#642 – Sad Violins for Superconductors

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released August 13th, 2023. Episode 642. Sad Violins for Superconductors.

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Dave Jones: Coming in hot and live. You just sounded loud there. Sounded loud.

Chris Gammell: Oh. Oh, well, loud and... Yeah, I mean...

Dave Jones: It was like you leaned into the mic, I think.

Chris Gammell: As I get older.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: You know, I've got dad voice now. That's what it really is.

Dave Jones: Shouting into the void more, yes. Oh, man.

Chris Gammell: My buddies, when they used to call my house, my dad took after my grandfather, who both have booming voices. I'm sure I'm also destined to have a booming voice. But, like, you know, when you used to call a house phone?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, right. Yes. And if you called long distance, you'd speak louder.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well, there's that piece. No, there's actually... Yeah. There's definitely that. No, this was... It was like... I don't know if kids these days... You know, they have kids these days. But it was like someone had to go and get that person. And in the Gamble household, I love my dad greatly, but he would just shout your name. Yeah. And then, you know, you're expected to go pick up the receiver and, you know, start talking. And so one of my friends still, to this day, every time I see him, he asks how my dad's doing. And then he goes, Christopher! Yeah. Because that's like his number one memory of my dad, like shouting, you know. Yeah. My buddy would call the house and then my dad would shout, Christopher! Oh! That's great. So was your phone in the hallway? We had one in the kitchen. There was one of my parents' bedroom upstairs. And I think that was it.

Dave Jones: What? You had multiple phone lines?

Chris Gammell: Well, I'm younger than you, Dave.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: The kitchen was the main one, but it was a pretty small house.

Dave Jones: Well, I eventually did have multiple phone lines. Yeah. They eventually got sick of me. Like, they were trying to use the phone and I'm on the modem, you know. Yeah. So it would like, yeah, they'd pick up the phone and, you know.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So here's a question for you. Yeah. Since we're on the modem thing. I watched a rom-com, an old rom-com the other day with my wife. And we were watching You Got Mail, which is a riot, which is now 25 years old and it's a riot. It's like an advertisement for American Online and Starbucks and just like being a yuppie, basically. And so my wife, though, she asked me, did it always make the noise when you like logged on? Because one of the things, you know, even featured in the movie is like the modem noise, you know, like the 14.4 modem or whatever.

Dave Jones: Those Hayes modem sounds. Yeah. It did. Well, back when you used to actually have-

Chris Gammell: Was it always audible to the user, though? Like even like in the latter days of modem? No, that was optional.

Dave Jones: That was optional. So, you know. I couldn't remember. Well, yeah, it depends on like back in the old days when you had to flip the switches on the Hayes modem, right? Hayes was the brand name. Hayes was like the Xerox of modems back then. Yeah. Yeah. You know, back when you had to flick the switches, you would have an online originate switch or whatever. So, and it would have a little speaker in it so that you could hear it. So that you could, you know, because the whole point was that you needed to be able to hear that the, yeah, you needed to monitor that the other end was actually a modem attached to it. And if you didn't have the speaker, you just wouldn't know.

Chris Gammell: Right. And you're not getting someone picking up and being like, hello, hello. Exactly. Hello. Hello. This is a phone line. Please don't, please don't play those noises in my ear.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So you needed that. But then when you connected to an ISP, you know, it was different back in the BBS days and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So point to point kind of.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Once you had an ISP, it was like, eh. But I can still remember it. Even my ADSL 2 plus would still, you could still like, they'd have a little tiny speaker in it. I think you could hear it actually negotiating.

Chris Gammell: I mean, in the movie. And then in like, in my, in my memory, I mean, like I could still pretty much sing the intro. You know, I know the words to that tune, but like, but I couldn't remember if they played it through the speaker. I mean, they, they very obviously played it through the speakers in the movie to like move the plot point, I guess, as much as that's worth.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. I, I, I think the, you know, you've got mail. See, cause I never had the America online. It's so bad. Cause it wasn't a thing here. Right.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really?

Dave Jones: No. Yeah. No. That was, hence the name America online. Right. I'm not in America. Right.

Chris Gammell: You're not.

Dave Jones: That was not a thing here. Right.

Chris Gammell: I can't. Oh, what was my. Wait. So what was like the latter? What were the latter days of like, wait, does that, how the hell did people communicate across the ocean?

Dave Jones: Well, my first, my first online internet thing after modems, of course, after, you know, BBSs and stuff like that was Microsoft network. They had their own network. This is before the internet as kind of, well, the internet existed, but like every, like companies were going for their own internet.

Chris Gammell: WW, the worldwide web. And the, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. And they touted that, oh, you could actually share mail with the internet. Right. So with people on the internet, you could. So yeah, I actually got the Microsoft network. It was called, because it came with Windows 95. Would have came with Windows 95. And I was using the Microsoft network. Almost 30,

Chris Gammell: almost 30 years ago, Dave. Yeah. Approaching 30 years ago. Speaking of approaching 30 years ago, today is our 13 year anniversary.

Dave Jones: Oh, is it really? I didn't know there was a day.

Chris Gammell: August. Well, it's August 10th here. I think it was August 10th that we were. Okay. Well, it's August 11th. August 10th in my head is, oh, there you go. Yeah. So we're releasing this later. But yeah, 13 years. Wow.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause we like started it not long after I had started, like I'm third. So I must be 13 and a half years on the blog now. Is it 14 and a bit?

Chris Gammell: I think it's 14. No, I started in 2009. I think.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I started April 2009.

Chris Gammell: Oh, then that would be 18 months. Really? Right. We started August 2010. I know that.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: So it's a year. I thought you were, I thought you were like six months prior, but maybe you were more than that.

Dave Jones: No, no. It's, well, it seemed like that, but no, it's actually more. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Okay. Well, the 13th anniversary is Lace. Is the. Lace, really? Is that a. You know, like. The thing is. Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah.

Dave Jones: Diamond Jubilee. Diamond, you know. Right, right, right, right. Right. Yep.

Chris Gammell: I was hoping copper. Yeah, copper is. Oh, yeah. Copper would have. Is copper one of them? Is copper a. Wool or copper. Yep. Seventh. Seventh anniversary.

Dave Jones: Oh, seventh, is it? Wool or copper.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay. Oh, there you go. Wool or copper. Wow. Geez.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they start getting weird, too. There's some weird ones. Oh, copper comes back on 49th anniversary.

Dave Jones: Oh, there you go. Right. Will we still be doing. Will podcasts still be a thing? I don't think so. No.

Chris Gammell: I don't think they will be for me. How about that? Right. No, I'll be like. What's that? 36 years from now? Sorry. Yeah, I'll be. I think I'm going to be retired from you, at least. Yeah, I'll probably be six feet under. How about that week? Yeah. Nah, I'm going to live for 150. Come on. I mean, robot brain.

Dave Jones: Maybe with modern tech. You never know. You want to know what else is having an anniversary this month, actually.

Chris Gammell: What's that?

Dave Jones: I just tweeted last night. The Fluke. The Fluke 87. The Fluke 87. Guess how old the Fluke 87 is.

Chris Gammell: Let's see. I bet that came out in the early 90s at the earliest. I would say mid 80s. So if it was 83, it'd be 40 years.

Dave Jones: Not quite. 35 years. Came out in 1988. August 1988. According to the manual, anyway. So, but Fluke retweeted me. So Fluke didn't question that.

Chris Gammell: It didn't.

