#69 – Control loops & Flying probers - Quassating Quadcopter Quantophrenia

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell from Chris Gammell's Analog Life.

Dave Jones: I'm a bit pissed off this morning, Chris.

Chris Gammell: Oh, so normal Australian morning?

Dave Jones: Yeah, pretty much.

Chris Gammell: Get up, have a cup of coffee, swear at Americans, have a bowl of Cheerios.

Dave Jones: No, but there was lots of swearing though.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay, what happened?

Dave Jones: A ton of swearing. I went out to the lab and I closed the door behind me, as you do, except foolishly. Old lab, new lab, what are we doing? Oh, no, this is the garage, you know. Sorry. The garage. Yes. And foolishly, for some reason, my thumb was in the door jamb when I closed the door.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that'll start to be wrong.

Dave Jones: There was more swearing than a drunken sailor, let me tell you.

Chris Gammell: Sagan learned some new words today.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Even though he's three rooms over and he's napping.

Dave Jones: He heard him. Oh, boy. Oh, man. Yikes. Oh, boy. So, yeah, being the professional that I am, I am soldiering on and doing the show.

Chris Gammell: You're soldering on? You're soldering what? Soldering on. Yeah. Just cauterize that wound with a soldering iron and you'll be fine.

Dave Jones: A soldering iron, yeah. Nothing you can't fix with a bit of solder.

Chris Gammell: There we go. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, man. So, yeah. That's rough. You can suddenly bleat out, son of a, then you know what it's about. So, anyway, I'm going to take my aggro out on someone or something, I'm sure, on today's show. Oh, cool. I bet that'll be me. Because why not, right? Yep. And, yeah, so that was my morning and I just got back from putting the deposit check on my new lab.

Chris Gammell: Ooh, all right. Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you very much. I thought it already went through, though. So, this is it, though.

Dave Jones: Well, it's a lengthy, drawn-out process. I signed it yesterday, but that doesn't mean diddly-squat. Now, I've paid a deposit and it still doesn't mean diddly-squat because I don't think the other people have signed it yet. And, ah, it's all. I don't know. It'll probably take another month to move in.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm going through my own stuff for a refinance. And so, I've been the plumber and the electrician lately. I've been the painter. I've been the, yeah.

Dave Jones: So, you have to actually do up your house to get a refinance? What's the story?

Chris Gammell: You don't have to. I just am because I'm hoping you get, I hope they look at my house and be like, ooh, it's worth so much more than you paid for it. Right. You know, the true American. And then I'll borrow against that money. And then, yeah.

Dave Jones: Of course. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Get a triple mortgage. Come on, you.

Chris Gammell: There we go. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: That's the way. That's the American way.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I always wonder about that. Like, if I did have a lot of money in my house and I wanted to start like an electronics business. You know, you always see that. It's like always so stereotypical, like in TV and everything. People, oh, I leveraged the house and I started this business and I was all on the line. It's like, do people really do that much anymore? I'm sure it happens with small businesses, but I don't ever hear about it.

Dave Jones: Smart ones, because the smart ones are bootstrapping. Only the idiots go and borrow $200,000 or something and then go rent a place and pay, you know, all that sort of, you know, all that big business open to like a retail shop front and all that sort of stuff where the risks are just huge.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But smart people like engineers that listen to this, listen to the amp hour, they know to bootstrap it. You know, start off small from your garage with zero overhead and never borrow money for a business. Rule number one.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Guaranteed failure. I think there are times to borrow money, but maybe not that. Maybe not that.

Dave Jones: Oh, possibly, yeah, but, you know.

Chris Gammell: Maybe not a storefront or, I don't know.

Dave Jones: No, no, that's just, no, crazy.

Chris Gammell: Definitely calculation. That's the important thing is calculating it. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Man. Anyway. No. Once you're established, if you've got an established business and then you want to borrow, mortgage your house to borrow some more money because you know it's going well and you know the money's going to work, you know, with 99% certainty, then, you know, it's a good risk. Yeah. No, I see it all the time. All these people, they borrow this money and they think that they have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to start a business and it's just madness. Yeah. One of my pet peeves.

Chris Gammell: I wonder how many engineers end up starting business. I've never seen real statistics on that. I'm sure they're out there somewhere. No idea. Yeah. But I think engineering mindsets are set for it, but I don't know. Maybe not.

Dave Jones: I think the percentage of the garage engineer is high though compared to other professions. I think the garage engineer is, you know, quite a high percentage. Like the garage startup kind of stuff? Yeah. Yep. The garage startup in your spare time while you're still doing your full-time job. You burn the midnight hour, hence the term midnight engineer. You know, you're a midnight engineer because you work at midnight, you have a day job and that's what you do.

Chris Gammell: And you're tired.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Engineers don't need to sleep, do they?

Chris Gammell: No. I don't do it very often. I don't know about you. But yeah. You have a kid, so obviously you don't. Yeah, right. You'll learn, son. I know. Anyway.

Dave Jones: Do we have shout-outs? No. No shout-outs, but we have some news. News? Go for it.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of not sleeping. Oh, this is lame.

Dave Jones: Come on.

Chris Gammell: This is not lame. This is good. I like this. I like this a lot. So Eddie Hagler wrote in and he just got his technician license, so congrats to him. He is now officially a ham. Well done. But basically he was telling me how easy it is and I still haven't gotten mine, obviously. You know, I've been doing some other things, like I said. A slack-ass. Yep. Slacking mostly and fixing up my house.

Dave Jones: See, you haven't been burning the midnight oil. There's your problem.

Chris Gammell: No, I have been. It's just, you know, I've had my, into my elbows. I know.

Dave Jones: You're up in all sorts of stuff, which we won't get into. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. But he challenged me and I like it. I like it. I like it. Oh, you like a challenge, do you? Yes. Yes, I do. I do. So here's what we're going to do. And Dave's not to agree with this, but we're going to get him to capitulate online today.

Speaker ?: We're not.

Chris Gammell: He is what was suggested, folks. Oh, here's what's suggested. So basically, and I helped him along with the idea. Basically, he challenged me to get it by the first week or two in the new year. We haven't set an actual date yet, but for me to get my license, because he's saying that it's, that's easy. And I'm saying that if I don't, what he suggested is that if I don't do it by a certain date, then I have to sing The Waltzing Matilda, which is some Aussie song.

Dave Jones: It's a stupid Australian poem. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's a poem. Okay. It's a poem. It's a poem with the music, though, isn't it?

Dave Jones: Oh, it often is, yes, but it is actually, but it started out as a poem.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Banjo-Petterson.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So that would be, that would be my punishment. I have to sing it or say it on the amp hour. The, if I do go through with it and I get my license, then I get a hearty congratulations and I move on my way with my call sign and I, you know, I'm a ham, yada, yada, yada.

Dave Jones: But. Up until that point, I have no problem. Well, I still do. Right, obviously. Because nobody wants to, anyway, go on.

Chris Gammell: My idea was if I get 10 people to do it alongside with me, right, we've got maybe 2,500 listeners at the amp hour. If I get a couple, a couple of friends with me and we all get licensed, technician licenses together, 10 of us, and we prove it somehow, that Dave has to sing the US national anthem on the amp hour.

Dave Jones: Why would I agree to that? Why? I don't know. I just don't care. I mean, if you want to go out and get your technician license, great, go do it. Not because you're, I'm going to promise to sing the bloody national anthem.

Chris Gammell: Because it's a challenge. Then you have some.

Dave Jones: I know. I don't care.

