Stephen gets an upgrade in his electronics lab with a new multimeter, A Fluke 87V! We break down Stephen’s old meter vs the new Fluke.
This week, Riley Hall of Fictiv joins the podcast to discuss how Fictiv connects engineers and designers to job and machining shops.
The US Mint Denver produces 30 million coins a day. Denes, the tooling department manager, discusses with us how production at this scale functions.
Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes!
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 fat engineering podcast. I'm your guest, Iris Sweden.
And we're your hosts,
Steven Craig and Barker Domon.
This is episode 100. Ah,
okay. So I are Sweden is our marketing director and an award winning marketer for 10 years of experience. Is that true? Yeah. Awesome.
Award winning.
She's a native Houstonian and lover of music dogs and beers in Episode 100. And
met an engineering Podcast,
episode 50 through 100 or however long she's been doing it in the background. Yeah. What a note, keeper and a topic investigator and a social media pusher. Yeah, she's done a lot behind the scenes Exactly.
Like actually, all the notes that you see is derived from what she writes in the podcast. Yay. It's been fun. Yeah. Looking forward to making sure that we episodes Yeah, make sure we keep on topic to which never
Yeah, no, no. I'm about to take us away from topic.
It's the hardest thing go.
No, I was I was gonna you know, we didn't talk about this. But I just came to mind. Like, we started off. And this was just like a random idea that Parker or I can remember is probably you, you probably had this idea. Back at the whale Mac fab shop when there was nine of us over there.
I think it was less than that. But yeah.
And we went over to Parker's apartment or house at the time and yeah, accorded in his kitchen. First four episodes. Yeah, the audio is horrendous. And we were so yeah.
So it's actually the episode one we actually recorded. Because the first time we did it was terrible. Yeah. Basically, we learned you can't pre write jokes.
Oh, yeah. One episode out of 100. Yes, we've actually. And that was the first one that no one has ever heard. Yes, we deleted we haven't even heard it. Now. We're like, we both looked each other
like this. So we came back next day. We recorded the episode basically just put the topics down. Yep. And that was it. But yeah, it's actually really funny how the podcast came about. It was just an idea. Just we needed like, to make content for the website, the blog, and writing articles is hard. It's not hard to write the articles. It's hard to find time.
You can't put bullshit in an article. But no, but lots of bullshit in the podcast.
It was it was it's also why we don't do any editing on the podcast, because that just takes more time to do is seriously like it people are like, Oh, it must take a lot of work and stuff. Like it's not really that many hours of work to do the podcast. It's just a lot of fun. And I'm really glad that a lot of people out there actually find it enjoyable to listen to. And yeah, thank
you to all the listeners who stuck around for 100 episodes. It's kind of crazy to look at it be like, you know, however many what it was a little bit less than two years ago that we started it and to look back and be like, wow, like, we were gonna do 100 episodes I like I would have never guessed I
thought we'd get to Episode 20. And then investors would just pull the plug and be like, you're done.
Yeah, the thing is, I mean, with Iris and a lot of other changes. We've made it pretty efficient. I mean, we've gotten to the point where we can just kind of rock it out pretty quick
now. Yeah. So and the good thing is
we have content never suffers.
I always like the our new our new Slack channel and in Twitter and stuff because we get a lot of good ideas from you know what to talk about there. Definitely. Anyways, this absence was not supposed to be about the history of the map, but a q&a session from our listeners, right?
Yes. So we got a lot of questions from both listeners through our email and the Slack channel. And parents even have not seen any of these questions yet. So that's why I'm here to ask the questions and you guys will answer Are we ready?
Okay, please. Fire away.
Alright, so the first question is from Brandon jury. So he asked how in the hell does one survive engineering school? What should a person expect to give him a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering?
How do you survive? Um,
well, the second part, what do you get from a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering? It's a piece of paper. Yes, they hand you as you walk across. Is it paper?
Any degree right?
Isn't it like me? That's something else though.
Oh, lambskin. Yeah, tears,
you know, it's like lambskin or something. Let's, yeah. vellum, right. Yeah. Something like that. Whatever.
It's still a piece of paper. Yeah.
So it's a fancy and it's got like, gold leaf on it and stuff like that big. stamp. Yeah, big stamp and signatures from people that you'd never met. Good job. Yeah, good job, a lot of money, a ton of money.
What do you do with a degree, I actually physically do with this.
Mine still in the tube in my closet says mine, mine.
I do have mine in a frame, but the frame is sitting somewhere in a storage unit. I guess I could put it up on the wall here. But it's like, it doesn't matter, I McWrap it doesn't really matter. It's one of the it's gets your foot in the door to a lot of opportunities, at least in the engineering world. I can't say much about any other degrees because I only have one. But electrical engineering degree, you can pretty much go into any industry that builds things you can do, you can work for construction companies, you can go oil and gas, you can do manufacturing, you can do aerospace, aerospace, you can do any it's such a flexible degree because of electronics are in our in anything now. Anything and everything now. Yeah.
Right. So and if you don't want to work with like components, like electrical components, there's the power industry, and there's like power delivery industries and things of that show, like Telecommunication or just communication in general also needs a lot of electrical engineers. So to the first part of that question was how in the hell does one survive engineering school? I think one of the first parts of that is engineering school comes in kind of two chunks. It comes in the beginning half, which really sucks. And then the second half, which doesn't suck as much. Yeah, but it still sucks. Much.
You guys talked about the beginning half an episode 99? A little bit
a little bit. Yeah, yeah. So the the well, the beginning half is just all the all the basics. So you just in theory, yeah. And take as much as you can don't overexert yourself. Just do what you you know, you're good at learn how to play the game, because college is a game.
At but it is Go Go to your your professor means even if you didn't make up a question and go and ask them. That's all it takes. Because what will happen is at the end of the year, and if your grade is one point away, they will bump you over because they know your name on that piece of paper.
That's true. Yeah, no, that's a that's a really good one. Yeah. One thing that I think this is super important. If you're going to college, you're paying for your classes, go to every single one of them, don't skip them. I mean, every time you skip it, that's a couple $100 that you just threw it, in my opinion, go to every single class do every single homework assignment, even though it's a giant pain in the ass. Like,
I didn't do any homework.
