Merry Keyzermas, 2022! Jeff Keyzer of Mightohm.com joins the show once again.

• Jeff has been at his place in Seattle since 2018
• Previously when he was in Redmond, he put his antenna up in the trees
• This year Jeff set up antennas at his new place
• New things in Amateur radio, SDRs
• ICOM IC705 portable
• Sunspot cycles impact how far you can communicate
• 5-10 watts in the backyard
• Taking ham radio setup camping
• Crater lake
• Goldeneye antenna coming out of a lake (Aricibo, now busted)
• Cape Disappointment
• Parks on the Air
• “2022…which is this year”
• Long Beach Washington kite festival
• Jeff put an antenna on a kite
• Doers vs talking in amateur radio
• FT8 mode
• QRZ.com
• IC7300 brought people back
• Alan Wolke YouTube channel
• Jeff hasn’t been doing much consulting
• Kit business gangbusters because of Ukraine
• Atmel DIP parts are easier to get than other Atmel parts (but still not easy)
• Eurorack companies closing
• Test equipment upgrade
• 8753D
• Agilent took down legacy resources
• Fixing test equipment as a way to learn
• 53310A
• Can’t just get a piece of test equipment on a whim
• GPS connected to MDA can get parts per billion (!)
• Plot frequency vs time
• Saluki
• Fusion news
• Hotplate vs oven for reflow
• Making generated art (couldn’t pass up the Clark Griswold reference, sorry)

The post #613 – It’s a Keyzermas Miracle! first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Welcome back, Jeff Keyzer AKA Mightyohm!

• Jeff has been consulting, including back at Valve working on a part of the Steam Deck
• CES Con-Flu
• Dead projects
• Sirenza Microdevices
• Portfolio sites – Dave’s friend Steve Hale has been documenting for decades!
• RIFA caps
• Jeff had to replace them to get his HP35665A working
• RIFA – “Replace If Found Always”
• X class capacitor
• The HP35665A is good for lower frequency analysis, including shock and vibe
• App notes
• 3560A
• Dave made a video about Coherence recently that was in this realm
• Kemet / Yageo still makes RIFA
• Modal Analysis
• Charge amplifier
• Voltage dependence of capacitors
• LTT
• Jeff has been trying to attend events that are able to happen in Seattle, like the recent 3H holiday party
• Museum in Bellingham – Spark museum
• James Lewis talks about bandwidth vs sample rate  on a recent video
• Bunnie writes about “Fixing a small corner of the supply chain”

The post #570 – Keyzermas All The Way first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Welcome back, Jeff Keyzer (@MightyOhm)!

• Jeff has been selling the MightyOhm Geiger Counter Kit and other products on Amazon
• He has also been consulting lately, helping clients with hardware certifications, regulatory compliance and EMC.
• These are separate tasks from product safety
• RyanAir is buying 737-MAX airplanes
• ESD is part of EMC
• UL testing
• CE combines EMC and product safety
• Radiated emissions testing
• Worst case testing
• We have had experts on EMC on in the past
  • Howard Johnson
  • Henry Ott
  • Eric Bogatin
• Near field vs far field
• H field and E field are separate
• Standards are changing for LiIon
• IEC60950 was the main standard for a long time
• IEC 62368 is replacing some of these standards
• Polluted rivers in Cleveland caused the Nixon administration to start the EPA
• Head tax in Seattle
• Chris and Jeff have both been living in/near the civil unrest happening in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. The news plays up what’s happening during protests, which are mainly peaceful.
• The Chaz
• Economic impacts of COVID
• Jeff has been working with older versions of Altium
• Mentor changes its name to Siemens EDA
• The Fusion / Eagle integration continues
• The KiCad dev conversation that happened at “KiCon 2020” talked about the features coming in v6
• We wanted to ask Jeff about abunch of the RF components we didn’t understand in Episode 520
• The main one was the power transistor and how it is tuned to particular frequencies
• Miller capacitance between gate and drain
• “Cut and try engineering”
• Chris is still reeling from the Adrian Tang episode, with all the things he talked about.
• Jeff was working on devices that went into WLAN and the now-defunct WiMax
• All of the designs Jeff worked on were Gallium Arsenide
• Former guests/sometimes co-host Piotr Esden-Tempski is running a new crowdfunding campaign for the Glasgow Interface Explorer (rev C)
• Mark Rober is running a paid engineering course. Does it cost too much?
• “Sounds like MBA projects”
• Jeff has taken Tufte’s visualizing information class
• Joe Barnard on the CE Podcast
• Starting real projects
• Looking to relax? Watch Nick Offerman drink scotch in front of a fire in a “Yule Log” style video (for 10 hours!)

Many thanks to our Patrons, for this and all the other episodes throughout 2020! We would be nothing without them. Check out Patreon.com/TheAmpHour if you’d like to join the crowd. A special thanks to our corporate sponsor Binho, who now distribute the Sensepeek PCBite.

That’s a wrap on 2020! Thank you for listening!!

