The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

#727 – Boat Anchor Warehouse Jul 2, 2026 54:43 AI Data Centers & Local LLMs: Dave discusses his noise concerns regarding a new AI data center and its diesel backup generators being built near his office. Chris shares his experience running local AI models like Gemma 4 on a laptop using the Hermes orchestrator for tasks like coding and internet research. USB Power Delivery Chips: Discussion of the CH224, a USB PD negotiation chip that wor

#726 – Arduino’s Invisible Touch with Massimo Banzi Jun 17, 2026 1:10:53 Welcome, Massimo Banzi of SuperModerno and co-founder of Arduino Introduction and SuperModerno: Massimo introduces himself as a “friendly nerd” and discusses his new project, SuperModerno The project aims to explain the “behind the scenes” of technology to prevent people from becoming “slaves to the platform” The History of Technology: Massimo expresses his pa

#725 – The Secret Life of Circuits with lcamtuf / Michał Zalewski Jun 4, 2026 59:56 Welcome Michał Zalewski, AKA lcamtuf! The lcamtuf Substack is where Michał is writing most these days Chris first found and geeked out about the CNC guide on the lcamtuf original site (discussed many times here) Michał is interested in the craft of teaching electronics He recently published The Secret Life of Circuits with No Starch Press Use the code AMPHOUR26 for 30% off The Secret Life of Ci

#724 – All Heat, No Useful Work May 25, 2026 1:05:23 Chris just got back from a work trip to Madrid He also got to hang out with Matt Venn (and coworker Mike Szczys) in Valencia Dave has a new data center going in across the street Chris enjoyed this episode of Prof G Markets where they talked about the impact of data centers on power and the rise of “behind the meter” generation Dave without internet for a week. Chris has had mul

#723 – BeagleBoard’s Back with Jason Kridner May 7, 2026 1:10:54 Welcome back, Jason Kridner! Jason has previously been on the show Episode 59 (!) Episode 378 alongside Robert Nelson The BeagleY AI was the first board that mimic’ed the RPi form factor PocketBeagle 2 is still a small altoid tin form factor with a new processor The Zepto is a new product targeting a $1 price point for microcontrollers Many boards in the Beagle catalog now run Zephyr, a

#722 – AI Tooling with Matt Liberty and Luke Beno Apr 23, 2026 1:09:44 Welcome back Matt Liberty (Joulescope) and Luke Beno (Werewolf.us) Matt has been a guest on episodes 527 and 607 Luke was a guest on episode 272 Luke launched a new cable manufacturing and power supply company in the US called Werewolf.us Matt is working on the JS320 We discussed how PartsBox is a great ERP solution but Matt and Luke decided to go fully custom with Claude Code. Jan Rychter was a

#721 – Chip Design for Fun (and Waffles) with Julia Desmazes Apr 9, 2026 59:35 Welcome Julia Desmazes of Tales on The Wire Follow along with the blog post we discuss Two Weeks Until Tapeout Matt Venn – TinyTapeout – Episode 616 and 672 Andreas Olofsson – openroad/openlane – Episode 254 and 650 Tim Ansell – Wafer.space – Episode 375, 501, and 703 JTAG How do you know that tooling is or isn’t working? Accelerator Rabbithole with f

#720 – Hyper Growth and OpenClaw Interns Apr 1, 2026 1:01:27 Canonical (the makers of Ubuntu) acquired Golioth, meaning Chris is moving from a 12-person startup to an organization of over 1,200 people Dave found this chart of Canonical products on wikipedia to be useful An increase in professional travel from zero weeks to six weeks per year following the acquisition, including “sprints” in cities like London The naming convention for Ubuntu r

#719 – Inventing the Power MOSFET with Alex Lidow Mar 20, 2026 1:05:43 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

#718 – Layout Review with Zachariah Peterson Mar 11, 2026 1:00:36 Welcome Zachariah Peterson of Northwest Engineering Solutions! Zach listed the various places people can find his work, including The Altium YouTube channel Zach’s YouTube channel His personal technical blog The Altium Blog various industry conferences like PCB West 01:10 Zach mentions that he has been creating video content and seminars for several years, traveling to places like Denma

