Circuit Break Podcast #6

Mythical Transistors

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March 11, 2016, Episode #6

Parker is working on the front panel for the SSPS, Rigol DP832 woes, and Stephen does a guest lecture for the Iron Yard.
  • Parker is still working on the Super Simple Power Supply. He is designing the front panel. He is considering using some WP1043 Kingbright LEDs.
  • Super Simple Power Supply will have two decimal places for the LED segmented displays. 10mV and 10mA display resolution.
  • Keypad for punching in numbers directly and encoder for scrolling.
  • The Rigol DP832 is the power supply Parker and Stephen currently use. Has the funky keypad. See Figure 1.
  • ESP8266 is a low cost wifi module that has been in the maker space for the last couple years.
  • IoT BBQ? Stephen thinks its getting silly. Parker thinks IoT is heading towards advertisement saturation for our lives.
  • Stephen did a guest lecture for the Iron Yard. It is a coding school. He gave a hardware based lecture. Covered the tool sets needed to design hardware like EDA Tools. Stephen pimped the MacroWatch.
  • Josh the sound guy trumps Parker and Stephen in figuring out where .ino file extension comes from.
  • Parker wrote a blog post about programming for production.
  • Heathkit launches a new website. $150 AM Radio? It is not just a radio but a chore since it is a kit! At least it looks nice…
  • Arduino and Raspberry Pi costs way less then any anything Heathkit offers. Stephen thinks Heathkit won’t last long.
  • Little Box Challenge winners where announced. The CE+T Power Red Electrical Devils blew the specs out of the water for the solar inverter.
  • Parker went to mouser to see if he could buy the mythical transistors the CE+T Power Red Electrical Devils used in the inverter. Found some crazy big GaN transistors made by GaN Systems. Pricey but crazy awesome power transistor specs.
Figure 1: Rigol DP832’s weird keypad

Figure 1: Rigol DP832’s weird keypad

About the Hosts

Parker Dillmann
  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

Stephen Kraig is a component engineer working in the aerospace industry. He has applied his electrical engineering knowledge in a variety of contexts previously, including oil and gas, contract manufacturing, audio electronic repair, and synthesizer design. A graduate of Texas A&M, Stephen has lived his adult life in the Houston, TX, and Denver, CO, areas.

Stephen has never said no to a project. From building guitar amps (starting when he was 17) to designing and building his own CNC table to fine-tuning the mineral composition of the water he uses to brew beer, he thrives on testing, experimentation, and problem-solving. Tune into the podcast to learn more about the wacky stuff Stephen gets up to.

Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!

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