#122 – Processors, CEOs & Soldering irons - Plentiful Perfunctory Programs

Chris Gammell: This episode of the Amp Hour is sponsored by Club Jameco, part of Jameco Electronics, a leading component distributor for over 35 years. Club Jameco allows you to upload your kit ideas and start selling to your peers and the public at large. You never need to purchase large lots of components up front or bag and ship your kits. Sign up and submit your design, and if it's chosen by the community, you can start making up to 10% on the cost of your kit. To learn more and see some of Chris and Dave's favorite kits, go to clubjameco.com slash theamphour. This is the Amp Hour Podcast, recorded November 19th, 2012. Episode 122, Plentiful, Perfunctory Programs.

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: Hey Chris, I'm back.

Chris Gammell: You are. Welcome back, Dave. Thank you. You held down the fort last week? I did. I did. Nice interview with Zach. He was a great guest. Well done. I enjoyed it.

Dave Jones: Excellent. Sorry I missed it.

Chris Gammell: But Dave, you had promised me Mars, and instead I got Facebook. What's up with that? Buzz Aldrin is pissed. Buzz Aldrin. I thought we'd jump right into that. We were talking about that before the show. I know. Yeah, we were. That was great.

Dave Jones: I love Buzz. I love Buzz. I do too. He's great. It's good value.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, he's awesome.

Dave Jones: And we were just talking about how we need to find an image of Buzz Aldrin flipping the bird. That's right. So I'm putting this out like, you know, casually flipping the bird, like, you know, flipping it Wydler style. You know, like the famous Wydler poster.

Chris Gammell: Right. We're looking for another t-shirt here. That's the ultimate.

Dave Jones: So we're going to crowdsource this one. If you can find us a photo of Aldrin flipping the bird, please post it. And he makes a great point. I mean, you know, we're supposed to have Mars colonies by now.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we've got bloody Facebook. And if you look at it, how much, you know, how much Facebook is worth and other companies like that. Worth, quote unquote. We probably, you know, yeah, could have gone to Mars, right?

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, it's all about priorities, really. I mean, but yeah, I had posts about this because it's like, well, you know, even in the midst of what we talk about, right? You know, like Kickstarter and the kit business and, you know, consumer level or even, you know, professional level electronics. Sometimes it seems kind of trite compared to the really big goals of going to frigging Mars, you know? Like, yeah, exactly. That's a big goal.

Dave Jones: Oh, I'm doing a pissant power supply kit, you know? What? Why? You know?

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: I'm always talking about I can fly to the moon on two watts, you know? Right. Well, prove it, man. Yeah. Why not? I know. Slacker.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Unbelievable. Oh, it's a very valid point.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know what to do about it. I guess if anyone did, they'd probably start doing it. But, I mean, we see people like Elon Musk. I mean, Elon Musk has said. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. You know, that's part of SpaceX is getting to Mars. Right.

Dave Jones: But you've got to have money or power or both, right? Both helps. Just having the drive and the, yeah, just having the drive, you know, and the ambition and the ideas isn't enough, you know? Because these grand things take grand amounts of money and, you know, grand amounts of resources. And nobody since Kennedy has had the balls to, you know, the vision to, you know, lay him out there and go, right, we're going to do this. And, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know, I always wonder about that because, you know, I'm not an economist and I wouldn't, you know, ever dare become one. But I always wonder about, like, what that means for in terms of, like, I think we might have talked about this two weeks ago even of just, like, the multipliers of, you know, if you put a hundred bucks into a space program, you not only get, like, the people then going out and buying test gear and, you know, paying subcontractors and stuff like that, but also, like, the, you know, like, the future investment that you get from the apples forming later on based on commoditized technology and, you know, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And in terms of the economic development that is really long term. So, it's, well, we developed into politics really fast, didn't we? We did. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And the point is it's impossible to foresee those sorts of things, you know, from putting your money into, say, you know, a good space program or something, you know. Yeah, it doesn't have to just be space. It's hard to convince people that there are so many spinoff benefits for an entire country or an entire planet or an entire industry or all three, you know. Well, yeah. And sometimes rightly so.

Chris Gammell: It's tough. I mean, like, a lot of companies are having a tough time right now, you know. It's a lot of them, aside from the fact that a lot of them have trouble at the top seeing past the next quarter. I mean, it's tough just, you know, seeing the next year because of, you know, slowing economies and everything else. So, it is tough, you know.

Dave Jones: Well, this is one thing I, a little whinge I had on the list here is that it always comes down to that one big number. You know, how much did you earn this quarter or this year? And how much are you paying the bloody shareholders? And, you know, and I was just reading a release from Agilent, right? And they're going, yeah, we made X billion this year and we are returning X, you know, amount of cents to shareholders and improving their value. Wank, wank, wank. And, like, all of the, it seems that the technology and the products are just down in the noise. Like, they just don't matter, you know. And it's like, whereas us, engineers.

Chris Gammell: Until, like, the business dried up.

Dave Jones: Right, until they don't sell anymore.

Chris Gammell: They say, oh, why didn't we invest? We need to invest. And then they go back to ignoring it, right? Right.

Dave Jones: Speaking of which, TI are going to axe how many?

Chris Gammell: 1,400 jobs. 1,400?

Dave Jones: They're giving the arse? Yep. They're all getting arse? Yeah, I think that's... 1,700. 1,700. Oh, 1,700. Okay. So, sorry to anyone who's working in the OMAP division. Because I think that's where most of the cuts or a majority or all of them perhaps are coming from.

Chris Gammell: That's the main thing they're getting rid of. I mean, this is kind of the race to the bottom of ARM and tablet type wars where you're, you know, you have chip processor companies that are manufacturing the chips. They're all using similar IP. You know, a lot of it's ARM-based. A lot of it has peripherals wrapped around it. But then it's... But it's interesting that then... It's just really hard to play in that market.

Dave Jones: These companies are moving out to their own individual... To manufacturing their own chips now. Like Apple's making their own chips. And now they're talking... I mean, I think we might have mentioned it a few weeks back because this isn't new news about TI wanting to spin off OMAP. You know, it's been in the news for quite some time that they're looking to perhaps sell it. To sell the OMAP division perhaps to Amazon for their Kindle. Because Amazon used the OMAP in the Kindle. They're probably the OMAP's biggest customer. I don't know. But I would suspect they'd be one of the biggest, if anything. Yeah, you know...

Chris Gammell: I was looking at this and I was thinking... Rather, when we talked about it, I was thinking about the OMAP. I'm like, ah, you know, this really wasn't... This isn't something that should just go to Amazon because what about everybody else? And, I mean, I didn't realize it was kind of an all or nothing. Like, well, if it's not going to someone, it's going in the toilet. We're just going to throw it away.

Dave Jones: Well, they're throwing away the R&D on new ones. They're still going to manufacture it, I think. Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, that's where the...

Dave Jones: Even if the sale doesn't go through, that's where they're making the cuts. They're making the cuts in the R&D side of things. Right.

Chris Gammell: Which means it's dead. I mean, no one's going to design it in now unless it's... No, that's right.

Dave Jones: Everyone goes, oh, now is where engineers like us go, oh, shit. I'm not going to use OMAP anymore. I'm going to have to transition because... Yeah, I'm not going to touch that. I mean, as soon as this article comes out, you instantly go, oh, shit. The game's over, right? I'm moving. Yeah, definitely. I'm packing up my bat and ball and I'm going home.

Chris Gammell: Right. Or going to another vendor. Well, yeah, you could do that. I mean, you could risk it. I mean, you could try it now and say, oh, well, maybe I'll get lower priced parts. But that's just a short-term thing, right? It's a short-term thing, yeah, yeah. Start ramping.

Dave Jones: Exactly. They would have customers, just like most of these big chip companies do, they have them tied up in supply contracts. So it's not like they can just break them. So they have to continue to manufacture these chips. But rarely is, well, I don't think I've ever heard of one where there's a contract which says we have to continue to develop a product and improve upon it. Yeah. Right. Yeah, you just have to make it for the next 10 years.

