MEP EP#174: Apply Inspiration Here Josh Rozier Research and Development of Transformers More than meets the eye Josh was a guest on EP #152: Third Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special – Vader’s Fake Fingers Parker DOOM SAO Screens arrive this week. Going to Test them with the breakout board. Atmel ICE to Tag connect adapter board ordered. Wagon Grill complete Sodium Hydroxide to remove Anodizing Stephen Removing Cosmoline from M1 Garand Rifle Genericized trademark for a common class of br...
May 29, 2019•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 174
MEP EP#173: Sidecreeping Gyrations Parker DOOM SAO ATSAMD21G18 Will be Arduino compatible Break out the majority of the I/O ST7789 LCD 1.3” 240x240 resolution SPI USB Type-C EEPROM AND!XOR for SAO reference designs Designed some arduino shields boards for the “smart LEDs” for testing PinoTaur update Software for the ATSAMD21G18 going well Lots of SPI and DMA going on to control the shift registers Stephen Macro Amp Differences Surface mount tech with high voltage Wilkinson Audio Fredman Clip Tes...
May 23, 2019•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 173
Triode Mode Tariffs Parker ATSAMD21G18A Breakout works! Next steps is power design and testing for PinoTaur Wagoneer Tach Installed. Will get this documented on the Longhorn Engineer blog Stephen Wilkinson Audio Fredman Clip Cool technique for removing hiss and fizz from your recordings Manufacturing? STL that Parker will print Fired up one channel of the Macroamp in Triode Mode Working great Considering a new PCB to clean up the design DML speakers Don't sound that great Working on a "prize" fo...
May 15, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 172
Mayonnaise Drone (And Other War Crimes) Danny Rankin An instructor in the Technology, Arts and Media (TAM) program at the University of Colorado Boulder The courses Danny teaches and his individual research reflect a diverse array of expertise, including graphic design, material fabrication, game design, hardware hacking, sustainable agriculture and large-scale installation art Co-directs the ATLAS Whaaat!? Lab , a space for experimental game and interaction design Cooperative card game Ravine ,...
May 08, 2019•52 min•Ep. 171
MEP EP #170: Start Getting Crusty Parker PinoTaur MCP23S08 I/O Expanders Verse Shift Registers? Wagon Tach Project 3D printed the housing Need to run the wire from the distributor to inside the cab To knock down the distributor signal In series diode to prevent negative flyback? voltage from affecting circuit Resistor divider Zener diode to clamp to 4.7V H11L1M - Schmitt Trigger Opto Stephen MacroAmp Testing Used a variac to bring the amp up to voltage Found some of the resistances were too high...
May 01, 2019•56 min•Ep. 170
Is "I'm an Engineer" a valid defense? Parker PinoTaur Update 12V master voltage input Switching psus for the voltage rails ATSAMD21G18A Breakout Board 32.768KHZ is the external crystal? Lead free Smart LEDS?! Direct from APA Electronic APA-102C-5050 256 APA-104-260-5050 Stephen Macroamp Update Tested preamp board ~42x gain which is much too high Power supply resistance is way too high at 2k Did not account for extra current draw from buffer Jfets J111 Jfet was bad out of the box - Have replaced ...
Apr 24, 2019•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 169
Kevin Beller of Seymour Duncan Kevin Beller Heads up the Engineering and New Product Development Departments at Seymour Duncan Does the electronic and mechanical design, pickup design, tooling and fixture design He has worn a lot of hats in his 40 years at Seymour Duncan by starting out as production supervisor and manufacturing engineer in 1979 How does an engineer sell a creative idea? Idea generation Turning sound into a design. What drives the product? Specifications Validation Audience? Use...
