Mandatory USB Type-C for everything? Parker and Stephen discuss the current EU ruling and preparing your PCBA design for contract manufacturing!
Parker's pinball controller has gone gold! Revision 3 is being fabricated! Stephen then explores the softness factor of diodes and the SSPS returns?
Parker gives an update on his Prop Dev Stick Type-C and Stephen designs a tonestack based on the LND150.
Figure 1: The Front Panel test board for the SSPS. Much working. Very wire bodge. Such bright LEDs.
Figure 2: Stephens SSPS Analog PCB for the Energon Cube.
Figure 3: The corrected datasheet for the breadboards that are being used for the FX Dev board.
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!
Hello, and welcome to the macro fab engineering podcast. We're your hosts, Parker
Domon. And Steven Greg,
this is the first time in like four weeks we don't have any guests. Yeah. So that's a different thing.
We can kind of get back to doing some updates on projects.
Yes. And this is episode 24. Now, that's been four months, right? Something like that. No,
six, we started in February.
That's what six months? Yeah. Oh, geez, people. So listen to us. Um, we've been working on the super simple power supply front panel, test board, right. And everything's been mostly okay with a all the test so far, except the display. I'm using the VFD display made by Nora Taki. And works great. Looks great. The problem is a datasheet is absolutely horrendous for the serial interface. So the actual like documentation of like how to send the data is fine. But the pin out? It actually doesn't specify the pin outs for that connector. Do you just guess? Yeah. So it's, it's got a 16 pin connector because it normally supports four slash eight bit, you know, normal character display. Yeah. But then it's got a auxilary six pin connector for serial. And it doesn't tell you the pin numbers does not tell you the pin numbers. And so I assumed one to 16 and then one to six. Yeah. Incorrect. One to 16. Six to one.
person it is.
So that was an interesting thing to figure out. Because I like hooked up my logic analyzer and everything. I'm like, I'm sending the right stuff. Why is it not talking back to me? Yeah,
so gotta seems like when we don't have guests, we default to datasheet rants.
But yeah, I all I had to do is just like cut all the pins and just like jumper them around to swap them out. Yeah. It works.
So the the the whole test board looks awesome. It is bright as hell
yeah, I think it's got it looks like a little tiny nuclear reactor. Right. The displays are
you were just you were sort of trying to test all the well, all the LEDs, all the switches, all the displays and stuff. And you have more crushed down into a small enough package. Yeah. And so the whole thing just glows.
It's awesome. Yeah, the great thing about it is at five volts, everything turned on, it pulls 2.7 amps at five volts. This is enough, the regulator can handle five amps. But I didn't think for some reason that it's got 2.5 volt regulator that powers almost all the LEDs. Those, that regulator can handle five amps, but I don't have any ground playing around it to dissipate the heat. So it's just the case. So it's just the case and it will work for about a minute and then they'll just start cycling as it as the thermal shutdown hits and then cools down comes back up. I basically what I did is I glued a piece of aluminium on top. That was enough to keep it from stopping to do that.
It'll handle the full 2.7 or 2.3 amps or whatever. With a little chunk of aluminum Gotoku Yes. Okay. What's the package? Is that one of the deepfakes it's a Deepak three. Okay, and it's just all it was was the pads on the board? Yes.
I don't have any thermal relief on it. It's a test board. But yeah, and so I actually extrapolated that out to the full panel the whole front panel is going to burn 12 amps at five volts Hmm So 60 Watts just an LEDs on this power supply Wow. So we actually are going to have to design a auxiliary power supply inside the power supply the power up the front display just for lights just for the lights
but okay so but that 12 amps is assuming every light turns on correct but under normal operation maybe half if not more than half will be on
yeah but you still got planned for Worst case scenario
yeah no no what but what I'm saying is if you have half of them on that's still six amps at five volts that's true. So it's it's gonna need its own power supply. Yeah, so I think we we are now planning on having three separate transformers are inside this one box correct. This might take the cake for one of the heaviest power supplies also.
Yeah, I wonder. We should do is instead of rating power supplies by like square or cubic inch per watt issue you want per pound watt per pound watt per unit of weight.
Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, we need to we need to report back once it's done because I bet you it's really low.
So the best would be, it would be well, usually when you have a power supply the heavier it is usually make means it's good.
