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This is the Empire podcast. Release

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August 28th, 2023. Episode 644.

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Garbage Ninjas.

0:30

Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave

0:32

Jones from the AE V-Blog. And I'm

0:34

Chris Gamble of Contextual Electronics. What's

0:37

up, nerd? You know, I have

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never been accused of being on the bleeding

0:41

edge of anything. We

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were on the bleeding edge of podcasting back in the day.

0:48

Okay, maybe

0:50

that's the only thing I could be accused

0:51

of. Not like we took advantage

0:54

of it. No, it's not like we're

0:56

some huge... We did not sell our podcast to Spotify

0:58

for a hundred million dollars or anything

1:00

of the sort. We're just, you know, kind

1:02

of still here. I

1:04

recently got into two trends

1:07

that are already very far

1:09

over. The

1:11

first being I got a fitness tracker.

1:14

In 2023, I got a fitness tracker, Dave, for

1:16

the first time. And I

1:18

started baking sourdough bread, which

1:20

people from three years ago would go, yawn. So

1:24

those are the two things that I... Sorry, I didn't

1:26

know baking sourdough bread was a thing. It was

1:28

a pandemic. At least a lot of people

1:30

I knew, you know, it was like a hand on neck, let

1:33

it lock in type thing. It was like, well, there

1:35

ain't anything else to do. We might as well make some bread.

1:38

Let me tell you, I'm pretty good at it. So take

1:41

that, people from three years ago. The

1:45

fitness tracker is a little bit more interesting to this audience,

1:48

I think, just because, you know, it's

1:50

a tiny electronic device. There's

1:53

Kalman filters in there and accelerometers.

1:56

They're

1:56

pretty simple in their base idea,

1:58

but like... A lot of software

2:00

magic that goes into it now. Does

2:04

it do your pulse thing? Does it do the pulse? Yep,

2:07

yep, yep. It says I walked 8.3 miles today though, or

2:10

whatever that is, kilometers. Sorry about that. And

2:12

how does it do that? Does it pump the infrared through

2:16

your skin or whatever? Yeah, if you pull it off

2:18

your, so like I have the Inspire 3, the Fitbit

2:20

Inspire 3. If you pull it off your wrist,

2:22

there's just like a pulsing multicolor light that's

2:25

trying to get through my skin to

2:27

attack my heart rate.

2:29

On top or is it

2:31

under the band? It is

2:33

under the top of my wrist, yeah. So like

2:36

finger skin too, which is the best. Because it'd

2:38

do better if it was on the bottom of your wrist

2:40

because there's no like hair and there's no like,

2:42

you know.

2:43

Well actually, I don't know if you know this about me, Dave. You probably

2:45

wouldn't know this. I have silky smooth, no, I don't

2:47

actually have silky smooth arms, I was gonna say. Yeah.

2:52

Right. Yeah, so

2:55

it is interesting as like a, you know, quantified

2:58

self. That's a term from what, 15

3:00

years ago? I mean, these are like

3:02

literally, how old are these things? Like when people

3:04

start wearing these things, I don't even know. Oh God, what

3:07

was the big one? Even we had one back

3:09

in the day, it was the, and

3:12

you wore the chest strap. The-

3:15

Oh yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about. And it was ants, it

3:17

was the ants, the protocol

3:19

was ant, polar. Yes, yes, yes, it

3:21

was ant. Yes, that's right.

3:23

Yeah, it was, oh God, I can't remember. I can't remember.

3:26

Polar, it's got- Ah.

3:29

Wasn't that what it was? Sorry?

3:30

The polar, wasn't it polar?

3:32

A polar, polar, yes, yes,

3:34

the polar. Yes, they were like the,

3:36

probably the, they were the innovators,

3:39

weren't they, I think? And- They

3:41

were definitely, yeah, the earliest ones, and it would like talk to like certain very

3:43

high-end watches and stuff like that, or- It was

3:46

before- Well, they would have their own watch,

3:48

yeah. And then they teamed up with the watchmakers

3:50

and you'd have polar support built in or something

3:52

like that. But they had their own watches and they'd have

3:54

the waterproof chestband and, you know,

3:57

it's like, eh, you know, it was

3:59

a thing. thing. But

4:02

yeah, nowadays, no, they just sit them on the wrist

4:04

and you kind of get the infrared thing

4:06

through the skin. And you know, it's actually

4:08

very different now. Yeah, I mean, I thought that

4:10

was like actually skin contact too, like the

4:13

polar ones. I thought that was doing like, only

4:15

different. It was on the chest strap. It was through

4:17

the chest strap, but that wasn't infrared. That

4:20

was electrodes and they had contact

4:22

surface contact electrodes. And they

4:25

didn't work if you hadn't sweated yet and stuff

4:27

like that. So you had to spit on them. Yeah,

4:29

yeah, yeah. So you had to spit on them to start

4:32

off with, you know, to, yeah. So

4:35

I mean, I've been, you know, in

4:37

my younger days, I was fitness savvy,

4:39

but I've not been very fit past,

4:42

let's say half

4:45

of my life, the second half of my life, I have not

4:47

been very fit. And,

4:48

and I'm still not going to be fit, but I'm

4:50

going to be

4:51

having a device telling me I'm not fit as well. Right.

4:54

Okay. Which is, yes, as long as you log

4:56

it, it's like, yeah, the, yep. That

4:59

is the difference between science and

5:01

not science. It's just writing it down as having

5:03

the data, right? That's the difference between fit

5:05

and unfit as having the data, is it? Is it $100 smartwatch?

5:12

See,

5:12

I've got a great way to

5:14

avoid spending any money on any of

5:16

these fit smart doodads. You

5:19

simply go to the gym or you go for a run and

5:21

you go 100%. Like you

5:23

go flat out. That's how you do it.

5:26

You don't have to measure anything. I have

5:28

a foolproof plan for you to

5:30

be the fittest person you can be both

5:32

mentally, physically and emotionally. That's

5:35

it. Give it your all every day from

5:37

the start. Also by my by

5:40

my supplements. By

5:44

my natural performance supplements, living

5:46

force vitamins, you know? It's,

5:51

there's a large industry here for

5:54

sure. Oh yeah. Yeah. Because people love their doodads.

5:56

People love their flashy. Oh yeah. I see it like gym,

5:58

like, like before the class. class actually starts,

6:01

everyone sets their, you know, usually it's an

6:03

iWatch, don't iWatches have rudimentary

6:06

thing, or maybe they've got Fitbits, I don't know, I don't take

6:08

a close look, but yeah, they start their watch at the

6:10

start of the class, and it's like,

6:12

and they're usually slackers, like

6:15

people who have these things are usually, I don't like

6:17

to stereotype, dude, but sorry, the

6:19

people that have these things are usually the slackers people

6:21

in the class. So, yeah, they've got their

6:23

tracker and

6:26

they set their calories and like, and they come

6:28

out of the class and they didn't even sweat,

6:30

and here I am, like everyone's just,

6:33

you know, staring at me, going like, well, what the fuck?

6:35

What drugs is this guy on? Sorry about the, I

6:38

dropped the F bomb there. I'm gonna edit that out. But

6:41

yeah. But

6:43

they just got passionate about the F word, fitness.

6:45

Oh boy.

6:48

Yeah, so two interesting things that I learned in

6:51

the course of my research around this, well, not research,

6:53

but just

6:54

all of the googling that I'm doing around this. First,

6:57

not even googling, that was a lie too. My

6:59

aunt, she is not,

7:01

again, not particularly fit, but she does

7:03

wear an Apple watch. And her watch

7:06

told her, hey, you have an arrhythmia, you

7:08

should go get this checked out. And like, to the level where like,

7:10

she went and got a pacemaker. Like,

7:13

that's the kind of detection. And this thing

7:15

will actually apparently give me, so

7:17

like, just like early detection type stuff, pretty interesting,

7:19

I think. And

7:22

the other one, the 10,000 step number, I

7:25

was looking it up yesterday, and apparently

7:28

that was created by a Japanese company in 1965, they

7:31

came up with the idea of the 10,000 steps because

7:34

they were selling some product called the 10,000 step

7:36

meter. Yeah, right. And

7:40

because it probably only have the five or four

7:42

and a half digits on there, so I could

7:45

only go to 10,000, or it could go to 999. Have

7:48

you get 999, just roll it over. Yeah, yeah, it rolled over,

7:50

yeah. It

7:52

is interesting how that kind of marketing

7:55

stuff makes it way into

7:57

the,

7:58

Oh, it's all psychology, dude. And

8:00

it's all marketing, it's all psychology, and

8:02

it's all just, you know, 10,000 is a nice round

8:06

number. It sounds good to people. Yeah, exactly.

8:09

It's like the thousand hour, what is it? Or

8:12

the thousand hours you have to get- 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours

8:15

you have to do to get good at something, you know.