#717 – Back on the road in ’26 Mar 4, 2026 59:51 Chris will be having a meetup in London March 8th, 2026 click here for more info. He will also be at Embedded World the following week at various events. Dave is also headed to a meetup in Sydney that he has presented at in the past. The “lazy man move” for meetup organizers: scheduling events within walking distance of home to simplify travel logistics. Chris provides details on his

#716 – Electronics Manufacturing History with David Ray Feb 26, 2026 1:02:54 Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, SeaSats! Check out their open positions making autonomous ocean vehicles. Welcome David Ray of Cyber City Circuits • The “Retro Electro” Series: David explains his passion for writing historical articles for Digi Key, focusing on “giants” like Orstead whose contributions to electricity are often overlooked. • Career Background: David

#715 – Shiny New Pebble with Eric Migicovsky Feb 10, 2026 58:56 Welcome Eric Migicovsky of Pebble! Pebble is back after Eric worked with Google to open source PebbleOS and he reaquired the naming rights Eric returns to the hardware space after 7 years, including working at yCombinator, a famous accelerator for early stage startups, and on Beeper, a cross platform app for messaging. While discussing the difficulties of hardware project, Chris brought up a rec

#714 – The Measurement Blues with Martin Rowe Feb 3, 2026 1:17:19 Welcome Martin Rowe of EE World! Martin is a long time journalist in the electronics space, having worked at magazines like EDN, Test and Measurement World, EE World, and more! Kenneth Wyatt Concentrated vs diffuse information Product reviews Unitrend scope video Tek 5 series B Wirecutter for test equipment / parts Skepticism Webinars – 3 levels Martin has an HP34401A early model Touring T

#713 – Rubber Duck Incarnate Jan 26, 2026 1:09:01 Dave is back from vacation. He should have bought a Starlink mini (not as cheap as we thought) because his coverage was very poor throughout the trip. Space twitter Artemis II is going up soon (early Feb 2026) Billy makes artemis go up Sparkfun and Adafruit are on the outs PJRC (and Paul Stoffregen) makes the Teensy and it is now produced exclusively by Sparfkun The pinout is open but the bootl

#712 – Robots Everywhere with Aaed Musa Jan 20, 2026 58:37 Welcome Aaed Musa! Aaed is a YouTuber who builds a variety of robots and a mechanical engineering student at Purdue. He just completed his undergrad degree and is now working on his Master’s degree. I believe he is the first Amp Hour guest who is still a full time student. His channel has a great variety of builds including designing all the way down to gearboxes. Aaed says the MIT “

#711 – Medical Electronics Education with Mark Palmeri Dec 22, 2025 1:29:38 Welcome Dr Mark Palmeri, professor at Duke University! Mark has been at Duke since 1996, and has completed undergraduate, graduate, medical, and PhD degrees here (!) He has focused on making medical devices and now teaches others to do the same in his Biomedical Engineering (BME) courses Verification and Validation (v&v) is a large constraint in getting a regulated medical device to market B

#710 – Tugging on the Nerd Heartstring Dec 6, 2025 56:18 Chris got back from his honeymoon to the Galapagos, see photos on the updated version of his blog. Dave encountered a super secret podcast location Before leaving on vacation, Chris went to an event mentioned in episode 708 launching a new Tektronix scope. The parent company has been Danaher -> Fortive -> Ralliant (now based out of Raleigh) Large budget events Don Mcmillan is technically

#709 – Nobel Prize Winner Dr Barry Marshall Nov 10, 2025 50:16 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. But Barry is also an electronics hobbyist and vintage HP and Tek oscilloscope and vintage computer enthusiast. He visited the EEVBlog lab and sat down with Dave for an impromptu discussion about all sorts of things. https://www

#708 – All the Connectors with Davide Andrea Nov 3, 2025 1:05:09 Welcome Davide Andrea, author or The Electronic Connector Book! And many thanks to Blues for sponsoring this episode of The Amp Hour! Get 10% off your next order in their online store for a development kit by using the code AMPHOUR. Davide is an engineer working on Battery Management Systems at Elithion He got into writing and editing books via a postcard sent to him after he gave a talk For man

#707 – Welding with an HDMI Cable Oct 28, 2025 50:41 Thanks to our sponsor Blues this week! Visit the Blues store and use the code AMPHOUR to get 10% off your first order of a kit. Capacitors go pop on Dave’s audio setup, the Presonus monitors Ground loops causing HDMI cable sparking Chris was watching Jetman videos and got an ‘Is that real?’ from the kid. We find ourselves asking the same with all the AI generated video these da

#706 – Leading Edge Analog with Joren Vaes Oct 18, 2025 1:04:25 Welcome Joren Vaes, design engineer at SOFICS Simulation is critical when designing analog devices based on a PDK from the fab Parasitics are significant, especially with new nodes having upwards of 16 metal layers Chris complained about a class where the professor made them draw planar structures with graph paper with colored pencils Large fabs on leading edge nodes have 1800 page textbook of r

#705 – Psst…Hey buddy, wanna buy an Octopus? Oct 9, 2025 46:07 Contextual Electronics is “still a thing”. Sydney hosted the International Astronautical Congress (IAC). The IAC is the “big space event of the year,” held annually in a different city. Chris noted that US space funding seems low, leading some friends to move from NASA to private industry. Dave recorded two walkaround videos: a 30-minute bird’s eye view using a GoPro on a

#704 – Applied Embedded Electronics with Jerry Twomey Oct 3, 2025 50:46 Welcome Jerry Twomey (Effective Electrons) author of the book, Applied Embedded Electronics: Design Essentials for Robust Systems. Chris first heard Jerry on Embedded.fm last year. Jerry’s Background and Book Motivation: Jerry shares his quick history, moving from the Boston area to San Jose (Silicon Valley) and eventually to San Diego, where he has worked across diverse sectors including

#703 – Building wafer.space with Tim Ansell Sep 25, 2025 58:13 Welcome back Tim Ansell! Tim’s past appearances and previous work Discussing Tomu on 375 Discussing Fomu on 456.3 Discussing the open source PDK on 501 Tim’s previous work at Google involved releasing a manufacturable open-source PDK (Process Development Kit), which contains the fundamental information needed to create integrated circuits. Key open-source tools discussed include OpenROAD

#702 – Test Point Accupuncture Sep 15, 2025 1:06:01 Dave bought a lemon laptop Chris officially has solar that is installed, working, and is effectively an appliance at this point… Duke Energy and North Carolina nuclear mix The impact of batteries on the grid The Duck Curve is something Chris and Ari discussed on ep650 Open circuit voltage on panels Dave did a repair on a tennis ball machine Chris designed a board with test points too small

#701 – Electric Propulsion with Todd Bailey Aug 22, 2025 1:30:55 Welcome back Todd Bailey of Starlight Engines, now Muon Space! (11 years later) Todd was on Episode 194 of The Amp Hour, when he was consulting in the art and design space and building instruments like Where the Party At (WTPA). He was designing ‘robot doors’ for Calvin Klein’s house, discussed last time. Through Andy Reitano, Todd learned about a role at Lockheed Martin (a US

#700 – Beware of the Overachievers Aug 7, 2025 1:15:18 Dave is starting a new project for a lab timer called the uTimer Timelapse Geerling videos about clocks Mitxela clock Transflective displays Dave is looking at LCDs like this one Dropping Rs vs Ls Font chip .5mm pin pitch on the connectors Chris is making a new breakout board that is effectively a sensors shield for a Bluetooth chip. It’s the first time he’s using the service and it

#699 – CircuitHub, 12 Years Later with Andrew Seddon Aug 1, 2025 1:23:37 Welcome Back, Andrew Seddon! Founder and CEO of CircuitHub. Andrew was first on episode 131 of The Amp Hour CircuitHub has a partnership with Worthington Assembly Worthington and CircuitHub host the Pick Place Podcast Mimicing silicon manufacturing Common parts library Setting the factory up to have only 50k SKUs in house for speed of loading / attrition Driving people to 2000 parts was the orig

#698 – Hardware Security with Matt Brown Jul 17, 2025 1:07:16 Welcome Matt Brown of Brown Fine Security! Matt has been reverse engineering a “smart” smoker controller that talks back to AWS IOT Jeff Geerling talking about his dishwasher Storing private keys on the device?? Threat models Key rotation What is the best case scenario for an IoT device? Secure boot / trust zone Keys encrypt flash storage Chris has designed in the ATECC608 before Rep

#697 – LEDs Everywhere with Tim from Mitxela Jul 8, 2025 1:15:11 Welcome Tim from Mitxela! Introduced by Mike Harrison, past guest of the show Fluid pendant Volumetric display London hackspace https://matthias-research.github.io/pages/tenMinutePhysics/index.html FLIP in Blender CHNT36ta Pick and place doing 0201 Precision Clock Sewing machine (check out that GIF!) Secret life of machines – Tim Hunkin Isaac Singer Tim has many Lathe projects on the har

#696 – It Works With Option Number 5 Jun 19, 2025 1:03:08 Dave found a wrist mounted DMM that looks…inadvisable We’ll discuss the survey results next time! Florin Cocos of VoltLog Great Scott Sam Aldaher on the show last week Gerald Undone did a studio tour with Captain Disillusionment Short videos Dave using a go-pro on a bike Separate gyro file to stabilize D-y hybrid inverter Chart Remote shell Cline Chris is finally getting solar open e

#695 – Making The Invisible, Visible with Sam Aldhaher Jun 4, 2025 1:15:13 Welcome Sam Aldhaher, power engineer and 3D graphic artist! Sam has always been interested in art…and power engineering He primarily works in Blender and has been for 5-6 years Inputs and outputs Starting from Altium / KiCad for eCAD Blender doesn’t accept step files, it works with meshes like STL KiCad -> Blender is a good flow, as there are add-ons to import KiCad Making a good

#694 – Voltage, Vibes, and VOCs May 22, 2025 1:11:34 We are doing a 2025 listener survey! Answer the survey and put in your email to win one of three Jumperless OG units donated by Kevin Cappuccio (past guest of the show). Last day to input is June 1st. This episode was recorded Monday the 12th, which has implications on discussions. Dave recently returned from Melbourne for Dave’s recent visit to Electronex. Dave saw past guest Scott Willia

#693 – Small Scale Electronics Manufacturing with Colin O’Flynn May 13, 2025 1:18:42 Welcome back Dr Colin O’Flynn of Dalhousie University and New AE tech! Colin has been on the show twice before Episode 239 in 2015 Episode 552 in 2021 Colin continues to publish/do research around side channel attacks Now he’s targeting different ports / Jitter measurements JTAGulator RF Mixer Side channel with power Can you fix it on a chip? Targeting an SD Card port because ther

#692 – Like a steam engine in your house Apr 15, 2025 1:13:25 We are doing a 2025 listener survey! Answer the survey and put in your email to win one of three Jumperless OG units donated by Kevin Cappuccio (past guest of the show) Note: this was corrected from the original, these are not v5 units, they are the original Jumperless units. Apologies for the confusion ~CG Chris signed on to get solar installed He’ll be taking advantage of Duke Energy&#82

#691 – System Designer Lets You Try Every Part with Michael Gielda Mar 24, 2025 1:11:55 Welcome back (for a third time!) Michael Gielda of Antmicro Michael and Chris usually see each other around the Zephyr booth at Embedded World, but not this year Antmicro continues to work on Zephyr, which targets hardware using Devicetree Renode Mult-node testing code aethero Data center in space Cosmic shielding corporation Tying the simulation to reality How do you know an actuation has happe

#690 – Clap on, clap off, lights flicker Mar 12, 2025 1:02:15 Meetup.com doubled their prices so the 3H Triangle group moved to Luma (same is true for SF, Seattle) Note taking apps after Evernote was gutted: Joplin, Obsidian Battery leakage in a DMM Causes of leak The PCB of a Tonie box with an SD card glued in place. Board has an ESP32-S3. (Product page) Design decisions – Latched / unlatched EEVblog video Pulse stretcher 3rd mode ‘break on op

#689 – A Jumperless Breadboard with Kevin Cappuccio Feb 26, 2025 1:14:05 Welcome Kevin Cappuccio, creator of the Jumperless Breadboard (v5 and before) Check out the Jumperless v5 on Crowd Supply OG Jumperless Video This update shows a bunch of images with the breadboard off 3M whitelabels their breadboards (because of the adhesive?) Breadboard spring clips Spring clips (in 3D) Elecrow 369 CH446Q, a clone of Zarlink MT88161 FPAA Resistance of the traces BSky Sch

#688 – The Tandy Train Feb 12, 2025 1:10:01 Tracking test equipment on one long homepage…the emporer of test equipment If you track it, it’s not hoarding…it’s curation Very specific piece of junk wood Garage Solar Amber allows you to sell power back in Australia at some wild rates Dave is trying out case design in OpenSCAD…it looks…ok Pebble is returning to the world after Google open sourced the OS

#687 – The RP2350 with the Raspberry Pi Team Jan 28, 2025 Welcome James Adams, Chris Boross, Liam Fraser, and Luke Wren! The last time the RPi team was on the show was about the RP1 (#648) The order of parts being released was RP2040->RP1->RP2350 Check out the datasheet for the RP2350 Learning from silicon Security and power states The part is a “Dual dual core” The Arm side is a Dual M33 The RISC V side is a Hazard 3 processor, des

#686 – A Benchtop Pick and Place with Stephen Hawes Jan 21, 2025 Welcome, Stephen Hawes! Chris interviewed Stephen back in 2020 for his second episode of The Contextual Electronics Podcast. It was when Stephen was still working at Formlabs and the Lumen/Opulo were a glimmer in his eye. The Lumen v4 is a Benchtop Pick and Place machine that works with OpenPNP Where are we in relation to reprap? Powered feeders Videos about eeprom KiCad pos file Can reliably pl

#685 – Data Provenance in the Home, Server, and Fab Dec 23, 2024 Home assistant Homelab subreddit Solar assistant proxmox CarPlay / android auto NUCs Video Interview with Lee (since posted as #684 of TAH) 25K pound amplifier repair and associated EEVblog forum post Louis Rossman also talking about the copyright claim How the Fairlight CMI changed Music Read more here Synths / woodworking are hobbies that will eat all free cash flow (and Chris is considering t

#684 – Lee Felsenstein: The Computer Revolution & Counterculture Dec 10, 2024 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. Covering everything from the Berkeley free speech movement, the counterculture movement, his career, through to Obsorne and how he invented social media with Community Memory. His book: https://www.amazon.com/Me-My-Big-Idea… https:

#683 – Troubleshooting is the skill Nov 20, 2024 AI tools for helping with coding (but NOT layout, amirite) Troubleshooting as a skillset Stick meme Dave got an updated electrical box Home assistant Keith Burzinski episode (ESPhome) Toothbrush show Andreas Spiess discussing Bluetooth proxy Ian Scott Johnson DIY home automation Electrarc240 reviews every element of a linear power supply India power cables Buried cables Spotify is bricking t

#682 – Your Mind Is The Tool Nov 6, 2024 Chris has been troubleshooting a PCB with a dead short on inner layers (put in by board house by mistake) Don’t Touch My Gerbers shirt “Is there an AI tool that will fix this for me?” … No Chris dumped a bunch of current in the board and looked at it with this thermal camera 6.5 digit DMM to track down shorts Etching problems in the old days 100% etest Adding rails to PCB

#681 – Compact High Speed Design with Lukas Henkel Oct 31, 2024 Welcome Lukas Henkel of OV Tech GmbH, a product design firm based in Nuremburg Germany! Miniturization and the limits of miniturization Price is a constraint Using standard PCB tech (off the shelf) Open source SIP Steps Conventional pcbs / components Silicon inductors embedded in boards Bonded Bare dies / stacked Need volume to make it work Requirements to fit into ______ iMX8 ULP – 0.4

#680 – Catching Rockets with Musk Sticks Oct 21, 2024 Starship 5 landed on chopsticks! (you know, in case you have been offline for 2 weeks) Dave’s EV had a stuck cable Portable charger is surprisingly good CCS Charging standard Fast charge 36/50 kW MKBHD Chevy Silverado review JLC is now offering silkscreen QR codes to have individually marked boards That’s the board that Chris has been designing on a livestream each week 1 wire UID (

#679 – Satellite Design Engineering with Dan Esparon Oct 11, 2024 Dan Esparon from Inovor Technologies in South Australia joins Dave to discuss all about the engineering of designing and launching satellites! Dan works for Inovor Technologies, an Australian company that designs and builds satellites entirely in-house! Recently they designed and launched the aussie Kanyini satellite on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket https://www.inovor.com.au/missions/ They design and b

#678 – All About Antennas with Katerina Galitskaya Oct 1, 2024 Welcome Katerina Galitskaya! Chris started following Katerina’s antenna posts on LinkedIn Monopole vs dipole Lower frequences are harder bc longer wavelength PCB size half of frequency Place antenta on the shorter side How to ruin your PCB When to go to a antenna engineer? Where will the device be? Antenna environment Start from vacuum, start adding elements Dummies in the lab. The one in

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