#665 – Really long needle nose pliers

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released April 24th, 2024. Episode 665. Really long needle nose pliers.

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

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

Dave Jones: I think I found it.

Chris Gammell: You got it.

Dave Jones: I think I found my problem. Those who couldn't hear the pre-show because, well, you can't hear us talk before the show. I thought that I had a problem with my Rode microphone. It was like giving some sort of weirdy audio compression-y kind of effect. I don't know. Something weird I couldn't quite nail down. And I was just adjusting the volume on my – I'm listening to Chris through headphones at the moment. Through my Scarlett – I don't know what it is. Scarlett's the brand USB pre-amp interface thing. Even though I don't use it as a preamp these days because I've got a direct USB mic. But I use it to power my studio monitors, which I listen to all my audio through. And I adjusted the pot. And then your voice just – Signal chain issues. Yeah. Yeah. Your voice just started like fading from one channel to the other and it was very weird.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And the pot really crackles like I turn it up and it's just absolutely awful. So I think there's some funny business going on there. That can be the problem. I blame sorry.

Chris Gammell: Non-linearities caused by dust. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I blame sorry Rode. I was starting to think that was something wrong for my Rode.

Chris Gammell: I mean there's still a possibility, right? Yeah, yeah. Of course. You got to like remove it from the system and yeah, you got lots of different things there. But yeah, that is super frustrating. Yeah. Honestly, this is like what I – you know, I used to have a lot of audio equipment, you know, like audio instruments and things like that. I used to have like a Wurlitzer 200 and –

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like, oh, it's so cool to have like this analog sound and, you know, I don't miss it. I miss –

Dave Jones: Really?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's just like – well, it was a – it's a very cool instrument.

Chris Gammell: You were boasting that, you know? I used to love it. I used to – you know, it was like a cool instrument. But it's just the amount you have to like do in order to make it sound good is like – it's like a – there's the whole industry around that, you know? Right. Like making it – you know, maintaining old analog electronics is like, yeah, it's a hard thing to do. So finicky stuff, you give up a little bit in terms of sound quality maybe if you go to like a digital piano like I have now. But, yeah, maintenance goes way down, that's for sure.

Dave Jones: Well, I'm going to have to – I'm going to have to do a bloody diagnosis and repair video on this turd because – yeah, so I'll have to feed like the headphone amplifier into my camera so that I can actually independently record what I'm hearing and see if other people hear and then make sure I'm not going crazy.

Chris Gammell: I think it was Jeremy Hong, I think. Someone – yeah, I think it was Jeremy. Who's been on the show. He was on one of the shows where we – where I was at a conference I recorded a long time ago. But he was talking about having a Keith Lee 2015.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Which has like a total harmonic distortion. Yes, I have one of those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there you go. So you could like pass – you could like do some – pass a sine wave through it and like see what that looks like too. That would be kind of interesting.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Yeah, it could. I never did that. In the case, it's a channel thing. It seems to be like a – like there's something weird happening with the channels.

Speaker ?: Yeah, but you would see that, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. Well, no, because that's only – you'd only be measuring a single channel then. You would need like a dual channel analyzer. You'd need like a –

Chris Gammell: I just meant like you could – I mean, so aside from like a total harmonic distortion thing, you could also just – You could certainly see – Put a sine wave through. You could put a sine wave through it, yes. Look at it on a scope and be like, oh, look. Yeah, yeah, right. There's a bunch of noise on that sine wave, you know, like a bunch of harmonics that are coming through.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, I could feed it. Yeah, it would be interesting.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I could feed it. Well, I can actually – I think this might have external audio in. I have to check. I can't see the back of it at the moment. If it does, I can put it on the bench and feed in the signal and scope it.

Chris Gammell: There's an analyzer on the Digilant one, the Analog Discovery.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I've never used – but I've always wondered about it because it's like – it doesn't – you know, it only has like up to megahertz output. Oh, well, heaps for audio.

Dave Jones: Yeah, fine for audio. Yeah, but for audio it would be fine, right? It's basically how real time it is so that, you know, I can move the pot and get the itchy and scratchy thing happening with the pot on. Itchy and scratchy show. So I can get the itchy and scratchy show happening. And if you can see that in real time as you tweak it and stuff like that. But I can – like I can certainly hear it. There's that – all that scratchiness. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: The old analog cochlear detectors, huh? Right, yes.

Dave Jones: But, yeah, so it might be – and I assume that the – well, the volume control obviously controls both the headphone output and the line out which goes to my speakers because I feed this – the line out of these into my two powered studio monitor speakers. So, you know, I presume I'm going to hear them both because the output – the pot, they're obviously – like it obviously has an analog pot in there because it's doing the itchy and scratchy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: And then that feeds into the line out just then splits into like straight to line out to the speakers and then into the headphone amp which drives the headphones.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you have a separate headphone amp too. Okay, so you don't listen – you don't listen direct out of that USB interface thing. Oh, yes, I am.

Dave Jones: It's actually got a headphone amp built in. It's got like – Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: So you could just have like one in each ear kind of thing if you wanted to.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Interesting.

Dave Jones: So, hmm. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah, so that may be the source of – because I couldn't quite nail a down why because I was listening to my edit the other day, you know, voiceover edit for my latest video and I'm like, that doesn't sound right. Like it's –

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's like a squeaky Australian voice coming out of the speakers, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I don't know. So – Natural itchy and scratchy. Yep.

Chris Gammell: There you go. Bingo.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Yep. Anyway, speaking of not trusting old stuff, is that what you said? Something like that. I guess so.

Chris Gammell: You mean like authority? You mean like I don't trust authority?

Dave Jones: No, no, no. Old, old equipment. You know, analogy equipment.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, old people. Yeah, no. Old analog equipment. That's what I was saying.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: What you can trust is – What can you trust, Dave? Dave, tell me. What can you trust?

Chris Gammell: The Voyager 1 probe. It's back, baby. Never going to get it down. Never going to stop transmitting.

Dave Jones: This is great. This is great. It just popped up this morning. I think we might have talked about it. Good news. Mentioned it like six months ago.

Chris Gammell: I don't think so. I don't know. Maybe. Okay. I remember seeing the story slide by.

Dave Jones: Maybe I'm confusing it. We've just seen the story. But yeah.

Chris Gammell: Maybe it was your other podcast.

Dave Jones: It's been spewing out garbage. Like it hasn't just completely died. It was like just spewing out garbage.

Chris Gammell: It didn't go dark?

Dave Jones: No, no. It was spewing out garbage data.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: I believe was the existing. Yeah. So.

Chris Gammell: Is Voyager 2 dark? I thought one of them went dark.

Dave Jones: No, no. No, no. Voyager 2. It's still going as far as I know.

Chris Gammell: All right. Great.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It stopped in November. On November 14th. So it stopped sending readable service and engineering data. Ah. Okay. Even though they could tell. They could still somehow tell that the spacecraft was still receiving the commands. So the processor on there was working. Processor in quote marks. Was working. And it was otherwise operating normally. But it was returning garbage. And they thought, uh-oh. You know. Because quite a few things have failed on this thing. And they keep, you know, shutting down things as they fail. And it turns out. Well, it took them, you know, three or four months or something. But they finally figured it out. And they were able to shut down a system on it. And now it's responding. And now it's returning regular data again. It's back in business.

Chris Gammell: I cannot even imagine. You know, we're talking troubleshooting it with a stereo headphone thing. Can you imagine that with the freaking Voyager 1?

Dave Jones: Which is outside of the solar system.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I know. Yeah. That's one thing. And then, like, yeah. Just the round trip times. And just. Yeah. You know, you're just working with 1970s. I guess you are also talking about 1970s electronics. Although not USB.

Dave Jones: But hats off to the design team for making it so flexible. And completely reprogrammable. I mean, you know, there's no flash memory on there that can. They can reprogram. But they can reprogram. Yeah. It uses tape. It uses magnetic tape for storage. So there's a physical tape on there that spins around a head that reads it and stuff like that. Oh, the. The. The. I think they use some core memory on it, though. For the. For the basic underlying core operating system or something. If that's the correct term, even.