The post #523 – A Keyzermas Story first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Hip hip hooray for Keyzermas Vacation!

• Jeff has been attending a lot of events in 2019
  • CES
  • DesignCon
  • IEEE EMC in New Orleans
  • Chaos Camp
  • Teardown
  • Superconference
• Jeff is no longer at Valve, since February of 2019.
• He’s been spending his time learning Solidworks and updating his Altium knowledge/license.
• Why Solidworks vs Fusion?
• The new normal of using different tools within companies, especially with groups inside of companies acting like startups
• David is moving on to greener pastures, so Dave will be doing software for the uSupply. This was the genesis behind the install video of tools.
• Sci.py is over 1 GB
• Chris was asking on twitter what people are looking to learn. What about you?
• “Jeff’s Makin Widgets”
• Everyone should have a 3D printer
• Wants to work on flex and rigid flex
• Losing skills once leaving the big companies
• What is this thing subreddit
• SMA and 3.5 mm connectors
• EMC far field vs near field
• Up close is a magnetic field (H field)
• It doesn’t become EMC until a certain distance from the board
• Based on the wavelength of the frequency
• CISPA
• “The antenna is just a piece of bent metal”
• Antenna we discussed
• EMC crash cart in Henry Ott’s book
• At the symposium Jeff was at a session on low cost tools
• EMC society in Seattle
• Dave has been inside Australia’s largest chamber_
• Using firmware to reduce EMC issues
• Minimum pieces of flair
• If you design it not to emit, you are not going to be susceptible
• Keeping loops tight
• Qi charging
• Jeff working on cars
• Metal casting
• Bob Simpson on The Amp Hour talking about converting his BMW
• Sinclair C5
• Tom Lee
• 2019 was the year of long lead time for components
• How long will through hole components stick around?
• Find Jeff on various parts of the internet:
  • Twitter
  • Mightyohm.com
  • Instagram
  • See all of Jeff’s appearances on The Amp Hour on our special category for him on the website!

The post #472 – Keyzermas Vacation first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• Teardown 2019 was a great event!
• These are a couple of shorter interviews, meant to show what the networking is like in a conference setting. It’s not for everyone, but I think it’s a good thing to try at some point.
• Interview 1
  • Jesse Vincent of Keyboardio
  • Watch Jesse’s talk from HDDG a few years ago
  • Jesse also wrote a great blog post about another negative experience. (also check out the other updates on their kickstarter campaign)
• Interview 2
  • Adrian Studer, creator of the Wegmatt AIS receiver.
  • He was giving a talk on reverse engineering called “It’s 8051s All the Way Down”. Video isn’t available yet but slides can be found here.
• Interview 3
  • Zach Archer of Control Z Inc
  • He did an interactive display for the Seattle Symphony recently (and is now looking for new work).
• Interview 4
  • A recap with Piotr Esden-Tempski and Jeff Keyzer

The image for this episode is during the “puzzle hunt” section of Teardown (Jeff Keyzer is the only guest shown). I was on the winning team, but did nothing of consequence to help them out.

The post #450 – Stories from Teardown 2019 first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Welcome back, Jeff Keyzer AKA Mightyohm!

• This is now our 5th Keyzermas! Check out the past ones here:
  • Mightyhohm For The Holidays
  • Merry Keyzermas
  • The Ghost of Keyzermas Past
  • Wait, Why is Jeff Glowing?
• Last year Jeff had just quit his job but has since re-joined Valve as a contractor
• Overhead
• Jeff has not joined Chris’s Consulting Forum. You can join here if you’re interested (now 100+ strong!)
• Jeff has been focusing on Signal Integrity
• It’s helpful to “Be the signal“, a visualization popularized by Eric Bogatin
• Dave things Jeff should get a video game maker to make a simulation. Maybe former guest Zach Barth of Zachtronics?
• “The Terminator”
• In his new SI role, Jeff is checking things like
  • Jitter
  • Eye diagrams
• And using equipment like
  • VNA
  • TDR
• Learn your Z transforms, kids! They’re important!
• We’ve had some great signal integrity guests on the show:
  • Eric Bogatin
  • Howard Johnson (though Chris completely forgot)
  • Henry Ott
• Elektor started carrying mightyohm kits
• The Seattle scene for hardware has been growing. Jeff isn’t a NIMBY yet.
• The effect of recessions on new company creation
• Boeing tour
• Things that have or haven’t happened
• USB C 
• TS80
• New bandwidths – 60 GHz
• Hiber and other low earth orbit satellite offerings
• Looking at the 2018 hype curve
• Jon Beri talk at HDDG about Brett Victor’s concept of “seeing spaces”
• CES trends
• Connected home
• Autobiography of Tek (think it’s “Winning with people: The first 40 years of Tektronix”)
• Hot Air Rises and Heat Sinks by Tony Kordyban
• Jeff pointed out the 27 series set from Rad Lab

Thanks to Mrs Mightyohm for the picture of Jeff and my sister’s instagram account for the picture of the elf on the shelf

The post #421 – The Legend of Keyzermas first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Mike Ossmann and Jeff Keyzer join the show at the same time!

