#700 – Beware of the Overachievers

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Released August 7th, 2025. Episode 700. Beware the overachievers.

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: Contrary to rumor, you are not dead.

Chris Gammell: I'm not dead?

Dave Jones: No, you've been sick a lot lately.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I was going to say, yeah, yes.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yes, I have... The rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated. Foregone recording or two, yeah, to try and recoup the, you know, I have tiny carriers of viruses that happen to live in my house. Tiny Petri dishes, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, no, I'm doing better now. Excellent. Getting ready to go on holiday. I'm going to be staying at 10,000 feet next week. Oh. So it's good that we're recording.

Dave Jones: 10,000 feet. Well, that's 3,000 odd meters.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's right.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: There you go. I'm a little worried about the altitude. I've never, like, stayed that high. I've definitely been that high, but I've never stayed that high.

Dave Jones: Where is this 3,000 meters in the U.S.?

Chris Gammell: In Colorado.

Dave Jones: In Colorado, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So up in the mountains. Yep. I'm excited. That's probably where I'm posting this from right now. And it's exciting, you know, family trip. Excellent. Cool. Yeah. Altitude sickness is a thing, and we'll see.

Dave Jones: At 3,000 meters, really?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I've been up there. I've been up there. It's not a problem.

Chris Gammell: Well, I've never stayed up there. That's what I'm saying. Oh, right. Okay. I've driven up there. I've been up in the mountains a whole bunch before, but I've never, like, tried to sleep up there. I'm not a skier, so I don't, like, go to ski resorts. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You've done that? What is it up in the mountains by you guys? What's the height of it?

Dave Jones: Our local Blue Mountains that you've been up to, that was 1,000 meters. Okay. Yeah. So you're three times that. What's Mount Kosciuszko, which is our highest point? Kosciuszko. Mount Kosciuszko. I can't even pronounce it, but Google fixed it for me. 2,200 meters. There you go. Okay. Yeah. That's the highest, because people don't know. Australia's pretty flat.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, there is a great dividing range, we call it, which runs up in the east coast of Australia. It runs, you know, north to south, up most of the mainland there, and it's a huge, it's in the name. It's a great dividing range, a big fold in the tectonic plates or whatever it is that caused that. But apart from that, no, we're pretty flat ass.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the 1,000 meters is like, those are like the kind of mountains, you know, mountains that I grew up near in New York. That's like the northern side of things where they're all flat and flattened out, rounded out, but still good hiking and fun stuff there.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. 2,200 meters is the highest point in Australia.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They do get higher. That is true. Right. Oh boy. Well, what have you been up to, man? It's been like a month since you and I have spoken, I guess.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a while. Yeah. We had to cancel a couple of times. Yep. I've been making videos, but I just started a project this morning. Just this morning. Okay. Yes. Just this morning. The video is not out yet, but I just shot the first part of the video. That's okay.

Chris Gammell: This episode will probably be out after, long after that. Yes.

Dave Jones: Right. Long after the first video is out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But what is your, what are you been making? What are you doing? What are you working on?

Dave Jones: Well, I'm going back to the project that I told you about. Oh God. I don't know how long ago. It might've been a year ago now. There's that beep in the bloody lab again. This is, I don't know. You know, you don't follow me on XRF. Or anywhere else. Or, you know, anyway. Or, you know, I haven't watched my recent videos. Bloody thing. There's something in my lab that's beeping. Every, randomly. Like every half hour or something like that. I haven't actually timed it. Which is ironic. Because that's the project I'm working on at the moment. And, yeah. There's this mysterious beep. And I thought, oh, I had this Bitcoin miner thing running. It's just like a little, someone sent it in the mailbag. It's just a little tiny Bitcoin, personal Bitcoin miner thing. And I thought that thing was beeping. But I moved that into the other room. And it's not that. And then I thought, oh, it's my NAS. My, you know, array of disks thing that, you know, has a beep. So I actually updated the software on that. And then I turned off all the beeps. And it's still, it's not that. And I can't say, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Irony would be if it was a clock that was beeping.

Dave Jones: It was a clock that was beeping. Or a timer that was beeping. Because my project. My project is the micro timer. As in mu timer.

Chris Gammell: You're right, of course. Micro timer. Oh, yeah. You've got to stick with it.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I've got to stick with consistency. Yeah, micro timer. So I'm doing a lab timer. I have talked about it before, I think. I'm sure. Anyway, I decided. I don't remember. I got off my ass and actually did something. Because step by, like, so it's a lab. You've seen it, right? I've sent you a photo of the, like, those bench timer things. So hang on.

Chris Gammell: Oh, is that the one with the funky case? Yeah. I think that was.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's not a funky case. It's just like an angled.

Chris Gammell: Like diagonal, yeah.

Dave Jones: Bench, yeah. It's a diagonal bench case, yeah. Okay, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's, well, funky-ish.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I will decide what is funky in this podcast.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's a little thing that sits on your bench. It's battery power. It's got an LCD, and it's got a couple of start-stop timers, and it's got some external plugs on it where you can plug in external signals to start and stop it as well. So you can, you know, it's good for experiments and stuff like that. But I wanted something a bit more advanced. I wanted something with a bigger display so you could see it right across the other side of the lab. Yeah, that's nice. And, yeah. And make it a bit more of a stock.

Chris Gammell: You wanted to also take more like a swim meet would have or a race would have. So that sort of kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Possibly something like that. So, yeah. So, anyway, it was, you know, it's a, mainly it's a timer. So it's a lab timer, but it can potentially do other things, you know.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Dave Jones: So, like, actually display the time and date while you're not using it as a timer, whereas the one I've got can't do that, you know. It isn't a clock. So, you know.

Chris Gammell: And what do you use a lab timer for?

Dave Jones: A lab timer? Timing things in the lab. When you do experiments and all sorts of things, you know. You need a lab timer. Like cooking an egg? It's one of those things that you don't know you need. It's like an egg timer? You've got your shoe phone, right? So you could use it. But, you know, no, it's a half-ass thing.

Speaker ?: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Tool for the job sort of thing. Yeah. It's the correct tool for the time. You'd be surprised how many times you actually need to time something in the lab when you've got a nice little desktop timer sitting there. You go, ooh, I'll just use that. Especially if you're shooting videos like me and you want to do, like, a time lapse or something like that. Yeah, that's true. Or you're timing how fast it takes for a scope to boot up or something, you know. And you want to have that on screen, so you've got to include a timer and, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, yeah. It's just a nice little thing that you didn't know you needed in your lab until you do. Yeah. And then with external inputs, if you've got an experiment or something like that that's running, it could take days or it could take hours or something, and you don't want to sit there watching it, but you want to know how long it runs for, then you can feed external inputs in which can start and stop the timer. Or you can have a lap counter, for example. If something's doing multiple times, you can count how many times that event occurred. So it's a timer counter kind of thing, just like a regular, you know, bench timer counter, you know, a Fluke Phillips timer counter or a Keysight timer counter or something would work. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And, like, what level of precision are we talking about then?

Dave Jones: Oh, we're talking 0.01 second or something. Okay, sure. Yeah, not, you know. It's a human scale still, but, like, you know. Yes, human scale times.

Chris Gammell: Or maybe one order of magnitude more than human scale so that it's.

Dave Jones: Yeah, something like that, yeah. So you can time faster events if you really wanted to.

Chris Gammell: No GPS signal required or anything like that.

Dave Jones: No, no, there's no GPS time synchronization. This isn't for the volt nuts or the time nuts, as they call them.

Chris Gammell: I've been watching Geerling. Jeff Geerling's been doing a bunch of GPS time things.

Dave Jones: Yes, yes, he's been doing some time nut stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, and Tim from Midzella also had, like, some fancy, crazy-ass clock thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all the rage at the moment. So I did, like, I think Jeff did a video on it. It's this timer board that works as a video clapper, you know, as one of those clappers boards. So it had these two big-digit displays on it, and you can just, you know, hit them together as a clapper. But yet it would synchronize to network time.

Chris Gammell: Right, if you're filming at 24 frames per second, it actually doesn't matter that much either, right? I mean, that's the thing, like, human scale like that is, like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's, yeah, I thought that was really cool. I'll see if I can find that video I'm linking in. Okay, yeah. I think it was Jeff Geerling. Yep. Anyway. Oh, cool.

Chris Gammell: So what's it going to take? What's it going to take to get it built?

