The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

Welcome Dr Mark Palmeri , professor at Duke University ! Mark has been at Duke since 1996, and has completed undergraduate, graduate, medical, and PhD degrees here (!) He has focused on making medical devices and now teaches others to do the same in his Biomedical Engineering (BME) courses Verification and Validation (v&v) is a large constraint in getting a regulated medical device to market B...

Chris got back from his honeymoon to the Galapagos, see photos on the updated version of his blog. Dave encountered a super secret podcast location Before leaving on vacation, Chris went to an event mentioned in episode 708 launching a new Tektronix scope. The parent company has been Danaher -> Fortive -> Ralliant (now based out of Raleigh) Large budget events Don Mcmillan is technically f...

Dr Barry Marshall won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovery of the bacterium  Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease. But Barry is also an electronics hobbyist and vintage HP and Tek oscilloscope and vintage computer enthusiast. He visited the EEVBlog lab and sat down with Dave for an impromptu discussion about all sorts of things. https://www...

Welcome Davide Andrea , author or The Electronic Connector Book ! And many thanks to Blues for sponsoring this episode of The Amp Hour! Get 10% off your next order in their online store for a development kit by using the code AMPHOUR. Davide is an engineer working on Battery Management Systems at Elithion He got into writing and editing books via a postcard sent to him after he gave a talk For man...

Thanks to our sponsor Blues this week! Visit the Blues store and use the code AMPHOUR to get 10% off your first order of a kit. Capacitors go pop on Dave’s audio setup , the Presonus monitors Ground loops causing HDMI cable sparking Chris was watching Jetman videos and got an ‘Is that real?’ from the kid. We find ourselves asking the same with all the AI generated video these day...

Welcome  Joren Vaes , design engineer at SOFICS Simulation is critical when designing analog devices based on a PDK from the fab Parasitics are significant, especially with new nodes having upwards of 16 metal layers Chris complained about a class where the professor made them draw planar structures with graph paper with colored pencils Large fabs on leading edge nodes have 1800 page textbook of r...

Contextual Electronics is “still a thing”. Sydney hosted the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) . The IAC is the “big space event of the year,” held annually in a different city. Chris noted that US space funding seems low, leading some friends to move from NASA to private industry. Dave recorded two walkaround videos: a 30-minute bird’s eye view using a GoPro on a...

Welcome Jerry Twomey ( Effective Electrons ) author of the book, Applied Embedded Electronics: Design Essentials for Robust Systems . Chris first heard Jerry on Embedded.fm last year . Jerry’s Background and Book Motivation: Jerry shares his quick history, moving from the Boston area to San Jose (Silicon Valley) and eventually to San Diego, where he has worked across diverse sectors includin...

Welcome back Tim Ansell! Tim’s past appearances and previous work Discussing Tomu on 375 Discussing Fomu on 456.3 Discussing the open source PDK on 501 Tim’s previous work at Google involved releasing a manufacturable open-source PDK (Process Development Kit), which contains the fundamental information needed to create integrated circuits. Key open-source tools discussed include OpenROAD (a...

Dave bought a lemon laptop Chris officially has solar that is installed, working, and is effectively an appliance at this point… Duke Energy and North Carolina nuclear mix The impact of batteries on the grid The Duck Curve is something Chris and Ari discussed on ep650 Open circuit voltage on panels Dave did a repair on a tennis ball machine Chris designed a board with test points too small A...

Welcome back Todd Bailey of Starlight Engines , now Muon Space ! (11 years later) Todd was on Episode 194 of The Amp Hour , when he was consulting in the art and design space and building instruments like Where the Party At (WTPA). He was designing ‘robot doors’ for Calvin Klein’s house, discussed last time. Through Andy Reitano, Todd learned about a role at  Lockheed Martin (a U...

Dave is starting a new project for a lab timer called the uTimer Timelapse Geerling videos about clocks Mitxela clock Transflective displays Dave is looking at LCDs like this one Dropping Rs vs Ls Font chip .5mm pin pitch on the connectors Chris is making a new breakout board that is effectively a sensors shield for a Bluetooth chip. It’s the first time he’s using the service and it wa...

Welcome Back, Andrew Seddon! Founder and CEO of CircuitHub . Andrew was first on episode 131 of The Amp Hour CircuitHub has a partnership with Worthington Assembly Worthington and CircuitHub host the Pick Place Podcast Mimicing silicon manufacturing Common parts library Setting the factory up to have only 50k SKUs in house for speed of loading / attrition Driving people to 2000 parts was the origi...

