#2 – Critical Mass

Dave Jones: Hi, I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog.

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

Dave Jones: And this is our second live, well, semi-live podcast. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Gammell: Hey, Dave. How are you? It's too bad we still don't have a name, huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah, we still don't have a name. We've been agonizing over it, checking if the domain names are available. And it's just next to impossible to get a decent domain name. It's crazy.

Chris Gammell: I know, and I remember seeing a thing a while back about how almost, I think, either all the four-letter or all the five-letter, regardless of how silly the actual spelling is, they're all gone. Like, every single one is registered, just in case. Every four-letter one? I think every four-letter and maybe every five-letter.

Dave Jones: Oh, unbelievable. Well, it's not surprising, really. It's just next to impossible to get a decent domain name. But anyway, you know, such is life in the digital age these days. If you're setting up a... That's the thing. If you're setting up like a business or an online podcast like this, it's just so important to be able to get the baselevel.com domain name. Because we thought about getting the .fm domain name for this podcast. Yeah, we didn't want to pay $70. Yeah, $70 for that as opposed to like, you know, $5 or $6 for a normal .com. It's just crazy. But nobody really recognizes the .fm domains and things like that. People just assume everything's .com, you know, your average user does anyway. So, it's pretty important to get that .com available.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and you know, it's almost like people are so dependent on Google these days, it's like almost tempting to do otherwise. But still, we want to make sure that if people are listening, they can find us. So, that's important. But thank you to everyone who did bring some recommendations to the table. If you didn't know, Dave and his community over at EEVblog, they have a really great forum that just came back up today. And it was down for a little bit. But tons of great suggestions and tons of great advice if you've never been over there. So, make sure you get on there if you're listening to this and you've never been there before.

Dave Jones: Thanks for the plug. But unfortunately, it will be down again today. Hey, I've just brought it back up temporarily so that we can see it here. Oh, gotcha. Yes, it will go back down because I'm in the process of moving web servers. I'm moving onto the cloud. I'm doing the quote marks there. Yeah. So, yeah, my servers, I've had my blog on a shared server for a long time. But now I'm doing almost one terabyte of data transfer per month, which is just crazy. That's a lot. For a shared server, yeah. So, it tends to drop out a fair bit. So, I'm trying a new cloud-based server based on, it's going onto the Amazon, you know, it's backing onto the Amazon cloud server or something like that. So, I'm in the process of doing a full website or a full, you know, website backup and hopefully transfer it without a hitch. But, yeah, fingers crossed. It's a big move anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, that's pretty crazy. I mean, you imagine talking to yourself from 10 years ago and being like, oh, you know, I've got about a terabyte of data that I need to move over. I just imagine telling that to myself and passing out, you know, from all the 10 years ago.

Dave Jones: Well, exactly. I was, you know, I was talking to the, I was getting a new computer at work the other day. I mentioned this in the other podcast, the first one. And we were, you know, it was a sort of a youngish computer guy sort of installing it for me. And I mentioned how, oh, yeah, when I was a boy, you know, my first computer had, you know, five kilobytes, you know, four kilobytes of memory. And it was just, and you just see the shock in his eyes. And, oh, it was, yeah, it was remarkable.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's crazy because it's kind of like a boutique kind of coming back thing of creating these really small computers. Now, one of my friends from work, actually, he's putting together his own 8-bit computer just for the hell of it, you know, just putting together to see how it works and trying to get it to interface with modern stuff. And it's all built on dip-type parts. And he's got the whole thing up and running. He's got SD RAM and everything. And he even can talk to hard drives. Oh, awesome. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that seems very popular. Everyone sort of seems to be doing these embedded processes in FPGA, you know, rolling their own or they're re-implementing a 6502 and, you know, an Apple II embedded in a FPGA. Or there's even some people out there actually building the, you know, the real hardware back from the day. You can actually go out and buy an Apple II. No, sorry, an Apple I, is it? Really? Yeah, you can buy an original Apple, yeah, you can buy an original Apple I kit. Go figure. It's, you know, some guy hasn't duplicated the layout because he thought that was, you know, sacrilege to, you know, because the layout is sort of, you know, legendary. The Woz did it and, you know, all that sort of thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, all that mythical culture around the Apple people. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, you know, hey, you know, you can buy a kit of the Apple I. Go figure. Yeah. And apparently the Woz, the guy asked for permission to get the original ROM image and Apple said no or something. But then the Woz stepped in and said, well, bullshit, I wrote that and I'm going to give it to you. So apparently the Woz just, you know, actually gave it to him and told Apple to go shove it or something like that. Well, that's commendable.

Chris Gammell: I mean, for all the DRM and everything you see these days, it's nice when they open it up, even if it is, you know, 20, 30 years out. Well, exactly.

Dave Jones: All right. So what have we got in today's show, Chris? We have no idea, right?

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, like usual, not much, not too much up on the plate. We did have some great suggestions on the forum. There's a spot on there for, you know, questions for, if you have any questions for us. They've made a good note that not as much the tutorial side of things, but more of the real life problems you're having or maybe, you know, industry issues you want to talk about, that would be more of the target we're going for. So we had a couple of things about that, you know, talk about China and electronics and everything like that. And other than that, talking about app notes and LEDs and the future. We should talk about the future at some point here.

Dave Jones: Yes, we should indeed.

Chris Gammell: I hear it's important.

Dave Jones: First up, I've got a, I noticed that on the Artifruit site, there's a new Arduino documentary coming out. Oh, yeah. Apparently. And the trailer, yeah, the trailer's up there. So if you go to Artifruit's website, there's a trailer of this Arduino documentary and they're interviewing all sorts of, you know, people and the original designers and all. It looks very well produced and, you know, very professional and everything else. So, um, I'm really looking forward to watching the full thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's great. I mean, it's almost like history's already folding back on itself. I mean, Arduino hasn't been around more than 10 years, I don't think. So it's good that they're documenting now.

Dave Jones: Well, how long is it? I've, I've actually got no idea. When did it, when did the actual thing first start? I'm sure it's a lot longer than what we think. Cause I've only known about it for, oh, you know, a year or something. Yeah, that's true. I'm sure it's, um.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, like out in, out in Italy, it must've been for a little bit longer, but. Looks like, uh, 05. Yeah, 05. Thank you, Wikipedia.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? 05. Wow. Well, I, I suppose it didn't really start picking up until the sort of, you know, the hacker maker crowd and make magazine got onto it and all that sort of, those sort of people. And then it just exploded, I think. Yeah. So, whereas before that, I think it was pretty niche little, it was just, you know, yet another little, um, you know, microcontroller embedded development board slash system, really.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah, it's amazing to, I mean, you really do need that, that critical mass, you know, you don't, I mean like your sites, your site's starting to have that too with the forum and everything, but it's almost like, how do you get to that point where it's all right, now we have enough people that really care. And then you could start getting the, uh, the experienced users, helping out the younger users and we're not even younger, just newer. And, uh, it really takes that critical mass though, to, to really get off the ground.

