#79 – Ludibrious Luxating Layout

Chris Gammell: This is the Amp Hour Podcast, recorded January 23rd, 2012. Episode 79, Modibrius Luxating Layout.

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Chris Gammell's Analog Life. Happy Chinese New Year, Chris. Alright, I'm going to try this. Here we go. Xin Yan Kua Le.

Dave Jones: That's impressive. I am not even going to try that. So, Happy Chinese New Year, or as everyone else who's not Chinese in the hardware industry says, Oh shit, we can't get our parts.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's what Freak Labs posted on Twitter the other day. It was awesome. It's true, though. I mean, like, it just shuts down. I mean, it's just gone for two weeks off the map.

Dave Jones: And you always forget about it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. February? What's going on? Oh, no. And it seems like it gets longer every year, too, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. I think they're off for 12 days or something. A lot of companies are shutting down for, like, almost two weeks. And my PCB card is shut down. And I was ordering some parts from Alibaba last night. And they were shutting down. Oh, yeah, we'll happily take your order. But we'll, you know, ship it in two weeks' time. You get it when you get it, right? Yeah, exactly. What was the site you were talking about? Alibaba? What's that? Alibaba. It's a Chinese component sourcing website. I've never heard of that. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's huge. It's the Chinese equivalent of, like, an eBay kind of thing, except it's not really an auction site.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's more like a digi-key, but like a shady digi-key?

Dave Jones: Yeah, but it's got all the different manufacturers. It's got all the different suppliers, sorry. And, yeah. Any problems with it ever? It's a place where you can get dodgy Chinese components, you know. You ever get any bum ones coming through there? I mean... I haven't. No, no. They've been pretty good, actually. Oh, it's good. So, yeah. Whether or not you're getting genuine parts is another issue entirely, you know. Some parts are...

Chris Gammell: So they work, but not necessarily with the brand that's listed or whatever. Well, some are higher risk than others, so, yeah. Yeah, if it's an LED, your test is, does it turn on? Oh, well, yeah, exactly. If it's an Atmel, like, 324 or something like that, you're a little more complex, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Your offset voltage, you know, might be a bit dodgy over temperature. Yeah. Or something. Oh, boy. Buy kits from EEVblog, everybody.

Chris Gammell: Oh, boy.

Dave Jones: That's hilarious. And, yeah, but it seems to be like... Because you just started the new year, right? You're just back, and your project, you know, is back on schedule, and you've got to finish the damn thing, and all of a sudden, bam, it hits you. It's Chinese New Year, and, you know, you just get caught short, and you always forget about it. Yeah. And Murphy's Law says it's, you know, when you need something urgent from your Chinese PCB manufacturer or whoever.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And what I wonder is, I mean, eventually, if... I mean, because cultures continue to get intertwined, I mean, it's a cultural thing as well. Of course, yeah. But, I mean, eventually, you've got to figure if business is that entwined too, maybe someday we might be, you know, businesses might have off. I mean, freelancers such as yourself won't, but, you know, large corporations that are dependent on it, maybe there's a significant reason for that. So, I don't know. It'll be interesting.

Dave Jones: Well, they don't. I mean, they don't. Well, they shut down, but most of them, I've found, always say, you know, if you really have urgent needs, contact us, and we'll charge you a buttload of money and we'll find some poor bastard who's willing to actually stay back over the holiday period and do your work for you. Right, yeah. It's like working over Christmas here. You can get it done. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Same thing. Yeah. Not the best idea. Yeah, you can do it. Oh, yeah, I've done that. You know, I've... Yeah, there I am, Christmas Eve, you know, 10 o'clock, working on my... Yeah. ...working on a work project because it's so mega urgent, you know, and the timelines are so ridiculous that...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. Well, you don't have that problem anymore now with China, right? I mean, I saw your boards you just posted on Twitter.

Dave Jones: Yes, I did. They turned up. I cannot believe this.

Chris Gammell: So what was the timeline there?

Dave Jones: I... Well, the date on my board of when I actually laid out the board was the 17th, and what is it today? The 24th here in Sydney. 23rd, yeah. Oh, yeah, 24th. Well, it's 24th here in Sydney. So I laid out... I think I sent them away. So it's Tuesday morning here, and they just turned up on the doorstep, and I think I sent them to Circuit Labs in New Zealand. That's who I got them from, on Thursday afternoon, Thursday evening, or sometime on Thursday, I think, and I've got the boards already. It's like they do claim a four-day turnaround, but, you know, they were doing this special for me. Like, they know who I am, and they, you know... Oh!

Chris Gammell: They know you're going to keep talking about it no matter what.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, they actually approached... How is this working, guys? Well, they actually approached me to possibly do some advertising, I think it was, or, you know, or something like that. You know, and I said, hey, you know, I've got a new project coming up, and, yeah, it's, you know... And they suggested, yeah, we'll send you some boards for your new projects. So they've done just that, and they're very nice. All right. I like it. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I like the red silkscreen. That's always a nice touch.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's... I don't think... The red's not standard on their standard prototype service, which is through pcbzone.net. It's not through Circuit Labs. Circuit Labs is their more high-volume... It's the same company, same fab, but, you know... Okay. Yeah, they just have different websites for different volumes. And their prices aren't bad. I think this one I got is $90 Australian dollars or thereabouts, I think, or is that $90 New Zealand, which might even work out cheaper. I'm not sure. I have to double-check that. But that's not far off my original Chinese suppliers' prices.

Chris Gammell: $90 per board?

Dave Jones: That's... Well, that's only a one-off board. Whereas if you get, you know, IT Studios, for $85, those IT Studio ones, I got five boards. Yeah. Okay, so this is just another proto. This isn't... Yeah, they did send me four boards, but I'm not sure if that's just because they wanted to show off to me or whether or not you'd actually get four. So I'll have to clarify that, but...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but still, $90 for a proto, that's not bad. I mean, it's...

Dave Jones: It's pretty good, and they do it in four days. That's their claim turnaround. How many layers? What's the layers of the... Oh, it's only two. You know, it's only a standard two-layer board.

Chris Gammell: Two layers. Yeah. What about the limits? Is it 6-6? Six-line, six-space?

Dave Jones: Yeah, it might be 6-6 or 5-5 or something like that. 0.3-millimeter hole, something like that. You know, fairly generic type stuff.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: And the ones from IT Studios, you could say they're a bit better value, but I waited over a month for those, like five weeks or something. Right. Well, okay. That's the ultimate question, right?

Chris Gammell: What's the cost of waiting? I mean, maybe...

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, exactly. I've lost all my enthusiasm for the project in five weeks. It's like...

Chris Gammell: Right?

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. I've moved on to something else.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And there's that whole spectrum of, you know, there's the slow boat from China, right? There's always that option, nice and cheap and slow. And then there's the even more extreme past, you know, a quick turn house. There's cut it on your own bench or whatever if you can.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: And there are significant costs with that in both time and, you know, cost of chemicals or the actual board cutter or whatever.

Dave Jones: Well, see, when you're talking about a hundred bucks for a board, it's not worth an hour of my time to actually do it at home, technically, right?

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, and especially if you've got, you know, any kind of component that needs, you know, a semi-difficult soldering job, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. And if you want solder masking, you want playthrough holes. And, you know, the ones you make at home are, you know, pretty crusty. They can work. But, you know, you're sold to your own vias, you know, at both sides. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You can put a little wire through. I was trying to sell my coworkers on getting a board cutter because I was looking at those LPKFs. I'm like in money spending mode. I'm looking at 3D printers. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. I'm looking at board cutters because, you know, like they suggest that. Well, maybe a board cutter makes more sense than a 3D printer, which, you know, a very legitimate argument. And the LPKFs, they're beautiful. I mean, they really are.

