Al Williams returns to the podcast for the fourth time! This time to discuss the importance of circuit simulation and what it can teach engineers.
Al Williams returns to the podcast to discuss FPGA documentation and meat balloons.
Parker talks LED patterns on the MEP SAO, Stephen uses a CNC machine, and RadioShack returns?
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Figure 1: Chris Gammell on vacation. A rare sight for an engineer!
Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.
In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.
In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.
Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.
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.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
Welcome to the macro fab engineering podcast. I am your guest and occasional co host elsewhere, Chris gamble.
And we're your hosts Parker
Dolan and Steven Craig. And this is episode number 90.
Chris Gamble is an electrical engineer and electronics instructor, his online courses called contextual electronics and his podcast. Y'all may have heard of it, maybe the amp hour. It's a little bit bigger than ours,
just by, you know, a factor of 10 or 100 or more.
And he was a guest on the Mac FEV engineering podcast, when we started episode 33. So Chris, that's like a year ago, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Over a year ago.
Yeah, yeah. We're recording in my apartment.
Wow. Yeah. This is moved. Moved internal. Yeah, that's right. Nice.
So Chris, anything else you want to add to your bio?
Well, I just started a new job at hologram, which is a cellular connectivity company. And I'm doing the dreaded IoT thing. No, yeah.
You want to what, what all does that entail?
Well, I'm doing so like, it's a term that's not really used much in the hardware world, as far as I can tell. But it's used a lot in the software world world, which is developer relations. And, and every time that term comes up, I always think of that thing from Nutty Professor where the grandmothers going like, are lations.
I'm actually thinking of like, office space where the guy got the red stapler. And he's like, I'm the person who takes what people want and brings to the engineers.
Oh, that's not him. That's Mycoskie. Man. She's you don't know your office space.
He called you what
was that guy? No, no.
Koski was a product manager. If you if you are a product marketer slash product manager where he talks about like, I take the requirements for the customer. And then
that's right. You're right. You're right. You're right, right. Yeah, you're right. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Cuz that's when they're asking them. So what do you actually do?
Exactly. So so a person dammit.
Developer Relations just sounds like talking to programmers?
Ah, yeah. I mean, except there's hardware people now. So it's not just programmers,
I guess. So. Yeah. Do we sort of fit in that weird world of the developers I guess, as hardware guys?
I guess so. Yeah. It's like there's different vernacular, but yeah, I mean, yeah. hardware developers, I suppose. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So you know, it's mostly, it's mostly just trying to help people build hardware, which is kind of kind of fits my MO, which is nice. I like that. And now it's it's also cellular, which is, there's a lot of cool stuff around that space. I don't know if you guys have heard about cellular projects or anything but
no, I've been playing with some satellite stuff, but not not
so. Nice. Like a redeemer. What? What kind of?
Yeah, yeah. The Rock.
The like, welcome to the rock. Yeah,
it's not as cool.
I guess. So the Nicolas Cage, half of the rock.
My projects, the rock, kind of approximate that guy whose face melted at the end? That's kind of like the rock.
Oh, sure. Yeah, we got the green gas on the green. Yeah, the
east the green goo. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, sorry. Spoilers.
I think that's a little bit past. Um, yeah. Not too soon. Turn limits.
Right. But yeah, so I mean, like, Saudi, there's cool. You know, there's, the thing is these days that I talk about, like, so like, one of the reasons that I joined, and even considered it, you know, a connectivity company in the first place, is because it's just something I need to learn. You know, it's not like, it's not like it's going away. Obviously, we just you guys posted about it. I saw I mean, I mean, we just talked about the power, the the crack, KR AC K. Wi Fi vulnerability thing. Obviously, everybody's favorite. Twitter account is the internet of I don't know if we let the internet Oh, yeah. We've talked about it multiple times. Oh, yeah. Great. Yeah. So that's like, our favorite like, Twitter account, you know, like, so? Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's just not going away. And so might as well learn how to do it. Right. And I'm learning a ton. So especially like, you know, the interesting thing is, developers, like software developers specifically. That's like a whole world that I just never had exposure to. And so this is an interesting, like, in between layer that I have to learn and kind of I guess I'm not gonna be building like JavaScript stuff anytime soon, but at least have to know how to talk to them and explain hardware to people that are technical, but not in in the hardware space.
Well, I How you liking that.
It's, it's great. So I mean, it's only been a couple of weeks, to be honest. I've been I've been to a couple shows, I've been building some hardware, and, you know, getting some more shows throughout the year kind of, but basically just trying to reach out to people and I'll be making videos again, that'd be cool. You know, like, just like making projects and talking to people like, nerdy stuff. It's like, it's like podcasting. But for a job, kind of,
that's always nice. Oh, yeah.
So yeah, it's, it's, it's all been great. You know.
So on the, on that cell cellular stuff. I is the like, the videos that you can be making and stuff for for hobbyist or is it for the developers that you're you get to talk to a lot? Or is it? You know, explain a little more on that one?
Well, it's yeah, that's, that's a great question, actually. Because it's, you know, like, so much of the stuff that you see, so like, like, professional video stuff, right? That's another space where I am not in it. Right. So me and Parker recorded for supply framing last company, right. So we did like that talking head thing. And that was, that was cool. And that was kind of more like a podcast, but somewhere between like that, and a tutorial and, and you know, not like a corporate training video, but like something along those lines of like, how do you really communicate how to get a thing built? Right? That's, that's really what that's the question you're trying to answer at the end of the day. And I think video is still the best way to do it. I think having written content is good, too. So like, all these things are important. And I've forgotten the original question now. So hopefully, I answered it.
No, it's actually it's actually really funny because you brought up a video verse, like written documentation and stuff. And I'm actually finding the same thing with because I've been helping the like, helping the developers more over here at macro fab. And basically taking over to
find that sorry, hold on to the internal like your SOP, because you guys have software people.
Yeah. So like, Bs, basically moving from a production support. I'm moving more towards, you know, internal development support. And Steven Raisa, we were both basically, we did both those things. And now we've kind of like, spread out a bit, I guess. Yeah, we did
a lot of floating before as to Yeah, whoever needed engineering support, and now we're a little bit more focused. Yeah.
