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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.
Parker
Stephen
Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.
In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.
In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.
Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.
Stephen Kraig began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
Hello, and welcome to the macro fab engineering podcast. We're your hosts Parker, Dolman.
And Steven Gregg.
This is episode 259. So we have a follow up to a news article that we brought up back at October 2020, I think was October 7. That was the one birthday I think. Yeah, it was on my birthday.
This is a this is one of those follow ups that I wish we didn't have a follow up to.
Yeah, I did like talking about this back then, though. So on October 7 2020, episode 240 5k factor in a gumbo. We brought up an article about a chastity belt for men, because you had to specify what kind it is, I guess, that had a security flaw that would basically the API that controlled it was an IoT chastity belt, right, and the API was open and unencrypted. And so anyone could take control of the device. While now it is 2021 in January, four months later, and that has happened.
As we predicted, yes. So do you get it predicted a.
So the article is called your is mine now. And that is what the hacker or exploiter is using to he basically takes control of your of this device and sends a message to the victim saying you're because now mine and makes people playing Bitcoin to an address to unlock it.
It's it's literally holding somebody. ransom. Yes, it you know, I'm sure you've Well, maybe not. But But gotten those ransom basically ran some things from your computer where it's like, oh, you know, in order to get these files, you know, you must pay blah, blah, blah. And unfortunately, people ransom attack. Ransom attack. Yeah. So this is a physical ransom attack through IoT. Yes. No, I was joking around on slack with someone just the other day about this article, and just saying, Hey, I'm sure they don't have the UL mark. Maybe the UL mark is made for this kind of thing. You know, the new UL security Mark, you're at
the at this sex toy shop. And you're looking at the IoT chastity belts and you see the UL marking like I want that one.
Yeah. Yeah, you know, this
one safe? Safer?
Sure. Sure. It's been, it's been proven to be safer.
Yes. Can you imagine me in the URL tester for that?
Yeah. Can you imagine being the person who has to go to UL and be like, I need someone to test
Oh, I bet you the people who design and build this stuff party. That's that's their thing. Yeah, I guess Yeah, you're right. You're right. But yeah, having to bring it to the tester and be like, Okay, you well, you need to certify this
so, is there I haven't read the article in whole I guess we'll we'll put the article in the show notes to this, but is there Do we know how many people have been hit by this?
It just says a few. I don't think you would this is one of those like,
this is almost like a prank. It's honoring bro. This actually sounds like something that like 4chan would be like really into you know,
it wouldn't surprise me if so if it was for the lols basically was what happened here. But yeah, I think the article says a few people had been hit by it.
Oh, wow. Okay, so the ransom is point 02 Bitcoin which is about 750 US dollars.
Yes. Well, depending on what time of day it is. That could be $2,000 or $30 as well.
I don't think it fluctuates that much. Does it? I haven't looked at Bitcoin in a while.
This weekend had a big dip. So
yeah, I guess you're right. Maybe Maybe he could. He
realized his cage was definitely locked and he could not gain access to it.
Oh, get out the angle grinder.
Oh, man. You're like getting a ring stuck on your finger. Yeah, except it's your 11th finger or third leg you know was just stopped. Oh yeah, I think I need to move on. Ivan. I only had one sip of beer too.
Yeah, yeah. I'm driving myself. I got to get a cup of water here. Not doing the regular beer. Yeah. Cool. Okay, well, well, here's, here's another thing that we can wrap on, in fact. So we're deep in. We're reaching real far back here all the way back to Episode One was.
We're changing subjects. Right? Yeah. Changing subjects. Okay. Yeah. You all can at home listening. Everyone, you know, it's around like the radio. You know, like the old fire talks that the President would have FDR. That's how I that's how I imagined people listening to us right now. Now y'all can unplug the
kids sitting Indian style on the floor. And yes, their dad smoking a pipe in the in the living room?
Yeah. Now y'all can unplug the ears of your kids?