Sure. Well, that's that was
the old way of doing like when you picked up like computer power supplies. Oh, yeah. If it had like heft to it had some heft to it. You knew it had good chokes and good inductors and had a beefy heatsink TV heat sinks, whereas he picked up, you know, a supposedly 500 watt power supply that way as much as like, you know, you know, a couple pieces of paper. Yeah.
you question your questions. So it's also like, when you were a kid with Christmas, you wouldn't, you know, picked up your presence underneath the tree and the heavy ones you knew. You knew there were some good stuff in there where it sounded like Legos. That's right. Shake. I'm looking for like,
Legos had that. Right. That that noise to it? Oh, yeah.
You knew? That's, that's awesome.
I'm actually speaking that. More random tangent. When I was growing up, my parents said, If I shook the my presence, it would break. Ah, yeah. Well, that's for all the parents out there.
My parents didn't didn't do that. And it was it was kind of a guarantee that I was going to get Lego. So I was just, I was kind of like, looking at the dimensions of the box and shaking it to kind of get an idea for whatever,
over like tours or SNA measure out. So for tour makers out there to use standard box sizes,
so you can throw kids off. Kids Christmas. Cool. Well, I actually. So I've also been working on SSPs. On my side, I got my board coming through the mix here soon.
Yeah, we were actually looking at that board today on the panel.
Yep. Yep. So there's a few more through hole parts that need to get installed. And I
think that boards got like eight zillion via stitches to ground.
That's the macro amp, not the SSPs. Oh, okay. The macro amp. Yeah, the, the amp that uses the Korg new tubes, and whatnot. I did some ridiculous via stitching. But on the on the SSPs board, the analog side, it's the it's the high voltage, high current voltage regulator. And the all the peripheral stuff in the analog and the digital communication side of things. So it's kind of like the all in one package that your board will eventually meet up with and talk to. And I made a mistake. Parker had a I think it's a 3.3 volt regulator that was like, his go to or something like that. I it was it was a week or two ago. And he gave me that, that part numbers like use this. It's perfect. It's great. I've used it a billion times. I was like, awesome. Yeah, I'll use it. So I throw it into my design. And lo and behold, I didn't change the footprint from nothing. So I've got a Deepak footprint and this three three regulator, which I think is in I don't remember what it is a sought 233 package. It might be so I cannot I can't remember right now, but yeah, no, it's one of our assemblers walks up and it goes this is this your board? And I was like, Yeah, and he's like, this port doesn't really fit here. And I'm like, Oh, damn it.
Well, engineers are people too.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I'm gonna have to Dead Bug a little regulator. Luckily, there's not a lot of current so I really don't care. Yeah, it's a test board. That's what they're here for.
And the, the copper busbar for the for the capacitor showed up to
you. So five sixteenths by five sixteenths solid copper
by six feet long by six feet long, heavy piece of metal, it actually really surprised how heavy that thing is.
So we're going to be drilling through and putting, I think they're M five bolts, they go directly through this and mount straight into the capacitors. So the caps are all going to be tied together on three these copper bars
should be pretty nice. I like how we're mixing an imperial copper bar with these M five screws.
Well, okay, so it's weird. I think it's m five. I might need to check that but the head of the screw is exactly five sixteenths. So I chose that so that there's no chance of shorting if something gets kind of askew and it fits perfectly on the little shelf of the top of the caps. So it just kind of happened to work out. Also. It's a standard part number AT mcmaster carr so it worked out really well. And we're going to be using the the Energy on cube is the whole system together with the the caps in the analog board and the water cooling and stuff, but we're actually using the standoffs that hold the PCB above the caps as the conductor for for moving things in. So should be
cool. Yeah. Hopefully next week we have that all caught up in that part all working powered up. Yeah, yeah, possible.
Yeah. I'll be receiving the board here soon. So I'll, we'll get some images up next week. I'm certainly spending some time on it.
Yeah. Should be cool. So yeah, FX dev board, right?
Yeah, fix dev board. The through hole breadboard that we've been working with. And by working on been struggling with for quite a while now have found an interesting. Artifact might be the right word here. So data sheets are fantastic. Oh, no, you got a sheet ran we use data sheets all the time. Exactly. Yeah, we use them all the time in order to accurately create our parts. But data sheets are not always accurate themself. And we found that the hard way with these boards, there's a dimension on the datasheet we've been using that is that claims that some holes are 1.54 millimeters from the edge of the the breadboard itself. And that's a kind of an interesting number. If you look at the decimal point five, four, it kind of raises some eyebrows. And and this one dimension expands across like 95 pins on this thing. Found out that that should be 2.54 which is 100 mil which is 100 mil Exactly. So the datasheet was wrong. I had contacted the manufacturer originally and said hey, there's something up with these boards. i At this time I didn't know what was up and they they sent me an email back been like no our data sheets perfect your your footprints wrong. And no, no, their data sheet is wrong. Yep. So I was off by just a slight bit on the one millimeter off one millimeter. That's right. So we've got that fixed now.
