Electrical Engineering

Dave is under the weather this week, but we did a show anyway. How’s THAT for dedication? Do you go into work when you’re sick? What kind of policies should workplaces have? Dave was automatically booted off the JayCar customer list! Littlefuse is running a promo to take someone behind the scenes at NASA. US only, unfortunately. Dave just had a solar panel array installed on his house! Solar will have a “calming” effect on grid because it will offload some of the peak power needs. This will also affect the economics of power generation.  Will the true implementation of the Internet of Things simply be when the Cat5 plug on the back of your appliance is unexciting? Like many new technologies and the authors that write about them, the IoT follows the hype curve.  Google Glass and wearable tech is likely on that curve. There was a great teardown of Glass recently. No huge surprises for the hardware, only how much they’re charging. The teardown was done by Star Simpson who also tricked Chris into believing in the Tacocopter. FPGAs have a community built around shared designs, located at OpenCores.org. Now there is a Python library called MyHDL which aims to make FPGA more accessible to software programmers, similar to how C-to-Hardware compilers have done in the past. There is a good presentation giving an overview of the library. One FPGA enthusiast thinks they will be a more widespread technology in the coming years, but Chris and Dave ultimately question the logic behind it (ha.).   CircuitLab has started charging for all levels of access, including the hobbyist level (even though it’s a low price). Dave posits that EAGLE would have never made it without the freemium level, nor the low cost license for getting into production. Chris likes the machined beer can stencils exhibited on Hack A Day. Nice confluence of machining and electronics. stencils/ The ad-hoc Chip Of the Week is my Maxim Integrated. It’s a new modem for doing powerline communications. This likely won’t be for an IP levele connection, but it’s still an interesting technology.  LT has a highly specialized and awesome looking part, a 20 bit, 500 ksps SAR ADC. But, of course, you’ll pay out the nose for it! Chris likes two subreddits: the new one with promise is /r/appnotes; the more established one with some great stuff posted is /r/PrintedCircuitBoards Thanks to the Boston Public Library for the somewhat creepy clown picture.

What can be more exciting than having two major platforms driving the industry, with a third, even larger one, coming right behind...

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Installing and initial testing of Dave’s 3kW home solar power system. With Sunnyboy SMA inverter, 250W LG Mono-X solar panels, and net metering. Forum HERE

Today’s design environment is significantly more complex and multi-disciplined than a decade ago, and this is often forcing engineers to work well outside their comfort zones.

In this paper a new comparator-based buffer circuit which utilizes a variable voltage controlled current source (VVCCS) is presented.

Thanks to everyone who participated in The Amp Hour 2013 Survey! We’ll have more surveys in the future for The Amp Hour t-shirts and other goodies. Check out the results below! Sorry about that last question!

What’s inside a 1980 vintage Yugoslavian digital multimeter, the Digimer 10 from Iskra Schematic Photos Forum

A new t-shirt idea? Dave didn’t understand the reference to “All your base are belong to us“ Dave’s op amp problem turned out to be from the rails (or so he says!). The “burden of experience” had him testing (and had Chris guessing) at all the wacky things it COULD be before checking what it actually was. Learning how to read schematics comes with time. Bob Pease schematics were notorious for being hard to read. Would there be interest in doing obfuscated circuit contests? Chris just got back from Hamvention, down in Dayton OH. It was great!There was a meetup on Saturday evening, where some t-shirt wearing listeners came to hang out. They were awesome! Thanks to Bill Boyer (far right) for the picture! Former guests of the show Greg Charvat and Kent Lundberg were both at Hamvention! (Greg is the tall one in blue in the back in the picture above) eBay significantly reduced the flea market from its former glory, but the selection was still pretty wide. And there were over 24K people in attendance! Dave used to buy test equipment overseas and resell locally. Chris feels terrible for forgetting his name, but the awesome person in red directly behind Chris in the picture gifted him a challenge coin, a really cool tradition in military circles. Dave says coins are a traditionally hidden and traded item between geocaching teams. Perhaps Dave should include a collectible coins as a donation level in his yet-to-be-announced Pozzible campaign? Thanks to our sponsor for this show, Club Jameco! Go to http://ClubJameco.com/TheAmpHour to see the J-bot kit discussed this week and to learn more about submitting your own kit idea for fun and profit! Arduino had some announcements at Maker Faire this week: They will be releasing a branded robot kit and a wifi based Arduino called the Yún. It will have a co-processor running a version of Linux and a wifi stack. Jeri Ellsworth and business partner Rick Johnson announce their new project spun out from Valve at Maker Faire. MAKE (and the MakerShed) will be expanding its offering and its partnership with Radio Shack.  Former guest, Jack Ganssle, has a great newsletter called The Embedded Muse. Someone wrote in about Partkeepr, a linux based inventory tracking system. How do you manage your parts? Will anyone build a vending machine for parts for Chris? Kickstarter, anyone? Bunnie did a great teardown of the Formlabs Form1. Can’t wait to hear more about the low cost SLA printer. The Intel Science Fair winners have been announced. The media over-extrapolated the chemistry project of the first runner-up, saying she created a device allowing a cell phone to charge in 20 seconds. She clarifies in an interview: The cost of school is still very prohibitive and really handcuffs many people with debt afterwards. A new program has been announced between Georgia Tech (a top 5 engineering school), Udacity and AT&T. They will be offering a Master’s Degree in CS for less than $7,000! Rapid Fire News! Tinkercad is back! They were acquired by AutoDesk and will be opening up the platform again! Former guest Andrew Seddon and the Circuit Hub team announced they now have support for KiCAD! Whee! theonetruestickman (on reddit) submitted his workbench for WBotW. Looks like a really neat space! Lost and found: At the end of the meetup at Hamvention, Chris found a pair of Ray Bans. If you lost a pair, please send an email to chris@theamphour.com.

Two years after his death, Jim Williams is a constant source of inspiration in the Linear Tech lab.