Batman, The King of EDC (Every Day Carry)

Parker Dillmann
Welcome to circuit break from Macrofab, a weekly show about all things engineering, DIY projects, manufacturing, industry news, and bat man's utility belt. We're your hosts, electrical engineers, Parker Dillmann, and Steven Kraig. If you want to discuss this podcast, follow along with the show notes and articles that we're gonna discuss. Head on over to form.macrofab.com. Circuit breaker from Macrofab.

Stephen Kraig
This week, we're exploring one of the most curious pieces of equipment in pop culture history, Batman's utility belt.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So we usually do, like, Star Wars episodes, and we never really do anything else. And this is, like, a superhero one. But Batman is, I guess, there's, like, 2 superheroes that are, like, engineering ish. There's Batman, and then there's Tony Stark, Iron Man.

Stephen Kraig
I'm gonna add one more. I think although I don't even know if they count as a superhero, but beast from x men. He was always, like, their tech dude.

Parker Dillmann
Well, then if you're gonna do tech dude

Stephen Kraig
There's probably a ton more.

Parker Dillmann
Then you could throw in, like, who's the tech person from Ninja Turtles? Wasn't that Donatello? Is it Donatello? I think using tech as part of their powers. Like, technically, Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne don't have any powers besides just having shitloads of money and being smart.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. I think that's one of the most compelling things about Batman, actually. Is the fact that he just gets by by being crafty and smart. In fact, the original Batman was all like detective comics DC, was all about Batman being a detective. He was less of a, like, this superhero villain of the night or whatever.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. That's true. He was just, like, a really damn good detective.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. That's actually if you look at, like, Adam West Batman too. Like, Adam West Batman just looks literally like a normal dude in spandex. Yeah. Yes.

Parker Dillmann
And then modern Batman is, like, hulked out. Yeah. So alright. Utility belts. So we got a little history about utility belts.

Parker Dillmann
Apparently, the utility belt was not even introduced in the first set of comics. It was only it was first series, but it was, like, issue 29. Even way back in July 1939, right before war well, right before what? Was that like the breakout of World War 2?

Stephen Kraig
World War 2 started in 38? 38, if I remember right. It's definitely before America entered the war. Yeah. America was 42, I believe.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. It was in 38?

Stephen Kraig
So that general time frame.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And it contained gas capsules, which is kinda interesting if World War is breaking out and the previous World War was all, like, mustard gas and stuff like that. So it's kind of interesting that it contained gas capsules in my mind.

Stephen Kraig
Was that in the original well, I'm not sure we have it here, but in the original one, was it just a belt of gas caps?

Parker Dillmann
Well, that was how it was originally in it, and then 2 episodes later, it had the batarang in it. And then over time, they added more and more stuff to it. They changed to kinda like the design of it. Tim Burton was, like, the first time they had grappling guns and stuff in it.

Stephen Kraig
Which is like a staple of Batman now.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Staple of Batman nowadays, but Tim Burton was the 1st Batmans to have that in it. I think he was, like, attached to the belt too. Right?

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah. Because he he actually, like, it, like, winds up on the belt.

Parker Dillmann
Was this belt buckle? Yeah. Yeah. It was his belt buckle. I think that fires up, which is kind of like the worst ergonomics ever.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I bet

Stephen Kraig
you it's incredibly uncomfortable too. Yeah. Okay. So so hang on. If you think about it, Batman sort of has 3 superpowers in a way, or the way that they've written Batman ends up becoming 3 superpowers.

Stephen Kraig
The first one is he's really smart. In fact, I think Batman has 5 different degrees, engineering being one of them, but computer science is another, and I don't remember the others, but I believe he has 5 different degrees. His second superpower is just money. He has so much money that it's just not an issue for him. If he needs something or he needs something created, or he needs to grease something, or blah blah blah, he just has that capability.

Stephen Kraig
And, the last superpower is his utility belt. Yeah. The utility belt just contains all the superpowers.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Basically. Yeah. I think, like, modern Batman has stuff in his suit too that makes him stronger, kinda like Tony Stark's Iron Man suit makes him stronger. But, definitely older Batman didn't have that.

Parker Dillmann
Right. And so but anyways, we're talking about the utility belt. So what's in the belt? What is in this yellow belt? So it's interesting that I was doing some research about this, and I was actually asked Jacob who's actually into superheroes at work.

Parker Dillmann
He's in IT. I don't think being in IT means you like superheroes, but I'm just saying that's his job.

Stephen Kraig
Just it just happened to me.

Parker Dillmann
Just just happens to be correlate. And, apparently, in a comic I can't remember what year it was, but it's a more modern comic. Some owl people that he had some name for these this evil group of, like, henchmen, but they're they're owl people, basically. But they break in the Batman's cave, and they, like, go through his utility belt and, like, categorize what's in there, and they get to, like, item, like, 44, and they're, like, we're only 30% the way through this thing.

Stephen Kraig
Oh my god.

