#43 – An Interview with Jeff Keyzer and Jeremy Blum - Audacious Arduino Arguments

Chris Gammell: Welcome to the Amp Hour.

Dave Jones: I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog. And I'm Chris Gammell from Chris Gammell's Analog Life.

Jeff Kaiser: And this is Jeff Kaiser from MightyOm.com.

Arduino: And over here is Jeremy Blum from JeremyBlum.com. Wow, is it open door today?

Dave Jones: Yeah, I guess so. This is letting everyone in now. Awesome. Hey, Jeremy, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's always nice to be had, as we say here.

Chris Gammell: We've heard someone had a birthday recently.

Arduino: Yes, my 21st birthday yesterday, and I'm still alive. He made it. Good. Awesome. Congratulations. I'm on the other side. Thanks. Now, Jeremy, have you been on the show before? I have not. Well, I mean, I guess I've been mentioned once or twice. I have not yet had the honor to come.

Jeff Kaiser: So you're somewhat of a celebrity at the Amp Hour.

Arduino: I mean, that's for you guys to decide, right?

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, we feature Jeremy's stuff a couple times now. Yeah, we have. Maybe for the purposes of the show, Jeremy could introduce himself. Or maybe, Chris, you should introduce Jeremy.

Chris Gammell: Or maybe for Jeff, because he had me send him links before, too. And Jeff's too lazy to read the links, I said.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, Jeremy, go ahead. Go ahead. I actually, I did read the links. Oh, good, good. But I think, Jeremy, you should say a few words. Because I know that we've had feedback before. We've had feedback before that we've had people on the show, and people are like, who is this guy? And I think they meant me whenever they were saying that.

Arduino: Okay, well, I guess, so I'm probably the youngest. Well, maybe you guys don't wish I was, but I'm the youngest among all of you. So I'm in college, junior at Cornell in electrical engineering. I do a lot of open source projects. I blog. I do video content for Elmett 14, as does Chris, obviously. And yeah, I'm just all around the internet and stuff, trying to expose people to the world of engineering.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, fantastic. I love it. Yeah, we've talked about the Arduino series that you did. And I got a bone to pick with you about that. Oh, yeah? Can you say Arduino for me?

Arduino: Arduino.

Chris Gammell: Arduino?

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, there is an extra syllable there. Is there? Man, that's just not me. That sounds pretty good to me. Arduino.

Arduino: I don't know what the correct way to pronounce it is, actually. I've always pronounced it Arduino, but maybe it's Arduino.

Jeff Kaiser: There was a link that was on the Arduino site quite a long time ago, and I think a link to it from my site that had a woman speaking Arduino.

Chris Gammell: Like an Italian or something? Like some official.

Jeff Kaiser: A native Italian speaker saying the word Arduino. And we should post a link to it from the show notes, but I'll see if I can dig it up. Okay.

Dave Jones: And coincidentally, we've got tons of Arduino stuff on today's show, I think. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's an Arduino special. Yeah, definitely. Because there is some big news, so we'll talk about that later. Well, I think it's pretty big anyway.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I think it's huge.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Let's get into shout-outs then. I mean, now we know Jeremy, right? I mean, that's the intro we needed, right? It's done.

Arduino: Everything you need to know about me in a nutshell. You can Google it. Google Jeremy Blunt. There you go.

Chris Gammell: There we go. All right. Awesome. So how about some shout-outs? First off, I had Jeremy's birthday on there, so obviously, happy birthday.

Arduino: Send me a present.

Chris Gammell: How about an appearance on the Amp Hour? Does that count?

Arduino: Okay. Yeah. All right. That's fair, I guess. I'll take it.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Next up, though, Jason Pruitt from 555 Contest. He's been on the site a couple times and commenting and such. He just linked here from his site. So thanks a lot to Jason. We always like that when people put our logo on their site and link back to the Amp Hour. Absolutely. Thanks, Jason. Yeah. He's got some cool posts, too. He did a review on one of the things he got from the 555 Contest. So it's pretty cool. Definitely.

Dave Jones: And if you haven't seen it, Alan got his Aussie Prize, the bunch of the shovel load of LCDs. Yeah. And he's actually uploaded a video showing those actually working and did a cool LCD demo thanking everyone for the contest and everything. So it's great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: It was awesome. Is there a webpage that summarizes what everybody got or what the complete list of winners is for the 555 Contest?

Chris Gammell: We have the winners, but not necessarily what they got.

Jeff Kaiser: I didn't.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Jeff Kaiser: Because there was a lot of stuff. A lot of really cool things had been donated, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. We had asked everybody to try and give a shout out or tweet or Facebook message.

Arduino: We need a montage video. Yeah. I've got to do a montage. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You've got to go for ages. Yeah. I know, right? I, bags not editing. Thank you. Yeah. Right. Bags is...

Jeff Kaiser: I'd like to see, I'd like to see what everybody got. And also, if maybe I know anybody that got cool stuff so I could go and, you know... Borrow it? Try to borrow it, yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Is bags a Yankee thing or is it just an Aussie expression? Like, bags that? I've never heard of that.

Jeff Kaiser: I've never heard of that. No? Okay. What does it mean? I think that's just you.

Dave Jones: It means that you claim it first. I, oh, I bags that prize, you know. Oh, okay.

Jeff Kaiser: We say that you have dibs. Yeah, dibs.

Dave Jones: Okay, yep. Same thing. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Okay. All right, cool. There you go. Yeah. So, that Alan's video is great, though. I mean, like, that bag you sent was bigger than what you said. You said a couple envelopes. That thing looked like it was sent in like a gunny sack. It was pretty big.

Dave Jones: I think it was about four kilos worth of... Wow. Times 2.2 for you pounds, people. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, that's, you know, 8.8 pounds or something worth of LCD displays. Wow. I love it. Yeah. It was 100, I think. I think it was around 100.

Chris Gammell: Nice. Displays, so. Awesome. You know, when Jeff was showing me around the shops out in Silicon Valley, we saw some of those displays, and I don't think they were how much you said they were, Dave. You said they were worth like 40 bucks a piece. I saw them for like three.

Dave Jones: No, they're not 40. When did I ever say they're 40 bucks a piece?

Chris Gammell: I thought you said they're like 40 bucks a piece.

Dave Jones: No, if I'm at J-Card, they're...

Jeff Kaiser: He meant 40 Australian dollars.

Dave Jones: No, they're about 15 dollars at J-Card. 15. Okay. Exaggeration. Yeah. It just gets bigger and bigger as time goes by. I know.

Jeff Kaiser: You said they were like a gajillion dollars.

Dave Jones: No, I didn't.

Jeff Kaiser: Makes it seem more impressive. Yeah. They were some kind of a military contract. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, I said they were about 15 bucks each, and I was originally going to give away about 80, because that's what fitted in a three kilo bag or something. Oh, okay. I managed to get a bigger bag, and that was about 1,200 bucks worth. So, technically, I think at retail prices, it was probably the most expensive price.

Chris Gammell: I'm still claiming that. Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry. We let you judge your own thing. That was gift enough for you, Dave. Right. Yeah. Yeah, me and Jerry were talking about doing another show for the... Jeremy and I. No, no. Jerry. I said Jerry and I. Oh, Jerry.

Dave Jones: Well, Jerry and I.

Chris Gammell: Jerry. Why do you always correct me on that, man?

Dave Jones: Because you always get it wrong.

Chris Gammell: Who cares? Me and Jerry. I do. Okay. Thank you.

Dave Jones: Grammar. Grammar's important. Jeez, I'm an engineer, and I can't spell or hopelessly grammar, but at least I get that right.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Man.

Chris Gammell: Jerry and I were talking about doing another show to follow up on some of the videos that we did out in Silicon Valley, because we didn't actually get to show a lot of them.

