#111 – DIP projects, OSHW & Trade Booths - Demonstrative DIP Dacrygelosis

Chris Gammell: This is the Amp Hour Podcast, reported September 3rd, 2012. Episode 111, Demonstrative Dip Decredilosis.

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Chip Report TV and Chris Gammell's Analog Life.

Dave Jones: Oh, plugging both there.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah, you gotta do both.

Dave Jones: And we do not have Bob Simpson today, sorry.

Chris Gammell: We are noticeably, yeah, absent.

Dave Jones: We are absent. We were supposed to have him on, but unfortunately he couldn't make it at the last minute. So we're winging it, and Chris is really worried.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I'm out of, yeah.

Dave Jones: He's packing lumpies because he's such an organized dude.

Chris Gammell: I'm off my game now, yeah. Packing lumpies, that's a new one.

Dave Jones: So he's just going to mumble the whole show, no pun intended.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, I'm expecting, you know, guest shows are easy for us. We just ask questions and they do all the talking. Yeah, yeah, they just let them talk. Yeah, it's great, I know.

Dave Jones: So your mind is just mush now.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'm still trying to get Kaiser on the phone here. We'll see if he cuts in late.

Dave Jones: We're trying to get Jeff on. Yeah. Get the last, like with, you know, look, we've already started.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Want to join us. Oh, boy, yes. Yeah, we'll see. Oh, boy. Anyway. That's the advantage of living your life in chaos, I was telling you. That's right, man. If you live an organized life, if it doesn't go to plan, you're screwed. You sit there going, oh, no, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

Chris Gammell: Live your life in chaos, dude. You've got me pegged, yeah. All right. I'm just always running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

Dave Jones: Insert chicken noise in post-edit. Boy, anyway, we will get Bob back on another episode.

Chris Gammell: Great. Great.

Dave Jones: Yep. So we're just, yeah, we're really winging it here, folks. Like, we were actually just a minute away from, yep. We were a minute away from recording and then we found out he couldn't make it. So we're, we just hit, ah, bugger it, we'll hit record and here we are. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's fun. It's like the old days. The professional show.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Exactly. The professional show.

Chris Gammell: Well, you've got a trade show coming up though, right?

Dave Jones: I do have a trade show. Oh, man. And if, I, I barely even started organizing the thing that I can tell people now. How close is it? Do not get yourself a trade show stand. It's just a whole bunch of worry, you know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, I'm sure it's something where it's like you do it once, right? Or if you were going to do a lot, you'd be much better off because then you'd actually invest the money, you know, get those fancy ass rollout displays, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I used to do trade shows for like hiring co-ops and stuff like that. It's not really a trade show. It's just like a job fair. And we'd have like this big tag board sign, you know? And like carrying that in the middle of winter in Cleveland is a lot more difficult than you see. You see these people in suits just, you know, whistling their way down the street. Do-do-do-do-do. And then, you know, they're just rolling this nice little pull case behind them. Yeah. They're just, you know, they're happy as a clam. And I'm like literally getting blown away. I look like I'm carrying, I look like I'm windsurfing here down the Cleveland avenues, you know?

Dave Jones: That's nothing, dude. I drove all the way, I drove halfway up the U.S. West Coast in a van with a truckload of bloody gear in the back for a trade show, you know?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. That's right. You mentioned that before.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then every time you go to a trade show, because here they're always overseas, right? You know, the big ones. So, you know, most companies that go to these trade shows regularly, they already have, as you said, all the stuff, right? They have, you know, we've got all these flight cases, you know, that we pack everything in and we've got the display, you know, the custom display stands and all that sort of stuff. And a lot of that will carry over from one show to the next. And you've got to cart all this crap around. And once somebody within the company who's all involved in organizing it knows that you're one of the people going, oh, can you carry this? Can you carry this? Can you carry this? And there's people giving you, you know, packed bags at the last second. You get to the airport. Did you pack your own bags? Sir? No. Do you know what's in the bag? Sure, step over here, please. I'm not sure. Somebody at the company just packed it for me. Yeah, don't do that in the US, man. Bend over, sir.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you'll get a surprise.

Dave Jones: You'll get a TSA rubber glove, yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's right, yeah. Oh, man. No yearly checkup of the doctor needed, right? That's it. You're in full health.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's... Yeah, so, you know, if you're doing these things regularly, you have stuff. Well, not even that.

Chris Gammell: I mean, some companies have entire departments just meant for... Oh, yeah. That's all they do. And I can't imagine that life. I mean, it's not an easy life. It's a lot of standing around. I mean, there's a lot of beer to be drank after the shows. I mean, like, it's a tough life.

Dave Jones: Well, we've talked about that before, how tough it is standing all day on a trade show stand. It's, you know...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's no fun. And you're going to be doing it, huh? And not only that... I'm going to be doing it. You said the amp hour is going to be there as well. In spirit. In spirit.

Dave Jones: They're technically listed, yes. Yeah. Would you like me to get a big cardboard cutout of you?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Are you going to stand... I'll just stand slightly behind you. I'll just... Right. Off to the back. Just that guy who looks like he doesn't know what he's supposed to be saying this week because he... His world was upended.

Dave Jones: I did... I must confess, I tweeted this. I did order a six-foot cardboard cutout of myself.

Chris Gammell: I can't wait to see it.

Dave Jones: I know. It's going to be hilarious because, A, I've got to have something in the stand when I'm not there, when I'm actually out walking around blogging the show because I've got to blog the show as well, right? Yeah. I've got to blog the event. So, you know, I mean, can't be in two places at once.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, you know, I need something to hang a sign on, you know, next live tear down at 2 p.m., you know?

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right.

Dave Jones: So I can... It would be funny watching me walk around carrying a cardboard cutout of myself. That would be...

Chris Gammell: Well, it's like a stand there.

Dave Jones: So if anyone at the show can secretly snap a photo of that, is there a prize on offer for somebody who snaps a photo of me carrying my own cardboard cutout?

Chris Gammell: How about the prizes? They get a picture with a Dave sandwich. Yeah. A cardboard Dave on one side, a real Dave on the other.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Yikes. Oh, man.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's going to be great, though.

Dave Jones: And then it's just all the little things. Like now I'm starting to worry that, you know, I'm not going to have it together in time, what I'm going to have on there, how you actually, you know, just the small stuff, like, you know, how you're going to put the table, where you're going to get a table from, where you're going to put things, power cores. Like they don't even have power coming into these stands. You've got to actually pay for that separately to get power onto your stand. It's like, holy crap.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know?

Chris Gammell: You know, I was just thinking about this cardboard cutout. And since I'm guessing your wife isn't going to volunteer to be a booth babe. So maybe you should, you should dress the cardboard cutout in like a hula skirt and that could be your booth babe. Your stand in slash booth babe.

Dave Jones: I don't even know if I'm getting it. Like I've ordered it, but I haven't heard back from the company who makes it. So it's like, well, I don't know. Have you shipped it yet? I want my damn cardboard cutout.

Chris Gammell: Oh, the ultimate ego. I love it. I can't wait to see this thing. I can't wait to see it. I just had to.

Dave Jones: I know. It's going to be hilarious. But yeah, I don't know what to do. You know, I'll try and live stream it, but all that is sort of like winging it on the day because I don't know what type of internet connection I'm going to get there, whether it's going to be reliable. I just, you know, I don't know anything. I'm organizing freebies at the moment. So yeah. I was going to ask about that. What are you going to give away? Come by my stand. Yeah, there will be freebies.

Chris Gammell: Are you giving something away in particular or no?

