#42 – Contests, Ham Radio & TWIT.tv - Ham, Spam, Thank You Ma'am

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell from Chris Gammell's Analog Life. Is there anyone else there? Nope. Again, sorry. No Wozniak this time. Again. Sorry.

Dave Jones: Fail. Second week in a row.

Chris Gammell: I know. If he's not going to be at ESC, he's probably not going to be in my basement.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Yeah. Fair cool.

Chris Gammell: Are you still, Chris? I'm good. I should ask, since you asked, is there anyone else here? Are there any Australian national anthems being played before we started talking?

Dave Jones: I'm afraid not. No. No.

Chris Gammell: I guess I have the editorial reins again, huh?

Dave Jones: I think you do. Sorry I had to put it in. Somebody suggested that on Twitter. There was a bit of chatter going on Twitter about what I should put in there. And somebody said, the national anthem. That'll piss Chris off.

Chris Gammell: I liked it. I wish you would have done something different on the back end.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. Sorry. That's okay. I thought I'd just play the whole thing. I was like, oh, I was going to play Waltz in Matilda, you know, but. What is that? Cliché. Oh, it's a famous poem turned into a song here in Australia. Oh, okay. So, yeah. Ah, well. Well, that's good. Maybe this week. Maybe I can add. Who knows? Waltz in Matilda by Rolf Harris. You can hijack the podcast. Right. Maybe I'll send it to you. Maybe we should have Song of the Week.

Chris Gammell: Song of the Week. Boy, we can just be different every single time, Dave.

Dave Jones: Can't have that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Can't have variety on a radio show. I know.

Chris Gammell: I know.

Dave Jones: Let's jump straight into the shout outs, shall we? Or do you want to talk or do you want to recap your week? Because you're just back from California.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah. I got back on Friday. I took the red eye back. That was no fun. Yep. And I was deluded into thinking that I was going to actually do some work on Friday. I mean, I went to work and it was a nice long slog to try and get through work. I got a little bit of work done, but I was tired that day. Mostly, you know, recapping for work too.

Dave Jones: So, you flew back in Friday morning, did you? And then went straight to work. Yeah. Oh, that's bad. Why didn't you take the extra day off?

Chris Gammell: I should have.

Dave Jones: Had an extra day in California, sunny California.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Now you're back in good old Cleveland, Ohio.

Chris Gammell: Hey, it's nice here now, but it was good. The rest of the week was real good. I mean, I met a lot of cool people and, you know, right after we recorded, I actually went to a meetup and that was cool. I met some cool people there.

Dave Jones: Yep. So, I heard.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And the rest of the week went well too. I mean, lots of talking to vendors and going to some sessions and recording some video. It's all in all. It was a real good time. Good stuff.

Dave Jones: And next time you'll learn that you should take extra time off.

Chris Gammell: Next time I'll do that just for you, Dave. I'll sit on a beach somewhere and say, oh, Dave told me to do this.

Dave Jones: You can't sit on a beach. You ought to do something tad more exciting like that. Like, go to the HP Garage. You're right. I didn't go to that.

Chris Gammell: You didn't.

Dave Jones: Ugh. Underwear. I didn't have a car.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Fail for the second time. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Come on. There's a thousand people at that conference. You could have just wandered up to a random person. Just stole the car. Let's go to the HP Garage. Oh, yeah. And there's a whole bunch of nerds there that go, yeah, why not?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Maybe.

Dave Jones: Someone's got to have a car. Come on.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I took the train around there. That was nice. That was a nice little train system. Yep. I always like trains. Train's fun.

Dave Jones: I do enjoy the train.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But all in all, a good time. And we can get into the, you know, ESC's over now. I'm into the next phase of my life.

Dave Jones: Which is? The amp hour. Back to the same old, same old. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Same old, same old.

Chris Gammell: How about those shout outs you mentioned before?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Shout outs. What do we got? We've got a, there's a new podcast that you wanted to mention.

Chris Gammell: Yes. It's called Insight. Excuse me. Sorry. Insight, which is a scientific computing podcast. So not necessarily on the electronic side of things, but sometimes that kind of carries over. You know, we've featured some out there podcasts before. But yeah, they had two of the people that were real instrumental in the open source hardware license. Aya and Alicia. They helped set up that conference I went to. Right. And so they were on there. That's how I heard about it. So they were on there talking about the license and everything. So I can link to that specific episode.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Cool little podcast.

Dave Jones: I read the open source hardware summit's on again.

Chris Gammell: It is. Yeah. Soon. Shortly. Somewhere in the US, I'm presuming. I think it's a same time, same place kind of thing. All right. Okay. Weekend before Maker Faire New York, probably. Maybe not. I should probably verify that first time. Right.

Dave Jones: And that is not spelt the usual way, insight. It's I-N-S-C-I-G-H-T. Yeah. So, yeah. Goof that one up on Google. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Or just click over to our website and you can see the stuff there. Absolutely. Too easy. Then we have two other people. And Jason. Yeah. Jason linked here. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Link to the site.

Chris Gammell: And he's a- Jason Struble. Yeah. He's a real active Twitterer and he's usually on our site too and Strubo9 on Twitter. But he has a site of the same name now, Strubo9.com. Awesome. So he's jumping in and starting to document projects. Good to see. Yes. And one more, Steve Mackey. I think that's how you say it?

Dave Jones: I think so. It's a double A.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Double A. It's a- So it's his first initial and then his last name. And so it looks like his site is SmackA.com.

Dave Jones: SmackA.com. I love it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Brilliant. But yeah, he has some cool stuff on his site. He does some die cutting and a lot of hackerspace stuff from Edmonton. And good stuff. So thanks to everyone who linked here.

Dave Jones: Thanks, Jason, Steve. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We always appreciate that. Always like seeing our logo different places. So that's awesome people link here. Thanks a lot.

Dave Jones: And we have some news. Yes. That's the teletype coming through. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We need to really get a sound clip for that. Yeah. I know. I think so. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I put these two in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Seed Studio. Not to be confused with IT Studio, who I've talked about on here before. Yeah. But Seed Studio have lowered their prices and changed all the specs and things on their PCB prototypes. So apparently they're cheaper, faster, better, bigger. All that sort of good stuff. They're out of China. Is that right? Yes. They're out of China. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, they're the same people that do the DSO Nano.

Dave Jones: DSO Nano and various other kits. Yeah. They're actually a... You can go to them. If you've got an idea, a product idea, you can go to them and they will do everything for you and give you a cut of the product and sell the kit and all that sort of stuff. That's kind of cool. So I believe, anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So these are kind of on the... So let's see, 20 price... Or 20 bucks for 5x5 centimeters. Yep. Max. That's not too bad. Is that for one board?

Dave Jones: I think that's... Yeah, probably one off. I don't have the page open here. But anyway, go and check it out. There's a press release. The new Fusion. Ooh, Fusion. Fusion. The new service. Yeah. Oh, dear. Anyway, that leads us onto the next news item, which I just got in the inbox this morning. So it literally is just off the teletype. As I predicted way back when Element 14 bought Eagle, they're starting to integrate everything into it. Component purchasing and all that sort of stuff. Now they've integrated PCB prototyping service into Eagle. Shock horror. Big surprise, that one. They're using a company. Oh, geez. What's their name? Hang on. They are using...