8:18

Or to not get good, but to

8:20

get expert, which is bullshit. It's

8:23

absolutely complete bullshit, but

8:24

people like it. It's a round number,

8:26

you know. So, yeah. It's

8:30

easy to talk about. Anyways,

8:33

so pretty interesting device. You

8:35

know, thinking about what's in here, I should probably look at the teardown.

8:38

But Bluetooth- So, what is it? The

8:41

Fitbit what? Inspire 3. Inspire 3

8:44

teardown. I'm going to have a look. Fitbit Inspire. Oh

8:46

yeah, I fixed it. Of course, I have that. Oh yeah. Really

8:50

tiny touchscreen though. Like not much

8:52

going on in there. Right. Oh,

8:55

it's a- Oh, okay. No, hang on. But

8:58

sensors on board. Yeah. Oh,

9:01

wow. Oh, you can buy- Oh, wow. Look at this. Yolegroup.com.

9:04

You can buy the full teardown for 8,000 euros. What?

9:08

Can I borrow 8,000

9:09

euros? Oh, I see it too. I've never seen this before.

9:11

Who's the Yole group? Is this

9:14

a group that does like- Is this

9:16

the- Similar to that- Who's

9:20

the Monroe guy who does the car

9:22

teardowns? Yeah, right. You know, you can buy

9:24

for like $10,000. You can buy the complete bill of materials

9:26

for the latest Tesla because

9:29

he tears it down bit by bit.

9:31

I never did get around to doing that

9:33

video because I've still got the PDF. I've got

9:35

the PDF of the BMW

9:37

i3 EV, which is

9:39

like 10 years old now or something. But

9:42

yeah, it's just- It's incredible. It's

9:45

incredible. So you buy these- They

9:47

only sell like, I don't know, 100 of these.

9:49

They only need to sell a bunch and they're selling them to

9:51

other manufacturers probably, right? Yeah, yeah,

9:54

yeah. Other manufacturers, yeah. And

9:56

they have a cost breakdown of how much this

9:58

screw costs and how much this mold costs.

9:59

and you know, they've got like,

10:02

yeah, yeah, it's incredible. Okay,

10:04

so this is a Yule group. This

10:07

is a price

10:09

at, okay, right, so they sell reports.

10:13

Right. That's kinda interesting. Yeah, I guess this

10:15

came out in- There's no details on it. This is the December 22nd.

10:17

Yeah, no, there's nothing on it. There's

10:18

no sample or anything. Like, you think they'd give

10:20

you a sample or something? What the

10:23

hell? I'm not paying my $8,000. Yeah, I'd be interested to

10:25

grow up without a sample. People

10:27

have a copy of one of these things. It would be interesting to see one.

10:30

Right, yeah. Maybe we

10:32

should talk to the old group, be like, give us your old ones, and

10:34

we'll just talk about them on the Ampower. Right, yeah,

10:36

free, free, free, free, free,

10:38

free. Listen to me. And they're like, no, we get 8,000 euros

10:40

per teardown, so

10:43

we don't care about you. Oh, screw, screw you. Oh, screw

10:45

you. All

10:47

right, well, there you go. All right, so

10:50

it's one of these new fangled, yeah. It

10:52

does make you wonder, too, like, could anyone just

10:54

go, I mean, like, it's obviously the new branding

10:56

and that sort of thing, but like, could anyone

10:58

just go and

10:59

start tearing these things down and making

11:01

reports out of them? You know, like, I guess that's the business. Of course they

11:04

can. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, it's a business,

11:06

but you've got to have the rep for it, I guess. You've got to, you

11:08

know, like, it's a chicken and egg kind

11:10

of thing. I don't think anyone's gonna buy your report if

11:12

you don't have the rep, and if you don't have the rep,

11:15

you know. Yeah, maybe eat 100 euros, not

11:17

eat 1,000 euros. Anyway, I am staring

11:19

down at a gorgeous, so from Tech Insights,

11:22

a gorgeous, high-definition

11:22

PCB shot, and

11:26

it's got weird marking

11:28

chips that, you know, I don't know, you'd

11:31

have to try and reverse engineer them, but there's

11:33

two main chips on there, I

11:35

guess. Well, there's like five

11:38

or six, but other ones are smaller. This

11:40

is the BMW thing you're talking about?

11:41

No, no, no, no, this is the Inspire 3. Well,

11:44

where did you find this? It's a new link, come

11:46

on, man. I did Fitbit, Inspire 3, tear

11:49

down, and then go to Google Images, and there they are.

11:51

Oh, Images, yep. Images, that's the trick,

11:53

lad. That's the jam. That's the jam. Yep,

11:56

yep, yep, yep. Got stuck into the old group.

12:00

All right, yeah, there

12:02

you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

12:03

all right. Well. I guess we'll just sit here reading

12:06

this Everybody take your take a break There

12:11

you go, someone's done it who's who's the youtuber

12:13

who's done a tear down I'm gonna give him a shout out it's

12:16

Do

12:19

it yourself easy

12:22

Do y easy is done a tear down

12:24

there you go and yeah a complete

12:27

video showing you how to open it Look

12:30

at the same thing this is the Fitbit charge. Oh,

12:32

that's why oh

12:34

Versa, okay, no Whatever

12:37

anyway. Yeah, I mean there's not I mean I'm

12:40

surprised is there's not a lot of

12:42

ships in there, right? I mean like the the sock is

12:45

often you know has a microcontroller

12:47

Bigged into it right I mean like they and then

12:51

a couple sensors and battery

12:53

and charging and that's about all that's all about All

12:55

she wrote right I mean like you don't need much else there. Oh

12:57

here. We go. No there's there is a Double-sided

13:02

load. Oh, there's a vibration motor on it.

13:04

So you want it actually vibrates does it

13:06

it does yeah,

13:07

okay? Yeah, so a little vibrator motor in there.

13:09

It's an st. Micro. It's a 32 l 485 JC

13:13

for those playing along at home And

13:15

there's a couple of other st. Micro

13:18

parts. Oh st. Micro blue energy So

13:21

that that'd be the bluetooth thing there's a maximum 14

13:24

676 don't know

13:26

what that does you know power management stuff?

13:28

I guess there's another st. Micro.

13:31

L is 2 HD.

13:33

What does that do?

13:35

Actually

13:37

use the

13:38

Lsh 2d h 12 that's

13:41

the one that I have on my latest design.

13:43

Oh, okay, right same one in the

13:46

Zephyr device tree There

13:48

is a reason to use a part if you don't know When

13:51

it's in when it's entry in Zephyr It's

13:54

a friend of mine

13:56

Okay Fair enough

13:58

who else is using Zephyr? Who

14:00

are the big customers? Who have you got? Or

14:03

you're not the guy that

14:06

is into that? Well, all the new Nordic stuff is. So

14:09

I went to the Nordic tech days. I was actually surprised

14:11

by this number. So they come through, they did like a

14:13

tour back

14:15

in, what is this, August? It must've been back in

14:17

like March, April. But they

14:19

like come around and then like, they basically do like product

14:22

updates to, you know, a conference room full

14:24

of different people instead of, you know, I'm not part of a company

14:27

and they would come and cater to

14:29

and walk in with like a sales person, right? So this is like

14:31

a generic, it was at like

14:33

a local community college and it was big lecture

14:35

hall

14:36

and you're sitting there. And

14:39

they talked about, so Zephyr is like their new

14:41

thing, but they talked about like something like,

14:43

some significant portion of

14:45

all the people are still using their old SDK still,

14:48

because if you

14:51

go by volume, because you think about like, well, all of the things

14:53

that are at volume

14:54

were built three, four years ago. And

14:57

they were designed with this old SDK. Of course, so they're gonna stick with it. And

14:59

they're still supporting it, of course. But all the new stuff,

15:01

so I think the new stuff is, they're

15:04

heavy in Zephyr,

15:05

which they made that decision about three

15:07

or four years ago. And so I would

15:09

imagine everything in the future coming out

15:11

of

15:12

Nordic Dev Shops

15:14

will be Zephyr. That's

15:16

an interesting thing. At what point does

15:18

a company go, let's not support

15:21

this anymore. I guess it's how big

15:23

your customers are and how much they scream, you

15:25

know? And if they stop screaming

15:27

anymore, then we gently,

15:30

you know? Right, it's just like, it's fewer

15:32

and fewer FAEs or

15:35

internal people. And then they just start

15:37

to say, well, there's no new features. And then

15:39

eventually, if you pay enough money, it's

15:42

really like forever, right? I mean, it's just at that point.

15:44

Yeah, of course. Yeah, for support, so. Well,

15:49

that's baked into contracts too. I mean, I've

15:51

actually done contracts with

15:53

chip companies that say you will

15:56

support this chip for the next 20 years.

15:59

It's like.

15:59

Like, you know, that's bait, like they

16:02

have to get the CEO to sign off

16:04

on it. Or, you know, some,

16:06

it has to be a company director, I think, has

16:09

to sign off on it. That

16:11

yeah, that you're going to support this for

16:13

our widget for the next 20 years.

