#20 – Military Electronics and The Free Eagle (Freagle) Campaign

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.

Chris Gammell: Hey Chris, I've heard you've got some snow there in Cleveland, Ohio.

Dave Jones: Yeah, more than we can handle around here. It's starting to really look like winter. Well, I'm in my fortress of solitude in the basement. Yeah, it is. I mean, before that, it was a warm fall. Whatever. It was, yeah, a lot of snow though. Tons of snow.

Chris Gammell: See, that's completely foreign to me. You know, I've seen snow. I've never seen snow in Sydney. I've seen it up in the mountains. Which is up at 3,000 feet. Which is where I go canyoning and stuff like that. I've seen it up there very rarely, but no, that's a foreign concept for us. Aussies really snow.

Dave Jones: Huh. That's, yeah, I don't know, man. I grew up in Buffalo too, so that was just snow all the time. Right. But, yeah, I don't mind it.

Chris Gammell: And having the white Christmas and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, yeah. Here it's, you know, sunburn and, you know.

Dave Jones: Board shorts, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Board shorts and thongs, which are not thongs, which you guys think are thongs over there. So, don't get the wrong idea.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. All right. Well, whatever.

Chris Gammell: Yes, thongs are sandals. Thongs are flip-flops, I believe you guys call them. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, whereas, yeah, over there, they're G-strings here. What you guys call thongs. Right. Anyway, let's, yep, that's not a good image.

Dave Jones: Well, of course, they'd be electronics thongs, though, or G-strings, because that's what we talk about here. No, of course, yeah. We have to talk about electronics, so, yeah. Yeah. All right. Made it relevant. We're allowed to talk about it. Awesome. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: What have we got on today's show?

Dave Jones: Well, I don't know if we have any shout-outs today, but I think we do have, bum-ba-da-bum, our first two workplaces slash workbenches of the week.

Chris Gammell: We do. Let's talk about them. First up is Mike. Yeah. And Mike's a New Zealander.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, he...

Dave Jones: A Kiwi, right? It's a Kiwi.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, a Kiwi. Just ask him to say six, and he'll say sooks.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't think we should get into the Australia-New Zealand thing. I mean, I... Oh, come on. It's gold. No. I'll let you leave that on that side of the hemisphere.

Chris Gammell: Right. This side of the pond, huh? Yeah. Fishing chubs.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Anyway, we love the New Zealand accent just as you guys love the Australian accent, so... And you mock it and all that sort of stuff. So, it's all good.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Anyway, yeah, Mike's from Ascot TV. Yeah. Yeah. In sunny Christchurch. And he's got his bench there. And there it is. Well, we'll put up the photo. You can't see it now, but obviously, while you're listening to it. And he's got the Ampour logo on the monitor. I know. Check it out. Check it out.

Dave Jones: That was very nice. That was a nice touch, Mike. So, thank you very much for that. Absolutely. Double shout out. And he said four techs are listening, too. So...

Chris Gammell: Oh, there you go. Hey, to the other techs working there at Ascot TV.

Dave Jones: Awesome. And they called you the Steve Irwin of electronics, too.

Chris Gammell: Steve Irwin of electronics. Well, yeah, that's a very American thing. I'm surprised that some New Zealanders said that, but I guess anyone other than Australian will say that. Yeah, I've had that often. The Steve Irwin of electronics. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a good thing. Now, let's, of course, take a look at his bench, shall we? Oh, yeah. Because, well, we can't just say, hey, thanks for that. No, I love looking at other people's benches. That's the whole idea of doing this thing. So...

Dave Jones: Looks like a Rigol there, maybe? Is that a... Oh, no, that's a Tech.

Chris Gammell: No, that looks like... That's a Tektronix, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's not high enough res to... The picture's not high enough resolution.

Dave Jones: Like a battery-powered 4-channel. Looks like the battery-powered, the floating kind. I like those.

Chris Gammell: Ah, the... Yeah, it could be. No, I see a black cable coming out of the back of it, but anyway... No, you need to charge it, though. You need to charge it. Right. Well, yeah, you do, but... Yep. That wouldn't surprise me for service work, actually, because those... They're very popular, those floating scopes. Yeah. And I talked about this on the live... My live EEV blog show the other day. Somebody asked, can you easily blow up a scope? And the answer is if you're... Yes, if you're working on mains-powered stuff. Yeah. Because a lot of people don't know that the B and C connectors, a lot of beginners don't know that those B and C connectors are mains-earth reference. Yeah. So, if you put that... That'll go straight through. Uh-huh. So, if you put that ground probe on anything other than a nominally mains-earth reference point in your circuit, bang! Yeah. You know? That's... Well, I'm sure he knows that well from the... I'm sure he knows that well. Especially CRTs. I mean, CRTs are so high voltage.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's awesome, though. Uh-huh. Yes. That's a great picture, so thanks to Mike for sending that in.

Chris Gammell: Yes, and he's in the shot as well, which is all... Which is a plus, yes. We want you in the... Yeah. We want you in the shot, definitely. Nice. And the... The... What was I? God. No. Mental... No.

Dave Jones: No, I've lost it. The thing that surprised me most about the picture is that people still fix CRTs. Or that fix anything. I mean, that's awesome. You know? Oh, yeah. How often are people... I don't hear about it much these days. You don't hear about... Same here. ...repair shops or anything like that. They're like, oh, just go buy a new one. No. You fix stuff like Mike's doing and all his tech buddies. That's awesome. So... I know. It's great. I love it. Kudos to him. I hope they get tons of business. I think that's a very good thing and very, you know, reducing waste and...

Chris Gammell: Absolutely. There's still a business out there for servicing stuff. I love it. It's great. Yeah. And... Oh, I remember what I was going to say now. Every beginner makes that mistake once. They hook up the ground probe and they hook up the ground clip and they blow something up. And you only ever do it once and then you learn.

Dave Jones: You know, when I was... When I started my job, I was doing... I was working on a thousand volts and I had an alligator clip on it. Probably the worst thing I ever did. And the alligator clip was on a thousand volt test point. And it just kind of fell over ever so slightly. And I got close enough to chassis and I was bent over it at the time and it sparked right in front of my face. And I nearly wet myself. It was... It was a... Yeah. It was a rough introduction to that circuit I was working on.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But you learn from those things. You do it once and you go... And you still, you know, you have vivid memories of those events and you're really, you know, it's ingrained in your memory.

Dave Jones: Either that or you die. One of the two.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's very Darwinian-like. Yeah. I love it. Now, let's take a look at what else he's got. He's got a J-Car catalogue, of course, because J-Car is big in Australia and New Zealand. So, he's got the obligatory J-Car catalogue. He's got the electronic cleaning software and the multimeter. That looks like, that looks suspiciously like the old Fluke 19. But I don't think it is. I think it's probably the newer model, which is the Fluke 17 or whatever. Because I think very few Fluke 19 still survive. Really? Because it was... Yeah. There's a history behind that. It was Fluke's first Asian-made meter. First meter made in China and they tested it in the Asia-Pacific market. So, you could buy it here in Australia and New Zealand and Malaysia and stuff, but you couldn't buy it in the US or anywhere else. So, it was... And at the time, everyone went apeshit over it because it was a Fluke, right?

Dave Jones: And it was super cheap.

Chris Gammell: And it was super cheap. You know, you could buy it for... I think it was $150 for... I'm talking 10, 12 years ago or something. So, this was a really cheap Fluke. Yeah. And it had everything on it. It had capacitance, which was pretty big at the time. And it had... Most of the features of the Fluke 87 didn't have the accuracy, though. But yeah, it was... So, it sold like hotcakes. And then, they all started dying. They... Just every meter out there started... This just mysterious fault that they started locking up and doing all sorts of weird, you know, weird and wonderful things. And I personally had four of them at work and they all failed. So, yeah. Go figure.

Dave Jones: Did you ever... Did they ever figure out why they were blowing up so much or why the 87 was so much better? Was it just like the made in China kind of thing or...?

