#126 – eReaders, datasheets & board assembly - Yearly Yeasty Yapping

SPEAKER_02: This is the F-Hour Podcast, recorded December 17, 2012. Episode 126, Yearly Yeasty Yapping.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV Blog. And I'm Chris Gammell of ChipReportTV and Chris Gammell's Analog Life. What's up, Chris? Happy holidays, Dave.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you too. It is getting there.

Dave Jones: It just magically appeared, didn't it?

SPEAKER_01: What is it today? The 18th? Well, it's the 18th here. I guess it's still the 17th here, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: I was furiously on Amazon.com purchasing all of my holiday gifts last night. I think I got it all done in about an hour. It was awesome.

SPEAKER_01: And you tweeted something that I saw yesterday. Was it about dead trees? None of this electronic book stuff?

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. I've been buying books like crazy. I mean, it's booksmas for me. It's just crazy. I bought probably 12 dead tree books. So I don't know all these predictions about the book is dead, but my Amazon account has not gotten the news yet. Right. All you potential authors out there, you're fine.

SPEAKER_01: What I love and the wife loves is abebooks.com, which is a secondhand book service if you haven't used it. Yeah. There's other ones out there, but it basically searches. Like all of these bookstores, you know all these tiny bookstores that used to be around before the internet, right? They're actually still around. But now every one of them to stay alive has now put their entire, every book in their store online and you can search for it. So if you want to find some old book somewhere, this will search every, like tens of thousands of bookstores all across the planet and they will ship you that book. And it's usually pretty cheap, you know? Nice. So I've bought, you know.

SPEAKER_02: Any electronics finds in there? Any good reference texts?

SPEAKER_01: You can get those ones, yeah. They're out there. So I generally have those.

SPEAKER_02: There's some wonky ones, right? I mean, there's sometimes you just can't find them. Like you'll go on Amazon or something and you'll see, oh, two used buyers that are like $400 a piece. You're like, okay, yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no. A similar thing exists on here, but you can sort by price, you know? And then you get sort by price or you can sort by book condition and all that sort of stuff or you sort by cheapest postage. And, you know, so I've ordered this obscure book from some little bookstore in some basement in, you know, New York or something like that. And they ship it to me for like $4, you know?

SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, like media mail, right? Where it takes like 16 weeks and you're like, yeah, whatever. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01: Who cares? It's great.

SPEAKER_02: How do you like that?

SPEAKER_01: I don't think I've failed once to find something that I was after on there. It's great. I love it.

SPEAKER_02: It makes you wonder if like, so, you know, like we've seen this with our own industry, right, where everybody shifted, oh, digital, everything's digital. And now, you know, we're getting back to hardware and makers and everything like that. And you wonder if eventually there's going to be like a revival of like, oh, bookbinding and that old smell. And collectors. And I think someone mentioned on Twitter, like, it'll become like the retro LP, you know, like buy an album kind of thing. Right.

SPEAKER_01: Okay.

SPEAKER_02: But that'll be books. It's like, yeah, that's fine with me. I don't care.

SPEAKER_01: You know, speaking of LPs, don't some of the new maintenance, some of the recording studios actually still release songs on LP. It's a specific version, right? Yeah, there's like boutique houses. It died there for like 10, 15 years, right? But then they discovered, oh, shit, people actually pay 200 bucks for the LP. Yeah. You know?

SPEAKER_02: Right. And some of them are like the audio fools like you talked about. But I mean, I think some of them, you know, like I have to represent my analog brethren. I mean, there is an interesting science behind it, right? I mean, if you look at like the actual physics of it, there is a lot of data that is encoded in LP. And the interesting thing is if you look at an LP, actually, it's actually the, I think it's the width of the track, the actual like track that the needle runs over. That actually determines the actual bandwidth. That's like a physical manifestation of the bandwidth. Because the less total time you put on an LP, the more quality you can have in the sound. So like the longer LPs that you get. Interesting, I didn't know that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like the longer albums you'll see with it have, you know, six, seven tracks per side will have more of a compressed version. They actually have less range and frequencies and stuff.

SPEAKER_01: Wow. So it's almost like an old school MP3.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly, right? Nice. This tidbit brought to you by Chris Gammell Analog Life.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, boy. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Brilliant.

SPEAKER_01: I like it. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. But nah, it's always going to be niche, you know. I mean, yeah, there's not going to be some huge, huge revival.

SPEAKER_02: Right, I mean, the mainstream stuff will be low cost, you know, digital distribution is going to stick around. I mean, it's, yeah, it's just, it's going to be natural.

SPEAKER_01: Imagine if the semiconductor makers, you know, like here's a special limited edition paper data book, you know, like, whoa, right? They could probably do that for the app notes, right?

SPEAKER_02: You mean like a nice bound version?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, a nice bound version of the app notes, and a nice leather cover, and oh, you know.

SPEAKER_02: I'm guessing, you know, I've got paper versions of the old LT app notes, like the Jim Williams ones, and you're going to have to pry those out of my cold, dead fingers. I mean, you're not going to get those away from me.

SPEAKER_01: Chalk master style.

SPEAKER_02: Right, exactly. You know, like, you're going to, I mean, like, honestly, though, there is something to be said for having paper on your bench. It's nice. I mean, like, you know, I've done research on, you know, e-readers, and, you know, having them at your bench, and people talk about having iPads for data sheets and everything like that. I just, it's still, you know, even with the searchability, that's nice, but I don't want it. I want to flip, you know, like maybe this is my age starting to show, but there's something to be said for it.

SPEAKER_01: In the lab. I've got a printer right next to me, and my bench is like three metres, like two and a half metres behind me, right? And, no, I will print something out to take it over to the bench so that, you know, like a page out of the data sheet. I might print the whole thing, of course, but if I just want one page, and it's just so convenient and there. Yeah, I could probably have a tablet on my bench and, you know, call up the data. It's just not the same. Like, you can't write on it. You can't, you know. Right, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and maybe like as stuff gets cheaper.

SPEAKER_02: Right, that's also true. Maybe as like e-readers get cheaper, though, maybe you'll get people doing like multi-screen like you like doing with actual LCDs, you know, like three or four e-readers all lined up. At that point, maybe it makes sense, but until then, I mean, I don't know. It's tough because like part of me wants like the, you know, like the hitchhiker's guy, you know, where like you open it up, and, you know, everybody wants that, right? It's just like the perfect source of information. But on the other hand, there's something about it. I don't know if it's just, maybe our younger listeners could chime in about this because maybe they're more attuned to the digital only, but not me yet. I'm not there yet, man. I'm going backwards. Yep. And recyclable paper, you know, as long as paper's recyclable, I don't feel guilty about it either. Plus, you know, I feel good about supporting Xerox, right? I mean, you got to keep those guys in business.

SPEAKER_01: Right.

SPEAKER_02: So retro.

SPEAKER_01: The tablet on the bench, though, is an interesting concept because like when I'm doing a teardown and stuff, like I'm searching part numbers, right? I go, oh, I have no idea what that part number is off the top of my head. And I'll search it, but I don't have a tablet here, right? I've got a notebook, but the notebook's inconvenient sitting on the bench. It's all tied into the external monitor and, you know, you can't sort of, you know. So, you know, my mic, right, you know, I wear the lapel mic, but it's got like a five-meter cord on it, right? So I can like extend it out, walk back in here to the desktop and sort of, you know, peer at it and go, oh, there's that, right. But then by the time I've gotten… Right, on your tippy toes, leaning over, right? Yeah, exactly. And the cord's all tangled up and everything because I don't want to unclip it, right, or unplug it because then I'd be unplugging it 10,000 times. And so I, you know, and I've got to go back and forth, back and forth. So I'm back and forth to the desktop machine during the teardown just trying to find, you know, these part numbers. And then often by the time I get back to the bench, oh, I've forgotten those specs because I'll try and remember them, right? And I'll go, oh, yeah, that chip has this bandwidth and it has this, you know, these features and this feature. And I've got to remember those five things to go back to the… Yeah, exactly. So there is value there. So I should probably get a, you know, a tablet would solve my issues there. But, you know, you've got to remember to charge the thing and…

SPEAKER_02: I've looked at it. So actually I talked to a former co-worker who was… He's a co-op actually. He was going to grad school and he was looking at it because he was going to have to read a lot of papers and stuff. And he actually found one and it's kind of pricey. But it's called like the… I think it's the Onyx M92. And it's actually an e-reader, but it's actually a full-size 10-inch tablet. And it's got all these different functions and you can load Linux on it. It's not like Android or anything like that. But it's really nice looking. I mean, like… And that's what you need. That's what I found out because I actually looked at the e-reader I have. You know, you have the Paperwhite and you're all into Kindles. I have the Nook Simple Touch. And the Simple Touch is, you know, a 6-inch screen. It's definitely not big enough for a PDF to render fully because that's the ultimate thing for, you know, if you're looking at a data sheet. You need a PDF to render like a piece of paper. Yes. And so it's just…

SPEAKER_01: I would be happy for… Yeah. You know, you've got to have the best tool for the job, right? If you try and get your iPad to do it, you know, sometimes, yeah, you've got to have a huge screen. It's got to render PDFs absolutely perfectly. Right. And it doesn't have to do anything else. Like, I'd be happy if it just had, you know, a wireless internet connection and a browser and a PDF viewer and that's it.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Maybe you should check this out then. I mean, it really does look nice.

