#8 – Layouts and Design-Outs

Dave Jones: Hi, welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog. And I'm Chris Gammell from Chris Gammell's Analog Life. How you doing, Chris? Pretty good, Dave. How you doing there? It's getting on towards spring there, isn't it?

Chris Gammell: Not too bad. It is, it is. Getting spring. We're having some nice warm days and a few chilly ones occasionally. So, you know, all the planets screwed up and everything, of course. So it's just all back and forth. I was thinking about you guys the other day.

Dave Jones: Because I was thinking, oh man, I'm kind of sad that we're moving down into the fall. But I'm like, oh, Dave's probably loving this though.

Chris Gammell: Oh, absolutely. Coming into summertime. Yeah, that's always weird to me. But even winters here in Sydney aren't that bad, you know. Yeah, that's good. You know, at top of like, you know, 18 degrees or something like that, Celsius, which you probably have no idea about. Whatever that is, yeah. Yeah, being a Fahrenheit man. Oh, yeah. So, yes, that non-linear conversion there.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Yeah, five-ninths and 32 or whatever that is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, something like that. There's some ratio in there somewhere. I can never remember it.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I've got to use a conversion program.

Dave Jones: Well, I actually messed up using a conversion program a couple days ago. Do tell. Yeah. I was supposed to be on, well, I mean, it's the same one that you and I have experienced as well. I was supposed to be on Let's Talk Geek, which is the South African program. And they invited me to be on there. And I get, you know, I rush home from work at lunchtime. And I'm going to like do like a little bit of lunchtime recording, whatever. And I get here. And I'm like, guys, where are you? Hello? Hello? Yep. Turns out, calculated it wrong again. Nice work. Well, yes, that's not the first time, is it? No, it's not. I'm really good at that. But I was...

Chris Gammell: You've got to use timeanddate.com as an excellent resource, which I use to...

Dave Jones: Even Google does it. But it's just like, it's just these silly things. I mean, like you and I, you know, we messed that up that one time. And you'd think that would have taught me, but nothing doing.

Chris Gammell: No, well, I've done it too, you know, I've got to admit. So, yeah, those sort of things happen.

Dave Jones: Well, I was thinking about it though, because why not just make time, not a constant, but like, you know, make it all related to GMT, right? Obviously, not every country would ever pick that up, but that'd be the best way to do it. And then when you say, you know, you probably do it in military time too. You say, you know, 1345, everybody would know when that is in their local time. And they'd be like, no, I'm sleeping then. But why not, right? I mean, the world's flat. Yeah, absolutely. Come on, flat.

Chris Gammell: Sorry, I'm having silly problems with this auto gain mic here. We think we've figured it out. We think it's a Google Talk issue. Yeah. So, we didn't have time before the show to disable this automatic gain on the mic that Google Talk does. So, it's really annoying. So, I can see myself peeking here on the graph here. So, yeah. Anyway, I like the audio quality we had last time using that new, what's it called?

Dave Jones: Oh, I'm going to forget what it's called now.

Chris Gammell: The Levelator or something like that. That's it. Yeah. I was just going to look. Awesome little program. Yes. Very awesome. It's going to adjust our volume levels for us and hopefully make us sound a bit more professional and radio-like. See, I can't even do a stupid radio voice. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't think that that's what people are listening for.

Chris Gammell: No, I don't think so. It's the content. So, what content have we got today?

Dave Jones: Well, we got tons of stuff. But I was going to mention about the content. We actually got some good feedback from people. So, thanks to everybody who took the survey. I kind of put that together without Dave knowing about it. But I was like, I want to know where people are from. And then I'm like, oh, Dave probably wants to know this too. So, threw some extra stuff in there. Yeah. So, we got some cool stuff. And we'll try and roll some stuff in here. I think I put some stuff on our list today. I don't know if me and Dave actually didn't talk about it at all. Nope. Well, it's an off-the-top show. We'll get to that later. So, it doesn't matter too much. There's some fun stuff in there. So, thanks to everyone who I filled that out. We got about 200 responses. That's really cool. 200? Geez. That's impressive. Thanks, guys. I know. Yeah. So, yeah. Let's do some shout-outs, huh?

Chris Gammell: Yep. Let's do it.

Dave Jones: So, CMC. I'm not sure if you wanted us to share his full name. But he put our logo on his webpage. And we always said we'd throw a shout-out for that. So, thanks a lot. We'll post a link. And techthing.org. So, we'll check that out. Yep.

Chris Gammell: The link will be up there.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's excellent. We always love people who link to the blog because that's how we're going to grow our audience eventually to millions and millions of nerds around the world. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think there's a critical mass for that. Yeah. Well, you know, I'd be happy for a couple of thousand.

Dave Jones: So, I'm happy with what we got right now. That's great. Absolutely. A couple of hundred. Awesome. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Which I'll actually talk about that later. So, that will lead into something else. Yeah. Anything else. Yeah. Yeah. And, yes.

Dave Jones: So, Adafruit.

Chris Gammell: What's this about Adafruit?

Dave Jones: They just turned a year. I was just watching their thing today. Is that all?

Chris Gammell: A year?

Dave Jones: Well, no. Sorry. Not the company. Sorry. My bad. That's their Ask an Engineer.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Ask an Engineer. Their video show has been going for a year, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You're at a year, right, with the EV blog? Is that right?

Chris Gammell: No, I'm at a year and a half. I started April 4th, 2009. There you go.

Dave Jones: Trailblazer right there. But, yeah. They had some great... I mean, I've been watching that more and more. And they got some good stuff on there. I mean, they're selling their stuff, but who cares? You know, like they're providing good service too. And they like cats more than I do, but whatever.

Chris Gammell: Yes, yes. I'm a cat hater, so yes. Oh, well, we won't get into that. What's the cat's name? It's like... Mosfet. Is it... Mosfet. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You know, that cat was born nerdy, so that's awesome.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I was a bit... I'm a bit disappointed with the video quality they've got there, their recorded video quality. I think they should try and... Especially for the recorded version. The live version is fine, you know, because you've got to watch it through via Ustream and the quality shit and the frame rate updates crap. But yeah, it'd be nice if they could improve the downloadable video quality there. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, I think they're real utilitarian though, so whatever works for them. That's okay. Yeah, exactly. I get through it. I mean...

Chris Gammell: That brings me to my live show, which I filmed last weekend. Yeah. I did... Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's Ask Dave. Well, it doesn't really have a name. It's just the EEV blog live show. And I filmed that with three different things. There was the online recorded version with Ustream. So, I got Ustream to automatically record it. Then I was recording the webcam directly onto my hard drive as well. And I was recording it with my backup HD camera. And wouldn't you know it, the other two just didn't work at all. It was crap.

Dave Jones: Really? Oh, wow. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The audio sync was all over the place. And oh, it was something to do with Ustream again. Oh, that's too bad. Just crapping up. So, those two audio strings were ruined. So, I had to use my backup camera yet again. So, sorry everyone who watched my live show as a download. And you know, I'm not looking at the camera. It's just up in the corner. And you didn't get the cool effects and things like that on camera. And yeah. Oh, well.