Dave Jones: Well, it, it does. And I don't think you can easily create that critical mass overnight. You just have to keep at it and you slowly build up an audience. And I guess it comes to a point where you just realize that, Ooh, you know, shit, I've got, you know, look at how many people are, are, are contributing to this thing now. And it's, um, I kind of get that with the, uh, blog, you know, I just started out and it's pretty, had pretty, um, constant growth ever since day one. But it, you know, I, I don't really remember the day when I thought, you know, Oh geez, look at how many viewers I've got. Look at the critical mass. It's just, it just sort of keeps growing and growing and I, yeah, there was no one point where you just, where it suddenly just goes bang. But I guess when it hits make magazine or something like that, that has a, you know, that has an instant audience of a hundred thousand or I don't know what the circulation is, but

Chris Gammell: that's probably a couple of hundred thousand. If there's any, uh, make magazine editors out there, we will happily be linked onto your site. Thank you. We would appreciate it.

Dave Jones: Yes, please. We would. Yes. We're not afraid to leech off somebody else's success. We are shameless. No shame whatsoever. I don't know the Arduino thing though.

Chris Gammell: I think there's, I mean, I, I've, I've, I've read about it a lot more than I've used it. I've used it a couple of times, but, but even comparing it to the launch pad that we talked about last time, one of the things that's really big on there is like, you've already got analog built into it. And so that right there is pretty, pretty great for interfacing to a lot of devices. So if you don't have that, you know, and you have to start talking to an A to D, there's all these stumbling blocks that come up that people are going to be like, ah, you know what? This is too much work. I'm just going to go do something else, you know, watch TV or go work on some other project.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, that's the thing. It's, um, it, it pretty much is on the hardware side. There's nothing special about it at all. It's just a, you know, it's just a microcontroller. It's just Navier microcontroller in a socket, you know, and, um, it doesn't really have any support, um, circuitry around. It's got the expansion header, of course, the shield, um, header, but you know, there's nothing different there at all. But what sets the Arduino apart is the, is the software ecosystem behind it. You know, that, that really simplistic programming interface, which is, um, called, uh, what is it? Wiring.

Chris Gammell: Wiring.

Dave Jones: And, um, it's, yeah. And it's based on C and it's pretty darn, you know, it's almost identical to C, but it includes all the libraries in there and it really is very easy to use. And that's what really sets it apart from the launch pad or the, you know, some other microchip, um, you know, pick. Yeah. Development board or something like that. It's just the software ecosystem.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And that happens with a lot of other products too. I mean, like it's not as simple, but I mean, you look at like the Beagle boards, I got a chance to talk to Jason who, who's in charge of the Beagle board community over TI and that, I mean, they have a critical mass, but they're still, I think one of the things that they're lacking is they're still at such a high complexity of the language and the, and the board itself that they run into like, uh, except the acceptance issues where they can do really cool things. I mean, those things are running quadcopters, but it's harder to, it's harder to, to get, uh, less experienced people involved. So that might be a jumping point after an Arduino runs out of headroom.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Well, there's, yeah, there's all sorts of, you know, you can get, um, yeah, you were talking about, I think the Beagle board had like a one gigahertz processor in it now. Was that you? Somebody was telling, yeah, tell me about that. And yeah, that's just, you know, it's just incredible. So there are, you know, and, and it's compatible with the, is it compatible with the Arduino shield or something?

Chris Gammell: Uh, there might be conversion kits, but I don't, it's not directly compatible. It's much more, it's much more like an industry type kit. I mean, that's what it was really made for. I believe it. And it kind of spawned into a community. Um, don't, don't quote me on that, but, uh, I, I know that it's from the industry kits I've seen, it's much closer than an Arduino might be.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, that's yeah. I think the Beagle board is pretty much, it's just, you know, there's nothing new about that either. It's just a standard industry development board that a lot of people have got around. It just has that critical mass, which makes it into something special. You know, it's yeah. Apart from that, you know, there's dozens, probably hundreds of companies out there with all these development boards and they're all pretty much the same. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it is the, um, it is the community that sets it apart really. Yeah. What user base do you have? And you know, what's the price of the board and is it, you know, generic enough to be used in jelly bean applications and all that sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: So, you know, there's a, an application I saw of, of the Beagle board that we're talking about it. I saw one today and it's pretty cool. Uh, have you ever heard anti, anti-pasto hardware blog? You ever been on that site?

Dave Jones: Ah, I've heard about it. I don't think I've been on there though.

Chris Gammell: I can send you a link real quick, but, uh, one of the things that the guy in there has been doing, he ported, uh, you know, Beagle board has its own version of Linux on it. Usually it's running angstrom, but it can run a couple other things. But this guy actually made his own graphing calculator on the Beagle touch, which is a touchscreen kit you can get. And then he put, you know, like a TI-89 or HP 50 and he actually made his own hardware or his own, uh, sorry, his own graphing calculator. Now there's no, I don't know if there's an interface you might have to get to keyboard, but I saw this thing. I'm just like, Whoa. So you can do graphing. Very cool. Matrices and everything like that. So definitely people out there that are, are doing some cool things.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah, they are. I'm just constantly amazed at what people are doing. I'm going like, cause I know how much effort will go into a project like, you know, like a graphing calculator like that. And, um, you know, with my scientific calculator watch, I've had guys doing, working on the software, um, side of that for me, you know, and it plays chess and everything now. Oh yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the only world's only chess playing watch. Um, so, you know, and there's all this other stuff built in and I just know how much time at right. And it takes to write stuff like that. And, you know, these, these, you know, people out there just have all this time available to dedicate to these projects. It's, it's really amazing.

Chris Gammell: And I think we should give a toast to all the significant others of all those people out there doing this work. Uh, you know, they're very welcoming of, of technology in their homes, obviously. So it's a big cheers to them.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. And those, you know, those, uh, developers out there who are just, you know, those hobbyists out there who are developing some kick-ass project, you know, and they stick it on YouTube or they stick it on their webpage and they get 50 people view it, you know, and they don't get success and, you know, recognition from it. So. Well, hopefully that's what we're here for. Incredible. Well, exactly. If you've got a very cool project, we, uh, yeah, we might give you a shout out. And, um, at least we've got a couple of thousand viewers. I noticed that, um, I think the views for the first show were like, uh, almost 2,500 or something like that. Thank you. It was certainly over 2,000. So there you go. We have an audience.