Chris Gammell: Involvement.

Dave Jones: Sorry. Stupid. Lame.

Chris Gammell: You see, the point is, you're not really interested in ham.

Dave Jones: Nobody wants to hear either of us sing at all. Right? So it's a lose, lose.

Chris Gammell: I have had some songs on here. One song. I did that Chonky, Chonky Product song. Oh, Chonky Product.

Dave Jones: Oh, you think you're a bit of a goer, do you?

Chris Gammell: A goer?

Dave Jones: A goer. That's an Australian term. You think you're pretty good.

Chris Gammell: No. No. No.

Dave Jones: I would want to sing. Being a band of news, I want all, right? Being in a band. You were in a band.

Chris Gammell: I was in a band. But no, I'm not a very good singer. But I'm saying I would do it in order to, I like the push behind this. I think it's good. I think we need to be advocates for ham because there's a, from the technical side of ham. You know, like there's the other side of it. I think, you know, there's people that are interested in the communications aspect and everything. But the electronics aspect, that's what's important, I think. And, you know.

Dave Jones: Well, then, we encourage it. There doesn't have to be some silly contest. Give me a break, which nobody wants to see won in quote marks. Because no one wants to listen to either of us. Just lame.

Chris Gammell: Sorry. Well, I like it.

Dave Jones: By all means, get your ten people together.

Chris Gammell: If people like it, then we'll pressure the hell out of Dave and maybe we get something. Maybe there's something he'll come up with on the other side of it. No, look.

Dave Jones: If you go through and get your ham license with Chris, we'll give you a shout out on the amp hour.

Chris Gammell: Nah. In musical form, Dave? Nah. Sorry. Moving on. Alright. Moving on. I've got a couple of things to be pissed off about. Let us know. You do. You've got some other stuff. I've got at least two rant items on here. Every time you add stuff, it's usually angry stuff to the list, Dave.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Especially this morning with this thumb is throbbing, let me tell you. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. It's stinging. Yeah. Woo. Alright. Suck it up.

Speaker ?: Ah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Ah. Anyway, if you've seen my latest video. I have. I liked it. Yes. I measured 1,000 resistors. Well, I measured 2,000 resistors. Actually, first 1,000 worked just fine. Then I uploaded the data with my Agilent U1272A multimeter. Let's name the bastard. Okay. And the first 1,000 worked fine. I tested my 1,000 at 1.5 seconds per resistor. I think that's pretty darn efficient, but we'll get onto that. Yeah. I saw that. So I loaded my first 1,000, no problems. Uploaded the PC. Measured my second 1,000. Tried to upload them at wah. Nah. Fail. Wah. Wah. Wah. Yeah. The software just refuses to load in any more than the first couple of data points. Yeah. Bloody ridiculous. Anyway, I haven't. Yeah. I just, I was pissed off, so I threw the meter on video and, yep, and said a few things. And then I haven't looked at it again, but I'm going to eventually solve it. It was just late in the day. I wanted to finish my video and, and then it just screws me around like that. I hate tools that don't work.

Chris Gammell: I know. You know? You should have done it. You should have done it like that. There was an article on Hackaday a couple of days ago. Some guy added RS-232 to his multimeter. He just tapped in and, and did it himself. He did it on a $4 meter though. None of that, I don't know how much a 1272A is. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's about 350 bucks or something. Yeah. This was $4. There's no reason to expect the damn thing to work.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah.

Dave Jones: Bloody hell. It's all this software shit. Never works.

Chris Gammell: It's, it's free, right? Just outsourcing, right? Well, it is.

Dave Jones: Well, it comes with the meter, yeah. It is, yeah. You don't actually have to pay. Well, you pay.

Chris Gammell: No, I mean, I mean, software is free. Bits are free, right?

Dave Jones: No, bits are free, right? Yeah. It doesn't actually cost you anything. Yeah, right. That's the big illusion, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, time is free.

Chris Gammell: Well, the first couple hundred bits are free and then the, to make, to make those bits go in the right order, then it's a little more expensive to make it, to make it look good. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it's a couple hundred bucks an hour, right? Which is on our list somewhere down here, which we'll get to eventually.

Speaker ?: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's true. We won't segue into that now because I haven't finished ranting.

Chris Gammell: Oh, keep on going, buddy. Keep the train going.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And the second one is someone has ripped me off. They have. My PCB tutorial. That's their last. The PCB tutorial I've got out there for years.

Chris Gammell: How did you find this?

Dave Jones: Years. How did you find this? Somebody emailed me.

Chris Gammell: Searching for yourself?

Dave Jones: No, no. Somebody emailed me and said, hey, do you realize this mob's ripping you off? That's a unit. Yeah. Anyway, I'm going to name them. I haven't confirmed this with them yet. I haven't confirmed, but I do have a screenshot which shows that they have removed my copyright information from my PCB tutorial. It's got a front page and it's got all my name and my web address and copyright and all that sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Overlay a smiley face over your face and then vocode your voice.

Dave Jones: Blanked it out completely. No attribution. No copyright. Right. Anyway, it's the Tyne Metropolitan College in England. They're a technical college or something like that. Bloody Poms. Yep. So not happy at all. I'm waiting for the guy. I don't actually have a copy of the document yet, but he sent me a screenshot.

Chris Gammell: Can you go back to this Bloody Poms? What does that mean? Is that some kind of cultural slur that you shouldn't be saying online?

Dave Jones: We actually call them Poms.

Chris Gammell: The English are Poms. What do you say online? Okay.

Dave Jones: That's just what we call them. They, you know. Yeah. I'm sure they have words for you, too. And if they do something stupid, they're Bloody Poms, you know. Or if they beat us in cricket, then they're Bloody Poms.

Chris Gammell: Boy, you Aussies are just so whimsical. You get names for everything.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, Bloody Oath.

Chris Gammell: Oh, boy.

Dave Jones: Anyway, not happy with the Tyne Metropolitan College in England. God, is it too much to ask? Just to, you know. Like, I actually stayed on there. You know, free to copy for educational use, you know. But that doesn't mean remove my copyright and my name and everything. Like, attribution, you know. It's all I want. It's not hard. Yeah, seriously.

Chris Gammell: People shouldn't want to take credit for what you do. I mean.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's just stupid. I don't see the advantage. They have to start talking like you. Yeah. What? They don't want their students seeing where the document comes from. They want to think it's written by their illustrious instructor, you know. Give me a break.

Chris Gammell: Oh, this is a written document? Okay. Oh, the PCB document. Okay. Oh, yes. I know what you're talking about now. Yeah. What did you think I was talking about? This is your old one. I thought you were talking about some video.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no. No, sorry. No, this is the PDF. Yeah, it's a good PDF. We should link people in. I think we've talked about that once before. Yeah, it's massively popular. It's downloaded like a million times or something. It's crazy.

Chris Gammell: A million times.

Speaker ?: Huh? Yep.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: Cool. Yeah, so there you go. They're my two rants for today. Not happy. Anyway, I wanted to get back to the Agilent thing. The Agilent meter. Like, if you've seen my latest video, I made this sort of semi-order. The automated jig. You know, and I got it down to 1.5 seconds per resistor test time. You know, that was... I got it down from like seven or eight seconds or something down to 1.5 seconds. And I think you reach that threshold where you're sort of, you know, if you try and tweak it anymore, it's very... You know, there's a lot more work involved to get it down to a second, you know, from like a second and a half that I've got down on average down to, say, a second or half a second is, you know, orders of magnitude more work. Yeah, law of diminishing returns. Yep. And, yeah, and everyone said, oh, why don't you just quickly lash up, you know, a little motor with, you know, little cogs which drive, you know, drive the bandolier of the resistors along and then the probes can come down. It's like, well, the devil's in the detail, you know. So, it took me like half an hour to build my little jig to, you know, do this.

