Macrofab Engineering Podcast

Surfing for Science: Phil Bresnahan of SmartfinPhil Bresnahan Has made the water his playground and office for most of his life Senior Development Engineer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography a department of UC San Diego, and the Lead Engineer of the Smartfin Project SmartFin What is SmartFin?The Lost Bird Project Why use a Surf Board for this platform? What kind of sensors does this fin have?How does it measure the ocean’s chemistry? Construction techniques? How is the fin charged and powered? Hardware challenges with the design? How does someone contribute to the project? BBC Documentary Announcements!KiCon 2019 is a user conference for the popular open source CAD program KiCad. Happening April 26th and 27th 2019 in Chicago IL, this is the first and largest gathering of hardware developers using KiCad. Talks at the conference will span hardware design, revision control, scripting, manufacturing considerations, proper library management and getting  started developing the underlying tools. All announce

The Golden Integrated CircuitParker Propeller Development Stick Type-C Addition Found the BQ24165RGET to handle the lithium battery power management New battery management IC handles dual inputs thus replacing the TPS2113ADRBR power mux and p-channel mosfet Wagon Tach Project Signal is a 50V pulse from the distributor Arduinos do not like 50V Wagon Powered Mirror PCB Installed! 3D printed a bracket and installed into the door Tag Connect Probe Ends Will give a full report on how well they work Stephen Macro Amp Milling the top panel Transformers mounted - check! PCB mounting needs fasteners ordered J-Fet buffer for the NuTubes Riaa filter with gain options for MM and MC type A series of filter specifications for recording If the record is cut with lower bass then the cut width can be smaller allowing for more info to be cut on to the record - More music playing time Two poles and one zero R.F.O. Gain ultra-high power density for 100-W USB Power Delivery adapters

Electric Vehicle Charging and Cat SafetyChristopher Howell OpenEVSE started in February 2011 with a simple experiment to try to generate the J1772 pilot signal on an Arduino One experiment lead to another to another until a prototype J1772 compatible controller was born With lots of feedback and interest a few boards were offered to other hardware hackers What started as 6 boards built in the first batch turned into many thousands... Today, OpenEVSE powers charging stations from many manufactures all over the world. OpenEVSE What is OpenEVSE? Does EVSE stand for something? What is the story behind you getting into Electric Vehicle Chargers?  Design Generating the SAE J1772 pilot signal from an Arduino. Why Arduino? What kind of regulations do you have to deal with? What approvals or markings does your product have? Are the kits approved? Kits Have you seen much interest in these? I would think most people just want a working final product. Safety concerns? Compatibility with vehicles? Going the other way?

Kalashinikaze: The Right to Fly Arms Parker Prop Dev Stick Type-C edition update Routing almost complete Moved from 0603 to 0402 Parallax Propeller moved from QFP to QFN Changed the voltage regulator from a NCP1117 3.3V to a AP7361C 3.3VWhy? Adding Lipo battery charging support BQ24075 Ti part Testing my USB Type-C example boardsInteresting Dongle Type-A to Type-C Wagon power mirror controller works! Stephen LND150 feedback tone stack for a Roz amp Similar to the Venteq this is a variable impedance filter inside a feedback loop Uses a modified architecture LND150 makes up the active elementFrom ~80V to 400V it is linear and does not shift amplitude High voltage power supply still working great Macro Amp Looking at the component layout Need to get octal sockets and J-Fets for the buffers R.F.O. Know your fits and tolerances Great video covering tolerances and fits for mechanical design New engineers - selecting tolerance too tight. Most of the time this is not needed. Fits - Ansi standards M

Al Williams and the One Instruction Wonder Al Williams One of the authors behind Hackaday, a website that features electronic projects and other things that appeal to people interested in computers, electronics, and technology Ham radio operator Author of many books Has worked on everything from underwater technology to the International Space Station and just about everything in between Was on previous episodes EP#57: Mr. Williams, your book changed my life EP#94: Al Williams and the Field Programmable Gate Arrays FPGA bootcamps on Hackaday5 out now, 6 soon FPGA development boards Upduino Max10 Arrow Digilent iCEstick Dr. Dobbs The One Instruction Wonder A Universal Cross Assembler The Commando Forth Compiler Write 8-bit code in your browser Atari 2600 programming in browser with simulation! Verilog compiler for designing a 8-bit platform from scratch Jone's forth compiler: JONESFORTH Project Jupyter IPython Interactive Computing The Jupyter Notebook Space suit decompresses in outer spac