Parker Dillmann
So there's over a 120 items in the utility belt, and I think figuring out how you would pack all that stuff together is, like, that could be its own episode of trying to figure out how to, like, manage a 120 items and know exactly where everything is at in your utility belt. And be able

Stephen Kraig
to just recall them immediately in the stress of whatever he's doing.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Exactly. So I picked some items that I wanna talk about that's in his utility belt, but we're not gonna do, like, items that have identical real life examples, like grappling hooks, smoke pellets, grenade. There's like 20 different kinds of grenades in his utility belt. Grenades exist, so we're not gonna talk about them.

Parker Dillmann
So the first one is probably one of the most famous ones, the batarang. And so the batarang is a boomerang shaped like a bat, but it's not like a bat bat. It's like a his symbol bat. Right? But it always comes back to him or, like, it's stuck in things.

Parker Dillmann
Like, he can kinda, like, determine what happens to it. He chooses he chooses what happens to it. Yeah. I think the batarang is like a drone. So it has, like, have you seen those, like, ads or, like, the ball that you throw when it comes back to you?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Parker Dillmann
I don't know if that device is actually real, but that's what the batarang is. The batarang is one of those except it's really sharp and can, like, cut people's heads off, like, in James Bond, the the dude with the hat.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, Oddjob?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Is Oddjob with the hat or was that in Austin Powers?

Stephen Kraig
Well, no. In Austin Powers, that's random task.

Parker Dillmann
Is Ram is and does Ram test throw a shoe?

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. And odd job shows his hat.

Parker Dillmann
Throws his hat. Okay. Got it. But, yeah, that's what it does. It, like well, technically, Batman doesn't no.

Parker Dillmann
That's Spider Man. Spider Man doesn't technically kill anyone.

Stephen Kraig
Batman, his creed, he doesn't kill people.

Parker Dillmann
That's true. Yeah. Okay.

Stephen Kraig
But if you watch the movies, he doesn't kill people, but he, like, severely maims people, and leaves them in situations where they're most likely going to die. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
I think he throws people off roofs and stuff, so

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. But he'll throw them off roofs, but, like, capture them with a grappling hook and leave them hanging upside down, which, you know, you do that for long enough and someone will die.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I mean, that's like Spider Man then. Spider Man does pretty much the same thing. Mhmm. So that's what I think a batarang is.

Parker Dillmann
A batarang is drone technology. It's got some way to maneuver itself. So because I don't think Batman, while he's trained in a lot of martial arts, I don't think he can throw a boomerang perfectly, especially these things, which are, like, clearly not really aerodynamic like a boomerang is.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. And the way I'm sure something like this they're symmetrical in, like, the x axis of a batarang, but in the y axis, they're not. I wouldn't expect these things to fly very well. On top of that, in the movies, like, if he wants to, like, throw it and have one of the wings of the batarang, like, stick into a wall or something like that, it always happens. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
So it's almost like he gets to choose how that works, and I just don't think he's that good at throwing these things.

Parker Dillmann
He could be, though. He could just have a range underneath his Wayne tower when he just throws these all day. Just all day.

Stephen Kraig
There is a scene where he it shows him grinding them by hand. So he manufactures these and sharpens them himself, basically.

Parker Dillmann
I mean, I guess it makes sense. Because could you imagine going to, like, a manufacturer on, like, AliExpress and sending them a drawing of a batarang. I mean, like, hey. I need, like, a 1,000 of these. They're gonna figure out that you're Batman.

Stephen Kraig
I think they actually covered that in one of the movies too, where they were getting his plastic ears for his head cowl. Uh-huh. And Alfred's like, we have to order like 10,000 of these so it doesn't look suspicious that there's 1 guy ordering like 5 of them. And then

Parker Dillmann
and then it shows up on the news everywhere. Right? What show is that from? What movie?

Stephen Kraig
That's the first Batman, the first Christopher Nolan Batman. Dark Knight Rises?

Parker Dillmann
I can't remember the name. So he orders them as like costumes?

Stephen Kraig
Yes. Basically, they they order them as if it was like a Halloween thing and he owns all of them. But it's not suspicious because they order something like 10,000 of them.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So he probably does that. He probably orders a million of these things, like, lasered out and you think he would do that, but instead of grinding it himself. But maybe maybe that's the secret. It's like the grind on the edge is like a certain shape that only he can manufacture.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, and only he can get it. Yeah. Yeah. I could see him, once again, there's with the cash thing, just buying, like, some amazing CNC machine and just basically roughed out the shape, and then he hand does the the bevels on it so they Yeah. Fly just right.

Parker Dillmann
But you think you would just be able to buy a machine that does that part too?

Stephen Kraig
Okay. Wait. Hang on. That's a Tony Stark thing. Batman still has, like, the hand touch on it.

Stephen Kraig
Whereas Tony Stark would be, like, I don't wanna waste my time with this. Design a whole machine to make me this one thing. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. That's true. Do you think Robin is the person that actually runs his CNC machines then? He's just a hired help. Just runs.

Parker Dillmann
Now the bat tracer. Now we do have GPS trackers in real life, but this just gets more into, like, movie tropes, I guess. Because GPS trackers in real life are like the size of a cell phone and a little bit thicker. That's about the size they are. Mainly because battery life and that kind of stuff.

Parker Dillmann
But in Batman, they're sometimes they're round, like, about the size of a quarter, a little bit thicker. Sometimes they're bat shaped.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, of course.