Chris Gammell: Also, Dave wanted to go eat lunch or something. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: I didn't want to spend a couple of days building an automated tweak.

Chris Gammell: I have a sandwich waiting and, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Because if you've ever tried to build stuff, those automated type of test jigs, they're tricky. They can... There's a lot of tweaking involved. Yeah, I like your point about that. A lot of tongue angle. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you made a good point about how that is a big part. I mean, just having... Being able to test your own stuff, I mean...

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: If you're not... Especially if you're not a big company with like incoming inspection and everything like that, you can really... You need to do that kind of thing. Or even if you're doing a product test, you need to be able to... Replicating tests is very important in order to have consistent results.

Dave Jones: Yeah, and if you're not... If the listeners don't know, haven't seen the video and don't know what we're talking about, I mentioned that it's very common in the electronics engineering business to have to build your own custom little jigs like this to do, you know, not test a thousand resistors, but, you know, test a PCB or test, you know, something else, characterize something, you know, or it's a very common skill to have to build some sort of one-off automated jig for something. So I'm sure you've done it, Chris. I have. Being in the test. Yeah. It's, you know... I've done it at, I think, every job I've ever worked at. So, you know, I don't know whether or not it's...

Chris Gammell: Have you ever seen... Just... What, common?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I, you know, it is very common in my experience. So, you know, so you get all these beginners, oh, what is it like in the industry? What do you have to do, you know? And this is one of the things you have to do. It's very common.

Chris Gammell: So... Especially in manufacturing situations, too, where you have higher volumes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a big thing. That was always what confused me. Like, I've talked to people before who work at, like, you know, even just consumer-type things. Like, someone I knew worked at a faucet plant, right? It's like, well, what the hell does an electrician, their electrical engineer do there? Well, it's like, well, they need to be able to test something in the manufacture of that. Yeah, of course. And there needs to be custom rigs. And you can outsource all that stuff, but... Oh, you can.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's common, too, to outsource it. There's lots of companies which will build you a turnkey automated test jig, but... Right. But then you have to support it. And sometimes you just need something in a day, you know, or we need something by the end of the week, you know? You just do it yourself. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Very common.

Chris Gammell: I was showing someone today, have you ever seen a flying probe machine?

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. They're very cool. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'll try and find a video of those. I was showing to someone, to a young engineer today, and he was just, like, in shock about it. And really, it is. It is shocking if you look at it. I mean, if people have never seen it, it's basically like, it's like you have two probes, like you're using a DMM or something like that. Yeah. Really sharp, thin probes. Yeah. Really sharp.

Dave Jones: So they can get in access and, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And, like, probably four, not six degrees of freedom, probably three or four degrees of freedom. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because they need to cut the probes need to come down to the board at almost any angle. Right. So even not just vertical, but at weird angles to get under components and avoid, you know, avoid big standoff, you know, high components and all that sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. Okay. And so, yeah, you program in basically where you need to probe, and you can, you know, you can do that by using fiducials on the board, which is how they do pick and play stuff, too. So you line up the board, and then you say, well, you know, probe one goes here, and you actually program it where it's supposed to go, and probe two goes here. And then, you know, I want to take a resistance measurement across that area. And then you can do the same thing somewhere else and measure, you know, voltage drop or whatever. And then you just speed it way the hell up. And it is so cool. It's just like... Oh, it's amazing. And really, it's like a pretty good example of robots in the workplace, of how a robot is really, to be blunt, taking someone's job, whereas someone might have sat there testing, you know, connections before. I think that's a good use of a robot, you know, like, in terms of removing that labor.

Dave Jones: Well, it's an automated... One of these Flying Pros machines is an automated... Well, is a way to test a board... Is a generic jig to measure any board, whereas the stuff we were talking about before, custom test jigs, you would have like a custom nail bed that you put a fixed PCB on, and it's only compatible with that PCB. Right, and you were talking about... Probe pens. Yeah, sometimes that can be faster than Flying Pro, because then you can put like a hundred contacts all at once. And then, you can test the board in one hit. So, you know...

Chris Gammell: Or you put it through relays and...

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. And if they're churning out mobile phones or something, that might be how they would do it. They would build a custom test jig. So, you know, if you've ever opened a product and you see all these gold pads on the bottom of the board, you know that's designed for a custom test jig. They've actually laid out those boards and they've put all these test points on there, and then that board sits down on a Pogo pin bed, a totally custom test bed, and then bang, it'll test it in one hit. Bang, bang, bang, bang. So, these Flying Pro machines are very common in assembly houses, so that they can test generic boards when they come out. Right, exactly. Yep. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: It's interesting with those gold pads, too. I've seen them, too, where they actually, you know, they might have a JTAG header for programming, but then they'll actually have a different set of gold pins, and then they actually plug in Pogo pins to that thing, and then they program through that, and then they can just, they basically, like, make it into a slave board at that point, and you can just, you know, control the whole JTAG chain and program things and access different pins and check out different pin configurations. Ooh, cool stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And the test electronics behind these Flying Pro machines is quite advanced, because not only can they do things like do JTAG programming and stuff, but they can, you know, they can test for shorts, they can measure capacitance, they can measure insulation resistance, they can measure, you know, or they can apply voltage, they can do all sorts of things. It's, they're really quite fascinating machines. Yeah, definitely. They're great. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I've never been in a, have you ever been in, like, a super high manual, high volume manufacturing? I've never really seen super high volume.

Dave Jones: Not by the millions, but I've designed many custom jigs for production. Probably the highest volume I've been involved in was, we did 300,000 boards. That's pretty big, yeah. These little, little, little preamp boards. So we designed this custom hydraulic machine, like, all the boards sat in these little chutes. So, so you actually load them up like a ammo, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Like a cartridge.

Dave Jones: Ammo sort of, yeah. Sort of like a cartridge. So you load all the boards in the cartridge, then you slot the cartridge into the machine. It was all fully custom built just to test these 300,000 boards. And, uh. Wow. Yeah. And then, you know, the, the hydraulics would push the board along a little sled and put it under the pogo pins. And then the hydraulics would pull the pogo pins down, run the test, all the automated, you know, it was all PC driven. And then once that's done, it would lift up. And then either, if it passed, it would shove it into the pass bin. If it failed, it would put it into the failed bin, you know. So. Yeah. That's cool. And that was a huge machine, you know, a lot of, a lot of complexity involved in that, but it was worth it in the end. So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Cool. That's too, uh, yeah. And that's kind of, that's kind of the downside. I mean, like I worked in a couple of manufacturing situations now and, and, uh, that's kind of what's going away with manufacturing going, going away, at least way from the U S and I'm sure from Australia too. I mean, that's kind of, there's a lot of issues in manufacturing too, you know, like you got to chase down a lot of bogus problems and deal with a lot of silly things, but, um, yeah, it's, it's, uh, that's kind of the stuff that you miss out on. There's actually an article in here from E E times about, about China looking to move to R and D more. And, and it's interesting. And, and, and, and they're going to have the same thing. They're going to, they're going to lose some of that similar expertise that they've been building up over the past 20, 30 years. If they start moving into a more knowledge economy and stuff, it's just, it just kind of moves around.