Chris Gammell: You have to support it as well. You have to support it as well, yep. There's no more of that trusty Xilinx tool where you say, oh, it's not working? Upgrade the software to the next version. Well, you can't upgrade to the next chip version. There is nothing but errata. So deal with it. Right. I mean, yeah. And it's nice for that. I mean, in terms of like a chip manufacturer, they probably like it because now it's just all money, right? I mean, it's just all, you just make the process more efficient. You shrink the dye as much as possible. You try to keep it, you know, you keep your process controls in place. But eventually, you know, you're not spending any new money on it. So it looks really good in the accounting books. But in terms of, you know, longevity of a product, obviously it's dead in the water. So that's kind of what you were talking about with the one big number. I mean, this kind of move looks great for that one big number. Oh, of course. You know, share price bounced up because now expenses drop, right? I mean, all these engineers now are, you know, not even just engineers. All these people are now not on the books anymore. And, of course, this looks great. Hello, Altium. Margin goes up. Shout out to Altium. Sorry. That's okay. It looks great for shareholders, but it's such short-term thinking that it's just like, you know, and we see it all the time, right? Yeah, of course. It just happens continuously. But I did, I was concerned about this for the BeagleBone, or BeagleBoard, rather, the BeagleBoard project. It's based on the OMAP. Because that uses OMAP, right. And that's actually, so I actually saw, actually, Jeff Kaiser was talking about that. And then Jason Kreidner cut in, and he said, no, it's actually, it's only on the original BeagleBones that the OMAP is on. The BeagleBoard, sorry, the BeagleBoard. The original BeagleBoard has the OMAP. Right. The BeagleBoard XM and the BeagleBone do not have OMAP processors.

Dave Jones: They use some other arm, do they?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, the BeagleBone uses a Sitara. And I had kind of blown this out of the water. It's another TI processor, another ARM-based. Oh, right. I think it's single core, though. I could be wrong about that. Right. But basically, you know, it's, I even told my coworker about this today. I was like, oh, you know, TI's shutting down the OMAP line. It's like they're shutting down their whole processor line. I said, really? And then I kind of stepped back and I said, no, no, that's actually, that's not true. Because, you know, they still have MSP430, they still have Sitara, and they, you know, I think there might be another couple arm lines. I don't know the whole range of it. But at the same time, it's crappy.

Dave Jones: And here's where all your arm fans jump out of the woodwork. Ah, no problem. Arm, beautiful. You just, you know, solder in a new chip from another vendor. Yeah. Yeah. It ain't that easy. You've got to do significant engineering to change arm vendors. Or even the same vendor to a different arm product within the same vendor. You have to do significant engineering with that.

Chris Gammell: I had posted an article, actually an EDN article, about, you know, there was one processor to rule them all. I was talking about arm. And the author was talking about, you know, could this happen? Could there just be one arm or, you know, just one platform? And I said, no, that's not actually the question that should be happening here. Should there only be one processor family or, you know, one architecture or one, you know, one overall way of doing things? And I think no. I mean, I think, sure, it can be great. It can be, you know, it can be a majority holder. But, you know, what happens if arm takes a dump tomorrow, right? And what if, I mean, just as easily.

Dave Jones: History has shown that it doesn't happen. I mean, there's nothing new in today's market that makes arm magic. This could have happened 30 years ago, right? And it's, you know, Intel with their huge run, where, you know, Intel was using bloody well everything. But there's always those niche markets or those other big markets that aren't catered for. It's just, you know, it's just not going to happen.

Chris Gammell: It's just the majority case, right? I mean, this is just a lot of people are using arm because the licensing is there. And it's, you know, it's a good core to drop in. And you can get rid of all your overhead, also known as your engineers that work on processor architecture, right?

Dave Jones: No, you know, if you're betting on arm is going to be, you know, 99.9% of processors used in every single electronic product on the planet in the next 20 years, I think you're dreaming.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Because as soon as they become the sleepy giant, then some other young upstart comes and, you know, starts... And comes out with a free core.

Dave Jones: Hey, look, there's no license in fee. Hey, how's that?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right, right. And I thought I saw that MIPS... Didn't MIPS get sold? I didn't actually post that story. Oh, I haven't heard. I thought I saw that MIPS was no longer... Because they were a company and a core, I thought. And I thought the company got divvied up among a bunch of people. Oh, okay. But the core is still around because that's in a lot of products.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's in the microchip 32-bit PIX and stuff like that. And in quite a few others. It's fairly popular.

Chris Gammell: Right, yeah. And so, I mean, it's not like ARM is the only one, but that's the way it should be. I mean, there should be competition among them because that's going to cause the greatest amount of innovation. What else will push ARM? You know, it's just like... I don't know. I'm not a very big fan of this. I think we talked about how Freescale is moving over to ARM. And I'm not a very big fan of that just because, I mean... You know, you can open up a whole lot of new markets like that if you're a chip maker, right? It's great. You know, you say, oh, well, now we can sell parts to everyone. It's like, yeah, well, you can. But now you're going to sell them for, you know, 50 cents. Whereas you're selling them for five bucks before. I mean, it's not a bad thing.

Dave Jones: And you barely make a one cent profit on each part.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. You're putting yourself into the meat grinder. And it's like... I know I sound very contradictory because on the one hand, I always say, oh, well, I don't want to lock myself into platforms, right? And on the other hand, I say, well, these companies should want to lock people into their platforms. But, I mean, that's the constant struggle in business, right? Of consumers wanting the most options and vendors wanting one option, namely theirs. Theirs, exactly. Actually, exclusively theirs.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. I don't know. Yeah. There's no easy answer. But, no, it's... There will continue to be other options. That's bullshit. Arm's not going to dominate the entire planet. It's just not going to happen. Right. Yeah. Speaking of discontinued products, I'm pissed. You're pissed? End of an era. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: What's that?

Dave Jones: Heiko have discontinued the FX888, apparently.

Chris Gammell: Now, what does the FX888 explain this for people that don't own one like me?

Dave Jones: It's a soldering iron, which basically follows the line from the famous Heiko 926, which I still have here on my bench. I've had it for, like, 25 years. Maybe. I'm still... It's my second iron here on the bench, the Heiko 926. Then they move to the Heiko 936. Then they move to the FX888, which is fancy new industrial design case, and it's funky yellow and blue color and stuff like that. Anyway, an analog, you know, a basic analog solder and iron with a knob, you know, those knob things. Yeah, yeah. You know, all these young whippersnappers haven't heard of. And controls, and yeah. You know, where you actually turn a knob and it has, like, a scale on it, 350 degrees. Yep. Turned around. No. So, apparently, they're going to stop selling the analog model and they're only going to sell the FX888D, which is the digital model. Oh. I've got nothing against the digital readout. Fine. Yeah. But give me a freaking knob. But now they've just got these up-down buttons, which apparently have all these different modes and crap, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right. So, it's great if you want to switch between two temperatures. You've got to use them, right? You've got to put them in every project. Right.

Dave Jones: You've got to use that 10-cent micro, that 50-cent arm micro. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We could put them everywhere. Bastards. Wow. Yep. Well, that's too bad. Unbelievable.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. Hey, Go of it. You know, this is, like, one of the industry standards. It's soldering irons, you know. Especially, like, it dominated the Australian market. You know, everyone's been using the Heiko 926 and 936 for, you know, 30 years now or something. 20, you know, 25 at least. And, yeah, they just, why? As if it wasn't selling. You know, it was selling like hotcakes, as far as I'm aware.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, you don't know that for real, but, I mean, very well could be, right? I mean.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I don't know. It's just stupid. Give me a knob. For goodness sake.

Chris Gammell: Well, I mean, that could be a lot of things, right? I mean, that really could be, I mean, more than likely it's cost, right? I mean, digital is almost always cheaper than analog in terms of, especially because you have a physical. No, I don't know.

Dave Jones: No, I don't think so. I think the FX AAA, well, you've got to have three seven-segment displays on there. You've got to have a couple of tactile switches. Come on. Come on.

Chris Gammell: All that is not more expensive than a carbon wiper pot.

Dave Jones: Than a carbon wiper pot, Ander.

