
Related Topics
How Soft Are Your Diodes?
Parker's pinball controller has gone gold! Revision 3 is being fabricated! Stephen then explores the softness factor of diodes and the SSPS returns?
Hungry Hungry Op Amps
Parker and Stephen just talk about Projects... Just Projects for 30 minutes.
You won’t believe this ONE WEIRD Engineering trick
Parker and Stephen talk about the Analog board of the SSPS and clickbait engineering article titles.
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February 6, 2016, Episode #1
- Stephen talks about the Stupid Simple Power Supply (SSPS). He designed a OPA541 breakout board for testing. See figure 1.
- OPA541 Datasheet : Street price of $21.88.
- Parker brings up that blinky LEDs are the most important part of a project. He is designing the control panel and chassis for the SSPS.
- FTDI is again at war with counterfeit parts.
- Microchip buys out Atmel for $3.8 Billion. The consolidation of semiconductors continues.
- France building a huge solar roadway. This again?
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.
Related Podcasts

You won’t believe this ONE WEIRD Engineering trick
Parker and Stephen talk about the Analog board of the SSPS and clickbait engineering article titles.

Lousy Datasheet Buyouts
Stephen and Parker rant (again) on bad datasheets, ARM being bought out by SoftBank, and general project updates.

Hungry Hungry Op Amps
Parker and Stephen just talk about Projects... Just Projects for 30 minutes.

Super Simple Buss Bars of Power
Parker and Stephen talk about the SSPS Energon Cube and Eagle Part Libraries.

Dissolving Energon Cubes
Stephen and Parker chat about updates to the SSPS and FX Dev board.

How Soft Are Your Diodes?
Parker's pinball controller has gone gold! Revision 3 is being fabricated! Stephen then explores the softness factor of diodes and the SSPS returns?