Dave Jones: Yeah, there was no show floor footage.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And that was the best stuff, I thought, but it didn't make it through. So, we might do a show where we review all that stuff and have people call in or...

Dave Jones: Excellent. Chat.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Do it. All right. It has been spoken. Right. Is there a deadline on that?

Dave Jones: Can we expect a... Oh, no. Right. No. Yeah. Kind of like my blog, huh? Yeah. Anytime he gets done. Yeah. Whenever. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, Jeremy, you wanted to start off on the Amp Hour in a grand fashion and have a bit of a rant.

Arduino: A rant. A Dave-style rant. Okay. Yeah. This is something that's been brought up on here a bunch of times before and also on a bunch of blogs. I think, Chris, you blogged about this, right, at some point?

Chris Gammell: I think so, yeah.

Arduino: Yeah. So, I've got... I mean, I'm going to do an internship this summer in New York City, and a lot of my friends are also going to New York City, a lot of engineering friends, but unfortunately, 90% of them are not going to work at engineering places. They're not going to do anything technical. They're going to work at banks. What? Yeah. I know. I know. And so, you know, I know a lot of people that are going to work at banks this summer, and I'm asking them why. I'm like, why? You have this engineering education. Why are you going to work at a bank? And they're like, I mean, it pays, and it does. It pays well. And so, I mean, I don't know. My personal opinion on this is you're getting the engineering degree. Go contribute to the world of engineering. Go help progress us forward. Help work on something new. We have a hell of a lot of bankers already, right? How many more do we need? Especially those people getting the engineering degrees. And then, so the most interesting part to me is there's like, you can get a degree in like operations research engineering. And I can see that, right? That kind of seems to follow into the financial world a little bit. But it's mostly like electrical engineers and computer scientists that are doing this. And that's what doesn't make sense to me. I don't know what your guys' feelings are on this. But I think there's certain kinds of engineering degrees that can lend themselves to this. But other kinds, you know, you have the knowledge. Why are you majoring in it if you want to go into the financial world?

Jeff Kaiser: So what are they doing at these banks?

Arduino: It's mostly like a lot of statistical analysis. It's software programming and math. Yeah, they do a lot of software programming. Because banks use a lot of custom internal software. So there's definitely a lot of that going on for sure.

Jeff Kaiser: But what is an electrical engineer doing?

Arduino: Most of the double E's that I know that are going to work at banks are doing just like general analysis and like trend mapping stuff. Not so much double E things at all. But just, you know, you're good at math. You're good at physics. You know, it carries over.

Dave Jones: Yep. I can tell you exactly why they do it. Because they don't give a shit. But seriously, in my experience, like over 95, it's got to be over 95%. I'm pulling that figure out of my ass. But anyway, over 95% of people who do engineering just don't care about it. Really, they're not passionate about it. They're just doing it because, well, they're doing it. You know, because their parents wanted them to or their friends wanted them to or it sounded good enough, you know. Or they think they're much money.

Jeff Kaiser: The paycheck probably has something to do with it.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, maybe. Well, once again, that's a real, but they're not, they don't care. They're not passionate like us. They're not going to listen to the, they're not, they wouldn't even, they've probably never read an electronics magazine in their life. They don't even own a soldering iron or a multimeter at home. You can guarantee it.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, maybe this is like a process of like self-selection. Like all these, all these guys who really shouldn't be in engineering anyway, go to these banks. And then in the next financial crisis, they'll all be out of a job. Well, good.

Dave Jones: You know, seriously, I reckon good riddance to them because, well, you know, if you're not passionate about what you do, I reckon get the hell out. Go, sure. Go and do banking. Fine.

Arduino: So I think they've got the potential. I think part of the issue is, you know, the education. So they come in to college and they, you know, they're going to engineering school. Because they start off passionate about it. And then they go into these classes and you go through all this theoretical bullshit. And you have to, you know, it's, it's very theoretical and you do so little hands-on work. And, you know, I was just, I was talking to one of my professors about this the other day. Like there, there is no class at Cornell where you like pick up a soldering iron or design a PCB, like start to finish. It just doesn't happen. It's completely theoretical. And all that only happens on your own accord if you, you know, if you work in a lab or something.

Chris Gammell: Or like senior project or something.

Arduino: Yeah, exactly. That kind of stuff. And I think if, if that was pushed more than this one, it wouldn't happen as much. But people, they come in and get bored of it.

Jeff Kaiser: Do you know what I think the, the, the fix for that is? We need hacker spaces in universities.

Arduino: I think that would be awesome. That would be really great. And there was speak of, you know, making just a general EE lab where anyone would come in and do whatever they wanted here. And it kind of fell through the cracks. I don't think anything ever happened with it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's hard to find funding for, you know, like when you have to go and justify it, it's like, well, we wanted there so people could go there. Right. What? No.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, it's a part of, it's a part of education. And I think you, well, I don't know, maybe corporate sponsorship. I mean, if you put some cool dev tools in there and people actually use them, then that's a great way to reach out to potential future, you know, users and people who are going to be specifying your tools. But it's also, I think there's an educational value to hacker spaces. Like a lot of universities have things like the, I don't know, back whenever I was in school, the micromouse competition was pretty big in a bunch of schools. Even though my school didn't have it, I saw some competitions at other universities. And I think it's a pretty important part of education to have that hands-on experience. So, yeah, so maybe we need to start like fighting back to try to keep a generation of electrical engineers from becoming financial analysts. Yeah, I think so.

Dave Jones: Well, I agree. But even if you introduce all those courses, there's still going to be X percent of people who just don't care. They just don't have an interest in it. They can go to the hacker spaces, do all these cool projects, and they just go, well, what's this shit? I don't care about this. You know, that's just the way of the world. Not everyone is interested in electronics, and you can't force them to be interested. You can't force everyone who finishes their degree to be a good designer and give a shit about it, really. I mean, it's just X amount of people who are just going to leave the industry. That always has, always will, I'm afraid.

Chris Gammell: It makes you wonder if it's like a perfect, not a perfect system, but like a self-balancing system too, because if all those people that were going into this banking sector ended up, you know, they probably would be decent engineers, not necessarily the best or most passionate ones, right? But if they all went into the field then, maybe there would be jobs or, you know, trying to ban care.

Speaker ?: That's right.

Chris Gammell: Be careful. They're really passionate.

Dave Jones: Because they could end up taking our jobs. So, you know, the one, the really passionate ones who deserve to get the jobs, the really passionate and talented ones, they might get, you know, they might get actually, their jobs may get taken by some smart-talking guy in a suit who doesn't know jack shit about electronics, it doesn't care, right? But it can happen. So, I would rather...

Arduino: Yeah, there's a lot of issues for you though. None of the engineers graduating here are smart-talking guys in suits. Right. They're all wearing cargo pants and looking at their feet.

Chris Gammell: Oh, dear.

Dave Jones: Anyway, not all education systems are the same and it varies in different countries and different states and all sorts of things.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. There's no universal solution to that.

Chris Gammell: But CJ Gervaisi, who's one of the friends of the show too, he wrote on his blog recently about, you know, he actually went for it. He said, you know, well, Wall Street needs engineers and, you know, they need the engineering culture and the engineering restrictiveness of their own finances. And I don't know about you guys, but personally, I think that kind of money, like, man, when it's that big, it just is totally corruptive.