Chris Gammell: Oh, the actual board company?

Dave Jones: Yeah, the board company.

Chris Gammell: Oh, something with an X in it.

Dave Jones: Here we go. Gmail. This is a fail. Yeah. I should have had the...

Chris Gammell: Probably could have just clicked on the press release, huh, Dave?

Dave Jones: Well, yes. This is the rant I wanted to do. We'll talk about the PCB stuff in a minute once I find the bloody thing. But the rant is that Element 14... I didn't get the email from Element 14. I got it from their presumably public relations firm, PR firm, Walt and Company, they're called. And these idiots didn't even put a link to the press release in there so that media folk, like us, can actually link... Are we media folk? I guess. I guess so, yeah. We're rebel media. Yeah, yes. Pirate skull and crossbones and all that sort of... Pirate radio.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, the dickheads didn't put the link to the press release. What sort of freaking PR firm are they? They're paying...

Chris Gammell: So, like, they copy-pasted the press release? Is that what you're saying?

Dave Jones: Probably, yeah. Well, it's in the email, which is fine, but that doesn't give... You know, I can't email it to people.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think the idea is you're supposed to rewrite it, Dave, and then pass it off as your own. Anyway, idiots.

Dave Jones: They don't make it easy for us to link to this press release. So, Element 14 are presumably paying this company a crap load, an absolute butt load full of money, I'm sure, to handle all their stuff like this. And they're adding... No, I do not see... The value that these PR firms bring, right? Element 14 are trying to... With Eagle, especially, they're trying to market the, you know, the hobbyist, hacker, maker, you know, low-end community. They're all going to be following your blog. They're all going to be following various blogs and radio shows like the Amp Hour and all sorts of other stuff. They're going to find out about this. It will naturally, within a few days, word will spread. There's this new service out there building... They don't have to spend a cent publicizing this.

Chris Gammell: It's just the old model. You know, that's the problem.

Dave Jones: I know. And it pisses me off.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, it's, you know... Anyway. We have to deal with this more than, you know, most people do, right? I mean, not necessarily. I mean, people might still get the email, but... Yeah. Email marketing is still a big deal. I don't know about the whole...

Dave Jones: Well, it is, but they could have sent it themselves, or they could have just had an email list which people sign up to for Eagle News. That's it. I can set one of those up in two minutes, and I'm not a Linux penguin. It's not hard. That's right.

Chris Gammell: You are not.

Dave Jones: You've said that many times over. Absolutely. Goodness sake. It's not hard. You don't need to spend a cent on these stupid PR firms. Give me a break.

Chris Gammell: I mean, to be honest, Dave, it worked. I mean, no offense, but...

Dave Jones: Well...

Chris Gammell: It works for you. I mean, you're talking about on the amp hour, so...

Dave Jones: You've got me riled up, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Maybe that's why they do it.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Should we talk about... Ah, Pentalogix. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Yep. That's it.

Dave Jones: Pentalogix. They're PCB fabrication service. They're an American company, presumably, because the boards are made in the US. So, yeah. Well, there's a whole bunch of things. They can be made in US or China, depending on what type you want and, you know, speed and all that sort of stuff. So, anyway. Yeah. Apparently, it's all built into Eagle now. I presume you have to download the latest version again. And it gives you a quote directly in the program or something. I haven't tried it. So, if you've got Eagle, go out there and give it a try and let us know in the comments.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Does it suck or does it work? Like... And I don't think it's... It's not Seed Studio or IT Studio type prices or PCB card type prices. I think they're a little bit higher than that, but... Yeah. More like advanced circuits or someone else. Yeah. Like that kind of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Or Sunstone. So, yeah. I mean, this is probably more for... Oh, hey, there it is. I'll just click this and go. You know, that kind of idea.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. Whereas if you're a hobbyist and you're trying to save every last cent, then you probably

Chris Gammell: won't use it. So, I don't know. It seems like it's not that hard, really, to get that last step going, you know?

Dave Jones: No, no. It's not. To click send.

Chris Gammell: I don't think it's... I mean, it's cool that it's integrated. I'm sure they're going for very full vertical integration, you know, all the way down to like the board assembly eventually. But, you know, they're just talking about the board right now, right?

Dave Jones: They're just talking about the blank board. But, yeah, assembly will be next. Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, can't hold against them. That's probably what they thought when they were buying Eagle in the first place. So... Oh, of course. That was in the plan from day one. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Guarantee it. Yeah. The first one was to integrate the parts purchasing. Second one is to get bare board manufactured. Next step will be 3D... Sorry. Next step will be... Well, no. The second... One of the steps in there will be 3D modeling of all components and everything like that. Yep. Although Eagle... Does Eagle do 3D yet? I think it does through a third-party package or something. Yeah, I haven't seen it yet. Anyway, they'll probably buy an add-on package to do it. Yeah. So you'll eventually get that for 3D assembly. So every single component in the Farnell libraries will have 3D models and boom, it'll all download. And it'll all be lovely, which is fair. I'm a big huge fan of that. Yeah. And then they'll do... Yeah. They've now got the bare board manufacturer. Next step will be the assembly. And the third step will be complete turnkey solution. So you just send them the schematic and somebody will probably lay out the board for you even. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The only thing I hope they don't do is if they lock it up so that you can only get through. If they ever took away Eagle's output ability to send out Gerber's, that would be the only bad side. They can't.

Dave Jones: It'd instantly, they'd go out of business overnight.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. So they offer the path for people if they want this one-click solution. And then if not, then they...

Dave Jones: If not, yeah. It's just an extra service which they offer. Yeah. Yeah. They're trying to get the whole shebang there. Yeah. Good luck to them.

Chris Gammell: And I should mention that I was at ESC 4 Element 14, but I really didn't know about this until today. So... Oh, there you go. No conflict of interest, hopefully. People don't think that. Right. Always trying to strike that balance of, you know. Anyway.

Dave Jones: I'm completely independent.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I haven't been paid by them, so I can call them dickheads. If I like. Because I still hate the Element 14 site. It's still the worst out. Oh, actually. No. I think Element 14 might have a contender for crappiest integrated community website. Guess who the winner might be?

Chris Gammell: Who's that?

Dave Jones: My former employer, Altium.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: If you've been to... Oh, the creatively titled Altium Live website. Yeah. Nice. Oh, my. It... It's just... Yeah. Yeah. I just shake my head every time I look at it. It's just... No. It's a fail. Mm-hmm. On pretty much every level, including their forum, which is one of the worst forums in... Probably on the internet. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're trying to build it from scratch. I don't know why. Yeah. Um... It's just madness.

Chris Gammell: Well, I will say, I did talk to some people about that, because I was, you know, I was talking... I was there for them. And I was saying, you know, I don't like their site. I don't like anyone who uses that kind of, you know, National Instruments uses that too. And... Yeah. Or an ASUS used it, and I complained to them too. Yeah. And, uh... And, you know, it's just like... They said, you know, to Element 14's credit, they said, if you don't like it, you know, write to our director or whoever else and just tell them you don't like it. And, uh... You know, people could do that if they want to. I... I would hope they would do that on their own, but, you know, it's understandable if they hear a lot of complaining, but mostly they're just going to see people drop off, I think. So...

