[0:01] hello
[0:03] hey everyone and welcome to makercast
[0:06] so uh
[0:08] what is makercast makercast is a monthly
[0:10] stream that wonders from maker channel
[0:12] to make a channel although it has been
[0:14] on my channel twice in a row now so you
[0:15] must be sick of me i won’t do it again
[0:18] this way makers share their latest
[0:20] projects we always try to have some new
[0:21] people on and they can talk about what
[0:23] they’ve been doing so this week we’ve
[0:24] got some pretty exciting guests we’ve
[0:26] got stephen hawes steven’s been building
[0:29] an open source pick and place machine
[0:31] you can follow him on youtube as he
[0:32] assembles its smg assembly machine i’m
[0:35] guessing at some point it will start to
[0:36] assemble itself who knows where it will
[0:38] end
[0:39] the milk aka deshipu or just simply
[0:42] sheep this guy is actually too cool for
[0:45] youtube you’ll find him on the hackaday
[0:47] where he’s got a huge number of projects
[0:49] if you can think of something he’s
[0:50] probably done it already
[0:52] then we’ve got jason kuhn jason spends
[0:54] his time making electronic art he hangs
[0:56] around on youtube and the evil genius
[0:58] labs you can expect his part of the show
[1:00] to be illuminated
[1:05] sorry
[1:06] no this feels good
[1:08] finally we’ve got microtype engineering
[1:10] aka kyle he actually has a real job
[1:13] designing and assembling incredible
[1:14] electronics
[1:16] he tries to take advanced topics and
[1:18] explain them to people like me i
[1:20] actually feel quite sorry for him
[1:24] in the description to find out more
[1:25] about the stars of the show and of
[1:26] course as your host for tonight me okay
[1:29] atomic 14.
[1:31] so um
[1:32] i guess we should get the show started
[1:33] really that was
[1:35] absolutely so good
[1:40] so i think we all agreed that stephen
[1:42] was going to go first so we’re dropping
[1:44] stephen in it so i will make stephen the
[1:47] um star of the show now
[1:49] that’s pretty much solo layout
[1:52] thank you sir all right so i have been
[1:54] working on a pick-and-place for the past
[1:55] couple of years and right now me and my
[1:58] buddy lucian are trying to get the
[1:59] motherboards ready for sale um and we
[2:02] want to make sure that every motherboard
[2:04] that we make is going to be is going to
[2:06] work correctly and put it through its
[2:07] paces that everything that we wanted to
[2:09] be able to do is
[2:10] is working the way we expected to uh so
[2:13] we have been jamming on this thing i
[2:15] made a couple videos about this um
[2:18] a few weeks ago uh this is a pogo pin
[2:20] test jig so
[2:22] this is everything that’s like brown
[2:24] here we bought off the shelf um and it’s
[2:26] kind of a platform to be able to test a
[2:29] circuit board
[2:30] we all the red parts are fdm 3d printed
[2:33] to accept the motherboard design that
[2:35] we’re working to sell and then this blue
[2:36] piece in here has a whole bunch of pogo
[2:38] pins which go up to test points on the
[2:41] bottom of the board
[2:42] um
[2:43] so that has been pretty cool getting all
[2:46] that mechanical stuff together but the
[2:47] guts are i don’t want to say a nightmare
[2:50] but they are very they got really
[2:52] complicated and i think this is just
[2:54] kind of how these things go but i’m not
[2:56] sure because this is my first rodeo
[2:57] doing this either way it’s been so much
[2:59] fun figuring it out so we need to take
[3:02] this motherboard it runs marlin like the
[3:04] classic 3d printer uh firmware uh so we
[3:07] need to when we put the board in it
[3:08] needs to flash test firmware to the
[3:11] board and then it needs to run a whole
[3:13] bunch of tests like checking pins and
[3:15] checking peripherals and talking over
[3:17] i2c and stuff like that and then after
[3:19] it’s tested everything it then needs to
[3:21] put test for uh actual like marlin build
[3:24] back onto it um and then we wanted it to
[3:27] print a receipt out like a report the
[3:29] prusa actually i think all prusa
[3:32] products also have this if you guys have
[3:33] ever bought one you get like a receipt
[3:35] in the mail that shows all the the test
[3:37] results out super cool so we wanted to
[3:39] do that kind of thing too also in case
[3:41] it needed rework we wanted a physical
[3:43] thing that we could just like binder
[3:44] clip to it so we know exactly what test
[3:46] failed so we generally know what needs
[3:48] to happen in rework so
[3:50] in the long and short of what’s going on
[3:52] inside of this is there are three
[3:53] circuit boards kicking around there’s
[3:55] the blue and you saw top which is pretty
[3:56] much just a breakout for the pogo pins
[3:58] then there’s this green one right here
[4:00] which is effectively the same thing as
[4:03] the motherboard except it’s designed to
[4:05] just
[4:06] probe pins so it’s the exact same chip
[4:08] it is the
[4:09] unbelievably expensive stm32f407
[4:13] vgt6 is what we’re using for the board
[4:15] which went from like four dollars to
[4:17] like 50 a few weeks ago or a few months
[4:20] ago which was devastating but we have
[4:22] one of those on there which pretty much
[4:23] will just probe all the pins um that is
[4:26] kind of designed to interact with the
[4:28] test former that we actually put on the
[4:29] target board so it goes through and it
[4:30] does all that stuff um and it’s actually
[4:32] talking back to a raspberry pi which is
[4:34] running a python script and that’s kind
[4:36] of deciding okay i want you to run this
[4:37] subset of tests i want you to run this
[4:39] subset of tests uh it’s orchestrating
[4:41] the whole thing after it gets the test
[4:42] results back from the microcontroller
[4:44] board um it logs it to a server uh the
[4:46] raspberry pi does the python script it
[4:48] saves all the data so we can access it
[4:49] later so if someone calls in they’re
[4:51] like hey this is my serial number
[4:53] this chip isn’t working or this this
[4:55] part of the board isn’t working we can
[4:56] bring it back to a jig or an operator or
[4:59] a you name it we can really narrow it
[5:01] down or like based on the day
[5:03] um
[5:03] so there’s a lot of things we can do to
[5:05] try and figure out what went wrong with
[5:06] that production process and then it
[5:07] prints out a receipt at the end which
[5:09] was my favorite part like getting the
[5:11] receipt print out to look good was so
[5:13] much fun i spent like two and a half to
[5:15] three days just like tuning it so it
[5:17] looks really nice like we put a logo in
[5:19] it and all that crap so that was a lot
[5:20] of fun um there’s a lot of uh black
[5:23] magic probes kicking around in here for
[5:25] actually flashing the firmware to the
[5:27] target board and also that i still have
[5:29] in here to reflash the firmware that
[5:31] runs the test procedure on the test
[5:33] board
[5:34] it’s a lot it’s really messy it’s a lot
[5:36] of things just glued together but it
[5:37] does work it checks everything in it and
[5:39] it poops out a little receipt at the end
[5:41] and logs the data to our server um so
[5:44] this was super fun we have not actually
[5:45] put it through production yet because of
[5:48] the second half of the thing that i’m
[5:49] working on
[5:50] let me pop on over to a different camera
[5:53] here
[5:56] hd webcam all right i think that would
[5:59] work hello okay this is my my mobile
[6:01] camera so this is the pick and place
[6:04] that we’ve been working on um and here
[6:07] is a panel that we made of the
[6:09] motherboard so these are the boards that
[6:10] we’re actually going to be uh populating
[6:13] on the machine and the ones that we test
[6:15] in that test jig um and over the past
[6:17] few weeks i’ve been pretty much living
[6:19] in this room getting all these strip
[6:21] feeders set up calibrating the machine
[6:23] and we’ve had some really good luck with
[6:24] placements so far let’s see if my auto
[6:26] focus is going to kick in here
[6:29] come on baby you got it
[6:31] um
[6:33] nuts this freaking camera is not
[6:36] sometimes does not want to
[6:38] cooperate but uh we’ve been getting
[6:40] really good placement i did actually try
[6:41] and uh have open pnp connected uh that’s
[6:44] a little better uh the software that
[6:45] we’re using to run it is this awesome
[6:47] open source project called open pnp
[6:50] and
[6:50] we’ve i tried to get it so that i could
[6:52] control the machine while we do this
[6:54] stream and i can just switch which
[6:55] camera is pointed to it so you guys can
[6:57] actually see the view of the machine the
[6:59] two cameras mounted in the pick and
[7:01] place but it crashes open me and p every
[7:03] time i try and
[7:05] uh we’re here with this with this camera
[7:07] situation but we’re getting really good
[7:09] placement so far it’s this has been a
[7:11] project like two years in the making um
[7:14] and getting like actual good results out
[7:16] of it has been
[7:17] nothing but stellar so
[7:19] super stoked on that um
[7:21] yeah it’s been really good let me switch
[7:23] back my other camera
[7:25] you guys aren’t having to get up in my
[7:26] grill here there we go
[7:28] um yeah so that’s pretty much what i’ve
[7:30] been working on is getting open pnp
[7:32] calibrated that thing is a beast they
[7:35] like make sure that pretty much any
[7:37] machine that you want to control with it
[7:39] will be supported so there are a million
[7:42] and one options and configurations and
[7:43] features and you can pretty much have it
[7:45] talk to any machine you want but that
[7:47] also means it takes a while to get it
[7:48] set up for any specific machine um kind
[7:51] of like the swiss army knife situation
[7:52] but it’s a really cool piece of software
[7:54] um so yeah hopefully pretty soon we’re
[7:57] going to be actually just producing
[7:59] motherboards with the machine so like
[8:02] doing the whole rep wrap building the
[8:03] machine with the machine thing i am
[8:06] so excited for that when we actually get
[8:08] there it might happen this week so we’ll
[8:09] see we’ll see where it goes
[8:13] that’s pretty cool so it is actually
[8:14] gonna it will be assembling itself then
[8:16] but my joke is actually true
[8:19] yeah yeah it will be there are two
[8:21] unique circuit boards in the machine
[8:22] there’s the motherboard and then there’s
[8:23] two ring light boards that go around the
[8:26] bottom and top cameras um the ring
[8:28] lights are like they’re really simple
[8:30] they’re some ws 2012 bees with some caps
[8:33] and you know like a few passes and stuff
[8:35] on them the motherboard is much more
[8:36] complicated and it has mostly
[8:38] through-hole um but there’s some finer
[8:40] pitch smt stuff that we’re doing on it
[8:42] too and
[8:43] yeah so it’d be really sweet we’re we
[8:45] i’ve populated every part on the
[8:47] motherboard with the machine so far it’s
[8:49] just a matter of continuing to tune it
[8:51] at this point um so yeah it’s gonna be
[8:53] really good i’m super stoked about it i
[8:56] can’t wait to just start flying boards
[8:57] through it it’s gonna be really good
[9:00] yeah devonsky’s comment is really good i
[9:02] mean
[9:02] how do you stay so enthusiastic and
[9:05] motivated with i know projects i do that
[9:07] there’s a certain point you reach that
[9:09] sort of hump and you just think
[9:12] it’s good enough i don’t want to do it
[9:14] i’m going to stop
[9:16] i think i i i definitely think that the
[9:19] fact that i’ll post a video about it
[9:21] every two weeks
[9:22] helps
[9:23] because like there are people that
[9:25] expect updates every two weeks and like
[9:28] i have something to show i need to have
[9:29] something to show every two weeks uh and
[9:31] that is like astounding for motivation
[9:34] of like i have a due date like i have
[9:37] homework
[9:38] you know like it does help um also it’s
[9:41] just something i’m really stoked about
[9:42] and i want it like i wanted this i did a
[9:45] kickstarter a few years ago for a little
[9:46] a light up bow tie and i had to solder a
[9:48] whole bunch of the leds by hand and it
[9:51] sucked it took up like you know six
[9:53] months of my life just like killing
[9:55] knights and vegans trying to make these
[9:56] things by hand and it was horrible i
[9:58] couldn’t afford like a neodym or
[9:59] something um so it’s also something that
[10:02] i really want i want to make it exist
[10:04] um but also like having the motivation
[10:06] of like an awesome community a bunch of
[10:09] really wonderful devs that are also
[10:10] working on the project too
[10:12] um there’s a lot of things that really
[10:14] help it help it keep momentum but mainly
[10:16] i’m just stoked on it and i really want
[10:18] to see it be a thing you know yeah
[10:21] yeah your uh your enthusiasm for it is
[10:23] infectious
[10:26] close closely you know watching
[10:28] following the project and i’m excited
[10:30] yeah without exciting
[10:32] thank you again
[10:35] leds by hand is terrible
[10:37] yeah
[10:38] how how are you are you populating those
[10:40] those big old discs back there by hand
[10:42] uh i i have never built one of those by
[10:44] hand i have pay other people to do that
[10:47] yeah
[10:47] smaller boards yeah and i’ll talk about
[10:50] that later more but
[10:52] yeah i don’t mind building one or two of
[10:53] something but you know 10 or 20 or 50 or
[10:56] 100.
