#32 – Cores, Digikey, Electronic Design - The Commercial Competitor Commencement

Chris Gammell: Welcome to the Amp Hour.

Dave Jones: I'm Dave Jones from the EEV Blog.

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

Dave Jones: Hey, Chris.

Chris Gammell: Guess which episode this is. Oh, it is. I didn't even notice. I did not even notice. It's 32.

Dave Jones: The big 3-2. Two to the power of five.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: It has massive binary significance. We're up to our sixth digit.

Chris Gammell: That's great. Oh, yeah. Flip another one over on the counter. Or start expanding your logic utilization. We're at 32 now. Although we didn't start at zero. So are we really? That's the real question.

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, true. Yeah, good point. We started at one. That's very un-engineering-like, isn't it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's just bad practice.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Should we go back and rename all the episodes to start from zero?

Dave Jones: Sounds good. Or maybe we can do like an anniversary zeroth edition. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Or we can do some kind of ridiculous voiceovers on all the old ones.

Dave Jones: Right. Got it. That's a much better way. Yeah, let's just re-upload.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, just redo all the work.

Dave Jones: We have the power to edit and re-upload. It's great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And the time, of course, too. Why wouldn't we?

Dave Jones: Of course. Oh, we've got oodles of free time. Yeah, we do this for a living, don't we? It's just- Yeah. We have nothing better to do than-

Chris Gammell: It's our everything, yeah. I definitely haven't been building a workbench, and you definitely haven't been-

Dave Jones: No, not at all.

Chris Gammell: I'm using DMMs and canyons, so-

Dave Jones: Right. We're in tons of time.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I came out of a canyon yesterday. I took the X-Tech meter through, and it survived. Not surprisingly, really, because, I don't know. It's just more fun than anything else. Yeah. So, you know, it survives the water. It's- Yeah. It's- So, anyway.

Chris Gammell: See, now, what if you also combine canyoning with DMMs with, like, rocket launching, right? So you're at the top of a canyon. Right. You launch it vertically into the air, and then it gets just that much more vertical drop when it's coming down into the canyon. And then the challenge for you is to just get out of the way so you don't get hit on the head with a DMM. Aha. Got it. There we go. So, there's a new sport.

Dave Jones: Well, dare I say it, it might actually survive. A meter might actually survive that, because it'd hit, like, trees and foliage on the way down, which would sort of break its fall, I'm guessing. Yeah. And, you know, that'd be interesting.

Chris Gammell: It would be.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Start working on those model rockets, Dave. Right. You can- Okay.

Dave Jones: I've got a friend who's into model rockets. He's into water rockets, actually. Oh, cool. Yeah, those water-powered ones, and they can get phenomenal height on those, just powered from high-pressure water. Yeah. It's amazing.

Chris Gammell: You know who else is into those? Who? It's Forrest Mims.

Dave Jones: Oh, right.

Chris Gammell: Okay. I think he did a couple books on that, too.

Dave Jones: Oh, did he?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: There you go. Oh, he's into all sorts of things these days. Isn't he measuring, like, atmospheric stuff or something like that? I sort of subscribe to his tweets, and he's measuring the dust in the atmosphere or something. He's got some instruments that does that. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, atmospheric science never really got me going.

Dave Jones: No, my sister-in-law's an atmospheric scientist.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah? Yeah. I mean, it's necessary, and it's cool, but it's just not my cup of tea, you know?

Dave Jones: Yep, absolutely.

Chris Gammell: But he's also judging our 555 contest entry soon.

Dave Jones: He is. How's that going? How many entries you got?

Chris Gammell: It's going good. We were over 120. I'll check right now. But we were over 120 last night, so I'm guessing more. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, am I able to say, I told you so, because of all the work involved?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yes.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Let that be a lesson to you out there. If you plan on running a contest, there's a reason I stayed out of this one.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, we're at 151 right now. Wow, that's crazy.

Dave Jones: Wow. Jeez, it was 120 yesterday, 110 or something.

Chris Gammell: Well, you know, all those procrastinators, but it's great. Right. Last minute entries. We're all kind of getting it in last minute. Yep.

Dave Jones: Everyone, what is it with engineers and last minute stuff? People work better under pressure. I think we've talked about this on the show before, haven't we? Yeah, I think we have.

Chris Gammell: About how, yeah. But it's, I don't know, it applies to me too. I mean.

Dave Jones: Yeah, same here.

Chris Gammell: It's just something about, maybe because, you know how people say engineers are efficient? You know, we're lazy and we're efficient.

Dave Jones: And the same.

Chris Gammell: Until you have to do it, you know. Exactly.

Dave Jones: We're a unique species.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. But that also goes to Jerry's prediction of, that people do it at the last minute anyways. So, a short contest window doesn't really matter.

Dave Jones: No. No, it doesn't matter at all. Because, yeah. Yeah. You know, last day before it's due. Oh, shit, I better do something. Yeah. And, yeah. I am the same with the blogs as well, you know. It's, you know, like those oscilloscopes I just reviewed, right? Yeah. And there was a real deadline on that. So, that pushed me to get it done. Otherwise, they would have sat around for months like all the other products I've got backlogged for review, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, it's just crazy.

Chris Gammell: The problem with that is, like, you try and, like, do it for yourself. Where you have, like, a personal deadline. You're like, all right, I have to do it by March 1st.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And you keep saying that. And then, but in the back of your mind, you still know that you set the deadline. And you're like, ah, that's not really a deadline.

Dave Jones: Exactly. And you can let it slip. And you always find really good excuses to tell yourself, you know. Yeah. So, yeah. You always come up first.

Chris Gammell: You got funerals to attend. Right. Got to do my taxes.

Dave Jones: Right. Oh, dear Eddie. Anyway, what are we, enough ranting. What have we got on today's, that wasn't ranting, that was jibber jabber. Jibber jabber. Jibber jabber. Is that a quote from, yeah? Jive talk. Jive talk. Right. Okay. There you go. Trying to be hip, are we? No. Not even close, man. Right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: No, we aren't. Nerds. We have some workbench of the week, though. We do. Let's go into workbench of the week. And we don't have a sound effect.

Dave Jones: Sorry. Right. You're still not up and running.

Chris Gammell: No. No. Still wiring up the bench. Sorry. All right.

Dave Jones: Well, let's go through them quick. Who have we got? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, first up, we have Dean, or Maker Dino. And he has a couple pictures of his bench. And more importantly, he has actually a live feed on Ustream where people can kind of log in and watch regularly, I guess. Well, he's got one.

Dave Jones: The latest one is building his timer contest. Oh, yeah. Building his triple five thing. So, it's not live now, but I think the recording's there, and you can just go in and watch it.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I see it. Yeah. He's got, like, a camera shooting down onto his bench. And he's got a triple five timer t-shirt. Look at that.

Chris Gammell: Does he?

Dave Jones: Yes, he does.

Speaker ?: I didn't see that.

Dave Jones: On the Ustream channel there. I see a screen capture of... Yeah. Awesome.

Chris Gammell: Oh, on the Ustream. I gotcha. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, he's got a cool bench, too. He's got a really, like, interesting-looking old toolbox there. Oh, no. You know what? That looks like a dresser. The top of an old dresser.