Dave Jones: Ah, well, step one, of course, it's all about the LCD, right? Usually, you know, when I talk about design and project, I'll start with the case. But in this case, no. In this case, pun intended, I'm here a week. No, it's about the LCD. LCD. So, like, when I originally came up with the idea for this project, I was going to go with a custom-made LCD, like, fully custom-made seven-segment LCD that have nice, big seven segments on it, you know. It'd be completely custom. But then, yeah, that's cool. And they're cheap. And they're reflective. So they're very high contrast for almost zero power, right? Yeah. Because this thing's powered from a battery. And because it's got a real-time clock, you might want to run it, you know, all the time. So, you know, power consumption's important. So I thought, yeah, I'd originally do that with a custom LCD. And then I thought, no, but that's not flexible. Like, you can't have multiple timers on the screen at once, for example. You know, you couldn't add text or hack it to do something else, you know, something like that.

Chris Gammell: And then you also have an additional thing that it needs to, like, look okay with a camera on it, right? So, like, certain things that are, like, PWM dimmed might have, like, weird aliasing that you don't want to have.

Dave Jones: If you, yeah, but most LCDs don't really have that problem.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, that's not really. But, yes, I do know where you're coming from.

Chris Gammell: I understand if you had a different solution that you're like, oh, well, you can't have PWM just because of the aliasing and stuff like that. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah, but a segmented LCD would be great from a contrast point of view, power consumption, everything else. But it lacks the flexibility of a full dot matrix. So, I've decided on a four-inch jobby. So, you know, reasonable size LCD, 196, 192 by 64 dot matrix display. So, I went searching for those. I found a couple that I liked that were within the price range, seemed to have the transflective display, which I needed. I wanted a fully reflective display, one that doesn't use a backlight. But, eh, try and get a dot matrix display that doesn't use a backlight these days. Like, they're, you know, a bit rare as hen Steve kind of thing. Maybe I could have, if I searched for, like, a large one. I'm talking, like, you know, large-ish size one.

Dave Jones: Yeah, what is the scale of what we're talking about here?

Dave Jones: We're talking four inches.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Diagonal, that is. I think the one I got is about 4.1 inch, 4.1 inch diagonal. So, you know, it's a reasonable size LCD. It's not some tiny little thing. And, yeah, so they're all transflective. All the ones out there, they're either fully, like, you can, they only work with a LED backlight or they're transflective, which means you can use them with or without a backlight. But, so I thought, yeah, okay. So I found one that I liked. It was a reasonable price. And it came with a demo board so I can try it out instantly. I don't have to dick around, you know, trying to set something up and talk to it, then spend a bloody day trying to figure out how to make the stupid thing talk, you know. So, yeah. And then I can display different size fonts on it easily, you know, because the demo board just does that. And, yeah, so I just set that up this morning. And it seems to work okay. But then I was shooting the video and I'm going to have to replay my footage. But something happened to the top of the LCD. I think it's, like, partially failing or something. Actually, I'm going to go check it now. Hang on. Oh, it's gone. It's gone. Hang on. I'll put my headphones back in. It's gone. There was this, like, a row of pixels at the top that seemed to have, like, bled in to the LCD. And now I have a look at it.

Chris Gammell: I thought you meant the whole thing was gone. I thought you meant...

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no. I've been wrong. These pixels...

Chris Gammell: There's a time bandit about.

Chris Gammell: Great. So, after this show... After this... Great Scott. ...after we record it...

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Dave Jones: ...I can go and shoot my next clip, which goes, it's magically gone. I just shot the amp hour and it magically went. Yeah, so I don't know if I injected some static into it and it just... And these pixels just permanently bled on or what. But, yeah, so that's weird. I don't know what's going on there. But, anyway, strange things that happen. So, yes, so the key was getting an LCD that I like, that looked good, that was reasonably low cost. I haven't measured the power consumption yet, but I think the data sheet says 800 microamps. But I've got another one that's supposedly 100 microamps. So I want to try... That's also a 4-inch. So I want to try that one as well. Unfortunately, I don't think the demo board supports it. So I'm going to have to bodge it somehow. So after we do this, I'm going to have to bodge in some wiring. And it's got, like, four different interfaces. You can do an SPI bus. I think you can do an I2C bus. Or you can do 8-bit parallel or 4-bit parallel interface. So choose your poison, you know.

Chris Gammell: And then, like, you're driving this actively from a micro the whole time. That's the idea?

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes, it would be driven actively from the micro the whole time. Yes. So I need to couple it with a low-power micro. So, you know, if the LCD's only taken, you know, half a milliamp, I don't want to add another half milliamp for the micro. You know, so the micro's going to have to be really low-power kind of thing as well. So, yep. Because most of the time, we'll just be sitting there working as a, like, as a, as like a clock thing. So, you know, like, you want, and you want to operate it from a couple of AA batteries or something. So, you know, it's got to be, it's got to be quite low power. Yeah. So, yeah. So I want to get the other LCD. So if the data sheet says 800 micro amps, that might be a bit high. So, you know, I might have to go with the lowest power solution I can get, regardless of how it looks.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and what's your target battery life?

Dave Jones: Oh, don't know yet. I'll figure it out. Well, like, I haven't even chosen what sort of battery I'm going to use in the form factor I'm going to use yet. So, you know. But anyway, goal number one is to find the lowest power four-inch dot matrix LCD with a good transflective or fully reflective display on it. That is the goal. So, and it's not that easy, you know. There's like, there's a ton of bloody displays out there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and the remote shopping experience also is kind of tough. Are you doing like AliExpress or something else?

Dave Jones: No. I'll send you a link. Here we go. I'll send you a link of the display that I'm using at the moment. And it is, it'll be in, there we go. It is from buydisplay.com, which is very convenient because I want to buy a display. So I go to buydisplay.com. Yeah, but they offer, this site's really good because they offer, you know, dedicated demo boards, like really cheap demo boards that they will program to, like straight out of the box, it worked, right? They had already sold it in the actual, the FlatFlex connector for me. They had wired it up properly. They had programmed the microcontroller that drives that specific LCD and it just worked. Demo, straight out of the box. It was great.

Chris Gammell: Nice.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I do have to call out that it's 192 on the demo display. That they're showcasing. 192 by 64 dot matix.

Chris Gammell: Oh, matix. It is dot matix. There's no R. They've dropped the R. There's no R. Well, that's how they save the cost, you know.

Dave Jones: Exactly. By eliminating the R from the font chip. Now, if you have a look.

Chris Gammell: Maybe they're targeting the British.

Dave Jones: They're targeting the British. Those pommies.

Chris Gammell: They dropped their R's, right?

Dave Jones: They're right. Oh, boy. Soda. Soda. Soda. Soda. Hello. Hello, R droppers. Soda.

Chris Gammell: Well, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. That's an L dropper, actually.

Dave Jones: Oh, sorry. Yes, it is. Yes. L dropper. Sorry. I take that back.

Chris Gammell: This is an LCD, as it says on the screen. So they're obviously not L droppers. Right.

Dave Jones: East Rising. Oh, they're also. Oh, they've got a different web address on the screen. Yeah, this is a reseller.

Chris Gammell: This is no doubt. This is a reseller.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't know. But anyway, no. But they seem like a big, you know, they're like just got tons of different products and matching displays. Yeah. I mean, they're clearing house, right. And they've got tutorials, source code, you know, all sorts of things. And they say they guarantee the production of them from a certain date, you know, and stuff. So, you know, whether or not you can believe that or not.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I went through this a little bit with ePaper when I was doing it. And it was like, you know, they're buying, you know, they're buying second. They're buying factory seconds. Right. And so, like, they'll guarantee it up to a point. But then, you know, there's.

Dave Jones: I don't think these are factory seconds.

Chris Gammell: I bet they are.

Dave Jones: I don't think so. I think they are the manufacturer. East Rising is the company. East Rising. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, but you could put your own stamp. You could put all that stuff on there. I don't know. I have stories about this later, too. I'll talk about my stuff a little bit. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: All right. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: This is great, though. I mean, it looks nice. Like, it looks fine. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. It doesn't look that good in practice, right? It looks, you know, and then I haven't tried the backlight yet, but I'm sure it's going to look better with the backlight. But the backlight's like 800 milliamps or something. You know, it's like. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The scale difference is insane.

Dave Jones: It's crazy. You know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: God. I couldn't even afford an 8 milliamp backlight, let alone 80 or 800 or something. You know, it's just crazy. So anyway. So you'll notice on the flat flex LCD on that thing, they've got these little pads on the right hand side. And that is for a font chip. So they also sell this font chip. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Font chip? Oh, interesting. Font chip.

Dave Jones: Yes. Never heard of a font chip. You're not aware of font chips. Okay.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I should say, I really haven't done much with displays at all. Okay.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I can get you a link to the font chip data sheet. Hang on. Where is it? Specification. Description.

