#81 – Jersey Jeff Jactitation

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast, recorded February 6th, 2012, Episode 81, Jersey Jeff Jackditation.

Dave Jones: Welcome to The Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog. And this is Jeff Kaiser from MightyOhm.com.

Chris Gammell: Hey, Jeff.

Dave Jones: Hey, Dave. Long time, no here. I know, it's been a while. Well, I guess it hasn't been that long. We talked in December, right? I guess it has been. It's been a few weeks.

Chris Gammell: Right. Time flies. Is that, really? I thought it was much longer ago than that.

Dave Jones: No, we did that holiday-ish episode in December, and we talked about all the things we wanted.

Chris Gammell: Oh, jeez, that would seem like a lifetime ago.

Dave Jones: It's like ancient history. Yeah, that's right. Time flies.

Chris Gammell: Yes, and Chris is not here, of course. So there's no adult supervision today.

Dave Jones: And I mean, it's public knowledge that where Chris is, right? It's not hush-hush.

Chris Gammell: No, it's not hush-hush. He's on his honeymoon. He's in Hawaii.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I think he's on Maui. Maui at the moment? Yeah, I think he's on Maui.

Chris Gammell: Is he sending tweet updates, is he?

Dave Jones: It's funny. We've been emailing back and forth, and I emailed him earlier this, or no, last week, and I said, Hey, Chris, when are you leaving on your honeymoon? And he sends me back, and he says, Oh, yeah, I'm leaving on Friday morning, but, you know, I'll have full email access and everything, so if you need to contact me, I'd love to, you know, email you. And I was thinking, come on, man. You've got to just turn it off. You know, you've got to just go away.

Chris Gammell: Well, he did a whole blog post on this about how the big decision was not taking a notebook with him. That was love. He seemed so proud of himself that he was going to do it without a notebook.

Dave Jones: So he's probably sitting on a beach somewhere, you know, painstakingly keying in emails on his smartphone.

Chris Gammell: On his smartphone, yeah.

Dave Jones: Thinking, God damn it, why didn't I just bring my laptop?

Chris Gammell: With his sunglasses on and his pasty white nerdy skin there on the beaches of Maui, which have Australian sand. So he's no doubt sitting on Australian sand, imported from Australia.

Dave Jones: Really? I did not know that.

Chris Gammell: There you go. I'm sure we've mentioned it on here before, as we like to do about anything Australia gets a one-up on the Yanks. And, yeah, the beaches of Maui, the famous beaches of Hawaii, and some of the islands there, some of the beaches, they import the sand from Australia, north of Sydney here, Newcastle, perhaps.

Dave Jones: Wow.

Chris Gammell: So, yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So it must be good. Absolutely. Australian sand.

Chris Gammell: We make good stuff. We have the world's best beaches here.

Dave Jones: I have heard that before. Well, I guess, I hope Chris enjoys his honeymoon. Hello, Chris. Yes. Although he shouldn't be listening. So, Chris, if you're listening, turn off the podcast. Oh, boy. You're failing at your honeymoon.

Chris Gammell: When I went on my honeymoon, we didn't have, oh, geez, it was only like six, seven years ago now, but, you know, we didn't have smartphones back then. And it was kind of, you know, and you didn't bother taking your notebook, of course. That was ridiculous. You know, you might occasionally try and find an internet connection somewhere to send an email update to your friends and family, you know, about what you're doing. But apart from that, yeah, it was about it.

Dave Jones: You know, it's getting to the point now where I rarely leave the house without my laptop. And it's even if I'm going someplace in town or if I'm, especially if I'm traveling, I always bring my laptop.

Chris Gammell: Of course, but, you know, I don't travel much.

Dave Jones: But I tend to pack one anytime I'm leaving the house now because most areas have Wi-Fi coverage, you know. Yep. And especially if I'm traveling for any reason, having a laptop is such a nice asset because you can look up things to do. You can check hotel reservations.

Chris Gammell: Isn't a tablet better for that these days? I'm probably kind of a... Are you in terms of form factor and, you know, just for traveling?

Dave Jones: I guess. I don't know. I like having a real keyboard. And it's funny, you know, I was an early adopter of the iPhone and, you know, people gave me a lot of shit because it didn't have a keyboard. And, you know, there's probably people who are still upset about that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but you can get like a Bluetooth, one of those fold-out pocket Bluetooth keyboards, can't you?

Dave Jones: Yeah, you know, I've seen those and I'm not interested. I like being able to have it in my pocket. But if I have a computer, I really want a keyboard and I want the ability to run my own applications and stuff. So you won't find me with any tablets probably for a while.

Chris Gammell: So is this a real notebook or is it one of these netbooks?

Dave Jones: It's kind of in between. I actually... So it's funny, the trip that I just got back from, I actually had to bring my 2006 vintage MacBook, which weighs like eight pounds. You know, it's this hulk of a computer. And I realized how good I have it now because I usually travel with a Toshiba that only weighs about three pounds. And it's a great little travel. Yeah, you know, it's like...

Chris Gammell: 1.3 kilos, yeah.

Dave Jones: It's a netbook-sized computer, but it actually has, you know, a decent processor and it's got real memory and all this. And, you know, it's funny, I've been kind of shopping because I recently, with all the traveling I've been doing last year, I actually cracked the cover of the laptop that I usually travel with, the Toshiba. And I had to send it back to Toshiba. And, of course, it wasn't in warranty. They don't cover things like that, you know. And it was like 200 bucks to get it fixed. And I was thinking to myself, you know, Apple, for all the negatives that people throw around about Apple, they make darn good laptops.

Chris Gammell: And in particular, you know, it's funny.

Dave Jones: I've gone back and forth and I've kind of jumped around between platforms. And the MacBook that I've got, the old one, is pretty much indestructible. You know, I've dropped it three feet onto a hard surface and it's fine. But this Toshiba is kind of falling apart after only using it for, it's actually just a little under a year now. And I started looking at some of the netbooks that are out there, like the Apple Air. And the problem with them is the storage. You know, the storage is still like, you get 128 gigs of storage.

Chris Gammell: Why do you need so much storage on a machine that you're carrying around for travel?

Dave Jones: It's because I keep all of my design files with me. And I also keep all my data sheets and all my reference libraries and all that stuff. And that takes up a fair amount of space. Yeah, okay. It's pretty cool. I guess I could probably do without a lot of it. But I just can't seem to get under, you know, I don't know, 200 or 300 gigs. You know, you get a few videos on there, you get your MP3s, and you're, you know, you're up to 300 gigs in no time. So I'm waiting for the netbooks to catch up on storage. But I would love to have a MacBook Air. I just, I like the form factor. And I like the fact that there's nothing to break off. There's nothing hanging off or anything that looks like it's fragile. But yeah, anyway, I like to travel fairly light, but I will almost always bring a laptop just because I can't really live without one at this point.

Chris Gammell: Right. Got it. So where have you been traveling this last month? Oh, gosh.