Yes. I'm actually gonna be using that breadboard on different project to Yeah, what's it the working on a parallax propeller? Similar setup. So all the pins on the prop go to a breadboard? And as a selectable, you know, voltage buses and that kind of stuff. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I can't wait. You know, actually, an FPGA that does this too. Would be nice. That would be cool. Especially since you'd have like 144 io, going all out to the breadboards.
Ah, yeah, I think you would just be able to, I don't know if there's enough pins unless you doubled up your bread boards. But that would be super cool. Double the bread boards. That would be awesome. So got a new article out on creating pads for BGA.
Yeah. SMD. First, n SMD. Yes, not surface mount device, though.
No, it's, it is a surface mount pad. Versus I'm sorry, solder mask defined SMD solder mask defined pad or a non solder mask define pad. Something that's kind of interesting that you don't really look at very often, with a lot of surface mount parts is how you create your actual copper. And the way that solder actually adheres to the copper. It doesn't normally make a difference with say, Oh 805 cap, it really doesn't. But when it gets down to really small balls on a BGA, you have to be real careful with how you create your pads. So we kind of cover that in the in the BGA article.
Yeah, and um, basically it's use non solder mask to define pads is what they come away with is yeah,
the come away with with all the research I did is that in general, typically, you use non solder mask to find pads, which basically means you have the copper pad that you define the size of, and then you have a blank area. And then the solder mask is defined as larger than the pad itself. And this has a couple of benefits. Mainly that the ball the solder ball from the BGA actually adheres to the entire piece of copper, including the edges. So you get better solder adherence, I guess you could say to the to the cups. Yeah, almost. And so really another takeaway is that do in general do whatever the manufacturer says, But if in doubt, go nsmt
Yeah, I was actually talking to someone who was building a board with with a BGA and actually atmail suggests to do SMD it They ended up doing an SMD. Because you can get away with, you get more spacing between your pads. So they can sneak the traces, wider traces. So you don't have to pay for basically extended manufacturing.
Yeah, that's one of the benefits of SMD is because the actual copper landing, you can reduce it by up to 20%. And giving you more room to sneak traces through. And in some cases, that's just enough to get your trace out of, without paying a ridiculous amount of money for it.
That way you can stay with was it six mil six mil spacing? Yep. And then instead of having to go to four mil, or or three mil?
Well, and so here's the thing, that's cool. A lot of manufacturers are saying, use SMD, mainly because it actually has less thermal stress on the BGA. So you don't yank the BGA in a bunch of different directions. But what's what's actually kind of a newer idea that's been going around is to use SMD. For for all the balls that are internal. And then for the outer two rings of the of balls. So say on like 1024 pin guy, the outer two rows would all be SMD and the inner, all nsmt. And what that does is it actually helps pull the outside of the BGA down while giving you the ability to escape on the inside. Hmm. So
that'd be interesting. Yeah,
it's, it's a sneaky.
Yeah, I wonder, I bet you there's a there's an app note or white paper out there where someone's actually like, somehow measured all that stress for
Oh, yeah. And you know, all said and done. Like, you can usually just get away with one or the other. Yeah. And SMD seems safer, because it has more pulling force. So when you place the BGA, and it goes through the reflow, it has more stuff to stick to. So the surface tension will pull the BGA into alignment. And so that's kind of preferable.
