#70 – Idiorhythmic IPC Inconcinnity

Abraham: 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. Hey, Chris. Sounds like you've got a cold or flu or something this morning.

Abraham: Is that what you meant?

Dave Jones: Yeah. You're obviously possessed by a chicken or something like that. Turkey.

Abraham: I was going for turkey. Turkey. Oh, right. It is nearly turkey day. I thought...

Dave Jones: Oh, what's that? Thanksgiving, is it?

Abraham: Thanksgiving, yeah.

Dave Jones: What is Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving. It's just... For the non-US people. Yeah, yeah. Because I'm not too up on it.

Abraham: I don't know why. It became a big holiday with Abraham. I just learned a history lesson about it the other day. Oh. But, yeah. It's just kind of a day to get together. It's supposed to be like, oh, well, the pilgrims and the Native Americans got together and gave thanks for surviving the winter, but... Surviving the winter?

Dave Jones: Is that it?

Abraham: Yeah, because... Whatever. Okay. Right. I don't know my elementary school history, but it turns out, though, it was enacted by Abraham Lincoln back in his days as president of the U.S., so... Yep. It's been around for a while. And now what it really means is eat until you puke, watch a lot of crappy football, because the worst teams seem to play on those days, and start shopping, of course, for your Christmas season. Black Friday is the day after, so...

Dave Jones: Oh, Christmas crap just comes earlier to the shops every year. I'm surprised they don't have Easter eggs there yet.

Abraham: There's not as much money on Easter, so I wouldn't expect that. Right. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay. There you go. Thank you for the history lesson.

Abraham: Oh, no problem. I was watching... There was a daily show. There's a TV show around here, and there was a history girl on there, and she was talking about how the day after Thanksgiving is actually... was a holiday prior to it. Right. It was called Evacuation Day. Evacuation Day? It was hilarious. I'll try and post a link to it. It was just a really funny segment, so... Cool. Yeah. Yeah, it was really good.

Dave Jones: So, why did they kill the holiday? If they tried to kill a public holiday here in Australia, that's when we would, you know...

Abraham: It was a bigger deal, apparently, back in the day.

Dave Jones: Killing the politicians. Right. Yeah.

Abraham: Right. These days, if someone tried to kill a holiday, it would be like, oh my god. It'd be news stories, and yeah. Yeah. Nope, nope, nope. Right. But I get two days off, so I'm happy. I got a four-day weekend coming up. That's nice.

Dave Jones: Awesome.

Abraham: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, you've still got a nine-to-five job, haven't you? Oh, I do. For me, every day is a... Well, no, see, because I have my weekends off now.

Abraham: Oh, that's good.

Dave Jones: See, because a lot of people ask, oh, why don't I produce more videos now that I'm doing it full-time? And, well, the answer is that I haven't magically just suddenly gained 40 hours a week of, you know, time to do stuff. Yeah. Because before, I had to do it on the weekends and at nights when I actually did have a full-time job. Yep. And, you know, and the wife graciously gave me the weekends to work on the blog because she could see that, you know, there was a bit of a future there. It was a temporary thing. You know, possibly. And now that I'm full-time, well, she instantly wanted the weekends back and the nights and everything else. And so, yeah, I don't magically have an extra 38. 38 hours is the work week here. What's the work week in the U.S.?

Abraham: Why 38? I mean, they say 40, but it's usually a little longer.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Usually a little longer? I'm talking about the official sort of, you know.

Abraham: I don't have an official work week. I have a when the job's done kind of work week. Right. I mean, I think that's actually an interesting question for our listeners. I mean, what about, I don't know. I feel like the engineering work week, at least in the U.S., can be upwards of 50 hours a week. I mean, it's.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Yeah. But here in Australia, the official, we, you know, there isn't like an official work week, you know, which is, I believe, 38 hours. It depends. Government departments are slightly less, I think. And maybe industry might still be 40 or something. I don't know. But there is like an official sort of thing. I don't know. You know, they don't really enforce it, so to say. Well, no. Some companies, they do. Some companies will actually, you know, they actually will tell you to go home if, you know, it's time to go home. Go.

Abraham: It's time to go. Leave. Yep. Pack up. Turn off that scope. Turn off that DMM. You are heading out of here. That's right. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. I'd be interested to hear from our listeners. I mean, you know, are there long, super long work days where you are? I know certain countries. It's very stringent. I mean, I used to work for a Korean company, and that was regularly longer hours. It wasn't standardized, but it was culturally, it was a very long work day. Right.

Dave Jones: Well, at most companies, most engineering companies I've worked at, oh, I've never worked at a non-engineering company, so they're all engineering companies.

Abraham: What about that time when you were an HR professional, Dave?

Dave Jones: A HR professional?

Abraham: That'd be hilarious.

Dave Jones: I would have killed myself. Right. I would have thrown myself off the 30th floor, I think. Like if I was a lawyer or a marketing person.

Abraham: Mr. Johnson, today we have your review, and you suck!

Dave Jones: Yeah, I wouldn't have been a very good HR professional. Nah, I don't think I'm cut out for it. Just like I'm not cut out for marketing, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Abraham: Yeah, well. Nah. Yeah. Where was I?

Dave Jones: Yes, at most engineering companies I've worked at, in fact, all of them, you pretty much make your own hours. You do what has to be done to get the job done. And if you finish early, you go home, and no one bats an eyelid. But, you know, if times are, you know, really tough and you have to get something finished by a deadline because you've got some trade show or something, then you're expected to work all night to finish it. Yeah. You know? Yeah, definitely. Or if the head honcho comes down and says, I want this tomorrow. Hello, we have a caller. No, we don't. We do. No, he's gone. Sorry. It's probably just Randy again. Right. And, yeah, so you're expected to do the job, and that's it. You know? You're... But, yeah, it's a bit of give and take kind of thing. You know? You put in the long hours when it's needed, and they don't quibble when you don't turn up. You know? Someday. Which days is it? All weekend, so I just don't turn it up on Monday and Tuesday. Oh, okay.

Abraham: I get you. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Abraham: So you just don't show up for like a month and a half. Yeah. That's right. You're good to go. Yeah. All right.

Dave Jones: And that's, you know, it's usually pretty flexible like that. So, see, I would never work at a job where, you know, if you're five minutes late, there's the boss tapping his watch, saying, and I'm docking you five minutes late. That's just bullshit.

Speaker ?: That's just...

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Abraham: Right. Well, if that's the case, then that's when I say, yeah, if I'm getting docked five minutes late, I want to be paid hourly. So then I get all that overtime too, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's right. So? That's one thing I've never had. I've never had overtime. You get paid a salary, and that's it. You know? You get paid a yearly salary.

Abraham: Yeah. Yeah. It seems like it's more in the consulting world kind of where it's hourly, at least on the engineering side. I mean, there are a lot of jobs. There are contract positions too. I know some engineering professionals who are contractors, and they get paid hourly, but...

Dave Jones: Should we segue into a segment we've got on that for today's show?

Abraham: Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. It's here somewhere. Yeah, it is. You put it on here. I did. Your friend, apparently. It's my buddy Dave, actually a former co-worker. He switched over to consulting, and he was actually kind of the guy that was inspiring me to do some consulting on the side too. But he wrote a really great article about it. He writes for Element 14. But he just kind of liked the stuff that he's run into and just the unknowns that he really didn't know about going into consulting. He knew a couple of people who had done it professionally. But even that, you know, you never really know everything about it.

Dave Jones: No, of course.

Abraham: And so he kind of lays out costs and how much it is to... He even lays out his own costs about tools and healthcare and, you know, self-employment tax, which is a U.S. thing. I'm not sure how that's different in Australia. Right, no.

Dave Jones: We don't have a self-employment tax. Yeah. Well, I assume that means if you're self-employed, you pay an additional tax over and above?

