#17 – EE Movies, Part Rants and SPICE.

Dave Jones: Hi, welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog.

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell from Chris Gammell's Analog Life. How you doing, Chris? Pretty good, Dave.

Dave Jones: You've got your computer working there, you've got your hamster working overtime.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, the hamster is spinning in the wheels.

Dave Jones: It's an old dinosaur, is it? It's pedal-powered.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, this thing was a killer back in its day. It's from 2001, though.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: So it's still kicking, but it had the 1.7 gigahertz processor at the time. That was a big deal.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's screaming, yeah. Yeah. How many generations is that? How many generations? What's the average generation on a computer now? Yeah, like, you know, is it 9 months or is it still 18 months or whatever?

Chris Gammell: I think they still say it's 18 months, but I don't know. That gets kind of squeezed anyways.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, I think the average computer turns over every... I think it's less than 9 months or something. Some new processor or something comes out, isn't it?

Chris Gammell: I mean, yeah, it does, but I think the 18 months is the total amount of, like, technology turnover. It has to double every 18 months for the Moore's Law. But that's, I don't know, those laws are so, you know, it's just, they say it after the fact, too. I mean, Gordon Moore, nothing against...

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, Moore's Law is just the amount of silicon in the same area for the same price or something like that. Whereas... Right, yeah. You know, you can come up with new architecture technology and stuff like that actually ahead of that schedule. So, I guess, yeah, you can churn out, you know, processors twice as quick as Moore's Law or something. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you start paralyzing and stuff. That helps out a lot.

Dave Jones: I stopped keeping up with processor technology, you know, PC processor technology in about 1990 or something like that. So, that's about the last time I tried to keep up with it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, every time I look at, like, you know, a computer store or something like that, I always look at them like, who needs this stuff? You know, they're talking about, like, six core processors and blah, blah, blah. I know. Unless you're playing video games. Yeah. You know, you need, like, a liquid cooling just to keep it at a reasonable temperature.

Dave Jones: Yeah, those cooling towers and they light up blue and all that sort of shit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, they're cool, but I'm not paying three grand for that stuff. I have a radio show to record, you know? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, my brand new notebook, here I am doing video processing, high-def video processing. Yeah. And I bought the cheap, almost the cheapest notebook that would do the job. I only paid $800 for my brand new notebook a couple of months ago.

Chris Gammell: That's pretty good, yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, yeah. It's, you know, so that's pretty cheap. So, there's people out there paying, you know, $2,000 or $3,000 for the same thing. Jesus. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it might be 50% faster in processing video, but God.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. What do you got better to do, right? I mean, you just go make another video while the first one's processing. Yeah, exactly. So, it's not a problem. That's the way to do it.

Dave Jones: Anyway, we've got a shitload of stuff today.

Chris Gammell: We do. A veritable. Veritable shitload. Yes. A crapload, if you want to put it more politely.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. But I don't think we're going to get through it all. So, where do you want to start?

Chris Gammell: Well, shoutouts. Shoutouts always, yeah. Yeah. Oh, go for it. So, Bill from Soddersmoke, he's back in the US and he is recording again. Awesome. He fired up his ham shack. He's out in the shack recording and, yeah, it's pretty good. I don't know. A lot of it's kind of like the hams talking to each other, you know, like, oh, hey, I was in this wavelength, that wavelength. But, you know, there's some really good stuff in there.

Dave Jones: Yeah, and I did this fox hunting, that fox hunting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's really cool. I mean... I've got a new Yagi antenna, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, yeah, right? Yeah. I don't... Yeah, that stuff, it gets out there pretty fast. But, you know, it's... I think the ham and the hobbyist, the maker kind of stuff is going to collide very soon. I know Jason, one of the guys we talked about on here before, he's actually making a ham kit for like a... For hobbyist kind of stuff. And that should be cool. I don't know. I think...

Chris Gammell: Awesome.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know, there's a lot of space to grow in the RF region. You know, there's a lot of people use Zigbee chips with like Arduinos and stuff like that, but there's a lot of, you know, stuff you can make on your own house that's just as good or better. Right.

Dave Jones: I know there's been a lot of talk in recent years about the government taking back all of this community RF channel space. Oh, really? Oh, wow. Yeah. So, yeah, like back in the 70s, the hams had all this, you know, all this RF, all this space available, all these channels available, and the government's slowly taking it back. Oh, you're just one guy in a shed. You don't need that anymore, you know? It's not important. So, yeah, we need it back for our, you know, our drones and our... Yeah. Well, it is getting pretty crowded out there. ...other weapons and satellites and God knows what. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It really, I mean, it is like, you know, like, especially like the common bands, like the 2.4 gigahertz and all those...

Dave Jones: Oh, 2.4 gig is flooded. Everything's 2.4 bloody gig. It's crazy.

Chris Gammell: I know. It must be something with the antenna length that's really good about that or something. I know it's not a huge antenna, but, yeah, it's going to be a bigger deal.

Dave Jones: Well, the only other thing up there is the microwave ovens. So, really, they're very contained. So, I guess the... I don't know. Maybe it's the... Why they chose 2.4? Because the microwave oven is 2.45. Oh, yeah? Okay. So, yeah, there's not much difference between frying your brains out and talking on your Bluetooth. Oh, power levels is the difference, I think, Dave. Right. Yes, power levels, too. I guess 2.4 would probably warm up your water molecules, too, I guess.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it would. Yeah, that's... I mean, it's interesting to see. I don't know how it is in Australia, but the FCC is pretty stringent. And there's no, like, global body for that, either.

Dave Jones: So... No, there's not. And that's a lot of RF modules and stuff like that. All these Zigbee... A lot of them have to be a different channel to be sold here. Oh, yeah. And you've got to get different certification here. So, if you're a manufacturer of RF modules, it's a pain in the ass selling worldwide. It's just...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you just think about everybody coming online. I mean, in the more commercial side of things, but you just think about that from a capacity standpoint. You know, with all the people wanting to have smartphones and wanting to be on the internet, it's just, like, such a fire hose of data. It's just, like, unfathomable, the kind of stuff they're going to need for that. But, at the same time, there's good stuff that comes out of it in the electronics industry, too, because that's a lot of business.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: We got another shout-out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, another shout-out. I found another... Well, I didn't find it. I subscribed to the feed for Do-It-Yourself Drones. And there's another one that talks about... It's all things that fly. That's the name of it, allthingsthatfly.com. And so, I think Chris Anderson was on there, and so they highlighted that podcast. It's been going for a lot longer. But it's... You know, they talk a lot about more of the application side of things, like, oh, this person's flying there, this person's flying there, or doing all these different types of applications, you know, tricopters, quadcopters. But also, they do some electronics, too. So, you know, I thought people listening here, if they've caught the podcast bug, rather, they might want to go over there and listen, too. So, I don't know. Absolutely. I think once people start listening... I've heard people say that, you know, they run out of ours to listen to, because we're only doing it once a week.