Chris Gammell: We're friends. Yay. We love you.

Dave Jones: The coolest radio show in town without a name or at least the coolest. And without guys with nice radio voices. Oh, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We have to get up really close to the microphone and, uh, start talking in low voice.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. And we have to give away icy cold cans of Coke. Oh, right. Yeah. Well, that, that's a thing here in Australia. Oh, is it really? You, you guys probably don't understand, but all the Sydney radio stations back in the eighties used to give away icy cold cans of Coke. Oh, really? So yeah, it's a bit of a running gag with, uh, with radio stations here in Sydney.

Chris Gammell: No, these days they just give away concert tickets. So I guess we'd have to give away like maker fair tickets or I don't know what, maybe like hardware, like dev con kind of tickets or something. I don't, I don't know what we'd ever give away.

Dave Jones: Right. So how much does it cost to go to the, one of these maker fairs? I've never really looked into the actual details.

Chris Gammell: Uh, I'm not too sure myself. I, like I said, in the last show, I didn't get the chance to, uh, to hit the one up in Detroit. I heard, I heard really good things about it, but I was, I was away for the weekend. I, I think it was, uh, I don't even want to say how much I think it is because that's an outright lie.

Dave Jones: But, um, yeah, actually somebody I've not might've been on the forum. Somebody after the first podcast, they talk, they, um, like how I said, there's nothing like a maker fair here in Sydney or in Australia and everyone's going, Oh, you should start one. And apparently, uh, the company who run the maker fair, sorry, I forget their name.

Chris Gammell: Um, Oh, it's O'Reilly.

Dave Jones: You mentioned O'Reilly. That's it. Apparently they run a, um, well, they have support available if you want to do a mini maker fair. Yeah. Um, so I haven't looked into the details for that. So, okay. Who knows? Maybe we could have something like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I've seen, there's a couple, there was one on Providence and I've seen, there's a couple, I think there was a, uh, right up near the Detroit one. There was one in, uh, Oh shoot. It's another Michigan town. I'm sorry. Michiganders. Uh, but yeah, they do have smaller ones where it's kind of, uh, you know, I think it's good to get like a good, it's again, a critical mass kind of thing. If you get a critical mass together, you can, you can really do it. And I just looked up on, uh, the site for the New York one, which is coming up in a couple months. Yeah. Two months, September 26th in New York. And for an adult, it is 50 and a student it's 30 and that's for the whole weekend. So that's actually a lot less than I thought it was going to be.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, that's not too bad. That's reasonably affordable. I think. And well, considering the size of the show that's usually put on, um, certainly the main maker fair is massive. Um, unfortunately I'm, I'm going to be over there in October. I'm going to be in the U S in October, um, mid to late October. So I'm going to miss that, unfortunately. So I would love to go to a maker fair. That'd be really cool. Yeah, it would be.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully they'll come back to the Midwest. So if anyone else is listening from, I guess we already said make, didn't we? But if you're still listening, uh, yeah, come on back to the Midwest because it seems like it went pretty well. I saw, I saw a couple articles about like just all the people learning how to solder and, uh, all the really cool events they had there. So it seems like it was a resounding success, especially at the Ford, the Henry Ford museum.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that'd be very cool. Please, please say, uh, solder again for me. Solder. Solder. Yes. I love the American pronunciation. Solder. Solder.

Chris Gammell: Solder.

Dave Jones: With an L. Yeah. There's no L in there, is there? Apparently not in America. So there you go. We have solder.

Chris Gammell: Solder.

Dave Jones: Solder is my favorite programming language. That's one of my, uh, that's one of my favorite, uh, favorite quotes I like to use.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I've, I've heard that one before. That's a good one.

Dave Jones: Yep. Absolutely. I just, you know, because software is just such a pain in the ass sometimes that, you know, you just want to wire some chips up and have something work. I know.

Chris Gammell: Just, yeah. You know, there was actually another question on the, uh, the forum was, uh. There was. Yeah. That was, why, why do people that are usually in software, and I, I'm not sure about the demographics here, but at least this person's experience was that a lot of people in the maker community, in the, uh, hacker or, you know, do it yourself community, why are they usually software people? So what do you think about that, David? Hmm.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, because really that's just the way it is these days to do something cool. You know, you've typically got to do it in, um, software, you know, I mean, I, I hate to admit it, but there are limits to what you can do in hardware. You know, I, I, I know you can, in theory, you can do anything in hardware, but it's just so big and convoluted and expensive that it's, it's just easier to do things in software these days. You know, you're whacking a microcontroller, it's got all the processing power you need to go to the moon and, and it's got all these, you know, it's got ADCs built in and all these peripherals and UARTs and all sorts of stuff. And just, you know, and everything's interconnected, you know, people want to connect up to ethernet or they want to, you know, do something else. And it's just, yeah, you just can't avoid, avoid it these days, I'm afraid. So, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Another thing I've always thought about too, is that, and something I've talked about with some of my, some of my friends is, uh, you know, if you're working on hardware all day, you get home and you might want to not, I mean, there's certain crazy people like me and Dave that aren't, aren't necessarily that way, but you, you might not want to work on resistors and, and transistors all day and then go home and keep on doing it. Cause then it's still feels a little bit more like work. Now, obviously that's not the case for, for everybody. Um, but it's understandable if that is the case, because it can be frustrating or it can be hard work or you can be working long hours. So not everybody has the, the desire or maybe they have other hobbies too. I mean, like one of my big hobbies is music. I get home and I want to play some music to relax and then I can go back and work on electronics if I want to.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, that's the, that's the thing with me. I, um, you know, I, I, I come home from work and I, but I might do, you know, software at work and stuff like that. So, you know, it's a mixed bag, but I, I come home and I have moods, you know, sometimes I want to just build something up. Other times, no, I don't want to go out to the lab. It's too cold. It's the middle of winter. I'd rather sit in the air conditioned study and just, um, you know, just cut some code and, and have my board blink a couple of leads or something like that. I find that immensely satisfying. So yeah, you know, it's all mood based as a lot of, uh, electronics is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So I think that, I think that might be one of the big things about why you see a couple more programmers than you would, uh, hardware people jumping into the, the hacker community and wanting to get their hands on hardware because sometimes the, just writing the code to see that, that blink an LED is not enough. You know, you actually have to put more LEDs on the board or switch out the LED for a relay driver and start, start flipping some, some serious switches, turn on your vacuum cleaner, you know, move the garage door up and down. That's, that's when it really starts to get interesting and you can really start to control your world around you. So I think that hopefully that answers, uh, answers this person's question. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They actually had another part to that question, I think, which is, um, it seems that it's more rare for someone to start with an analog foundation and then get into microcontrollers. Um, and I think that's, that's probably correct in my experience. Um, anyway, cause, um, if you've watched the blog before, um, my good mate, Doug Ford, who's been on the blog, um, he's an analog specialist. And, um, really he doesn't do microcontrollers, you know, he, he does absolutely brilliant, um, analog stuff and power electronics and things like that. But, you know, it's microcontrollers. He has somebody else to do that for him. He just, I don't, I don't know what his exact reason is. He just couldn't be bothered, you know, learning microcontrollers or just hates them or, or whatever, but he certainly actually appreciates the power, um, of them and what they can do, but he, he doesn't actually do them himself. So, yeah. You know, he's one of those, uh, you know, crusty old analog guys who, who doesn't want to touch them.