SPEAKER_01: I'm having a look at it now, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: It's like a $400 tablet or so. It's not cheap. I mean, like, compared to like… You know, you can get a lot of cheapies these days for, you know, especially Android devices and stuff. And, you know, I've talked to you guys on Twitter about, you know, actually using an iPad or even an Android device. Like, a full size actually does work really well and it's good for browsing. But, you know, like, if you're just going to stick it at your bench…

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly. And it's got an e-ink display, which means it should get a much longer battery life, right? Right.

SPEAKER_02: And it's easier on your eyes and everything else, right? I mean, that's the closest to paper you're going to get. And with that one, you can write on it too. That's the cool thing. Oh, you can write on it. I really did like that. Yeah. So, oh, boy. I might have just saw it. Hang on. I might need to start selling these things, right?

SPEAKER_01: So, you can actually get a stylus out and e-ink right on top of it.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: That's what I want because I can do that under the video because then I don't have to screen capture, right? Oh, that's true. Because when I'm doing a teardown, right, if I want to look at a data sheet, right, then I've got to come back into the office. I've got to, you know, turn on my screen capture, everything, browse. I've got to use a different mic and then I've got to sync it up later with the, you know, and it's all hard.

SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's the same hassle as if you're at the bench, right? You don't want to go and, you know, have to type something in on top of a data sheet, right? You want to just write on it. Just like you want to replicate your paper experience, right? That's the best case scenario. So, you know, I was trying to sell this idea to distributors for a while. I was talking to like Element 14 and DigiKey and everybody else. I was saying, you know, if you could figure out a way where you could tacitly track, you know, maybe anonymize everyone's data, but tacitly track what people are looking at, what they're interested in, you could sell that back to the actual chip vendors, right? And some people wouldn't like that, but whatever. It's like if you gave it away as a free tablet, then people might actually accept that kind of thing. You could actually display ads on there. I personally, if I could have that on my bench, I would totally take that kind of thing. I would take that. Absolutely. They would display ads. It's like, oh, okay, five-second ad for some new chip from like, you know, National Semi, or sorry, Texas Instruments. National Semi doesn't exist anymore. Right. But I mean, like you look at a five-second ad, right? It's just programming in our culture where you accept advertising these days. And then, you know, you get onto it and you look at the data sheet, whatever, no big deal. Or say I'm looking at like a Maxim part and there's a TI cross. TI pays to actually display that cross. Cross, yeah. And it's a really, like, but the problem was it was a really big expense up front, right? So like a $400 tablet, they're not just going to give that away to anybody. So I don't know. Maybe it'll work in the future, but I think that's a hell of a business model. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: There's an idea there. Yep, absolutely. Totally agree.

SPEAKER_02: You know, any enterprising listeners, you guys should get on it. Because I want one of those. I'll take one of those for free. I don't care. You know, even if you, like, you had to put in a credit card number. So, like, if you just took it and ran, you know, you could then just charge for it and say, oh, well, okay, yeah, you took it, no big deal.

SPEAKER_01: Or maybe only give it to people who spend X amount per month, you know, or per year or something, you know. Give it to your key customers and stuff like that. But then again, you'll find that a lot of the people doing the buy-in for the company are the buyers. And they're the ones who don't want the thing, you know, the engineers need it. Right. But they don't actually do the buy-in. But, eh, I don't know. Yeah. It's interesting.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. There was actually an article on EBM this week about that same kind of thing, about the difference between, what they call it, the art of concurrent engineering. And basically, just like that separation of, you know, like, buyers, they're not engineers, right? I mean, but anyone who works in a big company knows that, like, buyers are critical, right? I mean, like, they just, they're, first off, they're very angry people. I don't know about your experience. Yes. Yes. I think it's pretty universal that people that are in purchasing have to be angry because it's just part of the persona, you know? It's just like, they just yell.

SPEAKER_01: So, if someone's going to go postal at an engineering company, it's going to be a buyer, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: It's killer, man. And, you know, and I think I might have talked about that on here before, but actually, my best friend growing up, he ended up being a buyer, too. He's a purchasing agent. And so, I'm going home for the holidays, and me and him just getting these huge arguments about, oh, the engineers are wrong.

Dave Jones: Oh, the purchasing were assholes, you know?

SPEAKER_02: It's just like, it's like this great, it's just great match of just argument. Oh, yeah. It's a lot of fun. It's gold. But, you know, it's important when you are designing stuff in, you know, just to think about, you know, if this thing makes it to maybe even 10,000 or 100,000 or a million units, that's a really huge deal, right? I mean, like, just the logistics of all that stuff. You know, this article is talking about how distributors like DigiKey and LM14 and all those other guys, they're not, I mean, they have the back-end capabilities for doing it, but they don't do it for everybody, right? So, DigiKey actually will do super high-volume stuff, but it's like a whole other division that I never knew about. And you actually have to, like, set up accounts and all this other crap, and basically, it's just like, it's effectively a whole other business. And they can do it, but it's, you know, like, you look at the site, the 1,000-piece price on DigiKey, and it's way different than the 100,000-piece price. Of course. Just, I feel like there's an art form between going from the 1,000-piece price to figuring out what yours is, you know? You get, like, the company discount, and then you get the volume discount.

SPEAKER_01: There's all sorts of handshake deals and things done behind doors that, yeah, that you just don't know about. Speaking of the chip companies, everything's going end of life these days. It seems to be all the rage.

SPEAKER_02: Well, it could be. That's the real thing. So this is, it could be.

SPEAKER_01: Well, look, TI have discontinued the Stellaris Arm Cortex-M chips. They've just, you know, secretly just discontinued them in the background. By the way, these are end of life, you know? And, yeah, it just magically popped up as a flag on their website. Yeah, they discontinued their Arm Cortex-M series. So tough titties if you just design that in. Oh, man.

SPEAKER_02: I thought you were talking about the other article we posted, but this is crazy.

Speaker ?: No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01: I saw your one, and then I added this one in. Yeah. TI, somebody just found it because there was a little flag in there.

SPEAKER_02: It's the end of the year, buddy. Hold on to your hats. Here it comes.

SPEAKER_01: And, of course, TI bought the Stellaris stuff from Luminary Micro when they bought Luminary Micro, right? Because they wanted to get into Arm and Luminary Micro were this little obscure outfit that did all these Arm, you know, these high-end Arm Cortex and other processes. So they bought Luminary. How long ago was that now?

SPEAKER_02: Oh, that was a couple of years. Probably two years. Three or four years? Three, maybe. I guess it happened when we were still doing the show, so it must have been less than three.

SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it happened a couple of years ago. So now they've, yeah, they've just discontinued them. Thank you very much. The whole Cortex-M series.

Dave Jones: Because apparently there is some new version of the Cortex-M or something. So they've totally, yeah. There's M4 now and M0 Plus is the big one, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: And there's just so many bloody variations of these Arm processors. Like, where does it stop? Like, how many of these vendors, not just TI, but how many of the million vendors that manufacture Arm cores, how many of these families are going to go end of life in the next five or ten years? Right?

SPEAKER_02: And here's the real question is, who do we blame? I mean, that's what it ultimately comes down to is where does the buck stop? Does the buck stop with TI? Does it stop with Arm? Do they not support it anymore? Does it stop? Well, no, no. I don't even know what's above that.

SPEAKER_01: No, you can't blame Arm. They're still going to support it, I'm sure, because it's just a core, right? They just sell the, you know, a core doesn't go out of date, right? Right. I guess it's just bits in a file, right? A core is just a high-definition logic file that you buy.

