MacroRoundup for Week 14 of 2018

Interesting Links and Articles

Stealing Credit Cards from FUZE via Bluetooth

• FUZE is “all in one” smart credit card
• ICE9 reverse engineered the Bluetooth protocol to have the FUZE device spit out the stored credit card numbers
• The hardware engineering behind the FUZE credit card is impressive

Kapton: Miracle Material with a Tragic History

• The rise and fall of kapton as a wire insulation

A Concise Guide to Ceramic Capacitor Types

• Covers the different classes of capacitors
• Explains the 3 character dielectric code

Choosing and Using Bypass Capacitors

• Tons of detail presented in a way that takes away a lot of the mystery behind bypass cap choices
• The intersil document on bypass caps is fascinating – “Mike Williams”

Apple Plans to use its own chips in Macs

• Moving from Intel to an in house design
• ARM perhaps?

Low Inductance Ceramic Capacitors

• Changing from 0603 to 0306 style chip parts
• For reducing the size of current loops which lowers the parasitic inductance

Using USB Type-C on hobbyist projects

• Updating the USB micro connector to the new Type-C for USB 2.0 projects

MacroFab Engineering Podcast

This week on the MEP EP #114: Chasing Oscillations, Stephen and Parker discuss dramatic op amps, the Magic DAC, and hunting oscillations in the Serengeti. Listen here.

MacroFab Platform Updates

Continuing work on updating the look an feel of the MacroFab Platform to more closely align to the new PCB interface
Improved performance on the parts placement screen
Knowledge Base rework in progress

MacroFab IRL Events

Twitter Chat Info

• Join Parker on twitter to talk about PCB design, assembly, and the latest hashtags
• April 6th Friday at 1PM CST

Hardware & Electronics Engineering Meetup by MacroFab & Mouser Electronics

• Parker will discuss Key Parts of an Arduino
• Trey German will talk about taking off-shelf enclosures and customizing them
  • Trey was on the podcast MEP EP #10 and MEP EP #38
• Date moving to April 18, 2018

Houston Hardware Happy Hour

• First Thursday of each month
• Bring hacks and hang out
• 6PM CST on May 3rd at Slowpokes