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RSS Feed: Link
Twitter: @MacroFab
Runtime: (00:32:56)
Hosts:
Parker Dillmann
Stephen Kraig
Guest:
N/A
Podcast Notes
- Episode 100 is coming up! It’ll be a Q&A session – so send in your questions to podcast@macrofab.com
- 2nd Annual Star Wars Xmas Special Engineering Podcast. Check out the video from last year!
- Parker
- Built a mounting surface for the Jeep Electronics
- Stephen
- Failure of the Science Museum Project
- Was expecting soft foam at the bottom of the “well” to move the cones of the drill bit
- Hard plastic was installed instead
- Coupling bent up that connects the rotational shaft to the large nema 34 stepper
- Safety first, equal amounts of time spent on safety as engineering the rest of the project
- Failure of the Science Museum Project
- Pick Of the Week (POW)
- How to reduce Arduino Uno power usage by 95% – Deferred Procrastination
- Replace the linear regulator with a DC-DC converter
- Adjust the USB-to-Serial circuit so it’s only powered from the USB port
- Cut out (or desolder) the always-on LED’s on the board
- Use the processor sleep mode.
- Before: 53mA After: 2.5mA
- DC -DC convertor used was a Traco TSRN-1 for $6.07
- How to reduce Arduino Uno power usage by 95% – Deferred Procrastination
- Rapid Fire Opinion (RFO)
- Internet of Toilet Paper Holder – HackADay
- Revolutionized entire toilet paper supply management life cycle
- Tracks usage statistics – Manage wiping data and share on social media
- Instructables to make your own!
- Man is about to launch himself in his homemade rocket to prove the Earth is flat – The Washington Post
- Self-taught rocket builder Mike Hughes – 61 yr old limo driver
- Holds record for biggest limo jump
- Plans to launch himself 1,800 feet high
- U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) “told me they would not allow me to do the event … at least not at that location,” Will have to reschedule the launch
- Not “atmosphere” it’s “atmosflat”
- $20,000 rocket had a fancy coat of Rust-Oleum paint and “RESEARCH FLAT EARTH” inscribed on the side
- Internet of Toilet Paper Holder – HackADay
- Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes!

Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
About The Hosts
Parker Dillmann is MacroFab's Co-Founder, and Lead ECE with backgrounds in Embedded System Design, and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. He also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas.
Stephen Kraig began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.
Podcast Transcript
Host 3 00:11
Hello, and welcome to the macro fab engineering podcast. We are your host, Stephen Craig and Parker Domon. And this is episode 96.
Host 1 00:18
So episode 100 is coming up soon. It'll be a full q&a session for you, our listeners, send in your questions via email, Twitter, etc. Podcasts at Mac fab.com.
Host 3 00:32
Yeah. Any questions you want to ask us? We will feel them on the on the podcast and just go down. We've already been getting some and they're random. And it's fun.
Host 1 00:42
Yeah. And I've actually have not looked at any of them. Iris is recording all of them for us.
Host 3 00:49
I saw I saw one or two. And it was like, Okay, well, that's a question.
Host 1 00:55
And met the definition of a question. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then we'll have the Star Wars Podcast coming up in two weeks.
Host 3 01:08
Yeah, what's the actual release days? Is it 15/15
Host 1 01:11
Is the release is the release. Okay. So we'll just record if we have to just record something early or something and make that work. Yeah. And then next week, we have a guest to be dots.
Host 3 01:24
Yeah, that's right. So OB ducks was the the what is a data aggregator I was using for one of the projects the I spindle I spent? Well, they got in contact with us. And they apparently they heard the podcast with the spindle and they were like, Hey, can we come on and talk about movie Datsun? Like? Yeah, that sounds fun. Yeah.
Host 1 01:44
Pretty good. I think we'll do a pretty good intro to IoT.
Host 3 01:48
Yeah, yeah. It's gonna be more than just their platform. It's going to be IoT, and their platform kind of together. So it'll be fun.
