#15 – Analog Components, First Person Flying and Idea Ownership

Dave Jones: Welcome to The Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog. And I'm Chris Gammell from Chris Gammell's Analog Life. How are you doing, Chris? Pretty good, Dave. I'm glad I made it here. I had some technical difficulties at the beginning.

Chris Gammell: Technical difficulties, yes. Like Google Torque not working and flat batteries in your recorder and all sorts of stuff.

Dave Jones: You know, you can do everything in the world. Not like I do everything in the world, but you can do any kind of technology in the world. And sometimes it's the stuff you think of every day that really trips you up, you know? Like battery power. Like battery power, right.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: What have we got on the cards for today? I think we mentioned, didn't we mention last week that we'd try and do an episode without politics or open source? Oh yeah, I think we did. I think we're going to completely shatter that today, aren't we?

Dave Jones: Yeah, let's throw that out the window.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's not much electronics here, guys. It doesn't look like. Oh, maybe one or two. You know, there's some stuff, but this is all about entertainment, not education. Who wants to hear about electronics on an electronics show? These needy people, I don't know.

Dave Jones: I know, right? What are you guys coming here for, really? No, there's some good stuff. There's some follow-ups from last time and stuff, so... All right, well, let's do that. The follow-ups first, okay. Yeah, so last time... Well, shout-outs. Oh, shout-outs first, of course, of course.

Chris Gammell: Shout-outs. We typically do shout-outs first. Here on the ever-professional Amp Hour radio show. That's right, yeah. We'll get our act together one day.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Maybe even get a theme someday. I keep saying I'm going to get a theme.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, that's right. Whatever happened to that? Oh, well, it doesn't matter.

Dave Jones: My musical side has just drifted away from me, but... Right. Anyway, well, one of the shout-outs I had on here was the Hackerspace video. Have you seen that at all? It's a documentary about Hackerspaces so far.

Chris Gammell: Yes, I did. It's called Remade. Yes. It's called Remade, the rebirth of the maker movement, and it's on that website that you can pitch in money for. Yeah, Kickstarter. What's that called again?

Dave Jones: Kickstarter.

Chris Gammell: Kickstarter, that's the one.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And, yeah, and it looks really good. I just had a look at that, and they've currently got about $7,500. Their goal is to get $10,000 to do this documentary.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And I think it looks fantastic.

Dave Jones: Yeah, and so they need another $2,500 or so, and I think they have a little less than two weeks left to fund it. So, you know, if you have some cash sitting around and you want to see a cool video get made, throw in. And as we've talked about on here before with Kickstarter, if you contribute, you usually get some kind of gift, basically, for giving.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's right. Well, for this one, if you pledge more than $10, you get a shiny 11 by 17 poster. And if you pledge $25 or more, you get the finished DVD, $55. You get a DVD and a T-shirt. And, wow. And $100, you get, I don't know, a free date with the producers. I have no idea. But we'll pledge $2,000 or more. We'll give you executive producer credit. There you go. If you've ever wanted to be an executive producer, well, you can buy it for $2,000 and you get a dinner.

Dave Jones: I always wondered how they got that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and a private screening. Wow. And hang out with us in Chicago.

Dave Jones: Plus, you probably get extra credit for basically bringing them right to their funding goal right now.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Yeah, just in one fell swoop. That's right. Yeah. So, no, it's good. It's good. I think there was another, wasn't there another maker type documentary? I'm trying to think of it. Oh, I'll have to try and dig it up. I think there's been another doco. It doesn't look as polished as this one, but I think there was, yeah, some documentary on some aspect of the hacker maker movement about six months ago or something. All right.

Dave Jones: Well, I mean, how's that? I'll try and dig that one up. How's that documentary going about Australian electronics?

Chris Gammell: Ah, that's going fantastically. Carl, who's the editor and the producer and filmmaker and everything on that. It's his personal project on the Australian electronics industry, if you haven't heard about it. There's a trailer up on my blog, an awesome trailer, but he's still interviewing people. Oh, and Hill of the old Microbee fame. You probably wouldn't know about the Microbee computer because it's an Australian design computer. And, yeah, he's been interviewing him and a couple of other more big names. So, it's probably still a month or so away from completion. But, yeah, it really looks awesome. Yeah. He's got so much material. I believe he's got a two-hour cut already done. Wow. So, yeah, but he wants to get that down to a smaller version. But he'll also release the two-hour cut. And, I don't know, he could release like a five-DVD box set or something with all the complete interviews. Because he's got so much material, I think, he doesn't know what to do with.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So, that would be a tough job, editing. I've edited like an hour and a half, two-hour videos, not for the blog, but for other stuff. And it takes months. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It doesn't look like... I've only done that once, I think. And I never touched it again.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's not a pleasant experience editing thousands of clips together and trying to get a... Right. Let alone trying to get a professional level. You know, it's hard enough for me to edit my wedding video. You know, let alone a full-on documentary that he ultimately wants to get on TV and get, you know... Oh, really? Is that the eventual goal? Oh, yeah, yeah. That's the eventual goal is to get it on Australian TV or international TV. Absolutely.

Dave Jones: That's awesome. Yeah. Seems very PBS-y. Do you guys have like a PBS there?

Chris Gammell: We have... Well, we have the ABC, which is our government sort of channel, which shows...

Chris Gammell: ...which funds and shows, things like that. Yeah, that's similar.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'm sure we can... And we've got a local channel here in Sydney. I've never watched it. TVS or something. And apparently, they just show all locally produced stuff. So, I don't know.

Dave Jones: You should get the EEV blog on there. What do you think?

Chris Gammell: Possibly, yes. I don't think... I'm not sure if I'm up to their standards or not, but I think they do have standards. Oh.

Dave Jones: Darn it.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Gosh darn it. Whereas YouTube, YouTube has no standards. That's right.

Dave Jones: No standards and no civility. No holds barred. That's it. What about the... So, the videos that we were talking about last time, the Apex video, you posted that.

Chris Gammell: Yes, the Apex video. I got some great feedback from that. Everyone's going ape over Apex Electronics.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I saw the native fruit today.

Chris Gammell: Aladdin's cave of surplus stuff. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it reminded me...

Chris Gammell: The biggest... Sorry, go on.

Dave Jones: Oh, I was just going to say, it reminded me of something out of Star Wars or something like that. You know, where like... Hmm. Anakin was putting together like a robot or something like that. You know, like real nerdy stuff. And it's awesome. It was... Yeah. It was like you're going into like some... Do you know there's a show about that now? People that hoard stuff.

Chris Gammell: Oh, is there? Right. Yeah. Well, there's a show for everything on US television, isn't there? Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But that's what it looked like basically. You know, like hoarders will stack magazines. That's what it is. They'll stack it to the ceiling and it was awesome.

