#116 – Distribution, Wozniak & Robots - Early Eight-bit Endgame

SPEAKER_00: This is The Amp Hour Podcast, recorded October 7th, 2012. Episode 116, Early 8-Bit Endgame.

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of ChipReportTV and Chris Gammell's Analog Life.

Dave Jones: And of crappy internet connection fame.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, again.

Dave Jones: You're on your mobile phone again this week.

Chris Gammell: Again.

Dave Jones: And your username is DoubtThisWillWork.

Chris Gammell: That's from last week.

Dave Jones: On Mumble.

Chris Gammell: I still doubt it's going to work. I have the cable guy coming on Tuesday. But yeah, it's... The cable guy. What do you call him? Something different?

Dave Jones: We don't call him anything. We just, you know... We don't have cable guys come out and fix the... Well, we'll call them by the company name. We'll have the Telstra guy come out or the Optus guy come out.

Chris Gammell: I gotcha. I gotcha.

Dave Jones: So we don't call them the cable guy. It's a very Yankee thing.

Chris Gammell: Cable guy.

Dave Jones: Is there a stereotypical look for the cable guy? Does he turn up with his bum crack hanging out? Oh, yeah. I think there's that. Like a plumber or whatever.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, like the tradesman kind of style. But I think also there was a Jim Carrey movie called Cable Guy. So that's what I always think of. Yes. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: He was like the total freak.

Dave Jones: I don't think I've ever watched the whole thing. Oh, it's fun, man.

Chris Gammell: It's crazy. It's dark. I like it. So, yeah. We'll see. I don't know. Got the phone hanging out the window again. The wife was nice enough to loan it to me again. So we'll see.

Dave Jones: You're assuming the amp hour position with the phone.

Chris Gammell: It's just really frustrating.

Dave Jones: So you're actually holding one hand out the window, Trona?

Chris Gammell: No, it's just like propped up. I got like those little like glass block windows and like, you know, there's a little one where it flips out. But I was thinking about it and I'm like, well, you know, I really do have to get this fixed because it's, I mean, it's probably like 40 degrees outside, 40 degrees Fahrenheit. So it's probably, you know, it's getting down there. Which is cold. Yeah. It's just kind of chilly. So I'm not going to be able to do this much longer. We'll be limited by the snowfall and the Cleveland weather.

Dave Jones: Right. So what have you been up to lately? Anything we should know about?

Chris Gammell: No. Nah.

Dave Jones: As for me, I just got over with a two hour live show. So I'm like.

Chris Gammell: You're out of it, huh?

Dave Jones: I went straight from that to this. Yeah. I'm out of it.

Chris Gammell: You probably already said everything you're going to say, huh? We'll just get the sloppy seconds here.

Dave Jones: That's it. The dregs. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: What were you guys talking about? I was in there a little bit, but then I had to run to the store, so.

Dave Jones: Oh, it was just two hours of questions and answers. Yeah. Okay. So I get the usual questions. That's fun. I give the usual answers. Often they're repeated. Yeah. Oh, I don't know. Watched it before.

Chris Gammell: Like that. That's not a very good accent. Not even close, dude. No, it was terrible. Yeah. Sorry. It's okay. I don't really value myself on my accent ability, so.

Dave Jones: Well, I have absolute zero ability and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. What about electronics this week? You been doing anything electronics-y? Electronics.

Dave Jones: Well, I've been trying to get my power supply up and running. I just uploaded the video last night. Yeah, I started watching that. On that last night. I haven't looked at the, yeah, it's another fail video. So, you know, where I was, I was debugging the thing. I didn't plan on doing a video and then I went, oh, it doesn't bloody work. I've got to debug this thing. Oh, might as well switch on the camera. You know, might as well get free content. You know, I'm doing this anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. So, that's good.

Dave Jones: It was a good video though. There's nothing better than that free content.

Chris Gammell: I guess so. It's great. If you're a content producer and you care, most people just care, oh, Dave's debugging something. That's cool.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Well, that's right.

Chris Gammell: No, it's...

Dave Jones: But yeah, as a, you know, I mean, it's, if I'm going to do something anyway, I may as well switch on the camera. I love those. Oh, you're going to be... I get it for free. Not quite for free because I get in the mindset of, well, I'm, you know, I'm shooting this as a proper video. So, I've got to get the camera angle right before I start debugging that thing. So, I'll get the camera angle right and make sure the light's right and then I'll go, okay, let's probe this thing and see what's wrong.

Chris Gammell: See, now I feel like... You know, so it does take longer than... When Google Glass comes out, it's going to be so much worse, right? Because it'll be... It won't be like, get out the camera, set up the tripod. It'll be push a button, start going. And what I really wonder is people like you or, you know, other people online, if they'll start selling like subscription service, Truman Show style, where they're like...

Dave Jones: Truman Show style, yeah. You know, they'll... Well, I just found out you stream have a pay-per-view thing.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really? I didn't know that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, you know, if you want to spend a dollar and watch me sit in my lab and scratch my ass, then you'll... Pass. ...go for your life. Yeah. But no, that's kind of the plan here is why I've just bought the... Ustream Producer Pro. It cost me $199. Seems to work a lot better. Everyone was really raving about the quality of the stream. That's good. It's still not high def. The internet's still not good enough to stream video.

Chris Gammell: I'm streaming through my phone right now, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. And it's just audio. So, yeah, the internet's not good enough for that yet. But I'm still streaming 640 by 480 in 30 frames per second. And some people on the other end were saying they'll get in 30 frames per second. That's not bad. You know? Great. Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. So, you know, I'm fairly happy with that. So, I'm thinking about setting up like a multiple cam thing so that like I'll have one over the bench so I can like just leave it on if I'm in the lab, you know? Yeah. I'll come into the lab. I'm working on something. I'll just turn it on.

Chris Gammell: What I was thinking about though is like I think people eventually will, you know, like... So, I was thinking about like layout, right? And like doing layout videos and stuff like that. The thing is most people, they think that they'd want to see that kind of thing. But layout is really boring. I mean like even if sped up, I mean it's just okay. Yeah, yeah. I mean it's just... But I think there will be that.

Speaker ?: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: It's when it's times 100.

Chris Gammell: Right. It's just dull. And especially when you're switching back and forth between data sheets and everything, it's not good. I mean like...

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, it's boring as bad shit. Right. It really is.

Chris Gammell: We'll see. Maybe in the future. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You think you're going to get some... Well, see, Jerry used to do that. Jerry used to do like the 20... Because she used to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week in a lab, you know? Yeah. She didn't sleep. So, she'd just leave a camera running all day, every day. And she, I think in the end, didn't she mention on the show or something that she got jack of it, you know? Because people were too busy intruding on her life and she wanted to get things done and she was too busy, you know, pandering to everyone in the chat window and, you know.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's going to be anyone who does that kind of streaming stuff. Yeah, exactly. You're going to... You'll start to value your privacy a lot more, I think, if everything's online.

Dave Jones: I think so. And then you'll, you know, and you'll feel guilty. Like I've, you know, when I was assembling the MakerBot, for example, I left the live stream running, you know? And Phil and I were here assembling the MakerBot. And, you know, I felt guilty that I was sort of, kind of, you know, I was streaming a thing and I wasn't interacting with people. Yeah, it's like ignoring your friends, really. Like I felt bad at the trade show. I left... Yeah, exactly. You know, these are passionate, you know? They're friends. I mean, they are. Friends, fans, who've come along to watch. Yeah, exactly. And I'm not paying it... Like I felt bad at the trade show. I left my camera running in the corner of the booth, you know? And there were people watching and I basically didn't talk to them all day because I couldn't. And I was... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, and same thing happened with, like, the Open Hardware Summit, right? I mean, like, I remember I was talking to people and I'm like, where is everyone? You know, like, it didn't seem like there was a lot of tweets coming out. And then someone said to me, like, well, they're probably interacting with people. That's a good thing, you know? Eventually, people are, you know, there actually has to be some kind of value. You can't get everything remotely. So, and that's true, right? I mean, you're not going to... Yeah, yeah, of course. I don't want someone to sacrifice their in-person experience in order to, you know, entertain me from afar. Well, I sort of do, but it's selfish, right? It's not realistic.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: So, whatever.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I can... It's not bad if there's just two of us here in the lab working on something or, you know, we can generally juggle both. But yeah, if you're at, like, an Open Source Hardware Summit or something, so... Yeah, exactly. Apparently, Bree did not get lynched. No. Didn't we talk about... No.

Chris Gammell: Did we not cover this at all?

Dave Jones: Did we?

SPEAKER_01: I don't... Wasn't...

Chris Gammell: Did we cover it? Oh, we were doing it beforehand. That's right. We were... Because we were talking to Jeff. Beforehand. Before Greg showed up, right? That's right. It's all starting to blur together. It's... That's right. I just can't remember anything.