[10:57] it starts to get old real quick and i
[10:59] love doing i i actually really if i’m
[11:01] doing fine smd stuff i don’t
[11:04] use a stencil i just do them with an
[11:06] iron and like solder which people always
[11:08] leave comments and like why are you
[11:10] doing it this way use a stencil and i
[11:12] like doing it which is also a little
[11:13] ironic but after a period of time it’s
[11:15] like okay the novelty has worn off with
[11:17] this thing like i just i want a tool and
[11:19] not a project i just want it to be a
[11:21] fixed solved problem and not have to
[11:22] think about it anymore um that’s what
[11:25] we’re trying to make
[11:26] yeah how many people are actually
[11:28] working on it i mean you’re the kind of
[11:30] main guy but how many people work on the
[11:32] pick and play software i mean it’s open
[11:34] source isn’t it it is it’s all open
[11:36] source you can find everything all the
[11:37] source all the design for everything um
[11:39] on github all the the cad is in freecad
[11:42] we found a way to use git to track kycad
[11:45] and freecad
[11:48] and it’s a little bit of a dance but we
[11:49] figured it out and it actually works
[11:51] really well now um yeah but i’d say
[11:53] there’s there’s like four or five pretty
[11:55] regular active devs um people that have
[11:58] like the github credentials uh and then
[12:00] you know there’s a long tail from there
[12:01] about i mean there’s at least a few
[12:03] dozen people building the machine along
[12:05] with us and like doing updates and stuff
[12:07] um so it’s pretty cool it’s it’s a lot
[12:10] of fun like and it’s the craziest thing
[12:12] to see people making modifications
[12:13] there’s a whole bunch of people doing
[12:14] cable chain mods now i have like this
[12:16] umbilical setup a lot of people are like
[12:18] really jonesing on the cable chain so
[12:20] they’re making their own edits to it and
[12:21] figuring out how to do it that way and
[12:23] yeah it’s it’s cool it’s pretty awesome
[12:26] yeah the whole you know rep wrap like 3d
[12:29] did for 3d printing having that for
[12:30] picking place machines would just be
[12:32] amazing it’d be sweet
[12:35] will be amazing
[12:36] i i am hoping that that
[12:39] comes soon i really want that to be the
[12:41] case very very badly so
[12:43] yeah
[12:44] yeah and what would you do when you
[12:46] finished your pick and place machine
[12:47] what’s the uh when will it be exactly
[12:50] yeah
[12:51] well we’ll be done
[12:54] we will probably always be making
[12:56] improvements to it
[12:57] and finding ways to make it cheaper and
[13:00] make it more reliable and like it’s
[13:02] mostly printed parts um but we can still
[13:05] get like the other day i was very
[13:07] reliably picking 0 402s with it and like
[13:10] wow
[13:11] we’re not entirely sure yet if we can
[13:12] support it outright but like the signs
[13:15] are pointing to a likely yes so it’s
[13:18] it’s pretty good um for what it is i
[13:20] mean it’s some seven aluminum extrusions
[13:22] and some printed parts and some parts
[13:24] yeah um there’s a question from the
[13:26] audience do you plan on selling
[13:28] assembled machines will you will you go
[13:30] into full manufacturing
[13:32] yeah that’s definitely on the game plan
[13:34] so we’re kind of thinking about what are
[13:36] what are all the things that would be
[13:37] the most value add to people that are
[13:39] trying to do this and a lot of people
[13:40] who are interested in right now are
[13:42] people that are down to put a kit
[13:44] together um so we’re right now that’s a
[13:46] lot of our focus we want to get
[13:47] motherboards out the door because that’s
[13:48] a very difficult thing for someone to
[13:50] make at home but you can buy aluminum
[13:52] extrusion anywhere so we’re trying to
[13:54] enable as many people to get going as
[13:55] possible motherboard’s the first step um
[13:58] and then after that is is going on for
[14:00] uh kits and like we’re thinking about
[14:02] assembled machines too for sure yeah i
[14:04] think adam’s point gets same to me
[14:06] everything i do seems to go into
[14:08] more stuff to buy and more stuff on the
[14:10] shelf
[14:11] [Music]
[14:12] it’s terrible it’s a curse
[14:22] that’s fair we will never ask you to do
[14:24] that
[14:26] brilliant that’s great any other
[14:28] questions for stephen while we’ve um
[14:30] i have a question that’s not on topic
[14:33] sorry
[14:35] is that a circle you have on your neck
[14:38] yeah good eye damn yes
[14:40] yeah it’s a it’s a i don’t even know
[14:42] what it is um i had one that i got from
[14:45] servo city i bought a bunch of servos
[14:47] and they gave me um a servo they didn’t
[14:49] fit the servos i bought so i had that
[14:50] one for years um and then i got a new
[14:52] one and my girlfriend has my old one and
[14:54] now this one so yeah they’re fun they’re
[14:56] a great little pendant and like it’s
[14:58] also like people like is that a servo
[14:59] horn it’s kind of like a fun little nod
[15:01] when people notice it so good eye
[15:05] what is it can you explain it oh yeah
[15:08] i’m sorry um it’s a servo horn so like a
[15:10] servo motor uh i don’t know i guess it’s
[15:12] the thing that like pops on the end that
[15:14] like for hobbies uh hobby servo motors
[15:16] for like rc cars and stuff um and this
[15:18] is a really nice purple anodized
[15:20] aluminum
[15:22] um
[15:22] yeah that’s a pendant right there
[15:26] [Music]
[15:27] brilliant
[15:28] all right well thanks stephen so uh
[15:32] are you ready and you can tell us all
[15:34] how to pronounce your various names as
[15:36] well
[15:45] so basically the the whole uh plug the
[15:49] last two years have have been for me
[15:53] the the years of keyboards i got into
[15:56] mechanical keyboards
[15:58] a little bit because i finally found low
[16:01] profile switches which
[16:03] changed completely the whole thing
[16:05] because i couldn’t use mechanical
[16:07] keyboard before
[16:09] before because they are basically too
[16:12] high for me and the travel of the keys
[16:15] is too much so
[16:16] it feels like you are falling into it
[16:19] so
[16:20] the the low profile switches are amazing
[16:23] and the
[16:25] problem was at the beginning there
[16:27] weren’t really many keyboards you could
[16:29] buy with those switches so i had to make
[16:31] my own
[16:33] i made this one which i’m using right
[16:35] now and i’ve been using it for one and a
[16:37] half years already
[16:39] so it’s uh really nice it has a a socket
[16:43] in in the middle where you can replace
[16:45] different modules so you can put a knob
[16:47] on it or a display or whatever you want
[16:51] but then
[16:53] you keep exploring and there are several
[16:56] ways you can go so you can for instance
[16:59] just
[17:00] keep adding stuff to it add some
[17:02] displays add some leds and and stuff
[17:06] make it shiny blinking and all that
[17:09] but for me that was not really
[17:11] interesting because i don’t look at my
[17:13] keyboard when i’m typing so a display
[17:16] doesn’t make
[17:31] so so
[17:32] another thing you can do people do that
[17:35] is to go into exotic materials you know
[17:37] make like keycaps out of hard wood or i
[17:41] don’t know
[17:42] machine it from aluminum and and things
[17:45] like that
[17:46] but you know it’s
[17:49] expensive
[17:51] and you need the right tools and you
[17:53] need to
[17:54] skill to use those tools and while
[17:57] it’s all
[17:58] interesting to acquire those skills
[18:00] it’s a bit too much for me so i went
[18:03] into the other direction which is
[18:06] now making your keyboard as
[18:09] ergonomic as possible as convenient
[18:12] as easy to type on as possible and
[18:16] that’s let them protect them
[18:19] and
[18:20] you know while all those other ways go
[18:23] like
[18:24] into the sky so sky is the limit you can
[18:28] basically always add more leds and you
[18:30] can find even more exotic material to
[18:33] make your keyboard out of
[18:37] with with ergonomic
[18:38] with like you start reading the research
[18:41] papers you start experimenting you you
[18:43] look at other people’s designs and you
[18:46] always end up with the same thing
[18:49] which in my opinion should be the
[18:50] defaults
[18:53] for keyboards
[18:54] which looks mostly like this
[18:58] sometimes it’s in one piece so you can
[19:00] you can but then it’s tilted like this
[19:05] and
[19:06] this is actually not not yet the perfect
[19:09] one the perfect one also has a splay
[19:12] so the the cones are not
[19:14] perpendicular uh
[19:17] they they are they have a bit of
[19:20] of a splay between them because your
[19:22] your fingers are like that and
[19:24] people
[19:25] often
[19:26] remove that shirt key from the pinky
[19:29] column because your pinky doesn’t really
[19:31] reach that high
[19:33] so then either they move it to the side
[19:36] or they remove it completely and you
[19:38] charge
[19:39] two keys at once so this particular
[19:42] keyboard is not my design
[19:44] uh
[19:45] i got it in exchange for one of my pcbs
[19:48] but it it shows you basically what what
[19:51] the
[19:53] perfect performance looks like you might
[19:55] not like it
[19:58] is it like a community of
[20:00] keyboards but then when you make your
[20:02] own
[20:03] you try to think okay what if i put this
[20:07] on the back of a tablet like this
[20:13] move the thumb buttons to the front
[20:16] so you can hold the tablet at the same
[20:18] time and and type with a nice ergonomic
[20:21] keyword
[20:22] and uh yeah for years i’ve been thinking
[20:25] about this but never got
[20:27] the time to
[20:29] actually do this and now i have it
[20:31] whoa i actually made that it’s uh it
[20:35] also has a
[20:36] little d-pad in here so you can do and a
[20:39] joystick
[20:41] and this is an another joystick wow so
[20:44] you can use it for maps
[20:47] and two mouse buttons
[20:50] those are the front buttons
[20:53] and those are basically the two halves
[20:56] of
[20:57] the ergonomic keyboard but you you heard
[20:59] it
[21:01] i don’t have homer honky’s foaming keys
[21:04] in here so you hold it like this yeah
[21:06] basically and your thumbs are here so
[21:09] you have to hold it with with the inside
[21:11] of your palm here
[21:13] so uh that’s why i have holes in here i
[21:16] need to actually make like wooden
[21:18] handles in here
[21:20] because this is very sensitive to
[21:23] the size of your hand
[21:26] it has to be just right for you this one
[21:28] is a bit too small for me that’s why i
[21:31] my my
[21:32] fingers are like those
[21:34] hooks and that’s not convenient
[21:36] it should be wider a little bit so that
[21:39] my my fingers are mostly
[21:42] mostly straight but
[21:45] can still reach the
[21:48] furthest
[21:49] uh button that would be perfect so i
[21:52] need a
[21:53] a bit of a of a wooden part here to to
[21:56] you know adjust the weights of this but
[22:00] this already works pretty well you can
[22:02] see there are some budgets
[22:04] in here
[22:06] but yeah
[22:07] you know first pcb of this design you
[22:09] always get budgets
[22:12] and
[22:13] it’s actually surprisingly
[22:16] convenient
[22:17] it’s nice
[22:18] one thing i was surprised
[22:21] is that
[22:23] you know muscle memory is actually
[22:26] what actually works in absolute tense
[22:28] not in relative terms
[22:30] so rotating something 90 degrees
[22:33] makes it stop working
[22:35] so why i still know like intellectually
[22:39] where each
[22:40] key is and which finger i need to use
[22:42] and how far i need to i need to move
[22:45] that finger
[22:46] it’s no longer in my muscle memory so
[22:48] you can you you do have to train a
[22:51] little bit to use this to get this
[22:55] you know automatic thing back do you
[22:58] have it automatic yet
[23:08] why i use this
[23:10] quite you know
[23:13] so yeah so that’s still experimenting
[23:16] and
[23:17] yeah
[23:18] you can actually
[23:20] use uh like a very short usb cable
[23:24] with
[23:25] this otg
[23:27] adapter
[23:28] on the other hand by the way this
[23:30] adapter is very nice you just insert the
[23:33] wow outside of the
[23:36] where’d you get that that’s awesome
[23:39] where i get everything aliexpress
[23:41] [Laughter]
[23:46] yeah so you can do
[23:49] basically
[23:56] it’s not usb-c so you have to rotate it
[23:58] three times before it
[24:02] yeah so you can do
[24:04] oh wow that’s awesome
[24:07] so the the thing is i i lost my velcro
[24:10] strips i was planning to put velcro
[24:12] straight in here so you can you know
[24:14] have the tablet held in in place
[24:17] securely with them
[24:19] right now it’s just i i i have to
[24:22] actually hold it with my thumbs
[24:25] from using my
[24:27] buttons which kind of defeats the whole
[24:29] idea but i tested it and it works pretty
[24:31] well
[24:32] it works as a normal keyboard and you
[24:34] can type on it wow
[24:38] and
[24:39] another thing i want to
[24:41] do with it
[24:42] is i got this
[24:44] hyper pixel display for raspberry pi
[24:48] and you know it just begs to put a
[24:51] raspberry pi in here oh yeah
[24:54] and have a cyber deck basically i think
[24:57] and you know a power bank underneath
[25:00] and then you can you can do
[25:02] your hacking
[25:04] from the coach
[25:06] so that’s that’s that
[25:09] wow
[25:11] and the other long running project is
[25:14] this little guy
[25:18] as you can tell probably
[25:20] a walking robot
[25:22] i started
[25:23] so walking robots
[25:26] is what actually got me into
[25:28] making
[25:30] some seven eight years ago
[25:32] but uh
[25:34] at some point i decided okay i need to
[25:36] make a robot that it
[25:38] that will be very cheap and very easy to
[25:40] make without needing a 3d printer or a
[25:43] laser cutter anything like that
[25:46] and that would be
[25:48] cheap like below 30 dollars
[25:52] that was that was my
[25:54] thing and uh for a long time i had a
[25:57] problem that
[25:59] usually nice you really need uh
[26:02] 12 servos
[26:04] to have three three uh axes of of motion
[26:08] uh on each leg to be able to move it in
[26:11] 3d
[26:12] and because
[26:14] otherwise you are not able to move the
[26:17] legs in a straight line and i really
[26:19] wanted to be able to move flex in a
[26:21] straight line because i wanted proper
[26:23] walking without the legs sleeping
[26:26] without you know crawling
[26:28] uh
[26:30] because i wanted this to be like a
[26:33] platform to explore different ways of
[26:38] doing
[26:40] the walking robots because i i at the
[26:42] time i thought there must be some
[26:44] unexplored
[26:46] uh
[26:47] stuff that could simplify things and if
[26:49] we got enough people to you know
[26:51] experiment and someone will sooner or
[26:54] later stumble upon
[26:57] a nice improvement
[26:59] but later on i i decided okay so if i
[27:03] instead of having the like spider
[27:05] configuration where you have one servo
[27:08] horizontally moving the leg
[27:10] horizontally and one servo arising and
[27:14] lowering it
[27:15] instead if i do a configuration like
[27:17] this
[27:19] which is basically the mammal
[27:20] configuration but uh
[27:23] kind of
[27:24] the joints are
[27:26] the hips are very close together
[27:30] but it’s uh
[27:32] both servers are in the same
[27:35] uh plane
[27:37] and that means you can in that plane you
[27:39] can move the leg in a straight line
[27:41] right you can you can just kind of
[27:45] uh
[27:47] so so at least as long as you are
[27:50] walking straight
[27:52] you can walk properly and then for for
[27:54] turning i can do this like thanks to
[27:58] by by moving
[27:59] one side faster and the other side
[28:02] slower or even in the opposite direction
[28:05] so i came up with this design that was
[28:08] the first one how many servers is that
[28:11] uh eight eight you still need two
[28:14] degrees of freedom per like
[28:16] right but it’s already you know uh much
[28:18] cheaper the servos are about to one and
[28:21] a half dollar case per servo
[28:24] so with that up quickly if you have 12
[28:26] yeah from aliexpress of course
[28:32] actually if you buy them in bulk like i
[28:34] do
[28:35] because i have
[28:37] [Laughter]
[28:48] that’s only eight dollars
[28:52] all right so i i started to you know
[28:55] make
[28:56] more and more prototypes at some point i
[28:58] decided okay i’m going to make this a
[29:00] feather uh
[29:01] [Music]
[29:03] a featherweak basically so you can put
[29:08] no not a fader wing a feather so you can
[29:11] put feather wings on top of this as
[29:13] ships
[29:14] so you could have like a display for a
[29:16] face for instance or led matrix for a
[29:19] face or things like that so i did that
[29:23] and i based this on sandy 21 on uh
