#127 – FPGA, Xess, 32 Bit - Quirky Qualitative Questions

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast, recorded January 7th, 2013. Episode 127, Quirky, Qualitative Questions.

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

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

Dave Jones: And we are transmitting, folks. Transmitting, is that the correct word? We're transmitting from our underground bunkers since the end of the world happened on December 21st.

Chris Gammell: We're still here.

Dave Jones: Since our last show. Mutants, bam, every day. Everyone up on the surfaces. Too bad for all those suckers left up on the surface.

Chris Gammell: And they called us mutants before, but no, we were right.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Yeah, it didn't end, huh?

Chris Gammell: No. No. Darn. Darn. It's weird. It's weird with those crazies not being right.

Dave Jones: I was hoping that something would happen. Like, by coincidence, a volcano would go off and then all the preppers would...

Chris Gammell: Then they wouldn't come back out. They would just stay in hiding for a really long time. No. Oh boy. We're fine. We made it.

Dave Jones: Although it could be the end of the world here in Sydney today.

Chris Gammell: Oh?

Dave Jones: Yes. Where, like, apparently the worst fire risk in probably history here in Sydney, depends on who you believe. At least in several decades or something. Yeah. It's going to be like 45 degrees Celsius. Yeah. Yeah. Dry winds coming through and all sorts of... Yep. It's going to be 45 degrees Celsius all across Sydney. Wow. Which is a lot. Stay safe, man. What's that in Fahrenheit? Oh, you know, I was doing this the other day.

Chris Gammell: No, no. I can do this in my head. You can? I think so. It's nine-fifths and then you add 32, right? Right. So... Oh, I don't know. 2.1 times 45 is 95 plus 32. That's... That's... No, that can't be high. That's like 120, isn't it?

Dave Jones: It's 113, according to Google. 113.

Chris Gammell: Wow. 45 is 113. That's crazy. That's really high. That's like Texas high. That's really high. Yep. That's like... Wow.

Dave Jones: And that's all over Sydney. Like normally, you know, the temperature out here in the west where I am is higher than, you know, the beaches, you know, the beach areas on the coast because you get the coastal breeze and everything. But apparently all the wind's coming in from the west and all of Sydney's just going to be blanketed in there. Yeah. Man. Yeah. It's going to be bad. If fires do start, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, that's always a big... I always wonder, you know, like people who talk against solar and stuff, my mind immediately goes to situations like yours just because of like, you know, offloading the grid in these super high load times, right? I mean, everyone's got their air conditioner going. Yeah. And like at the hottest times, it's the, you know, that's when you're going to get the most solar power too. So I think even just for that, I mean, when the cost comes down more, obviously, but I know that's a big argument for it, but against it. But man, that's just like a perfect situation. Oh, yeah? Very shortly.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking about getting a solar system for home. That'd be fun. It cost us about four grand, I think, for a one and a half kilowatt system. I mean, we should have got it when the government subsidy was massive and you practically got the thing for free. I mean, my mum's got solar in a retirement village, for goodness sake.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And she hasn't paid a cent for ages now, for a year.

Chris Gammell: Do you guys still have feed-in tariffs and stuff like that?

Dave Jones: Yeah, but it's pathetic. It's like eight cents or something. So you're paying. So you're actually subsidizing the grid now if you buy solar.

Chris Gammell: That's how bad it is. I know. I think it's just paying for solar panels. It's not subsidizing the grid.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. You're feeding it back into the grid. I guess. Yeah. So if you're not home during the day using that power, you're just pissing it away. Oh, I see what you mean. Because the feed-in tariff is like one quarter of what you actually pay. Right. Whereas it used to be three times. It used to be three times. Now it's dropped to like a quarter or something.

Chris Gammell: I heard someplace that was still like 70 cents per kilowatt.

Dave Jones: Ours was 60. Ours was 60 here in Sydney.

Dave Jones: Man, that's...

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It was massive. So everyone jumped on the bandwagon and the government went, oh my God. That's a huge bill. We can't afford this. Yeah. Everyone signed up. And we refused to at the time because we didn't want to give back our renewable energy certificates. It was all politics and we didn't want to play the game. But with hindsight, yeah, we should have just swallowed our pride and got our free solar panels.

Chris Gammell: Ah, yes. Well, that sounds like a fun project for the new year, though. I mean, that'll be cool.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't do it. I make a phone call and say, you know, can you install the panels?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but you can hang out on the roof when they're installing it and you can be like, can I tape this?

Dave Jones: Oh, well, I can get some time lapse, you know, photos and stuff. Exactly. Maybe. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And then you stay safe. That's important. Stay safe.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Yep. Ah, it's a shit of a job. I wouldn't want to do it myself. It's tough. It's tough work, for sure. And then you'd have to find someone to certify it, you know. It's not like you can just hook it up yourself. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Man. Bugger that. Those inverters are cool, though. I really do like those. I mean, I've only seen a couple of them.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they're great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And they're getting better, too. I mean, they're moving to silicon carbide. And getting more efficient. I think they're running out of room on efficiency, personally. That's what I recall last time I looked at it.

Dave Jones: I think they're incredibly efficient, yeah. They could be, you know, they'd be fairly lucky to eke out another percent or two, I think. Yeah. I'm not sure. Does anyone know what the off hand? I thought it was like 98%. Well, I guess if I could Google it and then post. Yeah. I think it's pretty darn good. I thought it was, yeah. Which is great. Maybe not over the full load curve, you know. I'm sure they can't achieve that over the full.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just like when you look at like switching regulator data sheets, you're like, oh, 95% efficiency in this tiny, tiny, tiny little sliver.

Dave Jones: Tiny little window of between 60%. At 10 amps. You know, like between 10 amps and 10.01 amps. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, that's fun. Oh, boy. Spexmanship. Never gets old. Even in 2013.

Dave Jones: 2013. Jeez.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. We said today was going to be a question and answer show. And I was a little disappointed. No one left us a voicemail. I was, I had asked for voicemails.

Dave Jones: You were, yep. You were hoping for that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well. Maybe next time. Maybe in 2015. Right. Let me do the next one.

Dave Jones: And we did have, sorry, folks, but our server was hacked and shut down. Hacked and then shut down. Wasn't it?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: So it was like, yeah. So we had a double whammy there. So we may have lost some questions. Oh, yeah. Hopefully not. Quick, post them now. We'll definitely get to them. Doing the time warp. Oh, boy. Yeah. Doing our live show here. Anyway, yes. Our host decided to name them. Oh, Blue Mile. Name and shame the bastards. Blue Mile.

Chris Gammell: Blue Mile in Columbus, Ohio. I tried going local and then they just shut down on me. They just said, oh, yeah, we're getting out of the business. Oh, cool. Well, see you later. Buttholes. Yeah. I'm sure it wasn't a profitable business, but at the same time, it's the same thing with chips, too, right? I mean, I always understand when people give me obsolete notices and stuff like that, but I don't care. I'm mostly just pissed in the moment. I don't care how much business sense it makes. I don't care about that stuff. I care about me. Exactly. I'm looking out for number one.

Dave Jones: You selfish bastard. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And that is not changing in 2013. That is staying the same. Oh, brilliant. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Nothing like selfishness in electronics. Yeah. It is a very selfish field.

Chris Gammell: You think?

Dave Jones: I think so. Why is that? Possibly in general because people want to do it their way and they want their parts now and they want them practically for free and they always want them in stock. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: One of my friends who's a salesman, he said, this is the only business in the world where every year a product comes out with new features and half the price of the old one. It's like, man, you never think about it. Of course, sales guys see that every day. They're like, yeah, yeah, cool. We're selling what for what? I used to get $10 for that.

Dave Jones: We're selling it for a dollar now? Well, same thing's happening in test gear too. It's, well, you know, like five years ago, it was unheard of to buy a digital scope under a thousand bucks, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's true.

Dave Jones: Now it's like, well, you can pick one up for 250, 300 bucks and it's got more bells and whistles than you can poke a crow probe at. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's, and they're just kind of running out of room, you know, that it's like, unless you go higher in resolution or something, you know, and that's, and they all try and protect that, that high end side of things, right? If you're, you know, if you're currently selling a scope, right? Yeah. If you're selling a scope, you know, a hundred giga sample scope for, you know, a hundred grand or whatever it is, you don't want to just go and give that all away. So you just throw in other bells and whistles.

Dave Jones: They have to protect markets, but yeah, I'm, you know, the low end of the market, the test gear you can get these days, bang for buck is absolutely incredible.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So there's no excuse not to have it, people.

Dave Jones: Have good gear. Yeah, exactly. Oh boy. I love it. So we've got questions, huh? We do. We've got some.

Chris Gammell: We've got some. We got about 10 or 12 or 15 or something. Well, that, that'll do the whole show, surely. Oh yeah. Geez, we normally, yeah.

