The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

#706 – Leading Edge Analog with Joren Vaes

Yesterday at 7:20 PM

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’ / nanos...

#705 – Psst…Hey buddy, wanna buy an Octopus?

10/09/2025

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. Chris 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 connecto...

#704 – Applied Embedded Electronics with Jerry Twomey

10/03/2025

Welcome Jerry Twomey (Effective Electrons) author of the book, Applied Embedded Electronics: Design Essentials for Robust Systems. Chris first heard Jerry on Embedded.fm last year.

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how to develop robust systems, providing guidance that is timeless rather than applications manuals that quickly become outdated.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 mo...

#703 – Building wafer.space with Tim Ansell

09/25/2025

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 include OpenROAD (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 work on OpenROAD. Not discussed on the show but after Efabless went away, Open...

#702 – Test Point Accupuncture

09/15/2025

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

#701 – Electric Propulsion with Todd Bailey

08/22/2025

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 w...

#700 – Beware of the Overachievers

08/07/2025

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 desi...

#699 – CircuitHub, 12 Years Later with Andrew Seddon

08/01/2025

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. Ma...

#698 – Hardware Security with Matt Brown

07/17/2025

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 embe...

#697 – LEDs Everywhere with Tim from Mitxela

07/08/2025

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$...

#696 – It Works With Option Number 5

06/19/2025

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

#695 – Making The Invisible, Visible with Sam Aldhaher

06/04/2025

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 pytho...

#694 – Voltage, Vibes, and VOCs

05/22/2025

We are doing a 2025 listener survey! Answer the survey and put in your email to win one of three Jumperless OG units donated by Kevin Cappuccio (past guest of the show). Last day to input is June 1st.

This episode was recorded Monday the 12th, which has implications on discussions.

Dave recently returned from Melbourne for Dave’s recent visit to Electronex. Dave saw past guest Scott Williams there (he has been interviewed by both Dave and Chris). Scott’s company Xentronics is also a Golioth partner They discussed service providers in the electronics indus...

#693 – Small Scale Electronics Manufacturing with Colin O’Flynn

05/13/2025

Welcome back Dr Colin O’Flynn of Dalhousie University and New AE tech!

Colin has been on the show twice before Episode 239 in 2015 Episode 552 in 2021 Colin continues to publish/do research around side channel attacks Now he’s targeting different ports / Jitter measurements JTAGulator RF Mixer Side channel with power Can you fix it on a chip? Targeting an SD Card port because there’s a clock Other clocked things like displays / RF State of hardware security RPi episode (RP2350) OpenTitan Root of Trust Episode with Laura Abbott from Oxide Open vs closed about security Guidelines for wha...

#692 – Like a steam engine in your house

04/15/2025

We are doing a 2025 listener survey! Answer the survey and put in your email to win one of three Jumperless OG units donated by Kevin Cappuccio (past guest of the show) Note: this was corrected from the original, these are not v5 units, they are the original Jumperless units. Apologies for the confusion ~CG

Chris signed on to get solar installed He’ll be taking advantage of Duke Energy’s PowerPair, a program to get a bulk amount for the battery and ongoing payments to act as a virtual power plant. Telsa Powerwall 3 Teardown Australian politicians are p...

#691 – System Designer Lets You Try Every Part with Michael Gielda

03/24/2025

Welcome back (for a third time!) Michael Gielda of Antmicro

Michael and Chris usually see each other around the Zephyr booth at Embedded World, but not this year Antmicro continues to work on Zephyr, which targets hardware using Devicetree Renode Mult-node testing code aethero Data center in space Cosmic shielding corporation Tying the simulation to reality How do you know an actuation has happened RESD – Renode sensor data format Drone data example Finding and testing the variety of use cases Borderline criteria Fuzzing Kenning AutoML Anomaly detection on an MCU with Kenning Co-op example Adding System des...

#690 – Clap on, clap off, lights flicker

03/12/2025

Meetup.com doubled their prices so the 3H Triangle group moved to Luma (same is true for SF, Seattle) Note taking apps after Evernote was gutted: Joplin, Obsidian Battery leakage in a DMM Causes of leak The PCB of a Tonie box with an SD card glued in place. Board has an ESP32-S3. (Product page) Design decisions – Latched / unlatched EEVblog video Pulse stretcher 3rd mode ‘break on open’ Chris is working on a design inspired by the Apple AirTag Golioth just launched Bluetooth support (recorded prior to this announcement) It has an nRF52840 and NFC onboard, with a bunch...