Y'all. Yeah, right. Well, unless we say naughty words. So solar freakin roadways. We talked about this all the way back on Episode One. And I've figured, you know, there's been talked about this recently. In fact, Dave Jones had a great video about three weeks ago, where he was, well, let me let me preface that by saying Dave Jones has had a video about solar roadways about eight times in the last few years. Like he keeps making them and I love every single one of them. So why does he keep bringing it up? He keeps bringing them up because people keep trying solar roadways.
Okay, so basically, solar roadways, does something, and then he makes a reactionary video.
Effectively, yeah, okay, or new data comes out about something that has already been put out. And he reacts to that. So I think okay, so So a few things. First, there's a timeline that I kind of want to go over because I did I did a bit of bit more research on solar roadways today, because I wanted to, I've known about them for a long time. I've heard all these things. But it was jumbled in my mind as to like, what is the genesis of solar roadways? And how are we here today? So let's just walk through the timeline real quick. So 2006, the company's solar roadways is is was was founded, and those that is, so that company is the one that is kind of etched in everyone's mind, like when I say solar roadways, you think, oh, it's that hexagonal solar panel that gets glued to the road, right? That is solar roadways. So that company gets founded in 2006. In 2009, they get $100,000 small business grant. In 2011, they get a $750,000 small business grant to make a what what they call a parking lot, which is, from what I've researched is basically just an installation outside of their barn on their land, which is totally fine because it's a proof of concept kind of thing. So in 2014, they create an Indiegogo campaign that raises 2.2 million, which was the highest at that time of all campaigns to basically take this even further and create their their first true installation. In 2016, they're given another $750,000 by Department of Transportation. And then also that same year 2016 they complete their first installation, which is the Jeff Jones Town Square installation, which is basically 30 panels in a like a shopping center kind of area like a little town square thing. At the same time that same year 2016 France installs what's called the walkway which is a stretch of road awesome name, it's it's better than solar roadways he asked me like it actually like it has like a tangible name whereas
that actually sounds futuristic.
Futuristic is is a word that is used a lot when it comes to solar roadways. The concept of like the future like this is the future like be a part of the future kind of thing is is a big ordeal to the solar road waiters. So yeah, 2016 France installs the one way road which is a stretch of road that is actually driven on by cars. And it is the first legit test for what is a roadway not something that's just pedestrians walking on it. And then intermixed in there. I don't have the right date on this. There's there's two other roadways that are created. One is in the Netherlands and I believe there's another one in France. I could be wrong about that one, both of which are just like walkways or or for foot traffic or bicycles, things like that. And then 2020 December 2020, the USA gets its first true solar Road in Georgia, a city of Peachtree Peachtree corners in Gwinnett. County, Georgia gets its first actual legit roadway that cars can drive on. So yeah, yes, yeah, it is it is built, and you can actually see data from it now. And we have numbers from that. And so effectively from 2006 to 220 20, we have been looking at solar roadways as a thing. And really, mainly it's been since like, 2014 when the Indiegogo campaign came out, because that's when things went somewhat viral. So
we like how fusion is like 10 years down the road.
Always Yeah, free beer tomorrow. Right. So are free beer yesterday. That's what it is. Yes. So yeah, okay, so we've had, in total, we've had a handful of like four or five installations, depending on how you want to look at them. Because the solar roadways promises to be an actual roadway. Officially, I think we've only had two that are what we would call a roadway, something that a car can drive on. That would be the walkway in France, and then they wanted the 2021 I believe it's called the ray, I might be wrong about that. So
that's also really cool name for a road. So it's like you have like the Sam Houston Tollway or something like that, but you're like, I'm gonna I'm gonna take the ray. It's like That sounds awesome.