Dave Jones: All right. Well, shall we run to, shall we start on the, uh, website ones?

Chris Gammell: Let's do one, one, one in one. You read the website ones. I'll read the ones by email.

Dave Jones: All right. Shall we get the, uh, wank word of the day, um, over and done with? Oh, sure. Open source hardware. Oh yeah. Right. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Um, Dennis, not Dennis, but Dennis with a Z. Um, he's actually got four questions. Um, should I go through them all? Or should I?

Chris Gammell: Maybe we should put time limits on these. I don't know. Right. Well, I can answer the first one.

Dave Jones: He's talking about my micro supply project. Let's talk dates. He says, well, yeah, I don't know. I'm having a hard time finding times. Yeah. Slack ass. Yeah, Dave. Having a hard time finding.

Chris Gammell: You thought your wife was bad, right? Asking you when stuff's getting done.

Dave Jones: Yep. I need to take like a week off and just pull my finger out and, you know, get the latest

Chris Gammell: version done. We'll say the socket. My ass. My American ass. Ass.

Dave Jones: Anyway. So, yeah, I'm hoping that my last video this week will be today. Like I released, I'm releasing like three in three days. So I released one yesterday. I released one last night, day before. Then I released one yesterday. And now I'm going to do tear down Tuesday today. Of course. It's Tuesday here. And then I'm going to go bugger it. I'm going to work on the micro supply for the rest of the week. Look at that.

Chris Gammell: A question got some action. That's great. We have no way of knowing Dave was planning to do that either way.

Dave Jones: Right. No. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a new year. And, you know, yeah, I want to get the bloody thing done and move on to other things. So, yeah. Yeah. So hopefully. Yeah. But, you know, you've got it. Like you can't just do an hour here, hour there. It doesn't work. No. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It doesn't work. We, I used to do a, there was like a 20% time type of thing. Yep. And at a company I used to work for. And they tried cutting it down to say, oh, well, you know, do it four hours on Friday. And they said, oh, well, that's a little too much. Do two hours on Friday. Two hours. Right. Or spread it out through the week. And, you know, like do four hours, but do it, you know, hour at a time throughout the week. And it's like in hardware, I mean, not saying it's easy in software either, but, you know, just that context switch is really tough. I really don't like doing that. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because just like laying out a new board will take you two days, you know, you fiddle around with the schematic and the bomb, get it all right. And then you'll at least take a day laying out the board and, you know, I mean, there's, there's two days just, you know, two full working days.

Chris Gammell: I was doing an LTSpice simulation today. I looked up, it was four hours later. I mean, it was just like fiddling with stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So easy to do. So yeah, it's, it's, it's, I understand your pain.

Dave Jones: Excellent. Thank you very much. Second question from Dennis considering that he's milking this, 3D printing. Does it really have a future given that all printable material are low temp and low tensile strength? Will it ever replace metal parts? Is it a fad? No, it's not a fad. It produces useful stuff.

Chris Gammell: I think what we should, we should preface this with how the hell would we know this electronics show?

Dave Jones: Well, I do own a 3D printer. And so I can speak from a little bit of experience.

Chris Gammell: And I, similarly, CNC machine. It's coming in soon.

Dave Jones: Woohoo.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Awesome.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You man you. You're a big man. You're not using one of those pussy plastic 3D printers, right?

Chris Gammell: Metal. Metal. So metal.

Dave Jones: It'll be steam driven too, you know, and you'll be wearing overalls and you're a real engineer, you know? Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Old school. Yep. But no, I agree. Of course there's a room for 3D printers, you know? It's like. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, of course. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Even just for prototyping. I mean, it's even just for, even just holding something in your hand, you know? Like it's. Exactly. It's good for electronics. It's good for. That has a massive value.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. You never know. It's just. I mean, I was running into this with the layout stuff I was doing today and a couple of days prior. You know, I. You don't know what problems you're going to run into until you're in the thick of it, right? I thought I had everything all set. That's it. And then today I'm, you know, working with the layout guy and I'm just like, this is completely wrong. I was completely wrong because, you know, you had the context finally. And it's the same thing with a prototype in your hand. You hold it and you're like, well, that'll never work.

Dave Jones: What is this? What was I thinking? Oh.

Chris Gammell: I did a 3D model when I was, when I started doing 3D modeling stuff. I thought I had like the biggest holes for LEDs to poke through and then I printed it out and I'm like, good God. Did I not look at the measurement? It was super tiny. You couldn't have fit an LED through there if you tried, you know? And like the 3D printer showed me that, you know, it showed me that yes, it is possible to print a hole that small. But, you know, if you have an actual mold, if you're trying to do any kind of volume, there's no way that's going to work. So, yeah, that was a hard lesson I learned. So, of course there's a place for it. Question 3. Let's keep moving.

Dave Jones: But they are very fiddly. They are not consumer ready. I've said that before. They are not consumer ready. They're very fiddly. Yeah. They're a pain in the ass. Mine's not working at the moment. Mine's a freaking MakerBot. Mine's an expensive MakerBot, right? Right. Hopeless. Anyway, number 3, open source hardware. What changes did you see since the start of the Amp Hour? How do you see the future next 10 years, 20 years, 50? And there's a follow-up question to that, which I'll probably answer first. What is the big thing that open source hardware hasn't done yet? Which is an interesting question, I think. And I think I have one answer to it. Well, there's many answers. Go ahead.

Chris Gammell: What's the one answer?

Dave Jones: Is that open source hardware has yet to make a big, profitable company. Right? And that's sort of been...

Chris Gammell: Sorry. Yeah? I was going to say... I'm trying to... I'm racking my brain thinking, has open source software made a big, profitable company? I guess...

Dave Jones: Oh, it did. It's arguable. It's arguable. Yeah. Like, just a bit... I'm talking just like a company who has open source products and that, you know, and that's it. Like, they're selling a product. Like MakerBot, for example, is the classic example, right? They have an open source hardware product. And after a couple of years and all their venture capital and everything, they've decided, no, we cannot continue as a 100% pure open source hardware company. We have to close several aspects of it. And I don't necessarily blame them. And they said, we have to do this if we're going to grow and become a bigger major player in that industry. So it's yet to be demonstrated. Like, MakerBot couldn't do it. They had the best shot so far of doing it. And they just came to the conclusion we cannot do it. We cannot grow our company.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's interesting from other companies that are doing open sources, like SparkFun, right? And they're not doing the same... You know, it's not like they're closing off or anything like that.

Dave Jones: It's not the same thing. No, they're kit suppliers. Like, it's the same thing with Artifruit, right? They're basically a distributor of open... You know, they do write cool tutorials and, yeah, they develop their own products, but not... You know, they don't just specifically sell, you know, a limited range of open source hardware products, for example. So...

Chris Gammell: Right, but what I was going to say is they're also... I mean, it's just a size thing sometimes, too. I mean, like, so SparkFun just posted about their free day, right? That's like a big thing that people love online.

Dave Jones: Oh, right, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: They had to modify their free day because of lawyers, basically, because it got so big that, like... And Nathan... It wasn't Nathan that wrote about it. It was someone else there. But they wrote about, you know, all the intricacies of giving away product like that in large quantities.

Chris Gammell: You know, it's just...

Dave Jones: You can't give away. You're right. Yeah. It gets to a point where it gets so big that you, you know, you can't do those nice, friendly community things that you used to do.

Chris Gammell: Right. I guess. Scale is tough, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And then from the other side, I saw another article earlier this week about scale and stuff like that. And then there's, like, this nether region then, too, where, you know, like, if you're too big, right, you can't do some of the small company stuff. If you're too small, they were talking about, like, consumer electronics, like people investing in consumer electronic companies and stuff like that, you know, like a MakerBot or, you know, other smaller open source hardware companies that are coming up. They won't even talk to you if you're less than 10 million, they said. And 10 million, that is non-trivial. That is a big milestone. Yeah, exactly. That's a big one of cash.

Dave Jones: That's a throne of cash.

Chris Gammell: And that's just in sales. But even just in sales, that's really tough. That's a lot of moolah.

Dave Jones: That makes me think of Bill Gates and his, you know, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. You know, he's given away billions of dollars, but he needs 800 employees to do that. You know, you would think, oh, let's just, you know, just hand out cash, right? There's nothing easier, right? Just start flinging it at people.

Chris Gammell: No, no. It's nothing easier.

Dave Jones: No, they need a huge, big, built this huge corporate headquarters and they've got like 800 and a thousand people in there to give away money.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: You know, it's like, I mean, come on. Same here, man.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So anyway, I think that is the big thing, is the biggest thing that open source hardware has not demonstrated yet, is that somebody can really turn it into, I'm talking a huge business. Yeah. You know, $50, $100 million a year by still just making, you know, like a, you know, their little range of open source hardware products. So, and maintain it 100% open source, unlike MakerBot. I don't, it may not be possible. It may not be. So open source hardware may be the future, even 10, 20, 50 years down the track, may be that, well, you know, business always wins. The NBA playbook always wins. There it is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Would you agree or disagree?