Dave Jones: Oh, they're a nice bit of kit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And they even have, they'll, so they'll cut your board, right? And they have 0.1 mil precision, but not accuracy. So that whole argument, right? I got that wrong, actually, and people corrected me. But the cool thing is now those things actually, they squirt out solder paste with like an actual XY plotter. So I didn't realize they were doing that now. So it's not like the squeegee kind. It's just, you know, they drop a dot.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I've done a video actually reviewing one of those, like a $26,000 version of that. Oh, really? Yeah, that dispenses the solder paste. Yeah, and they can be incredibly accurate. That's fancy. Yeah. And I mean, that was 26 grand worth of kit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, yeah. If you got it laying around, might as well use it, right?

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, that's right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, it's a tough stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they're neat. And then you can just place your components by hand with your tweezers and then shove it in the reflow oven and Bob's your uncle.

Chris Gammell: Right. So, Bob is my uncle, by the way. But you still don't get the plated through holes, which sucks, so, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. So, well, I think they claim they've got a machine which somehow does plated through in some way, shape, or form. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, fancy. Yeah. So. If only I had the dough. Yeah, exactly. Right. Oh, boy. Yeah, I found that those things are really good. Like, if you're doing analog stuff, just to throw stuff together, because if you need like a ground plane, even just a surrounding ground, you know, like a pour, you know, like it's nice for that kind of stuff. But once you start getting into any kind of microcontroller, anything where you need solder mask, you're, screw it, you know.

Dave Jones: No, well, that's right. And speaking of solder mask, actually, and silkscreen, I mean, this board looks really nice from Circuit Labs. I'm really quite impressed. It's got a, the finish is not a gold or hot air level surface. It's actually silver. So it's a silver. Oh, cool. Finished pad. Yeah. So it looks really nice. And the silkscreen looks quite nice, but it's not as dark as my one from PCB cart. And if you see my little project, my little front panel microcurrent project, then the white silkscreen from PCB cart is really dark and like it's one of those photo imageable, you know, silkscreen type. You know, I don't know the various processes, but it's very dark. Whereas the one from Circuit Labs is very sort of lighter and more transparent. So I don't know how it's going to go as a front panel. So as you'll see in a video, which I just edited last night and I'll upload one hour.

Speaker ?: Woohoo.

Chris Gammell: For those fans of the big.

Dave Jones: It's a whole hour long.

Chris Gammell: I'm not one of them. I'm a skipper. I skip around. Right.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway. And you may have heard it all before. Because I think once I got through shooting the video, I went, I think I've said all this before in my previous design for manufacture video. Deja vu. Yeah. Slight. And of course, I'm not going to go through and edit it or just not upload it. So I may as well just upload it. Right.

Chris Gammell: You just hope that people forget.

Dave Jones: Yes. Because I, as you know, I want to make more of my little microcurrent project. Right. Yeah. So, and, you know, up until now, I've just been making them, you know, the hand assembled by my guy in Melbourne. He, you know, takes each part from the digi key bag and he hand assembles the things. And it's okay when you're making 50 of them or something like that. But, you know, I want to make a few more than that this time. And I figured, well, I might as well bite the bullet. So I penalized my board. Oh, yeah. Okay. And now I want to get away from China. I want to make it local. So I was hoping that Circuit Labs in New Zealand could make it for me.

Chris Gammell: Look at this hippie. He's going all local. He's a locavore. Have you heard that term yet?

Dave Jones: No. A locavore.

Chris Gammell: That's people who are supposed to, like, they insist on eating local. They call themselves locavores. Oh, it's such a douchey term.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I got to admit, it's a pretty bad term. Sorry. I didn't mean to call you a locavore. I can certainly agree with the concept. We try and get all local food. Yeah. No, I agree with it.

Chris Gammell: It's just calling yourself that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's a bit of a whack.

Chris Gammell: Or if you refer to yourself that way.

Dave Jones: That's right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I like the idea, though. I really do. I think, you know, supporting locally. And, you know, you and I were talking about that last night. You know, like, people used to stamp. I mean, they still do. They stamp where it's made. Part of that's, I think, export compliance. But it used to be very prominently displayed on the outside of stuff. Made in the USA or made in Australia. Yeah, yeah, of course. And, you know, usually you've got to pay a premium. But some people are willing to pay that. And I think it's admirable. That's right. You know?

Dave Jones: Well, in my case, right, this circuit board, I can give you the actual figures, right? Right, yeah. A circuit board from PCB cart is like one-third the cost of the New Zealand one, basically, for a quantity of $200, I think. So it's one-third the cost. So I'd be paying three times the price, basically. But that doesn't include postage. Postage from Tyne. They've upped their prices now, PCB cart in China. So it's like $50, you know? Yeah. Happy New Year. $50 postage. Happy New Year. Inflation is rampant.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: Oh, man. So, yeah, they used to be really cheap. And now they've really ramped up their prices.

Chris Gammell: And there's popularity, too. I mean, really, there's that. It is popularity. And scaling.

Dave Jones: I think they got to a point where they were so popular that they couldn't keep up. Because they used to have like an eight-day, that would be their standard turnaround, eight days. And they used to be able to meet that. But they've slowly been slipping and haven't been able to meet their eight days. And these got so popular. Yeah. Yeah. I guess they had to up their prices to sort of, you know, stem that supply and demand kind of thing. So, well, which is a good position to be in, I guess. It means you're successful.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah, it is. Now, here's a real question. How are you going to find Australian chips? Because I think you might be up a creek there, buddy.

Dave Jones: Up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't think you'll be able to find resistors, right?

Dave Jones: Well, we've got one thing here.

Chris Gammell: You have Alan Yates wire wrapping or wire wound resistors for you or something like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, Alan. Get to it. Whip.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Quarter walk. 1% tolerance, please. And I want a bunch of 0.1% tolerances, too. So, I want you to hold your tongue at the right angle while you wind them, you know? Yeah. Well, I mean. I know. Well, that's the thing. Right? But I'm trying to do as much as I can. Get the PCB assembled here. Try and get like a locally made or a locally sourced box, perhaps, like I do with the microcurrent. Get it assembled here. Tested here. You know, at least do as much as I can.

Chris Gammell: Get government funding for the whole project.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Stretch the schedule by two years. Hire thousands of contractors.

Dave Jones: And then go bust. Woo-hoo! Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Well, no. You just run away. You just...

Dave Jones: While I jump out with my golden parachute. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's the way you do it, Dave. I mean, you've got to figure this out.

Dave Jones: I've got it all wrong.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm doing it wrong. Unbelievable. That's fun, though. And I mean, maybe that's even a legitimate... If that could be a legitimate use of a printed chip. I know that that's a dead horse I'm dragging back out of the closet. But maybe even resistors. You'd see serpentine resistors sometimes. I've seen really high-accuracy serpentine resistors. So there is a significant case. I mean, it would be very costly to make those. But it is more possible to make them locally, at least, because it's probably expensive to make them everywhere. Right? So...

Dave Jones: Ah, let's not get involved in that again.

Chris Gammell: We don't have to. But I'm just saying, it's another use.