Chris Gammell: And that's like, so you don't have to then have all these fonts loaded into memory in your microcontroller? Correct.

Dave Jones: Into your microcontroller. Correct. Interesting. They're embedded in this font chip. Yep.

Chris Gammell: So it's just like an, was it like an EEPROM?

Dave Jones: It's like an EEPROM-y. Or ROM almost? Yeah. It's like a serial prom kind of thing. That's all it could be, actually. So hang on. I'll give you, I'll send you the link. Here you go. This is a direct link to the data sheet. They're available as a Chinese font chip, or this one's an English font chip. So, yep, there's a data. No, this one's a multi-language. And it's got different font sizes, like 5x7, 8x16, 24x24, you know. ASCII, it does ISO 8859 data sets, you know, Greek characters and all that sort of thing. So it's a little six-pin, yeah, font chip.

Chris Gammell: And why wouldn't you put that in the micro, I guess?

Dave Jones: Ah, because you don't want to chew up your, you don't want to chew up the space in the micro.

Chris Gammell: Got it. So this thing might be fast, or sorry, cheap enough that it's like, well, you could then go even lower on the flash and RAM.

Dave Jones: You could go lower on the flash chip, yes. You could go to a 1K, you know, a 4K flash, you know, micro and then max that out with code.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, this is like the, this is like the warehouse version of buying fonts instead of designing your own fonts and dealing with it. Having to deal with licensing, whatever, is already kind of in there.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But ironically, if I want a really super large font, which I kind of do on this thing for the timer, you know, when, so that you can see it halfway across the room, right, I can't use these fonts. These fonts aren't probably large enough, so I'm going to have to do a custom font anyway. Got it. So, yeah. Yeah. But anyway. Yeah. But it's there. The cable is there. And they can supply that, and they soldered that on for me. And, you know, it's like, yeah, that's cool.

Chris Gammell: It's interesting because, I mean, like, I've been looking, like, this is a very low level. It feels like, like, this is a simple micro talking to a simple font chip talking to a simple display. Not simple, like.

Dave Jones: No, but it's, like, overly simple. Relatively simple. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: But, like, if I think about how I would do it today with the stuff that I've been working on, it's like, I'd probably, like, see if I could figure out LVGL and, like, you know, like, kind of use all the software-y layers way, way further up the stack. Right. That is a fundamentally different exercise than what you're talking about here, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. No, mine's quite low level kind of thing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You're going to be painting pixels, right? Yes. You know, a certain shape, and that is representing a font. Yes. That's kind of the idea.

Dave Jones: That is correct, yes. Okay. And I've got to do it low power. It's not like I can run a bloody, you know, a higher order operating system on this thing and then, you know, install, like, you know, true type fonts or something like that. Yeah, exactly. It's like, no, this thing has to run on the smell of an oily rag, you know. Right, yep. So, yeah. Anyway, so I may or may not use that font chip, but it's there, you know. Okay. So, anyway, I do like the idea of the font chip. It just means that you can keep it separate. So, you only need a tiny routine inside your micro that reads the font chip and just transfers that data straight into the LCD itself. So, just, you know, basically transferring some data. And they probably give you example code for that as well.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. And it is interesting looking up the, so, like, it has a table in this font chip.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: And it's the base address going up is zero up to 22, 220,000. So, that's probably just the capacity of the EEPROM is. Oh, I would say so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 256K probably with the overhead. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

Dave Jones: Anyway, yeah. And I'm sure they've got example, because they've got lots of example code on their website and stuff you can download. So, I haven't investigated all that yet. I'm just trying to choose an LCD.

Chris Gammell: So, you used font chips in the past, though?

Dave Jones: Not personally. Or something like it? No. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: But I am aware of them. So, that's why. Yeah, no.

Chris Gammell: It's really an interesting idea.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And it only adds a few cents to the bomb. And then they will add it to the, and you don't even have to add it on your board. They will add it onto the LCD itself.

Chris Gammell: Oh, nice.

Dave Jones: So, you know, that's, like, really nice. So, you can just order it with that font chip and the LCD has it all built in and, you know. Yep. Bloody pin pictures. 0.5 millimeters, though. God, I hate 0.5 millimeter pin pitch.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's no fun.

Dave Jones: Stuff. No, it's a pain in the ass. It's smaller. And the demo board comes with a really nice adapter board, which has all the different pin pictures on it. And this one is the smallest pin pitch out of, you know. Oh, I see. Yeah. It's like, oh, God. Yep. So, anyway. Anyway, I do like this company. Because they supply, yeah, just a ready-to-go demo board. And it just works out of the box. So, that's really cool. So, happy with that.

Chris Gammell: That's great. That's great.

Dave Jones: But we'll see how much effort is required to drive the other LCD I got, which is not programmed into. I don't even know if it uses the same chip set in the LCD. So, if it does, maybe I'm in with a chance. If not, I might have to reprogram the 805 one on the demo board somehow. Oh, really?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Good luck with that.

Dave Jones: Well, they might actually provide the ROM images on the website. I haven't actually looked in detail yet. So, yeah. Anyway. So, got to find all that. So, there you go. Yes, that will be part one. I'm starting with the LCD instead of the case this time. Although, I've got an idea of the form factor that I want. And it'll probably be a 3D modeled and 3D printed case as well. So, that people can, you know, actually build it themselves and 3D print their own case and, you know, stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's great. That sounds like a good project. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's fun. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Where do you think you'll get it done, manufactured?

Dave Jones: Oh, I have no idea. But you're about to tell me, aren't you?

Chris Gammell: Come on, man. Don't blow my spot. Oh, come on. How you doing me dirty like that? Come on.

Dave Jones: I knew this segue was coming.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you knew what it was. You saw it from a mile away. Yeah. Yeah. So, I have used JLC for the first time and nobody was surprised and nobody is. Stop.

Dave Jones: They own the bloody market. Everywhere I look, everyone's getting everything assembled at J and JLC. How huge must they be? I know. Jesus.

Chris Gammell: It's nuts. Right.

Dave Jones: It's just like everyone uses it.

Chris Gammell: There's nothing fancy here. There's not. And really, it's like, you know, people have been doing this for years. Yep. The things I wanted to talk about is actually the, a couple things. One, the process, but, and you know, non-sponsor, whatever. So, this is just me using it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, yeah. Totally. Totally non-sponsored. But I just looked at, I don't know where I saw it, but I looked, I wasn't sure. Yeah. It might've been a video. I can't, definitely can't remember who it was, but they, they used JLC service and showed. Mike was talking about it. Sorry?

Chris Gammell: Mike Harrison. Mike Harrison.

Dave Jones: Oh, that was, that's it. Mike. Yes. Mike Harrison did an excellent video. Yeah. He did this tiny USB adapter power board or something. And he was showing, yeah, I was watching that and I'm going like, you can do it all in the fricking browser, can't you? Or something. You can do it all on their website where you can lay it, like you upload your Gerber images and then you can do your component placements on there. You can rotate your components all in their interface. It's like, holy crap.

Chris Gammell: I will say, so we talked to Andrew last, last episode. So I talked to Andrew and he's from Circuit Hub and you know, they have a similar thing and you know, both him and then Macrofab and then things like this, like it, it's, we're moving closer and closer to the ideal that we all want, which is I never want to talk to anyone ever. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You want complete turnkey. You want.

Chris Gammell: I want.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: I just don't, don't ask me a damn thing.

Dave Jones: You want to talk to another human.

Chris Gammell: Yes. I want to. Yeah, exactly. And this is the first time that I've actually achieved that. I haven't been making a lot of boards lately. So I think it's, I think kind of everyone's been moving towards this. Just the software has been getting better across the board. Oh, the. But this is the first time I, you know, first off, I read the, the capabilities better. So like I didn't have a PCB problem. Like I wasn't pushing the PCBs as much as my last time I was doing it with my little AirTag board.

Dave Jones: So you've done the same, same thing as Mike, basically.

Chris Gammell: Basically. Yeah. Okay. Right. And I, I should say I'm getting the boards back Thursday. So I don't know, you know, quality. They're fine. You know, whether it's right, whatever. But, um, you know, I made a small board. Right.

Dave Jones: It's probably your fault because it's entirely automated. That's how they get the cost down.

Chris Gammell: I think so. Yeah. And, um, yeah. So it was like a 38 by 18 millimeter board, you know, so pretty tiny. Jesus. Uh, I had 105 Oh four Oh two LEDs on it.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. All right. Decent number. Uh, but all the same. It's not like you had, I had 140 from parts or whatever.

Chris Gammell: Uh, yeah, there's a bunch of parts on the other side, but yeah, that was like an array of LEDs.