Okay, actually, let's let's get on that real quick. So let's rewind to the Indiegogo campaign and the YouTube video that came out that got everyone spurred up about solar roadways, which if you go to if you go to YouTube, and you type in solar freakin road roadways, you get the YouTube video that made everyone lose their shit about this new fangled idea. So this this video promises the world and it's absolutely insane. The amount of promises they give and I'm not here to just pick apart every single promise. But But earlier today, I put on the video and I put it got up a Word document. And as the video played, I typed out every claim that they made in this video that I could hear like they go really quickly on this video. But I started writing out every claim that was just and by claim I mean something that they say to be either that already true or going to be true. And I ended up writing two pages worth of claims from this one video that seven minutes long yes
seven minute video 22 million people have watched it. Yeah.
And And okay, let me just start reading off a handful of these claims. I'm not gonna bore everyone by reading all of them, but okay, so solar, solar freakin roadways are supposed to replace all and keyword they're all roadways, parking lots sidewalks, driveways, tarmacs, bike paths and outdoor recreation services, meaning like basketball courts,
courts and like a tennis court. Yeah.
So they are as good if not better than asphalt. They have impact rated glass intended to meet impact load and traction. They also said that they have been tested to that. Let's see here. Oh, here's a here's a really fun claim. They pay for themselves and more they actually provide they're effectively free and they give money. Here's a fun claim. Cities would smell better, and we would be healthier. That's, that's a nice one. Let's see how you can ride your bicycle and motorcycle all year round. Let's see here. Roads never have to have the lanes repainted because of these things. Let's see here. Because the LED lights improved visibility for pilots landing aircraft. Here's a nice claim. It's gonna look like Tron. And that's actually the claim I wanted to get to because that's the whole like, future thing because they they tried to sell these things as in like, come on. How cool would it be if we had these? All you have to do is want these things to become? It would be so cool. Why aren't we living in Tron? It's 2020 Or at that time it's 2014. And in fact, if you go a little bit further through the video, there's a quote and I think that this is The crux of everything, this is the biggest quote, that kind of like hooks everyone along and pulls them along. It says, if we vote with our money for a project we believe in, we can create a future where our society is driven by new ideas. And that's fine. You know, that's benign in a way. However, there's one word in that quote that I think really pulls it all together and makes solar roadways make sense. And that's the word believe.
Yeah, I was I was gonna bring that up later. But yeah, it's it's yeah, it's believing in an idea is good. Thus, it must be good.
Right? Right.
It's the whole thing with it with I never really go too far into this. But like, religion is like this. This is a this, the people who want to believe in solar roadways are, are treating it like a religion. They believe in a higher power, they believe in solar roadways, thus, it shall be
well, and I think the belief extends quite a bit beyond that, like, as long as you believe, then it will just happen. And if it's not happening, that's because people just don't believe enough in it. There's no need for there to actually be physical evidence of it working, there's no need for us, doesn't need to actually be possible, because you just believe in it. And smart people will make it happen, right?
There's gonna be a solar roadway, like, Rapture.
Just believe and be closed over a solar road?
Or what's the Holo? I can't remember. But I know there are some religions where like, everyone has to believe in the religion before it will come. Before it will be will happen. There's some religions that are like that. They have to convert everyone. You can't have non believers in your religion. There's some that are like that. Yeah. I mean, good luck. Yeah, no, but that's, that's one of those things, where you're saying is not enough people believe in solar roadways, that solar roadways won't happen?
Well, I think a lot of this concept is sort of the way that America approached landing on the moon, where it was like this big monstrous idea with huge engineering problems in, you know, if we just say, We're gonna land on the moon, then we'll put a bunch of money into it, and we'll research it and we'll get our top engineers on it, and we'll make it happen.
There's a difference. There's a difference here. The communists don't like solar roadways.
So yeah, this is not a solar roadway war.
Yes. Yeah. So if, let's say Russia was making all their roads, solar roadways, then yes, we would have to make all our roads solar as well. But that's not happening, so will never happen.
Well, the Cold War is fortunately long gone, right?