Parker Dillmann
But they always have a red LED on them that blinks. Yep. Yep. And I always think if you wanna track someone and not let them know, you would literally you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't just have a blinking red LED on it.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
I think doesn't he have I think he has one that sticks to the side of stuff, but he, like, shoots it out of a gun and it's got like, I don't know, it's got like some like snot glue that's Sticks on it. Freezes and sticks it on the side. But you're right. Most of the time, it's just this bat shaped thing that as soon as he puts it on there, it starts audibly beeping. That too.

Stephen Kraig
The the beeping.

Parker Dillmann
And but that's that's like in every movie that they have a GPS tracker, it always does that.

Stephen Kraig
They have to notify the viewer of what it is doing.

Parker Dillmann
Without saying I'm putting a GPS tracker on this car, clunked.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. I mean, it's I think it's kind of the same thing where it's like, okay, this mysterious box that has red, green, and I don't know, pick any other color wire hanging out of it, and like 5 7 segment displays on it. That's a bomb. That's a bomb. It's a bomb.

Parker Dillmann
Right? I think the bat tracer existed in, like, the Adam West era too.

Stephen Kraig
And if it did Not over a cellular network.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. No. Not over cellular or GPS, but probably using, like you know, where they use 2 antennas to do a, not a doppler effect, but very similar where you can hone in on a radio beacon. Triangulate? Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Triangle. Well, is it really triangulate? It is triangulation. Triangulate takes 3. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I remember seeing a, picture of a truck driving down the road that they put a huge flat metal sheet on top with I think it was, like, 12 antennas sticking up. And that's what it was for. It was to drive around and look for whatever radio signal you're trying to find. I think the bat tracer is really cool just because the it still can't get away from that movie trope of, like, the beeping sound and the red LED.

Parker Dillmann
Bruce Wayne can make it whatever he wants because he has infinite money. Right? But he's sticking with that movie trope.

Stephen Kraig
Go for it.

Parker Dillmann
Go for it.

Stephen Kraig
Maybe it's just easier on him. He's like, screw it. Whatever.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Maybe he just buys them off the shelf. Maybe old GPS trackers actually beep, and we just They're just

Stephen Kraig
what what's the Apple tracker? The Apple tag or whatever? He just buys those now.

Parker Dillmann
Air tag.

Stephen Kraig
Air tags. Yeah. He just buys those cheaper and easier.

Parker Dillmann
Because those beep too. Do they really? Yeah. They have a couple different tones they beep. Like, if the if the person who owns it hasn't checked in on it in a while, it will start it has a certain chime.

Parker Dillmann
It's it's to prevent you from, like, slipping it into someone's jacket or whatever without them noticing. Alright. Next thing. This one came from Jacob, and it is one of the most ridiculous things. And it's a new thing too.

Parker Dillmann
Well, new ish in terms of Batman because if Batman is from 1939, this is from 2011. In 2011, there was a comic where I don't know the circumstances, but Batman gets turned back into, like, 19 sixties Adam West Batman. Oh, that's great. Okay. And a villain is attacking him.

Parker Dillmann
A female villain is attacking him, and he says, I can't punch a woman. And so he pulls out literally bat female villain repellent. And while spraying the villain, yells bat apologies and runs

Stephen Kraig
away. Oh, that's so good. That's classic. That is a fantastic throwback to the old Adam West Batman because that's he would have absolutely said that.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. The the shark repellent from the Adam West Batman movie, I think that's what the throwback is too, but, I mean Oh, a 100%. It's so Adam West Batman always had a spray or a powder for everything. That was, like, his stick, I guess. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Because that was one that he had, like, a anti blasting blast powder where he could sprinkle it on, like, explosives and it would stop. They wouldn't explode anymore.

Stephen Kraig
I suppose in some way, like, if you had an explosive that was really, really sensitive to the pH of something, and you could just neutralize it with a buffer solution, then there's some validity to that. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. That's exactly what it's like though. There was a container of, like, talcum powder, basically. Oh, was it a no. No.

Parker Dillmann
No. That one was a

Stephen Kraig
Just baking soda.

Parker Dillmann
I think that one was actually like a spray. Looked like a spray paint can, basically.

Stephen Kraig
Okay.

Parker Dillmann
It says powder on on the can, though. Yeah. Instead of, like you wouldn't think a spray paint like, what comes out of spray paint can isn't powder. Because it's it's liquidus. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
That female villain repellent. I actually, I I was racking my brain over this, and I actually asked chat gpt what it thought that was. And only thing it can come up with was some, like, pheromones that made somehow evil people cry or something.

Stephen Kraig
Evil people. I think it's

Parker Dillmann
just like axe body spray.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Like, concentrated axe

Parker Dillmann
body spray. Concentrated axe body spray. Because it only has to only work on female villains, not male villains. Because, otherwise, it would just say bat villain repellent. Right?

Stephen Kraig
Right. Right. Right. No. This is specifically formulated Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
For female villain. And it's bat dash female dash Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
There's dashes in it.

Stephen Kraig
Right. And it's written on the side of the can, of course, beneath the Batman logo. Yes.

