Circuit Break Podcast #98
Second Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special: Jar Jar on a Harley
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December 13, 2017, Episode #98
- Taylor Smith
- Works at MacroFab as the Production Account Manager
- Manages all of our large customers as they go through prototyping to full production
- Graduated from Texas A&M last fall
- Joined the MacroFam early this year
- Favorite Star Wars Character?
- Organic
- Taylor: Loves the locks on Qui-Gon Jinn
- Stephen: Bossk
- Parker: Storm Trooper #38
- Robotic
- Taylor: R2D2 even though he slept through Rogue One
- Stephen: IG-88
- Parker: Not K-2SO
- Thrawn Books
- Organic
- Tech that stood out in Rogue One
- Data Storage Devices
- Three different storage methods
- USB Flash Drive: small amount of data.
- Data Tape: looks like an external hard drive. Contains Death Star plans.
- 8-track tapes style
- Some sort of other kind of storage device that the plans get transfered to
- Looks solid state
- Newer format then the empire’s data tape?
- Why doesn’t C3-PO have a wireless transmitter built in?!
- There does not seem to be a ton of wireless communication
- No Drop Box
- Most radio transmission seems to be analog in nature
- Trans-intergalactic data system
- Star wars servers
- Data Tapes stored in giant rooms which require physical access by manually manipulating robot arms
- Three different storage methods
- Transmission of data
- Besides radio there seems to be a distinct lack of wireless transmissions in StarWars.
- To transfer Death Star plans they needed a giant dish.
- No digital communication over RF?
- No lag with hologram communication via hyperspace
- Analog data travel through hyperspace?
- Death Star plans data size?
- 160km in diameter: 1.72×10^16m cubed
- Couldn’t find engineering drawings for an aircraft carrier
- 3D file for a building would be around ~100MB but probably 300MB looking at solidworks stuff
- 900m cubed area goes into a death star 19,111,111,111,111.111 times trillion
- 5,733,333.333 (5.7million) petabytes
- Solar freaking laser roads
- No hacking in Star Wars
- Reason similar to Battlestar Gallactica?
- Death Star accuracy
- Hitting the top of the tower a the end of Rogue One
- See images for maths and figures
- Scott Manley: Death Star Orbit from Planet Surface
- Data Storage Devices
- CGI Tarkins and Leia in Rogue One: Future for The Last Jedi and other Star Wars movies
- Will we see CGI Carrie Fisher?
- Parker hopes she won’t die off-screen
- Taylor thinks there will be a nice parting gift for her
- Stephen thinks they’re going to kill all of the old cast members, including Mark Hamill
- Will we see CGI Carrie Fisher?
What are looking forward to in The Last Jedi (new movie) and predictions
- Taylor
- Get more of Luke and Kylo’s backstory
- What happened to make it go so wrong
- Previews for Rose – curious to know more about her
- Stephen
- Wants to see the Jedi academy
- Thinks Luke will die in this movie
- Parker
- Thinks Rey isn’t a Jedi. Stephen clarifies – she’s Force Adept – he thinks she’s going to be the balance. The gray Jedi.
- Rey changes her name to Neo.
- Closure on Luke saga
- Wants to see more of Star of Death Killer – give purpose to what the good guys need to do
- See the First Order mess more things up
- Thinks Rey isn’t a Jedi. Stephen clarifies – she’s Force Adept – he thinks she’s going to be the balance. The gray Jedi.
- Taylor
Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes!
We are hiring an Electronics Manufacturing Engineer in Houston! Among other positions. Apply online!
MacroFam and Star Wars fanatic – Taylor Smith
Figure 1: Tarkins height to figure out the distance the Death Star is from Scarif
Figure 2: Death Star firing its main super laser
Figure 3: Scarif’s citadel tower getting a bit of a trim off the top
Figure 4: Parker’s notes for calculating the orbit of the Death Star
Figure 5: Calculations for how many degrees of accuracy the Death Star needs to hit a target
About the Hosts
Parker Dillmann
Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.
In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.
In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.
Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.
Stephen Kraig
Stephen Kraig is a component engineer working in the aerospace industry. He has applied his electrical engineering knowledge in a variety of contexts previously, including oil and gas, contract manufacturing, audio electronic repair, and synthesizer design. A graduate of Texas A&M, Stephen has lived his adult life in the Houston, TX, and Denver, CO, areas.
Stephen has never said no to a project. From building guitar amps (starting when he was 17) to designing and building his own CNC table to fine-tuning the mineral composition of the water he uses to brew beer, he thrives on testing, experimentation, and problem-solving. Tune into the podcast to learn more about the wacky stuff Stephen gets up to.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
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About MacroFab
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