This week we have our first 4 person Amp Hour! Welcome to the Ed McMahon of The Amp Hour, Jeff Keyzer, and the young star of the maker scene, Jeremy Blum!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
- Happy birthday to Jeremy!
- How do people say “Arduino”?
- Friend of the show and 555 contest entrant, Jason Pruitt linked here recently from his new site. Thanks!
- Alan did a great “thank you” video for the 555 contest.
- Many of Jeremy’s friends are going to internships over the summer for “financial engineering” (blech), similar to what we have discussed before. CJ Gervasi recently wrote about how this could be good for the financial services sector but we think it’ll corrupt them all!
- Lots of fun links about weather balloons and ham radio!
- Alvaro wrote in about a balloon that got to 116,000 feet! Woo!
- Troy Rank wrote in about a balloon documentary about a 2 day journey to find a balloon.
- And Bob Kochis wrote in about a balloon carrying a geiger counter, ostensibly to measure radiation in the upper atmosphere.
- XKCD mentions how much radiation you get while on an airplane.
- Bob also wrote in about a new X Prize to create a “tricorder” like device that could diagnose anyone.
- Google announces their ADK (Android Developers Kit) for all new phones and tablets.
- Microchip announces a partnership with Digilent to create a PIC based version of the Arduino (sans trademark, of course)
- Jeff will be at the Bay Area Maker Faire next week, judging the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge.
Thanks to Jeff and Jeremy for sitting in with us this week! If you’ve got comments about anything we discussed on this week’s show, let us know in the comments (or hit me, Dave, Jeff or Jeremy up on Twitter). Be sure to subscribe using the buttons in the upper right corner (RSS or email) to be alerted as soon as the next episode is released. Thanks for listening!
Jeremy Blum says
So yeah, I guess this episode is okay… But who’s that “Jeremy Blum” guy? Never heard of him before. You should get the Woz.
Curtis says
Here is a good article on the FPGA “bit flipping” in space, talked about in the podcast. It’s quite interesting that the experiments are taking place.
https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/space_download/
Curtis says
Does anyone else think that fragmenting the Arduino market is the key goal of Microchip with this product? Destroy the beginner hobby board market by putting fear, uncertainty and doubt in the mind of the person getting their start in electronics. Do they really want to develop and nurture this product, or kill the market and level the sales between them and Atmel?
I consider myself a big fan of Microchip products. I would prefer them to focus on the intermediate/professional end of the market and put out better high end dev boards. Leave the Arduino team to do what they are doing, a great job in bringing more people into electronics. In fact Microchip will probably profit in the long run from Arduino getting more people into this hobby who potentially later on choose a Microchip product for a project or two.
Dave Jones says
IMO, when the Arduino team open sourced the Arduino, they are the ones who gave it away and *actively encouraged* other people to run with it.
Would people be complaining if someone other than Microchip were involved in a PIC port of Arduino?
No, of course they wouldn’t, they would be cheered for it, as it has been a much requested port from the early days of the Ardunio. ARM will be next, maybe MSP430 etc.
People thinking Microchip are doing it deliberately to split the market etc are just spreading FUD themselves.
This gives people of all levels an excellent jump start into higher powered lower cost Arduino platform products with second source option from PIC, and I just can’t understand why anyone would think this is a bad idea?
Jeff mentioned that Arduino being a standardised platform is it’s strength, the truth I think is afir bit different. There is the UNO, Lilypad, Mega, Nano, Fio, Pro, Pro Mini, Mini, and Bluetooth (did I miss any?)
And they are just the “official” versions!
It’s already quite confusing for the beginner IMO.
Sev says
I disagree. This only strengthens the Arduino platform. The beauty and simplicity of the Arduino isn’t platform-specific; the beauty is the simplified code environment, bootloader, and IDE. That’s what really makes it so easy to pick up. You don’t have to learn all the low-level garbage if you don’t need it. I’d love to be able to go from an Atmel part to a PIC and still use the same code, or at least code that is fundamentally similar.
mikeselectricstuff says
er, no. Microchip doesn’t care about the Ardiuno market as such – they sell billions of chips a year, Arduino (including clones) has supposedly done 2-300,000 in several years , which isn’t even significant enough to Atmel for them to make sure the Arduino guys don’t run out of chips.