Dave Jones: Technical problems.

Chris Gammell: If only we were technical people. You know, I thought at least one of those ones would have worked. But no, sure enough, both of the direct recorded ones just... Yeah. One out of three. Well, that's right. At least you had the one. It's lucky I did do the third backup.

Dave Jones: So, at least I've got something. At least you can hear me. Yeah. Well, and I have my technical, my awesome, super awesome technical new gadget here. What's that? Which is a sock. I have a sock in front of my face.

Chris Gammell: That's right. You've got a pop filter finally.

Dave Jones: I have a pop filter. So, hopefully no one's getting popped in the ears. I think that we're all safe from those now.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's just not as advanced as my stocking one. Yours is just a sock. Right. Everyone knows the stocking is far superior. It has a far superior attenuation. Yeah. It is. Yeah. And we'll see if we can get the difference here. Like, I've got the pop filter on now and I'll take it off. And there we go. Hopefully, you can hear the... Oh, that is different. Yeah. Yeah. It's different. Yeah. There we go. It's back on now. Okay. My sock as we posted a photo on last time. Sorry. Stocking. Stocking. I'm stocking on the coat hanger. So, there you go.

Dave Jones: There you go.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Advanced tools here at the Amp Hour.

Dave Jones: Yep. So, speaking of the Adafruit people, I'm looking... Just as a reminder, if you're going to be at the Open Source Hardware Convention or even going to be at Maker Faire New York City or World Maker Faire early, I'll be out there. So, if you want to grab a beer or something, it might have to be a lunchtime beer because I'm taking off right afterwards. But, yeah. I'm doing that next week. Excellent.

Chris Gammell: So, you are finally getting to a Maker Faire.

Dave Jones: No. No, no, no. That's what I'm saying. I think the Maker Faire starts on Friday. Oh, right. And I'm going Thursday just for the Open Source Hardware thing.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right. Oh, it's part of the same thing, is it?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like they tacked it on the front so that, you know, because all those people are going to be out there anyways. Right. Got it. Yeah. So, I'll be out there for the summit and hopefully meet these people. And before that, I'll be at ESC Boston if any listeners are going to that. But I'm actually doing a Twitter panel, which is kind of weird. But, you know, interesting.

Chris Gammell: I watched. They did a Twitter panel last year. And I watched. I tried to watch some of the recording. And it was boring as batshit, really. Yeah. A bunch of, you know, people who think they're authoritative are up there. And, you know. So, yeah. At least you've got some reps. So, yeah. They'll have something. We'll see about that. Someone up there who actually knows something about, well, you know, the engineering industry at least. You know. They had it. I think the people on the last panel were marketers and all sorts of, you know. Yeah. They get that sometimes. People like that.

Dave Jones: I mean, that's kind of where it's targeted to. And I don't know. Like, a lot of people still don't use Twitter. But I like it. I mean, I, you know, get to follow people. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, I was. I'm starting to love it. I'm starting to love Twitter. It's not. It's, you know, a very sort of hacked up sort of tool. It's not the be all end all tool. But you can sort of do a lot of stuff with it. Yeah. It just, you know, through a simplistic interface, you know, 140 characters and hashtags and stuff like that. You can actually, yeah. You can do a surprising amount with it. Those marketers are under something. That's right. Yeah. I'm up to like 800 followers or something like that, which is fantastic. And I'm following other people. I'm getting, you know, all sorts of things on my feed. So, yeah, I'm actually learning stuff. So, but the thing is, you know, you don't, it can turn into like a Facebook kind of thing where you've got so many friends and you're following and you just bombard it with so much info, it becomes useless. Right. Signal to noise, right. So, I think the key to Twitter is, yeah, the signal to noise ratio. The key there is not to follow as many people as who are following you, especially if you're someone of note, you know, and if you're following 500 people, you know, how can you, you're following a thousand.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I'm following a thousand. Really?

Chris Gammell: How do you, see? How do you get a good signal to noise ratio?

Dave Jones: Oh, I don't. I mean, the thing is like, I don't, I don't check it that off. I mean, like I post stuff sometimes and when I check it, usually I get about 20 minutes worth of people's thoughts and you know, it's just kind of luck at that point, but it's still like, I mean, there's all these cool people. I mean, like I think about like the, the maker community. Like I just keep finding people through other people and then connecting like that. And so, I mean, it's good in that regard. I mean, like I find people like doing stuff that I never even would have thought of, you know, like, like some of these projects people do. I, you know, like what, where do they come from? Who thinks of doing these things? But exactly, you know, in the, in the event you did follow them, I don't, I think there's also a benefit to, I don't want to talk about Twitter too much, but like there's a benefit because if you're following the two same people and then they message each other, you're also going to see that. So that's a good thing too.

Chris Gammell: Yes, exactly. Yeah. I've seen a few good things pop up like that. And now they've, I think it's only come online in the last month or something, but they pop up with people who you should follow and it's based on other people you're following and it's good. You know, all these people, oh, I know them, I'll follow them. And it automatically pops up as sort of, yeah, right. Okay. You're just clicking. Oh yeah. I'll follow them. Follow them. Yeah. They're awesome. Oh yeah. Cool. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, so yeah, I'm only following like 30 or something. So I have to lift my game. There you go. But yeah, at, uh, yeah, I've now got a little, um, app, which, you know, automatically sits in the background and it pops up and alerts me if there's a new thing. Oh, oh, that's bad. So that's really bad. I know. Yeah. It can be bad. That's especially if you're following a thousand cause it would pop up every, every five seconds,

Dave Jones: you know, so maybe if I, if I cut my list way down, but whatever, I'm okay for now. And it's good. I mean, I find stuff for the show. So that's, I mean, that's the reason I do it a lot of times is like, there's some of the stuff in here I find through there and you know, as long as I still get work done during the day, I'm, I'm feeling okay about it. Excellent.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's another Twitter. I think, um, I think we should get onto another, um, shout out, shall we? Is it a shout out? It's listed here as a shout out, but, uh, um, hack and mods, Ben Heck, um, has, has a new, um, this is the first time I've really heard of him being to his site, but he has a new sponsored, um, show and it's sponsored by Element 14, uh, Farnells. So, um, it, it looks, uh, based on his intro, it looks like it should be, uh, fun. And yeah, it looks like he's got some sort of sponsorship deal with Element 14, um, which I, I think is only pretty much limited to, um, you know, he's getting tools to help him, um, put videos up on the site and, um, free parts and all that for all these hacks.