So Stephen does more of the production support, and I do more of the internal development support. And basically, I went and like, look, basically looking at Jira, like, makes me like, want to, you know, blow my head off. But just how crazy it is. And so I tried to raise the Atlassian the tracking the tracking stuff. And so that's what they use. And so, yeah, yeah, I'm basically trying to learn how to be an admin for the JIRA stuff. And it's pretty brutal, because they use a lot of they use a lot of like developer object stuff to explain, you know, how, how the tracking system works, and you got schemes and all those things, classes. And it's like, this doesn't make any sense coming from a hardware engineer with C programming background,
right, as you say, flashbacks to Java classes, right? Yeah,
exactly. Yeah. Databases, classes. Yeah. It sounds brutal. Yeah. And
some of this stuff is just like, so I think about it, too, like, so I'm, what 15 ish years into my career at rap. I'm less than that by 10, let's say 10 years into my career in kind, but like, you know, like, it's like, they talk about like, every seven years, right? It's like, you know, even if you stay in the same industry, your job nature usually changes. Either you switch to management, or, like, in our case, we're, you know, we're doing I'm doing training things now. And, you know, it's just a new challenges. That's cool. And that's just so Parker is just another challenge is just Oh, yeah, I'm working with JIRA and Atlassian. Tools.
Yeah. And it was, like, like, trying to read the documentation is pretty, pretty rough. And so I'm like, looking on YouTube. Look and see what how do I make this thing work? Yeah. And that helps a lot.
Right. Well, and that's and, and personally, I personally, I mean, I so I sold my house, and I moved to Chicago. I live in Chicago now. I think I told you guys that but like, so I sold my house when I moved to Chicago. And so I haven't been doing home improvement stuff. But, man, when I was doing home improvement stuff, like there's, I feel like a superhero just like it's like, oh, you have you have a YouTube video. There's like, you know, and the best part is, it's like, it's literally some plumber, who's like, just using a cell phone and showing you how to do stuff. Sometimes there's better stuff, but it's just like, and here's how he replaced the drain pipe. It's like oh, okay, I guess I can do that now. So like, video as an enabling tool there is is pretty awesome. Oh, yeah. I'm sure you guys know that from you know, you probably follow the same YouTubers of electronics that I do. Right? So AV AV said, yeah, yeah. Nice. Skookum Yep. I've been watching that a lot more. I you know, it took me a while to get into that. But once you're in here, you're in for life, you know?
Oh, yeah, he's incredible.
Yeah. So and then I'm gonna go back a little bit to on the because when I was looking at All this like satellite stuff, the reason why I chose satellite is because it's kind of future proofed. In terms of your radio, and it says, What about when the sun explodes? Parker? I mean, I think your cellular network won't work either.
Yeah, that's good. Well, 4.3 billion years until then.
So you get about eight minutes until the sun reaches here. So yeah, yeah.
Um, and so one of the big thing is, is why I chose that was because most of the hobbyist stuff is still running on 2g. Which won't exist. Yeah,
no, actually, it's already it's at the point. So I'm going to be doing a workshop at Supercon coming up, and we have to do modules, and that's our backup. But in the event, that that's our only case, we need to have t mobile coverage, or else like T mobile's the only coverage in the states that does 2g anymore. So. So yeah, that's that. That is a good point. I think that the hardware, right, we're right in that weird, like cusp between, like 3g is like, awkward, really large module stuff. Like if you look at the Adafruit FONA, which is a nice project, nice product, rather, it's, it's the product itself is nice, but you look at the module that's onboard. It's just monstrous. It's probably an inch and a half square, right? I mean, like it's, yeah, and a half by inch and a half. So whatever that is, yeah, it's about the size of a GPS module. Yeah. Well, it has one internally. And that's, and that is why it's bigger. But but it's still it's just monstrous, you know, compare that to like a, you know, ESP 8266, or even the 32. And it's, it's a pretty tough comparison there. So. So yeah, we're at this weird point. I think 4g is on the way, but the coverage isn't there. Yeah, it's Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes, we are. Yeah, my comm is gonna be one of the first to cover it, I think. But the thing is, it's just getting hardware right now is the hard part. So what is the satellite for,
basically, for communicating to a web server for doing location for off roading? And stuff like that with the jeep? Can't be? Yeah, so it has to work out in the middle of nowhere, Texas. See, and that was like half the state. That's,
that's the thing where I think about stuff like that. And that's where it's like an all the above kind of thing, like so like, if you have cellular, I would say you cellular if you have Wi Fi, you're gonna get even, you know, it's it's lower cost, higher bandwidth, everything like that. Use Wi Fi, right. And it's like, it's kind of just like, what, what can you do? And when you're in the middle of nowhere, yeah, satellites, pretty much your only option? Unless you're doing like, like, yeah, Laura is kind of there too. But if you have that use that too. But like, man, it's, it's, I get really like anxious when I think about like really big open spaces. So I try not to think about projects that do that.
Yeah, it's not like you you're pushing a lot of data with this. It's like, you know, you're sending coordinates. And a timestamp. Yeah. And that's about it.
Yeah, it's and as it was, so it's like bread crumbs
kind of thing. Yeah. When you get eaten by a bear. Is that what I'm mainly if the vehicle stops working?
Okay. Yeah, yeah. So then then you get eaten by a bear. Or a dinosaur, you know?
Well, it's it's West Texas, so probably tarantula.
Yeah, good lord. All right. Well, that's the end of the podcast. It's been real good. Yeah.
190 Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, that stuff. And so I mean, when you're out in the middle of nowhere, you really don't have a choice. And, and, and so that's another thing. Actually, I was excited about this gig was the, you know, working with like, ag Tech, I think ag tech is is a fantastically interesting area, because not only is are the hard problems to solve, there, the environmental impacts are large, just generally impact is large. But then the fact that it's, it's remote, you know, like it's it's doing things that are, that nothing else can really touch. You know, it's oh, sorry, that was that wasn't the last one. The last point was they have money.
That's always good when you get paid when you work. Yeah, right.
That's always nice, real ag tech. I mean, I kind of lump ag tech and industrial, but I'm sure you guys see tons of industrial stuff coming through.
We get we get a pretty decent mix.