Abraham: The easiest way to do it, like, so like 25% is like a decent tax rate in the U.S. Right. The way I estimate everything, like in terms of all my taxes for my consulting stuff, is just 50%. You just cut the number in half and that's how much money you're taking home. Right. Which is ridiculous when you think... I mean, when you look at it, you're like, wow, that makes a big difference. You know, like if I was going to... I didn't do a full-time, obviously, but if I was going to, like, you have to make a significant higher amount of cash in order to... Yeah. Oh, for sure. ...to make the same amount that you're making at a company. But you can write stuff off and to... You can.

Dave Jones: You can write off pretty much everything. We have two tax rates here. Basically, there's a corporate or company tax rate. So if you set yourself up as a company, you know, which is a much more paperwork and everything involved in actually doing that, then you pay the corporate or company tax rate. Or if you're like me, you're a sole trader, you're an individual, you pay the individual tax rate, which is like a scaled bracket thing depending on how much you earn. And it's a lot less paperwork, a lot simpler. Oh, that's nice. That is nice. Yeah. But there's no self-employment tax. Jeez, how... Well, it's kind of rolled in, I think, though. Don't they want to encourage that sort of thing?

Abraham: You know what it is? It's because most... Well, I mean, you have a social support system there, too. But the Social Security here, employers pay half of it. So basically, it kind of balances that out because you don't have an employer. So you have to pay the other half, basically. So that's kind of the idea.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay, got it. Okay. So you're helping out... It's sort of... Yeah, you're helping out the unemployed people, basically, with that tax. Is that the...

Abraham: Or yourself, if you became unemployed. Oh, yeah, yeah. Or older people, too. Social Security is a... As a retiree kind of thing. Yeah. But it's interesting because, you know, Dave, you and I have talked about it before, too. The net result of this is that you have to charge more, basically, in an hourly rate than you might think that you would. Oh, of course. You know, if you're making $50,000 an hour, the easiest way to...

Dave Jones: If you're making $50,000 an hour.

Abraham: Oh, sorry. A year. If you're making $50,000 an hour, work a couple hours a year and then just...

Dave Jones: Give me some of that action.

Abraham: Sit on your ass.

Dave Jones: Oh, I'll undercut you by half and I'll take all your business.

Abraham: Right.

Dave Jones: I can live on $25,000 an hour.

Abraham: Yeah. No, but basically, if you're making like $50,000 a year, right, and it doesn't matter what your dollar amount or your local currency is, but, you know, if you divide by 40 hours a week, that's $2,000 a year. So, basically, that means your hourly rate would be about $25 an hour. That's what you would expect.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Abraham: But, in fact, I mean, if you look at, you know, at least how I was talking about with, you know, 50% taxes in the U.S. for consulting money, then, you know, to get that equivalent amount, you need to charge $50 an hour. You've got to double it straight up.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And that doesn't take into account all sorts of, like, the extra risk of when you don't have, you know, work and your, you know, between that doesn't include holidays and all sorts of extra costs involved.

Abraham: If you're working on your own, it's only what you can bill. That's another difference. Yeah, exactly. If you're working 50 hours on a project, you may only be able to bill 30 of those hours or even 20. I mean, depending on how much work you get done. I mean, if you're like Dave and you're just surfing forums all day, yeah, you should only be billing 20 hours a week. But it's shocking, too, because, you know, like, yes, you might say you're working on an electronics project. You're like, oh, I need some help, and I'm going to ask Chris or Dave for their consulting rates. And it's like, well, you might be a little shocked when you see rates. I was very shocked when I saw people's rates and even more shocked when I saw people's rates in California, you know, like, just because it's a higher cost of living. Of course. I don't – you know, you and I have talked about that before that a lot of people don't understand that background of it when they're asking for the, you know, the contracting rates to get some help. And it's kind of like, well, what are you going to do?

Dave Jones: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. But there's a problem is there is often people who will undercut you. It depends on how specialized you are at the task and how much that client wants you in particular to do something, you know. Yeah. So, yeah, and how valuable you are to them. But if you're just doing something that, well, a hundred other consultants can do just as well, then you're often, you know, you're into that undercutting war. You get caught up in that as well. Yeah, it's how bad you want it, really. Yeah, exactly.

Abraham: If you're doing like a two-layered layout of, you know, an Arduino shield or something, right? I mean, there's a lot of people that can do that. It's just a matter of, you know, if people know your work or they might be willing to pay a little bit more. If you can get it done quickly. If you can get a job done in two hours that someone else takes 12 hours, then your higher rate might be justified, right? Yeah. And that's often the case with specialization too. Yeah. If someone wants to, you know, wants help on a microcontroller, they're probably not going to ask me because I'm not very great with microcontrollers. You know, like they'd go find someone.

Dave Jones: You aren't as efficient as somebody else who has a track record doing that.

Abraham: Right, exactly. And I wouldn't charge for, you know, if I'm learning something new, if I'm learning the IO on like a, you know, an Atmel part or something like that, I wouldn't charge for the learning because I, first off, I get the benefit of that learning. Yeah. But I also wouldn't charge because I'm not actually doing the work. You feel a bit guilty too. Yeah, I wouldn't.

Dave Jones: And being engineers, we just suck at that sort of thing and we just, you know. Yeah, yeah. We just aren't ruthless enough.

Abraham: We don't have the business acumen, which is a nice way of saying being a dick. Yeah, that's right. If only, if only. Oh, boy. So people should remember that the next time they think that we're being dicks. Yes.

Dave Jones: So have, I'm interested to know if anyone out there has actually been caught up in that, that undercutting war like has happened in the software. Like, you know, you can go to those online, there's online systems where you can actually have jobs on there and you can bid for them like actually, you know, doing software. Yeah. Jobs and stuff. And apparently that's been undercut by the Indians or the Asians or something because they will do the same job for a lot less. And it's sort of impossible to compete. And it's almost driven everyone out of that software consulting, online software consulting job.

Abraham: At least in that marketplace, yeah.

Dave Jones: In that sort of marketplace. I haven't heard of the same thing happening in engineering as much. I'm sure it's there, but. I'm sure it's there, but yeah. Not as much as the software.

Abraham: I think in the end it comes down to quality too. I mean like. Oh, for sure. I'm sure some of the, some of the people that are undercutting are probably very high quality and that's probably a part of the problem, right? And in sites like Elance is one of the ones that I know and there's, there's a couple others out there. But.

Dave Jones: Well, and you can argue that, you know, there's software's easier to learn than hardware. You know, engineering hardware is a more learned, you know, it takes a lot more time and effort to become good at engineering than it probably does at, say, software.

Abraham: Whoa, you're going to get yourself in some hot water there, buddy. I know, I know.

Dave Jones: I just pulled that one out of my ass.

Abraham: Someone just hacked Dave's computer. Yeah. Yeah. Dave's IP is 96.44. Sure.

Dave Jones: You know, but yeah, like they're, they're places like India are churning out a hell of a lot of software specialists. You know, they, they, especially in the VHDL side of things. And, and I know they're sort of really taking over that market of doing that sort of coding and things like that. Cause there's so many graduates coming out and they all know this and they're all fluent in JavaScript and Klingon and.

Abraham: JavaScript and Klingon. That's what else you need, right? Yeah. And that's a good point, but that kind of brings up a cost of quality thing then too. Cause I mean, you could pay, I mean, there, there's the, how quick it gets done is one thing, right? If two hours versus 12 hours, but even if it takes them two hours and it's cheap or even if you pay more for those two hours, right? If it's a piece of crap and you have to limp along and get support for it, it's like, eh.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I know. Then your support thing. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of these things are often job based as well. So that you will charge, you will quote based on the job, the anticipated job. You know, it's hard to get those open-ended ones. You know, somebody, a client comes to you and says, oh, okay, start work on this project. And then you build them hourly until you're finished. You know, that's not often the case. You've got to make that big guesstimate upfront. Up front, all of them want it. Most of them want a quote. And therein lies a lot of risk as well. How much padding do you put in for that? And you've put in a fixed quote. And if you're over and you've, you know, you've run into problems and you've got to troubleshoot and stuff like that, then, yeah. And that's the other thing. Electronics, there can be a lot more troubleshooting traps in there than, say, software perhaps. Well, maybe.

