The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

A weekly show about the trends in the electronic industry.

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#122 – Processors, CEOs & Soldering irons – Plentiful Perfunctory Programs

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For those interested, there is also now a transcript available for episode 122.

 

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Comments

  1. I dislike the whole idea of web based stuff. Maybe because i often suffer the horrors of an unstable intenret connection. Typing a email in gmail, internet drops, and my typing is gone. If that would happen to a pcb design i spend hours on i would impale my monitor with a keyboard

  2. I was at the electronica with a T-Shirt, but I was treated very well by everybody.
    The secret is having a bunch of professional looking business cards.
    Pathway Electronics and E-Tech Management are good fake company names 😉

    • I was at Electronica in the late 90s.
      This is an electronics show for the trade – no doubt about. I was in the industry as a distributor in Australia. We had appointments lined up for the four days of the show. No just turning up and chatting. These appointments were to discuss distibution deals etc.
      The deals done at the show are many thousnds of dollars (if not millions). The hobbysit turning up is really of no interest to the exhibitors. Its not a hobbyist show.
      On a side note. What most people do not see is what is behind the big stands. Food, wine and entertainment. All for free if you have an invitation.
      I’m telling you there are big dollars involved.

  5. I have seen a consumer treadmill with a touchscreen. our company has one and has taken it apart; it does appear to have a commodity tablet stuck into it. It is marketed as having Android in it. I think manufacturers already buy LCD panels as a drop-in component so this is really just taking the abstraction layer and moving it up one level. Maybe it is not as revolutionary as it first seems.

    Regarding the scopes with touchscreen modules, Dave mentioned you will always be close to it but that ignores field service applications. Sometimes you have to take the scope to the device under test and it has to be within the length of the probe cables. In that case it can be nice to have remote displays to avoid crawling on the floor or in some other tough spot.

    I do agree that knobs and buttons can easily be superior interfaces to touchscreens and sometimes there is no substitute.

  6. I am an computer engineering student in Estonia focused on space electronics. In the Space technology basics course they told something like every 1€ our country gives away to space industry gives back 10€ .

    And I found easy to use CAD program for simple modelling – HeeksCAD. http://heeks.net/

  7. I’m so glad I purchased the old Hakko FX-888. I’m sure the knob in it will outlast the LCD/pushbutton switches coming with the digital model.

  8. I wouldn’t mind to have several devices w/o screen if I can share that screen (or dual screen) between them. Some nice UI (touch or mouse based) where you can arrange multiple widgets across multiple screens — beauty.

    Why I just can’t buy DAQ card with
    – 4 analog channels
    – and 16 digital channels
    – and 1 or 2 arbitrary function generators
    – and reasonable and extensible software
    which I can connect via Thunderbolt to my 27” iMac ? (SSD hard drive /Thunderbolt/quad core CPU can easily handle 4 channels @ 2GSPS… )

  9. Hello All, Dave do you remember the version of the 123D that works like supposed to do? maybe we can find it on the net, I am also interested.
    Thank you

  10. On my desk is a Tek MSO2014 that runs some bizarre, who the hell knows which, operating system and it takes about a minute to boot. Boot an oscilloscope??? Hmmm must be some sort of progress.

    When I went to a electronics show recently, a bunch of the Tek scopes were using Windows to run the UI (rummage rummage, why is my circuit not working? blue screen)

    At home I have a Tek TWD120 headless scope, it has a SCSI interface to a PC where your monitor is the display and your mouse works the “knobs”. Nice scope IF microsoft doesn’t change the operating system and your PC doesn’t die and you can’t get a compatible SCSI board for the replacement. Now I have it attached to a “boat anchor” computer that can’t be hooked to the network or Update Tuesday kills the tool.

    I would rather have a scope that doesn’t advertise that it has an operating system at all. I don’t want some third party updating my tool into oblivion.

    Adding lots of features might make the device easier to sell, but they have to be done correctly to begin with. On my desk is an Agilent U1253B meter, it has a boot tone that has the feel of a child’s toy, a 20 minute battery life, and you can’t use it while it is charging (but it does charge in 3.5 hours – wait – 14 minutes but the battery isn’t actually charged). This is not your father’s HP meter…unfortunately.

  11. Love the episode, as I always do. Only thing I’ve got to point out is that Dave seemed to love that Fluke DMM that had a removable screen… I think that has as much use as a scope with a removable screen. Just my opinion.

  12. I appreciate this show a whole lot, but I think there needs to be a little more of an upbeat message in general. I think one of the problems is that lately these large problems seem so damn crushing, so damn huge that people don’t attempt them. I am part of a group at Boston University (burocket.org) working on a space bound hybrid rocket motor. We are all undergraduates, but we are trying really hard to make advancements in propulsion technology and provide microgravity for science experiments in the immediate future.

    I know that its not quite going to get us to a Mars colony, but it is a step. I am sorry, but hearing on this show year after year that things are getting worse is certainly not making things better.

    with respect,
    Christopher Woodall (happyrobotlabs.com)

  13. Love the shows, just recently discovered this and Dave’s videos (Which is what led me to the amp hour). I’m starting to tinker around with electronics a lot more, I’m software developer by trade and I find all this very valuable.

    As far as web based software, one advantage when done right is that I can sit down at virtually any machine that runs a modern browser and use the software without having to install anything and thanks to cloud storage (I want to know who came up with cloud, hate marketing) I would potentially have all my files anywhere I go.

    Emerging trends/standards also make it viable to have things like a cached copy of the app running locally when not connected and have it sync data onces connected. The browser is really turning into a host for what used to be traditionally referred to as ‘desktop’ apps. So even if you were to fire up the app with no internet connection you could still use it. Perhaps offer an option to sync you design files etc locally so you always (well nearly anyway) have your files on hand.

    The goal though is that it needs to be transparent. You shouldn’t have to freakin care where it’s running, it should be intuitive, full featured and just freakin work. The last part seems to be the hard part…