The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

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• #727 – Boat Anchor Warehouse 02.07.2026 54хв

  AI Data Centers & Local LLMs: Dave discusses his noise concerns regarding a new AI data center and its diesel backup generators being built near his office. Chris shares his experience running local AI models like Gemma 4 on a laptop using the Hermes orchestrator for tasks like coding and internet research. USB Power Delivery Chips: Discussion of the CH224, a USB PD negotiation chip that works via DIP switches or pin strapping without requiring programming. They also touch on the CH32 X33/X35 series, which integrates similar PD functionality into a microcontroller. CH224 LCSC Product Page Dave’s Werewolf USB PD Review The Art of (Paper) Electronics: The hosts admire Manabu Kosaka, a Japanese artist who creates 1:1 paper replicas of retro gadgets, including meticulously hand-cut lettering on SMD components. Dave also recounts his success as a “sold modern artist” after selling a printer-glitch masterpiece on eBay. Manabu Kosaka on X Manabu Kosaka Portfolio Article Chris’s 0201 Project: Chris provides an update on his leveling project, which features an accelerometer and 16 LEDs. He is considering a move to a rigid-flex PCB design for future revisions to better manage the two-board sandwich construction . Social Media & Networking: Insights on using LinkedIn for professional outreach (such as contacting Massimo Banzi) versus dealing with “algorithm fatigue” . A recommendation for using chronological feeds on X and Reddit to improve the user experience . MacService Warehouse Clearance: A massive clearance at MacService in Melbourne features rows of vintage “boat anchor” test gear . Dave expresses concern that thousands of items may end up as e-waste if not sold by the pallet. MacService Clearance Forum Thread Bring a Trailer Hyundai EV Recall: Dave recounts the recall of his 2020 Hyundai EV due to a software error that could lead to battery fires. He notes an annoying, repetitive relay clicking sound coming from the dash following the service update. The TI Datasheet Controversy: Dave details how Texas Instruments updated process nodes and designs for classic parts like the NE5532 and OPA134 without changing part numbers. These changes led to reduced slew rates, lower maximum supply voltages (22V down to 18V), and the removal of features like trim pins. Dave’s Video: TI Screwed Up the NE5532 “It Happens” Segment: Dave shares a “repair fail” where he accidentally mangled the 5,000-turn drive coil of his Bulova Accutron 2 watch while attempting to change the battery. Industry and Legal News: Brief mentions of 3D printing regulations in New York, Bambu Lab’s “closed” ecosystem controversies, and Lewis Rossmann suing Samsung over warranty issues. They also discuss Battle Born Batteries suing a YouTuber after their product failed a test conducted to its own datasheet specifications. Battle Born Technical Note
• #726 – Arduino’s Invisible Touch with Massimo Banzi 17.06.2026 1год 10хв