Microchip have always been supportive of low-volume users, and are just trying to get on the Arduino bandwagon to try to get some more people using their chips in real products, and providing a board with additional features which can use at least some of the existing Arduino ecosystem is a reasonable way to do this.
Curtis says
2-300,000 chips today, but do microchip see this gaining traction? Resulting in the engineers/hobbiest of tomorrow being dedicated Atmel users.
I’m not against Microchip in any way on this. I’m just trying to look at it from another business angle.
Dave Jones says
That’s spread over the last 5 years or something. That number is insignificant to them.
They just see it as yet another avenue to compete against their biggest competitor, that’s what they do, nothing surprising at all. Microchip would have sold just as many dev boards in that time.
I doubt the Arduino market keeps Steve Sanghi awake at night!
Curtis says
I Agree.
While the current figures are low, I see the current approach with the Arduino resulting in a similar effect to when Microsoft brought out VB. It generated a whole new generation of beginner programmers because of its ease of use. Today, because of the momentum generated, a large proportion of that generation sticks to using Microsoft development tools exclusively, even though there are much better/advanced tools available. I guess my initial post was kinda harsh on Microchip. I meant it more along the lines of Microchip wanting to throttle the momentum a little bit as an investment in future sales, thinking the arduino hacker/maker of today could end up being the high volume part consumer of tomorrow.
mikeselectricstuff says
Re. the cosmic ray thing, although memory has increased vastly over the years, the overall size of the die hasn’t much, so you have a similar capture cross-section for any cosmic ray.
As mentioned, the increased overall memory capacity means a cosmic ray event has a lower probability of hitting something important.
Also, what’s the probability of a ray passing though your house, the PC case and the device package without interacting, and then interacting with the silicon?
Dave Jones says
For those curious on the probability, some starting links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray#Effect_on_electronics
http://lambda-diode.com/opinion/ecc-memory
http://www.jai.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Camera_Solutions_Application_Tech_Note/TechNote-TH-1087-CosmicRays.pdf
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19095-01/sf3800.srvr/816-5053-10/816-5053-10.pdf
Al says
Re 32bit Arduino
Don’t forget the Maple :
http://leaflabs.com/devices/maple/
Which is an Arm cortex M3 Arduino board, its been around for some time, so Microchip are hardly the first. I have thought for a long time that Arduino’s jewel in the crown is their software influence/control and their trademark.
Great show guys
regards
Al
Dave Jones says
Quote:
“Maple can be programmed using an Arduino-style, sketch-based programming environment,”
100% compatible I wonder?
Dave Jones says
http://leaflabs.com/docs/compatibility.html
John Dowdell says
I have a balloon project in the works. You can buy balloons relatively cheaply on ebay. I’d like some ham radio payload – another reason for a ham licence. Have the balloon and have been collecting sensor components. Maybe i’ll have everything together in say 6 months. Peter who frequents SavageCircuits irc chat put me on to http://www.ihabproject.com for ideas and tips. They say they track and chase them across states in cars.
—————————————————————
btw how good was the photo of the shuttle launch as seen by the high altitude balloon camera?
———————————————————–
Regarding stray radiation and flipping bits, at least when i program assembly i would program defesively with stray bit flipping in mind. I still try to do it in C but you have to be very explicit about some things otherwise the compiler optimises around your safeguards that appear to the compiler to be doing nothing useful.
————————————————————
Can the Microchip base board accept most shield boards? I would have thought that even if Microchippers did not care much for the Arduino way that they’d be glad for the cornucopia of accessory shield boards. I understand Jeff’s point of view. But I think open source stuff always forks and fractals and will probably do so in the future. I’m mildly amused at the idea of protecting the boundaries of anything open source. It’s not what open source wants to do. If you can’t stop it, at least make the different forks and models obviously distinct from each other.
———————————————————————
Regarding the ADK, i thought the point of the ADK was that at the physical, mac, transport and session layers the device(Arduino or otherwise) you plug into the Android device was acting as the true USB host and is required to provide power to the Android device (plus enough for charging itself). I thought then via the API, the application layer allows it to seem like the Android device has some sort of master control over the USB “device” attached.