Apr 17, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 168
BenHeck and the PinoTaur Benjamin Heckendorn A console modder and famous computer engineer Better known as Ben Heck on the Internet Independent filmmaker and he was the star of element14’s The Ben Heck Show, a popular online series, until leaving the show in late 2018 Previous guest on episodes EP#23: Interview with Ben Heck of The Ben Heck Show EP#75: Does the Simulation Match the Reality? EP#153: Discrete Atomic Luffa Control PinoTaur Pinball Platform Plans for PinoTaur EP#85: Space Engineers ...
Apr 10, 2019•59 min•Ep. 167
Ken and Chip Gracey of Parallax Inc Ken Gracey Leader and CEO of Parallax UC Davis alumni who lives and breathes Parallax products and has done so around the world All about family, working smart, having fun, mountaineering, and riding his unicycle Chip Gracey Parallax founder. He had his first major introduction to programming and electronics when he was 13 years old with the Timex Sinclair computer After graduating high school, he and his techy friend from the 7th grade started Parallax at the...
Apr 03, 2019•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 166
Simplified Home Automation Dillon Nichols Electrical engineer specializing in embedded systems Spends his free time designing circuits, writing code, and building physical objects by 3D printing, woodworking, and metal working Enjoys trying out new processors and services to build up his engineering knowledge base Dillon was one of the Winners of the MacroFab Design Contest: Blink an LED Pragmatic Blinky Category Disintegrated LM3909 - 1.5V LED Flasher Home Automation What do you enjoy about hom...
Mar 28, 2019•40 min•Ep. 165
Surfing for Science: Phil Bresnahan of Smartfin Phil Bresnahan Has made the water his playground and office for most of his life Senior Development Engineer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography a department of UC San Diego, and the Lead Engineer of the Smartfin Project SmartFin What is SmartFin? The Lost Bird Project Why use a Surf Board for this platform? What kind of sensors does this fin have? How does it measure the ocean’s chemistry? Construction techniques? How is the fin charged and pow...
Mar 20, 2019•39 min•Ep. 164
The Golden Integrated Circuit Parker Propeller Development Stick Type-C Addition Found the BQ24165RGET to handle the lithium battery power management New battery management IC handles dual inputs thus replacing the TPS2113ADRBR power mux and p-channel mosfet Wagon Tach Project Signal is a 50V pulse from the distributor Arduinos do not like 50V Wagon Powered Mirror PCB Installed! 3D printed a bracket and installed into the door Tag Connect Probe Ends Will give a full report on how well they work ...
Mar 13, 2019•58 min•Ep. 163
Electric Vehicle Charging and Cat Safety Christopher Howell OpenEVSE started in February 2011 with a simple experiment to try to generate the J1772 pilot signal on an Arduino One experiment lead to another to another until a prototype J1772 compatible controller was born With lots of feedback and interest a few boards were offered to other hardware hackers What started as 6 boards built in the first batch turned into many thousands... Today, OpenEVSE powers charging stations from many manufactur...
Mar 06, 2019•35 min•Ep. 162
Kalashinikaze: The Right to Fly Arms Parker Prop Dev Stick Type-C edition update Routing almost complete Moved from 0603 to 0402 Parallax Propeller moved from QFP to QFN Changed the voltage regulator from a NCP1117 3.3V to a AP7361C 3.3V Why? Adding Lipo battery charging support BQ24075 Ti part Testing my USB Type-C example boards Interesting Dongle Type-A to Type-C Wagon power mirror controller works! Stephen LND150 feedback tone stack for a Roz amp Similar to the Venteq this is a variable impe...
Feb 27, 2019•52 min•Ep. 161
Al Williams and the One Instruction Wonder Al Williams One of the authors behind Hackaday , a website that features electronic projects and other things that appeal to people interested in computers, electronics, and technology Ham radio operator Author of many books Has worked on everything from underwater technology to the International Space Station and just about everything in between Was on previous episodes EP#57: Mr. Williams, your book changed my life EP#94: Al Williams and the Field Pro...