Yeah, I wonder if if SMD would have better lifespan? Because less thermal stress on the board, less
thermal stress. And I also I guess it has fewer areas for like acid traps or anything to get inside of an etch away stuff. Yep. And SMD. The pads, they're only held down by the glue from the copper. Yes, with SMD pads. It's the glue from the copper plus a shield of solder mask on a mask. So it kind of helps glue them down in a way. But what I've what I've heard is that's kind of in the past that was helpful, but modern technology where we're at in contract manufacturing, it's not necessarily
an issue. Yeah, that it probably would have helped a lot with lower TG boards. Yeah, TG 140, where were the that laminate might not survive the high temperature of of it. Yeah,
if it warps or if it ripples or any kind of weirdness, you can pull all those pads off, especially if your pads are you know, point, five millimeter,
point three, five millimeter point three, five, yeah, little little dots, all dots. So we will
be having actually another BGA article coming out here soon. So we were kind of doing a two part with this. So the first one was creating pads, the next article is actually going to be about how to get out of those pads. So we're going to talk about escaping and getting a traces out. So
cool. Looking forward to that. Speaking of escaping, I've been working with USB type C. And if you look at these USB type C because they have normal USB, you have four pins, yeah, power ground, differential pair, unless you have micro USB, you have a fifth pin for on the go detection, right. So you can basically reverse direction of your of your port, USB type C, it's got 24 pins. Yes, it's got a ton. And they're very close to that I can't remember the exact pitch of most of these connectors offhand. But it was close enough to where I was sweating a little bit trying to escape some of these pins. Because I'm trying to figure out how to implement type C connector for USB 2.0 and 2.1, which is what 99% of your applications is going to be for this stuff. It's basically updating your normal USB stuff to Type C connector. The good thing is you only need let's see, you need the CC one cc two pins, and the connector that does orientation connection for the host side. Right? So the host can figure out what side your connectors are at. And also, it lets the host know what kind of device kind of it gets really confusing what kind of device you're plugging into it.
Is it is it just like Logic, kind of it does it sends?
It sets a voltage. Do you have pull downs on the device side? And for USB 2.0 and 2.1? Use 5.1k 10% resistors? Yeah, the pull down the ground on both those pins.
Okay, so it still is just like a like a two bit system. CC. Okay. I thought I thought it was detecting the voltage across the line and based off of where the voltage was, it was doing some function, it
actually does some some funkiness there on the host side, it doesn't But
doesn't that kind of rely on the length of the cable and the quality that
there's actually specifications for that stuff. So wow, okay. They're type C's crazy. Yeah. And then you also have d plus d minus the differential pair. Yeah. Which is normal for USB 2.0. Yep, that's sits right in the middle, that's actually four pins on the connector. So once I tied together, you tie them together on the on your device side. But that way is when they're reversed. And so your connector gets flipped over. You still have your D plus D, myosin, right. Gotcha, gotcha. And then it's got four pins for ground, four pins for power. And those are reversible as well. Basically, they took the entire top row, and then they mirrored it on the other side. And that's how it pretty much handles the reversibility.
Or the contacts on one side of the
numbers. That's okay. Because there's, there's for USB 3.1, you have to have more differential pairs. Yeah, you'd have four differential pairs for that, right. And those are in that connector as well. But for 2.0 and 2.1, you don't have to use that. So I didn't route those out. But I basically was trying to do the normal manufacturing and do it macro fab and implement type C barely made it to us, like the smallest drill the smaller annual rings, these smallest traces.
Got it? Well, you're saying without paying
extra. Yeah. Without having to go to the extended man. Yeah, because we can we
can go smaller. It just there's a fee for that correct. Yeah,
I think if you were basically going to have to implement 3.0 USB, so you had to have more differential pairs. You would have to go extend manufacturing, just to snake those traces out.
Oh, that kind of sucks. Yeah, it's kind of, I guess it's nature of the game. Yeah.
Because you're you pretty much need for middle traces, and micro vias. Wow, to get up, get it out.
So it sounds like you need to publish your, your design right there. So people can just basically copy it, assuming if it works.
Right. So I actually just put it through the system today. Okay, so hopefully in two weeks, I have a functioning parallax propeller dev board that has Type C connector on it. That's cool. I hope Yeah. Oh, yeah. Um, Scott mentioned, this is a I've been using that that we had this like, really cheap Chinese like, USB power meter. Oh, yeah. The power sniffer? Yeah, the power sniffer. Which works? Okay. I've noticed it has some funkiness. Because I think it doesn't actually, like route the data through device correctly. I think it has to I think it goes through an intermediate like chip somewhere in there, man, pop it open and see what it actually does. I wonder why you would do that? Because I noticed that USB 2.0 BCD, which is the power charged detection? Yeah. Doesn't work through it. That's weird. Yeah, it's really weird. So I'm actually going to work on my own version of that power meter. Yeah, that will support BCD. And also wanted, so I can actually just, you know, dump data, like record data through all my computer with it.
You got you. Yeah, yeah. Cuz I would think that if you make a sniffer, it's not supposed to affect anything on the line. It just supposed to tell you what's on the line.