Host 1 01:56
Yeah. Pretty cool. So. So this past week, so last week, since you weren't here, you went to you wanna? That's right. I talked about the pin hack board. Go figure. Yeah, I'm updates about it. I probably won't be talking more about that until I finish it, though. Okay, because it's kind of in that state where all I'm doing now is routing. And so it's like, oh, I lay down eight traces on Saturday. Do you want to hear about what eight traces I was writing? No. So I over the long weekend, instead of routing, the Pentek board actually did some welding on the Jeep. Oh, nice. Because you know, I'm doing the electronics for the jeep. And the big problem with the Jeep is, it's a small vehicle. And so it's really hard to fit things into the vehicle. And so I made a platform basically in the engine bay, that all electronics went out to you just weld it right to the firewall. No, no, no, I built a I got some half inch angle iron cut and built a frame that fits on the fender well. And so the fender was all like, no bumpy and molded to like the tire area. Right. He's these hand
Host 3 03:04
Motions that Parker making. It's perfect. Yeah, absolutely. Just due to the hand motions, I can, I can see what it looks yeah, see
Host 1 03:11
What it looks like. It's not smooth or flat. So it's really hard to mount anything to it. And so I made a basically, I measured out what I wanted to build, cut it out with my chop saw and welded a angle iron platform kind of thing. And then put standoffs and rods down. Like, I take a picture. It's probably worth a million words of me describing something. And then basically bolted. So it's a nice flat platform. I haven't put the aluminum on it yet. But yeah, so I'll be able to mount the waterproof boxes on it. For electronics. Cool. That's what I did. I made electrons church.
Host 3 03:53
Sounds like a good weekend. Yeah. Just not in the electronic. And you made you made a lot of electrons.
Host 1 04:01
Very angry too. So Steven, yeah, we've been working on Oh, yes. The we were talking we were talking about the science museum. I know. We're like, we'll never talk about the science museum again. And then like you bring something up. And like we got talking about that?
Host 3 04:16
Of course, of course. Well, the so the Science Museum, the grand opening of the floor that we put our projects on was this past Monday, actually, a week ago, sorry, yes, this past Monday. And so we actually had some we had two projects go up. And one of the projects unfortunately, had an issue. And it was not working on the opening day. So why not? Why, but Well, the other one worked great. I have no other other 1% other one was perfect. Yeah, no, it's just gonna last for a decade. Yeah. Or a couple more weeks, something like that. I don't know. Regardless, the first one, we had to go back and do some diagnostics because we were just Just get a text and be like, hey, this thing is acting weird and going crazy and getting funky. And we're like, okay, I don't know exactly what these words mean. There's like jittery motion, I don't know, there was a bunch of descriptors that they used for this. So we go there. And we find out that the drill project, which was effectively just a large drill that goes up and down your drill, yeah, it's a real drill with a real, like big monster drill bit at the bottom, the whole point of the project was it would go up like four feet, it would, and then it would come down. And while the drill head is rotating, and it would come down to the bottom and just rotate for about 10 seconds, stop rotating, and then repeat the process. That's the whole point of this project. It's not even like a press button, it just does that. So the the thing that kind of sucks about is we were kind of told that the museum was going to install a nice soft, like foam down at the bottom where the drill head would come down, it would make contact with this soft foam. And as it turned, you would see the try cone bits move spin. Yeah, because that's that's the whole point. And that's really what they're trying to like detail is as a drill bit turns the try cones spin in place. And so we designed this project, with the thought that it would come down and touch this nice soft material. Well, when we got to actually see what happened, the drill was coming down and contacting a really hard plastic that was molded to have like all these grooves and ridges to it. Basically, it's supposed to look like the bottom of a well is supposed to look like Earth effectively. So what ended up happening is our our drill would come down, it would hit this hard plastic, and then just try to go to town on this but actually try to drill it was actually trying to drill it in there. And we never designed this drill to actually drill. So so all that happened in this case was we had a coupling that connects the physical drill to the stepper motor that turns it it's one of those couplings. It's just a compression coupling. But it has that that helical cut in it. Yes. Bring.
Host 1 06:58
Bring bring a union. Yeah. Right.
Host 3 07:01
So that that that coupling completely. It didn't cheer, but it bent. Oh, so II think of taking a slinky. Yeah, let's say spinning, it would put it in both hands and turn each hand a different direction. You know how a spring will open up when it doesn't? That's exactly what we found with one of those.
