Dave and Chris celebrate their 555th show by doing a live Q&A recording. There was also a video version:

The post #555 – Timing is Everything first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Our 5th call in show. Likely our last for a while given the drop off in the number of callers. We’ll do it again if asked!

• Alexander (by far our best caller)
  • He’s an EE student struggling with math, was wondering how to get through it.
  • Dave was part of a local college’s promo video.
  • There is an Intersil chip that involves RGB LEDs that requires using matricies.
  • Alexander was the person who sent Dave’s mailbag a warming device. 
• David2 is back doing some design work for Dave again.
• Anon SW Eng via email 
  • They asked about connecting the green and black grounds on a power supply by default. You can, but it’s usually better not to unless there’s a reason.
  • The isolated output of these supplies allows for “stacking” voltages.
  • Not having a grasp on your grounding tree means you could end up with ground loops.
• Chris found out he has knob and tube wiring throughout his house, which means none of the 3 prong switches (except for the ones Chris wired) have an earth ground. Romex is the plastic wrapped wire that often runs throughout houses.
• Xander
  • Wanted recommendations for getting an EE degree while keeping working. 
  • Ultimately it comes down to what kind of work Xander wants to work in.
  • If you’re getting a degree online (or in person, for that matter), make sure they are ABET accredited. These are often the only kind of engineering degrees accepted by employers. 
• Artem
  • Asked about the whether there is a shift away from formal education.
  • We used as an “add on” to Xanders question.
  • Places like Google are putting less emphasis on degrees and more on experience/portfolios.
• Todd
  • Asked if we had heard about magnetostrictive delay line memory.
  • He has a version from an old Friden 132 calculator from the mid 60s (what a beast!)
  • Chris asked Dave about RPN notation.
• A user took die photos of a chip on board a uCurrent when they blew theirs up. Chris was trying to remember the name of the site (formerly with a Russian TLD) took pictures of tons of ICs. It was Zeptobars! (who we have surely mentioned before)
• Chris has been posting lots of videos on the PHY youtube channel, including a great talk from Mike Harrison about art and one from James Lewis on Capacitors.

The post #307 – Call In Show #5 first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• Chris will be leaving for Europe soon. If you’re interested in getting together, here are the days he’ll be there:
  • Berlin, April 5th and 6th.
  • London, April 19th, 20th.
    • The London meetup will be at the Yorkshire Grey (2 Theobalds Road WC1X 8PN London) at 6:30 pm on April 19th.
    • Watch @chris_gammell‘s twitter account for any last minute updates/changes.
• Callers!
• Trevor
  • He works on wholesale electricity and was wondering about how they change voltages on generators. Chris eventually started talking about different taps on the windings, but that could be wrong still.
  • Trevor is also interested in DSP
    • Chris suggested a theoretical book by Oppenheim.
    • Dave mentioned the free online DSP guide.
    • This is in hopes of hacking Zwave devices.
  • Get in touch! Either correct us in the comments below or talk to Trevor directly on Twitter: @trevorstweeting
• Todd
  • He’s from the Upper Peninsula, making him a “Yooper“
  • Surface wave transmission line by N6GN. Some YouTube videos:
    • https://youtu.be/-VWBUDJv2n0
    • https://youtu.be/Q1oXTZiBXV0
    • https://youtu.be/2irtYGsb5kg
    • https://youtu.be/GxcwdmcLxHM
  • They hope to also use it for powering weather ballons / quads, not just transmitting signal. This would be useful for a technology like Makani (now owned by Google)
• Sam
  • Wavetek 27xt
  • He was asking about whether to start a kickstarter with a friend and whether he can focus on a problem that is sufficiently technical.
  • Chris recommends the book “Scale”
• Arsenio
  • Arsenio called in to our first callin show about his rocket. There was an issue with i2c layout and the library. He has since gotten a 1054Z at Dave’s recommendation. And has shipped off his first board to OSHpark!
  • He’s having issues with spiders in the workshop. Not as big as the one Dave had in his workshop a few years back.
  • Dave recommended trying something like an ultrasonic cockroach repeller. Chris recommended asking Tim and Greg from Backyard brains who have been on the show before. 
• Chris
  • He’s working with a battery powered ATTiny 84 board that controls an RC boat. Recently switched from a linear regulator to a switching power module…and started blowing stuff up.
  • Dave predicts that it is SCR Latchup on the logic. He has made a video about that before.
  • This could possibly be solved with an N-channel mosfet controlling power distrbution to the rest of the board.
• Intel news
  • Andy Grove passed away.
  • Intel is toning down their process jumps, indicating a shift in the predictive power of Moore’s law.
• William
  • The Fried Circuits USB tester has steadily added features, but he’s not sure how to get more resolution at the low end. This is a dynamic range problem.
  • Current chip is the INA219, also has been looking at the INA169
  • The new USB C version requires 24 super narrow pitch pins and does not allow for any breaks in the line because of the high speed signals. 

Thanks to everyone who called in! We’ll continue to refine this type of show and keep trying to answer your questions!

The post #293 – Call In Show #4 first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Our third (non-embedded) call in show!

• Callers
  • Mahesh called in about a recommendation on soldering irons for his business in India.
  • Sebastian was having his micro lock up when his wall wart was leaking current (assumed) onto the device and then it was shorted to chassis via a USB ground.
  • Aaron called in asking about how to change careers
  • Brian called in from Trinity College asking for advice on getting through an engineering program. 
  • Paul was also interested in changing careers, thinking about going from test engineering to design.
  • Adam was wondering about resources for learning about high speed design.
    • Dave and Chris both recommended Robert Feranac’s Fedevel Academy. He teaches high speed design using Altium.
  • Rudy was wondering if we have tried OpenSCAD. Neither Chris nor Dave had. 
    • Rudy also has a bet going with his son about when self-driving cars will be implemented (5 or 10 years?).
  • Andy is building a fridge that is meant to age steaks. He is building buttons for the control in KiCad and wanted to know about making hatched planes. This is not directly available in KiCad, but there are some workarounds.