I think it's important. I know it is good. Actually
looking back. I wish I did it because it would have made my life a lot easier.
And it probably make good grades better. Yes. Well, because you're sort of by default.
Yeah, basically is. Yeah, I basically dumped 10% of each grade down the toilet.
Yeah, exactly. And on top of that, like doing a homework assignment on a Friday night, as opposed to going out drinking is like, the hardest thing. It's it sucks. But in the end, you'll be happier. Yeah. Well, I
found towards later in, like, basically my senior year was I just did the I mentioned just started doing the homeworks like right after class. And I actually would just be in class during the previous classes, homework. That seemed to work. There you go. So.
So the problem is like, all of that is like super generic. Yeah. Almost any degree can be applied to that one. Yeah. But so like I said earlier with the whole, like engineering is cut into two different sections. You have the beginning, which is the basics. And the second part where you learn, like the specifics, do some research, do some secondary research, talk to anyone you can find and find out what degree or what what path of engineering interest to you, because then you'll like the second half of it. You know, if I've known too many people who got into electrical engineering, and by the time they were deep into it, they hated it. Because they didn't like the topic. Well, you know, then it makes it worthless. Yep. So if you really like civil engineering, become a civil engineer. If you like chemical, I don't know why you would because chemical engineering sucks. But if
I was actually I went to school for petroleum, which is a subset of that. There's more specific. Actually, what happened was I in my intro classes, I ended up not liking it. So I switched majors to electrical I was the only person that transferred in that semester. Electrical department Yeah, cool. Yeah. So it's, it's how you survive is you need to at least how I made it was I had to make it like something I really enjoyed. Like started reading up on extra stuff, doing it home soldering. Like I was the only person in my most of my classes that knew how to solder. I made my First PCB board. Yeah, way before like we were supposed to, like the our one of our final projects was we actually laid out boards and I'm like, that's easy.
So, you know, that's a really good point. Make your own crap. Yep, do things that have nothing to do with college, like, they might have to do with engineering, but nothing to do with your classes. So like, go make a little buzzy box or go make an LED blinker or go make a, I don't know, make your own version of a stoplight or something like that. Just go do that on your own, find something that's fun. And just go do that. And then you'll find out that the rest of the engineering stuff ends up not being as bad
or you really hate it and change majors or Yeah, or if you're a
mechanical engineer, go find a machine shop and cut some metal or do whatever you mechanical engineers do. Make a catapult I guess.
Right on All right, cool. So Brandon actually asked three questions. But this one from Emmett notton, who's a regular on a slack channel asked something similar. So I'm just gonna lump them together, then we'll go back to Brandon's questions. Cool. All right. So Emmetts question is, what's the best way to get an electrical engineering job, mostly for somebody with a degree but who doesn't have the job experience in the field.
So how my first job was I applied to a I just looked for like a lot like electronics, cars, I applied to like TI and all these other places. And because I didn't do my homework, I had a really low GPA, like 2.7, something like barely squeaked by to get a degree. And so like all the big guys, their HR departments don't care if you're under like 3.2, or whatever. So I started playing, and I know a lot of people harp on the industry, but oil and gas is always looking for people, people that actually work hard. And so I applied for a electronics implementation was it ayeni interpretation electronics, which is basically field work, doing sensors, pulling wire, basically being a field electrician and hooking up stuff. It's not really hard work. It's just, I was the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma. So it's kind of boring. But like, I've got to work with radios, I got to climb towers and set up, you know, looking at a sonar meter, figuring out where the antenna needs to be pointed all that cool stuff. And learned a lot, basically, when I didn't want to do that. So I went in just applying on a job board.
To Can you by that point, you already had some experience.
Yeah. And I I was a embedded system designers what I trained to do at school, so I was looking for that. And it's actually funny, I found the I found a job posting on the added fruit job board, which I don't think exists anymore, because last time I went there, it was like under construction. But I just applied to the job and that's where I met church. And then two years later, we started this company. So it's like I applied to two jobs my entire life three jobs actually my entire life. So I guess I'm not the Oh, Amber Alert. Sorry about that, guys. Yeah,
apparently someone stole a Toyota here in Houston. Let's well with a kid in it. Oh, yeah. Well, I guess that's Amber, isn't it? Yes. Okay, there we go.
I hope that you get a notification if someone stole just a vehicle. What kind of alert would that be? The side topic?
I don't know. So because Amber would be ringing all the amber is kids. Silver is old people. Yep. So what's a car?
I don't I don't look up the police code for that. I don't know.
Room Alert. Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom alert. Here we go. Anyways, so yeah, I would say just anything that's related to electrical engineering. And don't be afraid of doing field work, because it's actually you learn a lot from it.
Oh, yeah. And and half the time, if you're a very good solid engineer, everyone
else's phones, oh,
it's going crazy. If you're a solid engineer, there's, there's like,
I think most engineers are solid, pretty solid.
You're not gonna sit at a desk your entire life, you will eventually go to the field in one way or another, you know, if you're supporting a product, or if you're designing a product or if you're working in oil and gas, but you work a desk job, they'll still probably send you to the plant at one point in time to see the product in its place. So, you know, don't be don't be afraid to do like Barker said to actually go out there and experience that. Now. I guess with this question here. It's it's sort of open ended. You know, what's the best way to get an electrical engineering job? I would say for Somebody who's still a student, most college, colleges have a job board available in some way. And that's honestly, the easiest way to apply. And one of the reasons is, is because when you're a student, most of the time the you don't have anything that makes you unique. If you're an electrical engineer, chances are you've taken or I should say everyone else has taken the exact same classes that you have. So your resume is not going to be amazing. Yeah, so
that goes back to what you're talking about earlier is do extra things will enter that actually makes you different from every other students.
