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September 16, 2016, Episode #33
- Co-Podcast time with The Amp Hour’s Chris Gammell.
- Parker finds new ICs through the subreddit /r/nicechips and subscribing to manufactures mailing lists.
- Chip manufactures should just advertise the specifications of new chips and link direct to the datasheets.
- Other sources for new parts and information are EEweb and Electronics Weekly.
- Parker and Stephen do a really bad job explaining what MacroFab does. MacroFab does end-to-end electronics manufacturing and operations for low volume companies. Everything can be done via API end point which can enable your webstore to automatically drop ship inventory to your customers.
- Last time MacroFab talked with Chris Gammell it was only four people. Now MacroFab has over 20 employees and is moving to a 11k sq ft warehouse space.
- Renesas to Buy Intersil for $3.2 Billion. Everyone agrees that competition is good and these mergers go against that.
- How to defend against the USB Killer Thumb Drive. Best solution is to just not give users access to a USB ports.
- Samsung Note 7 exploding. Samsung says it is a mechanical issue but it sounds more like a failure of the Battery Management System.
- Parker has used the BQ24075RGTT for lithium battery management.
- Cycle life of Lithium batteries is around 500-600 recharge cycles.
- GM creates Elon Musk’s dream car first. GM will be using LG Tech’s batteries.
- Chris went to IMTS, International Manufacturing Technology Show a couple days ago. See Figure 1. Has lots of huge machines that Chris enjoyed looking at. How does electronic trade shows compete with this?
- Sword fighting robot arm by ABB.
- Stephen has been to Turbomachinery & Pump Symposia which is held in Houston, Texas.
- The ESP32 wifi module has been released. It is the successor to the popular ESP8266. If the price for the modules drop then the ESP32 will probably be as successful as the ESP8266.
- Stephen and Chris gotta go fast with SPI over I2C.
- Power will be the limiting factor going forward for IoT and other small devices as chips like the ESP32 drive the price of silicon down.
- Parker and Stephen are working on the SSPS (Super Simple Power Supply) and it is up on MacroFab’s github account. It is a 700W water cooled beast of a powersupply that runs a couple OPA541 opamps. See Figure 2 for the Analog test board for the SSPS.
- For EDA/CAD tools, Parker likes Eagle, Stephen likes DipTrace, and Chris is KiCad.
- MacroFab has seen lots of different EDA tools; Altium, Eagle, DipTrace, KiCad, PADS, Cadence, Ultiboard, Fritzing, EasyEDA, and MeowCad.

Figure 1: Fanuc robot arm picking up a car like it is nothing.

Figure 2: Stephen’s Test board for the SSPS.
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

Development Board Guilt
Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics and The Amp Hour join Parker and Stephen for a second time!

Free Form Jazz Welding
Parker talks LED patterns on the MEP SAO, Stephen uses a CNC machine, and RadioShack returns?

The IdeaFab Podcast
Guests Scott and Eric of The Idea Tank Podcast join Parker and Stephen.