[29:27] another project i made like a
[29:31] feather clone basically that i called
[29:33] fluff
[29:34] so this this robot is called fluffback
[29:37] because it’s
[29:38] it’s a fluff but it’s also a bag
[29:44] but uh recently you know there has been
[29:46] a shortage of chips
[29:48] probably you know with you use sdnc too
[29:50] so
[29:51] you must have
[29:52] noticed uh so i decided okay what are
[29:55] the two chips that you can get right now
[29:58] and
[29:59] that’s rp2040
[30:01] and
[30:02] expressive chips
[30:04] so i
[30:06] and just around that time there was
[30:08] there appeared annual
[30:10] that the s esp32 s2
[30:13] chip
[30:14] and this very nice
[30:17] module
[30:19] by lolly
[30:21] previously known as wemos
[30:24] you remember we mostly won so this is as
[30:27] we must
[30:29] loser
[30:30] we must be one mini which was really
[30:33] nicely
[30:35] a clown birthday
[30:36] they didn’t cut the corners they cut the
[30:38] corners by not cutting the corners on
[30:40] this one
[30:43] but yeah there is a lot of shields for
[30:45] this and i made like 10 myself
[30:49] so so
[30:50] when this came out and it’s actually
[30:52] compatible with with the d1 shields it
[30:55] only has a second row of pins to use or
[30:58] the
[31:01] all the pins that you have to do
[31:04] so so this is great for for me i decided
[31:08] okay i’m going to use this it doesn’t
[31:09] have bluetooth which is a bit of a
[31:12] banner because then i could use like
[31:15] a bluetooth controller for the robot but
[31:17] i can use wi-fi on this
[31:20] and
[31:21] i just plug it in here
[31:24] and another nice thing is that adafruit
[31:27] uh cleverplan from adafruit is working
[31:30] on a camera support for secret fighting
[31:33] by the way this robot runs circuit right
[31:36] so uh
[31:38] i’m still programming it right now
[31:41] i can actually show you the
[31:43] startup sequence
[31:46] but i it doesn’t work yet i i have
[31:49] inverse kinematics for it
[31:51] cool
[31:54] yeah and i
[31:55] broke something and it doesn’t work
[31:58] anyways
[32:07] so the esps esp32 s2 is one new thing in
[32:12] this particular prototype the second
[32:14] thing is uh i had actually a mentoring
[32:17] session during the hackathon prize
[32:20] with klim and dnf
[32:22] and he suggested okay i always have
[32:25] problems with with cable
[32:30] of cables here and that’s already after
[32:32] cutting the cables to the side
[32:35] because normally servers have cables
[32:38] like this
[32:40] because you know you you put them in the
[32:42] airplane model and you stuff the cable
[32:45] inside and it doesn’t get in the way
[32:48] so uh with the robots it’s it’s a big
[32:51] problem
[32:52] uh
[32:53] the the socket on the end it’s actually
[32:56] pretty difficult to replace when you cut
[32:58] the
[33:00] cable
[33:01] to size i didn’t want people to have to
[33:03] do that
[33:05] so what clement suggested is use
[33:08] is to use those
[33:10] ribbon cable
[33:11] sockets
[33:12] [Music]
[33:14] because you they they actually have like
[33:16] blades in here they that go through the
[33:19] cable
[33:20] so you just have to put the cable in the
[33:24] cables in the right order
[33:25] and you close this
[33:28] and
[33:29] cut off the excess and and you are ready
[33:34] so that’s what i did in here in the back
[33:37] that looks so good
[33:39] i can unplug it and you can see this is
[33:42] the yeah
[33:44] that is clean yeah that’s awesome great
[33:46] idea
[33:50] yeah there are still some mechanical
[33:53] issues i i put the battery too low
[33:56] because those sockets have a key they
[33:58] are keyed
[33:59] so they have a notch at the top
[34:02] and i had to cut off the knot from them
[34:04] in in this version because the battery
[34:07] is still a bit too low and there is no
[34:09] room for that notch
[34:11] but that’s details right next version
[34:14] can have
[34:15] proper
[34:16] uh
[34:18] yes oh i can actually show you that
[34:20] previous version
[34:21] [Laughter]
[34:26] oh it’s alive nice
[34:29] so then this version had an
[34:32] infrared
[34:33] sensor
[34:34] because you could uh
[34:36] so you could control it with that tv
[34:37] remote basically
[34:39] this one is going to have wi-fi and i
[34:41] didn’t finish so jeff hepburn from
[34:43] adafruit is working on those
[34:46] cameras
[34:47] for for a esp32 s2 basically the same
[34:51] camera that was used in the esp cam
[34:55] like m5 stack also has several modules
[34:58] with that camera
[35:00] but he he’s uh making them work in
[35:02] circuit pythons you can basically
[35:05] uh
[35:06] either record uh animated
[35:09] give images
[35:11] or or you could stream it over web
[35:15] over over the wi-fi
[35:17] or you could
[35:18] even
[35:19] if
[35:20] maybe there is a chance i could steal
[35:22] some code from openmv
[35:25] to do the
[35:26] april codes
[35:27] thing
[35:28] apple codes are fiducials
[35:31] and if i got the fiduciary code to work
[35:34] on it even you know it’s
[35:36] one frame per two seconds
[35:38] doesn’t matter
[35:40] you get uh
[35:42] if the fiducial is seen by the camera
[35:45] you get information on
[35:47] where it is actually exactly and how far
[35:49] from you
[35:51] and at which with angle
[35:54] so if you have a fiduciary anywhere in
[35:56] your room and and the robot can see it
[35:58] then the robot
[35:59] knows exactly where it is in the room
[36:02] probably you’ve seen those boston
[36:04] mechanics
[36:05] movies with
[36:07] with the
[36:08] atlas robot moving boxes and you notice
[36:11] there is something like a qr code on
[36:13] each of those boxes yeah
[36:16] that’s the fiducial that’s that’s the
[36:17] thing by which
[36:20] the robot can
[36:21] know where the box is exactly and what
[36:24] box it is brilliant
[36:27] uh
[36:28] working on boston dynamics so let’s see
[36:30] yes
[36:34] sorry so i’m not sure i will be able to
[36:37] adapt that library the library is open
[36:39] source they they made it available but
[36:41] it’s very you know
[36:43] specific to openmv
[36:46] uh so probably not but
[36:48] i can i can dream so i have a separate
[36:51] product working on a shield for this
[36:53] with a camera
[36:55] with that exact camera that is supported
[36:57] by the circuit pattern
[36:59] so then i can i can put the shoot on top
[37:02] here
[37:03] so it will have like one eye in the
[37:06] middle
[37:07] maybe i have some some you know time of
[37:09] flights distances as well
[37:12] uh
[37:13] yeah possibilities uh yeah
[37:16] anything
[37:17] i also have alternate legs
[37:28] so this is actually a switch they use
[37:29] for detecting if the sd card is inserted
[37:33] or not oh okay i use this because they
[37:36] are super light like yeah
[37:39] they know for at all to
[37:41] switch so when when it touches ground
[37:44] it it activates and then you can
[37:47] you can write code that makes it
[37:50] prevents the robot from walking off your
[37:52] desk basically
[37:54] it can you can send okay there is no
[37:56] ground there i i expected ground there
[37:58] so i can
[37:59] take a step back and turn around
[38:01] whatever
[38:04] so yeah so so that’s
[38:06] that’s crazy that’s what i was working
[38:08] on it’s it doesn’t work yet because i
[38:11] need to rewrite i have the code for for
[38:14] walking but it’s for the 12th server
[38:16] robot
[38:20] and because it’s
[38:22] there is nothing new in it i already
[38:25] know how to do it
[38:26] it’s not exciting for me so i don’t have
[38:28] much
[38:30] there’s no pull towards accomplishing
[38:32] that goal
[38:33] exactly i’ve been putting it for two
[38:35] years actually
[38:36] so so
[38:38] yeah i
[38:39] one day i would just sit down and do it
[38:41] but
[38:42] not yet i need to get that energy from
[38:44] stephen
[38:50] if you ever make that keyboard if you
[38:53] have bluetooth in it i will literally
[38:55] super glue my phone into one because i
[38:57] hate typing on my phone screen
[39:00] it’s like and i have i have my phone is
[39:02] still like pretty big i hate typing on
[39:04] it like if i i don’t care if my phone’s
[39:06] this big i would carry it around as a
[39:08] phone with a full keyboard on it because
[39:09] that would just be so freaking awesome
[39:11] so there’s one one more problem with
[39:13] this
[39:17] what is it
[39:18] you cannot like the device you cannot
[39:21] put it away on the desk
[39:25] or maybe if it sees that all the buttons
[39:27] get pressed it puts the phone yes i can
[39:28] do it
[39:29] you know additional logic yeah it wakes
[39:32] up when you pick it up that would be
[39:33] cool
[39:34] yeah that’s that’s some possibility
[39:37] so does shipping can we buy your
[39:39] keyboard is there anywhere to
[39:40] buy your keyboard is it a kit
[39:43] not really so uh
[39:45] i put all the design files on fritzing
[39:48] on on hackaday sorry
[39:51] and it’s made increasing by the way so
[39:53] so it should very easy to modify okay
[39:56] but uh
[39:58] it is a bit of of soldering because
[40:00] because this is a qfn
[40:04] yeah it’s programmed in circuit pattern
[40:07] of course as well so
[40:09] recently because yeah i’m a programmer
[40:12] by
[40:13] day
[40:14] and
[40:15] programming is not that fun for me when
[40:17] making things so i try to
[40:20] uh like motivate myself more to do
[40:23] programming a lot of my projects are
[40:25] okay product is finished i just need to
[40:27] program it
[40:29] and that never happens and
[40:31] so i try to motivate myself better
[40:36] by using languages that are easier to
[40:38] programming
[40:40] and give you more like instant feedback
[40:42] instance gratification
[40:45] so that’s why i don’t realize that about
[40:46] like the way that you work like if you
[40:48] know that you aren’t really jazzed about
[40:50] writing the software for your own stuff
[40:52] to pick something that has existing
[40:54] software support or something like
[40:55] circuit python is like what a great move
[40:58] to just design around that and that will
[41:00] help you finish your projects better
[41:02] like i love that so much that’s so cool
[41:04] yeah we want to live support from people
[41:07] that’s yeah that’s the key thing that
[41:09] keeps me doing projects is when someone
[41:10] else
[41:11] rather someone else tries to use it
[41:13] and they find all the bugs
[41:16] you can actually fix it
[41:18] or they start adding stuff to it and you
[41:20] saw i don’t really do something about
[41:21] this because someone now someone’s using
[41:23] it and i’ve got to actually support it
[41:24] i’m just important people actually care
[41:26] about it now i actually have her
[41:29] the thing that is really bad and i try
[41:31] to not actually
[41:33] do it but my my first
[41:37] like response to seeing someone is using
[41:40] my product okay no okay first response
[41:42] is great someone is using my product
[41:44] it’s actually useful
[41:57] because i know this doesn’t lead to
[41:59] anything good but
[42:04] that’s pretty funny
[42:08] yeah it is the support that’s always the
[42:09] uh difficulties
[42:11] it’s great publishing stuff and
[42:13] releasing it and you feel a great sense
[42:15] of achievement
[42:16] and then all the questions come and all
[42:18] the kind of issues come
[42:20] and then all the people just putting it
[42:22] out there it’s also it’s expecting all
[42:24] the people that will ask you about it
[42:26] there’s a lot more to it than that
[42:29] but it is good though it’s great it’s
[42:30] always good to get stuff out
[42:32] but motivation is a difficult one all
[42:34] day coding and then trying to code in
[42:37] the evening is not
[42:38] not always a good recipe well
[42:41] on the plus side it makes the coding
[42:43] easier
[42:44] yeah
[42:45] yeah that is true yeah if you actually
[42:47] can code it does help
[42:50] although i think some people look at my
[42:51] repositories might have a different
[42:52] opinion on
[42:57] and that switching between all these
[42:59] different languages isn’t always helpful
[43:01] it’s uh it’s very hard going back to c
[43:03] plus plus sometimes when
[43:05] you’re doing different things in your
[43:06] day job that’s always a
[43:09] yeah tricky
[43:12] a nice language in your in your project
[43:14] like circuit python and then you go go
[43:17] back to work
[43:18] [Music]
[43:21] now which one’s worse the projects all
[43:23] work that’s the question
[43:25] well depends on what you do at work do
[43:26] you do python at work or do you do like
[43:28] oh yeah what do you do c plus plus or
[43:30] something uh
[43:31] i work on openstack which is written in
[43:34] python so it’s mostly impactful but
[43:36] actually because it’s
[43:39] a nature project so we mostly do
[43:41] maintenance so in practice i mostly
[43:43] program in yaml
[43:45] which is not right
[43:47] that’s good
[43:55] i don’t understand why it doesn’t work
[43:57] why won’t you tell me what’s wrong it’s
[43:58] just kind of
[44:00] i’m not going to tell you it’s just
[44:01] small
[44:05] all right brilliant did she be that was
[44:07] great brilliant
[44:08] looking forward to my keyboard which i
[44:10] hope will get for christmas yeah if you
[44:11] ever have enough for sale i’m there i
[44:14] will i will you have my word i will
[44:16] super glue it to my phone
[44:20] it’s brilliant so next up is jason so
[44:23] jason i think uh we’ll hand over to you
[44:26] i think uh as i said in my introduction
[44:28] with my joke it should be illuminating
[44:33] yeah thanks for having me chris thanks
[44:35] for having me on my on my first makeup
[44:36] cast so um
[44:38] yeah my name is jason kuhn i i do in my
[44:41] limited free time spirit time i i do uh
[44:43] evil genius labs where i i make led
[44:46] stuff and um i sell some of the stuff
[44:49] that i make to you know fund uh creation
[44:52] and development of new stuff so
[44:55] um
[44:56] i started about six years ago making
[44:58] stuff by hand you know before i knew how
[45:01] to make pcbs so made stuff like this
[45:03] which is
[45:05] 100 holes hand drilled i didn’t have a
[45:07] drill press
[45:09] wow
[45:10] so yeah
[45:11] and then these are
[45:12] ws2811 eight millimeter leds
[45:16] um just pushed through and then on the
[45:18] back there’s a teensy i think it’s a
[45:20] teensy three two
[45:22] driving it so and a button to uh change
[45:25] brightness
[45:26] cool nice that’s good so that was uh one
[45:29] of the first uh fibonacci boards at
[45:31] least that i made so that you know the
[45:33] leds are in a um
[45:35] fibonacci distribution so
[45:38] and then um
[45:40] i actually did finally get a drill press
[45:43] and i started i made a couple of these
[45:46] which is
[45:48] the same thing
[45:49] um wow
[45:52] stainless steel bowl
[45:54] um which was fun to drill can it be used
[45:56] as a hat
[45:57] yeah i suppose but you shouldn’t see
[45:59] that
[46:00] guacamole oh wow so that’s all and i
[46:04] bought this pretty strong i didn’t have
[46:05] to do anything how long oh
[46:07] how long did that take though
[46:10] i don’t know um i i kind of spaced out
[46:13] as i was doing it you know podcasts and
[46:15] audiobooks is that a literal bowl like
[46:18] did you buy it it’s a stainless steel
[46:19] mixing bowl
[46:23] uh you can see the flat spot there that
[46:25] it would rest on and i kind of
[46:28] [Laughter]
[46:35] yeah so they’re
[46:37] eight millimeter ws2811 uh leds so it’s
[46:40] rgb led with a little each led has its
[46:43] own little ws2811 uh chip on a board
[46:45] there and they these come pretty strong
[46:48] so
[46:49] and i just kind of
[46:50] routed them however it worked um
[46:52] physically and then in software and that
[46:54] out to the actual um logical order of it
[46:58] how did you figure out where to drill
[46:59] the holes for a flashlight i could
[47:00] imagine like printing out on a piece of
[47:02] paper and a line yeah but like how do
[47:04] you do it on 3d like that that’s crazy
[47:06] yeah so that’s exactly yeah i used
[47:09] you know python to to
[47:12] generate the the points and printed out
[47:13] a template for the flat one and then for
[47:16] the round one i started with one with
[47:18] 100 only 100 leds
[47:20] um
[47:24] that just you know uh made the 3d model
[47:27] of it and then used the software to
[47:28] unwrap it uh like like paper craft right
[47:31] yeah and then cut it this was before i
[47:33] had a laser cutter so i used a cricut
[47:34] crack whatever to cut and then
[47:37] fold and tape and then
[47:40] taped this onto the bowl and then used a
[47:43] permanent marker and a hole
[47:46] like a punch you know to mark physically
[47:49] mark the uh
[47:50] the bowl and then drill all those holes
[47:52] and so that was the one with only a
[47:53] hundred ladies this was the one
[47:56] with 200.
