#694 – Voltage, Vibes, and VOCs

Chris Gammell: Two notes before we start the show today. The first is a reminder that we have a listener survey for 2025. We love hearing from all of you. We love reading your responses and we actually really benefit from that information if we ever have advertisers or anything like that. So we do appreciate it. You can also win a jumper list board. We are drawing three names and we will ship that to you from past guest Kevin Capucho. Thank you to him. Second is, well, we're not the most timely editors here, mostly me, and this was recorded about 10 days before airing. So there's some changing information as things have been changing a lot lately. So just keep that in mind as you're listening. This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released May 21st, 2025. Episode 694. Voltage, vibes, and VOCs.

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'm freshly back from Melbourne. I ventured out of my lab.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yes. How is the wider world? Is it still out there? Is it?

Dave Jones: It's still out there. I did actually survive the streets of Melbourne. Very, you know. All right. Very surprising. It's like going to, yeah.

Chris Gammell: All that wonderful graffiti.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes, yes. Melbourne is like the most chill.

Chris Gammell: It's such a chill city. I'm sure you're talking about some kind of local thing, but I had a very good time there.

Dave Jones: Yeah. We've got like a crime thing there at the moment that's going on. Yeah. It's making all the news. So, you know.

Chris Gammell: Dave, I live in the U.S.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yes, I know. Okay.

Chris Gammell: I'm from the mean streets of the South Loop of Chicago.

Dave Jones: It's a wonder you survived it all.

Chris Gammell: I know. Yeah. Well, I didn't go outside either. So, I mean, as it was. Well, that's great. How was the show? I saw our two-time guest, Scott Williams, hosting.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes, Scott Williams. Yes. I did a talk with him about, so he goes through a product that he developed with someone over two years. So, we talk about that. That'll be a separate video. And he mentioned that he's using your – his team is using your software now.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. Yes. He's a Goliath partner.

Dave Jones: Yes. He's a – oh, he's a Goliath partner. There you go. Yeah. Is he actually plastered all over your website or something, is he, as a Goliath partner?

Chris Gammell: I mean, not all over, but, yeah, he's on there.

Dave Jones: Oh, he's on there. Okay, cool.

Chris Gammell: Mostly, I just get to talk to him every quarter. That's the nice thing. He's like, you know, excuses to, you know, get there and chat. That's nice.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because I was talking to him about that, and he said, yeah, like, for those who don't know, we'll – you know, you can watch his episode on the AM. He's been on twice, actually. That's right. He's been on the AM Power twice. Once a day, once a day. Yes. And he basically runs a design consultancy business, which is getting, you know, quite sizable now. He's got, like, 10 employees or something, right? So a design services company, and the choice is when you're a design house like that, and he does, like, turnkey solutions as well. For those who don't know what turnkey is, it means basically you do the whole job from concept through to production and even marketing, you know, like, yeah, help out the whole way. So, you know, some customer comes to you, I've got this idea for this farting novelty widget thing. It's going to make a billion dollars, and you go, great, we can design that for you, and you spend, you know, a year or two with them, and you, you know, handhold their way all the way through, and you design everything. You know, you do the whole –

Chris Gammell: I think the alternative there is the services only, right? So, like, there's some other, like, service partners who are like, oh, you need just firmware. We'll come in and be your firmware team.

Speaker ?: You need just firmware.

Dave Jones: You need just PCB layout. You need just 3D, you know, housing, CAD-type stuff, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I feel like it depends on which type of customer you're talking to as well. Like, if you're talking to, like, a mechanical group who needs electronics, it's like, oh, yeah, we're going to do everything on the electronics side. But if you're, like, talking to an electronics group and they're just, like, short-staffed on PCBs or whatever, you're like, okay, we're going to just get that working for you.

Dave Jones: Just do some PCBs. If you're a large company, yeah, you just may be short-staffed at the moment and you need someone to lay out some boards or do some design check-in or something like that, you know. Or, you know, simulation or anything like that. So, yeah, turnkey just means doing the whole lot.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. Were there a lot of service providers like that at electronics?

Dave Jones: There were, yes, quite a, probably four, I think, at least, that I saw there. There were quite a lot, which at a small show like that is a lot.

Chris Gammell: Honestly, I thought that was going to be a much bigger number. But, yes, you're right. No, no, no. I see. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: No, but that's a lot for a small one-room show, you know, where there's, you know, 30, 50 exhibitors or something, you know. Yeah. So, like, to have, like, you know, four or five or half a dozen of those be in design consultancy. Actually, there was probably more than that. But, you know, it depends on what you're talking about in the design space. I talked to another stand that just, they do specialised in space, space design. So, they designed the flight controller computer for these rockets that, you know, these space rockets went up to 400 kilometres or something and came back down at terminal velocity. And for some reason, I don't know, I can't remember, but, yeah, they specialised in the design of those. It's called a missile. Yeah. It was a research rocket or something, you know, research stuff. So, they've been doing that for 30 years. They kind of, like, specialised in that. But you wouldn't know it from their name or from their other stuff. It was just, you know, you go there and start talking to them. And, yeah, look at this thing we have in our cabinet here. This is a flight control computer from a, you know, this rocket that went up and came back at terminal velocity and survived. That's cool. You know? Yeah. So, there's lots of specialist ones.

Chris Gammell: It's always interesting, too, with, like, service providers like that, too, because it's, like, do you go to an electronical show or electronics show, like you're talking about? It's, like, focused on the people that are working in electronics. Or, you know, if you're someone like Scott or someone like turnkey service provider, do you go to where your customers might be at, like, oh, I'm just going to, like, a medical expo? And then you're, like, the electronics person. Yes. Like, hey, you're a doctor looking to develop a thing. We can do all of that for you. We can do all those things.

Dave Jones: Things. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. Yep. And then you hit every type of show, whatever your vertical is.

Dave Jones: You're a show whore. Yes. You just go around and go to every single show and spruik your services. Yeah, because you don't know where it's going to come from, you know? That's right. So, you know, a farm show, like a farm expo, farmers need custom solutions for stuff, you know? Oh, man, farmers.

Chris Gammell: So, like. Farmers are rough clients. I don't know if you know this. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me. They are very cost constrained. They have ridiculously difficult, like, environmental stuff, right? Like, just sun, rain, and all that stuff. And then they just, they are unforgiving on anything that doesn't work, right? I mean, as they should be, right? Yeah, yeah, of course. They're just so practical and, like, they're so, like, this needs to work every single time. If there's any downtime, I will rip it out and I will replace it with whatever I need to. And immediately, you know? It's like, wow. Okay. I get it. All right. You don't want to pay much for that either, huh? No.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But I'll tell you what dwarfed the electronics show, the one next door, the Australian Manufacturing Week. I was watching the video. Yeah, because I haven't released a video on the electronics show. I went there just for the electronics show, which, you know, I go to every year. And, no, next door was Australian Manufacturing Week. And, like, I was standing out the front. Like, I got there to the big exhibition, Melbourne Exhibition, you know, center building. It's huge, right? And I got there right at opening time. You know, I was setting up my camera outside so I could do my talking headshot walking in and stuff like that. And there's, like, a thousand, thousands of people walking in. And I'm going, what the hell is going on here? Like, things can't all be going to electronics. And sure enough, when I go inside, it's absolutely packed. You couldn't move in this giant convention center, like, outside. This is just in the corridor to get in. And then there's a line, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people deep, trying to get into this Australian Manufacturing Week. And I asked around, and people have said, oh, yeah, it's, like, it's packed every day. It's 40 minutes to line up to get your pass to get in. Wow. It's, like, it's nuts. Oh, my God, it was packed. Anyway, there was this thing, Australian Manufacturing Week, order of magnitude bigger in terms of space and number of stands and everything else than the poor little electronics show next door, right?

Chris Gammell: So I go in. Can you define the manufacturing of it, too? Because, I mean, it's not like electronics manufacturing, right?

Dave Jones: It's not like what?

Chris Gammell: Is it electronics manufacturing? Is it mechanical? Is it something else?

Dave Jones: No, no, it's manufacturing manufacturing. It's all things. As in mostly mechanical manufacturing. Oh, okay. So there's laser cutters. There's sheet metal benders. There's – and giant scale. Like, I'm talking, you know, huge giant scale. You know, welding, automated welding machines and, you know, all sorts of things. You know, big giant machines that can cut 10 meters by 10 meter, you know, 100 millimeter steel thick, you know, bloody, like, slabs of metal. Just incredible stuff. Yeah. Anyway. I love shows like this. Oh, it's just – I know.

