#142 – Kickstarter, IndieGoGo & Ignite - Jasperated Jimswinger Jobbery

Chris Gammell: This episode of the Amp Hour is brought to you by ViaDesigner.com, part of Triad Semiconductor. Who needs a chip printer when you can design your own mixed signal chips on your desktop? ViaDesigner is a Windows-based software for the design and simulation of analog and digital circuits. At ViaDesigner.com, you can learn about mixed signal design, share your design IP, and form teams to create your own custom via ASICs. Go to ViaDesigner.com slash the Amp Hour and enter coupon code AMP100 at registration for a free year of ViaDesigner, a $500 value. This is the Amp Hour Podcast, recorded April 22, 2013. Episode 142, Jasperated, Jim Swinger, Jabari.

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

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

Dave Jones: I'm excited, Chris.

Chris Gammell: Me too, Dave. I'm quite excited.

Dave Jones: We've got a new t-shirt design.

Chris Gammell: We do, yeah.

Dave Jones: It looks freaking awesome.

Chris Gammell: I know. It so wasn't our fault.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we don't have a... If it's not obvious, folks, take a look at the website, see our t-shirt design, and you can know it wasn't us who designed it. No, it was not. Because we just lack all talent in that sort of area.

Chris Gammell: If you'd like to see some of our other artwork, check out our previous logo and, I don't know, Dave's website, my website.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Amateur ally. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We should pay people more often. This is... Yeah, I know. This is good. This is the benefit of our wonderful sponsors at Triad Semiconductor this week. So, yeah. This is what helps out. It is. So, we talked about it, and we are still... So, we'll be sending out codes this week to people who won the contest, and they'll be able to... Basically, the way the contest now and forever after will work is we'll send you a code. You put in the code on this website we're using called Printfection, and then you put in the size and your information. We don't have to have any of that stuff. So, that's the nice thing, and it'll just show up to you. They'll just bill us for it. But since not everybody's going to get that, we've decided we're going to try something else different. We're going to crowdfund it. Crowdsouls. Yeah. Kickstarter for t-shirts.

Dave Jones: Which is basically what it is. Yeah. On a site called Teespring.com. They allow us to do this.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, tell the audience what we're going to do. So, we're going to try it out with the black shirt first, and we can try this out in the future for other ones and stuff. But basically, we set a minimum t-shirt order, and then if we hit that minimum, then it'll go off, and it'll be good to go, basically, at that point.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You'll be charged and then sent a shirt. Yeah. And if we don't reach the minimum, eh, nothing happens. And we all... Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: In that case, I mean, we'll have a secondary store set up. But here's the real benefit, and this is why people should buy now. Buy, buy, buy. Buy now. So, we're going to charge $15 for a t-shirt, which isn't too bad. We're not sure about the shipping yet. That's pretty good. Yeah. For like a low-run t-shirt, it's not super expensive. So, it'll be the black t-shirt with the white and yellow lettering you can see on the website. $15 plus shipping. If you don't catch this first round of orders, it'll go up to $25 just because of the on-demand printing. So, that's just kind of incentive to buy now. So, yeah. Hopefully, we'll get 100 people. I'll be ordering one. Yes.

Dave Jones: We're setting the... I'm ordering one.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. We're setting the minimum to 100, and we figure the black t-shirt design is probably the most universal, although I do like the others as well. Yeah. Well, it's slimming, right? For all us fat engineering nerds, right?

Chris Gammell: I've been drinking beer more often lately, so... Right. Yeah. Well...

Dave Jones: Yes. Yeah. So, unfortunately, we can't choose different colours for the campaign. So, we are only going... So, we have to choose one. So, we're going to choose black, just for starters. And if we can get 100 people to sign up, then it'll happen. Otherwise, it just doesn't happen at all, and you're not charged, and blah, blah, blah. So, hopefully, out of our 6,500 listeners, or thereabouts, or we're up to like seven or something now.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know.

Dave Jones: So, surely 100 people want a t-shirt.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's really cool. Look at it. It's the first one, yeah. It's very 80s rock band kind of... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's like ACDC style, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I love it.

Chris Gammell: I was telling a friend, I was like, man, between working with this artist who worked on this thing, and then I had worked on some plastics with some industrial designers for my job, and it's just like, I'm not artistic at all, but damn, if I don't love telling them what to do, you know? Like, just guiding them, being part of the...

Chris Gammell: Not like in a bossy way, but just being part of the process, just being like, well, what if you tried this or that? It's like, oh, it was... I don't know. It's just really cool. You know, I wish I had those talents as well. Like, I mean, hell, this is hand-drawn, this t-shirt, but... Yeah. It's cool to work with artistic people, just because, you know, engineers... You know, with the maker community, they work with them a little bit more, with artistic people more, which is, I think, one of the big draws of it, but I don't get to do it that often, you know, at least at work, so...

Dave Jones: And we found this artist on a crowd, you know, what are people...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, peopleperhour.com.

Dave Jones: Yeah, peopleperhour.com, and... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm not going to give her name away yet. I will eventually, but I don't want everyone to inundate. We have a couple more t-shirt ideas we need to get out first, so...

Dave Jones: And no, it's not some kid in India. No, it's not, no. In a slum in India designing t-shirts for us, no. Yeah. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's the stereotype. No, no, no, no. Yeah, that's the stereotype, especially in the software side of, you know... Yeah. Yeah, like Elance or what are those other ones out there? Yeah, Elance and all those ones. Yeah. Apparently, you can't compete on that anymore, because there's always someone who's low-bid in you, you know, who will low-bid you for the job, you know, that kind of thing, so...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I put one up on people per hour of, like, you know, I'll help you spec in parts or something. It's just like a... And, you know, it's... I just put it on... I don't think anyone looking for that kind of thing would be on there, but... Right. ...in terms of talents I have to sell, it's like... You can hire Chris, folks. Yeah. It begins and ends right about there, so... You know, unless it's going to be... Like you said, I mean, unless it's going to be a layout, like a full layout or a full design or, you know, turnkey services, and at that point, that gets really pricey really quickly, you know? And, you know, you've talked before about your base rates, like, above $100 or $150 or whatever, and it's like...

Dave Jones: Yeah, I won't even get out of bed for less than $150 an hour, you know? Yeah, exactly. And it's like... It's like, you know, well, that's...

Chris Gammell: It's like baked into the field, right?

Dave Jones: It's just... Yeah. Yeah, exactly. No, if you want someone to do a small specialist job, you know, then, well, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so, yeah, the same site is what we use for the transcriptions that are up on the site, too, that are up on our site. And, you know, and it's the same thing. Like, you know, it comes down to the ultimate, like, you know, paying for quality kind of thing, because... Yep. And I'm sure people have experienced this in electronics, too. You know, if you don't have... If you don't pay someone who's experienced and is responsive, then it's just... You're going to end up spending the money one way or another, so you might as well spend it on quality work and not have the headache of... That's it. ...having to shout at the person or, you know, troubleshoot it yourself, because, you know, there's nothing worse than...

Dave Jones: Well, we did try more than one, didn't we? She was the... Was she the second one?

Chris Gammell: Third. Third. The artist. Third. Third. Yeah. There you go. I tried three artists and five transcriptionists. And, you know, you kind of have to do that, you know, like, at least for this kind of stuff. Just because you don't meet them in person. That's always the benefit of working with an in-person consultant. You know, you can tell if they're... You know, you just get a feel for them, right? If they're real shady. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. You know, it's like... I don't know. It's just like who you want to work with. And so... Yep. ...it's hard to get that through email and when you're doing these kind of sites...

Dave Jones: That's why if this thing works, I'm probably going to get her to design me some t-shirts for the EEV blog and I'll do a similar sort of campaign thing. So... Yeah. Hope it does work.

Chris Gammell: You know, like, that's... Everyone I've talked to has worked with consultants and I guess artists as well. And, you know, like, you find someone who's good and you just keep giving them more work because you just... Yeah. You don't want to go through that loop again, right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: To find somebody else.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: I think we're pretty lucky to get a design we liked after three.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah, the other option was like...

Dave Jones: Like, sometimes you can expect, like, give it to ten people and you might find one that you actually like.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So... Well, it's the same thing, right? So I had put this stuff out there when we were starting this process for, like, 99 designs I was thinking about and I'm like, ah, $300 for... You get, like, you know, 30 plus designs or so for, like, 300 bucks and I'm like, man, that's a lot of money.