Chris Gammell: I never really found out. I spoke to a couple of guys at Fluke and they said it used exactly the same chipset as what was used in the Fluke 87. But I believe something was killing the chipset, whether it was static or... I don't know. It's... Yeah. I never heard what the actual... What the actual problem was. And the failure mechanism, it'd be different for different people. You know, some would just go haywire and display, you know, random readings. Others would just completely die. And yeah. Yeah. But as I said, I had four meters at work and all of them died. And then everyone on the forums were saying the same thing. And yeah. It was practically every Fluke 19 out there eventually failed. So, if you're still using a Fluke 19, so if...

Dave Jones: Yeah. If you have it, save it and it'll be a relic. It'll go in the museum.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. I actually sold mine. I actually kept three of them, the faulty ones. And I eventually just sold them on eBay. I should have just kept them for, you know, dissection or something like that. So... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was before the blog though. That was many years ago. Because this model came out, oh, it'd have to be 10 years ago now, probably at least. Yeah. And so, yeah, that's it. That looks like a Fluke 19. So, the new Fluke's actually styled after that Fluke 19. That started the whole new trend of Fluke styling and stuff like that. So...

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's an interesting story, the Fluke 19. And what else has Mike got on here on his bench? I see a Bob Parker, the famous Bob Parker ESR meter as well. Oh, yeah. That's a little box sitting next to the... Oh, the gray one? Sitting next to the meter there. It's actually black. The little black.

Dave Jones: Black one. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's a little tiny black box sitting next to the multimeter there. That's the famous Bob Parker ESR meter. I've never seen that. And every service tech has one of those. Yeah. So, yeah. Nice. Hugely popular. He sold tens of thousands of those things.

Dave Jones: Wow. So, perhaps someday there'll be the Dave Jones meter. Who knows?

Chris Gammell: Right. Yes. Yeah. He gets his name sort of associated with it all the time. It's not just, you know, the EA. Well, it was known because he got published in EA back in the day and then it was republished in Silicon Chip Magazine about five years ago or something. So, it's the Bob Parker ESR meter. But now there's lots of others on the market now. So, I think his sales are dwindling with that thing. But, yeah. Unfortunately, he didn't. This is a good example for you people out there if you're thinking about getting into the kit business and doing that sort of stuff. He didn't actually sell this kit himself. He just sold the pre-programmed Zilog microcontroller. It was a Z8 microcontroller. Oh, wow. Yeah. And he just sold that for a couple of bucks to the likes of Dick Smith. And Dick Smith sold tens of thousands of these kits. So, he made, and he sold it really cheaply, this pre-programmed micro. So, you know, sure, he made a couple of tens of thousands of dollars on it. But, oh, no. I can assure you that the amount of money that, you know, each kit was like 80 bucks or something, you know. So, they're the ones who made all the money. Dick Smith, it wasn't poor old Bob Parker. So, yep. Yeah. If you, maybe, maybe he, maybe he's an avid Ampower, not watcher, listener.

Dave Jones: Listener, right, right.

Chris Gammell: I keep getting confused with all these different mediums, you know. There's only two of them, video and audio, but.

Dave Jones: Right. What about the other workplace or workbench of the week, I guess? We have, who's the other one? It was David. David from Delta Q Technologies. Hey, Dave. Vancouver. Yeah. Thanks for the shout out, Dave.

Chris Gammell: Vancouver. I love Vancouver. One of my favorite cities.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, it's a great city. And yeah, so he took a picture of like all his benches. It seems like him and his dad have a, you know, pretty badass workshop there. Yeah. And I think his main bench, he said he's, he's doing, so he actually got me looking at stuff because he was talking about one of his pet projects is going to be making an all-electric DeLorean. Did you see that?

Chris Gammell: Right. Oh, is he the one, he's the one that's doing the DeLorean, is he?

Dave Jones: He's talking about it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right. He's talking about doing one. Right.

Dave Jones: Right. And so I started looking at it and it's actually, it is out there, not to discourage David because obviously there's tons of different things you could do with that. But I looked out there and I, I'm going to post a link to the one that's out there. I think it's just electricdeLorean.com. Yeah. But yeah, it looks awesome. It's great. They refurbed an old one and, and filled the trunk and the, and the, and the hood with batteries and it looks nice. It's really cool.

Chris Gammell: I know. It's awesome. I'd love to do that. I'd love to. Ah, it's my dream. So, yeah. ElectricdeLorean. So, yeah, excellent. I hope that turns out, Dave, and I'm sure we can, I'm sure, I'm sure if you do it, we can post all the details and stuff like everyone would love to hear about it. So, yeah. Yeah. And there he is in the photo giving a big thumbs up with a cat in the background. I'm sorry, but you get a thumbs down for the cat. I'm a cat hater. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm outing myself as a cat hater. Oh, we all know you don't like cats. I'm a dog lover. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And he's got the, yeah, the 555 timer shirt on too, I think.

Chris Gammell: He's got my 555 timer shirt. Yes, he does. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So, thanks for buying the merch. Yeah. We, we haven't got any Ampower merch yet. Sorry.

Dave Jones: No. No, that's okay. I don't think, I don't know how people wore that out in public if anyone would know what was going on there. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Chris Gammell: I wear mine in public and people just, you know, give me weird stares and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, what can you do? Yeah. So, anyways, thanks to Mike and David. And, and if other people, like Dave said, you know, that's a, they're, they're both very good examples of, you know, the kind of stuff we're looking for. I'm going to see your bench. You want to see you in front of your bench, you know, smiling, giving a thumbs up, doesn't matter what. And, uh, not mooning. Dave said that last time. Not mooning.

Chris Gammell: No, thank you. Yeah. And, uh, girls, we would love to see some girls too.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, of course. Of course. The, uh, in the nicest possible way, of course. What's that? In the nicest possible way. Oh yeah. Yeah. Uh, so other things that I wanted to talk about with posting. So some of our, uh, Dave and I had been talking about this for, for posting your questions or your suggestions. I put up a widget on the suggestions page and basically what it does is it just takes you to my voicemail. Uh, so it's a really crude way for people to give questions, but basically in that way we, cause we, you know, we don't record live. We've, we have enough technical troubles as it is, right Dave? Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Gammell: Yes. We've already had a few today. Yeah. Yeah. This may be the quarter ramp hour this week. Yeah. It's more than a few actually. So we're actually back on Skype at the moment because we had to ditch, uh, ditch Google chat, Google voice or whatever it's called.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But anyways, you can call into, uh, that voicemail. It'll prompt you, you know, to record a question or suggestion and yeah, and we'll get your voice in the air and then we'll be able to answer the question like that. So if you're interested in doing that kind of thing, if you have a question or a suggestion, just go ahead and use that. And if we come up with a better solution later, we'll try that because the quality is, it's

Chris Gammell: just so, so, but yeah, it's not that great, but anyway, it'll, it's a start. Yeah. And

Dave Jones: I mean, if you ever want to, you know, send in an MP3 of your voice too, we can always use that too. So if you're a little more tech savvy, if not, it'll call your phone and it'll just record a voicemail through there. So a new thing. How about some, uh, Oh, go ahead.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I, I just wanted to do a quick talk about Dave's bench because we've talked about Mike's one and I see an, an Agilent and well, it was HP at the time, a five, four, six, two, one mixed signal scope there. I love that scope. I used to have one of those in, in my lab before I sold it. And, uh, he's got a fluke, uh, one eight nine or a two eight nine, by the looks of it there. And, uh, Weller soldering iron. Yeah. That, that, that looks like the old Weller sort of blue sort of flat slopey face. I can't see the front of it, but, uh, yeah, that screams Weller to me. Oh yes, I can see it now. I've zoomed in and, uh, yeah, he's got a, Oh, he's got a, uh, that looks like a Pro-Tech 506 multimeter there as well.