Chris Gammell: Well, I'm a, I'm a little light on the crust, but, uh, I do a lot of analog stuff myself. And, uh, you know, I think one of the other things too is, is that obviously analog is more fun. Uh, so, well, no, that's not always the case. Uh, but I think, I think a lot of times it's exposure. It's, it's not, not being exposed. Like, you know, even though I do analog now, I was always, I, you know, I, when I was in school and when I work on stuff at home, there, there always is that microcontroller base that's there. And, and that was learning as you go. If you have been working in transistors, you know, like straight transistors your whole life, it's a little harder to kind of carry that over. It's not saying that you can't, it can't be done, but. Yeah. When you see every kind of like, uh, I saw that phrase the other day, when you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail, right? It's like an Nile. Yeah. Yeah. And so if you see a problem where you need to compare a voltage and then, uh, flip a switch, you're probably gonna do that with an op amp or comparator as opposed to, you know, taking that, that DC data into an A to D, reading it, reacting to it, comparing it to a value in software, outputting it to a DAC, flipping it, or even just flipping a, uh, a bit and then, you know, doing a relay. So it's not saying that there aren't other options. It's just that, you know, uh.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's, it certainly is what you're familiar with. I mean, that's the thing, you know, my friend Doug is the analog guy. He will do everything using, you know, transistors and op amps. Whereas, you know, I, um, you know, I, I might use a little, you know, pick to do something like that because I, I was brought up in more of the, um, digital design area, I guess you could say. And, um, and things like that. So, you know, discrete transistor design wasn't my forte back in the day. So I still have not a fear of doing it. It's just not, you know, it's not intimately, you know, it isn't really familiar to me. So, um, for me to go and design a full on, you know, a discrete or, you know, high end audio amp using just transistors or something. It's, I don't know. You know, it just seems like a lot of work to me. So it's just something I'm not really familiar with. So yeah, I might chuck in the 50 cent micro, but I will always, I'm very much like on the, uh, was side of things who, who's always had the philosophy of trying to make things, keep it really simple, you know, optimize your design and things like that. So I, I, I love optimizing my design. So, but the optimizing can mean different things to different people. I mean, if you're an analog guy, you might think optimizing means using discrete transistors, even if you've got to use 10 or 20 of them instead of one pick, you know, that might be optimizing it. Right.

Chris Gammell: Um, well, it's like what we talked about last time too, about the, uh, you know, needing sometimes even just using the, the built-in parts where there's a vendors offering you a complete solution that might, you know, you might have to pay it a couple cents more, you know, even a dollar more, but sometimes in terms of overhead and everything else, that is the optimized solution is as silly as that sounds.

Dave Jones: If, if you're talking about board space or, or cost, yes, certainly, you know, but if you're talking about, you know, you might think it's, um, sacrilege to, you know, use a, use a, you know, a big, uh, big custom chip to do something, you know, that you can do using analog parts or something like that. So yeah, it's all a matter of point of view.

Chris Gammell: Well, I see another, another question on here that it kind of could feed into that. I mean, the person's asking about, uh, consumer products and their, their decline and, uh,

Dave Jones: Oh yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think, I think, I think you'd probably all experience that. Piece of string. Yeah. How long's the show? Yeah. How long is the show and, and how much, how much, how long can the computers last while they're recording us? Right. And I, I was thinking about something with this feed in there, but, uh, I guess optimizing, I guess those people are probably optimizing for cost. And, uh, you know, how do you, how do you deal with that these days? How do you deal with the products that you're buying, you're paying good money for, and then you open it up and then you see, well, this is it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, exactly. And that, that, that reminds me of, um, something, uh, one, um, ASIC designer told me once he, uh, came home and bragged to his wife and, um, look what I've done. And, you know, I've spent a year and a half working, working on this. And he showed her this little tiny bit of silicon and she went, you spent a year and a half working on that, you know, it was just, you know, this like, you know, it was a two millimeter by two millimeter piece of silicon, you know, and it's, uh, it's, yeah, it's amazing. The amount of effort that can go into, you know, optimizing that sort of product. You know, it might not impress the lay person, you know, the consumer who's buying the product and you know, it's got, you open it up and there's one chip in there and you go, well, you know, how hard is that?

Chris Gammell: Oh, I wasn't talking about it like that. I was talking about the other direction. I mean, I'm, I'm sitting here staring at a record player I bought and I paid about a hundred bucks for it. And I know that's kind of low cost, but I, uh, when I bought it, I bought it and I've, I got it on discount. I'm like, Oh, this is such a great product. And, and you know, there's, there's some electronics in it. So it's, it's sort of relevant, but then you open, I, it didn't work when I got it home. So I'm rumbling and popping up, popping the back open or the bottom rather. And, and it's just a tiny motor drive and all these tiny plastic components that are just like so frail looking. And, you know, how do you really deal with that these days? How do you, how do you go out and buy something that you think you're spending decent money on? And, and then you, you find out, you come to find out that a, it doesn't work and B you open it up and you see the exact reason why it doesn't work.

Dave Jones: Well, as a consumer, that's very difficult because you don't have any technical knowledge. You know, you've just got to go on some consumer review, but, but engineers like us, we can go, well, okay, I know, you know, I, if I buy a fluke multimeter, you know, it's going to have quality engineering in it compared to a one hung low brand meter. That's, you know, that, that costs five bucks at your local hardware store. And it's the same with products. You know, you can get a well engineered phone or you can get some cheap, you know, copy from China. That's just going to fall apart. So, but generally you've got to take it apart, you know, look at it, inspect it. And, and so you've got to have a technical background to know, but the average consumer, you know, it's potluck really, I think.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: So, and price isn't always indicative. Um, you know, it, I like to think it is.