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, that's not bad.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, it's not bad. Um, so, you know, I, like you wouldn't catch me doing something like that because all these companies like, um, Element 14 and Design Spark and all these other online, um, blogs run by big companies, they're all, I think we've mentioned this before, have we, that they're all fishing around for, uh, free content. So, um, pretty much they're trying to talk, you know, they're, they're emailing all these bloggers out there and other people, you know, oh, look, come and write content for us and we'll give you free stuff, you know? So they're looking to get, uh, content, uh, cheaply. So, um, just if you're a blogger out there and they contact you, just, you know, uh, I, I'm not going to say don't, um, jump at the chance, but, um, just think about it because, yeah, keep, keep your eyes open because, um, yeah, they are looking for free and cheap, uh, content and I get approached all the time by all these companies wanting me to, you know, uh, generate, oh, look, we'll send you all these free kits and you can review them. Well, no, you know, bugger off. I haven't got time to become a free content reviewer for your site, you know? Right, right. Anyway, that's my rant. That's a, yeah.

Dave Jones: So I think it's, uh, yeah. His new thing is about, uh, I think it's about like hacks for, for actual consumer equipment. I think. I'm kind of.

Chris Gammell: Something like that. Yeah. I'm not quite sure. And there's lots of like, um, you know, uh, Xbox, PlayStation, E-type. Right. Yeah. Um, hacks and things like that, I think. So something along those lines. Anyway, um, Ben Heck.

Chris Gammell: Well, welcome to the brotherhood.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Um, actually he's, I just went to his site and he's got like movies he's produced or something. I haven't actually watched them, but he's got like half a dozen, like, it looks like feature length movies or something. Oh, you're talking about this Warpath?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Um, sorry?

Dave Jones: Warpath or something else? No, this is.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I don't know. Um, no. Oh, I'm sorry.

Dave Jones: We haven't done our research well enough.

Chris Gammell: Here we go. I can call it up. I've got it up here. Uh, movies. These are the movies he's done thus far. Um, uh, the Wizard of Death. The Adventurous. Um, Adventure. Yeah. Possum's Man. What's Possum's Man? I don't know. This might be some good. These look hilarious. Yeah. I'm going to have to download these and watch. We'll link this in.

Dave Jones: This looks good. But yeah, so Element 14 is now, uh, jumping into the sponsorship. Yeah. I think they sponsor some other stuff too, so. Yeah. I'm sure we're going to see more and more of that. A lot of them try and bring their own people in too. But I'm.

Chris Gammell: They do. Yeah. And, um, that actually leads me onto a, um, I think it's a new law I've come up with. Oh. Okay. I'll call it Jones's Diminishing Blog Law. Well, and, um, for want of a better name. Yeah. If you've got a better name, let me know. But basically, um, I've got this theory and I think it pretty, it holds up pretty well that all these big companies and all these magazines and, uh, things, I won't name names at all, but it's, it's fairly generic across the industry, I think. Okay. And they will, um, have a certain amount of circulation or they'll claim, you know, we, we have a circulation of a hundred thousand or something like that. Uh, now the, okay, that, that might be true, but the number of actual people who actually read it, I reckon is an order of magnitude less than that. Oh. Um, so, if they've got a hundred thousand, then only ten thousand people actively read it. But here's where the extra part of the law comes in. There's another order of magnitude drop, um, where it's, um, so, it's an order of magnitude less again. Okay. So, only, um, you know, so, only a thousand, uh, readers this time will actually read their online, uh, blogs and stuff like that. Ah, okay, okay.

Dave Jones: So, a thousand, a hundred thousand people get, they mail out a hundred thousand magazines. Yeah. Ninety thousand get thrown in the trash bin. That's what you're saying? That's what I'm saying.

Chris Gammell: Only a thousand people read it seriously on a regular basis and then they think. Oh, sorry, ten thousand. Yep. And then only a thousand would actually, uh, read their online blogs. It may even be, they may even be another order of magnitude drop below that. Um, so, only a hundred people will actually read the online blog. But, yeah, I, I reckon there's a law there. Oh. That's, uh, I'll call it Jones's Diminishing Blog Law. Okay. That, um, yeah, so all these, you know, companies and that's how they suck in advertisers. They say, yeah, we've got a circulation of, you know, a hundred thousand and, uh, stuff like that. But the number of people who actually, you know, uh, read it and, uh, listen to the blogs, you know, subscribe to the RSS feeds and things like that is actually quite small. You'd be very surprised. So, yeah. There you go. That's my law.

Dave Jones: I wonder if, I wonder if that works in the other direction. And maybe you could start sending out a million magazines at once.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, I'm, I'm, I'm sort of growing my blog from the, from the ground up. I'm growing it from the other direction.

Dave Jones: So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Which I think works a lot better. That's why I've got an order of magnitude more subscribers than most of these big company, um, big company ones out there, all these blogs out there. So, um, cause I've grown mine in the opposite direction. So, yes.

Dave Jones: Anyway, there you go. Okay. That's good. So, um, I w I wanted to talk a little bit about, so onto some technical stuff. How about that?

Chris Gammell: Ah, let's, let's do it.

Dave Jones: Okay. No more blog stuff. Are we okay about that? That's fine. Chris has no readership. Don't worry about it. Anywho, uh, yeah. So, I wanted to talk about, uh, I don't even know what kicked this off. Oh, you know what it was? A friend told me. So, fine chips. Fine chips.com.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Speaker ?: What?

Dave Jones: I, I, you know, I didn't use it. I, I used it for like a day or two before I'd use some other ones, but, uh, and then a friend told me fine, fine chips.com got bought out by like some.

Chris Gammell: Um, yes, I've, I've read the, um, article, well, the, what? The announcement, there's a announcement somewhere. Yeah, there's a announcement we'll link to, but. Yep. And, um, yeah, they've been bought out. This is a real shame. I've been using fine chips.com for years and I think I recommended it on my first or second blog or something like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, he mentioned that you did, so.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and, um, and the guy who, um, who actually ran it was always very mysterious. He didn't know who it was because there was no information. Yeah, and it says in this article that he used to work for NASA 12 years. He, he actually started it 12 years ago. Um, I had no idea it was that old. Yeah. Um, cause I've only been using it for.

Dave Jones: It probably started very texty based, you know. Oh yeah, I'm sure it was. It's all flash now.

Chris Gammell: Just his own in-house use, yeah. Yeah. Um, and stuff like that. But yeah, it's a fantastic, uh, tool and now it's been bought out by, um, uh, who is it? Uh, Supply Frame Media.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I mean, someone who wants to harvest data and steer you towards whoever pays the most. And that's the thing, it's like, do you, I mean, do you trust it now? Like, that, that, that's the real question. It is like, now that, now that, uh, uh, uh, interested party owns it, before it's just some random dude. So, you know, you take it at face value, but now it's like, well, oh, well, who's, who's controlling this data? Exactly.

Chris Gammell: So, um, and it'll be interesting to see whether they, the same website is still there. There's, the website hasn't, uh, changed at all, but, um, I'm sure it will. And, um, yeah, they'll integrate it to their other systems. You'll probably have to end up registering. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm fairly sure that'll happen because they want the database of people and stuff like that to suck them into their other websites.

Dave Jones: And they'll start charging vendors for actually pushing people towards, you know, like DigiKey versus Mauser versus Element 14.