Well, there's that and that kind of what I'm getting at here, since your resumes, not necessarily going to be like, super unique in terms of your experience, you can write one resume, and shotgun that to a good zillion companies. And I know that sounds like, you might sound desperate, but it makes it such that you get a lot of chances to get interviews, and interviews. I know it's goofy. Everyone's heard this, but it's totally true. You're interviewing someone else as they're interviewing you. You need to hear what that company is all about in that interview, and swear to God, like 90% of the time, you're like, Man, this sounds terrible. I don't want to do this. And you learn that in the interview. So and that's okay. Yeah, that's, that's totally okay. And actually, on top of that, a lot of colleges will allow you to continue to use that job searching function, even after you've graduated. So utilize that it's a really, really
good tool. And I don't know how it is that other universities, but at UT, companies will come in and give presentations about their company and what they do and who they're looking for. For like interns and stuff. I never got a like electrical engineering internship, I got a petroleum engineering internship. And then, when I switched electrical engineering, I basically like my summers were spent in labs still, so I didn't work to that. But internships help a lot. Because they actually gives you some, it's basically another thing that makes your resume different from when you graduate. And that's the big thing, because, you know, everyone at your school has that has a degree has thinking, electrical engineering, 101102103202, etc, etc. Everyone's taking that stuff. So it's not like, you know, you're special in any way like that,
you know, I used to do hiring at career fairs. And I had when I would go to career fairs at a&m, where I graduated from, I'd have electrical engineering students give me their resumes, I'm using quotes on that resume, and they would put bullet points on this resume, like, oh, I designed a headphone amplifier in, in whatever. And I looked them, I was like, you know, I did that exact same thing when I was at school. And so like, I was like, did you design this outside of class? Or was this a class assignment? And they're like, Well, it's a class assignment. I was like, the thing is, like, I wasn't trying to, like, beat up on the kids. But uh, but I was, you know, it was at the, it was one of those things where it's like, everyone else here has also had to design that exact same thing. That is a requirement. Tell me about what makes you special, because that bullet point doesn't make you special. It doesn't make you unique.
Now, if that students can write up on a whiteboard or chalkboard, the schematic they use and how it worked, I'd be pretty impressed. So that
yeah, that would actually yeah, that would be awesome. Or even if they came to the the fair with their lab report, even showing me their lab report, like just like, hey, let's talk through this, let's walk through it. That would be
and that's another thing is job fairs. I wouldn't use them as getting jobs, I'd use them as just practicing, because you can do like eight interviews in that day. And use that to get used to talking to people because I really hate talking to people I don't know, like, even now, and I'm 30 years old, I hate like, like, I'll see someone's phone number. And I'm like, I really don't want to call them I just send an email. Just getting over that the podcast is actually helped a lot getting over that like fear. But like, interviews suck, like, I'm terrible at them. Oh, they
they're, they're so not fun. And you know, at the same time career fairs. You walk into whatever building you know, at a&m, it would it was the basketball stadium was 100 companies look, okay, Raytheon, IBM, Lockheed Martin, they're gonna have these these booths that are the size of the whole stadium, you know, these massive boots. Look, for 490 9% of the people who are in there, you have no chance of getting into that place. I'm not trying to be pessimistic or mean. But okay, so take those three off, unless it is your lifelong goal to work at Lockheed or whatever,
I would say still talk to them. Yeah, sure. Because it's this experience of talking to people and actually, if there's multiple people there, talk to them, go talk to other people and come back to a different person and talk to them and see how that experience is different.
Well, but but the point I'm getting at here is there's So many companies there, don't be afraid to go to the company that has a small booth, because they might have a position that's perfect for you. Yep, go to as many companies as possible. And don't just walk by a booth, just walk up to someone and be like, what do you do? My name is this? You know,
I've never heard of you before. Yeah. What do you do yet? Still, I kept that one. Because that's the thing is, they cheat, at least they taught us like, you should research the companies that you want to talk to. And like, I didn't, that's homework. I didn't do that. And that thing is like, I got more FaceTime with because they were talking and I was interviewing them on what their company did. And why is like, why should I work for you? Maybe that's you shouldn't phrase it that way. But that's what you should try to figure out.
It's a no go pile. That's
actually like, that's pretty, um, don't do that. But you should phrase. Like, if you don't know about the company, you should figure out why you would want to work for them.
Sure. Yeah. And you know, the thing is, those guys are going to be standing there on their feet in whatever stuffy clothing for eight hours. You know, they really don't want to waste time. You know, they they be conscious or conscientious that they're, you know, taking a full day to go they had to get there early and set up. They had to, you know, be very kind and gracious that they're there. And yeah, don't be Don't be an ass. Just don't do that. That's a good way to go in the no pile real fast. No.
Yeah. Cool. Cool. And we're done with that question. Good
answer. All right. So here's Brandon's other two questions. What is the dumbest slash smartest thing a person can do with shift registers?
So I'm going to guess these shift registers like seven four, HC five, nine times, probably the dumbest thing I've ever I've ever so I got I think we should phrase this question. The dumbest thing we've used them for or smartest thing. And then what's the dumbest, smart thing we can think of to use them? Okay, so the dumbest thing I've ever used them for was designing pinball hardware. Because why would you ever do that? Oh, yeah, you did shift. Why would ever want in tons of bits? Yeah. And you for switches and stuff.
It's like you had 595 controlling all the lights in a pinball machine? Right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So actually, I
it's not using a 595 directly, but like the first dot matrix display I designed for our pinball machines. I basically simulated like 1000 774 HC five nine fives in FPGA and it uses the same logic shift clock latch, and you latch like, you know, 4096 bits or something like that. That's no, that's the dumbest thing ever used a shift register for
Hey, just they work if it makes you feel any better. I had the chance earlier this year to speak with a couple engineers from a very well known synthesizer company, about their designs in a one of their keyboards. And for all of the lights in there, all the LEDs and their keyboard, they use Shift Registers, doing that exact same thing. So they just pipeline out a gobs gobs of bits and then hit latch and love to do. So that's that is a solution. It's
fast enough to do you know, 30 FPS on a dot matrix display on those
chips are cheap. And you can get them even cheaper.
So what about you, Steven, what's the dumbest thing,
the dumbest thing I've ever done with a shift register
an analog guy. I am an analog
guy. So I'm struggling to think of all of my shifting experience. You know, I remember having the first time I got introduced to shift registers. I had such a horrible professor, or with a TA really. And I had no clue how shift registers worked, or what was going on in that lab. And so like, I basically just wrote code until it worked. I like I like test cases, because like, no one, I think we have to simulate a shift register in an FPGA. Okay, and I just started writing, like all this random ass code, until like, I got a general idea of it working. And then I said, screw this. And so like, that was probably the
dumbest screw this I'm using tubes.