Parker Dillmann
Yes. Which we'll get into the Batman logo later in the podcast. I have that in here too. Bat apologies. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Bat I I like I couldn't believe that was real when he when Jacob sent that to me, and I was like, I went and looked it up myself, and I'm like, I can't believe they I could've if it was, like, the eighties or maybe the early nineties, I could totally believe that being a thing. 2011 is when that comic came out.

Stephen Kraig
If you Google Batman female villain repellent, you can see the snippet from the comic. It's chef's kiss for sure.

Parker Dillmann
Mhmm.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. I love that. Axe body spray.

Parker Dillmann
That's a rough one there. I would think the people who own the Batman license would probably wanna take that one back.

Stephen Kraig
I don't know. Maybe they enjoy it like we do.

Parker Dillmann
I can't just believe it. At the time, I couldn't believe that being a thing in 2011. Anyways, next thing, the universal tool. And so what this is is a remote hacking device slash computer that basically it's kinda like the what's the device in Star Trek? The tricorder?

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Tricorder.

Parker Dillmann
It's like a tricorder. And thinking about this, I have one of these. It's called a flipper 0. It's a device that allows you to, like, beam and receive transmissions and modify stuff on the fly, like a hacking device. That's what a flipper 0 is.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. It's not that, you know, Batman had this in, like, the eighties or something.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Okay. So I'm looking at the fandom website right now on this device, the universal pool. And let me just label off a handful of things it has on it. It has an oscilloscope slash vectorscope display on it.

Stephen Kraig
It has broadband HDTV jack, a multiline analyzer, which I whatever that is, CPU breakout box, which basically looks like an expansion port.

Parker Dillmann
So it has a parallel port.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. A parallel port, but it also has an RS 232 logic controller and breakout box and an EPROM reader writer on it.

Parker Dillmann
So It's more than a flipper 0 then.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. It's got it's got a little bit of everything on it.

Parker Dillmann
I like how it has an eprom reader where I guess, nowadays, it would be like an NFC reader writer.

Stephen Kraig
Well, in addition to this, it's still Yeah. Still useful having a e prom reader writer, but it's surprising that the fandom has gone that far to go to in into, like, that level of tech that he has. Like, full on, like, protocols.

Parker Dillmann
I would say nowadays, Batman probably can get away without an e prom writer reader.

Stephen Kraig
I would not mind having one of those universal tools. That would be pretty legit. If you if you walked into your job and they're like, here's your universal tool.

Parker Dillmann
Thank you. That would be pretty cool. Yeah. I think just having, like, an I guess they have portable oscilloscopes now that are basically multimeters with the oscilloscope screen on them.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. But his is not just an oscilloscope. It also has a vector display on it, which I don't know why he would need one of those, but still is pretty cool.

Parker Dillmann
I mean, back then, you had a lot more analog signals. Sure. And so a vector display was pretty important for debugging. But nowadays, I think I've only seen a vector display once, and it was it's an arcade game. I don't think I've actually seen 1.

Stephen Kraig
At my last job, we had a vector display, but it was just there to make cool pictures with music.

Parker Dillmann
I think it's what most people use them nowadays for.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. They're a novelty for sure.

Parker Dillmann
If anyone that's listening knows what you could use a vector display to debug nowadays, let us know in our, community discord. It'd be formed dot macro fab dot com.

Stephen Kraig
I could see a really goofy, like, storyline where, I don't know, he has to, like, analog hack into, like, a door lock, and the vector display is displaying like some strange image and he has to turn potentiometers until it becomes a circle, and when it's finally like a perfect circle, the door unlocks or something like that. That would be pretty cool. And that's like, I don't know. That's 2 waves that he's getting in the right orientation and phase and whatnot.

Parker Dillmann
I like that idea a lot. Alright. Next item, the Sonic Devastator. So we actually have similar device so sonic devastator's, audio device that he has, but it's that's technically not in his utility belts and his gloves, but we're gonna cheat a bit. But it beams sound waves at villains and no goo no good doers.

Parker Dillmann
That's Batman.

Stephen Kraig
Ne ne'er do wells. Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
And it, like, immobilizes them with the sound waves. So we actually have devices like this nowadays on, like, ships and stuff. They call them, like, non lethal deterrent devices.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. They use them for, like, riot control and things like that.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. But I started going down, like, what kinds we have nowadays, and this is very interesting. So we have 3 different kinds, actually. We have sub audible, audible, and high frequency. And they all affect different parts of your body.

Parker Dillmann
So clear like, the audible kind just makes it awful for your your hearing and Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Makes it painful.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. But the problem with the audible kind is you put on hearing protection and you kind of nullify it. So Sure. They don't really use the audible kind too much anymore because it's very easy to defeat. But there's sub audible, which is like Is

Stephen Kraig
that, like, just jiggle your guts or what? It make you feel uncomfortable.

Parker Dillmann
So they figured out there's certain frequencies that actually vibrate your eyeballs and make it impossible for you to see. No. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
That's oh.