Chris Gammell: You have to have a reliable, no, you know as well as anyone that if you put a switch onto a board, and if it's no good, you're going to get bitched at nonstop. And if it's on a soldering iron, doubly so, right? Because if you turn your soldering iron up to four, and it goes up to, you know, 20, you're screwed. You burn the tip off, right? I mean, it's just, yeah.

Dave Jones: At the very least, it's cost neutral, right? Between the two. No, I don't think so, man. Oh, man, you've got the huge one.

Chris Gammell: I lament this as much as anyone, but no. I think you're wrong.

Dave Jones: Honking iron transformant. No, no, no. You're just fluffing around the edges with the price here.

Chris Gammell: How about manufacturing costs? What about that? If you have wires in something, you know, if you're going to start point-to-point wiring, you need...

Dave Jones: There is no wiring in this. It's a PCB-mounted...

Chris Gammell: Okay, I've never pulled one apart. Yeah. I was talking about my butt.

Dave Jones: If you haven't seen my teardown, it's a PCB-mounted pot.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I've got to start watching your videos at some point.

Dave Jones: You're right.

Chris Gammell: No, come on.

Dave Jones: No, because most of the cost in something like this goes into, like, the transformer and the case. Yeah, no. Because they have big hunk and bit of iron, you know? Yeah. I mean, for a good quality transformer, which these ones have, you know, and that costs the majority of the money.

Chris Gammell: You'd be surprised how much people get cost out of transformers. I've seen some transformers go overseas and get pretty cheap.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, but, you know, we're talking like a big, you know, 80-watt transformer here. You know, it's a big hunk and bit of iron. Right. So, anyway, I can't believe that it's just purely a cost issue. That's got to be bullshit. So, something else is going on there. Anyway, I'm not happy.

Chris Gammell: That's too bad. It sucks when you see that it's the end of an era, right? You know, when it's... Yeah, exactly. You know, like, I mean, at the same time, we should celebrate change. But, you know, we're human, right? We don't want to...

Dave Jones: No, exactly. We like our products.

Chris Gammell: Change our ways.

Dave Jones: No, exactly. Engineers like that. They don't like change.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Speaking of change, did you see the announcement about Intel? We had a bit of change announced. CEO steps... Yeah. ...retires... ...whooping. Well, that's...

Dave Jones: Yeah, I didn't even know who Altolini is. Didn't even know who ran Intel these days. Couldn't care less.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's in charge.

Dave Jones: He's not bad. I mean... Whatever. I'm shrugging my shoulders here.

Chris Gammell: I know. Intel's kind of beyond... It's like out of the stratosphere of, you know, in terms of companies, right? Caring anymore. Well, caring, yeah. I mean, in terms of, like, who actually designs the parts in, right? I mean, to get their attention, you need to be a, you know, a super high-volume manufacturer.

Dave Jones: A Dell or a HP or... Yeah, you've got to be a... Yeah, or the CMs that put that stuff in.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. It's... But at the same time, you know, it could be an interesting thing because, you know, Intel keeps dancing on the, well, we're going to go into phones, right? We just saw a TI and say, I'm not touching that with a 10-foot pole, but now Intel might go touching it.

Dave Jones: This doesn't sound good.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, I mean, they always... They jump in and out of the embedded market and then they screw people over and, you know...

Dave Jones: Nah. Nah. Intel made their history on the desktop PC and that's forever where they will pretty much remain, I think.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it sucks when you optimize for that kind of stuff, right? I mean, if you have a... I mean, they have a huge operation, right? They own all the fads. They're... They're massive. Come on. Yeah. The CSS masters and...

Chris Gammell: But it's all based around these super high-end, super leading-edge processors that...

Dave Jones: Massive. And with these massive dies in them with, you know, what, a billion transistors now or something.

Chris Gammell: Right. Ridiculous. And then they come back and they say, oh, well, you know, you should look at our Intel Core i7. Check out this Atom processor. What happened to Atom?

Dave Jones: It's still using, like, some netbooks and stuff, isn't it? But not many. Yeah, no, it is.

Chris Gammell: But, I mean, like, in terms of, like, their flagship... That's like having a flagship product, right? Like, you reviewed this Agilent scope, right? That 4000 series. Yep. And then it's like Agilent rolling out a 4000 series scope and then turning around and saying, oh, but wait a second. Check out this bottom-of-the-line, you know, cheapest entry model, right? I mean, that's effectively what it is.

Dave Jones: Which they've rebadged from Rigol.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. Right? I mean, granted, Intel's not doing that, but that would be the equivalent kind of thing where it's like, oh, well, maybe you should pay attention to the bottom of the line. But buy a lot of them because we need it. Oh, boy.

Dave Jones: To get that one big number looking good.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Bastard. Okay. Okay, here we go. I know we've been jumping around a lot already this week, but we have to talk about this 4000 series scope. Do you know what I'm going to bring up here?

Dave Jones: Oh, not the tablet screen. Yeah. It's a crock of shit. You would have been able to brag if they actually didn't put a screen in it. Oh, come on, man. And then you had to use your tablet.

Chris Gammell: Okay, so tell people... Teepa, tell people what it is first because then we can post about your review and your, you know... Well, I haven't actually used it, right? I get scopes first thing.

Dave Jones: The scope is a Windows CE-based scope, right? Just like all the other... Yeah, the big touchscreen. ...series scope, yeah. And it's got a big touchscreen on it, right? And what they've done is they've added a menu system up there to allow you to control the scope from a tablet, if you so choose. And they've made this marketing claim that, oh, you can just sit back on your beanbag and sit there with your tablet and control your scope. Whoop-de-freaking-do. Whoop-de-do. Is my response. Yeah, I agree. Because it's pointless. A scope is a hands-on instrument where you're always probing shit and doing stuff. You're always within the reach of it. To add tablet control capability is so niche and stupid. It's just... It puts it in the whoop-de-doo category. Okay, we were...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no, I agree with that. Right now it is a whoop-de-doo thing. I totally agree. But, and I don't think you're going to be able to argue with me on this one. How long is it until someone pulls out their NBA playbook and says, wait a second, this touchscreen assembly is $100? Well, we could just tell them to use a tablet. Those are $20 now in India and, you know, you can get them overseas for this much. How long do you think it's going to be until that happens? And at that point... Ha-ha!

Dave Jones: And at that point, Agilent test and measurement equipment business goes out of business. Guaranteed. Yeah, maybe. No.

Chris Gammell: I don't know, man. No. I'm just saying, it's starting and everybody listening was here to experience it. And...

Dave Jones: Nope.

Chris Gammell: Printing chips is coming next.

Dave Jones: At the very least, what they would do is they would actually integrate their own custom tablet into the scope as the screen. So it sits in like a cradle in there and you use it. That's what I said to do. And then you can pull it out, right? And then you can pull it out.

Chris Gammell: Oh, come on. That was my argument from the beginning.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but they're not going to use a third-party tablet, right? They're not going to use a third-party tablet.

Chris Gammell: Well, technically it would be unless they manufacture the tablet, which they won't do. They'll just rebadge. That's what I'm saying. That's what I said from the beginning, that it would be ultimately cheaper to use a commodity tablet that they buy on the market from, you know, some CM somewhere and they just...

Dave Jones: And then sit it in there as a cradle in the thing. Yeah. That's what I said from the beginning. You starting to see the light, Dave? No. Your reliability goes out the freaking window. Of course it does. They're probably, ultimately paying more. Because if you're looking at the same screen, why can't they just buy? They've got to put all the engineering into designing the scope. So why not just buy the same screen that they can buy that's used in the tablet to begin with, toss everything else out and just put that in there as a regular scope?

Chris Gammell: Because then you have to engineer the battery and the charger and the everything else when it's already off the shelf ready.

Dave Jones: Why would you want to integrate it? Because it's pointless functionality. It's stupid. You need a battery.

Chris Gammell: You're going to make a wired one? I mean, how are you going to do this, Dave?

Dave Jones: You don't do it at all. That's what I'm saying.

Chris Gammell: All right. We'll wait and see. It's ridiculous. We will wait and see. It's a wink.

Dave Jones: It's not going to happen. And if they do it, they'll go out of business.

