The Amp Hour · 19 Jun 2025 · 1h 03m · Episode 696
Dave Jones and Chris Gammell discuss a useless wrist-worn multimeter, the educational value of visual tools like Blender and quantum diamonds, and the pitfalls of camera review content. They detail Dave's struggles with a DI hybrid solar inverter's drifting internal clock and Chris's hack day project implementing a remote shell for Zephyr OS devices using Golioth. The conversation concludes with a comparison of Australian and US electrical systems and a lesson on hysteresis from a car's low-temperature warning.
makers and hobbyists and early-stage companies
Other shows on the same ground, closest first.
Elecia White and Christopher White discuss Elecia's recent burnout while teaching her Making Embedded Systems course on Classpert, and Christopher's debugging of a subtle SPI + FreeRTOS bug on a Cypress PSoC chip. They also cover Elecia's recommendations for the book 'Thanks for the Feedback', the Wokwi simulator for Raspberry Pi Pico, and listener projects like Serial Wombat and Cyanobyte.
Elecia White and Christopher White discuss their experiences with the Zephyr RTOS, highlighting its powerful ecosystem but steep learning curve, particularly regarding the complex build system, Kconfig, and device tree (DTS) configurations. They share specific debugging stories, including a hardware noise issue caused by a jumper cable and a Zephyr driver integration problem where a missing ST module caused build failures. The conversation also covers debugging techniques like rubber-ducking, the limitations of AI tools for embedded code, and career reflections on becoming a senior engineer.
Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi discuss recent community hacks, including Mikey Sklar's work to bring MicroPython's Viper and empy cross speedups to CircuitPython, and Bas Bottberg's reverse engineering of a Bluetooth printer using bleak. They also cover Ben's complete firmware rewrite of an E-grooter in Rust, which involved discovering CAN bus over USB-C, and Egg Karate Singh's complex mechanical clocks like Ovodio. The episode concludes with Hackaday Europe talks: Sylvain's bare metal 'Minimacy' virtual machine for security-critical applications, and Janelle Wellen's presentation on space mission hacks and troubleshooting.
Hosts Elecia White and Christopher White discuss the intersection of science fiction and engineering inspiration, review Digilent's Analog Discovery 2 and Digital Discovery test equipment, and detail Christopher's experience building a QRP Labs Ultimate 3S ham radio kit for WSPR. They also cover Elecia's struggles with Ubuntu and the NVIDIA Jetson TX2, the choice of programming languages for embedded firmware, and Elecia's appearance on the Jennylyn Show.
Hosts Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos discuss the upcoming Supercon conference in Pasadena and the Frikkin' Lasers Contest. They cover several hacks, including Abdul Sahil's OpenStrap project which reverse-engineers the Whoop fitness tracker's Bluetooth protocol to enable local data processing, and Paul Rickards' portable Raspberry Pi cyberdeck. The episode also features a deep dive into Michael Weebush's analog directional coupler for bidirectional communication over a single wire, and Maya's analysis of the challenges in archiving software as physical media disappears.
The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by The Amp Hour. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.