The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

Welcome Martin Rowe of EE World! Martin is a long time journalist in the electronics space, having worked at magazines like EDN, Test and Measurement World, EE World, and more! Ken Wyatt Concentrated vs diffuse information Product reviews Unitrend scope videod Tek 5 series B Wirecutter for test equipment / parts Skepticism Webinars – 3 levels Martin has an HP34401 early model Touring T&M companies Littelfuse Martin is in the Boston area Boxborough has multiple EMI labs Article on building an anechoic chamber PCB East was in Boxborough now in Worchester (“Wuh – Stah” 😀 ) International Microwave Symposium (IMS) inBoston this year What is driving the Boston ecosystem? NYU wireless 6G summit Components trickling down into the other parts of the industry Ted Rappaport from NYU writing a paper Open RAN 5G standalone vs nonstandalone Poster session ISAC Test equipment has to test everything leading edge 3GPP The impacts of satellite connectivity IoT still talking about LTE 5G modems and battery life Private networks Automation software The Measurement Blues song, among others Find him online Martin Rowe on LinkedIn EEworldonline Martin sent over some links related the things we discussed during the episode 6G discussions: How things have changed. We assembled a timeline of the topics so you can see what’s come and gone Nokia Bell Labs’ Peter Vetter talks 6G research Live from the Brooklyn 6G Summitd Teardown: HP 8112A pulse generator – I bought this at a flea market. MIT holds these once a month April through October. I go every year to buy things for teardowns and to take photos. DSL router uses parts from old phones – Heard about this from a European telecom newsletter and just had to get the details The slide keyboard is back, in a 5G phone – Video interview from 2020. I mentioned the Psion Organizer. The designer of this phone used to work for Psion. He designs beautiful products. Tryout: two low-cost USB inline meters and a load – My latest. This was the one where the audio in the videos seemed overdubbed. I uploaded the videos again using different file names. Seems OK now.

Dave is back from vacation. He should have bought a Starlink mini (not as cheap as we thought) because his coverage was very poor throughout the trip. Space twitter Artemis II is going up soon (early Feb 2026) Billy makes artemis go up  Sparkfun and Adafruit are on the outs PJRC (and Paul Stoffregen) makes the Teensy and it is now produced exclusively by Sparfkun The pinout is open but the bootloader is proprietary and sold as the magic black box. Paul’s wrote about what was happening on the EEVblog forum Tim Lamb (Trash80) talked about teensy in his devices on episode 292  Chris modified a Tag Connect 10 pin footprint for an upcoming design RAM prices are wild right now! After following a tutorial on “Doom Coding”, Chris picked up using Claude Code A friend pointed out that more horizontal, open source programs like KiCad (version 10 coming soon) will have an advantage with LLMs/coding assistants over more vertically integrated tools. The vertical tools won’t be able to move as fast. Also in the Doom Coding exercise, Chris found an app called Terminus that allows connecting an Android device (and maybe iOS?) and getting a terminal interface from the phone using a USB-C cable in OTG mode. Zephyr builds in lots of capabilities Chris loves using Zephyr shells to build interfaces (even custom ones) to standard functions in Zephyr CES wrapped a week or two before this recording. The Donut lab solid state battery proposed impossible specs. Some engineers modified a Rivian to try and make the Cannonball Run. It was an interesting look into battery packs and what it takes to charge them fast. Dave and Chris took a long roadtrip to the Deep Space Network back in 2017. Piers Rocks has a great video about how PIOs work on the RP2xxx chips from Raspberry Pi The Raspberry Pi should always be viewed from the perspective of “what is cheapest”. The RP team mentioned that drove the decisions of external flash on the RP2xxx boards Past guest Jeff Geerling talked about some of the pricing challenges with RAM prices increasing

Welcome Aaed Musa! Aaed is a YouTuber who builds a variety of robots and a mechanical engineering student at Purdue. He just completed his undergrad degree and is now working on his Master’s degree. I believe he is the first Amp Hour guest who is still a full time student. His channel has a great variety of builds including designing all the way down to gearboxes. Aaed says the MIT “mini cheetah” launched many low(er) costs builds of robots, including his own. Boston Dynamics (and many others) announced their new ATLAS robotics platform at CES this year. FOC motor controller Backlash is a measure of how much movement you have between the teeth of gears (and thus how accurate you can be with open loop control) Ball bearing balancing robot Inverse kinematics Past guest of the show James Bruton was a model for the builds that Aaed does what does the glue look like His recent build uses…rope…to build a robot dog? A Capstan drive has virtually zero backlash “relatively new rope” DM20 High precision speed reducer using rope the impacts of materials on design processes Juicero Relationship with classmates and professors as a YouTuber Purdue Engineering Aaed picked up electronics from youtube What’s his take on LLMs? Making next CARA open source New video recently came out about a spinning top bulk of the cost is in the motors and motor controllers growing up in the age of youtubers