Dave Jones: It is. I know. Our lives are blue. It just flashes before our eyes. Yeah. Yeah. It's 2012, dude. Did you know? It's October. It's like October. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's almost over, man. I know. Some people at the end of fiscal year already happen. Not me.

Dave Jones: Well, dude. Well, the world ends on... Nothing to worry about. The world ends on December 21st, doesn't it?

Chris Gammell: That'd be a relief. No more...

Dave Jones: Aren't you up on your Mayan calendar? No. No. End of the world?

Chris Gammell: Oh, God.

Dave Jones: Conspiracy theories? No?

Chris Gammell: No. Come on. Are we going to stream that live? You must know that 2012's the end of the world. I mean, I knew... Yeah, I knew... I know about that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I'll probably do a... Yeah, I'll probably do a live stream on the 21st of December.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think it's the 21st. It is. Yeah, it's 12-21. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But remember, your 12-21 isn't our 12th. What if... Does it mean that you guys are done before us? No, that's right.

Dave Jones: I know. How does that work?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. Maybe it's like... Yeah, that's right. There's no way for it to be... Would it be like on the day line? Wherever that is? It would have to be like...

Dave Jones: Well, see the... Yeah, see, it starts... See, the big fire that engulfs the world, you know, starts on the date line and then travels around as the globe goes around. It burns going east.

Chris Gammell: Or west, I guess. It would be west. West, west. It has to be. Yeah, west. Bring it on. Bring it on, bitches. Oh, boy. We should have a party. We should have an end of the world electronics party or something. Yeah, we should. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We should have like a Google Hangout.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, like when my cable gives out, it'll be like, oh, well, at least there's a reason now.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Oh, man.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Yes.

Chris Gammell: So we haven't had like a show where like we're going over stuff lately. I mean, we kind of just kind of... What was it? Two weeks ago we were talking about... I guess we were talking about open source and, you know, our usual pain points of open source and 3D printers and everything else. Yeah. Not this week. No. And then guests, obviously, are good as well. But we've actually got some... We got a couple links. Not too many.

Speaker ?: But...

Dave Jones: Well, we've got the old chestnut, which I could get out your bingo sheet. I don't know if it's on the bingo sheet, actually.

Chris Gammell: No, I don't think it is. No. But you hear it a lot, right? You hear it a lot in like the EE times of the world and everything.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But apparently there's proof now.

Chris Gammell: Oh. That... Well, sort of, kind of. Sort of, kind of.

Dave Jones: Here we go, folks. 8-bit micros are dead.

Chris Gammell: Bum, bum, bum. End of the world for 8-bit micros.

Dave Jones: And yes, it probably will happen on about the date that...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, maybe.

Dave Jones: That the Mayans predicted the death of... Yeah. That's a t-shirt. The Mayans predicted the end of 8-bit micros. That's too long.

Chris Gammell: Oh, man. We need some of our listeners to just start... We always come up with these of, you know, oh, that should be a t-shirt. And then we're just, meh, whatever. You know?

Dave Jones: Well, I want to... I've got a whole list of t-shirts I want to do. So please send me a t-shirt. Just send one to Dave. Yeah, just, you know, do all the work.

Chris Gammell: Send it to Dave. You'll be fine.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Actually, I've got a good one for a symbol, but I've got to learn, like, Photoshop-y type program to do it. It's really simple. I won't tell you what it is, but I think it's time for it. Just tell me after this show. Some people will go, eh, meh. Yeah. Anyway, it's a symbol. It's a symbol shirt. So there's no text. It'll just be... Anyway, I think it's cool. Yeah. And I'm going to do it. Yeah. According to Freescale... Freescale. You know, we're talking, right? Not a small company. The second biggest... Yeah. No, right. The second biggest, I think, 8-bit... Second biggest microcontroller manufacturer in the world.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think it's them and Renesis, right? The trade spots, kind of...

Dave Jones: Yep. They're number one. I think Freescale is still hanging in at number two, and, yeah, I don't know who's number three these days. Right. Yeah, anyway, they're right up there, right? Freescale, because they're using all the automotive stuff, right? This is the old Motorola, you know, MC series, right? Freescale micros, and they have announced that they will be shipping... They'll be shipping a new ARM Zero Kinetus L series. If you're into Freescale micros, you'll know what I'm talking about with an M Zero Plus Flycatcher core. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Flycatcher?

Dave Jones: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Flycatcher. I've never heard that. That's the name of the core. Is it really? For as little as 30 cents in volume, right? Jeez. But they don't tell you what volume. Right, and they don't tell you what's attached. They don't tell you what's attached to it either. Well, they're saying it's the same pinout as the 8-bit devices, and that's their key, right? Gotcha. That's their key in this. They're saying that they will stop in development. Well, they finish in development. They don't say what they say. They'll say it will continue for EMC and ESD-protected devices. Right, right. So that's the more high end of the market that really, you know, these things are going in rugged environments, that kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: 30 cents.

Dave Jones: And presumably they'd still sell and support them. They're just stopping development.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right, right, right, right. Yeah, so new selling.

Dave Jones: Right, because they can't just go to, yeah, they can't just tell, you know, Ford and Toyota, no, piss off, we're not going to make the 8-bit micros anymore.

Chris Gammell: They can at their own detriment, right, at their own peril.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, no, they're legally, they'd be up for billions of dollars in. That's true. Yeah, that's. Because they're legally, they're in contracts. When you're a big automotive man, you're a big company, you go into supply contracts with these manufacturers.

Chris Gammell: Right, 10-year support and everything, right?

Dave Jones: They can't, yeah. Yeah. You will support it for 10 years, and it's legal in writing. And if you try and back out of it, well, there's big compensation to be had. Yeah. Yeah. They've got legal liability there. So they can't just up and quit making them. And they're not going to make these compatible.

Chris Gammell: I mean, they're pin compatible, right? But.

Dave Jones: They're pin compatible, but they know. It's a totally different core. It's an ARM M0 core, flycatcher, whatever the hell that is. It's not the old, you know, what was the original Motorola core, the MC. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. You know, 6800. 6800 or something. You know, whatever. I don't know.

Dave Jones: HC8 or something. Yeah. Something like that. I don't know. Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Well, this is. I mean, 30 cents is really getting down there. I remember with the. What was the last one I saw? They were talking about 32. I think it was NXP. It had like 60 cent micros. They were the M0 plus cores. I mean. Nope. We've lost Chris. He's Gonski. No, he's back. Hello. I feel like I'm in the frigging dark ages here, man.

Dave Jones: I know. Tell me about. I can't even get more than one megabit upload at my office. Oh, yeah. It's disgusting. Well, I can. Do I tell you? I tweeted. Like, my local supplier, right? Telstra, who handles phone line. To get a 10 megabit Ethernet line costs. Wait for it, folks.

Chris Gammell: $300.

Dave Jones: $8,000 per month. Per month.

Chris Gammell: Save me, Google. You're my only hope. That's what I feel like. Honestly. Save me, Google. You're my only hope.

Dave Jones: Save me, National Broadband Network. You're our only hope. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: For you guys, right? Oh, yeah. The Woz is moving there. Yeah, yeah. That's right.

Dave Jones: Remember? The Woz is moving here because we've got the National Broadband Network. That's right. Did we talk about that last time? No, because he just announced that.

Chris Gammell: He just announced that.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yes. The Woz has announced that he wants to be an Australian because the US government sucks so bad that they don't have a broadband policy in Australia, do? No, no, no, no, no. So, the Woz is going to become Wozza.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The Wozza, yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, that's right.

Chris Gammell: The Wozza.

Dave Jones: So, he's going to be called Wozza. I've already made up the nickname for him. It's Wozza.

Chris Gammell: Another t-shirt. Bring it on. So, there you go. Welcome to Oz, Woz. Right?

Dave Jones: I don't know when, but yeah, it seems to be like I get the impression it's like a long-term goal, but he's in the process of figuring out how he can get Australian citizenship. He was quite pleased that he could keep his US citizenship.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, if you get enough money, you can be a citizen just about anywhere. In some capacity or another, you know? Maybe the mandatory service countries you wouldn't be able to, but...

Dave Jones: But he's cool, right? Because he says he can't even get broadband at his house, right? I'm sure he's got a mansion somewhere in Silicon Valley.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, he's Los Gatos.

Dave Jones: Somewhere around the...

Chris Gammell: The Cats. California.

Dave Jones: Los, right. Okay. Yep. And he said, no, I refuse to pull strings to get me a better internet connection. I just refuse to do it, you know? And I'm sure he could, right? Or he just pays the money and they lay a fiber straight to his house, right? Right. You know? Yeah. It'd cost him 10 grand, but it's probably chicken feed, right?

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: So... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's like, what, two, three shares of Apple? Yeah.

Dave Jones: He refuses to do it... Yeah, exactly. So he refuses to do it on principle. Yeah. That's awesome. I love it.

Chris Gammell: The Woz wins again, man.