Am i wrong? Is this talking about something else entirely?:
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/usb/adk.html
It mentions that the kit is an Arduino Mega with the circuits@home USB *host* shield.
I like that they’ve done this anyway. Some of the first Android phones alledegedly had serial on the connector. I’d love to be able to use my phone as a serial terminal as i used to do with an old windows phone.
JD
Brian J Hoskins says
Hi JD,
I also have a balloon project in the works (near ready for a first flight). I looked into obtaining a HAM radio licence so that I could build my own radio system for broadcasting data to the ground, and the information I obtained said that a HAM radio licence does not apply to airbourne vehicles, which includes high altitude balloons. So, although you may have obtained a licence to build and use high power radios, you’re not allowed to use them in this particular application.
If you have different information, I would be very interested indeed to be pointed in the direction of it?
I have opted instead to use a licence-free 500mW 868Mhz radio. Apparently it’s good for 20KM line of sight, which unfortunately means that it’s likely to drop out for part of the flight. But it all depends how sensitive you can make your receiver I suppose – I’m going to run with it anyway and see what results I get.
As a backup I also have a GSM system on board so when the balloon comes down I will be able to text it and request it’s last known location. All the sensor data and pictures will be stored locally on an SD card so as long as I can find the balloon, I won’t have lost any data.
I would be interested to hear how your launch goes, and even get involved if you want some help and you’re in the UK?
Brian
Brian J Hoskins says
PS: The licence-free 868Mhz radio only applies to Europe as far as I know. You probably have different licence-free bands outside of Europe. Also maybe the HAM rules for airbourne vehicles will be different outside of the UK, I’m not sure…
John Dowdell says
Hey Brian, thanks for the comment. I’m in Australia. I havn’t checked what the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) says about all this, let alone WIA or ACMA. ACMA is gov radio authority. WIA is kinda like ARRL. I’d like to do at least APRS or my own version of it if the rules for radio on balloons in Oz allow. I have to get through a few months of hecticity before i get serious about his.
Brian J Hoskins says
Cool, well Australia is a bit far for me to come and physically lend a hand on launch day, but I’d definitely be interested to hear how you get on and see the pics/data!
In return I’ll happily share my pics/data and lessons learned with you.
My email is mail brianhoskins.co.uk (obviously substitute for a real @ and no spaces).
Cheers,
Brian
ExtremHybrid says
Concerning the Term: “Tricoder”
It seems not to be trademarked.
Vital Technologies Corporation sold a portable device dubbed the “Official Star-Trek Tricorder Mark 1” (formally, the TR-107 Tricorder Mark 1) in 1996. Its features were an “Electromagnetic Field (EMF) Meter”, “Two-Mode Weather Station”, (thermometer and barometer), “Colorimeter” (no wavelength given), “Light meter”, and “Stardate Clock and Timer” (a clock and timer). Spokespersons claimed the device was a “serious scientific instrument”.[5] Vital Technologies sold 10,000 units before going out of business. The company was permitted to call this device a “tricorder” because Gene Roddenberry’s contract included a clause allowing any company able to create functioning technology to use the name.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricorder
FreeThinker says
Hi Chris
Just a word to the wise, are you sure about this radio ham thing? Perhaps medical science has moved on since this was made? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaHm1ecBCgw&feature=feedrec_grec_index
Good Luck ;).
Mike Cowgill says
I have a theory that the entire electronics industry is simultaneously convergent+divergent, weaving together to make a sort of metaphorical rope where the weakest products still contribute to an overall strength. Strong products such as the original Arduino are good but even they have a finite lifespan and need other products in order to progress. I’m not sure Microchip chose the right processor though (they should have stuck to 8/12/16-bit ones which are available in DIP packages) they seem to be utterly in denial about the ARM architecture. I can design my product around an architecture available in many flavours from from many vendors, with many sources of support, or I can design it around one architecture from one vendor that is bought in from MIPS. Hmm. I’m afraid life is too short to waste it on learning the MIPS architecture. If you don’t want to go with an m-bed, then there are already Netduinos etc that are ARM based but leveraging the Arduino form factor. On the subject of SEUs (Single Event Upsets caused by cosmic rays etc) I know that at least one of the Mars Rovers has had an FPGA remotely analysed and reprogrammed after a hard fault appeared in the array. According to Xilinx, the FPGA code hadn’t even been finished when the rovers were launched. Talking of space (and amateur radio) AMSAT will be at the Dayton Hamvention (I’m looking at people in Ohio here…)
Jaanus says
I listened the show and was like my university (Tartu University in Estonia) has hackerspace like electronics lab. There are some courses in there but half of the people there are just random people working on their own projects. Many work for robot competition and so on.