Dave Jones: So, and, and. Perhaps maybe if people start sending in pictures with all the test equipment

Chris Gammell: blurred out, that would be good for Dave. Blurred out and we can try and identify. We

Dave Jones: could actually get something else done because Dave is going bonkers right here. He loves

Chris Gammell: this. This is the real reason we're doing this. I just love, absolutely. I love looking at what

Dave Jones: other people have got. See, now I like that. You see that, is that a huge motor underneath

Chris Gammell: the bench? Um, that is, that's a big ass, some sort of big ass motor. I have no idea what, uh, what it does, but, um, yeah, it's doing something serious. Well, he said in his post

Dave Jones: too, that he, he works on AC motor. So that's pretty awesome. Oh, there you go. So yeah,

Chris Gammell: he's a motor guy. And yeah, that's awesome. And in the true tradition of every electronics person, he has a second workshop in his study where his computer is. So he's got like a little, uh, he's, he's got actually, yeah. And, um, he's got actually got another, um, infinian scope in there. So he's well set up with scopes. Definitely. So, um, yeah, geez, I wish I had a, um, and a HP agilent infinian scope in my, uh, study. That's for sure. That'd be nice. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's awesome. And that looks like some sort of, uh, weird brand pulse generator or something there as well. And he's got a big CRT monitor sitting, sitting on top of that. But yeah, everyone's got to have a second, uh, a second workbench in this study because I do, you know, because a lot of projects are all PC based these days and you're all, they're small. So you work on them and they hook up to USB, the computer, whatever, you know, or you're writing firmware and you want to download it. So you sit in your nice comfy study instead of out in your workshop and you work from there. So I, I do a lot of work in my study here. I drag my oscilloscope in. I don't have a second one that I drag into the study. The wife doesn't, the wife makes me keep the study pretty clean. So yeah. Yeah. Ah, so that's excellent. Thanks for that, Dave. Yeah. Oh, and, and if you check out the mechanical bench, that's a real mechanical bench. Yes. It's just filled with crap. I love it. And I'm jealous cause I don't have a mechanical bench really. I just don't have working room in the EV blog lab. So I don't even have a vice, you know, I feel so unmanly without a vice.

Dave Jones: You don't have a vice that's not hooked up right now. It's like not to do that thing. So it's

Chris Gammell: worthless. Right. Well, at least you've got a vice. I don't even have one. So yeah,

Dave Jones: even freestanding. That's great. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Anyway. So thanks guys for sending those in. And if you want to get, um, uh, mentioned on the amp hour, please send in your photos and make sure you're in the photo and girls, we want to see your workshop too. So everyone is welcome. Uh, let's see what else, what else

Dave Jones: we got this week? Uh, man, tons of stuff, not tons of stuff. Well, some follow-ups though. So one of the things from, uh, so I've been posting some of our posts on LinkedIn because I'd really like to hear more people or, you know, you know, some more people from industry because we love our hobbyist friends and, uh, we think we have some appeal in industry too. And I think there's some listeners out there, but anyways, uh, you know, you can get to the, the older crowd by going through LinkedIn and I posted the, the, I think it was episode 17 about the transistor types. And one of the guys on there, he posted a link to, uh, there's still cross-reference data sheets available for transistors, which I didn't know about. And you can actually still get them in print. You can order them in print or you can just get a CD or you can just go download them for free, I think. So we'll post a link to that.

Chris Gammell: That doesn't surprise me too much really, because you know, it's still a needed service for guys like Mike who are service techs, you know, they, they come across transistor designs all the time in, you know, TVs and, and, you know, radios and amplifiers and all that sort of stuff. So yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, well, the way this guy was talking about it, it was more of a, it used to be like a huge industry, kind of like this, this, whoever was doing this was, was banking on it, you know, and now it's not as big of a, uh, industry, you know, there's still, there is a need, like you said, but it's not quite as big.

Chris Gammell: No, no, it's not nearly as big as it was back in the eighties or some seventies, eighties. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's great, you know, awesome link. And, uh, we'll post that up there. Uh, another one was from Frank. He posted about the, so we were talking, I think last time or two times ago about, about CAD programs. Oh, by the way, this is a episode 20. We made

Chris Gammell: it to 20, by the way. Woohoo. Yeah. Hey, all right. Hey, we'll celebrate it. It's our

Dave Jones: 32, which is binary multiple. So yeah. Uh, I like base 10 personally, but anyway. Oh, right. Okay. Well, yeah. All right. All right. I'll celebrate on my own afterwards. I'll have a beer. Okay. Uh, so Frank posted about, because we were talking about user, user interface design and also, you know, going to CAD programs, how, you know, you were saying you'd love to have a huge table where you can interact and stuff. And he talked about a 3d sketch program where you had like a tablet and it interpreted the, the actual sketches. So this was a prototype sketch program called I love sketch. So I don't know. It's kind of

Chris Gammell: cool. I didn't really dig into it too much, but I didn't see the details, but yeah, you draw on the screen. It's like, you know, with one of those pens, like a touchscreen tablet. A stylus. Yeah. A stylus. Yes, that's correct. And they're, they're big in the art world. You know, you see all these artists and you know, all the people who draw comics these days, they don't draw it with pencil anymore. They sit there with their big tablet, you know, at their desk and it's raised to a certain angle and they just draw it on the screen. And Oh, I didn't know that. Yep. Yeah. That's cool. Actually, there's a, um, there's a YouTube video of, uh, Dilbert being, uh, drawn. So I'll have to, Oh yeah. I'll have to post a link to that. Yeah. He, you can actually watch him draw Dilbert and it's fascinating. It takes him about an hour to draw one of them or something like that. And it's like a time-lapse kind of thing of him drawing, uh, Dilbert. So we'll, we'll definitely have to post that one in. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Or link it. That's really cool. I've never seen that. Hmm. I mean, Dilbert gets a lot of, Dilbert gets a lot of exposure in the, uh, like even professionally, I think.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's because it's so spot on. I, I get the automatic email alert every day and I look forward to it opening my inbox. There's my Dilbert, you know, and, and it's just spot on. I can relate to every single one of those. And that's why it's so popular. I think, cause everyone's, you know, everyone's had a boss like that, you know, like the pointy head boss or something. And it's just, uh, every situation is gold. So I don't know where it gets them from,

Dave Jones: but yeah, I think a lot of them are suggestions and stuff. I think they're suggestions. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: They must be, but I haven't seen any place where you can actually suggest stuff to him. So I don't

Dave Jones: know. I think it just, people find his email, email them or something direct. I think he,

Chris Gammell: cause he started out putting his email on the actual street itself and yeah, he probably gets

Dave Jones: more emails than he can handle. Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, oh crap. Oh yeah. His blog is really popular too. He has like, he's very, very opinionated. If people, I mean, I think like to the point, like people get angry at him. So if you, uh, you know, well, if you, if you don't like opinionated, you probably aren't listening to us, but, uh, uh, but yeah, yeah. He's, he's got a great blog and it's some interesting stuff on there. He does like some like, like kind of interesting stuff with like, like sociological studies using social media stuff. And like, okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So I'm going to have to check that out. I've never, I didn't know he actually did a regular blog. Yeah, he does. Yeah. Jeez. Okay. I'll definitely check that one out. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Uh, and I had another followup on here. Another, another of our favorite talking, talking point.