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 BME design fellows is a program that guides students towards real world use cases and design projects The courses that Mark runs reminds Chris of “automatic job offers” that Chris has heard about for classes like those taught by former guest Larry Sears (at CWRU). Also SMPS design courses at UT Dallas and microarchitecture courses like those taught at University of Michigan. Teaching the skills of troubleshooting / debug Putting together circuits like Legos There are difficulties when teaching students with various levels of experience, namely how deep to go on any particular subject and how much background to provide. Mark has been flipping a circuit course on its head, instead prompting students with ideas like “how do you capture bio signals electronically and pull them into a microcontroller” Tools of the trade for Mark’s courses include KiCad ngspice (built in to KiCad) Jupyter notebooks VS code Git Zephyr Talking about power as an intuition builder, as opposed to currents or voltages V&V requires that you have a quality management system (QMS) IEC60601 Going through companies that have  QMS can be a shorter path for bringing a device to market Even face shields needed to go through that process when COVID hit Firmware and embedded in BME at graduate level Mark and students in BME Design Fellows course have been working on a Tympanometer, targeted at resource constrained industries Mark also teaches students how to use Zephyr, as opposed to how most educational programs migrate towards arduino A challenge for teaching Zephyr is the devicetreed They target Nordic Semiconductor parts, which have great support and educational resources Mark experienced a “vertical learning curve” when first migrating designs to Zephyr a few years ago Complicating things is that most students haven’t coded in C, if they have done much code at all Teaching how to lock to a particular version with Zephyr manifests Using CI/CD for automated builds Focusing on state machines early on, using Zephyr’s state machine framework (SMF) All of Mark’s courses are on github under his username mlp6 Teaching stack vs heap Mark only ever has taken one official progrmming course The benefits of experiential learning Accreditation is a constant challenge with non-standard courses and testing Duke is taking retrospective and prospective looks at the space of education Problem sets are moot these days Mark gave a great example about teaching a student about Bode Plots “Thats a trick problem” is something Mark hears wrt testing (when it’s definitely not) “Getting the reps in” is an important concept in educational contexts, and something Chris really resonates with Building open ended problems vs closed The more open ended a problem, the more time it take to grade / evaluate TI-85 / 83 / 92 calculators Jupyter notebooks as a way to track progress and have students show their work More about the tympanometer project They have been working with Duke hospital, a major benefit for Mark and his BME colleagues Continuous middle ear infection that causes scarring that causes lifelong loss Sound reflection under vacuum is an indicator that more testing is needed The key innovation is making it lower cost and allow a layperson to do the screening to hand off a child to get more screening at a pro clinic BME Design Fellow students getting to design the various parts of the design They have multiple sources of funding: private, nih, etc Value engineering in medical space Mark points out the philosophical question on whether you can reduce costs by reducing testing … but thinking about whyat that takes to satisfy that need Find Mark online mlp6 on Github His Duke homepage tymp project article Find him on LinkedIn Duke BME design fellows / on LinkedIn

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 funny Open Circuit The Way Things Work Discman teardown Neo the home robot Humane AI pin ‘tugging on the nerd heartstring’ Nikola / Trevor Norton Auto concept cars Rigol MHO 900 videos, already hacked, paid hack EEVblog forum Unknown chinese fpga Stephen Hawes working on a PCB that can be laser cut for super quick turn boards Oxide and Friends podcast KiCon (US) 2025 Talks

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.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2005/marshall/facts/