SPEAKER_02: It's just an NDA at about 500 grand or so, right? Yeah, yeah. 500? Yeah, probably more than that, right? That's chum-chum, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: Wow.

Dave Jones: Keep talking. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01: I know. They've just discontinued it. Well, it's the vendors, right?

SPEAKER_02: Well, it's not recommended for new designs, but that's basically the death knell, right? That's like, okay, you get two or three or maybe five years, but you better watch your back, buddy. That's like the hangman is calling your name, right?

SPEAKER_01: So how do you pick one? How do you go about picking a processor from, you know, and as we've talked about before, no, right, you know, this Arm bullshit. Oh, if you choose Arm as your processor, then you can just move to any vendor seamlessly. You know, everyone knows it's absolutely complete bullshit.

SPEAKER_02: Right. Yeah. And, uh...

Speaker ?: Right.

SPEAKER_02: It's like, uh, you can throw out all... I mean, you can move a letter in a part family and you're screwed, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can use entire peripheral sets and you're just... Yep. Oh, God. Yep. Oh, that? No, you wanted that to work still? No, no, no, no, no. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: So it's a tough... That's tough. I know. It's a tough choice. And a lot of people are going to get caught out with this. Because how many Arm variants are there? Like, I don't know. There's dozens or something, right?

SPEAKER_02: Well, let's see. In the market right now, like, you hear about a lot of them. But I think, you know, A8 is kind of waning. A9 is pretty huge right now. You got the M16s... Or not M, sorry. A16s and up through A56 for, like, the server stuff. I mean, there's a shitload. And then there's the low stuff, like the Cortex stuff. Like the M3, M4, M0+. And that's all you really see. That's all I've really seen, at least. I mean, maybe there's others, but... But it's all about the core stuff.

SPEAKER_01: Well, there's Cortex-A, there's Cortex-I, there's... Really? Oh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Is it Cortex-A? I thought it was just A. I can't keep up with it, because honestly...

SPEAKER_01: I think it's Cortex-I.

SPEAKER_02: I avoid it. I mean, that's what it is. I mean, like, because it's... I think one of the problems is it's a space race, right? I mean, it's a... Oh, well, we have the newest hot model, right? Yep. Exactly. Here's all the new features. You get... You go from 80 DMIPS to 90 DMIPS. Oh, cool. Whatever that means. And, I mean, like, that's what it is, right? And then the vendors throw in their, you know, their process efficiencies and their peripherals and everything else. And all that's for the jazz. Yep. Right. And it's become formulaic, but so is the obsolescence. And it's... I don't know. I think what you're going to see is that you're going to get people chasing, like, automotive market, right? Automotive is often, you know, touted as high lifetime because the car companies mandate it. Yes. So you'll see people chasing that and you'll pay more for it, but what's the cost of a rework, right? I mean, like...

SPEAKER_01: I would rather pay more for it and use it deliberately not as super bleeding edge processor if it means, you know, it's going to be available in 10 years' time. I mean...

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. I mean, that's a big deal for a lot of customers. I mean, yeah. I think the thing is, like, you know, like, a lot of what we hear about is consumer stuff, right? Because the tablet space is moving so fast. You just get... Cell phone space is moving so fast. And that's what's hot, right? I mean, it's interesting to talk about. And really, I mean, it's cool, right? I mean, like, the commodity level hardware is really cool. But...

SPEAKER_01: But those companies that do that, those consumer companies that make these iPads and bloody tablets and everything else, they don't care if that chip is out of, you know... Right. Goes out of production in... Three years max. In, what, 12 months, right? They do, you know, they manufacture that model for 12 months, 18 months, right? Right. And then they're bang. They're on to the next model. They don't care. They've got to retool the damn thing anyway.

SPEAKER_02: So, yeah. I've always wondered what that was like. Like, I've never talked to anyone who works in, like, a, you know, like, a motherboard factory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like, motherboards are very fast turn, you know? Like, I know that a lot of it is, like, back-end work that you don't see. Then, you know, you have, like, six-month lifespan for a motherboard at a manufacturer, right? You'll, you know, you'll see it's manufactured for six months, and then they'll do a turn, and there's big revisions and stuff. But it's so much churn there, you know? It's just, like, they change so many things out of necessity that... I'd really love to know about the culture there and just, like, what the hell that's like? I mean, it's got to be insane.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Well, it's most likely, you know, oh, what chip can we get this week? You know, that's what we're going to design our next run for, you know? And then that's it. And then it just changes about over what parts they can get at what price, probably.

SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's true, too, right? I mean, yeah, you've got to play it against the market, and you're chasing, you know, other trends, right? Like, I remember Bunny wrote that post about...

SPEAKER_01: Oh, you have to use the latest, because that sells, right? That's true, too, right? Oh, yeah, this has the new Cortex M bloody Z million, you know? Right. Pour in it. And, well...

SPEAKER_02: Right, the top-line spec chasing the marketing dollars and stuff. Well, I remember Bunny wrote about that with the iPhone. He said he bought the schematics in order to...

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_02: ...you know, in order to chase the high-volume components, because you know there's going to be tons of crosses, and...

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but that's flawed, right? That's fundamentally flawed. You won't be able to get those parts in three years.

SPEAKER_02: Well, you might not be able to get those parts today, because... Yeah, exactly, because the run's already gone. That's right. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, that is the downside of it, but I mean... I thought it sounds like a smart strategy, but... Yeah, I think the general idea is good. I mean, you and I design like that, too, right? I mean, you design for what's available, right? I'm sure that you look at DigiKey just like I look at DigiKey and say, okay, well, there's 300,000 parts available. I'm probably safe for the next couple weeks, at least. Yep. I mean, because you don't want to get stuck. No one wants to get stuck. I mean, granted, I was just looking at capacitors that was 300,000 parts, right? It's not going to be like, you know, super specialized FPGA that's at 300,000, because they're not idiots, but... You know, you still design for that, because it's just a risk. It's a balancing of risk. I mean, that's what it all comes down to. It's... Yeah, it's crappy. I hate it.

SPEAKER_01: So, what did you have on here about Freescale and NXP focus in 2013?

SPEAKER_02: So, basically, there was an announcement from the Freescale CEO saying, okay, well, in 2013, we're going to focus. And then there were similar statements that came out of ST, who's in some restructuring talks of debt, and same with NXP. And basically, all these huge companies are... You know, they're up to their necks in debt, right? I mean, Freescale, because they got taken private, and then they went public again, and they didn't get as much money. Yeah. Yeah. Shemazel, right? And basically, all these companies have tons of debt. And so, what they're doing is they're saying, all right, well, we're going to focus in quote marks, right? And what that really means is they're going to try and, you know, target their main markets and ignore everybody else or send a bunch of stuff end of life, because they have to, right? I mean, they can't support it. They can't manufacture it. And so, basically, it's a warning sign for people out there. I mean, I've used some of these parts before, and I'm a little scared about it. I mean, like, you know, you hope... Basically, it's like a lottery, you know? It's like you're hoping that, you know, please don't pick me. Please don't pick me. But they might. And so, it's just something to keep an eye out for. I think we're going to see a lot of that in 2013, at least from, you know, what we're hearing, you know? We can only believe what we hear.

SPEAKER_01: Well, these companies have to go lean, you know, because they're in huge debt. There's nothing else you can do. It's either go lean and strip everything or go out of business.

SPEAKER_02: Right. Exactly. Unless you're Renesys. Renesys, right. Renesys.

SPEAKER_01: And you get bailed out.

SPEAKER_02: Well, and not just Renesys, actually. So, ST is, you know, real big in France and Germany as well. Oh, of course. I think they're in, like, the Elsest-Loren region. And basically, it's the same thing there, too. It's like these, you know, these huge companies. I mean, they're employing thousands and thousands of people. And basically, they're becoming bailouts. I mean, they're... Because they're too big to... They're deemed to be too big to file, right? Right. Because it's just all the trickle effects of, you know, if the fab goes out of business, then you lose, you know, thousands of jobs at a time. And then all the supporting businesses that, you know, support the fab and all the people

Speaker ?: that sell food to them.

SPEAKER_02: And you can't manufacture those cars anymore.

SPEAKER_01: Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's an economic argument, really. I mean, if one of those chips is used in a car, they can't just re-spin that, you know, that little... That box in the car that uses that chip. Right?

SPEAKER_02: I thought you meant the people that are selling cars to the workers at the plant. But you're saying the actual... No, no, no. I'm talking about the actual manufacturers.

SPEAKER_01: The actual manufacturers, that's why the people who are bailing out, who are bailing them out, are Nissan and Toyota.