Chris Gammell: Well, it's, yeah, it's not like the, I mean, NBA playbook, yeah, it, it, it's, it's just money. Money always wins. I think it's more likely than not. I think it's just money.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, of course.

Chris Gammell: People that invest in stuff, they want returns and then, you know, then they go to tried and true methods, which is a lot of, you know, known corporate behavior. I mean, like, it's, as much as I rail against it, it's like, I get it. I understand it, you know, whatever. Yeah, yeah. Same here. It all happens for a reason, but that reason is money, so.

Dave Jones: You may not like the reason, but it's, you know. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But I don't have to, I don't have to ignore it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So I think he's, I think he's had enough questions.

Dave Jones: So I think that's quite unlikely. He's had enough airtime. Yep. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Jeez. All right. Next one comes, next one comes from Martin in Norway. He says, I'm 16 and I live in Norway, and so therefore sometimes he gets a little bit cold. A bit chilly? Yep. Sometimes below minus 20 Celsius. He's wondering though, he said, I've done some research, but I haven't found why things fail. And especially on the cold side of things. At low temperatures.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Yeah. And it says in data sheets, there are specified minimum and maximum temperatures, but what happens when it exceeds those limits? And I'm guessing he's saying on the low side.

Dave Jones: Well, when you talk about thermal cycling, actual physical water condensation can be a big issue. Oh. Okay. So if you're, you know, if you're going between, like I used to develop, you know, marine seismic products, right? Yeah. And often they would be dragged from the ocean depths, right? We're talking, you know, minus two degrees, right? Down to, because freezing point of salt water can actually go below zero. Right. So, you know, yeah. So very low temperatures. And then it would be dragged onto the back deck of the boat in the middle of the sun, which would be, you know, 50, 60 degrees or something on the back deck, you know? And so it's just dragged up from one to the other. And, you know, and that can be a huge deal. So, you know, you can formally coat your boards, you pot them, things like that. Yeah. Just to avoid issues like that.

Chris Gammell: Okay. That's good. Because I had no idea. I've never worked. I've worked on the hot side. I mean, I think that's the thing. A lot of people do work on the hot side, but man, the cold side. Usually I end up thinking of like automotive specs. I know that those things have to run from minus 40 up to like 120 or something like that. But yeah.

Dave Jones: There are some components very sensitive to temperature. LCDs, for example. I've done an example in one of my videos. I think it was a Fluke 28. I put it in the freezer and the response time of the LCD goes down, right? As you drop the temperature. You know, you can see the update rate is slower, right? Because the crystals, I don't know, they start to freeze or whatever and they don't move around as freely as they did at the warmer temperatures. Could be talking out my ass there, but I'm not a physicist.

Chris Gammell: I was thinking about that too with like electron mobility. Does that change in the cold? I really don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, no. As a general rule, components perform better at lower temperatures.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Generally, you want your system to work at a lower temperature because it's better. Yeah. I mean, it's from an entropy standpoint too, right? All that sort of stuff. Yep. Yeah. So.

Chris Gammell: Unless it's a, was it PTCs?

Dave Jones: So operating at cold is a good thing. So operating at zero to 10 degrees or something is actually good for most components and stuff like that, apart from say LCDs or something like that, could be an issue. So like take Agilent's latest OLED multimeter, for example. It works down to like minus 40 or minus 50 or something because it's got an OLED display to do that. They had to use an OLED display instead of LCD because the LCD model, exactly the same model, only goes down to like minus 30 or something. Don't quote me. But yeah, this one goes 10 or 20 degrees below that because it's got an OLED display instead of that. So interesting. But yeah, like I don't have too much experience, anything below zero. In fact, I have no experience. Yeah. I was going to say, it hardly gets that cold. It ever gets that cold there. It doesn't get that cold in Australia. So yeah. 45 on the high side. Sorry. I have no idea. So I'm sure Agilent will sell a, they'll sell a buttload of these multimeters in Norway, I guess. Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, I would say for his actual design though, you know, like, like you said with, you know, I could see the water, you know, like when water starts to freeze, it can really, if it gets in cracks and stuff, it could start busting things up. So definitely waterproof first would probably be. Oh, batteries.

Dave Jones: Batteries are a huge thing. They lose massive capacity at low temperatures. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Real nasty stuff. Go look up the data sheets in, in depth for a temperature for lithium ion and very, you know, alkalines and, you know, various types of lithium cells and stuff. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No battery is. Yep. Driving around the Cleveland in the winter. I was thinking about that with like electric cars and wondering how that's handled because Yep. I know that.

Dave Jones: Very delicately. That's how that's handled. But yeah. They're like block heaters and stuff. Once again, there's upmanship on the specs, right? They will specify the battery capacity at the optimal temperature, right? They won't tell you you're going to lose half your battery capacity of your bloody, you know, your car's going to lose half its, half its pack energy at low temperatures in the middle of winter. Right. So don't quote me on the exact figure, but it will drop.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So.

Chris Gammell: Well, I remember Bob Simpson saying that he, he has a heater in his car, an electric heater in his car that pulls off the batteries, but that's just for the cabin temperature. I don't know if they need actual, like heaters for the batteries and stuff too.

Dave Jones: Well, see the, the, the operation of them may actually keep them warm, right? The, the internal resistance of the batteries, right? Yeah. It would actually keep them warm. So, but when that, when you first started up, of course, you know, I don't know the ESR could go up and I don't know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Maybe you do like a, a heater like they do up in the, in the great North. Do you know that cars up in like, uh, like the upper peninsula in Michigan and like, like North Dakota and stuff like that. They just have, they have plugs basically. They just, you take, you drive the car to the store, you plug your car in just like into a 120 outlet. And then it just has a little, it has a little, uh, resistive heater in there. It just keeps the block. Really? I think that's actually for the, so the, uh, motor oil doesn't coagulate.

Dave Jones: That's, that's hilarious.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But yeah, you'll like, you'll go up there and you'll see like people at the grocery store, they plug their car in. Wow.

Dave Jones: I had no idea. That's the first time I've heard of that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And, uh, well, I mean that they'll be well primed for actual charging once, you know, like they'll be used to it. So that's good for EVs, but yeah, of course, that's not the reason right now. So do we answer his question? Probably not, but we should move on. Yeah, probably not. Yeah. Thanks for asking that, Martin. That was, that was, thanks for asking. And if other Norwegians are, are, are experiencing this, please let us know in the comments. That'd, that'd be helpful too.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Cause you've got to live in these cold areas to really appreciate it. Like I have no freaking idea, right? It never gets below zero here. It never snows. Give me a break.

Chris Gammell: It feels like it here, but it's not that cold.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, exactly. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. All right. So another one from the site, which I can't see and you can.

Dave Jones: Right. Ah, well, um, uh, what do we got here? Oh, um, from Daniel from, um, Argentina. Hello to all our Argentinian, Argentinian viewers. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Listeners. Listeners.

Chris Gammell: God. I didn't get that one of the new year, huh, Dave? Nah. Santa didn't leave that under the tree for you? Sorry. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm an electronics engineer who pretend, who pretends don't lag behind. Oh. Who pretends don't lag behind the new technologies. Sorry. Bit of, uh, translation required there. Currently, I have the option to take a course on 32-bit micros, ARM family, or, um, FPGA systems, in particular Xilinx. Um, from an employer point of view, which one would you consider more important, uh, these days? Oh. FPGA or 32-bit ARM? Which field has a bigger demand?

Chris Gammell: Ah. Well, that's the real question then.

Dave Jones: Well, it's, there's no black or white answer there, right? Um, FPGA is more specific. Um, it's not as generic as 32-bit ARM, right? So, potentially, if you were very good at FPGAs, you could potentially get higher pay in a more niche market, perhaps. Yeah. Um, because there's fewer people who know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's like, it's like if he was asking, you know, should I take a course in FPGAs or learn how to be a garbage man? It's like, okay, well, FPGAs. But in this case, it's like, either one's okay. And even garbage men are okay. Nothing against garbage men.

Dave Jones: Uh, well, I'd say because 32-bit ARM's are easy, right? Micro-processors are easy. FPGAs and, um, and, uh, you know, everything that goes along with it, the high-definition languages and all that, it's more difficult to learn.

