[0:01] all right we’re live
[0:04] so
[0:06] you can hear me hey everyone and welcome
[0:08] to episode 33 of makercast
[0:11] so what is makercast it’s a monthly
[0:13] stream that wanders from maker to maker
[0:15] where makers share their latest projects
[0:17] we always try to have some new people on
[0:19] and they’re going to talk about what
[0:20] they’ve been doing
[0:21] so what’s the first rule of maker cast
[0:24] please tell everyone about it it’s
[0:26] really important that we get as many
[0:27] people on the stream as possible
[0:29] so this week we’ve got some really
[0:30] exciting guests we’ve got james sharman
[0:33] james been building a 8-bit pipeline cpu
[0:36] and most recently he’s been adding vga
[0:38] to it so he’s building all of that from
[0:39] scratch so that’s pretty exciting we’ve
[0:41] got brian luff he knows everything there
[0:44] is to know about arduino and esp he’s
[0:46] also an expert on robotic lawn mowers
[0:49] we have uh bit looney he’s a full-time
[0:52] youtuber creating a lava and funny
[0:54] tutorial videos about building gadgets
[0:56] he guarantees nerdy entertainment and
[0:59] finally we’ve got the unexpected maker
[1:02] shaw
[1:02] his mission is to inspire you to make
[1:04] something unexpected he also sells the
[1:06] world’s smallest fully featured esp32
[1:09] development board the tiny pico so check
[1:11] out their links in the channel
[1:13] description and please subscribe to them
[1:15] and of course there’s your host for
[1:16] tonight me also known as atomic14
[1:20] so i think uh james kindly volunteered
[1:22] to go first so james why don’t you uh
[1:25] kick off the show with your uh your
[1:27] segment
[1:29] hello
[1:30] okay so as uh chris kindly said i’ve
[1:33] been
[1:33] spending the last couple of years
[1:35] building a
[1:37] pipeline cpu 8-bit from first principles
[1:40] so it’s all made from discrete logic and
[1:43] if i find the right button and
[1:46] the youtube
[1:47] fates smiles on me i can show it to you
[1:54] all right stick me in the corner
[1:56] right so
[1:59] so the big chunk of pcbs in the middle
[2:01] is the actual cpu itself
[2:03] on the right you’ve got the the pipeline
[2:05] and at the top you’ve got of that you’ve
[2:07] got the alu and on the left you’ve got
[2:09] all the registers and
[2:11] the memory and it’s kind of cool from a
[2:13] development perspective because if
[2:15] you’ve ever done any kind of assembly
[2:16] language programming you’re used to
[2:18] talking about uh registers as kind of
[2:21] these e for real things which uh just
[2:23] kind of store data whereas here it’s a
[2:26] pcb in its own right
[2:29] now i’ve got a whole set of side
[2:31] products on on this as well
[2:33] now
[2:34] on the top right the green pcb and
[2:39] i’m going to knock stuff if i lean all
[2:40] the way over to it um there’s a uart
[2:43] which means i can talk to the device
[2:45] over over serial
[2:47] on the left here is a vga device i’ve
[2:50] been building
[2:51] and on the
[2:53] bottom at the right is an audio device
[2:55] now i’ve shown some of this on past
[2:57] maker casts
[2:58] but
[2:59] you i’ve been making some good progress
[3:01] all along and in the back you can see
[3:04] a image with a
[3:06] crafting put together make a crop make a
[3:08] cast logo which is displaying on the vga
[3:11] vga device
[3:13] now i’m a few videos into that as a
[3:15] series so that’s what i’m most inclined
[3:16] to talk about the moment but this is all
[3:18] built up from ttl and some memory chips
[3:24] i’ve got uh sync generation i’ve got
[3:28] some
[3:29] xy location and some ram to hold the
[3:32] frame buffer and the most recent thing
[3:34] i’ve added is some registers to handle
[3:37] hardware scrolling
[3:39] so i’m going to give you a few little
[3:40] demos of that and talk about how that
[3:42] works
[3:45] now last time i was on make a cast
[3:47] you’ll have noticed me unplugging rom
[3:49] chips from here to plug new ones in but
[3:51] one of the big new bits of functionality
[3:52] i’ve got is a
[3:54] loader program
[3:56] which allows me to do that
[3:58] remotely so i’ll just give you a quick
[4:00] look at that
[4:04] so here i’m just instructing it to take
[4:07] a block of binary data from the console
[4:09] which is
[4:10] easiest way to get some code in
[4:18] and i can tell it to execute that
[4:21] so this is the first big side scrolling
[4:24] demo i put together
[4:27] so this has um
[4:29] left to right and up down scrolling and
[4:31] it’s got a little bit of procedure
[4:33] procedural generation of
[4:35] this uh kind of tunnel and a little bit
[4:37] of shadow casting in there so you can
[4:39] kind of see that make quite a
[4:41] interesting starting point for a game at
[4:43] some point in the future
[4:51] i’ve got um
[4:53] quite a
[4:54] speedy processor i’m quite proud of how
[4:57] fast it’s going i’ve got it clocked at
[4:59] 3.14 megahertz at the moment which does
[5:01] mean i can do some quite interesting
[5:03] stuff because i can kind of monitor the
[5:06] synchronization signals on the vga
[5:08] circuit and start to kind of tweak stuff
[5:10] that’s what people call beam racing so
[5:12] that was the last big video i put out is
[5:14] on that and that kind of leads itself to
[5:16] some more interesting demos so i’ll see
[5:18] if i can get some of those running
[5:23] why are you doing that can i just
[5:24] comment on how you just said
[5:26] three three megahertz like really fast
[5:29] three megahertz like
[5:31] i mean yes
[5:32] super fast for what you’ve built but
[5:34] like
[5:35] yeah i think we’ve moved
[5:38] the thing is what what we’re dealing
[5:39] with here is something that that very
[5:41] much lives in the
[5:42] that the the 8-bit land from the the
[5:45] kind of 70s and the 80s it’s like you
[5:48] stand-alone ttl logic chips you know as
[5:50] and gates or gates nor gates on there um
[5:54] and that’s actually a pretty respectable
[5:56] speed um
[5:58] for that kind of generation of hardware
[6:01] once you once you make your transistors
[6:02] kind of nanometers in size and pack them
[6:04] onto a tiny little silicon die you can
[6:06] clock things a lot faster but um i’m
[6:09] pleased this this does what it does
[6:12] so will you be spinning up a fab plan at
[6:14] some point
[6:15] um unlikely
[6:17] right
[6:18] so what this is doing is this kind of
[6:20] almost looks like a 3d effect now um bit
[6:23] loony i know was very involved in the
[6:25] demo scene so he’s probably got an idea
[6:28] of what i’m doing here already but um
[6:30] what i’m i’m basically doing is
[6:32] modifying the
[6:34] scrolling registers but on a per scan
[6:36] line basis so i can take out sections of
[6:38] the image
[6:40] and
[6:41] display them and if i stop this program
[6:44] what you see is it just goes back to the
[6:45] static parrot because to have that
[6:47] effect going i need um constant uh
[6:50] monitoring and updating of the registers
[6:52] so do you do you have like interrupts
[6:54] for the horizontal retrace or
[6:57] no it’s all working
[6:59] don’t you just count
[7:01] i just count
[7:03] and interrupts are basically cheating
[7:05] but looney
[7:07] yeah but they are available at the
[7:10] x 86
[7:12] architecture as far as i remember
[7:15] correctly so you could even like build
[7:18] this in and make it quite easy to like
[7:21] compute stuff in between well
[7:23] interrupts are actually um one of those
[7:25] things where i i did think about putting
[7:27] them into this build but i didn’t really
[7:30] need it for any of the stuff i was going
[7:32] to do and
[7:33] because rather than a kind of a basic
[7:36] stepped processor it’s a pipeline
[7:38] processor so i can get close to one
[7:40] instruction per cycle
[7:42] but the pipeline state makes interrupt
[7:44] handling a bit more complex so it was a
[7:46] kind of i do one or do the other or but
[7:49] if i do both then suddenly these pcbs
[7:51] get twice the size
[7:54] so here’s another a scrolling demo which
[7:56] is it doesn’t actually use any
[7:58] fundamental technology that i haven’t
[8:00] shown in the previous ones but it’s uh
[8:02] it looks uh quite flash and parallax
[8:07] so what i’m basically doing here is just
[8:09] horizontal scrolling
[8:12] different scan lines at different speeds
[8:14] and getting this nice beautiful 3d
[8:15] effect from it
[8:18] that looks awesome that looks really
[8:19] really good
[8:24] yeah pretty impressive reminds me of the
[8:26] old um games i used to play on my
[8:28] spectrum and and stuff the power like
[8:30] scrolling
[8:33] yeah i mean it’s obviously
[8:35] later on when you kind of hit the 16-bit
[8:37] era and people had
[8:39] um you know things like the copper list
[8:40] on the amiga effects like this were
[8:42] being done very smooth and
[8:44] um
[8:45] you know very easily because you didn’t
[8:47] need that uh the constant attention of
[8:49] the registers
[8:51] but uh in terms of the the actual total
[8:54] overall circuitry i’ve got here i mean
[8:56] the
[8:56] the vj circuit there is kind of you know
[8:59] less than 20 chips and they’re mostly
[9:01] discrete logic so um
[9:03] you
[9:05] this is uh
[9:06] something i’m quite pleased i’ve got out
[9:07] of it
[9:09] whereas this was the uh the final
[9:11] biggest demo i put out in in my last
[9:13] video
[9:14] so
[9:15] this is kind of trying to uh to look a
[9:17] bit like the old
[9:18] you know racing games on the atari
[9:22] pissed off or something yeah yeah yeah
[9:24] absolutely is that the one however
[9:27] vague memories of outrun yeah that was
[9:29] 16-bit error i think but yeah the the
[9:31] trick the tricks here are what were kind
[9:34] of
[9:35] developed over the years um once i’ve
[9:38] got a bit more resolution in there at
[9:39] the moment my display is 80 by
[9:42] 60
[9:43] um which you’ll recognize the
[9:46] kind of
[9:48] 8 pixel divisor from the six basic 640
[9:50] by 480 vga so i’m actually planning that
[9:53] um that’s going to be the resolution of
[9:55] my tile map but it was
[9:58] um quite an interesting step on the
[10:00] development to
[10:01] basically build what amounts to the tile
[10:06] set and
[10:08] use that as the pixel color because that
[10:10] meant i could
[10:11] get the vga circuit up and running with
[10:13] a fraction of the circuitry so i’ll add
[10:16] the tile data in a future video
[10:18] after i converted some of this to pcbs
[10:20] to save desk space and that will
[10:22] suddenly mean i can actually drive um
[10:24] far higher like visual resolution and
[10:28] i’m going to add sprites and
[10:31] a palette system
[10:32] so once again there’s actually a whole
[10:34] bunch of interesting beam race type
[10:36] effects i can do once i’ve got uh
[10:38] sprites and a palette system that will
[10:40] really uh make me
[10:42] uh
[10:43] able to do some visually impressive
[10:45] stuff
[10:46] james you need to uh sorry about this
[10:48] mate you need to add your uh nice easing
[10:50] and he’s out
[10:57] that that was done in a hurry it’s not
[10:59] actually supposed to be a racing game
[11:02] and um what what you basically have
[11:04] there is a whole little set of
[11:08] pre-cooked tables that i i threw
[11:11] together from scripps
[11:13] that just get kind of blended together
[11:15] to uh to create the effect but it does
[11:18] it does prove that the the visual
[11:19] capability is there
[11:21] do you have a sound effects as well
[11:23] james have you built a um
[11:25] an audio chip
[11:26] um well when you say audio chip um
[11:32] this over here is an audio device
[11:36] um that’s currently basically got um two
[11:39] channels on there at the moment i’m
[11:41] planning on switching to um four
[11:43] channels when i
[11:45] um convert it to pcbs which is actually
[11:47] one of the things that’s going to come
[11:48] fairly soon but obviously
[11:52] two channels proved to prove the systems
[11:55] and then for four channels it’s a it’s a
[11:57] lot easier to copy paste stuff in eda or
[12:00] replicate pcbs and it is to try and uh
[12:03] double up all the breadboards
[12:07] that’s pretty amazing and you actually
[12:10] that it still works and it’s not kind of
[12:12] fallen over at any point because i look
[12:14] like something like that most of my
[12:16] stuff lasts about a day
[12:18] and then it’s it’s in a box and trying
[12:20] to bring it back to life is impossible
[12:22] do you keep it fully assembled all the
[12:24] time or do you take it apart and pack it
[12:26] away
[12:27] um well i used to right at the start of
[12:30] the build i used to i used to have it on
[12:32] my
[12:33] my straight desk in front of me
[12:36] and i would um uh move it manually off
[12:40] to to one side between build sessions
[12:43] and
[12:44] um
[12:45] then it got a bit bigger and i had this
[12:47] piece of wood that i would slide it onto
[12:51] and then after a while it’s like no it’s
[12:52] just gonna and then you’ll you’ll see a
[12:55] certain number of videos into my series
[12:57] you’ll see it just starts staying on the
[12:59] wood because then i could just lift it
[13:01] up and move it over
[13:02] and then um
[13:04] i’ve actually started keeping it um
[13:07] i put it on my main desk when i’m
[13:09] recording youtube videos but i take it
[13:12] and and leave it there a lot of the time
[13:13] because you what you’ve seen is that um
[13:16] i can do an awful lot of development now
[13:17] without actually having to touch it and
[13:20] you you do
[13:22] chunks of building circuitry and then a
[13:24] whole lot of software development now um
[13:26] because it’s really kind of changed the
[13:27] phase of
[13:28] development on on the system so i build
[13:31] a small piece of circuitry and then i
[13:32] have to spend a whole bunch of evenings
[13:34] writing code for it to actually uh drive
[13:36] it properly and see what i can do
[13:38] and i can do that without physically
[13:40] touching the device
[13:42] unless i
[13:44] put it into a broken state in which case
[13:46] i have to lean over and hit the reset
[13:47] button
[13:49] very cool
[13:51] so just quickly i know that like all the
[13:52] stuff that you’re showing right now is
[13:54] um
[13:55] manipulation like video
[13:58] manipulation right like screen tricks so
[14:02] i don’t mean to
[14:03] belittle it sorry i didn’t shouldn’t
[14:05] have said tricks
[14:08] tricks is absolutely fine um everything
[14:10] you’ve seen here is
[14:12] i mean
[14:13] a stream like this doesn’t do it justice
[14:15] it’s 60 frames per second and it’s
[14:17] totally smooth right what i’m going to
[14:19] say was i don’t recall ever like i owned
[14:21] a you know a lot of home computers and
[14:24] pcs and i was very into the graphics and
[14:27] game scene in the 8-bit era and and i
[14:29] don’t recall ever owning
[14:32] anything that had such smooth and
[14:34] colorful graphics in the 8-bit era right
[14:38] like i think that a lot of the how cool
[14:42] this stuff is for you
[14:43] is because we’re so far beyond the 8-bit
[14:45] era
[14:46] that we know now how to do amazing stuff
[14:49] with 8-bit hardware we’re back then yeah
[14:51] now
[14:52] there is a little bit of um
[14:54] you in hindsight i can i can draw on all
[14:57] the tricks that
[14:59] game developers and demo coders have put
[15:01] together over the years yeah and um
[15:03] there’s also there’s a couple of very
[15:05] specific things like um
[15:07] uh
[15:08] some of the demos i showed you can be
[15:10] done purely with scanline modification
[15:13] of the horizontal scroll register
[15:16] and some of them require
[15:18] scanline modification of the vertical
[15:20] scroll register
[15:22] and
[15:23] a lot of 8-bit error systems um and
[15:26] indeed later stuff
[15:28] wouldn’t allow you to modify vertical
[15:30] scrolling on a on a scan line basis
[15:33] because it only reads in during the
[15:35] vertical retrace
[15:36] um in fact the first version of my vj
[15:39] circuit suffered from exactly that
[15:40] problem that’s it’s the obvious way to
[15:43] do it so
[15:44] i actually had a video in which i
[15:46] stopped halfway through and added a
[15:49] small piece of circuitry up here that
[15:51] allow allows me to um update that
[15:55] register because there’s been plenty of
[15:57] times when i was developing code
[15:59] you know
[16:00] way back in the 8-bit era or messing
[16:02] around on early pcs and a few 16-bit
[16:05] systems where it’s like oh if only it
[16:07] let me do this
[16:09] but of course i don’t have that kind of
[16:11] restriction
[16:13] yeah it’s very cool
[16:15] well done really good
[16:16] um yes so the sound
[16:19] um i haven’t got that in a demo board
[16:21] position today but it’s not really
[16:23] advanced
[16:24] more than when i last showed it on a
[16:26] maker cast ages ago
[16:27] um
[16:31] i was going to show the controller a bit
[16:33] oh there it is
[16:35] hey jane just just quickly so
[16:37] do it in the chat has said that what
[16:39] you’ve done like
[16:41] what’s the motivation for your big for
[16:43] everything you’re doing like he’s
[16:45] impressed but there must be some
[16:46] underlying desire
[16:48] for um
[16:50] this is about this is about
[16:51] understanding
[16:52] um i have been a programmer you know i’m
[16:55] not an electronics expert i was never an
[16:57] electronics expert um
[16:59] i’ve been a programmer all my life i’ve
[17:01] done a lot of um low-level programming
[17:04] for particularly games optimization um
[17:08] a lot of the game systems um that you
[17:10] may have seen over the last 25 years