Dave Jones: Yes. I'll be giving away something from my friends in Circuit Labs in New Zealand, hopefully. Oh, nice. Nice. So yeah. A custom designed thing, which will be handy. Yeah, definitely. But I don't think I'll have enough for everyone. So it'll be, I think, based on a secret password. You know, the secret. What's the secret password?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I don't know either.

Dave Jones: Great Scott. Same as last time. So if you come up to me at the trade show and you say, great Scott, you'll get a freebie. Nice. If I haven't run out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's good. Yeah. A whole new experience, man. Dave, the trade show. Yeah. I don't know.

Dave Jones: And the only reason I'm doing it is because I got the stand for free. You know, it's just not like I'm going to pay the, you know, a couple of thousand dollars it costs for it. Yeah, exactly. Just like me. I don't need the publicity that bad. Yeah, exactly. There's tight asses. Engineers are tight asses by nature.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, there's no way I'd ever do my own trade show stand. But hey, I was, I was doing, I'm the official blogger for the event. So, you know, they, they gave me a stand. Hey, you, would you like a stand? Yeah. And then I didn't realize I was getting myself in full. So.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And the, and the theory is that it's going to be lame and embarrassing. You know, you don't want to be, we've talked about this before. You don't want to be just the one guy there with the table and a chair sitting, you know, looking sad. Right on your laptop. You know, just messaging on his phone, just sitting in his lame ass booth, right. With nothing to show. Yeah. And, you know, that's, that's just sad. You just walk by and you go loser. You know, he's mumble under your breath.

Chris Gammell: No. I was, I just figured they, they don't have budget for it. You know, it's just like, well, might as well go. But.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Might as well go and have a presence and meet people.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And that's a good tip for people. If you are at a trade show and you see someone and you do happen to read their, you know, printed out sign that was on the laser jet printer and it's something interesting, that person will probably grasp onto you for having someone to talk about if you really want to talk about something. So those, those are the best people to talk to because they often have the most time versus a lot of the.

Dave Jones: Go up to that sad looking person sitting alone in their booth and they'll talk to you for hours. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yep. They'll be your new best friend.

Chris Gammell: That's right. That's right. Boy. So let's hit up the Reddit list because as people know, now we have a Reddit list where we add in questions throughout the week or, or, uh, um, news stories or anything like that.

Dave Jones: And you can vote them up.

Chris Gammell: And you can. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And we won't talk about them.

Chris Gammell: What do you mean? Like, oh, bye. Maybe we will.

Dave Jones: Well, because we haven't really done the thing where we talk, where we rattle off the list of the most popular ones yet. Have we?

Chris Gammell: Uh, no, no, we haven't. I mean, you mean, you mean like, like only go like in order?

Dave Jones: In, in order of which one got the most votes.

Chris Gammell: No, this isn't a democracy. Come on. No, it's not. It's a dictatorship. This is a duocracy. Right.

Dave Jones: That's right. That's the only way to get things done as a dictatorship. People don't understand this, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, who's in charge though? Is it you or me? I don't know. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: I just don't give a shit most of the time. Right. That means I am. You're the one who's all organized.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Anyway, I, I like this one. Nut job. Here's the title. Chris has put in. Nut job attempts to extort $35 computer from nonprofit foundation.

Chris Gammell: Actually, that was a, uh, this is great. We were talking about it on Twitter. I saw the story on Twitter and, oh crap. I forget who it was now. I'll have to remember who it was. Um, he actually suggested that, oh, whatever the original title was, it shouldn't be that. It should be nut job tries to extort this computer, this computer. And Liz, who's in charge of the Raspberry Pi foundation says, yeah, I like that better. Let's change the title. And that's what the title of it is now.

Dave Jones: So who's this dude? I don't know. Eben? Is that his name?

Chris Gammell: Oh, Eben's the guy that runs, uh, Raspberry Pi foundation. So it's Liz and Eben. So Steve is the person. Yeah. Steve is the nut job. Right. Steve is the nut job. And basically he got ahold of Eben's email address and just started chatting with him on G, you can tell it's G chat, right? And, uh, and it's just, uh, you know, he's just, oh, you know, give me a free board, give me a free board. Um, and he, you know, he can't, it's against the policy basically, but you, you read it too. I mean, it's just basically.

Dave Jones: I haven't read door yet because you just spoke it on me before the show, but I'm looking through it now and it looks pretty hilarious.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Um, and, and basically, basically he just keeps going through all these different things and you can tell he's just totally full of crap. Uh, and, and, you know, eventually the guy finally gives, they finally just ignore him. I don't know how the hell Eben had so much patience in this, um, but he, he does. And, uh, you know, he just kind of finally, the guy goes away, but man, he just tries everything. He says, oh, well I have so much buying power. Oh, I'm a journalist. Oh, I'm a student. Oh, you're, you know, you're a racist. You're just like, oh my God, really? Like where is this guy coming from? So yeah, it was, it's insane. It was, it was.

Dave Jones: And it does degenerate into the Jewish argument, folks. Right. That was the racist comment. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It was like, yeah. And it's just. That's funny. Yeah. Yep. It, you know, it's, I think this is just a sign of like, you know, like, like Raspberry Pi, we know there's a very big thing now, right? I mean, it, it's, it's expanded beyond a development board. It's expanded way past, you know, it's just, you know, tiny Linux computer, right? That's how people see it now. And, uh, and, and that's part of the problem is, you know, like it's, is that it's a general, it's a, it's a mass market now, right? We've seen this in a lot of different cases, Kickstarter and other things. You deal with a whole new set of problems. And in this case, you get a larger. Yeah. Well, you get a larger percentage of the population and it'll, you know, the bigger you go, the, you know, the, the more you play the numbers and the more you play the numbers, you get, you get some crazies in there. So, uh.

Dave Jones: Well, that's exactly what I've found with my videos. If I do a general interest video, woohoo, out come the nut jobs, right? As opposed to, you know, just the odd nut job I'll get if I just release a regular video to a niche audience.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: And, uh, yeah, they all come out of the woodworks. When you stretch your, you know, your, uh, breadth across a larger audience base, then yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Well, it's coming up.

Dave Jones: It's just a sheer statistics.

Chris Gammell: I mean, exactly, exactly. Well, as, as I've said on here before and misquoted probably someone, I don't even know who said this, but you know, imagine the, the average intelligence of, of the population. Now, now half the people are dumber than that, right? It's like, or crazier than that, or, you know, like, yeah, yeah. More desperate than that, whatever it is, you know, it's just, yeah, you start playing the numbers and they start to look pretty grim. So.

Dave Jones: And they can get really feral as a bit of a case of what happens here. If you don't give them exactly what they want. Right. They instantly just snap and turn feral on you. So it's, uh, you know, it can, it can get nasty really quick with these exchanges.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. And yeah, it's people that are used to, you know, being obnoxious and because they're obnoxious, they get their way, right? People just shut them up. Yeah. Yeah. Just to get them out of there. And it's like, yeah, well, when you can't do it, you can't do it. You know, it's just, uh. Oh boy. It's a whole lot of, it's 10 pounds of crazy in a five pound bag right there. You can, you can read it yourself. Our listening audience can read it and, and, uh, yeah, you'll see how crazy this guy was. So.

Dave Jones: Oh, terrific.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: News alert. Wages are going up 13% in Shenzhen.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That was a Wired article this week. It's kind of, kind of crazy. It's, uh, I don't, I don't know what to think about it. I mean, like it's, it was been coming, right? I mean, like.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's good. I mean, I've, you know, I've been to China and I've talked to the people who work in these, you know, factories and the, the, the conditions and the pay they get is, you know, it's just dismal. Really?