Chris Gammell: See, I think it's the other way around. Really? I mean, because I learned, well, I learned the other one first. I mean, so it's not, it depends on your, on your background, right? I mean, like, if you were doing just, if you were doing 74-series logic all the time, you would probably take to, to, you know, programming FPGAs more. Or if you were doing, I don't know, batch programming? I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, not at the, uh, not at the high-definition language level, maybe. Which is a bit different to, um, the schematic entry version of the FPGAs.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, no, I agree with that. I agree with that. But, I mean, so I was doing this, when I was, how about this? Here's my input on this. I was, I've been programming 8-bit stuff recently. 8-bit micros. Mm-hmm. And, uh, and I've been having a hell of a time getting back into, like, sequential processing. You know, like, first this, then that, then that. Yeah, yeah. That's, that's the hard switch between the two, is, is going from, like, everything happens at once and it's, is instantiated in logic. Or, you know, it happens running through the processor and all the ALU and everything else like that, you know, and knowing how micros work.

Dave Jones: I think as a general rule, the parallel processing nature of the FPGA is harder to understand, is a more difficult concept to understand than line by line. You know, a sequential programming. And, and most people, most engineers, most hobbyists, most nerds will have some programming background. They will have programmed in basic or done, you know, or wrote some scripts or something. They would have at least have some experience with sequential, um, coding. So, um, I, I, I just think it's easier. I just think.

Chris Gammell: I think the other hard thing about FPGAs, too, is, is figuring out what people use them for, too. That's, that's a really hard point for a lot of people. I remember even, uh, Mr. Mr. Mightyome.

Dave Jones: The pros and cons, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Jeff was, I remember explaining to him, and I'm like, yeah, here's all the things you can do with it. Because he hadn't, he hadn't, um, experience at that point. And, and once we kind of compared nodes, it's like, okay, there's some good things that are micros and some good things that are FPGAs. But, you know, unless you, unless you know what the FPGAs are used for, then, yeah, it's, it's, it's tough. You know, you're right. So I agree with that. The parallel processing is, is more difficult to grasp at first.

Dave Jones: So I would say, I would advise Daniel to take the FPGA course, because I think that's more valuable. Because I'd be surprised if he doesn't do sequential programming somewhere else in the course. I mean, you know, when I was doing this stuff, we had many classes on programming, right? We didn't just have one. You know, there were, there were a lot. There was quite a bit of software focus. I mean, granted, that was 20 years ago, but.

Chris Gammell: Well, and I guess, I guess that's a good point, too, because, because maybe, maybe even just access of course, right? So if he has access to an FPGA course, there's less hobby material online about FPGAs. There's, there's getting more like Dave Vanabout from Zess. He, he has some courses now and there's other ones like the Papilio is an, is a dev board. There's people doing stuff for that. But yeah, I think in general, there's, there's less hobbyist stuff. So maybe, you know, he could, he could do the FPGA stuff in class and then go home and learn programming on his own. So.

Dave Jones: So are we unanimous on our recommendation? I think so. To do the FPGA? Take advantage of it when it's in? I mean, I love FPGAs anyways.

Chris Gammell: I love FPGAs anyways. But like you said, it'll be harder to find a broad range of jobs. When you find something, it'll be, they'll be clamoring for it, I think.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: And if we're wrong, we're. There you go. Sorry.

Dave Jones: And we're his favorite podcast. All right. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: Sweet.

Dave Jones: Awesome.

Chris Gammell: All right. Here's another one from. Another one. Kevin. This is from Kevin. And he asks, he says, I'm a serious noob. Noob with electronics. Kev here in Australia. And. G'day Kev. On you mate. He's a yank. Oh, he said, here we go. He says, as a yank, I have a quick question for Dave. How many syllables? I don't know where this comes from. How many syllables are in the word blown? B-L-O-W-N.

Dave Jones: That depends on what part of the country you live in. The further inland you go, it merges into one syllable and then it becomes half a syllable.

Chris Gammell: Can you, can you explain, can you demonstrate?

Dave Jones: I don't know if I can demonstrate.

Chris Gammell: I'm trying to think of multiple syllables that it would be. Is it like blown? Blown.

Dave Jones: Right. I could say blown. Blown. Or I could say blown. It's blown. You know, it's blown. Or, you know, if you get right inland, you might get blown. Blown, mate. You know what I mean? It becomes quicker and, you know, everything's just blurred together. The further inland you go. Now back, that's the stereotype anyway. Oh, okay. That's fun. That's blown. Blown, mate.

Chris Gammell: Gotcha.

Dave Jones: I said blown, mate there and it's, you know, blah, mate. Blown, mate. You know, and that almost blurs into one syllable, you know, blown, mate. You know, it's blown, mate, you know, and that's almost one word. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: All right. On to his real question. Why do power supplies sometimes buzz? I know that switch mode power supplies have various things happening at frequencies in the audio range, but how do these solid state components couple their voltage and or current oscillations into the air so that I can hear them? And a follow-up question that might... Oh, you'll go to that later.

Dave Jones: Go, go, go. No, finish it. Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: The follow-up question is how do you not make power supplies buzz?

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Well, yeah. Transformer laminations can be a big thing. If you, you know, you hear that 50 hertz hum from the transformer, that can be vibration in the laminate material. You know, it's not properly laminated or it's losing its lamination or whatever. I'm not big into transformer construction, but I'm sure you can read up on that, read up on transformer lamination and core techniques. They're not bonded tight enough together and they can vibrate due to the magnetic field and the coupling.

Chris Gammell: Oh, and it can vibrate against the chassis as well, right? I mean, the entire transformer can vibrate as well.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because the core, if you actually have a look at the transformer, it's made up of these laminate core, you know, these sheets, which then they have to press together. And if there's any, you know, and if that all comes loose, then those laminate sheets can vibrate. And, you know, there's all sorts of eddy currents formed in the laminate sheets and stuff, you know. I could be talking out my ass. I'm not a transformer guy. But basically, yeah, that's what can make transformers, you know, hum and rattle and do all sorts of stuff.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: And for switch mode, then you can move it up out of the – so 50, 60 hertz is usually line level. Yep. But then you can move it up out of – That's line level.

Dave Jones: And then you can get switching frequencies, and this is where inductors come into play. If you've got a loosely wound inductor, for example. I've got one in my power supply. I've been meaning to fix it. You know, when I put it on full load, it hums. You know, it just buzzes like crazy. And, yeah, you know, if you don't wind your inductors tight enough, you know, if you're hand winding in – Inductors, which you do for large power stuff, you know. Often you won't buy them off the shelf. You'll, you know, wind them or someone in China will wind them for you. Yeah. And, yeah, if they don't wind them tight enough, they can vibrate as well.

Chris Gammell: So, I've had some switching supplies too where it was just not optimal. I was just running it out of the zone it was supposed to be running in. And I'm guessing that it was probably moving into like a PWM mode where it was a very low duty cycle. And I'm not sure why that started whining. But, man, that was – it was like having an alarm. You know, and it was – I think I'd switched out the inductor too. So, it was probably that. That was vibrating and stuff. But, yeah, usually it's your metal core moving around. The ferrite, rather. Parts. But there is a third. Oh, what's the third?

Dave Jones: Number three. Yeah. Number three is capacitor microphonics. And I've done this in my capacitor tutorial. Surface mount multi-layer ceramic capacitors. Both surface mount and through hole. I've actually got an example of a through hole one that does buzz. And I should show that one day. And, yeah, once again, they're multi-layered material. And with the ceramic sheeting and all the multi-layers in there, they can actually become microphonic and they can sing. You know, it's often called singing capacitors because they go bzzz and they sing, you know, and they produce a buzzing sound. And they are microphonic, which works both ways. If you tap your board, if there's any vibration on your board, your capacitor can pick that up and generate a voltage. Yeah. I've seen that one before. That freaks me out. Yeah, it is freaky.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like you're – so you can actually shout at your circuit. You can shout at, you bastard! And it will actually produce a result, right? Because these capacitors, multi-layer ceramic capacitors, are microphonic, both through hole and surface mount.

Chris Gammell: That'd be great to have like a sensitive trigger set up on one of those things. Because you actually have that as a feature, an Easter egg.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. You shout at it and it can change modes or something. Oh, that'd be great. Yeah. So there you go. They're probably the three things. Offhand, I can't think of another physical phenomenon there. I've probably got the three majors anyway. Transformer, laminates, inductor, windings, and capacitor microphonics.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that sounds like the lot.

Dave Jones: We're probably missing something, but I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing about like the – especially the surface mount stuff too, I mean, you think about the tensions that are actually – you know, when you actually solder something down, you're – I mean, you're basically gluing into the board with metal, right? I mean, like that's a – Yeah.

Dave Jones: And you glue in both ends, right? You're sticking both ends and then you've got all this stressed ceramic in between, right? With these little plates between them and they're stacked up together and they're all stressed and oh, yeah, you know?