Dave Jones: You said you've been everywhere to Timbuktu and back. Yeah, you know, I wasn't expecting to do so much traveling in January. But I, so first of all, after we talked on the last show, just a week or two later, I went out to Germany again for the second time last year.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's right. I didn't think you mentioned that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So I went to the 28C3 conference, which is kind of a hacker conference, I guess. It's run by the same guys that did the camp that I went to in the summer outside of Berlin. And this was actually in Berlin. And again, I was doing Geiger counter workshops. And that kit just has a mind of its own at this point. You're like, it's, I feel kind of like the kit drags me along to these things now. It's really, it's really funny, because I found myself in Berlin on New Year's. And it was like, how did I end up here? Oh, thanks to the Geiger counter. Here I am. So I did New Year's in Berlin, which was just amazing. You know, it's funny, in the US, they don't really let you buy fireworks of the kind that go up in the air and, you know, create explosions.

Chris Gammell: They're totally banned here in Australia.

Dave Jones: Okay, so imagine that, but anyone on the street can go into the convenience store on their corner and buy those.

Chris Gammell: Yep. So just imagine what that's like. Back in the 70s. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So Berlin, for as calm and collected as you imagine Germans being most of the time, Berlin erupts into total chaos around New Year's. And just having survived that and not getting hit in the head with a bottle or a firework or anything, I still have all my fingers. It was kind of an amazing experience. But, you know, it's interesting. I had a great time. But for me, actually, the highlight of that trip is I got back into the East Coast a few days later, and I happened to spend a few days in New Jersey. And I just did a blog post about this today. I had a chance to visit the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, which is awesome. So this is a laboratory complex in West Orange, New Jersey, which is kind of northern New Jersey. And this is not where Edison invented the light bulb, sadly. That lab actually, I think... Well, technically he didn't invent it, but... Oh, we're not even going to get into that.

Speaker ?: Let's not get into that.

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no. So this...

Chris Gammell: He was a brilliant experimentalist. He was. Yeah.

Dave Jones: He was. Edison did a lot of, I think, really amazing things. And the laboratory complex that's in West Orange is where he kind of created one of the first research campuses in the United States. So it was this huge, sprawling complex. And I took some photos and went on a tour. And I got to say, for people who haven't seen this and maybe are on the East Coast or maybe, you know, it's not too far from New York City. So if you were in New York, it's not that... I don't know how you'd get there, but, you know, public transportation in this country isn't the greatest. Yeah. But find a way to get there somehow. But it is an amazing museum. And there's a lot of really interesting artifacts there. But for me, the highlight is there's a machine shop that is breathtaking. Just absolutely amazing.

Chris Gammell: Is it like a recreation or has it got some... No, this is the real deal.

Dave Jones: It's got all of the original stuff.

Chris Gammell: Because he used to have famously had one of, you know, or 10 of every single substance and every single element in a million glass jars. And that's how he did his experimentation. He just tried everything. That's exactly, yeah. You know?

Dave Jones: So that's here. So there's a storeroom. And in the storeroom, they've got elephant tusks and hides and tortoise shells. And it's... I guess the famous saying is that there's everything from whatever to the eyeballs of a U.S. senator.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: And I don't know that that's actually true. But if you look at this place, it's just shelves and shelves and shelves of stuff. And there's a lot of natural materials. Because that's kind of how they did experiments back then, is they'd look for some natural material that they could turn into something else or use for some purpose. So they had to have a library of this. And Edison, you're exactly right. He was really proud of having this huge collection of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Wow. I didn't know this still existed. I've actually read his autobiography. Well, not his autobiography, but one of his biographies. It shows photos of this and talks about it. And I didn't know it was still around.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it is. You can actually visit it. You can. Wow. And it's the Thomas Edison National Historical Park. And it actually includes a laboratory complex as well as the mansion where Edison lived, I think, up until the time of his death. He lived in a mansion called Glenmont, which is just a short distance away. And the amazing thing is that this laboratory complex has gone through, I think, multiple restorations. And I think the most recent was in 2009. And it is immaculate. I mean, it is truly breathtaking. Everything's in pristine condition.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I'd love to. Now you're making me jealous.

Dave Jones: So it's like a time capsule. And the machine shop is one of these types that's got the huge motors in the back. And then there's leather belts strewn everywhere throughout the building, just waiting to grab your hand or arm or hair or something and going to all the machines. And I walked into this and I seriously just my jaw dropped. It was the most amazing thing I've seen in a long time.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: And so I took a few pictures of it. And they're actually I put them up on Flickr. And I've also today I finally I'm kind of behind. I started trying to catch up the blog. I've done so much traveling recently that it's really cramped my ability to write blog posts at the rates that I'd like to. But I finally wrote up something about it.

Chris Gammell: Why? Why have you been traveling? Is this just because you want to? Well, it's. This is off your own dime, isn't it? This is, as you say, in the US. It's actually.

Dave Jones: It's partially that. But it's also partially because of the Geiger counter workshop I did at 28C3. I could actually afford to go back to Europe again last year. And so this is just something I tacked on to that trip. It turns out that if you come back from Germany, you have to go through the East Coast to get to Austin, Texas. And so it didn't cost me anything to stay a few days. I've got some family out there. So, you know, I've been doing a mix of kind of business traveling for these workshops, but then also trying to get some fun stuff in. And, you know, I enjoy traveling a lot. And, you know, doing what I do, I have a fairly flexible schedule. And I really I don't usually take advantage of that. And so finally this month I said, you know what, I'm just going to take some time. And and that actually gets into my most recent trip that I just got back from last week. You remember you've been to Apex Electronics, right?

Chris Gammell: Yes, I have.

Dave Jones: In Los Angeles. Well, I went back last week to visit a friend of mine that lives in L.A. And we went on what we entitled Surplus Summit 2012. Oh, brilliant. Do tell. And we we visited not only the TRW swap meet, which takes place on I believe it's the last Saturday of every month. This is run by the guys that were from the W6 TRW Amateur Radio Club, which was associated with TRW, which is now Northrop Grumman. They have a ham radio swap meet. I actually flew out to L.A. just to go to this. This is this is the kind of the yeah, this is kind of the level I'm at with these things. So my my good friend Tony, he invited me out. And so we actually did the swap meet on on Saturday. And also we visited a few of the surplus shops that are in Southern California. And I think I went to something like six or seven different surplus electronic shops, three of them in L.A. and then the rest in San Diego. So I did this whole L.A. San Diego trip.

Chris Gammell: How do they compare with the if the Apex one, for example? Well, they're all they're all different.

Dave Jones: So the three places I visited in L.A. were Apex, which you know what that's like. CNH. So CNH surplus is in Duarte or Duarte, which is kind of on the eastern side of L.A. Right. It's smaller, but I would say more curated. So you get only the most interesting junk. Apex is kind of a lot of everything. And it's just it's a pile. Yeah, it is. It is. And, you know, your your fingers get dirty rummaging through stuff. CNH is more test equipment that might have a possibility of actually working. You know, just interesting little doodads. I picked up a couple radioactive gauges from aircraft as I was just browsing through what they had there. And then we also went to All Electronics, which is a catalog supplier in the U.S. I don't think very many people know that they have a retail store, but they actually have a retail store in Van Nuys, which is northern. Probably my knowledge of L.A. geography is not great, but it's kind of in the northern part of L.A. And they have more, you know, I don't know, components, I guess. Mm hmm. CNH is more kind of stuff, industrial stuff, like industrial gear. Yeah. And then Apex is just everything. It's hard to even describe. So, you know, it's funny. I've been visiting surplus stores for a long time, and I've I've kind of gotten into this thing where if I'm ever traveling, I try to visit the surplus shops in the area. And it's funny because as I've done this, I've become like I the first thing I do is walk in and just say hi to the owner. And these guys tend to be pretty interesting people. You know, you really you have to be a little bit of a nut to run a surplus electronics shop.

