Radio Frequency Eyeballs

Welcome to the macro fed engineering podcast where your hosts Parker, Dolman and Steven Gregg, this is episode 270.

So I came across a pretty cool connector that I should say I actually kind of stumbled into this connector. So I bought an XLR connector so just like a microphone cable connector.

Yeah, those aren't that cool. Well, this one. Okay,

so this one it baffled me at first because the datasheet doesn't necessarily say anything about this. Like, what this one feature that all engineers hate, or something like that, whatever. Okay, no, no, this is actually kind of cool. I was trying to be clickbaity there. But the so I'm actually holding the the XLR connector up to so Parker can see it. Okay, like, looks like a regular XLR connector, that's a PCB mount, or its PCB and, and panel mount right angle. Yeah. But it goes blue, and it comes apart. So you have this shroud thing that connects to the panel. And then you have the actual PCB mount thing. So when I first got this, I had no clue that these two pieces came apart, because I'm not really used to that I don't run into that situation. One molded piece. Exactly, exactly. So I'm like, Wait, what did I buy here? This, this is odd. And then I did a bit of investigation by actually searching on manufacturers website. So this this XLR connector, if you look down the barrel has a little screw terminal in it, like not as good, like a little set screw kind of thing. Yeah, that if you look on the the actual connector part it has, like this swing arm that can that the screw turns. So you can put the two connectors together and then put a screw in, turn it and lock the connectors together, or you can disassemble them. So this is meant for manufacturing such that the shroud part that connects to the panel, you can add a separate time connect that to the panel, solder the inner portion on your PCB and have them separate. So you can do testing separate and then bring them together at a different time and connect them together.

Oh, interesting. So you don't have to waste all your Buildbox and then find out your product doesn't work

that and this allows you to do either rear mount on your chair on your panel or front mount on your panel. Because since this is a PCB mount, you don't have to permanently connect it together. So it makes it super easy to break them break the two apart, solder everything as assemblies and then bring them together. Yeah,

that's actually one thing I noticed on that. What was it the fan controller was the connectors that goes to the outside world outside of it are molded in the enclosure itself, like in the body, and then the pins just hanging out. So you can't actually remove the PCB without basically the soldering those pins because the pins are molded into the enclosure. But yeah, I see what you're saying is since now your your part that screws to the panel is separate. You could put your board down and then plug the outside parts into your component.

Yeah, it makes for super convenient assembly. But it also makes for like, if something goes wrong, you can just replace the inner barrels or the or the whole PCB that connects to that. So it makes for a non permanent solution. Which is super awesome.

Yeah, cuz otherwise you'd have to de solder all your XLR RS then remove the board.

Good luck on that. It actually kind of reminds me of the cache hit long time ago, I was talking about a frequency generator that I bought that was made of grade eight Chinesey them and like the entire thing was multiple assemblies that were hard soldered together and hard soldered into the case, it was virtually impossible without just taking a hammer to it to disassemble it if you wanted to. And this is the exact opposite of that. But but it is funny because like when I first got it, I'm like wait, how like

recall assembly like solder in place assembly?

You know? Yeah, that's sounds reasonable.

I don't know if there's a special term for it. But I like that for Yeah, building something like that.

I don't know bad design, maybe we should just call it

what makes sense on like the fan controller because like I don't really see any other way of like, making a waterproof seal that way, because that's actually a really good way to do it. Except that you know, the front panel and back panel, the fan controller aren't waterproof at all. So it's like okay, why is it done this way, but, you know, it makes for pretty convenient assembly. And it's not like it's not like you have to remove that board to do any work on it anyways. And it's not much to go around.

And even with these things like you probably wouldn't like the the chance that you need to remove it is pretty slim. But it's but it is nice that they give you that ability. And actually, it's kind of cool because if you go to the website and you read like the product page for this, they talk about this as a feature being saying, like, you can solder your entire unit as an assembly, test it as an assembly board and then break them apart and assemble into the final unit. And I think that's brilliant.