Chris Gammell: My friend was doing a grad school report about that actually, about – not about capacitors, but actually about the mechanical – all about – it was about the drift of references and it was about – Oh, right, yeah. The actual – Fascinating topic. Yeah, the drift over time actually causes – it's caused by mechanical stresses because you think about like an SOIC package, right? You solder that thing down. First off, the case is hot and then you got the metal actually bonding to the board and then it cools down. There's all the bonding wires inside. There's just like stresses everywhere. And then finally it settles. That's why they don't spec references for 1,000 hours at least because – Yep. They just say, well, no, it's going to move. It's going to do something else for the first 1,000 hours. And yeah.

Dave Jones: Same thing with quartz. Same thing with quartz. Oh, yeah. Or your quartz crystals. I've done some research in that area and I've done a video or two mentioning this. You know, yeah, they drift with time and vibration and shock and they can – when you shock a crystal, it can actually reset its drift characteristics, which is really weird phenomenon. I've spent months actually – you know, I've sent data loggers that monitor these things for months and I've got massive amounts of data out of it and it really is a fascinating topic.

Chris Gammell: No, that sounds terrible actually. I mean like it is fascinating but like any test that goes months is a terrible, terrible thing.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But the data you get, I love getting data and it's just so fascinating, you know.

Chris Gammell: That's cool. How do you measure that? To actually look at that stuff. You just do like a high impedance input on the measurement or you're just doing like a frequency counter? Oh, no.

Dave Jones: I built a special drift circuit. Huh. Well, I've done a video on that, a drift counter, which allows you to measure the drift of the frequency over time. Oh, cool. Yep. There's a certain way you can do that and yeah, because there's no real instrument that allows you to do it. So you have to roll your own, you know. You've got to build your own test gear to do that sort of thing. Yeah. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's usually when you. That was neat. You know that you're entering the science realm outside of the engineering realm. If there's no test gear yet. Yes. Exactly. Then you're. No, no.

Dave Jones: That's right.

Chris Gammell: You're probably doing science.

Dave Jones: Yes. That's right. And that's what we were. We were doing science. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's cool. That sounds really cool.

Dave Jones: It's awesome.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Some of the most fascinating stuff I've ever done is when you get down to that sort of level. When you're measuring the physical characteristics of components and systems.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's not. It's great. It's frustrating though too.

Dave Jones: Part of me likes it.

Chris Gammell: Part of me likes it.

Dave Jones: So his second part of his question was what do they. What can you do to minimize that? Well. Oh yeah. Buy quality components. Not one hung low components. So you buy quality inductors. You buy quality transformers. You buy. You use the right type of capacitor.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm. That's it.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's. Yeah. That helps. All right. Next question. I think you're up.

Dave Jones: Oh. Am I? Oh God. Wim. W-I-M. Hey Wim. He's from Australia. Beauty. G'day. I am an electronics hobbyist getting into, getting into in apart from building analog synthesizers. I feel fairly comfortable building kits but a lot of knowledge seems a black art to me. I have a cheap multimeter soldering iron in the art of electronics. Well there you go. That's all you need to get started.

Chris Gammell: Good start.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Could you suggest for someone that is studying electronics as a hobby a way to become more knowledgeable or just any general advice? I have begun to build circuits I have found online on Perfboard. I am hoping to build my own modular analog synthesizer from scratch. I guess I am asking do you have any pearls of wisdom for someone on the learning curve trying to understand hobby electronics? Thanks Wim. It's a great question. We've talked about this a lot before I think probably in various ways over episodes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah it's tough because if you don't catch it right? I mean if they're just getting new to the show. Yeah. We get people starting to listen all the time so that's good.

Dave Jones: The first thing you should do is don't say you're hoping to build an analog synthesizer. Go and bloody well do it. I like that. You learn a hell of a lot because that's the way you learn electronics. You build shit. You make mistakes. It doesn't work. You troubleshoot it and you learn.

Chris Gammell: You talk to people on the forums. You talk to people on the forums.

Dave Jones: You get help and advice and that's the way you learn. And as I've always said I hope your project does not work because if it works first go you haven't learned nearly as much as you will when it fails and you have to figure out why and troubleshoot it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So I hope you fail miserably Wim.

Chris Gammell: It's the best we can hope for you.

Dave Jones: Yeah. There's no magic.

Chris Gammell: I would also add I mean I think a big turning point is what we were talking about earlier is getting a scope. You know like getting some more test gear because actually like being able to visualize signals I think in a time domain. Oh it's huge. Yeah it's just massive. And so you know there's tons of options out there. Even if you're just going small you know you can do like what was that little perf board one that I forget his name. There's a little tiny scope.

Dave Jones: What? Case of plan.

Chris Gammell: Gabotronics. That's it. Gabotronics. Ah right. Yeah. So there's that one. I mean you could do like the DSO Nano from Seed Studios.

Dave Jones: Oh no no. Go in now. Go and get a bloody 20 megahertz dual channel analog.

Chris Gammell: Yeah okay yeah it's even better right. I mean you can go on eBay and get one for a real low price. I mean you can. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Under 100 bucks easy. 50 bucks maybe. Or even free if you ask nicely and somebody's near you and has an old one.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah or if you're near university look in the trash bin. That's a good one. So that helps a lot because then you could start you know visualizing signals and it really helps pull things together I think. It really helped me I remember when I was getting started so.

Dave Jones: Yep. And I'll mention it and I'll probably get hammered for mentioning it but play around with simulators as well.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: They're not a substitute for you know building stuff up right and seeing how they work but it allows you to very quickly you know check stuff and then you can build it up and verify it and stuff like that. Anyway the more general playing around you do it just takes time. Tinker. You know yeah tinker.

Chris Gammell: Tinker's important.

Dave Jones: Nobody learns this stuff but yeah and document stuff. Write stuff down. Have a notebook and you know write all your circus down in there and you know or a blog. Yeah exactly. Hey it's the you know. Hey it's 2013 right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Seriously.

Dave Jones: Yeah. There's this. Start a podcast. There's this thing called the internet you know. Yeah. And yeah you can share your you know experiences with the world and it's all there and if you've got it written down and documented you'll never forget it. You can always go back to it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it helps out other people as well.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And they'll come comment on it too and.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Well that is if it's online. And they'll tell you where you're going wrong and you know give you ideas and pointers. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Start a blog. That is nice.

Dave Jones: There you go. Yeah. That's our universal advice for every question these days. Start a blog.

Chris Gammell: You sick? Start a blog.

Dave Jones: Whinge about something? Start a blog. Dog got run over by a car?

Chris Gammell: Start a blog. Start a blog. Dog blog.

Dave Jones: Splatted dog blog dot com. I'm sure it's available. Oh jeez.

Chris Gammell: Oh you could start a podcast. Right. You could you know I did a video on how we do our podcast if our people are interested. We do get that question from time to time. And we'd love to see more electronics podcasts. We do not have the. It's not enough. Yeah. I don't have anything else to listen to. I'm running out of stuff man. Come on.

Dave Jones: Next question. Thanks.

Chris Gammell: Next question. Next question. Is this me? I think it's me. Yeah it's you. Next one is from. Oh. Oh no. There actually is someone. What? That asked by. YouTube. You won't be able to hear this.

Dave Jones: Oh really? Oh crap. Oh okay.

Chris Gammell: Alright so we're going to. We're going to break here. And then we will. We'll come right back after we watch this.

SPEAKER_00: Hi Dave and Chris. Happy New Year. This is my video question for Amp Hour 127. And my name is Eric Wasatonic. I am the electrical lab supervisor at the Harrisburg campus of Penn State University. And very often a lot of students come to me for help when they're working on their senior projects. And they ask very, they ask questions that to me it seems like they should already know the answer. It seems very simple common knowledge to me. Let me give you an example. Like here I've got all my wire organized and you know students very often don't know the difference between solid wire, stranded wire, or enamel insulated magnet wire. They very commonly mistake this for just bare uninsulated copper wire and have no idea that there is a very thin insulation that they can only scrape off with a knife rather than with wire strippers. And then there's other things like switches. You know if I give them a double pull, double throw switch, sometimes they don't even know the pull and throw terminology. And they don't know what terminals to hook up where. And I tell them well just figure it out for yourself with an ohmmeter. And they don't know the types like I've got rotary and slide switch, thermal switch, reed switches. And no one's ever asked me about this because they don't even know that these decade selector switches even exist. And then of course there's very tiny reed relays here, solid state relay, and just standard relays, big and small. Students don't even know how to operate relays. They have no idea that there's a coil in there. And they wouldn't even, sometimes they just can't even figure out exactly what terminals go where. I tell them to try to figure it out for yourself. Sometimes they don't know how to wind their own inductors. Or something else that I think they should know is how to salvage parts from stuff they take apart. Like this is from a yoke on a TV coil, on a CRT television. And I repurposed it as a 3 mH inductor. And there's other special parts too, like peltier junction, a photoresistor, and Hall effect sensor. You know, just lots of little things like that. And my question is, do you think students should learn about this stuff as common knowledge in their first introductory electronics course? Or is it something more or less, you know, are these all niche applications that they would learn on the job as they need to? Otherwise, they don't need to know this stuff at all. Thank you.