Dave Jones: He's off in la-la land. It's like printing your own chips. It's off in fairy land, really. No, you just, you know, it's never going to happen. You get sucked. Oh, man. You can be a, you know, a badass engineer, go in there and you're just going to get sucked into the system. That's what happens. The system is, you know, the system is what it is. And you just get sucked into it. And you've got to conform or you're out. So, you know, you can't go in there and go, oh, yeah, I'm going to bring my engineering, you know, intuition and everything, you know, my skills into this. No, it doesn't happen. Right. You go into the job. It's like starting at some jobs, right? You can be coming, coming there keen as mustard, but no, you've got to do what the company wants and play by their rules and, and work by their thinking and methodologies and all that sort of stuff. It's even worse when money's involved. Yeah. So, you know, it's just, nah, he's, nah, I, you know, he's good. He has good intentions, but he's not living in the practical world. I don't think it's just not going to work. I would agree. More engineers aren't going to change that system. They're just going to get sucked into the system and no longer be engineers. End of story.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Interesting cultural note. A lot of, you know, you look at a lot of places like China and India too, and engineering is not necessarily there for engineering sake. I mean, there are a lot of good engineers over there, but I know a lot of engineers are just there to get their degree and, hey, I'm going to management right away. So it's interesting.

Dave Jones: Well, it's a big status thing over there. If you don't become an engineer or a doctor, they're the two big, they're the two big professions, aren't they? I think over there, you know, especially in India, I think it is. Engineering is huge. You know, so if you don't do that, then you're, you know, it's almost a shame on you. You know?

Chris Gammell: I know the schools are very, I have some friends who went to the schools there and they're very competitive schools. But yeah, if people out there listening are from India or China and know about that, I'd definitely love to hear about that in the comments section just because, you know, that's a world I've never been part of.

Dave Jones: And we're just talking out of us, really. So we have no idea.

Chris Gammell: I've had friends that have told me about it, but that's all secondhand stuff. So I'd love to hear firsthand of pounce.

Arduino: Well, I mean, it means a lot more in terms of status over there, right? So like you're an engineer, you're on top of the pile. Over here, you think, oh, CEO, he's on top. Over there, being an engineer is a much bigger deal than it is here.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: I agree. Sounds like my kind of place.

Arduino: Yeah. We should all move to China. Jeff's on the move.

Chris Gammell: Love it. So speaking of on the move, we've had like three or four suggestions come through about balloon projects. And I'm not sure why, if it's like all at the same time or it's just the same people are feeding these stories through. But, you know, I was talking about hams last week and I was asking about stories and suggestions and stuff. And a lot of people actually wrote in. So one was Bob Kokus. He wrote in about a balloon project where he was actually putting stuff up into space. He was going off a tutorial on SparkFun, which I'd never heard of. But, and then there's another one here where a bunch of EEs and ham operators launched it up to 96,000 feet. It was a high altitude balloon from RIT.

Dave Jones: I love that stuff. Really. It's just, yeah, it's very cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think the simple, I think the real simple one that Bob's talking about was the, where they just sent a cell phone camera up in a balloon and had to take pictures and then they, you know, parachuted back down. But, man, that stuff's cool.

Arduino: What kind of data was the 9,600 feet one collecting?

Chris Gammell: Let's see. So there's sending back. 96,000. 1,000. 96,000. Okay. 96,000 feet. Yeah. They had photos. They had, they were doing tracking. So, you know, sending out beacons, I believe. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You do GPS tracking. And yeah, somebody tracked this real time. I think Alan's involved in this. Oh, really? This sort of balloons. I think, maybe I'm confusing him with somebody else. But yeah, there's quite a few of these bloggers involved in, in these, in these Loon projects. So they're very cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Definitely. So, thanks a lot.

Dave Jones: And they, yeah, they GPS track them. You can get live tracking on the net and you can watch it as it droves across the country. Which is pretty cool. Where will it land? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's good. Then you got to go climb up in power poles and trees and find it again.

Dave Jones: And if they're really smart, they'd aim for the White House lawn, you know. Score! Oh, I don't know. That's smart.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And there was one other one. There's a, oh God, I don't know how to say this. Blinkandlichten.org. There's a first day, a first person account of a two day adventure to actually find one of these. So it's a, a near space balloon again, but they actually have a full, it's like a documentary and, and blog, I believe. So. Right. We'll, we'll link to all that stuff.

Dave Jones: Got to take a look. What, and they, yeah. How do they find these things? Have they got like a tracker in them after they, I guess, you know, kind of where it landed with the GPS. I guess it would, it would continue to transmit, wouldn't it? Yeah. After it's landed. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: So you, they use APRS, which is an amateur radio, I think amateur radio position reporting system. Right. So it sends coordinates. But the problem is that whenever the balloon gets down close to the ground, the local terrain can really affect the ability of the transmitter to actually make it to wherever the receiver is. And so I think very often by the time they hit the ground, the antenna, you know, which was probably pointing down is not really looking so good. It's the ground.

Dave Jones: So maybe they've only got like a, a few hundred feet or a few hundred meters radius to search for something.

Jeff Kaiser: Exactly. Exactly. It's, it's really interesting though. I've always, this is something that I've always wanted to do, but I can't really really do it myself. I've, I've thought about trying to get some people together because, um, Austin is.

Chris Gammell: Jeff, are you afraid of balloons?

Jeff Kaiser: Is that why? I have a phobia of a high altitude balloons. Latex.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I think it'd be great fun too, but it requires a lot of money, a lot of time and investment and stuff like that. So it's not trivial to go up to 90,000 feet.

Jeff Kaiser: I, you know, I see in the show notes here that the, the second project that's on the list, um, mentions, uh, trying to put high voltage electronics and having problems with, I guess, Corona discharge at high altitude. Yeah. Um, I wonder if they're trying to plot the, um, density or whatever rate of, um, cosmic rays, uh, versus altitude, because I know that that's something that I think in the turn of the century, the last century, uh, people were using hot air balloons to, uh, chart the occurrence of cosmic rays versus, um, altitude because it's a very strong function. Yeah. Uh, cosmic rays are, uh, they, they hit, um, oxygen and whatever else, uh, atoms in the atmosphere and, um, get broken up into smaller particles. And, uh, that's why if you fly on a commercial airliner, uh, you get considerably more radiation exposure while you're in the air than you do just walking around on the ground. That's why, uh, which I learned from that XKCD comic. Yeah. Right. Oh, that's right. Yeah. I remember that. And it is a real, it is a real problem. So I, I, I'm going to guess without, I, there isn't a link here. Um, but I'm going to guess that that's what they're doing because I can't think of any other reason they'd put a Geiger tube in a high altitude balloon.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And that can correlate to, uh, like random, uh, fires, like a random, uh, fires in memory and stuff like that. Certain, you know, if it gets hit, I have a question about that.

Jeff Kaiser: I have a question about that. You know, I've heard from time to time and the last time, and this is probably as close to a rant as you're going to get from me. I've heard. So, so remember the, uh, unintended acceleration BS that, uh, started. Coming about because of Toyota or whoever it was. The Toyota thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I remember for a little while they were citing, uh, cosmic rays. It were causing these unintended accelerations. And you know that whenever an engineer goes with the cosmic rays, that they have no freaking idea what you're talking about. It was, uh, out of ideas. It was, but, but it made me actually think, um, cosmic rays theoretically can alter, uh, memory contents. Right. Yes.

Dave Jones: As, as the geometries go down too. So the smaller the geometry.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah. Right. And this is one of the reasons why back in the nineties, people were trying to sell me error correcting Ram for my Pentium, you know, one 23.

Speaker ?: Oh yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: That's right. Yeah. And you used to have to pay like twice as much and you could get ECC Ram. But here's my question. I've got a desktop sitting here that, you know, I use for well in excess of 40 hours a week, right? It's my, my business computer. It's got eight gigabytes of Ram. It doesn't have error correction. I know that there's cosmic rays that are coming through this memory. Why don't I see any failures? Isn't there just redundancy?

Dave Jones: It is a statistical event. Um, but it, you know, it will eventually happen.