Oh, yeah. Oh, cool. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I just had Jen and Alvaro on the Show, Episode 363. And they came on to respond to my assertion that we didn't have any consumer people in the show, which was pretty much true, not completely true. And they came to talk about consumer and man, it's just a different world, right? It's like industrial versus consumer. It's just a different set of design constraints. So and, and I will take industrial every time. I mean, you cringe a little bit when you don't get the the pricing you need, but at the same time, the people on the other end usually are willing to pay that cost differential for you. So it's great.
Yeah, of you in the industrial world if you do make a really good product. Pete the industry understands that usually, whereas the consumer Roll, they don't give a shit. Right?
Well, the expectations for longevity are that's probably one of the biggest constraints that you talked about. That's different, you know?
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. What is what is the longest longest term products you guys have built? Longest none of us have like super long careers. I get that. But,
um, I have a C that someone else uses or something that I still use. I guess I have both the
day that someone else uses because that's probably gonna be longer. Yeah. So the, the
spooky pinball pin hex system. That's so Ronnie. That's six years so far. Nice. Okay, so I've
designed some vibration sensors that are in a couple. Well, not a couple a good chunk of coal power plants. And those have been running for a while. years. Yeah. So
I used to work in the power plant sector as well. And the Yeah, I was. I was designing stuff that ostensibly was supposed to last that long. But really, the big thing was, I was often I was, I was designing replacements for things that had been in the field for 30 years. And it's like, damn, like that. I don't I don't know those kind of timelines I don't really expect. I like attribute these feelings, none to feelings. But like, I attribute like, like electronics don't get tired. You know what I mean? Like, you don't like when you leave an LED on, you're like, oh, I should really turn that off. Like, no, it doesn't care. It's fine. Right? There's no, it's not like a light ball. But stuff like that. It's just, you know, it's yes, maybe it's a little bit more stressed. And there is possibility to bond wire would go at some point. But the LED doesn't care. You know, I don't know, sometimes I think about like, oh, I should really shut that off. Or this is stressing that electronics? It's like, no, no, it's if it's in operating range, it's fine.
Well, right, right. However, with the exception of maybe like, electrolytic, capacitors or something like that, yeah, okay, true. Because because they actually have some chemistry that's going to dry out.
Yeah, sure. But you can just switch over to, you know, a different stock capacitor, if you need to
go of course, of course, but but when you're doing a design that you know, needs to last a significant amount of time, you add a whole second layer to your, your design. So normally, you know, you have a design where, you know, if you're just prototyping, the main goal is just make it work. You know, it's not that extra layer of oh my gosh, this, this has to continuously work that makes it that makes it a little bit more fun, you know,
right. redundancy and all those different things. And, and, yeah, specking in the headroom for things and stuff like that, right.
You know, and I, you know, I've done a lot of repairs, on on consumer equipment. And one of the things that I learned it doing all of that was that you shouldn't ever trust that any component will last, you know, I saw, I saw absolutely every type of component fail. You know, most of the time, it's fairly safe to consider that the resistors are fine if they're not black, you know, and charred. But that's not always true. I've had plenty of situations where resistor went bad.
And sometimes they will go bad. Especially like the old school wire around a wound or the big bulky. What's the ones that are actually look like cylinders, carbon composition, yeah, with those, we're actually getting micro fractures. And then so when they heat up, they just increased resistance, because now they have cracks in them.
And so a little bit of a tangent on those guys, they're really prone to moisture ingression over a long period of time, and they will actually drift in their value. But at the same time, because of the carbon composition, it's weird. They have a voltage dependent resistance that changes with with age. So as they get older, the more voltage you put on them, the more they actually physically change their resistance. And it's like point 00 1% per volt. But if you have something that's 300 400 500 volts, it actually starts to take effect and it gets worse with age. So you do have to consider these things. But
or if you're using like high value resistors to start with, right, which is usually when it starts to really be noticeable. Right?
Right. That stuff starts to get weird. Yeah.
Yeah. Alright, so we'll reel it back a bit. On on the cellular stuff. So the the Hackaday superconference. Chris, so you're given a talk there. I'm
doing a workshop or workshop. Okay. Yeah, hologram My company is helping sponsor and so in exchange, we get to do a workshop. So I'll be doing a workshop. That's actually the the hardware that I'm hoping so. So I have last minute hardware that I'm hoping will work and I mentioned this on the episode of manpower just recorded too. So now it's in two places on the internet. Thanks a lot, guys.
You got to make it happen.
Yeah, right. Yeah. So it's, it's basically just a low level at command. Which is just, which is crazy. I was just reading about it today. My coworker Ben knows a lot more about it. So he's gonna help me write the libraries and, and stuff like that. But you know, if you like people know this a lot from the ESP 8266 as well. It's just simple, simple, single line commands that you send, you know, to open connections and broker connections and, and then eventually send data, it's usually just over serial. And so we're going to be doing that for a low level, just via serial on two modems, with the ultimate goal of hopefully, we're going to have some, you know, microcontrollers, maybe some more Arduino boards or something. But the hopeful goal is that people can get through the example and then use the super conference badge, the microchip, Mike Harrison, superconference badge to also talk to the cereal. So that would be that'd be the ultimate goal. We'll see that happens.
Pretty cool. Yeah.
And you guys saw that thing?
Yeah.
We've seen that. It's been coming through.
You guys are making it of course, right? Yeah, right. There. Yeah. There you go.
Yeah, we were just having a chat about earlier today.
Yeah. How's it going? How's it going? Okay.
It's good. Yeah, it's going great. Our customer support guy came over today. And he's like, uh, this what? What's this? So we, we had we had to go through it.
Yeah. Yeah, that's I'm sure that Mike Harrison gets kind of found in a lot, right. But you do in here.
Pretty much it was it was something very, very close to that. So
yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool. Yeah. And so there's a couple of expansion headers on there. I think I talked to Mike Satish, the head of the lead editor of Hackaday. And he said, he's going to be writing may have published it today, I didn't actually see, like, the explanation of or maybe by the time this post, but an explanation of how to hack it, you know, kind of like a primer on how to hack it, that kind of idea.
So yeah, they had they already had an article explaining what it is and how they designed it and all that stuff. So I guess that's next article they're writing. Right?
