MEP EP#72: Fire Sticks

Podcast Transcript

Host 2     00:10

Hello, and welcome to the macro fab engineering podcast where your hosts Parker Domine. And Steven Gregg, this is episode 72.

Host 3     00:17

Hey, listeners, if you enjoyed the Mac fab engineering podcast, please let others know about us. Tell your co workers, your friends, your family loved ones, and share it on social media at macro fab, or follow us on Facebook. At some point during the show, we're going to have a secret code word that we announce. If you email us the code word and your address, we'll send some cool swag your way. The email address is podcast at macro fab.com.

Host 2     00:41

So the next hardware electronics engineering meetup here in Houston is going to be happening at the end of this month, June 28. So Please RSVP, if you are planning to attend. There'll be a link in the podcast description and probably a tweet about it. And you know,

Host 3     00:57

That'll be our third meetup third meetup. Yep. And then they've gone pretty, pretty well. So far. Yeah. Good turnout. They've been really fun.

Host 2     01:04

Yeah, the talks are really interesting, too. Yeah. What's the topic for this month's engineering medical devices?

Host 3     01:14

That's gonna be interesting. Yeah. Do we? How many speakers do we have so far? We're gonna have one this time. Cool. That'll be that'd be okay. We may have more than one. So very

Host 2     01:25

Cool. Yep. And then, on Episode 64, we had the Stanford volleyball project, which is the like, Halo balloon. Yeah, that's controlled with with ballast and helium. Helium valve. That

Host 3     01:42

Was a really interesting talk. Yeah.

Host 2     01:43

So the launching again. You know, I don't have the date for that, though. Today, okay. Oh, it's already in the air. Okay, so very cool. Check that out on at the Stanford volleyball, Twitter. We'll have the link in the description below. And

Host 3     02:01

The last time they launched, they broke like a bunch of World Records, right? Yes. It was like the longest flight terms of distance and time. Yeah. And they were this class or whatever.

Host 1     02:09

Yeah, they very broke their

Host 3     02:12

Record. Right. Yeah. Well, hopefully, here's to them doing it again. Yeah,

Host 2     02:15

They are, I think, because last time they almost made it across the Atlantic. So they're probably aiming to get across now. Yeah.

Host 3     02:25

Great. Yeah. So what's been up? Barger,

Host 2     02:27

So we've been testing these new LEDs for spooky Pinball for doing basically serial lights, or RGB lights to red, green blue. And so instead of doing old school matrix slap lights, where you strobe the column, and then you activate the row, and you can light up, you know, eight by eight array. Or just like the old school way of doing pinball lights. We've been experimenting with these the WS 21 chip to try to see realize and limit how much wiring because if you ever opened up a panel machine, it's like, just wires, gobs away. Yeah. And so we're trying to simplify that by just having, you know, one little tiny ribbon cable for all the lights.

Host 3     03:18

One that like spans all the lights. Yeah, in one continuous? Yeah. And

Host 2     03:22

So we been working on these several, several iterations of boards, trying to get the price down and make it easy to install and make the graph to make sure you know, the reliability is high. Right? You don't want one because basically, if one goes out everything else down the stream dies.

Host 3     03:39

Well, right. Yeah. Yeah, if the communication can't make it,

Host 2     03:42

You can't make it online. And so we finally got it down to where the price for one of these modules in quantity is like the same price as a regular bulb and that sockets.

Host 3     03:55

Okay, so it's a it's a one to one, it's a well, yeah, it's one one swap.

Host 2     04:00

And it's actually easier to wire. Because what we did is when we designed the panel for these is we connected the boards together. And then only v scored on one side. So we didn't cut the trace between the boards. Yeah, yeah, I got you. And so we can have like, eight of them in a row. And so we'll only have to connect the cable on one side. Then we have eight LEDs in a row and then connect the cable again.

Host 3     04:27

So so you're trying to do parallel testing. No, no, this is this is in the game. Oh, in the game. Yeah. So Oh, okay. So you can just break out in a row. Yeah. So

Host 2     04:35

Because a lot of times a pinball machines you'll have like four or five lights in a row. Yeah. And they have a common spacing. And so we use that spacing in the panel

Host 3     04:45

Where they have common spacing across machine to machine. Yeah, I didn't know that. What is that? An inch or so?