Dave Jones: Speaking of government funding, actually, I've got a little non-sequitur story here. Right? This guy I know, he's a Kenyaner, and he's setting up this website. And, you know, this really cool website. We can put all the information, and it maps out all the canyons and all sorts of various things. It's really cool. But he's just got funding from the Chilean government, as in Chile. Chilean. Chilean. The Chilean... Sorry, to all the Chilean people out there, if I actually pronounced it wrong. But he's actually got this government funding from the Chilean government. He's moving over there for six months to work on his project. Awesome. It's like, yeah, the government are trying to entice people to come to their actual startup companies to come to the country, and they'll help them out. So move to our country for six months, and we'll pay all your expenses. And I don't know what other catchers are involved in.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's an interesting point, though. Because, I mean, really, a lot of startups can get localized funding like that, not necessarily moving. But even if you're a startup in Sydney, I'm sure there's funding of some sort, just local boosters. Sydney, I don't know. Maybe in Melbourne, perhaps.

Dave Jones: Yeah, Sydney's very backwards, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, like when I was talking to that guy from the Cleveland Maker Gear. Yep. Maker Gear is that MakerBot competitor. And I was talking to him, and I'm like, you know, you should really be looking for this stuff because, you know, Cleveland's got tons of foundations, and they want so many startups. Really? It's just like, blah.

Dave Jones: Right. He just didn't want to go to Cleveland, is that the...

Chris Gammell: No, he's already here. That's the thing. Like, he's already here. So why not get the funding since you're here? So if you're a startup out there, or if you're thinking about a startup, that's a significant funding source that... Yeah. I know Cleveland has it because I have another friend who's running a software startup, and he gets a ton of this funding. Wow. And it's usually pretty... Not many strings attached. Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: I was going to ask. What are the strings? Like, do they get a percentage of the company if you ever float it, or do they just do it for the... You know, they just want to make use of public money.

Chris Gammell: I think it's... It's not even public. Sometimes it's private, like, foundation money. You know, like people... Oh, right. Like, the Cleveland Foundation is a huge thing. Well, if it's private foundation money, usually there'll be more strings attached, I think. No, that's the thing, though, too. Like, it's like... These are, like, charities and, like, stuff like that. Like, these are local... Like, Cleveland Foundation is this huge foundation that tries to promote business and art and everything else, right? Great foundation. Okay, yep. And so... But really, the... As far as I know, some of these, the only thing that's tied to it is, well, let us show off how awesome you are, right? Like, it's like people are applying for this, so they're only going to pick the best ones. But, you know, in the end, they just want to bring business here. And I know Detroit has a lot of programs like that. I was listening to a story about that. Fantastic. On the radio about that. So, if you're thinking about a startup, look for that kind of localized funding, because it's possible. And even if not that, maybe even national stuff, because there's, you know, STEM programs and stuff like that. There's a lot of... There is funding out there. It's not easy to get, but it's out there. Yep, it's possible.

Dave Jones: Well, there you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's great, though. Your friend's doing that. Yeah. And Chile is supposed to be the hot spot. I mean, South America in general. Yeah, it's blown up.

Dave Jones: So, in a good way, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sorry, in a good way. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Literally blowing up and imploding. No.

Chris Gammell: No, that'd be bad. Got it. Yeah, they're a growth area, just like Asia. I mean, I think they're kind of... Like Brazil, I know, is slated to be the next China. I don't know if they already are surpassing China. I mean, at least in growth. That's tough. Growth percentages. Yeah. Yeah. I think in growth percentages, though. I mean, a lot of software is going down there. But just these really dense areas, you know, like Rio is huge, right? Yep. Can't say I know much about it. I think we're talking about Alaska again. It's hot. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, there you go. If you can get funding, do it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Go for it. Go for it.

Dave Jones: Speaking of funding, and we talked about PCB mills before, somebody pointed out... Who is it? You've reorganized my... No, you haven't reorganized my list. Um, uh, case B on Twitter, um, point has sent me a tweet and he pointed out another, yes, Kickstarter project.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I know. Yeah. They're getting a bit boring, but it's one of those, um, you know, circuit board mills, you know, it mills out and it's made, it looks like it's made of wood and it's got some accurate stepper motors and it's got some capacitive sensing system. So, it gives you absolute relative positioning and, uh, stuff like that. So, um, yeah, I think I, they haven't actually got much funding yet. I think two, two grand out of 30 or something. So... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's, that's a, that's a tough one.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's a tough one. 30 grand is their thing. But why hasn't somebody done a maker bot in quote marks and sort of taken these circuit board mills commercial? I know it's a much, you know, the, it's a much more niche market. Um, but it seems like every man, his dog's done a do it yourself PCB mill, right? But that's where it stopped. You know, they, they make one, they make a prototype. Like an actual board. An actual kit that actually works, you know, or mostly works or, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, because you're right. The stepper motors, like in a maker bot have to be, they're, they're getting good enough resolution to probably do a decent enough mill. Right. So... Yeah, of course. It's XYZ. That's all it is. Yeah, I'm sure. And then a drill.

Dave Jones: You know, it's, and these things work. It's not a big deal. They do work. It's just a matter of putting the effort in to design a kit or a fully built unit that actually works for a reasonable price.

Chris Gammell: I think you pegged it with the market because if you have a maker bot or 3D printer, that has really broad appeal, like even broader appeal than...

Dave Jones: But it didn't when it started up though. That's true. But I guess you could see that it had bigger potential, but it was, you know, practically unheard. It was just a novel little toy for nerds, you know. Yeah. Just like a piece of bee mill would be. So... I don't know though. I think if you look at the actual final subset.

Chris Gammell: I think if you look at that final subset of like, okay, so how many people in the world would want to do 3D printing, right?

Speaker ?: Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Of course.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Versus how many would want to eventually etch them on board. And then there's the whole...

Dave Jones: I wonder if they thought about that when they actually did it. Did Bree and the other two guys, I think, who started MakerBot, did they sit around and go, right, there's X amount of people in the world and they're all going to buy a, you know, X percentage are going to buy a MakerBot. Or they just went, well, we want to do it because it's fun. If it works, it works. If it fails, it fails.

Chris Gammell: Well, there's a couple stories out there about, I mean, they did a couple interviews, but I would think that they looked at, I know they based it off the RepRap. So if you could, they could... Oh, did they? Okay. Yeah. I mean, everyone saw how exciting the RepRap was and then it was taking that to the next level, right? Right. Yada, yada, yada. So maybe the first step for this would be as some kind of open source one just to start with, right? Yeah. Yeah, of course. MakerBot is open source, but really you need like a fully open non-commercial project first. Yeah. And then it goes towards the other. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And one of my predictions came true that they would drop the kit and now they have. This new MakerBot replicator is, you know, you can't buy it as a kit anymore. It's a fully built unit. That was plainly obvious. So they've actually dropped the kit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And well, speaking of open source version of that, actually, that's actually one of the things in that open source ecology 50. You know, I've talked about open source ecology. It's a 3D printer. Yeah. No, no, not a 3D. Well, yes, I think that is in there too, but actually a board mill is in there as well.

Dave Jones: Oh, is it? Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: So actually I want to say thank you to everyone and shout out to everyone who actually did write in about that. We've probably got about seven or eight people and I was, I was shocked, like, like reading the experience people were on there and it was all like super relevant and people working on induction furnaces. And I'm just like, whoa. So our listeners are very cool. I'm like reading and I'm like, oh, I haven't done anything. Oh.

Dave Jones: I know. Some people make you feel ashamed of yourself, don't they? I know. Yeah. They just do so much work, you know.

Chris Gammell: I know.

Dave Jones: Put so many hours into it.