Parker Dillmann
I don't know if they've deployed that at all, but there's, like, a story in, like, the it's Sonic. It's the Wikipedia article for a sonic weapon that talks about how that was discovered. It's like 0.7 Hertz and then, like, 4. You have to combine a couple different low frequencies and, like, it will make your, like, eyeball pulse.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, so I bet things just go blurry.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Everything just kinda goes woo woo woo woo. Oh, that's frightening, actually. Yeah. And then on the opposite side, you have high frequency, which can, like, destroy, like, your organs.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah. That that sounds like the real dangerous one. Yeah. I mean, the audible one, if if it's enough, you you can Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Cause hearing damage or whatnot, but the high frequency one, yeah, you can you can jiggle things loose.

Parker Dillmann
Yes. Liquify.

Stephen Kraig
Put enough energy into it. Mhmm. But if this is on his belt or on his wrist or whatever, there's probably not enough energy to cause any kind of permanent damage, which is frankly not what Batman is going for most of the time he's fighting crime.

Parker Dillmann
Crime. Yeah. And in the comics, it's all audible too. Because if you can surprise your assailants, the audible would probably work fine because most people don't walk around, you know, with ear protection on. This one is also really weird.

Parker Dillmann
It's the identity disc.

Stephen Kraig
Okay.

Parker Dillmann
K? So Batman and his utility belt has a little disc about the size of a quarter or half dollar that is blank. But if he pours a specific chemical that he he doesn't say what the chemical is in the comic. This is an older

Stephen Kraig
It it's gotta be bat chemical or show or chemical b or something like that.

Parker Dillmann
Chemical b. But when he pours a special chemical on it, it reveals text who identifies who Batman's real identity is.

Stephen Kraig
Okay.

Parker Dillmann
And what it's for is if he's captured and he's about to die, right, he can pour this liquid on his disc to basically reveal to whoever finds his body or whoever finds the disc that who Batman really is, and so no one can impersonate Batman and cause more harm.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, that's kinda cool.

Parker Dillmann
But the whole thing is he has to have enough time to, like, pour this special liquid on it. It's not like a fail safe where, like, if he does like a, a better way to do it would be like, hey, every day Batman has to go log in to some server. And if he doesn't, it, like, fail trips over, and then it his identity gets broadcasted.

Stephen Kraig
Or it could be connected to his heart rate. And if that stops Yeah. Then, do something.

Parker Dillmann
I think it's like in the comic pain, there's, like, fire behind him. Like he's in like a burning building. That's like about to come down and he's just standing there hunched over this little disc, pouring this liquid vial on this desk. Oh, and then he

Stephen Kraig
goes, I hope this develops. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
And then he says it's also made of espresso, so it won't burn. Oh, man.

Stephen Kraig
Well, okay. I had not heard of that without is is that the old Adam West or not Adam West? The the comp the

Parker Dillmann
old comic? I think that was, like, in the eighties.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, okay.

Parker Dillmann
I'm trying to remember when that one was, but it was it's definitely an older Batman comic. But I I just laughed at the whole idea of, like, he's about to die. And he's like, he's like, hold up before you kill me. I gotta I gotta do this first.

Stephen Kraig
I gotta do a chemical experiment. Yeah. Oh, that's fantastic.

Parker Dillmann
Alright. Last one is lock picking. And I know lock picking is you just get lock picks no matter what, but can you get lock picks that have the Batman logo in the handle?

Stephen Kraig
You're, like, bent into the handle. Right? Yeah. Bent into the handle.

Parker Dillmann
So this got me think because Batman's actually really good at picking locks, but they don't really show that in, like, newer Batman. He just kicks the doors down now. Right. But old Batman could really easily get into locks. And so I propose a question for those listening.

Parker Dillmann
Is the lock picking lawyer who runs a YouTube channel about picking locks, is he Batman? Cause we don't know what lock picking lawyer looks like. We just see his hands, and we've never seen lock picking lawyer, Bruce Wayne, or Batman in the same room together. You never know. Maybe.

Parker Dillmann
Then my lockpicking lawyer, are you Batman?

Stephen Kraig
I do like the idea that his lock picks have to have the logo on them. Oh, yeah. Just so that he knows, like,

Parker Dillmann
I'm Batman. We we have more items. Steven has some items that are in his belt. We we need to get to that topic though of of the logos.

Stephen Kraig
Let me just I got 4 items real quick. Let me blast

Parker Dillmann
through that, and then we'll go on to

Stephen Kraig
the next topic. These 4 items, I chuckle a lot about them. I found this on a website, screenrant.com. They had a list of a list of items in the in in his thing. For one of the items on there was just crayons.

Stephen Kraig
There is actually a comic book where him and Batman and Robin are on top of a train, and for what ever reason, they need to make a sign. And they don't pull out like a Sharpie or like a pen or something like that. In fact, Batman's like, good thing we have crayons, and he, like, just draws a picture to, I don't know, write a sign for somebody. So, yeah, crayons. Apparently, he has lollipops in his utility belt.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, no. There's a time when he like, there was a kid who was crying or whatnot, and he needed to console the kid. And so pulls out a lollipop and gives it to the kid. I don't know. Seems a little bit weird to to me, but that's in there.

Stephen Kraig
Apparently, he also always carries around a Kryptonite ring for that, like, situation that there's just a roaming superman around and he needs to keep him in check.