Chris Gammell: The biggest question I got was how do they manage their inventory? Yeah. And well, I wish I had asked that, but I don't think they do. I just think they buy everything by the pound and most likely sell it by the pound. So, I don't know. I'll have those five oscilloscopes. Well, how much do they weigh, son?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, and that's probably the only way they can do it for tax purposes because otherwise if you have that inventory sitting there, you have to pay for it. You have to pay taxes on it every year or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's right. I think we've got a similar thing here in Australia where you've got to itemize everything at the end of the year. Yeah. All of your stock and there's no way in hell they can do that.

Dave Jones: See, now, if I was a LA accounting firm, I would play a joke on an intern and tell them to go down there and inventory everything. We need you to just go down to Apex and, yep, just let us know when you're done and you might want to pack a lunch. That would be awesome. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yes. It's the old left-handed screwdriver joke. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Send the apprentice away to get the left-handed screwdriver.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's mean.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's funny, though. Yeah. It's hilarious, yeah. I love that. Everyone gets caught out with that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I love that video. It was a great video, though. I thought it was really good.

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, uh... Awesome. What else we got here? We got... More shout-outs? Tons of stuff. Shout-outs? Shout-outs are done, I think.

Chris Gammell: Oh, shout-outs are done. Okay. Yeah. On to the next. What have we got? We've got that first-person tricopter thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh. Did you get to watch that? Yes, I did. It's on the drones website, the Do-It-Yourself drones, and this guy has developed this... Well, it's a tricopter with a camera on it, and he sits there controlling it with one of those, you know, 3D... Not 3D, but one of those camera glasses on, and he basically controls it through the camera. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, awesome. That was actually from a... I probably, like... I've had this on our list for, like, a couple weeks now, but it looks amazing, like, just to look at it, because, you know, it looks like you're actually flying. I mean, the video cuts in and out, like, he actually records the stream, and then put that up on YouTube, so that's a really cool part. But... Yeah. Man, it, like... I think he was a student from Germany, I think it said, and... Yeah. Just unreal the stuff they're doing over there, so... Kudos to him.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's... Yeah, I don't think there's anything new there. I think people who've been doing these remote-controlled planes have been putting cameras on them and doing the first-person perspective thing for a long time, but it's... I just get a kick out of it every time I see it. I think it's the first time it's on a tricopter, though, so... I don't know, something like that. Yeah, that might have been it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I thought... I didn't think the first-person stuff was... Was it, because... Or at least not with the heads-up display. I thought it was... That was the new thing, but maybe not.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right. No, I think I've heard of people doing that on their light plane or whatever, you know, their remote-controlled fighter jet or something.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: They... Yeah.

Dave Jones: I just... You know, I want one really bad, but I don't... I know.

Chris Gammell: It's just awesome, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, it's not rocket science. It's a tricopter with a camera on it and a transmitter.

Speaker ?: You know?

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah. But it's great. Yeah. It's just brilliant. It just brings a new... A new... A totally different perspective to the whole thing. So, you know, rather than watch your plane, you're actually flying it. I know. Or your helicopter. Oh, I know. It's true.

Dave Jones: Very cool. I wanted one this weekend. I was at the rally... The Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert... That's right. ...Rally to Restore Sanity. And so I was sitting in a crowd of probably like 200,000 people or something like that. Oh. And, you know, I could see. I felt bad for my girlfriend. She couldn't see because she's shorter than me. And I really wanted to be able to just, like, you know, like fly one of those things up there and see the crowd. Yeah. That would have been awesome to, like, see the crowd and, like... You know, you could have even zoomed up closer and stuff. Like, that kind of thing I think of as a...

Chris Gammell: That would have been great. Why didn't someone think to do that? Get a little...

Dave Jones: I think you'd probably get in trouble in Washington, D.C. You'd probably get in trouble. Yeah. Exactly. But, yeah. It was really cool. And actually, the guys from Mythbusters were there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Mythbusters. Actually, there's some news about them. I just read yesterday that apparently they've got such clout now that Obama is going to be on their show.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I did see that.

Chris Gammell: Oh. Unbelievable. That's crazy, right? How much cred do these guys have? I know. I'm sure he doesn't know who they are, but some staff... Yeah, yeah. You know, because Obama's promoting some science thing, isn't he, in the U.S.? Yeah. Some get back to science and we'll save the country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. All that kind of stuff. Would have been nice a couple of years ago. Which is great. Yeah, that's good. Which is true, you know? Yeah. So...

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's to promote STEM programs. I think it's... STEM? They have a website... Oh, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Oh, right. So anytime you hear STEM, that's usually what that refers to in education. Right. And they have... It's called Restore the Equation or something like that. Okay. Something like that. Change the Equation, that's it. Yeah. Change the Equation.org. That's their site that tries to promote all that kind of educational stuff. So if you're into education... Mm-hmm. I mean, it actually kind of fits real nice in with the, you know, the make stuff. That stuff's real good. You know, like... So that's their... That's where they kind of launch from, and that's probably why he's doing the show. Right. But it was really cool at the rally, they... So Jamie and Adam were up there, and they did two experiments. One was the wave, and they timed it. So going from the front of the crowd all the way to the back.

Chris Gammell: Oh, awesome.

Dave Jones: And then the other one was really cool. They had a seismologist there, and they had everybody jump at the same time. Oh. And they measured it. Brilliant. It was really cool. That was... That's great. That was a really fun part. And they said the second jump... They actually... And a lot of these videos are on Comedy Central. I'm not sure if they're available worldwide, but some of them are available on ComedyCentral.com, and I'll try and link them in. But they said the second one had the impact... A hundred times the impact of a car hitting a brick wall at 60 miles an hour. So whatever that means, you know?

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, it's one of those silly, you know, translations... Arbitrary. Yeah, things that they do in the newspapers all the time to try and make the common folk understand, you know... It's like 7,000 seagulls flapping their wings at once. That's right. It's the size of 10 football stadiums full of water, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Crazy. But that's awesome, Mythbusters. Yeah, it was really cool that they were there. So I had a good time there.

Chris Gammell: I miss the Mythbusters, because if I went to the DevCon event two years ago, which is the event I just went to, they actually had the Mythbusters there. I don't know how much they would have paid to get the Mythbusters to attend their DevCon event, but geez, that would have been awesome.

Dave Jones: I think those guys make some bank now, just showing up and doing speaking tours.

Speaker ?: Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Just showing up, and that's probably where they make most of their money, I think, now. Yeah. It's probably appearances. Maybe that'll be Dave Jones someday.

Dave Jones: Who knows? Who knows?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Who knows? That'd be great. Yes. I am for hire. I can appear at your event. Yeah, that's right.

