MEP EP#183: Feel the Hum

Podcast Transcript

Host 2     00:00

The mag fed engineering podcast design contest sponsored by Mouser. Electronics is currently going on. The topic is useless machines. We have cash prizes up to $1,000 for winners. The deadline is August 10. And is closing fast More information can be found at Mack feb.com/blog.

Host 1     00:30

Welcome to the macro fendering podcast. I'm your guest Zapp Brannigan.

Host 2     00:34

And we're your hosts crab foam and Blitz. This is episode 183. So zap was on previous episodes, incognito mode, which was episode number 69. And Arduino the gateway drug to hashtag bad life, which was episode number 109. Go back and listen to those of you want to know more about the background of zap. Zap. Why are you here on our practice? Oh, and actually thank you for coming on to our podcast.

Host 1     01:02

Yeah, sure. No problem. I enjoy it a lot.

Host 2     01:05

I know you're like a hotel room right now. Yeah, I

Host 1     01:07

Just landed in a undisclosed location.

Host 2     01:10

Area 51.

Host 1     01:12

Your store minute. We're looking for aliens. Yeah, so I want we just announced our badge design for DEF CON 27. Just yesterday, we dropped our teaser video, and proceeded to kill my phone with notifications. So that was kind of fun.

Host 2     01:30

So what badge is it?

Host 1     01:31

So this is the analytics or badge? Previously, it was known as the vendor badge. We had a Futurama theme, and basically killed off the trilogy this year. And we're doing a character in a gas mask with a hoodie. So basically a hacker with light up eyes and gas mask. postapocalyptic I guess this the hacker hoodie character have a name? We don't have a name for him actually.

Host 2     01:58

All that can be a contest we have

Host 1     02:01

This thing gets a badge. Yeah,

Host 2     02:03

Best thing gets a badge.

Host 1     02:04

Yeah. It kinda kind of reminds you of like, like somewhat of a fallout kind of thing going on?

Host 1     02:09

Yeah, it does. One of the things that Hackaday wrote about last year was they did a cycle analysis and he said, hey, they just keep getting darker and darker and darker. And so last year was this Westworld theme and benders face of being ripped off. And this year is a it's post apocalyptic the whole world's gone like, yeah, there you go. Yeah, so that's this, that's this years. One of the main things we tried to do this year is to make it as cheap or free as possible. We mostly succeeded, we only had to sell about 25% to make things happen. So we're gonna be giving out 75% of our badges at DEF CON. That's gonna be exciting.

Host 1     02:47

And that was part of the crowdfunding campaign, right? Was that, like, the people who purchase are, in a way funding? The other ones? Right?

Host 1     02:56

Yeah. So the way we did that was you were actually buying one badge. And then somebody else got a badge as part of that. So it's pretty expensive to get in, but at least you reserved it. And our theme this year is, you know, how much can you do? So we want to find people that are hacking on things who are doing cool projects, or learning to solder winning contests. And in some cases, if you have the resources buying badger somebody else, and that's what the crowdfunding was.

Host 1     03:24

How's the response been so far?

Host 1     03:27

Well, considering my phone, battery died so quickly. Yesterday, it's been off the charts. We kept the design complete secret until yesterday morning. It was really hard. Yeah, we did some things in Parker families for us. But the we added some three dimensional elements to it some light pipes, that light up in a glow, that was really neat effect. And we're able to control that, of course, with the LEDs. And then there's some glow in the dark on the front covers of capacitive touch wheels.

Host 1     03:57

And it has like an LED matrix on the front too. Right? Yeah, 101

Host 1     04:00

LEDs, matrix and then plus for more for the light bikes. Okay, but 80,000 LEDs is here.

Host 1     04:10

Nice. What are some of the other design elements behind this badge?

Host 1     04:14

So one thing we did was we did change up our technique for actually generating the silkscreen that cover. On the final run. I did all of that in Inkscape, and then used a tool called SVG to shinjin.

Host 1     04:31

That sounds legit.

Host 1     04:35

Actually, a lot of the add on makers and other batch folks use it now. It's pretty nice because you can go in and create each copper layer and silkscreen layer cutouts, and it'll just spit out a chi CAD module or footprint for it. And you just drop that in it works. Problem. If you do copper layers, they'll kind of mess up things from a DRC perspective, but as far as controlling solder mask and sill So like one of things you'll notice on the badges hoodie, is there's this dither pattern. And that kind of gives it this somewhat sort of gray, not quite white look to it. So it sets it apart for the rest of his face.

Host 2     05:11

Kind of like a comic book shading effect. Old Style.

Host 1     05:15

Yeah. Yeah. Or newspapers.

Host 1     05:19

The board house must absolutely love you

Host 2     05:24

Didn't complain? Really? Oh, that's great.

Host 1     05:28

Here do 600 Of these, and you're going to do it on your whatever your inkjet or whatever process they use, FYI. Yeah.

Host 1     05:35

You know, it's funny, I sent a board over to a board house just the other day that it had some unusual aspects to it, because it didn't have a

Host 3     05:46

Drill file. But it does have holes in it. And the reason why I didn't have a drill file is because I actually just needed a front panel for something. And I had a DX F of everything. So I just brought the DX F over into the board, outline file, and just ship that over. And it's like, you're gonna see and see this anyway, from this file, that should work. And there was a lot of complaining, I mean, they're gonna do it. But it's also like,

Host 2     06:10

If this breaks our process, don't need this.

Host 1     06:14

But it but it but at the same time, he sort of doesn't. They just didn't, they didn't like the fact that a circle wasn't on a drill file, it was in a board outline file, which is still effectively just a C and C file.

Host 2     06:27

Well, in Eagle, an eagle, it will automatically put a drill files over our drill hit is over a certain size, it doesn't actually put a drill hit there in the drill file it it routes it into the board outline automatically. I don't know what the cutoff is. But so it's like that is a normal thing.

Host 3     06:45

Yeah, it is a normal thing. Also, the holes that were in this board, the majority of them were really big. I mean, as in like bigger than a quarter of an inch. So so like they're gonna see and see that anyway. Like, I just think, yeah, I think it's exactly what you're saying. Like, this does not conform to all the standards, things. Just calm down. It'll be fine. That's, that's why I was Gary's wide like, intense silkscreen, and things require extra attention to detail when they're aligning

Host 1     07:16

The masks and things like that. So I was just curious why they would have thought they would have complained about that. You

Host 1     07:22

Probably had the drill guy work on board outlines, which he's not used to. Oh, there

Host 1     07:26

We go. Yeah. Cool. So what else is new with the with the badge? Different with this

Host 1     07:34

One? Different? So for us, it's always say, what can we do? It's new, we added capacitive touch. And there's two wheels on each of the gas mask cans. And then there's another button hidden in plain sight. And we used an IQ s 333 from this company called Aza tech. And it does all the noise rejection. And you just basically just clear it over I squared C and say, Hey, what's the state of this channel or these channels, and it'll tell you the position on a wheel or if a button is being pressed or whatnot, it's pretty neat.

Host 2     08:05

That when we started using it, I actually bought the development boards for it and started playing around. It's super, it's like, if you're doing capacitive touch, like, just use that chip. It just works. It's amazing. Like it like self calibrates and all this stuff, so like, shapes and patterns, and like it just works.

Host 1     08:26

You know, the the wheels are actually they're not perfect circles are kind of ovals, and they're tilted up to the side. And it still works. So it knows exactly where your finger is. It's awesome.

Host 1     08:37

Is it using like a like a high frequency oscillator technology kind of thing behind it?

Host 1     08:43

I'm a software guy, I don't know, you got

Host 2     08:45

Me. I never. I didn't look any farther than like, I actually got the dev board in for it. And I just went right into like, what registers are at the hit and I square C just to actually talk to this thing. I didn't even look at like the technology stuff, because I wasn't actually making a board with it.

Host 1     08:59

Input cover pad export digital data, right? Yes,

Host 2     09:03

That's pretty much what I did. I want to use it for another project. But you know, then I'll have to get further into like, properly routing it and stuff. But that's cool. Sounds like it's not too hard.

