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August 12, 2016, Episode #28
- Stephen has been running tests on the Energon Cube for the SSPS. So far everything is working great. Check out Stephen’s blog post update: Super Simple Power Supply “SSPS” Design (Part 3).
- The FX Dev board enclosure arrived and it looks great. See Figure 1 for some sweet powder-coated goodness.
- Parker has been working on streamlining all the MacroFab Engineering Github Repositories. Most of them should look consistent in layout and information now.
- All the Eagle footprint libraries have been updated with MPN and Populate attributes. Check them out here. Should be adding these features to DipTrace and KiCad footprints by next week.
- Releasing MF-CON-2.54mm-01xXX pinheaders. Check out the house parts section on the MacroFab website.
- Parker posted an article this week on Eagle Part Attributes. This way designers and engineers can easily add the MPN and Populate field to their own parts.
- In Episode 26 of MEP, Parker had a hacked together USB Type C prototype. Now Parker has a full on development board he designed using a FTDI FT230X and a Parallax Propeller (See Figure 2).
- ‘Transient electronics’ research develops dissolving battery. Basically, it’s a battery that has a polyvinyl alcohol-based polymer casing that swells causing it to dissolve (except for some nanoparticles) in around 30min after contact with water. It supposedly can power a laptop for 15 minutes but Parker did some napkin math and found out it was a bunch of crap.
- PokeBall Wiggles when Pokemon are Nearby. Cool project that uses servos inside a 3D printed pokeball to wiggle when it finds pokemon nearby for the Pokemon Go App. Uses Particle IoT’s “Photon” hardware and the Pokemon Go’s API.

Figure 1: Completed enclosure for the FX Development board.

Figure 2: Parker’s USB Type C prototype using a FT230X for the USB UART bridge and a Parallax Propeller.
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!
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