[47:58] james has a question
[47:59] yeah
[48:00] what is the lead positioning is it
[48:02] random or geodesic
[48:03] it’s not random and it’s not geodesic
[48:06] it’s it’s a fibonacci distribution so
[48:09] you know if you start with the 2d one
[48:12] start in the center yeah and then go at
[48:15] a certain distance
[48:16] and rotate by a certain angle
[48:20] if you use any rational number the
[48:22] pattern will repeat you’ll end up with
[48:24] it being linear if you use that
[48:26] irrational number like phi or phi
[48:28] whatever and rotate by the golden angle
[48:30] then it will you can always add another
[48:33] led um and it will never repeat they’ll
[48:36] never stack up right exactly like
[48:38] fibonacci fibonacci sequence so
[48:40] um and then yeah with just a little bit
[48:43] of scripting you can do the same thing
[48:44] in 3d so i made that
[48:47] started with the papercraft templates
[48:49] and then got a 3d printer and 3d printed
[48:53] um i had a mini so i had to do it in
[48:54] lots of pieces
[48:57] wow
[48:58] that’s cool
[49:00] and then uh you know put this on top of
[49:02] the bowl and again use a
[49:04] permanent marker and a punch to
[49:06] mark the locations to drill all the
[49:08] holes um but anyway that gets old really
[49:11] fast right like i made a couple of those
[49:13] and uh sold a couple of them but
[49:16] it doesn’t scale right so
[49:19] um i started learning to
[49:21] you know design the printed circuit
[49:22] boards and then you know in the interim
[49:25] i’ve made
[49:27] fibonacci leds
[49:28] boards all the way from this one is 33
[49:31] millimeters in diameter so inch and a
[49:33] quarter
[49:34] in diameter all the way to this one
[49:38] 320 millimeters so about 10 times the
[49:41] size
[49:44] so this one has three and a half
[49:45] millimeter square leds 512 of them
[49:48] and this one has 64 one and a half
[49:50] millimeter leds that’s amazing
[49:54] thanks yeah and so i’ve like i said i’ve
[49:56] made just about every size in between
[49:59] do you have a background in like art or
[50:01] anything because that is like super
[50:03] creative for us
[50:07] no thanks
[50:08] [Laughter]
[50:21] had a really great four-year electronics
[50:22] program and so i took that and actually
[50:23] started out to become an electronic
[50:25] engineer before switching to computer
[50:26] science and and then really didn’t do
[50:28] much with electronics until just you
[50:30] know six or seven years ago right
[50:32] arduino kind of
[50:33] ushered me back into playing with
[50:35] electronics
[50:37] and that’s awesome not an electronic
[50:39] engineer i literally play with blinky
[50:40] leds like that’s all i mean i aspire to
[50:44] i aspire to someday
[50:46] be able to you know actually put a
[50:47] microcontroller on one of these led pcbs
[50:50] right
[50:51] um
[50:52] how much how much current do they draw
[50:54] and what’s the sort of power supply
[50:55] requirements for that for that
[50:58] yeah yeah so it depends so like these
[51:00] can use i think theoretically
[51:02] uh
[51:03] 60 milliamps each
[51:05] so since 512 it’s a lot um
[51:11] but that’s at full brightness uh solid
[51:13] white which
[51:14] you know just don’t do it right yeah
[51:17] they’re not rgbw they just have the
[51:18] three dies for rgb just just rgb i
[51:20] haven’t really done much with rgbw and
[51:23] that’s mostly because i use i i
[51:25] love and use the fast led library yeah
[51:28] um and it doesn’t yes support rgbw um
[51:31] so um but yeah maybe some some day that
[51:33] it will i have you know i’ve done a
[51:35] little bit with the neopixel library
[51:36] which does support that and micro python
[51:38] or circuit python but um i still do most
[51:41] of my
[51:42] pattern creation in uh fast led um
[51:51] the ones in the background like i rarely
[51:53] drive them at over two amps right
[51:56] um
[51:57] very rarely just and you can actually
[51:59] like the fast led library you can set a
[52:01] max current
[52:03] and it will adjust dynamically adjust
[52:04] the brightness to keep it below that
[52:06] threshold
[52:07] um so you know even these large ones in
[52:09] the background that they’re probably not
[52:11] pulling over two amps absolutely that’s
[52:13] so cool
[52:14] thank you um
[52:18] do you know what he means what’s he
[52:20] referring to jason oh yeah so uh kim
[52:22] dock is a long time member of the fasta
[52:24] led community and um so i think he’s
[52:27] just
[52:28] talking about the fact that i’ve been
[52:29] holding them up and not showing
[52:30] them okay this is the same thing that’s
[52:32] in the background there oh cool yeah the
[52:35] portal is into another dimension right
[52:37] yeah exactly so the smaller one there
[52:38] hanging on the wall is a 512. uh the
[52:40] larger one is just a set of
[52:42] off-the-shelf concentric rings um that i
[52:45] just bought so that i didn’t make that
[52:47] pcb but um
[52:49] yeah i can show like the little one so
[52:52] this is a
[52:53] magnetic uh lipo clasp connector that
[52:56] was made by deborah of um geekbomb
[53:00] projects on twitter and so this is the
[53:02] switch and battery holder and so you
[53:04] just
[53:05] wow
[53:06] that’s amazing
[53:08] yeah i thought that was a brilliant idea
[53:10] she made a couple of those and sent them
[53:11] to me we exchanged
[53:13] and so you know you can actually wear it
[53:15] as a pendant
[53:17] and i think she actually did wear one
[53:19] too to dinner
[53:25] what’s the pattern that’s being shown on
[53:26] that is that uh so this is a demo reel
[53:29] made by a guy on twitter um
[53:33] trying to el dirko i think his name is
[53:35] uh yaroslav so he made a demo reel of
[53:38] some really cool um patterns and
[53:40] animations but
[53:41] so everything i make the code is always
[53:43] open source i always post it um
[53:46] so
[53:47] i find all of that on my site no it’s so
[53:49] cool
[53:50] yeah
[53:52] this is just the bare pcb but then it
[53:54] has some black led acrylic on top of it
[53:57] so yeah that really makes it look
[53:59] beautiful
[54:01] right
[54:02] here what’s your question yeah so once
[54:05] you put all the leds into this steel
[54:08] ball or
[54:09] which whichever
[54:11] how long does it take you to figure out
[54:13] which led is which
[54:16] so it’s definitely easier if i’ve made a
[54:19] pcb because i have the coordinates of
[54:21] them all and then i can i have the i
[54:24] know the physical order that they’re
[54:25] routed in and um the x y coordinates and
[54:28] from that i can calculate the polar
[54:30] coordinates um which is something i was
[54:31] actually messing with just this morning
[54:33] this is one of my 256’s
[54:36] so this is
[54:38] using fast leds uh festivities um purlin
[54:41] noise um and so usually you would do
[54:43] that to to do x y uh
[54:47] um noise this i just swapped um angle
[54:50] for the x-axis and radius for the y-axis
[54:54] same exact code
[54:56] um
[54:56] and it does a really cool radial or
[54:59] polar
[55:00] mapping so
[55:01] so do all do all of the boards now
[55:03] you’re doing are all the designs they’re
[55:05] all on pcbs now just to simplify things
[55:08] yeah and just to make it faster you know
[55:10] to to be able to make multiple of them
[55:12] so make sense um and i’ve started
[55:14] experimenting with
[55:16] multiple sizes of leds so at the
[55:19] suggestion of uh
[55:21] jp john paul on twitter
[55:24] so this is not only do that these are
[55:26] one and a half millimeter leds in the
[55:28] center and then
[55:30] two millimeter
[55:31] and then three and a half millimeter and
[55:33] then five millimeter and then but they
[55:35] also increase the spacing um as they
[55:38] radiate out from the center so that’s
[55:40] are they also rgb you you’ve got some
[55:42] rgb like individually addressable ones
[55:44] that that’s small yeah and it’s so in
[55:46] the center they’re the same leds that
[55:48] are on the little tiny oh yeah okay
[55:50] they’re actually sk 6805 one and a half
[55:54] millimeter square but it talks the same
[55:56] language as the ws 2012 yep that was a
[55:58] concern so this was a prototype and i
[56:00] wasn’t sure if just chaining them
[56:02] because this is all one strand right
[56:04] yeah um they all talk the same protocol
[56:06] close enough that it just works and
[56:08] that’s cool i made a 256 version
[56:13] what about brightness do they differ in
[56:15] brightness
[56:17] probably different sizes
[56:18] yeah probably but you can adjust for
[56:20] that pretty easily in software so have
[56:22] you have you tested those yet
[56:24] yeah they were yeah i don’t have one
[56:26] assembled to
[56:27] light up but yeah so do they end up
[56:29] actually looking that much different
[56:31] than if they’re all the same
[56:33] not really not really
[56:36] i haven’t bothered adjusting for it
[56:40] so which you certainly look very
[56:41] different when they’re not on yes i mean
[56:43] like right right yeah yeah that’s what i
[56:46] was thinking is the brightness would
[56:48] overwhelm the actual like size of them
[56:50] yeah
[56:51] it does look cool though it does
[56:54] are they um aluminium pcb someone else
[56:58] now they’re all just they’re just two
[57:00] layer fr4 that’s all i’ve i’ve done so
[57:02] far um i haven’t had to go to a four
[57:04] layer or six layer or more and then um
[57:08] i haven’t tried aluminum pcbs but um
[57:10] again i just i drastically limit the
[57:12] brightness like i rarely drive any of
[57:14] these they’re just grinding
[57:16] even behind diffusion they’re blinding i
[57:18] i usually run them at maybe a quarter
[57:19] brightness or an eighth brightness so
[57:23] one thing that i recently noticed is
[57:26] that
[57:26] they started making rgb leds that are
[57:30] not for lighting
[57:31] but for signals
[57:33] and they take much less current and they
[57:36] are much
[57:37] bright
[57:38] right yeah so the the little one and a
[57:40] half millimeter ones and i think the two
[57:42] millimeter square ones also um they only
[57:44] consume like maybe i think they’re five
[57:46] milliamps per channel per led
[57:48] so 50 15 milliamps as opposed to 30 or
[57:51] 60 60 yeah
[57:52] yeah um
[57:54] so and sorry if i’m running long just
[57:57] real quick
[57:58] plenty of time
[58:00] more recently i wanted to try my hand at
[58:03] pcb art
[58:06] so this is
[58:11] guys
[58:17] [Laughter]
[58:27] and so there are you know uh gaps
[58:30] exposed fr4 and then it’s just a
[58:32] sandwich of
[58:34] boards so below this is a pcb with leds
[58:37] specifically laid out
[58:39] you know to follow the the
[58:41] pattern the arms and everything
[58:44] and then just another pcb for the back
[58:46] plate beautiful so
[58:48] how did you get it to come through with
[58:49] the the solder mask did you like have to
[58:52] figure out like how to raster it in a
[58:53] weird way because like as far as i’m
[58:55] aware it’s only like kind of like a
[58:57] binary thing you can’t do like a half
[58:59] opacity you know right i mean you can
[59:01] dither it um yeah there’s the what i was
[59:03] looking for yeah you can do there um
[59:05] this was you know uh it was vector art
[59:07] and i brought in and didn’t didn’t
[59:09] really have to do any of that okay um
[59:11] and i actually converted it to raster
[59:12] you know just a one bit per pixel bitmap
[59:16] imported into eagle which becomes
[59:18] millions of little rectangles
[59:20] and then just you know put that on the
[59:23] uh what the resist layer and um you know
[59:26] for the solder mask and then to
[59:28] um keep the fr4 exposed you know all the
[59:31] way through on both sides of the pcb
[59:33] mirrored on the back so that the
[59:35] so that the the leds would shine through
[59:38] wow so that looks like i know what that
[59:40] fab thought when you sent that to it
[59:42] yeah you had questions coming back
[59:44] i think you might have sent those little
[59:46] things there
[59:48] they they did warn me that they could
[59:50] not guarantee the quality um
[59:52] of it but honestly they they turned out
[59:54] great um
[59:56] and some leds kind of helped to blend
[59:57] everything it looks like yeah yeah so
[60:00] this was my second attempt i have you
[60:02] know keeping with the color changing
[60:04] um that’s the chameleon and then i had
[60:07] to try it in i had to try it with the
[60:09] white solder mask
[60:10] so cool so you also have sunscreen
[60:17] right yeah exactly so there’s you know
[60:19] the octopus has what um
[60:21] chromatophores i think is what they’re
[60:24] called and yeah this one doesn’t have
[60:25] any silk on the
[60:27] uh on the top board
[60:29] this one does have both silk and you
[60:32] know exposed fr4
[60:34] it’s beautiful wow and back and then
[60:37] yeah i thought white turned out really
[60:40] nice as well
[60:41] so
[60:42] and when will you be selling those
[60:44] um they they are for sale already on my
[60:46] tindy store
[60:48] i think i have a couple of
[60:50] them in stock so
[60:51] i don’t make you know i don’t mess
[60:53] produce them i make fairly limited
[60:55] batches as i as i feel like it um and
[60:57] put them up and then that funds the
[60:59] development of the next project which
[61:01] speaking of um
[61:03] so this is
[61:04] my latest project
[61:06] oh my gosh and so this this is a small
[61:09] scale test and these are i think it’s
[61:12] 192 leds there’s 19 uh rings of them
[61:17] and then each each led circle has a
[61:21] touch pad
[61:22] in the center oh way and then i use m2
[61:25] screws so if i turn this off oh it’s a
[61:28] cap touch pad
[61:29] right um
[61:30] so you can see there’s even two metal
[61:32] screws
[61:33] and um there’s
[61:35] breakouts for all the touch pads and i’m
[61:38] struggling again with software um trying
[61:40] to get the capacitive touch
[61:42] uh sensor
[61:44] working um
[61:49] what is it
[61:50] npr at programming just arduino um but
[61:54] the touch sensor that i’m trying to use
[61:56] is like an mpr121 which is a 12 channel
[62:00] uh level shifter and so
[62:02] i’m just doing all of this on a
[62:03] breadboard right now if i can show that
[62:08] um so there’s two
[62:10] two of those capacitive touch sensor
[62:12] breakouts on my breadboard and then just
[62:15] a
[62:16] esp8266 step board
[62:20] so if i can get the software to work um
[62:22] and get the small scale test to work
[62:23] then i’m going to make one as large as i
[62:26] can
[62:26] [Laughter]
[62:31] what’s the biggest one you’ve ever made
[62:33] is it the
[62:34] the
[62:36] 320 millimeter
[62:39] which is the largest that the uh so this
[62:42] was um actually some of my boards are
[62:44] assembled by
[62:45] cyber city circuits in augusta georgia
[62:47] and this is about as big as the reflow
[62:50] so
[62:52] but i already have plans to make a
[62:54] fibonacci 1024
[62:56] and to do that i’m going to split the
[62:58] pcb up into
[63:00] puzzle pieces
[63:03] that fit together and we’ll mount with
[63:05] standoffs
[63:07] so this is a small scale test this is
[63:09] just a
[63:10] 86 millimeter 64.