Chris Gammell: I went to IMTS, the show in Chicago, every two years, four years. Yeah. It's like this where they just fill up the Chicago Expo Center with just, like, three-story tall, like, machining centers. Yes. It's just, like, unbelievable.

Dave Jones: And I couldn't believe it. And I hate to say it. It was more exciting than the electronics show, which is the same every year. Of course it is. Yeah, it's the same exhibitors.

Chris Gammell: You know. No, I don't think it's even that. I don't think it's, like, you're, like, normalized to it. I think it's just the demos are cooler. The demos are way cooler. Than tiny electrons moving. Yeah. Electrons moving. The LED's lighting up. It's just, like, harder to make it demonstrably fun and, I don't know. Exactly. Like, we're interested in it, of course. I know.

Dave Jones: Someone's bending this giant 10 meter long piece of steel. It's like, yeah. Hello. Right. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's mad. You know, these huge water jet cutters just blasting through 50 millimeters of steel, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right, right. I mean, just like if you had, like, a Tesla coil is more interesting than a microcontroller. Exactly. For the same reason, right? It's just doing things in the physical world.

Dave Jones: You've got a little demo board sitting on your stand, you know? And it's, like, flashing some LEDs. Yeah, but it's doing really cool stuff.

Chris Gammell: Look at how many power this is taking.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. Look at how much power. Oh, look. You know, and the complicated real-time OS we're using with, and it's like, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yawn. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, it is. I mean, it just is. I know. Yeah, it's hard. The way the cookie crumbles, man.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. It's hard to get flashy. We've talked about those in the past, you know, designing trade show stands and stuff. You know, it's hard to sort of entice people to your stand, you know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, just think about the setup, though, too. I know, like, at IMTS, they would come in, like, a week early, you know, because they'd be setting up machining centers. Yeah. And just the, like, the unionized dock workers that are, like, bringing in pallets and pallets to put all these things together. It's just, it's pandemonium, you know? Yeah, yeah. So it's such an impressive logistical thing, too.

Dave Jones: Oh, I would love to have stuck around and actually see the, oh, got there early and saw the setup and dismantling of it all. You know? It's just incredible. It's, yeah, it's wild. They have to drive trucks into the show so that, you know, with giant cranes and lift them off these giant flatbed trucks and stuff like that. You know, these machines weigh hundreds of tons.

Chris Gammell: It's just crazy.

Dave Jones: Man.

Chris Gammell: It's unbelievable.

Dave Jones: I mean, that's the thing.

Chris Gammell: It's impressive. I know. Yeah, it was very impressive. I don't know. How do you fight that, Dave? I don't think you, I think you chose the right one.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway, I have done a walk around of both so you can compare the, you know, I was more excited by the, manufacturing week. And, yeah, I was surprised at just the popularity of manufacturing here in Australia.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So what do you all make? What do you all make there?

Dave Jones: Well, we're one of the world's biggest steel producers. So, you know, there's tons of, like, big steel stuff. You know, there's big, you know, cutters and benders for giant I-beams to build bridges and, you know, stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: That's true. That's true. Y'all like your bridges.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And, yeah, so, you know, it's just like making, like, I saw them. Like, live, like, manufacturing, like, a big scoop for an excavator thing. Like those big front, you know, the big front, you know, scoops that go on the front of bloody escalator.

Chris Gammell: They were making that live? Isn't that, like, made out of, like, really hardened steel?

Dave Jones: They were making it, yeah. Well, it was not the cast. Some of them are cast. Okay. But, you know, they were actually manufacturing these, like, custom shape ones. You know, it's just, it's nuts. Man. And, you know, roofing, you know, they're manufacturing, you know, they've got these big roller machines that can manufacture a roofing and, you know, all sorts of, you know, stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so it's things that, like, yeah, like finished goods that might be from raw materials that, like, extrusions and things like it, right? Housing is obviously very expensive there. So, like, I'm sure there's a lot of money in that. So, doing that closer might make more sense from raw stock.

Dave Jones: You know, and there was a stand that just had wheels for trolleys, right? They just had big trolley wheels, like all these selection of German-made trolley wheels or something, you know? It's like, yeah, okay, cool. You know, it's like, oh, yeah, really nice wheels. Damn. You know, bought me some of them.

Chris Gammell: Did we get into the wrong industry? Is that what I'm saying?

Dave Jones: No, I don't know, but it was more fun. It was more fun.

Chris Gammell: It was more novel at the very least. Yeah, oh, it's novel. There's always that.

Dave Jones: Yes, I think I'll go to that every year now. Australian manufacturing. But, no, I just could not believe the volume of people that were going through. Like, you know, this took, I think, eight different, like, halls. Like, you know, they had, like, ten halls in the, yeah, they took up eight of the halls or something. It was just absolutely enormous. So, the scale of it was enormous, but the number of people that were there, wow. It was just, man, unbelievable. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'd like to go to, like, a manufacturing-style show like this. And, like, Shenzhen or something, too. Oh, yeah. That'd be nice. I can just, like, see the scale difference, right, you know.

Dave Jones: And then I came across, like, little small, you know, Asian maker of these lathes, you know, these little, which I think you got once, didn't you? You got one of those small lathes.

Chris Gammell: I did a mill. I did a mill on a lathe. A mill.

Dave Jones: What's the difference between a mill and a lathe?

Chris Gammell: So, a mill goes, it's, like, imagine, like, a subtractive 3D printer, right, where you have a spinning bit.

Dave Jones: You have a block. Yes, you actually start with a block.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and then you basically carve off from that. Right. A lathe is, like, you're spinning around a spindle axis, right? And then you're using a cutter to modify. There are combos as well, right? So, like, the larger machining centers will have them combine fourth axes and stuff like that. Got it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, you can laugh at my walk around as I get everything wrong, you know. Like a kid in a candy store. Yeah. Yeah. And I have no clue what I was talking about, so, you know, people are just laughing their ass off, you know. It's great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: So, anyway, yeah, I, like, wanted to buy, I wanted to, you know, I think it was. See?

Chris Gammell: Doesn't seem as stupid now, does it?

Dave Jones: No, I wanted to buy this little mini desktop lathe. I thought, oh, geez, it's, like, show special. 800 bucks. Okay. I'm like, eh.

Chris Gammell: Name something that you would build with a lathe.

Dave Jones: I don't know. But I'd like to have one.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly right. Exactly. Actually, if you want to see how people use lathe.

Dave Jones: I don't know, I can make knobs. I can make custom metal knobs or something.

Speaker ?: There you go.

Chris Gammell: Nobs would actually work. Yeah. Okay, there you got one thing. Yeah, I'd say watch. Colin Furze does a bunch with lathes. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's great. And Ben Krasnow as well. Those are both great starters. We will find lathes often in there, and I'll be like, I never would have thought to make that. That is, like, the most common thing when I see, like, something spinning, and I'm like, that's the first thought. And then the second thought is, I would totally chop a finger off. That's the other thing.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Because, yeah, I don't know how it works. But there are people that do it well and successfully and safely, so I'm just, yeah, good for them.

Dave Jones: I really like the idea of, like, small desktop machines like that, you know? It's kind of like, yeah, you know, that can just sit in a corner for when I need it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, they would sit in a corner, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: They would do splendidly at sitting in a corner.

Chris Gammell: They would do really well, yeah. You know, I got this advice, I think, from past guest Philip Friedin about, like, machining and stuff like that. I think it was him, or I'm sure a couple of people told me this, but it was like, buy, send out for these parts you think you need, like, over and over and over again. Like, there's so many services these days that'll do this sort of thing, like send, cut, send, and, you know, just all of these, like, online services where you can just send in the design files, and then they'll send you back a thing. Like, and do that enough to the point where, like, you get to a machine, like, even $800. Like, I would be very hard pressed to get $800 worth of-

Dave Jones: Value, exactly.

Chris Gammell: ...laithed things. No, you better send it there.

Dave Jones: And it's just like, yeah, I just, yeah, I know.

Chris Gammell: You know, unless you're to the point where you actually need it the next day.