Speaker ?: All right.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. 35 years. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: 35 years for the same, essentially the same model of multimeter. You can still buy it as the Fluke 87. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Some executive somewhere should be getting a bonus for all of the amortized R&D on that thing. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's nuts. I mean, they've changed the design. They switched from a Fluke proprietary processor to an MSP430. Oh, really? I didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. I think that came in the Mark III. Don't quote me on that. Because there was no Mark II. That was very interesting. There was no Mark. There was the, I don't think there was. I don't think there was. I think they went from the 87 to the 87 Model 3. It isn't Mark. It's Model. The 87 Model 3. I don't think there was ever an 80 series Model 2. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Anyone? In the comments down below. But, yep. Yeah. There was no Model 2. And interestingly, there was a Model 4. But, but, I don't know if you know this. But they, but it was so radically different. Right? It was so, the Model 4 was so radically different. You can, you can Google a picture of the Fluke Model 4. Right? And you'll find it. Maybe. It was so radically different. Everyone, like, went, well, this is no longer a Fluke 87. Screw you. I'm not buying it. So, they quickly, very quickly rebranded it as the Fluke 187. So, now you can't buy it anymore. But then, it was reasonably successful as the Fluke 187.

Chris Gammell: So. Was it 87 because that's when it was created? Is that why it was the Fluke 87?

Dave Jones: No. It was the Fluke 80 series. Probably because it was the 1980s. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: It was released in 88. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was released in 88, but it probably started in 87. And you know how projects go. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But it's not, but it's not just the 87. It's the, there was the 83, the 85, and the 87. There were three models in that series.

Chris Gammell: I don't know any of these things, Dave. I've never had an 87. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You see? Because you're not a multimeter aficionado. Like, you know.

Chris Gammell: I'm not.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: I have literally what's given to me.

Dave Jones: What multimeter do you use?

Chris Gammell: I use a 121 GW and, you know, questionable quality and construction. But, you know, it was free. It gets the job done. It's free. Yeah. I have a Keithley 2000, which was also free. Yeah. Yeah. Benchmade. Yeah. I have a, I have one of those Anang 80. Oh, yeah. One of those little ones that you recommended.

Dave Jones: Yeah. The 8008. Yep. Yeah. That's the one. Or some variant. There's, you know, 20 variants.

Chris Gammell: I don't, I'm not very good at electronics, Dave. I don't know if you know this.

Dave Jones: You're just not, you're not really a hobbyist.

Chris Gammell: You're not as much of a hobbyist. I'm not. I don't know. I'm definitely not a gearhead.

Dave Jones: Than other. You're not really a, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You're more of a. I'm the practical engineer. I'm. You're a corporate engineer.

Dave Jones: Corporate engineer.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's, that's a little bit of a stretch, but okay.

Dave Jones: Not, not, not quite. Yeah. Cause you have a podcast and you have, you know, you teach it. Yeah. You know, like, so you've got more passion than your regular corporate engineer.

Chris Gammell: I'm not a hobbyist. I, I a hundred percent agree with that.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I did not get started like that. I'm not, you know, I'm not doing this for funsies all the time. You know, like, yep. I'd like to think that if I won the lottery, I'd still do electronics, but I, I'm, I'm honest. I don't, I don't think so.

Dave Jones: You may not.

Chris Gammell: Whereas yeah. Like hardcore guys like me will just still be. I think I just, I don't know if you would have any choice. I think your brain is broken. Nice way.

Dave Jones: That's fine. I think every electronics hobbyist will take that as a.

Chris Gammell: A little bit broken, but you know, yeah. In like the right way. It's all good. Yeah. I like to think that I would, but I'm pretty, I'm pretty honest with myself.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'd probably get, I'd probably get tied up in other things.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: But what are you using every day though? Are you using the 87 every day?

Dave Jones: One that's in the nearest reach. No, I'm not using the Fluke 87. That's doesn't really, it, it, it's hanging around the lab and I might use it very occasionally, but no, I'm either using a, uh, one of my own branded BM, uh, seven, eight, sixes or, or my, uh, two, three, five or the one 21 GW, whichever one happens to be within. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So that's, yeah, that, that is a good synopsis of, of mine as well. It's just the ones that are in reach are mostly the ones given to me. So I think, I think if I had like a special need, which I, I don't, I mean like even the five and a half digit, I'm not using all the digits on there. So, yeah. And I don't care, you know, like the, the 10 volt folks, the reference aficionados, whatever you call them. Yeah. I'm, I'm not that. So, and nor, nor will I ever be. I know that I'll. Volt nuts. The volt nuts. Yeah. I will never be a volt nut. Yeah. Right. I think, yeah. Even if I was offered the lottery amounts of money, I'm not sure I could be a volt nut because I just, I don't care that much.

Dave Jones: You just don't care. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, that's, there's many better engineers than me in many ways. So, yeah. I did like your question to Toby. That was a good question. I listened to that whole interview. Yeah. Fascinating interview. What question? Toby was great.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. Toby was great.

Chris Gammell: About the DM, what DMM they have on their hip. Oh, right. Yes. Okay. Yeah. That was a good question. Yep. Yes. I do recommend people listen to that show if they have not.

Dave Jones: Oh, you have to listen to find out which one a linesman uses.

Chris Gammell: That's right. That's right. There you go. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, there's much debate. There's a very lively, you know, Brimann thread going on the EV blog. Forum at the moment. And everyone's talking about, oh, you know, which one's the most suitable for Phil. He's, ah, it's too big. I can't physically use the BM 869 in my hand. It's just too big. And, you know, so everyone's like complaining.

Chris Gammell: Just imagining a bunch of, a bunch of adults, you know, on the internet. This is serious shit. This BM is too big. This BM is too big. No, it's too big.

Dave Jones: This one uses polycarbonate and this one uses polyethylene housing. Oh, my God. You should see the debate about polycarbonate versus polyethylene. Polyethylene. Holy crap.

Chris Gammell: You know, I just, I just, I shan't. I shan't, Dave.

Dave Jones: That's great. That's great.

Chris Gammell: Nerds. I'm glad they, I'm glad they found something they like. And people to argue with. How would they have done this in the era when there wasn't America online connecting people to Australia? I mean, you know, you and I wouldn't have been.

Dave Jones: Well, I'm actually going to be given a talk on this.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really?

Dave Jones: It won't be recorded. So sorry, you've got to turn up in person, but I've been invited to a university, which shall remain nameless at the moment, just in case people try to gate crash it in September. And yeah, they want me to give a talk about how I got into electronics and all that sort of stuff. And I was going to share all that sort of stuff. Like this is before the internet. Okay. How do we do things? Okay. How do we do that?

Chris Gammell: Here's the thing, Dave. What? I will pay you $500 if you show up in full regalia, like you're going to a graduation. And then when you walk in, you play Pomp and Circumstance.

Dave Jones: What's Pomp and Circumstance? Oh, right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. And then you like go in and you lecture like in very like, like. Right.

Dave Jones: In regal robes. Like. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Basically, basically like you're, yeah. Like you're a academic king. I would like.

Dave Jones: Oh, I could dress like Bob Pease as a czar. You know? Like, have you seen his czar?

Chris Gammell: Not getting my $500 for that. Yes. I have seen that.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. His czar costume.

Chris Gammell: You don't have the beard for it though. That's the thing. You'd have to put on the beard.

Dave Jones: I know. I know. I'd have to put on the fake beard. Yeah. Damn it.

Chris Gammell: Darn. Darn. Anyway.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: That's exciting. It is just about like getting started.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Getting started.

Chris Gammell: And you're not, you're not going to the U.S. for this university visit.

Dave Jones: No, no. No. It's in town.

Chris Gammell: So, you know. It's here in Sydney. Somewhere in Sydney. Check out the universities in Sydney sometime in September, folks. Right. You might find Dave there.

Dave Jones: You might indeed. And I'll be getting an exciting tour of something. I won't spoil it. But yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm guessing particle accelerator. That's what I'm guessing.

Dave Jones: Right. I've already done a particle accelerator.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Well, maybe. Yeah. There's always more. There's always more particles to accelerate. Maybe there's a muon detector or some kind of particulate detector. They think that's always very exciting. And then you're like, oh, look. A bunch of stuff I can't see.