Chris Gammell: Me, me and Dave went, continued on making your own chips, continued on past. And I had,

Dave Jones: I had Jerry Ellsworth behind me. I believe, uh, who else? John Oxer from Freetronics would back me up on this. So I think it's many against one. If, if there's supporters of Dave out there,

Chris Gammell: we can start a campaign. Nobody has picked apart my argument. Nobody, not a single person. Well, here it comes. Everyone's saying, yeah, it's possible. You know, yeah, it's going to happen. And yeah, we all live in fairy land and utopia land and all that sort of stuff. And we're going to be producing our own chips in our own backyard. And, oh, look, go through. I've put all my arguments and points on the, uh, amp hour comments for that. Yeah. So just nobody's tried to pick them apart yet because they can't. That's why. So anyway, I, I've said, I've set down the challenge, go and do it. Okay. And anyway, you go on, you've, you've got yet another proof.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I have a chip in your armor. What about obsolescence? Because chip vendors, we've talked about it on here before. Chip vendors are ruthless about if you have a low volume production kind of thing, which would actually be a very good target for this, right? You're not going to be doing high volume manufacturing in your garage or basement. You're going to be doing low volume and you need custom maybe to keep it even, to keep the IP relatively more difficult to get to. You know, right now people, you know, and actually the, the link I, I, that, that inspired this was, uh, the fact that, you know, Zilog, who you talked about with the Z8 and that, uh, that, uh, Bob Parker meter, they just got rid of that thing. You can't find a Z8 anymore. And now my, uh, who is it? Uh, I, XS, I X Y S the, the, uh, the FET manufacturer, they bought them now and they're, you know, reviving a bunch of stuff. Anyway, you wouldn't need any of that stuff if you were making your own chips, right? I mean, like what's the argument

Chris Gammell: against that? Of course, but there's no argument against that at all. My argument is purely based on the practicality. No, the practical, not the economics of it, the practicality of it. It is so last week, right? You could try to compare it to the maker bot, right? It's insane. Making your own chip is orders and orders of magnitude more complex than just extruding a bit of plastic with an X Y stepper motor. Okay. It's just go and look at the, this is where my argument comes in. It's just so the chemical processes needed are so complex, right? That it's just not going to happen. It's not going to be practical. I'm not saying it's not possible. Don't get me wrong. You know, I'm sure you can definitely make your own chip in your own backyard, right? But it won't be practical. There's so many steps involved. That's why these fab houses that make these chips cost hundreds of millions of dollars at a minimum. All right. There's a reason for it. It's, you know, it's, you can't compare it to the maker bot, which is just extruding a bit of plastic. Okay. And you used to be, you can buy those before the maker bot came along. You could buy those machines for $5,000, right? Or $10,000. And the maker bot was just, just, you know, it didn't come out with a new process. Okay. I get that. You know, making your own chips will always be complex.

Dave Jones: That's fine. I'm just saying this is an argument for it. I think this is an argument for it. Low volume, you know, you want to have, you know, in perpetuity, you want to be able to make this thing. I think that's the argument for it.

Chris Gammell: It is one of the arguments for it, but I will counter argue by saying that if you're trying to make your own chips because you want to keep that chip viable, then this is an age old problem, right? You're probably going down the wrong path. Okay. You're better off just taking the hit and redesigning it for another part. This is an age old problem, right? It's been going on for 50 years and it's not just chips. It's semiconductors or some little mechanical widget or passive, anything like that, right? So what, you're going to go out and make your own capacitor because they don't make some weird ass, you know, 0.01% tolerance cap you wanted with, you know, 0, you know, drift and all that sort of crap. I mean, it's an age old problem and solving it by trying to manufacture your own chips, which is probably the most complex process in electronics engineering today, manufacturing process. Well, I think it's just madness. I'm sorry. That's, oh God, nah, you're really pushing shit up here with

Dave Jones: pointy stick there. Argument continues. I think that's where we're going to go with this one.

Chris Gammell: Argument continues. Come on, people. There must be somebody out there who agrees that it's just not really going to be practical. If there are any people that agree with Dave, we would

Dave Jones: like to hear in the comments, please. Or, you know, you can call in now. You can call in

Chris Gammell: and, you know, argue your case and we'll cut it in. And none of this airy-fairy pie-in-the-sky shit, right? I want, I want reason, you know, practical reasons why it's going to be cheap, cheap enough and viable enough and simple enough to manufacture chips in your own home. And we're talking about your own home here, right? Let's not spread the argument to, right, oh, you're a semi-large company and you want to, you know, there's people been talking about buying surplus gear from, you know, fabs that are closing down and stuff like that. No, that's, you know, that's not part of the argument.

Dave Jones: No, you're right. That doesn't count. I think, I don't think your own home though, because that puts a budgetary price on. I mean, obviously, like you said, there's a difference in price between like a make or a bot. Surely, I win. There you go. You just

Chris Gammell: admitted, right, that your own home isn't really viable because it requires so many processes.

Dave Jones: It's crazy. What? Did the Skype feed cut out? Did I finish? Did I finish there, Dave? I don't think so, man. I'm fucking in as usual. No, I'm saying that it should be a low volume workplace where there's actually a little bit of cash. I don't think anyone's saying that it's going to cost $1,000 tomorrow. No one's saying it's going to be the next maker bot. But, you know, in industry, there are low volume manufacturing cases where it makes sense.

Chris Gammell: Well, there are. I'm not going to argue that point. There are people like military companies who have to still keep these, manufacture these chips going. And there's companies out there who will cater for that. We've talked about this before. They will actually still make the, you know, the 888 processor or something because it's used in some, you know, space shuttle or something like that. Right, right. And there's a market for another 10 of them. So, they will actually produce them at, you know, $10,000 a chip or something like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, because I don't see, the reason for my argument is that I don't see any technology on the horizon or even pie in the sky stuff that will instantly make chips simple to manufacture. That gets rid of all the chemical processes, right? We've got Jerry Osworth has made a point contact transistor and that's great. Okay. And that happened with, you know, noise, you know, I mean, with the, you know, Schottky and Barden, you know, how long ago was it? 50, 60 years ago now, right? And it's taken all this time to perfect chip manufacturing. Well, it took, you know, 20 years or something to produce chip manufacturing. And, you know, this is the best mines, the best companies in the business. And it took them, you know, how many processes and how many hundreds of millions of dollars to build these fab plants? To think that somebody's going to come up with some concept that can make a silicon chip on a little XY plotter is, I don't, with hardly any of these nasty chemicals they use, it's crazy. Come on, you've worked in the chip fab, right? You know what nasty chemicals are. Tell us about the nasty chemicals. I think we've talked about it before.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we've talked about sulfur hexafluoride. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just one of the nasty chemicals, right? There's much worse ones, yeah. Yeah. Free radicals, blah, blah, blah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And you're talking about doing that in your own home. And then how do you do the bond wires? How do you get the bond wires on there? Okay, fine. Okay. And then how do you package it? How do you encapsulate it? Well, actually, the encapsulation is probably the easiest part, actually. There's a tip out there for you if you want to go out and try and do it. I reckon the encapsulation is not hard at all. Just get some clear epoxy stuff and, you know, away you go. But imagine working under your microscope just attaching each little bond wire to your homemade chip. It's like...

Dave Jones: This is almost worse than you seeing test equipment as me bringing this up again.

Chris Gammell: Well, you did it. You bought it up.

Dave Jones: I asked for it. I asked for it. You asked for it. You know, you mentioned... In the best context switch I can possibly have, you mentioned military electronics. And there's something I want to talk about military electronics. Go for it. They, uh... I saw an article the other day. They started putting microchips into grenades.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yes. I've seen this. Did you see that? We weren't... I guess we shouldn't talk too much about it. But yeah, the... Basically, it's a little smart bullet or a smart grenade that is set to explode at a certain distance. You can dial in the distance you want, laser rangefinder, and... Well, it...

Dave Jones: Ugh. Well, let's talk about it. I mean, like, what don't you want to talk about? I don't get it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well, well, well, because it's talking about war and all that sort of stuff and how it changes the paradigm of war now. Because you... Essentially, you can't hide anymore, right? You can't hide in your trench. Oh, yeah. You can't hide behind your wall. You know?

Dave Jones: I think the relevant question here is more of an, uh, you know... How about that question? How about... Would you ever work for a military manufacturer? Would you ever work for a weapons manufacturer? I think... I've talked to co-workers about that before.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So have I. It's come up. I know people who flatly refuse to work on weapons. And I'm probably one of them. As cool as weapons might be, I probably... I feel bad enough working in the oil survey industry being a greenie. You know? I feel like, oh, yeah, I can't believe I used to work on designing oil survey gear, you know? Right, right. And I feel bad enough about that.

