#629 – At least my house isn't haunted

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released April 23rd, 2023. Episode 629. At least my house isn't haunted.

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. In the Riddler department. No, Puzzler. Damn it, I got it wrong again. Riddle me this, Dave.

Dave Jones: Yeah, okay. The Puzzler. Apparently last week, which I have not listened to. That's right, that's right.

Chris Gammell: So we're going to do a recap here, and then Dave's going to be able to guess live, and everybody else will be able to find out what's going on here.

Dave Jones: Is this like a real thing that this is like a real thing? It's not like a made-up puzzle.

Chris Gammell: That's right, it's a real thing. I'm not that good. I can't make up this. But it was actually, it was freaking me out. That's probably the main thing. Okay. Okay. All right. So as a recap, I'm sitting there, I'm sitting at my desk where I am now, and it's like the middle of the day, and it was like a Monday, and my main monitor shut off.

Dave Jones: There's your problem right there.

Chris Gammell: I was sitting at the desk. Oh, Monday. Monday.

Dave Jones: Monday's problem.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so I'm like checking the, I look around, and I can't, like all my, actually all my power's off. And then I looked at the router, the router's turned off, everything. Basically my whole office is dead. Yep. I'm like, okay. I go out to the hallway, and hallway light is still on, and the bathroom light next to my office, the light's on. I'm like, okay. And then start going through the rest of the house. My daughter's room turned off. It's off. I can't switch on anything in there. All right. And then my wife's office is off.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: And many of the other things in the house are fine, but I'm like, all right, I'll go check the breaker. What's going on? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we go down to the breaker, check the breaker, nothing's flipped. Okay. Yep. Start flipping some breakers. Nothing seems to come back upstairs. Light's still off. Nothing changed. But the garage door had been kind of pokey the past couple of days. It had been kind of finicky. I thought it might have been the sensor or something like that, but it was kind of going up a little bit slower, but then also just this weird stuff happens. I'm like, I wonder if it's the GFCI in the garage. And so I hit the test button on the GFCI. And I should mention, because I told this to a friend in Europe, the GFCIs are in the wall here. Many places they're in the breaker box. Yes.

Dave Jones: That's what they're like here usually.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And they're actually both. They actually, so my breaker, some of my breakers also have GFCI in them. They have like the tests and the reset. But then I also have GFCIs in the wall. That is not relevant to this story. I thought I might've been interacting, but I go to hit the test, it pops, I can hear it pop. And then I go to hit reset and it won't reset.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The one on the wall. I'm like, what? What the heck is going on here? This is so weird. So then I'm like, maybe it's other GFCI. I thought it was like maybe interacting. I don't know. So I like go around the rest of the house. I'm going to the kitchen. The kitchen has some. Bathrooms have them. And then finally, I go upstairs to the bathroom. Upstairs. The bathroom near my office. I test and reset it. And then like things seem to be okay. I'm able to turn lights back on in my office. I'm like, it must've been some kind of, yeah, really weird. Right? So that's on Monday. On Tuesday, Tuesday evening, it happens again. And I, and everything's like dead at this point. I can't figure it out. I have no idea what's going on. And what did I, I'm trying to remember what I said in the, in this, the last story too. So at that point I am like, all right, I'm calling a light stressor tomorrow morning. And that, the rest of that night, I just didn't have power. And I was like, I tried everything again. I, you know, I tried, went, flipped all the breakers, whatever. And I just could not get anything to go.

Dave Jones: So, but just power, you still had lights, right?

Chris Gammell: In a certain rooms, I had lights. So many of the rooms I had lights, not my office and not one of the other rooms. And then the, my wife's office, it did have lights, but like, I went to go, we have ceiling fans too. And I turned on the ceiling fan. The ceiling fan is like super slow. It's like spinning up super slow. Cause it's just,

Dave Jones: I'm just like,

Chris Gammell: what the hell is going on? I was like really getting freaked out. And so then I had company coming. So I started like, like, all right, well, nothing's working here. I still have to clean this room. Cause I had company coming. And so I go to turn on the vacuum cleaner. And I plugged in like the vacuum cleaner and it, the lights dropped out. And I'm like, my house is haunted.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So I think that's, I actually don't think I shared that may have given you a little bit more info than the last set of folks than the last episode. Well, yeah. So what do you think maybe? Well,

Dave Jones: when you turn on a large load like that and other stuff dips, that indicates some sort of high impedance. So I'm thinking some sort of intermittent high impedance, uh, neutral or something like that, perhaps. But you guys, you yanks have this weird split phase thing, right?

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You're you. People think the U S is 110 volts. It's not, it's actually two 40 volts. It's just that you guys do the weird split thing when it gets to the house or something. So that complicates things. So I'm not necessarily familiar with that, but my money would be on, you know, some sort of intermittent, uh, neutral or, or even a intermittent active feed or something like that. Like a high impedance, you know, the screw terminals, you know, it's all pitted or it's, I don't know. The incoming connection is pitted and you don't have the impedance. I don't know. It sounds weird.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It was super weird. So super weird.

Dave Jones: I think I'm totally wrong, but that's probably the only thing I could guess. Okay.

Chris Gammell: So then, so here comes, so if you, uh, well, I guess at this point, all of the entries are closed. Nobody actually got it by email either. So,

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: At least as of this recording, so we're recording on Thursday, I'm not going to close entries until Sunday when we publish this thing, but as of this recording, nobody got it. If anyone does by the time we record,

Dave Jones: and I obviously haven't got it otherwise.

Chris Gammell: Sorry. You did. Well, also the prize is a t-shirt. So you probably,

Dave Jones: right. So, so, so did I guess similar to the other?

Chris Gammell: Most people keyed in on the GFCI stuff. So they thought it was maybe, let me pull it up here. So yeah,

Dave Jones: but they're usually like circuit based. They're usually like for individual radial circuits. Right. So it usually one, if folding one of those won't upset the other ones, if you've got a rock solid ground, you know, if you've got a rock solid incoming connection.

Chris Gammell: Right. And that's, that's what I was thought too. And so like, that's why I was weird, weirded out about it because there's really no reason that a GFCI in one, on a one breaker should really ever impact another breaker. Right. I mean, because as far as I understand it, is there like a master one for the whole?

Dave Jones: No. No. Okay. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right. So some of the other guesses were daisy change GFCI, loose breaker on the bus bar, loose wires in the screw terminal. Yeah. Arcing that occurred in the faulty garage opener, open neutral in the box, dead rodent in the back of your PowerPoint.

Dave Jones: Yep. That sounds like personal experience. But, but that usually only, that will only impact one radial. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Circuit. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That wouldn't like feedback. And this is why.

Dave Jones: You guys use radial, not a circular, right?

Chris Gammell: Sorry, what are you saying? Radial versus radial?

Dave Jones: Radial means you have one, you have your one incoming point, and then you have one branch circuit, which radiates out like spokes on a bike. Right. So that, so it doesn't loop back. So, so, so it's actually called a radial here. It's called a radial connection, but you can actually loop a connection. So if you, so you can actually loop from your circuit box through various rooms and then loop back. So that if you get a break in the cable, it would go in both. It would just go in different directions. I'm not sure under what circumstances. Yeah, no,

Chris Gammell: we're, we're one way. So,

Dave Jones: okay, well you're using what's called a radial.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. And a radial. Yeah. So basically it's like, if you think about it, like if you were wiring from the circuit box, at least this is, this is how I understand it, which may be, which may be broken, you know, it would be like, if you had a circuit that was coming up to my office for, for example, and I had four PowerPoints in my office, if you think about the farthest one is the end of that connection. And then there's like kind of three others that would be basically spliced in along the way. That's the easy way to think about it.