Dave Jones: So he's moving to Australia instead. Yeah. So instead of just getting a fiber laid to his house, he's going to move to Australia.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it seems like the long way around, but it's... That's a guy with passion. Yeah, exactly. It's still pretty cool.

Dave Jones: It's awesome. Anyway, there is an open invite for Wozza to visit the lab anytime and just hang out and we'll just hack on shit. Yeah, man. And it'd be great.

Chris Gammell: That is a good idea.

Dave Jones: So coming up on the live show, Wozza. Jeez.

Chris Gammell: Dave is dreaming. He's just dreaming about it.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Anyway, that'd be cool. All right. So back to this micro thing.

Chris Gammell: I don't know what the hell is. Oh, 30 cents, right? So 30 cents is kind of insane, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, but they don't say what volume. It's probably a million volume to their primo customers, right?

Chris Gammell: Well, that's what they're...

Dave Jones: You're not going to be able to buy it on Digikey in a thousand volume for 30 cents. Kiss my ass. That's not going to happen.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Is it out? It's not out yet, is it? No. No.

Dave Jones: No. They're still, you know, next six months or something. Okay. Yeah. Something like that. But anyway, they have announced, apparently, that they are finishing development of their 8 and 16-bit, by the way. 8 and 16. Gonski.

Chris Gammell: Well, who needs it at that, right? I mean, let's move on to 64, right? Why not?

Dave Jones: Well, that's well.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And what are the other manufacturers going to do? I predict precisely zip. They're just going to go, eh, whatever. Yeah, more for us, right? Big micros, who cares if they're 8-bit or 16-bit? Yeah. Yeah. More for us, right?

Chris Gammell: I mean, really, what does it really come down to? I mean, I'm not a big micro guy, but, I mean, it's just...

Dave Jones: Dude, it comes down to money. It comes down to chip sales. If these chips are still selling, then maybe Freescale is seeing the demise of their 8-bit market. And they're going, well, you know, look, we're going to make this bold move that looks good on marketing.

Chris Gammell: I guess so.

Dave Jones: You know, so...

Chris Gammell: What we do is we just ignore what the customers are asking for, and...

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's right.

Chris Gammell: I'm guessing what it really is, is they say, you know, well, you can get... You know, it's the same thing, right? For the same cost and the same everything else. But there are differences, right? There's power consumption differences. There's code bloat differences.

Dave Jones: Voltage rail differences and everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I'm not saying, like, old 8-bitters are the only solution, but it's... You know, there are trade-offs, and I don't know. I've seen people just not want to switch just based on preference, right? They don't like ARM cores.

Dave Jones: Because, yeah, no, they just like it. They either don't like ARM cores, or they, you know, they're so used to... There's nothing wrong with sticking with your tool, right? If you've used PIX all your life, or if you've used, you know, TI all your life, or Atmel, or whatever, or Freescale, you don't want to move because you're familiar with the development tools, who then wants to start again? And most of these manufacturers have a huge range of devices to pick from. You know, you're almost guaranteed to find one that's going to do the job for you.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: From anyone's portfolio, really. Right, no, I agree.

Chris Gammell: But it's all about that trade-off. I mean, it's... I mean, that could be a big shock to the system. What it really means is... The thing I don't get about Freescale is they have, you know, they have their own Freescale cores. They have, like, Coldfire stuff, and they have, you know, they have older 8-bit stuff. H-I-N-O. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. The thing I don't get about them, though, is, like, so, they've been talking about, oh, well, there's more demand for ARM stuff and everything like that. But I don't understand why a company would throw itself into a market that's saturated with other people, right? I mean, like, I know they're... That's the thing. Yeah. I know they're a manufacturer. I know it's a huge market. I get that. I get that there's, you know, tons of demand for ARM and low cost and low power and everything. And that's cool. And, you know, then you have an upgrade path when ARM comes out with a new chip. You can license a new core and everything like that. But what I don't get is you're throwing yourself in with every other manufacturer out there. And especially with all these, you know, like the NBA playbook, right, of, oh, well, we'll offshore, you know, manufacturing as well. Because fabs are not cheap and they're not easy to use. When you start pushing stuff to TSMC, well, what the hell are... What is the difference then? Then you're a software company, right? I mean, you're just developing tools to put on your proprietary chips. And in that case, then... Which you're selling at a rock bottom saturated market cost. Exactly. Where the hell are they going with all this stuff? I mean, not that I like Apple in any, you know, short terms. But, you know, one thing Apple does well is they protect their ecosystem. I mean, like, that is a very significant thing they do.

Dave Jones: And they're buying their own fab now, aren't they? Or they're looking into it or something. Yeah, they might be.

Chris Gammell: But, yeah, I mean, they're going in the opposite direction, right? And maybe because they're cash heavy. I mean, Freescale's had a lot of money issues. And I get all that stuff. And they probably had management consultants come in and, oh, you have all these liabilities. You need to get rid of them. And, oh, you could just offload it to... And it's like, well, yeah, you could. But you erode everything that you're about. Everything. And you just become vanilla. I mean, you're just another one, right? Freescale right now is... Exactly. They have so many fans. And it's just like they're just eroding everything about that when you move to all arm. And, I mean, I talked to my local rep about that, too. And I'm like, you know, that's fine if you want to move to all arm. But you're up against six other different players. So you better win on price then. That's all it comes down to.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: And that's a crappy game to play.

Dave Jones: Price, power, speed, all that. And that's a crappy market to be in. Right. Well, I've said it before. I spoke to the microchip CEO, Steve Sangy, what, two and a half years ago now? Probably two, two and a half years ago. And he said exactly that, why they didn't go into arm. And he said that we investigated it thoroughly. I spoke to him in depth on this on the phone. And he said, yeah, we looked at all the options. And we didn't want to go the arm. We decided it wasn't right to go into the arm way of things because the market was already saturated. That was two and a half years, what, three years ago, three and a half years ago when they made the decision to do that. Right. It was already sad. They could already see the saturation back then. And he said we'd just be another commodity player. And we didn't want to do that. So they went with the MIPS 3K or whatever it is they use in their PIC32 line of micros. He said that's the way we differentiate ourselves. If we get fewer customers, fine. But we're not going to get beat up in that rock bottom, race to the bottom, saturated market competitive price thing. We'll make our own way with our core, the MIPS core, which is still used in a few places. So it's not like it's totally proprietary. Right. And we'll make it on our cross-development tools, which are, you know, one of our big key features will be the cross-development tools that work from 8-bit all the way up to 32-bit seamlessly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You incentivize people to pull into your platform and then you just try and keep them there, right? That's the idea.

Dave Jones: And then you can offer them in anything. Right. Exactly. Because at the end of the day, nobody cares if it's ARM or not. Right. Most people do not give a shit. Yeah. They care. Can I use the tools? Are they bug-free? Am I familiar with them?

Chris Gammell: Right. No one says like, oh, I use this product because it has an ARM inside, right? Intel inside does not apply anymore, right? I mean, like, there's nothing about that. No. No.

Dave Jones: For most markets, for the majority of markets, it does not matter.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. And I don't know.

Dave Jones: And all that bullshit about moving, like, the benefit of ARM being, oh, you can just seamlessly move from one ARM manufacturer to the next. That's bullshit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it is.

Dave Jones: That doesn't happen. Nobody does that. You've got to recompile.

Chris Gammell: You've got to remap everything. You've got to, yeah, it's...

Dave Jones: You've got to re-lay out your boards so they'll have different voltage cores. Right, exactly.

Chris Gammell: When they standardize on pinouts and features and everything else, and at that point, you might as well just be, you know, welcome to McChips. Which flavor would you like today? You know?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly. Oh, well, I'll have the freescale flavor. Oh, I had freescale last time. I'm going to have Atmel. With a chalk top and sprinkles. Right, exactly.

Dave Jones: Oh, man. It's ridiculous. Right.

Chris Gammell: And you know, the frustrating thing about it is, like I always say, it's the NBA playbook, right? You know, it's just a bunch of executives seeing this on a balance sheet. On a balance sheet, I'm sure it makes a ton of sense. Yeah, yeah, of course. But the frustrating thing about it is not that they do it, because, you know, they want to do that. They want to flush their toilet and their brand down the drain. That's fine with me. I don't give a crap. Because seriously, there's six more of them waiting in line, or there's, you know, there's startups in China, right? The thing that frustrates me is that in five years, someone else is going to come in and they're going to say, oh, well, we shouldn't be doing this. We need to differentiate. Why don't we go back to that? And then they're going to be in the toilet and they're going to have no customers. And they're going to say, well, why didn't we do this five years ago? And it's like, come on, man. You know what's going to happen. I just know it. I know it. They're going to say, oh, well, we're refreshing this product line and we're going to, you know, get back to our roots and focus on our core. And it's like, screw you guys. Go back to MBA school. Oh, I get so frustrated. There was a Harvard Business Review article about this, about the MBA playbook. I was, my friend pointed out to me because I'm always talking about it. They actually talk about the MBA playbook on the Harvard Business Review. It was awesome. I felt so vindicated. Yeah. Oh, boy. And because, you know, in this case, they were talking about growth, right? And how everybody does the same thing. But, like, it's just universal. They all go to their shelf. They flip through the MBA playbook and they do the exact same thing. And it's like, look at the situation here. It's free scale. You have a crap load IP that you can use. Don't just throw it all away, you know? And they're going to say, oh, well, we still have all this. We have PowerPC and we have ColdFire, even though we're not developing it anymore. It's like, yeah, okay, well, give me a call. Give me a call later when you figure it out.

