smith and Tandy back in the day. You know, that was like, they were the two hobby outlets where you, you know, bought your parts from, you know, Tandy and Dick Smith. So it was. Yep. Anyway. Yeah. That was fun.

Chris Gammell: So tricky, tricky Dick was there.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. Dick was there.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Still.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Spry.

Dave Jones: Oh, he's, he's still sharp as a tack. He's mid seventies. I think he, I think he's 76 or something. Maybe. I don't know. We can check out his wiki. What is his wiki? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Say. It's interesting. Like these local. Entrepreneur. He's born in 44. Same as my dad was born in 44. That makes him 79. Are you serious? Oh man. No. Like he's, he's sharp as a tack. No, he's still the high spirit. For people who don't know, we'll link in the video of him giving a talk at the same Manly Warringah ham thing about his adventures. He was the first to solo around the world in a helicopter. He was the first to do it. He's gone on all these adventures. He's knowing, you know, like he sold Dick Smith back in 1982 or something. It was, you know, it's like, it's basically ancient history. He's more known as an adventurer. And he was the head of the civil aviation authority here in Australia for quite a few years. He was actually the head of that.

Chris Gammell: So when he retired from his thing, he had no shortage of things.

Dave Jones: He had no shortage of things. He was, and he did start up, you know. He's a man who has hobbies. Yeah. And he started up food companies to make actually Australian made food. This was back in the days when all our food was, you know, the trend was starting to be like made overseas and stuff. He formed, you know, an Australian food company to get stuff locally made. And, you know, he's had all sorts of entrepreneurial things over the years. So he's more of a business. Like he is a, you know, he is a hobbyist. That's why he turns up to a vintage ham meetup. And he's a ham, of course. And he's called sign is a VK2 dick without the C. So, yeah. Nice, nice, nice.

Chris Gammell: It'd be really great if he, if one of the food companies he started was like a ham, like a canned ham company or something like that. Oh, right. Canned ham. Canned ham.

Dave Jones: Spam in a can. Yep. Not spam in a can. Dick in a can. Dick in a can.

Chris Gammell: I don't think that's a good idea.

Dave Jones: Right. Oh, and it's sell a mozza. I'm telling you. Yep. Anyway, I put up a new photo on his page, actually, that I took there. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: Great. Great, great, great. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And he's still looking fantastic, as you can see. So, anyway. That's fun. Yeah. Tricky dick. So, yes, he's still doing the, you know, still doing the hobby thing. You know, he's still, you know, you can still call him a hobbyist, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

Chris Gammell: Cool. You also went to the EV show. I don't think we talked about that last time, did we?

Dave Jones: No, I don't think so. Yes, I did go. There is a video on my second channel. I didn't really go there to shoot it. I just, I did take my camera, but I, there is a walk around. I actually did like a walk around video, but I didn't like do any interviews or anything like that. It's just a walk around. Although I did interview Mal, who's, who, Fade. Right. Yeah. So, there's a little talk with him about catch up and stuff. But, yeah.

Chris Gammell: About your favorite electric vehicle. Is that the one that you guys chatted about? The Sinclair C5?

Dave Jones: Yeah, the Sinclair C5. Yes. Yes. But he's now got a solar powered boat.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, he got a boat on Gumtree for like 50 bucks or something. Oh, wow. He converted it to solar power. So, yeah. Cool.

Chris Gammell: Cool. Yeah. Well, so the EV show, anything worth seeing or no?

Dave Jones: No, I did briefly catch up with Walter. Why do I always call him Walter? The fully charged guy. Oh, cool. Yes. Red Dwarf. Robert. Robert. Why do I always call him Walter Llewellyn? It's Robert Llewellyn.

Chris Gammell: Robert Llewellyn. Okay.

Dave Jones: Robert Llewellyn. Yes. Yeah. For those fans of Red Dwarf.

Chris Gammell: One of the hosts of the show.

Dave Jones: He's the founder. Yeah. He's the founder and one of the hosts of the fully charged. So, I had a brief meeting with him. And yeah. Yeah. He's a really top bloke. So, I didn't want to bother him with an interview because he was so busy. Like, everyone was trying to get a selfie with the Red Dwarf dude. You know? Yeah. Like, it was. Yeah. He was extremely busy. But that was quite a large show. I was actually quite impressed by that. I was amazed that they'd basically put on by a YouTube channel. Like, you know.

Chris Gammell: Well, a production company plus YouTube channel.

Dave Jones: Well, there, I guess they're a production. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. It's not just. Yeah. Conferences are nothing to sneeze at. There's a lot of stuff going on there. Yeah. And you can always hire it out. But then you got to gather the money.

Dave Jones: Yeah. All that sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: As a conference organizer myself. Yes. Yes. Yes. Small potatoes.

Dave Jones: It actually wasn't that cheap to go to. It was, you know, fairly expensive to get a ticket or whatever. But the thing that I found amazing is that all the talks, they had, I think, five different locations for talks. So there was one outside. There was a tent outside. And there were, like, four locations inside. And all of them were standing room only. Even for the most, like, trivial, like, marketing presentation. You know, it's like some companies giving some talk on, you know, home solar or something because they're flogging, you know, home solar stuff or whatever. Right. Standing room only. Like, you know, I was just amazed that people were there for the talks. It was just, like, wow. Wow. I'm not stunned. Like, usually, you know, like, it's usually hard to fill up a talk at a trade show, you know? So. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's right. Well, I guess it depends on the type. But.

Chris Gammell: The thing that's interesting about this sort of thing is, like, so, like, you and I think about, like, technical talks at technical conferences. Right. And there's, like, a slate of that sort of thing. This is, like, technical talks at a. Joe Public. This is Joe Public. Yeah. Right, right, right. Right. Right. So, everything is kind of, like, amazing and different. Right. And it sounds like it was, well, attended to. So, it's, like, another thing to do.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Or another thing that's included. So, yeah. Maybe people are just trying to maximize their output. I don't know. Yeah. That's great, though. You should be talking to me next time.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I was stunned. Like, I was there for most of the day. And, like, I was there for the last talk or whatever. And it was still, you know, it was still full at the last talk. I couldn't believe it. So, yeah. Really amazing stuff.

Chris Gammell: It's great. Anyway, yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. But I still can't. Damn it. They still. Can somebody please, if you know, send me an email or leave it in the comments or do something. Is there a bloody EV available that is just like a station wagon with a big boot that you can actually put stuff in? They just focus on bloody, like, making them, you know, aerodynamic and stuff. Like, no, I'll happily trade off range for boot space, please.

Chris Gammell: A big, boxy cargo carrier, basically.

Dave Jones: A big, boxy cargo carrier thing. Yeah. Yeah, there are. You know, you can get a giant Mercedes or something, but it's like $100,000, $150,000. Right. Is there just like a boring looking station wagon EV? You know? It's like a big, as a way.

Chris Gammell: I don't know about station wagon, but, like, in the US, at least, there's, like, minivans that are going electric now that are, like, they are expensive, too. Yeah, you can get vans.