16:16

And it's, yeah, as long as you keep paying the increasing

16:18

prices too, don't forget about that. Right.

16:21

Yeah, of course. There's no price fixing there.

16:24

I think that's the other thing. They do, they up the prices.

16:27

So it makes sense to pay the migration,

16:29

pay for the migration in people hours, whatever.

16:33

In the smart watch space, actually,

16:37

Aiden, who was on the show, the one, two in

16:39

the augmented reality headset,

16:41

he was using a part called the RT 500. And

16:45

that is a part that's targeting

16:48

the smartwatch industry. I think it's in some of the Garmin projects,

16:51

products, because they like have a bunch

16:53

of circular displays they support

16:55

or something like that. Like something where it's like, oh, this is going

16:57

into a watch, right?

17:00

And so he was using it for his smart heads

17:03

up display thing, augmented reality, but

17:06

they're definitely playing in that

17:08

space, the smartwatch space.

17:10

Got it. Yeah. I

17:13

don't know.

17:13

It's interesting with like Apple in the smartwatch space.

17:16

It's like, that feels like that's a giant in the room,

17:18

but you know, there, there's

17:20

still a lot of money in it. And they're, they're trying different

17:23

niches and you know, like the, the

17:26

people that are doing GPS and

17:29

that aren't so connected or whatever. So there's

17:32

a lot of,

17:33

it's like a secondary cellular market. Basically.

17:36

It's a third screen kind

17:37

of thing. You know what the ironic thing about the, uh,

17:39

these, uh, Fitbit smartwatches is all

17:42

these fitness watches is that the fiddie

17:44

you get

17:45

the lower your heart rate gets for

17:48

a given activity. So it's going to

17:50

think that you're actually getting not

17:53

as fit because it's all based on heart rate, right? Cause

17:55

it's not, you know, well, they've got accelerometers

17:57

in there, but they can't judge how high

17:59

you.

17:59

jump, how much force you put into

18:02

stuff, how much effort you're

18:04

putting into the cycle, how much, you know, like they

18:06

can't like get, you

18:08

know, force feedback like that. And

18:12

yeah, the- Sorry, what are you tracking in that case? Sorry,

18:14

you mean you're tracking like calorie burn or something like that?

18:16

You would be tracking heart rate, calorie

18:18

burn based on heart rate. The whole point

18:20

is that the fitter you get, the more your

18:22

body gets used to it and the lower your heart

18:25

rate is for like given activity, even

18:27

though you're doing working twice

18:29

as hard as somebody else, yet your heart rate

18:31

might be, you know, 10 to 20 beats long. Dave's

18:34

bringing a lot of personal issues to

18:36

this, a lot of personal feelings

18:38

to this conversation. No, I'm just, you know,

18:40

this is just- All these other people, all of these

18:42

hunters at the gym are not

18:44

trying hard enough for Dave. They're

18:46

all wearing watches and Dave's not. I

18:49

think- They're all carrying bloody phones into the gym.

18:51

I'm not. I'm the only one who

18:53

doesn't take a phone into the gym. It's going

18:56

to be okay, buddy. What is wrong with the human race? Who

18:58

hurt you? Tim

19:01

Cook has the answer to Dave.

19:05

But it's- I

19:07

think the thing that is abundantly clear in all of this

19:09

stuff and like, so my wife has an

19:11

iWatch, whatever, Apple Watch, whatever, and

19:13

like, you know, I've got this thing now. It is all an

19:15

approximation, right? It's all, you know,

19:18

there's algorithms and there's all this stuff, but

19:20

they're not super

19:21

accurate. They're

19:23

all inferred things and I think they're

19:25

amazing for what they are, right? I mean, like there's- Of

19:27

course. They're detecting that like,

19:29

you know, you think about the output of an accelerometer,

19:31

right? It's like, so

19:33

this thing is getting some kind of interrupt that I'm moving

19:36

and then it's like, oh, I moved from, you

19:38

know,

19:39

X4 to X4, Y2 to X5,

19:41

you know, Y1.

19:44

And I'm like, oh, that's a step, right? Or they

19:46

do it twice and they do the difference.

19:48

And it's just like, yeah,

19:50

Calvin filters are amazing and all

19:52

the- But how hard and fast did

19:54

you do that? Well, there's, you know, there's acceleration

19:57

and there's definitely jerks out there,

19:59

right?

19:59

Right. That's a little. He

20:03

jerked more than other jerks. Yeah.

20:06

Yeah. Right. Oh

20:08

boy. Yeah, I don't know. It's all,

20:10

but it is definitely all approximation. Like I said

20:12

at the beginning of the show, like

20:15

my watch told me I went 8.3 miles today and

20:17

I

20:18

did not go 8.3 miles today. So like it's

20:20

definitely still. Oh really? Okay.

20:23

Yeah. Right. Okay.

20:27

Why? Yeah,

20:29

exactly. Oh, right. Kermit

20:31

the Frog, you're. Kermit. Yeah,

20:34

I don't know. I

20:39

think it's

20:41

inferred like steps

20:44

and

20:45

your gait and all these other things. So I don't know how.

20:48

Oh yeah. Hopefully it updates at some point,

20:51

but I guess if it's consistent enough, it could be precise

20:53

without being accurate, right? Well,

20:55

interestingly, I went to a sports

20:58

podiatrist

21:00

the other week and on the

21:02

recommendation of my

21:05

physio, because I've got, you know, knee

21:08

issue, like I busted my other knee. Yeah,

21:10

I busted my other knee and

21:13

I didn't even know it. Yeah, I didn't even know it anyway.

21:15

And it healed itself. So I went and this is the

21:17

problem, Dave, when you don't wear a watch at the gym and

21:19

you're just going a hundred percent all the time. Oh, it

21:22

could have told me the fit big. You've torn

21:24

your meniscus. Slow down. Slow

21:26

down, old man. Slow down. And

21:30

anyway, so the interesting thing is

21:32

I did a poll on Twitter

21:34

about whether or not

21:35

people thought podiatry

21:39

was quackery

21:41

or not. And I think the majority

21:43

of people think podiatry is quackery.

21:46

So that's interesting. Anyway, I just thought

21:48

I'd throw that in there. What about podiatry though? I

21:51

mean, they're just... Oh, well, because they've got one tool. You know,

21:53

because the thing is that they've only got

21:55

one

21:55

tool. which

22:00

is orthotics, right? That's kind of like, you

22:02

know. Oh, I see. They only have one answer.

22:05

Right, store back, put in the orthotics, yeah. Put

22:07

in the orthotics, right? We'll sell you the expensive orthotics.

22:09

Yeah, I feel like that's a lot of doctors, though, too, like chiropractors,

22:12

too. Oh, yeah, oh, well, that's completely

22:14

removed. You don't need to crack my back when I have a cold.

22:16

Thank you very much, yeah. Yeah. So

22:19

anyway, in a dietary bar, I went in and found

22:21

it actually quite good. She

22:23

knew, you know, a lot, you know, analyzed my

22:25

walking and stuff like that, and I've got all these sorts

22:27

of issues. And I don't actually need, surprisingly,

22:31

I don't need the one tool that they had, which

22:34

was the orthotics. Yeah, it's my

22:36

hip, toe alignment, and that sort of stuff. Although

22:39

I do apparently have impressively flexible

22:42

feet, and that's a quote.

22:43

So there you go. Apparently, I'm one of

22:45

these flexible feet people, and if

22:48

I roll, she was quite jealous that if I

22:50

roll my ankle,

22:52

like I don't actually, like I can

22:54

just walk it off. I don't actually damage anything.

22:56

Apparently, there's a certain type of person

22:59

on one of those flexible, weird,

23:01

flexible feet people. So, you know, go figure. Basically,

23:04

a superhuman at this point. Yeah, yeah, pretty

23:06

much. Who breaks those a

23:08

lot? You should use that as your one thing

23:11

that you do to solve problems. Oh, you can't figure

23:13

out the resistance before a wire kelvin resistant,

23:15

or a measurement rather. I've got flexible

23:17

feet, I can help you with that. Oh,

23:20

goodness.

23:22

Yeah. Anyway, speaking of

23:24

teardowns, Yes. Yeah,

23:26

I just released a video, just moments before we started

23:28

this, 1980s. I went back to old school.

23:31

Yeah.

23:32

Old school, boom box from the

23:34

1980s. The boom box from the 1980s. Teardown,

23:38

it was very interesting. It's like, you know,

23:40

I actually split a clip of this over

23:43

onto my second

23:44

channel, and it was how the

23:46

volume and graphic equalizer

23:49

board, you know, how

23:51

the slider pots, you know. So they've

23:54

got the five band graphic equalizer slider pots

23:56

and the volume and balance controls and stuff. They're

23:58

all on this dedicated.

23:59

board and all the boards are single-sided by

24:02

the way. None of these double-sided rubbish, right?