Dave Jones: That's called a radial. Yes.

Chris Gammell: That's a radial. Okay, cool. All right. Other ones.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: Another loose wire or breaker box. Yep. And then faulty neutral question, uh, between your house's breaker and the transformer. Okay.

Dave Jones: There's not anything electromagnetic near your fuse box. Is there?

Chris Gammell: Nope. Nope. It's my fuse box is in the garage.

Dave Jones: Okay. So you haven't. Nothing new. And this is like,

Chris Gammell: it was like in out of the blue, right? It was just completely out of the blue. And this is why. And so, okay. So I had said in the last episode, so I recorded with my other friend, Dave, and I said, I kind of figured it out. And he stopped me. He's like, no, you didn't. That's the electricity. Okay. So I'm going to tell you what happened. And then maybe, so you didn't get it just so we're clear, but I'm going to tell you the thing that happened that may clue you in. And I knew this is when things got really weird. Okay. So at this point, I'm, I'm hopeless, right? I'm just, I'm just flipping breakers, right? I'm just flipping breakers, flipping breakers, flipping breakers.

Dave Jones: That'd be me too. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I had worked on, on my air conditioning unit. And so they installed a new cap across there. And I'm like, is it possible that he shorted something when he was doing that? It's like, is that possible? That's so weird, right? That's not something that would happen. And so I'm like, I'm flipping, I'm flipping every break. I'm like, all right, I'm going to flip the breaker out to the air conditioning unit or the HVAC. So I flip it, nothing happens. And I'm like, all right, fine. And I have an electric water heater and I flip that. And the, the door into my house in from the garage was open and all the lights in the kitchen were on and the lights went off. Oh, what the hell? And then I go inside and I noticed the living room lights are, I'm like, what the hell is happening right now?

Dave Jones: Because you disconnected an element load.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Explain that more.

Dave Jones: You disconnected your hot water, right?

Chris Gammell: I disconnected my hot water. That's right.

Dave Jones: Right. Which is an element, right? That's right. Yeah. It's a resistive heating element. That's right. That's right.

Chris Gammell: All right. Let me just keep going from here. This is because I had no idea. I knew that was something weird, but this is the most freaked out. I was, I was, some people are probably listening right now. They probably get it. And this is probably where the U S thing really matters. All right. So the electrician shows up.

Dave Jones: I suspect it's a U S thing. I suspect it would not happen. This is. Yeah. I, I, I, that, that's why I mentioned this weird split phase American thing at start. Cause I suspect it has something to do with that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. So the electrician shows up, I show him the box. We're in my garage. He's looking at it. And he's like, I don't know. That's kind of weird. And he's like, all right, well, it's not here. Let's, let's go outside. And it's like really bright outside that day. And like the sun is like beaming down 45 degree angle, right onto my power meter outside. Yep. He goes outside and he calls me out. He's like, Hey, Hey man, can you see this? And I walk outside and it's like super bright. I'm shot and shielded my eyes. I'm like, no, I can't see it. He's like, yeah, it's not there. And I'm like, what? He's like, no, you can't see it because it's not there. What is going on? He's like, you don't have power at your meter. I'm like, yes, I do. My house is lit up. He's like, well, as luck would have it, one of the phases powers the display and the other one just goes into the house. And that's how he knew that I didn't have power on one of the phases into my house.

Dave Jones: So it was capacitively coupled. Was it into your house?

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. Okay. So I have, so like you said, Dave, Dave is right. There's, there's a 240 across two of the legs, right? But it's split in the middle. So it's 120 to the neutral from leg one to neutral. It's 120. And then from leg two to neutral, it's 120. So if you go from leg two to leg one, it's 240. And if you look at the breaker that goes to my hot water heater, really any resistive heating element in the house, it always goes across both.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: It goes across 240.

Dave Jones: So yes, you guys use, you guys don't have 120 volt appliance, like hot water systems. You've got 240 volt hot water systems, right?

Chris Gammell: And, and some, and some motor systems as well. Right. Yeah. So some, basically it's like a different type of plug and whatever. So like my HVAC is across is a, is a 240. My, my dryer, I have electric dryer for my clothes. That's 240. The, the hot water heater, 240.

Dave Jones: Right. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So now the really crazy thing. So my garage door, when it was going really super, super, super pokey, it was on a bad circuit. There was no power on that circuit. Right. So when my garage door was going up and when the vacuum was going on, power was going from leg one through the resistive heating element of my hot water heater two leg two.

Speaker ?: Oh, Oh,

Dave Jones: that's fantastic. That's fantastic. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So crazy. I was just like, Oh my God, everything makes sense. Now my house isn't haunted.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Because I like, I mentioned capacitive coupling, but I went, yeah. Like I was thinking, no, it can't be because you, you like, you're just not going to get the power available, but going through a resistive element.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: That makes total sense.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And, and he said, you know, I've seen this before. I've seen it go through people's electric stove elements, but that only works if the stove is turned on. So the other thing that happened was because I had used hot water in my house, you know, there's a thermostat on there and it turns itself off when it doesn't need to be heating anymore. Well, I had used up a bunch of the hot water because I didn't know that this was happening. So I had been like using hot water. I'm like, Oh, it's getting kind of cold, but it's not like, it wasn't like cold yet. And it was still actually heating water on the one active leg that was there. Right. So it was heating at one 20, but it was pretty much always on because it was just racing to keep up with the one 20 heating element. And so in that case is basically quote unquote, always on. And so it's always passing power through that resistive element to the other leg.

Dave Jones: I was kind of,

Dave Jones: sort of right that you were going through a high impedance or some sort of, you know, when you're, when you're talking about an element, which might be 10 ohms or something, that's high impedance. Yeah. Like, yeah,

Chris Gammell: yeah, yeah. In terms of mains. Like a vacuum cleaner pulls, I mean, or any kind of motor. Yeah, yeah. It's pulling 10 amps, right? It's just like a huge thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And that's why it didn't make any sense to me that there was this huge drop.

Dave Jones: Wow. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So crazy. And I was just like,

Dave Jones: I was the broken. So it was a broken neutral connection. Was it?

Chris Gammell: No, it was a broken hot connection. One of the legs was hot. So neutral still there. Leg one was there. Leg two was broken or whatever, you know, one of it doesn't matter which one. Yeah. Yeah. So that's also why in my house, every other room basically was off, right? It was basically because like, because if you look, if you look on the back of a panel, it's a zigzag. So every other, every other breaker is on either leg. And so it's those double breakers that are crossed both legs.

Dave Jones: Right. And the symptoms would have changed depending on whether or not your hot water element was switched on.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Exactly. Yep. Yep. Okay. So. Wow. He's like, all right, well, that's 200 bucks.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

Chris Gammell: Took him about five minutes. He was great. I mean, I'm like, yeah, yeah, you know what? Yeah. Totally. Better than I did. Better than I did.

Dave Jones: Because he's seen something like that before. If you haven't seen something like that before. I mean,

Chris Gammell: he's also just checked, like, of course he's going to go check the meter. That's what he always does, right? And like, yeah. So he's like, yeah, I'm going to call the power company. And I called the power company. We'll send someone out.