Dave Jones: Birthday parties, bar mitzvahs. Bar mitzvahs, that's it. They're all good. Weddings. They're all good. So I wanted to talk about a follow-up from last time. You and I talked about it, and then also Jeff and I talked about it the week before that with the make-your-own-chip thing, and we talked about Jerry Ellsworth and everything. And so one of our listeners, I think it's Jan, they mentioned that there's a software that can interface to the chip fab we were talking about. So MOSIS is the chip fab, so Metal Oxide Silicon Integration Systems or whatever their acronym is. But then there's a piece of software called Electric, and that is actually like an it's like a CAD program for people that want to make chips. So you, and even with like a schematic entry and then a layout, except the layouts of silicon, and there's a simulator built in, and it's all free, which is the other amazing thing.

Chris Gammell: It's all open source. Yeah, I've seen it. Yeah. And it can do really groovy stuff, like give you a 3D pictorial, like a 3D diagram of how your die is going to look like, like the different layers on the die. Right. It's just very cool. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how much work's gone into that, but a hell of a lot.

Dave Jones: I know. And it's all, yeah, well, they're on version 8, so it's, I mean, that doesn't mean too much, but that's something. No, but, well, yeah. I mean, they could have jumped from 1 to 8, but whatever.

Chris Gammell: Well, they could have, yeah, for marketing purposes, that's right.

Dave Jones: Right. But they're not selling it, so who cares, right? And, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, so, and actually another thing that Fluxer, from flyingflux.com, or dot blogspot, rather, he actually did a cost analysis on the chips, too, because they were saying that, like, you know, to get a wafer, it's about $7,500 right now. Right. But if you're bundled together with other people, you could start getting that down a lot more. So, we're kind of entering.

Chris Gammell: Right, but, yeah, but that's like the batch PCB thing where you've got to, you know, you've got to share the panel with everyone else to get, to lower the cost. And that's okay if you happen to be using the same process as everyone else. Or is this Moses thing just one process and that's it? I don't know.

Dave Jones: See, that's the thing. It would have to be the same process, at least, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Because that's why I don't use this batch PCB thing, because I almost never want to do just a PCB, just a regular 1.6mm FR4 green, white solder mask, PCB, two layers. I always want something obscure. I want red solder mask, I want a weird, you know, or I want a different layer stack or I want something else. And, you know, it just doesn't fit into those services often. Or I'm doing a front panel and it needs to be, you know, it's a PCB that's a front panel as well. And so it needs, you know, special requirements. And I can't get on those batch PCB things.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, yeah, but any time you do anything special, you've got to pay for it, basically. So, that's kind of the problem. And it'd be the same thing for any kind of bundled service like that, you know. Like when you buy t-shirts.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'm sure that's good for like, you know, students. You know, there's a whole class of students. And so they each only have to pay, you know, 100 bucks or something or 200 bucks to get their chip made. So, yeah, if they all pitch in.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And so, well, there's another, and another listener, Chris Atkins. He also mentioned one of his former professors actually has a website that has like tutorials and other links for that software too. So, if people out there listening are interested, there are resources available. So, you could learn how to do chip layout on your own in theory. I mean, you wouldn't have anyone advising you. And I don't know how many people use this, but it's, you know, it's pretty cool to start with.

Chris Gammell: And yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome that the capability is there. But once again, I think, you know, you're really, I wouldn't rush out and learn it, kiddies, because it's a very specialized niche thing, really doing your own chip. So, you know, if it interests you, great. Yeah, go for it. It's there. But, you know, how often is the regular Joe going to want to do their own chip? Well, you know, there's a chip learning curve there, I'm sure. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I mean, chip making is big money though. I mean, if, you know, I talk about analog, you know, analog stuff, especially, you know, people that are doing analog chip design, they're making some bank. So, and also, they're hard to find too. So, you know, like, if people are listening and are interested, like legitimately interested and want to take the time, it could pay off eventually. I'm not saying there's any guarantees of that.

Chris Gammell: If you want to do it as a career, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Go and make a chip and then take it to the interview. Look, I designed and built this, you know, this chip, this silicon. How awesome would that be? You're hired, son. That would be really awesome.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly, right? Yeah. Yeah, they'd hire you in a spot. And that's the thing. You'll get recruiters chasing you for the rest of your life too. That's the other thing. Yep. Very cool. Awesome. So, what about Element 14? There's a couple of things at Element 14, aren't there?

Chris Gammell: There's, well, their website. The Newark website went down the other day. Yeah. If you didn't hear about that. No, I didn't. It was all over the forums and all sorts of places. Yeah. Everyone was mentioning that, yeah, it shat itself in the domain. Everyone was going, have they gone under? And, yeah. No, apparently they were just, yeah, they're switching over the domain for the new Element 14 branding or something. And I think something went horribly wrong. Some geek pushed the wrong button and the website went down for a day.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Or something like that. Newark. Because they've got to merge Farnell's, Newark, and, you know, everything into this Element 14 brand. So, yeah. Don't envy them. It's all going tits up. Yep. Anyway, I've got to, I'll mention this. Yeah. If you've been watching my tweets, Farnell slash Element 14 screwed me over again. They just refused to send my parts yesterday. They called me up and said, we're not going to send your parts because your company hasn't paid your account. And for this month. And it was like, I don't know, it was $20 or something ridiculous like that. And, but I paid by credit card. So, I effectively paid them cash, yet they still wouldn't send my parts. But apparently after I tweeted it and everyone went apeshit there, they have relented and I believe I'll have my parts this morning.

Chris Gammell: Oh, good. There you go. But this is the second time they've done it. And they said it's a quirk in their system they've got. And they had fixed it last time. And it would never happen again. Yeah, right. My ass. Yeah. Bloody. Exactly the same thing. Anyway. Yeah. Dear kids. Yep. There we go. That's my slander for today. Oh, yeah. And the thing we wanted to actually talk about is Element 14, we'll put up the link.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: They are, they will effectively sponsor somebody to go and, to go to a conference and be a roving reporter at a conference.

Dave Jones: See, and I thought that was many different conferences. I think they're doing.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's more than one. Yeah. I think they're looking for more than one person or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And they will pay your airfare accommodation and they'll give you a little flip video camcorder ! Yep. to go to a conference. And, well, yeah, okay, great, but what are they going to get out of it?

Dave Jones: Dave's shaking in his boots.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'm really shaking in my boots. Somebody's got a flip camcorder and is going to a conference, you know. They're just, once again, it's a cheap way for them to get content. Yep. Because if you hired a professional blogger like ourselves, you know, it's going to cost more than just the airfare and the accommodation. So, yeah, they're just looking for, you know, a cheap way to get content as they always have been. As we've mentioned before, they've been approaching everyone with a blog, every man and his dog with a blog. They're trying to, oh, come and write for us. We've got an audience of 30,000, 30,000 members on our Element 14. Yeah, bullshit you do. It's more like 300. The Jones law. Yes, yes. Jones is diminishing blog law. That's right. Anyway, it's good. It's a good step forward. Hey, if you want to become a roving reporter, go and sign up. So, it's not all bad.

