The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

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#45 -Texas Instruments, OPA & Chevy Volt – Nerdy Neuroelectronic Neurosis

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Dave is a daddy! Congrats to him! See Dave’s intro video to his new “project” below.

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  1. Six smell sensors that are changing the internet of things…
    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/6_smell_sensors_that_are_changing_the_internet_of_things.php

    Umm it’s not a camshaft … it’s a crankshaft, or more accurately, the drive shaft.
    A Camshaft is what opens and closes the intake and exhaust valves of the combustion chamber. The camshaft is driven by the crankshaft via a chain or belt. The crankshaft is driven by the pistons. The crankshaft is connected to the transmission and the transmission is connected to the drive shaft.
    “The leg bone’s connected to the, foot bone” lol

    Good show!

  4. Congrats again Dave
    ————
    Valuation of sites like LinkedIn is rarely about the product but about the size of the user base and the dollar value per head thereof right?. (advertisement*eyes/2). <- yes i know there will be exceptions for pirates etc.
    ————
    Blackstone are crazy re Freescale but they have a diverse portfolio. Freescale have big debt, are just clawing back real profit after the silicon recession, and in the last couple of years despite the debt continued to buy companies and do big R&D including pushing forward with the ARM range amongst others. If i bought shares, I'd still have to cross my fingers that they don't hiccup too much more.
    ———————————————————-
    I think you meant "White Zombie"? John Wayland's (PlasmaBoy) Datsun. He's the EV conversion world's poster boy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8sgvVdSCHU
    The article you link to also mentions KillaCycle. Bill Dube does himself a mischief showing off the bike at a convention:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV8_meso6kU
    ——————————————————-
    There's a guy in the Sydney EV club building what should prove to be an awesome electric dragster.
    ———————————————————
    EV's with fossil fuel generators are a security blanket for the buying public until range is improved or the 5 minute battery swap is common place (so may issues to overcome with that last one). BTW EV marketers still use miles per gallon to describe EV range from batteries because they don't think the buying public is going to understand other terminology.
    In-hub wheels must cop a beating. sureley off wheel motor(s) wouldn't suffer so much mechanical stress?
    ————————————

    Yeah i've got a mid to end of week gap in my podcast listening lineup If you wanted to fill that with more geekery nerdery that'd be great.

    JD

  7. Congratulations Dave! You should buy one of those replica “Gold Records” and hang it over Sagan’s cot like a mobile.

    Regarding the show, I’d love to see (hear) the Amp Hour go to two episodes a week. I don’t think you’d run out of stuff to talk about, although I could personally do without all the talk about marketing/lawyers/banks. Maybe Chris could talk about his projects (does he have any that aren’t clobbered by NDAs?), as he doesn’t seem to mention them much.

    • I’ll tone down the non-engineer blather. It just gets my goat and I feel like we need to stand up as engineers. That doesn’t necessarily mean bashing on others though, so I agree with you.

      As for my projects, I’ll work on it. The NDAs are out to get me but there are a few things I’m working on (ham license, for instance)

  9. Oh yeah I’d love to hear about your Ham exploits and I suspect many other listeners would too. I’m never sure what to think about Ham technology, perhaps you can shed some light on the crazy hacks those guys get up to.

    One thing I remember from one time Jeff Keyzer was on here was that he said someone was using cryogenics kit to build a super-sensitive radio that could bounce signals off the Moon. At first I laughed it off thinking it was a comical exaggeration – but the more I read about Hams the less that seems ridiculous. Do Hams really get up to that kind of insane hackery? That would make awesome show material IMHO.

    • Not rediculous at all, although the cryogenic cooling is pretty neat and exotic. This is known as EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) communication. http://www.nitehawk.com/rasmit/ws1_1.html has a ton of links to different ham radio stations set up for EME. Just a warning that a fair bit of those are old (dead) links, but the ones that work are quite informative.

      -Matt NM1C

  10. Since you asked (about ESD) … 😎

    My setup is over the top because my lab isn’t exclusively for hobby work. My bench has a full coverage ESD mat which is grounded at one corner, and monitored from the opposite corner.

    I have two wrist strap plug-ins, but they are for two-wire wrist straps. Two-wire straps are constantly monitored, and an audio alarm is sounded if the path to ground is broken.

    I have a field sense wire that monitors the volume of the work envelope for large charges. For example, if you walk up and toss a charged PVC covered binder onto the bench, it will sound.

    I have a bunch of ESD lab coats, heel grounders, and treat the carpet for ESD once a month or so. I also have an ionizer that pretty much runs non-stop.

    So, do I always use it?

    If I’m bashing together a 555 circuit and playing with some wacky TTL stuff for fun maybe, maybe not.

    If I’m working with LSIs, j-fets, static ram, or any other part with a known sensitivity to ESD, yeah, I do.

    And if I’m working on a clients board or product, I absolutely do wear and use everything I have.

    And if I were going to tear down my test equipment, even just to change a fuse, you bet I’d wear a wrist strap. It’s really REALLY cheap insurance to make sure I don’t have to waste my money replacing blown gear.

  11. At my work, ESD is taken very seriously. We are predominantly a software company but we do spit out the odd bit of hardware every so often. As a small outfit we need to have good procedures in place to avoid blowing stuff up by accident, in order to keep unnecessary costs down. So we’ve got a dedicated “ESD warden” who diligently tests every single bit of anti-ESD kit we’ve got every couple of weeks.