Abraham: I mean, that's another kind of software versus hardware.

Dave Jones: A lot more, you know, especially if you're working on, you know, really subtle stuff.

Dave Jones: And there's lots of, you know, if there's a silicon bug in the chip, right, that can really ruin your day. Yeah, they can. You're right. That can really suck the bank account out of you, you know. Yeah. Suck your bank account dry. That's a good point. Because then it's all or nothing at that point. Yeah, software, I would guess. Yeah, if there's, you know, I've seen errors in compilers and stuff like that. But they're usually very mature type products, you know, because there's a lot more people using, you know, the Microsoft C++ compiler than there are people using some little embedded. Yeah, some new chip, right? Some new chip or something. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point.

Abraham: I'm glad I had a point there somewhere to make in my favor otherwise. You got there eventually. You got there eventually. Yeah. But there's an interesting article that I keep kind of going back to in my own consulting work. And I've sent it to, I think I sent it to you, Dave, and my other friend, Dave. And it's by Steve Friedel. And it's just this brilliant, so you want to be a consultant. That's what it is. And it's basically, it runs down the whole, I mean, it's just this great, great article. The guy is an IT consultant. But it's just, it's across all industries, really. It's very relevant to everything. And I'll be sure to post a link to it. But, you know, one of the first things he says is, if you can, just don't quote jobs. Don't do whole jobs because it's not worth it. You know, like, the risk is all on you.

Dave Jones: Well, unfortunately, that is a lot of the engineering industry.

Abraham: Yeah.

Dave Jones: If you aren't quoting jobs, then you're not in business, almost.

Abraham: Yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: You know, I, most of the jobs I've done are always been job-based, quote, you know, quote-based jobs.

Abraham: Not to, not to share your secrets too much. I mean, but do you over-spec then? I mean, do you, how much padding do you put in?

Dave Jones: You try and over-spec. You know, it depends on how much experience you set. Like you talked about before, about, you know, if you accepted a job for an Atmel microcontroller and you haven't worked on them before, then you're going to put in a lot more padding because you know there's more risk there. Whereas, you know, if you're just laying out a board and they've already done the schematic for it, you know, you, you can, you know, if you're an experienced PCB layout person, you might know how long it's estimate, you might get pretty good.

Abraham: Yeah, you might actually have a rate for that kind of thing, right?

Dave Jones: You would have a rate for that, you know, you would know how long it's going to take you. So you're not going to be too far off the mark, but there's always padding in there. It's just a matter of how much, really. And, uh.

Abraham: Yeah, that's tough too, because if you get down, if you get three quarters of the way done and you have to start over because of some huge design flaw. Well, that's like, that's a real huge deal.

Dave Jones: All the customer changes their spec, that's another thing.

Abraham: Well, then you've got to write that in too. I mean, you've got to make sure you, you don't let that happen, but.

Dave Jones: Well, there's spec creep as well, whereas it's just this little bit and this little bit leads to another change and another change. And then, you know, you can't just keep rewriting the contract each time.

Abraham: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, that can be, that can be more trouble than it's worth. So, yeah, you get caught up in that trap.

Abraham: Another reason not to do job-based, uh, quoting, if you can.

Dave Jones: And yet another reason not to become a consultant, right? It's not the dream job that you often, you know, think it is.

Abraham: Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, I love the idea of it. I love the idea of, you know, oh, I'll set my own hours.

Dave Jones: In theory, it's great. In practice, I was a consultant many, many years ago. I gave it up because I hated it. And I liked the, uh, I liked the, uh, what's the word of the nine to five? I like this. The regularity. The ability. Predictability. Yeah. Of the nine to five job. The boringness. Five o'clock, I can go home and I can forget about everything. Yeah, that's true. Not my problems. That's true. So I've got my weekends and, you know, and, and I'm only working for one boss, not 10 different bosses.

Abraham: Yeah.

Dave Jones: As you are, you know, people think, oh, you work for yourself as a consultant. Well, no, you don't. Your boss is your client that you're working for at the moment. If you've got three jobs on at once, well, you've got three bosses.

Abraham: Yeah. Give me a break. Yeah. It's, it's tough, you know, because I think, uh, you know, you're a little more experienced. So I think you've really seen the, the bad side of it. You know, I, I think that it, I, I've romanticized it. I've already recognized that I've way over romanticized it. And, uh, you and I have talked about that before, but, um, you know, it's still, it's, I like the idea of it. I love the idea of being able to be in charge if even if only in my mind.

Dave Jones: Oh, so do I. And some people thrive on this. Some people thrive on being able to get jobs and all that, you know, and all that sort of stuff and, and, and doing things. Competitive nature. Yeah. Yeah. It's entirely up to the individual. Um, personally, I want to do as little work as possible for my money with as little hassle as possible.

Abraham: And as we've heard, as we've heard before.

Dave Jones: Well, who wouldn't, right? Trust me, working is working hard for a living is overrated people. Tell your kids. I'll say it again. That's right. No, it's, you know, even if you still enjoy it, well, I, there's better, you know, if I had a million bucks, I wouldn't be out there doing consulting gigs, right? Even though I like it, I enjoy doing it.

Abraham: No, I've got better things in life to be doing. Be your own true boss and do it at home as a hobbyist.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. As a hobbyist. And then I can just work on it whenever. If I don't get it done, ah, who cares? You know? Yeah. No pressure, stress, you know, it's all. Yep.

Abraham: Has Dave solved the actual working world, big question? I mean, maybe Dave's got it all figured out. Maybe I've got it wrong, man.

Dave Jones: But, well, well, that's it. Well, the problem is, right, I'm getting people coming to me, right, going, oh, do you do consulting? Oh, yeah, occasionally. You know, I'm trying not to. And, you know, I've got to explain, you know, and I've got to turn down this work. You know, I could probably do with the money, right? But I've got to turn it down because I just, you know, I just don't want to be working on someone else's shit. I want to work on my own shit in my own time.

Abraham: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You know, that's the only way you can be your own boss is if you work on your own stuff and you're not, you know, working for someone else. So, there you go.

Abraham: Yep. Yep. Well, speaking of something else, let's hear about your recent video, Mr. I Don't Like Ham Radio, and then I run out and go to an amateur radio club.

Dave Jones: I'm just not that interested.

Abraham: I'm not that interested, but I'll hang out for it. Would you say you get three videos out of an amateur radio club, Dave? Oh, I'm going to get three videos out of it.

Dave Jones: Well, one, only one is an amateur radio. Only one is to do with hair. The other two are Gav from the Sydney Hackerspace turned up and he's got this cool lightsaber, lightsife thing. And he gave a lecture on that. So, I've got video on that. And the other one's a maker bot. Well, not a maker bot. A commercial 3D printer thing. So, those videos will eventually come out. Sorry for people who don't like those sort of videos. Stick it. It's content. He's his own boss, people. He's his own boss. Yep, I am the boss. That's right.

Abraham: Yeah, that's right.

Dave Jones: Can't please everyone. And I like them, so I'm going to put them up. And some people will like them, so...

Abraham: Yeah. To those people who don't like them. Yes. Yes. And speaking of ham, I think so far I have four people joining in what I am calling my fellowship of the ham. Oh, boy. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's excellent to hear, though.