Your, if you build your product with those, you're saving some poor audio engineers, like an entire day of his work. By putting those in,

actually, you know, it's funny, I might make the argument that you're not saving the that, because these are so odd. I've never seen these before, they would probably go and D solder them, and then figure out that they could have done this. Because like I'm inspecting this thing, and I didn't even see that little set screw that's like buried down into the body of it. Now, to be honest, I do have a little concern on this though, because the two sections of this, they they the way they fit together. And the way that little swing arm fits into a groove and kind of connects the two connectors seems great. But this is a highly mechanical part, the user puts a bunch of force by like pushing a connector into it. And the question I have is, is that one little swing arm that connects these two connectors? Is that enough to take the brunt of the user pushing this connector into it? Or is the PCB pins themself? Are they going to take a bunch of force and push against the PCB? I guess I have a little bit of concern on that. And I mean, that's one of the beautiful things about like big beefy XLR connectors is they're just a big metal body that you can be fairly confident that the the enclosure of the connector itself is going to take most of the force when you push against it, but I'm not so sure about this one. I don't know. We'll have to see.

Why did you end up buying these if you didn't know about that feature? Why did you end up picking these?

I did they're nitric and I like nitric and I saw they were the right price. And they looked good. And they had all the information I needed. So I picked these up. Okay, to be honest, that's it. So they were in stock and you liked the brand. Yep. Yep. That's it in this supply chain environment. That's good enough. Yeah, for sure. And the port number for these is NC three M D dash H dash bag for the male and then replace m with F for the female version.

Let me look him up real quick. Oh, I've ordered some stuff from these guys before.

Yeah, they're ubiquitous on Mauser.

Yeah, that's actually the second thing on features and benefits is insert is removable from rear of connector and locked into place by internal latch promoting assembly and disassembly for testing and PCB assembly into housing.

Bingo. or confusing engineers. It also does that. Yeah. That's kind of a cool idea, though. Yeah, I think that's really novel. I like it.

I do like how they have an accessory that's see a as Dummy. Ooh,

what is that? Do I need to go buy it? Mix

assortment of dummy plugs. Okay, let me play with our

plugs. I guess you could plug them in for shipping or keep dust out of them or something?

I don't Yeah, that's unused inputs can be covered to avoid Miss wiring and protects against dust. Yeah. I just like you that that part number is dummy. Okay. So Jeff Kaiser had really interesting tweet that got my brain rolling. Jeff Kaiser is mighty ohm on Twitter. And he posted a picture of key sites, new scope lines, and he says that they're like dark mode for scopes. So dark mode is like the quote unquote new wave of what, like applications are like

I read it went nuts for it, right?

Yeah. So I personally don't enjoy dark mode too much. But there's some people who like don't like to be blinded by the monitors. Or actually for phones since phones use OLED technology for the displays is dark mode saves battery. So there's a good engineering reason why not because user preference, but so Keysight scopes they have like, they're like dark gray in color. Now. And my only comment on this is like, it's taken about 20 years for, like, like test equipment to catch up to PC enclosures. Because like 20 years ago, like before, 20 years ago, most PC cases besides like Apple ones, were like beige boxes. And then they turned in, like, hobbyists and stuff started modifying himself and then you could buy like, a black aluminum enclosure, a dark mode enclosure, right? And so I'm like, Okay, is it gonna take when do we get our first like, clear enclosure? Because it was like that whole movement and PC cases to be like, acrylic, only, or like Windows, so you can see the electronics inside them. And then when did we get like RGB? Like scope? probes?

Yeah, because PC cases PC master race is all about, like, how much RGB can I put into? Like, how much power draw is possible with just RGBs? Yeah, how

much light RGB lights can I have? It's just it's ridiculous. Blue. Yeah.

So I like to look at these new key sites. They do look cool. Yeah. The whole white thing is is great and all but these it's a good way to separate themselves from the crowd, you know? Although, according to Jeff, he doesn't like their new Dark Theme.

Yeah, it could be like, tool manufacturers like Milwaukee in like DeWalt. They could have super bright colors like red, yellow, construction yellow. Or be like Makita which is like barf blue.

That's a new color you create

it's actually really close to the scissors. I have the webcam. The webcam actually does not do that justice. This is green by the way. What? Yeah, the webcam shows blue.

Hey, Oh, yeah. over the over the webcam. I'm seeing bars blue over here. No, I think the reason they use all those like really crazy colors is such that when you're walking through your favorite big box store, you see a measly you know, yeah, I'm actually taking a picture of the difference. Don't trust what your eyes see. Or don't trust the electric guy. Yeah,

that was that is really weird.