Chris Gammell: Your reviews always kind of show that. I mean, you're, uh, I've got another plug for Dave's, Dave's video blog, but if you've never seen the, the multimeter reviews, if you love multimeters, I mean, or even if you don't, you just need to find one, you know, you, you can see a lot of the different bits of quality that, that go into different, different price ranges. And, and it's pretty amazing to see how much it can really span the gap of a good one can be $50 and a bad one can be $50.

Dave Jones: Yep, exactly. So yes, price isn't always indicative, which is crazy. Speaking of that, I've got to LCR meter. That's due to come today. I think when I get to work, it should be there. So there's going to be a LCR meter triple review again. Um, but I had lots of complaints last time that my last, uh, my last $100 shootout was like, um, two hours and almost two hours or something. And I spread it over to, so I'm going to actually spread a new one. I'm going to do a separate review for each one, and then I'll do a summary review when I'm comparing meters like that.

Chris Gammell: Anyway, let's not talk about the EEV log, shall we? Right, right, right. Uh, well, there's another question on here about why is everything made in China? And, uh, you know, if, if the person asking doesn't know, obviously there's, oh, they even say it on those cheap labor, obviously. Um, but you know, there's actually, again, you know, we've been talking about critical mass today, but it's getting to the point where technical expertise is, is pretty great over there too. You look at the Foxcons of the world. That's the, the people that make Apple products and HP products and, and a lot of the products that you have in your home probably that are electronics products, but not, are not necessarily the difficult to, uh, or the complex products so much as the difficult to assemble products. And they have all these great facilities out there. They, they employ 800,000 people over there and yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. It's, it's a obscene amount of people.

Dave Jones: So they have, that's just one company and one, essentially one company, one big fabrication facility, really. Yeah. And that's the biggest one. So I think I'm sure it's a big park, you know, it's probably spread over different, uh, locations and things like that. But yeah, that's just one company, 800,000 people. Yeah. Crazy.

Chris Gammell: So this person's asking why, you know, there's other countries with lower wages. Well, yes, that's true, but you have to, you have to also remember that, you know, for the past 20 years now, uh, you know, communist China has been not, not to get political or anything, uh, but they've actually been pouring money into it. And that's actually a very good thing. I mean, they, they've been investing like crazy and you look at their stimulus plan that they've had and you look at all the, the benefits they have and the way, I mean, obviously their, their government is very well on message, you know, to themselves. So hopefully we won't get blocked blocked in China or anything, but, uh, you know, they're very focused on it. And it's, it is, and that part of it is very, uh, it's, it's admirable because they understand that technology is a very important part of their economy and that accumulating all this manufacturing capability is going to lock them in as the place you have to go for the next however many years.

Dave Jones: That reminds me of the, um, news thing that came out just this week, um, that India have, you know, big publicity, big to do about how they're going to create this $35, you know, touchpad, iPad, notebook thing, you know, it'll be, I think it's $35, might be 25 or something, but yeah. And, um, and everyone, the media latch onto that. Oh, it's the few look at India and it's just absolute bullshit. It's just marketing and political spin completely. There's no way India can produce a $35 iPad notebook thing. It's just because they don't have the infrastructure. They don't produce their own touch panel LCDs. They don't produce anything, you know, they've got to buy it all from China and they're just, you know, step in line like everyone else, you know, even Apple can't come along and buy an, a, um, you know, the touch screen from, from a Chinese factory for $35. So there's no way India are going to.

Chris Gammell: Right. And I think the thing is that, I mean, with that kind of thing, they're probably just going to end up buying it and then subsidizing it and then like, Oh, it's $35 for you, but you know, it's not going to go on forever. So yeah, you're right.

Chris Gammell: So they have very strong software in India. I mean, we can't discount that. Yes.

Dave Jones: Um, the quality is dubious, but yes, everyone coming out of university there has a PhD. Well, yeah. PhD in computer science and they know VHDL and they, you know, they can do pretty much anything on the software side. Right. And, and I mean, hardware too.

Chris Gammell: I know, uh, I've met many, many engineers from there too, that are really strong hardware wise, but it's just, I think you're right about the industry there. It's just, you know, it doesn't have that. It doesn't have the, uh, the same, the same focus on building infrastructure. Um, yeah, I've never, I, have you ever been over to China? I've, I've only heard.

Dave Jones: I've, I've been to China. Yes. I've been to some of the assembly factories there and, uh, yeah. And it, it really is remarkable just the amount of gear and it's all high end top quality. And this is just one of, you know, 10,000, you know, assembly factories over there. It's just, it's just incredible. The amount of machinery and the amount of labor that they had over there to, to do almost anything, um, you know, it's, it's not so much their cheap labor, their, their, their cheap labor helps, but it's the ecosystem they have in place and the gray market component industry they have over there. And, you know, that, that's really the key to it is, you know, it, people think, oh, it's just cheap labor in China. Well, it's not that cheap and it's getting more expensive because everyone in China now wants the, you know, the first world sort of, you know, everyone wants, wants their own house and their car and their iPhone and their everything else, you know? So they want to live in a more modern society and that, you know, they, they just can't help it. Maybe in 20 years time, India will be the next, you know, powerhouse. I don't know, because it started out being, um, Japan, you know, and then everything shifted to Taiwan and then everything shifted from Taiwan to mainland China and who knows, you know, China might. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's amazing. It's just like technology is this, this bringer of wealth and yet, you know, you see people kind of rise and fall with it. I mean, Japan is still very strong technically, but they're not doing the manufacturing near, not nearly as much anymore. And now you see even China, I've been reading about China and how they're, they're, they're much more interested in natural resources, but the, how they're, they're investing infrastructure in Africa now. And that's, you know, that's, that's their low cost labor, which is amazing. You just see like this, this amazing ecosystem forming some, with some, you know, political background to it too, as well. I mean, there's obviously a lot of push in certain directions, but, but just as bringer, you know, technology is this bringer of wealth and, uh, some, some good, some bad. Uh, but obviously me and Dave, like the technology side of things. And I'm sure that we do one year or two years or, you know, six months, even, you know, there will be, or there already are people in China, you know, talking about this stuff on the internet as well. I'm can't say I'm real privy to what they're talking about in China, nor are they real privy to what we're talking about here because it's probably filtered, but that again is another, another issue.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Don't get me started on internet film. Oh, right, right.

Chris Gammell: Touchy issue with, with the, with the Aussies. I've, I've been told how to, how to pronounce that by Dave. It's not Aussies, as I used to say, it's Aussies. Aussie. Oh, there you go. That was pretty good. All right. That was pretty good.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. As in Aussie Osborne. That's right. Yeah. That's good.