Dave Jones: And you can pick one. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. And you can refine them then too. But, you know, we ended up spending that anyways. You know, it's not like... It's not like we... So, but we ended up getting one. But like you said, it was lucky. You know, like, 99 designs is nice because... And there's a couple sites like that where you can, you know, try out a couple things.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, the reason I like that is because, yeah, you will get, you know, 20 or 30 to choose from. So you put up the target... If people aren't aware of this, you put up the target amount. Like, I will pay you or I will pay the winner of the... It's like a contest. It is a contest, yeah. I'll pay the winner of the design contest, like, you know, 300 or 500 bucks. Yeah. And then you'll have 20... And depending on the amount of money, you'll get, you know, on average, maybe 20 or 30 different designs. And then you can choose the one you like and that winner gets all the money. And the rest just sends you flame emails. Why did you pick mine? Mine was brilliant, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. The only thing with that is it seems like, you know, in any kind of thing like that, right, it's like it just... Unless you find one that kind of strikes a chord with you, it ends up being kind of generic. Like, I've seen a couple on there. It's like, yeah, they're interesting. But, you know, they're mostly designing for, like, web startups and stuff, so...

Dave Jones: Mm, yep. Yeah, they will just design the quickest, you know, most generic thing possible. So you end up with 30 generic designs rather than one brilliant one.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, exactly. Makes you wonder if this kind of thing would work in electronics, you know? If, like, a contest site send me... I guess you kind of do that with, like, with apps engineers and salespeople.

Dave Jones: Well, you can't because there's too much work involved. Well, no, like... There's too much work involved in our business. And what... Well, no, no.

Chris Gammell: So here's... I guess here's the only analog I can think of is, like... So I say I need to go... I need to switch from a 12-volt supply down to a 5-volt supply, right? Not necessarily a very stringent application. And then, you know, I'll go tell three distributor reps and, you know, four salespeople from individual... You know, like, in-salespeople. And then they'll all send me back designs and I can go, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. You know, check through them all. That one looks good. Pricing looks good. You know, like, that... I guess that would be the closest thing.

Dave Jones: But what sort of design are they going to send you, though? Is it going to be... Like, it's not going to be a schematic because they're not going to do all that work.

Chris Gammell: No, it would be, like, application circuits, basically. Yeah, you're right. It would be generic unless there was something special. But, you know, it's like, oh, well, 12 volts down to 5 volts and it's going to be at, you know, 200 degrees Fahrenheit. You know, like, that would be, like, the one weird thing where then, you know, you need the specialized circuitry if you could even get it. You know, so... But, yeah, if you're going to be generic in the first place, then, yeah, you're going to get a lot of... You're going to get a lot of generic responses from vendors and stuff. And it can be hard to decide that. I remember a couple of times where I'm just going through all the... You know, it's just so much stuff. You know, you just think about, you know, the big companies' catalogs, right? I mean, or even just going onto a distributor's website and looking at all the different options.

Dave Jones: I know. It's crazy. That's why I don't think it's ever going to work for electronics, this sort of thing.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think that's what it is. It's either take it or leave it there, you know? It's like, you know, vendors and people who are... Yeah, it wouldn't work with, like, freelancers, I don't think. But maybe it would. I don't know. I don't know. It'd be interesting, yeah.

Dave Jones: It's going to work for t-shirts, folks. It has worked. We've got a design that we absolutely love. And if you love it, too, then get a t-shirt. Yeah. I'm definitely getting one.

Chris Gammell: Me, too.

Dave Jones: All right. When do I get it? And hopefully, you can get it before Maker Faire.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right? So Maker Faire. So Maker Faire. Maker Faire. Hamvention, which I'm definitely going to now.

Dave Jones: Where's that at?

Chris Gammell: That is in Dayton, Ohio. Dayton, Ohio. Yeah. It's not in the country, Dave. Right. It's like three hours away from me. Children banjos, there, folks. There's, I forget what the Air Force... Edwards? I forget the Air... There's a big Air Force base there, but they have a really big aeronautics museum that I hope to go to as well.

Dave Jones: Awesome.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'd love those.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think that's the one where my friend's been down there, and I think there's like a big airfield where there's like retired planes just like hanging outside. I think that's the one. I might be thinking of somewhere else, but I'll be taking videos and everything. And I will be setting up a meetup for Amp Hour listeners amongst all the ham enthusiasts. So if anyone will be going... Oh, cool. All right. You know, you can send me an email or... I posted something on the subreddit today about it, so we can just kind of coordinate. One of our former guests, Greg Charvat, will be there. And I think... Cool. Possibly Dr. Analog will be there too.

Dave Jones: Right. But the big highlight, folks, is you can meet and you can touch Christopher J. Gamble. No touching! I refuse to touch. Yeah. Yeah. Subhumans.

Chris Gammell: Well, it should be good. You know, I'm a little nervous about it, to be honest. You know, I got my license, right? And it is sat completely dormant. Of course. I still don't even have a radio. So, I mean... It's like, honestly, like... How do I have time for this, right? It's like... I don't know. It's just so... I need to get one. There's like $50 radios you can get on Amazon. So I'll get one of those and practice before I go.

Dave Jones: Oh, please. You may as well not have anything.

Chris Gammell: No, they're not bad, really. Seriously, they're not bad. They're really...

Dave Jones: Yeah, but no. At least get an old bloody Icom or something off eBay.

Chris Gammell: Well, I could, yeah. But that's the other thing. So that's the reason to go to this.

Dave Jones: Don't buy some newfangled piece of one-hung low garbage on Amazon.

Chris Gammell: It's not bad, man. Jeff had one. So I was at Maker Faire last year, and Jeff Kaiser had one of those. And it's like $50. It's, you know, it's got like a little digital keypad and everything. And you can dial in all the different frequencies. And we were chatting between cars and stuff. Wrong. Wrong. What's the problem here? I don't get it. Just because I have to have vintage gear?

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's the other thing. Okay, so that's the other thing about Hamvention is, you know how you went to that Wiong field day or whatever it was? Wiong. Wiong, sorry.

Dave Jones: Wiong, mate. No worries. You yanks. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So that was, you know, like people are buying out of boots and stuff like that, right? I mean, like they were selling on the back of their cars. This is like that times a thousand. Like this is like one of the biggest. Yeah, of course. Our one's nothing. This is the biggest. This is the biggest. One in the country, isn't it? Flea market. Yeah. Well, arguably maybe the one in Silicon Valley is big, but that's a regular thing. This is one of the biggest. Right. All year. So that'll be like electronic. I think maybe you should come in next year for this. We can go. Right. We can go. No worries. Buy some junk together.

Dave Jones: No worries. I'll spend a couple of grand, fly over here. Exactly. Not a problem.

Chris Gammell: We wear matching t-shirts. You can bring Sagan. He can wear a t-shirt too.

Dave Jones: Right. We can get a little baby size. Exactly. Have they got baby size ones?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. If they do, you got to get one. Absolutely. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm excited. Lots of stuff going on.

Dave Jones: Why the hell is it in Dayton, Ohio?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I don't remember the history of it.

Dave Jones: Who the hell goes to Dayton, Ohio? You know?

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's the DARA Dayton Amateur Radio Association is the ones who throw it. Right. There's like a whole history on their webpage about that.

Dave Jones: Well, that's the same thing about here. Like, why is it a bloody Wyong, which is, you know, an hour up the coast? You know, like nobody goes to Wyong, right? You know, it's crazy. But, yeah, the Wyong Amateur Radio Club are the ones who originally started it. And that's, you know, that's where the history is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's what it's all about. So, it's going to be a lot of nerds in town.

Dave Jones: You've got to shoot video. Oh, I plan to. Because the people that wander around are just hilarious. Oh, yeah. Just shoot crowd footage. Oh, yeah. You know? Just like mullet spotting. And just look at all the stereotypes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I am a mullet connoisseur. I am a very big fan of mullets. So, I will be on the lookout.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Get Dave to do voiceovers.

Dave Jones: You're not old enough to have had a mullet.

Chris Gammell: No. No. You mean like.

Dave Jones: Like back in the 80s? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think the closest that came was some of the kids like around my age had like rat tails. Do you remember those? Rat tails. Yes. They're so gross. I distinctly remember wanting one, but thankfully my mom said no. They're right. No.

Dave Jones: It was only the tough kids had rat's tails. Okay. When I went to school. Okay. If you had a rat's tail, you were tough. Oh, God. They're so gross. Oh, boy. Yeah. Let's not go there.

Chris Gammell: No. So, what else is going on? I guess that's a lot of our news right here. Oh, yeah. You. Well, yeah.

Dave Jones: I gave an Ignite talk.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you did. That was a good talk.

Dave Jones: The video is up. If people haven't seen it, you can watch me make a fool out of myself in front of a live audience of 500.

Chris Gammell: It wasn't a live. It wasn't. No, it was a live audience. It was not you making a fool. It was a good talk.

