Macrofab Engineering Podcast

Apples and Astronauts Stephen PCB Design - Hexa Precision Converts MIDI codes to constant voltage What about using constant current to control functions and signals? Teensy 3.6 Pro-Level Breadboard Parker PCM5122 I2S Audio DAC Prototyped with a PiFi DAC+ v2.0 SMT film caps are hard to find for lead free reflow temps ECH-U1C222JX5 3 Different Versions Cost difference of $5 per unit in QTY Wima capacitors PinHeck REV8 Prototypes being built Future of the Pinheck Platform? Rapid Fire Opinion (R.F.O.) PT8A2514A Toaster Controller Has Defrost, Reheat and BAGEL function If you could have a chip that does a specific function what would you pick? Stephen: “Nothing super magical, like a bagel function” “Microwave with butter softening function” MacroFab is Hiring! Apply here Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes! If you have a cool idea, project or topic that you want Stephen and I to discuss tweet at us @MacroFab or email us. If you are n

The Current Source with Derek Brodeur Derek Brodeur Applications engineer involved in writing control software for atmospheric and vacuum robotics used in the semiconductor robotics industry Runs a YouTube channel called "The Current Source" where the primary focus is around electronics What made you want to go start a Youtube channel? Favorite old Project that you have completed? Most difficult video was the Doppler Shift SERs and PIN Diodes Projects that you are currently working on David Kronstein is letting Derek borrow one of his high speed Chronos cameras, so Derek is going to use an High Voltage capacitor and giant SCR to fry some electronic components and hopefully get some good footage Contact bounce in high speed using the camera (and ways to mitigate bounce) 16-bit flip dot array for demonstrations (instead of boring LEDs) Build a TEM cell from aluminum scrap Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes!Tags: Derek Brodeur, electronics podcast, MacroFab, mac

8 Bit Rupee Wallets Stephen Alternative uses for assembly layers Assembly, document, and mechanical layers “It’s a way for us electrical engineers to feel like a mechanical engineer” Parker HackADay IO talk Friday, January 12, 2018 12:00 pm PST “The moment they invent smell-o-vision, this podcast would be done” MEP101 DSO138 Update STM32F103 Widely cloned If your cocktail of silicone is a little off, you’ll be okay Silicon actually change as the year goes around (according to a professor of stephen) “The chip just decides only to run on saturdays” Legit STM32F103's are $2.36 in QTY Can get “questionably sourced “ units for under $1 OctoPrint Use a Raspberry Pi to control your 3D printer You can load gcode wirelessly up to the Pi with SSH tunnel on browser Best open source project parker has come across Monoprice Ultimate 3D printer Had to set up bod rate manually Webcam setup  Printoid  Access OctoPrint over the internet R.F.O. Dragonfly 2020 Pro Additive PCB print

Playing the New Doom Stephen DSO138 Oscilloscope Comes as a kit (just through hole) but can be purchased assembled The "true" version can be had for ~$30 Counterfeit versions exist for $4 Open Source Firmware! Analog bandwidth: 0 - 200KHz Sampling rate: 1Msps max Sensitivity: 10mV/Div - 5V/Div Sensitivity error: < 5% Vertical resolution: 12-bit Timebase: 10us/Div - 500s/Div Record length: 1024 points Built-in 1KHz/3.3V test signal Waveform frozen (HOLD) function available Save/recall waveform In short - it’ll getcha through college Parker Pinheck REV 8 is routed Finishing silkscreen after the podcast Placing an order for prototypes this week! Switched from standard SD card to microSD card Next board is the I2S Audio Amp TAS5755M Working with the  TAS5755MEVM So far it kinda works Need to generate a clock for it? R.F.O. Making A Classic Chip From Discretes Motorola MC1466 - voltage regulator Stephen has made opamps with Discretes before - that was a project we finished! Mac

The Q&A Episode Iris Weeden MacroFab's Marketing Director Award-winning marketer with ten years of experience Native Houstonian and lover of music, dogs, and beers Episode 100!!!!!! The Q&A Episode Thanks to our listeners who submitted questions through email and our Slack channel Questions Brandon Drury How in the hell does one survive engineering school? What should a person expect to get from a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering? What's the dumbest/smartest thing a person can do with shift registers? What's a good resource for learning how to prototype? My wires are always a mess. I have no idea what kind of box can hold panel-style outlets. I'm looking for a resource that will improve my ability to take a circuit that works into a form factor, that will allow it to be tested in a halfway reliable way. Emmett Naughton What's the best way to get a electrical engineering job? Mostly for somebody with a degree but who doesn't have job experience in the field. Stephen Newberry