Dave Jones: Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_01: If you read the article...

Speaker ?: Whoa.

SPEAKER_02: Whoa, buddy.

SPEAKER_01: You posted it on here. Read the article. I read it.

SPEAKER_02: I've got some 2013 resolutions that'll take care of that.

SPEAKER_01: And, yeah, they're the ones bailing them out. Or they're part of the consortium that are bailing them out because they need those chips.

Dave Jones: Right.

SPEAKER_01: Because it takes them a huge... Yeah. Because, you know, if they can't get those chips anymore for the million black boxes that are used in cars these days, then they're screwed. Because you can't just re-spin those, you know, those things in a couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_02: Right.

SPEAKER_01: To use some other vendor's chip.

SPEAKER_02: And the reality with all this stuff, too, is that it's not just hardware anymore, right? Maybe in the past, you know, a 7-4 series logic chip goes out, right? Okay. You could probably find a replacement. Even if you can't and you have to change the actual structure, then, okay, yeah, the logic changes, right? And that's fine. But, you know, now there's so much software built on top of it, right? There's firmware and then there's software built on top of that. And it just propagates through the system. It's just, oh, it's killer. I mean, just these engineering changes are just, they are very significant impacts. An interesting article I saw today was actually about not just the, so like you're talking about like these car makers bailing them out. Also, though, distributors investing in chip companies. I forget which one it was, but they were saying that, yeah, it was like a distributor that had bought, I think it was Future, had bought into someone else. I mean, it's just like this system that's all built upon itself because it has to be, right? I mean, like there's all this conjoined interest on selling more stuff to more people. And man, it's a, whew, that's a house of cards. It's just...

Dave Jones: I was going to say yes. You hope it doesn't happen, but I mean, if it does, it's going to be bad.

SPEAKER_01: Don't take out the wrong card and then it all collapses.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right. Exactly. I mean, it's just... I mean, so it's, there's a lot of big companies out there. And so guys that are listening that are big companies, don't mess up. I need chips to make stuff.

SPEAKER_01: Speaking about making stuff, Bunny is, who we talked about before, and this ties right into it. He's doing an open source hardware laptop. Well, laptop, you quote, Marx, because I don't think it's actually going to be a laptop. I think that's just a marketing term that he's using. I suspect it's going to be more... Well, because a laptop implies a sexy, fully built machine with a screen that hinges up and does everything. Although he's talking about doing that sort of stuff. No, he's talking about it.

SPEAKER_02: He's talking about...

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's talking about it, but I think he'll...

SPEAKER_02: Doing custom plastics and metals and stuff.

SPEAKER_01: Plastics and all that sort of stuff. But I think what might happen here is he'll find that there's more interest in just having it as a bare board, like just having it as a Raspberry Pi type embedded board, possibly. I think this would be pretty expensive. I think people would want that more than they would want the laptop and all the plastics. Because they have their own thing in mind. Yeah, I think that's what he'll find. Is that, yeah, he might go through and do the plastics and get the whole laptop and everything, but I think he'll find that people go, oh, I don't want that. I just want the board. Right.

SPEAKER_02: Well, and it's interesting you bring up Raspberry Pi because that was actually the thing that I was most impressed with this. He actually put in a bunch of different headers in order to make it compatible with Raspberry Pi. Make it Raspberry Pi compatible. And then tons of FP... He put an FPGA on a laptop, which by itself makes it just awesome, right? And expensive. But awesome, right? I mean, you put a Spartan 6 on there, 324 pins. I mean, so basically tons of breakout pins. This thing is just set up for hacking hardware, which is great. I mean, it's hacked hardware to make, to hack hardware. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_01: Which is all the more reason why you wouldn't use it in its laptop form factor. Yeah, that's true. And I guess, I mean, that's what happened with the Chumby eventually, too. Because it's silly.

Speaker ?: If you want a laptop, you buy a laptop.

SPEAKER_01: Because this thing will be four or five times more expensive than a regular laptop, right?

SPEAKER_02: Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01: It just won't get down to a laptop price point. So if you want a laptop, you buy a laptop.

SPEAKER_02: Right. But you can see that since this is open source hardware, you could see something like this going towards, like, the Ninja blocks that use the BeagleBone as the base. And then they built on top of it. You could see the same kind of thing happening here, where it's a proto, quasi, first run kind of thing. And then eventually you do custom cost-optimized hardware. And then you roll it from there kind of thing, which is great. I mean, that's exactly what you need, right? Like you said, you could see that, I mean, this is, like you said, it's a single-board computer. It doesn't have any of the charging capacities on board. But, you know, all the control, all of the processing, yeah, it'll run Linux. It'll run, yeah, probably a VirtualBox that can run Windows if you needed it, maybe a little slower. But, I mean, it's awesome. I mean. Yeah, it's great. We should have this guy on the show sometime. He's really smart. Jeez. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm sure we haven't had him on before. No, no. No, no.

SPEAKER_02: But, you know, reading this document he wrote up, it was really interesting reading some of the design decisions he had, you know.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, has he put all that? I haven't read that.

SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, I mean, he was just talking about, you know, like one of the big things was making sure it was open from a software perspective, right? So he understood that the Wi-Fi stack and the, what was the other thing? I think the GPU. And the USB stacks. Those can get, yeah. Right. But then he said, you don't need this to boot. So, okay, yeah, okay. You can do it without it. So it is technically still open.

SPEAKER_01: That's why he didn't include Wi-Fi on there, right?

SPEAKER_02: Right. Right, exactly. Yeah. What else was there? I mean, there was just interesting, you know, like the, I really like the analog, I was surprised, the analog output for gauge stuff, right? So just from a UI perspective of being able to integrate a little analog gauge for battery power or time remaining left or anything like that. I mean, it's just, those are just nice little flares that you can use on stuff. What was the other one? There was one other one, big one. I can't remember what it was. There was one other trade-off that I really liked. But, you know, it was interesting from a, you know, like what he chose as a processor, too. You know, he chose a IMX-66, which Bunny's used a lot of free scale stuff. I know he used it on the Chumbian stuff. But it is quad core still, so it's, you know, it's great. I mean, I really think this is going to be a really cool project. And I think what he's going to find, and maybe some of our audience is interested in this kind of thing, is people are going to jump in and say, yeah, not only do I want to buy a board off you, because he talks about starting a Kickstarter with it, they're going to, you know, actually help develop, you know, the low-level drivers and stuff like that, that's really going to be necessary to get it all working together. And when you build that community kind of thing, I mean, that's what makes for a great project. I mean, that's going to make for, you know, maybe Gen 1 isn't usable as just a laptop, but maybe Gen 2 is, and maybe then cost-reduced happens, right? I mean, that's the kind of thing that really makes for good products.

SPEAKER_01: I think it's going to be a winner.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01: But in markets he probably has not realized. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Well, you don't need it. If you try and constrain yourself, you're screwed, right? Yep.

SPEAKER_01: Yep.

SPEAKER_02: Oh, that was what it was. It was the connector stuff. So he pulled off a bunch of battery connectors from old hard drives, right? So it was a bunch of old Molex connectors that can hook up from old disk drives. Then he said, okay, I can find these cheap. And then so he threw those down as hooking up to battery stuff. He chose standard LiPos from, like, the DIY drone folks and a lot of people that have battery packs at their house. That's a great decision, too. He pulled a SATA connector, I think it was. Yeah. So he put a SATA connector to actually talk up to the main board from this battery board. And the thing is, I mean, I've always talked about this from a system design. The nice thing about it is if you define your interface, then you can just let it go, right? I mean, if you define that interface once, then it doesn't matter what happens after that because you're going to find variations no matter what. But if it's a standard interface, then people just design whatever they want to after that. I mean, hopefully you still have a little bit of guiding principles forward, right? So you can actually get a battery pack you want to and control and everything. But that's really when it gets crazy awesome. You know, like Raspberry Pi having their 26-pin header and Arduino having their pinout. You know, like, that's standardization is what, you know, you set that and then you just let it go. That's the best part of it. So, very exciting. Yeah. Maybe we can get him back on to talk about it. It's still awesome.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: I'm sure he's going to be very busy.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it's a lot of work. It's not a trivial project, that's for sure. Right. That's cool. There's probably more work in the software side of things than there are in the hardware side of things. Like, people look at that and go, oh, how can he develop his own laptop? Well, it's not that hard. You know, like, as in, like, just the board, right? Yeah, you can spend a month doing the schematics and then you lay out the board. And, you know, it's not that hard. There's a lot of work to come in the software side of things.