Host 1 07:20
Yeah, and and the slink Lee slinky is never the same ever again. No,
Host 3 07:24
No, it never is. Once you've bent the snot out of one of those things, it's you never go back. So luckily, it's not a big issue, we just purchased a new coupling, and we're gonna go slap it in there. The good thing is, all of my safety checks in my code, they all caught the issue, they shut down, there was no harm to anything. The museum was was able to identify that there was an issue. But the what so what we've done in the interim is we've actually just turned off the functionality of the drill going up and down. And we jacked up the the drill such that it's not making contact with the hard plastic anymore. And we just have it spinning continuously. So you still get to see it spin. And it's at least has some motion. And it's still spinning on that bad coupling. But, but it's it's really it's not a big issue. And we discussed it with the Science Museum. They're like, hey, we realized that these kinds of things happen. So they're not upset. It's foam in the bottom. Yes, yeah, we're gonna put something softer. So, at the end of the day, we actually ended up making a really shitty drill. Yeah. It's a really professionally made drill bit, but it couldn't even drill through hard plastic. Yeah. But that was never its intent. So
Host 1 08:44
You should just put dirt in it. You know,
Host 3 08:47
We discussed that. Why not just put a little bit of sand in there. Yeah, but but the thing is, the the museum is pretty adamant about they want to see those cones move. And if you just put dirt in it, it might just move the dirt around around. Yeah, so but I think like, you know, like, like a soft, like acoustic foam or something like that. And, and the intent was always that they would replace that once every couple months, or once a year or something like that. It's just a little small, like six inch disc, or more like 1012 inch disk. So it's not a big deal. It's just, you know, yeah, it's funny. It's funny how a little bit of plastic can completely take down entire project. The thing that's like I said, you know, my safety measures tripped in my code, which I like. I like the fact that like it tested the safety measures, and they work
Host 1 09:33
That you spent probably more time putting in safety measures and designing safety measures in your hardware. Oh my gosh, I'm actually designing the stuff
Host 3 09:41
That I was actually discussing that with it with the partner of mine. I guarantee you I spent equally half as much time thinking about is this thing going to blow up is this thing going to just rip itself apart is this thing like every little thing that I tell that that project to do if it goes somewhere have to ask, is it doing it properly? Did it complete that action? You know, everything single thing has an initial check? And a final check to see, are you ready to do this? Did you actually do it? That kind of stuff? You know, just you can the other thing that's sort of the difference between like writing home game code and writing something maybe a little bit more professional, or like, Yes, I could have just told it to do all the actions, but my systems dumb without safety checks, it doesn't know if it actually did anything. And and there's, there's some pretty powerful motors on there. I mean, I this small stepper motor was enough to completely bend a coupling. Yeah, so it's nice to have some safety check. Yeah,
Host 1 10:38
It could be like that movie final destination. And like walk by CVS project in Science Museum, and like the drill, like, pops out and just like bores into your head or something. Yeah,
Host 3 10:49
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or like, you fall down and the drill is coming down towards your head. Oh, it's like but but like, I could slow it down a lot and make it like a really bad James Bond. Yeah, let's say machine. Yeah. Just comes down to mash. It could
Host 1 11:05
Be something like the same could be like, Bond movie, like what you expect me to die goes, No, I expect you to get bored. Oh, hey,
Host 3 11:15
Oh, that was terrible.
Host 1 11:21
Okay, and with that, yeah, we'll go on to the power the power pick of the week to power for a while. But this one popped up. I can't remember where this popped up at Twitter. Maybe. Anyways, this is um, how to reduce your Arduino Uno power usage by 95%. And so I picked this in like, I'm gonna read down the list. And you can be like, dah, dah, dah, dah. But this is actually a really good list for people who are just starting doing their own hardware, and figuring out because like, a lot of times when you do an A Duino uno project, and say you're making a not project but like a product, then a lot of people will, you know, get a project box and stick to Arduino in there. And that's like, rev one of their products. Yep. And the rep two is making an integrated board where they basically just copy the Arduino schematic into their board design, and then do it that way. And so this is like but you really haven't changed anything, you haven't really changed things. This is like stuff that you can do to improve that basic Arduino schematic. And it's stuff like replacing linear regulator with a DC to DC converter. That's actually where a lot of the power savings is comes through. It's like 50% 50 to 60% Right? If you input 12 volts into your Arduino, you're burning a lot of JUCO volts to five volts at seven volts times whatever amperage which is like 50 milliamps so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So seven times point oh five whatever that is. wattage burnt just away just basically more than 50 About 60% of your power is just burned away as heats Yep. Through that regulator. The other one is which I thought was kind of lame but but he had it in there anyways which is cut the trace of the Always On led the power LED that's a good one. I mean, it's good one
Host 3 13:17
On those I spindles I removed the the LEDs from the boards so that it has a power LED on it. And that would drain them so much faster.
