The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast
#216 - Last Minute Decisions - Obdurate Onepercenter Obstacles
- Dave’s mother got cheated out of a vacation when her cruise ship broke! Chris knew someone who has been on the Oasis of the Seas, the largest cruise ship built to date.
- Dave worked at a company on Garden Island in Sydney’s Central Business District. He worked there two months and subsequently left it off his resume.
- Do you ever leave stuff off your resume?
- Dave just returned from Electronex where he had a trade booth, which listed The Amp Hour! The big hits were the microscope and core memory:
- Dave is also looking at foregoing a bigger lab and instead getting a bigger space.
- Apple released a new smart watch, will be interesting to see how it changes the sensors game.
- Chris just got back from the Hardware Workshop in San Francisco (notes available here). It was more “business” focused than electronics.
- This coming weekend is the World Maker Faire in NY. Chris said on the show that he wouldn’t be there, but changed his plans!
- Altium will be officially releasing their new free PCB tool. Â Dave has a list of the upcoming features. One possible showstopper is that you have to save your files to the cloud (no local copy).
- Chris will continue working with KiCad.
- Breakin (Breakdance) and Breakin’ 2 (Breakdance 2), Electric Boogaloo. 80s classics!
- Chris’s is working on a new component search engine! A new way to discover parts called Parts.io. There is an Alpha signup as well.
- Chris got to meet the folks from Seeed studio and learned about their Open Part Library. This should reduce cost if you send a board to them. They also have an EAGLE library with the part footprints.
- This is similar to what CircuitHub is going to be trying with the part bundling. Andy talked about CircuitHub way back on episode 131.
- Do other CMs publish their part lists? It would be good to create a database or wiki page with links to these.
- Chip of the Week: The TI FDC1004, “Capacitance to Digital Converter”
- There was a wonderful teardown of a Tesla 85 kWh battery pack. The pictures show the multitude of networked 18650 lithium cells.
- We wonder about what happens when a fuse blows. Chris recalls when Bob Simpson was on the show he talked about bypassing cells if necessary.
- We also learned that Vincent Himpe (also a former guest of the show and prolific EEVblog forum member) recently got a gig as the lead PCB designer for Tesla! We’ll try to get him back on the show at some point.
Thanks to Charlie J for the picture of the guts of a Rolex