Dave Jones: It is the top of an old dresser. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's a good idea for building benches. Just go out, because, you know, you see those on the road sometimes. People just toss those to the side.

Dave Jones: Oh, people. Yeah. Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: So, that's a cool little setup there. Great storage options.

Dave Jones: And he's got a nice bench with, you know, it's all lit up.

Chris Gammell: And, yeah. Two pictures of Tesla, too.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. He's a fan, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. There we go. Yes. There's one behind. He's analog scope. Big bonus points. Yeah. He's got a Tektronix 453.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm. That looks nice. Nice. Nice little sine wave on there. Yep.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Chris Gammell: I don't know the Tesla thing. Some people are, like, really. I mean, like, I know that dude is brilliant. And, like, he enabled so much stuff. But it seems like some people are, like, really, really into it.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's huge. Yeah. There's whole communities based around. Well, of course, based around all these, you know, energy experiments. And, you know, power transmission and reception and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, that's the bad side effect of Tesla's fame is that people jump on all these patents and, you know, they start up these companies and they rip people off because, oh, they've cracked, you know. Look, Tesla's invention did work, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, bugs me. Yeah. Yeah. Genius. Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: Smart dude. But, yeah. Some people take a little further than I would probably do it. Right. Right.

Dave Jones: Yes. No, yeah. I'm not really into the whole Tesla.

Chris Gammell: I think Dean's two pictures are acceptable. So, we'll let this one slide, Dean.

Dave Jones: All right. Cool. Yeah. At work, we've got conference rooms named after famous engineers. Nice. So, Tesla, you know. So, there's the Tesla room and all that sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I like that. I like that, too. Yeah. It's kind of groovy. I think in offices, if you're starting to just do, like, conference room one, two, three, four, that stuff gets confusing so fast. Yeah. Personally, I'm better off when you associate, like, you know, like, images in your mind with it. So.

Dave Jones: Yep. Very true.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I can hear the thing in the background now, Dave. Sorry. That animal. I can hear the animal you were talking about in the background. Oh, the animal.

Dave Jones: Yes. So, if you can. I'm not sure if it'll pick up on this mic.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Wow. That sounds horrible. Poor little thing.

Dave Jones: I don't know what it is. I went outside to check, and I have no idea. It's a weird sound. It sounds like there's some animal dying in the wall of the house here. I don't know. I can't find it.

Speaker ?: So.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I've banged on the walls, and it did stop once, but it's back. So, I apologize for the bad audio. Anyway. I just feel bad for the little guy, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: All right. Thanks, Dino. That's awesome.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, Dino. That was great. That's a great set of pictures.

Dave Jones: Yep. And next up, we've got Mitch. Mitch Patterson.

Chris Gammell: That's right. MIT Patterson on Twitter, and name's Mitch, and he did a great panorama. I always love when people do this stuff.

Dave Jones: Oh, I haven't seen the panorama.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's the second picture over, so you can piece pictures together.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. I'm calling it up now. There we go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There it is. That's cool. I like that. And he's got some, out in his garage, he's got a set of chemicals for etching boards himself. Yep. Which is, I've never done that myself. We've talked about it, I think, before. You've done that, right?

Dave Jones: I've done it. I've still got the gear to do it, but yeah. Yeah. I just couldn't be bothered. I ordered some boards the other day. I haven't got them yet. Yeah. I ordered them from, what's their name? Ah, mental block. I team or something, or I don't know. I'm sure someone will correct me on it. Anyway, they're so cheap. It was like $26 for five boards, including delivery and tooling.

Chris Gammell: Are you kidding me? That's pretty good.

Dave Jones: So I thought I'd try them. You know, I thought, I'll give them a go. You know, this is a prototype board, because I didn't care about the color of the solder mask, and it's not some weird, you know, front panel thing I'm doing this time. I just wanted, you know, a double-sided board, and that's double-sided, you know, double-sided plated through, solder mask, you know, silk screen, both sides. That's pretty good. Yeah. So, oh, man. It's so cheap. Anyway, I haven't got them yet, so I may have done my money. I don't know. I may have done my, but $26. Seriously, why would you bother even making your own boards, unless you were so desperate that you needed them today?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, what do they advertise the lead time as?

Dave Jones: Oh, it's a four, five days turnaround. It's very quick. Yeah. Are they local? No, they're in China or somewhere. Or, yeah, I don't know. Something like that.

Chris Gammell: That's still pretty fast, though.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: That's damn fast, I think, because that means they're flying it over, right, for four to five days, right? Unless it's four to five days to make it. Actually, sorry.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. Hong Kong.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, I don't want to offend the Hong Kongians.

Chris Gammell: Is there a board limit, size limit on it?

Dave Jones: Yes, there are. There's different price categories for different sizes. So, this is under, like, you know, two inches by two inches or something, which is fine, because my board's only an inch by an inch. So, yeah. But it's just, it's incredibly cheap. It's crazy.

Chris Gammell: That's a good deal.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Sorry, here it is. It's ITed Studio. ITed. ITed. I-T-E-A-D studio.com. So, yeah, check them out. But I haven't got them yet, so I'm going to reserve my judgment. Yeah, right. But, you know, I don't care if they're crap. For 26 bucks.

Chris Gammell: I mean, God.

Dave Jones: Can't get wrong.

Chris Gammell: What's the exchange rate now? Is it pretty close for the Australian and US dollars?

Dave Jones: The Australian dollars is practically one to one, yeah. So.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yep. That's good for reference points.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, yeah. It's great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Although it means I get less money from my ads and stuff like that, which all come in US dollars.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's very disappointing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, sorry. Anyway, yeah. Sorry we stink.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. Come on, US.

Chris Gammell: I didn't do it.

Dave Jones: Get strong again.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, dear. Anyway, thanks to Mitch for sending this in. This is a cool picture. I definitely, I mean, it's cool that people do it still. I mean, the fact that they do the boards, but yeah, from a practical standpoint, I don't know if it's really there. Yeah.

Dave Jones: The only reason I did it is because I wanted it now. You know, I wanted the satisfaction. You know, I had the enthusiasm. I want to build it up today. I've got the parts. Yeah. I don't have the board. I don't want to wait, you know, a week or two weeks to get it. Right. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And that's nice when, like, board cutters come in. And if you have, like, a router-type board cutter. Yeah. You can just cut out some copper clad. That's when that kind of thing's nice, but that has its limits, too.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I just use an old pair of tin snips to chop up the boards. Yeah. Yeah. It works fine. Yeah. Never, you know, warps them a bit, but, ah, well, who cares? Yeah. Thanks. And the problem with homemade boards is really you can't do that plated through thing. Yeah. So, you have to design your boards and then you've got to feed each, you know, a wire through each via on there to, you know, and solder it both sides to join up your double-sided board. Yeah. So, ah, yeah, it's pretty annoying.

Chris Gammell: It is kind of annoying. It's almost better at the point where, it depends what you're doing, too, but, like, if you have enough space, if you have enough space, it's better to just spread out at that point and not go to the bottom side. But, you know, then you start wasting materials, too. So, lots of trade-offs there.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but my current boards, actually, it's, well, it's slightly over an inch. It's 32 millimeters by 32 millimeters. So, and it's double-sided, you know, 6th-hour space, 6th-hour traces. And, you know, so, yeah, not something you can easily, and components mounted both sides. Yeah. So, not something you can really easily make at home. Yeah. But you can build the circuit up, you know, you can lash it up on sort of a prototype board, but it's ugly. I really want the look and feel of the real thing, so.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. You get spoiled with that, too, you know? Oh, yeah. Once you do it a couple of times, you're like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Where's the labeling? How do I know where to put these parts?