Host 1     09:15

Yeah, it's not all janky like some of the analog read stuff that I've tried before. Mirror calibrating. And every board is slightly different than each other. So that's nice. So the other big thing I do want to talk about is the ft 2232. That's ft it's a dual FTDI chip serial UART. But that's I mean that's just the surface of what it can do. So we route our you are to that to channel B, but then on Channel A, you can use the MP SS e interface to the chip and basically bit bang IO you can read in all sorts of data. People have turned it into a JTAG debugger they turn it into an STD UDF programmers slash debugger they've used it to, to basically pull, pull data off of a flash chip, you can turn it into a logic analyzer. So it's just this amazing Swiss Army knife of a tool. And you can buy these on eBay for like, seven bucks. You have to know how to use it and get your, get your hands a little bit dirty in some of the code. But it's amazing. All the stuff you do with one little device. So that's on the board, everything's broken out. And we've got some, some instructions coming to help people hack other badges with our badge.

Host 1     10:34

Oh, my gosh, I'm looking at their datasheet in a typical application section is like half a page of things that it can do.

Host 1     10:41

It's ridiculous. I've been working on trying to get it to work with open OCD as an SWD. Because I want to dump some other badges and go play mess with their stuffs.

Host 2     10:53

Yeah, I think one of the big elements from this year was basically making our badges and and add ons and stuff like useful and tools.

Host 1     11:06

Yep. Yeah. Cuz our mantra and I think it speaks in the way we're, we're selling these or raising the money was, we want to teach you something. And so hardware hacking or just entry level hardware stuff. The the FTDI chip is part of that. The Doom SEO being I squared C debugger as part of that. So So not just things that flash and light up. But can you learn something that can be a useful tool

Host 1     11:32

As it being a useful tool? Is that sort of like a wink? Wink, nod nod kind of thing? Maybe, oh, no comment. Yeah, we

Host 1     11:45

Hire and was actually working, because he did a lot of work on the FTDI. So he was actually using it to hack in SEO, those plugged into the badge. So he's using the badge to hack an SEO plugin. And the badge was like this weird Inception thing. So there's, there's a lot of fun you can have and

Host 2     12:00

Yeah, I think we actually have it set up where like the XR badge can hack the Doom SEO badge to that there's not much there. You can do but yeah, dump other images onto it? Um, no, but you can like write to the EEPROM. and stuff. It's pretty interesting stuff you can do?

Host 1     12:17

Well, and writing to the EEPROM allows you to change which image or which animation to jumps to, right. Correct.

Host 1     12:24

Make them really buddy make him look left, make him look right. Angry.

Host 1     12:30

Can you control that through the capacitive touch wheels? Can you like scroll through his facial expressions?

Host 1     12:35

You have to do it through our shell. Okay, and so if you remember last year, we did a thing called El or we call it moles code. I remember. Yeah, writing things like I mean, your variable up in your eye till both same one and 100. Right. So that was a full scripting language that ran last year's badge. So our shell is actually based off of that we call it lol shell. So you get to figure out these lols commands to change the Doom SEO or, or do something to one of the other SEOs that we have? Or hack another badge.

Host 1     13:07

So we've already kind of been jumping into the Doom SEO thing. Parker, you want to start talking about that? A little bit? Yeah. So

Host 2     13:16

It's also out in the wild? And actually, we we shipped it out like a week before the regular badges. And so far, it's been pretty good. I think we've only have like one actual hardware issue that like, just didn't get tested for. But like the, so that's 199 of them are good.

Host 1     13:42

190 1999

Host 2     13:44

Exactly. Yeah.

Host 1     13:45

What was the issue?

Host 2     13:47

It just like one of the GPIO pins is held high for some reason. And I actually look like there's no 3.3 volts anywhere around that pin. So something internally got messed up on that chip is one guessing. I'll get it at DEF CON. And I'm going to exchange it for you know, I'll give them the working one. But yeah, it's just it was a weird issue. We've had a couple of screen failures. But those were shipping issues, because it's a glass screen. And it goes through like a bubble mailer.

Host 1     14:20

So only one of those was an actual screen issue. Oh, yeah. That's true. Was a bricked in air quotes bad, right.

Host 2     14:27

Yeah. So. So yeah, the we're running into an issue where, because the code on doom for the EEPROM only supports single reads and writes. It doesn't support continuous streams of data. It talks to address 50 And which is the normal e prom address, right? Well, there was this one badge where they put their LED controller On the same I squared C bus. And it's also address 50. And it just blasts data at 50. And so what, I haven't been able to test this yet, but I'm thinking what is happening is, when my part of the code on the EEPROM code goes to that multiple bytes state, basically, I just have it just go up, forget about it, don't do anything. I need to flush that data out. And so that buffers just getting filled up. And I'm going to bet you, the wire Arduino wire library will just keep on like filling up that buffer and the buffer just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, bigger, bigger until it blows up. And it just crashes to the human add on.

Host 1     15:41

You don't think they had protections for for overfill?

Host 2     15:45

I don't think so because I've looked in that code. And I there's nothing really in there that sets buffer sizes or anything. So it's got to be just fills up and runs over the RAM space. So refer to Episode

Host 1     15:59

69, where he talked about my thoughts on Arduino. And then once I like it

Host 1     16:05

I think you also spoke about the ESP in Episode 109. And how much you love that also. Yes, almost as much as SD cards. So, so we there's already been some people who've hacked into the Doom SEO and loaded other things, right?

Host 2     16:25

Yeah, it's all the easter eggs that we implemented have been found. There wasn't that many. And since the source code, it's all open source. So you can go to GitHub and you can download everything you can build one if you want to. It's pretty easy to find the Easter eggs. I did try to hide some of the variable names and like other sections of the code. Like I think one of them is called inconspicuous variable one

Host 1     16:53

Will hidden.

Host 2     16:56

When you scroll through it, it's in the section where there's a lot of long variable names. And you just if you're not looking for something, you might miss it.

Host 1     17:04

Totally not an unlock int. Yeah, exactly.

Host 2     17:09

We actually had someone put in pull requests to fix bugs. already, it's already fixed bugs for me. I've actually got to suck those into the repo. Probably tomorrow or tonight. I got your saying that.

Host 1     17:26

They're trying to remove features from your

Host 2     17:28

SEO the adding features. Okay. Yeah. Okay, good.

Host 1     17:33

So I saw Duke Nukem on a Twitter post. Was that? Was that an Easter egg? Or was that someone else added that?

Host 2     17:38

That's an Easter egg. And that's if you set the health to 3d.

Host 1     17:44

That's great. Fantastic. Space. Yeah. Yeah. For 3d realms.

Host 2     17:49

Yes. Nice. Because I was like, the only because we only have like, you know, two hex characters to work with, with what you can write to things. So I was trying to figure out some interesting, you know, I want to do to be in there. So, Bender is also in there. And it's, oh, I won't tell what you can look at the source code to figure that one out.

Host 1     18:09

I think I could probably guess what number Ben? Is. What number 69 Right.

Host 2     18:15

No,

Host 1     18:16

You didn't put vendor at 69? Nope. Okay. No.

Host 1     18:22

Don't you ever do messy Oh to play with? He doesn't have one.

Host 1     18:25

Not yet. I will have one soon. You're gonna get one when he comes DEFCON. Yeah, hint hint. Cool. So what else is uh, I guess it's not Parker? It's crab foam.

Host 2     18:41

Yeah, it's crap from today. The pentateuch or the Minotaur is flipping pinball machines now. Hey, congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, we've only found one hardware bug. And I wired the relay up wrong. Oh, that powers the 50 volts on and off. It's like the safety relay enable. Basically, it allows all the power to go to the solenoids.

Host 1     19:06

That's a good thing to not wire correctly.

Host 2     19:10

I wired it up. Normally. I wire it up the relay to be normally closed. And so when you activate the relay it goes normally it goes open and disconnects the exact opposite of what we wanted to do.

Host 1     19:28

Did you just do like a PCB bodge to fix it?

