#658 – Uncle Al's Eating Garbage Again

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released February 12th, 2024. Episode 658. Uncle Al's Eating Garbage Again.

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

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

Dave Jones: And now, editor extraordinaire.

Speaker ?: Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Our long-time editor retired. Suzanne was wonderful. Yes, thank you. We wish her a happy retirement. And we're on the lookout for a new editor we were just talking about. So if people have suggestions, we'd gladly take them. Otherwise, we'll slowly start a search. And if the edits stink in the meantime, that's because yours truly is a stinky editor.

Dave Jones: Well, speaking of which, somebody added to the Reddit that our volume is a bit low on our mix, on our final edit. I don't necessarily think so.

Chris Gammell: I think that was the last time I edited it. It was like a last-minute thing. Oh, okay. Right. Yes, maybe it's the same person who told me about it, too. Okay. I think it was kind of low podcast MP3 volume. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: So it was one specific episode, wasn't it?

Chris Gammell: I think that one was probably really called it out for people. But, yeah, generally. Okay.

Dave Jones: Generally, I think we haven't had any other complaints.

Chris Gammell: I'll try to do a side-by-side with other podcasts, too. Yeah. David and I don't listen, so how the hell would we know?

Dave Jones: Well, that's the thing with videos. Videos, like there's a normalization level. And I actually, here it is. I've got it right now. I'm actually, I'll play it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's like a broadcaster standard, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Here it is. So we also, if you don't know, we publish these episodes on the YouTubes as well. We actually have a YouTube. What have we got? Four and a half thousand subscribers. Yeah. Not too shabby for... YouTube. Not too shabby at all. So I'm listening to the previous episodes, 657, and our content loudness, it's called, is minus 6.2 dB. That one was me.

Chris Gammell: That one, the last one was me.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. So that was your edit, was it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. So let me go to... But I put that through the levelator, too. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. We're still using that ancient tool from like 12 years ago. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I have it sequestered as a dot, as an executable in the Dropbox. And I actually just sent it to a friend who's starting a new podcast. So it's like one of those things where it's just like handed down. I'll probably, you know, give it to my kids someday in like a, you know, an USB stick. And they'll be like, what is, what is this thing?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Do you think you'll hand someone a USB stick at some point in the future? And they'll be like, I don't, I don't know what that is. It's almost certainly, right? Possibly. It's just like... Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, maybe. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, they'll have one of those like kids react videos where like they...

Dave Jones: Kids react, yeah, to old stuff. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Like an LP or something, like a vinyl. Right. Piece of vinyl. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, the previous episode with us, 656, which would have been properly edited, that was minus 6.9 dB. So content loudness in quote marks.

Chris Gammell: I think what we really need is everybody gets a complimentary wax cleaning out of their ears, you know?

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: That's the real power move, Dave, is insult the listeners.

Dave Jones: Right. Absolutely. It's not us. Why not? It's you.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And now that I've turned the volume up on this, I'm shouting in your ear.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. All right. So, yes.

Chris Gammell: I've heard it a couple of times. So we'll turn it up. That's fine.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I still enjoy editing. I still enjoy editing. I still enjoy editing. I still enjoy editing the interviews that I do because, well, often they're video as well. So, like, so I need to edit the video. So the audio sort of like comes out for free for the podcast. But even if it's not, I kind of enjoy editing. Sort of like editing. But when it's just the two of us doing our regular, you know, episode together, it's like, meh. It's just, you know, episode number 10 million.

Chris Gammell: Dave will allow me to edit at that point. Right.

Dave Jones: Well, you can edit that by all means. I'd rather have something else.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Ed and Z. You'll just have AI do it at some point, Dave. Maybe that's what it really is.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, you can get it to do all sorts of stuff these days. You can get it to. Yeah. Well, apparently there is. I heard about an AI tool recently. I can't remember the name of it, but it'll take out the ums and ahs. It'll take out the repeats. Oh, interesting. It'll normalize the volume. It'll do all sorts of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well, Descript was kind of like that too. Descript was a transcribing service.

Dave Jones: Yes. Well, it can do. So I think it might be the new version of Descript, actually. Okay.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Dave Jones: And if you peak, right, you know how if you hit the mic or you speak really loudly into it like this. Oh, okay. You didn't need it.

Chris Gammell: I think people would have figured that out, Dave.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Making it harsh. But if your mic level was wrong and you peaked, right, or your guest peaks or whatever, that's pretty unrecoverable. It's like it's really.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's an information theory thing, actually.

Dave Jones: It's an information thing. The information's just gone, right? It's not sampled there. So what this does, what this tool does, is it actually figures out what that word was or was going to be? And then it actually recreates your voice, the speaker's voice for that word. Interesting. So it actually recreates just that one word. It recreates the one word. And then it makes you say other things. And it makes you say other things.

Chris Gammell: Like I do when I edit the show, I make you say things that you actually don't know about.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that didn't mean. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That was interesting.

Chris Gammell: I actually, I just got, well, not just got, I've had for a while the DJI, the wireless mic. And the new trend in like microphones.

Dave Jones: Why don't you have the Rode one? Everyone has the Rode one, dude. It's the same.

Chris Gammell: The Rode does it as well. And so it's the 32-bit recording. I did it because I have that camera that I showed you that you're not a fan of. It came with that. Oh, right. Okay. Right. But the 32-bit recording, I thought was interesting how there's a lot of the audio manufacturers are switching to that where they have a 32-bit recording. And so basically you peak, you're too far away. You're going to have other problems with audio in that case. But you basically can dig stuff out of the dirt or you can knock it down if it is too high a volume. And it's like idiot control for people like me. Right. But I was wondering what they do with that. Is it just a higher...

Dave Jones: Well, it's not foolproof because it depends how it's integrated with the microphone, right? So if it's like an independent 32-bit recorder, for example, you can still feed in the mic. And if you turn the input mic preamp gain up too high, you still... To 11. Yeah. It turned up to 11. That 32-bit still isn't going to save you, right? Yeah. So you've got to have it still somewhere in the middle where it can get the peak exclusions. And it, you know...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, on this one, I don't actually have control of the preamp on this. Right. That's the... Yeah. I think that's the big thing.

Dave Jones: Well, they've already designed it. When it's integrated in that sort of product, they've already designed it for, you know, to be in that sweet spot where you need to be.

Chris Gammell: I just wondered, are they doing two like 18 or 20-bit and then stitching them together like so that you have a different amplification level as well?

Dave Jones: They physically have two different amplification paths. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. Yes. And then they stitch it... And then they stitch it together. Yep. Yeah. Because I was just thinking like... Because the real thing I think about is like, yeah, you could get a 32-bit recording of like, you know, maybe you find an ADC and you're just using a Sigma Delta and you're just, you know, oversampling the crap out of it and that, you know, you could start to get that. But then you just... The amount of noise that's going into that ADC is like really... So if you were like, if you were just whisper, whisper quiet and you're trying to like amplify that up, when you amplify, you're amplifying everything at that point, right? Yeah. The noise and the whole word. So you need multiple paths. This is basically more like a multi-ranging DMM or something like that, right?

Dave Jones: You don't get 32 bits of dynamic range on the one circuit. I'm sorry to tell you.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Got it. Okay. That's what I wanted to talk about. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Exactly. It's all about the dynamic range and you're just not going to get it. So...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. So there's not like some magical... No.

Dave Jones: Like in theory, you could work it out, right? Yeah. Work it out in signal level. You wouldn't need like a plus minus thousand volt power supply or something or a plus minus 10,000 volt power supply or something ridiculous like that to actually get the excursion levels required for that 32 bit dynamic range, right? For a one milli volt input signal, you know, from one milli volt. I'm not going to do the math in my head now, but I'm sure someone out there will do it and they'll correct us. But yeah, no, you would need like a massively... Yeah. You would need like thousands of volts of a power supply or something. You get 32 bit dynamic range. Right. So yes, you have to have different gain stages.