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 many years he was an editor at Artech house He works on Lithium BMS systems for large setups How do young engineers learn about connectors, but for tribal knowledge within larger companies? Digikey catalog is a good search for connectors overall Industrial cinch by Harting Should you design a custom connector (“no”) Davide also built and maintains an online tool for finding connectors called Identiconn Fretting is when vibration causes a connector to fail Davide had to go to Bell Labs docs to look up some specs Chris remarked that Identiconn is a McMaster (Carr) style browsing experience Vendors divide based on how the fields are set up, because that is actually logical for them selling parts. It’s harder for finding/discovering components though. On distributor sites, the connectors are grouped by how they were bought Chris asked Davide about things that have gone wrong in his career with connectors FFC doesn’t connect back into the socket after the tab is ripped away ribbon cable vs ffc, CIC vs FPC IDC – insulation displacement connector Davide has filled in with generated terms where there are no defined language for a family/type of connector, such as with “bump idc” connectors “dual beam? Chris and Davide did a joint search for the high density CM4 connector that mounts the Raspberry Pi module to another board Gender of connectors (note: there is a great discussion about the historical nature of using gender for connectors in the book) Pin vs plastic gender Shrouded vs enshrouded gaziatea (sic) – poem from the 1800 USB type A connector Self mating APC7 – self mting connector Anderson connectors TNC BNC search PFFE for the dielectric on a BNC/TNC Magnetic connectors with pogo pins Example connector from Hyte Crimps were designed in the 50s The source of having so many power connectors is … imperialism? tahiti / fiji / nz all have different connectors Why antennas are male/female is…money? And regulatory silliness via the FCC Davide has also written about and is working on lithium ion batteries A sodium ion battery book (self published, unlike the LiIon books) should be out next year The Connector Book is self published. Your purchase directly supports Davide’s work…and you get the web tools for free! “peak lithium” What is required when refining sodium for batteries? The voltage range and charging needs are different for Sodium Ion. For instance, the range goes from 4V to 2V Find Davide on his various websites, on LinkedIn, on StackExchange, and on reddit

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 days. Fight between mehdi/electroboom and walter lewin about KVL Arduino bought by Qualcomm! They also released the Arduino Uno Q, a single board computer running Debian that also has a beefy microcontroller running Zephyr Daves post on X about the purchase Arduino switched to Zephyr A new enabler of this complex mix of embedded, linux, AI, and ML is a software offering from Arduino called App lab Spacey Hardware meetup – ACES  Veritasium is PE owned now Chris will be going to a Tektronix event for new gear and past guest Alan Wolke (W2AEW) is giving a class Chris has been rebooting his website to follow the ideas of the Small Web Follow #electronicscreators on YouTube to not be subject to algorithmic steering Chris has been getting into gridfinity after discussing it a few shows ago. Altium changed their pricing again…but it might be lower? Hard to tell Check out the features coming to KiCad in v10 YOLO = “You Only Look Once”, Chris learned about it from OpenMV

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 rules Because the constraints get tighter, that book gets longer for each node 2 nm mass production on finfet currently with TSMC 22 was the last classic cmos Finfet, looks like a devil ‘gate all around’ / nanosheet CFET (complementary field effect transistor) is next Joren really gets Maxwells Equations…as you have to at super high speeds SOFICS are making phy’s / IP blocks Amplifiers that are DC to 50 GHz Making a datasheet for the resulting IP block Joren got his PhD working on millimeter wave applications It’s all just physics Using coils to impedance match between layers Reflecting off of different materials at angles is Snells law (not lorentz equation) and that extends to different materials at different wavelengths Cables are very lossy at 100 GHz…dBs per cm Parasitics impact every part of the design process Wireline community – name for the high speed interfaces, including research in the space Most transistor threshhold voltages that Joren works with are … 750 mV! Voltage dependent drc rules Electromigration – holes in wires from electrons ESD is a big part of the business, and a large source of parasitics New product development for IP blocks Working with customers and Foundry at the 2 nm node Design companies need to be paying 100s of thousands to software providers After, it goes to spice and schedmatic Joren decides whether to jump in on layout LVS – layout vs schematic Parasitic extraction (spice netlist) PDKs define how you can do the layout stage Lower cost tools exist but more expensive tools have tooling that tells you when you’re violating DRC 3 main vendors Cadence Synopsis Siemens (Caliber) Foundries soemtimes only support one tool Doing test wafers  allows testing of structures. They often get MPW at a discount from the fab (since they’re often testing new processes as well) How do they test with packaging options? ‘low speed’ can be die bonded or pcb mounted high speed does on wafer probing (with veeeery expensive probes) Check out Sofics.com for more info on the company. They also have a blog with a great name. Follow or connect with Joren on LinkedIn  