Is Keysight doing this on all of their new stuff?

I think so. Because if you actually go onto their Twitter, it's all their scopes look like that now all their test equipment, which I actually really liked how it looks.

So did you participate in the Keysight University live stuff that was going on?

I did not know what that was.

Yeah, they they did it? What was it this week or last week? Gosh, I'm getting old if I can't even remember a few days ago. So Keysight University love they they were they were given away about like $300,000 worth of test gear, including a bunch of like scopes, and power supplies and all kinds of stuff. And they had this whole like week long thing. In fact, I think it's still going and they will do more of it next month. So I apologize if I'm butchering it, if anyone from Keysight is listening right now, but it's it was a bunch of videos on some like cool electronic topics, but also how to use test gear and stuff. And so there was a lot of chances to win some really cool test test gear stuff.

Well, I had to look for or next time.

Yeah, gosh, I think they're they're doing they did like a whole week of the university thing where they would take random things actually what they had a cool video where they got a handful of their RF team together. And they tried to come up with unique solutions to boost the signal from their key fob to unlock their car. And they they were doing all kinds of stuff like testing if you hold it up to your face does your head act as there's your skull act as a booster car? And and they had like a directional antenna? Well, yeah, and people were doing like tinfoil hats and making like little cones and all kinds of stuff. And they had a box that they were actually measuring like the effectiveness of it. And it was it's a pretty cool video so check it out. I think it's only like 10 minutes or something like that, but it's fun. And they did prove that your skull increases signal integrity so if you can't unlock your car just stick it up to like your jaw or something like that. I don't remember exactly how it was go watch the video

and bounce those waves off the off the bottom of your brain.

Yeah, probably bounces a handful of times inside your skull and then emits out your eyeballs actually, you know it's funny when I made the it's not funny per se but it's interesting. My my buddy his his mother came down with a form have cancer of the eyeball. And they That's not funny at all. No, but the solution a downer the the medical solution they have for this is funny. So what they what they had they created this little, it's basically a square of lead this little thin sheet of lead. And then on top of the lid, they put some I don't remember some radioactive element such that it was a directional emitter of radioactivity. And they went behind her eyeball, and they basically glued it to the back of the eyeball subject was pointing right at the cancer itself. And the thing about it was it emitted radioactivity straight out her eyeballs. So for a few days, she wasn't allowed to look at people. Because she had like laser beams. You

know, her stink eye could actually give people cancer.

Yeah. And you know, what's great, it actually worked, it killed the cancer cells, but like she had to be like alone and not look at people for a few days. That's interesting. Yeah. Solutions, man. Crazy. Yeah, it does look like

I guess that makes sense for me, like, what's the least amount of tissue in your body to hit the cancer, because it because they most mostly kill cancer with radiation and stuff like that. So I guess that makes sense is go from the back of the eyeball, instead of having to go through the eyeball than through your skull?

Well, and that's just the thing, like what's behind your eyeball it probably one of the few things though, the most important thing to not shoot radioactivity out. So they, they just basically made a lead shield for radioactivity going backwards. That's interesting. She had superpowers for a few days that she couldn't turn off.

Alright, so we're gonna cover some of these very interesting supply chain stuff. I know. We've been talking about this for a couple of weeks now. But well, it's affecting everyone. It is affecting me when it listens to our podcast. Because like DigiKey, and Mauser have, like seven day delays right now. And just shipping stuff out. But regardless, the it's a article we found from fierce electronics, which is titled chip makers are hustling to make auto chips, and they say it's not a hustle. And it's kind of like we're picking some of the comments out of here that we found really interesting. Because there's basically all these chip makers are, they're using their lines to build higher margin items. And they need other lines to build the Lower, lower margin, older technology items for automotive. And so what they're doing is they're buying old equipments. And where are they getting the old equipment from? And basically, they're going around and stocking other chip manufacturers that are are slowly going out of business, and then eating them all up.

It's weird, because it's like they're just sitting there sniffing them and we're just like, I can't wait for you to die.

Yes, I can buy your equipment and I'm numb numb. Because apparently, the equipment to make all these chips is also on a really extreme backorders right now.