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, I, no, it is. It is. Yeah. I worked, you know, I've been to one of these assembly factories and they told me that, oh, at the factory they worked at, if you made a mistake, you pay for it. It comes out of your pay. You know, if you break something or, you know, break a board or you, you know, or you goof up something. Yeah. Even if it, you know, if it's a thousand dollar board, you know, as some, you know, as some boards that we were putting through, you know, were then, you know, that's, that's their wages gone for months. Really? They really did that? Yeah. They, they do that. They, they told me that they do that. It's crazy.

Chris Gammell: You just quit at that point? I mean, that's basically just quitting, right?

Dave Jones: Well, you know, that, that's why I asked them, you know, why don't you just quit and go, but there's, you know, they're all the same. They were saying, they were telling me. It doesn't matter where you go.

Chris Gammell: Like if, so say, say you get paid a hundred bucks a week, right? You break a thousand dollar board. You're not going to be like, oh, well I'll work your 10 more weeks and then I'll quit. Right?

Dave Jones: Right. No. Exactly. So they hang in there. Well, you know, there, there are some of them who do and go on, you know, they don't put up with the shit.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's, and that actually gets at the problem of it. Right? I mean, maybe at some point there was, it was a hard, hard time finding another job. Right? But these days there's just so much industry over there. You walk down the street, you get another job immediately. Right? You would think so. Yeah. No, no, that's what it is. And that is exactly what leads to inflation. Right? Not only does that lead to, you know, like turnover rates at companies, which is horrendous. You know, you, in order to keep people and in order to, you know, continue to draw people in, you have to raise rates basically. And that's what leads to the inflation. I mean, that's why, that's why the rates are going up. It's not because it's like they're doing it out of the goodness of their hearts as much as, you know, people might want that. It's, it's, no, it's, it's, this is straight up inflation. Food's getting more expensive. Housing's getting more expensive. You know, it's just cities are more crowded. Everything there, it, it has to do that. And that's why the minimum wage is going up. I mean, the government's moving it up. And so it's good that it's keeping up, but it's, it's, well, here's my question with it. And this is the question I posed on Reddit is, you know, okay, say tomorrow went up a thousand percent, right? Does, does electronics still stay in Shenzhen? That's my question. Go.

Dave Jones: Go. Well, it's, it's already moving away from China. There's already, we've talked about a lot of companies moving back, moving their manufacturing back. Not really. Because it's creeping up. No. We say that, but not really. Like, we're talking like less than one percent. No, it's still 95%, right? Okay. So we're talking, but, but it is a sign. So if it went up an order of magnitude, yes, that can swing it in the opposite direction or it moves on, you know, it moves off to India. It moves off to the next cheapest location. Right.

Chris Gammell: In Indonesia or wherever.

Dave Jones: It would be anywhere, right? You know, it's, I mean, you know, there's nothing special about, you know, China. And it's just that they had a lot of people and they worked cheap or they used to, right? Well, I don't know. That was it. I mean, like, so think about. Well, it helps with the communist, you know, thing. Helps a lot. As we said, the old dictatorship works well in terms of getting stuff done.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, unilateral actions against, you know, for tax breaks and everything else, right? I mean, they're going to continue to try and get investment, so they'll make incentives. But my point is that, like, it's, what about critical mass though, right? That's exactly the argument that was made when all that stuff came out about Apple, right? And they were talking about, oh, would they ever move back? And they said, I think it was when the Jobs biography came out. They said, no, we wouldn't have done it because we couldn't have gotten the supply chain that we need in order to do this at the scale that we need. And that's my question is, if wages went up 1,000% tomorrow, is it possible to replicate Shenzhen elsewhere?

Dave Jones: Well, no, there's not because not instantly because the infrastructure is not there. They've built up this infrastructure over a lot, you know, over 20 years or something like that, you know? Right. Yeah, exactly. Where everything's there. The special zone, right. Yeah, everything. And they've got 20 million billion assembly machines and they've got all the parts that are there and everything else. And it's just, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, that's what I'm saying though.

Dave Jones: It is a one-stop shop. Yeah, no, then you are correct. No, it's not going to instantly go back. Like, it can't. It can't physically happen.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, the seg markets there, right? I mean, like, we've seen the videos. The seg market is unbelievable, right? I know.

Dave Jones: It can't happen. It can't happen overnight. But that doesn't mean it can't happen over the span of a decade or 20 years.

Chris Gammell: That, okay. Yeah, I agree with that.

Dave Jones: And there's a lot of people saying that that's going to be the case. Because, you know, all these Chinese people are, you know, getting up in arms. We want better pay. We want, you know, we want a first world, you know, standard of living and all that sort of stuff. And, well, that costs money.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, yeah, that's, I mean, we'll see. Because I guess the real question then after that, right? So we say, okay, yeah, 10 years from now, it's not going to be there anymore. Which, eh, whatever. Where does it go?

Dave Jones: It's still going to be there, but it won't be, yeah. The shift might go to somewhere else.

Chris Gammell: But does it actually start moving back to more, you know, high-wage countries anyways? I mean, you know, do you say, well, it's, you know, going to get robotic? You know, because everything is going to SMT, because there's less, you know, human assembly stuff, you know, more robotic assembly, what we've talked about before. Then maybe the U.S. looks okay. Maybe Australia looks okay. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know where it goes next.

Dave Jones: But the ace up their sleeve, of course, is that all the components are manufactured there.

Chris Gammell: Right? That's a good point.

Dave Jones: That's the ace up their sleeve, okay? Will they become just a supply country and not a, you know, a turnkey assembly country anymore, right? They might go back to the supply model of where they just, you know, supply the individual parts and they don't do as much labor anymore, maybe. That, you know, but because it takes many decades for fab plants to move out of countries and spread elsewhere in the world, right? That's certainly not going to happen tomorrow.

Chris Gammell: They just, they become decrepit and then they just don't do anything with them. They just let them die, really. They become brownfields. Right. They don't upgrade. Yeah. And, yeah, and I guess that, you know, if there's a new, if there's a new fab, who's the one? Is it UMC is in China, I believe? Maybe they're in Hong Kong. But, yeah, you know, like if they build a new fab there, yeah, of course they're not going to abandon it tomorrow because that's stupid, right? That, or if you're just building a new factory now, you're stupid. Even if wages go up, you just, you know, you just do what you got to do. You just push on. Yeah, exactly. You get efficiency.

Dave Jones: Make that return on your investment.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Another argument there, too, is that what does China do when wages start to go up? They do the same thing the U.S. does when wages start to go up. They start working on making more efficient processes, right? You know, you don't put 10 people on a job that takes two people in reality. You actually, you know, you do some Six Sigma crap and, you know, you optimize your manufacturing processes. And don't get me wrong. I mean, I know that they're doing a lot of that now as well, but, you know, like a lot of those gains were coming in the productivity gains in the U.S. were coming from manufacturing side of things and manufacturing engineering stuff. So instead of throwing people at it, you throw process at it, basically. Right. So maybe we'll see that. I don't know. It's just, it's an interesting question because, like you said, man, everything's there, right? I mean, like, especially the component stuff, you know?

Dave Jones: So that's not going to go away in the next 20 years at least. You know, that's just going to continue to be the case.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, built up in 20 years. It could go up. It could go away in 10 years.

Dave Jones: 20 years is a long time. But, you know, the absolute minimum, 10, right? Not much is going to change in the next 10 years, guaranteed. You're a fool if you bet. Yeah, I'd give it 10 years, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Minimum. The crazy thing.