Big Mattress is Coming For You Parker Wrote an article about the past three years of the MacroFab Engineering Podcast Chime Module MC14069UBHex inverter MC14001UBQuad NOR gate Other Circuit components What is the best way to reverse engineer a PCB? Ray Alert Stephen Rebuilt and rewired 3 amplifiers Soldano clone went from being somewhat noisy to virtually nothing Very interesting grounding scheme Lots of dos and donts Utracer tube testing The Macro AmpNu Tube Always remember to over buy parts Game idea? Zork derivative game that comes on a "com stick" RFO Power Supply Design for Clean Jazz Amps This is a cool blog about building power supplies Vasily Ivanenko Lots of images and good analysis Heavy focus on component selection and managing grounds Bees can do simple arithmetic, offering hop to low-gate-count AINow that is kinda click baity Flow Chart on Electrical Component SelectionThis accurately describes part buying for personal projects MacroFab will be at SXSW. We are teaming

Jason Cerundolo of Reclaimer Labs Jason Cerundolo An engineer experienced in mechanical, electrical, and firmware engineering Jason has over nine years of experience as a hardware engineer and working on electronic designs in Silicon Valley In his free time, he works on open source projects, such as USB Type-C tools and projects USB Type-C Power Delivery PHY Breakout Board A breakout board for the FUSB302USB-PD PHY for BMC communication used in USB-C connectors Determine plug orientation (normal or reversed) Determine or advertise Type-C power levels (5 V at 0.5, 1.5, or 3.0 A) Use BMC communication to negotiate USB Power Delivery Explicit Contracts up to 20 V and 5 A (100 W of power) Negotiate Alternate Modes to reuse the pins in the Type-C connector for other purposes One of the problems that I always run into with USB designs is the “Am I doing this right?”Testing, debugging, and evaluation What hardware and software should you look at when building a test setup for USB? Low Cost Alternatives for

Power Hungry Venti-Q Parker Star Wars Detonator is 95% complete It is inside the enclosure and works! Stand needs to be printed and wrap up the paint Original STL files for the detonator by Roel Veldhuyzen Future of this project? USB Type-C Article Update USB Type-C -> FTDI FT230X -> Parallax Propeller is completed Example is on our githubs Next is going to be a direct to MCU style like an ATmega32u4 unless someone else has a better idea from the slack channel? Stephen EQ is functioning! Grtyvr from our Slack Channel came up with a good name – The Venti-Q Power Hungry Most of the bands work 1 band has an oscillation problem 1 band is pulling too much current 2 or 3 bands are weak Building a test harness to test each band individually The Super Simple Ribbon Mic live design Saturday Feb 2 @ 6pm Central on the MacroFab Twitch Channel Preamp design for the Microphone Mechanical Design (design of the ribbon frame and the case) Audio Connection (USB? XLR?) R.F.O. One board dev kit has th

Are you ready to Tango? Parker Wagon Chime Module Installed back on Wagon and It works! USB Type-C Article Update Have the Type-C to FT230X complete Design Block for Eagle ESD protection on the CC Pins? IP4234CZ6,125 USB ESD protection StephenFound the old ribbon mic from MEP EP#110: Dangling Transformers Going look at doing a quick spin of a stacked PCB based version instead of the 3d printed chassis Boards can screw together to clamp to the ribbon itself by having a gold pad on the PCB Need a way to do fine tune adjustments on the ribbon tension Embedded transformer 3D printed enclosure – Fusion 360 to 3d printing? PCM2912A Brian Benchoff’s Oreo Stackup PCB R.F.O. MIDI Association Announces MIDI 2.0 Prototyping Will be announced at NAMM 2019 (Jan 24-27th) In prototyping phase Fully back compatible with 1.0 Solder Surface Tension and Why You Should Care The Current Source aka Derek has a released a really cool video on surface tension and how it relates to PCB Assembly Derek was on MEP EP#103

Void Copper Donuts Parker Wagon Chime Module Repaired StarWars Detonator Prop RPI3 CM Motherboard USB Hub Saga LAN9514 MP62551 or TPS2054B Improving the Prop Dev Stick Changing to QFN from QFP Prop USB Type C for USB 2.0 Changing the power handling? Original part is TPS2113 Only handles 5.5V MAX NCP3901 is a Dual input MuxHandles more power then I need but no built in current limiting Maybe MPS has a good standalone current limiter? Stephen Beginning the eq build. There is a lot to do so it is taking a bit of time Gold fingers and connectors - They work! Trying a special coax connection - Different rings on top and bottom R.F.O. Bluetooth chip doesn’t need a battery because it harvests energy from the air Wiliot Embedded in consumer products to provide easy access to a digital manual when the original paper version is long lost, or it could be put on a clothing label and used to communicate the optimal settings to a washing machine $30 million financing from Amazon and Samsung Possible rel