Adam Ward says
Great show guys, the arduino compatibility discussion was getting quite heated at times. I was expecting a brawl to kick off 😀
Good times. I really look forwards to Tuesday mornings now. I come into work before everyone else and fire up the Amp Hour on the old computer and get educated and entertained.
Keep up the good work.
Gero Sebor says
No class at Cornell with hands on? Hmm http://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece4760/FinalProjects/
—————————————————————————–
Studying in India
I have worked with engineers from India and engineering companies from India. It is not uncommon that an Indian family instead of the student picks the subject one is supposed to study. One reason is they have to pay for it, and want to maximize the return of invest. It is expected that the family is financially supported once the student has finished and gets a job. It is about climbing up social ranks.
This is not so much an issue for EE. EE is not supposed where the money is, and EE students typically did chose the subject on their own, not because of their family. Maybe even against the family’s wish. The problem is with computer science, because that is where the money is supposed to be and families love to send their kids to study CS.
One consequence is that almost 100% of CS students in India give a shit about the subject. They are just biomass to fill call centers and outsourcing companies.
Cheating your way through universities and deemed universities is very common for the students, including paying someone to do the homework and bribing to get exam questions in advance. Often the cheating already started at school when they try to qualify for university.
Outsourcing companies also give a shit if their employees have a clue or not, as long as they have a degree and can be marketed to western customers. At the hight of the outsourcing boom one outsourcing company was hiring 5000 freshers a day! Yes, 5000/day. Fresher is what they call someone who just finished studies.
Job interviews are often based on interview question catalogs. There is a market for such interview question collections. Since the interviewers also have no clue they often draw the questions from the same catalog used by applicants to memorized the answers.
Memorizing things in addition to the already mentioned cheating are those student’s main study techniques, instead of understanding things.
—————————————————————————–
PIC Arduino clone
I also don’t see a problem with the Microchip PIC. It is yet another me-too Arduino clone. I am not even sure if it is the first PIC clone.
The AVR Arduino is the iPhone of the development boards. It is nothing special, but people buy it, because it is a brand.
Other chip companies try to catch up to not miss a future generation of potential chip buyers. Microchip’s chance to catch up are slim. In case they catch up, good for them and more choice for Arduino users.
What worries me is that some of you got a board under the condition of keeping your mouth about it shut until a certain deadline. You effectively decided to become part of the marketing machine in exchange for a board. I consider that a betrayal of your readers, listeners and viewers. You are no longer independent if you dance to their marketing’s tune.
Yes, I know it is customs in journalism. And one reason why I think most journalists are just corrupt. Please don’t become journalist, keep being bloggers.
Jeremy Blum says
I don’t think I ever said there are not hands-on classes at Cornell. Just that many of the intro courses are highly theoretical. I’ll be taking 4760 next year, and the professor that I mentioned in the podcast is the instructor for that course (Bruce Land). I talk with him often about how that class is basically the only class of its kind, and it needs more intro-level hands-on classes to lead up to it. There are courses that you can make into hands-on courses – I’ve managed to do it almost every semester, but not everybody cares as much about that stuff as I do…
Dave Jones says
I will speak for myself here.
This comes up nearly every time I review something, and I can assure you you are are way off the mark.
Either you get NO reviews or news at all, or you get reviews and comment on new products when they are announced.
What’s the point us talking about it 6 months down the track?
Which one do you want? (BTW, that’s a rhetorical question, it’s our show and we’ll talk about anything we like :-p)
IMO it’s an exciting product release and *I* and I alone decided to talk about it because I find it personally interesting and exiting. It has absolutely nothing to do with their product release, marketing, or giving me a board. Do you seriously think I give a shit about getting a free $30 board?