Dave Jones: So the meter, so you've got one of these newfangled electronic meters, do you? So you could see that it was on?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The display. I mean, like the old analog meters.

Dave Jones: So you could see that your house was getting power. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I should have gone out there. I mean, honestly, that's a bit irresponsible of me, but like I had power in the house, right? It seemed like I had power in the house. Why would, why would I go out there? It doesn't make any sense. of course. That's great. Okay. So I called the power power company and they've been doing work out on, you know, so, so between the Monday and the Wednesday that I called basically, you know, I'm just like questioning everything. I'm like, yeah, you know, they were out on the pole. They've been doing some work. I saw it like a bucket truck out there and that was doing some work on the pole. Right. And then there was this big bundle of cables and this big black looking thing that looked like a big capacitor out there. And I'm like, I bet they mess with something, but they're like doing load tests. I'm just coming up with all these theories. Finally, I look, I look up like black cylinder wires, you know, power pole or whatever. And it's, it's a frigging splice for cable for fiber optics. You know, it's, I was, I was so far off. It's not even funny. Yeah. You know, so I don't know how power stuff works apparently. And also what they would not put anything that's like live power on the ground. Right. It's yeah, of course. So not, not the brightest. Yeah. That,

Dave Jones: that cannot physically, happen here. The only way something similar could happen is if you get a break in that, like an active break, you'll have a capacitive coupling. So some led lights might still work for example. And that's actually a common thing. In fact, some, some led lights. I, did I do a video on this or I was going to like the, the modern led lights operate with so little current. They can operate with so little current that they will turn on and appear dim. Even if your switch is turned off, but just due to the capacitance in the switch and the wiring.

Chris Gammell: Wow. That's so.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay.

Chris Gammell: So I, I was at least skeptical that, you know, something had been done on the pole. So I called the power company. The guy comes out, he looks, he looks at the pole. He's like, no man, that looks great. That's good. I'm going to start digging. You know, like this guy is just, he's a lineman. He's like, I'm gonna start digging. I'm like, okay, yeah, that's great. He was awesome. Move really fast. I got to send Dave a photo right now.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. So they were digging for nothing, were they?

Chris Gammell: They, no, they were, they were digging for the right stuff. So basically he tested power at the base of the pole as you do. And then I think he turned stuff back on and he has like a little detector that shows where there might be a break. He basically sensed where it was and he started digging there and he goes down about three feet or whatever it is, you know, about a meter here. And then he calls me out. He's like, Hey, found the problem. And you know, power came back on in the meantime. So I had, I had power again. I knew it was back on and he showed me what I'm about to show Dave.

Dave Jones: You can actually get a dedicated tools to check the impedance of systems. So yeah, I'm not sure how they work in the U S but yeah. Oh, there we go. Let's have a look. Nope. Not found.

Chris Gammell: All right. So paint a little audio picture here.

Dave Jones: It doesn't, it doesn't work. I get a 404 error.

Chris Gammell: Oh, interesting. Okay. Let me try again.

Dave Jones: You're using photos. Google. Yeah. Googly photos.

Chris Gammell: I'll send it on our, our chat, our other chat.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So copy it and paste. He sends me, he hands me two things. One looks like a shell, a black shell and like a cylindrical cell.

Dave Jones: It looks like, it looks like a, a bit of burnt wood, like a burnt tree branch.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Like a hollowed out tree branch. That's, that's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. And then what's the other thing?

Dave Jones: The other thing looks like a, some sort of clay brick or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Square rock. I'd say. Yeah. Square,

Dave Jones: square, square rock. Something.

Chris Gammell: All right. Here, here's what happened when they backfilled, uh, your, you know, when they put your power in, they backfilled with fill, like clean, you know, ostensibly clean fill. The square thing is a rock and it was on top of your cable. And what happens over time is that it kind of, because it's just natural vibrations and settling in the ground, it works its way down and it works its way down. And sometimes it's right on top of a cable and it's works its way down through the insulation on the cable. Really? And then the, and then the cable says, Ooh, look, path to ground. And it blew itself to pieces. So the white stuff, I'll post this photo, obviously in the show, the white stuff in that tree looking thing. So this is actually the shell. This is the insulation of the shell.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The white stuff is aluminum oxide. It's an aluminum cable. It blew itself. It oxidized itself to death. And that thing used to be a solid conductor. It is now dead to the world.

Dave Jones: I can, I can see the twist in the aluminium, none of this aluminum rubbish. You can see the twist in the aluminium. Ah, you almost said it. Yeah. For those who don't know, power lines use aluminium wires for weight.

Chris Gammell: Right. Because copper is expensive as hell too, right?

Dave Jones: And it's expensive and it's heavy. Yeah. So they actually, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so that's, that's what did me in. Single conductor, one of the legs of my powerhouse to my house, blew itself apart. The guy was telling me lots of crazy stories. I asked him to be on the show. He's checking. I don't know if he'll be able to, because he works for the power company.

Dave Jones: Hang on. So what have you got coming into your house? Have you got three phase?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Two phase. Two phase. Oh, two phase. Okay. Okay. So there's a, two hots, a neutral, and then there's a local ground thing, right? There's like a stake that goes down into the ground, basically. Yes. Yeah. And then it's tied to that.

Dave Jones: It's actually a physical ground. You guys are so weird compared to ours. You've either got single phase or you've got three phase, you know? So.

Chris Gammell: Well, technically it's two single phases, but yeah. What do you have going into your house?

Dave Jones: We've only got a single phase. So there's only two wires coming into our house. Yep. Single phase at 240. And, and then every second house goes across a different phase. Oh, that makes sense. Just to sort of balance out the, just to sort of balance out the grid. Yep. So.

Chris Gammell: Makes sense. Wow.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So our street, usually, oh, pro, I'm not going to say, no, definitely not in all cases.

Chris Gammell: So is it possible every other house in your street could go out? Is that possible?

Dave Jones: That's actually possible. Yes. Yes,

Chris Gammell: it could. Interesting. I think. I mean, I don't know. Leave it in the comments. Do you know any power engineers in Australia? I mean, that'd be really just like the differences, you know, Europe, Australia, US, everywhere. Like these all have their weird idiosyncrasies, but like. Yeah,

Dave Jones: but you guys have the same three phase system as us. You just implement it different at the point of load.

Chris Gammell: Ah, okay.

Dave Jones: I think, I think. I do believe like if, if you go look at your overhead lines.

Chris Gammell: I'm very obviously out of my element. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But if you go out to the street, right. And you have a look at the big power poles that are 11 KV or something like that. You're going to have three wires, right? Yeah. You're actually going to have three. That's actually three phase. And then, yeah, every, I think every, or maybe every alternate street goes across a phase. So you could have a street that's technically out. I don't know if every second house is like, you know, on, or every third house is on a different phase. I'm not actually sure, but yeah, we just have a single phase actually coming in and.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Just too wise. So yeah, this problem is physically impossible to happen here.

Chris Gammell: Right. Your whole house would just go.

Dave Jones: We would. Yeah. The whole house would just be out. Yeah. Wow. That is weird. That is great. So weird.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I excitedly called my father once it figured out. I was like, I am both relieved and excited. One, I'm relieved because I have power back and I know my house is not like playing tricks on me anymore. And, and two, I'm excited because I get to talk about this on the amp hour.

