The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast
A weekly podcast about the electronics industry. Occasional guests. Lots of laughs.
Episodes
The Walmart Greeter of Electronics
Dave and Chris catch up on the shift toward practical hands-on engineering education at universities, open-source robotics, calculator forensics, mentoring young engineers, AI-assisted PCB layout tools, reverse-engineering scope RF sections, and why Chris wants to be “the Walmart greeter of electronics”
Perpetual Wearable Biosensing with Andy Kong
Andy Kong is creating Chargerless, a pre-seed wearable biometric device that runs on 1 minute of sunshine per day. He joins Chris to talk about low power design, unconventional power schemes, the weird signals of the human body, and more.
Hands-on Physical AI with Kevin Cloutier
Kevin Cloutier is the North American Lead for Physical AI at a global engineering consulting firm and a computer engineer who is passionate about taking complex computations to the edge. He joins Chris to discuss the transition from legacy, statically programmed factory robotics to modern, imitation-learning-based “Physical AI,” building and calibrating the affordable $200 3D-printed SO101 robot a
E&M Reality Emerges with Robert Fennis
Robert Fennis joins Chris to demystify the black magic of RF and talk about his open-source, Python-based 3D electromagnetic solver, EMerge. They discuss why simulation is like building a pyramid of knowledge, how silk screen can completely de-tune a patch antenna, and Robert’s quest to build the “IKEA of FEM solvers” so hardware developers everywhere can simulate their designs without relying on
The Focus Knob Works
Dave and Chris celebrate 16 years of the show (1st episode was August 10th, 2010) by launching a brand-new static website featuring searchable transcripts and a “pissed-old amber” SVG scope with a working focus knob–and links to merch!. They also discuss Dave’s new employee, 10 cent RISC-V debuggers, and why naming your startup after an un-Googleable Australian cryptid is a bad move
The Terahertz Frontier with Greg Charvat of Teradar
Dr Greg Charvat, CTO and co-founder of Teradar, joins Chris for a 5th appearance on The Amp Hour to talk about how terahertz frequency radar will revolutionize the automotive space and far outstrips the capabilities of LIDAR and Blobbology
Space Age Bluetooth with Alex Haro
Alex Haro, CEO of Hubble, joins Chris to talk about building a network of terrestrial and space (!) based Bluetooth infrastructure to track low power devices across the globe, without a data plan or a GPS module onboard.
Boat Anchor Warehouse
Dave and Chris discuss a massive “boat anchor” warehouse clearance, 0201 board assembly, Texas Instruments’ stealthy datasheet updates for classic op-amps, the latest in local AI models, and paper-based electronics art
Arduino's Invisible Touch with Massimo Banzi
Massimo Banzi is co-founder of Arduino, the worldwide project built upon easily accessible embedded hardware. He joins Chris to talk about the design, rise, struggles, and eventual exit of the company, and what he’s now doing with Supermoderno.
The Secret Life of Circuits with lcamtuf / Michał Zalewski
Michał Zalewski (lcamtuf) is a security researcher, author, electronics enthusiast, and calculator collector. He joins Chris to talk about his new book The Secret Life of Circuits and his interest in the field of electronics and explaining things to others.
All Heat, No Useful Work
Dave and Chris discuss the infrastructure and massive energy demands of AI data centers, injecting power through a programming header, Linux changes, and dogfooding your own projects.
BeagleBoard's Back with Jason Kridner
Jason Kridner returns to The Amp Hour after his first appearance 15 years ago to talk about the BeagleBadge and Zepto boards that showcase new capabilities in the Linux and Zephyr space. The BeagleBoard.org project is still focused on building open source, affordable, and accessible Linux and embedded hardware.
AI Tooling with Matt Liberty and Luke Beno
Past guests Matt Liberty (Joulescope) and Luke Beno (Werewolf.us) join Chris to talk through using AI tooling for small businesses in the hardware and firmware space. Both have built custom ERP systems, among many other tooling for their businesses, in a fast moving environment.
Chip Design for Fun (and Waffles) with Julia Desmazes
Julia Desmazes joins Chris to discuss designing chips for fun and getting an entire design done in 2 weeks to make a tapeout deadline. Julia built accerlators and has continued to dive deeper into on and off chip tooling for greater visibility into the silicon she gets back from the fab.
Hyper Growth and OpenClaw Interns
Dave and Chris discuss Golioth getting acquired by Canonical (makers of Ubuntu), trying out OpenClaw in the lab, changes to space plans, big new factories, Arm making chips, and more!
Inventing the Power MOSFET with Alex Lidow
Alex is founder and CEO of Efficient Power Conversion, a leading manufacturer of GaN MOSFET’s.