Dave Jones: Yeah. I mean, well, here we are, talking about it on The Amp Hour, the biggest electronics radio show in the world. And we're saying it's shit. Yeah, well... We are universally, um... Get two of the loudest members, at least. Yeah. Well, exactly. Yeah. But not everyone you talk to says it's a crap. You know, Jerry's said it's crap, and Jeff has said it's crap. And, you know, all of the, you know, leading people out there who are in the know in this sort of stuff, they're telling you it's crap. So, yeah. Element 14, get yourself a real forum. For goodness sake. Once again, I'm not a Linux penguin, but I can install one in five damn minutes. Okay?

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: My EEV blog forum is 20 times bigger than yours will ever be, and it requires no input. It's zero cost, required no input. It's community taken care of, and community moderated, and I just...

Chris Gammell: And I like it. Oh, goodness. I love the EEV blog forum.

Dave Jones: Yep. Well, it's simple. It's just a generic BBS forum. It's a simple machines forum, but there's V Bulletin out there. Are you listening to Altium as well? You know, there's V Bulletin. There's... Really, all tech companies. I mean, like... PHBB.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they try and do this all integrated thing where there's blogs and everything else.

Dave Jones: All integrated Altium live, and your license is integrated into it. Yeah. And they're getting into the same thing. And they think that you will want to... Oh, everyone in the electronics design community will join, and they'll be all talking to each other, and they'll swap libraries, and then you'll be able to get quotes online, similar to Element 14, to be able to get your blank boards assembled, and it'll be integrated into the purchasing and assembly process, and all that sort of stuff. And it's just not going to work.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh. Sorry. Anyway, this sort of stuff just ticks me off. It really does. All these people think that they can, you know, that everyone in the whole world is going to join their silly little system, and, you know, and... What can you say?

Chris Gammell: It's just hopeless. I can say, I hope they fix it, because, well, that's not our job. Anyway. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And these companies put so much time and effort into these systems. And they're just fundamentally flawed. They're never going to work. Yeah. So, you know, you will never, ever get one big portal or community website for everyone in the industry. It's just not going to happen.

Dave Jones: Right.

Dave Jones: So, never has, never will.

Chris Gammell: I agree.

Dave Jones: Anyway. And companies like Altium are practically betting the whole company on it again, you know?

Chris Gammell: One thing I wanted to bring up about that, I won't talk about it much here, but I wondered if people from the Amp Hour, if they wanted to see a Facebook page. I saw this study today about how people get more news from Facebook than Twitter. I understand that. Yeah. So, I'm just wondering if you could leave it in the comments. If you want to see a Facebook page, we'll make one. I don't know how active it'll be, but it's not a hard thing to do, and, you know, we'd love to hear from you guys. So, if that's easier, if that's easier to talk back to us, just let us know. I would appreciate it.

Dave Jones: Yep. Sure, we can set one up. No problems. I set one up for the blog. Yeah. Actually, I had several aborted attempts at it, because Facebook is so shit in the way it, you know, oh, do you have it as a public, a person as a public figure? Do you have it as a fan page? Do you have it as a like, like a company-like page, which is eventually what I went with, because I think that's the proper way to do it in quote marks. Yeah. Anyway, and then... We'll figure that out, though. People don't have to worry.

Chris Gammell: I mean, our listeners don't have to worry about that. We'll worry about that stuff. We're just wondering if...

Dave Jones: No, we'll have one page, and that'll be it. People actually care. Actually, you don't join it. You like a page now, and that's what you do. You don't follow or, you know... Yeah. Yeah, you like it. Yeah. Anyway, I do get quite a few hits every day from the Facebook page, so it does seem to work. I've only got like 400, 500 likes or something so far. Now, I started off, I thought, well, I should have not only the announcements on there of new shows, right? Every episode, every blog post, it gets automatically announced and fed through onto Facebook, which is great. But I thought, well, people want to hear what I've got to say as well, because, you know, it's... As a new thing, Dave. Well, that's usually why they sign up, you know. Yeah. They like to hear what I want to say. So, I thought I would push my tweets onto the Facebook page as well. And it turns out, I had complaints about that. People said, I don't want to hear your tweets. I don't want to hear your little comments. I just want to get your announcements. And, well, okay. No, that makes sense.

Chris Gammell: It's a different kind of way of receiving news. So, I get that. Well, I guess.

Dave Jones: So, I stopped doing that, unless it was a very important tweet that I thought should go onto Facebook. So, in my little tweet deck program I use, I've got an option to either just put it on Twitter or put it on Twitter and Facebook. So, I occasionally make the odd comment to Facebook. But apart from that, no, it's just product... Not product announcements. Jeez. New episode announcements. And that's it. So, tell us. Do you want that if... Well, we're probably going to do a Facebook page for the show, I guess. Yeah. Why not? Doesn't take much effort. And would you like to see just that or would you like to get our tweets as well? Yeah. Or do you just want a ping every time a new episode pops up?

Chris Gammell: Well, any feedback is good. Yeah. And speaking of feedback, we did actually hear last week from a... So, remember we were talking about the Google Hackerspace? Do you remember that? So, and we asked... We don't know if there's any Google listeners out there and we do have one. So, Ian. Oh, we do. Yeah. Ian from Google. So, thanks. Awesome.

Dave Jones: G'day, Ian. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: He's from Australia too.

Dave Jones: Oh, there you go.

Dave Jones: Yeah. All right. So, he's in the Googleplex here in Sydney, is he? I guess so. I didn't know they had one there. Right. Okay. I've got a... The embedded director at Altium moved to Google just last month. So... Oh, cool. G'day. Sure, he's not listening. But anyway.

Chris Gammell: Now, how often do people say g'day in... Is that like a common thing?

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's pretty common.

Chris Gammell: Yeah?

Dave Jones: Yep. Absolutely. That's cool. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know if we have that in the US. We have like... What's up? Howdy. Howdy, yeah. Howdy. Howdy. Howdy, howdy, howdy.

Dave Jones: Howdy, my name's Jeb.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Do you already? I love it.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's fairly common here. It's more common in some areas than not, so... Yeah. Yeah, like howdy is common in the South, maybe.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. So it's... Maybe. I don't know about that one.

Dave Jones: Oh, I love it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So this week, I know it's not like a big topic of ours, but this might be a bigger part of my life now. Maybe. I don't want to speak about it too much because, you know, I have to do instead of talk, right, Dave? Right. But I've been looking into getting a ham license. Are you ham licensed? No, I'm not. No?

Dave Jones: No, it's never really... No, the whole ham radio thing never really interests me at all. RF, I'm not an RF guy. I've said that before.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and that's what kind of like got me into it.

Dave Jones: Doesn't interest me.

Chris Gammell: I was looking at it last night. I'm like, I want to build radios, you know, because like RF and like radio type stuff, it's strikingly simple looking, but actually quite... Yeah, exactly. Very difficult when you get down to it, right? It's a lot more...

Dave Jones: Yeah, the physics behind it and the theory behind it, yeah, it can get very complex.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's like, oh man, I got to start buying inductors, you know? Right.

Dave Jones: No, you got to wide your own, dude.

Chris Gammell: Well, that too, right? I mean, but it's like not just for noise suppression anymore, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, no, exactly.