Chris Gammell: So everybody out there now knows it. It's Aussie as in Aussie Osborne. So another, another thing I wanted to mention about China is the, uh, have you, have you read at all about the, uh, the conflict minerals? Have you heard about that at all? No. What's, what's conflict minerals? So it's kind of like this, you know, I've heard of conflict diamonds, which are, uh, in Africa. Have you heard about those? Oh yeah. So that's right. Yep. That was a big thing for many years. You know, funded, uh, some military activities that weren't so great, but that, uh, you know, there's really big reserves now of, of, you know, tantalum and lithium and all these things that are really important or gold even, you know, that are very important for technology. Yeah. And you see China going and, and the U S too. I mean, they just found in Afghanistan, they found it a while ago. There's a New York times article about it, but they found these rich mineral deposits in Afghanistan. Basically that point towards the future of Afghanistan could be the mining industry of, you know, Hey, we got really? Yeah. Like one of the biggest lithium deposits in the world and they've known about it, but they just released it and it was something like $4 trillion over the next however many years. I don't want to put numbers on again, cause I'm not looking at it, but it was an obscene amount of money.

Dave Jones: And that's crazy. And of course, lithium is very important now that the, um, cars and the batteries, you know, we're going to have electric cars and they all need lithium ion batteries. And lithium is apparently that's one of the bottlenecks to, you know, getting all these cars out there powered from batteries is lithium is one of the main things. And, um, and, and you mentioned tantalum, tantalum, tantalum is another major, uh, rare earth, uh, metal that, um, Australia produces about 90%. I think the world's tantalum. Yes. Oh yeah. We're, uh, where we manufacture most of it and, um, and all mine, most of it, we have the world's largest deposits, um, here in Australia and, um, and China is of course, um, buying, there's a big thing in Australia at the moment where China is buying up all our, all our mineral companies, you know, they're trying to buy all of our companies and the government are trying to let it happen. Well, there there's parts of the government that want to let it happen because it's good for, you know, it's good politics and it's good, but there's the other part. Well, you know, it's the Australian people don't like the concept of China owning everything in Australia. And, but yeah, that's happening. It's hard to stop. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And I think the same thing is happening elsewhere with China and, uh, you know, buying other, I saw even in that same New York times article that China was already swooping in and, and looking to buy stuff in, uh, Afghanistan. You know, they're already, they're already looking there. They're already looking everywhere else. And it's just as much like how we talked about last time with like the buying power of these big technology companies, like the apples. Well, the people that make that stuff, like the, the Fox cons of the world, or even the, the, the lesser known manufacturers, they all need raw raw materials from somewhere. So it all just kind of propagates down the line and they all, all these supply issues just ripple back and forth and back and forth.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's incredible. And, uh, you know, and actually protecting those interests is a big thing. So who knows, maybe the U S is still in Afghanistan, not just, not just for the oil. Maybe they're there for, uh, maybe they're there for the minerals too.

Chris Gammell: I don't want to be cynical. Of course. Don't get us shut down this soon. It's only the second show. I mean, I don't want people in my house. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Come on, U S shut us down. Come on. I dare you.

Chris Gammell: Uh, testing freedoms. Dave and his pirate radio show from Australia, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh dear. Yeah. No, poor old Chris. I don't want the police, the FBI to show up in your doorstep and raid your basement there, you know, in Cleveland.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I doubt it's that big a deal, but, uh, you know, even the, uh, you know, we're talking about minerals, but you, you even see the, uh, you know, the really rare ones, like the, the ones that go into like manufacturing of silicon and stuff like the itriums and everything else, like all these crazy ones. Very rare. I mean, uh, or, or how they're achieving different band gaps and LEDs with all these different materials now. And, uh, you know, LEDs is going to be a huge market. We, we talked about that a little bit last time, but. Oh yes. I mean, you think about all of the light bulbs in every house. So, 6 billion people on the planet. If every single one was, uh, lucky enough to have an LED light bulb or, you know, maybe more, but, you know, probably it would even out to one based on poverty levels and everything. That is a, and, and, and LEDs don't last forever either. I mean.

Dave Jones: No, no.

Chris Gammell: Incandescents are not great. And, uh, compact fluorescents last a little bit longer, but LEDs, you know, probably about 10 X the lifespan. And you think about that, that's a lot of LEDs right there. And that's a shitload of LEDs.

Dave Jones: And, and the technology is just growing exponentially there. It's crazy. I mean, you know, Cree have got the, what is it? 200 lumens per watt now. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it, it really is. That is remarkable. You know, that's, that's beating compact fluoros and it's just, you know, it's just incredible. So, um, you know, five years ago, I would have called you crazy if you said LEDs were going to, you know, actually replace, uh, fluoro lighting anytime soon. But geez, you know, it's come a long way in a short time and it's just going to get better.

Chris Gammell: And you wonder about like, I mean, semiconductor, excuse me, semiconductor fabs are not easy to build, but you know, you wonder about the capacity of those and, and how they're going to build all these things. I mean, obviously they're going to, once the money is there, it's going to ramp up like crazy, but man, that's going to be a lot. I just hope that some of it, you know, comes to the U S or Australia, you know, like a lot of that stuff is overseas for us. And, and, uh, you know, it's, it's going to be great to have the energy efficiency of these things, but you know, again, if you're a, uh, if you're some kind of rich medium or not media, if you're a, some kind of rich semiconductor investor, be sure to pop a few, a few semiconductor fabs in, in, uh, the Midwest for us, if you would. Yes.

Dave Jones: Well, local, local manufacturing and local, uh, you know, local industry is very important, I think, because, you know, it's, um, people just rely on the fact that importing is so cheap, but, um, you know, you can bet your bottom dollar that 20 years down the track, it's not going to be as cheap to, uh, you know, ship things across the world as oil becomes a bit more scarcer and prices go up and, you know, prices for oil aren't going to go down. So, you know, things have to be shipped by ship, you know, people, you know, there's a huge, you know, tens of thousands of cargo ships bring all this stuff in and that, you know, that, that takes resources to do too. So yeah, it's, um, it's going to be strategically important. Maybe, you know, maybe not for 10 or 20 years, but you know, sort of beyond that, um, you can, yeah, definitely in our lifetime, you know, it's, um, yeah, in another 30 years, I think, you know, I'll, I'll still be around hopefully still doing the blog. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: Still 10,452.

Dave Jones: That's it. I'll need some, you know, I need 10 exabytes of, uh, data transfer on my website or something instead of terabytes. Yeah. But, um, yeah. So, uh, you know, having that local industry there is important. And of course, Australia has thrown away everything over the last, you know, 20 or 30 years or something, you know, everything's done overseas and, you know, there's a lot of R and D still done here, but as far as manufacturing goes, no, we've just pissed it all away. The government's just, you know,

Chris Gammell: Well, I think it's just kind of now it's like people are realizing that, oh, this is, this is kind of important. I mean, like they, they saw it as a, as it went, but, but now it's like now that a lot of it's gone and it's like, wow, that, that really affected a lot more things than we thought it was going to.