[17:12] i’ve i’ve developed games for
[17:14] and you kind of along that
[17:17] process you develop a respect and an
[17:20] interest in what must be going on under
[17:21] the hood so that’s why this is a
[17:23] pipeline cpu because particularly
[17:26] um once intel started coming along and
[17:30] putting a lot of very interesting rules
[17:34] into the
[17:36] um instruction set for what’s what would
[17:38] cause instructions to execute faster or
[17:40] store them out and then um when i got
[17:43] into console programming a little bit
[17:45] further into my career and particularly
[17:47] some of the early devices like ps2 that
[17:49] were really really blatant about how
[17:52] their pipelines were structured and how
[17:54] you had to drive them to get the peak
[17:56] performance out of it you developed a
[17:58] really strong instinct for what was
[17:59] going on and a kind of a desire to know
[18:02] how it actually worked at the low level
[18:05] and
[18:06] you making like a 32-bit pipeline
[18:09] processor with all the leds and stuff is
[18:12] um
[18:13] a bit of a big ask but so in some ways
[18:16] this processor is um it’s taking some of
[18:19] those
[18:19] later concepts that came along with um
[18:22] early risk systems
[18:24] um but i’m just building an 8-bit cpu
[18:26] with it to experiment with the ideas and
[18:29] also demonstrate them and you there’s
[18:33] um a lot of
[18:35] people who are you know commenting on
[18:36] the videos or joining in on on the
[18:38] discord who are
[18:40] you building stuff themselves as well
[18:42] it’s a great little community and
[18:44] there’s there seems to be a lot of
[18:45] interest in this kind of stuff out there
[18:47] from uh at least this tiny little corner
[18:49] of the internet yeah i’ve got quite a
[18:51] few questions for you actually so uh
[18:53] what was your first computer is uh
[18:56] someone wants to know
[18:57] and then another question is um
[18:59] how many hours have you spent on this so
[19:01] far so what’s the total build time so
[19:03] far so what was your first computer
[19:05] let’s do that one first first the first
[19:07] computer i actually
[19:09] owned insofar as having um
[19:13] complete access to was a sinclair
[19:15] spectrum
[19:17] there was a
[19:21] when i was in in junior school i had
[19:23] access to a zx81 at work sorry at school
[19:28] and
[19:29] my
[19:31] father was involved with
[19:33] the early stages of computerization in
[19:36] his company and so he would frequently
[19:38] bring home
[19:40] um computers um and let me play with
[19:43] them over the weekend so stuff like um
[19:46] uh apple twos
[19:48] and that kind of era stuff i did get a
[19:50] chance to play with a little bit but not
[19:52] dig into in depth
[19:54] great and how many hours do you think
[19:55] you’ve spent or someone suggested maybe
[19:58] years
[20:02] well
[20:04] the stuff you see here is represented by
[20:06] what is it about 120 videos on youtube
[20:10] um
[20:11] i
[20:13] i i
[20:14] probably don’t want to acknowledge the
[20:16] answer to that question
[20:19] i think this every video takes like an
[20:21] hour or every minute of video it takes
[20:23] like an hour of work so you can work it
[20:26] out from there
[20:29] i don’t think that holds true for
[20:31] development projects though because it’s
[20:33] like
[20:35] james is spending way more time making
[20:36] videos and he has making
[20:38] making the cpu
[20:42] but it’s amazing it’s pretty impressive
[20:45] thanks james that was that’s wonderful
[20:48] yeah absolutely
[20:51] the one little side project i’ve got
[20:52] coming up is ages ago
[20:55] i built this
[20:56] which is a nest controller
[20:58] and uh
[21:00] and i built the circuit to interface to
[21:02] it
[21:02] and i
[21:04] i’m in in a few weeks time i’m actually
[21:06] going to uh wire that circuit into my uh
[21:09] cpu so i can actually uh control stuff
[21:11] from a pad rather than a keyboard via
[21:13] the serial terminal
[21:15] nice so you’ve built a games console but
[21:18] it’s the size of a table
[21:20] in many regards yes this is this is
[21:22] actually
[21:23] i i kept for ages saying i’m building a
[21:26] cpu but in reality i’m building all the
[21:28] components of a basic gaming system
[21:30] because that’s what i that’s what i do
[21:32] and then he’s going to go into
[21:33] manufacturing and silver exactly yeah
[21:35] need to miniaturize it now shrink it
[21:37] down
[21:38] uh
[21:39] no
[21:41] i don’t want the miniaturized version i
[21:42] want the full thing
[21:45] on a big wooden board like the size of a
[21:48] door
[21:50] my plan is to
[21:52] because i think the whole thing together
[21:53] will take up slightly less room than it
[21:55] currently consumes
[21:57] um and what i’m planning to do is
[22:00] put it all on
[22:02] because it’s all built from a module
[22:04] perspective the next big job i’ve got is
[22:06] i’ve started pcb design work for the vga
[22:09] device um and
[22:11] putting my hand over there is pointless
[22:12] because i’ve changed camera already um
[22:14] but uh i’m basically going to be
[22:18] um
[22:18] putting that together one chunk at a
[22:20] time so
[22:21] the circuitry i’ve got now will go on to
[22:23] pcb and then that will free up
[22:24] breadboard space
[22:26] on the desk to uh to put together the
[22:29] the tile data and the sprite and the
[22:30] palette data
[22:32] brilliant
[22:33] but i’m gonna i’m gonna i’m hoping to
[22:35] wall-mount it eventually
[22:37] go there or something
[22:38] yeah but be functional on the wall
[22:43] do you do you have any kind of heart
[22:46] storage like tape or or
[22:49] some kind of where do you store all the
[22:51] data right now um well it’s it’s just
[22:55] got 64k of ram at the moment
[22:58] um yeah but but how it’s loaded is it
[23:00] like do you have a eprom there or
[23:03] how how do you load the graphics
[23:06] right
[23:07] well i’ve got i’ve got a eprom i’ve got
[23:09] a rom socket so i can
[23:11] i can blow an eprom and put it on but
[23:12] the only the only program that’s on
[23:14] there at the moment is a
[23:16] like a monitor bootloader program
[23:18] and so
[23:19] what what i was doing in the gaps
[23:21] between demos was basically just copy
[23:24] pasting
[23:26] um
[23:28] a text file into the console window
[23:30] which basically writes the memory data
[23:33] in really you know it’s like that
[23:37] yes
[23:37] code like
[23:39] yes i mean i can actually i can show you
[23:40] this um
[23:42] if i
[23:44] switch back to that
[23:46] so this here in the corner is my um my
[23:50] monitor program
[23:51] so i
[23:52] um i hit return there and break out the
[23:56] program because i’ve just got a tiny
[23:58] little function call i put in my main
[24:00] loops that checks for a return
[24:03] um to break out of it but um you know
[24:06] i’ve got a whole stack of little
[24:08] commands in here so you can see what
[24:10] that last program actually has in the
[24:11] frame buffer
[24:13] um yeah i could do for example um
[24:20] you
[24:21] like the
[24:22] scroll registers are memory mapped so i
[24:24] can
[24:25] go in and
[24:27] mess with them to move stuff about on
[24:29] the screen
[24:32] and
[24:33] obviously i could in theory put a
[24:35] program in this way i don’t have an
[24:37] assembler in the monitor that would
[24:39] that be going
[24:40] quite uh extreme
[24:43] but um what i do actually have an
[24:47] uh disassembler
[24:50] so i can
[24:52] kind of dig into to code and
[24:54] normally
[24:56] the only thing i really use this for is
[24:58] occasionally i go in and manually insert
[25:00] a break point into a piece of code that
[25:02] i’m debugging
[25:04] uh so
[25:05] what what do you
[25:07] plan to add like a storage what kind of
[25:10] storage would you love to have uh
[25:13] attached to it
[25:15] um i want some kind of storage um and
[25:18] then i’ll add support for it to the the
[25:21] monitor program so i can launch programs
[25:23] without having the pc attached um
[25:26] i’ve i’m not a hundred percent settled
[25:28] on it um
[25:30] my kind of leading
[25:31] option at the moment is
[25:33] to
[25:35] implement
[25:36] um spi and then just um
[25:39] use that as a mmc card reader or sd card
[25:42] reader okay
[25:44] but i’d have to write no no old school
[25:47] like tape device
[25:49] or anything
[25:50] no um
[25:52] i mean the thing is if you think think
[25:54] um i did briefly consider
[25:57] putting um a direct connection for a
[26:00] commodore 64 disk drive
[26:02] because they they’re driven by uarts and
[26:04] i’ve got a uart sat right there that can
[26:06] do it
[26:07] but um i kind of actually i don’t want
[26:10] to
[26:11] multi-purpose the
[26:13] the serial port on this device because i
[26:15] want to be able to always plug it into
[26:16] the pcb and play
[26:18] so with three three megahertz uh can you
[26:21] emulate a c64 that runs on one megahertz
[26:30] i feel like
[26:31] now we need to go deeper
[26:32] [Music]
[26:34] 6502
[26:35] um
[26:38] the the the simple programs i’ve coded
[26:40] and tested
[26:42] um comparing performance between 6502
[26:44] and my processor i’m significantly
[26:47] faster um
[26:49] how well that holds out on on some
[26:52] bigger broader programs uh
[26:55] is anyone’s guess it’s uh
[26:57] but
[26:58] i would i would run out of memory my
[27:01] code is less
[27:02] my code is less dense than 6502
[27:06] so um
[27:08] despite you 6502 a lot of stuff is kind
[27:11] of two three four cycles all of my
[27:13] instructions are either one or two
[27:14] cycles um apart from a couple of very
[27:17] specific exceptions and that’s basically
[27:20] if it’s pure registers it’s one cycle if
[27:22] it accesses memory it’s two cycles
[27:24] because it it takes over the memory
[27:27] subsystem so the fetch unit can’t grab
[27:29] the next instruction so it kind of
[27:31] defaults out to being two instructions
[27:35] so you i could write an emulator
[27:38] um i think the
[27:42] the the margin would be way way off that
[27:45] the only way to get that kind of
[27:47] performance differential is with a
[27:49] a jit assembler conversion
[27:51] and because my assembly instructions
[27:54] they take more space than the 6502 to do
[27:57] the same thing okay um it’s just not
[27:59] going to work very well
[28:02] no but it’s still pretty amazing
[28:04] that’s uh
[28:06] good job when do you think you’ll finish
[28:12] finish
[28:14] all right
[28:26] just over committed to adding stuff to
[28:28] it that would have meant it probably
[28:30] never finished so i’ve been very strict
[28:32] for myself in
[28:34] building a list of stuff i’m going to do
[28:36] in the next build the backlog list as
[28:38] opposed to adding stuff to this
[28:43] i have a prediction of when james is
[28:45] going to finish
[28:48] before you make a prediction i i will
[28:49] tell you the one concrete piece of
[28:51] information i have is when i started
[28:53] this thing two years ago i estimated six
[28:55] months
[29:01] you’re going to stop the moment you plug
[29:04] another pcb in and the whole thing goes
[29:08] and it all turns into magic smoke and
[29:10] then you’re going to stop
[29:13] a few weeks ago
[29:15] um because there were comments earlier
[29:17] about uh stability and when when
[29:19] particularly the pipeline and the alu
[29:21] were still breadboards
[29:23] um you know there were times when i
[29:25] would sit down
[29:27] and i would i would be poking wires in
[29:30] to find the loose one
[29:31] for you half an hour before
[29:34] you
[29:34] every time before i could start working
[29:36] on it whereas
[29:38] um once to cut the core cpu circuits hit
[29:42] pcb i’ve had no problems apart from one
[29:46] day i sat down and the demos i had
[29:48] written the night before stop weren’t
[29:49] running anymore
[29:51] and eventually i
[29:53] found that uh one of these pcbs had just
[29:55] been nudged and i just kind of
[29:58] put my fingers on top it clicked back in
[29:59] space it was all working again and uh
[30:01] yeah that was that was quite a big sigh
[30:04] of relief
[30:05] i can imagine yeah
[30:08] one more question
[30:10] yeah about vga maybe i missed it uh does
[30:12] it work with pallets so
[30:15] or or do you do like a pallet is planned
[30:19] at the moment yeah but basically i’ve
[30:21] got currently got a frame buffer which
[30:23] is 80 by 60
[30:26] yeah but the plan is that that’s going
[30:28] to be and
[30:29] each of those one-byte quantities go
[30:31] into a
[30:33] um
[30:35] you’re a free free two dac um resistor
[30:37] ladder
[30:38] and but the plan is for actually those
[30:42] eight by eight pixel blocks to actually
[30:44] be a tile selection
[30:46] yeah but if you see the logic of just
[30:48] building that and using the 8 bits
[30:50] directly as color data
[30:52] to get the vj circuit up and running
[30:53] quickly even though i can scroll it on a
[30:56] a sub pixel but what will be a pixel
[30:59] basis
[31:01] and then so i’ll add the tile system and
[31:04] then i’ll add the
[31:05] the dax and
[31:07] um a palette
[31:10] so i’ll have a 256 entry palette with um
[31:14] well hopefully 24 bits per pixel
[31:17] yeah then you can
[31:18] you can do it palette scrolling like
[31:21] animation
[31:23] [Music]
[31:26] absolutely
[31:28] it’s fantastic well that is one hell of
[31:30] a project that’s really impressive
[31:33] that’s all right right i think
[31:35] one day
[31:36] you’ll finish one day yeah maybe i i
[31:39] i’ve i’ve banded around a six-month
[31:43] figure um from now
[31:45] um
[31:46] which is kind of funny when you realize
[31:49] i said six months from the start at the
[31:50] beginning but i was
[31:52] woefully unprepared for how much effort
[31:54] it was going to be as is always the case
[31:57] with my personal projects
[31:58] so we’re going to be six months from now
[32:00] that’s uh that’s the deadline
[32:04] brilliant so do i do up next are you
[32:06] ready to uh start your segment of the
[32:09] show
[32:10] sure why not
[32:14] yeah something isn’t working but it’s
[32:16] fine i can explain it away
[32:18] what are all those boxes boxes
[32:21] yeah you’re moving house
[32:23] uh
[32:24] i
[32:24] i moved house recently
[32:28] 2020
[32:30] march 2020
[32:31] that’s when i moved so that was recently
[32:34] right um
[32:36] i’m doing up
[32:38] my what should be my office so a lot of
[32:41] stuff has been moved around and it is
[32:43] right there and i’m in the middle of
[32:45] other stuff that i’ll get into uh
[32:47] that is taking up a lot of space too
[32:50] uh
[32:51] right first thing
[32:53] is
[32:55] i got some pink pcbs recently let me
[32:57] move my
[32:59] head out of the way
[33:00] oh yeah pink
[33:02] pink pcbs uh yeah i got these off pcb by
[33:07] uh
[33:08] they’re
[33:09] kind of expensive but not that expensive
[33:12] i suppose uh
[33:13] i think they’re about
[33:15] they don’t have a fixed price for like a
[33:18] size like say jlc do but um
[33:21] i think actually uh are you sponsored by
[33:24] pcb web pcb where also greg just want to
[33:27] throw that out there um
[33:29] yeah uh
[33:32] they don’t have a fixed price uh so like
[33:34] it it varies precisely i think it was
[33:37] roughly like thirty dollars per design
[33:40] um
[33:41] which is fine uh
[33:43] looks pretty cool it’s a pink pcb uh
[33:47] it’s not very opaque so it’s kind of
[33:49] like white uh solder mask so there is a
[33:51] copper fill there that you just can’t
[33:53] see
[33:54] uh basically you can kind of see it
[33:56] depending on how i shine the board um so
[33:59] yeah it’s kind of hard to see other than
[34:01] that it’s pink i don’t know what you
[34:03] want me to say here’s a pink
[34:06] led on a pink pcb
[34:09] brilliant
[34:10] okay pink
[34:11] done let’s move on from pink
[34:15] yeah so next thing the thing that has
[34:17] been occupying all my time for the last
[34:21] two months at least and time before that
[34:24] is i have received
[34:27] my esp32 trinity boards from maker fabs
[34:31] and yeah they look pretty good
[34:34] um so this is a board for controlling uh
[34:39] those rgb matrix um
[34:41] boards
[34:42] one like
[34:44] this
[34:45] which kind of doesn’t fit on my screen
[34:47] but
[34:48] yeah so this is 64 by 64 rgb leds so
[34:52] they’re not individually addressable in
[34:54] the way a neopixel air but they are
[34:57] individually addressable because of the
[35:00] shift registers on the back here
[35:02] and
[35:03] yeah the trinity just drops into the
[35:07] input port and then you use the power
[35:09] wires
[35:10] here and plug that in i’ll actually show
[35:13] a demo of setting it up now in a second
[35:15] um because it also shows something else
[35:17] i want to show and yeah that’s it it’s
[35:20] assembled and it’s ready to go has the
[35:22] esp32 built into it so i’m kind of
[35:25] excited about that it’s uh
[35:28] the next step on from like i was making
[35:31] these uh matrix shields and selling them
[35:34] on tindy um they’d have an esp32 that
[35:38] sits into the top of them but um
[35:41] the quality of these esp32s is not the
[35:44] best um
[35:47] so uh yeah i kind of wanted to make a
[35:50] version that uh
[35:52] is soldered ready to go and
[35:55] yeah should work and it has a couple of
[35:56] other
[35:57] fancy features too
[36:00] such as it is now
[36:02] usbc which the other one wasn’t and can
[36:04] be powered using usbc it has a poly fuse
[36:09] on it
[36:10] to like limit the current that the usbc