Dave Jones: You can get, you know, you can get, yeah. But they're fairly expensive. Like, I sat in one and I had these luxurious reclining seats.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: And I'm going, come on. Seriously? Just lower the price. Just strip it all down. Take all that crap out.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right. Exactly. You're like, basically, take the skateboard, put the biggest, like, metal cage you can around it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's street legal. Yep. Make it sharp edges. I don't give a shit. And then just, yeah. Yep, yep. Don't care. I'll put it in seats myself. Thank you.

Dave Jones: Yes, yes. Exactly. It's like, because we've got, like, a seven-seater 2012, 2011 Nissan Dualis Plus 2, it is. The plus two is the two extra seats in the back. And we hardly ever use the two seats in the back. But, you know, it's good for our holiday trips.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: Because we have to, like, load the thing up. And we, you know, we'd like to buy a full-

Chris Gammell: You are squarely in minivan land. That is, I'm not sure how big minivans are in Australia. Maybe.

Dave Jones: But, and, and, we've got a roof rack thing on top. You know, we've got one of those pod things as well. So, when we go on, you know, large trips, you have to take the pod. But it's just, like, it's so full, we can't see out the back of it. And, you know, it's fairly boxy. It's got, like, you know, a tailgate thing. And it's not, you know, sloped at the back to make it look aerodynamic. Right. So, you know, you don't use-

Chris Gammell: I have a feeling that I maybe mentioned this on the show before. But one of my favorite brands that I've ever seen was actually the cargo carrier that my folks had when I was growing up. And it was just, like, a, you know, roto-molded plastic injection, you know, piece of crap. It, like, really was not well-made. It was made by Sears. Sears? But the brand name-

Dave Jones: Yeah, you used to be able to buy kit houses at Sears.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's right. That's right. But the brand name was X Cargo. Like, extra cargo. Yeah, yeah. And also, it looked like a snail shell. And I was like, oh, my God. That is, like, my favorite brand. X Cargo. I am looking at it now. X Cargo. Isn't that great?

Dave Jones: Oh, that's- No, it's just a pod. Are you sure it's a car?

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. It's just the pod. Yeah, that's right.

Dave Jones: Oh, the pod. Okay, right. Yes. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No buying cars at Sears that I know of.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Giant pod. We don't have the hard shell one. We've got a soft shell. Yeah. Pod, yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. That's what I want. Give me a big freaking roof rack. A big 1970s roof rack and a station wagon. You know that?

Chris Gammell: Dave is in the optimization stage of his life right now.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. I did think about- I haven't discussed the topic with Mrs. AEV blog yet. I'm sure it'll be a hard night. But I did. I do like the Aptira. Have you seen the Aptira? Aptira.

Chris Gammell: All the brand names are different where you are, so that's the other thing. No, no, no, no.

Dave Jones: This is the Aptira Motors. I'll send you a link.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Aptira US. Oh, I see. There you go. It's the fancy looking solar powered EV.

Chris Gammell: It looks like a plane.

Dave Jones: It looks like a three wheeled plane kind of thing. It looks like-

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it looks like the wheels would lift up after the wings pop out or something like that. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You do like this or you don't like this?

Dave Jones: I like it. I like the concept. And it's cheap. It's relatively cheap because it's bare bones, right? It's just bare bones. And they will apparently sell them in Australia. But I thought it'd be fun to do a cross Australia trip. Yeah, it looks like, yeah. But I would love to do a cross Australia trip in that because I was actually Dick Smith on his, I didn't know this, but Tricky Dick Smith, he actually held the record at one point for a crossing Australia in an EV. This was back in the 80s, right?

Chris Gammell: Really?

Dave Jones: So yeah, in a solar powered, I don't know, was it solar powered? Yeah, it was a solar powered EV. It was one of the first, you know, early prototype. Yeah. He actually held the record for traveling across Australia in an EV. In the 19 freaking 80s, right?

Chris Gammell: You go across the outback, you get a lot of sunshine, but.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And you just, apparently you can sleep in the back. Apparently the cargo space, you could actually, if you really wanted to, you could kind of like there is enough room in the back or something to sleep.

Chris Gammell: I guess this is another hobby you could have in retirement, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Like I would.

Chris Gammell: Those tires look like they would like literally fall off the car. This looks like, this is, this is basically an upgraded version of the Sinclair C5.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. That's what it looks like to me.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Solar powered.

Chris Gammell: Those are like, those are like the wheels of a wheelbarrow.

Dave Jones: I've got a second channel video on running through the numbers and yeah, you could probably like, maybe like, yeah, yeah. Solar powered. Like, cause it's only got 800 Watts worth of solar panels. Right. And if you just run the numbers, 800 Watts doesn't put much energy per day into your EV. Right. So, so it's not, so you're not going to be able to drive it continuously. Even if you've got full sun in the Australian outback in the middle of the summer.

Chris Gammell: You'd be like, you'd be like Mark Watney going across, going across the Mars landscape. Yes.

Dave Jones: On the Mars landscape. Yep. You've got to stop every, you know, six hours or something and recharge the, pull out the panels, brush them off. Yep. Brush them off. And yeah. Maybe you'd have to carry some bigger panels and plug them in or something, you know, like, yeah. Yeah. But I would see, I would love to do that. So I would love to buy one of these, do that trip and then maybe sell it. Cause I have no use for it afterwards.

Chris Gammell: So when you get there and fly back from Perth, that's what you'd do. Yeah. I'm only driving this one way.

Dave Jones: Well, I'd maybe go across and back maybe. I don't know. Oh, yuck.

Chris Gammell: Yuck. Yeah. What? No, thanks. I hate road trips, Dave. That's. Oh, no. See, I. You and I did a road trip. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We did a road trip down to Canberra. Well, yeah. Canberra is only like two and a half hours though. So. Yeah. Yeah. He, he, he barely survived folks. Barely survived.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like.

Chris Gammell: What do we talk about? I mean, we can't fill two and a half hours, two and a half hours.

Dave Jones: And then we got there and we ended up at the wrong location with a paddock full of kangaroos. And it was like, yeah. You know. Yeah. Oops. Yeah. And then we were all locked out of our apartment. Cause we didn't have the keys or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That was, that just came up. That was actually six years ago this week.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? That I was there. Yeah. Wow. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Any more plans for coming back to Australia with the wife and kids? Kid, kid. Singular.

Chris Gammell: That's right. No. That's a long ass flight with a child. Right. Yes. With a child. As you may know. Yes, of course. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No. I love road trips, but I like, I would know the thought of like traveling 14 hours to the U S by plane is just like, ah, it's just torture.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: That's a lot. That's a lot.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I've, uh, you know, generally I've been a little down on travel. Like, unlike I used to be, obviously I want to be home for my, my child and my wife to take care of the child. And yeah, I think I'm just, you know, further, further introverted. So, you know, I see the world through my microphone and my screen, Dave.

Dave Jones: Well, it's, it's only going to get worse. You do realize this because it's at the point where, of course. Oh, I miss daddy. Where they can actually start talking and they start realizing that daddy's not there. And yep. Yeah, of course.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: How old now?

Chris Gammell: Uh, little one's two. Two.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. So expect it to get worse in the next year or two when they realize that you're not there. And yep.