Chris Gammell: Different gain stages and you just... Yeah. Then you stitch it somehow. Yeah. Yep. Interesting.

Dave Jones: So there you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I've seen that on a couple products.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's cool.

Chris Gammell: And I like... I did not seek this out, but I'm just like, oh yeah, if I need it, I guess I could use it. But I have messed up a lot of audio recording, so that's nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, I'm still sticking with like, I've still got 16 bit or whatever my little, I don't know, thing is. Okay. No. Well, no. Sorry. I kind of switched over. I'm now the USB road mic. So it's whatever that's doing internally. I don't think it's 32 bit. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So you're talking about the thing you're talking through right now?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. This is a wireless one. So it's like, it's basically there's like localized recording and then it passes over some wireless link to a receiver and then that goes into the camera. But then it's only the localized recording that's 32 bit.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure people don't give a crap about microphones. We talk about microphones more than people probably care about. Like there's like four people right now.

Dave Jones: They do, but it's very interesting. It's interesting enough for me to... I mean, I think the circuit parts are interesting. I've done a five-part microphone design series with Doug Ford.

Chris Gammell: Oh, sure.

Dave Jones: Fascinating. Right?

Speaker ?: Yeah. That's true.

Chris Gammell: I mean, a microphone is just a transducer, right? It's just changing one type of energy into another. But it's... Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, it's absolutely fascinating. So, yeah. I've got the Rode Pod mic. So, you know. I'm avoiding the external amplifier now. It's just USB out.

Chris Gammell: Just a built-in.

Dave Jones: Although it does have that option. It does have analog out as well if I want it to. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Anyway, it does the job. I still need to do that tour of the Rode factory. God damn it, I'll do it this year.

Chris Gammell: Get on it, man.

Dave Jones: Get on it. Get on your calendar.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Because they're just here in Sydney, you know. So, yeah. Yeah. I should do it. Speaking of companies, I've been dealing with... I now have a pool, if you've seen my pool videos on my second channel.

Chris Gammell: I have seen them slide by my feet and I'm like, oh, look.

Dave Jones: Right. And it goes, oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm not watching that one either.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Time lapse of a pool robot.

Dave Jones: So, I am now dominating the pool robot market. Ah, yes, yes. For videos, pool robot videos. So, I got this Maddie Mac, which is an Australian brand, pool robot, right? So, like really top of the line, quite expensive, you know, pool robot. And, you know, it's supposed to have autonomous nav and it maps out your pool and it does, you know, it does. And it totally cleans your pool, right? And it wasn't going up the walls properly, right? It's supposed to actually climb the walls. So, it's got an impeller on the top of it, which turns on and then it can put more downward force on the traction wheels. And then that's how it's able to climb up. Like a Formula One car. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right? And so, that's how it's able to climb up the walls. And it was really weird. Like it was going up the high walls perfectly and then it wasn't going up the shorter walls and then it would not go up the tall walls again. And it was kind of like random. So, I contacted the company. They're in Sydney, actually. And then they really, they watched my videos and everything and they really wanted to, they wanted the data back out of my robot. So, they actually got my, so I sent the robot back. They desperately wanted it back to pull out the data and figure it because they didn't know. Well, they had a few theories what was going on. And I think there might be like firmware, you know, buggy firmware issues or something like that. Did you ask to see the data? After it turns left, you know, if it turns left before it does this, then it can't go up the wall. So, the gyroscopic data, so it's a combination of the gyroscopic data and the mapping was causing it to go.

Chris Gammell: You know, okay, I'm going to go a little conspiracy theorist here. They just wanted you to stop making videos with that specific robot. And they're like, we'll send you another one. I'm just wondering, like, does a poor robot actually, does it actually record data, though? Yes, yes.

Dave Jones: I actually had a conference call with them, right? I had a conference call with one of their head technical people. And he said, yeah, they log everything. They log motor torque, right? So, the torque has all the motors in it. So, they know the impeller force.

Chris Gammell: What's their cache? Like, how many days of data is there on there?

Dave Jones: Oh, I don't know. Maybe for the last run or something.

Chris Gammell: Did you break it apart?

Dave Jones: No, I haven't torn it down because I didn't want to. And he said, that's a pretty good idea because it's got, you know, you'd have to re-grease the O-ring seals and you'd have to, you know, because this is designed to go underwater, right? So, it's not something that you just want to take apart and slap back together.

Chris Gammell: Sacrificial unit, Dave. Come on. It's a business expense. Well, you know. You could have your pool clean as a business expense, you know, because you're taking it apart.

Dave Jones: Bloody expensive. I know.

Chris Gammell: Hey, you know what? The progress costs money, you know? Yep. I'm just curious if it's embedded or, like, more Linux-y. Like, probably embedded, right? Well, I'm sure.

Dave Jones: Well, maybe they'll send me some boards or something. I actually offered to go there and shoot. You know, they said, oh, yeah, we've got hundreds of boards just laying around the lab and, you know, sort of like in various states. So, maybe they can send me one.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, nothing works here.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. No, but they've been working on this for five years. They've been working on perfecting the design of this autonomous robot for five years. And they reckon it's the best. They think it's the best on the market. But they're so keen to find and use my pool as a test bed because they said it's a perfect shape and everything, perfect circumstances. So, they want to use me to try out. Yeah, yeah. So, they extracted all the data out. Anyway, why? You're doubting them? They're playing, yeah. You're doubting their sincerity?

Chris Gammell: They're just looking for a promo, you know?

Dave Jones: You think?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I don't care.

Dave Jones: Well, currently, if you search their brand on YouTube, it's just these wonky, wonky robot videos.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Anyway, yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. So, they're, you know. Yep. Yeah. So, companies are very…

Chris Gammell: I think you should think them up on it. I think that's a great idea. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: No, they sent me a program. We swapped the robot and they sent me one with new firmware and it doesn't seem to make that much difference yet, but they, you know, they're going to work on the firmware and once they do… Do you actually swim in this pool?

Chris Gammell: Do you just film it?

Dave Jones: Do I swim in it? Well, it's actually a video of me swimming in it.

Chris Gammell: I'm okay not seeing you swim. I'm just saying. Right, okay. Are you actually enjoying the pool? It seems like it's just a stressor. Yes, yes. It's excellent. Yes. It actually matches up really well with my internal dialogue about owning a pool, which is you just spend all your time cleaning it and you never actually get to use it, you know? My wife had a pool growing up and she just talks about how much she had to skim the top of it. I'm just like, all right, well, you know, I didn't have that. So.

Dave Jones: Well, currently it's pretty low maintenance and that's why we've got the pool robot because everyone says that the pool robots are less work than their, you know, manual, creepy, crawly, posy things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: I remember I was very confused about pool robots growing up because we had a family friend who had a pool and of course we always wanted to go over there. Yeah. But they named their pool robot after like one of their uncles. So the pool robot was named Uncle Al. Uncle Al. And I just remember they'd be like, yeah, Uncle Al's in the pool just like eating garbage again. What? Yeah, he just eats up all the leaves off the bottom of the pool. That made some context. Like what? What? Yeah, it was very confusing for a young Chris.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, they're quite cool because, again, I come from the underwater industry. Yeah, sure, sure. So, you know, it's like, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's good.

Dave Jones: It's right up my alley.

Chris Gammell: Let's get a little update here. Did you end up getting the pick in place?

Dave Jones: No, I haven't. Well, I haven't said no yet, but I haven't said yes yet. It's kind of like.

Chris Gammell: Say yes. Say yes.

Dave Jones: You want me to say yes? You want me to say yes?

Chris Gammell: I told you to say yes. Three episodes ago. Four episodes. Five episodes ago. I'm not busy.

Dave Jones: I need to like. You're busy. You're filming your pool.

Chris Gammell: You're filming your pool. Set it up on a tripod. Put it on time lapse and walk away, Dave. You don't need to be there.

Dave Jones: That's what I did with the pool. It takes me like. We don't know that. It takes me like a minute.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Then you post it. It takes like a minute to set up my time lapse camera. And then I put the robot in. You know, I'm just saying. Go get a pick in place for my edification. So I can make fun of you. You just want to see me waste my life on it. Yeah, I do actually. I want to. I want you to feel that pain. But I want you to like film it. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, God. Yeah. I got to hire a car. I hire a van. I've got to drive to Canberra. Just do it. I probably got to hire a troll. Like one of those, you know, forklifty jack trolleys or something as well.

Chris Gammell: No, you could probably just hire someone to pick it up and bring it to you. Come on. There's delivery services. Yeah, there probably are. Come on, Dave.

Dave Jones: Probably are. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Just do that. All right. Just do that. I'll investigate. I'll investigate a. Yeah, because that would be a total no-brainer, right? Like if I could pay someone to go.

Chris Gammell: If you could pay. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then like you don't get hurt.

Dave Jones: Pay someone to go pick it up and deliver it. Then, yeah. Yeah. That's great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Although I think I measured my door and everything, right? I think, well, I would have to tip the thing sideways to get it through the door.

Chris Gammell: You could pay the people that move it to move it in for you.

Dave Jones: Yeah, true. Yeah. True.

Chris Gammell: There's professional movers. That's what they do. They do. First off, they're amazing. I love watching. Like they are just like, the good ones are so good. They know exactly what they're doing. So good. Yeah. And I am not that.

Dave Jones: And they're usually huge and strong and they're, you know.

Chris Gammell: Not always though. Like usually they just know about like leverage and like. Leverage and the best way to do things. Yeah, exactly. The right equipment and yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but I've seen movers just pick shit up like it's like nothing.

Chris Gammell: Oh, man. I have a video for my doorbell camera of this guy delivered a crib for my son. You know, like.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it was like, it was a very. I had to have my brother-in-law help me move this box. And this guy literally is just like one person just tearing off the back of the FedEx truck and dropping it on my porch and like thumping it on my porch really. Wow. You have to pay that guy more, you know. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they're pretty good. Yeah, they know what they're doing. All right. I'll look into it. I'll look into it.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of doorbell cameras, last episode, Keith Brzezinski was on the show. We talked about ESP Home. But I have a functional Home Assistant. I am joining the smart home, Dave. Oh, God. Only about 15 years later. Yeah. It is so easy to get this stuff going. Like I was so incredibly surprised how easy it was.

Dave Jones: What is the system?

Chris Gammell: So it's Home Assistant is the.

Dave Jones: So that's the brand, is it?

Chris Gammell: That is the open source software that gets installed on a Raspberry Pi.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: It's all local, right? So that's. Yes. Maybe you've never heard of it.

Dave Jones: Yes, you don't want to go back to the cloud. God, no. That's right.

Chris Gammell: You can. You can integrate with like cloud services and stuff like that. Yeah, but no. You don't have to. Which is the. Don't. Don't. Pro tip.

Dave Jones: Don't.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. I think you would like this system, honestly. And then like.

Dave Jones: I did. I have had a look at that at one point.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It was incredible. I would. I wish I would have done it sooner. Like not because I don't need this. This stuff, right? It's just for fun right now. But it is so much easier than I thought it was going to be. Like even still. Like it's, you know, it's been around for a while. So much easier. And then. So I think since. So I recorded with Keith on Sunday this past week. So it's only like five days ago. But even just since then, I've. I got. I mean, I was talking about it with Keith on the show. But I have a Zigbee dongle that plugs in. So it's basically just like a. It's a Silicon Labs. EFR 32 in there, basically. And there's firmware on there. And then because it's USB plugged into this Pi. The software and home assistant. It's called Zigbee home automation. Is the ZHA is what you all often see. Basically, it just says. All right. Well, I'm talking. You know, this high level software on the Pi. It's talking down through USB to the. To the firmware. And then that's got a Zigbee radio on there. Which is just 2.4 gigahertz. And. I go into the menu. And I just click. On the Zigbee device. It's basically the dongle. And it says, hey, do you want to add a new device? And then like. You literally just press a pair button. And you're off to the races. And you're done. And it's. Right. Because it's reporting all these standardized. Capabilities. It's just knows what it is. And. You give it a name. And off you go.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay. It's great. Have fun. I will say. Until it goes.

Dave Jones: All obsolete. And then. You know. It's not. How can it go obsolete? It's open source. It's. It's on my computer.

Chris Gammell: It's local. Yeah. You don't need to update anything. If you don't want to. You could just air cap it. If you really wanted to. Right. So like. That. There is no obsolete. You know.

Dave Jones: What is this doing?

Chris Gammell: So in this case. That I have not 100% figured out yet. Okay. So I'll tell you. You don't even have a use case.

Dave Jones: You're just dicking around. No. No.

Chris Gammell: I have a couple of use cases right now. So like. I'm still trying to figure out some of it. So like. I ended up getting. I have a smart switch. Right. So that's a Zigbee switch. Plugs into the wall. Right. And I can just actuate that. Off of. So like. Right now. It's controlling the lights behind me. In my. In my office. Right. So basically. I started. Video. Like literally. Not hard to do. I just wanted to have something. That's very. Actionable. Invisible. Right. So that's like. I could trigger that from. Home assistant. And then I ended up getting some. Based on Keith's recommendations. I got. Just got some off the shelf. These are. Window sensors. I'd actually been searching for a garage door sensor. I was like. Oh. I. You know. They make garage door sensors. Whatever. Yeah. And then I searched on Amazon. To see if there was like an. Off the shelf. Zigbee one. And there. There wasn't. But it was just showing like. These window. It's just like a. Magnet. Magnet read switch. Kind of thing. And. And then I saw. The. The best part was actually. I got the idea from the. From the. The. One of the product reviews. On Amazon. The person took a photo. And what he did is he took. A hinge. Like a metal hinge. Like. You would just have on a cabinet. And he stuck the magnet. He glued the magnet. Onto the bottom of the hinge. And then he put the. The detector. Right below it. Right. So. And it's just anywhere on your garage door. So then as your garage door goes up. Gravity makes the hinge. Fall away from the other thing. And now. It's showing as open. And so like. For. Ten dollars. And a. And a metal hinge. Now I have. A functional. Garage door. Detector. That's like. Worked perfectly. And I didn't have to like. Do anything. I like. Did like two screw holes. And I'm done. It was like. Awesome. And then. So then. Okay. That's two things. Right. Not saying that I would ever do this. But I could. In theory. Then I could set up automations. That are like. I like. To set up an automation. You'd basically just say. Okay. When the garage door is open. That's like your trigger. And then. Set up an automation. Select your light.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it's like. Completely. It's very very simple to do. Yeah. I would not do that. That's not a very good automation. From my perspective. But. Right. I'm still learning a lot of this stuff. So. Okay. Yeah. Kind of interesting. All right. Yeah. I thought about like. Having like a recording mode. In my office. You know. Just have like. Have it so it's always very consistent. That's like one way I could do it. I have a one on my baby gate. That's at the top of the stairs now. So like. I can. Have automation at like. 10 p.m. Every night. To make sure my daughter. Doesn't get out of bed. And like. Right. Be able to like. Walk down the stairs. That sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. There's lots of. Lots of silly things. But like. Stuff I always skipped in the past. Like I literally would have skipped in the past. Yeah. But now it's. It's like 10 bucks on Amazon for a thing.

Chris Gammell: And like. Well. Like a minute of setup. That's the key thing for me. Yeah. Not even. So.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: Well have fun. Thanks. Thanks. I'm going to talk about it more on here. Probably. Probably. We'll see.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Home automation. God no. Yeah. Please don't do your light bulbs. Just use a plug. I don't. Switch.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't understand that one.

Dave Jones: I don't understand though. Oh. You can RGB control your lights. And you can dim that. Like. God.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. If you want to dim them. Put a knob on your wall.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. For God's sake. I think the programmable knob. I'm guessing that probably would work. I would only want it to be like. If you had a. You need to still have local control. Like local physical control. That's the important thing to me. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe I'll try it. Yeah. That seems like a lot of work. This is right now. I'm just gluing stuff. On. You know. Under the socket. Or under the wall. Or garage door. Or whatever. So like. Once we start doing anything more intense than that. I think that'll. That'll move me into another. Another phase of. Home. Home automation. And I'm not sure. That's for me. But we'll see. Where it all goes. I have a. What was I order? I just ordered some temp sensors. They were like. Like I said. They're just so cheap. That's. That's what's really crazy about it. Just like the. The abundance of. Cheap hardware. Is pretty. Pretty crazy.

Dave Jones: Right. Well. I had a problem with the wireless. Lights in my lab here. Like. Because I've got. You know. Lots of overhead lights. And I need to turn them on in various combinations. Depending on where I am in the lab. And what I'm shooting. Right. Stuff like that. Yeah. So. So I had these wireless. Ones. And. They just gave me. No end of problem. So I changed brands. And they gave. And the new brand gave me. No end of bloody problems. They would. Reset. And then I actually did a video. Analyzing. Let's see if I can find it. Analyzing. The. It was the RF. Circuit in it. That is crap. Wireless. Lights. Controller. Or something.

Chris Gammell: What is the. Oh. I can't. What's the protocol it's talking over.

Dave Jones: Oh. It's just a. Like. 433 megahertz. Or something. RF. Analog RF. Sure. Right. And. Yeah. And these things. And then. If you switch. Like. Because I switch my lights off. Right. When I leave. And then I switch them back on. These wireless light sensors. When you actually switch the power. Sorry. They're wireless power points. Right. So they're. They're just wireless power points. And you. And you've got this remote control button. And you can turn. These power points off and on. Because all the lights in my lab. Are actually power point based. So my entire roof is. Like. Wired with. Freaking power points. You know. It's nuts. But that's. Oh. Okay. So like.

Chris Gammell: You have a light that plugs in. I see. So it just plugs into the power point.

Dave Jones: So that's how they do these. Commercial offices here. Is that. They install power points. Interesting. And then you just plug. The things into the power point. That's kind of nice.

Chris Gammell: Like a replaceability. Oh yeah. No. It's great. Yeah. So I could just plug in.

Dave Jones: I could just physically plug in. You know. A wireless. Thing. And then. No. But when you turn the power on. They go into a programming mode. For the first minute. Right. So if you. So if you press the button. Within the first minute. It screws up all the programming. That you've done for your lights. And it does that. Every single time. You walk into the bloody lab. It's ridiculous. So in that. No. I just. No. After getting two different brands. I went. No. Screw this. And I put in a six way power. A six way light switch. So I've got six different light buttons. And there's individual wiring. Going to the lights. It's just way easier. God. Bloody wireless. Things.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh no. I still do have one of them. I still do have one. Wired up.

Dave Jones: For some reason. But. Yeah. They're a pain in the ass.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So you basically have the smarts. Like in the light itself. Instead of. Instead of like. Between the light. In the power point.

Dave Jones: Going to the light. Or the lights. I did actually. Originally. I did actually have a wireless thing. For the light itself. And then that was. Okay. Yeah. Oh God. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Because then it would like. Maintain power to that. It would like be in a sleep mode. Yes. When it's off. But then. Probably some vampire power.

Dave Jones: And then it would. Oh God. It's just. It's just horrible. So. No. No. No. No. No. So I installed a six way power. Like a switch. A six way switch on the wall. So. Yep. Screw it. Yeah. Yep. Just works way better. I'm far happier.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah. I mean. Sometimes simpler is better in that way. You know. Like.

Dave Jones: Totally. Totally. It's. It's worth putting the effort in to do. To make it simple. If you know. Like. Like. Sometimes it's not easy to make it simple. Right. Sometimes you've got to put in a lot of work to make it simple. Right.

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: The lights had to be individually wired. And had to drop cables down to the six way power point. And everything. And six way. Light switch and everything else. Right.

Speaker ?: But.

Dave Jones: The final solution is great.

Chris Gammell: When you say a six way. Is that like a power strip? Is that what you're saying there? No.

Dave Jones: It's like a regular light switch. But it's got six individual light switches on it. So it's a gang of six.

Chris Gammell: Oh. I see. Okay. Switches.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So I can turn any combination of lights off or on.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just. It's just individually controlled. And you just choose. And you're like. I can just. Yep. Switches one, two, and six. One, two, and six.

Dave Jones: And that lights up a segment in my lab. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. It's far easier. But it was a significant amount of effort to.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Actually do all that. But yeah, it was worth it. Sure, sure, sure.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Whereas the wireless thing was so. Oh, it's so much easier. Just plug in this wireless PowerPoint into the roof. And no. No. Fine.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of simpler, I am. I am headed that direction. You know, so I do a lot of. High powered microcontrollers for. My day job. Goliath. And then I'm going the other direction now for. At home for funsies. And following your path. I'm doing a CH32 V003 board. Nice.

Dave Jones: Doing what? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's. Not really sure right now. So I did a breakout. Basically. Just to. I'm just proving out. That I. Have the right footprint. And you know. All the. Mostly just get some momentum too. So it's mostly just breaking out pins. I've got like. Two things hanging off the I squared C bus. That I assigned. So like a.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Pin off. For one of those cheapo. Like one inch OLEDs. Excuse me. And then like a. A quick connector. I don't know if you ever looked at those. Like the. Quick and Stemma. Are the two. Yeah. Adafruit and Sparkfun brands. Yeah. So like one of those connectors. Was just like a JST. BB. SM. Type of thing. And then. The big one though. Probably the most. Important thing on there. That I'm trying. Is. The. When CN Laura was on the show. He talked about his USB library. So it's the RV. 003 USB. Library. Right. And that's the thing he talks about. Where it's. He fit it into the bootloader. Basically. It's a. Low speed. Low speed. Yeah. Low speed. Like the lowest speed. USB connection. The 1.5 megabits. The old. Yeah.

Dave Jones: The old school one.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So there's actually no transceiver. It's just bit banging on the. On the. Oh.

Dave Jones: Okay. Right. Right. Yeah. The actual micro is fast enough to bit bang the original USB. That's right. Yeah. Nice.

Chris Gammell: And it's pretty janky on my end too. Cause like. Right. I was like. I don't really want to buy. A four layer board. And I don't think people who are using this. In this super low speed thing. Would want to either.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And then when you look at like. Trying to run controlled. You really. Can't do controlled impedance. From. You know. At 90 ohms. On a two layer board. At 1.6 millimeters. Right. Right. So like. That part. Is pretty. It's pretty much just like. It's just. They're just. I'm just ran some lines. And just hoping for the best. And just the discontinuity there. Will be. Yeah. You just. Low enough. That sort of speed.

Dave Jones: You don't really care. Like. Yeah. Exactly. It doesn't really matter.

Chris Gammell: It'll work. So. It'll. It'll probably work. If not. It'll probably be my. Implementation. Right. So. No big deal though. Like. You know. Yeah. I got. I got the boards. My big thing was like. I wanted to do it. While I'm still on parental leave. And. The lining up with. The Chinese New Year. Which started. A couple days ago. It just started. Isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I had to. I had to. Had a long. Thread that needle. So. I managed to get it out in time. And. I do have the boards in hand now. And so. We'll. We'll see how it goes. Cool bananas.

Dave Jones: All right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Have you done anything else with that part or no? I saw your video. Yeah. No.

Dave Jones: I just saw Mike's electric stuff. Yes. That's right. He's playing around with a standalone. They now have a standalone programmer. I'll probably. Yeah. Oh. Well. No. I don't really need one. Because I don't. You only need these standalone programmers if you've got a production. That's right. Run. Yeah. And you want to quickly program them all. And it's just easier if it's standalone. You don't have to dick around. Hooking it up to the computer. Yeah. And everything else. You know. You can. You can go over to your programming bench and just use it. You know. Just power. Plug in. And then. Yeah. You can ship it to a.

Chris Gammell: Like he talks about in the video. Like shipping it to a manufacturer is nice and easy. They have like some capabilities in there. It's pretty. Pretty cool. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's actually loaded up. I've actually got that for my meters. Because my BM786 meter is actually firmware reprogrammable. Not by the user. But I've got the factory programmer tool. And it's a standalone tool. So I've got the latest firmware programmed into that. So I don't need to hook up a computer. If I want to program the latest firmware into a. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Unit for some reason. I just plug it in. Press the button. Yeah. You know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And that's nice too from like a. Yes you could get a program and send it to your CM or whatever. But you don't know what they're installing on. So like. Yeah. Why not just shipping the whole damn thing. That's like. Yeah. Shipping the whole thing. It worked when I shipped it.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Does it work when you open it? If not you're shipping it back to me. And then we're going to. Oh yes. You're just kind of like. That is the best way to. It's like a controlled experiment that you're shipping the whole damn experiment.

Dave Jones: That was a lot of my career was making. Yeah. Right. Which we would ship to the manufacturers. You know. Like we would ship to the contract manufacturer. Yep. Yeah. And yeah. And you'd set them up and you'd train them and you'd have test procedures for using the thing. And you know. Yeah. This standalone WCH program is interesting. I don't know if you watched Mike's full video.

Chris Gammell: I did. I did.

Dave Jones: But yeah. Yeah. I thought one of the interesting things was that it limits how many chips you can program. So it's limited to like 500 or 1,000 or whatever. So the reason they do that is so that the manufacturer can't secretly manufacture 10,000 more units and sell them on the black market. Right. Yeah. That's what it's for. So this Chinese, because the WCH controller. You probably just have to do some man in the middle type of magic. You know, you have to work for it. It's not easy. It's not easy. It's a lock on the door. You would have to be smart enough to figure a workaround for it. Totally. And so this, it's interesting that the WCH, which is, you know, purely, this is like a Chinese targeted, you know, micro, right, for the Chinese market. And they don't trust the other Chinese manufacturers. So they limit the programming tool to actually include this.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think it's a practical good idea. I mean, yeah, it's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, no. It's a sensible idea. Because, you know, everyone's heard the horror stories about, oh, yeah, I sent my product to the Chinese manufacturer and they made and sold them on the black market, you know.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: And, yep. Yep. That's the horror story.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, not the stuff I make. I don't worry about that. Yep.

Dave Jones: No, I don't worry about that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, the other thing I put on my board is a header for one of those tiny NRF24 breakouts. Right. Have you seen those things? You know, those little 8-pin, like 2.4 gigahertz open protocol things?

Dave Jones: Oh, I'm trying to, yeah, I'm trying to picture it now.

Chris Gammell: I know I have. The boards basically look like, yeah, you probably have. I always think about them because they always have, like, they always have, like, the 8 megahertz metal can on them, like the little oscillator. Right. And then there's the NRF24 as the main chipset and then there's, like, a 2.4 gigahertz inverted F antenna. So, you would see that. Actually, I can just send you an Amazon link. Yeah, you can buy, like, a 10-pack on Amazon for, like, $8 sort of thing. Oh, right.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Which is great because, you know, like, if you need them for. So, and they're just super cheap. I didn't realize why they were so cheap because, like, Nordic is still making these things, right? Nordic semiconductor is doing a lot of much more complicated projects out there, but they are also selling these chips into the, you know, into the low-cost market to have, like, you know, point-to-point. It's basically point-to-point wiring.

Speaker ?: Oh, man.

Chris Gammell: My Amazon's not showing up. Did I order it this year? I ordered it last year. Let's see. But what I figured out is that there is a chip maker that basically emulated the entire chipset. And there is a low-cost replacement of it. All right. I find the link, finally. Yeah. Let me send this to Dave. There it is. I'll send it in StreamYard, Dave.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And it's actually a 16 megahertz crystal. I got that wrong. So, there's really not much to it. Yeah, I've seen this.

Dave Jones: And they plug into a breadboard or whatever. Or they plug, well, not into a breadboard, really.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you plug them into a lot of different things. They've got a 0.1-inch header. What I always think about is one of the projects that I've seen it implemented on, it was Sammy Kamkar, who we've had on the show before. He did a Hackaday talk about some, like, illuminated balloons where he basically did, like, I think it might have been a Burning Man project, but it was, like, at night. Then you have, like, a mesh, like, an ad hoc mesh of these different balloons that could talk to each other. Got it. And you can color synchronize. Yeah, yeah. Maybe it wasn't Burning Man, but, you know, some kind of art project like that. So, I'll link those two things in his show.

Dave Jones: Is that how those drone shows work? I'm not sure. I don't know about those drone shows. I don't know. I've actually never seen how that works. Are they pre-programmed on the ground, or do they talk to each other in the air and then synchronize in the air?

Chris Gammell: I always figured they must talk back to the station because they need to be, like, reference locked, right? You need some kind of, like, three-dimensional reference lock in order to make those crazy shapes they do. So, I can always figure they were just on individual channels talking back to a base station on the ground.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Or probably multiple base stations when you think about it, right?

Dave Jones: I can imagine because you could pre-program them all on the ground and then synchronize, synchronize, start them on the ground, and then they wouldn't drift enough during, like, a 10-minute show or something that it would be a problem. So, eh.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but then they have to have, like, dead reckoning of, like, where each individual one is, and that sounds really expensive. I figured it'd be, like, you have, like, multiple beacons.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but you could, in theory, pre-program all that. You could pre-program the whole lot.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I guess you could. Yeah. I guess I always see them, like, on football fields and stuff like that. And I guess if you had, like, fixed references on the field, then they would be able to triangulate where they are in three-dimensional space from that. Basically, it's, like, inverse GPS where each drone is the GPS satellite sort of thing. No, I guess that wouldn't be it. No, it would be, like, even the receiver.

Dave Jones: I think they're all pre-programmed on the ground. That is my best guess.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. It's an interesting question. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, there's drone shows. I've never really looked into it. But, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they've gotten really insane. Like, I mean, I know that, like, they were, they've been around a long time now, but, like, it's crazy.

Dave Jones: We used to have this issue when we were doing the ocean bottom data recorders, right? Because these were completely autonomous. They couldn't talk to each other, right? Yet we would lay them on the ocean floor in a grid pattern, right? Okay. So, either you could, you could drop, like, a remote-controlled rover would go down and drop these things in a grid pattern on the ocean floor, right? But we had to see. But not perfectly, right? Not absolutely perfectly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you wouldn't, it wouldn't be, like, a perfect locationing kind of thing, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no, no. But you would know the distance between each one. And so you could figure out the maths later. You know, it goes into the supercomputer to find your oil and whatnot, right? Yeah, got it. So, they would lay there, but we would synchronize them on the back of the boat, right? So, you know, we would synchronize the time. But these were autonomous data loggers, and they'd go for, like, weeks, right? So, you would place them on the ocean floor and then go for weeks, and then they'd drift apart in time. So, even though they had really good oscillators on them, they would drift. And, of course, then you had to skew correct. So, when you get them back off, you have to then plug each one into the unit, and then you would see how much each one had actually drifted. And then you could skew correct.

Chris Gammell: Oh, because you'd have a single point of reference.

Dave Jones: You would have a single point of reference, which is the atomic clock on the back of the boat. And you would know, right? And so, you would know after a week how much these things had drifted, and then you could skew correct all the data. So, you had to skew correct, you know, a whole week or a month.

Chris Gammell: So, what if the bottom of the ocean is traveling at some fractional speed of sea? Then you wouldn't, you know, then it's about relative then.

Dave Jones: Well, we'd have to take relativity into account. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Exactly. Also, probably, there'd be some other problems about locality.

Dave Jones: Well, in theory, a couple hundred meters down, the clocks do run slower than they do on the boat. So, you know.

Chris Gammell: Wait, really? Because of gravity? They do.

Dave Jones: Dude.

Chris Gammell: Sorry. Help me out here, Dave. Come on. I'm underslept. Help me out.

Dave Jones: It's the famous flying clock experiment that HP did back in the 50s or something. I've actually got a video looking at one of the original cesium beam atomic clocks that was used in that famous flying clock experiment, where they proved that time passes differently if you're on the ground or if you're up in the air. Right? Right? This is going back to the, you know, the early days of Einstein, right? When it came up theory.

Chris Gammell: But it's because of relativity or because of what? Yes. It's not just distance, is it?

Dave Jones: It's because of relativity. You're traveling faster. The Earth is spinning. Right? So, you're traveling at a faster speed if you're up at a different height. So, if you're standing at the top of a mountain.

Chris Gammell: Because of gravity pulling you out through an orbit at a faster speed kind of thing. If you're like geolocked.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You're physically traveling faster than the person down at the bottom of the mountain. And you can measure this. You can measure this in the time difference. If you've got a good enough atomic clock, you can actually measure the difference. And so, what HP did with their flying clock experiment is like nobody had actually proved this. But based on Einstein's thing. Okay. The clocks would run slower or faster, I think, if they're higher up. I've probably got that back to front. Anyway. Faster or slower. They would run at different speeds whether or not they're higher. So, what they did is they put two atomic clocks. Well, they had multiple ones. They kept some on. So, they synchronized them all. Put some on the ground. Took some up in a 747. And then they actually got the data up there and brought them back down. And they were actually different. The clocks, there was a skew difference in the clocks. Because the time actually ran slower or faster the higher they were up.

Speaker ?: Huh. Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: It's a real thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, this is why I don't hang out with the atomic clock route. Because I don't know.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: It's basic relativity. The faster you travel, you, in theory, go at a different speed. So, technically, if you live at the top of the mountain.

Chris Gammell: Well, you know what they should do, Dave, is just fly the plane slower, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, yeah. I think somebody did actually calculate it. That was a joke.

Chris Gammell: That was a joke.

Dave Jones: Right. Fly the plane slower. Somebody did actually calculate, I think, once. I read it somewhere that a pilot lives, is like, lives X amount longer than somebody who's not. Because they're…

Chris Gammell: Except for all the heavy drinking.

Dave Jones: Except for… And… That's the joke. And all the radiation, right?

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. And the… Yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: And the radiation they get in from…

Chris Gammell: Yeah, call back to the… I always think of that XKCD comic where XKCD shows the relative radiation doses. Right. Yeah. It's crazy. Just being up higher and less coverage from atmosphere. Like, yeah.

Dave Jones: Here you go. I will send you the video from 10 years ago where I looked at the HP atomic clock that was used in the famous flying clock experiment. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: And it's kind of a mini tear down of it as well. So, there you go. There you go.

Chris Gammell: There you go, son. Go educate yourself.

Dave Jones: But anyway, getting back to the ocean bottom stuff, it wasn't that much of a difference over several weeks at several hundred meters height difference between the ocean floor and the boats. So, it wasn't… Gotcha. Well, it didn't really matter anyway because they were all down the bottom. They were all at the same level, essentially. So, they were all on the ocean floor together. Got it. So, there was technically no height difference. But, you know…

Chris Gammell: So, what was the drift caused from? Just from…

Dave Jones: Oh, a drift caused from the clock. Because we couldn't put an atomic clock inside each one because, well, power consumption, right? These things had to be battery powered because they're, you know, autonomous things on the bottom. So, yeah. So, we had to have DT-CXOs, digitally temperature controlled crystal oscillators. We got those specially manufactured in Japan and even they weren't good enough. Sorry?

Chris Gammell: The best stuff comes from there.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. So, yep. And they're all hand selected. I can remember hand carrying these oscillators to Singapore. And I tried to get through the Singapore airport with these things in… I'm sure I've told this story before, surely. I'm sure you have. These hand selected, right? I had to hand test and hand select all the best oscillators. And then I had to go and install them personally in Singapore. And I went through the airport and they stopped me. And, you know, all my stuff went through the x-rays. And so, I had to hand carry these on the plane because, you know, we couldn't risk them being subjected to any shocks or vibrations. So, they're all in there with shock absorber padding and everything. And so, I went through the x-ray machine and they went, what are these unusual things? And they called over the armed guards with automatic weapons over to me because they thought, you know, like, this is like something was… These look really weird. Yeah. These look weird.

Chris Gammell: I mean, there definitely are like, you know, people transporting microchips in like Bond movies. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's it. And, yeah. So, these look really weird to them. So, I had to explain to them… You know the big difference, Dave? What are these used for? What?

Chris Gammell: You know the big difference? What? In the Bond movies, they're not nerds.

Dave Jones: Right. Oh, boy. So, I had to explain to them what these did. They're clocks. And I had to, you know, tick-tock, tick-tock. And they, like, get in all nervous like they're bombs. Now, I remember.

Chris Gammell: You've definitely told this story on the show before because I remember that part. Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I did make it out of Singapore airport alive. So, yep. It's all good. But, yeah. Yeah. So, anyway. You only live twice. Fun stuff. Yes. Yeah. And I've done a lot of research on that because I've told you before that if you shock or if you vibrate a crystal oscillator, it resets its long-term drift characteristics. And I've done a lot of research into that. So, a lot of long-term research. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I've done that, too. You know, like when the alarm clock won't go off and hit the side of it. Right. And that hit, that resets it, you know?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And I've told you about 2G tip-over, haven't I?

Chris Gammell: Yes, you have. Yes.

Dave Jones: Yes. If you hold your watch upside down, it actually changes its time.

Speaker ?: Yes.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Gravity. Gravity's a bitch.

Chris Gammell: Gravity. Gravity's a thing. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it affects your oscillator. So, yep. And I've done a video showing me.

Chris Gammell: I was that interested when I talked about a garage door with gravity impacting a sensor opening. Come on, man. Same thing. Gravity.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but it's a garage door opener. It's a garage door. It's true. They go up, they go down. Yeah. It's true. Seen it.

Chris Gammell: If you're doing it right. Yep.

Dave Jones: All right. Oh, boy. Anyway, very fascinating stuff. So, where the hell? How did we get on that tangent?

Chris Gammell: Time drift of drone shows because of this NRF24 thing. Oh, drone shows. That's right.

Dave Jones: And how did we get onto drone shows?

Chris Gammell: NRF24, I was mentioning that I put onto my board. So, I'm going to try and get the two boards talking. The only reason I'm doing that, honestly, is because there's in the CH32V003 fun library that CN Lore came on to talk about, there's a receive and a send program on there. And I was like, oh, look, free code.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Free code.

Chris Gammell: That is the entirety of my thinking so far on that side. Everything else is just trying it out.

Dave Jones: Well, I might have to look into free code because I definitely don't want to write it myself for a project that I'm working on. I'm kind of still tossing up between whether to go for a custom seven segment display or go for a full graphic LCD display. And if I go for the full graphic display, then I have to do my own fonts, of course. You know, because you have to-

Chris Gammell: That's non-trivial, yeah. That's right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no. So, I don't want to do that from scratch. So, surely somebody's written like a- And I want like a big, large font. So, maybe I'd have to choose a regular font. Then I'd have to scale it somehow or something like that. Maybe the code. So, I've got to find some code that scales it.

Chris Gammell: I have told people that before, too. Like, when they're asking like, oh, like what chipset should I use or what, you know, whatever. And it's really, I think, being able to see the entire ecosystem, including the software, that actually is a bigger deal, I think. Because, you know, the chip is good.

Dave Jones: That's why a lot of people will stick with the Arduino and stuff like that. Because there's so much code out there to do so much different stuff. Yeah. That it's almost worth compromising on your hardware just to make your software life easier.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I mean, it's basically like an interactive activity layer, right? I mean, like that's interoperability layer, I guess, is a better way to say that. So, yeah, that's nice. Yeah. It's like a lot of the things that I like in like Zephyr. Like, you get a lot of free stuff there, too. Not everything. There's no like, I don't think there's any libraries for code or for fonts. But, yeah. I mean, like finding, you know, I think that's why searching on projects as well is also really important. Like, being able to see other people doing this sort of thing. Just as a proof point of like, it has been done, maybe it's not the easiest implementation. But seeing someone else do it is often a great starting place for that sort of thing. So, how big of an LCD? Like, I think that's the other thing with LCDs, too. There's so many variations.

Dave Jones: Well, it's like maybe three and a half to four inches diagonal. So, it's quite a large LCD, right? So, it's quite a, you know, because I want it to have like a big font. So, it's like an LCD, like 100 millimeters by 50 millimeters or something like that, you know? So, it's quite sizable. And I want it to have a big font so that you can see it from across the lab, right? I want to, you know. Yeah. So, you can just glance. This is a product that's designed for you to glance over to and see where it's at. And you don't, you know, and you don't want to have to walk up to it and squint at some tiny little LCD, right? You want to be able to see from, you know, half a mile away.

Chris Gammell: You should make it like that AI pin that projects onto your hand.

Dave Jones: Oh, that projects on your bloody hand. Oh, God. That was the most boring. Did we talk about that? That was the most boring.

Chris Gammell: We didn't. Yeah, it's really funny.

Dave Jones: Oh, my God. It was the two founders and they personally did the promo video. Like, you know, it's quite a novel concept, quite a novel product. They were ex-Google Labs or something, were they? Or where did they come from?

Chris Gammell: They were a bunch of smarty pants. I think we just leave it at that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they were a bunch of smarty pants from some other smarty pants company. And they spun off into smarty pants Inc. To do this. What is it called? The AI? What's its name?

Chris Gammell: I don't remember. I think the last I heard about it, they've already fired a couple people in the company.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? Right.

Chris Gammell: They raised all this humane. Yes, humane.

Dave Jones: Humane. Humane, right. Yes, the humane pin or whatever. And it's an AI pin that projects onto you. Like, you actually wear it on your shirt. And then it actually projects onto your hand and you can do gestures.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, except it doesn't look like what they're showing here. Right. They're showing it like being this perfect, you know, projection on your hand. And as you watch the video, it's like, it's a tough thing to do, to like do that kind of like late. And it's like, you know.

Dave Jones: So is that actually released? Can you buy it?

Chris Gammell: You can order it. I don't know if you can. I don't know. Right.

Dave Jones: Because that was ages ago when that made all the hype and everyone was wowing about it. And then I watched the promo video and they had the two founders, this guy and this girl, like, and they were the most boring presenters ever. I mean, like, hats off to them. It was a really good demo and it was all shot in a single take, I think, from memory. I think it was, you know, I was very impressed by the production value of what went into their promo. But, oh, the two of them were just as boring as batshit. And it was like, oh, the most two unenthusiastic people actually promoting this whiz bang product.

Chris Gammell: Like, have a cup of coffee before you do it, huh?

Dave Jones: Oh, gee. It's like, oh, God, I just wanted to go to sleep. It's like, geez, have some more excitement in your voice. But I know they were reading a rehearsed script and it was all in real time. So they had to shoot this one long take in real time. So I know they couldn't make any mistakes. And then maybe it was the 10th take they did to get it right or something, you know.

Chris Gammell: Sure, sure.

Dave Jones: But still, you've got to be enthusiastic about your own product, for God's sake.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, this is basically, this is just Google Glass you're wearing your shirt. That's how I said it.

Speaker ?: Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Dave Jones: Oh, God, we've got to talk about the bloody Vision Pro, don't we?

Chris Gammell: I don't have to. No, you don't have to.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I did make the prediction on Twitter that it would not be a thing in public. It would totally not be a thing. And there's quite a lot of people who agree. And there's other people who said dumbest take ever. No.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you like the guy wearing it on the subway and stuff like that? Yeah, yeah, the guy wearing it on the subway and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: It will not be a thing.

Chris Gammell: No. I don't think, not in its current incarnation. No. I don't think so. No. What it says to me is that this person should be pickpocketed because they have $3,500.

Dave Jones: Right, because they've got a $4,000 thing on their head.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Just grab it and run and they'll be so shocked. And they won't be in the real world, so it'll take them 30 seconds to re-acclimatize before they can chase you.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, as you know, I am an early adopter of a particular head-worn system. And it was not greeted with interest.

Dave Jones: So, what was the name? You were a glass hole.

Chris Gammell: I was a glass hole.

Dave Jones: You were one of the glass holes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I was. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And how long did that novelty take to wear off? A week? A couple of weeks.

Chris Gammell: So, here's the thing. I still... So, like this AI pin, right? The... I actually ended up buying something that was kind of like it, but it was...

Dave Jones: There's another thing like it? Is there?

Chris Gammell: There was another thing like it. Yeah. It was the narrative pin. You remember me talking about that? Narrative pin? No. Yeah. It was a Belgian company. And basically, all it was is it would just take these wide-angle shots of like your day. So, you would just have like a visual reminder and you could like scroll through. So, it would just be taking like basically time-lapse shots while pinned to your shirt. So, you could just be like, who did I talk to at that cocktail party? Right. Yeah. You know, like at 7 p.m. on a Friday? Yeah. Oh, that person. I remember that. And, you know, like having these visual reminders because we just have so much data that we process and our brain down samples it. And I actually... That was probably my favorite. Like Google Glass is Google Glass, right? It was a widely known to be a failure find, whatever. But like the thing that I liked about it was the capturing of like my day. Like that... Right. It wasn't on a regular basis. I had to sort of tap the button, but like...

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. So, it's not taking a photo every second or something. You have to tap it to start a day.

Chris Gammell: Glass didn't do that, but no. So, the narrative pin did take it every... It was settable, you know, every 30 seconds. Oh, right.

Dave Jones: Okay. So, every 10 seconds or something. So, would it... It'd just take a photo, would it? It wouldn't voice record anything? It wouldn't record?

Chris Gammell: You could record a video, but it was like terrible quality. No, voice. It was a really wide angle. It was basically like having a doorbell camera pinned to your shirt. Right. Like that level of quality and lighting and like... And like in the wide angle nature too because you want to capture a lot of stuff. Yep. I really liked it. So, it couldn't record audio. It was just... It could record audio. No, no, it could. Okay.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: It could, but it didn't because of the power, right? I mean... Yeah, yeah. It was a long.

Dave Jones: Of course. It's all about power consumption and that's why a camera in its crap because, you know, there's only so much power you can... Right. ...whack into something, you know, the size of the... Right.

Chris Gammell: Much like how on the Vision Pro, like the thing is you need a battery pack that's like...

Dave Jones: You need an external battery pack, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And it's just like... Yeah. It's just so much power still. Like over time, it's going to get better and better. Sure. It might... This, you know, this AI pin, other things like it probably become more reasonable. Maybe not socially acceptable. But from a technological perspective, like we're already there for a lot of this stuff. Like this AI pin is very, I mean, possible from a, you know, capability. Like I think it's probably leaning on your phone, you know, even though it probably has some localized processing. I'm sure it's also talking to your phone and that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: So... Well, if somebody... Like I think I said this. Like if somebody came up to me wearing one of these Google Vision Pros or something, I would not...

Chris Gammell: Apple Vision Pro.

Dave Jones: Apple Vision Pro. Yeah. They're all the same, aren't they?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they are.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Same, same evil. Yeah. And yeah, if somebody walked up to me and tried to talk to me wearing one of those, I just refused. No, take this stupid shit off and then we'll talk, right? Otherwise, piss off, you know? It's like, no. I'm just going to deal with it.

Chris Gammell: I mean, yeah, it's very obvious. Yeah. They kind of went the other direction, right? It's still, it's nicely designed. It's, I'm sure, high quality. I mean, it's high quality chipsets in there, whatever. But like, they were not trying to be subtle about it.

Dave Jones: No. Like, the tech in it is apparently really good. Like, apparently it's one of the best VR, AI, AR solutions out there. It's, you know, it's quite, you know, it's quite awesome. But...

Chris Gammell: It's basically iPhone engineers making a headset. Like, there's lots of camera processing, really good chipset in there.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's got like nine cameras or something. It's got like a, oh, 16, is it? I think it's some ridiculous number like that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's just insane. And they don't actually sell it as VR goggles. They sell it as a spatial computing solution.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So that's technically what it is, spatial computing. You know, so you can have multiple monitors and you're right in front of you anywhere and you can move them around. It's like, eh.

Chris Gammell: You know what it is to me, Dave? It's a literal pain in the neck. That's what it is.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen all the memes of all these huge necked people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. The memes are great. You don't see the memes anymore because you're not on Twitter. Dude, get back on X. Yeah. That's where all the action is.

Chris Gammell: I think if I'm getting on X, I'll probably do the more traditional version of that. Which is what? Have a nice flowy weekend and touch my shoulder, man. I'm on X. Oh, boy. I was talking about X, Dave. I was going to take X, X. MDMA. That was my joke. Got it. Just for the explainer out there. Probably more likely at this point. Anyway. Bloody Apple Vision Pro. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway, some people liked my take and other people just, I got quite a few Apple fanboys out there attack me, you know, as to be expected.

Chris Gammell: Hmm.

Dave Jones: So, yep. Yeah, well.

Chris Gammell: Well, you know, it's like how, imagine what you were feeling when I was telling you about a smart home type thing. Like, it doesn't really impact you and yet you're still kind of like, why are you doing this? Like, I kind of think I'd probably feel similar about the Vision Pro. Like, I don't, I'm sure it's going to have an impact just because things that Apple do have an impact. Fine, whatever.

Dave Jones: Right. Of course.

Chris Gammell: But it's not going to have an impact for me.

Dave Jones: No. No. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: You're right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: It's, it's not going to change society. It's not going to change.

Chris Gammell: It'll probably change society. You know, like I'm sure there will be some impact, but it's probably not going to change me.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So you don't want to have five different monitors all in front of you anywhere you want.

Chris Gammell: I already do. I mean, like. Yeah. Well, I've got three. Yeah. I already get yelled at when I like, you know, I'm on a laptop or a phone outside of my office. Like, so I don't think I'm going to be allowed to bring a headset into the living room. Uh, so like, why not?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure, you know, like much like people always in history say like, why would I possibly need more than 640 K of memory? Maybe I'll eat crow on that one later. Uh, and like, maybe I need a lot of displays, but kind of the more I think about it and my own technological stuff, I need fewer monitors, not more. So.

Dave Jones: No, I, my, my Spidey sense tells me it's horses for courses. Again, if you want your three or five displays, you set up your three or five displays and have an optimum solution and not just do it anywhere. Like, oh yeah, I'm sitting on the crapper and I'm like, I've still got my five displays and I'm moving them. Like, come on. No, just. Yeah. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Maybe you can go for a walk while you do it. I guess that would maybe, maybe you can get some more exercise. I guess maybe that's good.

Dave Jones: Just no head down, bum up in an optimized solution environment with your five setup monitors properly, real monitors. And then when you're high, when you're super productive in that, in that space, and then when you fit, you can finish earlier and then you've got time for your walk, go and touch grass. Right. And you don't have to take any tech with you.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Touch grass.

Dave Jones: You'll be out. You'll have a happier life than just, oh, I'm going to have a suboptimal solution, but I've got my five monitors everywhere I go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Who the hell cares? Like, no, no.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: No. Fail.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Well, it turns out we're not going to be tech bloggers.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. I won't be getting an Apple sponsorship anytime soon.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you're probably not. Probably not.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It would be fun to do a teardown on one of those things. I'm sure the hardware is gorgeous.

Dave Jones: Someone's already, I think iFixit has already done a teardown. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'll have to check that out. I'll see if I can find it. Link it in. All the usual. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's why it costs, you know, three and a half, $4,000 or something.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. I mean, the metal machining alone is just like, oh, yeah, that's nice.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: Actually, I think I saw Apple released a factory video that kind of was a throwback to like the...

Dave Jones: Oh, really?

Chris Gammell: Remember when Valve did that for the controllers?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, of course.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that was great. Spending production, like having a production company go and film in a factory, that's always money well spent.

Dave Jones: Yes, totally agree. Kudos to them on that one. That's marketing money well spent. Totally agree. Yep. And all the PCB factories are doing that now. Come and, you know, they offer all the...

Speaker ?: I know, yeah.

Dave Jones: Scotty. All the bloggers.

Chris Gammell: Scotty started a cottage industry for himself there, which is great because I will watch that every single time he films something. I'm just like, yes, please. I want to see more automation.

Dave Jones: Every other YouTuber. Come and visit. Come on down. You can tour the factory and shoot, you know, shoot video. They've offered it to every blogger I know. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Which is smart. Absolutely smart marketing. Yeah. Totally.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I want to see inside a factory.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Fantastic. So, anyway. Road factories. That's where you're going. Get off my ass this year and do a couple of factory tours. What do you think?

Chris Gammell: Do it. Do it. I think you should. Yep. Give me... You know, if you need a production assistant, just send me a ticket and I'll... Right. Send me a ticket and you'll come on. Very low cost.

Dave Jones: You've got a family now. You can't just... I know. I can't. ...pack up and leave willy-nilly, dude.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I know. I am likely going to Embedded World this year. It was not for certain. And where's... Where's that? ...a certain team, but that is the one in Germany, in Nuremberg. Yeah. In April 9th to the 11th. Right. So, I'll be at that. Probably some of the events around there. So, if you're there, please hit me up. Right. This year, there's also a new Embedded World, the production company that does it in Germany. They're going to have a US version, which I'm excited about. That's the first year of that. That's going to be in Austin in October. And I will try and go to that, too. I'm not sure. Like, the one in Germany is just always big and lots of people are there and whatever. The one in Austin, I'm not sure about, but I think... There's a bunch of chip companies there. So, like, Scilabs is there. NXP is there. Samsung's there. Like, probably will at least have a lot of local folks. And Austin's a fun town. Cool, but not. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm probably going to the EV show tomorrow. Woo-hoo.

Chris Gammell: Ooh, that'll be fun. Yeah. Bring your camera.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did that last year. It was good fun. So, I might just... I might turn up and now I might... Yeah. Might as well take the camera and shoot something.

Chris Gammell: I might be buying an EV soon. We should talk about this on future shows. Yeah. You know, there's more kids. So, I might have some questions.

Dave Jones: What sort of EV... Well, you...

Chris Gammell: I said next show, Dave.

Dave Jones: Oh, next show. Oh. Okay. We're already like an hour and seven minutes. Well... Yeah, we're way over. Okay. Next show. All right. I was all excited to talk to EVs.

Chris Gammell: And you'll be the show. You'll go to the show. I will have been... I've gone to the show.

Dave Jones: I would have seen the latest EVs. I'll be able to shoot you... I'll send you the video.

Chris Gammell: Well, there'll be different names sometimes. I've been seeing Ionics around here finally. Really? So, they finally came to the States. Ionic 5s. Yeah. I've seen one right here. Yep. Yeah, it looked nice. Yeah. Okay. No worries. Next time. Next time.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time. See ya. See ya.

Speaker ?: See ya. See ya. See ya. See ya. See ya. See ya. See ya. See ya. See ya. See ya. See ya. See ya. See ya. See ya. Thank you.