  Welcome, Massimo Banzi of SuperModerno and co-founder of Arduino Introduction and SuperModerno: Massimo introduces himself as a “friendly nerd” and discusses his new project, SuperModerno The project aims to explain the “behind the scenes” of technology to prevent people from becoming “slaves to the platform” The History of Technology: Massimo expresses his passion for technology’s history, emphasizing non-American innovators to show Europeans they can also lead in technology, citing the UK-based origins of the Arm processor The Legacy of Olivetti: He highlights Olivetti (founded in 1908), which moved from typewriters to creating the Programma 101, the first desktop computer used by NASA to compute orbits for the Apollo program Design as a Differentiator: Olivetti was the first tech company to apply design to everything (products, posters, and architecture) This inspired Massimo’s concept of the “invisible touch”, the idea that consistent, intentional design creates a unique connection with users and gives a company a competitive edge The Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII): Massimo’s path led him to IDII, located in the former Olivetti research building, where he transitioned from a two-week sabbatical to a four-year stay Learning by Making: To help students with no electronics background, Massimo drew on how he learned as a seven-year-old (“learning by making”) to remove the friction of interacting with technology The Founding Team: He met Tom Igoe (ITP) and David Cuartielles, and they realized students were afraid to be creative because they feared “blowing up” expensive tools like the Basic Stamp The “Pizza and a Beer” Price Point: Massimo aimed for a hardware cost of 20 Euros, roughly what a student would spend on a pizza and a beer, to encourage experimentation Building the Platform: Along with David Mellis, the team adapted Processing (a language for artists) by “surgically” replacing Java with C++ to create the Arduino IDE Ivrea Manufacturing: Leveraging the industrial base of Ivrea and Torino (the “Detroit of Italy”), Massimo was able to find local PCB manufacturers and assemblers just a short drive away From Hacking to AVR: Massimo’s early work involved hacking satellite TV PIC chips for soccer fans, but mentor Bill Verplank encouraged him to use AVR microcontrollers because they could be programmed simply in C Enabling Creators: Massimo shares stories of how Arduino enabled others, such as Josef Prusa, who started with Arduino as a teenager before building his global open-source 3D printer company The Innovation of Simplicity: Massimo argues that Arduino’s true innovation is the user experience This is measured by the “Time to First Blink”, the goal for a user to go from downloading software to blinking an LED in five minutes Standardization and “The Core”: Arduino became an ad-hoc standard by providing a compatibility layer across different microcontrollers Massimo believes in having a “small slice of a really large pie” by allowing other architectures to work within the ecosystem Hardware Architecture and the “Lasagna”: Inspired by the PC104 format, the board uses a layered approach where modules stack like a lasagna The “Shield of a King”: The name Arduino comes from King Arduino of Ivrea; David Cuartielles suggested that since the board was named after a king, the add-on modules should be called “Shields” Hardware Design Choices: The board fits a credit card size (to stay within the free version of Eagle software) and is blue because that color was thought to be less tiring for workers’ eyes Happy Accidents: The unique shape was chosen to be “ourselves instead of everyone else” During the design process, Massimo inadvertently moved a connector by half a step, creating an offset header that they kept for consistency after the first few thousand were made The Discovery of Auto-Reset: During a workshop in Germany, Massimo solved the frustration of manual resets by soldering a capacitor to the DTR pin, allowing the software to trigger the reset automatically The US Market and Legal Battles: Tom Igoe’s adoption of Arduino at NYU helped the US become the project’s single biggest market This growth led to a difficult legal battle for control of the brand against a former partner Support from Arm: Massimo credits Arm Ltd (and CEO Simon Segars) for providing the strategic support that allowed the founders to regain control of the company. Massimo believes this is the first time he has talked about the role of Arm in the difficult legal process. Industrial and AI Expansion: Partnerships with Intel and Microsoft (Windows 10 IoT) led to early forays into TinyML (AI on small boards) back in 2017 The Qualcomm Acquisition: In October 2025, Qualcomm acquired Arduino, which Massimo sees as essential for bringing “advanced silicon” into the family to handle the increasing complexity of technology The “Arduino Formula” and Layering: Massimo views Arduino as a formula for simplification that can be applied to anything, including complex Linux machines like the Uno Q This is achieved by building in layers, where beginners use high-level abstractions and experts can “strip away” layers to reach the bare metal The Future Vision: Massimo looks forward to the “Arduino Formula” being applied to new fields, stating he is waiting for someone to develop an “Arduino for biology” using CRISPR and DNA technology
• #725 – The Secret Life of Circuits with lcamtuf / Michał Zalewski 04.06.2026 59хв

  Welcome Michał Zalewski, AKA lcamtuf! The lcamtuf Substack is where Michał is writing most these days Chris first found and geeked out about the CNC guide on the lcamtuf original site (discussed many times here) Michał is interested in the craft of teaching electronics He recently published The Secret Life of Circuits with No Starch Press Use the code AMPHOUR26 for 30% off The Secret Life of Circuits valid from June 1st through June 30th It was announced on his blog here Deriving fomulas from basic trigonometry sometimes bugs people who think electronics should only work with calculus Software geeks follow the site, often getting lots of attention on Hacker News Row hammer DRAM There were no Information Security degrees in the early days, so the field was made up of folks with backgrounds in math and EEs Fuzzing for security SMBC cartoon for blming humans Books American Fuzzy Lop The Tangled Web P0f v3 Silence on the Wire Security stuff (including books on the subject) ages over time, as opposed to electronics On the subjects of Calculators (and Michał’s collection) Calculators are a footnote in the history of computing, but still intriguing Dead ends in calculators CRT displays on calculators Nixie tubes Discrete moving into logic gates into processors Mechanical calculators are rare and get a high price online Working with transistors The Secret Life of Circuits start with FET based transistors vs BJT BJTs are often right after diode chapter because of the multiple junctions in an NPN, but that doesn’t make it easier to understand Projects A recent project involved making a clock out of current meters  Woodworking and AI example Want to see all lcamtuf articles in one place? Sokoban Sir box-a-lot
• #724 – All Heat, No Useful Work 25.05.2026 1год 5хв