Dave Jones: I don't see that happening much. That's been talked about for ages, you know, and I, they're.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's eventually someone's got to build this stuff, right? Yeah. Well, that's right. I think a lot of, I think it ends up being like a lot of politicians see knowledge, knowledge economies being like these high, high, high value. Added. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But eventually someone's got to make this stuff. And personally, I think that high tech manufacturing, I think that's a great thing, but I think it's more of a politics game there when they say that kind of stuff. I think eventually the realities are it's going to go over the low, the laborers is, you know, worthwhile, but.

Dave Jones: And then it raises the question, can they do both? Can they have both, you know, be a major power in both kind of areas? I don't, I don't see it happening much. You know, it's going to happen a little bit, but no, I see them still as the manufacturing. Yeah. Because their whole culture seems to be built around that. It's, you know, it's just, whereas the US, for example, is the opposite, you know? So. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And India too. I mean, India's having struggles with it too. There's another article. Yeah, they are. About India, basically, something like they're predicting $400 billion in electronics imports in the next 10 years. Like in 10 years, their electronics import number will be $400 billion a year, which is more than their oil imports will be.

Dave Jones: Well, see, I. Just because they have so many people. I think India have a much better chance of being, being the smart, you know, actually R&D type center than China does. Because India doesn't really have the manufacturing hub there. In our industry anyway, they don't really have it. So there's no component. Right. Very few component manufacturing type infrastructure there. That's true. Things like that. So. Yeah. I.

Chris Gammell: It's tough too when you look at these like big macro things too, you know, like, like India is a huge country, right? And China is a huge country. It's billions of people. And it's like, well, if you say electronics is going to cure one country's woes, you're kidding yourself. You know, it's just some part of a huge picture. But it's funny. India, because now China's talking about getting rid of it and India says we want it. And then the U.S. always says, oh, well, we want it. But then the business says we don't. U.S. want both.

Dave Jones: U.S. want the manufacturing back, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So. And Australia says, well, whatever, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Australia says, well, we picked that away long ago. Yeah. We've sold our, sold our sold to the Chinese, you know, a long time ago. They, they, they own all our resources now.

Speaker ?: So.

Chris Gammell: That's, yeah. Yep. Yeah. It's reality, I guess, for now.

Dave Jones: Your illustrious leader is here this week.

Chris Gammell: Is he really? Here in Australia. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yes. He flew into, yeah. He flew into Canberra or somewhere. Cool. Canberra is our state capital. Is our capital.

Chris Gammell: I didn't know that. Yeah. There you go. I don't know much Aussie geography, so.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, it's, it's halfway. Canberra, right. Back in the early day, they said, well, where, where could our capital? Where do our, where do we want to shove all of our politicians and have the capital? And everyone went Sydney. And the other half went Melbourne. And being Australia, we went, right, we're putting it in the freaking center. You know. No one is arguing shit. So they, Canberra, which was a nothing, which was a dust bowl on a map somewhere. They, you know, chose Canberra. They always do that. Right. We're going to put it in the middle. That settles the argument. You know. So there's. Yeah. There's our capital in Canberra. So Canberra is full of politicians. So you can imagine the jokes.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Sorry to any listeners who do actually live in Canberra, which is actually quite a nice place. I do enjoy going.

Chris Gammell: Or any listeners who are politicians, in which case.

Dave Jones: Bugger off. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Go away. Fix shit.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah. Anyway. So, yes, he's, he's here. And of course, he wants to increase his globe. Here's another rant. Yeah. I, U.S. Rant. Get your bingo sheets ready. Sorry. No. U.S. Rant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Obama's going to Darwin, which is the north end of Australia here. And he was making a big announcement. But everyone knows what the big announcement is. Big defense announcement. They're going to put more troops here. They're going to base more troops in Australia. As if their global empire of troops wasn't big enough already. And pissing off enough people. Easy Dave. Easy Dave. Because they want to intimidate the Chinese, you see. So they want a bigger presence in the Asia Pacific region. So they're going to stay, going to base more Marines here. Bloody hell. Yeah. Piss off, Yanks. Just take all your imperialistic world domination shit and just, yeah, take it home. Oh, Dave. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: So insecure. Yeah. It's interesting from, I mean, I think it's interesting from a world viewpoint. I mean, like, seven billion people, right? We just crossed that mark. And yet, you know, like, obviously I'm talking to you. That's kind of crazy. Yeah. I know people in China. I know people in India. I know people, you know, Korea. I know people all over the world. Germany, England. It's insane. And it's obviously very electronic centric.

Dave Jones: And they all don't like Americans, right? Oh, come on. Sorry, I had to get that in. No, we actually love Americans. We just hate American government and their policies.

Chris Gammell: Well, don't worry about that. Let's worry about electronics. Cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm sure we've got some electronics on today's show.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, we do.

Dave Jones: We do. Well, speaking about, no, speaking about China, Shanghai, they want to, here's a, you know, you can't blame them for not actually crabbing the ball and actually running with it. They want, the Shanghai government want 100 hackerspaces in Shanghai. Shanghai, I would actually presume it's in the Shanghai region, right? Because it's the Shanghai government. I guess the local government, right? I'm not sure how it all works there, but yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it was the technology community of Shanghai. And this was a story from Slashdot that we found through Dale Doherty from Make. So, but yeah.

Dave Jones: So what would they be sponsored by? How's it going to work? Are they putting up money or are they?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they're putting up money in space and.

Dave Jones: Oh, wow.

Chris Gammell: And it would be community managed and. Yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay. I mean, it doesn't really say how much. And then handling all the legal crap behind it. Because half the problem of setting up a hacker space is, you know, all the legal issues, you know, whereas I guess in a country like China, they just, the government says it's done and it's done, right? End of story. Right, yeah. They're very efficient in that way.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's good though. I mean, it's.

Dave Jones: No, it's great. You know, they're, they're certainly are taking the bull by the horns and saying, right. Oh, we love this hacker space idea. We're going to make a hundred of them within Shanghai. Yeah. Especially if they're all in.

Chris Gammell: I mean, Shanghai is pretty big. So it's. Oh, yeah. I've been there. More than 10 million at least. I mean, I think it's, it's one of those like mega cities that they talk about. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It is. Wow. That's, that's just awesome. I think that's awesome. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I can't see other companies. I can't see other countries getting, you know, doing it to that extent. I, you know, it's hard enough to get, you know, one local council to, you know, sort of understand the idea of a hackerspace, let alone go, right, we're going to build a hundred of them. You know? Right. And then actually do it. It's, I, it had never happened here. Never.

Chris Gammell: Well, and I mean, it's, it's yet to be seen if there will actually be uptake and interest in it. I mean, it seems like, you know, from a.

Dave Jones: That's a separate point, right? But the fact is that the government want to do it. That, that alone is the news, you know, really, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. And putting up money in space. Wow. You know, geez, we'd be happy to have one here in Sydney where the, some local council or state government actually sponsored, you know, or, you know, even recognize the fact that we might need something like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, maybe it's time to start asking, you know, like, maybe that is, maybe that's the thing.

Dave Jones: Well, the guys in Melbourne have been asking for four years and they've gotten nowhere almost.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. It's a shame. Yeah. There's another interesting article from Ian over at Dangerous Prototypes about, you know, China and the potential for open source hardware in China. And actually, this wasn't from Ian, this is from DP over there. But it seems like there's a lot of interest and it seems like open source hardware could have, you know, some legs over there. Obviously, Seed Studio is already over there. So, that's someone that Dangerous Prototype works with. They're the ones who do the DSO Nano and a lot of really good open source hardware projects. So, you know, that's a good sign between that and hackerspaces. I mean, it's interesting when you start, it's such an open, usually hackerspaces is such an open idea, but you don't hear a lot of mention of China usually. And bringing that many more people in is really a good idea, I think.