Dave Jones: And having the solder mask there is, you know, it just makes it so much easier to solder.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: What else have we got? All right. We've got a big rant, haven't we?

Chris Gammell: Well, it was going to be a shout-out to start with. It's kind of morphed.

Dave Jones: It was going to be a shout-out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It was going to be a shout-out.

Dave Jones: Actually, let's do it as a shout-out first, and then, because it's already happened, we will discuss it. So, let's talk about it. We could crap on about this for half an hour, I think.

Chris Gammell: Oh, probably. Here it comes. Yeah. So, there is a shout-out to, dear DigiKey and Design News, here's your shout-out. You have a new radio show. So, there's a new radio show sponsored by DigiKey, and it was done by the guys at Design News. Yep. So, Joe... Oh, I forgot his last name. He's the editor-in-chief of the Design News. Joe Des... Des... Des... Des... Des... Oh, God, I can't pronounce it.

Dave Jones: Des Pizzito. Sorry if I've pronounced that incorrectly. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: He's the editor-in-chief of Electronic Design Magazine.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. And then, they had... Oh, I should have pulled this up. Sorry. They had two columnists on there. The one that I recognize is Bob Peace, and he does Peace Porridge, and he's written a bunch of books and stuff.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So, Bob always writes some great stuff, and... And... So, I was really excited about it.

Dave Jones: And, yeah, he was... Bob Peace was the guest for the first episode. He was the special guest.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: And now, there's two of them, isn't there? Just like our show, I think there's two, plus they had Bob Peace.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Well, that's where it starts to get into it. So, this show is going to be the Just Joe, I think, at least to start up. Oh, right. Okay. So, I want to start up saying that I want to take you on these guys, because it's just their first show. And if someone was railing on me like I want to rail on them, it would not be nice. So, I want to preface with that.

Dave Jones: Actually, we were both looking forward to this show, weren't we?

Chris Gammell: I was so looking forward to it.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Because, you know, we don't mind the competition. We thought anyone who produces good content, excellent. You know? I know. We'll give them a shout out, even if they are a competition to us.

Chris Gammell: Well, and they're not even competition, you know? Like in... Well... Well, maybe, I guess.

Dave Jones: Technically, they could be. They're an engineering radio show. So...

Chris Gammell: I guess so, yeah. Yes.

Dave Jones: They're definitely competition.

Chris Gammell: The thing that I always think of is, like, people always, you know, like, come to you and me, and they say, oh, well, can't you guys do more shows a week? And it's like, well, not really. I mean, we have a lot of stuff to do. And even the show takes all night to edit and everything, and it would just, it would be a full-time thing. So, no, we can't do that, unfortunately. And so, if there's other people out there doing good stuff, you know, like, I like watching... I love, you know, Ask an Engineer on Saturdays, and the Savage Circuit chat on Fridays, and now Make has that podcast, and...

Dave Jones: That's right.

Chris Gammell: Anyone who's doing this stuff, it's just fun to watch, and even better if there's chat rooms, you know? Like, so that's good stuff. I like that. So, I was looking forward to it, and you said you were looking forward to it, too. Yep. So, the first problem is Dave can't listen to it.

Dave Jones: He missed it, and it's... No, because I'm in a different time zone, and I don't like listening to live shows, but we'll get... Well, no, I do, but not these webinars. Things, especially a radio one. Right. Anyway, we'll get into that, but yes, I couldn't listen to it, so I haven't actually heard it.

Chris Gammell: It was only live, so that's basically the basis behind that, and so unless they're going to bring that out later as a, you know, something that someone can download and listen to, then people are SOL on that one. So, that's kind of a pan there. The other one would be the fact that you have to read...

Dave Jones: Well, I want to talk about that, too, now that we're on the topic. Yeah. Okay. I think that, you know, if they don't release the podcast version of it, then I don't know why they bother doing it, quite frankly, because these live shows, these live webinars, generally attract incredibly small audiences.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, I'd be surprised if they got a couple of dozen people tuning into that. I would, you know, I think that's the kind of level. I mean, you know, if I go do one of my live shows, I might have a couple of hundred. Artifruit go do their live show, you know, they've got a couple of hundred, something like that, maybe even 500. But that's nothing compared to the amount of people who want to listen to it or want to watch it and will download it later. Yep. So, you know, why you don't... Why even bother to do it as a live show? I mean, we're doing this as a live, I'm using the quote marks, live show, but only for the purposes of talking to each other. We don't actually stream it live because that'd be kind of silly because it means we don't get to polish it and merge the things together and make it sound all good.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So... Although I would like to try that eventually. I think we... That's... I'm buying a new computer and hopefully we can try that eventually, but not right now.

Dave Jones: Maybe eventually, but yeah, it just... No, people want to download the podcast.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: So, you know, and they want top audio quality as well, which you'll go into because you've heard this. Yes. Anyway, I think that's the first fail is that they're doing it as a live webinar because these big companies, they're obsessed with these, you know, webinars and, you know, live sort of things and they don't work. Wake up, people.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: They do not work. Just produce your content and release it.

Chris Gammell: I think to give them credit, I think they do it because they have like a really set system. You know, they do other webinars and maybe some of them are successful, but...

Dave Jones: Or webcasts, they're calling them. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know. I think most engineers I've talked to are down on it. I don't know if that's actually a real measure of all engineers. I don't... I doubt it is actually.

Dave Jones: I think it's a pretty general measure is that most engineers don't, you know, a vast majority of them do not want to tune in live or they're in different time zones around the world and they can't. Right. You know, it's just... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Or even if you have a meeting or something. It's just pointless, really. But anyway, so yeah. And I don't think we should call these pans so much as just feedback because hopefully they will change. And if not, well, that's our own decision. But, you know.

Dave Jones: Absolutely, guys. We're not panning your show. It's just constructive feedback. Always is.

Chris Gammell: Things that we'd like to see, especially when you have guests that... You're like Bob Pease, you know, because...

Dave Jones: The caliber of Bob Pease. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, audio quality. Oh, now that one was pretty awful. I was talking to John Schuch online as it was going on. We were going back and forth on Twitter. And at first he said, since you had to register and you couldn't download, it was like 2001. You know, like, what is this, 2001? And then he heard it and he said, what is this, 1963? It sounds like AM radio. And it honestly did.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And they weren't even calling in. It was just whatever software they're using was just really low bandwidth.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And low quality. So...

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: I mean, we have the benefit of mixing separately and recording later and smushing it together later. But, uh...

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, we're smart enough to record directly into quality microphones and then mix it later. I mean, that's why... That's another reason why we don't do it live. And if you've got live, then you've got people calling in and stuff like that. And it's, you know... Yeah. I think for this type of show, they just had him and a guest and that's it. They should have just recorded them separately and then mixed it like we do and got good audio quality. Yeah. It's... So, I... I hope they did do that. Maybe they did. Maybe they recorded it. Oh, maybe. And they are going to release the podcast. So...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Let's... Let's assume that they are going to release the podcast.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we hope so. Anyway. Yeah. Uh... Let's see. What else?

