#44 – BASIC, Chip companies & Robots - Pernicious Projects, Puppies in Peril

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV Blog.

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

Dave Jones: And hopefully you don't hear any echo, echo, echo, echo.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, because you have acoustic panels now.

Dave Jones: I have, well, professional. Are you a professional now? Professional homemade acoustic panels. Is that what you're doing with these hours these days? That's it. I'm a professional radio announcer and I have a professional recording studio with my... There you go. A massive $80 mic and my...

Chris Gammell: Watch out, Leo Laporte. Here comes Dave. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Yes, I made my own acoustic panels. It took me a while. Yeah. I had a few things on, so it sort of sat in the garage, sort of half finished for a while, which was really annoying. I couldn't actually get my car into the garage because I had these frames just scattered and all this acoustic material scattered all over my garage floor.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But yes, I finished it. If you haven't seen the video, it's up on the site now and it does make a difference. But you probably won't hear it here. It makes more of a... It's a very subtle thing because I had the pillows before, as you know, and they worked fairly well. But it was just annoying getting the pillows, dragging the pillows in here every week and setting them up and...

Chris Gammell: Right. So now someone could sit on the couch and also... Exactly. While I'm actually doing this. Yeah. Right. And then the wife doesn't complain.

Dave Jones: There you go. And they look pretty good, too. So... Yeah. Yeah, they did. I like the result.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Nothing like a little decorative sound killing.

Dave Jones: Yes. And we're back to our regular two-person show this week.

Chris Gammell: I know. It's weird.

Dave Jones: It seems like we haven't done this for ages. When was our last two-person show?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. I think... Well, let's see. So last time was Jeff and Jeremy. And then... I think it was before that, though. Was it? I think so. Yeah. I don't know. It just seems like a long time. That's all. It does. We haven't had a chance to talk, huh, Dave? That's right.

Speaker ?: Just me and you.

Chris Gammell: Mano a mano.

Dave Jones: Which was the original idea. I know. Because I thought a show with just me would be boring as batshit. And I tried it, and it was boring. Now it's twice as boring.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's right. You did try it, didn't you?

Chris Gammell: Oh, it was so bad. I go back and I listen to it. I'm just like, oh. It's so horrible. I'll put a link if people want to torture themselves. Right. Yuck. Anyway. Never again.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. Yeah, the two-person show works much better. Yep.

Chris Gammell: So, what's been going on this week?

Dave Jones: Ah, busy, busy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah? Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm flat out with shit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's good. That's good. Which I can't talk about. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right.

Dave Jones: Crazy. Anyway, you wanted to talk about an acronym.

Chris Gammell: I did. Yeah. So, the Bay Area Maker Faire. So, people have been hearing about this probably on Twitter and other places. And, you know, there's always that lag from when the event happens to when it actually occurs. And so, I keep seeing this everywhere pop up. And it's B-A-M-F. And I keep saying, B-A-M-F? What is that? And I'm like, is that badass mother... Beep. And no, it's not. It's actually Bay Area Maker Faire. So, I've been getting that wrong all week long. I've been thinking these people have been talking about, like, Mr. T or whoever used to say that. Maybe the fool. That's good. There you go.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. Love Mr. T. But I am from the 80s. So, I'm a child of the 80s. Right. So, yeah. I'm a huge fan. That's good. Young whippersnappers these days don't know who Mr. T is, I'm sure.

Chris Gammell: Well, they had that remake of the A-Team.

Dave Jones: And that was just so good. Oh, yeah. I guess. I haven't even watched that. I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I'm sorry.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Other than that, though, there's been the Hamvention. It was down in Dayton, Ohio. Hamvention. That's a good term. Yeah. Like it. Yeah. So, that's a big ham convention, or as they call it, Hamvention. There's like this monstrous flea market. Yeah. So, I know a bunch of people that went to that. And I've been getting lots of comments, actually, from hams when I mentioned that I'm studying for the license. So, that's been cool. Excellent.

Dave Jones: There's actually a ham radio thing here. I think it's called the Wyong Field Day or something they call it, because it's up in Wyong, which is up on the north coast here in Sydney. Oh, cool. And I've never been to it. And they have a similar thing. You know, they have like a flea market sort of junk stalls and people selling old gear and stuff like that. And I think I'll have to go one year.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think it'd be worthwhile. I mean, like I had some friends at work that went and just hearing about some of the stuff they got. I mean, like my one friend got a tube for his 1920s radio. Nice. I mean, like he does that regularly. But just hearing about that, I mean, like it was such like an obscure socket type and everything. And oh, yeah, of course we have that. Why not?

Dave Jones: Yeah, I got one of those by trunk here.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: So, I mean, it's... Oh, God, I'm using American terms. The boot. Boot. The boot.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, it sounds like it was a fun time, though. I don't know. I think field days are when they actually have like events and they just kind of take a radio out in a field.

Dave Jones: Yeah, and they do fox hunts and stuff like that. But yeah, they call... I think they call it the Wyong field day here, but it's actually more of a, you know, just a flea market type. Yeah. Yeah, they have stalls and things like that. So...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Are there any kind of like electronics, like non-ham, like electronics flea markets out there?

Dave Jones: No. No, nothing. There's nothing here in Sydney.

Chris Gammell: I've only heard of that in like California, I think. I'm not sure if... If people know of other ones, I'd love to hear about them just because it seems like it'd be a really cool thing to go to, but I've only heard about them out in California, really. So...

Dave Jones: Yep. Same here. So, I don't know. I'm sure there's some in other countries where there's a large, you know, tech population density. But you certainly don't get that here in Sydney. So, unfortunately... That's stupid. It'd be great if we did, but yeah, it's pretty much the backwater here. You get eBay, huh? Yeah, eBay's pretty much it. And that's the problem. If you want to get gear and stuff like that, it's hard to get it here. Yeah. You know, you can't just, you know, there's not like 10 surplus dealers like there are in the US in the Bay Area. I'm sure there's, you know, a dozen of them. But here, it's just hard to get that sort of stuff. So... Yeah, yeah. You've got to pay a fortune in shipping to get it shipped from the US. Anyway. That's too bad. Yeah, big old beefy Transformers. But it's pretty good now that the US dollar's worth about...

Chris Gammell: Nothing. 10 cents. Yeah. There you go. Whatever works, man. Glad we could help you out, Dave.

Dave Jones: No problem.

Chris Gammell: I've been slowly influencing it over the years just to help you out.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I just sit here going, crash, crash. Come on. Come on, you won't.

Chris Gammell: I need more test equipment.

Dave Jones: Exactly. All right. Wow.

Chris Gammell: What have we got this week? I have no idea. No idea what we've got going on this week.

Dave Jones: I haven't looked at the list.

Chris Gammell: So, it's got to be a balls up. Let's see. How about some micro stuff? We haven't talked about micros. Well, I guess we did talk about it last week.

Dave Jones: We did, and people complained. And there's a word which shall not be mentioned this week.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yes.

Dave Jones: Yes. We'll do our best.