What if I actually paid for the board myself?, would you still accuse me of falling for their marketing hype by talking about it now?
I have a whole bunch of free products sitting in my lab that I have NOT discussed or reviewed.
I’m as independent as they get. Who else tells people who give them free stuff their product is shit?
I don’t follow anyone’s tune, ever, end of story.
Gero Sebor says
You make money from us, your viewers, listeners, readers. You market us to your advertisers and to those giving you stuff. You indirectly market us via your popularity, e.g. for getting consulting gigs. That is the deal, and so much for it is your show. Yes it is, but without us you wouldn’t have anything of value you could market. We make you famous.
I don’t think I need yet another journalist dancing to tunes of corporate marketing. My life wouldn’t been poorer if I would have heard about the PIC board from only 1000 instead of 1001 sources as part of Microchip’s marketing campaign. It wouldn’t be poorer if I would have heard of it with a few weeks delay than at launch day.
What I like to listen to, read or view are the things that journalists don’t touch. That information I don’t get from 1000 other sources.
Chris Gammell says
Hi Gero!
I understand how you could see it like that, I think I used to be of the same opinion. But being on the reviewing side now, let me share how my perspective has changed:
I’d put forward that without the the giveaways, nothing would ever get reviewed. This is how literature, music, cars, tech and a whole lot of other things get reviewed. And given the fact that journalists don’t make much money in the first place ($0 earned to date for me), I put forward that nothing would ever get reviewed because they’d never be able to afford the things they’re reviewing. Perhaps it would be possible if there was a big magazine or media entity making these purchases and then pushing them down to writers for reviews…but that adds a whole other layer of issues. You want to be marketed to? Try the big magazines, they’re pros! 😉
As for the release date and Dave not talking about it until they asked him to, that’s just him being polite. It’s not so much being part of a “marketing machine” as fulfilling a request.
I think of the people I’ve heard about doing reviews and otherwise, Dave is one of the most independent and fair out there. He’ll keep defending himself, and rightly so, because he catches a lot of flak on YouTube and otherwise. Hell, even I accused him of being compensated for the Agilent reviews (he wasn’t). Dave really is about the best and purest voice out there about a realistic view of a product and he will tell you how he feels. Because as he says, “he just doesn’t give a shit”.
~Chris
Dave Jones says
100% correct, and I never forget that. But having said that, it’s doesn’t mean you get the final say in what I do or say, ever.
I’ve said it a million times, I can never EVER please everyone in terms of content, it’s just impossible.
So I continue to do whatever I want, and I say whatever I want, because that’s what I like to do. And I’d like to think (in fact I know) that’s why most people like listening to me and watching my blog, because I say what I think without regard to the consequences or bowing to political correctness etc.
I listen to feedback and change the show and my content accordingly where I think it’s good idea. But when people just bitch about content because they happen not to like it, they can go get stuffed. I know SOME people like the content and that’s good enough for me.
Ah, now I get it. Your real complaint is that you simply didn’t want to hear about the PIC thing, and you are chucking a hissy fit about it.
Fair enough, you are entitled to your opinion, not everyone is going to like all content, I get comments like that daily.
A simple “I don’t like you guys talking about, can you chose more obscure topics etc” would have gone down much nicer and we would have taken it under advisement.
But when you accuse us about selling out and “betraying” our listeners, you crossed a line. Not only are you completely and utterly wrong, but you can go kiss my arse.
If you don’t like the content, don’t listen. Don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out.
I (I won’t speak for Chris) will continue to talk about whatever I want to talk about on the show. I wanted to talk about the PIC Ardunio because I found it interesting, end of story.
Gero Sebor says
You are now on a power trip because you are successful and you think you can get away with insults. Internet fame is a volatile thing, and there is a good chance it won’t last. When it is over you won’t even know what happened to Jones the Great. Just make sure you don’t become one of those aging rock star, living in the past, doing gigs in front of a handful of remaining geriatric fans, and occasionally doing the grand opening of a corner store.
Dave Jones says
YOU are the one who insulted Chris and I by accusing us of betraying our listeners. I’m simply telling you to piss off, and that you are wrong.
Continuing with the insults will never make you right. In fact it makes you look pretty darn foolish.