• Mike and the Great Scott Gadgets crew made Creme Brulee for the entire camp, more than 650 servings!
• Chris later had a Creme Brulee delivered via tacocopter
• They also designed the firefly badge, that used the jar.
• Jeff is making more kits these days and also repairing old sports cars.
• We discussed learning KiCad and generally the difficulties of learning electronics and software.
• Alvaro ended up kidnapping Mike when the episode was over…

The post #397.7 – Impedance Matching with Jeff Keyzer and Michael Ossmann first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Welcome back Jeff Keyzer of Mightyohm.com!

• Jeff will be in New Zealand in December! Hit him up on his twitter (@mightyohm) to schedule a time to hang out!
• He is now making more kits for Mightyohm.com!
• Geiger tubes aren’t as hard to source (or at least any harder than before)
• 5 years at Valve, creating the Steam controller (among other things)
• “High volume is addicting” (because of the level of support
• The B Reactor is located in Richland, WA. Also known as the Hanford large scale nuclear reactor
• The LIGO facility is also there.
• Calutron girls
• Chicago Pile 1
• Check out the area on a map
• Tickets are March through November
• The guillotine cut apart process tubes
• 360 degree panoramas
• xkcd radiation
• Poison splines
• How to build a reactor
• The making of the atomic bomb (Richard Rhodes)
• Windscale reactor in the UK
• Einstein letter about uranium
• More personal histories of the reactor and the area

Thanks to Jeff for being on the show! The picture at the top is the tubes in the B Reactor. For more pictures follow Jeff on Twitter or on Instagram.

The post #365 – Wait, why is Jeff glowing? first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Welcome back Jeff Keyzer, AKA Mightyohm!

• Jeff’s coworker Alan Yates’ talk from SuperCon was just released. He was also on The Amp Hour in the past.
• Jeff’s other former coworker Ben Krasnow gave a fantastic talk about prototyping.
• After reading The Idea Factory by John Gertner, Jeff decided to make a pilmigridge to various sites at Bell Labs.
• He saw the original transistor up close and personal.
• Former guest Shahriar currently works at Bell Labs at The Murray Hill facility. There is a visitor center there.
• Two books about the HP garage/life were the HP Way and Bill and Dave.
• It’s amazing thinking about what they went through with the first transistors. Jeri talked about surface state issues with semiconductors when she was trying to make her own transistors.
• The Crawford Hill area is being developed real estate developers
• At this location, Jeff stood need to the feedhorn that initially measured background radiation in the universe.
• Wilson talk on YouTube
• The feedhorn was super sensitive because of a liquid helium cooled MASER
• George Smoot wrote a book about lumpy radiation when measuring with the kobe satellite
• Janskys are a unit of apparent brightness for radio astronomy
• Jeff is still working at Valve, continuing his manufacturing support for the Steam controller. Awesome video of them being assembled here.
• When looking at huge amounts of statistical data, tools like JMP and MiniTab allow you to analyze. Jeff also recommends using python to massage data before JMP.
• Viewing this data allows you to compare test setups with analysis like gauge R&R.
• Sourcing parts for smaller builds can prove challenging. Somewhere between prototype and high volume production, you can get stuck trying to buy lots of parts from distribution. Chris wrote about this in his building a badge post.
• The Batterizer has started shipping
• The EEZ-h24005 will start funding soon.
• Jeff still selling the geiger counter kit and the rescue shield.
• Chris will not be going to 33c3, sadly.
• Jeff likes that his alma mater (UC San Diego) has started a maker space and that schools are focusing on hands-on labs. Former guest Kent Lundberg did this with a class where they did teardowns of electronics and prototyped lots of circuits.

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The post #328 – The Ghost of Keyzermas Past first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Merry Keyzermas! Welcome again, Jeff Keyzer!

• Jeff is still selling his Geiger counter kits.
• He has been working on Valve on the Steam Controller
• Part of the process for high volume manufacturing is doing Monte Carlo analysis. 
• If you haven’t seen it yet, the video of the the Steam Controller is amazing!
  
  
• Chris asked about using the Steam controller for layout but it doesn’t seem like a good fit. Dave and Jeff use space navigators with Altium.
• Jeff has a go-kit. He brings it everytime he goes to China
  • DMM
  • USB digital microscope – the dino-lite
  • Tweezers
  • Spudgers
  • Soldering supplies
  • Gloves sized for Jeff
  • Finger cots (magnum sized)
• Dealing with part switching due to sourcing issues is an ongoing process.
  • Paper qual – if the datasheet looks good
  • Full qualification – test rigs and sample builds
• Jeff uses OneNote (Chris uses Evernote) for documenting projects over the product lifecycle. A paper trail is very important.
• iFixit teardown of the Steam controller.
• Chris asked about the reliability of Chinese manufacturers. Dave has been reading a book called Poorly Made in China. Jeff says the most important thing is representing the interests of the company paying for the manufacturing (often with an employee on the ground).
• Jeff has turned into the “Quality Tzar”, making sure the boards are up to snuff. Using the USB microscope, he shares problems he finds with boards. A picture is worth a 1000 words.
• The level of competence in china is so high because they have consumer electronics experience. Getting to the point of “steady state” manufacturing will help you maintain quality.
• Rework adds uncertainty and sometimes it’s not worth it. For a finished goods product that is $49.99 retail the decisions are different than for a $4K board. The value of time is a big factor.
• Could this all be done stateside? It’s very dependent on the support and the supply chain. In China, there’s no issue that can’t be solved within one day (with a mfg rep).