Dave Jones: We're only doing it once a week, and you have to drive to work five times a week. Because I know so many people are actually, you know, they're in their car right now. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Watch the road, guys. Jeez.

Chris Gammell: You almost hit someone.

Speaker ?: Look out!

Chris Gammell: We're not talking to you right now. We recorded a while ago. Don't worry. We're on your radio. We live here with the hamsters.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Bet you've got to find four other shows to listen to every week. So, it's not that... Yeah. All the shows out there, you've just got to look around.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Maybe we can get, like, a list going or something. The Amp Hour Approved Alternate Podcast or something. There are some good ones, though. So, it's worth listening to. And, you know, people, like, they ask if we're threatened or anything like that. But it's like, why be threatened when there's just more stuff to listen to? You know, there's more good stuff out there. So, that's the important thing. So, if you know of any, if you're listening right now and you know of any or listening to some in the car, be sure to let us know on our website. We'll talk about it on here and let others know, too.

Dave Jones: Yep. And the only time we're going to be concerned is if somebody starts doing an Australian and American dueling accents and talking about, well, sometimes, electronics.

Chris Gammell: Well, they did. Did you see that email from John from Arizona? So, one of our regular listeners, John, he emailed us about that. It's like AussieGeek.net or something like that.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. Aussie Geeks or something. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But, yeah, they talk about, you know, PCs and the latest video cards and shit like that.

Chris Gammell: But, I'm just saying, they got the Aussie and the North American, I think, because the guy's from Canada, but still. Yeah. Nah, near enough. There goes our shtick. It's done. It's over. We lost all credibility. Who was first? Us or them? They were way longer. Oh, jeez. Sorry, man.

Dave Jones: A bunch of bloody copycats we have. Oh, well, what can we do?

Chris Gammell: Okay. Well, we can talk about other stuff. We can rant.

Dave Jones: Okay. Well, rant. Well, I'll just go, like, up to the next on the list because I am right.

Chris Gammell: You are right.

Dave Jones: As usual. I am right. As usual. I am right, damn it. And I'm going to shove it down people's throats. Everyone, this is the last thing I'll say on this, okay? The open source, is it open source hardware or open hardware? Okay. Now, everyone said I was completely wrong. It's not open source hardware. And I say bullshit. You're so wrong. And I am right. And I can prove it. Because if you think it's called open hardware, then you go and try and produce something called open hardware and try and find a license called open hardware. I bet you you can't because the official license, and here it is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Shove it. The official license, I'm rubbing this in. The official license is called open source hardware license. Okay. So, if you want to produce the hardware, you can call it open hardware, but you've got to use the license called open source hardware. So, there you go. You know it. Take that. So, yeah. Don't complain about people who call it open source hardware because that's what the license is called. Okay, kiddies? Last thing I want to say about that.

Chris Gammell: End of issue right there. It's no more. No more ever.

Dave Jones: Or as the Woz would say, bitches. Doesn't she? Is that what she says?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I've only seen a couple of things.

Dave Jones: Bitches on her video podcast that we talked about last week or something. Anyway. Yeah. Anyway. So, there you go. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. She was on the Ask an Engineer last Saturday.

Dave Jones: That's right. I saw that. How did that go? I didn't watch it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I guess a lot.

Dave Jones: Because I thought it was, sorry, I thought it was Sunday. Is it Saturday night?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Saturday night here. So, 10 p.m. here would be. Right.

Dave Jones: Which is 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon here. Right. Okay. That's why I keep missing it.

Chris Gammell: Is it? Yeah.

Dave Jones: For some reason, I keep thinking it's Sunday night. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh, man. Time stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty good, though. I mean, they were talking about that. And, you know, they were talking about the Kinect stuff. And it was interesting. You know, like, there were some good questions about that stuff. Cool. Yeah. All right. More rants. Come on. More rants. Let's just get you the rants. Let's get them all out, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I've been working on some power supply stuff. And do you ever use WebMentional?

Dave Jones: I've tried to use it a few times. I'm not a big fan of it, no. You know, I wasn't a... It can do novel stuff.

Chris Gammell: But, yeah, I only use it if I have to. I think going in from a perspective of, like, thinking it's going to be like a simulator or show you any kind of useful behavior, that's not going to be the case. But it's more of a... It's almost like just like an online calculator where they already have all the formulas in the back end. You know, you can go into the data sheet and see them, you know, if the sense voltage across the sense resistor has to be like 1.24 volts. And it'll just... You know, you put in your top level requirements and then it kind of pushes them all down. And there's a lot of stuff out there that'll do that kind of thing. But this is just kind of real Ajax-y and pretty and also very slow.

Dave Jones: Ajax-y? That's a geek term, right? Yeah, it is. It's online, Java-y type. I just say Ajax whenever it's pretty. Yeah, when it's pretty and web-based. Yeah. Got it.

Chris Gammell: And maybe it's... I don't know. Who cares? It might be Flash-based. But...

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's web-based. You go on and you put in all your info on the web. You don't have to download a program and it...

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Contrast it with, like, a LTSpice kind of thing where you can still see all their parts, but you have to download the simulator and pull it in, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And the nice thing about it, though, is it sets up a bomb for you. So, you know, you have, like, a switcher circuit. And the one I was looking at was a switcher circuit. And it's got maybe, you know, 15 different resistors to set different parameters that maybe you wanted to just set externally. Well, this is all really great. I really like that part of it. And I like that, you know, it's decently simple up to that point. But then you get this bomb, right? And basically, they do the bait and switch. So, they pop out a thing that says, okay, your switcher with the chip itself, the inductor, the capacitors, the huge-ass diode, all those things, that's going to be $6. Okay, great, awesome. And then you go look at them and you go over to DigiKey. First off, you can't find them, obviously, right? Right.

Dave Jones: But, of course, or they're not in stock.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no one expected that to happen, right? No. But the thing that really kind of gets me is they quote, like, they must be 100,000-piece pricing or something like that. Because I look at them and it's like an inductor for 30 cents. And this is like a nice shielded inductor and everything. And I'm like, I can't find, I couldn't steal one for 30 cents, you know? So, it's this really useful tool. I get up to the end and then I'm like, this thing's lying to me. I mean, I know it's not actually because, but I'm not even sure the people that could buy 100,000 parts and get these actual prices that they would be using this tool in the first place. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, it's just solely based on high-volume pricing. Well, no surprise there. No surprise there. I was doing, last night, all the manufacturers do this, right? Yeah, they do. It doesn't matter who they are. And I was on Atmel and the microchip sites last night looking for a suitable microcontroller that had a shitload of PWM modules in it. And I was sorting by the number of PWMs and I was looking down for the price because it's got to be low cost too, of course. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, and they, I think it was microchip, were quoting in their parametric search. They were quoting 5K price. So, you know. Reasonable-ish. It's like, yeah, okay, it's $2 at $5,000, but how much is it at $1,000 or, you know, $500 or something like that? Right, yeah. So, you know, it's a good indicative pricing, but, oh, yeah, it's just really quite annoying.