Dave Jones: Oh, so you've got a dual side load.

Chris Gammell: Yes, that's right. And that ups the cost a little bit, but it was fine, you know, basically for panelizing. Uh, and you know, the only thing that was weird is like in their little preview interface when it did show, you know, the kind of the placement like Mike showed, um, for the LEDs, it was showing, it was showing plus minus instead of anode cathode. Oh, right.

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So then it's just a little jarring. You're like plus minus, you know, like, uh, so, but it was. I think it was fine. I added an additional image just to like be very, very clear. I'm like, here's the anode. Here's the cathode on all these, this array of things. Didn't hear anything back. And like I said, we'll find out on Thursday.

Dave Jones: So did you use their parts?

Chris Gammell: Yes. Okay. So now here's the thing. Here's the thing that I will actually. You have to, right?

Dave Jones: You've got to use their parts for this to work flawlessly. You don't have to. No?

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yes. That part. Yes. If you want it to work smoothly, then yes, you have to. Yeah. If you want it to work low cost. Yes, you have to. Right. Um, if you want it to work with longevity, I don't think that would actually work. I think that's where, uh, you know, so basically if I expect to make this exact same board with the exact same part numbers six months from now, I think, and on the forum where I found out about this, someone had expressed that they said like, look, I can't get the same parts. Yeah. I have to redo the bomb basically each and every time because of that. Um, and so, um, you know, in my case, I wasn't using anything fancy. I wasn't using anything that like, there's nothing fancy about this board. It's just the compactness of it. That's the only thing that's really fancy. Now here's the thing that I love. And here's what I would love to actually see in every other thing anywhere, anywhere in the whole world. Uh, so there is a script, which I will post the link to. So this is actually, um, this is on the embedded FM slack. This is where I was, you know, talking to folks about this thing and finding out and, you know, just borrowing, borrowing knowledge really. So Alvaro Prieto, uh, from the Rivers Engineering podcast and former guest of the show, um, he pointed me at two things. One, there's a, uh, there's just like an export plugin for key CAD, which is great. It basically just kind of spits everything out, pre-formatted exactly how they want it, you know, checks it against their database.

Dave Jones: Oh, so there's a JLC export.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: Script. Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: And that part is great. So like, if I wasn't using their parts initially, it would also help you kind of line up. So it's like, say I just kind of left off 0402, like resistors and I only see a 10k. Like I could just leave it to that point and then go search through this database and like say this one, this one, that one, whatever. I think that's still going to be, um, higher friction generally, but you know, might have a little bit more, you might have reasons to do that sort of thing. And like I said, it actually, it pulls down the entire LCSC database and then you could check against that. And so, and even though the, um, even though the web interface for LCSC, said that this one part that I wanted was available, the, the database had pulled down and then the interface, when I actually went to go like order the boards, both said, yeah, that part's not available. And I actually had to go back and redesign for a different motor driver, um, for what I was doing.

Dave Jones: But they do have the full, um, LCSC database that you can choose from.

Chris Gammell: It just syncs it down to your computer. It's like 12, 12 chunks of data. Um, and not, yeah.

Dave Jones: And syncs it into key CAD. How does that work exactly?

Chris Gammell: It's yeah. I'm not sure actually. I mean, it's just a Python plugin, but it's, it's all, it's all doing on the backend basically. So I don't, I don't really know.

Dave Jones: So if you do it, can you, then does, does all the LCSC components show up in key CAD? So you can just go, right, I want a microcontroller boom and it lists all the Asian source microcontrollers or what?

Chris Gammell: Not that I haven't tried. I was, I, yeah, I was not using it like that. Um, I can show you now if you want, we'd have to describe it to the listeners. I can show, I have it open here.

Dave Jones: No, I think we're a bit.

Chris Gammell: It's really sort of, so for what I could understand, it's the checking, right? It's the, um, it's the, um, it's the, so it's not at the design stage.

Dave Jones: It's at the, uh, check in.

Chris Gammell: Um, it's the checking stage. Pre-manufactured checking stage. It's like the personal DFM kind of thing. Right. Yeah. And it's, it's that stage. It's the export at that, at that stage. Um, so good, important. And like I said, the formatting alone is like, makes it, um, very, very useful. Um, and you know, you can at least like sanity check yourself that like, Hey, this doesn't have a, you know, an LCSC component. And then, you know, there's going to be extra cost as a result of that. It's basically, you know, and then, like I said, it also has. Um, stock and stuff like that. So you can use this almost like a mini DFM tool, assuming you're locked into this.

Dave Jones: So it shows you their stock.

Chris Gammell: Yes, exactly. So I have it open right now and it has, it just did a poll on the database. Um, so I could see that they have of this 0805 10 microfiber capacitor. I would be constantly going 5.47.

Dave Jones: F5 database refresh, database, F5, F5, F5. Like refreshing that data. Oh, some bastard just bought 10,000, just cleaned them out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Damn. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so like, and like I said, there was another connector that was on board that I was pretty sure they didn't have, but then this was right that they were out. So I just left off the board and I'm going to hand solder those later. Right. That's fine. Okay. So that is, that is the output generation and kind of DFM checking. That is called the JLC PCB tools plugin for key cat, I guess.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: But that is not, that is not the business. That is not the thing that I want in my life all the time because the other thing that's there will save you all the headaches anyway. So again, this is assuming you're going to be going towards JLC PCB. Now I've got to try and vamp a little bit while I find this plugin.

Dave Jones: Is there anyone, and please, if our listeners out there know, please drop us a note, leave it in the comments or whatever. Is there anyone else that's comparative to this service at the moment? You know, is like, I haven't checked. I haven't actually kept up to date, but are there any other manufacturers that are close to this sort of almost complete automation?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because this is just insane. I don't know. It's just mad.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So now here's the, I found the, I found the thing. Yeah. So I'll link in that other, that other plugin. But the thing that is so, so much better, here we go. It's called the easy EDA to key CAD dot PY. So basically.

Dave Jones: Easy EDA is their online CAD tool. That's right. That's right. And so that is what they push.

Chris Gammell: They're like, yeah, they built a whole web interface. And for like a lot of people, it's great. That's what they want. Oh yeah. That's fine. But people will be surprised to know that's not me. I'm a, I, my heart is elsewhere.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So like they basically, they only build for their own tools. That's fine. That's their right. They built all the data, whatever.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: I don't care. I still want it in key CAD. And so this is basically an export script. So now what you do is when you plug in and let me send you the link for this too. So you have, you have a visibility into it. Um, when you, so it's basically now from my command line, I, uh, you know, it's easy EDA to the number two key CAD. And then basically you just do dash dash LCSC ID equals the number. Right. And so every part has the number there as they're basically like a digi key part number or an LCSC part number. They're unique identifiers. It goes out, it grabs the footprint, it grabs the schematic, it grabs the 3d model, puts them all in a common library and it just sucks it down and you're set to go. And like, that is all I've ever wanted. Right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like I don't want to, you know, like, and I do it each, even though it's better to probably maintain my own libraries. I know that's better. Like I know in my heart of hearts, this is going to bite me at some point. I'm going to get bit. Right. I just, I just know it.

Dave Jones: So I need to, so if I want to use this, I've got to run a Python's, I've got to run this Python script. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep. Right. So it's not, all you do though is.

Dave Jones: Right. But I thought it was a plugin for key CAD. You said it was a plugin.

Chris Gammell: This one is not. No, the other one is. So there's, there's other tools, which is the, the, the, the checker, the checker tools is a plugin. That's fine.

Dave Jones: Okay. Gotcha. Right.

Chris Gammell: But this, this script is going out is fetching the easy EDA part.

Dave Jones: So it's generating a, basically a key CAD library from the easy EDA library. Exactly. Right.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Gotcha. And that made it so much faster and easier. Right. So now imagine you find new parts you like.

Dave Jones: And do you have to do it part by part or can you just go do every single part on LCSC?

Chris Gammell: You probably could do it for every part. I have not done that. Thank you. And also that would be a mess to search through then too. Right. So I could just do it per project.

Dave Jones: The bandwidth would be.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. So just the turnaround time to do this sort of thing. You know, there's other tools out there. We've, you know, we've had Natasha from Snap EDA, which is now called Snap Magic. She's been on the show. There's, you know, the ultra librarian. There's a lot of these tools that are out there. But I think that the, you know, the, for better or worse. No, this skips all that. The centralized managed nature of it. Right. The fact that we're basically, you know, we're going to Trader Joe's, which is like a grocery store here where they have their own brand of stuff effectively. Right. You know, they still carry other stuff, but it's like, it's a quasi curated, but it's like, you, you only get two or three choices of each thing. Fine. You kind of like buy into that. And then you just go buy it. I just need, I just need ketchup. You have two choices for ketchup. Right. And like, that's kind of, that's the equivalent in my mind here. Again, it could bite you in so many other ways. There's so many bad things about this, but the, if, if convenience is kind of trumping everything else, then yeah, this is.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: It's real. It was real nice. It was a very pleasant experience. So. Damn. Yeah. This script, like if I could get this script for. Hang on.