Chris Gammell: Well, I mean, I'm on video chat when I'm not there, but I will be going to Prague in two months from now. Uh, I'll be in Prague. That's where the embedded open source summit is this year. So that is Zephyr summit. Basically. Like I went to last year is now in Prague. Never been there. That's cool.

Dave Jones: Are you doing anything else there? Taking any extra time off or are you just doing that? No, no, that's not how that works.

Chris Gammell: Sunday to Friday. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Have you been there before?

Chris Gammell: No, never been. All right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I haven't been there either.

Chris Gammell: So yeah, I hear it's beautiful. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I heard it's great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Actually, uh, speaking of Prague denizens as well. In the world of 3d printing, the Prusa crew just released their Mark four printer. And if you were going to get a new printer, Dave, if you ever wanted to get a printer, I say you get the Prusa. Yeah. The Prusa Mark four. Right.

Dave Jones: It did pop up on Twitter the other day. I didn't know it was new, but yeah, I did see the. Yeah. That one just released.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. They. How much is that? Probably like for an Aussie box, five, 1500 Aussie box. Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: So, so it's a pricey high end printer.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It still doesn't look like a, like, you know, you can get ones that look identical and it looks like, like you can get ones that look exactly the same for like 200 bucks.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. What's, what's so special about it? Does it have a big build envelope? I can't tell by from the photos.

Chris Gammell: It's really the reliability and the support. So like. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's just a rock solid printer. It's, you can definitely get cheaper ones. You can definitely make other ones as reliable, but it's just like plug it in off you go kind of thing. And then, you know, open source and.

Dave Jones: Does it have its own software or does it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So there's Prusa Slicer is the Slicer program and they actually have their own marketplace now as well.

Dave Jones: And that actually makes it, does it? Does that like, cause I can't imagine the hardware is that radically better than anyone else. It just looks like.

Chris Gammell: Oh, there's some new features. I'd say there's a new, like they're doing force feedback. I think they have like a strain sensor. Oh, okay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Interesting. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Good stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And so, you know, really it's just, I like the company. They're well supported. There's a lot of people that have them too. So then when you do run into problems, I just don't want to fiddle with it. I honestly, that's what it comes out. I have to admit it.

Dave Jones: Totally. Why the hell would you want to fiddle with a 3d printer? It's just dumb.

Chris Gammell: That is. I want to do the first time, you know, and that's what I did. Maybe.

Dave Jones: Well, well back in the day you had to, right?

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: I mean, they're from hell. Heck they came as a kit, right?

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: I've still got that video of me building the early maker bot, the cupcake or whatever it was. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I am way past that part of my life and I just need a tool. So a tool, there are other tools. I could also, you know, ship stuff off, but I find, you know, so like, like two weeks ago, we talked about things that I want to like do more of, learn more of. One of them is just like getting better at 3d modeling so that I can crank more stuff out on my printer and, you know, kind of get 3d world feedback on it. And just having the flow that is just like click and export and it's, it's there and ready to go. Like that is super important for me that I don't even think about it to the point where even another thing that like, I didn't really think about Prusa makes their own filament too, but it's like super dialed in for. So it's like, they control the, like, again, it sounds like I'm like, just kind of, I am in their ecosystem. You don't, you don't get locked in their ecosystem, but I give you kind of do the happy path in that case, you just don't have to think about anything. And that's where I'm at. I'm like, don't make me think that's, that is my number.

Dave Jones: I heard that they did an April fool's joke where they released hexagonal filament. And apparently people say it's actually a real thing and they actually did it or something. Yeah. Something like that on Twitter. I saw.

Chris Gammell: I mean, if you extrude it, you'd think you just changed the extruder. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think they actually did it and they actually made spools of hexagonal. Yep. Filament. So do you still do the ABS thing or is it, what's, what's the other?

Chris Gammell: No, I use PLA. Right. And, um. Yeah. Uh, what's the other one? I don't remember.

Dave Jones: I don't keep track with this anymore. So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There's a TPS. That's not it. Right. It's in Prusa slicers. Let me just open that up.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I've got one of those, like, uh, what are they called? The. Petgy. The ones that, you know, you're actually have to dissolve it. What are the, you know, the laser printed. Oh, like the support material. Yeah. Resin. Resin printers or whatever.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. SLA. Yeah. So. Selective laser.

Dave Jones: So selective laser ablation or something. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Petgy is the other one that I was thinking about. So I use the Prusim and Petgy as well. And that's kind of like more waterproof and.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Again, just dialed in. Good to go. Yeah. That's how I made all my models for the last trade show I was at.

Dave Jones: I should actually get a new printer because the maker bot I've got is so old that it's just like, it's, you know, it's sort of like hard to deal with now. I should actually have one that's set up down in my dungeon. So I know all I've got to do is press a button or, or can I even send it a file via the network or something? Can I, is it networkable?

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure if the new ones have networking. Right. I think they do. I think that, yeah, I think there's like a, a wifi add on for it. Oh, okay. I, I don't have that on my, I still have the mini. So like, you know, I, I don't have any need to upgrade right now, but.

Dave Jones: No, I should do that. So all I have to do is pull the cover off it and press print. And, you know. Yeah. I mean.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. You should really figure out what you want to print. I'd say as well. Like, are you printing stuff?

Dave Jones: Not really. Yeah. Because I know it's a pain in the ass. Right. So that's the problem.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. It is kind of that chicken and egg kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Here's the thing. I would say if you got one and then you found you didn't, I would probably like, if I were you and you were actually interested in that, I'd say like, get it, put a label on it, set an alarm on your phone. And then if six months, if you haven't printed anything, sell it locally. Yeah. Right. So like you make some of your local money back.

Dave Jones: Well, the kids are at a point where they might want to make stuff on it, you know, cause they're using 3d printers and stuff. So, you know, yeah. Yeah. But I, I feel as though it's a tool I should have. Right. I feel as though it's, you know, I probably don't have a properly equipped lab unless I have at least a functional 3d printer.

Chris Gammell: I'd say maybe, but I don't know. I don't know. Like it's like, so like I, so like my lab has a vinyl cutter now.

Dave Jones: Well, I do actually have a project coming up that I'm thinking about. It'll be a bare board. I thought about searching for a case for it, but then I thought, maybe not. Maybe if I just like design a 3d printed enclosure, then I simply release that and everyone can print their own, own enclosure if they want. So it can either be used as a desktop thing with no enclosure, or you can, sorry, or if you want to make it look a bit fancy pantsy, you can actually put an enclosure around it. So it works both ways. So, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's not bad.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: All right. Seed of an idea has been planted. Yes. Dave may have a new printer at some point.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But you know, a thousand bucks is kind of pricey.

Chris Gammell: I know it's not, it's not nothing. And I, when I was shopping around for a new printer, I asked on Twitter and, you know, went through all the different options and just the thing that kept coming up over and over again was just the reliability. That's all. And that's now that I have it, I'm not letting that go. So that's, that's the key thing.

Dave Jones: Well, you've got a mini, right?

Chris Gammell: I got a mini. That's right. Maybe I should just get 500 bucks.

Dave Jones: Right. Maybe I should just get a mini.