Dave Jones: And you've got to sign up for it. That's nuts. Yeah, that is... Engineers do not want to sign up for this stuff.

Chris Gammell: I bet you didn't see my real name on there. I'll tell you that much. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay. Bill Gates, huh? Nah. Bill Gates is listening in. Yay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: A couple known aliases.

Dave Jones: Bill... Everyone's favorite email address, bill at microsoft.com.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. There's some fun ones. We get to see those sometimes when people leave comments on our site. They always put funky...

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: ...funky addresses for websites, whatever. So...

Dave Jones: So, could you actually put in a fake name and fake email and you just get straight in? Or do you have to do the registration? Like, you have to... They send you an email and you've got to click on it and...

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. They have the email. You have to click on it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, they have... Oh, right. So, you can't use a fake email.

Chris Gammell: They have an email of mine. They do not have the main email of mine, though. So... The main email. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, that's annoying. Come on, guys. Stop it. Yeah. No one's going to listen to your show. I'm telling you the truth. No one's going to listen if they have to sign up... Right. ...and come live. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean... It was interesting because we... I was going back and forth with the analog guy at EDN, Paul Rako. And when I told him about the 555 contest, he was, like, really, like, upset about it. He thought I was, like, trying to get people's email addresses. And I'm like, look, this isn't what it is. Oh, really? Yeah. And he was... And, like... And, you know, he, like, called me. I don't... And I'm like, well, no, that's not what we're doing. It's just for fun. And he, like, apologizes. I think it's just because he sees it so much where, you know, people are just trying, like, crazy to get email addresses. Because then they bundle them up. I know. It's insane. And they sell them to companies. And they say, oh, these are leads that I got for you. And pay me money now. So...

Dave Jones: Or they use them internally for their own leads. Right. In quote marks. Right. Right. Yeah. It's just crazy. But all big companies work like that. They're... That's what the marketing books tell you is that you must have... Regardless of what you do, if you're not getting leads from it and data and contacts, then you're wasting your time. And that's just ridiculous. You know... When you're in a niche market like this, you're just pissing people off.

Chris Gammell: You know, while we're on that subject, I actually saw something about that today. So, Agilent. I saw Agilent has an engineering calculator for, like, iPhones and smartphones, whatever. And it looked pretty useful.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I've seen that.

Chris Gammell: And it was, like, you know, Ohm's Law calculator and a Smith chart calculator and everything else. And I'm like, oh, this looks pretty cool. And then I see the form. And I see the form. And I'm like, screw this. I'm not doing it. I don't need it that much. You know, it would be a fun little thing to have on my phone. Yeah. But I can find that free elsewhere. I don't need an Agilent logo on it. And so I'm like, well, see you later, guys. And so if you guys need ROI, you know, if these social media people think they need, like, return on investment by getting email addresses and info, it's like...

Dave Jones: I'm evaluating, you know, network analyzers. Yeah, I'm evaluating network analyzers because I'm downloading a bloody iPhone app. Give me a break. Yeah, right. Yeah. And also, please, people, when you're developing these apps, make it available for Android. Yeah. iPhone's not the... You know, Android is going to be or is already almost as big as the iPhone market. So, really.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, that's just a resource thing.

Dave Jones: Try and make them available on both. Yeah. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I can understand that because, you know, they've got to pick one or the other at the beginning, right? Unless you're doubling your money.

Dave Jones: And, yeah. And they can't go back to management and management ask, have you released that iPhone app yet? And they went, oh, but it's better on Android. Yeah. And they're just not going to understand, you know. They're just, yeah. I know. Right. So, that's all right. But, yeah, just try, please. Hmm.

Chris Gammell: So, man. So, yeah, they're not doing well so far. So, the audio quality wasn't... Audio was not good. No.

Dave Jones: Right. So, they didn't tick any boxes, huh? Nope. And let's see what else there was. So, we'll reserve final judgment until they release the podcast. If they do. Oh. If they don't, well, then that's another fail.

Chris Gammell: I had one other thing that actually was kind of bad. What's that? It was all marketing material.

Dave Jones: Oh, no. Oh, no. I'm hanging my head. Yeah. It was, like, honestly. Oh, actually, no.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Here's... Nah, come on. It couldn't be. It couldn't be that bad. Please, please tell me it wasn't all marketing.

Chris Gammell: It was all marketing. I mean, no, no. That's not true. Because when Bob got on there, it was great. I mean, talk... Ah, awesome. They were talking about his articles. You know, he even talked about some of the analog stuff. Yeah. So, that was good. I ended up...

Dave Jones: I want to listen to that. Where's the podcast?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I so want to hear Bob. I know.

Chris Gammell: And the other thing, too. He doesn't sound anything like I thought he would. I know that, like, that happens a lot. But, like, I don't know what I thought he was... Same here. I always thought he was going to have, like, a gravelly voice. Because, you know, he's got the beard. He's a little older. And, like...

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You think he's going to have this old, wise and voice. But he sounds, like, so, like, youthful and bouncy. It's awesome. Like, I'm like... Yeah, this... You know, it's just like... He sounds like his writing is, almost. You know? So, I don't know. Right. I'm probably too much of a fan to be an objective judge on that one. But...

Dave Jones: I was... No. I saw a video. I think it was linked through here. They had linked through somebody. And they had... They were... He was at a panel at ESC. They were interviewing him afterwards. Yeah. And I saw the video. And I went... That's the first time I've ever heard his voice. And I went... Wow. You know, that... Yeah. I had pictured a totally different... Yeah. As you said, like, a more gravelly kind of voice. It's strange.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You figure, like, analog... Yeah. You know, old analog dudes. You're like, yeah. I need, like, the voice of wisdom. And you could still have that, like, youthful voice. I mean, right?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: That was just horrible judgment on my part saying that. But anyways...

Dave Jones: Yeah. I was surprised too. So, no. You weren't alone in that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, actually, the number one thing that they got wrong... And this one is... A big snafu. They said they were the first ever electronics design radio show.

Dave Jones: Oh, please. They didn't. They did. Oh, come on. It's okay.

Chris Gammell: It's okay.

Dave Jones: People... Nah. I can't let that one slide. Oh.

Chris Gammell: They don't know about us. It's okay. Not everybody does.

Dave Jones: Well, we're so insignificant, huh?

Chris Gammell: But the thing that I take issue with that is, like, they didn't really talk... The first 20 minutes, they didn't talk about electronics design. It was... It was... Joe honestly read from a white paper. He was reading a white paper. And then he was... And the other stuff, too. Oh, really? It was about LCD screens and DLP stuff. And just, like, stuff that... And, like, I don't need that stuff. I don't... I can't imagine unless I'm designing a commercial, like, very specific digital color processing machine. Yeah. You know? Like, it was very, very bought and paid for, you could tell. So...

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Interesting. That I'm going to call criticism.

Chris Gammell: I'm going to call criticism.