So yeah, the the industry cannibalism is crazy right now.

Yep. And then there was a, the, this is this is the part that you pulled out, which was chips used in braking an engine system. So it was talking about automotive systems are typically made of using older tech, that is sufficient to meet autumn automaker reliability requirements, while newer infotainment and assisted driving technologies require modern chips with cutting edge chip factories, which I thought was a very interesting comment that comment as well from this article, because it makes sense is, when you think about reliability, what makes something reliable? Is it the design? Is it? Is it the people who designed it, or the people who manufacture it? Usually not. It's a combination, all that but the main thing is, it's known, it's been tested over a long period of time. And so once you have something that works really well, and it's highly reliable, you don't change it.

Oh, yeah. Don't touch unless you're forced to. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, Old Faithful rely on on the stuff that like proven unknown. Like, which one which one would you rather have go down in your braking system? Or, I don't know, like the little computer screen in your dash, you know,

it tells me I'm listening to like 94 or five the buzz? Oh, who listens to

that? Yeah, so looks like the the I mean, the that's one of the things that both kind of sucks because we have people going out of business, doing these things, but It's also nice that like this proven technology exists, and we can go and snag it all up and just bring it online pretty quickly.

Well, we'll see what line quickly means.

I'm sure they're going to do it as fast as possible. I mean, if you have the large auto makers going out, or having outages, I'm sure that they are doing absolutely everything in their power to prevent that right, including buying up fab equipment.

Yeah, or convincing their sciennes to buy it. I think we did talk about it, but it was the where Chevy, Chevy and GM are like just omitting components from their cars.

I mean, they're gonna do everything

right. Yeah. Just the move product. Yeah. Yeah, that's I don't know. That's crazy. So another thing what chip makers are doing is, the United States is getting new fabs. I think it's like the first time in I don't know how many years but it's definitely more than five years actually finally hit New fabs in the United States. Because Intel's building two new seven nanometer fabs. TSMC, is building a new five nanometer fab. What's interesting, though, these are all like bleeding edge tech scale, which is not what the auto industry uses. Right? Yeah. But you know, whatever.

Well, but But talk about spin up. I mean, if you're building a new fab, I'm sure it's not going to be like, Oh, well, we're ready to go tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Especially with how much money some of these fabs cost because like the Intel fab is like $20 billion. Yeah, just just ridiculous amounts. That's, I can't think about how much money that is. And Samsung is building a three nanometer fab. And these are all going to be in like Texas and Arizona and New York.

You know, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna do a quick little sidenote, I remember having a conversation with my buddy in college about this, we took a semiconductor fab class. And when, when you when you do the all the equations that they require you to do in those classes, virtually everything is like, nanometers are big. In those kinds of classes, you start to get so used to working in scales that small that it doesn't feel small anymore. Like you just like your mind, just reconfigures itself, but it's like, oh, okay, in order to make these equations work, I just have to pull an extra nanometre here, or there or not? Like, you need to stop and get some reality every once awhile and look back and be like, No, a nanometers freaking tiny, like, tiny. It's just Yeah, it's funny. Like, if you just, if you spend your entire life on on a piece of paper, working in, in whatever units, you just don't get, like an appreciation for that.

There's just way to put it. Sorry to derail there. No, no, no, it's like one of those. When when you when you say a leader Fortuna American, not because we're both in the United States. When you say a leader to me, I'm like, I don't know what that is. But you say, a quarter of a gallon, I know how much it is a quarter gallon is actually pretty close to a leader. So it's interesting to think about that concept. It's yeah, you have to start using units to actually understand what those units actually are,

you have to experience it. Which Which is funny because like, if you look at astrophysics, or cosmology, or whatnot, and you and you start just throwing around a use or light years are things like that, like, it's impossible to experience, distances of that sort. And, but yet, you start throwing those around in like, should they just explode into these unimaginable units? That which nanometers in the same way are kind of the same thing where it's just like, you've never really experienced it, but there's stuff that's happening there.

Yeah. Or like an angstrom. Switches atoms?

Yeah, actually, yeah, there was there was a handful of stuff we were talking about when we were in college, where we were just talking about transistors that were a few angstroms wide, where it's just like, that's another level where it's like, Okay, now we're talking about, like, having sheets of individual atoms, and things like for gates on transistors. It just, it's all just like fantasy at some point, you know?