[36:13] will supply but that’s okay does it have
[36:16] power delivery
[36:18] no it does not it just says well the
[36:21] matrix
[36:22] how about delivery now you’re welcome to
[36:25] do that
[36:26] the the matrix boards require 5 volts so
[36:29] i don’t think it makes sense to yeah i
[36:32] suppose you could try do power delivery
[36:34] and get something higher and then book
[36:37] it down or whatever to 5 volts but i i
[36:40] don’t think it really makes sense so
[36:43] this is a project i’m sure i’ve shown
[36:45] before uh but i’m going to show it again
[36:47] i’ll move that out of the way so it’s
[36:49] not a an ad
[36:50] um
[36:52] yeah so
[36:53] this is my uh
[36:55] this is the rgb matrix panel here is my
[36:58] phone and spotify i’m not going to play
[37:02] any music so uh
[37:04] chris doesn’t get a
[37:06] you know copyright strikes but i’m just
[37:08] after playing a song there now
[37:10] and with any look in a couple of seconds
[37:14] uh yeah so it’s too bright
[37:17] but uh can i adjust that on the
[37:20] fly go the other way if i make it too
[37:23] dark then it will um
[37:26] it will uh
[37:27] start
[37:29] going crazy so i’ll just leave it where
[37:31] it is that’s not too bad
[37:33] yeah so what it’s doing is it’s
[37:35] connected to my spotify account and it’s
[37:38] play or it’s it’s grabbing the song of
[37:41] what is currently playing on spotify
[37:44] and uh downloads the album art from that
[37:47] so if i
[37:48] throw on something else here i don’t
[37:51] know songs for the def actually has a
[37:52] nice thing that will probably look
[37:55] okay on um
[37:57] on a 64 by 64 matrix
[38:01] it’s not the fastest because there’s a
[38:04] five second poll interval that i could
[38:07] make smaller
[38:08] so there’s a five second poll interval
[38:10] and then it needs to download the image
[38:12] and display the image so
[38:14] it isn’t the fastest but it should uh
[38:17] update now in a few seconds you could
[38:19] get a little bit smarter about it too in
[38:21] terms of um
[38:24] like if it’s just moving from song to
[38:27] song on your playlist that like is in it
[38:29] knows when the the song is going to end
[38:32] so it’ll uh
[38:34] it’ll um you know work off that so
[38:37] it looks better in person it doesn’t
[38:40] look quite as white as this it looks
[38:43] more red um so yeah so that’s nice uh
[38:47] the thing that’s broken about it is the
[38:50] best feature about this project and it’s
[38:52] working absolutely fine on the one
[38:54] downstairs my kids use it literally
[38:56] every day
[38:58] but i have these uh nfc tags and this uh
[39:01] little pcb there’s actually two of them
[39:03] because i was testing out i squared c
[39:05] and spi
[39:07] versions of it um
[39:09] so what i do is i write the url of the
[39:13] song
[39:14] to um
[39:15] to the nfc tag and on the esp i parse
[39:20] out
[39:21] from that url there’s a there’s a
[39:23] spotify uri
[39:26] they call it and the the api
[39:28] uses the uri to change songs so i have a
[39:32] song written to this and when i tap it
[39:34] off this it’ll tell my phone to start
[39:37] playing the song that’s on it so we’ll
[39:40] do that but the problem is it’s crashing
[39:43] the esp at the moment afterwards so it
[39:46] changes the song and then crashes so
[39:48] it’s like
[39:49] let me do this one last job for you uh
[39:52] and then i will die so it
[39:55] has that blue and red symbol around it
[39:57] to indicate that it has read the tag
[40:01] so yes you see it restarted
[40:04] and it didn’t update the song this time
[40:07] it’s at times
[40:09] so let’s try one more time
[40:13] live demos mate live demos
[40:16] i’m convinced
[40:17] where can i buy it
[40:21] yeah we’ll get that working some other
[40:23] time yeah that’s disappointing it was at
[40:26] least updating
[40:28] i did make code changes before this to
[40:30] try to fix it but obviously i made it
[40:32] even worse so that’s fine but
[40:35] it does do that
[40:36] i promise um
[40:39] okay so that’s that’s my nfc spotify
[40:42] project uh i will be released
[40:45] it is on github now if anybody wants it
[40:48] but i’ll properly be releasing a fixed
[40:51] version of it at some stage
[40:53] uh yeah so the next thing that i want to
[40:56] show is um
[40:58] it’s
[40:59] continuing the infomercial of um
[41:03] of the trinity but it’s actually
[41:05] something that i’ve been working on
[41:06] that’s really cool it uses the esp
[41:10] web flash tools
[41:12] so uh let me show you um if if people
[41:16] are familiar with my channel
[41:19] i made a wi-fi tetris clock before um
[41:22] where like it’s a clock that fetches its
[41:25] time from the internet and um
[41:28] like draws the time using falling tetris
[41:31] blocks and it’s it’s a pretty nice
[41:33] project but it has like a lot of
[41:35] dependencies and things like you need to
[41:37] install the matrix libraries
[41:39] uh you need to install
[41:41] like
[41:42] the
[41:43] adafruit gfx the thing for getting the
[41:46] time the
[41:47] the tetris draw um project so um
[41:52] yeah i want to show
[41:53] this how web flash tools could make
[41:56] sharing it really easy so with the
[41:58] trinity you just plug it in here
[42:01] you uh take this thing
[42:03] this is a wire that comes with the um
[42:06] with the matrix panel and you would just
[42:09] draw it in here
[42:10] so if anybody has any questions while
[42:12] i’m making this up but literally only
[42:14] take a second here so why is the uh when
[42:17] is the trinity boy going to be available
[42:19] on tindy when will you be selling them
[42:21] next week i would say next
[42:24] probably next saturday uh i would think
[42:27] um
[42:30] can you add some touch buttons to the
[42:33] trinity in the next version
[42:35] there’s touch buttons on this version
[42:38] wow
[42:41] there’s two touch buttons there
[42:43] which is one of the added features over
[42:46] the i2s shields uh yeah
[42:50] now
[42:52] the other one of the other added
[42:54] features is uh pink leds two of them
[42:59] one of them being user controlled and
[43:01] there are being uh
[43:03] like the power led
[43:05] um
[43:06] right so that’s it plugged in
[43:08] uh this is just usb from my computer and
[43:12] that’s it and it’s hooked up to the
[43:13] matrix it’s actually displaying
[43:15] something now but
[43:16] we won’t worry about that
[43:18] what we’re going to do is go to my lg
[43:22] monitor share
[43:24] so this is my um so this is a web page
[43:27] that i’m hosting using github pages um
[43:32] which is a nice way of getting a
[43:34] simple
[43:35] like web server that has https built in
[43:39] for free basically
[43:41] um and what i’ve done here is i have
[43:45] a compiled binary of the wi-fi tetris
[43:48] clock project
[43:50] up on this website that like anybody can
[43:53] visit
[43:54] i have my esp32 plugged in
[43:57] uh via usb
[43:59] the only piece of software i need
[44:01] installed on my computer is the driver
[44:04] for the es like the usb to ur chip so in
[44:07] this case it’s the ch340
[44:09] g
[44:10] but um
[44:11] yeah so hopefully this works now so i’m
[44:13] going to click install
[44:15] i get the options it’s probably a bit
[44:17] small for you but i get basically my two
[44:19] com port options so i know it’s com port
[44:22] 5
[44:23] i click connect
[44:25] it does initializing and
[44:28] it should yeah so it’s now writing the
[44:31] binaries
[44:33] for for the project uh onto the board
[44:37] and yeah it’ll take a couple of seconds
[44:39] or whatever but
[44:40] yeah what’s super cool about this is
[44:42] like i don’t even need to have the
[44:44] arduino ide installed never mind the
[44:46] esp32 board devs or any of the libraries
[44:50] and i’m able to like get this up and
[44:52] running so it’s a really nice way to
[44:55] share a project like especially if
[44:58] there’s kind of like a complex like
[45:00] install path for it like if you’ve tons
[45:04] of dependent libraries or you know
[45:06] sometimes you might even need to make a
[45:08] modification to one of the dependent
[45:10] libraries
[45:11] um
[45:12] i think this is developed by the esp
[45:15] home guys like so like when you’re
[45:17] installing tasmota or usb home like this
[45:20] is probably a good thing wled also
[45:23] definitely supports it as well so that’s
[45:26] it um
[45:28] that’s it done uh it should be kicking
[45:30] into wi-fi manager at the moment but um
[45:34] i already have uh i already had this
[45:36] project set up on um
[45:39] on this already um we’ve probably all
[45:42] seen wi-fi manager anyway so it just
[45:44] makes it a capacit
[45:46] a captive portal for you to uh
[45:49] configure like the wi-fi settings and
[45:52] things like that because
[45:54] because it’s a binary i have put up on
[45:56] it like it needs to be completely
[45:58] generic for everybody so like things
[46:01] like putting in your wi-fi details
[46:04] setting the correct time zone
[46:06] and
[46:07] some of the other matrix config options
[46:10] as well can be done through the
[46:12] captive portal and uh yeah so that is
[46:16] this uh which is pretty nice like is in
[46:20] literally
[46:20] i don’t know how long i was talking for
[46:22] maybe six or seven minutes i went from
[46:25] like
[46:26] a blank trinity for want of a better
[46:29] word i had other stuff on it uh to like
[46:32] the project finished um which is which
[46:35] is quite cool
[46:36] um why is chrome doesn’t it browser it
[46:39] does require chrome yeah because chrome
[46:42] is one of the only browsers that
[46:44] supports that
[46:45] usb serial
[46:47] um stuff
[46:49] uh
[46:50] yeah so if there’s any other browser
[46:51] that starts supporting it that would be
[46:53] fine but yes it does require chrome
[46:56] um
[46:58] how does it detect what kind of matrix
[47:01] this is this is like a 64 by 32 do you
[47:05] have like dip switches or
[47:08] no it doesn’t do that that is um
[47:12] so let me
[47:13] so let me enter config mode and i’ll
[47:16] show you here
[47:18] uh so i what i did there was i double
[47:21] pressed reset so i’m pressing the reset
[47:24] button twice to force me into config
[47:26] mode it’s just a nice way of
[47:29] uh like freeing up a button like i could
[47:32] have mapped it to a touch button or
[47:34] something but that i might want to use
[47:36] them for something else later while the
[47:39] reset button for an a thing like this
[47:42] which is you know
[47:44] on startup you either want to enter
[47:46] config mode or you don’t
[47:48] a double reset detect is really useful
[47:51] basically it like writes to some memory
[47:54] a persistent memory and after 10 seconds
[47:57] or it’s configurable but after 10
[47:59] seconds it will like remove that flag
[48:02] from persistent memory and then on the
[48:04] next startup it checks that for that
[48:07] flag and if it finds it it goes okay
[48:09] yeah they’ve pressed reset twice in the
[48:12] last 10 seconds i you know i need to
[48:14] enter config mode so i wish i had a
[48:17] better way of sharing this now than
[48:19] showing my phone but anyways so uh
[48:21] configure wi-fi
[48:24] uh let’s press configure wi-fi better oh
[48:26] i’ve disconnected from the wi-fi that’s
[48:28] back yeah so you can enter in your
[48:32] ssid details and stuff like that and
[48:34] then i actually have the option in here
[48:37] to so if you had plugged this into a 64
[48:40] by 64 panel uh you could get it to to
[48:43] work in that too
[48:45] so thank you bit looney
[48:50] you got me back
[48:52] you know sometimes i’ve taught it to you
[48:55] yeah so that is the
[48:57] uh wi-fi tetris project uh the the other
[49:00] thing that i’ve been up to but i don’t
[49:02] really have anything to show for it yet
[49:04] is i s uh my home heating
[49:07] uh controller or timer was broken and i
[49:10] swapped that out for a sunoff so i am
[49:12] starting into the world of uh like home
[49:16] assistant and that type of thing um
[49:21] and yeah i think it’ll be fun um yeah
[49:25] once i don’t kill myself
[49:27] wiring the sign offs and stuff but the
[49:28] sign off is in and working fine i’ve
[49:31] done something with the sonoff that i
[49:33] don’t believe anybody else has ever done
[49:35] i have left the default firmware on it
[49:39] um
[49:40] most people just installed tesmoto
[49:42] straight away and i i will
[49:44] but uh yeah that’s uh that’s
[49:48] that’s pretty much it for me
[49:50] yeah as i mentioned trinity has been
[49:53] absolutely chewing up my time uh
[49:56] yeah it’s it’s uh yeah it’s interesting
[49:59] but uh hopefully next week uh is is uh
[50:03] will be released there is like
[50:06] a good few in one of those boxes behind
[50:08] me
[50:09] and uh yeah so be fun i sent out a
[50:11] couple of samples to some big time
[50:14] youtubers as well uh
[50:16] so uh
[50:17] we’ll see if they get them
[50:19] none of us
[50:25] whoever wants one can ask me very nicely
[50:28] and i will probably say yes
[50:33] uh yeah so yeah that’s that’s pretty
[50:36] much it for me i think
[50:37] brilliant cheers brian that’s great
[50:40] so i think a bit looney you said you’d
[50:42] go next so uh you’re it
[50:46] are you ready
[50:47] yeah i hope so
[50:50] so uh
[50:52] um
[50:55] since last time i was on the maker cast
[50:57] i uh started doing uh like weekly
[51:01] streaming
[51:03] i don’t like
[51:05] when
[51:06] like youtubers uh do only streaming like
[51:10] i do now
[51:11] like it looks uh but it’s it’s a way for
[51:14] me to be more productive on on that side
[51:17] and i i’m really about to um
[51:22] make like real videos from the project
[51:25] that we did there so we had like one
[51:28] theme
[51:28] uh that was suggested by my viewers to
[51:32] do like a one day challenge that i do on
[51:35] a single stream the people suggest and
[51:38] vote on the project that this that is
[51:40] done
[51:41] and we did like two three insta
[51:45] installments already and
[51:48] the first one is the one that i will
[51:50] present because the other ones already
[51:53] uh broke like uh this is the accident
[51:55] counter uh that
[51:57] um yeah i have unforged unfortunately i
[52:00] have like detached uh two wires it was
[52:03] like
[52:04] it was too stiff
[52:06] but basically whenever i hurt myself i
[52:08] can press the button there was a william
[52:10] scream and uh it was printing on one of
[52:13] the thermal printers
[52:15] that i found that i found i just want to
[52:17] show that there is still yeah yes brian
[52:19] brian found i didn’t find the meter i
[52:22] stole it from larry
[52:23] [Music]
[52:25] from him first
[52:26] yeah
[52:28] larry basically i
[52:30] can’t find the other ones this is a very
[52:32] page that’s that’s like there’s simply
[52:34] like cute little printers
[52:36] with uh a role in there and um they can
[52:40] they work with bluetooth uh more or less
[52:44] sorry is that thermal the printer yes
[52:47] thermal printer yeah and um
[52:51] they work with bluetooth low energy i
[52:54] think even and uh larry did the arduino
[52:58] library to access one of the printers
[53:01] and he
[53:02] even extended it to the other printers
[53:04] as well i i can’t find the other two
[53:07] it must be somewhere here i don’t know
[53:10] if you want but looney seeing as i was
[53:12] the first person to get them yeah so
[53:14] shall we show them one
[53:18] where is it
[53:21] that’s a mess here
[53:24] oh yeah that’s the that’s the one that’s
[53:26] the easiest to access so
[53:29] and
[53:30] um
[53:31] yeah brian you’re muted
[53:35] yeah that was the gold jprt that was the
[53:38] original one
[53:39] uh
[53:40] you showed the prairie page one right
[53:42] that’s the
[53:44] the bear one
[53:46] and then the third there’s the cat
[53:48] printer i don’t i’m not sure if i got
[53:50] the cat no i did yeah of course it did
[53:54] why did i get a cat printer no idea
[53:57] yeah and the cat printer is a little bit
[54:00] harder to program since it has uh
[54:03] some like checksum and stuff
[54:06] um
[54:07] and um also the latest implementation of
[54:11] the bluetooth stack on the esp32
[54:15] uh crashes sometimes there but that’s an
[54:18] ongoing project um
[54:20] then we had like uh something that uh a
[54:24] super basic one uh because all that all
[54:27] of the time when i’m working on other
[54:30] stuff like away from the screen and the
[54:32] people are screaming in the chat and i i
[54:34] can’t read it we had like a basic piezo
[54:38] buzzer connected to this esp
[54:41] that that was controlled by chat with uh
[54:45] exclamation mark fail and uh it would
[54:48] set off a beep and uh we have we had
[54:51] even text to speech on uh over
[54:54] node red that was quite enjoyable
[54:57] because the people sent of course uh
[54:59] hacked it and sent uh
[55:02] images and and so on and so forth
[55:04] but the first one was the longest stream
[55:07] i will switch my camera
[55:11] if if it’s still working here
[55:14] yes it’s it’s working
[55:16] okay so um i got from from a viewer i
[55:20] got this flip thought matrix
[55:22] and
[55:25] the first
[55:27] first
[55:29] project was
[55:30] oh yes
[55:33] brian is
[55:34] stoxing me as well
[55:36] the first project was to uh
[55:39] to
[55:40] like control this um
[55:42] and i basically i didn’t know what what
[55:45] i’m doing um the viewer sent me also the
[55:48] ics that are like
[55:50] drivers and shift registers i have a few
[55:53] here
[55:54] and um
[55:56] we it took us like
[55:58] 15 hours on stream to set this up