[63:13] um and i was really curious i made no
[63:16] allowance for like inside corners
[63:18] whatsoever um and i was really surprised
[63:21] that they fit
[63:22] um very very tightly together yeah
[63:25] i didn’t have to you know account for
[63:27] like the sharp quarters on the inside
[63:28] the you know the radius of whatever you
[63:31] know one millimeter bit that they’re out
[63:32] with or whatever
[63:34] i wonder if they just default to routing
[63:35] too much and like cutting out too much
[63:38] of the pcb as opposed to leaving a
[63:39] little bit of excess but maybe but i
[63:41] mean so here’s one that i mounted with
[63:43] standoffs and it’s wow you can’t even
[63:45] see the gaps yeah you can’t tell you
[63:47] really can’t and by the time the leds
[63:49] are lit up and there’s
[63:51] acrylic diffusion on top of it
[63:55] yeah so this worked um so i’m gonna i’ll
[63:58] i’ll do another slightly larger scale
[64:00] test and then if that works i will do
[64:02] probably a 500 millimeter
[64:08] 1024 board in probably eight different
[64:10] pieces is the current plan so
[64:14] and then i’ll need a larger laser cutter
[64:16] to be able to grill it
[64:19] the
[64:20] acrylic for the 512 and the large rings
[64:22] i had cut by polo lube because they’re
[64:25] already too big for my small laser
[64:27] cutter yeah you can make the wackiest
[64:29] frisbee ever
[64:33] yeah
[64:34] um
[64:35] so yeah sorry that was a quick tour of
[64:37] my descent into led madness
[64:42] so yeah quick question yeah do you buy
[64:45] these fully assembled or do you solder
[64:46] them all by hand so i almost go over i
[64:49] almost always assembled the first
[64:52] prototype by inside just out of frame i
[64:55] have a
[64:56] microscope you know stereoscopic
[64:59] microscope for assembling the really
[65:01] tiny boards and i have a little uh
[65:03] handmade or a homemade reflow and back
[65:05] there using unexpected maker’s free
[65:07] flowmaster
[65:08] all right um
[65:10] the larger boards i’ve i’ve never
[65:11] assembled the 512 so i was outsourced
[65:14] assembly of those um the 256 boards i
[65:17] had um
[65:18] ben hink of um
[65:20] the guy that makes the pixel blaze
[65:22] assembled some of those
[65:24] and then cyber city circuits um does a
[65:26] symbol for me i i’ve had some assembled
[65:28] by jlc pcb with varying you know
[65:32] results um
[65:34] you know um
[65:37] yeah
[65:40] question
[65:41] are they use open sourced uh so all of
[65:44] my software is open source i have to
[65:46] open source any of my hardware um i did
[65:48] just recently um so i actually the first
[65:53] pcbs that i made were just little level
[65:55] shifter pc views um and i recently uh
[65:59] opened them on osh park so i just
[66:01] ordered them directly from mosh park and
[66:03] i will take those open source but
[66:05] they’re just little you know like a
[66:07] breakout board for uh like a 74
[66:10] hct u245 level shifter
[66:13] um
[66:14] can you show the hexi again special
[66:16] requests
[66:26] um yeah i’ll get this plugged back in
[66:28] any other questions while i do that
[66:33] i’m slightly worried that carl and i
[66:34] still have to go and i’m not i’m
[66:36] thinking my stuff’s not really going to
[66:38] match up to that
[66:41] the key is just to not even try
[66:45] then you won’t be disappointed
[66:47] wow
[66:48] jason i wonder if the screws that you’re
[66:50] using i don’t know if this is even
[66:52] remotely an option or like this could be
[66:54] it but maybe they aren’t conductive on
[66:56] the surface if they’re coated with
[66:57] something and maybe that’s why you’re
[66:58] having problems with cap touch like are
[67:00] they conductive do you get continuity
[67:01] end to end on them they are in so much
[67:04] that um you can touch the nylon
[67:06] standoffs that i use and it will still
[67:09] work
[67:10] that’s cool so here is a touch
[67:14] so the the smaller boards that i’ve made
[67:16] i’ve started putting cap touch pads in
[67:18] the corner
[67:19] um
[67:20] and so when you touch them oh my gosh
[67:23] um and
[67:24] so even mounted behind acrylic like this
[67:28] with nylon standoffs you can touch the
[67:30] nylon standoff and it will still
[67:31] actually trigger the touch okay all
[67:34] right
[67:35] that’s cool that’s insanity
[67:38] rex
[67:39] yeah
[67:40] proximity based not touch base
[67:43] the touch link is a bit inaccurate
[67:46] because they measure the capacitance so
[67:49] yeah well and so like this one uses the
[67:51] adafruit’s qt pi which is like a at cmd
[67:54] 21 and it has built-in it has a built-in
[67:57] touch peripheral nice and so they’re
[67:59] just using the image library for that
[68:01] no it can do six
[68:03] six channels of that
[68:05] yeah
[68:06] that is so cool yes wow that is
[68:15] all stephen has is a servo horn
[68:37] i have a pencil in my hand
[68:38] [Laughter]
[68:42] i think that’s a good point from david
[68:44] yeah getting the bling sketch to work is
[68:46] still pretty good sorry that’s exactly
[68:48] really good
[68:51] that was that was absolutely amazing
[68:53] jason all right thank you thank you i’m
[68:55] blown away so uh come on
[68:59] so next we’ve got kyle franklin
[69:02] technology no micro micro type
[69:04] engineering so kyle let’s uh
[69:07] should we stay on the screen because you
[69:08] want us to quiz you about stuff um
[69:11] um i can at least i can at least start
[69:14] going through some stuff but yeah
[69:15] definitely will probably want to do some
[69:18] sort of like q a type stuff um but yeah
[69:21] definitely first off we just need to
[69:23] kind of lower those expectations
[69:27] um
[69:28] because they are certainly not gonna
[69:31] live up to that
[69:33] but um
[69:35] so yeah like uh
[69:37] like we were saying or talking about in
[69:39] the intro there um yeah my full-time gig
[69:43] is doing electronics design and it kind
[69:46] of used the analogy like a mechanic
[69:48] doesn’t work on their own car
[69:51] so i don’t do a ton of stuff like on the
[69:53] side like maker type stuff it’s all
[69:56] pretty much uh work based so i can’t
[69:59] really show
[70:00] really any of the work type stuff but
[70:02] what i think i’m gonna do is and this is
[70:04] something i’ve been working on getting
[70:07] going on my channel for
[70:09] like a year or two now
[70:11] so something that is really really
[70:14] overlooked in a lot of
[70:16] hobby level or even people who are
[70:18] getting into like the professional side
[70:20] of circuit board design
[70:22] is like just because a design works
[70:25] doesn’t actually mean like it’s a good
[70:29] design
[70:30] either emissions-wise or safety-wise or
[70:34] reliability-wise
[70:36] so i’ve started doing a series going
[70:38] through like emc so electromagnetic
[70:41] compatibility or compliance is what a
[70:43] lot of people refer to it as
[70:45] so a board that i did for this and i
[70:49] have a green screen so it’s probably
[70:51] going to somewhat disappear
[70:54] i think you can kind of see that and
[70:56] here i’ll switch
[70:58] i’ll switch over to
[71:01] my
[71:01] [Music]
[71:02] um screen here
[71:05] so
[71:08] basically so this is the design that i
[71:11] just showed
[71:12] it’s a
[71:14] honestly like the coolest looking
[71:17] or the coolest buck converter that i
[71:20] have ever messed with i did a
[71:22] series going over it but basically it’s
[71:25] a i squared c or a pm bus controlled
[71:29] buck converter so it can take in up to
[71:32] like
[71:32] 20 volts on the input side and then it
[71:35] can output pretty much whatever you want
[71:38] and it has like strapping pins you can
[71:42] set what the frequency is you can set
[71:44] what the voltage is you can set the
[71:48] i squared c or the pm bus address
[71:51] but then you can also use i squared c to
[71:55] set any number of registers
[71:58] so like you can do
[72:01] what you can monitor what the current is
[72:03] you can set current limits you can set
[72:06] output voltages you can set
[72:08] pretty much whatever you want on it
[72:10] which is really unique in a buck
[72:12] converter because normally if you want
[72:13] to have
[72:14] say like a semi-variable supply you’re
[72:17] gonna have to use either
[72:19] something to adjust one of the feedback
[72:22] resistors
[72:23] or you’re going to have to use like
[72:25] multiple regulators which is pretty neat
[72:28] in something
[72:30] and i was planning on kind of going
[72:32] through and joining like the
[72:35] the true maker side like the the tindy
[72:38] side
[72:38] and selling some of these but
[72:41] i probably won’t so i’m just ending up
[72:44] using this board as kind of like the
[72:47] test bench for the emc series so i’ll
[72:51] pull up just real fast what the
[72:55] board looks like
[72:57] uh so four layer board outer two our
[73:01] uh
[73:02] signal to enter our reference planes and
[73:06] a buck converter is a really really good
[73:09] board for testing and messing around
[73:11] with emc or emi issues
[73:14] because especially conducted emissions
[73:16] so something that and i’ve been seeing
[73:20] it recently with some people on uh on
[73:23] youtube and some other platforms so like
[73:25] buck converters they have to have input
[73:28] capacitors to make sure that it’s able
[73:30] to like supply the instantaneous current
[73:33] on the output side
[73:35] in a lot of
[73:36] uh data sheets they’ll just say like hey
[73:39] you need like 47 microfarads of input
[73:43] capacitance so people will people will
[73:46] go ahead and throw in
[73:49] a single electrolytic oh gosh and i
[73:52] don’t use the new kite cad version all
[73:55] that much yet only on youtube so i’m
[73:57] still not really used to it
[73:58] so people throw like a single
[74:00] electrolytic in here and be like sweet
[74:02] it works
[74:04] so that’s what i tested
[74:07] so that’s what i tested in this my
[74:10] most recent video so i set up a decent
[74:13] like pre-compliance setup for like a
[74:15] cis for like 16 or 25 they all use kind
[74:18] of the same standard
[74:20] and i
[74:21] hope you can kind of see this i don’t
[74:23] know if i can zoom in
[74:25] uh
[74:27] maybe zoom
[74:29] double
[74:31] did absolutely nothing already then
[74:34] so oh yeah someone just keen commented
[74:37] yeah i can output up to 15 amps so it’s
[74:38] also a super high powered regulator so
[74:41] basically using that setup that i just
[74:44] showed so
[74:46] uh right here and actually without this
[74:48] ferrite so these were just connected
[74:50] across so with a single or actually i
[74:52] think there were
[74:54] the three electrolytic so with just
[74:56] electrolytics here
[74:57] anything that goes over this line this
[75:01] blue line here which i know is probably
[75:03] hard to see
[75:05] but anything that goes over that line
[75:06] and anywhere you see numbers are all
[75:09] spectrums of the frequency here that
[75:12] would fail
[75:13] pretty much any compliance test on the
[75:15] conducted emissions so is this an fft of
[75:18] the output voltage
[75:20] yeah it’s with a true spectrum analyzer
[75:22] so it’s doing the fft there um either
[75:25] through real time or a true fft but yeah
[75:28] so this is breaking down all the
[75:30] different frequency components of the
[75:33] voltage swings on the input wire
[75:36] so it’s conducted emissions so
[75:39] okay
[75:40] yeah let me
[75:41] good good point so basically
[75:44] the rough setup here is
[75:46] conducted emissions is
[75:49] they when you’re testing this they want
[75:51] to make sure
[75:52] that
[75:53] whatever you plug this into it’s not
[75:56] going to send noise back to it and
[76:00] interfere with that thing that you
[76:02] plugged it into or it’s not going to
[76:05] send worst case back into the main
[76:07] supply and screw something up there
[76:10] so conducted emissions isn’t anything
[76:12] radiating it’s only on the actual wires
[76:15] itself that go back to the source
[76:18] so basically on this input side you
[76:21] throw it into a listen a line impedance
[76:24] stabilization network
[76:26] which
[76:27] super fancy way of saying it it
[76:29] separates out the noise that your
[76:32] circuit produces
[76:34] from the input side
[76:36] and it makes sure that it’s set at a a
[76:39] known impedance so you know it’s
[76:41] reproducible and it’s going to be
[76:43] consistent no matter how you’re testing
[76:46] it
[76:46] and i mean it’s obvious this is really
[76:48] oversimplified but big and long and
[76:51] short of it is
[76:52] this is measuring noise that is on the
[76:54] wire that goes to your input supply
[76:57] so any one of these peaks the first peak
[77:00] here is the fundamental frequency so
[77:02] that’s at one megahertz and you can see
[77:05] in the table down here
[77:07] so anything that’s above roughly 60 db
[77:11] uv so decibels microvolts would likely
[77:15] fail
[77:16] so we have some and i was changing the
[77:19] current here so i think this is at like
[77:21] five or eight amps so we can see all the
[77:24] way out to like the 15 16th harmonic
[77:26] it’s going to fail
[77:28] which is what you would expect because
[77:32] with just using electrolytics and this
[77:35] is this is kind of the goal like with
[77:37] the intro like i try to explain fancy
[77:40] stuff to people who might not know it
[77:42] and it’s like this is such a gotcha
[77:44] because it’s like those data sheets say
[77:46] you need bulk capacitance you have to
[77:49] have capacitors that are this size
[77:53] yes that’s true but these capacitors
[77:56] have such a high internal resistance or
[77:58] esr equivalent series resistance
[78:01] that every time your output the buck
[78:05] converter switches on and off it
[78:08] essentially sends a massive voltage
[78:11] surge on the input side and that’s what
[78:14] causes radiation or causes it to radiate
[78:17] or to conduct
[78:18] the reason why
[78:20] the switching regulators are super good
[78:23] to test conducted emissions is because
[78:25] they’re low frequency
[78:26] so anywhere from like this is a
[78:28] megahertz but you can get in the
[78:30] hundreds of kilohertz that’s at like the
[78:33] prime frequency for conducted emissions
[78:36] like this test goes from
[78:38] 150 kilohertz up to 30 megahertz pretty
[78:42] much all main fcc or any ce standards
[78:46] that’s what they measure to
[78:48] so a switching regulator is like the
[78:51] perfect candidate for that not to say
[78:54] that they won’t radiate also
[78:57] but they just don’t typically have a
[78:59] tendency to radiate as much because
[79:03] if it’s going to fail on
[79:05] radiated emissions it’s almost
[79:08] certainly going to fail conducted
[79:10] emissions even worse so like this port
[79:13] here sure it probably would fail
[79:16] radiated emissions also but it doesn’t
[79:19] really matter because it’s so
[79:22] horrifically failing here
[79:24] so
[79:26] then what i did
[79:27] is i put back all the ceramic so exactly
[79:30] as i designed it and put back this
[79:33] ferrite
[79:34] so the ceramics here yes they’re they’re
[79:37] pretty big most of these are 22 mics uh
[79:40] but they they lower the impedance
[79:43] massively of this whole
[79:45] input network
[79:47] so those voltage
[79:48] surges that are coming from the output
[79:51] side they’re that less likely to travel
[79:54] back and then same with the ferrite bead
[79:57] so
[79:58] i changed that out and now this was the
[80:01] result and is that maybe because ceramic
[80:03] capacitors have a much lower esr than
[80:05] electrolytic does it’s like they’re
[80:07] quicker to
[80:08] dump their their stored charge yeah it’s
[80:11] ex
[80:12] exclusively that um that’s the whole
[80:14] reason so you can see here we still have
[80:17] the fundamental and this was at eight or
[80:19] ten amps the listed online is rated up
[80:21] to eight or ten amps
[80:23] um and you can see the fundamental
[80:25] frequency is still in the danger zone so
[80:27] the big thing with pre-compliance
[80:29] testing is you can only do so good so
[80:32] you want to always have a gap here
[80:35] so
[80:36] and this isn’t the true standard i was
[80:38] still getting my uh
[80:40] actual software setup which shows the
[80:42] actual compliance limits
[80:45] but
[80:46] 60 is a good average
[80:49] if it was at like
[80:51] 60 ish that’s still way too close
[80:54] because you don’t know what it’s going