Dave Jones: So, we'll see how it goes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Cool. I have, I started working on my quadcopter.

Chris Gammell: You did? Oh. How's that going? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Roger and I, Roger's mate of mine, we're doing this together. We're building this thing and we're going to...

Chris Gammell: So, you're doing it for canyon exploration?

Dave Jones: Canyon, yeah. That kind of thing? It's going to be the world's first canyon navigating quadcopter.

Chris Gammell: The first quadcopter to splash down spectacularly inside a canyon.

Dave Jones: Correct. So, I bounce off the walls and do all sorts of other fun stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Rubber coated. Yeah. We got our kit and we started building it on yesterday, no, Sunday. Yeah. Cool. We spent a good lot of the day building it and it was quite interesting. The kit itself, we were quite impressed by the instructions and just the way it was supplied and everything was individually bagged and numbered and it all went together quite well. We were quite impressed by that. But, you know, as I was doing it, I couldn't help but think, you know, my engineering brain goes, what did they design it like that for? I, oh, that looks like, you know, not an ideal way to do it and all that sort of stuff. I don't know. I couldn't be talking out my ass but, you know, they're using fiberglass. It's like very thin FR4 material to hold as the base plate to hold the arms on that take all this flexion, you know, that take all this flexion force from the motors and, oh, it's like there were quite a few things on there. I just scratched my head going, well, you know, that's the last thing I would have chosen to.

Chris Gammell: So is it an open design? I mean, could you feed that back?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, no, no, we can change it. Yeah, this is just, you know. Anyway, I'm sure it works and it'll, you know, it'll fly but we end up, we fully expect this thing to be totally different by the time we actually, you know, finish with it. It'll be.

Chris Gammell: Especially after you break it a couple of times.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, it'll be totally custom. But we just wanted to get a kit so it actually got us off the ground and we can do some experimentation and then work from there. So that was the idea. So it's coming together.

Chris Gammell: So how far along? I mean, you have this motor spinning yet? You got the...

Dave Jones: No, we haven't because we don't have the battery or the transmitter and slash receiver yet. They're still in the mail.

Chris Gammell: Gotcha.

Dave Jones: Which is another thing I wanted to talk about. I got them from a company called HobbyKing.com. They apparently own the online hobby remote control business. Apparently, you know, their prices are so cheap. You know, they practically own it. They world domination and all that sort of thing. And it all comes from Hong Kong. And although they do have a warehouse here in Australia but they didn't have stock of anything I wanted. So it's going to come from Hong Kong. Anyway, I thought the shopping cart was rather clever. I found myself being sucked in to their marketing. I couldn't help it. It's so enticing. What it is, is when you check out, you know, you have to pay postage based on weight, right? So, you know, if you're ordering five kilos worth of stuff and your shopping cart only contains, you know, 4,100 grams of stuff, then it tells you, you know, oh, look, you've still got 900 grams left. And then there's a link to tell you, well, here's all the items that you can buy that are under 900 grams.

Chris Gammell: And by the way, you have $34 left in your bank account.

Dave Jones: Exactly. And it really, you find yourself being, oh, wow, I've got to use up that extra, you know, 50 grams packing.

Chris Gammell: Really playing on the human emotion.

Dave Jones: They are psyche and emotion.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Getting something for free. And a cheapskate.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. The engineer cheapskate mindset.

Dave Jones: Cheapskate, because you always want to get, you know, something on, you know, it's like if you order from DigiKey, oh, you know, I'm paying my 30 bucks postage, I'll throw on, you know, a bunch more stuff, even though you don't need it, you know. Yeah. And because you just want, you think you're getting value because you're sending more things at once. And, you know, you do get sucked into it. It's very enticing. Anyway, I thought it was very clever. And I liked it. I'm sure there's other websites like that, but that's the first, I think that's the first online website I've done where it actually shows you the products that will fit, just the products that will fit within your remaining weight limit.

Chris Gammell: That's pretty cool. I like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I like that.

Dave Jones: And then if you're buying a battery, you know, it tells you, it knows you're buying that battery, so it knows you may want some matching connectors and stuff like that. So it pops up and tells you, you may need these. And sure enough, I did. Oh, I didn't think of that.

Chris Gammell: Well, you know.

Dave Jones: Thanks. You suck some more money out of me. So, yeah. Clever. Very clever.

Chris Gammell: That's interesting. So, what, like, it's already getting, it's Arduino controlled and everything, right?

Dave Jones: It's Arduino controlled, yep.

Chris Gammell: Okay. That's interesting. It's from a, because it's going to be a control loop then too, right? I mean, it's, there's input back into the Arduino. Yes, yes.

Dave Jones: There's a tilt sensor, which, yeah, the Arduino handles, it reads the tilt sensor, and then that's what stabilizes the quadcopter. Is there any, like, filtering? Filtering or? Oh, I'm sure there's digital filtering and stuff like that. Okay. Yeah. I don't know the ins and outs of it. But, yeah, I, normally you could not fly one of these quadcopters. If you had to do it manually, you wouldn't be able to do it. A human couldn't actually respond fast enough to compensate for, you know, these things are inherently unstable. And it actually requires a control algorithm and, you know, software to keep it stable. So, yep. There are also actual, there are planes like that now. Some of these planes, you know, high, you know, some of these, one of these are wing, where the wings are swept forward on some of these jets. Yeah, yeah. You know, the, you know, the X, you know, these experimental jet fighters and stuff, they are unflyable. You can't fly them. They need software to be stable. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's scary. So, big, for, yeah, for the big ones, that's a real reliability thing. That's, that's interesting. Yep. I've, I've, I've been working on control loops lately, like analog control loops in a circuit. Have you ever done any of that kind of stuff?

Dave Jones: Oh, not hugely, no. I'm not really into, I've never had a need to do that sort of thing. I'm not a big control theory person, you know.

Chris Gammell: I'm not a big control theory person either. I'm just trying to fix a problem, but.

Dave Jones: Oh, right, yep.

Chris Gammell: Man, that is just like one of the most frustrating things ever, you know. It's, it's just like an amplifier and then there's, you know, feedback and feedback is a no summing note.

Dave Jones: But then trying to get it to do what you want, trying to tame, trying to tame the beast is. Not even tame it.

Chris Gammell: Just figure out where the hell the problem is. That's the real, that's the thing I keep running into, you know. Yep. So, I'll be like probing, right? I'll have like a DMM and I started the DAC, right? That's a good place to start this DAC input. And I started the DAC and, oh, okay, DAC looks fine, whatever. Go into this, you know, air ramp, air ramp looks fine. Then, oh, here's a problem. You know, I have this fault condition and I find the problem. Then I'm like, oh, here it is. Then I move next down the line and, oh, there it is too. Next down the line. Oh, there it is too. Ah, it's in the goddamn, ah, it's everywhere. Ah. You know, like it's, it's just, it's really frustrating. I mean, like. Yeah, you try to see your tile all night. Oh, like the worst example is like, so this is a big control loop, right? And there's op amps in it and everything. And, and I look at the input of an op amp and, and it's a buffer configuration, right? Yeah. So the input of an op amp is like one volt or whatever it is. And then I look on the, the other input, the, the non-inverting input where the feedback is, or the inverting input where the feedback is. And it's like 1.2. And I'm like, oh, there it is. It's, it's, it's, it's like not right. It's not right. And then, and then I realized that it's not that, that, um, that that op amp is broken, right? I think that op amp is broken at first, but no, it's actually somewhere else in the circuit. It's just not responding how it should be. Oh man. It's, I'm losing sleep over this, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's tiring. Yeah. To even think about it, let alone to have to troubleshoot that. So, but some people really enjoy control system theory, you know, they really get off of it.