Dave Jones: Or it's.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it is exciting. Or it's an LK99 superconductor, dude. Oh. Someone asked if that was going to come up on the show. I don't have the stones for it, Dave. Nor do I have the background in research. I don't get it. I don't really care about it. I read a little bit about it. And I'm like, oh, okay. Would you have something that you'd like to say about it?

Dave Jones: Well, what would you like me to say? I've already done a video. Like people. Thing is, right. People expected me to do a debunking video of superconductor physics.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. I can't deal with this science right now. There's someone in the Netherlands talking about solar panels in a roadway again. I got to go. Through you science. There's some idiots over here.

Dave Jones: I mean, like as if people expected me to know and debunk superconductor physics. Like, you know, come on. Seriously? I saw an incredibly stupid, the stupidest video I've ever seen on the company's website. The hardest of heart takes. So I did a video laughing at this stupid video. And sure enough, their website's now closed. And it's, you know, so I don't know what's going on there. But whether or not it reopens, whether or not their video will be back. And nobody disagreed with me. Everyone thought that was a stupid video. But there were a lot of people defending it. Like, well, as in a lot of people saying, oh, the video doesn't matter. Oh, the marketing team made it. Oh, the, you know, no, the scientists were under duress. They had to make it under pressure from marketing. And it's not, it's an old video. It's not, and it's not real. They never, like, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know what we're talking about here. Are we talking about?

Dave Jones: Oh, you have not seen my LK99 video?

Chris Gammell: No, no.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: Something to watch afterwards. Okay. All right.

Dave Jones: Well, I'll explain it to you briefly.

Chris Gammell: It's more about the video than it is about the.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, yeah. It's a video that the company, like, this is, the LK99 is developed by a commercial of a university, right? So they have a commercial website, right? And they're trying to promote this material. It's an innovation lab or something like that. Technology transfer. Right. Something like that, right? They're trying to sell. They try to patent and sell the technology. And every university in the world has one of these commercial arms. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Right. That's right. It's, yeah. To varying success. Yes. That's, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Some of them really do not do well.

Dave Jones: Well, I've done another debunking video about another university commercial lab, which we can go into if you want. But anyway, this LK99, right? So they've got a commercial website. Right. And the main, the only promotional video on their website, it's front and center on the main page, is they use this copper plate, right? It's like a coin, right? It's like, you know, it's round shaped like a coin and it's hanging by a piece of string. And they coated it with their magic LK99 material, right? So they're thermally deposited on there and they put a magnet near it and the copper plate moves. Yeah. That's called Lenz's Law. It's going to do that. And I did a demo demonstrating that it's going to do that. It's Lenz's Law, right? You put a moving magnet near a copper thing, it's going to induce a current in the copper, which then back induces and actually repels the... The eddy current? Is that the one? Yeah. And it actually repels the magnet. So it's like, it's the dumbest thing ever. It's the dumbest thing. So I did a video laughing at that and everyone thought I was doing a debunking video debunking the physics of the semiconductor, of the superconductor materials. Like, no. So anyway, yeah, that's what I... Yeah. So that was just the dumbest thing.

Chris Gammell: Can you explain to me what it actually... Okay, so then that's that thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't get... Like I said, I didn't pay attention in like... Oh, it was on holiday, I think, when all this stuff started on Twitter. Because you're not on Twitter anymore. That's the problem, dude.

Dave Jones: Everything's on Twitter. Dude, everything's on Twitter. Nothing's on Mastodon. Mastodon's just...

Chris Gammell: Nothing's on... I agree. That has fallen off. It's still good. It's not... I'm just not doing anything, though. And I think that's... I'm no poorer for it. I'll tell you that much. Maybe I haven't... You haven't been kept up to date with all the... I've missed out on a lot of hot takes. I mean, that's the thing.

Dave Jones: You've missed all the memes as well. You've missed all the best memes. All right. The best LK99 memes.

Chris Gammell: I will give you that. I've missed out on the memes. Dude. And for that, I am forever heartbroken. Insert set. Editor, editor, insert sad music here. Yes, please. I'm so sad. I can't even think it's sad music for singing. Violin. Like one of those, you know, violin.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Violin music, please. Yep. For those who don't know, we do have an editor now who edits the show. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, we don't expect her to do this. I mean, that's a better job description.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I do like that idea of just like calling out into the deep of like, editor, please. Yep.

Dave Jones: Fine. Anyway, so what don't you get about LK99? What have you missed? Or what have you missed?

Chris Gammell: So here's what I've, this is, I saw there was some stuff about it. Like LK99 has been around for a while. Now they're starting to do some experimental stuff. Some of it look kind of shoddy. The videos that I saw, whatever. I don't really care about that. But what is the actual breakthrough of having a superconductor? So then what does that enable practically? So say there was a room temperature superconductor. Yep. I didn't even look that far. What does that enable day to day?

Dave Jones: Zero power loss for starters. Zero transmission loss, right? Zero transformer losses. If you can build it into a wire that you can wind on a transformer, right? Zero transformer losses, zero power losses. Because quantum computers, apparently, it's got a big use in quantum computers. You wouldn't have to cool them down. So apparently, and that would be like a game changer or something. Okay.

Chris Gammell: So the quantum thing, that's way beyond my comprehension. But I feel like the, I was actually watching your video about the trace rating, current rating. That was a good video. And like, I understand that. I feel like in DC power transfer and like the resistance of, you know, like at least using calculators and that sort of thing. And like, okay, but are you saying to me then? So like, how about that? We could talk about that in that context of that thing, right? So you had someone who on Twitter asked if you had 70 or 80 amps that you needed to pass through a trace on a board. Yep. That there would be, you know, there's some temperature rise and some, some, there's a bunch of formulas around that. And you can use calculators like you did to, to do the engineering of how big the trace needs to be.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Are there practical, like if it was a true superconductor, that means there would be no self-heating.

Dave Jones: There would be zero.

Chris Gammell: So that means we would be able to squeeze a thousand amps of current through a 10 mil trace. Like, like some of it just doesn't, it breaks my brain, right?

Dave Jones: That I don't actually know. Like, could you like put all of the power for a, a city through a, a hair's width thing, right? Yeah. I, I think there are still limits. Right. Exactly. Is it just start to break physics? Yeah. I think there are still limits there somehow.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So like the practical limits.

Dave Jones: I don't, I couldn't, I could not tell you. Yeah. I could not, and I don't think maybe anyone could tell you until we actually have a, well, no, because they could already test that. Presumably they could already, because you, you can get superconductors that have literally zero resistance, right? Right. But you have to like chill them down to like, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Down at zero Kelvin or closest to it as you can. And then like. That's an interesting question.

Dave Jones: Has anyone passed like 10,000 amps through a hair's width superconductor? Right. Exactly. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: I don't, I don't know. Often they're doing it because of other, I feel like when they're using superconductors. So I always think of like the magnetic levitation thing. Right. So they always use that in examples. Right. So you have like super, super cold things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a superconductor.

Dave Jones: That's the Meissner effect. Yes.

Chris Gammell: What is the, what is the effect called? Oh, I didn't know that.

Dave Jones: It's called the Meissner effect. Don't ask me to spell it. M-E-I-S-S-S. Something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Just put in Meissner effect. Yeah. I always, I always think of that as like, when I think of superconductors, I think of that. I think of, like you said, they're, they're always talking about it for quantum. I honestly don't get how quantum computers work in the slightest. You know, I'm just like, okay. Right. Yeah. There's another couple of states of, you know, it's not on and off. It's on and off sideways, left ways, up ways, diagonal ways. It's the Willy Wonka Vader of computing. Right. I'm like, okay, cool.