Chris Gammell: Possibly, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, oh, that's a shame. I know. Internet business. Watch findchips.com, don't go down the toilet, I think. I, I love their slogan at the article. It's got like, um, their, this new company is, they bought it to Target and I quote, bottom of the funnel. Oh, yeah. There's a new wank word for you. No, that's, that's an old wank word. That is an old one. Yeah. Bottom, I haven't heard bottom of the funnel before.

Dave Jones: Oh, Dave, Dave's never talked to a salesman before. They love talking about funnels.

Chris Gammell: No, I try and avoid them at all costs. Yeah, that's okay. So, yeah, bottom of the funnel.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that means like, so they try and like, if they start at the top, there's like tons and tons of people that are willing to buy, you know, like LM741, right? Right. And then out of a thousand people, maybe 10 are serious and then two are actually going to buy and then, you know, they try and target those two people. Right. And so they think that since people are actually searching for parts now, they'll be able to peg those people. Right. It's like, well, yeah, but screw you. I don't want to use your site anymore. Yeah. So you use Octopart? That's another one that...

Chris Gammell: I used to use Octopart, but they've changed a lot too. I think they've gone the same way. Oh, really? I haven't used it for a month or two now, yeah. And I used to use it and it used to be good, but it's changed a lot. Yeah. So I'm not sure if I still like it. So Fine Chips hasn't changed and I like stuff that doesn't change, you know?

Dave Jones: You're a curmudgeonly old man, aren't you?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yes, I am. Get off my lawn, you darn kids. Yes, I'm a complete Luddite. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, Fine Chips.

Dave Jones: Yeah, the guy with the video blog. Yeah, Luddite right there.

Chris Gammell: He's a Luddite. Yeah, the guy who's pioneering engineering video blogging is a Luddite.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: There you go.

Dave Jones: What we don't tell you is he records it with rocks. He records it with rocks.

Speaker ?: That's right.

Dave Jones: It's actually a VHS camera.

Chris Gammell: That's right. And I'm paid in barter as well. I'm not paying money.

Chris Gammell: For sheep. That's right.

Dave Jones: That's my going rate. If our listeners have any other sites, I mean, we're looking for them now. So if you know any kind of quasi-good sites other than going straight to the DigiKeys and the Mousers, you know, if there's... I'm surprised they even open up their interface like that. You'd think that they'd kind of guard their search engine. But, you know, obviously someone's worked on it.

Chris Gammell: They used to. But now they've realized that that is just the way it's going to go. And they have to meet it. As I said, all the EDA companies are building in the tools. So they need access to the database and the engines and all these supply companies. And they've realized, well, shit, we have to give access to our database. Otherwise, we're going to fall behind and go out of business. So now they're all scrambling to give companies the best, you know, application interface or, you know, software, geeky Linux, penguin thing to interface to their...

Speaker ?: !

Chris Gammell: Yeah, API. That's what you're looking for there, API. API, thank you, yes. You're welcome. Yes, penguin term, yep, API. Yeah, well, that's good.

Dave Jones: I mean, that's a good market economy kind of example right there, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Follow it or get out.

Chris Gammell: No bad can come from that, I don't think. It's only good that, you know, those sort of databases are open and people can access them. So, and these little guys like findchips.com just get bored out and, yeah, oh, well, my hat's off. To him, he's had a very useful tool for 10 years or something and hopefully it continues to be useful. But, yeah, I'm not sure how much he... It'd be interesting to find out how much he actually got. So, if he's ever listening, mysterious NASA dude. Yeah, findchips.com, the guy sold out. So, good luck to him, I guess. Yeah. It's a shame, really, but... Pass. Yeah. Yeah. And if you noticed a weird audio blip there, yes, Google Talk cut out again.

Dave Jones: Oh, minus one.

Chris Gammell: We do. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we're probably not going to develop our own interface anytime soon, so...

Chris Gammell: No, I don't think so, unless I can solder it together. That's one long wire. It is. Probably two, really, right? Yeah. You can't beat copper. Yeah. Copper all the way, absolutely. Or I'll even be... Yeah, I'll go high-tech and go fiber. That's fine. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Well, I was bringing up that because... The findchips thing, because I've been working on a new design for a friend, and I've been looking at data sheets like crazy. And I've posted on Twitter a couple times. I love looking at op-amp data sheets, but it's getting insane how many... I mean, just like going through DigiKeyMauser, all those... Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's... That's kind of a bad part of design, I have to say. I... Like, how do you really continue to keep an eye on parts and search for parts without doing it each and every time, you know? Like...

Chris Gammell: Well, unfortunately, you have to. And I've mentioned this on my blog many times. Yeah. You know, component engineering is a big aspect of engineering. It really is. That's where you'll spend... You know, I've thrown figures around before, but that's where you can spend 80 or 90% of your time easily. It's just, you know, on any new design. Just looking for parts.

Dave Jones: And more if you're sourcing for your own design, right? So, if you're actually going out and buying them and sorting them and everything else... Yep. Exactly. ...then you're really up the creek. Yeah, that sucks.

Chris Gammell: Well, there's an interesting story with my... One of my designs at the moment that I'm working on. I needed a little three-digit LED head display, right? You know, pretty easy. There's a few different models around. And I picked one for my first prototype and I liked it. It was all good and cheap and everything like that. And it took me some time to find it because I had to make sure, you know, yes, they had a couple of thousand in stock at DigiKey and Mauser. And I thought that was, you know, a fairly safe number. Yeah, you always think that's good. Or there was 5,000 or something, you know? So, it was all pretty good and it looked good because the lead times were very long. They were like, you know, 24 weeks or something. So, you have to make sure, you have to think ahead and, well, if I sell 1,000 of them or 10,000, is there going to be, you know, stock there available? So, you know, they had like 5,000. I was pretty happy with that. So, I designed it in and I built up my prototype and everything and I was quite happy with it. And then when I went to check the bill of materials again, lo and behold, somebody had snapped up all of those 5,000 and there was only like 100 left or something like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: And I couldn't get them from any other supplier. So, they had zero stock and they're all saying 24 weeks lead time. So, I had to redesign my product for a different one, which was smaller. It wasn't pin compatible either.

Dave Jones: Oh, man.

Chris Gammell: So, it was smaller and that changed the whole look and feel of my design and everything changed. The user interface changed and the whole that led me down a different direction. It was a complete redesign of how the product looked and worked based on one stupid display. Yeah. You know, and that's just the way it is. You know, those things happen. I think my design is now better for that. I certainly like it much better now. And now they've got like 14,000 of these things in stock from multiple suppliers. That's good. Hopefully, it doesn't...

Dave Jones: The new package is better and everything too.

Chris Gammell: The new package is better and it's smaller and it allowed me to reorient everything differently. And yeah, it was... Yep. So, I changed a lot of stuff based on that. And, you know, as usual, we change one thing and it can lead to another thing and then another and then another. And it cascades and your whole design changes overnight.