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. Dave 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 pole and a physical hour-long walkaround. Large companies had private stands, while smaller, two-man companies had sub-booths within their country’s larger rented stand (e.g., South Africa, Germany, Poland). Niche companies included those selling “space connectors,” described as regular connectors sold at potentially 10 times the price to space customers. Australia had a large presence, with stands for the country and individual states (Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania) hosting local niche space gear firms. Dave toured a new, completely mobile Mission Controlfacility built into a semi-trailer van. This unit is designed as a generic platform with screens, server racks, and redundant power, allowing any space company to install their own servers and operate anywhere in Australia. An Australian company specialized in “Space lube” (lubricants for satellites and actuators), necessary because water-based lubricants would boil off or freeze up and cause gear to seize. Chris has a new “quasi obsession” with the old technology of DIN rail. He is using 3D printers to mount development boards onto DIN rail to organize his desk. DIN rail is common in Australia and Europe for electrical switchboards and automation equipment (PLCs, power supplies). Dave sent a photo of “Fish Pointer’s” organized desk, which Chris identified as using “Gridfinity,” an ad hoc, modular standard popular in the 3D printing community, often associated with Zack Friedman of Voidstar Labs. Dave found a Gridfinity generator website and a tutorial video. Dave runs a Creality K1 3D printer that is networked, allowing him to control and print remotely. Chris purchased a filament dryer for only $42 to combat the issue of filament going brittle due to moisture. Dave recounted his attempt to sort 330 tins of salvaged parts (feet, spacers, grommets) from vintage test gear. The space industry is currently “so hot” due to private funding, unlike the “dead” industry 10 to 15 years ago. It is now easy to book a payload slot on a launch vehicle like SpaceX. Firefly was actually “begging” people to put payloads on its Moonlander to help fund the mission. The Commodore Corporation recently changed hands, and a consortium of enthusiasts released a new Commodore 64 Ultimate, featuring a transparent keyboard PCB signed by original designers, including Jerry Ellsworth. The appeal is nostalgia, as modern chips far outperform the 6510 CPU it uses. Chris bought a split, ergonomic Corne V4 keyboard (RP2040 chip) from AliExpress for $68. The key feature is the pleasant web serial-based app for reconfiguring key mappings. Dave stated he hates split keyboards and rechargeable keyboards that only last a week. Dave is installing 75 kWh of beefy outdoor battery packs (800-900 kg total) received “free” due to a government subsidy. He poured a new, completely reinforced concrete slab rated for over 1,500 kg to support the batteries on a flat surface, using pre-welded mesh instead of tying rebar. The new system includes an 8 kW inverter. Dave intends to install a changeover switch to run the house off the batteries if the power grid fails. Dave noted he mainly wants the “warm fuzzy” feeling of running his entire house on solar and batteries.

Welcome Jerry Twomey (Effective Electrons) author of the book, Applied Embedded Electronics: Design Essentials for Robust Systems. 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 including consumer electronics, aerospace, defense projects, DARPA research, and medical electronics. His book focuses on how to develop robust systems, providing guidance that is timeless rather than applications manuals that quickly become outdated. The Analog Problem: Although modern systems may be digital end-to-end, Jerry emphasizes that the predominant causes of failure and design difficulties are often analog in nature. Academic study often teaches ideal signals but neglects real-world issues like inductance, noise, and cross-coupling. Consulting Experience & Troubleshooting: Jerry discusses being called in to fix systems that failed strenuous regulatory testing for medical devices, where reliability is first and foremost (similar to an aerospace way of thinking). Failures often stemmed from basic issues like a lack of ESD protection, absence of error correction in data streams, insufficient detection of errors, and common mode noise rejection problems. High-Speed Data and Signal Integrity: At high data rates, communication becomes a “communications channel problem,” not truly a digital one. When bits are underneath a tenth of a nanosecond, the communication turns into multiple standing wave transitions. The two primary limits on performance are rise and fall times and distance traveled. Real-World Applications: Jerry has worked extensively on medical devices, including early-generation Dexcom glucose monitoring systems (two on-body monitors and a hospital insulin pump/monitor), and a wearable EEG monitor. He also worked on a system that required packing five video cameras into an endoscope distal head, measuring 11 mm in diameter and 13 mm long. Architecting Systems and Identifying Bottlenecks: When starting a new project, Jerry suggests defining needs and interfaces and looking at the system as a black box. Engineering time should focus on the bottleneck—the hardest part of the system. For medical implantables, this might be minimizing power consumption down to virtually nothing, which could take up 90% of the effort. Power System Design: Jerry advises purchasing commercial AC-to-DC converters due to competitive pricing. He notes that switching supplies (buck converters) commonly introduce noise that can lead to EMI failures or corrupt sensitive analog front ends. A classic case of “digital thinking in an analog scenario” is when a sensitive analog front end is powered by a noisy switching converter. Working with Embedded Teams: Jerry prefers guiding embedded teams toward “self-discovery,” using bench time and empirical measurement (such as comparing grounds on a scope) to demonstrate non-ideal connections and grounding issues. He advises against the “seagull manager” approach. Grounding Best Practices: For integrated circuits (chips), designs must be fully differential because securing a good hard ground reference is impossible. On singular circuit boards, a common uncut ground plane (dedicated ground plane, often multiple layers stitched together with vias) is the recommended approach. Cutting the ground plane is discouraged as it can create a slot antenna, increasing the signal radiating from the board by about 7 dB. Jerry has published rules on grounding. Engineering Intuition vs. LLMs: Jerry notes that intuition is gathered through painful learning experiences and guidance from experienced designers. He expresses concern over the reliance on LLMs (Language Learning Models), which, while improving, can confidently provide incorrect answers, especially regarding complex topics like signal grounding. Limits to Moore’s Law: CMOS scaling is approaching physical limits, likely unable to go below 10 or 11 nanometers. Modern performance gains are achieved through more parallel processing, not significantly faster clock rates, which have plateaued around 5 GHz due to parasitics and timing limitations. Jerry’s article discusses this topic. RISC Architectures: The industry benefits from migrating to RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architectures (like ARM) because they eliminate useless architecture and transistors associated with complex instruction sets (like x86). Find Jerry on Effective Electrons and on LinkedIn