Yeah. It doesn't. Interesting. Yeah. And I think the interesting thing is, is Power Meter also powers itself in the port you plugged into, so it's not 100% accurate. On the power,
whatever, you have to subtract whatever it takes, yes. From the
device I want to make is it's powered by a no outside
source. You have it plugged into a different USB port. That's
basically what's going to be Yeah, so it's gonna be it's powered by a different USB port. Yeah. And that way the other port I'm probably gonna have 100% isolation with so make sure it's not getting messed with
right and then you'll get accurate numbers. Yep. Because you originally got the sniffer because you're working on what the
the prop flicker? Yeah, prop dev flicker.
Yeah, cuz it was doing some weird stuff pulling tons of current.
Yeah. And it ended up not being that problem. It was a the US C port was just a piece of junk that is plugged into. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess we'll go right into RFO. Sounds good. And since we're talking about USB type three, type C type C intercell has this really cool chip, that's for Type C. It's the ISL 9237, which they buck boost converter. It's got a narrow output, which is actually really weird. I've never seen them, like any manufacturer, like, oh, yeah, this chips got a narrow output. It's like, usually it's like, no one actually says it as Yeah, it's like, that's not a selling point for chip.
Yeah, wide output. Yeah, wide output ultimate features, you know, crazy.
But yeah, so they're like, oh, yeah, this thing is narrower output, blah, blah, blah, blah. Basically, it's for powering up battery packs. Yeah. And the cool thing about this chip is it supports basically all the power modes for USB type C, so you can do five volt 12 volt 20 volts. So you can do 100 watts of power up and charge up your lithium battery pack.
You know, I'm curious. It's, it's called a book boost. But none of the voltages are lower than any other voltage. I wonder why they can't
charge a dual cell. So 7.4 volt,
but that's still a boost. I wonder why it's not just a boost converter?
If it's 20 volt in, you got a buck down.
Wait 20 volt into what?
If you have a 20 volt source charging up a 7.4 volt battery? You get the buck down?
Oh, okay. I get I'm sorry. I was assuming that this was always tied to a five volt source. No, no, no. It can be tied to a 2512 20.
Which is USB type C power delivery system.
Gotcha. Gotcha acceptable either way.
Yes. That's cool. And it's reverse USB on the go. So basically, when you charge up your cell, this is like basically like an A, you can plug your laptop into it. And since your laptop becomes an on the go device for this battery cell, yeah. And then it basically your laptop is powered by this battery cell now. So it goes the opposite directions. Well, it can be a charger and discharger.
So my phone can charge my laptop.
Yes, that's it.
That sounds pointless. But yeah, a fun exercise.
Yeah, it's it's pretty cool. Chip. Um, I'm probably going to try that that part out when it finally hits the market hasn't come out yet.
I think you will get a little bit of time to test out your layout. Yeah.
Well, this is gonna be more on the like, full implementation type. See, the first thing I'm trying is just upgrading a micro USB designed to type C. You know,
I remember seeing your footprint for the Type C connector. Now that I think about it. It seems like it's kind of meant for like six layer plus boards. Yeah, it looks it almost seems like in order to escape it, you would have to do six, I
think you'd have to at least do four layer minimal via form for
layer at just getting by.
But I'm hoping with this, the the implementation I did, you can just upgrade your normal two layer USB 2.0 Micro USB devices with this connector with the setup. Yeah, basically, you have to change the connector and add two resistors. And that's it. That's all you have to do.
Awesome. Nice. Oh, the to 5.1 case. Yes. For the drop down on the CC.
Yep. Yeah, that should work. Cool. Some there's some app notes that say you can use one 5.1k And then bridge them together. But there's a lot of conflicting app notes and data sheets about type C out there. Literally hard to find. It's probably
not going to break the bank to add another 5.1k No, I am
going I actually set up the the board so I can just bridge it over. And I can test it
out. Yeah. I guess it just pulls twice as much current. Yeah, that. I mean, on that line, whatever that line is from the host.
Yeah, we'll see. Cool. And what's been sweeping the news this past weekend was Pokemon Go. We don't usually talk about apps on this show. Now but this one's ridiculous. But this one well, it's not really about Pokemon Go. Yeah, but SparkFun had a really cool project. They made a pokey Dex. Yeah, those don't know that's like in the show. The Pokemon show is that's like their PDA. I guess it's good way to put it. Yeah. That records all the Pokemon data.