[56:03] we only had the drivers for uh half the
[56:06] display
[56:08] but after 15 hours we
[56:10] so the the task was
[56:12] to
[56:13] maybe i i will show it
[56:15] okay so
[56:18] that’s
[56:20] not
[56:21] broken
[56:22] i hope not i hope it’s still still
[56:24] working yeah it’s still working
[56:27] so i’m printing a proper case right now
[56:30] as we speak but it takes uh quite some
[56:33] hours because it’s quite a huge display
[56:36] yeah that’s like an uh flip dot
[56:38] oscilloscope and it’s in the roll mode
[56:41] i can maybe demonstrate it before i
[56:43] break it so let me connect it to my
[56:46] other oscilloscope
[56:48] which has a wave wave generator
[56:52] that’s like a sine wave
[56:55] i can set the frequency that’s like
[56:59] a low frequency let me
[57:03] set it to a higher frequency
[57:05] so
[57:11] so it actually works
[57:13] and we got it on after 15 hours of
[57:16] stream we got it like it was only the
[57:19] half the display and it was rotated by
[57:21] 90 degrees
[57:22] and we got it working and it actually
[57:27] this update is a little bit slow because
[57:29] um
[57:30] this display
[57:33] i will turn it off for now
[57:35] yeah it’s it’s
[57:37] moving out
[57:39] this display has only like
[57:41] uh not a complete
[57:43] full
[57:44] like
[57:45] h-bridge per
[57:48] pixel it has like
[57:49] um the reset only works like column-wise
[57:52] so you either reset the complete column
[57:55] and you can set each pixel individually
[57:58] so it takes a little bit longer to
[58:01] update a complete display or if you
[58:03] change only a few pixels you might need
[58:05] to update a complete column at once
[58:08] if the pixel changes in a different way
[58:11] and
[58:12] what what i did
[58:14] later saw the stream was 15 hours long
[58:17] people went to bed and got up and
[58:21] joined the stream again at work and and
[58:23] so on
[58:24] and um
[58:26] yeah we even like used
[58:29] things
[58:30] on on on this one
[58:32] that weren’t like supposed to be used
[58:34] like this is like pwm and
[58:37] like pwm extension shields and we use
[58:40] them basically as uh shift register uh
[58:45] like
[58:46] uh supplements or
[58:48] whatever
[58:49] and um yeah after that when i get the
[58:52] focus back
[58:53] i i can turn
[58:56] i will just unplug it live
[58:58] it will be terrible i probably break the
[59:00] board
[59:01] because my power supply
[59:03] power supply is on the other uh
[59:07] side of of the room uh i designed the um
[59:10] yeah it was another live stream where i
[59:14] told people to show me how kai kit works
[59:16] and this is basically my first port that
[59:18] i designed with
[59:20] kycat
[59:21] because my
[59:23] new new
[59:25] sponsor which is isla where i got the
[59:27] bots from um
[59:29] they have a like if you upload like the
[59:32] project you don’t need to export gerbers
[59:33] and so on
[59:34] and um yeah i tested tested them and got
[59:39] like this is the board it’s called the
[59:41] big loonies flippy flip
[59:43] um and it has like some
[59:47] uh yeah the design design decisions are
[59:50] not the best but it works with only one
[59:53] teeny tiny batch and it has also a pink
[59:56] led pink in this case it’s like more
[59:58] more of a magenta i would say i don’t
[60:01] know if you can see it
[60:03] and it even says
[60:05] ah if we get some focus
[60:08] it even has a label
[60:10] that says only pink and it you can’t do
[60:13] anything about this led it’s just
[60:16] like a power led
[60:21] and i had to screw on this this uh
[60:25] huge heatsink because
[60:27] this board is powered by 24 volts
[60:31] and i’m i’m just using a basic 5 volt
[60:36] voltage regulator to get
[60:39] the
[60:40] power for for all the ics which are not
[60:43] it’s these are like
[60:45] these are like high side drivers and we
[60:48] have some low side shift registers and
[60:50] some additional shift registers to
[60:52] address the high side drivers so it’s
[60:55] like
[60:56] the board is not very efficiently i i
[60:59] guess there are probably some high side
[61:01] drivers with shift registers included
[61:03] but
[61:05] i don’t know
[61:06] anything about that so i designed it
[61:08] like like i just
[61:10] uh thought and yeah it’s working with
[61:13] them with the esp32 mini board and i
[61:18] added like this is this
[61:20] the probe
[61:22] the uh
[61:23] the oscilloscope probe so i made this
[61:26] board with with the first project in
[61:28] mind to uh make it like like that i
[61:31] didn’t didn’t even bother uh order the
[61:33] right connector for for the flip dot
[61:35] display and just
[61:37] just
[61:38] cut off
[61:40] like female female um
[61:43] not pin headers or the sockets and
[61:46] that’s about it
[61:48] so
[61:49] this is quite hot it’s getting really
[61:52] okay now it’s one to the touch because
[61:54] the esp32 it drains uh it draws so much
[61:57] current and if i would like i’m not
[61:59] using a wi-fi now
[62:02] and i think that’s about like 500
[62:04] milliamps and you can imagine if you
[62:07] use 24 volts to like five volts and you
[62:10] have uh 20 times uh like 10 10 watts
[62:15] of heat is wasted here because of the
[62:17] esp alone
[62:19] so maybe a step down converter would be
[62:22] more efficient but i it’s like too many
[62:25] components i just wanted one component
[62:27] there and that’s that’s about it
[62:29] there’s just uh there’s a guy
[62:32] captain uh who used to be around on my
[62:35] discord i haven’t seen him too often
[62:36] recently but he made a
[62:39] a book converter
[62:41] the form like the size format of the
[62:45] leos just for such an occasion like this
[62:48] like uh it’s just a good job into a
[62:51] single component maybe if he has a i
[62:53] think it’s open source so maybe yeah if
[62:55] you can drop a link that would be cool
[62:58] um yeah and um that’s that’s about it
[63:02] it’s not very complicated board and
[63:05] um yeah there is also like
[63:08] the bit looney features like the gnd
[63:11] label is a little bit tilted
[63:13] to trigger all the people and i even had
[63:16] some some half bridge spare half bridges
[63:19] here
[63:20] that are basically screw demos so i
[63:22] could even drive a motor here with that
[63:24] and and there are some spare
[63:27] like
[63:28] pins even for audio or whatever so
[63:32] um yeah i’m i’m hoping to use that this
[63:36] is this is very specifically for this
[63:38] design of a flip dot matrix so
[63:42] probably nobody will ever use it uh
[63:44] except for for the the guy that that
[63:47] sent me uh the flip because he has
[63:50] another two
[63:51] of these and
[63:52] you can’t buy them really so you can you
[63:55] have to be really lucky on ebay too to
[63:57] get one
[63:59] i will just plug it in oh
[64:02] plug it live
[64:03] still working that’s cool very very
[64:06] robust design by petunia
[64:08] [Laughter]
[64:12] uh yeah and um
[64:16] yeah i hope to use this i’m printing
[64:18] currently like a basic 3d printed case
[64:21] where i can put it on the wall and maybe
[64:25] use it for different displays like uh
[64:28] the accident counter that displays how
[64:30] many seconds since the last accident in
[64:32] in my lab
[64:34] happened and
[64:35] maybe
[64:37] people can
[64:38] like put something on the scroller from
[64:40] the chat or whatever
[64:42] uh yeah that’s that’s that’s everything
[64:44] that i would like to show i think
[64:50] camera
[64:55] very nice bit looney brilliant
[64:58] yeah thanks
[65:00] can we get a better look at the mess
[65:01] behind you
[65:02] yeah sure where’s your office
[65:07] it doesn’t have anything on my mess
[65:14] yeah that’s the clean side
[65:19] what do you think is that way for me
[65:23] one of those things in the background
[65:26] yeah
[65:27] that’s the one the pro project that
[65:29] people probably were waiting for an
[65:31] update for but that might might take a
[65:33] while because i have so so many things
[65:35] lined up these are like the
[65:37] six vga
[65:39] boards i showed that so many times
[65:42] already so i don’t bother there there is
[65:44] like a stack of of the boards behind me
[65:47] there
[65:48] so and they are even working that’s like
[65:50] the only the third iteration
[65:55] that’s a surprise in your voice
[65:57] that they’re even working
[65:58] [Laughter]
[66:01] yeah you know i i tend to flip things
[66:05] yeah
[66:06] yeah
[66:07] nice
[66:09] all right uh sean are you ready
[66:11] yeah yeah excellent
[66:14] i’m just gonna sean’s up next all the
[66:16] way from australia it’s 6 a.m or
[66:18] 7 am now
[66:20] i’m so far away i’m just going to
[66:21] quickly mute myself and turn my lights
[66:23] on
[66:24] so i don’t trigger anyone else’s home
[66:26] assistant one second
[66:40] sorry fire isn’t responding
[66:52] so while sean talks to himself let’s uh
[66:55] let’s talk amongst ourselves
[66:57] wow okay well that’s not working
[67:12] well that’s gonna make things difficult
[67:15] so
[67:17] um for those of you that caught my video
[67:19] the other day i have been
[67:21] um tinkering over the last little while
[67:24] uh collaboratively with um
[67:27] marius from
[67:29] uh norway
[67:31] not netherlands i got that bit wrong oh
[67:32] well um
[67:34] we’ve been uh playing around with
[67:36] different ideas to do with
[67:38] um well both of us have been working on
[67:41] the stencil printing problem
[67:43] um
[67:44] so
[67:45] or as in the solder paste application
[67:46] with pencil printing so
[67:48] those of you that
[67:50] do any surface mount work that use
[67:52] stencils whether you’re doing
[67:54] using like non-frame stencils like this
[67:57] or whether you’re using frame stencils
[68:00] whether you’re
[68:01] even making your own stencils etching
[68:03] them yourself or using my laser cutting
[68:05] and whatever else they all pretty much
[68:07] have an inherent problem
[68:09] in that
[68:10] how do you get the stencil to sit flat
[68:13] and still on your pcb while you’re
[68:15] pasting how do you get
[68:17] a really good paste application and
[68:20] don’t have the paste squeeze underneath
[68:23] how do you i mean a lot of people you’ll
[68:25] see when they’re pasting they they do
[68:27] multiple wipes and they wipe in
[68:28] different directions which you really
[68:29] shouldn’t do because you’re just pushing
[68:31] paste under
[68:32] how do you get the perfect paste
[68:34] um for me it’s about production like i
[68:37] every time i have a board where the
[68:39] paste isn’t perfect i’m going to have
[68:41] rework
[68:42] after the board’s been assembled and
[68:44] reflowed and reworked just takes so much
[68:47] time so
[68:49] i’m all about how to improve that and
[68:51] the easiest way is to go out and spend
[68:53] 40 or 50 or 150 000 on a really good
[68:58] fully automatic stencil printer that
[68:59] does it all for you
[69:00] but um
[69:01] i don’t have that type of cash sitting
[69:03] around
[69:04] and i don’t have any space for anyway
[69:06] so i’ve got a manual stencil printer one
[69:08] of those ones that kind of looks like a
[69:09] silkscreen printer that you can lift up
[69:12] you put your pcb and you put the pull it
[69:14] down you align it and then you paste
[69:17] the problem is
[69:19] pcbs especially if they’re penalized
[69:21] they come bowed and bent
[69:23] um
[69:24] mostly from packaging but the fact is if
[69:27] you’ve got a pcb and it’s a v scored for
[69:29] instance you’re introducing the ability
[69:31] for the pcb to flex you have to mount it
[69:34] inside the stencil printer you need to
[69:36] put the stencil down and getting the
[69:38] stencil perfectly aligned
[69:40] not from a position point of view but
[69:41] from a height point of view
[69:43] is
[69:44] well
[69:45] for me it’s fairly hard i mean i’ve got
[69:48] fairly good eyesight sure i wear glasses
[69:50] but i’ve got
[69:51] different types of pairs of glasses that
[69:53] you know allow me to do really close-up
[69:55] work and
[69:57] because of the pitch that i’m working on
[69:59] with a lot of my parts the
[70:01] um the thickness of the stencil is like
[70:03] only like 0.1 millimeter thick like 100
[70:06] microns so
[70:08] if it’s not sitting perfectly flat on
[70:09] the stencil
[70:10] on the pcb
[70:12] you know it could be out 50 of the
[70:15] thickness of the stencil so if i want to
[70:17] only get paste that’s
[70:19] 100
[70:21] microns or 0.1 millimeter thick on the
[70:24] pcb and it’s sitting
[70:26] 30 or 40 microns high i’m either going
[70:28] to get too much paste to go in and
[70:30] squish under or it’s not going to
[70:32] actually touch the pcb and when i pull
[70:35] the stencil off the paste comes back up
[70:38] stays in the aperture because it hasn’t
[70:39] actually touched the pcb properly and i
[70:41] get pads with no paste on them that is
[70:44] it’s a nightmare and um
[70:47] there are so many factors that are
[70:48] involved with pasting you know
[70:51] temperature
[70:52] and humidity at the time how um you know
[70:55] whether your paste is old whether it’s
[70:56] it’s drying out too much
[70:58] whether you’ve taken out the fridge
[71:00] early enough and let it warmed up
[71:02] whether you’ve mixed it enough there’s
[71:04] so many things that can go wrong with
[71:05] pasting
[71:06] i’m trying to eliminate as many as
[71:07] possible and maris has also been doing
[71:09] the same thing he’s been playing around
[71:11] with making
[71:12] um
[71:13] both a fully custom stencil printer like
[71:15] an automated stencil printer or semi
[71:17] semi-automatic but
[71:19] um one where it can automatically lift
[71:22] and lower the the pcb to the stencil
[71:24] he’s playing around with framed and
[71:26] frameless ideas
[71:28] um
[71:29] but we’ve both been playing around
[71:30] recently with
[71:32] vacuum beds
[71:34] and
[71:35] i started with the intention of working
[71:37] out how to make one for a cnc machine so
[71:41] i could do my own pcb
[71:43] routing for pcb separation
[71:46] so i could take a
[71:47] a panel of boards
[71:51] like this like tiny picots that are
[71:53] already made put them inside a cnc
[71:55] machine
[71:56] um and like i can’t just put inside a
[71:59] cnc right now and clamp it down and cut
[72:00] it because i’ve got no way of clamping
[72:02] the individual boards so a vacuum bed
[72:06] that sucked the whole thing down would
[72:07] allow me to cut these out
[72:09] without the pcbs moving because of the
[72:12] vacuum
[72:13] um
[72:14] and marist was playing around with that
[72:16] kind of same idea but for manual
[72:18] stencils
[72:19] and so
[72:21] i’ve evolved mine into a system for
[72:24] my stencil printer now this is a newer
[72:26] version of what i showed on my video the
[72:28] other day
[72:29] and it looks a bit funny with the
[72:31] the adapter on the side so i did have
[72:33] the hose sticking out this way but i
[72:36] wanted it to go back behind the unit
[72:38] unfortunately it’s got to go on an angle
[72:40] because the stencils are quite wide and
[72:42] this section can’t hit the stencil since
[72:44] it won’t come down
[72:45] but the whole idea is if i just go to a
[72:50] the previous version the whole idea is
[72:51] these run off a vacuum cleaner
[72:54] which is crazy i know but who doesn’t
[72:56] have a vacuum cleaner
[72:58] um
[72:59] so you plug a vacuum cleaner into it and
[73:02] you turn the vacuum cleaner on and it
[73:03] sucks looks like a flux capacitor
[73:06] yeah without all the flashy lights
[73:07] though
[73:08] um and and it sucks air in and basically
[73:12] makes anything that goes to it stick to
[73:14] it
[73:15] so
[73:17] i started playing around with a whole
[73:19] bunch of different ideas and my my first
[73:21] iteration was i wanted something to be
[73:23] modular
[73:24] so i built this system where these
[73:27] individual pieces
[73:31] these individual pieces had holes in the
[73:33] top
[73:34] to suck air you can see that there’s a
[73:36] um a raised and lower section so the pcb
[73:38] would sit inside it’s a bomb
[73:41] yeah it’s a flute
[73:43] um
[73:44] and that what you could do is you could
[73:47] they just plug into each other
[73:50] and you can make them as long or as
[73:51] short as you want and oops
[73:55] anyway yep doesn’t matter
[73:58] there we go
[73:59] and
[74:00] so the whole idea was it was modular so
[74:02] that way i could
[74:04] not i would not have to print custom
[74:06] tops for each type of panel i’ve got
[74:08] because i’ve got um
[74:10] as of yesterday now i’ve got 19
[74:12] different stencils frame stencils
[74:14] sitting in my stencil area and that
[74:17] means i’ve got um
[74:19] probably all up about 12 different shape
[74:21] panels
[74:22] that i do production with that would
[74:24] mean i needed 12
[74:26] custom things to go in the stencil
[74:29] machine
[74:30] which is way too many but the problem
[74:32] with this is it just it because of the
[74:34] nature of it and it just didn’t work
[74:36] very well i couldn’t suck enough air
[74:37] through it um the the openings joining
[74:40] it all together were just too small
[74:42] so
[74:44] the next thing i did i mean what i
[74:46] should have done is gone straight to my
[74:47] idea now which is
[74:49] oh and and
[74:51] what marex is also doing is printing it
[74:53] in two sections but i wanted to see if i
[74:55] could print the base in one go
[74:58] as in
[75:00] this
[75:01] got a bit of a rattle because uh some
[75:04] uh support that was on the the end here
[75:07] as i was trying to get it out i