[80:55] to be at an actual test lab so the fact
[80:57] that it’s at 70 db micro volts is way
[81:00] too high this still i would fear it
[81:02] wouldn’t pass
[81:04] but what’s crazy is like you see every
[81:06] single harmonic is completely shunted
[81:08] down it’s only that fundamental so now i
[81:11] change the stop to 10 megahertz and you
[81:14] can see a little bit closer how it’s
[81:15] still failing on that fundamental
[81:18] which again kind of makes sense because
[81:21] the single one megahertz surge has a ton
[81:25] of power because that is the
[81:28] the the fundamental that it’s drawing
[81:30] all of its current based from and the
[81:33] only series filter that is here is a
[81:36] ferrite bead
[81:37] so
[81:38] what i’m going to go into after this and
[81:41] i don’t know how much i don’t want to
[81:43] keep going on with this because i know
[81:45] it’s probably a little excessive for
[81:48] for what we’ve been going through but
[81:51] there’s a bunch of different like series
[81:53] filter elements you can use here that
[81:55] will have a much much higher impedance
[81:59] at a lower frequency ferrite beads
[82:01] really only are effective in the
[82:05] tens of megahertz to the hundreds of
[82:07] megahertz so it’s really not doing a ton
[82:10] to help filter that noise from getting
[82:12] back but it still obviously helps and it
[82:15] helps a lot with the upper harmonics and
[82:17] it helps a lot with radiated emissions
[82:20] but yeah i mean
[82:21] essentially the spiel with this and like
[82:24] kind of the videos i’m doing is it’s
[82:25] like basically
[82:28] just because like a data sheet
[82:30] especially anything with a switching
[82:32] regulator or or anything that has uh
[82:36] super fast rise times just because it
[82:38] works and just because everything seems
[82:40] good doesn’t mean it’s actually a
[82:44] decent design that will pass any sort of
[82:47] standards
[82:48] so there’s just some like simple things
[82:50] you can do like making sure you’re
[82:52] you’re paralleling your caps and doing
[82:54] whatever you can to make a decent filter
[82:56] network that kind of go a long way there
[82:59] um but yeah that’s crazy that you were
[83:01] completely following what the data sheet
[83:03] suggested that you do
[83:05] and it failed so terribly and they don’t
[83:08] specify in the data sheet that you need
[83:09] to have a mix of different like
[83:11] um capacitor chemistries to like be able
[83:14] to actually keep it moderate i guess
[83:15] they’re not
[83:17] i i do they just not think about what
[83:19] you might what kind of testing and
[83:20] regulation you might need to apply your
[83:22] board to when they say
[83:24] it’s kind of
[83:25] they honestly and this is also something
[83:27] i i talk to about a lot because it’s
[83:30] pretty common data sheets they don’t
[83:32] really care um it’s not really there
[83:36] sounds in one of the jokes um gary who
[83:40] who works for me uh he’s like an old
[83:42] school designer started like before the
[83:44] uh the ecad side and his or his joke is
[83:47] always they have the interns write the
[83:49] data sheets which
[83:51] as true as that is something like this
[83:54] it’s like
[83:56] it’s something that if you’re going into
[83:58] a professional design it’s something
[84:01] that should be known but it’s something
[84:03] that you don’t hear about talked that
[84:06] often in like the the maker or the
[84:08] hobbyist space because again
[84:10] most people including the people who are
[84:12] selling a lot of products online in
[84:15] smaller quantities
[84:17] if it works it’s good like that’s all
[84:19] they care about and it’s not that that’s
[84:22] an a fault or it doesn’t make sense it’s
[84:24] just kind of by nature
[84:26] and there’s just a lot of stuff like the
[84:28] worst to your specific point
[84:31] the worst uh
[84:33] issue with this is texas instruments and
[84:35] i love their data sheets they normally
[84:37] have the best but they have a series of
[84:39] switching regulators called
[84:41] simple switchers and they’re in their
[84:44] normal switching frequencies or in the
[84:46] two to four hundred-ish kilohertz range
[84:50] and they will literally specify a single
[84:53] tantillium
[84:55] or
[84:56] uh
[84:57] electrolytic and it’ll be like since
[84:59] it’s a lower switching frequency you
[85:01] have to use a larger size so we’re
[85:03] talking like a 470 microfarad
[85:05] electrolytic
[85:07] with a
[85:08] 250 or
[85:10] 470 uh kilohertz switching frequency and
[85:14] it’s like never in a million years is
[85:16] that gonna pass but it’ll work
[85:19] so
[85:20] yeah it’s just and that’s that’s kind of
[85:22] my goal with this whole the whole series
[85:24] here is just kind of come up with some
[85:26] like generalized things here that are
[85:28] like hey yeah that works but just
[85:30] even just by adding some lower esr caps
[85:33] you’re going to be so much better off
[85:35] you don’t even have to have a fancy
[85:38] ferrite or a pie filter something like
[85:40] that but yeah it’s kind of crazy like
[85:43] like testing and if you were to take
[85:44] like
[85:46] pretty much any buck converter board
[85:48] from amazon or aliexpress every single
[85:51] one of them will fail and usually it’s
[85:53] not even going to be close
[85:54] and it’s just kind of crazy because it’s
[85:57] like switching regulators as much as
[85:58] people love to use them the rule of
[86:01] thumb that i always kind of use is if
[86:03] you don’t have
[86:05] some sort of filter and that’s typically
[86:08] like a pie filter or a ferrite something
[86:10] it’s going to fail so it’s like it’s
[86:12] such an important thing and you can get
[86:15] in massive trouble with fcc or ce or
[86:18] whatever by not doing it yet very few
[86:20] people other than
[86:23] massive companies or people who have
[86:25] gone through the full compliance testing
[86:28] very few people actually do it and it’s
[86:30] kind of crazy to think about same with
[86:31] like a lot of the safety standards ul or
[86:33] iec
[86:35] so if you were to actually try and get
[86:36] this board approved and you brought it
[86:38] to the fcc and you got all the the
[86:40] testing done and stuff you were going
[86:41] through a wide range of like loads like
[86:44] how much current you’re expecting to
[86:45] pull from this thing would you also
[86:47] would the sec expect that you’d also
[86:49] have to change uh like through that idc
[86:52] interface you talked about what voltage
[86:53] it’s actually regulating it down to or
[86:55] is that based on the application like
[86:57] although in software you could
[86:58] technically
[86:59] make the voltage a different output
[87:01] voltage and like maybe then it fails do
[87:03] they take what you would
[87:05] your intention of the design and not
[87:07] every possible variable you could turn
[87:09] in the design like in software would
[87:11] they make you test that the output
[87:12] voltage as well even if you were never
[87:13] planning to change it yeah so
[87:16] super super good point um and this is
[87:19] where it really depends or ultimately a
[87:23] generalized like in the united states
[87:25] and i obviously see
[87:26] as i’m sure anyone in this space knows
[87:28] has been an absolute mess lately with
[87:30] how they’re starting to enforce things
[87:32] which is completely different than they
[87:33] have been
[87:34] so the us is a bit bit simpler a bit
[87:37] cleaner
[87:38] so if it’s a board like this that is a
[87:41] unintentional radiator like it is not
[87:43] supposed to send out anything it doesn’t
[87:45] have any rf on it you don’t have to take
[87:49] it to an fcc accredited lab you don’t
[87:51] have to have them there telling you
[87:53] exactly how it has to behave
[87:56] all it has to do is under whatever use
[87:58] you’re going to be using it can’t exceed
[88:01] whatever standard it would fall into
[88:04] so it’s whatever it would be used in so
[88:07] like if you were to go to like inner
[88:09] tech is really big in the u.s they can
[88:12] do pretty much any standard
[88:14] as long as it’s under its normal
[88:16] operating use and it doesn’t exceed it
[88:19] that’s all they care about it doesn’t
[88:20] matter like you said
[88:22] this board being an evaluation board i
[88:24] mean technically what you said yes it
[88:26] would probably have to be every single
[88:28] scenario but in the u.s evaluation
[88:31] boards are pretty exempt which they used
[88:33] to be in the ce now they’re not it kind
[88:35] of sucks
[88:36] but with the us
[88:38] if it’s an evaluation board it’s up to
[88:40] the end user whatever it’s the sum of
[88:42] all of its parts to make sure it doesn’t
[88:45] exceed it but fcc in the us you can sell
[88:48] pretty much as long as it’s not an
[88:50] unintentional radiator and as long as it
[88:52] doesn’t get reported
[88:54] and then they go out and test it which
[88:57] at that point you’re so beyond screwed
[89:00] so that’s why
[89:01] [Laughter]
[89:04] and you can see that there’s they put
[89:07] out a report every year of i actually
[89:10] don’t know if it’s officially through
[89:11] the fcc or it’s a watchdog but there’s a
[89:13] report put out every year where it shows
[89:16] the fines and uh
[89:19] citations levied for companies
[89:22] and it’s almost always intentional
[89:24] radiators to be fair it’s it’s not too
[89:27] common that it would be something like
[89:28] this but it’s one of those things like
[89:30] even if someone else is kind of
[89:32] competing with you and they’re like oh i
[89:34] want to bring him down they take one of
[89:36] your boards they test it and if it
[89:38] exceeds it you’re screwed and it’s like
[89:41] you have to recall all of those boards
[89:43] you can get a massive fine over a board
[89:46] that works
[89:48] and it’s like it makes sense but yeah
[89:50] some of that stuff’s pretty harsh
[89:53] now ul ul does exactly what you’re
[89:56] saying that has to be an official an
[89:58] official
[90:02] yeah right all of my boards are
[90:04] unintentional radiators
[90:08] except except the esp on there
[90:11] but then it’s a kit and that’s a
[90:13] different delineation
[90:16] some assembly required
[90:26] [Music]
[90:31] it is a pretty kind of
[90:33] people try not to think about because i
[90:35] know yes they’re probably not really
[90:37] doing what they should do
[90:41] the fact that didn’t even exist
[90:44] is crazy
[90:54] it falls on the oem because they’re just
[90:56] a third party so like an example like ul
[91:00] so ul again mostly mostly us um
[91:04] some of theirs and like the iec
[91:06] standards if it like touches mains are
[91:08] required by law like you can’t sell it
[91:10] without it but like stuff like this it’s
[91:13] purely for liability if you can say your
[91:15] widget’s gone through ul testing it
[91:18] lowers your liability insurance it helps
[91:20] every aspect almost all big box
[91:23] retailers require ul testing on
[91:26] everything like if you go into walmart
[91:28] right now every single electronic gizmo
[91:30] in there will be ul listed most big
[91:33] boxes do that
[91:34] they do that to prevent them from
[91:36] getting sued where tindy
[91:39] i guess everything just falls right on
[91:42] the oem that that’s the only thing i can
[91:44] think of because yeah they don’t they
[91:46] don’t give a crap that’s actually not
[91:47] how it works they actually are
[91:49] responsible just they are
[91:52] step on the mind yet
[91:54] i don’t know how i mean you can see
[91:55] people on there literally selling like
[91:57] non-protected lithium-ion cells and it’s
[92:01] like that’s as terrifying as it gets man
[92:03] [Laughter]
[92:06] yeah
[92:07] it’s it is pretty fun
[92:09] um
[92:16] what are some simple things that we
[92:17] should be doing or things that
[92:19] a hobbyist can do if they’re designing a
[92:21] pcb or board what’s the obvious things
[92:24] that they missed that
[92:26] they could get 90 of the way there or at
[92:28] least make it not completely rubbish
[92:31] um i mean the biggest thing is is
[92:33] honestly there are a few things
[92:35] switching regulators cause the vast
[92:38] majority of failures um
[92:40] almost every time
[92:42] the other thing is if it’s
[92:45] if it is a regulator or even if it’s not
[92:48] you almost always fail because of wires
[92:51] because you have to think like if you
[92:53] have other than jason’s massive boards
[92:56] i’ll i’ll exclude him from this talk
[92:59] but your average circuit board is small
[93:01] like on the order of like this
[93:03] and in order to have emissions you have
[93:06] to have three things you have to have a
[93:08] source of energy you have to have a
[93:11] antenna and you have to have a receiver
[93:13] for the sake of testing the receiver is
[93:16] obviously the test chambers antenna the
[93:19] energy a lot of times you can’t do a ton
[93:22] about it so it’s your antenna where is
[93:24] your largest antenna on almost every
[93:26] board it’s the wires
[93:28] so
[93:29] most test failures and radiated
[93:31] emissions are from the wires so making
[93:34] sure you don’t have any ground loops
[93:36] making sure it’s shielded properly and i
[93:38] saw someone jokingly in the chat saying
[93:40] like oh just cover it in aluminum foil
[93:43] that is how a lot of products pass
[93:47] radiated emissions because it works
[93:48] really well the bigger your reference
[93:51] plane is the better you’re going to do
[93:53] from virtually every test so yeah
[93:56] unintentional radiators because if
[93:57] they’re impossible then you’ve just lost
[93:59] a feature of your products oh yes
[94:02] or you add a little uh purposeful
[94:03] antenna there yeah put one outside yes
[94:06] um but yeah i mean watch watch your
[94:08] switching regulators watch your wires um
[94:12] making sure you have ceramics everywhere
[94:15] uh you can definitely get into trouble
[94:18] and
[94:18] there’s always and that’s also a thing
[94:20] i’ve been trying to work on is getting
[94:22] rid of like the it depends answers
[94:24] because like emc is full of like oh it
[94:27] depends on the application which
[94:29] is true but it gets people scared or get
[94:33] turns people away because they’re like
[94:34] well i don’t know if it depends
[94:36] um
[94:37] in ceramics adding more capacitors more
[94:40] ceramics is almost always good you just
[94:43] have to watch out for ringing so if you
[94:45] had a bunch of ceramics make sure you
[94:47] dampen it damp it with a electrolytic or
[94:50] put resistor in series with your
[94:52] capacitor
[94:53] but yeah everything gets a ceramic cap
[94:57] the other biggest thing to prevent
[94:59] radiating emissions from your board is
[95:02] don’t do two-layer boards uh two-layer
[95:04] boards are incredibly difficult to do
[95:07] correctly
[95:08] [Laughter]
[95:08] [Applause]
[95:12] and that’s and that’s something i’m
[95:14] going to be going into quite a bit is
[95:16] just by going to and like as jokingly as
[95:19] it is
[95:20] it doesn’t matter how good of a
[95:22] two-layer board is
[95:23] at that you did if you go to a
[95:25] four-layer board
[95:26] 99.9 percent of the time if you do the
[95:29] stack up correctly it’s going to make it
[95:31] better
[95:32] because you have a whole bunch of like
[95:34] extra planes that are gonna yeah exactly
[95:36] because you have to think if you have a
[95:38] two layer if you have a two layer board
[95:40] you have your top signal layer you have
[95:44] your bottom and let’s say your bottom
[95:46] layer is 100 plain so it’s as perfect of
[95:49] a two layer board as you can have you
[95:51] have your top layer you have an entire
[95:55] fr4 prepreg core in between there so all
[95:59] of that energy is now in that massive
[96:01] dielectric space if you have a four
[96:03] layer board
[96:05] your top two layers are right there
[96:08] within the core so if you have your
[96:09] reference and this is like rick hartley
[96:12] he kind of changed
[96:14] from the old style like henriott how
[96:17] multi-stack ups are
[96:19] now the new school stack up is
[96:22] signal and power on top then your
[96:25] reference
[96:26] then signal
[96:29] two inner ground layers
[96:31] signal and power on the outer so you
[96:33] always have super tight coupling between
[96:36] every single layer the old-school way
[96:39] that like henry ott used to talk about
