The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

Welcome, Massimo Banzi of SuperModerno and co-founder of Arduino Introduction and SuperModerno: Massimo introduces himself as a “friendly nerd” and discusses his new project, SuperModerno The project aims to explain the “behind the scenes” of technology to prevent people from becoming “slaves to the platform” The History of Technology: Massimo expresses his passion for technology’s history, emphasizing non-American innovators to show Europeans they can also lead in technology, citing the UK-based origins of the Arm processor The Legacy of Olivetti: He highlights Olivetti (founded in 1908), which moved from typewriters to creating the Programma 101, the first desktop computer used by NASA to compute orbits for the Apollo program Design as a Differentiator: Olivetti was the first tech company to apply design to everything (products, posters, and architecture) This inspired Massimo’s concept of the “invisible touch”, the idea that consistent, intentional design creates a unique connection with users and gives a company a competitive edge The Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII): Massimo’s path led him to IDII, located in the former Olivetti research building, where he transitioned from a two-week sabbatical to a four-year stay Learning by Making: To help students with no electronics background, Massimo drew on how he learned as a seven-year-old (“learning by making”) to remove the friction of interacting with technology The Founding Team: He met Tom Igoe (ITP) and David Cuartielles, and they realized students were afraid to be creative because they feared “blowing up” expensive tools like the Basic Stamp The “Pizza and a Beer” Price Point: Massimo aimed for a hardware cost of 20 Euros, roughly what a student would spend on a pizza and a beer, to encourage experimentation Building the Platform: Along with David Mellis, the team adapted Processing (a language for artists) by “surgically” replacing Java with C++ to create the Arduino IDE Ivrea Manufacturing: Leveraging the industrial base of Ivrea and Torino (the “Detroit of Italy”), Massimo was able to find local PCB manufacturers and assemblers just a short drive away From Hacking to AVR: Massimo’s early work involved hacking satellite TV PIC chips for soccer fans, but mentor Bill Verplank encouraged him to use AVR microcontrollers because they could be programmed simply in C Enabling Creators: Massimo shares stories of how Arduino enabled others, such as Josef Prusa, who started with Arduino as a teenager before building his global open-source 3D printer company The Innovation of Simplicity: Massimo argues that Arduino’s true innovation is the user experience This is measured by the “Time to First Blink”, the goal for a user to go from downloading software to blinking an LED in five minutes Standardization and “The Core”: Arduino became an ad-hoc standard by providing a compatibility layer across different microcontrollers Massimo believes in having a “small slice of a really large pie” by allowing other architectures to work within the ecosystem Hardware Architecture and the “Lasagna”: Inspired by the PC104 format, the board uses a layered approach where modules stack like a lasagna The “Shield of a King”: The name Arduino comes from King Arduino of Ivrea; David Cuartielles suggested that since the board was named after a king, the add-on modules should be called “Shields” Hardware Design Choices: The board fits a credit card size (to stay within the free version of Eagle software) and is blue because that color was thought to be less tiring for workers’ eyes Happy Accidents: The unique shape was chosen to be “ourselves instead of everyone else” During the design process, Massimo inadvertently moved a connector by half a step, creating an offset header that they kept for consistency after the first few thousand were made The Discovery of Auto-Reset: During a workshop in Germany, Massimo solved the frustration of manual resets by soldering a capacitor to the DTR pin, allowing the software to trigger the reset automatically The US Market and Legal Battles: Tom Igoe’s adoption of Arduino at NYU helped the US become the project’s single biggest market This growth led to a difficult legal battle for control of the brand against a former partner Support from Arm: Massimo credits Arm Ltd (and CEO Simon Segars) for providing the strategic support that allowed the founders to regain control of the company. Massimo believes this is the first time he has talked about the role of Arm in the difficult legal process. Industrial and AI Expansion: Partnerships with Intel and Microsoft (Windows 10 IoT) led to early forays into TinyML (AI on small boards) back in 2017 The Qualcomm Acquisition: In October 2025, Qualcomm acquired Arduino, which Massimo sees as essential for bringing “advanced silicon” into the family to handle the increasing complexity of technology The “Arduino Formula” and Layering: Massimo views Arduino as a formula for simplification that can be applied to anything, including complex Linux machines like the Uno Q This is achieved by building in layers, where beginners use high-level abstractions and experts can “strip away” layers to reach the bare metal The Future Vision: Massimo looks forward to the “Arduino Formula” being applied to new fields, stating he is waiting for someone to develop an “Arduino for biology” using CRISPR and DNA technology