I’m on no power trip, I continue to express my point of view the exact same way I have all my life. It’s why I’m not “management material”
Chris Gammell says
It’s “Chris and Me”, Dave…
Chris Gammell says
Word.
Ben says
Oh dear, I swear I’ll kill a puppy if I hear another 555 five five five or five fifthy five joke again !!!
Can you try no to talk about the 555 or the arduino for about a week or so ? , I would like to think there’s more to electronics than the 555 and the Arduino !!! stop the spamm Arduiopoly
Chris Gammell says
Haha, we’ll try
Chris Jones says
@mightyohm I wonder if the DRAM chips in our computers have on-chip error correction. I would imagine they could shrink the cell sizes a bit further if there is redundancy.
If any DRAM designers are reading, perhaps you can tell us.
I know some infineon microcontrollers have error correction on the flash program memory, for automotive use etc.
Here is some data from Xilinx about the measured rate of single event upsets from an experiment:
http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/white_papers/wp286.pdf
Another thing I found interesting was that they have to use special “low alpha” solder for flip chips. One time Xilinx had to do a product recall because someone used the wrong solder:
http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/white_papers/wp208.pdf
If you’d like to see a very visual demonstration of soft- and hard errors induced by radiation, check out Bionerd’s video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFNvYA7731o
Mike Cowgill says
I don’t think it matters whether someone is a blogger or whether they are a journalist, it is their personal ethics that decide if a product gets undeserved reviews. I can’t imagine Dave (or Chris for that matter) being anything other than 100% honest about a product. In the long term, that has to be the only way. (P.S. good to hear a new voice, I look forward to Jeremy’s future appearances!)
Al says
@Gero Well I’m particularly looking forward to Dave doing the Uno32 review because I know he will do a cracking job, not just because he already knows Microchip stuff but also because he knows Arduino and is likely therefore to give a more thorough and balanced stripdown (“Take it apart!”). What’s more I’m sure Dave will investigate questions around compatibility which is what we all want to know about with this thing.
P.S. if you look back through Dave’s reviews you will see how he has been very forthcoming about reviews including direct headons with Microchip in the past
regards
Al
Brian J Hoskins says
I’ve never used Arduino stuff before, so I may be talking out of my arse here, but if I’ve understood the situation correctly then the main complaint with Microchip’s version is that it has some upgrades in terms of I/O count and, if this extra I/O is exploited, it could break compatibility with current Arduino products. The feeling is that beginners should not have to concern themselves with these kinds of complexities, because that kind of defeats the object of Arduino compatibles in the first place, right?
So, with that in mind, wouldn’t it be great if the development environent had selectable compatability modes? So, for example, if you’re using the new Microchip kit and you want to develop something that’s guaranteed to be compatible with the Arduino standard, then you select this in the project set up and then the dev environment makes sure you’re not using any unsupported I/O pins, and perhaps warns you at compile-time if you do.
Experienced people wouldn’t care for this, but for beginners it could be a good idea…
Daniel says
I’d like to give a shoutout to the MIPS architecture. This isn’t the weird, hard to write a compiler for architecture of the smaller pics. It’s one of the first, most elegant, most studied risc architectures, invented in the eighties, adapted for the first 64 bit processor, and widely used. For example it was used in the Playstation 2. You might have one in a router. Of course it’s not as popular as ARM but it is definitely not a waste of time.
Daniel says
I’d like to nominate the MAX3421E USB Peripheral/Host controller with SPI interface as the chip of the week (week, week, week [echoes]).
The MAX3421E is the chip used in the Android kit and in the much cheaper Circuits at Home shield that it’s based on. Although Google announced USB host support for an upcoming Android release, the phone is the /device/. The bad news is that you could basically get a USB host-capable micro for the same amount of money but this chip probably saves you a ton of time developing firmware.
Nerobro says
I”m a member of pumping station: one. I called you guys out at the meeting last night. Thanks for mentioning us.
Daniel says
The chip in the $400 Android kit is the MAX3421E USB peripheral/host controller, and the phone is the device. Pretty cool, even if it costs about as much as just buying a USB-enabled microcontroller.
Tony says
What’s with the background noise? Someone recordning in a bathroom?
