The Amp Hour

Lots of fun and lots of discussion points this week! We talked about schools, contests, more contests, ham radio, 3D transistors and our first Chip of the Week! New-ish podcast about scientific computing. We found out about it when Ayah and Alicia from the Open Hardware Summit were on there. Jason Struble (@strube09) linked [...]

This week is another threesome. Chris & Migthyohm Jeff are jury-rigged up in a hotel room at the ESC conference.   New startup kit business Nerds Like Us Sebastian (@sgtech) linked to us on his blog Chris & Jeff visited Halted Electronics & Weird Stuff Dave retold the Robert Cringely's DEFCON hacker conference story [...]

This week focused mainly around building a kit business, namely keeping costs down, keeping revenues in check and how to license your project.   Jigish linked to us from his site. Thanks! The Nottingham Hackerspace, Nottinghack, was pushed out of their old space and needs help funding a new one. Can hackerspaces thrive in [...]

A few audio snafus this week, but we decided to leave them in for the "real experience". We'll get it eventually.   Chris and Jeri are broadcasting a live video show to announce the 555 contest winners. Dave is stressing about the Tektronix contest. He's trailing in votes! Jeremy Blum was featured on The [...]

Jeff Keyzer of Mightyohm.com joins us this week to talk electronics and his new comic book!   Jeff Keyzer and Mitch Altman and Andie Nordgren just put out a comic book called "Soldering is easy!". Great resource for those just starting out and a preview of a book to be published later this year. [...]

Whoa! Some big news this week!   Chris has a new rig in the mail. Should help future Amp Hour podcasts. Dave officially has left his day-job at Altium (never before spoken directly on air before!). The company is moving to China, as stated in their official press release. In other news, Texas Instruments [...]

No guests this week, but lots of rants and items! Suggest future guests you'd like to hear either in the comments section or on the Suggestions Page.   Mike Cowgill is building an LCR meter. Looks like a really cool build! Welcome to Adam Ward, who recently started a new site and gave us [...]

The Amp Hour - Now with 100% more guests! Welcome, Jeri Ellsworth!   C vs. assembly language. Jeri still uses asm, Dave has in the past but favors C, C stands for Chris, that's good enough for him. Management of projects could improve projects, but not much can help code reviews. Jeremy is done [...]

Chris has a new bench! New podcasts! Vintage Volts is a podcast about electronics "back in the day" by Jeff Salzman. The BeagleCast is a new podcast from the folks at BeagleBoard.org. Jaime (@jpwack) is the awesome dude who put together the text and processing behind the final Widlar poster. Tell your favorite chip vendor [...]

Protip: If you don't understand the title, think U2... Corrections It was Electronic Design, not Design News with the new radio show we mentioned last week. Sorry! WotW (our last?) Lucas Weakley writes from Florida to show off his bench and some kind of device in a pelican case. Our first female WotW submission, Irmi from [...]

WotW Dino (who now has a uStream channel for his workshop) Modular bench Bench with dresser drawers Bench with old Tek scope! Mitch (@mitpatterson) Bench with etching tools laid out Panorama of home lab Shoutouts DigiKey and Electronic Design Magazine have a new show! Rants DigiKey and Electronic Design Magazine have a new show! We [...]

Chris apologizes for the poor audio quality on his end, it was a new setup (again) while the bench is being finished. What's your favorite movie about engineering? Piggybacking on an article by Bill Schewber article from EEtimes. Bjork pulls apart a TV and tells us about it. WTF. "You shouldn't let poets lie to [...]

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 [...]

This week on The Amp Hour, Dave and Mightyohm Jeff Keyzer join forces to talk about: Jeri was naughty and got thrown out of the Designcon conference! Workbench of the Week from SnakeBite & Jeff's buddy Tony The new one-stop EE shop, EEweb.com Jeff rants about Eagle and the lack of IPC footrints Forest Mims [...]

The 555 contest continues onward! Everyone is getting excited! Dave's classic 1976 vintage Signetics 555 timer chip (which he destroyed! RIP). Can anyone beat it? WOTW William L-shaped bench photos Laurence White Photo tour of the workshop Mr. J from Boston Home workbench Radio gear Rants Dave doesn't like how all those cupcakes he's sending [...]

Shoutouts Thanks to Mitch (@mitpatterson) for linking to us from his site! Alexander linked here too and asked about what to do when family and friends might not be interested in hearing about your latest project. Octopart now indexes Digikey as well! Electronics porn! Hi res photos of an old Microchip part. Light can get [...]

WOTW None! C'mon people! But we did hear that some people have been building benches, such as John S. Can't wait to see them! Chris is planning a new bench as well! And has been doodling in Google Sketchup to get an idea of what he wants: View from the front From afar with the [...]

. WotW JP Wack from Santiago, Chile Bench with awesome labels! Other work Troy Rank from Rochester, NY Bench page Stynus from Belgium Project page (tons'o'projects!) Workbenches And workbenches with Stynus in the picture Followup The 6502 was laid out by hand by one person! A new study out found that ASUS was the most [...]

. Shoutouts Sparkfun has a new "grab bag" program for all their pick and place cast off parts. Could be some good pickins! Rants Why does the IEEE still charge membership fees to unemployed engineers? And why does the cutoff for waiving the fee occur at 13k(and below)? Is that a realistic point at which [...]

. WotW Adam C of Onecircuit.com submitted the first workbench of the week submission by video! Bob of Ambientsensors.com took a picture of his bench with his pup, including a signed HP 300A! Lieven Blancke of Belgium submitted two pictures of his 7 year old maker son at their bench. Also included a picture of [...]

We wanted to try out a title similar to the style of The Big Bang Theory...we love it! Shoutout Another Ham-like video podcast called Amateur Logic. We like it! Thanks to the queen of science videos (Jeri) for the link! Dave got scooped! Afrotechmods did an AWESOME video about ultracaps. He arc welded a coin! [...]

. Seasonal What is on your electronics list for the holidays? Dave and Chris both need new chairs for their labs WOTW Henrik from Oslo, Norway Bench setup and explanation. Sylvain from Belgium Bench setup for RF projects. David from Portland Portable bench setup. Taking your electronics on the road is impressive! Mike from the [...]

Our first WOTWs! Mike, who works at Ascot TV in Christchurch New Zealand! More info about Mike's is here. Dave likes the Bob Parker ESR meter. David work at Delta-Q Technologies in Vancouver, Canada. More info about David is here (as are many more pictures!). David plans on doing something similar to the Electric Delorean [...]

Shoutouts Rich Hoeg of The Northstar Nerd, linked to us from his podcast page! Be sure to check out the others on there! To Google Sketchup! For offering electro-nerds the opportunity to do 3D modeling (easily!). They have a new contest in conjunction with Ponoko (thanks to @dustynrobots for the link). Check it out if [...]

Shoutouts Dave's $50 shootout is cited in Adafruit now carrying the Extech meter. Cool! There's also mention of it on extech site. NPR did a piece covering hackerspaces. Likely many have heard about it , but it's good coverage of the burgeoning trend. All About Circuits is a great resource if you've never seen it. [...]