[75:08] accidentally pushed it in and it’s stuck
[75:09] in there now and i can’t get it out but
[75:11] anyway this was printed in one piece now
[75:13] i know it looks like there’s a top on it
[75:16] i actually ran out of filament and it
[75:17] just so happened that the
[75:19] swapper filament ended up going to a
[75:20] different color
[75:22] makes it look like
[75:23] there’s two halves but this is all one
[75:25] piece
[75:26] and so this was a solid
[75:28] chunk of 3d printing but what i did is i
[75:31] i um put
[75:33] i can’t remember i think it was 160
[75:34] spheres inside here and i bullying them
[75:38] out and so the reason i used spheres is
[75:41] that gave a natural
[75:43] like um an arc
[75:45] or an arch inside that allowed the top
[75:48] to be supported
[75:49] so i didn’t like because obviously i
[75:51] couldn’t just print the top it would
[75:52] fall down right without supports
[75:54] underneath
[75:55] so
[75:56] inside here are like 160 little arches
[76:00] that hold the top up
[76:02] and but give
[76:04] um like an open space inside and it
[76:07] actually works really really well
[76:09] unfortunately i got the spacing of the
[76:12] holes on the bottom wrong
[76:14] because i discovered that um the
[76:17] alignment of the holes on my stencil
[76:19] printer are not
[76:21] symmetrical they’re not yeah or
[76:24] that they it skews off as it goes up
[76:27] and so it didn’t screw down so that was
[76:29] a 17 hour print that was a waste of time
[76:32] but and probably about six hours of
[76:35] designing this thing to make it hollow
[76:38] to make it and not have the top fall in
[76:40] it was a nice exercise i’m glad i did it
[76:42] i’ll never ever do it again
[76:43] and then
[76:45] it’s the worst thing about 3d printing
[76:46] isn’t it it’s the hours and hours until
[76:48] you find out it’s wrong
[76:50] right really yeah
[76:52] yes and what i should have done is is
[76:53] printed the bottom first to check it and
[76:56] so i started doing that so from now on
[76:58] from then onwards everything i printed
[77:01] i would print the the first layer or two
[77:03] layers
[77:04] of the print first so i could measure it
[77:07] and put it down right
[77:08] and the same thing with my lattice
[77:10] design i i printed this case it was two
[77:13] layers i got distracted and i came back
[77:14] and it printed two layers um
[77:17] so i’ve moved on so the version i had on
[77:19] the stream outside on my video the
[77:21] problem was i couldn’t clamp it down
[77:23] onto the bed because i designed it to
[77:25] put the screw holes um
[77:28] it wasn’t working well so what i did
[77:30] instead is i got rid of the holes on the
[77:31] bottom and i put these little
[77:33] um tabs on the side and then i’ve
[77:36] printed
[77:37] some of these little adapter things and
[77:39] they clamp it down and i use the normal
[77:42] m5 bolts on the the bed that would
[77:45] normally get used to screw in the little
[77:48] mounts and pin holders
[77:49] and that holds this down perfectly
[77:52] so now i’ve got the the thing stuck down
[77:55] and i’m just gonna
[77:56] i’ll leave that on for the moment so
[77:59] there’s the two halves here there’s the
[78:01] top and the bottom and they’re just
[78:02] screwed together at the moment
[78:04] and then what i do is i print a custom
[78:07] plate
[78:09] so this done in red
[78:11] that holds my pcb so the pcb just sits
[78:13] in there right and it can it just comes
[78:15] out
[78:17] and
[78:19] each one of these is three millimeters
[78:20] high
[78:21] and i inset so these are one millimeter
[78:24] thickness pcbs i just insert the one
[78:26] millimeter with a little thing to flip
[78:28] it up
[78:29] and what that allows me to do is once
[78:31] it’s in
[78:33] it gives me a perfectly flat
[78:36] area here where the pcb gets sucked down
[78:38] through the holes and the
[78:41] um the raised section holds down the
[78:43] stencil
[78:44] and so
[78:46] when i turn the vacuum cleaner on it
[78:48] sucks the pcb perfectly flat so even if
[78:50] there’s a bow on the pcb
[78:52] it gets completely flattened and then it
[78:54] sucks the stencil directly onto the pcb
[78:57] and even if of the stencil is sitting
[79:00] there and it’s not perfectly flat and
[79:02] it’s not perfectly um like you know it’s
[79:04] raised on the corner it doesn’t matter
[79:06] it just gets sucked right down and i get
[79:08] a perfectly flat
[79:10] surface and
[79:11] it’s like my vacuum cleaner is probably
[79:13] overpowered from what i’m doing with at
[79:15] the moment but it’s incredible like the
[79:17] thing can’t move at all
[79:19] once the vacuum is sucked and then i can
[79:21] paste turn the vacuum off and then the
[79:24] stencil comes up a little bit and i can
[79:26] lift the stencil and i get a perfectly
[79:27] pasted board
[79:29] now
[79:30] a few people ask me on like in the
[79:32] comments on the video what do i do about
[79:34] the um like my usb connectors have got
[79:38] um
[79:39] little peg holes
[79:41] right so there’s paste in these little
[79:42] holes now turned around there are a
[79:45] paste in these little holes here for the
[79:46] usb
[79:48] and is that isn’t that going to suck the
[79:49] pace through well what i do is on the
[79:51] actual design for each of the stencils
[79:54] you can see that there are
[79:55] holes missing and they align to where
[79:58] those peg legs are
[80:00] so there is no way that those will get
[80:03] sucked through and everything else is in
[80:05] a is in a completely sealed vacuum so no
[80:08] pace can move sideways
[80:09] no pace can go anywhere other than onto
[80:11] the pads
[80:12] because the stencil is being sucked
[80:14] directly onto the pcb like it’s the
[80:17] yeah it’s
[80:19] like if i was gonna get paste going
[80:21] sideways i’d get it without the vacuum
[80:24] and i don’t get it without the vacuum
[80:25] with the vacuum yeah it’s incredible so
[80:28] what i’m actually gonna
[80:29] show you something i’m gonna i’m gonna
[80:31] have to mute
[80:32] my video when i do this because it’s
[80:34] gonna be loud but i’m gonna um
[80:37] this stencil here i’m gonna do this live
[80:39] i’m gonna plug this into my vacuum
[80:41] cleaner and stick the sensor on and show
[80:42] you just how insane
[80:44] this thing is so i’m gonna mute
[80:50] hopefully his live demo goes better than
[80:52] mine
[80:55] he’s gonna reappear covered in solid
[80:57] paste
[81:00] like a mime shop
[81:02] down here okay
[81:04] so
[81:05] it’s plugged in it’s connected
[81:07] you have to the vacuum cleaner’s all
[81:08] over there it’s going to be loud but i’m
[81:10] going to move because i don’t want
[81:11] everyone have to listen to my vacuum
[81:12] cleaner
[81:15] i’ll imitate the noise of a vacuum
[81:18] trainer at a lower volume
[81:29] it does it looks like uh
[81:31] like charlie chaplin her i was like
[81:35] that was pretty impressive look at this
[81:38] [Laughter]
[81:49] anyway the point is
[81:51] okay people want to hear the thing with
[81:52] sound so can you do it
[81:54] do it
[81:58] yeah i’ll do it again not muted
[82:01] so
[82:02] hang on
[82:04] i knew that was going to fall off
[82:10] i haven’t glued the um the adapter onto
[82:13] this yes oh yeah that’s enough
[82:15] so it’s this that came off
[82:18] that’s all
[82:19] um
[82:20] i’m still playing around i’ve got a
[82:22] whole bunch of different angle pieces
[82:24] i’m trying to get the right angle
[82:27] for this piece here so i don’t want to
[82:28] glue it on yet and that’s what fell off
[82:32] okay i’m going to turn the vacuum
[82:32] cleaner on again
[82:34] good loud
[82:38] oh my goodness
[82:52] pretty impressive
[82:53] it doesn’t move
[82:55] yeah
[82:56] when it was unbeatable it’s more like a
[82:58] magic trick
[83:00] i’m wondering if you can use it as a
[83:01] back massager or something what
[83:10] there is like this therapy where they’re
[83:12] putting like suction cups on the back
[83:15] so if you might want to sell it as a
[83:18] back massager or
[83:21] with different
[83:22] and horns you can maybe
[83:25] do different devices with flexible
[83:28] flexible
[83:29] filaments uni is
[83:31] getting dangerously close to making
[83:33] [Laughter]
[83:44] [Music]
[83:46] that would be really confusing
[83:49] anyway
[83:50] the point is the point is i um
[83:54] this solves for me anyway it solves so
[83:56] many problems
[83:58] because i’ve got pcbs that are 0.8
[84:00] millimeter one millimeter 1.2 and 1.6
[84:04] millimeter thick and in the past every
[84:06] time i put a different thickness pcb on
[84:09] i had to readjust the height of my
[84:11] stencil printer
[84:12] and
[84:14] adjusting it
[84:15] point to a millimeter is impossible like
[84:18] it’s there’s no fidelity on these
[84:20] machines and so i’d often my first or my
[84:23] second panel that i’d paste
[84:25] would be bad
[84:27] because i still had to keep tuning the
[84:28] stencil and you don’t want to wipe down
[84:31] like for a lot of my boards i can’t just
[84:33] wipe down the panel and reuse it because
[84:35] you get
[84:36] paste inside vias and all sorts of other
[84:38] stuff and completely changes the board
[84:40] so
[84:42] there was a little bit of wastage but
[84:43] with this each one of these is always
[84:46] three millimeters high and i inset into
[84:48] it
[84:49] so i’ve got now a fixed height stencil i
[84:52] never have to adjust the height of my
[84:53] stencil and even if i take a stencil off
[84:56] and put a new one on and there’s a
[84:57] little bit of tilt or something with it
[84:59] the fact is the suction just sucks it
[85:01] down straight
[85:02] and it doesn’t matter i don’t have to do
[85:04] any adjustments anymore
[85:05] so i’ve been visibly printing off all
[85:08] the different types of
[85:09] adapters i need
[85:11] and
[85:13] yeah it’s uh
[85:14] it works much much better than i was
[85:17] expecting
[85:18] i’m quite surprised but i do need to get
[85:20] a
[85:21] um a different vacuum cleaner that’s got
[85:23] the ability to turn it down because this
[85:25] is too strong i don’t need this strong
[85:26] or this loud
[85:29] little dyson battery-powered one then
[85:31] you can claim the walls again
[85:34] yeah i don’t know if i want to do
[85:35] battery power i don’t think it’ll last
[85:36] very long
[85:37] so um i mean people were complaining
[85:39] about the noise on my video like you
[85:41] know why do i have to use
[85:43] allow can’t the vacuum cleaner be in a
[85:44] different room the fact is like you know
[85:47] i’m using it for 30 seconds at a time
[85:49] who cares how loud it is right you know
[85:51] when i’m picking placing that the noise
[85:53] in my garage from the pick and place
[85:55] machine and from the compressor going
[85:56] and stuff
[85:57] is loud enough anyway um
[86:00] i i don’t know
[86:01] so much you’ve got your electronic dance
[86:03] music on while you’re doing this i’m
[86:05] sure
[86:06] i know cancelling bose headphones on and
[86:08] all i can i can’t hear anything it’s
[86:09] great
[86:10] um
[86:12] so people are asking me if i’m going to
[86:13] uh open source this or not well
[86:15] i’m not selling this as a product like
[86:17] i’m not 3d printing things for people
[86:20] this is like 20 hours 25 hours with the
[86:22] printing yeah um
[86:25] but yeah i like it
[86:27] generator that generates like the the
[86:29] the plate where your uh
[86:33] pcb goes in or do you like do it
[86:37] on the fly with your design tool
[86:40] well it’s all confusion i i haven’t done
[86:42] it parametrically um
[86:45] but what i’ve done instead just to make
[86:47] sure that everything fits right as you
[86:48] can see this is like a really good
[86:51] perfect fit for this panel is i actually
[86:53] took my design of the board into fusion
[86:56] and re-penalized it in fusion and then
[86:58] used that to cut out what did mike just
[87:01] write
[87:01] this paste in you could flick the vacuum
[87:03] in reverse
[87:05] smg
[87:09] yeah
[87:12] so that these top plates are there
[87:14] oh
[87:15] what did you drop
[87:17] my display fell down
[87:21] i was laughing loud
[87:31] the people in the chat are hilarious
[87:33] today
[87:35] you put a part reading from your
[87:37] compressor from the ping pong
[87:39] yeah so doing vacuum from the compressor
[87:42] is not powerful enough
[87:43] um using a venturi
[87:46] type um
[87:48] system or or something else
[87:50] you need
[87:51] even though my vacuum cleaner is quite
[87:52] powerful
[87:53] you know overpowered it’s still
[87:56] you know
[87:56] 100 times more powerful than what you
[87:58] get off a compressor
[88:00] but you can um you can actually buy
[88:02] vacuum pumps that are quieter but
[88:04] they’re 700 like i don’t again
[88:06] i don’t have a problem with software
[88:07] vacuum cleaner i don’t care about the
[88:08] noise like it’s only a problem
[88:11] a lot of the vacuum cleaners have like
[88:13] dials on them anyways don’t they yeah
[88:16] little sliders to let air out yeah yeah
[88:19] well that’s the thing i could get a
[88:20] release valve right but that’s still not
[88:22] going to reduce the noise of the vacuum
[88:24] cleaner this isn’t
[88:25] true it’s one
[88:28] very loud very powerful yeah
[88:30] 2400 watt vacuum cleaner right where a
[88:32] normal like household one is anywhere
[88:34] between 1200 and 1600 watts so
[88:37] anyway
[88:38] i can make it quite if i need but that’s
[88:40] not my my purpose um
[88:42] i have a i have a shot effect that has
[88:45] like a socket on it right that you plug
[88:48] your power tool into
[88:50] and when you engage the power tool
[88:53] like the current draw that’s going
[88:55] through it is enough to tell the
[88:58] the vacuum to turn on so the vacuum only
[89:00] turns on when you engage the power tool
[89:02] so you could like stick like a drill
[89:04] beneath your desk and be turning that on
[89:06] with your foot uh
[89:16] maybe a fake it to something else but
[89:18] like a foot pedal like would be nice for
[89:21] this
[89:30] makes a good point uh some worries like
[89:32] how do people vacuum their houses if if
[89:35] they’re complaining about the noise of a
[89:37] vacuum that’s a good point yeah
[89:40] yeah
[89:41] so random hacks just asked me like and
[89:43] this is part of the problem that um yeah
[89:46] every time i get boards from jlc pcb
[89:50] from my provider
[89:54] um
[89:56] other providers are available yeah
[89:58] so like the panels they’re always
[90:01] different they’re always really
[90:02] different so this is my tiny pico usbc i
[90:05] had an order of um
[90:07] so it’s 100 panels right so 2 000 boards
[90:10] yeah and in one order of 100 panels
[90:14] there were three different versions of
[90:16] where they drilled
[90:18] the pinhole
[90:21] now the pinholes are in the design
[90:24] they’re in the drill file if you
[90:25] download their gerbers they’re in the
[90:27] actual design
[90:28] yet
[90:29] three different places they put the
[90:31] holes so i take a panel i’d put it down
[90:34] and it wouldn’t fit
[90:35] and i’d have to go and re-set up my
[90:37] sensor printer for the new pins and then
[90:40] i’d go take another panel and it
[90:41] wouldn’t fit again right
[90:43] there’s
[90:44] there’s all different issues you get
[90:45] with
[90:46] different thicknesses of the boards and
[90:48] stuff
[90:49] so
[90:50] relying on a perfect layout to place
[90:53] these in all the time is really hard
[90:54] this suction solves all that it doesn’t
[90:56] matter
[90:57] right because once it’s sucked down in
[90:59] place it doesn’t move i can push
[91:00] everything into the corner the only
[91:02] problem i’ve got is when the suction’s
[91:03] going you can’t adjust the stencil
[91:06] position like you can’t alter it because
[91:07] it’s so strong
[91:09] that it won’t move and that’s what the
[91:11] problem was having in my video um
[91:13] so that i actually had more footage that
[91:15] i was going to i had to cut out of the
[91:16] video because it was getting a bit long
[91:18] but um i was actually showing how i was
[91:20] adjusting it and as i was adjusting it
[91:22] it was because i couldn’t clamp this
[91:24] base down it was moving the base and
[91:27] then i went to lift the stencil up and
[91:28] it actually lifted the whole thing and
[91:31] stuck to the stencil it was like this
[91:33] i’m looking and i couldn’t find
[91:35] my basement
[91:39] so that’s why i had to put the clamping
[91:40] on so um
[91:42] yeah anyway it’s really cool it’s
[91:44] exciting marius is also sharing stuff on
[91:46] twitter and uh i think he’s gonna be
[91:48] releasing some videos of the stuff he’s
[91:50] working on um he’s primarily focusing on
[91:53] non-framed
[91:54] so he’s adding things like uh little
[91:56] springs and stuff that lift the stencil
[91:58] off when it’s not being sucked
[92:00] um i can’t do stuff like that because i
[92:02] need i need the stencil down all the
[92:03] time to be able to
[92:05] align it
[92:06] um
[92:07] so yeah we’ve got some pretty cool ideas
[92:09] we’ve been discussing things like
[92:10] magnets and using um
[92:12] powered coils to turn the magnets on and
[92:14] off to
[92:16] um
[92:17] there’s a lot of different options for
[92:18] stuff like this but i’m quite surprised
[92:20] how how many people
[92:22] um
[92:23] got excited by the video like
[92:26] other makers and stuff
[92:27] that want to start just playing around
[92:29] the vacuum stuff like it’s a really
[92:30] clever idea just to use a vacuum cleaner
[92:32] um at least for experimenting and stuff