Dave Jones: No, I think it's actually pretty good for the, you know, for people that are starting out and have like a fresh perspective on things and maybe don't get to go to, like, you know, if you don't get to go to conferences usually too, that's another great thing. The question will be is if they'll send someone from Australia, New Zealand, China to something in the US or, you know, vice versa. You know what I mean? That would be impressive because if they're paying that much for flights, that's, I mean, that makes it worth it right there. Yeah, that's a good chunk of money.

Chris Gammell: Well, the interesting thing is if you were following my tweets and other things, I tried to get, I asked Element 14 if they would send me, Farnell's, if they would send me to the Electronica show in Germany, which is on in like a week or something like that.

Dave Jones: Right, right, right.

Chris Gammell: And they said, oh, we would have loved to, but we don't have the budget. So, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You've got to wonder how much budget they actually have. I'm sure they'll fly. I'm sure they'll choose the nearest person to the trade show. Right. That's pretty smart on their part, I've got to say. Well, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't think they'd send someone from Australia to Germany or something like that. So, that's a bit, that's a bit much.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's too bad we're investing in that. I mean, that seems like a huge, the Electronica conference, that looks like that's going to be monstrous.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's massive. And it's only on every two years, which is a bit of a bummer. So, I've got to wait two years to go back to it. But I'm sure I'll be there in two years' time. Yeah. Hopefully. Hopefully we'll do. Yeah. That'd be great. Yeah, that's no problem. Well, they actually said to me, we could have sent you, but it's too late. We ran out of budget. Oh, oh. Gotcha. It was something like that. So, yeah. If I asked earlier, apparently, I could have gone. But I'm sure I can get somebody to fund my trip to Electronica in two years' time.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Highest bidder.

Chris Gammell: Yep. And I'll be going to the ESC conference, if people don't know. I'll be going to ESC, which is the huge embedded systems conference. It's pretty much the biggest one in the world, I think. Yeah. In San Jose slash Silicon Valley next, I think it's April or something like that. I think it's May, actually. May, May, is it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm teed up to go to that already. So, that should be good. Okay.

Dave Jones: Well, how about the last conference you were at, you took that thing apart. That's right.

Chris Gammell: That's right. If you've seen the blog, I took this little, it's called a Poken. And it's an electronic business card kind of USB stick. It's got a little like an RFID kind of tag in it. And instead of exchanging business cards, you're supposed to exchange, you're supposed to put these little tokens next to each other. And they exchange contact info. Which is really cool, I think. I mean, it's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I still prefer the old-fashioned business card.

Dave Jones: Well, here's the question. Did you use it a lot? I mean, that's the real question is if it got used.

Chris Gammell: Well, I did. Everyone was using it because it was cool. Like, you put it together, it lights up and it glows green. And hey, you know. And then I stuck it into the computer. You sign up to the website. And you can download the contact info. But I don't know. It's pretty, it's just pretty sterile and not really. It's fun to use as when you actually, you know, you exchange contact details. But not afterwards when you want to suck down the data. It's just, I don't know. It's too clinical and sterile.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't like it. The interesting thing about that is if it, you know, like when you get a business card, if you get someone's business card and it looks different or you know they work somewhere and you see it on there, then like, you know, it's like a question of if your brain will actually be able to associate it anymore. So, if you're just talking to me, right, and we touch pokens together, that sounds horrible. And we poke each other. Yeah. We poke each other. And then, you know, like two weeks later, I'm like, oh, I forgot to get details. And then I try and remember who the hell you were. You know, it's like, well, that could be the downside of it all. You know, like the technology is cool, but there's always a human aspect to it too. You know, like you need to remember people.

Chris Gammell: Very true. One cool aspect to it was that you did, it does actually give you a timeline. So, it tells you when you met certain people. So, it's go, oh, I met that person first. And it shows you on a timeline that pops up with their photo. And, you know, if the person's entered their photo in, it'll pop up with a photo. And, yeah, and it shows you when you met them and can give you a timeline type thing. But, I don't know. Yeah, I much prefer a bit of cardboard. Call me old-fashioned. Anyway, what I wanted to talk about, yeah, this poke, and I actually took it apart on the blog. And, of course, we're at a Renesys conference, okay, and Renesys number one microcontroller manufacturer in the world. And I opened it up to have a look what was inside it. And I had a look at the part number. It was some weird part number, and I didn't know it at the time. And apparently, it's a custom part number. But it turns out it's not a Renesys part. It's a microchip part. So, oops. So, everyone, the ironic thing is everyone at the Renesys conference there to promote their parts had hanging around their neck a microchip microcontroller, and they didn't even know it.

Dave Jones: And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that damn Dave Jones.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Oh, aren't I a bastard? Anyway. I thought that was hilarious. Yeah. So, there you go. Because, yeah, the thing is, if you get, you know, if you want 10,000 chips made, almost any of the manufacturers will custom print a number on there for you. Oh, I didn't know that. So, you don't have to have, like, yeah, you don't have to have, like, pick, you know, 16F84 on there. They will custom silkscreen. I think it's even free if you order over X amount. They'll custom silkscreen print. Yeah. The, you know, any part number you want on there, your company logo, all that sort of stuff. So, it can look like a totally custom chip, or it's a small fee or something. I don't know. But, yeah, it's certainly within the bounds of even the smallish companies and the individual to get a custom printed chip. Huh. That's pretty cool. So, that, yeah, that helps from the reverse engineering aspect, too. You know, if somebody opens your design and they're trying to look to reverse engineer it. Right. You know, if they say, oh, it's a pick, you know, 16F series chip or something like that, then, you know, they've got a good starting point. Right. If it's just got, you know, Dave's chip on it, that's it.

Dave Jones: It just says, go away, don't look at this. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Or it's just completely blank. I'm sure you can order it blank as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true. So, you don't have to shave the number off because a lot of people will, you know, shave the number off the parts. That's a way to protect their design. Right, right. Stuff like that. So, you can order them like that. And I believe almost every manufacturer will do that for you. So, some are a bit better than others in terms of cost and numbers of chips. But there you go. That's a little bit of electronics there.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's interesting, too, because, you know, people, it's just kind of, it's like a lock on your front door, right? I mean, like, if someone wants to steal it, they're going to steal it, right? I mean, like, eventually, they're going to get a way in. You know, same with encoded streams from, like, you know, a bit pattern that's programming your chip or anything. Yeah. Anything like that.