Dave Jones: It's like a pick and place machine, you know? It's like a pick and place.

Chris Gammell: It's exactly the same thing.

Dave Jones: There's got to be some niche little window there where it's worth your time and money.

Chris Gammell: Right. Unless you're looking for a project, which then, of course- Of course, you're looking for a hobby project. ... actually $800 is fine to learn that sort of thing, right?

Dave Jones: Yep, exactly.

Chris Gammell: You might need it for, you know, like, custom manufacturing once the world falls apart, you know? That's great.

Dave Jones: Right, yeah, yeah, zombie apocalypse manufacturing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think the- What did I see the one time? Someone was doing a- They put a- They bolted, like, a tree stump that they were going to, like, turn on a lathe. Yeah. But they attached it to, like, the axle of a car. And so then they had, like, a brick on the accelerator.

Dave Jones: Oh, so they spit out the brick on the car and then they just- Yeah, it was really- And then they just spit it. Oh, my God.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it was really dumb.

Chris Gammell: Redneck machine. Yeah, very redneck, yes. Yes, yes, very redneck. Yeah, I would not recommend. But, you know, you're- You know, like you said, zombie apocalypse.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's how you do it, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, totally. Tool prepping. Is that tool prepping?

Chris Gammell: Tool prepping. Tool prepping. I mean, the preppers, at least in the States, are very gun nut- Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Garden, ammo, and food. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Well, but you can make- I mean, like, you literally can use a lathe to make, like, barrels, right? Like, that is another very good use. Yeah, right. Very good. Good is probably a stretch. But a very common use case of a lathe would be to make a gun barrel. Like, you literally can't. Yeah, yeah, right. Yes. Yeah. So, like, for always- Every time you see, like, an argument against, like, 3D-printed guns, it's like $800 lathe, and you're probably going to have a much more reliable- Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, totally.

Chris Gammell: Bang, bang, pew, pew kind of thing. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but you can't just actually download the file and hit a button, you know.

Chris Gammell: You wouldn't download a gun. Yeah, so the person who wrote the guide that got me into machining, the El Camtuf, he does, like, a bunch of electronics blog posts now. I think I mentioned it maybe one or two shows ago. Oh, okay. I still highly recommend the- I'll link in the machining guide. I think it's still amazing with, you know, the caveat. If you read it, you might want to buy a lathe, or, I'm sorry, a mill, rather, which I would not recommend at this point, at least in my life. I think you sold yours, didn't you? You sold it? I traded it with my friend Marty, who was building- He was designing 3D printing kits, and so that was my first 3D printer. Oh, right. Because I traded- Okay.

Dave Jones: Right. Traded a mill for a more useful 3D printer.

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure if he ever kept it, but- Right. Okay. Yeah. That kit is now in pieces, and I've since moved away from the DIY and into the- It just works. So, I'm very happy with that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I mean, the-it-just-needs-to-work campaign. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. For how often I print on it, it's- Yeah. You know, the same kind of, like, thing pops up now. You know, like the, oh, I need a resin printer. No, you don't, Chris. No, you don't. Yeah, exactly. Like, send out for a single resin print before you say you need a resin printer. Or that's, like, the same test I need to do, and I just keep failing at it, Dave.

Dave Jones: Well, it's, like, for me, it's like, yeah, I get these companies all the time. Look, we'll send you a 3D resin printer. And I'm going, what am I going to use it for?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like, you know, like, even though I'm getting it for free, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Totally. It's just going to take up room in your lab.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's just going to take up room. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Again, you know, things that we've said many times on the show before, like, the hobby starts as 3D printing, but if it doesn't immediately become 3D modeling, basically, it's like you're just printing trinkets. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You're printing Yoda heads, you know? You really got to just get into modeling first. And you can do that for free. Yes. Free CAD 1.00 is much better than the earlier version. So, not great, but it's getting better.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Why would you call it 1.00? Just on principle.

Chris Gammell: Because it's the first, like, it's like standardizing the API. That's the reason you do that.

Dave Jones: I know, but nobody trusts 1.00. Crap.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. You download 1.0.1, you know?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Which comes out very shortly after, usually. Right. Okay. Yeah. Bug fixes.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah. Anyway, I am doing some lab environmental monitoring at the moment. Oh, yeah. We were talking about that before the show. Yes.

Chris Gammell: So, what was the prompting of this? Why did you start?

Dave Jones: For some reason, like, it was on the weekend. You know, I had the in-laws over. My sister-in-law, who's an environmental, just like, she's like an environmental air quality scientist. Right? And anyway, so, I don't know. For some reason, I was showing her the, like, I've got an environmental monitor here in the lab, and it's hooked up to the net, and you can log in, and you can, right? So, I logged into it and showed her the graph of, you know, CO2, formaldehyde. Hang on, and let me look at this. What have I got? I've got temperature, pressure, humidity, VOCs, noise, carbon dioxide, formaldehyde, PM 2.5 particulate matter. So, that's 2.5 micron particulate matter. Radiation, just in case, you know, the nuclear apocalypse happens.

Chris Gammell: What kind of particles? Gamma? Beta? Alpha?

Dave Jones: Probably none of those.

Chris Gammell: Gamma.

Dave Jones: Yes, but one of them doesn't make it through the case. Is it the gamma? Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't make it through the case or whatever. I can never remember which of the two ones make it through the case. Okay, so whatever.

Chris Gammell: So, you've got a tube in there, though. It's got, like, it's like a radiation detector. Yes, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep, there's a high voltage tube. It's currently running at 381 volts because there's a voltage graph as well.

Chris Gammell: Where's Kaiser when we need him, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. And anyway, yeah, so I'm, and she's going, that formaldehyde, wow, what's going on there? And it's like, every time I open my door, there's a big formaldehyde spike, which, like, and it's actually, like, it's actually green at the bottom. Then it gets yellow. Then it gets orange. And it gets red. And the spikes are way up in the red.

Chris Gammell: And that's how I learned that there was an embalming clinic down the hall. Right.

Dave Jones: And these big formaldehyde, but they go down within 10 minutes or something. But every time I open the door, there's these giant formaldehyde spikes and stuff. And then my CO2 is up in 800 parts per million or something like that. You know, 900. No. You know.

Chris Gammell: 800. PP, no. Is it PPM? Is that what it is?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yes. PPM. Yeah. My carbon dioxide level, you know. These humans that need to breathe, you know. Yeah. Asks you humans. So, yeah. Anyway. So, my Dyson filter here actually has a formaldehyde filter in it. It actually gets rid of formaldehyde and stuff. So, I thought I'd do some controlled tests. So, I did a test all day. I was in the lab all day yesterday. And I didn't have the air con on and I didn't have my Dyson filter on. I've just got my other regular fanny filter just on low, which is doing naff all really. And, yeah. So, I got one graph of a day like that. So, I was sitting here kind of uncomfortable because there was no sort of like fresh air and the air con wasn't on. Yeah. It was about 26 degrees or something. Stale. So, you know. So, but anyway, I endured the day. So, yeah. Now, so today I'm doing air con. So, sorry if you hear any air con switching off and on during this show. I normally turn the air con off when I'm actually recording this and other videos. But, no. I've got the air con cycling at the moment. And, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And do you have early numbers or like kind of relatives?

Dave Jones: Oh, I can take a screenshot and I can show. No. No, dude. Look, I will give you this. Send me a link. I'll give you the link.

Chris Gammell: I get to see it live. You get to see it live, dude.

Dave Jones: Here you go.

Chris Gammell: Man, I'm going to log into Australia.

Dave Jones: There you go. And it's open to the public. It's open to the public. I'll just send it to you on Gmail.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Whatever the googly chat's called these. What is the googly chat called these? It's just called chat.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, Google chat. I don't know. You're basically the only person I talk to on there anymore.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: Me and my friend Sophie.

Dave Jones: What do you use otherwise? What's your tool?

Chris Gammell: A lot of signal these days. Oh, signal. Okay. For the whole house.

Dave Jones: Yeah, WhatsApp seems to be. I get lots of component suppliers and other advertisers wanting to chat on bloody. Yeah. WeChat.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's like very universal kind of throughout the world. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm seeing it now. This is parts per billion for formaldehyde, which is. Yes. Parts per billion. But obviously, love 300 is bad.