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 includeOpen Road (a backend compiler for IC design) and Open Lane (an end-to-end suite turning chip descriptions (RTL) into manufacturing data (GDS)). Andreas had been on the show talking about his worfk on Open Lane. EFABless, a VC-backed startup, shut down in early 2025 due to investor disagreements. Mohamad EFABless previously provided pooled manufacturing access (similar to OSH Park for PCBs) using the Sky130 process from Skywater in Minnesota. A Skywater run costs $200k–$300k, which EFABless divided by 40 to reach roughly a $10k price point per slot. Tiny Tapeout Matt Venn’s Tiny Tapeout program further subdivides the manufacturing costs, making it the cheapest way to create custom silicon, typically costing around $300 per design. Tiny Tapeout lowers the barrier to entry, allowing people to “just try it and see if you like it,” similar to writing a “hello world” program. The program has already processed almost 3,000 projects, demonstrating high community demand when costs are low. Despite limitations, advanced projects are possible: a developer taped out a Linux capable SOC using open-source tools and the tiny tapeout space. Introducing Wafer Space Tim started Wafer Space, based in Singapore, to provide community access to open-source manufacturing after EFABless ceased operations. Wafer Space focuses on the GF-180 MCU PDK (Global Foundries 180 nm process), which is a much cheaper technology manufactured in Singapore. The core offering is a low-volume production run: $7,000 USD gets you 1,000 chips back. This volume is enough for prototyping and shipping a small product (e.g., 500 units). The design envelope area is 3.8 x 5 mm (20 mm squared) using the 180 nm process. Interested parties should sign up via the Crowd Supply page. The current target timeline is submissions by December 3rd, with delivery by March 15th. Manufacturing & Packaging By default, customers receive bare silicon die Tim is working with PCB manufacturers (like JLC PCB, PCB Way, Seed Studio) to offer Chip on Board (COB) wire bonding assembly onto custom PCBs (think black epoxy blob on a PCB) COB packaging is significantly cheaper (sub-$2) than standard packaging houses (which often charge around $7 per chip). This approach also provides faster iteration speed, as PCB manufacturers offer quick turnaround times (sometimes 3 days) compared to typical packaging houses (3 months) Getting Started & Resources If you are new to chip design, starting with Tiny Tape Out’s click and drag tools is highly recommended. Matt Venn previously talked/sang about Siliwiz More advanced tools include Verilog and VHDL (coding style) or KLayout and Magic (drawing shapes, similar to PCB design). To follow the project or seek help, join the Wafer Space Discord New services offering open-source silicon manufacturing include IHP (Europe/130 nm) and Chip Foundry (US/Skywater), increasing ecosystem resiliency. Website: Wafer.space Sign up on the CrowdSupply campaign