Chris Gammell: If someone was listening, and I don't think they are, but if someone was listening and they wanted a suggestion, they should have a little prototype checkbox because you know it's going to be small. Yeah. And then they can even do it by percentage. They could just double the price or triple the price. I don't care what it is. I just want to see that it's some more reasonable price so that when I go look at it, because you know that there's different vendors that will do different things. Oh, yeah. So, if I go to National and I say, okay, I want a really high-quality inductor, well, maybe the price doesn't change that much from the $1,000 price to the $10,000 price. But if I want a cheap, not-so-great inductor, maybe the price changes a ton from the $1,000 price or the one-part price to the $10,000 price. Same kind of thing. So, if they had some kind of checkbox or any other kind of way to say, no, this is a prototype, just show me any bit of reality and I'll be happy. So, that's kind of the message on that one. I want just a taste of reality because I did not get it.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, I had the same thing last night and it happens all the time and I'm sick of it too. So, yeah, get off your asses, manufacturers. But I guess, well, you know, who do you care? I mean, it's good to have both. Yeah. But I guess if you're only going to cater for one, which one are you going to cater for? The high volume or the low volume? The ones that give you all the money.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Exactly. So, you know, I'm surprised that they're even, you know, doing a $1,000 pricing. But that's sort of an industry standard is the $1,000 price. Right. Yeah. But the microchip one was the $5,000. So, they're creeping up there. They're sort of going, they're bucking that industry trend of the $1,000 pricing standard. So, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I would be interested to see like the percentage of it. So, say like a microchip, right? They might have 100,000 customers, right? But probably, you know, it's like a power law kind of thing where only the top 1% is spending the most money. And so, obviously, that would be the crowd they're catering to in this kind of situation. But I wonder, you know, do they have to still do all that? You know, like Maxim kind of ran into that problem where they would only, you know, a couple of years back where they would only supply to the really big people. And then they kind of ignored the second tier customers. And I wonder, like, what's the real motivation there? Are they just kind of hoping – or the people that do cater to the lower end people, are they just hoping that they'll get bigger someday? I don't know.

Dave Jones: That's the idea. I guess that's the only thing you can do. A lot of the big manufacturers don't care, but some of them – but that's the idea. Yeah. It's just kind of like throwing us a bone. Yeah. And lock them in and, yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's what smart companies do anyway. Yeah?

Chris Gammell: Ask away. I wanted to ask you about your DFM video because I really like that. I was listening to that today. Cool. I was actually listening to it instead of watching it. I hope that's okay. I knew what you were showing. That's right.

Dave Jones: That's right. You've got a question about – well, shoot.

Chris Gammell: Shoot. So, you were talking about buying reels of resistors in that video, right? Yep. And how people don't want to buy 5,000 or whatever. But wasn't that sometimes an option where you can go to a contract manufacturer and just say, I need 200 1K resistors. And then they already have the reels there and you just buy them directly from them? Because I don't think you mentioned that in the video.

Dave Jones: You can. Yeah. A lot of the contract assemblers, the assembly houses will have stock of all your common things. So, they'll have your 1K resistor in all the 0805, 0603, 0402, et cetera. And they'll have all the common values and stuff like that. So, yeah. Because that seems like a good option. Yeah, but you've got to be careful with that. Because, yeah, it's a good option. But you've got to be careful that it's not a part which you need a specific, you know, spec for. So, they'll just use some generic, you know, part. And, yeah, you've just got to be careful. You know, it's got some different Temco or something like that. So, some different power rating to some other one. So, yeah, you've just got to be careful.

Chris Gammell: That sounds really familiar. I'm not sure if I talked about that with you or someone else or I saw it written somewhere.

Dave Jones: I can't remember.

Chris Gammell: God, no. It's getting to the point where I can't even remember these things, you know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Hey, welcome to my world. I know, right? There you go. Once it gets over episode 10, it all starts becoming a blur.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I thought you meant once you get over, like, 25. Like, the age.

Dave Jones: And once you get over the age of 25, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's all downhill from here.

Dave Jones: It's all downhill. Yeah. Yep. Everything starts deteriorating.

Chris Gammell: I'm a bit over 25.

Dave Jones: Ah, young whipper snapper. It's all over. Yep. And you were talking about getting the reels directly from the manufacturer too, weren't you?

Chris Gammell: Well, no, I was saying getting those directly from the contract manufacturer, not the...

Dave Jones: Oh, the contract manufacturer. Yeah. Right. Oh, yes. There it is. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, getting them for the... Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, you can buy them directly from the manufacturer. Right. And that's part of the process of doing your kit. Actually, you know, where do you buy your parts from is another interesting aspect. Well, you know, if you've ever tried to actually do a project kit and actually kit up for it, then you'll know how much of a pain in the ass it is to buy from different suppliers. And you'll want to, you know, you almost design your product around the parts that you can get from one supplier, either DigiKey is your favorite or Mouse is your favorite or Element 14 is your favorite. And you design around one supplier if you can, because then you just have to do one purchase order and that's it. And all your parts come in. You don't have to order things from 10 different places and, you know, have different lead times and stocks and...

Chris Gammell: See, now, I thought you were talking about buying them directly from like a, from a national or a... You can.

Dave Jones: Well, that's what I'm talking about. Buying them directly from the manufacturer. You might be able to save, you know, five cents per chip or something. You know, if your chip's $5, you might be able to save five cents buying it directly from the manufacturer. Right, but then you have to pay cash, don't you? Instead of buying it from DigiKey or Mouser. But, well, yeah, you've... A lot of them don't have online stores or you've got to go, especially here in Australia, you've got to go through the local reps, local distributors. They won't ship directly from the US. You know, if it's national in the US, they won't ship directly here. You've got to buy it through, you know, the local rep. And, ah, it's just... That's a mess. It's too much hassle. Yeah, and then they want you to set up an account. They won't, you know, take credit cards or... Let us mail stuff to you.

Chris Gammell: Oh, God. Yeah, that's, you know, that's something I never knew about like, you know, until I like kind of started seeing business stuff and I never really knew about like net 30 payment and all that other stuff. Because you never think about that. You think, oh, okay, I need parts. I'm going to go pay for parts. But actually, a lot of times, they'll credit you for 30 days or whatever. And then you could, you know, once somehow you have to get to that point where you say, yeah, I'm legit enough that I am going to pay you. But then the terms are like net 30 where you can wait 30 days and pay at some point within those 30 days. I always thought that was kind of interesting because that's kind of a gamble on the part of the manufacturer.

Dave Jones: But... Well, it is. And actually, interestingly, that's how Steve Jobs started out with their first Apple computers. They actually...

Speaker ?: Really?

