Hackaday Podcast · 21 Jan 2022 · 59m · Episode 152
Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi discuss the winners of the 555 Timer Contest, including Red Raksha's discrete wooden circuit sculpture and Eric Brandahl's ESP32-driven analog hybrid synthesizer. They highlight Riskables' open-source magnetic mechanical keyboard design that uses Hall effect sensors, and Colin O'Flynn's open-source Pico EMP tool for voltage glitching. The episode also covers a Star Trek Voyager tricorder prop by mangy dog, which required a complete redesign due to component obsolescence, and research into detecting malware via EM signatures.
makers and hobbyists
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Hosts Dave Jones and Chris Gammell discuss the upcoming 555 Timer Design Contest, detailing its categories, judge Forrest Mims, and the March 1st deadline. They also explore the history of EPROMs and the 'green pen' audio hoax, review listener workbenches, and discuss the Computer History Museum and the revival of Popular Electronics magazine via Kickstarter.
Hosts Dave Jones and Chris Gammell discuss the community excitement surrounding the 555 timer contest, with Jones sharing his experience using a vintage 1976 Signetics triple 555 chip. The conversation shifts to industry news, including Intel's $700 million loss due to a chipset bug, National Instruments' R&D hiring plans, and the business models behind free EDA tools from Analog Devices and Microchip. The episode also features a 'Workbench of the Week' segment showcasing hobbyist setups and a discussion on the viability of plastic transistors and laser PCB cutting.
Lenore Edman and Windell Oskay of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories discuss their business model of creating high-quality hobby electronics kits, such as the disintegrated 555 Timer and 741 Op-Amp, which are faithful transistor-scale replicas of classic chips. They explain how they design products like the AxiDraw pen plotter to ensure a successful user experience, often choosing to sell complex items as assembled units rather than kits. The conversation also covers the evolution of PCB aesthetics, the shift from gEDA to KiCad for open-source hardware design, and their personal hobby of studying seaweed through the Jepson Herbarium.
Dave Jones and Chris Gammell host a live Q&A for their 555th episode, discussing the history and engineering of the 555 timer, the safety constraints preventing rechargeable multimeters, and the PCB manufacturing economics of ground pours. Gammell recounts his time at Altium, detailing the failed 'NanoBoard' FPGA development platform and the company's strategic pivot away from hardware. The conversation also covers the challenges of home energy storage, the viability of hydrogen vehicles versus EVs, and the professional market dynamics between Altium and KiCad.
Hosts Dave Jones and Chris Gammell attempt their first call-in show, fielding questions from listeners on electronics design and ethics. They advise a caller on protecting low-level analog sensors from high-voltage induction in substations, troubleshoot I2C bus issues for a rocket stabilization prototype, and discuss the ethics of responsible disclosure for hardware security vulnerabilities with former guest Brandon Harris. The episode concludes with a discussion on the future of through-hole components for education and the challenges of judging the Hackaday Prize.
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