Chris Gammell: One thing someone suggested to me, there was an IEEE robot newsletter that went out. And I got it, too. It was actually pretty cool. Right. And so, they're... Oh, Schutzky. So, there was a couple things. There was... First thing is they talked about like a home-based, low-cost, quote-unquote, personalized robot. Yeah. So, it's about $3,000, and it's called Luna.

Dave Jones: Low-cost, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, I don't really...

Dave Jones: Well, it's getting down there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, it's pretty big, too. I mean, for what the size of it is.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, and they say... But they say it's fully programmable. But, you know, it's interesting because it's like a humanoid factor, like a face for... A screen for a face, rather. But it doesn't look like it does much else other than kind of like walk around and follow you. Honestly, it looks like an air filter with a big screen on the top. A filter. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Where is this? I've got to take a look at this. Is there a link here?

Chris Gammell: There is a link further down. So, on our list, our secretive list, it's number 28. Number 28. People are probably sitting at home right now. Oh, yeah. There we go. I wish I could see that list. Yeah. So, it's interesting. It's, you know, it's cool that they're making it programmable and... Is it open source? I don't think it is. I don't think the hardware is open source. But it actually looks a lot more like a, you know, a computer spec. Yeah. It says open source software. So, people like Willow Garage, who is a big robot group, they can work on it. But I don't think the hardware is open. But I'm not sure if it would matter as much.

Dave Jones: You're right. That is an air filter.

Chris Gammell: It looks like it.

Dave Jones: It looks like a portable air conditioner. Yeah. And, of course, they've got a photo of a chick standing next to it, of course. Staring at it. Yeah. Rather than some nerd, you know. Well, yeah. Yeah. Chicks can be nerds, too, of course.

Chris Gammell: Of course, yeah. Equal opportunity nerdiness. Right. You know, it's got these two wimpy little arms, and it doesn't look like it does much.

Dave Jones: I know. They just look like you strew the day.

Chris Gammell: There's a couple different pictures of it with a tray. And it's like holding two Solo Cups, like the red Solo Cups for... So, I don't know about that, but it's a good start. I mean, that's cool. I mean, like robots, and I don't think they're going to get a lot of traction in the home,

Dave Jones: but not bad. I can see what they've tried to do there. They've probably tried to go with the alien type look, because it's kind of like the E.T. kind of... Yeah. You know, thing.

Chris Gammell: Friendly. Or like WALL-E. WALL-E. WALL-E. WALL-E.

Dave Jones: But, yeah, I don't know. Maybe it would grow on you, the look. I don't know. So, yeah. It doesn't seem like you can do much except follow you around. And it's got like a big screen for the face. Yeah. Kind of thing. So, that's a touch screen, presumably.

Chris Gammell: I know. And if it's supposed to be humanoid, it's like, would you touch your friend's face? A face. You go out and poke you in the face. In order to control him? Hey, you, go over there.

Dave Jones: I'm going to poke you in the face. Face. Maybe it's all gesture-based, you know. So... Yeah. Yeah. They're talking about... Well, you could probably have somebody's human face on there, right? Because it's a screen.

Chris Gammell: Like telepresence and all that other junk. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Probably a telepresence kind of thing. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: They were showing one of those off at ESC. Yeah. And like... I mean, it's cool, right? I mean, it's cool because of the network. Yeah, of course. Because you need a lot of bandwidth to get the video through and everything. That's cool. And the control is cool. But the actual form factor, I mean... I don't know. Science fiction has just got my hopes so high. Yeah, I know. Yeah. This makes... This really makes R2-D2 look like a porn star. I mean, like... Right. Yeah. Very true. It's... Yeah, it's...

Dave Jones: I don't know. Would you want one of these following you around your house?

Chris Gammell: Well, it's not going up the stairs, I'll tell you that much. Yeah, exactly. It's... Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Adjustable... It wouldn't even get up a single step, so... Yeah. It couldn't even go out the front door in my place. No. No, me neither. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Can you fall out the front door? But again, I mean...

Dave Jones: Faceplant. Yeah. That would be a fun, like...

Chris Gammell: Like blooper reel that you'd see. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Anyway, I... Yeah, I don't know. These things have a lot to go. I mean, they had these back in the... I'm not kidding. They had them in the 80s. You could buy them from Radio Shack. These little, you know, these little portable personal robots. They were going, oh, the future's here. You know, you can have your own personal robot. And it had an FM radio built in and a cassette player, I think.

Chris Gammell: With real transistor action. I love it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, yeah, they've got a long way to go. They're just a gimmick, really, I think. Anyway, I guess if you've got three grand to spend, then they could be fun to program and hack around with. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: So there was another robot thing that I thought was interesting, too. They're promoting, like, a RoboGames. And actually, I've... RoboGames already happened for 2011, I believe. Right. But they're talking... It's kind of like... Do you ever used to watch BattleBots?

Dave Jones: We never used to get that here, though. Oh, that's too bad.

Chris Gammell: I've never watched it.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's funny. I know about the... I've seen bits of it.

Chris Gammell: So I know what happens, yeah. Yeah. And they still do it. I mean, like, this is... I think this is kind of like a continuation, except not as televised. You know, BattleBots is a big deal, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, apparently. It's got its own network TV show, doesn't it? Is it?

Chris Gammell: Well, it used to, yeah.

Dave Jones: It's a series, isn't it, when it comes on or something? I don't know. It used to be. It's a big deal.

Chris Gammell: I haven't seen it in years, so...

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: It was always great, though. I mean, although some of the stuff, I mean, the wedge always seemed to win. Stupid wedge.

Dave Jones: Right. The wedge... So it just flies under the other one and flips it over, doesn't it? It flips it over, yep.

Chris Gammell: And it just totally incapacitates it.

Dave Jones: Yep. Okay. So everyone else needs to design one of these robots with these arms that can just flip itself back up. Is that the idea?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. That's a good call. Yeah? Or, like, have a reversible one. Yeah, I think that's how they eventually beat them, but... Okay. Yeah, that's... It was always cool when it was on, but... Yeah, I don't know. But I think they're pushing it, too, as, like, a competition for kids. Not necessarily, like, first, but, like, a... Right. Hey, cool, get into robotics kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Absolutely. Why not?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, it's better than nothing.

Dave Jones: Probably the coolest implementation of engineering and electronics possible, right? Surely. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You know, can anyone think of anything better that kids would find cooler? I don't know. Well, maybe tricopters or something like that, or... Yeah, fire breathing. Quad cop car, or... Yeah. You know, but, yeah, which you can say is a robot kind of thing, right? Yeah, destruction always gets the crowds going, right? Yeah, blowing shit up. Yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, robots are cool. So, any way to get the kids involved, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I know. Well, I guess I was contrasting it with, like, first, and I am a very big fan of first robotics. If people don't know what that is, that's Dean Kamen's charity, I guess it is.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we've talked about it on here before. Oh, we have? I had only heard of it, first heard of it, like, a year ago or something.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: I hadn't heard of it, because it's not big in Australia. You know, well, it might be, but I don't, I'm not involved with schools, you know, so... Right, right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I've got no clue. Yeah, and I think it is international, but I don't know enough about it to say about Australia, so...