Chris Gammell: It's so going to happen. I may give you that you may be right about this chip printer thing in the short term, you know, 10 years or so. But I think I'm right about this. I think we need to have a bet here. That's what I'm saying.

Dave Jones: These devices need to be fit for the purpose. And having a removable screen is pointless. It caters to like 0.01% of the market who use these devices. It's useless to put in engineering into a removable screen.

Chris Gammell: You were thinking inside the oscilloscope box.

Dave Jones: No, I'm thinking like a practical engineer meeting the market demands. The market demands don't want to fiddle around with some dick-ass removable thing which has to have some removable docking connector in there. Wank, wank. That'll just go missing because somebody, you've taken the thing out and it's gone missing, right? It's bad enough when your scope goes missing from the lab.

Chris Gammell: I have no argument that you were thinking like an engineer, Dave. You were not thinking like a marketer and someone that actually ends up, you know, specking something in, right? That's what our listeners should know. That is what ends up making products, like it or not.

Dave Jones: I'm not saying someone's not going to have a go at it, but I'm saying the company that does in this market niche is going to go out of business.

Chris Gammell: You betcha.

Dave Jones: I don't think so.

Chris Gammell: I think maybe people wouldn't use it, but there's no reason they'd go out of business. Like, look at this. Okay, so there's an article here. Like I mentioned, I alluded to earlier, there's a $20 tablet in India right now. $20. Come on.

Dave Jones: Where's it made? It's made in freaking China like everywhere else. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Now, granted, I should mention it's a $40 tablet that gets subsidized, but it's- And buy $20.

Dave Jones: And you can currently buy a $45 tablet wholesale in China, right? Right. So yeah, it's $5 cheaper. Whoop-dee. That's pretty crazy, man. I mean, like- Yeah, I agree. That is the cost of an assembly. It's totally awesome, right? Yeah, I agree. It's the cost of an assembly.

Chris Gammell: There's probably 30% off that if you're going to buy it wholesale, right? I mean, something like that. I agree. Because they're probably selling that pretty low margin to start with.

Dave Jones: Look, here's my prediction. You are just going to milk this thing and take every little- Every time someone mentions tablet and scope. Every time somebody mentions something to do with a tablet, having a user interface, you're going to go, ah, I told you so. Just like the stupid chip printing machine where every time somebody mentions- I haven't brought it up in a while. That they've drawn a little transistor with a freaking conductive pen, you're going to go, ah, I told you so. Ah, man.

Chris Gammell: I haven't done that in a while. I think our audience will note.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because you realize you're lost, and you'll realize you'll lose on this tablet thing, too.

Chris Gammell: No, the news cycle is just slow on the printing of chips industry.

Dave Jones: Unbelievable. Let's get on to something else, shall we?

Chris Gammell: Hey, this is something I want to talk about. Before we do that, we should mention our sponsor real quick, since they are generously sponsoring us.

Dave Jones: And we're halfway through the show.

Chris Gammell: We are. Well, sort of.

Dave Jones: And they've stuck with us for a couple of weeks now.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. We're in week three. And so our sponsor is Club Jamco. Yay! And so as people may have heard in past shows, you can go there and register and submit a kit idea, and you can actually get it made. I mean, people vote on it. But once it's voted on, then they will actually take their product engineers and work on getting it into kit format and putting it all together, getting part number four.

Dave Jones: And you don't have to do jack.

Chris Gammell: Once it's in there, yeah.

Dave Jones: And granted, you only get 10%, but eh. At least you don't have to do anything, right? You just come up with the idea and watch it sell. That's right.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: Which is okay if you want to do that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's effectively licensing. I mean, it's a nice deal if you want a hands-off approach. And actually, Ian of Dangerous Prototypes.

Dave Jones: You don't get much of a better deal anywhere else, really. I don't think so. There's a few other places which will kind of sort of do this thing. But yeah, if you think, oh, you're going to come up with an idea and get your 50%, it's not going to happen.

Chris Gammell: If you manufacture, you will. But we've been picking out kits each week. And you can actually see all of them. But this week, we actually picked out Horace Mims, who people probably know from all of his Radio Shack books about electronics and getting started in electronics. Yep. So he has a kit. He was working with Club Jamco as well. It's actually a kit of something from one of his early books called the Atari Punk Console, which I've heard of before.

Dave Jones: Yeah, so have I. But he didn't name it that right. Somebody else.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. That was actually named by Caustic Machines back in the 80s. But basically, it's like a noise generator for chip tunes kind of stuff. And it's pretty cool.

Dave Jones: And it's called the Atari Punk Console because it sounds very 8-bit Atari 2600 square wave.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, chip tune.

Dave Jones: Like audio, you know. Yeah. Oh, chip tune is a recent wank name for it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: All right. Very cool. Yeah. So if people are interested. And users, triple five.

Chris Gammell: Woo! If you want to check out the kit, if you want to check out the program, you can go to clubjameco.com slash the amp hour. And that also helps support us here at the amp hour. So we really appreciate it.

Dave Jones: We do. Thank you very much. Club Jameco. All right. So what's next? Somebody else is pissed off today. Not just us.

Chris Gammell: It's a trend.

Dave Jones: It is. Einball, if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Who is, I assume his handle is at Einball.

Chris Gammell: Yes. And it's short for some longer German word. I'm not sure what it means.

Dave Jones: Okay. Speaking of Germany, he went to the Elektronika exhibition in Germany, which is one of the world's biggest electronics. It's like massive. It's huge. It's in like 20 million halls or something. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to go to that one day. So would I. Actually, I think it's only on every two years, isn't it?

Chris Gammell: It is. Every two years. And my friend got to go this year. And I think I said two years ago. I was so jealous.

Dave Jones: Why? For work? Did he milk it for work?

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: He's a buyer. So he got to go over there.

Speaker ?: Ah, buyer.

Dave Jones: There you go.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Money.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And I said two years ago, oh, yeah, I'll try and scrounge a trip this time around. And I just forgot. Forgot. Completely.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Completely forgot. Two more years to procrastinate.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I might be in Germany in another two years. Maybe. Anyway, Einball is pissed off that when he went in there, almost everyone apparently was wearing suits.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, um, and, which, okay, right, whatever. Yeah, it's a show. I mean, sometimes that happens. Yeah, yeah, whatever. But the worst part is, apparently, him and his friend, who weren't dressed in suits, i.e. dressed as a real engineer, um, were, you know, spoken down to and looked at with contempt. Right. Because they weren't, you know.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: And, uh, ignored and scoffed at. And it's like.

Dave Jones: From the major, major vendors, apparently. Yeah. What are these companies doing?

Chris Gammell: They should be, I told him, I was like, people should be targeting people that are dressed normally exclusively. Right? You shouldn't, you shouldn't be targeting people in suits.

Dave Jones: And, and the worst they smell. If you can smell them coming, you know, this is someone we've got to talk to.

Chris Gammell: Right. That might be a bit, uh, judgmental there, David, but, uh.

Dave Jones: Come on. All right, I've been stereotypical. But his name and names, he's, he went to all the biggies. Yeah. Animal devices, TI, microchip, Mouser, Farnell, DigiKey.

Chris Gammell: I am surprised at the, the consistency of it. That's what, that's what really surprises me because, I mean, maybe. Yeah, yeah. Is this maybe a European thing or. I don't get it. I mean, like.

Dave Jones: I assume it must be because the ones, like the ones I've gone to in the US and the couple here in Australia that they have. Yeah. You know, every so often it's, you know, if you turn up in a suit, it's like, ugh, you're a suit. You're not. It's a good day if I don't turn up in my Zumbas. You're not a real engineer.

Chris Gammell: You know, like it's, uh, or my, uh, my jams. Jams? Yeah, 1980s, like colorful shorts. These are like. Oh, right. Okay. You know? You don't remember those?

Dave Jones: Right. No, no. It must be a brand name, is it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they were. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. People are the, people listening. Some of them will know what I'm talking about. Right. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, who dresses up for a show? That's like, that's like, you know, people saying, oh, I dressed up to get on an airplane. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. In the seventies, maybe, you know, like.