Host 1 13:26
Well, I wonder if these would grow faster?
Host 3 13:30
A little a little bit of like nice blue light. Like mood light mood light? Yeah. I'm sure I'm sure that would make them go.
Host 1 13:39
That could be a brew, honestly, you're to hell it's called thing.
Host 3 13:42
Oh, the the experiments experiment is that blue LEDs? Always make them go faster. Yeah, you know that. It actually wouldn't surprise me if there was some kind of weird element where yeast prefer one light and not another but
Host 1 13:57
Or no light. Yeah, it's like mold or batch again, but just like light. Yeah. And then the other one is, or the third one is to convert the ft. Actually on the UNO it's the 80 Mega 80 Mega 16. You Yeah, you few whatever, which is the USB converter. Yep. And to make that USB powered and not powered off the regulator. Okay, so you make it bus powered instead of device power. Those
Host 3 14:26
Are only fires up when you plug in USB. Yeah, that's cool.
Host 1 14:30
Which is a that's a really good one, I think. Yeah. Most of the vices I design are that way too. I bust power my, my USB device or USB bridge chip. And then this one's like, come on, but it's used processor sleep mode. Yeah, yeah. So this gets you from 53 milliamps to 2.5 milliamps. Wow. Which is pretty, pretty good.
Host 3 14:55
To 25 times the saving or 20 times the saving. Yeah, that's pretty good.
Host 1 15:00
Yeah. Oh no. 95% Yeah, but yeah 95% Well, I'm
Host 3 15:04
In terms of current as well. Oh, yeah.
Host 1 15:06
And the DC DC converter he used was the Traco T S R n. That's one which is a kind of like an all in one module.
Host 3 15:18
Like it like one of those like daughter PCB things.
Host 1 15:20
Yeah, it's but it's potted in a it looks. A breakage. Yeah. And you, you pass through hole and you solder in that way. It's not cheap, though. Yeah, it's six bucks and singles. So you won't find these on like, $2. We know that you buy on AliExpress. But I think you can probably actually get a switcher that would work for this design doubt on like, the TI web bench. You can probably get down to a buck or less. Oh, for sure. Yeah.
Host 3 15:51
Yeah. Especially because it's low current. And it's a really common voltage. Yep. You, you probably find and the, the 328 peak and run it. Excuse me. 3.3. Right. Yes. So you could always even go yet? Deeper into Yeah. More inception. Yeah.
Host 1 16:09
The macro. We know that we designed those five or 3.3. That's right. It's just a jumper. You switch around? Yeah. I wonder what would happen if you tried to switch that during its runtime? Probably not good things. I bet you it doesn't like it now probably won't like it.
Host 3 16:24
If I you know, I bet I don't know. But I bet you it would it would still respond? I don't think you would destroy it. But it probably go funky. Yeah, you know, it probably flipped some bit here or there.
Host 1 16:37
I betcha you mess up the phase lock loop. That's probably what you would mess up.
Host 3 16:41
That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz there's something about like, it senses the voltage, and then it spins up the oscillator and things. Yeah, I bet you try that. Yeah, we should, I'll try that.
Host 1 16:51
We'll probably release the smoke. Okay, so on to the RFO. So this is this is probably on par to course with the macro engineer podcast, but it's the inner a toilet paper holder. This is actually a real thing. But the it has an infomercial. Then for commercial, it's fake. You know, it's not a real product. But you can actually build one of these things, and it works. It's a toilet paper holder, you know, just the rod that you put your toilet paper on, that has a accelerometer, and so it knows how many times it rotates. So you can roughly Guess how much you use toilet paper, and then it can report or this is what it does. It revolutionizes the entire toilet paper supply management lifecycle for your bathroom.
Host 3 17:45
Does it link directly with Amazon and place orders when you're low? Actually does No. That's amazing.
Host 1 17:51
So when what the app does, I don't know if the apps real. But what in the infomercial. what the app does is when senses you're low on toilet paper, the app pops up and says What kind of toilet paper you want to buy. That's great while you're on the toilet while you're in Amazon one hour delivers to your place.
Host 3 18:07
Can you but can you put like a what is it like a like a teepee threshold or something like that? Like if I've got three rolls left, then hit me up or if I go one roll left hit me up.