Chris Gammell: No, it's for... I do a lot... I mean, like that's the thing. I do a lot of DC stuff usually. Yeah. So RF's a whole new thing. And then I was talking to Jeff about it, Jeff Kaiser last night, because he's done RF in the past. And he was telling me that, yeah, well, if you're building these circuits, you really better get ham licensed, right? Yep. And so that kind of kicked off this whole thing. And then today, I just kept seeing all these stories. I think I was talking about it on Twitter yesterday, and so that kind of like sent people some stories, some people sent stories to me and stuff, but I just keep seeing things pop up. So that's why a lot of the stuff on our list this week is ham based, but it's not necessarily... We don't have to talk about it, but... Right. Man, yeah, so I've never really done RF stuff before, so hopefully I'll be getting into that soon, and, you know, it's kind of...

Dave Jones: Well, I've done RF before, but, you know, I don't have a big interest in it, so I wouldn't go out and design a radio or something like that. But, yeah, I've done it where required, so... Why not a big interest in it? I don't know. It just doesn't fascinate me. How do you explain that you don't have an interest in something? That's true. I don't find it interesting. I mean... Explain yourself, Mr. Jones. That's right. No, that's... I...

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, you're right. That's the same thing to ask, but... I don't have to explain.

Chris Gammell: The ham things... So, like, the ham thing seems like there's two sides of it, right? There's some people that just, like, buy radios and just, you know, talk to each other over ham band, right? And then there's the other group that actually build it. And I definitely want to be in that second group. If I do it at all, I want to be in that second group.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, there's those that restore them as well. There's a huge... That's true, yeah.

Chris Gammell: One of my friends at work does that. Huge community.

Dave Jones: Even here in Australia, there's a massive community of people who restore vintage radios and stuff like that. Although that's not ham. You know, that's... Right. Although it's RF, you know, it's...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's receivers and stuff.

Dave Jones: Anything radios, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And as the ham guys say, you know, anything less than a gigahertz is DC. Really? So... Oh, crap.

Chris Gammell: Anything under a gig is DC. Oh, man. All right, well...

Dave Jones: Yeah, they're the real hardcore ones.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. That's right. And, you know, there's a lot of... That's, like, there's a lot of resources, not just resources, but, like, podcasts out there. There's a lot of podcasts. I thought it was just Sodderspoke out there. Oh, yeah, there's tons. But I was on LowSWR.com today, and they have this list of probably 15 podcasts on there. So, it's pretty crazy. I mean, like, there's a lot of chatter out there, I guess, about it. And I don't want to be a ham podcast either, because there are so many, right? I like the electronic side of things. That's what I want to do. But, you know, if I need a ham license in order to start cranking out some signal, then, I'll do that. So, interestingly, too, so, last thing about ham, there was a show, you know, I was kind of, like, working through, you know, like, you get on, like, strings of thoughts, and you kind of just pop through different websites. Anyway, so, from that LowSWR thing, I went to twit.tv, right? So, that's Leo Laporte. And they were actually talking to Bob Heil, who is this microphone guy. He makes Heil Sound microphones or something like that. And so, these badass microphones. Well, it turns out, though, that Leo and this guy, Bob, are going to start doing a podcast about ham as well. So, that means on Twiz. Yeah. So, they're going to start having a, you know, like, a really wide audience for... How many shows a day does Leo do? Oh, he does a lot.

Dave Jones: Is he actually going to be on the show?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's going to be him. Because Leo is a, you know, he's a broadcaster, and he's got his license, too. And Bob's got his license.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: I didn't know he was actually a ham, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And get this, too. So, Joe Walsh of the Eagles, you know, like, Life's Been Good, that song and everything, when he went solo. So, he's a ham, too. And so, he wrote the theme song for this new show. How cool is that? We need to get a... We need, like, someone like that, right?

Dave Jones: We need to get a member of the Eagles or maybe... I know. ...one of the last remaining Beatles or something to write us up. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I hope some of them do electronics as a hobby, because otherwise... I mean, like, that's... Man, but... Yeah, so, apparently... That'd be fantastic. The Eagles were, like...

Dave Jones: So, if you are a big, huge celebrity...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Muso, please. Write in and write us an intro theme.

Chris Gammell: If you happen to be famous and a huge nerd, like us... Right. Because Lord knows my theme song's getting tired. Dave's already put the Australian theme song on a couple times now, so... Yeah. Yeah, so it's... That's brilliant. Yeah, it's really... It's interesting. And Leo... I mean, not to talk about Leo all the time, too, but they've got a new studio, too. And, man, their new studio looks amazing. You know, like... Yeah. I hold Leo very highly, because it's, like, where podcasting could go. Not necessarily for us, because our audience is probably a little smaller than his ever could be. And orders of magnitude, yeah. Yeah. Smaller. But, I mean, his studio looks amazing. He's building it from scratch, so... I'll post a link to it. There's a video. And, you know, people who know anything about studios... Man, just, like, they show his little... Like, the equivalent space of his current studio inside of this huge new studio. And it's just, like... Yeah. It's probably, like, one-sixth of the floor space. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. So... And that's where Jerry... Jerry was supposed to go, you know, start a show there or something.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, he offered her the basement. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, down to the basement, Jerry. You know? Yeah. He offered her free reign of the entire basement or something for her workshop, and she could do a show or whatever. Yeah. I think she just politely turned it down or something, but... Yeah. No, it was certainly offered there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, that'd be cool if she's ever on there. I mean, like, she's real famous on there. They all love her. So, that's a good, you know, a good window into the electronics community if she gets on there. So, that'd be great.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Dave Jones: We've got... There's another contest happening.

Chris Gammell: There is. Yeah. And this is actually one that we've talked about before.

Dave Jones: We have. Touchstone Semiconductor. That's right. They're a new startup, and they've got this new 0.8 volt, 0.6 microamp whiz-bang op-amp. That's their only product, I believe. It's super tiny.

Chris Gammell: That is the only one for now, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. And it's in, like, a little SC70, 5-pin SC70 package. Yeah. And they've got a design contest. Win 1,000 bucks. Oh, well, you know, that's all right, I guess.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And... It's funny.

Chris Gammell: They have on their site, they say, oh, you know, first prize, 1,000 bucks. Runners up, nothing. Sorry, we're a startup. That's what they said. Right. If it's good, it better be really good.

Dave Jones: I love it. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, they've run the contest, and you've got to create something with their TS1001 op-amp. And... But the conditions are that the circuit, I presume the entire circuit, must operate on 0.8 volts or less.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Very tiny.

Dave Jones: Well, or less. Well, this op-amp... Does this op-amp go below 0.8 as well?

Chris Gammell: Wait, do they say below less? No, because that thing goes from 0.8 up to 2.5 volts, I think.

Dave Jones: Well, they're saying 0.8 volts or less. So...

Chris Gammell: Or less? Maybe that's a typo.

Dave Jones: Hopefully. Maybe it is. Anyway, and you've got to use less than 5 microamps of current. And once again, they don't specify, they've goofed it again, they don't specify the voltage at that current is drawn. Oh, I see it there. Is it 0.8? Is it, like, you know, it's power. You can't just say, oh, you know, 5 microamps. Well, if you step it up to 2,000 volts, in 5 microamps, there's a fair bit. Right? So, a fair bit of power. So, yeah, I think they need to be a bit... Yes, it's all, you know...

