#351 – The Automation Amish

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Image credit to the Weird Al classic

• Dave has been having computer troubles (again).
• New chips from TI can do 80GHz. Like usual, the hardest part is getting the demo up and running.
• The Flashing Light Prize is on! We watched Ben’s entry, but there are a lot of familiar faces. Check out the site to see who’s already entered. Goes until August 2nd.
• The constraints are what matters. The 1 square inch contest and the 1K contest were also fun.
• The Lunar X prize is still going (as well as many other challenges). Dave has done a video about it in the past with a participant who has since dropped out.
• CastAR has shut down. We’ve had Jeri on the show many times in the past.
• Former guest Ian and his company Dangerous Prototypes has started offering custom cables using an online builder.
• SKU
• Build your own voice assistant with SNIPS
• Dave is going to become Automation Amish
• We’ve had a voice controller project on the show in the past when Gerald and Bertrand came on to talk about Audeme
• Dave was a fan of Firefox with Clint Eastwood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5DsLow4SVQ

• Intel has discontinued their Joule, Galileo and Edison platforms.
• Zeptobars continues to make some rockin die-shots!
  • Fake 555s
  • Batteroo
  • ST-2STD1665
• The thermal transfer rate across a die is surprisingly slow. Adding a special macro lens to a thermal camera might help see the transfer.
• 65C02 teardown. We had Chuck Peddle on the show in the past, arguably our most famous guest!
• Though we had a little trouble at first, we googled around and realized the differences between CMOS and NMOS.
• GlobalFoundries is already starting on 7 nm wafers!
• You can still buy a 130-in-1 kit from Sparkfun (Chris thought these were no longer made)
• The CSR8645 has an insane amount of stuff in it! These are the chipsets used in “bluetooth speaker” that spam emails want to source for you.
• The amount of stuff on-die is reminiscent of the conversation with Jorgen about hearing aid chips.