Chris Gammell: For sure. You've got you've got to be a character. Yeah, you do.

Dave Jones: And so it's fun to talk to these guys. And, you know, why did they do this? And how did they end up here? And and of course, all of them tell you that, you know, ah, yeah, eBay is killing us and we're not going to be around for very long. And and so what I try to do is visit these places. And then I've got a wiki page where I try to list as many of them as I can. And I try to keep kind of a directory because people need to shop at these places or they're going to go away. Right. So I try to get the word out about them. Yeah. And so I had a great time while I was in Southern California, just going from place to place. And I had some time to kill. And for me, this was kind of a vacation, you know, just to go out and look at this stuff. And it was it was I was on my own. And so I didn't have the wife to get tired of me rummaging around in components.

Chris Gammell: And that's what I had. I had like all of 30 minutes at Apex Electronics. She was on. That is not enough.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: With a grouchy look on her face, you know, that's all I had is the one run through. And that was come on, we're going now. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's I might be kind of a weird, sick fascination I have. But I just I get such a kick out of looking at old equipment and looking at old stuff. It's just, you know, because you see not only do you have this, you know, interesting power supply or multimeter or whatever, but a lot of these have, you know, logos of companies that are that are long gone. Right. Long gone. And you think about the engineers that worked on this stuff. I know. You kind of wonder.

Chris Gammell: They must have a huge history with a thousand stories to tell. Yeah. One of them. That's right. You know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And now it's just sitting in some. Here. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

Chris Gammell: They just vanish. Poof. Amazing.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it is. But yeah. So I guess I'm finally home. But it was. For how long? I'm actually here for two weeks.

Chris Gammell: The wife lets you do this. Is she okay with this?

Dave Jones: She is. And she actually.

Chris Gammell: Do you actually pay her off? Do you give her the credit card and say, here, dude, go.

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no. It doesn't take that. She actually travels a bit for her job. Right. And so a lot of the time it would just be me sitting at home alone. So it's like, well, you know, why not just go and do something fun? Yeah. But yeah, she's entirely supportive. And in fact, I have brought her along to some of these things. She used to come to me, come with me to the Silicon Valley flea market. And she gets a kick out of it, too, just because she kind of sees how I'm actually fairly normal compared to.

Chris Gammell: I can bet some freaks out there.

Dave Jones: Compared to some of the people that are that frequent these things. But, you know, I I love it. It's really great. And I got to say one one last thing about the San Diego portion of that trip. I visited my alma mater. I went to UCSD, the University of California, San Diego. And I had not been back to my university in a long time. I mean, probably six years at least.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: And my how things change. Really? Yeah. Do tell. It is. UCSD saw, I think, a big influx in money after I graduated. And the number of new buildings on campus is just absolutely amazing. So I go back to, you know, where I used to live. And it's almost unrecognizable. Wow. You know, vastly different. In six years. In six years. Yeah. Yeah. They've seen a huge amount of development over the past few years. And it's funny. You know, we used to think of UCSD as being kind of a more modest university. You know, not not very flashy. Not very, the facilities, especially the freshman dormitories, were not particularly good. God. No offense. Yeah. But now it's funny. You go back and you think, oh, wow. You know, when I was a boy.

Speaker ?: Boy?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Six years ago.

Dave Jones: Six years ago. Yeah. Things change. But the funny thing is, I went to where the engineering buildings are. The engineering, they're all kind of in the same area at UCSD. And the student chapter of the IEEE had set up a tent and they were trying to recruit students. And so I was there and I had my Geiger counter, of course, because I bring it everywhere.

Chris Gammell: How do, hang on.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: How do you recruit students? I mean, are there so, actually the answer, I already know the answer to my question. It's yes. But do so, do so many people just wander onto campus, right? I'm out of high school. I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm just going to wander from tent to tent and whoever gives me the best, you know, spiel, I'm going to join. I'm going to do that course. Is that, well, like, are there that many undecided people? No, see, this was sort of tense work.

Dave Jones: This was the IEEE, so the Institute for Electronics and Electrical Engineers.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right, getting them to join the society.

Dave Jones: So they want them to join the student chapter of the society. Oh, okay. And actually, I got to say, the way that they do it is free drinks and free food, which I think are a successful recipe to recruit students for anything. Having been a student, I agree completely with that. And so they had, you know, chips and drinks out. But they also had some student robotics projects on display and some kind of cool stuff. Right. So I immediately was attracted to these people that were out here. Nerds. Nerds, but the best kind of nerds. I mean, these are my people.

Chris Gammell: Is there a bad kind of nerd? I'm sorry. I'm not aware of any. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Maybe like the Unabomber kind of nerd. That's a bad kind of nerd. Is that even a nerd? Right.

Chris Gammell: How did you get Unabomber out of that? Unabomber. Was the Unabomber a nerd? I don't know. I don't know. I have no idea. I don't know. No, come on.

Dave Jones: Well, anyway.

Chris Gammell: It's sitting on your mind there. But if that's the first thing that popped out, the Unabomber.

Dave Jones: Yeah. This is like the litmus test of trying to figure out, so what does Jeff think about? Oh, goodness. So these guys, it was cool. Because I always thought it would be really interesting to go back to a college campus after having some experience and talking to students. Because when I was a student, I had no idea what I was doing, right? And I had no idea what it was like to actually be an engineer, right, and to work in the industry. Because you're sheltered from so much of that. Because your whole world consists of fellow students and professors. And professors are the weirdest. Like, professors are so far from your working engineer that your view of the world is so distorted, right? That you have no concept of what it's like to actually work in the industry. And the thing that I really got a kick out of is that these students were actually interested in talking to me. And so I talked to them. And it's funny because my friend Christoph comes over and he says, hey, stop corrupting the undergraduates. But, you know, it was funny. You show them something like the Geiger kit and they say, well, why did you make this? You know, what is this for? Like, why did you do this? Well, it was just for fun. You know, I just do this. And it's like, really? Really? And I spent probably an hour talking to these kids. And it was awesome. I mean, I really enjoyed it a lot.

Chris Gammell: Excellent.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it was just a lot of fun. And, of course, San Diego is such a beautiful, idyllic environment. Have you been to San Diego before?

Chris Gammell: I have been, but I only went to SeaWorld. I took a train and then a bus. And, yeah, it was part of my whirlwind business trip there. And I thought, ah, bugger it, I'll go down to San Diego at SeaWorld. So I didn't get to see much of the city itself. Yeah. Only from a bus window, really.

