Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
- Chris recently put in his two-week notice and will soon be completely self-employed. This is based upon the success of Contextual Electronics so far and Chris wants to spend more time focusing on it for those who signed up. Thank you to everyone in The Amp Hour audience who has been part of it!
- Australia has decided to ditch automotive manufacturing and all the add-on industries it supports. Holden, Ford and Toyota are all pulling out. All cars will be imported from now on.
- High complexity manufacturing should be less and less of a labor issue these days, as factory automation continues to increase. Dave and Chris recalled the video of the Tesla factory.
- Dangerous Prototypes and other fun hacker types are setting up a soldering workshop and market tour before the Shenzhen Maker Faire.
- Digikey also gave tours of their gigundous facility, in a town with no unemployment. They are isolated logistically but make it work.
- It was surprising seeing how much manual work is still involved in their operation. Chris and Dave propose having stickers of the face of the person that packs and ships your order.
- Kiva systems, recently purchased by Amazon, helps with warehouse automation by moving shelves to the pick and pack people.
[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KRjuuEVEZs[/tube] - Though robots aren’t taking over, TI, Intel and IBM are all slashing headcount.
- Dave is working on a precision current source as part of the test jigs for the thousands of uCurrent Golds being produced.
[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2ohz8DyJoQ[/tube] - The Bench BudEE (the project being built in Session 1 of Contextual Electronics) has a similar current source output, but lower precision.
- There is a new 6-in-1 Tek scope that will be released later this month (and you can win one). Dave was able to find some info with some strategic Googling. Chris thinks this is better marketing than they could have ever designed!
- Dave is making a video about some behind the scenes Kickstarter logistics.
- Mike Harrison (of Mike’s Electric Stuff and former guest of the show) is working on a crazy LED project. The manufacturing of those long PCBs seems treacherous!
- Chip of the Week! 2 Weeks running! The ADuCM350 is an all-in-one medical device chip, meant to measure, process and communicate body data. It’s a crazy amount of peripherals in one chip.
- Bill Nye debated a crazy person. While the debate dragged on a little and Bill wasn’t as aggressive as Dave would have liked, Bill used it as a platform to talk about he importance of science education. Our favorite quote: “We NEED scientists, and especially engineers, for the future. Engineers use science to solve problems and MAKE things.
- We may have an Android app soon, as part of our LibSyn account! We’ll update this page and the subreddit with more info.
- We forgot to mention it on the show, but Hank Zumbahlen, prolific Analog Devices applications engineer will be on the show next week! Get your questions in here!
Thanks to Marsmett Tallahassee for the Plan B picture
Well, if I need someone to not finish my projects for me, I know who to turn to.
Hey Chris, congratulations.
I have this nagging feeling that, since the big Bush triggered meltdown, a lot of people down there are waiting for the big companies to come back and rehire them. And here’s you being an entrepreneur! I can tell you that you will love being able to not work on some dork’s pet project, and you will see new stuff all of the time, and you don’t have to support it for years and years. Doing the books is a bit of a drag, and not getting paid by people like DTI in Edmonton sucks big time ($70K really messes with everybody’s Christmas).
As for your dream of going around and giving lectures? Well, your government peed in that pool. For foreigners to come to the US and give lectures, they have to be paid by someone back home. A privateer (arrr) like yourself needs a Beiber Rockstar visa, because you be taking jobs away from our ‘merican boys. Well, don’t reciprocity suck? For a long time now, ‘merican boys need rockstar visas to do anything where they will be paid by customers outside of the US. You have to prove that there is nobody in that country that can sing badly/talk about analog. Watch the sharks in immigration.
Holden shutting down in Aus – well, as much as I hate GM and everything that their bony hands touch and turn black, the only good car that they have put out in North America in the last decade was the GTO otherwise known as a Holden Monaro with plastic surgery. And it was so well built that GM management went down to Aus to teach them the ‘merican way of assembly, totally #~({ing the company. Say b’bye. It’s time for Dick Smith (or whoever wants to make a small fortune out of a large fortune) to step up and do and Elon Musk.