Chris Gammell: All right. We're back. Thank you, Eric, for asking that.

Dave Jones: That was awesome. That was great. That was a great tour. Everyone has to watch it. We'll post, we'll embed the YouTube video link in here. And that was fantastic. Which uni is he from?

Chris Gammell: He said Penn State.

Dave Jones: Penn State, something.

Chris Gammell: Pennsylvania State. Yeah, I'm sorry. I forget which. Harrisburg campus, I think. Something like that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, he's the, what is he? The lab manager there? Yep. And basically, I think I can summarize his video. He's basically saying that students don't know jack shit when it comes to practical, when it comes to practical components. You know, they don't know what different types of wires are. They don't know what different types of relays and switches are. They don't know what, you know, CDS photo cells are. And, you know, they don't know how to salvage parts from things. They don't know how double pole, double throw switches work and all that sort of practical stuff. Yeah. And his question is, do we think it should be taught as a practical subject? Because he's concerned that, you know, there are students that know this, but a lot of them will go out into the industry. They'll graduate with honors and everything, and they won't know which end of the soldiering iron to hold.

Chris Gammell: I think he was saying coming into uni is not necessarily. I mean, you're right that some do leave without it, but I think he was saying coming in.

Dave Jones: No, he was, no, I think he popped up on the video with an annotation saying that some people do, yeah, some people do know it, but his concern is that a lot of people will leave. His concern will people will leave and they won't know this stuff. Gotcha. It's practical stuff. So, we haven't talked about our consensus answer, but shall we count down three, two, one, and give our answer together? Oh. Should this stuff be taught?

Chris Gammell: Oh, three.

Dave Jones: Two, one.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: Hell yes.

Chris Gammell: I mean, yeah, I mean, like, that's an easy answer, but it's just about how it's done. I mean, I don't know, like, I talked to Larry Sears was on the show, and he teaches down at Case now, and he said that he's starting an intro course for freshmen, right? And that's just a school thing. I mean, like, if you accept the reality that a lot of students are coming in without, you know, hobbyist knowledge, then yeah, you should teach it. Why wouldn't you? Or, I think much better is, you know, have resources in place, and if they do come ask you that question, you hit them over the head, and you point towards the resource, and you say, get the hell out of here, I'm doing stuff. That's the real problem, is that, you know, I think a lot of, I was like this, too. Come on. Let's be honest here. I was like this, too. You're right. But it's just, you know, like, you get. See, I wasn't. I know you weren't.

Dave Jones: I came in from a hobbyist background, you know. Right.

Chris Gammell: But I mean, like, asking questions, too. Like, students get in the habit of asking questions not as a general inquisitiveness. It's more of a, well, give me the answer. Give me the answer. Give me the answer. You know, like, so what you have to do is you have to encourage students to go figure it out on their own. I think that's the main thing.

Dave Jones: See, unfortunately, my experience was pretty bad in that regard. I got absolutely hammered for asking questions and for possibly saying, you know, I think you're slightly. Can you read, you know, can you explain that differently? Because I think you've got it a bit wrong, you know. And hell, you know, that's like, woohoo, get the frig out of my class, you know. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. See, that's a difference. Maybe I'm a bit jaded. I don't think it's like that a lot of places now. Maybe that's a time thing. Maybe. Maybe. I mean, you're pretty old, Dave. I mean, you're right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yes, they need to teach this practical aspect. And I've been saying that for 20 years. I've been saying that. Yeah. In fact, I did a talk on it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I did a talk on it at uni once. They had a, you know, a lecture thing. Yeah. I gave a talk on it. Yeah. That went down well, didn't it? Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think another good thing that school, like, if we were talking about schools here, I think another good thing, though, is just a project course. You know, if you're going to expect this knowledge from students, and I think you should, you know, just make sure that they're doing challenging projects, and they're going to have to figure it out on their own, you know, and say that you need to integrate some of these components and you're, they'll figure it out.

Dave Jones: Well, because electronics is essentially when it comes down to it, a practical field, right? It is not a theoretical field. So you can learn all the theory you want, but, you know, that's not going to make you an electronics design engineer. It's a practical field. You've got to know your components. Otherwise, you won't be able to design anything. Well, I think you have to... Well, there are some fields that are theoretical, but, you know, as a general rule, as a, you know... Well, and that's...

Chris Gammell: No one asked this question, but I think... I'll ask this question. I mean, what is the difference between electronics engineer and electrical engineer? I think that's really where it comes down to it, is that, you know, when you separate electronics, you know, the field of working with components and stuff, out from the more broad version of electrical engineering, which tries to cover everything, including, you know, programming...

Dave Jones: More systems and project management and all that sort of... Yeah, yeah, right, yeah.

Chris Gammell: DSP, right? I mean, like, math-heavy stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but we're both electronics design engineers, right? So let's limit it to that.

Chris Gammell: Right, but I didn't go to school for that. I went to school for electrical engineering. I mean, I learned all that other stuff.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Well, see, I went to school for a different reason. I went there to learn practical electronics, and I got very little of it, and I was very pissed off.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I can see...

Dave Jones: Yeah, and I think Eric is equally, you know, annoyed at the fact that a lot of people... And he's concerned, and I think he's rightly concerned that a lot of people leave not knowing this stuff.

Chris Gammell: I think so, too. But I think there's some reason behind it. I don't know if it's excusable, but I think there's reason behind it. Like, I went to go recruit at MIT, right? And I met some really, really bright kids. But, you know, I pointed at this thing that was behind me, which was an oscilloscope, and they kind of just stared at me. And I'm like, you go to MIT? How do you not... You're in the electrical engineering program at MIT. Like, it's just such a broad spectrum, right? Because it's... You know, some kids are diving in, and they're just learning digital signal processing, and they go become communications engineers somewhere, right? Or they become PhDs, or, you know, like, there is just such a broad range in electrical engineering programs. So...

Dave Jones: And, well, that's its problem, right? A degree...

Speaker ?: It is.

Dave Jones: Your generic electrical engineering degree tries to be all things, right? And, you know, and... Well, you know, it can't be, essentially. You know, to become... I think to become a good electronics engineer, you probably have to, you know, do the more practical aspects. Well, I think... And depending on what degree you...

Chris Gammell: I think you can do an electrical engineering degree, and then, you know, you just got to do stuff outside, right? I mean, if you really want to get good at stuff...

Dave Jones: We're... Well, I've always said that, but we're limiting here to formal teaching in schools, right? And, well, I think every school that teaches EE should have a class or a couple of classes dedicated to practical components and the practical aspects of electronics and things like that, or a teardown course, right? That just tears shit down and analyzes stuff. And, you know, granted, if you're like you, if you're there to get a more broad... You know, if you don't want to design anything, you want to become a manager or you want to become a, you know, a systems designer or something, okay, don't take that part of the course, right? Choose a different thread. But I think it needs to be available in every school. And in my experience, there's not. You know, probably the majority of schools out there don't teach enough practical electronics. And that's a lot of the thing everyone in the industry says. Whether or not it's different these days to what it used to be, you know, 30, 40 years ago, I don't know. Because there's more complex, like 30, 40 years ago, right? They weren't teaching software. There wasn't that stuff to distract you. They weren't teaching you DSPs. They weren't teaching you... Right. They weren't teaching you chip design even.

Chris Gammell: I mean, like, that's another thing, right?

Dave Jones: No, right. See, there's just so much more these days that they have to teach in a generic, broad EE degree that, you know, it's probably just actually getting worse.

Chris Gammell: Very possible.

Dave Jones: I would suspect. Yeah, it's just a broader field. Compared to 30, 40 years ago.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's more EEs out there, right? It's not like everybody's sitting down and working on an oscillator at their bench, right? It's like everyone's...

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: There's just... Some people don't even have benches, you know? So, yeah.

Dave Jones: And Eric complains to that, you know, a lot of people come to him and, you know, they ask him, you know, and he's surprised that they don't know what this type of switch is or something. And he says, well, why don't you test it with a multimeter and, you know, and go do it yourself, which is great. But probably the majority of people will just give up at that point. They just don't want to do it. So it needs enthusiastic people like Eric to go, look, I'll show you. Let's grab a multimeter and... Look how cool this is. Let's go do it. Look how cool this is. Look, it's got double poles and it goes this direction and here's a BCD thumb wheel switch. Aren't these fantastic? You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And things like that. So...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. You've got to find the people that are also enthusiastic and then just kind of trying...