[92:35] um if i can get this system running
[92:37] perfectly i could always go out there
[92:39] and buy you know spend 600 bucks and get
[92:42] a really good vacuum pump that is
[92:44] considerably quieter that can sit
[92:45] outside in the garage or something but
[92:48] um
[92:49] for now it’s all about getting a little
[92:50] tasting
[92:52] so yeah i
[92:53] yeah i love that concept of like using
[92:57] a cheap like something that is widely
[93:00] available
[93:01] to like do some you know like a specific
[93:04] job like this like vacuum cleaners are
[93:07] like by far the cheapest
[93:09] source of vacuums you can get
[93:12] like and you know
[93:13] why not make you so yeah
[93:16] right i mean who doesn’t have a vacuum
[93:17] cleaner or have that have access to a
[93:19] vacuum cleaner i know not everyone’s got
[93:21] access to a 3d printer but that’s
[93:22] becoming more and more prevalent now um
[93:24] and you can buy prints off pcb where the
[93:27] sponsor is absolutely absolutely
[93:30] or somewhere else right yeah
[93:33] um
[93:34] i think this is going to be the thing
[93:35] that finally pushes me into buying a cnc
[93:37] machine so um
[93:39] because i’d like to be able to see and
[93:41] see these parts instead
[93:44] um
[93:45] but yeah look it’s been really fun
[93:46] experimenting with getting it all
[93:48] together and stuff um also people asked
[93:51] on uh on the video
[93:53] how does it hold this section down
[93:56] and so the aperture of the holes on here
[93:59] are five millimeter and the aperture of
[94:01] the holes on here are four
[94:03] so that
[94:04] allows the suction actually sucks
[94:07] onto
[94:08] the base and holds that on
[94:10] so like it’s kind of cascading as the
[94:12] holes get smaller and then they get
[94:14] blocked
[94:15] and um
[94:16] yeah it’s um
[94:18] it’s really cool
[94:20] so yeah i’ve been spending a lot of time
[94:22] on that and just um
[94:26] yeah
[94:27] yeah i’ve got some other stuff i just
[94:29] don’t know if i’m
[94:30] i might do a tease should i do a tv
[94:34] depends on what it is if you have to
[94:36] stand up i don’t want to see it
[94:39] okay
[94:42] i’m trying to think how i do a tease
[94:43] okay
[94:45] there was a suggestion of uh who’s not
[94:47] wearing any trousers competition
[94:51] okay i’m just gonna quickly hold
[94:52] something up to the camera
[94:54] and then i’m gonna
[94:57] yeah
[94:58] okay
[95:12] additional um serial chip or are you
[95:15] using the built-in uh usb
[95:20] no comment
[95:22] ah
[95:24] the team
[95:26] it was a cheese now it’s all native i’m
[95:28] not doing external chips if you want to
[95:31] well firstly there’s no room but if you
[95:32] want an extent aboard think central chip
[95:34] buy uh one of the development kits
[95:37] yeah
[95:38] yeah there’s uh these boards are
[95:40] absolutely packed in
[95:42] no space
[95:44] for a second usb or for a serial but you
[95:46] can always connect one externally
[95:49] like all the pins are broken out um
[95:52] but yeah they’re the first revision
[95:54] of my s3 boards and they don’t know
[95:56] anything about um
[95:58] the stuff that they released recently on
[96:01] the esp
[96:02] uh youtube channel they showed that they
[96:05] support even usb cameras now and and so
[96:08] on
[96:10] yep
[96:11] did you try that already or
[96:14] no um well no because they don’t have
[96:16] that stuff in their
[96:18] main line idf right now
[96:20] oh so it’s like
[96:22] only also only a teaser what
[96:24] no well everybody’s teasing no so the
[96:27] the
[96:28] the native usb is a full full speed on
[96:31] the go usb yeah
[96:33] right it always happened even on the s2
[96:35] it’s not specific it’s not an s3 thing
[96:37] um
[96:38] s2 also supports that yeah absolutely
[96:41] right um
[96:43] so it’s just that they’re the idf is
[96:45] quite
[96:46] light in all of their usb stuff like for
[96:48] instance
[96:49] the all the mess storage stuff that like
[96:51] you know tiny usb and circuit python
[96:53] uses for the native usb
[96:55] like
[96:56] circuit python’s had that for a while
[96:58] now but uh the idf is only just now
[97:00] introducing things like mess storage and
[97:02] head and other stuff
[97:04] um but yeah it’s a full speed on the go
[97:07] and you don’t like you can still use the
[97:09] native usb to flash the device
[97:11] and then you can unplug it and you could
[97:13] plug it on the go
[97:15] into it like a camera into it
[97:17] like you don’t have to have two usb
[97:18] connections for instance like one with
[97:20] the serial up to flash it and one
[97:23] the thing um you just put the board back
[97:25] into download mode and it just becomes a
[97:27] normal cdc again
[97:29] did you think uh often
[97:32] often methods to like switch it on the
[97:36] board because uh
[97:37] when designing boards that that use like
[97:40] the internal i would like to have
[97:42] let’s say usbc to upload it and then
[97:46] maybe a
[97:47] usb
[97:49] like a socket a regular usb 2 socket and
[97:53] i would like to switch it from from when
[97:56] i boot up or or program it to use usbc
[98:00] and then only use the usbc power and uh
[98:03] like switched
[98:05] the data lines to
[98:07] like a port or or anything on the board
[98:10] do you have any ideas about that is
[98:12] there a possibility to do that
[98:16] yeah you can use a high speed like
[98:18] digital switch
[98:19] for your data lines i guess
[98:21] like you’d have problems getting
[98:22] something like that through to
[98:23] certification
[98:25] but um
[98:26] but yeah you could you could do that you
[98:27] can get like a high speed but there is
[98:29] nothing built in the the usb
[98:32] no all
[98:34] like a matrix
[98:36] for the an io matrix for the data log
[98:38] for the d plus and d minus
[98:40] no no um they’re complete
[98:43] no you’d have to do that externally
[98:45] but but the solution to that is you
[98:47] stick a serial you are
[98:49] on there and you have one to flash it
[98:50] and one
[98:52] and you usually on the go as they on the
[98:54] go all the time
[98:55] um
[98:57] yeah
[98:58] but i mean
[99:00] i don’t know like so
[99:02] the if you look at all the other chips
[99:04] and all the other boards that have
[99:06] uh native usb none of them have a serial
[99:09] ui chip on there but the only reason
[99:12] that you can get their dev kits and
[99:13] stuff like if you look at this is the s3
[99:16] board the current dev kit it’s got two
[99:18] usbs on it now they didn’t do that with
[99:20] the s2 but they’ve done it with the s3
[99:22] so they’ve got native connected and
[99:24] they’ve got a serial ui chip on there
[99:26] now this is the only thing
[99:28] in existence in this whole marketplace
[99:30] that has this
[99:31] like you buy any other
[99:34] dev board or you know like a nuclear
[99:36] board discovery board or any other type
[99:37] of
[99:38] development board that has a sandy or an
[99:40] arm like an stm32 or whatever on it they
[99:43] don’t break out two usbs it’s a native
[99:45] usb and you get one usb connection right
[99:48] the the only reason especially for doing
[99:49] this is because up until now every one
[99:52] of their
[99:53] chips has required an external serial u
[99:55] art and that’s what everyone’s used to
[99:58] but
[99:59] i don’t know like the the fact that that
[100:01] people are still designing with an
[100:03] external clue art for me defeats the
[100:06] whole purpose of having a native usb
[100:09] i mean you can
[100:10] take one of um
[100:12] you know
[100:13] paul’s uh teensy boards that’s only got
[100:15] a single usb connector on there and you
[100:17] can do all the things that you want to
[100:19] do you can you can use it as a full on
[100:21] the go
[100:22] usb and whatever else and still use it
[100:24] to flash your board
[100:25] and you know you don’t see anyone
[100:27] running out and sticking an external
[100:29] serial you are onto a teensy board
[100:31] like it’s just it’s not needed it’s just
[100:33] that
[100:34] everyone is so used to doing things in a
[100:36] certain way with the esp32
[100:39] that
[100:41] they’re coming out with boards like this
[100:42] that have both but it’s just it’s
[100:44] unnecessary so that that’s why i’ve been
[100:46] focusing on only doing native on my
[100:48] boards um
[100:51] the flip side is though that all this
[100:52] stuff’s still very new and the idf
[100:54] support for all the things like the you
[100:57] know the on the go the camera full speed
[100:59] camera and doing hidden stuff like that
[101:01] is still only coming out now
[101:03] the mass storage and everything else is
[101:05] still only coming out now
[101:07] um
[101:08] so yeah they’re a little behind in the
[101:09] software but
[101:11] yeah it’s
[101:13] like why do you need to have both
[101:14] connected at the same time bit loony why
[101:15] can’t you plug your usb in flash it take
[101:18] it out
[101:19] and then plug your device in because
[101:21] your code’s running on the board
[101:23] why do you still need to have the are
[101:25] you talking about the power you need it
[101:26] as a host so i want a
[101:29] console that is passed from us on from
[101:31] the usb
[101:34] c connector and then uh
[101:37] have plug-in like
[101:39] keyboard or
[101:40] controller in the usba and then
[101:43] but i don’t want to program the esp over
[101:47] the usb
[101:49] socket like usb 2 socket
[101:54] okay no so that i want a constant power
[101:56] supply i don’t want like an additional
[101:58] power supply at like
[102:01] but he’s you know about making a custom
[102:02] board because you can do that like all
[102:05] the pins are broken out
[102:06] like yeah but i want
[102:09] i want the usbc
[102:11] to deliver power
[102:14] and programming the esp32 and after it’s
[102:17] done communicating programming whatever
[102:20] switch to another port where i have
[102:22] plugged in my peripheral that i want to
[102:25] use with the computer that i made
[102:28] you know accuracy
[102:30] yeah so this is the if you’re gonna have
[102:31] two usb connectors on there
[102:34] why not just stick a serial ui chip on
[102:35] there with you as well and then that
[102:37] solves it yeah but i don’t want an extra
[102:39] ua chip if i can like solve it a
[102:42] different way
[102:44] that loonie’s going to spend like
[102:46] days trying to figure out this like
[102:48] high-speed usb
[102:50] switcher to avoid putting the 40-cent
[102:53] ch340g
[102:55] on honest
[102:56] that’s a problem flip shortage like
[102:58] the cs3
[103:00] anything you don’t want to use any
[103:02] component inside like uh true hole
[103:04] resistors anymore
[103:07] you’d have to use another chip you’d
[103:08] have to use a high-speed digital switch
[103:12] oh i don’t want
[103:14] you
[103:15] you absolutely cannot do it inside the
[103:17] chip inside the esp32 yeah okay that was
[103:20] my question you could maybe use you
[103:22] could use jumper headers to
[103:25] from when usb to the other petroleum
[103:28] yeah that’s that’s a solution like a
[103:30] jumper
[103:33] i think this is very unique to you
[103:35] though
[103:36] no you can do that you need four jumpers
[103:39] no yeah
[103:40] two two yeah for example
[103:43] yeah anyway anyway
[103:47] we digress there’s a quiz to do still
[103:50] no
[103:51] oh yeah that’s it i’m done i’m done okay
[103:53] sean’s down all right well then sean
[103:56] thanks very much that’s brilliant good
[103:57] job
[103:59] so uh what’s next then because it’s me
[104:01] next isn’t it me
[104:03] okay right uh let’s see if any of this
[104:04] actually works
[104:12] okay
[104:13] so
[104:15] i know some of you have seen this
[104:16] already this is the uh the old asteroids
[104:19] project but i didn’t share it when i
[104:20] when i came on the uh making cast the
[104:22] first time i was so nervous i forgot to
[104:24] set any of my projects up so
[104:27] this is the
[104:29] laser projective afterwards
[104:40] so there’s a few issues with the sound
[104:42] at the moment or something isn’t it’s a
[104:43] strange crackling
[104:51] so that’s the uh that’s the laser
[104:53] protective asteroids and
[104:55] how many of you of those have you built
[104:57] have you just got the one i’ve just got
[104:59] the one yeah i’ll show you the uh wire
[105:03] oops i’m disconnecting my phone
[105:08] no technical issues
[105:10] oh there we go
[105:11] so uh
[105:14] the wiring is a little bit um a little
[105:16] less
[105:18] the main problem is the uh the
[105:20] controller i made which is this thing
[105:23] it does does require it’s got four
[105:25] switches and this magnetic rotary
[105:27] encoder
[105:28] um which involves a lot of wires going
[105:31] back to the actual uh
[105:33] i guess we can call it a console
[105:35] to the console and then you have even
[105:37] more wires because you’ve got the two
[105:39] the two wires that control the um
[105:42] the laser gauge which is here so you can
[105:45] see that i’ll try not to get the laser
[105:47] in my phone but that’s them
[105:49] that’s an x and y galvey we have two
[105:51] millimeters you can get off aliexpress
[105:53] isn’t it you can get my family express
[105:55] yeah there’s loads of them and that that
[105:57] basically projects our um
[105:59] our laser you do get you know
[106:02] in a sensibly lit room you can get it
[106:04] onto a sort of wall that’s quite far
[106:06] away and you get a kind of
[106:08] four meters by four meters um display so
[106:10] it’s pretty good and then in here we’ve
[106:12] got a
[106:14] there’s a custom custom board with a
[106:16] couple of um
[106:18] the acs on it
[106:19] and a mosfet for switching the laser on
[106:21] and off
[106:22] and then these boards are what come with
[106:24] the actual um laser gauge this is just a
[106:27] bunch of analog amplifiers that
[106:30] use feedback to direct these laser
[106:33] cowboys the laser galleries are pretty
[106:34] interesting they’re basically
[106:37] just the coils of electromagnets so very
[106:40] lightweight kind of um motors that can
[106:42] be moved very very quickly
[106:45] and they have a
[106:47] i have a kind of or some of them have
[106:50] some feedback that uses light shining on
[106:52] some other mirrors and as the
[106:54] as the galvo turns the amount of light
[106:57] being reflected back to two sensors
[106:59] changes and then you can detect where
[107:01] the calvary mirror is actually pointing
[107:04] and there’s a bunch of crazy um
[107:06] non-linear feedback circuitry that
[107:08] sort of checks where it is and tries to
[107:10] correct it so you can get
[107:12] these ones are really cheap off ebay and
[107:15] they’re they’re kind of um
[107:17] they didn’t cost very much really it’s
[107:18] about 60 pounds or so
[107:21] and you can get amazingly expensive ones
[107:24] that go up to really high frame rates um
[107:27] but this gives us quite a quite a
[107:28] reasonable display it doesn’t flicker
[107:30] too much obviously when you’re showing
[107:31] it on the camera you get the um the
[107:33] shutter effect which
[107:35] means you get that flicker but
[107:38] for me it’s kind of pretty much solid
[107:40] and it’s a bit flickery but you don’t
[107:42] really notice it
[107:43] the more stuff you have on the screen
[107:45] the slower it gets so as you get more
[107:48] sort of
[107:51] [Applause]
[108:02] that’s now flickering quite a bit more
[108:03] because it’s trying to render more lines
[108:05] and there’s only so much time these
[108:06] galves can move in so
[108:09] the more stuff you have on screen the
[108:11] more flickery it gets but but it’s still
[108:13] pretty reasonable even even now it’s um
[108:15] it’s not too bad
[108:16] so that’s the old layer laser projected
[108:18] asteroids and the other thing i thought
[108:21] it might be fun to show was
[108:24] i’ve been
[108:25] upgrading my voice controlled robot to
[108:28] use one of sean’s tiny picots so if we
[108:31] turn this on
[108:33] turn this off so it doesn’t make too
[108:34] much noise
[108:36] so hopefully
[108:37] this will work so if i said it
[108:40] slightly
[108:41] got a mind of its own but if i go
[108:43] forward
[108:59] my little voice controlled
[109:02] voice controlled robot which uh
[109:05] does tend to kind of move if you’re just
[109:06] talking as well so it’s not not very
[109:08] well trained but um
[109:10] it does kind of kind of responds to
[109:12] commands backward
[109:14] yeah so most of the time it responds to
[109:16] real commands half the time it’s kind of
[109:19] just kind of moving by itself but um
[109:22] that’s a fun little project so i’ve been
[109:23] there upgrading that now i’ve got little
[109:25] batteries i used i built this originally
[109:27] around a big usb barrel bank power bank
[109:30] so i kind of left a big gap for one of
[109:33] these um
[109:34] tube sort of power banks but actually it
[109:36] runs off a nice little um
[109:38] thousand milliamp hour battery now so
[109:40] that’s that’s
[109:42] and then the main project i’ve been
[109:43] working on is this um diy e-reader
[109:46] unfortunately the screen is quite
[109:47] reflective but um
[109:49] let’s see if i can get the right angle
[109:51] so yeah there we go so that’s
[109:54] that’s
[109:55] a bit of a beatrix potter peter rabbit
[109:58] so we
[110:00] click the buttons come on okay
[110:04] oh there we go
[110:06] i don’t know if you can actually see
[110:07] that because it is is pretty reflective