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, there are definitely schools here that do it. I've actually seen some of them, I've met some of them now that I know about it, but before that, yeah, I had no clue, so it may have been happening here for 20 years, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, it's just contrasting it with, like, that, I guess, I'd probably pick first over, you know, robo-games as, like, a killer robot thing, but at the same time, like, I don't know, sometimes you have to be... Oh, I don't know. So, if you're a kid, which one are you going to like better? Exactly. Yeah, sometimes you have to be realistic that pop culture, you still have to have that entry point where you draw people in. Yeah, exactly. Like, how do you do that? I mean, for some people, it's science fiction, right? For some people, it's a mentor, you know, just parents that work on electronics or whatever else, it doesn't matter.

Dave Jones: And for some girls, as we've discussed before, it might be the art aspect of interactive art or something. Like it or not, that might get them interested in engineering and electronics.

Chris Gammell: Or boys as well. Or boys, you know? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, of course. There's many different areas you can get into.

Chris Gammell: And it's always about... Yeah. And so, yeah, having a multi-pronged approach like that, I think, is good. So, saying one's better than the other is not really a way to say it.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no. You definitely can't say that. You need them all. Anything that gets people involved. Well, I guess there's limits to that, but yeah, let's not go there. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of which, that brings me to multimeters. I have a...

Chris Gammell: Wait, do you like multimeters? Have you ever mentioned those before?

Dave Jones: There's a rumor going around that I kind of find them fascinating.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Oh, that's weird. Okay.

Dave Jones: Anyway, this is not new, but I thought I'd add it on here to see if anyone can beat this. One of the forum members... I've got to pronounce it correctly, which I won't. Excavatory is his username or handle. Like excavator... Excavator. Yep. Something like that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's probably what it is. Excavator EE. Like electrical engineering, maybe.

Dave Jones: Oh, of course. Right. Yeah. All right.

Chris Gammell: But yeah, I see how you pronounced it. I totally agree with that pronunciation.

Dave Jones: Right. All right. Anyway, he posted a photo. This is quite some time back, and we'll link it on the show notes. Take a look at it. He got out his collection of multimeters and actually put them on the steps inside his house, you know, the staircase. Yeah. And it goes all the way up the staircase. His collection of fluke. They're just fluke multimeters. It's insanity. And he said he has 88 more that he didn't put in the photo. Why? Did he say... I didn't see the thread yet, but did he say why? Well, he came from some industry where they would just throw these out. They would give them a finite lifetime and then toss them out or something, some mining industry or something like that. Yeah. He was in some industry where he managed to pick up all these flukes and all in original cases and all sorts of stuff. So, it's just absolutely amazing.

Chris Gammell: That is unreal.

Dave Jones: This photo is just mind-boggling. It really is. Oh, my God. So, can anyone beat that for a collection of multimeters, let alone a collection of just flukes?

Chris Gammell: So... Why? He should send that to fluke. I bet they would love that.

Dave Jones: Exactly. It's brilliant. I know. And it's worth a fortune. Some of those... Yeah. If he's selling them off.

Chris Gammell: I mean...

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Is he technically considered a...

Dave Jones: Because they're highly sought after on eBay.

Chris Gammell: Is he a hoarder at this point? I mean, people will be able to tell if you...

Dave Jones: That constitutes hoarder. That's not... That's not collection. You know? You would have one of each. If you were a collector, you'd have the best type of each. You know? Or maybe he goes for serial numbers and... Oh, yeah. Look, I've got the lowest serial number in that model. Yeah. Manufactured out of that plant in... You know? Some people get to that level. Yeah. Not on multimeters. I haven't heard people doing it on multimeters. But the people who collect scientific calculators. They collect... I'm a fan of calculators as well. And some of those guys are nuts. Yeah. Some of the collections of calculators are just amazing. They must have the earliest serial number manufactured from that plant in... You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: New Jersey or something.

Chris Gammell: It's just crazy. I really shouldn't speak against it. Have I ever told you what I collect, even though I definitely shouldn't? Do tell. I collect pianos. And it's just been this, like, increasingly horrible hobby. I collect them, but I'm not very good at playing them.

Dave Jones: As in full-size pianos? Well, I have... So right now, I have... Like grand pianos?

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no. Right. I have five... Six pianos? As in the keyboards? Keyboards, sort of. So I have a 68 Wurlitzer, like, upright. I have a MIDI programmer. That's like a fully weighted keyboard. I have an electric piano, which is like my favorite. That's a Wurlitzer 200. I have an organ down here. This is all in my basement, too. So I, you know...

Dave Jones: Well, you'll have to post a photo now.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'll try and pop some photos on there. But I don't know how it happened, though. You know? I'm not good at piano. I made the theme song, but it was not a good theme song, you know? So, I mean, yeah. So, what?

Dave Jones: You've got like half a dozen or something?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: That's not a serious collection, though. That's not a sickness yet.

Chris Gammell: You're right. You're right. It's not. But, you know, the worst part is I inherited the sickness from a friend. Right. So, yeah, it's bad. It is a sickness. I understand it, though. I mean, I guess.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I can. If I had the space and didn't have a wife, yes, I'd be collecting hordes of shit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, you'd have test equipment. You'd be like, oh, that'll be worse off this someday.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I'd have test equipment coming out my ass, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. That's good to have that check to get rid of it once in a while, you know? Right.

Dave Jones: Anyway, so can anyone beat that? If you do, take a photo of your multimeter collection and put it up there, please.

Chris Gammell: We should expand that to any kind of test equipment. Like, who needs that much stuff? I mean... Sure. If you've got 100 scopes in your... Or even just 100 total pieces. They don't have to be the same... I mean... I remember Mike's from... Mike's Electric Stuff, the one who he posted on Workbench of the Week. And that was a crazy... I mean, that was his lab. Yeah, exactly. That was a sweet shot. That was a panorama. Good.

Dave Jones: Anyway, yeah. Post your photos, please. Yes. And I wanted to talk about this week, because we can't mention the other name this week. The thing. Because somebody said they'd kill a puppy if we did. Yeah. And we don't. I mean, we love puppies. And we just don't want any puppies to die. So I wanted to talk about a... Well, it's new-ish. It's a single-chip PIC basic interpreter microcomputer. Okay. And it's called the Maximite. And it was published in Silicon Chip magazine. And, I don't know, four or five months ago, something like that. And Jeff is the guy's name. I'm not sure of his last name. I forget. But he has developed this. It's all open source, too. And the good thing about it is that it really is... Although you can buy the whole kit, which has the micro and a whole bunch of serial and parallel interfaces and SD card and all that sort of stuff. But it really is a single-chip solution. So you can, just like the thing that shall not be named, you can just program the chip and put it into your product. And you can program it in a form of good old BASIC. So I just... Who's programming in BASIC still?

Chris Gammell: Sorry? Who's still programming in BASIC?

Dave Jones: Well, I don't know. It's just another avenue. I, you know... I mean, granted, that was my first programming language. I spent many years programming BASIC, and I think it's still a valid thing. If you don't want to get into C, if you find BASIC easier, if you've had experience in BASIC, then, well, why not continue with BASIC? There's nothing wrong with it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you're right. There's nothing wrong with it. I agree with that.