Chris Gammell: Probably not an operating system. No. I would say, like, the core routines, maybe.

Dave Jones: The core routines or something like that. And they are able to reprogram this thing to actually get around problems just like this. And they did it. And so they discovered a chip responsible for storing a portion of the SDS memory. Flight dynamic. I don't know. Flight dynamic system. Or flight data system. Maybe that means. Including some of the FDS computer software code isn't working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. So unable to repair the chip, obviously. You know, it's a big call out fee to go across the outside of the known solar system.

Chris Gammell: Does anyone have some really long pliers?

Dave Jones: Really long needle nose. The team decided to place the effective code elsewhere. So they moved the code into another part of the memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code entirely. So they devised a plan. Here we go. I haven't read this yet. So they devised a plan to divide the affected code. There's a subtitle for the story. For the show, rather.

Chris Gammell: I haven't read this yet.

Dave Jones: I haven't read this yet. Yes. Can we label it that? Yes. That is today's title. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. Mark it down. So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store these sections in different places. And then I guess they use like jumps, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Jumps in memory.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Go to 10. Go to 10. Go to 10. Well, instead of line 10, it's a direct memory address, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Right.

Dave Jones: So it's, you know, it's, yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Coordinate system. It's coordinates.

Dave Jones: So to make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well. Who's doing this? Who has the knowledge to do this? I need to know. Maybe we can get them on the show.

Chris Gammell: I bet they're not the most youthful people, but, you know, they are badasses. That is for damn sure.

Dave Jones: Well, there's a photo here and there's lots of grey involved at the people applauding around the round table. Both the men and the women are not, yeah. Not young. They're not youthful.

Chris Gammell: They shouldn't be. They're at the top of their damn field. That's what they are.

Dave Jones: And they're probably like in their early 20s when they worked on it.

Chris Gammell: They're long-term stewards, you know? Like, that's...

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: This is insane. So not only did they move, they figured out what code wasn't working, they moved it. And not only... But they didn't have space to move it to anywhere because, you know, in a system like this, you don't just have free memory just lying around willy-nilly, right?

Chris Gammell: That's what we should have put in there.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. And they had to chop up the code into sections to make it fit into any little nook and cranny of the memory they can find. Maybe it's due to some other shutdown system might, I don't know, free up some memory or something like that. I don't know how it works. But, jeez, man. Amazing. That's unbelievable. And they made it work.

Chris Gammell: This is like the most badass sustaining engineering job ever, you know?

Dave Jones: And they set the code. Sustaining engineering. This is the model.

Chris Gammell: It is, yeah. I mean, like, that is, like, the best.

Dave Jones: Oh, God. For those who don't know, there is a joke in... Well, it isn't a joke. It's a real role. And hi to everyone who works in sustaining engineering. Hello, me, Dave. I was that guy. I was that guy. I was not even close to this school. You were sustaining engineering at Keithley. I, well, I kind of was, but I never had the official title. So, technically, I'm not. I wasn't in sustaining engineering. You couldn't hack it, man. You couldn't hack it. But given that I was the only one who knew the system and a company I used to work at, it's kind of...

Chris Gammell: We'll count it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, last man standing. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: They even contacted me after I actually...

Chris Gammell: There you go. After I left the company. So, that's how you tell.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I guess I'm an unofficial sustaining engineering. Yeah. This is a thing in companies because you've got to maintain products for like 10, 20 years. Stuff like that. You know, it's not uncommon. Right? It's not uncommon. People are used to the consumer rubbish these days. But in all sorts of industries, countless industries, they're like, you know, you have to guarantee to your customer, especially if they're a defense customer or a government customer or something like that. You have to guarantee. You know, that's why there's some of your banking system is still running on bloody Fortran or COBOL code somewhere. Right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's why yours is powered by koalas and kangaroos. Exactly. It's actually just them on a treadmill.

Dave Jones: That's it. And still, yeah. And someone comes in and leaves the belt every. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. It throws in some more whatever kangaroos eat and a little bit more whatever koalas eat.

Dave Jones: Grass. It leaves. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Brush.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Ah. Yeah. This is fantastic. This is just great. They made it work. Jesus. Heroes. All of them. Hats off, folks.

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

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's amazing. Anyway, I do believe it's like back to, oh, they got to relocate and adjust some other affected portions. Oh, they got more to do. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I love thinking about this too of just like the, I mean, the oblivion of it all. Like the, so this thing is, it's still going, right? It's amazing. Yeah. 46 years later.

Dave Jones: 46 years. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. 46 years. But like, why not a hundred years? Right. I mean, like there are some practical limits in terms of like the onboard power source and just the distances required. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: It will eventually.

Chris Gammell: How are we going to be able to listen to it eventually? Whatever. But just like really, I'm going to go into sci-fi mode now. But like, it's like one of my favorite things in sci-fi books, like that are about space travel of just like, just the vast distances and stuff like that. Like, uh, yeah. And they always have to have like literary tools to like get around certain things. I'm mostly talking about the Bob, the Bobaverse books, which book five is coming later this year, apparently. Um, but like Bobaverse books. Right. No. Oh, I definitely mentioned on the show before. It's all right. Uh, the first book is we are legion. We are Bob, but it's about a software engineer who basically gets trapped inside a computer. And then he like goes and explores the universe. It's fantastic.

Dave Jones: So five out of five stars. So it's, uh, Tron in space is what you're saying.

Chris Gammell: Uh, no, because he also replicates himself. So it's like basically like talking to yourself a lot too. So it's like, he like has different versions of himself, all like developing personalities.

Dave Jones: It's so it's AI in space.

Chris Gammell: So it's how, yeah. So it's how, it's kind of like how, but like, like self-aware how who's like actually based on a human. So like, it's like personalities. There's a lot more personality. Yeah. But yeah, that's, it's not bad. Um, and the audio books are just awesome. Just some of my favorite. I just re-listened again. So yeah. Bob of ours. Everybody should listen. Okay. My favorite.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So yeah. How they can keep this going after 46 years is remarkable. Given the fact that they're shutting down the Chandra, uh, space telescope. They're shutting it down.

Chris Gammell: I don't know about this.

Dave Jones: Even though there's nothing wrong with it. Slash it. Like they slightly budgets. Budget's gone. Like I can send you a link. Like, yeah, yeah. It's like, yeah. They just don't want to fund it anymore. So it's just going to sit there. It's just going to, they're just going to like, nah, nah. Like. Moth wallet in space. Yeah. Just moth wallet. You know.

Chris Gammell: Does it like have a, I guess, I don't know what you do when you like go into low power mode and you have it ready to wake up later.

Dave Jones: I don't know. I don't know what they'll do, but yeah, no, they've, uh, yeah. The Chandra. And that's only 24 years old. I think it went in 2000. It's a baby. That's a baby. Oh man. Unbelievable. Yeah. Compared to, I know. And, and it's 68 million bucks a year to keep it is like going. It's not nothing Dave. No, no. It's not nothing. But you know, like in the scheme of things, it's nothing. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And space dollars. That's probably low overall. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Although I don't understand how you can spend that much money. It's just a, like a handful of geeks in a room, right? Yeah. But it's a handful of geeks. How do you spend a handful of, how do you spend 68 million on a handful of geeks in a room?

Chris Gammell: Um, well, divide. I don't know. What's an easy person cost?

Dave Jones: Well, I don't know. Let's assume it's a, you know, even a 250K carrying cost.

Chris Gammell: 250K carrying cost.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. So it's quarter of a mil. You can't afford. Like you can't afford a handful of people. For the net. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: 272 people. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it takes a lot to maintain it.

Dave Jones: It's not 68 million. Yeah. But how? Why? I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Maybe 272, like, like pretty, pretty decently high end average salary. So.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Maybe if you've got a like model, you know, like if you've got a, I don't know, maybe they've got a hardware duplicate somewhere and they have to keep that running and, you know, things like.