Dave Jones: Well, you designed it safely, though, right? I mean, you made sure no oil...

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah. Ours was the world's eco-friendliest oil survey gear. You know? It was very... Yeah. Because actually, just the act of searching for oil actually dumps oil into the ocean, because the cables used to be oil-filled. Yeah. And our one was a nice, solid one. So it was designed as an eco product. It won the Australian Design Award and all sorts of stuff. So...

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Anyway...

Dave Jones: Yeah. I don't know. I've talked about that with friends, though, before. And, you know, because it's kind of like where you start to draw the line there, because, well, if... Okay, so I'm working on... Say I'm working on a piece of test equipment, long shot, right? And the test equipment is then used to, you know, test out a missile, and the missile then goes and blows someone up. Now, that's two steps removed. Do I say that I'm, you know... Am I okay with that? Now, say I move one step closer now. Maybe I'm a, you know, a sheet metal former for a missile, right? Instead, say I'm not working electronics. But I'm still making a casing for, you know, a missile. So I don't know. I don't know where that stuff stops. Because like you said, you know, they get a lot of research dollars. They do some cool stuff. And I don't know what the answer is to that, because I've never really been approached

Chris Gammell: by it, but... Well, I have. And the answer... Oh, you have? Yeah, the answer is obviously the one step removed. If you're directly working on that military project, then, you know, you are producing the missile or whatever. You know, we're at the company I used to work for. We produced a... We... Not a missile, but we produced a torpedo, right? But I never worked on that actual project. But there it was. I walked past it every day. Well, that's another question. I mean, do you work for a company that takes money from... I used to work for one of the world's largest defense manufacturers, Tally's, right? They're a French. They're the world's... Well, the French is... I think they were the world's biggest at one stage. Yeah. So I used to work for them. But they do everything. You know, they do oil survey. They do the garden. They do the Magellan GPS receivers. They do... Oh, yeah. They're so... Such a huge conglomerate that, you know, I didn't really care about that aspect that I was working for essentially a military company. But the fact that I wasn't working on a... You know, I wasn't actually working on a military... You know, I wasn't working on a missile or something like that. Right, right, right. Or this new smart bullet. So I didn't care about it. And I don't think... Right. You know, you talked about, you know, you design an oscilloscope or something and it could be used for something like that. Or you're working at microchip and that chip is used in... Yeah, yeah. You know, a missile. I... If you worry about that, well, you may as well go be in the bush. You may as well not be in the industry. Go be a sheep farmer, right? Yeah, exactly. Herd sheep for a living. I mean, that's just... You can't worry about that. Yeah. You can't worry about... That's a good point. That's just nuts. It's... You know...

Dave Jones: The other thing I've heard before, too, is, you know, because there is a very legitimate flip side, I think. And, you know, you say, well, yes, this, you know, X, you know, missile might be hurting people, but on the same time, it's protecting other people. So that kind of just becomes a whole other gray area of ethics and... I don't know. Maybe that's not an amp hour thing, but... Yeah, I know. I think a lot of our listeners are approached by this kind of thing. I think, yeah, you got to make your own decision, but it's tough. It's real tough because there's a lot of jobs there. There's a ton of jobs there. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think a lot of people actually approach it from that aspect. As you say, well, it's used as defense. It's helping defend our country. And I think a lot of Americans who work... It's American industrial military machine. It's massive. Yeah, it's monstrous. It's just, you know, it's the biggest in the world. So how many millions of engineers in the US working on some sort of military, you know, weapon or something like that?

Dave Jones: And that drives other demand, too, right? We can't discount that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, don't get us wrong. It's, you know...

Dave Jones: If they need chips, then they get chips, right?

Chris Gammell: As much as I hate war and everything else, it's, you know, it does help the industry. If you set everything else aside, it, you know, it's good for the industry as a whole. So, but yeah, there's a lot of people, I think, who use that as the excuse to live with themselves or, you know, to, I guess, not live with them. Anyway, you know what I mean? To make themselves feel better about, you know... Right. Justification would be the... Yeah, I'm working on defense. This missile defends the United States, you know. Right. Right. Or anyone, really. I mean... Yeah. Yeah. It's...

Dave Jones: Yeah. Might have to bring back our... Dave says something nice about the US segment. Do you remember that segment?

Chris Gammell: Well, no. It's, you know, the US is a prime example here because it's...

Dave Jones: No, I know. Yeah. It's probably the bigger example, the biggest example, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the world's biggest example of the military manufacturing machine. Here in Australia, we do do, you know, some stuff. I've worked for a company that does it, but, yeah, it's quite small, small time compared to the US, that's for sure. Yeah. So, hey, leave some comments. If you're working on a... Are you working on a missile? You know, are you working on... And we're talking about a weapon. Not like I was. Yeah, I work in a military company, but I'm working on, you know, sweeping the bins or doing... Right, right. Yeah. If you're working on a weapon, that's... You know.

Dave Jones: That's interesting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Are you actually designing something?

Dave Jones: I would be interested just to hear about the kind of the culture around it, too. You know, oh, hey, we had a really great quarter. You know, we shipped X number of missiles, right? To Iran or somewhere. I mean, to whoever, right? I mean, like, I don't know how that works. Yeah, well, exactly. Yeah. Is it a different kind of engineering culture? Is it just kind of like people keep to themselves and get the work done? I mean, I'd be very interested in that kind of thing. And probably they're not going to be able to take pictures in front of their benches.

Chris Gammell: No, I'm sure we're not. And how do you feel about your weapons ending up in the wrong hands? Because, you know, the US military is armed, who are now some of their enemies, like, you know, Osama bin Laden. The US armed him back in the 80s to fight the Soviets. So, you know, your weapons could be in his hands. How do you feel about that?

Dave Jones: Did you ever see the Iron Man movie?

Chris Gammell: Yes. Love Iron Man.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, I mean, that's the same kind of thing that he runs into, right? Same thing, yeah. Probably one of the better examples of engineering, not role models, because obviously the guy was a dog, but, you know. But cool. He's stupid. Yeah, but yeah, a good exposure for engineering as, hey, isn't this awesome kind of thing. Although in the second movie, it was a little ridiculous. Yeah. Just since we're hopping into popular culture right there. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think that's a great example. You know, if he realized his weapons, you know, they ended up in the wrong hands and, you know, yeah, they could be used for bad things.

Dave Jones: Homework this week for all Amp Hour listeners. Go watch Iron Man. So, there was another military-related kind of thing I wanted to talk about. Did you see the thing about that virus, basically, that was an army?

Chris Gammell: Yes, yeah. Somebody wrote a virus that took out the Iranian nuclear facility or something. It was, I was reading about it.

Dave Jones: Or tried to or something, yeah. I was flabbergasted at how, I mean, obviously, we talk about hardware a little bit more on here, but there are some software junkies, too. And whoever did this, oh, oh my God. Like, did you read the details on it?

Chris Gammell: No, I haven't actually gone into the gruesome details of what it actually did.

Dave Jones: Basically, it's a virus that carpeted the entire world. This virus was found everywhere. It had to jump an air gap. So, someone had to load it from a USB stick onto this thing because there was no internet connection on the centrifuge. And then it had to recognize, okay, now I'm on a centrifuge. It has X, Y, Z, you know, different machines attached to it. And then it implements this complicated algorithm to just subtly ruin experiments over the course of a year.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's insane.

Dave Jones: However you feel about the politics of a nuclear whatever, that is some badass programming. Like, that is like, who comes up with that stuff?

Chris Gammell: Someone at the NSA, maybe?

Dave Jones: I guess so. You know, hearing about that and then a USB driver not working on my computer, that just is kind of depressing, I gotta say.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: It was like, where's that guy? That is some impressive. Oh, it's so impressive.