Jeff Kaiser: But, but I guess I, I've never had the computer do anything that would lead me to believe that it had been hit by cosmic rays. I mean, I guess what my point is, is that computers now have so much memory capacity that isn't the statistical likelihood of having a soft failure, which is, I think what they're called, uh, so much higher now. Like I just don't understand why we don't see cosmic ray related failures on, in our desktop or laptop PCs. Maybe we do and we don't know it.

Dave Jones: I program crashes.

Jeff Kaiser: You know?

Arduino: And you have, you have so much memory, right? So the same argument goes the other way. If you have so much, it's probably affecting something that you're not even using or it's not doing something critical.

Jeff Kaiser: That's right. What I'd like to do is I'd like to, to take a computer and I'd like to basically dump, launch it into space. You know what I mean? I'm going to put it on a high altitude balloon. Stick it in your microwave. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I'd like to see, you know, say you take like an AVR microcontroller, which is a lot simpler and you dump the contents of memory every whatever seconds. Would you ever, ever see a flipped bit? That's my question.

Dave Jones: I think it's likely you would. If you ran it long enough, you probably would.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I would, I would agree with that. Yeah. Also, I think the other thing to remember too, is you got to compare DRAM, which has a refresh rate, right? So if you hit it, basically DRAM is a little, DRAM is different. Yeah. Yeah. So there are little capacitors in there, right? So those things are refreshed.

Dave Jones: It's different to a hard, a hard, um, F-RAM or something like that. Right.

Chris Gammell: Or like an FPGA, which has SRAM in it, right? Which is like six. Yes. Yes. That's right. Flip flops. And then so.

Dave Jones: Different gate construction. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Because I was just talking to a micro semi, which just bought Actel, right? And they love Actel because they're, now they're going to sell these rad hard parts, right? Rad hard being radiation hardened. Radiation hardened. Yeah. So you can send it into space. It's smart, right? These are very, very expensive parts. But with FPGAs, if, if you hit it with the cosmic ray and you flip one of those configuration bits, now you have a totally different path for all your signal and not necessarily just a, a lost piece of data, right? So you've actually changed the architecture of your program.

Dave Jones: Of your device. Yeah. And it morphs into an intelligent, you know, Skynet type device. Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: It's short circuit. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Johnny Five is alive.

Chris Gammell: Transformers 3 goes to the moon.

Jeff Kaiser: Evolution's a bitch, isn't it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah. But I guess I'm just, I'm saying that I've, I've read, I've read for, for years that cosmic rays cause soft failures in computer memory, but I could not tell you that I've ever experienced this. And I'm, I'm just curious that if this really was a problem, it certainly seems like we'd be having a lot more problems.

Dave Jones: No, I'm sure there's papers on it. I'm sure people have researched it in these huge data centers, you know, the Googles and the Facebook data centers and all that sort of stuff. I'm sure, you know, they've probably taken that sort of thing into account.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't know, but yeah, it, no, it, it is a genuine problem and it is, it is a completely statistical problem. There's got to be enough energy in the right point at the right space in memory where it can cause damage at the right energy level on the right type of cell, be it, you know, DRAM, SRAM, whatever. And yeah, it's fairly complex stuff, but there's other things involved. It's not just cosmic rays. You can get, you know, electron migration and all those semiconductor problems. I read a story. You can probably get quantum fluctuations too. I think it was Intel.

Jeff Kaiser: Intel made a CPU or a memory chip back in the seventies maybe. And they were seeing mysterious failures and it turned out that there was a small amount of radioactive material in their encapsulation compound. It was nice. And apparently that took them a while to figure out.

Chris Gammell: Wow. Yeah, it certainly would. Well, speaking of space, how about this other thing that Bob Coke has sent in? Did you guys see this? The new XPRIZE that was announced?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: This is the first I've heard of it.

Chris Gammell: I love it. Yes. So basically they knew XPRIZE. So XPRIZE in the past has been get to space and get back in six months. And that's what I think SpaceX did that or someone else, maybe advanced. I was just reading about this. Advanced materials or advanced. Oh, crap. Whatever. There was a company that won it basically. And then another one is the AutomotiveX prize, which is 100 miles per gallon. And that's another $10 million prize. But the new one is $10 million to develop a medical tricorder like in Star Trek, which makes my inner geek go crazy.

Arduino: Are they actually officially calling it a tricorder in the announcement?

Chris Gammell: Is that what I call you writing? It's probably a trademark. Yeah. I don't know. They said they need to have something. Oh, they have it here. Hold on. It needs to be able to, a mobile solution that can diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board certified physicians. Excellent.

Arduino: I'm sure the board certified physicians love that.

Dave Jones: But that's pretty broad. That is pretty broad. Yeah, that's a very hard challenge to me. But couldn't the tricorder do like other stuff? It could detect radiation and energy. I guess it doesn't have to do that, right?

Jeff Kaiser: It's just got to detect it. The tricorder could do pretty much anything that they want it to.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Magic. Yeah. So is this going to be, you know, it all comes down to the technical details. Is it going to be based on the blood thing? You know, like you need to take a sample of the blood, put it in there and do that. Just figure it out, Dave. Just figure it out. There's a couple of probes that you stick on your head or...

Chris Gammell: Can you just look up Wikipedia? I mean, is that the kind of thing?

Dave Jones: Well, because if it was open, right, if the specs were completely open on this to beat a board of certified doctors, right, then you would choose the most obscure thing that they would have a hard time. You can't just walk up to someone and, you know, check their symptoms and go, oh, you've got such and such.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Um, this is your problem. You would, you know, you'd have probes that could actually detect, you know, brain waves or something. And you could say, okay, you've got this problem. Um.

Chris Gammell: Or they could do it where, uh, they could just say, well, it has to be better than Dr. House. And, uh. You're right. Then the device just has to be a lupus detector.

Arduino: It always has to come close to killing you before it makes you better. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I don't know. I think there needs to be some boundaries on that one. That's really incredibly broad. I think that's impossible to meet as it stands.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, we need more details, but. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's still fun. I'm sure there will be.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because nobody's going to put, you know, a million bucks into developing something like this without hard and fast rules. That's what happened to the Google, the X-Prize, the Luna thing. You remember the first person? Did anyone claim that? I can't. No. Obviously not. It would have been huge news. It was, you know, 10 million bucks for the first person. I think it went up to 20 million. He put a little probe on the moon, like a little rover, and it transmitted, you know, photos and video back. And all of the teams, there were a lot of, you know, everyone flocked to that one. And then they started going into the fine details of it, and there were so many loopholes in it, they, you know, half of them actually just left. They just actually pulled out and said, well, I'm not going to be involved in this because there's too many loopholes. So, yeah. Shame, really.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There's a couple. I mean, there's a bunch of different names for stuff, too. There's the Lunar Lander X-Challenge. There's the Oil Cleanup. That's it, yeah. The Lunar X-Prize. Right. And there's the Schmidt Oil Cleanup. Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X-Challenge. Automotive. That's Progressive Insurance. Obviously, these are all very sponsored. Right. There's the Google Lunar X-Prize. There's the Ansari X-Prize. There's the Archon Genomics X-Prize, which is...

Arduino: Wasn't that just to map the human genome? Is that one done?

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure. I mean, it sounds right.

Dave Jones: Well, the human genome was mapped before all this X-Prize thing came along, wasn't it? That was probably 10 years ago now, wasn't it?

Arduino: Yeah, about 10 years ago.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I'm sure it was a long time ago now. In 2000. In the scheme of things. Yeah, it was in 2000. Especially for Jeremy, that's half his lifetime. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it'll be... Let's see, it's $10 million awarded to the first team that can build a device to use to sequence 100 genomes within 10 days or less.

