Electrical Engineering

If you are a geek like me, you are not insulted when someone says you are a geek!

There was a time when "Geek" was far from a badge of honor. Jr. High School (AKA middle school) was developed specifically for the purpose of making geeks miserable. We were told that lockers were designed for holding books, lunches...

While the large EDA companies are focusing on top-tier SoC design houses, many are left with different requirements...

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.

It has almost become a truth that the Cloud does not work for EDA, but who is telling us that and who has tried it?

Making basic analog circuit functions that operate from a low-voltage battery supply can be tricky. Lack of headroom and the need to minimize supply and leakage currents are usually the biggest challenges.

If you're going to exit, you may as well exit in style and I can't think of a better example than Commander Chris Hadfield's "good by" from the International Space Station on Monday (May 13). Thank you, Astronaut Hadfield. Since...

What’s inside an $18K 20GHz handheld spectrum analyser? Rigol DSA815 teardown Tektronix MDO4000 teardown

Thanks to our sponsors at Club Jameco! Head over to The Amp Hour section of their site to see the kit we discussed this week and to find out more about submitting a kit for a coupon or for revenue if it’s chosen by the community. The USB DVB-T (such as this one sold on Amazon) is a great way to learn more about the radio spectrum, even without a ham license (because you’re only receiving signals, not sending them). The software defined radio inside works with programs like SDRsharp (Windows) or GQRX (Mac, Linux). Thanks to Matt Richardson’s video for alerting us to this! If you haven’t seen Commander Chris Hadfield doing “Space Oddity” by David Bowie (from the ISS!), you’re missing out! “At least we’re not Detroit!” is no longer valid. They have a new Robocop statue. And a rapidly recovering auto sector! Not from Detroit, but from Michigan (Grand Rapids), thegeekgroup.org have a great YouTube channel with lots of well produced videos on elect

I have a question for you. When is the last time that you responded to an unsolicited email? It's been a very long time for me. However, I just did open up and read an unsolicited email that actually seems...