Chris Gammell: Software engineering, that's just incredible.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I am so impressed. I doubt they're listening. I doubt they will ever hear me, but you have one fan. And I'm sure it's not just one person either. You know it's a whole army of, you know, hackers or whatever it is. It honestly sounded fake. Talking about movies, Iron Man before, you know, there's some ludicrous stuff in Iron Man. This movie about the hacking into this Iranian centrifuge is ludicrous movie, but I loved it.

Chris Gammell: It's very Hollywood-ish, isn't it?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. It definitely is. Yeah. Yeah. It was awesome. So, I'll post the link. It's a Fox News link. I'm not a big fan of Fox News, but whatever. No. It's a well-written article, and it's definitely worth reading. So, check it out. Right. And I don't know about you, Dave, but I'm done talking about war for now.

Chris Gammell: Yep. I think that'll pretty much do it, unless you want to go to battle again over the chip manufacturing.

Dave Jones: That is a war for another day. That is a battle for another day, yes.

Chris Gammell: How about we talk about little embedded companies being overtaken by the big players? Yeah. You wanted to talk about this.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, Mentor got bought, or they've been buying two different open source people. I'm not sure. They're both embedded companies. But, you know, Mentor's huge. They're a huge company. And they grow by buying and sucking in more companies now. Yeah. But it's interesting that it's open source, you know, like the fact that, hey, we really, and they say that they were talking about they were targeting it. You know, they said this will significantly increase the value because it's open source.

Chris Gammell: Well, they've actually said, you know, this is a direct quote. We believe that the future of embedded software development depends on the wide availability of open source software and tools. And, you know, this is coming from the general manager of Mentor Graphics, who are one of the absolute monsters in the EDA industry, who have built their entire companies around charging millions of dollars for such convoluted and complex software. I know. It's a complete paradigm shift, you know, to hear them say it. But, well, it's big. You know, you hear Microsoft say it these days, don't they? I know, yeah. You know, there's all these big companies are realizing, well, you know, if we can't beat them, let's join them and we can make some money out of it by selling services instead.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, that's definitely the target area. That is definitely the target area. And, I mean, that's probably the eventual future from hardware, too. I mean, a lot of companies already do open up their reference designs, some more than others, some less than people would like. But, I mean, we'll probably see more and more adoption of that because, much like the social media stuff, they see this as a, hey, free work, right? I mean, it's not always true.

Chris Gammell: It's snowballing big time. It's just, you know, a lot of companies are falling behind. As soon as one starts, you know, then their competitors go, oh, you know, do they know something we don't? Oh, we better jump on the bandwagon, you know? It reminds me of the, you know, the Element 14 Design Spark battle, you know? They're almost copying each other tit for tat in terms of website features and free PCB tool. You know, one came out with free PCB tool. Oh, we better do that. Yeah. You know?

Dave Jones: And we got a response from them over your dislike of the FAQ last week.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, we, I, well, I hammered RS Design Spark last week on the show that, you know, they, they're, you couldn't find any info about their PCB tool. You went to their website and it's like, well, there's no, and their FAQ sucked and, well, they, they listened to the amp hour. Thanks, guys. And they said, oh, yeah, we agree. We're going to fix it and thanks for the feedback and all that sort of stuff. So, I don't think they've fixed it yet, have they? No, I don't believe so. So, anyway, I know they've put some info on there. They've actually updated their, if you go to designspark.com slash PCB. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's actually some info there. But once again, they don't actually tell you, you know, they say it's, I think, made by a big, it's written by a big PCB design company with decades of experience. Well, who? I know who it is. It's number one systems, right? Yeah. If you go to number one systemside.com or whoever it is, they're the ones who write the design spark software. Yeah, yeah. But they're not promoting that. They're sort of, you know. Right, it's the buy, resell or the OEM. Yeah. The OEM.

Dave Jones: Blah, blah, blah.

Chris Gammell: And they're not directing them, you, to their website where if you want to go buy the pro version or something. But I guess, I don't know. Maybe they're not going to sell it anymore because the RS Design Spark, unlike the Element 14 one. Come on, get off your ass, Element 14 with Eagle, right? Yeah. The Design Spark one is completely free. No size limitations, as I banged on about last week. Yeah. There's no limit to the size of the board. There's no limit to the layers. It's the full package. It's the whole shebang. Yeah. Whereas Eagle is still pushing that old two, the free version's only two layers and, you know, 160.

Dave Jones: We want Freegal. That's going to be our rallying cry. We want Freegal.

Chris Gammell: Oh, Freegal.org. There we go. I'm sure it's not taken. Let's go and register the domain.

Chris Gammell: There we go. Free Eagle. Free Eagle. Free Eagle. Free Eagle.

Dave Jones: Free Eagle. Free Eagle.

Chris Gammell: I love it. All right. So, yeah, I actually predicted that right at the start when as soon as the RS Design Spark came out, I predicted that I tweeted it, I think. You can go look it up probably, that I predicted Eagle would eventually be totally free. They will keep outdoing each other in the free stakes until both packages are, without limitation, completely free. So, RS Design Spark have made the first move and, yeah, Eagle, I think, will eventually follow and they should.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But that's great. They actually listen. So, they appreciate feedback and they wanted feedback on the website too because they admitted, essentially admitted, that they don't really know what they're kind of doing with the website. They've just, yeah, they just, you know, bought a package and it does everything but they're asking for feedback to help, you know. Yeah, that's great. As long as they're listening, that's a good sign.

Dave Jones: So, more power too.

Chris Gammell: And I've, yeah, I've got so much feedback on the website because, you know, it's, and the blog and how it works and the forum, you know, you need a proper BBS forum for a start. People don't want this blog format for Q&A.

Dave Jones: It's okay to try new stuff. I think it's okay to try new stuff.

Chris Gammell: No, no, I don't like it. The format is terrible. People prefer a nice...

Dave Jones: You're not a codger, Dave. Come on, man.

Chris Gammell: No, you can't. Be willing to try something new. You know, there's no threaded comments. You can't... Okay, threaded. Nice, powerful BBS forum.

Dave Jones: You know me. I like the stack exchange kind of. I like that kind of style.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, you know, they can do a lot better than what they're doing because they bought this one package. It's the same as, I'm sure it's the same bloody package as Element 14, you know, and it just does everything.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And it's a jack of all trades and that's its problem. It doesn't, you know, people are happy to go and use a separate BBS forum. Trust me. They would love it. If you had Zionspark.com slash forum and it was a PHP BBS or a Simple Machines forum or something like that, people would flock to it. Anyway. Anyway.

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, don't get me started. I've got so much feedback on that.

Dave Jones: So, since we're briefly on the topic of social media, another of your favorites, did you see that little post I have in there, Dave?

Chris Gammell: I did about the...

Dave Jones: Oh, it's the saddest day. Jones's diminishing blog law has already been named.

Chris Gammell: Oh, not really. I think it has. Oh, probably. Okay. It is the 1% rule.

Dave Jones: Yeah, the 99.1. The 90-9-1 rule. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: 9-1, which is shit. Anyway. Yeah. They're talking about it in terms of... Yeah. They're talking about it in terms of forums and stuff like that. Which I guess... Oh, okay. Mine's more a bit blog-specific. Mine was sort of targeting the magazines. This is pretty general.

Chris Gammell: This one sort of tries to cover everything. But it basically... Yeah, it's true. It backs up my theory that it's an order of magnitude drop each time. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So that, you know, if there's a hundred people going to a forum... Right. ...then only 10 people are going to be active...

Dave Jones: Right. And then only one is posting most of the stuff. ...changing and contributing.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Yeah. And 1% is going to... Dominate. What is the 1% going to do?

Dave Jones: He's going to dominate the post. He'll be the most post. He's going to dominate the post. Yeah. It's a power-off thing.

Chris Gammell: And then there'll be 90% who just lurk and won't contribute at all. Right. Yep. It's okay. Yeah. Well, mine was sort of...