Chris Gammell: I would say like another thing that I always thought I need like a ton of build volume. Yeah. I don't, yeah, I don't need it.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And, uh, and the new slicer soft, one of the new slicer softwares makes it a lot easier. I follow, uh, Thomas Sarlander and he does a lot of great videos, including a Mark four review that I can link in, but he was reviewing the new proof of slicer 2.6, I think. And that has some new options to like make it easier to like chop stuff up for smaller build volumes. That's another thing that's like, you could always do if you really needed to. But again, like I, I really don't find, I find myself kind of designing to the build volume in my have. Yes. And that's right. That's all they really need. So.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. I feel as though I should have one. I feel as though my labs. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I'm actually doing a lab cleanup at the moment. So I'm actually like doing organization. In fact, probably today after this, I might actually go down. I'm installing more PowerPoints down in the dungeon. That's part of the, like a, and, you know, a reorg down there and, you know, have stuff set up and sort of, you know, I've installed the internet down there. So, you know, step one.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's the, yeah. You drag that cable down there. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Drag that cable down there. That was quite an effort, but, uh, finally have it. And, uh, that's where my, my, uh, servers, my raid, you know, NAS boxes down there now. Oh, sure. Sure. Sure. You know, so it's all down there. So I've got a one gig ethernet connection straight down to my dungeon. And, uh, you know, I've got power, I've got lighting, I've got benches. I'm going to build another bench. I just found a pallet in the, uh, dumpster room. And I thought about just doing a quick video, actually assembling a, and turning a pallet into a nice workbench.

Chris Gammell: Define pallet in Australia. Pallet.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? Pallet's not a U.S. Thing?

Chris Gammell: No, I, I, I have a vision in my mind, but I'm not sure it's the same thing.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Here we go. A pallet. I will send you a, a, a shipping pallet. Really? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like wooden slats? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: A wooden slat shipping pallet.

Chris Gammell: Okay. That's what I thought. Yeah. Yeah. So you're going to make that into a bench though?

Dave Jones: You said? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can turn that. I'm pretty sure I could turn that into a bench.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you would put something on top. Okay. I'm thinking of like the slats. You wouldn't have.

Dave Jones: Oh, you would actually move the slats together. So I'd, I'd hammer them out and I'd take them out cause they're nailed in and then I'd move them together and then you sand the whole thing and then you could even, you know, lacquer it and oil it if you want and stuff like that. But yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I could turn a pallet into it.

Chris Gammell: I always just figured it was like really low quality wood that they use for those things.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Yeah, it is. It's not great. Okay. Right. Got it. So it's like a, you know, it's like.

Chris Gammell: Kind of quick and dirty kind of thing.

Dave Jones: It's, it's a quick and dirty thing, but yeah.

Chris Gammell: Got it.

Dave Jones: Pallets are actually quite expensive. They're worth a lot of money. They're worth like a couple hundred bucks a pop. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I've seen people, people around here often are like transporting them in bulk, you know, after like you see shipping. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They, the companies that specialize in pallets, they want to get the pallets back cause they're expensive. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. You definitely don't want to ship something on a pallet and then throw the pallet away. Jeez. You know?

Chris Gammell: No. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like, but that's what somebody did here. I found a pallet and perfectly like top quality pallet in the dumpster room. You know? Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it's really crappy wood. It's not sanded. It's got, you know, crap. Like.

Chris Gammell: It's not matched at all. No, no, no. It's not. No. Different colors, colorations.

Dave Jones: So you could turn it into something nice, but then you'd have to really sand it to buggery. Then you'd have to oil it multiple times and do lacquer it maybe. And, you know, stuff like that to really turn it into a, you know, if you wanted a schmick looking bench, but.

Chris Gammell: I thought you were maybe going for like shabby chic down in your.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Shabby chic. It's mixed. I've got a desk. So I've got my old workbench. I've got my old garage bench, lab workbench there, which is mounted on the wall. Then I've got a desk, which was there when I actually bought the dungeon. So I've got a desk, like as in a work, you know, office desk. And then, yeah, I'll probably make this pallet workbench. I'll probably maybe attach that to the wall or something and just use that as like a, just a mechanical whack and stuff on kind of bench. You know, I just, yeah. I don't care how it looks. In fact, I don't care how the entire dungeon looks really. I mean, it's a dungeon. Yeah. For goodness sake.

Chris Gammell: That's right. That's right. Keep the lighting low. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to install more PowerPoints. Yep.

Chris Gammell: My first job, I worked in like the fourth bay of the warehouse that they owned. The fourth bay. Yeah. So there was like, so it was like the front first bay was like where all the office space was. It was actually like furnished. Then it was like two bays of like manufacturing. So it was like, it's like well lit and like heated and whatever. I can just picture it. It was just like storage. It was like me in like, you know, I was Milton. Who's the guy in office space? Milton.

Dave Jones: Milton in office space. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was just that guy in the back with like a single lamp working at like a rolling, I think a rolling like shipping container or something like that. Yeah. And then I had like a, you know, an old desktop computer. Oh, dude.

Dave Jones: Have you seen the photo of me in the dungeon at Surcell? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think you sent that last. I think maybe we have this conversation here. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I was literally in the basement next to the fire escape. Yep. Just classic. Surrounded by chairs because they used it as a chair storage place. I'm just surrounded by like, yeah, 50 stairs and chairs. Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: You were the chairman.

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

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: Is that like, do you have to go through something like that to, you know, to like, is it like a rite of passage in the industry to like have a shit cubicle or whatever?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I think about some of the people, I've been doing a lot of resume review lately. Yeah. I'm helping to hire people. It is, it is quite an interesting, it's very interesting as like a, as an exercise. I, it really is tough over time because you start to like, everything starts to look the same. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it really starts to differentiate or it's hard to differentiate people after, after looking at that many resumes.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: But some people, they don't have grunt work, you know, like they don't have like.

Dave Jones: Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: The food service job or, you know, like I respect, I respect seeing a food service job on a, on a resume.

Dave Jones: See, I've, I've, I've never had that. I have never had a non-professional engineering job. I, I got my first job when I was seven. No, yeah. Paper, right? Really. I have never had a knife. Come on, man.

Chris Gammell: I've been working since I was 12.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. Like I, I, I did my own stuff. I actually.

Chris Gammell: That's true. You had your software company, right?

Dave Jones: Collected like cans. I, right. I had my software. I was selling software. I was actually collecting cans because you got. Deposit back. You get the deposit back or whatever. And you know, I was doing stuff like that, but I never actually worked for, I never worked at McDonald's. I never worked. Employer. You know, yeah. I never, my first job at 17 was as a tech working at a engineering company. So yeah.

Chris Gammell: There you go. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So I've never had a.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure. I'm sure I've said this on the show before too, but my first job was working for Warren Buffett.

Dave Jones: Really? Do him what?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. He owned, at the time he owned the Buffalo News, which is the local, I grew up in Buffalo, New York. Right. And Buffalo News with the news, new newspaper there. And I was a paper boy.

Dave Jones: Oh, paper boy. Okay. All right.

Chris Gammell: Warren Buffett was my first boss.