Chris Gammell: Oh, go ahead.

Dave Jones: An interesting tidbit I discovered when I was on the life-sucking force, which is Wikipedia. Okay. I don't know how I ended up on it. Did you know that the NSA, it makes sense, the NSA, as in the national security, US national security agency, have their own fab plant.

Chris Gammell: I did not know that. That's interesting.

Dave Jones: And they've got one at Fort Meade or wherever they're, yeah, Fort Meade, I think, is their, you know, their location where they've got 10,000 people working and the big building is and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, apparently they have their own fab plant, which makes sense because they need to do their own special encryption decoding fabs and all that sort of stuff. And, yeah, there's someone at the door.

Chris Gammell: Your door? Hang on. Is it Jeff Kaiser?

Dave Jones: Sorry, it could be a courier. This could be important. I'm not sure if the wife's still home. Oh, God, I hope it's a cardboard thing. Carry on, carry on.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I have to, oh, great, yeah. So I go from the usual no guest to just up by myself now. So what else is on the list? Actually, I just talked to Jeff. Jeff is not going to be able to make it because of the port blocking at Valve. But we'll see. Maybe next time Jeff will get on here. So what else is on the list? Hmm. Well, we ran through that last week. Someone talked to me last week about this. It's like, oh, well, when Chris gets on there by himself and Dave goes to answer the door, it gets to be really awkward. And we're there.

Dave Jones: I'm back. I'm back.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And yes, it was. It's my DigiKey package. Woohoo.

Chris Gammell: Oh, DigiKey. I thought it was going to be your cardboard cutout.

Dave Jones: I've got to do this. This is for the trade show. I'm trying to get my...

Chris Gammell: I thought you were going to do cardboard cutout.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, I know. I was like, but no, this is more important. I was trying to get my USB power supply running before the show. Oh. My prototype. So, yeah. These are the parts.

Chris Gammell: Dude, I'm totally awkward when you go to the door. That's not cool.

Dave Jones: Sorry, I had to. I was desperate. I know you do. You didn't know anyone there, right? I wasn't home. I know. She snuck out somewhere, and I thought that might have been the case, and well, you know. Don't you guys leave packages?

Chris Gammell: Don't you have that in Australia where you can like...

Dave Jones: Oh, we... Sometimes you can sign the waiver that says, you know... Oh, like they won't... Like for FedEx, I sign the thing that says, please leave all future packages there, and they don't.

Chris Gammell: They don't, really? Like, it doesn't work.

Dave Jones: No, it doesn't. I don't. Yeah, it's lame.

Chris Gammell: So, what do you do on the USB power supply? I was going to ask you about that anyways. What's going on with that?

Dave Jones: Oh, I... I rushed a prototype board through. It's done. I haven't done a video on it yet, but I tweeted a couple of photos of the board. So, if you follow me on Twitter, which you should be doing, then... You? Yeah. Then you would have got my... Talk about the TSA. The FFAB plan at the NSA. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I can just... That's where Dave keeps all his links for the week. I do them on Reddit. Dave keeps them on Twitter.

Dave Jones: Anyway, yeah, my USB power supply, I've... I don't want to spoil it. I don't want to do a spoiler. But you can probably see if you have a look at the photo anyway.

Chris Gammell: I'm going to look at it right now. Oh, that's what that was. Okay, yeah. So, I saw you tweeted a board. I didn't know what it was. All right. You got your little platypus on there in the silk screen. That's...

Dave Jones: I managed to squeeze it there. There's always room for a platypus. Squeezed it in there. That's good. And it's a combination of... I'm pretty happy with the design. I hope it works. I rushed it. Yeah. I really rushed it together at the last minute, you know, hoping to get a board back in time. And I did. That's good.

Chris Gammell: We were talking about that last week. That's good. You said you were going to do that. So... Yeah. That's great, man.

Dave Jones: And it's good to set a deadline. See, I've been dicking around on that USB power supply, scratching my bum, doing nothing for the last couple of months. And, you know, all of a sudden, oh, deadline. I'll do it for the show. Oh, shit. And then, you know, engineers really go into overdrive when they have that no one deadline. They're very good at it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's funny. It's funny, too, hearing you say this. It's weird. Because you've complained in the past about the night before a trade show or being at the trade show still soldering in the morning. And now you're doing it to yourself.

Dave Jones: I know. Exactly. And the thing is, it always gets done.

Chris Gammell: It does, yeah. Somehow. It's tough, too, because you can't just say, oh, well, Tuesday's the deadline. It's like, yeah, you know that's not really a deadline, right? Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It's like, no. Trade show is the deadline. You have to have some kind of juice behind it, right? You need something for real. I wonder if there's like a market in like setting up a, you know, like hiring some guy that would offer to break your legs. You know, you hire... Right. If you didn't get something done. If I'm not done by Thursday, you come break my leg. No, no, I was kidding. You're fired. Oh, crap.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah. It's that innate ability of engineers. I think they don't... Like, it's not like you when you formally do a procedure and you're all... Me? You know, nice and organized and all that sort of stuff. I'm not that organized.

Chris Gammell: Just because I keep links somewhere and I keep a calendar. Give me a break.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's a calendar for starters, right? A calendar. Oh, crazy.

Chris Gammell: And you've probably got those Gantt charts too, right? No, I do not do Gantt charts.

Dave Jones: All right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: You know, I was actually dealing with that. You know, I used to be really into that stuff, to be honest. I used to be really into... I was looking at, like, Agile and, you know, I'm planning to talk about Agile on my other podcast and stuff like that. And it interests me, right? But lately, I've been having to update that stuff in my own projects, right? And I have a project manager, right? And I'm just like, you know, when I'm on this side of it, it blows, you know?

Dave Jones: See, you've got a project manager for your own personal projects.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: See? That's tough, man.

Chris Gammell: Well, like, no, it's just like, I want to just do the work. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to update, oh, I have eight hours left. It's like, I get... That's the worst part, is I understand the benefits of it. I totally get it. And I don't want to do it. I just... And you don't? I don't want to do this.

Dave Jones: Because there's no one else to show it to. You know, there's no one else to do it for or to impress. You know, when you've got a boss or something, oh, yeah, you can show them progress. This is a work.

Chris Gammell: This is a work.

Dave Jones: I'm talking about my real day job.

Chris Gammell: I'm saying, like, I'm all about, like, you know, like, keeping track of, like, agile and, like, doing, like, quick turnarounds and stuff like that. And, you know, showing stuff off and everything. And just the administrative side of it is just so tedious. And it's not even much. It's just, you know, filling in, oh, I did, like, four hours of work on this this week. It's not hard. But I was just, like, slogging through it. You're being like, I hate this. Why?

Dave Jones: Because you're an engineer. Engineers hate time. They hate filling out timesheets. They hate filling out weekly progress reports and crap like that. Just leave me alone. Right.

Chris Gammell: But here's the thing. I know how useful that stuff actually is, right? I mean, I know. But I still can't stand it, right? What is that? Why does that happen? I don't understand.

Dave Jones: It's the innate engineer in you. I guess so. It resists all other, you know, it's such a powerful force that it resists all other means of control, you know?

Chris Gammell: I guess so. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Now, if I had to do that for myself, yeah, like you were saying with personal projects, that would be ridiculous. I don't even know how to begin to start.

Dave Jones: It's hard enough to get a bombing order for your own project. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Let alone bloody, you know, a Gantt chart.

Chris Gammell: Gross. Gross. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: You find someone who does that, you find someone who, you have found someone who has like OCD or is just extremely organized or something. I don't even know.

Dave Jones: And they'd love working at a big military company.