Dave Jones: I was going to say, maybe we should, you know, change the wiki page and add it to it. But, you know, we just lurk around there. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, we probably... Yeah. Well, we can point to the Amp Hour, which is another...

Dave Jones: Which is a reference source, is it not? I believe so. We are a radio show of sorts.

Chris Gammell: We are a radio show. We can point to that. So, there we go. We can add it in. All right. Yeah, mine was more directed at the fake advertising promotional figures that the magazines and stuff put out. That's where it stemmed from. Right. Right. You know, RS Design Spark will say, you know, or Element 14 will say, oh, yeah, we have 10,000 subscribers, you know, but really only 1,000 would actively visit, you know, would actively come back. And then there's an order of magnitude drop, so only 100 would actually contribute out of those, you know, 10,000 or something. So, that's... Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, I'm sure we can... Maybe we can edit the wiki page. That'd be cool. All right.

Dave Jones: Well, we'll give it a shot and we'll see if we're in that 1% now.

Chris Gammell: Right. Anyway, yeah, that's pretty close to the mark. So, it backs up my theory, which is great. I love it.

Dave Jones: So, how are we doing on time? I really don't have any reference because we've had a couple blips today.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, we had a 20-minute drop out there. It took us about 20 minutes to fix all our shit up and we change over to Skype and change computers and stuff. I believe we've got five minutes left.

Dave Jones: All right. So, one thing I wanted to mention, because it's actually kind of getting to be an older post now. So, Uptown Maker, did you see that post?

Chris Gammell: No, I haven't. Do tell.

Dave Jones: So, I follow him on Twitter, but I saw this and I think it might have been showcased in Make and a couple other places, but this is a really great article. So, electronics tools you didn't know you needed. And some of my favorites were your nose. I like that one. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, I wasn't blown away by this list. I expected, oh, what cool thing can I go and know? Oh, yeah. You were expecting a gadget. No, I already have all these things. You know? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, don't get too excited, people.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, yeah. But I like the flashlight a lot, too. So, I thought that was a very good one. Having a really directed light source, I think that can't be understated because you've got a lot of...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I've got one of those on my keychain. I've got a 70 lumen torch on my keychain. Very valuable. You know? Yeah. That's great. When you're trying to peer under a microscope, you're trying to read a part number just to get some light from a different angle and boom, it shows up. You know? So, having a flashlight is...

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know?

Dave Jones: That's awesome. Yeah. So, anyways, I like the post. I don't know. Yeah. It wasn't anything mind-blowing, but it was useful. And I've been using it recently. Did you see my post about the crowbar?

Chris Gammell: About the crowbar hack. Use the crowbar as a heatsink. Yes.

Dave Jones: The crowbar should not... It was not on the list, but it apparently should be because you never know when you're going to need a crowbar heatsink.

Chris Gammell: Right. Or to bust open a door or something like that. Right. If the door to your lab's locked. Somebody's locked you in there.

Dave Jones: Well, it's probably inside your lab, so... I guess if someone locked you in, but... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You've got to... Yes. Who's the... I'm sure it would be the pointy-haired boss, you know, who's locked you in the lab. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. I've since... I've since... I've since revised my crowbar heatsink to a proper heatsink, and I actually switched over to a FET, but...

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: It was a fun little project. I liked it. It was a good hack.

Chris Gammell: Well, not exactly the world's most efficient heatsink there, but still, it works. Yeah. I've done similar things.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And I definitely referenced that video of yours. I really liked that video. Oh, cool. Yeah. The heat... Or the programmable current sync. I thought that was good, so...

Chris Gammell: Yes. It's very... Most relevant.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And as we close out, why don't we talk about... Did you see Jerry's new video?

Speaker ?: The...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. I saw it, how she made a TSA security scanner out of a feed horn, and she basically modified a feed horn, which is working at 10... I think it's working at... What's the frequency? 10 gig. 10 gigahertz. Okay. It is 10 gig. Yeah. Yeah. And she got a centimeter resolution or something like that, so she could see her hand. You could see the outline of her hand and stuff like that. Right. Fantastic. Fantastic. So, she proved all the doubters wrong. I know. She actually tweeted that she was getting a bit upset with all the doubters claiming, oh, why she can't do it and all that sort of stuff. So, she stuck it right up them. I love it. Yeah. It's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's great. You know, the thing that struck me about the video, I was expecting like this, you know, awesome high-res display. And I realized that like, obviously it was a first step, so that was a ridiculous assumption on my part. Yeah. Because even what it was, it was amazing. Yeah. But, you know, I've come to expect that these days. You know, you see HD everything. There was another project that I'll post a link to. There was an Arduino-based IR camera. So, first off, hearing Arduino, I shouldn't have expected high-res, but I expected something and it was like just super blocky, you know, tons of pixels everywhere. Oh, really low-res.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's about as low-res as you can get.

Dave Jones: Right. And it's, you know, it's okay because you're just proving that you can do it at first. If you wanted to commercialize it, you'd probably pick something else. But the thing that struck me about it is that, you know, if you really do want to do high-res, you kind of have to start moving towards a different model where it's like DSP-based now, where you're almost capturing an image and then processing it. You know, because if you're rastering like Jerry is too, that's a lot less efficient. You've got to go a lot faster.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm. And also, she's working at a wavelength that, well, the wavelength is only, you know, a centimeter or two. You know, it's only a couple of centimeters.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So, you know, there's only so much you can do there. Right, right, right. Somebody posted a link in her comments to my video I did at the trade show in the U.S. where I showed one of these machines, and it's got a rotating feed horn, I think it is. It actually rotates around, and it is quite high-res. You can see your hand, you know, behind the wall and stuff like that. So, I think it was working at, from memory, 30 gig or something like that. It was much higher.

Dave Jones: That was a commercial one?

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: Yep. Okay. Okay. That's pretty cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, yeah, but it sort of looks like a belt, one of those hand sanders kind of thing, and it's got a plate in it which rotates, and the antenna rotates, I think, inside. And, yeah, it's, and once again, it's doing a similar XY mapping thing. So, it's got like a mouse kind of thing. So, it knows its location, so you can go over it. So, you scan it a few times, and it builds up a better image. So, yeah. Yeah, but, yeah, those doubters. I don't know why they doubted Jerry on that, because if you give it a moment's thought, which I'm sure she did, and she was pretty confident, that really, you know, if you've got, if you've got the wavelength, then, well, it's certainly possible to get a crude image. So, I don't know why, you know, anyone would say it's just flat out not possible. I think that was just stupid of them. They obviously don't know enough.

Dave Jones: Well, I guess it's possible, because, I mean, they're doing that in airports all over the U.S. right now.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well, yeah, I'm sure it's a totally different, totally different concept. So, I don't know how the backscatter machines work. I haven't really looked into them, but, yeah. But, yeah, she was promising a backscatter machine. You know, as she says up front in the video, I think, you know, she hasn't worked. It doesn't work from a distance. It's not like you stand there, and you can see a whole body and stuff like that. You know, it's, no, it only works, you know, like inches. It only works a couple of inches away, so. Right.

Dave Jones: But, yeah, very cool. I was still very impressed by it, so.

Chris Gammell: Very cool hack. Very cool.

Dave Jones: Next up, she's going to prove you wrong on your chips at home.

Chris Gammell: Well, like I said, please prove me wrong. Please prove me wrong. But it's got to be practical. I don't want to see a couple of transistors on a chip, and they go, no, no, no, no, I produce my own chip at home. No, I want something practical. You pot it. You do everything. It's got the leads and the pins and the whole, okay, the whole shebang. So, but please prove me wrong.

Dave Jones: All right. We'll get there. We'll get there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but I don't know how she has the time. That's the third hack or something she's produced in, like, the last week or something like that. She must be working full time on this. I can't see how she's not, you know, spending all day.