Dave Jones: It was for all your. I'm going to do a big blog post on it, I think. Okay. But it's going to take me a couple of hours to write the bloody thing, I think. Yeah. My experience of doing this Ignite talk, and I highly recommend it. Because they have these in different cities around the world, you know, these Ignite talks. And if you've got a passion for something, then doing a five-minute lightning PowerPoint presentation is brilliant. I love the concept. It's great. And it's extremely difficult, though. It's very challenging. That's why I did it. I actually pushed myself out of my comfort zone. And this is the first time I've been live on stage with a script. I've been, you know, live on stage off the cuff before in front of a thousand people. But, you know, that's just like if I screwed up, it was like, oh, I can mumble my way through it. This one, if you lose your time in, if people don't know what it is, basically it's a fixed five-minute format. You have 20 PowerPoint slides and 15 seconds per slide, and they auto-rotate. So if you lose your time in, or you forget to say something, or you do whatever, those slides just keep ticking over, and there's no stopping it. There's no, you know, there's no backing down. There's no going, oh, I can't start again. No, because everyone will boo you, right? Right. If you do that, it's, you know, you'll get booed off stage. It's like, and no, so it's, you know, you get one shot, and you have to nail it. Yeah. And I think I did pretty well. I was quite pleased with myself. I was quite chuffed. Came off stage, and I went, yes, did it. Son of a bitch. All that practice paid off. Nice. That's good.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's good you still have a work ethic. Someone buried deep underneath the surface, says the guy who doesn't make any videos, talking to the guy who makes tons of videos. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But it's tough. Like, the amount of, to actually say, to tell a meaningful story, throw in jokes, and, you know, give some information in, you know, 15 seconds per slide is incredibly difficult. When I first started writing the thing, I like, you know, I wrote, oh, yeah, this will fit in, you know, 15 seconds, and I, you know, spoke it to myself, and I timed it, and that took like a minute. Yeah. It was like, holy shit, I'm saying too much, you know, and I had to, the amount of stuff I had to cut out and actually refine is phenomenal.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's absolutely amazing. There's a really good post by Seth Godin, the marketing guy that I probably have mentioned on here before. Yeah, I know. And he talks about the, like, the basics of presenting, and a lot of them are captured in like a Ignite or another version of that. It's like Pachakacha is another one that they have around here. Oh, never heard of that. Yeah, it's a Japanese word for chatter, basically. But it's the same kind of thing, like a rapid fire presentation. But basically, the idea behind good presentations, and it's good just even if you're doing presentations for like work, is do not have a wall of text. Do not use bullet points. You know, like...

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. You get booed off stage at Ignite if you use a bullet point. Yeah. Yeah, you frowned upon.

Chris Gammell: The thing that Seth Godin talks about is just, you know, like big pictures, you know, striking images, you know, single words, that kind of thing. And it can get kind of lame if, you know, if it goes too... If you do it like that too much, you know, if you actually are presenting data, you might need a graph on screen.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. No, of course. Yeah, I put a graph into mine. I put a couple of points. They weren't bullet points, but I put a couple of facts up there. And other than that, there were other people who just had funny pictures of the Muppets. You know, that was it. Yeah. Every slide was just a different Muppet, you know. I mean, it was great, you know. So is that a monthly thing out there? No, it's about every nine months or so. Okay. They run that, you know. Oh, that's good, though. This was the 10th time they've run it in Sydney. And yeah, no, I'll definitely be... I'll definitely go back next year, but I won't talk. I'll just watch. Right, right. No, I'll be a... Yeah. You're a veteran. And it's very stand-up comedy-like, like the venue. I don't think you can see it on camera, but like I'm standing right on the edge of the stage, and there are people like right at my feet. It's a mosh pit, and it's standing room only. Oh, wow. You know? And there's like, yeah, it's like, you know.

Chris Gammell: That's got to be like an electric kid.

Dave Jones: These people aren't seated. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's good. That kind of crowd is good, because it's better than like... Oh, it's great. You crack a joke, and it's just like, cricket, cricket, cricket, cricket.

Dave Jones: No, but this was a real pumped-up, positive, motivated crowd, so the jokes went over well. And the thing is, like, you don't have time. Like, if your joke goes down well, and people are pissing themselves, and at one point I couldn't even hear myself. Yeah. Right? Because people are pissing themselves laughing. But you can't just stop and wait for the... No. You've got to wait for that to finish. Muscle through it. Because you're on a schedule, right? You're on a schedule for the next slide, so you've just got to talk over the laughter and keep on going. You know, you can't... It's really, really amazing. It was a great experience. I loved it. Good. Yep. I highly recommend it, to challenge yourself and do an Ignite talk.

Chris Gammell: I'll have to keep an eye out for Cleveland. And see if they come around here.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Don't know if they do, but they're in quite a few cities. It was actually first developed by... Who's the head of O'Reilly Media, who does the Make Magazine thing?

Chris Gammell: Dale? Dale Doherty?

Dave Jones: Yes. And Brie... Brie Pettis? Pettis from... Yeah. I think they were the two who founded it. Or something. So...

Chris Gammell: Okay. I don't...

Dave Jones: I think so.

Chris Gammell: Okay. You disagree? I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. No, I think their names were mentioned as one of the... As the two people who started it in some way. So, this Ignite format. Oh, yeah, you're right. Rapid fire presentation. Am I right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. 2006 in Seattle as a brainchild of Brady Forrest and Brie Pettis.

Dave Jones: There you go.

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Awesome. Well, way to go, Brie. That's awesome. Yeah. Okay. Well, what else is on the list for this week?

Dave Jones: Oh, well, we can get into the big topic which we could talk half an hour on.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Which involves Kickstarter and...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Should we? Speaking of crowdfunding, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. Well, let's do it. Right. There's a big thread on the EEV blog forum about a Kickstarter... No, an Indiegogo. Sorry, it's not Kickstarter. It's Indiegogo.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because they couldn't get on Kickstarter. And that's one part of the reason we're discussing this. And it's the MuOptics thermal imaging camera. And somebody who backed it asked on the forum, is it real or is it fake? Right. And the general consensus is that these, including my own opinion, is that they will not deliver squat. Right?

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: And they will... No, they will... It'll be a miserable failure and nobody will get... Will see anything for their $150 or $200. It's going to fail. Like many Kickstarter... Well, you know, there's quite a few out there who have delivered absolutely nothing. They've taken all this money. In some cases, you know, like many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And that's the case with this MuOptics one. It's... They got $250 and a quarter of a million bucks in funding.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right? Right. $280.

Dave Jones: And, yeah. And they claim to be able to... The reason I smelled bullshit from day one is because the delivery schedule was ridiculous. They said they were going to deliver in May and it came out early April and all they had was just a slick, you know, 3D rendered video. They had no real product, no real prototype. And it's like, you're not going to deliver squat by May. And that's bullshit.

Chris Gammell: And that's why Kickstarter implemented those rules on their projects in the first place.

Dave Jones: That's why they could not go on Kickstarter. Because Kickstarter have new rules that say you must show a real working prototype. Otherwise, bugger off. So they bugger off. They do. They bugger off to Indiegogo.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: And if you don't know about Indiegogo, the other big difference is that... Well, there's two other big differences. One is that you get the money regardless of whether or not you meet the target.

Chris Gammell: Well, they have different types of campaigns. You can do that, that, or they could do it like the traditional Kickstarter one as well. Oh, okay. And interestingly, they started before Kickstarter, if you didn't know.

Dave Jones: Yes, I did. Okay. They've been around longer. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, there is that option where they get the money regardless of whether or not they meet the target. And I think in this case, they did do that. Which is sexy, in my opinion.

Chris Gammell: I think it's better to have that all or nothing.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I think so.

Chris Gammell: Endless upside.

Dave Jones: And the other one is, I believe, although I haven't used Indiegogo, so don't quote me, but this is just what I've read, is that they can delete comments that they don't like.

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

Dave Jones: Yeah. Whereas you can't do that on Kickstarter. So, you know, you can read in the comments all the public, you know, people start screaming, this is bullshit, I want my money back, you know. Yeah. And, yeah. Although there's no, I'll say that there's no evidence of them doing that with this campaign, but in others, this MuOptics one, they haven't done that, I don't believe. But in other campaigns like the Vision Eyes, no, Zion Eyes campaign, which is a famous one. Yeah. That was like a Google Glass style. Google Glass style thing, and they delivered squat, you know. And, yeah. And then there's a thing where they've moved to Indiegogo as well with the same, a similar thing. And there's, you know. Anyway, the question is, the reason I brought this up is because the original poster on the forum asked, is it a scam or is it not? Right. And here is the question, are these projects actually genuine engineered scams from the get-go, or are they just enthusiastic people who have no idea about electronics design and manufacturing? And unless they admit they're scammers, you just don't know, right? Right. You just, you know, you sort of kind of have to give them the benefit of the doubt, I guess.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, you have to judge it based on whatever information they give you. You can't judge it any more than that, really.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know.

