It was Australia Day when Dave and Chris recorded The pinnacle of stereaming services: The Amp Hour+ Chris just got a new solar quote for his house, the roof shape is still too weird to make it a good option. Thunderbirds episode Solar city panels starting on fire Dave is looking at upgrading his solar again, including with DC batteries Span.io is working on smart circuit breaker boxes The Grid book Sydney program to use homeowners’ batteries How many times has this guy gotten laid off? (the one scamming for 8-10 engineering jobs at a time) Big layoffs are hitting the likes of Google, M ..read more

“Time is a (flat) circle“ Dave has been making videos about jellybean components, the latest about references and regulators PCB requirements Pricing pressures There was a fire in the Eurocircuits Hungarian factory. Chris was told about the DFM tool from past guest Joris Digikey was mentioned in a recent episode of Planet Money talking about the runway in Thief River Falls Wendover Productions talks about How Ocean Shipping Works Digikey location on a map Chris recently took a train to Washington DC Dave warned Chris about doing electronics on public transport, as someone was recently a ..read more

Contextual Electronics is opening for sign-ups this week!  Finding big projects to work on can be tough as a small business. Chris suggests SBIR grants (though those aren’t always small). Dave doesn’t get lonely working by himself. Chris enjoys bouncing ideas off co-workers though, which is why he started a Meetup. Dave has resolved to attend or start on in the new year. China has landed a rover on the moon. Dave is reading the Buzz Aldrin book, “Mission to Mars” This is different than the 70s movie about a Mars Mission hoax called Capricorn One. Chris prefers his Sci-Fi to be more ..read more

Welcome Dr. Howard Johnson! He has published two reference books that are a must-have for the field of high speed signal propagation: High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic High Speed Signal Propagation: Advanced Black Magic Howard hails from Twisp, WA. Martin Graham, the co-author of his book, was also his longtime mentor at ROLM. Howard teaches a class at Oxford every summer. He also teaches classes throughout the US, both in public and private forums. He also has published articles regularly at EDN and other technical magazines. Other things mentioned during the sho ..read more

What would be the best way to create a “cough switch” or “kill switch” for a USB based podcasting microphone? EMSL created an AWESOME 555 Timer Footstool. Such a great replica! Design Spark corrected us on what their new plugin does, in relation to Google Sketchup. Dave is wondering what kind of criteria to use to evaluate all different CAD packages objectively. Let us know in the comments! Harry from Robogaia linked here. He just started a new business from his home! Richard (@SJGadgetGuy) also linked here from his new site. Thanks! Dave recently fixed a Leapster for a friend’s child. Gre ..read more

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 to get on Twitter! Dave doesn’t like that Atmel uses a broken system to download programs. Shouldn’t have to re-register for each download. Instrumentation amps are powering future applications of EEGs as a control device. One exampled discussed was the AD620. Why is T ..read more

This week our sponsor is Keysight Technologies, who are ramping up a new contest called “Stump The Experts” and is focused on Keysight’s 5G testing technologies. You can learn more and enter the contest by going to TheAmpHour.com/5G Dave tore down his ATEM mini ISO Internally there is a Xilinx Zynq that has an $1800 single piece price The pipelined data path can also do things like Chromakey Texas power outage Lawrence Krause Dave is upgrading his solar Can solar be used as a hedge on inflation? North vs south facing depends on your latitude. String inverter vs microinveter John Edmond of Cr ..read more

Welcome, Natasha Baker, Founder and CEO of SnapEDA! Natasha has an EE background, she got her start working on tools at National Instruments She was reading IPC-7351 specs early on. What’s in there? All about how to create footprints, with different density levels, depending on the complexity of your board Most Nominal Neast A new version is coming out soon, check IPC.org for more info With corporate sponsorship, anyone can participate (and Natasha recommends it!) Interesting discussion around using an X shaped pad under a QFP Later, Natasha got interested in the marketing side ..read more

Dave did a teardown of a plane transponder, so we talk a bit about RF (without much knowledge) There is a PIC16C84 on board Learning or relearning Transmits 1030 MHz, receives 1090 MHz, 140W We’ll ask Jeff Keyzer on the upcoming Keyzermas Crystal radio is basically a pin diode with long antenna. Dodgy wiring on 3.5kW aircon Coefficient of performance Dishy (Starlink) teardown. Discussed briefly when Joris Aerts (518) was on the show. Which PCB software is the best? Question posed by past guest Robert Ferenec. 100 Photos vs 1 Photo anecdote Greg Davill is doing an “Advent for circuit boa ..read more

Welcome Brandon Gilles and Brian Weinstein of Luxonis Holding Corporation They make the DepthAI system, which uses the Intel Movidius Myriad X It was initially created for life safety problems, specifically targeted at distracted drivers. There is research that a car horn on a bike can help to lower fatal interactions. Brandon had multiple people in his life hurt or killed by cars while biking. Though a systemic change is needed, a tech solution is more likely in the short term. They built a hardware protoype and spent a couple hours of coding to prove out the concept. “Depth perception + CV ..read more