Dave Jones: Like, you know, understandable the people on the stands. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. But the, you know, because you want to give a professional appearance, wank, wank. Yeah. You know, not the. You've all got to dress similar. You know, I've been on the trade show stands where, you know, we have official company guidelines on, you know, the color of clothes you're allowed to wear and the type and, you know. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Right. Tell someone who cares. Right. Oh, boy. Yeah. And I don't know. Is this a European thing?

Chris Gammell: Please, our European listeners, let us know. Yeah. And you know, I know that.

Dave Jones: It seems totally different.

Chris Gammell: Some places are more fashion conscious than others, but still, why would you judge someone, you know, like. Like I said, I mean, you want to target people that just are excited about stuff, you know. That's why I don't understand that. But at the same time, you have to think about, you know, who's also manning stands. It's usually public relations type people and it's. Yeah. Sales people and stuff like that. Well, hopefully people will be in tune with engineers, but not necessarily. Well, not always. Right.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, no. I found at these shows, you can usually find someone cluey, right? Well, there's. Yeah. Okay. They've got a mix of sales and engineer types on the stand and you can always pick them apart. Oh, yeah. Right. Oh, for sure. You know, if you step back and you can, you know, tell the slick ass salesman who knows jack about technical anything, you know. Yep. Right. And wouldn't even be able to flash an LED and you can tell the engineer, you know. And you spot them a mile away. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So you always, you know. And not from dress either. Just from, you know, demeanor. Or from smell. No. Or from smell. No, it's just from, it's just from like, honestly, it's usually excitement about a product, right? That's, that's a really big one. You know, if you see one who's actually excitedly talking about a, you know, a tiny little dev board, you know, that's usually an engineer, you know. It's somebody, if not an engineer, someone that just worked on it, right? Someone who wants to show off the capabilities of what they're working on. And that's the kind of people I always want to talk to at shows anyways. Who wants to talk to the, you know, the schmoozers, you know. Ugh. That's not my thing.

Dave Jones: You can often tell them by their watch too, you know. If they're wearing a, like a cheap ass Casio or they're wearing a slightly calculated watch. Prejudice lives large here at the Amp Hour. Yeah. Or if they're, if they wear it as shiny, you know, Rolex, analog Rolex or something, then, you know, yeah, salesman. Right. Whatever.

Chris Gammell: Let's definitely fight prejudice with prejudice here, Dave.

Dave Jones: But no, you know, and I judge people based on what they say, you know, and how they act, not what they bloody well look like, or if they're male or female or they're, or, or what race they are or whatever, you know, whether or not they've got, or whether or not they're, they're, they do smell from a mile away or whether or not they're, you know, some scrawny, wheelie little nerd or if they're in a wheelchair or whatever. I don't give a toss.

Chris Gammell: You know, the one thing to watch out for at shows is to make sure they actually work for the company you're at the stand at. I've made that mistake before when I'm like talking to someone and I'm like, you don't actually work here, do you? You just, you just really like this product. Yeah. Should tip me off that you work wearing this shirt. I've copped that dozens of times. Yeah. It's fun still. I mean, don't, don't get me wrong. Those people are usually, if they're more excited, you know, they're like, ah, let me show you about this thing. Cool. Well, I'd love to see it, but, you know, you don't work here.

Dave Jones: So it would have been interesting if I went to this thing. Yeah, well. I wouldn't be wearing a suit. Me neither.

Chris Gammell: I don't know many.

Dave Jones: Or even a collared shirt. No, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah. If people, you know, are in Europe, let us know. I mean, I, the point I tried to get across to Einball is that, you know, it's actually Jan, is don't let it get you down. You know, like there's always going to be people that are, you know, look down on electronics or, you know, nerdy people or whatever, whatever the reason is, right? Don't let it, don't let it, you know, turn you away from the field or anything like that. It's just you have to work to find the awesome people. You know, there are people out there that are excited. And once you find them, you know, hang out with those people. They're the ones you can hang out with anyways. I mean.

Dave Jones: And don't let them change you or your opinion next time. Next time, turn up even rattier looking. Yes. Deliberately. Right. Right? Or take a picture of the person that made fun of you. Flip the bird. Put him on a t-shirt. Exactly. And post it on Twitter and I'll retweet it. Yeah, exactly right. This guy is a dickhead. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yes.

Dave Jones: Oh, man. Unbelievable. Yeah, that's, I haven't encountered that at shows before. I find a vast majority of people roaming around are roaming around in very casual attire.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's too bad. But hopefully it doesn't get yawned down too much.

Dave Jones: Is it similar to other sort of techie but non-hardcore shows like the CES in Las Vegas and stuff like that? Because I've never been to one of those.

Chris Gammell: Me neither.

Dave Jones: We have to get out more.

Speaker ?: We do.

Chris Gammell: Tell me about it. Again, though, electronics nerds, so maybe not.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Fair call.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. You wanted to crap on about another trend.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Which one?

Dave Jones: Web. Which one? Yeah, you've got many. We do, yeah. More ones that you poke a stick at. You wanted to crap on about web-based ECAD tools.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Go for it. Enlighten us. Well, this has been an increasing trend, right? So this past week we saw an announcement that Upverter, which was, you know, they were talking about starting up. To start out with they had schematics that you could share online and collaborate and everything. And there was another one called Circuit B that was very similar. Well, this week Upverter also included layout. And they have, what else? They have, I think they have where you can actually start to export it to CAD companies and everything like that. And so, yeah, that's really interesting. And actually then I started emailing as well with Circuits.io, which was up online. They had had a similar announcement.

Dave Jones: I think they contacted me as well.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they had a similar announcement a couple weeks prior. And so I've been talking, I think it was Ben, and we've been talking about, you know, what they're planning to do and everything like that. And it's actually, it's a similar service. You know, it's got a layout tool. It's got a, you know, schematic layout.

Dave Jones: Every man's dog seems to be doing this. And aren't some of the vendors offering, aren't like DigiKey or somebody like that offering some similar online tools and stuff? Oh, yeah, we've talked about that before.

Chris Gammell: Everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon. Well, no, so I would put, you know, Circuits.io and Upverter are now in their own category because they have a layout tool in the browser, which is different.

Dave Jones: Right. So that's the differentiator, I think.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, DigiKey actually had a layout tool for sharing schematics, and they were interactive schematics. But ultimately, that's really not that useful. I mean, it's interesting, but it's not. Of course.

Dave Jones: No, we've talked about this. Why would anyone bother using an online web tool except if you want to just share a very simple one-off circuit or something like that? Right, right, exactly. It's very limited. So the differentiator seems to be the inclusion of a PCB tool to make it a proper ECAD package.

Chris Gammell: Right. And the real power there is not just that it's, you know, they are free tools, at least for now. You know, there's schematic entry and layout is free. But KiCAD is also free, right? I mean, I've talked about KiCAD. Of course. But the real killer, and this really is good, is you can watch someone lay out a board live, which is cool because, you know, like you can work with friends.

Dave Jones: It's cool, but is it practical? I was going to get to that, Dave. Like, for example, Altium have a live collaboration feature, right? Right. And I can tell you, I've tried to use it. I tried to use it during the development of the thing. And, yeah, it's cool. It's cool. But from a practical point of view, it sucks ass.

Chris Gammell: Sucks ass, right. Right? Yeah. It's tough because it's...

Speaker ?: Ass.

Chris Gammell: Ass.

Dave Jones: Or how do you pronounce ass in Chinese now?

Chris Gammell: Oh, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Ass. Ass. Sucks ass. Sorry. Apologies to all Chinese listeners.

Chris Gammell: But, yeah, the tough part about that is just the dynamics of, you know, team interaction there, right? I mean, working with someone on an electronics project, you know, that is immediately jumping into design by committee, right? That is the definition of it because you have multiple people.

Dave Jones: Engineers are solo creatures. They don't like being watched over their shoulder as they design something. Not even a like thing.