Because like, I really probably should have just like, asked for help. But I was really arrogant at that particular time, because I was, I was pissed off because like, nobody was helping me and like, I felt like I should have just known it. And so I was like, I'm just gonna figure this out. I probably spent like, way more hours than I need to do. So that was dumb. Yeah.
So we have an example of a dumb thing that's actually a product And then two things we didn't know stupid. Yeah. Cool, cool,
smarter thing to talk about smarter thing I'm
programming a pinball machine with
elegant and stupid. So
if you think about it in terms of like board real estate and cost, it might be smart.
Yeah, um, the only thing is I, there's some, I want to try out or like the I squared C IO expanders, which are basically shift registers, but they run on I squared C bus and they have an address and they work pretty much the same way. I want to try those out. Okay, so, in the future, hopefully I get to use one.
Right on. Okay, on to number three. Yep, yep. What is a good resource for learning how to prototype? My wires are always a mess. I have no idea what kind of box can hold panels style outlets. I'm looking for a resource that will improve my ability to take a circuit that works into a form factor that will allow it to be tested in a halfway reliable way. Whoo.
That's a solid,
spicy question.
Yes, that one, because I was about to say that what's a good resource for learning how to prototype a breadboard, a breadboard, but then he was like, my wires are all a mess. It was like okay, well not.
So a breadboard and then get the solid wire jumpers that have the nine degrees built into them. Yeah, those I can't remember what they're called the jumper wires. But not like the ones that are flexible. They're actually like you get a case in a pre cut and bent. Yep, get those. Yeah, jumpers, jumpers, yes, a jumper. Those will really help clean up your wiring. And, yeah,
so I would say the way you're probably prototyping now continue to do that. However, once you get your circuit working, rip it apart, and then rebuild it. The way Parker is talking about with, like, really well known like jumper lengths. And then to clear things up, like take, for instance, if you're doing a like an op amp, pin eight goes to positive voltage and pin four goes negative voltage, plan your rails such that the top rail is positive voltage and your bottom rail is negative voltage. So if you do a jump, that's from pin eight to the positive rail, it's only like point four inches, put a little point four inch, like solid bend jumper there. And, you know, plan plan like that think think of like, where are my parts going to go as opposed to just like, well, I'll slap this here and slap this here and then then my circuit doesn't work. You know? Yeah, that's usually a really good way to make sure it doesn't work. So planning a little bit ahead of time. And I don't mean like, don't plan your old breadboard ahead of time plan like one step
ahead. Yeah. So I usually do for prototyping. Now. It's changed a lot over the years. I used to do breadboarding first and then you know, and iterate that. But what I do now is I usually will design the schematic first. Its first thing I'd do is design all the parts I want to use in schematic, and that way I know what kind of, you know, do I need a carrier board to, you know, it's SMD part. You can't put that into a breadboard and build it from there. Do schematic first and then replicate the schematic onto a breadboard and sometimes I want an breadboard the whole thing. I'll just breadboard parts that I don't know that work yet. Like, I don't breadboard an FTDI chip USB interface anymore, because I'm like, I know how that works. And I can make circuit elements that are Lego block. Yes. I want to say Lego blocks but I'm like, I know I can make that thing work no matter what. Yeah, on the on the board the first time. And I'll only experiments with that one part that I need. That's new, basically. And then I'll write code for like Musee the parallax propeller because I can chuck out some spin code really fast to just like make that chip work. I'm okay, that works. And then I'll spin up full on PCB. So and then port decoder like C or something. Depends on what my controller using. Cool. Yeah. So the next part of that is box that can hold panel style. So finding the enclosures is like the hardest thing for an electrical engineer. Yeah. It's always just finding the right one because we at least how I think of stuff is like I already know what I want to look like and how I want to use it. I'm like, I need a box that's cheap and off the shelf that does that. And there's never one No, no never 3d printer.
Here's two names that I can give or three, three names that are inexpensive, in quotes, and they they usually have something that will work. You have bud industries, BD I love that name. Hammond. And then you have to catching Tokachi to gotcha Yeah, that's it. So if you want like a real nice plastic case that has like rubber overmolding and it's silkscreen, silkscreen Tokachi. If you want a extruded aluminum box that comes in incredibly standard sizes, go with Hammond. And if you want, like, old school like 60s era test equipment looking thing, go with bud. Yeah,
that's a good way to do it. Or listen to episode 99. And listen to how we talked about doing it using PCBs for enclosures and stuff.
That's true. Yeah, that's, that's, uh, yeah, that works really well.
Yeah. So and it works with our wheelhouse as electro engineers and EDA tools. So,
right and then and then part of that question says panel style outlets. When you say outlets, hopefully, you're not saying like, wall outlet, like, you know, the mains voltage. For something like that. You need a box that's like, dedicated for that kind of thing. Because even though like, as an electrical engineer you you have an idea of what, what the angry pixies are doing inside the wires. Like, you still need to like at least pretend like we know what we're doing with them. And because they will hurt
try to follow UL and electrical standards and stuff like that.
Don't put don't put a mains outlet in anything that can explode or burn. So don't make a wooden box with a mains outlet on it. When, when it comes to
my first power supply ever design was in a wooden box. It was in a wooden box. Yeah. And 120 went in and then into a transformer. I pulled out of an old radio and then into a LM 317 with a geometer. On the front. Yeah, wooden box. Well, hey,
remember earlier this year, I did 5500 Watts into a USPS cardboard box that was like slightly moldy. Yeah, exactly. I'm not saying that. Like we're not hypocritical here. When it comes to dealing with mains voltage, Home Depot has like four aisles that are dedicated to doing that properly. So research that and figure that out.
Yeah, yeah. All right. So next question from Steven Newbery. What is the best method method for as hardware engineers to monetize our side projects? I personally don't have the time to handle manufacturing or customer support. In the long term. I've considered contacting companies to sell a design for a lump sum, or royalty based model, but I've never gone through with it. What are your suggestions on what will or won't work the best? Hmm,
I've actually, I, when I was in a way, that when I was a student, I sold Atari video mods, it's how I funded a lot of my actual education. Like, I paid for rent basically with that, so that was pretty nice.