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 Accupuncture jbc High cost vs low cost rework tweezers Nanofix YouTube Channel Tested Ugly multimeter review

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 US defence company) working on sonar for submarines. “What a good job is” Fun Lucrative Skills / teach you Todd, Andy, and other Lockheed Martin friends worked on the VEC9 discussed in ep194 Clearance was required to work on sonar Military electronics had some differences from his past work, but Todd was interestingly complementary of requirements driven design / waterfall Chris and Todd were hanging out in a bar before he moved over to working on space and Todd mentioned he wanted to be Zefram Cochrane and do interesting things that matter (in space). Star Trek First Contact (gah, I said generations) Past guest Shawn Meehan talked to Todd and that’s how he started working at the “stealth space startup” at the time Astra HBO (not Netflix) special called Wild Wild Space Other past guests of the show who were at Astra include Charles Aylward and Jeri Ellsworth Silicon Valley Startup “When the heavens went on sale” (book) Commercial space by SpaceX Rocket Lab was second “Fail on stage” Booster state of that rocket motor control Electric turbo pump Delphin engine Cryogenic / feedback was hard Alameda indoor test facility Meant to fit in shipping container (8×8.5×40 ft) System design and market requirements (launches don’t want small rockets) Working remote No place like home Jim Williams essay Leaving Astra Staying in the trenches Rocket Lab 3rd stage “Kick stage, now known as “Photon“ Things you can work on in space Radios Sensors Power Electric propulsion (EP) Apollo fusion – Alex Zannos (Contemporary) and Mike Cassidy (CEO) After working on fusion didn’t have legs, they switched to working on Hall effect thrusters “Low earth orbit is 50% of the way to anywhere in the solar system” Rocket equation Stage fires then falls off Kick stage is 3rd stage Accelerating an ion beam Delta V book Rocket efficiency “Seconds of ISP” How much mass do you use to go distance Asteroid mining Who buys EP? SpaceX built their own Argon thruster Torque rods / reaction wheels Apollo successfully pivoted Acquired by Astra space / finished the apollo constellation engine In 2022, Todd and his cofounder Mark Hopkins started Starlight Engines after some initial proof points and then fundraising Had opinions about EP Goebels and Katz textbooks about EP Busek electric propulsion is a family business that has tried all kinds of EP. Run by Vlad Ruby & son Pete. Starlight is based on solid Zinc propellant Traditionally it’s Xenon “The honda civic of hall effect sensor systems” The atomic mass of Zinc is light “Lickable EP” Discharge converter runs the ion beam Custom magnetics 300W – 800W 28V spacecraft bus “Plume divergence” Need to go from solid to gas Cathode is a thermionic emitter “Like a tube amp”, it emits to boil off electrons Zinc gets caught in electron cloud, knocks an electron off to make ions, ejected from a positively charged plate nearby. Novel propellent is a differentiator Starlight had a scrappy factor, like they built their own vacuum chamber (for 15K!) The device is not known to be operational in space yet (they sell it but don’t operate it, so it’d be tough to know) “Give the first one away” Have sold 4 propulsion systems Muon space needed a propulsion system and instead decided to buy the company. They weren’t put off by “two guys in a garage and contractors”. Muon builds things like fire detection satellites For more info about their past work and see pictures of the plumes, check out Starlightengines.com To see the new things they’ll be working on, check out Muon space

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 was a pleasant completely hands-off experience. Mike Harrison USB C barrel jack JLC DFM plugin for KiCad Python script to pull EasyEDA parts into KiCad Chris is designing around this $3 board with an nRF52840A de minimus tariff exemptions are gone in the us North Korea is putting forward software engineering candidates that are actually teams of workers Mini PC production at BeeLink Stephen Hawes on The Amp Hour Stephen documented the process of getting the Opulo v4 through certification Chris has solar install issues Dave is dealing with removing downpipes Dave is getting battery extension 50 kWh

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 original intent, but didn’t hit the mark Level of production needs to be high Many parts need to work in conjunction Reflow PnP Throughhole Selective soldering Inspection Need to solve for the whole setup. Making smt 10x better doesn’t make overall 10x better Starlink manufcaturing localy PCB fabs in the US, 50 left, getting rolled up under Private Equity (as are things like machine shops) AI with VCs How it impacts the electronics industries KiCad More AI stuff Automation on checking Still humans involved PDKs for chip companies File checking / JLC Types of customers 10 largest companies on the planets It’s individuals who order and try it out, that often becomes a repeat business thing Customers / types of boards / size of orders More startups who also want production Future serving lower cost areas Proto service 2-4 layer black soldermask (unlisted) See the CircuitHub capabilities Going high volume People making weekly or monthly units and spreading it out Spinning up custom in-house high volume Flattenting the price curve Tariffs New customers approaching them because of it Can consumer be done in the US?