#689 – A Jumperless Breadboard with Kevin Cappuccio

02/26/2025

Welcome Kevin Cappuccio, creator of the Jumperless Breadboard (v5 and before)

Check out the Jumperless v5 on Crowd Supply OG Jumperless Video This update shows a bunch of images with the breadboard off 3M whitelabels their breadboards (because of the adhesive?) Breadboard spring clips Spring clips (in 3D) Elecrow 369 CH446Q, a clone of Zarlink MT88161 FPAA Resistance of the traces BSky

#688 – The Tandy Train

02/12/2025

Tracking test equipment on one long homepage…the emporer of test equipment If you track it, it’s not hoarding…it’s curation Very specific piece of junk wood Garage Solar Amber allows you to sell power back in Australia at some wild rates Dave is trying out case design in OpenSCAD…it looks…ok Pebble is returning to the world after Google open sourced the OS (kudos) Andrew Witte, former CTO of Pebble, was a guest on the show Tandy200 Annie Lennox on the train with her Tandy (see cover image) Capacitive forming / reforming Electric Dreams Multimeter repair Tandy

#687 – The RP2350 with the Raspberry Pi Team

01/28/2025

Welcome James Adams, Chris Boross, Liam Fraser, and Luke Wren!

The last time the RPi team was on the show was about the RP1 (#648) The order of parts being released was RP2040->RP1->RP2350 Check out the datasheet for the RP2350 Learning from silicon Security and power states The part is a “Dual dual core” The Arm side is a Dual M33 The RISC V side is a Hazard 3 processor, designed by Luke based on a previous processor called the Hazard 5 HB5 There is a mux on the core and you select which side you’re go...

#686 – A Benchtop Pick and Place with Stephen Hawes

01/21/2025

Welcome, Stephen Hawes!

Chris interviewed Stephen back in 2020 for his second episode of The Contextual Electronics Podcast. It was when Stephen was still working at Formlabs and the Lumen/Opulo were a glimmer in his eye. The Lumen v4 is a Benchtop Pick and Place machine that works with OpenPNP Where are we in relation to reprap? Powered feeders Videos about eeprom KiCad pos file Can reliably place 0402 Lumen v4 product page Motherboard of v4 Running Marlin FW Head has two heads/nozzles Compare the Lumen to other methods (hand placed, paying for assembly) OHM (Open H...

#685 – Data Provenance in the Home, Server, and Fab

12/23/2024

Home assistant Homelab subreddit Solar assistant proxmox CarPlay / android auto NUCs Video Interview with Lee (since posted as #684 of TAH) 25K pound amplifier repair and associated EEVblog forum post Louis Rossman also talking about the copyright claim How the Fairlight CMI changed Music Read more here Synths / woodworking are hobbies that will eat all free cash flow (and Chris is considering the latter…) Pat Gelsinger has stepped down / retired / been forced out at Intel Intel will now have co-CEOs. As past guest Luke Wren wrote on Mastodon, “Based on historical trends I predict the number of Intel co-CEOs will...

#684 – Lee Felsenstein: The Computer Revolution & Counterculture

12/10/2024

A full 3 hour discussion with the legendary Lee Felsenstein, designer of the Osborne 1, SOL computer, VDM-1, Pennywhistle modem, and the inventor of social media. Covering everything from the Berkeley free speech movement, the counterculture movement, his career, through to Obsorne and how he invented social media with Community Memory.

His book: https://www.amazon.com/Me-My-Big-Idea…

https://felsensigns.com/

00:00 – Full 3 hour talk with Lee Felsenstein
08:24 – University of California at Berkeley, and the Free Speech Movement.
29:04 – First Junior Engineer job at Ampex

#683 – Troubleshooting is the skill

11/20/2024

AI tools for helping with coding (but NOT layout, amirite) Troubleshooting as a skillset Stick meme Dave got an updated electrical box Home assistant Keith Burzinski episode (ESPhome) Toothbrush show Andreas Spiess discussing Bluetooth proxy Ian Scott Johnson DIY home automation Electrarc240 reviews every element of a linear power supply India power cables Buried cables Spotify is bricking the Car Thing but others are trying to save it “injurnear” Chris recently developed and coded up a cellular connected relay board for a Smart Locker application

#682 – Your Mind Is The Tool

11/06/2024

Chris has been troubleshooting a PCB with a dead short on inner layers (put in by board house by mistake) Don’t Touch My Gerbers shirt “Is there an AI tool that will fix this for me?” … No Chris dumped a bunch of current in the board and looked at it with this thermal camera 6.5 digit DMM to track down shorts Etching problems in the old days 100% etest Adding rails to PCBs for production Reddit discussion thread: why not work on a product? That is, Dave, the wise one. Videos Live stream issues Post from Twitter: Is 2 layers all you...