Dave Jones: I was just thinking maybe the decision came around that, yeah, they might be in financial trouble. They have to strip the company somehow. Well, right, okay, well, let's strip some of the R&D. What do we strip? Maybe they'll force into it, right? Maybe they said, well, we really need to keep our 32-bit micros going. And, well, the 8-bit ones, well, you know, if we're going to cut development, we may as well cut 8-bit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And in that case, it may have forced their hand. Maybe. Right? So I can picture that happening.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know, I was thinking about this the other day in this context of because what it really comes down to, I think, is it's a lot of, like, fear, right? And either fear-mongering from people that are actually making these decisions or, you know, just actual fear about losing jobs and stuff like that. And how often, you know, like, you read about, like, people that are innovative and different than the crowd, right? They're always turned down. And why are they always turned down? Like, people that submit books 20 times, manuscripts, and they get turned down. And why are they turned down? They're turned down because the people that are making the decisions are fearful of, you know, stepping outside the norm.

Dave Jones: The norm. Right. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: And I was trying to think of a way that that could not happen. And I really couldn't. I don't know, like, in any large-scale company situation how you can do that, right? I mean, if people are looking to feed their families, then, you know, they have to make decisions, right? I mean, and they're probably going to make the least risky decisions. It's like just a human characteristic of loss aversion.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: I don't know how to fix it, Dave. I don't know. Fix it. Please.

Dave Jones: I don't know. Maybe. I don't know either. Maybe they don't need fixing, right? Maybe. Maybe this is an excellent move for them, right? Maybe they're too big to fail.

Chris Gammell: Maybe.

Dave Jones: We've talked about that before. Maybe they've got so much momentum they physically can't fail. So much sales momentum. It doesn't matter what they do on the R&D side of things.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Like, someone will always pick them up. Yeah, I mean, you look at, like, with their investing history, I mean, they've gotten bought out in private equity, and then they got relisted again, and, you know, all that other stupid silliness, right? It's just, oh, my adrenaline's pumping from thinking about this. It just frustrates me so much.

Dave Jones: I don't give a shit. I don't use freescale anyway. Sorry, freescale, if you're listening. But, yeah, whatever. You're just another microcontroller manufacturer, you know? Yeah. I happen not to use you.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right. How about some happy news? Okay, I wanted to call out a video by, who is this by? Ah, crap. This is a shout-out. This is a shout-out by Electronic Tonic 156 on YouTube. And it's a shout-out because his girlfriend wrote in, and she wanted to wish him a happy anniversary. And, I mean, he's got great videos, too. And so this video, I'm going to link it as the Tesla coil winding machine, because he plays with Tesla coils. But his girlfriend is awesome enough to have written in and said, can you please give him a shout-out on the Amp Hour? It's his favorite show. And she listens, too. So you guys are awesome. Absolutely. It warmed my heart. It really did.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Congratulations, guys. Is it the first anniversary? I think it is, isn't it? I didn't think it was first.

Chris Gammell: I thought it was multiple. I don't know. I thought it was a multiple anniversary.

Dave Jones: We don't want to get in the habit of doing shout-outs on him. Right, yeah. Please don't. But he had content behind it, right? Yeah, exactly. It was great.

Chris Gammell: It was great. I mean, he's got a lot of great Tesla coil stuff. And that's always fun, you know? Checking out people's app and stuff. I'm always afraid to play. Tesla coil is just that high of voltage. I know that some of it isn't that big a deal. But, man, I just... You like all that photonic induction stuff, too? No, I just...

Dave Jones: Anything over 12 volts DC, high voltage. I know. That's it. I won't touch it.

Chris Gammell: I'll do 100. I'll do 100 on a good day.

Dave Jones: Yeah? Okay. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'm a low-voltage, low-power guy. That's where I get my kicks. Now, I like seeing shit blowing up as much as the next guy. But if I want that, I'll watch Mythbusters and get a really big bang, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So...

Chris Gammell: Well, some of the analog stuff you can't do in low-voltage, right? I mean, sometimes you need to... If you're doing an amplifier, you might need, you know...

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

Chris Gammell: 100-volt rails in order to, you know, actually output... Yeah, yeah. ...50 volts or whatever you're doing, you know? So, uh...

Dave Jones: No, but I've always had a fascination with ultra-low-power stuff, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, what about it? I mean, like, just...

Dave Jones: Go and fly into the moon on the smell of an oily rag.

Chris Gammell: Potato, potato circuits and everything like that.

Dave Jones: As a fly into the moon on a single potato. Yeah. If anyone hasn't made a battery out of a potato... You can make a battery out of almost anything, can't you?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, like lemons and grapefruits and a lot of citrus.

Dave Jones: Lemons and all sorts of things, yeah. Old science fair projects.

Chris Gammell: I never did that stuff. I mean, like, I did, like, some science fair things, like, you know, like the volcanoes.

Dave Jones: Oh, we had no science at school. No? No, it was embarrassing. It was pathetic. So, yep. But then again, I did go to one of the worst high schools in the country, and it was a long time ago. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, there you go.

Chris Gammell: Hey, he turned out okay. Oh, boy.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm all right. What's this about? We're trying to win a podcast award.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: You want people to sign up? Yeah, if they want to. Nominate us?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, if they want to.

Dave Jones: Jeez, you sound excited.

Chris Gammell: I don't want to be like, you have to do this.

Dave Jones: Podcast awards.com.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Is there a specific link that they can click on to vote? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Show notes.

Dave Jones: Or do you have to sign up?

Chris Gammell: We'll put it in the show notes. No, you don't have to sign up. You just have to, I think, nominate, and then there might be voting later. So, I don't think you even need it. I think you need an email. Maybe not. They might just do it by IP address. Ah, right. You can use fake emails. I mean.

Dave Jones: And by the way, I will use this platform to plug myself. I've entered the Streamy Awards, the 2012 Streamys. Well, kind of. Sort of. This show brought to you by our egos.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't know. It'll be an epic fail, but it's fun to enter. Yeah, it's fun. So, you don't fully enter this year. Usually, they have a panel of judges who choose worthy entries. That's why, you know, the winners are, you know, Weird Al Yankovic, Neil Patrick Harris, you know. Oh, really? Like, big superstars. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. Neil Patrick Harris won last time, as did Weird Al. And all those guys are on the Nerdist channel now. Because they do online.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: They do online content, right? But now they've got this new award where you can vote where you can vote for yourself. You can nominate yourself, and your fans can nominate you.

Chris Gammell: The only way I get nominated.

Dave Jones: I didn't have to. Yeah, I didn't have to fill out a form. All I did was click on a Twitter widget, and it, you know, I send out a tweet, and it nominates me. And they've presumably got some server in the background, which checks for the correct hashtag and counts them all up. And the winner automatically gets nominated to be in the Streamy Awards. So, and I'm International Personality of the Year. So, there you go.

Chris Gammell: Crazy Aussie.

Dave Jones: So, maybe I can get in there. And it's like, this is a big deal. Like, streamies are a big deal. They have like a huge black tie event in LA in one of the huge big, you know, where they hold the Oscars or something.

Chris Gammell: So, Dave actually might show up in the US? In the... Yeah, that'd be good.

Dave Jones: I might show up and collect my little pointy streamie award if I win.

Chris Gammell: There's not a reason to vote? I don't know what it is. Anyway, you can just vote. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Unfortunately, you've got to be on Twitter. You've got to have a Twitter account. People should be anyways. And it's on my website. That's a good way to get a hold of us, though, right? You should be following us.

Chris Gammell: Twitter should be... I mean, that's... It is. I enjoy it. Yeah. Tweet us. That's the best way to keep up with people.

Dave Jones: We just sit here all day watching our feed and we just reply to everyone.

Chris Gammell: No, I do it on my phone. I just... You do. Right. You... Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I do it occasionally on my phone, but I sit in front of a computer for 16 hours a day, so I don't really need my phone.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. I'm at work, so... Don't usually like to be on...

Dave Jones: No, right.

Chris Gammell: ...computer at work doing that. Why not? Well, I mean, I'm on my computer. What?

Dave Jones: So you sit there with your phone? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, I mean, I try and, you know, separate the two, you know?

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: That way I can ignore the phone, too. I don't know if it's on the desktop.

