Thanks for your good work. After watching your post on USB Scopes, would you give review on the following product from Acquitek. http://www.acquitek.com/usb250/measuring-instrument.html

If you want, I can send you the specification in pdf file.

Kind regards,
Apri

But, often there is something in the name which points to the fact, that it is a podcast.

So my entry in the not yet official “name the show contest” would be

“Electronics Engineering Audio Podcast” “EEAcast”

Sounds recognizable don’t you think.

Keep up the good work guys, I really like the podcast.

You can even use some of the cap blow-up video for a logo.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Since Dave or Chris mentioned CC contests, they already had one or two in 2010. Although nothing really interesting. I remember for one of the contests you could hardly avoid to buy a particular board from a certain, sponsoring distributor. Unfortunately a distributor not really prepared to sell to individuals in my county. And I remember there was some problem with a compiler license.

I am not sure if Elektor did Circuit Cellar any good.

Steve Ciarcia (Se-Arc-See-A to my understanding)Originally wrote articles for Carl Helmers (Used to advertize in Carl’s BYTE Mag. mid 70′s) or was steve in after Carl sold to McGraw Hill Pub … I probably have some original mags. (Byte) w/steve here somewhere… in any event, he spun-off his own mag. I eMailed him a few months ago w/response so he is still alive and kickin’ .. and so …

http://www.circuitcellar.com/contactus/index.html

Doug

Steve has been an innovator and leader for years..

Thanks!

Doug

I hope you’ll get guests from the hobby/maker/hacker/robot crowd too !

@George Graves
you can get arduinos for 12$ now
that’s throwaway money
perfect for controlling my furnace or my Air conditionner cooled air compressor

the big analog welder is next after that etc..

at 12$ it’s good for many projects yet it doesn’t risk going away as a platform like TI’s heavily subsidized “MSP430 breakout board”, and that’s what the arduino is also
a standardised breakout pattern for the Atmega168 and Atmega1280, btw a arduino mega can be had for 35$CAD shipped to canada so that’s a lot of bang for the buck

and honestly I hope to see a Cortex 3 or some other ARM cpu on a standard arduino or arduino mega breakout pattern, and a pic and a hybrid dsp like the motorola 56F8323

TI’s wiki no longer refers to TI’s web store for ordering, and if you carefully compare the old banner

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/images/archive/c/cb/20100725032833!LaunchPad_wikibar.PNG

with the current one

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/images/c/cb/LaunchPad_wikibar.PNG

you’ll see that the good times are over. That’s not how you make a real impact in the long term. Thats just one-time marketing fireworks, now burned out.

I know that’s not the case.

There’s a fairly active Model Engineering scene in Aus, and it’s more mechanical engineering focussed – steam engines and stuff.

I’m sure they’ll be involved in exhibitions and so on, and certainly in the UK there are groups like the SMEE.

They’re a bit different from your idea of a Hacker Fair, but it’s still engineering.

If you ask me there’s a fairly significant divide in mentality. For Model Engineers steam rules the roost, but for Hackers/Makers the focus is more on electronics and software.

I think it’s something to do with the old vs new. I like both, but I feel like a pariah saying that. I like steam engines, I find them fascinating. They’re just not as interesting as electric motors and batteries, which you also find.

Software, firmware and electronics can be fascinating. When you combine these things you’re into engine management systems, radar, even scientific instrumentation.

How about a home made mass spectrometer?

My point really is that the networks are already there. If you look at Model Engineering, when you go back in time perhaps just after WWII you’ll find that the electronics and mechanical engineering worlds were much closer together in the paper publications.

Get involved.

I used to go to similar ones in the 90s and they mostly sold cheap motherboards, pirate software and “multimedia” speakers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_io

Think of all the “arduino projects” you see. Now think of how many more people would have attempted the project if they knew they were going to be out less than $10 if they fail. I see people throwing these silly things into EVERYTHING. A $4.30 board? Are you kidding me? These will end up permanently installed into all sorts of hacks. I mean at $4.30, I’m fine with it controlling my door bell and living inside a wall forever. With arduino at about $40 shipped, I’d think twice about that. In fact, I’d unplug it and move it to the next project…

Just my 2 cents.

Loved the podcast – I didn’t miss the video as much as I thought I would. In fact I got up and got some cleaning done!

George Graves

Circuit Cellar began in the now defunct computer mag “Byte”, which was where most of us got to hear US industry news before the Internet took over. If you want something more analogue to read, the ARRL have a couple of amateur radio magazines.

By the way, my newish i7 pc motherboard has headers for rs232 and parallel. Finding appropriate connectors though is a different matter. Sounds like it might be built into the chipset.

As for show names, how about

I was listening to Chris’s first podcast the other day, and he mentioned a bit about the water-flow analogy for electronic circuits. It inspired me to thrash out a blog post about capacitors as water balloons – http://mackys.livejournal.com/914252.html

As for show names, how about “The DC Show”? The Dave and Chris show, get it? It’s a stupid pun, which is perfect. And when you get Lady Ada to guest-star, you can call it the “A & DC” show. ;]

See http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Category:Hackerspace

http://robodino.org/ has over 50 members.

Not so many here in NZ.

Mike