Dave Jones: Except if you want to get into the industry, you know, you can't put it on your resume and expect to go and get work in BASIC somewhere. But, you know, to some people, that's not a big deal. They just want to do their own stuff, and that's fine. So, anyway, I think it's pretty cool. He's open-sourced it. He's got his own BASIC interpreter, which you can program into presumably any 32-bit PIC. I'm not sure of which ones it actually fits into, how big the kernel is and all that sort of stuff. But it uses a 32-bit PIC micro. And, yeah, it's got 128K of working memory, and even after the BASIC interpreter is in there. And I just think it's neat. And he's going to all the effort to open-source it and everything. And this kit's available. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And he's got a whole story about it, too, on the website. So that's pretty cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I like it. I really like it. And there's nothing new there. I mean, the original PIC BASIC stamp is the original introduction to, you know, the easy introduction to microcontrollers. And that, I think you can still buy it, can't you? The BASIC stamp? BASIC stamp? Was that Parallax or no? That was, yes. That was Parallax. That's how they started with the BASIC stamp, I think. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think they still sell it. Although their big thing is the propeller chip now, which I don't know if you saw. They actually started selling that on its own now. So not just in boards.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they spun it off. Did they spin off part of the company or something? They spun off the manufacturing arm just to make it look more professional, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so people will buy the chip by itself for putting in products and stuff. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: So they're like an independent manufacturer. Like, here's us. We just make this chip and we don't make hobby kits. Trust us. We're a professional company and we manufacture a professional. That's an excellent move. I agree. A lot of people in the industry, they're going, I'm not going to buy a chip from a hobbyist maker. You know, I'm not going to build that into my product. Right.

Chris Gammell: That's a huge risk. How is my supply chain affected by that hobbyist company? I can't deal with that. Yeah. I need a large industrial company to deal with.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Whereas if you, yeah, if they spin it off, I don't think they've called themselves something else, have they? They just think they're still using the same name.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'll have to check. I'll have to check.

Dave Jones: But yeah, I think that's an excellent move because that's the only way they can gain traction in the professional industry, really. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, and can you buy it at Mouser and DigiKey? That's a big question. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That is still a big deal, right? I mean... That's a big deal.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Did we talk about that on here or is that someone else talking about it? Oh, no.

Dave Jones: We've talked about it many times on here, I'm sure.

Chris Gammell: Okay. I thought I remember someone else talking about it in the industry too.

Dave Jones: No, I've ranted because you see all these startups, you know, like Touchstone Semiconductor we talked about the other week and we probably want to mention them again because they've changed their rules. Anyway, yeah. Yeah, I don't understand any startup company who comes out with their new chip and doesn't immediately make available on Mouser and DigiKey. It's like suicide to do that or not to do that.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's not smart. I think it's smart to get on the biggest ones, but I'm sure there's a lot of cost to get listed.

Dave Jones: And then they'll use some obscure distributor you've never heard of and it's like, oh, no, that's too hard. But I'm not going to design your part in because I can't get small volumes to do my prototype runs.

Chris Gammell: Well, a single source still is always a big deal. I mean, but that's any kind of custom chip or not custom, but specialized chip like that. So that's got its own boatload of issues, right? I mean, distribution is a big deal though, right? I mean.

Dave Jones: Yes, it definitely is. And yeah, so if you're a startup out there, make sure you get your chip on Mouser and DigiKey. Otherwise, we're not going to design it in. That's right. Trust me.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. If it can't get the prototype, no one's putting it in their final design, that's for sure.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I like the, I think this kit's a really good idea. And it's like a little reboot of BASIC. I kind of like it, you know? No pun intended.

Chris Gammell: Ha. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I keep seeing your story, you know, whenever you pull something on a silicon chip, I keep telling myself I got to get that magazine. Right. Because there's a couple out there. I mean, like, silicon chip still does project-based stuff like that, right? Yep. And, uh...

Dave Jones: Oh, they've, yeah, they're the only magazine, as far as I'm aware of, that have their own in-house team who actually design projects and kits. All the others get external people to submit stuff. Hmm. So, as far as I know, if you're aware of another magazine out there that actually has their own in-house staff to actually design kits, then let me know, because I'm not aware of one.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Hmm. So, what about this Touchstone thing? We should probably mention that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Uh, where's the link to it again?

Chris Gammell: Then, up further. Anyways, so Touchstone, uh, they heard our complaining, basically. That's what I've come to call our show, the big old complaining. Uh, but about the rules, so they didn't, uh, you know, they said, oh, well, the, the prop, you know, the, if you design something, it belongs to us, and also they had the, the voltage ranges wrong, and the current usage that you could have wrong, and so they went back, and they touched up those, and I'm not sure what they, they listed it now. I think they might have, like, said you get 30 microamps instead of the six that the part supposedly uses. Right, okay. So it's like five times, which isn't much still.

Dave Jones: Oh, but, yeah, but the whole idea is a low-power solution. I think that's not too bad.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, and my advice to them was to make a stipulation that all entries must be open-sourced. Yes. And they did that, did they?

Chris Gammell: They, well, they did. Right. And someone actually, I forget who it was, sorry, uh, someone mentioned it on the site, and then, like, about an hour or two later, they're like, I must be seeing things because it's gone now. And I, I, I had clicked on it both times, and, yeah, so at one point it said, uh, you know, use the open-source hardware license. And, you know, I, I wrote an email to Phil Taroni, even, and I was like, Phil, someone is using this for a design contest. Isn't this cool? Because, you know, Phil's all big into the, the, the doing of that. And, of course. And then I, I had to write it back, and I'm like, oh, they changed it, never mind, man.

Dave Jones: What a bunch of, well. Touchstone, you idiots. I know.

Chris Gammell: What are you doing? It's their, I, so I talked to them about it, and, and they got, I think their lawyers got a hold of it. And, and basically, the thing that they were worried about, which I think is still a little out there, but they were worried that if someone, so say, say Dave, you were working for Dave Corp, the thousand-person entity, right? And they were worried that if, if you had designed something for Dave Corp, right, and you didn't own the property, the intellectual property, and then you used it in this contest, and then they didn't claim it or something like that, or they, they didn't have this little clause that they put in as rule five.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Uh, then, then they would not get sued by you, Dave Jones, but they would get sued by Dave Corp. And so I think that's a bit of a stretch. It is.

Dave Jones: Stop worrying about this shit. Oh, they- Really. I know. It's just ridiculous.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: These lawyers are worthless. They really are. It's- All they do is, is create fear, FUD, you know? FUD. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Chris Gammell: In doubt. Yep. I agree.

Dave Jones: Oh, man.

Chris Gammell: Yep. It's, it's too bad.

Dave Jones: Do stuff in good spirits and, you know, in the spirit of, what am I saying? I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Uh, good nature?

Dave Jones: Good nature. Yeah, I was gonna say that. Yeah, just, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's, it's too bad how it worked out at the end, but-

Dave Jones: Do stuff for the fun of it, and just live with the consequences, because there won't be any.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: For goodness sake. Idiots.

Chris Gammell: Well, you know. Anyway. That's, that's the corporate world.

Dave Jones: Let's not advertise Touchstone anymore, huh?