Dave Jones: There's like two problems, I think. I think the first is like what you mentioned. Someone just snapped that up. You know, you think about with the shortage we've talked about on this show before. Yeah. And they just... There's nothing you can do. I mean, people are going to need parts. They're going to go out and buy. And some people are probably going to even overbuy so that they... Exactly. They're like all scared and they're willing to overbuy. And the other problem is, I think that even aside from supplier problems, so say, you know, like they're trying to supply you an op amp and the fab says they can only give you so many. Well, more than that even is all these companies try and do something called lean. And Dave, you know what lean is. But I don't know if our listeners do it. Lean manufacturing. Yeah. It's where you basically try and have as little inventory on hand because if you have inventory, you get charged for it like at tax time and, you know, like in all that accounting stuff. So they try and have as little parts as possible. And that's not just companies. So that's not just like the Apples and the Dave Jones of the world. And yes, I did put those two drastically different in the same category. You're welcome, Dave. No problem. Thank you. But they also do that at the people that are holding these parts because they're the ones that are actually holding them and they get charged big time. So it's like it almost becomes a question of, you know, if you're going to the big distributors, like even the DigiKeys and the Mousers, they don't want to hold them that much because then they have to charge them. And so you're doubly screwed. You know, no one wants to hold on to these parts and you can never get them. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: And they take up shelf space and warehouse space and they have to expand their warehouses, etc., etc. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Even those 603 parts, they fill up a lot of room real fast, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they can, especially when you've got 100,000 line items, you know, in stock. It's just crazy. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I liked your point about the pin compatible thing. That's the one thing that I'm looking at. Oh, yeah. It's like, I mean, op-amps, it's easy. When you start getting into LEDs and other things like that, it starts getting a little more difficult. But, man, it's like really important because you lock yourself in. Absolutely. And then you're...

Chris Gammell: Right at the design stage. And then you go out and manufacture boards. Yeah. I know. And you're screwed. So, if you've got to use some specialized, you know, like especially pots and knobs and other sort of, you know, mechanical type items, they can really lock you in, too. You know, more so than just a footprint, a component footprint. Right.

Dave Jones: And if they don't get you with the supply numbers, like say they can only offer you 20, even if they have 100, they're going to jack the price up if other people want them. So... Exactly. It's... It's... I don't know. I wasn't designing stuff five, ten years ago. Was it different then? Or has it always been like this?

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's always been pretty much the same. But it's gotten a much bigger scale now with all the online e-commerce and everything like that. And, you know, like the digi-keys and the mouses are now 10 times bigger than what they were. And... Yeah. Yeah. The laws have still pretty much stayed the same, the cutthroat nature of the industry and stuff like that. But it's actually gotten better, though, I think. Because they're holding more stock, bigger stock, you know. Really? I didn't think so. I thought they were... Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you... You know...

Dave Jones: You mean more total stuff.

Chris Gammell: As in Farnells and digi-key and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Okay.

Chris Gammell: So it's gotten better from that perspective. But, yeah, if you're talking about like the local distributors in each country for the manufacturers and stuff like that, they're still running their old game of, you know, of not keeping any stock and giving it to priority customers and all that sort of stuff.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's like... It's like it's like a famine, you know, and it's like you have all the bread. And you maybe even have like a wheat mill. A wheat mill. It's like, what? Come on, man. Like, that's not cool. All we want is complete oversupply so the prices drop and we can get parts whenever we want. Is that too much to ask, you know, all you business types out there? Come on, just make a ton of parts and give them to us. Cheap. Immediately. Yes. Please. For free. Preferably. Free. Free would be great. I mean, free... Free would be fantastic. Probably not going to happen. But there was an article from...

Chris Gammell: I'm sure there's a viable business model there somewhere. Come on. Somebody come up with a viable business model and do a startup based on free components. Get to it, business schools.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. You're there for something. Anyway. I don't want to ruin my future. There was an article actually from Bob Peace too. You know Bob Peace?

Chris Gammell: Bob Peace? You're saying Peace? How do you say it? Whereas I pronounce it Pease. Pease. Pease. Past the Pease. Past the Pease. I don't know.

Dave Jones: I thought it was Pease.

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure how he actually pronounces it, but that's my Australian pronunciation. Bob Pease. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So people who don't know who he is, he's another analog guru. There's a couple pictures. I have this one picture of him with... Actually, it's right on the front of his book actually, Troubleshooting Analog Circuits. Oh, yeah. It's like him holding this mess of wires and like all these...

Dave Jones: He's the one who came up with dead bug component working where you put an SOIC or any kind of really chip component on his back so that the pins hang up in the air. And then because it's air surrounding it, there's a lot better capacitive nature on the pins and there's no leakage at all. So you still have wires to deal with, but it's a cool technique. I always liked it. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I've done that on the blog. I've explained how the dead bug... Oh, you have? Okay. Yeah. I've done a demo on my GSM mobile phone blog. So if anyone wants to see an example of the dead bug, it's sort of like on a smaller scale how to use little chip scale packages and flip them on the back and put them on your ground planed board and stuff like that. So, yeah. Yeah, it's good for high speed. Well, yeah. Everyone thinks like that's messy. How can that work at high speed? But some of the best high speed stuff is dead bug flipped over and actually just stuck down onto a copper clad board, you know? I mean, well, there are limits to that. I mean, if you want to go to really ultra high speed, then you have to purpose design and get special Teflon boards and all that sort of stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but at that point, you're not even using real layout tools. You're probably using like microwave office or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, using microwave tools and, yeah, strip line techniques and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I like that too because it's kind of like a real world app. Like whenever you talk about like in a physics class or something like that, you always have these teachers who talk about like infinite plane of charge and all that crap. And it's like, well, that almost approximates it because you have this ground plane with all these electrons just kind of bubbling around in there. And then you just have a single pin connected down there. Well, there's no like potential difference any way you look. So, that's really good for circuits and stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so it really works. So, if you're into that sort of stuff, I'd highly recommend checking out Bob Pease's stuff and his book too.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Great book. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Troubleshooting analog circuits.

Dave Jones: And he has a regular column too that will – that's actually the thing I'll link you into. Electronic design. Yep. Although, I told you before the show, Dave, I really hate their site.

Chris Gammell: You really hate that site? Well, I didn't know he was still doing that. I used to follow it all the time when I actually got the magazine. I actually got the printed magazine. But, yeah, they stopped sending that to Australia or something like that. So, the bastards. The bastards. Yeah. So, EDN. But their website. So, I thought, oh, great. I can subscribe to Bob Pease's RSS feed. No. Nope. You can't. You hit the subscribe button there. Not only did the website fail. I tried again. It worked a second time. So, you know, that's okay. I can't talk. My website goes down too. Not lately, right, Dave? Yeah. But then they take you to the subscription for the whole magazine. That's ridiculous. I don't want that. I just want to read Bob Pease's column.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Is that too much to ask? God.

Dave Jones: Apparently. Apparently. They want to count you as a reader. You know, the Jones law. Well, yeah. The Jones law.

Chris Gammell: That's right. In the Jones's blog law. Yeah, exactly. They want to sign you up to say that. Yeah. Got another one. Exactly. Whereas only, you know, 100 people actually subscribe to Bob Pease's RSS feed. Right. Well, there isn't one, you know. Right. Yeah, there's no RSS feed. It's stupid. Yeah. They'll figure it out. Oh, the dickheads.