Moses Parting the Sea of Traces PCB material as structural elements and enclosures FR4 Material - glass-reinforced epoxy laminate sheets Custom face plates aren’t cheap - the solution? Face plate out of PCB material! Silk screening and milling Easy to order Get to use the same design tool for PCBs P.O.W. From Bryan with Poetic.io "Do you have a guy that knows lots about sensors? I need one that will tell me the distance to any solid material out to a range of about 60 feet. Could be ultrasonic but not sure there's one that's strong enough." Microwave kit 24GHz radar evaluation kit K-LD2-EVAL How do lasers find absolute distance? Comment below with your answers R.F.O. Eagle 8.5 Push shove routing Altium Designer 18 MacroFab Hiring! Apply here Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes!Tags: 24GHz, Altium, Eagle Cadsoft, electronics podcast, FR4, K-LD2-EVAL, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MEP, PCB material, Podcast  

Second Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special: Jar Jar on a Harley Taylor Smith Works at MacroFab as the Production Account Manager Manage all of our large customers as they go through prototyping to full production Graduated from Texas A&M last fall Joined the MacroFam early this year Favorite Star Wars Character? Organic Taylor: Loves the locks on Qui-Gon Jinn Stephen: Bossk Parker: Storm Trooper #38  Robotic Taylor: R2D2 even though he slept through Rogue One Stephen: IG-88 Parker: Not K-2SO Thrawn Books Tech that stood out in Rogue One Data Storage Devices Three different storage methods USB Flash Drive: small amount of data. Data Tape: looks like an external hard drive. Contains Death Star plans. 8-track tapes style Some sort of other kind of storage device that the plans get transfered to Looks solid state Newer format then the empire’s data tape? Why doesn’t C3-PO have a wireless transmitter built in?! There does not seem to be a ton of wireless communication No D

The Internet of Mothers Agustin Pelaez Electrical engineer from UPB/FH Münster Helped engineer a remote monitoring solution for Airbus Germany Founded the IoT Application Enablement platform Ubidots.com Cameron Klotz Joined Ubidots as the Director of Operations Graduate of UC Berkeley Previously worked in Operations and Project Management at Getaround Inc. and UBS Financial Services Always focusing on efficient team/client dynamics and quality assurance About Ubidots Difference between their IoT platform and others Long tail solution - through app development for engineers What can Ubidots do for me? How to get started in IoT Overview of what IoT actually is Devices Connection protocol Cloud Application development What makes a device IoT? Convergence of digital to physical Embedded design What is an API and how is it tied into IoT? Hardware? Stephen’s arduino with temperature control sensor and valve Program to send data; Ubidots library; search for existing HTTP libraries, put API tok

I Expect You To be Bored Mr. Bond Episode 100 is coming up! It’ll be a Q&A session - so send in your questions to podcast@macrofab.com 2nd Annual Star Wars Xmas Special Engineering Podcast. Check out the video from last year! Parker Built a mounting surface for the Jeep Electronics Stephen Failure of the Science Museum Project Was expecting soft foam at the bottom of the "well" to move the cones of the drill bit Hard plastic was installed instead Coupling bent up that connects the rotational shaft to the large nema 34 stepper Safety first, equal amounts of time spent on safety as engineering the rest of the project Pick Of the Week (POW) How to reduce Arduino Uno power usage by 95% - Deferred Procrastination Replace the linear regulator with a DC-DC converter Adjust the USB-to-Serial circuit so it’s only powered from the USB port Cut out (or desolder) the always-on LED’s on the board Use the processor sleep mode. Before: 53mA After: 2.5mA DC -DC convertor used was a Traco TSRN-1 for $6.07

Putting English on Electrons The Houston meetup is coming up next week. RSVP here if you are in town!  Mike HackerBox - LootCrate for Hardware and Software hackers Parker PinHeck EOTL REV8 Update Another shout out to Chris Gammell and Contextual Electronics Some work on the Pinotaur design R.F.O. (Rapid Fire Opinion) Tesla SemiTruck 500 mile range. In a 30 minute charge it can get up to 400 miles of range back. Roughly what truck drivers do now. 100-mile routes, the Tesla Semi will cost just $1.26 per mile to operate, compared to $1.51 for diesel Emberlight KickStarter shut down Every time a customer wants to turn on a light, it requires the company’s cloud service to process the command Not a problem with kickstarter but with IoT devices Solution to this problem? Better exit strategy App to connect to them via modem Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes!Tags: electronics podcast, Emberlight, HackerBox, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MEP, PinHeck

