The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast #713 – Rubber Duck Incarnate
Jan 26, 2026
They trade Starlink travel woes and tracker sightings, then dig into Artemis II and the unsung techs who make launches work. A spat over Teensy distribution and closed bootloaders sparks a wider talk about open vs proprietary tooling. They riff on Doom Coding with LLMs as a rubber duck, using phones as serial terminals, Zephyr shells, wild RAM prices, CES battery skepticism, and a Rivian charging deep dive.
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Starlink Disappoints On Rural Road Trip
- Dave tested Starlink on a rural three-week road trip and found speeds as low as 400–800 kbps, making streaming nearly impossible.
- He had to drive to a beach to use cellular data and work, and still got badly sunburned while doing it.
The Unsung Hero Who Saved Artemis
- Dave recounts 'Billy' and the hydrogen tech team who crawled under a fueled Artemis rocket to fix a valve and save the launch.
- Billy and his crew became unsung heroes who received recognition and memorabilia after Artemis 1.
Teensy: Open Libraries, Proprietary Bootloader
- The Teensy platform mixes open and closed elements: libraries are open but the bootloader is proprietary due to an NDA with NXP.
- Paul Stoffregen explained this was both a security and business decision to support a tiny company serving a large market.