Dave Jones: You've got half an hour worth of content on the amp hour. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Because that is weird. You know, I've had like weird stuff, you know, happen like that. And I go like, wow, how can that possibly. Yeah. Happen. You know, like it's, it's such a rare thing and it happens to me and I'm a, and I can actually blog about it, you know? And it's like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So the lineman guy said, if the, if the neutral goes out that bad, uh, because basically then you have two hot phases and they got nowhere to go. And so where they go is basically the ground connection. And if that doesn't work well, then they go wherever the hell they want to go. Uh, and he said he saw, he once saw aluminum siding or aluminum siding that was actually energized. He said he met someone who once had every time he was afraid to use his bathroom at night. Cause every time he would get shocked. Cause it was like tied to the pipes, you know? And so like actually, he said grounding before they used to do this, the, the state grounding, they would actually tie it to like a, you know, a water pipe because that also goes to ground.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yes. Of course. Water pipes go underground. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It's nuts.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so anyways, like I said, I asked him to be on the show. I don't think he's going to be able to, but he was great. Regaled me with some fun stories that I cannot repeat. That's great. I just think generally, like I'd love to get alignment on here generally. I mean, yeah, yeah. So if other people have, have an insight to someone. So we had Paul's a lot on here. Paul was able to talk about some of the stuff, especially like the, the kind of the architectural level stuff that he was working on, but man, Oh, weird stuff that can happen. And it's just like in our houses every day.

Dave Jones: So yeah.

Chris Gammell: So we'll see if we have any other winners. But yeah,

Dave Jones: it's, it's remarkable how it happens to you. And I, I get these weird things happening to me all the time. Like the test equipment curse, you know, what are the odds that I'd be the one to get a brand new road and Schwartz oscilloscope that has a loose screw in it. And I shake it and it's got a bloody screw in it. Like what are the odds, right? What are the odds that I'd get a new review product from like a new power supply? And it's got a capacitor that catches on fire. Right. I mean, what are the odds, right? Yeah. I mean, maybe,

Chris Gammell: but maybe someone's like intercepting your, mail and just like, right. They're sending me the dodgy stuff. So maybe you're going to work in, maybe you sleepwalk and you go to work and you just make things more interesting for videos. Yeah. Yeah. Can we tell, you know, it's, you know, it's impossible. Well,

Dave Jones: you wouldn't be able to tell. I've, I've always thought about, I thought like I could actually, like I could do a repair video where I could like, just like take out like a, like I could actually destroy an individual component. Then I could do a fake repair video and go through and actually find the fake component. I've always thought that would be possible. And people wouldn't know.

Chris Gammell: This sounds like how like reality TV show happened. Reality TV, like, they're like, you know, they're like totally set stuff up, right? Because you need to have some kind of tension and then you have to have some kind of resolution.

Dave Jones: I was watching last, uh, the other night, the latest David Attenborough special. Oh, okay. Right. And you know, they're like, they just get the most gorgeous shots of everything. Right. And I'm going there. They're watching this avalanche happen and they've got like five different drone angles of this avalanche. And I went, no way, no way. They did not do that. Right. They triggered that goddamn avalanche. They had to, there's no way you can have five drones. They're like sitting there waiting. Yeah. Yeah. No, it just, it just doesn't happen. No, it just doesn't happen. Right.

Chris Gammell: They can probably tell like when it might have happened, but yeah, they probably. Yeah. No, no, no. They said it was going to be for safety. Yeah. And,

Dave Jones: and the drones are following the thing and they got all the different angles. And it's like, no, they, they triggered that bloody thing, you know? Yeah. And it's like, you know, and it's like, and they're going to get in the gorgeous shot of this, like a dead, uh, deer or something in the middle of this snow field. It's in the middle of absolute nowhere. And they just happen to be there when the animals are there, like the birds that are feeding on this thing just happened to come down. It's like, I don't know. Did they place the dead animal there or did they find it and then went and placed it there? So that, I don't know. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: And this is why I don't watch the nature documentaries, but yeah,

Dave Jones: certainly the avalanche. Yeah. They've definitely triggered that bloody avalanche. I'm sure it was going to happen.

Chris Gammell: I do remember seeing one. And I saw one where they were, they were tracking a, a glacier that was like about to shear off and they could like, they actually had sensors on it and stuff. Right. But then they said they were, they were there for like a week, just filming.

Dave Jones: Oh, just, just film waiting for it to happen. Yeah. Well, that's a bit harder. Like that's a, you know, you can't just slice an entire glacier. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: We're going to need more TNT guys.

Dave Jones: Whereas I'm sure to trigger an avalanche is not, is not hard. You spit in the right place. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: System on the edge.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I can say with, with confidence that I did not place that rock on top of my power. Six, seven years ago.

Dave Jones: I, I find, yeah, that's, that's absolutely. Yeah. Cause for those who don't know, your house is not old. Your house is what? Five years old or something. Five, six years old.

Chris Gammell: Six years old. Yeah. Dave, other Dave mentioned that as well. Cause, cause you want to like count out the, just the spooky, the spooky aspects of it all. Right. Of just like crap wiring or whatever. Yeah. I was really happy too. Like I was worried. Oh, Oh yeah. How about this? So at one point, you know, everything had shut off. And then I'm like, just like my, I think it was like, Oh, my daughter was napping when this happened. My wife was working from home. And so was I, and the power's off. And then I start hearing this like buzzing coming from the walls. And I'm like, Oh no. Like if this was like, if there's like, if you have to open a wall or something like that. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. What, what is that? And it was just like intermittent. Wow. I am getting so freaked out. And then luckily it was like, as I was standing in the doorway to my office, well, I have some speakers plugged in my electric piano that is in the, in the background of my videos. But like I, I used it to play piano through there cause they don't have speakers naturally. And it was plugged directly in the wall. And it was the, the power going through the, I don't, I don't know what it was in the, in the amplifier. I think probably the amplifier was right on the edge. So it was like right at the top of the cycle. It was like, just kind of like browning out or something like that. And it was just, it was just doing that buzz. Wow. The same thing. Oh, the other, the same thing happened. I turned the light, the, the switch on to my, to my bench. And like the scope, my, one of my scopes that like has a fan. It was just. I'm like, what? Yeah. So anyways, we've got a half hour. We can move, we can move on. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think that. Yeah. That is, that is great though. Cause that is great to get started. Cause that rarely happens. Like that is, you know,

Chris Gammell: I better frigging hope so. It's really happens. If it happens the other phase, I'm going to call someone. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Can't just move on just yet. And that makes me wonder, is there like, because that's, it just disturbs me that that's, that's actually possible. Right. In the U S right. It's not possible here. So you wouldn't worry about, you know, you wouldn't care about it. Right. Right. Right. But it's, it's possible over there. So is there some sort of device you can install in your house that automatically trips everything. If it detects a high impedance connection somewhere.

Chris Gammell: That's an interesting point. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I bet you there's some device out there that'll do it.

Chris Gammell: That's so rare though. Yeah. I know.

Dave Jones: It's like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's not something to plan for. Right. I mean, yeah, yeah,

Dave Jones: yeah, exactly. It's something you wouldn't pay, you know, a couple hundred bucks for this device just in case this rare event happens,

Chris Gammell: but I'm sure it's, I am a little worried about the lifetime of products that are in my house because of it. Right. So yeah, yeah, of course. One, the heat, the heating element, right. I think power was passing through it. I think it is, I think the thermostat would have shut off, right. If it gets above a certain. Yes. Uh, temperature or whatever. So I think, yeah, I,

Dave Jones: I think your, your hot water system would have taken care of itself. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, like, I guess the, the one element is probably was more stressed is going to have a longer lifetime just because there was more power going through it for sure. And there was, you know, at certain points there was more power going through, but it is kind of self-regulating that is basically just a resistor. I mean, like, and it's in water. yeah, totally.