Dave Jones: This has been around for years. The first check-in was like three years ago.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Nobody says I'm on top of things, Dave. Nobody says I'm hip or with it or whatever, but I've just never done it. I've just never taken that leap. So.

Dave Jones: This can be, yeah, this converts easy EDA to key care libraries. Cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Wow.

Chris Gammell: But it's all the, they update their library too. So like there are new parts on there too. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Cause this code hasn't been updated in a year or two years. Is it like, yeah. The last update was last, last year or something. So once they've dialed it in and it works, you shouldn't have to touch it again. It just updates the database. You know, you just pull in the latest stuff from the database. Cool. Wow.

Chris Gammell: So I did get charged 54% tariffs. So that definitely sucked. However, you know, like here's another thing. Okay. So now I bought 4,000 LEDs for this project.

Dave Jones: And if you're paying 4% on your $2 widget, gosh darn it. You know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It was a lot more. It was more than that. But I think the thing is.

Dave Jones: You know what I mean. You know. Yes, of course.

Chris Gammell: Look, there's, I'm not happy about it. Nobody's surprised by that. But like, let's just talk about the actual economics in this case. Right. So like, should I have gone domestic? Okay. So now I, you know, in my anger, right? After, you know, just plopping down my credit card, paying the tax, whatever. Okay. I went and looked for, could I get on DigiKey, right? This is not a true apples to apples. I'll explain it at the end. But like, I paid 0.007 cents per LED at the quantity I was buying.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: The cheapest I could buy on DigiKey at the time was 0.005 cents. Yes. So basically, almost like a, you know, 15x, right? Almost. No, that's not, that's bad math. No, 8x. Sorry. Yes. So basically, I paid, I think for the, it was like $30 versus like $250 and just LEDs, right?

Dave Jones: Now, someone could say to me, yeah, it was a big difference. It was like a, it was like a, you're not getting one board made, you're getting multiple boards.

Chris Gammell: I've got 40 boards. Oh, okay. So you had 105 LEDs per board. So basically a reel of LEDs, right? And so like, yeah. Okay. So that's the best I could do in DigiKey. I'm not saying there's none other places. Now the, you know, the true not apples to apples, like I could go and buy the parts off LCS here, some other low cost supplier, import those, just pay the tax on that $30 and then, and then get it made domestically. Like no arguments there.

Dave Jones: Yes, you could.

Chris Gammell: But the cost difference then in, in production is just like, it's insane. It's crazy. It's still not there. And so like, I don't like the tariff, but it's still worthwhile for in, on this project, not all projects for me to just pay it and just deal with it. So. Yep. Of course. And like you said, scale to scale is nuts. So we'll see how the, how the quality looks. This is nothing fancy, right? This is basically like a sensor break.

Dave Jones: I'm sure the quality is just fine. I'm sure you don't have to worry about that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But I've never heard any bad stories really.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I'm.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm sure it's adequate. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm yeah. I think the thing is if you're going to do, you know, reasonable boards, it's going to have decent outcomes probably.

Dave Jones: But yeah, people have to remember that, you know, like people, okay, this is fantastic. This, everyone raves about this. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread and it's revolutionized the industry and everything. But if you're designing anything like serious, like as in seriously complex, like stuff, you know, this is not going to work. You know, this is.

Chris Gammell: It would work, but I think the cost would start to equablate, you know.

Dave Jones: But you don't get the same automation capability. If you need very specific things that you're doing then, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But if you're just making a simple board that has a bunch of parts on it, Bob's your uncle, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: This is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So now the other thing that's about this project. So basically what I was making, I'm making a Bluetooth thing. Probably no one's surprised about that. Yeah. But I designed it around this board that I actually don't know how I bought it. So I got it for $3. So it's an NR52 840 board. It's actually targeted at like the keyboard building community that's out there.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So like a lot of them target that part. It's a Bluetooth part from Nordic. It's, you know, it's a great part. I've used it many times before. The board shipped to my house from China was $3. Yeah. And it's got battery charging, USB, just like LED, whatever. And it's just like a, it's just like a, you know, it's a 13 pins down either side of a point inch, point inch. You know, so it's just like a, basically a breakout board. But, but like $3 for this. Delivered. I can't.

Dave Jones: Delivered.

Chris Gammell: Delivered. I can't. I can't buy.

Dave Jones: I just did a video on delivery yesterday and how hard delivery is and how expensive it is.

Chris Gammell: I can't buy an NR52 840 for less than $5 in single quantity. Like not even single quantity, like in like significant quantity.

Dave Jones: In like a hundred or something. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. And so I was talking to my, my friend about this. Like, I think the only way that this works is if someone's ripping these off other products and reballing them and putting them on. Like, so this is definitely like a recycled part, but that, I don't, as long as it works, I don't really care. $3 though. Like my God. So yeah, the board I'm building is like a, basically a little like shield effectively for this thing. But the fact that I can get this board for $3 is really what makes the whole thing work in the first place. Delivered.

Dave Jones: That's the amazing thing. For those who don't know, I'm sure we've discussed this before, but the reason you can get stuff delivered cheap from China and specifically China is because China is deemed by the International Postal Union. I think it is to be a developing country, developing country in quote marks. They have a space station. They have probes on the moon and Mars. Okay. But they're a developing nation in quote marks. So therefore they get international subsidized postage. And that's why you can get your $1 farting gadget from China delivered for $1.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Or your board delivered for $3. Let's see if it doesn't make sense though.

Chris Gammell: Like this probably, like this was like tariff paid at source kind of thing, right? That's like what they claimed at least. Right. And like it got through customs.

Dave Jones: They can even absorb the tariff.

Chris Gammell: They got through customs too, which is nuts. And it's like, but there's like a, there's no de minimis exemption. That's used to be another kind of loophole, at least with a lot of like the low cost, like Timu and AliExpress type stuff where you'd be buying like the farting novelty toys type things. It would used to be like, well, there was no tariff. It was less than 800, but now that no longer. So yeah, I think this is still-

Dave Jones: For those who don't know, that's called a, what is it? A de-

Chris Gammell: De minimis. De minimis. De minimis. I never know how to pronounce it. Of the minimum amount. Yeah. De minimis.

Dave Jones: De minimis is basically the cap under which you import something. If it's under that value, then you don't get taxed. That's basically-

Chris Gammell: Basically, it's saying that you're not an importer. You're not doing a large enough business. To- For the government to care about. Yeah. Yeah. So like the old way that this would have worked, these boards that I got, you know, I didn't spend $800 on boards. No. I think it was like- That's right. Let's see. I paid 180 in tariffs and I think the boards were like, it was like 400 some dollars in boards. Right. So like- Right. Yeah. Not cheap.

Dave Jones: It used to be here in Australia, it used to be like $1,000 or something, but I don't even know if that's a thing anymore. I haven't thought about that for a decade now.

Chris Gammell: You guys don't have any kind of like- Yeah.

Dave Jones: No. But yeah, but there used to be like a thing, like a cap. If it was under $1,000 here in Australia, you could import it and you wouldn't pay GST or anything on it, you know. Oh, yeah. Nice. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So it's basically personal consumption, direct mail kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Those days are gone around here, unfortunately. I mean, like fortunately, unfortunately. Like there are, you know, there are sort of like some things I agree with. Like, do we need more like, you know, fast fashion crap coming from China, like direct to people's homes?

Chris Gammell: Like thrown in the trash immediately? Like, no. No, we don't need that. You know. No. Is that actually the intent of this? No, it's not.

Dave Jones: The International Postal Union should remove China's status as a developing nation. That's just insane. It's just insane.

Speaker ?: You know.

Dave Jones: That just allows them to dominate everything. So, you know. Yep. And people wonder why we don't do any manufacturing here or in the US.

Chris Gammell: I don't think no one is competing on these prices at all. No. Like just.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: You can't. Even take away all the other stuff. Like nobody is making an Android 52 840 breakout board for, you know, $2 and whatever the, you know, the stuff. Whatever the post. Like it's just insane, right?

Dave Jones: So. It's crazy. Yeah. Oh, man. The margins are so razor thin. It's just nuts. Yeah. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So I'll let you know. Well, we're recording this a week before or three days before I actually get these boards. You know. We'll see how the quality is. I'll follow up in the future. Sure, it's fine.