SPEAKER_02: That's true. I mean, yeah, it's non-trivial. I mean, like, the layout is, you know, BGA packages and everything like that. But it is easy to overcome. But if he was trying to do the operating system and everything by himself, then that would be where it really starts to, you know, hit a wall. Yep. So, yeah, that's – if people are interested, you know, give him a shout. I think he has some links on here for getting in contact and helping out with some of the validation testing. But, yeah, it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there'll be no shortage of people willing to help out.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's great. I mean, I was thinking about that today, you know, just with hardware in general. I was holding a board I was working on today and I was just like, man, it feels good to make stuff, you know. I just like it. And I think it's universal too. Like, even software people, you know, it's just – it's so hard when you're just, you know, at least my past experience with software, which is limited. You know, it's just hard because it's so abstracted. It's like, well, what is this really doing? Even if you have like a, you know, UI and everything. Man, when you hold hardware, it's just – it's great. I like it. I'm sold.

SPEAKER_01: Speaking about making your own hardware, there's a 4K desktop pick-and-place machine. Chinese pick-and-place machine. I've seen the video. It looks very quick.

SPEAKER_02: This was posted by Zach Hoken, who was on the show previously. And it's on his favorite site, which is Taobao, which I haven't tried out yet.

SPEAKER_01: I've never really used it, no.

SPEAKER_02: It's a dangerous-looking site. I mean, like, there's so many weird and crazy things. I think he called it the eBay of China or something. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. People have got to watch this. I mean, it is very, very impressive for what it is. I mean, so it's $4,000. Is it 4K?

SPEAKER_01: Under $3,600 American if you actually do the conversion. Okay. So it's under 4K, including pay. I'm sure it's not cheap to post a sucker. Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it looks like it's about 2x2 foot. I mean, or whatever that be.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's quite a large desktop machine. It looks like it holds like 30 reels or something. I'm not... And I don't know if that price includes the feeders either. Right. I'm not sure if, you know... Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: The crazy thing is, like, you compare this to, like, you know, like home... We've featured some machines on here before, and they're really cool because, you know, you can actually see how they're made, and a lot of them are, like, you know, like laser-cut wood and stuff like that. But man, this thing is just spiffy. It's just, like, it's just zipped around the board like crazy, and I think it probably

SPEAKER_01: matches Pro. It probably matches Pro. There's some fine engineering in it. Yeah. I mean... And it looks absolutely bare bones, just what you would need to do the job, and that's it. Right. Like, there's no big, huge housing for it. There's the XY, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: It's like a gantry. It's all neat and tidy. There's the... Yeah. And there's the tracks to hold the, you know, and the cables in, and there's the step motors and... Yeah. It just does... It seems to do exactly the job you'd expect out of a desktop pick-and-place machine.

SPEAKER_02: Right. And the video is of 0402 placement, too, so it's not like some crazy, you know, oh, well, it does 1206s and nothing else. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Although the videos only show it placing, you know, a very limited range of components. So, you know, how does it handle... Like over distance, you mean? Yeah, over distance and stuff like that. Yeah. Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02: Because, yeah, you can have local accuracy versus, like, board-wide accuracy stuff, right?

SPEAKER_01: And board-wise speed and how fast can it move the heavy components. Right. Because it has to slow down. You know, if you pick up a big, heavy component, you can't just fly it across the board... Right. ...at the same speed as you can for a little 0402, because it, like, it falls off. There's not enough suction there to, you know, to hold the component in place.

Dave Jones: Right.

SPEAKER_01: You know, and what's the software like? I mean, you know, is it usable? And I love how in the video they put an iPhone under the board and you can see the screen... Right, I was going to ask about that. ...with a timer, because otherwise people would say, oh, they've sped the video up, right? Well, you could probably... So that's their way of showing that they actually put an iPod under there, iPhone under there, under the board and see the screen, and they've got a stopwatch going on the screen so that you can see that it is actually real-time and, yes, that's how fast it is.

SPEAKER_02: Okay. I wanted to make sure. I thought it might have been part of the product or something, too.

SPEAKER_01: I was like... My first thought is went, huh? They've integrated an iPhone in the basement? Yeah, that's expensive. I went...

SPEAKER_02: No, that's not an iPhone. That's like a ripped-off Samsung phone. Well, whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_01: But I thought, what is that? Some sort of control interface or something? And then I realized, no, they're doing it just for the stopwatch, just to show you that they didn't fake the video and speed it up. Right. Because it is that quick. The first time you see it, you go, oh, you know, it's fake. It can't be that quick. But, yeah, it is incredible. I don't know. Would you ever get something like this? I mean, do you... No, because I've talked about it before. There's, you know... No, I'd rather pay some schmuck who knows how to do it properly.

SPEAKER_02: Sorry to all schmucks out there.

SPEAKER_01: Schmucks out there. No, you pay someone who's, you know... Because these things, they aren't magic, right? They require a lot of maintenance, a lot of care. You can't just set it up, push the button, come back, and there's your thousand boards. You've got to sit there, babysit in this sucker, right?

SPEAKER_02: Which is interesting because the Chinese translation for some of these buttons say, share... There's like a share button, and it says, share this baby. Oh, really? Favorite this baby. It's like the product. It's like, nice. Okay. Thank you, Google. Brilliant.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's... So, it'd be good for like a hackerspace or something like that. Yeah. If I was in the market for one, yes, I would seriously consider this. But no, I wouldn't want one to do the way I'm bored.

SPEAKER_02: I don't know how much the standard picking places are. Are they like 20 grand, 50 grand? I don't even know.

SPEAKER_01: Like, you can probably get a bare bones one for 10, but by the time you include all the feeders and all the support stuff, yeah, you're going to be paying 20 upwards. Well, you know, the ones like Artifruit and SparkFun, the ones you see there, they're about 50K.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like Chris has too, like at the DIY drones factory.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're spending about 50K. Okay. So, really, yeah, you can get one for maybe 10 or 20. Brand new, we're talking. Yeah. But it requires... It's a full-time job to maintain and run these things. So, if you're a one-man band, having your own pick-and-place machine is actually pointless. It defeats the purpose of having automation like this. Well, unless you're cranking out a lot, right?

SPEAKER_02: If you're cranking out a lot of volume.

SPEAKER_01: No, but you're still going to sit there all day and babysit this thing, right? And if you're a one-man band, you can't do anything else.

SPEAKER_02: This thing's pretty zippy, Dave. I don't know, man.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, trust me.

SPEAKER_02: I could stay on Twitter all day and just watch this thing. You're clicking away.

SPEAKER_01: But no, they are not infallible. They fail. Even the professional ones. If you've seen my video, right? I talk about on my video of watching my boards. You know, there's somebody who sits there and every five minutes, they've got to fix something. They've got to change something. They've got to tweak something. They've got to, you know...

SPEAKER_02: It's process control, right? I mean, that's the basis of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, man. No, sorry. If you're a one-man band and think this thing's going to... Pick-and-place machine is going to help you, I think you're in for a rude shock of how much time and effort's required to maintain them.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I kind of... You know, so I've been looking at the CNC machine thing, right? And it's kind of the same thing of like, this is like the low-end, you know, low-volume kind of stuff. But yeah, to really get anything sizable, right, you need to go $10,000, $20,000, $50,000. Because it's just... It starts to become the material cost of it, right? I mean, like, you know, you can get used stuff, like old bridge ports, but to get all the stepper motors and like the controllers and stuff, it's just a lot of money. And like you said, I mean, there is a lot of maintenance there, so I'm probably got myself lined up for a hell of a new year. Have fun.

SPEAKER_01: But yeah, no, I mean, these things are getting cheaper. I mean, it does look like it can do the business. I mean, I will reserve judgment because, you know, it might be as a completely unreliable POS, you know? Right, yeah. One run is different than 20 runs. It's different than 1,000 runs. Exactly. Repeatability is important. And how good is the software and, you know, all that sort of stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: I keep finding that with all this stuff, you know, it's interesting how much mechanical stuff... Like, once you get into the manufacturing side of electronics, it's amazing how much you're like, oh, this isn't electronics anymore. This is mechanical stuff, right?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is mechanical. It's manufacturing. It's a totally different ballgame. That's why you're a muggy if you try and do it yourself.

SPEAKER_02: Well, I agree with that, but I'm just saying, like, you'd think someone would have told you in school. It's like, okay, well, if you're going to make stuff, just, you know, you might want to take some mechanical classes or brush up on your, you know, statics or whatever else. You know, like, programming. It's, you know, it's just like, it feels like electronics isn't just electronics anymore. You know, and maybe it's just because of what I look at.