Chris Gammell: They don't like collaborating. No, it's not even a like thing. That's just, you know, some engineers like collaborating. I like collaborating. I like working on big projects bigger than I could do myself. But... Of course. But at the same time, I don't want someone to jump into my schematic halfway through and say, Oh, well, why didn't you do this and that and this and that and this and that? And then all I can say to them is, Well, you weren't here. I already tried all this stuff. You know, like that's the ultimate... That is the worst feeling in the world where someone rattles through all of the things that they thought and then you've already tried all of them and you have to prove it. That is like... Yeah. That is worse than being on the phone with, you know, a technical magazine talking about what parts you're authorized to buy, right? I would honestly rather sit on the phone with, you know, someone in a call center telling them what parts I'm authorized to buy. How bad is that? Pretty bad, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's just frustrating because you have to defend everything, right? You want to get to the end and then have a design review where you can say, here is the holistic view of what I was looking at and then you defend yourself.

Dave Jones: What are you getting at here that the collaboration aspect of these tools is a wank? Is that what you're getting at? It's awesome. It's not practical.

Chris Gammell: It's awesome and it's good for revision tracking. Revision tracking is actually what the power of this is. So you have revision tracking and it's a public revision tracking, right? And that's what they were really going for. They were going for like a GitHub style. Now, they actually, you know, the way, if you think about how this is probably set up, it's probably, you know, you move a component from coordinate XY to coordinate XY, X2, Y2. They were just tracking that in a database. That is what they're doing. And so they can backtrack it. That's good and bad, right? I mean, because if you're the kind of person like, you know, sometimes make little moves and little adjustments, that gets really annoying. But at the same time, you know, it's just, it's all recorded. And so that's nice. You know, the GitHub kind of thing is more of a snapshot and then you, you know, you commit it, right? So there is a difference there because you don't always want to capture all the minutia. Sometimes you want to capture just the difference.

Dave Jones: Well, that doesn't work well for me because I'm one of these nervous people who have this habit. But, you know, this just, you know, it's almost a subconscious thing of like saving my work every two minutes. Like every time I make a major change, save, save, you know, boom, boom. I've got this macro finger thing happening on the keyboard, right? Yeah. And I'm paranoid. And I end up with a thousand different revision files in my backup folder. Yeah. You know, so this online collaboration thing is, for me, when you're live doing it, it'd be a pain in the ass. Even though I haven't tried this, I can just imagine. Well, there would be no save though. That's the thing. It'd be stupid. Right. Well, it'd be like at the end of the day when I choose to commit it, then that's fine and dandy. Right. Or at the end of the week. That would be more like GitHub is, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, that's, you hit commit, it's active, it's an action, right? It's a, you know, it's a decision. Yeah, right. So, yeah, that good and bad side, you know, that's, but ultimately, you know, it's cool, right? It's cool and it's, you know, it's good for collaboration in general. I don't think live collaboration is really, I think that's more of a wank, like you said. But it's cool. I mean, it really is. It is cool. Now, the real thing that I would be interested in, and I know I've talked to, oh God, I hope it's Ben. The thing that they're working on is the back end stuff, right? So, the, you know, working with board houses, right? And having one-click orders. And working on all the other stuff. They mentioned that to me as well, yeah. Right. So, and all that other stuff with it. And they said that, you know, eventually they might go towards a, you know, a model where one person can upload it. And then it becomes a library, like a sub-circuit library. So, you have a non-inverting op-amp, right? You can just pull that out with a very specified op-amp and it just drops it in your circuit. And I really like that, you know, from a modular design standpoint.

Dave Jones: And that back end stuff can be their revenue stream. Right, exactly. That keeps them going. Yeah, exactly. So, potentially, all the tools can be free. Yeah. But they offer these value-added, easy one-click services. That's where they can make their money from.

Chris Gammell: Exactly.

Dave Jones: Exactly. And that's really the value for U&B. And I think that's quite viable, yep.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. And it's not just based on, like, KiCad is based on interest and open source software, you know, goodwill of, you know, wanting to work on a project.

Dave Jones: And I would caution them, and I think they may already be doing this, but if they're not, I would caution them. If they're going to do something like that and make that their revenue model, make sure that anyone can use it, not just somebody using their tools. Make sure that anyone can use that service by uploading their own Gerbers from whatever, you know, if they want to make money, for example, on getting the board manufactured. Yeah. Upload using any other tool, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no, I like that idea. I mean, you know, it starts to smell of the ecosystem thing that I complimented and lamented earlier, right, of locking people in, you know, like, it's good from the vendor side but bad from the consumer side, right? Yeah. You know, some of it would be a good benefit, right? I mean, to be able to say one-click order a board, order the parts, even send it to an assembler, like, that kind of stuff, that's the holy grail, right? Now, granted, you're going to pay some margin for that, but more than likely, if you're actually doing anything fast, that is totally worth it. I mean, it's just, if you do it right and you can have the, you know, the library updated and the parts already associated, like, that kind of, that's a killer app. I mean, really, it would be. But at the same time, when you want to get it out, that, you know, do you have to pay money for that? You know, like, there's just a lot of other questions. Yeah, yeah, right. And I told all this stuff to Ben, too, so.

Dave Jones: So, as always, the devil is in the detail. One small little thing can absolutely piss somebody off and they won't use your tool again.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right. Well, and, yeah, and this is all before we even talked about the actual layout, right? I mean, like, there are just tons and tons of quirks in Altium and Mentor and Allegro and, like, all of these things. You know, like, there's just so many quirks that people are used to and people say their preferences. Well, no, it's just more of a, you know, that's what they learned on, right? Like, people can relearn anything, but they don't want to. And so, more often than not, they will throw down the money for the license to just keep doing it the way they're doing it because that shift is just so hard. And, which means that they'll only really get new people or people that are very adventurous. So, it's interesting.

Dave Jones: Well, it would be interesting to see how this whole web-based ECAD market folds out. I don't think they're going to take any part of the professional market at all. I can't see it.

Chris Gammell: Well, near term. Near term. Because it's like what I said. Yeah, near term. If you get students now, right? If you get people that are, you know, working on it for, you know, like a college project, they're working with their buddies on a, you know, a board and they get really used to it, that's the same kind of thing that happens. You know, they develop these ties and then if the company can survive the fledgling stages of being a company, then, yeah, you know, they could make it. They could, you know, grow and continue to develop their tool, the browser tools and, you know, web stuff can keep getting better. You know, cloud storage isn't going away anytime soon.

Dave Jones: One of the big problems with this, though, is that you cannot sort of, you know, you don't have a snapshot of the program at that particular point in time because you've got to run it in the browser, on their server or whatever it is. And so if you come back in five years' time and, oh, that file was done back in that version, you can't just, you know, bring out an old floppy disk of, you know. Right. We going back. Bring out an old floppy disk. Oh, here's the install version I used to design this one and, you know, go back and use it. Which is a big deal. Which is a big deal and a big fear of any professional working in the ECAD market.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. But on the other side, that could be a value add, right? They could say, well, you know, we'll sell you a snapshot every six months, right? I mean, that could be a revenue model for them, but that's not for me or you to really say. I mean, they could figure that out. Well, of course. Yeah, yeah. But personally, what I'd like to see and what I told him, I mean, like, this is a very big thing for me, is I would love to see it so that, okay, I'm working online with you on a board, right? You and I are, you know, even just daily trading back and forth because we're in different time zones, right? That's a, you know, I leave you an email and here's what I did today and you take it away, right? And then you do the same. Well, say I go to my wife's farm and there's no internet out there, right? What I want more than anything is I want this to work with KiCad. Now, granted, I know that that's very selfish for me because, but at the same time, all that source code is online and, like, getting that kind of compatibility and then that offline mode, if all that stuff was together, ooh, man, that would be, you know, these are all just blue sky wish lists. But, you know, if anyone else is listening out there and you do it first, I'll try it.

Dave Jones: Speaking of blue sky stuff, there's a few comments in here in regards to this post on the Reddit thing. And people start talking about, oh, I hope they get the, you know, the 3D modeling right and I hope they get the simulation right and I hope they – and here we go, right? You know, just my advice to these companies, the Upverter and the Circuit IOs, stick to core PCB and schematic and get it nailed and get it right. Don't dick around wasting your time.

Chris Gammell: Or pull in other stuff, right? That's what I'm saying is pull in KiCad or something else.

