#84 – An Interview with Bunnie Huang – Bunnie’s Bibelot Bonification

Bunnie is the hardware designer behind the Chumby family of products.
He also wrote a book about his experience of Hacking the Xbox. He got a little help from some friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
He also recently released the NeTV, which was met with some DMCA resistance due to the method in which he injects pixels.
You can get chumby/NeTV hacker kits over at adafruit.
He gets to go to some of the electronics markets, such as the SEG market in Shenzhen.
Ian from Dangerous Prototypes went to the Japanese version of this market recently:
[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DHX2FruBog[/tube]
While in the SEG market, you can even buy an iPhone schematic!
Bunnie discussed Moore’s law (and the breakdown thereof) at the OSHW conference and we discussed on episode 61 of The Amp Hour (with Jeff!), around 20 minutes in.
We asked why he decided to use Marvell chips, as opposed to a more open chip company like Freescale (in relative terms).

Thanks again to Bunnie for taking the time to talk about his work and his philosophy on design. We hope you all enjoyed listening as much as we enjoyed talking to him! Please leave any unanswered questions in the comments and we’ll try to follow up by next week!

Note: We changed the encoded volume of the podcast so we don’t blow anyone’s eardrums out when they jump from their favorite NPR podcast (Car Talk, duh) to ours or whatever else you’re listening to. Sorry if this has been an issue in the past.

Thanks to Joi Ito for the image of Bunnie

Comments

JoannaK says

February 28, 2012 at 1:18 am

Thanks, great episode once again.

Marvell have made many amazing chips, but their NDA:s are really PITA.
Rasz says

February 28, 2012 at 3:04 am

You are on a roll, another ‘must listen’ show.
Love you guys.
Nabil says

February 28, 2012 at 1:05 pm

Good show. I would have like to hear more about Bunnies design process and how one person can create such a complicated hardware product like the NeTV. What tools he uses, how he designs for high frequency, validation process, etc.
- bunnie says
  
  February 29, 2012 at 11:01 am
  
  I did an interview once that answers basically the first half of your question:
  
  http://andrew.huang.usesthis.com/
  
  High frequency design — well, the fastest I get on design work I do is 533 MHz (DDR2/3 busses). It’s not that fast and usually I’m just wiring up one or two chips to a CPU — I can still get away with solid design rules and discipline at that level of design, and a good bit of oscope probing with an active probe post-design to validate signal margins.
  
  If I do anything with RF, it’s usually a module, or if it’s got an on-board antenna I’ll just copy the app note very precisely. I don’t have a license for Ansoft HFSS or anything like that to model these things….the HDMI stuff does get to Gbit-speeds, but the wires are also kept to < 1cm in length simply because I lack the validation tools to do anything longer than that (this explains the long-standing gripe of why the HDMI ports are located the way they are on the NeTV).
  
  I use the EVT/DVT/PVT model for design validation to production. I try to do unit testing and continuous test automation when I can.
  - Nabil says
    
    April 9, 2012 at 12:26 pm
    
    Thanks!
off-by-one says

February 28, 2012 at 4:34 pm

Thanks for the great show. Bunnie is awesome!
Chumby says

February 28, 2012 at 6:38 pm

Hey guys, another great show this week. I look forward to your shows every week. Bunnie was informative and entertaining.

One comment though… As others have commented in the past about you guys not introducing the guests, you guys jumped straight into Chumby talk for 15 minutes and never even told us what a Chumby is!!! I was in the car so I could not look it up till I got home.

Introduce your guests and discussion topics. Don’t assume that everyone knows these things!
- Chris Gammell says
  
  February 28, 2012 at 8:55 pm
  
  Seeing what you chose as your name, I feel compelled to say, “Chumby…know thyself”
  
  Yet this is good feedback. Thanks!
[lum] says

February 28, 2012 at 8:01 pm

I asked this on Bunnies blog too, but what is this liquid work audio he mentions? I’m intrigued.
- bunnie says
  
  February 29, 2012 at 10:54 am
  
  “Liquid work” is just my phrase for music that gets me in the zone. If I’m not focused or unable to get into something, I just mainline some liquid work (i.e., crank the volume up) and I start getting work done.
  - Andrey says
    
    February 29, 2012 at 8:11 pm
    
    Mind to share your playlist then? 🙂
  - Charles J Gervasi says
    
    February 29, 2012 at 9:03 pm
    
    It’s not the sugar-free Amp Energy then. 🙂
Andrey says

February 29, 2012 at 6:14 am

What is the “liquid work” thing Bunnie talks about? Some sort of music?
Charles J Gervasi says

February 29, 2012 at 9:01 pm

I thought he was going to say he Tom Sawyered those kids by letting them play his high-end connect the dots game for a few hours. (I’m reading Drive right now.)

Trackbacks

“The Amp Hour” Podcast « bunnie's blog says:

February 28, 2012 at 3:55 am

[…] was a guest on this week’s The Amp Hour podcast. It was good fun having a chat with show hosts Dave Jones and Chris Gammell — talked about […]
Bunnie’s Bibelot Bonification – On The Amp Hour « adafruit industries blog says:

February 29, 2012 at 12:29 pm

[…] Bunnie’s Bibelot Bonification @ The Amp Hour. Great interview with one of the most amazing EEs in the world! Filed under: bunnie studios — by adafruit, posted February 29, 2012 at 12:28 pm Comments (0) hr{display:none} .in_the_store{background-image: url("https://www.adafruit.com/includes/templates/adafruit/images/side_back.jpg"); background-repeat: repeat-x;width:634px;border: 1px solid #CCCCCC; float:left;} In the Adafruit Store: Linux "Tux" Penguin – Skill badge, iron-on patch Blank SMT Storage Book – 20 pages Drawdio kit […]