Dave Jones: But you still sit there all day, Ed.

Chris Gammell: No, not all day. Well, maybe some of the day. Come on. You can check every phone. Anyway, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it, Dave.

Dave Jones: Twitter's anonymous. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right. So speaking of work, I've been doing a lot of design reviews on some of my designs. And I was wondering about...

Dave Jones: On your own designs?

Chris Gammell: About, yeah, work designs.

Dave Jones: As in you go into a design review meeting with other peers? Yeah. Is that what you're talking about?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, peer design reviews. And so I was wondering about... Peer design reviews, where you have to defend your design, basically. Yeah, exactly. That's what I was getting at, is that... Pretty much. I... You know, it's a balance, right? This is what I tweeted about it being a balance of having to defend yourself versus not being an ass, right? And being like, no, no, no. I won't listen to you.

Dave Jones: Well, sometimes you've got to, because sometimes there's dickheads in these review meetings, and you've got to set them straight. See, how do you deal with that? You know, clueless dickheads.

Chris Gammell: Not even clueless, though.

Dave Jones: Well, you don't call them a clueless dickhead. You just hit them with facts. Right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Dave Jones: It usually, hopefully, shuts them up, but, you know...

Chris Gammell: So just from knowing your own design well enough of, you know, being like, well, no, I tried this, I tried that. Yeah, exactly. I've looked into that. Right.

Dave Jones: You know? No, it's not going to work because...

Chris Gammell: So, like, drown them in data?

Dave Jones: Like, you don't just say, it's not going to work.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. You just say, it's not going to work because... I've already looked into it.

Chris Gammell: Right. So it's like the... When people approach you with invention ideas, like, what did you do there? Except, in this case, it's your invention idea. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: So let's see, uh...

Dave Jones: Or worse, you've been given a shit design. You've got to design it, and you hate the design. You hate... And you've got to go in and defend it in the design review meeting.

Chris Gammell: Wait.

Dave Jones: Because it's based on a spec which you think shit or flawed or whatever.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. So the situation is bad and, like, you have to try and...

Dave Jones: I've talked about this before where, you know, you're given a project which has been, you know, been there for years. The project's just been going on and on and on, and they bring you in thinking that you can fix it all. You know, you're just the latest schmuck to come in and try and, you know, help this project along. Yeah. And fix it. And, well, no, you're being set up to fail. Right. You know, you've been given the worst project in the company, and, uh, no, there's no way this can possibly work. And sometimes you've got to work on those projects that you know are just going to fail in the end. There's just no way to salvage it. Or they won't let you salvage.

Chris Gammell: What do you mean that they won't let you, like, they don't let you redesign it from scratch, that kind of thing?

Dave Jones: They don't let you redesign it from scratch because it's either too far down the path or their customer wants a specific thing. And we've already promised a specific thing by a specific date. You don't have time to go back and redo it. We've got to push forward and, you know, actually give the illusion that we're still, you know, so we can at least get the money for this milestone, you know, or something like that if you're doing a government contract or something like that. It's all about meeting your milestone. And if you hit your milestone, you get paid. And who cares if it works in the end?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Most people don't care, you know. I mean, and unfortunately, some big companies, big organizations work like that. It's a reality part of the, um, sorry, I got sidetracked on this, Chris, because we lost you again. So I just continued on with the, um, being, being pushed into projects, which fail.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. That's cool.

Dave Jones: So you're being set up to fail and it has happened. I've certainly experienced more than a few.

Chris Gammell: Uh, do you have any, like specific examples or no? Like did, did it end up?

Dave Jones: Oh, I've worked on.

Chris Gammell: Was it just a bad project in the end? Is that kind of the thing?

Dave Jones: It was a bad, I've worked on military, like a military sonar. I won't name names or project names, but I've worked on ones where, you know, we've already spent, you know, $5 million working on this thing and we've already produced the prototype, the massive prototype PCB and we can't get the parts anymore because the previous designer designed it poorly and we can't go back and we've got three months left until we have to do a show and tell with the, with the Navy or whatever. And, you know, and, um, yeah, you, you, you can't fix it. So you've just got to patch it together to get to the show and tell so that you met, so that you can tick off, you know, that yes, we met this milestone and everyone, and it kind of sort of works and, and the government go, you know, the Navy go, oh yeah, kind of sort of works. Yeah. We understand. Yeah. You met this milestone. So you'll get paid for that. And then, but then after that, they, they know it's a loser. So they cancel the project, you know, eventually they know nothing's going to come out the other end and everyone knows that, but you've got to do it anyways, right? Put the, you've got to go through the motions, right? Right.

Chris Gammell: And you just got to shrug your shoulders at the design review or what? I mean like.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. And you've, you've just got to go along with, well, yeah, I know this isn't going to work, but, or it's going to work poorly. Yeah. It's not going to meet, meet the spec, but we can always massage the spec, you know. That's true. Or massage the results to, you know, it's just, it's just bullshit. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No, I've had that, I've had that stuff with, uh.

Dave Jones: And it can be quite depressing.

Chris Gammell: With like working on existing products and trying to, you know, rev them for obsolescence and stuff like that. I mean, you know, you go into.

Dave Jones: Component obsolescence engineer. Hey man. You were, you were, you were promoted to component obsolescence engineer. No, I was doing larger.

Chris Gammell: This is larger design reviews and larger design fixes. It wasn't just like swap one in for another.

Dave Jones: So you're a project obsolescence engineer. Oh my God.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Okay, Dave. Yes, you win. I was the old guy in the corner.

Dave Jones: I'm sorry. I need to make fun of you.

Chris Gammell: Everybody's got to start somewhere, man. Anywho. It's a tough thing, man. Please continue. You're even more, you think it's bad with military? How about like you, I couldn't go from a four layer board to a six layer board. And so, you know, like that, that right there throws out, that threw out like 15 different, you know, try, try getting only flat pack chips these days. You go ahead and you search on DigiKey looking for new silicon with only flat pack and you'll have... And you end up with BGAs.

Dave Jones: The only thing you can find is BGAs which need six or eight layers to fan out all the pins, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, like those kind of constraints.

Dave Jones: And you can't go to a full layer. Yeah, don't give me any crap, man. I've been there.

Chris Gammell: Don't give me any crap. I feel your pain. No, you don't. You just make it fun of me.

Dave Jones: I do. I've been there. Most of my projects I've ever worked in my career have never seen the light of freaking day.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm telling you, the majority of them, vast majority.

Chris Gammell: Well, no, it's a tough thing, man. Yeah, it is. So, let's see. What else about design reviews themselves?

Dave Jones: So, we're both angry as hell, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, different reasons.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Carmen wrote in about other suggestions for design reviews. Readable schematics that are already printed out, which is key. You can't just be like, and go to page four on the PDF. Keeping track on paper.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that doesn't quite work when you're sitting in a meeting.

Chris Gammell: Right. And then scheduling it at an inconvenient time, which is a good point. You don't want to do it on a, don't start design reviews at 3 p.m. 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon.

Dave Jones: Even, I'd say after 3 p.m. On a Friday afternoon.

Chris Gammell: I'd say after 3 any day. You know, if it's a big enough design review, you're going to be there a couple hours. Yeah. Yeah, that's.

Dave Jones: One key, folks, that the noobs always forget. Turn off your computer and do not read your email after 3 p.m. on a Friday. And put your phone, and don't, and turn the volume on your phone down, because you don't want it to ring. Do not answer the phone after 3 or 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. Because they, you know, no good news can come. Right, exactly. At 3 or 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, right? They want you to work back. They want you to come in on the weekend.

Chris Gammell: And if it's really that bad, they're going to find you anyway. So just, yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, exactly. That's why you go hide down in a lab or in the production facility or something on the Friday afternoon. That's, you know, as a small gathering of people. Yeah, just huddling in the corner. Shaking. Shaking. Down in the corner of the year. Exactly. I'm not joking. That's what you said. No, man.

Chris Gammell: That's good. That's smart. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Because we had a big production facility, right? It'll be 200 meters long, right? So the managers are, you know, eating their donuts. I don't want to walk down the end of the bloody production facility and find you, right? I'll do it Monday. So you walk all the way down the other end.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's right. Yep. If you can outrun them. Oh, man.

Chris Gammell: He's got to be faster than your slowest coworker, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah. Ah. Ah. Yes.

Chris Gammell: So I had a different- Those were the days. Different article about- This is on EBM. EBN, which is a supply chain magazine, which is meh. But-

Dave Jones: You get a supply chain magazine?

Chris Gammell: I follow it on Twitter, so I catch articles. And this one caught my eye.

Dave Jones: Oh, dude. Shoot yourself now. Well, here's- Is there anything more boring than a supply chain magazine?

Chris Gammell: Ah. Maybe be like a- Oh, you found a gem in there. An accounting magazine, maybe? Would it be like? Like accounts payable weekly?

Dave Jones: I still get- I still get accounts payable weekly. I still get factory equipment news magazine. Oh, yeah? I have no idea why I even started- It just appeared one day.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. They just- Magically appeared on the new list. Shotgun effect, right? They just try and get as many people as they can. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, and what are you in charge of- So they can count you as a reader for the advertising. Exactly. Mr. Jones, I'd like to verify what you're in charge of purchasing and- Are you in charge of op-amps? Oh, boy. Microcontrollers? Yeah, that's right. Passive control components? Anyway- Have you got executive buy-in decision on these parts?

Dave Jones: You know? They're the forms. They're the classic forms you fill out to get these magazines. Do you have purchase buy-in power on- And they list 20 different components. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yawn.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Anyways, the title that caught my eye was, is this distribution's new golden age? And I was like, ah. Right. Really? I don't know. Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong, but I think-

Dave Jones: That's their definition of the death of 8-bit micros article, is it? That just keeps coming around and around again? Ah, probably. We're in a new golden age of supply and demand.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. Oh, value add, this and that. And it's like, so, I mean, distributors- Explain it. Okay, so distributors are, for people that don't know what distributors are because they just haven't, you know, they're working on hobby stuff or whatever else, think of DigiKey as a distributor. However, DigiKey is a, you know, not a small distributor, but they are a online- They're a catalog distributor, as they call it. The other ones are- They call them catalog distributors. They're more like manufacturing side.

Dave Jones: They're authorized distributors.

Chris Gammell: There we go. Apparently, I don't know the terms.

Dave Jones: I mean, well, by authorized, I mean, certainly DigiKey and Mauser, they're author- And Farnells, they're authorized distributors, but they're catalog distributors, right? Right, right. Whereas that keeps stock. That's the difference, right? The catalog distributors keep stock. The other distributors don't. Basically, that's the difference.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they start- I mean, they all have like, you know, there's like Adnet Express and Aero and everything else.

Dave Jones: And it's like- Yeah, they kind of start to-

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they're not going to be the full range. It's not like every part that's in their library, you can definitely get in single-piece quantity.

Dave Jones: They are not the go-to people, right? When you need your prototype, you're making 10 or 50 or 100, you don't go to them. Right, right. You go to the catalog distributors, because they're more likely to have them in stock. Right. But when you go to- In fact, most likely to have them in stock.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. But when you go to production- When you want to buy reels of them. Exactly.

Dave Jones: Yes, production.

Chris Gammell: Because they're stocking reels for you, because you're buying, you know, 100,000, million quantities of capacitors, right? And you need- You're getting, you know, three reels at a time, and stuff like that. That's all the-

Dave Jones: And usually the distributors will only sell you by the reel. Right. They really wait, oh, you want 10 chips? Go to Digi-Key. Piss off. Yeah, right. Or sample.

Chris Gammell: They'll sample. They'll go to the manufacturer and get a sample. Yeah, they'll have samples.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Chris Gammell: So, the article is basically, it was basically a piece about Avnet. I mean, it seemed like this was kind of like, eh.

Dave Jones: It's an infomotion, folks, for Avnet. I don't want to say that.

Chris Gammell: I don't know if it was, but it was very, it was a little fluffy. But I don't think, I mean, maybe they are from a manufacturing side of things. You know, I work in manufacturing a little bit on the stuff that I'm working on, and I have in the past. And I get that, you know, like, you know, distributors are good because they're the buffer zone between buying zero parts and buying 100,000 parts all at once. You don't necessarily want them to get shipped to you. You want them to be sitting at the distributor, and they have 100 different clients, and they can hand out these reels to different people, basically, right? So, they're that buffer zone. They're the digi-key on the real level, right? I mean, so they have fewer total customers, but they're a lot more sales per. And so, maybe I just haven't had enough experience with this, but in general, it feels like, I mean, the article is talking about distributors becoming more and more important and everything like that. But other than just buying and holding components and being that buffer zone, I don't know if there's really that much value. I mean, like, maybe I'm wrong about that. I mean, but it seems like, whereas before, you know, vendors were also the, you know, sorry, distributors were also the way that you got information, right? How you learn about new chips and everything.

Dave Jones: You got data books. If you wanted to order a new data book, you found out a bit of new chips. But these days, I mean-

Chris Gammell: This is before the days of the web. Right. And granted, I'm biased here, right? I mean, part of this is, you know, I'm looking at this from Chip Report TV. Like, that's kind of where I'm doing it because you don't need it anymore. You don't need your manufacturer or your distributor rep to tell you about new chips. You could go off and find them yourself, right? I mean, you don't need me either. You could just go to the manufacturer's site.

Dave Jones: Chris's TV show has made component distributors obsolete.

SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to say that because I'm not buying and holding components, right?

Chris Gammell: But even if I'm not out there, I mean, all of these manufacturers now, they all have videos, right? And, you know, they're all doing social media and crap. I mean, like, not saying that's going to replace everything, but it's not hard to get information anymore. And so, really, what the hell- It's trivial. I mean, like, this is saying, oh, there's so many other things, but I don't see it. I mean, maybe- Am I wrong? I mean, I don't know.

Dave Jones: You're not in terms of where do you see the component distributors? Because, well, they're being edged out in all ways. They're being edged out from the Alibabas of the world. Yeah. Right? Where you buy your reels, where you go to buy your- And the manufacturers are selling reels directly. They sell components directly now. Most of your major manufacturers have an online shop. You know, Microchip have an online shop, you know? Yeah, look at those, too. You want to buy a chip? Buy them from the factory direct. Yeah. Yeah. Would you like those pre-programmed at the factory? Yes, sir. It's an extra, you know, it's all done straight on the manufacturer's website now. Right. And there's value for that, too, right?

Chris Gammell: Because then the manufacturers know they don't have to wait for the information to filter back to them through Arrow, Avnet, DigiKey, anyone else. They just know, I have, you know, a thousand customers who buy three reels a week, and they buy them direct, and we have terms, or we have credit set up, and we can talk directly to them. We have a whole huge database of, you know, people, if we want to develop a new chip, we can just go talk to them directly. So I see it as the opposite. I think eventually some MBA out there is going to be like, oh, well, there's your problem. You know, they're going to say, all your money is going to distribution. You know, like, eventually they're going to say that, right? I mean, I'm not the only one thinking this, am I? So I don't think so. That's what caught my eye here. And it's like, I don't see, especially because all of the marketing departments at these chip companies, right, they all want to do this stuff. They all want to, I mean, they don't want necessarily all the responsibility of it, but they want to be able to talk to customers. They want to be able to interact with them. It's easy as hell to do that now. And you kind of just. And there's big margin as well. Exactly. You don't have to give up anything.

Dave Jones: You don't have to take the commission.

Chris Gammell: All you do is you just put that, you have to build more infrastructure. But in terms of, I mean, maybe there's infrastructure there that I don't know about, right? I mean, like, I'm sure that stocking. They could be. Or, you know, like having, you know, having a, what do they call that? You know, like a customer database, like Salesforce or something like that. You know, maybe having all that stuff, ERP or CRS or CRM, that's it. That's it, yeah. Maybe having that and all the people behind it is, you know, worth offshoring to, you know, effective offshoring to a distributor. But if not, then I don't get it. I mean, like, rant over.

Dave Jones: So, not only are 8-bit micros dead, but distributors are dead too.

Chris Gammell: Man, they're dropping like flies. We're really, yeah. The Mayans were right. The Mayans were electronics. Well, there's been more mergers. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I mean, in the last 10, 15 years, there's been more mergers in the component distributor market than you can poke a freaking stick at.

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: Really.

Chris Gammell: And, yeah, because.

Dave Jones: It's just, you know, they keep.

Chris Gammell: I hear stories. So, I go out with, you know, these guys for lunch sometimes. They talk about stories of, oh, you know, well, it used to be the good old days, you know, back in the 90s and everything. You know, before even just data sheets were available online. Because, and they say 90s. Before the web.

Dave Jones: The web changed everything. Yeah, yeah. Mid-90s is when it all changed. Right.

Chris Gammell: And they say 90s because.

Dave Jones: In a single year, it was all over.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they were working then. It's not like it started in the 90s. Or, you know, the good times were in the 90s. They were all the way back. But, you know, these guys weren't working then. They were in college or whatever. So, you know, those were the good times because there was just tons of money. That's the only channel you had to get your stuff out, to learn about, you know, new parts or whatever. And like you said, Dave, there were tons and tons of companies. And now, I mean, razor thin margins on everything, you know, like even just DigiQ alone, right? I mean, like, they're just going on volume. They sell, you know, a thousand resistors for.

Dave Jones: Well, their other. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: There's other.

Dave Jones: Their other area, though, was applications. You know, they would have application engineers. Oh, we'll help you with the design. I've complained about this before. Or, you know, oh, they phone you up and, you know, would we, can we help you with your design? We're experienced electronics engineers. And I'm going, no. If I need your help, I'll, you know, nobody will ask for it. I'll call you when I call you. I doubt it. It'll take you three months to get up to speed on the project. How can you possibly help? We can choose you. We can help you choose the right part. But you don't know my requirements. And they go, well, tell us your requirements. And I go, it'll take me a week to explain it to you. I'm not going to do that.

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: I'm the experienced design engineer. That's why they hired me.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, like maintaining that context is tough, right? I mean, like, and you think about how many, you know, just distributors have, you know, maybe 30 clients in an area. So that means their FAEs also have 30 clients in an area. They're trying to keep all that stuff straight. And like you said, maintaining that context is just really, really tough.

Dave Jones: But granted, there are circumstances where you don't have enough engineering talent in-house. And where these field application engineers are very valuable. Yeah, definitely. Right. You don't have an analog, you don't have an FPGA expert. Well, fine. One of these FPGA distributors, they'll have an expert who can, you know, write you some VHDL for you to get you up and running or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, they can write a test bed for you. They can do, you know. So they've got those value-added services happening there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Which is applicable to some companies, not to others.

Chris Gammell: Right. And, you know, with those smaller companies, too, I think that's going to be a trend, too. You know, talking about the NBA playbook and, like, offloading everything. It's so much easier to just cut a check to an outside agency. It doesn't always work the best. But, you know, like, when it's just a line item of... It's pretty easy to do. Yeah, 50 grand for X amount of, you know, engineering hours. It's like, yeah, of course I'd like that. I don't have to pay, you know, health benefits and everything else, right? Well, in the U.S. at least. You know, I don't have to pay salary. Right. And I don't have to, you know, maintain these people. And so it's like a flexible workforce. Now, there's tons of downsides to it as well in terms of context and everything else. But I think that's going to be a bigger and bigger thing. And since this is, you know, half complaining show, half plug show, we also talked about that on the Engineering Commons about free agency. You know, and just how it's going to get bigger, you know, like, and not just, you know, small firms. Like, of course, you know, there's always going to be consultants and contractors and everything. But I think big firms that are actually, you know, they just outsource or they accept outsourced work, basically. Not necessarily, you know, out of the country, like offshoring, but just company A has, you know, too much work. They want some flexible workforce and they throw it to company B that has, you know, per hour design services and stuff.

Dave Jones: So this is where the National Broadband Network comes in, right? Fibre to every home, every office. Everyone around the world. You don't even have to be working with people in the same country, although that helps with time zone things, right? But you can, you know, people don't actually have to physically come into your office. You can easily do this sort of stuff, video chat all day, every day. Oh, God.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You can have your design review meetings where everyone's on Skype.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you could.

Dave Jones: Right? There's nothing wrong with that if you've got the bandwidth technology there to do it.

Chris Gammell: So.

Dave Jones: There's nothing wrong with that.

Chris Gammell: So me and my phone in the basement won't work. But maybe.

Dave Jones: No, I doubt it.

Chris Gammell: Maybe once the cable guy comes out.

Dave Jones: And then that's when you can flip them the bird off camera, you know. So, you know. Right. Dickhead. It's a bit harder to do, you know, whereas you're sitting in the design review meeting and you do it under the table, you know. You're flipping the bird under the table, you dickhead. Right, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Or if you do an audio, you can just, you know, put it on mute and take a nap.

Dave Jones: Mute and just blurt out a few expletives, yeah. Or blurt it out to certain other people in the group. And then, you know. So you'd have a kill managers button, right? So you would have a mute. Different meaning, maybe. Yeah, to everyone, but yeah, exactly. So you could cue who you wanted to send your audio to. So you hit that big red button and then you start cursing everyone else. Yep. All the other engineers start pissing themselves and the managers go, what's going on, guys? What's funny? Yeah. It's kind of like the bingo thing. If you're in a meeting, you'll play a real wank word bingo. And somebody shouts out bingo and everyone pisses. And, you know. All the engineers, you know, burst out laughing. And the managers go, what's funny? What's going on, guys? I don't get it. What? Guys, come on. Clue me in. I'm cool.

SPEAKER_01: I'm hip. Come on, guys. Come on. I'm cool. I won't get mad. Schmucks.

Chris Gammell: It's sad. I love it. It's sad because you know that managers aren't bad people, right? It's just.

Dave Jones: Well, that's what I said before. I don't mind them as people. But if they suck as a manager, I'm going to tell them something. Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, and it becomes an automatic us versus them thing, right? Even if you have a great working relationship, there's just different priorities, right? There's, you know, a manager is paid to get things done and, you know, make sure it's on time. And the engineer is paid to get it right and, you know, try and.

Dave Jones: And take the blame.

Chris Gammell: Well, take the blame. Be the whipping boy, right? But, you know, like also future-proofing is another thing, right? I mean, you always talk about gilding the lily, right? I mean, that's not something you're getting paid to do. You're doing that because you know that you should, right? You think it's necessary. Exactly. Yes. You are future-proofing your design against stupidness or dumb decisions.

Dave Jones: And there's something that you thought of that they didn't think of when they wrote their product spec, right? And you're thinking, I'm going to secretly include all this shit because I know down the track it's going to be a problem. And I'm a smart-ass engineer and I'm going to include this.

Chris Gammell: And when they give you a week to implement it, then you just flip a switch.

Dave Jones: Yeah, fix it. You look like a hero, right? Because you've already done it. Exactly. That's it. Yep. That's the way to do it, noobs out there. Exactly. If you're starting your new engineering job, that's the way to do it. Building that stuff to make you look like a hero. Yes. I like it. And once you look like a hero once, you get that hero reputation. It only takes one simple thing. You're a hero and you get that rep for the rest of your career at that company.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Right? Oh, your Dave did this once. He's a freaking hero. Yep. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but then you've got to keep performing and then you always gild the lily. And then until your manager figures out, well, why did Dave design in 20 extra dollars in this $30 device? Oh, I don't know, boss. He must just really think it's necessary.

Dave Jones: But he knows what he's doing. He's a hero. He's a hero. Yeah. Trust him.

Chris Gammell: You've got to listen to him. Oh, boy.

SPEAKER_01: Good times.

Chris Gammell: So what do you think about robots?

Dave Jones: Robots are cool. I wish I had one.

Chris Gammell: So there was a picture or there was an article about robots. I feel like I'm woefully unprepared for all things robot. I mean, do you ever do motor controller projects? I see all these chips popping up on Chip Report.

Dave Jones: No, I really haven't touched on that side of things. I would like to. You know, I would love to build my own RTD tool or something. But who the hell has the time? Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's not easy, right? I mean.

Dave Jones: No, it's a huge project to take on. You know, building a robot, any type of robot, really. Any reasonably complex one is a reasonably large task. Right. You know, you can hack one together with a couple of motors. But, you know, you want a bit of elegance in there.

Chris Gammell: Right. And that's all software, right? I mean, that's what Martin Ronin said here on the thread. He said, the best hardware of the world is just dumb actuators if you don't have a mind to drive it. Which is true. Exactly. Right. I mean, and even like looking at like the, you know, the software necessary to get human-like motion. It's just insane. I mean, it's just from a control system standpoint.

Dave Jones: Or vision detection and all sorts of stuff. And, you know, it's just, yeah. It's massive amount of software and computational power. And you think about like. And control theory and all that stuff. Right. And the way that you're usually doing it.

Chris Gammell: You know, if you're programming a micro in order to turn an actuator, that means you're probably doing it in C or assembly or maybe C. C++ if you've got a lot of memory, right?

Dave Jones: If you're a wanker. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But that is not an easy way to do like high-level actions, right? If it's like reach out and grab orange, right? There's a lot of stuff that's in there.

Dave Jones: No, you've got to have a real-time operator. That pushes you into a real-time operating system. And then high-level stuff.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. And then you get all that stuff built on top of it. And then you have like an application layer. And it's like, okay, well. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And then you end up going, well, I might as well use a freaking PC in there instead of an 8-bit micro, you know? Or I might as well use my Raspberry Pi or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Or like LabVIEW. A lot of people do LabVIEW for Robotics too.

Dave Jones: Or LabVIEW. A lot of robots are.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But they're putting entire computers underneath.

Dave Jones: Because they're easy at that application level, right? All that low-level shit is taken care of for you. Exactly. You know, they've got vision. They've even, you know, you can hook up a camera to the National Instruments driver and they've got like vision software which can do object recognition and all that sort of stuff. It's already done for you. You know, you don't have to spend six months writing your own object recognition firmly.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right.

Dave Jones: That's...

Chris Gammell: It's crazy. Yeah. And you think about... I don't blame people for going that route. They talk about it from a manufacturing standpoint, right? I mean, they've talked about it in terms of, you know, maybe coming back to the U.S. because, you know, when you can turn off the lights, that's like the ultimate, right? Is it like the dark factories and turning off the lights and...