Host 2     04:50

Um, it depends on the manufacturer. Okay, but for spooky it's like an inch in nine sixteenths or some weird number like okay,

Host 3     05:00

So it's not a super clean number. No, no, no, but it's a number

Host 2     05:03

Where like we can adhere to it in our designs.

Host 3     05:06

And so it's really convenient. So you just break off however many neat.

Host 2     05:09

Yeah. So well, you can't really break it off because only one side to be scored. So if you try to break it your pull the trace now, okay, so we did some experiments with actually lasering the FR for? Yeah, and bam, it like, I think it's a 40 watt laser goes right through.

Host 3     05:25

It just slices it clean. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it's

Host 2     05:28

Pretty cool. I post some pictures of my friend. Ben's been doing all the testing for it. I've been up in Benton, Wisconsin, so I'll put some pictures of the modules working and have it been lasered? It's really cool. Nice. He said it's like the brightest like fire he's ever seen in his when it hits copper. I don't know if he says it's all the time.

Host 3     05:50

Huh? Fr force just burning like mad. Yeah, it makes it really white. So spooky is gonna have a laser on site that they have on all this? Yep. Oh, that's cool.

Host 2     05:58

Yeah. And so the LED, we're using a CRI LED. That's part number C, LP six c dash f KB. There's also a lot more numbers after that, which denote like the bin. Because a lot of times these LEDs go into like TVs and stuff. And you want one bin? So they all look the same? Yeah. But we don't care about the bin. We just care about the family of LED.

Host 3     06:25

Yeah, I'm sure pinball players are not going to care to the hue of this

Host 2     06:31

LED is slightly off in the green spectrum, right, as the as it's

Host 3     06:35

Screaming at you and flashing all over the place. You're not gonna notice anything.

Host 2     06:39

Yeah. And then the WS 2001 chip, which we're using for the PWM and CO communication, that's a really old school mic LED driver made by wold semiconductor. They're everywhere. You can buy him now. Like, I think like nine cents or something like that. Wow. And yeah, they're really inexpensive. And you can find them pretty easy. You know, the whole thing draws 60 milliamps when you turn it on the LED all the way full on, but the LED burns 60 of that. And then the chip only burns eight.

Host 3     07:10

So are you pumping power through the ribbon cable also? Oh, yeah. So the first LED in line has to take all of the downstream current

Host 2     07:21

Oh, yeah, it we're, we're making it so that you can do 64 in series. So the first length of wire has to handle about 4.4 amps. And then by the end, it's only 68 milliamps. Right.

Host 3     07:33

Right. And so are you controlling that in software? Making sure you never have too many on? No. Okay. Just let it rip. We have

Host 2     07:40

The conductors we're using can help that can handle it. Yeah, that's awesome.

Host 3     07:44

Yeah, that's, that's a hell of a lot of juice flowing through there just for lights.

Host 1     07:48

And that's Simon. Yeah, not even half of it.

Host 3     07:52

How many? How many lights go into a typical one?

Host 2     07:55

Around 100. Okay. Yeah. So you have about, you know, old school incandescent was even more.

Host 3     08:03

Well, yeah, but but they had dedicated lines, right?

Host 2     08:06

No, they were. They were serious. They were matrixed. Well, so you're running them at eighth duty cycle.

Host 3     08:12

Oh, okay. But these are not. These are these are individualized. Yeah,

Host 2     08:16

That's cool. Well, the PWM does well, but yeah, sure, sure. But full blast. Yeah, full blast. So that's cool. I'll post pictures for that. I'm finally finishing up the EFM eight article series that I like, started last October. Um, I got the bases. Just we didn't have time since we moved the shop. Basically. Last October is when we moved. Yeah. And so got the most of the preliminary testing, code written all that stuff. Everything's tested working. That's got to write it now. Which is the easy part. Yeah. So they'll probably come out next early next week. Nice. And yeah, that will be it for me. Cool. So Steven, yeah. Any synth stuff? A little