HDMI, Atari,
s, video, S video analog, it has analog and digital components of it. And I supported that through, you know, email and all that good stuff. And yeah, it's, it's, you get to a point where it becomes you have to go and I was actually building all the boards myself too. And soldering them all and doing all that work. And yeah, it gets to the point where it's just too much and I actually just stopped doing it. I kind of want to start doing it again. Because I get a lot of requests for it. And with macro fab I don't have to build anything. Shameless plug right but yeah, it's you know, I don't know what a good solution that is because you got a website like tindy but you still have to It's like eBay though, is you still had to manage your own. It's not a storefront we sought the Manage your customers. Maybe that's what tindy should go into. They manage your customers for you. You just ship them inventory. But he also doesn't want to, like handle anything besides just design just wants to design sounds like you just need to get contract jobs. And I don't know cuz like, you want to design something and it just not support it.
Well, okay. So so if I mean, if you're really I mean, if your chops are good enough that people want to buy your whatever you're making mention. Royalty is going to be your best option. Yeah, for the for the long term. But if you're willing to, you know, settle for lump sum, then, you know, your two options of lump sum or royalty is probably your best options. Yeah, and because you it sounds like you don't want to do anything.
Yeah. So, I'm gonna use McWrap as an example, see if we can make this work in McWrap. This is another shameless plug, but we got some times on the podcast
that it was gonna be that looks like
what does the shameful plug look
shameful? Yeah, no. You know what shameless though is okay. Anyways, You confuse me with with sad stuff with the English sad stuff.
What did you make on the English portion of the LSAT? I made it 550 hours
below that the 400
Math section was nearly perfect. And that was that was enough to get me in the horse. That was it.
I think I was the opposite. What
was it like a 900 was like the top score was 800 for each. Okay, I was a tough I think I score 780 on math.
I was either 780 or 790. Yeah,
that's right. This is the oldest 82 Which how many iterations? Were in off topic? I don't ask how many iterations? Is it because it was like the oldest 80 And then when I went to school, it became the new SAP. So I actually took both and you took your best score. And yeah, actually, the funny thing is with it cuz a lot people like take the Assa T multiple times, I did worse every single time. I was like, fuck this, this is the AC T to AC T, I actually did pretty well on AC T. But no schools at the time took the AC T in Texas. No idea why I took it. Anyways,
um, the designing and making money off of stuff.
Yeah, so, um, and macro fab, you can put your your design in and build it maktab will handle all the operations side. And all you have to do is give them a customer list. So you start the manager storefront, and then you get the manager support inventory. The inventory Max have handles too.
So once you run low, you just have to really like you said, the more
you just have to build another batch. Yeah. So the thing is, you sought to run a storefront and still run. If you have warranty stuff. If you have, you know, customer support customer support, you sought to run that side. I don't know of anyone that does does that side, like run your customer support? Because that's a really hard because you have to know the Congressman spouse? Yeah. Because your customer support needs to know your product. Yeah, that's really hard to do support for products. So you might not be able to get away. That's this thing. It's like, I could make so much money if it wasn't for those pesky customers.
Every engineers dream. Don't ever let me talk to anyone. Let me sell my design, never support it and make a ton of money. Yeah, that would be an engineer's dream, but unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.
That's true. Elon Musk. Yeah. Cuz he has enough money to pay other people to worry about that stuff.
That's right. Yeah. He can make electric semi trucks.
Yeah. Electric anything? Yeah. Yeah, good. No, I don't think we have a really good answer for that.
I don't think anyone has a good
you know. Sorry. I'm sorry, Stephen,
the royalty method and that has worked for me. Yes.
I've done the royalty method too. And that works pretty well. The funny thing is we it the world is the pinball boards. Yeah, um, I get a royalty and we also manufacture this year. So that's got weird conflict of interest. Just a little, just a little bit, just a little bit. Yeah, I just farmed out the price. You know,
so one of the best options and we'll go quickly sell your royalty design to another engineer. So find an engineer who needs just design work and they don't have the time for it? Because they can support it. There's someone you can actually trust to support it. There you go. There. That's a good solution.
Right on. Okay, good. Okay, cool. So I would say that was the segment one if you will of like the serious ish questions is Act Two is act to know our mission. Our mission.
Donations over these are a little bit more fun. Okay. All right. This is from
on intermission. Reload,
reload. Alright, Tom Anderson asks, I would like to hear the story behind what's the worst electrical electrical shock that you guys have ever had? So this goes back to Episode 85. Y'all remember? We talked about this? Yep. Briefly, I had read listen to a story behind it. Yes.
Ah, so mine i It was by a shot my jeep Yep. Hey, guess what the story behind it? Yeah, I haven't. I'm drinking beer. And was Oz is before I get the engine replaced in the jeep. And it was having some it's called blow by basically the exhaust is going blown through the or oil rings on your pistons and so it goes to the crankcase and you basically it burps oil smell all the time.
So, okay, I like mechanics but I am no mechanic whatsoever I have no idea I know that it was your distributor cap
yes as I'm explaining why I did this I have no idea what a disc distributor cap does okay if you get that too yeah so I'll get there yeah so engine that blow by so trying to figure out what piston it was and how you do that is basically make that piston not fire and because the engine noise will change and basically I was looking for a cert It was basically piston slopping which is when the piston rocks in the bore of where the piston goes it the skirt will basically hit the sidewall and because it was doing that the rings shift and then you get blow by and yeah exhaust and oil crankcase and the burps oil smell every so often. And so I was basically unplugging all the spark plug boots to figure out which one was burping. You're supposed to like just turn the engine off, unplug one and then like put a cap on the spark plug boot and then crank it back up again. And I'm like ah whatever I was wearing a glove so I was wearing just like a leather Mechanics Gloves. I pulled the first one off and I got basically 40 KV into basically into the glove across my chest into my barn which was on the fender. Victor's bad. Yeah. And, you know, immediately got knocked back on my ass and was like, Well, I'm done working on juicer
isn't that important for glutes are like, you know, 10 millimeters of like high voltage silicon? Yes. Is a good reason for that.