We always love when Jeff stops by! Don’t forget to follow @mightyohm on twitter!

Image courtesy of Jeff’s face and Chris’s family’s house

The post #279 – Merry Keyzermas! first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

We are joined once again by our old friend Jeff Keyzer (Mightyohm)!

• Last time Jeff was on show was after the 2013 Open Hardware Summit (episode 162).
• Jeff has been working on a new high volume consumer product and has been experiencing the need for DfX. Instead Jeff has learned that shotgunning issues is a more likely way to find problems.
• Back in the day Jeff used to do III-V semiconductor PA design. This was part of what we talked about last week with Shahriar.
• Dave was very curious about whether Valve would be showing anything at the upcoming CES.
• Dave just tore down an Apple Lisa:
  [tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hxdz6c8bHg[/tube]
• Chris asked if Dave and Jeff have needed to use IEEE 488/GPIB/HPIB for programming test equipment.
• Jeff (and his wife) have still been selling the Geiger Counter kit, both online and through distributors like adafruit.
• Adafruit has a tutorial about packing and shipping kits and talks about using a counting scale.
• Dave is currently hiring an assistant, but didn’t expect people to apply from outside the country. They would need a travel visa to work with Dave.
  [tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_qhlFc-MVU[/tube]
• Jeff hasn’t found too many in-person hardware events in Seattle but the Kent mic and key swap meet has been well maintained and interesting. Jeff compared this to the De Anza swap meet down in Silicon Valley.
• Jeff got to see Mike Ossmann speak (from afar) at TAPR. Microsoft has a HAM group called microhams.
• One of the most north-westernly conferences in the US is ToorCon.
• Jeff also wants to visit the Hanford Superfund site/reactor in eastern Washington where they enriched some of the early plutonium for US projects.
• There is a Living Computer History museum in Seattle paid for by Paul Allen.
• Another museum (the Space Gallery) is owned by Charles Symonyi. He was the lead developer of Micosoft office; Bill Gates hired him because he did a phd on compiler design.
• The 1405 intel chip was recently decapped and photographed by Ken Sheriff.
• Jeff has thought about making an art project out of scope he picked up at swap meets. like the ICO435.
• What Jeff really wants is the Keysight MSO4000 series. He likes things like the touchscreen and the USB analyzer.
• Another piece of test equipment that would enable a lower cost RF consultant would be a piece of equipment like the Fieldfox.
• Jeff has found a bunch of low cost/no cost tools for RF design:
  • LT Spice
  • QUCS (outputs S2P files)
  • AppCad
  • NEC antenna sim, EZNEC
• The Art Clock was an impressive project that Dave posted about recently.
  
• Adafruit has an article investigating who owns and the history of Heathkit (and an update today).

The post #229 – MightyHohm For The Holidays – Kaiser Keyzer’s Kits first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Jeff is back to talk about the Open Hardware Summit with Chris! YESSAH.

• A few former guests were at the summit, including Ryan O’Hara of Ohararp. He was getting along grand with Brent of OSHstencils.com. Frenemies!
  