Dave Jones: Well, that's right. I mean, I'm not sure if, uh, how many people know this, but, um, the world's largest solar, solar, um, solar cell manufacturer is in China. Not surprisingly, but the guy who founded that company is from the university of New South Wales. Oh, really? Which does world lead. Yeah. Which does world leading research. He's actually an Australian or Chinese Australian, you know, Chinese background. And, and he actually did all his research here on those solar cells and how to manufacture them cheaply. And he tried to set up, this is not sure how long ago, 10 years ago, maybe. Um, he tried to set up, um, you know, a manufacturing industry here for solar cells, tried to get the government involved. Look, we can be world leaders. And they basically told him to piss off. So, yeah. So he went, well, bugger you, I'm going to China. And he went to China and now I think he's in the top five richest men in China or something. You know, he's one of China's richest men and he owns, I can't remember the name of the solar cell manufacturer.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure somebody out there does, but sorry. Is it first solar? I think that's one of them or sun.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I, yeah. I don't know. It doesn't, doesn't ring a bell, but anyway. Yeah. He founded that. Now he's, you know, one of the richest men in China and Australia missed out. That's just one of the examples of, you know, and now of course the government's trying to scramble to get some manufacturing back here and stuff. And they let the BP solar plant here in Sydney manufacturing solar cells. They let that close down and now they're opening it again. And, you know, too little, too late, really.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, as, as is proven here, Dave is never, never shy about saying what he thinks about the Australian government. So, uh. No, the Australian government sucks. There's a soundbite for you. There you go. That'll be on the website. There you go. That'll be the first thing. Oh, yeah. If you ever forgot our domain name. So, Dave, what about the, uh, what about other big needs? I mean, you're talking about solar and we talked about OEDs. I mean, what else do you see in the future? I mean, that's something that we want to talk about today. The, the futures for, you know, 10, 10 years of electronics. What do you see 10 years out?

Dave Jones: Well, I'll, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you, talk about something a bit, a bit obscure. Uh, well, it's not obscure. It's a key tool everyone uses and that's, um, EDA, you know, CAD. Everyone's got their, you know, schematic and PCB design tool and they're used to, you know, doing things like that. But, um, you may have noticed a lot of companies now are starting to get, um, manufacturer integration into there so that, um, you don't need to leave your CAD package to go and search parts on DigiKey and Mouser and, and all that sort of stuff and get stock online. And I think that's a huge future because, um, as I've said in one of my blogs, you know, 90% of my time often I'll just spend searching, you know, DigiKey and Mouser looking for the right part and all that sort of stuff. And you wouldn't believe the amount of time that a typical design engineer would waste just, you know, trying to find a part or something like that. So it's crazy. So if all that sort of stuff is taken out of the equation, the design cycles for products can actually drastically shorten with, you know, these new tools coming out. So I, you know, what I think, you know, 20 years ago, it used to be 18 months was the typical product design life cycle or something. And now it's down to nine months. And I can see that, you know, well, I think that's the standard, uh, time everyone uses in the industry at the moment is nine months to develop a product from start to finish. And I see that coming down even further.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I mean, I don't know about 10 years. I think that could happen in almost two years from the way you speak about it. Oh yeah. That seems if, so if there's anyone out there listening about, you know, working for a vendor, you know, hop on the ball here. That's something we could really use. Yeah, absolutely. That is an instantly implementable device that Dave and I would pick up. And I think, I think you're completely right about that. When you said EDA before, I thought you were going to talk about the, uh, the chip side of things and how, you know, those guys. Oh no. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But yeah, the, uh, the terminology is a bit muddy there.

Chris Gammell: But, uh, cause I mean, that stuff's getting crazy too. I mean, you think about how complex these chip design, I mean, you and I only have limited, uh, you know, on chip experience, but you think about how complex these things get and, you know, they have huge server farms just cranking on this stuff all the time. Oh yeah. I'm not sure. I mean, that's obviously going to have to get more complex as it goes along and it might just track with the, with the, you know, server technology and computer technology, but that's obviously going to be a big deal in 10 years as well.

Dave Jones: Well, exactly. And the ED, the other interesting thing about the EDA industry, the chip side of the EDA industry, like the silicon layout side is that, um, it's, it's a well-known fact in the industry that, um, you know, the companies like mentor and cadence that, that do those sort of real high-end tools that, you know, the, um, that, uh, the, the apples and the Sony's of the world use to design all their custom, uh, chips. Um, they're actually getting fewer and fewer customers because they're, you know, the tools are that complex and that expensive that, um, yeah, really they just have to keep increasing the price of the tool as their customers become fewer and fewer that are willing to invest in developing ASICs and it's just, well, yeah, nobody knows where that cycle is going to end. But, um, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I've seen things about that where they actually talk about pulling, uh, you know, I read, I read some EDA blogs once, but there's actually a good number of EDA bloggers and, uh, and, uh, one of them was talking about how chip manufacturers might try and pull those things back in like the TSMC of the world might try and buy out a cadence, which would cause a big, big hullabaloo, I'm sure.

Dave Jones: Yeah, there's talk about that because they want to just not sell chips and sell their fat, fat, you know, their fab plant capability anymore. They want to get into the design side of things. So yeah, I, you know, who knows what the future is there, but yeah, some of these companies are getting a bit desperate as the markets for that sort of thing get complex and dry up.

Chris Gammell: You know, I wonder about just the size of companies too. You know, you look at like Apple, Apple is a huge company right now, right? And, or, well, I don't know. I kind of ignore Microsoft these days, but you know, there's a lot of huge, TSMC, that's another good example. They can keep getting bigger. They're not going to get, you know, if you look at it as a business side of things, they're going to keep growing at some rate that's pretty standard. You know, you can't move that, you can't move the Titanic that fast. So they're not going to grow at 20% a year, but they're going to keep growing probably, you know, as long as people keep needing more chips. But I wonder about the future of the electronics business of if it'll trend back towards smaller companies or keep trending with, you know, more, uh, kind of not condensation, but, you know, gathering more companies together. Or, sorry, my, my grammar is pretty bad there. Uh, but these companies keep getting bigger and bigger and making more acquisitions or if it'll trend back towards a smaller because of the, the maker market and all those kinds of things, you know, people being able to make devices and even manufacture from home.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, I think there's a huge divide there between the companies that actually manufacture all these niche, you know, all these massive high-end chips and the, and the people like the hackers and the makers and the small companies and the medium companies who actually just, you know, really just use the chips at a system sort of level. So there's, I think there's always going to be two divides there. Um, but yeah, it's, it's interesting to see what happens. There's been a lot of consolidation in the industry of companies buying out other companies and merging and all sorts of things. And that, that's, that's been the norm in the last 10, uh, years or so, I think, but yeah, where it goes in the future, I don't know. It's, it's just, it's a very fluid dynamic industry that sort of changes direction a lot. Yeah. And even if not, not fundamental direction, but you know, as technology changes, it's sort of driven one way or the other, it steers the ship, so to speak.