Abraham: Yeah, it's great. It's great. I've been studying, too. And it's really... It's not as bad as I thought it would be. I mean, like, I had been studying previously, but I've actually been starting taking exams and stuff, and it's like, ugh, this is... Like, it's like, show a resistor. You can point out the resistor. It's like, oh, my God. Okay. Which, I mean, I get it. That's a big part of the... I mean, like, the people that are coming in to ham radio are not... A lot of them are not electronics people, so... Yep. Oh, of course. This is what a lot of people were telling me about. But I'll... For those interested, you know, let me know. I think I got four people so far. We're trying to get to ten, and we're also still trying to get Dave to sing. He will. He will, people. So, you know, you owe me for sending you a couple of...

Dave Jones: Kindles. Yes. Yeah.

Abraham: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes, you did do that. I do owe you. Thank you very much. Because the bastards won't sell them outside of America. What the hell is the deal with that? I know. I'm trying to give these people money. They will not take my money. Take my money. And then when I get the damn Kindle, right, I want to buy some content. Oh, no, sorry. We can't sell it in your region. What? I'm trying to give you money, you idiots. Don't turn it down. You've got an automated system to take my money? Take it. Take my money. Yep. Unbelievable. Oh, this region shit. When are companies going to learn that? It's a worldwide market now.

Abraham: It's just insane. Yeah, it's too bad. It really is.

Dave Jones: You would think a company like Amazon would get it, but they don't. You know, they just... Yeah.

Abraham: I don't get where it comes from. I mean, it must be like a copyright kind of selliness.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. You see it on these, you know, YouTube videos. Some YouTube videos are not available in your region. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's annoying. Or Vimeo videos. Or, you know, news. You know, I'm trying to watch, you know, some video on some US news network or something, and it says, oh, can't view that in your region. You know, bloody hell.

Abraham: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's the internet. There are no regions. Yeah.

Abraham: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Give me a break.

Abraham: Yep.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I heard you bought a snowblower. I did not yet.

Abraham: You didn't? I'm thinking about it still. No.

Dave Jones: See, this is a bizarre concept to an Australian. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, especially because it's summer. It's a plow, right? Yeah. You've put it on the list here. What?

Abraham: Yeah. What the? Do you know what that is? No?

Dave Jones: Well, it's a plow to get rid of snow, right? It's a hand, like, you drag it behind you, and it...

Abraham: No, they mount these things on the front of trucks, man. Oh, right. I'm going to have to take a picture now.

Dave Jones: You actually have a truck with, like, a...

Abraham: A big shovel on the front. It's like a 50-inch shovel, basically, and it goes down on the ground, and it scrapes the snow off my driveway into a big pile, and then it actually has hydraulics to push it up, and...

Dave Jones: Bloody hell!

Abraham: Uh-huh. What do you park this thing in the garage, or what? No, I don't have it. I pay someone to come and do it.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Oh, okay. Right.

Abraham: Yeah. Right. Yeah, this is a big deal in Cleveland. I mean, yeah. Right. I mean...

Dave Jones: Yeah, I'm sorry.

Abraham: And I'm kind of in what's called the snow belt, too, so it's like how the wind blows off Lake Erie. It's... If the lake's warm, it's... Oh, it's bad news. It's fine. I mean, I like snow sometimes, but, you know, usually by March, I'm pretty sick of it, so...

Dave Jones: We just don't have that in virtually all regions of Australia. There are a couple of alpine snow regions in Australia where you can go skiing, and those towns, yeah, they'd get... You know, you'd probably have to have a snow plow, but, you know, we're talking, you know, 0.01% of Australia's population or something. It's tiny.

Abraham: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: It's weird. So, yeah, I just don't get it.

Abraham: Foreign concept to you.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Abraham: Well, the interesting side of this, though, is that I was looking at snow plows, and just in general, I mean, winter's coming in the U.S. in general, and there's autonomous snow plow competitions, actually. Oh, cool. Who was it? Michael Carroll told me about it. I was talking about, you know, because I was looking at getting a snow plow, which is kind of like a big spindle that kind of basically chews into snow and then spits it out. You know, it's the same idea as a plow just to clear out my driveway. Yep. But there's people out there that have, like, completely custom-built... I'll try and find a couple more links. Nice. There's a completely custom-built snow plow, either autonomous vehicles or radio-controlled. I saw one where the guy's actually sitting in his garage at his computer.

Dave Jones: I was going to say, you can just sit inside in front of the fireplace and operate your remote snow plow. Yeah. Operate your remote snow plow.

Abraham: And, I mean, I'm guessing probably Roomba. We'll probably see, like... Who's the company that does Roomba? The iRobot people?

Abraham: What's that? Roomba's a type of vacuuming robot.

Dave Jones: No.

Abraham: No? You haven't seen that? No. No. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: I've heard of these things.

Abraham: Okay, yeah.

Dave Jones: Aren't they a gimmick? Don't they just... No, they actually work. Something you buy on Demtel or something like that?

Abraham: No, they actually... They work. I mean, they have, like, a control mechanism or a control algorithm in them, and basically, you... They know... They can sense where the wall is, and then they have an algorithm that tells them the way to maximize floor space coverage. Right. And then it basically has a little charging station, and once a day or whatever, it comes out, and it goes around your house, and it sweeps, and it's low enough profile that it can get on your couches, and people actually hack these things, too. I mean, they're really cool. Yeah. Yeah. They're really cool, and it's a good way to get a cheap robot, basically. Okay. Yep. Because there's the benefits of, you know, mass market and stuff.

Dave Jones: It's the whole consumer mass market thing. Yep.

Abraham: Right. And so Roomba's getting into a... Now they have ones for the bathroom, too, and so they can... You know, they're actually mops more than vacuums. Right. But I'm guessing eventually. I can't imagine why a company like Roomba wouldn't do the same for larger stuff like snow plows and lawn mowers and anything else like that.

Dave Jones: Well, you can buy these automated lawn mowers. Apparently. I've seen them around.

Abraham: You can buy them. Programmable? I mean, this is like algorithmic. Well, yeah.

Dave Jones: I think they've probably got a GPS on them because they're outside or something, and you can program them to do your yard, and it just goes around.

Abraham: Yep. I haven't seen commercial ones. I mean, I've seen a lot of home brews for those, but I haven't seen the commercial ones yet. But, yeah. I mean, I think it makes sense. If you're going to pay a lawn service company however much people pay for that, I've never paid for that, maybe like $100 a week, or I don't know. I got a huge yard, so I don't know what the deal would be with my yard, but $50 a week even.

Dave Jones: Once again, even those guys, even the lawn mower guys are probably Jim's lawn mowing service, what we have here in Australia, Jim's franchise. They're probably $100 an hour to mow your lawn, right?

Abraham: Yeah, probably. Probably. I honestly can't say. I don't know.

Dave Jones: They're lawn mowing consultants.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Abraham: Yeah. I mean, there comes a point, though, where it balances out, where if a Roomba lawn mower, or whatever the one you're talking about, is $1,000, then that could pay itself off in three or four years, right? Maybe even less. I don't know. Yep. So, yeah. I could see it being a very viable business model eventually.

Dave Jones: But then the batteries would be dead, and you'd have to...

Abraham: Yeah. Or you could have a gas-based one where you just... Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. I don't know. I think that just in general, the autonomous vehicle kind of... Right. Or just robots in general, I think if people can get the prices down on them, they have a very realistic chance in the marketplace. Yeah. And snowblowers, I mean, hell, I'd pay for a... I don't know. I think I pay, what, like $200 or $300 a year for snow plowing, so... Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, I could easily pay $1,500 and pay it back in, you know, five years, and I'd feel good about that.

Dave Jones: How often would you have to plow? How often would you have to call him the plow guy?

Abraham: Oh, it's just whenever it snows more than, like, two or three inches, I think.