• The event was held at the Kresge Auditorium at MIT.
• Didn’t make it to the OHSummit? You should be able to see the talks soon! (not available yet, will try to update when the link is live)
• The night before the summit, we had a tour of Bolt (the hardware accelerator) and had a meetup at the Meadhall.
• After the event on Friday night, Chris got to visit Artisan’s Asylum, where he finally saw Stompy, the Giant, Rideable Hexapod Robot!
• On Saturday Jeff visited the MIT museum. It was a great reminder of prototyping methods throughout the years.
• They also have modern inventions in there, such as the MakeyMakey.
• The 2013 OSHW Goodie Bag was great this year. Dave and Chris both had a design in there, the uRuler and The Amp Hour Breakout Board (shown above), respectively.
• Chris had a bit of a snafu with the soldermask relief, but the OSHpark fab must have fixed it because it wasn’t on every board! This can be good…or very very bad (good in this case)
• Low cost tools continue to get better. The Parallela project was laid out with EAGLE and has multiple BGAs on board.
• Really there are some features that are only available on the high end tools, but some creep in to the low end ones as well.
• Jeff loves the PCBs that are reference material as well, such as the uRuler, the Octopart footprint example/resistor color coder and the Sparkfun Silkscreen example board.
• If you’re interested in seeing/downloading/making the files for The Amp Hour Breakout Board, they’re available on GitHub now. Chris is getting into GitHub for KiCAD files (finally).
• Robert Spitzenfeld wrote a script for GitHub that allows you to do visual diffs, by generating gerbers for each layer and overlaying different versions. 
• Jeff is very excited about what we talked about last week with Michael Ossmann, the Hack RF project. He’s getting one and will learn more about SDR.
• Chris has recognized that when he has the feeling of threatened, it likely means its something he should be learning. An example would be firmware (or GitHub!) for an analog person because of the increasing levels of integration in silicon. 
• Knobs are going away in RF products because SDR and the variety of digital interfacing now available on rigs.
• Jeff will be at TAPR in Seattle in two weekends.
• There is a meetup in Cleveland this Thursday, 9/12/2013. It’s called Charged Conversation and will be hosted with Martin Lorton.
• Having a meetup in your city? Let us know and we’ll promote it!
• Next week on the show, we’ll have Upverter on to talk about online CAD tools and the sharing capabilities of their platform. You can see Chris participating in an online build with them for their activity tracker. Ask your questions for them here!
• Chris also uploaded the rest of his pictures from his trip to his Flickr stream.

It was great to have Jeff back on the show! We hope he’ll be able to stop by again soon to talk with Chris and Dave together!

The post #162 – Discussing The Open Hardware Summit With MightyOhm – Ostrobogulous Openness Occasion first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Welcome back Jeff! Always a good time when Mr Keyzer stops by. YESSIR.

• Jeff is preparing for the winter in Washington.
• The MakerBot is possibly going closed source.
• Kickstarter tells hardware companies, “We’re Not A Store“
• The LIFX bulb has caught a particularly large amount of flac.
• Chris wonders if people care about non-connected devices anymore. The IoT could very well come from Kickstarter.
• The Art of Electronics 3rd edition will be out next year! Or will it?
• Did you know: Dave is 1.028 smoots, Chris is 1.075 smoots and Jeff is 1.100 smoots? Find out more about crazy measurements here.
• Hardware is dead? Well, computer hardware maybe. But who thinks they can make money from computer hardware?
• A bunch of experts from Harvard say what we’ve been saying as well: “Manufacturing is important for the economy“. Duh.
• Can manufacturing ever be abstracted out, similar to an API? Is that what CMs do now?

That’s all for our time with Jeff. We’ll be sure to have him back again soon. As always, you can find out more about the stories, comment on them and add some of your own story ideas at The Amp Hour subreddit.

The post #114 – Kickstarter, Manufacturing, Open Hardware – Judging Jurisdictional Junctures first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Another round with the MightyOhm! Welcome back Jeff!

• Jeff has a new job! He’ll be joining Valve as a hardware designer in June!
• There is a handbook for working at Valve that was previously released online.
• Additionally, another employee wrote about the culture of working at Valve.
• Jeff highlights the importance of networking. Chris has written about this before, specifically for engineers.
• In getting a new job, it’s becoming increasingly important to show a portfolio of sorts. Jeff does this by documenting his projects on his MightyOhm website.
• Jeff’s kit business will continue but may need to be outsourced to a third party.
• Kickstarter is getting bigger, as are the projects. The Pebble watch is now at $6 million dollars (and counting) and has 26 days left.
• Ian of Dangerous Prototypes visit the SEG market in Shenzhen and show off the true power of a large electronics ecosystem/supply chain.
  [tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBtRJc-z05k[/tube]
• New type of patent agreement out of the engineering group at Twitter. States that patents will only be used defensively and continue to be used in the same manner wherever those patents go.
• Speaking of legal issues, a seemingly bogus lawsuit is being claimed against (many) companies that sell vacuum tubes with mercury in them…that they have mercury in them! Shocker! See more from this Hack-a-Day post and accompanying law filing.

It was great having Jeff back on the show and we can’t wait to see what he develops while at Valve. We wish him the best of luck!

Thanks to sigma for the picture of the valve.

The post #92 – Vellicate Videogame Vocation first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• All about Sabaticals, and trying to get out of working for a living :->
• We ridicule a Spray-On Antenna in a can!
• We are reluctant to mention a new reality TV show called Top Engineer. Before auditioning, be sure to check out Joe Grand’s experience with a Discovery Channel reality TV show.
• The Mythbusters are producing a show called Unchained reaction
• Jeff doesn’t quite like the new $1300 Cube 3D Printer from 3D Systems, because they ain’t playing the open source game. But it seems all Dave’s predictions are coming true.
• Dave is having 2nd thoughts about doing a through-hole PSU kit
• Dave rants about several things, as per usual.
• Jeff is headed to the Computer History Museum to check out the Jim Williams exhibit.
• Jeff like this new book: Analog Circuit Design: A Tutorial Guide to Applications and Solutions

Next week on the show, we’ll have special guest Bunnie Huang! Get your questions in for him ASAP!