Dave Jones: It's just a resistor. That's why I thought high impedance path,

Chris Gammell: you know? And then, and then the other one that was worrying, well, I think the garage door opener as well, just that it was, it's all squeaky anyway. So like, I was just kind of worried about that. But the other, the big one is actually the dishwasher was browning out. Right. It was like, it was getting to the top of its cycle. And it was just like, I could hear it like clicking. It was like, click, click, click, click, click, click. And then it would start back down again and buzz, it would spin back up and click, click, click, click, click, click. Yeah.

Dave Jones: This could potentially cause problems in filtering in mains, filter caps and stuff like that. Oh. Perhaps if, yeah, things are like cycling. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Cycling at some rapid pace or something like that. I don't know. Potentially. Yeah. Anyway. Interesting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Wow. There you go. What else we got?

Chris Gammell: Well, things in my house didn't blow up, but one thing did blow up today, which is. Oh yes. The starship. Yes. Well,

Dave Jones: it blew up last night because I'm in Australia.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right. Right. Well, I watched it in America where it happened. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And yeah, my predicting penny, I have a predicting penny. You obviously didn't watch my live show and I predicted that it would, that it would not succeed. So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think most people didn't. I think it was really about where it blew up. Not about if it blew up.

Dave Jones: Well, I'm surprised. See, cause I like, while I was doing the live show, I went, once it's cleared that tower, I'm going, this thing's going to make it. And it was, it's, I haven't heard any aftermath stuff, but it seemed to be that something went wrong with the separation thing. And like, it would not, the starship wouldn't separate from the super heavy booster thing. So I don't know, somebody forgot to pull the pin or something before there's some, some retaining pin or something. Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, we should put that on the checklist for next time. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it just didn't go for Manny,

Chris Gammell: the pin puller.

Dave Jones: And is it confirmed that they did actually blow it up? I think somebody did blow it up. Yeah. Self-destruct button. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Because it was just tumbling out of control. Yeah. It was spinning out of control. Once I saw it, once I saw it go past the single rotation, I went, uh, oh, on my live feed. I just went,

Chris Gammell: yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That shot of like the, from the bottom where you could see all the engines lit up, man. Yeah. And they weren't all lit up. No,

Dave Jones: there were five or six engines that were failed.

Chris Gammell: Cool. Yeah. Oh man.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That was so cool.

Dave Jones: For those who don't know, it's twice the power of the Saturn five. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's, it's just insane. I just, but yeah, it, uh, it, it actually cleared the tower and it, and it worked. It was just the separation. It would have like, if, you know, there's some, there's some mechanical. Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: There's like the, it's supposed to, so the, both things are supposed to be able to come back and land themselves.

Dave Jones: There's a lot. There's a lot still to do. There's a lot still to do. I can't believe that. They didn't even, weren't even going to attempt landings of these ones. It was, it was always going to be totally expendable. They were just going to belly flop them in the ocean. Like,

Chris Gammell: they were. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Even, even Starship was not supposed to propulsively land, even though that's one of its main jobs. So I can understand not testing it on the heavy booster. Cause you just wanted to make sure the 33 engines blow up.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. We got to see it all blow up when they were trying to do the landing. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. But that's been just Starship. This is the first time the super heavy booster with the 33 Raptor fricking engines has, you know, last time anyone has tried any scale of this sheer number of engines was the Soviet, none of this Russian rubbish, Soviet Union back then, Soviet N1. And it didn't go that well. Ah, okay. It had 30 engines, had 30 engines. That was supposed to be their big moon rocket. And it just. Got it. Totally blew up. So yeah, but 33 engines, but yeah, five or six of them didn't work. So it looks like they shut down. Okay. But I, I think if one of those blew up, then it would have started a chain, a chain reaction that blew them all up. That would have blown up the whole thing.

Chris Gammell: So yeah,

Dave Jones: I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think it's pretty, pretty edge. There.

Dave Jones: It's pretty dicey. It's like, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Chris Gammell: I have a new book recommendation. Maybe I haven't mentioned on the show yet. You knew this was going to happen. Delta V and critical mass. Those are both.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: It's basically about asteroid mining and then.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Moon mining. And I loved it. First off, because it's written by the same guy that wrote Damon and freedom.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So do you remember me talking about at DEF CON, the, the security conference?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: They have like a hacking contest called dark net.

Dave Jones: Oh, I think so.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So that's based on those early books on Damon and freedom. Right. So they basically built an entire like hacking contest based on those books. And it's just like this. It's just like this adrenaline ride. The whole two, but both two books are cool. And then you wrote the space book and two space books and frigging fantastic. I hope he writes the third one. There's a, he kind of left the hanging for the third one, but so good.

Dave Jones: Can I make a prediction?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Of the books?

Dave Jones: Asteroid mining will not happen in my lifetime.

Chris Gammell: Oh, interesting.

Dave Jones: So I'm talking what I've got another good 30 years, hopefully. Yeah. Hopefully. Right. You know, so it will not happen in my lifetime. That is my, that is my prediction. Cause there's still so much stuff to mine here. There's a lot of stuff. Orders of magnitude. Orders. I don't know how many, 10 orders of magnitude easier and cheaper to simply mine it here.

Chris Gammell: Well, here's the thing. So this is what I had not ever thought about with these books. And this is why I liked them so much is just like, if you are able to mine in space, you would never actually, I always thought like when they, you know that I remember someone talking about like the first asteroid miner, whoever owns the first asteroid mining company will be the first earth's first trillionaire. And I think that that could, could be true. But the thing I always, I always thought that they were going to bring stuff back to earth, right? Bring it back down to gravity. Well, yeah, but there's no guarantee of that. Actually, the harder thing is to bring stuff from earth up to orbit, right? Like the, the weight of doing that. So instead, if you then have, if you have materials,

Dave Jones: but the weight of getting heavy stuff back to earth is, I don't know if it's just as bad, but it's, it's, it's very difficult to get heavy stuff back to earth. This is why they had to leave their poop on the moon, right? They, they, they, they had to throw everything out the window. Like they threw everything out the door, right? To save weight.

Chris Gammell: Because of the propellant to get back off the, that gravity well. So like, but what I'm saying is, I always thought that they would be putting.

Dave Jones: it's also the incoming weight through the atmosphere as well.

Chris Gammell: Sure. No, no doubt about that. I'm just saying that I always thought that the point of asteroid mining was to bring more material back to earth, but I never considered it the way that these books frame it, which is it stays in orbit. And then because it's so expensive to bring any material up from the earth out to orbit, right?

Chris Gammell: they, they use it in space. You can build stuff in space. Right. I just, for some reason, my brain never made that switch over before. And then that is a large plot point.

Dave Jones: With my prediction, I'm talking about bringing them back to earth, right? In, in, in my lifetime, I fully expect mining on the moon. Right. So the mind oxygen, they mind water, right? They mind, you know, that they talk about the helium three or whatever it is,

Chris Gammell: you know,

Dave Jones: stuff like that. Right. No, I can see that happening in my lifetime. Yep.