  Chris just got back from a work trip to Madrid He also got to hang out with Matt Venn (and coworker Mike Szczys) in Valencia Dave has a new data center going in across the street Chris enjoyed this episode of Prof G Markets where they talked about the impact of data centers on power and the rise of “behind the meter” generation Dave without internet for a week. Chris has had multiday losses after fiber has been cut in his neighborhood. Humanoid robots…on a plane! Chris has been working on 0201 components on a tiny Bluetooth board The Iran War and subsequent rise in petroleum product sourcing issues is starting to impact the PCB industry PCBs we are used to ordering at low cost (JLC, PCBway, etc) are normally loss leaders to get larger business later Chris found his low cost microscope from Florin/Voltlog trinocular video  lcamtuf will be on the show soon, Chris bought a CNC mill because of a single webpage of his making TagMod board is a new breakout Chris made for injecting power through a 10 pin TagConnect cable. NXP devboards somehow have LEDs as bright as the sun Dave has been revisiting his solar analytics (update: he figured out he’s getting charged more too!) Chris has been working at Canonical (makers of Ubuntu, new owners of Golioth) for a few months now. That was the trip to Spain. Dogfooding your own product Chris created a backronym: “Application Level Program Optimization” or… ALPO Chris built a new vibe coded project for talking to Zephyr devices using Web Serial and passing firmware packages over SMP CI/CD Debian now requires “fully reproducable” builds to harden against supply chain attacks Veritasium video about Linux bug
• #723 – BeagleBoard’s Back with Jason Kridner 07.05.2026 1год 10хв

  Welcome back, Jason Kridner! Jason has previously been on the show Episode 59 (!) Episode 378 alongside Robert Nelson The BeagleY AI was the first board that mimic’ed the RPi form factor PocketBeagle 2 is still a small altoid tin form factor with a new processor The Zepto is a new product targeting a $1 price point for microcontrollers Many boards in the Beagle catalog now run Zephyr, and BeagleBoard.org recently joined The Zephyr Project as members and contributors Click Brand is the official bards from MikroElectronika that implement the open source Mikrobus Chris started using Mikrobus while designing early prototypes of the BeagleConnect Freedom The Freedom board talks over wireless to boards like the BeaglePlay Application spaces for different boards FPGA based board Cheeseburger robot? Well yes, but also Cheeseburger robot Mitchells vs the machine Krazam Click boarfds now have eeprom / ClickID as a 1-wire identifier with a uuid Beagleplay has 802.15.4 Project ARA popularized the idea of Greybus MotoMods from Motorola was another implementation that worked on the Moto Z Using Freedom for prototyping WebAssembly …on microcontrollers? Jason says he doesn’t really like MCUboot Entering the linux ecosystem bb-imager Techlab is a way to easily extend peripherals for the PocketBeagle Known working targets Michael Welling designed the baconbits mini cape as a learning platform The BeagleBadge is a new formfactor shown in the title image for this episode. It runs on a new low cost TI part running Linux and yes… it runs Doom The Badge can also talk on Meshtastic Working with the memory shortage Bao – Bunie and Xobs Bella / Gem Beagle5fire RISC V boards RV32 Claire Find Beagle and Jason online Schedule a meeting with Jason There is also a Discord And a Zulip instance You can get Beagle merch
• #722 – AI Tooling with Matt Liberty and Luke Beno 23.04.2026 1год 9хв

  Welcome back Matt Liberty (Joulescope) and Luke Beno (Werewolf.us) Matt has been a guest on episodes 527 and 607 Luke was a guest on episode 272 Luke launched a new cable manufacturing and power supply company in the US called Werewolf.us Matt is working on the JS320 We discussed how PartsBox is a great ERP solution but Matt and Luke decided to go fully custom with Claude Code. Jan Rychter was a guest on episode 542 We discussed the differences with Product Lifecycle Maintenance. Michael Corr of the recently acquired Duro Labs was on episode 577 CAM workflow A fully verticalized PCB factory is something Jonathan Hirschmann talked about on episode 299 Jeff Bezos is investing 100B in a fund that is looking at automation in the factory using AI Matt recently had success with Claude Code and verilog programming Saleae for hardware in the loop using their APIs Other tools to check out pyelf pdfdk blast superpowers skill (by past guest at Teardown Jesse Vincent) Luke used OpenClaw to power a chat agent in his ERP system Working with distributors TI backlog Chris recently learned that Digikey has a developer API Cocotb verification framework (in Python) Luke is working on vision experiments for inhouse developed AOI solutions
• #721 – Chip Design for Fun (and Waffles) with Julia Desmazes 09.04.2026 59хв