The post #82 – Vecordious Vacation Variorum first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Whilst Chris is on his belated honeymoon, regular cohort Jeff Keyzer from Mightohm.com takes over.
• Jeff has been travelling again:
• He barely survived Berlin for New Years, what with their readily available fireworks, unlike Australia.
• The Edison National Historic Park in New Jersey
• Another surplus shop tour, including the TWR swap meet.
• Will Detroit just make crappy cars again? or will they turn all Japanese?
• Dave heard a big BANG on his desk, something smells fishy.
• Jeff isn’t too happy with TI’s new MSP430 web based development environment
• Will Raspberry Pie meet their $20 price target? Dave & Jeff think they might have a hard time.
• There is a 6502 documentary in the works.

The post #81 – Jersey Jeff Jactitation first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Welcome back Jeff! Joining us for some holiday fun!

• Chris started a new engineering job today! Dave is getting the keys to his new lab today!
• 
• Jeff is attending DorkBot Austin tonight! Reminds Chris of PechaKucha.
• What should we call a group of nerds standing around? Chris likes the term, “a grumbling of nerds”.
• Dave hasn’t seen Altoid tins in the grocery stores, but has built projects in tic tac boxes, cassette cases and hammond cases.
• Chris just got a new BeagleBone to play with! It’s awesome!

• Digi-key is doing their Digi-Wish again this year, so you can ask for something out of their catalog.
• Chris wished for some of the classical CDs they stock at Digi-Key(?).
• What’s the difference between black and pink foam in electronics? One is conductive (black) and one is static resistant (pink)
• Our wishlists:
  • Dave — A spectrum analyzer, likely one off of eBay. The Rigol ones are too much for Dave so he needs to go older.
  • Chris — A sig gen like the newer Rigol DG1022 because a certain Aussie’s kit isn’t available anymore. Jeff and Dave say Chris isn’t wishing big enough.
  • Jeff — Lots and lots of kits!
    • The adafruit Icetube clock kit.
    • The NixieKit NixieTherm thermometer kit (suggested by electroman-j).
    • The Fun Cube Dongle kit.
• Jeff’s new Ham Callsign is W6OHM! Awesome! Dave wants VK2EEV (but has to get his license first!)
• Chris’s co-worker did a homebrew solution for programmable outdoor holiday lights, controlled by text message!
• [tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77bTCBb8apc[/tube]
• We loved John DeCristafaro’s (@johngineer) post on displaying a holiday image on an old scope with a micro!
• Our past guest, Jeremy Blum was named the IEEE “New Face of College Engineering”!  Awesome! He will be featured during national eWeek.
• Itching to get your hands on an old micro? Try out the new Microbee Z80 kit, which is now available!
• This Day in Nerd History:
  • As seen on today’s Google Doodle, it would have been Robert Noyce’s 84th birthday. He started Fairchild and Intel. Wow!
  • It was on this day in 1901 that Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio transmissions. They had been transmitted from his large transmitting station in Poldhu Cornwall England and he had received them in St Johns Newfoundland. (thanks to Alan Wolke for the suggestions!)
• New contest from DesignSpark for using the ChipKit in an energy efficient application. Giving away 1000 ChipKits but you have to play by their rules.

The post #73 – Horrisonous Holiday Habromania first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• Jeff’s new setup is on Flickr! As are the pictures of his new cases for the Geiger Counter kit.
• He cut out the new cases at the ATXHackerspace using the ULS laser cutter.
• There’s a new Design News Radio Show. You can listen…if you trade all your information.
• Dave prefers using off-the-shelf cases from DigiKey.
• Chris brought up the recent news from Xerox PARC and Thinfilm. They announced 20 bits of printable memory from organic transistors. Chris recognized this is not the print-at-home revolution he is looking for (but it’s a good first step!)
• The term “baud’ used in communications comes from Baudot Codes used in telegraphy. Chris learned about it in the context of Radioteletype (RTTY while studying for a HAM exam.
• Farts cause seismic issues.
• Hackerspaces should install Ham radio stations.
• Jeff suggests reading/following along in The Electronics of Radio by Daniel Rutledge.
• He also is building a Norcal40 kit along with the book. This is a standard kit used in college electronic classes.
• The IEEE refuses to publish papers already in the public domain. Why do people use the IEEE still? Couldn’t people publish outside the IEEE?
• Jeff has found it useful, especially for older (more general) topics. He read about the Early Effect in issues from the early semiconductor days.
• China back in the news for stopping the sale of rare earth elements to outside countries, for a month! But why? To increase prices, silly!
• The US is responding with research dollars for a program called REACT to try and reduce dependence upon these rare earth elements.
• Shonky Product of the Week:
  • From listener Wilhelm: The Fostac Maximus will harmonize your electro-smog. Just don’t forget to give it a few months to kick in!