Dave Jones: Ah, right. So, it's just a computational thing, really. Yeah. With a recurring cost of no more than... Get the world's biggest supercomputer and you can claim the prize.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No more than $10,000 per genome recurring cost. Ah, right. And it has to be 98% effective. So, yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, these are all very useful things. But, uh... And smart from a business perspective.

Speaker ?: I'd like to see...

Jeff Kaiser: I'd like to see some, like, Windows 7 XPRIZES. Like, can I get a decent backup tool?

Chris Gammell: Ooh.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, right. Burn. XPRIZE. $10 million. The Jeff Kaiser Mighty O'M XPRIZE. Can I get Windows not to crash every five days? Ah, you know, Jeff. It's probably that cosmic radiation. Yeah, actually, now it all comes together.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, I've got a shitload more LCDs I can donate. $10 million worth.

Jeff Kaiser: It'd be funny if the prize was, like, an OS X license or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Or Linux license. A Linux license, yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: A Linux license. Free Linux license.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Free lifetime Linux license.

Chris Gammell: There you go.

Dave Jones: I love it. All right, that's enough about XPRIZES.

Chris Gammell: XPRIZES. Well, let's get to this big news about Arduino. How about that? Yeah, let's do it.

Dave Jones: Who wants to announce this? Yeah, I put this on here. What it is, is that...

Chris Gammell: Oh, I put it on there first, Dave. Come on. Oh, did you? Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Right. You go ahead, though. Go ahead, please. Sorry. All right. Where are we? Who is it? Google. Sorry.

Arduino: I can't find on the list. Google. Google. Google.

Chris Gammell: An Android. Android, basically. So, Google had their I.O. conference to start off, and they announced a whole bunch of stuff.

Chris Gammell: This wasn't the one I was thinking of.

Dave Jones: Okay. Oh, okay. No, I was thinking about the other Arduino one. Are you talking about the microchip one? Yeah, I'm talking about the microchip thing. Oh, I don't think that's as big. Okay, let's discuss the Android one. Oh, yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Okay, there were two. Yeah, there were two this week.

Chris Gammell: There were. I didn't see that. Or last week. I didn't see that. Okay, yeah. So, I'll go with the Google thing. So, Google had this conference called the I.O. conference. It was out in San Francisco. And basically, they announced a bunch of stuff. They released the 3.0 version of Android, which is the, they're calling Ice Cream Sandwich, which I think is a really clunky name, but I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Because Honeycomb is their iPad rip-off, you know, thingy. Let's just call it like it is, folks. But the cool thing that they announced, and this has been all over the place, is that basically, they announced an ADK, which, anyone help? Android Development Kit. There we go. Basically, though, it's a defined API to talk through the USB interface for now, possibly Bluetooth in the future, down to this Arduino board. So, basically, they are gunning to have, in my opinion at least, they're gunning to have Android as the screen for everything, which I think is brilliant.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Hey, I've got one question with this. Because it goes through the micro USB connector on there, it does, and it obviously acts as a host. Does it actually provide 5-volt power through there? Because you use it to charge through there, but can it back power devices through from your phone? Does it actually output 5 volts? I don't know.

Arduino: I can't imagine you would want to. It would drain the battery pretty fast.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but it'll at least be convenient. If you've got some low-power little thing that you want to plug in, it means that it doesn't have to have its own power supply. Yeah, that's true. And that opens up a whole new level of apps, really.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you talk about like a tricorder, right? You plug it into your phone.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. You plug in your little dongle. It detects your blood cell count or something, and you could... Yeah. Yeah, and it's all powered from that. It doesn't have to have its own power supply or battery.

Jeff Kaiser: But did you guys see how expensive the reference design is? Yeah, it's 400 bucks.

Dave Jones: 400 bucks! What the heck?

Chris Gammell: It's insane.

Dave Jones: Let's Google it. They got money. And that's 400 American dollars, isn't it? That's about $2 Australian.

Speaker ?: Oh.

Dave Jones: Well, I can probably see you, fellas.

Jeff Kaiser: I can't believe that. I don't know what they're thinking. What's in this thing that it costs $400?

Arduino: That's the thing that makes no sense. I put another thing on here. Someone already hacked it to work with an Arduino Uno.

Jeff Kaiser: No problem. Yeah. Yeah, I saw that.

Arduino: So what is on this that's making it 400 bucks?

Dave Jones: It's because that's not their business. They don't want it to be their business, so they charge 400 bucks because they can. Yeah, they didn't get the memo. Right? They don't care. They're not in the business of supplying hobbyists. End of story. I find that... So 400 bucks is actually quite reasonable for that.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah. I find that offensive.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, Jeff. I don't really. It's just normal business for that sort of thing. That's what they're targeting. They're not targeting the average hobbyists. I don't think they're going to make money. They know everyone's just going to go make their own one. So why should they make it 20 bucks, you know?

Chris Gammell: That's true. If you make it prohibitively high, then people just do that naturally, right? It'll drive the makers out there. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's right. They just don't want to be involved with it. They just seeded it, and it's fine.

Jeff Kaiser: But then unlike Arduino, where you have one common reference, reference design, there's going to be like 10 of them, and they're all going to be different, and it's going to be fragmented. And I just don't like... Why did they have to go and do that?

Dave Jones: Yeah, but it's the same API, right? It's just literally different hardware, isn't it? Yeah. Okay.

Jeff Kaiser: Okay. So I guess they're really using a traditional reference design model with this, and no one's actually going to use that hardware in a product.

Chris Gammell: Right. It's not actually in... It's not a Google-made thing. I mean, it's just... It's based on... What was it? Micro someone? It was actually based on another kit. Not there. Okay. All right. I saw it on Adafruit, I think. That's where I saw it. I'll look at it. You guys keep talking.

Dave Jones: I can't talk, actually, because I am one of the developers of the... Quite possibly the world's most expensive development board.

Chris Gammell: What's that?

Dave Jones: $4,000. The Altium NB2.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: $4,000 US. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: What are you going to do? They halved the price, and they still didn't sell them.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well.

Dave Jones: Doesn't matter now, does it, Dave? Sorry, that's my little Altium rant for today. Yeah. There we go.

Jeff Kaiser: Crazy stuff. I'm really happy that someone hacked the Arduino to interface with this ADK.

Arduino: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It really wasn't much of a hack. It was just changing a few of the hard-coded port bits, and that's it.

Jeff Kaiser: Oh, so they changed the VID, PID, and it's as long as it looks the right USB descriptor. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, crap. I can't find what it was based on. Sorry, I can't find what the kit it was based on.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, I can't find it either.

Chris Gammell: Who cares?

Dave Jones: It's $400, and everyone's going to use something else. Well, everyone by meaning our type of audience. Yeah. That would be interesting to see how the uptake is. Because $400 is nothing for any commercial company or anyone serious, even at the hobbyist level. It's not a showstopper. If you really want to develop this widget, $400 is going to stop you.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, if you're going to go into business selling something based on it, then yeah. It's a trivial cost. If you're a hobbyist, then $400 is a bit much to stomach. Well, it is.

Chris Gammell: Do you think they're actually targeting hobbyists? I don't think they are. Well, no, they're not. But I don't understand. They are, and that's the thing.

Arduino: Why did they choose to go with the Arduino, then, if they're going to... Because the Arduino is so clearly aimed at hobbyists. So why the Arduino plus the $400 price tags that doesn't match?