Chris Gammell: I should stop sleeping. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, you're married now, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's true. It's all over. I sleep all the time now, 12 hours a day. Right. Chris, wash the dishes. Oh, boy. On that same thing, actually, I talked to the guy running the Open Source Ecology Project and he asked for a little bit more help from us and I thought we might be able to help. They're actually looking for a project manager now for the whole universal power supply. Basically, we supplied them with some domain experts, which is awesome. But I know that some of our listeners are project managers and I think some of them, I was thinking about it and I was thinking, if I was a project manager for 10 years, right, and I had this great experience, but I wanted to dig into something that was like really... Meaningful. Meaningful, yeah. It gets back to like that Dan Pink book and talking about like drive and the purpose, right? This is it, man. Like this is... So anyways, I'm going to set up another Google form after the show tonight and I'll put it in the show notes. But yeah, if you're a project manager, even if you want to get a... You know, if you want to get project manager experience so that you can show your boss someday and be like, look, I just managed this project and that's a good way to get stuff on your resume. Yeah, for sure. You know, I talk to people about that, like people interviewing for software jobs. I'm like, well, they always say, well, I don't have any experience. Well, there's a lot of open source projects out there.

Dave Jones: There's countless ones. Why didn't you do anything? Why didn't you get off your ass and show some initiative? Yeah. I'm going to hire the next guy who walks in the door that says he's done that. So too bad, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yep. And I think, aside from, you know, hobby projects that people can do at home for the resumes, I think there's a surge in open source hardware projects that, you know, as more people get... As the projects get bigger, there's more people that need to be involved and share the work, rather. But...

Dave Jones: In fact, you can do most of them. I mean, some projects, you know, languish so far behind because there's nobody to work on it. Right. And you can come along and, woof, can contribute most of the effort to it. Yeah. If you've got the time and you've got the talent.

Chris Gammell: Or even just the time.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right. You can gain the talent later. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think there was a question on here at some point. I can't find it, but there's always that question of hardware projects. I mean, if there is the collaboration or if you... You know, there's a... I saw in... Ah, I forget what Twitter account it was. But basically, it was a quote from iWoz. And it was basically Steve Wozniak saying, you know, basically, you've got to work alone. Yeah. And I don't know. I don't know if that's true with hardware. I mean...

Dave Jones: Well, I've got to agree. I think he's right to a certain extent. And, you know...

Chris Gammell: I think someone has to have a vision, right? I think that...

Dave Jones: Somebody has to run it and make all the decisions and be the dictator on the project. Otherwise, if it's designed by a committee, it's not going to work. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. And, yeah, you could farm it out. So, say you were like a senior architect or whatever. You could always hand someone and be like, I need a circuit that does this, this, and this. Go. Yeah. Come back when you're done. And don't come back until you're done, rather.

Speaker ?: Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: You're damn true.

Dave Jones: I totally agree. Either you do it yourself or you've got to be the dictator who... You know, end of story. I've said so. That's it. Boom. And the project succeeds or fails based on your vision. That's it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know. And... And we've talked about actually how chips have been going that way, too. Like, I think we... I... Oh, man. 79 episodes. I'm starting to forget them all day. They're all starting to blur together. Welcome to my world. Yeah, right?

Dave Jones: I just did a whole one-hour video.

Chris Gammell: I forgot I'd done it before. Yep. Yep. It's not just age. Sometimes it's... It's just life, man. But yeah, there was a... I think it was like an Apple chip or something like that, where the guy... It was one guy driving the train, you know? Like, he was just...

Speaker ?: What?

Chris Gammell: As in recently? Yeah. I think that was recently.

Dave Jones: Like the Apple A4 processor or something? Surely not. I mean, those things are so huge that...

Chris Gammell: It was, but it was like he was pulling in modules, basically. So he was basically the architect, and then he handed it off to a verification engineer. All right. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. It's... Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Hmm. Got it. Well, it's kind of like how we had Howard Johnson on the other week, and he was talking about the standards, you know, how to choose the new Ethernet standard. And I asked him, you know, is it... Did it come down to one or two guys with white and gray beards, and they stroke their beard and go, right, this is the way we're going to do 10 gigabit Ethernet. And he said, yeah, that's basically how it works. We, you know, we get, you know, the smartest guys in the room, and they make the decision, and that's it. End of story.

Chris Gammell: And everyone else is there for the resume, because they're head nodders, right? Exactly.

Dave Jones: Playing wank word bingo.

Chris Gammell: There you go. Oh, yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, and so that's how it works. And, you know, you're always going to be able to find examples where you can prove otherwise that a community-developed project is, you know, it works or can be really good or better. But I think they're the niche minority. Yeah. I think they're the exception rather than the rule. And we're talking in terms of hardware. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I've seen it where people split apart, like, schematics by pages, and then you, you know, you can, you still have an architect, but then you... Right. And in those cases, I think the important thing...

Dave Jones: In those cases, you could get it to work. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think the key there is...

Dave Jones: Like my open source multimeter concept I had. You know, I could have dictated that I want this, this, this, this, and this feature, and then I could have, you know, had other people actually do the schematic for that part and that part. But, you know, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: But you're not a project manager?

Dave Jones: Yeah. And, you know, they might end up using some $50 chip that's going to kill the entire budget, you know? So there's lots of really intricate trade-offs. Right.

Chris Gammell: And when you constrain it that much, it's like, well, might as well just go do it.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Might as well do it all myself. And, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, because that's the key. I mean, you... I think the key with projects like that is you have to... You have to really constrain at the boundaries, like the signals. So if you have block A talking to block B, the important thing is making sure that the communication between block A and block B, your power between them, whatever it is, you need to make sure that's right. And then you can let designers go off and do block A and do block B.

Dave Jones: That's classic systems engineering. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I love that stuff. And you can put... I've worked on huge projects like that where that eventually works, but it takes two or three years and, you know, it eventually sort of limps its way out of the...

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Out of a prototype into production, you know. It's a very lethargic, iterative process with lots of meetings and lots of, you know, shouting and lots of money wasted and time wasted. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, boy. The stories I could tell.

Chris Gammell: Well, if you want to, you're allowed to.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Oh, they're just too long. Okay. I've told a couple of them before. But, you know, I've worked on projects, 10, you know, $15 million that have just been scrapped, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, speaking of meetings and wank word bingo, I have a wank word for you. It's one of our favorites around here. The Internet of Things. Oh, please, no. Oh, yeah. There it is. That's it. But it's for good reason, actually. So, TI released the chip this week. I think it was this week. It's kind of cool, though. It's a module, a completely self-contained module that lets you just put Wi-Fi into anything. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, that's what I'm doing with my power supply project at the moment. I'm going that route. I'm using one of these little WiZnet modules, which allows you to put Ethernet into anything. Yeah. You know, instant bank.

Dave Jones: I think it's a great idea. Instant web-accessed Ethernet. And it costs $19 or something for this module. And it's got the, you know, it's got the whole Mac in there and the whole thing. And it just converts serial SPI into web-enabled, you know, product.

Chris Gammell: I didn't know you were putting that on there.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to put that on. Well, I originally added support for it. But then somebody suggested the WiZnet. Ah, I've got one of those WiZnet modules here.

Chris Gammell: Dave's kit is now $4,000. That's right.

Dave Jones: Don't worry, folks.

Chris Gammell: There's only 60% margin.

Dave Jones: And I had somebody complain that, you know, it was, that I was letting it end up being actually community-designed project. And it's not. I always had the thought to put that serial, any sort of serial capability in, albeit, any sort of comms capability, be it RS-232, USB, Ethernet, whatever.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Is it pretty limited going serial to Ethernet or serial to USB? Sorry? I've always heard that it's pretty limited in terms of bandwidth when you get down to that.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, it is pretty limited. But for something like a power supply, geez, it's not like you're transferring megabytes per second of data. Geez, you just want to set the voltage and maybe read it back. 2.4. You know, it's got two commands, set voltage, read voltage, you know. Yeah. Pretty much it.