Dave Jones: I lived there for about seven years. And I miss it a lot. I think San Diego is a wonderful place to live. And it's funny, after being there for just a week, it was like, you know what? I want to move back here. It has this very intoxicating kind of effect. Right.

Chris Gammell: I've heard other people, I think it might have even been Jerry, refer to it as a hole or something. Like that. It has a reputation, doesn't it?

Dave Jones: It has a lot of reputations of various kinds. And I think most of them are not very kind. Right. It was a military town for a long time.

Chris Gammell: It's a military town, yeah. The Pacific Fleet's base there, I believe.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yeah. And I think that for a long time, military was really the only thing going on there. And there's still evidence of that. Defense contractors, if you drive along the highway, certain stretches, you can see some really interesting facilities that are left over from, you know, I don't know, 70s and 80s. Yep. But San Diego's changed a lot. And it's become a home for a lot of bioengineering and biotech companies. There's a lot of electrical engineering companies and wireless companies. I think there's a considerable amount of technical, I don't know, industry development being done there. You know, I know quite a few engineers that work in San Diego. And I got to say, the weather alone is, it's hard to really talk much about San Diego that's negative just based on the weather.

Chris Gammell: It's like Sydney, yep. It's a very similar climate.

Dave Jones: It's one of the only places I've ever lived where I could go outside in January after midnight without a jacket. I mean, where can you do that? I guess you can do that in Sydney.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Not a problem. So maybe I should consider moving to Sydney.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Or further north in Australia. Yeah. You know, if you go to the top end of Australia, you're sweating all year round. You know, that's the thing.

Dave Jones: And that's like Austin in the winter, it'll be like that and it'll be pretty warm. But then you pay for it in the summer. And in San Diego, you don't pay for it. It's just mild the whole year round. But anyway, enough about me.

Chris Gammell: Well, let's talk about me then. Because I might be, I might, it turns out, got an email yesterday, I might be in the US in April. Really? Yes. Yes. So.

Dave Jones: What for?

Chris Gammell: I won't say yet, I guess. Secret. No, it's not really a secret. I just, I don't know. It's not firmed up yet. But, well, it's, no, it's a, I think it's a pretty done deal if I decide to take somebody up on their offer and go there for a, yeah, it's a conference thing. Cool. Cool. Yeah. And I'm going, but it's on the, it's on the West Coast again. You know, I've always been to, that's where I've seen most of the US is on the West Coast. And there's probably, I'm sure there's tons of it I haven't, still haven't seen. But it's like, yeah, okay, West Coast again, you know.

Dave Jones: You know, many would say it's the best part.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, okay. But, you know, I never get to the central parts. I, you know, I've only been to the East Coast once. So, you know, it's, yeah, it's just, it's just the same, same old, same old, you know. Oh, going back to the US. Oh, going back to the West Coast. Yeah. Oh, got to fly into LA again. Oh, groan. You know. And it's, yeah, I don't know. So if you've got any good ideas for what I can do over there, because I'd hate to fly, because this thing's only going to be like two days or something. You know, it takes me two days to get there and back, right? Yeah. So it's stupid to go there for two days, spend two days getting there and back, and then only spending two days there, right?

Dave Jones: Because it takes you a full day to get there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it does. You know, the flight is 14 hours, plus you get another connecting flight. And by the time you've done that, it's, you know, it's like 18 hours or something, and to and from the airport here. It's an hour, for me, it's an hour's drive to the airport here in Sydney. You know, I mean, it's, yeah. So it takes you a full day to actually get there. So if I am going, I might as well, you know, take some extra time and do something. I have no idea what yet. Haven't even thought about it.

Dave Jones: Well, if you know. If anyone's got any good ideas. Yeah. I mean, can you say which part of the West Coast?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'll be up near Seattle. I'll be up in.

Dave Jones: Oh, wow. Okay. Ah. Ah, very interesting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's Washington State.

Dave Jones: You know, there are quite a few people in the Maker DIY community up there. I think all you've got to do is say, hey, will somebody show me around? And people will come out of the woodwork. Okay. I was in Seattle not that long ago, and it's a really interesting place to visit. And if you're there for any length of time at all, you can drive down to Portland, too, and see Portland. Yep. Home of Jerry Ellsworth.

Speaker ?: Home of Jerry Ellsworth.

Chris Gammell: That Portland's the slogan, right?

Dave Jones: Famous home of Jerry Ellsworth.

Chris Gammell: The home of Jerry Ellsworth. Brilliant. Great slogan. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I have to say, I mean, there's a lot of things to do there. Just, I mean, I could put you in touch with a local, and somebody will show you around, I'm sure. Sweet. It's a beautiful part of the country. Yep.

Chris Gammell: I have been to Seattle before. Okay. I actually enjoyed it thoroughly. It was one of my, even though it sort of was miserable and sort of, you know, in terms of weather, you know, because it's not known for its good weather.

Dave Jones: You have to embrace that. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's really part of their cultural identity. Yes. That's right. I think the weather.

Chris Gammell: It's carrying the umbrella. It's dreary. It's grey. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. But no, it was nice. It was one of my favorite US cities, so, that I've been to. Yeah. I'm just, you know, I'm just groaning because, well, it's always the West Coast. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, if you ever make it out to Austin, I'll show you around.

Chris Gammell: Excellent. Texas.

Dave Jones: Yes. Which is, contrary to popular belief, is a part of the United States.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really? It's why? It's not deemed part of the United States? Why is it not deemed part of the United States?

Dave Jones: I think, historically, Texas has tried to separate itself from the rest of the US, and there's definitely some cultural, yeah, there's definitely some proud Texans. Since I've moved to Texas, I've learned what it means to be a Texan.

Chris Gammell: Texan. To carry your gun around on your cultural belt.

Speaker ?: That's right, yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's right, yeah. That's right. Oh, boy. Scary. So, what do you think of the Obama thing that Chris and I talked about the other week? I know you just got back and, what? What? What? I haven't just heard of this thing. Yeah, he's talking about bringing manufacturing back to the US as part of his State of the Union. Rah, rah. You know, America's going to save the... You know, manufacturing's going to save America and all that sort of jazz. And, incidentally, I saw one of the Super Bowl ads the other night, because the Super Bowl ads are big, right? Everyone watches those. Have you seen it? I did.

Dave Jones: I saw the commercial. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's Eastwood. They actually got Clint to love Clint and to do an ad for Chrysler, you know, bringing jobs back to Detroit.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's right. It was an interesting commercial. Yeah, it's like, you know, America's been down and we've been, you know, hard times and heartstrings, you know, and... Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that commercial was 100% made of heartstrings, I think. Yeah, and I really... I turned... I was watching that little bit of the Super Bowl. I'm not much of a sports fan, but I caught the tail end of the Super Bowl yesterday, and I saw that commercial, and I turned to my wife and just said, really?