Dave Jones: Right. I mean, granted, we don't talk much electronics, like, detailed electronics on here. Because I... You know? Because ours was like an off-the-cuff, just kind of, you know, conversational rant kind of, you know, format. But, yeah, I think you're limited in what you can actually do with technical content on a radio. Oh, with radio. Yeah, that's true. Thing. So, you know, if you go too deep into something, you can't visualize anything. And just, yeah, I don't know. It's hard. So that's why we don't go in-depth on... That's true.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: People want us to talk about circuits and stuff like that. And, well, you know, without any visual clues, it's hard to...

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's hard to do that, I think. So... That's true.

Chris Gammell: That's a good point. Yeah, I guess I shouldn't criticize too heavily in that side of things. Because we're talking more about engineering culture and news articles and stuff like that. So... Hmm. Okay.

Dave Jones: And, by the way, we aren't the first electronics radio show either. There's other ones. You know? That's sold to smoke is one that comes to mind. Yeah. Even though it was more ham radio... Yeah. ...kind of thing. But they talked electronics. Yeah. So, you know, they were before us. And there's probably others as well. Yeah. So, yeah. Nah. Sorry, guys. Yeah. We're up to episode 32 in case you didn't notice. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Two to the five. Right.

Dave Jones: All right. Yeah. Is that enough rant about...

Chris Gammell: I'm still going to listen. It was tough to listen to with that audio. So, hopefully, they'll fix that. But, yeah. Hopefully, they fix it. And hopefully, there's other stuff for people to listen to. But, man.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, please. I want to listen. I want to hear Bob Pease. I want to download the podcast. Where is it? Give it to me. And don't make me sign up for it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I know. Yeah. Hmm. Well, speaking of technical details, since we didn't ever really talk about it, I actually have something that I know a little bit about. And it's a news article. And so, I could probably talk about it a little bit. Well, go for it. It's kind of a follow-up from last week, actually. Because we talked about Intel and getting to 14 nanometer lines. And I'm not saying I know a lot about this, obviously. Right.

Dave Jones: But you have worked in a fab. I have. So, that's more than me. Right. Right. I haven't even been into a fab. Oh, really? But then again, I live in backwater Sydney, Australia.

Chris Gammell: You don't have a backwater. You don't have a Sydney suburbs.

Dave Jones: I bet. We've got one fab here.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: We've got one fab here.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you don't mean the backwater of Australia. You mean Australia is the backwater. No. Australia is the backwater. No.

Dave Jones: But as far as the technology, you know, the World Technology Center goes, Sydney is about as far away as you can get. Pretty much. You know. Well, no. They're not as strong. They're like Central Africa. It could be worse. It could be in New Zealand or Central Africa or Antarctica or something like that. They shot there to the Kiwis, Dave. You know, to the Kiwis. I was going to get that in there. They suck just as much as we do. Yay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, man. That's funny. Oh, boy. Anyways, Intel. So, we talked about last week how Intel is getting a 14 nanometer fab. And we were kind of shocked at how small that's getting already. But how are you going to get there, right? Because they've, the current lithography methods, which is how they actually pattern photoresist for all the people listening is, you know, they're actually using 193 nanometer wavelength. So, I don't know what, I think it's ultraviolet maybe. I'm not, I don't do spectrum stuff.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. I don't know my wavelengths off the top of my head.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, it must be ultraviolet. Because the next generation of that is EUV, which is extreme ultraviolet, I believe. I think that's what EUV stands for. Right, okay. Yeah. And so, they've been talking about it for a while. And they're finally getting into the fabs. But there's all these problems with it that they're kind of running into. And that's actually, there's a lot of interesting process issues that people don't know about and why it's almost stagnated. This was a big deal to the point where they almost said, wait a second, we can't advance the node any further, you know?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So, there's some interesting things, though, that happen when you start getting that small. Oh, I know.

Dave Jones: It's crazy. It isn't just the photo lithography stuff, either. It's actually the final etched silicon. You know, you get electrons jumping from, you know, channel to channel. Yeah. Crazy stuff happening like that. And just, oh, it's just. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, now that they're getting down to, like, 14 nanometer. And I think that's actually the wavelength of the stuff, I think, of the EUV is down in that region. I don't know if it's actually 14 nanometers. I think it's a little higher, but then they focus it down, which is how they do the current lithography. Anyways, though, the stuff that happens, though, is kind of interesting because it gets so small and the aspect ratios are so high. So, if you think about it as, like, a building, right? If you were trying to etch out New York City, right, that would be, like, the, it would basically be the amount of distance going from the top of the building to the street level would be, like, the same kind of aspect ratios you'd see inside of, or at the very lowest level of a wafer. So, you'd have this stack of photoresist, which is basically just something that's made to block etch chemicals. And then you have these really tall buildings worth of photoresist on top of the silicon. And then, basically, in all the, where all the streets would be, that's where the etch goes in and cuts down into the silicon or whatever material is there. So, you start seeing some really interesting issues, like, the buildings start falling over, or when you're actually cutting out the shape of the buildings, they don't focus right, so you start getting, like, line roughness. Or when you're actually etching, it eats away at the buildings at different rates. This is actually a pretty decent analogy, I guess. Thank you, Bjork.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right. With the little cities, right? Little cities, that's it.

Chris Gammell: I saw that somewhere else later in the week, too. Someone else was talking about little cities. I forget who they are. It's very common. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, you said your wife does that, too, right? Yeah. That's funny. So, maybe that's a good analogy for all time, huh?

Dave Jones: It's not bad, you know? Components have height and depth, and they have, you know, roads.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Absolutely. So, anyways, this new piece of equipment, though, it's... I don't know. It's kind of letting the 14 nanometers happen. So, we don't talk about, like, chip-level electronics too much, other than our usual blathering on about, you know, that thing. Making your own. Yeah. But, yeah, there's some interesting problems that are getting solved right now with the EUV, because, I mean, that's some really high-energy stuff, trying to get... That's insane.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Just trying to blast down through all the goop that Photoresist is, and then cutting out all these cities and then etching down through them. It's not easy to do, so go hug your favorite process engineer, because they are allowing the microchips of the future. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You want to know what really amazes me is that how they're able to make a profit at the end of the day producing chips with these damn things. Yeah. The amount of technology and, you know, the machinery and the processes and everything else that goes into getting these right, and you only get a certain yield. Yeah. You know, it's just phenomenal. But I guess they do churn out, you know, 100 million chips a week or something like that. Crazy.

Chris Gammell: I had an interesting discussion about yield today with one of my coworkers, because I was talking about how I bought a new processor for this computer I just bought, and how, oh, I found out, oh, you can unlock cores. And he was telling me about, like, he knows about it. Have you ever heard about that?

Dave Jones: Yeah, I've heard mumblings about it, but I don't know the details.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so he said, I mean, and I had heard about this a little bit. Basically, the way it works, though, is you'll have a company like AMD or Intel, and they'll make a chip that's a four-core processor. And the way they get their yield up, though, is they test these things. You know, they have some kind of test vectors that actually test the wafers.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And if one of the cores is bad, they just shut it off. They just say, oh, well, you know, you can't use this, and we're just going to shut this off, and now it's a three-core chip. Or shut two of them off, and it's a two-core chip. Yeah. And so now, when I bought my computer, I was looking for it, and you can buy boards that go and try and unlock the cores. Because sometimes they also have to turn off the cores in order to just get the stock up. So if they're selling more two-core chips because of price than four-core chips, and they have much higher yield on it, then they're going to sell more two-core chips. But those other two cores on that chip might still be good.