Yeah, I wonder if it's something that you can, I'm gonna bet you chip designers understand those units really well. But like for normal people, it's really hard to experience what that

size actually is. Oh, your eyes just gloss over.

Rollback in your head. Yeah. Turn into a shark.

So yeah, some fabs are coming to the United States. Actually, it looks like they're coming to what is it? I'm Looking at this, Arizona and Texas and maybe even New York, right?

Correct. And then actually another thing I found out was that the fabs in Texas some of them haven't even restarted yet. Oh, from those from the weather, from the weather, the snowpocalypse They even named that storm. Now, no, we're gonna get really, really, really cold in Texas, like, the people would forget already, like three weeks ago. Was that was only like three weeks ago. It's like four weeks ago. I think this point, okay. Yeah. Samsung Infineon and NXP fabs have not restarted yet. I wonder I bet you they have water problems? Because that's our next topic.

What a segue. Yeah.

So one of the issues that TSMC is having, because they're in Taiwan, it's in the name. They're in Taiwan is having some really interesting water problems, but the exact opposite of what you would normally think they don't have enough water. Because there's like flooding. Normally, when you say, people having water problems, it's flooding. Or it's too cold and Texas. started an ice. But they stated they use 156,000 tons of water a year, which is wait a year or a day. No,

it's a day a day. Yeah. So yeah, 156,000 tons of water a day. That's 34,454,981 gallons a day.

Yeah. And so I'm thinking about that number. And I'm like, they're going to build these in like Texas and Arizona, which are not the most. I mean, you need to be like, in the Great Lakes. Like, you need a lot of water. So I actually started I Googled, like, is that number that tn TSMC even stated, basically, what's happened in Taiwan, though, is they don't have enough water and having water shortages. So they can't make chips. Or integrated circuits. So I found actually a water management report by TSMC. See how much actual water they use? And are they able to recycle this stuff? Or is it just straight up wastewater?

That's a ton of wastewater. So this is

a report from 2018 and TSMC, their corporate social responsibility report. And it's on the water aspect of it is a bunch of other things in here. But in 2018, they recycle 87.5% of the water. So okay, they get the recycled the majority of it. But the water consumption is at 5.1 million metric tons. They don't have a unit there yet to go like in the note and see what the unit is for that million metric tons. And then there's tap water consumption. So there's like ultra pure water consumption. And then there's tap water consumption, tap water consumption is 56 point 8 million metric tons.

We're just spending a good chunk of this podcast talking about just unimaginable units.

Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. Yes. And so they have the total amount of water recycled, which is 129 million metric tons. So I want to guess the add up the other two numbers multiplied by 87.5%. That equals 129 million metric tons. I'm going to assume that not doing the math right now. But yeah, that's a kind of interesting. Oh, yeah, number of times each drop of water is used 3.5. So I guess that's, that's an interesting way to put it. Each drop of water is used.

Yeah. What do you define as a drop?

Well, just it's just a weird estate like that. Yeah, that's definitely kind of like a marketing way to put it because, like, makes us know, you're just reusing the water three and a half times. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. On average,

if anyone knows, like, what, what what is in the fab industry? Like what is water used for? I mean, obviously, it's used for I mean, like there's everything can be back trace towards to water. But I'm curious. Like, what yeah, what is the like, biggest user of water? Or what process requires that much? I guess there's a lot of chemical processes that require to

assume Yeah, I wonder if it's diluting all the chemicals. Mm. But I think this is over like these numbers I was talking about are over like all of TSMC is fabs.

Oh sure. But I mean, it's still impressive one way or the other excuse me.

Yeah. Very interesting. Paper.

Yeah. Check that out. We'll post it in the in the links.

Yep. It's like when you think about like a hamburger. Like, yeah, you go to McDonald's, buy a hamburger for $1. But then you actually realize like, how much like environmental impact that burger on the world?