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Did they... Are they forgetting that the reason... One of the reasons why Detroit went down the toilet is... Well, the manufacturing... American auto manufacturing industry went down the toilet. It's because the cars were crap quality compared to the Japanese. Are they... Like, they don't say anything about that, you know? Our cars are going to be better, but they're just going to be made here. They're still going to be shit, but they're going to be made here, you know? I mean, that's one of the reasons the Japanese cars took over, is because they were lower cost. They were better quality. They didn't fail, you know, every thousand miles. And just better built. They just had it down pat. Whereas America didn't, you know, change any of their manufacturing processes, and they just slapped them together.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we made the Dodge Ares K.

Chris Gammell: Right. Is that a particular... Is that a well-known car?

Dave Jones: It's a particularly crap car, yeah. Okay. Yeah. And there were a lot of them, too. And interestingly enough, there's none of them left on the road. You don't see them anywhere. Okay, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know. So, is that enough to just have stuff made local? I think it's not. You've got to have quality. Obviously not.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Obviously not.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I really don't... Are they capable of doing it? I think they are. I think they'll get it right this time, purely because they will start up the factories from fresh, and they'll use new modern machines and techniques and, you know, manufacturing quality processes and systems and things like that.

Dave Jones: I think it's more than that, though. I think you have to have somebody with vision who is going to revitalize that industry. Who has to drive it. You basically need the Steve Jobs of the auto industry, right? You need somebody that's going to just rewrite the book and is going to be thinking far enough ahead of the curve that they're not just copying what the outside auto manufacturers are making outside of the U.S. You need somebody that's really a visionary, and I think that without that, and I guess you're going to have a boatload of government stimulus also, you know, because you could see that just completely going the wrong direction as well. You can't just pour money into this and expect that all of a sudden you're going to revitalize an entire industry and make it profitable and whatnot. I don't know. I'm skeptical. I don't know. I think it's going to take the right people dedicating themselves to this, and it's challenging. I'm not really sure what to make of it. Yeah. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Right. It's a tough challenge. Yeah. Fair call. But generally a good thing, though, right? Well, obviously. State of the Union, you know, is a big thing. And he spends five minutes talking about manufacturing and getting things back to, you know. Well, it doesn't make sense getting things made in China.

Dave Jones: Well, here's the thing. I mean, it's somewhat. So here's the issue. So you've got a lot of things that are being made in China. And for obvious reasons, the cost of labor is trivially small. I mean, you can hire. You have an unlimited.

Chris Gammell: Not so much these days, but it is a lot less. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, if you're not trying to just go to another country, right? Go to somewhere where the cost of labor is even lower. Yeah. Right. And you just keep moving. And the problem is that I think Americans expect a fairly high quality of life. Right. Oh, yeah. And everyone expects that they're going to own a house and they're going to have a car and they're going to have their two and a half kids and all this. And the problem is that I think our expectations of the price of goods are based on a system which may not work necessarily very well in the US.

Chris Gammell: It is unsustainable. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The people have to be willing to pay more. That's, yeah. Well, I think we talked about that the other week and that's.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. People need to be willing to pay more.

Chris Gammell: We've been brought up on these expectations of that. All these gadgets are, you know, giveaway prices. And, well, that is unsustainable. You know, somebody's losing out in that deal. Yeah. And whether it's a worker in China or somewhere else. Right. You know, I don't think they should miss out either. They should get the first world lifestyle as well because, you know, they're them and their family and everything else. And I. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's true. But then if.

Chris Gammell: You can't just keep moving it to another country. Right. Because you'll ruin that country. Right.

Dave Jones: But if that means that you can't have your iPod, then, yeah, that's a tough one for a lot of people. Is that if they can't afford their. If they have to put, you know, more money into their consumer electronics stuff that they're going to throw away in two years.

Chris Gammell: But the thing is, the iPhone is like 800 bucks or something.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's massively expensive. That's true. People buy these things like they're subsidized by the carriers. Right. But you're paying for this. Okay. And they're massively expensive. And, you know, why can't you make that in the U.S. and sell it at the same price? I'm sure you can. You just take a lower margin. It's not like they can't do it. It's, you know, it's not like they'll have to charge more for it if they make it in the U.S. Yeah. I think, you know. Well, good luck convincing. These real high tech items. Once they get to a certain high tech, you know, the bleeding edge level, I think it doesn't really matter where you get it made. It's just an inherently very expensive process. You know, the parts are expensive. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I mean, there's environmental concerns. I mean, you can't just. Yeah. It's really. You have to consider the whole end to end. Everything that's involved in the manufacturing process. Right. Yeah. It's not just about making the thing. It's where do you put all the crap that's left over when you're done and how do you treat the workers? And I mean, not to mention that a lot of these companies, the people that own shares in these companies, they don't give a shit. Right. I mean, they want maximum return on their investment. And if it's cheaper to outsource this into China, then that's a good business decision. Right. No, that's right.

Chris Gammell: And that's all I think about.

Dave Jones: And I guess I'm kind of a cynic. I just. No. I just don't know how. I don't know how this is going to work. I mean, yeah, sure. It'd be great to have more manufacturing in the United States. But.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Show me the money, I guess.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I know. It's hard to do. Anyway, we'll change topics. I heard. I tweeted this the other week. There was this. I'll sit in here using my notebook and all of a sudden, bang. You know, it's huge. Bang. And my wife heard it in the next room, right? Halfway across the house. And something on my desk, I'm not sure what, went bang. And then the power failed. It actually tripped the earth leakage circuit breaker. Right. So something, you know, mains-y kind of, you know, like some sort of switch mode, main switch mode power supply is something's failed in there. And it puts some current to earth and tripped the breaker. And for the life of me, I don't know what it is because nothing's failed. Like, I've got my brand new notebook. It was only like a couple of weeks old. My brand new notebook. I've got my speakers. There's printers. There's hard drives. There's routers and modems and VoIP boxes and all sorts of things. You know, plugged into here. And I have no idea. Everything works. So what do I do? Do I go and take everything apart? You know, do I go and strip down my whole, my new notebook down to the bare board to see if there's, you know. You know what I would do?

Dave Jones: If it was me, I'd go around sniffing around the, sniffing around it and trying to find the one piece of equipment that has that burnt electronic smell.

Chris Gammell: I have. There is no burnt electronic smell.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: And I'm quite attuned to that smell over the years. You get quite attuned to it. And there's no, nothing. But something went bang.

Dave Jones: I wonder if it was like a, one of those spark discharge devices that is like a surge protector, but maybe something arced over the ground.

Chris Gammell: They don't make noises though. They just spark. They just, well, that's what I thought, you know, it was a surge overload in the power box up the street or something and, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Something like that. But no, there was a definite, well.

Dave Jones: You don't have any CRTs in your office, do you? No, no CRTs. Because I, every once in a while, I used to see like CRTs would go bad and have a big arc inside the cabinet because they had, you know, 10 KV or something on the tube there. Yeah. That's a good one.

Chris Gammell: I know. What do I do? I don't know. I'm just going to have to wait until something fails, I guess.

Dave Jones: Maybe something has failed, but you just haven't, haven't noticed yet.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's exactly. It wasn't critical, you know. Yeah. It was the noise suppression. It was your smoke detector or something. Well, it was the noise suppression mains cap or something in there. Yeah, right. It was just spewing out noise, but, you know, it's, so it wouldn't pass the emissions requirement or something like that. Right, right, right. So, yeah, perhaps.