Chris Gammell: Uh, well. Yeah. I still like them, you know. Ah, well, yeah. It's nice they responded. You know, you gotta give them a couple points for that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I'll give them that. I'll give them A for responding, but, nah, if you don't do it properly.

Chris Gammell: If you don't do exactly what we say, right, Dave? That's right. Yeah. They amp our decree, huh? Yeah, I don't think that's really necessary. I mean, they're gonna do what's best for them. It's, I, I don't know if it's the best for a contest, but, whatever. You know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Ah, it's just. Good luck. Good luck. Anyway. Yeah. Not happy. Ah, boy.

Chris Gammell: All right. Speaking of, speaking of corporate thoughts, I wanted to post, I'll post the, the comic to this, but there's this really, I forget where I, I think it was somewhere on Twitter, there was this comic, this really simple web comic, you know, kind of like XKCD or something like that. Right. And they're talking about the apocalypse, which we all lived through, apparently, you know, the other day. Ah, yes. Yeah, we're still here. And, and, uh, you know, how engineers would be fixing everything up during the, the apocalypse. And then you see the finance major afterwards and just saying, well, maybe by this point, since I gave all these suggestions, we should talk about executive compensation at this point, because I think I should be, I should be compensated. So, everybody else is doing stuff. Yeah. I love that, Cardo. I'll post a link to it. It's pretty great. Yeah, it's funny.

Dave Jones: Ah, man. Yes. Probably the most worthless people out there after Armageddon, aren't they?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Ah.

Chris Gammell: So, speaking of big companies, did you see, uh, this article about Intel releasing a smartphone? No, I didn't do tell. They are great. I saw another thing from E Times today. They had a newsletter go out. But it feels, I feel like Intel is just grasping at straws, you know? They're so huge, but they're like, you know, maybe desktops and everything won't be as big in a couple years. And so, now they said, next year, Intel's gonna have, I think, 10 smart, uh, Intel-based smartphones.

Dave Jones: What?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Why 10?

Chris Gammell: Well, if I had to guess, it would be that a lot of their customers are in warm climates and they want some kind of heater for their pocket, because that's what I would think of with an Intel chip inside of it. Right. Okay. I know, I know they have Atom chips and everything else, but Atom chips are just so wimpy. Like, at least all the products I've used. I know that, like, they put, you know, major OSs on.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, but they try and do so much in them. They put an Atom chip in and then try and run, you know, full HD video on, you know, render HD video. Yeah. Stuff like that. I mean, you try and do that on an ARM and it's not even gonna boot up, let alone do it. Right. So, I don't know. I thought the, no, I thought the Atom chips killed the ARM. Ones in terms of sheer performance. Maybe not in actual performance per power consumption, per, you know, per watt kind of thing, but.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I thought the Atoms were super powerful for their size anyway.

Chris Gammell: Hmm.

Dave Jones: I don't know. I could be completely wrong.

Chris Gammell: Maybe I'm just looking at it from the wrong angle, but I don't know. So, anyways, I mean, Intel's been going after the embedded market for a while. They've been poking at it from different angles. Yeah. But I just pulled up this newsletter. They said 4%. This EE Times thing said it's only 4% of their revenue or something like that. The rest is PCs and servers and everything else.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: But they see it as the future. Right. Well, and that's the. I would tend to agree. I mean. Yeah. Unless you're making. I don't disagree. They should be pouring whole heap of, whole heap of resources and money into it. But. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird.

Speaker ?: It's weird.

Dave Jones: The actual phones. Yeah, I know. It's like. There's better companies out there. Are they actually going to do it in-house? Or are they just going to subcontract, you know, HTC to do them a phone or something? A WAC and Intel.

Chris Gammell: I've got them in there. All they have is the press release and it says. Oh, I guess it's just Intel based smartphones. But. Right. Man. I guess. If it's an Atom chip, that's one thing. Like that. I don't think that would be great. I mean, they're like two watt chips still. And like the sleep mode isn't as good on those things.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, maybe they can actually scale them back. I don't know. Has anyone used an Atom at 32 kilohertz? I don't know. Can you? Can you actually run the thing in a real ultra low power mode? I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Like a sleep mode? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Because the phone really doesn't need much power most of the time unless you're actually doing video type stuff. Or transmitting. Just to operate the phone and actually do calls and texts and stuff like that. It really doesn't need to do much at all. Well.

Chris Gammell: No. Because some of the transmitting stuff is high. It's in short pulses.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But that's done in chipsets. That's not done. That's done in the chipsets. It's not done in the actual micro itself.

Chris Gammell: I was thinking of the whole phone. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No. It's, you know. So unless you're actually surfing the web or something like that, that's when it, or doing video, that's when it actually needs all that grunt to process it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I know mine heats up the most when I do like navigation. So I use like Google Maps and I'm trying to find my way somewhere. That's when my phone gets the hottest. Right. Because that's real processing intensive and rendering that video and everything.

Dave Jones: I say that with my HTC phone, everyone talks about the difference between, oh, the old model was 700 megahertz processing speed and this new phone's a gig, you know, and they can really tell the performance difference and stuff like that. So I guess, you know, when you're running. Yeah. Well, I guess because the interfaces are all graphical these days, you know, all the HTC touch interface or whatever it's called and the iPhone interface and stuff like that. They're just graphically intensive to actually render all that stuff. And so, yeah, even if you just, you know, actually typing in a phone number to dial, it's got to do all fancy processing because it's got to put all that, you know, it's got to put the touch overlay display on there and it's got to do all that sort of stuff. And windows have to shrink and expand and be all fancy looking. Yeah. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. There's something to be said for a phone that just has buttons and numbers on it and a monochrome

Chris Gammell: LCD screen. The old man, he pops his head out. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Hey, you kids, get off my lawn. But seriously, I do it every time. Every time I take the wife's old phone, right, which is a Nokia, you know, 6300 or something. And, well, no, it's tiny, right? It's much smaller than the smartphones these days. It's not a brick. It's ultra tiny. And it gets like, you know, three weeks battery life or something. It's incredible. And you just use it and you go, well, shit, this just works. You know?

Chris Gammell: It's just a phone though.

Dave Jones: I know. It's just a phone. But it's just, if you want to make a call or send it, it's just so easy. It just works.

Chris Gammell: That's true. Oh, man. But how will you respond to all your feedback online, Dave? Well, yeah, I know. That's what you have a smartphone for, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. So that's why I succumbed and I got a HTC desire.

Chris Gammell: That's why I justified it as that. That's such a load of crap. Yeah. I sit at a computer so often anyways. I could just, yeah. Same.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Same here.

Dave Jones: It doesn't make any difference. I'm in front of a computer 15 hours a day. Yeah. Yeah, I know. But for some reason, I talk myself into getting one.

Chris Gammell: I know.

Dave Jones: And now you're never going to go back, just like me. Yeah, I know. That's the worst part. If I do need the internet functionality while I'm out on the road somewhere, then it's invaluable and I'll miss it. Yeah. Yeah. I'll kick myself for not having a smartphone. Yeah. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: So speaking of the smart computers out on the road, have you seen the thing with the Google driving and everything like that? The autopilot?