Dave Jones: I have done videos on that. Of course. I just, so we just don't, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's hard to wrap your head around. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I also don't get how it's going to be practical. Like, so are they going to recompile the computer programs for this? Like eight bits of, I just, my brain needs a practical example and I don't feel like we're there. I know they exist, but like.

Dave Jones: No, look, the thing with quantum computers is that they're not general purpose computers. You can't really use them as general purpose, you know, structured flow code computers. So that's, they're not there yet.

Chris Gammell: So like, so as we start to talk about like a superconductor, right. Wherever that there's obviously some threshold there, but like, it doesn't break physics. It's like a special characteristic of a material that takes it into a, you know, that enables some like, kind of like non-linear jump in characteristics, but it's not removing physics entirely. So I don't understand. No, no.

Dave Jones: It's yeah. I know. I can, I can appreciate it. Yeah. Can you put a million amps? I've gone from a thousand to 10,000. Now I'm going to a million. Why not? Yeah. Why not? Right. A million amps, right. Through the size of a, you know, hair. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: Can I pass a million amps from point A to point B and then put it through a 10K resistor?

Dave Jones: I'm slow. It's not going to break, dude. It's just, yeah, it's just, anyway, the, the, the two major things that everyone touts from is transport, of course, we could have trains that just like no friction. Well, except for air friction, but yeah, we, we, we have, you know, trains and buses and we can, we can have hoverboards eventually.

Chris Gammell: Hoverboards. Bring it. Yeah. All right.

Dave Jones: And, and the, but the other one thing is zero resistance.

Chris Gammell: With like stripy things on them by Mattel. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. Right. But you are right. I've never actually, like, I always hear it touted as, oh yeah, zero resistance, right? That is the thing. And zero power loss transmission. But I've never, yeah, I've got, you know.

Chris Gammell: Well, resistance is a construct anyways, right? I mean, like.

Dave Jones: I don't think I've ever investigated.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Anyways, I just feel like, like, and so right now it feels like there's a, there's also a, so if you wanted to do levitation, right? You know, you get someone who's like, I'm going to change transportation for the better and everything is going to levitate and we're going to have maglev trains everywhere. And like maglev does. Hyperlic. Right. Well, I mean, yeah, sure. Right. I mean, like, but there is a, there are some practical like energy inputs, right? So like you can make superconductors, you can have magnetic, you'd have magnetic levitation as it is currently, right? You can have like lower resistance bearings and things like that, but there's an energy cost there and, and I'm guessing that superconductors would start to reduce that energy cost and maybe make it more practical, but there's still going to be more practical. Yeah. There's still going to be an energy cost. And so like then, so I guess. Yeah.

Dave Jones: There's still going to be imaging, but it reduces by orders of magnitude.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: So what are those current problem with the maglev trains at the moment? I've been on a maglev at 430 kilometers an hour. It's fantastic.

Chris Gammell: Ooh, that's cool. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's fast. I've always wanted to. Especially when they pass each other, they pass each other, but one's gone to 430, one's gone to 430. It's fantastic. Right? Absolutely fantastic motor transportation. They actually multiply to like 16,000. Yeah. Right. But it's, yeah, it's just. The problem with the maglev trains is that massive power consumption required. They, they actually, they don't make a profit because they have to pay so much in power to keep the thing going. Right. So yeah. So that is, you know, so that's why they're not really practical. You can make them, but they don't really pay for themselves. So, which is a, you know, kind of a non-starter. But superconductors would mean that they, yeah, they would work. They would work and you'd be able to build them everywhere. And it'd be a complete no brainer. You wouldn't build regular trains anymore, really.

Chris Gammell: You still wouldn't be able to build in the U.S. because apparently the U.S. hates trains.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, of course. Because we are incapable of running trains.

Chris Gammell: Oh my God. You know, I watch train channels with my daughter. She loves trains. And like, I'm like, and look, you know, watching like, first off, it's amazing. There's like these channels that are just, it's just, it's just people. It's just, it's actually just one guy that just records trains and he must be rich. Because like each video has got like 18 million views on it. And it's just like, you know, it's just like, you know, this guy's hobby. And, you know, I'm talking to my daughter. I'm like, oh, look, a steam train. That's still about as fast as you can go on a train in the U.S.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Just plodding along. I mean, there's a lot of infrastructure problems. You know, it's 400 Ks an hour. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. The China trains are super fast. Super fast. Yeah. It's a darn shame because I love trains too. And the fastest train in the U.S. is way slow compared to China and Japan. So I've heard. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's not great. Yeah. And it's really expensive too.

Chris Gammell: Like I asked a friend who's in New York currently and going up to Boston. I was like, oh, you're going to take the Acellus Express? He's like, it is so much cheaper to take a flight. It's unfortunate.

Dave Jones: Right. Really? Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Because I want to go out to Siding Springs Observatory, which is out near Dubbo. And I'm thinking about taking the train. I'm thinking about taking the train from Sydney.

Chris Gammell: You guys have those trains.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's slow. It takes six hours to get there. But by the time I get to, you know, and, and the flight's like an hour or an hour and 20 minutes or something. But by the time I, you know, get to the dry, you know, take the train to the airport and then wait, you know, you've got to get there early and then you've got to like, it'd probably take me almost that anyway. So.

Chris Gammell: Eat a $30 sandwich. You don't forget that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. And I can get a train for 60 bucks. First class. 60 bucks to Dubbo. You know, it's like, eh.

Chris Gammell: I did that. I did that to DC from here. Cause I live pretty close to a train stop.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And there's a, it was a seven hour trip. I mean, like it was not short. It would have been a four hour drive or a one hour flight minus the airport stuff. But you know, I wasn't stressed at all.

Dave Jones: But you can do things on the train. You can. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I wasn't, I wasn't stressed. I was just working all day. Yeah, exactly. You can just sit there. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yep. So. Yep. So you can sit there for six hours and put the headphones on and just chill. You know.

Chris Gammell: Ignore the crap out of other people. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. That's what I really want to do is be, not be near other people. And I want to ignore everyone. That's what I'm.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Bring it on.

Dave Jones: Unsocial nerd.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Yep.

Dave Jones: Anyway. So yeah, I, I think I'll take the train, damn it.

Chris Gammell: I think you should. Yeah. That's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Sounds good.

Chris Gammell: Man. I wish the trains are better than the US. Oh, well, oh, well.

Dave Jones: Anyway. All right. I've, I've, I've got a few train videos on my channel, on my second channel.

Chris Gammell: No. Do they have millions of views?

Dave Jones: No, unfortunately not.

Chris Gammell: You know what? I'll get my daughter's take on them.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Got it. All right. I've, I've, I've got one with a steam train on a big turntable and they're pushing the steam. You know, I've got. Oh yeah. I've seen that one. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I've seen that one. What you really need, given her age and her ability to concentrate on things is like the train to change about every 20 seconds so that she can also shout. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. She needs to shout to really stay engaged. Yes. Right. And don't you know it, Dave, I am also shouting to, to, so.

Dave Jones: Of course.

Chris Gammell: My behavior reverts. Yep.

Dave Jones: Anyway. There you go. All right. That's enough of trains. Enough of the LK99 material. And everyone's waiting for my apology.

Chris Gammell: Why apologize?

Dave Jones: Oh, no. Yeah. Everyone's waiting for it. The comments because, because a day or two later, here we go. We're going to keep going on. Because like a day or two later, like everyone, like it's all over Twitter. Oh, somebody's confirmed it. Oh, somebody's going to this, this lab here's confirmed. Oh, this lab's here's confirmed. Ha. And so my comments got filled with, ha ha. Dave's going to have to apologize. This is the most embarrassing video ever. Ha. You're the, the credibility of your channel's ruined. Ha ha. You know, it's like. Oh, come on.

Chris Gammell: There was never any credibility in the first place. Let's be honest.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of your channel. So I mentioned that current monitoring thing. I actually, or the current carrying. Yes. But I like that. I was, I've been back in layout land, Dave. This has been about six months for me. Yeah. Oh, well. It's probably the same for me.

Dave Jones: At least. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's been a long time since I've done the board.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm just about, I'm just about ready to buy the board. And yeah. Okay. That's the thing. I, when I'm out of practice though, everything gets slower, you know, like when I'm like coming back to it, you know, totally, totally.

Dave Jones: If you're not in the swing of it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I need to, I need to build those muscles again. I need to build some stupid, stupid stuff. That's what I need to do. This is a work thing. So this is not stupid, but I need to build stupid things quickly. So if you have any ideas.

Dave Jones: But. Oh, build stupid things. Oh, you want ideas for stupid things.

Chris Gammell: I do. You got some ideas.

Dave Jones: Oh. Oh God. No. Cause my ideas are never stupid.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well. I'm not falling for that. All right. Well, I have stupid ideas all the time. How about that?

Dave Jones: Okay. Great. No one's surprised.

Chris Gammell: Well, great.

Dave Jones: I'm going to rub it in.

Chris Gammell: I've already, I've already said on this show, this is a specific episode that I'm not a good engineer. I don't care about a lot of electronics. I don't know how superconductors work. I, I don't care how quantum computers work. And now I'm saying I'm out of practice on circuit boards, but you know what? I'm back into it. So you don't have to worry about me. Awesome. No, that, that energy.

Dave Jones: But, but I thought that was your job. I thought your job was like making like demo doodads.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Demo doodads for sure. But like, it's been a lot of plugging stuff together and then writing firmware. Right. I've been doing a lot of firmware in my work and other stuff, training and things like that. But I don't know. It's expensive to make custom hardware. And I do, so I do a lot of like modular kind of hardware.

Dave Jones: It's expensive to make custom hardware. We've never lived in a better age for making custom hardware. You can get your PCBs for a dollar and you get 3D printed cases for next to nothing. Can't you? It's never been cheaper.

Chris Gammell: That is true. Yeah. It has never been cheaper, but it's still expensive. And I time expensive. This is actually, this is a conversation I had with the co-worker today about like, so we were watching a YouTube channel where someone was talking about like having, having their own pick and place. And my coworker rightfully pointed out that you can do a lot of turns with this sort of thing. And I said, this, this is a, something that you and I have discussed on, on the show a lot. And just like that.

Dave Jones: Yes. Countless times.

Chris Gammell: So like to, I think, I think the time cost of the person who has the pick and place is almost never put into it, but that is almost always the most expensive thing. And.

Dave Jones: Oh, I totally. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, and I just, I, so I think the real thing is like having a true need to build that custom hardware. And then if you do, then, then that's fine. Right. I mean, if you're building a ton of like customizable stuff, but if you're trying to make something like I am, I'm trying to make something that other people can build and like buy off the shelf. That's a whole different ballgame. Yeah. Right. That's like, that's like building with Lego blocks then. And like, hopefully got widely available Lego blocks. And that changes a lot of the, uh, the story. But now I'm just, I'm designing my own Lego block. So that's, that's the end of that story.

Dave Jones: Oh, right.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: Well, speaking of widely available Lego box, the scooters in Seattle, the spin scooters, someone took them apart and they found a Raspberry Pi four in there.

Chris Gammell: I know that's, that's a good example of like, well, that's not a good example of what I'm doing, but that is a good example of someone who took off the shelf things. Right. Like they're not, they weren't trying to make it reusable by other people. But I think if, if people knew what were inside spin scooters, they would have cracked those things open.

Dave Jones: No, no, it was just, it was the easiest development. They were a startup. They were a startup. They needed to show something, stick a Raspberry Pi four in it. What would I develop custom hardware? That's just dumb.

Chris Gammell: Totally.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, especially I think with the scooters too, like you have a pretty massive battery source. I mean, like the amount of compute, like, oh yeah, I have like 500 million amps sleep current. Who cares? This thing is going to be dead in, you know, six hours from some millennial riding it half a mile. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't really matter. Appointment. Right. So like, it's just the real, the real bulk is there for the ride.

Dave Jones: It's, it is, it is not a power optimized solution.

Chris Gammell: That's right. It doesn't need to be. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: I think the surprising thing to me there is just the, the bulk of the case that you need for that sort of thing. Like that is just, they kind of design these cases, you know, they design the scooters and to have these large enclosures built into them.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, there's apparently a lot of these abandoned scooters around. So you can go pick yourself up on Raspberry Pi 4.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Cause Spin, Spin was in Seattle, but then they left Seattle.

Dave Jones: Okay. Right. So where are they now? They're where I live.

Chris Gammell: No, I think this thing is like a lot of, if you go like town to town, I was surprised I was in Chicago. I came back through Chicago. I was in Seattle and then I went to Chicago. Then I came back to Durham where I live. And you see the, basically the municipalities have like brought the hammer down on all of these different scooter companies and they all have their own restrictions now. So like in Seattle, you, they're kind of like all over, but they only have so many companies available that are like, they have licenses to operate in the city. So it used to, when the wild west starting of scooter days, it was like anybody would just go and drop off scooters and it'd be like download our app. And then you could start riding this scooter. You just happened to find that at a corner. Okay. Well now the cities were like, no, we will find you if you don't have a business license. And they only give so many of those out in Chicago. They make it so that you have to dock some of the scooters too. So like the actual like physical dock thing. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You can't just abandon them. You can't just leave them anywhere.

Dave Jones: You can leave them on the sidewalk.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. And then where I live, it's pandemonium. It's a, there's, but there's only a couple, a couple that show up here. So, and it's also like they geofence them too. So that like, if you ride outside. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: I, yeah. I was riding one in Canberra. They're a thing in Canberra. Canberra's littered with them. You've, you've been to Canberra. I have. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. And they're littered with these bloody, there's, there's two major scooter companies there. And yeah, they just about, they do have like central kind of locations where they mostly are, but yeah, you just see them abandoned everywhere. Right. And then people just leave, like technically you get like docked, like you have to pay a bit more, but you can actually leave it anywhere, but you don't, you know, they actually charge you a bit more if it's just left anywhere.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And yeah, and these things were geofence, right? Where we were, you know, hiring this thing and we're riding the thing around. It's only going like 15 K's an hour. I'm going, this is freaking lame. Right. And then all of a sudden we went to the other side of the street, 25 K's an hour. And then we went back to the other side of the road, 15 K's an hour. And then we realized it was geofenced. It was well, it, no, it, it, this, it was geo speed fenced.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It was like, right. So, so within a certain. Governed.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It w yeah, it was electronically speed governed within a certain area. And we figured, okay, because it was all around the shops there and they limited them to 15 K's as soon as you got literally to the other side of the road, it would, it would speed up. It'll allow you to go faster. It was great. So yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: That's why you always ride on that, the fast side of the street, you know?

Speaker ?: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But the, anyway, they're like, I don't think any of them are going to succeed really. I mean, it's just like, if you need one of these every day, you're going to buy your own. Right. You're not going to be renting these and they're really expensive. Right. They're, they're actually quite expensive, especially if you use it every day. Well, they are here. No to rent them.

Chris Gammell: Oh, how much does it cost?

Dave Jones: Oh, we were paying, uh, like 30 bucks an hour or something. It was quite, you know, or 30 bucks a half hour or something. It was like, it was really, you know, it was pretty expensive.

Chris Gammell: They're not meant as like a touring vehicles. They're meant as like, I want to get across. It's basically, I feel like it's a comparison to like taking an Uber or a Lyft or whatever your local ride share is. It is.

Dave Jones: But if you're taking it every day to work or something, you know, even if it's a 10 minute ride, you would just buy your own. Like it would work out cheaper in no time.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Get an e-bike or an e-scooter. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Which are banned here. I actually do have an e-scooter and they're banned. I can't ride it outside. So yeah. Bloody state government.

Chris Gammell: What you should do is you should design a speaker to make like a, like a putt, putt, putt, putt, putt, putt, putt, putt, putt, putt, putt, putt. Right. So that people like think it's a two stroke motor. And then you're like, ha ha ha.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: No petrol required.

Dave Jones: Petrol. Yes. All right. Yes. Well, that's, that's true. They've, they've only banned e-scooters. They haven't banned petrol scooters. I don't think.

Chris Gammell: Right. Why would they? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Cause they're not really a thing. But actually I have seen the odd one around over the years. Somebody's, you know, converted a scooter into a petrol powered scooter and you hear them coming a mile away. Oh yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Little two stroke thing. Yeah. Yep. Hmm. Anyway. Yeah. I think they're doomed to fail. Like they're only like a tourist thing and then it's like, meh. And just the, like, and, and then who comes around and charges the damn things up? Like somebody has got to come around at night and recharge them. Like there's no charging facilities at the little like hub you leave them at. There's, there's no ability to charge them there. So somebody has got to come around with a van and put these things in a van and go charge them overnight and then bring them back the next morning. So they're available for the hunters or a ute. Yeah. So I, I don't get it. If anyone knows how they, you know, is there like, I assume there's like a swarm of people just driving around at night. We've talked about this on the show before.

Chris Gammell: We've definitely talked about this on the show before. There was like the, oh really? Okay. Yeah. The nighttime bird army or whatever they called him. Cause it was like, oh right. Yeah. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. It's a, it's like a, what do they call that? Uh, the gig economy. It's like another gig economy.

Dave Jones: Okay. Yep. Yep. So, so students can make money by just go around and charging up these scooters at night.

Chris Gammell: I think it'd be US. It's all, all types, all types.

Dave Jones: All right. Okay. Yep. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Maybe I should go work for that, uh, Amazon prime, you know, shipping thing. What's it called? The, you know, you can sign up and you can become a courier driver for Amazon, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Different, different places, but you like peeing in Gatorade bottles. Is that, is that your thing? Is that right?

Dave Jones: No, no, no. Well, you just pick it up. Like you drive your own car and you pick the stuff up from the depot.

Chris Gammell: You still have to pee in Gatorade bottles. No, no, no. It's, uh. Oh, really? Oh, okay. Right. Bezos actually recommend, he requires it.

Dave Jones: Oh, cause they put the camera in your car to watch you and stuff like that. So you have to. You make sure you're pee in the Gatorade bottles. Yeah. Make sure you're not. Yeah. Right. So, yeah. Cause we actually have a, one of those hubs in my, uh, business park here.

Chris Gammell: So we, I'm not sure the hourly rate would be, would meet your standards. No, no. I'm going to say it like that. Is that a, is that a, a good way to say it?

Dave Jones: There's a clickbait video. I joined. I, I became an Amazon delivery driver. You won't believe what I found out. Yes. As an Amazon delivery driver. Yeah. I'll do it for a day and then quit.

Chris Gammell: Very much a clickbait thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. Oh boy. Yeah. I'm sure you have to sign an NDA and they'll sue your ass, you know? Yep. If you actually reveal.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of things that, that sound like clickbait, but it was just a curiosity. And my coworker and I, we were talking to parts today. To parts. Yeah. Like what is, what part does DigiKey have the most of?

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. Can you actually sort by the most, the highest availability part?

Chris Gammell: Well, you'd have to go through each category. And I, I took a guess on resistors and capacitors, which might not actually be true.

Dave Jones: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, but it's got to be close.

Chris Gammell: It was. And then what was, I guess the interesting thing that popped out of it. So if you go to capacitors and then you sort by the most and you don't turn off marketplace because the stupid frigging marketplace. Marketplace is bullshit. Hey DigiKey, if you're listening, you know, I love you. Marketplace is so dumb. Turn it off by default. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

Dave Jones: It's a good service if you need it, but yeah, I want it off by default. There is a reason I go to DigiKey, damn it. Make it a different color.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Make it a different color. So interestingly, this was actually, this was kind of interesting, right? I was like, okay, well, I want to see the most capacitors. And I was like, holy crap. There is a company that has like 180 million capacitors. Like they were just, you know, like 30, 35. So they claim.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like 35 volt, 0805, like 0.1 microfarad capacitors. Like pretty much like right down the middle of what I would expect to give in our current technology track and stuff like that. And then like, that was the most thing. And I'm like, oh. So, and then I, and then I saw the same company over as Calchip, Calchip, Calchip, Calchip, all the way down the thing. And then finally it struck me. I was like, this is marketplace. We're looking at their frigging factory right now. Like, this is not what I want to see. DigiKey. And like, okay, cool. But like, I, I, I, I said a lot. I was like, I, I think we, I think they may be using DigiKey as their warehouse, but it wasn't. It was just like, it's their warehouse. That's not useful to anyone. I love you, DigiKey. No. Fix your shit.

Dave Jones: No. Exactly. There is a reason that us engineers go to DigiKey and Mouser and Farnells and the rest of it is because we get it. Like we get, like we're guaranteed to get it.

Chris Gammell: I don't care what other people have. I want what you have. I want, I want it. You have. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: I want it next day. Same day. I want it. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: I want a little baggie with a smiley face, you know, like.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: We should put smiley faces. Be nice.

Dave Jones: Oh, totally. Yeah. They should put a smiley face sticker. Yep. Yep. Yep. I agree. We won't even charge you for that marketing advice, DigiKey. Exactly. Exactly. We give it to you. You're welcome.

Chris Gammell: You're welcome. Anyways, the answer was, I think, I think one in, in the DigiKey factory, I think there was like 40 or 50 million caps was the top one.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Not, not super surprising. I gotta say. And not, not exciting.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, I'm not surprised at all.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: One thing you might be surprised about is why the 2N2222 transistor, how it got that number and why it got that number. Is it special or does it mean something?

Chris Gammell: Why is that, Dave?

Dave Jones: Please tell me. Well, we can watch it. You can watch the video. The, because diodes are one, right? Diodes are one in, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, one in.

Dave Jones: And, and then transistors are two in, right? So it needed to be the two. And anyway, there's a great video here by Datasheet Digest.

Chris Gammell: Because it has two in like NPN, is it because you have like a NPN, you have two N.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: You know, like a, like a diode. Something different. E N, right? So there's one N.

Dave Jones: No, the, the, the letter N stands for registered device.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: The letter. Yeah. Sorry. That's too bad. That makes no sense. I know. Yeah. It's a random thing. I mean, that's fine.

Chris Gammell: But it would have been nice thing. Cause then it would have been like one P would be like a PNP or two P would be a PNP transistor. Right. I guess, I guess you wouldn't have one P though. Cause then it would just be the other side of the diode. And, and if it's C. I can't get a one in one in one in four, one, four, eight. Oh, have you tried the one P four and four, eight.

Dave Jones: So well, you can get a one, so well you could get a C, which is an unregistered un, unencapsulated chip device. So if you see a two C, you see a two C, it means that it's, yeah, it's not packaged. Two C or not two C. Two C. That is the question. So yeah. So yeah, that, that means an unpackaged chip. So N basically means packaged, I guess. Then the two two at the start of it means something. Sorry, I'm going to have to go through it. I don't remember the exact video. I'm trying to scroll through it here, but anyway, we'll link in the video. You can watch it. There's a reason that it's got the two, two, two, two thing. And the two end at the start, the two means something. The end means something. I think this is the Augusta. Oh, they've actually linked it. Yeah. It's it. It isn't their video. I don't think, I think they've linked in someone's video. I thought it's another podcast.

Chris Gammell: There's no way anyone can make that exciting, but if they can, I mean, we're talking about it.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's a really interesting video. Go watch it. It explains.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Cyber city circuits. That's what I was thinking. Designators.

Dave Jones: Yep. That's great. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Cyber city circuits. Is it? Okay. Cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm going to be suing them for stealing chip report TV. Oh God.

Chris Gammell: Oh God. Yeah. Cause that,

Dave Jones: just imagine the damages you can, you can claim in that, all that revenue that you could have gotten. Tens of cents. Tens of cents. Tens of cents in revenue. Oh, so bad.

Chris Gammell: This is already a thousand times better. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Ooh, they do have on their May 21st episode. They talk about the reverse mount LEDs, the sun led ones. Have you seen those?

Dave Jones: Remember I showed you my, uh, LEDs. There's talked about that. Maybe they've been around for a long time. They've been around since the seventies, dude. Eighties.

Chris Gammell: I know. I know. Okay. So new to me. Come on, man. You know, Dave, there's a lot of people listening who have not been around as long as you have. You may know. Okay. Yeah. So we still have to talk about it. I hate to tell you. Anyways, I love these things because then I can make a fancy cutouts in my circuit boards. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: You can do front panels and you can do all sorts of. Yep. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Using the beautiful glow of FR4.

Dave Jones: Well, you could even put a hole there and you can have it shine through the hole and then you can use the diffuse. That's what I was talking about. Decl. That's what I was talking about. But you can also shine it through the FR4. Ah, don't shine it through. That'll hurt someone's eyes. You can actually, you can remove the solder mask and you can have the FR4 actually light up. Yeah. Weren't you?

Chris Gammell: You said you were going to make a video about this. I thought you did. No?

Dave Jones: Yeah, probably. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: You got to do it. You want me to make it for you? I can do it.

Dave Jones: So many videos.

Chris Gammell: EEV blog. Guest host. Chris Gammell with all his free time.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Join the club.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh boy.

Chris Gammell: I'm ignoring my child right now to be here to explain how these work for you.

Dave Jones: My wife complains every day that, you know. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Ah boy. Anyway, have we got anything else on the list? Round out the show.

Chris Gammell: Oh, this new, I don't know where this is going. So there's a new, well, relatively new announcement. The TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, NXP. Oh wait, no, that's not it. That's the wrong one. That's not what I wanted.

Dave Jones: Oh, do we care about a bloody joint adventure? No, not that one.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. The one that's number 10 on the list here. I don't care about that one. The one that I do care about is Bosch, Infineon, Nordic, NXP, and Qualcomm are getting together to do RISC-V. Yeah. So here's the thing I can't understand. First off, Nordic's already doing RISC-V. I'm sure all, so first off, I'm sure all of them are doing something with RISC-V. I'm sure they are, but they're all. Researchers, they have, yeah, they've got, you know, they've got postdocs.

Dave Jones: So are they doing like, because RISC-V, like, yeah, the core is like the instruction set is standardized, but outside of that, nothing else is standardized. Got it.

Chris Gammell: He got it, folks. He got it. I think that's the thing. Oh, I got it, dude.

Dave Jones: I knew that's what it would be, would be that they're making it more compatible.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. I'm saying we've got it wrong on this show many, many times that it was. Right. The instruction set. Remember when we first started talking about it, we're like, oh, there's this common open source processor. That was wrong. But the architecture. So what I'm wondering is if this is, you have to excuse my conspiracy theorists, but like, is this malicious? Is this like, we're doing this, we're the big, we're the big boys in the room and we're going to make sure that we all interoperate, but we're going to somehow keep other people. Like, no offense, Qualcomm, but I don't think of you as the bastion of open sourciness. I know there are some open source things, but when I have to sign multiple NDAs in order to like get a data sheet or manual or buy a chip from you. Yeah. No.

Dave Jones: They aren't exactly a shining light in the industry when it comes to that. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: So like, that's where like my brain goes. And like, you know, I love all these companies, right? They, I've used all of the parts here. They all make great parts. Fine. But like, yeah. Like what's really going on here? You know, it kind of feels like.

Dave Jones: We will say that we, we might find out that they all magically cost the same. Yeah, exactly. Right?

Chris Gammell: Is this announcement going to be in a lawsuit in about 10 years from now where the word fixing is involved? Like, I don't think so. I don't want to be that conspiracy, but like, you know, my brain doesn't go the most positive places. And like I said, I love all these companies. Like I use all these parts.

Dave Jones: So what is the TLDR on this? What is, why are they doing? No, I think it's because.

Chris Gammell: I think they're saying automotive. I think they're saying that maybe they're going to define something for the automotive there. It seemed like there was.

Dave Jones: Here we go. No, the, the company will be a single source to enable compatible risk five based products, provide reference architectures and help establish solutions widely in the industry.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So that's the other thing. Potentially. I think this is, I think this is also them giving a halfway up middle finger to arm saying, arm, you better lower those prices or else, you know, we've got this, we've got this consortium over here. I think that might be it too. I think this might be a thing to be pushing down pricing from arm because, you know, arm, it's not, it doesn't look like a lot on paper, but when you add it all up and you look at,

Dave Jones: Oh, when you make a 10 million chips, it matters. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Right. Yeah. A couple cents per chip or whatever, you know, they, they have licensing deals and stuff like that. So it could be that maybe it's a power play, whatever. I don't really know. I don't. Yeah. I don't know what to get all of it, all this stuff. Right. So like I have been using risk five parts now. They're cool. They're not that differentiated yet. And that's the other thing. Like, so, and the tooling, like the, the tooling that C and Laura came on the show to talk about and like, it's catching up, but at least like the, the GCC ports and stuff like that. Like, I don't, I don't know how visible this is going to be. Like, I don't know if like, would you seek out a risk five part? Would you pay a premium for risk five part right now?

Dave Jones: No. Why would I pay a premium for it?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. Like, that's the thing. There's, there's no like monetary incentive, maybe in the other direction. Maybe you'd pay less for a risk five part. And maybe, again, maybe that's what they're going for here.

Dave Jones: They're trying to like, I'm going to use to choose a processor these days. I'm still going to use the same decisions I always have.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you're just going to buy, which is.

Dave Jones: Well, no, it's not the same decision. That was a good joke. That was a good joke. And you know it. That was a good joke. Dated. Come on. It's dated.

Chris Gammell: That was, but that was like three episodes ago, Dave. We talked about that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. Hey, you know, it's fine.

Chris Gammell: It's fine. But here's the thing. Okay. How about this? So if microchip started putting, so like if, if the tools, you know, right. So you use MP lab X, right. You know, you're not like writing, you're not writing assembly, right. You're writing C. Right. You're mostly. And if the tool was there. Right. And MP lab was, it had some like interface layer. And then under the hood picks started using risk five for whatever reason. And that would be, that would be a big shift. Would you care? Like, I don't, I don't, that's, that's what I really want.

Dave Jones: I wouldn't know. Exactly. I wouldn't care. That's what I said. I'm still going to use the same requirements for picking a process of that. I always have an often that comes down to the actual product. Like, you know, cause it might be a price sensitive product. So, oh, that rules out pick. Well, it doesn't rule it out, but you know, if I'm going for like ultra low cost. Right. It, it probably rules them out. Right. I'm going for some, you know, you know, the 10 cent micro, right. I'm going for the 10 cent one instead of the 40 cent one. Right. So it just rules it out or I'm doing it based on a features that I need or power, you know, if it's really ultra, ultra low power design. Well, there's only a few on the market. Right. So I might have to choose something that I wouldn't ordinarily choose. It's, you know, often it's, you know, not all projects can just use any processor brand. Right. It, it often doesn't work like that, or at least I find it doesn't work like for the stuff I want.

Chris Gammell: I think you would, you would upset a lot of the, especially if you're working on bigger teams too, like the, the tooling is super integrated to the process. And if you're like, well, Hey, firmware team, we're going to go pull the rug out from under you.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. No, if you're working at a large company that's used Motorola parts for 30 years, you come in and go, Oh, I'm going to use these, you know, risk five things. You know, like you're just going to get, yeah, no, he's going to,

Chris Gammell: you better show up with the, with the, uh, the tooling and the guarantees.

Dave Jones: Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So it is going to be really interesting. I, like I said, I think it probably something to do with arm. It's probably, you know, this is probably either to knock down arm prices or to take on arm directly. I don't know. See how it plays out. I got no idea either. Yeah. I do think we're going to see more risk five parts at all these companies. That's not too surprising.

Dave Jones: That's not a stretch. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The only ones I had seen so far, at least announced publicly were the Nordic. The Nordic had some like co-processors that were risk five, but I bet we'll start to see some NXP parts and the Infineon and Nordic, whatever that like some other banner level chips will probably start to trend that direction. So yeah, it's right. Strange new world here, Dave. So we'll see how that goes. Yeah.

Dave Jones: All right. Well, there you go. That was, yeah. Yet another chip industry, not a merger thing, but a affiliate joint venture thing. It's like, meh, meh, meh, meh.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Good. That was good. Good old man. Old man thing. I could actually hear your gray beard growing, which is great. You just got to say meh a thousand more times and you'll be ready to dress up as Lazar for your thing.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: All right. Well, I think we're done unless you've got a last minute shout out.

Chris Gammell: I haven't checked this subreddit in a long time. Oh. Hmm. Yeah. Oh, Mike Englehard. Mike Englehard released Qspice. I tried to do it. Oh, really? It's like, it's like, you need windows 11. And I'm like, I don't even know.

Dave Jones: So did he leave? So he's left. Yes. And he's doing his own thing.

Chris Gammell: He had left.

Dave Jones: I do recall vaguely a mention of it. Yeah. Push out maybe. I'm not sure. I don't know. Okay. Or part of a restructure or something. Yeah. So he started his own. We had mentioned on the show that he had. Yeah. I'm sure we've mentioned it. But yeah. Like, is he like, is that his full-time thing? Is that his like.

Chris Gammell: He was like doing it on his own. That was like the thing that he was talking about. We should probably catch up with him, but he had been posting on LinkedIn about this, this new type of spice that he was doing, whatever. And then he released it with. There's a company that. Oh, yes. It was called SPQR. And now it's Qspice. And it's released with, I forget who. It's Corvo. There we go. Qspice. Get it? Qspice. Oh, Corvo. Who's Corvo? Corvo is like, they do like, I always think of their near field chips. They do like ultrasound.

Dave Jones: Oh, so they make chips. Oh, it looks like they make like power transistors and RF filters and amplifiers and RF attenuators. Okay. So they're an RF chip company. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: They're pretty big. And like, like I said, I think of them for like ultra high frequency, like six gigahertz transistors and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Like, you know, the thing that's inside the little air tag. You've seen those teardowns.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, right. They use those parts.

Chris Gammell: They can do like ultrasonic range finding and stuff like that. I think that's a Corvo chip in there. Got it. But yeah, they're like right on the edge of, I mean, they're RF, but power RF stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now Q spice. Yeah. This is a good day. It's a good day video. Right. There it is.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I, I, like I said, I, I was hoping there was going to be a Linux port. That was probably a, that was probably a stretch. And then I tried using a wine and it's like, no, this doesn't work with wine. So, uh, whatever it is. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's a windows platform. Windows 11 or 64 bit edition of windows 10. So it doesn't even support 32 bit edition of windows 10. Well, not many people have that. So, all right. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool bananas. Okay. Excellent. But there's so many like online simulators these days and they're all pretty good. They're okay. I mean, from my user interface point of view. Like it's often like. I agree with that. Yes. Yeah. Like, like, like it's once again, it's a skill thing, right? If you're not using your simulator, like every month or something, then you'll completely forget how to use the damn thing. If you haven't used it for a year.

Chris Gammell: I was thinking also like the DMM thing, right? It's like, like the ones that are on, like, I go to false set all the time just to like the false stats, the little JavaScript one. That's like the nice visualization of current and stuff. Like most of the time that's like, if I, I just want to like see like a rising current and like, I don't, I don't, I'm not like putting in any kind of characteristics of FETS or hop amps or whatever. You just want to make sure that you send it a check. Like, or really, or even like just to show someone an idea, like that's great. Cause then you can like send them a link and I just want to do that. I don't want to say like, go download LT spice and do this and do this and do this.

Dave Jones: No, no, no.

Chris Gammell: But if you want to like make a real simulation, yeah, you should use like LT spice or P spice or Q spice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Of course.

Chris Gammell: Keycad's got spice now in it too, which is, I have not tried to be honest.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: And yeah. So like, all right. Well, there, there is that, that difference in tiers, but I am not doing Q spice much like my DMM stuff today. If I'm going to, I'm going to break another secret here. I don't need, I don't need high end spice these days. Right.

Dave Jones: No, no, I've never really needed it as such, you know, I've used it, but as you said, like for simple, you know, like sanity check stuff, you know, it's not like something incredibly in-depth that, oh, I have to do my own custom model for this thing. And I need to, you know, evaluate how it absolutely works over, you know, like, no, not really.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I can't remember the last time I've done that actually. So yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think it might've been my Keithley days when I was doing that stuff. I mean, like, I guess I did a little bit. Yeah. And my one or two of my, yeah.

Dave Jones: Like, God. Yeah. I wouldn't have touched that. I didn't use it at Altium. So yeah. Like Sir Cell would have been the last time. So we're talking like 20 years ago. Right. I went back and listened.

Chris Gammell: So we've had Mike on the show and I'll link that into. It's a good, good interview. I mean, like Mike does not come, Mike comes across as incredibly skilled. Like he, he knows things about Spice that Dave and I would just never even come close on. But he doesn't come across as particularly, you know, he seems like he, he, he knows what he's doing and how he wants to do things. And it's not going to, he's not going to be using a JavaScript front end anytime soon. How about that?

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But one of the things I said in that show is that like I, one of the values, at least in when it was LT Spice and like the LT Spice days is that they had bespoke parts and like guaranteed models that were like tied to the specific parts. And like that was super valuable to me. And that is actually even.

Dave Jones: Especially there are switches and stuff like that. I would use it for LT Spice for LT switches. And they had all their models. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like you said, a sanity check. Yeah. You know, it's like, oh, it's supposed to have like this kind of rise time. It's supposed to do this, but it was also verified by LT. Like, so like now if Corvo is doing the same thing, that might make sense. I don't need that kind of level of things. But if it like, if it enables me to like, if it reliably allows me to like evaluate a part without having to have it on my bench, or even if I do have it on my bench, I can then go and reference this thing to be like, here's the expected behavior. Here's the weird shit I'm seeing on my bench. Like that's super valuable. And every chip company should have that, but they don't. Um, so. Yep.

Dave Jones: So they, that's probably a smart move. So they've hired, does he work for him now? So, so they've hired him. I think. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know the relationship. I'm guessing they're probably paying him in some way.

Dave Jones: I don't think it matters, but yeah. Anyway, there's a demo video. There's a video of him talking about it on their website, on their QSPICE simulator page. So, yep. Yep. So that's a smart move. Oh, definitely agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

Chris Gammell: You know, what would not be a smart move is, uh, hiring you or I to build a spice engine. That would be a dumb move.

Dave Jones: No, no, no. That would be a really dumb move. Dumb. Because we don't know Jack about it. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: All right, man. Well, uh, we'll be back in a week or two talking about other things we don't know Jack about.

Dave Jones: Exactly. That's what we do.

Chris Gammell: That's what we do.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Speaker ?: Bye. !