Well, this is so this is something else we could talk about in terms of, you know, conference badges to this is something I think, is new, but pre publishing the header. That that's what I was most excited about. Cuz I was so people don't know, I was helping, you know, kind of get the start. I used to help run super conference. And I've always wanted where people could show up with a badge done or with a mod done, right, which is a little bit cheating. But like, I think that could be like a separate category of, of, you know, mods and stuff in the contest.
Oh, you can call it the it's the unlimited class. Right.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's like the heavyweights or whatever. Right. So yeah, that kind of thing. And it's obviously gonna be a subset of people that are that are doing that. But at the same time, you could do some really cool things. So I don't know. Who cares.
It's like reading the chapter before going to class.
Who does that? So? No,
no, you say that I actually got in trouble for doing that. What? Oh, yeah. What class it was a class for I'm doing. It was mathematical proofs. Yeah. And so and, and that's all backwards anyways. Yeah, it was, um, yeah. So it was doing all the chapters, we basically did one chapter every, you know, class period, right. And I read, and basically, each chapter built off the previous one. And so if you read ahead, you knew how to, you knew the better proof to solve the problem. And so I just read ahead, just thinking about it. And I answered the proof with the better way of the do the proof. And then in front of the class, because I was, I was presenting it, she called me I was cheating.
Yeah, there was a Simpsons episode about that, I think. Yeah. Like Bart, Bart, like is talking about how he cheated on the test, because he just went home and he memorized all the materials. And then it was from the book or something. Yeah.
I'm like, I didn't cheat it. I opened the book and said, This is where it shows that how to do this proof.
Like to dive into the the world of education and my feelings on education. I'm always happy to do that. But we could do that in a little bit. I guess. I have strong feelings. But yeah, I'm sure that I'm sure that we align on many of them. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that, that, that badges coming along sounds like and hopefully the workshop people will be able to do that stuff. I don't know. Like, there's some other good workshops, though, too. So like, there's a black magic probe workshop and what else Autodesk is doing a workshop on Eagle, the eagle fusion switchover. Matt's doing that one, so that'd be fun. And yeah, I mean, oh, and what's his name? Josh. Josh is doing the tentacle mechanism. He's going he's doing a workshop where you can build a tentacle mechanism. And that is very ambitious. And I'm very interested to see if there's going to be like 30 Tentacles at the end of this thing. Man, that I'm talking about this thing or not. Do you guys see that from last year?
I know I saw someone a couple months ago on Hackaday that built a tentacle. So I wanted
to say wires and Delrin that's Josh. He's a mechanical he's like count somewhere between mechanical and electrical? And yeah, it's a weird space to be holes and yeah, it's awesome.
So so the the the the badge game is really, really strong out at DEF CON. But how about it super conference?
You have to probably quantify that a little more.
So how how's the badge game different?
Because as the game though, I guess is the real thing.
Yeah, I guess what I mean by game is that there's badges everywhere and tons of people are designing them and there's a lot of variety and a lot of creativity. Is Hakodate, the, the super conferences? Does it have the same level of craziness
going on? No, because there's no secondary market. So this is a great topic. And I'm sure you guys have talked with accent and x naught and or whatever. Yep, whatever the hell their name is. Those guys and not excellent. That's a that's the one. Yeah, I mean, there's a market there, right. So that that kind of encourages people to make a variety of them and then sell them as an actual commercial enterprise. And talking about that stuff, I think the whole badge life thing is is blows me away. Like, first off that there is such a market that people will pay 100 125 bucks for one of those things, like, they're beautiful, but they're Come on guys, their boards, like I mean, like any I mean, I'll defend that like, but that that's me as a hardware person, right? And it's like, I've seen a lot of these badges I, I talked to them when I was at DEF CON. And it was a beautiful badge. I said, Please don't give me one. Like they offered me one. I was very nice to them. And I said, Please don't give me one. I just won't appreciate it. You know, I've had I just have a box of circuit boards. And this is just the hardware thing, right? Hardware, people have more hardware than they know what to do with normally.
Oh, oh, yeah, there's a box over there, that's probably full of 40 different dev boards that people have given me over the years.
And it's, it's just not appreciated as much. Now, if I have something where it's like, I need to actually try out a part. That's why a dev board is exists in the first place. But it's changed. It's changed. So like I talked to Alicia about it, right? So Alicia from embedded FM, she was she she would always gratefully accept the board because she would actually like go and use it for the code. And, and you know, it was it was not something she was building her own boards, right. But she was doing it as a as a new thing to try out with the with the code stuff. And for me, it was usually like, okay, got it done. Good. I'll go to design my own right. And that I just feel like that's the difference there. I don't want to sound ungrateful. I know I do sound ungrateful.
No, not at all. No, not at all. It completely makes sense. Yeah. Well, like young Chris, right
younger, in my younger days, I was I was the same. Like, I was also like, I would take any board that was handed to me. And, and but now it's just that it's built. Like, like you said, it's just built up. And, and I feel guilty. Because I'm not I know, I'm not going to use it.
Dev board guilt. So I wonder what I want the name of the podcast,
Dev board. That's awesome. I'm wondering what the what the analog would be for hardware, guys. I mean, if the guys at DEF CON, like hold these boards in such high regard, what would be a hardware version of that?
You mean, like, what would we be given that would that we value that highly? Yeah. Nothing. Now, I don't know I think maybe. I don't know. Like, if someone did a bunch of free coding for me, I guess.
Yeah, guys, let's say a, a firmware package for whatever EDA tool that you're using that works perfectly with proper documentation. Yeah,
yeah. Yeah. Yeah, actually,
that sounds great. Can't carry that around on a conference with you though. No, no, we need to come up with something that works for that. We'll get right on me
like cash that always works. If they want to just give me cash. Yeah. Cash or beer. Yeah, that also works. You know, like, I don't know, I just think it's just a slightly different thing there. So I think that that the Bajaj thing is is really interesting to me. And I love watching and actually it's really interesting watching other people come in and be like, and then it couldn't source person saying, well, welcome to The Club. You've been ordained by fire. Yeah. And it burns. So I'm sure that a lot of them I think you guys said either you or Chris or someone told me that there's a lot of badge life stuff that comes through macro fab too. So yeah, the I'm sure that you're there serve at salvation.