Dave Jones: And, well, what's happened with the MuOptics one is now, if it wasn't a scam to begin with, it is now. Because this guy is selling snake oil. He's absolutely classic. The responses he's giving, I've read them, and it's classic snake oil talk. Absolutely classic. And they said they were going to, you know, stuff like they were going to show the product at an upcoming trade show in May. And now they've pulled out of that. And their reasons for that are just complete bullshit. Yeah. Right. There's not, you know.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I can utter a name I haven't uttered in a while. Do you remember E-E Store? Oh, right, yeah. Yes, yes. That sound, echoes of that. Right. We still haven't delivered. Still haven't seen a damn thing. What was the story behind that?

Dave Jones: Did they take investment? Like venture?

Chris Gammell: They had announced this, you know, revolutionary battery technology. And then basically they said they had a car manufacturer interested in it. And the military was interested in it. And there was all this hype. Yeah, yeah. And then basically people started investing in the car company because of that. And it's just like, ugh.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. As in like the industry started investing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Like? Yeah, because that was the only really public-facing entity. And people thought, well, if this is such a big thing, I want to get any piece of it. I can't. Ah, right.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's the downside of like, you know, that JOBS Act, which still isn't in place either, which is supposed to be like crowdfunding smaller companies up to a million dollars. We talked about that on the show back when that happened. First off, that still isn't in place, the JOBS Act.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: But that's the big problem with that is that, you know, you get these small, not small ideas. They're usually big ideas with small companies. And it's like, there's nothing but marketing sell because, you know, you don't have anything to show yet. You either need money for a big first prototype or, you know, something like that. So it's tough to be in, but it's made it even worse when there's people that aren't being honest about it, you know. Yeah. And I don't know if, I haven't read about the Mew enough to really say whether or not. But when people are, you know, so like, I think a good thing is like in the EEV blog post, they talk about the comparative cost, right? So it's the same optics as a $2,500 fluke scanner, right? That's the, that was the comparison that they gave.

Dave Jones: Well, they claim to be able to get it much lower cost, you know, but. Well, yeah, that's what I mean though.

Chris Gammell: So it's either one of two things. They're either, you know, not, they're not playing with the spec sheet correctly. They're, you know, like they're actually just using the sensor wrong, right? I assume that they're using some sensor. They're, they're lying.

Dave Jones: Well, they claim to be able to get like, oh, they, well, we have a selection of low cost sensors to choose from. It's like bullshit you do. Yeah. Right? There's only, there's hardly any on the market that can meet that price point, let alone a selection of them.

Chris Gammell: Right. You know, it's just like. It's tough. It could be, you know, it could just be that they haven't gotten far enough in their development. So, you know, like everybody does at the beginning of a project, right? You're like, oh, well, of course I'll get, you know, 24 bits from this ADC. And then you're like, oh, well, I wanted to run it at more than a sample every five seconds. So I guess I won't get 24, 24 bits, you know, it's like, I guess I can't integrate that much. Yeah. That's. So. It just happens every project. If you're not far enough, then you're, you don't, you don't know what you don't know yet. Right. And, but you're selling on that, what you don't know.

Dave Jones: The thing is, these guys who are doing these sort of things, if you read these projects that people think might be scams, if you read them, you go, well, these guys are actually quite knowledgeable. They do actually know enough to, you know, to actually talk technical about various things. It's just that when you dig below the surface, it's not really practical, but they at least know enough to, you know, to convince a lot of people that they know what they're talking about.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's, that's the worst, worst kind too, because, you know, you're like, you get excited as, you know, even if you know what it is in the field, right? They're saying all the right things. And then, and then eventually you're like, oh, but you've, you didn't know what you're talking, you were just saying the right words at the beginning, right? You don't actually, oh man. Yeah. You know, it's just.

Dave Jones: But the dead giveaway is like, they keep talking about, oh, we're spinning more boards and, you know, which means, well, where are all your previous boards? People keep asking them, show us an old prototype. Yeah. You know, and they're showing squat, right? They've like, it's just like, yeah, you can just smell the bullshit a mile away. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's tough.

Dave Jones: So are they scammers or are they, or are they just pie in the sky dreamers, you know, who are just stretching the truth that, you know, like, are they seriously working on it? Yeah. You know, like, you know, and they've, they've actually put up a video of, you know, going around in the office there and talking to the three or four people working on the project. Yeah. You know, and it's like, oh, you know, and people have said, oh, they're actors or whatever or they're, you know.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's just speculation. Come on. That's. Yeah. Well, it's just speculation. I mean, like, it's tough because again, it's like we said with consultants, right? You can't sit there. You can't look them in the eye. You know, like you can produce a video to, to make someone look like Superman, right? But unless, unless you're sitting there with them and, you know, maybe throwing them off a little bit, right? Like, like you're interviewing someone, right? You could have a resume that's brilliant when you're interviewing a new electronics designer, but unless they're bringing the boards in, like you always say, if you're, unless you're asking them about what they've actually made or actually done, you know, you can't tell if they're full of crap, you know, and that's, it's just a dangerous position to be in. So it's.

Dave Jones: And that's why it's easy with these campaigns to tell if they're full of shit or not. You just say, well, show me the hardware.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. You know? Right. Yeah. Prototypes.

Dave Jones: And that, that, that, that should be the rule, right? Yeah. And that's why I think the Kickstarter rule is, is excellent. Show me the real prototype. Otherwise, piss off. I don't want to, you know. Yeah. You know, you're, you're just full of crap.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Right. You know, anyone can do a 3D render these days and a fancy video.

Chris Gammell: I can hire an artist. That's my favorite part.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. You can hire someone for a couple hundred bucks on bloody, you know, people per hour to do your slick video.

Chris Gammell: Oh no. What if these t-shirts aren't actually real? That's what everyone's thinking right now. Oh yeah. Right. Yeah. Luckily t-shirts, that's all there is. I'll be scamming people with shit. Yeah. Yeah. Oh no. Oh man. Oh boy. There's actually, so there was, there was a, a, a fortune tech article about, about the same kind of thing about this, you know, they were talking about the hardware renaissance is stalling out and it's like, well, you know, the stuff they're talking about is just, you know, so they, they gave a couple examples, right? They, the big ones, right? From Kickstarter, like the Jawbone Up, which is a, that's a quantified self, you know, tracking your movements and everything. There's the Pebble, which we've talked about a bunch. And then there's a, or however you say that, the, the Android game console. And it's like, you know, a lot of this is just scaling, right? That, that, that's a big part of it. And that's just a hard part of any project is going from one to 10 is tough. Going from 10 to a hundred is tough. Going from a hundred thousand, thousand to a ten thousand. Yeah. You know, like all the way up. Yeah. And I think, you know, in that case, it's just, it's just over exuberance in terms of the founders, right? They, you know, if they, if they were really realistic about it on a Kickstarter or a Indiegogo or even a self-starter, right? They would limit it to what they know they can do, right? I know.

Dave Jones: Yes, I know. Yeah. That's, I would never put myself out there like that. Right. Like, cause your reputation, absolutely ruined. Cause you've got to put your name behind it.

Chris Gammell: You do. Yeah, you're right. And, and even in the case of Pebble, that's what actually sold it too. You know, they said, oh, well, this is a company that started to design a different watch before and that, that gave people more confidence and, you know, that everything else there. Right. But it's like, you know, it's like you have to give that balance point and it's, I'm sure it's very hard if you're at the beginning, right? It's like, of course you want to, you know, grab as much cash as you can, because you might be thinking that might be the only time you get it in the first place. Right. If you, if you don't get it at first, when, when you have that big slug of, of publicity and marketing, it's like, yeah, you know, but if you can't deliver, you also get the backside marketing and you get it in the backside. So it's, it's a, it's a tough, it's a tough balance. Love it. I don't know if I'd be able to, I don't think I'd be able to hold off either. You know, it's like, oh, of course, you know, like it's, you kind of do that. What do you do? You do the little thumb thing, you know, the tongue off to the side, right? You're kind of looking at, yeah, we could do 10,000 more units. What is it? It's just time and money, right? Plastic.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: To pay someone to do it. Yeah. Yeah, right. Well, at 4,000, 80%, failure rate. But then if it all comes against, well, yeah, what, you know, something goes wrong. You can lose all your money. Yeah, right. You know, and then you've got nothing left, you know, to actually, you know, if you screw it up one, you know, a time or two, you know, if you try and do, you know, 10,000, the company could run off. That's a lot of, that's a common excuse, apparently, for a lot of these companies that fail. Oh, we gave our money, we gave all your money to the contract manufacturer and they just disappeared. And it's like, you know, yeah. Right. Yeah. Blames, you know, shifting blame. It's like bullshit. Well, of course, right.

Chris Gammell: And it's like, you know, when we talked to Scott Miller on the show, it's like, he's, you know, he said they offer that service for that kind of thing because it does happen. But, you know, if you don't think to hire someone like Scott or if you don't go over to China and babysit the process, man, it's, yeah, you can't just, you can't just sit back and be like, oh, I got 10 million in the bank now. I'm sure this will get itself done. Money is hard to make. Have you noticed this? It is hard to make money. Ah, yeah. It's, uh, I don't know.

