#567 – The Rodeo Drive of Electronics

Comments

1. SeanB says

   November 22, 2021 at 6:47 am

   Swiss Post used for the simple reason that, for International deliveries of bulk mail, they were cheaper than using USPS, so the entire production run of international catalogues was simply bagged, labelled and then placed in a single airline shipping container, then sent as low priority bulk to Switzerland, probably to Rotterdam, as that is a big postal hub for many postal authorities. Then there they were separated into region, if not already done so by Digikey, and those bags were then sent via the IPU routes, so Auspost had to carry them and deliver for free.

   The bags were likely used because they needed tracking, so Swisspost simply used the bags they already buy in massive bulk, and used their own seals, with a printed address label, as of course they already have the info, so simple enough for the Rotterdam crew to do the separation and labelling, then put the whole lot of tracked parcels into a city by city bag for Australia, and put this into another consignment of bulk postal articles being sent to Australia on whichever airline, likely Quantas of BA, still had room when loading.

   Used to get magazines when they still were around ( remember ETI, Elektor and such), and all of those, despite most being produced in the UK, all were sent via Rotterdam, as the postage was cheaper than Royal Mail, even if they all had a return inquiries card that was free, if sent via Royal Mail. Obviously worth the cost of the ferry trip over the Channel to send them for the non UK subscribers, and even Elektor, printed in Netherlands, did not come via NL Post, also Swisspost.

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2. Derek Fronek says

   November 22, 2021 at 7:38 am

   Hello Chris and Dave,

   Just thought I’d pop in and say that I am currently in a digital systems design class at University and say that the majority of the course is taught using iCE40s and System Verilog as the primary format of learning digital system design. In the first third of the class we used breadboard and 74 series logic to complete projects but quickly moved past that as the complexity of the material grew beyond what could be practically built on breadboards.

   I will say that in High School the digital logic design class I took used an old NI CPLD and NI Multisim to complete schematic capture style hardware design. I have been in touch recently with that teacher and have heard that they are moving away from that style and more into HDL.

   I cant speak for all universities but I hope that gives a better picture of where logic design classes are heading.

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3. FlightRadar (btw a Swedish company) do filter the airplanes they display. There are several ways to opt out your airplane from being advertised publicly on FlightRadar. But if you set up a Raspberry PI and an RTL-SDR dongle as ADS-B receiver, you get position and id data from all airplanes. The software I set up years ago even give you a webpage with a Google maps display of the airplanes.
   I have a lot of military/coastal guards choppers and airplanes flying over my farm, on the Kullen peninsula on the Swedish side of the Oresound that separates Sweden from Denmark. Most won’t show up on FlightRadar, but I can receive their ADS-B data and find out what is what, with just a PI and a RTL-SDR dongle.
   Lesser known fact: A lot of the stations that collect data for FlightRadar are PIs with an RTL-SDR dongle. If you set up one that report data to FlightRadar, they offer certain rewards, like a level-up “professional” account.

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4. I don't have a smartphone says

   November 24, 2021 at 11:31 am

   Greetings from the periphery of Europe!

   [DISCLAIMER: The following comment does not represent the views of The Amp Hour or is in any shape or form…]

   Why not have an episode, or even a mini-series on small/tiny/travel labs?

   One man’s e-waste is another man’s storage bill!

   Here are the first iteration categories:

   n: The sweetest, fastest, least brainhurt travel sized lab.

   m: Lab on a table which then goes back to storage after use.
   /* Ahh, the joys of living below the povery line as a student and having to pack your lab back to the storage box/shelf in order to not look like a crazy person for potential dates/parents/normies. */

   k: Lab in a closet!
   /* Not yet ready to break the chains of the society that’s holding you back from declaring your love to electronics? No fear! Just hide those skele.. burnt op-amps behind the doors of your dorm room closet! */

   In a more serious tone: It is far too easy to end up with piles of e-waste nowadays, but trying to find the best breadboard(thanks Ben Eater!) with the best/not-too-expensive 0.1″ DuPont male-to-male jumper wires to go along with that is not easy! (The really cheap ones don’t last that long, don’t feel good in use and look low quality, which makes you look like an amateur in the eyes of the professional who know that you’re most likely loosing at least several kiloelectrons due to the leaky sheath of the chinesium strandz that you got cheap from eBay!)

   THEN, how do you attach your scope to the breadboard to utilize its logic analyzer functions when messing around with an Adafruit board and RPi, without having your desk be a mess with the normal scope probes attached to the setup?
   Yes, AoE has the el-cheapo special DIY 20x probes, which kinda solve the problem, so one can have nice custom length scope probes for logic probing without having THE ONLY DESK IN YOUR HOUSE/OFFICE/DORM be a birds nest of wires and a hazard for the project when the next door startup drunk comes over, catches one of those dangling wires and tears the whole setup to the ground, while pitching you his great new idea for a mini-series!

   I think many guests have been talking about having project boxes and also having some kind of perma-proto setups. OpenTechLab on YT 3dprints his holders for the different small boards to hold everything in place. Is there a website/dedicated forum section for people who don’t want to live in an e-waste sorting facility buffer room, and do want to find solutions on how to utilize the limited desk space in the best possible way?

   And for those who ask what’s wrong with the e-waste -chic home decor: Have you ever tried to debug anything?
   (WHERE THE HELL DOES THAT MAGENTA COLORED WIRE GO AGAIN, IS IT PIN 5 OR PIN 19? I CAN’T SEE FROM THIS ANGLE AS THE LIGHT ARE SHIT AND IT’S DARK ALREADY OUTSIDE AND I’VE ALREADY DRANK HALF A POT OF COFFEE/BROTEIN POWDER FOR F-SAKE AND I NEED TO GET THIS BLOODY THING READY BY MONDAY. I SHOULD HAVE WROTE ALL OF THIS DOWN ON A LAB NOTEBOOK BUT I WAS TOO BUSY READING THE [redacted] FORUMS AND COULDN’T BE BOTHERED)
   I think we’ve all been there, right? Why can’t the bench just look nice and clean, with not too long wires, etc?

   THIS, I propose, be the next mini-series, or you can always ask for a refund, your choice!

   Sincerely,
   Santa’s little helper (not the dog)

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