Chris Gammell: I don't get how they go less than 0.8 volts, right? I mean, I understand the 5 microamps. So, we're saying 5 microamps versus 0.6 microamps. So, you can do up to 6 times the supply.

Dave Jones: Well, yes. So, you've got that extra current available for the rest of your circuitry, because the op-amp draws 0.6 at 0.8 volts.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Man, that is tiny. So, they're allowing you to have 5 microamps for your entire circuit. But once again, but they don't specify the voltage it's at, which is silly, you know? I mean, anyway, I think they've goofed their rules there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, maybe they'll have to give a look at that. They heard from a bunch of people from the Amp Hour, actually. I talked to some of them, and they said, oh, yeah, you know, people heard about the part on the Amp Hour. And so, that's cool. You know, that's why we started Part of the Week, actually, or Chip of the Week. You know, hopefully we can showcase some new parts that people like. And, you know, because, like, it's hard to hear about new parts, too. That's the reason we started that, too. But, yeah, so, hopefully they'll hear this and, you know, touch up their contest rules or figure it out.

Dave Jones: Well, and there's one thing, another thing they need to fix up is their damn, well, is rules. Yeah, always the problem, right? Rule number five. Here it is. No surprise. Design submittals become the property of Touchstone Semiconductor.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: I'm sorry, but stick it up your ass.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You can quote me on that. And that's the same thing that Jerry went through with the Renesas thing, right? That's right.

Dave Jones: And they were smart enough to apologize and say, oops, sorry, no, we'll change that. And I think that's kind of just as... Yeah, that was just our legal people going stupid. Right.

Chris Gammell: I think that's what it is. It's just a standard legalese thing. And, you know, we don't want people to claim it back and start, you know, making products out of it. But really, I mean, rule number five, design submittals become the property of Touchstone Semiconductor.

Dave Jones: And that's not even in the fine print. They've got number nine down there, which is the fine print. Yeah. So that's like a headline thing, you know? Well...

Chris Gammell: And you know, the thing that's weird is number six on here is you agree to let us publish any part of your design on our website, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Oh, that's pretty standard. And this hold harmless. But that should be enough, right? I mean, like... Yeah, exactly. That should be plenty. It's your circuit, whatever, you can do whatever you want with it, but it's out there, so it doesn't matter at that point. So why does... Unless they mean like the physical... But I don't know, I don't think they actually make you submit the actual design, like the actual entire... Oh, the physical thing that you built.

Dave Jones: No, but they're clearly talking about the intellectual property, the actual design itself. So if you come up with something clever, it becomes their property. Well, that's just bullshit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right? I mean, it's probably so they can push it into data sheets and everything else. And I mean, I understand it. It's like, they're like, oh, well, we don't want you to come back and say you owe us royalties, right? That's what they don't want. Yeah, I know.

Dave Jones: But for goodness sake, come on.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: People will be thrilled to have their circuit in your data sheet.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. You know what they should do is instead take away rule five, right? And then they say, you agree to publish... Let us publish it wherever we want. And then include, just say, the data sheet. And then just give credit to whoever circuit it is. And... Yeah, exactly. That would be the win right there. I think that would be the best case. Absolutely. Unless they have a lot of lawyer pushback, which is, you know, that's their own problem.

Dave Jones: Well, actually, they could have a thing. They could have a rule which says, you must open source your design.

Chris Gammell: Oh, another good one. That would be a groundbreaking thing.

Dave Jones: That would be awesome. So then they would be legally free to use it in their data sheet. And all they have to do is credit you. And that's it.

Chris Gammell: That's great. Right?

Dave Jones: Problem solved. All the legal stuff is all taken care of.

Chris Gammell: I like it, Dave. That's a good call. Hopefully they'll do that.

Dave Jones: Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I wonder how that works. I mean, so if you're a designer, right? I mean, because I use a lot of reference designs, right? If you copy it verbatim, you don't have to credit the person, do you? I mean, you really credit the company. No, you don't credit the company at all. So is that licensed in any way or is it just owned and...

Dave Jones: No, reference designs are free to use.

Chris Gammell: They become public domain. So how is this any different than if you design a circuit with this new part and then it goes into their data sheet and it's public domain?

Dave Jones: And then unless said so otherwise, yes, you've effectively given it away. You've effectively made it public domain. I mean, no one's going to order... Once it hits that data sheet as an application reference design.

Chris Gammell: You're not going to patent it because they're going to publish it. No, exactly. Anyways, hopefully they'll touch that up and...

Dave Jones: No pun intended. Ha ha. Touchstone.

Chris Gammell: Ka-ching. Yeah. And you got something else on here about design contests. So... Oh, well, first off, we should mention your triumphant win, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, yes, I did. Thank you very much. Yeah, you didn't put that on there. I got third... I didn't put it on here. No, it is a news item. Yeah. I won third place in the Tektronix oscilloscope contest, whatever it's called. My Tektronix scope or something. Yeah. Yes, thank you very much to everyone who voted. Woo-hoo! Third place. Yes. I think they disqualified somebody in first or second. Oh, no. In second place because I'm sure I was fourth. And there were two front runners and only one of them got a prize.

Chris Gammell: Dave gave an anonymous tip about...

Dave Jones: They must have been disqualified.

Chris Gammell: I guess so. That's too bad.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But, yeah, thank you. So, I win a Tektronix 2000 series scope. Cool. That's great. And I'll have to do a review of it. Oh, that'll be great. The problem is, here's a, you know, I might as well rant about this as well. Tektronix have been caught so much with their pants down by the Agilent scope release that they've got nothing. Like, they've got nothing to compete with anymore. They've slashed their prices by up to 50% and they still can't even compete. And, well, I don't know what my review of this Tektronix scope is going to be like. I think it'll come down to, well, it's a nice scope five years ago.

Chris Gammell: Well, it is an older scope too, right? Sorry? It is an older scope that they're giving away, right?

Dave Jones: Well, it is an older... Well, it's a, I don't know, three-year-old model, perhaps. I don't know when it actually came out. But it's only got 2.5K of memory. It's pathetic. Like, you know, it's not a bad scope otherwise. But, God, 2.5K of memory is like 10-year-old type technology. You know, it's...

Chris Gammell: Well, maybe review it and they'll send you top of the line just to review that instead. Right, the new MSO one.

Dave Jones: Well, if I won first place, I would have got the MSO, which is the new one with one mega memory.

Chris Gammell: If you would have gotten more votes.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, sorry, in advance, Tektronix, you make great scopes, but this one just can't compete. So, I can tell you now, it's going to get a thumbs down for value for money. Yeah. Without even thinking about it. I mean, what do you mean you got it for free? Yeah, exactly. Value for money? Infinity.

Chris Gammell: Even if they paid me, I'd still give it a thumbs down. Yeah. Oh, well. Anyway. Who won that contest, though? Wasn't it... I recall it being not that great of an entry. It was the chick.

Dave Jones: Yes, the... Yes, boobs won again.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well.

Dave Jones: Yep. You can't compete against boobs.