Someone may want to even carry PDAs anymore. smartphone is A PhD horrified version of one but like an official PDA Well, when I guess they do now with polka Tech's?
Yes. When the show came out, smartphones didn't exist. That's true. So it was like a PDA.
It was like Encyclopedia Britannica. For the Pokemon world in your hand. Yeah, in digital.
Yes. So but they made a 3d printed case that you put your smartphone in, that you can play Pokemon Go in. Wow. But they, once it furthers they added a big lithium cell and a charger for that lithium self. So you could basically have extended battery life while you're playing. You don't run out of battery life while catching a Pokemon.
They fixed everything except for your data plan, where it just gets obliterated by playing
the game. You know, I was thinking is speaking of pokey DEXIS in the in the in the I don't know if a lot of people watch the show or whatnot. I watched a lot when I was a kid. And just thinking about it is so the whole whole whole thing about the show is the guy is going out and recording Pokemon to like, quote, catch them or like record them all. I think the professor wants you to like, basically record all the Pokemon. Sure, yeah. But the pokey Dex knows all the information about these things. Like when you scan one in it has like all the lists of what it is. So he already has this data database.
Yeah, like everything already exists. They already exist. What whatever. Maybe it's just some kind of like right to passage thing where you have to go and discover all this information that already exists or the exam, then you're like a man or something like
that, and that universe in the Pokemon universe.
So I have to admit, I did download pokemon go just because like, what is it? I just don't get it. I don't understand it. And my shop I found out that my workshop is a gym. Didn't even know that my workshop is a Pokemon gym. I told everyone that the only Pokemon I've ever seen at my gym are cockroaches and spiders.
So you have to defend it every day then, huh?
You know, I really I don't even know how the game works. I haven't put much time into it. But I it the game has told me that I'm I am not a high enough level to even like, do anything. So I'm like, I don't want to put time into this game.
But yeah, this game is I haven't I haven't downloaded it yet, either. But apparently it's bigger than Twitter now.
It's, it's incredible. It is absolutely insane. My Facebook feed, like every other post is about PokemonGo. Yeah. It's the concept is really cool. It's it's awesome that it's like gathering data from your location and making a game out of it. So I don't know. I like it. I think it's cool. Yeah. I don't know if I'm gonna dump time into
it. I was just impressed how fast SparkFun came up that project. The SparkFun
knew this was something big and they got on there. They got it on. Or they had some like Pokemon nerds there who was like I got to do this. Both. Well, both. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a guarantee.
And the big project that's actually came out this week. Is the Arduino door locked as activated by opening in a incognito window in Chrome. I saw that I'm like, I don't really have like, I know exactly what he's using that for.
Everyone knows exactly what he sees. No.
So it's basically a a script that's running on Chrome. Yeah, a plugin and basically tells Arduino to move a certain hobby servo to throw a lock. Yeah, pretty simple. He says he uses it when he goes shopping for gifts.
For his wine. Yeah, yeah, exactly what he's in for.
My favorite is what it's actually what the script is called.
What is it fap this guy is pretty pretty brazen. Yeah, get out there. And
when you read the nothing about that stuff, but when you actually like look at his video, and you go through like, you look at the variable names, so
he probably had way too much fun making this project. Yeah, he's got
a lot of other interesting projects. Like he's got like an automatic automatic Toilet Paper Dispenser. I don't know why you need one of those. But it's a cool project.
This guy's all into like, I guess like toilet humor and bad Through level stuff and that's that's hilarious.
But yeah, I think it's cool project. I'm actually surprised is the first time someone's actually built one of these
I guess you could call them an innovator
profile projects so yeah, and I guess that that's gonna wrap it up for this week.
What's this? What's this thing at the end of at the end of our sheet that says, Huh?
Oh yeah, this is a claims it's for shopping gifts online
I'm just trying to interpret Parker's notes here.
My notes always Alright, and that's, uh, that's gonna wrap up this week's macro fab engineering podcast, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So we were your hosts Parker Dolman and Steven Craig. Catch on next time. Take it easy.
Parker gives an update on his Prop Dev Stick Type-C and Stephen designs a tonestack based on the LND150.
Mandatory USB Type-C for everything? Parker and Stephen discuss the current EU ruling and preparing your PCBA design for contract manufacturing!
Parker's pinball controller has gone gold! Revision 3 is being fabricated! Stephen then explores the softness factor of diodes and the SSPS returns?