Dave Jones: You know, it's, it's funny. I've, I've worked in offices before and you always like, like it used to be when people had CRTs on every desk, there used to be these times when I'd be walking around, you know, the cubicle farm and you'd smell that smell and you'd know something bad is happening somewhere. It's not as bad as that one. And I used to be really attuned to it because I think if you work in the lab a lot, this is like your worst enemy is this smell, right? Yeah. Because it usually means you've done something wrong.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And I used to just go sniffing around the lab and you'd like, oh, is it coming out of the ventilation system? You know, where is it coming from? I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hard. Yeah. And it's scary too because some of these big power electronics can be a fire hazard too. So if something is going to go, you want to be there when it happens, right? You don't want it to happen late at night when no one's in the office. And it's funny. They should train dogs.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Like the blue smoke detecting dogs, like the drug dogs at the airport. They can train dogs to sniff blue smoke and they can tell us where electronics have failed or maybe are going to fail.

Chris Gammell: That'd be a... Fantastic. Did you know that in the submarine business, the blue smoke is called green steam?

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: There you go. Why is that? I have no... Well, because the submarines used to be all steam, you know, they have lots of steam and stuff in them back in the old days. And I don't know, that was the magic, you know, the... Yeah. Just the magic steam that made something work was the...

Dave Jones: The green steam.

Chris Gammell: Green steam. Yep.

Dave Jones: Wow. If I was working on a nuclear sub, I'd be really scared of the green steam coming out of anything.

Chris Gammell: It was green, Simpson style, right?

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's right.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I love it. Ah. We've got a shout out. Shout outs on today's show. The ninja blocks. Have you heard of these?

Dave Jones: I have not.

Chris Gammell: Oh. You must check it out. It is a Kickstarter project. Yes. Grown. But it's Australian. And it's Australian-US combo. Marcus from Hiddlebird Electronics. He's a company here in Australia. And they're teamed up with someone in the US. They've got a friend there. And they're designed these little ninja blocks. They are... It's an open source project, of course. And it's designed to connect everyday things to the, oh yes, grown time, wank word bingo sheets at the ready, the internet of things. But it seems to work quite well. It's... I'm not sure what the processor in it is, but it's like a little block and it's got all USB attachments. And you hook things up and there's this online web app where you just actually join. It's like almost like a LabVIEW kind of simplistic, you know, join stuff together. Okay, here's my sensor. And when the sensor... Here's the different actions on the sensor. Like if you've got a motion sensor, it'll be, you know, some sort of motion detection. So as soon as motion happens, then you can do one of these other things. You can Facebook, you can tweet, you can send a photo, you can, you know, upload the video to YouTube, you can do anything, you know. So you can sort of join all these social media actions to real world inputs very easily, you know, sort of drag and drop style. And it's all web based and it's a little block. It's a little hardware block.

Dave Jones: So what would you use this for? Like what's a good example of a place where this would be useful?

Chris Gammell: Oh, well, they gave one of the examples I watched in the video, I think, was that they had a security web based motion sensor. So you put it there. As soon as somebody walks in, it automatically takes an image from the web camera and can tweet it or can send you an email or can send you an SMS message or can do whatever, you know. And it's all built in. Like you don't have to write any code to do any of this. It's just, you know, it's all based in a web app, which they've written, the Ninja Cloud, they call it.

Dave Jones: Oh, that is pretty slick. Huh.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You have to watch the video to sort of get an idea of it. And it's kind of, it's like a little brick. It's like a block, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not sure what the deal is with the form factor and the little symbol, the little ninja symbol they've got on there. But yeah, but it's an interesting thing. And they're going to make them in Australia as well. Oh, wow. So yeah. Yeah. Very cool. And they've exceeded their target. They got 44 grand of their $24,000 goal and there's still a month left.

Dave Jones: Wow. Congratulations, guys. Go check it out. Yes. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Marcus from Little Bird Electronics. Well done. And his cohort in the US. Sorry, I forget his name. Hmm. But yeah, Ninja Blocks. There you go. So that's the, that's the Kickstarter project of the week. Because we always seem to highlight, that's where everyone goes. V and B, based in Australia, you still can't get, you know, you can't put a project on Kickstarter. It's US. Really? Ah, wow. So that's why they had to team up with this guy in the US.

Dave Jones: Interesting.

Chris Gammell: Is because, you know, they, you know, you've got to have a bank account there. You've got to have the, all your details and you've got to have a social security number or something apparently. And I don't know, something like that. So yeah, it's all too hard. So. Wow. Of course, America's the center of the universe. So yeah. You would think if you, if you're starting up something like this Kickstarter thing, right? You know, like the whole world can contribute money to these projects, but only US people can start them up. It's just retarded.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: It really is. I don't understand the thinking there.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Surely it's, I don't know. I'm sure there's some technical reason for it, but they could have overcome that. There's so many other things that, you know, you can get money from anywhere in the world. It's not rocket science these days. I don't know. I don't like it.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's too bad. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So that's the Kickstarter project of the week. Check it out. Ninja blocks. I rather like it. I thought I groaned at first when I first saw it and I, what? Internet of things, cloud. But you know, it's, it's not a bad little project. Check out the video. What else have we got? Uh, there's apparently make have a new podcast. Um, and Chris put this on the list. He's buggered off to Hawaii. Didn't bother to put a link to it. So I Googled, I foolishly Googled make podcast. And well, there's 10,000 pages of how to make a podcast. I don't know. So it's out there somewhere. Um, I don't even know what it's called. I guess it's called the make podcast or something, but anyway, there you go.

Dave Jones: Make has had a podcast for a long time. Have they?

Chris Gammell: Well, it's on the list for a shout out.

Dave Jones: Maybe, maybe this is one of those items that's been kicking around on the list for, you know, two, two years. No, you know, make has had a podcast for a long time and it used to be hosted by Brie Pettis.

Chris Gammell: No, this is hosted by Mark.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Frounfelder. Sorry. Frounfelder. Yeah. I'm sure I pronounce it. Yep. And also Steve Hoffer.

Dave Jones: Hofer? Hoffer? I think it's Hofer, but I don't know. I've, I've met Steve before. I should ask him how he pronounces his last name.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Right. There you go.

Dave Jones: Huh. Well, I'm sure it'll be good stuff. I mean, I used to watch the make podcast all the time.

Chris Gammell: So it's, I get the feeling that it is actually new. So in some way. So, yep. I don't know. Check it out if you can find it. Sorry. I couldn't. I'm sure I can with a more stringent Google search, but it was, you know, two seconds before the show and, hey, I better check this out. No, fail. Ah, well. What can you do? Oh, boy. Speaking of cloud-based development. More wank word bingo. Sorry, folks. TI, their MSP430 now has an online web-based compiler. So you can do all your MSP430 development via the web.

Dave Jones: You know.