Dave Jones: Yeah. He found out. Part of the history of that is he found out like they didn't have any money. You know, Steve Wozniak sold his HP calculator and Jobs sold his van or something and they put the money together. But they still didn't have enough to buy all the parts to manufacture their, you know, two or three hundred Apple One computers. Yeah. So, but Steve Jobs figured out that you could get net 30 days and that, you know, somebody... Somebody... So, they had to assemble those machines in 30 days and get them. So, they had to buy the parts. They had 30 days to pay for them, but they didn't have the money to pay for them. So, they had to assemble them in 30 days, ship them to the computer store, get them to pay them so that they could... And they made it just in time. So, that was... That's pretty cool. Yeah. That's the early history of Apple. Yeah. That's kind of cool. Otherwise, yeah. If he didn't get that 30 days net, then he wouldn't have been able to do the first couple hundred computers and they probably would have gone under or something. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, there was an interesting thing. Nathan Seidel from SparkFun, one of the other, you know, like Adafruit and SparkFun. And he was... He's the founder, isn't he or something? Yeah. He's the founder. He was... Apparently, he just did a talk at Google the other day and it was on... They recorded it. But he was talking about how he started and it kind of sounds similar, not quite as similar, but... Right. You know, he basically was working out of his dorm room, working out of the basement. And I'll try and post a link to it because it was... Excellent.

Dave Jones: I definitely want to listen to that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And he was talking about how, you know, he was just scraping together money too. He put his first boards together using a $40 hot plate. I think that's kind of like his, you know, that's his humble beginning story. Yeah. But it's really impressive too because, you know, like he just kind of figured it all out. He just kind of went through the process and figured it out. Yeah. And one of the things that kind of helped him through was just persistence. I mean...

Dave Jones: Absolutely. You know, he... You've got to have a shitload of it when you're... Yeah, definitely. ...when you're doing your own projects and selling your own kits and stuff like that. But yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, he's an EE by training, but I mean, you know, you don't learn the business stuff in school. And even if you did, you got to have money from somewhere. So, he just bootstrapped himself and I think he's doing well because of it. So, many...

Dave Jones: Well, I... Oh, yeah. That should turn over $10 million a year at the moment. Yeah. They got like 80 employees. I can remember back when I was a teenager, you know, I was buying parts and selling kits and stuff like that. And I had to, you know, I had to buy a fax machine because back then the only way to send through purchase orders was by fax. And so, you would have to, you know, type up an official purchase order. So, here I am, you know, I'm 15 and I'm typing up a purchase order and faxing it through to these supplies. And they're thinking that I'm some big business and I didn't even have a registered business name. Yeah. I just had a made up name and, you know. That's awesome.

Chris Gammell: And it was... Yeah. Dave, do you have any pictures of 15-year-old Dave? I think everyone would enjoy that.

Dave Jones: Oh, I don't... Oh, very few because back then digital cameras...

Chris Gammell: Right, right. ...were around and, you know. Yeah, you'd have to like scan it in or something.

Dave Jones: It's just... Yeah, I've probably got a couple of old ones of me sitting at the bench. If you have...

Chris Gammell: I think that would go... That would go over very funnily on your forum and on here. I think if you could find one, everyone would appreciate it, I think.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: So, what did you call yourself back then? That's interesting that you did that.

Dave Jones: Oh, advanced R&D solutions. Tronaut technology was an early... Tronaut software was another one. There's lots of history behind that.

Chris Gammell: I'm a real company.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. So, yeah. So, I started out selling software and then I got into kits and bits and pieces and, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Ah, dear Eddie.

Chris Gammell: You know, even just today, I was talking to some people who found this circuit they really liked and they wanted to buy like a kit of it and, you know, this nice little data sheet for it and they were just... They were like looking around and they couldn't find it anywhere and I'm like, you know, this is just a guy sitting in his basement somewhere. He's made 10 of them and he disappeared. I could not find anything about it anymore. Yeah. And it really did seem like a great idea but, you know, he was gone now. So, I guess... That happens to a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Much like you, he's a shadow.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Just vanish from the face of the... And their webpage is still there but they're uncontactable, you know? Yeah. That's crazy. I know.

Chris Gammell: They need to forward some addresses or something. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because that leads on to stuff, you know? People see your stuff and you don't know who's going to see it and they think, oh, that's cool and that can lead on to something else, can lead on to a job or anything. So, kiddies, if you're out there and you've got an abandoned webpage from 10, 15 years ago, at least put a current email address on it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So...

Chris Gammell: And make sure you didn't say anything too stupid back then too. Right. I go back and look at some of my old posts and I'm like, uh-uh. So do I. That's not staying there. That's going away.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes.

Chris Gammell: Sorry, internet. That history is gone.

Dave Jones: Uh-huh. At least locally. I'm heavily researchable on the internet. Yeah, right. I'm more so than almost anyone I know. Yeah. Oh, yes. Occupational hazard, Dave. Yeah. I know. I don't care. You've just got to go, ah, what the hell?

Chris Gammell: You know, speaking of hard to reach, I was talking with Jeff from Mighty Home on Twitter today and we were bitching about the mailings you get from the... Are you an IEEE member? I don't remember if you said you were. Yes, yes, I did. Do you get... In Australia, do you get like credit card offers and insurance offers and all the other stuff?

Dave Jones: I think I did get it once from... And it came via the IEEE.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, around here. Oh, yes. Yeah. I get that sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: I get junk mail nonstop from them and it seems like a lot of other people do too. So Jeff figured out if you call them and you just say, look, I want to be taken off your third party list, they'll do it. So many thanks to Jeff because that's going to save probably a thousand trees this year if everybody did that. It's a lot of crap. And it's all the same insurance offers.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. I know. I hate these companies who opt you in. Yeah. They audit you automatically opt in because that's the law here in Australia. I don't know what it's like in the US, right? There was this big to-do that, oh, the government's bringing in these spamming laws. Okay? And, oh, great. Okay, no one's going to get spammed anymore. Yeah. No. The law says that you're allowed to opt somebody in without their permission. That's horrible. As long as you provide the link in the spam email to opt out, then it's fine. It's like, what sort of shit is that? I know. You've got to be kidding me. I know. Oh, it's, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And then sometimes the link doesn't work. It's horrible.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. It gets, or it's, yeah. And you don't, you know, and you're hesitant to click on that link because it's some bizarre link that goes to God knows where. Yeah, you know, you think it's some phishing website or something and, nah, and so you just delete and, or put in your filter and, oh, it makes me angry. Anyway, stupid bloody laws.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh. Oh, well. God. Oh, so, let's see. We, what have we got? I guess we have one more rant, I guess, if you want to, if you want to let loose on that, the community members and.

Dave Jones: Oh, community members. Yeah, here we go. So, this came, well, this has been boiling for a long time and I've mentioned it before and I'm sick of it. But on Twitter, it was Design Spark, I think it was. And they tweeted that, oh, we're about to get our 20,000th community member, I think it was. Who's going to be our 20,000th community member? Can't even say it. Yeah. 20,000th. And that just, oh, it bugs me. Because, yeah, they might have had 20,000 people sign up, but the number of active community members on there is not 20,000. It's freaking 200. Okay? You idiots. It's, you know.

Chris Gammell: The diminishing blog law.