24:04

They're

24:04

all single-sided

24:05

and it's just got all these

24:07

cable looms running over to the graphic equalizer

24:10

board. So all the LM3

24:13

to 4 op amps are all on a different board, then all

24:15

the analog signals just go over via this unshielded

24:17

cable loom. You know, it's like... Pass the speaker. You

24:20

know, yeah, right. It's just

24:22

good. But they're actually amazingly engineered,

24:25

these boom boxes. Oh no, no. Especially for... How they actually

24:27

produce them. You said this is 80s? What year

24:29

did you... The...

24:33

Oh boy.

24:34

That's something I didn't include

24:37

in my video, is what date was it? You

24:40

say 80s, but also like, you know, the time... Well,

24:44

it was before 89 because

24:46

it was used in the movie, Say Anything.

24:48

Oh, class. And Anything. It's the

24:51

boom box which he holds over his head, right? So

24:53

it was at least before that. It was at least before that. That I

24:55

was thinking there was going to be because I was thinking of

24:57

the kind... So Joe Gran did a video about

24:59

the... Did you see Joe Gran's video? No. A

25:01

couple... It was I guess around...

25:04

Oh,

25:05

he'd run it to Embedded World. So it must have been

25:07

March timeframe. But basically he built

25:11

a piece, an all PCB

25:13

boom box. Oh, I said the world's

25:16

thinnest boom box. Oh, okay. Oh,

25:18

I'm looking at the other. Joe got a sponsorship from

25:20

the maker of the

25:23

Pizzo elements. I think that's why he made that.

25:25

I was like, why did he do this? Right.

25:29

That's a cool project. Okay. I'll pay that.

25:31

Yeah. No, it was great. I mean, and the

25:33

fact that it was all PCB too. Yeah. Yeah. Super

25:36

cool.

25:36

But he was modeling that after like the

25:38

old school, like the

25:41

one that the break dancers used to use. You know what I mean? Yeah.

25:43

Yeah. Of course. Yeah. And he's got the cardboard down

25:45

on the ground. Is he actually going to break? No,

25:48

he hired some break dancers. Oh, yeah. I

25:50

had some break dancers. Okay. Oh yeah. I'm watching it

25:52

now. Oh, this is great. Oh, and he sticks

25:54

the tape on the front. Oh,

25:57

this is great. Yeah. But it actually

25:59

works. Oh, that's great. And he's got lids that

26:01

are built into the PCB, are they? I think those are actually

26:04

reverse firing neopane. Oh,

26:06

OK, right. They want this. Right.

26:08

Yeah, this is great. OK.

26:10

I'm sure it doesn't sound that great, but you know.

26:12

It does not sound that great, yeah. I mean, that's the point.

26:14

It's not really,

26:16

you know, like, you need driver cones to really move

26:18

some air, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. They're

26:20

good for certain things, and it's not the base is

26:23

not one of them. Yeah.

26:26

You want to get some base, you got to push some

26:28

air. Yeah. That's a great video.

26:30

He went to a lot of effort, not only to

26:32

build that, but to shoot the video as well.

26:35

Went outside and got a rapping crew, and you

26:37

know, like a, sorry, a dance crew.

26:39

Yeah, break dance crew. Yeah.

26:41

Yeah.

26:42

Break dance too. Let's read boogaloo. Classic. Break

26:44

into.

26:45

No, break dance too. I know. That's

26:48

what it's called here. You know, it's originally here, Dave, so.

26:50

All right. Yeah. But

26:53

that's great. How did he do the color?

26:56

Obviously, he didn't get a multi. I think he

26:58

covers it in the video, but they did like eight passes.

27:01

I was going to say, you can actually pay to

27:04

have it done. But oh, yeah, yeah.

27:06

I can see he's got like different,

27:08

eight different colors or something. Yeah. Right.

27:10

So yellows, reds, blues. I think

27:13

the artist he hired, he told, would have this palette

27:15

of available costumes. Right. Yeah,

27:17

yeah. So we hired an artist

27:19

to do that. Well, Joe is the original bad boy. Listen

27:22

to our episode with Joe Gran back in the

27:24

day. Yes. Yeah,

27:24

yeah. That was a long time ago. I'll

27:27

look that in. Yeah,

27:28

yeah. Form a yes. You've probably done a wow. That

27:31

is wow. So we got sponsored

27:33

to do that or something, I guess. Because that's

27:35

a lot of effort to go to just to make a video. It

27:37

was a big effort. Yeah. Right,

27:40

yeah. And hiring dancers. You know, you're going to hire dancers.

27:42

Yeah, I know. Oh, if you're going to hire dancers, yeah.

27:44

Dave, you never hire dancers. Why don't you hire dancers? I

27:47

can hire a dad and I can

27:49

write marching band.

27:51

I can have a brass band and, you know.

27:57

Marching through the lab or something. No. Yeah,

27:59

there you go.

27:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

28:02

boy. Anyway, maybe

28:04

you could hire the here's here's a here's one. You

28:06

could do,

28:07

you know, like the the rugby crews

28:10

that do the Haka at the beginning, like the all

28:12

right. Yes, yes, I could do the DMM

28:14

probe promotion. They could be all red and blacks.

28:17

All right. How about that? Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good.

28:20

So like I would do stuff like that if

28:22

a company like paid me to

28:23

do it, like to spend like a month on

28:26

a video. I would never do sponsored. No,

28:29

no, same here. But I'm saying if

28:31

like that's the only way I would do it is if

28:33

I was getting paid to like not

28:35

do anything else and just work on a project for a

28:38

month. And then, you know, like,

28:40

but yeah, it'd need a lot of money.

28:42

OK, you heard it here first. You heard it here first. Contact

28:44

Dave David, easy blog. I can't give him

28:47

many, many chunks of dollars. And

28:49

he says he'll do a sponsored video. I don't think it's

28:51

true. I don't think so. No, you don't think

28:53

so. I'd probably do a sponsored video for one

28:55

hundred thousand dollars. Oh, OK.

28:57

Well, yeah, yeah, there's there's the bar. The

29:00

bar has been laid. Yeah. Well, I've I've

29:02

constantly turned down five thousand dollars.

29:04

So it's like to do one one

29:07

sponsored video. It's like five thousand dollars if you

29:09

mention our product, you know, you know. And

29:11

that's not even a sponsored video. It's

29:13

like we'll just put a we'll just like an ad

29:15

actually baked in,

29:17

you know. So it's not even a it's not

29:19

even a sponsored video, really. So I guys turned

29:21

to me. To build hard work for you folks, if

29:23

you want to give them buckets of money,

29:26

that's right. Buckets of money. I will happily

29:28

accept your buckets of money. I have a wife and kids.

29:30

I have a wife and five kids to feed. Yeah.

29:34

Yeah. And a pool to make. I mean,

29:36

I've been watching your pool going in. So Mr.

29:39

Fancy Pants Pool over here.

29:41

Yep. How's it going? Is it done

29:43

yet? No, no, no, it's not done yet.

29:45

I'll have a pool party and you invited

29:47

over. Oh, I can I can come over for that. Yeah. Yeah.

29:49

Yeah. Yeah. You just. Yeah. Simply hop on a plane.

29:51

It's not a problem. Right. It only cost you a couple of thousand dollars.

29:54

How much does it cost to fly to Australia

29:56

now? From where I am, probably

29:59

twenty five hundred.

30:00

on a good day. Yankee bucks.

30:03

That's Yankee bucks. Wow,

30:05

that's like $4,000 Australian. Oh, is

30:07

it really? Yeah. Exchange

30:09

rate's that bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty crap

30:11

at the moment. Oh, that's pretty bad, dude. Yeah,

30:14

yeah.

30:15

Yeah, the real problem is that it's, I don't

30:17

know if you know this, it's pretty far away. It is

30:19

pretty far away. Also,

30:22

I, yeah. It's only like 14 hours or

30:24

something. No, it's more from where you are. No, it's working out on the West

30:27

Coast. You're from the West Coast. I know, sorry. It's like

30:29

six hours on the West Coast, Dave. I live in the East Coast. Yeah, all

30:31

right, okay. So it's 20 hours to get here. Yeah, 20

30:33

hours if anyone flew that far. Nobody

30:36

does, although apparently it's some point. No, they go

30:38

from Dallas. You can go from Sydney

30:40

to Dallas, I think. I'm still three hours from Dallas, Dave. Oh,

30:43

okay, right. Oh, well, that's not far. I'm 17 to Dallas,

30:45

so,

30:45

and then there's layover. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

30:48

All right. Let's see, let's

30:50

look on, let's go look on Google. Oh, $2,000. Oh,

30:52

I could get there for $1,600 right now. Bargain.

30:56

Bargain. I'm not going to, just

30:58

so we're absolutely clear about that. Okay.