Random tangent ran tangent. There's, that reminds me of that. There's that video. Oh, man. I don't know why it's popped in my head. But if y'all haven't watched it, there's a video on YouTube with Kevin Bacon about the 80s and the Cold War. I think it's Kevin Bacon. Yeah. Kevin, if you type in Kevin Bacon nuked into YouTube. Give that a quick watch. It's like yeah, it's called Kevin Bacon explains the 80s to millennials. And actually, it came out the same time solar roadways came around. Oh, nice. 2014. But yeah, he's talking about how the 80s sucked because like you had to worry about getting nuked all the time. That's skateboarding down your solar roadways gotta be afraid of being Newt. Newt. Newt. Sorry. pletely random
that just popped out. That's great. I love that. And I also I love the fact that it's Kevin Bacon. Who who did that? Yeah, there's something there's something fantastic about that.
Okay, back to solar roadways. Getting nuked.
Very next quote that I that I pulled from from their video is it's finally going to look like the future out there. Like, somehow everyone knows what the future is going to look like. And we've just been waiting for that to come about. Well,
they're wrong. The assault the the future is work from home because there's a pandemic.
That's true. Yeah.
We got nuked by the Coronavirus.
Okay, and I want to I want to stop for a second and just say like, sure we're shitting on this idea right now. And that's not to say that like I'm I'm anti solar in any way. I'm way pro solar. I'm just way doing it. Proper, and way not just wasting a ton of money. on something that we already know, other methods that are far far, far more efficient, and cost effective and easier. And I get that like this, this grand idea that we could be this, I don't know, we could be this nation that has that has their shit together in a way that that that like goes goes green and we do it in a really unique and innovative way. And sure if I
got I got a snide, if we just believed in solar roadways, we wouldn't have Trump.
Yeah, you know, to be honest, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody has said that, you know. And so like I the thing about it is, let's go back and look at those, those some of the installations that I've I talked about earlier. So the Jeff, the Jeff Jones Town Square, one, which was effectively the first one, it's 30 panels in this town square, that basically just received light foot traffic. So people who are shopping just walked over it, right. So it had I suppose it's 60k install cost. And according to Wikipedia, it produces one quarter kilowatt hour per day, which is meager at best, certainly not worth 60k install cost. A typical home install, which is in a much better situation produces about 1.45 kilowatts per day. So significantly cheaper and way more effective for what amounts to the exact same technology, just put in a better situation. It's not that the solar roadways have like better solar panels or anything, they're just solar panels, it's in a crippled situation. They're just not capable of doing what they need to do. There's another YouTuber that goes by the name of Thunderfoot, which he does a, a significant number of videos where he approaches problems from a scientific background, any and he looks at claims that are made by all kinds of people a lot of like, crowdfunded things, and he tears them apart. So Thunderfoot actually visited the Jeff Jones Town Square and did kind of a, an in person review of everything. And he threw out some numbers in there, where he estimated that a third of the energy that the solar panels are producing actually go to just illuminating the LEDs within the road. So a third of it is just making light out of these things. That's fine, because the actual, you know, the claim of its mission is to light up, right? Yeah. So there's, there's something, okay, that's, that's fine. The remaining energy is estimated to go to the heaters that are intended to keep snow or, uh, you know, ice off stuff and building up. So according to Thunderfoot, 100% of the energy that goes that is produced by these things is in just their own upkeep. Now, here's the thing, this first installation had a huge amount of failures. So within three months, he said 100% of the panels had failed like just they're not operating. There's all these problems with LEDs there were shorted solar panel cells within I he's kind of harsh on this install. If he asked me like, he just has a very harshly based off of that. I wouldn't necessarily myself judge it that that hard, because this was a proof of concept. And they were using this as like, okay, a real world situation, what are the failure modes, we need to find out? What are the install proper white prototype? Exactly? That article, right. And since then, they've actually done a re install, actually, with, you know, without any investment money, they replaced everything. That is solar roadways, replaced it themselves with like, new and improved version cool. So I wouldn't dog them for like mechanical failures or or all these other things. What I would say is, we have significant amount of data showing that these things are incredibly inefficient. And we have an enormous amount of data showing that if they're just installed, say, as a regular solar panel, then they could operate in a far more efficient manner and a far more cost effective manner. And that leads to one big problem is that if you believe so hard on something, then cost isn't a factor. Like you can't argue cost to belief, right?