Reclaiming Audio Equipment with Cliff Schecht Cliff Schecht An electrical engineer with a masters degree Spends his days rescuing vintage gear Is the CEO and operates Reclaimed Audio Reclaimed Audio offers repair and restoration services on audio, radio, and test equipment from the turn of the century through current state of the art Restoring Vintage Audio Equipment How to restore equipment and keep it true to original design, but get it ready for another 20 years run time Rebuilding power supplies on tube units for example, but not changing the audio path topology much Tips and tricks with test gear Properly evaluating a piece of unknown gear How to restore vintage electronics How old is old enough to consider restoration/recapping When is it ok to power up? How do you power up vintage gear? Any myths you have debunked? Visit our Public Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes!Tags:  Audio Repair, Capacitors, Cliff Schecht, electronics podcast, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podc

Discrete Atomic Luffa Control Benjamin Heckendorn An electronics hacking entertainment guru Former host of Element 14’s “ The Ben Heck Show”. Chris Kraft A tinkerer currently working as a software engineer in the financial services industry Extensive background in 3d printing and building anything that seems interesting Past two years Both where last seen on Episode 75: Does the simulation match reality? Ben has moved on from hosting "The Ben Heck Show" Chris has been experimenting with SLA resin printers Hangprinter A very simplified explanation is you take a delta printer but instead of having the three motors that are attached to the side frame you instead locate those motors wherever and have wires/cables/etc that run up to points that you mount Some videos that show how it works Hangprinter Presentation Thomas Sanladerer interviews The Hangprinter Building the Hangprinter: The Basics! The first new/interesting thing Chris has seen in awhile Project is open source so people are free to cont

Third Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special - Vader's Fake Fingers Josh Rozier By day Josh Rozier does business intelligence and data analytics for a large, east-coast insurance monolith By night he is Roz, a level 5 Scoundrel and chief troublemaker of the StarWars D20 RPG group Is the Force a Force? Hyperspace Ramming 12 Parsecs? Solo’s famous line that shows Lucas has no idea what he was writing. Predictions from the previous podcast Stephen was right - Luke Died Parker was wrong. Though is Rey really a Jedi without training? Rey didn’t change her name to Neo Predictions for EP9? Is luke actually dead? Will we see CGI Carrie Fisher? Best and Worst movies of the Star Wars Franchise. Visit our Public Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes!Tags: Boson, electronics podcast, HyperDrive, Kessel Run, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, Midichlorians, Parsecs, StarWars, Vader

Why Mesh Networking Matters – Brandon Satrom Brandon Satrom Developer Advocate for Particle, an IoT platform company The founder of Carrot Pants Press, a company dedicated to educating makers On the MacroFab Engineering Podcast Episode Number 122, Brandon discussed the Particle Photon and built an IoT breathalyzer with Parker live on the podcast What is currently distracting Brandon now? Why mesh networking matters Existing mesh networking standards Thread/OpenThread and why Particle built OpenThread into 3rd gen devicesWhat is OpenThread? Mesh Christmas Tree project 5 device network with a gateway and 4 edge devices Particle Blog detailing more about the project One edge device publishes multicast messages to all other nodes, which light up neopixel strips when those messages are received on each device The goal was to see how low latency UDP-based mesh messaging was Researching theory around "the color of sound" and added a mode to the firmware that converts the frequency of a played note into a co

Connector ConfusionCongratulations to our Slack member Mobius Striptease! Mobius’ pulse generator won first place at their Senior Design Expo!Article written about MacroFab: Houston electronics manufacturing company gears up for growth. Talks about the growth of MacroFab over the past 2 years. ParkerRPI3 Compute Module PCM5122 Routed LAN9514 Routed single upstream USB port on BCM2835 Pin 44 Ethernet 25MHz output Pin 31 LAN RESET Information found on the Raspberry pi forum Need to add USB current limiting CM3 HOMEGuido Ottaviani made his own carrier board I have been looking at for inspiration to solve some of the final problems 1473149-4Connector being used to socket the RPI3 Compute Module Stephen Crazy EQ amplifier design continuation Opted to go with a card edge solution for each EQ band Each band connects via a 36 pin PCI-Express connector +12V -12V +5v Reference -5V reference Gnd 4 In Signals Cut Boost Potentiometer pin 2 21 modules in total. 1 module has all of the power and main signal