Host 2     19:31

Yeah, we just wired up. You know, looking in 14 gauge wire across the terminals. Oh, okay. Back out of budge. Yeah. That's crazy. You're

Host 1     19:43

Home depot soldering iron.

Host 1     19:45

Exactly. Yeah, the big wedge.

Host 2     19:48

Well, I mean, you got like, you got like 300 mil wide traces on both sides of the board to carry that current. So you kind of need a big wire to bridge that relay.

Host 3     20:01

So we talked a bunch about the various ground pads and things like that on grounding schemes that you did. Have you had a chance to look into that and see the impact? I mean, it's working, right?

Host 2     20:13

It's working. All I know is it's working at some, you know, deep remote location in, in Wisconsin, that's all I know. I'm actually going to get a couple boards, blank boards, I'm going to assemble them here to do some more like power testing, because the main one I want to test is like, if you turn on five amps of lights, and cycle at all, not really fast, does it? Does my grounding scheme actually hold up? Does the processor reset? Yeah, does the processor reset? I'm hoping since I basically routed those all on their own thing that it works. It should. Yeah, you would hope you would hope. Because on pin hack, we did it even less. Like we didn't like think about that kind of issue. It never had a problem. So you know. And then we started implementing on the software side, like NPF mission pinball framework. That works. Mostly so far. I think there's a couple more bugs to work out with the USB buffer, but it seems to be working fine. So that's kind of exciting. It's all kind of coming together in the last, you know, two months.

Host 1     21:27

Yeah. When you were up here in Denver, you what you were here for like 10 days, I drank a beer and did that board for like seven of those 10 days, like seven did like eight hours a day on just that boy.

Host 1     21:40

Then we brought him out to California and he all he did was work for us for three days. Yeah, he's got a bit busy. Drink beer. Work comes out. Yeah, pretty

Host 1     21:49

Much. It seems to work with crabs. Macro fab needs to have a little fridge, Nick. Well, Mack, Feb. I do have the fridge still there. My little fridge is still there. Yeah, the engineering department for the longest time had a little mini fridge that was underneath a pinball machine that had beer in it. Yeah,

Host 2     22:07

So that mini fridge is under my desk now. It's even closer now. Yeah, it's closer to me.

Host 1     22:13

Excuse me, everyone. I've got to go work crack.

Host 2     22:20

So yeah, I gotta I gotta do some testing on doom. Should he add on doing more? I got pulling those those software requests and test those out. They should work. Because they've been tested already in the field. But I want to make sure on my end, and yeah, hopefully, there's gonna be a read to Penetang probably next month or two, plus some support. Like we got to do like the LED boards next. Already got a preliminary design for that done. But yeah, it's going pretty good. Nice, because

Host 1     22:52

I know you were kind of scrambling last minute to kind of get that going.

Host 2     22:57

Yeah, we managed to avoid disaster with that.

Host 1     23:05

Okay, did you did you hit the target? We hit the target. So nice. Congratulations.

Host 2     23:13

So Steven, what do you been up to?

Host 3     23:16

Well, I guess it's my turn. Yeah. So I, you know, hopefully this is somewhat momentous. But we finished another podcast project. And I'm going to put finishing quotes just, you know, a little bit of asterisk and stuff just because there's an article that needs to be written about the design and construction and implementation. But the macro ramp is fully built, it is fully functional. And it is, like done, which that was like project two to macro fab. So Whoo, we're finally chipping away at the block. So yeah, I'm not gonna spend too much time on it. But effectively, like I got the board's in. And it went together really, really easily and functioned up on first startup. In fact, there really wasn't even much to do, I basically just turned it on and just started, you know, spinning vinyl on it, which was pretty awesome. The one thing that sucks and we talked about this a bit in our Slack channel. And, well, we've talked about this a bunch of times in our Slack channel and on the podcast, but I kind of got bitten the asked by some bad data sheets, and it's my fault, but also kind of like why does this even exist, but the three rotary switches so let me back up a second, I implemented a kind of a goofy volume control scheme on the front of this amp, where it has one master control volume, that's a chorus control, and then each stereo channel has its own like fine tune control. So you can like fine tune each side of the channel and then have a chorus control that controls both of them. And I did six position two pole rotary switches for each channel. And and for the volume And I picked some rotary switches that I've used in the past. And I liked them because I liked the feel of them. They're robust, they're inexpensive, and they're readily available on Mauser, which I kind of wanted everything to be easily available from Mauser. I've only ever used the solder lug versions of these switches. This time, I wanted to make everything PCB mount and they were the right height, such that they stood the board right off of the front panel of the macro amp, so everything was nice about them. However, if you go download the datasheet for it, there's not enough information to actually build a footprint for this part. Like, it doesn't tell you what pins are, what it doesn't tell you where the pins are. And it doesn't tell you what pins connect to what it but it has a mechanical drawing. And it's kind of goofy, but like, the thing about it is this, which I don't know, they're in the couple dollar range each.

Host 1     25:57

The next level of switch that was six position and two pole is like $35. So there's like this huge gap in between, like, it's not like I could just go pick another one. And like I said, I've used these before. So I took a chance. And I did actually a good bit of research on it. I scoured Google for images of like the bottom side of these, this switch, so I could kind of guesstimate on things. And I was going across like users who were selling singles of these on Amazon and eBay and crap. And there's like old data sheets for this that have like suggested footprints and things, but they sort of none of the none of the data sheets agreed with each other. And in reality, if I really wanted to do this, right, I should have just purchased one, had it shipped to my house and then built a footprint off the real thing. But in I wanted to get things on order. And of course I got it wrong. The good thing is I got the like all the sizes of the holes, and the radiuses of where all the pins go, like I got everything correct, it's just the rotary switch is one position off, I had to like rotate it by 15 degrees or something like that. So the pins all fit in the holes, I just had to re maneuver one of them to fit in the correct hole. The thing that sucks about it is just that that one click or that 115 degree turn, flips both of the channels on my stereo. So like right is left and left is right now, the way I'm gonna fix is I'm just going to reroute the cables on the inside such that right goes to left and left goes the right and not tell anyone.

Host 1     27:40

So please production, right?

Host 1     27:42

Just Oh God, this, this thing would be awful for production, I would never wish this for production on anyone. And also like the Okay, so the original intent of this was to test out the Korg new tube, which, at the time I originally designed it, it was brand brand new. In fact, we got engineering samples from Japan of these things. And the whole point was to just like make an app that uses this new new slash old technology. And the thing about it is now that I've done it, it's kind of crappy. It's like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to use this thing in anything else. And we've discussed it before that it's pretty microphonic. And it rings like a madman if you tap the app, it just has this really high frequency like 6k ringing that lasts for a long time. Like it's like, you can measure the time of the ringing in seconds. And the worst part about it is I have rigidly connected rotary switches that go could chunk when you turn them right next to this thing that is incredibly microphonic. So if you can change the volume, it just ping and it just hangs on for. So you have to be very, very ginger about turning the volume knob, which I mean it let's be honest, you're going to turn the volume knob and set it but it's also super annoying. So it's one of those things where I will post the design files for it. But it's like, everything's functional. If you built one it works. It sounds great. But don't build one because it's not like it's just inherently flawed. Due to the parts. Yeah, the

Host 2     29:13

We had an idea. I don't think we've ever actually said this idea on the podcast, but because we were basically waiting for the macro amp to be done. We want to take that idea and make like a cell phone carrier case that had a tube in it and was an a headphone preamp.

Host 1     29:32

Right and the audio file OtterBox.

Host 1     29:35

Yeah, basically the mic the micro amp. Yeah.

Host 2     29:39

And, and basically once we realize that how microphonic these things were, it's like it would never work, because you'd put it in your pocket and whenever you move to LA, it would just go crazy. If you

Host 1     29:51

Were jogging, you would go you would go criminally insane in minutes.

Host 1     29:58

It's fine because everything is us. We see no anyways, why do you?

