The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

A weekly show about the trends in the electronic industry.

You are here: Home / Radio Show / #118 – Kickstarter, Open Source RC & Modelsource – Facinorous Financial Foulness

#118 – Kickstarter, Open Source RC & Modelsource – Facinorous Financial Foulness

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

For those interested, there is also now a transcript available for episode 118

 

 

This week Chris and Dave get talking about the intersection of money and electronics and all the craziness that can ensue.

  • Yes, Chris still has far too many web sites, many of which are dormant.
    • Chip Report TV is going strong, there’s a new one available.
      [tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uOmNP-J4e8[/tube]
    • ChrisGammell.com just got a refresh, though is the same content.
    • Engineer Blogs is dying, much to Dave’s disappointment.
    • Chris’s other podcast, The Engineering Commons, is going strong and has new episodes every 2 weeks.
    • And if that weren’t bad enough, Chris is talking about starting a kickstarter! What a nutjob.

 

Thanks to espensorvik for the picture of the money, phone and coke.

Comments

  3. Regarding the OMAP being bought by TI there might be something in it for Amazon.

    Basically the SoC market these days are being dominated by 4 big platforms that are in most smartphones, tablets and TV’s. Samsung Exynos, Nvidia Tegra, TI OMAP and Snapdragon by Qualcomm. Even though concrete numbers are hard to come by most people would agree that OMAP is the least successful.

    So maybe Amazon sees a potential opportunity to buy this line. Not the Fab per se but the IP for the chipset and like Dave said have more control over their hardware and tweak to their needs as they see fit.

    **************

    If I had the money then i would defiantly use to fund interesting ideas but also a part of me wants to start a Thomas Edison type of lab where he had every element or compound possible but only in my case with electronics.

    *****************
    Also for some reason the the link for the Myer Biggs does not work so you have to go the homeapge of the website and click on the Jung Test.

  5. Open Source RC project :

    – was NEVER open source. There was no source code, no design files. The only open source thing there was the logo 🙂
    – They tried selling UNLICENSED transmitters on US market (wrong band, no CE, no FCC)
    – They got kicked out of kickstarter, moved to indiegogo, got kicked from there as well, finally made their own “kickstarterlike” website.
    – whole thing was basically repackaged Chinese $50 Tabled he (doubt there was more than one guy there) tried selling for ~$300 alone. Additional bridge hardware talking to unlicensed transmitter and pots/buttons was another $400.
    – there was NEVER a working prototype. Even his kickstarter videos didnt show any working hardware, not even a working mockup, only his talking head and a ‘vision’ of what could be possible. Even his website has no pictures of that tablet displaying UI.

    It was “hey I have an idea, people will pay me so I can research it and maybe make a product” at best, SCAM at worst.

    A123 are NOT in the Volt. They didnt win the contract. Tesla uses commercial 18650 laptop cells.
    This is why A123 failed – they had no customers. Some genius decided to get a huge contract with Fisker, and they turned out to be a tax/DOE loan scam.

    Chris
    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/En-us-schadenfreude.ogg
    thats a nice word to know, thanks!

    Multilayer pcbs and routing:
    Lattice has even nicer app note: http://www.latticesemi.com/lit/docs/package/tn1074.pdf
    + I found this quite educational: http://blogs.mentor.com/tom-hausherr/
    I was interested in a project involving 121 pin 0.8mm pitch BGA chip (USB 3.0 IO chip from Cypress). But routing that on a hobby budget killed the idea (4 layers is minimum :(, pcb houses I looked up could barely make a board at >100 Euro/piece )

        • 0.5mils for 8mil pitch? That doesn’t sound right to me.

          0.8mm pitch is roughly 31.5mil pitch, and that datasheet you link suggests 9.5mil pad size, which leaves roughly 22 mils between pads. That’s enough enough room to fit 7 mil traces/spaces (7 mil x 3) without issue. It should be totally doable.

          • To add to what I noted above, I just checked for vias. OSH Park does 13mil drill size with 7mil annular ring, which works out 39mil via diameter including annular ring and spacing.

            The diagonal pitch is 44.5mils, and subtract 9.5mils for pad size, and that leaves you with 35mils room for vias. If I did my math right, it seems that while OSH Park specs have no trouble fitting traces between those pads, there isn’t enough room for vias.

            • Yeah, it’s true. 0.8mm BGA probably isn’t possible with OSHPark as it currently stands.

              Are a lot of people doing 0.8mm BGA? I’m nowhere near the fab’s limits, so I can definitely offer a tighter spec service.

              What would be needed for 0.8mm BGA? Would 10 mil drills with 4 mil annular ring do it?

            • ..And I guess the logical followup:

              Are there a lot of chips that are only available in 0.8mm BGA? Is the lack of a cheap PCB service that can make boards for these parts keeping you from making cool stuff?

              If this is a big limiting factor to a lot of makers, I’d be happy to offer tighter specs to support it, but if there are alternatives (like, if most 0.8mm BGA parts are also available in 1mm BGA), then I’ll keep things the way they are.

              • Not many right now, but a good chunk of processors and FPGAs limit how many families you can get at with QFPs and >.8mm BGAs. The only other problem is that it’d require more layers, possibly 6+. Personally I’ve never seen 4 layer BGAs, but they might be possible.

        • OurPCB.com will do 4/4mil 4 layer boards for about $250 setup and peanuts per board (a dollar per square inch or so)

          I just did an FX3 design, I ended up using 6 layers for easy routing, 4 layers may be possible with a lot of effort.

      • Speaking of OSHPark, when is Laen going to be on the show?

        And yes, even for many hobbyists, 0.8mm BGA is cropping up. The smaller rules also make 1mm BGA much easier to deal with.

    • Can you link to his Kickstarter video and project if still there?
      He seems to claim that Kickstarter was never an option because he is not a US citizen.

  6. Fun thing I just noticed. That Myers Briggs test page that is linked suggests that “software engineer” is INTP-associated, and “electrical engineer” is INTJ-associated.

    The degree I went with in university, was halfway between the “electrical engieneering” and “software engineering” degrees. I’ve taken Myers Briggs tests a few times in the past, and as it turns out half the time they say I’m INTP and half the time they say I’m INTJ.

  7. Before Dave gets too confident about Apple never buying ARM… ARM was founded as a partnership between Acorn, VLSI, and, yes, Apple. At the time they needed a powerful and efficient processor for the Newton. According to Wikipedia, their holding dropped to 14.8% by 1999, down from 43%. They don’t need any more than that really.