Yeah. The installation part of it.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's surrounded by everything. That that spark that's in there wants to go everywhere. But the spark plugs? Yes. And so like, spark plugs are all designed to just like focus the spark in one spot.
Yeah. Cuz a spark plug. The electrode is surrounded by ceramic, which is very high insulated. And so because what you're because you're trying to spark it across a gap of air, and air fuel mixture, but just air and boom, yeah. And that that gap has, like, you know, is that they don't call it resistance. I can't remember what they call air gaps. But they have a voltage rating, a dielectric breakdown, this dielectric breakdown of that air gap. And you have to overcome that with lots of voltage.
You ionize the air and it electrons flow across the air. Yes.
Yeah. Or across your chest. Oh. That's the worst. Because 120 is kind of like it tingles. actually shocked my friend before. With one train accident. Yeah, by accident. So this is back in high school. I was in as in tech theater. And we built fog machines. Let's tech theater, technical theater. So you were doing all the sets and props for the theater class. technical stuff.
It's like you got the theater nerds. Yeah. And then you have like, the ultimate nerds. Yeah.
So we were building marker. So we built everything and did all electrical work. And we would run the set. So like we were the people that were in black and moving stuff around. And so we were building can
you see Parker running around in
the snow? wore a black T shirt? No, we had all we had just black shirt and gloves and mask on it, sir. And you always had to tell your parents which one you were because if one just wears black in the back, it's just like, Dude,
you know me? Yeah.
So if you saw the buting beast in 2004, at Stratford High School in Houston, I was the person at the very beginning that pushed the fountain out.
You don't be surprised. Like, remember that? It was the best time of my life.
I had because the fountain was when the magical, the fountain because the curtain came up and the fountain had to come forward because it more front center. And so I had to like push it like five feet and then scurry off to the side for the actors game. That was like the most I've ever was like in front of people. So
shocking, buddy. No.
So what the what show we were doing but we had built fog machines. And these were like, We need a lot of fog. And so we had 55 gallon metal drums that we put water in and then we built a basket that had dry ice in it. And that dumped into the water that was in the barrel. And then on top of the lid of the barrel we put giant squirrel cage fans because they had to be quiet and that pumped air into the barrel and then we had big AC duct hoses that we would just drape out onto the floor. And this thing would fill the entire like we had like eight of these affiliates are on top and full of fog. And so we were fixing one of them because some basically someone ripped the cord off of it. And so we're fixing it. And my friend goes plug it in, see if it works and he's holding it today and he grounded it out by his body. And he was like I like I turn around look at him like, ah, and then it was like, he was watching me and it was like, no quickness to my movements
so that's the other one that was shocked to me.
Well, you probably wouldn't be holding like a plug that was being tested.
Yeah, we've done some pretty sketchy things at your shop. My shop Yeah, with electronics. Oh, yeah, plugging stuff in. But it's like when those like you get to like 30 years old and you're like, I don't really want shot myself anymore,
too, but at the same time you've done it enough that it's just like out and then you keep going. Yeah, no,
I was living on a farm for a little bit and so hot wires with like pig fences and all that kind of stuff. And that brings back memories Yeah, that's no fun and then being a girl's probably TMI but yeah, there's like wires that we were that it just you can feel it you know? Like harder but yeah. Anyways
guide and direct they do instead of lifting separate
I like it. Podcast title. Yeah. So I like how both of these shocking stories are related to spark plugs.
Yeah, yeah. So you know the thing is like, I have another story and I thought I told this that it's in my opinion is way worse. So I'll go over that one real quick in a second. But the the story that was brought up here from Episode 85 was a lawn mower. My buddy had a lawn mower where the kill switch didn't work. So instead of installing or fixing the kill switch, which is literally two wires, he just put a zip tie on the sparkplug wire and all you would do is just yank the zip tie and kill the lawnmower and I was over at his house helping him mow one day and he told me about that I was like okay cool. And all he told me was you just pull the spark plug wire to kill the motor and so like I get done mowing his entire lawn I just grabbed the wire and give it a Yank and it just it made a noise like it was it was like enough in and this is just a small like lawn mower Yeah, it was enough to to horsepower me on my ass.
Yeah, no did you fly? No, I
mean, like I have before Yeah, I'm getting shocked from from Calvin's once actually I was climbing over a fence and I the very top wire was was oh you got Jurassic Park I got dressed onto my back was it I know this is gonna sound super weird but it actually kind of felt good whoa whoa, what was that like your whole body feels alive that's the
finish house and it's just like there's jumper cables
like it's still like any engine needs a huge spark and any spark needs to be massive to cross that little spark gap
Yeah 20 KV or
a Jeep or a lawnmower? It's still a big spark and current will kill you voltage hurts. Yes. So like I've been hit by low voltage before and it's just like it's not that bad but I've been hit by you know, I have actually hit 500 volts once and that was not fun. Like I'm going home to take a nap Oh, there was a there was a tube amp I get hit by a two man points in my elbow actually
funnybone but okay,
so the worst shock ever got I swear I talked about this on the episode but we're getting regardless if I hadn't. I was working a job years and years and years ago and I did something completely stupid I should have never done I'd actually brought in my own soldering iron. And I bought this soldering iron. It was like a Chinese piece of crap. And the soldering iron was not grounded. But all I did was a two prong or I and I wasn't thinking and like I had like 15 things in my left hand and I had the soldering iron and like four other things in my right hand and I didn't have anywhere to put the solder so I took a chunk of solder and I held it and I pushed it into the PCB with my head and I got my front teeth.
Does that why your tooth is chipped? Oh.
That was that was to get mains voltage into your skull through your teeth is about the worst pain ever. Like I do not know and I will never know what pregnancy feels like. But I guarantee Do you This is worse, I guarantee you like it cannot be bad and like, my co workers watched me do it. That was the worst part. They watch me like, Good God, you are stupid.