Dave Jones: So are they disabled, like using an eSquared problem, kind of? Is there some switch in there, some flag which turns it off that you can reprogram?

Chris Gammell: I believe so. And that's actually what the motherboard people are doing now. So you can go into the bias.

Dave Jones: I thought they would have like burnt a laser, you know, thing into it, into a trace on there that sort of, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, blow a fuse, right?

Dave Jones: Turned it off, disabled it. Yeah. Yeah, actually blow a physical fuse that totally disabled it. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: So I got an AMD, and apparently I'm going to try it whenever I get it. But it's interesting from like a rubber hits the road kind of thing because, you know, you think about computers, and they're always, you know, like operating systems are so high level. And, like, you never really get down in the hardware. But when you start working with motherboards and stuff, and like, and you even look at motherboards, you know, with all the different switchers on board and everything. And you think about people are actually designing these motherboards somewhere. You know, like, there's a lot of interesting design issues too. So.

Dave Jones: Well, there you go. Let us know if you can unlock your core and get extra processing performance.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I will. And the same friend was telling me actually that this is a new model too. Like, not only the fact that – I don't know. I'll have to try and find an article about it. But the – not only that they're doing it as a yield thing, but also that certain chip – I think Intel was talking about doing this as an upgrade path. So.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. So. Okay. 10 years. Just like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: A couple years down the road, you need some extra processing power. You pay $100 to get the encrypted key and then – And it unlocks. Yep. Boom. Yep.

Dave Jones: That wouldn't surprise me at all. But then you do have to get the yield on those chips up front. You do. Yeah. So that sort of smacks into that. Yeah. And once you go down – you know, if you go down to 14 nanometers, imagine what the yield is going to be. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's –

Dave Jones: Anyway.

Chris Gammell: There's a lot of – I mean, yeah. And there's a lot that goes into that because just the – I mean, as complexity goes up, I think it goes up by like the square, the number of test vectors you need. So. Yeah. It starts getting really insane.

Dave Jones: And the chips must get more expensive because if you don't know, you know, wafers are a certain size. You know, they might be 150 millimeters, 300 millimeters in diameter. And you can only fit X amount of chips on that one, you know, on that one thing. So the number of chips that they can get through on a throughput on a per day basis is really determined by the size of the wafer and the size of the silicon.

Chris Gammell: Right. And that actually – you know. That answers your earlier question about how they make money. And basically that's it. It's as high utilization as you possibly can. So 90, 95%. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Fit as many chips on that wafer as possible.

Chris Gammell: No, no. I mean like the machines that are actually processing the wafers. That's where you make the money. So making sure those things are used 90%, 95% so that they're always running. Right. And then you crank out the most possible wafers.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: That was my old life.

Dave Jones: You're right.

Chris Gammell: I don't miss it.

Dave Jones: But these wafers are physically huge. I mean, well, no, sorry, not the wafer, but the individual chip for like an Intel processor is a massive die. I don't know what the size – what is it, 20 millimeters by 20 millimeters these days? I'm not sure actually. They'd be huge, right?

Chris Gammell: I thought they weren't increasing too much. But I mean they're definitely bigger than most discreet that you're ever going to touch. Oh, yeah. Discreet are just little tiny flecks. But – or specks, not flecks.

Dave Jones: Near enough.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. I'm not sure how big they are these days. I'll have to look that up. But definitely big.

Dave Jones: But I guess it scales down because as you go to a smaller process, you can make that physical die smaller. So that's a whole advantage. So you get speed – once you make them smaller, you get speed, power advantages, and yield advantages in theory because you get more dies per wafer.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. I think Fluxer wrote about that once or twice. I think – because he's a chip guy. So he knows all that stuff. Yeah. But I think it actually doesn't scale linearly. I think there is actually like a limit.

Dave Jones: Oh, I'm sure it's – yeah, it's definitely not linear. Yeah. But it does scale in some aspects.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Hmm. So a lot of interesting problems coming up with – I mean, man, 14 nanometers. Yeah, we talked about that before. That's crazy.

Dave Jones: Well, you wanted to talk about Europe, how Europe are going to fabs. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You could tell Chris was reading some semiconductor magazines today.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. And you wanted to crap on about how Europe have suddenly figured out, oh, we need to manufacture here. So what – are they building fabs, are they?

Chris Gammell: Well, they're talking about it. They haven't done anything yet.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they're talking about it. Right.

Chris Gammell: You know, because they're just – they're running out of powerhouses. You know, they have – I think they still have STM is there. I think they're in France. Right.

Dave Jones: ST Micro. Yep.

Chris Gammell: And Global Foundries. That used to be someone else. They're in Germany. AMD might be part of that. I know AMD is in Germany too. But then Intel is in Ireland. Ireland is kind of on the rise for technical stuff too. And they have a bunch of hard drive manufacturers in Ireland, I think. Obviously not chip makers, but yeah. Right. It's interesting because, you know, they're seeing this as, you know, like people were so gung-ho in the 90s about, oh, everything's programming, knowledge economy, knowledge economy. And now it's like, oh, you mean other people can have a knowledge economy at the same time as us and they'll do it shitloads cheaper? Huh. This is weird. Weird. Maybe we should make stuff.

Dave Jones: Oh, God. Yeah. The world's screwed. I'll tell you what.

Chris Gammell: I just wonder sometimes about the – because, I mean, if you think about like a utilization rate of the population, there's just so many more people that can do stuff now, right? I mean, just access to – Yep. To working – workplaces and everything else. And are there really ever going to be enough jobs for everyone? Are we going to make enough stuff that that's going to matter? Oh, we'll always make enough stuff.

Dave Jones: Come on. Of course we will. I don't know, man. That's what our entire civilization is built on. Stuff. Stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Sweet. Sweet.

Dave Jones: Of course it is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: There's no way we're going back to hunting, gathering our food and not – Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well.

Dave Jones: Living in huts and – it's just not going to happen. Well. No. Wait. You never know. It's never going to stop. No. I've got a rant. Okay. Can I rant? We don't – or should we have actual content on today's show? I don't know.

Chris Gammell: We don't – do we have any?

Dave Jones: Anyway, I'll just give a little rant here. Yeah. I get this – I've been getting this sort of crap for 20 years. And basically what it is, is people email me and they say, oh, I love your show, yada, yada, yada. And I believe you're the best person in the world to help me. I've got this idea and it's going to take the world by storm. Oh, yeah. And it's a million dollar to a billion dollar. My latest email that triggered this is up to billions of dollars in a very short time frame. That's what I'm going to make from this idea. It's so fantastic. And do you want in on it? See, what can I – you know, what do I have to do to convince you to jump into this with me? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think this has implications outside of ranting, Dave. So, I think this is an entrepreneurial topic, I think.

Dave Jones: It is. It is. So, I, you know. So, what do you say to that?

Chris Gammell: Do you just ignore it or –

Speaker ?: Yes, I give them –

Dave Jones: Well, I give them A for enthusiasm, right? Okay. But then I tell them realistically that this happens every day of the week. And these people – and, you know, 99.9999% of them fail. Yep. You know, it's just – it's just crazy. The odds are totally against you. And, yeah, I mean, they just get blinded. I tell them that they're, you know, blinded by their own, you know, you know, they're just narrowly focused and they don't understand how the market works properly and that their odds are incredibly small of success. And, you know, I don't like to discourage people, but I'm a practicum, you know. I need to give them the facts. And it's crazy. And when you get them start talking, oh, it's a – you know, it's going to make a billion dollars in a short time frame. They're just delusional.