[110:12] yeah we can see it huh you can see it
[110:15] okay
[110:16] so yeah so you can um
[110:18] page through the book
[110:21] now we’ve just been working on making
[110:23] this work with um at the moment it’s
[110:25] using an sd card
[110:27] but one of the
[110:28] guys on github wanted to use um
[110:31] spiffs so i’ve been making it worth just
[110:33] off spiffs the only fit maybe one or two
[110:36] books
[110:37] whereas when you’ve got an sd card
[110:39] you can fit um quite a few books i’ve
[110:42] got about 20 or so on there at the
[110:44] moment
[110:45] it is a bit slow rendering images of
[110:47] this stuff we’re going to be over the
[110:48] top on the
[110:50] ui for picking books so uh we can get um
[110:55] quite a few some kind of known format of
[110:58] the files yeah so they’re they’re called
[111:00] equal i’m using epub files which are
[111:02] kind of a
[111:04] zip file says zip archive
[111:06] and it has
[111:07] some xml files that sort of define the
[111:10] contents of the ebook
[111:12] and then the actual
[111:14] sort of contents are actually um
[111:16] html
[111:17] so it’s xhtml so it’s fairly fairly easy
[111:20] to pass
[111:22] and they tend to do them in quite small
[111:24] sections so each kind of chapter of the
[111:26] book tends to be an individual file
[111:29] and then there’s images and jpegs and
[111:31] pngs
[111:32] so actually sort of works actually works
[111:35] pretty well i’m quite
[111:37] quite impressed with it
[111:38] renders so well it is using a lot of ps
[111:41] ram so
[111:42] when you’re parsing one of these html
[111:44] files it does use about a megabyte of
[111:46] memory so you do definitely need
[111:48] ps ram and then the e-paper displays
[111:51] tend to need sort of two frame buffers
[111:54] so a sort of front buffer and a back
[111:55] buffer
[111:56] and that’s how the e-paper driver knows
[111:58] which bits of the screen to update
[112:00] so it’s really hard to fit it into a
[112:02] sort of standard esp32 but as long as
[112:04] you’ve got ps ram then
[112:06] that works really well
[112:08] and um
[112:09] so yes
[112:11] it’s kind of quite nice drawing images
[112:13] is is a little bit slower so i actually
[112:15] hit an image because just because in the
[112:16] images i probably picked one that
[112:18] doesn’t have any images let’s get back
[112:24] so it still needs a bit of work a bit of
[112:26] tweaking will
[112:27] make this pretty good so um
[112:31] so yeah so that’s that’s my ebook reader
[112:33] which is taken up
[112:35] to be honest it’s probably taken up most
[112:36] of this month when i was supposed to be
[112:38] actually working in the day job i’ve
[112:40] been um messing around
[112:51] very interesting but yeah now i’m
[112:53] looking for the next project to do after
[112:54] this i
[112:56] need a
[112:57] need more projects um
[113:00] but if anyone’s got any people back like
[113:01] anyways do you want to do them
[113:06] full backlog you could take yeah well
[113:08] that’s yeah
[113:10] i’m sure
[113:11] i’m sure i’m going to get a lot more
[113:12] sort of i can think of many slime bed
[113:15] thinking of projects to do and then
[113:17] realize that
[113:19] they actually have that much time to do
[113:21] you know one thing that i actually uh
[113:24] i used to commute uh for my job like two
[113:27] days a week
[113:29] uh up i had about an hour and a half
[113:31] each way and like that drive used to be
[113:34] a place where i used to like think
[113:36] through a lot of project ideas and stuff
[113:38] like you know just
[113:41] noodle over things and like go through
[113:43] you know you wouldn’t actually be trying
[113:44] anything out obviously but like you know
[113:46] be like oh i could do it that way or
[113:48] maybe i could use that or maybe i could
[113:50] do that kind of i actually kind of
[113:52] missed that a little bit like there’s no
[113:54] sort of hour and a half of doing nothing
[113:57] anymore but like i know driving is not
[113:59] nothing but it’s not
[114:01] active concentration really
[114:03] especially on a motorway or something
[114:07] i’ve had the same thing
[114:09] like
[114:10] driving around the m25 i’ve designed
[114:12] part of that vga circuit
[114:17] literally with your laptop
[114:20] those
[114:23] the sections of your brain that just
[114:24] aren’t needed for driving and they can
[114:26] just wander
[114:28] yeah and i i agree
[114:30] if you’re sat there at your desk
[114:33] um
[114:34] trying to you know looking for something
[114:35] to do something to occupy your attention
[114:37] it’s um it’s it’s that kind of it’s a
[114:40] completely different type of focus
[114:42] there’ll always be a kind of creativity
[114:43] you can get when you’ve got uh
[114:46] um
[114:47] your mind engaged on something that’s
[114:49] not taking all your attention
[114:51] yeah
[114:54] and you don’t remember the drive
[114:59] like my drive was literally like
[115:01] five minutes from my house was a
[115:03] motorway
[115:04] then it was motorway like for an hour
[115:06] and 20 minutes of the drive like so you
[115:09] know like there is really like all i
[115:11] have to do is now crashing to the car in
[115:13] front of me
[115:16] i’d stay between the lanes i get you
[115:18] know like that that’s literally my two
[115:20] jobs like if i had lane assist that
[115:22] would be half of them gone
[115:24] yeah
[115:26] right are we ready for a quiz no no no
[115:28] no no i have one question did you find
[115:31] about the the
[115:32] laser projector thing is because i was
[115:35] uh
[115:36] looking into that topic um
[115:39] like
[115:40] two weeks ago maybe even yeah probably
[115:43] inspired by by your videos and um
[115:47] i was looking for a galva that’s that’s
[115:50] a little bit smaller because you have
[115:52] like the one that you showed that that’s
[115:54] the typical one that you can purchase
[115:56] for like 50 60 bucks
[115:58] and then
[116:00] the next
[116:01] smaller types that i was able to find
[116:04] are from like
[116:06] some websites from the manufacturer that
[116:08] are really tiny and where you have to
[116:11] request a quote maybe and if you have to
[116:14] request a quote you know you can’t
[116:16] afford it
[116:17] yeah so did you uh and and i was also my
[116:22] mind was like
[116:25] going mad that
[116:26] i could i could maybe
[116:28] build them myself you you can um like
[116:31] small hard drives you have like very
[116:34] precise positioning of the of the head
[116:36] so
[116:37] you have like an angle there on this
[116:39] main axis of the of the head and uh i
[116:42] was thinking if if you
[116:45] thought about that or tried it already
[116:47] to build your own galaxy no
[116:50] i do have a bigger gal though that
[116:52] someone sent me so almost bigger
[116:58] it’s controlled digitally so it’s
[117:00] i think it might be better than this one
[117:02] but smaller yeah i mean there are people
[117:05] who build their own so there’s
[117:06] definitely
[117:07] yeah some people who will make their own
[117:10] and stuff but you didn’t
[117:12] find like a cheap source of like
[117:16] not certainly not sort of anywhere
[117:17] obvious
[117:18] um
[117:19] i think this is kind of um
[117:21] these ones seem to be mass manufactured
[117:23] now so they’re the kind of generic ones
[117:24] they’re very cheap
[117:26] anything
[117:27] anything outside that
[117:29] starts getting very very expensive very
[117:31] quickly
[117:32] it tends to be aimed at the professional
[117:34] sort of laser show people yeah farmer i
[117:36] only have thousands of pounds to spend
[117:38] on on stuff
[117:40] so are those units that that are so
[117:43] cheap are those the same that are built
[117:46] in the cheap projectors that are like
[117:48] 200 bucks or so
[117:50] i suspect so yeah yeah they probably are
[117:53] um i mean they seem to be manufactured
[117:55] by multiple people so there’s almost a
[117:57] standard
[117:58] sort of this is a laser projector galva
[118:01] it’s like a blonde although i mean
[118:03] the original white i had too and i
[118:05] thought i’d broken one of them it came
[118:07] with two separate boards for driving the
[118:09] x and the y
[118:10] and then this one was slightly more
[118:12] expensive and just has one board so this
[118:14] is probably a
[118:16] later version um
[118:18] but it
[118:19] it’s kind of the actual hardware is
[118:21] exactly the same and i think the
[118:22] electronics is exactly the same they’ve
[118:24] just squashed it onto one board rather
[118:25] than two boards so
[118:28] yeah it seems like it’s fairly
[118:29] standardized at least at the low end to
[118:32] just this i haven’t seen anything
[118:34] much cheaper
[118:37] but you can’t get you can get good
[118:38] results out of these these ones why do
[118:40] you need something so small what have
[118:41] you got
[118:46] planned has to fit in like
[118:50] this size
[118:52] okay
[118:53] yeah yeah i mean
[118:54] these are these are pretty small i mean
[118:56] what what’s that like
[119:03] what are we looking at
[119:05] it’s about four centimeters oh
[119:09] they look bigger
[119:10] yeah four centimeters by three and a
[119:12] half
[119:13] so it’s about it’s a four centimeter
[119:15] cube
[119:17] how noisy is it
[119:19] it’s very quiet actually i mean you can
[119:22] hear it but um
[119:24] i hope you’ve affiliate linked these in
[119:27] the description because i imagine loads
[119:29] of people are currently
[119:31] aliexpress
[119:35] of course you can but
[119:37] no i can’t i’m not a moderator
[119:40] how difficult to drive are they well
[119:43] they’re very easy because the driver
[119:44] boards do it all for you so you
[119:47] you need to feed in a differential
[119:49] signal so
[119:50] so that’s the only sort of hard way is
[119:53] just getting a differential signal which
[119:54] is just kind of one that goes either
[119:56] side of zero so but you can drive them
[119:58] sort of single sided as well so you
[120:01] depends how much deflection you want and
[120:03] one of the problems
[120:05] correct did you try to drive them
[120:07] yourself no i didn’t because
[120:14] the problem is the
[120:16] drive in them is actually quite
[120:18] complicated and these these boards come
[120:20] with about
[120:21] this one’s gone to three four five six
[120:24] so about ten little potentiometers that
[120:26] are tuned in the factory to adjust all
[120:28] the different non-linear kind of
[120:30] behaviors of the amplifiers to get
[120:33] sort of they basically tune them to do
[120:35] this standard test pattern at a certain
[120:37] rate without any artifacts yeah um so
[120:40] there’s a really it’s a bit of a strange
[120:42] word when you start digging into it
[120:43] there’s lots of
[120:44] sort of voodoo and black magic going on
[120:46] about tuning these things
[120:48] i was quite surprised how big that board
[120:50] was
[120:51] like yeah
[120:53] there’s a lot of um
[120:54] there’s basically a whole bunch of
[120:55] op-amps on it that’s the op-amps and
[120:57] then audio amplifiers so it’s kind of a
[121:01] there’s a on the output stage there’s a
[121:03] couple of big audio amplifiers that we
[121:04] use to drive the actual galves
[121:07] and there’s a whole bunch of crazy
[121:08] feedback stuff
[121:10] um the really expensive stuff is all
[121:12] digital now there we go there’s
[121:14] it’s not as big as that
[121:16] i could attach it to this yeah yeah
[121:21] yeah i mean you just need to generate
[121:23] sort of um
[121:24] some analog outputs uh so let’s bring
[121:26] your next one their stream that loony
[121:29] yeah
[121:30] cool it’ll take you one week i don’t
[121:33] mind the artifacts i i just wanted to
[121:35] like run and
[121:38] make a video and done
[121:41] get the affiliate link
[122:02] um
[122:11] there’s some really nice rgb laser
[122:14] things i have is it
[122:16] got three got a red green and a blue
[122:18] laser and they use um
[122:21] prisms and partially
[122:23] sort of um
[122:24] opaque
[122:25] partially reflected mirrors to kind of
[122:27] combine them all together and then send
[122:29] them out and i think they use the prism
[122:31] or something yeah so you can get rgb
[122:33] finding the lasers is better
[122:36] what’s that james i was just saying
[122:38] combining the lasers before you put it
[122:40] into the um
[122:41] the the xy galvo is yeah
[122:47] it’s pretty it’s pretty amazing and but
[122:49] yeah then you’re starting to get quite
[122:51] expensive
[122:52] but looney is like but the more ladies
[122:55] thinking i should do this no the more
[122:56] expensive i make it the more money i can
[122:59] make off affiliate
[123:00] [Laughter]
[123:04] if you did it beforehand
[123:06] wouldn’t they
[123:08] the colors split
[123:09] well because they’re lasers and as long
[123:11] as you align it all properly so is the
[123:13] guy i saw building one of these was um
[123:16] he was a bit crazy but he was really
[123:17] kind of
[123:19] completely fine tuning it with a little
[123:21] kind of squeeze to adjust it so it was
[123:24] just perfect
[123:25] and then
[123:26] quite dangerously eyeballing was it
[123:28] correct or not which always says
[123:30] slightly
[123:32] you would guess them
[123:33] before they hit yeah exactly yeah make
[123:35] sure they are
[123:36] parallel yeah
[123:38] okay
[123:39] so yeah but that’s getting on that’s
[123:40] getting into the kind of extreme kind of
[123:42] people
[123:44] it’s the same same how um three tft
[123:48] projectors work exactly yeah it’s very
[123:50] similar yeah
[123:51] because they have like two three arrays
[123:53] with different tfts with different
[123:56] colors and they combine it with like a
[123:59] prism or like mirror that’s
[124:02] it’s amazing actually it works really
[124:04] let’s see can i just comment bit
[124:05] looney’s getting lower
[124:15] right should we do a quiz then are we
[124:17] ready
[124:18] yes
[124:19] yes
[124:22] [Music]
[124:25] okay how do i do this
[124:27] share screen
[124:29] window right
[124:33] okay
[124:35] no expense has been spared in this quiz
[124:37] oh wow this isn’t even there’s even an
[124:40] egg no presentation
[124:45] so if anyone’s playing on that home just
[124:47] get yourself a piece of paper and you
[124:48] can write down the answers actually if
[124:50] you’re playing
[124:51] in the um live cast as well before you
[124:53] just write down your answers
[124:55] or something
[124:58] paper oh
[125:00] you could use your computer
[125:02] okay crazy
[125:04] okay i’ll type it into my phone
[125:07] okay
[125:08] it’s the quiz
[125:10] is there a prize you might be asking
[125:12] there’s always a prize
[125:14] admiration and adoration of your peers
[125:17] so if you win
[125:19] you just basically become
[125:20] the most famous maker caster ever
[125:24] so are we ready
[125:26] i’m just going to leave now get myself a
[125:28] coffee okay
[125:31] right then question one computer history
[125:36] who was the third founder of apple
[125:39] was it ronald wayne
[125:41] was it ted codd
[125:43] was it elon musk
[125:45] or was it gordon moore you’re not
[125:47] supposed to shout out the answer
[125:50] oh write it down
[125:57] get it down just get it out write it
[125:59] down it’s the same thing
[126:01] all right are we ready for question two
[126:05] after question one probably not
[126:11] i’m just gonna shout them out okay go on
[126:13] okay you ready
[126:14] sorry question two
[126:17] ibm boss thomas watson allegedly said i
[126:21] think there was a world market for maybe
[126:24] x computers did he think he would be
[126:26] able to sell
[126:28] five
[126:29] 10
[126:30] 100 or 1 million
[126:34] this was back in
[126:36] 19 something something a long time ago
[126:38] back in the year
[126:42] okay next question
[126:44] it’s electronics
[126:46] what is this symbol
[126:48] is it
[126:49] a fuse
[126:51] an antenna
[126:53] a mem resistor
[126:55] or a delay line
[126:56] so what is this symbol
[127:00] okay
[127:01] question four it’s the music round
[127:05] i’ll just turn my volume up so you can
[127:06] hear
[127:18] was that used in
[127:20] jetpack
[127:21] and attack
[127:23] night law
[127:24] or manic miner
[127:26] this isn’t fair i’m younger than you
[127:29] oh what’s the show
[127:30] at least some of you poor question
[127:32] please
[127:33] i never had a zx spectrum oh no
[127:37] this is a real uh uk focused one isn’t
[127:40] it i wasn’t saying spectrum korean
[127:42] uk
[127:44] i’m just glad i’ve got one question
[127:45] right
[127:47] question it’s another music question
[127:50] [Music]
[127:54] [Applause]
[127:58] right was this
[128:00] used in elite
[128:02] tetris
[128:03] hey you know
[128:05] or final fantasy
[128:08] okay
[128:10] next question
[128:11] movies and films there’s only 10
[128:13] questions so don’t worry this will be
[128:15] over soon
[128:16] movies and films
[128:18] computers make excellent and efficient
[128:20] servants i have no wish to serve under
[128:22] them who said this was it kirk
[128:26] spock
[128:27] bones
[128:28] or scotty
[128:33] okay
[128:34] question seven
[128:36] all those moments will be lost in time
[128:39] like tears in the rain
[128:43] star wars
[128:45] blade runner
[128:47] total recall
[128:48] or hackers
[128:55] i know one
[128:57] question eight
[128:58] what variant of terminator was sent back
[129:01] in the first terminator film
[129:03] was it the b9
[129:05] the t800
[129:07] the symbian s60
[129:09] or c3po
[129:14] we’ve got the ts80.