Yeah, the and not XOR guys were pretty generous and pimping macro fab in their, their inner circle. So yeah, right, right. Yeah. And we had them and the guys that John Adams that did the other big bore a big badge out there. The car hacking badge. Yeah, that was one boy. Yes. Yeah, he was on the podcast as well.
Okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, it's great. I mean, I love that there's a lot of interest in it. I mean, there's nothing, it'll just add more hardware people please like, right? I mean, like, that's Oh, yeah, that's like the end of the day. That's all they care about. So whatever brings people in is
great. And the crazy thing is to most of these batch life guys that their their software people first, and these are like, it's like, it's trial by fire. And it's awesome to watch and help help them out. And, yeah,
yeah, a lot of fun. I
don't know, they say awesome to watch this a little less a little bit sadistic. And to think, like, no,
it's just, you know, help them out and resistor, you know, well, no, just trying to help, you know, guide them, you know, because, you know, we we've been building now, I say we, as you know, Chris, and Steven and I, royal we, yeah, the royal we, yeah, um, you've been building hardware for, you know, probably collectively we have 40 years, probably, right. Probably that year or more. That wouldn't make sense. And so it's like, one of those things was like, there's a lot of pitfalls that you don't want people to fall into. Yeah, yeah.
And then there's a little bit of pride in helping someone and being like, look, it was really shitty when I was there. Let me make sure it's not shady for you.
Well, and I think that that's, I mean, ultimately, I think that like the amp hour and your podcast and bedded and the spark gap, whenever the hell that's coming back, Carl, Cory, where are you? Where does it go with that? I think that's why so like, when when the guests come on the shows, right? It's interesting just because, like, hearing these stories, right, I mean, it's like collecting wisdom. You're still never going to learn it as good as feeling that pain like being at work at two in the morning. Desoldering some part that was backwards, right. You will you will double check your diode placement after you have to D solder 1000 boards, right, but so you can't really replace the experience of it. But But hearing about it sure as heck helps. So yeah, yep. Yeah, so how can I build more stuff with macro? Fab?
That segue? Yeah, it was flawless follows. Um, so? Yeah, so we'll go and don't
have any RFO but um, but um, but um, bom bom.
RFO. The segment rapid fire opinion. We have a couple topics. We go through pretty quickly.
I didn't get that. Sorry.
Yeah. Yeah, rapid fire.
Well, and not we go through it. And we'd not so rapidly fire off opinions.
Yeah, basically. Yeah.
This is like, s fo doesn't embedded but without the lightning.
Yeah. And more hardware. Yeah.
So yeah, good. So this week, I'm Macro fab announces production manufacturing services expansion to Mexico or in Mexico. found on the amp hour subreddit.
Whoa, whoa. I haven't heard of these macro fab guys before Parker. Why don't you tell me about them?
Like this is like the worst product placement ever guys. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, we really do try to avoid this.
I think this is the second maybe third time in 90 episodes. We've actually talked about macro fab.
Right. Well, yeah. Purposefully without someone else bringing it up. We try to avoid that Yeah, but this this this was a really big rollout and some cool
No, no better time to show them when Chris Gamble's on your episode. I'm just saying.
Actually, you know, it's really funny is Iris wishes are mark, who's our marketing manager. Put this in the show notes. And I'm like, Oh, we're also having Chris gamble on. Bigger? Yeah. Um, so yeah, we launched a new website earlier this week. So a whole brand new front end for the.com. And then there's a whole new PCB interface in our factory dot macro comm. We launched some new services, the big one is 10 day prototyping. So if you basically are ordering a prototype, and you have I mean, this is this is marketing stuff, guys. Sorry.
I don't think so. I actually I saw I use this the other day. So I I'm assembling a board. I told you, right? And I started freaking out. I'm like, Oh, shit, I have to do this myself. Like I. So first off, I designed with Oh, two components. And I did. You know, disclaimer, I talked about a lot of this stuff on the on the amp hour this week, too. So people might be doubling up, but who cares? It's more electronics. But yeah, oh, 402 components and a bunch of small small sat 523, stuff like that. And I probably screwed but we'll see.
Get your green reading. I was just
putting it in though. So like I was put I put it into macrophages to see and I actually I didn't I didn't I did not read the rules. I didn't know. So it says what no more than 50 units. I'm actually at 50 units. So I might just squeak it in. We'll
see. Yeah, so yeah, so it's no more than 50 units for this is how you call for 10 days. No more than 50 units. Less than 2000 SMT parts total total. Less than 20 SMT line items and no through hole
and No through holes like for the rest of time, come on, folks. Yeah. How do you how do you qualified you qualified like so I have a USB I showed you I use your USB C's.
Yeah. So that one is classified as a SMT part.
Okay, do you because it doesn't apply wave solder. So I'm sorry, we should explain this too. So it's got the slotted holes for the mounting
mounting tabs. So we do paste in hole for that, that guy. Oh, really, what does that process so basically because we have a piece jeder which is instead of having a stencil to put the piece down, so a stencil is like a squeegee it's squeegee and there's a big piece of stainless that's got holes, and so when you drag the solder paste across, it leaves the pace in the holes and you pull the stencil up and now all your pads are pasted. What we have basically is a laser jet printer that prints paste down. And so we can basically tell when it goes over that hole is to shove a ton of paste into that hole instead of just a thin layer like a stencil would Yeah, we connect when
like when you used to have like a typewriter and you needed to bold something. You just did a backspace and you typed it over again. Exactly. That's it. That's almost exactly what it does. Do you guys remember typewriters? Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I was at the tail end of it anyways. So you know
actually funny enough, a little bit of a side story. We actually got a firmware update from one of our customers today they wanted to update actually wasn't firmware. It was a it was a test program for one of our customers. And they sent a CD in today. With with the update, what do I do? Oh, okay. We're doing this
coworker was throwing a bunch out yesterday. I was like, I throw them all out. I literally have no, I have a DVD collection. I have no way to play DVDs anymore. Yeah, I don't know what to do with them. Like, am I download them? I guess? I don't know.
So yeah, and the thing about the 10 day is, it's there's no extra charge. So.
Oh, nice. Nice. Yeah. Okay. So basically, it's just a low volume stuff to start with. Right?
Yeah. And the reason why for these rules is it's so that we can get it out that fast. Yeah, right. 10 day. The big one is no throw because a lot of times most of your, all of our SMT stuff is done for most of our jobs. By 10 days. It's the through hole that just takes longer.