Dave Jones: Like Bode plots and yeah.

Chris Gammell: Phase, phase margin, all that other junk. Yeah. And it's an, you know, it's an important thing to, to know. I mean, it's, it's a good thing to know. I'm can't say I'm very strong in it. I mean, like I said, I'm more troubleshooting side of things, but man, it is, it's crazy.

Dave Jones: I, uh, sorry. I lost you there for a second.

Chris Gammell: Oh, dropping out. It's raining like crazy here. Oh, well that, that must be it. You know? Yeah. Hopefully we don't lose the transmission, but, uh, there is a chance I might go black and then Dave has to take over and you'll have to listen in rant about the U S the rest of the time. Awesome. Yeah. Just go.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Speaking of math and all that sort of stuff, there was a thing on the forum last night. I saw that, um, you know, somebody said, oh, electronics should be taught as a heavy math subject. And well, you know, no, I think you'll be struggling to find people to agree with you there. Cause a good majority of electronics, you can do a hell of a lot with some very simple math. You know, you know, as, as I've always said, you know, I've always said to these graduates, oh, you know, they always ask, you know, oh, am I ever going to use these integrals that I learned and all this sort of stuff? And I go, well, in 25 years, 30 years, I've never used an integral. I've never had to solve an integral. I have to know the concept, but I've never actually had to solve an integral like you're doing math 101 in, you know. Right.

Chris Gammell: And you have to know it. I mean, you have to know how it works.

Dave Jones: And triple integrals and everything else. Yeah. Triple integrals, man. But you know, concepts and stuff are important, you know? Yeah. The, you know, the concept of an integral and that sort of stuff is important, but not actually solving the math is... Area under the curve and... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How waveforms change, that's a big one, right? Like how a square wave looks different and when you integrate it and...

Dave Jones: Yeah. But the actual math itself, no, I rarely have to use anything more than Ohm's law and a couple of other basic, you know, formulas, really. All these people out there learning all this heavy math in their engineering course will be very surprised that in, you know, general electronics design, not all electronics design, some people use integrals every day. They have to solve them. Yeah, yeah. That's just their business.

Chris Gammell: That's just their business, but... High-level simulations and other stuff and...

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But yeah, I don't even think...

Dave Jones: Or control systems or really advanced control systems theory and God knows what, but...

Chris Gammell: Right. But I think at a certain point, you get to... Like if you're doing that kind of stuff, you're throwing it into MATLAB, you're doing it numerically instead of like symbolically. Or if you are doing it symbolically, there's Mathematica, which is a crazy program. Oh my God. That's... Yeah. It's a crazy program.

Dave Jones: So tell us your... What do you do in your everyday job? Let us know. Do you... Yeah, yeah. When was the last time you used heavy math in some aspect of your...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. ...electronics profession? There's probably like 10 equations that people use over and over again whenever I'm talking to them in my experiences. You know, like LDIT, that kind of stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that kind of basic stuff.

Chris Gammell: That's more like physical stuff. That's physics. Yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah. And... But it's good stuff to know and then you... Then you hack the rest. I mean, it's... Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's right. You figure it out. You know, you just do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: It's all... Yeah, exactly. It's all rules of thumb. Electronics is all... You know...

Chris Gammell: It's mostly rules of thumb. A lot of it is.

Dave Jones: And you can do a hell of a lot. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. And it's interesting too. There's... There's Paul Rako from EDN wrote about... You know, he's written a lot about Jim Williams since he passed away. And he scanned in this article from 1987. And it's really great about how he taught and just about like everything that... You know, like he was very hands-on obviously. Jim Williams was. Yeah. But my favorite part was about equations too. And he says... He says, I'm sure Einstein was able to look up anything in the library while he was looking up his theory of relativity. Which is true. I mean, like... Yeah. He didn't need to memorize everything because he could look it up. And it's more about the... It's not about the stuff that you memorize and need to be able to regurgitate. It's taking that and bending it and recognizing it. And that's really where it's... Yeah. If you're good at that stuff, then you're a freaking magician. You know, you're Harry Houdini with equations.

Dave Jones: That's why I hate job interviews where... I've been at a couple of job interviews where they'll ask you to, you know, actually solve stuff like that on paper. And it's going, geez, dude, I haven't done that for 20 years. Like, as if I remember how to do that. And then they think, oh, well, you failed because you don't remember how to... All these formulas. Well, God. No, I haven't used them for 20 years. Why do I have to remember them? They're in a book. That's right next to me. I can just look it up.

Chris Gammell: They're in Wikipedia.

Dave Jones: You know, yeah. It's like... I hate people who do that.

Chris Gammell: That'd be really funny if at the end of the interview, you start... You pull out a question for him, you know? Mm-hmm. You're like, oh, well, I need you to solve this problem. Yeah. Yeah. At the end of a really bad interview. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. And you know you just don't want the job anyway. Yeah, you really have fun with it. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I interviewed someone recently and they brought in a circuit board. I was thinking about you, Dave. I was thinking about your... Excellent. I'm not sure if he's a fan of yours or if he's just a bright kid, but yeah, definitely.

Dave Jones: Fantastic. That's my number one...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's a great tip. I love that tip. ...to tell people.

Dave Jones: Bring your own stuff to the interview. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I... It was actually pretty recently and... You know, he was like just rude. What happened?

Dave Jones: Oh, it went great. Did you ask him about it? Was it cool? Oh, so the board was...

Chris Gammell: Oh, about the... Yeah, the boards? The boards themselves were great. I mean, it was... I was more excited about... I was just going to point out that I love talking to people who are excited about electronics. Yeah. Like, just trying to capture that feeling. Yeah. You know, it's kind of like talking to you. Like, you and I talking. And it's just like... Because I geek out all the time about stuff, right? You know, I just... I enjoy electronics. I think stuff's cool in electronics. But if I turn to my wife or a friend and, you know, I start explaining it, they often kind of just say... Nah, it's not the stuff. Okay. Okay. But when you have someone else who's like a kindred spirit, you know, they're like... And that's a lot of our listeners, too. They geek out about this stuff. Of course. It's just nice. You know? It doesn't happen often. So, we got to stick together, man. We got to stick together. It's... It's... Yeah. You find those people. Cherish them. Cherish them.

Dave Jones: So, did he get the job?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. Maybe I'll tell you the future.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. But he would have been way up the list, right? He would have scored big points for bringing his own stuff in.

Chris Gammell: Bringing stuff in. Big points with me. I'm not sure if it's for everyone, but definitely big points for me.