Dave Jones: I'm sure the quality is fine and you're going to be happy. And if it. And if there is a goof on it, it's probably your goof. Right.

Chris Gammell: Very likely. Yeah. Yeah. That is. That is the historically correct answer. Yep.

Dave Jones: Wasn't Mike complaining about that he didn't know the polarity of something? He couldn't. He had to guess or something. What was it? I don't know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't remember. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Actually, Mike's video is really good too. I wish I would have seen it because he. So there's like a 70 by 70 millimeter like panel thing. So like say you have to do double sided. He did it. I did it. But I just ended up panelizing and like, and then I ended up having to order more boards as a result. Right. Because I had like a small size board. He just infilled the whole panel himself. So he just had five per panel.

Dave Jones: Oh, so he did the panelization at the PCB end.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Whereas you did panelization on the JLC end. Is that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's right. You can do like an auto, you know, basically a grid layout, add rails, whatever. Like that's fine. But then because I had this 18 by 18 by 38 millimeter board, I basically did a four by two array in order to get to the 70 by 70 and then add rails to that. Whereas Mike, he just did these tiny boards with a bunch of dead space in between out to the minimum space.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So that you could have, you know, fewer, fewer per panel sort of thing, which is, I mean, nobody's surprised Mike's a better electrolyte. You know that I am.

Dave Jones: Well, he manufactures things at medium volume, you know, so he, he, he's got his own in-house pick and place machine and he's just manufactured, always manufacturing hundreds of boards every month or two, you know. So, yep. Yep. He's got everything dialed in and he still uses PCAD, still uses, what is it? PCAD 2000 or something like that. So, yep. Yeah. It's great. Yep. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, you know. That's right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yep. You'll be pleased to know I will use key CAD for this new design. I won't use Altium. Oh, interesting. I'll use key CAD. Yep. So there you go. And yeah, I'll probably do this JLC thing as well just because I can show the process, you know, kind of thing. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, I don't know, man. I might've, I could've, I could've been a mole in there and I could've, I could've gotten to your beloved Altium and, you know, eaten it from the inside out, right?

Dave Jones: You could've. Are we, should we talk about that?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Because that's funny. I had a recruiter reach out to me and they're like, you know, hey, I want you to, you know, take a look at this job for the product manager, blah, blah, blah, you know, recruiters, they just spray and pray, right? Yeah. Yeah. Random shit. Yeah. I ignored them, but I sent it to Dave and I said, you know, I can, I can really get in there and mess up some stuff if I took over the Altium product management stuff. Yes.

Dave Jones: This was Altium. So what was the role? Product.

Chris Gammell: I think it's like the product manager for like Altium designer.

Dave Jones: The product lead or something? Product lead. Something like that, yeah. PCB product lead or something? I don't know. Yeah. Something like that. You don't want me.

Chris Gammell: That's, that's, that's the, that's the, that's what they would have figured out after, after many rounds of interviews. Why does this guy keep talking about KeyCat?

Chris Gammell: KeyCat.

Dave Jones: And the first thing you do is a KeyCat export tool when you get in there. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh, God. Oh, it's hilarious.

Chris Gammell: You know, like you gotta boil the frog one degree at a time, right? Right. Yep. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I can't believe it is.

Dave Jones: So did you even reply?

Chris Gammell: No, no. No, you didn't even reply. Come on, man. Don't, don't, don't deal with recruiters. It's not worth it. It's never worth it. It's not, I'm not looking to work on PCB stuff nor anything else right now. You know, it's just like, ugh. Ugh.

Dave Jones: I've been watching a few videos that have been complaining about, like, the entire industry is now, the entire recruitment industry has now changed. It's all AI interviews now. Totally. Apparently. Like, oh, God.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, my God. No.

Chris Gammell: I mean, like.

Dave Jones: No, no, I am out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you and I have been, you know, on that path for a long time. But, like, I don't look good on paper. You know what I mean?

Dave Jones: Same here.

Chris Gammell: I'm no Mike Harrison, right? But, like, I just, you know, I know a lot of people and, like, I think I kind of piece stuff together okay. But, like, my resume would not read well to an AI. Yeah, no, mine would be shit.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, good luck to me if I ever need to.

Dave Jones: If you never need to work for the man again, huh? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No.

Dave Jones: No, you'll just continue finding jobs through your contacts and things like that. Which is how most of the industry is going to, you know, schmucks, if you're doing an AI job interview, you're doing it wrong.

Chris Gammell: It's tough. I mean, well, that's the thing. I feel bad for, you know, people that are coming out of college, right? Like, entry-level position, they don't have a choice, right? It's not like, oh, I'll go network. Yeah, yeah, right. You know, I'll network my way into a job as an entry level. It's like, no. Yeah, it's tough. And you're hosed.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's really tough. It's really, it's a tough time for that sort of stuff. So.

Dave Jones: Oh, I watched this one video. You know, it's about how North Korean, North Korean spies get into all the tech companies in the West. They're filled with them. I can't remember which channel it was on, but how all the tech companies have been infiltrated by these North Korean spies because everyone works from home now, right? So they do these online interviews and they appear to be somebody else, right? So, you know, they can change their appearance, change everything, you know, right? And so they actually get this job and then they have a whole army of people behind them at the back end helping them do that job. And they get, you know, so they're actually apparently awesome employees because they have a whole, you know, army of people behind them helping them out and back in North Korea. So it's like, you own one person, but you're getting like, you know, 10 other people at the other end doing the job for you. And it's like, yeah. And they're infiltrating all these tech companies.

Chris Gammell: Beware of the overachievers, right, Dave?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Beware of the overachievers. And I thought that was hilarious. Oh my God. Yeah. It's like, and companies are apparently, they were saying in this, you know, expose video or whatever, they were saying that a lot of companies are actually aware that these people are from North Korea and they're possibly spies, but they don't care because they're so productive and they keep them employed because they're so darn productive.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's insane. What the hell? Anyway, I'll see if I can find that video. I'll link it in. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'll check it out. North Korean spy. It's just, oh my God. So great.

Chris Gammell: Well, speaking of some, I do have some videos that I'd like to call out. One, there is a new channel. I'm sure this is just the algorithm getting me, but it is the, it was a full like, like walkthrough of B-Link. I don't know if you know them. They're like mini PC makers. Oh yes, yeah.

Dave Jones: I've done, I've done videos on the B-Link PCs. Yeah. I haven't watched the full video, but oh, like it goes for like half an hour or something, doesn't it?

Chris Gammell: It does. Yeah, yeah. It's like 20 minutes.

Dave Jones: Shows their entire production facility.

Chris Gammell: It's beautiful. Yeah. Like really just, you know, like any how it's made tile thing. Great. Love to watch it. Cause they actually, you know, they're doing their own anodization of like, you know, forming of, you know, aluminum, that sort of thing. So really good stuff. Love that sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was great. It's very in depth. I'm going to have to go and watch the whole thing. You know, is there any commentary on top? I don't.

Chris Gammell: No, no.

Dave Jones: No, I didn't think there was. Yeah. It's just showing all the steps. Yeah. But it's just, yeah. Yeah. It's great. I thought it was.

Chris Gammell: And they have other ones out there. Like they do a heat sinks and stuff like that. Good stuff, you know, but this one, this one has been my favorite so far. So, right. And then the other one, past guest of the show, Stephen Hawes from Opulo, he had a really great one about getting certified. So basically he went and got the Lumen Pick and Place certified for like FCC and CE and stuff like that. And he kind of talks through it.

Speaker ?: Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that certification.

Dave Jones: Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's great.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: I'll link in Stephen's episode here. Wait, was he in my other podcast? Hmm. No, he came here too. That's right. He was here recently. Yeah. So he was on the Contextual Electronics podcast early on, like right when it, right when he started, right when the other podcast started, now defunct. And then he came back onto the Amp Hour relatively recently and he talked about what the Lumen's doing and stuff like that. And this is part of like the moving it towards production. This is the V4. So. Cool. Cool stuff. Yeah. He continues to make great videos.

Dave Jones: Excellent.

Chris Gammell: Highly recommended.

Dave Jones: I have to check it out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Certifications suck.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unbelievable. I'm selling a new pocket meter at the moment. Oh, yeah? Sanwa. Sanwa manufactured pocket meter. And I was supposed to sell it like a year ago, but all the compliance issues took forever.

Chris Gammell: Is that like the 8008 that you had? Didn't you recommend one for a while? That was the, or no, this ending.

Dave Jones: That was the PM300.