Dave Jones: Enthusiastic. Enthusiasm's everything. Yeah. It totally is. It's the key.

Chris Gammell: From the king of enthusiasm. There we go. Exactly.

Dave Jones: I am the king of enthusiasm. They would have no career right now if he wasn't enthusiastic. Yeah, enthusiastic. No, no. That's right. I made my career. I have zero talent but 100% enthusiasm. Enthusiastic. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you've got talent.

Dave Jones: Ah, boy. Yeah, talent for being enthusiastic. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We should also mention that Eric is... His girlfriend is the one who asked for a shout out for him for his birthday. I think it was for his birthday a couple months ago. Yeah. Oh, right.

Dave Jones: And we...

Chris Gammell: Close the loop. All right. Well done. We found 5,000 to go. Everybody else have your significant others right in and we'll give you a shout out.

Dave Jones: Well, that wasn't a really shout out. You mentioned that there was a shout out but you didn't actually give the shout out.

Chris Gammell: No, I did a shout out because he had a video too so we gave a shout out to the video. It was in episode 116. People can go check out.

Dave Jones: Oh. Oh, okay. Right. There you go. Oh. Well done.

Chris Gammell: I found that our episodes are starting to blur together. I can't remember anything these days.

Dave Jones: Oh, man. Come on. Jeez, I'm up to... 400, right? I'm over 400 now, right? Yeah. I don't remember anything I've done, right? Yeah. Jeez, it's impossible.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Friend asked me, he's like, didn't you say something about this in like a show a while back? I'm like, yeah, probably. Whatever. Exactly. At this point, I'm just lucky enough.

Dave Jones: And I'm sure we did it in depth too, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I might have sounded like I knew what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, boy. Wrong-o. So that was an awesome question. Thank you very much, Eric. And he shows, you know, he's holding the camera and shows you around his lab there. Yeah, it looks like a nice lab. It's great. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. It's fully kidded out. Everything's labeled. Oh, man, I'm so jealous.

Chris Gammell: That is a good lab manager there.

Dave Jones: I'm going to give that a thumbs up. There we go. You do that. I'm going to click the like button on there. Oh, I'm going to do it as well. There we go. I just clicked the like.

Chris Gammell: People should do that. That's a good thing. Or rate podcast positively on iTunes. That's another thing they can do. Yep.

Dave Jones: Oh, and it does work. I just hit the like button, refreshed, and it went up to two thumbs. All right. Beautiful from one. Hey, YouTube works.

Chris Gammell: All right. What's it? Oh, I'm reloaded. What is the next question? We're at an hour.

Dave Jones: I don't know, but we're already over an hour.

Chris Gammell: Come on. It's us. Come on, man.

Dave Jones: Oh, by the way, what episode number is this?

Chris Gammell: This is 127 in decimal.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. So we're still on seven bits. We don't require eight bits yet.

Chris Gammell: Correct.

Dave Jones: Yes. So once we go to 128, we require an extra bit of capacity there. Yeah. In our word size. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: So at the moment, we're a seven bit podcast.

Chris Gammell: Yes, that's right. All right. I've got two more email questions.

Dave Jones: I'm sorry.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, go for it. Okay. This one's short. This is from Sean. He said, you might want to mention the Chinese New Year. It's coming up in February. February 10th is the Chinese New Year. I still remember. And how long does it go for? It's a two-week festival usually.

Dave Jones: Right. So it starts on the 10th and goes for two weeks? Or does it start before that? Right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I remember Akiba's. So you can't get past folks. Yeah. I remember Akiba's tweet from a year or two ago. It said, happy Chinese New Year. Or if you're an electronics engineer, oh crap, it's Chinese New Year.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: The two weeks of the year when the entire electronics industry shuts down. You know, we should just start taking vacation then too.

Chris Gammell: Just feeling that. Yeah, right. I'll see you later. I mean, Christmas holidays you can get parts still, right? I mean, maybe not from like Digi-Key or something, but even Digi-Key you can get parts still.

Dave Jones: Oh, sure. Sure you still can. I don't think they close down much. Only for a couple of days or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But most board houses will shut down over, you know, Christmas, New Year, stuff like that. Maybe not the Chinese ones, but if you use the Western ones, yeah, they'll shut down for a couple of weeks. Oh, shit, I can't get boards, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's true. And if you're doing the overseas ones anyways, that's longer lead time. So you probably, they just work it in. You're just like, oh, it's just part of the six weeks that I was waiting. Right. Yeah. So February 10th, keep an eye out. All right, that was a nice short one. Let's see. This one is from Ed and Happy New Year, he says. That's good. It's been a while since I've been to school. In my current job role, I do very little design work. I would like to brush up on the theory and design and wanted to know if you have recommendations on how to do that. Should I crack open a textbook or use the Shams outlines to review most of the theory I may have forgotten? I'm not sure what Shams outlines are.

Dave Jones: Do you know what that is? Neither am I. Well, no, I've heard of them. They do like concise study books or something, like cram books or something. Oh, kind of like a cliff notes. Something like that. Yeah. Okay. We don't have cliff notes here, but yeah. So I do know what they are. Oh, that's interesting.

Chris Gammell: So something like that. I will have to check those out. You know, there's a lot of resources these days for this kind of stuff. I mean, there's this weird dude who does videos on YouTube about electronics. You could probably watch some of that.

Dave Jones: I wouldn't watch him. It's just bullshit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But I mean, like some of your stuff, like you're switching regulator videos. That's great. That was a great brush up even for me. I mean, I'm like, oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know. Because when you're into data sheets all the time, you just stop thinking about theory. You're just kind of chunking through it and trying to get it on a board.

Dave Jones: Or 13 parts of it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Was that a 13 part series? Is that what you mean?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a 13 part. Yeah. My power supply. And I didn't even finish it. You know. It was 13 parts. Something like that.

Chris Gammell: I remember there's one video where you're doing a lot of whiteboarding. That's the one I was thinking of. Right. I'll try and find it and link it in. But you know, there's a lot of stuff out there. Personally, I mean, that easy recommendation is Art of Electronics. People always say, oh, it's a terrible beginner book. And it's like, yeah, it is a terrible beginner book. But it's a great review book. That's how I recapped all of my knowledge and got hired for a job. It was like, I was out of design for a while. I just started reading Art of Electronics for like a couple weeks straight. And I was fine. So if you don't have that, highly recommended.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. Maybe we'll actually see the third edition in 2030. Oh, yeah. It's slated to come in. So this could be a big year, folks. This could be a big decade.

Chris Gammell: We might see chip printers first, Dave.

Dave Jones: We may. And those guys aren't getting any younger either. They better aren't.

Chris Gammell: No, they're not. Yeah, we might have to get them on the show too. That might be the real thing for 2013. Getting a little, getting windhill on here.

Dave Jones: Should we try and get bigger names? I think we should really, you know, we should try and get some, you know, huge CEOs and big name, you know.

Chris Gammell: You know, I was thinking about this. I was thinking I will post in the show notes today, because the show notes are going to be kind of sparse, because these are just questions anyways. I will post a form for suggested guests. And especially if you know a guest, if you know a guest personally, you can do an introduction. That would be awesome. Because introductions are, even though oftentimes people will respond to emails and stuff, it always feels so awkward. You know, not that that's a reason not to do it, but it's just really nice if people do know someone. And if you think they're a good guest, I mean, I think our listeners are going to know best of all of who they like to hear as a guest based on our past ones. So I'll put a form up, like a Google Doc. And even if you just want to hear someone, or if you want to hear someone in particular, you know, feel free to fill that in, and we'll try and get them on the show in the near future. I have a couple lined up, but I'm not going to announce them yet.

Dave Jones: Should we keep that as an open list?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you know what? I'll just create a page. How about that? I'll just do a page, and then that'll be there forever.

Dave Jones: Yeah, and here's a list of people we want to get, or where, you know, they're on the list.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, so I'll create a form, and then people can add to there, and then they can also see who's on the list already.

Dave Jones: Sounds good.

Chris Gammell: Cool. All right, good thinking, Dave.

Dave Jones: That's what I'm here for.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man.

Dave Jones: That's why I'm paid the big bucks.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, big, big bucks. That's where it all is. This is all going. So back to this question, though. So what was the rest of the question? So beginner stuff. You know, there's also like the, I guess if you really want to go back to basics, you know, not basics, but if you want to go back to school for stuff like this, there is that MIT course. I'm not sure when that's starting back up.

Dave Jones: Well, there's tons of online lectures. Like half the unis out there now have all their lectures online now. Right. They all have them on, they've uploaded them to YouTube, and you can just sit there watching all day. Yeah. You can do entire courses. Snooze. You sat there 24 hours with pizza and, you know. Yeah, that's a snooze fest. You could do a whole degree in a week, you know.