Dave Jones: But if you bring your own stuff, make sure you can talk about it. I've... Oh, yeah. Mentioned this somewhere along the line, but I had one guy bring in his thesis project. And I thought, fine, I'll ask you some questions about it. He couldn't answer one of them. I think he paid someone to do his thesis project for him. It's like... And, like, it's right here. I even gave him the copy of the... You know, like, I was actually reading through the report thing. And, you know, it had schematics in there. And I was asking him... So I even handed it to him and said, explain that paragraph that you wrote. You know? And he couldn't. And it's like, holy crap, you know? And... Was that what you... Because I knew this guy... I smelt bullshit as soon as this guy walked in. You know? You can just smell it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's like the opposite of knowing, like, a kindred spirit. You know exactly when there's a phony, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. And, uh... Yep. Uh-huh. Yes. You know, he came in as a microcontroller expert. Oh, fine. Okay. And easy question. Name me two microcontroller manufacturers. You know? Easy question. Right? Yeah. Nah. Couldn't even get one, you know?

Chris Gammell: And he wasn't, like, nervous and clamming up.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no, no. He was just a... No. He was just a loser. Just full of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I had talked to someone about that. Who the... Oh, I was talking to someone at a conference. And he said he wrote papers for someone. Like, he would just do their master's projects for them. He saw his cash on the side.

Dave Jones: I've done that once. I won't do it again. Yeah, I am serious. Oh, that's horrible. Well, I actually designed their circuit for him over lunch. He shouted me lunch and I designed his... Because it was something I enjoyed doing. You know, it was a scope. It was a digital storage scope. So, I designed him a digital storage... A PC-based digital storage scope over lunch. You know, I drew the thing on the back of the napkin and the whole lot. And I did some... You know, I told him, you have to research this. And, you know, explain this, this. And told him what to put in his thesis project. And, yep.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, I think this is a little more extensive.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I bet, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. But, you know, it was easy stuff for me. And I just enjoyed doing it. So, I did it. But, yeah, I felt bad about it afterwards. I thought, that guy's going to go nowhere. But, anyway, that's his problem. You know, so... Yeah. He was not going to make it anyway. You know, if he tried to do it himself, he was just the type that didn't care. You know, so those people just end up...

Chris Gammell: In management?

Dave Jones: In management.

Chris Gammell: In charge of you, Dave? Yeah, in charge of me. I mean, that's the problem, right? I mean, like...

Dave Jones: It is. I know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. That's... No offense to the managers out there. I mean, sometimes there's a good manager. Some of them are good. But, yeah. I mean, like, that kind of thing. They just sit there and they don't do much work for a while. And they start to tell people what to do because they don't know how to do it themselves. I mean, that's... Man, that's crazy. I was so surprised when I talked to this person about it. And he said it was a couple of Indian students who were just looking to get their engineering degree so they could go into management eventually. Yeah, of course. Yep. And, man, that's crazy.

Dave Jones: Who does that? Yeah, I know. I don't understand why you do engineering if you're not passionate about it. I don't get it. You know, yet that was 90... That was... Oh, man. It was greater than more than 95% of the people I knew, you know, actually doing their engineering course. You know, like, most of them just didn't care.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't know why they were there. Well, it's because of money. I mean, that's why.

Chris Gammell: I mean, there's an article in here. There's this actually pretty great, like, layout of the Wall Street Journal about different careers and unemployment right now and media earnings and stuff. And if you look at engineering, I mean, it's not bad. I mean, at least... I think this is mostly...

Speaker ?: Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, it's not a bad profession. That's...

Dave Jones: I was a little surprised. That's some of the reason why they do it is because, oh, it's, you know, oh, their parents are happy because they... Oh, engineering, that sounds good. My kid's successful, you know? Or they might have friends that do it because they've heard it pays well or... I don't know. I... Yeah, but... I don't know. If you don't have a passion for it, I don't know why. Or how about this?

Chris Gammell: Petroleum engineering, median earnings, $127,000. That's crazy.

Dave Jones: Oh, wow, yeah. That's... I'm surprised it's that low.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. There's big money in that. That's median. Oh, mining out here in Australia, mining, there's huge money. I could be earning $200,000 a year if I want to go, you know, actually wire up stuff into mine or something like that. There's big, huge money in it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The crazy thing about that, though, is like it's so safety dependent, too. If you have people that are just in it for the money, do you think... I mean, do they care about safety at that point? I don't know. Maybe... Oh, no. They take it extremely. Maybe they'll cut corners. I mean...

Dave Jones: No, no. They take it very seriously.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Well, that's good. Well, in the seismic industry, I was in, if you went on those seismic survey boats, right, you earned massive money. You would spend three months on the boat and then you had three months off. Oh, yeah. So, you could go and you'd have enough money to go and tour the world five times over during that three months, you know. That's crazy. You'd just make so much money. That's crazy. And you're not doing anything complex. You're doing something that's really blue collar, you know, anyone can do it kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, like industrial installations and stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You're just manually doing stuff or you're doing TO, you know, really simple wiring. What's TO? Type. What's TO? Technical Officer.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I've never heard of that.

Dave Jones: You're a... Oh, yeah. That's what they're called here.

Chris Gammell: Okay. TOs.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You're a Technical Officer.

Speaker ?: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I mean, it's good money. I'm sure there's some challenges to it. But, yeah, that's crazy.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And a lot of the cases, you don't need any qualifications at all to do it. You just rock up and say, I want to go on a seismic survey boat. Fine. Sign here, son. Slap on the back. Off you go. Well, they'll put you through training and away you go. Oh, there's big money if you want to live dangerously. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because you fall off. Well, it can be dangerous. Well, it can be dangerous on those boats, you know. Basically, it's a shitty lifestyle. You're in the middle of the North Atlantic and you're rocking. That boat's rocking at 45 degrees 24 hours a day. And, you know, it's just...

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, thank you.

Dave Jones: It's not a good life, so...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Wow.

Dave Jones: But, yeah, you're paid well. Same with the mining. You know, it's pretty shit going down in the mines, I can imagine, but...

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You're paid handsomely for it. So, if there's anyone out there that's doing stuff, making an absolute buttload of money that you can embarrass us with, please tell us.

Chris Gammell: If you're listening to the amp hour right now in a mine, let us know. Yeah, when you get out, of course. Right. You're probably not texting us from now on there or anything, so...

Dave Jones: But you'd need an intrinsically safe MP3 player.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Because everything in the mine has to be intrinsically safe. You can buy a Fluke 87 meter, that's, yeah, that's intrinsically safe. I don't know how different it is to the standard one, but... Yeah. It's, yeah, it just can't generate a spark to, you know, ignite explosive atmospheres and stuff like that. So, yes, there's a whole art in intrinsically safe stuff.

Chris Gammell: So... Dock tape it. Right.

Dave Jones: No, it's a bit more than that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, uh... Hmm. So, this standard... Oh, no, hang on. I want to talk about this. What's this... You found a report in Wired. Uh, who's Pinoco? The CEO of Pinoco says...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, Pinoco, you can send them a 3D design and they'll laser cut it or 3D print it for you.

Dave Jones: Oh, right, that's what I've heard of them. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Hey, they say that circuit board printing is 24 months away. That's what they say. I call it bullshit again. Just like I did with the 3D chip maker. No, I would say this is... Straight away, I instantly smell bullshit. I don't even have to check into it. I just... No, I'd say this is closer. This is...

Chris Gammell: I mean, basically what you need to do at this point is, uh, have a way to lay down... Oh, sorry, my dog's... My dog's going crazy. Uh...

Dave Jones: Yeah, you've got to lay down the conductive layers and then you've got to build up the vias, right? Right.

Chris Gammell: The vias are really where it would be tough and then plating those vias, that's the toughest part I see. I mean, you could etch boards right now, it's just all about plating the vias, so...

Dave Jones: And then making it all withstand, you know, 400 plus degree soldering temperatures, right?