31:01

Basically, like. But if a company wanted to, like

31:04

big bucks, sponsor us to fly for 7 hours. It's still

31:06

not gonna do that. It's still big, because you've got a wife and kids now too. That's

31:08

right, yeah, exactly. Yep.

31:09

Wow, this is, 27 hours, door to door.

31:14

27 hours, door to door. Oh,

31:16

yeah. I still get

31:19

invites all the time, you know, to like conferences

31:21

and stuff. Oh, we all, you know, like,

31:23

just come to the conference, we'll pay for your airfare

31:25

and stuff. Like, do you realize how long it takes

31:28

for me to get anywhere?

31:31

Yeah, you should give him an hourly rate so that he can.

31:34

Right. Get the night on the plane. Oh, boy,

31:36

yep. Yikes.

31:39

Cool, any other interesting

31:41

findings from the boombox teardown you did? What would

31:43

you, how would you get this thing? Someone send you this?

31:46

No, no, I found it on

31:48

eBay. It was on my watch list

31:50

for years. Really? It was on my watch

31:52

list, yeah, I died on the watch list, you know, because I wanted the

31:54

boombox, right? So I just put

31:56

it on my watch list and it eventually popped up.

31:59

Eventually. And I got it cheap like I could I

32:01

could sell it for three times what I paid for it I

32:04

think

32:04

would you say oh?

32:05

Okay, I can't remember. I've had it for a long time.

32:08

It was like that was like 150 bucks or something

32:10

wasn't much But I reckon I could probably

32:12

sell for 500 bucks dollar reduce

32:14

or yeah, yeah, Aussie Aussie bucks

32:16

Well, I could probably I don't know it's

32:19

in really good nick and and it's highly

32:21

sought after it's it's one of the models People

32:23

want I mean if you want to have like collector item type things

32:25

like this. Yeah, yeah

32:27

But they're um yeah Another

32:30

thing to put in the background, huh? Well,

32:33

I don't really have space I'm thinking about remodeling

32:35

the lab cuz I'm not happy like I

32:37

don't really have you know I shoot a what? Like

32:42

I don't really have decent backdrops

32:43

and shit like other YouTube

32:46

like other real youtubers You know I don't know

32:48

it's about like lading more than it is backdrop

32:50

No, no, I want you know because I do

32:53

a lot of you know talking head type things And

32:55

I don't really you know well I kind

32:57

of do have a backdrop, but it's like It's

33:00

not that great. I wouldn't know I would

33:03

know no All

33:07

right, I mean people aren't there for that and they're

33:09

there no, but it's you know you're small flapping

33:12

you know Yeah,

33:17

oh, what was it nice what oh, I watched your your

33:20

one with the Why did

33:22

you start talking about the micro supply? I saw you oh,

33:24

yes hang on I think someone's at the door heck

33:27

Korea hang on Korea editor

33:31

help Dave's inconsiderate

33:35

Dave so inconsiderate you

33:37

know wouldn't you know it I completely forgot

33:39

that I am actually editor

33:40

this week Sorry

33:44

about that that was my main Nixon More

33:49

crap for the background. That was my main

33:51

Nixon um oh I've

33:53

got it's a key site box

33:57

All right a lot thickens

34:02

Don't open it live, it's an audio podcast, Steve.

34:05

Right, yeah. Anyway, I

34:07

have no idea. I don't know, this stuff just turns

34:09

up. Yeah. That's

34:12

a good way to do it. Fine.

34:15

I'm looking for eBay prices at the moment. No,

34:18

no one's got one. See,

34:20

I could own the market.

34:22

I could get like, oh, someone's got a GF800.

34:25

Geez, 580 bucks for a GF800. But

34:29

that one's got like an eight-band graphic equalizer, or

34:31

ten-band graphic equalizer. This

34:33

is a high exchange rate right now. Holy crap. Maybe

34:36

I should go there and just like buy

34:39

stuff? Well, I don't know.

34:42

What was it like when, I don't even remember what it was

34:44

like when I was there. See, it's five years, it's

34:46

more than five years since I was there.

34:48

Oh, no, someone's got one. GF7600, 450,

34:51

they say it's from 1983.

34:56

So, anyway,

34:59

oh, someone's got one here. Yeah,

35:02

there you go. Oh, that's in

35:05

really good nick too. Geez, I've got a tour. Okay,

35:07

no more eBay live on air, okay.

35:10

Oh, it's missing a knob.

35:11

Pretty missing a knob. Oh,

35:14

no, no, tragic. How

35:17

much time do you spend on eBay per week? I used

35:20

to spend a lot, I don't anymore. I've

35:22

got a couple of things on a watch list. Buying

35:24

and buying and buying. Oh, yeah, it used to

35:26

be one of my main hobbies

35:28

was buying, I've got over a thousand feedback

35:30

on eBay. I used to buy and sell, I used

35:32

to buy and sell Teske

35:34

on eBay. Right, I think

35:36

we talked about it on the show before, you said you also like

35:38

convert stuff.

35:40

Oh, yeah, well, I would import

35:42

stuff because there's people in Australia who refuse

35:45

to buy from overseas because they don't trust it,

35:47

they'll get, you know, cond or something like

35:49

that. So I'd take

35:51

the risk to buy it in the US

35:53

or buy it in Europe or something, have it shipped over here

35:56

and then I'd clean it up, repair it, polish

35:58

it and make it look good and then...

35:59

I would resell it for two to three

36:02

times what I paid for it. Yeah. You

36:04

know? So, yeah.

36:05

Interesting. That was

36:07

fun. It was a fun hobby, yeah, I made some coin out of it, but

36:09

you know, it was more of a,

36:12

just a fun hobby thing, just buying and selling test

36:14

gear and stuff, so.

36:16

I'm selling some furniture right now on Facebook Marketplace,

36:19

and it is my least favorite

36:21

thing I've done in a long time. Really?

36:23

I think, why? Why? Because

36:26

you have to talk to people, and they're

36:29

terrible, and they're all, they all feel

36:31

like scammers to me. They're all like,

36:33

text me on this number, and I look up the number, and it's like,

36:35

this is an odd fake number. Really? Yeah,

36:37

I mean, and then it says like, they've all joined Facebook

36:40

in 2023. What kind of psycho joined

36:43

Facebook in 2023? Well, I actually

36:45

like Facebook Marketplace. It's

36:49

not bad as a solution. I'm

36:51

not talking about the, I'm not talking about the software, Dave.

36:53

I'm talking about the people behind the software, and

36:56

the susceptibility to scammers, yes. Wow,

36:58

okay.

36:59

Interesting. No,

37:01

I really haven't had an issue with

37:04

either Facebook Marketplace, or

37:07

eBay pickups, or

37:11

Comtree is the other one here.

37:13

I mean, it's

37:15

owned by eBay,

37:17

but it's like a secondhand thing, whereas eBay

37:19

is more of a new thing.

37:20

You buy and sell your new stuff on eBay.

37:23

And,

37:24

oh yeah, no, that was a push that they did. Oh,

37:27

it might have been eight years ago now. eBay actually

37:29

pushed, they tried to push secondhand

37:32

sellers out of eBay,

37:34

and it

37:35

kind of didn't work, but it- Like the billion

37:37

versus like an actual like- Yeah, yeah,

37:39

they made a huge change. They made

37:41

a whole lot of back end and front end changes

37:44

to eBay, so it was more

37:46

for buying and selling brand new stuff.

37:49

So all of your merchants just selling new

37:51

gear, and they transitioned away, especially

37:53

here in Australia. That's

37:55

why they bought, I think,

37:58

the company

37:59

Gumtree one, Gumtree started independently

38:02

as like an independent Craigslist kind

38:04

of thing. Yes, selling like local,

38:07

you know, and it was local. So, you know, so

38:09

it was, you know, so you put in your local area and what

38:12

stuff's available and you go pick it up. And

38:14

then eBay actually bought them and

38:16

eBay then tried to push a lot

38:18

of secondhand sellers over to Gumtree. It

38:21

was like a thing

38:22

here. It was like, yeah. Yeah,

38:24

you know, a lot of people, so like

38:26

my friend who built 3D printers, he set

38:28

up a store on eBay. I was really surprised by it. I was like,

38:31

I wouldn't have started like that, but I think it might've been around that

38:33

timeframe when they were pushing that sort of thing.

38:35

And. No, it's a big thing, but

38:37

they take just 13, 15%, something

38:40

like that. Sure, sure, yeah. Yeah, that's a

38:42

lot. I mean, like,

38:43

what's it called? Shopify takes not a small

38:45

amount either. Oh, no, I'm moving over

38:47

to Shopify now, my store over.

38:49

But they all take some percentage. It's

38:51

just, you know,

38:53

between what, it doesn't really matter. I'm

38:55

just surprised that some of them will buy. They've

38:57

just got so many freaking add-ons that

38:59

you're

39:00

gonna pay for. Yeah. Oh, you would like invoices,

39:02

would you? Oh, well, that's not built in. Hey, buy

39:04

this module to make invoices. Screw

39:06

you. Like, bloody Shopify. I

39:09

am surprised though that people, I know there's a lot of

39:11

Chinese electronics vendors that are on eBay

39:13

as well.

