Circuit Break Podcast #336

Heirloom Documentation

Related Topics
Conductive Cuisine

We'll explore an in-depth study conducted by Seth Jenkins, Neil LaTourette, and Brendan Liverman on how boiling time affects hot dog conductivity.

Wanting to be a Wizard - Matt Brown

Matt Brown, shares his career insights, including his experiences working at Tesla and on personal projects like the land speed car and the off-road Viper.

Exploring the Arctic Through Art and Technology with Cy Keener

Cy Keener's work includes a range of data-based efforts to visualize diverse phenomena including ice, wind, rain, and ocean waves.

Other Resources

Circuit Break Podcast
Webinars
Videos
Tour MacroFab's ITAR-Compliant Facility

July 9, 2022, Episode #336

How important is documentation for your project? Many people view it as an afterthought but it should be just as or more important then your design!

UtracerV6

  • The right way to do instructions
  • Full table of contents
  • Broken out into sections. The ref designators match the section
    • Build
    • Test
  • At the end is a full calibration section
    • Section for logging your calibration values
  • A whole section for building enclosures and wiring
  • dos4ever.com

Project Snackey

  • PCBA completed!
  • Smoke monster is still contained within the circuit
  • Wrapping up the wiring inside the machine before moving onto code
  • Installed a kiosk receipt printer where the coin return used to be and got it working
  • Microswitches – The fidget spinner for electrical engineers?

DIY Meat Smoker Ideas?

  • Introducing the Low Poly Smoker!

Nvidia could spend $10 billion to secure RTX 4000 components

  • Hold there place in line at TSMC?

About the Hosts

Parker Dillmann
  Parker Dillmann

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
  Stephen Kraig

Stephen Kraig is a component engineer working in the aerospace industry. He has applied his electrical engineering knowledge in a variety of contexts previously, including oil and gas, contract manufacturing, audio electronic repair, and synthesizer design. A graduate of Texas A&M, Stephen has lived his adult life in the Houston, TX, and Denver, CO, areas.

Stephen has never said no to a project. From building guitar amps (starting when he was 17) to designing and building his own CNC table to fine-tuning the mineral composition of the water he uses to brew beer, he thrives on testing, experimentation, and problem-solving. Tune into the podcast to learn more about the wacky stuff Stephen gets up to.

Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!