Chris Gammell: And it's all done locally, all the control then.

Dave Jones: Yep. So, you know, it's fairly basic. But when you can just put in a little dual 0.1-inch header footprint on your design that you can plug in one of these, you know, sub-$20 WISnet modules to give your product Ethernet capability, it's a no-brainer.

Chris Gammell: Oh, is that a module, though?

Dave Jones: It's a module. Yeah, you plug it in.

Chris Gammell: Dave, this is a chip that I'm talking about. Oh, right. No. Well, I'm talking modules, basically. I know. Okay. Which does have it.

Dave Jones: Which means it's great because then you could just put the footprint on your board for zero cost during development. Yeah, that's true. Right? And then if people want to pay extra, they can plug the module in. Yeah, that's true. Whereas if it's chip level, you've got to- Or you could sell it to them.

Chris Gammell: You could sell it to them at a 200% margin. Right. Yeah. Oh, the upgraded version. I don't know. I always love seeing that when you're looking at a product catalog and you're like, what is that jump right there? And then they're like, oh, well, this version has two megs of memory and this next version up for $4,000 more is four megs of memory. Really?

Dave Jones: And it's already on there, but they just software unlock it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Bastards. Oh, that's fun. I don't know. I think this chip's pretty cool, though. Like, all the software's integrated and everything, it's all internal. Like, it's like 6K internal. It's pretty cool. Okay.

Dave Jones: And what does it do exactly?

Chris Gammell: It puts your stuff on Wi-Fi now instead of Ethernet.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. But what's the interface? Like, does it convert, like, does it hook up to your processor via SPI bus or parallel bus or what? I can hear you busily typing away there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I was going to say, you're making me read nowadays. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, come on. You're plugging this thing.

Chris Gammell: I know. It's almost a chip of the week, and you're... That's not a chip of the... I didn't say chip of the week. I didn't say it. You said it. I didn't say it. I didn't say it.

Dave Jones: It's a chip, which we're discussing. That automatically makes it chip of the week, doesn't it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I guess.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's a chip, and it's this week, so...

Dave Jones: Insert music. So, yeah, it's got... You know, that's what I want to know. I want to know the technical details, because if it's complicated to interface to, and, you know, then, well, it's hopeless. Right? Well, I think the... But if it's got Arduino libraries or something, and it's very trivial, it uses SPI bus, then, you know, way easy. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And the key with that kind of stuff always is if you have to handle... If you have to pull out stuff internal to the processor, and you have to, like, have a stack, and then you have to have an RTOS... Yeah, you've got to have software stacks. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. No. That's too hard. And that's what these WISnet, Ethernet modules do. It doesn't. Yeah. It's just send SPI commands, and that's it. It handles the stack and everything else, and the back addresses, and the whole kit and caboodle, and the web server, and the whole...

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's got a server, too? That's pretty cool.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, I don't know if it's a server, but you can actually communicate with it via the web... Via a web page, you know? Okay.

Chris Gammell: Via a web browser, so... So you could, like, at least have a console within the web page, and then send commands to it, or something?

Dave Jones: Guess what I got the other day, right? That was so cheap. A puppy.

Chris Gammell: No. Sorry. Oh, okay. All right.

Dave Jones: For, like, 55 or 60 bucks delivered, or something, it was so cheap. It's one of these Wi-Fi-enabled web cameras, right? And it's got, like, a pen tilt base as well, so it's got motors in it, and it can rotate around 360 degrees. It's an infrared camera as well, so it can see at night. And it's all web-enabled. It's Wi-Fi-enabled. It's Ethernet-enabled. And you can hook it up, and it's got complete web-based access, so anyone can go to the web page and then control your camera. So I'm going to stick it in the corner of a lab so people can come and control the camera in my lab and look and pan around. Don't judge me.

Chris Gammell: Listeners, please don't judge me, but my first thought was creepers are going to have a field day with that one. People are just going to buy that and plug it in.

Dave Jones: I think I'll have it automatically switched off only when I want to switch it on, will it come on.

Chris Gammell: Just throw a T-shirt over it or something, right? Right. Yeah, that was my first thought.

Dave Jones: And it's got alarm outputs as well, like a little terminal block for alarm outputs. It does motion sensing in software building. Wow.

Chris Gammell: 60 bucks?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Deliver it. Oh, man.

Chris Gammell: That's crazy.

Dave Jones: And it's got a pan-tilt motor and the web. You're just typing the IP address for it. I haven't got it fully configured, but I've got it talking locally. So you type in the IP address, you know, like 196.1.168 or something. And then it pops up. Automatically just pops up with the video feed in there. Automatically pops up with the pan-tilt controls and the zoom controls and everything. And you can set it to automatically record during certain hours and days of the week. And you can automatically set it to record when it detects motion. So like a security type system.

Chris Gammell: It's incredible. That kind of reminds me of like a rising tide lifts all boats kind of thing, right? I mean, like that is enabled by cheap microcontrollers and cheap image. Cheap web. CMOS. CMOS, yeah. Yeah, cheap. Cheap Fies. Cheap everything, right?

Dave Jones: Wi-Fi chips and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: So how are companies making money on real webcams? Like am I just buying the exact same thing for $200 from Logitech? I mean like –

Dave Jones: Oh, but they've got much better quality sensors in them. I guess so, yeah. I mean this one's pretty crusty quality, you know. Okay, but I mean eventually –

Chris Gammell: It goes up 640 by 480. Eventually this stuff all comes down to a commercial level. Like I was talking to my wife about like portable phones. Like do you remember portable phones from like 15 years ago?

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Like how expensive they were and everything. And she was asking because we had bought her mom one. And I started explaining to her. I was like, well, it was like 60 for a set of five of them for around the house. And I'm like – I was explaining like the margins and stuff. And I'm like in reality for $60, those five phones and all the receivers and bases of plastic and everything, it was probably like $10 honestly. Yeah, I know.

Dave Jones: It's crazy. It's unbelievable. Yeah, and that's – Well, I just bought Nicole, my better half. One of these smartphones is one of these – it's the new HTC – I can't remember the name. But it's $150, right? And it's got –

Chris Gammell: Even without another contract or anything? I mean it's not contract. No, no, no.

Dave Jones: This is outright, right? Okay. It's $150 outright. It's only like a month old. It's very – it's just come out. And it's like their super low-end, low-cost smartphone. But it does everything. Every other smartphone does except the quality of the camera in there is crap, right? It doesn't have autofocusing. It can't scan barcodes up close. It can't do anything. But apart from that, it does everything. And an $800 smartphone does.

Chris Gammell: So where do we go from here, though? That's what I was getting at is like if all these low-end manufacturers can do so much stuff – I mean we talked about $100 tablets and low-end smartphones. Like what else do we need really? I mean like that sounds really pedantic, right? I mean like – but like what else do we – where do companies go from here, right? I mean like – They just make more shit and they make it – I guess so. But like do they need – More feature pack. – 15 megapixel cameras on a phone? You know what I mean? Like it seems like the value of companies is rapidly declining, right? And so –

Dave Jones: But you can go into that niche market. Like people will buy – I guess so, yeah. I'm surprised at the amount of people who will fork out for an $800, $1,000 phone. I won't do it. There's tons of people out there who might. And you can have a niche product where, oh, this has an absolute kick-ass camera and lens in it. It's handcrafted by nude virgins and it's the best in the business, right? Yeah, yeah. And people will pay a big actual premium for that. Yeah, yeah, they will.