Host 1 18:19
I think it only detects what's on your current
Host 3 18:22
Handle. Okay, yeah.
Host 1 18:25
But yeah, it also tracks uses statistics so it knows how much you're using. It manages wiping data. Oh, gosh. And you can share it on social media.
Host 3 18:36
Sounds like these need to be installed a macro.
Host 1 18:39
That was an eight paper white.
Host 3 18:41
Oh. Well, that's great. So that was actually that's it. There's an Instructables about yes, you can actually build the you can actually build this and the article is found on Hackaday. Yeah, I thought that was it was great. I found it earlier today. They article and immediately I didn't even read the article. I immediately just send it right to Parker because I was like, this is this is met material, right? Yeah. No, it was for gold. Yeah, I actually looked at
Host 1 19:10
The Instructables, it's actually really well put together you actually get the there's actually a toilet paper holder, that it's like one of those talk. Well, those things you get in 90s talkbacks where you can like talk into it and then it would just keep playing that same voice over and over and over again.
Host 3 19:29
Okay. Yeah. Like one of those things.
Host 1 19:33
No, no, it's like a tape recorder but it was on
Host 3 19:35
Top. Yeah, back yet. Oh, Yak back. Oh, yeah. Yak back. That's old school. Yeah,
Host 1 19:39
That's a that's a mid 90s Yeah, kid thing. So you were talking to it and go like, you know, you smell and then you click it once you
Host 3 19:47
Smell but you can modify the voice on it on some of the models
Host 1 19:49
Or some of them. I wasn't that fancy. Oh, you weren't that cool. Yeah, I didn't I just had the regular model.
Host 3 19:54
Did you turn it into a toilet paper to fold? No, no, no.
Host 1 19:57
So it does the same thing. This is what it doesn't say thing where you talk into it anyway. The toilet paper of senses movement it response. It's a joke toilet paper holder. Okay. In quotes joke, okay. But he used that as the shell because it's a hollow plastic shell. He got it it got it and so it already house electronics. So he just put his his accelerometer in there. Oh, that's creative. Yeah. It's pretty cool. So the next topic even, like even crazier. Oh, yeah. This is kooky. Yeah, this actually was last week, but actually came out after we recorded last week's episode, but there's an update to it. So okay, whoever that this is man is about to launch himself in his homemade rocket to prove the earth is flat.
Host 3 20:45
Well, he's about to launch himself. And he said he's gonna take pictures.
Host 1 20:49
Yes. Take pictures. And so this is Mike Hughes. And he's a self taught rocket builder. Mm hmm. He's a limo driver.
Host 3 20:57
Nope. Well, let me see. Let me let me look at these. Nope. Okay. You don't have this. Not only is he a limo driver. He holds the record for like the biggest limousine jump. Oh, yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah, he holds the Guinness record. I read the other day for jumping a limousine. So
Host 1 21:14
You know, what's really interesting about this is I didn't know that. Because he's like a modern Evil Queen evil. And so this isn't his rocket is steam powered. Evil Knievel actually flew in a steam powered rocket as well.
Host 3 21:30
Wait, he's hoping to do this on a steam powered rock? Yes, the rocket. What does it just like? pressurize and explode? Yeah,
Host 1 21:37
Out the butt. All that
Host 3 21:38
Crazy. And want to see it
Host 1 21:43
Just as a video where he a couple of years back that he actually launched himself in a short distance. I think it went like a couple football fields.
Host 3 21:52
And didn't die. No, he
Host 1 21:54
Was injured pretty badly. But he lived. He's doing it again though. Okay, so So what exactly is he doing here? So what he wants. So this is the thing. He's a flight he is I'm putting this in quotes to a flat earther. Okay, and so this is the thing is he was looking for so I'm gonna put Baxter on that he was looking for funds. He's an amateur rocket guy who's looking for funds to get his rocket built. And like he did like an Indiegogo and all this and no one gave him any money. And then he said he was a flat earther and one that uses rockets to take pictures of the curvature of the earth as if it existed. And then he got money thrown at him. Really? Yeah. And so. And when you actually have read the interviews, like I started for a couple months plot or sounds pretty legit. I'm like, That's pretty bullshit. So I don't think he's a true Flat Earther Oh, he's using flat Earth
Host 3 22:50
Money. Gotcha. I always think that there would be a lot of flat Earth money.
Host 1 22:56
Apparently, it's our rocket. Yeah. But he's gonna launch 1800 feet up in the air, which is pretty high. I don't know what to record for a steam powered rock.