Yeah, it's also if you believe hard enough physics doesn't matter.
Unfortunately, that that comes into play. So with all All of these roadways or these foot installations, that you can find articles saying that they're a monumental failure. But you can also find articles showing that like, Hey, we're successful, we're generating energy. And I think a lot of that comes down to like a really poor understanding of the fundamentals that go behind all of it. In other words, like, if you produce energy, any energy whatsoever, then it's acting as a solar roadway, right? It's doing its job. But if you spend $60,000 to produce 250 Watts, 250 kilowatt hours. No, 250. Sorry, yeah, right. Watt hours. Yeah. That's an awful return. Right? Even if you were to scale that up to the size of the United States, that would be a monumental failure. So I think I think a lot of this boils down to just a misunderstanding. And I think it would be different if our only dataset was solar roadways, but we have huge amounts of data showing that if you just put these on the roof of a building, like every video Dave Jones has ever done on this stuff, he shows, you can get like, many, many multiple times the efficiency and the output.
Yeah, that's the that's the example I'm going to bring up is you brought up the articles that say that their success, I can only find one road or solo roadway install that was deemed a success by like articles, and is the Dutch bike path. Okay, and that was deemed a success in 2018. Okay, since then, it's broken. But anyways, let's go back to 2018, while back to clock, three years now. And so I couldn't actually find what they measured it as a success. So the only thing I can think of is what you said it made power. And it functioned.
Well, if that's your criteria. Yeah, it was successful.
So it's a 70 meter long bike path, and a journey generated 3000 kilowatt hours. Okay. Which is that's a lot. That's, they say, Okay, that's enough to power a house.
Yeah, actually, Dave Jones, his house in his video, his array that's up on top of his house produces 3200 kilowatt hours.
Yeah. Okay. And so, and you look at the pictures, they, there's the thing about this, it's like a religion to hide so much information from you. It's like a conspiracy almost. So the the road, the test bike path is 70 meters long, but they don't tell you like how wide it is. So I just looked at it. I'm like, Okay, it looks like it's like two people walking next to each other, or like about the width of it. So I'm like, Okay,
let's get six foot seven foot.
I know, that's if you'd lay down. But if like two people walking next to each other, it's about a meter. Like two people can walk down a site, oh, like, walking next to each other shoulder to shoulder almost, I mean, if you're fat Americans, but Europeans are probably skinny enough to easily do that within a meter. So it looks about a meter wide. And so I'm like, Okay, it's 70 square meters. And which is about 760 square feet for us fat Americans. But that looked up, like how much like an average house would need. And it's like 300 square feet. So you need less than half the materials to produce enough power to make your house and you don't have to like, and the install cost is like, I think there was it was like, a 10th of the cost. So it's like, okay, you are wasting two and a half times the material, burning all this extra capital money just to make a solar roadway. Just the belief.
Right, right. Right. At the numbers can usually just show that it's that is not worth it. Yeah.
So just from the saving the environment standpoint, it is worse than putting solar panels on your roof. For sure. Because you're you're using two and a half times more material, which so people think of like Recycling Recycling logo that's got the three arrows. It's not just recycle, it's reduce, reuse, and recycle recycles the third thing. So you should reduce and reuse first reduces the first one. This is not reducing.
Yeah, yeah. I don't know if anyone's done any significant studies on how much how much energy does it take to create one of these panels to put into the road? You And then, like, how much damage does it do to the environment to just create one? And then how long of a lifespan? Would it take at this extremely reduced efficiency? would it take for it to recoup? Its environmental damage?