Another great set of questions this show! We’ll be back for future shows where you can call in. Check out our post about how people could contact us this time and keep an eye out for future announcements.

Thank you to rfduck for the picture of the phone.

The post #288 – Call In Show #3 first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Welcome, Elecia and Chris White from Embedded.fm! Our 3rd Call-in Show for The Amp Hour, this one focused more on the embedded side of things with some other electronics thrown in!

• Elecia is no longer working on mice containment but is still playing around with BB8. The newest project is disassembling  tiny quadcopters. Check out the mentioned diagram here and ping her with any thoughts using the contact link on embedded.fm.
• Chris asked if El/Chris had seen the Seeed WIO (kickstarter). It’s interesting because of the app configuration of devices. 
• Guest calls!
  • Steve Dalton (@spidie)
    • called in asking about pro makers and how they are perceived by traditional engineers.
    • He was a former guest on episode 63 of Embedded.fm
    • The Maker Pro book
  • Lee Wiggins (@wigman27)
    • He wanted to know when to jump out of Arduino.
    • Lee has a popular Dummy load that is on instructables and Tindie.
    • Elecia recommends using mbed
    • Lee has used a SPI display from Adafruit in the past.
  • Stuart McAndrew (@ssshocker)
    • Stuart wanted to know whether to use external or internal watchdog timers.
    • Jack Ganssle wrote about watchdogs.
    • He is working on the ozQube, a 5cmx5cm satellite.
  • Jonathan McDonald (@5onathan)
    • Jon currently uses Flow code 5 and wants to know which language to switch to next.
    • The current software stack is used for tasks like controlling ladders on mining equipment.
    • Chris W suggests starting with Arduino, as Jon already has experience with system design.
  • Chris Svec (@christophersvec)
    • Chris was also a guest on Embedded.fm in the past, episode 78.
    • He wanted to know what products should exist for embedded that don’t already.
    • Elecia pointed out that there are many product/services that the founders started to “scratch their own itch”. OSHpark, Small Batch Assembly, Tindie were given as examples.
    • Clang is a newer open source compiler, as opposed to using GCC.
    • Chris always wanted a serial output logging system that uses wifi, like a wifi bus pirate. It doesn’t appear that anything like this exists but the ESP8266 is a good candidate for getting something working. 

It was great having Chris and Elecia on the show again to help answer questions! Thanks to everyone who called in and chatted with us!

Thanks to Jeremy for the picture of the school bus

The post #281 – Crossovers and Call-ins first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Our second call in show….was ruined by Star Wars!

• Stu was our screener and works in the security industry.
• Vikas
  • He was wondering about how to build an arbitrary waveform generator. He will be using a Raspberry Pi Zero and will be bare metal programming
  • He will be using an 8 bit dac, the TLC5602. The plan is to put the LM318 behind it as an amplifier.
  • Vikas isn’t sure about how to do the DC offset and whether to use a discrete amplifier.
  • The STM8 Discovery kit has a built in signal generator demo.
• Ryan
  • He is a student who wants to buy test equipment on a budget.
  • The Digilent Discovery 2 was released recently. 
  • Ryan’s school also has TDS1000 series
• Microchip offered to buy Atmel (from under the nose of Dialog!)
• Dave had interviewed Steve Sanghe a couple years ago.
• The CastAR is refunding money and giving a voucher for a consumer version of the glasses.
• The Steam Controller video was beautiful! 
• A FOUP is not just fun to say, it’s also how wafers are carried around fabs.
• When your fridge can’t display a calendar on a screen.
• When automation and labor collide
• ARM is starting to chart out plastic chips!

Image via MovieClips.com

The post #278 – Our Second Callin Show(ish) first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• Our first attempt at a call in show! We’re using CallInStudio.com for the actual call handling.
• It’s been a year since Tom Magliozzi (of Tom and Ray/Click and Clack) of Car Talk passed away.
• Our call screener is Gary Servin who lives in Paraguay. He works on Robot Operating System (ROS) during the day but then also creates educational programs using small robots at night
• Our callers!
  • Richard
    • He is from Vancouver is working on battery powered sensors that will be used in a high voltage substation.
    • The floating sensor is meant to measure voltages remotely.
    • The main concern is anything being ground referenced. Oscilloscopes have trouble measuring floating circuits because of this. Dave made a video on how to not blow up a scope:
      
    • Chris
  • Arsenio
    • He is from Virginia called in about a problem with his i2c lines on a rocket stabilization prototype. Pull up resistors may have been too high of values.
    • Chris recommends Rheingold Heavy i2c tutorials.
  • Brandon
    • He is one of our former guests and a lead engineer at Electric Imp.
    • Do hardware engineers have the same duty to quietly report security errors, like software people normally do? Or is it different for hardware.
  • Steve
    • He teaches electronics and programming to 3rd and 4th graders and is worried about through hole parts disappearing.
    • The classics (LM741, NE555, etc) will be made in through hole packages for a long time because it’s cheap to do so. “New old stock” is also a possibility.
• Next week Chris is off to the Superconference he is helping plan. Dave is busy judging the final round of The Hackaday Prize. 
• We were placed on the muffinworks podcast map! It’s cool to see how they are all connected and use it to discover new shows!

Image courtesy of Mr. Show which did the “Pre Taped Call In Show”

The post #274 – Our First Call In Show first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.