[96:42] and it was fine for the lower speeds and
[96:44] the lower rise times would be normally
[96:47] signal
[96:48] signal
[96:49] power
[96:50] ground so every power and ground is
[96:53] which makes routing so much easier yeah
[96:56] it’s much easier you have two ground in
[96:58] the middle you’re burning a whole length
[97:00] yes just for
[97:02] yes which is devastating i mean like but
[97:04] the good part and this is where again
[97:06] the difference between like trying to do
[97:08] a really good let’s uh uh
[97:12] design and just one that you can get
[97:14] done what’s so nice about doing the two
[97:17] inner ground layers is as long as you
[97:19] only touch the two outer layers you
[97:21] honestly don’t have to care about much
[97:23] of anything because everywhere you route
[97:26] a trace you have your reference right
[97:28] under it where every other of the old
[97:31] school stack ups you have to be super
[97:33] careful where your reference plane is so
[97:35] you just don’t even have to carry you
[97:36] just route it and as long as you don’t
[97:38] touch those two inner layers you’re good
[97:40] to go
[97:41] so that’s that’s another thing i mean
[97:42] yeah obviously four layer boards are
[97:44] more expensive at lower quantities it’s
[97:46] about 2x multiple but it’s like you’re
[97:49] going to save a crap ton of time and
[97:51] it’s going to make this the the actual
[97:53] layout much much better sure
[97:56] yeah
[97:58] and the pcbs are a fraction of the total
[98:00] project costs
[98:02] especially when you get to when you get
[98:05] to a larger quantity because i mean
[98:07] you’re talking yes it’s still normally a
[98:09] 2x multiple but we’re talking sometimes
[98:11] 40 cents versus 80 cents when you’re
[98:13] selling this thing for
[98:15] 50 bucks 100 bucks 200 it’s like that is
[98:18] almost irrelevant
[98:23] what about you know differences in
[98:25] quality
[98:26] you send to the lab you know a prototype
[98:31] that is going to be probably different
[98:33] quality than the products that you are
[98:35] going to turn out on the chip
[98:38] afterwards
[98:40] if there is something you know
[98:42] yeah if it’s if it’s the whole
[98:47] making sure and same with ce being uh
[98:50] you can report on your own or it just
[98:52] has to pass on your side as long as
[98:55] you’re confident that it’s close enough
[98:58] that’s that’s all that matters that’s
[99:00] where again with like pre-compliance
[99:01] testing it’s just making sure that it’s
[99:04] under the limit by a sufficient amount
[99:07] so yeah if you’re going from a prototype
[99:08] and something’s changing
[99:10] yeah i mean that’s always a little
[99:12] sketchy
[99:13] but as long as you’re not making any
[99:15] massive changes and that’s where again
[99:17] intentional radiators and like ul type
[99:20] stuff every change does matter and
[99:22] that’s a completely different story
[99:26] wow
[99:27] wow
[99:28] there is some no joke depth to the
[99:30] specifics of this
[99:32] it’s so cool to hear about that like i
[99:35] totally hear you like a lot of people
[99:37] will do it till it works
[99:39] exactly i’m done but like
[99:41] there’s a lot more that you can go into
[99:43] of really
[99:45] quantifying the performance of the thing
[99:46] beyond just a binary it does the thing
[99:49] versus yes it doesn’t do the thing
[99:50] um that’s cool that’s but yeah
[99:55] and it just sucks because it needs to be
[99:57] more consistent like ce like i said and
[100:00] i’ve been on some of the discord
[100:02] channels like uh some replacements for
[100:04] tindy because of how big of a mess it is
[100:07] it’s like it’s really unfair and talking
[100:09] to sean from unexpected maker it’s like
[100:12] they go from being able to sell in the
[100:15] eu because it seemed to be grandfathered
[100:18] into the evaluation board that the us is
[100:22] and now it’s not anymore and it’s like
[100:24] that’s not fair because it’s like
[100:26] smaller companies if you get
[100:29] caught for this it’s like it it’s really
[100:31] bad and it’s like it shouldn’t be such a
[100:33] big gray area
[100:35] which is is a massive shame
[100:38] yeah
[100:39] yeah
[100:41] crazy
[100:47] i told you i wasn’t going to be able to
[100:49] live up to jason’s uh demo we need to go
[100:51] back to some pretty leds you did it in
[100:53] just a different way you know yeah
[100:56] but absolutely that was super absolutely
[100:58] brilliant i think you’re there’s going
[101:00] to be a lot of people watching your
[101:01] videos and
[101:02] trying to learn what to do properly now
[101:04] we’ll see
[101:07] well yeah i’m certainly going to take a
[101:09] take a look because
[101:12] i’m not proud of so
[101:17] yeah i’m excited the the emc series
[101:19] because it’s like i have a lot of
[101:21] experience doing like uh designing
[101:24] boards and stuff for compliance testing
[101:26] we do a lot of like compliance reviews
[101:29] but i have next to none other than what
[101:32] i’m starting to now actual like hands-on
[101:35] test compliance like in lab settings so
[101:38] that’s what i’m like super excited about
[101:40] is like actually seeing these tests done
[101:43] and like seeing like hey i can change
[101:46] this and then what happens with this and
[101:49] like what makes it better so that’s
[101:50] what’s super cool is it’s like i’m
[101:52] learning so much from actual like
[101:53] hands-on side which i certainly never
[101:55] had and i don’t know of a resource out
[101:58] there right now that walks you through
[101:59] that specifically of like yeah what are
[102:00] the knobs you turn in or just
[102:03] get compliance in that way thank you for
[102:05] making that like that’s clearly a void
[102:07] of content
[102:09] i’m glad that’s the goal
[102:14] yeah any other i don’t know that’s
[102:16] that’s all i had
[102:18] that was as i say that was really good
[102:20] and i think um
[102:22] it is about time we started paying a bit
[102:24] more attention to that kind of stuff
[102:26] it’s
[102:30] it was enlightening in a totally
[102:31] different way
[102:35] [Laughter]
[102:38] the fun lives
[102:40] it’s gonna go on forever
[102:44] all right um
[102:46] i guess it’s my turn isn’t it and then
[102:47] we got a quiz so i’ll do my bit i’ve got
[102:50] actually much to show and some of it’s
[102:52] not actually that interesting
[102:54] so we’ll see
[103:02] so what have i been doing um
[103:05] so talking about uh emissions and wires
[103:08] and stuff please ignore the uh massive
[103:10] bundle of wires there because uh
[103:13] that’s probably not great so i’ve been
[103:14] i’ve been messing around with some audio
[103:15] stuff so if i just uh
[103:18] turn on this
[103:19] so i’ve been playing mp3 files so
[103:22] hopefully we’ll hear a classic youtube
[103:25] channel
[103:26] wow
[103:27] which i think is used on pretty much
[103:28] every youtube video ever yeah what’s
[103:31] your name
[103:31] that makes all of them all the
[103:34] open
[103:35] from that guy
[103:36] that
[103:48] my little stereo amplifier board which
[103:50] i’m sure fails all admissions possible
[103:53] because
[103:54] [Laughter]
[103:56] i need to go and watch some videos
[103:59] that was a bit of fun it was it was
[104:01] surprisingly easy to actually do mp3d
[104:03] coding so i found quite nice likely to
[104:05] do that
[104:10] this is their tiny picot so that’s um oh
[104:13] the outboard is a it’s a max
[104:16] 98537
[104:17] which is a
[104:19] class d amplifier
[104:20] um
[104:22] i should have put an off button on it
[104:23] i’ll just turn it off with the power
[104:24] there we go
[104:26] um so 83 do a do a board that’s just a
[104:29] single chip and um
[104:31] i’m quite fast having a stereo chip so i
[104:33] thought i’d stick two on one board the
[104:35] only problem is that when you play it at
[104:36] maximum volume
[104:38] it pretty much takes down the power
[104:39] supply because
[104:43] it’s quite a few outs
[104:45] there’s your emissions
[104:51] the power supply coming in
[104:53] and um it looks terrible when you’re
[104:55] playing
[104:56] it
[104:59] but eventually it just drops down and
[105:01] then and the esp cuts out and says drown
[105:04] out and then it starts again
[105:07] so that’s that’s been interesting and
[105:09] then the other thing i’ve been playing
[105:10] with um
[105:11] is lots of stuff with the ulp code
[105:13] process on the esp32 so if you can see
[105:16] yeah you can see the
[105:17] stuff so this has got a um
[105:19] swinging from the adc and just comparing
[105:22] the sort of voltage levels
[105:23] and driving leds but what’s kind of
[105:26] interesting with this is it’s all
[105:27] running
[105:28] on the ultra low power code processor so
[105:30] it’s not actually running
[105:32] any of the esp32 cores
[105:34] it’s all running um on the low power
[105:36] thing but obviously it’s not
[105:38] particularly low power because there’s a
[105:40] there’s a power led
[105:44] i’m also setting some leds on and off
[105:46] but um but that was kind of fun so it’s
[105:48] kind of there’s obviously potential
[105:50] there for kind of the ultimate
[105:53] mode right
[105:55] sorry
[105:56] you could put the main processor to
[105:59] sleep yeah so the main processor is
[106:00] completely asleep it’s not even waking
[106:02] up so
[106:03] even doing the leds that’s still the ulp
[106:06] processor
[106:07] so lp is an actual core it’s just
[106:09] incredibly low power and like super
[106:11] limited peripheral access and stuff yeah
[106:13] so they call it a a simple finite state
[106:16] machine i mean it’s kind of okay it’s a
[106:17] very very simple processor it’s got four
[106:20] registers
[106:21] um it doesn’t have a stack it doesn’t
[106:23] really you don’t really
[106:25] there’s people who have simulated sort
[106:26] of stack trading on it so you can use
[106:28] one of the registers as a stack pointer
[106:31] so i’ll just see a github repo where a
[106:32] guy
[106:34] i’m putting a whole kind of
[106:36] stacks i have i square c running and
[106:38] this bit banging all on the ulp
[106:42] given
[106:43] it is really kind of limited but you can
[106:45] you can read the adc it does have i
[106:47] squared c built in but only eight bit is
[106:50] currency so you can do sort of basic
[106:52] peripherals and it wakes up every you
[106:54] schedule it to run with a certain time
[106:57] period it will wake up
[106:58] do a bit of processing and then switch
[107:00] itself off again and it can make the
[107:02] main processor when certain things
[107:04] happen so you could you could build all
[107:06] sorts of clever stuff that stays in the
[107:08] low power and only wakes up the
[107:09] processor when you actually detect
[107:11] something interesting
[107:12] um
[107:13] you can store there’s about 16k of ram
[107:16] so you can store measurements so
[107:17] potentially you could store
[107:19] a whole bunch of measurements and then
[107:21] wake up the main processor to square all
[107:23] the signals up to a server somewhere and
[107:25] then go back to sleep
[107:27] so
[107:28] it’s pretty interesting i got into it
[107:29] because i was
[107:30] playing around with the um e-ink
[107:32] displays and this is my um e-book read
[107:35] i’ve just ported it to the m5 paper
[107:38] which is pretty interesting but um one
[107:41] of the weird things is the battery is
[107:42] actually cleaning really fast on this so
[107:44] you can almost as you page through you
[107:46] can see the battery going down
[107:58] [Laughter]
[108:01] one of the books i’ve been testing with
[108:03] is peter rabbit and i’ve started getting
[108:05] comments about my reading age being a
[108:07] bit low but
[108:09] this is gary and i i do actually i
[108:11] really i do like the m5 paper so i was
[108:13] um
[108:14] originally building on the on the lilly
[108:16] go which is which is nice but my uh my
[108:19] 3d printed case it’s not quite as good
[108:21] as a proper
[108:23] sort of injection molded case but this
[108:25] works well as well so
[108:27] this all uses low power mode as well so
[108:29] it’s quite
[108:30] that’s what got me into the ulp is just
[108:33] um
[108:34] the buttons on this
[108:35] are all active
[108:37] low and on the
[108:39] on the usb 32 there’s a
[108:41] there is a deep sleep mode that will
[108:43] detect
[108:44] button presses and you can set multiple
[108:46] button presses
[108:48] but it only works if the buttons are
[108:50] active high and then it will tell you
[108:52] which button was pushed
[108:54] if they’re active low it just tells you
[108:56] a button was pushed but it can’t tell
[108:58] you which one you have
[109:01] a line that’s so funny i know it’s just
[109:03] the most bizarre kind of we’ll build it
[109:06] this way
[109:07] everyone has buttons and active high
[109:09] that’s not how the world works
[109:13] these guys decided to put the buttons
[109:14] active low so you can’t use that most
[109:16] you have to use ulp programming to scan
[109:18] the buttons and see what’s which one’s
[109:20] pushed and then wake up when that
[109:21] happens
[109:22] so that’s been like this um this
[109:24] e-reader project if you saw the last
[109:26] show you’ll know that that’s been taking
[109:28] up
[109:28] a lot of my time it’s one of those
[109:30] projects that someone’s actually got
[109:32] involved with so they are contributing
[109:33] back which is great but it is you have
[109:36] to actually do it now
[109:41] which is difficult
[109:43] but it’s great because it is working
[109:45] really well and um an m5 sent me a free
[109:48] device so you can’t really complain that
[109:49] much
[109:51] it’s quite nice
[109:52] so that’ll lively help too so mostly
[109:54] messing around with audio and
[109:56] the ulp processor
[109:58] so do you have any idea what might be
[110:00] causing the the power draw or drain well
[110:04] yeah i’m not really sure i mean they do
[110:05] have so on the back you can see that
[110:08] somewhere there’s a mosfet somewhere so
[110:12] they have their own kind of way of
[110:13] managing the power so
[110:15] there is a gpio pin that you take high
[110:19] and that switches on a mosfet which then
[110:22] keeps power going to the esp32
[110:24] and if you drop that low then it powers
[110:26] off the entire device and then they’ve
[110:28] got an rtc chip that you can use to wake
[110:31] up the device again so it’s been
[110:32] designed to be used in that way where
[110:34] you actually power off completely and
[110:37] because i want to use the buttons to
[110:39] wake up and have the up and down buttons
[110:40] working
[110:41] i’m leaving power switched on to the
[110:43] esp32 and then going to deep sleep so i
[110:46] think i’m probably leaving power on
[110:48] something else on the device as well or
[110:50] it’s not
[110:51] it’s not been designed to work in that
[110:53] way so i’m slightly abusing it
[110:56] so i need to only slightly
[110:59] need to do some investigating and see
[111:01] what i’m doing wrong and
[111:04] maybe i’ll just switch back to their
[111:05] sort of powering off everything
[111:07] completely it will wake up
[111:09] you can push the uh the jog button in
[111:12] when you’re in sort of power off mode
[111:13] and the rtc will wake you up so i might
[111:16] i might switch back to um doing it that
[111:18] way just because that’s the way they’ve
[111:20] designed it
[111:21] because the little seems to work quite
[111:23] well in deep sleep mode so it’s
[111:25] definitely possible
[111:28] yeah not entirely sure why
[111:30] it doesn’t work as it should it’s
[111:38] i’m curious how you’re
[111:39] storing the mp3 you’re playing through
[111:41] your stereo driver is it is there any
[111:43] questions on that and yeah that’s
[111:45] actually on spiffs yes so
[111:47] oh really okay yeah so you can i mean
[111:50] you can
[111:51] that’s about 30 seconds and i’ve
[111:53] compressed it quite aggressively so it
[111:55] is kind of
[111:57] it’s not really audio file quality i
[112:00] wouldn’t
[112:00] wouldn’t play everyone who actually
[112:02] enjoys music but it’s it’s pretty
[112:04] it’s pretty good i mean if you’ve got an
[112:05] sd card obviously you can you can store
[112:07] as many as you want so
[112:09] the m5 has got an sd card
[112:11] the lilly go i’ve got a
[112:13] sd card that i’ve just sold an adapter
[112:16] to stick it in here’s peter rabbit just