Chris Gammell: Copy protected DVDs and all that sort of, you know, somebody's going to get around it eventually. Right. And there's actually a... It's just a matter of time and effort.

Dave Jones: A really big push for that stuff right now. I mean, like, with the, have you seen that thermal image, or there's a thermal, I didn't have a link for it or anything, but there's, like, a thermal signature where it matches inside the chip or something like that. Have you seen that?

Chris Gammell: Oh, really? I think I've heard something about that. Yeah. And, yeah, they can thermally map, yeah, the actual dye inside.

Dave Jones: Right. And, yeah, I mean, they're just trying to, you know, like, and they try and also, like, the chip manufacturers are trying to use, like, not inefficiencies, but impurities in the silicon even to just kind of, like, prove out that a chip is that chip. And then when you program, it has to match the chip that it's actually going on to and everything. So it gets really crazy. I mean, like, but at the end, at the end of the day, you know, security is only as good as, you know, as the people trying to hack it, right? So if someone's trying to hack it and they spend enough time on it, they're going to figure it out eventually.

Chris Gammell: They're going to figure it out. So, yeah, there's not much you can do. But you can slow them down. That's the main thing. Right. Or you can only stop the persistent. I mean, quite frankly, if I'm trying to protect a design, I don't know why I would, but if I did and somebody goes to all the effort to hack it, then, well, I think they actually deserve to have it because they went to so much effort. Yeah. You know, it's crazy.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we talk about open stuff a lot here, too, but that's almost one of the better protections. You know, like, it depends on what your goal is. You know, if you're an Apple and you're trying to sell an entire device, then, yeah, maybe you want to stop Samsung from replicating your exact device. But at the end, you know, there's a lot of smart people working on that stuff. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, when it gets to that level, you know, if it's Apple against Samsung or something like that, they're not going to blatantly copy each other's stuff because, you know, they're just going to sue themselves out of existence. So, you know, it's a bit at the smaller scale, you know, where somebody in China is copying your, you know, your design or something like that. It's a bit different. But, yeah. Yeah. Speaking of open source, we've had a suggestion on here. I think it come from the forum or the, no, it came from The Amp Hour Suggestions box, didn't it? Yeah. Somebody wanted to know about open source and the Instructables website. Right. If you haven't been to it. What is it? Instructables.com. That's right. Or something. Yep. And this site apparently has all this open source projects. You can go there. It's a place to publish, I'm using the quote marks again, your design. Right. On their website. And apparently, you know, millions of people see it. Right. Yada yada. Which is great. But somebody complained that it's not truly open because you have to sign up and pay to be a member of the site or something in order to get a lot of the information. Yeah. And I just checked it out real quick. And I can put up a link to a, there's an open source microchip led PWM driver project. And I tried to download the source code for that. I mean, it's supposed to be open, but I couldn't do it. It said, what's your membership number?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: You know, that's just evil.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It really is. It's kind of weird that they, you know, they accept stuff and then they don't really kind of give it back. I mean, I'm guessing it is a business, but, and it's, there are some cool projects on there. I just, I don't quite understand the, the fine. I mean, maybe they just got to the point where they're like, no, we have to make money. And that's the way they wanted to do it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, I think they're trying to force everyone to sign up because I think, I'm not a member of the site, but I think to download, like I'm actually clicking, like there's a zip file here. It says zip file. Here's the source code. And I click on it and it goes, no, what's your username and password? Oh, okay. And so I don't think you actually have to pay to get it. But you do have to sign up and be a member of the site. So that's how they get a, you know, a user base and your contact details. And they probably flog that off to somebody else. And well, they can claim 10,000 members.

Dave Jones: Well, the person who wrote it though, they said that it's, that there's a, there is a paid membership side of it too.

Chris Gammell: There is apparently. Yeah. I haven't fully looked into it. So yeah, I, I can't. Yeah. Yeah. But they do value add. Like there's actually a full on PDF that you can download, but I think that might be for paid. Ah, yes. That's right. You've got to be a pro member. So it looks like if you want to download the full PDFs and that's their value adding things. So taking your open source project, putting it into a nice, you know, PDF or something like that, but you've got to pay to get that. And it looks like even to get the source code, you've got to be a member. So yeah. I mean, it comes down to instructables.

Dave Jones: I mean, it kind of comes to a question of like, when do you really want to pay for something, you know? Or I mean, I think that the listener is actually asking if that should ever be paid because it started as open source projects in the beginning. But, you know, at a certain point, you know, if there is really some kind of value there, you know, there is reasons to pay for that kind of stuff. You know what I mean? Because a lot of people can't insist on just donations and such like that. But I mean...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I totally agree. They're value added there. But to not give you the source code without signing up to the site, I think that's gone too far. Even though you don't have to pay for it, I think that's, you know, somebody's gone to the effort to submit their open source project to this site. They're giving it to the world. And this instructables company is saying, no, you can't have that unless you sign up to us. You know? I think that's wrong.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Anyway. Thumbs down, I reckon. That's too bad. Not happy.

Dave Jones: They lost Dave's endorsement. Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: What else have we got?

Dave Jones: So I wanted to talk to you. So Dave and I... So a little backstory on this. Dave and I were talking last night about, you know, when do you really... Speaking of money and time and all that other stuff, you know, when do you really decide to pay someone? And Dave is very against it. Very against it. Never wants to pay anybody. But I think that's kind of an interesting question just on... Not just on electronics, but on a lot of stuff. You know, like when do you actually pay someone to do something, right? When do you pay for the service?

Chris Gammell: Well, okay. Well, the thing is, you thought I was being a bit stubborn, right? Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, because we were talking... Last night, we were talking about... I think it started about, oh, if I did the blog full-time or something like that. And I was talking about how busy I was and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, you mentioned that, oh, maybe I should, you know, pay someone to do some of the administrative tasks or something like that. And, you know, it's... Well, that's a fair call. But it's one of those things where, well, it's my blog, you know, and it's my baby. And I don't want to pay somebody to do something that I enjoy doing. You know, it's a very personal type thing. Like all the administrative tasks. Yes, if there were... If I had a business where I was, you know, just sending out invoices or something like that and I was sending 1,000 invoices a day, yeah, I wouldn't do that myself. I'd pay someone to do it. But not for, you know, writing emails or going on the forum and they're pretending to be me or something like that, you know. I wouldn't say that, but... Right. Dave would say this. It's an interesting question. But, yeah, the menial tasks that aren't personal, then yes, you know. Otherwise, you're just diluting your time and, you know, and effectively not making the most out of your time and hence, you know, charging yourself less for your... You know, your time becomes less valuable then.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: If you're trying to do everything. But, yeah, I don't know. I've run my own business before and I did pretty much everything. Everything myself. Like... But, no, there's stuff I outsource. Like these boards I get made for a project, right? If I'm selling a project, I don't sit there and solder the boards myself, right? Right. Because that's crazy. That's a ridiculous waste of my time. I'd be charging myself $5 an hour or something. Right. You know, that's just stupid. But some people do that. Some people do that. So I get somebody else to assemble. So, yeah. Well, some people do do it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: I think... See, and I think that's a good point of where it really makes sense to do that kind of thing. Like, even if you're doing a hobbyist kind of thing, sometimes if you have the resources available, it might be worth it to have someone fab a board for you versus trying to fab it all yourself, you know, especially if they guarantee it.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. And you can turn it into a complete turnkey thing. Because at the moment, I buy the parts myself. You know, I buy from Mauser, DigiKey, China, anywhere I can get them from. And I have to put them together as a kit and then send them out to get manufactured. Well, there's turnkey solutions for that. Right. You know, companies will order your parts, handle the inventory. Yeah. And just basically, you just pay the money and they send you a finished product.