Host 3     09:05

Bit? Not, not as much as the previous weeks. And the reason is, last week, we were talking about, you know, getting the filter completed. And I talked about the issues with one of the chips that I had, where I you had to have the right chip, but I had the wrong internal package, the wrong configuration of transistors. So I got the new ones in, and I put them on the board. And it works but doesn't work says in I'm checking my DC voltages on it. And that's all running fine. I'm getting values that I would expect to get, but I'm not getting any ACO. So something's not biased. Just right. And, and the thing I've kind of painted myself into a corner right now, because I've been slowly adding functionality, you know, bringing different sections on board. Right now. Everything is just a giant rat's nest on the board. So it's actually really difficult to probe and figure out what's not working. And it's just been such a giant pain in the ass to get it working, that I'm actually thinking I'm just going to rip out a piece of vero board. stripboard Yeah, and just build an off board filter, build the exact same thing, but off of this, just because I need I need more room. I did, I did the whole filter surface mount. And it's yeah, it's just a pain in the ass with everything in the way right now. So yeah, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna kind of start from scratch on the on the filter, I shouldn't say scratch, I already have a layout, I just need to slap some parts on the board. So I'm going to do that. And another driving factor for that was the envelopes. Well, the final version, I want to have two envelopes in it, such that you can control the amp and the filter at differently separately. And the the envelope that I have on the board right now works, it does exactly what I asked it to. I just don't like it that much. It's it's just too sensitive. And well, it's too sensitive in some ways, and not sensitive enough and others. And so there's a much better design that I that I found. And I'm going to kind of modify that and put those to put the, you know, there.

Host 1     11:12

Put the Steven touch on it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So this is this is, you know,

Host 3     11:16

When you when it comes to this kind of circuitry, it's one of those things where you can get it fully functioning and just like yeah, I don't like it. It doesn't sound good. Doesn't work the way I make sound,

Host 2     11:23

Which is what then it sounds good or not is subjective.

Host 3     11:28

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So because I was gonna do the the envelopes on various board already. I was like, I'll just do the filter also. Because it you know, once you once you set up all your equipment to build all that crap it it just goes real quick. So and I think right now, I probably have everything I need on my kitchen counter right now to build everything. So it's like, okay, I'll just do it that way.

Host 1     11:51

I mean, the lead solder? Oh, yeah. Oh,

Host 3     11:54

Actually, it's the lead solder you gave me. The old Kester stuff. Yeah.

Host 2     11:59

You don't come in on Monday just like tweaking.

Host 3     12:03

That's right, lead poisoning.

Host 2     12:05

So we actually had a listener email in and ask a question about the synth. Yeah. Yeah. And he says, although I'm curious why you specify a voltage to define a frequency, this is your VCO, I guess, yeah. Then using a clock at a desired frequency, basically using a microcontroller to spit out the frequency. So why did you do it that way? Okay.

Host 3     12:27

Yeah. Okay. The reasoning behind it was, the original intent with this design was to create something that acts like a traditional analog synthesizer, yet uses a microcontroller. So the control scheme behind an original analog synthesizer is as good as a control voltage scheme where you just put a DC voltage in and modify it based off of what you want it to be. And, and so I wanted to just keep all of that. And in effect, what I wanted is that somebody who was going to be playing this wouldn't know that it's, it has digital stuff in the background, controlling it. So what I'm doing is absolutely ridiculous. And if I want to do make it, you know, to be a standalone device that didn't play by those rules, I would never do it this way. I just wanted it effectively to be just like an analog synth, but have the the kind of frequency stability that I wanted. And originally, I had everything running in a microcontroller. But 16 megahertz on an on a Arduino wasn't enough to pump out the correct waves, I, in other words, a single bit change was way too far of a frequency shift. And it had terrible tuning stability. And you just heard all kinds of extra crap that I didn't want. That's why I ended up going with the DDS chip the 28 bit frequency control chip, because then I can just bang on a frequency. And so yeah, no, it's really ridiculous. You wouldn't normally design a newer product or a new device to work this way. I just wanted to emulate an old sense. So that's the whole reasoning why. But the answer, to answer your question directly, you are absolutely right. I could do this all on a microcontroller. It would be a lot cheaper, it would be a lot easier, smaller, faster, all of those things. But once again, it's subjective, you know?

Host 2     14:29

Yeah. You know, I was thinking, what if? Because you can do everything in like the main loop? And like, on a microcontroller? Yeah. Well, what if you made it more? What if you use a parallax propeller? So you have eight cores, and you put all your stuff? Like you put like the you emulated? VCO in one spot, the envelope and another core?