#681 – Compact High Speed Design with Lukas Henkel

10/31/2024

Welcome Lukas Henkel of OV Tech GmbH, a product design firm based in Nuremburg Germany!

Miniturization and the limits of miniturization Price is a constraint Using standard PCB tech (off the shelf) Open source SIP Steps Conventional pcbs / components Silicon inductors embedded in boards Bonded Bare dies / stacked Need volume to make it work Requirements to fit into ______ iMX8 ULP – 0.4mm CSP SIP Footprint Module abstraction layer talk Framework laptop Software support / BSP SIP will be different than PiMX8 Crowdsupply campaign launching 2-3 weeks and delivery in Dec/Jan OpenSource laptop CM4 vs PiMX8 SPI Flash with...

#680 – Catching Rockets with Musk Sticks

10/21/2024

Starship 5 landed on chopsticks! (you know, in case you have been offline for 2 weeks) Dave’s EV had a stuck cable Portable charger is surprisingly good CCS Charging standard Fast charge 36/50 kW MKBHD Chevy Silverado review JLC is now offering silkscreen QR codes to have individually marked boards

That’s the board that Chris has been designing on a livestream each week 1 wire UID (pioneered by Dallas, then Maxim, now Analog…le sigh) Dave is selling a new Bryman multimeter, the BM2257 (teardown photos) Chris just returned from Embedded World North America, doing a demo at the Jo...

#679 – Satellite Design Engineering with Dan Esparon

10/11/2024

Dan Esparon from Inovor Technologies in South Australia joins Dave to discuss all about the engineering of designing and launching satellites!

Dan works for Inovor Technologies, an Australian company that designs and builds satellites entirely in-house!

Recently they designed and launched the aussie Kanyini satellite on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket
https://www.inovor.com.au/missions/

They design and build their own Flight computers, ADCS systems, UHF radios, Battery modules and Solar Arrays in Australia.

#678 – All About Antennas with Katerina Galitskaya

10/01/2024

Welcome Katerina Galitskaya!

Chris started following Katerina’s antenna posts on LinkedIn Monopole vs dipole Lower frequences are harder bc longer wavelength PCB size half of frequency Place antenta on the shorter side How to ruin your PCB When to go to a antenna engineer? Where will the device be? Antenna environment Start from vacuum, start adding elements Dummies in the lab. The one in the episode photo is a dummy head filled with liquid (?!) SAR – Specific Absorption rate Simulation vs lab work (dimensions) Anechoic chamber When to go with custom antenna? Buying off the shelf ante...

#677 – Watt Is The Deal

09/23/2024

Spam calls Keysight released the HD3, a 14 bit ADC oscilloscope (teardown video) Chris will be at Embedded World North America, please let him know if you’ll be there! Chris will be at the Joulescope stand along with former guest Matt Liberty This is one of the only tradeshows for general electronics in the US, Embedded Systems Conference went away many years ago. Chris, Dave, and Jeff (yesssah!) recorded at ESC in episode 41! Bootstrapping new conferences Cellular power modes Dave old GSM video PSM / eDRX ALT1350 Dave got a smart meter on his home setup EDMI EEVblog forum pos...

#676 – Moving House (And Lab)

09/03/2024

Chris has been moving house, which partially explains the terrible audio problems the past few episodes… For a lab, Chris believes in Lots of wire shelving (with epoxy coating) Everything on wheels (including shelving and workbenches) As much storage as you can get Chris has been doing livestreams of hardware design for Golioth. The module he is designing is called the Drachm (“dram”) The hardware Chris has been working on for the past 2 years is now open source Flox video with machine learning on a camera also featured Chris Altium finalized their acquisition by Renesas. The price already went u...

#675 – Changing Course with Shawn Hymel

08/09/2024

Welcome Shawn Hymel!

Shawn will be transitioning out Developer Relations at Edge Impulse. He will now be building courses full time. (this was recorded before Shawn announced his departure) He want’s to be like a Professor, which partially explains his signature bowtie Should people go into content? What about Developer Relations more specifically? New courses will include FreeCAD and 3D printing and will be published by Digikey Part design in FreeCAD 0.22 in Mango Jelly Learning modeling vs learning an actual program Scoffolding Making a Zephyr course Zephyr / Golioth training Ecosystem vs RTOS Workshop at Harvard Try...