Feb 20, 2019•54 min•Ep. 160
Parker Wrote an article about the past three years of the MacroFab Engineering Podcast Chime Module MC14069UB Hex inverter MC14001UB Quad NOR gate Other Circuit components What is the best way to reverse engineer a PCB? Ray Alert Stephen Rebuilt and rewired 3 amplifiers Soldano clone went from being somewhat noisy to virtually nothing Very interesting grounding scheme Lots of dos and donts Utracer tube testing The Macro Amp Nu Tube Always remember to over buy parts Game idea? Zork derivative gam...
Feb 13, 2019•55 min•Ep. 159
Jason Cerundolo An engineer experienced in mechanical, electrical, and firmware engineering Jason has over nine years of experience as a hardware engineer and working on electronic designs in Silicon Valley In his free time, he works on open source projects , such as USB Type-C tools and projects USB Type-C Power Delivery PHY Breakout Board A breakout board for the FUSB302 USB-PD PHY for BMC communication used in USB-C connectors Determine plug orientation (normal or reversed) Determine or adver...
Feb 06, 2019•50 min•Ep. 158
Parker Star Wars Detonator is 95% complete It is inside the enclosure and works! Stand needs to be printed and wrap up the paint Original STL files for the detonator by Roel Veldhuyzen Future of this project? USB Type-C Article Update USB Type-C -> FTDI FT230X -> Parallax Propeller is completed Example is on our githubs Next is going to be a direct to MCU style like an ATmega32u4 unless someone else has a better idea from the slack channel? Stephen EQ is functioning! Grtyvr from our Slack ...
Jan 30, 2019•50 min•Ep. 157
Parker Wagon Chime Module Installed back on Wagon and It works! USB Type-C Article Update Have the Type-C to FT230X complete Design Block for Eagle ESD protection on the CC Pins? IP4234CZ6,125 USB ESD protection Stephen Found the old ribbon mic from MEP EP#110: Dangling Transformers Going look at doing a quick spin of a stacked PCB based version instead of the 3d printed chassis Boards can screw together to clamp to the ribbon itself by having a gold pad on the PCB Need a way to do fine tune adj...
Jan 23, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 156
Parker Wagon Chime Module Repaired StarWars Detonator Prop RPI3 CM Motherboard USB Hub Saga LAN9514 MP62551 or TPS2054B Improving the Prop Dev Stick Changing to QFN from QFP Prop USB Type C for USB 2.0 Changing the power handling? Original part is TPS2113 Only handles 5.5V MAX NCP3901 is a Dual input Mux Handles more power then I need but no built in current limiting Maybe MPS has a good standalone current limiter? Stephen Beginning the eq build. There is a lot to do so it is taking a bit of tim...
Jan 16, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 155
Cliff Schecht An electrical engineer with a masters degree Spends his days rescuing vintage gear Is the CEO and operates Reclaimed Audio Reclaimed Audio offers repair and restoration services on audio, radio, and test equipment from the turn of the century through current state of the art Restoring Vintage Audio Equipment How to restore equipment and keep it true to original design, but get it ready for another 20 years run time Rebuilding power supplies on tube units for example, but not changi...
Jan 09, 2019•52 min•Ep. 154
Benjamin Heckendorn An electronics hacking entertainment guru Former host of Element 14’s “ The Ben Heck Show”. Chris Kraft A tinkerer currently working as a software engineer in the financial services industry Extensive background in 3d printing and building anything that seems interesting Past two years Both where last seen on Episode 75: Does the simulation match reality? Ben has moved on from hosting "The Ben Heck Show" Chris has been experimenting with SLA resin printers Hangprinter A very ...
Jan 02, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 153
Josh Rozier By day Josh Rozier does business intelligence and data analytics for a large, east-coast insurance monolith By night he is Roz, a level 5 Scoundrel and chief troublemaker of the StarWars D20 RPG group Is the Force a Force? Hyperspace Ramming 12 Parsecs? Solo’s famous line that shows Lucas has no idea what he was writing . Predictions from the previous podcast Stephen was right - Luke Died Parker was wrong. Though is Rey really a Jedi without training? Rey didn’t change her name to Ne...