SPEAKER_01: Well, it never has been. It never has been. It's also possible as well. Unless you're talking like we talked with our guests last week about just making a bare board, right? If it's just a bare board, it's just fast load on a bare board, and then that's so easy. Right? Because you've got no enclosures. You've got, you know, like, a test in might be easy or whatever, you know. But no, if you get into any moderately complex product, the manufacturing of it is a whole different world of mechanical and optimization and manufacturing processes.

Dave Jones: Right.

SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, there's engineering. The electronics itself doesn't matter. Manufacturing engineers for a reason.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly. The electronics itself is 5% of it, you know. It's like a trivial part of your product.

SPEAKER_02: Which is crazy. We should change that.

SPEAKER_01: That's just the way it is. Someone should fix that. Get on that, people. Right. I'm sorry, but products have to have a physical manifestation. Who would have thought? I know. Hardware. Hardware is hard, right? Yeah, that's right. That's why, you know, Bunny's laptop, in quote marks, you know, people have different requirements and different needs for that sort of thing. So that's why I don't think few people are going to buy it as a laptop. I don't see that's where its success is going to be. Its success will be as a bare board which then gets integrated into all different types of form factors.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Yeah, that'll be interesting. Speaking of the troubles of manufacturing, actually, someone posted on the subreddit about the kick. It was a Kickstarter project. No, not it was. What? Have we talked about this?

SPEAKER_01: Oh, I know. This is every week. We talk. Oh, Kickstarter project. Week's Kickstarter, you know.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Well, it's interesting because they talked about the kick. And so it's basically, it's like a lighting, it's like an LED.

SPEAKER_01: Wow, another Kickstarter LED lighting project. It's like Wi-Fi control. Sorry, the diamond doesn't, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: It's interesting, I think. But, so they were talking about, the person who posted it said, oh, they're bringing it, you know, they're bringing manufacturing back. And I thought it was interesting because the person who, who interestingly told them to follow the NBA playbook was me. Oh, right. Also, you're, you're involved in this project. I'm not involved in it, but they, they emailed me about it. And I said, yeah, you know, like, why don't you talk to some people? And I pointed them towards some former guests who were very helpful for us. And, and, yeah. And now it's, they're actually bringing it back from China. I thought it was interesting. Oh, right. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: So they're bringing it back from China under your advice. Right.

SPEAKER_02: The irony of me, you know, lamenting the NBA playbook. But, hey, I said it before all this GE crap started happening. So, you know. Right. It's just silly.

SPEAKER_01: So what's the takeaway from this? They're bringing it, what, they tried to manufacture in China and they failed? Or they had issues?

SPEAKER_02: It was just, yeah, finding reliable, you know, suppliers rights. I mean, like, so like Scott Miller's business, right, was, was, was, was basically providing reliable suppliers. And if you don't go with someone like that, you're on your own. Right. I mean, that's basically the idea of it. And, and there's costs associated with going with someone like Dragon Innovation or other companies like that. And so, you know, if you go on your own, you might get screwed. You know, you might say, well, I need 10,000 boards. And they say, well, too bad. Go away. But it's like, okay, well, and, and, and the benefit of being local wherever you are, it's not just the states, it's local. Yeah. Right. It's, it's, it's, that's, that's the basis of it is try and stay low. I said there was another, there was actually a subreddit about it today, or there's a Reddit thread about today about just getting boards manufactured. Right. And everyone there was saying the same thing. Go local, no matter what. Yeah. If you can hop on a plane without a, without a passport, you are in better shape than needing to have a passport. Not from the passport side, but just from the distance side. Right. If you have to fly 15 hours, that's different than flying three hours. And so, yeah, that's, I mean, that's the takeaway is just stay local if you can, if any, if you can justify the cost in any way possible. Oh yeah. What kind of stuff? You mean you're.

SPEAKER_01: I'm getting my boards made in Sydney.

SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah. Cool. A lot of, what's the cost that are looking like?

SPEAKER_01: Oh, the cost there is, well.

SPEAKER_02: 20, 20%. I mean, like, that's what I expect. Hang on.

SPEAKER_01: By don't know in percentage, let me run the numbers. It's, yeah, round about that, maybe. I mean, that's, I mean, that's what I expect, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, probably. It's, you know, it's, it's quite a significant proportion of the cost of the bomb, you know. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, it's quite large. It's, you know, in the order of like 30% or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Right. Well, it's, what it comes down to, to me, I mean, maybe, maybe we mentioned it here before, but, you know, if you get woken up at three in the morning, it all comes down to, what would I pay right now to not be awake? Yeah, yeah. Is it 30%? Is it 100%? Exactly. I think it's at least 30%, you know, like, that's, that's what I get to.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I could get my product manufactured in China, right? And, yeah, I could probably halve my total cost of the product, including the components and the, and the manufacturer. And the bareboard, like I get my bareboard manufactured by Circuit Labs in, in New Zealand as well. And I pay a very substantial cost extra for that instead of getting the bareboard made in China. Yeah. And so, yeah, I could, I could probably halve or one third my total cost of the product, but I don't want to do that. You know, I'll just happily get it manufactured locally, get less hassle and charge more for it.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, so be it.

SPEAKER_02: Do you put words manufactured on your parts, on your products?

SPEAKER_01: I'm always curious about that. Not on the product itself, but on the page. Yeah. I actually say, yeah, it's manufactured locally. The board comes from New Zealand and, you know, all that sort of jazz.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's always, that's always an internal struggle for me is, is like the, you know, my inner cheapskate versus my, you know, inner knowledge of quality, right? I mean, like, it's not necessarily just quality, but it's also, you know, yeah, crappy nationalism, whatever else you want to call it, right? I mean, like it's, some of it's just other stuff, right? I mean, so, or support, supporting local guys and supporting the ecosystem and everything, right? So. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: I like supporting the local guys. I'm deliberately paying a lot more to do it, but it also, as you said, it also, if something goes wrong, I can, I, you know, a half hour drive away, right? If something goes wrong in China, forget it, right? That, that whole run is ruined. I'm, I'm not flying to China. I'll just have to say, well, okay, right off that batch. Right. You know, shit happens, right? Right. And I've, I've got to wear that cost. Yep. If something goes wrong.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. At least it was, at least it was half as much because I'm eating it. Right. Yeah. That's.

SPEAKER_01: You know, and so, yeah, I mean, granted there hasn't been too many problems, you know, so far that, you know, had that, there has been an advantage being local, but if it does happen, then there is that advantage there. Yeah. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: It's, it's tough, right? Because humans are really bad at that kind of thing. I mean, we're, we're bad at figuring out what the future pain will be, right? I mean, in general, I think humans are risk averse, but not, not in, when it comes to like that kind of stuff, not with like straight up cost stuff, like money stuff, because, you know, I've, I've been a cheapskate before and then when something breaks, I'm like, ah, what the hell, you know, charge to the store, buy something different or whatever, you know? And some people, some people have internalized that and not, and, you know, I'm, this is my own personal struggle, but you don't know what it is until you're there. And, and the difference between a flight to China and a flight to, you know, Melbourne for you, it's like, yeah, it's crazy. So.

SPEAKER_01: I've, I've got a friend who used to manufacture stuff locally at the same place I do. And, and for various reasons of his customer, his customers basically forced him to move that to China. And, you know, he wasn't keen on that because he was happy where he was, but yeah, for various reasons. Anyway, moved to China and he's constantly flying back and forth and they're putting in dodgy components and all the usual stories you hear about, you know, you've got to watch them like a hawk. Otherwise they'll substitute components in, you know, and all that sort of jazz and. Right. And yeah, they've had quite a few issues. So, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: And it's like looking down at a board that you designed and you're like, oh, that's not me.

SPEAKER_01: And, and, and yes, he suddenly, you know, he's costs, you know, went to manufacture the product went down by two thirds, right? He can manufacture it for a third of the cost of what he could hear, but with all those added issues. So.

SPEAKER_02: Right. All the hidden costs of his time and his stress.

SPEAKER_01: And he's taking his time away from the family because he's got to fly back to China again, you know, to, to sort out problems and do stuff like that. So yeah. I don't know. Anyway, each to their own. Yeah. Some people, you know, don't, don't care. You know, bottom line is everything. Well, yeah, exactly. Well, in some markets, yeah. Bottom line is everything. Right. So, but others. Yeah. If you can get away with it, yes, do local. Certainly. And a lot of the time with these Kickstarter projects, it is kind of a niche kind of thing. And people are willing to pay a premium for this particular niche thing. So, you know, it's not like you're competing, you know, you have to compete against some mass market manufactured product. Right. You've got a niche product. You're, you're the only one selling that product that does that thing. People can't buy it from somewhere else. So they're going to pay whatever it costs to get that manufactured.