    They even forced everyone in the firm to sit through a 30 minute educational film (with cheesy special effects including mushroom clouds and lightning).

  15. Regarding ESD, I have a full size 6′ ESD mat on my workbench but have never actually used a wrist-strap. I can never recall destroying anything by ESD while working at my bench. I will say that I believe having a humidifier on my furnace keeps the air from getting too dry in my house helping prevent any ESD, especially in those dry winter months.

  16. Yes, more amp hour! Either longer, or more often, maybe one of them for general topics and one more dedicated to electronics, current projects, chip of the week etc. Dunno, you figure out, you’ve done perfect so far! More is never a bad thing!

  18. Congrats on the baby. I love the name. Regarding baby electronics, the doctor tested our baby for Pb b/c he likes to play with solder.

    Don’t worry about the toy multimeter. Starting when was about 18 months old, my baby liked to disassemble a real multimeter. It was his favorite toy.

    Be warned that caring for a baby gets hard a few months after he’s born. It’s difficult mind-numbing work. Also be warned there’s more insanity at least in the US around the topic of childcare than any other topic. I expect to hear some good rants.

    You’re going to start manipulating the baby at two? Two is when they start manipulating you!

    Regarding EM fields, do you live near any broadcast stations or paging towers?

    You are both right about how having a professional association lobby for a profession helps. My wife charges $185/hr, and if someone tries to do it without a license it’s a crime. I say we should adopt a model, though, closer to the CPA where the license is something people look for when hiring even if their project does not require licensure.

    I don’t wear ESD protection unless I’m handling parts. Once they’re stuffed on a board, I figure the capacitance of the traces should absorb most of the ESD. Maybe some of the people complaining about ESD live in arid regions where ESD is more of a problem.

    This reminds me of a time I was doing a telco card ten years ago and I asked the customer if he wears (ESD) protection before he puts it in.

  19. One programme a week is fine! Always leave them wanting more. Sure, I would love a couple of programmes a week, but I don’t think there is enough material for it without the visual aspect. As the baby grows up, I think Dave’s spare time is going to be increasingly rare and valuable.

    • Sagan can host the show while his old man gets some sleep 😀 He can do rattle reviews and rusk teardowns live on the show.

    • I agree 100%. As baby pressure grows on Dave the added pressure of a second amphour hour(?) could be too much. Better one great quality show than two so-so ones. A second approach could be to introduce a third presenter to share the load with Dave but no idea who would fit the bill, Sagan is still a bit young.

  20. If you guys can do two a week that would be great!! 😀

    How about asking Nate from Sparkfun or Limor from Adafruit to join as guests?

    And congrats Dave on the new harmonic! 😀

  23. congrats on the baby Dave…..Get Bob Pease from the defuct National Semiconductor…that make for an interesting show.Hi Chris..liked your workshop video…gave me a lot of idea’s

  25. Crankshaft. Not camshaft. CRANK shaft.

    I don’t think any cars that have made it to production have hub motors. Every EV I am aware of uses a central motor and a driveshaft to carry torque to the wheels. The EV1, the IMEV, the teslas all use a single motor.

    The early honda hybrids had a pancake motor that was part of the engine flywheel, this was both teh starter motor, and power assistance motor. So it was actually attached to the crankshaft.

    Every hybrid car in production now has the electric and gas engines separate. The Toyota system uses it’s two electric motors as part of the transmission. They provide locking and torque distribution for the synergy drivetrain, so they need to operate to transfer crankshaft power to the wheels.

    The Toyota system doesn’t have a very big battery. so you can only go a mile or so on electric only. The electric motors aren’t very strong, and the gas motor provides most of the umph.

    The cool thing about the volt, is that it’s first an electric car, and second a hybrid. The onboard batteries and electric motor of the volt make for a good electric car. and “THEN” they put in a decent gas engine to charge the batteries and provide more power. The power for the motor goes through the transmission to the wheels, and it’s not a genset.

    • Nerobro, I think Honda still uses the inline “pancake” motor as you described. Honda calls it IMA. I guess due to the really bad sales of the newest Insight you could argue it is not really ‘in production’ ? ; )

      I am shocked to learn that the Volt engine is connected to the wheels as I had always believed it was generating power for the batteries. I don’t know how I missed this but I looked it up just now and indeed you are correct. I wonder how the patents all played out because it appears their system is extremely similar to Toyotas.

  26. Yes on two shows a week, one with guests one without? Or rotate Jeri, Jeff and Jermery? so Dave doesn’t get beat by the wife for not spending enough time with the family.

  27. Regards mobile phones and health effects: I think that constant RF (AM and FM) fields aren’t such a big problem – we have decades of experience with broadcast transmitters and no trail of dead bodies. However, at least one experiment has shown effects with pulsed RF, like GSM. I’m suspicious that slow pulse rate RF might have some biological effect beyond the heating effect. I don’t think the effect is strong. I have a GSM mobile but use less talk and more text. Keep up the good work, it’s very entertaining.

  28. I was so scared when watching the beginning of Dave’s video on Project Sagan. For some reason, I was expecting Dave to say, “Don’t turn it on, take it apart!”. Thankfully, he didn’t do that.