Dave Jones: Right. Really.

Chris Gammell: It can even be tested, firmware programmed, everything by them. As a turnkey solution. And yeah, that's not a bad way to do it. In fact, it's a very good way to do it once you reach a certain point, I think. Right. So, you know, and I'll certainly do that myself.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we might catch some crap for that because of the whole, you know, like, we talk about like do it yourself and make stuff. Yeah, well, I know. And I think there's a legit side of that. You know, like, if you are doing it yourself, there's value. Sometimes there's value just because you're learning how to do it, right? But maybe it's once you get past that point and you've done it enough and you just don't want to solder another resistor and, you know. Exactly. Breathe solder smoke again. So, yeah. Maybe that's...

Chris Gammell: No, I'm... Yeah, I'm pretty much a big fan of, well, I won't solder anything myself. Like, if I'm doing a project, a kit, a fully built product, you know, I don't want to solder. I, you know, I've soldered too much shit in my 30 years that I just, in more than 30 years, I just don't want to, you know, it's not pleasurable. Yeah. But granted, in about an hour's time, I've got to head to work and all I'm going to be doing all day is soldering boards. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. So, you know, I don't want, you know, that's not a productive use of my time.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah, but, you know, I will send them out to be made. I'll kit them myself and stuff like that, maybe for the first 50 or 100. And if it becomes successful, yeah, I farm out the whole thing to someone and just, yeah, turn the key. Yeah. As they say.

Dave Jones: Yeah. All right. Well, I guess that answers my question then. But as it stands right now, Dave does not need any help with his blog, apparently.

Chris Gammell: No. Well, actually, the interesting thing is some people have suggested that. Why don't I farm out the video editing to someone? Yeah, that's what I said. You know, and it's like, yeah, people have, even 6, 12 months ago, people were actually on the forum were suggesting that I do that. You know, because I always complain about how much time it takes me to edit the videos. Yeah. And it does take a long time and transcode them and upload. And everyone says, well, why don't you just pay someone to do that or get somebody on the forum to do it and give them a free multimeter or something? And, well, you know, no, you can't really. Because that's one of those things where you would spend more time telling somebody what to do than just to do it yourself. Right. It's one of those, you know, because it's a very personal thing. What goes into my videos? Right. I'm the one who has to choose. So I would have to effectively do the editing anyway. So what's the point?

Dave Jones: Yeah, you'd have to like re-edit after it's all done, I guess, huh?

Chris Gammell: And they would just have to re-edit. It's, yeah. It's almost like auto-placing a PCB or auto-routing a PCB. Right. Or something like that. You know, by the time you set up, if you want the auto-router to do your entire board, by the time you set it up and put all the rules in there and tell it exactly what to do, then, well, you may as well have just done it. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well. Yep. There you go. That's how we value our time. All right. I don't know.

Dave Jones: So for the record.

Chris Gammell: Everyone has their own personal limit to what they can do. Right. You know, some people just enjoy soldering boards, so they will do it.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know? That's true. Hey.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I like it still. I mean, I haven't been doing it for as long as you, so maybe that's why. You'll learn. Yeah. You'll learn. Yep. Once my eyes get old and decrepit like yours. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's the one. So how about- You wanted to ask about Australian inflation. Ah, we can skip that. That's okay. Ah, we can skip that? Okay. Yeah. I don't know.

Dave Jones: I feel like we really should talk about some more. I feel like guilty now because you brought it up at the beginning of the episode, some electronic stuff. You know what I mean? Like-

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, because there were a few political things on here, weren't there? Yeah. Yeah. That were unrelated to- Yeah. Electronics. Yeah. Well, I mean like- Oh, here's a good one. Yeah. Well, which is- It's electronics related. Yeah. Kind of. It's electronics industry related. But somebody on the forum, I wanted to talk about this. Companies that own everything you do. Right. Right? If you- Yeah. If you're basically inside-

Dave Jones: That's part of my problem too because I have all these ideas and things I want to talk about from what I'm doing all day, right? Yeah. But I can't talk about them. You know what I mean? And even stuff that I do on the side, I can't talk about that stuff either.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So-

Chris Gammell: Because you're bound by a work contract or some other contract. Exactly. You know? And NDA or something like that. Right. Yeah. So anyway, where this spawned from was that somebody on the forum wanted to enter the Renesys RX design contest coming up. Right. But they said they couldn't because their company owns everything. Every thought and idea that they have, they own. Yeah. And he has to give them first right to that idea. And then if they- And there's a good side and a bad side to it. The good side is he says he's been paid a few times for his ideas- Yeah. By the company. And that's okay. But you're giving up everything. Right. You know? So even if- Apparently he said it's almost impossible for him to get the okay from the company to go and enter this design contest. And that, you know, once it gets to that level, it's getting pretty stupid.

Dave Jones: You know? You are crippled. Right. Effectively. Well, the question is if he's getting paid for his bad ideas too. You know what I mean?

Chris Gammell: Well, that's the thing. The company's not going to get paid for the crap ideas or the ideas that aren't part of their core product or their, you know, of a benefit to that company. Which is going to be an extremely narrow window of ideas. Right. Unless- I'm sure he got paid. Those ideas he got paid for weren't some weird ass thing that has nothing to do with the company. I can guarantee you. It's going to be something that's a product improvement or, you know, something that's of interest to their core business. Right.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. So, if they're a company that makes toasters and then he goes off and he wants to make a refrigerator.

Chris Gammell: Or a tricopter or something like that.