Chris Gammell: I didn't think it was that good of an entry, to be honest. I mean... Well... I thought there were some other better entries than yours, too. No offense, but...

Dave Jones: Well, no, there's better entries than mine, but mine was... At least mine just used the scope. It didn't rely on any third part. Like, someone built a scanning electron microscope or something. Which is awesome. Yes. How do you compete against that? And that actually brings me into the thing I wanted to talk about, which was talking about this on the forum, actually, the EEV blog forum. In fact, the girl who won that contest, somebody in the forum complains that she was spamming her... Spamming them to vote for her. So they don't even know where she got their email address from. So anyway, let's not go there. Sour grapes here, people. Nah, not at all. Anyway. Good luck to her. I hope you... Iona or something, her name is? Maybe she listens. I don't know. Oh, hopefully.

Dave Jones: You won your... I hope you use it well.

Chris Gammell: Sour grapes.

Dave Jones: Nah. Not at all.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, I won a scope. It's cool. It's awesome. That is cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Very happy. Where is it? I wrote it on here somewhere. 24. 24. Oh, God. Is it that far up the list?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. An interesting observation that... Well, I guess everyone's aware of as well as most of these type of design contests seem to be won by the most advanced and refined projects. So, which is not very surprising at all. No, not at all. If you've got a scanning electron microscope, right, you're probably going to win, right? Because that is super cool. Yeah. But typically, you didn't develop that just for the contest, right? You might have been working on that for years and years. And so you actually have an inherent advantage over the people who just see the contest and go, oh, I'll just design something quickly for the contest. Mm-hmm. So, not that there's anything wrong with that. That's just the way of the world, I guess. But it's just an interesting observation that I've found over the years that a lot of these contests are won by these projects which weren't developed just for the contest. Oh, okay. People have been working on them for years and they've got a robot or something, you know? Okay, yeah. And I think that's the same thing with the Triple Five contest, isn't it? Wasn't the winner a guy who's been doing robots? Oh, Tom, yeah. Tom Jenner has been doing it. As part of the TAFE course, yeah.

Chris Gammell: He's been doing that kind of thing for a while, yeah.

Dave Jones: So, it's all fully documented. It's all developed, debugged, and...

Chris Gammell: Well, no, he made new circuits for the contest, but they were... Right, yeah. Based on existing concepts. ...very experienced with the 555, right? And I think that's true for a lot of them, right? But, like you said, it's got the most polish. I mean... Yep, that's right.

Dave Jones: And the RX design contest, which I was judging. The winners have been announced and the winner was the Nimble SIG 3 RF generator. Go check it out. It's super cool. Yeah, I heard about that. But this guy, and it got my top marks as well because we had to score each one. And it came out top on my list and I guess it came out top on the others. So, it won.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because it is highly refined. If you want to see some cool RF stuff... Yeah, I'll go check that out. Go check out that design. Because this guy's been developing that for years. He's... He won, I think, second place in another contest. Won a circuit seller contest with the same project. It was the Nimble SIG 2. This is the third one, I think. And I'm sure I've seen him enter it in another contest as well. Anyway, that doesn't take away from how cool it is. But the fact is, he's spent years developing and refining this project to the point where, yeah, it is super cool. Yeah. And you know, that's the problem with...

Chris Gammell: I mean, how do you think about working even though? I mean, like when people scan resumes, right? They're looking for experience. They're looking for expertise in a very specific field. So if you're working on design... If you're a board designer, right? And you want to go work for Altium, they're going to make sure that you've used Altium and that you've designed thousands of boards before, right? Because that's going to be the best fit. So, I mean, I understand that... But like if you're designing something that you're good at, then you're just going to make the shiniest one of those and enter that in the contest. So it makes sense.

Dave Jones: Yeah, of course. It's just a natural, you know, thing really. Maybe this touchstone contest will be different because you can't just enter your robot or something else, you know? Yeah. It's an op-amp that... Very specific niche thing. Very low power. How many people have developed something that works at 0.8 volts under... Oof. We'll find out. Under six microamps. Yeah. We'll find out. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you have and you've polished something, then well, you've got a huge advantage. You'll probably win the thousand bucks. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And I just thought that was an interesting thing. I mean, you know, it's just the way it is. If you've been working on something cool for years, you should enter these contests because you've got a really good chance.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's really no downside. I mean, if they charge you to enter the contest, but then they'd have a lot less entries in the first place, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That's a cool way to show off, though. I like it. I like it a lot. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of showing off, have you seen these Intel blokes and their showy new 3D features on silicon? Have you heard about this?

Dave Jones: No detail. No detail.

Chris Gammell: Intel is... They just announced their 22 nanometer node. I think it was at ESC. It might have been just at the same time, not necessarily at the show. Because I don't know if they were there. But yeah, they're going to a 3D transistor. Yeah. So, it's a little bit of PR hype because they said it's huge news and we're reinventing the transistor. But really what they're doing is they're taking the gate on a transistor, which is one of the defining feature sizes, and they're shrinking it to 22 nanometers. That's the next process node. But in doing so, they're actually raising it up off the bed of silicon. So, it's not a flat thing anymore where electrons would flow underneath the oxide gate. Right. Now, it's actually... The whole gate is raised up and they... And it's like... Basically, it's like a speed... It's like a speed bump now. So, the channel... Oh, okay. It's like a speed bump.

Dave Jones: Can they... Well, that had just dropped the performance, I would have thought, unless they could stack them.

Chris Gammell: Well, no. What they do is they... So, since you raise it up, you have a lot more surface area now. Right? So, if you go from...

Dave Jones: Right. You have to kind of think of it... Oh, so you're saying it raises up and then overlaps other transistors. Is that what you're saying?

Chris Gammell: Well, no. So, if you think of the transistor as like a one foot wide line on a pavement, right? And then... So, that's actually where... Then you're going to put a piece of cross beam across that, right? So, the cross beam is actually activating that one line on the pavement. This is horrible for radio, right? But basically, the idea is now that one foot line is now maybe raised up another foot out of the pavement. So, if you think about that increase in surface area now, right? You have a lot more surface area for the same cross section.

Dave Jones: I'm sorry. I don't see where the extra surface area comes from.

Chris Gammell: You know what? Here, this will help you. We're going to post a link to pictures. And they actually have some really good pictures and showing the difference between the two. It's from ZDNet. So, Intel went to 3D and they'll show it here where they can actually shrink the width down and get actually more surface area.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: It's interesting.

Dave Jones: So, it's not the fact that it's a multi-layer thing where transistors are stacked. Okay. That's what I first imagined when I hear it's a 3D integrated circuit. They're stacking multiple layers. Right.

Chris Gammell: And that's actually a really hard problem because when you do that, when you have silicon and then you try and stack another piece of silicon on top.

Dave Jones: And then you have an insulator and then you have another bit of silicon.

Chris Gammell: You'd have to drill down through. The differences in thicknesses are so great from where you're actually processing the top of the silicon to get to the bottom of that wafer. It would be like drilling to the center of the earth kind of thing. Not the center of the earth, but some very large distance down, like a couple miles down. Yeah. Yeah. That would be the other side of the earth, but okay. But yeah. So, it's really interesting how they're doing it. I mean, but I kind of was put off by the press release because it was a press release. You know, they're just doing what they have to do. You know, they're just marching along thanks to Moore's Law. You know, they're doing what they have to do because if they didn't, someone else would. And, you know, and a lot of the other fabs are doing that now too. They're working on FinFets is another one. And, you know, it's a big deal.