Dave Jones: Market economy eventually will figure it out and they'll stop getting advertising dollars or something. I don't know. Either way, we love Bob Pease, so. Or Pease. Yes, we do.

Chris Gammell: And EDN, they've actually admitted, I think one time many years ago, that was the most read thing in the magazine. Oh, really? People would actually flip through. Yeah. And I think I remember a lot, there was a huge influx of complaints once when they moved his column, I think from the front of the magazine to the back, or, you know, they moved it. You know, it used to be, I don't know where it was, but they moved it around and people went, oh, you moved it. Where is it? I'm lost. Because that's where they flicked to for the first time. It used to be in a common location to read his. People hate change. They're crazy about it.

Dave Jones: You really got to give a good case.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah. For changing something, exactly.

Dave Jones: Sad, but true.

Chris Gammell: Very true. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Especially... Yeah, very popular column. Oh, yeah. I mean, you think all those analog guys out there. I mean, they're old. They're, you know, they're set in their ways. They know their filter design. They're smart dudes, but they know what they like and they want it. Yep. And just a little tip out there for all those students. Analog isn't going away. I know this is kind of a self-plug, but a lot of the analog engineers are getting up there. So, just, you know, take a second look. You don't have to look at my site. Just look at your textbook, even. There's some cool stuff you can do still. So, you know, digital is fine. FPGA is good. I do that stuff, too. But consider analog. There's some cool stuff in there, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Dave does it. I do it.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah. And I've done a blog on can you be a jack of all trades kind of thing. You know, can you do hardware and software? And I came to the conclusion that I don't think – well, you can. You can certainly do both. But to become a real industry guru, I think you've got to specialize in one thing. Of course. You know, you can't be a world-class software developer and a world-class electronics – or a world-class analog specialist or ASIC specialist as well. I don't think the two go hand in hand, you know. Right.

Dave Jones: But I think there's a lot of – there's something to point out in there, and I'm sure you did in your blog, too, is that, you know, if you're just doing hardware, there's no chance you're just sitting there doing only hardware. If you are, you're not going to be employed very long. You need to know how to, like, talk to an A to D or talk to a DAC. Yeah. You know, like, there's no lack of any analog these days – or any digital these days or any coding even. I mean, you've got to do everything these days. Oh, yeah. So, specialize in one.

Chris Gammell: Your average design engineer has to do the whole works. Yeah. Yeah. They've got to do the whole gamut. Yeah. As I said, you know, you've got to know everything from, you know, embedded software, right, you know, simulation, modeling, even 3D CAD, component selection, which we've talked about, component engineering.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, board, PCB layout, all sorts of – you know, you really have to be a jack of all trades.

Dave Jones: Yes, you do. And if you're a new student or if you're a new hobbyist even and you want to get into it, don't worry about it too much. I mean, you'll get the – I was always worried about that when I was starting out, like, oh, my God, how am I going to learn all this stuff? But you get to it eventually. I mean, so, start small and you'll build up really fast. So, don't worry about that. Don't let that overwhelm you.

Chris Gammell: That brings me to a question I had, an email I got this morning, actually. I added it to the list. I don't know if you've seen it. Yeah, I saw you adding that. But it's from someone called Wilfredo. I hope I pronounced that correctly. He sent an email and said he wants to become a PCB designer. He's read my PCB tutorial and I presume he likes it. And, yeah, and he asked, how do I get started in the field? Are there any books, classes, you know, courses I can take and stuff like that? And I haven't actually replied to him yet. I can send him this podcast. Yeah. Yeah, right. You know, how do you do it if you know you want to specialize in something like that? Well, are there any books and classes? Well, not really. I mean, you can go for an IPC certification. I'm an IPC certified board layout. It's the Industrial Designers Council. They actually... Okay.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Sorry, I'm a CID. I'm a CID. Okay. Yeah, a certified interconnect designer. Really? So, yes, I am actually certified in PCB design and there's CID Plus as well, which is another level above that they've added since I've done mine.

Dave Jones: So, tell me, is this emailer, Wilfredo, is he from Australia?

Chris Gammell: I don't think so. Okay. Yeah, I don't know where he's actually from. He didn't say, which people often leave out. So, I assume they're always from the US or Europe or something like that. I assume they're from the US first because they know that...

Dave Jones: There's people in Australia, right? There's Aussies.

Chris Gammell: There's apparently people who live outside the US. Who knew? I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Yeah. It's amazing, isn't it? Yeah. The world exists out there. It's not just, you know, evil countries. Anyway, let's not go there. Okay. So, yeah. How do you get into PCB design? Well, there are courses like the CID, but it doesn't... You know, it teaches you a bit, but it's more about getting certification of the knowledge you already have. Right, and then you're going to get the actual experience later. Yeah, I think it's a week-long course or something like that. You know, and then you do an exam at the end. So, yeah. It's not going to teach you PCB design. Okay. You have to... It's one of those learned skills. You can't just read a book or take a course. I wrote that tutorial to try and get people started, and it's...

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: It's an art, really. It's a... Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. You know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, you think about when you're starting a board. I mean, that alone makes my head spin. Like, when you're looking at an entire pile of components, you know, you put them all into a schematic, and then you pull them all into the actual layout tool, and then you have just this pile of components. Like, and there's just, you know, little rat's nest, little lines going everywhere, and you're like, oh, my God, where do I start? You know? It's like, ugh.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. And you've got thousands of components sometimes, and you've got, you know, 12 layers on your board, and you've got... Right. And decisions you made at the beginning. ...what, 100,000 interconnects sometimes or something. Yeah, it's crazy. And all those decisions...

Dave Jones: Decisions you make at the beginning matter. They really matter at the beginning, even.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. And sometimes I still don't know how I do it. You know? I'll lay out a board, and it's got hundreds or... You heard it here first. ...or 1,000 components, and, you know, as I place the last component, it just so happens to fit into place, or I'm routing the last track, and it just so happens there's enough room left by magic, you know, that there's just enough room left. So your mind's doing something in the, you know, background that you're not, probably not fully conscious of, and you, you know, it just, you lay out these tracks like magic or like painting or something like that, and it just... Yeah. The entire thing comes together right at the end, and you're... And, you know, I finish a board, and I still go, wow, you know? Wow. All right. How did I do that layout? You know? I didn't plan that from the beginning. It just sort of took form, and yeah, and you lay down that last track, and you just go, oh, that fits. Isn't that sex on a stick, you know? That is nice. That's just magic. How did I do that? I'm brilliant, you know? And you pat yourself on the back and walk away and high-five yourself. Celebratory beer. Yeah. Exactly. That's good. And, yeah, so it's a bit of an art. So, really, it's one of those skills that you have to practice. And you can't just do, you know, basic hobbyist-level boards either. Well, you can start there, though. You can start. Well, certainly start there, but you can't just do a couple of those and think you're a PCB designer, you know? No. Oh, my God. You put a couple of through-hole components down and a triple-five timer on a board, and you've hit the order route button.