Chris Gammell: You don't need. So you can be sitting there. So you don't have to take your full notebook, Jeff. You see, you can just take your dumbass tablet with your web interface and you can be sitting in the, sitting in the airport lounge there in the business class because you're a big business traveler. So you'd be sitting in the business class there. And you can be compiling your projects on your online browser. You don't need any app or anything on the machine. Yeah, except that. All your projects all stored in the cloud somewhere.

Dave Jones: I hate this. I absolutely hate this. And I hate anything like this. I am so against. This is a load of crap. And seriously, I don't understand why people get so excited about this stuff. I do not want to have an internet connection anytime I need to compile firmware. And besides, if I'm compiling firmware on a little netbook, it's probably not going to have the USB connectivity to my programmer, which I had to have anyway. You know, the software is the easy part. There is no way I'm going to be compiling MSP430 stuff on my iPad.

Speaker ?: Ever.

Dave Jones: This is a load of crap. I got to say, I don't understand why people devote so much time to making these things. And it started, I think the first time I really saw this was, what was it? It was that ARM-based, shoot, what was the name of that platform? So this was several years ago now, three, four years ago. One of the ARM companies that was doing ARM architecture did one of those little Arduino compatible dealies. And they had a total web development platform. And it basically meant that if they decided they didn't want to do this anymore, you lost your entire compilation environment, right? You were at the mercy of the people that were hosting your whole development environment. I don't know. This stuff drives me absolutely crazy.

Chris Gammell: I just don't understand it. I don't disagree. I don't disagree. There's going to be a couple of people out there who find it cool and useful, but I, you know, just give me a download and install it on my machine. But I guess the idea is that it's all totally cross-platform and then, you know, it's all that sort of stuff. But I don't know. Yeah. As you say, you are at the mercy of, you know, quite a few people.

Dave Jones: Yeah, you are. And companies that... I mean, it's just, think about trying to support that in the future. Yeah, I know. And besides, I mean, do you really want to have an internet connection anytime you're doing development? You know? Think of Chris sitting on his beach in Maui. And maybe he wants to compile some MSP430 code, you know? Maybe that's what he feels like. He has a Mai Tai and he's got his MSP430 eval board, as you would on the beach in Maui.

Chris Gammell: As you would on your honeymoon, yeah.

Dave Jones: And his Wi-Fi goes down. And now he's up the creek. He can't actually do his product development that he was going to do on his honeymoon.

Chris Gammell: And it just doesn't make sense to me. And I don't know about everyone else, but internet connection is so dodgy. I mean, at home here, okay, I've got cable. It works. But if you're talking mobile internet, sucks. Okay? There's... End of story. Okay? Mobile internet sucks. I don't know how anyone does any serious web anything via a mobile... Any sort of mobile connection. It's just... I don't know if it's better in the US. It probably is. But here in Australia, it's...

Dave Jones: It's the same here. It's typically pretty pathetic unless you pay a lot of money for somebody to have a nice 3G modem. And even then, you have to be in a fairly urban area.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Well, yeah, 3G, right? I've got a 3G phone and everything else, right? And it's shit. It's still shit. Even though when I've got full bars, right? I've got five bars on my phone. You know, full 3G connection signal. Sometimes it's okay. And I can surf a bit. But other times, it's just garbage. And it's just random. It'll just drop out randomly. It's just...

Dave Jones: It's crap. I'm sorry.

Chris Gammell: I don't know how anyone does any serious computing via a mobile connection. You know, there's... And that's what a lot of people said. A lot of people, when I moved in a new office and I was having all sorts of problems getting my internet connection, people said, oh, just get a 3G modem. You know, you'll be right.

Dave Jones: No way. No. No. It doesn't work. You know, I've tried to deal with 3G connections. And it just... It doesn't work. It's a nice idea. Just try to push in a serious amount of data. And typically, those connections will just fall flat. They're just not...

Chris Gammell: I have a hard enough time tweeting a photo. Like, four out of five times, it doesn't work first go. I've got to go, repeat, repeat, repeat. Oh, it finally got through. You know, I'm tweeting a freaking photo. Give me a break.

Dave Jones: Now, there's an interesting piece of news. I don't know if I see this on the list, but the Raspberry Pi, which I know you've talked about on the show before.

Chris Gammell: I think we have.

Dave Jones: The Raspberry Pi, apparently the first batch of boards is due out on February 20th. So that's coming up.

Chris Gammell: And have they met their, what is it, $20 price target?

Dave Jones: You know, I don't see any mention of price here.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. Oh, this is just the first early pre-production batch. I think it's hard.

Dave Jones: Once we get production in China, we'll get it down to $20.

Chris Gammell: But no, I think the first prototypes were over $100 or something.

Dave Jones: I wouldn't be surprised. Economies of scale really play into this a lot. And I'm not sure how many they're building for their prototype run. But, you know, their website still very prominently says an ARM GNU Linux box for $25. So.

Chris Gammell: Well, I don't know how confident they can be to meet that or what the volume. Because I've found, right, going through my stuff, you know, you're talking like through my various kit projects I'm working on. And, you know, and I'm looking at like a thousand volumes and things like that. And you don't save much over a hundred. Like you're not actually, there's no huge price drop. It's not like it's suddenly when you go from a hundred to a thousand, it suddenly halves in price. You know, you get a 10% saving or something. Yeah. The volumes have to be, I'm talking, you know, tens of thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand to get the really dramatic, massive price reduction that you think of when you talk of, you know, the volume production China thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So it's, yeah, I, so unless they're talking tens of thousands of units, I don't see how they're going to get that price down.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm not sure. You know, it's, that's an interesting phenomenon. I think the price savings depends on the component too.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it does. Yeah. Some of them just.

Dave Jones: The guys from Octopart gave a talk at the open source hardware summit last year. And they actually had a graph for each component in the bill of materials for a certain project. Oh, okay. It showed what the curve did as a function of price. And I forget what they said. It was something like, you know, hundreds or thousands of units was kind of the sweet spot for kind of a small scale design. Yes. Yeah. But I know that, yeah, if you're, if you're really going, I think if you're building a product and you're still ordering parts from DigiKey or Mauser, you're probably not.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: There's like a whole nother level of price reduction that goes on beyond that. You're still pretty small time.

Chris Gammell: For, for, for generic parts. Yes. It's harder for like, if you've got a specific part and it's like a specific high spec op amp or something like that, then, you know, you can't just substitute that with some jelly bean, you know. Yeah. That's right. That's right. And there's, there's some low factory.

Dave Jones: Some parts that don't go down in price regardless of quantity. Also, you know, I've got a friend who's building a synthesizer modules for ham radio. And he was telling me that the most expensive part in his design is something like 20 or 30 bucks. And the price is about the same if you order one as you order a hundred. And so in that case, the manufacturer just doesn't give a crap. You know, they don't, they don't care whether you're ordering smaller, larger numbers. And I think this is the kind of deal where you'd have to arrange a specific contract or something with the manufacturer. And even then, it may just be too much of a niche part. They're just not catering to high volume manufacturing.