Dave Jones: Or a tricopter. That's much better because that's way out of- Yeah. That's not even close to a kitchen appliance, right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There's no- I mean, there's no crossover there except that maybe some of the components in a tricopter get warm. You know? But then- Exactly. That's kind of a stretch. Or maybe a tricopter that's trying to carry a piece of bread to the sun to get it toasted or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And the thing with these companies is if you've never been involved in this, then it's almost impossible for them to sign off on something and say, yeah, okay, go and do that. Right. Because they will never do it. Right. Because they will never want you to do something outside. So, it's as the old adage, it's easier to seek forgiveness than it is to seek permission. So, in these cases, you're better off just going out, doing it on the sly and hoping they don't find out. And if they do, well, just quit. You know? That's one of the- If it's a big enough idea. You know? So, yeah. It's- I think it's a rotten deal. I really do.

Dave Jones: And we're back. Yes. So, we just had a tiny technical glitch. My inability to estimate battery life. And this is not the Zoom's fault this time. This is all Chris. So, sorry. Right. Okay. Sorry if there's any jumps in the conversation there.

Chris Gammell: It isn't one of those dodgy alkaline cells from China, is it?

Dave Jones: No. This is a homegrown Duracell.

Chris Gammell: Homegrown. Made in the old US of A. Uncle Sam. You're right.

Dave Jones: It is. It's like one hung low. The one I tried to-

Chris Gammell: One hung low brand. There you go. Made in China with all those toxic chemicals in there. It's not a real battery. So, yeah. It has a terminal voltage of 1.5 when you buy it. But that's about it.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: It certainly doesn't have its full amp hour capacity.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: No pun intended. That's right.

Dave Jones: That's right. So, we were talking about quad- You know, just if you're owning a design. If you're at a company. You should- I mean, hopefully you are able to take your designs with you. But it's really just not a reality these days. So-

Chris Gammell: Well, exactly. And I've got an interesting story there. My previous company, or my previous previous company, they- When you signed up, when you joined, they had this ridiculous agreement saying that, Well, we own not only everything you do, every, you know, ID you have, but every ID you have after you leave the company. Ever? Ever. Ever. And that's what they put in this contract. I'm not kidding. And everyone was just like- And I think they went through and made everyone in the company re-sign it based on this new thing. And everyone just laughed at them and said, Well, that's just, you know, you can't legally enforce that. It's just absolute bullshit. And finally, they actually admitted that, yeah, it's not legally valid, but sign it anyway, please. You know? Oh, yeah. And so everyone just laughed and just signed it and went, Yeah, right. Is that company still around? Yes. Well, in various forms. Yes. It's changed names like five times.

Dave Jones: You should write some ideas you have down that are totally ridiculous and mail it to them. That would be amazing. So I was sitting on the crapper the other day and I thought about this great electronic circuit you really want to have and it's all yours. Electronic flushing. Unbelievable. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah, don't necessarily always believe that you're as locked in as you imagine with the company. Because these lawyers will just try and write everything into these contracts. And a lot of them may not be legally valid. It's going to depend on your country and all sorts of things. But, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Take it with a grain of salt. But, yeah, definitely if you're working at an oppressive company like this guy on the forum was. But he seemed fairly content. Because he was quite, you know, he seemed quite enthused that they were actually paying him for his ideas. Yeah. That's a good sign. He didn't say how much, you know. Right. And, but he was alluding to that, oh, his bank account proves that it's a good thing, you know. So I presume he's getting, you know, a decent, some sort of money, Terry, actual reward out of that. And that might be good for some people who don't have that entrepreneurial bent to go out and do something on their own.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, if you've got really good ideas but you just don't have the enthusiasm or anything to go out and do it on your own. Then, well, maybe getting your company to buy those ideas might be a good aspect. But, yeah, don't believe the company's going to buy every last little idea that you have. Because it's just, you know, ideas really are a dime a dozen. That's right. Any good designer, anyone with any amounts, you know, any ounce of talent whatsoever can come up with a dozen ideas a day. That's right. It's not hard. Right.

Dave Jones: Especially if you get on a kick of it, you know. Like, it's good.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Just sit down with a whiteboard, brainstorm it. You can come up with a dozen ideas. They are really worthless ideas. It's only when you actually, you know, take them forward and make something out of them. So, nobody is ever going to buy your ideas. I think that was the argument we were having on the forum. He was, you know, I was saying nobody's going to ever buy your ideas. And he was saying, well, my company's bought my ideas. No, no, no. You know.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, if you work there and, like, you know, you might be rewarded for, like, incremental stuff that you've done or maybe even new stuff. Yeah. And that does happen sometimes. But, in general, like, definitely not with the services where, oh, yeah, let us design your idea for you. No. Sorry. No one really wants your ideas. They just want your money. Yeah. That is always going to be true.

Chris Gammell: And your idea has to be really, really good and exactly match what they want before they will even consider buying it. So, you are totally limited. There's a whole world of ideas out there that, you know, they're restricting. And he can't even enter a damn design contest. I really feel sorry for him. That really is crippling. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, I was talking with someone about that today about, you know, just kind of, it was a college student about, like, design contests that his school is sponsoring. Oh, right. And it's kind of like the whole, and I've thought this before, too. Where do you start? You know, like, instead of, like, having a starting point of, oh, I'm going to make a circuit that does blank and I don't know how to do that. That's a bounded problem, right? But when it's an unbounded problem, like, hey, I want to start a company. I want to be an entrepreneur. It's like, well, I don't know what the hell to do. Exactly. Exactly. That gets a little harder, I think.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it certainly does. I mean, you know, how do you, you can't teach something like, you've just got to go out. I think we've said it before. You just got to go out and do it. Have a go. And then build something incrementally. You know, you can't, you can't just do, plan everything at the start and then have it all go to plan and you become an entrepreneur and a millionaire. It's bullshit.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Nobody in history has ever done that, you know, it's, everyone writes that, you know, you get all these books people have written, how to become rich quick and how to, you know, be a property tycoon and a billionaire and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Well, they're written by the people who have already done it and they didn't get there by following the advice in their book. They got there through trial and error, luck and everything else. So, ah, it's just, yeah, don't believe, don't believe that shit. Really.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: It's too bad though. Go out there and do it.

Dave Jones: Because that would be nice.

Chris Gammell: Make your own luck. Well, it would be. Yeah. If there was a guide you could follow to become, you know, successful in anything you wanted to be.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Step one, listen to the Amp Hour.

Dave Jones: That's right. Step one. And on the Amp Hour, we had another person to suggest that we should talk about some more analog components. And so Dave was cringing when I suggested we talk about this before, but.

Chris Gammell: That's real electronics. Come on. Oh, you do real electronics. Come on. This is more entertainment, isn't it?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Well, I think we should do a little bit of electronics on an electronics show.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, okay. Go for it. This is off the cuff.