Dave Jones: Oh, they're trying to get the car. They're actually trying to get a car certified in a state in the US, are they?

Chris Gammell: They are trying to get Nevada. I don't know why they went with Nevada. I guess because they-

Dave Jones: Lots of open space, flat, straight roads. Really?

Chris Gammell: I was actually going to say because they legalize just about everything else.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Between prostitution and gambling and everything else. Guns, drugs, prostitution. Yeah, there you go.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Moonshine. You can still run moonshine in Nevada, can't you?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know. I'll be out there later this year, so we'll see. If I don't come back, then yes, the answer is yes. Right. Yeah, so they're going for legalization, though. Basically, if people don't know, Google, one of their 20% time projects is, hey, we have a car that can drive itself now. And they've clocked like over 100,000 miles with this thing. Oh, really?

Dave Jones: 100,000 on normal roads?

Chris Gammell: On normal roads. So they'll have someone sitting there monitoring it.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. That's how they legally...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, the computer's taken over.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And I don't know, man. Would you do that? I feel like the whole public is not used to it. No. It's like... No. Now, statistically, I think that these cars, even with a 1% software bug defect, right? I bet the human bug defect is 5%, right? Just bad drivers, tired drivers, drunk drivers, all that other stuff.

Dave Jones: What about those rogue cosmic rays, right? You're screwed. Yeah, that's true. Comes through, flips a bit.

Chris Gammell: I don't think that's going to really be the real concern.

Dave Jones: Never know. All you need is one in a million or something like that. Yeah, but that's the thing. You get a bad reputation.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm sure that kind of thing would be so regulated. It would be like airline software, right? I mean, that stuff is much more stringently checked. You know, there's like all that pair programming and all that other... But I think generally the public would say, oh, I'd never do that. I'm a much safer driver. And then you'd compare the two.

Dave Jones: Right. And they're probably not.

Chris Gammell: Then end up rear-ending each other. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I don't know. I haven't seen the full details of it, so I shouldn't probably comment. But I can't believe it's to a point where it's so refined that it's good enough to go through the streets of New York or something like that. Well, yeah. Yeah. I just can't believe it. You know, you would need so many sensors tracking people and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's not just about hitting other cars. It's other objects like people at crossings and doing, you know, God knows what.

Chris Gammell: I had to stick a Microsoft Connect on the front, right?

Dave Jones: Right, on the front. Yeah. There's someone dancing over there.

Chris Gammell: I'm not going to go over there. That's what the car would think. Right.

Dave Jones: Nah. And then you've got to work under all lighting conditions, all conditions of weather, you know, rain, hail, fog, you know. I don't know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, I've said it before about other things, but if there's someone who's going to do it, I would trust Google to do that kind of thing. You know, I think they have the resources behind it, at least.

Dave Jones: I think they would have the resources, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure what the value behind it is for them. I mean, unless they're trying to just spend money. Ah, it's just cool.

Dave Jones: They do it because it's cool, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, but pushing for legislation, that's a bigger step, right?

Dave Jones: Once again, it's probably just because they can. You know, I...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, probably.

Dave Jones: Well, we do have one Google listener, maybe. Hey, there's big money in automobiles, right? So if they can sell the technology down the track, they can become the world leaders in that, then, well, it might pay off one day. Yeah, I guess so. It won't pay off for 10, 20 years.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But who knows? That's refreshing, dude.

Dave Jones: You know, they probably do it just because they can and it's cool. And that's good enough.

Chris Gammell: You know, and I love that from the, like, the innovation aspect, that horrible word, innovation, but, like, the fact that they're doing it, if it is just because they can and just because they have the capability to, that's how you actually make cool stuff, right? Yeah, of course. When you start, like, oh, let's do some customer research and let's make sure everybody likes it. And let's design it by committee. And let's sit in some meetings and design and design. And we're not really designing, but we're getting stuff done, perhaps. And we're playing wank word bingo. Yep. Yeah. So, from that perspective, I could get behind it, but... All right. I don't really see the value. And, like, I can't imagine, like, driving down the road or having a car drive down the road and being like, do you want to buy... You know, like, the Google pop-up words, right?

Dave Jones: I was going to say, you get pop-up ads in your car as you go along.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, like, maybe if they have all the...

Dave Jones: Would you like a penis enlargement? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And if they have, like, you know, because now you can read a book in the car, now they can sell you a book, too, or they can help you play music, or I don't know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well. Anyway. Yeah. I won't knock it till I've tried it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. It could work. Who knows? But, hey, one thing I noticed... Yeah. Maxim have changed their slogan, I think.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: I don't know. I just noticed it. If you go to the Maxim website and you look at the Maxim logo up in the top left corner, it's Maxim, and underneath is Innovation Delivered.

Chris Gammell: Okay. And let me just say here, I'm not totally disappointed about this, but Maxim.com is the young male magazine, which is somewhere between Men's Health and Playboy.

Dave Jones: I think I learned that many years ago, and I just always type in Maxim-ic.com now. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I... Right. Okay. I won't type in Maxim.

Chris Gammell: I'm all distracted, Dave. I'm like, look at this. I'm like, oh, wow. These are really... Oh, better ways to pick up chicks. Okay.

Speaker ?: Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I've just always known with Maxim from... I learned very early that, oh, they're the ones with the weird address. They're the ones with the weird URL and, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep. Oh, this is a much more boring website. Right.

Dave Jones: Maxim, I see. I don't know. There's some pornographic chips on there.

Chris Gammell: No, pornographic chips. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Anyway, is this new? I don't know.

Dave Jones: Can anyone tell me when they changed it? Because I... It's just hit me. Yeah. I haven't been to their website for quite some time, so I don't know. It could be 12 months old. Who knows? But innovation delivered.

Chris Gammell: Why don't you talk about why that's important, though? Because that's the real key.

Dave Jones: Because Maxim had a very bad reputation for a long time for not delivering chips. They would have... They would actually release more cool chips than anyone else in the industry. So many that you couldn't keep up with it. They would have a newsletter each month that you would get sent that would have all the new chips for that month. And you couldn't read them all. There were that many. It was crazy. 100... 500 devices a year or something. I don't know. Don't blame me on that. But it was ridiculous, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's crazy. And they would... And they're all very cool chips. Maxim make cool chips, right? But you couldn't buy them. You could get samples. They had the best sample service in the business, right? Even though we've talked about that before. And you said you don't like samples anymore. Yeah, this fantastic service system. Uh-huh. Which they still have, I think. But, yeah. You couldn't buy the damn thing. So everyone would design them into their product and go, oops, sorry. That's 40 weeks lead time, sir. You're screwed. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Maxim. Maxim. And it was actually a blanket rule at many big companies. Oh, yeah. To simply, you do not use Maxim. End of story. You know?

Chris Gammell: It's still that way today for me. I'm still... Oh, really? It's not an official rule for me, but every time I go talk to our purchasing guy for the engineering group, he says, nope, don't bother.