Dave Jones: I mean, 12 layers, and it's just like, oh, my... I've seen some of the designs that... I've seen some crazy designs. And you start looking at routing and, like, ground planes. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. It gets crazy. But I think for your... I mean, I think there are some programs out there. So, we shouldn't say that there's no programs. I mean, there's certification. I think in the U.S. there actually are some more in-depth programs. Or maybe there's just even requirements of, you know, you need an associate's degree or even a bachelor's degree. Right. I think there is that stuff. I've talked to our CAD guys about that stuff before at my company, and I think they have degrees, but I can't say I know specifically. So, we can look it up for next time, maybe, or...

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, I've been a full-time PCB designer before. That's one of my backgrounds, you know? Oh, okay. I've done full-time... Yeah, my full-time job has been laying out boards for companies. And, yeah, and a lot of those people... It probably doesn't happen these days, but a lot of those people would come from a drafting background back in the old days. Oh, okay. So, they wouldn't know anything about electronics at all. They come from a CAD, you know, a mechanical CAD drafting, you know, with old pen and paper and the ruler and the whole, you know, and the whole thing. They'd come from that background. But I think that's a dying art. But, yeah, basically, you don't need... If you're a... You can be a good PCB designer and not have any, you know, any formal training or anything like that. Certainly, that's not uncommon. But, yeah, to be a good...

Dave Jones: Well, at that point, the question is, how do you actually get started as a... Like, get in that first job, though? Exactly. That's the hard part.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's right. You've got to actually do as many boards as you can, and you've got to go specifically... There's two ways. Either go specifically after a junior PCB layout job, you know, go in there. And they might be looking for someone experienced, but, you know, that's just what they all say. So, there's not high... You know, very few junior PCB... I can't say I've ever seen a junior PCB design a job. But, yeah, don't let that... You know, don't be afraid if you're a junior or, you know, you've only laid out 10 boards or something. Don't be afraid to go for those jobs because they might go, oh, yeah, we'll pay you much less and we'll take you on.

Dave Jones: It's like doing that idea you had in one of your video blogs about going in there with even your hobbyist projects and, look, say, look, I don't have tons of experience, but I did really good work on these 10 boards I've already done. Here's my examples. You know, check these out. Ask me about these. And I'd love to at least, you know, get my foot in the door here and, you know, like, I want to do good work on your design. So, the enthusiasm and the showing off your work, even if it is simpler work, it's probably a good start.

Chris Gammell: That is an excellent start. Yeah. As I've always said, that's the best thing you can do at a job interview or something like that. But, yeah, generally, it's... There's... You know, there are still a niche industry out there for a... Just a PCB designer, be it inside a company. Companies will have their own layout guys. Their own layout guys and they will have... But there's external contract companies who, generally, they want someone very good, very productive. So, it's harder to get a job at those layout companies that just do, you know, turnkey electronics and, you know, stuff like that. Because you have to be very good, very productive. Lots of leading edge work, typically. But if you can get into a company where they mention layout, you've just got to look for the job description. And if they mention layout, go for that job, get some experience doing some industrial layout boards and then work from there. Once you've got that experience, then you can go to a specific job, really. So, I would recommend taking on a general job that has PCB layout as part of the job description.

Dave Jones: And if you want to look at really interesting and intricate layout guidelines, I know that there are a lot of chip makers will actually have... I mean, that's probably... Might be way beyond a beginner. But if you want to see how crazy you can get, I know Intel has layout guidelines because when you think about, you know, 2, 3 gigahertz for a processor, you have to have really stringent design requirement or design rules. Or DRC is sometimes called in layout stuff if you haven't done it. Where it actually, you know, you put in all these constraints beforehand. It has to be, you know, 1 picosecond or 10 picoseconds to get from here to there. And once you do that, it'll actually, you know, calculate the RC of your trace. And it'll actually check all this stuff for you as you go along. And then at the end, it says, oh, you messed up 10 different places. So go back and fix those.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. And that goes into field solvers as well, which is a more complex. They actually analyze the field around each trace on the board. Oh, that gets crazy. It can get very complex. And then there's... Not only is there an art there, there's an art into designing boards that actually fit a specific envelope inside a package. So you've got to know about 3D modeling these days. And, you know, all these new CAD packages, they all have 3D modeling of components.

Dave Jones: You've just scared him off from ever doing PCB design. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But, you know, it's certainly a viable career path. You can become an expert PCB designer, get your certification and just... And boards are only getting more complicated. As soon as you get that one stepping stone job, I found I basically got a job and I, you know, I did some high-out stuff. And that led to a full-time job, actually laying out boards. So, yeah. And I've laid out... I've lost count, you know, thousands. Oh, wow. So, yeah. It's, you know, I'd be churning out... I have not done that many. You know, I'd be churning out a couple of boards a week or something like that. So, yeah. Hell of a lot of boards. Wow.

Dave Jones: That's crazy. So, hopefully that answered Wilfredo's question.

Chris Gammell: I hope so. So, yes. It's viable. Go for it if you like it. But you've got to like it. And it's something you've probably got to have a bit of talent in, too. If you find that you're trying to lay out boards and you just have no concept. I know it's a very slow learning process. But if you find that you just can't really get your head around mapping, you know, keeping that visual map of the board in your head or something like that and stuff like that. So, it's one of those things not everyone can do. Not every designer can become a good PCB designer. Yeah. You know, your brain has to be wired in a certain visual way to, you know, remember.

Dave Jones: Start placing components early and everything.

Chris Gammell: Placing components and, you know, keeping all that up there in your head. It's like, you know, trying to write a program. You know, only certain people can become very excellent programmers. You know, they've got to remember, you know, 10 numbers in sequence or something like that. That's all it takes to program, folks. That's all it takes to program. 10 numbers in sequence. 10 numbers in sequence. They've done studies on that. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently.

Dave Jones: I guess they have. Yeah, you're right. Sorry. Yeah. I was like, what are you talking about?

Chris Gammell: I think it's eight, actually, if you can remember. I think it is a variation between six and 10 or something is the number of digits somebody can remember in one sequence. And if you can remember 10, you're a Bill Gates or something.

Dave Jones: So, and various other skills that you might need, like typing.

Chris Gammell: Yes, quite possibly. But there you go. It's similar in PCB design. Yeah. You know, you've got to have, yeah, your brain has to be wide. Natural abilities that kind of lead to that. Natural ability. Yeah. So, yeah, but go for it. The only way to find out is to start laying out boards.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, I noticed before you kind of didn't speak very nicely of the U.S.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I always speak nicely of the U.S. What are you talking about? Surely. Surely I don't say anything negative about the U.S.

Dave Jones: So, my favorite part of the, I don't know who it was out there. If you want to leave it in the comments, whoever it was, I thought it was awesome. In the survey, I asked, is there anything you'd like to see in the Amp Hour? And it said, Dave Jones saying one positive thing about the U.S. And I've decided I think we should have a new segment and we're going to turn it into Dave Jones says something marginally positive about the U.S. Marginally positive. Marginally positive. It doesn't have to be anything big.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Here we go. The U.S. has produced some good TV shows.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: We'll stop there. Which I like. All right. There you go. The Big Bang Theory. Oh, yeah. That is a good one. I'm a huge fan of the Big Bang Theory.

