
Related Topics
Sealed Tigersharks
Stephen's finally upgrades his toolkit to include a Digital Logic Analyzer and Parker repairs a Tigershark. Don't worry it's not a real shark.
Design Contest – Useless Machines Wrap Up
The Useless Machine contest has just closed. Thank you Mouser for sponsoring our contest and our judges! The Podcast Favorite gets chosen!
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Parker gets test results from his APA-102C experiments and Stephen wraps up REV2 of the MacroAmp!
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June 5, 2019, Episode #175
MacroFab Design Contest: Useless Machine Sponsored by Mouser Electronics
- Four cash prizes!
- First Place: $1000
- Second Place: $500
- Third Place: $250
- MacroFab Podcast Favorite: $1000 and a Useless Trophy
- Contest runs 8 AM CST June 1st, 2019 through 8 AM CST August 10, 2019
- How to Enter your Useless Project
- Build an electronic project that is useless
- Document it as a new project on Hackaday.io
Tag it with “MacroFab Design Contest: Useless Machine”
- More rules and information on the blog
R.F.O.
Arm gives up control of IP to China
- Softbank, sold the 51% share of Arm China to the Chinese
-
- Nest was down. No A/C and Doors couldn’t be unlocked
- Services rendered YouTube, Gmail, and Snapchat
- Google Cloud on the backend
Squirrels and Security — It’s a Thing!
- They’re cute, they’re fuzzy, and they pose a major threat to our cyber-infrastructure.
- “Frankly, the No. 1 threat experienced to date by the U.S. electrical grid is squirrels”
Visit our Public Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes!
About the Hosts

Parker Dillmann
Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.
In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.
In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.
Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.

Stephen Kraig
Stephen Kraig began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
Related Podcasts

Sealed Tigersharks
Stephen's finally upgrades his toolkit to include a Digital Logic Analyzer and Parker repairs a Tigershark. Don't worry it's not a real shark.

Design Contest – Useless Machines Wrap Up
The Useless Machine contest has just closed. Thank you Mouser for sponsoring our contest and our judges! The Podcast Favorite gets chosen!

Leeroy Jenkins Transistor
Parker gets test results from his APA-102C experiments and Stephen wraps up REV2 of the MacroAmp!