Dec 26, 2018•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 152
Brandon Satrom Developer Advocate for Particle , an IoT platform company The founder of Carrot Pants Press , a company dedicated to educating makers On the MacroFab Engineering Podcast Episode Number 122 , Brandon discussed the Particle Photon and built an IoT breathalyzer with Parker live on the podcast What is currently distracting Brandon now? Why mesh networking matters Existing mesh networking standards Thread/OpenThread and why Particle built OpenThread into 3rd gen devices What is OpenThr...
Dec 19, 2018•49 min•Ep. 151
Congratulations to our Slack member Mobius Striptease! Mobius’ pulse generator won first place at their Senior Design Expo! Article written about MacroFab: Houston electronics manufacturing company gears up for growth . Talks about the growth of MacroFab over the past 2 years. Parker RPI3 Compute Module PCM5122 Routed LAN9514 Routed single upstream USB port on BCM2835 Pin 44 Ethernet 25MHz output Pin 31 LAN RESET Information found on the Raspberry pi forum Need to add USB current limiting CM3 HO...
Dec 13, 2018•41 min•Ep. 150
Matt Glazer Lead electrical engineer at KINETIC Building IoT wearables for the industrial workforce by day and building electric long-boards by night Obsessed with space and can talk hours on end about the current state of space technology Jeff Doong Head of manufacturing at KINETIC In charge of making sure current products are manufactured correctly and new products are designed to efficiently scale If he wasn't at KINETIC, he'd be a farmer back home in California KINETIC What is KINETIC? Last ...
Dec 05, 2018•52 min•Ep. 149
The podcast got mentioned in an article! 12 Great Podcasts for Engineers from the Mind Tribe blog. Mind Tribe is a design driven engineering firm based in San Francisco. The list spawns from a survey from the engineering team at Mind Tribe. Thanks Mind Tribe for mentioning our podcast! Parker RPI3 Compute Module Added PCM5122 Added LAN9514 Still figuring out the schematic part Ethernet and USB hub built in EFM8 Universal Beeeeeeeeeee Com port native! VCP driver Secret Project It may DOOM everyth...
Nov 28, 2018•52 min•Ep. 148
Charlyn Gonda Coder by day, maker by night A chronic problem solver and is currently in the middle of her year-long project, 12 Months of Makes Has too much fun building circuits, creating things with 3D printing, crafting hats and coding IoT devices! Topics Charlyn what is your background? Day Job ect? Why did you become a Software Developer? How did you go from a Software Developer to building Hardware for the first time? Any particular reason you wanted to start building hardware? How do you ...
Nov 21, 2018•49 min•Ep. 147
John Waidner Electronics Engineer with a background in Logic design, analog circuit, system integration and testing Currently John is a mentor for the TechHOUNDS and volunteers for the Boy Scouts of America Derek Fronek High school student from Carmel High School Part of the Carmel High School robotics team the TechHOUNDS TechHOUNDS What are the TechHOUNDS and how did you start? Leadership? Who leads the group? Divisions Robot Ops Programming/Electrical Construction Information Technology Public...
Nov 14, 2018•53 min•Ep. 146
Stephen's Vox in a Box Preamp Design Vox AC30 preamp - 3 gain stages with a cathode follower and a phase inverter Phase inverter - create differential signals for the power amp input Drop signal using voltage dividers and mosfet buffers 320V phase inverter to 18V buffer drive Built point to point on an aluminum plate for easy modification and testing Power Amp Design TPA3116 Class D amplifier LM311 comparator mute circuit for start up mute ~5 to 10 Seconds Runs at 400KHz - Left open pads for boo...
Nov 06, 2018•57 min•Ep. 145