Chris Gammell: Maybe just because of existing customer base. I mean, I really don't think... Who would price it at that? You look at the market, right? And you say... The committee would. It's designed by committee. Yeah, maybe. Right? I don't think we should really worry about this stuff, honestly. The fact that it's out there... I wouldn't care. That's fine with me. The fact that they're opening up the phone, it's really brilliant from that perspective. Because the way I see it, right? When what they're, I'm guessing, hoping for, is that people design with this standard, standard API, right? And then eventually, you start having people design it into products. It's going to branch a lot of different ways. You know, now that microchip is doing whatever, and a lot of other people are going to match the form factor. You're going to have people design it into, like, home automation stuff. So maybe you'd be able to push down the price of, like, a window shade controller, or a washing machine, or anything else like that. And then Google becomes the centralized device for controlling home stuff.

Arduino: They actually specifically mentioned that at Google I.O. They released a bunch of their home control stuff as well. They had Google light bulbs there, basically.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I didn't see that one. Okay.

Arduino: So it seems like it's kind of aimed at the same platform kind of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Maybe that should work for Google.

Dave Jones: And as Jeff said, you know, why couldn't it be low cost from the start? And then everyone uses the same development kit. Well, you can't have one development kit that solves everyone, that meets everyone's needs. You're going to have to have a whole bunch of different ones. You know, just simple as that.

Jeff Kaiser: You're right.

Dave Jones: Really. So they just put an expensive one out there, and if people want to buy it, they buy it. If not, they knew certainly well that a whole flood of them would come along to meet every niche need possible.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah. Yeah. Of course, none of this means anything to me because I don't have an Android phone.

Dave Jones: Oh, I've got Android. Yeah. Android's cool. And Android's been open from the start. Yeah. That was the whole idea of it, wasn't it? Open hardware, and was the hardware open? I don't think the hardware is open. I think technically it was.

Chris Gammell: No, I don't think so.

Dave Jones: That was my recollection.

Chris Gammell: And also, the software, it's got some weird licensing in it. I believe the way it was explained to me is that the kernel is, they modified the kernel or something like that, so it's not actually like traditional Linux. Right. Like, they played some funny games with licensing and everything, too. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Bastards. I finally found it on Phil Terrone's article on Make. He said that it's Circuits at Home is the name of that. It's a mega board. So, the mega 2560 from Circuits at Home. So, that's what it's based on.

Dave Jones: Right. There you go. Well, that's a good step. That's a huge step forward. It's massive.

Chris Gammell: Get behind it 100%. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It means that anyone with, you know, even pretty feeble skills can actually develop an app. Well, a physical hardware app.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: For a phone. It's fantastic.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Dave Jones: Awesome. Anyway, next up on the Arduino.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Bandwagon. Microchip have released in combination with Digilent. Is that their name? Digilent.

Chris Gammell: What kind of company are they?

Dave Jones: I always say Digilent. Is it Digilent? I think it's Digilent. Sort of slurred one word. Yeah, like Angulent. Digilent. Oh, right. Okay.

Speaker ?: Digilent.

Dave Jones: Sorry. I always, for some reason, you know, maybe because it's, you know, close to DigiKey and...

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. There you go. I don't see that.

Dave Jones: I don't know. Anyway. But what kind of company?

Chris Gammell: Are they software or...

Dave Jones: They're a hardware company.

Chris Gammell: They're a hardware chip.

Dave Jones: They sell development boards. They sell FPGA development boards mainly. Ah, okay. Really, I think. Anyway, Microchip have teamed up with them and there is now a Microchip Pick compatible 32-bit version of the Arduino. It's called the Chip Kit or, well, that's their name from... TG Lint and there's the Max 32 one and there's the Uno 32. Once again, compatible with the Arduino Uno and the Arduino... Huh. Is it the Max? No, it's not the Max, is it?

Arduino: The Mega.

Dave Jones: Mega. Mega, that's right. Yeah, fully pin compatible and it works with the Arduino. No, the actual interface, the actual software, the actual development environment. I'm going to be the first to say...

Jeff Kaiser: They've released their own tweaked version of it, so... Why? Why? Why? Why did the world need this?

Dave Jones: Because they want to capture the hobbyists.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'll tell you why. Because it's important. Because it was locked... You were locked in to Atmel. And I said from day one...

Speaker ?: And the parts.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, the parts you can't get.

Dave Jones: And you can't get the parts. People are designing things around... I've had this problem. I'm designing something around the Atmel in the Arduino factory. You can't get the parts. It's a real problem. So having... That was... You know, that was my ideal goal for this Arduino, was that it didn't matter what chip it was. When it started, it was so... Up until now, it's been totally associated with Atmel chips only. That just locks them in. But somebody has now ported it. Well, you know, microchip and this mob have ported it to the microchip. And next, it'll be ARM and something else. It's very important.

Jeff Kaiser: What compiler are they using?

Dave Jones: They would use the GCC version for the microchip. There is actually a GCC compiler. It's free. People think, oh, only Atmel have the free GCC compiler. It's bullshit. Microchip have one too.

Jeff Kaiser: I've heard some disparaging remarks about the PIC GCC compiler.

Dave Jones: I've heard it both ways as well. The Atmel one sucks too. They both suck ass, right?

Chris Gammell: Well, let's hear it from the Arduino video master himself. What do you think, Jeremy?

Arduino: I don't know. I think it's pretty cool. The same reason that Dave said. I think it's going to be a big deal. So I've definitely, you know, designed things with Arduino with the intention to move to an Atmega chip. And then, you know, I'm locked into the Atmega chip because I designed the prototype with Arduino. So if I have the opportunity to now do a 32-bit PIC, that's pretty enticing. And so I might end up, you know, using a microchip part instead.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, why don't you just use a Cortex-M3 with the embed or something like that? I mean, these boards like this have been around for a long time. I guess this is the first one.

Dave Jones: It's the Arduino platform.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, this is the first one that actually uses the IDE. Yeah, the IDE. Which is nice.

Dave Jones: That's the whole point. Yeah, anyone can make it. The Arduino is nothing. It's just yet another development board that's been around for 30 years. Nothing special. It's the IDE that makes the Arduino.

Chris Gammell: And the critical mass. We mentioned that a lot of times.

Dave Jones: And the critical mass as well. All the plug-in boards. Well, this is fully compatible with the plug-in boards. And the other thing is it's 32-bit, right? It's got this massive, powerful 32-bit pick in there. So it gives you more grunt for less price. This is actually cheaper than the Arduino. They've priced it cheaper. So there's almost, you know, you've got much more power for less price. It's fantastic. And dare I say it, a more available chip.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Seriously, you know, Atmel are being killed at the moment. Their CEO had to publicly come out and say, we're working on the chip supply problem. Because they had massive problems. And that's a big deal. That's a good problem to have, though. And just to have another source, you know. And it means you can stick with your Arduino. You don't have to move into a, you know, a dedicated micro environment either. Right. You can stick with the Arduino if you want. If you're happy with it.

Chris Gammell: 90% of the people are doing it from such a high level that it shouldn't matter, right? And then it becomes a price war.

Jeff Kaiser: Well, I mean, ultimately, this is going to fragment the Arduino market. Because you're going to see sketches that only work with this digilant board. You're going to see sketches that don't work on this board. I mean.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but you have to. Because the Arduino is not the be-all, end-all platform as far as hardware is concerned.

Jeff Kaiser: But one of the reasons it's extremely successful, just like if you think back to the days of the Commodore 64 or the Apple II, it's because everyone's running the same hardware. And so that means that the examples for any one circuit, for the most part. Now, Arduino Mega aside, which I think is kind of a, I don't like the Mega. But you have a standardized.

Dave Jones: Then how do you do a high-end product?

Jeff Kaiser: Well, you probably don't use an Arduino.

Dave Jones: The Uno is not that powerful, quite frankly.

Jeff Kaiser: No, I realize that. But the Arduino is not supposed to be an end-all starter kit for any product development.