Dave Jones: It's, it's, it's, welcome to the real world. I know, right?

Chris Gammell: But like, okay, so this is going to sound really stupid, right?

Dave Jones: It's easy for some people, right? You see all these successful campaigns on Kickstarter and you go, oh man, I could get a million bucks too. It's like very few people actually get serious money. Right. The guy made a million bucks.

Chris Gammell: The jump to conclusions, Matt. But you know, like, but like, even when you're coming out of school, right? Even when you're coming out of school, you know, like engineers who get paid pretty well out of school, right? It's like, it's like, oh, I'm just doing the stuff I want to do, but breaking through, you know, barriers of, you know, salary or, you know, making money on your own or going out on your own. It is hard to make money. You know, it does continue to be hard or else everyone would do it, obviously. You know, it's like, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And it's like, you know, if you go into the kit, kit business and you're making the maximum profit packing and shipping each one. Well, yeah, congratulations. You've just scored yourself a 12 hour a day job for the rest of your life. You know? Yeah. You might be making a, you know, quite a lot of money, but not like a lot of margin, but you're working your ass off. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, you know, people should not say, yeah, we talked about those different models before. There's models where you can completely hand everything off to someone else and sit back and only make 10% or you can work your ass off yourself and make all the profit,

Chris Gammell: you know, and well, choose your poison, you know? Yeah. You can make all the self-paid salary of not that much. Right. Yeah. It's, yeah, you gotta, you gotta work hard. It's, it's gotta get even harder when you're selling a phone for $12. 12 bucks. 12 bucks. Uh, this is a post from Bunny.

Dave Jones: And it looks like a $12 phone. Uh, yeah, if that. It's a bit of green translucent plastic with like nine, nine buttons and a little one inch screen. That's probably what? 120 pixels or something. And, uh, it's got two, two chips in it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And um, Bunny lays it out like usual, obviously, you know, he did an interesting comparison

Dave Jones: and he compared it to the Arduino Uno, which is $29 and this phone is $12, you know, like.

Chris Gammell: Right. This is scraping the bottom of the, uh, of the supply chain barrel. Yeah. You know, like this is just optimizing. Because I bet if you bought this, this phone two different months, it could have potentially entirely different parts of it. Oh, totally different. Just because. Absolutely. You know, this is probably bought off surplus shelves at, at the seg market or wherever Bunny got it from. What was it? The, uh, I didn't see which market it was from. Gankai. I don't know what that means.

Dave Jones: And it comes with a charger in a box.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's one of those fake chargers that just, you know, are lethal, you know, like they churn them out for 20 cents, you know. Yeah. Right. Ugh.

Chris Gammell: Crazy.

Dave Jones: And it comes with a free silicon sleeve as well. One of those protective silicon covers.

Chris Gammell: You mean like.

Dave Jones: And a cable.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like a, like a skin. One of the protective silicon skins.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I, I, I always just amazed at the, the RF side of things. You know, I always think that's the, the most expensive, expensive side of things. But the fact that it can do all.

Dave Jones: Well, the chip's only two bucks. I know. That's a bunny, you reckon.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The baseband stuff. But like that, that's what's most crazy to me. Like, I mean, I guess the same thing with like, you know, Raspberry Pi. That's what they, they built that on too, right? That was a mobile, uh, graphics processor. Right. So it's, you know, it's. Mm-hmm. It's economies of scale, obviously. But just, man, $2. I, I, I buy $2 resistors sometimes. You know, like. Yeah, I know. Exactly. The drastic difference.

Dave Jones: My, my new project's using a five buck resistor in it. Exactly. Oh, I've. And that's in volume.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we can, I can, I can play this game all day long. I've. Yeah, exactly. My past has gotten me in touch with some very expensive resistors. But yeah, it doesn't matter. It's, it's just like the, the extreme disparity between pricing and complexity. Right. I mean, you could argue that this is, you know, that a, a very fancy resistor has process, uh, complexities that, that, uh, uh, chip, obviously the, the processing of, you know, uh, uh, chip like this, right. It's probably on an older node of technology. It might be on 90 nanometer or, you know, whatever. Was it 135 before that, you know, so it could be on an older technology node. So it's, you know, it's, it's already cost optimized, but man, even still, you know, just the, just the, the bare metal complexity is insane. Absolutely insane. I know. Yeah. And it's, and it's interesting too. It's incredible. I, it's, the bunny got the schematics and everything. So, cause it's China, you know, right. Okay. Yeah. But it's unbelievable. Very, very cool post. So bunny continues to crank out the awesomeness.

Dave Jones: Oh man. 12 bucks. What do you think if, I mean, like, but as you said, it will not be available next month, right? It'll, or if it is, it'll be an entirely different chip set, entirely different design. It's, you know, it's a case of a company that, you know, some one hung low company has been stuck with some surplus gear or they bought a whole bunch of surplus chips and something and went, Whoa, what can we do with this? I know we'll make a run of phones. And they make a run of 50,000 of them and that's it. Right. 50,000.

Chris Gammell: I mean, if you're making, what do you think they're making, even if they're making 50% margin on this, which would make it even more insane.

Dave Jones: Oh, where, which they're not. Right.

Chris Gammell: They're probably two, $2, $2 margin. I'm guessing. I'm guessing. That, what, times 50,000 pieces? That's $100,000 margin or profit rather. It's like, you know, that's, that's like cheap labor priced in there because who's going to put that together for, you know, like how do you, how do you even do that?

Dave Jones: I know. It's, it's insane. I mean, somebody had to lay out the board. Somebody had to assemble it. Yeah, exactly. Somebody had to, you know, test it. Somebody, yeah. Well, I doubt they're even testing.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, maybe we'll make 150 and just sell what we can. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yep. Well, there was a post on hackthings.com by Joe and, and he, same kind of thing, just calling out cheap hardware of, so he calls out a $30 Android tablet, which we talked about in the past with, you know, the India program. And some, some of that is subsidizing, but, you know, Android tablet for Android 4.1, which is better than my phone, you know, like you're running 30 bucks. And then he also says $8 video recorders. And then no contract, $11 cell phones, quote unquote, but it's actually just a, it's like a, it's a hotspot basically, but for 12 bucks, same kind of thing. Right. So, man, that's, it's crazy. You know, like, and so he's, he writing about, he's writing about disposable hardware and it's like, yeah, okay. It's Earth Day today. And it's like, yes, I, I disagree with that in principle, just from the disposable side of things. You could argue that all electronics are effectively disposable because of technological advancements, but just from the, where, where do you and I exist in this, this universe, Dave? That's what, that's what I don't get. I don't think we do, do we? I don't. I mean, like, no, not in this universe, but I mean, like, okay, so is there any future? Like, should I, should I be brushing up on my software right now? I mean, yes, I should be brushing up on my software, but like, like, can we survive in a world like this?

Dave Jones: Of course we can. I mean. Rumors of our death have been greatly exaggerated. Greatly exaggerated, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, we can always sell t-shirts. Right. I could always be an a-hole on radio and maybe people will buy a t-shirt for me once in a while. Donate or something. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, boy. Wait. Oh.

Dave Jones: No, come on. You know, like, there's, like, people look at this, but there's so much other industry out there. Yeah. Right? There's, you know, countless industrial stuff which still needs to be done, countless niche stuff which still needs to be done. I mean, you know, people look at this and they think, oh, this is the only industry that exists. It's just bullshit. You know, it's the same sort of blinker vision that Altium had when they, you know, said, oh, everyone is going to have a designer product that connects to the internet. Yeah. You know, it's bullshit. Right? It's just bullshit. It's not going to happen. Not even close. Not even to within an order of magnitude. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I guess, yeah. Although people always need custom hardware of some type, but it's just a matter of, you know, how many nooks and crannies are there. Right? That's what it comes down to.

Dave Jones: Well, I reckon there's more nooks and crannies than there are for consumer shit like this.

Chris Gammell: Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. I mean, if you're designing a $12 cell phone.

Dave Jones: It's just that they're not visible. Right? They're not visible.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: All these little nooks and crannies that exist everywhere collectively make up more than the consumer market, I'm sure.

Chris Gammell: You think so? You think from a profit standpoint? Or from like a...

Dave Jones: It's at least equal.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Or from like a work standpoint?

Dave Jones: Maybe not from a volume standpoint, but from a design and manufacturing requirements standpoint, yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I definitely agree that's where all the interesting stuff is, right? Because, yeah, when you're doing this kind of stuff, you're optimizing, you know, fractions of pennies on resistors and, you know, everything else. Not even... Probably less than fractions, you know? Like a... Yeah. Thousands and millions of... Heart and bee sticks of... Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. But I don't know. It's still... It's a big world out there, you know? It's like... It's just... It's hard to know your place sometimes, you know? Like, it's just... I'm sure that our audience feels that too. It's just like, you know, you look at it... Especially when you're starting out, you're just like, where the hell do I fit in all this? You know?