Dave Jones: Oh, there you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. All right. I'm sure those coins you got came straight out of his pocket, you know? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: He really, he really felt it when he was, yeah. Yeah. You know, these paper boys, they're taking me to the cleaners.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, I don't know if I can pay you this week. I'm a bit short, you know? Can you? Yeah. Oh, boy. Yep. Okay. Okay. So you, you, I get the hint that you would look down on somebody who hasn't done, or you won't. No, no, no, no. You would prefer somebody who's done the grunt work?

Chris Gammell: Like, I don't, I don't, like, I don't count it against people. Some people would be like, oh, why would they put that on here? But I feel like it's like a, like, like you're saying, it's like a rite of passage. It's like, it's just grunt work showing you can like show up. You know, if you have like two years of like working in food service in high school, like, yeah, it means you were like, you know, probably.

Dave Jones: It shows that you can put up with not so much crap, but you know, just like the non-ideal job, right? You aren't going to bail in three months because it wasn't the, you know, fantastic job you thought it was, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think that's right. But, you know, anyways, I think just with looking at that many resumes, some people, you know, they, they go high school to uni to Google internship to, you know, some people just, yeah, they, they've been in the, they've been on that top two thing. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because they got a scholarship so they didn't have to do, pay for their uni by working in a, you know, at night or whatever. So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh man. I had like the most choice campus job. I just handed athletes towels and then did my homework when there was no one there. It was, it was like the best job. It was a work study job. So it was like, you know, a financial aid kind of thing as well, but what a great job. Yeah. Washing and handing out towels. That's the job to have folks.

Dave Jones: So, so you, what, you just stood in the locker room and handed out towels to the job? It was like an equipment. Jocks?

Chris Gammell: No, no. It was like an equipment room. They would like stop by, they'd get a towel and they'd walk, walk to the locker room. And I would just be sitting there like studying and just being like, there's a towel. It's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great job.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. That's great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Great jobs. Speaking of workspaces, this is a pretty weak segue. I've been working on moving my workspace into the cloud. This is another thing I talked about two weeks ago when we were talking about like things I wanted to be learning and I've been working on GitHub actions. I'm actually kind of curious from your experience of like doing embedded programming and then like doing a firmware release. Like what's the most distributed method you've seen in that way in your, in your career in the past?

Dave Jones: Like distribute, what do you mean by distributed method?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Like, was it always like, uh, I guess what was the release process like in doing firmware stuff when you've done firmware software cuts in the past? Was it like somebody built it on their machine and they kind of like submitted it to, for approval? I've seen it like lots of different ways, but the modern ways.

Dave Jones: Well, I did work at a software company. I actually worked at Altium. So I know how Altium do it. But apart from that at, at engineering companies, no, I've basically been the, the sort of like software firm that were, that we did was, you know, it wasn't for public product release or something. So it was quite different. So it's quite a different experience than doing like a public product release. Say you're doing firmware for a new mobile phone or something that's going to be pushed out to everyone. You're doing firmware for an oscilloscope or something like that. Right. That's going to be pushed out to everyone. That's quite a different process.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think, well, I think even like Keith Lee, when I was there, Keith Lee and some of the other jobs too, like there was still being like, they would do, it wasn't me, right? It was other people, but there were still like local builds, you know? Oh yeah. Then you would attach that binary to like a release and you know, you have people test it, of course, right? It wouldn't just be like one person like pushing out to the world. But then, you know, when you pushed a new binary to the manufacturer, right? It'd be like you test out this binary, people would test it on their machines locally, whatever. And then you'd like literally attach it to a document or an email and you'd send it over to the manufacturer, right? Like that would be one way to do it. And modern methodologies are obviously very, very different with like continuous integration, continuous deployment. And so I've been trying to do that on some projects that I've been working on and it's tough, Dave. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. Well, I can tell you how we did it at Altium.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: I haven't explained this before. I don't think. No, maybe.

Chris Gammell: I don't remember.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I'll explain how Altium worked. Altium, we had a daily build by we, I mean, it was not our hardware group, but for the software programmers, right? There was an automatic daily build, right?

Chris Gammell: So like a build server somewhere, right?

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. So there was a big, there was like a master source code. So anytime you submit it, you know, you submitted your little routine, you know, a new feature or whatever, it'd be incorporated in the new daily build. Right. And as, as part of the hardware group, and also we were also one of the groups that actually tested the software and gave feedback and said, oh no, this, this new feature you're trying to put in now, it sucks. It's broken, you know? So we were encouraged to, even when we were designing real products, real hardware products, we were encouraged to use the daily build. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it was like, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh,

Dave Jones: that was kind of living on the edge. I can't, I can neither confirm nor deny that between the hardware group, we, uh, may or may not have had a secret agreement to use a, a one that a build that we trusted. Right, right, right. Yeah. Anyway, we, yeah, you would use the daily build and then you'd find issues like that and then you'd fix them and stuff. So, so everyone, including the programmers and the hardware group, anyone in the company could access the new and install the new daily build. And it was easy to like install the new build and actually run it. It just took minutes. Right. So at the start of the day, you know, oh yeah, I'll try out the new daily build.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: And then as an actual release, we released, uh, twice per year. This is when we did the summer winter bullshit thing, you know, summer, summer, summer winter release, which is so dumb.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You do it right before everybody goes on break. Yeah. That's the best way to do it.

Dave Jones: And yeah, I'm sort of, we'll fix stuff when we get back. I don't remember the exact price. Oh, and, and for the daily build, there was also automated testing as well. They had countless automated testing scripts. And then, you know, so you could often tell if a, like a daily build was just crap, it just, you know, failed or whatever, or, or it had too many issues. You wouldn't bother even testing it like yourself on your own computer. Yeah. Basically, uh, the four release, everyone within the company would sort of like give their feedback and we, like, it was the vibe kind of thing. Okay. This one has the least errors in it. This one feels good. Everyone's using it. This, you know, so we're sort of like, you know, to hone into a particular release. And then that would be the one that's actually released as, as the summer or winter release.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And that's definitely a lot more complex than the stuff that I'm doing. Cause there's no, like you, uh, I'm like, No, we're talking millions of lines of code, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: We're talking millions of lines. Right. So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So anyways, I've been, uh, I've been doing, you know, trying to get this stuff on. So basically what I'm trying to do is take the simplicity studio, which is a Silicon Labs tool, which is an IDE. And I'm trying to now put that into GitHub actions and do, you know, and so Sean, he Mel, who's, uh.

Dave Jones: What is, what is this actions thing? What is this GitHub actions?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So GitHub actions is basically like you can within GitHub, right? So you can, you can create a action so that like, you can say on a commit or on when you push to a certain. Oh, right.

Dave Jones: So it's like a script kind of thing. If something happens, do this.

Chris Gammell: Sort of that. It's more like, yeah, there's like a configuration file in there and I'll link in a really good series by Sean. He Mel. So he did it for digi key. Sean's at edge impulse, but he's been doing like, he was at spark fun previously and he's done a lot of great videos for, for the digi key folks.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And basically the idea is that like, you can kind of tell it when you want this stuff to run, but then you can also tell it like, all right, now I want you to spin up. Basically it's a container, but it's, you know, think about it like a virtual machine. And then like, when you spin up this virtual machine, you go and install in this case, in Sean's example, he's talking about Python. And then, you know, you're going to have, you're going to pull in this, this piece of code, run a test, run this test file on it, and then show me the result and show that it passed. So that's like one thing you could do.