Al Williams and the Field Programmable Gate Arrays FPGA Mega Podcast with Al Williams: What is an FPGA? Field-programmable gate array Bunch of logic gates and sea of gates, we tell them what to do Writing hardware description of what it will do - writing requirements language, You’re describing requirements Using VHDL or veralog, syntax is close to the C programming language Why not a microcontroller? Advantage with FPGA = parallel hardware, not a brain with steps and time running out People use FPGAs to get fixed deadline on when processes get finished 100 arduinos on an FPGA - next HackADay Article Mike “Hamster” Field Do you need hardware? No, you can do things via simulation. EDA Playground Can play around for free and don’t have to create login IceStick/IceStorm IceStick is a Lattice FPGA dev board: good starter tool IceStorm is an open source development tool chain HackADay Learning FPGA Links Learning Verilog for FPGAs: The Tools and Building an Adder Learning Verilog for FPGAs: H

Glue A Penny On It Episode 100 is coming up! It’ll be a Q&A session - so send in your questions to podcast@macrofab.com 2nd Annual Star Wars Xmas Special Engineering Podcast. Check out the video from last year! Parker Update on the Jeep Electronics LM22678TJ-5.0/NOPB 5V switcher regulator with 5A capacity Used Ti Webench to design it ADP3338AKCZ-3.3-RL 3.3V LDO Linear Regulator with 1A capacity CU40045-UW1J 40 x 4 VFD Propeller code for driving this display Keep Tabs on this project on github! Decent cheap toggle switches on Amazon Stephen Science Museum Update Video screen that plays animation - in house engineer setting it up and built an Arduino circuit around Stephen’s project DipTrace update 3.2 You can now rotate and flip by groups, when making patterns WOOT! Rapid Fire Opinion (RFO) Solder? What is the best kind? What about Flux? The Amazing $1 Microcontroller - Jay Carlson Best comparison of MCUs I have seen Goes through IDEs, Performance, Peripherals of each IC

Through Hole on Cruise Control Parker Jeep Cruise Control update Ordered a late model TJ wiring harness Speed Control Servo: 4669979 Cable: 4854156 Vacuum Line: 52109525AD Jeep Electrical Control Have wiring diagram done Bussmann 15303-5-2-4 Stephen Science Museum Almost commission day Last minute preparations and it is working great Adding counterweight Gif! Rapid Fire Opinion (RFO) Beverage Coaster Reference Design - Intersil The beverage coaster reference design lights up, plays music, and indicates beverage drinkability! Plays the Chicken Dance when a drink rests on it  Thoughts on high-volume through-hole wire soldering - Reddit ECE Stephen has some thoughts about this Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes! Tags: Beverage Coaster Reference Design, electronics podcast, High volume PTH, Houston Museum of Natural Science, Intersil, Jeep Cruise, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MEP, Podcast

An Ampersand Made Me A Hero Kaylan Smith Houston native, rice owl , UX designer, artist, die hard Astros fan, and MacroFaber since July 2016 One of the strange breeds that went from being an artist to software development Attended a talk that Stephen Kraig gave about MacroFab at her school where she was learning to become a developer Mike Williams Fascinated with computers since 7th grade, when he first got to use a TRS-80 model 1 Seen the software development industry advance from MSDOS to smart phones and cloud computing Written and designed software for flying cameras, high speed trains, and lots of business apps Joined MacroFab about 2 years ago and moved to Houston last year with his wife Loretta and his dog Kosmo Heard about MacroFab from the episode of The Amp Hour where Chris Church and Parker Dillmann where guests Kaylan and Mike talk about the new PCB experience on the MacroFab platform they helped develop Overall cleaner interface that provides more information to customers Quick turnarou

Development Board Guilt Chris Gammell Electrical engineer and electronics instructor Runs an online course is called Contextual Electronics and is host for the podcast The Amp Hour Guest on the MacroFab Engineering podcast episode 33 Currently works for Hologram Consumer Vs Industrial Electronics  Longest running devices? HackADay Superconference Chris is doing a workshop on cellular, low level serial commands to modems via AT commands. Rapid Fire Opinion (RFO) MacroFab Announces Production Manufacturing Services, Expansion in Mexico. - Found on The Amp Hour Subreddit MacroFab has a new website! Launching 10-day prototyping Have no more than 50 units Have fewer than 2,000 surface-mount placements (SMT) Have fewer than 20 unique SMT line items No through-hole placements Giant Robot Battle Iron Glory Vs Kuratas Was pretty lame Next time remove pilots for more destruction? Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes! Tags: Chris Gammell, Contextual Electronic

Randomly Determined Parker Tom Anderson Long time listener just launched his own podcast called Function. It is a podcast that is about Art and Engineering and where those two meet. Jeep Factory Cruse Control Most of the parts have not arrived. Mopar part 05013979AB Connector for the speed controller that pulls the throttle cable Stephen iSpindel Does it work?! Made a bucket full of prison wine, and measuring with a fancy hydrometer Diatomaceous Transformation aka shifting dirt Stephen and Patrick Renner have an installation coming up, Nov 10 in Plainview, TX 8x8 grid, Can access any point on grid and drop any rod Pick Of the Week (POW) Intersil Unveils First USB-C Buck-Boost Voltage Regulator - EEWeb Converts voltages 3.8V-24V to 5V-20V range with no dead zone. “It leverages Intersil's patented R3™ modulation technology to deliver acoustic noise-free operation (not buzzy), superior light-load efficiency and ultra-fast transient response.” Reminds us of the Turbo Encabulator Scishow

TLDR; Life Stephen iSpindel - First time on the MEP: Introduce a tropic and finish it in 2 episodes! Parker Next Jeep Project: Factory Cruise Control RetroFit Currently missing the wiring to go to the PCM (Power Control Module) of the Jeep Buy a used harness for connector pins and modify the current harness PinHeck REV8 EOTL Update Inner layers are 0.5oz copper. Watch out for that. RPI3 CM will have its own power rails to keep the power clean Rapid Fire Opinion (RFO) Google Clips is a new $249 smart camera that you can wear - TechCrunch Passive use camera 3hr battery life Grabs “Motion Photos”. Its 1910's all over again. It looks for people it recognizes and captures information “Automatically suggests the best moments” The Art of Blinky Business Cards - Brian McEvoy on HackADay NFC powered buisness cards NXP: NT3H1101 which has energy harvesting built in Parker's SuperBoost business card that is all forgotten about on HackADay. Stephen’s business cards that demonstrate all of your cap

Liquid Hot "Magma" Parker PinHeck update! Rev8 EOTL Adding RPI3 CM module to the board. Reorganized the Schematic after 5 years of hacks and additions Printed a new HAKKO key New key costs $15! 3D printed one in 17 minutes Stephen Making an iSpindel - A budget version of the Tilt hydrometer Floats in liquid and by how the device tilts it measures the density and temperature of the fermenting beer GY-521 Gyro & Acceleration Sensor on a breakout DS18B20 Temperature Sensor Lipo charger TP4056 POW 100W Watercooled LED Light Using a Corsair Hydro Water CPU cooler Parker wants to make a ruggedized version Overkill Solar Battery USB Charger Simulation Vs Reality Parker's Pro tip: if you do this for your senior project, you’ll get a AAA+ RFO Zapp from the Slack Channel Would you rather have your evil engineering lair 1000 ft under water or in an active volcano? This is assuming that you have overcome all challenges related to living in such  harsh environments. Stephen picks water -

Don't try this at home Annika O'Brien Founder and driving force behind both the LA Robotics Club and Houston Robotics Club Focus into creating communities for people of all ages who have an interest in learning more about Robotics and Electronics Houston Robotics Club Working on getting 501c3 status (nonprofit) Outreach and free mentor-ship programs About 100 active users Shout Out to TX/RX Landmine Tracking Robotics Symbiobots Communicates with rat and rat smells TNT Piper the robot sees the rat’s dance Will eventually drill into landmines to inject environmentally safe Gel that will biodegrade TNT Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!Tags: Annika O'Brien, Houston Robotics Club, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MEP, Nerd Cred, Podcast, Symbiobots, TX/RX

Space Engineers VS Caffeinated Chipmunks September 13th, 2017 was the 4th anniversary of MacroFab! Hardware and Electronics Engineering Meetup for September event is live! How to Design Products with Lean Manufacturing in Mind which Stephen is doing. How to Use Mouser's Parametric Search Function Free food and beer and Networking! "Fan" Art for the Pinotaur! Thanks Emmett Naughton, Tom Anderson, and Ekon_Designs!  Parker Fixing Stephens Motorcycle 2001 Honda Arrow VT 1100 c3 Back cylinder does not fire Fuel, spark, compression - at least one of those things doesn’t work Update week after next weeks episode. MEP EP#87 Stephen New gear for the podcast All in rack-mount format, everything accessible from back side Front will be mint List of equipment MOTU 8pre USB interface ART P16 XLR Balanced Patchbay 2 of Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone, Cardioid 2 of Shure SM58-LC Cardioid Dynamic Vocal Microphone 2 Mindprint DTC tube preamps and compressor/limiters Dual tube channel Stephen picked u