Got it? Yeah, cuz that's like a queue of people actually. soldering or, or the
inner? Yeah, depends on the quantity, then we fire up the, you know, the selective solder, which is a fancy wave solder machine.
So yeah. Well, and you guys are also going to Makiko
that that's correct. Yeah. So Steven can talk about this one. Yeah. So he's actually been there. Yeah, yeah,
I've been they've been there a couple times now. So yeah, we gonna TJ run it. Do you wanna? Yes, yeah, we have, we have a plant down there. Now, that will be helping us with our high volume production runs. So there, you know, the system now has the capability of kind of directing you where you go based off of the quantity. And now the new system has like nice graphs and things that show cut off points when you you qualify for production. And so for our very highest running customers, our high quality customers, we can actually have your boards manufactured in in Tijuana. So we can still offer the best price when you're, you know, wanting a couple 100,000 boards done, and still still need a good, good timeframe.
Have you guys ever done high volume like that? Again? This kind of goes back to consumer, I'm sure but
personally No. at macro fab? Yes. Well, sure. Yeah. Personally, sorry. No, I think that pin hack board we build 200 at a time. So
okay, at previous jobs I've done. You know, I've had some products that I've supported that, you know, you were doing 120 to 150 a full assemblies per day. So I've done some high, high volume stuff.
Well, Mr. Kaiser, Mr. Jeff Kaiser mighty um, he, he's come on, he's talking about that stuff. You know, he did the Steam Controller. Yep. And, geez, I just, it's that like, again, big open spaces and high volume manufacturing two things that make me very anxious. Just because like, I don't know, like, I make mistakes. But that doesn't really affect the, the open spaces, I suppose. Unless you're a bear. But
or giant tarantulas? Right?
Yeah, exactly. Why don't go to West Texas. Come on, man. What are you crazy? You said West Texas or East Texas.
What is it doesn't matter. Texas is gators West is door Angeles. Yeah, got it. Okay. Yeah. So actually down in Tijuana, I met the guy who was one of the managers over getting the Nintendo Wii created in China.
Really? Yep. Wow. That's cool. He said that
was stressful. He said Nintendo is really really a very strict on their quality standards.
I believe that 100% No, I mean, it's just like and like there's so many moving parts. I mean, it's, it's easy to see like was so like, I mean, you said Steven, you're doing more like production level stuff as well. That's right. It's, it's really like a whole other field, right? I mean, there's electronics, but then there's like manufacturing engineering, you know, and it's like, it's it's this whole other segment that is super important. But most people don't get to that point. Because Because well, first volumes, leaving the states hopefully coming back. But, you know, it's just a most people don't get to experience it yet, you
know, and what's funny about it is it kind of is in parallel with what we were talking about earlier, where, you know, you have your design, and your initial thing is just get the design working. And then we talked about longevity, will you have to add yet one more layer on it? Where you ask yourself? Can we even make this? You know, is it even possible to make my design?
Yeah, even like, you know, jumping from 100 units, to 1000 units, just the, just the, the supply chain? Yeah, you know, like, if you're using some kind of somewhat obscure microcontroller, you know, Mouser might have a couple 100. Now, you need a, you know, 1000 units.
Right, right. Well, when we were taught when we were talking about your new servicing on the amp hour, again, if people are listening in order, so
now I need to go listen to it. Yeah. But
Dave scoffed, Dave scoffed at the 40 days thing, right? And it was for, like, 5000 units, but I told him, I was like, look at 5000 units, I think about just just like a couple, if you have like one transistor that you get five motherboard times 5000, that's 25,000, you're not going to be able to buy that, you know, unless it's the most Jelly Bean of Jelly Bean components, you're just not gonna be able to buy that from distribution, because distribution does want to have it on an order. So it's like, it's like you are you you are then captive to the 868 week lead time of, of the manufacturers of the component manufacturers. Yep.
And a lot of times when you get to that volume, like you said, 25,000 of the apart, we go talk to diodes Inc. Basically worse, actually, I think it is Inc is a real company. It is yes, I just made that up, but it is a real company.
That diode zinc is yeah, they're they're a little on the lower end, I guess. But you know, they're diodes. So. Yeah.
So yeah, there's a there's a lot of extra stuff that goes into the production. Things that you don't really consider when when when doing prototypes. But yeah, it's it's sort of a sort of a big game that we're having to play here. And it's, it's going pretty well, so far. Having fun with it. That's for sure.
That's good. Yeah, I think it's, you know, like, so, I have started self identifying as a realist in the past couple years, mostly people that voted but also refer to me as a pessimist. But I think it's just like, sometimes it's nice to have that reality as a backstop. Right. So it's like, someone's like, well, I want to buy 5000 units, it's like, that's great. You can ask for him in two weeks, you can ask up and down in two weeks, but it's just the supply chain doesn't, doesn't deal with it. It's like, okay, and now we have this as a baseline assumption. Now, how do we optimize for it getting out in week 10, instead of week? 50. Right. And that's, that's the big difference. That's, that's the difference between like a mature organization, and immature organization, the immature organization doesn't even think about that. And then they design it apart, that has a 40 week lead time, and then that ultimately decides the, the fate of the product, right?
Well, right. And when, you know, when discussing these kinds of things with, with customers, and just really anyone, the real aspect is what comes out, you know, it just be real with people and and, you know, there's an understanding that, hey, these things are, you know, they take a finite amount of time to create, and, and we're gonna, we're gonna make it happen. So,
right, well, in the problem, I say, to tie back to the thing we talked about earlier, is the only problem that this really becomes an issue is like, when you are talking to software people specifically, right? Because software is, you know, I think a lot of software engineers understand the aspect of time and, you know, development cycles and stuff like that, because of, you know, just you have to write the code, or you have to, you know, test the code or whatever. But sometimes there's just the physical aspect of like, it just, you can't just create it, you know, there is there is finite stuff. I even I even separate the electronic stuff from the, from mechanical sometimes to Oh, yeah. So, mechanical. I mean, this isn't this is, this is a way over simplification. But you can go in machine apart and fit it in where you need to, right, you could create these things. Yeah, and I can't I can't go create a chip like a microcontroller.