Dave Jones: She's going crazy with this stuff. But whatever it is, as long as we get to keep seeing videos of it, that's good for me. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And I think it got 60,000 hits in the first day or something. It's gone massive. Yeah, I'm sure it's linked. Oh, yeah, she's at, there you go, 85,000 hits now. So, that's a huge, I think that's almost her most popular one now, apart from one other or something. So, not surprisingly.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's great.

Chris Gammell: But yeah, on you, Jerry. Keep it up.

Dave Jones: Love you. Love your show. So, anything else? I don't know if we were, are we out of time?

Chris Gammell: I think, well, who cares? Let's just call it, let's just call it quits, eh?

Dave Jones: We'll play the F-hour theme over and over again, so that'll make an hour.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure we're out of time. Actually, no, I said it was 20 minutes, didn't I?

Dave Jones: I have no idea, Dave, I'm sorry.

Chris Gammell: I said 20, I think. We wasted. So, no, I think we've got five left. There you go. All right, good.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: Okay, come on.

Dave Jones: I have a rant. I have a rant of finishing rants. Oh, do it, do it. We have another rant today. Okay, so do you ever hear about RamBus?

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yes, I've heard about RamBus.

Dave Jones: So, RamBus, I have a personal gripe with because the computer I am recording on right now is a 2001 Dell Dimension 8100 with 512 meg of RD RAM. And if you want to buy RD RAM, which came out in, I believe, 99, 2000 or something like that, it still costs about $250 for a 256 megabyte stick of RAM. Right. Because they're the only ones who make it. And so, this is like basically a patent factory. And now they're at it again. And so, they have recently, they announced that they're suing, like, they had won a settlement against NVIDIA, I think, a while back. Oh, that's big. But now they're going after everyone. Everyone. And this is just like the worst example. I bet at this company, they probably have two to one ratio of lawyers to engineers. Oh, for sure. Because they are just, I mean, and they have a lot of patents. So, they obviously did a lot of research. But at the same time, maybe they're just really good at getting patents. Right now.

Chris Gammell: Well, maybe they are. Maybe they have a solid case. Who knows? Maybe.

Dave Jones: Yeah, and maybe. And if that is the case, then I'm okay with that. But I don't think they do. Here, listen to the list of all the things that are at fault. Because, and what I'm guessing is they have a very basic building block. And then it was built into all these other things. Here's the list. PCI Express. Certain serial ATA. Certain serial attached or SCSI. Display port interfaces. DDR. DDR2. DDR3. Mobile DDR. LPDDR. LPDDR2. GDDR3. Graphics processors. Media processors. Communication processors. Chipsets. Other logic integrated circuits. And now they're moving on to LEDs. That was a separate note. They teamed up with GE and now they're getting into LEDs. So now. I don't even. And you know what? They're located. They have a facility in Cleveland. That's the LED with GE. Oh, right. Okay. And I'm just like, what the hell is going on here? Like, what is it? Maybe I have to dig into it more. But it sounds like they honestly patented a transistor. Like, that's what it sounds like, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Or like a sense amp or something like that. You know, like, I don't get it. And they're suing, like, Samsung, Intel, all the big names.

Chris Gammell: Oh, everyone's in there. HP, Hitachi, ST Micro, Freescale, Broadcom, LSI, MediaTek. Yeah. Yeah. You know.

Dave Jones: And they're just using the shotgun approach to try and, you know, get money where they can. Yeah. And some of it might be deserved, like you said, Dave. I mean, that's okay. If it is, go ahead.

Chris Gammell: The classic example of that is the Australian CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific Research Association here, government organization. They develop Wi-Fi. I mentioned this in my very first EEV blog episode. Oh. And they won. Vintage. They beat everyone. They developed 802.11 Wi-Fi. And everyone just ripped them off. And they eventually won. And now, every company in the world has to pay royalties to this Australian government organization for effectively 802.11 Wi-Fi. And they won. Everyone caved.

Dave Jones: I didn't know that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I think it's brilliant.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And, I mean, well, the thing that's so, I don't know. Some of it, like, the crazy thing about it is, like, even, like, the standards that you and I think of, like, SD cards, USB, all that stuff's licensed. You can't put the name on there unless it's licensed. Yeah. And maybe it's a good thing. Maybe it's not. And I think, I mean, we've talked about patents before. But, like, this seems a little out there.

Chris Gammell: This is too broad. Whereas the CSIRO one was very specific. It was Wi-Fi. And that was, you know, that was it. Right. I mean, and they had a very solid patent. You know, one patent that just covered it. But this is just, yeah, as you said, the shotgun approach. It's just nuts. Which is very common with these patent, you know, leeches. Really. It's, oh.

Dave Jones: I don't know. I think about it. Like, I talk to people that are, like, like, I talk to one, you know, a guy who's still in school who was doing an internship. And really bright kid. Like, probably one of the smarter engineers, young engineers I've met in a long time. And he's talking about going to law school. And, you know, I'm like, what? I mean, like, yes, I understand the idea of getting ahead and success and all that stuff. But I'm like, what do you want to do? You want to be a patent lawyer? I mean, like, patent lawyers are very important for certain cases. And you will make a buttload of money. There's no doubt about that. You will make a lot of money. But it just sounds like, personally, personally to me, that sounds like the most boring thing in the world. It's like the opposite.

Chris Gammell: Your brother-in-law is a patent attorney.

Dave Jones: That's fine. I mean, I'm sure he makes buttloads of money. But at the same time.

Chris Gammell: Well, he's not because he just drafts patents. That's easy. He doesn't go out suing. He's not a real lawyer that sues people. Even that. It just sounds like. He's a patent attorney, which is a, yeah. Anyway. I mean, I don't.

Dave Jones: I have a lot of lawyer friends, too. And the whole concept of law is lost on me. So maybe that's a bad starting point. But, man. Patent attorney. Oh. It was just the fact that this kid was so smart and so bright, you know. And just, like, wasting all this design talent on going and sitting in a courtroom and arguing for money. And it's like, man, there's more out there than that. That's my personal opinion. People disagree with it. It's fine. If your brother-in-law disagrees with it, you know. He does.

Chris Gammell: Every time I talk about patents on my, you know. Or patents. Sorry. A lot of people, you know. Oh, patents patents. It's actually patents here. You know. It depends on how you pronounce it. We actually say both. Patents and patents. Depending on the. Yeah. It's fine. Anyway. Yeah. He keeps, you know. I hear about it over the dinner table. You know. I watched your blog on the. You were bashing, you know. Bashing patents again. And why you don't understand. Oh, God. Anyway. But yeah. His job is basically to take nice, readable engineering design documentation and turn it into. And garble it. Gook.

Dave Jones: You know. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa. Back up. What was that word? Gobbledy gook. Oh, I think you said Corby gook. I'm like, is this some new Australian word? No, no. Gobbledy gook.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's a Skype thing. Skype. Yeah. Okay. We really can't hear each other here. Skype made a new word.

Dave Jones: Corby gook. I like it.

Chris Gammell: Gobbledy gook. So, yeah. I don't know. That's his job. His job is to draft patents and, you know. Man, that sounds boring. Take good design engineering, which us engineers produce. And, you know, we love producing really good documentation.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. His job is to turn it into incomprehensible garbage.

Dave Jones: I will say the one – I've talked to a friend who's going to law school right now, and she told me that there's, like, a really big push for, like, lawyers to go in the opposite direction and to make it more readable to, like, the layperson. Oh, really? And if that's the case, you know, I know there's no lawyers listening, but if that's the case, go lawyers. That's awesome. That's, like, the best thing I've heard about law school in years.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I agree.

Dave Jones: That's brilliant. Keep it up and make it simpler.

Chris Gammell: Yes, please. And I think that's all for today's Amp Hour. So, thanks for joining us, everyone.

Dave Jones: Yeah, and if you've got questions, remember you can record them live now on voicemail, and or if you have pictures of you in your lab, send them on in. Yes, please. Well, see you next week, I guess.

Chris Gammell: See you, guys. See you, guys.

Speaker ?: Woo.

Chris Gammell: All right. Stop. So, let's go.