This week Dave and Chris discuss test equipment, the Arduino acquisition, Zephyr, Altium pricing, private equity owning YouTube channels, audio circuits, and more!
Joren Vaes is a design engineer at SOFICS working on simulating and delivering analog IP blocks on leading edge nodes like the 2 nm node from TSMC. Listen to how they bend physics to their will to make the chips that power our modern electronics.
This week Dave and Chris discuss DIN rail, IAC (featuring Space Lube), begging for Moonlanders, batteries, 10x-priced connectors, Gridfinity, concrete slabs, and more.
Jerry Twomey, author of Applied Embedded Electronics, joins Chris to talk about how to build more reliable hardware when there are embedded components involved. And these days, there are almost always embedded components involved.
Tim 'Mithro' Ansell returns to The Amp Hour to discuss his new Singapore based wafer sharing service called wafer.space. Now that Efabless is no more, this venture will aim to make silicon even more accessible to the masses, driving down the costs on a per chip basis. For $7K, you get 1000 chips delivered on a 180 nm process from Global Foundries.
Dave and Chris discuss solar, nuclear, making new injection molds from old ones (or not), and how to probe poorly placed test points with tiny needles.
Todd Bailey has been busy in the 11 years since he was last on the show. He has designed submarine sonar and many different pieces of space electronics, the latest being a hall effect thruster that uses solid propellant for his now sold company Starlight Engines.
Dave and Chris record after a long break between episodes together and discuss new electronics designs they're working on, solar and battery installations, dealing with tariffs, and building at JLC.
Andrew Seddon, founder and CEO of CircuitHub, joins Chris to talk about how CircuitHub has changed over the past 12 years as a startup and how they are continuing to push the boundaries of high mix domestic electronics manufacturing.
Matt Brown is a hardware and IoT security researcher. He joins Chris to talk about best practices for securing hardware that talks to the internet and share stories of products that didn't pass muster.
Tim from Mitxela stops by the show to discuss his extensive portfolio of projects involving, hardware (tiny LEDs), firmware (ridiculously low power processing), software (emulating gameboy), and mechanical (machining jewelry grade objects)
This week Dave and Chris discuss solar optimization, short videos, useless products, cameras, energy monitors, Bluetooth, magnets, and more!
Sam Aldhaher is a power engineer and 3D graphic artist, his Blender visualizations have helped many people understand how RF flows in a variety of circuits. Sam joins Chris to talk about how to get started in Blender and the variety of tools available once you do.
In this episode, Dave and Chris cover environmental monitoring, trade shows, manufacturing, tariffs, new test equipment, and AI coding.
Colin O'Flynn returns to The Amp Hour for a 3rd time to talk about recent developments in security, FPGAs, small scale electronics manufacturing, and the world of academia.
In this episode Dave and Chris discuss solar installs, wacky tariffs, peak power pricing, tiny electronics, oscilloscope triggering, and more.
Michael Gielda returns to the show (for a third time) to talk about the work Antmicro is doing to extend hardware, firmware, and silicon design. Their new tool System Designer allows even more high level testing of full systems, in addition to their popular Renode tool.
Dave and Chris discuss bluetooth boards, what happens when batteries leak, new cellular capabilities in iPhones, AC flicker, old oscilloscopes, and more!
Kevin Cappuccio joins Chris to talk about the Jumperless Breadboard, an advanced platform for prototyping and interacting with circuits that you place onto the breadboard.
Dave and Chris discuss the Tandy 200, test equipment cashflow, the return of the Pebble watch, GPT trying its hand at CAD, solar output...and more
Rupert Reynolds
Superconductors 100.5 (I'm not wise enough to do a 101): Superconductors have a critical current (or magnetic field) above which they lose their superconducting property. The max current tends to increase as the temperature drops. Opinion: SCs, even if we get them working above room temperature, will never be cheap enough for widespread use just to power chips, or cars, ot homes.
Rupert Reynolds
Framework laptop would suit me, because I'm a cheapskate and I want to reduce wastage. I think the modules connect via internal USB Type-C, so the Type-C module is just a port saver. Imagine giving a live coding conference talk and finding they can only take Apple iThing connections. Easy. Open your "Joe 90" briefcase, grab the iThing connector module and stick it in where the other video output module was. A bit neater than carrying adaptor cables. And laptops are getting harder to repair/upgrade, while Framework reverses that. My current portable is still a old and beaten-up Lenovo laptop (Flex 14" 20404). Fitted maximum RAM and a big SSD. I only write code and assemble/compile and it's fast enough, so I'll look again at Framework when old faithful can't cope any more. My old Lenovo is easily repairable for battery, screen, keyboard, RAM, fan, connectors. I'm not so sure about newer stuff, so if I buy a Framework, maybe it's a vote, as well as making repair easy?
Rupert Reynolds
There was a chip released that I called an "Erg Thief". I got the release though the post (don't know why--I'm a semi-retired programmer who drives buses!). Anyway, it reckoned to run from about 0.4V, needing (from memory) 1.2V to start. The sheet listed charging from a single solar cell as an example. So, for moon power you need a lower PV cell voltage to reduce the leakage. 0.2 or maybe even lower? This chip could power your quartz clock from the Moon. Gotta be worth it :-)
Gholi
Interesting conversation about LoRaWAN, DASH7 and IoT telecomm in general
tarun sri harsha
awesome podcast...been tired of searching for electronics podcasts... ultimately reached here