Yeah, and the thing about that, too, is 3d printing is really kind of revolutionized the mechanical aspect of projects basically. Because you can order sorta but like so if you can get away with a 3d printed part for at least prototyping stuff, or doing your first articles but
that doesn't that's not reality then right. So that's not well, even some distant reality is a backstop. Because I've so again, this is I talked to Dave, my co host, and then he was saying oval, David, who's a really good designer is his employee. And I'm like, well, that's a big difference between like, making a prototype, and then going and taking it and making a mold, right. A mold maker is a completely separate person than a plastics designer, right? Or, you know, just a designer, correct. Industrial Designer, good lord. I mean, I love industrial designers, but Oh, Well, they don't always make things that are mapable.
Yeah, well, and actually, so the molding thing is a really interesting topic that we could probably spend a ton of time on. But but one of the things that's that's kind of something I'm certainly learning myself more recently, but but it's I don't know, it's something that that's kind of been on my mind from beginning my career as an engineer is making the right decisions up front saves so much time in the end, I mean, one good or one bad decision could either save or cost you months of work later down the road. And so kind of to what Parker was talking about with the 3d printing, yeah, you can, you can certainly 3d print a case. But when designing that case, you kind of have to have in mind like, Hey, I'm going to 3d print this, but I also want this to be injection molded, so I'm going to 3d print it with injection molding in mind, you know, and so like making those decisions up front, he spent five minutes and save weeks.
Oh, totally. Yeah. Right. I mean, well, and that's I talked to people about that too, for like, specifically around microcontrollers. Right? You know, you talk about sourcing a microcontroller. And all of the different, you know, so like a microcontroller part number might be 16 digits long. And each one means like, I'm sure you guys know, and I'm sure a lot of your customers and listeners know, each one means something. And it's usually pretty damn important to know which one each one means, right? Oh, it's like, and if you if you design something in if you design in something that's not sortable, you know, at, you know, week zero. And then week, 60 year firmware engineer is like, alright, it's all tested, it's ready to go. And you can't, you can't buy it. It's like, Oh, crap, you know, like you. You scramble. Right. And that that is the story of, I wouldn't say failed startups, but man, some definitely sleepless startups and screwing the pooch. Kickstarters kick started. Sure.
Oh, my gosh, yes. Right.
I mean, remember when people freak out about like, when a 328 goes out of stock in the world, right, that that hasn't happened in a while. But like, that is just because it's a it's an easy option. But it was also not the right option for a lot of people. Right. And it was just the it was the it was the default option almost for people that were coming from an Arduino to whatever. Yeah, and, yeah, I mean, supply chain wise that that really messed a lot of people up, they probably should have gone to another product or another part, but mostly because they didn't know.
And most time those guys can go to a smaller MCU.
Sure, well, that too. But that's that's a different. That's a different optimization. Right? Yeah. That's not like a sourcing thing. That's a cost thing or whatever.
Well, it's also sourcing, because then you jump out of the 8328 P. chunk.
Yeah. Yeah, right. Sure.
You know, I gotta I have a sourcing. I did not ID a story, I have a story about a design, I was doing that sourcing made story, an absolute pain in the ass. So get this. So I had to make a an oscillator. And this oscillator had to oscillate at 100 megahertz. And it had to do a sorry, one megahertz, but it had to do some kind of funkiness. There was like some control in there was digitally adjustable based off of what load was connected to it. And there was a a dual transistor package where it's a super match pair in in like a little slot package. And that one, like door three, five, or something like that. Yeah, yeah. So one of those would have made this oscillator, absolutely flawless. They were they were awesome. But I was totally screwed, because nobody on earth would guarantee that they would keep it in production for longer than a year. And this product, the you know, the company wanted to manufacture it for about a decade. So I had to go with a completely different design front end, which frankly, wasn't as good. But, you know, the the the the sourcing actually drove the design, as opposed to
oh, yeah, they couldn't, you know, well, then thank goodness, you actually looked at it though, right? I mean, imagine, imagine the case where it's like one year out, you're like, Guess I'm doing this all over again. Oh, yeah. What do you design
it every year on? You know, actually, I bet you what it was on that is the manufacturers would build one whole stack of wafers worth. Yeah. Which they would say is a year's worth. And all those are matched. And then when they had to rerun it again, it had to redo the maths. Yeah, match.
I haven't done it, you know, and I bet you I bet you they do that. Because then then the actual the information in the datasheet will be uniform across all components. Yes. Because it's pretty hard to have two super match transistors on different wafers. Yep. Or different lots be the same. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah.
Well, I think the other thing too, though, is a lot of designs are moving away from that, like, so if there are going to be match stuff, it's going to be on a die where you're actually designing it yourself. Right. Yeah. And maybe do some laser trimming or whatever. But yeah. Wow, that's that's a tough one. I've got lots of war stories as well. But those are the good ones to hear. Right. I mean, like, I mean, again, like I'll hear that and then I'll see you know, mass transition or some point in the future future and be like, Yeah, I remember someone told me about this and I'll go to make the same mistakes. Right. It's do the same problems. Yeah, it's that's the real problem is that in those moments of like, in those moments, it's hard to remember all those lessons or where you heard them. That's why people should listen to the amp hour and macro fat podcasts on repeat for the rest of their careers. That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah.
Infinite repeat. Like that's right. Put it on the radio and then go to bed.
We're in your head. Right? Yeah.
You can play our podcast backwards, and you might hear it. Good advice. Good advice. All right. Cool. So I think that wraps up that our SFO slow fire, opinion. Okay, so the next one is, um, the giant robot battle? Yeah, yeah. So this is, yeah, it happened. It was definitely something I guess. So that there was a for those that don't know, there was a giant robot battle between United States and Japan. Just like in the cartoons and movies that we always watch. Very boring.
Well, here's the thing. So I know ghee, and Matt. And they're, they're very nice. And I love that they're building this like, think about how much how much. They're supporting the machining industry with those huge as parts, you know, like, oh, yeah, it's great. It's
great. These things are gargantuan. Yeah, so
I was about to say, because Steven was giving me a look like I have no idea what you're talking. No. Okay,
so I've totally followed this project, but I didn't watch the results. I have no okay. So
like the thing about the you would like it is the American robot look like from mech warrior? Oh, yeah. I've seen that. It looks incredible. Yeah, it is. A Japanese one looks like it's from Japan. Well, no, I would say what's the one was that anime?