Dave Jones: Well, there's the answer to your question. Really, you need much more powerful and cheaper platforms.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah. But I'm just concerned that for hobbyists starting out, having to figure out, wait, do I get an Uno? Or do I get this digilant board? Or, oh, my friend has the digilant board. I better get what he has. I worry that this is going to work against what Arduino, what has made Arduino so successful. And that is having a standard, least common denominator, admittedly, hardware platform that everybody can start from. So that everybody's code, excluding, you know, the weird variants like the Mega, like I said. Everybody's code runs on the reference design that you have in your hands. And so I think that's really, really critical for a beginner starting out is to be able to draw from a huge code base that you know works on your hardware. Now you've got this alternate.

Dave Jones: Then you stick with the Uno.

Jeff Kaiser: You buy that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's true. Right? You're saying that the Mega is some weird offshoot, right? I think the Mega is, there's two platforms. With the Arduino, there's the standard Uno, and there's the Mega if you want something more powerful.

Jeff Kaiser: And now we've got something else.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but they're fully compatible. Oh, they're so, I, you know, granted, I haven't checked it, right?

Jeff Kaiser: Well, no, they're not fully compatible. They're not fully compatible. Have you actually tried it? They may be backwards compatible. They're claiming it is.

Dave Jones: They're claiming it's compatible.

Jeff Kaiser: I can tell you that the Mega is not fully compatible with the Uno, for example. So I can only imagine that a PIC-based version is not going to be fully compatible. I mean, if you look at their board, it's got too many I.O. lines.

Dave Jones: Well, no. Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Come on. Seriously. So it can, right? So somebody goes and they use...

Dave Jones: So you're saying that the microchip Uno board is not going to be compatible with the genuine Arduino Uno.

Arduino: Well, I think it's going to be compatible in one direction, right? So if something was written to work on the original Arduino Uno, it should work on the PIC. But something that works on the PIC might even say it'll work on the original.

Dave Jones: But they're claiming it's fully compatible. They're claiming it's designed to be... It can't be.

Arduino: There's a different number of IOPs.

Jeff Kaiser: It can't be fully compatible. Yeah, it can't be fully compatible. You can't write something for the Digilant board and then go back to an Uno and expect it to work if you're using IOPs. Of course you can.

Dave Jones: It's completely PIN compatible, the same number of IOPs. Are you guys talking about a totally different board to what I am?

Jeff Kaiser: The board that I'm staring at here is the... It has one.

Dave Jones: It's the Mega one, yes. Right? But they also have an Uno one.

Jeff Kaiser: But it's got... On the top, there's a dual row.

Dave Jones: Oh, there's an extra row of IOPs. Yes. I was going to talk about that. That's a separate argument entirely. Right? They've added an extra row of PINs on top of what looks like an extra row of PINs on top of the standard Uno footprint.

Arduino: Exactly. So if you write something to use those PINs, then it's... Oh, sure. No.

Dave Jones: Okay. Granted. Right? Yeah. But if you stick to the regular PINs, do you agree that it's completely compatible? Or it should be.

Arduino: I would hope so if they designed this correctly. Exactly. That's what it definitely should be doing.

Dave Jones: They designed it to be fully compatible. Right? Yeah. They've gone... Okay. They've gone and they've added another row of header pins here, which... Well, someone had to eventually. Right? Yeah. Because you may not want the mega footprint, that huge footprint. You may want the Uno, smaller Uno footprint, but with more IO. So somebody had to take a step forward. Are you saying that only the Arduino team are able to do that?

Arduino: No. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, per se.

Jeff Kaiser: What I'm saying is that I think part of the reason that Arduino has been so successful is that they have a simple and standardized development platform.

Dave Jones: They do, but it has to progress forward.

Jeff Kaiser: It's got to.

Dave Jones: You can't just, you know, stick with that for the next 20 years.

Jeff Kaiser: We used the PIC 16F84 for, what, 10, 15 years? Yeah, I know what you're saying. I agree. I just... Things like this turn my stomach a little bit, just because I know they're trying to get... Microchip is... Or whoever, Digilant, is trying to get a piece of the Arduino Pi by, you know, developing this evaluation board that uses a PIC. And I just worry that fragmenting the Arduino landscape with, you know, the Cortex-M3 stuff with the embed, which is hardly even like an Arduino at all. Now you've got this guy, which is sort of... I mean, it's supposed to be compatible, but of course there's going to be corner edge cases where things don't quite work the way that they're supposed to. I just worry that now you're going to have somebody who's never played with Arduino before. He goes to pick up an evaluation board, and how does he know what to... Which one to start with?

Dave Jones: Well, he gets a genuine Arduino. Yeah. This is that concern. Is your only concern is that they've added the new Rowa headers? Or are you concerned that they've chosen a different microcontroller architecture? I guess...

Jeff Kaiser: If it works 100%, I'm not too worried about it. Although, I just find that a little bit hard to believe.

Dave Jones: I'm sure some of the clones out there don't even work 100%, right? Do they? I don't know.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, that's true.

Arduino: So, I mean, this is something that Arduino already has to deal with, right? Because it's an open-source hardware company. So, there's all these other companies that make Arduino clones, and Arduino distinguishes itself by saying, you know, only we can use our trademark and our name. And this is something I ran into firsthand when I tried to, like, put Arduino in my videos. You guys remember this, right? Yeah. You know, the Arduino people contacted me, and they're like, you can't do that. Oh, did they? Yeah. So, I mean, they're pretty intense about protecting what is, you know, genuine Arduino. So, I don't think it's too hard to figure that out, and then if you want to get the genuine Arduino, you get the genuine Arduino. Otherwise, you should be able to tell pretty easily that it's not made by the Arduino company. It's just Arduino compatible in some way, and then, you know, you're kind of on your own.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Arduino: Yeah, I guess.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I think it's a good step forward. If you, you know, the Arduino hasn't gone away. Those who want full compatibility and, you know, guaranteed to work with every sketch out there, you buy the genuine Arduino. You know, these are for people who want options, and that's not a bad thing. I can't see how that can possibly be a bad thing. I think it's fantastic.

Arduino: I'm definitely getting, well, so one of the guys at Microchip sent me an email, and they said, you know, we're going to release. So, I don't think this was technically supposed to be released yet, was it?

Dave Jones: No, it wasn't. I got the same email. They're sending me a kit as well, and it was embargoed until May 21st.

Arduino: Mine said the ATO. Maybe it's different because I'm in Australia.

Dave Jones: No, they said no. There was a virtual press conference on May 18th, but then the embargo was very clear. It was to have a press embargo until May 21, but it's on the DigiLent site.

Chris Gammell: Oh, we didn't make it to the 18th. Let's say it's 16th for here. Yeah. Wow. Oops.

Jeff Kaiser: So, wait. You guys are telling me that you're both testers for this evaluation board?

Arduino: Yeah, they said they were going to send me a kit. Yeah, they were going to send me a kit as well.

Jeff Kaiser: So, we've got the totally unbiased... Ha! Yeah. We're not there. I have to say, for the record, no one has offered me a kit, although if they do, we'll probably accept it.

Speaker ?: Right.

Jeff Kaiser: At least he's honest about it.

Dave Jones: I've got an interesting observation. Notice the in-circuit serial programming here, if you're looking at the photos. It doesn't work real well on radio, but if you look at the photo of the board, on the left-hand side, JP3, which is the in-circuit serial programming header, the pins are staggered.

Jeff Kaiser: Ah, that's a SparkFun invention. Oh, is it? So, SparkFun released some Eagle footprints for headers that are staggered, and you know why they do that? It's so that if you stick the headers into the board, they don't fall out whenever you try to solder them. Oh, is that it?

Dave Jones: Well, you can buy them with little crimps on them. You can buy the connectors with the crimp on the pin.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah, but this is their way. I think it looks ridiculous.

Speaker ?: That's a good idea, though.