[129:18] you need a flexi friend if you go to
[129:20] your city
[129:22] no actually you don’t
[129:25] question nine the chips are down what
[129:27] country makes the most silicone chips
[129:30] china
[129:31] usa
[129:32] taiwan
[129:33] or malaysia
[129:38] okay the first answer that jumped into
[129:39] my head is not on that list oh was it
[129:42] ireland
[129:43] it’s from wikipedia so all answers from
[129:46] wikipedia okay last question
[129:48] according to wikipedia what percentage
[129:50] of chip production do cars consume
[129:53] 5 10 15 or 20.
[130:01] okay that’s the last question
[130:03] have you all do you want to go back to
[130:05] any questions or should we do the
[130:06] answers but i can hear looney typing
[130:09] looking up wikipedia no i’m not typing
[130:12] yes you are i can paste my answers right
[130:14] now
[130:15] i i think i got the terminator wrong
[130:23] i have the ts80
[130:26] yeah you need a ts 100 and a flexi
[130:29] friend yeah
[130:30] okay the answers so
[130:32] here was it i have to ruin that one
[130:37] third founder of apple
[130:38] it was ronald wayne
[130:47] does anyone know how much he he sold his
[130:50] shares for oh yeah
[130:52] bonus question it was like 10 000
[130:54] or something stupid like that wasn’t it
[130:56] it was listen
[131:00] it was
[131:02] yeah
[131:03] okay
[131:06] i got that wrong okay so
[131:09] thomas watson said
[131:10] there’s a market for maybe
[131:12] five computers worldwide oh wow
[131:16] it’s only allegedly though apparently
[131:18] this might just be made up so it seems
[131:20] like a stupid thing for the head of a
[131:22] computer company to say can we stop
[131:24] counting now
[131:27] i’ve got 100 so far i know i’m going to
[131:29] fail later
[131:32] this symbol is
[131:34] a memristor
[131:36] the fourth component of the
[131:38] components apparently sorry
[131:41] anyone know what a memristor does
[131:43] no i don’t know
[131:48] okay the music around it changes its
[131:50] resistance based on the current that’s
[131:52] been through it beforehand james bonus
[131:54] point for james
[131:56] you said you weren’t a hard worker james
[131:59] i’m actually like a qualified electronic
[132:02] and computer engineer like literally
[132:04] have a degree
[132:05] no idea what that was
[132:08] i do i didn’t get the symbol i thought
[132:11] it was a delay line but um
[132:16] did anybody get this then he went to zx
[132:18] spectra
[132:22] uh i picked i didn’t know oh yeah i
[132:24] guess
[132:26] this is my first point i
[132:28] guess that one right oh crap i haven’t
[132:31] been counting where i got points
[132:34] okay the next one this music was used
[132:37] in elite for the docking computer
[132:41] oh yeah i got that one
[132:46] always classical music you were quite
[132:48] clever there and stopped it before it
[132:50] got to the bit that played when you were
[132:53] actually docking oh did i
[132:55] i didn’t write a comment or 64 so i just
[132:59] heard it
[133:00] okay so who says yes anybody get this
[133:03] bones
[133:04] scotty i said spark yeah
[133:08] no way
[133:10] sorry
[133:11] wrong
[133:12] okay
[133:22] my wife does not like sci-fi movies so i
[133:25] don’t know
[133:27] oh
[133:28] yeah like i’ve seen blade runner before
[133:31] but like i don’t know 15 years ago
[133:34] okay
[133:36] okay 800 st 800 right t800 right oh yes
[133:56] where did you think it was james
[133:59] and for some reason i thought it was um
[134:02] korea but um my second guess was taiwan
[134:05] and
[134:06] well yeah it was on the list so that’s
[134:08] all that matters yeah
[134:11] malaysia does actually manufacture quite
[134:12] a few chips there’s quite a few um
[134:14] foundries there and design places but
[134:16] taiwan mostly food tsmc they are the big
[134:19] one
[134:20] and then the last one
[134:22] how many how much do cars consume
[134:35] very terrible
[134:37] question three
[134:38] [Music]
[134:43] how can i get 50 right even though i
[134:45] knew like one or two for sure
[134:49] there’s four options you’d only have a
[134:51] 25 percent chance
[134:58] so did you guys be a member of the
[134:59] audience i i got i got seven out of ten
[135:02] plus my bonus point
[135:06] smart app james i only got five you
[135:09] could be the super popular youtuber of
[135:11] maker cast or whatever it is
[135:14] i don’t even wanna
[135:16] you’re five
[135:18] five i got five
[135:26] you win the uh the admiration and phrase
[135:28] of probably your fellow peers you don’t
[135:30] have my head
[135:34] thanks brian
[135:47] um
[135:49] yeah but maybe maybe james you’re on a
[135:51] whole another level so i’m not a peer
[135:53] anymore so that’s why the admiration
[135:55] thing is not there i i think i had a bit
[135:58] of a bonus just by owning a spectrum
[136:00] when i was younger
[136:02] i yeah i think my i think the first
[136:04] computer i would have had is like
[136:06] a nintendo like a nez
[136:09] wow how old are you you must be like a
[136:11] 13 or something
[136:14] i’m 34.
[136:16] and i had the nes when i was young like
[136:19] like four or five
[136:22] like i was born in 87 when did the nez
[136:25] come out
[136:26] like 90 right
[136:29] that’s right old now
[136:31] like is the party’s question
[136:35] i should have had a spectrum when i was
[136:38] minus one
[136:40] why should i have had a spectrum
[136:44] i just thought it was popular knowledge
[136:49] so 1990 that’s 11 years ago right
[136:52] yeah exactly
[137:04] james how long ago in hex was it
[137:11] he’s working out
[137:14] well i said 11 years it was b but
[137:18] it’s 20.
[137:19] now around 1986. there we go
[137:22] that was probably in japan it came out
[137:25] in 1986 and make it over here too
[137:28] well ireland needed to go through a boom
[137:30] of economic prosperity before anybody
[137:33] could afford one so yeah we probably
[137:36] just got everything later than everyone
[137:37] else
[137:40] that’s my economic talk for today
[137:42] okay
[137:43] next time i’ll i’ll shift the uh
[137:46] references forward by
[137:48] 20 years or something
[137:50] 20 years
[137:52] i’m not 20 years younger than me
[137:56] nez was 1983 in japan wow wow
[138:00] that’s pretty cool
[138:02] that’s amazing
[138:05] if we’re going 20 years forward will the
[138:06] next maker cast beyond tick tock
[138:10] i’m not on tick-tock so
[138:12] maybe
[138:13] we’ll continue 30 seconds to show their
[138:15] projects
[138:19] and it has to have some weird computer
[138:21] audio
[138:23] this project and it was amazing
[138:27] what is with that voice
[138:28] brian we can we can set up a nice makeup
[138:32] filter for you
[138:33] they track your face in real time it’s
[138:35] really cool
[138:37] yeah you can’t really do more than track
[138:39] your face in real time they track your
[138:42] like data and bank accounts too
[138:45] you know you can do it even like a live
[138:47] stream on on tick tock so it’s not far
[138:49] far off
[138:50] maybe
[139:03] hasn’t released a video in like nine
[139:05] months is because he spends all his time
[139:07] on talk
[139:09] i’m doing research it’s it’s research
[139:14] shorts
[139:15] the youtube shorts algorithm is not good
[139:18] oh wow there is no no like clickbait
[139:21] filter whatsoever i get only like that’s
[139:23] not the problem but like you watch a
[139:25] video like oh you watch one guy make an
[139:28] ice cream or something and it’s like for
[139:30] the next like 20 things it’s like here’s
[139:32] a guy making an ice cream it’s like i
[139:34] don’t care about ice cream so it’s just
[139:35] one
[139:37] sorry
[139:38] yeah i just take it back i take it back
[139:42] whereas we just get people wiring up
[139:44] pcbs and breadboards
[139:46] like i actually do i have come across
[139:48] some people it from the scene bit looney
[139:51] has uh short’s channel uh but a couple
[139:54] other people as well have
[139:57] shorts and you come across them
[139:59] like three views on my shorts
[140:02] yeah i’m i’m one of them no it’s
[140:05] automatically like pasted in my on my
[140:07] discord nobody watches
[140:16] gotta get that engagement but looney i
[140:19] don’t care
[140:20] [Laughter]
[140:23] slipping off the affiliate money of
[140:25] these future galvo videos
[140:28] yeah
[140:29] what’s the most expensive galva you can
[140:31] buy
[140:33] let me review it i think i think the
[140:35] this is a gold mine
[140:37] you get the hell away from that
[140:40] you get the hell away from that that’s
[140:42] my gold mine
[140:48] i’m pretty sure making computers that
[140:50] fit on a tabletop
[140:51] is uh
[140:52] the gold mine
[140:55] yeah
[140:56] when it comes in kit form and it takes
[140:58] you uh 18 months to build it
[141:01] yeah
[141:03] whoever i pick to be the supplier on
[141:05] that will be the new number one chip
[141:07] manufacturer
[141:09] [Laughter]
[141:21] i’ve not had any problem
[141:23] getting hold of discrete logic devices
[141:26] chips from like i was so weird here as
[141:28] well
[141:29] although usually
[141:31] back in the time it was really hard to
[141:33] get like the
[141:34] the true whole components and the logic
[141:37] logic i see it was harder to get those
[141:40] and they were like
[141:42] way more expensive than
[141:44] uh the the surface mount thingies and
[141:47] now it’s completely different way around
[141:51] building like that board this driver
[141:53] board it was so cheap this is like the
[141:55] bomb cost is maybe without the esp it’s
[141:58] like maybe five five euros top so it’s
[142:02] really cheap if you re through stuff
[142:04] right now
[142:05] if you get the bulk ones off ebay
[142:09] um what you’ll actually find is that an
[142:11] awful lot of those come from reclaims
[142:14] from old pcbs
[142:16] and
[142:17] the the worst um supplies of those what
[142:20] they literally do is they
[142:23] um they just hold the
[142:25] the boards over a flame until the chips
[142:29] [Laughter]
[142:32] no no no they collect them up and
[142:34] reprint the top so they all look nice
[142:36] and new
[142:39] i learned
[142:40] i’ve bought lots of
[142:42] cheap discreet logic chips and
[142:45] some of my most
[142:47] i’m going to say enjoyable debugging
[142:50] sessions have uh
[142:52] resulted me finding chips that are a
[142:55] different 74 series logic chip than
[142:58] what’s written on them and occasionally
[143:01] just um just
[143:02] dead oh
[143:06] wow
[143:07] that’s hard to debug
[143:11] how did you find out though by
[143:13] popping up in the lid looking inside
[143:17] no it’s um
[143:18] the
[143:19] i think i had a
[143:22] an a nor gate that was labeled as a nand
[143:24] gate
[143:28] and of course you know i’m a more
[143:30] complex chip i would have just regarded
[143:31] as dead but that was like the
[143:34] the logic function on this just isn’t
[143:36] right but it’s
[143:38] it’s obviously it’s the wrong jip
[143:41] they’ve misidentified it and printed the
[143:43] wrong label on top is that some kind of
[143:45] tester that you could use for that or or
[143:48] develop a tester for i
[143:50] thought about making a tester for that
[143:53] um
[143:54] but uh yes it’s on the it’s in the
[143:56] backlog with
[143:58] a hundred other things that will
[143:59] probably never happen
[144:01] okay
[144:03] yeah
[144:03] no that feeling yeah
[144:06] me too
[144:07] see that board don’t start thinking
[144:09] about what it needs to do you get
[144:11] feature creep to detect all the odd
[144:14] variants of stuff
[144:15] but looney’s looking for more ideas to
[144:18] steal yeah
[144:22] he can steal that one and then i can buy
[144:24] one because it would be quite handy
[144:40] yeah yeah
[144:42] that’s not working
[144:46] yeah that looked like an etch a sketch
[144:51] i was thinking that might be my next
[144:53] project
[144:55] because i got this e-paper display and i
[144:57] thought it looks kind of like an extra
[144:59] sketch and you just need a little couple
[145:00] of um twiggly knobs
[145:08] looney’s channel
[145:11] no there’s not enough affiliate money in
[145:13] them
[145:16] all the big ink displays are pretty
[145:17] costly that’s true yeah
[145:20] it’s like
[145:21] um
[145:24] yeah
[145:25] but hang on before we talk about how
[145:27] many uh how much affiliate money bit
[145:29] looney’s made of his cnc video right
[145:33] how many robot vacuum cleaners you’ve
[145:35] sold brian
[145:36] oh yeah
[145:43] right so i released that video three
[145:45] months ago or maybe four months ago uh
[145:48] for the first month and a half it did
[145:50] absolutely nothing got a thousand views
[145:52] in the first like two days and did
[145:55] nothing after that and then it was like
[145:58] somebody in google just turned on a
[146:00] switch and
[146:01] suddenly like
[146:03] it was getting thousands of views a day
[146:06] 120k it’s up to now amazon
[146:09] which is the only place i had affiliate
[146:11] links for those have not
[146:14] paid i haven’t met the threshold on
[146:16] amazon for affiliate links
[146:19] since that video came out so i haven’t
[146:22] actually went in to see how many people
[146:24] bought them true links but i have not
[146:26] made over
[146:28] i i think the threshold is like 20 pound
[146:30] and like 30 dollars or something you
[146:32] know is
[146:34] like i would have thought one sale would
[146:37] get you over the threshold so i don’t
[146:39] think i’ve had a single sale but one
[146:41] thing that is a scam i think brian they
[146:45] might be have been somewhere as sale or
[146:47] something for the specific uh maybe yeah
[146:51] but one thing that is interesting that
[146:54] it makes more money ad revenue than my
[146:57] other videos
[146:58] like is in i have like my mate the first
[147:02] video i did on the matrix displays has
[147:04] 160 000 views and has made like half the
[147:08] money
[147:09] the robot lawnmower video made in its
[147:12] lifetime
[147:13] uh just because like uh like if you
[147:16] think about it if you wanted to put an
[147:18] ad in front of one of our channels like
[147:20] what do you put in
[147:22] yeah you know you’re trying to aim for
[147:23] like a techie person maybe you know as
[147:26] in what do you put in front but if it’s
[147:28] like a video for like garden tools like
[147:31] ryobi you’ll want to get involved like
[147:33] you know as in there’s
[147:35] like the
[147:36] target audience of that kind of a video
[147:38] is much more valuable from a marketing
[147:40] point of view so
[147:42] they’re paying out the big books so i’m
[147:44] a robot lawnmower video uh channel now
[147:47] um
[147:49] nothing but robot lawnmower videos we’re
[147:51] added
[147:52] and brian i didn’t earn much from from
[147:55] the mini mill it was like sold within
[147:58] two days or something sold out so i
[148:00] they didn’t have much stock there so i
[148:03] didn’t earn much you need to just
[148:05] partner up with the next one
[148:07] make sure
[148:09] i accuse you of anything i think i think
[148:12] the best deal was like the light placer
[148:15] was the best deal for for the light
[148:17] blazer guy because
[148:19] that had like the this link
[148:22] was clicked like 50 000 times and then
[148:25] you have a conversion
[148:27] conversion rate of one percent probably
[148:30] then you can imagine and one one of
[148:32] those things cost like two thousand
[148:34] euros he was really happy uh like after
[148:38] after a month that he did this deal with
[148:41] me
[148:43] uh yeah
[148:45] but other other picking place
[148:48] manufacturers didn’t want to i asked
[148:51] what was the other guy see on the
[148:53] chairman
[148:54] no no no the european guy
[148:58] that also does the tabletop
[149:01] ah what’s that
[149:02] what’s the name
[149:04] one
[149:06] yeah it’s
[149:07] small yeah small smta or something yeah
[149:10] yeah he didn’t want to to put one on my
[149:13] game
[149:14] that was a loss for him
[149:16] yeah yeah yeah but they started like
[149:18] four and a half thousand
[149:20] yeah but i mean different i don’t know
[149:24] okay we are
[149:26] talking about youtuber stuff again here
[149:29] all the audience already
[149:32] faded down
[149:37] okay
[149:38] so is that it are we done two and a half
[149:40] hours i think we might be done
[149:42] two and a half hours that’s it’s not bad
[149:44] is it it’s like
[149:46] that’s pretty good i thought james’s
[149:48] section was going to go for two and a
[149:49] half hours at that at the start
[149:54] mine wasn’t the longest this time brian
[149:56] wow
[149:57] that’s a pretty good try harder it’s
[149:59] very disappointing
[150:01] that’s because he was he was listening
[150:03] more than he was yeah i was so he could
[150:05] get ideas to steal fixing this this
[150:08] thing uh but it doesn’t still doesn’t
[150:10] work i don’t know what i saw that it was
[150:12] why someone was talking and
[150:15] yet it won’t work
[150:18] i got a request can you put your uh end
[150:20] of your
[150:21] stream music on for the end of this
[150:23] stream
[150:24] oh no i can’t because then i would have
[150:28] like
[150:29] to switch the microphone sorry
[150:33] okay okay play the magic miter saw again
[150:35] yeah
[150:41] who can hold the bit looney music the
[150:42] best that’s
[150:44] what does the music sound like
[150:48] [Laughter]
[150:58] i’m so tempted to use that in a video on
[151:00] ironically just be like in the youtube
[151:03] library yeah i know like you can’t do
[151:05] anything about it you don’t own that
[151:06] song
[151:07] i own this song
[151:10] you get a copyright shot from bitly
[151:13] [Laughter]
[151:39] yeah
[151:41] well thanks everyone that was brilliant
[151:43] awesome
[151:44] you’ve been brilliant
[151:45] amazing thanks for coming everyone
[151:48] thank you next time bye