Welcome Aaed Musa! Aaed is a YouTuber who builds a variety of robots and a mechanical engineering student at Purdue. He just completed his undergrad degree and is now working on his Master’s degree. I believe he is the first Amp Hour guest who is still a full time student. His channel has a great variety of builds including designing all the way down to gearboxes. Aaed says the MIT “mini cheetah” launched many low(er) costs builds of robots, including his own. Boston Dynamics (and many others) announced their new ATLAS robotics platform at CES this year. FOC motor controller Backlash is a measure of how much movement you have between the teeth of gears (and thus how accurate you can be with open loop control) Ball bearing balancing robot Inverse kinematics Past guest of the show James Bruton was a model for the builds that Aaed does what does the glue look like His recent build uses…rope…to build a robot dog? A Capstan drive has virtually zero backlash “relatively new rope” DM20 High precision speed reducer using rope the impacts of materials on design processes Juicero Relationship with classmates and professors as a YouTuber Purdue Engineering Aaed picked up electronics from youtube What’s his take on LLMs? Making next CARA open source New video recently came out about a spinning top bulk of the cost is in the motors and motor controllers growing up in the age of youtubers

Chris got back from his honeymoon to the Galapagos, see photos on the updated version of his blog. Dave encountered a super secret podcast location Before leaving on vacation, Chris went to an event mentioned in episode 708 launching a new Tektronix scope. The parent company has been Danaher -> Fortive -> Ralliant (now based out of Raleigh) Large budget events Don Mcmillan is technically funny Open Circuit The Way Things Work Discman teardown Neo the home robot Humane AI pin ‘tugging on the nerd heartstring’ Nikola / Trevor Norton Auto concept cars Rigol MHO 900 videos, already hacked, paid hack EEVblog forum Unknown chinese fpga Stephen Hawes working on a PCB that can be laser cut for super quick turn boards Oxide and Friends podcast KiCon (US) 2025 Talks

Welcome Davide Andrea, author or The Electronic Connector Book! And many thanks to Blues for sponsoring this episode of The Amp Hour! Get 10% off your next order in their online store for a development kit by using the code AMPHOUR. Davide is an engineer working on Battery Management Systems at Elithion He got into writing and editing books via a postcard sent to him after he gave a talk For many years he was an editor at Artech house He works on Lithium BMS systems for large setups How do young engineers learn about connectors, but for tribal knowledge within larger companies? Digikey catalog is a good search for connectors overall Industrial cinch by Harting Should you design a custom connector (“no”) Davide also built and maintains an online tool for finding connectors called Identiconn Fretting is when vibration causes a connector to fail Davide had to go to Bell Labs docs to look up some specs Chris remarked that Identiconn is a McMaster (Carr) style browsing experience Vendors divide based on how the fields are set up, because that is actually logical for them selling parts. It’s harder for finding/discovering components though. On distributor sites, the connectors are grouped by how they were bought Chris asked Davide about things that have gone wrong in his career with connectors FFC doesn’t connect back into the socket after the tab is ripped away ribbon cable vs ffc, CIC vs FPC IDC – insulation displacement connector Davide has filled in with generated terms where there are no defined language for a family/type of connector, such as with “bump idc” connectors “dual beam? Chris and Davide did a joint search for the high density CM4 connector that mounts the Raspberry Pi module to another board Gender of connectors (note: there is a great discussion about the historical nature of using gender for connectors in the book) Pin vs plastic gender Shrouded vs enshrouded gaziatea (sic) – poem from the 1800 USB type A connector Self mating APC7 – self mting connector Anderson connectors TNC BNC search PFFE for the dielectric on a BNC/TNC Magnetic connectors with pogo pins Example connector from Hyte Crimps were designed in the 50s The source of having so many power connectors is … imperialism? tahiti / fiji / nz all have different connectors Why antennas are male/female is…money? And regulatory silliness via the FCC Davide has also written about and is working on lithium ion batteries A sodium ion battery book (self published, unlike the LiIon books) should be out next year The Connector Book is self published. Your purchase directly supports Davide’s work…and you get the web tools for free! “peak lithium” What is required when refining sodium for batteries? The voltage range and charging needs are different for Sodium Ion. For instance, the range goes from 4V to 2V Find Davide on his various websites, on LinkedIn, on StackExchange, and on reddit

Welcome Joren Vaes, design engineer at SOFICS Simulation is critical when designing analog devices based on a PDK from the fab Parasitics are significant, especially with new nodes having upwards of 16 metal layers Chris complained about a class where the professor made them draw planar structures with graph paper with colored pencils Large fabs on leading edge nodes have 1800 page textbook of rules Because the constraints get tighter, that book gets longer for each node 2 nm mass production on finfet currently with TSMC 22 was the last classic cmos Finfet, looks like a devil ‘gate all around’ / nanosheet CFET (complementary field effect transistor) is next Joren really gets Maxwells Equations…as you have to at super high speeds SOFICS are making phy’s / IP blocks Amplifiers that are DC to 50 GHz Making a datasheet for the resulting IP block Joren got his PhD working on millimeter wave applications It’s all just physics Using coils to impedance match between layers Reflecting off of different materials at angles is Snells law (not lorentz equation) and that extends to different materials at different wavelengths Cables are very lossy at 100 GHz…dBs per cm Parasitics impact every part of the design process Wireline community – name for the high speed interfaces, including research in the space Most transistor threshhold voltages that Joren works with are … 750 mV! Voltage dependent drc rules Electromigration – holes in wires from electrons ESD is a big part of the business, and a large source of parasitics New product development for IP blocks Working with customers and Foundry at the 2 nm node Design companies need to be paying 100s of thousands to software providers After, it goes to spice and schedmatic Joren decides whether to jump in on layout LVS – layout vs schematic Parasitic extraction (spice netlist) PDKs define how you can do the layout stage Lower cost tools exist but more expensive tools have tooling that tells you when you’re violating DRC 3 main vendors Cadence Synopsis Siemens (Calibre) Foundries soemtimes only support one tool Doing test wafers allows testing of structures. They often get MPW at a discount from the fab (since they’re often testing new processes as well) How do they test with packaging options? ‘low speed’ can be die bonded or pcb mounted high speed does on wafer probing (with veeeery expensive probes) Check out Sofics.com for more info on the company. They also have a blog with a great name. Follow or connect with Joren on LinkedIn  