Dave Jones: Right.

SPEAKER_01: And I think you should build that. If you're doing your Kickstarter or whatever, you should price everything locally. I think we've probably talked about this before as well. You know, make your bomb, base your bomb on, you know, catalog prices, right? Your worst case, catalog digi-key prices or Farnells or whatever. And then, well, if you can source them cheaper somewhere else, great. Go and do it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Do not start on eBay, right?

SPEAKER_01: No, that's right. So base everything.

SPEAKER_02: Lots of a thousand, a hundred thousand, then I can get them for three cents a piece and they'll all be different colors, but.

SPEAKER_01: So if your bomb costs, you know, if your bomb cost is 30 bucks for your product, then based on digi-key and local manufacturer and local board prices and all that sort of stuff, then you, then your target price is a hundred bucks or something. Right. So then, yeah. And anything over and above that is a bonus. If you can take your manufacturing to China after that, well, you've made a larger margin, but at a cost in terms of risk. Yeah. Engineering dollars. Yeah. And all that sort of jazz. So, yeah. Whereas if you paint yourself, you've got options that way. Whereas if you paint yourself into the corner first where, oh, I have to get it manufactured at the absolute lowest possible price in China, you're stuck with that.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Right. And you should design for that then too, right? That's the other thing. Yes. But yeah, you better start from the beginning. Oh, boy. And you never, I mean, you never learn this stuff in school, right? I mean, it's just, it's just something that, you know, if students are listening, this is just not something that you can learn in school. Maybe you won't even learn it for the first couple of years on the job. It's just because, you know, until you're manufacturing in the thick of it, it's just, or until you get bit by it, right? You're forced to do it.

SPEAKER_01: You usually have to get bit by it because, you know, you can hear, you know, idiots like us dull out all this advice, right? Oh, I'm sure I'm still going to get bit by it.

SPEAKER_02: I don't, I can listen to myself again in like probably two or three years and be like,

Dave Jones: why didn't I listen to myself?

SPEAKER_01: Exactly. Happens to me all the time. I never take my own advice. Right. Yep. Pretty easy to do.

SPEAKER_02: Speaking of school, did you see this story about Florida? There's universities in Florida? No, I don't keep up with U.S.

Dave Jones: U.S. stuff. Southern state news, sorry. Right.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're probably in good shape not doing that, but they're doing, they're offering cheaper tuition to engineers. I think we might have talked about this as a potential at some point, but they're actually going forward with this. Why? Because they need more, so they need more engineers in general, right? So basically, so the state does, I mean, they want to bring more jobs and everything like that.

SPEAKER_02: So it's a state thing. Right. It's a state thing. Right, right, right. So they're trying to bring more jobs to the area. And in order to have more engineers, they're saying, well, if you become an engineer, it'll be cheaper than if you're an English major.

SPEAKER_01: How does that work? Does the government, or does the state offer tax subsidies to the unis, to the schools?

SPEAKER_02: I mean, they own some of the schools, so that's the main thing.

SPEAKER_01: Like, because I can't imagine that the schools would suddenly go, oh, we're just going to drop our fees in half to support the state, right? No, that's not going to happen, right? So the state would have to subsidize that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: That's crazy, though. I mean, I don't know. I always wonder about that. I think about like the time, I mean, it was before when I was in school, but I guess it was toward the tail end of it, I entered school. But, you know, people going into engineering because of the exorbitant salaries that, you know, from the dot-com boom and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Right.

SPEAKER_02: I was kind of entering at the end of that, and people were all like, oh, you know, if you go into engineering, it's a huge salary. But like, eh, you know, I don't know what that ended up happening from that. Like, if there was a huge fallout from that, or what that happened, or if this would actually do the same kind of effect, because it's just the entry side of things. Right.

SPEAKER_01: Because if, you know, if engineering costs half as much as arts, then you're, you know, then you're going to go for engineering, right?

SPEAKER_02: Right, right. But you'll be miserable, and you might not enjoy it. I mean, like, yeah, because you won't enjoy it. Like, if you don't enjoy engineering, I mean, and I think there's people out, I mean, I know some cranky, cranky engineers, right? They don't enjoy engineering. Yeah, I know. It's like, so it's like, maybe, maybe this isn't a good thing in the end, but it's interesting regardless, I think. I mean, just the... Yeah, no, of course. The cost, the cost benefit. We were talking about cost earlier, but the cost benefit of becoming an engineer versus becoming a history major.

SPEAKER_01: How will you know if something like that works, though? How will you know if a scheme like that works? It's hard to get a metric on that.

SPEAKER_02: It is, but you know what the benefit of that is? If you're a politician, it doesn't matter. Hey, right. Yeah, yeah. Of course. Oh, we'll measure that in about 10 years. I might be retired by then, so...

SPEAKER_01: Way out of my term. I'm on my lifetime pension. Thank you very much. Exactly.

Dave Jones: I'll be on a beach. A big fat pension. Thank you. Yep. And I'll land with my golden parachute. Yep, yep. Bastards. Oh, that's great. Oh, man.

SPEAKER_01: So it's practically up. What else have we got?

SPEAKER_02: We have a couple announcements before the end of the show. Yeah, one thing. So we talked about it, I think, last year, and a couple people ended up going from the show, but there's an analog aficionados party out in Silicon Valley. If people are willing to go out there, I know a couple people were out there or flew out there. Paul Rico. When? When is it? That is coming up November... It's Wednesday. Hello. It's December. Yeah. It's December 18th. Did I miss that? No, that's the old one then. 2013. Oh, it's posted. Oh, sorry. February 16th. I'm sorry. Ah, right. It was posted on the 19th of November. So the party is on February 16th in Silicon Valley. So we'll link it in and stuff. But a lot of that freaked me out. But we had some people go last year. And honestly, if you can go and you're interested in analog, there are some crazy awesome people that go out to that thing. I mean, so check out the guest list and stuff.

SPEAKER_01: And do it soon, because they seem to be dropping like flies. I know, right?

SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. We need to get some more people on the show. I keep thinking about that. Yeah. It's just a sad reality, right? I mean, we're kind of... I wouldn't say we're exiting the heyday of it, but it's just like all these huge names and the people that you know from, like Jim Williams and Bob Pease and all them, you know, like you just know them from being published so much. And it's just, you know, they were getting up there in an age and they both unfortunately passed away. And it's like, yeah. And then Hans Kamenzen passed away. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Right. So in 50 years time, people are going to say, oh, Chris Gammell died. Can't believe it.

SPEAKER_02: I'm never dying, Dave.

SPEAKER_01: He was the analog guard. Right. You're going to live forever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Singularity. Right. Oh, boy.

SPEAKER_02: Yes. Let's see. There was one other thing I thought. No, I guess that's it. Well, then there's show news as well. So we are going to take a little break.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. We just decided this before the show, didn't we? We thought, oh, should we do, you know... It's weird this year, right? The show's over Christmas or should we, I don't know, record a Q&A show or something like that? Right. So we usually record...

SPEAKER_02: We just decided bugger it. Well, we usually record and post it on Tuesdays. And this year, that's both Christmas and New Year's, as it usually goes, because it's seven days apart. But since it is the same day, it's just like, eh. So we're going to take a little break. And we were thinking for the first show of the year, we could do a Q&A show, though. Yeah. So give people...

SPEAKER_01: We don't talk about our own shit. We just answer questions. And then try not to go off on too many tangents, I guess.

SPEAKER_02: Right. Right. And so people can post questions to... I'll put a post up on the actual site proper. So you can leave comments there if you don't like Reddit. There's also our subreddit. You can also email us if you really want to. But hopefully those other two options will suffice. But yeah, if you've got questions or if you're working on projects over the holidays, you run into something or you find something cool, that's always good. And we always like those suggestions anyways. But in this case, that'll be a very specific Q&A show. And then we can have a title that uses the letter Q. I like that too. Right.

SPEAKER_01: Don't get to use that much.

SPEAKER_02: No, we don't. But I was thinking about... I mentioned to Dave. Was it last week, Dave? I said, maybe we should move away from this three-letter thing next year. Yeah, that's right.