Dave Jones: Right. Not allowed to design in a Maxim part, huh?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I wouldn't touch him right now. I mean, I mentioned before. So I met Eric Schlepfer. I hope I pronounced his name right. And he's actually a Maxim product manager. And I said it to him. And he got kind of upset. They get very defensive about it, I think. I would, too. I mean, that's rough. I mean, it's like you get discounted before anything happens. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Because they claim... But, hey, it's their fault, right? They're the ones who let themselves get that bad rep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And they didn't fix it. And then the CEO had to come out and write an open letter to everyone. Yep. I could probably post a link to that, I think. I think it was back in 2008 saying, oh, we're aware of it. And we've put trillions of dollars into making sure that we're fixing it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, well, yeah. Yeah. But, hey, you know, mud sticks and tough shit. So, yeah, I'm not surprised that they've had to change their logo to Innovation Delivered.

Chris Gammell: Delivered.

Dave Jones: Which is the two things that they were known for. This does not surprise me. They were known for Innovation, making some of the coolest chips in the market. And they now want to be known for delivering that stuff.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't know if they made that up themselves or they paid some PR company to think it up for them. But, yeah, it was a pretty obvious slogan. And I think it's good, but will it help them? Maybe in the long run.

Chris Gammell: I think we've talked about it on here before. But I think... Maybe we talked about it on here. But the reason behind it, though, was also the reason they wouldn't deliver is because they were serving, like, really high-volume clients. So, it would be, like, going and serving. Okay, well, Apple needs chips. So, they get all our chips. Instead of saying, well, they get 90% of our chips. And we're still going to sell 10%. So, little guys can still design them in. So, you'd have people that were using them.

Dave Jones: I bet that's nothing new. Other manufacturers do that, too. Right? But the fact is, Maxim just overextended themselves on the number of devices. Yeah. And they just became too popular. And people tried to, you know... There's too many people who wanted them. And they didn't have the design capacity. And they, you know, couldn't figure out how to, you know, weigh up the number of devices versus, you know, all that planning. Yeah. All that logistics planning stuff. They just sucked at it.

Chris Gammell: And, yep, whoops. In the world of fabless models, you know, like, that is the model. If people don't know, that is the model today. There's... Yeah. It's not going back, right? And so, back in the day... That's right. If Maxim had their own chip fabs, then you're limited by that. You can start, you know, 20,000 wafers a week. And that's what you get. You get 20,000 wafers. And if Apple needs 20,000 wafers, you're giving them all to Apple or whoever you favor. And that was why the 40-week lead time happened. And now, you can say, well, we're just going to farm it out to TSMC or UMC or Global Chip Fab, whatever the hell they're called. So, you know, and that's just the way it is. I don't think it's coming back. Do you think it's coming back, Dave?

Dave Jones: In what the fab-based companies...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Like, anyone having their own fab. Like, say, Touchstone. We mentioned them, right?

Dave Jones: No, it costs too much. So, you know, the big ones are always going to have their fabs. Because fabs aren't going to shut down. They just keep changing hands, really. So, somebody's got to have the fabs. And, you know, the huge company... I thought Maxim did have some of their own fabs.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No, I think they do. But I'm just saying, in a fab-less world... As much as they need. Now, you can farm it out, right? Whereas before...

Dave Jones: Now, you can farm it out. Which is... Every startup company, of course. Oh, yeah. Because you can't build your own fab. There's no way you can get the investment capital to, you know, a billion dollars to buy your own fab.

Chris Gammell: Right. Because the equivalent would be like... It's just not going to happen. Forget it. If you started a circuit board manufacturing company, right? And you went out and tried to buy an SMT machine, you're not going to do that, right? You're going to start by sending to an assembly house. That's a smaller scale, but, you know, you're going to get someone else to assemble it first, get some cash, and start building it. And then, eventually, it might make sense to make that kind of thing. Or to buy one of those.

Dave Jones: Or you might buy a small machine to start off with, but you wouldn't go and buy a whole factory with 100 machines. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. That's crazy. Anyway, it's interesting to mention Maxim, because in my recent teardown of the new Agilent U1272A meter, I noted, if you have a look at the video... Oh, I should go watch that video right now, Dave. Absolutely. I need the views. Yeah, they use a ton of Maxim parts in there. I was quite surprised.

Chris Gammell: Oh, there you go.

Dave Jones: Yeah, a whole bunch of them. Like, more than half the chips, I think, are actually Maxim in there. It's fascinating.

Chris Gammell: That is fascinating.

Dave Jones: So, they can obviously buy them.

Speaker ?: Hmm.

Dave Jones: But they are Agilent, I guess. Yeah, I guess so. Right. They've got a bit more pull than, you know, Dave Jones, who wants his 100 chips, please. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, will that work for them? I don't know. Innovation delivered.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: That's just a cool radio... You know, you can just picture that on radio. Maxim, innovation delivered. Sorry, I don't have a radio voice, but yeah. No, neither of us do. It kind of... I think it's one of the better slogans, actually. I've got to admit.

Chris Gammell: I'm not a connoisseur of slogans, so...

Dave Jones: No? Yeah, well, neither am I, but I just kind of like it. Anyway, if anyone knows when they actually changed it, please let me know, because I have no idea. Maybe it's been there for donkey's years, and I just haven't noticed.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Anyway. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So, I think we have time for one more thing. Maybe a chip of the week.

Dave Jones: Oh, a chip of the week!

Chris Gammell: Yes. Before we do that, I forgot our shout-out for the week. Go for it. So, we wanted to give a shout-out to Dino, Maker Dino. He's been on here once or twice before, but he's still doing his Hack a Week thing. Awesome. And so, I want to commend that. He's on his eighth week now. He's been doing some fun stuff. Fantastic. Yeah, we kind of ranted on here about how Hackaday wanted to hire someone so cheap, and then he just started doing it on his own. And he's kind of become the de facto, you know, person they feature now. Right. So, I told him to invoice them, to send him a bill.

Dave Jones: Oh, they actually put his stuff on Hack a Week, do they? Yeah. Oh, sorry, Hackaday.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, he sends it in every week.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: That's brilliant. I told him, I'm like, man, you should just send him a bill. So.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's great. So, do they actually hire someone? I don't. Yeah, I haven't heard. Does anyone know?

Chris Gammell: I haven't heard.

Dave Jones: Right. Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, if people have heard, definitely leave it in the comments or give us a tweet or something. That'd be cool to know. But. Oh, excellent. So, Chip of the Week.

Dave Jones: Just quickly, before we do Chip of the Week.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Go.

Dave Jones: I outed somebody.

Chris Gammell: Oh, no.

Dave Jones: There was a, yeah, it was excellent. There was a big full-page ad in one of the papers here in Australia, you know, big, expensive ad about solar panels. Oh, I just see this. Okay. Yeah, our government sponsored this huge program to, they would basically pay for installing your solar panels, right? And the scheme was so popular that they had to can it. It just, you know, they just got inundated. And now they're trying to cancel all the feed-in tariffs, which people were going to get, you know, a whole bunch of money. People who installed these things for feeding energy back into the grid, which was great. But, oh, yeah, it was a ridiculous rate. It was like five times the rate that you would buy power for. So if you fed the same energy back into the grid, you'd get paid five times more.

Chris Gammell: So the payback looked a lot better for the panels.