Alex is also the inventor of the original Power MOSFET and HEXFET at International Rectifier. Also, former CEO of International Rectifier (founded by his father!), https://epc-co.com We cover everything from inventing the power MOSFET on his first day on the job to silicon physics, AI data centres and hu
Layout Review with Zachariah Peterson
Zachariah Peterson joins Chris to discuss doing PCB layout and creating content for engineers looking to learn more about how to build their own PCBs
Back on the road in '26
This week we talked about upcoming travel, solid state transformers, battery testing, new small circuit boards, and a bunch more.
Electronics Manufacturing History with David Ray
David Ray joins Dave to talk about the history of electronics manufacturing and how he has built a high mix manufacturing business while regularly educating the public about how electronics work.
Shiny New Pebble with Eric Migicovsky
Founder of Pebble and CEO of CoreDevices, Eric Migicovsky, joins Chris to talk about the history of the Pebble Watch and resurrecting the hardware to serve a very loyal ecosystem. Along the way, Eric has continued to create new gadgets like the Index 01 ring.
The Measurement Blues with Martin Rowe
Martin Rowe is a long time technical editor for publications like EE World, EDN, and Test and Measurement World. He stops by The Amp Hour to talk about the things he has seen and the people he has met in the electronics industry, and he’s still going strong!
Rubber Duck Incarnate
Dave and Chris discuss staying connected while traveling, building terminal interfaces for custom hardware, using coding tools, the Teensy and recent events surrounding the manufacture, Zephyr, Raspberry Pi PIOs, and more!
Robots Everywhere with Aaed Musa
Aaed is a YouTuber who builds a variety of robots and a mechanical engineering student at Purdue. He joins Chris to talk building robots and robotics components from the ground up, with a focus on lowering the cost and barrier to entry. They also discuss modern engineering education.
Medical Electronics Education with Mark Palmeri
Dr Mark Palmeri is a professor at Duke University in the Biomedical Engineering (BME) field. He joins Chris to talk about using open tools (KiCad, ngspice, Zephyr, Jupyter notebooks, Python) to build educational resources and how he shares those courses with the world outside of Duke. He also walks through the Tympanometer project, built with Duke BME Design Fellows.
Tugging on the Nerd Heartstring
Dave and Chris are back after a long vacation absence to talk about high end events, new scopes, fast board assembly, and nerds nostalgic for the sci fi future that never was.
Nobel Prize Winner Dr Barry Marshall
Dr Barry Marshall won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease.
All the Connectors with Davide Andrea
Davide Andrea is the author of The Electronic Connector Book and Principal of Elithion, a company that designs Battery Management System. He joins Chris to talk about the wide and wonderful world of connectors.
Welding with an HDMI Cable
This week Dave and Chris discuss test equipment, the Arduino acquisition, Zephyr, Altium pricing, private equity owning YouTube channels, audio circuits, and more!
Leading Edge Analog with Joren Vaes
Joren Vaes is a design engineer at SOFICS working on simulating and delivering analog IP blocks on leading edge nodes like the 2 nm node from TSMC. Listen to how they bend physics to their will to make the chips that power our modern electronics.
Psst...Hey buddy, wanna buy an Octopus?
This week Dave and Chris discuss DIN rail, IAC (featuring Space Lube), begging for Moonlanders, batteries, 10x-priced connectors, Gridfinity, concrete slabs, and more.
Applied Embedded Electronics with Jerry Twomey
Jerry Twomey, author of Applied Embedded Electronics, joins Chris to talk about how to build more reliable hardware when there are embedded components involved. And these days, there are almost always embedded components involved.
Building wafer.space with Tim Ansell
Tim ‘Mithro’ Ansell returns to The Amp Hour to discuss his new Singapore based wafer sharing service called wafer.space. Now that Efabless is no more, this venture will aim to make silicon even more accessible to the masses, driving down the costs on a per chip basis. For $7K, you get 1000 chips delivered on a 180 nm process from Global Foundries.
Test Point Accupuncture
Dave and Chris discuss solar, nuclear, making new injection molds from old ones (or not), and how to probe poorly placed test points with tiny needles.
Electric Propulsion with Todd Bailey
Todd Bailey has been busy in the 11 years since he was last on the show. He has designed submarine sonar and many different pieces of space electronics, the latest being a hall effect thruster that uses solid propellant for his now sold company Starlight Engines.
Beware of the Overachievers
Dave and Chris record after a long break between episodes together and discuss new electronics designs they’re working on, solar and battery installations, dealing with tariffs, and building at JLC.
CircuitHub, 12 Years Later with Andrew Seddon
Andrew Seddon, founder and CEO of CircuitHub, joins Chris to talk about how CircuitHub has changed over the past 12 years as a startup and how they are continuing to push the boundaries of high mix domestic electronics manufacturing.
Hardware Security with Matt Brown
Matt Brown is a hardware and IoT security researcher. He joins Chris to talk about best practices for securing hardware that talks to the internet and share stories of products that didn’t pass muster.
LEDs Everywhere with Tim from Mitxela
Tim from Mitxela stops by the show to discuss his extensive portfolio of projects involving, hardware (tiny LEDs), firmware (ridiculously low power processing), software (emulating gameboy), and mechanical (machining jewelry grade objects)
It Works With Option Number 5
This week Dave and Chris discuss solar optimization, short videos, useless products, cameras, energy monitors, Bluetooth, magnets, and more!
Making The Invisible, Visible with Sam Aldhaher
Sam Aldhaher is a power engineer and 3D graphic artist, his Blender visualizations have helped many people understand how RF flows in a variety of circuits. Sam joins Chris to talk about how to get started in Blender and the variety of tools available once you do.
Voltage, Vibes, and VOCs
In this episode, Dave and Chris cover environmental monitoring, trade shows, manufacturing, tariffs, new test equipment, and AI coding.
Small Scale Electronics Manufacturing with Colin O'Flynn
Colin O’Flynn returns to The Amp Hour for a 3rd time to talk about recent developments in security, FPGAs, small scale electronics manufacturing, and the world of academia.
Like a steam engine in your house
In this episode Dave and Chris discuss solar installs, wacky tariffs, peak power pricing, tiny electronics, oscilloscope triggering, and more.
System Designer Lets You Try Every Part with Michael Gielda
Michael Gielda returns to the show (for a third time) to talk about the work Antmicro is doing to extend hardware, firmware, and silicon design. Their new tool System Designer allows even more high level testing of full systems, in addition to their popular Renode tool.
Clap on, clap off, lights flicker
Dave and Chris discuss bluetooth boards, what happens when batteries leak, new cellular capabilities in iPhones, AC flicker, old oscilloscopes, and more!
A Jumperless Breadboard with Kevin Cappuccio
Kevin Cappuccio joins Chris to talk about the Jumperless Breadboard, an advanced platform for prototyping and interacting with circuits that you place onto the breadboard.
The Tandy Train
Dave and Chris discuss the Tandy 200, test equipment cashflow, the return of the Pebble watch, GPT trying its hand at CAD, solar output…and more
The RP2350 with the Raspberry Pi Team
The RP2350 from Raspberry Pi is a dual dual-core (Cortex-M33 and Hazard 3 RISC V) microcontroller with extensive peripherals. Some of the Raspberry Pi team (James Adams, Chris Boross, Liam Fraser, Luke Wren) join Chris to discuss how the chip evolved from the RP2040, including interesting security and lower power enhancements.
A Benchtop Pick and Place with Stephen Hawes
Stephen Hawes started Opulo, a company that builds the Lumen Benchtop Pick and Place. Opulo designs open source hardware and sane software for building your own PCBs in your lab.
Data Provenance in the Home, Server, and Fab
This week Chris and Dave discuss the changes at Intel, being in control data in your home lab, bogus copyright claims for repair videos, and more!
Lee Felsenstein: The Computer Revolution & Counterculture
A full 3 hour discussion with the legendary Lee Felsenstein, designer of the Osborne 1, SOL computer, VDM-1, Pennywhistle modem, and the inventor of social media.
Troubleshooting is the skill
Chris and Dave discuss updated house wiring, making smart relays capable of switching power, how to design a linear supply, and using AI tools to help troubleshoot code (but NOT layout)
Your Mind Is The Tool
Chris and Dave discuss troubleshooting a dead short in a PCB, the slow march of time, retirements, whether 2 layers is sufficient on PCBs, and much more!
Compact High Speed Design with Lukas Henkel
Lukas Henkel, CEO of OV Tech, joins Chris to talk about high speed design while utilizing incredibly small form factors. They discuss open source SIPs, a CM4 replacement board, FEM modeling, and more!
Catching Rockets with Musk Sticks
Chris and Dave discuss identifying boards, amazing rocket catches, recent travel to trade shows, the impacts of the floods on the supply chain, EV charging, and more!
Satellite Design Engineering with Dan Esparon
Dan Esparon from Inovor Technologies in South Australia joins Dave to discuss all about the engineering of designing and launching satellites!
All About Antennas with Katerina Galitskaya
Katerina Galitskaya is a Senior Antenna Engineer who is currently designing base station antennas. She joins Chris to talk about simulating, visualizing, and thinking about the design of antennas. Listen for everyday design rules and stories of interesting antenna designs.
Watt Is The Deal
This week Dave and Chris talk about Meshtastic (a meshing layer on top of LoRa), new scope specs, cellular modems, power, and a new Embedded Conference in the US.
Moving House (And Lab)
Dave and Chris record together after a long hiatus because Chris spent the summer moving boxes between two houses and reorganizing his lab. Also hardware livestreams, open source hardware, new battery storage, layoffs, and more!
Changing Course with Shawn Hymel
Shawn Hymel is an engineer and content creator who recently left his developer relations job at Edge Impulse to work on developing courses full time
Turtles as a Service
Dave and Chris return to talk electronics trade shows, API tools, solar and batteries, automation, and more!
Lifelong Learning with Bitluni
Bitluni joins Chris on The Amp Hour to discuss FPGAs, ESP32 projects, custom silicon, building around memes, and continually challenging yourself to learn something new.
Silicon Revolution with Matt Venn
Matt Venn returns to The Amp Hour to talk about the successes (and learnings) from many additional runs of TinyTapeout, a shared project service sitting on top of a multi product wafer service. Matt also talks about a forthcoming analog ASIC design class on Zero to Asic, his online course.
NDA Sideshow
Dave and Chris talk about the letdown of signing an NDA and seeing “behind the curtain”. Also inverters, programming tools, pricing changes at Altium, and old school web stuff.
Engineering Careers with Circuit Break & James Lewis
Chris joins the Circuit Break podcast (Parker Dillman, Stephen Kraig) along with James Lewis to talk about engineering careers. This show will also be posted as episode 435 of the Circuit Break Podcast
Freelance PCB Design with Petr Dvorak
Petr Dvorak is a freelance PCB designer and a prolific sharer of knowledge on LInkedIn. He joins Chris to discuss electronic microscopes, traveling to Shenzhen, revision control, KiCad (of course), and much more!
50.0000 Ohms
Chris and Dave discuss controlled impedance board traces, classic hacker movies, Location APIs, CHIPS act beneficiaries, power problems in houses, and more!
Long Distance with CNLohr-a
CNLohr returns to The Amp Hour to talk about LoRa and implementing a solution using harmonics coming out of a standard microcontroller’s GPIO
Good Energy Citizen
This week Chris and Dave discuss EV charging, chip fabs, manufacturing, large airliners, power storage, and more!
Really long needle nose pliers
Dave and Chris talk trade shows, demos, light up hardware, bluetooth, obsolete processors, sustaining engineering, and more
Simulating doors falling off
This week Dave and Chris talk about upcoming demos, bluetooth, car troubles, new silicon, parts in the lab, and more!
Motors on PCBs with Carl Bugeja
Carl Bugeja joins Chris to talk about building PCB motors and actuators, starting a new business, documenting build processes on YouTube, manufacturing flexible circuits, and much more!
The non-Stinky Car
Dave and Chris discuss EVs, adapting power tool batteries for projects on the bench, robots, software updates, and more!
Blogging Electronics with Pallav Aggarwal
Pallav Aggarwal of CAPUF Embedded joins Chris to talk about blogging about learning electronics and helping others learn along the way! Pallav does teardowns, chip walkthroughs (like on the CH32V003), Linux projects, custom hardware, and more!
My Toothbrush Is Broadcasting
Chris and Dave discuss SPICE in CAD programs, new software releases, startup paperwork, crazy smarthome stuff, and toothbrushes that give away your data.
Altium...Acquired!
Dave and Chris talk through Renesas acquiring Altium and all its implications. Also Dave gives a history of Altium and they discuss how the industry might change (or not).
Uncle Al's Eating Garbage Again
This week Chris and Dave discuss relativistic time differences, building with RISC V components, RF modules, silly consumer hardware, underwater electronics, and more!
Automating the Home with Keith Burzinski
Keith Burzinski of Nabu Casa works on ESPhome and making it easier to attach custom hardware to the open source home assistant project. He joins Chris to talk about the realities of offline smart home setups and how you can get started building custom things.
Pneumatic Tubes, Straight To The Home
Dave returns after a few weeks on holiday to chat with Chris about robots, maker companies merging, hyped up tech at CES (and beyond), trains, power grids…and more!
The Twelfth Day of Keyzermas
Jeff Keyzer of Mightyohm.com joins Chris for a later-than-usual holiday episode, recording on what will be known as The Twelfth Day of Keyzermas
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