Host 1     30:03

Well, if you got a cork new tube, that's a little tough. Yeah, well, okay, so resurrect the the box in the box and get that back up and go. I mean, we effectively finished that one too. But, but that's a way better, like, Okay, you got you got two more two modern audio solutions there you got a Korg new tube that's trying to be like magical. And then you have this like, really well integrated Texas Instruments, Class D amplifier, and frankly, I'll pick the Texas Instruments. And the funny thing is, these new tubes are like 40 bucks apiece, for for something that is like, at best, I mean, I had to do some some fancy impedance control, I got 12 times gain out of this thing, and that's the best it can do. And so it's just, I don't know, like, if this was an exercise in like finagling, the best you can do with the worst, you got kind of thing. And then that cramp totally works. I mean, I was able to push 15 watts each channel with a function generator with, with just regular audio, I'm getting about 10 Watts, which is what the output transformer in the tube, they're basically rated for anyway. So I'll call it a success, but at the same time, it's just like, we'll use it as a learning experience.

Host 2     31:29

I would say, probably the worst case scenario that could have happened is like, if your enclosure resonated at like that seven kilohertz? Oh,

Host 1     31:39

Well, no, no, no, you then just use it as a really nice sine wave standard. Yeah. There we go.

Host 2     31:48

That's a feature feature. Yeah, it's a feature.

Host 1     31:53

Don't you like throw pillows and blankets into these things, and they start resonating. I feel like I always saw the old amplifiers or people are doing that.

Host 1     32:01

You know, one thing I haven't done yet, the case I bought comes with rubber feet, maybe I need to screw in the rubber feet. So it just has just the right amount of dampening for 6k. Well, the other thing is, I haven't done it yet. I don't even know if I'm going to but I put holes in the board around the actual new tube element, such that we could 3d print, like a little clip that helps support it into the board. Because right now it's just it's held by its pins, which all the pins of this thing exit on one side of the device. So it's kind of held in in a dive board fashion. So in other words, it's it's, it's the worst possible configuration for it to not vibrate.

Host 3     32:46

So I don't know, maybe one day we'll do that. But it only it only has this issue, if I mess with. I'm just gonna leave it on and turn it off, put it on the side of the basement and have it just be a jam box for when I'm working down here.

Host 2     33:02

They just leave it on all the time. That's the solution. Yeah, just cook at max volume. So you know, if the just the volume.

Host 1     33:09

You know, it doesn't, it doesn't actually have a whole lot of noise. It it did initially. And I'll just touch on this for a second. I totally made a mistake in the design. And that's mainly due to ignorance. Because I've never actually designed a class A amplifier before. I've always designed Class A B amplifiers, which ABR pushpull style amplifier. So half of the amplifier works and then it kind of like teeter totters over to the other side of the amplifier. And that's how it pushes a positive sine wave or a negative sine wave to the speakers and stuff. So they kind of share the load. What's unique about a class AB amplifier is it inherently rejects common mode noise. Well, a class A amplifier has virtually zero noise reduction. So you can get away with absolute murder on your power supply rails on a class AB amplifier. Because whatever ripple is going to be there is going to be common to both sides and it'll just get rid of it. So the first time I turned on the macro amp, I just I get greeted with this lovely kind of sound. I'm like, oh shit, what did I do wrong. And then I realized I had like 20 volts of ripple on my high voltage rail. And it's the high voltage rail connects directly to the output transformer which connects directly to the speaker. So go figure that that's my bad on that. So the way I Fix It is I just glued in a an extra 840 micro farad capacitance and got that 20 micro farad is down to I think it's like one one volt of ripple now and it's like at max volume if you stick your ear on the speaker you'll hear some hum but or go deaf. Well yeah, well, especially with all the meatloaf that's glaring over the speaker.

Host 1     34:58

If you're deaf you don't hear at home right you Just feel it.

Host 1     35:00

There we go. Yeah. Percussive hum is what I like to call it, or tactile hum. So, one of the things that I have luckily made some good progress on is the design contract, good design, contest and closure, which is something that Parker and I've kind of been messing around for the past month and a half or so. And so one of the things we wanted to do for this design contest was have an overly useless overly complex, overly well made trophy. And so I spent last weekend machining a bunch of aluminum for this trophy, a lot of aluminum, a lot of aluminum Yeah, I bought, I bought a piece of a piece of 6061 aluminum that was 10 inches by 36 inches by a quarter of an inch. So the wall thickness of this thing after I flattened it, because you know, anything you buy from McMaster is not going to come flat. So I had to mill all the aluminum flat up, we're still looking at a wall thickness of the this enclosure of like, point two inch inches, which is ridiculous. The thing is going to be pretty hefty. But we actually have like, it has a screen on it. That's like milled flush into the front of the device. And it it has a through hole micro USB connector on it. And it's all countersunk flathead screws around the edge with a nice shiny mill finish on it. It's it's gonna look pretty slick when we're done with it.

Host 2     36:32

And this is my first foray into actually designing a GUI interface. Yeah, so I've been taking a lot of like online Raspberry Pi Python GUI classes.

Host 1     36:44

How's that going?

Host 2     36:45

Oh, okay. It looks like garbage. But it works ish. Well,

Host 1     36:50

It just has to be useless. That's it.

Host 1     36:52

Yes. So you now you're now you're a full stack engineer.

Host 2     36:54

Almost. I gotta do databases next. Okay, that's true. Yeah. And then yeah, I'll be full stack.

Host 1     37:03

Well, so So one of the things I still have left to do on the enclosures, I still have to drill and tap, excuse me, the holes for it. So my plan is actually what I want to do is, I have all the pieces, and I'm going to put a Sharpie X on the side that goes, that's internal. And I'm just going to send Parker like this Lego set of, of aluminum pieces, and you get to assemble the whole thing. And hopefully it all goes together. Well. So

Host 2     37:29

When are you going to ship it? Because next week is DEF CON.

Host 1     37:33

Yeah, it's good. It's gonna come soon.

Host 1     37:35

Okay, just slap a USPS label on it and just throw in the mail. Well, the thing was, I had selected anything.

Host 1     37:42

Well, I still have to drill and tap holes. And the thing is, I selected M, three screws for everything. And unfortunately, those are just going to, I realized those are not going to leave it enough fat on the aluminum and I'd probably blow out some holes. So I've decided to drop it to m 2.5. Which means I gotta go pick up some M 2.5 screws and a tap, or probably like three taps. Three taps. Yes. Yeah. So I gotta get them. Exactly. So I will get that off to you as soon as I get those drilled and tapped. Which, if, if all goes well, I'll probably actually just chuck up all the pieces in one of our meals at work and just drill the holes out that way. So they're in the exact right spot. If not, you might you might be you know, you could advance Legos.

Host 2     38:26

You could just bring it to DEF CON.

Host 1     38:29

Yeah, you want to you want to do at a DEF

Host 2     38:30

CON. Yeah, just bring you a symbol DEF CON. And we'll just throw the rest of the piping crap into it. Yeah, that's some code on it.

Host 1     38:38

I'm checking the bag so I can bring some heavy plates of aluminum and let the TSA just look at me be like what, what the hell's wrong with

Host 1     38:46

Just take it down to hardware hacking village and have them help you finish.

Host 1     38:50

That's actually a really great idea. We should totally do that. And see if anyone has a mill or a drill press there that's willing to help us out with it.

Host 1     38:58

And then what you do is you start a scavenger hunt and you ask people bring you random things, they'll just bring it to you thinking they're part of a contest.

Host 1     39:05

Hey, that's a great idea. So I was there was there was one other thing I was gonna say about that. Shoot, I don't remember Oh, it's kind of sharp. We need to break all the edges. I didn't end up breaking any of the edges on it right now and I realized that whoever gets it might really hurt himself. Because everything right now

Host 2     39:29

Just hit it with like 300 grit on a random orbital sander

Host 1     39:33

On honestly, a Scotch Brite pad might even be enough to just break Yeah. Or we could we could also just take a file to the edge. You know, okay, so get this one of the things like I really wanted to go ridiculous with this. So the Think of the boxes. It's like a it's like a rectangular shape. Right? Every edge every side is it like a plate that is made except the screen is tilted back at a 30 degree angle. So two of the pieces that have to come together that interface with the plate, I actually ended up modeling and milling the edge to a 30 degree angle such that like it'll all fit together and meet properly. Instead of like, as I want to avoid gaps. I mean, there's gonna be gaps no matter what, just because like, nothing's gonna be perfect. And the material thickness is not perfect at the same time. But like, I went through the trouble of actually milling it like getting out like a ball mill and milling a 30 degree angle in the edge plate. I kind of had fun doing it.