Parker Dillmann
So well, no. That kryptonite ring, sometimes it's like a chunk of kryptonite just depends on the error of Batman, basically. Yeah. Right. Is it's interesting, especially when, like, the Justice League, like, cartoon and stuff, where I think he actually gives the kryptonite to Superman as, like, a sign of trust.

Stephen Kraig
Yes. Yeah. I think that, in fact, there's an episode oh, I think it's Batman the animated series that came out in the early nineties. There's a whole episode where it shows him writing the logs into the bat computer in the bat cave where he goes through every superhero in the justice league, and he talks about their superpower and how he can defeat their superpower, and he writes like an entire thing about if they go rogue, here's what I do. And it's a pretty cool episode because there's no, like, it's literally just Batman at his computer writing these logs, but it's fascinating because he has all of these reports on these superheroes.

Stephen Kraig
And I think Superman was, yeah, I just have Kryptonite. Like, we're fine. Don't worry about it. Okay. And then there was there was one last item that Screen Rant had, and I love this because they literally categorized this as an item in his utility belt.

Stephen Kraig
It's just cash. He just has money. In fact, one of the pictures they have is just like a wad of cash on a table, and it's like, yep. That's that's a thing.

Parker Dillmann
And I mean, it makes sense.

Stephen Kraig
Totally. Yeah. One of his superpowers.

Parker Dillmann
Because I'll put it this way, if you were in that span spandex doesn't have back pockets for wallets.

Stephen Kraig
Actually, you could make the argument that the cash is more of the universal tool than the universal tool.

Parker Dillmann
So we were joking about this earlier. Batman and his gadgets and everything Batman has, including, like, some of the items that he designs and builds, always have the Batman logo on it. Mhmm. Why? Why do

Stephen Kraig
you think Well, even the different eras, every Batman always has the Batman logo on their stuff, or the item itself is the shape of the logo. Like, they're just so proud of this logo.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. It's do you think he gets stickers made?

Stephen Kraig
I think absolutely, but I think it goes further than that. Stickers are like the lowest level of things. I think I think the like, he spends an unreal amount of time machining metals, getting things printed, getting stickers for sure, like everything has to be like flawless. Actually, what would be really funny is to see the, like, discard pile.

Parker Dillmann
I was about to say of all

Stephen Kraig
of these, like, messed up logos on the ground.

Parker Dillmann
But they're all like a messed up batarang. Yeah. But it's only messed up because, like, the lasering is, like, a millimeter off of, like, his logo.

Stephen Kraig
Yep. Yeah. If it was my bat cave, knowing the way I have my basement, I would have, like, parts of it that are really clean and then parts that are just, like, piles of, like, discarded, like, that's it. Sorry.

Parker Dillmann
Do you think that's what Alfred has to do? Categorize that and put it all away?

Stephen Kraig
Oh, yeah. That that makes sense. Absolutely. Yeah. I wonder if, if Alfred is involved in well, no.

Stephen Kraig
Absolutely. In fact, we were talking mentioning it earlier. Alfred does a lot of the communication, with vendors and things like that.

Parker Dillmann
So Alfred's a butler, but more importantly, Alfred's actually his procurement team.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. His procurement team. Absolutely. Because yeah. I mean, they actually say that because he's, like, communicating with whatever factory in China that they were getting the the bat ears done.

Stephen Kraig
Isn't that funny that that was a must? Like, they had to have that.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Well, just the the fact that's a scene in a movie. I I can totally see that being, like, a scene in, like, one of the cartoon shows or, like, a comic, but it's in one of the big budget movies.

Stephen Kraig
Well, there's a really good reason for it though. I I think the reason they put that there is to make it seem like he wasn't as much of just a toy and the fact that it makes you take Batman a little bit more serious that he's putting that much thought into things, that it's not just like some guy dressing up in a costume. They I mean, they mentioned that a whole bunch of times in the movies where it's like that, you know, I'm I'm just I'm not a guy who fights crime in a costume even though he really is. He put a lot of thought into his perception. And in fact, I think that goes to what we're talking about here.

Stephen Kraig
His perception is the logos got to be everywhere because people have to know the symbol. The symbol matters for Gotham.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I think that's what it comes down to is if you find how many batarangs do you think are just, like, littered across Gotham?

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. It's gotta be a ton. Right? And every single one of those is bespoke. We already said, like, he sat there with a grinder and did every single one of them by hand.

Stephen Kraig
Every single one. Yeah. All the way to the point where the bat signal. I mean the the big the light that they display up in the sky, which funny enough if you think about that, Gotham has to have some of the worst weather out there because it's got to be overcast all the time in order for that light to work. Right?

Stephen Kraig
It's really funny because my wife and I were driving home from something the other night, and, one of the towns around here had 2 spotlights going. And you could easily tell that the spotlights were going, but there's no way on earth that you could tell, like where the beam was ending. I mean it was it was a fairly clear night, it was foggy enough that you could see the lights. And I mentioned that about Batman, I was like the bat signal's really dumb. It is really dumb.

Stephen Kraig
Because if it's a clear night, it makes no sense whatsoever. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. It could literally just be, like, a button and then, like, a siren goes off or, like, they just sit on the radio.