I did watch my friend. He was plugging in some speakers and he put, fortunately not 120 Wii, but it was a he put the, the, like the barrel jack in his mouth to hold it for some reason and plug the transformer in. And so it's 1015 volt AC. Now. I just watched him do it. I'm like, Well, I mean, Darwin finds a way. So yeah,
man, it's kind of like, I'm glad that I'm hearing these stories. Because, like, I'm starting to mess around with being a homeowner like doing my own electrical stuff. And I'm assuming that like, you know, sparkplug saw the ceramic because it's safe. And so you know, I could touch a sparkplug maybe or whatever. But
no, not while it's running. At least now.
You can't see it, but it hurts like hell
yeah. It's actually good story. We will keep riding this gravy train on. So on Saturday night, I was in my garage. I was like, you know, drinking a lot of whiskey and smoking cigar. I was like looking at my jeep like admiring all the work I did over the weekend like
it's a project I'm like, like admiring. I'm listening to the radio. And I'm looking over on the wall. I'm looking at my welder socket, and I installed it upside down. With the ground. It's a three prong 240 50 amp Oh, so
the cord, the ground plus the wall
and then goes up AI because I had the ground plot blog going on the bottom, which is like a normal 120 volt socket would be like, but for these and see exact opposite. So I'm like I should fix that. And this is like four whiskies in, it's all like I opened the breaker box, turn it off, I pull out the meter, check to make sure it's dead. It's all dead. You know, pull it out. And like I twist it and like I'm here on the radio is like homeowners shouldn't do their own electrical work. And then it's like the sound effect. I'm like, I'm okay. No, I finished a job that I thought was really funny. That commercial popped on Yeah, it's like a commercial for like, a handyman service or something. But like they had the sound effect. Shocked.
Like, at the end, I didn't get shot. Come on. That's not a story. That's just like what you're supposed to do. Okay, I got a good one here. This This one is funny, because my buddy and I, we still talk about this today. So my parents went out of town on time, a couple years ago, or, actually, it was way more than a couple years ago. Geez, I'm old. But so my buddy was like, I'm gonna bring my drumset over and we're gonna set up and play guitar and drums in the living room. However, guys, oh, high school. Okay. And so like, I was like, awesome. So like, we were just jamming and stuff. And I was like, Hey, let's start, you know, designing some guitar pedals and stuff. So we started we were designing some two guitar pedals. And we built a circuit that was 300 volts. And it was all like breadboard it up and stuff. And we're like, hey, we can we can play on this. Well, I had the table that we were working on was in a completely separate room from where the the drums were that my buddy said up and he's like, oh, let's jam on this. We just built this cool pedal. Oh, yeah, hell yeah. So I go over there. I have my shoes off. And this is a pedal that you normally like stomp on. Yes. And I had the switch for it, which is not a high voltage just like just your guitar signal. Yeah, I had the switch on like long pigtail wires that were hanging off of it. Well, so like he gets on the drums starts going and we start jamming and stuff and I go to like turn this new pedal on because it's gonna make us sound amazing. And somehow I slipped and my toe hits the 300 volts on the breadboard. Like I I felt I did not feel the shock in my toe. I felt it in the back of my head. Your spinal cord hits your skull there and I turned around because I thought my friend punched me in the back of mad at him he's like what the hell's wrong with me? And then I realized that he didn't punch me I just shot my toe Wow, looking back I've done a lot of
yeah, when you slowly like start thinking about it. It's like builds up. Yeah, all the stupid stuff. You
know that friend that same friend has totally shocked me before. You know it is. I think
we could probably keep going for hours on it. Hey guys, I got like eight more. On the
back. It says, Yeah, on the back it says Steven Longmore Parker distribution cap.
Yeah, yeah. We just talked about those two. This would have been like a one minute segue.
Yeah. But we had to go into evil.
Like, yeah. Oh, sorry. So we've got our friends from N notic. sort of asked us some questions. Do not read ahead, sir.
I think they made some cool badges at one point in time. Yeah. Those guys, right. Yeah. In fact, I think we actually have some of those badges lying around. Yep. Cool. All right. What questions do they have for us?
All right. So Hierin asked, what is the difference between a duck Okay,
right. Difference between a duck and what else?
You see the problem with hiring is that he thinks that we're funny
we're not we're not saying up comedians.
No, we're not. And so I'm going to put this on him as in like he made the mistake here not that we can't answer this question.
Two part question if
you will. The what is a wait what else question again?
What's the difference between duck
compiler error must need another argument.
does not compute what was the celebrity Jeopardy thing? The difference between a sick duck and sick you're sick mothers. I don't I don't see like this is just not gonna go well. Yeah, whatever. That was Sean Connery on Celebrity Jeopardy. Sean Connery.
Those are the best celebrity Jeopardy episodes. Yeah,
yeah, watch it. I like celebrity Jeopardy. All right. Well, so second part of this question. All of a sudden, one of the following two things no longer exists craft beer or lead alloy solder? Which do you pick Parker? Oh,
um, because I'm doing a lot more s&t work and involves pasting stuff. Little blood solder,
you get rid of craft beer. No blood solder
can go away. Oh, that's okay. Craft beer is more important. Because that also means you can't brew
so that doesn't No, no, no, no, no crap. No. Home Brewing.
So there's a there's a different set then. If that's true, then I'll get rid of craft beer because I can just brew my own craft beer.
That wasn't gonna be my answer. Because yeah, there's other people's brew now I saw
I saw your sparkplug shot that's right.
My lead solder Yeah. What if it's all craft beer? What if it's all good? So really this this question on this podcast that always advocates for lead solder So yeah, this question sounds like trying to get me to to slip up and say yeah, I'm gonna get ready to lead so I'm going to brew illegally in my basement that I will build in Houston with lead solder with lead solder that way and I will convert this question because I will have both homebrew and lead solder because
with lead with the lead solder walls the federal government can't read your mind. That's right.
And I will not have lead poisoning. Maybe not
because in your in your in your in your beer.
Okay, but in all honesty, if I absolute gun to the head if I had to get rid of one of them. I get rid of my lead solder because you can still make stuff with lead free solder. And so getting rid of lead solder would mean you'd still have both things. Yeah. So cool. Okay.
Right on. All right. Next question from zap. Oh,
I'm rereading his questions
that's cheating. Cheating please. Iris.