The post #66 – Magnets, China & IEEE – Xenomorphic Xerox Xebec first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• Chris is a married man! Sorry all you throngs of lady-listeners to The Amp Hour, this nerd is taken! Would you marry an engineer?
• Chris will also be in Boston for the coming week. If you’re around give him a shout!
• Dave just got back from his trip to Melbourne. He saw lots of great stuff, to be explained in future videos. But check out his latest video about cell phone SAR testing.
• Also on the schedule was an interview with Colin Mitchell of Talking Electronics.
• Great presentations from Bunnie Huang about the future of Open Hardware and from Amanda “w0z” Wozniak about the importance of documentation.
• Some other captured videos are available on the side bar of the OHS ustream page.
• Shoutout: A short news-based podcast called “This Week in Engineering” popped onto Chris’ radar.
• Jeff also mentioned the Open Source Hardware Junkies podcast, which neither Chris nor Dave knew about.
• Chris was at the ICSCRM conference last week, one focused on GaN and SiC devices. Pretty cool future for power and switching applications!
• Jeff mentioned the importance of these more exotic, non-standard materials entering the market, like when Dr Shuji Nakamura used GaN to create a blue light LED.
• Chip of the Week: Well, really package of the week. The International Rectifier DirectFET2 package is really cool! It’s a flip-chip die in a tiny metal can that allows heat sinking on both the top and the bottom.
• Listener Ben Rampling sent in an amazing video for our Shonky Product of the Week segment. The guy in the video is claiming your being bombarded with deadly radiation, as shown on his 0-1KHz FFT plot that zeroes out when he puts his feet on a grounded surface and his wrist on a grounded mouse pad. A must watch for ridiculous product claims!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLOx1kWCWoc

Another episode flown by the seats of our collective pants. Hear something you did or didn’t like? Let us know in the comments!

The post #61 – Moore’s Law, GaN and SiC devices – Gallimaufry GaN Gabble first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Wow…kind of a long episode this week (but totally worth it), due to having TWO guests on the show! Jason Kridner of the BeagleBoard Project and Texas Instruments and our regular co-co-host, Jeff Keyzer of MightyOhm.com.

• Some of Jason’s favorite projects for the BeagleBoard are robotics, including some that utilize the libfreenect library.
• Jason sees the BeagleBoard getting smaller and cheaper in the future, trending towards other projects like Raspberry Pi
• The Gadgeteer (from Microsoft) doesn’t appear to be open source hardware, but is a way for .NET programmers to start with hardware.
• Though the hardware may not be OSHW, the .NET Micro Framework is FOSS. And using .NET on Linux  is a possibility in part by Miguel de Icaza.
• Jason’s next project with the BeagleBoard will be to remove the need for his iPad for his retro gaming interface system, the iCade.
• Due to frustration over a broken 40 pin zif socket Jeff went out and bought and fell in love with a Hakko 808 desoldering station.
• Jason has seen some crazy BGA mods. Send in pictures of your favorite board mods to be featured on the show.
• Software on the BeagleBoard is pretty varied. The Angstrom Distribution is based upon similar code to WebOS, the main software of the temporarily cheap and available HP touchpads.
• Roel Adriaans took The Amp Hour Bingo concept to a new level! Follow along when you listen to the show!
• Bill Porter did an unconventional thing: he proposed to his girlfriend by hijacking her PCB panel order from @Laen!
• A new competition in the works: a 7400 logic series competition from Dangerous Protoypes!
• Jeff had a great time at the Chaos Communication Camp, held outside of Berlin Germany. Check out his photos on the MightyOhm Flickr Page.
• There was a talk about sending hackers (in satellite or human form) to space in the near future.
• Jeff compared it to Burning Man, the annual art festival in the desert of the US.
• Jeff was selling his Geiger Counter kit at the CCC and will continue to at the NY Maker Faire.
• Why isn’t there overnight camping at any of the MakerFaire events?

The post #59 – An Interview with Jeff Keyzer and Jason Kridner – Bonafide BeagleBoard Bionomics first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

The post #47 – Apple HQ and Vintage Arcade Games – The Mothership Manifesto first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• 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!

The post #43 – An Interview with Jeff Keyzer and Jeremy Blum – Audacious Arduino Arguments first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• New startup kit business Nerds Like Us
• Sebastian (@sgtech) linked to us on his blog
• Chris & Jeff visited Halted Electronics & Weird Stuff
• Dave retold the Robert Cringely’s DEFCON hacker conference story
• DealExtreme are selling ripoff’s of an Adafruit kit
• Dave talks about a Sydney TAFE initiative to get high school girls into electronics, and the inevitable boy vs girl argument starts.
• Talk about support networks for consultants. Dave announced he is also now a consultant.
• Talk about the Noisebridge Hackerspace.
• The In-House Google Hacker Space
• Philips are using proprietary AAA batteries
• TI are now using Ramtron FRAM.