Dave Jones: Well, look. It's simple. Do a poll, right? Of all of our audience, right? Six, seven thousand of you, how many of you work in consumer... Designing consumer electronics products? And how many work on something other than that? I guarantee you... There's probably not a single person in our audience working on a consumer electronics item.

Chris Gammell: Well, I guess we'd have to define consumer, right?

Dave Jones: Well, yes. Something that's visible, you know? Something that's... Well, yeah. You know? Something you go buy in your local, you know, market or...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Cost optimized. I don't know, man. I know one of our listeners, two... I know two at really big companies that make commercial hardware, so... I can't say who they are, but I do know... You know who you are. You're listening.

Speaker ?: Well, yeah.

Dave Jones: It's one or two. That's what I'm talking about, right? Yeah, that's true. It's very few.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right? It's a very small percentage. And that's why it's bullshit that... That, you know, because all this consumer stuff gets the high visibility. It does, yeah. You're totally right. The other stuff gets zero visibility. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And I mean, I'm in the industrial space, right? I mean, like, that's my bread and butter. That's what keeps food on my table. Yeah. And, you know, I have vendors coming in and telling me the same thing because they don't want to play in this market. You know, they don't want to play in the cell phone market. Like, obviously, we saw TI getting out of the OMAP line, right? Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because the margins are bugger all. Right. Right?

Chris Gammell: Well, and they were really gung-ho about it at first, too. Like, linear technology, I remember. Like, one of those great app notes from Jim Williams about the Reuter oscillator. That is a brilliant... Have you ever read that app note?

Dave Jones: No. I don't think so. Oh, it's a good one. I don't think so.

Chris Gammell: It's about self-resonant switching circuit, basically. Right. It's basically an inverter. And so he did this huge study on it, right, about all these different things. It was actually for the backlight, the CCLF, the cold cathode fluorescent light.

Speaker ?: Oh, right.

Dave Jones: I think I know the one you're talking about. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It was a backlight for one of the early Mac notebooks. That's right. And it's like, you look at that, you're like, holy crap. You know, obviously, they're down the road from Cupertino at Milpitas, where linear technology is. But, you know, I never really thought about that. You know, I always saw linear tech from an industrial standpoint, so I thought of it like that. But no, of course they were playing in that market. And, you know, there's a reason there's so many power switchers out there from all these analog companies. It's like, yeah, yeah. That's going into a lot of different things, right? And that's their bread and butter some of the times, not always. So, yeah. I mean, I get it, but we'll have to, like you said, we'll have to...

Dave Jones: You still think it's doom and gloom, right?

Chris Gammell: I ebb and flow. Well, like you said, we'll put a poll up. That'll be interesting. I mean, I didn't ask that in the listener survey for the year. So if people could say that, it'll be a real simple survey. Just, you know, what industry are you in? I'll try and think of as many as I can. And then we'll leave an other column.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. I mean, but then, like, the consumer one has to be just that. The visible consumer side. Something that you can, you know, we can go and buy in a shop somewhere or buy on eBay. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And I reckon there's very few. I guarantee it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Like, I mean, yeah, you're right. Because, like, big TVs and big consumer type stuff like that, I mean, that's made by very few people in very concentrated parts of the world.

Dave Jones: And I just think that there is, I think I'm right in that there is an order of magnitude or more in terms of the industrial niche market. In terms of us, the number of people working on stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Number of people like us working on things. It's just, you know, it has to be an order of magnitude or two. It's got to be.

Chris Gammell: Well. More in favor of the industrial niche side of things. We can try and find some numbers. That always, you know, it can feel one way, but it can, you know, numbers tell the truth. As long as it's not a marketing guy giving you numbers. Of course. Yeah. Speaking of marketing, we should mention our wonderful sponsor. Yeah. Triad Semiconductor.

Dave Jones: For the last week?

Chris Gammell: No. One more week. One more week.

Dave Jones: One more week.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Triad Semiconductor.

Chris Gammell: Let's hear that one more time, Dave. Let's hear that radio voice.

Dave Jones: In my non-radio voice. Here we go. Triad Semiconductor. No. No, that's crap.

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: I don't even know what I was trying to do there.

Chris Gammell: I think he has a cold or something.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. It's my nasally whinal voice.

Chris Gammell: We mentioned our flub last week, or from two weeks ago. We mentioned that last week. Basically, so Via Designer is the software that you can, so you can get a trial version from, from Triad. So, viadesigner.com. A year was. A amp hour. Yes. A whole year. $500 value. Basically, you can put together, there's a variety of pre-proven designs, and then basically what you do is you drop vias, hence the Via ASIC name, you drop vias in different parts of the design, and that allows you to basically connect the fabric up, and then be able to route different analog blocks, there's digital blocks, there's lots of different peripherals that you can use in there, and then you can have a semi-custom chip for your application, be it industrial or military, or if you're charging a whole lot, maybe in a consumer application, against the competition, obviously. But, yeah, it's, you know, it's a really cool way to do a semi-custom chip at a low cost compared to...

Dave Jones: Quite a reasonably low cost compared to a traditional, well, you know, we're talking orders of magnitude less than a traditional ASIC.

Chris Gammell: Right. And especially the fact that you can analog in there. Very cool stuff. So we highly recommend people check it out. Viadesigner.com slash the amp hour.

Dave Jones: Viadesigner.com.

Chris Gammell: Dot com.

Dave Jones: Com. Com. Was that better?

Chris Gammell: That was better, yeah.

Dave Jones: All right. Come on, surely you can do one of those American... Come on down to viadesigner.com. Infomercial.

Chris Gammell: Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.

Dave Jones: I can do one of those shouty ads. Have you guys got those shouty ads in the US? You know, like they usually come on like at midnight. And it's like, go to viadesigner.com now. You must do it. We've got a free viadesigner software. Right. $500 value.

Speaker ?: You know, like...

Chris Gammell: Or like Billy Mays back in the... Was it Billy Mays? Yeah, the guy, the infomercial guy. Billy Mays here. You can get a brand new knife set. And that's not all. OxiClean. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think people next door are laughing at me. I can hear laughter.

Chris Gammell: Really?

Dave Jones: Yeah. So they don't call you the crazy Aussie around there, though.

Chris Gammell: They just call you crazy. Is that right?

Dave Jones: No, I just get weird stares as I walk through that corridor. Yeah. I'm sure they can hear me through the walls here. I mean, you know, I can hear them, so... And I'm louder than your average human, so...

Chris Gammell: That's true. Yep. I guess they... You need to reinforce the walls. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I need a fully padded rune. That's right. That's what you need. And an orange straight jacket, you know? Yeah. Bounce off the walls. Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: So there is an announcement this week from BeagleBone, and Jason has been on the show before talking about BeagleBone. He has. And the BeagleBoard project. But they just announced a new version, which I think we might have alluded to in a prior episode. But it looks pretty cool. Did you get a chance to check out Specs?

Dave Jones: I haven't looked at it. Hey, I've got it open here somewhere. I did have it open. No, I haven't. Give us the lowdown.

Chris Gammell: So it is... It's the same family, the AM335X. I think that's the same family. The... I think it's the Sitara. Oh, I'm probably talking out my butt here. But basically, it's dual core. It's ARM Cortex-A8. And then, you know, basically, this is a lower-cost version of the original BeagleBone. That was like $90. This one's half-priced, $45.

Dave Jones: Well, because they've got to compete with the Raspberry Pi, right?

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. Yeah. And so that's... That is... Basically, yeah, that's part of the spin. You know, I think they updated some of the technology. There's a slightly different core and stuff. But you still get all the same headers. You get the same connectivity. You get Ethernet, the USB host. Have you used the original BeagleBone?

Dave Jones: No, I don't have one.

Chris Gammell: Oh, no. Yeah, it's...

Dave Jones: No, they never sent me one.

Chris Gammell: Oh, sad.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's pretty cool, though. And this one, folks, is called the BeagleBone Black.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I have the original one, and... Right. The white one. The white one, right.

Dave Jones: The bone-colored one.

Chris Gammell: They emulate Ethernet over USB. I had never... I think it's just the chipset that they use, but I had never done that before. So it's like you connect to it, you plug it in, and then basically you would... You know, it shows up like a flash drive, and then you eject it, and then it's like, oh, hey, I'm an Ethernet peripheral now, and it's all through your USB. Wow, cool. So you can be USB on one end, and then you can actually be, you know, like, basically SSH-ing into this Linux core, and then I believe you can also have an Ethernet cable plugged on the other end. I think that's right. You might not be able to do both at the same time. Right. But in terms of development, it's super simple, because you power it off the USB, and then you also do Ethernet off the USB. And it's... I don't know. I was really flabbergasted when I started doing that, but it's a cool thing.