Chris Gammell: Like an operations center. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Something like that.

Chris Gammell: You got to keep the vending machine stock.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: That's not nothing.

Dave Jones: That's not nothing. But at least. Oh, that's got a flush. At least. You could pay to have them at least continue to talk to it until the wheels fall off the billy cart. Right. Surely just like, as I said, like a handful of geeks in a room, just, just talking to it until something breaks is like, well, at least do that.

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Maybe this is the way to save it though, too. Like if it's just a power down and go into like a.

Dave Jones: No, that's justification because they don't want to, they want to steal the money for some other shit thing they're working on. Got it.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Got it. Yeah. That's too bad.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, space ain't cheap. Space ain't cheap. No. That's for sure. No, it's not. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Oh, we could get into the whole starship thing, you know. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. No, no. Chris, Chris doesn't want to hear about space, do you?

Chris Gammell: No, I don't want to talk about Elon. It is a hobby of mine. Yep. Yeah. Space is great. And, and Elon is involved and just, he's not one of my favorite people.

Chris Gammell: No kidding. Spaceship's awesome. Their starship's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And I just, yeah, I don't know anything about it. So. Right. Otherwise, I just watch the launches and, yeah. Move on.

Dave Jones: Fair enough. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I, speaking of far flung locations, I was just in Germany a week ago.

Dave Jones: Oh, oh, yes. Oh, right. Yes. How'd it go? Yes. I forgot. Yes, you were.

Chris Gammell: It was good. You know, I, I am now realizing, so this is my third year and I was just looking at my past, my sad little passport, which mostly only has stamps in Frankfurt, Germany.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Since I got it. Because it was, you know, a COVID passport.

Dave Jones: They still stamp them, do they? I thought, you know, don't they have like the chippity, chippy ones now?

Chris Gammell: It has a chip in it, but they still stamp it. Oh, okay. I think people like to collect it, maybe. I don't know. I like it. It's an easy record keeping, I guess. Yeah. I'm definitely being tracked in multiple ways. Oh, yeah. The amount of facial recognition happening these days. Like, okay. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: So, do you have to scan your fingerprints when you go through the customs to get back into the US?

Chris Gammell: I used to, but they don't do that anymore. Now, they just do face. Oh, really? Yeah. So, I have like global entry. And like, they literally just like take a photo and they're like, yeah, we know who you are. Don't worry.

Dave Jones: Don't worry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we now know you're about to watch this on YouTube and we know you're about to follow this person on Twitter. Exactly. And I'm like, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Did you just bought a Chevy Bolt, right? Yeah, yeah, right. Oh, boy. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's not good.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, yeah. Germany. Germany's great. You know, going to Nuremberg is a cool historic town. They've been there three times now. I'm not going for the history anymore, but it's still interesting. And the thing is.

Dave Jones: Is that the only place you went there or did you?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Take some holiday time. Got to get back. Got to get back to the fam.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: So, but even the thing that's interesting to me is like, so now three years in, the thing that is surprising is that the booth numbers don't change. I guess I would have expected that they. What? Like, I kept like asking like, oh, what booth are you going to be at? And everyone's just like, well, the same one as last year. They all have the same booth number year to year. So, because they all like re-up. Right. And then they keep the same booth number. So, like, if you've walked through Embedded World, like, at least three years ago, the first time I went three years ago.

Dave Jones: It'd be exactly the same as long as the same people are there. The same layout.

Chris Gammell: Oh, not exactly the same, but like significantly the same. Wow.

Dave Jones: That's interesting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm not sure why that is. You know, obviously there's different stuff in each booth and the real reason to go is for people and, you know, that sort of thing. But like, it was a little surprising.

Dave Jones: Okay. All right. Well, I'm sure they'll boot you if somebody wanted your size booth or something and they're willing to pay more or I don't know. No, that's the thing. They won't. Really?

Chris Gammell: Okay. The booths change size, but they keep in the same location, basically.

Dave Jones: Oh, interesting. They dig saw them together.

Chris Gammell: So like the Zephyr booth has been changing size. It's been getting bigger, but they just say, okay, well, we'll just change where the aisle is or maybe someone who was behind, they get shuffled around. Like there is some shuffling.

Speaker ?: Oh, that's fascinating.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But like it's mostly kind of anchored by the booths.

Dave Jones: So every year it's a dynamic assembly process of all the stands, but they try and keep the layout the same. They keep the layout and the number in the same. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So like this year, Raspberry Pi was in a slightly different location. Okay. And I could picture them in both spots, but so they moved and people do move. I guess, but it was just surprising to me to realize that a lot of things don't move. And I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it was something I noticed.

Dave Jones: Right. There you go. Yeah. Interesting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. A lot of, a lot of, every time you saw a camera this year, I've already said this one of the, I think on a live stream. Hey, camera. But every time you, every time you saw a camera this year, like if you were like walking across a video feed, you were almost certainly certain to be enclosed in a little box that says like human or like person.

Speaker ?: Oh, tracking.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So there's AOA tracking everywhere. They all want to show that stuff. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Everyone wants to. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't kind of, it's fine. That was kind of like the main, one of the main trends that I noticed. Obviously there's a lot of new silicon and new things out there, new cortex cores, a lot more risk five. That's kind of interesting, but not like, not like banner level. Like we are risk five everywhere. You know, there's a risk booth of course, but you know, it's just kind of showing off wares and showing off demos and stuff like that. So year to year. And also I didn't really walk around all that much to be completely honest. I, yeah, I was busy. But yeah, not a, not a ton of trend stuff. Noticeable. Otherwise, trying to think of the things I saw. Like I didn't stop. I really, if I was, if I was there as an EV blog correspondent, I'm sure I would have stopped by the measurement test measurement stands more, but I don't.

Dave Jones: Okay. But you don't. I'm not in the market for that stuff now. You're not really a TNM enthusiast, are you?

Chris Gammell: No, I'm not.

Dave Jones: Even though you used to work at Keithley, you're just punching your card.

Chris Gammell: I'm not into like specsmanship and stuff like that. Like the, you know, the forum members are like really into like digging into specs and stuff like that. And I'm just, yeah. Okay. You know, if I, if I could afford one of the new ones, I'd probably start doing some comparison shopping, but right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We get it. You're not a hobbyist.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. It's cool. Yeah. I'm not sure this is a great place for hobbyists though, either. It's like, you know, there's people are like going to be like, Oh, when are you buying? You know? Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: No, no, no. Of course they're harvesting which company you're from. How many, what is your budget this year? You know? Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Trade show kind of stuff. The most surprising thing is that, so, you know, like this year, I'm not going to be a little bit different. And then in October, they're supposed to be in Embedded World US. Right. It's, it's in Austin in April, in October rather. I did not see that mentioned a single place throughout the entire conference.

Dave Jones: Oh, interesting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know if it's like, maybe not the same groups, but I'm going to try and be there. I don't know if other people are going to be there. I talked to all the ship companies.

Dave Jones: Where's it going to be? I assume LA-ish. Austin, Texas. Oh, Austin. Austin, Texas. All right.

Chris Gammell: Austin, Texas. Yes. My former, my former city. I used to live there before I, before I knew you, actually.

Dave Jones: All right. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't know. First time I met you, you were from Cleveland.

Chris Gammell: Cleveland, Ohio. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think that's still on our website somewhere, isn't it? Oh, I'm sure it is. Chris is from Cleveland. Yeah. Days from Sydney. Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. The old microphone going around the globe to the two cities.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. The old logo. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I haven't been back to Austin since 2014, I think. So it's been 10 years at this point. All right. And that was like for South by Southwest. I went back after a while. So yeah, I'm going to try and go. But I talked to all these people like at the conference and be like, hey, you're going to be at Embedded World US? And they're like, yeah, you know, we're going to wait and see.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yes.

Chris Gammell: You know, guys, if none of the vendors show up and say that we're going to be there and pay for booths, it doesn't exist the next year. Exactly. Yeah. You have to like actually, someone's got to like put a toe in. So I'm going to officially state that I'm going to try and be there. And now all the chip companies are going to be like, well, Chris is going to.