Host 3     14:55

Oh, and then you just combine them all in another court? Yeah, yeah, you could, you could do Then you'd probably have to have really efficient code. Yeah. Yeah.

Host 2     15:06

Because then you can basically emulate an analog synth in the digital code. Lease how it set up?

Host 3     15:15

I'm sure it's I'm sure it's possible, you'd have to have a ton of ADD is reading in all your different pot values, though.

Host 1     15:23

No, no, you Oh, okay. Acid.

Host 3     15:27

Yeah, each, each module has a handful of controls, you'd have to read all of those and just

Host 2     15:31

Get like four I squared C ADCs. That have eight channels each.

Host 3     15:35

Yeah, right. Yeah. And then have each core like listening? Or would you have the main loop listened to probably have

Host 2     15:41

One core that's running the ADCs? And then you throw the values into mailboxes into main ram. Right? And then and then. Yeah, and then when a and like, let's say, the VCO. So it gets a voltage in that, it doesn't get a voltage, and it actually just looks at the mailbox value and goes, that's what my voltage is right, then does it stuff and says, here's the frequency throws it back out into the main code, or main ram?

Host 3     16:11

Well, and the thing is, if you think about it, the it's not really creating any kind of difficult waveforms. No, I mean, we're talking about a square square wave is just high low, a sawtooth wave is just x, you know, y is equal to x. And then, you know, the more difficult one might be a triangle wave is just the absolute value. And a sine wave might be the most computationally difficult to do we just do a sine wave table. Right? Right. In fact, for a lot of, of lower end sense out there, that's all they do. They just have a ram lookup table. And it just reads when you read in whatever frequency you want to play, that just speeds up or slows down how fast it's accessing the table. That's, it really boils down to that. And in fact, there's a ton of Arduino since that, that do that currently. But they they just kind of have that. I don't know, I don't want to get all goofy here. But they have that kind of sound. You know, that really leads to I don't know, the more digital, whatever that is. I don't know I don't know how to quantify it. I love that sound like the Sruthi by Mutable Instruments. Go take a listen to that. I don't know exactly how to pronounce sh ru T, I think. But yeah, go listen to that. It's a it's an Arduino controlled synth that does wave table lookups with some fancy filtering on there. It sounds incredible. But it sounds like that, you know? So.

Host 2     17:44

Me. So we'll go on to the pow Pick of the Week. Yep. So we've got two picks of the week. Okay. So we have the P D, buddy. And then the internet of fidget spinners. Oh, nice. So the PD buddy sync is a USB power delivery for everybody. We always like USB type C on the show. Yep. So this Clayton Hobbs basically developed a it's it's kind of hard to explain. It's not a power supply. We got Stevens got a fidget spinner. Sorry.

Host 3     18:25

Yeah, no, Iris. I reserve our marketing manager here. She's got a fidget spinner. And she just gave it to me. So I'm getting prepped for

Host 2     18:34

The next pow. Yeah, so it's not a power supply. But it's a thing you plug into a USB type C, you know, power delivery power supply. Yeah. And you can say, hey, I want five volts at three amps. And then the power supply gives it to you. So it's like the negotiator. Oh, that's cool. Between whatever your devices and the USB power delivery. Power supply. Cool. All type see all types. See.

Host 3     19:03

What's the max? It can do? 100 Watts, no lie. Yeah. That's cool. I don't want a good application. Exactly. To see it.

Host 2     19:12

I haven't seen a good application yet for that thing. Because 100

Host 3     19:15

Watts is nothing to you know, shake a leg. Yeah, that's it. That's a lot of power. 20 volts at five amps. Yeah, you can you can do a lot with 100 watts. I want to see that. Okay.

Host 1     19:28

Once you do the application note.

Host 3     19:33

I'm trying to think like what Yeah, no, I mean, now I'm thinking like, what would I even do with 100 Watts use so much power

Host 2     19:38

USB type C soldering iron?

Host 3     19:42

It's not a bad idea. What are the what are the the power of the ions we use? They're more like 300 Watt, right?

Host 2     19:49

No, 60 day do you want? No. Yeah.

Host 3     19:53

The base is way more than that. No,

Host 2     19:55

Actually, I think stumbled tronics that we use are 50 wanders.