Chris Gammell: I don't understand how people, like even, I mean, when I was at school, you know, at least, at least, you know, like you were there, you could ask questions and get feedback and stuff. But, I mean, what a terrible knowledge transfer method, right? I mean, like, it's just, it's, oh, it's really tough, you know, like just hearing someone talk. It depends how you learn, too. But, you know, like sitting in a room and hearing someone talk is just, is a hard way to learn, especially programming.

Dave Jones: It depends how enthusiastic they are.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and how enthusiastic you are as well. I remember my programming teacher, I really didn't like when I took the course from him. And then he ended up being my senior advisor later, and he was just awesome. He's just like the nicest guy in the world, and I disliked him just because he was teaching me programming. Right.

Dave Jones: And he was shit at teaching programming, was he?

Chris Gammell: No, it's everyone's shit at teaching programming. It is a tough thing to teach. There's actually, there's a, so learning Python, right? There's a page called Python the Hard Way, and it's really interesting because it's, that's the name of the site, or the book, or whatever it is. It's free, but it says, basically the guy asserts that you can't learn it by looking at someone else's code. You have to not only code stuff yourself, you have to like get it into muscle memory. So some of the course is actually you just retyping some of the stuff into the, into a text editor. Honestly, and then compiling it and seeing where it's wrong, you know? And like, that's kind of brilliant. I mean, like that's, that's even good just for electronics, you know? Like look at, look at a textbook maybe, or look at a video, like one of Dave's videos, replicate it, see what you did wrong, and then go back, right? Like that, that is the muscle memory you'll need to get. And then you have very defined points where you could say, this is broken. And then, you know, then there's often forums for that kind of thing too, you know? Like, so that, I know that he's looking for theory, but it's.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. I've always said that, that that's the advantage of having the hobby background in engineering before you actually go to formally learn it. Because you've got all that, you know, like it might be, you know, totally, you know, all that knowledge just scattered around in there. It's not cohesive, but, you know, and then when you go learn it formally, you go, oh, then it all drops into place.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. And you give a crap.

Dave Jones: Because it's in there and you give a crap.

Chris Gammell: That's the important thing.

Dave Jones: Because it's in there because you know it. You, you instantly just bang, get it. Right. Just like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I remember people that were like, when learning op amps, right? People don't care about op amps at first, right? It's just, oh, well, there's no current going into one, into either of the inputs, right? It's like, okay, well, I don't know why that is, right? You know, like you don't have any context for that. But once you get it, you know, if you get it two years later, that's not helpful. But if you know why, you know it happens naturally, or not happens naturally, but you know that you've encountered it multiple times. Then when you're learning it, you care. You care a lot. And then you know that, like, you know, like having that context is just so important. If you, if you just teach through the math, I very much dislike that method. And it's, it's hard. It's just really hard to do. I mean, that's how I learned. I ended up relearning all this stuff later. So. Yeah. But learning's not easy too. I'm still learning every day. Yeah. That's, that's the other thing. You know, I've been learning that too over time. I know I should have figured this out earlier, but learning's hard, you know? And you just have to, you got to struggle. Like once you accept that, it helps a little bit, but it's still not easy, you know? Like you just got to struggle.

Dave Jones: And it's continuous.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like I get this, I get beginner questions all the time. It's like, how do I know all this stuff? You know? And I, well, A, the answer is I've been doing it for 30 plus years. Yeah. Right. And B, I don't know Jack. Right. I'm still learning new stuff every day. There's something that I don't know. And I've got to learn.

Chris Gammell: Go on the Psy.electronics forum, right? And ask those guys that, right? Oh, good Lord. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Speaking from experience there, right?

Chris Gammell: Oh, man. Greybeards are great as a resource, but sometimes I'm just so afraid of them. You know? I'm just like, oh, I don't want to ask anything. I'm just going to look stupid. And that's another thing though. Like, you know you're going to look stupid. Like, it's okay to look stupid sometimes, but make sure that like you ask yourself the question first. That's the hard part. Right. You know, like there are no dumb questions, but sometimes there's repetitive ones.

Dave Jones: And people look, well, you know, if you go ask on a forum or something, right, there's bound to be somebody on there who knows that so thoroughly right off the top of their head. Oh, yeah. That they're going to look like an absolute genius, right? But that just comes down, like they know everything.

Chris Gammell: Or they've experienced everything.

Dave Jones: That's the key. Or they've experienced everything. But it comes down to the fact that no, it's just, you know, you go on there, you're going to, the odds are you're going to find somebody who's, who's done that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And I will refer people back to Jerry's video again. And this is one of my favorite videos on the internet. Jerry's video about failure is just one of the, Jerry Ellsworth, sorry, people don't know who that is. She does a video just about all of the stuff that she's done and just her piles of broken junk that she's, you know, failed with. Like that is just, that is a great video. And like, it should be required watching, I think, because it ain't easy. So that's how, but that's how you learn, you know, like that's how she got good at it. And that's how people get good at stuff is practice, practice, practice.

Dave Jones: And people can't be good at everything. That's the thing. You can't know everything. It's impossible. The field is too big.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: That's why I'm still learning every day. It's something I don't know or something I haven't done for 20 years and I've forgotten.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. You've got to keep your knowledge up. That's another thing. Like, you know. Good Lord. Like some things I can remember from 30 years, 20, 30 years ago. Right. Some things will stick in there, but other things I'll completely and utterly forget. Yeah. You know, it's just, yeah. You asked me how to solve an integral. Right. And I haven't done it in 20 years. I couldn't do it. Right. I couldn't do it to save my life. Right. And I was looking at a piece. If I spend five, ten minutes studying it, it'll probably come back.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Exactly. I was looking at P Channel Fets the other day. I was like staring at him like, I know how these work. My brain was just like, nope, not going to do that. I'm an analog engineer. I promote myself on the internet. I know.

Dave Jones: I'm a world known. Oh, I shouldn't have said it here. I'm a world known as an analog engineer.

Chris Gammell: I shouldn't have said it here. But like, honestly, I was looking at it. I'm just like. Exactly. I need more coffee. Yep. And you just said that. But then you're right. You know, I opened up a couple windows. I'm like, oh, duh, idiot. You know, of course. Duh. Of course.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And everyone's different. Some people retain information a lot better than others.

Chris Gammell: Oh, they're so lucky. I feel like they should have something to balance that out, right? Right. Social ineptitude or something is your punishment for whatever it is. I don't care. I'm just jealous of you. Don't take me at face value. I'm just jealous.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. What was it? Oh.

Dave Jones: Is that enough advice for one episode?

Chris Gammell: Oh, probably. Yeah. That's fine.

Dave Jones: We're way over, man.

Chris Gammell: Are we?

Dave Jones: Yeah. We're at least 15 minutes over.

Chris Gammell: I guess we're over for just shows with me and you. Man, I had so many links this week. Oh, my God. I had so many links. I just kept putting them on there. And, yeah, I shouldn't have.

Dave Jones: But we won't get around to those for two weeks, right? Have we got someone else lined up next week? Are we still going to try and follow the alternate week thing? Yeah. You know, where it's just the two of us one week and the guests the next week? I think that's a good compromise.

Chris Gammell: I'd like to do that. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to find anyone for next week. So maybe we'll be able to do these links next week. If you want to see them in the meantime, we do have a subreddit, which is reddit.com slash r slash the amp hour. And you can get to that through the amp hour.com as well. And that's usually where I dump all of the links.

Dave Jones: Why do they have the R in there? Why do they have the R in the URL?

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure what the R stands for, but I know that it's different than like for users. It's slash you. For subreddits, it's slash R. Right. Whatever.

Dave Jones: At least I did limit that to one letter. So that's pretty efficient. Somebody was thinking. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Programmers. But yeah, if people want to see, I just dump links there throughout the week. Usually I'm just stealing them off people's tweets. I'm just, oh, that's cool. I'm going to put that on the list. Right. Yeah. So if you want me to, you can add stuff there too. People can add there. You know, like, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes, you can have questions every week. That's true. If you've got a question.

Chris Gammell: Just this week.

Dave Jones: It doesn't have to be a link to something cool. No.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. And subreddit's nicest. Email is okay as well, but it might get lost in the shuffle. And then show notes as well. You can just leave them on. I guess you could leave them on the prior week or something. Yeah. Yeah. We like comments. Just leave comments. That'll do. All right. All right. Call it quits. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Hope you enjoyed our Q&A show. Yeah. Where we mostly answer questions.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Thanks to everyone who asked questions.

Dave Jones: Haven't done that before. It's quite novel. Yes.

Chris Gammell: We like it. All right. Well, we'll see you next week. Later. Later. Later.

Speaker ?: administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered Take care.