Dave Jones: There's a thing up at the top that's volume. You can change it to mass. So there's a little button up at the top so you can change it to mass. And the parts per billion becomes micrograms per cubic meter. So 50 micrograms. Average of 64 micrograms per cubic meter.

Chris Gammell: What's up with the voltage? Why is the voltage at 380? What is that?

Dave Jones: That's the tube. That is the radiation tube. Oh, interesting. Yes, you need the high voltage for the radiation tube. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So there's like a boost in there. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Dave Jones: And yeah, so these spikes every time I open the door. So you can see that I've exited twice today. I went to the post office. That is always interesting. And then I went to the shop. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That is interesting. Like, you know, it's like, oh, people are like, oh, I don't need to encrypt my data. Like, what does it matter? But like, literally you can have, you can like back calculate occupancy from that sort of thing. Oh, yeah. Oh, totally. From this sort of data. Yeah. You know, like it's wild. Yeah.

Dave Jones: People can actually view this live. It's public. People can view my public thing.

Chris Gammell: Oh, there you go. Well, maybe you shouldn't make it public. Eh, whatever. Yeah, it doesn't really matter. Do you know why there's so many sensors available now that do VOCs? No. Do tell. Actually, because of the FEMA trailers after Hurricane Katrina, they like discovered that they had like ridiculous amounts of formaldehyde in the FEMA trailers, like the temporary shelters after this big hurricane in the US.

Dave Jones: Oh, right.

Chris Gammell: And then after that, there's like a bunch of regulations, obviously, about it because like people get really sick from it. But then. Oh, really? Then there was all these these sensor makers that now they're like very, very affordable, which is ultimately a good thing in terms of like more sensors is better in my mind. But yeah, that's actually whenever I talk to like folks that like Sinceria and stuff, that's where a lot of that came from, which is interesting.

Dave Jones: Wow. There you go. Fascinating. Yeah. So my VOCs spiked when I came in today, but spiked by like, I don't know, like there's like a scale. I don't know what the scale is and it's in ohms, which is a curious scale. And I had to look up what ohms was in relation to VOCs. It's some new thing that started in 2013 or something. Some researchers developed this new method for low cost sensors for doing VOC. And that's probably what you're talking about. And they all now measure it in ohms. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's like gas resistivity, I think is what they call it. Like I know it mostly just from like a lot of these sensors, like Dave Driver's built in the Zephyr, so like I'll use them. And like I'm almost always using like temperature press humidity. Like those are very grokkable, I feel like. Yeah. And then VOC is like kind of like an add in or like gas resistivity is an add in. I'm like, oh, look, it's changing. No idea. There's no way for me to correlate it. I don't have any controlled experiments, controlled chambers, anything like that. So I'm just like, oh, look, another reading, you know. Right. Right. But yeah, like the BME 680 has, I think, CO2, VOC.

Dave Jones: Mine, I think mine is the, mine is that one. My monitor uses that sensor. That's like a Bosch sensor. That's like a Bosch sensor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Very, very common. So as you were saying these, I was pretty sure it was a 680. I am pretty sure it was a 680. But then like radiation separate, the PM 2.5, that's the one I use for that is the Censurion has one where it's like a little fan. It's like a little square box. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it has a little fan that pushes air through it or whatever. That's right. And then it's actually a laser that goes through. Yes. Yeah. A laser detects whether or not there's particles in the air. Yeah. It bounces off them and goes to an optical sensor.

Chris Gammell: But if you look at the interface to it, it's really weird. It's like, it's very non-standard. And then, you know, my main thing is like it's five volts as well because like they need a little bit more power, you know, power laser. Fire the laser. And so, yeah, it's not my favorite to work with, but there's other ones that are out there now as well. So if you're doing a little. Right. It's, there's not a ton of differentiation at the end of the day. It's like, you know, air quality, you know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. That's neat though. This is a nice little dashboard too.

Dave Jones: And if you use something like a Bosch, you know it's going to be, you know, top tier kind of thing. Oh, they charge it for it. That's for sure. It should do its job. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So you can see with the humidity there, you can see my air con switching off and on. That is why there's that sort of like choppy waveform on the humidity. That's because my air con cycles every five minutes or whatnot. So yeah. And it controls the humidity apparently. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. Because air conditioners have coils that are cold and that makes water condense out of the air. Yep. Bingo.

Dave Jones: And you can see the oscillation and you can see exactly when I came in at, you know, eight, nine PM, nine, nine AM, nine, nine AM this morning and boom, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. But I think the VOCs yesterday actually dropped when I came in, which was interesting. So I'm still trying to, this is why I'm actually logging this data under different scenarios so that I can see, you know, what, what causes what kind of thing. Hopefully. Yeah. That is the end result. So tomorrow will be air con plus the Dyson filter and then there'll be Dyson filter on its own. And, you know, like, yeah. And hopefully I'll get all these different plots to try and figure out what's going on. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Have you compared your radiation to the XKCD chart?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: I immediately go to this. I love this. Obviously. People are going to be surprised that Dave and I love XKCD, but there's a radiation dose chart that it was a couple, I mean, many years ago at this point, but I was thinking about it because like the amount of, let's see. So chest X-ray, 20 microsieverts sleeping next to someone is 0.05 microsieverts. Did you know that?

Dave Jones: I guess all humans are slightly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Radiative.

Chris Gammell: X-ray, five micro Sieverts, airplane flight from – I actually remember telling my dad about this because my dad used to fly all the time. Yeah, yeah. And so he would just – being up in the air a lot, you just get more radiation.

Dave Jones: I think there's some sort of – I don't know if it's in force, but for like long-haul airline pilot flights, like airline pilots who do the long-haul stuff and stay up for 13 hours a day, then yeah, there is some dose. They get tested or something or something. There's some medical thing. They wear a badge or something. Yeah, something. I don't know, something like that. But yeah, it's actually – like over the single trip, it's not a big deal. But if you're doing that every second day, right?

Chris Gammell: Right, career.

Dave Jones: That's hundreds of trips a year. Yeah. And you're spending –

Chris Gammell: Plus, I mean, cosmic radiation might make one of your brain bits flip, right? Right, right.

Dave Jones: Yes, and you might crash – yeah, deliberately. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Go nutso. Right, right. Up is down. Left is right.

Dave Jones: Dose from spending an hour on the grounds at the Chernobyl plant in 2010. Yeah. Just CT scan is more. Yeah, just the scale difference, right? It's always like scales.

Chris Gammell: So that's – and then one note down at the bottom, using a cell phone, the transmitter does not produce ionizing radiation, does not cause cancer, unless it's a banana phone.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: I tried to measure a banana. I tried to measure a bunch of bananas. I can't measure any. Oh, yeah. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, you get one of those uranium plates. Apparently, you need like 100 bananas before your average radiation detector will even start to change it. Yeah, I think that's right. Beeping.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. Yep. So – Yeah, I remember when Jeff would bring – this is Jeff Kaiser, of course. Yes. The mightiest of them. He would bring like – he had like uranium plates and stuff when he was doing demos. Yeah. And so like things that are like actually slightly radioactive, you know. Right. But like the fun amount, you know. Yeah. There was one, I think – he had one that had like a radium watch hand. Like they used to make the glow-in-the-dark one.

Dave Jones: Old radium watch hands, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, those are cool. Baby amounts of radiation, you know.

Dave Jones: Let's bring back the radium.

Chris Gammell: You know, it's even easier if you glow in the dark, then you don't have to worry about your watch, you know, hand glowing in the dark. All right. Just collect the natural glow off your skin. Oh, boy. Your skin is radiant, Dave. You're positively glowing.

Dave Jones: Have you seen the TV show Fallout based on the game? No, I heard it's really good though. Oh, it's great. I love Fallout.

Chris Gammell: I never play the game either. So like, yeah, friends who play the game.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I haven't actually played the game, but I'm kind of into that sort of thing. The post-apocalyptic stuff, I'm kind of into it. Right, right, right. So, yeah, yeah. No, it's great. Fallout is terrific. Nice. Unfortunately, they actually released the whole thing at once. They just dumped the whole 20 episodes or whatever at once.

Chris Gammell: Don't baby drip it out to me. I don't need that. I'm an adult. I can binge watch a season if I want to.