Dave Jones: Right. But... Yeah, but what happens if you call him in and he plows it and then it snows again? You're screwed, right? You've got to call him back in.

Abraham: Yeah, sometimes. That's why people get snowblowers, so...

Dave Jones: Right. Okay.

Abraham: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And are these just a snowblower? Are they just like a heat, a big heat gun? What are they?

Abraham: No, no, no, no. How do they work? It's kind of like a... What's a good way to explain it? I've never seen a snowblower. You know, like a big, like a drill bore, basically? You know, like... Yeah, right. Basically, it has a curvature to it and that, when you're drilling down into the ground, that moves earth upwards. Yep, yep. You know what I'm talking about? Yes. Basically, imagine that and you take it 90 degrees and you put it on the ground now. Right. Now, you have that same thing but you have the four... You're trying to... You're moving into snow and you're trying to throw snow backwards towards you and then there's a secondary stage that throws it up in the air so you can, like, toss it off to the side.

Dave Jones: Right, so it's got like a corkscrew kind of... Yeah, that's a good way to say. ...drills into the snow and then just disperses it

Abraham: off to the side. Usually, you know, like a stream off to the side. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay, right.

Abraham: Got it. Man, you gotta come visit Ohio in the winter. Hey, hey. February trip for Dave. Yay. Yay. You will be miserable.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. No, I'll have Australia. Thank you very much.

Abraham: Just like me. Yep.

Dave Jones: Ah, well. Yeah, but here, you know, in the middle of summer, it's, you know, 40 degrees, so...

Speaker ?: Nah.

Abraham: 40 degrees... Oh, C. Right. 40 degrees C. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Which is about, you know, 38 is like 100 Fahrenheit or something. Yeah. So it can be like 100...

Abraham: That's crazy. That's crazy.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Abraham: Hmm.

Dave Jones: Hmm. Well, hopefully I won't have to put up with that anymore out in the lab. I won't have to do that.

Abraham: Oh, yeah. Everything all closed up for that?

Dave Jones: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. The power's now turned on. The power's turned on to the office so I can now see it with the lights on and the aircon works. I was a bit afraid of that because, you know, it's been vacant for over a year or something. I thought, oh, you know, the aircon might smell funny or it won't work or something like that. But no, it seems to work just a treat. Great. Yep. But then the wife saw it in the lights yesterday and she went, oh, I need to paint. Got to paint this place. So, oh, goodness.

Abraham: Don't tell them how to do my business, woman. Is that what she said? And then you get smacked. That's what I said in my mind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yes, dear. Okay, we'll paint it. No, yeah.

Abraham: We definitely need a coat of paint. That was a great idea. Great idea.

Dave Jones: So I've got to paint the thing.

Abraham: Yeah. No, it's good. And you mentioned that before. You were thinking maybe hanging PCBs up on the wall or something like that?

Dave Jones: Yeah, hanging stuff. Yeah, all sorts of stuff. I'm going to get some posters, cool posters and stuff. They'll all go up. And I've decided that I want to put plants in there. I want some fresh air.

Abraham: Ah, that's a good idea.

Dave Jones: I want some plants that absorb all those volatile organic chemicals and crap like that. You'll have to get a big... Not that I actually paint it with VOC. See, I don't paint it with ordinary paint. I paint it with low VOC or zero VOC paint. That's smart.

Abraham: You'll have to get a big old Wydlar poster, you know, like the one that's on our site. You're right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Abraham: Yeah, yeah. And if people haven't seen that, I'll link that in too. I mean, that's actually how a surprising number of people have found our site these days. If you search Google Images for Bob Wydlar, this amp hour pops up. Yep. Yeah. Thanks again to Jaime for making that poster. It's awesome. And I think it's Fran, whoever, Fran Hoffert, who took the picture. So speaking of those PCBs on the wall, we had someone write in the Axis. I'm not sure what his or her real name is. But basically, he or she, sorry, they wanted to tell us about how they use PCBs and reuse. And it's actually a really cool idea. Basically, they took the scrap PCBs from a 68,000 expansion board for their Amiga 2000. And they turned it into fins for their rocket experiments. And they sent in pictures. There's these great pictures, you know, like really high strength fins that are FR4. I haven't seen the pictures yet. Oh man, they're great. And that is, it's probably like a four foot rocket from what it looks like. I mean, it's crazy. So there's a picture on the, we'll have it up on our site.

Dave Jones: Well, fiberglass is a very versatile material. Blank fiberglass or, you know, copper clad fiberglass.

Abraham: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Very versatile material. It's, you know, it's strong, it's easy to cut. And it's a relatively lightweight. Gives you cancer. Gives you cancer. It's awesome. Oh,

Abraham: I love that stuff. And people don't know, please don't breathe in fiberglass shavings. That's not good for you. It's bad for your lungs.

Dave Jones: But, but have a very versatile material. So, yeah, it's good stuff to, you know, it's good to have a couple of sheets of it just lying around old, old, old PCBs. You can cut up and do various things with.

Abraham: Yeah. And speaking of, uh, uh, bad things that you shouldn't breathe in, but actually I had a shout out for Eric, the embedded guy. He, uh, he, you know, we've talked to him about him before he won that, that, uh, touchstone contest. And that's right. And, uh, but he has this great post on eweb where he built a tiny little, uh, fume extractor. And this is something, I don't have one on my bench, so I might build one of these. It's a great idea. It's, uh, it's two Altoid tins. He soldered the ends together and basically inserted a, uh, what looks like a couple millimeter fan. I don't know what, how big that is. Uh, he didn't say how big the fan is.

Dave Jones: It can't be too big.

Abraham: Those Altoid tins are small. Yeah. But basically it's a filter. Uh, you know, he cuts out the one side and has the filter or allows the air to get pulled through the one side. And it's just a nine volt battery and a switch and a fan. It's simple and awesome. It's great.

Dave Jones: Well, a lot of time you don't need a, like a lot of the time, just a fan blowing across your bench will work better than a filter. Cause often it's hard to suck the fumes in. The filter has to be very close to your soldering, uh, to the job that you're actually soldering, or it has to be right on top, um, to actually get all the fumes in. Otherwise they tend to miss it and you end up blowing them away. And so you're soldering going.

Abraham: Yeah, that's what I do. And,

Dave Jones: um, yeah, so a fan, I like, I've got proper filters, um, you know, pace brand, uh, filters. And there's quite a few times where I've just turned them around cause they don't work. So I've turned them around so that they just blow. So I use them as fans across the bench. So you just assume would,

Abraham: would just use like a ceiling or not a ceiling fan, but like a desk fan or something small. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Just a simple desk fan or a 12 volt fan, hook it up your power supply and sit on your bench. And it's more than good enough to, but I need a solution for my new office actually. Uh, cause it's an enclosed space.

Abraham: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, well, I think about making one myself with one of those arms, you know, those flexible tube arms, which then you can put over your work. So it does actually suck up all the fumes. Um, and then I've got some, uh, carbon filter, um, stuff. I've got a few spare sheets of that. So I was thinking about just bodging up a fan system for that. And so that's a good idea. Yeah. Um,

Abraham: I like that.

Dave Jones: Hacking something up for that bit because the commercial ones cost thousands of dollars, you know, they're, they're a big fan box, you know, huge suction on them. Like an HVAC system. Uh, yeah. Like a HVAC and they,

Abraham: you'd have to get like electrician to install it and everything.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's not that big, but.

Abraham: Oh no, not like that. Okay. Okay.

Dave Jones: And the, um, outlet. Yeah. And like normally, like in, in like a big assembly factory or something, you would have the exhaust going like outside the building somewhere. Right. Yeah. You have it funneled, but I don't have that luxury in the office. So, um, I have to run your neighbors.

Abraham: You're going to have a neighbor there.