Dave Jones: So you can install all this software on the GitHub server.

Chris Gammell: That's right. So they'll actually spin up compute for you. Yeah. They'll actually, yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, like, and so.

Dave Jones: So you could run, so you could run your microcontroller tool on the GitHub server.

Chris Gammell: Well, this is where, yeah. And that's where I am bonking on this stuff because. So like the way Sean's showing it and the way that it's like kind of general, like there's kind of like a general, like thinking about it like a Linux system. Like you can go and install these different packages on there. You could like take this generic Linux system. Think about it like an Ubuntu type system. You can install these packages on there. Then you can kind of pass files into it and run them on this now kind of generic system. Like, like I said, running Python, but now I have to, because I'm normally building on a Windows IDE, either I either have to go and use the Linux version of those tools, put those into container, make the container available to the GitHub actions. And actually like push code through there, or I have to change the compiler so that it's not, it's no longer using the simplicity studio and IDE plus the Kyle, like C51 compiler and use SDCC instead. So that's like kind of like what I'm trying to figure out right now. But the promise of it all is that you, you then have kind of a standardized system. And, you know, when you think about the benefits of it all, like, you know, the, the, the, the kind of the idea of like, it works on my computer. Why doesn't it work on your computer? It's like, oh, well I have V4. I have simplicity studio V4 and you have V5 and something's changed and there's no way to possibly tell what the difference is. But like literally if you compared the binaries, they are different binaries. Like that, that's bad. And now if you have like this, now, if you have this combined system, if you have this system where it's always spit out from the exact same virtual machine effectively, then everybody is always going through the same pipe and the same compiler. And it's like, you can really start to standardize. So that's what a lot of big teams do. And obviously this is a thing that's been in the software world for years and years and years and years. So yeah, it's, it's a strange new world for me, but it's like, I'm sure anyone who's in like the DevOps world, they're like, yeah. And yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's just standard process for them. Right. Yeah. It's just, exactly. Yeah. So. So what, what, what do you stand to gain from all this magic?

Chris Gammell: Well, right now I actually think back to a former company I worked at. And I, I know I've mentioned this on the show before, but like some of the revision control methods was like putting a laptop into a file cabinet. Right. And it had like a tool chain on it. Swapping hard drives, you know, and put the whole laptop into the cabinet and be like, well, if we need a compiler, you can just pull out that laptop.

Dave Jones: It's like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: That is, that is real bad. Right.

Dave Jones: Well, it's, it's actually not. It doesn't work.

Chris Gammell: It is. No, it doesn't. What happens? You loved, you love for posting, posting photos on Twitter of corroded batteries and like dead hard drives.

Dave Jones: Well, take the freaking batteries out. Right. Sure. Take the batteries out. Have a backup hard drive.

Chris Gammell: Sure. I mean, there's a lot of things you can do there, but you know, a lot of things can go wrong. You really should make it replicable in not just one computer. You shouldn't have a single failure point like that generally. Right. Right. Like, you know, you get hit by, you know, so that's another thing too. Like it's, it's the hit by a bus test, right? Your laptop gets hit by a bus and you're, that's the one that it's like proven on. Well, then you had to go and replicate it on another laptop. That's bad. But what if Chris gets hit by a bus? Yeah. Like that's another thing that like is a true concern, you know, and, and from, you know, a consulting concept concept as well. Like, like I think about like being able to deliver a thing to a client and saying like, look, you can fire me at any time. That is something that you, that should be possible in any consulting job you do. I think maybe some people don't agree with that, but I think that's the case. I think that actually should give a client a lot of like confidence, right? Just like basically saying like, I stand behind my work. If you don't like it, you will be able to replicate everything I do here because it's documented. It's there's all of the tool chain is, you know, on GitHub or whatever.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But then your smart contractors don't want to do that because they know it's, that's called job security, right? That's called contract security is by sort of obfuscate like you being the person that they absolutely need. Yeah. Right. You're so you're almost doing yourself out of a job there.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. You're totally right. It could be. But like, I think that is, I'm not sure I would qualify the people that don't do that as smart contractors, maybe shrewd, maybe profitable, but I'm not sure I'd say smart. And I don't want to personally operate like that. I want to make it so that someone can get rid of me.

Dave Jones: Well, no, it's not smart on the part of the contractor to do that. It's smart on the part of the, the, the company to insist on it.

Chris Gammell: Right. They are two different things. I think of it as a marketing element for me as me as a consultant. Right. Okay. You could, you could present myself. You could market that. Yeah. Right. Is a, you know, the, the, the way that a consultant gets more work. You can.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Is. Well, I think the way that a consultant gets more work is by word of mouth.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: You know, if you put yourself forward as someone that is, does good work documents well and all that stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. You could make it a marketing proposition. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It doesn't have to be like, you know, like a, a negative marketing kind of thing. Right. It's like, not like a, I just say, I do this. I think it's literally like the way that you work and people will, I think other engineers will respect that and you'll get lots of work that way. Sure. There's no shortage.

Dave Jones: I would not doubt that. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Fair enough.

Chris Gammell: That is all to say, I think setting up these systems so that if something does go wrong with me or, you know, say I'm just unavailable, I get sick for a month, right? Someone else should be able to trigger a new build if they need to. It should be documented enough that it should be replicable and that sort of thing. And then in a more realistic scenario, if you bring on people to try and do some force multiplication and get other people, you know, doing PRs or doing code reviews, they should also be able to replicate the stuff without having to have the tool chain on their box. Yeah. Fair enough. Because then you start to think about like different in my system than your system, that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: That is all to say, I have not gotten it working yet. So it's in the works. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But it is possible. It's just, you know, my setup currently is not there. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because you're not a software professional who would do this just like that, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right. And there's, you know, and there's like other systems that are out there like Jenkins is one that I've heard of that I've never used, but GitHub Actions is the one I'm using. There's another, Travis CI is another one, Continuous Integration. So, and good folks like Philip from Better Artistry, he's done a bunch of stuff about that. So you can go and read some of his stuff as well. I just think generally this is a, you know, again, this is like a thing that's been in the software world for 20 years, 20 plus years now. Oh, yeah.

Speaker ?: Totally.

Chris Gammell: Right. And it's just like the fact that it's not, it's interesting to me, like, as I talk to more Silicon vendors and my, my daily work about like, you know, and just like how they operate and every Silicon vendor I feel like is becoming a software company by necessity as well. And just like this stuff kind of slowly trickling down into the hardware world. And then I think there's also younger engineers that are kind of learning this stuff in school and bringing it up through the ranks as well. It's an interesting like mix and culture clash and just like seeing how kind of more senior engineers operate versus how younger engineers operate and just expectations and that sort of stuff. So, yeah, it's a interesting cultural shift that is coming. Yeah. I think.

Dave Jones: Well, good luck trying to get working. I'm going to get it, Dave.