Chris Gammell: This talks about that. But you know,

Dave Jones: everyone talking about one mining gold from one of these asteroids and bringing it back. It's, it's, it's complete bullshit. Right. No.

Chris Gammell: Right. I think the hard thing is actually like, you think about like making propellant. It's like, you need to split water often with water. I mean, how about this? I should really say it like this. Many of the sci-fi novels that I read often talk about water being an important piece of propulsion and that you need it to live. You need it to block radiation. And then you also need oxygen. Well,

Dave Jones: one of the things that's being talked about, well, one of the primary things that they're planning right now for the moon, you know, outpost is an oxygen pipeline from, from the mining facility to where they use the oxygen, right? Cause oxygen is so important, right? You're going to mine oxygen. This is stuff that they're like, that they're already planning and working on and actually developing as part of the Artemis space thing. It's one of the first things they're going to build when they get there is this oxygen pipeline so that you can transport the mind oxygen. So it's, you know, it's been all over the news in the last week or whatever. And yeah, that, that's one of their, that's one of the first things they're going to do when they get there is it's like, because you can't have a colony without the mining, right? We can't send up all the, you know,

Chris Gammell: you need resources up there. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You need to mine, mine the resources. So that is one of the first priorities. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I never had that in my mind in all of this stuff. So yeah, that's,

Dave Jones: that's for like Artemis six or something. That's, that's for like, like, like the third, like, you know, yeah, we'll send humans there. They'll do their little walkie things. Right. And then, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then only a few missions later, they'll be starting to build the mining type stuff.

Chris Gammell: Huh?

Dave Jones: So yeah, it's, it's coming very quick.

Chris Gammell: Great. Well, if you like that kind of stuff in a high pressure environment, check out these two books. I'll link them in.

Dave Jones: All right, cool. I will put them on my Kindle. I assume they're Kindle, Kindle. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, very Kindle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I bet you'll like them.

Dave Jones: Cool bananas. All right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Space, man.

Dave Jones: Yep. Never,

Chris Gammell: never gets old. I still don't want to live out there though.

Dave Jones: There's so much stuff happening at the moment. It's just, it's just nuts. Yeah. That's why there's, you know, 20 different space YouTube channels and they've all got something new every week. You know, there's like new news literally every week. It's just crazy. Something's always happened, but yeah. Yep. Starship. Wow. It actually got off the pad.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It was great. Great. Yeah. I will watch every additional launch to be honest. Yes. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But catching, I still don't know. About, you know, the big, Oh,

Chris Gammell: the plucking it out of the air thing.

Dave Jones: Hekazilla thing. The big Mechazilla arms that capture the super heavy booster, but they have to do that. Right. To make it affordable. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I, I don't get it. Yeah. I don't, I don't understand why that is,

Dave Jones: but why? Well, cause cost.

Chris Gammell: Why can't you just land it like the other ones? Why can't you just land it like the other ones? Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. I, I don't know the answer to that.

Chris Gammell: I thought it was just because it was cool and that it was hard to set them back up, but, you know, maybe,

Dave Jones: maybe something different with the super heavy booster as opposed to Starship. I don't know. Maybe the engines can't gimbal enough or something to, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Could be. Could be. We'll find out.

Speaker ?: Oof.

Dave Jones: Good stuff though. Yep. But yeah, damn it. The one little thing, like all I had to do was separate, like don't they have like explosive bolts, which have been used forever in the space program. They're like 60 years and they never fail. Don't they use explosive bolts to separate the things? I mean, you know, just imagine like the, um, the, the, uh, uh, what's the new, uh, telescope. Can't believe I've got a mental block.

Chris Gammell: James Webb space. James Webb space.

Dave Jones: Right. That had 200 over 200 things that had to happen in sequence for that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But that thing was put together over 25 years and it, you know, and it had, it had, that was NASA budget and NASA timelines.

Dave Jones: This is all they had to do was physically separate two.

Chris Gammell: SpaceX budget and physically separate two items.

Dave Jones: That is not a, I don't think that's a trivial thing. Explosive bolts.

Chris Gammell: Two massive things though. Two massive.

Dave Jones: Yeah, true. They're massive, but put a couple of explosive bolts in series and you know, as long as you can blow one of them, you know, the whole chain's going to go. Right. I don't know. Yeah. I'm just disappointed that like I was like, I was saying that during the live stream, I went right. I'm 95% confident that the rest of the mission is going to work. Cause the separation, like, I don't think anyone actually predicted, Oh yeah, they're going to have a problem with the, uh, with, with the separation. That's just like, no, no, that's just nuts. So yeah, they're the most unlikely thing to fail failed.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Which is really remarkable. Yeah. Anyway, there you go.

Chris Gammell: All right. Let's move on to other remarkable things. Uh, national instruments is getting subsumed. No,

Dave Jones: no. Are they being bought? Are they?

Chris Gammell: They're being bought. Yeah. $8.2 billion. Who's buying Emerson electric. Uh, where's this in the list? Uh, I don't know. 10, 15 down. Emerson electric to buy national instruments for $8.2 billion to deepen automation push.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. I say it.

Chris Gammell: Here's the interesting thing. This is the most interesting thing to me, at least at the last moment, our old friends, my old, my old boss and our old friends, Papa Danaher, also known as Fortiv, put in a competing bid at the same dollar at the last minute. And then national instruments goes, Nope, we're going with Emerson.

Dave Jones: Yeah. What? So they put in a higher bid?

Chris Gammell: Nope. Put in the same bid. Oh,

Dave Jones: the same bid. Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's why I don't get that. You know, it's maybe a little bit. Well,

Dave Jones: they most likely had like a handshake deal with them or something. And, you know, they don't want,

Chris Gammell: I don't think that's how that works. No. Handshake deal at 8.2 billion. You're a very trusting person. No, no, no, but you know, many lawyers involved.

Dave Jones: Like, especially if like, you know, they've kind of like, especially if coming with last minute, they had no clue. It's like, oh yeah, of course we're going to get with Emerson.

Chris Gammell: Ford have also made a 60, to quote, Ford have also made a $60 per share offer, which is Emerson's offer for national instruments on Tuesday. But the seller decided to pick Emerson due to lesser risks in financing the deal and potentially easier path to regulatory approval. This is what I thought of. Basically, you know, Ford have owns Keith Lee, Fluke and tech. They don't own, obviously, but that's them trying to eat, you know, a pretty, you know, basically national instruments has been eating a lot of the business of, well,

Dave Jones: I was going to ask how many companies have national instruments actually. Yeah. National. Instruments or semiconductor? Who are we talking about?

Chris Gammell: National instruments. National semiconductor was bought by TI. National instruments. 15 years ago. Yeah. Right. Yes.

Dave Jones: I was going to say, I don't know how to yell. All this national stuff. National instruments. Yes. How many companies of national instruments actually gobbled up? Have they gobbled up any?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I know I tried to work there and they rejected me hard.

Dave Jones: Hard rejection. Why?

Chris Gammell: Because I didn't have any experience. So this is when I was in Austin.

Dave Jones: What job were you going for?