Host 2     40:40

Maybe you were sending me pictures over the weekend? And I my comment was it looked like Tiger aluminum? Because the angle that you sent the pictures it made it look like tiger stripes.

Host 1     40:51

Oh, yeah, well, I started off with a 14 millimeter flat end mill, well, it's, it's effectively a face mill. And, and then I did a 65% step over on that and just walked across the surface. So it has whatever 65% of 14 millimeters is that has stripes in that in that width across the entire thing. So the cool thing is with the mill I used on it, I could go 6000 millimeters a minute on that. So facing it, you can just fly through it, it didn't take too long. The part that took a long time was that I was only taking like 5000 inch skim cuts. And when you have warped aluminum, you have to do like eight passes to get it flat, right. So that honestly, half the day was flattening the piece of aluminum and then the other half was making everything else.

Host 2     41:50

And make sure when comm DEF CON actually bring your screen to just in case it's not the same tolerance as the screen I have. Yeah,

Host 1     42:01

I allotted a 10,000 inch wiggle border around it. So it fits in there. And honestly I say we just put like two or three dabs of super glue or something just

Host 2     42:11

Yeah, I was gonna I was actually just gonna, you know, Loctite 495. Yeah, that'll

Host 1     42:15

Work right in there. It'll just, you know, okay, another quick gripe about data sheets. If you go online and try to find the Raspberry Pi, seven inch monitor datasheet there's a datasheet out there with a whole bunch of dimensions on it and a whole bunch of dimensions that you just don't give a shit about. And a whole bunch of dimensions that don't help you. There's, there's like, and also there's like community users who have like, I've got the definitive drawing for this, and then you look at theirs and you're like, dude, yours doesn't tell you half the stuff you need to know to actually make anything. So one of the things that I'm a little bit upset about, it's not the end of the world, but like the corner radius of every of one on all four sides. It's not called out on the drawing, someone said it was 6.5 millimeters. So I did 6.5 millimeters. It's not 6.5 millimeters. So there's a little bit extra gap on all four corners. It's tiny. And like you'd only see it if you're like really looking at it. But it's also pisses me off because it's like come on, like these are the things you need to know in order to use the this product that cost 80 bucks, like what like have the outline drawing, you know. So that's

Host 1     43:28

To do sheet ones were the same company for the same part at three different data sheets. Nice and they know them agreed.

Host 2     43:36

No date stamps, either.

Host 1     43:38

No date stamps. It was like your APA one or two new. The new data sheet. It changed the size of your product in big bold text use this one. Rev do not use draft watermark. That's you know, scribbled on

Host 2     43:58

Preliminary use only. Yeah, I

Host 1     44:00

Actually, we had a product in. I remember it at macro fab. We had a product that one of the customers sent in a data sheet. And literally every page had a giant watermark that was in gray. That said do not use a like huge watermark. I crossed every page and they're like, Yeah, we're gonna use this one.

Host 2     44:20

I didn't even pull up the datasheet it was like Parker Look at this. I turned around because he was behind me and he just turns the monitor around and just says do not use that product to me a lot of fun to manufacture. Yeah,

Host 1     44:31

It was great. We had a lot of fun with that one.

Host 1     44:37

Shipment. We're doing this live.

Host 2     44:40

Frankly, that's what a lot of customers feel like sometimes.

Host 1     44:44

Cool. So whoever gets this trophy, you know, thumbs up, have fun with it. It's useless.

Host 2     44:49

Yes, maybe they can turn it into something not useless because it is basically a really nice enclosure for Raspberry Pi three with a touchscreen on it.

Host 1     44:59

Yeah Yeah, you know one thing I haven't done and one one thing that whoever wins this trophy might have to make it less useless is you might have to drill some holes in it to let the heat

Host 2     45:13

Oh, it's all aluminum it will just conduct out.

Host 1     45:16

You will. That's true. The entire enclosure is unpainted aluminum. So maybe it just, it's a giant heatsink. We can just consider it that way.

Host 2     45:25

Cool. Let's go to the RFO time. Yeah. So speaking of Raspberry Pi's, Honey, I've shrunk the Raspberry Pi. So this is our new cam company called our new cam, shrunk Raspberry Pi to a system on module style board. That's got capsulated edges. So think about like the ESP 32 that you use before zap. But what's interesting about this is the Broadcom SOC that the Raspberry Pi three uses is not publicly available. And but this is not a clone. This is not like a Raspberry Pi three clone either. So how did they do it?

Host 1     46:08

I think they're just buying a bunch of pies and desoldering the modules? Exactly, exactly. What is it really, really

Host 2     46:17

Exactly what they're doing.

Host 1     46:18

Oh my God, what's the failure rate on that?

Host 2     46:21

I don't know. They actually have a video of their process of taking the Raspberry Pi three, soak up system on chip off and putting it on their board.

Host 1     46:31

No, are they reballing it?

Host 2     46:34

I haven't seen the video. I just read the description. So I assume the rebol on it. I'd hope. God How much are they charging for this thing? I don't think you can buy it. Oh, okay. But the fact that someone actually built this and is using it means probably the Raspberry Pi foundation should build something similar.

Host 1     46:58

Hmm. Kind of like basically like the like the PI compute module, right? Yeah, except

Host 2     47:02

It's even theoretically be cheaper than the compute module because I've used the compute module as well. But the compute module is like almost the same price as the full on Raspberry Pi three with all the connectors and stuff. And then you have to add in that sodium connector, which is not a cheap connector. I think it's like six bucks. Plus all the pins so it's like expensive to assemble.

Host 1     47:27

Look at that the article was written by James Lewis. Yeah, Mr. Capacitor, man. Yeah, that was a great episode. We talked about Kemet capacitors which influence

Host 2     47:37

All that one, all ceramic capacitors all the time.

Host 1     47:40

Wow. It's incredible that they're cramming all this crap down into I mean, what's the size of this, but 40 millimeters by 25 millimeters. So one inch by one and a half inch? Yeah. That's crazy.

Host 2     47:55

So it'd be interesting to see if Raspberry Pi comes out with a version like this for the for that's like just like a stripped down version for you know, embedding further into products, or whether or not we'll get a compute module for the for

Host 1     48:13

Those those that wasn't next company, or they went out of business that was doing little modules like that.

Host 2     48:19

Yeah. They it was next chip. Was it next chip?

Host 1     48:25

Or chip? Just it was just chip.

Host 2     48:27

Yeah. And they have the GR eight, the great chip. I actually have some in the drawer right here. So

Host 1     48:37

That's like that company that sells a bunch of weird like audio specific stuff. It's called that corporation. And everything is like a VAT 123 or whatever.

Host 2     48:47

Oh, yeah, we've talked about couple of their chips before. We've used a couple of you've used a couple digits before

Host 1     48:52

I deal with their chips every single day. They're super popular in my industry. But it's also kind of like really guys, you could you could that's the best you could think about your name.

Host 1     49:03

The real says those.

Host 2     49:09

So onwards with more Raspberry Pi stuff, the USB type C issue on a Raspberry Pi four.

Host 1     49:17

Yeah, there's actually a really good fairly not fairly pretty damn in depth article on Hackaday about this with the USB type C issue. So you want to dive into what that actual issue is.

Host 2     49:30

So what Raspberry Pi corporation or foundation, whatever I think its foundation, what they did, what the design is on the USB type C connector for the power. The PD, the power distribution is a power distribution. Anyways, how that works on type C is there's two pins called the CC pins, and they need to be pulled up or down or you need to send data across them. It's like a low voltage Your data signals Well, basically telling what the host what the devices

Host 1     50:07

Were, it helps them detect the orientation of the pins as well. Because they form a voltage divider with, I think resistors that are in the cable, and it does a voltage sensor. That sounds a little flip it around,

Host 2     50:19

Correct. So those pins do a lot of multiple things. And what Raspberry Pi did is they connected both CEC pins together at the connector, and then pulled that down to 5.1k. To Ground, which, with a dumb cable, which is a cable that just has those resistors sensor resistors in it, it works fine for the power. But the moment you use an E rated cable, which has a little microcontroller in it, that's make basically tells the host and the device like hey, this cable can do whatever power can do, you can do 100 watts or 60 watts or whatever. But it also handles some of that PD communication and looking at the device. Well, when you do that, it creates this very interesting voltage divider scenario where it gets classified as an audio device and won't send power down.

Host 1     51:15

Yeah, I think it drops into like the the old default USB mode, which was 500 milliamps. Yeah. Which for a PI of course is nowhere close what they need exactly what

Host 1     51:25

The four is, is up word like the power supplies are rate three amp, right? Because like previously with the three and three plus, I think they were shipping with a two amp, like as the the official standard now now it's three Yep. For the wall.

Host 1     51:41

That screwed me up on a couple. When I switch to the red, the PI three didn't have a power enough powerful enough

Host 1     51:47

Plug for it. Did you get the little lightning bolt symbol? Yeah, or

Host 1     51:51

Didn't even come on?

Host 1     51:54

Yeah. Right. Okay, so I know we've talked about USBC. But it's like, it's still kind of confusing to me, because there's just so many like, there's so many ways that you it has to be configured properly, that it's kind of it's understandable that they would make a mistake. Now the so with the the E cables, they do a lot more than just say like we're capable. They also take care of like the handshaking, too, right?

Host 2     52:25

Not so much. Most of the handshaking is between the host and device over that. Is it okay. Yeah.

Host 1     52:33

Yeah. Cuz don't they have to say like, are you ready? Yes, I'm ready. Let's go. Okay. And then it starts hammering power.

Host 1     52:41

Negotiate higher power, but the E marked cables, they will lead to higher gauge, right? So they'll jump in and say, hey, I can handle even more power than what a standard USB cable again? Got it? Yes, you're not melting your USB.

Host 1     52:57

So this issue doesn't necessarily brick the pay for it just means that in order to deliver that power, you have to have a gift to use a dumb cable.

Host 2     53:06

Correct. But there they are going to fix it at a later release.

Host 1     53:10

Yeah, that's a pretty big oops, unfortunately. Yeah, it's

Host 2     53:14

One of those it should have been tested. Yeah, we caught a similar issue with our USB type C on the badge. Yep. Yeah. So we had a different issue.

Host 1     53:26

It was those the hardest hardware problem we had this year was USBC. Yeah, it's

Host 2     53:31

Like why is working. So we found this really cool USB type C connector, and I've talked about it a couple of times on the podcast, where it only has like the pins you need for USB type C to implement USB 2.0. So it doesn't have all the extra high, super high speed stuff. So it's really cool for like doing what we're doing on the badge, which is just like, you know, we just had normal USB type 2.0. And we just want to use your football connector. But the wherever we found the footprint from was it built into KiCad? Or is it something that we found online?

Host 1     54:09

It was the schematic that was built in. And there's actually two there are two different USBC receptacles in the standard chi CAD library and one had the same cc pin repeated so it's like well, I've got one connected they must both be which is stupid. And then the other one actually broke them out as CC one and CC two and you should tie both of those to ground through a 5.1k resistor. Yeah,

Host 1     54:35

So like separately to separate 5.1 K's right, not the same, right.

Host 1     54:41

So we had a our USBC implementation you it was not reversible. You had to get

Host 2     54:48

Plugged in but he wouldn't work so you had to unplug it you put back over

Host 1     54:53

Normal USB, you just made it normal.

Host 2     54:57

Or we fixed that on the production version. So it was Gertie.

Host 1     55:01

Hmm. So, so the the raspberry, like, I don't think we've heard if the, when we're going to see a new version of the PI four, right,

Host 2     55:12

Probably whenever they run out of boards that they've made.

Host 1     55:16

I, you know, I haven't done a ton of research, but from what I've heard and watch some YouTube videos on, it seems like they're backordered already, you know, for the platform. Yeah, so seems like maybe this is the time that they can jump into that. It's also kind of, you know, the maybe it's a little bit mean, but the Hackaday article started off with like, the Raspberry Pi foundation is no you no stranger to problems on launch and stuff. And then they go into this whole list of like, all the things that they've gotten wrong, and it's like, man, that's kind of, yeah. I would say,

Host 2     55:53

One of those issues is like the photosensitive ldeo. It was on the resume, right? Yeah, the,

Host 1     55:58

The switching power controller, that's actually really that was a really cool issue,

Host 2     56:04

Where basically, we hit it with like a flash from a really bright light source, it would freak out the ldeo and cause it to just stall.

Host 1     56:13

You know, Dave Jones has a really great video on that, it's actually you have to hit it from with a flash from a xenon bulb, okay? Because that has just the right frequency that it causes the photoelectric effect in an exposed die. And it what it actually does is it causes the the chip to go into a, like a current restriction mode, because it thinks that it's overcurrent. And so it just basically chokes off power to the processor and resets it.

Host 2     56:41

So yeah, it's like, how, why? How are you? Is this going back to what we were talking with Chrissy? And talking about, like, testing products is like the most important thing you could do? It's like, if you didn't have a flat a camera flash with a xenon bulb, you would never even thought about that.

Host 1     56:59

Yeah, yeah. Well, and in that video with Dave, he takes pictures of the board with multiple different cameras, and it's only the Xenon bulb that resets it. And it's like, why that is? How does that happen?

Host 1     57:11

So there's a there's a guy at DEF CON a couple years ago that was working on a pie gun. And he he had a camera flash hooked up to his makeshift gun, and then we hit the we hit the trigger, you'd actually do a flash and kill the pie. For wearing Raspberry Pi's, rather than X's badges, he's like, boom, kill you.

Host 1     57:31

You know, I wonder with it with, like a gun like that. How far away would still be functional? You know,

Host 1     57:38

I don't know. We I think we need to test this.

Host 1     57:41

Yeah, sounds great.

Host 2     57:42

Maybe Raspberry Pi's are affected by it, though.

Host 1     57:44

No, no, I think they were I think that was like a cute manufacturing trick where they were like, Hey, we can use a flip chip on on this controller and save an extra penny here, because we're still trying to hit our $35 Mark. Which, that's awesome. But it's also like, well, there's unfortunate impacts. And it's exactly like you said grateful. Like, it's you're never going to like how do you test for that? Like, how do you even think about that?

Host 2     58:07

Yeah. Like in the datasheet doesn't say like Xenon bulbs firing at x range can cause this thing to fail.

Host 1     58:18

You know, I bet you I bet you the engineering department that designed that chip. probably heard of that. And they were like, Huh, that's cool. You know, cuz they probably do that. No,

Host 2     58:25

Don't do that. Don't do that. Or put your device in an enclosure. And that won't happen.

Host 1     58:32

Yeah, that you Right, exactly.

Host 1     58:34

I bet ti datasheet has it. frequency of light versus failures? Yeah.

Host 1     58:39

Oh, yeah. Yeah, histogram of failure.

Host 2     58:45

That's great. All right, cool. So the next RFO is Sony crowdfunded personal air conditioner. So me living in Houston. This is a something that piqued my interest. So it's called the Reon pocket wearable AC and heater device. And so it's a little it looks at the size of a phone that you put into a pocket it comes with shirts, goes into a pocket on the back of your like, right between your shoulder blades. And it uses a Peltier to heat and cool that area of your body. And so you can get this nice cooling effect that radiates throughout your back and the how do I get one of these so the only in Japan right now through the first flight program, which is Sony's like, pilot, like internal pilot program and people can like you basically use it as like Kickstarter to like fund internal products at Sony. I really want to try one.