39:14

And I never got into that

39:17

mode though. Some people are like, yeah, I'll just go buy a module on

39:19

eBay. Oh, I, that's my

39:21

first, yeah, that's my first place. That's

39:23

my first go-to place. Yeah, I

39:25

know I'm being a hypocrite here because often I'll be like, oh, I'll

39:27

just go on Amazon and buy it. and

39:31

repackaging it in the US or something like that and just

39:33

putting it in storage. No, my

39:35

first port of call would be eBay.

39:38

Interesting.

39:40

Yeah, I'm sure it varies by country

39:42

and stuff, but no, there's still a ton

39:44

of stuff on eBay. Like

39:47

often, if I just want like

39:49

a convenient order process, I just go on

39:52

eBay. If I want the absolute lowest cost,

39:54

I'll go straight to AliExpress, you

39:57

know, for example. Some good AliExpress. express

40:00

stuff. I don't mind that.

40:02

Yeah, no, it works. It's fine. And

40:04

if I'm customizing to go to Alibaba, I mean like... Yeah,

40:07

yeah, of course. Various by country. But

40:09

no, eBay's still a thing, yeah. So the whole

40:11

push that they had to try and get secondhand merchants

40:13

off there, it didn't really work. So all of your test

40:15

keys is still on eBay. All your like

40:17

secondhand test keys, still there. So,

40:20

yeah.

40:21

Although in the US isn't Craig's

40:23

list

40:24

probably just as big for like secondhand

40:26

gear.

40:27

For secondhand, like broadly, yeah. I'd say like

40:29

Facebook's actually eaten some of that.

40:31

Yeah, I'd like to know how

40:33

much Facebook's eating from

40:35

Gumtree actually here in Australia. I

40:38

suspect it's a lot. So

40:40

yeah, I mean there is... I just have bad feels

40:42

about selling to people I think. Really?

40:44

I know, we. Yeah, the

40:46

worst thing is is giving something away for free.

40:49

Oh my god.

40:50

Hard path. I would rather throw it in the trash. Yeah,

40:52

no. There's a pro tip, put a

40:54

dollar

40:56

on it or put five bucks on it. Don't give something

40:59

away for free, put five bucks on it and then it stops

41:01

all of the tire kickers from

41:03

going, oh

41:04

yeah, I'm coming, you know, if it's free, oh hold

41:06

it for me, I'm coming from all the... oh come next

41:08

week, hold it for me. I think the other thing,

41:10

the only other way you can do that is saying I've

41:13

put the stuff by the street near this address.

41:15

Yeah, yeah. I've actually done that. And I will

41:17

take this thing down when it's gone. Yeah, I just... Yes,

41:20

yes. I've actually done that on Gumtree.

41:23

I went, it's sitting out the corner of this road and

41:25

this road. Yeah, I think that's... For large items,

41:27

it's like it's sitting out there just go and pick it

41:29

up. And sure enough, like an hour later it's gone. Oh

41:31

yeah, garbage ninjas, that's what we call them here. Garbage

41:34

ninjas? Garbage ninjas, no,

41:36

no, I haven't been, haven't,

41:38

no, I haven't heard that one.

41:40

Yeah, yeah, because like where

41:41

I grew up, I mean where I grew up it would be like

41:43

middle of the night, you know, under

41:46

the cover of darkness, like you put something up on the street and it's just

41:48

gone, you know. Yeah. Coming like ninjas.

41:50

No, I hate my council for changing

41:53

this. I'm sure we've talked about this before, right? The

41:55

Verge Collection, right? You know, you

41:58

would put like we used to have... our

42:00

council used to have right twice

42:02

a year or three times a year or something. I don't

42:04

know. Um, they used to have a, uh,

42:06

council cleanup as we called it here. So

42:08

everyone would put the stuff that they didn't want anymore.

42:11

You put it out the front of your house on your verge strip,

42:14

you know, and, and then the council comes

42:16

to what I call that, uh, outside,

42:18

outside your

42:19

I thought verge was the us word.

42:22

Cause that that's why I use verge. I thought that

42:24

was a Yankee thing. I have never heard that term. You

42:26

know, that's actually very regional regional

42:28

though as well. I, I, I should treat lawn from where I grew

42:30

up. Cause it was like, okay, treat like the

42:33

street and there's like a cement curb. And

42:36

then you have a grass strip in, in

42:38

front of that. Yeah. And then sidewalk and then more.

42:40

Yep. This is only for suburbia

42:42

for you. Suburbia for you

42:45

city, um, slickers. Yeah. Yeah.

42:47

No longer have cement everywhere. Oh,

42:50

right. Right. So many everywhere. Okay.

42:52

Anyway, so yeah, our council used to

42:54

have this where they would, you know, so

42:56

you knew which everyone knew

42:57

what, what day it was, everyone to put their

43:00

stuff out the front and it, you know, your streets

43:02

would look like just, you know, like

43:04

a war zone, right? Cause everything's dumped out the front, but

43:06

they come around and only lasted for a day

43:09

until they come around and picked everything up. But then

43:11

all the people who wanted the free stuff came around

43:13

and they'd bring their box trailer and they'd stand

43:15

and they'd rummage through all your stuff. And they'd half of

43:18

it was gone by the time you

43:19

buy it by the time the truck came around

43:21

to pick it up,

43:22

you know, it was great, but now, now, now

43:24

you have to book it, which is dumb because

43:26

now instead of one, one day

43:28

per year

43:28

or several days a year, now you just have

43:31

them randomly pulled out at different times.

43:33

And it's like, and then nobody knows,

43:35

you know, like no one's going to go

43:37

to the effort to actually drive around on that day

43:40

to see if anyone's throwing anything out. So it's

43:42

like, it's

43:42

just pot luck and it isn't as good

43:45

for recycling stuff, you know, people

43:47

who come around and reuse stuff. I agree. I

43:49

agree. Yeah. I mean, more of it. Yeah, I think you're right. I think more of it will

43:51

end up in landfill and, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

43:54

Yep.

43:54

Yep. And, and it actually, and

43:56

it doesn't, and it actually ends up better

43:59

for the now.

43:59

Worse for the neighborhood because you

44:02

know, you just have one or two people on the street There's

44:04

always stuff being thrown out. So it looks crappy,

44:06

you know, whereas before it was localized it like

44:09

yeah Yeah, yeah, just a single day and everyone says yeah,

44:11

and then it's done and then everything's really new for

44:13

what do you guys do? For recycling electronics in Australia

44:16

and not a lot. I don't think No,

44:19

we don't have well, we have the council

44:21

here do have like a waste recycle

44:23

days I think it's once or twice per year where

44:25

you can bring in not only a waste but you

44:28

can bring in batteries All

44:30

sorts of paints and chemicals and stuff like that

44:32

and they will actually separate them and you

44:34

know I don't know what happens to them after that. So,

44:37

you know, there's something we say it's all a con, you

44:39

know It's all a big

44:40

yeah Yeah,

44:43

I mean I always just wonder about that I mean like and

44:46

like how far is it going right? I mean like I forget

44:49

who was telling about if it was like they were burning circuit

44:51

boards to like get the Get

44:53

some of the rare minerals out of

44:55

them or something like that, you know, like right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Oh,

44:58

yeah, I know and

45:00

and the toxic fumes actually released

45:02

that that's a big thing

45:03

in India

45:06

some of the slums in India and stuff like that. They

45:08

they actually burn all these yeah Yeah,

45:10

they burn them all and then get all the precious

45:12

metals out of Yeah,

45:15

yeah, I don't know what to do about that.

45:17

There's an Aussie there's an Aussie YouTube

45:19

channel I forget the name who specializes in Actually

45:23

scrapping old boards and stuff like that.

45:25

Yeah, that's good. That has like the Jackhammer

45:28

that knocks the caps off. I think we've talked about yes. Yes.

45:30

Yes. Yes. That's right. He's got a jackhammer

45:33

Like he's really cool. She's all Jackhammer that

45:36

chisels all the chips often. Yeah, like

45:38

terrific. Oh my god. Yeah

45:42

Yep, like yeah,

45:44

you just can't bear to watch it, you know, it's like So

45:48

bad so back to the micro

45:50

supply you are you picking that thing back up what's the Not

45:54

really I did a video on that like

45:56

just showing like the where it actually got to and

45:59

it was actually

45:59

It finished, well,

46:02

finished in terms of it works, right?

46:05

Sure. It's an actual working thing,

46:07

but it never made it through the production.

46:10

Yes. Yeah. And it actually looks

46:12

like a final product. It looks and works like a

46:14

final product, but

46:15

it's not really manufacturable,

46:19

let's say. Well, it is, but not cheaply

46:21

at a price point that would. You don't want

46:23

to manufacture it. No, no, no. I

46:26

would make changes. You've gone over a bunch of the changes

46:28

you'd want to make too, but I thought that was interesting.

46:31

Yeah. Yeah.

46:32

I say, well, maybe not. There's other ways

46:34

to do it cheaper, but you know, and like

46:37

some of the parts are obsolete now, or I'd use

46:39

different, you know, I'd use totally different cheaper

46:41

parts, cheaper solutions, you know,

46:44

stuff like that. So yeah. Yeah.

46:47

Like there are people think, oh, just give it to

46:49

a contract manufacturer and they'll just make it for like,

46:52

it's no, it's not that easy. It's

46:54

not that,

46:56

clearly these people have never actually

46:58

made anything before.

47:01

Right. I'm actually, I'm, I've

47:03

got early prototype stuff going

47:05

in. I'm using the service

47:07

of our

47:08

former guests, Macrofab

47:10

going through that process currently. Yeah.

47:13

Reminding me just, I think last episode that

47:16

you and I recorded, I mentioned how rusty I

47:18

am and, you know, getting that first, that first

47:20

DFM report back. I'm like, oh wow, I'm really

47:22

rusty. Right. Like,

47:25

like parts that have 0805 in the name do not

47:27

fit. On

47:29

top of 0402 footprints. No,

47:32

generally not. No, unless you use

47:34

the really, really ultra, ultra wide 0402 footprint.

47:38

The ones that actually aren't 0402 footprints. Yeah. Yeah.

47:42

So that was,

47:42

that was a goof on my part. For those

47:45

who don't know, there are actually in

47:47

the standards, in the IPC standards,

47:49

there are actually three designated official

47:52

footprints for all these, you know, so you can

47:54

get like short, medium, wide, normal,

47:56

normal Y can't remember exactly what they're called, the

47:59

ones that are.

47:59

The shortest one is like really tight too. It's

48:02

really tight. And the other ones are designed

48:04

to know you can actually put test

48:06

points onto them. You know, like you can have probes come

48:08

down and probe them and stuff like that. There's

48:11

some parts that came through that I was a

48:13

little disappointed about. It

48:15

was just like a generic diode. But you know like the

48:17

older parts that are like generic part names?

48:21

Like this one was M-U-R-S 360.

48:24

It has like multiple

48:27

package sizes. So I got like a, that was one of the things that

48:29

popped up in the error report that was like, oh, you have

48:31

a SMC footprint here.

48:33

Other way around, it was like, you have an SMB

48:35

footprint,

48:36

but it was an SMC part.

48:39

And it's like, yeah, there actually are both

48:41

SMC and SMB

48:43

footprints that have that part name. It's just like,

48:45

how did this happen? I know how it happened. It's

48:49

such a messy thing when you're going

48:51

through, when your only real

48:54

index key is the manufacturer

48:57

part number and it's that generic, it really

48:59

can start. I mean, you basically have to give like a digi-key

49:01

part number at that point or something, some other identifier,

49:04

or you have to go to a more unique

49:07

part that has the same characteristics, which I don't

49:09

want to do because I want to have easily swapped and stuff

49:11

like that. So I don't know. It's just, it's a frustrating

49:14

part of stuff.

49:15

It isn't easy. Yeah, no, people like, you

49:17

can't just turn a key and make it happen, you know? Although

49:20

technically, like you can,

49:22

you can throw it to a manufacturer and go sort

49:24

this out and just make it for me. But

49:27

they'll charge you an absolute

49:28

mozza for it, right? Right, because if only

49:31

pain that they have to get to it. right,

49:33

that's the other thing is like you're going to be,

49:35

you know, dealing with the consequences of throwing

49:37

that over the wall and it's like, why is

49:39

this part changed? It's like, well, we couldn't source the other one,

49:41

so we made a decision, we tried to source this one. So it's like,

49:44

you know,

49:45

do you take the pain now or take the pain later, right?

49:47

Right. Oh,

49:51

boy. Yeah, manufacturing.

49:53

Yeah, no, it's not fun. But otherwise, you know, good

49:56

service. Yeah. Formally

49:59

mentioned in the show. So this was an interesting thing.

50:01

So speaking of CMs, so we've

50:04

talked about Temple Automation and they

50:06

got put in

50:08

through

50:10

a SPAC, like a special

50:13

purpose acquisition vehicle,

50:15

like the thing where people are going public without

50:17

actually going public. Without going public

50:19

because it's part of another already existing

50:22

public company somehow

50:23

or something, isn't it? Yeah, so basically it's

50:25

like people, sorry,

50:29

these companies, so like an investor

50:31

type person, right? So Dave Jones, the investor,

50:34

he says, I'm going to start a SPAC

50:37

and I'm going to go raise money from a bunch of schlubs

50:39

like me. And then Chris Gamble, the investor

50:41

says, oh, well, Dave's raising money and we're going

50:44

to try and buy a company once the

50:46

SPAC

50:47

company has enough dough in it, right? So basically you

50:49

go and like raise this money blind and you say, we're

50:51

going to go and find some profitable entity

50:53

to buy. And in this case,

50:56

Dave Jones, the initial investor decided

50:59

to go and buy Temple Automation. And that was what

51:01

we talked about in the show in the past where they said like, it's

51:03

this company that's worth like $900

51:05

million as a contract manufacturer.

51:08

And it's like, no, I'm sorry. There

51:12

are very few, there are some in the world that are $900

51:14

million, but they're not in

51:16

a single, a single building in San Francisco.

51:22

And SPACs are

51:24

like on the, on the way out there. They're, they're

51:26

not. Oh, really? I thought that the new hip

51:28

theme that all the kiddies were doing.

51:30

Yeah. So anyways, I got an email. This

51:32

was back at the beginning of the month, August 7th, uh,

51:36

important update. Temple Automation is holding tempo

51:38

announced on August 4th. It has established a manufacturing

51:40

outsourced agreement with network PCB, an excellent

51:43

manufacturing facility, strategically located

51:45

in San Jose, blah, blah, blah. I realize this is

51:47

an abrupt transition. It was necessitated

51:49

by unforeseen circumstances that were beyond

51:51

our control. I think they're shutting down. Um, basically

51:54

they said, uh, take your stuff over here.

51:57

Uh, we don't think we can, we can

51:59

do this.

51:59

All right, we regret this unforeseen

52:02

inconvenience and we appreciate this opportunity

52:04

to have served you I'm just on their email list I've never given

52:06

them a single design, right? Yeah,

52:09

it was basically like a sting. We're done

52:13

You know, I could be speaking on my butt here, but I'm

52:15

pretty sure they're dead

52:18

Yeah But

52:24

not not great whatever it is not

52:27

great They've

52:31

gone tits up

52:32

I don't know about tits up but

52:35

whatever this is Certainly

52:37

being handed their hat and did they would

52:39

this this was bad. Whatever this was it was bad

52:43

You don't send out that kind of email of like hey We're

52:45

your contract manufacturer and we'd like to introduce

52:47

you to this other contract manufacturer unless

52:50

they know you're going poorly Yeah,

52:52

exactly. It's like yep. Yeah.

52:55

Oh they do and Include at

52:57

the bottom customers with outstanding invoices from tempo

52:59

should continue to remit payment to tempo as usual.

53:02

Oh, thanks. Thanks Thanks. Yeah, so

53:04

keep on paying us, but

53:05

we're shutting down that yeah, I mean

53:07

I should just be clear I'm not sure they're shutting down but

53:11

Whatever this is. It's not great

53:18

Best of luck best

53:20

of luck All

53:23

right, yeah, did you know that you

53:25

can do a risk 5 core in a hundred lines

53:27

of code

53:29

What code I did not know that

53:32

Verilog Verilog

53:33

really is it calling a library that actually

53:36

contains the rest of the risk 5 core? I

53:40

thought the tweets been deleted night. Look I'll send you the

53:42

link right now. Here we go All

53:45

right,

53:46

so yes Bruno Levy on

53:48

the Twitter's Is done

53:51

he posted the complete Verilog

53:53

source code a very risk 5 core He says

53:55

it takes more less than a hundred lines or 200 lines

53:58

if you have reasonable formatting in common

53:59

just to be clear. And

54:02

he said, yeah, he showed a,

54:04

you know, a lead matrix, blinky

54:07

scrolling project

54:09

with, yeah, apparently you can do a hundred lines of Verilog

54:11

code. I'm sure there's like more behind

54:14

it. Like there's more libraries behind it, surely.

54:16

Like

54:17

it just doesn't seem feasible.

54:19

Like I'm staring at the code now and I like, I

54:22

don't know my Verilog. It's gotta be like a single, it's

54:24

like executing like a single,

54:27

I guess it does have a couple of things. Well, I don't know. It's got

54:30

wire is load, wire ALU

54:32

register is branch. Like,

54:34

so it's got, it seems to have the instructions

54:37

in there.