Chris Gammell: They would, yeah. Yeah, they just are. If any of our listeners do that for personal projects, I would love to see that or hear about that because I don't even know what that would look like.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, some people do awesome documentation on their own stuff. Yeah. On their own projects. There's a few people that do stuff like that.

Speaker ?: So.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but documentation.

Chris Gammell: I feel like that's more of a drive to share than it is to track and improve, right? Yeah. You know, like.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because no one's ever going to see your work you put into, you know, your back end system to take care of your bombs and do your project management and all that sort of stuff. No one's ever going to see it.

Chris Gammell: Right. Unless you share it. I mean, if you share it, then that's good. But.

Dave Jones: But what's the point in sharing it?

Chris Gammell: Well, I mean, like if you develop a new bomb calculation system, right? And you share that algorithm. Right. You share the software. That would be different. That's not what you're talking about, though. Huh.

Dave Jones: No. That's a different ballgame.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So how's your day job going anyway?

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's okay.

Dave Jones: It's okay. I can't talk about it. I'll shrug. Yeah, you'd rather not be. No. You'd rather be doing this show full time, right? Oh, maybe. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: If there's any sponsors out there, we'd love to do this full time. I'd love to do this full time. Dave's already doing his own thing full time. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's pretty cool. I can tell you.

Chris Gammell: Yeah? Yeah. Sitting around scratching your bum all day? Yep. Now, I see something on this board I want to ask you about. You put the open source hardware logo on. And we've talked about open source hardware before in the past. Yep. Do we talk about the logo craziness?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I haven't kept. No, we haven't. But I haven't kept track of that.

Chris Gammell: I don't know what the latest is. I was going to ask. So basically what the story is behind that is they got sued by the open source software people. Well, no. They didn't get sued. They're just... No.

Dave Jones: They had concerns. They started to get the heebie-jeebies.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That if you... Is that a US word? Yeah. That's a thing. Yeah. Okay. All right. They started to get nervous. Get the heebie-jeebies that because the open source hardware logo was a derivative, a clear derivative of...

Chris Gammell: The open source software. Yeah.

Dave Jones: The open source software logo that it infringes... That little key symbol in the middle. That... Right. And they're using it with the permission of them. Yeah. But then technically they own it and they're tied to whatever...

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know.

Chris Gammell: And there's like some profit thing in there. Isn't it like something about like they have to actually pay money? I don't know.

Dave Jones: It was a big... I don't know. So their choice was the open source hardware groups. It's now a formal organization, by the way, if you don't know.

Speaker ?: It's a nonprofit.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's got members and directors and all that sort of jazz. It's a proper legal organization. But their choices were basically to either license the logo from... Right. ...legally pay money and license the logo so then it's all squared off legally. But I don't know how much that would cost per year to... I thought it was a bit.

Chris Gammell: Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. I wasn't paying attention.

Dave Jones: But anyway, that was one of the choices. Or the other one was to do nothing and just go with it and hope that down the track the open source software community don't... Who own... Technically own the trademark on that logo or part of that logo don't sue them or, you know, do whatever. And the third choice was to change it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I think they're doing the third choice.

Dave Jones: I think they're doing the third one. I think they're trying to change it. Yeah. That's smart. Who cares? I mean... Change it.

Chris Gammell: They had like hundreds of suggestions. So they'll just pick another one. And that's coming up actually in late September, later this month. They're having an open source hardware convention.

Dave Jones: Yes, they are. That's right.

Chris Gammell: The Summit. Open Hardware Summit. Something like that. So anyway, yeah.

Dave Jones: So I don't know. Maybe I'm using the old logo, huh? I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I don't think there's anything else to know about it yet. Yeah. No. I just thought it was interesting.

Dave Jones: They are changing it. So just a heads up. Yeah. So... Which, you know, is confusing. But, you know, it's... You could argue that it's better to bite the bullet now. Right? Do it once and then it's... Yep. It's all done and dusted. Yeah. So... Anyway, back to the NSA. Chipfab. Yeah. They have their own chipfab. And another interesting statistic that I tweeted, of course, if you follow me on Twitter, you'll already know this. Talking about low wages, apparently 5% of the people who work at the NSA live below the poverty line. Really? Yeah. It's on the wiki page for the NSA headquarters. And because it's its own jurisdiction in terms of the census, right? You can publicly get the census data. You know, how many males, how many females, blah, blah, blah, what their incomes are. And their average income is like $28,000 or something. Ridiculous. And 5% of them live below the poverty line. And this is where you don't live here unless you work for the NSA, right? It's a closed community.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right?

Dave Jones: So how does this work?

Chris Gammell: That's weird.

Dave Jones: Do they have no money left after buying all their mainframes to pay anyone?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. That's weird.

Dave Jones: I know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But that's an official stat from the Census Bureau. People fill in the census and they live in this NSA community. Because there's 10,000 people working there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right? And they all, you know, you cannot drive into this community unless you- Right.

Chris Gammell: It's like a special exit. We've talked about that, I think, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So- Go figure. Yeah. If anyone knows any more about that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. Oh, yeah. I work for the NSA. I'd like to give you some information about this, Dave Jones.

Dave Jones: No, but just in general, in terms of the U.S., I mean, you might know. You might be up on it. You're a yank.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, they give us that in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the U.S., right? Right. Yeah. You just open it and ask what the NSA is all about.

Dave Jones: What is the average wage in the U.S.? You know, there's talk about, oh, you know, the airline pilots are getting $30,000 a year or something ridiculous like that.

Chris Gammell: I think, like, they do it by, like, home income, I think, is like $50,000, $40,000 or $50,000. That's combined. That's like a four-person household, though. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So that's both parents. That's both people working.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So the average wage would be, what, 25?

Chris Gammell: It's lower. Yeah, it's lower. I don't know. Ouch. You're a Wikipedia fanatic. What the heck, man?

Dave Jones: No, I could find it. I just don't know. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Like I said, I don't have the Hitchhiker's Guide to the U.S. here. You know.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's all not going to matter when the U.S. collapses again financially. So it's going to happen, folks. Mark my words.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well. Sorry, dude. Join Dave in shorting every stock.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I'd be. Yeah. That's it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, power. Financial advice is not meant to, you know, make any money or anything. Yes.

Dave Jones: Do not take financial or life advice from engineers, folks. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Anyway, yeah, I thought that's interesting that they've got their own fab, and it makes sense because then they can develop their own chips in-house.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, without the security, you know, problems of getting them made somewhere else. They can vet every single person who works there and, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how big or what scale it is. I don't think it's a big, you know, Intel scale fab or anything, but, you know, a little niche thing for doing- No, yeah. And you don't need much.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. If you're doing, you know, you could do, you know, 180 nanometers, still do some cool stuff, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Especially if you, you know, you don't care about the size of the thing, if you care more about the-

Dave Jones: Well, you don't, because they just parallel everything up, right? They just manufacture a million of them and parallel it up.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I mean, it depends what you're using it for, right? A megawatt.

Chris Gammell: If you're using it for, you know, like data center stuff, that's different than if you're using it for, like, handheld stuff, right?

Dave Jones: A handheld consumer. Right. Like, because you've got to go smaller, because the smaller, you know, smaller geometry you go, the lower power you get, you know, the more bang per buck in terms of, you know, power per speed and all that sort of stuff, but-

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you're not constrained by that sort of, those sort of power budgets, yeah, you can use an old style fab. Yeah. Yeah. Heck, only 140 nanometers, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Shock. Speaking of a monolithic company that makes chips, Texas Instruments actually just had a design contest for seniors in college. So, like-

Dave Jones: It's over? It's done?

Chris Gammell: It's done, yeah. It was a while ago, actually. So, it's for basically college seniors could, for, like, senior projects, they could write to TI, they could say, you know, I need, you know, this, this, this, and this chip, you know, they'll give them free samples, and then they, you know, had it just, and I make a video out of it, and they show it off, and then they can enter it with, like, yeah, poster contest or something like that.

Dave Jones: So, this is high school students? No, this is college. This is college. Oh, college as in uni. Oh, sorry. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: University. Yeah.

Dave Jones: University. Right. Yeah. Okay.

Chris Gammell: And so, you know what this really is, right? What? This is recruiting. I mean, this is just straight up- Oh, of course it is. Yeah, of course it is. Yeah. We want people to, you know, compete for prize money, and then we're going to try to hire them with even more prize money. That's right. And it is brilliant. It's all, it's a lot of analog stuff, too. That's the other, that's the other part of it. So, that's what catches my attention, obviously. And, you know, like, it's-

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: So, these are existing engineering students that can enter.

Chris Gammell: Yes, exactly.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And, you know, there's some, there's some, they call it the, uh, Ingen, Ingibus? Ingibus? Huh? Ingibus prize, maybe? E-N-G-I-B-O-U-S? Ingibus? I don't know. I was, I was saying Inigbus, but I spelled it wrong before, so, unless I-

Dave Jones: Oh, I see it. Yeah. Yeah, that is just stupid, made-up word. I think it's right.

Chris Gammell: I think it's someone's name. I'm sure he appreciates that. Right. Sorry, dude. Your name sucks. Uh, yeah. But, yeah, you know, there's some, there's some cool projects in here, though. I was actually, I looked at, uh, the, the group from my alma mater, uh, Case Western Reserve. They, they did a cool little, uh, combo, uh, you know, like, DMM and oscilloscope with a bunch of TI chips. That was pretty cool. Um, and then this- The, the winning team was from Rice, and they got a, uh, they had like a, what was it? It was like a mobile station, it definitely, what was it? The mobile vision, that's what it was. So you could, uh- I see it, yep. Yeah, you could do like a retinal scan, and then you could like- Nice. Do something with like a, like talk to like a, you know, an Android phone or something like that.

Dave Jones: So, does their school give them support for this? Can they get credit towards their final project or something?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's, it's meant for final products, projects. Basically, it's like, if you're doing a final project, write to TI, we'll give you a bunch of free chips, and then we'll try and hire you afterwards.

Dave Jones: And then you get that approved by your professor. Exactly. You know, that's right. Okay, got it. Exactly. Because, yeah, I didn't think they would get many if they had to, you know, if they weren't getting credit towards their degree, because they'd be so busy finishing off their own final project that they wouldn't have time to do this. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's why some are very good, because they've probably been working on it for six months, right? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, like, yeah, this is some serious stuff. I mean, it's not like, it's not like cobble it together over a weekend. This is like...

Dave Jones: Right. So, this is a final year project kind of stuff, where you put, you know, half the effort into your report, as well as the hardware, so...

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. And that's why it's great for, you know, a design contest, too, because it is so, it's got, it's got some meaty chunks to it, right? I mean, so, you know, it's good to check out, and it's got some cool stuff, too. I mean, like, with, especially with, like, optics kind of thing, right? I mean, if you're, if you're scanning someone's retina, you know, like, that's some, some cool stuff, right? I mean, like, that's not something, you know, if they're working with a college professor, then they probably have some very specified advice as well. So, yeah, pretty cool. I like it. I approve. Thumbs up. Yeah. Winners all around. Especially those kids getting analog jobs. Which are, you know, I keep telling people, man, you know. It's big money in analog, huh? There is, you know. Yeah, I'm just saying. It's more so, you know, I feel like I have to, like, put a disclaimer with that, you know, especially if you're working for a chip company, right? If you're, if you're working as a, as a chip designer, big money. Of course, you're going to be, you know, you'll be working on a PLL circuit somewhere in a dark room. But, you know, it's, there's just, there's fewer and fewer people that can do it. So.

Dave Jones: Are there various pay grades? It's like, do you actually double if you actually grow a beard?

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: And then it doubles again if it's gray? Once it goes gray? Is that. That would be awesome. That's why they do it. Right. Oh, boy. Oh, man. Oh, this guy must be good. He's got a gray beard. Exactly. You've got to pay him double. Yeah, exactly. Go up and pay great. What's this crap on the list? How much longer will dip packages survive?

Chris Gammell: That was an honor. What have you put this on here for? That was me. Yeah, why? That was a real thing. You think they're going to stick? It's good. We talked about it already, I think, but.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we probably have.

Chris Gammell: Well, here's the real thing. So, it's from Chip Report TV, right? I do all these chips, right? And it's like, oh, well, this is Tiny Chip 1, Tiny Chip 2, right? And people have been writing to me and they say, well, I don't give a crap. It's not dip, right? And. Yep. And I'm like, well, you're not going to have, I mean, I've seen one product announcement in the past five years that's been a dip part. And it was that Cortex M0 from NXP. Yep. And it was very specialized in that they put it in a dip package because they were very specifically targeting the hobbyist market. We talked about that on here.

Dave Jones: Why? Here's an idea. Why don't the manufacturers don't? They may not produce dip packages anymore, but why don't they sell them as, as converter boards?

Chris Gammell: Converter boards.

Dave Jones: Like, as in fully assembled converter boards. Just like. I guess it's easier and cheaper for them to just do a dip version, right? Maybe. They need to sell their surface mount chip, but they offer it. They actually offer it. You can buy it through DigiKey.

Chris Gammell: There's no money in it. Where is the money in that? There's none.

Dave Jones: I know, but I, well. You're just. Yeah, I guess it's the same argument, right? You're just paying more. Yeah. If anything. You might as well do the dip package.

Chris Gammell: Did we talk? We talked about this last week. See, this is the problem. I'm sure we did. We were going to have two whole weeks between episodes that I could have, you know, passed it off as, oh, well, we didn't talk about dip last week, but we totally talked about dip last week. And it's got me. I was thinking about it more because we were talking about it last week. There's no money in it. Best case scenario, right? You have someone who goes out and, you know, buys, you know, like you see all these product announcements now where companies are actually selling bare die. I mean, they've always done that, but you had to kind of, you kind of had to, you know, know somebody, not know somebody, you had to buy a shitload of them.

Dave Jones: You had to be special. You couldn't walk in there and I'll have 10 bare die, please. Right.

Chris Gammell: And now I see part numbers coming out and it's like, you know, MSP430-die. And I'm like, whoa, is this thing telling me to die? And then I calm down and I say, oh, it's no, it's the bare die. They're just selling that because, you know, people put them down on boards, they put the black goop on them and then they, you know, they, it's a real thing, right? We talked about that here. Absolutely. So best case scenario, you have a third party packaging, you know, you buying those bare die because you can get them easily now. And then, you know, someone's just doing, doing a die bonder and then they package it up in the, you know, in the, in a dip package and they sell that. They, they basically are just a packager. Hmm. That's the best case, right? Yep. Now you're going to have to pay about, you know, a $2 chip is going to become a $10 chip and no one's going to want to pay that. So just. They might as a one-off. Maybe. I don't think so, man.

Dave Jones: It's like way back in the old days, you would pay a buttload more for the microcontroller with the erasable window on it. Right?

Chris Gammell: Because of the.

Dave Jones: Because that was an expensive package.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right? I mean, you know, I'm talking way, way back before you were born. Right. No, I get it. And yeah, but that was a real thing. You know, you would pay 10 times the price of the normal chip. You would buy that special windowed erasable.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Micro. Here's the, here's the difference. That, that, that was your development chip. Right. You knew you had to pay more for it.

Chris Gammell: Here's the difference. Having an erasable window or erasable, as you say. Yep. The difference there is there's an economic advantage. You do that because you don't want to have to keep popping new chips into the programmer. You want to just erase it, put it back in and program it. Right? Yeah. In the case of a hobbyist using a dip package, right? Paying more money is, eventually you're just going to have someone say, well, I'll just, I'll do a breakout board. I don't care. It's just cheaper. True.

Dave Jones: It rules out the, yeah. It does rule out the hobbyist.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's got, yeah. There's a very niche window there where it's too expensive for hobbyists, but it's not, you know, there's very few pros who would bother with dip. They're going to go straight to PCB.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Now here, I just came up with this. Here is a brilliant new thing. Not a brilliant, it's not new. It's not new and it's not that brilliant, but I want to see someone do this because I don't have time to do this. We need someone to do a Kickstarter for an easy board prototyping system, right? We need either, it could be an acid bath, it could be, you know, it could be a board router. I don't care what it is.

Dave Jones: It's like your mythical chip printing machine. A piece there just spits out PCBs like they're nothing, right?

Chris Gammell: It could just be a PCB milling machine. I don't care. That's got to be the next Kickstarter that I see because that's the next thing that you need, right? I mean, that's the next step is because even going from an SOIC out to a dip package or something prototypable, right? I mean, you need that kind of thing. You need the PCB. Yeah, we need maker bot of the PCB milling machine and don't say LPKF. Someone's going to say LPKF and it's like, yeah, sure. When I have 40 grand sitting around, I will go straight to LPKF. But until then, I need low cost piece of crap bought on Kickstarter board milling machine. So get on it, people.

Dave Jones: There's an article in this month's Silicon Chip for a cheap ass PCB milling machine. No. It's not like it's a cutter, but they've modified it to be a PCB milling machine. It's like a couple hundred bucks.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well, maybe it's already been done.

Dave Jones: Sorry. So the edition's not here. It's at the lab. So I can't access it. Post it later. Straight up. But yeah, I will have to post in the notes. And it's, yeah, I went and looked at it. Holy crap. That's cheap. And well, those results aren't too bad. It's like fussy to use. Right. And stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: See, that's the other thing, right? It's that whole, you know. Well, that's right.

Dave Jones: You want to push a button, right? And you want it to pop out.

Chris Gammell: It's the same thing. It's the same argument for, you know, plastic extruded 3D printers. Right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They're fussy.

Chris Gammell: But you got to start somewhere, right? And the people that want it will do it. And that's the thing. Like, I think a lot of people, I always say board cutter, right? And people are like, what are you talking about? But, you know, PCB milling machine, right? It's a little drill bit. You just cut out the copper clad. It's got to be something better, though. Best case scenario, I think, would be like a squeegee acid bath kind of thing. But there's no good way to do it still.

Dave Jones: Anything that involves chemicals is going to suck. That's true. It's going to suck ass. It's bad enough with the milling machine with all the fiberglass dust and shit around it.

Chris Gammell: And, you know, the best case scenario would be like a, you know, an inkjet type printer where you lay down like a silver base.

Dave Jones: A conductive, yeah. That would be the best. That has to be the solution. That would have to be the solution.

Chris Gammell: Get on it, people. Get on it. Come on. We need it.

Dave Jones: Yep. I know. But then you've got to, you know, you've got to have that drill as well to drill the holes. That's true. Because ultimately you're going to have some connectors or wires coming off your board that require that through hole thing. Yeah, that's true. Although I guess it would be popular even if it just didn't drill holes. Even if it just, you know, etched it out or laid down the tracks, the conductive tracks in ink or whatever, that would be, you know, 80% there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it'd be better. You can't do that last.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I agree. It'd be hugely popular.

Chris Gammell: You can't do the drilling holes last though. You have to do drill holes first. Because if you print out, or even when you're doing like, you know, PCB milling, right? You have to, if you don't drill the holes first, say you route out around, you know, like a usual via where it gets, you know, it looks like a little lollipop flavor. If you do that first and then you try and drill in the middle of the lollipop, it'll just rip that trace right up. So you can't do that. So that's the only downside of that kind of thing.

Dave Jones: We're going to have to post edit this and remove this because we're going to make a fortune from this dude. Yeah, right. We can secretly work on it in the background.

Chris Gammell: All right, I'm going to go start making a Gantt chart. All right.

Dave Jones: All right. Okay. You can project manage the thing. I'll do the great work.

Chris Gammell: You know, like whenever you start doing like a project, you start, you know, you come up with the BS, you know, like categories and tasks and stuff. And it's like, step one, think of ideas. Step two, begin to execute ideas. Step three, become rich. Profit. Oh, my God. Yeah. No, I don't think we need to post edit this, Dave. I think we'll be okay. But if anyone wants to take that idea and run with it, I am A-okay. I will sign up for the T-shirt on your Kickstarter and I will buy it three years later when it's refined.

Dave Jones: Oh, no. All you have to do, see, I went to one of these meetup things. You know, I go to a couple of these meetup, you know, it's a website. Yeah. And there was an entrepreneur, there was a local entrepreneurial thing. It was just around the corner. I thought, yeah, okay, you know, I'll turn up. And, oh, you know, it was all very, you know, Anthony Robbins type, you know, all you have to do is think about it and it will happen. You know, it's like, wow, great, you know, yay. All my project dreams are going to come true. All I need to do is think about that.

Chris Gammell: There's names for people like that. It's, uh, Ian, one of the guys that was on this show, he calls them, uh, entrepidouches. There's also, uh, there's, there's other ones too. Shit. Yeah. There's other ones too. It's people that, like, are so about the idea of being an entrepreneur versus actually doing stuff. That's the key. It was like, oh, come on, man. And I'll call myself an entrepreneur when I'm, you know, sitting on a billion, right? At that point, I've been an entrepreneur, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: I would probably only call myself an entrepreneur if I was funding other entrepreneurs. Maybe. Maybe. You know, if I was like angel funding, if I had the money to angel fund, then again, I wouldn't even call myself that. Yeah. It's a sucky term.

Chris Gammell: It is a shitty term, you know?

Dave Jones: Same as inventor or I'm an inventor.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, it bugs me. Those, those two terms are really shitty. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But you could say that about a lot of terms. I mean, even like maker. Sure. Maker is becoming kind of like. Maker. Well, you could, you know.

Dave Jones: Well, I think it's better than inventor. That's true. It's more all enveloping. You know, there's so many people who are leeching off the term that it's.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, at least the people who are making, who are calling themselves makers are actually making shit.

Chris Gammell: That's true. Yeah. You know? And, yeah, that's the good ones, right? I mean, like, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, yeah, I try not to be self-referential.

Dave Jones: But they call themselves an inventor because they came up with an idea and they paid $5,000 to get it patented. And then they call themselves an inventor. You know, they haven't actually produced anything yet. Yeah. You know, or done anything meaningful. They've just. Yeah. They've entered the system and they call themselves an inventor. It bugs me. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: When I hear the term inventor, I think of, there's these commercials on around here. It's those companies that are like, are you an inventor? And then they have like. Yeah, yeah. That's what I think of. You know, they're trying to buy ideas. I don't even know what they're trying to do there. But they're. It's always this caveman, you know, like chiseling away at a wheel. And I'm like, that's what I always think of whenever I hear the term inventor.

