The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

Chris got a Chevy Bolt (2023 1LT) The model has since been discontinued 11 kW charging using a level 2 charger Flappy paddle to recapture battery (instead of the brake) Ioniq 5/6 Aptera Marques Brownlee reviews the Prius V2G is avaialble as a software upgrade to the Nissan Leaf 2nd channel abs bypass Microbit v2 Robot video with Huxley Software updates on a door handle Chris is playing around with 20V DeWalt batteries Battery fast charger schematic Bosch adapter Vmount batteries, as explained by Caleb of DSLR Video Shooter Sony batteries Dave’s tutorial on charging Chris might try out OnShape If you’re interested in helping model some battery stuff (or know someone who can), please email chrisgammell@golioth.io Sony battery lab hack

Pallav Aggarwal discusses learning the ch32v003, Ambiq Apollo, decision trees for hardware vs firmware, reducing complexity, AI tools for PCB creation, troubleshooting with tools like Joulescope and Saleae, and the importance of efficiency consulting in electronics projects.

From discussing smart home promises to tearing down a Braun toothbrush, this podcast covers it all. They dive into electronics testing, SPICE in CAD, quirky hardware store tales, and business setup challenges. The closure of DIYode mag and reflections on engineering software tools make for an engaging listen.

Exploring Renesas acquiring Altium, Altium's history, strategic acquisitions, Renesas collaboration with big companies, Altium's cloud focus, and industry news insights including Intel's funding and corporate events humor.

AI tools for recording 32 bit recording Pool robot Home assistant Power points in the ceiling in Dave’s office park CH32V003 board CNLohr episode rv003usb library Mike Harrison doing a video about a CH32V003 standalone programmer nRF24 Low cost modules Chris bought on Amazon Samy Kamkar on the show Samy talk about balloons Drone shows Time difference of distances Dave’s video about HP atomic clocks XKCD Radiation Dose Chart DTCXO In the Bond movies they’re not nerds LCD and fonts AI pin Vision Pro iFixit teardown Chris will be at Embedded World again this year, come say hi!

Keith Burzinski, expert in home automation and creator of the ESPhome project, discusses the importance of local control in home automation, the convenience of the ESPhome development platform, custom board building and frustrations with off-the-shelf PIR sensors, and the accessibility and affordability of home automation. They also touch on Navacasa hardware and cloud service, the smart capabilities of Home Assistant, and the evolution of home automation.

Dave just drove 4500 km / ~ 2800 miles Dumpster room tier on Patreon? Hyperloop failure Florida train video (Wendover) Pipedream Series of tubes Guam capsize Hugo site builder, based on Go Dreamweaver Chris recommends buying a foldable lightbox (Light this) Chris’s blog post when he was going to meet Dave for the first time Dehumidifiers are raising money based on ridiculous hype Spec Sheet for Genesis Systems Chris just got a chest freezer, was surprised at the low energy needs Power charges Texas grid article on NYT after recent deep freeze Energy mix in NC Beta voltaic Used for aerospace Bantam Tools (Bre Pettis) acquires Evil Mad Scientist (Lenore, Windell) Vulnerabilities in the ESP32 RISC V parts Will people make tools to make it easier to crack into something, like discussoned the CAN episode with Ken Tindell Dave might get a free pick and place, the TVM920 Video about the 1980s “drink robots” Chris’s daughter is really into robots and gondolas Pool robots videos on EEVblog2

Welcome back Jeff Keyzer of Mightyohm Orthodox Keyzermas Twelfth Day of Keyzermas Jeff has been taking care of his ailing cat for the past years and learned a lot about administering medicine RF 8753 / Copper mountain Shariar sometimes features Copper Mountain VNAs on the Signal Path Step attenuator NanoVNA Pallav Aggarwal articles Murata modules Chip down cellular Seattle visit The big dark Input shaping Printing with .25mm Tek TM500 Scope on a monitor arm Test equipment intervention Jay Leno turbine car episode Selling on eBay, including stuff made during the process of making parts for Jeff’s equipment Tek groups.io Fluke in Seattle / now Everett Vintage Tek Museum Being set up to ship things Shipping CRTs CRTs are in vogue again (?!) Low latency Retropie Oscilloscope music paying premium for RCA / Heathkit Jeff was off to Hardware happy hour (3H) Seattle Led Zeppelin had many references to Lord Of The Rings. Past guest and Chris’s former roommate Steve Kreuzer was a huge LZ fan.

CES is coming up and there’s good attendance as one of the last remaining large electronic shows in the US Tradeshow are all bunched up in April for Chris in 2024, specifically Embedded World and Embedded Open Source Summit Dave gives a synopsis of the latest Smarter Every Day video (about NASA) Smarter Every Day video about NASA talk Lunar lander training abort Apollo guide SP287 Speeding up podcast…how fast can/do you go? Last minute designs at the end of the year ESP32 / NRF9160 board limitations Cheap as chips – podcast about fish and chips Siglent oscope SDS7000A Innovators dilemma for car manufaucturers…and scopes too! Kia Carnival Kasm vs Codespaces Home Assistant ESPHome YAML NSW tour video / Quantum Smart home fraturing AI New guide to Shenzhen, updated by Naomi Wu

Welcome Benjamin Cabé of The Zephyr Project! Benjamin is the developer advocate at The Zephyr Project, which is both a Real Time Operating System and an ecosystem (or almost like a “distro”, rather than an OS) Benjamin does videos on the Zephyr YouTube and maintains an awesome blog / newsletter The ecosystem is deep: Chris recently learned there is a state machine framework Multiple people involved in dev like an OS The Platinmum Members includes chip companies like NXP, Nordic, ADI There are 600+ boards supported in the ecosystem (and more if you do custom) Devicetree is a tough concept, but a powerful one that was borrowed from Linux Who is the audience for Zephyr? Chromebook embedded controller What’s the smallest processor that Zephyr can run on? M0s can run it no problem Chris thinks one of the benefits is the ability to bolt new stuff on to a project Simulation through Wokwi (Past Guest Uri) or Renode (Past Guest Michael) Using different levels of abstraction zephyr i2c init Benefits of abstraction Swapping out chips (bubblegum tapshoes) Tying stuff together (bolting stuff on) Infrastructure with CI/CD Zephyr doesn’t have an official IDE but VScode “just works” Helper tools from Nordic Open Source Hobby projects Dev survey Custom Keyboards (ZMK) RP2040 support Arduino recenlty joined the project Layers of abstraction Architecture (ie. arm, nios2, x86) SOC (available peripherals surrounding the core) Board (PCB definition which might have:) SOC Memory Peripherals / Sensors Check the tree and PRs for sensors that might be in-flight Compared to Arduino IDE Choosing ecosystems Weekly newsletter Things you didn’t know you needed: NMEA subsystem In Jay Carlson’s 2nd appearance on the show, he said “I’m reading more code than I’m writing” Benjamin’s profile photo is of his artificial nose he created a few years ago Making a machine model for bread (pandemic) It uses TFLite What is the project doing? (in parallel) Acquire data Machine learning inference Display update Network interface Benjamin reimplemented the Nose in Zephyr using ZBus (Chris recorded a video with the author of this subsystem) Like an MQTT broker on device Some of the concerns I (Chris) had when I was starting was not understanding RTOS concepts (threads, queues, etc). Brian Amos was on the show talking about his book, which is a great way to get started with these ideas. Threading / work queues The importance of a project when starting out Starter hardware Hero devkits (Chris likes the nRF9160-DK as a starter board or the nRF5340-DK) M5stack boards iMX8 Jumping down to Zephyr from Linux MPU + MCU Tight integration Zephyr can run POSIX code What about the the RT in RTOS? Does this operate realtime often? (timing critical) BOM cost and software cost Security and dependencies Join the Zephyr discord to talk to other people using Zephyr TechTalks / YouTube Interested in going to a conference in Seattle in 2024 for Zephyr? The ZDS / EOSS CFP is open now!