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- Chris recently announced that he is releasing all of the KiCad videos from the Contextual Electronics course.
- There is also a new site over at KiCad.info and there is a forum to talk about KiCad at forum.kicad.info
- We also still have an IRC channel! There are also channels for KiCad and Electronics on Freenode.
- Dave used to own AltiumForums.com but they got antsy about him owning that.
- The “Lithium Ion super cap in a battery” is being updated to say they’re using homemade graphene capacitors.
- The current requirements are insane, the dynamic current would be higher than most car chargers.
- GE claims to have made a fuel cell breakthrough and are in early production.
- Another gimmicky crowdfunding was someone claiming to have replicated Wardenclyff.
- Weird Al has a new song about conspiracy theories called “Foil”.
[tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-0TEJMJOhk[/tube] - Dave recently got into OK Go videos, citing the Rube Goldberg as his favorite.
[tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w[/tube] - OK Go was part of the White House maker faire
- Dave has camera woes after losing an entire day of footage going through old magazines.
- National Instruments recently released a headless unit/multitool. The specs for the scope appear that they are using off the shelf silicon (100 MHz for 2 channels).
- Dave mentioned that there is also a wireless head unit for multimeters from Agilent. It is ruggedized for field work.
- Fluke also has been pushing their safety equipment.
- The hard problem to solve is streaming data back across a wireless connection (especially if you expect it on a particular ).
- Dave recently found that low scan rates on the RF section of MDO3000 lock up the keys on the scope.
[tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6R3uynR9Kk[/tube] - A Cleveland accelerator is now looking for hardware startups.
- Dave found out there is also a hardware accelerator in Sydney.
- Many of our listeners will be tempted by VC/accelerator money as well. Just be sure you know why you’re taking money for a company idea.
- Ben Einstein of Bolt (another hardware accelerator) wrote a piece on why so much money is heading into hardware.
- Littlebits released their CloudBit module, which connects their platform to the internet. Chris was interested to know that people are using it as prototyping.
- Google is giving $1 million for the “Littlebox challenge”. It’s all about trying to get the maximum power density for a microinverter.
- The EDA solver is meant to be a way to search through available components for a PCB and pick the best ones. It will be interesting to see if that kind of thing works for non-example designs.
Thanks to Low Voltage Labs for the picture of the pumpkin made in KiCad
FYI – the narrow RBW doesn’t “kill” the keyboard, it slows the response to the keyboard. The UI responds to the keypress when the screen is refreshed, which is several seconds of processing time (not 30 minutes).
Dave is so right about the Tek spectrum problem.
This is a software bug/architecture fail. Its like they have no interrupts on the scope ?!?!?!? Most scopes have shitty GUIs that slow down as scope gets loaded with math functions to begin with, but up until now it wasnt _that big_ of a deal because usually they managed at least few frames per seconds.
Problem is Tek implemented spectrum analyser in DSP running on main cpu, and that dsp code doesnt care about anything else running on the device.
Its like
disable_interrupts
do_FFT(6666 points) #2mhz/300hz
enable_interrupts
and NOTHING else can run while this task is pending. W T F is wrong with them. They need to hire Elecia or something 🙂
Keyboard handler that is called manually after you refreshed the screen is fine ONLY if you can refresh that screen often enough.
Rule number #1 of usability is … umm, no, rule one is always give user feedback (like a progress bar), but rule #2 is give user control at all times (moving mouse while task is pending, ability to break the task). Tek just freezes screen until shitton_of_bins FFT is ready.
This same problem was already solved by PCs 20 years ago, and again resolved (lol, industry never learns) by phones ~3-7 years ago (android used to be as shitty as this tek, it took them a long time to finally fix all the input lag).
You dont need a fast CPU as long as user feels in control over the whole system, taking away control for the duration of a task is a BIG FLIPPING NO NO.
Darn, I was hoping to hear some talk about the new pcb printing tool.
http://www.botfactory.co/
Is there a particular post on the amphour subreddit that has all show articles (either discussed or not)? What’s the one for MQTT?
I’ve never heard of CalStan, is that a popular tool? What are you doing with the Adafruit NeoPixel?
The botfactory thing is a bit…I don’t know. It’s a lot for a silver printer. I do like that they are promoting gluing parts vs solder, that part was smart. I’m sure Dave would have called it ‘niche’ and moved on 😀
240-208V 60htz is pretty common in us data centers in the us:)
dave’s kickstarter idea exists
http://drop-kicker.com/
I would have to say Dave’s complaint of not being able to quickly review an entire shot in camera is a bit silly. I shoot with a DSLR and watching a clip is just s couple of button presses. However, I NEVER do it? Why? It’s a waste of time! In an entire day’s shoot I might rewatch one or two really tricky shots. Other than that, I see basically no need. It makes sense that a prosumer camera doesn’t have that button. I’d only really expect to see it under a fisher price logo.
I for one would like to thank Dave for being evil and bursting the “solar freaking roadways” peoples dreams..