Dave Jones: And you said, no! Well, what the hell would we move to? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Random titles. Oh, and that's the last announcement. Let us know.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so our titles are so hard to parse, right? If you're trying to find an old show. But... Yes. So we're trying a new thing where we actually got some transcriptions done. So we're just trying it out to start with. We're getting four different shows transcribed. And it's pretty cool, you know? Like, the first show was, you know, the last one. So me, Dave, and Ian. And it was like 15,000 words. It's like a crazy amount of text. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of bullshit. It is, right? It's just like, you could print that out and it actually will have a weight to it now.

Dave Jones: You can smell a mile away.

SPEAKER_02: That's right. But the benefit of that is Google can find it. And more specifically, if you're looking for old stuff and shows, we know how hard it is if you're like, if you're trying to go back and say, oh, well, I think Dave said this really dumb thing about chip printing, you know, a couple months ago. And I really want to find it. You can go back and actually have a contextual search now because we'll have some transcriptions done. We're not going to do all of them because of the cost. But, you know, we'll try and do some of them going forward just to, you know, hopefully have people make it easier to find and stuff. And we'll see how it goes as we go forward. But thank you so much to the people that donate. Thank you to everyone for participating. Yes, please. Keep this going. Exactly. And, you know, if you want to donate before the new year, that'd be great too. But, you know, also just, you know, participating with the advertisers. We're going to probably have some new advertisers in the new year as well. All that stuff really helps out. And I guess since this is the last show of the year, we should thank all of you profusely. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_01: Thank you indeed. Well, we can't leave the... We can't leave 2012 without mentioning the five most disruptive technologies of 2012.

SPEAKER_02: Oh, this is going to be the last one? Okay. I like this one.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's go a bit over. It's the last show of the year. Right? So you've put a link here to an article on QZ.com. Quartz.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Quartz is a new tech site. And Christopher Mims is one of the articles. He used to be one of the writers at MIT Technology Review. And he went over there. Oh, right. And I really like his writings. Very snarky and awesome. Another Christopher. There you go.

SPEAKER_01: Anyway, the five most disruptive technologies of 2012. Let's go through them. Number one. Controlling computers without touching them. Oh, yeah. Look at that. Yeah, geez. I were doing this in the 70s, in the 60s and 70s. Nothing new here.

SPEAKER_02: But not as a mass market thing, right? I mean, that's the main thing. So there was actually a chip. And actually, someone posted about this in the subreddit a while back. It's a microchip part that actually senses electric fields, basically, in proximity to the chip.

SPEAKER_01: It works exactly the same as the regular touch button ones, except it's a little bit more sensitive. And they've got some algorithms to detect 3D. Sorry.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. And that's cool. I mean, and the big thing there is the mass market aspect of it, right? I mean, that's the killer thing is that if it's mass market, then you can start rolling in at other things.

SPEAKER_01: Recognize the middle finger gesture. You give your iPhone the middle finger in it. Yeah, right. And it says, I'm sorry. Yeah, Siri says that, right? Right, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: I didn't know you didn't want that.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Anyway. Next one, number two, is the obvious one that was announced at that Google conference, the Google Glasses and Augmented Reality. I think it's, you know, they've been talking about this for a long time as well, talking about car windshields and everything like that. Yeah, heads up displays.

SPEAKER_01: And once again, it's all tech, you know, there's nothing new in all this. They just put in modern technology spin. The commoditization of hardware, right?

SPEAKER_02: And that's cool. And, you know, I think the thing with this, I was actually thinking about Dave for this one, because, you know, when you have a camera, right? I mean, that's basically what Dave does with EEV blog is a lot of, you know, if you have people that are working on circuits or whatever, you can have, like, a first-person view of what they're doing. And I think that's, yeah, it's interesting going forward, because you could not learn from a teacher, but learn from someone like Dave online from, you know, 20,000 miles away. 12,000 miles, rather. I guess 20,000 miles, you'd start going around again. But, yeah, I mean, like, it's just, it's interesting from a, you know, a YouTube perspective and all the other side stuff. More sensors on your body is cool. I like that. Cool.

SPEAKER_01: All right. Number three. Next up, we have the world's most cost-effective energy storage. They're talking about compressed air batteries here. I don't like anything that involves compressed and all that sort of, no, it's sort of, it just instantly says dangerous, exploding, you know. Right. Well, they were talking about this. There's so many battery technologies, that's the holy grail of, you know, electric vehicles and home energy storage and all sorts of stuff. Renewable grids and stuff like that, right? So there's, yep.

SPEAKER_02: Right. That's definitely going to happen. And they were talking about the young lady that actually improved the efficiency by, like, basically putting some mist inside the compressed air batteries, which is interesting, you know. Right. And that's all it tooks, and yeah, it's cool. But number four is, kind of feeds off that because it's autonomous vehicles and electric vehicles. You know, it's, again, that's going to be dependent on batteries.

SPEAKER_01: Autonomous vehicles are bullshit. You don't like those? I like those. No, they're not going to happen in the next, you know, foreseeable future. No, it's bullshit. I don't know, man. No, not bullshit. You wouldn't get in one? I'd get in one.

SPEAKER_02: I don't know. You're an idiot. I trust them more than some of those idiots on the road. No. Yeah. All right. We'll see. Not going to happen. All right. That's why it's something to watch, Dave. It's disruptive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: It disrupts. But no, if it's disruptive, it can't disrupt unless it actually penetrates the freaking market. Right?

Speaker ?: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: I guess. If it doesn't penetrate the market, it's not disruptive. It doesn't change the market. How many people are going to buy autonomous vehicles in the next, drive your own vehicles? Well, it's autonomous electric vehicles.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but it doesn't matter. Imagine, how about getting rid of every cabbie in the world, right? That would be disruptive. Johnny Cab. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. You know, from... What was it? Total Recall?

SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Johnny Cab. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Total Recall, if you haven't seen it. Oh, God.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. It's so terrible. I might have to go watch that this holiday break. Oh, come on. It's great. It's good fun. I know. Oh, it's great. Better than the remake.

SPEAKER_01: They just made a remake of that. I don't like the idea of a remake of a movie like that. No. Yeah. It's got Big Arnie in it. Arnold. Arnold. It's terrific. Anyway. Yeah. No, you never catch me jumping in a Johnny Cab. Anyway. Okay. And now they're talking about ultra-cheap web devices. Right. Which we mentioned on here before. They reckon 5 billion people.

SPEAKER_02: With the Indian tablet that's $40 and then subsidized down to $20. An Android tablet, which is...

SPEAKER_01: But once again, it's kind of similar to the one laptop per child bullshit.

SPEAKER_01: But cheaper. Way cheaper. I'd rather have those five people have clean drinking water and education and medicine than... Well, this is education. ...freaking access to the internet. I mean... I mean, it is education. Yeah, I know. But I'd rather have them actually have the basics first rather than an internet connection.

SPEAKER_02: Hey, hey, hey. That's like 5 billion more Amp Hour listeners that we could potentially have.

SPEAKER_01: Right. Okay. Let's be selfish.

SPEAKER_02: You are out there and listening. Even if this is in the future, I'm for it. Remember, it was Dave that didn't want it. So... I hope there's a speaker on there or else I'll feel really dumb. Right. It's tablet only. No speaker.

SPEAKER_01: Right. So little Johnny in his little hut or pit in Ethiopia is sitting there with his tablet listening in to the Amp Hour, huh?

SPEAKER_02: I hope so. And if you are, you're awesome.

SPEAKER_01: We'll give you a shout out, yeah. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right in. Use Reddit.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, boy. Oh, man. But it's an interesting fact that most people like us in the Western world pay more for our internet access than most people per month than the majority of people earn in a year in those countries. Oh, yeah. Like total. So, you know. Right. Hmm. Right.

SPEAKER_02: Right. Right. Well, that's a good segue into...

SPEAKER_01: A bit of a human perspective there.

SPEAKER_02: If people find other charities to donate to before the Amp Hour, you should do that in 2012 first.

SPEAKER_02: We are secondary. But, yeah. That is a good thing to do in 2012 is to support education and everything else.

SPEAKER_01: All right, man. Well, that's done. Well, it's been another year. How many years have we been doing this shit?

SPEAKER_02: Two and a half. Two and a half now. Two and a half. I guess we've been around since 2010. So, we'll be entering our third year.

SPEAKER_01: Thanks, guys. Have a good holiday and a good new year.

SPEAKER_02: Talk to you in the new year. See you.

SPEAKER_01: Catch you later. Bye.

Speaker ?: We'll see you next week.