Yeah, that's it's, I do know, solar panels are not for renewable energies. Solar panels are not the best at that. I don't know what the exact data is, I just remember reading that in passing. So that could have changed recently, but was actually looking at up like, compared to a wind turbine, wind turbines are pretty, they're not that pretty look at I guess, but that's not where I was going, just where my, my sentence was going. But their impact on like, actually building them is not too bad. Mainly because you don't have exotic materials in a wind turbine. It's just a bunch of copper and steel. Whereas, you know, you have in a solar panel, you have all the doping agents that you need to impregnate all the silicon. So that's fun. All those nasty chemicals? Yeah, I don't know what they what they doping with, but like some of the doping agents is like arsenic. Arsenic. So that's what they do. With that, oh, I'm looking at right now, what materials needed are doping? Okay, well, while you're looking that up, let
me let me throw some numbers out about the 2016 French walkway, because that's the first what we would call official road or solar road. So according to some websites I visited, it was 5.2 million to build, which is actually not significantly terrible. Quite a bit more than, you know, a, a stretch of asphalt, but you know, okay, so 5.2 mil million to build, and it was expected to get about 767 kilowatt hours per day, that was the what was expected, it ended up only producing 409 kilowatt hours per day. So a little bit over half of what they proposed. So that ended up with $20 per kilowatt hour, is what, what you would pay for that, for the power, which is 13 times the cost of just a rooftop style solar installation. And that's, that really gets at it for me where it's like, you have the option of doing other styles of installation. Why does it have to be in the road? What is so attractive about putting it in the road? And one of the things I, my mind started going towards with that, is, if you put it on a building, somebody owns the building. So do are people concerned about somebody owning those panels? Or do you want it to be on something that is considered public, like a road? Is there something to issue for I see that's, and that's just the thing, I just can't I don't understand it, maybe it's maybe it's just the concept that it's like, we need roads, we have to put roads, maybe we should make roads do something more than be a road.
So I did look, it's actually phosphorus and boron, they, so it's not as bad as arsenic. And there's a bunch of other really crazy doping stuff that you can do. But so it's not as bad as that. But it's still semiconductor process, which is not the cleanest for the environment. But yes, going back to that is I haven't seen anyone, any reason why it has like, why does it have to be in a row, you can put it on top of a light pole. Yeah, like a street lamp, you can put it on top of a street lamp. And then you can have it at the right angle like you would have on a roof. How about
what if you were to erect a structure that goes over the road, and you put solar panels on top of that? I'm sure even erecting a structure like that is probably cheaper than burying it in the ground.
Because then you could have it you can actually have a peek.
You can have all kinds of unique applications with it like your
snow slides off. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Instead of a road where snow accumulates and you
you can then use proper solar glass. You don't have to use impact rated glass. You don't. You don't have to have glass that's rated for like, what happens if there is an accident, a crash on one of these things? You know, okay, Barker lives in Houston. I did for a long time to how many how many car wrecks Do you think there are per day? Oh,
there's probably four happening right now.
Probably. Yeah, exactly. So what about the upkeep the cost to upkeep something like this? And what I mean by cost is not just necessarily oh, we need to drive out there and plug in these new panels or what No, if if a car wreck happens on the freeway and you wreck this entire solar roadway, how are you transmitting that power anymore? Like okay, so there's extended cost of the roadway just not functioning anymore because of a wreck. It's it just doesn't it boggles the mind that that people are so hung up on like it has to be in the road. I just don't know why it might
extend to a lot of people don't like concrete. And so this is Futuristic concrete. So it does it does look cooler, you know, concrete road.
It's called Tron Creek. That's what it is Tron Creek.
I like you know, that's the title.