Oh, yeah, it's significant. Actually, you know, it's funny, like, I look at how much water I use when I brew beer, like, I'll get the end result. The target I'm shooting for is five gallons of water. Baganz a beer? Oh, sorry. Yeah, five gallons of beer, which is about 6%. Alcohol. Yeah, somewhere in that range, right. So okay, so five gallons of five gallons of beer. And whenever you're calculating a recipe, it always helps to start from the end, and then go back towards and go backwards, I want five, how do I get to five. And it's, it's almost like an energy equation where you're seeing where all the energy falls off. And then you really your eyes start to open as you peel back all the processes and stages, most of which require water. So five gallons, you lose some in the stage right before from like just crapping your firm fermenting bucket. So you'd like it takes six to make five, but then you have to backtrack that six, because you boiled off, what a gallon a half, right? And your dead space and your boil kettle and the dead space. So you're like at nine gallons to make five at this point. But then you have what goes into the grain and the grain soaks absorb, absorb some so you're like at 10 or 11. But then Parker and I use submersion heating systems, which I use 11 gallons of water, just as a heater. Oh, I use like 15 Yeah. Okay, so now we're like in the 20s range. But then you also well, I use tap water to cool down my beer. And that runs out of my hose for a continuous, I don't know, probably four minutes or something like that. So all said and done to make that five gallons of beer at the end of the day. You're consuming like 30 gallons to get their you know, massively inefficient. Oh, yeah.

And it used to be really bad when I did that same way of cooling my boil down. Yeah. Was by running water. And I would water my lawn. Yeah. But I could water like my lawn like three times over because I'm using Houston tap water, which is not cold at all. Yeah. And then with my new setup, I just use ice now, which is way better efficiency in terms of volume.

Sure. Well, more efficient in terms of the water usage, but probably a lot less efficient in terms of energy usage.

Ah, no, that's pretty good. It's like 50 pounds of ice is required.

Yeah, but I'm talking about the energy required to make that into ice.

Oh, yeah. Oh, now we're talking about my carbon footprint to brew five gallons of beer. Yeah, yeah, it's probably not great. At least we're using electricity for the burners now instead of propane. Yeah,

yeah. Well, we're just burning gas somewhere else as opposed to in our driveway.

That's true. But those gas plants are this is like the this is like that argument of like, a electric car. I think. Yeah, we've gotten this on one episode. Or maybe it wasn't maybe it's like after an episode we talked about this. But there's that argument of like, Oh, if you buy an electric car, they're still burning fossil fuels somewhere else, which is 100%. Okay. trade off. Your internal combustion engine is only like 30 to 35% efficient. Those gas plants are like 80% efficient at turning hydrocarbons into electric energy. Or usable let's just say usable energy at the end because they have reclamation or not reclaiming reclaim ation circuits. So you can recycle all that heat. Whereas your internal combustion engine just dumps it into the into the world.

So yep,

yeah, so don't get don't get into brewing to save the planet. No,

I Yeah. Even on a commercial level, it's not that great.

No, we can try to be better though. Sure, I'd be better. So actually, that was one thing I was thinking about. I was like, if I was going to build another system, which will eventually happen. season two, season two, which isn't going to happen I don't think this season. Just depend COVID kind of hit my brewery numbers pretty hard. But the is, do I stick with ice, which is fine. Do I get an ice maker to make enough? Because right now I have to go to like the gas station and pick up like, you know, six bags ice, which is kind of annoying, you know? Do I get an icemaker to make my own ice? Or do I switch over to like a refrigeration system

a glycol system?

Yeah, kind of like a glycol system to cool it down. To boil down,

you know, if you wanted to be, I suppose a little bit more energy efficient, what you could do is take the boiling liquid, dumped that straight into your fermenter. Like, at boiling temperature, seal it all up. So it sanitizes it, let it let it naturally cooled down and then use something to cool it down further once it's once it's reached, like room temperature.

Well, actually the problem with that is you don't get your cold break. Yeah, yeah, there's there's compromises, right? Yeah, there's compromises but yeah, you don't get your cold breaking your boil. When you do it that way. Because I have tried that way. You get hazy. Yeah, yeah. Which is fine. A

lot of people like hazy beer now. That's right. But all your walls would be hazy. There's

that's that's a that's a quality and beer that people enjoy now.

They seek it out.

Yes. Ah, well, this is gonna be a little short episode. I'm taking a little vacation this coming up weekend. So we're doing an episode The day after the last episode. So

Well, that was the macro fab engineering podcast. We were your host, Stephen, Greg,

and Parker Dolman. Take it easy.