Dave Jones: Oh, well. Maybe we should. They're all in.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Follow the leader. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Well, that's that's interesting. Can anyone is there anyone out there who can confirm that engineering conferences and, you know, exhibitiony things are doing a downturn in the US? That's.

Chris Gammell: Oh, in the US, I could I could tell you that. Oh, really? There. Yeah. I mean, like, just look at what used to be out there. Like, well, not it's not recent. This is not a recent thing. I don't follow. Sorry. Oh, sure. Sure. I don't follow. Well, I mean, like, like you went to a couple of events in the US in the past. Yep. I don't think any of those exist anymore. Oh, really?

Dave Jones: Wow.

Chris Gammell: I don't think Renaissance. You went to the Renaissance thing, right?

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: They don't do it. Yeah. They don't do a big conference anymore. I don't think.

Dave Jones: They don't do a DEF CON. OK.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I don't think so. I should probably double check my. But like embedded systems conference is one that I used to go to all the time. That was in multiple cities that got tossed around. And then basically the events company that ran it just went out of business. They just like said, no, we're done. We're done in this space. I think they're still in the security space. I think they run Black Hat still. So some of like, you know, it's an events thing, but it was just like dwindling membership. So like the conferences that I think of kind of in our space in the US are like, well, I think CES is honestly one of the biggest trade shows at least, which is insane. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: But that's more, that's consumer. I know. That's, you know.

Chris Gammell: It is. It is. It is consumer, but like all of the chip companies go there and show up. And so there's just lots of meetings and stuff like that. It's always surprising to me. It's just like, it's just a mass of people gathering. And so then that just becomes this magnetic, the gravitational thing almost. You know, it's like, well, we have to be there because other people are there. And because other people are there, we should all take meetings, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's just like, oh, I don't want to go to Vegas in January. Yuck. Right. And so embedded system conference used to be this thing. And, you know, it was, it kept shrinking year after year after year. And then all the chip companies kind of stepped away from it. I think it was an expensive thing for what it delivered. Fine.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: That's now effectively dead. I haven't seen anything there. And now there's like, there's like some small niche ones. Some of the really niche ones are still around. So like, and not small ones either, like design automation conference is still around, but that's really specific to like layout tools. And then there's a design con, which is in.

Dave Jones: That's right. Design con. There's embedded world and design con.

Chris Gammell: Design con though is really meant for like high speed design. Right. So that's like, like high speed interconnect and like board design and stuff like that. And so it's not like, it's not, if you were say you're a young impressionable person working in analog electronics, such as yours truly. Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a stupid place to go because it's like, there's nothing for you there. Right. Yep. Yeah. And yeah. So, and you know, it's specific to like, all right, like all the design, all the PCB designers from Apple will be there. Of course. Right. Like they're, it makes sense. They want to take meetings with, but it's not a huge trade show either. Uh, and then other things in the U S I'm coming up short.

Dave Jones: I mean, like, well, at least in electronic space, there's a national hardware show. I've got, I just, uh, there's West pack. There's embedded systems conference, design con printed electronics.

Chris Gammell: There's PCB West, PCB East. Yeah. Those kinds of things as well. But like, none of these are like kind of the same level of like, like, so like embedded world, even though it's called embedded world, it's really electronic show. Right. I mean, it's like a cross spectrum, like they should call it electronics world or something stupid like that. But like, it's surprising that it is like embedded focus, but like that, at least fine, whatever it's, whatever they want to call it.

Dave Jones: Uh, I, I have asked AI, I have asked Grok. Here is a list of electronics engineering shows in the U S. Grok is the X.

Chris Gammell: It just, it just made it, it made all this stuff up. Right.

Dave Jones: They've got the Delmar electronic show. I actually have a t-shirt from that. Um, there's the magnetic show. There's the CES, uh, consumer electron. No, there's a consumer electronics and electronic components show by global sources. And, uh, CES, they're the only ones that list. So that was a lame list because they didn't include like any of the others we mentioned. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because the thing is they're not really like DAC is not really an electronic show. Right. I mean, it's like really meant for like, like layout tools and, and including in the Silicon space too. And there's other, so PCB West, PCB East, like I said, um, I think there's other Silicon conferences. There's a ton of like, uh, computing shows. So like IEEE style symposiums. Yep. But that's not a trade show. No. No. No. And then there's like electronics education stuff, like ECE, E-E-D-S-A, whatever the hell that is called. It's like the, the design, the department heads association. Right. Of like electrical and computer engineer. E-C-E-D-H-A. That's it. Yeah. So not a ton. I mean, like, and I don't know. It's fine, but I wish there was more in the U.S.

Dave Jones: Well, you wish there was more. Jeez. You know, we've got one here in Australia, although there is national manufacturing week. I was invited to national manufacturing week by one of the exhibitors there. They wanted to know if I was showing up. Right.

Chris Gammell: But if you just look at the difference in the amount of electronics being done. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It doesn't really match. I would expect that. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I would agree. Yep.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And like the other thing too, is that like there are some, there are some trade shows in Asia. Like I feel like, you know, I've got like, why not have big trade shows in like Shanghai or Shenzhen and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I get invites to those occasionally. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you do. Okay. Like I don't actually hear about those at all. I feel like that would potentially be one to go to, but I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: So yeah. Oh, Sensors Converge is another one too. That's in, that's also in the Bay area in June.

Dave Jones: Well, I do believe I know someone who has experience doing, running shows.

Chris Gammell: Yes. 300 person trade show in Chicago.

Dave Jones: Come on.

Chris Gammell: You're saying that I should take out multimillion dollar loans and start up a conference.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That sounds like a good.

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no, dude. You use someone else's money. Otherwise you do it wrong. Someone else's money. Yes. Yes.

Speaker ?: Yes.

Dave Jones: Yes. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Right. And then when you lose it all, I'm sure they're just cool with it.

Dave Jones: They are. They will actually fund your next thing. That's the fun thing about it.

Chris Gammell: Dude. VCs.

Dave Jones: They're dumb. They will fund your next thing.

Chris Gammell: Gather round children. Let me tell you a story about a mythical creature named Adam Newman who burns money and then they give him more money.

Dave Jones: They literally do.

Chris Gammell: I know. I know they do. But that's on them. That's on them.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's the WeWork founder. If people don't know, that's the WeWork founder. Yeah. WeWork. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: They've actually gone under, right?

Chris Gammell: Oh, they are. We're in bankruptcy. Bankruptcy. Bankruptcy. Yeah. They were in bankruptcy protection at some point. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Got it. Yeah. I'm sure we talked about it.

Chris Gammell: Who cares? I think one thing that it probably tells me is that I think one of the problems in all this case is just that there's not travel budgets like it used to be. I think that is probably the biggest thing. Yeah. Probably. Even if you had one in, you know, say you had like a huge show in like Dallas or the Bay Area or whatever, like just companies don't, hardware companies don't have margin to send engineers. They're like getting used to not sending people to shows. It's freaking expensive.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's expensive. Yeah, exactly. You know, like.

Dave Jones: During the good times. You can drink a lot, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I mean, yeah. When I was working at Altium, that was definitely the good times financially.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, sure.

Dave Jones: And we had more people, we had more people on the, more employees on the trade show stand than there were people attending, like actually coming to the stand. We, we, we set like 50 people. It was huge.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's nuts.

Dave Jones: And like, you know, like it must have. I feel like that kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: It also ebbs and flows in terms of like the priorities of the executive. Like I think it's just out of style right now, at least in the US right now too. You know, so some things they have to feel like they have to be at, but even this year, I noticed a lot of people that I know at various companies were not at Embedded World because it's, like you said, it's expensive. And anytime it's like, it's not rip roaring where.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And sometimes it, and that shows up in the yearly Christmas party as well. It's like I've worked at companies where we had our own fireworks display on Sydney Harbor. What? Yeah. They had their own barge with fireworks. We were at the museum. We were at, oh, what's the museum? There's a little tiny museum at the Rocks there. So the Rocks is like a really expensive part of Sydney. And we hired that venue for our Christmas party. And we had our own fireworks barge on Sydney Harbor went off for like 10 minutes of fireworks. Yeah. Just to celebrate our companies. It was ridiculous, right? But they, they were the good times. And that was before they retrenched. That was a couple of months before they retrenched like a third of the company. Yeah, that's why. Yeah, yeah. That's why it is. Right. They, they, they literally burnt the money. I mean, it went up in smoke. It was pretty spectacular.

Chris Gammell: You know, the, the real cost of a fireworks show in Sydney Harbor is actually not the, it's not the cost of the fireworks. It's actually the replacement ducks you have to get once you burn up all the ones that the fireworks land on. So. Oh, got it.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: All those drop bears. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. The drop bear replacement costs. Yep. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Anyway. So yeah. Yeah. I would say that where I would rank now the last couple of years, um, as not good financial times. So yeah. Yeah. I mean. I can see why it's. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Unless you worked at a broker like two years ago.

Dave Jones: Ah, right. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Have I mentioned lately, I hope they all go bankrupt and that they, um, they lose their houses. Is that too mean?

Dave Jones: Yeah. That means you could lose your, uh, 401k. You, you want that to happen?

Chris Gammell: I'm talking about part chip brokers, Dave. I'm talking about the people that took advantage of. Oh, I thought you meant to like stock brokers. I thought you were talking about stock brokers. Throw them under the bus with me. Come on, man. Chip brokers. Nobody likes chip brokers.

Dave Jones: Although they just, uh. Stock brokers. Well, they just discontinued breaking news, straight off the teletype. Um, Z80 of, oh, sorry, I don't have a link, but Z80 have apparently announced that they're discontinuing. Oh, sorry. Zilog. Zilog. Zilog are announcing that they're discontinuing the Z80.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Zilog, a little fuse company. Boy, that, that's, uh, that's, that's weird.

Dave Jones: A little fuse? I was bought by little fuse.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Really? Yeah. That's what it says. That's what you're asking. Oh my God. I'll send you the link.

Dave Jones: Oh, all right. Oh, please. Yeah. Oh, that's hilarious. When you're bought by a company that makes little bits of wire that melt. Yeah. Yeah. You know, a semiconductor company that's been bought by a company that makes little bits of wire that melt. Yeah. I mean, oh, geez.

Chris Gammell: I, I, I, we can use these for.

Dave Jones: Oh. Oh. Oh, that's bad. Okay. Where's the link? I mean, I got to see it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, sorry. It's in, it's in StreamYard. It's in StreamYard. Sorry.

Speaker ?: Oh.

Dave Jones: Don't see it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. New, new definitions of burn and testing, right? It's like, well, you're going to be our test subjects. Zilog parts.

Dave Jones: Oh God. Yeah. Anyway, that's pretty sad. Is that 80? Cause it's, you know.

Chris Gammell: I think it's, well, is, is it all Z80 or is it just the Z84, C100? Or C, C00?

Dave Jones: Don't know. Don't know. Yeah. Yep. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Do things still use this? I guess they must, right? I mean.

Dave Jones: Few legacy systems probably still use it. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. There you go. Of course you can get the spin-off microcontrollers. You know, you can get the spin-off microcontrollers. I think they still have a small fan base. Okay. But yeah. The, which is the Z8. It's, it's, it's a Z8 micro. I think, you know, you can still buy those. Still people who use them, swear by them. But yeah. I don't know. Legacy engineering. That's key.

Chris Gammell: Did you ever, did you ever use the Z80?

Dave Jones: I have. I've worked on a couple of products that was Z80 based. In fact, that was my first job. Oh, okay. Yeah. Our first, yeah. Yeah. Working on CCTV security systems. They were all Z80 based. I didn't actually design them, but I certainly worked on them. So, yeah. They were Z80 based. Yep. That was fun.

Chris Gammell: Your thoughts? Your thoughts on it?

Dave Jones: There was nothing, there's nothing wrong with the Z80. It's fine.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: It's a fine processor. I think it's a little before my time there it is. Well, it's going to be a huge battle between the 6502 and the Z80. Got it. Fanboys, you know.

Speaker ?: So.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Six of one, half dozen the others. Perfectly fine processor for its day. Got the job done. That's all you cared about. And then they spun off the instruction set compatibility into the single chip micros with the Z8 series and stuff. So, you know. Yeah. It's great.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: It probably, it's, but the popularity of the Z80 kind of died with the end of the micro, the home micro era. Probably late 80s, early 90s at, like most. So, yeah. Anyway. Yeah. It kind of died. Whereas, you know, Intel's still going, right? It's still, still backward instruction set, backward compatible, right back to the original 4004. You know. It's like all the 8008 at least, I think. So, yeah. Anyway. But you can still buy the Z8s, Z8 micros. Because not many people use micro controllers anymore. But there's lots of spin-offs from that. But I think, don't quote me on that, but the Rabbit 2000 processor, which I used at one point, I think that was an instruction set spin-off from the Z80. So, don't quote me. But I think there are quite a few that are spin-offs from the Z80. So, it kind of lives on in many other architectures.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Cool. I was watching your mailbag about the jumperless. I'd seen the jumperless. Oh, yeah. The jumperless breadboard.

Dave Jones: But hang on. Just, yes. I am correct. The instruction set of the Rabbit processors also closely resembles the instruction set of the Z80, Z180 family.

Chris Gammell: Oh, we've definitely mentioned the Rabbit on here. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: Rabbit 2000. I'm sure there's others that are all. Yeah. Yeah. Because you use that on like a test stand you said or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. On a test instrument. Yeah. Yeah. That was designed. Yeah. Anyway. Yes. Back to the. Breadboard.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The jumperless breadboard. I had seen this one. So this is like one. So like it's backlit, right?

Dave Jones: It's backlit. There is a lead behind every row on the breadboard. It lights up individual channels. And I think it won the Hackaday Prize or it was in. That's where I've seen. Okay. Or it was in the Hackaday Prize. Right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So what's your take on it? I mean, like, is it.

Dave Jones: Have you watched my video?

Chris Gammell: No, I haven't. Sorry.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, there you go. Okay. The too long didn't read from my video. Cause I did like 18 minutes on it or something in the mail. It's quite long. 18, 20 minutes or something. The TLDR is, it's one of the most amazing thing. One of the most amazing ideas and executed concepts I've ever seen, but I don't get the point of it. Like, I don't get the practicality of it. It's just like, I don't understand who it's for.

Chris Gammell: Education? Not education?

Dave Jones: No, it's just, he just did it because, um, what's his name? Flux? Arca, I'm going to butcher the pronunciation.

Chris Gammell: Oh. Arca-tuthis?

Dave Jones: Arca-tuthis Flux. Sure. Arca-tuthis Flux, I think. He's the person.

Chris Gammell: I guess if it's, if it's, uh, Latin, it's probably, there's more, there's more, there's more, there's more. But, uh, yeah, sorry.

Dave Jones: I, I forget. Don't have a tongue.

Chris Gammell: Arca-tuthis? Arca-tuthis?

Dave Jones: I'm glad you can't pronounce it either. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker ?: Flux.

Dave Jones: Anyway, um, it looks like he just did it for kicks, which is great. Hats off. If I, if I was still judging on the Hackaday prize, cause I have been a judge on the Hackaday prize, yeah, it'd get, it'd get top marks for me too. Even though there's, I, even though I think there's essentially no market for it, I don't see who it's marketable to. I just think it's really cool. Right? Yeah. It's just, yeah, it's awesome. And some things can just be awesome on the, for their own sake. Right? It doesn't have to have a practical market. You know, um, there is a niche.

Chris Gammell: Um, I have, uh, I just remembered a product I saw in better world that is that same, that same thing. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Same thing as cool, but like you're standing there scratching your head going, who's going to buy this?