Dave Jones: I can pump it next door. And, uh, yeah, so I've got to do something. And there, once again, the, uh, all of those lovely plants I'll have in there will.

Abraham: No,

Dave Jones: that'll help. Hopefully help as well. So, yep.

Abraham: Yeah. Anyway,

Dave Jones: I don't do masses of amount, massive amount of soldering. You know, it's not like I'm sitting there going to assemble boards all day, every day.

Abraham: Not yet. We'll see.

Dave Jones: No, who knows? I'll pay some bastard to do that.

Abraham: Yeah. Well, when you take a picture of your, uh, your new bench, you should add it to Jeff's, uh, uh, flicker set. Do you see that thing?

Dave Jones: Yes. He's added a flicker account for the week.

Abraham: Our buddy Jeff of mighty home. He, uh, how does that work?

Dave Jones: Can, can anyone just log in and upload their own photos?

Abraham: Uh, let's see. Add it to the group. I think, yeah, I think you just submit it basically. Maybe you have to tag it or something. Right. Um, uh, I don't, Oh boy. I don't know how to do it. Join this group, I guess. Yeah, it's probably that. So,

Dave Jones: okay.

Abraham: You join it and then you can probably got rights to upload it. Got it. Yeah. So this is kind of, uh, he said it's partially inspired by workbench of the week. Yay. Uh, but yeah. And, uh, someone said it was on the verge today. Someone, uh, that's like a new, a new site. That's supposed to be pretty popular. So,

Dave Jones: sites that were popular before have all gone out of fad. Have they? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well,

Abraham: he's trying to get us to, sorry. He's trying to get us, he's saying that we should bring work adventure the week back. That's what he's saying. Right. Yeah. Uh, well, we should maybe someday, someday, maybe once we build up this, so we can just start cherry picking off of there. Yeah. Well,

Dave Jones: we don't have these things. You know, where, where did chip of the week go? Where did, do we have a shonky product?

Abraham: I have a chip of the week this week and there's a shonky product. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Let's, let's do chip of the week, shall we?

Abraham: You want to go straight to chip of the week? Okay.

Dave Jones: Let's do chip. Yep. Do it.

Abraham: Yeah. All right. All right. Uh, where is it? All right. So I actually got this off of, uh, do you remember I mentioned, uh, Reddit has a new thread called nice chips? Ah, yes. Yeah. We talked about that the other week. Someone, someone posted this one on there. Uh, and it's crazy. It's an at mile parts, an AT tiny 10, which is, I think you might've mentioned on here before. Yeah. It's not new. It's not new, but it's just, it's just a crazy chip. I mean, like look at it as an eight bit AVR. It's got a K of flash, 32 bytes of SRAM. Only a K? Yeah. But look how big it is.

Dave Jones: 32 bytes of SRAM. Yeah.

Abraham: Look at what it is though, Dave. It's in a,

Dave Jones: it's in a, it's in a 23 six.

Abraham: Oh, I think it's great. There's like a bunch of, there's like four different ADCs or four channel ADC. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Abraham: I don't know. You can just throw this thing at anything. It's great. Well,

Dave Jones: I mean, it's not just that male. Others have them.

Abraham: I know others are doing it too. I just like these little tiny ones. I, I like the, the, I don't know. I was, I don't know what you prefer, but I, I, I think like, I think this kind of small throat and anything kind of technology is almost cooler than, than like a, you know, a Xilinx $20,000 FPGA, you know, like,

Dave Jones: Oh yeah, yeah.

Abraham: FPGAs are cool in their own right, but.

Dave Jones: I agree. These little tiny, which you can just do, put in, they're so cheap, you know, they're 20 cents in volume or something. You can whack them in and you can just do a specific task with that. But often a lot of the problem is actually programming these bastards because you put them in and you're using all the pins because they're only like six pins. Right. Well, that is a problem. So where do you put your ISP header, you know, to actually do the in circuit programming, you know, so you've, and cause they're a SOT 23 part. You can't, it's not easy to make your own jig to program each part. So you're pretty much locked into almost getting them pre-programmed from the manufacturer in volume. So they're quite annoying. They're great for volume products cause you can order them pre-programmed. But when you use them on your own, you know, they can be quite annoying cause then you've got to multiply, it's in the ISP header and stuff like that. And the, and the ISP headers five times bigger than the chip.

Abraham: Right. You know? Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it's like, ah. And that is a downside,

Abraham: just low pin count stuff anyways, is that you're always balancing, you know, like if you're using one function that you can't use another, you have to do something like that. You have to change the mode or something like that. Yeah. But yeah. Like I said before.

Dave Jones: Usually you're only going to do one thing with this chip, you know? Yeah. It's designed for a specific task.

Abraham: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Abraham: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't know. I still think, I think it's a cool part. I don't care what you're saying. They're very nice. These little low pin count micros. Yeah.

Abraham: Yeah. I think it's nifty. And it's tiny. It is tiny. It's not 23.6, man.

Dave Jones: I've been crapping on about low pin count parts. I know. I remember you talking about that. A decade or two.

Abraham: That's why I thought you'd like this one. Yeah. I don't know what went wrong. I don't know what happened.

Dave Jones: Sorry, it's not new. I just want,

Speaker ?: you know,

Dave Jones: I've seen it. I'm sorry. It's not chip of the week for me. Okay. Well, you know. It is now.

Abraham: Okay. Because you don't have your own. Okay. Fair call. Take it. Yeah. Speaking of CAD and chips and stuff. I was talking to CJ Gervaisi about some stuff. Do you know, is there a standard footprint repository anywhere? Have you ever seen that? Just footprint? Not like actual entire part libraries? For CAD stuff? Yeah. For like an Eagle or Altium or anything like that. I mean, just a... Oh,

Dave Jones: there are sites which claim to do it, but you always want something different. I mean, you know, when there's IPC footprint wizards, you know, if you've got something like Altium, you know, it has a whole bunch of footprints in there and it's got an IPC wizard generator, which generates footprints based on that sort of stuff. But, you know, unless you're doing like generic, you know, you're doing a simple through hole Arduino. Yeah, you can stick with the same generic, you know, dip eight, you know, footprint or something like that for every design you do. But if you're doing, you know, commercial stuff with lots of variety of boards and different densities, then you're going to have different footprints for different things. A lot of companies will have...

Abraham: So you actually change the footprint around? Oh, yeah. You'll change the physical layout of the footprint in order to... Yes.

Dave Jones: And, yeah, if you've got a high density part, that's the IPC footprint standards actually have a least, most, and normal footprint size for every footprint based on the density of your board. So you've got that SOT 23 package we were talking about, right? Yeah. They've got three different sizes officially in the IPC standard for that. And then a lot of... And then your board loader might go, oh, I don't like the PCB, the IPC footprints. Here's our preferred footprint. So there's a lot of the times you will be driven by your PCB assembler. They will tell you our equipment is optimized for the... You know, our equipment's optimized for this footprint. We know this one works. We trust it. Use this one.

Abraham: And we'll have the lowest defects in that case, right? So you're going to do it. So...

Dave Jones: And you're probably going to do it. But, you know, once you get... Or you can do it the opposite way. You can go, right, our company standard is IPC normal size. And you force that upon the assembler, you know, and they go, shrug their shoulders and go, okay, we'll do that.

Dave Jones: you know, and everything usually works out. Okay. But there are lots of subtleties in there. And it's, yeah, it's very common. I've laid out a lot of boards where I'm driven by many different requirements. So...

Abraham: So how about outside those three then? Like, so you said there's the three, the three different IPC type footprints.

Dave Jones: then if you're doing some ultra tiny... Okay,

Abraham: let's assume the edge cases are not relevant here, right? Where you're doing some super, super fine thing. There should, in theory, be a way to have those three footprints across multiple software packages, right? So maybe a Eagle footprint...