Alright. Zap from n naught XOR says would you rather assemble 1000 duck sized horse PCBs or one horse sized duck PCB
1000 Duck size because that fits in the pick and place
though a artists like you know you've made large thing is I'm really
considering the horse sized duck PCB because, like assembling 1000 duck sized horse PCBs is just going to get you like the award for assembling 1000 Duck size, you know, horse PCBs, but being the guy the one guy who's like, quirky enough to make the horse size PCB is like I would rather have that. Okay, so
the next Yeah, well, whoever makes a duck size PCB and runs it through our pay close and they'll make on the red hot PCB for sure. Twitter post. Yeah,
but do they have to make 1000? Yes.
For sized one,
like I mean, panels are only 16 by 16. Right. So you got to find a way to like, stick a bunch of panels
tantalize a horse. Yeah.
I'm sure that somewhere out there. There's some like magical PCB fab house that will actually make you a horse sized PCB. There's some like military application where they need like a 16 foot by 16 foot PCB is crazy. Yeah, I'm sure there's got to be something like that. And NASA has used it one time, and they paid $50 million for all the machines and they use all the tools in place one IC on it. Actually the, you know, that was funny, our PCB or not PCB, it's our manufacturing. What is it, the guy who runs up the floor here, I don't I don't remember what his exact title is. He was telling Chris Colbert bless his name, but
I think people can go look on the Mac fab.com/about, Us page director,
something like that, whatever. Regardless, he was telling me when he was back in like PCB school, he was learning on the micronic, my nine devices. And apparently they had a device that NASA was using. And it's this large IC that has like a, you know, a zillion pins on it. And they were using this this mine nine to place this part. And the guy who was demonstrating it was the guy who was actually going to place this part on the actual massive board. And so he fires up the my nine and he shows everyone, like how to like program and everything like that. First thing he does is he picks up this chip, drives it over to the board, rams it into the wrong spot on the board and bends like a ton of pins on this chip is $200,000. Like in front of the entire class just completely
why wouldn't you just use a dummy chip?
I don't know. I don't know, for some reason they were using like, like the chip. And NASA bought this entire pick and place machine to put one PCB in one IC on it. And the very first one they do their operators are Rexy. And
I think that shows also inefficiency of government and agencies to do that. Possibly.
Needless to say that guy didn't teach any. You're done here. Yeah. 111
I guess it was probably a custom basic. So that ship probably only cost a couple bucks. But like all the tooling that went into designing that ship,
was that Oh, yeah. And the salaries and all the other crap. Yeah. $200,000 for a single chip. And the guy ruined. Leads, I feel terrible.
But that was probably a while back too,
right? That's still I mean, if you're building that, what's the thing is if you build one chip, it's like $10 million. If you build 2000 chips, it's $10 million.
The same that my boss used to tell me all the time, it was like, yeah, one chip is 100,000 100,000 chips is 100,000. Yeah. So
he's got because the, how chips are made, they're built on wafers, and they have a certain size. So like a wafer can have like 10,000 chips on it. So
it's our 101. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's all the tooling that goes like all the screens and lithographs, and it's amazing that we still build. Yeah, no, it's just amazing. If you still build stuff with lightwaves and lithographs.
I know. I was like little graph, isn't it like some Disney sketch, it's like in a museum somewhere.
It's a microscopic screen of stainless that's got little tiny holes cut into it. So build chips that way.
Primarily, the way that we build. Yeah,
it's just crazy to think about that way. That's not technology. It's improved over time. But it's relatively like if you showed the engineers in the 60s that technology they're like, you just got better at machining or building the tooling. That's all it was. tooling. It's gotten better, but the technology sold. Someone's gonna be like, but it's gray beard. Yeah, some gray beard that Oh, no,
the fundamental concept works is they
do some new things nowadays. Oh, yeah, it's more accurate, but the they do some new things now which is like pre distort the aperture so that because they do sub light, they do sub wavelength size now so you have to like when the wavelength when the light goes into the aperture like distorts because it bends so they pre distort the aperture so when it bends it's the right shape which is pretty crazy because that's the last simulation Yeah,
if you think if you think solder paste stencils or are hard to design try this. I think I see stencil.
Yeah. That's actually a good thing. Stencil. Yeah. But yeah, it's it's besides that, I can't think of anything else crazy that's new in that field, like the procedures of course are better and the technology building tunes better but the actual processes Like, yeah, a guy from the 60s would be like, Yeah, I know how that works, you know,
a new in class, my buddy brought up something that was that was great. And I love this. We were talking about the fact that, you know, when you're in that class, you're talking about single transistors on a die. And the whole class is all about that. And so all of your units are in like, Pico meters or nanometers. Yeah. So you spend three or four months, and you get used to thinking in that scale, like, and he came up to me one day, he's like, we shouldn't be used to thinking about this scale. Like, that should be really, really tiny. Like, that shouldn't be like, we should appreciate how small that is. But in what, like we throw around those numbers, like it's like, oh, you know, this is easy stuff. Like 50 years ago, that was not easy. Even I guess, 20 years ago, that probably wasn't even easy, you know?
Yeah. Well, it's yield count. Well,
I guess Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got that big wafer you're talking about and you get 40% of it. Yeah. If you're lucky on a mature product. Yeah. No,
I don't. Crazy. So I think that's gonna wrap up the q&a session, right. There's no more questions. Nope. No more question. No secret question. Those
are good questions. No secret question. Oh,
yeah, it was fun. You want to sign yourself
Sure thing that was the macro five engineering podcast. I was your guest Iris Sweden.
And we're your hosts Parker Dohmen. And Steven Craig man so for one more episode 100 guys we made it. We did something cheers y'all.
Take it easy
we should harmonize that Thank you. Yes, you our listener for downloading our show. If you have a cool idea, project or topic or question that you want Stephen and I to discuss and Iris to read to us. Tweet us at Mac fab or in walls at podcasts@macro.com. Also, check out our Slack channel. We have a lot of people ask questions on our Slack channel. In discussions Yeah. If you're not subscribed to the podcast yet, click that subscribe button. That way you get the latest map episode right when it releases and please review us on iTunes. It helps the show stay visible and helps new listeners find us