Dave Jones: That was the PM300. That was the PM300 pocket multimeter from Sanwa. Got it. Got it.

Dave Jones: But that is completely discontinued.

Chris Gammell: Oh, wow.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So anyway, I've got the new version of the PM3, which is quite nice. It's a folded wallet type. And yeah. Yeah. But that was a new model that they had to get recertified just for me. And it took like, yeah. It took like a year or something. It was nuts. All sorts of little issues. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Anyway, it was crazy. Oh, well. So, yeah. Actually, I know certification issues as well. Guess whose solar still isn't turned on, Dave?

Dave Jones: Oh, really? It's not turned on.

Chris Gammell: Why? So, everything got installed. The installers did great.

Dave Jones: They're certified installers?

Chris Gammell: They're certified installers.

Dave Jones: Well, so things are a little bit different here as well. Why can't they just switch it on?

Chris Gammell: So, things are different here. Yeah. You have to have external certification, basically. So, yeah. So, like Europe and I think Australia are certified installers where basically, yeah, they come in, they do it, whatever.

Dave Jones: And they just switch it on. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, there's a multi-step process here. And so, there's two problems. I was talking to a friend in Europe about this, too. Because he said the same thing happens in the Netherlands. And where they just turn it, you know, like they know what they're doing. They turn it on. So, one is it's a city regulation here. And that's really where this stuff all fell apart.

Dave Jones: Oh, city-based regulation. Not even state.

Chris Gammell: It's just city. Not even state. Yeah. Oh. So, this is like building code type stuff, right? So, that's really what it came down to. Yeah. Yeah. So, the inspector came by. They put the power wall in my garage. Despite it, I wanted it in a different location. They said that it wasn't possible because of like spacing and other features that are on the side of the house. Okay. So, they rerouted all the wiring. It ended up being like a ton.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? So, it was outside the house and they rerouted it inside?

Chris Gammell: So, like when I first agreed to this whole thing, it was supposed to be on the outside of the house, on the northern side of the house, and no sun. It was going to be, you know, right near the, basically mounted right near the meter, right? Yes. So, it kind of makes sense, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, of course.

Chris Gammell: Your wires all come back there, whatever. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Shortest run possible.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I was looking for. And it was still not that short to do that because it's on a detached garage and then my roof, there's two different sets of panels, whatever. So, they ended up doing all this wacky stuff where the panels on the roof are going through a trench all the way out to the garage, up and over the garage, out to this power wall, which is the inverter and the battery that's in the garage. But it's basically mounted next to the subpanel that's tied back to my main meter. And so, whatever this inspector did not give, like, a spec, or not a spec, but like a regulation that he was actually going against. He said it's like something like, oh, it's only a single conductor to the panel, and it just, like, didn't make any sense to me.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And we kept asking, like, what is this, you know, code that you're going against? And he basically said, I'm not going to prove it. That's, like, all it came down to is, like, he had the power to, like, shut this whole project down. He said, I'm not going to prove it. And so, the solar company was like, I guess we got to move it. And so, they just came back and moved it.

Dave Jones: Oh, at their expense? They moved it? Yeah, exactly. They moved it at their expense. But still, oh, my God.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. What in that? So, then they moved it to a different part of the garage, further away from that subpanel.

Dave Jones: So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, just such a mess. And now it's going to get certified. But here's the other thing. It's not, still not allowed to start generating it. Oh. Because in the U.S., what I found out, like, there's been all these steps that have been, like, kind of waiting for me that I didn't read the initial email for. Right. That's really what it comes down to. I wasn't reading very well. So, at the end of all this, once we get the certification, then I have to, not I have to, the solar company submits it to the power company. The power company, apparently the meter I have on my house is only unidirectional. It's not bidirectional. Because there's been, because when they installed it. Oh, what? There was no, there was no idea that there would ever be power flowing back out to the grid. Yeah, yeah, right. And so, then what they have to do is they get a work order.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but your house is from, like, 2000, right? It's not old.

Speaker ?: I know.

Chris Gammell: That's what's wild, right? Like, you'd think, like, but I guess it's probably just a cost basis.

Dave Jones: Like, the old school spinny ones, they would spin backwards, you know? Exactly. They'd, like, go the opposite direction.

Chris Gammell: What? I have no idea what it is, but they said, look, you have to get, I think it's probably just so they can build in both directions. That's probably the real thing.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it's got to communicate back probably better than.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, you'd need a smart meter for them to monitor it. I think that's what it is. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Totally. Okay, right. Yeah, it's not the fact that it can't export. It's the fact that they can't meter it in the export direction. Yeah, yeah. And they can't charge it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, anyways, it's going to take another week, and then the power company will do it. And then, finally, I'll have what's called the permission to operate, and then I can turn the damn thing on.

Dave Jones: And then summer will be over.

Chris Gammell: In my garage. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right, yeah. Yeah. Well, here's the other thing, though. So, I had a friend who, you know, so I don't know if you know, but the incentives are all going away. I have a friend who, like, looked into it when they found out that the incentives are going away. Yeah. And they're like, oh, yeah, we're booked out way past the deadline.

Dave Jones: Oh, past the deadline. Wow. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, there's people that are, like, so this friend is looking at it and, like, saying, like, they might just pay it in this tax year, even though it won't get installed in this tax year, to get the incentives. And then, you know. So, what's going to happen is probably about six months into 2026, you're going to start seeing a bunch of solar companies shut down. Oh, yeah, totally.

Dave Jones: Because, like, the economics have just completely changed. We have thousands of solar companies shut down. I'm not kidding. I can probably pull up an article that, yeah, I think it's 4,000 solar companies in Australia just shut down. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I believe it.

Dave Jones: Because there was this government incentive that every fly-by-night person did their solar course and they were installing solar panels like, you know, like candy. Yeah. And it was, yeah, and, yeah, there were, like, 4,000, I think, shut down.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'm sure the biggest ones are, you know, but they're all using subcontractors, too. So, it's really just like, there's going to be a ton of electricians available now, you know, that sort of thing. So, I'm not, again, I'm not happy about it.

Dave Jones: Well, the guy who came to install mine didn't even have a multimeter. He had to borrow mine. And I go, you go, it's a fluke. And he goes, oh, yeah, does it measure DC volts? And I'm going, like, I'm going, Jesus. Like, he just had no clue.

Chris Gammell: Just in case there's no instructions with yours, ladders go up and down. You can climb both ways. Yeah, just be sure, you know, one rung at a time, buddy. One rung at a time.

Dave Jones: This is amazing that you've got the people who are actually installing your solar system. They could, they're at the mercy of the inspector who comes in at a later date. So, they've got to install it with their best guess of what the inspector might pass or not pass.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yes, exactly.

Dave Jones: Imagine how many people are getting caught with this.

Chris Gammell: Oh, totally. I think this is, yeah, I mean, this company is very reputable in the area. They know what they're doing. Like, they have been frustrated, too, obviously, because it's costing them money. Yeah, but they're at the mercy of the install. Yeah, exactly. Well, so the site manager, when this was all, the first day that they were installing all this stuff, right? When they actually did all the hard, like, panel lifting, all that stuff, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The guy who was managing the site, you know, I mentioned that, like, hey, I want to, you know, put these, I would have wanted to put the battery in this original location. And he said to me, you know, I can get this to pass. He's like, you want me to just move it? And I'm like, you want me to approve you, like, going off drawing and just, like, yellowing it? I do not want that. I'm impressed that that is something that he could do.

Dave Jones: I'm impressed that you would offer it, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like, he's done it so many times that, like, I have no doubt that he could do that, but I'm just, you know, so risk averse of this, you know, very expensive installation that, no, I want to be able to yell at someone and say, you know, the drawings of this. Yeah, so.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, it should have been, like, when they submitted the drawings to get approved that that should have been caught. But I don't think that this guy who was, you know, it's like, even there's discretion left to someone.

Dave Jones: I can't believe you have even city-level regulations. That is not a thing here.

Chris Gammell: I don't know why it is that.

Dave Jones: Well, no, it could be. It could be county-level. If we have local council regulations.