Host 3 23:06
Wait 1800 feet. It's not high enough to see the curvature of the earth. By the way. It's about say I went skydiving and we were way higher than that. Yeah. Like,
Host 1 23:15
We're still pretty straight.
Host 3 23:16
I if I remember right?
Host 1 23:20
Or you weren't even paying attention? Well,
Host 3 23:22
No. I mean, I I was trying more like we were skydiving outside of Houston. And I was trying to see the ocean. Ah, and you can totally see it. When you're, we jumped from 10,500 Okay. Something like miles up. Yeah, something like that. I don't I don't remember exactly what the height was. It was high. I remember that. Regardless. You can't even see the curvature of the earth until you're much higher than that. So it Yeah, of course it looks flat.
Host 1 23:50
Yeah. So he had to cancel his launch because that you because this is actually thinking his he wanted a rocket launch. His His thing was a rocket launch that has no bearing the US government can't do anything about it, which is why he's doing steam powered. Because you don't need to buy gobs of fuel. It's just water and you just hate the hell out of it up.
Host 3 24:13
Oh my gosh.
Host 1 24:15
So the US Bureau of Land Management told him he can't launch on this land, or the land where he was doing it. So he has to move locations. Okay, yeah. And then,
Host 3 24:25
I mean, does this guy think he's gonna survive like what? I've seen a picture of this rocket. I don't see the method through which he gets back to Earth. parachute. Oh, he's gonna Yeah, you
Host 1 24:36
Should watch the video. We actually launched himself. Like, I think it was like 800 feet or something like
Host 3 24:41
That. Okay, so he parachuted out. Yeah,
Host 1 24:43
But my favorite comment was he's he's got $20,000 from Flat Earther so far. Yeah. Has a fancy coat of rust oleum paint with research Flat Earth painted on the side
Host 3 24:56
Of it. Only the best, only the best. Oh,
Host 1 25:00
In one thing, I actually started doing a little bit of research on like, what Flat Earthers believe it's because there's different sectors. It's really weird.
Host 3 25:09
Oh, they're not. They're not all like coalesce. No, no one thought no, of course not.
Host 1 25:13
That'd be the me conspiracy. I
Host 3 25:15
Mean, it's not the whole, like we're floating through space on the back of a turtle. Right?
Host 1 25:19
There are some that are similar to that. Okay. But they don't call it an atmosphere. Oh, it's Atmos flat.
Host 3 25:30
Sorry, I have. I'm feeling a little under the weather now. And that is causing me some distress.
Host 1 25:39
Okay, and then. And so, some of them believe that, that around this, whatever shape Earth is, it's a ring of ice. Right? Okay, cuz that, of course, keeps the ocean water in. Okay, yeah. But no one knows what's beyond that?
Host 3 26:00
Well, naturally,
Host 1 26:03
That's great, that was perfect. So that's that. So he cancelled it. I don't know when he's gonna launch again. So we might have to bring it up when he actually launches it and see if he lives in on a you
Host 3 26:21
Know, the thing that I'm most curious about actually, with this whole thing, like screw the whole flat Earth thing. What I want to know is like, every time I've done experiments with like, pressurized water, it doesn't like slowly ramp up. Oh, yeah, like explodes, like the G forces, this guy will will be subjected to when that rocket first starts to move will just liquefy the man, you know.
Host 1 26:45
So the best thing about it is, there's a I was like watching a couple of other videos on YouTube. And he has one where he's testing the rocket engine for the first time. And he pulls the cord and the cord broke. goes really up close to the stick and like, pokes at the valve until it releases all the energy. Hmm. It makes pretty
Host 3 27:07
Legit engineering. Yeah.
Host 1 27:11
I want to do I want to do some math on how much energy would take? How much energy does it take to get up high enough to see the curvature of the earth isn't to get an orbit?
Host 3 27:22
That's, that's gonna this I would think that would be kind of hard to calculate. Because you'd have to quantify, like, at how much curvature would you need to accept that it is curved? That's true. Because, you know,
Host 1 27:34
It's because that's another thing is is, is a lot of people have launched rockets up like Flat Earthers with cameras on it. And people don't. People, people legitly think GoPros have an algorithm so that when it sees the edge of the Earth, it makes it curved.
Host 3 27:53
Well and it masks whatever ice is at the edge, right?