Host 1     59:49

Okay, so So get this. I kind of love this and one of the one of the reasons why I worked one time, one time because it sucked. But I worked as a a on a on a job doing some roofing. In the middle of summer in Houston, if you've ever done that, like it's, it's quite possibly one of the worst things you could possibly do to yourself. But the crew that I was working with, there was a couple of us. I noticed they had a trick and it totally free can work. They had a block of steel or aluminum. I don't remember what it was. They would take this block, I swear to God, they would, they would take a neckerchief and they'd soak it in water, they'd put the block on the back of their neck, and then they just tie it to their neck in you'll stay cool. It's like a heat sink. And for some reason, the back of your neck, there's, it's there's a lot of heat that escapes there. And and that'll keep you cool during the day you wear you wear a hat on top of that, and it's it's game over.

Host 2     1:00:50

So I'm gonna bet you this does work. Yeah, so it's that version. And it's for like, if you look at the pictures, it's for businessmen so they can look so look professional and not have a you know neckerchief with a piece of steel tied to their neck.

Host 1     1:01:05

Right? Also, I bet you if you had some kind of like electric gizmo while you're out there roofing, you'd probably get made fun of you know, why don't you just use like so tanker?

Host 1     1:01:15

Did you notice that their crowdfunding options include either five shirts, three shirts or one shirt?

Host 2     1:01:19

That's the only options

Host 1     1:01:23

Called the Reon.

Host 1     1:01:24

I wonder,

Host 1     1:01:26

Because there's a couple. It's USB type C, I wonder if detected as an audio device.

Host 1     1:01:31

And Bluetooth.

Host 2     1:01:32

I wonder if there's a way using one of those like courier services that are in like China and Japan that you can like order one of these and then just have them shipped to you?

Host 1     1:01:44

Oh, the reshipping service. Yeah.

Host 2     1:01:47

We should definitely look into for DEF CON next year. Because it's going it's only a week with DEF CON is only a week away. So I don't think we can get these by then.

Host 1     1:01:55

You know, I don't I don't read? Well, okay, so it's saying that it goes zero degrees Celsius, which well, it's a heater, right? So okay, so that may heater in cooler. Yeah, it does go up to 45 degrees Celsius. Now here's the thing. 45 degrees Celsius is 113 Fahrenheit. And in Houston, a can get past 113 Fahrenheit. I mean, it doesn't get much past that. But yeah, you could take it right to the edge of its working temperature.

Host 1     1:02:21

So it is sold out. Which is too bad.

Host 2     1:02:24

Yeah. I wonder if they'll pop up on eBay? Yeah, probably the only 150 If you're a listener in Japan, I will buy one from you. If you've managed to get a trade.

Host 1     1:02:35

I will trade an unexplored edge for one. Here we go.

Host 1     1:02:39

That's a good trade is a good

Host 2     1:02:40

Trade. We need to try this thing out because I am. This thing's like piquing my interest all week. I'm not sold on like you have to have the custom shirt thing. Like that's a little goofy, but yeah.

Host 1     1:02:56

What does it take to get like 50 of these all over my body? Like, just think of these things sewed together? Yeah, like chain mail.

Host 2     1:03:08

Cool. I'm imagining like a bulletproof vest. But instead of putting plates in you put these things in.

Host 1     1:03:15

That's a great idea. That's, you know, I bet you this is something the military has had for like 20 years, you know? Oh, yeah.

Host 1     1:03:22

That's what they're doing. Are you 51 Yeah, that's what

Host 1     1:03:25

Everyone's storming to get. Seven and a couple and not XOR badges. Right. Those are at area.

Host 1     1:03:33

Yeah, we dropped a couple on the other side of the fence. Well, you know, those guys pretty well, right. Oh, totally. Like even with our designs,

Host 1     1:03:41

Well, I'm talking about the aliens

Host 2     1:03:47

Because I can't speak Japanese either, Steven. But my I like how, like you scroll down. And like the first English language is business person answers. And the best is like a FAQ. But like it's called business person.

Host 1     1:04:02

Yeah. And no lie that it actually says that.

Host 2     1:04:06

It's really geared to office workers. And so no one knows you're wearing it though. Because like they have pictures of like, when you wear your shirts and jacket. There's no one there. But this device but

Host 1     1:04:18

Okay, wait, wait, wait. Okay, so Peltier has to have a temperature, like differential across it to actually work. So if this thing is is underneath, an undershirt and a button up and a suit coat and things like that, it's just going to stop working, right? Yeah.

Host 2     1:04:36

Depends on how breathable those fabrics are because it does have a fan. And that's what's cooling off the hot side. Oh, okay. So it has forced air going across. Yeah, it has forced air. Oh, I

Host 1     1:04:46

See. It has a little like grill then at the bottom. It kinda looks like a weird microphone. A little bit. Yeah.

Host 1     1:04:51

Probably why doesn't work over 114

Host 1     1:04:55

Probably Yeah, probably. Because it just gives up right the physics stop working Oh,

Host 2     1:05:01

I wonder if I would have enough time is because I have hung up with Mike.

Host 1     1:05:07

Well, you're gonna try to buy one before DEF CON you have like, a week in two days or something like he's gonna make one. Oh, you Oh, he's just gonna duct tape it around his neck and walk around with a portable power supply.

Host 2     1:05:24

You remember the ABC, the automotive Buck cooler?

Host 1     1:05:28

Oh, my gosh.

Host 2     1:05:31

And a T c or a Peltier device. And you just give it a shitload of power and it does its thing.

Host 1     1:05:39

That sounds like the Americans.

Host 2     1:05:43

Not that don't get in a bunch of lithium batteries. You're good to go.

Host 1     1:05:46

Yeah, there we go. I like that. That's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. American ingenuity. Just throw a bunch of power at it. Yeah, exactly. And steel, you need to make a steel enclosure for it.

Host 2     1:05:58

Yeah. So there was a side tangent. There was a hardhat contest. For DEF CON. They wanted to enter. And we were doing the no next door solder party, right. And so they told me about the contest. I'm like, Oh, I got totally do that. So I ordered a hard hat. Now ordered a cowboy hard hat. But then I read the rules later. And you can't enter with a heart cowboy hard hat. You have to use a standard hard hat. So I got to figure out how to make this portable. In like next three days.

Host 1     1:06:38

Did I ever tell you about the cool pants? The design for cool pants? cool pants? No, they were see oh pants coupe. Like Cool Whip. Yeah, like who whip Yeah, right. The cool. I swear I'm told this story. So I apologize if you've heard it before. Never heard this story before. No, no, get this. Well, I took a class in college once. And it was a design class. And it was the most blow off class ever, like absolute blow off. And we're at the end of the semester, we all had to get up on stage in front of like 700 people, and like, give like design examples. And you had to have five separate designs for your team. And each team member would get up and talk about a design. And we knew it was a blow off class. So like I, we just all said, Hey, everyone, just come up with your own design, get up there and say it and so we didn't tell each other what are designed for. And I got up there and I did my design and it was whatever you know. And then this kid who was 18 he was fresh out of high school and I'm a senior at this time, he gets up right after me. And he goes coo pants right in front of everyone. And then he brings up this diagram that he drew and like MS Paint on this huge screen in front of like 700 people. And he designed these pants that had tubes that went up them and they these tubes connected into your shoes, and there was a bladder underneath the heel of your shoes. So as you walked it would like spray cool air up your pants and keep you keep you cool as you as you walk. And like this was legitimately like his senior does I mean well not like the end of the semester design project. And we're all just sitting there like holy shit. This is what our team

Host 2     1:08:20

You know, that's actually creative. Again, props

Host 1     1:08:24

That coupe cool pants. He even he even like made like this whole like graphic logo for it.

Host 1     1:08:32

If it keeps the MSP to Senegal by UPS,

Host 1     1:08:35

By pair, you know, I gotta admit, I have used MSPaint in a like, high level senior design class before for a presentation on electron beam, like my crush, or whatever, I don't remember even what it was for. But like I needed a diagram and it was like the night before my presentation shows like, alright, MSPaint this is we're doing this. I got called out for it in the lexer.

Host 2     1:09:06

I cool last RFO micro size flex for commercial quality bodging. So this is super cool. This is a really neat technique.