Host 3     19:58

I thought I thought it was higher power such that it could ramp up temperature quickly. No, no, it attains a temperature at 60 watts. No, it's

Host 2     20:07

50. The reason why they heat up so fast is they use that they like met cows, they use curry tech. Right which is actually they vibrate it with a frequency that heated up, right? Instead of just a fat resistor.

Host 3     20:21

Yeah, just just dumping juice into it. So works fundamentally like an old like an old radio shack banger? Yeah, I did. That was that was the first soldering iron I got was the little part. Where it was like a $3. One. Hmm. Fire Stick that people call Yep. Oh, Radio Shack fire stick. Yeah, it was garbage, absolute garbage

Host 2     20:42

And tips bent really easily on them. It been

Host 3     20:43

It it it did everything wrong. You know, it was that was one of those things where I remember getting into electronics I was trying to. I was teaching myself how to solder because nobody in my family or friends knew how to do it. And I was trying to get it done. And I realized now that if I had a better iron, it would have been so much easier. I would have learned a whole lot faster. Because I screwed up a ton of projects just because I couldn't solder with that piece of crap.

Host 2     21:11

Actually built a lot of stuff for that. firestick really? Yeah, actually got pretty good with it. And the first Iron I got after that was a Weller WP 30. Yeah. Which is like Wellers fire stick. Nothing was awesome. I actually still have it, was it? Yeah, yeah, I should bring that in. I love that iron.

Host 3     21:29

I think I think I've told you this story before, maybe I haven't. But the the one of the first projects I was doing, I set up a table in my parents living room. And I was I was building around the table out there. And I didn't have a stand for the soldering iron. So I went outside and I got a brick, because I had holes in the side of it. So stick it in. So I just stuck it in the brick. I remember I was working on my board and I set the iron down. And because it had those fairly short cords that was kind of almost taut against the wall and the iron spun around. And I didn't know it spun around and I was looking at the board and I go to grab it and I just just grabbed the hot just lately and just burned the living hell out of my hand. I had a huge like stripe across my hand have blisters. Yeah. So I actually did that was the first time I really burned myself. It's like I did something similar

Host 2     22:15

Except mine was the iron was on a stand on my bench. And I went to go reach over to get the computer mouse. And I rested my wrist on it. Yeah. And I did the same thing. I had like a three inch band. That was a half inch wide. Oh, yeah. Then the blister was like probably three quarters inch tall. Oh, yeah, it was

Host 3     22:36

Huge. And those are those are third degree burns those those go right in 700 degrees. Yeah,

Host 2     22:43

I think I basically the rest of the week, I had my wrist just sitting in a bowl of ice water.

Host 3     22:48

It hurts so bad. And I did it to my right hand and I'm right handed to Yeah, that was. That was not fun,

Host 2     22:54

Though. fidget spinners. Yeah. Yay. Stop talking about meaning ourselves. We were talking

Host 3     23:01

About fidgets spinners earlier, because I brought this over into the engineering department. And we were talking about like, why? Like,

Host 2     23:11

What I don't get in the best thing though. He's like, why? And he's sitting there just spinning it.

Host 3     23:16

No, I'm sliding out like why? Like, it is it is absolutely mesmerizing. It really is. It's like, but I still don't get it. You know, but whatever.

Host 1     23:28

It's some. Like, here you have primal thing in your brain is like, oh,

Host 3     23:34

Must spin spin. Yeah. And we were talking about fidget spinner classic, which was just twiddling a pen and we did back in school.

Host 2     23:43

Yeah. So this guy, Matt. He basically made an IoT fidget spinner. Oh, yeah. I saw this. Yeah. Has Has Wi Fi has an accelerometer LEDs is actually has the its POV but that's not it's not on point of view. It's persistence of vision. So you can put like graphics on it. Oh, LEDs, so you can make like Pac Man and stuff. Oh, that's kind of neat. Yeah, yeah. So go check out that project.