Speaker ?: Well,

Abraham: no, there aren't.

Dave Jones: Because each software package uses their own proprietary library format. That's the problem.

Abraham: Well, that's what I mean, though. You could have like a link that says, okay, here's, here's where you download the SOIC8 for KiCad, for, uh, Jita, for Eagle, for Altium.

Dave Jones: I think I've seen one site in the years that claims to do that. It's a paid service or something, but yeah, I don't know. And they never have the footprint you want because there's so, the variety of package types these days is getting ridiculous.

Abraham: Yeah. Well, yeah, you know,

Dave Jones: yeah. And I,

Abraham: I forget where I heard about it, but someone was talking about that too, with, you know, with chips getting to the, to the, when chips get to the edge of a process, like, like a 65 nanometer process or even higher for like analog type parts, like 130, whatever it is. Yeah. Once they get to the, to the limits of what the process can do, that they start playing around with package types in order to reduce, uh, parasitics and drift and everything else. And yeah, that just, that just messes everything up. Right.

Dave Jones: And you wouldn't know what else annoys me. Like in, in a package like Altium, right? Like a lot of the time, the packages will be in this IP. I think it's your IPC name in convention. And it's some weird, you know, 56 X 25, blah, blah, blah. Right.

Abraham: And you can look it up in a glossary or something.

Dave Jones: What does that mean? Like there's, there's, there's actually, you know, there is, uh, heathed to the madness, so to speak in terms of that, but it doesn't make sense when you read it. It's not human readable almost. So, you know, if you're searching through the library, Oh, I want a, uh, a SOP, you know, 20 package or something, but it's not called that, you know, it's not called SOP 20 dot, uh, you know, dot PCB lib or something, you know, it's called some weird IPC number and you have trouble finding it and actually doing that. So I find myself all the time just generating footprints from scratch. Screw it. Yeah, exactly.

Abraham: It's just nuts. It's crazy. There's a downside. Yeah. And you got to maintain your library then too.

Dave Jones: Uh, yeah. Well, you know, and a lot of companies will have rules for that. We do our own libraries. We do not use the manufacturers. That's fair. We do not use the ones supplied by the CAD companies or anyone else. End of story. That's company policy. And I'd say probably the majority of companies do that.

Abraham: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was talking, I wasn't talking. I was, uh, I was, I was watching, uh, ask an engineer on Saturday night and I, I asked Lamar and Phil if they've used KiCad yet. And, uh, Lamar said she hasn't tried it yet. Um, cause just shouldn't have time, but she, she was hoping that with the new XML format that, you know, like that'll kind of open it up and allow online databases. And that'll be interesting if the, if, if the XML format does open up multiple programs, if then maybe standardization will be more possible on the footprint side. Yeah. It really would.

Dave Jones: That's the holy grail of, of CAD, of the CAD industry. Yes. It's standardization.

Abraham: Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: And the downside is, you know, yeah, it's probably not worth it for them. It takes a lot more than just Eagle to drive it. Let me tell you.

Abraham: Oh yeah. Oh, you're saying like the XML side of things, not the footprints.

Dave Jones: Yeah. The, the XML side of footprint side of things. Yeah. It takes all companies to get on board. Otherwise you're,

Abraham: you know, well, that'll be a, you know, if, if enough people ask for it, that kind of thing eventually. Yeah. And, and I'm hopeful for that kind of thing.

Dave Jones: And companies have to actually standardize it on, as the core, uh, file format, not just have an importer. Oh yeah, we support XML, but it's some weird ass importer you've got to use. And it's just no good. And it then converts it into their own proprietary format. That's no good.

Abraham: Right. Cause then you're locked in that format. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's just, ah,

Abraham: yeah.

Dave Jones: Stupid. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully it will.

Abraham: It would work, but we'll, we'll see going forward. I mean, it's, I'm glad Eagle did it. That's, that's nice. I mean, even if it does allow for importing, that's a good start, but yeah, hopefully eventually it, it moves towards a, a more open model.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I, once again, I'll mention Altium, right. They're talking about, you know, these, they turn the company around on this new vault system, right. Where all the parts are stored in this cloud-based vault. Right. And, yeah. And, and that's the Holy grail, right. Is that they think, Oh, everyone in the industry has got to put their footprints. Everyone will put footprints in there and then they'll have a footprint for, and I, and a schematic symbol and a 3d model and everything for every single part in the industry. And everyone will be happy to use that. And well, you know, it's, it's, it's,

Dave Jones: it's, it's, it's, it's, it's just, the world doesn't work like that. Sorry. It's going to fail. It's just, I think,

Abraham: I think what would happen is like most, most part libraries I've seen where it's like, you know, be like, Sot 23 dash Chris, Sot 23 dash Chris one, Sot 23 dash Chris hates Dave. Why did he mess up my last one? You know, like that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think the same kind of thing would happen or else you need some kind of oversight committee and that'll slow things down as just as much. Yeah. But,

Dave Jones: and then some people want extended, uh, footprints to do test points, you know, cause they, cause they want to fly in probe, automate, test everything. And, you know, and their footprint has to support that. No, it's just, yeah, it gets really messy. And then let's not even get into schematic symbols where everyone wants their schematic ! done a different way. Everyone goes, Oh, I want all the inputs on the left side and all the outputs on the right side. And other people go, no, I want it actually to match the physical pin layout of the chip. And other people go, no, I want them functionally separated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unbelievable. It's just, the world's just too complex. I'm sorry. There's no universal solution. That's going to work. It's just humans aren't made to cooperate.

Abraham: It's just, it's just, just deal with it. There's no answer. It's just, no, Dave says deal with it, people just deal with it. Wow.

Dave Jones: Yeah. What can I say? That's, that's just the way of the world.

Abraham: Yeah. Interesting post about making boards and, and getting, getting those, those small, those small components, the standard components, right? We're talking about standard footprints, but standard components. Bunny, Bunny Huang of, Chambi fame. Chambi. Thank you. He wrote an interesting article about buying a iPhone schematic for four bucks in Shenzhen.

Dave Jones: Four bucks. I think he got ripped off.

Abraham: You can get that for free on the internet.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Abraham: But this is probably really good. I'm sure it was really good. Yeah. But he, he makes a really, a really good idea. He makes a really good point rather about, about using that just to source low cost components. I was calling it coattailing. You know, you grab the, the big guys coattails, right? Coattails and hang on. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a great idea. Free ride. I mean, I don't know about you, Dave, but like whenever I'm, I'm doing a board, I always try and find highest volume parts, at least internally when I'm doing like company stuff. Oh, of course. Then, you know, you want half a, half a cent for a capacitor. Yeah, sure. Hey, that's much better. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's right. Of course you do. That's a natural way to do engineering. Yeah.

Abraham: And this is just an example in the, in the real, in not the real world, but in the, in the outside world of, of how to do it, where I guess you're pretending Apple's your, Apple's your company and you have access to their, to their stock. Right.

Dave Jones: And to their massive buying power. Yeah. Because if you don't know, Apple is the, the reason they've been massively profitable. I'm not going to say successful, but massively profitable. Like, you know, the biggest or second most profitable company in the world or something, um, is because of their, of their buying power, their sheer buying power. They, they will actually go into these manufacturers and go, right, we're going to buy your entire production run of those chips. And you're going to give them to us for nothing.

Abraham: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, 0.01 cent each, you know? Yeah. And, and everyone else gets driven out of the industry because they have the power to do it. And it snowballs. And then, you know, all the manufacturers dream, salivate about getting the big order from, um, uh, Apple, even though they're getting shafted up the ass in terms of,

Abraham: yeah,

Dave Jones: in terms of margin. So, yeah. And then that's how they make their money. They ask for more.