Host 1     1:09:20

So if you've ever gone into production with a board and made a mistake and had to botch things, you know that it's awful, and it really sucks, especially if it's your mistake, and you kind of have to go to the people on the manufacturing floor and say, I'm sorry, let's find a way to fix this. And you end up running green wires or blue wires or whatever color you choose. It kind of sucks. But this article on Hackaday kind of gives a really kind of cool solution around it. That gives you a more professional look and almost makes it look like it was intended.

Host 2     1:09:57

Yeah, and it would definitely be faster to implement on the floor as an additional assembly step,

Host 1     1:10:03

Right? For sure. Yeah. So this is basically a flat flex cable that conforms to the wiring boards that you would attempt to do by hand. So on this baje that they're looking or that they designed, they kind of have, I guess, exposed pads underneath, and it's somewhat capsulated. But it's, but it's an actual flat flex cable that kind of wraps around the board wherever the body needs to go to, and then is hand soldered in place. So it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to cut and strip wire. And, you know, put nice curves and 90s and things like that, which that's fine. Like if you're prototyping and you're in the engineering lab, and you need to run three extra bodge wires, like, you can spend some time and make it look nice and glue them down and things like that. But in production, it really sucks. So this is a really cool concept of like, okay, so design the baje on flat flex, and then give that to manufacturing, and then they just have to solder more terminals down. I really liked this when I saw it,

Host 2     1:11:04

I think it's really good idea. Maybe Raspberry Pi should use this to suit. So I

Host 1     1:11:15

Can't tell I'm looking at the picture in the article. Today's put this underneath the qf P partners it's on, it's on

Host 2     1:11:22

Top. So it's a lot of connect all the traces and stuff together. So they're doing it to like, and this example they're using it to like, bring out more the connections so that like those like six pads there. So you can solder it. So you don't have to solder to the chip. Like if you have like an they're doing it for a mod for a for console. So they're bringing those pads that would be around the chip to a central location and a bigger area for you to solder to.

Host 1     1:12:00

Yeah, this is a this is a really great way to hack things. Also, if you know what pads you need, and you know where you need to bring them to. This is this is a great way to you can like take, for example, you started this in place once and then you never have to jack with the more sensitive pins of the processor. You can just mess with your flat flex would you could design that to be as big and robust as necessary. I like that. That's really,

Host 1     1:12:26

I'm writing something down right now for next year.

Host 2     1:12:31

Hey, someone actually mentioned macro fab in the comments of this article.

Host 1     1:12:38

Does does macro fab do flat flakes on the regular? No.

Host 2     1:12:42

You had to custom order it. Our platform doesn't support it yet. Hint Hint, hint hints sometime in the future.

Host 1     1:12:50

Yeah, I'm sure you're the seams are not bursting with people wanting flat. Yeah, very plenty.

Host 2     1:12:57

But it's not a lot of people. Yep. I'm hoping not a ton OSHPark now doing it. And oh,

Host 1     1:13:03

I didn't know they were doing it now. That's

Host 2     1:13:04

Cool. Yeah, they're doing it. Now. I'm really hoping with that. It really spurs more the low volume OEM people realizing they can actually afford this technology now. Going forward.

Host 1     1:13:17

You know, have you ever can you get flat flex in any color other than kept on brown? I don't think so. Because that would be really cool. If you offered a service we get, you know, black flex or something like that. That would be

Host 2     1:13:32

Real. It'd be pretty cool.

Host 1     1:13:34

So yeah, if you use that idea, it's $1,000. Okay,

Host 1     1:13:44

I'll send it to you from my yacht.

Host 2     1:13:46

So our photo is over. But DEF CON is next week.

Host 1     1:13:50

I can't it's a week from tomorrow.

Host 2     1:13:55

Yes, we come tomorrow.

Host 1     1:13:57

Yeah, technically searched on Thursday, but people are showing up on Wednesday and lining up for Lincoln.

Host 2     1:14:02

Yeah. So I, I was starting to look at like all the talks and stuff. And I was really excited about this backdooring hardware devices by injecting malicious payloads like I was starting to look at like hardware related talks to go to this is like hacking microcontrollers by injecting I don't know how you know, code and stuff into maybe I can improve my own hardware devices doing it by taking that that course. I guess not really course listen to that talk. But it's also at the same time of adventures and smart bug plug penetration testing. Adventure

Host 1     1:14:55

I think I know who's giving that talk and if it's anything it's render man, if it's him He's he's a good speaker.

Host 2     1:15:01

It's worth watch. Yeah. So I'm thinking about actually, because DEF CON is pretty good about making sure stuff is available online later. I might actually go see in person, the ventures and smart bug plug testing, and then watch the injecting malicious payloads and microcontrollers online. Why

Host 1     1:15:18

Do they need to be smart?

Host 2     1:15:20

I don't know why. Oh, that's like just a title like, oh, man, I have to go. I have to go watch that. Okay,

Host 1     1:15:31

So before we started the podcast, Parker was off or sorry, crap phone was off getting a beer and zap mentioned that that Parker was having trouble deciding what, what talk to go to. I didn't know that you were choosing between those.

Host 2     1:15:47

Two, I was trying to decide to go to there's a couple other ones. Yeah, but most of them are like I can pick because there's like four different tracks or three different tracks. And I assume that just means different rooms they're in.

Host 1     1:16:04

There's there's three main tracks. Those are just the main talks, and then there's about 30 villages, and they all have talked. Okay. Yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be overwhelmed.

Host 1     1:16:15

And so yeah, we're, I'm certainly looking forward to it.

Host 1     1:16:20

Are you looking forward?

Host 1     1:16:22

To? Um, well, I was not aware of smart plugs. So I may have to change my, my itinerary now. No, honestly, when I looked through the list, I I didn't understand 90% of the things that were on there. It was just like the title of the whole thing is like I didn't I don't I don't get any of the words that are in the title of this talk at all. There's a payload one what Wait, which Whoa,

Host 2     1:16:53

Freaking elevators leaking. Elevate.

Host 1     1:16:56

That's why we'll Karwan Yeah, I can never say his last name, right. But we'll see. He has found ways where you can get the phone number in a elevator and then just call people while they're writing it up or post them on Twitter.

Host 1     1:17:13

You know, I just had a curiosity like how, like the police force how much is is out and about during this?

Host 1     1:17:22

FBI is definitely there. Yeah, but they're looking for people doing real stuff. Not just

Host 1     1:17:29

Not just calling people in elevator. Yeah.

Host 1     1:17:33

They're looking for fake cell phone towers, stuff like that.

Host 1     1:17:36

Does that actually happen?

Host 1     1:17:38

Oh, yeah. Okay.

Host 1     1:17:40

I was talking. I was talking to cramp home earlier this week. And I was like, What do I need to be prepared for?

Host 1     1:17:45

Turn off your Wi Fi and your Bluetooth and get a VPN? Not a free vpn because you get what you pay for but I can give you some recommendations offline.

Host 1     1:17:55

This this is a sponsored

Host 2     1:18:00

One that you see always sponsored on YouTube.

Host 1     1:18:03

Yeah. Yeah, like like Nord, they're pretty good. There's there's websites and how much your privacy you care about where they're located if they can, if the US government can send them a warrant and get all your data. It just depends on what you're looking for. I mostly care about getting my data out of DEFCON privately.

Host 1     1:18:23

Yeah, maybe I just won't bring my phone. That's the safest route.

Host 2     1:18:28

Yeah, so we're gonna wrap up this podcast gone a little long today.

Host 1     1:18:32

So that was the Mecca five injuring podcast I was your host guest Zapp branigan

Host 2     1:18:37

And we're your hosts guests craft foam. And blitz later, everyone I can't read. Thank you so much that for coming on the podcast.

Host 1     1:18:47

Yeah, thanks. So that was great.

Host 1     1:18:50

I'm starving. Go eat.

Host 2     1:19:00

The mag fed engineering podcast design contest sponsored by Mouser electronics is currently going on. The topic is useless machines. We have cash prizes, up to $1,000 for winners. That deadline is August 10, and is closing fast. More information can be found at Mack feb.com/blog.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai