Circuit Break Podcast #107

Orthogonal for Mutual Conductance

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February 14, 2018, Episode #107

Stephen melts his brewery's SSR, Parker fixes his PCM5122 DAC, and Adventures in Autorouting.

Podcast Notes

  • Stephen
    • Melted Solid State Relay in electric brewery setup
      • “Finally gave up the smoke”
      • New SSR is rated for 40A
      • Installed a blower fan on the heatsink for extra protection
    • GFCI Breakers
      • Monitors current on both legs of the circuit and makes sure they are within 5mA of each other
      • Parker is going to use a SPA 240V 50A GFCI setup for his brewery setup
  • Parker
    • DAC board update
      • PCM5122 based DAC design
      • Same chip as what is on the HiFiberry DAC+
      • Had to change out the in series resistors from 1K Ohm to 27 Ohm resistors to get the communication to work
      • Digital Logic Analyzer Verse Oscilloscope
    • Soldering Iron ownership history
  • Rapid Fire Opinion R.F.O.
    • PCM2912A USB microphone chip
      • USB Interface, Mono Microphone Input, and Stereo Headphone Output
    • Found in a Datasheet for LAN9514 pg 15
      • When disabling port power, the driver will actively drive a ‘0’
    • The BenHeck show is losing its host
    • Adventures in Autorouting
      • /r/electronics thread
      • It is definitely written by a software person
      • They do not take in account RF noise, stability, power return and ground loops
      • “Imagine today’s standard 4 layer boards routinely being fit into 2 layers without any human effort.”

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One of the DAC boards Parker designed. Runs the PCM5122 from Texas Instruments.

One of the DAC boards Parker designed. Runs the PCM5122 from Texas Instruments.

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!

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