Dave Jones: Weren't we talking some time back about how the BeagleBone might actually disappear? Because TI wanted to sell off...

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because some of the older...

Dave Jones: The OMAP shut down the OMAP line or something?

Chris Gammell: The original BeagleBone, that was like $150. So that's like the red one. It's not... It doesn't have the... I don't think it has the same pin headers and stuff, like the 0.1-inch pin headers. Right. But yeah, some of the older ones, they used the OMAP. So those got discontinued.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. So this is the new... Right. Yeah, this is a different family. The new AM335X one gig arm cortex. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The only thing I don't like... So I really don't like the Cloud9. I tried that with like the Cloud9 IDE and Node.js. And it's like... I know that it's trying to be like Arduino and it is very high level and everything like that. But it just... It feels clunky. I think it's probably because... Failed, huh? ...how I connected to it. But I don't know. Writing JavaScript to talk to peripherals, it just... It feels weird. I mean, it's not really... I mean, it's JavaScript-based. But it's... You know, it's just a scripting language. It's... It feels weird. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Give me basic.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, sometimes it feels like that, right? I mean, like...

Dave Jones: Yeah, right. Just give me basic. I just want to print 10 Hello World, you know? Print Hello World. I don't know. It's hard.

Chris Gammell: So I've been interfacing to an ADC at work and stuff. And, you know, it's like getting to the point of, you know, just getting data to stream out and have, like...

Dave Jones: To talk out. Yeah. Exactly. It's a big hurdle. It's a big step.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know, and also, not only... You know, you can just stream it sometimes, you know, if you have it all set up and you click go and you stream it. That's one thing. And then... But then also having, like, it configurable and everything, it's just like, oh, man, this is so much work. It's like, at a certain point, you just feel like, well, why don't I just do everything at this point and just start programming the damn thing with whatever I'm going to end up talking to it with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And so it's always that battle of trying to figure out when you actually pull the trigger on, you know, between the, what do you call it, exercising a chip and actually just full out developing something, you know? Yep. But it's...

Dave Jones: Yeah, I'm a big fan of just jumping straight in there and writing real code. Yeah. You know, and just, yep. Works everything, you know. Yeah, I don't see wasting time, you know, I don't think it's worthwhile wasting time writing some test routine or something like that. I just, you know, jump straight in, do the code, sort out any issues and...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you know, so I was getting back into code when I was starting to do some of this project I'm doing now. I was kind of, you know, I'd been away from code for a little while and stuff and really the thing that tripped me up was just like, man, like, okay, so I know I can get to data if I, like, just look at the registers and everything, but that's really clunky. I know that that's how a lot of embedded people do, like, actual development. You know, you run to a certain line and then go look at the register and... Or, you know, you could do a printf if you wanted to, but then you need, like, a debug interface. The real turning point for me was having a serial interface. That still... I think that still kind of rocks the house on... Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but that's what eventually ended up allowing me to, you know, stream data back. That was the key thing for me. I don't know. I don't know if that's how you usually do it.

Dave Jones: I mean, if you've got a product that doesn't have a display, doesn't natively have a display device, like, a lot of my products will have an LCD, right? So that's the first thing I'll get working. Get the LCD working, and once you've got that working, you can use that to just print out all your variables and, you know, and things to see that they work. Yeah. You know, you've instantly got that, you know, that debug interface there with the LCD.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and I had that when I was... So I was starting on a different platform. I had, like, a little interface, but the problem with that was it took so damn long to update it because, you know, you had... It was, like, this... You know, it was all abstracted to me, but it was... You know, you still had this serial... Or this interface you had to write to, and so it had this huge library, and it was, you know, updating character at a time, and it's like, I wanted to stream data, and this thing wanted to slowly blink data across the screen, you know? It's like... Yeah, yeah, right. You know, it's too bad. I was thinking about that with, like, Google Glass and stuff, and really just even cell phones, you know? Like, no one ever... And I know there's good reason for it, but, like, no one will ever just give you access to the data bus. You know, like, wouldn't that be refreshing if you're just like, here's a 16-pin header, have at our 8-bit data bus. You know, like, you can just throw commands at it, and don't worry about it. But, you know, like, just... There's no good ways to... At least as far as I know, like, with phones, I still think there's no good way to stream data in or out of phones. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. No. I don't know anymore.

Chris Gammell: There was, like, the Yo-Yo. It was spelled I-O-I-O. And that connects to, like, Google phones and stuff, but...

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And that was, like... I think that was, like, an Arduino that talked over USB to hosts or something like that. But even that was, like, really low bandwidth.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I think it's pretty piss poor. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So I think it turns out that one of the fastest ways to... You know, like, and, like, this is not, like, a trivial problem either, because, like, look, we were talking about Kickstarter before. Like, look how many products on there are widget that talks to phone or tablet. You know? It's like... I know.

Dave Jones: It's every one of them. Right. Almost.

Chris Gammell: Right. So your only option there really is wireless. You know, as far as I know, like, I don't know any other ways to get data in or out.

Dave Jones: Well, there's Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and USB. They're your three option. Or not really... No, you can't really do the near-field communications. That's really not... That's slow.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's really slow.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's not going to cut the mustard. That's like the 300-board modem of the modern world. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, no, it actually gets even slower than that. I think there was...

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. It's not even that quick.

Chris Gammell: No, there's a slower technology even that... I forget what it was. It was like another quantified self device. It was kind of like a Fitbit that kind of clips to your belt and tracks your walking and stuff. But then you put it down on the screen. Oh, yes.

Dave Jones: Yeah, the Ant.

Chris Gammell: Was that what it was?

Dave Jones: Well, there's a couple of technologies that do that. The Ant is one of them. The Ant is like a protocol and a wireless RF... Like a ultra-low-power wireless RF protocol. And the bandwidth is incredibly low.

Chris Gammell: No, this one was... You put it on a screen. I think it actually modulated the capacitive touch field. I think that's how it did it. Oh. I can't remember it now. I'll try and find it. I'll try and put it in the show notes. But yeah, it was really weird. You know, like it was like the guy put it down on the screen and then it actually detected where it was on the screen. And I think because it was modulating the cap touch field. Oh, right. But that's another way in, right? I mean, like you could do that. You could do... You could try and... I guess you wouldn't be able... You could try and do a camera type thing where it like, you know, monitors colors or something.

Dave Jones: That reminds me of the computers way back. We're talking 70s, 80s. Light pens.

Chris Gammell: Yes. I was thinking about that at the library the other day. Do you remember that? Like, I remember the nice old lady at the library. Yeah, the light pen ones. She would scan across, you know, it's like such a fond memory of mine. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. Yes. Yes, me too.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. Because I thought, you know, as a kid, I thought, oh, that was stunning technology. Yeah. You know. How does it do it? And I guess it was back in the day, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, barcode wand readers, you know, that you would, you know, or light pens that you touch on the screen. Oh, yeah. Phenomenal. And all they did was, you know, they, you know, the timing for that particular, you know, thing on the screen, that particular icon on the screen, they just timed that through the light sensor. It's actually quite easy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's how a lot of the pens work, or a lot of the fab equipment works, you know, semiconductor fab, like the older stuff. They're all light pen based. Right. Like all the eight inch wafer equipment. Nice text based interface. Oh, yeah. Classic. Like, then it plays, if you ever sit inside a fab, you'll hear, is it the Entertainer? Is that the Joplin song? Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da Yeah. There's like all these alarms you can set on fab machines so that you hear the same song over and over every time the process finishes, and so you come to hate them. Like, Fur Elise is another one, you know, by Beethoven. Is it Beethoven? Right. I don't know. No, I don't know, but yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah, I know what you're talking about though. Oh, it's terrible.

Chris Gammell: There's only like six alarms total. Yeah. So, yeah. Worst. Worst thing ever.

Dave Jones: My kingdom for green sleeves. Yeah. Something different. Yeah. Oh, man.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: We're way over again. No, we're not, are we?

Chris Gammell: Oh, we're only ten minutes over. We can keep going. Come on, keep going.

Speaker ?: Keep going.

Dave Jones: Well, do we have more stuff to shovel out?

Chris Gammell: Sure. Did you see, did you see Bill Porter's site? Bill Porter, he was a former guest on the Engineering Commons when I was doing that, but he's been doing these updates about his wedding with his wife, who's similarly geeky. And they sealed their vows with soldering. It is spectacular. Oh, I read something about it. I didn't actually see it. Right. It's like, it's like so awkward and cute and like, it's.

Dave Jones: I saw somewhere, where was it? It was on TV. It was on like the six o'clock news. Some guy, it just reminded me of this. Some guy quit his job and he loved decorating cake. So he actually baked a cake and then decorated his resignation letter, actually wrote it in icing on the top of the cake and gave it to them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's awesome. That's only really good when you shove it in their face. Right. Oh, man. Oh, boy. We should do like a link breakdown. You know, like where we like rapid fire links.