Dave Jones: You didn't prepare this. You know, the thing I always run into, and I think a lot of people run into it when they're starting out too, is kind of like, well, where does all, you know, there's so much stuff out there. Where do you really use it? You know, the application side of things. And where do you start with this stuff? And so the listener mentioned, it was Bill, his name is, and he mentioned stuff about, you know, difference amps and instrumentation amps and all these different kind of circuits. And the thing is, if you look at them, they're actually usually pretty similar when you break them down. So even like all those fancy parts from like LT and TI and all that stuff, usually it's still, you know, there's building block components, but they're actually packaging a whole system. So even like a difference or a instrumentation amp, right? That's just three op amps. And op amps, exactly.

Chris Gammell: And some precision resistance. That's right. That's pretty much all it is.

Dave Jones: Right. And it's tuned. And, you know, it's funny because you, like when I have vendors come in and talk to me about that stuff, they're always like, well, we have this new thing, this new thing. And then you kind of look at them, they're like, yeah, well, it's pretty much like all our other op amps because they're limited by what the silicon can do. And so it's funny because they try and, you know, they sell all these things and they're trying to sell more parts that are more specific, but there's still only so much you can do with a process technology. So it's interesting when you really break it down. And I always like those diagrams that are on some data sheets, but not all data sheets where they actually show the...

Chris Gammell: The operational part. Yeah. Yeah. It's an operational block diagram. Yeah, I love those. Every data sheet should have... And I think it should be compulsory. Don't buy anyone's parts who doesn't have an operational block diagram for their analog part, you know? Yeah. For their voltage regulator or something like that or their switch mode converter or... Right.

Dave Jones: And I mean, you've talked about voltage regulators, but today I was thinking, I mean, I know how they basically work, right? But, you know, like usually it's an op-amp type thing, driving a FET or some kind of high power transistor. Yeah. And then, you know, regulating itself.

Chris Gammell: And it's a closed loop and it's a... Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But you know that the fancy ones that are like low noise are... Because I was thinking about like, well, what if I wanted to make my own, you know, like in discrete parts? Never really that great of an idea because it's, you know, you're going to have other issues that come into it like layout, like board layout stuff. Yeah. But still, sometimes you want to do that stuff. So I went to go look at one and I couldn't find one really in my brief search. And, you know, that would have been really nice though, but they don't want to give away those secrets like, oh, well, we add, you know, like a balancing circuit here where we, you know, like, you know, or chopper over here, you know, where they do special things inside the silicon that you never really see. You know, you still see a linear regulator on the outside. You put power on one side, you get a regulated voltage on the other side. But it's too bad that that's not on every sheet, like you said, because that would be nice. And it's nice if you're ever trying to replicate something too. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I think just from an educational point of view, you can learn so much from those data sheets. Like even today, I don't know everything. God, not even close. So I open up a data sheet for a new chip and I go, oh, that's how they do it, is it?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And, you know, when you see the block diagram and you go, okay, there's the basic concepts. And then they might go into a bit more detail in the theory of operation or something like that. And, you know, but yeah, I think it's just a great learning experience. You just get these data sheets and just go for it. Look at the block diagrams. And then the good companies will not only have the functional block diagrams in there, they'll have the app notes, which explain more detail, how it all works. And yeah, it's a brilliant way to learn.

Dave Jones: I had a former co-worker who was a very experienced engineer. And he told me, you know, I was asking about that, you know, like, what do you read usually? And like, what kind of books? And he's like, well, you know, you're reading books and it's like, you know, you look at like Art of Electronics. That's a great book and it's still very relevant, but it's not using the latest stuff. So you really got to go out and find new stuff. And where do you find that? You find that in like app notes or the app notes part. App notes and data sheets. And data sheets. And I was just flabbergasted. I'm like, that was there the whole time. I could have been learning this stuff the whole time and I didn't really know about it.

Chris Gammell: That's it.

Dave Jones: And, you know, that's another thing I'm always amazed by too, is not just that people learn from data sheets, but like, you know, you'll look at a circuit on a circuit diagram sometimes and then you'll be like, you know, you go look up the part and maybe you didn't know the designer and you go look up the part and then you look at the data sheet. You're like, oh my God, that's the exact same circuit. I thought they designed this thing. Because there's...

Chris Gammell: And the other thing is, people always ask me for advice on books. Oh, what book should I get to read? God, I haven't read an electronics book for textbook for 20 years or something. You know, it's crazy. I've got no idea. I do all my learning from, as you said, you know, app notes, data sheets and other things.

Dave Jones: Right. Dave's actually forgotten how to read at this point. Oh, yeah. With all the videos and everything else, it's just videos and data sheets. That's it. And he has someone record videos of reading a data sheet. It's weird. I've seen them.

Chris Gammell: Well, I've done a video, yes, on the data sheets. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You should do an April Fool's...

Chris Gammell: Data sheet utopia, it's called, or something.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? Nice.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, data sheet utopia, where I cry. This data sheet's so magnificent and fantastic. I weep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You should do an April Fool's... Do you know who Andy Kaufman is, the comedian?

Chris Gammell: Nah, I've heard of him.

Dave Jones: He was like this tongue-in-cheek type of comedian. You should do... Where he would... He got up on stage once, and he just started reading Charles Dickens' novel. And you should do that with the data sheet on your video blog for April Fool's or something like that. Oh, right. You just get on there. The LM317, as read by David Jones.

Chris Gammell: Bedtime story for the kiddies. Yeah, right? That would put people to sleep. Yeah. My whiny voice, yes. Perfect for audio.

Dave Jones: For relaxing.

Chris Gammell: Absolutely.

Dave Jones: I think we might be pushing the amp hour here, Dave.

Chris Gammell: Oh, we are? Our capacity's up? I don't know. It's probably... Yeah, I think it is. I think it is. We don't know with our epic failure there in the middle. Our epic battery failure. So... Yeah. Whereas I'm not. Yeah, I'm using my desktop here to record from a USB mic, and Chris is using his little Zoom H1. H1.

Dave Jones: I think I may be buying a mic soon.

Chris Gammell: Right. I don't know. I've gone through so many iterations now.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I think I have to get it.

Chris Gammell: You've got such a complicated setup there, because you're recording. I know. You used to record in stereo and mix it and through a mixer and all sorts of weird stuff, and it'll take you half an hour rattling around, setting the damn thing up before we started. I know. Whereas I just plug in my USB mic and go.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Eh.

Dave Jones: Technology. I promise. I'll get better next week. I promise.

Chris Gammell: Excellent. All right. Well, thanks everyone for joining us.

Dave Jones: Thanks for putting up with our little break there, too. I, uh... Sorry about that.

Chris Gammell: Catch you a little later.

Dave Jones: Bye. Bye.