Stephen Kraig
One of the bat trackers could start beeping and blinking. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah. Because if you if you activate the bat light, it signals that, hey, someone knows that someone's doing something bad and wants Batman to show up now, which kinda like ruins the surprise element that Batman always has. Oh, sure. Like, it seems that the villains, like, are always shocked that Batman shows besides the Joker.

Parker Dillmann
The Joker wants Batman to show up, so he always expects Batman. But all the other villains are like, oh, we didn't know Batman would show up.

Stephen Kraig
We didn't see the big bat sign in the sky. Yeah. Exactly. I think it's a mixture of exactly what I just said with the people need to know that Batman is, gosh, what is the phrase they say, the hero they need not the hero to deserve. I probably butchered that, but the logo means something to Gotham.

Stephen Kraig
Mhmm. And it means something to the villains of Gotham. But I also think Batman has an ego that's the size of Gotham. So he's got to have that logo out there. So it's a mixture of the 2.

Parker Dillmann
And that actually gives credit to the bat signal too then. Because, like, oh, there's someone doing evil, and so we're gonna turn on this big old light, and that kinda lets people of Gotham know that Batman's on the prowl.

Stephen Kraig
Which wouldn't you think they've just oh, it's it's 6 PM. Let's turn on the bat signal every night.

Parker Dillmann
Every night? It's just a deterrent.

Stephen Kraig
Right. Right. Right. Which okay. So funny enough, somewhat side story, but in a similar vein, I visited a city back in, my college age where they had something similar to that, where they put these, these blue lights at intersections that were fairly crime ridden intersections, and those blue lights were intended to be deterrents for crime because it was supposed to illuminate the intersection.

Stephen Kraig
But what they ended up becoming were crime amplifiers where people were just like, well just go to the blue light, like that's like, and it was a huge failed experiment by the local police department, but they ended up, you know, letting them be. So it it is kinda funny because it's it's fairly similar to this because the logo itself, does it actually deter crime? It doesn't seem like it does. It just calls Batman. That's all it was.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. That could be what it is. Do you think there's, like, on every corner, like, you know, where in every corner, you have, like, USPS, like, delivery box. Do you think Batman on all his batarangs say if found, please deposit in the bat box?

Stephen Kraig
Bat box? Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Or they can just put it into, like, a mailbox, and it just shows back up at the Batcave. Wayne Manor? Yeah. Well, that'd be too obvious.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, sure. Sure.

Parker Dillmann
Do you think Batman goes to the post office and has, like, a PO box where he can get all his equipment back?

Stephen Kraig
He just opens it up, and it's just filled with batteries.

Parker Dillmann
He's, like,

Stephen Kraig
scooping them into a bag.

Parker Dillmann
In a big old bag.

Stephen Kraig
But but but can you imagine what Ebay would look like if someone found a Batarang, you know, official Batman Batarang. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Official batarang. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
He doesn't really leave a lot though. Batarangs, he does. Yeah. But for the most part, he doesn't leave items No. In places.

Parker Dillmann
Next this is the next segment, I guess, of this podcast is alright. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wrap it up.

Parker Dillmann
What would an electrical engineer have actually, I have a better question. Steven, do you have a utility belt?

Stephen Kraig
I do not, but I think it would be awesome to have a utility belt. And in fact, I went around my office today, and I pulled all the engineers together. I was like, quick off work question. It's like, if you were to create a Batman style utility belt for a double e, what would it look like? And what's funny is so I I created this list with my double e team, but I hadn't seen a handful of the items that Parker had put on on our list that we're reading from right here until not that long before the podcast.

Stephen Kraig
And it's interesting because some of these items are like my engineering team independently came up with some of these items. So I've got a list here that I think would be fun to go through of what would a double e's Batman utility belt look like. So the whole team universally said no matter what, even though it's not directly e e, you still need a grappling hook, and you still need batarangs. Like, they all were just like, yes. That's gotta have that.

Stephen Kraig
And some of the some of the arguments were like, you're sitting at your desk in the lab and you look over and you need, like, a piece of equipment from across the room. You just shoot the grappling hook and pull it in. Right? Like, we don't wanna walk across the lab to get that o scope. And the batarang is there in case somebody in case you get up from your desk and someone goes to steal that scope that you just got.

Stephen Kraig
You could you could stick their hand to the desk with a batarang. So those were 1 to 1, Batman has them, double e needs to have them. So surprisingly, this is where the first one starts that Batman already has. So everyone said handheld o scope, gotta have that. Basically a tricorder, but what it really ends up being is the universal tool.

Stephen Kraig
I didn't know the universal tool literally has an o scope built into it. So handheld o scope for sure and a multimeter with all the standard functions plus a function generator. Those are 3 locations on utility belt. But there is one caveat to that, and this goes a little beyond the utility belt itself. They all plug into the bat cowl, the headpiece, and you just see the scope, or you just see the multimeter, and you can flip between them or do augmented reality.

Stephen Kraig
So you're looking at your board and it just displays the scope over your vision. Oh, that's cool. That would be really cool. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. That would be cool.

Stephen Kraig
Same thing with heat vision. So you could just look at your board and it just displays over your eyes thermal vision. Yeah. Yeah. So that would be freaking yes.