Dave Jones: And so, will that header work? Will that footprint work with the standard header? They claim that it will.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah. It does flex a little.

Arduino: I think it fits more securely.

Jeff Kaiser: I've never tried to do it. It rubs me the wrong way.

Speaker ?: Oh, okay.

Jeff Kaiser: Right. But they say that it holds the header in. Yeah, I wonder if SparkFun patented that.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. That was the first time that I never... No, I've done similar things in the past before.

Jeff Kaiser: That's the first time I'd ever seen that before was SparkFun. So that's... Yeah, it looks like a little snake or something on their board.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a snake style with a slight curve in it. Weird. Okay.

Arduino: So here's another thing on the compatibility of this. I don't know if you guys read the Hackaday thing on this, but this thing also has capability of USB 2 controller, Ethernet, and CAN controllers. So there's going to be... There's definitely going to be shields that work with this and sure as hell don't work with any of the standard WiNOS.

Dave Jones: Oh, because all of those interfaces are built into the PIC32. Yeah. Right. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Oh, so they'll just be pass-through pins to like a... They'll just be... They'll just be...

Dave Jones: Yeah, you use it like a dual-purpose I.O. pin. Yeah. Even use it as an I.O. Or you can use it as an Ethernet interface or USB host. Yeah.

Arduino: So there's definitely going to be some fragmentation on the shields.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I like... It makes me a little bit nervous to have shields. Oh, you pussy. No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. I'm... It's a totally, totally different topic. Oh, oh. So you have a shield that has a USB 2.0 port or something on it. So I want you to think from a signal integrity standpoint what it's like to have a USB 2.0 high-speed signal go through a pair of pin headers and some traces which are not necessarily differential. Same thing for Ethernet. Yeah, too. You've got kind of an electrical mess, right?

Chris Gammell: So you mean actually passing these up through the header, the 100 mil space pins, right? Yeah. And then you've got a... Yeah. So you're saying it's better to go lower, like real slow out to a specified chip that can do that kind of thing? That's what you're saying, Jeff?

Jeff Kaiser: Well, no, no, no, no, no. No, I think it's better to have those... If you're going to have like an RJ45 port, it should be on the Arduino board. You shouldn't have to pass those signals through the pin headers. I don't know. Maybe it'll work, but...

Dave Jones: Yeah, I agree. They probably should have...

Jeff Kaiser: As an RF guy, that also gives me a little bit of a... Gives them the willies.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Heebie-jeebies. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I agree. Maybe they should have included that stuff on the base board, but I guess there's limited room there, right? Yeah, right. But they could have put the in-circuit... They could have moved the in-circuit programming header and there's a bit of space there. They could have put a USB... Yeah, look at all the stuff that's there or something. There's a lot of stuff that's there or something.

Jeff Kaiser: There's a lot of stuff on that board. There's kind of a lot going on. They've got... There's a bunch of discrets.

Dave Jones: Well, they've got the main chip plus the in-circuit debugger thing. Yeah. Like the... It's effectively a PicKit 3 on there, really. They're putting like a little... Ah, okay. Got it. That's the extra chip there next to the USB. Yeah, yeah. The whole idea of the Arduino is that you don't need an external programmer. It plugs straight up to the USB, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And that's what the Arduino has. It's actually got the... Well, it's got the kernel built in to allow it to do that. And the Pic needs the same thing. It needs an external Pic. It needs a second chip to act as an interface to... Oh, no, it's just a serial. That's right. It's just a serial computer, isn't it? Oh, that's right. Duh.

Jeff Kaiser: So is this... Where can I get schematics for this thing?

Dave Jones: You can download it straight from the site.

Jeff Kaiser: I see this, yeah. Yeah, they've got the Eagle files, too. Wow. Yep. Cool.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Jeff's sold. There you go. All right, so we're running out of time here. We need to do our chip of the week. And this is from Dave this week.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, we don't really have time. I think we're out of time. Oh, no. Yeah, we're out of time. Thanks for my... I wasn't even looking. I was too busy ranting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That was a hefty Arduino conversation. Yeah, really. I felt left out. I'm like, meh, I've used them a couple times. Sorry, guys. Well, let's... So what's going on this week? So Jeff, you're going to Maker Faire, right?

Jeff Kaiser: Maker Faire is this weekend in San Mateo, California. And I'll be presenting my Wi-Fi radio project on Saturday at 1.30 p.m. And also the great global hackerspace challenge. Three finalists have been selected. And I'll be on the panel of judges on Sunday at 5.30, I think, to announce the winner. And the winner gets a bunch of cool stuff, including $5,000, $6,000 oscilloscope. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Weren't they flying... Who are the finalists? Weren't they flying them in from anywhere in the world? Yeah. To the event?

Jeff Kaiser: The finalists are from Build Brighton, which I guess is in the UK, right?

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Jeff Kaiser: Hackerspace Charlotte in North Carolina in the United States. And Pumping Station 1, which is in Chicago.

Dave Jones: Right. So there's only one overseas thing. Yeah. How many people are they going to send? Jeez, you'd have to draw straws to see who actually scores the free trip. I will start running a bus.

Jeff Kaiser: I actually don't know. I don't know. We will find out.

Dave Jones: Right. Because these are a hackerspace thing. So it's a collective of people. It's not just one person at a hackerspace, presumably. Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: They haven't shared that detail with me. I was at it at the last minute. So maybe I'm supposed to know this stuff, but I don't.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And if people haven't seen, I mean, some of the projects on there are very, very impressive. I saw the San Francisco Noisebridge one where they were doing, they were like monitoring yogurt, which sounds... It was kombucha. Kombucha, which is yogurt.

Jeff Kaiser: It's fermented tea. Yeah, whatever. But still. Tea, yogurt, whatever. Yeah, yogurt, whatever. It's fermented. There were some really interesting ones. And it was, I think there were 28 hackerspaces that entered. And a lot of them were really cool. I had to look at all of them. And it was really, really hard to select down to finalists. So yeah. There's a lot of great projects on the Element 14 website.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: They actually invited myself and Chris to be judges in this thing, but they invited us too late. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We sat on our hands and then they was too late. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We were just too busy at the time and didn't reply. And, well, they wanted to reply within like a day or... Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: And I think they were... Their travel budget for judges was very low. Yeah. Also. So I happened to be going to the Maker Faire anyway. Right. So they said you could turn up. They said you... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, that is our amp hour. Excellent.

Dave Jones: Well, that was a good show. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Jeremy. Yeah.

Jeff Kaiser: Thanks for having me. As usual. As always. Yeah. And Jeff.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, people should always leave comments on the site. We always love that. Hit us up on Twitter. We do. Jeremy's CyGuy14 on Twitter. Jeff is MightyUm on Twitter. Dave is EEVblog. And Chris actually uses his name. So Chris underscore Gamble on Twitter. Lame. Frank. Lame. I know. Whatever. All right.

Jeff Kaiser: Is there a Chris Gammell with no underscore on Twitter?

Chris Gammell: Yes, there is. And it's me.

Jeff Kaiser: Oh, so watch out for... Oh, okay. I was going to say watch out for that guy. Why don't you use that one?

Dave Jones: Why do you use the underscore?

Chris Gammell: That's just how I started it. I could switch it over sometime, but...

Jeff Kaiser: No, you can't switch. It's too late. No, it's too late.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. You're locked in. All right. Sorry, dude. All right. Whatever. Fail. All right, guys. Well, we'll talk to you guys soon. And Dave, I'll talk to you next week. Absolutely. Thanks for joining us. Bye.

Dave Jones: See ya.

Dave Jones: Bye.

Speaker ?: Ooh.

Chris Gammell: Ooh. Guess what I am. Guess what I am. Ready? Ready? Like me. Like me. I'm a Facebook button. Do it.