Dave Jones: I have a t-shirt of that. I love it. Yes. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And some movies, too. You know, a lot of my favorite movies, they're all, well, I think all of them are, you know, come out of Hollywood. So, there you go.

Dave Jones: So, that concludes the first segment of Dave says something marginally nice. It does. About the U.S.

Chris Gammell: Does that preclude me saying anything negative at all in the show?

Dave Jones: No. You know, you're free to say whatever you want. Cool. All right. You know. Yeah. I thought that would be a hilarious idea. I wanted there to be like intro. Obviously, we don't have any music yet. You know, we're still looking at that. No, I would not have any of that. I was hoping for like this boppy theme, like, Dave said something nice about the U.S. You know? Yeah. I didn't have time. Sorry. But, yeah, just had it there. So, you know, like, you know how they do that on like late night talk shows and stuff. I had a segment, too, where Chris could try and say something else, like an Aussie. I don't know if you have any words that I could try and say, but maybe for next time.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I don't. Oh, there's, I don't know. There's so many. There's too many.

Dave Jones: Too many. So, maybe for next time. Okay. Yes. So, it looks like we got about five, five or six more minutes, maybe. I don't even know. Five more minutes. What have we got? What's on the list? So, have you seen these Mindstorms? They're not called Mindstorm. Sorry. The Emotive. Have you seen these things? No. No, I haven't.

Chris Gammell: Oh, my God.

Dave Jones: They're so cool. They're like, okay, so you put these headsets on and they do like really dumbed down EEGs. Yeah. And then basically they map that and then they wirelessly transmit back to a base station. And this is for a kid's toy, mind you. And then you use it to control stuff. So, like, people are now hacking these things. So, because there's like a, I think there's an encrypted output from this actual headset. So, imagine like a headband and then there's like little sensors all over your head.

Chris Gammell: I just called up the photo here and it looks really funky and high tech. I love it.

Dave Jones: Well, there's a dumbed down one too where it's just on the side of your head apparently too. Right. But it's just doing, I don't know if it's just doing like a instrumentation amp. And if you don't know what, not you Dave, but if people out there don't know what an instrumentation amp is, it's good for measuring differential signals. So, if the left side of your head had 0.1 volts on it and the right side of your head had 0.2 volts on it, it might be able to read the 0.1 difference easily without a lot of interference and it would be able to cancel out the common mode signal. So, but I'm not sure exactly how they're doing it, but it is so cool.

Chris Gammell: It is. It looks great. Oh, and I've seen them. Yeah, they actually play games with it. Like they can play Wii game, you know, someone's Donkey Kong thing, you know, they play Donkey Kong and they just think about jumping and it jumps. How cool is that? I know. It's awesome.

Dave Jones: I mean, you think about people complaining about not having like, you know, flying cars and stuff, but like, come on, that's pretty close. I mean, like your control, it's not like full out control and you still have to have this funky thing, but I can imagine it eventually having it like built into a baseball cap and then being able to control, you know, a motor scooter that you're on or something like that. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. That'd be very cool. So, 500 bucks for the SDK.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You want, oh. Yeah, that's just for like a development kit, but there's toys that you can, there's been a couple of things on Hackaday and Make and all those other people where they actually, I think the simpler one, it's only like 130 bucks or something like that. And they drilled into it, they tapped off the amplifier line, and then I think they shoved it into Arduino and then wirelessly transmitted it. So, if I find any of those links, I'll put those in, but oh my God, so cool. So cool.

Chris Gammell: Now, if these companies who design and manufacture these, I'm not sure who it is, but you said for obviously some game, what is it? The Emotive Epoch or something. This is the one I'm actually looking at here. Now, if they were smart, they would realize people are doing stuff like this, and they would just put an interface on there because they'd sell a shitload more of them. That's for sure. And it can become the industry standard headset for doing something like that. And these companies just, as you said, it's got 128-bit, the signal is actually encrypted. That's just nuts. Why?

Dave Jones: Well, money. Money is the answer. It's always the answer, Dave.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but there's more money by not doing that. I know, yeah. That's my argument. And they're just not thinking.

Dave Jones: Unless there's something big, and maybe there's some kind of algorithm they have in there that they, you know, the management wanted to protect it, blah, blah, blah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but you can protect the algorithms and still feed out usable data. That's the thing. Your IP goes into your algorithms. That's fine. I've got no problems with that. Protect that. Pot it. Do whatever. Put it in an encrypted micro. But the output signal should be, you know, something usable. Yeah, that's true. That's true.

Dave Jones: Maybe it's so people aren't tapping off your brainwave and reading your mind. Did you think about that, Dave?

Chris Gammell: Oh, right. Right. It's an anti-government tinfoil hat thing, is it? Yeah, that's right.

Dave Jones: There you go. I've got mine ready.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Tinfoil for everyone. I'm going to have to do that on the blog sometimes. I'm going to have to wear a tinfoil hat.

Dave Jones: That would be such a good prop if you just, like, pulled it out and, like, slipped it on real discreetly, and you're like, all right, we're good. Absolutely. I'm going to have to do that, I think. So, that's awesome. That's good. I'm looking forward to that. I don't know. I think there's, I mean, there's so many cool applications, I mean, you could have for this thing. Even, like, I mean, people thought they couldn't get any lazier with a remote control, but what if it's just attached to your brain now, and you're like, oh, change the channel.

Chris Gammell: Change the channel. There it is. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We'll have people that actually, like, you know, when people, like, grow into the couch, and they have to, like, be cut away from the couch. Right. As soon as this thing gets put on the market, it's going to be, like, spike of those cases where 14 more people were cut out of their couches today.

Chris Gammell: Right. All those 500, you know, all those 5,000-pound people have to be removed by crane from their bedroom.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. That is disgusting.

Chris Gammell: And, of course, that only happens in the U.S., of course.

Dave Jones: Of course, yeah, because we're fat and stupid, right?

Chris Gammell: That's right. That's the stereotype. Ah, yes.

Dave Jones: Oh, dear. Oh, well. So, I think we're kind of wrapping up here, huh? I think we should wrap it up.

Chris Gammell: I think our amp hour is done. We have some good topics today. Oh, thanks. Yeah. Yeah, I think we covered some cool stuff. So, hopefully, everyone enjoys it.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I had some feedback about, like, you know, we're kind of... We were... And we were. We were drifting away from technical stuff, but I think we kind of touched back on that. So, that's good. I love it. I love technical stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, that's the whole idea of the show. We're going to try and keep it like that, but we do go off on tangents, so... Sometimes. Sometimes we rant. Yeah, you'll have to put up with this. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. What can we do? We can put disclaimers or something. I don't know. Either way. Thanks for listening.

Chris Gammell: We'll be fine. Thank you. Catch you next time.

Chris Gammell: Bye.