Abraham: They just ask for more right after that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Please, please. And apparently the guy, the guy who did that is Tim. Is it Tim Cook? The current CEO? I'm not sure. Um, yeah. Anyway, the, the new CEO that the jobs, um, that, that actually replaced jobs, he is the architect behind all that, um, and squeezing every last cent out of every supplier. And that's apparently what he's absolutely brilliant at. He can't actually design products. Yeah.

Abraham: And we know what people probably say about him, right?

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: But he's one smart cookie in terms of, um, all that supply chain stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what made, that's what turned Apple around is the supply chain. It's not that they made good products. It's all this supply chain. They're able to make big,

Abraham: big margins on it. I'm always amazed by that. That's the side of business that like, I never learned in school or even my first couple of jobs. Like you just didn't really hear about it, you know, but no, and I should have one of my friends as a buyer. Someone else always does it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You just know I, I order my stuff off. Digi key and yeah, I pay four cents for a capacitor. Why do you pay 0.04 cents for a capacity? You know, like that kind of thing, you know? Uh, yeah, it's, it's crazy. But speaking of there's a, there's a, apparently there's a whole magazine for that kind of stuff called EBN. I think it's UBM that makes that stuff,

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah.

Abraham: Uh, it was an interesting article on there because they were talking about cell phones, you know, like an Apple market, right? That's one iPhones in, right? But basically because of, because of how, how fast stuff is moving, basically they have, they have like four months to make all of their money basically, because that's, that's the only time they can really charge enough to really make any money on it. Even with those, you know, those, those ridiculous deals they broker and tore it in order to, you know, actually make margin on something, but months, can you imagine, can you imagine designing what if something you've designed and four months later, it's,

Speaker ?: it's,

Abraham: it's just not, not so because it's obsolete, but because, yeah, yeah, it's, no one wants to buy it anymore because it's, oh, it's old technology, you know? Well,

Dave Jones: hey, that's better than actually does it work in your ass off for a year or two designing something that never makes it to market to begin with.

Abraham: That's true. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Which is half the projects I've ever worked on.

Abraham: Really?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I've, I, I, I actually kept a dead projects list. How long was that? The projects I've worked on that have been shit canned. There's dozens of projects on there.

Abraham: That's, that's too bad.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Abraham: I'm sorry, man.

Dave Jones: I, I spent most of my career working on projects that have never seen the light of day, but hey, it doesn't mean they weren't, they weren't fun to work on, you know? That's true. Yeah. Yeah. They weren't satisfied. You know, there was no big satisfying thing at the end. Oh, look, you know, a million people are using this thing.

Abraham: I built that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.

Dave Jones: No. It's just vanishes into the ether.

Abraham: Yep.

Dave Jones: Dispacing to the ether is my favorite term.

Abraham: I'm interested in hearing, you know, listeners experiences with too, because like I, I've, I've only done like longterm kind of stuff, like big longterm stuff that has gotten out, but most, I wasn't by my doing, you know, like I've never had the experience you talked about with like the, the, the shit canning as you called it. And I've never had the fast turnaround. I, I don't know if any of our listeners have like the commercial side of things. I think, I think that maybe some of our.

Dave Jones: Actually, actually designing a commercial product, which the main, which your average market product. Yeah. Mass market products. Yeah. See, I've never designed a mass market product in my life.

Abraham: Yeah. Yeah. Closest I can think of is like how Jerry said she worked on toys and like, yeah, no, no, I don't use those. I've never used toys. She talked about obviously, cause they were like Bratz dolls and stuff, but I think that's a close. I think she's the one that I would think of that, that has actually done that kind of thing. So I don't know if, if there's listeners out there, let us know. We're always interested in that kind of stuff. So.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Abraham: Hmm.

Dave Jones: Jeez. Our show's almost up.

Abraham: It is.

Dave Jones: Whoa. Where did the time go?

Abraham: Oh, we were just blathering on.

Dave Jones: Yeah,

Abraham: we were like usual.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Abraham: Like usual. Uh, any, any last, uh, capacity that you want to talk about, Dave? Any final things?

Dave Jones: I don't know. No, I'm busy. I need to get to work.

Abraham: You're going to go review some, uh, some Kindles and stuff, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I've got my new Kindles. I want to, uh, do a tear down of that and, uh, finish the review. That'll be good. It's not that great. Let me tell you. No. Apparently they're not making money on this Kindle. Apparently it will. Some claim that they're actually making a loss on it. Yeah. I saw that. $199 US dollars and everyone, apparently some expert company's done a tear down, and added up the bill of materials and stuff like that. And they say, oh, this make, it's $203 to make it or something. And they're making a loss. I, I think they're underestimating Amazon's buying power. Cause they estimate they'll sell 8 million of these things in the, as you say, like the first four months or something. Four months. Yeah. That's all that matters, right? Exactly. And then it'll die out. It'll be obsolete. No one will want it. And, um, you know, that's a massive, and they've got the money. They've got the reserves to buy all that up front, buy that stock up front. Oh yeah. They won't go,

Dave Jones: let's buy a hundred thousand and then see how it goes. No, they will commit to the 8 billion, you know?

Abraham: Man. And, you do not want to get that design wrong. No, exactly. I bet Jeff Bezos would not be, Bezos or whatever it is. I bet he would not be very happy with you.

Dave Jones: Who's that?

Abraham: The, the CEO of Amazon. Ah, see that right. Yeah. The founder. I'm from Barra Soap.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. You're right. But yeah, it's not that great. It was rushed to market. It's really obvious it was rushed to market. That's too bad. Yeah. Lots of stupid things in it. Yeah. Anyway. Eh.

Abraham: Yep. Well, uh, how about our own bit of, uh, rush, not rush to market. That's the wrong thing to say. we got something important coming on the show next week. We rush every show to market. We do. We do. But not next week. Next week will be awesome. Uh, next week,

Dave Jones: yes,

Abraham: John Edmund, the CTO, the chief technology officer of Cree, the LED company.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Abraham: He's going to be on our show.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Absolutely. Because all the, all the CEOs and CTOs want to be on the amp. I cannot believe this. But, but this guy's cool. I cannot believe this personally. We let him be on.

Abraham: Yeah. Yeah. I talked to, I talked to some people. Apparently John's at his, at his bench every day. So he's still a hands-on guy. He's one of the founders. And, uh, yeah, he said he wants to be on our show. So, uh, no promises, you know, things happen sometimes, but, uh, as far as I know, he's still scheduled and, and I couldn't be happier. So that, that is going to be awesome. If people have questions about LEDs, about, uh, you know, materials, silicon carbide, that's a big thing they do. Uh, let us know. So you can send us an email at the amp hour at gmail.com. That's actually like a shared email address. Uh, you can tweet either of us. Dave's obviously EEV blog. I'm Chris underscore gamble underscore gamble. And, uh, and we have a Google plus page now, which I will of course link in like I do every week. Uh, so yeah,

Dave Jones: be sure to let us know if you have questions until that fad wears off. And then, Oh yeah. Then we'll be on the next one. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Abraham: But yeah, I'm excited. So hopefully that'll all work out.

Dave Jones: Should be great. So we'll catch you then. And hopefully we haven't jinxed it.

Abraham: Yes. Hopefully not. Cause we do that sometimes we do. It happens. Yep. All right guys, we'll talk to you next week. See ya.

Dave Jones: This show always creeps up on me every week. This morning I went, right. I'm getting up early. Tuesday. It's always Tuesday. Right. No, I don't keep a calendar. No,

Abraham: you should. No, it sends you emails. That's the best part about it.

Dave Jones: I've got one thing I have to do regularly every week. And that's this show. And you forget it every week. I know because I don't have a calendar. I know. That's what I'm saying. I don't know.

Dave Jones: I don't know.

Speaker ?: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.