Chris Gammell: So I was in Austin. I was at Samsung. I was trying to like, you know, I had an electrical engineering degree, but I had been working in a fab for two years. And I was like, I don't want to work in this fab anymore. I would like to work in test equipment. And there's this awesome test equipment company in town. And they go, yeah, no.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no. Okay. Yeah, no. So there you go.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I like new people there even. They're like, no. See, if you had built some,

Dave Jones: if you had built some hobby power supplies or something, you would have. Yeah. That's what I would have done it. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's what I would have done it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Instead, I was out boozing in Austin. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. I mean, like they have kind of like this whole weird subculture too of like, you know, so they have, I'm going to get this wrong. It's not Simulink. The MATLAB has Simulink. That is their control software. National Instruments has whatever the hell they call their automation software. So there's, and they have like different divisions too, right? LabVIEW. LabVIEW. That's it. Test engineer here. Of course he would say that you know this, right? LabVIEW, and LabVIEW has got like, you know, LabVIEW is huge, but like, there's like the software control element of it all. And then they also build hardware for it as well, which is, that's what was competing with all these hardware companies. So I'm guessing if I had to guess, I, you know, I guess the main reason that Emerson's buying them is the IP around the, I think the real moneymaker is the, is the software stuff because. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But the software is so beautifully integrated with the hardware. It is, it's magical, right? That's why people pay a premium for, for their stuff is because the hardware, you pay a premium for their cards because they're, it's integrated with their software, not only LabVIEW, but Lab, uh, Windows, uh, CVI. So they've got like a C version of it and it's just all integrated. So beautifully.

Chris Gammell: When's the last time you used it? We should put that out there.

Dave Jones: Well, I used it when I was at my old job. So we're talking 12 years ago now. Yeah. No, even further than that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I didn't, didn't use it at Altium. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

Chris Gammell: it's still well-regarded. I know that, but like, well, not, not by the people that actually use it every day, but it's well-regarded. I'm sure it hasn't gone to crap.

Dave Jones: I'm sure it hasn't gone to crap.

Chris Gammell: I was just always surprised. They had like their own language. I think G wasn't G a programming language.

Dave Jones: I haven't heard of that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. G programming language mainly used automation. It's a graphical programming language.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Okay. Used in LabVIEW.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Maybe that's after my time.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. LabVIEW used, and it's like, but like then under the hood, it's like all this, it's all tied to other programming languages as well. So like C, C under the hood or something like that.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: I never used it, but this is probably not going to impact many people, if I'm being honest, because they're, Emerson's just trying to eat more of the market. They're not like going to, I mean, there may change some things, but yeah.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: Anywho. It's a company I don't know much about, apparently.

Dave Jones: Okay. The other week, you, weren't you crapping on about a, uh, Prusa 3D printer?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So that's why I think un, unmanaged 615 has, uh, put it. I think he's, uh, trolling you somewhat and it did get seven thumbs up is, no, sorry. Yeah. No, I'm looking at the wrong thing. Anyway, he added this in and there's a Prusa 3D printer issues. And you said, Oh, it's so good that it's, it just works. And apparently there's issues. Somebody's having issues with it. So. Yeah. I mean,

Chris Gammell: okay.

Dave Jones: Yep. I think you're being trolled there.

Chris Gammell: Oh, maybe. I mean, I like the brand.

Dave Jones: I, I highly recommend trolling Chris.

Chris Gammell: That's. Oh, okay. Yeah, sure. Sure. Sure. Yep. And no one did take any photos of me at a middle world. I mean, they took photos with me, but they didn't take photos of me. Like, yeah, so.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Boy. Yeah. There's actually some drama on, on, I've seen on, uh, Twitter. Yeah. To do with, uh, Prusa and some, uh, rep, rap festival or something. And there's someone, someone on YouTube. I can't remember his name who absolutely hates Prusa. And he was uninvited from the, from actually, uh, having a booth at the 3d printer thing. So there's like lots of, uh, lots of bad blood going on in the 3d printer community, apparently. Yeah. And it's all to do with, uh, Prusa. Some people claim that they're, you know, and I don't know, it's anti Prusa and pro Prusa. And I don't know. Who's got time. Who's got time. Drama channels, you know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We got stuff to do. Like I've been watching your stuff with the, I watched your enclosure video. I enjoyed that.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: I haven't watched these, uh, microcontrollers. You've been picking out microcontrollers.

Dave Jones: I've been picking out microcontrollers. Just released another video, uh, this morning because all the three, speaking of fanboys, yes, the, uh, STM 32 fanboys came out of the woodwork, as I predicted in my first microcontroller video, that that would come out of the woodwork. Surely they did. And they said, I've picked the wrong microcontroller. Cause I picked a microchip, uh, pick, uh, 24 F 24 jobby. And they said, Oh no, you've got to use the STM, um, 32 L Sierra low power series chosen the wrong micro. So I did another video the other day, actually comparing the two. And well, there's some, uh, shenanigans going on in the ST data sheet. Let me tell you that. Interesting. Yeah. They, they, they claim 88 microwatts per megahertz, right. Power consumption in, in, in active, uh, processing mode. Cause that's how you usually specify it. X amount of current, but, but how,

Chris Gammell: this is a battery powered thing you're making. Yeah.

Dave Jones: This is a battery powered thing. So power consumption is, is part of the equation. It's not critical. Like it, it isn't like a watch or anything that has to work for, you know,

Chris Gammell: so it's not, I'm always curious about those kinds of readings too. Like the, you know, the power per mega megahertz, whatever. It feels like it's an antiquated thing where it's actually on the full bore kind of like, like, Oh, you're going to operate at the top of its range. And it's really about like how much you're going to use at the top. Cause I figure when you're in the, in the bottom of the range, like most,

Dave Jones: at least the things I do product. Yeah. They, they're in sleep mode.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But most of the things I do, it's like they're in sleep mode. They're just as off as they can be. And let, yes, it's a real time clock. And so it's just about like, what is the draw?

Dave Jones: How much power it draws when it's actually actively running for a few minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Right. Yeah. It's like these spiky things, but, and it does matter because it's about the efficiency of the processing, but it's not like, exactly. I don't know. Okay. Anyway,

Dave Jones: so that's why it, anyway, in my recent video, there's actually quite a few things involved here. Uh, in my recent video, I mentioned that a more accurate description is not the, uh, micro amps per frequency. It's actually the, uh, micro amps per, micro amps. Cause you want to know how many instructions, like if one, uh, processor is one MIPS at one Meg, right? So it's processed with one instruction per cycle and another one's one instruction per four cycles. Then that's one quarter the, uh, processing power for the same current per megahertz. And then you can say, well, current shouldn't, uh, you shouldn't use current. You should use a power. So it should be microwatts per megahertz or microwatts per MIPS. So there's like three or four different ways that you can categorize this. And yeah, I think technically it's power. Per MIPS is the best way to do it. But, but the data sheets never give you that figure because a lot of, including the STM 32, they actually run the core at 1.2 volts, right? So they've got a built in low dropout regulator. And also I think there's some versions of it that have a built in DC to DC converter. So if you, if you're using a DC to DC converter or no, sorry, an external DC to DC converter, then you're talking about constant power consumption. Whereas an LDO is a linear regulator. So it's constant current and they're two and constant current into your load. And they're two very different power consumption ways to consider power consumption in your load because the DC to DC converter, constant power is going to be more accurate than your constant current, which will change with battery voltage as your battery voltage drops. Right? So, so your power consumption is going to drop as your battery voltage drops. Right? So there's, it's all this weird, you know, there's so many different ways to look at power consumption of a micro controller. It's crazy. And, and it's almost impossible to compare, as I said, in the video, really the only way to genuinely compare two micros is to actually build them up. Make two boards. Yeah. Make, make, make two different boards, run the same software on both. And, and physically, you know, turn on all the, turn on all the peripherals, go into all the sleep modes you want to go into. And, you know, like,

Chris Gammell: yeah, it's just. How much is this? So is, is this something that actually matters for your product or is this something that you're kind of just honing it on?