54:37

I don't know how many RISC-V instructions there

54:39

are. I've got no idea. I don't do RISC-V assembly,

54:41

but yeah, yeah. It's got load store,

54:44

which is about 12 lines. And then it's got

54:46

state machine, which is about 20 lines. Yeah,

54:49

yeah. It's got the ALU. It's got

54:51

the address generation. That's right back. And

54:53

apparently,

54:54

apparently it works. I guess when does it cross over? When

54:57

is a device finally

55:00

blessed as a, I mean, it has to be able to process what

55:02

a single set of instructions or?

55:05

I don't know. I've got no idea. Hang

55:08

on, I'm going to RISC-V,

55:11

which is actually RISC-V instruction

55:13

set. And chat

55:16

GPT. Ask

55:19

chat GPT. I don't have it. Yeah, you gotta log

55:21

into it and you know, it's like, yeah. While

55:25

you're doing that,

55:25

I was actually interested on archive.org.

55:28

They have old manuals.

55:29

And I was actually looking at the, the MOS

55:31

microcomputers programming manual

55:33

today. It was pretty great.

55:35

All right. The Slack

55:38

channels

55:38

I was on was showing some old manuals. And

55:40

yeah, so you can just go and look

55:42

at the old programming manual. And, you know, it's

55:44

actually like, they probably had like a pretty significant

55:46

documentation department. So it's like written

55:48

very like narratively. So

55:51

that's pretty cool too. That's pretty cool too. I

55:54

found the instruction list. It's not many. Okay.

55:56

I mean, there's a lot of special, you can make custom ones on top of it too.

55:59

So that's.

55:59

OK, right. Yeah, so this is minimum.

56:03

47, the RISC-V base

56:05

is small, contains just 47 instructions. That's

56:07

the first hit I got on Google.

56:09

So

56:10

yeah, 47 instructions seems, yeah, that's

56:13

multiple locations. But yeah, OK.

56:16

But jeez, like, yeah. But do you have to handle

56:18

all of them in order to? I don't,

56:20

yeah, that's the thing. I don't know whether or not this

56:22

handles everything. But

56:24

anyway, he's published a project. He's

56:26

published a source code. And I just thought that was really

56:28

groovy. I just had no idea. That's

56:31

just nuts. So he can put that

56:34

in 1,380 logic units. He

56:37

doesn't say using the tiny I-stick.

56:40

So I don't know what

56:41

actual device that is. I presume

56:44

it's a FPGA of some description. Yeah, it's an I-40. Yeah,

56:46

I suppose so. Yeah. And

56:49

he reckons he uses 1,380 logic units. I

56:52

don't know how big a logic unit is

56:54

on the I-stick, whether it's a flip-flop

56:56

or it's a flip-flop with a

56:58

bunch of it. It's usually

57:01

a LUT with a flip-flop

57:04

and

57:04

some sort of register. Yeah. Yeah.

57:06

Or some sort of multiple registers. But

57:09

yeah, that's amazing. Well done. I

57:11

mean, that's just fantastic.

57:14

That's like a great intro. That

57:17

alone is like a great headline to be

57:19

like, oh, I could try this. Yeah,

57:21

exactly. All you've got to do is cut and paste 100

57:23

lines of code. And bingo,

57:25

you've got your RISC-V soft core.

57:28

Like, what? I might go

57:30

and make a RISC-V processor. What do you think, Dave? I might go make

57:32

a RISC-V processor soft core on an FPGA. This would

57:34

be a great video. It'd be a great video, yeah.

57:37

Yeah. Yeah, it'd be a great video. But I've never

57:39

done Verilog. I've done some VHDL back

57:41

in the day. But I've never actually done

57:43

Verilog. So I don't know.

57:45

The last time I did

57:47

some I-40 stuff

57:50

with the open tool

57:52

chain,

57:53

that was at teardown 2019, 2018. I

57:56

don't know. It's been a while for that. It was really

57:59

easy.

57:59

actually like the right in terms of the like

58:02

what you need you know like compared to

58:04

the the xilinx of the

58:07

Now intel formerly all terra Tool

58:09

chains that you know that are like 60 gigs. Uh,

58:12

it was like, you know,

58:13

very reasonable installs and

58:15

um,

58:16

Very command liney. So I like that Yeah,

58:20

but it's like on but on top of that like how

58:22

do you compile the code? How do you download

58:24

it to the soft core? How do you attach

58:26

the memory like I did that's like i've

58:28

got no i've got no clue

58:30

I've got no clue. That's why you just interview someone like

58:32

bruno. Right? Okay. I'm gonna show

58:34

you Yeah

58:38

Anyway, I I just think that's great hats off

58:40

Yeah, very nice to show you how simple

58:42

it could be

58:43

just to put a soft core. I mean in you know

58:45

a bunch of yeah Yeah

58:48

to a tiny fpga beautiful

58:50

But then again, like you're better off like you're

58:53

probably better off just buying rather

58:55

than mucking around with that You're probably just better off buying

58:57

a risk five chip and you

59:00

know,

59:00

oh 100. Yeah. I mean if you

59:02

want to get yourself a

59:04

ch32 v003 Exactly

59:07

like their chief. Actually, I I was thinking

59:09

uh, someone pointed out to me that I I still owe

59:12

you about a thousand chips Yes. Yes, you

59:14

owe me a hundred bucks worth of chips. Yep, a hundred

59:16

bucks worth of chips So I have to just decide

59:18

what project i'm going to use them on and then yeah Because

59:21

there was no end date. I think you just have to choose

59:24

a package size really. I mean I can just Because

59:26

you're completely wrong, but you're gonna pay for are you

59:28

gonna pay for um shipping or no That's

59:32

included. No, I mean you're still gonna get a lot of

59:34

A lot of chips out of there. So right

59:38

So so do you want to admit I was right

59:40

about twitter or x no,

59:42

I do not want to admit you're right about twitter

59:45

I'm actually getting paid in the post now and

59:48

I don't like it and um,

59:50

I think it's It's

59:52

not long for this world, but it's uh,

59:54

you know, enjoy it while it lasts. I miss all the

59:56

people there I do. I will say that. Um, well,

59:58

I thought you moved to mastodon

59:59

I did. Are you still using Mastodon?

1:00:02

I did use Mastodon. Yeah, I still use it. Yeah,

1:00:04

right. It's still a thing, is it? Still

1:00:06

a thing. Like I said, I wish everyone would have moved it

1:00:08

once. If everyone would have moved it somewhere

1:00:11

else at once, I would go there. But in absence of that, I will be where I'm at. I've

1:00:15

heard it's not going that well over at Mastodon.

1:00:18

Well, yeah, that's fine. It's

1:00:20

not a big deal. Well, they certainly didn't move

1:00:22

to threads. They did not move to threads, yes.

1:00:25

I was hopeful. I think the thing is,

1:00:27

I think the thing is, I think the thing is, I think the thing is, Dave,

1:00:30

much like we started the show, I am

1:00:32

not a bleeding edge kind of person. So

1:00:35

wherever people move, just send me a note, send

1:00:37

me a carrier pigeon or a registered

1:00:39

mail, and I will pop over there and wait a couple years.

1:00:43

Dude, they're still on Twitter. Just

1:00:45

follow the people you want to follow. I'm

1:00:47

not going back to Twitter.

1:00:47

Just follow the people you want to, why? Just follow the people you want to follow.

1:00:50

Not for me. Why? Why?

1:00:53

Sounds

1:00:53

like an ideological thing. It

1:00:56

is entirely an ideological thing,

1:00:58

and I don't want to be there. But

1:01:03

if they go somewhere else, shoot me a

1:01:07

note through one of those pneumatic

1:01:09

tubes, like they have at the List office, and

1:01:11

I will pop on down a few

1:01:14

years later and happily join the crowd. Right.

1:01:18

Fine.

1:01:19

Not Twitter. All right. You can

1:01:21

find me on Twitter. I'm there tweeting every day. All right. I'm

1:01:25

getting paid to post now.

1:01:26

Yes. They actually sent me a check. Well, you know,

1:01:29

money. I'm

1:01:32

not getting much, but you know, after 13 years,

1:01:35

you know, it's a nice, nice thing to actually

1:01:37

be. You're an influencer now, dude. I'm going to

1:01:40

go and find an endorsement from

1:01:42

all the fitness people that need an

1:01:45

electronics person to talk about, yeah, quantified

1:01:47

health. Right. Then we

1:01:49

can hire a marching band and a bunch

1:01:52

of breakdancers. Yeah. Yeah.

1:01:55

Oh, God. All right. Yeah. I

1:01:58

think this has gone fairly off the rails.

1:01:59

Yeah, no, I wait on unless it's

1:02:02

in last minute things. No, I get

1:02:04

stupid a thousand hopefully of a

1:02:06

board to talk about soon

1:02:08

Oh, excellent. No, I see how it goes.

1:02:10

Sounds good. All right, man. Have a week. Catch you next time

1:02:30

You