Dave Jones: Yeah, or something like that. Or have easy exports to a better tool that'll do the job, like a 3D viewing or something like that, you know? Export it to a –

Chris Gammell: Yeah, the app model of making one thing really good, right?

Dave Jones: Exactly. Rather than, you know, it's trying to, oh, let's – oh, I know, we'll put an autorouter in this thing now. So we'll spend the next 12 months of our development time getting the autorouter. Nobody gives a shit, right? They just want a solid PCB schematic. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: And this should be a public service announcement. If you are using an autorouter, you are wrong. You are wrong. You slap your hand right now, mister or missus.

Dave Jones: And don't dick around doing a simulator.

Chris Gammell: No. Oh, God. Make it work with LTSpice. That's all I care about.

Dave Jones: Export to LTSpice. Thank you very much. End of story, right?

Chris Gammell: Done. Solid.

Dave Jones: So that everyone can continue to work on their specialized tools. I know it's not the whole, you know, integrated model and, you know, it's this silo-based thing. Another wank word. If you're playing a long wank word, bingo at home. There it is. I use the word silos.

Chris Gammell: Ooh, we added new terms this week too, by the way. Right?

Dave Jones: What?

Chris Gammell: To the bingo sheet.

Dave Jones: Oh, did we? Yeah. Oh, okay. Excellent. There you go. Silo. You can tick that one off if it's on there. Yeah. You know, yes, it is silo-based because that actually works. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, yeah. And if you do it well, people will come back, right? I mean, but at the interface, right? When you go from, if you're really good at doing schematics and you're going to have someone else work on layout stuff, keep your format open, right? I mean, everybody's afraid to, that's one of the best things about the open source hardware and software movement is people figuring out open data, even though you don't get to control every piece of it, you know, you get to control some of it, right? I mean, you get to do the one thing really well. And if someone else comes in, well, then you go work on something else, right? I mean, like, I know that sucks from a business perspective, but from a, but from a, like, an overall perspective from a consumer's standpoint, that's awesome. You know, I really liked when Eagle went to the XML format. I mean, I thought that was really good. Yeah, yeah. I haven't used it since, but I mean, like, the fact that people can see that stuff and that it's more open, that's a really good start. So kudos to them. Exactly. You know, and that would allow, like, a Upverter or a Circuits I.O. to pull in that data if they were just going to the back end, order PCBs and parts and everything else at once. So we want you to succeed. We love this stuff.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't, I still don't like the online aspect. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well, that's okay. But I mean, if it's out there, right? I mean, it's nice, right? Like, I can see you doing, like, a tutorial. If multiple people could see it at once, you could do, like, a tutorial and you could show people how to lay out stuff, right? I mean, that's kind of cool. Like, actually showing a layout live. That's a cool thing, you know, or from a class perspective, right? I mean, online learning is going through the roof, right? Well, what happens when a teacher, you know, you don't want to watch it on a video. You know, you don't want to watch it all at once. Well, why not?

Dave Jones: That's a very good, it's a very good condensed format.

Chris Gammell: I guess so. But I mean, like, but if you want a live interaction with it, if you want to ask, well, why did you move that there, right? I mean, then you actually have that kind of option now. So, and then there's the whole 3D CAD thing. I mean, you and I were talking about this before the show, too. I tried out Tinkercad and it's, mostly I was looking for a free 3D CAD program and it's not it.

Dave Jones: Well, so am I. And I thought I found one. And here's a rant.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay? This pisses me off. I thought, I found, I've tried dozens of these different free CAD tools, right? 3D CAD tools to try and, you know, just do simple stuff for my 3D printer, right? And import step files of like project cases and just do a simple mod, put some holes in it and export to the, to the MakerBot thing, right? Yeah. The thing. And most of them, right, most of them either do not import step files correctly. They don't do this. They don't do that. They don't export to STL properly. They don't, oh, they're a pain in the ass to use. They're not intuitive, whatever. Anyway, I've tried them all, I think. And I finally found one that seemed to just be simple and do the job. And it was Autodesk 123D. Get it? What, 123D? Yes. 3D. Yes, I get it. Sorry, it's sort of, I just like the name because it brings back memories of Lotus 123 and 3D. Oh, God, Lotus. Oh, the bane of my existence.

Chris Gammell: I still use Lotus Notes if you didn't know that.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? Terrible. Absolutely terrible. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, Lotus. That was a classic. They bet big, by the way. A bit of computer history here. Back then, they rewrote, sorry, they wrote it from the ground up in 8086 assembly language just for the IBM PC. And they were betting that the IBM PC would be the platform. And they won. You know? Yeah, for a little while. It was the big platform. Lotus 123. Well, yeah, it was the industry standard for maybe five years there or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But that was a different era too, right? I mean, that was an era of very close machines because you had to be so vertically integrated. These days, it's so distributed. Oh, goodbye.

Dave Jones: Anyway, let's not go there. Anyway, Autodesk, the makers of AutoCAD and all that sort of, you know, all that high-end stuff, you know, this free tool, 123D. And I was using the beta version and it seemed to do exactly what I want. It imported the step file brilliantly from Polycase and Hammond, you know, the project cases. It imported them. I was able to, you know, add holes easily. I was able to delete things. This did exactly what I want and it had a specific export function, export to a 3D printer file, right? An STL. It was specifically designed for that. Yeah. And I thought, brilliant. So, yesterday, I actually started shooting a video review of this, right? Well, not like a video tutorial of how to do, you know, how to use this tool, 123D, to do project cases and actually print something useful with your 3D printer instead of doing little, you know, Yoda heads or something like that. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And I was halfway. And so I tried to, I found they had released the new, like the actual full version of it, right? It wasn't beta anymore. They went to the proper release. Oh, download that. It'll have a few extra improvements. Oh, no. They've totally changed everything from the beta version. No longer can you, it seems that no longer can you export to an STL file. You've got, well, you kind of can, but you've got to log in. You've got to log in to their online recording, their online, you know, account thing. So you've got to create an account on their website. You've got to log in. You've got to save it to my projects in that account file or something. It's absolutely ridiculous because they're, and I quote them. Here we go. I will quote them.

Chris Gammell: They say that. You will.

Dave Jones: You will do it. I will. I'll quote you. Swear to God. Gully, Numa. Sorry, I can't pronounce your name, so I won't try. He's saying that, yeah, it was this, this release version was based on all this user feedback and it was designed to be so simple to use. And it was to be designed for people who do not have a 3D printer at home because nobody has a 3D printer at home. So they've optimized this thing to export so that it automatically goes to their website and then you can order your part from a list of approved vendors, you know, of 3D printer objects. Oh, so like shapeways and stuff like that, yeah. Yeah, shapeways and all that sort of stuff. I don't know who they support, but yeah, stuff like that, right? But so they're saying that nobody has a 3D printer at home and by that implying that nobody ever will. And so we're going to drop support for direct, like, and then dumb the whole thing down. Like, they, they're implying that the users of this software are so dumb that they do not, it would be too confusing for them to have a menu up the top that says export to STL file. You know, that's what they're saying. They're saying, no, we designed this based on feed. And, oh man. It's like, and I like the beta version. This is probably the only project, only program I've ever used where the final release version or a, or a next version of the program is so massively dumb compared to the previous version.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: I don't know. Oh, hang on. Bang my head. Hang on.

Chris Gammell: Nice. That's good audio. That's good audio, Dave.

Dave Jones: Well, man, you get what you pay for, right?

Chris Gammell: I mean, that's ultimately what it comes down to. Yeah, it's free. Okay.

Dave Jones: But, oh man. And like, oh, anyway, I'm going to struggle. I'm going to continue to struggle with it and try and get it because it was fairly user intuitive, like intuitive to use. And they changed the whole menu interface and everything. Oh, idiots. Yeah. Anyway, so they've gone this all online cloud web, but you know, and the things available as a tablet version as well. And they're saying that that one does not support the STL export at all. You have to, you have to use the PC version. Right. And they've got a web-based version as well, just like we were talking about Upverter and CircuitIO, right? They've got a web-based version. They're saying that one does not support export either. Fail all around. Stop me, please. Speak with your wallet.