  Welcome Julia Desmazes of Tales on The Wire Follow along with the blog post we discuss Two Weeks Until Tapeout Matt Venn – TinyTapeout – Episode 616 and 672 Andreas Olofsson – openroad/openlane – Episode 254 and 650 Tim Ansell – Wafer.space – Episode 375, 501, and 703 JTAG How do you know that tooling is or isn’t working? Accelerator Rabbithole with floating point (post updated after recording) BFloat16 Follow Julia on GitHubhttps://github.com/Essenceia Kapla (official website, not the much cheaper alibaba version): Dimity Grinberg personal blog
• #720 – Hyper Growth and OpenClaw Interns 01.04.2026 1год 1хв

  Canonical (the makers of Ubuntu) acquired Golioth, meaning Chris is moving from a 12-person startup to an organization of over 1,200 people Dave found this chart of Canonical products on wikipedia to be useful An increase in professional travel from zero weeks to six weeks per year following the acquisition, including “sprints” in cities like London The naming convention for Ubuntu releases (Year.Month) and the importance of Long Term Support (LTS) versions for backporting security vulnerabilities Ubuntu Core’s role in embedded Linux devices, utilizing an immutable kernel and “snaps” for field update Dave believes he influenced the Emergency Situation Surcharge at DHL after asking why it is still happening Dave’s transition to a “Hipster Dave” persona, complete with a secondhand Mac and a goatee The implementation of OpenClaw, a scripting service that interfaces with LLMs to act as an “automated intern” for repetitive administrative tasks Chris really likes this video showing how to use OpenClaw Using OpenClaw to automate forum registration approvals to combat high volumes of bot activity The security implications of AI agents, emphasizing that they should be treated like interns with limited access to sensitive data and separate accounts ARM released its first physical server chip, measuring approximately 70mm, marking a shift from a pure IP company to a hardware competitor. The Super Micro CEO smuggling scandal, where the founder was accused of smuggling $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia chips. The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and its requirement for nearly all CE-marked electronic products to be updatable by December 2027. Potential impacts of the CRA on one-time programmable (OTP) devices and the necessity of maintaining firmware support for five years post-product life. SpaceX’s plans for a “Terafab” a manufacturing facility ten times larger than a Gigafactory designed to verticalize the entire supply chain from silicon wafers to final packaging. Editor’s note: despite cool tech stuff happening, Elon is…so lame. NASA’s cancellation of the Lunar Gateway project in favor of a direct path to establishing a moon base within the next five to seven years. Pop culture recommendations including the series For All Mankind and The Expanse, along with the book Delta V.
• #719 – Inventing the Power MOSFET with Alex Lidow 20.03.2026 1год 5хв

  Alex is founder and CEO of Efficient Power Conversion, a leading manufacturer of GaN MOSFET’s. Alex is also the inventor of the original Power MOSFET and HEXFET at International Rectifier. Also, former CEO of International Rectifier (founded by his father!), https://epc-co.com We cover everything from inventing the power MOSFET on his first day on the job to silicon physics, AI data centres and humanoid robots. Enjoy.
• #718 – Layout Review with Zachariah Peterson 11.03.2026 1год