PEE-can Verse puh-KAHN - Scaling up Electronics with KINETIC Matt Glazer Lead electrical engineer at KINETIC Building IoT wearables for the industrial workforce by day and building electric long-boards by night Obsessed with space and can talk hours on end about the current state of space technology Jeff Doong Head of manufacturing at KINETIC In charge of making sure current products are manufactured correctly and new products are designed to efficiently scale If he wasn't at KINETIC, he'd be a farmer back home in California KINETIC What is KINETIC? Last time we had KINETIC on the podcast it was episode #53 with Aditya and Mijael. What has changed since February 2017? Product has a name now. Now longer called the device. Expand a bit more on what you two do at KINETIC? Any major engineering challenges yall had to overcome since the last prototype? KINETIC has been expanding to scale up manufacturing. What were some of the engineering changes needed to do so? Supply Chain management? Case Study on the

A Unique Perspective on Feature CreepingThe podcast got mentioned in an article! 12 Great Podcasts for Engineers from the Mind Tribe blog. Mind Tribe is a design driven engineering firm based in San Francisco. The list spawns from a survey from the engineering team at Mind Tribe. Thanks Mind Tribe for mentioning our podcast! Parker RPI3 Compute Module Added PCM5122 Added LAN9514 Still figuring out the schematic part Ethernet and USB hub built in EFM8 Universal Beeeeeeeeeee Com port native! VCP driver Secret ProjectIt may DOOM everything ST7735 Common SPI TFT Screen Module 1.44” 128x128 pixels Wagon Update: YouTube videos Stephen“Feature creeped” my way into designing a 20 band graphic eq and a fancy solid state effects loop 20 band eq with +/- 12ish (simulation shows 13.8) db of gain per band Each band has a Q of 2.87 so they end up being ½ octave Using the 1kHz standard Designed with “constant Q” in mind R.F.O. STM releases STM32 Cube MX V5.0 Redone UI and cleaner look Better searching

Charlyn Gonda and the Ever-Lowering Fence between Software and Hardware Charlyn Gonda Coder by day, maker by night A chronic problem solver and is currently in the middle of her year-long project, 12 Months of Makes Has too much fun building circuits, creating things with 3D printing, crafting hats and coding IoT devices! Topics Charlyn what is your background? Day Job ect? Why did you become a Software Developer? How did you go from a Software Developer to building Hardware for the first time?Any particular reason you wanted to start building hardware? How do you approach hardware design? Is it in anyway the same as software development or radically different? What is the 12 Months of Makes Projects you have completed so far? Bongocat Sharknicorn Almost at the end of the 12 Months of Makes. How successful was the experiment? Words of wisdom to other software developers that are thinking about hardware creation? Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes and please revie

The TechHOUNDS John Waidner Electronics Engineer with a background in Logic design, analog circuit, system integration and testing Currently John is a mentor for the TechHOUNDS and volunteers for the Boy Scouts of America Derek Fronek High school student from Carmel High School Part of the Carmel High School robotics team the TechHOUNDS TechHOUNDS What are the TechHOUNDS and how did you start? Leadership? Who leads the group? Divisions Robot Ops Programming/Electrical Construction Information Technology Public Relations How do you handle the overlap between divisions? Derek - What division are you most involved with? John - How involved are you in the process? What is FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Who can be a part of FIRST? How to get involved Funding? Competing in FRC (First Robotics Competition) What are the competitions? How does your team prepare for them? Who gets to go? Who gets to drive the bot? The TechHOUNDS youtube channel has lots of videos of the

The Vox in a Box Roxs Stephen's Vox in a Box Preamp Design Vox AC30 preamp - 3 gain stages with a cathode follower and a phase inverter Phase inverter - create differential signals for the power amp input Drop signal using voltage dividers and mosfet buffers 320V phase inverter to 18V buffer drive Built point to point on an aluminum plate for easy modification and testing Power Amp Design TPA3116 Class D amplifier LM311 comparator mute circuit for start up mute ~5 to 10 Seconds Runs at 400KHz - Left open pads for boosting this up to 1.2MHzIs there an advantage at running at higher frequencies? Power Supply Design TPS40210 Switching controller into a diode/cap ladder voltage multiplier 7 stages of multiplication leads to ~50V per stage Variable Switching from 35KHz to 1000KHz PMP8621 Appnote Testing the Vox in a Box Been going nonstop for weeks now Have taken it up to nearly 60 Watts without problems Layout of the PCB Multiple ground system with master start Each sub circuit has its own ground re