Dave Jones says
All the really weird sounds you hear on the show originate somewhere in Chris’s basement. I think he has Oompa Loompa’s locked up in there somewhere…
Adam Ward says
This whole product review controversy seems like a common theme. Ignoring the fact that a review may be positive or negative, it could be regarded that having product X featured on your site/blog/podcast at all is an implied endorsement by association. But that’s unavoidable unless you somehow find a way to randomly (and transparently) select the products you’re going to review.
So like the man says, just publish and be damned.
anonymoose says
I’m sure Chris is a nice guy and all, but the show would be great with just Dave and Jeff.
Finally, regarding the arudino accessory kit development, according to the official site, it’s the accessory that must provide power!! Not the other way around…
“The Android 3.1 platform (also backported to Android 2.3.4) introduces Android Open Accessory support, which allows external USB hardware (an Android USB accessory) to interact with an Android-powered device in a special “accessory” mode. When an Android-powered powered device is in accessory mode, the connected accessory acts as the USB host (powers the bus and enumerates devices) and the Android-powered device acts as the device.”
“Accessories must also provide 500mA at 5V for charging power.”
FreeThinker says
Boo! Shame on you!
Chris we love you 🙂
Brad Boegler says
In 2005 we had launched a near-space balloon up to 120000 feet. Payload recovery was successful and had a few hundred pictures including some showing curvature of the earth.
We sent gps lat long alt, temperatures, battery voltages, etc over a tnc using packet radio on a ham band real time as we chased the balloon in our vehicles.
The biggest cost was helium and the weather balloon itself, around $400 or so iirc. Was definitely a lot of fun.
Dave Jones says
Better get in quick, the worlds supplies of helium are running out, and it will soon be very costly to even fill a party balloon.
Adam Ward says
Surely cold fusion will provide us with all the helium we’ll ever need.
Sven Killig says
Actually, the cheapest dev board linked on Google’s site is $65. Nevertheless, I don’t quite get the point of their USB accessory mode, since all Qualcomm SoCs I know of are host capable. I published host drivers for some of them:
http://sven.killig.de/android/N1/2.2/usb_host
http://sven.killig.de/android/Blade/usb_host
Other phones use TI OMAP SoCs that are even host enabled when delivered. So the host mode support in Android 3.1 tablets seems quite practical for already many phones to me.
John Dowdell says
That’s Interesting. I wonder on how many phones (if any?)the host D+ and D- is brought out to the connector but never used.
Or to your point, are available on chip but maybe never brought out to a connector.
adam lumpkins says
Gero Sebor sounds to be a little simple minded prick!!! For some reasion he dose not possess the ability to turn the damn computer off if he dosent like the content!!!! I get a lot of useful info. from this site and the EEVBLOG!!! So in short Go play with some arsenic you moron!!! P.S. LOVE EVERY THING YOU GUYS DO!!! GOOD JOB!!!!!
Charles J Gervasi says
Thanks for discussing my position on engineers in finance in the show.
You say if engineers work in finance they get sucked into the system. The system, however, is made up of people. A rank-and-file worker in any organization has less influence than someone in leadership. I am not saying that a rank-and-file engineer is able to counter-balance corrupt leadership. I’m saying having engineers in finance at all levels (esp. leadership) is a good thing because allocating capital wisely (e.g. to disruptive technologies and not to excessive consumer debt) is an important job.
Thanks again for debating my point.
Herman says
Dave…come on dude…admit it…your a PIC fanboy…Dave and chris I love your show…and Dave I love your EEVblog..keep up the good work guys.
rsjsouza says
Hahaha… I think Dave is a PIC fanboy too… 🙂
I obviously don’t agree all the time with his reviews or comments (as I am a MSP430 fanboy myself), but I still can’t smell anything fishy about them (independently of equipment or microcontroller brand).
Dave and Chris, keep doing the rants and comments.
—————————-
Regarding the “financial engineers”, I’ve seen several friends dissatisfied with engineering (either during college or even afterwards) that simply found their calling in several other areas (Computer Sciences, Economy, HR, even Law! :). What attracted them in financing was their passion about statistics and programming. Obviously that we gave them a very hard time, but it’s all good. There’s room for everyone.