Stephen Kraig
Chef's kiss. One engineer said I have to have 26 gauge solid core wire, and one said 30 gauge stranded wire. So these are for your bodge jobs

Parker Dillmann
Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
That you gotta do. I think having both of those, if you had both of those, you're good to go.

Parker Dillmann
I would say you also need to add at least, like, 18 or 16 gauge.

Stephen Kraig
Something a little thicker.

Parker Dillmann
In case she carries some power. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Heat shrink, black. Has to be black heat shrink. Right?

Parker Dillmann
With Batman logos all

Stephen Kraig
all every 2

Parker Dillmann
issues. Batman logos on it. So screen into it.

Stephen Kraig
Well, I that's I I hope that exists somewhere. There's some heat shrink with the Batman logo on it. That would be yeah. I should have thought about that. That's perfect.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. With the Batman logo. Now, here's one of the more fun ones. Aerosolized Kapton tape, where you could just spray on, whatever tape you need. I think that would be absolutely good.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. That's a that's a really good one.

Stephen Kraig
Let's see here. Oh, magic smoke bombs. So they're smoke bombs, but they have the same smoke that's in ICs in case you're in like a really bad meeting and you need to get away. You just pop a handful of those and run out

Parker Dillmann
of the meeting room. It's just the blue smoke that comes out of ice.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. But it's but it's got that, like, electronic smell to it. The ozone? The ozone smell to it? Yep.

Stephen Kraig
I really do like the the aerosolized Kapton. Yeah. That that's perfect. Yep. Yep.

Stephen Kraig
Yep. So both thermally, both can withstand high temperatures and, high dielectrics.

Parker Dillmann
Oh, there's one thing you're missing in there. Oh, yeah. What's that? Is a, a harness tape. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah. Not electrical tape, harness tape. Because electric tape just gets all gooey.

Stephen Kraig
Well, but it would of course. Once again, it would be electrical tape with, like, the logo every few inches. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Or I bet you Batman, Bruce Wayne, could develop an electrical tape that doesn't get gooey.

Stephen Kraig
Could also see him having, like, zip ties. Oh,

Parker Dillmann
no. Zip ties. No zip ties gotta be in there.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Zip ties, but they have to have something special about them where they're like zip ties the

Parker Dillmann
The head of the zip tie is a bat logo.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, yeah. It's just like 2 wings that come off this.

Parker Dillmann
Two wings on that little part that ratchets.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. I like that. But that might be the one thing where, like, the zip tie is just straight yellow. It it and like the logo is black. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Yellow zepti is a black. Yeah. I think it would be really cool if you came to work, starting a new job, and there you show up to your desk and there's just this yellow belt sitting there, and you see all the engineers wearing a yellow belt. Wearing

Parker Dillmann
yellow belts?

Stephen Kraig
Yes. I know I'd be in the right place.

Parker Dillmann
I'd be like, what did I get myself into? Or, or what if, what if you show up for an interview and you're wearing the utility belt as the interviewee?

Stephen Kraig
You know, I feel like some places would be like, sorry, dude. This ain't the right place for you, but some places would absolutely love that.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. If an engineer showed up at an interview with a utility belt, I'd be like, when can you start?

Stephen Kraig
Actually okay. Look. Look. Look. Wait.

Stephen Kraig
Hang on. Slight tangent. Somebody out there, that's really in my opinion, that's not a bad idea. Now that would be a very weird interview, but if you showed up and they were like, tell me something about you, and you stood up and you just started pulling out like, I can solder, and you put a soldering iron on the table, and then you're like, I know how to do this, and you put it on the table, like, this is your double e utility bill. Look, I know it's weird, but it you would stand out for sure.

Stephen Kraig
Mhmm. And, in fact, slight tangent story, I met a guy once who told me about an interview he did where he he had hats, literal hats for every job he had worked at, And, like, he he he made some of them obviously, but he went into the interview and he would put on a hat and he would talk about that, and that he would take it off, put on his next hat, and talk about oh, no. Now look. It's super lame and Parker's face falling hard here, but the guys remembered him. He was very memorable for that.

Stephen Kraig
This is similar to that. I dare somebody out there to give this a shot. Put on your double utility belt. It's the lamest thing ever, but do it. Give it a shot.

Parker Dillmann
If someone does that

Stephen Kraig
You Parker will give you a job.

Parker Dillmann
You can have a free prototype at. You have that proof, but, man, that that that would be something to see.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah. That would be fun.

Parker Dillmann
Alright. So before we sign off, go to our discourse. It's form dotmacrofab.com. Post your utility belts, post what you would put in your utility belts, bonus points for if it has bat in it. And with that, let's sign off.

Parker Dillmann
Alright.

Stephen Kraig
Well, thank you for listening to circuit break from Macrofab. We were your hosts, Steven Craig. And Parker Doman. So long for now.

Parker Dillmann
Later, everyone. Thank you. Yes. You are a listener for downloading our podcast. Tell your friends and coworkers about Circuit Break, the podcast from Macrofab.

Parker Dillmann
If you have a cool idea, project, or topic you want us to discuss, let Steven and I and the community know. Our community where you can find personal projects, discussion about the podcast, and engineering topics and news is located atform.macrofab.com.