#644 – Garbage Ninjas

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Release August 28th, 2023. Episode 644. Garbage Ninjas.

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

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

Dave Jones: What's up, nerd?

Chris Gammell: You know, I have never been accused of being on the bleeding edge of anything. Right.

Dave Jones: Oh, we were on the bleeding edge of podcasting back in the day, you know? I mean, come on.

Chris Gammell: Okay, maybe that's the only thing I could be accused of.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Not like we took advantage of it. No, it's not like we're some huge... We did not sell our podcast to Spotify for... Yeah, right. ...$100 or anything of the sort. We're just, you know, kind of still here. I recently got into two trends that are already very far over. The first being I got a fitness tracker. In 2023, I got a fitness tracker, Dave, for the first time. And I started baking sourdough bread, which people from three years ago would go, oh, yawn. Yeah, yeah. So those are the two things that I could...

Dave Jones: Sorry, I didn't know baking sourdough bread was a thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it was a pandemic. At least a lot of people I knew, you know, it was a pandemic. Oh, right, okay. Right. Let it lock in type thing. It was like, well, there ain't anything else to do. We might as well make some bread. Right. Let me tell you, I'm pretty good at it. So take that, people, for three years ago. But the fitness tracker is a little bit more interesting to this audience, I think, just because, you know, it's a tiny electronic device. Yeah, yeah. There's Kalman filters in there and accelerometers. And they're pretty simple in, like, their base idea. But, like...

Dave Jones: Oh, there's a lot of software. A lot of software. You know, magic that goes into it now. I don't think it's accurate. Is it...

Chris Gammell: Does it do your pulse thing? Does it do the... It does the pulse. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah. How does it, like... It says I walk 8.3 miles today, though, or whatever that is, kilometers. Sorry about that.

Dave Jones: And how does it do that? Does it pump the infrared through the... Oh, yeah. Through your skin or whatever?

Chris Gammell: And... Yeah. If you pull it off your... So, like, I have the Inspire 3, the Fitbit Inspire 3. And if you pull it off your wrist, like, there's just, like, a pulsing multicolor light that's trying to get through my skin to detect my heart rate.

Dave Jones: Right. On top? Or is it under the band?

Chris Gammell: It is under the top of my wrist. Yeah. So, like, thicker skin, too. Right.

Dave Jones: Because it'd do better if it was on the bottom of your wrist. It would. Because there's no, like, hair and there's no, like, you know...

Chris Gammell: Well, actually, I don't know if you know this about me, Dave. You probably wouldn't know this. I have silky smooth... No, I actually have silky smooth arms. I was going to say. Right. Yeah. So, it's interesting. It's like, you know, quantified self. That's a term from, what, 15 years ago? I mean, these are, like, literally... How old are these things? Like, when did people start wearing these things? I don't even know.

Dave Jones: Oh, God. What was the big one? Even we had one. Back in the day, it was the... And you wore the chest strap. The...

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, yeah. I know what you're talking about. And it was ant. It was the ant. The protocol was ant. Polar.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. Yes. It was ant. Yes. That's right. Yeah, it was. Oh, God. I can't remember. I can't remember. Wasn't that what it was? Sorry? The Polar. Wasn't it Polar? A Polar. Polar. Yes. Yes. The Polar. Yes. They were, like, the... Probably the... They were the innovators, weren't they, I think? And...

Chris Gammell: They were definitely, yeah, the earliest ones. And it would, like, talk to, like, certain very high-end watches and stuff like that. Or... It was before...

Dave Jones: Well, they would have their own watch, yeah. And then they teamed up with the watchmakers and you'd have Polar support built in or something like that. But they had their own watches and they'd have the waterproof chest band. And, you know, it's like, eh, you know, it was a thing. But, yeah, nowadays, no, they just sit them on the wrist and you kind of get the infrared thing through the skin. And, you know, it's actually very different now. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I thought that was, like, actually skin contact, too, like the polar ones. I thought that was doing, like... Only...

Dave Jones: It was on the chest strap. It was through the chest strap. But that wasn't infrared. That was electrodes. And they had contact, surface contact electrodes. And they didn't work if you hadn't sweated yet and stuff like that. So you had to put some spit on them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you had to put some spit on them to start off with, you know, before you sweat.

Chris Gammell: So, I mean, I've been, you know, in my younger days, I was fitness savvy, but I have not been very fit in the past, let's say, half of my life, the second half of my life, I have not been very fit. And I'm still not going to be fit, but I'm going to be having a device telling me I'm not fit as well. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay. Which is, yes, as long as you log it, it's like, yeah. Also telling me. Yep. That is the difference between science and not science is just writing it down as having the data, right? That's the difference between fit and unfit as having the data, is it?

Chris Gammell: It's a hundred dollar smartwatch.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: See, I've got a great way to avoid spending any money on any of these fit, smart doodads. You simply go to the gym or you go for a run and you go 100%. Like you go flat out. That's how you do it.

Chris Gammell: Sounds like a Dave turning.

Dave Jones: You don't have to measure anything. Right?

Chris Gammell: I have a foolproof plan for you to be the fittest person you can be both mentally, physically and emotionally.

Dave Jones: That's it.

Chris Gammell: Give it your all every day from the start. Also buy my, buy my supplements.

Dave Jones: Buy my, yeah. Buy my natural performance supplements. Living force vitamins. You know. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. It's, there's a large industry here for sure. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Cause people love their doodads. People love their flashy. Oh yeah. I see it. Like gym, like, like before the class actually starts, everyone sits there. You know, usually it's an iWatch. Don't iWatches have rudimentary thing, or maybe they've got Fitbits. I don't know. I don't take a close look, but yeah, they start their watch at the start of the class. And it's like, like, and they're usually slackers. Like people who have these things are usually, I don't like to stereotype dude, but sorry. The people that have these things are usually slackers people in the class. I'm matching your personal. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, they, they've got their tracker and they set their calories and like, and they come out of the class and they didn't even sweat. And here I am like, everyone's just, you know, staring at me going like, well, what the what drugs is this going on? Sorry about the, I dropped the F bomb there. They cleared that out. But yeah. Dave is passionate about the F word, fitness. Oh boy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So two interesting things that I learned in the course of my research around this, well, not research, but just all of the Googling that I'm doing around this first, um, not even Googling. That was a lie to my aunt. Uh, she is not, again, not particularly fit, but, uh, she does wear an Apple watch and her watch told her, uh, Hey, you have an arrhythmia. You should go get this checked out. And like to the level where like she went and got a pacemaker, like, Oh, wow. It's the kind of like, and this thing will actually apparently give me, so like, just like early detection type stuff. Pretty interesting. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I think.

Chris Gammell: Um, and, uh, the other one, the, uh, 10,000 step number, I was looking it up yesterday. And apparently that was created by a Japanese company in 1965. They came up with the idea of the 10,000 steps because they were selling some product called the 10,000 step meter.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. And because it probably only have the five or four and a half, uh, it's on there. So I could only go to 10,000 or it could go to nine, nine, nine, nine, nine. Have you get nine, nine, nine, nine. Yeah. Yeah. It rolled over. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It is interesting how that, you know, that kind of marketing stuff kind of makes it way, it makes it way into the, uh,

Dave Jones: Oh, it's all psychology, dude. And it's all, it's all marketing. It's all psychology and it's all, you know, and it's all just, uh, you know, 10,000 is nice round number. It sounds good to people. Yeah. It's like the thousand hour. What is it? Or the, yeah, the thousand hours you have to get 10,000 hours. Yeah. 10,000 hours you have to do to get good at something, you know, um, or, or to not get good, but to get expert, which is bullshit. You know, it's, it's absolutely complete bullshit, but you know, people like it. It's a round number, you know? So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Easy to talk about. Anyways. So pretty interesting device. Um, you know, thinking about what's in here, I should probably look at the teardown, but, um, yeah. Bluetooth. So what is it?

Dave Jones: The, the Fitbit what?

Chris Gammell: Inspire three.

Dave Jones: Inspire three. Teardown. I'm going to have a look.

Chris Gammell: I actually haven't looked at it. Oh yeah. I fixed it. Of course they have that. Oh yeah. Really tiny touch screen though. Like not, not much going on in there. Right.

Dave Jones: Um, Oh, it's a, Oh, okay. No, hang on. Right.

Chris Gammell: But, uh, sensors on board. Uh, yeah. Oh wow. Oh, you can buy. Oh wow. Look at this. You'll group.com. You can buy the full teardown for 8,000, 8,000 euros. What? Okay. Can I borrow 8,000 euros?

Dave Jones: Oh, I see it too. Who's the, your group? Is this a group that does like, is, is this the, um, similar to that? Um, who's the Monroe guy who does the car teardowns? You know, you can buy for like $10,000. You can buy the complete bill of materials for the latest Tesla, you know, because he, he tears it down bit by bit. I never did get around to doing that video because I've still got the PDF. I've got the PDF of the BMW i3 EV, which is like 10 years old now or something. But, um, yeah, it's just, it's incredible. It's incredible. So you buy these, you know, they only sell like, you know, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: They only need to sell a bunch and they're selling them other manufacturers probably, right?

Dave Jones: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're selling to other manufacturers. Yeah. And, and they have a cost breakdown of how much this screw costs and how much this molding costs and, you know, they've got like, yeah, yeah, it's incredible. Okay. So this is a Yule group. This is a price at, uh, okay. Right. So they sell reports.

Chris Gammell: Right. That's kind of interesting. Yeah. I guess this came out and there's no details. There's no details. Yeah. No, there's nothing.

Dave Jones: There's no sample or anything. Like you think they'd give you a sample or something. What the, what the hell? I'm not paying my 8,000 euros without a sample.

Chris Gammell: Or, uh, have, have a copy of one of these things. It would be interesting to see one.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Maybe we should like talk to the old group and be like, give us your old ones and we'll just talk about them on the Amp Hour.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Free, uh, free publicity.

Chris Gammell: And they're like, uh, no, we get, we get 8,000 euros per, per teardown. So we don't care about you. Well, screw you.

Dave Jones: All right. Well, there you go. All right. So it's one of these newfangled. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It does wonder, make you wonder too, like, could anyone just go, I mean, like it's obviously the new branding and that sort of thing, but like, could anyone just go and start tearing these things down and making reports out of them? You know, like, I guess, I guess that's the business. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Absolutely. It's a business, but you've got to have the rep for it. I guess you've got to, you know, like it's a chicken and egg kind of thing. I don't think anyone's going to buy your report if you don't have the rep. And if you don't have the rep, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Maybe, maybe eat a hundred euros, not eat thousand euros.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I am staring down at a gorgeous, so from a tech insights, a gorgeous high definition PCB shot. And it's got weird marking chips that, you know, I don't know, you'd have to try and reverse engineer them. But there's two, two main chips on there, I guess. Three. Well, there's like five or six, but other ones are smaller.

Chris Gammell: This is, this is the BMW thing you're talking about?

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no. This is the Inspire 3. Well, where'd you find this? Send me a link. Come on, man. I did Fitbit, Inspire 3, Teardown, and then go to Google Images. And there they are.

Chris Gammell: Oh, images. Yep.

Dave Jones: Images. That's the trick, lad. That's the jam.

Chris Gammell: That's the jam. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. I got stuck, stuck into the, uh, the old group.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. There you go. I see. Yep. Yep. Meh.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, I guess we'll just sit here reading this. Uh, everybody take care and take a break. Uh, we'll be back to you in a few.

Dave Jones: There you go. There you go. Someone's done it. Who's, who's the YouTuber who's done a Teardown? I'm going to give them a shout out. It's, uh, do it yourself easy. DIY easy has done a Teardown. There you go. And yeah, a complete Teardown video showing you how to open it and everything else.

Chris Gammell: No, this is a different one. I'm looking at it. Are we looking at the same thing? This is the Fitbit Charge. Oh, that's why.

Dave Jones: Oh, Versa. Okay. No. Whatever. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, there's not, I mean, I'm surprised there's not a lot of chips in there. Right. I mean, like the, the sock is often, you know, has a microcontroller baked into it. Right. I mean, like they, and then a couple of sensors and battery and charging and that's about all, that's about all she wrote. Right. I mean, like you don't need much else there.

Dave Jones: Oh, here we go. No, there's, there is a double-sided load. Oh, there's a vibration motor on it. So your one, it actually vibrates, does it? It does. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So a little vibrator motor in there. It's an ST micro. It's a 32L485 JC for those playing along at home. And there's a couple of other ST micro parts. Oh, ST micro blue energy. So that, that'd be the Bluetooth thing. There's a Maxim 14676. Don't know what that does. You know, power management stuff, I guess. There's another ST micro LIS2HD. What does that do? It's the XR owner. Oh, okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: I actually use the LIS2DH12. That's the one that I have on my latest design.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. Same one.

Chris Gammell: It's in the Zephyr device tree. There is a reason to use a part if you don't know. When it's in tree in Zephyr. Right. It's a friend of mine.

Dave Jones: Okay. Fair enough. Who else is using Zephyr? Who are the big customers? Who have you got? Hmm.

Chris Gammell: There are. Or are you not the guy that is into that? Well, all the new Nordic stuff is. All right. So I went to the Nordic tech days. I was actually surprised by this number. So they come through. They did like a tour back in, what is this? This is August. It must've been back in like March, April. But they like come around and then like, they basically do like product updates to, you know, a conference room full of different people instead of, you know, I'm not part of a company that they would come and cater to and walk in with like a salesperson. Right. So this is like a generic, it was at like a local community college and it was big lecture hall and you sit in there. Yeah. And they talked about, so Zephyr is like their new thing, but they talked about like something like some significant portion of all the people are still using their old SDK still because the, if you go by volume, because you think about like, well, all of the things that are at volume were built three, four years ago. Yeah. And they were using that old SDK. Yeah. Of course. Right. And they're still supporting it, of course, but all the new stuff. So I think the new stuff is they're, you know, they're heavy into Zephyr, which they made that decision about three or four years ago. And so I would imagine everything in the future coming out of Nordic dev shops will be, will be a Zephyr.

Dave Jones: That's an interesting thing. At what point does a company go, eh, let's not support this anymore. I guess it's how big your customers are and how much they scream, you know? And if they stop screaming anymore, then we gently, you know, Right.

Chris Gammell: It's just like fewer and fewer, uh, FEs or internal people. And then, and then they just start to say, well, there's no new features. And then eventually they're right. And then if you, if you pay enough money, it's really like forever. Right. I mean, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, of course.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. For support. So, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But well, that that's baked into contracts too. I mean, I've actually done contracts with chip companies that say you will. Support this chip for the next 20 years. It's like, you know, that's bait. Like they, like they have to get the CEO to sign off on it. Or, you know, some, some, it has to be a company director, I think has to sign off on it. Um, that, yeah, that you're going to support this for our, uh, widget for the next 20 years. And it's, it's. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: As long as you keep paying the increasing prices too. Don't forget about that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's no price fixing there. So they're going to make it, they're going to make it more and more painful. I think that's the other thing they do. They up the prices. So it makes sense to, to pay the migration, pay for the migration and in people hours, whatever. Right. Um, in the smart watch space, um, actually, uh, uh, Aiden, who was on the show, the one, two in the, uh, augmented reality headset, he was using a part called the RT 500. And, um, that is a part that's targeting the smart watch industry. I think it's in some of the Garmin projects products because they like have a bunch of circular displays they support or something like that. Like something where it's like, Oh, this is going into a watch. Right. Uh, and, uh, and so he was using it for his smart, uh, you know, heads up display thing that augment to reality, but they're definitely, uh, playing in that space, the smart watch space.

Dave Jones: That's got it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. It's, it's interesting with like Apple in the smart watch space. It's like, that feels like that's a giant in the room, but you know, there, there's still a lot of money in it. So they're, they're trying different niches and, you know, like the, the people that are doing GPS and that aren't so connected or whatever. So there's a lot of, it's like a secondary cellular market. Basically it's a third screen kind of thing.

Dave Jones: You know what the ironic thing about the, uh, these, uh, Fitbit smartwatches is all these fitness watches is that the fitter you get, the lower your heart rate gets for a given activity. So it's going to think that you're actually getting not as fit because it's all based on heart rate, right? Cause it's not, you know, well, they've, they've got accelerometers in there, but they can't judge how high you jump, how much force you put into stuff, how much, you know, how much effort you're putting into the cycle, how much, you know, like they can't like get, you know,

Chris Gammell: force feedback like that and yeah, the, uh, sorry, you mean like tracking like calorie burn or something like that?

Dave Jones: You would be tracking heart, calorie burn based on heart rate. The whole point is that the fitter you get, the more your body gets used to it. And the lower your heart rate is for like given activity, even though you're doing, working twice as hard as somebody else. Yet your heart, heart rate might be, you know, 10 to 10 to 20.

Chris Gammell: Dave's bringing a lot of personal issues to this. A lot of personal feelings to this conversation. No, I just, you know, all these other people, all of these hunters at the gym are not trying hard enough for Dave.

Chris Gammell: They're all wearing watches and Dave's not. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think they're all carrying bloody phones into the gym. I'm not. I'm the only one who doesn't take a phone into the gym.

Chris Gammell: It's going to be okay, buddy.

Dave Jones: What's wrong with the human race? Who hurts you? Who hurts you?

Chris Gammell: Tim Cook has to answer to Dave. But I think the thing that is abundantly clear in all of this stuff. And like, so my wife has a, I watch whatever, Apple watch, whatever. And like, you know, I've got this thing now. It is all an approximation, right? It's all, you know, there's algorithms and there's all this stuff, but they're not, they're not super accurate. They're all inferred things. And I think they're, they're amazing for what they are. Right. I mean, like there's Calvin models where basically they're detecting that, like, I, you know, even think about the output of an accelerometer, right? It's like, so this thing is getting some kind of interrupt that I'm moving. And then it's like, oh, I moved from, you know, X four to X four, Y two to X five, you know, Y one. And they're like, oh, that's a step, right? Or they do it twice and they, they do the difference. And it's just like, yeah, Calvin, Calvin filters are amazing.

Dave Jones: And all the, that's, that how hard and fast did you do that?

Chris Gammell: Well, there's, you know, there's acceleration and there's, there's definitely jerks out there.

Dave Jones: Right. Right. Who jerk more than other jerks. Yeah. Right. Uh, oh boy. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I, I don't know. It's all, but it is definitely all approximation. And like, like I said, at the beginning of the show, like my watch told me I went 8.3 miles today and I, I did not go 8.3 miles today. So like, it's definitely still. Oh, really?

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah. Right. Why? Cause you were flapping your arms around like Kermit the Frog?

Chris Gammell: What were you doing? That's what it was.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. All right. Kermit. Kermit. Kermit arms. Kermit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know. I, I think it's like, uh, I think it's, it's inferred like steps and your, your gate and all these other things. So I don't know how. Oh yeah. Yeah. I guess if it's consistent enough, it could be precise without being accurate.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, interestingly, I went to a sports podiatrist the other week and on the recommendation of my, uh, physio, cause I've got, you know, a knee issue. Like cause I actually busted my other knee. Yeah. I busted my other knee and, uh, and, and, and I didn't even know it. Yeah. I didn't even know it anyway. And it healed itself. I was like, I'm going to scan this is the problem Dave when you don't wear a watch at the gym and you're just going. Right. Oh, I could have told me the fit big. You've torn your meniscus. Slow down. Slow down. Slow down. Slow down. And anyway, so an interesting thing is I did a poll on a Twitter about whether or not people thought, uh, podiatry was a quackery or not. And I think the majority of people think podiatry is quackery. So that's interesting. Anyway, I just thought I'd throw that in there. What about podiatry though? I mean, they're just. Oh, well, cause they've got one, one tool. Like, you know, cause like the, well, cause the, like the, the thing is, is that they've only got one tool, which is orthotics, right? That's kind of like, you know, they only have one answer. Oh yeah. You've got to get these orthotics. Put in the orthotics. Yeah. Put in the orthotics, right. We'll sell you these expensive orthotics.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I feel like that's a lot of doctors though too, like chiropractors too, you know? Oh yeah. Oh, well that's a completely will-wee. You don't need to crack my back when I'm, I have a cold. Thank you very much.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So anyway, in podiatry, but I went in and found it actually quite, uh, good. She knew, you know, a lot, you know, analyzed my walking and stuff like that. And I've got all these sorts of issues and I, I don't actually need, um, surprisingly, I don't need the one tool that they had, uh, which was the orthotics. Um, yeah, it's my hip toe alignment and that sort of stuff. Um, although I do apparently have impressively flexible feet and that's a quote.

Speaker ?: So there you go.

Dave Jones: Apparently I'm one of these flexible feet people. And if I, and if I roll my, she was quite jealous that if I roll my ankle, like I don't actually, like I can just walk it off. I don't actually damage anything. I'm apparently there's a certain type of person on one of those flexible, which is flexible, weird, flexible feet people.

Chris Gammell: So basically, basically a superhuman at this point. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Pretty much. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You should use that as your, as your one thing that you do to solve problems. Oh, you can't figure out the resistance before wire, Kelvin resistant or a measurement rather. Uh, I've got flexible feet. I could, I could help you with that. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, speaking to teardowns. Um, I, um, yeah, I just released a video just moments before we started this 1980s. I went back to old school.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Old school boom box from the 1980s, the boom box from the 1980s. Teardown. It was very interesting. It's like, you know, I, I actually up, I actually split a clip of this over onto my second channel. And it was how the volume and graphic equalizer board, you know, how they give the, uh, the, the slider pots, you know, so they've got the five band graphic equalizer slider pots and the volume and balance controls and stuff. They're all on this dedicated board and all the boards are single sided by the way. Now these double sided rubbish, right? They're all single sided. And, uh, and it's just got all these cable looms running over to the graphic equalizer board. So all the LM2 LM, uh, three, two, four op amps are all on a different board. Then all the analog signals just go over via this unshielded cable loom.

Chris Gammell: You know, it's like, it's just good.

Dave Jones: But they're actually amazingly engineered. These boom boxes. Oh no doubt.

Chris Gammell: Especially for how they actually, what year did this, you said this is eighties.

Dave Jones: What year, what year, what year, what year, the boy, um, um, I, that's something I didn't include in my video is what date was it? Um, you say eighties. So yeah, that is, but also like, you know, the, the time, well, it was, it was before 89 because it was used in the movie. Um, say anything, anything, it's the boom box, which he holds over his head.

Chris Gammell: So it was at least not the one that I was thinking that was going to be, because I was thinking of the kind. So, uh, Joe grand did a video about the, did you see Joe grand's video? No, a couple, it was, I guess around. Oh, he'd run it to embedded world. So it must've been March timeframe, but basically he built a, uh, uh, piece and all PCB, uh, boom box.

Dave Jones: Oh, I said the world's thinnest boom box. Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I've looked at Joe got a sponsorship from the, the maker of the, the piezo elements. I think that's why he made that. I was like, why did he do this? Right. Right. That's a good, that's a cool project.

Dave Jones: Okay. I'll pay that.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, and the fact that it was all PCB too. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Uh, but he was modeling that after like the old school, like the one that the break dancers used to use, you know what I mean? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Of course.

Dave Jones: And he's got the cardboard down on the ground. Is he actually gonna, uh, break? No, he hired some, some break dancers.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: I had some break dancers. Okay. Oh yeah. I'm just getting into it now. Oh, this is great. Oh, and he sticks the tape on the front. Oh, this is great. Yeah. But it actually works. Oh, that's great. And he's got leads that are built into the PCB. I think those are actually reverse firing, uh, neopinx. Oh, okay. Right. Right. Yeah. This is great. Okay. I'm sure it doesn't sound that great, but you know, it does not sound that great. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, that's the point. It's not really, you know, like you need, you need driver cones to really move some air, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. They're good for certain things and it's not a base is not one of them. Yeah. You want to get some base. You gotta, you gotta push some air. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's a great video. He went to a lot of effort, not only to build that, but to shoot the video as well. We went outside and got a rapping crew and you know, like, I'm sorry. I, uh, dance crew. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Breakdance to electric boogaloo.

Chris Gammell: Classic break into.

Dave Jones: No, breakdance to, you know, it was, you know, it was here, Dave.

Chris Gammell: So it's all right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But that's great. How, how do you do the color? Um, obviously you didn't get a money.

Chris Gammell: Multi, I think he covers it in the video, but they did like, like eight passes.

Dave Jones: I was going to say you can actually pay to have it done, but, oh yeah. Yeah. I can see he's got like different, eight different colors or something. Yeah. Right. So yellow, red, blues.

Chris Gammell: I think the, uh, the artist he hired, he told would have this palette of available. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I've hired an artist to do that.

Dave Jones: To draw it.

Chris Gammell: Uh, listen to our episode with Joe grand back in the day.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That was a long time ago. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That is wow. So, so we got sponsored to do that or something, I guess. Cause that, that's a lot of effort to go to just to make a video.

Chris Gammell: It was a, yeah, it was a big, it was a big effort. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And hiring dancers, you know, you're gonna hire dancers.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I know. Oh, if you're gonna hire dancers.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Dave, you never hired dancers.

Dave Jones: I could hire, I don't know. I can write marching band. I could have a brass band and you know, marching through the lab or something. No, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Boy. Anyway, maybe you could hire the, uh, here's, here's a, here's one. You could do, um, you know, like the, uh, the rugby crews that do the haka at the beginning, like the all black. Oh, right. Yes. Yes. I could do the haka. All red and blacks. Right. How about that?

Dave Jones: Yep. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. See, so like I would do stuff like that. If a company like paid me to do like to spend like a month on a video, I would never do sponsored.

Chris Gammell: No, no, same here.

Dave Jones: But I'm saying if like, that's the only way I would do it is if I was getting paid to like, not do anything else and just work on a project for a month. And then, you know, like, but yeah, it'd need a lot of money. Okay. You heard it here first. You heard it here first.

Chris Gammell: You'd contact Dave, David, eevblog.com. Right. Give him many, many chunks of dollars. And he says, he'll do a sponsored video. I don't think it's true. I don't think so.

Dave Jones: No, you don't think so. I'd, I'd probably do a sponsored video for a hundred thousand dollars.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Well, I, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: There's, there's the bar.

Chris Gammell: There's the bar has been laid. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, I've, I've, I've constantly turned down $5,000. So it's like to, to, to do one spot, one sponsored video. It's like $5,000. If you mentioned our product, you know, you know, and, and, and that's not even a sponsored video. It's like, we'll just put a, we'll just like an ad actually baked in, you know? So it's not even a, it's not even a sponsored video really. So I, I turned it all down. I did build hard work for you folks.

Chris Gammell: If you want to give them buckets of money, that's.

Dave Jones: Buckets of money. I will happily accept your buckets of money. I have a wife and kids. I have a wife and five kids to feed. Yeah. I know that reference. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And a pool to make. I mean, I've been watching your pool going in. So, uh, Mr. Fancy pants pool over here. Yep. How's it going? Is it done yet?

Dave Jones: No, no, no, it's not done yet. I'll have a pool party and you're invited over. Oh, I can, I can come over for that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Simply hop on a plane. It's not a problem. Right. It only cost you a couple of thousand dollars. How much does it cost to fly to Australia now?

Chris Gammell: Um, from where I am, probably 2,500 on a good day. Yeah. Yankee bucks. That's Yankee bucks.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's like $4,000 Australian.

Chris Gammell: Oh, is it really? Yeah. Exchange rates that bad.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's pretty crap at the moment.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The real problem is that it's, it's, I don't know if you know this, it's pretty far away. It is, uh, pretty far away. Also, I, uh,

Dave Jones: It's only like 14 hours or something. No, it's more from where you are.

Chris Gammell: No, it's working hours on the west coast. I work from the west coast. Yeah. Sorry. I know it's hours on the west coast, Dave. I live in the east. Oh, right. Okay. So it's 20 hours to get here. Yeah. It's 20 hours if anyone flew that far. Um, nobody does. Although apparently at some point.

Dave Jones: No, they go from Dallas. You can go from Sydney to Dallas, I think.

Chris Gammell: I'm still three hours from Dallas, Dave. Oh, okay. Right. 17 to Dallas. So, and then there's, yeah.

Dave Jones: So.

Chris Gammell: Right. Let's see. Let's, let's look on, let's go. Look on. Oh, $2,000. Oh, I could get there for 1600, $1,600 right now. Bargain.

Dave Jones: Bargain.

Chris Gammell: I'm not going to. Just so we're absolutely clear about that. Okay. Basically.

Dave Jones: But if some, but if a company wanted to like big bucks sponsors to fly. Still not gonna do that. It's still because you've got a wife and kids now too. That's right. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Wow. This is 27 hours door to door.

Dave Jones: 27 hours door to door.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I, I, I still get invites all the time, you know, to like conferences and stuff. Oh, we all, you know, like just come to the conference. We'll pay for your airfare and stuff. Like, do you realize how long it takes for me to get, get anywhere? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You should give them an hourly rate so that you can. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Cool. Any other interesting findings from the boom box tear down you did? What would made you, how would you get this thing? Someone send you this? No, no.

Dave Jones: I found it on eBay. It was on my watch list for years. Really? Really?

Dave Jones: I died on the watch, cause I wanted the boom box. Right. So I just put it on my watch list and it eventually popped up. Eventually popped and I got it cheap. Like I could, I could sell it for three times what I paid for it. I think. What'd you pay for it? Oh, I can't remember. I've had it for a long time. It was like, I don't know, it was like 150 bucks or something. Wasn't much. I reckon I could probably sell it for 500 bucks.

Chris Gammell: Dollar reduce or? Yeah. Yeah. Aussie, Aussie bucks.

Dave Jones: Well, I could probably, I dunno. It's in really good nick and it's highly sought after. It's one of the models people want.

Chris Gammell: I mean, if you want to have like collector item type things like this.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Another thing to put in the background, huh?

Dave Jones: Well, I don't really have space. I'm thinking about remodeling the lab. Cause I'm not happy. Like I don't really have, you know, I shoot a, what? Nah. You don't need to do that. Like I don't really have decent backdrops and shit. Like other YouTube, like other real YouTubers, you know? I dunno.

Chris Gammell: It's about like lading more than it is backdrop. No, no.

Dave Jones: I want, you know, cause I do a lot of, you know, talking head type things and I don't really, you know, well, I kinda do have a backdrop and it's like, eh, I dunno. It's not that great. I wouldn't overthink it. I wouldn't overthink it. No? Wouldn't overthink it? No. All right.

Chris Gammell: I mean, people aren't there for that.

Dave Jones: I mean, they're, they're, they're, no, but it's, you know, it's a small thing.

Chris Gammell: You're mouth flapping, you know?

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, what was I gonna ask about? Oh, I watched your, um, your one with the, why didn't you start talking about the micro supply?

Dave Jones: I saw you. Oh yes. Hang on. I think someone's at the door. Hey, courier.

Chris Gammell: Hang on. Courier. Help. Dave's inconsiderate. Dave's so inconsiderate. You know, wouldn't you know it? I completely forgot that I am actually the editor this week. Sorry about that.

Dave Jones: That was my man, Nixon. More.

Chris Gammell: More stuff. Put my earbuds back in. More stuff being, more crap for the background.

Dave Jones: That was my man, Nixon. Um, oh, I've got, it, it's a Keysight box. Uh, alright.

Chris Gammell: Alright.

Dave Jones: The blood thickens.

Chris Gammell: Uh, uh, okay. Don't open it live.

Dave Jones: It's an audio podcast, Dave. It's not working. Right, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Anyway, I have no idea.

Dave Jones: I don't know if this stuff just turns up. Yeah. Okay. Way to do it. Fine. I'm looking for, I'm looking for eBay prices at the moment. No, no one's got one. See, I could own them. I could, I could get like, oh, they got, someone's got a GF 800. What? What? I don't know if I can get a market. I can get like, oh, they got, someone's got a GF 800. Oh, geez. 580 bucks for a GF 800. But that one's got like an eight band graphic equalizer or 10 band graphic equalizer.

Chris Gammell: Oh, this is a high exchange rate right now. Holy crap. Maybe I should go there and just like, buy stuff.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: What was it like when, I don't even remember what it was like when I was there. Let's see, it's five years. It's more than five years since I was there.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, someone's got one. Um, uh, GF 7600, uh, 450. They say it's from 1983. So yeah. Anyway. Oh, someone's, oh, someone's got one here. Oh. Yeah. There you go. Oh, that's in really good nick too. Jeez.

Chris Gammell: Okay. No more eBaying live on air. Okay.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's missing a knob.

Speaker ?: Oh, it's missing a knob.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh no, no. Tragic.

Chris Gammell: How much time do you spend on eBay per week?

Dave Jones: I used to spend a lot. I don't anymore. I've got a couple of things on a watch list.

Chris Gammell: Because you were like actually sourcing and buying. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: I didn't. It used to be my, one of my main hobbies was buying. So I've got over a thousand feedback on eBay. I used to buy and sell. I used to buy and sell, I used to buy and sell Teske on eBay. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: I remember you talking, I think we talked about on the show before. You said you also like would convert stuff. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, I would, I would import stuff because there's people in Australia who refuse to buy from overseas because they don't trust it. They'll, they'll get, you know, conned or something like that or, you know, so I'd, I'd take the risk to buy it in the U S or buy it in Europe or something, have it shipped over here and then I'd, you know, clean it up, repair it, polish it and make it look good. And then I would, uh, resell it for two to three times what I paid for it. Yeah. You know? So yeah. Interesting. That was fun. It was a fun hobby.

Dave Jones: I made some coin out of it, but you know, it was, it was more of a, just a fun hobby thing, just buying and selling test gear and stuff. So.

Chris Gammell: I'm, uh, I'm selling some furniture right now on Facebook marketplace and it is, uh, it was my least favorite thing I've done in a long time. Really?

Dave Jones: I think why, why?

Chris Gammell: Uh, cause you have to talk to people and they're, they're terrible. They're terrible. They all feel like scammers to me. Like they're all like text me on this number. And I look up the number and it's like, this is a, an odd number. Yeah. I mean, and then it says like they're all, they've all joined Facebook in 2023. What kind of psycho joined Facebook in 2023? Well, I actually like Facebook. Well, I actually like Facebook marketplace. It's not bad as a, as a, as a solution. I'm not talking about the, I'm not talking about the software Dave. I'm talking about the people behind the software and the susceptibility to scammers. Yes.

Dave Jones: Wow. Okay. Interesting. I've really haven't had a issue with, um, either Facebook marketplace or a eBay pickups or, uh, um, tree is the other one here. Um, you know, I mean, it's, it, it's owned by eBay, but you know, it's like a secondhand thing. Whereas eBay is more of a new thing, you know, like you buy and sell your new stuff on eBay. And, um, yeah, no, that was a push that they did. Oh, it might've been eight years ago. Now eBay actually pushed, they tried to push secondhand sellers out of eBay and it, it kind of didn't work, but it.

Chris Gammell: Like the bidding versus like an actual, like they're trying to. Yeah.

Dave Jones: They, they made a huge change. They made a whole lot of backend and front end changes to eBay. So it was more for buying and selling brand new stuff. So all of your merchants just selling new gear. And they transitioned away, especially here in Australia. Um, that's why they bought, I think the Gumtree one Gumtree started independently as like an independent, you know, Craigslist kind of thing. Yes. Selling like local, you know, and it was local. So, you know, so it was, you know, so you put in your local area and what, what stuff's available and you go pick it up. Um, and then eBay actually bought them and eBay then tried to push a lot of secondhand sellers over to Gumtree. It was like a thing here. It was like, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, a lot of people, so like, um, my friend who built 3d printers, he set up a store on eBay. I was really surprised by it. I was like, I, I wouldn't have started like that, but I think it might've been around that timeframe when they were pushing that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: And, uh, no, it's, it's, it's a big thing, but they take just 13, 15%, something like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, market system. I mean, like what's it called? Uh, Shopify takes not a small amount either. Oh no, I'm, I'm moving over to Shopify now.

Dave Jones: My store over. But they all, they all take some percentage.

Chris Gammell: It's just, you know, between what it doesn't really matter. I'm just surprised. It doesn't really matter. I'm just surprised that so many people buy.

Dave Jones: Well, it's actually rather small. They've just got so many freaking add ons. You've got to pay for. Yeah. Oh, you were, you would like invoices. Would you? Oh, well that's not built in. Hey, buy this module to make invoices. Like screw you. Like bloody Shopify.

Chris Gammell: I am surprised though that people like, I know there's a lot of Chinese, like electronics vendors that are like on eBay as well. And I, I, I never got into that mode though. Like some people are like, yeah, I'll just go buy a module on eBay.

Dave Jones: Oh, I, I do that. That's my first. Yeah. That's my first go-to place. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I know I'm being a hypocrite here. Cause like often I'll be like, Oh, I'll just go on Amazon and buy it. And it's just like probably people buying on eBay and repackaging it in the U S or something like that. And just putting it in storage.

Dave Jones: No, I might know my first port of call would be eBay. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I'm, I'm sure it varies by country and stuff, but no, no, there's still a ton of, you know, it's a ton of stuff on eBay. Like often if I like, if I just want like a convenient order process, I just go on eBay. If I want the absolute lowest cost, I'll go straight to Ali express. Uh, you know, for example, but. Yeah. I've got some good express or some good Ali express stuff.

Chris Gammell: I don't mind that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's fine. I, and if I'm customizing go to Alibaba, I mean like.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I'd, yeah, yeah, of course.

Chris Gammell: Varies by country, but no eBay still a thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So the whole push that they had to try and get secondhand merchants off there, it didn't really work. So all of your test is still on eBay or you like secondhand test is still there. So yeah.

Dave Jones: Although in the U S isn't a Craigslist probably just as big for like secondhand gear. For secondhand, like broadly. Yeah. I'd say like Facebook's actually eating some of that. Um, yeah. I'd like to know how much Facebook's eating from, from Gumtree actually here in Australia. Yeah. I suspect it's a lot. So yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, there is, I just have bad feels about selling to people. I think really, I know we, you know, the, the worst thing is, is giving something away

Dave Jones: for free. Oh my God. Oh, I would rather throw it in the trash. Yeah. No, there's a pro tip, put a dollar on it or it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'll put five bucks on it. Don't give something away for free. Put five bucks on it. And then it stops all of the tire kickers from going. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, if it's free. I'll hold it for me. I'm coming from all the whole come next week.

Chris Gammell: I think the only way you can do that is saying I've put the stuff by the street near this

Chris Gammell: I've done that. I will take this thing down when it's gone.

Dave Jones: Yes. I've actually done that on, on Gumtree of I went it's sitting out the corner of this road

Dave Jones: this road yeah i think for large items it's like it's sitting out there just go and pick it up and sure enough like an hour later it's gone oh yeah yeah garbage ninjas that's what we call them here garbage garbage ninjas garbage ninjas no no i haven't been haven't uh no i haven't heard that

Chris Gammell: one yeah yeah because like where i grew up i mean where i grew up it would be like uh middle of the night you know under the cover of darkness like you put something off the street and it's just gone

Dave Jones: you know yeah coming like ninjas no i i hate my council for changing this i'm sure we've talked about this before right the uh verge collection right you know you would put like we we used to have our council used to have right twice a year or three times a year or something i don't know um they used to have a uh council cleanup as we called it here so everyone would put the stuff that they didn't want anymore you put it out the front of your house on your verge strip you know and and then the

Chris Gammell: council would come that's what i call that uh yeah you're talking about outside your i thought verge

Dave Jones: was the us word because that's why i used verge i thought that was a yankee thing i have never

Chris Gammell: heard that term you know that's actually very regional it's regional though as well i i i say tree lawn from where i grew up because it was okay it was like there's like the uh street and there's

Dave Jones: like a cement curb and then yep and and then you have a grass strip in in yeah and then sidewalk and then more yep this is only for suburbia for you for you city um slickers yeah yeah i no longer have right i now have cement everywhere oh right right cement everywhere okay anyway so yeah our council used to have this yeah where they would you know so you knew which everyone knew what what day it was everyone to put their stuff out the front and it you know your streets would look like just you know like a war zone right because everything's dumped out the front but they come around but it only lasted for a day until they come around and picked everything up but then all the people who wanted the free stuff came around and they'd bring their box trailer and they'd stand and they'd rummage through all your stuff and then half of it was gone by the time yeah by by the time the truck came around to pick it up you know it was great but now now now you have to book it which is dumb because now yeah instead of one one day per year or several days a year now you just have them randomly put out at different times and it's like and then nobody knows you know like no one's going to go to the effort to actually drive around on that day to see if anyone's throwing anything out so it's like it's just potluck and it it isn't as good for recycling stuff you know people would come around and reuse stuff i agree i agree

Chris Gammell: yeah i mean more of it yeah i think you're right i think more of it will end up in the landfill and uh

Dave Jones: yeah yeah yeah totally yeah yep yep and and it actually and it doesn't and it actually ends up uh better for the worse for the neighborhood because you know you just have one or two people on the street there's always stuff being thrown out so it looks crappy you know whereas before it was localized to like yeah yeah just a single day and everyone says yeah yeah and then it's done and then everything's

Chris Gammell: what do you do for what do you guys do for recycling electronics in australia uh not a lot i don't think

Dave Jones: um no we don't have well we have uh the council here do have like um e-waste recycle days i think it's once or twice per year where you can bring in not only e-waste but you can bring in uh batteries um all sorts of paints and chemicals and stuff like that and they will actually separate them and you know i don't know what happens to them after that so yeah you know there's something we say it's all a con you know it's all a big yeah it's all going on the drain yeah yeah but yeah yeah i mean

Chris Gammell: i i always just wonder about that i mean like and like how far is it going right i mean like i forget who was telling me about it but it was like they were burning circuit boards to like get the get some of the the rare minerals out of them or something like that you know like right yeah

Dave Jones: yeah yeah yeah that's the thing and it's just oh like yeah i know and and the toxic fumes actually released that that's a big thing in in india some of the slums in india and stuff like that they they actually burn all these yeah yeah they they burn them all and then get all the precious

Chris Gammell: metals out of them yeah yeah yeah yeah i uh i don't i don't know what to do about that dave there's

Dave Jones: an aussie um there's an aussie youtube channel i forget the name who specializes in uh actually

Chris Gammell: scrapping old boards and stuff like that yeah is that the guy that has like the uh the the jack hammer that knocks the caps off i think we've talked about yes yes yes yes that's right

Dave Jones: he's got a jack hammer like a chiseled jack hammer that chisels all the chips off and it's like it's horrific oh my god yeah yup like yeah you just can't bear to watch it you know it's like

Chris Gammell: so bad um so back to the uh microspire are you are you picking that thing back up what's the

Dave Jones: what was the no no not really i i did a video on that i'll like just showing like the where it actually got to and it was actually a finished um well yeah finished in terms of it works right sure it's an it's an actual working thing but it never made it through production yes yeah and and it actually looks like a final product it looks and works like a final product but it's not really manufacturable let's say well it is but not cheaply at a price point that would yeah it's not you don't want to manufacture it yeah no no no i would make a change over a bunch of the uh yeah changes you'd

Chris Gammell: want to make too like the isolation i thought that was interesting yeah yeah yeah i saw well

Dave Jones: well maybe not there's other ways to do it cheaper but you know and like some of the parts are obsolete now or i'd use different you know i'd use totally different cheaper parts cheaper solutions you know yeah yeah stuff like that so yeah yeah like and then there are people think oh just give it to a contract manufacturer and they'll just make it for like it's no it's not that easy it's not that clearly these people have never actually made anything before right yeah i i'm actually uh i'm

Chris Gammell: i've got early prototype stuff going in uh i'm using the service of our former guests uh macrofab going going through that process currently yeah um reminding me just i think last episode that you and i recorded i mentioned how how rusty i am and you know getting that first that first dfm report back i'm like oh wow i'm really rusty like like uh parts that have 0805 in the name do not fit on top of 0402

Dave Jones: footprints uh no generally not no unless you use the really really ultra ultra wide 0402 footprint

Chris Gammell: that's right yeah the ones that actually aren't 0402 footprints yeah yeah yeah yeah so that was yep

Dave Jones: that was a goof on my part um for those who don't know there are actually um in these standards in the ipc standards there are actually three designated official footprints for all these you know that's right so you can get like short medium wide normal normal wire i can't remember exactly what they're

Chris Gammell: called normal ones that are the shortest one is like really tight too it's really tight and the other

Dave Jones: ones are designed to no you can actually put uh test points onto them you know like you can have probes come down and probe them and stuff like that so there's some parts that came through that i was a

Chris Gammell: little disappointed about like the uh it was just like a generic diode but like you know like the older parts that are like generic part names uh like this one was murs 360 right it has like multiple package sizes so i got like a that was one of the things that popped up in the error report that was like oh you have a smc footprint here no other way around it was like you have an smb footprint yeah but it was an smc part right and it's like yeah there actually are both smc and smb footprints that have that part name it's just like yes how did this happen you know like i know how it happened but like it's just right it's just such a messy thing when you're you know you're going through when you when your only real like index key is is the manufacturer part number and it's that generic it really can start yeah you basically have to give like a digi key part number that point or something some other identifier or you have to go to a more uh unique part that has the same characteristics which i don't want to do because i want to have easily swapped and stuff like that so i don't know it's

Dave Jones: just it's a frustrating part yeah it isn't easy yeah no people like you can't just turn a key and make it happen you know although technically like you can you can throw it to a manufacturer and go sort this out and just make it for me but they'll charge you an absolute mozza for it right right because

Chris Gammell: on your bench right that's the other thing is like you're going to be you know dealing with the consequences of throwing that over the wall and it's like right why is this part changed it's like well we couldn't source the other one so we made a decision we tried to source this one so it's like you know do you take the pain now or take the pain later right right oh boy yeah manufacturing yeah no but otherwise uh you know it's good service yeah uh formally mentioned on the show oh this was an interesting thing uh so speaking of cms um so we've talked about tempo automation and um they're they like they got put in through a spack like a special purpose acquisition right vehicle like the thing where people are going public without

Dave Jones: like actually going public without going public because it's part of another already existing public company somehow or something isn't it yeah so basically it's like uh people uh sorry these

Chris Gammell: companies so like a investor type person right so dave dave jones the investor he says i'm going to start a a spack and i'm going to go raise money from a bunch of schlubs like me and then Chris Gammell the investor says oh well dave's raising money and and we're going to try and buy a company once the spack company has enough dough in it right so basically you're going to raise this money blind you say we're going to go and find some profitable entity to buy and uh in this case dave jones the the initial investor decided to go and buy tempo automation and that was what we talked about in the show in the past where they said like it's this company that's worth like 900 million dollars as a contract manufacturer and it's like uh no i'm sorry uh there are there are very few there are some in the world that are 900 million dollars but they're not uh in a single a single building in san francisco so right um yeah uh and spacks are like on the on the way out they're they're they're not oh really

Dave Jones: i thought they were the new hip no thing that all the kiddies were doing yeah so anyways i got an email

Chris Gammell: this is back at the beginning of the month august 7th uh important update tempo automations holding tempo announced on august 4th it has established a manufacturing outsource agreement with network pcb an excellent manufacturing facility strategically located in san jose blah blah blah i realize this is an abrupt transition it was necessity by unforeseen circumstances that were beyond our control i think they're shutting down um basically they said uh take your stuff over here uh we don't think we can we can't do this all right once again we regret this unforeseen inconvenience and we appreciate this opportunity to observe you i'm just on their email list i've never given them a single design right yeah all right it was basically like interesting we're we're done i i don't know any emails i could be speaking out of my butt here but i i'm pretty sure they're dead um yeah so oh my goodness um let's see if there's any news about them but uh not not great whatever it is um not great they've gone tits up uh i don't know about tits up but uh whatever this is uh certainly been handed their hat and did they would this this was bad whatever this was it was bad um yeah you don't send out that kind of email of like hey we're your contract manufacturer and we'd like to introduce you to this other contract

Dave Jones: manufacturer unless things now you're going poorly yeah exactly it's like yep yeah oh they do and it

Chris Gammell: it included the bottom customers with outstanding invoices from tempo should continue to remit payment to tempo as usual oh thanks thanks thanks yeah so keep on paying us but we're shutting down but yeah i mean i should just be clear i'm not sure they're shutting down but um whatever this is it's uh not great no right oopsie yeah oops now best of luck best of luck oh well all right um yeah did you know

Dave Jones: that you can do a risk five core in a hundred lines of code uh what code i did not know that

Chris Gammell: verilog verilog really is it calling a library that actually contains the rest of the risk five

Dave Jones: core oh no i thought the tweet's been deleted no look i'll send you the link right now here we go um so yes uh bruno levy on uh the twitters um he's done he posted the complete verilog source code a very risk five core he says it takes more or less than a hundred lines or 200 lines if you have reasonable formatting in comments just to be clear um and he said yeah he's got he showed a uh you know a lead matrix blinky uh scrolling project with yeah apparently you can do a hundred lines of verilog code i'm sure there's like more behind it like there's more libraries behind it surely like it just doesn't seem feasible like i'm staring at the code now and i like i don't know it's gonna be like a single

Chris Gammell: it's like executing like a single um i guess it does have a couple well i don't know it's got wire

Dave Jones: is load why alu register is branch like so it's got it seems to have the instructions in there i don't know how many risk five instructions there are i've got no idea i don't do risk five assembly but um yeah yeah it's got load store which is about 12 lines and then it's got state machine which is about 20 lines yeah yeah it's got the alu it's got the address generation that's right back and apparently

Chris Gammell: apparently i guess when does it cross over when when is a uh when is a device finally blessed as a i mean

Dave Jones: it has to be able to process what a single set of instructions or i don't know no idea hang on i'm going to risk v which is actually risk five instruction set and chat gpt ask gpt i don't have it yeah you got to log into it and you know it's like yeah yeah yeah um uh while

Chris Gammell: you're doing that i was actually interested um on archive.org they have old manuals and i was actually looking at the the moss microcomputers programming manual today it was pretty great all right the slack channels amazon was showing some old manuals and uh yeah so you can just go and look at the old programming manual and and you know it's actually like they probably had like a pretty significant documentation department so it's like written very like narratively um so that's pretty cool too

Dave Jones: i found the instruction list it's not many okay i mean there's a lot of special yeah you can make custom ones on top of it too so that's oh okay right yeah so this is like minimum 47 the risk 5 base is small contains just 47 instructions that's the first hit i got on google so yeah 47 instructions seems yeah that's multiple locations but yeah okay but geez like yeah but you have to do you have to handle all of them in order to i don't yeah that's the thing i don't know whether or not this handles everything but anyway he's like published the project he's published the source code and i just thought that was really groovy i just had no idea like you know that's just nuts so he can put that in 1380 logic units he doesn't say using the tiny ice stick so i don't know what actual device that is i presume it's a fpga of some description yeah it's a nice 40 yeah that's right yeah and it reckons he uses 1380 logic units i don't know how big a logic unit is on the ice stick you know whether it's a flip flop or it's a flip flop usually it's like a lookup table with it's a usually yeah yeah a lut with a flip flop and some sort of register yeah yeah yeah or some sort of multiple registers but yeah that's that's amazing well done i mean that's that's just it's just fantastic because that's like a great like

Chris Gammell: intro like that might that alone is like a great headline to like be like oh i could try this you

Dave Jones: know like that yeah yeah exactly all you gotta do is cut and paste 100 lines of code like and bingo

Chris Gammell: you've got your wrist five soft core like what might go and make a risk five processor what do

Dave Jones: you think i might go make a risk five processor this would be a great video yeah yeah yeah it'd be a great video but i like i've never done verilog i've done some vhdl back in the day but um i've never

Chris Gammell: actually done verilog so i don't know um the last time i did i did some ice 40 stuff with the um with the open tool chain that was at tear down 2019 2018 and it's been a while for that but it was um really easy actually like the right in terms of the like what you need you know like compared to the the xilinx so the now intel formerly altera uh tool chains that you know that are like 60 gigs uh it was like you know very reasonable installs and um very command liney so i like that yeah yeah but it's

Dave Jones: like on but on top of that like how do you compile the code how do you download it to the soft core how do you attach the memory like i did that's like i've got no i've got no clue i've got no clue that's why

Chris Gammell: you just interview someone like bruno right okay i'm gonna show you yeah yeah anyway i i just think that's

Dave Jones: great hats off yeah yeah very nice to show you how simple it could be just to put a soft core i mean in you know a bunch of yeah yeah to a tiny fpga beautiful but then again like you're better off like you're probably better off just buying rather than mucking around with that you're probably just better off buying a risk 5 chip and you know oh 100 yeah i mean if you want to get yourself a

Chris Gammell: ch32 v003 exactly like they're cheap actually i i was thinking uh someone pointed out to me that i i

Dave Jones: still owe you about a thousand chips yes yes you owe me a hundred bucks worth of chips yep 100 bucks worth of chips so i have to just decide what project i'm going to use them on and then yeah i will because

Chris Gammell: there was no end date i think you just have to choose a package size really i mean i can just yep because you were completely wrong but you're going to pay for are you going to pay for um shipping or no no no no no that's included no i mean you're gonna get a lot of a lot of chips out of there so

Dave Jones: right so so do you want to admit i was right about uh twitter or x no i do not want to admit

Chris Gammell: you're right about twitter um i'm actually getting paid now and i don't like it and um i think it's not long for this world but it's uh you know enjoy it while it lasts i miss all the people there i do i will say that um well i thought you moved to mastodon i did are you still using mastodon yeah i still use it yeah right it's still a thing is it still a thing um like i said i miss i wish i wish everyone would have moved it once if everyone would have moved somewhere else at once i would go there but in uh absence of that i will be where i'm at so i've heard it's not going that well over at mastodon well yeah that's that's fine it's not a big deal that's just i don't well they certainly didn't move to threads they did not move to threads yes i was hopeful i think the thing is dave much like uh we started the show i am not a bleeding edge uh kind of person so wherever people move just send me a note uh send me a carrier pigeon or a uh registered mail and i will i will pop over there and dude they're still on twitter and then just follow the people you want to follow i'm not

Dave Jones: going back to the people you want to why just follow the people you want to follow not not for me it's uh

Chris Gammell: why why it sounds like an ideological thing it is entirely an ideological thing and i don't want to be there uh fine and uh but if they go somewhere else shoot me a uh a note through one of those uh pneumatic tubes like they have right office and i will pop on down a few years later and happily join

Dave Jones: join the crowd right fine not twitter all right oh you can find me on twitter i'm there tweeting every day i'm david up the storm yep i'm getting paid to post now yes they actually sent me a check well you know money i'm not getting much but you know after 13 years you know it's a nice nice thing to

Chris Gammell: actually be you're an influencer now dude i'm gonna go and uh find an endorsement from um all the fitness people that need people say the electronics person to talk about uh yeah

Dave Jones: quantified health right then we can hire a marching band and a you know that's right a bunch of break

Chris Gammell: dancers yeah yeah oh god oh this is all right yeah i think this has gone thoroughly off the rails

Dave Jones: uh yeah no we're done unless there's any last minute things no i got i got stupid amp hours up

Chris Gammell: hopefully a board to talk about soon uh oh excellent all right yeah sounds good all right man have a good week catch you next time

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