  Welcome Zachariah Peterson of Northwest Engineering Solutions! Zach listed the various places people can find his work, including The Altium YouTube channel Zach’s YouTube channel His personal technical blog The Altium Blog various industry conferences like PCB West 01:10 Zach mentions that he has been creating video content and seminars for several years, traveling to places like Denmark to teach high-speed design. 01:10 They discuss the recent acquisition of Altium by Renesas and how the company is trying to balance enterprise features with the needs of individual users. 03:15 He notes that the pricing for professional design software has recently become more accessible for freelancers and consultants. 11:15 He suggests that learning the fundamentals of EMC is one of the best ways for an engineer to become more valuable in the industry. 14:00 He warns against relying solely on semiconductor data sheets for EMC guidance because they often contain outdated or incorrect information. 18:45 They talk about the massive costs and delays that happen when a product fails its initial testing runs in a lab. 21:00 Zach shares how his background in applied physics and lasers made it easier for him to transition into high-speed RF and digital design. 25:15 He explains that he relies on mental models and specialized software tools more than solving complex equations by hand on a daily basis. 27:00 He stresses the importance of understanding the physical manufacturing process, such as how circuit boards are pressed and laminated. 30:00 They discuss the common problem of engineers over-specifying expensive materials when a cheaper option would work perfectly fine. 32:45 Zach predicts that the most useful AI tools will eventually be built directly into existing PCB design software rather than living in separate browser tabs. 35:30 He shares how he uses AI to quickly find generic part numbers, which saves him a lot of tedious manual searching. 42:00 He compares different AI design tools, noting that some generate schematics from data sheets while others use proven building blocks. 46:30 He describes an internal tool he is building to help him search through and reuse circuitry from his own past projects. 49:30 He admits he isn’t a fan of code-based schematics because he prefers graphical tools and doesn’t consider himself a professional coder. 51:00 He tells the story of how his popular one-minute design reviews started as a spontaneous way to manage the many requests he receives on LinkedIn. 54:00 He points out that many designers fail to use their software’s built-in design rule checks, leading to thousands of avoidable errors. 58:45 They talk about the decline of mentorship in the industry and the risk of companies losing important tribal knowledge as senior engineers retire. 61:15 Zach shares his goals for the coming year, including a deeper focus on manufacturing nuances and advanced EMC testing standards. 66:00 He encourages engineers of all levels to attend industry conferences like PCB West and DesignCon to learn directly from experts. 70:00 They conclude the episode by sharing where listeners can find more of his technical articles and videos online. 1:02:30
• #717 – Back on the road in ’26 04.03.2026 59хв

  Chris will be having a meetup in London March 8th, 2026 click here for more info. He will also be at Embedded World the following week at various events. Dave is also headed to a meetup in Sydney that he has presented at in the past. The “lazy man move” for meetup organizers: scheduling events within walking distance of home to simplify travel logistics. Chris provides details on his latest high-density hardware project, a 22mm circular board packed with 0201 components, Bluetooth, and a suite of sensors, noting a move from BGA to QFN for better assembly reliability. There is significant skepticism regarding “solid-state transformers” and tech articles claiming they will replace the traditional power grid, with the hosts citing efficiency losses that become massive at megawatt scales. A fascinating look into global supply chains reveals how a single AI prompt can be traced back through layers of manufacturing to sugarcane fermentation and high-purity quartz mines in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. The creeping normalization of biometric face scanning in public spaces, from water park lockers to international airport terminals. The marketing tactics behind Donut Lab’s solid-state battery claims, explaining how “independent third-party testing” can be carefully hand-picked to avoid industry standards. They want us  to talk about it like this The nuances of UL certification explains how companies sometimes use specific lab reports to imply broader official endorsements that do not actually exist. Dave shares his experience watching the show Silicon Valley with his son and discusses the “hideous accuracy” of the Australian public service comedy Utopia. The pros and cons of modular hardware are debated, covering the Framework laptop’s “Ship of Theseus” repairability model versus high-end gaming tablets like the Asus ROG Flow Z13. Dave’s viral social media quest for the best Linux distribution leads to a consensus on Linux Mint as the top choice for beginners, fueling the ongoing joke about the “Year of the Linux Desktop”. Recent industry news highlights the release candidate for KiCad 10 and the discovery of a three-cent Paduk microcontroller performing auxiliary functions inside Rode wireless microphones. Pimoroni did extreme an cooling project back in 2024 that successfully overclocked the RP2350 microcontroller to 800 MHz. We just found out about it from a post from Jeff Geerling.
• #716 – Electronics Manufacturing History with David Ray 26.02.2026 1год 2хв

  Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, SeaSats! Check out their open positions making autonomous ocean vehicles. Welcome David Ray of Cyber City Circuits • The “Retro Electro” Series: David explains his passion for writing historical articles for Digi Key, focusing on “giants” like Orstead whose contributions to electricity are often overlooked. • Career Background: David details his path from Marine Corps radio repair to cash register and Motorola radio repair. • Starting the Business: In late 2019, David cashed in his retirement to buy pick-and-place machines and start his own factory. • Teaching the First Lady: David recounts the story of teaching First Lady Jill Biden how to solder during a summer camp. • Growth via Twitter: For the first few years, 95% of his revenue came from relationships built on Twitter (X). • The Kit Business: David discusses his “Soldering Kit of the Month” program, noting that while fun, the kit business is exhausting and low-margin. • Equipment & Machines: A discussion on why he uses Charm High machines and his strong advice to buy new equipment rather than used industrial machines, which are often sold because they are “used up”. • Stencils & Paste: David advocates for framed stencils and GC10 solder paste, which is shelf-stable and prevents cold solder joints. • Soldering Physics: Insights into the thermodynamics of soldering, especially the difficulty of working with 2 oz copper boards. • John Fluke History: David previews his research on John Fluke, explaining that Fluke meters became yellow because the Navy had trouble finding gray ones on the ground. • Upcoming Articles: David mentions future work on the history of Op-amps and strain gauges. • Business Services: Overview of Cyber City Circuits’ services, including reverse engineering, obsolescence engineering, and free DFM (Design for Manufacturing) consulting. • Success Philosophy: David shares his “Monopoly mindset,” viewing business setbacks as “chance cards,” and stresses that persistence is the only way to avoid failure. Links from David Website List: Cyber City Circuits Website: www.CyberCityCircuits.com PCB Event Badges: www.BadgesBadgesBadges.com X: www.x.com/MakeAugusta Collection of Retro Electro Articles: https://cybercitycircuits.com/retro-electro-the-little-told-history-of-electronics/ Digikey Magazine: https://www.digikey.com/en/emedia GC10 Solder Paste: www.BuyGC10.com
• #715 – Shiny New Pebble with Eric Migicovsky 10.02.2026 58хв

  Welcome Eric Migicovsky of Pebble! Pebble is back after Eric worked with Google to open source PebbleOS and he reaquired the naming rights Eric returns to the hardware space after 7 years, including working at yCombinator, a famous accelerator for early stage startups, and on Beeper, a cross platform app for messaging. While discussing the difficulties of hardware project, Chris brought up a recent post about a high wattage lamp project HN One thing Eric likes about hardware projects vs software is that “hardware projects can be done” as in they have a defined end state A more recent project is a smart ring – The Index 01. The non-replaceable battery is driven by the product specs, also the need for reliability The ring doesn’t immediately need to be in range of a phone, it syncs the memory after the fact Pebble is no longer a VC backed startup with a subscription model, so that changes a lot of constraints Initially they sold 2 million watches, and 250 million in sales Eric is driven by “gadgets”. He read “pen computing” and “popular mechanics” as a kid Consumer companies vs other types (and why Eric likes the former) Pebble went through different phases The team spent 6 months in China, designing the first consumer version and working directly with factories CTO of (original) Pebble, Andrew Witte, was a somewhat early guest of The Amp Hour How much did the China ecosystem drive design decisions? There was no such thing as a smartwatch factory (but are there ever now!) The book Apple in China is supposed to be a great read and mirrors the Pebble Experience We heard from Chrissy Meyer when she was on the show about working with the Apple Watch manufacturing proces Water proof methods codeveloping in China It’s an interative process of submerging designs in a glass vessel with pressure and bubbles seep out of the device at different points The remedy? According to Eric: “More Glue” 😀 Eric shares his process on a YouTube channel called Tick Talk (not to be confused with the shortform video site) There is a video with the CEO of SiFli, makers of the Bluetooth chip that is in the most recent Pebble devices One interesting feature is a custom bus to the Sharp-made ePaper-like screen used onboard FreeRTOS pebble OS What is PebbleOS? It’s targeted at an m33 class ARM chip and the kernel is FreeRTOS The bluetooth stack is nimBLE Eric went back and forth on whether to port to Zephyr for the Bluetooth stack and hw support from vendors like Nordic Semiconductor The Index 01 ring is Dialog Semiconductor (now part of Renesas) part One challenge is that rings have different sizes…so they mill the rings based on orders. The larger rings get an extra battery!
• #714 – The Measurement Blues with Martin Rowe 03.02.2026 1год 17хв

  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! Kenneth Wyatt Concentrated vs diffuse information Product reviews Unitrend scope video Tek 5 series B Wirecutter for test equipment / parts Skepticism Webinars – 3 levels Martin has an HP34401A 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 Worcester (“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.
• #713 – Rubber Duck Incarnate 26.01.2026 1год 9хв

  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
• #712 – Robots Everywhere with Aaed Musa 20.01.2026 58хв

  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
• #711 – Medical Electronics Education with Mark Palmeri 22.12.2025 1год 29хв

  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
• #710 – Tugging on the Nerd Heartstring 06.12.2025 56хв

  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
• #709 – Nobel Prize Winner Dr Barry Marshall 10.11.2025 50хв

  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/
• #708 – All the Connectors with Davide Andrea 03.11.2025 1год 5хв

  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