Chris Gammell: So, like, I'm in Durham, and it's Durham. I don't know if it's a county. It might be a county inspector instead of a city inspector because it's the same name. It's Durham County, too. But even still, county versus state versus, you know, federal, right? But there wouldn't be federal inspectors, and there's maybe state inspectors. I think it's just the building inspectors, though, right? That's what it comes down to. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, interestingly, I've been trying to fix a downpipe that we've got on our house, right, because we removed a water tank, because we want to install the large battery, our large storage battery outside. We want to store a new bike shed and everything, right? So the battery's going on the outside. So we had to remove our 3,000-litre water tank, which we haven't used for years because the pump broke and I couldn't be bothered fixing it. Anyway, right? So we removed this downpipe. So I'm trying to order the downpipes that go under the eave, like you can get these adjustable downpipe things that go under the bend of the eave or whatever. I don't know if it's called that in the US or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And rather than having to cut and bend the pipe myself, you can buy these like pre-cut, nicely made things. And I'm trying to get those. And I found out, no, there's a difference between my state and other states. They have different models for different states because they have different regulations on eaves and how big they can be. This feels familiar.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I talked to my buddy who's a solar installer in Illinois and he's like, you know, I could tell you something, but it's definitely not true wherever you live. You know, like.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's not going to be the same. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But as far as I know, there's no, as far as wiring and electrical stuff go, that is an Australian code. Yeah. Some electrician is going to call me up here, but I don't think there's any state-based differences.

Chris Gammell: And this is a building. I'm pretty sure this is a building code that I'm dealing with because there is the National Electric Code, right? That's the thing in the US as well. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. This is not like wires to a box. This is like thing near a thing, like fire safety.

Dave Jones: Like mine, my battery is in the garage and I wouldn't have been allowed to do that if there was a bedroom above.

Chris Gammell: Ah, yeah.

Dave Jones: So, but because our bedrooms are on the other side of the house, we were allowed to do it. So that comes down to building code and nothing to do with the power or anything else. Got it, got it. Yeah, wiring or anything else.

Chris Gammell: How big is the battery going to be now? I mean, I'm sure you're going to make videos about this.

Dave Jones: I'm looking at getting an additional 50 kilowatt hours so that it'd give me 75 kilowatt hours, dude.

Chris Gammell: That's awesome. Wow.

Dave Jones: Because the government scheme allows me, I've been told up to 50, I can get a maximum of 50. This is the rebate. And my friend who installed the battery, who runs the battery company and actually manufactures these, he said, yeah, it's almost the same price to get 50 kilowatts as it would to be to get an additional 25 kilowatts. So he said, you might as well max it out. Yeah. So that's the plan. 75 kilowatt hour. But I have found that 25 kilowatt hour battery is not enough. Is not enough for our basic needs. I believe it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Well, like on some days it is, but other days, no.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You feel like the, it's like the range anxiety, but like in the home sort of thing too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Cause like, you know, you have more, you'd be like, I expect it to be able to handle everything.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. And the five and the five kilowatt inverter that I've got, that is a limit as well. It's like if we turn on the oven and the air con at the same time, boom, it's no longer coming from the battery. It's coming from the grid, you know, because I've exceeded the capacity of my, so I'm going to probably up the inverter to eight possibly. Cause the model that he says works the best with the battery is only available in eight. So anyway, that will be a nice upgrade as well.

Chris Gammell: So yeah, sure. Sure.

Dave Jones: Sure. Yeah. So that's planned. So hopefully, um, it's 75.

Chris Gammell: What is like, what's the, so like based on your usage, how many days of storage is that?

Dave Jones: 75 kilowatt. I could probably get three days use three nights usage out of that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty good. It depends if we charge the EV and stuff like that. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. How many, how many K's are you putting on the EV per day? You think?

Dave Jones: Uh, well the EV has done 82,000 now, 82,000 in five years. I've had it almost five years. It's out of factory warranty next month.

Chris Gammell: Hmm.

Dave Jones: And you're going to ask me how I knew that.

Chris Gammell: Uh, how'd you know that Dave?

Dave Jones: How I knew that? Because if you watch my videos on my second channel, you'll know that I've had, I recently had a problem with my EV. It was in the garage charging, right? During my free window every day where I get three free hours of charging every day. So we, we plug in everything. We plug in, you know, we turn on everything during this free window. So we, so we're charging the EV, uh, for free and, uh, it stopped charging for some reason. I thought that's odd. And then I tried to plug it back in and it wouldn't start charging.

Chris Gammell: Did you turn it off and turn it back on again?

Dave Jones: I turned everything off and on again. And, uh, and it wouldn't start charging. Hmm. And I, I thought, oh no, it's because I've heard that the AC charge controls in Hyundai Oh. Ionics go, um, technology connections did a video on this, but that was the new model five. Whereas mine's the old, older model. But anyway, it's a known thing that, oh no, my AC charge is gone. And, um, so I, so I drove it to the lab. I tried to charge it to the lab just in case, you know, it might've been my zappy charger or something weird going on. No, it wouldn't charge there at all. So it wouldn't charge from the AC. And then, um, I figured out that, uh, or somebody alerted me. Uh, yeah. Try the, um, the manual release cable in the boot, which I have done before actually, but I got locked. My charge cable got locked into the car and I couldn't physically remove. Yeah. I think I've told you about that. Couldn't physically remove it. Yeah. It was like a solenoid you had to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Stuck solenoid. So they said, oh, the stuck solenoid can also stuck in the other direction where it won't engage. And once you plug in the cable, then the car activates the solenoid to put in the pin and, and only then after the locking pins in place via the solenoid, will it start charging?

Chris Gammell: See, that's why we yell a lot around here. That's why we don't have that.

Dave Jones: So I popped the manual cable in the back. Sure enough, it'd start charging now.

Chris Gammell: Nice.

Dave Jones: And then, oh, bloody hell. So I, I had a service last week.

Chris Gammell: So you, as you say, you have like the one thing that needs to be greased on an EV is that one pin. Yes, is the charge pin.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That thing needs to be greased up. So I squirted some WD-40 in there.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's not grease, man. And then everyone freaked out. Oh, Jesus. Everyone says that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right?

Dave Jones: It's literally a lubricant, but, you know.

Chris Gammell: Get yourself some three-in-one, man.

Dave Jones: It's not a, no, I do have a WD-40 lithium grease version as well.

Chris Gammell: I've never seen that. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It comes in a, yeah, some sort of, you know. Anyway, yes, there are two types of WD-40. Anyway. Yes, I heard that in the comments. Oh, WD-40 is not a lubricant. It literally says on the can it's a lubricant.

Chris Gammell: It's a water displacement.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's a water displacement. It literally says lubricant. Anyway, it works short-term as a lubricant.

Dave Jones: It does. It does. It totally does. Yes.

Dave Jones: That's its job. God damn it. But the internet's going to internet, right?

Chris Gammell: It sure is.

Dave Jones: So anyway. So yes, so that worked. And then I took it into service last week because I skipped my last service. And I was probably going to skip this one too. But I thought, oh. And then I realized it had two months left on the warranty, right? On the factory warranty. So I'll take it in for the service. And I told them all about it. Oh, it gets stuck all the time, you know. And it's a known problem. You know, it's the solenoid that gets stuck and everything. And they got back to me and they said, oh, we'd never heard of that fault before. It's not a known thing. I'm going, read any of the forums. Hundreds of people telling you, yes, it's a known problem. Hyundai fixed it for me. But my local dealer didn't know anything about it. So anyway, they tried it. And of course, it didn't fail. So if it didn't fail, they can't fix it under warranty.

Dave Jones: So you put some bubble gum in there and then you got a fix. Stuck with it. Stuck with it.

Dave Jones: So yeah, I'm going to have to carry a can of lube grease around in my boot, I think. Just in case I get stuck somewhere. But anyway, yeah, it does have the manual release handle in the back. And that seems to like kind of reset it or something. So maybe it's rusting inside or something. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I do think the failure modes over, you know. Car Talk would be a different show these days. How about that?

Dave Jones: Right, it would be. But yeah, like, you know, of all the things to go wrong in an EV from the, you know, PCB point of view and everything else, right? It's a manual bloody cable solenoid-y lock thing that stops you from charging. It's like, God, please start there. You know, you should be able to override that crap. You should be able to go, no, the cable's plugged in. Trust me. Just override it. And boom. But no, of course, because that puts liability on the manufacturer, you know. Legal liability if something goes wrong. So yes, it has to activate the solenoid. And then it's probably got a sensor showing that the pin, that the locking pin is in. And then it will activate the charging. But why it died halfway during the charging, I don't know. So anyway. Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, it's weird.

Chris Gammell: Well, we are far past, I think this is the sign that we have not talked in about a month. We are at 15 minutes past the hour. And thanks for everybody sticking around. And we'll be back hopefully in less than a month. But excellent. Catch you next time. 700th show. Oh, 700. Yeah. Even 700. 700th.

Dave Jones: Not that that matters. That's not a binary multiple, so no one cares.

Chris Gammell: No, it's just, you know, everything starts with seven now. Oh, right. That's the thing for me. I've got to type seven instead of six. Right, yeah. All right. To 100 more.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Chris Gammell: See you soon.