Dave Jones: Jones' diminishing blog law. It's more than an order of magnitude. It's several orders below what they claim. And the same thing with Element 14. They claim 30,000 or something, you know. And, oh, give me a break. Come on, people. You know, and I've got the facts to back this up. Like, my video. Okay? Here's an example. I posted a couple of my videos onto the Element 14 site, because you might know I'm in this month's magazine and start Element 14 magazine and stuff like that. Yeah. And I go and have a look, and my video, it tells me, has been viewed 7,000 or 8,000 times or something. Woo-hoo. Fantastic on Element 14. Nah. Sorry. It's been viewed, I think it's 12,000 times total. And I know for a fact that, you know, more than 11,000 of those came from YouTube and my own site. They didn't come from Element 14. So, I don't know where they got the 7,000 from. So, their numbers are, yeah. It's fuzzy math. They're pie in the sky. Fuzzy math. They are. They're fuzzy math. Yeah. Yeah. That's too bad. So, don't believe it all. So, yeah. You know, you post something on those sites and you go, ooh, 1,000 people have viewed it. No, it's 50, actually. Sorry to tell you. Right.

Chris Gammell: Or every time someone reloads a page, they double count it or...

Dave Jones: Yeah. And that leads into advertising, but I won't go into that. Right. Right. Yeah. We beat that horse to death. Yeah. It ticks me off. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'd love it if my video got 7,000 extra views. That'd be fantastic, but nah. Anyway. Rant over.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. Okay. Slash rant.

Dave Jones: Oh, this is another... It's kind of a rant, actually. It's global commerce. Okay. I know this isn't... It's kind of related to my blog, though, right? Because, as you know, I get an Amazon... I encourage people to buy through Amazon so that I get a 6% cut through Amazon. And I've been getting a fair bit of money through that. So, thanks, everyone, for buying through Amazon. It's great. But...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: They supposedly pay you by funds transferred directly into your bank account at the end of the month or whatever. And, you know, so I'm waiting for my money to come through. I can see it in my account on the Amazon site, and it never comes through. And they're going, oh, we tried to pay you, and it didn't work. You know, please check your international account sentings and all that sort of stuff. So, you know, I'm checking it. I try different accounts. Nah, it still doesn't work. I finally found some fine print somewhere that says people outside the US are not allowed to get electronic fund transfer. You have to be paid by check. You've got to be shitting me. And their excuse is that it costs too much for international bank transfer. Oh, A, that's bullshit. And B, if it does, just pass it on. I'm happy to pay $30 for the convenience of having electronic funds transferred. To cash in international check here is a pain in the ass. You've got to wait. You've got to physically walk into a bank and line up. And then you've got to fill out a form because it's an international one. And then it takes a month. And then they charge you $30 anyway. And if you don't do it in time, if the check comes by surface mail and takes too long to get here, it's already expired by the time you go to cash it. So, it's like, you've got to be kidding me. Come on, Amazon.

Chris Gammell: I don't think it's just Amazon, though, personally.

Dave Jones: Well, there are. But there are other companies that have figured it out, you know, that know that you can do international bank transfer. There's some political or some other reason, Amazon or arrogance or something else, that Amazon don't want to do international thing. And here's more arrogance. Get this. Maybe you can, being from the US, you can figure this out. As you know, I'm part of the associate program for Amazon. And you're allowed to be an associate anywhere except Colorado, North Carolina or Rhode Island.

Chris Gammell: Hmm.

Dave Jones: How does that work?

Chris Gammell: You're asking me about state law, Dave. I don't know.

Dave Jones: You're a US. Come on. You must know. Oh, you're right. Is there some stupid state law that prevents you being an associate in Colorado?

Chris Gammell: Just today, Dave, I was saying I am an expert of all states' local laws. It was weird. You must know this. Come on. You're American. I was just saying this today. You know, Americans are so smart. They know everything about every state and every minute law. My guess would be that there's probably, they had enough, like, you know, vote or make money by the mail kind of fraud. And then they wrote some overarching law.

Dave Jones: Some state law or something that, yeah. But that must piss off people in those states. That's ridiculous. You know, you're in the US and you can't be an Amazon associate, which means that you can't, you know, sell an e-book on Kindle. You can't do anything. You can't participate in the advertising. You can't do a damn thing with Amazon in those states. That's insane.

Chris Gammell: Maybe they just hate Coloradians and North Carolinians.

Dave Jones: North Carolinians and Rhode Islanders. Rhode Islanders. Rhode Islanders. Rhode Islanders. Rhode Islanders. Yes, of course. My apologies to all Rhode Islanders out there. San Diegans. Ooh. So, they're not called Friskans. I don't know. No. I think that's frowned upon. Yeah, I'd probably get lynched. Anyway, that was supposed to be a discussion point. But it was more of a rant. So, anyway, I'm pissed off at that. So, not a happy little camper. Man, we are full of piss and vinegar today, aren't we? Yeah, I know. We better get on something decent. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: How about some more international stuff? That EE job listing I saw. So, I watch Google Alerts for like electrical engineering stuff, right? So do I. It's fun. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. There's some great stuff in there. That's actually how I found out about – actually, I should talk about that here. I mentioned it on Twitter. But there's a movie coming out about an electrical engineer and it's done by Disney. Awesome. Yeah. And I'm not sure – it's like about an inventor or something like that. But like the guys that are directing are actually going to be really good – they're like really good directors and everything too. So, I'll post a link to that. That's actually how I found that. But then usually I see these ridiculous job postings, right? So, it just comes through. Any time an electrical engineer pops up on Google, they send a summary to me every day. Yeah. And so, I saw one for – it said electrical engineer, Mandarin speaking only. So, it makes sense, right? There's a lot of electrical engineers in China. So, I go to look. Oh, where's this job? It's in Oman. Of course it would be, right? Why wouldn't they need Mandarin speaking electrical engineers in the Middle East? I mean, that makes tons of sense. So, if you happen to speak Mandarin and you want to suntan, we'll post the link and you can check it out because – I don't know.

Dave Jones: Hey, do you want to get involved in terrorism? Isn't Oman the new terrorist hotspot? Is that where those plane – those recent plane baggage bombs came from? No, that was Yemen. Yemen, Dave. Yemen. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Omanians. My apologies. Oman.

Chris Gammell: I can't believe you said that.

Dave Jones: Oh, gosh darn it. But I know exactly why they need Mandarin speaking because it's a Mandarin client. They own some resource or something over there and they're digging it up and I'm sure, you know, just like China own half of Australia's farms and everything. That's a big deal here at the moment. Everyone overseas is buying up Australian farms and – Interesting. And mines and stuff like that because, yeah, they've got to feed their people and power their nuclear power reactors and stuff like that. So, they just buy up all the resources here and, yep, I'm sure they're doing the same in Oman as well. So, that's why you have to speak Mandarin in Oman because half of it's probably owned by Africa.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and Africa. There's a really big build out in Africa too. It's kind of like Chinese imperialism quasi. I don't want to speak too far to that but, I mean, like, I mean, that's the best thing I could – I mean, that's the best explanation I can get of it.