Chris Gammell: I'm going to get it. I'm not, I'm not too worried. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Is that someone you can, is that something you can like just hire someone to show you how to do it? Like, you know, like hire someone for a day to show you?

Chris Gammell: Guess what I did today? Yeah. I put out a Upwork post today. Ah, there you go. Hopefully you get some instruction. So, yeah. There you go. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's exactly what I thought. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Trying to get better. So, yeah, I think it's about understanding, you know, like there's a lot of people that understand like the DevOps containerization kind of stuff. Yeah. I know that a little bit, but it's, I think there's also, you'd need to know a little bit about embedded tools too. I think maybe wrong.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: But if people are out there and listening, they're like, oh, I could show that to Chris in an hour. Right. Shoot me an email. I'd love to.

Dave Jones: Interesting. Okay. Cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. All right. How about this? On the multimeter firmware or not the firmware. What does it look like when people try to build like the app, like the Bluetooth app? Like you went through all that GitLab, GitHub stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What does that build process look like? That's like built locally on your computer?

Dave Jones: That's built, built. Yes. Yes. That's built entirely locally. That was just running on a single instance on David 2's computer here in the lab. Yep. Yeah. Sorry. It's nothing fancier than that. He just had all the tools on it. It's fine. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. So there's one other thing that's actually, I forget what they call it. Like there's infrastructure as code is a different thing. There's one where like now, so like GitHub has another thing and there's another company called GitLab where basically like you actually, as part of like what you commit to a repo, you also commit the entire tool chain into the repo as well.

Dave Jones: David used that. He used GitLab.

Chris Gammell: Git. Sorry. Did I say GitLab? Yes. Sorry. I meant what it was.

Dave Jones: Yes. You said GitLab.

Chris Gammell: I'm sorry. GitPod is the one I was trying to think of.

Dave Jones: I haven't heard of GitPod.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. GitPod and there's a GitHub workspaces are the two things where basically you commit the entire, so you basically, you send this tool chain as like another file that's in your repo as well. And then instead of installing anything on your computer, now because you have all your tooling running in a virtual machine or container.

Dave Jones: Isn't that exactly what you want? Why aren't you using GitPod then? Isn't that exactly, that's how I'm actually on the page here and it sounds like exactly what you want.

Chris Gammell: It's a little different. It's in that you would still use it to maybe build the output and stuff like that. It's not, it's not the automation piece, right? It's actually. So imagine you and I are working on a, so we're going on an STM 32 embedded project, right? And we use GitPod and we have all the configuration file. We have like GitPod integration file there. What it would do is it would, it would instantiate a container. It would install all the tool chain in there. And then you and I would both have like a browser based VS code effectively that then, you know, we look at the code there and then it basically pushes that code to this container. And you and I would both have our own browsers, but we'd have the exact same container. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You'd be working on the same container and yep. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. And so then, so then the key, the key thing though, the way I think about that being different is like, okay, so now we move a month later, right? We go to implement a new sensor and we pull in a new sensor library and I would be able to go and compile with the old tool chain. I would be able to like go back in the Git history and compile with the, the old tool chain without that new sensor stuff built into it. But then I'd be able to switch immediately and have the entire new tool chain by just moving back and forth throughout the, the Git history. Because the Git history has like a different configuration file throughout time.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: And so you're carrying that stuff with you. So that's kind of how I think about like workspaces and Git pod. What you would then do is that when, once you know that's working, right? So then now we like this new sensor, we, we say this configuration is great. Then we would also push that configuration into the automated build piece so that now every time I go and do a commit, it would also run it through all these, it would use that same container because it's already embedded with the, with the code. You would say, you point at that, that configuration file, like here's how you're going to build this thing. You're going to do that in an automated way every time. And then you might also run a battery of tests, that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Got it. Okay.

Chris Gammell: I'm really sorry if people are listening to this and like, Chris, you're such a goddamn idiot.

Dave Jones: This should be on the embedded FM podcast. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I will be, I'm recording with them on Saturday. So I'll be on there next week. And it's not like an idiot over there.

Dave Jones: So you are a regular over there.

Chris Gammell: Oh, no, I'm a sometimes over there. It's been a while since I talked to them.

Dave Jones: All right. Do we actually have anything hardware related on the list? This is hardware.

Chris Gammell: Dave, hardware is software these days. We do.

Dave Jones: Do you know? Anyway. Well, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's like, it's everywhere, man.

Dave Jones: Thunderscope. Thunderscope. Somebody asked about this on my live show the other day. My thoughts. I had not seen it. It grew out of a Hackaday project back in 2020, 2021 or something like that. And yeah, it was part of a contest or something. And it's a four channel PCI scope. So it uses Thunderbolt, which I'm told is just a PCI interface. Is that right?

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Dave Jones: Thunderbolt is just PCI. Apparently it's just like PCI over a cable or something.

Chris Gammell: The edge connector looks like PCI.

Dave Jones: It looks like PCI. Right. So it looks like it can either be a plug-in into your computer. Right. PCIe. Yeah. Or whatever. Yeah. Or it can plug into. So it looks like it can either plug into your PC or you can plug it into a cable, I guess, and put it in a box, I guess.

Chris Gammell: Prototyping. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Something like that. And you can get Thunderbolt ports on computers, can't you, on the back or something? Or you can get a card or whatever. I don't know. Anyway. I haven't looked at a computer in a while, Dave. It's four channel. Yeah. Anyway, it looks really good. It looks like it's got a proper analog front end that you'd find on any modern scope. It's got a HAD 1511 ADC, four channel ADC. I think it's only one gig sample per second. But I think it's 350 meg analog bandwidth. Don't quote me on that. And yeah. Yeah. It looks quite good. You know, like they've got proper shielded cans and stuff like that. And it's, yeah, it looks like a good project. That I, when I was having a look, look at this just a minute ago, I just got the sudden idea. Why couldn't you take? Because scopes are fairly cheap these days, right? Scopes are cheap. Sure. Right. You know, for 400 bucks, you can buy a four channel, really kick ass scope. And they're all like single ball construction. If you've seen my teardown, right? They're all just like, you know, just a small little single ball.

Chris Gammell: It's like a power supply. Yeah. And a night, well, like really fancy silicon on there. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: And it's got an applications processor, which drives the screen and everything else. But yeah. You could, and they usually have a remote networking capability. So there's actually no reason why you couldn't actually buy a scope, take it out of its case, put it in a little desktop case and you actually convert it to a PC based scope. I mean, sure. These manufacturers also sell PC based scopes, but generally I think they're much more expensive. Why couldn't you convert a?

Chris Gammell: I mean, probably because you wouldn't want to take apart a fancy eye scope.

Dave Jones: You wouldn't. Well, it's only 400 bucks, right? I guess. Yeah. It's not, you know, it's not a $4,000 scope, right? It's only 400 bucks. Yeah. True. You could convert it into a little desktop, but then you could argue, well, what's the point? Because you're only changing the form factor. You might as well, if you want the remote capability, just stick the ethernet in the back of it and Bob's your uncle, right? So I don't know. I just thought it'd be neat. Kind of.

Chris Gammell: That's cool. I mean, yeah. Yeah. This is cool. This is cool.

