#677 – Watt Is The Deal

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Release September 23rd, 2024. Episode 677. What is the deal?

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: With a microphone that kind of, sort of works?

Chris Gammell: Kind of, sort of, yeah. I apologize. You know, I had announced long ago that my AT2020 gave up the ghost. Yeah. Yeah, I'm now between microphones. I'm on my Zoom H6. So, you know, feedback welcome, but not that much feedback, let's be honest.

Dave Jones: No pun intended. All right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, I have a problem with mine. I've got a Rode, what is it, a PodMic? Yes. Yeah, PodMic.

Chris Gammell: Podcaster NT.

Dave Jones: No, no, PodMic USB, which is different. PodMic USB. Yes, yes. It's a USB version. And while it's a perfectly fine mic, I think there's a discrepancy with Windows somehow. And it's, I'm hearing it in my video playbacks. You know, I can say, listen to my damn voice every single day.

Chris Gammell: You thought it was bad for you folks.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Try editing like 3,000, 4,000 videos or something and listening with your own voice.

Chris Gammell: I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me. Yep.

Dave Jones: And yeah, so it's, no, there's some little artifact in it that I don't, I have not been able to narrow down. So I'm not sure what the hell it is. I'm not sure if it comes across on the Amp Hour or not, but I don't know. I can't even describe it. It's some weird compression-y kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Is the thing where you like, you say words funny and like aluminium?

Dave Jones: Oh, right. That accent feature of these Aussie mics. That's right. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's the problem. Yes. It's Australian made rubbish.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Turn off the AI, the Australian interference.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. I haven't done the AI voice thing for a while because I tried out, you know. Yes. Yeah, it's still. Everything's garbage, Dave. It's still garbage. Yeah, everything AI is garbage these days. Yeah. It was all hype. Yep.

Chris Gammell: There's a lot of hype. You know, it's still coming, right? It's still coming for you. It's coming hot and fast.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it is, but it's not, you know. I think we might have reached, we may have even already reached peak AI. Nah. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, maybe.

Dave Jones: Because it's not going to get, it is not smart. AI is not smart and it's not going to get smart.

Chris Gammell: But that's what I'm betting on. No, no. I think it'll get smarter. It'll do interesting things. It's going to be interesting. But now, and I think there actually might even be some like leaps, you know. Whether or not I care about it, that's the real question.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. I don't think there'll be a...

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's going to take my job even more? Is that what we're hearing? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, anyway, so maybe I should get back in and try the voice thing. You know, how it emulates my voice. Like I trained it on my voice. I used like three or four different ones. This is like a year and a half ago or something. And I trained it with my voice. I even went through their online training thing where, you know, say certain words and everything. And it tries to simulate the voice. And it was shit. It was shit. What, you know, concise summary. Hello? Nope.

Chris Gammell: Damn, sorry. I was muted. Sorry about that. Oh, he's muted. Okay, there you go. I'll adjust my audio down. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. Should we edit that out? Leave it in. Yeah, leave it in. Come on, man.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no, no, no. That's great. It gets like our, you know, our real vibe of Chris is muting himself all the time. Right. Dave is answering the door to get packages, that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. It's all, yeah, it's all.

Chris Gammell: The real sitting in the office.

Dave Jones: The wife's calling me up or, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Or I get a spam. Usually it's a spam call these days.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, a lot of spam calls.

Dave Jones: Are you getting spam calls much?

Chris Gammell: Oh, totally. Yeah? I just sold a house and, you know, all your information goes online. Oh, right. Yep. Buying, selling houses. Like, I applied for a mortgage here in the US and I probably got 150 calls within three days.

Dave Jones: Whoa, really?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Because you go into a public database or something, do you?

Chris Gammell: Something like that, yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, wow.

Chris Gammell: I thought it was actually my lender, the one I had chosen and like I was going through with. I thought they actually sold my info, but no, it's just on the application.

Dave Jones: It's on the public thing. Right.

Chris Gammell: Why you need a phone number attached to that, I have no idea.

Dave Jones: Wow.

Chris Gammell: And then, you know, you're like all these people call you up and they're like, yeah, we can offer you the exact same rate that you have currently.

Dave Jones: Oh, wow. They're trying to scalp the other.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Right. Oh, that's incredible. Wow. We don't have any-

Chris Gammell: Not how I would describe it, but yeah.

Dave Jones: Haven't bought a house in a while, but you know, it's, we don't, I'd never experienced it, never heard of anything like that here. So, but it happens for other things. Yeah, and the bell of a ball. It just happened to me, a mobile phone, right? We finally, I know I've entered the 1990s or something, but we no longer have a home phone, like an actual landline phone. Oh, wow. Even though it wasn't a landline, we haven't had a landline for like 15 years. Yeah, it was like a VoIP phone. But we still had the VoIP. Yeah, we still had the VoIP thing. Yeah, totally. And then we did some remodeling and we took down the phone had to come out. And so we'd been without the phone for like a year and we didn't even notice. And we realized, what the hell have we got this home phone for? Like, why are we paying?

Chris Gammell: Well, receiving spend calls, don't forget that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And right. So we finally decided, no, so I got one of my old mobiles out of the drawer, dusted it off and got one of those little charging stands, you know, it's got the wifi charger on. And so we thought we'd use that. So I got a brand new SIM card. I bought a brand new SIM card with a supposedly brand new number and we got that. And the first day it was switched on. So we're using that as the home phone now, just like an emergency home phone so that the kids can use it if we're out, you know, because our kids don't have a shoe phone, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So can I please get acknowledgement and a pat on the back that my 13 year old child does not have nor does not want a smartphone.

Chris Gammell: Oh, so you know that second one, that was a surprising thing. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yes, does not want. Does not want. Yes. Where's my parent of the year award, please?

Chris Gammell: What generation are your kids? I don't know.

Dave Jones: They're a Z. It's the next one. Yeah, yeah. It'd be Z. None of those Z rubbish.

Chris Gammell: Is it past Z? No?

Dave Jones: No, 2013. Oh, okay. Yeah. Which is, I think, technically Gen Z. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think they're looping around maybe to Alpha or something like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something. It's very, yeah, it's borderline. But, you know.

Chris Gammell: You know, all the listicles and stuff, they're being written now.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: How is Gen Alpha different than Gen Z? Gen Z.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Who cares? Gen X all the way with LBJ.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Sorry. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: That is impressive, though, that kids don't want one.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it doesn't want one. Anyway, we started getting spam calls.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Like, on this brand new number.

Chris Gammell: Like, on what the? They were dialing. Come on. There's just, you know, 001, 002. Right. It's random, you think. Okay. Oh, totally. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. So, I thought, hey, you know, maybe we entered, auto-magically entered some database somewhere because we registered a new phone, you know. No. Or maybe it's a recycled number. Like, are they actually recycled? I don't know. But, yeah. Like, first day, yeah. Started getting bloody spam calls. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Yeah. Anyway. It's so sad when you know they're not actually targeting you. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's what you really want. You want to feel special. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Like, they actually deliberately targeted me.

Chris Gammell: You want to be the only person who sent a very fancy scope, not all the YouTube influencers. By the way, Keysight, I'm waiting for my HD3, by the way. Oh, you're waiting for your HD3. You want your HD3? I saw Dave got one. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Dave gets one. Yeah. I got one like 12 hours before it was released. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, customs. You know, customs is tough.

Dave Jones: But I, once again, can I have a pat on the back, please? I did an unboxing and first impressions review video that was like 50, 40, 50 minutes long or something. And I did that all within 24 hours. Okay, that's impressive. And I still went to the gym. I still dropped the kids off at school. I still went to the physio.

Chris Gammell: Dave and I were supposed to record last night and we got our wires crossed. And so instead I watched Dave on video. And then I went to bed. My condolences. Yeah. Yeah, it was good. I enjoyed seeing inside of there. But you put into the video, Dave's doing the teardown, you know, usual.

Dave Jones: Oh, the teardown was later. The teardown was a different. Whatever. That's what I was watching. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But you said there was like a little thing on the screen that said, wait until later in the video, what's under these heat sinks is actually something, something. I don't know. And then you didn't actually explain it. So what is under those heat sinks?

Dave Jones: Yes, I did. I did explain it. No, you don't. You probably didn't watch the full video, dude. I watched the whole thing, man. Dude, I explained it. Well. Like I couldn't physically get the heat sinks off, by the way. Yeah, I knew that.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But I guessed what was under there because I thought, right, there was two new 14-bit analog to digital converter chips and there was the new Megazune 5 ASIC, right? Because there were three-

Chris Gammell: Megazune 5 ASIC many, many times.

Dave Jones: Yeah, there were three ASIC chips. No, but I explained it.

Chris Gammell: You kept saying Megazune 5 ASIC.

Dave Jones: Megazune 5, yes.

Chris Gammell: Yes, Megazune 5.

Dave Jones: Waited 13 years for that, by the way.

Chris Gammell: Megazune 5.

Dave Jones: Yep. 13 years between the Megazune 4 and the Megazune 5. Wow. It's like a long time. Anyway, I came to the conclusion that no, it must be an all-in-one scope chip. So it must contain the 14-bit ADC and the new Megazune 5 ASIC all in the one chip. And there's two of them.

Chris Gammell: Because you were talking about FPGAs at one point. I know we're talking. Yeah, yeah. People can go watch this. You didn't watch my video closely enough. We'll link this in. Yeah, okay. You're right. Yeah. I didn't take notes.

Dave Jones: And then I even, even further in the video.

Chris Gammell: Because you started talking about an FPGA and I had thought maybe that underneath the cans was all FPGAs and they were just processing memory stuff. No.

Dave Jones: No. No. There's only one FPGA in there and that's not the Megazune 5 ASIC. So it is. And then further on in the video that you obviously didn't watch thoroughly.

Chris Gammell: I totally watched it. I want my money back. YouTube. Hello. Yes, YouTube. I watched a stupid ad. Would it cut you off at the 10-minute mark or something? I would like to reclaim the revenue that Dave got from that one. That .0001c. I am one one thousandth of a CPM. I would like that money back, please.

Dave Jones: I even confirmed with Keysight halfway through.

Chris Gammell: You are why I have an ad blocker, sir.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I confirmed with Keysight halfway through making that video that yes, it's an all-in-one. My theory was correct. It's an all-in-one scope chip. So it's probably a hybrid chip. I still haven't heard back. Because it's unlikely, I think, that you do a leading-edge 14-bit 1 gig bandwidth. That's what I'm talking about.

Chris Gammell: You said later in the video, I'm going to tell you what this is. And then you said, oh, Keysight didn't get back to me. So I think I'm right here.

Dave Jones: I did. Get back. Even later on in the video, I literally said Keysight got back to me and my suspicions were confirmed.

Chris Gammell: Nope. Dude. I know. I shot it. I know what I said and I know what I edited. I want my money back. I want my money back.

Dave Jones: Unbelievable. Anyway, yes, it's an all-in-one scope chip, which is very impressive. Very impressive.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, you know, it has to be a hybrid.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure if Daniel's listening, I really didn't like all the HD3 stuff of a month worth of YouTube influencers and LinkedIn influencers being like, oh, look, it's a box. Wasn't a fan of that personally.

Dave Jones: Oh, there weren't hundreds of them. There were only like a couple, weren't there?

Chris Gammell: Whoever it was. I wasn't a huge fan. There was a couple.

Dave Jones: Medi. Medi did it. And there was another one which I hadn't heard of before.

Chris Gammell: He's only got like 5,000 subs or something.

Dave Jones: I hadn't heard of him before, but he did something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: So.

Chris Gammell: Wasn't a fan. But the scope looks good. I don't get it though. So the 14-bit thing.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: You know, I'm not a test equipment person. Do you need this? Does anyone need this? Yes. Why is this a thing?

Dave Jones: Why is 12-bit a thing? Why don't we stick with 8-bits?

Chris Gammell: Because it's better than 10-bit, right? Yeah. Exactly. 14-bits better than 12-bits. Why not one?

Dave Jones: But it doesn't mean anything unless you've got a correspondingly lower noise floor, right? Yeah, totally. And this one does. It has half the noise floor of the previous versions.

Chris Gammell: But here's the thing. So when is an application? So I need to see, I need the dynamic range of 14-bits, right? Okay.

Dave Jones: If you watch my review video, I show an example in there where I actually pick a 15-microvolt signal out of the noise, or sub-15-microvolt signal out of the noise floor of the spectrum, right? And then I did an AB comparison with a 12-bit scope, and I couldn't see that same signal, right? So it popped out. Yeah, that's not bad. So it popped out of the noise, right? Because of the 14-bit converter. So, yep. All things being equal, of course.

Chris Gammell: But do I care about 14? I mean, that's the thing. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, it did. I'm not using scopes much.

Chris Gammell: My scopes are still in a box, I should say.

Dave Jones: For some applications, yes, you are going to care. It's going to be a big deal.

Chris Gammell: You should not send me a scope. That's what I'm really trying to say.

Dave Jones: It's a big deal.

Chris Gammell: Got it.

Dave Jones: If you have the application for it. If you don't have the application, 12-bit's going to be just fine. The leap from 8-bit to 12-bit was pretty big. Yeah. The leap from 12-bit to 14-bit is smaller, but they've now sent the benchmark. So I guess you're probably going to eventually see 14. It may take a year or two, but you might eventually see 14-bit converters going into other scopes. Even if you don't actually need it, it's going to be a marketing thing, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Rode and Schwartz. Tech. You're going to have to go, well, we win.

Chris Gammell: Rode had the 12 first. Is that right?

Dave Jones: No, they weren't first. Or Teledyne.

Chris Gammell: LaCroix maybe had a 12 first.

Dave Jones: Oh, I couldn't tell you offhand.

Chris Gammell: I remember someone talking about 12, and same reaction at the time. Again, I'm not the target audience here. I don't need this stuff.

Dave Jones: Rigol were first with the low-cost 12-bit.

Chris Gammell: Sure. Yeah, okay.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it doesn't really –

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Here's actually – I can go ask a question. No, no, no. Hang on.

Dave Jones: 12-bits were always a thing in USB scopes, right? USB scopes – 12-bits, like even 16-bits are still a thing. But it's bandwidth, right? It's all about the bandwidth.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, how much you can see in the noise at a high speed, you're saying, right?

Dave Jones: At a high sample rate. Yes, a high frequency. Yes. It's all about – anyone can do 16 – but you put a 24-bit ADC in the scope if you want.

Chris Gammell: Slow it down.

Dave Jones: If you want like 20 kilohertz bandwidth.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Come on.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Seriously. Turn on an electrometer, right? Just see the – Yeah, right. The signal's moving slow enough. Single electron, yep. Yeah, right. Okay. I'm not the target audience. Okay. But I just thought of a place I can go see and ask these questions. Ooh, segue. I am going to Embedded World, North America, which is a brand new conference this year. Where is that at? That is in my old town, Austin, Texas. Oh, okay. It'll be the first time I'm back in Texas since –

Dave Jones: Is it normally in Texas or is it normally in –

Chris Gammell: Well, Dave, if you listened to my review just now, you would know that I said this was the first time they're having this conference.

Dave Jones: Oh, right.

Chris Gammell: The first – yes. Okay.

Dave Jones: Well, the first time – Because you said about your video. That's what you said about your video.

Chris Gammell: If you watched the whole thing, if you – yeah.

Dave Jones: No, I thought this was a thing before.

Chris Gammell: Embedded World is a thing, yes, but that's almost – that has always been in Nuremberg. This is the first time it's ever been in North America.

Dave Jones: Oh, they've never had it in the U.S. before. Okay, right.

Speaker ?: That's right.

Dave Jones: There's my confusion.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I went to Embedded World in – it was in April in Nuremberg, Germany. Yes, that's right. This is going to be different. I'm excited, personally. I'm a little bit worried that it's going to flop because at this point – I mean, we talked about it on the show before. There's not really any trade shows in the U.S. for electronics anymore. You could say Design Con is – Right. It's not my favorite show. It's really not – actually, that's made for the people that are doing high-speed design and stuff like that. It's just not me. But there's no general electronics and embedded kind of thing of scale anymore. I'd say the closest is probably like an ad hoc thing, which is CES in January.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, that's not a thing. I friggin' hate Vegas. That's not a thing for our industry, really. Although companies do go –

Chris Gammell: It becomes like that because it's like, oh, are you going to be – well, yeah, we're going to be there because everybody else is there, right?

Dave Jones: Because everyone else is there, yes. But it's not an electronic-specific industry. Like it's not a – it's a consumer thing. It's actually in the name.

Chris Gammell: Because every chip vendor is there, right? It becomes a ad hoc. Yes, exactly. I know.

Dave Jones: It becomes a design – a de facto design thing.

Chris Gammell: Right. We're talking about Keysight and Regal and stuff like that. And okay, fine. They're going to show off their new stuff even though they're not consumer. They're going to try and talk to all the engineers that are there so they all feel like they have to be there. It's this weird see and be seen kind of thing. Yeah. Fine. But I don't want to go to Vegas. I freaking hate Vegas. Everybody gets sick. Vegas does suck.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and it's just – ugh, yuck. And it's January. It's not that warm despite it being January – you know, Vegas. Like, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Oh, I thought Vegas was warm.

Chris Gammell: In Miami. Why not Miami? I don't know. Because they don't have huge hotels like they do in Vegas. Oh, right. Really? Yeah, yeah. It's a logistics thing. There's only so many places in the States where you can have these big conferences like this. Right. Vegas is one. New Orleans tries to play like that. You know, there's some – Bay Area sort of, but not Bay Area, but like South Bay, like Santa Clara.

Dave Jones: Yeah, sort of. Yeah, so I've been to the one at Santa Clara. And yeah, like they're not huge. They're just like ordinary large hotel, you know, conference.

Chris Gammell: But boy, is it expensive.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So anyways, yeah. So I get it. I get that logistics piece of Vegas. Fine. I just don't want to be there. So this is going to be interesting. You know, Austin. Cool. I moved out of Austin in 2008. I went back very briefly in 2014 for South by Southwest. I saw very little of it. So basically this is going to be like the first time I've been back in the city since – for like 16 years? Am I doing math right? More than that? Yeah, 16 years. So yeah, very different. Very, very different. Got it. And Austin has grown like crazy. So it's going to be really interesting. And yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing people. So if people are going to be there, I'd love to meet up with you. I'd love to hang out.

Dave Jones: Are you just hanging around or do you have a stand there?

Chris Gammell: I'm actually going to be helping. I'm going to be taking meetings. But then I'm also helping out at the Jewelscope stand from Matt Liberty. So past guests of the show, helping with that. Yeah. So I'll be around there. Is that just to help out a buddy or is that – Yeah, helping out a buddy. Also doing a demo there. So yeah, I'm excited about that. Okay. Yeah. It's exciting. So yeah, find the Jewelscope stand and you will find the Chris. Wish I could be there. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, if people have the ability to go – I mean, I want there to be a second year of this. I don't know if that's realistic. But if you can go, you know, that's good. That's the kind of thing where it's like –

Dave Jones: Don't change it, dude.

Chris Gammell: Dave, I had a very bad experience. I bet it's just some conference went down the toilet. That used to be my favorite. And that was the other one. How many years did that go for? It was around a long time before I got started. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: And then it just flopped. It was also – it was concurrent with – I don't even remember the name now.

Dave Jones: Okay. So they joined with something else to try and save it, did they? Because that often happens. They like join up with some other –

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they joined up with other conferences. Yeah. There was a Sensors, one in Chicago. They had different locations. But the real thing was that the production company basically just dropped out and stopped doing it. And then the chip company just dried up and they just stopped – they just stopped showing up.

Dave Jones: Yeah, for those who don't know, these things don't magically happen. There has to be a production and actual events company behind this that want to do it. Oh, yeah. And like so much money. And it has to be financially viable for them. So, yeah, it's got to be – and they usually aren't involved in the industry. They just don't care. It's not that they don't care. It's just that they're not –

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they run a bunch of different types of conferences and they just maximize their –

Dave Jones: Yeah, the latest, I don't know, horse enthusiast conference. Here we go. Yeah, they'll just run all these different – they're an event company. So they run events and, yeah. That's right. If they don't make a return, you know, they've got no – Drop it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. It's the ones who – they ended up running Black Hat as well. Oh, okay. I forget the name of the company. But anyways, we'll see. It's just – it's a huge outlay. And then, again, it's also the – it's a bootstrapping thing too. So you're trying to run an event company. I saw this on a very, very, very micro level running Kicon or Kicon at the time. But it's basically like how do you convince someone that you're going to – you know, how do you convince a vendor who might sponsor you to show up when nobody has said they're going to show up yet?

Dave Jones: No, it's a total trust. In fact, the vendors have to be willing to – Yeah, take a chance. Make a loss on it, even though often you can't directly tie sales revenue with your appearance at a said show. So, you know, it's often – you know, it's just one of those things that they have to sort of do. Oh, yeah, yeah. The quality of leads and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's hard to do. Yeah. I'm hopeful.

Chris Gammell: I'm hopeful that it just sticks around, but we'll see. We'll see. Cool.

Dave Jones: Well, everyone turn up.

Chris Gammell: As part of my demo, I'm going to be doing a bunch of power measurement stuff using a Julescope, so I'm excited about that. But on some of the hardware that is published, I'm going to be doing some network-triggered power modes and stuff like that and putting cell modems into – do you know all, like, the cell modem stuff? I'm honestly not very good with it. How cell modems actually can do power saving?

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. No, because there are – well, I do know that they're a pulsed thing. And the GSM stuff, for example, I think it's – what is it? 218 hertz? It cycles that. And I've actually done a video on that, like, 15 years ago about –

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think we're a little past that, but yes. Yeah, yeah. Yes, right. Yeah, I think we remember your video because weren't you doing it about the power draw of GSM as well? It was, like, really, really high?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yes. Yes, the pulse power currents are very high. And then it does it at 218 hertz rate or something, and then that gets into your audio. And the audio chips that go into cell phones have to have this specific – I think it's 218 hertz. I'm probably getting it wrong, 300 or something. Anyway, they've got to have this actual filter in there to filter out the particular switch-in noise, that pulse-in noise. Otherwise, you get this, you know, buzz in your –

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. 218 is a – that is a note on the piano.

Dave Jones: Yep. So, yeah, all the – I now have to get the – I now have to get the correct frequency.

Chris Gammell: It's almost an A3, right? Sorry. A4 is 440, right? That's A4.

Dave Jones: It is 217 hertz. I was one hertz out.

Chris Gammell: That's pretty close. That's pretty close.

Dave Jones: GSM 217.

Chris Gammell: That's, like, a couple of halftones but below an A.

Dave Jones: Anyway, yeah, yeah, those pulses come. So a whole ton of preamps, microphone preamps and stuff like that will come with this filter built in often so that, yeah, so that you don't get this bloody annoying buzz on your cell phone design. So, yeah. Anyway, we will link you my video on that later.

Chris Gammell: I actually don't have – all the stuff I do these days actually doesn't have – anything with cellular that I do doesn't actually have the capability to do audio. Oh, okay. Right.

Dave Jones: It's just all data. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're – like, the SIM cards are all, you know, IoT SIM cards. There's no actual, like, telephony in the modems. That's what we're saying. Got it.

Dave Jones: So the plan and those cards don't actually support any audio channel at all?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, if you did, you'd have to do it in digital format. Right, yes, yes.

Dave Jones: You'd have to do it yourself. Yeah, you'd have to roll your own.

Chris Gammell: And then reconstruct it, that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But, yeah, there's two modes. One is called PSM. That's Power Save Mode, a very unique name. And then the other one that you hear about is EDRX. And that one's kind of interesting because it's basically like you send the tower a code. Yeah. And I'm not very good at this still. But you send the tower a code. Basically, you say, hey, I'm going to go – and there's predefined lengths. You say, I'm going to go to sleep for about 82 seconds. Right. So hit me back. And so basically you have these timers, and they synchronize. And then there's, like, windows to wake up so that the device knows when to wake up.

Dave Jones: Ah, yes. And the tower knows when to send a ping.

Chris Gammell: But then it's still validated to be on the network and that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Go on. Ah, interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting way around it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That EDRX stands for Extended Discontinuous Reception, by the way, for those playing along at home.

Chris Gammell: And that's made a lot for smart meters and stuff like that too because, you know, you're mostly – it's like super sleepy devices, that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: So the cell tower knows when your device is supposed to wake up.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Exactly. Yes.

Dave Jones: So then you can wake up during that time, and then it won't drop you from the service during the blank periods because it knows that you aren't going to be on because you're in this power-saving mode, you know.

Chris Gammell: Well, power-saving mode is a separate thing, though, as well. So PSM is a separate mode. Oh, yes. Where it's closer to, like, a true sleep.

Dave Jones: So if you're not doing anything, if you're not having to receive or transmit during that time, then obviously you'd shut down.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and some of the new parts that are out too are, like, super, super, super low power. So the new Nordic parts, super low power, one of the new Sony parts, the ALT 13 –

Speaker ?: Sony parts?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, Sony. Sony Altair, it's called. There you go. Yeah. ALT 1350, that thing is a really cool part that's targeted at the smart meter market, really. Okay. It's, like, first and foremost.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: But we're – I forget the specs, but it's, like, microamps of EDRX-style current. Right. Like, really, really low for being a cell motor. And then it's got, like, a bunch of other radios in there. It's got a Wi-Fi receiver in there. It's got a 822.15.4.

Dave Jones: I've got the data sheet up now. Yeah, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no, it's a really cool part.

Dave Jones: Most integrated is the banner claim. Most integrated. Yeah. Most integrated compared to what? Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right, right, right.

Dave Jones: Jeez, yeah, it's got a lot of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and there's so many out there. I mean, like, yeah, all that stuff.

Dave Jones: Speaking of smart meters, I've got the perfect segue.

Chris Gammell: Man, I had a segue lined up, too. But you know what? It's your turn, so. Thank you very much. I can get back to my thing. All right, all right. All right, let's do it.

Dave Jones: I'll remind you at the end to get back to your – Okay, great. See you, right. All right.

Chris Gammell: Two minutes left. Chris was going to say something.

Dave Jones: I literally have a smart meter now.

Chris Gammell: Really?

Dave Jones: I upgraded my old board, my old switchboard at home. You used to have a net metering, so I would have an import meter and an export meter. So I had two separate meters when I installed my solar. So it knows how much I'm importing from the grid and it knows how much I'm exporting. And that was just a manual thing.

Chris Gammell: They're separate devices? They're separate meters.

Dave Jones: Physically separate meters, yes.

Chris Gammell: Oh, interesting. Interesting.

Dave Jones: And you can see it in any of my solar videos where I show my switch panel. I've got two physically separate meters and somebody has to come along and actually read the number off it and note it down. So there's no comms in it at all. It's just a dumb smart meter.

Chris Gammell: Are you talking about the old one now or the new one?

Dave Jones: Yes, no, the old one. The old one.

Chris Gammell: Okay, I was going to say because usually the dumb ones are not referred to as smart meters. No, no, they're dumb. Yeah, we got a baseline. Got it.

Dave Jones: Baseline net metering. I just had it upgraded to the smart meter now. So I've got one of these newfangled. It's an EDMI. I think that's the- EDMI. EDMI smart meter. That's the company's- That's the brand? That's the brand, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: EDMI smart meter. Yeah, I think it's EDMI. Yes, it is. EDMI, which is a huge, huge brand. And it's got a cell modem thing in it, right? Yep, yep. But you can have many different options. You can have a mesh network one, which I think they have in Victoria here. Okay. And so it's like the various states will be different. Like Victoria will be different in New South Wales. They'll have their own standards, you know, for these sorts of things.

Chris Gammell: I mean, the lack of contiguous nature between- It's like a Wild West sometimes too, like, yeah. Literally in Texas, the grid is completely separate from the rest of the United States. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. And that's just in the states. And then, you know, you go to different countries. And, you know, Japan has different phases. And, yeah, different frequencies. And it's like so much history and weirdness, you know?

Dave Jones: No, even though our states are physically connected, the actual grids in our states are physically connected. No, they have different smart meter standards. Okay. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: And that also is like power companies too, because you have basically like legal monopolies. But then they're like, well, we're big enough. We're going to do our thing and we're going to define it like this and screw those other guys.

Dave Jones: And it's not the power company that owns it. It's not the power company you're with that owns it. It's the line distributor which owns it, like who own the lines and everything, who own the copper and everything. They usually own the meters as well. Oh, I'm not sure that's the case here. And then which energy provider you go with, it doesn't matter. They don't own the meter. They just read the data from it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I guess when I think about it here, so where I live, it's Duke Energy and they own, I guess they are the distribution, but then you're saying that the people you buy your power from, often that's a marketplace.

Dave Jones: The people you buy your power from, that's different again.

Speaker ?: Got it.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay. All right.

Dave Jones: In fact, that can be different again, because there's a company that owns the lines, then there's companies that own the generation plants, and then there's a company that will charge you for the power. And they're all different. Yeah. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And you know what's in between all those? It's spreadsheets.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Spreadsheets and billing systems written in COBOL.

Dave Jones: That's it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, so I've got a newfangled smart meter, right? So it's supposed to track time of day usage and all that sort of stuff. So in theory, I could sign up to a plan that has different time of day. So if it offers me cheap energy or zero-cost energy at some window during the day, I could charge my EV and my battery using zero-cost energy, right? So in theory, that's possible now. But I'm not on that plan yet.

Chris Gammell: But you generate so much of your own, and you store it now too.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yes, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: I store it, and I've still got tons of excess. And we're just out of winter here. I'm still pissing away 20 kilowatts hours a day.

Chris Gammell: It sounds like you should start it. You should, you know what? Shut down that pool. Open a smelting plant. That's what you should do. Right. Okay. There's one thing that Sidney-ites love. It's industrial machinery in backyards.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's, yeah, council approved. Absolutely. Yeah, no problems.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: So anyway, so I've been monitoring this thing. I've had it on for a couple of weeks, right? And there's an EV blog forum thread on this, which I can actually link in. We'll try and add that in. I will send you a link.

Chris Gammell: Yep, yep, yep. Okay.

Dave Jones: And I've been monitoring this. So now I get automated data.

Chris Gammell: Who watches the Watchmen? Well, people without real jobs, that's the answer. Right. Like me.

Dave Jones: So I'm watching the data every day, right? Because now I get daily updates. I can't monitor it live, so my energy provider doesn't provide that ability.

Chris Gammell: So there's like a portal?

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. There's an online portal and it gives me a daily figure. So it gives me a daily figure of how much I imported and how much I exported from the grid. Okay. So I've been monitoring daily. And then it was giving me one kilowatt hour a day or something like that. No, 1.8 kilowatt hours a day I was still importing, right? So I was still importing energy. I can actually show you. I'll send you a image. Here you go. I'll send you a image. Oh, anyway. I'll try to send you an image. All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I was looking at all my other data because I log, you know, I have other solar monitoring systems. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You have tracking and you go through those panels, through the battery system, all that stuff.

Dave Jones: And then I'm looking at it and I'm going, I shouldn't be importing any energy at all because my battery doesn't discharge. So my battery should be able to provide all of my energy requirements.

Chris Gammell: I have a guess here, but I think it's a kind of a crazy guess. No, give it to me. Is it the power that the power company requires that they run the smart meter off their power and that they're charging you for that?

Dave Jones: That could be very close. Oh, okay. Well, this smart, no, because we're talking about 50 watts here. You said 1.8. We're talking about 60 watts or something. Oh, 60 watts. 60 watt discrepancy here.

Chris Gammell: Wait, how much? Sorry. No, I didn't catch that. I think you said kilowatts. I think you said 1.5 kilowatts.

Dave Jones: Yes, about 1.8 kilowatt hours per day, but you've got to divide that by 24 hours.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Kilowatt hours. Yeah, classic.

Dave Jones: So it turns out to about 60 odd watts, right? Sort of continuous average somewhere. 60 is pretty high for a meter, yeah. That's a fair bit, right? So I don't think it's the meter because 60 watts, geez, it's only a small little thing.

Chris Gammell: It's like 5 amps to 12 volts, right? Yeah. That would be pretty toasty.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it'd be very toasty. So anyway, so I was guessing, like people on the forum were guessing what this is. And the general consensus seems to be it's probably your solar, your battery inverter, right? Because they have this on-grid trickle feature where you can actually program. You can actually program how many watts is set so that it keeps a continuous grid connection. But mine was set to 5 watts. Mine was set to 5 watts.

Chris Gammell: Powered down? Is that the idea?

Dave Jones: Yeah. So it doesn't think it's not joined to the grid and it-

Chris Gammell: Got it. It thinks it's like a dead connection. Yes.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Interesting. So there needs to be some sort of small amount of energy it takes to know that it's still on the grid, right? So I thought maybe the battery's not providing that and the grid's actually providing that and I'm not seeing that on my other monitoring systems. And yeah, but it was set to 5 watts. So I changed it in the last five days ago. I changed it to 50 watts to see if I'd see an increase. And I did see a bit of an increase, but it wasn't, it was like one fifth of what I expected. So I still don't know what the hell is causing this.

Chris Gammell: You wouldn't be able to do this with like a current clamp or anything like that, right? I mean, like this isn't-

Dave Jones: I, it gets, I'd have to get behind my switchboard and actually insert, you know-

Chris Gammell: 14-bit, 14-bit ADC, that's what you're saying.

Dave Jones: Right, 14-bit ADC and a kick-ass current clamp, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right, right. Okay, so yeah, just to think about, so you have power coming from the local grid, coming through your smart grid, sorry, through your smart meter to some, to your, just to your board, you're saying, right? This is just net import to your distribution panel.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: And you would need to then see that going in that same direction. Yes, I'd need to see it going in the same direction. Like a quarter amp, basically at 240, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: But I've physically got a clamp for the energy flowing out. And I'm not seeing it. So I don't-

Chris Gammell: Energy flowing out of what? Out of your whole system or what?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. I am not seeing anything flow out to the grid, which is what they, sorry, is flowing in from the grid, which is what they claim is happening. And they're charging me for it, right? Sure, it's only a small amount. It's only, I don't know, cents, you know, it's only tens of cents, right, per day. It's not much. But still, I want to know why it's not zero. And somebody in the EV blog forum thread, they actually design energy meters. And they said, and they worked out the calcs and maybe it could be with inside the 1% tolerance of the meter. And it's like, oh, geez. Okay. Well, that's kind of disappointing. Maybe, you know what it really is, Dave?

Chris Gammell: What? You really got to put on your tinfoil hat and be like, you know, it's cents for you, but multiply it by every customer.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, multiply it by every one. Now we're talking real money. It's the Superman. It's Superman 3. Yeah, it's the Superman 3. Superman 3.

Chris Gammell: Or the office space, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, yep. You put it into account.

Chris Gammell: It's ours. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yep. Anyway. So, it's interesting. Still have not figured out what the deal is there.

Chris Gammell: What the deal is?

Dave Jones: But it could just be the residual.

Chris Gammell: What is the deal?

Dave Jones: What?

Chris Gammell: What is the deal? And we found our show title.

Dave Jones: Oh, what is the deal? Yes. Yes. Okay. Got it. All right. I've just sent you an EV blog forum link, which has the image on there of my daily thing.

Chris Gammell: And there's this small residual. How's your battery system going?

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's great.

Chris Gammell: No problem?

Dave Jones: It's great. Yeah. Yeah, once I did, before we did the upgrade, when I originally had 15 kilowatt hour capacity, that just wasn't quite enough to handle some of our nighttime needs. But now I upgraded it to 25. We have never, the battery's always done, haven't even got close to running out. So, maybe there might be some freak day where, I don't know, we have to panic and we have to charge the EV and we have to run the oven for 10 hours and we have to run the dryer because it's rained and we have to, you know, I don't know. But yeah, it's pretty good. So, 25 kilowatt hour battery at 80% because I'm only using, I've only set it to use 80% of that capacity just to extend its life.

Chris Gammell: Sure. So, that seems to be enough. I do that on my EV. Yep. Yeah. Cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, that seems to be enough. So, I'm very happy.

Chris Gammell: That's really great.

Dave Jones: But come summertime, I don't know what I'm going to do with the excess energy.

Chris Gammell: I'm telling you, smelting. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I can't even dump it into the pool. I'm already doing that and still I'm getting up to 20 kilowatt hours a day.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, you don't want the pool to be super hot though either, right?

Dave Jones: Well, not especially during summer. You can't dump it.

Chris Gammell: What if this, Dave? What if you helped climate change and you just air condition the outside?

Dave Jones: I'll air condition the outside. No worries. I'll change the orientation of my- I'm doing my part.

Chris Gammell: Straight up in the air.

Dave Jones: Oh, just reverse that air con and face it outwards. Yeah. Bingo. Yep. That's it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, boy. And then you dump heat into the house and what do you do with that heat in the house? You air condition it with the other air cons. Oh, right. So, I can just- Boom.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's like some kind of perpetual machine for energy, right?

Dave Jones: Because damn it, the grid's not going to get it. I'm going to piss it away myself. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: What are the resale rates at these? Oh, $0.08. Anything or no? $0.08.

Dave Jones: $0.08 per kilowatt hour, $0.07. Maybe with this new smart meter, I might be able to find a-

Chris Gammell: Get a really long extension cord and broker your own deals to a smelting plant. Yeah, yeah. Oh, smelting plant. Well, your neighbor's smelting. Yeah. Yeah. Smelting.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. So, anyway. Anyway, there are other options, so I will investigate other plans, which I might potentially be able to do.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, Bitcoin mining. You know, that's like an energy intensive thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I can run. Yeah, I can dump the Bitcoin. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It generates heat. Again, same problem.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right. Oh, well, just use more energy to even cool that down. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Our mutual friend, Martin Lorton. He's got a Bitcoin miner as a heater in his shed.

Dave Jones: Oh, he's actually still doing that, is he?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Right? Because usually these days- He's getting a lot of Bitcoin these days. Yeah, right. These days it's not very profitable. You basically have to have free energy for it to be profitable. Yeah. You can't even buy it.

Chris Gammell: Well, it sounds like you have excess.

Dave Jones: I have excess free energy.

Chris Gammell: You should box it up, send it to North Carolina. All right. You can open it, use it, you know. Yeah. There you go.

Dave Jones: All right. Anyway, yeah, I'm kind of annoyed that there's this offset thing there, and it might be explained by the design of the unit. I think you might be splitting hairs.

Chris Gammell: I think you might be splitting hairs, but you know what?

Dave Jones: Yeah, but I'm paying like 50 cents a day for it or something.

Chris Gammell: 50 cents? You said cents.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, no, no, no. It's tens of cents. Yeah, it's Aussie cents too. It's, you know, tens of cents. No, yeah. I mean, that's like five cents of an American dollar. It's worth 59 cents.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: 59 cents for 1.87 kilowatt hour.

Chris Gammell: What does the kilowatt hour cost there?

Dave Jones: 30 cents. Something like that. Yeah. Wow. On my current plan. My current fixed plan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's, yeah. Got it. So anyway, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I have stepped into the 1990s and I've gotten myself a smart meter.

Chris Gammell: Got it.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Cool. Well, I have stepped into the-

Dave Jones: What's your segue? Hang on. Is this your segue?

Chris Gammell: I'm in the middle of it. Come on, man. Give me a freaking break. Give me a chance. Take a chance on me. All right. I have stepped into the, I actually don't know when this came out. I have stepped into the 2010s, maybe. Excellent. I have been messing around. This is something you've already told me you don't care about, but I'm going to talk about it on here anyways. I've been messing around with Mesh-tastic and I've been trying to explain it to Dave and he's like, I don't care.

Dave Jones: I will pretend. No, it's not. You said I don't care and I have a need for this. I don't, yeah. I don't have a need for it. So, okay. It's cool.

Chris Gammell: I don't have a use case for it either other than to, you know, absorb any spare moments I have outside of being a parent and having a job and pretending that I care about my health.

Dave Jones: You see, the difference is, is that I have a YouTube channel, okay, that needs to be fed with hours of my time, which needs to be fed with all my excess hours.

Chris Gammell: I'm giving you gold. I'm giving you gold here. Right. One Jeff Geerling and his father made a video about this. I don't see why you couldn't. And anyway, so MeshTastic is basically a layer on top of LoRa. We've talked about LoRa on the show. Yes. A whole bunch. L-O-R-A.

Dave Jones: I have tried to use it and being in Australia, it was a pain in the ass.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, it was. Because you guys have, it was because we were talking about-

Dave Jones: We have different frequency standards and you need different firmware.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but that was actually a, you were setting up a gateway and the gateway wasn't made for Australia.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well. That was the problem. It was a software problem. Yes. It wasn't like a LoRa problem or- Oh, no, no, no, no. It was an implementation. It was a thing. Yeah. I don't remember what it was though. It was like a gateway-

Dave Jones: It was something like that. The latest firmware didn't support- The Things Network gateway, right? Is the only thing I remember is that the firmware didn't support the local frequency standards here or something.

Chris Gammell: Was it LoRaWAN though? Was it the Things Network? I don't remember what-

Dave Jones: It was the, it was the Things Network.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it was. Okay. So it was one of the gateways for the Things Network. Yes. And I think now there's better support. Like that project has continued on as well. That's a community project. Oh, yeah. Sure, it works now. LoRaWAN is an industrial thing on top of it where you can license the full server to do that sort of thing. So LoRaWAN and LoRa are different things. LoRaWAN is built on LoRa. LoRa is a radio topology, I guess. I don't know if I'm saying that right. But what I really think about is Semtech chips, right? Semtech chips is a very common thing. They basically have this IP based on the idea that you're sending out chirps and then you can stretch the chirps out to, and they, you know, they chirp up and they chirp down. Many great videos out there about how it works and I should watch more of them. But the idea being that you can send low bandwidth, long distance messages to the point where our pal Andrea Spies has a 240 kilometer, I think it was 240. It was like some really long distance. You know, it has to be line of sight, but it has to, it basically, if you get up high enough, like on a mountain, like Andreas did, you can basically send to, you know, around the curvature of the earth and you can get a good distance with a high gain antenna and you spread this, it's called the spreading factor, SF, you'll see, it looks like SF12 is spread way the hell out and you only get, you know, a couple of bits per second, fine, but then you just, you take a long time to transmit. Then on the other end, when you're receiving that sort of thing, if you're on the right spreading factor as well, you wait around for this message and then you can reconstruct it. And there you go. I think Dave would say Bob's your uncle. So this is, that's Laura generally, right? I've known about this a long time. There's gobs and gobs of projects and libraries. I have some Adafruit breakouts here. Hope RF modules, people will see as well. That has, I hope RF modules, like a five dollar module that has a Semtech chip on it with some radio stuff. People have probably heard about it. I've got tons and tons of Laura boards around, but the limitation for me has always been firmware. Because I can write it myself and I can follow, I can write, I can go get a library and, you know, there's, I forget what it's called. It's called Radiohead, I think. The library for it. And I can, I can follow Arduino tutorials, but it's not that complicated. It's not that, what's it called? Polished? Yeah, it's not polished, but it's also like, you can't do that much with it because it's still, it's still truly point to point. And so then you start to layer different channels on top and you could potentially get a receiver. You can have up to eight channels and get a receiver and do that sort of thing, you know. But again, it's all bespoke at that point, right? It's not standard. So now, I don't know the history of the project. I started watching YouTube videos about it and now I have some hardware and I've had these Helltech boards before as well. These are like $15, $20 boards where it's just an ESP32 and a Semtech chip on it. Well, the V3 is now supported by MeshTastic. So MeshTastic, now we're at the MeshTastic project. So basically, there's a bunch of people writing both an app and then firmware across different boards. And so it supports a bunch of different hardware. So LilyGo makes some hardware. Seed Studio makes some hardware. There's just different hardware makers out there doing this sort of thing. Rack Wireless makes a bunch of great hardware too. And they actually make it now with ESP32. They make it with NRF52840. So like that's a Bluetooth chip that Cortex-M4. So a bunch of different hardware. This is a community project now. So you can go and just either drag and drop firmware or use the online flashing tool to go and flash this hardware. And now I have, so what I have in front of me, I'm trying to describe it. It's basically, it's a Helltech board, a Helltech V3, $20. There's a UFL to SMA converter. So I have cable to an antenna. I have a moderate gain antenna for US frequencies. In my case, 915 megahertz, which is the ISM band. And then all it does, not all it does, what it does is the ESP32 sets up as a Bluetooth interface. And then from my phone, there is a MeshTastic app. And from the app, you can then talk to the Spark.

Dave Jones: You can send a message, right? You can send a message over Bluetooth to the transmitter. And then the transmitter, yeah. So anyone else on the network. How do you see other people on the network? Is it like an open list of people? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So the other thing you can do is you can configure, right? So now you're in the app, you're in the MeshTastic app. You have control of all the different characteristics. Basically, there's like a bunch of registers. But really, it's been simplified to more of like different styles of sending, obviously what region you're in. So Dave, when you set one up, you would set it up for Australia. And it's actually the same chipset, but it would be 904 megahertz in Australia. But you'd still be talking Bluetooth to it. So you'd be using the same app and infrastructure in that way. And you then would be able to set up that sort of thing. And then there's open channels with a shared key. Or if, so say Dave and I were in the same city and we're on the same region. So we're both, say Dave's here.

Dave Jones: We can send a text message to each other.

Chris Gammell: Yes, but we can also.

Dave Jones: Via our shoe phones. No, but here's the other thing.

Chris Gammell: We could also set up a, so this is an open channel, right? ISM band is an industrial and scientific band. And it's open, right? Anyone can use it. And you don't need to have a license. It's unlicensed as well. So that means anyone could see it as well, right? So you are sending that sort of thing. But with MeshTastic, you can also exchange keys, right? So Dave and I can basically scan a QR code, have an encryption key. And now we're sending encrypted traffic over that same channel, which is interesting, right? So basically now we're just talking point to point, right? So Dave talks, Dave's phone talks to his MeshTastic node. It translates. It basically talks Bluetooth. Bluetooth controls the lower radio, sends out at the whatever, you know, whatever spreading factor and frequency that it needs to. Mine, as long as it's said at the same thing, receives it, pings it to my phone. Actually, I have one with a screen on it and a keyboard. That's fine. Now, the other thing, though, is that it's also a meshing capability so that it'll do up to three hops. So now Dave with his unlimited power in his house.

Dave Jones: I assumed it was unlimited hops. You're saying there's only three.

Chris Gammell: You can set it. You can set it. You can set it. But the idea being that you're also forwarding other people's traffic along too. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Your radio becomes like a forward packet, a packet forwarding thing. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Yes. And so, but the thinking about the idea of for 20 bucks, effectively, right? And obviously there's other electronics. If you're going to make it more fancy, have it solar, whatever, you could start to set up nodes. You know, say you're on a farm. You could start to set up your own mesh network and have, you know, you could have messaging across your whole property, whereas you might not have any connectivity. And Wi-Fi is not a good option for that.

Dave Jones: No, because it's power hungry.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so, Dave, you had said when we started talking about this, UHF is good, but you might not actually be able to get that distance without vocal repeaters. You know, you could have UHF repeaters as well.

Dave Jones: Well, I was talking about voice because you tried to sell it to me as something for a prepper.

Chris Gammell: Totally. I actually do. I mean, I think that's the other thing. So, like, a lot of – so, it's interesting seeing who's getting into this field. There are – I would say the prepper archetype is interested maybe because they're –

Dave Jones: They could be. They set up a mesh network with their other prepper friends, you know, kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think that's – and maybe that's an overstatement of what those – the people that I'm thinking about. I'm really thinking about people that are like absolute freedom. I don't want to have anyone peeking into my messages regardless of channel, that sort of thing. So, okay, fine. You and your friends want to talk about something on a completely encrypted channel aside from the limits of cryptography. Yeah, you could do that. Even signal goes – you know, you might be encrypting at your phone, but –

Dave Jones: Yeah, but it goes over via the cellular network, which is all sucked up into the – Right. It's going cellular network.

Chris Gammell: It's going through the internet at some point. And, you know, yeah. And not to sound like a –

Dave Jones: Hi to our friends at the National Security Agency.

Chris Gammell: I was going to say, not to sound like a crazy person, but someone told me the other day, they're like, yeah, you know, if you were the NSA, you could just capture all that traffic. And once computers get powerful enough, you just go and decrypt it all. Yes. It's like, oh, my God. They actually decrypt it later. Like, I never thought of that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's –

Dave Jones: That's wild. They don't have to do it live. They can do it later.

Chris Gammell: Do it in arrears.

Dave Jones: So, if they're probably listening to us now, they're probably thinking – Well, we're not encrypting. Wow. We didn't think about LoRa. We should be monitoring that too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: That's the thing, though. You could set up an SDR and you could just capture all this traffic too, right? There is no completely secure channel. Never, ever. No. Right? There is just – as long as, you know, if you watch Silicon Valley, if the AI figures out every encryption key, you're hosed no matter what. There's always brute force methods. But, yeah, it's probably not worth it to capture, you know, Chris sending from one radio on his desk to another radio on his desk test four. You might be a little underwhelmed when you decrypt that packet.

Dave Jones: Damn, we just expended a week and 500 megawatts of power decrypting this.

Chris Gammell: You know, NSA, if you're looking for some extra power, I hear Dave has some.

Dave Jones: Yeah, totally.

Chris Gammell: You could donate it, Dave.

Dave Jones: I could donate it to the NSA is what you're saying, or the Australian ASIO equivalent, I guess. Bingo.

Chris Gammell: Bingo. You know what? Guys, I bet you don't have those resources.

Dave Jones: You could sell a Pine Gap out there, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there you go. So, anyways, I think it's fun. And so, the things I like about it, one, there's the radio aspect. And it really just is an unlock on, you know, all of the stuff that it does, you could have done on your own. But it's enabling it for people that maybe could have done it, like ourselves, but we never ever would have because of time and scale, honestly, too. But then it also opens up other people. And you might be, you know, so then now people are coming into the, let's say hobby, right? And they're adding to kind of generic meshing as well. You know, so there's also these open channels where people are forwarding messages along. And it's almost like, I won't say it's a revival of ham because it's not ham, right? It's not licensed, but it's... It isn't voice. So... It's not voice. Well, I mean, there's digital modes in ham as well. But it's not even hard. That's the thing. It's literally like buy it and toy with it. And that's what I like. And you see sort of similar things. So, if you follow the MeshTastic subreddit, which is fun, you'll see people transmitting from planes. And then people are getting the messages on grounds on these open channels. And they're like, oh, hey, someone's above me at 30,000 feet right now. You know, it's pretty fun. Okay.

Dave Jones: I was about to ask, is there a map of people using it? But I found it. It's meshmap.net, I think. Nice. Okay. Meshmap.net. So, I'm looking in Sydney. Whoa, there's only one in the northern part of Sydney here. Cool O2. Shout out to Cool O2. Last seen 15 minutes ago. Channel long fast, whatever that is.

Chris Gammell: So, that's like the default. That's like saying you boot up your radio. It's going to be default long fast.

Dave Jones: Okay. So, if I set one up, I would actually be setting up one in between in a null area in between those two. So, there you go.

Chris Gammell: I think this is also... I'm not sure how this is reporting back here, though. I don't know how this is capturing this stuff.

Dave Jones: I don't know how meshmap works. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: If it's like war driving, it's like someone's reporting back. Yeah. So, then there's also... It also has like an MQTT backend, which is kind of cool. But say Dave and I both... So, say I set up a mesh here in Durham, and Dave set one in Sydney, even a custom... Or, sorry, an encrypted one. You could also then forward that traffic along over MQTT. So, basically, an internet backhaul, which, again, happens in HAM all the time. All of these things are just rehashes of the same thing. But then, basically, you know, I'm sending out just a generic message to the Durham channel that also then gets piped over MQTT to Sydney, and Dave wakes up to a test five. Wow! Cowboy! Yeah, I know. I know. I know. The thing that's interesting about this is distance, right? It really becomes a distance thing because it's... You know, you're... I mean, the HAM folks, how about that? You know, you're on a two-meter band or something like that. You can really... You can get some ionosphere bouncing. You could really get some distance. This is not going to be that, right? I mean, this is going to be, you know, kilometers. Not going to be...

Dave Jones: Right. So, how is this... Ultimately, how is this different to the one that I played around with a couple of years back? That was LoRa, right? But I was using...

Chris Gammell: That was LoRaWAN. That was LoRaWAN.

Dave Jones: That was LoRaWAN. So, that's different. So, I couldn't even use my existing hardware that I've got.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. You could look it up. Probably not. I mean, it's probably a safe assumption it's not. Because, like, this is all just targeting low-cost hardware.

Dave Jones: Things Network, right? That was that Things Network thing. Which is different to this.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. So, that's a good comparison.

Dave Jones: So, there's two competing standards here? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: They're different, though. No, they're different. No? So, the Things Network... LoRaWAN generally uses LoRa, right? Yeah. Like we're talking about here. And really, it's meant as a networking mechanism for low-powered sensors, right? So, now it's not necessarily... You probably could have them interoperate. But what I think about is like a temperature sensor sitting in the middle of a field, just bleeping out every hour, 23C, right? Something like that. And then when it got set up, it got an encryption key. Yeah. And then the gateway that you were running basically was running a bunch of software and controlling the gateway node and all the receiver on there, probably a multi-channel receiver, basically saying, hey, any traffic I see, I'm going to forward along over this network. And if I recognize the key is... The key that's being presented along with this data packet is going to show... And usually, it's like multiple layers of encryption there. But the outermost key is going to say, hey, this is allowed to be on this specific network. I'm going to forward the traffic along and not just drop the packet. And then it's still encrypted underneath that. And then finally, it's like a... I forget the typology, but there's a... I think they call it a network server and an application server. But basically, it's like a gateway receives packets, and you can have multiple gateways receiving and then it forwards it along to basically kind of like a database backend. And then you're going to see... You as an application developer is trying to see, oh, look, temperature sensor 25 said that the temperature was 23 at 10, 20 p.m. in Durham, North Carolina, right? So then that's at the internet level. That's already on the internet now. And then you could also send data down in the other direction as well, right? It is bidirectional. That's more of like a centralized kind of method utilizing multiple layers of encryption. But still, it's all lore at the end. So the idea being that it's like... It's basically like giving, you know, quote unquote, internet to a very, very tiny low power thing. Whereas what MeshTastic is, it is literally allowing you to set up a mesh. Now, you could set up... There are sensor nodes that can work on MeshTastic as well. So if you wanted to, you could just say... So now that same temperature sensor that's sitting in the middle of a field in Durham, if you could find a field in Durham, it could also be on the long, fast network and just be bleeping out the temperature's 23. And then that packet might get hopped along, but it's not going to go anywhere unless you have a receiver also on that network and saying, oh, look, I got a new temperature reading. Now I'm going to put that on the internet, right? So like you could have a computer that's listening, but it's much more ad hoc, I feel like.

Dave Jones: Right. So if I want to play with this, I need one of these... I'm on the Get Start page and they recommend the LilyGo.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Sure.

Dave Jones: They recommend that and I'm at the page for that. That's like 15 bucks and it's available in 433 megahertz, 868 megahertz, 915 megahertz, 923 megahertz. Which one do I need?

Chris Gammell: Oh, is it 9... I don't know what the Aussie one is. I thought it was 904 in Australia, but maybe it's 923.

Dave Jones: Well, it's not... There's no 904 option. It's 915 or 923.

Chris Gammell: So the 868 and the 915, they're the same radio. That's the thing.

Dave Jones: Right, okay. Yeah, but I don't want to...

Chris Gammell: But it's literally like on configuration, you would just turn it to Australian. You would just set the region to Australia and it'd be like, oh, whatever the frequency is.

Dave Jones: Oh, there's actually a region setting, is there?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's the first thing you have to do. You have to set the region. When it boots up, it just says unset. And then when you connect it with the first time, it's like, oh, you need a region or else I don't know what the... You could set it to the EU here, right? And you'd be on 868, but you're probably stomping on some... I don't know. There's probably some, not on a license band, but probably some other band that's using 868 in the US.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: You're not going to find anyone. You're not going to talk to anyone.

Dave Jones: Eh, I don't know. I would say...

Dave Jones: I would say...

Dave Jones: I would say... I would say my previous experience.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a lot easier than I think than the other stuff and cheaper. Yeah. That's the other thing. Yours was not super cheap. Oh, yeah, no.

Dave Jones: It was a few hundred bucks.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. It wasn't cheap at all, whereas these things look really cheap.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you can charge that against the Amp or Arfa. I feel bad that I suggested it. You got some content out of it, right?

Dave Jones: I did get some content, yeah. I don't think I got enough ad revenue back there.

Chris Gammell: If you're going to buy anyone who's going to do this, I would say buy two. Because I don't know. I haven't found anyone in the area. Well, and it's just so you could test it out, right? If you buy one and you're waiting around.

Dave Jones: If there's no one in the area, yes, you can't just wait for someone else. It's like, who am I talking to?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Yeah, like I could potentially go between the lab here and home, for example.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, what is the rough distance?

Dave Jones: Oh, we're talking a few k's.

Chris Gammell: So that might be on the limit. You might have to like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you see about going through walls and stuff.

Dave Jones: Especially considering that my lab's in the middle of a concrete building here.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think what's going to be interesting is we're going to see... So the other thing I like about this kind of as a hobby is it kind of pulls together other things, right? So 3D printing is fun. There's a bunch of great designs on Thingiverse and whatever the Prusa site is called. And you can just go download them and play around with them and they're super fun. So that's one, right? You have a 3D printer. I have a 3D printer. And there's the radio piece. But then there's also the kind of like that everything else piece, right? There's a lot of people that are setting up battery charging and solar and just making... Because there really is a very legitimate use case for setting up one of these things to just be a node that's just hanging out and sipping a little power and forwarding messages along. You know what I mean? And if you set up enough of those, I'm not saying it's like a thing you have to do, but if you set up enough of those, you really could start to blanket coverage in different areas. And I think that's fun.

Dave Jones: Okay, cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think our amp power's up.

Chris Gammell: It is.

Dave Jones: Completely sucked it up with...

Chris Gammell: I stomped. I stomped on the bandwidth of this one, yeah.

Dave Jones: It's fun.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I'm excited. I don't know. Excellent. I'm happy for you. I'm also excited. I'm going to be doing another live stream on... Oh, this won't be out in time. Never mind. I've been doing live streams on Wednesdays or Thursdays, so I'm going to go out of the count. I think I mentioned it last time. Yep. So people want to stop by? Great. If not, no problem.

Dave Jones: Cool bananas. And that's on the YouTubes, is it? Only?

Chris Gammell: That's on the YouTubes, yeah. And LinkedIn, but you said you didn't like that, so...

Dave Jones: LinkedIn.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. All right.

Chris Gammell: All right. So if you're going to do this, I'd say check out the MeshTastic docs. I would check out the MeshTastic subreddit. And then, like Dave said, there's a flasher tool even. So I would recommend an ESP32 one, like a Helltech V3, great starting board, super cheap, 40 bucks, and you're in. So let me know if you're going to do it.

Dave Jones: Well, the other board is 20 bucks. Sorry, the other board is 15 bucks.

Chris Gammell: Is it ESP32? ESP32 is a web-based flasher, which is also awesome. You literally plug it in. Oh, I'll send you a link.

Dave Jones: Here it is here. Here it is here.

Chris Gammell: When you plug it in, it's web serial. It's like, oh, I see it. And then it just programs it for you. Like, that's a cool thing.

Dave Jones: I don't know. I just went to their getting started guide and said, buy this thing. And there it is.

Chris Gammell: That was probably great then. Yeah. That's probably the way to go. Oh, yeah. The V2. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. The Lora32. Cool.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: Well, let me know if you do it. Good luck. All right.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Chris Gammell: See you. See you. See you.

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