Chris Gammell: They will. I think this is part of what's actually pushing the open source hardware thing though too because once it gets past the cheapo manufacturers, the one hung lows as you like to call them. I think eventually it becomes cheap enough and even easy enough that hobbyists are – not always that it has to be easy but just that it's – why not, right? I mean why not design a webcam into an Arduino or whatever else people are doing these days, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean so maybe that's just the next step. Maybe that's why it's surging like it is because there's just this buildup of technology and it's good enough, right?

Dave Jones: And it's good enough and it's so cheap. Yeah, it's cheap. Yeah, because you're not going to pay – like I've heard before that the magic figure is like $300. Once a product gets below the $300 threshold, it becomes an impulse buy. I think we've even talked about that on here before as usual. We've done so many shows. We've talked about everything, haven't we? And we just rehash shit. That's all we do on the NPL. We're just on repeat now. Yeah. Me and Dave actually, we're not even here. We're not even here. We've just hit – Yeah. We've just hit play, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And yeah, so once they get cheap enough, it enables certain things to happen and certain markets to grow and develop and things like that.

Chris Gammell: So I don't know.

Dave Jones: But yeah, this $150 smartphone, you've got to be kidding me.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Like unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and there's other driving points like this too. I mean there's another article on our list about low power, right? I mean like things are relatively low power right now, but they can obviously get better. There's always efficiencies you can get. But they're talking about like millivolt switching of electronics. Like noise switching basically. That's what I think of, you know? But apparently that's what the drive is towards, you know? Like eventually, why with 5 volt? Why with 3 volt? Yeah, I know. 0.9? That's so much. Why not go down to –

Dave Jones: Your regular processor works at 0.8 now or 0.75 or something.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, but like there is a – I mean there's zero, right? There's always zero. And there's always zero, right. You know, there may be plenty of room at the bottom as Feynman used to say, but is there really?

Dave Jones: Is it that much? I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't think so. I think there are – So, I mean that's what I –

Chris Gammell: It gets exponentially more difficult. So, are companies just doing this because – I mean are they just doing it because, well, they're running out of things to do or is there actually value to it? That's kind of my question for it. Well, both.

Dave Jones: I mean they're forced to because they have to spend money researching new markets. If they don't, somebody else will and they'll beat them to it if it works. If it doesn't work, well, you know, they're smart, you know, with hindsight, right? We didn't waste money on that process.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that was a dead end. Oh, Blind Freddy could see that.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, they're doing the same thing with chips too. I mean they're talking about 3D processes and all that crazy shit.

Dave Jones: You've got to take a gamble sometimes and –

Chris Gammell: What? No, companies don't do that. They don't fund research and development. They just fund development, right?

Dave Jones: Right, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Bastards. Oh, no.

Dave Jones: But, you know, somebody else will. That's always the fear is that somebody – somebody else will and they'll grab that market and bam, you're gone, you know? Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Look at – Like Kodak just went out of business, right? I know. They just went bankrupt. Bankruptcy, yeah. Yeah, filed for – But, you know, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And the restructuring is a different company, right? I mean if you look at them 30 years ago versus now, like they were making technology back then and now they're a chemical company basically.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, and they had like 95% of the camera market, like for 50 years, right? And they clearly didn't do the right things when digital technology came along and bam, now they're, you know, they're effectively out of business. They're insignificant. So –

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And now they're like a tube manufacturer, right? Yeah. It's like – You know, and I think that's a pretty good analog actually is that, you know, people still use tube amps, right? I'm actually working on a tube amp right now and – Lottoit. I know. But like there's a market for that but it's just so – it's just a sliver, just a tiny little market, you know? It's not that big.

Dave Jones: There's a niche for everything. Right, exactly.

Chris Gammell: And that's the reality these days, right? I mean, it benefits us in many ways as in there's open source hardware and there's Etsy.com and all that other crazy stuff that's out there.

Dave Jones: I think somebody tweeted the other day that no matter how – sorry, I forget who – but no matter how shit your product is, there's a niche for it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, even the shonky products, right? I mean, like someone's buying it, obviously. Someone wants to feel good.

Dave Jones: I get 10 people to buy it but it's –

Chris Gammell: And times $3,000, I mean, that's 30 grand.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's right. Unbelievable.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: There are other things. There is someone called Aurora from the forum. He pointed out a 500-page PDF book on analog circuit design and it looks pretty darn impressive, I've got to say. Is this the – okay.

Chris Gammell: Because actually Hans Kammensund, the 555 guy, he actually did one. Oh, right. But I think I've seen this one before too. Yeah, this is great. Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I haven't seen this one before. It's called Analog Secrets as in S-E-E-K-R-E-T-S. Yeah. Yeah, groan. Okay. DC to daylight is the tagline, you know. Yeah. So Analog Secrets, a masterclass in analog design by Leslie Green. And apparently he comes from – where did he used to work? He used to work at – he used to work designing 7.5-digit meters at Dartron Instruments. So, you know, really sort of bleeding edge, you know, low signal level stuff. So I'm sure he knows his stuff in the analog domain.

Chris Gammell: I think that's when I found it when I was working at Keith. Right. I was looking for stuff like this.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I'm sure you would have come across it. So, yeah, he used to work on stuff like that. And this is a real shame because he – how much effort goes – how many years of your life – you know, years, not just one year. I'm sure it was multiple years of his life went into writing this book. He found a UK publisher. This is on his website. And apparently they've just discontinued it because due to lack of sales, the publisher discontinued it because UK students now don't have grants and they have too high fees for their courses that they can't afford to buy the book anymore. So apparently they used to get grants or something and now they don't and now nobody can afford to buy this book because it's 500 pages. So it's, you know, it's a monster of a book.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and publishing in general. And these textbooks are expensive. Right. Yeah, they're always 100 plus.

Dave Jones: They're always over 100 bucks for a textbook.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I was talking to someone about how they – or someone I mentioned last week actually was when they were – we were talking about the art of computer programming, right? And someone asked, I can't believe you don't have that. I think it's Adam who said that. Yeah, right. And it's like, I don't program that much and I can't afford those books. Yeah, exactly. If I could have found one on campus somewhere, you know, like or at a book sale.

Dave Jones: I was going through eBay. I was surfing eBay the other day and for some reason I ended up on these medical textbooks. It's like, you know, you surf in Wikipedia and you end up, you know, in a few clicks you end up –

Chris Gammell: The dark corner of Wikipedia.

Dave Jones: Exactly. And these textbooks even used were like $300, $400 because they're so specialized in this medical field. You know, if you're doing your – you know, if you're becoming a doctor and you've got to buy your textbook for – these textbooks are $300, $400, $500 because they're so niche. They only print like 1,000 of them worldwide or something and they're so big and complicated that they –

Chris Gammell: And it's the must-have or whatever, right?

Dave Jones: It's a must-have so they can charge anything they like and that's how much – you know, they do charge.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like a wounded bull in a china shop.

Chris Gammell: What? Oh, charge. Got it. Charge. Yeah. Charge. Charge. Yeah. China shop. Happy New Year. Yeah. Can you say it again? No, I totally forgot. I was just thinking – I was trying to think and I'm like, nope, it's gone. Not right.

Dave Jones: You trained yourself. I heard you at the start practicing.

Chris Gammell: I probably said it about 100 times trying to say it.