Dave Jones: The payback was incredible. It was an absolute no-brainer to get these solar panels. Anyway, they tried to cancel all these contracts with people who installed, you know, with all the people who installed them. And there's this campaign mob in Australia here, a solar energy group. And they took out this full-page ad in the paper saying, oh, there's 120,000 people in this state who you're screwing over with this thing. And I thought, shit, 120,000 panels. Have they really installed that many on 120,000 homes? And I thought, I'll check on this. So I went and checked. And sure enough, the figure's bullshit. Right? It's a, yeah, full-page ad, 120,000 people. You've screwed them over. And it's not. It's actually 25,000 people. The figure they used was for all of Australia. Oops.

Speaker ?: Ha.

Dave Jones: Idiots. So, yeah, anyway, I thought that was absolutely hilarious. And I called them on it. And, well, they're just pulling their head in and hiding now. So they won't respond. Anyway, you can't believe numbers. So. What are their lies, damn lies, and stats? Is that the saying? Yeah, yeah. Something like that, yeah. Right. Yeah. No, anyway. God, you would think if you take out a full-page ad, which costs a buttload of money. Yes, it does. If you put your ass on the line by claiming some huge figure, you know, you'd at least get it right. Right. And this is the solar energy mob of Australia. It's the, you know, some group, you know. And you would think that would be their bread and butter figure, right? You would think that would be the one figure that they would know was how many solar panels have been installed.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And I found the government document, which told me exactly how many, right down to the last digit. You know, they were wrong. They used the wrong figure. Oops. Anyway. End of story. I thought that was funny. Can't trust anyone. Don't trust figures. Always check.

Chris Gammell: I agree with that, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So, chip of the week. What do we got?

Dave Jones: Chip of the week. Is this my one or have you got one?

Chris Gammell: No, this is yours. This is a carryover from, we've talked about this twice now, I think.

Dave Jones: Cool. And it's the LT3080 is the chip of the week. Congratulations. Yay. Yeah. I've actually talked about the LT3085 on my very first blog, I think.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah?

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, it's been out a while, but this is the upgraded version, which goes to an amp. So, it's basically an LDO. It's a low dropout voltage regulator. Nothing fancy there, but it goes down to zero volts. It's not your traditional LDO. And really, you've got to, it's basically simply an op amp with a current source in it set by a single resistor. And that's the other good thing is that you set the output voltage with a single resistor. You don't need the traditional resistor divider on the output. So, you just put it to ground. Yeah. And you just put it to ground. And it's got a, it has an internal constant current source, which drives the constant current through that resistor, which then generates a reference voltage. And that's how it, and that's how it generates the thing. Anyway, you can look at the internal block diagram, too. It's very simple, and it's a very useful part. And what I've found is that because the internal constant current source is so small, it's only 10 microamps. Yep. You can actually override that and feed in onto the set pin. You can actually feed a voltage directly onto the set pin.

Chris Gammell: Oh, so you can just use it as a programming zero to one amp.

Dave Jones: You can just use it as a digitally programmable. So, if you need a programmable voltage from your PIC chip or something like that, all you've got to do is have your pulse width modulation output that sets a voltage, buffer it, drive it directly into the set pin, and you can get a digitally programmable voltage out of this thing.

Chris Gammell: Up to an amp, right?

Dave Jones: Up to an amp, yep. Yeah, that's pretty sweet. It's available in various packages, T0220, SOT223, which is one of my favorites, and other packages. And you can get a half amp version, which is the LT3085 as well. So, they're basically the same chip.

Chris Gammell: That seems like a good tool belt kind of piece part.

Dave Jones: It's a nice little building block chip.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I like that.

Dave Jones: I really like it. It's a little bit on the expensive side. I think it's $1.50 or something in 100 quantity. But it's not the cheapest out there, but it's really versatile, and I like it.

Chris Gammell: Well, we were talking about the thing Maxim can't get away from. LT can't get away from the pricier side of the chips.

Dave Jones: Right, they are LTR pricier. Yeah. If you want cheap chips, you don't go to they're not your first choice.

Chris Gammell: No, definitely. Unfortunately. Definitely not. But they make some cool ones too. So, I mean, they're our second chip of the week, and they've been on twice now.

Dave Jones: Yep. And also, I've developed a circuit where you can actually, which I'll eventually reveal, that you can develop a digitally programmable constant current as well. Oh, nice. And you can use this as a constant current generator as well. So, it's a really neat chip, and they've got lots of example apps in the data sheet. It's really cool.

Chris Gammell: Man, I love data sheets. We had a high school student shadowing us this week in my group at work, and I was showing him data sheets today, because he was just real fresh to the scene and everything. Yeah. And I just said, no, I turned to him, I said, you know, I love data sheets. I love the application circuits and data sheets. You could almost teach yourself all of electronics with just data sheets. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, so great. I loved it.

Dave Jones: It's brilliant.

Chris Gammell: So.

Dave Jones: So, check it out. The LT3080.

Chris Gammell: Yes. I think. Is it true? Is it up? Is our amp hour up, Dave?

Dave Jones: No, come on. We haven't run out of capacity, surely. Probably. Oh, I think we have.

Chris Gammell: Unless my time is off.

Dave Jones: What the hell did we rant on about today? That took up an hour.

Chris Gammell: I can run through the list if you'd like.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. That's right. They're here and they're numbered.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Let's see.

Dave Jones: 17 items. Give me a break.

Chris Gammell: I know. A lot of chips today. A lot of chips and our usual corporate finance making fun of bean counters and complaining about stuff and you called out that new project, Maximite, which is cool. Yep. It's all good.

Dave Jones: Actually, there's a thing I wanted to tack on to the end of that, but I won't this week because I just wanted to, what opinions do you have of the semiconductor companies out there? Maybe we can get a list for next week. Like, you know, LT, right? Yeah. They have a stigma of being high cost. Maxim, you can't get the bastards. Yeah. Right? National. They're dead. Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, what other companies out there do you think have a rep for something? Tell us.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's a good idea. So, yeah, people could leave that in the comments. And then also, if you, remember we mentioned the guy that had 88 fluke meters. So, if you can beat that or even if you want to just show it up, you can go on the EEV blog forum.

Dave Jones: I'll be surprised if anyone can beat that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, God. Yeah. And was there anything else? I don't know if there was. I don't know. Oh, if you know flea markets around the US or elsewhere, let us know about those too because, you know, that'd be great to get a list going of flea markets for people to go buy other people's electronic crap.

Dave Jones: Instead of just dumping it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Because it usually is junk. Yeah. Junk with a Q, you know. That's how you pronounce fancy junk. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yep.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well. Thanks for joining us. We'll talk to you guys next week.

Dave Jones: Bye. Bye.

Chris Gammell: Five, five, five. Arduino. Arduino. Arduino. Arduino. Five, five, five. Five, five. Arduino.

Dave Jones: Not that triple nickel rubbish. That's all we're going to talk about today. 555. 555. Arduino. Arduino. Arduino. Arduino. Arduino. Kill that puppy. See if we care.

Chris Gammell: Please don't kill puppies.

Speaker ?: Okay.