Chris Gammell: Uh, yeah. Yeah, so it doesn't delay. Yeah, let's not forget that. Like, if you have multiple layers, too. I think what they were talking about is, you know, single layer conductor printing, you know, like a conductive ink pen could do right now. I mean, you could do that right now, right? Of course you could do that.

Dave Jones: You can modify the head on a MakerBot to draw the lines with conductive ink.

Chris Gammell: I think that's probably what he was talking about.

Dave Jones: You could have done that 30 years ago. Nothing new there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, then, yeah, it's bullshit. So, yeah. Yeah, I mean, maybe. Not even worth mentioning.

Chris Gammell: I thought it was an interesting article. There's a couple... I don't know. 3D printing is definitely getting some more. There was two other New York Times articles about 3D printing this week. And, uh, so, I don't know.

Dave Jones: How hot do those 3D printer heads get? Because, obviously, the heat... I think they're only like a couple of hundred degrees. So, soldering temperatures are more than that. Um, or... Or they can be potentially more than that. So, really, you've got to use a material and a printhead that is, you know, like, say, double a typical soldering temperature. Otherwise, your thing's just going to fall apart when you try and solder it. So...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, unless you, like, mandate... Well, then Rojas would never work, right? Because you couldn't do that high-temperature silver tin. I know that you would go straight to Rojas with a printed circuit board or an actual printed circuit board.

Dave Jones: It's just not going to work. So, let's forget about it.

Chris Gammell: All right. Why don't they call them PCBs instead of ECBs? Wouldn't it be better to call them ECBs, like etched circuit boards? Nobody ever calls it ECB. I'm just saying. Wouldn't it be a better thing to do? They don't really print it. They etch it.

Dave Jones: Well, there's a... Well, you etch normal boards, right? As well.

Chris Gammell: Uh, etch...

Dave Jones: You etch away the copper.

Chris Gammell: Right, yeah.

Dave Jones: Actually, there's a lot of old-timers, right? There's a lot of old-timers that refuse to call them PCBs. They're printed wiring boards, son. When I was a boy, we only made printed wiring boards. That's their correct name, PWB. And don't you forget it, sonny.

Chris Gammell: Doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well.

Dave Jones: No. But, yeah, there's a few old-timers out there. I know who... Yep.

Chris Gammell: You know who you are.

Dave Jones: Who will start a fight every time you call them PCBs.

Chris Gammell: You're probably not listening to this.

Dave Jones: Right. But, yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Coming through your gramophone. 23-skidoo.

Dave Jones: But apparently, technically, if you want to get into that, that's the correct term. Printed wiring board. You know, I'll concede that possibly that is the original term. And, well, yep. Things change. And it was hijacked. Things change.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, things change. Yeah. How about a little history for those old-timers out here? Although you'd have to be really old.

Dave Jones: The show's almost over already.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No wonder we're all old.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right? We just took an hour of your life. One more bit before we... Before we sign off for our next hour of taking your life next week. 1887. 1887. That's what's crazy to me. It was the first dry cell battery was invented. Cool. Can you believe batteries have been around for that long?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, I can.

Chris Gammell: Really?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I mean... They knew they were around in the 1800s? Of course.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I always figured they just did it in jars, you know, with like... Yeah, right. You know, different electric... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Or is that a capacitor or a Leiden jar? I can't remember. I don't know either. I'm going to embarrass myself there. Someone will correct me, I'm sure. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Someone will. Yeah. But yeah, 1887, these things have been around. Yeah. So it was Carl Gassner got the first patent of a dry cell. So... And that was the first... And let's see. In 1896, so that was what, like nine years later, was the first... No, 1898, was the first D cell. So D cells have been around for that same form factor, have been around for...

Dave Jones: Is it exactly the same? 115 years. Or have they tweaked it? Or have they actually tweaked it? I...

Chris Gammell: They say first D cell. I mean, I assume it's the standard D cell.

Dave Jones: I guess you've got to say it's a D cell, right? Yeah. Right. Awesome. It's amazing.

Chris Gammell: 115 years, man. That's crazy.

Dave Jones: For one form factor. Yeah, that's... Yep. And it's still used.

Chris Gammell: That's staying power right there. Although, I'm sure those batteries aren't in good shape. The first ones are probably not in very good shape these days.

Dave Jones: Right. No. You wouldn't suspect so. Yeah. That's a very interesting bit of nerd history.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I like it. I like it. And that was on the 15th, was the day of the patent. Not the 14th. It's this day in Dave's nerd history, because today it's only the 14th here.

Dave Jones: Right. No, what is it here? It's the 15th, is it? Yeah. Yes, it is. 15th.

Chris Gammell: November?

Dave Jones: Yeah, November 2011, right? Yeah. I'm with it.

Chris Gammell: You are out of it.

Dave Jones: Sorry, I'm concentrating on my throbbing thumb.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: Poor diddums. You've got to get some sympathy from someone. Come on. You won't.

Chris Gammell: Maybe you will next week. I don't know. Oh, man. Not for me. I wanted to remind people that we have an RSS feed. I don't know if people knew this. It is the best way to get a hold of the fact that we have a new post up, as opposed to, I'm always furiously tweeting and Dave's always saying, ah, just leave it go.

Dave Jones: Well, I automatically tweet it. What are you talking about?

Chris Gammell: I know. I'm going to decide with Dave.

Dave Jones: You want me to retweet it, like, ten times so that people, ah, just in case they're different times. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Ah.

Dave Jones: Anyways. That's spamming. If you do it more than once, it's spamming. It's not spamming.

Chris Gammell: If you do it once, do it one extra time, you're fine. If people do it for us, too, that'd be great.

Dave Jones: But then you start on that slippery slope. Oh, just do it two extra times.

Chris Gammell: Ah, just do it 7,000 times, yeah, one day. Ah. In an hour. See Alice. Unbelievable. So, we have an RSS feed. We also have a Google Plus page, if you're so inclined. They just open those up for businesses. We used to have one, and it got shut down. Have we got a Facebook page? We have a Facebook page, we have a Google Plus page, and we have a bunch of people who passively follow us, because we don't do much the rest of the week.

Dave Jones: No, because we don't do anything on those channels as the amp hour, because we have our own channels. So, where we tweet furiously all day, every day.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, sure, Dave.

Dave Jones: I don't know. I'm up to, like, a couple of thousand tweets or something.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's getting up there.

Chris Gammell: I'll follow you.

Dave Jones: You're not too bad. Yeah, I follow you, too. I see you popping up.

Chris Gammell: All right. All right. Yeah. Well, if people want to follow us, Dave is EEVblog. I am Chris underscore Gamble. And, yeah. Why?

Dave Jones: Because you couldn't get Chris Gammell without the underscore?

Chris Gammell: I have both. It's just, you know, we've talked about that before.

Dave Jones: You're just an underscore man.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I like space.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: You need my space. All right, guys.

Dave Jones: It was just Gamble on its own taken? Because Gamble is not a... Oh, that was so taken. Oh, right.

Chris Gammell: It's a Scottish name. It's very Scottish.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's very... Right. So, it's... Okay. I thought it was a bit more obscure.

Chris Gammell: It is if you're not Scottish.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Got it. All right.

Chris Gammell: No Scottish.

Dave Jones: Well, that's all we've got.

Chris Gammell: All right, guys. We'll talk to you next week.

Dave Jones: See you. Son of a bitch. This thumb hurts.

Chris Gammell: All right. All right. You baby.