Dave Jones: Right. Yikes. Or I often I think of the scene from the Gremlins. Have you seen the Gremlins? Or are you too young for Gremlins? I've seen Gremlins. Where the guy invents the bathroom buddy. Yeah. It's like he's come. You know, he's a serial inventor. Right. And he's trying to be a full time professional inventor. And he tries to, you know, think up something that'll meet some mythical market need. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Rather than just doing something that he enjoys or, you know, something that he wants to do because he wants to do it. Right. You know. So, yeah. It's hilarious. Oh, boy. I only got five minutes left. What do we got?

Chris Gammell: What are the dregs? NASA selling surplus electronics. It's weird. There's.

Dave Jones: I. It's quite awesome.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, it doesn't say what it is.

Chris Gammell: Right. That's the problem. And so it's like out in Connecticut, I think, or something like that. But basically, I saw this. I got like a Google alert for electronics or something like that. And I saw this in there. And it's FBO.

Chris Gammell: I think it's like something budget. Federal. Federal biz opportunities. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Bureau of Opportunity. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Federal business opportunities. Right. And so it says their surplus sale of excess NASA equipment. And it doesn't say anything else. And I'm just like, no, I want to know what this is. Because it could just be, you know, it could just be like, you know, highly specced resistors. Right. Or it could be like, it could be like prototypes of the rover, you know?

Dave Jones: Exactly. I know. I want that. Give me that. Oh. See, I would so turn up to that. Yeah, exactly. It's an auction, is it? Is it an auction format or what is it? It's just got a point of contact. So it's like, I think they only cater to.

Chris Gammell: Oh, big buyers.

Dave Jones: You know, those big auction houses who buy pallet loads worth of crap.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Bummer.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So if you're in Danbury, Connecticut, that's where the auction is going to happen.

Dave Jones: Yep. Take a video camera along, please. Oh, God, that'd be so cool. But it's probably going to be boring. And we'll post it. Let's be honest. I mean, it's probably going to be. Yeah, maybe. But it's probably going to be resistors. I would so turn up to it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't know, man. In order to submit bids. But how can we submit a bid when we don't?

Chris Gammell: Five bucks, I guess. Yeah, like it's like you got to start somewhere.

Dave Jones: Five bucks per pallet, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: But there's companies that do that. They buy pallet loads worth of this stuff. Oh, yeah. And they're the resellers on eBay. You know, they buy a pallet load worth of a seller scope.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they just buy it based on statistics, right? They're just like, well, there's bound to be something worthwhile in here. Yep. You know. Exactly. Yeah. There's actually shitty TV shows in the US about that, too. Oh, is there? Yeah. Oh, it's terrible. Oh, it's so bad. I do not watch them.

Dave Jones: I'm a bit of a fan of pickers. Have you seen that?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I was watching that this weekend, actually.

Dave Jones: I just like the guys in it. I think their personalities are great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's good. But, you know, it's also the junk aspect. You know, like electronics people are pack rats by nature, right? You have to be.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's right.

Chris Gammell: You need a junk bin. You need stuff to pull from. It's like, we don't throw stuff out.

Dave Jones: I enjoy watching people's garages, you know? Right. They go into people's garages full of, you know, 20 million pinball machines or something. Right.

Chris Gammell: And it's like, but I don't get where, like, people just keep buying outhouses or whatever they're called, outbuildings, right? And it's like, that's where they keep storing stuff. But, like, where does this stuff come from? I never understand that. I mean, I guess it's just somewhere between being a hoarder and something else. But, yeah, I feel like that's the kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Most of it was acquired before the days of eBay. You know, now it's like, you know, before the online days of, you know, of just being able to sit back, oh, click, click, click, you know, buy, buy, buy, and have all this shit turn up.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know? Do you ever buy a bit of effort to acquire this stuff?

Chris Gammell: You do that with, like, test equipment sometimes, right? You'll buy it on a whim.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, I'll just buy it on a whim. I see it on eBay and I go, oh, yeah, yeah, that's a good price. I'll buy it, you know? I've never done that. It's a bargain. Yeah, it's a bargain.

Chris Gammell: That's the worst thing, right? When you're like, oh, I have to buy it, right? It's all.

Dave Jones: I have to buy it. It's a bargain. Somebody else else, otherwise somebody else will get that bargain. My precious. It's a sickness. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah, I used to buy and sell multimeters because I just enjoyed it. And other gear, oscilloscopes and stuff. Oscilloscopes are harder because they're bigger and, you know, the postage and packing is a pain in the ass. But, you know, small stuff like multimeters was, you know, oh, bought and sold so many. Yeah? Do you fix them up ever or not? You just buy them? Yeah. Sometimes, you know, I'd rub the numbers off and I'd sell, you know, I'd polish them up and I'd sell them like, you know, I'd always make money out of it because I knew what something was worth. Yeah. And, yeah. What's that called? Arbitrature? And sometimes you would take a chance, you know, you'd take a chance on that one that's, you know, I have no idea if this works. I don't know what this thing does, you know. Right. And you take a chance on it. Right. And most of the time it works out.

Chris Gammell: And if not, then you just, you just say, I don't know if this works and you sell it again. Well, you just. Or it sits in your garage, right? Exactly. Yeah. Toss it in. Or now in your lab. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Ah, boy. Anyway, our amp hour's up, I think. I think we're smack on time, actually.

Chris Gammell: Weird. I think we, yeah, we made it for this week, huh? Yeah, last minute. We'll see if we can't get Bob back next week. It was unfortunate, the timing. He was, he was sad he couldn't be here. But thank you to everyone who filled out questions, too. That was, it was a good showing.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they won't go to waste. We will get him back on and we will ask those questions.

Chris Gammell: And we actually have three guests out right now. We have, we have three guests scheduled. So I'm looking forward to all of them. Awesome. And we will find out who those other ones are very soon.

Dave Jones: And speaking of next week, I will be at the Electronics Trade Show. Electronics with an X. Yeah. Electronics.com.au.

Chris Gammell: Nice. So if any Aussies out there, go find Dave. And it's, yeah. Say Great Scott.

Dave Jones: Great Scott will be the password. Come up and say Great Scott. I'm fairly sure at this stage I'll have a freebie for you.

Chris Gammell: You should do something that was more embarrassing where it's like, I cannot do it, Captain.

Dave Jones: I like Great Scott though.

Chris Gammell: Yeah?

Dave Jones: It keeps with the Back to the Future thing. I'll probably have a couple of Back to the Future posters up in my booth. I'll have my out of time number play.

Chris Gammell: People who don't know who you are are going to have no idea what you do. I know. It's great. That's the idea. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like, what the hell's going on in this booth? I have intrigue. Who are you? You know, you've got a cardboard cutout of yourself and you've got Back to the Future posters. What the hell are you selling?

Chris Gammell: Who let this 12-year-old kid into this electronic show, right?

Dave Jones: Exactly. Maybe I can wear the Marty McFly hat.

Chris Gammell: Oh, there you go.

Dave Jones: I've got a Marty McFly cap.

Chris Gammell: Nice.

Dave Jones: There you go. Yeah. Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, have a good time in the show, man. Will do. We'll see you next week.

Dave Jones: Bye. Bye.

Chris Gammell: I'm looking for tips. Like, I feel like I should leave and see if you can do any better. I'm sure you could.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. No, I think I did it once and I suck too. Yeah. It's weird, right?

Chris Gammell: It's just like you're not used to it and then it's like, well.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It throws you off. Yeah. I think I did it once for some reason. You ran and had to do Shut Up a Barking Dog or something and I was left holding the bag. you