Gundam even Gillian.
No, no, no, no. It was a Gundam did that they just had a movie
a couple months ago for Voltron. No, I can't remember for some reason I'm going oh, yeah, it does look like it
goes in they talk about that stuff and Ready Player One all the time. So I was like, trying to list those out you
know? Yeah, it's it's a kind of like a ghost and shell style design. Yeah, yeah. So like in like the first around basically the Japanese robot just went straight ahead and just knocked it over. knocks the USA robot over.
So what were the rules? did was it just like a like a ring, you had to push them out of the ring or no?
Sumo rah bots. It was like, kind of like boxing. Okay, kind of. There wasn't didn't seem like there was a lot of rules in it seemed very scripted about what's going on. Oh,
a safety person. They're sitting in these damn things like, yeah, that's the thing that I never got,
like, yeah, why were they doing that? Because like, because you have like Battle Bots. That you know, just came back last year. And like actually gonna watch read that I was actually watching it last night, which is like, it's like the semi finals or something right now. And like, one of the bots exploded. And I'm like, That is awesome. Why cam like what they need to do
on the you wouldn't feel that good is if these things blew up, right?
Yeah. Well, yeah. The drivers. Yeah. But I'm like, just take the people out of it. And just have giant robots fight each other.
Yeah. I don't know if it gets more like, again, this is like one of the things where if it gets more people in engineering, that's great. I love like, I love watching the build videos. Like that's really cool. Yeah, the build videos are great thing is like, if you want to get like mass appeal, then you need things blowing up, right. And I'm not in that mass appeal group. I want to see the stuff getting built. So I hope they keep they and they've been making videos that are pretty fun. So
yeah, and they had a Kickstarter and stuff like that to get everything going. So
how much how much money was dumped into each robot?
A couple million. I think they actually ended up raising they ended up raising money. They got some sponsorship from like Autodesk and a couple others because
they easily was several million dollars into each robot. Yeah. Wow.
I mean, that was just for the offices in San Francisco, I'm sure. For six months, right, right. Yeah, six days actually.
Yeah, I think what the American robot was a was named iron glory. Oh, yeah. Another one's a Caracas. So
yeah. Steel Patriot steel.
But yeah, it was like, the build videos are really awesome. And I was actually pretty hyped and then like, I watched the fighting and I'm like, Okay, this is why I actually like watching movies of giant fighting robots. Yeah, they just break they can break physics. And it's awesome when they do that.
You know, what's interesting is to consider kind of like the design philosophies between each team because I doubt they actually shared a whole lot during the build process I'm sure there were some in between there but one of them published at least that does help Well yeah, but but the the American one still has that like muscle car, kind of add more steel and it'll be better
saw on it. Yeah. Right. Yeah, that was actually pretty awesome. I was like, the only damage was when They brought like, it was like the Japanese robot put its arm out like here's my arm in the USA robot goes, Ah, chainsaw your it was like, Oh my God. It's like because basically the robot just stood there with his arm hanging out so that he could chop it off.
Oh, did it actually take the arm off?
Ah no but it did for a messed up pretty good all right. It wasn't like well bosses which are what? I watched the replays on YouTube. So yeah the battle bots is definitely the way to go. Okay on that
yeah, it's always been fun I mean but BattleBots has this thing to where it's like alright, what the wedge one again? Cool.
It's the wedge with the forklift front that just causes friggin wedge man.
Yeah, everything yeah. Actually one of the last night one of the popular bots it's it's the I can't remember that. It's called the Minotaur. It's it's like one a couple times actually lost last night. Hmm. So it's one of those it's a box with a spinner on the front. So there's a handful a handful this so but it lost through like, oh man is one of those bots that has just the big disk that spins. And those always you lose. And it one. So in summary final so it was interesting. I think everyone's
like what this is like what happens when electron Lectro nerds talk about sports. This is like our sports. Yeah, exactly. The day and this
funny thing on the front was a wedge. Yeah,
I think what BattleBots boils down to is it's not really about the like the weapons, it's just can you design something that can survive? Right? Cuz if you can do that, that's because most of these bots
weight classes too, right? So you can't just like armor the shit out of it. You have to actually
yeah, there's those generic yeah, there's a weight class and stuff. But it's like if you can design a drive train, because like actually the one that lost last night it lost because it just couldn't move anymore. So if you can just design something that just keeps moving. Yep, an industrial battle. But so that's another layer when you're designing your product is can it survive three rounds with the jugan Nadir in the ring?
Or what was the old one from from? What was it the Robot Wars and they had like search chops a lot or something like that? Like the house bots? Remember? Oh, that
was the British one. Yeah.
What the dude who was in red dwarf? He was the he was the guy who was he announced he was the announcer Yes. He made it. Awesome. So rapid fire opinion on giant robot battle? Thumbs up, thumbs down,
take the humans out, then thumbs up. Because then you can actually destroy stuff.
I'll agree with that. Chris?
Sorry. I'd say thumbs up on the build thumbs, whatever. On the on the actual implementation.
Yeah, I guess if you dump a couple million dollars into these things, you really don't want them to be destroyed.
Right? Yeah. So maybe maybe they should do like, like, Time Trial type things or you know what I mean, like making an obstacle course. I don't know. But then it loses the appeal. So yeah, I shouldn't design a shows. I know that. No robotics. Great. That's what I want. Yeah,
yeah. But the build videos are great. So yeah. And that's the thing is when you put a lot of money into it, you can have those build videos that look really nice. Definitely. Cool. So that's the end of the RFO section. So Chris, do you want to sign us out?
Sure. That was the macro fab engineering podcast. I was your guest Chris gamble.
And we're your hosts Parker
Dillon and Steven Craig.
See you later everyone.
Take it easy
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 email us at podcast at macro calm. Also check out our Slack channel. That's where we you know, talk about cool electronic stuff, the map. No general macro Fabien things. And if you're not subscribed to the podcast yet, click that subscribe button. Yes, with our new website, we have a subscribe button now that we've been talking about that did not exist for like 20 episodes. So yeah, click that button. You'll get the latest map episode right when it releases and please review us on iTunes as it helps the show stay visible and helps new listeners find us
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