Dave Jones: Oh, there's tons of them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There's a big deal and it's cool that they're doing it, but it's like they're doing it because they have to. They got to keep making money. If they don't, they're going to stop making money. So, because, yeah. So, cool news. People should check out the pictures. We'll definitely post that. They're pretty awesome.

Dave Jones: Excellent.

Chris Gammell: Should we do Chip of the Week? The first Chip of the Week. Sure. Let's go for it. Do you want to go first?

Dave Jones: Which one are we going to do? Yours or mine?

Chris Gammell: We both have one. Well, mine was on there first.

Dave Jones: So, there's going to be two Chips of the Week?

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Mine was on there first.

Dave Jones: Well, technically we've already had a Chip of the Week. Oh, that doesn't count. It's the Touchstone one. Oh, I guess we did. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, we mentioned a Chip, so it's...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: There's no reason we can't have more than one Chip of the Week, right?

Chris Gammell: We'll go back through and put the sound in there, right? Well, Chip of the Week. I feel bad. With reverb, reverb. Yeah, I really don't do that anymore, do I? Aye. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, what happened to that? That was a very short-term little bad thing you had with your new little doodad box. I know.

Chris Gammell: Did all the sound effects? I know. Novelty's worn off, huh? No, I've been pissed at it. I was so angry at this thing, just... I want to throw it on the ground already, but it's all my fault. What'd it do? It's my fault, really. It's just my frustration. Anyway. Oh, okay. So, it didn't fail, or it's playing up? No, I'm using it right now. It's just, you know... I've had other things going on. So, maybe in between getting my ham license, if I do that, I'll also, you know, get this rig up and working. Right. So, Chip of the Week. Here we go. You okay with doing mine this week? Yeah, yeah, go. Okay. I think this thing's really cool. So, it's from... There's an Electronics Weekly article I saw, and it's for the LTC 4000, right? And so, it's basically...

Dave Jones: Nice round number.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, nice round number. So, it means they're probably jumping into a whole new arena or something, right? Because they... I don't know why they wouldn't have done 4000 in the first place. But basically, what they do is... So, we got to step back and look at DC to DC converters. And you probably use those all the time, right, Dave? Absolutely. Yeah. So, there's all those different, like, buck and boost and buck boost. Basically, you know, like, basically going from one DC voltage to another DC voltage by switching. People know that one. Yeah. And this is instead of having linear regulators, they're switching regulators. So, a lot of the LT regulators, and even companies outside of LT, they'll have what's called a compensation pin. And basically, what that is, is that when you're doing a switching regulator, you need to have feedback back into the circuit. So, this little tiny chip knows what's going on in the inductor and in the capacitors and all that. And it can compensate. So, it can continually compensate the output by the form of a loop. Exactly. Yeah. So, it's a loop bandwidth thing, right? So, people set this with a capacitor, a resistor, and you set up time constants in order to have so that your power supply doesn't oscillate. And you'll also calculate it based on loads and all those wonderful, you know, equations that they give you in the data sheets. I love data sheets so much for that kind of thing. It's like a cookbook. You know, it's awesome. It is. Yeah. Anyways, so this new chip, really cool. Basically, they're saying that this new chip can make any DC to DC regulator into a battery charger, which is pretty cool. Yep. And here's why it's cool. So, batteries, here's why it's cool to me. Batteries basically like seeing voltage sources or current sources depending on what stage of the charge cycle they're in. So, I think they like current sources to start with and then once they get to a certain capacity, they like voltage sources. That depends on the battery topology and all sorts of stuff. Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I didn't know that. So, I just learned that. And then you've got to have temperature sensing of the battery and all sorts of stuff as well.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because you can determine the end. Sorry. You can determine the end cutoff point of all the various charge cycles depending on the temperature of the battery in some technologies.

Chris Gammell: Right. So, you can like keep really healthy batteries over the life of the battery, right? So, you don't overcharge it and undercharge it. Because that's why a lot of people complain about like lithium ions, how they die, or even any kind of battery, how they have that memory and everything. So, there's a lot of chips out there that try and like monitor this stuff and you have to sometimes buy a whole separate charging circuit just for your battery. Well, this thing basically does all that monitoring and then it uses that compensation pin that we talked about on the DC to DC converter. And it uses that as like a little knob in order to control the output of the DC to DC converter into the battery.

Dave Jones: Well, there's... Okay. Here's my view on this one.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: It's really only of use for really more obscure high power stuff, I think. Because if it's low power, if it's just something that can be handled by a regular off-the-shelf charging chip, you'd be crazy to use this one. That's true. It's not a universal solution. Because it's complicated. If you have a look at what's involved in the chip and what's required... It is complicated. Right? It's got no built-in FETs. Yeah. Okay? So, you've got to use external FETs. You've got to have an external DC to DC converter chip, right? Which will cost you another couple of bucks or might even cost you 10 bucks or something like that. So, it's... You know, whereas you can buy a 50-cent charger chip that's all integrated and is just specifically designed for your cell topology.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I mean... So, if you've got a lithium polymer battery, you can buy a little microchip 5-pin lithium polymer battery charger chip for 50 cents. Right? Right. So, this is like... So, using this is like overkill. You know, it's like the sledgehammer approach.

Chris Gammell: So, this is probably... They're probably targeting like cars and all that crazy stuff, right?

Dave Jones: They're targeting big stuff, I think. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: But still, I think it's cool. I just like how they yank on the compensation pin. I think that's really cool. That's the part that I geek out about. Oh, that's the cool feature. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it's really... Yeah. I think people will use this as sort of a last resort device when you can't find a specific chip to do the job.

Chris Gammell: Or you've got like a really crazy battery or something, right? Or you're going to switch out batteries. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And because you don't... Or maybe you don't want to risk that part going out of... Oh, yeah. You know, going obsolete because it's a very specific, you know, niche chip. Whereas this is a more general purpose solution, which... Yeah. So, presumably it should stick around a lot longer and... Yeah. Et cetera, et cetera. But, yeah. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: So, it's like five bucks on top of a DC to DC converter, depending on what you're using.

Dave Jones: Well, five bucks is a lot, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. For charging a battery. That's a lot of cost, right? This chip's not cheap.

Chris Gammell: No, yeah. Definitely not for like... Not consumer kind of stuff. I mean, for... You could charge a battery with a diode, basically, right? I mean, you just dump charge in and then once the battery's charged...

Dave Jones: Oh, we can charge it with an LM317 constant current. Yeah. Two LM317s can charge a... Yeah. A lead acid battery, for example.

Dave Jones: Okay. You can charge a lead acid with a constant current source, LM317 in series with a constant voltage source. Yeah. So, eh, you know. So, yeah. That whole solution would cost 30 cents.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So, it's a crazy... It's more for crazy situations, but...

Dave Jones: It's more for crazy situations, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's very cool. I like it. Hmm.

Dave Jones: All right. How are we doing on time? I think we got five minutes left. Five minutes left. Okay. We'll save my chip for next week, then. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, I can't have two chip of the week. Oh, no. Definitely not. That's probably a bit too much.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. All right. So, how about...