Chris Gammell: Right. And I mean, even if you look at like startups today, startups usually are not going to be not looking to become huge companies though. You know, they're looking, so if you have an EDA startup, you're, they're probably hoping to be bought out by cadence or mentor. Yeah, exactly. Or if you have a small hardware startup, they're hoping to, you know, like the PA semis, that was a fabulous chip company that got bought out by Apple. And I don't know if that was actually their intent at the beginning, but that was what happened. And, but I think that is the exit strategy for a lot of smaller companies. So you're right. There is this big divide of, you know, once you even get past a certain point, can you compete or do you just have to get bought out?

Dave Jones: I think you just got to get bought out. That's the old axiom of startups, isn't it? Is that you basically, you know, you're looking to get bought out in the end, ultimately, unless you're some, you know, nutter, like, you know, the Facebook owner who turned down a billion dollars to, you know, to buy Facebook a year or two back, you know, he'll never get a, you know, but yeah.

Chris Gammell: But he can make his own money back maybe. I mean, you never know. I guess it's just like bravado and thinking you could build your own thing just as big.

Dave Jones: Well, one interesting startup, Silicon Blue, I think their name is. Don't quote me on that. But if you Google them, they're actually an FPGA startup. They're actually developing FPGA, just like, you know, Xilinx, Altaira and Lattice. And you think, how can you, you know, possibly compete with those big three or the big two major FPGA makers? But there they are. They're producing, you know, their little FPGA chips. I'm not sure what's... I think they're extremely low power or something like that. But yeah, as a lot of them claim, but, you know, that's not really much of a help, you know? Yeah. You're always going to get a lower power solution in a, you know, a dedicated embedded processor or something, a dedicated micro or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: FPGA is really like that. Yeah, for some applications. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, you've got to think, well, what is their exit strategy? You know, do we want to be a, you know, a fourth or a fifth FPGA vendor? It's like, I don't think so. I think they're just, you know, looking to, you know, they formed a, you know, they developed a cool technology in some, you know, someone's PhD thesis at uni or something. And then they went out and formed their startup, got some venture capital in there, you know, and, but that's the thing. You're under the pump. The venture capitalists are the ones who gave you the money and they want to make their return.

Chris Gammell: They want to sell it back as soon as possible.

Dave Jones: Exactly. They want to return on investment as quickly as they can. So, yeah, well, there's not much you can do there, but geez, I wish I had a startup and I could sell out to the biggies. I've got no problem selling out at all. I don't think I'll take the money and run. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: Would you sell out an EV blog these days? I don't know if you would. I think if, if someone came in and said, Dave, I want to pay you 200K a year and I want you to create all these videos talking about our wonderful $25 multimeter that is one, one and a half digits and the stand always breaks. I don't, I don't know if you'd do that. Would you?

Dave Jones: Well, that's it. Well, I did an April, I'm not sure if you saw my April fools blog last year. Oh, no, I missed it. And I actually, I did that. Like, I did a blog as if I had sold out, you know, to a company where I was only going to review their products and I was only going to, you know, not allowed to say bad things anymore. And, yeah, I don't know. You know, everyone has a, has a price. You know, I wouldn't sell out for a couple of hundred thousand, but if someone is talking a couple of million bucks, yeah, hell, you know, I might take the money and go on to something else, you know?

Chris Gammell: I just, I just imagine them buying you out and then like the next day, you know, your site gets all fancy and then you see, they get like, they get like some other Australian being like, like sitting there and like pretending to be you and being like, he's like swearing in very proper manner and talking about multimeters and, and except they call them something like digimeters or something like that. Some kind of hilarious hijinks like that.

Dave Jones: That would be hilarious. But, you know, I'm being, I'm being approached at the moment by companies who want me to do certain things with my blog and, you know, do things for them or even merge with their website and things like that. And, you know, I've basically told them no, you know, pretty much go away. You know, um, my professional services as a blogger are for hire, by the way, if anyone works for a major manufacturer, if you want me to do some, uh, you know, do some stuff for you, I'm, I'm happy to do that. But, uh, yeah, the blog's not for sale. It's off. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And you know, that's a good thing too. You know, you hope that the, the little guys stick around, you're always cheering for like the Adafruits and the Spark funds because in the end someone else is going to pop up even if, if Spark the Fund got bought tomorrow and Mauser bought them, right? Yeah. I don't think it'd be a very good idea, but you know, if not, cause it's such a, such a, it's a growing market, but it's not a, you know, it's not a lucrative market. You know, if they get bought tomorrow, someone else is going to pop up probably and take and fill that space. And so, of course they will. You always cheer for them cause they're fighting the good fight. You know, they are dealing with the late night orders or the, the asking engineers at 10 o'clock on a Friday or Saturday, whenever they do that. So we, we always appreciate all those people that do that.

Dave Jones: Well, exactly. And I've got no, um, you know, it's a, well, people say I've already sold out and stuff like that on the blog. Oh, you know, it's like, oh, piss off. You don't know what you're talking about. Really? You have no idea. But yeah, I mean, yeah. Like if I stopped my video blog tomorrow, you know, there'd be someone around to, you know, to continue on. I'm sure, you know, somebody would, uh, fill, fill that niche again. Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure my ugly mug would pick up a video camera at some point then. You think?

Dave Jones: Oh, there you go. I don't know about that. Chris Gammell video blog. Excellent. Well, we should probably call it quits for the day.

Chris Gammell: It's been over an hour, Chris. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So that's good. It's been good. And we'll keep these limited to an hour, I think.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, we better.

Dave Jones: I'll fall out of my chair any longer. Excellent. Well, all right. I think it's been a good one. And, uh, hopefully, uh, it, if I press save and it's, uh, the recording saved at my end, otherwise we've lost the whole show. So that'd be bad. All right. So yeah.

Chris Gammell: Thanks everyone for listening. Thank you for listening. If you have, uh, any further names, we're always, we're still looking for that. And if you have any questions, there's a place for that on, on eevblog.com slash forum. And, uh, or you can always leave it in the comments of either Dave or I site. Uh, so we appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks for listening.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. See you next time, guys. Bye-bye.