Host 3     24:13

I am probably going to fidget spin for the rest of the buttons will go

Host 2     24:17

On to the RFO while you keep doing that then. So we have three our photos this week. The first one is world's heaviest weight. I think the website

Host 3     24:29

Veritasium. Yeah, that's actually

Host 2     24:31

The YouTube channel right. So the second one is paratek wins place and most advanced gaming mouse found on electronics weekly. That's a cool one. And then the LG Display quality assurance report, which I found in my box for my new monitor. Cool. Okay, so the world's heaviest weight. This is a really cool video that basically is like nerd engineering central Ultimate of like, how do you calibrate ginormous force transducers like, like, let's say the rocket engine on the Saturn five the f1 engine, it produces like 33 million Newton's of force. How do you measure that? Oh, how

Host 3     25:15

Do you know that? Yeah. How

Host 2     25:16

Do you know that? Yeah, so they this is basically a ginormous calibrated weight. Yep. That weighs 1 million pounds. Yes. And isn't it? No, I think it's more than that. It was.

Host 3     25:28

No, it's 1 million pounds. And 1 million pounds plus or minus 100. Some odd pounds. Right? Yeah. And the the tolerance is point. Oh, 5% on a million pounds. So it's like plus or minus 40 pounds or something like that. I don't remember exactly what it is. But yeah.

Host 2     25:45

And they basically they start out with the the kilogram, the weight standard kilogram that they have. I think it's like number. I think we use in the United States number 20. Or number 22? Yes, they made like 30 of them. Yep. So that's they use that. And then they basically just keep going up and measuring. And calibrating bigger and bigger, bigger weights until you get to the million pound weights.

Host 3     26:14

Yeah. Which it's it's made up of individual plates that are 50,000 pounds each. Yes. So they have it they have it in a configuration such that you can lift one plate at a time. Yeah. Whereas if you keep pulling up, it'll just add 50,000 pounds every single time. 50,000 pounds plus a little tiny bit. Yeah.

Host 2     26:36

And they also go into like the fact that this weight is so big, they actually have to account for the displacement, the buoyancy displacement of air around it.

Host 3     26:49

Yeah. Because it displaces about 120 pounds of air of air. So they had to calibrate that into a million pounds. Yeah.

Host 2     26:56

And then like, you know, the local gravity, they had to actually measure that. Yep. And all that crazy stuff. And you actually had an interesting question is, if the moon was overhead with the effect, it's yet

Host 3     27:09

What would the pole of the moon have a, an effect on the weight of? Yeah, the whole million pounds?

Host 2     27:15

Because I know what like, you know, for humans, and most stuff that you interact with, it doesn't matter. It's so minuscule. But on something that big. I wonder what the

Host 3     27:27

Right and all the things it's measuring, all of those things really matter. So do you take that into account when doing the measurement? Or does the moon poll equally on everything such that it zeroes out? I don't know the answer to that. No. It'd be an interesting one for Star grams. Oh, my gosh, yeah. A physics one. So he Veritasium has a bunch of cool videos on there. They have another one. That's great. It's on the world around us object. Yes. Which is redefining what a kilogram is? Yes. And they the there's hopes, I think, did it happen? I can't remember when it was supposed to go through but but the hopes are to redefine what a kilogram is by making it into a sphere of known radius of pure silicone.

Host 2     28:14

Yeah. And we actually did. It was one of the podcast episodes, we talked about that. Yeah.

Host 3     28:21

So go check out both those videos. Because it's funny. They made this million pound weight based off of the kilogram, and then they're redefining the kilogram, even though it shouldn't change. Their redefine shouldn't

Host 1     28:31

Change. Yeah, much change, though.

Host 3     28:34

It should not.

Host 2     28:37

Okay, so the second RFO is paratek wins place in most advanced gaming mouse. So paratek makes sensors. They didn't make this mouse but they make the sensor. So the claim to fame for the swift point z mouse, basically is it can tell how hard you press the buttons on it. That's cool. Yeah. And it uses a basic, a little tiny force sensor that paratek makes. And that sensors the SP 210 sensor, which uses a loss commoners dubbed quantum tunneling composites Hmm, that the company actually says that.

Host 3     29:17

That's some marketing link. Oh, yeah, that's serious.

Host 2     29:22

Quantum tunneling proposals, that will be our code word.

Host 3     29:25

Oh, geez. You picked like the I guess we we can accept Qt C's. Yeah, cute, etc, etc. Okay, that's a little bit easier.

Host 2     29:36

So I'll have the datasheet for the the sensors. It looks like you can actually buy them from the company. So you have quantum tunneling composites in your mouse. I wonder if it makes your headshot better.