Dave Jones: You can binge watch it if you want to. Yeah, anyway. So, yeah, I think I'm pretty sure there's going to be a season too. I'm sure. Anyway, yeah, it's great. Highly recommended Fallout.

Chris Gammell: Well, speaking of Fallout, here's a segue. The tariffs dropped this morning. So, we're recording on Monday, May 12th, and we are still following. Here in the U.S., we're still dealing with the fallout of ridiculous tariffs. And they dropped from. So, both China and the U.S. agreed to drop them 110%, I believe. 115%, rather, because the U.S. went from 145 down to 30. And China's tariff on U.S. stuck over to China went from 115. Sorry, 125 down to 10.

Dave Jones: Told you.

Chris Gammell: So, I didn't doubt you. I'm just saying.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: As I said last time, it's stupid. It's unnecessary. And I don't think really anything was achieved here other than, you know. Oh, no.

Dave Jones: I think you'd be surprised at what was achieved by this.

Chris Gammell: Okay. I'll wait to be surprised. Well, here's what I'll see.

Dave Jones: A lot of diplomacy was achieved by this. A lot of, yeah. Anyway. I don't agree with that. But, okay. We would have to go into politics. Sure, we'll find out.

Chris Gammell: We're going to find out. We're going to find out. But, anyway. I will hold reserve judgment on that piece. Well, I'll tell you what.

Dave Jones: There's a lot of bloody manufacturing coming back to the U.S. That's for sure. I don't know. There's announcements galore. I don't know if I agree with that. Companies investing insane amounts in the U.S.

Chris Gammell: Well, there was that ridiculous AI data center thing, which I believe that one I see.

Dave Jones: Oh, what was it called? What was the name of that bloody thing?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Like Magneto or something like very like future spacey.

Dave Jones: Futuristic. Yeah. Something. I can't remember the name of it. Yeah, but they didn't have the money, but they announced it anyway. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: What did you hear that's actually coming back to the U.S.? I don't actually think that's anything.

Speaker ?: Oh, there's tons.

Dave Jones: All the semiconductor companies are coming. All of the, yeah, lots of AI stuff is coming back. Lots of big haul. Lots of car manufacturing is coming back to the U.S. I'm talking like a dozen companies. Like, you know, all of your big names are coming back to the U.S. Opening plants and stuff. They've all announced it. I'm hearing tons of every day. I'm hearing like dozens of big companies coming back to the U.S. Okay. I couldn't point you to a single source. You know, I couldn't point you to a single news source for this. But, you know, I just hear it all the time.

Chris Gammell: So I've been looking this up and trying to validate Dave's claims as fact checker Chris. Yes, I do exist sometimes. There are some. Dave is correct on some of this stuff. Definitely not dozens, but, you know, hyperbole. I do think they're all dealing with this stuff. Let's see. Again, I don't, I will believe it when I see it. I think like in terms of like supply chain, like, so like automotive supply chain is actually like North American, right? Like, so tons of like auto blocks, sorry, like machine, uh, engine blocks are made like up in Canada and like the wiring harnesses are done in Mexico and it's just like all up and down North America. Oh yeah. So like, yeah, maybe some of that will cross the border. Maybe, but I doubt it. Um, okay.

Dave Jones: Anyway, that's what I've been hearing. And I heard that DigiKey, I didn't look into the details, but I heard that DigiKey did a direct deal with the government somehow and they got like special treatment somehow. I don't, I, I wish I had.

Chris Gammell: I'm going to need some links on these things. I don't, I don't think.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Uh, DigiKey, uh, tariff. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So last week, uh, when Colin was on the show, he was talking about Mauser had like a kind of an exclusionary zone within their warehouse. Um, yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yes. Right.

Chris Gammell: So they just physically separate. Yeah. Like, so like for Canadian stuff that was going up to Canada, like wouldn't get, wouldn't get kind of the pass through sort of thing. Right.

Dave Jones: So if somebody comes around and audits you, you can go, no, look, this is all separate, you know, yada, yada. Is that the.

Chris Gammell: Here's what I'll say. I have seen, uh, a lot of people paying 145% on their PCBs. That's been a lot of people posting that. Uh, I have held off personally on buying PCBs. I'm at 30%. I'm like, okay, maybe I will now. Um, I have some stuff that I need to be building. Yeah. I don't think anything is, I'm like you said, maybe stuff is yet to be announced and actually achieved. I don't think so personally. I think there was really no leverage points here, right? There's not like, I still can't buy capacitors that are manufactured in the U S and they're not coming back. Right. I still can't buy even package semiconductors. Like, like in terms of like the global supply chain has not shifted in any appreciable way and it shan't. And so like, I'm still going to be paying. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But it takes a long time. It takes years. You know, you can't just suddenly, you know, spin up factories again.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. But I'm saying that there has been no actual motion in that direction. And I'm actually not sure there should be right. Like in terms of like the amount of automation manufacturing to come back locally. That's not what I said. I said that I don't think this, the scale and like the investment required and the payoff for doing it. Right. So if it's truly about jobs and truly about like, you know, U S manufacturing, I'm not sure there's actually any value to having like U S made caps, right? Like capacitors being made here. Like, okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But you're not thinking fourth dimensionally. You're not thinking politically, you're not thinking about national security, things like that.

Chris Gammell: National security, maybe that, but again, like, I just don't think there's actually any motion in that direction. So yeah, maybe there should be, maybe there, maybe there's stuff that is not being published

Dave Jones: Maybe it's not visible to you, but I hear about it all the time. All possible. I'm hearing about it every day. You know, Volvo is opening, is announcing they're going to make open and manufacturing plan. And BMW is going to announce their open manufacturing plant, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I don't know if it's going to happen, but that's why I can only report what I'm hearing. So, you know.

Chris Gammell: So I'm just to give a call back now to other parts of the past episodes of the show where it's like the chips act, right? So we had all these announcements. Like I was maybe a little unbridled in my enthusiasm about it. I should have probably been a little bit more measured. Like, but I don't think a lot of that stuff's actually happening, right? Like the Intel, obviously Intel is on a downwards trajectory. No, it's not.

Dave Jones: I mean, I spoke with Steve Sangy from Microchip and he said, oh no, we were, you know, that chips act sounded great. And then he started to look into the details of it and it was golden handcuffs in his, I think, quote. They were, it was golden handcuffs. So we didn't want the golden handcuffs. So they politely declined the funding for the chips act.

Chris Gammell: I don't even think, I mean, yes, yes. Steve made a decision on that side of things, but I think even the ones that were announced, the ones that like were ready to break ground, you know, like all of this excitement and this buildup, it's just like the amount of lead time it takes to build a fab, right? So like two, three, four years down the line, like, are they actually getting built? Are they actually getting finished? Are they actually producing stuff? Are they, you know, if the promise is there for jobs, are there actual jobs?

Dave Jones: There's been weeks researching this in detail to try and find out what's happening where,

Chris Gammell: you know? Oh, sure. I just think like, is there actually outcome, right? I think that's, that's what it comes down to. Is there actually outcome in a long, like a long-term context? It's like, so chips act on one end in terms of like trying to drive.

Dave Jones: Well, we'll find out in five years, right?

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right.

Dave Jones: Because you can't possibly know anything now. So, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. Right. I'm just saying that chips act was like a move towards like trying to drive domestic chip production. And I was sharing that. I think that's an actual like in, you know, yes, strings attached, but like investment in domestic production. Like, I think that's personally, that's, that's the, the thing that I think will actually move the needle. I think you have to like incentivize, co-invest, whatever. Like, you know, you guys put in this much, we'll put in that much and trying to drive that sort of thing. Now, in more of a punitive measure of like, you better come back or else everybody's going to be, you know, paying tariffs. Like, okay, that's another method, right? I don't, I personally don't agree with it. I don't think it's going to be effective. I don't think it's, you know, in much in the same way of like Volvo saying they're coming back. Like that sounds great. But like, is it actually going to like five years down the line? Are they making Volvo cars here? Sure.

Dave Jones: No point arguing over now. Wait, wait five years and see what happens.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, totally. Totally. I'm just, I'm just saying, because we're, we're talking in the current time in the current context of all this stuff. To me, it feels like the punitive, like, I don't think it's actually driving anything. I feel like, so my prediction is ultimately it's just going to kind of peter out eventually over time. It'll return to steady state. We'll either get used to the tariffs or we'll, you know, I don't think it's going to be like, wow, that was the turning point. And American manufacturing came back after that. Look at that chip plant down the street. Look at that capacitor plant next state over. Right. I just don't think that's going to happen. And obviously the Chips Act had the same kind of thing. It's just like, what actually drives that kind of investment? I'm not sure. I would love to know.

Dave Jones: Well, let's find out. Chris has taken the black pill, folks. He's taken the black pill.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And, you know, and like, there's a lot of unknowns. There was a really good channel that was recommended. I think it was in Hacker News thread. But it's this guy, all he does is he just talks about shipping and logistics. Oh, cool. Sounds like a snooze fest. No, no, no, no.

Dave Jones: That's fascinating stuff. It's really interesting.

Chris Gammell: He's talking about like different ports and like, oh, actually, like, let's look at. Send me a link to that.

Dave Jones: Send me a link.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I will. Yeah. I got to find it. Yeah. I could watch that. Yeah. I forget what it's called. There's a site where you can actually just look at like the shipping data or like the actual boats that are in transit.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Um, there it is. Marine traffic. So marinetraffic.com is like this live global shipping. So like. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes, yes. I've been to that.

Chris Gammell: Stuff's like in the middle of the ocean. You only get, I think, satellite data. You have to pay like extra for that to know. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: But if it's going through the Suez Canal or something, you can track it.

Chris Gammell: Right. If it's getting like cellular links because it's near the shore, then it's like it has to report data and there's like beacons and buoys and stuff like that. So super cool site. And then this guy, I forget what his name is, but I'll send it through. Cool. Sometime. So he's very popular right now. I think he's. All right.

Dave Jones: Okay. Boom. Boom in his popularity for this channel. I think so. I mean, like. That's great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, my God. Yep. Yep. Totally. What to do is just be really interested in shipping for your whole life. And then sometimes it really pays off.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: All right. What else we got?

Chris Gammell: Well, I can tell you about Bluetooth stuff I've been doing. That's if you're interested.

Dave Jones: Bluetooth is pretty. I've been doing Bluetooth stuff too.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. What have you been doing?

Dave Jones: Oh, the new Bryman BM 787 meter. Okay. It has the Bluetooth thing in it. And it's. I got a couple of data dropouts happening and stuff like that. So we're trying to get to the bottom of that. And another guy on the forum. He's actually test. He's also got a YouTube channel. He's actually testing it as well. Because Bryman sent him a pre-release version of this meter as well. And, you know, we're both trying to test it. And he's going to town on it. Trying to, you know, buying different versions of phones to test out different drivers. And he's trying to update the firmware in the module, the Bluetooth module in there and stuff like that. And trying to figure it all out. And it's like, yeah. Like, because I set up data logging for like an hour and a half or something. And I was getting like three dropouts in that time. But they weren't dropouts. Like, I don't mind dropouts, right? Data dropouts in terms of like, okay, the value goes to zero. It goes to, you know, like just null value or something like that. It's fine. But it actually jumped from one volt. Like, I was actually measuring a one volt source. Fixed one volt. And it jumped up to 10 volts. And it's like, what? Like, the end was only on the six volt range. So that value is like not only over range, but it's an actual value. Like, no, I don't want that. If there's a genuine dropout, like, tell me it's a dropout. Put, you know, none or something.

Chris Gammell: And how are you just like looking at a chart for all this stuff? Like, how are you actually going to find a chart? No, well, a chart.

Dave Jones: And then you can download the CSV data. And then I load that in. And I can see the individual values. And it's like, so when I download, I put it in first. Like, and there's this value jumping up to 10 volts. Like, what the hell? And it's like, yeah, yeah. So it's doing something weird. So we don't know if that's related to the Bluetooth module itself. We don't know if it's related to the Android phone.

Chris Gammell: How would the Bluetooth module do that? I don't know. It's not sounding like a bogus value, is it?

Dave Jones: Well, I don't know. It's just one of the things in the chain, right? So you have to rule out the, you know, it doesn't seem to be the meter because there's no way that the meter could physically change ranges from 6 volts to 60 volts within one sample and then change back. So that doesn't happen, right? So you can pretty much rule out that. But then you've got the receiver. So you've got the Android receiver. Which version of Android is it running? Which version of Bluetooth driver is it running? And then, you know, what version is running in the Bluetooth module and how are they compatible or incompatible and, you know, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, it's kind of annoying and we haven't figured it out yet. So, yep.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Dave Jones: Bluetooth sucks. And that's why I just released a video. Have you ever used a free program called Test Controller? Test Controller. It's a guy on the forum wrote it, like, during COVID, like, four years ago or something. And now it supports hundreds of different types of multimeters, power supplies, loads, and things like that. And you can automate them all. And he's got this free software that actually, you know, logs data and you can control all these instruments and you can script it and everything else. And it's fantastic. So I just released a video on that the other day. Yeah, I see it, yeah. It's very cool. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Test Controller. That interface. That is. That looks old.

Dave Jones: Yeah, Java. Yeah, it's written in Java.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, there's a little Java logo in the upper left. All right. Oh, is it? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Dave Jones: No, no. Well, that means it's cross-platform. You can run it on anything. So, yeah. I'm thinking about ditching for my microscope PC. I'm thinking about ditching my NI, you know, combined scope multimeter thing, power supply thing, and actually hooking up multiple instruments like this to a dedicated PC running this software, and then outputs, instead of going to a monitor, that would go into the input to my video switcher, and then I can, you know, overlay that sort of stuff on the screen. So I can overlay the multimeter result on the screen and the power supply and stuff like that. So I'm thinking about maybe doing that. That'd be kind of cool. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: And what is the actual interface to the machine? Is it like GPU or RACU?

Dave Jones: It's a serial. So anything UART, anything UART-based. Unfortunately, he hasn't done any Bluetooth interfaces yet because they're tricky somehow. So, yep. But anything that has, that anything ultimately resolves, you can do Bluetooth meters and other instruments, but only if they resolve down to a UART serial port.

Chris Gammell: So it's like a parser, kind of like a, it parses the serial output.

Dave Jones: It actually parses the serial output and then logs it and can control hundreds of different instruments. He supports. Yeah, yeah. My, you know, the actual support is just insane. So, yeah, it's very cool. It isn't open source, unfortunately, but it is free. And supports a ton of stuff.

Chris Gammell: I mean, what are you going to do with Java program, Dave? I mean, come on.

Dave Jones: I don't know. You know, if he gets hit by a bus, then somebody else can take it over, right? Sure, sure, sure. You know, and, yep. And you can actually write your own driver. So if you've got a product that has a serial interface, you can, like, write your own little script text file and, like, actually have the commands in there and what it does and stuff, and you can add your own products.

Chris Gammell: I was thinking about your, not defunct, but your project. I guess your STM32 was for the microsupply?

Dave Jones: Yes, STM32. Yes, that was for the microsupply. Yes.

Chris Gammell: I was thinking about that for, like, vibe coding stuff, right? You guys were going to release all that code, and then you kind of put it aside. I was like, I wonder if Dave could, like, vibe code that thing, you know? I don't know if you've done much vibe coding.

Dave Jones: We did release the source code donkeys years ago for that. All of the source code for the microsupply is on my GitHub.

Speaker ?: Right, right.

Dave Jones: I thought you haven't modified it much, though.

Chris Gammell: Oh, no. Yeah, I just thought you... No, it hasn't been changed in years. I meant, like, you could, like, extend it, you know? Like, you could vibe code it, man.

Dave Jones: Vibe code it, really? I've got a video before David2 left. We recorded a video of how to set up all the tools required to compile the microsupply code. I can link you the video. It's about an hour long or something like that. The number of tools and software things that we have to install just so that we can compile this STM32 code, just so we can compile the code. It is not just install the STM32 software. What's that called? You know, they've got the...

Chris Gammell: Cube, yeah.

Dave Jones: Cube or in-cube or whatever. No, it's not just installing that. You have to install, you know, a dozen, half a dozen different things to make it all work or something. And it's just... It's complicated. It's complicated. So, yeah. Oops. Yeah, so that's why I have not expanded on that because it's just, wow, the amount of effort I'd have to go to to get up and running just to recompile the code, let alone change it. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I have been vibe coding, but not C, like STM32 in C or anything like that. I've been doing a location service where it, like, it's all... I don't even know what it's written in. I think it's Vue.js. It's like a front-end type thing. And then it's...

Dave Jones: Oh, and you will have to explain vibe coding for those players.

Chris Gammell: Vibe coding is, like, letting the AI do the coding for you. And so, basically, you're basically, like, acting like a product manager. Yep. And you just, here's what I want. Here's how I wanted to specify it. Here's what's working. Here's what's not. Whatever. And it's, you know, I've... It's been limited... Limited attempts on my part. But it's been very interesting, like, especially watching it go. I don't know if... So, have you done any of this stuff or no?

Dave Jones: Yes, yeah, I've actually done videos on coding using AI. Yep. Oh, someone's at the door. Hang on.

Chris Gammell: It's the robots. They're coming to get them. David, your AI bill is due.

Dave Jones: I'm back. Sorry.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Dude, you're not going to believe what just turned up. Anyway, let's... We can talk about it at the end.

Chris Gammell: I was actually just talking to the audience saying that I thought it was the AI... It was the robots coming to get you and saying your AI bill is due. Oh, right.

Dave Jones: Okay. I would... Speaking of coding, I would definitely do AI coding for my next project. Why? Because I do so little coding now, I literally have to relearn how to code every time I want to start a new project. And that just... Like, yeah, I can do it. It's no problem, but why? I think it's good for... And it's just simple. It just gets something up and running. Yeah, I just want something up and running. Get a prototype going. Like, I'm thinking about doing the timer, the little... Yeah, your little bomb. Test top timer thing. You know, we should just have a simple micro and LCD, you know. Perfect. That's a good example. Yeah. Write me some code that just does some timery things and displays the time on the LCD. And it has to generate fonts and stuff like that. So that kind of annoying stuff of, like, you know, generating fonts for the dot matrix LCD and, you know, things like that. Just handle all that for me.

Chris Gammell: Anything that's, like, been done many times before, too. Like, there's a lot of code, kind of, like, that's already been indexed by these engines. And, like, that's going to be right over the plate for it. You know, that's going to be really good. So for mine, I am doing nothing fancy. But what I wanted to do is I'm sharing... I have, like, a little cellular device that I've been working on that can, like, publish location. And then... So I was going to take it to a meetup, right? I have a meetup coming. Oh, I have a meetup coming up, which might actually... This episode might go out. I've scheduled it far enough out, Dave. This episode might go out in time. People might hear it. It's on May 20th between Raleigh and Durham. So I will link in the meetup that people might be able to go to. So if you know anybody in the area, I want to meet them. Anyways, we're going to this new spot. And it's, like, this big open area. And I was like, how do you get a bunch of people to find you? Right. Well, I work on cellular things. Fine. I can, like, publish my location. But then I started thinking, like, wouldn't it be really cool to be able to, like, see me publishing my location? Okay, fine. But that's not actually that useful. What's useful is if you are looking at this map, and then you know how, like, when you click on, like, Google Maps, it says, like, share your location?

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Well, I vibe-coded this app where, like, it's a public, you know, map page. But then it asks you to share your location, and it'll drop your location onto a shared, like, a public map, basically. Without it being, like, it's not like, you know, I'm Chris Gammell, and here's all my information. It's literally, like, I just put in whatever name I want it to be, and then you can keep updating it over time. And so, like, then you kind of have, like, a central beacon and then a bunch of... I'm sure there's, like, services that do this, but I came up with an idea to vibe-code something.

Dave Jones: You could do this if you're at a large trade show or something like that. You can go, oh, where is Joe Bloggs? Oh, he's over in the corner over there. I can see him on my map. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: And then everybody can, like, hit update as they go, and it's really just a push, right? It's just, like, me as a viewer, I want to, you know, I'm in the can. I don't want to update, right? I don't want to be, like, live updating. Right, and you don't want to update. But I'm out of the can, and I'm like, okay, now I'm in the food court. Bam, I say I'm in the food court.

Dave Jones: Bam, someone please come and talk to me. I'm lonely. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, so we'll see how it goes. It's local on my computer, but it works on my computer, which is, like... And, like, watching how it works, so this is... I had been using Klein, which is, like, a VS Code plugin that, like, uses a bunch of different API services, and then I, you know, bought some cloud credits, and watching it work is, like, it's, man, it's frigging trippy. You know, I'd obviously done some, like, you know, code checking, copy-paste, copy-paste, whatever, but, like, when it can modify your files, and, like, it's, you know, asking permission to, like, use your browser, I'm like, oh, oh. And then it's like, can I have your credit card number? Can I, you know, give me your social security number? No, I'm just kidding. But, yeah, like, seeing it all change and do it live is very wild. Very, very wild.

Dave Jones: You just mentioned the most dystopian... You just blurted out the most dystopian thing I've ever heard there, I think. You said, I purchased some cloud credits.

Chris Gammell: I said, Claude credits.

Dave Jones: Claude?

Chris Gammell: Claude is... Oh, I thought you said cloud.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay, that came through my little... Dave, I hate to break it to you.

Chris Gammell: I've been buying cloud credits for a long time.

Dave Jones: Cloud credits. It's like, oh, God.

Speaker ?: What?

Dave Jones: Claude credits, right?

Chris Gammell: It'll be 30 credits, please. Yeah, Claude credits. But, you know, it's not that far off, to be honest. It's, you know, it's just somebody else's computer, right? So...

Dave Jones: Yeah, right. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's... You know, it's the times we're living in, and... What I really wonder about in all this stuff, right? It's neither good nor bad. It just is, right? It just is. It's how we live now. You just got to deal with it, yeah.

Dave Jones: I just wonder... You can choose to opt out of life, you know, opt out of society if you want.

Chris Gammell: Sure, yes, of course. But we work in technology, right? Like, and technology marches on, and we can choose whether or not to keep up with it, right? And this is just a new thing that's come up. And fine. Like, I don't think that a job is going to ask, you know, do you know how to, you know, interact with an LLM and, you know, use some AI coding tool. I don't think that'll ever be part of a job interview. Maybe quite the opposite, actually. However, I do think that there is going to be... You don't think so?

Dave Jones: I think that's happening 100,000 times a day right now.

Chris Gammell: I don't think for me, Dave. I don't think any job that I can get. Yeah, yeah. But I do think there's expectations about, like, how wide and varied your responsibilities are. I think just people are asked to do more with less, right? There's lots of cuts happening all over the world. That's fine, whatever. And just there's, you know, people have to do more with less. A lot of times, you know, AI is filling in the gap. And it's like, okay, well, there are going to be people out there that are effectively using these tools. You know, like, watching some of the creator channels that are out there are amazing. Like, really, to watch people do interesting things with this stuff, there are people that are using it in very novel ways. And so then, like, yeah, you could choose whether or not to keep up with it. But I do think it is a new kind of arena to play in and a new skill set and, like, basically broadening my horizons of, like, oh, look, I can, I'll just say stand up a, you know, a prototype of a front end map site. I didn't write it. I don't take any credit for it. But it's just, like, that's the thing that I have some capability in now. Like, oh, okay. That is useful. That is, you know, in terms of, like, being a prototyper, yeah, that's useful. So, I don't know. It's the times we live in. I don't know where I'm going with this other than I do think it's worth learning and, like, dipping a toe in. That's what I'm saying.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, totally. That is why I've done videos on it. You know, I did videos on that two years ago, you know.

Chris Gammell: I just, I think two years ago is very different than now. Oh, yeah, no, it's just totally different now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, so, yes, is the answer to that. I would Vibecode my next project and I wouldn't have a problem with it because it's just yet another tool.

Chris Gammell: It's just another tool.

Dave Jones: It's just another tool to use to get my end product done. I don't.

Chris Gammell: Colin and I talked about it a little bit on the last show of, like, so he's, you know, interacting with a lot of students and just, like, what does that look like, right? And I think I'm not worried about, like, you know, kids these days, you know, generally. I'm not worried about, like, whether or not they'll figure it out. I do worry about, like, general, like, opportunities to, like, learn, I think, and, like, opportunities to learn, like, good methods for troubleshooting. Because I think troubleshooting is the main skill that we all need to have. Like, you know, same as it ever was. But, like, especially with, like, all this kind of AI garbage that's coming out, like, the humans are still there to, like, say that looks right or that doesn't look right. And so how do we learn that stuff? And I feel like if you're coming up and out of university or, you know, other learning programs, just, like, how do you tell whether something's working properly when you, you know, maybe you can't afford to have a mentor because they're so busy doing their own things or, you know, there's no entry-level jobs. Like, that's what I'm kind of worried about generally in this arena is just how do we get it so that people aren't just clicking buttons over and over and over again? How do they actually have thoughtful design processes if they are co-designing?

Dave Jones: Nah.

Chris Gammell: Not worried about it, huh, Dave?

Dave Jones: Yeah. No.

Chris Gammell: Okay. I'll take care of the youths. You keep it.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: All right. You be the grumpy old guy and I'll be the helpful person thinking about this stuff. Nah, you'll help people too. Of course. I always do. Grumpy old guy also teaches, but, you know, different ways.

Dave Jones: I just sent you a link to what I got. What just turned up. The FedEx man just delivered.

Chris Gammell: Oh, what did we get? Let's see. I sent you a link. Ooh. Are you allowed to talk about it or no?

Dave Jones: I don't know. The coolest bit of equipment in this lab by far and I've got lots of cool shit here.

Chris Gammell: This is pretty cool. Are you allowed to talk about it or no?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yes. It is a micro test. It is a micro test. For those who aren't aware of micro tests, you can go check out their website. They manufacture specific bits of high-end test gear for, you know, like semiconductor testing and, you know, stuff like that, right? And harness, cable harness. Oh, yeah. I'm on their website. You know, DC bias current source systems, right? For, you know, wafer testing or something like that, right? Transformer test systems. Cable motor testing systems, right? All sorts of things. But what they make is an impedance analyzer, not just an LCR meter. None of that rubbish. This is an impedance analyzer. It's a 6632. And it can go up to 50 megahertz. I think they sent me the 10 megahertz jobby. So, yeah, I've got a full impedance analyzer up to 10 megahertz. So, this allows me, like, you can just use it as an LCR meter, but the whole idea is that it measures the entire frequency impedance sweep of… We got X.

Chris Gammell: We got Y. We got Z. We got R. We got B. We got L. We got D. We got Q. We got DCR.

Dave Jones: If you want to test the coil on your new RFID swipe board design, hook this thing up. You can get the entire impedance sweep of the thing. You know, your inductor, you know… That is cool. If you design a PCB inductor, you can fully characterize it using this, you know? So, you can do an entire impedance sweep.

Chris Gammell: Carl Bougasia. He's doing his coil, you know, the PCB coils, like the YouTuber.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. Yes, yes, I've seen those. Yes, those PCB motors. Yeah. This would be a perfect thing to characterize that. Yeah. So, very specific bit of kit. And, yeah, absolutely amazing stuff. And I think I've got a couple of tests, you know, an SMD test adapter with it and stuff like that. So, you know, yeah. So, you can measure. So, I can potentially hook this up to a board and I can show how efficient various bypass things are, right? Various bypass caps and using the ground planes as bypass and things like that. I can find out how efficient that is. For example. That's cool. Efficient is not the right word. How, what is the performance of those bypass components, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. How good they are. You know, you can measure the response of frequency crystals, right?

Chris Gammell: Maybe you were looking at the data sheet? Oh, no, no.

Dave Jones: I was just looking at the website. Data sheet.

Chris Gammell: Passive components, acoustic components, like vibration coils and piezos. Oh, yeah. There it is. Yep. They've got all these different fixtures. What is the magnetic material?

Dave Jones: Like, you can get all these different custom fixtures for like wafer probing and, you know, like actually not just components, but you can test actual materials as well. So, if you're developing, like I used to work on acoustic hydrophones, right? Yeah, right. So, they used a piezo ceramic substrate and we would use impedance analyzers like this to actually measure the physical, you know, the large physical substrate itself.

Chris Gammell: And you guys would be, would you be like compressing your own like piezo material and stuff like that? Yes, yeah.

Dave Jones: We were manufacturing, baking our own piezo materials.

Chris Gammell: We were doing this all in-house. Right. So, you do that as a quality control basically.

Dave Jones: Yes, yes. Oh, and also not only for, not only during the production to check that way, you know, the, something in the process hasn't sort of, you know, started to drift out or something like that, you know. So, you know, if you get, you know, this glue is not working properly, oh, your impedance is going to drift in this direction, you know, something like that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, you can use these for production, but you can use them for R&D design, you know, if you're designing new benders, as we called them, underwater acoustic hydrophores.

Chris Gammell: The interesting one is the PCB, like the permittivity and stuff like that. Yeah, the PCB permittivity.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, I can measure different PCB materials.

Chris Gammell: I just always, I don't know when I would get to the point where I'd be like, oh, I thought this was going to be 4.1. It was actually 4.05. Like, you know, like, you'd have to have such a tight tolerance on your, you know, like they have what, TDRs and stuff like that to do controlled impedance.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. If you want to go real high frequency, you would use a TDR approach.

Chris Gammell: I just always would assume it is like, oh, I probably got the spacing wrong, you know, like to the point where it's like, oh, actually, no, they used the wrong laminate.

Dave Jones: It's the spread in the laminate or even the manufacturing spread. You were using the right laminate, but you just didn't know it spread that much. Manufacturing issue. You just didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. It changes a lot.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Yeah. But if you were at an RF house, you'd be like, yeah, of course, we're going to test this. Like, we need to be precise. Yeah. Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. I have to imagine, you know, you mentioned the fixturing is there. That's. Yeah. That is interesting.

Dave Jones: All those different fixtures. You can see all the different custom fixtures.

Chris Gammell: But even still, like the probing, right? So, like, you can't just, like, stick a probe onto a. Oh, no. You can't just, like, have, like, a pointy probe that you stick into your PCB. You must have to have, like, very standardized, like, gauge R and R testing.

Dave Jones: You have to have a customized short, ridiculously short solutions. And then you'd probably do open short load compensation. Yeah, right. So, I can do stuff like that. I don't know if you've ever done open short load compensation.

Speaker ?: But.

Chris Gammell: Well, I used to have a VNA, Dave. So.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There you go.

Dave Jones: Ultra high measuring speed. Three milliseconds. Three milliseconds. Oh, my God.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's cool.

Dave Jones: You can measure piezoelectric element admittance circle. So, if you're into admittance circles, you can get those on it. Oh, my God. DC bias characteristics. So, I can do a video, like, showing how the value of a bypass cap can change based on the DC bias voltage. Right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, really fascinating stuff like that. So, yeah. It's a real cool bit of kit. So, very excited.

Chris Gammell: You should do one where you measure a cap, but then you, like, have the cap, like, soldered in a really tight joint. You know, like the, what's the effect called when it's, like, a microphone?

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. Right. The, yes. Yes. It's a.

Chris Gammell: You should do that.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's a microphonic effect. I don't know. I don't know what it's called.

Dave Jones: I can do all things. I can do, like, tons of different videos with this thing. And one of the things, like, the box, I just picked it up, and it weighs almost nothing. It's actually 3.95 kilos. It felt like nothing. Because just yesterday, I got delivered from eBay in China. I got a GW Instec AC power source, right? Which is a really impressive AC power source. It's all copper.

Chris Gammell: It's all copper.

Dave Jones: Oh, my God. It's about 25 kilos or something. Yeah, I believe it. It is insanely heavy. Yeah, doubles as a workout. Yeah, so that's a really cool bit of kit, if I can figure out how to use it. You can do, you can test mains voltage. Nice. You know, you can put, like, spikes in the mains. You can put dropouts in the mains. Brownouts. Oh, yeah. You can do, like, power line. You can power line sims. Yeah. You can do. Yeah, cool. Power line simulations, yeah, to see how your product works if you have a mains, you know, dropout for half a second. You know, you can, yeah. You can. All right, man, we'll go make some videos. This sounds cool as hell.

Chris Gammell: Go do it.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's great. Anyway, yeah, we're done, aren't we? We're way over.

Chris Gammell: We are. Yeah, we're way over. All right.

Dave Jones: I'll go play with my toys. All right, cool.

Chris Gammell: Well, good videoing, sir. Good job. Good luck.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time. See you.

Speaker ?: Bye. Bye. administered administered administered