All right, if we're gonna call it Tron Creek, I'm on board. Who cares what the efficiency is? You will leave now I'm a believer in
the I know we're focusing a lot on the energy right now. But there is two things that I actually think is interesting. It's lighting up. And the heating function out here in Houston, the heating function doesn't matter because it's it like it never, like last time it snowed here was like eight years ago, the heating function just gets the oils on the road more slick, more slick. Exactly. Yeah. So like, it was like six years ago, it's snowed here. Anyways, I could see that being useful in places that snows if you could heat the roadway up. But but you could just put heaters underneath concrete and and run normal solar panels on the side of the road. You right, right, right. And it's like, you could do it that way. And it'd be so much better. It doesn't have to be in there. You could just put, like antennas with light. And the thing is, though, people like oh, yeah, it's the light that lights up. So you can see the lanes and stuff. And I'm like, That's what reflectors are for. Yeah. Passive. Yeah, they're passive. And they always function if you have your lights on, right, even in daylight, they work if you have your lights on,
which is another big ordeal that especially that that Thunderfoot character was going on, like, in at noon, when full summer light, you're not seeing LEDs underneath, like, oh, like all that class. Like, it's just not happening, you know, late at night, that's fine. But but even even back to the one of the claims of the video where it's like, pirates land, like how are a handful of LEDs in underneath glass on a tarmac going to help a pilot land like you have
an awesome, but like one of the claims is not having to paint lines, if during the day, high noon, you can't see the LEDs, you're gonna have to have paint on the road to see the lines,
right. The problem is this, this idea is just too easy to shoot holes in it. But but but the claims were made and the belief was asked upon, you know, all you have to do is believe. And all of your dreams will come true. And unfortunately, that's just and you know, maybe here's the thing, maybe one day, something like this will be the case. And I get the idea where it's like, well, if we don't try, we'll never get there, right. But let's let's, let's bring these kinds of concepts to academia. And let's bring these to researchers, as opposed to just like trying to beat our head on on the ground, to try to make it work because we believe in right to just try to force it, like the technology is just not there. Also, in the videos that are out there, that all of these claims are just spewed out and there's nothing backing up any of them. The video was a little bit pompous in terms of how it how it assumes that the it assumes that the audience kind of knows what is correct. And all you have to do is just say, I agree, I agree. Let's do this, you know, and frankly, I think that's how they got $2.2 million. Like, it's a great idea. It's an awesome idea. Let's, let's use a passive thing and make it active and generate energy from it. Awesome. That's great. But as Dave Jones says, All it takes is, you know, a napkin and and it doesn't even take an engineer to just start shooting holes in this thing.
I do like one of these claims is being able to ride your bicycle and motorcycle year round. If it's snowing in like negative 20 You're ain't going to be riding your bicycle around.
Yeah, I've written a motorcycle. Not in snow but in weather where it could have easily snowed and it is awful. It's so bad. So I don't know why this has turned into a long a long rant. I just I'm so I'm so surprised that we have, we have all this data. And we just keep trying, we're not trying something new, we just keep trying the same thing. It's just Well, if we do it, it'll be different this time around, you know. And it's funny too, I think we might have a link to that Jeff tones town square, I sent this to Parker earlier, they have the data available to anyone, you can go to their their URL, you RL link, and you can see the live data on it. And I sent it to Parker earlier. And it's flatlined at zero, it is not producing any energy. It today, it didn't produce any energy yesterday, it hasn't produced energy in a week. And it shows the total amount of energy that it's produced over some period of time, and it has produced some, but it's like, that doesn't look too great. You know, if you go there, and it's just zero. And I could I don't know, maybe they're doing maintenance on it, let's throw them a bone. But still, it doesn't look very good. If they're like here, come check out our data. And if you're doing maintenance, like put up a note on the website being like, Hey, this is why it's showing zero. But I kind of doubt they're doing maintenance, it's probably just not functioning right now.
Yeah. Now, again, it's using all of its energy to light up and and make sure snow doesn't accumulate, which is a good idea. It's just you could do that more efficiently and cheaper by putting heaters under the concrete and just solar panels on the roof.
Actually, you know, saying that, you know, perhaps, perhaps just that function, not generating energy, but just heating? That's a good idea by itself.