Chris Gammell: No, also education based. It's also education. So like education becomes the default. So Robert Nelson, who works with, uh, Jason Kreidner on Beagleboard stuff, he's a DigiKey employee and they basically put together this new thing where it's basically like a, a down camera. I did a video about it, but I didn't publish it anywhere yet. Um, it's like a down camera and then you can have like four and maybe like six like board setups. So it'd be like a dev board. The one that they were showing was like a STM 32 discovery dev board with like LEDs and like a server, a tiny servo. So basically, and then like a down camera so that you could basically kind of time slice and you could have someone log in. They could run their code on it. They could, uh, see the program execute and actually see the physical thing that happens. Right? So like, that's one of the hard things that you could always run a simulator and actually walk. We, uh, so Uri, who apparently works on this spread board thing as well. The one that you're talking about, like, I think walk. We is like one of the best use cases of like, it's amazing, right? Yeah. Yeah. You get to see all your code working, whatever.

Dave Jones: For those who don't know what we're talking about, I'm sure we've done a bit. We've done an episode. Yeah. He's been on the show. Yeah. I'll link Uri in. But the, for those who don't know, it's basically a web-based simulator for different platforms for your Raspberry Pi or Arduinos and stuff like that. And you can physically do everything in the web browser. You can write your code, run it, and you can see the board and you can see things light

Speaker ?: up.

Chris Gammell: You can have a talk to the internet through a, through a, like a emulated wifi connection to it. It's unreal. Yeah. I mean, Uri is a magician. Yes. Um, but I think the thing that still isn't there, right? One of the big things is that like, you know, you and I get into like, well, we got into electronics for different reasons, but I don't know about you, but when I see an LED light up, it's still.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Lights for something to me, right?

Chris Gammell: I mean like the actual, like, it's not on screen.

Dave Jones: Oh, I did something. I made something happen.

Chris Gammell: I changed my, yeah, I changed my environment. That is, that is the, the constant. And like, and so, you know, it could be the most amazing VR thing in the world, but it's still in a virtual environment. Yeah. Like I love walk, don't get me wrong. But it's still a little different. And so this serves that little bit different need. And I wish I knew the name of it. I should look up the name of it, the system I'm talking about.

Dave Jones: I've, I've done a video where I went, where I toured the lab at the University of New South Wales, the engineering lab there. And during COVID, they did exactly this. They, they developed their own system where they would have cameras on little things and they'd have little motors, which actually drive pots, which, which actually, you know, the little arm comes and they, the sliders can go up and down and yeah. Yeah. It's a, yeah. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: And it's like, and in an education context, it makes a lot of sense. I had looked at it from like a hardware in the loop testing, maybe that kind of makes sense. But like, I think for the price, it's at like $3,000 starting price. It was like, it's not cheap either. So it's like, it's tough, it's a tough, it's a tough sell, right? I mean, like it's cool. It's very cool.

Dave Jones: It sounds like the 4,000 US dollar Altium development board all over again.

Chris Gammell: That thing. What is the cost on the jumper list? What does that go for?

Dave Jones: Oh, don't quote me. It's like, it's like 300. Yeah. I think it's like 300 US. I mean, that's like, that's really.

Chris Gammell: I can see. I mean, there's so many parts on it too. Like, you can see why. Yeah, totally. Yeah, totally. I mean, all these things are amazing engineering. It's just like.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Who's the target market?

Chris Gammell: The market and the product. Yeah. The product. Exactly. Yeah. It's tough. It's tough. Yeah. Wow. It is. It's gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous electronics.

Dave Jones: It's fantastic. I was just amazed. That's why I gushed over it for like 20 minutes or something, 25 minutes. And then I, in the end, I had to admit, well, I don't understand who this is for. Sorry.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. But, and basically, and. And the author did actually get back to me. He actually commented on the video and said, yeah, fair. You know. Yeah. Or something along those lines, I think. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, he just did it for his own enjoyment and he sells it on Tindy. If you want to buy it, buy it. If you think it's not suitable for your needs. Oh, well. You know. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you linked to our interview with Uri on your video. Yes. Yeah. Yes, I did. I know. I know. Exactly. This guy's getting soft in his old age, linking to the Amp Hour. Look at that.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Anyway. Yeah. Mentioned in video too, I think.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure. Yeah. Why wouldn't you? Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Promo.

Dave Jones: Jeez, Al. Numbers are going to skyrocket. The Amp Hour numbers are just going to, like, to the moon.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Buy your, buy your Amp Hour tokens now.

Dave Jones: Now. Oh, boy. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Fantastic.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. What's coming up for the week for you?

Dave Jones: Well, if I get some time, if I get some spare time, I do have that project I talked to you about briefly last night. Oh, yeah. That I wanted to.

Chris Gammell: We're not talking about that here? Are we talking about that here? No, no, no. I got a message from David. No, no, no. No, no, really. We can mention that. I happen to be up at four in the morning, my time, like, because my son woke me up. But, like. Right. I was like, yeah, I'll respond to Dave. No big deal.

Dave Jones: Well, it's on the forum. It's on the, I've actually got an EV blog forum thread forum. Sure, sure. Because I ask for people his advice on there and basically.

Chris Gammell: Let them dig. Let them dig.

Dave Jones: But I've basically been, multiple people have now confirmed that, yeah, nah, you're not going to be able to do what you want. You'll have to find another solution. What I wanted to do is I wanted to take the, hang on. What's it called?

Speaker ?: Bloody hell.

Dave Jones: I can never remember the damn name of the stupid thing. It is SIGROC. SIGROC, right? SIGROC. Which is a open source SIGROC with a K, no CK, just SIGROC. ROC. Yep. SIGROC is, if you haven't seen it, it's a.

Chris Gammell: It's a logic analyzer thing, isn't it? Well, no.

Dave Jones: It's scopes, multimeters. It's basically an open source universal interface to almost every test equipment on the market. Got it. It's just, it's support is incredible. Like it supports my 121 GW multimeter. So you can hook up the Bluetooth or that. And then you can feed that in and SIGROC can read it. And then people have written interface, like GUI interfaces around it. So SIGROC is basically the driver. It's like a big, like command line, you know, drivery type thing.

Chris Gammell: It kind of like sounds like a new radio kind of thing where it's like, you can have plugins, you like plugin marketplace type of thing as well. Right?

Dave Jones: Yep. Well, I, yeah, I don't know how it works at the code level, but it's all open source. Anyway, SIGROC, absolutely amazing interfaces to absolutely everything. Yeah. I think it started out as a logic analyzer thing or something. And then they branched out and they supported multimeters and oscilloscopes. So you can do like real time capture and all sorts of things. Right. But I wanted to basically take advantage of that because it already has support for all these different multimeters. Right. So I thought, Hey, why not make use of something that's already written that can already talk to all these multimeters. Right. That absolutely makes sense rather than rewrite it from scratch. And, uh, but I want that to run on a really flea powered micro and everyone's pretty much confirmed with me. No, it's designed for windows, Linux, and there's too much bloat in it to sort of made, maybe you could, if you put a lot of effort, you could like cut out only the bits of code that you wanted and then run that. Um, but yeah, no, I was, I was hoping that someone had already done it.

Chris Gammell: I mean, if you look at the requirements already, you could see it like SIGROC meter, right? So it's a, it's a GUI for, well, that's the GUI piece. Right. But like requirements, Python two or three, PyQT four. Right. Yeah. PyQT graph and let's see. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So it uses all Python libraries and everything. Right. So automatically right off the bat.

Chris Gammell: That's how you get the maximum. Yeah. That's how you get the maximum like interface and like compatibility, you know, like that's, that's the way to do it. Right. That absolutely makes sense. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's just absolutely. Unfortunately, that's not what I need for my project. I need ultra low power. Like by, by low power, I mean, run off a couple of AA batteries for like hundreds of hours, you know, kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think, I think the trade-off here is going to be like that maximum like compatibility and like flexibility. You're just not going to have that. No. That's why.

Dave Jones: I'm going to have to write it from scratch.

Chris Gammell: Low power devices are like always more. I think what, if you were going to do something similar, right. You don't make a new SIGROC, but you make something in like in the, in the mode of SIGROC.

Dave Jones: In the style of that. Yes. That has, that people can easily add their own products and stuff like that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. Tough moving up new things like that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Although I see, how would you, because, you know, if you're talking about like a little micro like that, how would you let users add different functionality? I don't think you can, cause it's not like you can pop in an SD card or something and then like have a text file with some commands in it, because then, then your micro has to be able to read an SD card and then, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I see.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, you could have like, you could have like a standard where it's maybe reading like a JSON file that like helps to decode it. Right. So like it's using some kind of like third, you know, some kind of other data source. So it's not compiled in, it's like reading it at, at a runtime, something like that. Maybe, maybe tougher. Maybe. Right. But then you now make a new file format. People have to match that. Match that. There's like special things on top of it. You know, you can always do things like, um, like, uh, ZMK is a type of keyboard out there. So it's like a keyboard kind of, uh, ecosystem and it's like the Zephyr. It's like based on Zephyr. That's how I know about it. Oh, okay. Um, and people have different versions. They compile it for a lot of different hardware that's out there. Like you can read, go and retarget it. So you could have that kind of thing too, where you basically are targeting different hardware. And then if someone wants to introduce a new thing that this would run on, so say you're building a piece of hardware and then I want to make a different piece of hardware that runs the same project, right? Say, assuming it's an open source project, you could have, you could say, Hey, Chris, well, it's the onus of responsibilities on you to go and make that compatibility layer for that hardware. Right. And maybe you do or don't support everything that the original does, but then you call out what does or doesn't work. That's a little bit different than like the decoding, like you're talking about though. I feel like I feel like the decoding might be totally.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I would separate. Yeah. Like you can separate those things. Or you just have it hard coded in. And then if you want to add a product, well, you just have to recompile the code. Yeah. You just like, that's obviously easier.

Chris Gammell: There's a new thing in Zephyr. I know I talk about Zephyr a lot, but there's a new thing that was just introduced, which is kind of not unknown, but like it's, it's new enough. It was just in 3.5 was just released a couple weeks ago. It's called linkable loadable extensions, LL EXTs. And that could be, so basically that's like a, kind of like a plugin system for an embedded system, right? So it's like, it's basically you have an ELF that would be, you basically load at runtime and you say, Hey, the flavor of this device is now A or B or C, right? And then listening for these protocols or whatever.

Dave Jones: That sounds like the avenue. Like a cartridge system, you know, like video games, you know, you need like a cartridge

Chris Gammell: system and then you sell each one for like 25 bucks. Thanks Nintendo for poisoning my mind. This is how it all works, right?

Dave Jones: Well, they're actually based on ROMs, the old cartridge systems. They were just ROMs and you execute a start from address 100 or something.

Chris Gammell: I mean, that's basically what it is, right? A linkable loadable extension is basically like, okay, you're going to start from here. Run your code from there.

Dave Jones: Run Toad and here it is. Here's your ROM that you've just plugged in, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Make sure you save your game. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So yeah, I don't know. So I'm probably, I think, yeah, I think that has been answered that no, I can't really use SigRock for that. So I'm just going to have to write it from scratch. So at this stage, yeah, I have to investigate how hard it is to have a USB host that actually connects to a multimeter. You know, how much code's involved in doing that and then extracting data from it. I don't know off the top of my head.

Chris Gammell: I don't know how much you want me to mention of our conversation, but I feel like there's an interface layer you're not mentioning that would make it a little bit easier.

Speaker ?: Oh, yes.

Dave Jones: The GAT. The GAT.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Bluetooth. Yeah. Bluetooth. And like, yeah, you'd have to like have a lot of different listeners out there for Bluetooth messages. And you'd also have to potentially pair with the remote device, but yeah, it might be a little bit more abstracted.

Dave Jones: Like it has to pair with it. So how does that happen at the code level?

Chris Gammell: I don't know if they all do. Some of these might just be spitting out. Ah, right. It could do. Remember the toothbrush, Dave.

Dave Jones: Ah, you could just listen. Right. See, that'd be the way to do it. If there's no negotiation. That would be great. If it just spits it out. I probably need to fire up my 121 GW and put it into a Bluetooth analyzer-y thing and see what it spits out. Jerk. We do have some of the document. I mean, we've got the commands documented, but if it's just continually spewing out via a standardized GAT message or something, I don't know, talking out my ass, then great. Then you don't have to pair with it. You don't have to pair with the device.

Chris Gammell: You can just... Not to go back to our toothbrush conversation, but like this is basically what home... It's basically like your device you're talking about is kind of like acting the same way that Home Assistant is, right? Right. Where it's like it knows some subset of devices, tens, hundreds, thousands, whatever it is, of like Bluetooth devices. And it knows the various messages and how to then go and decode those messages. And it does actually pair with them often as well. Not all of them, but I think some of them can actually pair. Yeah. And so... But then once you have that, now it's just listening to data and decoding it and potentially pushing stuff back down the pipe. So...

Dave Jones: There you go. There you go. And I have to do that with several different meters. And if it looks like there's still room...

Chris Gammell: All you got to do is start Home Assistant for DMMs. Got it. You know? Yep. Yeah. And run off a couple of batteries.

Dave Jones: Excellent.

Chris Gammell: Forever. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm sure that's coming to the EEV blog store soon.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. And code written by Chris.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. Run. Run for your lives. Run for your lives. It's going to blow. Oh, boy. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, well. Any last minute things? Because our amp hour's up.

Chris Gammell: It's not up yet. Remember, we started three minutes in.

Dave Jones: That's why I'm winding down. I know.

Chris Gammell: Dave, you just...

Dave Jones: That's why I'm asking for last calls. I'm asking for the dregs. This is the dregs. Right? This is the dregs of the show. We need something suitably dreggy.

Chris Gammell: Have you used any of the 3D capabilities from the cheapy PCB manufacturers out of China?

Dave Jones: No. No, I haven't. But I've heard them. Like, every man and his dog's doing that these days.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's so cheap. I mean, it's crazy.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. It's crazy. I think one of them, or maybe a couple of them, probably more than a couple, have sent me an email. Hey, do you want to try our 3D printing service? Of course. We'll do it free for you. We'll help you do a video. We'll help you come up with project ideas for you. Nah. Like, yeah. Nah. Okay. Yeah, nah. I don't want to advertise your little cheapy... Yeah. I know. Yeah. It's fantastic.

Chris Gammell: It's fine, but it's just amazing.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's crazy.

Chris Gammell: Thinking about what is possible these days.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's nuts. There's no barrier to a startup having a... Like a one-man band startup. I'm talking Midnight Engineering Garage having a schmick-looking product, like a schmick-looking low-run prototype. Like, you could have, you know, build, you know, hundreds of these things for not much cost. Like, tooling cost be damned. There's basically no tooling cost anymore. It's basically gone.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it got to the point where, you know, like, I have a system that I set up where I'm basically, like, 3D printing on my machine, and then I have, like, some milled-out boxes, and I'm, like, customizing that. And I showed you the PCB front plate and stuff like that before. But I got to the point where I was, like, well, I'm doing all this work, and I've, you know, paid extra for milling out these off-the-shelf boxes. But, like, at a certain point, it's just, like, I should just... It almost, like, introduces bad design practices, because it's, like, well, I could just design my own, right? Like, I don't feel like I should be starting from Chris designing a 3D enclosure, right? Because I'm just not as good as, like, some engineer at BudBoxes that is designing this thing with draft angles and, like, highly manufacturable. Right, yeah, yeah, cool. Which is super high volume. Yep. Like, I'm going to be, like, oh, yeah, half a millimeter thick walls? No problem on a plastic part. Yeah, right. Yeah, right, right. You know, like, the first ever 3D print I did that was SLA-based, and it, like, caved in on itself.

Dave Jones: Ah, right, nice.