Dave Jones: Do you want to have an audience next week so that they can actually buy a T-shirt? Or do you want to run scared shitless? We do have Workbench of the Week.

Chris Gammell: Oh, we do. Yeah, we should definitely talk about that real quick. So we had three people sent in. So after last week, we talked about in a similar manner of hurried desperation of trying to fit everything in at the end of the week. But so we had three people write in. First of whom was, who is this? Christopher. Or Chris, sorry. But yeah, he actually has, so he repairs amplifiers and stuff like that. And so he says, you know, we were kind of saying, I said, I don't trust people with clean benches.

Dave Jones: Yeah, clean benches, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think he was trying to, you know, say it's okay. So, but, you know, nice. He's got a nice bench here. It's got some.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I like it. A lot of. He's got some old school audio. Audio stuff. I see a graphic equalizer.

Chris Gammell: Yep, yep. Looks like some, maybe an oscillator up there on the upper left. But, oh, nice big volt meters.

Dave Jones: Yes, and a ancient, is that a Trio analog scope? I think it might be a Trio. I can't. No, it's a Tashi.

Chris Gammell: No, it says Tektronix, doesn't it? That's a TEC.

Dave Jones: No. Are we looking at the same workbench?

Chris Gammell: Maybe not.

Dave Jones: That's not a Tektronix scope.

Chris Gammell: It looks like it says TEC. I guess I see what I want to see.

Dave Jones: Goodness, man.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Are we talking about the one, the black bench with the notebook and the shiny amplifiers at the top? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah, a little CRT screen. No? Yeah, that little CRT oscilloscope in the bottom right.

Chris Gammell: Bottom right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, bottom left corner.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: That is not a.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, you're right. It looks like it could say Tektronix. I don't know. Companies go through. We go through logo changes. Companies can go through logo changes.

Dave Jones: I think it's in a Hitachi logo. I think it's an Hitachi logo.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it looks like old. It's old.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's an old 15 meg. Yeah. Yeah, it's V because the, yes, it's definitely a Hitachi because the Hitachi one started with V dash and it's a V dash something oscilloscope. I know my oscilloscopes, man.

Chris Gammell: Sure. Whatever.

Dave Jones: Bloody Tektronix, my ass.

Chris Gammell: I used to work for them. Jeez. I would know, Dave. I worked for them for like two months. Right. Right.

Dave Jones: Hang your head in shame, dude. You don't know a Tektronix scope.

Chris Gammell: I know the color. When I see the color, I know it, but.

Dave Jones: Exactly. No, it's not that.

Chris Gammell: What if like some crazy marketing person came in and changed stuff? I don't know.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Anyways, next bench.

Dave Jones: Limited edition, non-Tektronix color model.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Fail. So, Yi Yao, who's a regular commenter on the site, he also wrote in. And now, this is what I like to see. Not only is, we're seeing messy workbench with, looks like he didn't even bother painting his wall. He like drywalled himself into a room. Yeah, yeah. This is great. Which is awesome. Then he's also. Exactly. He started a company for machining stuff. So, he's actually giving me tips on machining because I've obviously had no idea what I'm doing. You suck at it, yeah. Yeah, I'm no good at it. And so, he's got a lot of the same equipment that I have. So, he's got a machine shop and everything else. Nice and messy. I like that.

Dave Jones: I like it too. I love the unpainted walls. Just the plastered, you know, gyprock, just plastered. Yeah. Gyprock.

Chris Gammell: Gyprock, like sheetrock or, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, you guys don't call it gyprock, do you? No. You call it like drywalling or something.

Chris Gammell: I like that though. It's like gypsum based sheetrock, right?

Dave Jones: Right, yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Here in Australia, it's called gyprock. That's a brand name. It's like saying Xerox, you know.

Chris Gammell: Oh, is it? Okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. I believe so anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And he's got a Heiko FX 888 there. And he's got a little cheap $50 hot air gun and an analog scope. He looks like a Rigol and a big logic analyzer. Oh, yeah. Big ass old school HP by the looks of it.

Chris Gammell: Logic analyzer. Yes, I see the little blue logo. I concur. I concur with the HP assessment, Dave. Right. You're lucky this time.

Dave Jones: I wasn't even looking at the logo. I was just looking at the general shape and it's just the vibe of it to my Australian audience. Yep.

Chris Gammell: And then one last one. From, who's this one from? Jan.

Dave Jones: Real work happens there, you know.

Chris Gammell: Where?

Dave Jones: Sorry. I don't trust these other guys. Oh, clean. Look, nothing goes, nothing goes, nothing's going on here. Look, it's a side wave on the oscilloscope there, but there's no hardware. Where's the hardware?

Chris Gammell: Where's the smattering of boards? There's no pigtails.

Dave Jones: Where's the solder splashes?

Chris Gammell: Exactly.

Dave Jones: In fact, where's the solder and iron?

Chris Gammell: Where are the burn marks?

Dave Jones: Sorry. No, I don't wish to belittle your lab there. It's fine. See, but this could be secondary bench, too.

Chris Gammell: That's the other thing. Some people do that where they have the clean. It could be secondary.

Dave Jones: Hey, this is better than my home bench. Right, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. It's my, you know.

Chris Gammell: I think people need to start sending in higher res pictures, though, because I have no idea what these scopes are. I don't even know what that thing on top is. Looks like it might be a ham radio.

Dave Jones: The thing on top is one of those multifunction three-in-one things. So it's like a frequency counter. Oh. It's a function generator. It's a power supply all-in-one. Yeah. You can buy them now for under a grand. I think it's a recent model one. Huh. You can, yeah. Okay. One of those three- or four-in-one lab. It's a lab-in-one kind of thing. I've never used one of those. Perfect for this application at home. Yeah. You don't need, you only need one power cord, and you've got yourself a power supply, a function generator, a multimeter, a frequency counter, you know. Yeah. Boom. It's all in one. And that is a Philips oscilloscope, if I'm not mistaken.

Chris Gammell: Maybe I shouldn't do any videos of the swap meet at the Hamvention.

Dave Jones: Right. I'll be like, and here's another screen. Here's this lovely vintage Tektronix one, and it's actually a Hung Chang, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Here's a, I think this is a radio. Chris, that's a car.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It might be bad.

Dave Jones: I do know my, I do know my Teske. Yes. I do like that. I could, I stand to be corrected, but I think that's a Philips. That has the classic Philips vertical lines through the, through the vertical sections and the horizontal section next to it, and it's just got that classic, yes, look to it. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Well, the battle rages on, I think, I'm still on the, I think we're, I think we both agree on this though, with the dirty bench is the, is the, is the, is the, is the dirty bench is the way to go. So we still haven't seen a dirty S bench. So if people want to submit that, you don't need to have a super, super high res photo if it's, it's really messy, but.

Speaker ?: I know.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. I guess you do.

Dave Jones: I want to be able to see each solder splash, man.

Chris Gammell: Come on. That's a good point. You really got to get in there.

Dave Jones: So we want fast shutter speed folks. Yeah. None of this blurry rubbish. Good lighting. Fast shutter speed. Good, good, good lighting. Fast shutter speed. Yep. Although most of your best labs are, you know, in. Dank. Almost sheer darkness. Oh yeah. Dank darkness.

Chris Gammell: One little, one little lamp with like a 40 watt bulb in it.

Dave Jones: That's actually flickering. Yeah, exactly. Above your head. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Don't worry. You get an LED that you rigged up yourself to try and get extra light for when you're soldering. But yeah, you don't turn that on all the time because.

Dave Jones: No, no. That's right. Because you don't want to piss away at the pair. Yeah. Yeah. Engineers love working in adversity, don't they? I think they thrive on it.

Chris Gammell: I think it's just habit for me, man. I just, I can't keep a clean bench. I got too much stuff going on. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Whatever. Hmm. All right. Well, I guess we can go now. I guess.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: But people should remember that you can, for one week only, the campaign will end April 29th and then the price goes up. You can buy a black.

Dave Jones: Grab your cool Amp Hour t-shirt.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: It's got a great retro look to it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Hopefully people like it. If not, well, we have more designs in the pipeline.

Dave Jones: If you don't like it, buy it anyway and it could be a collector's item. I don't know. Sell it or resell it on eBay. Right.

Chris Gammell: Like Beanie Babies. Right. Collector's Edition. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm not going to make any promises about last week. Next week, because I've obviously made them the past three weeks. So next week, we'll have a show.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: You think?

Dave Jones: We better. All right. I'll try Beanie.

Chris Gammell: All right. Until then, buy your t-shirts. Yes. See ya. See ya. This episode of The Amp Hour was brought to you by Triad Semiconductor. If you need maximum flexibility in both the analog and digital realm, check out the Via ASIC and associated Via Designer software. Visit viadesigner.com slash theamphour and enter AMP100 at registration for a free year subscription, a $500 value. x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x