Chris Gammell: Are you – really? Are you allowed to tell us what their background was? Because that would be interesting to me is – I mean –

Dave Jones: They're always non-electronic people who don't have the skills to do it. That's why, you know, you search electronics design. And I always – I've been popping up on the internet since it started. You know, that's how all the people find me. Nerd. Even before that, they started – yeah, they started sending me letters, like real paper letters. Whoa. You know, a dead tree. And because they saw me in a magazine and my address is in there because, you know, you can buy the software for me or something. So they go, oh, I've got Dave Jones' address. I'll email him. He seems like a smart guy. He'll be in on this. Yeah. He'll understand he can make a billion dollars overnight.

Chris Gammell: Billion dollars.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's just – yeah. It's just – I, you know, and then I always humor them. I always say, well, tell me your idea. And I'll tell you whether or not, you know, it's shit.

Chris Gammell: And then they say, I want an NDA first, right?

Dave Jones: Well, some of them do, and then I just go, well, piss off. Yeah. Ideas are a dime – less than a dime a dozen.

Chris Gammell: I was going to say, you wrote that on my latest post on engineer blogs. Which is totally true. I totally agree with it.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Ideas are worthless until you put them into practice, you know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I agree.

Dave Jones: And these people always claim that they know the market intimately and they know how to market a product. Well, if you did, you would just go out and hire an engineer, not try and convince someone. You just go out and hire someone to actually produce a prototype for you. Right. You know, not try and convince, you know, someone to jump on board with you. And, yeah, it's just ridiculous. Anyway, stop it, people. Stop sending me crap like that. Forget it all the time. Yeah. He's getting cranky.

Chris Gammell: He's getting cranky, people.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I do find it humorous, though, the ideas they, you know, come up with. And often they'll send me their idea and I'll go, you know, and I'll send them a link back with a let me Google that for you, you know, that website. Yes, I love that website. And you just type it in and there it is. Somebody's already done it. Oh. Like, you know.

Chris Gammell: So, you know, that would point to they actually have legitimate, decent ideas.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. But, and then just because somebody does it. Doesn't mean you can't do it better. Doesn't mean that it's a million or billion dollar idea. Right. Right. It's A, somebody's already done it. And B, it's so, you know, and you just look at it and you know, well, no one's going to buy that. It's just, you know, yeah, you might sell a few, but it's not going to make you a billionaire. Yeah. You know, it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the stuff I was talking about in that article that you, I mean, well, not really a billionaire, but I was talking about how kind of going into new markets and stuff too. It feels daunting, but it doesn't mean it is, you know, like just because it feels.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no, of course not.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's, you know, and yeah, people, you know, I don't want to discourage you from doing that, but. But, you know, if you, it's the inventor, you know, trap. There's a term for it. And, you know, you come up with an idea and you think that it's going to be a million bucks. But, well, you've got to know the market. You've got to have knowledge in all sorts of areas before you can, you know, do that. There's only a very few select lucky people who actually don't know anything about, you know, if you want to produce an electronic product and you don't know anything about electronics and you can go and convince someone to make it for you or you mortgage your house and, you know, there's a lot of people that do that. Right. And those. They'll go out and mortgage their house and, you know, borrow $100,000 to build up their idea. It's crazy. The odds of you failing are ridiculously high. But there are a couple of people who make it. But so, you know. It's, yeah, it's tough.

Chris Gammell: Depending on. I'm sure you have a pretty good feel of who you're talking to, though, too. I mean, like, there is that certain excitable type who, you know, like, are always. Everything is to the moon. You know what I mean? Like the.

Dave Jones: Oh, they're always very excited. You know, they're so excited. They're jumping out of their skin, which is great. I love it, of course. But, yeah. You've just got to be realistic.

Chris Gammell: But I love shooting it down more.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Oh, man. Yeah, that's too bad. And he's, you know, once. And the story is always the same. They've gone to other people. They've got friends who have said, oh, you know, it's not possible. But I know it is. I know it's possible. I believe it. I believe in it. I believe it. And you're the best guy I've ever seen. And you're going to help me do it. And, you know, I believe in you. You're the best. And I only want the best working for me. And, you know, like, if you're so confident, just go spend the money. There's plenty of subcontract.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Electronic companies out there. They'll give them a spec. And they'll add top level spec. And they'll go design the thing for you.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I was talking to a friend about that, though. When you have people that come in and they don't understand the industry and they don't understand anything else, they always balk at the price. So say you charge. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You charge, you know, a decent rate of, like, $75 an hour. People don't realize that, at least in the U.S., like, that's a nominal rate. You basically have to cut that in half for taxes. You know, like.

Dave Jones: Yep. Oh, that's bottom of the range. Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: And people see that and their jaws drop. They're just like, no, I can't pay that. You have to go lower. It's like, well, no, you really don't. So you might be able to find someone that can do it lower, you know, but they're going to take twice as long and you're going to pay just as much in hours or you're going to get a subpar product. So fast. That's right.

Dave Jones: And that's why they seek out. Yeah, well, that's why they seek out people like us who, you know, who do this thing and they're enthusiastic and they, you know, they think that they can get it for free. You know, they think that by, oh, look, we'll join them and we'll put in massive effort. We'll just, you know, stop everything else in our life and work on their product because it's guaranteed because they've guaranteed it's going to make a billion dollars. Yeah. Yeah. They're hoping to get it for free. Yeah. That's what they're hoping for.

Chris Gammell: You know, it's just all stock up here, right. It's like, yeah, it's, I've had offers like that before and it's like, well, so I'm going to go and you have this idea and you want me to go design it all. And I'm going to charge you a rate. So I understandably would take the money and not the potential of a upside payout someday. You know, I could become a billionaire, as you say, right? So I want to get paid instead. Right. But I'm going to go design this whole thing and put in all this work for this. And then you're just going to take all the credit. I mean, like if you're bankrolling me, then that's a whole different thing. Then I'm a contract manufacturer. Exactly. And I guess you're free to do that. But if, but as soon as it becomes like a, oh, well, we can't pay you this much. We want to pay part of it in stock. It's like, well, if you don't have any money, then I want a much bigger share because. Absolutely. Someone's got to do the work, you know, like. That's right. And absolutely. Absolutely. And people out there should know. And it's always going to be us. Right.

Dave Jones: Because they're the ideas man.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, and, and don't get me wrong. There's a lot of, there's a lot of benefit to the salespeople. Like, I know a lot of engineers harangue salespeople. They're like, oh, well, I could do that. And it's like, well, it's, it's, the tables get turned. It's like, well, could you, could you go out and find leads and, and sell them on your idea and get money up front without a product? Yeah. Because that is often just as important in startups and in these little small ventures as anything else is. Just as much as, as good design or anything else. So, so people should realize that as well. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, end of rant, right? Yeah. Can we talk about some electronics? We've had this one on the list for a while. It comes from the forum. Okay. JK on the forum. His name's actually Jay. And it has to do with, he, he, he asked a very good question. Why are nine volt batteries still used in multimeters and, and other products? Really? Why don't they use double A's? Because they have a much higher energy density. You know, they, they're cheaper. They have a higher energy density per, you know, square centimeter or, I would say, or whatever. So why don't they just use that?