Dave Jones: Yep. But once again, it's all in the software, as you said, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. The hardware is nice. It looks like they're doing all the right things. It looks like a front end I'd see in any modern scope. It's got a Koto. Looks like a shielded relay there. Is that for the switch in the 50 ohm termination? I'm not sure if it's got 50 ohm termination. But then, yeah. It looks like they've got a Fujitsu relay in there. Japanese relay. Nice. Looks like they've got the same front end, like a programmable gain differential amp in there. That's used in every modern scope. It's a TI part or something. And yeah. But all the magic, of course, is going to happen in the Xilinx Arctic 7, right? Which has an ARM core in it. And you can run all that sort of stuff. So, yep. Cool. There you go. So, yeah. Somebody's developed. I presume it's open source. It is open source certified. Yeah. Open source. Yes. Soft way to find.

Chris Gammell: They have a Discord.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I wish I would have seen this. Yeah. It was part of Hackaday Prize back in 21, I think.

Dave Jones: Nice.

Chris Gammell: They're part of the E-E-Vengers.

Dave Jones: What's E-E-Vengers?

Chris Gammell: Is that like E-E-Vengers? Like the Avengers.

Dave Jones: Oh, E-E-Vengers. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. What is it? Right. Is that a group of hardcore?

Chris Gammell: You haven't got an invite to it. Sorry, Dave. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, E-E-V Thor, E-E-V Iron Man. Right. Okay.

Dave Jones: I'd be like. Terrible name. Terrible joke. Well, which character would I be?

Chris Gammell: You'd be E-E-V blog.

Dave Jones: Right. I'd be blog man. I'd be blog man.

Chris Gammell: With the power to post to WordPress and YouTube.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Exactly. Oh, God. Speaking of WordPress. WordPress sucks ass. I tried to create a new website the other day for, I won't say, why, but I tried to create a new website. Oh, come on. And no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I tried to create a website for some non-related thing. And I thought, oh, yeah, I'll just spin up a bloody WordPress website. Right. Because I've got like a host thing, which, you know, I can install WordPress automatically. You hit a single button. Right. Installed. And I tried to look through the bloody templates. Do you think I can get something freaking working? I thought I was a WordPress guru. Right. I probably was like 10 years ago. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right.

Dave Jones: But it was like, oh my God. So I moved, like, it's got so jack of it. I moved to another thing called SitePad. I think it's called. Is it called? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like low code, no code. SitePad.

Dave Jones: It's like, it's similar to WordPress. Like, yeah, it's actually called SitePad. And it's just a website builder, very similar to WordPress. And it just worked a lot better. And bam, I just learned how to use that in like an hour. And I managed to get my website done without too much fun.

Chris Gammell: That WordPress platform, it's so popular nobody goes there anymore.

Dave Jones: That's right. Yeah. I was just stunned that I couldn't do it easily anymore. Like, I don't know whether or not it was the shit templates I was using or what. But I just couldn't get anything to look the way I wanted it to look. It was just too hard. I don't know. Stuff. Stuff. Just thought I'd mention that. Because it pissed me off, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Like. Yeah. Have you ever had that? Have you ever had the experience where, oh, geez, I thought I was good at this. Because you did it eight years ago. I thought I was good at this stuff. And then it's, I don't know, it's changed and you just suck at it now. Or has that ever happened to you?

Chris Gammell: I mean, literally every time I open KeyCad, that's pretty much that.

Dave Jones: Right. Every time you open KeyCad. Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Why? Is that because it's so constantly changing or?

Chris Gammell: Mostly because it's like my use is so spotty these days. And then also, yeah, it does. It does change. Yeah. And then I'm like.

Dave Jones: Oh, you totally lose the flow of it. Like, you know, back when I was doing PCB every day. Daily driver. Like, you know. Actually. No one can touch me.

Chris Gammell: It's even worse with FreeCad as well.

Dave Jones: Okay. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Because it's just like when you're out of the flow. Like, if you're not in it every day.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's. That muscle atrophies quickly.

Dave Jones: Well, that's my problem. You know, you're always telling me. Okay. Get a 3D printer. Learn a skill like, you know, 3D modeling. Yeah. Great. And then I. Okay. I spend a couple of weeks or a month doing it. Okay. I'm fairly proficient. I can at least get some, you know, stuff done. And then I don't use it for 12 months. And then I suck at it again.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know. Yeah. This is the. You know. So, I've been. Talking about it with some people. You know, like my. Again. Bring up two weeks ago. I talked about like wanting to learn all these different skills. And whatever. And the one thing that came up when I was talking to some folks about it. It's like. You know. You really need a project. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I need like a. Totally. Long going project. Yeah. I need to find something that I want to build. And like. But that alone is actually kind of hard too. Because it does. You know. Everything seems kind of trite. Or it doesn't. You know. It's really got to like swallow my pride.

Dave Jones: That's why. Yeah. This. As I talked about before. This project. That I'm going to. Hopefully do that. Yeah. It sits on a desk. And it can either be with or without a case. And that will. You know. Get me into like 3D printing. It'll like. Yeah. Okay. I've got to design my own case. Hopefully other things too. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

Chris Gammell: That's like how it goes. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Maybe I can then do a. Oh. I'm going to make these. Hey. Pick and place machine time. You know.

Chris Gammell: Sure. Sure.

Dave Jones: Who knows. I mean.

Chris Gammell: You could also do like. You know. Try out new Altium. You know. Like even like upgrading to a different Altium. That sort of thing. Well.

Dave Jones: At the moment. I don't have an Altium license. So I'd have to use KiCad. I'm sure they. I would suck worse than you at KiCad. Because I have used KiCad. But I've never really done a project in anger. In KiCad. Right. I've never done like a.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That is. That is the test. From scratch. It's a different take on the 2am problem. When you're just like. Yeah. I just need to do this one. God damn thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Why would I go. Yeah. Exactly. It's going to. Yeah. It's going to suck ass.

Chris Gammell: That's usually me and FreeCad these days. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Because Altium don't want to give me a. Freaking license anymore. So. You know. Yep. So.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure they would. If you groveled. But yeah.

Dave Jones: No. They just don't seem. Yeah. Go open source.

Chris Gammell: Come on man.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I know. Yeah. I'll probably just. Yeah. Probably do it in KeyCad.

Chris Gammell: You know Dave. I'll help you. I will tutor you. Oh. You just let me know. No. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't need anyone to tutor me. I can learn a bloody PCB package. Yep. No. I refuse to have anyone help me.

Chris Gammell: That's the spirit. That's how you learn. Yep.

Dave Jones: That's it. I got too much pride. Damn it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: No one's going to help me lay out a board. No.

Chris Gammell: Here's what you do. You hire someone on Upwork. You have them show you how to do it. And then you go on YouTube and you record yourself doing it like, oh, I learned this all on my own. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm an expert. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: I'm an expert. I just had this preternatural, you know, ability that I just.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: Just comes to me.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: Off to go learn some new things around here, I guess.

Dave Jones: Well, our amp hours will truly up. We're way over. Let's get out of here. Yep. Catch you next time.

Dave Jones: Bye.

Speaker ?: Bye. Bye.