Dave Jones: All right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yep. I'm not good with languages. Speaking of books, actually, one of my favorite books actually in analog is by Sergio Franco. He's a UCSF professor and there's this great book on op amps he wrote called – crap, it's not with me. But anyways, he just finished a new book and he actually – and someone online told me about it because I had been interested in his other book. And basically, he printed it in a spiral bound version for his students to keep it cheap. And it's still $75 on Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. That's like, ugh. So this one's actually –

Dave Jones: That's a cheap version. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so this is actually about discrete design. So if you're interested in – you know how like they always talk about like – Transistism. Yeah, analog circuit designers like chip designers. If you want to make a crap ton of money, this is how you do it. Buy this book and –

Dave Jones: Learn how to do current mirrors and – Yeah, yeah, exactly. Transistor current mirrors and constant current sources and rolling that 10 different ways with a handful of transistors and then figuring out all the physics behind it. Yes. And then how to put it on a bit of silicon. Tiny, tiny bit of sand.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: With a whole lot of magic dust thrown in.

Chris Gammell: And – Yep. Some wide, large current mirrors, right? Right, yes. Yeah. Speaking of actually – I was poking on the bookshelf – Any idiot can count to one. Yeah, that's right. Not me. I was poking on the bookshelf at work and I found a gem. It was awesome. I found –

Dave Jones: Why didn't you tweet a photo of it?

Chris Gammell: My camera's broken on my phone actually. I need to get a low-cost phone.

Dave Jones: You need to get one of these $150 smartphones. Yeah, I do. I need to go over to the store. With a shit camera but at least it works.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I found a 1987 linear technology application handbook. And I'm like, ah, 87. That sounds about right. And I open it up and it's AppNote 1 through AppNote 21. It was awesome. It was like finding a diamond. It was awesome. Hallelujah. So like out of that 21, I think 19 of those are Jim Williams' AppNotes. Right. And one is Bob Weidler and one is some other guy. I didn't recognize his name. Right. Disappeared into obscurity. Oh, I'm sure he's still there. Come on. These guys are long-term. You know?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: These guys are high cool. That's right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And actually, speaking of Jim Williams, we have had a note on here for a while. This guy, Kent Lundberg. He's a MIT professor. And he's kind of going through, I think it's since Jim Williams died, but he actually started a blog called readingjimwilliams.blogspot.com. And he's going through and reading every AppNote and writing about them. He just wrote one today, actually, on AppNote 85. And it's this really great in-depth look at each AppNote and, you know, a link to it. And it's great.

Dave Jones: That's unusual that you could actually discuss an AppNote because an AppNote is designed to discuss the thing it's talking about in a clear way. So this is commentary on the AppNote.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Or is it a different way to present the information? Or is it, what is the style of the... It's like a true... Commentary.

Chris Gammell: ...blog style. Actually, it's Dr. Analog on Twitter, I believe. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, yeah. It's great, though. I mean, it's great. It's kind of fun to follow along. You could sell that Twitter name. You could. I guess so.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: There's got to be a whole 20 bucks in that. Yeah. Yeah, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, yeah. It's fun to follow along. So if people out there are analog folk, you know, check it out.

Dave Jones: Do we have any... We completely missed shout-outs or anything like that today. Do we have any of those?

Chris Gammell: I don't think so. No, we talked about some of it, but no, not really. We've had some suggestions from... We should clear out our list. This could be our yard sale of an episode.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Last, what, seven minutes we've got left. Oh, by the way, we have a new server. We're now on LibSyn.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. So hopefully it's been better.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You should not have any download issues now because the MP3 file is hosted on this cloud server. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So it's like multiple location, right? It's distributed.

Dave Jones: It's a CDN.

Chris Gammell: That's the word. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's a content delivery network. So, yeah. So the file is now hosted on, automatically hosted on multiple servers around the world, and you automatically download from the one nearest to you, and you don't even realize it. So, yeah. Rather than before, the file was on one server, and then when, you know, 3,000 people try and download it once, it just dies and falls over.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Crabby server. Yeah. So, and that is all thank you to our donors, which we love and appreciate. Thank you so much. Yes, thank you very much.

Dave Jones: People have been donating, and, yeah, the money goes towards that.

Chris Gammell: And other things that we're working on.

Dave Jones: And fortunately or unfortunately, we get a free app with that. Would you like a free app with that, sir? Yeah. And, yeah, so we automatically, I haven't tried it, but apparently we can set up our own app for the show.

Chris Gammell: Well, we should be more clear about it. The people would have to pay $1.99.

Dave Jones: Oh, they would have to pay. It's $1.99, and we would get, like, 50% cut of that. So, it's a way to donate to the show. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I'm going to try it out just to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's worth trying it. And if it's shit, well, we'll tell you it's shit. But if it's good, we'll actually promote it, so.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's a cool thing to say, like, oh, we have an app, but then it's like, and 50 people use it, and they're all unhappy with it because we don't keep it up.

Dave Jones: Yeah, you had 50 people try it once, you know. Right, yeah, exactly. Because it was crap, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, anyways, Libsyn's good. So, if there's any other problems with, I don't know, we might look at other server stuff just for the WordPress.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but the WordPress doesn't get much traffic, so our shared server should be able to handle that for the foreseeable future. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And thanks to Alan for helping us. Yes, thank you very much, Alan. Alan Garfield. It's a guru. He's our penguin.

Dave Jones: That's right. He's our penguin man. And, yeah, so it's, you know, it allows us to do a lot of stuff in the future, hopefully, with the show. It can transcode into different formats. And heaven forbid it can insert advertising.

Chris Gammell: It's in, you know.

Dave Jones: That's where we found someone silly enough to want us to actually give us money to. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Blab.

Dave Jones: We can be bored.

Chris Gammell: We can.

Dave Jones: But, yeah, it allows us to do all sorts of stuff like that. So, in theory, you can download, you know, we could upload a super high, not res, thinking video, high audio quality version. Then it can automatically transcode in different formats based on what sort of bandwidth connection you've got and things like that. It's fairly smart. Yeah. I like it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: All right. So, I have a fun thing on this list for the last couple minutes.

Dave Jones: All right. It better be fun.

Chris Gammell: It's just going to be a quick mention, actually, because it's a visual thing, so people have to click over. But I found it, actually, from Matt Inks on Twitter. It's like these science stock photos. Have you ever seen these before? No. There's always these ridiculous – I mean, stock photos in general, pretty ridiculous, right? Oh, right. Okay. Whenever I see one, I love calling it out. Like, just being like, you know, like company literature, they always love doing that kind of thing. Yeah. But these are science-y stock photos. And it's just like picture after picture of people holding test tubes. Ah, right. And it's usually – Some with, like, people not wearing clothes for some reason. Like –

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's ridiculous.

Dave Jones: And there's always different types of people. Yeah. Very diverse. There's a very smart-looking chick with glasses, and there's a black person, and there's an Asian person, and there's a guy with a gray beard. And there'll be a – you know, there'll be all the stereotypes, all the ridiculous.

Chris Gammell: Right. And my favorite is the second to last, which is a very attractive young lady wearing protective goggles for some reason with a multimeter measuring a MacBook Pro.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: It's just like – no.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, I can see that. Oh, that's bad. Come on.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So –

Dave Jones: Oh, no. Are these – these cars – they almost look like joke photos. I know, right? Yeah, they are.

Chris Gammell: It's just they're so clueless that –

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, they're like – they're so tan and attractive. Yeah. And there's the one above it, they're looking at a chicken.

Dave Jones: And they're pulling funny faces.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. You know, like – So definitely worth the look. It's absolutely ridiculous. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Shonky photos of the week, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, right. Some of them are fun. I've got to admit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're good. You know, but there's a naked chick holding a test tube, you know. Yeah. Like a beaker filled with some blue liquid. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, works for me. I don't know about you, but – Don't tell the wife. Right. Yeah. And there's a chick with a lab coat unbuttoned, you know. Yeah. Okay. Let's not say anymore.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's pretty bad. So last suggestion of the day. Actually, bring it back to PCBs, which we were talking about at the beginning of the episode. Actually, Brad Leister wrote in about this. There is a – I'm not sure about the site name. It's called meetandnetworking.com.