Chris recording in the Hotel room at the Hilton:

The post #41 – An Interview with Jeff Keyzer – Exhilarating ESC Escapades first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• Jeff Keyzer and Mitch Altman and Andie Nordgren just put out a comic book called “Soldering is easy!”. Great resource for those just starting out and a preview of a book to be published later this year.
• Jeff will be at the Bay Area Maker Faire next month, teaching classes.
• He also will be at the Choas Communication Camp in Germany later this year (the place where the Hackerspace was born).
• Chris found out about all this from the Hackerspaces Mailing List.
• Dave is unabashedly asking people to vote for him in the Tektronix Scope Contest! Dave’s video is about the piezoelectric effect in probes.
• Henrik (@hspalm), one of our WOTW alums, writes in about his new project to characterize DIY shipping costs. Could be a good launchpad for a wiki-type site and drive some change at these organizations.
• Digikey has a new community that seems destined to flop right out of the gate.
• Instead, they should try to be more like AVRfreaks or BeagleBoard, which are more targeted and detached from the company.
• Electric Vehicles
  • Chris had the opportunity to hear Bob Simpson, of EVdrive.com, talk about his conversion and upcoming business venture.
  • New idea is V2G or Vehicle-2-Grid, uses cars as load balancing while they are parked in the garage. Don Tuite has a good rebuttal to the practicality of this in a recent Electronic Design article.
  • Why doesn’t the Toyota Prius have plug-in capability?
• Dave is putting up new lighting in the lab. LED for total lumens needed is still impractical. Dave went with fluorescent to cost and light output.
• And finally, in the WTF column, the US Navy is working on a new  lighting scheme: a laser weapon! Good gravy!

The post #38 – An Interview with Jeff Keyzer – Comical Keyzer Comes a-Callin’ first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• Jeri was naughty and got thrown out of the Designcon conference!
• Workbench of the Week from SnakeBite & Jeff’s buddy Tony
• The new one-stop EE shop, EEweb.com
• Jeff rants about Eagle and the lack of IPC footrints
• Forest Mims autobiography:
  Siliconnections: Coming of Age in the Electronic Era
• Job interviews techniques of employers
• Ridiculous packaging from HP and Newark
• And how to sneak into a trade show

The post #29 – DJ and Jazzy Jeff first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

• Shoutouts
  • Chiphacker.com has become Electronics Stack Exchange. It’s a really awesome format and a great community so far!
• Discussion Points
  • • • What would it take to make open hardware chips?
      • Jeri Ellsworth has done it! In her garage no less!
    • One of our listeners Richard thinks it could be done with laser printers.
    • Chip fabs are better places to do that, just like the one Jeff visited (well, not during the taping of this music video):
  • • Fabs use some nasty chemicals (and some that aren’t allowed under ROHS) like SF6. But SF6 is fun too!
  • Jeff has used the services of James (@laen) who has a great PCB bundling service.
• Rants
  • No parts? Still? AVRs are hard to find and it hurts small businesses!
  • Dumb analysts are sad FPGA lead times are getting better.
  • Chris hates it when there aren’t standard pinouts!

Thanks (again) to Jeff from Mighty Ohm for sitting in on The Amp Hour! It was really fun talking to him again and we appreciate it!

The post #13 – Chips And Fabs And Garages first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

So did my Dave Jones impression fool you? No? I thought it was pretty bad as well. Dave is unfortunately under the weather and was not up to doing a show this week. In all honesty, he is rightly saving his voice for his upcoming trip to the US! Very exciting for him! And of course very exciting for Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory, as Dave Jones will be attending his taping! I know I’d be pumped!

Anyway, we were very lucky to have Jeff Keyzer of Mighty Ohm join me in Dave’s stead this week. Jeff explained more about his background during the show, so onto the links!

• Shoutouts!
  • To you! Thanks to the 1000+ people that have listened to our podcasts!
  • Thanks to Jon at TronixStuff for linking me to Silicon Chip magazine.
    • Jeff suggests Elektor magazine out of Europe. Similar style magazine.
  • Thanks to William at HackersWorkbench for linking here!
• Jeff was one of the first to receive an Arduino Uno board.
• The ATmega8U2 is a big difference to the board, people are already hacking it.
• It uses a USB to Serial stack written by Dean Camera.
• Some issues but good response from the Arduino team.
• “Getting Started with Arduino” by Massimo Banzi is a great starter book.
• But not as great as Jeff’s new book with Mitch Altman will be!
• Getting young ladies involved in electronics is usually a matter of applications more than how it’s taught.
• How else can we get kids interested in STEM?
• Who else can we get engineers interested in twitter? (BBC article on social media)

If we missed anything or if you have other magazines that are similar to Silicon Chip or Elektor, please leave them in the comments. Thanks again to Jeff for helping out this week!

NOTE: I apologize about the sound quality on this recording. Jeff actually went out of his way to try and get a good setup but then I go use my Zoom H1 with the autogain on (very bad thing) in a cubby like desk at my house (nearly as bad as the autogain). I’m very sorry and will try to fix it next week.

The post #11 – Ardui…no Dave This Week? first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.