Chris Gammell: That would be my guess.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, it's because a lot of products, uh, well, there's many reasons behind it, but a lot of products, um, need a, a reasonably high voltage to work with. And when you start with a nine volt battery, it's easy to knock that down to five volts. But if you start with two double A's, it's going to cost you money to put in a DC to DC converter to bump it up.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Well, costs. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you think about those, those POS, uh, multimeters you get at like trade shows and stuff, you know, like the $5 ones that are just pathetic, but you know, they have nine volt in the back and yeah, they, uh, step it down. They can, how they could step it. If they calculate it, right. They could step it down with a resistor instead of a linear regulator or even linear regulators

Dave Jones: are cheap as hell.

Chris Gammell: So why not? You know, that's, that's probably a significant portion of the cost right there. And then you could start getting older parts, which are, you know, five volt parts instead of three, three, three volt parts that might be. Yep. Exactly. Older technology. So.

Dave Jones: But there are meters out there, which run on two double A's, especially actually a lot of the cheap ones in my $50 shootout. I think most of them use two double A's actually like you're, you're right. Like the really cheap $2 ones, they use a nine volt battery because they're saving, you know, but then you step up a little bit and they do, it's quite a few of them that do actually go to two double A's, but then they're limited. Like the diode test voltage is limited because they're using a chip in there, which can work from two double A's right. And the LCD and everything else. They don't need to bump it up. Right. But then, you know, your diode test voltage is low, you know, you can't test leads with it. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, these, I usually don't use these kind of like cheapo multimeter. I have a couple sitting around, but I don't really use them. I mean, so. Yeah. It's interesting the fact that they still use them, but I would say cost mainly. And then, like you said, Dave, the voltages that you need, it's much, much easier to step down and step up every time.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's right. So. Yeah. It's just, you know, and ease of design, you know, they can just whack it out there. You know, if you've got to design a DC to DC converter, geez, you might have to prototype that. Heaven forbid. Oh, good Lord. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I can't even imagine being on that super low. Have you ever done any kind of like super, super low end stuff? I mean, like that.

Dave Jones: As in low voltage.

Chris Gammell: No, no. Sorry. Low end costs. Like the, like where you're squeezing out sub penny, sub sub penny kind of cost.

Dave Jones: Not quite to that level. I've worked on stuff where the volumes have been in the hundreds of thousands. So if you save a dollar on each board, assemble one dollar assemble cost on each board, there's a hundred thousand dollars. So that's the thing that a lot of people don't realize is if you actually stand back and take a look at it. If you're producing a hundred thousand boards, you can afford to spend a hundred thousand dollars in labor to actually get your cost down by a dollar.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So.

Dave Jones: So because you will get that money back when you go to manufacture a hundred thousand. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's a one year payback right there. And that's how a lot of people do that kind of calculation. If you're a manager, that's what you're looking at. Yep. How long is it going to take to make all this stuff back? So.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: That's a, that's a really good point.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So you can, you know, you can afford to actually hire someone full time just to optimize the, you know, the component. You can hire a manufacturing engineer full time to optimize the manufacturing cost of this thing. Right.

Chris Gammell: And that's why you will never find a component in a cell phone or any kind of commercial product that does not need to be in there because they are saving money any way they can because that, that's margin that goes straight to the bottom line basically.

Dave Jones: Well, that's called the old Japanese method. What's that? The old Japanese TV method. Is that from the 80s? No, 70s. I think 60s, 70s or something like that. Yeah. They would actually, they would design the TV, you know, this was back when they're all discrete components, you know, very complex stuff. If you ever looked at the schematic for a TV, absolutely amazing. Very difficult to follow. Anyway, what they would do is they'd produce it, they'd engineer it well and they'd make sure it works. And then they'd start taking out components one by one. And when the TV stops working, that's when they put it back in and that's what they'll ship. You know, that's the, I, you know, I don't know if it's a myth. It's sort of like a, you know, a legend of Japanese TV.

Chris Gammell: Was it Jeff that was talking about that when he was on here last time with you with the capacitors?

Dave Jones: Maybe. I don't know. He said something. Yeah, quite, quite possibly. Take off decoupling capacitors until it stops working.

Chris Gammell: And that's a great example too, because you think about decoupling caps, like, you know, like what, a cent a piece or, or even like a, a 10th of a cent, you know, like that's, that's ridiculous. But again, times.

Dave Jones: But you throw a lot of them in there and they generally overkill. Most decoupling is over-engineered. Yeah, that's true. So that's just what, what we do, you know, oh, I've got an, I'll stick a hundred and a 10 and a one mic on there just for good measure.

Chris Gammell: You know, I would call that under-engineered because I think, I think it's just not understood. I think people understand, okay, you need some charge sitting there at locally at the device and they just put it in until it works. And then if it doesn't work, you put on more, you know, like I think.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but you try and go and measure and actually characterize that sort of stuff for each component in your design. And then when they interact on the board together, or it's almost impossible to, you know, get down to a level where you can actually engineer that one, 100% to know exactly what decoupling cap is needed for each one. I think it's very difficult.

Chris Gammell: No, I totally agree. But that's why I think it's under-engineering.

Dave Jones: That's why people just go, well, I need, I should have some decoupling there. The app note says I should have some. Okay, I'll chuck in a hundred and.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's like one of those rule of thumb kind of things, you know, just throwing them on there because, oh, well, it didn't work last time. Might as well put it in this time.

Dave Jones: And it's too hard to characterize it. Jeez, I'm not going to spend, you know, a month characterizing this thing to figure out what is the best optimal, you know, I don't have time for that. Jeez. Yep, yep, yep. So just bung it in and I know it'll work.

Chris Gammell: Bung it in. That's good.

Dave Jones: Bung it in. Yeah. Nice. So that's what you do. That's good. Yeah, I've never. And that's our amp hour. Is that, is it really? It's over. We've been going for an hour and two minutes. Oh, man. Sorry to tell you. Number 32 is all over. And it was all a rant.

Chris Gammell: It wasn't all a rant.

Dave Jones: It was a half hour rant on a competing radio show.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, you know.

Dave Jones: Love you guys, really. It's just constructive advice.

Chris Gammell: We'd love to hear your future updated version. We can't wait to hear it, actually.

Dave Jones: And yeah, absolutely. I'd love, you know, I love, I thrive on competition. Not even competition, just more. I don't thrive on world domination.

Chris Gammell: Just more stuff to listen to.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. You know, sitting at work. Yeah. I want more engineering shows to listen to.

Chris Gammell: Can't listen to ourselves.

Dave Jones: Well, I do. After you edit this. See, because I, you know, I like listening. I have to listen to the show back. Because it's different when it's edited. I, it just turns out different, I think, to when it's, you know.

Chris Gammell: It's just the magic that I edit into it.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. What magic? You time align it and run it through the levelizer. Yeah, that's about it. But it takes time, you know. It's, yeah. Oh, boy. Anyway, thanks for joining us. Yeah, we'll talk to you next week, guys.

Chris Gammell: See ya. Bye.

Speaker ?: Thank you.