Dave Jones: Mine is a hangover.

Chris Gammell: Here's one. This will get some good ranting, right? All right. Rant. Number 21 on the list. Here we go. 21 on the list. So, I saw this thing a couple weeks ago. It's from Shelton Ear. It's one of the guys on Twitter. And he posted this. It's from Omaha.com. And it was basically at... Shoot. The University of Nebraska at Lincoln. So, UNO. They're trying to say that engineering tuition should be higher than an English major's tuition, for example, because engineering majors make more money after school. Holy crap.

Dave Jones: Well, they're a bunch of dickheads because they could have just used the obvious reason why it should be more expensive because...

Chris Gammell: Because we're awesome?

Dave Jones: No. EE requires... We are.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But EE requires labs and parts and gear and all sorts of stuff. They have a higher cost to run those courses than just reading Shakespeare or something, right? Yeah. Exactly. There's massive costs which go into maintaining laboratories. You've got to have laboratory staff. You've got to have all sorts of things. And that's what someone said on Twitter. I think, actually.

Chris Gammell: I mean, that they had a flat rate and then they had a lab fee on top of that.

Dave Jones: A lab fee based on... Yeah. And I think, yes, technically, realistically, they should charge more for EE education over something like that because the expenses are higher to the school. Well, maybe. That's a natural thing. Here's the thing I said. Maybe. I think that's natural. I'll tell you what you think. No, I think...

Chris Gammell: I just told you what I think. Oh, I'll tell you what you think. And that's the end of the story. I think if they really were serious about, like, need, though, right? So, this is, like, positive feedback, right? So, you charge more using the... I mean, your stuff makes sense, Dave, right? So, like, labs are more expensive. That makes sense. But... I always make sense. Yeah. But the thing that would really make... Or the bad situation would be if it was actually what they were saying where, oh, well, they make more after school, so, you know, engineers should be charged more. Well, that's a positive feedback system because if you charge more for students to go into engineering, less students are going into engineering, right? Less students go into engineering. Less students come out of engineering. There's less supply. Now the demand gets higher. Engineering salaries go up more. Therefore, tuition has to go up more. And eventually we have one engineer who makes a bajillion dollars who's so sought after, you know? And it's... So, instead, what they should do is try and... Really, they shouldn't do this at all, I think. I think even the lab idea is kind of ridiculous because I don't pay for the football guys, you know, to go run on the football field. Anyway. Or they don't pay for themselves.

Dave Jones: I think it's perfectly acceptable if your field of study requires a hell of a lot more resources than something else. You should naturally pay for that. I have no problems with that at all. I don't think so. If the school wants to absorb it and everyone pays the same fee, I'm happy with that too. But I have no problem with somebody charging more because it costs a lot more. And I'm talking a hell of a lot more to maintain.

Chris Gammell: Football players more in order to, you know, go run on the fields. For what?

Dave Jones: For foot, you know?

Chris Gammell: Oh, fields are expensive. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, fields are expensive to maintain, you know.

Chris Gammell: Anyways, what I'm saying is if they're really smart about it, they would pay... They would subsidize engineering tuition. And I'm sure this will get a lot of people pissed because nobody likes the word subsidy. They would subsidize engineering education. Tons of people would go into it. Tons of engineers would come out and they'd start making crap, right? They'd make no money anymore and it would equate itself. So, if they're going to do it, that's the way they should really do it. If they really want English majors to make the same as engineering majors, then that's how you equate the situation, in my opinion. Right. Anyway. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, good luck with that. That's all pie in the sky stuff. It's, you know.

Chris Gammell: Good luck, University of Nebraska. I've never met any of your engineering graduates and I'm not sure I ever will.

Dave Jones: Well, if you're out there, tell us. Have, you know... Oh, good point. Yeah. Has your university... Oh. You know, do they charge more? Yeah, that would be good. I can't remember mine. It was too many... It was 20 years ago. I can't remember. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Sorry, but... I specifically... I had a technology fee because they put in all this crappy networking equipment in the early 2000s. Right. And so, I had to pay 400 bucks a year for that. But other than that, mine is flat rate and really expensive. And I'm still paying it off.

Dave Jones: Right. Damn it. I paid mine up front. Ah, smart man. In case you actually got a cash discount if you paid up front. Ah, that is smart man. You got like 40% discount or something. Yeah, I'll have that. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Awesome. All right. I think our amp hour is up.

Dave Jones: Ah, come on. We've got a minute left, haven't we?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. Nope. I think we're done. Nah, come on.

Dave Jones: We started at 7.50. All right, one more.

Chris Gammell: One more. How about this thing from Reddit I saw? This is pretty cool. Did you see this? Shoot. Someone on Reddit, so scanlime.org, they put a single inductor onto two pins of an AVR microcontroller and using some of the idiosyncrasies of the chip, like the protection diodes on the input, that actually powered the rails. And then there's like natural capacitance on the chip, so it actually held some of that power. So basically, they can use it as an RFID tag. So all they did is they programmed the chip. They put an inductor across two of the leads. I'm not sure. I think they're two of the input pins. That powered the chip when you blast it with RF energy, and then it could bounce back a signal. That's brilliant. That's pretty cool. Cool. That's pretty awesome.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Thumbs up for that one. Yeah. There it is. There's the photo of the chip. Yeah. And an eight pin dip. Yeah. With an inductor just- Just hanging off there. That's all it is. Just hanging onto it.

Chris Gammell: Yep. And then I think- It's the size of a quarter dollar. I think she did- I love it. She put capacitors on there later to help it along. Oh, it's a she, is it? Yes. I think her name's-

Dave Jones: Oh, posted by Beth. Yes. Awesome. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: She's got a really cool site. I like that site a lot. Okay. And yeah, but it's a cool project. Who would have thought of that? I mean, like, that's just really cool.

Dave Jones: That's just great. Yeah. That is brilliant. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Hats off to that one.

Chris Gammell: Yes, definitely.

Dave Jones: Very cool. See, that would have won a contest. Oh, I don't know what contest, though.

Chris Gammell: I mean-

Dave Jones: I don't know. Yeah, I guess. Are there any contests?

Chris Gammell: I've never heard of one of those, but I'm sure there have been.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I entered an AVR contest. Cool. Quite a few years ago. Nice. Yeah. One squat.

Chris Gammell: Well, no one was voting for you then. Sit up. No, it's not vote. It's a panel of judges.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. You know.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Fantastic. All right. I love it.

Chris Gammell: So now can we end the Amp Hour, Dave?

Dave Jones: We can end the Amp Hour, and maybe we'll have a song at the end. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Maybe it'll just be me singing about Dave and how he messes with people. Nah, that's just still something. Yeah, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, who cares about copyright? No one's going to find us, right? We're just some tin pot radio show. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Well, this week, if you... So remember, if you want to talk about Facebook in the comments section, we'd love to hear about that. What else is on there?

Dave Jones: Your uni stuff, if you want to comment about that. That would be great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think that was it, right? And anything else, of course.

Dave Jones: And if you want to bash on Element 14, Dave.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true, too. All right. All right, cool. Well, good Amp Hour, man. Nice and quick, like usual. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week.