Welcome Matt Brown of Brown Fine Security ! Matt has been reverse engineering a “smart” smoker controller that talks back to AWS IOT Jeff Geerling talking about his dishwasher Storing private keys on the device?? Threat models Key rotation What is the best case scenario for an IoT device? Secure boot / trust zone Keys encrypt flash storage Chris has designed in the ATECC608 before Repl...

Welcome Tim from Mitxela ! Introduced by Mike Harrison , past guest of the show Fluid pendant Volumetric display London hackspace https://matthias-research.github.io/pages/tenMinutePhysics/index.html FLIP in Blender CHNT36ta Pick and place doing 0201 Precision Clock Sewing machine (check out that GIF!) Secret life of machines – Tim Hunkin Isaac Singer Tim has many Lathe projects on the hardw...

Dave found a wrist mounted DMM that looks…inadvisable We’ll discuss the survey results next time! Florin Cocos of VoltLog Great Scott Sam Aldaher on the show last week Gerald Undone did a studio tour with Captain Disillusionment Short videos Dave using a go-pro on a bike Separate gyro file to stabilize D-y hybrid inverter Chart Remote shell Cline Chris is finally getting solar open ene...

Welcome Sam Aldhaher , power engineer and 3D graphic artist! Sam has always been interested in art…and power engineering He primarily works in Blender and has been for 5-6 years Inputs and outputs Starting from Altium / KiCad for eCAD Blender doesn’t accept step files, it works with meshes like STL KiCad -> Blender is a good flow , as there are add-ons to import KiCad Making a good...

We are doing a 2025 listener survey ! Answer the survey and put in your email to win one of three Jumperless OG units donated by  Kevin Cappuccio (past guest of the show ). Last day to input is June 1st. This episode was recorded Monday the 12th, which has implications on discussions. Dave recently returned from Melbourne for Dave’s recent visit to Electronex . Dave saw past guest Scott Will...

Welcome back Dr Colin O’Flynn of Dalhousie University and New AE tech! Colin has been on the show twice before Episode 239 in 2015 Episode 552 in 2021 Colin continues to publish/do research around side channel attacks Now he’s targeting different ports / Jitter measurements JTAGulator RF Mixer Side channel with power Can you fix it on a chip? Targeting an SD Card port because there&#82...

We are doing a 2025 listener survey ! Answer the survey and put in your email to win one of three Jumperless OG units donated by Kevin Cappuccio (past guest of the show )  Note: this was corrected from the original, these are not v5 units, they are the original Jumperless units. Apologies for the confusion ~CG Chris signed on to get solar installed He’ll be taking advantage of Duke Energy&#8...

Welcome back (for a third time!) Michael Gielda of Antmicro Michael and Chris usually see each other around the Zephyr booth at Embedded World , but not this year Antmicro continues to work on Zephyr , which targets hardware using  Devicetree Renode Mult-node testing code aethero Data center in space Cosmic shielding corporation Tying the simulation to reality How do you know an actuation has happ...

Meetup.com doubled their prices so the 3H Triangle group moved to Luma (same is true for SF, Seattle) Note taking apps after Evernote was gutted: Joplin , Obsidian Battery leakage in a DMM Causes of leak The PCB of a Tonie box with an SD card glued in place. Board has an ESP32-S3. ( Product page ) Design decisions – Latched / unlatched EEVblog video Pulse stretcher 3rd mode ‘break on o...

Welcome Kevin Cappuccio, creator of the Jumperless Breadboard (v5 and before) Check out the Jumperless v5 on Crowd Supply OG Jumperless Video This update shows a bunch of images with the breadboard off 3M whitelabels their breadboards (because of the adhesive?) Breadboard spring clips Spring clips (in 3D) Elecrow 369 CH446Q , a clone of Zarlink MT88161 FPAA Resistance of the traces BSky Schematic...

Tracking test equipment on one long homepage… the emporer of test equipment If you track it, it’s not hoarding…it’s curation Very specific piece of junk wood Garage Solar Amber allows you to sell power back in Australia at some wild rates Dave is trying out case design in OpenSCAD…it looks…ok Pebble is returning to the world after Google open sourced the OS (kud...

Welcome James Adams , Chris Boross , Liam Fraser , and Luke Wren ! The last time the RPi team was on the show was about the RP1 (#648) The order of parts being released was RP2040->RP1->RP2350 Check out the datasheet for the RP2350 Learning from silicon Security  and  power  states The part is a “Dual dual core” The Arm side is a Dual M33 The RISC V side is a  Hazard 3 processo...