Dave Jones: Ah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, like, that takes a lot to get there, right? But at the same time, if you can do that, then labor cost is just a, you know, it's just a... It's nothing, right? It's maintenance. It's... It's a... It's mapping at the beginning. Distant memory. Right, exactly. And so it is important. I mean, like, there's no doubt about that. It's... So... People should look into it. I'm not going to touch it, but... You know, go on, kids. You can do it.

Dave Jones: Every man's dog, though, seems to be working on robots, especially with that first robotics thing, you know? Yeah. Seems like every school kid in America is designing a robot.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. It's...

Dave Jones: I'm just jealous, you know?

Chris Gammell: Well, you know, but first... First, you know, I've heard that as a complaint is that first is a lot of, I mean, lab view. I mean, because it's... Because of the difficulty of that, right? You're still learning.

Dave Jones: It's high. It's high, of course. It's high level. They can't... It'll take them forever to come up to speed to be able to write their own C code from scratch. Right, exactly.

Chris Gammell: And really, that's not the point of first. The point of first is to get kids excited about science, and that's what a lot of people think.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: It doesn't matter what you're doing. If kids are having a good time doing it, that's...

Dave Jones: Or how you're doing it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Dave Jones: But it's like the Arduino thing. Exactly. It doesn't matter how you're playing with electronics as long as you're playing with electronics.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. It is just critical that you can impart some kind of change on your environment with electronics. That shit will hook you for life. You know, even just blinking that LED the first time. That is going to do it. You know, that is a powerful thing. Exactly. And that's... Anytime people complain about Arduino... You know, Arduino has done... They do a lot of good stuff still, you know, and a lot of cool projects come out of that. But in terms of the ultimate power of it, it's all about that. You know, it's all about that blinking light, man.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Because, you know, otherwise the Arduino is just yet another development board. Whoop-dee-doo. Right. Exactly. But it's that ecosystem. And the community, right. Right. And the community and everything else. Yeah. Right. That makes it all work. And people get excited about it. Yeah. And they're pushing these things in the kids' hands everywhere. And it's fantastic.

Chris Gammell: So one last thing before we go. I wanted to call out... I usually don't call out Hackaday projects anymore. But this one just really kind of got me. Because it was a robotics project. And it was just, like, really cool. It was a 200-pound Wi-Fi deploying robot. Did you see that one?

Dave Jones: No. Where does it... It's the same guys... How and where does it deploy?

Chris Gammell: It's the same guys that are doing the Stompy robot. Which was the 18-foot hexapod robot that was on Kickstarter. Ah, right. So it's an artisan asylum. But basically, it's like a low-to-the-ground robot. And then basically, it dumps a Pelican case with a battery and Wi-Fi in it. And basically...

Dave Jones: I see. Yeah. It's like a tracked robot. It's like a tank. Yeah, it's like a little tank. It's got, like, tank tracks on it.

Chris Gammell: It's got a camera and everything.

Dave Jones: And it's all sheet steel and stuff with a Pelican case strapped on top.

Chris Gammell: Two of them, actually. So then basically, what it can do is it can bounce. Ah, right. It can drop one and then it can go a little bit further because it's Wi-Fi. And then you could keep bouncing it back. So you can actually set up Wi-Fi networks. But then you can also bounce your signal back in order to keep the robot going. And I'm guessing because they're doing video, they need Wi-Fi. But that's pretty cool. I really like... I just think it's a really fun project because, I don't know, it's cool.

Dave Jones: And that's not terribly difficult to do at the high level. Maybe. Like, there are... Well, no. Like, just to get a... Just to control a robot via Wi-Fi. I mean, you know, you can get, like, a Ninja Block or something. Or you can get one of the... You know, you can get these other... These things which interact with, you know, web pages and Wi-Fi. And, you know, it can control an actuator, you know, and drive it and turn on a motor. But...

Chris Gammell: Okay. Well, I can't do it. I know that. No, that's as much. Well, no.

Dave Jones: There's off-the-shelf... You can build this with off-the-shelf hardware. You know, all the magic is in the mechanical aspects of the robot, how you build it. And also what sensors you put in and how you put the whole system together. But you can do all this with off-the-shelf hardware, basically.

Chris Gammell: Nope, I can't.

Dave Jones: So, you know, look, they're using a regular Wi-Fi steerable webcam. Yeah. Well, I haven't seen this thing working, but I can see. I've got one sitting on the bench right in front of me. It's exactly the same model, but it's black. Mine's white, right? And it's got one of these pan-tilt infrared remote-controlled cameras, right?

Chris Gammell: Okay, so you're saying they're not doing, like, video from scratch, which I wouldn't expect anyways. I mean...

Dave Jones: No. No, exactly. You know, because this is a Wi-Fi streaming camera I've got here. I can't get the bastard working because I'm too stupid, right, to get the bloody thing working over my internet connection. Yeah. Yeah, I bought it like it's supposed to just plug in and work, and I'm, bloody hell, I can't get it working. But they've got one of those on top of this thing, right? There's your pan-tilt camera Wi-Fi enabled bang off the shelf if you buy it on eBay for $50. And it hooks up to your Wi-Fi. And you can remote control it from anywhere in the world.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Pan-tilt for $50. I mean, jeez.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, you can't do it anywhere in the world, right?

Speaker ?: No.

Dave Jones: Well, I was... Oh, no, because I'm hopeless. I was thinking of hacking this thing, right? Because it's got motors in it, right? This is all remote controlled via the either Wi-Fi or an Ethernet connection. It's got both on it. It's got a little antenna and Ethernet. And, you know, I could actually, instead of driving the pan-tilt motor for the camera, I could drive wheels on... I could just, you know, hack it to drive the wheels on a robot. So I could easily have a Wi-Fi remote control robot from anywhere in the world by hacking a $50 webcam.

Chris Gammell: Well, maybe that's what they did. Maybe you should give these guys a call.

Dave Jones: Well, you know, like they've got grunty motor drivers in it. This thing weighs like 100 kilos or something probably. It's all sheet steel and huge, you know. It's half a meter long or something. But, yeah, you know, I could easily... I was going to actually maybe attempt to do a video of this, hacking this webcam into a robot because it's all there.

Chris Gammell: Well, there's actually one last thing I wanted to point out on the list from this week. It's actually kind of with that because it's about hacking and, you know, pulling stuff apart. It's actually... It's... Oh, crap. What's his name? It's Dr. Analog, right? It's Dr. Analog on Twitter and it's... And readingjimwilliams.blogspot, basically. But he actually runs a course. And basically, he has a course. And I haven't really heard of this in other places. What he's doing is basically they're ripping stuff apart. That's the main thing. Cool. Isn't that great? I mean, it's like you wouldn't build a bridge without, you know, studying how bridges are made.

Dave Jones: So it's basically a teardown course. It's a teardown course. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. And it's great because, like, with electronics, you're always going to start from first principles, right? It's like, okay, voltage divider and everything like that.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. And that's why engineering education is an epic fail, right? Because they start from as far as getting people into it. Right, exactly. Right? Because it sucks ass. Because they start from, let's learn what an electron is. Let's learn quantum physics and then we'll work our way up. Screw that.

Chris Gammell: And that takes forever. You lose tons of people along the way, right? They just hemorrhage. You lose enthusiasm.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Instantly. Right.

Chris Gammell: So this course, though, is an EE prototyping course. And he's just pulling stuff apart and they're talking about it. And it's brilliant. It's like you said, it's a teardown course. I love it. I think having that kind of context is just killer, you know? So nice job. Totally agree.

Dave Jones: So where is he teaching this?

Chris Gammell: I thought it was, he's at Olin, I think. He's at Olin and MIT. I think he bounces between the two up in Boston. It's Kent Lundberg.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: I knew that, but I've forgotten about it. Dr. Analog is Kent Lundberg. So, but yeah, great. I mean, we've talked about his blog before. He's reading Jim Williams. He goes over, you know, he kind of, he's going through all the different app notes and stuff. But this is, this is a good idea. So if there's any other teachers out there, replicate this. And then you could show Dave's videos too. Or Mike's videos. Cool. All right. Well. Is that it? I think so. Sorry about my connection. Why over time? Hopefully it'll be better by next week.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's all right.

Chris Gammell: Because.

Dave Jones: You, you shouldn't have to edit this. I, I just kept on going. Just kept on plowing through. Okay. Cool. Being the professional broadcaster that I am. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We're so professional. Which is why people should vote for us on the podcast awards and or the streamies. So we will leave those in the show notes.

Dave Jones: And the streamie. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Definitely.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Yeah. All right, man. Well. All right. We'll see you next week.

Chris Gammell: With mystery guest number seven.

Dave Jones: Yeah. We haven't figured out who that is yet, have we?

Chris Gammell: Dave, it's mystery guest. Just say mystery guest. administered.

Dave Jones: Okay. Mystery guest. Yeah. See you next week. Can't wait. See you then. Bye.

Speaker ?: Outro Music