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- WOTW
- Kibi (a WOTW alum!) send in pictures of a past bench! And a past beefy power amplifier!
- Jeremy Blum (@sciguy14) submitted pictures of his work workbench on his personal site! Great toaster SMT reflow!
- Not submitted, but Steve Liebson did a video interview with Jim Williams and we get to see Jim’s lab.
- Events
- Analog aficionados meeting out in Silicon Valley. Sounds awesome!
- Rant
- TI is SO thoughtful to let us upload videos for them to keep! Wow, thanks guys!
- Discussion Points
- Dave did a review of the new Agilent Scope! Great teardown!
- Agilent moving manufacturing for low end back into the US. Is this a new trend?
- Karl’s documentary still isn’t done, but will be an interesting look into local electronics manufacturing in Australia.
- Science funding is under threat in the US, but Obama is pushing for more funding in next year’s budget.
- Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains why science funding is important regardless.
- New wireless system for cell phones called “LightRadio” could get rid of towers.
- Dave turned down his wireless router, but does he have ElectroMagnetic sensitivity?
- Cold fusion is back in the news. Dave thinks it’s viable in <20 years, based on a documentary he saw recently.
- Microchip is selling already programmed parts under different part numbers. Cool idea!
- At the recent SavageCircuits chat, EOD asked our opinion of the Parallax Propeller.
- WTF
- DigiKey sent Dave a catalog?? And from Switzerland no less!
Ferudun Yurdabak emailed Dave with a photo is his old 555 timer chip, the exact same batch as Dave’s one – amazing coincidence after 34 years!
For reference, the WTF soundclip comes from here: End Of The World
Re Light Radio discussion.
They already have a individual cell tower, it’s called a microcell. The major American cell companies already offer these to customers.
I have to correct you on the Jim Williams WOTW video. It was submitted. I submitted it 1st of February
https://theamphour.com/wotw/#comment-1765
Picaxe = Revolution Education Ltd.
Just found this
PICAXE® is a registered trademark licensed by Microchip Technology Inc.
Revolution Education is not an agent or representative of Microchip
and has no authority to bind Microchip in any way.
Go Figure??
Perhaps because they’re using PIC in the name? I wonder now if Dale Wheat had this issue with the PIC-an-LCD?
I had the same scope as Jim was fixing for about 10yrs and it was 20yrs old when I got it.Seem to remember my main problems were due to it riding shotgun in the boot of the car for years, any sort of impact to the side of the scope caused the case to short out on the vertical mounted board (Horizontal amps I think ) Eventually cut a thin piece of card and insulated the case. Never had any more bother until I sold it.The 465 was a true workhorse.
Companies like Xilinx will sell you unmarked chips and point you to a services that etch your logo in the top.
Many companies like Microchip can actually mark the chips with anything you like, no need for a third party service.
I don’t think you an actually send money to the White House. Check this out: http://sesquicentennial.deviantart.com/art/I-m-silly-172535573
(not mine)
There is a suspecisious chip from 4Dsystem : http://img10.imageshack.us/i/pic32vspicasogfx.png/
Look at the power and specials functions pins…
I don’t know if it’s really a PIC32 but it sure look like it, and with name like “PICASO” well…
Yup, almost certainly a PIC32, nice spotting!
Thanks for the great show.
Cell Towers:
The trend to smaller cells in mobile service has been a trend for the past 25 years. Finite bandwidth with increasing calls per unit geographical area drives it. Putting antennas in shopping centers and hiding antennas on small buildings (even churches and one private home I know of) has been going on for at least a decade.
Science Funding:
You guys are right to mention military and entitlement spending when talking about about science funding. That’s not a political issue. Most of the spending is military and entitlement. If we want to cut the budget significantly w/o cutting those two items, it will require very deep cuts in everything else, including science funding.
IMHO you shouldn’t resist talking about the scientific and mathematical elements of issues that are normally politicized. Just because everyone else sees them as emotionally-charged doesn’t mean we engineers have to.
Protectionism:
I am nostalgic too for the days when things were made locally. Going back in that direction is not IMHO a reasonable goal. I see the power the nation state decreasing b/c people can share info on the Internet and businesses can trade easily w/o regard to borders. If my prediction is right, in a few decades trading with other nation states will be perceived the way trading with other cities/provinces/states is now.
To answer the call of companies selling re-branded chips using a PIC, the EDE chips from E-Labs. I believe their chips are al pre-programmed PICs or variants. Also I used to use the PIC-an-LCD from Dale Wheat which was a serial backpack for parallel LCD.
On the note of the Propeller chip…as for taking chances, Parallax has been on the scene for along time. The BASIC Stamp alone inspired much of the current technology people use and the SX chips were widely used in high volume applications. There’s no reason to think that Parallax isn’t a safe bet with as long as they’ve already been in business.
Mainly I can tell by the dialogue though that there’s still a lot of misconceptions that need to be cleared up and I think this is the source for people being shy about such a powerful microcontroller. The programming language barrier is also based on lack of info as there is a C compiler available, albeit 3rd party, though Parallax is working on C compatibility.
Elm Electronics is another company that turns PICs into intelligent OBD to RS-232 interpreters by programming their firmware into the blank micros. I found out about them while looking for OBDII solutions but I believe they customise PICs for other tasks as well, home automation, security and more. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with it, similar to selling libraries to do certain protocol or task.
I’ve used the propeller chip twice, and it’s an awesome chip. Blows the Basic Stamp out of the water, and the multiple cogs are insanely useful.
For the networks to employ microcells/femto cells to cover radio shadows from the big towers is a good thing if its still their infrastructure and their cost. Charging a customer for the eqipment and requiring them to use their broadband adsl/cable bandwidth to get the call back to their network is a bit rich.
Did you really mean a mesh network? To my ears that would mean transceiver nodes that didnt have to get data to the rest of the network by cable but rather by radio to other nodes.
Also, i tried to recycle my Digikey Catalogue Swiss Post bags into some edgy clothing fashion. But they didn’t quite fit 🙂
If i can find a willing model, i’ll send pics.
Electromagnetic sensitivity is the cause of the looney-ness that results 9/11 conspiracy theorists, alien abduction survivors and the Audiophiles spending fortunes on audio-foolery. Dave needs to bust them all!
Ferudun Yurdabak is a Turkish name, means he’s from Turkey. And yes Dave, you pronounced it right!