Dave Jones: Okay. This sounds like a communicating song.

Chris Gammell: I don't know where that comes from, but – Yeah. Yeah. But basically, it's a tutorial on KiCad and how to actually create your own laser cut stencils, which is pretty cool. I mean – Awesome. I think KiCad actually naturally outputs the stencils as a part of its output files. But then taking that and then sending it over to a laser cutter, not bad, right? I mean like you could do cardboard –

Dave Jones: Well, any package does that. It outputs a paste layer. It's just a solder paste layer.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, because that's part of the package layout, right? Yeah. And yeah, so you can take this and then actually send it to a laser cutter. And I think you do like a SVG, which is like a – isn't that like a vector format or something like that?

Dave Jones: Yes, it's a vector-based format, which is what Gerber is. Gerber is a vector-based format. So everything has to be lines. It's not like Gerber can – you know, you render – I mentioned this in my previous – in my video I shot last night, actually.

Chris Gammell: In your Deja Vu video?

Dave Jones: In my Deja Vu video. I mentioned somewhere in the hour in there that, yeah, Gerbers generate things as lines. It's not like you can render fonts inside a Gerber file. Right, you render lines that look like fonts. It would transfer it to vectors, yeah. Yeah. So –

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. And yeah, any PCB package must be able to output a paste file exactly like that. But outputting in an SVG, I guess, is a – you know, in a suitable file that then can go into a laser printer, that's the key. So –

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And there's always that same thing of, you know, like, you have to be at a certain point where you really want to use a solder stencil like that. You know, like, there's probably – I think it's nice because some of the paid services now, they'll just send you the stencil.

Dave Jones: They'll send you them for free because they're with your board because they – Yeah, they're using them anyways. They cut them out of mylar these days. It's so cheap. They churn them out in 10 seconds. Yeah. Yeah, they're practically giving them away. Right.

Chris Gammell: So that's a nice – I mean, it's a nice thing to have for sure. I mean, it's a lot easier than squirting out little bits of solder paste unless you're – Yeah. Unless you have one of those fancy machines that does it for you all integrated.

Dave Jones: But I'm happy to, you know, sit there and solder my prototype board. It's almost like, you know, it's almost like a rite of passage for your prototype. You've got to hand solder it. Yeah, for a prototype. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of which, you know how I got these boards and they turned up super quick, right? Yeah. I like to make a complaint. They turned up too darn quick because I was going to order some parts today. I thought I had like a couple of days there. So I was going to order some parts today so that they turn up tomorrow so I'd have them when the boards arrive. But the boards turned up this morning, damn it, and I'm parts short. So –

Speaker ?: Ugh.

Dave Jones: Ugh. Don't you hate it?

Chris Gammell: Just pop on down to your local electronics shop. Don't you guys have those there?

Dave Jones: Well, I'm going to have to make a run to Farnell's today. Oh, there you go. See, you have that.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I don't have that here, man. I can – Really? I mean, I've got a surplus supply store in Cleveland.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. You don't have like a – Oh, I get – yeah. Well, it's not like you're going to have a digi-key or mouser or something, right? They're a centralized thing. Yeah, they're all in Thief River Falls. I mean, Sydney, so I do have a Farnell's. I have an RS Components, and then we've got Jcar and Altronics.

Chris Gammell: So you just go to the distribution center, basically, and you're like –

Dave Jones: Yes, I go to the distribution center. Well, you order it before, and then it takes them half an hour to pack it for you, and then you arrive at the tray counter, and you pick it up from the tray counter instead of getting it posted. So –

Chris Gammell: Okay. So it's like if I lived in Thief River Falls and called Digi-key.

Dave Jones: I don't know if Digi-key offer a tray counter. Don't quote me on that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but certainly Farnell and RS in –

Chris Gammell: I'm sure the population there doesn't really play to their benefit, you know? No. So, you know.

Dave Jones: What? I've got to get off my couch and –

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's true. Get going, man. Yeah. I know.

Dave Jones: So, yes.

Chris Gammell: Lazy Aussies.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. And, yeah, so I've got to get parts, and this is my new power supply. I'm quite excited. I've already got a few revisions that I want to do, so – But anyway, this one will be close enough that I can build up, and I've scrapped my ones from IT studios. They're no good. They took a month to get here, and by the time they took, what, five weeks to get here, I'd already figured, oh, no, I want to change things, and there was no point building it up. I got them, like, a week ago, but –

Chris Gammell: Isn't it crazy how you can, like, you'll send it off, and then you'll be – you know, you'll just be crunching on it. You'll, like, stand in the shower, like, thinking about it. Yeah, yeah. And you'll go, oh, crap. I forgot this, you know?

Dave Jones: I forgot this, and I want to add this feature. Oh, that'd be nice, you know? Yeah, I'll do that instead.

Chris Gammell: I wish there was some kind of, like, meditation technique that allowed you to kind of compress all that into, like, an hour, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: That'd be nice.

Dave Jones: Getting boards right on the first spin as an art.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, well.

Dave Jones: Especially when it's your own project, and you're developing it as you go along.

Chris Gammell: Right, yeah.

Dave Jones: And we talked about it before, you can't check your own stuff, and you always –

Chris Gammell: And if boards are cheap, too, then there's not as much incentive, right? Exactly. If boards are $1,000, then it's –

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's right. It's a big difference. And when I was a boy, we didn't have – you couldn't get a cheap board like this. Right, exactly. It's what I heard of for a hobbyist to get a professionally made board. They were thousands of dollars if you wanted to get one made. And this was up until probably the end of the 90s, you know? I would say, you know, maybe mid-90s.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and I knew engineers who would insist on having everything right, and it's like, come on, man. It's cheaper to just spin the board a couple times because we know it's going to happen anyways. It's better that than spend two months and then have to spin the board another two months later. So it's kind of a mindset thing now, too. So it's – hopefully it doesn't go back the other direction because a lot of younger engineers would be screwed.

Dave Jones: And I – we've talked about it before, I'm sure, but it's so important to have something in your hands. Yeah. You know, like you can have your – Oh, I wrote about that this weekend. You've got your 3D model and you've got all that. Yeah. But nothing beats actually building the damn thing up and having a board and having a go at it.

Chris Gammell: Thank you so much. Now I have an excuse to link in my article from this weekend. You were just the nicest guy. I am. That's just me. Ah, you are. All right. We should get going. It's getting me.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we're five minutes past. Yeah. Low on our capacity. I've got to race off to get some parts. Go get some parts. If they're in stock, will I get thwarted by Murphy again? Oh, they won't have the chip I need.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I hope not.

Dave Jones: Guarantee you. Oh, yeah, it's in stock, but it's in our Singapore warehouse, you know? Yeah. Yeah, thanks a lot. Anyway, can't complain. At least I'm based in Sydney where their main warehouse is for Farnell and RS.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, if you're based in Austin, I would tell you, go after Jay Car and get some parts.

Dave Jones: That sounded New Zealand, which is very apt for today's show. Yeah, there you go.

Chris Gammell: Well, don't ask those guys either. Oh, boy. All right, guys. All right. We'll talk to you next week. See ya. See ya.

Dave Jones: And we tried. We stayed on topic for like half an hour. And we talked about electronics. Yeah, we did. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Crazy.