[112:18] because
[112:20] he’s a rabbit no judgment
[112:25] it’s an easy beat
[112:27] so yeah so the mp3 i mean you’re
[112:30] probably
[112:31] in my video i kind of jokingly say you
[112:33] can you can listen to a song
[112:35] from your flash drive but it’s it’s
[112:37] really more
[112:38] if you want to do a kind of
[112:39] text-to-speech type thing that you want
[112:41] to store lots of words or numbers and
[112:43] stuff
[112:45] yeah i thought it was tricky to set up
[112:47] spiffs because i tried to do it one time
[112:49] on an um
[112:51] esp8266 and i found it was so difficult
[112:54] i i had to store a html file and i
[112:57] wanted
[112:58] instead i just put it as a string in c
[113:00] yes and served it that way because it
[113:02] was like i couldn’t get it to work was
[113:03] it pretty easy for you to do it on this
[113:05] it’s
[113:06] well i use platform i o and that that
[113:08] seems very straightforward as long as
[113:09] you know
[113:10] where they’ve hidden the button to
[113:12] upload the file system because they’ve
[113:14] moved it around they put it away on some
[113:16] menu where it’s quite hard to find yeah
[113:18] i’ve had lots of problems with spiffs on
[113:20] the e-reader
[113:22] where um
[113:23] writing suspicious seems to just fail
[113:25] continuously so i’m trying to write
[113:27] fairly for the for the lilly go to um
[113:30] when it goes into deep sleep
[113:32] i persist the stage of the display so
[113:34] when it wakes up it knows what the
[113:36] display was showing and it can refresh
[113:38] itself correctly but that involves
[113:40] saving a frame buffer to to spiffs and
[113:43] it’s i zip it up but it’s still kind of
[113:46] 30 or 40k
[113:48] and it just sometimes works most of the
[113:50] time
[113:51] it happens
[113:54] garbage collection of the file system
[113:56] and you can increase the number of times
[113:58] it runs but then it just sits there for
[114:00] about 10 seconds and then still gives up
[114:02] so
[114:03] you know
[114:04] kind of giving up on on writing to
[114:06] splits now
[114:07] yeah in this case because it’s
[114:09] it doesn’t really work very well um i
[114:12] think little fs is supposed to be better
[114:16] but it’s not quite supported on platform
[114:18] io yet you have to write some funny
[114:20] python scripts
[114:21] it’s called little fs
[114:24] okay so spiffs is deprecated and they’re
[114:27] switching
[114:30] and stephen you may have been having the
[114:32] problem very early on uh with spiffs
[114:34] that was a bug with the uploader for the
[114:36] arduino ide
[114:37] um which seems to be fixed now so all of
[114:40] my boards run on esp8266 and they
[114:43] host a
[114:44] website
[114:46] on the on you know on board and
[114:49] all the html javascript and css is all
[114:51] stored in spiffs yeah yeah i did that it
[114:53] was like early 2018 and i just yeah it
[114:56] might still be
[114:57] yeah early days for support
[114:59] um it’s a kind of moving target it
[115:02] feels it sort of works i mean i do have
[115:05] yeah i’ve not really had that many
[115:06] problems with it but it’s just writing
[115:08] to it seems to be the big issue um yeah
[115:11] sometimes i’ll have to lower the uh
[115:13] upload speed to get to work and then i
[115:16] uh geez up all of my files um so they’re
[115:20] actually stored in spiffs
[115:21] gzip and then the web server just
[115:23] streams them directly yeah out of flash
[115:26] um with the gzip
[115:29] http header set
[115:31] so it just you know gets decrypted on
[115:33] the client or
[115:35] decompressed
[115:36] on the client wow that’s cool as heck
[115:39] yeah that’s pretty great that’s very
[115:40] cool
[115:43] all right are we ready for a quiz hectic
[115:45] are you ready
[115:47] i’m ready i’ve got my quiz ready
[115:50] all right
[115:52] all right let’s uh how do we arrange the
[115:53] screen though
[115:55] oh boy
[115:57] you said it’s it’s
[115:58] like 80s themed again
[116:01] it’s not really yeah it’s not easy
[116:03] some of the uh cultural references may
[116:06] be
[116:07] difficult
[116:08] before you were born stephen yeah okay a
[116:12] country we don’t live in
[116:15] and yeah the country yeah
[116:17] it’s the quiz
[116:18] make it past episode 34 the quiz
[116:22] and
[116:23] you can play along at home as well so if
[116:24] you if anyone’s still here then
[116:29] it’s an honesty quiz so i assume you’ll
[116:31] keep score which ones you got right
[116:35] there isn’t really a prize
[116:37] but if you’re lucky i might send you a
[116:39] certificate
[116:46] okay are we ready is everyone ready at
[116:48] home i’m gonna assume they are so the
[116:50] questions let’s get started
[116:54] question one
[116:56] how many transistors did intel’s first
[116:59] processor
[117:00] the 4004 have
[117:03] is it
[117:05] 200 000
[117:07] 51 000 two thousand three hundred
[117:12] or four thousand and four
[117:17] forty sure
[117:20] okay
[117:21] right the question the answer’s comment
[117:23] yet so just make a note of which one you
[117:25] want and then we’ll uh
[117:27] move on to the next question okay
[117:30] according to wikipedia what was the name
[117:32] of the first programmable electronic
[117:35] general purpose digital computer
[117:38] was it
[117:39] the universal automatic computer one
[117:41] univac one
[117:43] was it the electronic numerical
[117:45] integrator and computer or eniac
[117:49] was it the harvard mark one computer or
[117:52] was it the manchester mark one
[117:59] okay i’ve been christmas tree this bad
[118:01] in a while
[118:03] [Laughter]
[118:05] back in school
[118:08] ready for the next question
[118:10] yes
[118:12] question three electronics
[118:15] [Laughter]
[118:18] what logic function does this nand gate
[118:20] circuit implement
[118:24] is it an xor
[118:26] have i been really cheeky and it’s just
[118:28] an and
[118:30] is it an x naught
[118:32] i have been even more cheeky and it’s
[118:34] actually just a land gate
[118:40] just i’m going to put a time limit on
[118:41] this one because i don’t want you
[118:42] reverse engineering
[118:45] you want us to guess and not figure it
[118:47] out well you should be your pattern
[118:49] recognition should cut an instant okay
[118:55] my electronics teacher from high school
[118:56] is going to be so disappointed in me
[118:59] are we ready hopefully all analyzed the
[119:02] circuit and simulated it
[119:04] 100
[119:06] next question
[119:08] it’s the music round let me let me turn
[119:09] my way
[119:11] right which famous game use this music
[119:16] [Music]
[119:22] i i know
[119:24] yeah
[119:27] this might be my first correct answer
[119:32] okay
[119:35] was it super mario
[119:38] tetris
[119:41] space invaders
[119:43] or pac-man
[119:45] okay
[119:46] ready for the next question
[119:49] all right music round but there’s no
[119:51] music this time when was the first
[119:53] compact disc released
[119:55] was it
[119:56] 1982 oh man was it 1975
[120:02] 1991
[120:04] or 1989 and they’re so close to each
[120:07] other
[120:10] makes it so much harder to guess
[120:12] and they were all before stephen was
[120:14] born
[120:16] i’m literally thinking of like i
[120:18] remember being like five and there being
[120:20] aol cds coming in the mail like how long
[120:22] would it take to build the like global
[120:24] infrastructure right
[120:26] and how many years would that take and
[120:28] that’s my case it’s it’s pretty internet
[120:30] so you can knock out a few well one of
[120:32] the answers so oh two of the answers i
[120:35] like zero what’s that is an internet
[120:37] like 95-ish isn’t that generally
[120:39] accepted as the age that’s it no
[120:41] no
[120:42] or like the first network or like when
[120:44] uh okay yeah okay bonus question
[120:47] [Music]
[120:50] i don’t know the answer to it either so
[120:53] uh oh wow
[120:55] mako because he’s 100 percent so fast
[120:58] right
[120:59] i’ll tell you it worked
[121:01] i’ve forgotten the answer to some of
[121:02] these questions
[121:03] let’s do the next one these are good
[121:05] ones movies and tvs
[121:08] it is the lot of man to strive no matter
[121:10] how content he is
[121:12] which guy from star trek said this was
[121:14] it kirk
[121:16] is it spock
[121:17] was it bones or was it scotty i was
[121:21] really hoping the question was going to
[121:22] be what show was that from
[121:26] i would have certainly got off on the
[121:28] complexity
[121:30] of the question i was certainly going to
[121:32] get it right the next question is what
[121:34] episode was it
[121:37] and what time during the episode
[121:39] what’s the time stamp
[121:43] okay next question
[121:46] okay
[121:47] huge cat who look whose catchphrase is
[121:50] by grab far’s hammer i will avenge you
[121:54] is it
[121:55] thor
[121:56] he does have a hammer is it dr lazarus
[122:00] is it commander wharf
[122:03] or is it ming the merciless
[122:08] my second correct answer
[122:10] okay jason jason looks confident and so
[122:12] does stephen
[122:15] this is still scarves
[122:17] okay there’s only there’s only three
[122:19] more questions left so oh i just watched
[122:21] this movie oh okay i’m gonna get two
[122:24] right i’m gonna get at least two right
[122:26] my third
[122:27] name is
[122:29] and i have to be clear the big computer
[122:31] in more games because when you’re
[122:32] getting confused with the guy hacking so
[122:34] it’s not the guy who’s hacking not his
[122:35] computer the proper big computer
[122:38] is it
[122:39] the trs-80
[122:40] [Laughter]
[122:43] the
[122:44] whopper
[122:46] the vic-20
[122:49] or hal
[122:50] [Laughter]
[122:54] okay
[122:55] really
[122:57] question nine the robots are taking over
[123:00] what was the name of doctor who’s
[123:02] robotic companion
[123:05] was it
[123:06] k2so
[123:09] was it k9
[123:11] was it john e5
[123:13] or was it kronos
[123:22] okay last question
[123:26] do you want chips with that
[123:28] this is especially the tiebreaker
[123:30] question so in 2019
[123:33] 11 810 million square inches of silicon
[123:36] wafers were shipped
[123:38] what was the number in 2020 2020 is the
[123:42] year where on every graph they have to
[123:43] put an asterisk next to the data for it
[123:46] that was that xkcd about it
[123:48] was it 12 407
[123:51] what was it
[123:52] 22 567
[123:56] was it 11 678
[123:59] or was it 9686.
[124:04] this is going to be a pretty much a
[124:05] random guess to be honest
[124:07] nothing to say they must be nine
[124:10] [Applause]
[124:10] [Laughter]
[124:18] should be silicon obviously
[124:21] trick question
[124:29] right
[124:30] okay
[124:34] that’s the end there are no more
[124:36] questions should we see the answers
[124:38] there were no right answers
[124:43] how many transistors
[124:44] what did everyone guess what were you
[124:46] thinking i said c d c
[124:50] c
[124:51] you’re not serious
[124:52] c
[124:54] but if you look really carefully you can
[124:56] count them
[124:59] what does anyone know i’m sure someone
[125:01] does why it’s 404 like why is that the
[125:04] part number
[125:05] they wouldn’t make it that for the
[125:06] number of transistors
[125:10] yeah when i was doing the quiz i did
[125:11] read it on wikipedia
[125:13] unfortunately i forgot
[125:16] i’m hoping someone in the audience will
[125:17] know anyone know the audience register
[125:20] sizes could be
[125:22] do we think it’s register sizes does
[125:24] that make sense four bits
[125:26] four bits could be yeah it wasn’t
[125:29] four bits it was four bits wasn’t it
[125:30] yeah
[125:32] david
[125:33] you get a special bonus prize
[125:37] certificate
[125:39] yeah
[125:41] okay question two um
[125:44] so does anyone get this one
[125:46] we don’t
[125:58] but it was electromechanical apparently
[126:00] so it doesn’t
[126:02] the manchester mark one is behind my
[126:04] name that was 1948.
[126:07] didn’t they didn’t they rename it after
[126:09] a while because like
[126:10] other people made other computers after
[126:12] following a similar naming scheme and it
[126:14] got like really confusing and annoying
[126:15] so they just like switch i read
[126:17] something about this very recently so we
[126:18] should throw this question out
[126:20] yeah
[126:22] so you can’t read a question
[126:28] i’m just blindly agreeing with people
[126:30] now
[126:33] okay
[126:35] next question
[126:36] so oh man this one
[126:39] it’s an
[126:41] exnor
[126:56] play the music around i think we’ll be
[126:58] honest
[126:59] so i won’t play it too much it was
[127:01] tetris
[127:07] did anybody else go to sleep still
[127:09] hearing this music
[127:10] [Laughter]
[127:16] okay
[127:18] it was
[127:20] 1982 and if you were
[127:22] immensely wealthy you could have
[127:24] afforded one of these very nice cd
[127:26] players
[127:28] and the embedded hobbyist worked out the
[127:30] logic goes as he reverse engineered the
[127:32] circuit
[127:33] very good well done very impressive
[127:36] okay 1982 combat discs there you go i
[127:40] think it was
[127:41] maybe abba or it was some classical
[127:43] music that came out
[127:46] yeah i would have been about 11 so i
[127:47] don’t remember
[127:48] right what’s the next question
[127:52] okay
[127:53] so
[127:55] who’s this quote from
[127:57] anyone want to stand because while i’m
[127:58] standing back
[128:00] i said kirk
[128:02] i feel like i feel like spock wouldn’t
[128:03] know what man is all about you know
[128:06] nobody’s half human i guess so but it
[128:09] was it was [ __ ] it’s not like
[128:12] every quote spock because he’s got the
[128:14] most
[128:15] interesting things to say okay
[128:18] and so this was it wasn’t thought even
[128:21] though thor has a hammer
[128:23] it was
[128:24] dr lazarus
[128:28] galaxy quest yes you all have homework
[128:30] to go watch it if you haven’t yes it’s a
[128:32] brilliant film excellent definitely
[128:35] worth seeing
[128:36] okay question eight it was of course the
[128:39] whopper
[128:41] which stands for anyone know what it
[128:42] stands for
[128:44] i bet unexpected maker knows
[128:47] sure
[128:57] let’s quickly ask the internet let me
[128:59] run a second
[129:04] stands for
[129:06] uh
[129:07] war operations planned response war
[129:09] operation plans i was closed
[129:11] proportional operation plan response
[129:13] very good right once programmed
[129:30] it was of course good old canine
[129:34] it’s of course cool
[129:37] that was a guess
[129:39] yes
[129:41] okay what is q2so from that sounds like
[129:45] star um star wars yeah okay okay um
[129:49] it was in the mandalorian right
[129:51] johnny e5 is um
[129:54] short circuit
[129:56] chronos forgotten what chromosomes yeah
[130:12] bonus point for you very good
[130:14] uh the answer to this one do you think
[130:16] it was higher or lower i guess that’s
[130:18] the uh that’s the question i guess
[130:20] slower i think lower because like still
[130:24] covets gonna mess with that
[130:25] significantly i don’t think it was more
[130:28] it was actually more
[130:30] really only slightly more but still more
[130:33] so this whole chip crisis i think it’s
[130:35] just made up
[130:36] [Laughter]
[130:45] [Music]
[130:53] who got the highest score not me i got
[130:55] six i got six
[130:57] i have six
[130:59] six as well
[131:00] well i got four so i definitely did not
[131:02] win
[131:04] i’ll make it easy on everyone
[131:08] i think the uh i think the audience wins
[131:10] they’re all getting yeah probably that’s
[131:12] terrible oh someone got another seven on
[131:14] average
[131:16] oh who won the audience one yeah
[131:20] who won out of us i think it was
[131:37] thanks for turning up
[131:41] well that was a great show i uh i
[131:43] enjoyed that a lot yes yeah it was great
[131:46] thanks for hosting chris
[131:47] any time any well actually not any time
[131:52] you’re so good at it
[131:55] now really fantastic job yes
[131:57] thank you
[132:00] all right i think we should end the live
[132:02] stream and let the audience get to bed
[132:04] before we keep them up too late so uh
[132:06] thanks everyone yeah lots of stamps
[132:08] needed i’ve got to send everything
[132:10] and figure everyone in the audience so
[132:12] everyone gets a certificate i will
[132:14] i’ll put it somewhere you can download
[132:16] it and customize it yourself there we go
[132:21] all right everyone i’m gonna end the
[132:23] vlogs now