Dave Jones: So, you know, more power to them.

Chris Gammell: I mean, if you look at it, they're bringing like tons of, you know, like investment and stuff like that but basically it's China making other people into the new China. So, you know, what goes around comes around and they're doing really well. I mean, everything I see about China continually, you know, it impresses me. It scares me. And, you know, we'll see what happens. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Don't worry about it. Their one-child policy will be their undoing apparently. So, that's all the latest rage going around. Yeah, they're saying India will take over because the one-child – because they have a young population and China have the one-child policy. So, in 20 years' time, China will cease to be a – well, won't be as much of a world power as they are now. So, that's the theory. Anyway, that's making the rounds of all the international blogs and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Right. So, the amp hour message of the week is go out and – go forth and multiply.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, that's bad. No, because I'm all for population control. Me too. Anyway, let's not go there.

Chris Gammell: Maybe it'd be go forth and multiply, accumulate.

Dave Jones: Right. With a maximum of two, please. So, we can keep – so we don't overpopulate the planet.

Chris Gammell: That was a DSP joke. I'm sorry. That was a DSP joke. Right. Yes. Okay. Right. Joke. Bad joke. Anyway. Sorry. Sorry. So, what about this free energy? Speaking of energy in China, this free energy thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I was about to talk about free energy rubbish. I got – this comes about because some guy emailed me. I won't name him. I don't even know if he listens to the show, but he listens to the blog and watches the blog. Yeah. And he wanted me to debunk a free energy company. I don't even think I should name them to give the – I don't think we'll even put the link up. Yeah. No, don't give him credit. It's free energy over unity machine. They're – I don't know. They're a US company or Canadian or something. I don't know. Might even be English. Who cares? Anyway, they've got this over unity machine. They've been pushing for years and years and years. And you can buy into the development – they sell a development platform. You pay your 500 bucks or something and you get the development platform and you get to become part of the secret development community forum. And this guy was actually a member of the forum. He's been a member for years. Yeah. And he wanted me to try and debunk it because he was saying that they've got a couple hundred people on this forum – people meaning suckers, okay? On this forum that have – Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave.

Chris Gammell: Tell us what you really think, please.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That have bought into this scheme. And he said a lot of them have realized after all these years it finally doesn't work and it's a whole heap of shit and they've left. But he's still hanging in there hoping that it's going to work and all that sort of stuff. And he wanted me to debunk it. And I'm going, no, it's just not worth my effort. And it reminded me of the Richard Dawkins quote where he – a lot of the religious fanatics want him to debate them. And his response is always, it'll look better on your resume than mine. Yeah. So that's the thing. And if I try and debunk free energy, I'm giving credibility to it almost even if I debunk it. I agree.

Chris Gammell: It's tough not to like shoot back and be like, that's ridiculous. But it is. People know it is. And if they don't know it is, then they deserve to lose their money. Anytime I see that stuff and I see over unity, free energy, blah, blah, blah, I'm just like, come on, guys. I think we've tried this conservation of energy, physical law long enough to really understand it. Now, if – and usually what it ends up coming down to is like, so say someone creates this brilliant – it's always like flywheels or fancy permanent magnets. It's always magnets. Magnets are the great. Oh, yeah. They're the one with the magnets. How do they work? But, you know, like whatever it is. And it's like, well, you can make so much money. And it's like, you know what? I am willing to afford them to take all of that money and do whatever they want with it. Kind of like E.E. Store. My good old friend's E.E. Store, who I still haven't seen.

Speaker ?: Oh, right, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You talked about them in the first episode or something. I still haven't seen anything pop up out of the news for them. And, you know, if they're working on it, if they're doing a good job, good for them. I bet they're going to become billionaires. But I don't care. I don't want to touch it. I don't have time for it. And so that's what it comes down to when it's like free energy and blah, blah, blah. Anytime there's like a technological leap and bound, you have to kind of question why it's there. And sometimes it happens, but a lot of times it's a lot of hype. Exactly. It's just a load of... Yeah.

Dave Jones: And the funny thing is the website. No, I won't put it up. I'll resist putting it up. But it has all the hallmarks of the classic free energy scam. It's very slick. It's got a guy, the inventor, doing a video supposedly to a big crowd of people showing at some conference, showing it's credible. And it's got all these telltale marketing signs, like it's marketing 101. And it's got a step-by-step guide to how to market your free energy product. And it's just classic. And, of course, the killer and the obvious thing is that to buy into it, you have to buy the development kit. You've got to send your $300 or your $500.

Chris Gammell: Well, they need to make their 30-day net payment, Dave. That's why. Right.

Dave Jones: Oh, jeez. Yeah, free energy. It's just hilarious. But no, I'm not going to touch it. So don't even bother asking me to debunk free energy stuff. People have asked many times over the last year and a half for me to do it.

Chris Gammell: I can't wait for someone to figure it out, and I don't want anything to do with it until they do. That's basically... I'd say that would be my stance on it.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And if you've got it and it works, well, freaking keep it to yourself. You don't... Last thing you want is 500 people investing in it. Yeah. God. That's true. No. You know, if it really does work, whew. You know?

Chris Gammell: That would be an interesting study, too, to see all the big breakthroughs and how often they had group investment, right? Because I would think that sometimes the group mentality would kind of squash the innovation process. If you have 500 people who all say, well, I gave you all this money. You know, give me results right now, then maybe that's not going to work. Whereas you have, you know, Steve Jobs out there making an Apple computer, and he just does it with his own money. Well, there's... All he has to answer to is himself and his stomach when he gets hungry. You know, like... Exactly. That's the only thing he gets to answer to. So, that'd be interesting to see that. I don't know if there's anything out there like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, I don't know. Yeah. Keep it to yourself. If you've got a brilliant idea, yeah. Yeah. Just go out and produce a product with it and show that it works, you know? Get people to buy it. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of new products, the... So, I talk to analog IC people a lot, right? Not a lot. That's a lie. That was an out-and-out lie. But it's kind of cool. They're actually doing some new stuff with silicon where they're using like all these RF processes they made. We talked about RF a little early in the episode. But they got this really fast silicon, you know, all these like optimized processes. Yeah. And then someone one day, their brilliant idea was, well, why don't we just make everything out of this stuff?

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: So, it's like, oh, okay. So, it's actually... We're actually going to see a lot of faster parts coming out. I don't know if you'd heard about that at all.

Dave Jones: Oh, I always get... There's always... You know, I always get some news item that IBM have come out with the world's fastest transistor or the world's fastest switching circuit or something. And, yeah, it's like, yeah, they aren't real parts that you can buy. It's more of the research kind of level.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's always the kind of interesting stuff where it's like a mature innovation so that it gets... And then it's kind of ramping up. So, now this RF process, it started out very exotic, right? It's like gallium arsenide or whatever. I mean, that's not that exotic anymore. But, you know, it's some kind of exotic element right now. So, but as that gets spread out, it's more common. It gets pushed into every product. And now everybody gets to benefit from it. So, you know, we'll see op amps with like, you know, hundreds of megahertz of bandwidth and stuff like that. So, I love that stuff. I think that's cool. I don't know. I'm not going to talk about any specific parts. But I just think it's cool if people don't know about it, go out and, you know, ask people about it or look up for articles. They're kind of pushing that. It's definitely like two or three big vendors are doing that right now.

Dave Jones: So, I like it. It reminds me actually, Cole's doco. He's actually filmed in a fab here in Sydney. Australia's only silicon fab is actually one of these exotic. I think it's, I don't quite mean it's like silicon on sapphire or sapphire on silicon or some sort of exotic process that's used in satellite, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's like the red hard. Kind of, yeah, radiation hardened, you know, extreme bandwidth sort of, you know, amplifiers and stuff like that. Badass. That's what it's called. Real badass stuff. Yeah. And he's filmed, he's shot inside that lab. So, that'll be in the doco. He's interviewed people from there and stuff like that. So, that'll all be part of the doco. So, you might see inside some one of those niche exotic manufacturing plants. Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I wonder if that's going to be cool. I wonder if that's going to like, you know, because they are like more exotic materials. If that's going to kind of exacerbate the problem right now that they're seeing with, I mean, rare earth stuff like China back down on the not exporting to Japan anymore, which is good. Oh, did they? Oh, right. I didn't hear about that. So, that's good. I mean, but, you know, there's going to be, anytime there's a valuable item, people are going to be tussling over it, right? Yeah. But I just wonder if it gets like really widespread where like, you know, everybody needs Yttrium now, right? Because Yttrium is one of the ones that gets embedded, I think, in high-end or fast semiconductors, right? Well, then what? You know, and then we can't get it anymore.

Dave Jones: I mean, so.

Chris Gammell: And then wars start. Yeah. Yeah. And then wars start. Exactly right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Maybe the wars of the 22nd century will be fought over exotic materials instead of oil. Because the oil will be gone and then they'll have to fight over something else, I guess, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oil and gases all gone. Well, then they'll fight over algae or whatever's next, right? No, I want that algae. Oh, dear. It's delicious.

Dave Jones: Anyway, you wanted to know, well, you wanted to know if people say 0.001 microfarads or 1 nanofarad.

Chris Gammell: This is not a 555 thing. This is not another survey going crazy thing. I had this on there a couple weeks now, but I hardly ever see it as nanofarad, but I mean, you see it pop up once in a while. And I just don't get why that ever happened.

Dave Jones: It's the great nanofarad debate. This was before you were itching your daddy's pants. Young kitties out there. Okay. Yeah. It's great. There never used to be a nanofarad. Yeah. I don't know. Why? It was just there were microfarads and there were picofarads and that was it. Okay. And the history is convoluted. I'm not even going to try and explain it, but yeah, I don't even know if I can, but I've read, there's been many articles on it over the decades of people trying to explain why and is the nanofarad a good thing? I can remember Silicon Chip magazine back in the 90s or something. I think they used to always use, you know, they used microfarads or picofarads and they had this big debate with the readers whether or not they should switch to nanofarads, you know, or should we switch to nanofarads? It's part of the SI index of units.

Chris Gammell: So, it's just not worth talking about, huh?

Dave Jones: It's not worth talking about. Use nanofarads, you know, but I fall back into the old...

Chris Gammell: Oh, so you're one of those, Dave.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, you know, I started electronics 30 years ago, so I, back when there were no nanofarads, so I'm still in the habit of saying 0.1 microfarads instead of 100 nanofarads, so...

Chris Gammell: Hey, Dave, can you do something for me? Yep. Repeat after me. Uh, back in my day? Back in my day, when I was a boy. Yeah. That's how you got to say that. Oh, back in my day, we didn't have nanofarads.

Chris Gammell: Back in my day, when I was a boy? You young whippersnappers didn't know about nanofarads?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's right. Anyway. Right. That's good. Yes. You know, I was... Yeah, I was looking up that, and I was looking up... I don't know why I thought of it today, but, like, why are circuit boards green, right? Stupid question. Why are circuit boards green?

Dave Jones: I think it's just the chemical, the original chemical process used... It is. ...the first chemicals they tried happened to be green. And there's no... That's exactly right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's the glass, whatever it was in there, the glass epitaxial or whatever the hell that... I don't... I think I said that wrong. But, yeah, whatever it was, it was just green. And, uh... Mm.

Dave Jones: I think it was only until the 80s or something they realized how to do other colors. They came up with a good... Yeah. ...consistent process, chemical process, to do the other... Right. Oh, I think, yeah, they eventually came out with blue was the next one or something. And then, you know, God, you couldn't get red or black or anything like that. So, it's only, you know, late 80s, probably, since you've been able to get those sort of colors. And then, Dave... And back then, it was fairly exotic.

Chris Gammell: Dave started using them everywhere. What's that?

Dave Jones: And now, it's like, yeah, you buy it from PCB carton. What color would you like, sir?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And...

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, you use those everywhere, right? That was in your video.

Dave Jones: I'm a big fan of red boards. Yeah. Red is my favorite board color at the moment. So, but I tend to switch a lot, you know.

Chris Gammell: That's good.

Dave Jones: But, yeah, it's great getting the different color solder masks. But, yeah, it's all about chemical process and getting it right. Because, yeah, they can make it, but does it turn brittle? Because back in the 70s, when I was a boy... When I was a boy! There used to be a real problem with solder masks. It would actually crack. Oh, really? It would... Yeah. If you've ever seen any of these old... You know, you get an old pinball machine board from the 70s or something like that. You would... You might often see that the solder mask sort of dries up and... Well, it looks like it, you know, like one of those dry lake beds that's all dried up and cracked. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And it just all peels off and flakes off. Yeah, because they hadn't actually perfected the chemical processes back then. So, yeah, that was a common problem. And it would wrinkle as well. You'd get bubbles in it and...

Chris Gammell: Oh, gross.

Dave Jones: All sorts of stuff. So, yeah. So, we take it for granted that we can get these nice, beautifully finished boards these days. Yeah. And cheap, too. But it wasn't always like that. So, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's great. That's really... That's an interesting historical note there. I mean, I'm glad that I looked that up. I mean, it was interesting to see why. I mean, like... I don't know. You don't... I usually don't think about that. I think it was your video that actually set that off. Then I was like, why are they green? So...

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. But, yeah, the old microfarad, nanofarad debate thing. Yeah, I think it's silly to say 0.001 microfarads. It's just, you know... It's okay to say 0.1. It's okay to go one over, you know, one back, one digit back, but not three digits. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of old timers will say 100,000 picofarads, son, you know? And, yeah. Especially a lot of the very old hams. They will... Everything will be picofarads. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Yeah. So, they'll go, oh, it's a million picofarads.

Chris Gammell: Nice.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's, yeah, that's just the way they talk, so...