Bill Nye is screwed. Out of all of the teachers in New York state, none are qualified to teach computing, and the curriculum is completely arbitrarily set up by the teacher. You could pass your CTS option by knowing how to work Excel (Microsoft’s target goal) or you could be hacking kernels in assembly (pfffffttttt). Bill’s target would have to start at elementary school, and getting education majors to teach ANYTHING beyond their comfort level is many layers of impossible.
Now before Sheldon starts his “Actually” rant, I get it, my son graduates from highschool in about 6 months and is going to Uni for CS. I would really like GM/Ford/Toyota/Leland/Hyundai/pickyourpoison to stick around, hell, a lot of US cars are make here in Soviet Canukistan because of government bailouts and bilateral treaties that keep Ontario and Quebec alive. And don’t get me started about bat-shit crazy fundamentalists, I was in catholic school for 12 years, ‘nuf said.
Hi Chris greetings from the Old Dart! (Dave will understand) Good luck with your new chapter in the book of life, I have a idea for you and Dave maybe you could instead of “segwaying” from topic to topic you could use a “tenuous link” as a hobbyist I have found that electronics is tenuous by nature and is always linked in someway!
Once again Good luck!
My first reaction when I saw this week’s title was “holy crap!” – but no surprise because it was kind of building up…
Good Luck Chris. Dave gave you good advice, and I commend you for taking the plunge yourself rather than being given the boot (ass?) as Dave and I were. Definitely DO NOT take on debt or partners, but do get an accountant (because you will overpay on taxes otherwise) and a lawyer (because you will become a target – trust me) in that order.
Re: Thief River Falls and Digi-Key, yeah, they are kind of in the middle of nowhere, but you may be surprised how common that is for nationally or internationally known companies here in MN, in fact Artic Cat is also in TRF. There is BIG money up that way, but those are not the workers Digi-Key seeks 🙂 as you guys mentioned. I actually order from Newark or Mouser more commonly than Digi-Key because I get the order in-hand faster – not surprising I suppose.
Hi Chris,
Sorry that you had to move on. Glad that you are stepping out on your own.
The prior comment about getting an accountant and a lawyer is good advice. Small companies are very prone to having legal issues regarding liability and ip.
There seems to be a huge shift in electronics in the US. The industry is shrinking and consolidating. Don’t see this reported in the press. This IMHO is not a business cycle.
There is no one in the engineering press that talks about the need for engineers to plan for a second career. Very few engineers that I know retire from a career in engineering. Companies do not want to retain EE’s that get older than 50 and they don’t want to hire EE’s that are older than 40. No one talks about the age discrimination in EE employment.
First let me say Good luck to Chris on his venture into self employment. I hope it turns out well for him.
Next let me say to both Chris and Dave (but especially Dave) I listened to the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. It was not the first (or best debate between an evolutionist and a creationist I have seen.)
You sounded particularly intolerant those who see the theory of evolution as a fairytale. As Mr. Ham pointed out There are are more than a few scientist that do not believe in evolution and I say there are thousands (if not millions) of people that do not believe in evolution.
I myself have never ever believed in evolution (and I am older than Dave.)
I find it to be an absurd notion that order will naturally come from disorder. No convincing evidence has ever been found to prove that lower life forms evolve into higher life forms. Try using that method sometime to design a functional piece of electronics. You will see it doesn’t work.
As for Bill Nye…. I like him but he is wrong. The most interesting objection he seemed to raise is “what about those who never heard about creationism.” This is a Theological question not a scientific question.
Bill did not make a good case for evolution. I have heard better debaters than Ken Ham. All in all a lackluster debate but Ken Ham made a somewhat better case.
Just remember Dave and Chris… not all of your listeners believe in evolution.