#674 – Turtles as a Service

07/25/2024

Murphy More efficient with cooled panels Battery storage solution Server rack batteries Chris has been doing hardware Livestreams Geofence n8n, Similar to Zapier, IFTTT Home assistant EE Grad wants some insight on new tech https://4dsystems.com.au/ Scott Williams of Xentronix recorded with Dave and then Chris Saw at Electronex My Cousin Vinny Embedded World North America is happening in Austin in October. There is a vendor map now. Voltnuts Open source book Tiny Tapeout Tantalum Caps from AliExpress What’s next for ASML Ben Krasnow printing PCB traces again

#673 – Lifelong Learning with Bitluni

07/15/2024

Welcome, Matthias Balwierz / Bitluni / Luni!

Midi pedals Old projects LED walls Dunning kruger Sonar scanner Aliens Romulus Lifelong learning Beamforming Previously had worked on something similar in the medical field but didn’t realize it was the same tech ESP32 Gowin FPGA Video generation / crt control R2R cnlohr videos for making PCBs ESP32 VGA PCB mill Failing Tiny Tapeout bringing down costs like PCBs Jeri doing “home etching” (making silicon at home) Building the meme project on TT02 GIF construction set Almost like a ROM on board, on each clock it exposes the next byte on paralel...

#672 – Silicon Revolution with Matt Venn

06/30/2024

Welcome back, Matt Venn of the Zero to Asic Course and Tiny Tapeout!

(Due to illness and some life stuff happening, my recording setup was crap. Apologies. I also leaned heavily on Matt’s notes, so some of the following links will be out of order. Think of it like an ad hoc scavenger hunt…fun!)

Matt was last on the show on episode 616, about 18 months ago Tiny Tapeout has continued, now working on it’s 8th run. the 5th run is shipping soon. Uri Shaked made Wokwi compatible with making chip designs and then c...

#671 – NDA Sideshow

06/20/2024

Sideshow Bob (simpsons) HERIC Inverter Review Fraunhofer HERIC inverter Dave’s video about the CH32V003 Charles episode Altium is increasing the price of their product (by 2x??) HITECH compiler from Microchip Newfound Warp13 Webrings, Blog roll, StumbleUpon Dontronics amazing site

#670 – Engineering Careers with Circuit Break & James Lewis

06/14/2024

Check out the Circuit Break Podcast for show notes

Parker Dillman Stephen Kraig James Lewis

#669 – Freelance PCB Design with Petr Dvorak

06/07/2024

Welcome Petr Dvorak of Beny Devices

A to Z book about KiCad fancygit lazygit gitlol Customer types Brno – 30% of electron microscopes What is changing in electron microscopes? Higher voltage, no noise Electrostatic steering Transitioning to freelancing Regulations for freelancer vs employer Petr is a prolific poster of electronics content on his LinkedIn Show your work – Austin Kleon 3 years to get first client 1 month buffer of posts on LinkedIn Building repetitions Outliers / 10000 hours Lists of projects Constraints helping new engineers trying to learn electronics 8×32 pixel displays Petr in Shenzhen Gallup – top strength is learning Personality types Contact Get a f...

#668 – 50.0000 Ohms

05/31/2024

Mistakes in house repair for partners Architectural Lighting Power quality Repairing a $4500 DAC Invisible computers Cal Newport on AI AI shortform USB C Spec Tester “50.0000 ohms” HDMI Layout guide (ADI) Bit Error Rate My voice is my passport Fake Dave Hackers War Games Captain Crunch no longer welcome at DEF CON Wifi (WLAN) Location API Polar Semi gets CHIPS act money

#667 – Long Distance with CNLohr-a

05/23/2024

Welcome back, CNLohr!

CNLohr was on the last episode talking about the CH32V003 part and the CH32V003fun library Charlieplexed errings Fast iteration Lohr-a…LoRa…get it? LoRa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIdHBDSQHyw

Started in January 2024 with discussions with mustardtiger / Frank Charles had done Wifi long range before Also FM from ATTINY85 Ethernet + AM Radio signals without radios USB Harmonics LolRa Upchirps / downchirps 903.825 – 903.975 mhz Michael Ossmann talk LoRa doesn’t do code matching JP Norair talking about LoRaWAN / DASH7 Tool / emulator for the airwaves 3 lines of the repo Tool to create t...