Chris Gammell: 10 to the 12 picofarads.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's very interesting, so... I love it. I love the old days. Really? Yep. Yeah. Well, no. No, I wouldn't. As I've said in one of my blogs, I wouldn't trade it for... Yeah, I was going to say. I wouldn't trade the modern...

Chris Gammell: There wasn't any EEV blog back then, I'll tell you that much.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. And there... Yeah. When I was a boy, it was all data books and no internet, sonny boy. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, I was talking to some people about that because I use a wiki sometimes for documenting, which I really like. If people don't do that, it's actually really a great way to keep track of your projects. But, you know, like, you think about that, like, if you're going back through old, like, data books and stuff like that, or lab notebooks. Lab notebooks are great to keep track of stuff. But you think about it, you're flipping through a notebook from the front to the back, and you're going through development process, right? And the first 100 pages are, you know, you trying stuff out and getting stuff wrong. Well, if you stop on page 99 and page 100, you say, oh, no, no, no, no, this stuff was all wrong. Here's how you really do it. And you just stop there. That's not useful anymore. So you need some kind of, like, historical system, or you need to read everything if it's on paper. So that's why I'm grateful. I like that. I like the wiki stuff, personally. There's a lot of ways to do it, but...

Dave Jones: Yeah, absolutely. I still have an engineering notebook. I, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's good for local stuff, but, you know, eventually you should get it somewhere else, just for the historical point.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, there's so much info, though, over the years of stuff I've gone through. You know, these days, a lot of it's on post-it notes. I've got one right in front of me at the moment. I've got a circuit on a post-it note, and it'll sit there for about, about probably a month. It depends on how naggy the wife is about cleaning the desk here, but, yeah, they eventually get tossed out, all these post-it notes. And that's my entire design process is on these post-it and sticky notes. I don't know. Are they called post-it notes in the US?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. Post-it notes. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's a brand. I think that's a brand. 3M trademark or something. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Anyway. The last of our time, I wanted to ask you about Spice stuff. Yep. Go for it. I think we've talked about Spice before on here, and I remember you being not very keen on it.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It has its place. People try and do everything in it and think it's the Holy Grail. And that's just wrong, you know. No.

Chris Gammell: Well, I mean, I've been working on transformer design, and I've kind of run into a couple problems with it, just because a lot of them are kind of dodgy on how you kind of spec a transformer and leakage inductance and all that other crazy stuff in there. Do you ever... I mean, you said you don't usually do transformer stuff, but do you ever use Spice at all?

Dave Jones: I don't know. It's just not... I use LT Spice occasionally if I need to. If I, you know, I think, oh, there's a high likelihood that's not going to work, or it's not going to work the way I expect, I'll simulate it first. But yeah, I generally won't go to too much effort. I certainly won't go into the real nitty gritty detail of getting every parameter correct and stuff like that. I'll just... If it's got a generic part in the library, I'll throw it in just to see that the topology generally does what I want. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I guess that was kind of my question. Like, where do you really stop? You know, like when you... That's where I stop, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: If I have to go in and tweak the actual parameters for those parts, you know, like at a really deep...

Speaker ?: Like a model.

Dave Jones: At a model level, then no. Yeah. That's where I stop. I've gone too far, you know. Yeah. The circuits I'm doing just... It's just... It's not that I don't want to do. It's just that the stuff I'm working on doesn't warrant that. So, you know, I just want to make sure a top level topology is not going to oscillate or do something, you know, or it's just going to work or...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's kind of my question because with like... Yeah, I know. When you start getting into like L's and C's and, you know, like all the AC characteristics, that's kind of the stuff we're on real weak on. I mean, like a lot of the DC stuff... Same here, yeah. It's still difficult, but, you know, you can work it out on paper relatively easy or a whiteboard or whatever. Not easy, but you can work it out, you know, currents are moving wherever. But when you start getting into like the sine J omega kind of stuff, you know, it's like I think Mr. Computer is better at that than I am.

Dave Jones: Yeah, Mr. Computer is definitely better. Yeah. If I've got, you know, 12 transistor circuit, you know, I'm going to simulate the damn thing. It's like... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's kind of nice for that. Like for like amplifiers or something like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, or something like that. But yeah, like I said, that's very rare that I need to go to that sort of level. Very rare that I'm down doing a design that needs something like that. So...

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. You know, everyone else is different. Yeah. Like you said, if people are working on, you know, if you're an audio amplifier, dude, then, you know, you might find it's fantastic. Yeah. Distortions and stuff like that. Yeah. Your distortions, discrete transistor level, and you're going to care what the shot noise in that transistor is and all, you know, you're going to care about all sorts of stuff. So you need the correct models and the...

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Things like that. Yeah. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's usually the point. And the tough thing too is like trying to model the parasitics usually.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And that's kind of the things that I usually end up looking at is like, oh God, like, you know, you have like a op amp, right? And maybe it's bias current is high for some reason. And that actually matters in the circuit then. You know, and you can actually put that in as a separate element. but at what point is it really you know like there's sometimes that it's worth it and other times I'm just like ugh yeah I know it's just it's almost like when the cost of going out and actually plopping it down on a circuit board is high that's when it's really worth it right?

Dave Jones: absolutely yep or you can't afford to re-spin it you've got to get it right the first time so you better off spending a day just making sure that a day simulating it making sure you know it's a higher likelihood your first prototype is going to work or something like that

Chris Gammell: yeah you know going back to your video from the one you just posted the DFM I really like that you emphasize that the time up front because I wish someone would have told me that my first couple boards just like you know get it right double triple quadruple check it because you are going to get it wrong no matter what

Dave Jones: you're going to goof it up and having that going to the effort of actually producing a spreadsheet with your bill of materials you know yeah sure your CAD program spits out a bomb but it doesn't have the manufacturer's part numbers it doesn't have alternatives it doesn't have your stock levels and prices and oh yeah and you know

Chris Gammell: Waz was talking about that on Adafruit on the Ask an Engineer thing she was mentioning that too and that was interesting that was like the same week you guys brought it up so that's double plus good for that excellent

Dave Jones: well that's about time we have for the today's air power I think we're up

Chris Gammell: I think we got through a pretty good chunk we even added stuff in

Dave Jones: oh okay well yeah because I think we spent the first 20 minutes talking about something that wasn't even on the list I think we got caught up in yeah something else I can't see I can't even remember what we spoke about at the start of the show

Chris Gammell: boy you are old man you are old

Chris Gammell: I can't remember either that's the other thing I can't I have no idea oh god it's crazy actually we should tell people we have two two potential segments coming up next week that we were we're thinking about we're we don't have to tell them what it is but just check back next week yes

Dave Jones: please but yeah don't get all hyped up about it it's not that exciting it's not like we're giving away super exciting

Chris Gammell: it is the most no you're right it's not that exciting no right

Dave Jones: okay all right okay thanks for joining us everyone

Chris Gammell: yep we'll see you next week

Dave Jones: enjoy your car ride or your bike ride or your dog walk whatever it is you're listening to see ya