Chris Gammell: And they're, like, yeah, we'll make it for you. Who cares? You're paying a lot of money.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: But, like, but it is really at that level of, like, oh, I don't know, you could do it, I guess. You know, like, and like you said, it could look good. Even if it's, like, poorly made, it could look really good.

Dave Jones: But, like, I was just 3D printing something yesterday, and I was, like, and I was just thinking about this, because I had another 3D printer manufacturer contact me and said, hey, we're fans of your blog. And they are, like, apparently the founders are fans, apparently. And they wanted to, you know, hey, can we send you the new, our latest printer or whatever? And I was going, well, I've already got a good one. It's like, what am I going to do with another one kind of thing? Right. And, yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: And you were not firing that one up either, right? I mean, you were not, like, using it that often.

Dave Jones: That's it. I use it every six months. And I found out that the PLA material, if you leave it sitting too long, it just goes all brittle or something. And you have to re-hematically seal it if you want to, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So if I get one of those fancy ones with, like, five different types of material and five different colors all lined up in the spools, that's all great. And then I use it for five minutes and then I don't use it for another year. Like, what the hell? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you know, the startup cost. And at that point, you should just go and use some other service, right? I should.

Dave Jones: I should just go use a service. I was thinking this. Like, I used to make all my own boards, right? I used to make a ton of my own boards. Yeah, exactly. Even for companies I worked at, I would actually etch my own boards, right? And then this was back when it took weeks and it cost thousands of dollars just to get one prototype board, right? Just one single-sided, you know, or actually double. You know, I was doing double and you make your own via feed-throughs and stuff. But, you know, like, yeah, like, it made sense back then. But now it doesn't make sense at all. And maybe 3D printers go in the same way as well.

Chris Gammell: I think in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

Dave Jones: I mean, you know, like, it's always nice to have something in your hand in, like, an hour.

Chris Gammell: But, you know. I mean, if there's ever, let's say, a global conflict with countries where a lot of these parts are sourcing from, yeah, the people that are good at milling and machining and doing their own printing and whatever, they're going to be laughing all the way to the product being done. But, like, until then. You know, and, like, and also, like, there's pretty quickly a crossover from, like, the. So, like, even if you're, like, a great machinist and you want to have that skill, which is great. Like, you should learn how to do that sort of thing, whatever. Like, the amount of time it goes from, like, like, when you go from 1 to 10 to 50. Like, somewhere between 1 and 10, you're already, like, way beyond the cost of making it, right? Yes. You know. You're becoming a manufacturer when almost anyone. Yep. Yeah, you should be. Someone else should be doing that, right? You should be going at least to a local manufacturer. And then that's expensive. And, yeah. I'm not saying that low-cost hardware is the answer to all things.

Dave Jones: But it sure helps. Especially in the days of, like, now the modern days of that Tindy and stuff like that, where anyone can set up their little storefront and they can, you know, send it into channels and they can suddenly be, you know, get, like, 100 orders or something like that, you know? Yeah, like, super niche. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it's like, eh, I don't know. Anyway, yeah, but I was just thinking that just the other day with the 3D printer. I thought, eh, like, you know, even if I had these high-end 3D printers, is it worth me even keeping them? Like, and actually keeping them in, like, actual working order, you know? Keeping them, like, maintaining them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, the cost of space and, you know, clutter.

Dave Jones: Space and, you know, and effort and mucking around. Is it, like, yeah?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, time. Totally. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I think the answer for me is, yes, it's worth having one, like, you know, set up so that, you know, at least I have something to, you know. Sure.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, like a backup, right? Yeah, yeah. Sure.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: If people want a real fun listen, go back about, what was it? Probably about 10 years ago. Right. As I worked myself into a pretzel knot. As I try and convince myself that I need a CNC machine. I know. It was great. Boy, howdy.

Dave Jones: It was great.

Chris Gammell: Boy, howdy. Did I not need one? I will say I learned that I knew nothing about machining and that was great. I just. And I learned a lot of bad things. I just thought about that. Bad habits.

Dave Jones: Just the other day, YouTube sped me up a video recommendation. I can't remember the channel, but somebody's channel was that is worth getting a micro mill. Is it worth getting your own micro mill? And I watched like some of it and he's going, oh, yeah, nah. Like, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: There are reasons to do it, but the answer is probably if you're going to get a big mill later. Right, right. And the answer for me was never going to be that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think if I could go back, I mean, I won't change anything about what got me to where I am right now, but like if I could go back and tell myself anything, it would be get better at 3D modeling. That is like, that is the skill that you need, right? And all this stuff. Yes, oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: I totally. I totally need, I need to spend the hours to learn 3D modeling. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: 3D modeling. And then like, and then, and then the next step after that is not going by a mill or a 3D printer or anything like that. It's going like, get your stuff made and then get yelled at by like someone who knows what you're doing. And then they're like, look at this. You have no draft angle here. Like, this is never going to inject from a mold. This is never going to do this. This is never going to, this is a terrible design. Like, great. Like, great.

Dave Jones: Yes, feedback. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that would be, but that's hard to do because the cost and all these other things. So anyways, try and get as much of like the pain pulled forward as you can. Right.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Get yelled at by the gray beard engineer that fixed the frigging Voyager 1, you know,

Dave Jones: software.

Chris Gammell: You know, get that person to like teach you things and you will be in a good spot. And yeah. Keep listening to the amp hour because we'll, we'll have some nuggets in here too, I think.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Someday.

Dave Jones: I also got approached from a company. I don't actually remember their name. They're developing a PCB printer.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: Yay. Yay. And they, you know, love your channel, everything else. Do you want us to, you know, do you want to like evaluate one of our PCB printers? And I'm going like, and I had to like, they're a startup, I think. And they're like, and I like reply back like, sorry, dude, I don't think there's actually a market for these. I'm like, it's, it's so niche. And once again, like, yeah, I think they think that everyone's going to have one of these, you know, and like, and, and I'm going, well, and, and like they were, you had to buy their material or something. Cause if you use their special FR, like their special substrate material, you could do this. And they had like, um, uh, pre set boards, kind of like a perf board that had preset V is in them. And so that you could, but didn't, you know, you can design your prototype around these boards that already have, they plated through V is on them and you can just route your circuit within that. And it's gone. Oh my God. It's like, nah, sorry, dude. No, one's going to do that. Yeah. Like, no one's going to do it. I'm sorry, but your product is like, I like, like I hated to tell them that, you know, but I'm, that's like, I can't see.

Chris Gammell: The market will tell them. Yeah. The market will tell them. And you know what, if the, if you're wrong, then you'll find out. Oh yeah. Totally. Like that's right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And totally. If I'm wrong and everyone thinks this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I've been in the industry for too long to know it's not the greatest thing since sliced bread. It's so niche. Once again, there'll be a few niche people who think, oh yeah, oh yeah, we, we, we need this. We work at the NSA and we definitely need to print our own piece of piece. We don't want to send it out to, you know, to China or whatever, or even to any other company. We don't want to send it outside this building. We want to do everything in house and yeah, fine. Okay. You know, you can sell your machines to companies, you know, like that, but yeah. Yeah. No, sorry. That's tough. Yep. But anyway, I didn't ghost them. I gave practical, and they actually thanked me for my feedback. You know, they thanked, thanked me for my honest feedback. So, you know, yeah, hopefully it helped, but. That's good. Wish them best of luck. Nameless company who I forget. I'm sure you can go find them. Yeah. Anyway. There you go.

Chris Gammell: That's it. All right, man. Well, I think now we're done.

Dave Jones: We're done. Catch you next time. We have an extra 10 minutes. Yep. Yeah. Bye.

Chris Gammell: Bye. Bye.

Chris Gammell: Bye.

Speaker ?: Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Dave Jones: Wish them best of luck. Nameless company who I forget. I'm sure you can go find them. Yeah. Anyway. There you go.

Chris Gammell: That's it. All right, man. Well, I think now we're done.

Dave Jones: We're done. Catch you next time. We have an extra 10 minutes. Yep. Yeah. Bye.

Chris Gammell: Bye. Bye.

Chris Gammell: Bye.

Speaker ?: Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you.