Yes, it is. But it's again, you can do it the same concept using solar power to do it. But you can do it better by not putting solar panels in the road. So knowing that if someone out there in our Slack, let let us know, why does the solar panels need to be in the road? Just one exam? One reason? Yeah, one good reason. I put a qualifier there. Good. Yeah. Well, the good reason could be it could be it less square footage is used for easements, that's actually a reason. So they don't put the put the road in, they don't need an easements to put in solar panels.
Well, but with these particular style, they have to dig a trench on either side where they have all the data and power lines and power distribution. And so it's actually significantly
that anyways, for roads, like the drainage that goes underneath, like the sidewalks and stuff. Yeah, that's easement too. So,
but this is far more complex than digging a ditch.
Yes, yes. But so that's what I'm getting at though is like, Okay, give me a good reason like that. You can't use that one. Yeah, to have a different one. Yeah. I know that one's
free energy, man. The sun's just bathing us with free energy, and we're not taking advantage of it.
Without UV juicy UV rays.
Crazy man, you know, and here's one of the thing to contemplate about this. How long have we as humans been pouring roads as asphalt? You know, it's been a while, right? We've been doing it for a while. There's a lot of people who do it. There's a lot of people who've studied the living bejesus out of it. I'm sure there's a lie a lot of science that goes behind asphalt. So so we have decades of experience with with modern asphalt, we have so much data and information about how to create a road. And then one person comes around with this idea would that just like, throw all that away? I just like, just put that through a sniff test real quick. Like, don't get me wrong. There are people who come around and just, you know, change the world that does happen. But like, not if not someone who comes around and doesn't give you data and just says please just believe like, I'm gonna I'm gonna stick with all the people who like we've spent decades researching asphalt, you know?
Sorry, I had to do that state comment. Sorry, I
didn't even hear it. i Oh, no, no.
I said, you brought up personally to come around change the world and you said Believe in it. And I said Jesus did that.
Well, okay, that's, that's different.
That's a little unfair. That's an unfair comment by me. I will say that.
That's a bit different.
It's a bit different. So going back, so this is my last comment. I swear. We have 45 Minutes are ready. Yeah. Well, you brought up asphalt. And the amazing thing about asphalt roads is they are one of the only things that we build that is 100% recyclable. They, they, after an asphalt road has been patched in and it's ready to be replaced. They have a machine that goes out there, gobbles it all up, chews it back up, and then heats it back up, and three paves it to a brand new road. And that's one of the things that is in the in the notes about not notes, claims claims about solar roadways that they've made is we use a lot of recycled materials. Do you use 100% recycled materials like asphalt is?
Yeah, I can answer that. No. And in fact, I there's plenty of claims showing that or evidence showing that they use zero recyclable
things. Are you saying that Indiegogo campaign lied to me? Ah,
I mean, go watch it. Like there's not a lot of times, therefore,
I watched it like six years ago.
That's when it came in. So
alright, let's wrap this. Yeah, I
don't know what I mean. I really hope this doesn't sound like we've just been assholes this entire time.
Like no, I think we've been very fair. Yeah. From my my one comments about Jesus. Sure.
Yeah, so So here's the thing I would love to see something of this sort be real, but in order to get on board with it, you can't just ask for an engineer to believe you have to you have to be practical in some way whatsoever and unfortunately, this kind of technology is just not practical right now. I think instead of just like beating our head on the ground and trying to put solar panels in the asphalt or in concrete let's let's spend those that energy researching how to make this technology better and then we can go towards something of this sort.
Sounds good to me. So that was the Mac fab engineering podcast we're your hosts Parker Tim and Steven Craig later everyone take it easy thank you yes, you our listener for downloading our podcasts and believing in us. If you have a cool idea project or topic let Stephen I know Tweet us at Mac Feb at Longhorn engineer or analog E and G are email us at podcast at macro voices.com. Also check out our Slack channel where we talk about solar roadways extra don't think we ever talked about solar roadways? You can find us at Mac fab.com/slack That's how you get the invite to get into our Slack channel.