Chris Gammell: I found that totally. I've gone to the manufacturer's website. Okay, what's your price for 10,000 pieces? Well, it's, it's all my, it's only a couple of cents cheaper than the price for a hundred. It's like, well, that's no price reduction. And that's the part you've got to use. I think they're trying to discourage you. You've designed it in. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's, you're forced, you're forced to go to the gray market and potentially get, you know, or the surplus chip market and, and potentially get counterfeit devices or something. It's just, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, people are actually surprised by that. People think, oh, that, okay, you, you jumped to a hundred units and your price halves. Well, yes, it can. Okay. But they think, oh, you jumped to a thousand and it, and it halves again. Uh-uh. No, it just, unless you've got those jelly bean generic parts, which you can get from Alibaba and, you know, something like that, or from the Wanang Lo factory in China and, yeah, it doesn't do it. So it's, it's not all it's cut out to be. So if you're looking at developing a project, people be very careful that you're, you know, don't just assume that when you go to a thousand units, your price is going to plummet to one tenth, because it may not.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's a. You have to do your research. That's an excellent point. I think that as you're designing a product, you really should be looking at those large volume prices anyway, even if you're just planning on building a couple of them for now. Yep. And it's interesting. You'll see weird pricing anomalies too, where the quantity pricing is, is higher than the single unit. And there's things like that. It's, it's really, it becomes part of the process, I think, for design. It's a huge part of the process. Designing for, uh, manufacturability, but also the economic aspects of volume manufacturing. You have to keep that in mind during the design process. Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: As I've been going on, cause I'm doing a series of videos doing my power supply, um, my power supply project. I'm up to eight videos now of showing the process of how to, how to do it all. And the design for manufacturing, you know, it's all part of it and stuff like that. And yeah, it's, it's, it's not easy folks. It's a big part of the design process.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Unfortunately, designing is, uh, Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Chris Gammell: Our, our, our is up. Make it snappy.

Dave Jones: Wow. Yeah. I know. Tell me about it. Where does the time go?

Chris Gammell: We've got five minutes left. Come on.

Dave Jones: This is the amp 90 minutes.

Chris Gammell: Extra capacity. Yep. No, please, please go on.

Dave Jones: No, I, I, you had a point and I completely forgot what it was. It's gone. I have no idea. Gosh.

Chris Gammell: Well, I'll do one. I'll do one last news item. Um, uh, there's going to be a documentary on the 65. Oh, two. Uh, we mentioned this the other week on the show, how they're selling. You can now buy the 65 Oh two chip through mouser in a dip 40 package again. Fantastic. Right. For those old school people. Um, apparently someone is doing a doco on it. So, um, check it out. Um, they're got, apparently it's going to take them a couple of years or something. I assume they're going to get, uh, Chuck Piedl. Is that the guy who developed the, yeah?

Dave Jones: I believe so. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. If my history serves me correctly. Um, and, uh, yeah, I assume they're going to interview him. It's the whole, how it came about and things like that. So that'll be rather interesting. I think.

Dave Jones: Yeah, definitely.

Chris Gammell: Cool stories in there.

Dave Jones: I'm, I'm really curious who is still using the 65 Oh two and why, why they still want to use the 65 Oh two. If it's not just nostalgia, you know, is it, is it just because it's cool to use this old

Chris Gammell: processor or is there something, is there something it does legacy designs? There'd be a few massively legacy designs in the military or something somewhere, you know, some old bit of gear, which, you know, it's just easier to maintain it than it is to redesign it from scratch. So, you know, but it's very niche. I mean, yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, I saw there was a bunch of discussion in the comments for the last show about the 65 Oh two and guys saying like, Oh yeah, they never stopped making those. They've been making 65 Oh two's all this time. You know, if, if one of those guys can tell me why, why I would consider a 65 Oh two for any design I was doing, I'd be really interested to hear.

Chris Gammell: Well, you wouldn't. And I don't think there is a, is a correct answer to that. It's just, well, the only answer would be nostalgia. That would be it. Right.

Dave Jones: We could design the Commodore 64 thousand.

Chris Gammell: Oh boy. But then it's not true to the original, right? Yeah. You can't just upgrade it. Well, what's the point? Upgrade enough.

Dave Jones: If it's not the original, I think the C64 used a 65 10 anyway. It wasn't, it's not quite the same thing.

Chris Gammell: That's why we talked about the micro B computer, the, the, the Australian micro B. Um, they, they, they re-spun that a guy started the company back up again in Australia and he got all the original PCBs that were left over from the original run. And he did a run of kits of the, of the original micro B computer, which you've probably never heard of, but, uh, it's famous here in Australia. One of the very early 1980s vintage, uh, personal computers, which was very popular in schools here. And, um, and, but he designed as well as releasing the same kit, he designed this massive add-on board with a cold fire processor and, you know, all sorts of like, and it's like, why did you do that? Just release the 65, you know, the, the, the kit with the Z80, sorry, it was a Z80 base. Ah, okay. Just release the pure kit for nostalgia. But he had this, you know, it was marketing as this add-on board was the duck's guts, you know?

Dave Jones: Well, I think, I think, I, I think I said this on the, the last show, uh, that the micro B came up, but it's because if you ever go back and use an old computer, they're actually not very good.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no, no. Shit. No, no.

Dave Jones: You know, you, you, it's, it's, the novelty wears off about five minutes into using it. When you realize that you have to type out a basic program in order to do anything and you're like, ah, yeah. And then you can't save it, you know. Yeah. And you couldn't save it. Yeah. And there's no hard drive and you've got to dig out floppies and the floppy doesn't work and you've got to.

Chris Gammell: Cassette.

Dave Jones: Oh, see, I, I, I missed the cassette. I missed the cassettes. I, I was a little bit too young. Uh, my first computer had a floppy drive and, and I just remember, uh, the C64 floppy and those like shotgun noises it would make or machine gun noises it would make as that's reading the disc. Uh, and then you'd have readers and you'd have to pull the disc out and blow on it and all this. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I mean, those were like the good old days, quote unquote. Right.

Chris Gammell: But absolutely.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anybody now wants an SD card reader on their, their, that's right. At the minimum. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. All this stuff. Uh, groan.

Chris Gammell: Well, thank you very much, Jeff. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Thanks for joining us. Having me on the show. It's always a pleasure. And, uh, I guess I'll be here. You will be on next week. Yeah. I'll be here next week.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's the plan anyway.

Dave Jones: Double, double dose.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We're not sure if Chris is, Chris said, oh, I might be back. I don't know. It depends on the jet lag, you know. Yeah. He only went to Hawaii, dude. Get over it.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Uh, well, I'll, I'll have to make sure that he's, he's, uh, he's not on the show next week.

Chris Gammell: Anyway, you'll definitely be here next week. I'll be here next week. I'm assuming. Got nothing better to do. Yeah. And, uh, we both had nothing better to do. You're, you're just gallob at around the world and I'm just making silly videos. I mean, what? We don't actually work for a living, do we, Jeff?

Dave Jones: Well, yeah. It depends on what you call work.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Oh boy. Anyway.

Dave Jones: See you next week. All right. Thanks. Bye. Bye.

Chris Gammell: We'll see you next time.