Host 3     29:48

I mean, is that something that games are gonna have access to? So it

Host 2     29:51

Sounds a lot like we're on modern consoles. Now. They actually can tell how hard you press buttons. Oh, really? Yeah, I think the first one that did that was the PlayStation two. It could have it had

Host 3     30:06

Density.

Host 2     30:07

Well, it wasn't lost. He just knew it. Instead of saying it was a on or off, it could measure the resistance because it's a it's a carbon pad, pressing into another carbon pad. And given the resistance, the lower the resistance, the harder you're pressing it. Yeah, I mean, so if you lightly tap the button, like in a football game, you would lob the ball. Or if you hit the button hard, you would, you know, do a Hail Mary. No, you would, you'd you'd bullet it.

Host 3     30:35

Oh, I gotcha. I gotcha. Yeah, I could, I could see it for like an a first person shooter using it for a melee attack. If you want to do like, like melee attacks,

Host 2     30:45

Obviously in like, context control and stuff like that. Or, or throwing things on like a grenade and the first person shooter, just lightly tap it, you kind of roll it. Or if you hit it hard, you chunk it as hard as you can. That's cool. Yeah. Paul mm is if the problem with doing that is in video games and consoles, you have one controller, so you can program that into your game, because you know if one's gonna have that controller, yep. How many people who's gonna buy a $300? Mouse

Host 3     31:17

Is 300 bucks. Oh, geez. Yeah, that's rough. Yeah, but okay. So it has an accelerometer and a gyroscope in it. Yep. Why? More force? More

Host 2     31:29

Things that can do? Yeah, cool. I wonder if it would be if the accelerometer and gyroscope would be accurate enough to actually use it as the mouse moving around, instead of having an optical sensor?

Host 3     31:40

I'm probably not, I'm guessing no, but maybe that seems like it would be really hard to measure accurately to that level. Yeah, especially for small movements. And the fact that like, a lot of times these, these mice are used as like, super sensitive for Twitch gaming.

Host 2     31:59

So anyways, get the Swift point z mouse, if you want to spend 300 Well, not that and, you know, maybe maybe up your game and video games. Maybe you can, you know, headshot better.

Host 3     32:17

So you got a quality assurance report. Yeah, it's

Host 2     32:21

Really weird. Um, so I just bought a brand new 4k monitor for home to two of them. Yeah. And open the box. And the first thing on top was the LG Display quality assurance report. I've never seen one of these for consumer device, which you actually have a new one, right? Yeah. And it's got the serial number. And I actually checked, it's the serial number that's on the monitor. Oh, configure different so they they actually read look at the the what was printed on it's definitely printed from a different printer. Okay, so it's probably they print out a ton of these reports. And then they put the monitor data in later.

Host 3     33:03

Oh, yeah, it's clear that the serial number is a lot darker than everything else. Yeah,

Host 2     33:06

And especially the graph stooks actually has three graphs showing the data of the test report of the monitor.

Host 3     33:15

That's And these weren't like, super expensive.

Host 2     33:18

No, these were like the cheapest 4k monitors you can buy. That's neat. But yeah, it's got gamma color temperature and delta E nine for which I don't know. Oh, it actually has descriptions of what they are. Oh, yeah, please enlighten us. So delta E represents the uniform different difference of two colors over grayscale.

Host 3     33:38

Oh, okay. Yeah. It looks good, right?

Host 1     33:41

Yeah, they look pretty good.

Host 3     33:43

What's the look? Good factor 810 Eight. Okay, cool. For 300 bucks. That's not bad.

Host 2     33:50

Yeah, it's pretty good and actually has test equipment which see a 210 Whatever that is, if someone knows email in what a ca 210 test equipment for monitors or you should frame

Host 3     34:01

That and put it up on the wall behind them.

Host 2     34:07

Notice the result may change depending on test equipment, and system environments.

Host 3     34:13

Wait wait wait is that just like a notice that just says this could all be bullshit? Yeah, basically. This means absolutely nothing. Yeah, that is great.

Host 2     34:25

And I guess that will wrap up this episode. Yep. Somebody to have the macro fab engineering podcast. We're your host Sparky Dolman and Steven Craig. Later everyone. Take it easy.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai