#655 – The Twelfth Day of Keyzermas

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released January 8th, 2024. Episode 655. The Twelfth Day of Kaiserness. Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Jeff Kaiser: And I am Jeff Kaiser, the mighty Ohm. And I just want to say, Chris, you're a little bit late.

Chris Gammell: You're a little bit late this year. Man, story of my life these days, Jeff. Yes. Don't worry, kids. Kaiserness may be over, but... Kaiserness was canceled. Papa Kaiser delivered. This is the... What is it? You know the Russian Orthodox Church? They celebrate Christmas in January? Oh, yeah. It's like that. Yeah, it's like... This is going to be like Orthodox Kaiserness. Maybe we could put you in a Russian hat or something like that. I was thinking... The onion top churches behind you.

Jeff Kaiser: This is like Kaiserness, the hangover edition. It's like, it's all behind us now. We did Christmas, we did New Year's, and here we are, January 2024, and I am back. And a good Kaiserness to you, sir. Ho, ho, ho. Yes. On the 12th day of Kaiserness that Jeffrey brought to me. It's pretty soon. It's going to be on the 12th day of January. Yeah, true. True.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I think we are actually getting to the 12th day of Christmas soon. So there you go. Maybe we'll do 12 days of Kaiserness. I'm like, going through my head, I'm like, what is the least amount of work it'll be to make art to do this and then make a fun thing? What is the 12th day? The 12th day of the 12 days of Christmas is 12... Lord's Leaping? 12 Drummers Drumming? I think it's 12 Lords Leaping, isn't it? 12th day of Christmas. I've had this conversation many times. Oh, tomorrow is the 5th of the 12th day of Christmas. Oh, okay. Yeah. Come on. 12 Drummers Drumming. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Drumline here.

Jeff Kaiser: Okay. Yeah. Here we go. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, thanks for having me back. Yeah. Hey, welcome back, Jeff. What has been going on in the past year?

Jeff Kaiser: What has been going on this past year? I feel like I'm reaching a stage in my life where, like, if you talk about last year, I'm still thinking 2022. 2022. So, yeah. Last year was kind of a crazy year for me. So, I don't know if you remember, but the last time I was on the show, which is now not last year, but technically in 2022. We're just going to pretend it's 2023 now. I'm going to make sure you don't forget. But anyway, so last time I was on the show, I had just had, like, a really crazy year, and I was still doing the kit thing, which I still am. I'm still doing the kit thing. But I had just had, like, the craziest year in over 10 years of doing electronics kits, and things were kind of going wild, and I was really kind of struggling to kind of keep up with it because it had come out of nowhere, and I was just, you know, I'm a one-man operation, and so it was hard for me to kind of keep up. I'd started selling on Amazon, and it had been, like, really successful. So, anyway, 2023, that, like, totally reversed itself, and 2023 was actually comparatively, like, very, very slow. And it's the kind of thing that as, like, a small business owner, you're like, oh, okay, you know, I expected this. I was kind of dreading that this would happen, but, like, here it is. And to be honest, like, things are okay. You know, the Amazon store is still going okay. I still sell kits on my website. I still sell on Adafruit. But, like, things are clearly kind of slowing down, and I'm definitely at that point where I've had this business going, and I've had this kit, this Geiger counter kit that I've known was selling for a long time, and I'm starting to kind of think about, okay, like, the number of components that are becoming obsolete is increasing. Like, silly things, too, like, through-hole resistors and, like, things that you just, like, you know, making a product like that, you're like, oh, okay, the writing's on the wall that it's getting, like, harder to keep doing this. And so, you know, sales are slowing down. Like, how long should I keep doing this? And so, anyway, I had kind of a, like, self-reflective moment and said, all right, well, I've got this, I've got all these components here. I'm going to try to, like, just kind of keep building things out, and then we're going to kind of see, and then maybe we'll think about, like, you know, not building more after a certain point. And I haven't gotten to that point yet, but I'm starting to think about that, which, for me, is a great run because, I mean, I released that kit in 2011, and now we're in 2024. So, lucky 13, I guess.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's almost, like, as long as the amp hours run, so, yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: I think that I was working on the kit, like, around the time that I first started guesting on the show. So, that's how long this has been going on.

Chris Gammell: So, we've heard the entirety of it, yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah. So, anyway, now it's, like, I could say this year, but it's last year. 2023 was kind of a crazy year. We also had our cat who had been sick. I don't know if I've ever mentioned our cat. So, we had this cat named Wilson who we adopted when I was living in Austin, right around the time that I designed the Geiger counter kit. So, another thing kind of around that time. And he had a lot of health issues throughout his life, you know, particularly over the past, I would say, like, six or seven years. And 2023 was kind of the year that things got really bad with him. And I realized this is a departure from our usual amp hour material, but I was spending, like, a lot of hours kind of dealing with his care. In particular, he was on, like, a dozen medications. And I have to say that as an electrical engineer and someone who does electronic kits kind of for a living sometimes, I had, like, all the tools to, like, organize and sort pills and, like, pharmaceutical stuff. And it's really funny because, like, you know, I had this entire production line of kind of taking pills that we got from the pharmacy, cutting them up into, like, little bits, because a lot of them, he was on, like, a quarter tablet or an eighth of a tablet. And then I was sort of having these, like, I was thinking about, okay, how can I be a good pharmacist, basically? Because you have to combine pills and put them in pill pockets and do the whole thing. And a lot of it was, like, things where you need tweezers and you need, and I was, like, cutting pills using, you know, X-Acto knives and the whole thing. And so anyway, I went from spending probably easily over 10 hours a week kind of dealing with keeping his medications, you know, on hand and doing, and I mean, actually administering the medication and stuff like that. And then December comes, and now I don't have to do any of that. And so I'm in this really surreal place where a lot of 2023 I sort of spent working through this, and now I'm sort of past it. And I'm like, man, I have so much time all of a sudden. And so, you know, like I said, I think a lot of people wouldn't have signed up to kind of do what I did. But I have to say that, like, I think that the last year of his life in a lot of ways was his best year. So he pretty much spent the whole summer, like, in the backyard, roaming around, you know, chasing after squirrels, which he couldn't actually catch, but just kind of, like, living his best life. And it was a, it was a, like, I will always remember that we sort of got this bonus time with him. And so, you know, 2023 was not an electronics-heavy year for me. It was a, like, dealing with this very, very sick animal that was not at any point sick enough that you're like, all right, we need to call this and, like, say that this is over, you know, until we got to the very end. But yeah, it was a crazy experience. And now here we are in January, and that's kind of all behind us now. But it was a, it was a big focus of last year.

Chris Gammell: I'm sorry for your loss, man. That's, that's really tough. That's really tough. I think it's, you know, the medical industry generally is a area for lots of innovation and change and stuff like that. But it's just like, it is once you get into that space, if you're anyone doing long-term care, it's just like, you kind of look around, you're like, why do they do things all these different ways? And then, like, it does, but then, you know, you get a little bit deeper into it and, like, the regulation, obviously not, you know, I don't know about veterinary care, but, like, if you're doing the long-term care for, you know, family members and stuff in the human sphere, and it's like, yeah, it's a lot of crazy stuff there.

Jeff Kaiser: I think that the things that I was thinking about is, like, you know, components, like, you know, we deal with electronic components, but, you know, if you're in the medical world, pills are, like, components too. And one of the things that I thought was interesting and frustrating as someone kind of, this being, like, a big focus was that, you know, you get these medications and there will be generics, and so, like, let's talk about pills. So pills, the same medication can come in a lot of different sizes and shapes of pills, and different generics will have a different diameter, or they'll be film-coded, which was kind of my nemesis because I'm trying to divide pills into, like, eighths of a tablet for this cat, but if it's film-coded, it's difficult to actually cut up. But, like, you'll have these substitutions, and it totally reminded me of, like, my day job because you would have, like, okay, I go to Costco and I fill the prescription, and one time it's, like, a different pill, and you're like, okay, now I'm spending an extra 20 minutes every time I cut up these pills because I have to, like, deal with the film coding or deal with the fact that now the pill is physically, like, too big to fit into the little pill pouch that I'm putting it in. And I think it's really interesting that, like, that's an industry where, as a consumer, as, like, the person who's administering the medication, like, they just hand this to you, and they don't even tell you that anything's changed. They don't tell you that, oh, by the way, the pills you've been getting for six months, you're never going to see those again because we, Costco changed, like, the provider, you know, and, you know, me being me, I'm, like, I try to find, like, the good ones, and it is really hard to, like, and, I mean, even things like pills have markings on them, and figuring out, like, what that marking actually means is actually surprisingly difficult for, like, the end user. And I was really surprised at how not transparent that whole thing is and how, like, especially with generics, like, they can change the, you know, the specific physical properties of the medication you're getting can change and they, they just sort of assume you're going to roll with it, which if you're a human and you're taking, like, a whole tablet, okay, fine, but, like, if you're, if you're having to, like, microdose this tablet to, like, a, you know, a 10-pound cat, it's, like, a whole other story.

Chris Gammell: I, you know, like, substitutions are always a problem, right, for, like you said, for day job or regular, right, I mean, or outside of work, so.

Jeff Kaiser: Because it's never actually the same, is it? You know, I mean, there is some standardization.

Chris Gammell: Depends on the, I guess in the, in the electronic space, it's, like, you at least have some, like, commoditization and, like, so, like, two resistor manufacturers are going to have the same, quote, unquote, formulation or the same top-level spec, right? Yeah, true. But, I guess if, I guess one thing I think about with that sort of thing is,

Chris Gammell: if you, if you're, if you are running, you know, you've run high-volume lines in the past, right? And if you're trying to troubleshoot then, looking backwards at, like, you have a new behavior off the line, and you're looking backwards, and then you see, like, oh, R52 used to be, you know, it used to have a, you know, a 1K0 marking on the top, and now it doesn't, you're going to at least, at least think like that, that is a problematic space, right? I mean, that's like a problematic thing that could, could be a, a, a area to investigate. But yeah, it's, it's tough when it does switch up, because I mean that, I don't know, you're just expecting kind of the same thing, unless you have incoming, I guess in this case, you, Jeff, playing the role of incoming inspection, right?

Jeff Kaiser: I definitely was, and, and I think that, you know, I would call the pharmacy, and it's like, there's not really any process for that. They're like, well, do you want the medication or not? You can't say, oh, well, can you change generics for like all of Costco? I feel like that industry, like as a, again, it's like the person at home that's responsible for administering medication, you have like very little resources to like do anything about it. So in a way, I actually, I prefer the electronics industry, which you wouldn't think would be, like you'd think that the medical industry would be like more tightly regulated and like this kind of stuff would be less likely to happen. But I actually feel like the electronics industry, I'd way prefer that. Like I can, there's like, you know, you can usually find somebody to call, whereas like I don't have pharma reps on my like, you know, my contact list, right? To say, hey, you're, you know, you're an oxyperin came in a weird format this time. Whereas like if a chip vendor sends you.

Chris Gammell: I think, well, I think the other thing though is you get like, you get the benefit of like marketplace type things as well, right? Like as long as there is competition, then like you just go with the one that has more, you know, so like if it's the same manufacturer that's changing things, you only have one manufacturer or two manufacturers, like what are you going to do? You basically are like, all right, well, it's kind of like with you in the pharmacy, you're saying like, all right, I'm just going to go with it, I guess. But like if you have other choices, then you could go and do that. Or if you're big enough, you can always go ask them to do that sort of thing. But yeah,

Jeff Kaiser: if I had a million cats, I'd probably get a lot more attention, don't you think? You'd have many,

Chris Gammell: many other problems, Jeffrey.

Jeff Kaiser: But I'd have the volume needed to, you know, I could get my own custom medications at that point. Maybe not, maybe not, but still, yeah, I mean, I kind of went into it with this lens of like being curious about it because, you know, there is a lot of things about dispensing and about sorting and organizing. And I definitely, you know, those little flip top boxes that like Adafruit and you can get them on AliExpress for surface mount component storage, like those little, yeah,

Chris Gammell: those are called pill boxes usually, right? I mean, like that's,

Jeff Kaiser: so I absolutely use those as pill boxes and they work great. I mean, it's perfect. It's like the perfect thing and I already had a bunch of them around. So yeah, yeah, it was an adventure.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, sorry about the ending, but sounds like you were quite, quite the steward for your, your family. What about your RF stuff? I mean, so you've been kind of been on the show past years, you know, we've talked about the VNA and things like it. Any, any of that RF stuff?

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah. I, so I've been continuing to put together a lab at home to do RF work and which has been a goal of mine for many, many years. You know, since I was a RF engineer working professionally, I always wished that I had spectrum analyzer, network analyzer, you know, all of that stuff at home. And it took me a long time and honestly, I still have a ways to go. But over this past year, I rebuilt the step attenuator on the 8753 that I bought from you and that's been working great. And I've actually used that to do some, some work with and it's been really good. And I wish that box was like a third of the size that it is because it does take up like a big amount of my workbench, but it works great. And I, I love the 8753 because that's the VNA that I used in college. That's the VNA that I used in my first job and my second job out of college doing RF design. So I can kind of use it with one eye closed and it's a great VNA. It works really well. Yeah, there's like smaller and better stuff. I demoed a Copper Mountain VNA over the summer.

Chris Gammell: I think I've seen Sharia review those. Those are like the headless ones.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, exactly. And I, they basically do everything that an 8753 would do except it's like a backpack size.

Chris Gammell: It's like $15,000, isn't it?

Jeff Kaiser: Oh yeah, they're really, really expensive. Now, I will say they're a good value. Personally, I think they're a good value because if you compare it with like the Keysight stuff. Yeah,

Chris Gammell: but what if you want to, what if you want to play with a CRT screen? Then, then you don't get to.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, you know, I have to say I was skeptical going in and I'm really glad I did the demo. I, I know one of the reps and he reached out and I was like, yeah, like I will totally get a demo of this. I've been curious about them because, you know, my impression being kind of a test equipment snob was that like there's no way that these are going to be as good as the HP Agilent Keysight stuff that I'm used to that I've used for, you know, 25 years. But it turns out actually I think in some ways they're better and the fact that they're headless means that you can use like a really nice PC as your CRT. Yeah, yeah. And you can more easily like save data and move data back and forth. That's a big one. Yeah, I feel like

Chris Gammell: and then scripting too if you got into scripting that would be another thing but I don't know.

Jeff Kaiser: And they have a scripting engine. Yeah. One of the things that they do that I gave them feedback on is it's really clear if you ever demo the Copper Mountain software is that they're trying to mock up sort of a legacy VNA. Like it looks like an old HP or Rhodey VNA and like I feel like HP kind of pioneered I'm almost certainly it was HP back in the 1980s or maybe even 1970s HP kind of created like the soft key user menu interface that all of the VNAs for the past like many, many years have used. And so Copper Mountain pretty much adopted that whole convention and their UI looks like really similar. So I immediately knew how to use it because you load up the app and you're like, oh yeah, okay. You know, you have to hunt for menus but like it kind of works the way that I would expect a VNA to work. But on the other hand that's like kind of limiting because that user interface technology, that convention of UI design was developed like a really long time ago, like probably the 1980s. And it hasn't really evolved or changed and even like new key site VNAs like they kind of look similar in a way which is kind of shocking almost that like we're still, I guess it was just a really good idea when they developed it and it works really well. But anyway, you know, you're running like a modern PC and it's 2023 and like you load this app and you're like, oh, like it kind of feels like the 80s again. Yeah. But it's better because you can start multiple windows and you can have like sessions and the whole thing. So anyway, I demoed this Copper Mountain VNA and it was great and I actually used it to test the step attenuator that was faulty in the 87-53 which was a whole adventure that I went on and I embarked on where I actually took the step attenuator out of the VNA and anyone that's been around HP RF equipment.

Chris Gammell: Wait, Jeff, can you explain what a step attenuator is first?

Jeff Kaiser: It's an electronically controlled switch that changes the amount of attenuation from port one to port two. So it's a programmable attenuator. It's a thing that you can use to reduce the amount of power going from port one to port two. So if you want to add loss, like say your incoming signal is too big, you can step up and add, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 dB of loss through this switchable device to get your desired signal level at the output. And so VNAs use this because you have a signal source that, you know, in the case of the 87-53 goes from, I think it's like 9 kilohertz or 30 kilohertz all the way up to 6 gigahertz. So you have a signal source, which has an oscillator and, you know, amplifiers and the whole thing, but you want that signal source to be adjustable in amplitude so that it's not always at like the max level, which I think is a few dBm for the 87-53. You want to be able to actually, so say that you're testing an amplifier and your amplifier has 30 dB of gain, but it has like a relatively low, what's called P1 dB or saturated power output. So your amplifier, it's like a wimpy little amplifier. It can only generate say like 0 dBm before it saturates or starts to distort the signal. You know, that's one of the key metrics for an RF power amplifier. So if you're trying to test it on a VNA, you need to make sure that your input power to the amplifier that you're testing is like really low because if it's like 0 dBm and the amplifier has 30 dB of gain, well, you're going to be saturating the amplifier because the output can only go to 0 dBm max, but now you have 0 dBm in and then 30 dB of gain and so it's a mess, right? So that's why VNAs have these really fancy step attenuers and this is one of the things when people talk about the nano VNA and they talk about like a lot of the low cost and, you know, they're great in a certain context. They're great. Like all the cheap VNAs that you can get that have been out for several years now. But if you look at those VNAs in detail, this is what separates them among many other reasons or many other kind of characteristics. This is what separates the toys from like the real professional grade VNAs. So the HP 8753 has a step attenuator that I forget if it's like 70 or 90 dB. I think it's 70 dB of total attenuation. So you can have your signal go all the way from like plus 5 dBm, which is, you know, small, but like it's a, that's a decent signal. That's a common signal level for RF. But you can switch in all the stages of this step attenuator and go all the way down to, let's say, like minus 70, which is like really low. That's actually hard to measure. It's so low. So you're adding a ton of loss and you're able to get your signal down. But what that does is it allows you to test devices which cannot tolerate larger amounts of input power without distorting or oscillating or being damaged or whatever. And so pretty much any serious VNA has a switchable attenuator. And the ones that are in the HP are a really common design that HP used in a lot of equipment, including signal sources, spectrum analyzers, and a bunch of other RF stuff. And they're, because it's old, they are mechanical devices. So they have solenoids, you know, like a pinball machine. They've got like little solenoids that you can hear like click, click, click, click, click when they're doing their self-test or calibration or you're changing attenuation settings. And those solenoids actually move little gold fingers against these little, I think it's like glass substrates or they're an insulating substrate that I think is glass that actually has like a printed or etched pad, like a resistive pad on the glass. So they're these little gold fingers that are actually physically moving on plungers up and down so that they either make contact with this resistor, basically, or they pull back and they actually short against the housing. So you can either switch the resistor or it's actually called a pad because it's like a matched resistor. It's not just like a series resistor but there's parallel components as well. But these little fingers can move up and down and because these are inherently mechanical devices like they'll work for I think like they're rated for millions of cycles but eventually after time and use things stop working like the fingers get dirty or the biggest issue that happens is that the O-rings that kind of keep these plungers in the right place. They're made of rubber which was a poor decision by HP. I guess it's the best that they could do but the rubber falls apart over time and then the little bits of O-ring get into these little like almost watch-like mechanisms these little tiny fingers that are moving around and then somebody has to actually take this thing apart and completely break it down and do its components replace the O-rings put it back together test it and then put it back in the instrument and I actually did that for this step attenuator and I have to say I think it was one of the hardest repairs that I've ever done. It was just daunting like every aspect of it it was like taking apart a watch and then you know and that's one of the things that for me like I'm sitting in my lab which is in my home and I'm like gosh this place is so dirty like it's not a clean room I'm taking apart this really delicate thing with all these shiny gold surfaces and I'm like really worried that I've got my windows open because it's the summertime and there's like dirt blowing in and it's dusty and so I was a little bit nervous that I'd be able to actually pull this off but I kind of continued and kind of worked through it all and I took it all apart and I cleaned everything and I figured out that yes in fact the O-rings in the unit that was in year old 8753 had dried up and they were sticking and so one of the stages was not actually making contact consistently and if you toggled it eventually you could sort of get it to make contact but it wasn't it wasn't reliable and after taking it apart putting it back together I had to make test fixtures I had to buy equipment to sort of drive the step attenuator outside of the instrument so I could test it I put it all back in and it works and I was so impressed by my success that I actually like went on eBay and I bought a bunch more step attenuators thinking okay well if this dies again I'm going to have like another one that I can swap in and honestly I haven't gotten to that they're still all sitting here but it was actually quite an interesting experience having to go through all of this and for anybody that's been around HP test equipment like I know that Shariar has done this on his show he's done and I watched a couple episodes of his show to sort of figure out what needed to be done and to see because he has some good videos where he shows these things and there's also some good Google groups and things like that for like resources for learning how to repair these but anybody that's been around these instruments long enough will encounter this sooner or later because it's a really common failure and it affects a lot of RF equipment made by HP and there are probably other brands too but HP I have a bunch of HP stuff here and so knowing how to do this was really important and there's I think pretty much only one or two people in the country that are willing to do this if you want to pay them and I was like you know like I could pay somebody to do this but I also I feel like I need to know how to do this so that you know if it ever happens again I'll be able I'm not going to like pay $400 or whatever every time this happens and so anyway I did it it works that's great

Chris Gammell: that's great yeah that's it's interesting like how much stuff in the RF space I remember when we talked about the APS APSC whatever the connector type is on there

Jeff Kaiser: APC7 yeah

Chris Gammell: APC7 yeah like how just how critical the spacing is and obviously the cleanliness that makes sense but like the just the reliance on it and like even when I look at like RF layouts and stuff like that when you look at like how you create an attenuator on your board it's just it is a shape you know it's it's still just like copper or gold on a substrate but then it's like it's the shape and the physical nature that ultimately does it I don't know just to me that that always stands out as like a interesting like kind of not black magic but just like it's a different it feels it feels like it's a different kind of realm of of study

Jeff Kaiser: it is yeah I agree I mean it's I think that it's interesting that electronics in general is sort of headed this way where the physicality of the implementation matters a lot like no one's doing these giant well I guess people do all sorts of things but you think of these big breadboarded electronics things back in the old days with lots of wire and you know

Chris Gammell: Jeff I have to say I really don't think about those things anymore I mean like if I'm watching like retro tech videos then yeah sure but like yeah yes

Jeff Kaiser: but we're at a point now where signals are fast enough and but there's also a lot of other considerations that are driving the physical design of electronics like the packaging and you know if you want to design something like a phone even if it was at low frequency you're still in this domain of where the physical aspect or you have thermal considerations or things like that but but you're exactly right

Chris Gammell: like the like the fact that things are moving to direct you know silicon to silicon type stuff or silicon on substrate and I think the the shrinking geometries definitely are impacting a lot of things and then a lot of the physical things pop out of there so we had like Andreas Olofsson on again he was talking about like chiplets and stuff like that but like the hearing about how it's all put together for an end chip as well it's like it kind of every time I hear about this stuff it's like oh we're just pushing our PCB problems down onto silicon vendors now right so like you know chiplet type stuff or similar you know like any kind of like sip package that I'm buying off the shelf and it looks like a module I'm like oh I'm just you're just making that little tiny circuit board for me and I'm okay with it yeah there's a Palav Argawal I think his name is he's got a blog where he's he does a lot of like RISC-V like CH32 V003 stuff but like he does like courses on that but then he also has been doing module teardowns lately so like he'll just like rip the can off of like cell modules that he has around and he's like oh let's look at what's in here and it's it's I'll put some links in the show it's it's it's cool to look at it but I'm like again I'm like nothing is going to change from my perspective like oh that's a Skyworks RF switch on the front end like oh does it talk to a cell tower I don't give a shit otherwise you know like that's that's basically the level that I'm at I'm just like well you you know cell module vendors you deal with it no I'll worry about when it stops working you know

Jeff Kaiser: I find that fascinating I think my favorite modules are Murata has a series that have DC to DC converters that have like printed inductors in the module I always thought those were so cool where like the laminate of the module is an inductor and sometimes they'll have like ferrites clamped around them or you know so that they have better efficiency or whatever it is I always thought that was awesome because then I've always kind of felt I guess I've been kind of a snob about modules but I've always been resistant to use modules in my designs

Chris Gammell: join the resistance

Jeff Kaiser: because you know you pay more you're you're you're paying there's somebody else that's that's kind of in the the middleman there right where yes you know you're probably getting a package that's like a little bigger than if it was directly integrated you might not have as much flexibility on the design maybe it doesn't do exactly what you want but in the case of like the Murata thing they're actually bringing something to the table that is really interesting and like designing a printed transformer I'm probably not going to do that that's outside the scope of like what I'm going to do for a single product and the other thing I think is interesting about modules is like they'll get the FCC certification and that's another thing where you're like okay yeah now I totally get it it totally makes sense to use a module unless you're doing like a high volume product of yourself where you know you can actually pay and have the time to to do all that stuff but yeah I I love those teardowns because it's like it demystifies like I've never thought of those things as black boxes because I used to work on modules I was a module designer you know way back when and so I was the guy putting those little Skyworks switches in front end modules for cellular and I just I've always wanted to know like I want to know what's in the box I want to know what's in there like how does it work

Chris Gammell: pain that's what's in the box

Jeff Kaiser: pain isn't that the

Chris Gammell: line from doom what's in the box pain oh yeah I

Jeff Kaiser: I was thinking of shoot what's the other movie what's in the box oh there's a

Chris Gammell: 90s Andy Sandberg thing about it no no no no no no no no seasonally appropriate yeah I think I

Jeff Kaiser: think you're right though and I it's a seven the movie is I never

Chris Gammell: saw seven yeah

Jeff Kaiser: seven is a scary movie I do recommend it but it's no I

Chris Gammell: don't like I don't know thank you I'll pass uh none for me thanks uh yeah I think it does depend where you are in your career and what your company pushes for too right like modules probably they were the wrong call for like the steam controller right like because it's just like you should be putting almost like silicon down on the board you almost were at the level of like exactly like chip with black blob on top of it right like that's almost the level you were at and

Jeff Kaiser: you're making a ton of them and you're extremely cost sensitive yeah you cannot be putting other people's modules on yeah I

Chris Gammell: once went to go talk to a RF group that was in Chicago and it was like a quasi interview and you know they were talking about like they're they're super legit like they they knew all their stuff and they're like talking about like all their customers they had worked for and you're doing chip down design for like cellular stuff like onto PCBs and then they would do the full FCC you know then you have to do a full FCC thing and they're like yeah I just don't know why anyone would ever do a module or anything like that and they're like all right Chris you said you brought some demos like what like what did you bring and then I bring out this board and it's got like a honking huge quick tell module and I'm like yeah well I'm one of the module users turns out I didn't get the job nor did I want it but yeah different different strokes for different folks right yeah so yeah yeah makes sense yeah I I think one of the big things there is that you could get yourself into sourcing trouble right like modules oh yeah there's no like standardization even like even though it would be a perfect place to do it none of the module vendors are like oh yeah I'll make the same thing my competitor does like yeah we are completely unimportant in this process please let us let us battle on price with one another

Jeff Kaiser: yeah it's a hundred percent and it's really hard to do substitutions it's really hard to have multiple sources it's yeah I think you're quite vulnerable to the module vendor and yeah I mean I think that for certain designs it's fine I mean I've also seen you've got products that start out modular you because you can get to market quicker and then you know obviously you got to design it out and you know and kind of come up the learning curve and maybe we could have done that on the controller I don't know we went from zero to a hundred really fast yeah but like we certainly prototyped with modules yeah right that was the easiest way to get an NRF NRF radio like back in the day there were a bunch of companies that were making low-cost modules and so you know stick one of them on a board but I was always keen to sort of get all that stuff out because I also you wanted to

Chris Gammell: get the RF fiddly bits and optimize I'm

Jeff Kaiser: sure well I I did enjoy that quite a bit

Chris Gammell: I yes I you know this many Kaiser misses you don't do this many Kaiser misses and I know a little bit more about Jeff not only that not only do we hang out at Kaiser misses you and I hung out in person this year that's something that happened in 2023 we didn't mention that

Jeff Kaiser: yeah yeah yeah that's true so actually what that was like August July was that it

Chris Gammell: was July yeah

Jeff Kaiser: July yeah that was on our yeah that was that was super cool you came during like the best three months of the year here in Seattle so you have like a really inaccurate yes view yeah what's it like there now life is like I it this is what we call the big dark I don't know if I've seen the sun in a while this is the the time of year when it gets like dusk is at you know 330 this is basically

Chris Gammell: Seattle as a Nordic country yeah yeah

Jeff Kaiser: totally I mean this is what gives Seattle its reputation and you know why people always are hesitant to you know move here come visit here it's like this time of year I remember every year you know the first year we moved here being like really shocked at how early it gets dark and you know you go to work and it's dark and then you come home and it's dark and you I think after a few years you either moon you either you crack or you like embrace the darkness and you know I have to say I don't love it but I I do I I'm fine with it like it's just a feature of

Chris Gammell: well that's the thing about being a nerd inside your lab all day and all night I know this it's I know this about the sun here Jeff I don't see the

Jeff Kaiser: sun most days so yeah it's also rainy which you know fits the other stereotype of Seattle so like I would definitely recommend if someone's visiting Seattle you definitely don't want to come now although hotels are probably cheap and you know I mean especially now that Christmas and stuff is is over but yeah it's the time that you were here those are our best months there's this kind of saying in Seattle is that the fourth of July through Labor Day yeah which is not that many weeks yeah that's sort of the reliably like good weather and often the weather is incredible during that period and you were here kind of right during that time and it was really cool so it was it was good

Chris Gammell: to see it yeah I mean this is it's actually my wife and I figured out this year that like so we lived in Chicago for a long time and I lived in many other cold places and the thing is like you shouldn't leave in the summer then right you shouldn't like go travel then but you always want to because you have friends other places and you know you want to go see national parks or whatever and yeah it's that's a it's a bad time like Chicago in the summer is fantastic just like Seattle is right and so it's like yep but now we live somewhere where your face will melt off in the summer and we're like oh yeah we can get the heck out of here in the summer we should do that and so we'll be doing that more my

Jeff Kaiser: wife and I have an unofficial rule that we will not travel during those weeks of July 4th to Labor Day like I think if you live in Seattle yeah like you we it's like you need to have some rules about like okay we're not gonna miss like the best time of year here and so you know like it's like the the winter and the spring are I think the times to like go to Hawaii or go somewhere

Chris Gammell: else oh of course of course just go to just nobody nobody deals just pop on over right yeah yeah yeah you know as as you do shorter shorter hop for you than me huh

Jeff Kaiser: oh that's definitely true you would go the other way you'd go to the Caribbean that's right

Chris Gammell: yeah yeah yeah if I was to do that sort of thing yes I would oh man how about your mechanical I mean you had been doing I mean car stuff is kind of feels like that's a non-stop for you but like you had I remember you were doing CAD stuff not last year but I think two years ago you're doing CAD stuff well I guess I should look at show notes

Jeff Kaiser: yeah I was learning SolidWorks solid yeah yeah so I still do use SolidWorks

Chris Gammell: you do want to switch to FreeCAD I have FreeCAD open on my screen in front of me right now not I but

Jeff Kaiser: it's I so I made a I made a conscious effort to learn SolidWorks and I'm not leaving the SolidWorks ecosystem because I don't I don't have enough like bandwidth or desire to like become multilingual in the mechanical CAD space like I really just wanted to become good at SolidWorks because that like for years and years and years when I was at Valve I wanted to be able to do things in SolidWorks and I was so bad like I was embarrassingly terrible at doing because we had all these 3D printers at work and I was like well I can't I need to ask somebody else to like help me the

Chris Gammell: secret of 3D printing is it doesn't matter a lick unless you know how to model like it just doesn't it's not yes you're basically yes getting trinkets that would be much cheaper to get from China you know like or you know maybe you can customize them a little bit but who cares I

Jeff Kaiser: I've definitely gotten to the point where I can need something throw together some CAD for like an enclosure or for a lot of times it's like really simple stuff like spacers adapters yeah things like that like little fixtures

Chris Gammell: yeah but that's something where like even that would be tough to go and get from like a hardware store right I mean like oh yeah I feel like that's that's where the that's where it really comes through that I didn't I'd never thought would be a thing but it definitely is and I think

Jeff Kaiser: that for me one of the big hang-ups is I would try to go into CAD wanting it to be like perfect and these really good designs that are like done according to best practices but what I've learned is that I'm actually much better at saying okay my goal is to just get to the printed part working and fitting and then we can worry about all that other stuff later and just try to like get in and not be too rigid in how I do the CAD and with Solid Works it's interesting because you I think it's like a lot of those 3D modeling programs there's like 10 different ways to do something and there's usually like a way that probably people that do it every day are like well you should really use this tool you should use the spline tool and not this other tool but well actually yeah so I go in saying well I'm aware that I'm just being like fast and loose I'm not like you know doing the right hierarchy of features things like that but like let's just get the part that it's the right size it functions it works and then let's figure out the rest later about symmetry and things like that and I've gotten much better this year at being faster and loose so that I can sort of just get to the result quicker you know especially the first result to say is this part even what I want like does it fit is it the right size does it function the way that it should and so anyway I've been doing quite a bit of that I still have a 3d printer here so I've been doing some CAD and then I'll you know send it over to the 3d printer and I haven't been like following trends so I still have the Prusa mark 3s that I've had for I think I built and built it in 2019 and then I've been like upgrading it a couple times yeah so I'm not on like the bleeding edge

Chris Gammell: did you get the upgrade for the what's it called the mark 4 got it for sure no I don't have the new

Jeff Kaiser: extruder I don't have the new extruder and I don't have I don't have the acceleration yeah that's

Chris Gammell: the list I'm talking about the no I

Jeff Kaiser: don't have any of that stuff I'm so so I'm kind of behind the curve now but I also like I know my printer

Chris Gammell: really well input shaper that's what

Jeff Kaiser: it's called input shaping yeah yeah so

Chris Gammell: that is that is trippy as shit like that that is like the best firmware update I've ever gotten for a device that not maybe not the best the most visible like on a device that I'm actually modifying versus like a unlocking a new mode and like a camera maybe I guess that's probably big as well but input do you have a

Jeff Kaiser: do you have a mark 4 or a mini I have

Chris Gammell: a mini yeah ah okay yeah highly recommend a mini like cost you know if you're not most people aren't building things like they think they will like the size of things people always including myself I way overestimated so like my first printer was 200 by 200 by 300 millimeter or 8 by 8 by 12 inches which is insanely big right I did not need that and it was did you know it was a kit and I just I just didn't I didn't need that it was like made to build lots of big things with low resolution and it's like no I want probably more resolution input shaping is like basically everything speeds up it's it's crazy I'll post a Thomas Sarlander video in here too it's it's it's not the most glowing video about about it but just like seeing the difference the speed differences is jarring I can't do it

Jeff Kaiser: because my printer has the old 8-bit controller so I would need to do a lot of surgery got it I think that there's a mark 4 upgrade kit but then you have to change your extruder and I've already got all these nozzles for the old one

Chris Gammell: you should just get I mean like you should just refresh if you if you ever

Jeff Kaiser: yeah wait until you I've always I've always thought that I would just keep this printer and then just have another yes printer which is the new one you know but I haven't really had a need to to upgrade I've kind of I think it's the other thing that you said like

Chris Gammell: spacers like how much time what is your average print time too that's the other thing you know it varies wildly an hour

Jeff Kaiser: but who cares uh no I mean it depends one of the things I did this year is I started experimenting with really small nozzles and so I went down to a 0.25 which I've been using like a 0.4 which I think the standard has been 0.6 and 0.4 I started wanting to print like really tiny stuff particularly for repairing tektronics uh I have a bunch of tm500 modules which is a line of test equipment that tektronics did which is

Chris Gammell: what sorry what's the name again it's

Jeff Kaiser: tm500 so it's a series so tektronics back in the 1980s had these modular uh test equipment things and I think it was

Chris Gammell: a great idea like they were like the long skinny modules like uh yeah what's the relative size on these things for

Jeff Kaiser: people can get a feel oh they're they're like at least 12 inches long and then they're probably like two or three inches wide and then three or four inches tall so it's like a rectangular prism and I'd say they're like way too long because like the the the main frame that they go into is like a bend yeah it totally is like a bench depth issue and so that's one of the things I did this year is I upgraded my lab and I got like workbenches which I bought at university surplus for pennies on the dollar but then I ended up spending several times that to get shelves for them because I had to buy them from this one company that makes like the workbench just like modules so so anyway I upgraded to like 15 inch deep shelves because of this tm500 stuff which is kind of deep this is another

Chris Gammell: reason for uh headless stuff too I feel like just that just the depth recording on a bench is insane it's really

Jeff Kaiser: crazy yeah my buddy Tony was telling me that there's a new uh who makes it there's a new oscilloscope that goes on a monitor arm which is a great great yeah great idea yeah that I really like

Chris Gammell: every yeah every scope is basically like like LCD front-end chip big zinc processes processor slash FPGA and like all right you're done you know obviously there's a lot more than that but power supply it's like you know like watch you know EV blog reviews or something like that and like you'll see them you know that's there's not much they're getting smaller and smaller and then a big big

Jeff Kaiser: ass fan on the back yeah yeah that's it's true so this tm500 stuff is I think it's a great idea because what it does is it allows you to have like a power supply and then you can plug in various modules to do like signal generator multimeter yeah and also like interesting stuff like I have one that is an op amp it's just an op amp and it's got terminals on the front and you can put a resistors across the terminals or you can put on a board to like make it into an integrator or a differentiator or an adder or whatever and it's a really clever idea and I think like tektronics kind of got they had some fun when they were designing the modules because they did some like interesting stuff there's you know power supplies and there's all sorts of kind of somewhat specialized calibration fixtures and stuff but one of the things almost universally is that this was a great idea but it was implemented kind of poorly because I think it was done in a division of the company that didn't have the resources in the budget that like oscilloscopes did yeah and so and no I really and so like if you look at them the build quality is not on par with like some of the really nice scopes from the same time period at least in my experience and I think this is a thing people talk

Chris Gammell: about could have been like they got pushed to a different factory even to right or like secondary lines stuff like that like you just you're not you're not the a squad you know like you're not the

Jeff Kaiser: money literally so yeah and I'll say you know there's some great design work and I'm sure some great people worked on these but like it definitely has that kind of b-team flavor and and the reason I really say that is that anyone who's ever collected these modules knows that the vast majority of them that you buy today are broken like they are horrible in terms of reliability I think mainly because tantalum capacitors and electrolytic capacitors fail like they used poor quality components and they're also really old because a lot of these modules from the the 70s 80s 90s I think and so anyway if you buy a bunch of TM 500 stuff a word of warning is that it's like a lot of it probably over half of what I've encountered is broken in some way like and it's always annoying stuff it's like these selector switches that have like these cam switches with a hundred positions and like they're really complicated and really hard to work on and so anyway I've started printing some little parts and everything's like really small because they're these little kind of highly integrated little modules and so I switched to a 0.25 nozzle on the 3d printer this year and I started printing little brackets and replacement parts for them because I had to get these modules working I'm trying to like get a test set up working so that I can repair I'm in this like trap which I think is probably familiar to people that are into electronics that have been into electronics for a long time that you like buy a piece of equipment it doesn't work and you're like okay I have to buy three other pieces of equipment so that I can repair this first piece of equipment I'm probably like six stages down that now to where I have a lot of broken equipment and the TM500 stuff I'd say is among the most broken it's like I have a pile of it it all needs a ton of work like tons of work to get it all working.

Chris Gammell: Kaiser Miss 2024 is actually going to be an intervention. Jeff we're all here and we love you and we think we think you have a problem and we have that same problem but but you have the most of the problem.

Jeff Kaiser: So I remember I remember I'm probably like a broken record if you play my episodes back to back because I remember talking about this last year because I was also in this like TM500 hell last year and one of the things that I said last year and I'll repeat it again and then I won't I won't repeat other things from last year but I think repairing test equipment is a great way to learn about electronics design and about test equipment design obviously but I have to say that you know a year later it's like really rewarding and it's also really really really hard like really hard especially because now we're at a point where this equipment is all really old and you can't call up tektronics and get parts for it anymore which is like a huge problem like yeah you're basically

Chris Gammell: getting like the the realm of like Jay Leno in his garage like like 3d printing a boiler for like yeah where you're trying to repair

Jeff Kaiser: you're trying to repair the turbine the turbine car and you have to make your own turbine exactly yeah you're just like

Chris Gammell: doing it off of like like a Polaroid photo yeah like watching there's watching his videos or that stuff's amazing like his shop is amazing but like yeah have you

Jeff Kaiser: seen the turbine have you seen the

Chris Gammell: turbine car one no so so there's a

Jeff Kaiser: documentary by Hagerty it's on YouTube it's by Hagerty Drivers Foundation it's called the Chrysler turbine car engineering a revolution it is a great

Chris Gammell: I think I've seen an ad for the car when it came out I've definitely seen a video about the car but not about the repair because it was like it was basically it was like a jet right I mean like but it was

Jeff Kaiser: yes yeah yeah so Chrysler I think it's in the 1960s made a turbine powered car and they made a whole bunch of prototypes maybe

Chris Gammell: we talked about this on the show last year too that would be scary I should really look at this all right you keep going maybe that's the maybe that's the documentary I'm thinking about Jeff so

Jeff Kaiser: they made a turbine car they gave them to a bunch of people to test drive them and get feedback and then after this program was done it was too complicated and too expensive and they ended up taking all the cars back and then destroying the vast majority of them but Leno has one and he has gone through tremendous hoops to keep it on the road because he actually burned up the engine or the turbine and then literally had to like contract with the design team that originally did the turbine like some of those guys are still alive yeah and I apologize if I talked about all this last year it's entirely possible that I did I

Chris Gammell: definitely watch I definitely watch this parts of this video I remember seeing I think it was I think it was about the the high-level car thing though maybe it

Jeff Kaiser: was I don't know so he he's having these guys like make new parts and test equipment is definitely getting to be I mean if you think about it like it's now 2024 and a lot of this equipment is like you know 40 years old so I mean it's that's a long time to try to be keeping things alive and and one of the things that I think is is challenging is that test equipment like if this was the 1980s and you were repairing stuff from the 1940s it would be you're saying fairly

Chris Gammell: simple it would be simple scale differences of of like well it's the

Jeff Kaiser: the complexity and the amount of like special modules and customized season stuff like in the 1940s you didn't have customized ease you didn't have ICs in general but now that it's 40 years ago is putting us in the 1980s now we're at the point where like there's a bunch of proprietary weird stuff in these and they're built to like a different build standard and so it's actually getting much much harder I've got a bunch of old tech oscilloscopes and you know you look at the ones made in the 70s and then you look at the ones made in the 80s and like just in 10 years the complexity went through the roof you've got like switching power supplies and all this stuff in the newer ones yeah and that makes them much harder to to service but but it's it's still rewarding and I think it's super interesting and it's you know there's definitely the satisfaction of repairing something with other equipment and yeah I probably talked about all of

Chris Gammell: this last year no you didn't I'm I'm looking right now Jeff oh you didn't I'm also going through my art and I'm very proud of myself oh for the Kaiser Miss art all the Kaiser Miss art it's a very badly photoshopped but I'm I just I got all of the Christmas movies that I love I think I got a couple of yeah pretty great pretty great good times with Kaiser Miss yeah no we didn't talk about this last time apparently so I must have just watched this on my own or maybe you sent me a link or something like that yeah no a lot more I think last year was a lot more ham stuff oh yeah and I've

Jeff Kaiser: been doing ham stuff this year too now we

Chris Gammell: did ham stuff last year don't worry about it I like test equipment stuff better you

Jeff Kaiser: like test equipment better well you know I mean I think so the things they kind of all come together it's all can use ham equipment as test equipment I mean

Chris Gammell: at all it is all pin it's all gonna be the pinnacle of you like do you have as your beard grown out yet like is it the long and gray yet I mean I know it's gray well certainly gray yeah yeah it's

Jeff Kaiser: getting super gray yeah it's not it's not long but it's super it's super gray yeah it shocks even me well that's the

Chris Gammell: thing you you remember when it wasn't gray so that's that's oh yeah that's

Jeff Kaiser: always the problem I definitely yeah I definitely remember that yeah yeah yeah

Chris Gammell: I'm I'm still 25 in my mind and then I go for a walk and I'm like oh wow my hip hurts and I'm like oh yeah no I'm not I'm not 25 I'm I'm actually in the 40s so

Jeff Kaiser: yeah I'm working on being Santa that's you mean you're jolly and generous is that what I'm hearing well certainly be gray bearded and and round I can work on the jolly I'll work on the jolly part yeah

Chris Gammell: yeah yeah what do you uh what's what do you see for the new year what is what's on your plate now I mean obviously you said you you're you're scheduled a little more freed up but not not for good reasons but for reasons yeah yeah it's like I have

Jeff Kaiser: more time on my hand what are you hoping to do well I think that kind of one of the things that I've been trying to do this past year but I think I'll be putting more effort into is reducing the amount of test equipment so ebay things yeah oh I mean yeah absolutely and I've started pushing off

Chris Gammell: on some other poor sucker

Jeff Kaiser: one of the things that I've done on ebay that's actually interesting so so I will say that my standards are usually pretty high so if I'm selling stuff on ebay it's usually like pretty nice but one of the things I have started doing recently on ebay is so in the process of repairing an instrument I'll have to make a custom part and I'll say okay well I could just make one but a lot of times it's easier to just make 10 or 20 or 30 parts and so one of the things I started doing is saying okay as I'm going as and this is kind of part of my way of saying okay I need to try to get some money back out of this hobby you know what I mean because it's like it's collecting test equipment you're not going to like make a lot of money doing this I promise you but one of the things I started doing is like laser cutting fan filters for vintage especially oscilloscopes but like I have this old tech scope it needed a new fan filter it's the little foam thing that goes in the back of the scope that keeps dust and dirt and hair from getting into the scope you know because it has a fan on the back yeah and so I was like okay I'm going to design this little thing for mine and then oh well I can just I have a sheet of this material and especially on the laser cutter you know once you do one you might as well do like a whole bed full of them right and so I cut a bunch of them and I started selling them on ebay and it's actually been pretty like I've sold a lot of them actually interesting and I've doing this for a couple months now

Chris Gammell: do you find out where how people are

Jeff Kaiser: finding you this one I posted to the tech scopes mailing list which is very active that's a Google group yeah or sorry groups IO and that like anybody who's repairing tech equipment is on that list it's probably it's one of the better and it's actually I wish that HP had a list that was as active and there is actually an HP Agilent mailing list but the tech the tectronics community for vintage test equipment repair is so incredible like they just have their act together it's I don't know what it is I think culturally like there's a museum for vintage tech equipment right which like I don't there is no museum for HP like I can't I I'm a huge fan of HP equipment I have a lot of HP equipment but there isn't this like energy no I

Chris Gammell: think I think probably there was like a committee put together and they're like well should we put together a a place where we can get all of our equipment into one big room like no no we have Jeff's house no

Jeff Kaiser: maybe but I mean I I am a little jealous of the tech side I mean it's just I think culturally tectronics I think was an incredible company had an incredible and like very strong culture and I HP maybe did too but like for whatever reason now that it's 2024 like we have a vintage tech museum we don't have a vintage HP museum we don't have a vintage LaCroix museum we don't have like a fluke like fluke is based in Everett which is actually I don't know if I've ever mentioned this on the show but fluke's first Pacific Northwest headquarters was within walking distance of my house and I know the building that it was in and I've driven by the building dozens of times before I realized that it was flukes and it's it's not well advertised like fluke doesn't really talk about it they sort of say our first office in Seattle blah blah blah yeah but like they never give you the address they don't actually tell you

Chris Gammell: yeah because it's not theirs anymore right that's the other thing they don't want you to hassle the it's not like a historic site so they don't want you to like go and like knock on the door and

Jeff Kaiser: be like oh it is it is a historic site but yeah not a marked historic site how

Chris Gammell: about that it's not like a tour true

Jeff Kaiser: true true there's no plaque on the wall

Chris Gammell: it's not kiefly was like that too they they didn't they didn't publish the address because it was also a rough name road I think oh well yeah so so anyway

Jeff Kaiser: isn't it interesting that like fluke does not have you know tektronics just has this like crazy energy around their history and they've got people like the thing about the vintage tech museum is that if you go to the vintage tech museum you will most likely meet people who like worked on and designed the instruments that are in the museum which is like a whole another whole level like that totally blows my mind like I've met the guy who designed the high performance amplifiers that are in like a scope that I have and it's just like wow like that that's incredible I mean I could only wish that like when I'm long retired that like

Chris Gammell: AI hasn't started hasn't started designing stuff yet so you know we still get to meet the humans

Jeff Kaiser: well no no no no I mean I know I know what you meant I know exactly what you meant but like think of you I mean you can't say that that's not like a very novel thing like it's not like you can walk up to the designer of like the Macintosh and like shake his hand and say hey nice job guy whereas at the tech museum you can do that and I think it's because you know maybe it's part of what you said where tektronics it's not like a company that has such notoriety that like people are knocking down the door like trying to get in it's not like it's not like baseball star or like movies not like that yeah it's not like you don't have kind of this public fandom that would ruin that right so you can have these guys that can come into this museum and they can volunteer and they're not being overrun by like fans but you do get that opportunity as an engineer that's sound like if you go

Chris Gammell: there to be a fan maybe they would be you know I'm very out I'm very polite

Jeff Kaiser: polite about it well I think that the interesting thing about going to a museum like that is that when you go there they do try to like size you up because you know if you wander in and you start kind of touching knobs they're like oh like you know who are you who's this guy but it's like if you talk to them for a few minutes they're like oh yeah you're electro generic oh yeah oh yeah you have a bunch of this stuff like

Chris Gammell: okay you're fine it's the shibboleth and

Jeff Kaiser: they've always been like super super super friendly and super nice but as I was saying so I just started making these parts and I'll keep this short don't you

Chris Gammell: bring it back to the point on me the point here is to meander sir well I

Jeff Kaiser: started making these parts and I started selling them on eBay and it's not like this big business but it is something that sort of I get a lot of satisfaction out of being like all right I'm contributing trying to keep this stuff alive because I I do think this equipment is really important well there

Chris Gammell: are like you know you go through eBay and it's just like super super niche stuff like this right and it's like someone selling it for like four bucks and that you know plus shipping whatever and it's like yeah that's the right price for that sort of thing I don't know how much you're selling yours for but like it doesn't it shouldn't be super expensive and yet it's so niche that you're like almost like well that should be like 30 bucks right but you know you know it's and it's but it's people like you that

Jeff Kaiser: are doing the same thing well don't forget who you're selling this stuff to you're selling this stuff to like retired people and I don't think those people have a ton of money to you know

Chris Gammell: price is the price you get to charge whatever you want to charge it's just whether or not they're gonna buy you

Jeff Kaiser: you may or may not sell any yeah I mean my my interest is and it's kind of this is the classic example of you want to make this part you have to buy an entire roll of material yeah I think that's why not just try to pay for the role you know what I mean yeah that is maybe you make a couple bucks yeah and I think that's kind of the level that I'm at so I'm not gonna make a lot of money but it is a great thing to get some satisfaction you're

Chris Gammell: already set up to ship I think that's another big one right a lot of people I was scared of shipping for so long and I remember Dave would talk about it I think you would talk about a little bit I was just like I don't want to do this and then like I finally got a label printer figured out ship station I'm like oh this is like really easy now and it is but it was such a big hurdle for me and and I

Jeff Kaiser: think it is for a lot of people I go to the post office like multiple times a week I have a P.O. box I I spend quite a bit of time at the post office and especially this time I don't want to

Chris Gammell: brag no no good thing Jeff's married can you imagine Jeff bragging about this on a first date be like well I do have a P.O.

Jeff Kaiser: box where do you like I go to the post office multiple times a week I've I've been at the post office once or twice in my day so I agree with you that is a big hurdle because I go to the post office especially around this time of year yeah you run into a lot of people waiting in like really long lines that look very sad to be waiting in those lines and when I have to wait in those lines I'm really sad that I'm waiting a line because my entire goal of dealing with the post office is never to wait in line

Chris Gammell: you drop in the bin right that is that

Jeff Kaiser: is the best case thing so so I even like go to the the post office that has the best drop-off situation the window to interact with anyone yeah totally no like literally the window that you throw the package into so this is there I'm gonna jump a little bit because in terms of like shipping things as someone who buys stuff on eBay people are very very very bad at shipping things like your average person who especially the types of people who have vintage equipment or oh yeah especially like CRT monitors and televisions like you hear horror stories yeah I mean no way I don't know where you've been but like CRT monitors are like super collectible now and it's getting to the point where oh yeah no no no it's like I mean I don't I don't this isn't like a mainstream hobby but there's definitely this growing group of CRT collectors that are wait a second though

Chris Gammell: are you talking about computer monitors

Jeff Kaiser: it's televisions and computer monitors no anything with the CRT oh no this is a huge thing don't like throw away CRTs because now they're worth money and I mean some are probably not worth money but why do people want the little like the like the turn on is like the warm up

Chris Gammell: blink

Jeff Kaiser: same reason people want collector cars like it's different they are in you know obsolete technology they're complicated they're yeah they get hot they're they're interesting I think at the end of the day the the reason that people want them is that they have very low latency compared to LCD based displays so the signal that goes in gets immediately within the latency of the electrical signal propagating up to the tube so like nanoseconds they display what you've provided and LCDs inherently do not do that because LCDs update on a frame by frame sure basis so you don't instantaneously see the change on the

Chris Gammell: input so yeah but what about the less scan lines you know you got to do that

Jeff Kaiser: too right well so CRTs have scan lines and so actually aesthetically they do look different and people like fetishize this in a way that actually makes me kind of

Chris Gammell: uncomfortable is it becoming like tubes is this like how like people do this with like audio like tubes oh yeah no it

Jeff Kaiser: is actually kind of getting like that like people know like oh Sony had this particular phosphorus yeah no absolutely yeah or had like what is it called like the grid ask the shadow shadow mask I'm not inherently a CRT guy so like you know Sony Sony had like these special technology these things that they used to make CRTs that made Trinitron displays

Chris Gammell: different I remember that I remember that brand name for sure I had a

Jeff Kaiser: Trinitron in college and it probably weighed 70 pounds it was a 19 inch

Chris Gammell: Trinitron land parties and like how people would bring yeah you know like they would all just like come over with their huge-ass tower computers and yeah

Jeff Kaiser: and their giant CRTs like so now you've

Chris Gammell: got a 29 23 inch CRT like and it's like basically like moving a house you

Jeff Kaiser: know they were really really large and so you know obviously as soon as LCDs came out everyone got rid of their CRTs because they were like awful in a lot of ways they took up a lot of space they were really heavy they were hot and you know the image quality for computers was not super great right because pixel density was low and they're they're kind of fuzzy and you know refresh rates weren't what they are today so anyway now we've had enough time that we can become nostalgic for those things and I think in particular the vintage computing and vintage like video gaming communities are like really really active like that's a huge thing like anything from the 80s 90s even 2000s there's a lot of like Nintendo Super Nintendo so like I want to play

Chris Gammell: jazz jackrabbit on a on a CRT with like a x-286 or something like that yeah it

Jeff Kaiser: is like my childhood I mean there's a lot of nostalgia for like 486s and 386s and like PCs which I want to hear that you know no totally totally yeah like commander keen on like your 486 DX there are Instagram channels or whatever accounts that are sharing like the sound of the hard drive spinning up and the clicking of the switches and I mean it's so funny how like everything gets like kind of fetishized yeah that's a good modern day right like it's all asthma it's all like you know all this stuff so CRTs are kind of part of that whole thing I think they're cool because they have low latency and also because it's just different it's like oh if you're going to play an original Nintendo it should be on a CRT if you play it on an LCD it's like fundamentally different

Chris Gammell: oh well another reason to do that is you you actually can't I try I try we had an old Nintendo here and an N64 and I tried I was like oh my TV's got component AV component input right like I can just plug directly into it nope it it did can't drive that big of a screen it just it won't do it and there's no compatibility mode to like handle Nintendo's and handle the signals coming in so I'm like probably because

Jeff Kaiser: it doesn't like 480i yeah something it's something like that yeah low low

Chris Gammell: resolution and it was like to the point where I'm like all right well I basically spun up a what's it called a Raspberry Pi arcade whatever it's called not the main thing but it was just like so much easier to just go and emulate and I'm done and I don't yeah RetroPie

Jeff Kaiser: RetroPie that's the one yeah yeah and those have been really popular I've never never built a RetroPie but this is like kind of like when you walk up to an old arcade game like the big stand-up arcade games you'd have an arcade like it has to be a CRT it's like really a big part of the aesthetic it's like you can't have like a pinball machine that's like a TV screen instead of a pinball machine it's like way different people do it some people are into it I'm not but like that's a thing people do but I for me it's like very important that it you know it behaves like the the way that it did when it was do you know like it always has right yeah I think right same thing for

Chris Gammell: video game the childhood kind of piece of everything yeah it's just it's it definitely is it's because people you know I think just the age of when people were growing up we're in that part of the it's not like the hype cycle it's the opposite of the hype cycle right it's but it's basically nostalgia building and then oh yeah happy no the 90s all their old

Jeff Kaiser: stuff the 90s are yeah I I totally agree with that the 90s are super in right now and I think that there's this thing where there you could plot this on a graph of like yeah you you time goes by and then you get to a point where oh I'm gonna get rid of all this garbage from the 90s that I have because like all the new stuff is way better and like why do I have all this stuff around so these fads wait until everyone has given all their stuff to goodwill or has thrown away all of their 90s stuff and then all of a sudden and I really feel like this is intensified over the past year especially all of a sudden we get like intensely nostalgic for the 90s and it's crazy to see 90s nostalgia everywhere but someone was saying that like if you made the movie back to the future today you'd go back to what 1995 just like what the Zubas would be out of control yeah yeah so yeah it's it we are in in peak nostalgia so hang on to those CRTs or make sure that they go to a good home because no there are folks that are no

Chris Gammell: break them with a looking baseball bat

Jeff Kaiser: just like everybody else does yeah I'm gonna so I'm gonna bring it back again I'm gonna bring it back to where we were in our meandering path so the the reason why this matters is that people are really bad at shipping things especially yeah because they don't see that was a good meander we went so far that I almost didn't know how how to get it back again yeah but like people especially eBay they'll take the CRT throw it in a box where it's like touching the sides of the box you know put some tape on it no literally there's like hundreds and hundreds of examples of this happening and then ship it and just you know hope and pray I don't it's

Chris Gammell: like an anthrax by like phosphors you know when you open the box you know like

Jeff Kaiser: oh yeah I mean it is actually dangerous you get broken glass and yeah like phosphor is probably not good for you so you've got all these CRTs that arrive broken and I think it's because there's a segment of the population that they think that as soon as they like close the box that like whatever happens in the box it's now okay it's gonna make it it's like I don't wrote in your see what's yeah Schrodinger CRT as long as I don't see the CRT in the box it's gonna be fine yeah but I've seen this many times with buying test equipment where your average Joe does not know how to package test equipment like doesn't know how to wrap things and protect them and to put them in a sturdy box where it's

Chris Gammell: not like falling apart I have to be honest I I question how often I'm buying stuff that is known and or legally owned by the person I'm buying from I'm not saying I buy stolen goods

Jeff Kaiser: but like you buy like power tools on eBay all the time no like power Craigslist or Facebook so here's the

Chris Gammell: thing like so I bought my I bought my mini Prusa mini on eBay right I was it was like a two it was pandemic it was like six month waiting time I don't want to wait I needed a printer I was like all right I can just go buy this on eBay but like you know it was an unopened box on eBay and they're like I was a little bit of a risk it wasn't too big of a premium I'm like someone could have just snatched this off a porch right you know like that's the real thing I think about it's like porch pirates like that's that's not a small amount of things that are gonna be sold and like I I don't have any way to know you know I hope not

Jeff Kaiser: but I think certain product categories are way more likely yes yeah yeah have this like and I noticed this as a seller on eBay too that certain things when you sell them you kind of get like a different crowd like if I'm selling a piece of test equipment it's fine generally I've never really had issues I

Chris Gammell: mean because someone buying your tech scope you're like oh you have the same problem I do

Jeff Kaiser: I mean I think I think literally yes like that is it's an enthusiast community and if you're looking for like a tech

Chris Gammell: four six addict community Jeff it's you have a problem okay but then we're here we love you you you have a

Jeff Kaiser: problem you need to stop I I appreciate I appreciate that but then you change it a little bit so say you're not selling like a weird old tech scope but you're selling like a 1960s generic cheap oscilloscope you know like an RCA or an Enco or something like that so there's all these like kind of cheap tube scopes from the 60s that show up all over on eBay and you can actually get like a decent amount of money for them now and I realized that the reason that those scopes sell well as a person who has sold several of them let me

Chris Gammell: guess they're going in like the background of music videos to like look

Jeff Kaiser: sciencey well that's a good idea that is a good idea no it's people that want to do the whole oscilloscope music thing where you hook your computer up to a scope and you can do pretty pictures and there's like a whole yeah whole movement around that but it the kind of folks that are doing that they care a lot more about the aesthetic quality of like the front panel of the scope and there's a lot of old Heathkit and RCA Enco scopes that are gorgeous but they're horrible oscilloscopes like their bandwidth of like 100 kilohertz like they're they're like they have like very bad you know it they're just bad like they're bad oscilloscopes they're the kind of scopes that have like six tubes inside them and that's it and like you can't do very much with six active devices right so they're garbage oscilloscopes by any modern definition but they look really cool and I've sold a bunch of them that I've picked up at swap meets because I I have no interest in keeping that kind of stuff around even though it's very pretty to look at because it's not functional you can't you're not going to test anything with it right but I've sold a bunch of patients eBay and it's funny because the people the kind of questions you get and the people that are wanting them are you know like kids it's like you know people who clearly like teenagers like that want to do this cool thing because this is a cool thing to do so it's not like your your tektronics collector because like a four six five or like an old tech scope those are worth a lot more money because they are usable as a soul you know you should do you should

Chris Gammell: when they contact you and ask you questions you should be like I know you would like to pay me a hundred dollars for this Keith get scope for your oscilloscope music however can I upsell you on a fan filter for a tech and then that's how you hook them you hook them yeah and then you get another one in the community and

Jeff Kaiser: you're like well at the museum you buy a scope and you'll get fan filters for life for free they just ban filter box using

Chris Gammell: this packing material yeah yeah to be environmentally friendly these this packing material could be reused as a scope fan

Jeff Kaiser: filter your your cathode ray tube has been carefully hand-packed with fan filters to ensure a safe delivery yeah yeah yeah I mean I I'm aware that I have a problem I'm aware that this has gone way too far and so my New Year's resolution and I'm not I'm not exaggerating or making this up my New Year's resolution is to downsize my test equipment because I've got a lot of gear here that needs to go to another home just because I've got you know duplicates of things and I've got things that I bought for a project 10 years ago that I don't need anymore and so mark my words this year I will be downsizing the test equipment pool yeah because I'd really like to have less of it here I'm just

Chris Gammell: imagining Jeff as Bilbo Baggins being

Jeff Kaiser: like why why should they have it my precious my precious my precious wait that's not Bilbo that's a Gollum isn't it it's Bilbo at

Chris Gammell: one point though oh because he gets like

Jeff Kaiser: possessed by the ring exactly yeah yeah got

Chris Gammell: it yeah yeah yeah yeah you know that's good to end on a Lord of the Rings reference so I think I think you are also you are needed at a local meetup sir so you should probably get skedaddling now that yeah hardware hardware

Jeff Kaiser: happy or as an aside Tolkien's birthday was yesterday but how do you know that I know that because it came up in something I was listening to today I can't remember and Tolkien I think is said to be like the most influential fiction writer of like all time because so many people have read those books or have been touched by those books in some way but yeah he was born on January 3rd 1892 I had to look that crazy do you know how

Chris Gammell: many Zeppelin songs are about Lord of the Rings that's what bit trips me out just like the coolest dudes some of the coolest dudes to ever hit rock and roll and they're just like reading Lord of the Rings yeah they're nerds write songs about this like they were just like so cool and they wrote the nerdiest friggin songs yeah Misty Mountain Hop cool you know like just like there's there's so many there's so many Tolkien references in their songs like not even that like they're about yeah listen listen to a bunch of I'm not I'm not

Jeff Kaiser: like a I'm not knowledgeable of the Zeppelin catalog but I will I have an Apple music subscription so I'll have to add what's your favorite Zeppelin album are you like a

Chris Gammell: huge fan or not a huge fan my roommate used to be and actually my roommate and former guest of the amp power Steve cruiser probably I never met anyone who listened to more Zeppelin than him and I'm sure he still does I don't think he listens to the show anymore but yeah so so many

Jeff Kaiser: songs oh it looks like Led Zeppelin 4 for the 1971 album won a poll by the Rolling Stone yeah followed by physical graffiti 1975 well anyway I will add a bunch of these albums to my Apple music so I can

Chris Gammell: listen to them and there's a there's a Rolling Stones out a piece that I just googled but just about like Lord of the

Jeff Kaiser: Rings and yeah it's misty mountaintop yeah Led Zeppelin or sorry yeah Misty mountain hop is on that 1971 album so maybe I'll start there that and that one the

Chris Gammell: reader's choice ramble on is probably the big that one of the biggest ones too so like ramble on is awesome yeah it's crazy

Jeff Kaiser: it's crazy well as you pointed out hardware happy hour starts in 23 minutes

Chris Gammell: send my best to all the Seattleites who are braving what did you call it you called it the big dark the big dark yes the big

Jeff Kaiser: for us it's just for us it's just life it's just like every it's like a Thursday in Seattle yeah it's just the way it is but

Chris Gammell: yeah thank you thanks for having me on the show thanks for being back Jeff happy Kaiser Miss and we'll see you we'll see you next year probably in December next year I think we'll shoot for this year sorry this year we'll try and do it oh so that'll be a double appearance a double Kaiser Miss year yeah that's right 2024 year feel a

Jeff Kaiser: disturbance in the force to different nerd actually that'll be yeah two Kaiser Misses in one year which that's like one of those like off by one this is the 12th

Chris Gammell: day of Kaiser Miss yeah and then also it also is maybe this is a leap year as well so like so I think it is I think it is a

Jeff Kaiser: leap year so yeah so it's thus as it has been foretold there were two Kaiser Misses in the year of 2024 well thank you all

Chris Gammell: right Jeff yeah we'll see you soon

Jeff Kaiser: sounds good thanks you

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