Dave Jones: That's what my video was about is that it doesn't really matter. And I mentioned this in the video is that I'm powering it from a pair of double A batteries. Most likely I haven't got the exact final form factor yet, but yeah, it like I did the worst case calculation, even if the thing was on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, it's still going to have two years battery life. Worst case. Right. So it's like, you know, so it's like, it really doesn't matter. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So yeah, it, it, it, yeah, it doesn't matter that the STM 32 was half the power of the pick. Like it, it made no difference. Really. So I was on,

Chris Gammell: I was back on the embedded podcast and I, I mentioned, I mentioned to them that like, like past me felt bad for current me because, because like past me didn't care about like, really, I think one of the things when like, uh, in this, in this environment is like, what is the speed to implementation? Right. It's like, you could go and find the lowest power thing out there, but if it's got like a, you know, crappy software support and like, yeah, you know, you have to do all the bit twiddling yourself to access the registers versus like using some abstracted interface. That's just going to like be done. It's like, yeah, yeah. Just pay the extra, do that. You know, like don't optimize at the beginning, unless you really need to,

Dave Jones: unless you really need to. Yeah. That's what I mentioned. Unless you're really on the bleeding edge of your product and it's absolutely critical. It makes or breaks your product that you have to use this micro because of cost or power reasons. Right. Then you just choose the one that's easiest to implement. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And, and I mean, you, you've had picked products in the, in the past as well. So, you know, the ecosystem, you like it,

Dave Jones: like that's more than enough in my mind.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Dave Jones: And then once I saw in my first video, I saw that, Oh, cause mine's going to have a custom LCD in it. Right. And it's going to do some blinking of the LCD. Right. And it's got built in blinking and animation modes for the LCD that don't use the core at all. So it's built in. So, so if you want to toggle between two different things on the LCD, you can do that. And you can do that in power in complete sleep mode and not even power up your core at all to do that. It's done in the LCD engine. It's great. Cool. Right. That's great.

Chris Gammell: That's a really cool little feature. Even if you couldn't do that, even if you didn't have the, I just mean like, uh, I said like on the, on the other show, like my specsmanship in the past, like mine, like, Oh, I need to have this and have that. Like that can often be outdone by like comfort with a, with a, with a, with a platform. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like I could just go write something or put down another part, whatever.

Dave Jones: Like a, a, a really classic case of this. If you're a subcontractor, like, uh, Mike, uh, Harrison, for example, right. Who we've had on the show, right. He does, you know, all these lead lighting systems that he does. He just uses pick 32 for everything. Cause that's the tool. Like he has all the routines. He has all the tools down pat and he can implement a new product in days. Right. Yep. Because he, yeah, he has all the existing tools in place. So unless he has some absolutely overriding, I've had never heard him use anything other than the pick 32.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't think anyway, because it's just, yeah, it's, you know, rarely does he, you know, he just never comes across a situation where, well, it, the pick 32 wasn't suitable. Right. You know, he's, he, he isn't talking millions of volumes. So he's not trying to save sense. Right. And he's not doing ultra low power stuff. So he's not considering every microamp.

Chris Gammell: Probably. I think the other thing too, is that when people start thinking like, Oh, I have this new function that I have to do. And it's like, there is a wide. So like, just from my life example of, you know, my work example, rather of like, if you're adding connectivity to something, like there are, you know, there are so many integrated parts that you can say, Oh, you should switch to this thing where there's like a micro plus that communication method. That's in there. And it's like, yes, you can do that, but there is, you know, there are umpteen options to go and add the connectivity as a peripheral as well. Right. So that you could still have your main processing and then offload it to, to a separate modem or something like that. Right. And so it might not be the most optimized, but if it's going to speed up your, your production, it's probably worth it for your, at least your prototype.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, totally. So I don't know. I could end up using a different micro than the pick, uh, 24 if I don't know, but at this stage, there was no compelling. My latest video said, Nope, sorry. I don't see any compelling reason to go for the STM 32 over the pick. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Go change it in rev two. If you really need to, you know?

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It doesn't sound, it sounds like it's pretty straightforward though. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's a very, it's a pretty simple product. Yeah. The most. Yeah. It needs some 32 bit timers. It needs some custom LCD drivers and not much else.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So,

Dave Jones: you know,

Chris Gammell: cool. Well, good luck, man. That sounds like a fun,

Dave Jones: I'm sure it's half a dozen micros on the market that could do this job. You know?

Chris Gammell: I see. More than that probably. Unless you really need that integrated LCD piece.

Dave Jones: Or I wanted ultra low cost, like, you know, because the, uh, because the pick is $2 something. If I wanted something that's in the, you know, heart, you know, like sub dollar or something like the, yeah, it's in the sense range. Right. Then, yeah, I'd be going for some obscure Asian, you know, I'd be going for some whole talk, whole tech or something. That's a viable one. You know? Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of processors, I don't think we mentioned this last week and it wasn't out a couple of weeks ago, but I was pleasantly surprised to see one of my favorite companies, which is Nordic semiconductor. They have a new part that just came out. Dual core M33. That's no different than before. Uh, what is different though, Dave, multiple risk five coprocessors. Oh, that's the first I've seen. That is one of the biggest chip companies I've seen. You know, they're not the biggest, right. But that is one of the biggest chip companies I've seen. That's adding risk five into a banner level product like this. And they still haven't said like, what are there for?

Dave Jones: But yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: I'm guessing, you know,

Dave Jones: if you build it, they will come right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think so. Well, I mean, they, they build Bluetooth. So this is going to be the thing that's in like tons of, you know, headsets. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But then you need two different tool chains for the one chip.

Chris Gammell: It's all Zephyr, man.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: So, I mean, like, honestly, it's they, and they have different targets within there, but yeah, it's all going to be in the, it's all going to be using the stuff under the hood that you have to worry about it. Right. You have to worry about other things with Zephyr, of course, but yeah. Yeah. But yeah.

Dave Jones: Cool bananas.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's, it's interesting. I don't know. Like it's, uh, the seeing, seeing what that is. They have a weird new, it's like, so it's NRF 54, H 20. That's the new thing. And then a bunch of memory to beef up memory. So.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: We'll be interesting. I remember I had gotten excited because I saw, you know, I had watched, I saw one of their job listings on like LinkedIn six plus months ago. And they were, they were advertising a risk five. I think I maybe, they were advertising a risk five engineer, like something that had experience with it. As in a,

Dave Jones: uh, as in, right. A, a chip level.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Someone who worked with us, the, the standard has built stuff for it. You know, they don't, they haven't announced what the cores yet are either. Right. It's an instruction set architecture, which is just five, but.

Dave Jones: Oh, fire alarm.

Chris Gammell: Well, I guess the show's over.

Dave Jones: I guess the show's over. Okay. All right.

Chris Gammell: We made it. All right. All right.

Dave Jones: I don't know if you can hear that in the background. I can.

Chris Gammell: Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. I'm out of here. We'll, uh, catch you on the next show. Catch you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Speaker ?: We'll be right back.