Host 1 27:57
Yeah. Okay, I mean it there's no appeasing these people.
Host 3 28:00
No, no, no, no, yeah. Not even really worth it.
Host 1 28:03
So I think this guy's just doing it just to build his rockets. And so more power to them, but man it is. That was a deep rabbit hole one night. A lot of rum and coke.
Host 3 28:16
You know, I'm what I'm looking at right now. So I went to the Wikipedia page for rocket, because I'm wondering if because this thing and it works entirely upon water. Can it even be classified as a rocket? So it's a rocket is a vehicle that obtains thrust from a rocket engine, rocket engines exhaust is formed entirely from propellant carried within the rocket before use. So is water technically a propellant? So well
Host 1 28:48
Depends on if you cost five pressure, I would say as long as it's scorning energy out one direction.
Host 3 28:55
Well, okay, so if you follow the Wikipedia trail down the line to rocket propellant, it says it's either a high oxygen containing fuel, or a mixture of fuel plus oxidant, whose combustion takes place in a definite and controlled manner. So I guess it's not it's not because it's not combusting. So
Host 1 29:14
What is it then?
Host 3 29:15
A pressure vehicle pressure vehicle? I don't know. Um, it's not that I'm trying to like pin this guy into something. I'm like, does that count as a rocket? I guess not. But I mean, I don't know Wikipedia is probably not necessarily an authority on these things yet.
Host 1 29:27
I like the first one base. A rocket is a vehicle that moves by its main main way of moving is throwing energy or mass. Yeah, it won't be energy. Yes,
Host 3 29:41
Rocket engines work by action and reaction and push rockets forward simply by expelling their exhaust in the opposite direction at high speed and can therefore work in the vacuum of space. So
Host 1 29:51
That would be that definition would be this that would Yeah, that would work
Host 3 29:54
In this case. Yeah.
Host 1 29:55
I want to know how much energy would require I get that kind of on those chicken egg things because it's like, how much energy is required to get to space? And like, Okay, we need that much water, but not much water weighs this much. And so you need that plus your payload, which is the guy. And so how much energy is required to get that up? But you're losing as you go. Not rocket science is hard.
Host 3 30:20
It's a lot of calculus. That sounds like a differential equation right there. Yeah. A really nasty one.
Host 1 30:25
Yeah, I wonder there's got to be like a rocket calculator with like, fuel payload. Yeah, call NASA. And then you can probably figure out like your energy density of the steam and just do a pure, you know, energy calculation on it in and you have to probably factor in some kind of like, loss. Yeah. Thermal loss.
Host 3 30:49
You remember? Well, actually, maybe you didn't? I don't know. I don't know how it worked at UT. You probably because you took all the jet, basically same classes. But there was there was a type of question or problem in calculus where it was like, you have a bucket, and water is coming out in the bottom of the bucket at this rate? Yep. And then you have water coming into the top of the bucket at this rate, but it has a concentration of salt in the water. And then it would you'd have to be like at time t is equal to 10 minutes. What is the concentration of salt water in the bucket? So you've got some water coming out. Now salt water coming in, and then it eventually mixes up there? They sucked. I hated that.
Host 1 31:32
Yeah. Like what if the spigot was like right over the hole? So most of it actually just went straight out. That might be a little too complex. What I would ask for a one hour examination or one hour exam. That's like that probably take you 30 minutes to answer just all by itself. Yeah, by hand. Yeah.
Host 3 31:47
I hated those questions. Yeah, those those suck. They they they really
Host 1 31:50
Suck. Yeah. So I guess we'll wrap up the engineering podcast. Yep. So that yeah, that was the macro fab. That was loud. Y'all don't know we record in the warehouse. Yeah. The warehouses got a bunch of stuff going on. Yeah. So that was the Mac fab engineering podcasts were your host Parker Dolman
Host 3 32:08
And Steven Craig See you later guys. Take it easy
Host 1 32:19
Thank you, yes, you our listener for downloading our show. If you have a cool idea, project or topic that you want Steven and I to discuss, tweet us at macro fab or at Longhorn engineer or at macro engineer or email us at podcast at macro pad comm also check out our Slack channel. If you're not subscribed to the podcast yet, click that subscribe button. That way you get the latest map episode right when it releases and please review us on iTunes. I think only four people have reviewed us if it helps. This helps the show stay visible helps new listeners find us
Transcribed by https://otter.ai