Welcome Jerry Twomey (Effective Electrons) author of the book, Applied Embedded Electronics: Design Essentials for Robust Systems. Chris first heard Jerry on Embedded.fm last year. Jerry’s Background and Book Motivation: Jerry shares his quick history, moving from the Boston area to San Jose (Silicon Valley) and eventually to San Diego, where he has worked across diverse sectors including consumer electronics, aerospace, defense projects, DARPA research, and medical electronics. His book focuses on how to develop robust systems, providing guidance that is timeless rather than applications manuals that quickly become outdated. The Analog Problem: Although modern systems may be digital end-to-end, Jerry emphasizes that the predominant causes of failure and design difficulties are often analog in nature. Academic study often teaches ideal signals but neglects real-world issues like inductance, noise, and cross-coupling. Consulting Experience & Troubleshooting: Jerry discusses being called in to fix systems that failed strenuous regulatory testing for medical devices, where reliability is first and foremost (similar to an aerospace way of thinking). Failures often stemmed from basic issues like a lack of ESD protection, absence of error correction in data streams, insufficient detection of errors, and common mode noise rejection problems. High-Speed Data and Signal Integrity: At high data rates, communication becomes a “communications channel problem,” not truly a digital one. When bits are underneath a tenth of a nanosecond, the communication turns into multiple standing wave transitions. The two primary limits on performance are rise and fall times and distance traveled. Real-World Applications: Jerry has worked extensively on medical devices, including early-generation Dexcom glucose monitoring systems (two on-body monitors and a hospital insulin pump/monitor), and a wearable EEG monitor. He also worked on a system that required packing five video cameras into an endoscope distal head, measuring 11 mm in diameter and 13 mm long. Architecting Systems and Identifying Bottlenecks: When starting a new project, Jerry suggests defining needs and interfaces and looking at the system as a black box. Engineering time should focus on the bottleneck—the hardest part of the system. For medical implantables, this might be minimizing power consumption down to virtually nothing, which could take up 90% of the effort. Power System Design: Jerry advises purchasing commercial AC-to-DC converters due to competitive pricing. He notes that switching supplies (buck converters) commonly introduce noise that can lead to EMI failures or corrupt sensitive analog front ends. A classic case of “digital thinking in an analog scenario” is when a sensitive analog front end is powered by a noisy switching converter. Working with Embedded Teams: Jerry prefers guiding embedded teams toward “self-discovery,” using bench time and empirical measurement (such as comparing grounds on a scope) to demonstrate non-ideal connections and grounding issues. He advises against the “seagull manager” approach. Grounding Best Practices: For integrated circuits (chips), designs must be fully differential because securing a good hard ground reference is impossible. On singular circuit boards, a common uncut ground plane (dedicated ground plane, often multiple layers stitched together with vias) is the recommended approach. Cutting the ground plane is discouraged as it can create a slot antenna, increasing the signal radiating from the board by about 7 dB. Jerry has published rules on grounding. Engineering Intuition vs. LLMs: Jerry notes that intuition is gathered through painful learning experiences and guidance from experienced designers. He expresses concern over the reliance on LLMs (Language Learning Models), which, while improving, can confidently provide incorrect answers, especially regarding complex topics like signal grounding. Limits to Moore’s Law: CMOS scaling is approaching physical limits, likely unable to go below 10 or 11 nanometers. Modern performance gains are achieved through more parallel processing, not significantly faster clock rates, which have plateaued around 5 GHz due to parasitics and timing limitations. Jerry’s article discusses this topic. RISC Architectures: The industry benefits from migrating to RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architectures (like ARM) because they eliminate useless architecture and transistors associated with complex instruction sets (like x86). Find Jerry on Effective Electrons and on LinkedIn

Dave bought a lemon laptop Chris officially has solar that is installed, working, and is effectively an appliance at this point… Duke Energy and North Carolina nuclear mix The impact of batteries on the grid The Duck Curve is something Chris and Ari discussed on ep650 Open circuit voltage on panels Dave did a repair on a tennis ball machine Chris designed a board with test points too small Accupuncture jbc High cost vs low cost rework tweezers Nanofix YouTube Channel Tested Ugly multimeter review