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- Dave has decided to keep his current office and update his internet.
- A Swedish broadband company showed the effect of crappy internet (because of the lag)
- The 3 second lag is similar to a trip for a signal from the earth to the moon.
- Speaking of space, Hackaday (and Supply Frame) is sending a design contest winner to space! It’s called The Hackaday Prize.
- Dave is a judge, Chris is helping to organize it.
- There are some parallels to the 555 contest; Dave wants to see an elegant solution, similar to Le Domineux.
- On the Virgin Galactic wiki page (a possible carrier for winners of The Hackaday Prize), it mentions that Richard Branson was scheduled to be on Spaceship Two, but apparently Chris was mistaken thinking this had already launched (only testing still).
- On the portable lab idea, talked about 2 episodes ago, Chris found a new class of carrying cases: Rolling Makeup Carrying Cases.
- If a tablet based scope was going to be included in the portolab, a possible option is the OSCiprime, an open source Android based oscilloscope.
- A more rugged and advanced option would be a handheld scope, like the Hantek DSO-1200.
- Chris will be at Maker Faire and SolidCon giving talks this year, prompting more discussion about a portable lab. If you’ll be in town, let him know!
- Altium is moving again, this time to San Diego. Their last move to Shanghai was when Dave was let go.
- Dave wrote a forum post translating press release.
- EAGLE is also making some changes; their version 7 of their software will be node-locked. This means more hassle for software owners when changing machines (though they will allow two machines to start with)
- Dave was once contacted to be a dongle designer. Heh.
- The chip world is seeing changes, especially at the top. Intel was not the choice by Google for their new server motherboard. Instead it will be the Power8 chip from IBM.
- Amazon is also hiring a chip architect to develop next generation server silicon technology.
- Cirrus Logic is buying Woflson, a competing audio firm. Who is left to compete with them for audio amplifiers and CODECs?
- One of the hardest things about doing a project (especially alone/with a small team) is handling the purchasing side of things.
- Lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System (that many vendors follow), means that there isn’t often excess inventory in the marketplace for non-commodity components.
- Chris never got his green belt he began training for, but he did develop a distaste for terms like KanBan.
Thanks to Danlockton for the picture of the Dongle Scrapyard
Steve says
Anvil cases are built like tanks, I’ve been all over the world with them. Heavy but great.
planofuji says
The Hantek 1200 doesn’t appear to exist. They have several model 1000’s but no 1200. The link to the Forum produces a link that just comes up in kanji? characters. Looking through the manufacturer sight leads to this page; http://www.hantek.com.cn/en/ProductList_1_1.html
ben says
Someone recently made an arudino travel lab, maybe some ideas there…
http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Triptych-A-Portable-Arduino-Workshop/
chinadave says
Seems like only yesterday
https://theamphour.com/the-chinese-clairvoyancy/
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/tisk-tisk-altium-moving-to-china!/
Alan “W2AEW” Wolke says
Speaking of keys and dongles – one of the more interesting keys for software I used was for the early DOS version of PSpice. The “key” was a 5-1/4″ floppy disk. The security “feature” on the key-disk was a particular spot on the disk surface where the emulsion was removed. PSpice was setup to attempt to write or read from this particular sector, and would only run if it failed on this particular sector.
Mark J. Blair, NF6X says
I purchased the full professional version of Eagle 5, and then purchased the upgrade to Eagle 6 when it came out. Now that they’ve announced nodelocked licensing in version 7, I’m seriously considering switching to KiCad on general principle, even though I only use Eagle on one system and I don’t pirate it.
EschatologicalEngineer says
I have been using make-up cases for my components, microcontrollers, small test gear (bus pirate, scanalogic, etc.), demo boards, fpgas, etc.. for a few years now. They work wonderfully for staying organized. Jewelry boxes may work too, maybe if you replace the spinning ballerina with something a little cooler..
Google Image: Makeup Caboodle. Thats what I use. I have two aluminum ones that keep me organized very well and a couple black ones fake leather boxes.
rasz_pl says
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3957
Looks like Bunnie has the ultimate travel osciloscope problem in his crosshair.
Chris Gammell says
Awesome! I was thinking about use cases for the Novena and this was definitely one of them
AlexandreJasmin says
You shouldn’t dismiss Butane irons. They do a decent job and can double as an hot air gun.
Roland says
C’mon! Average distance from Earth to the moon is 384399 km. Speed of light?
Sad!
Jason Lewis says
Whats the name of the Australian isp you mentioned in the podcast? the one that does fibre to office buildings?