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 Replacing Certificate Authority (CA) cert in grill firmware Matt has a Linux hardware / reverse engineering background Flash is always external Ghidra / idapro / binwalk Security cameras are 99% linux based (battery based cameras might be embedded) Best practices Encrypted firmware hidden uart / jtag Keys Are linux devices “worth more” to a security researcher? CVSS risk scoring system Attack vector Vulnerabilities are better if it can be a remote executed Linux devices have more compute Bluetoothe LE Ability to enumerate Scale reverse engineering Chris has discussed the silliness of a bluetooth toothbrush on the show before Tools / Software of the trade xgeku firmware reader picoemp PCBite Saleae SDR USRP B200 Universal radio hacker Stick-to-it-ness Matt just came back from hardwear.io, one of his new favorite conferences Find Matt at the embedded systems village at DEF CON Follow Matt via his YouTube channel Matt has a new IoT Security newsletter starting up

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 hardware projects page Flag Steam Engine Learn how to machine from MrPete222’s YouTube channel Schlock Mercenary (Comic) Sprite tm on The Amp Hour Gameboy advance link cable Writing a gameboy emulator  Emulators got him into electronics No$ (“nocash”) emulator AVR instruction set MIDI CNLohr on The Amp Hour https://mitxela.com/projects/slide2 Forcing brainfuck (language) quop movfuscator Puzzles Spacechem (Game) Zach Barth of Zachtronics on The Amp Hour  babaisu LED errings watchdog timer allows ridiculously low power 1 way loader  autobauding Find all of Tim’s projects on mitxela.com Watch the latest videos on the mitxela youtube

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 energy monitor Emporia vue Sense We talked with Joe Bamberg when he worked there Driving back from canberra Ben Krasnow makin’ magnets! Bluetooth videos

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 visulalization is all about lighting, materials Building library of models Modeling magnetic fields Research in wireless power openEMS vtk format The marjority of tooling is glued together with python ElectroMag Nodes – Sam‘s tool – $1 Right hand rule Developing intuition Elmer finite element solver Past guest Katerina Galitskaya also visualized RF and talked about the differences of testingi n a chamber vs building a visualization FastHenry is inductance tool that was created in 80s at MIT for wirebonds. Didn’t have a visualization front end, like SPICE 3D whiteboard Using Blender to prototype and then taking it to other tools (CST, Ansys) Validating on the bench with an impedance analyzer Simulating power loss is difficult Quality factor “CAD is too perfect” Adding surface imperfections Node system is similar to simulink, adding blocks (Chris also thought this sounded like the effects in Davinci Resolve) Lighting Making the background dark means you don’t need to have far field details Tutorials Blender Guru – how to make a donut Sam’s video about how to draw components on a PCB in Blender Doing the same with Geometry nodes in Blender Ability to create things procedurally How to create ICs in Blender Using LLMs for python glue code What is a shader? HardOps tool, simplifies workflow (shuffle button) Visualizing an Inverted F antenna in Blender Remembering that videos are just still frames in order Electric fields propagating on the antenna itself Radiated electric fields (red and blue and black) OpenEMS generates GBs of data Blender geomtry goes out to OpenEMS so it’s geometrically linked What if it was a ceramic antenna instead of a metal inverted F? Simulating 60 GHz from a radar chipset Meshing – sample points in space simulating points in time Impacts of stubs / squares on microwaves Human Hand Interaction with 60GHz Electromagnetic waves SAR simulations – how much heat do you generate Simulating motor windings on a PCB The above was a collaboration with past guest Carl Bugeja When to switch from near field (electro) vs far field (openEMS) Calculating values with inductance calculator FastHenry tool on Github Sam’s work on artstation ZS smart watch Fast track if listeners want to get better at this art Learn blender – donut KiCad -> Blender reference Play with geometries nodes (ElectroMag Nodes, Fast Henry) Find Sam on social LinkedIn Twitter/X YouTube Instagram EEVblog forum