Chris Gammell: Well, the interesting thing about all this stuff is that, you know, like, I wonder about it from a, you know, working on new stuff, not a new stuff kind of thing, but just evolving with technology thing, right? I mean, you keep up with technology. I keep up with technology. But, you know, a lot of people in our industry are aging and, you know, they're kind of getting, you know, it's just tough keeping up with technology in general. I mean, it's definitely an active act, right? Whether or not people do is up to them and, you know, to their own detriment. But I'm interested in this because we keep seeing stories about ageism, right? And if you don't keep up with the times, you know, there's always value in knowing older stuff like, you know, still being a cobalt cowboy and, you know, being able to program assembly and yada, yada, yada.

Dave Jones: Analog.

Chris Gammell: Design analog. Hell yeah. I mean, being an analog designer, right? I am at the younger end of the bracket, I think. You're a dinosaur, dude. Well, to be honest, the analog people most people talk about are chip designers. I am an analog system designer. But, yeah, even that, I mean, it's old guys. Come on.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. So you're a flying dinosaur.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Right. I'd say I'm more of one of those little tiny dinosaurs that nibbles on ankles, you know? Oh, boy.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: I wanted to pair my question, though, with a question that you posted as well. You posted a question that someone had on the EEV blog forum about if it's too late to ever change to electronics. But my question is, should, you know, once you're in electronics, should people then plan to move out of electronics? Because I know people that have, and I just, I don't know, I think it's interesting that, you know, people actually plan their own obsolescence as an electronics person.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't think you'd ever plan it, would you? You'd just do it. If you got jack of it, you'd just bugger off.

Chris Gammell: I know a guy that's in school to get an MBA. That's technically planning. You said he's going to, you know, go become a product person, right?

Dave Jones: Yep. Worthless. Yep. So, it's going from a practical person to just somebody who's in the way. Yeah. Good move.

Chris Gammell: I wouldn't say that to his face. But you can earn more. Well, and that's usually what it comes down to, right? I mean, there's a plateau of usually earning potential. But I think some of that is also, you know, people leave the industry, so, you know, they move on to other stuff. And so, it kind of is self-fulfilling. Right. So, I don't know. I don't know what, I don't know why I brought this up, I guess. I brought it up because you posted about this, too. Is it too late to change?

Dave Jones: Because we're at the end of the show and we're struggling. We're not struggling. Is it too late to change? Yeah. Right? Yeah. Is it, like, you know, somebody asked, yeah, I mean, you know, are you ever too old to change from whatever it is you're doing now and get into the field of electronics? Yeah. I've had people ask me this, too.

Chris Gammell: You know, like a lot of people that are hobbyists that are interested in getting into electronics, you know, as a career. No, I think the answer is no.

Dave Jones: Of course it is.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Wait, it is too late or what?

Dave Jones: No, no, no. The answer is no. It's not too late. It never is too late.

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: If you've got a passion to do something, you do it. Right. And you can always find a job.

Chris Gammell: Is whether you want to do it as a living, right? If it's a, you know, if it's something that you just enjoy doing, is it something you want to try and earn money at? Because there's a whole other range of things that come along with doing electronics for a living versus doing it as a hobby, right? I mean, I can't tell you how many days I've spent just figuring out bombs, right? I mean, like...

Dave Jones: Doing electronics for a living can be frustrating.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. It's like you say.

Dave Jones: You can deal with it as real, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and you don't get into electronics to get your design jollies. You do it to, you know, because that's just what you do. And then you get your design jollies at home, right? That's the idea you always promote.

Dave Jones: Well, you get the crumbs at work where you can. Right, of course. Usually it's more crumb-like than feasting every day.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. And there's that stuff at home, too. I mean, you still have to order parts and figure it all out. But you can continually design circuits if you want to and never fabricate them, you know, or whatever. Or even if you just want to, you know, plop stuff down on a breadboard. You can do that every day.

Dave Jones: I love a friend of mine who said that in a big company, being an electronics engineer in a big company is like seagulls pecking over the last chip. You know, like, mine, mine, mine. You know, because the interesting, you know, the really interesting work that people want to do is, you know, few and far between. Of course, of course. And there's a lot of internal competition to do that. Yeah. And, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, best case scenario, you're a small, you work on something very small within a much bigger, you know, platform or assembly. And you get a nice chunk of that design. But at the same time, you know, then that also means you're focusing just on that chunk of design. You don't get as much system-level stuff, which is the stuff that I love. I mean, it's just, you know.

Dave Jones: Well, system-level stuff can, to a good engineer, can be as boring as batshit sometimes because you're so bogged down in the overall system design that you can't actually do anything real. That's true, too.

Chris Gammell: That's true. Yeah, you don't have time for, like, tinkering on a, you know, optimizing for current draw or something like that, right?

Dave Jones: You find that you're not actually, you know, actually designing any circuits. You're not laying out any boards. You're not doing any simulations. You're not doing anything. You're too busy doing paperwork at the top end.

Chris Gammell: That's true. Yeah, I guess it depends how you define system. I guess that's what it, but yeah, it's either way.

Dave Jones: There's a huge range there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there is. So I think to the poster on the EV blog form, I think it's not too late. Just try and go in with your eyes open. Talk to a lot of people, you know. Talk to, of course, listen to your favorite Amp Hour podcast or your electronics podcast, which might be the Amp Hour, to learn more about the experiences of, two people and wonderful guests as well. But yeah, you know, talk to people. That's the important thing. Figure it out. Figure out what you want to do and how a day actually might be like in order to make that decision.

Dave Jones: Yep. It's tough. Okay. If you like something, you cannot make a bad decision by doing it for a living.

Chris Gammell: Unless that thing is, oh, let's see. Insert something funny here. Unless you like punting puppies. That's a bad decision. Do not do that. Bad, bad decision. Punting cats is fine, though. I might edit this out. I'm just saying. Okay. One last thing I wanted to point out, because I think this is a really fun bit of trivia. I was talking with DigiKey on Twitter, right? Did you know what the...

Dave Jones: I can't believe you haven't... I can't believe you've never heard of this.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Well, you obviously know what this is. The dash ND at the end of a DigiKey part number. See, the problem is you come from the catalog days, and I didn't. I think that's what it is. So dash ND at the end of every DigiKey part is... Dave?

Dave Jones: No discount. Bugger off.

Chris Gammell: That's so weird. And so they said that that just stuck on every part, and they just kind of...

Dave Jones: It stuck on because it doesn't make... Yeah, it doesn't mean that anymore, but they stuck it on as a differentiator to identify that as a DigiKey part number. As opposed to a bouncer part number, or as opposed to the manufacturer's part number.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So often the DigiKey part number will be exactly the same as the manufacturer's part number with dash ND on the end.

Chris Gammell: Right, and that's what I actually asked about, because some of them have their own part numbers, and I like it when it's just the manufacturer part number, and you just tag a little thing on the end. That's great. Yeah, yeah. Makes it really easy. Yep. All right. I think we're good for this week. What do you think? Anything else?

Dave Jones: Yeah, done and dusted. I've ranted enough.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Going to go back and try this pathetic 1, 2, 3D program. Oh, yeah. Get back to that. What do I want for free? You get what you pay for, folks.

Chris Gammell: You get what you pay for, man. Yeah, sometimes, you know, video software was another one, right? You paid for that. That worked out okay, right?

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Much like our program. People watch my videos for free, and much like our program is free. Yeah, like I said, you get what you pay for. You get what you pay for, folks.

Chris Gammell: Suckers.

Dave Jones: You're in no position to demand anything. This is a dictatorship.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and 180-degree turn of that. You know, if you do like this program, we love it when people give us a nice rating on iTunes. Or, you know, if you don't, you can give us a crappy rating, too. So iTunes ratings are great. If you want to tweet to us or about us, we're at The Amp Hour on Twitter. We'll see you next week. Till you, friends. This episode of The Amp Hour was sponsored by Club Jameco, who allows you to upload your kit idea and make up to 10% of the sale price without ever needing to buy or bag components. Go to clubjameco.com slash The Amp Hour to see the kit discussed on this week's show and to support the show.

Speaker ?: The Amp Hour