The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast
#213 -Travel Recaps and Altium Announcements - Artisinal Aussie Assemblage
- Chris was having issues with his internet provider (or so he thought). Chris is afraid of the possible TimeWarner/Comcast merger.
- Dave heard about a pristine version of an early Superman comic going on eBay for $3.2M.
- On a episode of Innovation Hub, an expert or risk talked about about HP betting on the HP35. Did he forget about everything before that??
- Can anyone think of an early version of a popular technology that has sold at auction for big money?
- Dave got to see an Apple I at the Sydney Powerhouse, where the 2nd Sydney mini-Maker Faire was going on during the weekend.
- Dave had a fireside chat with the Bluechilli CEOÂ (yet to be posted)
- The Rome Maker Faire is another “major” Maker Faire. It will coincide with the open hardware summit in Rome this year.
- They announced the speaker list for the OHS and it looks like a great mix of familiar faces and new ones.
- Chris will be at the Hackaday 10th anniversary party in LA.
- Chris gave a talk about KiCad at the Hardware Didactic Galactic. He had to install KiCad on a Mac using a virtual machine running Ubuntu.
- Chris will be at the Hardware Workshop in San Francisco and we’ll have another meetup if you’re in town.
- Dave announced the changes coming to Altium.
- They took some of Dave’s suggestions for the top 5 for Altium when he thought they were bringing out a low cost tool:
- Chris asks about open design formats and how much that affects OSHW. Presentation:
Open Source Hardware (OSHW)…What About The Tools? from ChrisGammell
- The new KiCad forum (forum.kicad.info) is going well, Discourse has turned out  to be great forum software.
- If you want to donate to get CERN to spend more time on KiCad, you can do so here.
- When do you decide to pull the trigger on a CAD program upgrade?
- Dave used to use a “best bet” version of new builds of Altium while working there and designing hardware.
- The XL741 is a new kit from EMSL, which shows how a 741 op amp is put together.
- Hardware companies continue to raise money: Electric Imp just raised $15M. You can hear our interview with Brandon Harris when he was on The Amp Hour.
- Is there any way to avoid the standards wars in the emerging internet of things.
- One thing that will limit IoT is the takeup of IPv6.
- Samsung bought IoT company SmartThings for a rumored $200M.
- Chris was enamored with an online book about DSP that was posted to the subreddit. Dave informs him that this book has been around for a long time.
- NPR published a piece about women in engineering and how workplace culture and how there is a 40% fallout. Dave and Chris agree about the impact of the workplace on retaining women, but think the numbers need to be normalized against men leaving the workforce.
Thanks to panavatar for the original picture of the secret bear.