Episodes
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Metrology Podcast
May 20th is a special day - World Metrology Day! Get a bit of history and learn about all things metrology when you join Daniel Bogdanoff, Bob Stern, and Chris Cox in this special Metrology Day electrical engineering podcast!
App note mentioned by Bob: https://bit.ly/DecisionRules
More about Keysight metrology, calibration, and services: https://www.keysight.com/find/metrology
Topics and time tags:0:00 World metrology day, and a brief history of the meter and the ohm
2:00 Keysight University has FREE test gear courses!
2:45 Bob Stern, Keysight Metrologist Chris Cox, Keysight Regional Metrologist
4:30 Why does metrology matter? How does it impact us? The global economy relies on a consistency of measurement and test, which is why metrology is important. It allows measurements made in one country to be used and replicated in other countries.
7:25 Metrology and measurement traceability is important. An unbroken chain of traceability is one of the key components of metrology and calibration. It's a bit like a game of telephone leading back to SI units.
10:00 Keysight DMMs get calibrated off the first commercially available Josephson Junction - a tool that uses quantum physics to provide a very stable voltage.
11:16 Accuracy vs. Measurement Uncertainty A production engineer might say "accuracy" but really it's all about "measurement uncertainty" Vocabulary of international metrology (VIM): https://www.bipm.org/en/publications/guides/vim.html
12:15 A practical example of how different instruments have different levels of uncertainty
13:45 What's the significance of measurement uncertainty for a user of test gear or a production engineer?
15:33 The internal adjustments that the factory makes to an instrument are some of the most closely guarded intellectual property / trade secrets.
18:15 The Army uses mobile Josephson junctions to test the DMMs used in Apache helicopter field testing.
18:45 Metrology overkills - times when people went overboard with their measurement uncertainty
21:10 How do you quantify measurement uncertainty? There's "test uncertainty ratio" which uses your expanded measurement uncertainty.
23:00 You can also get to percent risk, which is easy to wrap your head around. Bob Stern and Chris Cox authored some papers on this topic.
24:00 Why do people make measurements in the first place? There are no perfect measurements
26:45 Metrology in the government/military vs. private sector
29:00 There are a lot of factors for metrology equipment calibration and the engineering metrology equipment. There are different "levels" of calibration and different depth of reporting
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New tunneling modes, the scoop on plugfests, and 40 Gbps!
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It feels like USB 3.2 just came out, but USB4 is HERE! With USB4, gone are the days of wondering what's behind that USB Type-C connector - all the functionality is mandatory. And, you get double the speed! 40 Gbps over two 20 Gpbs lines keeps Moore's law happy (which makes us happy).
Find out more in today's podcast with Jit Lim, Mike Hoffman, and Daniel Bogdanoff.
Video version:
Twitter: @DanielBogdanoff: https://twitter.com/DanielBogdanoff
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Notes & Topics:
1:45 The USB-IF released the USB4 Spec in September USB4 requires that you use the USB Type C connector USB4 is fully backwards compatible USB4 uses a 20 Gbps x2 link (pronounced "by two") so Mooreâs law still holds (yay!) USB 3.2 took 10 Gbps and doubled it to 20 Gbps
Itâs USB4 not USB 4.0 and not USB 4 (confirmed)
10:00With USB4 you must implement USB-PD (USB Power Delivery), but in the past it was optional.USB4 brings a doubling bitrates, you must use Type C connector, and must be backwards compatible all the way to USB2
13:30USB 3 and USB 3.2 had a lot of alternate modes, but USB4 implements a tunneling mode. With tunneling allows you to send packets of USB, DisplayPort, or PCIe inside of the USB protocol. This means you donât have to run it as an alternate mode, which requires extra silicon.
17:00The silicon is often prototyped before a spec is actually released, so that the spec can match reality and be possible to build.
18:30USB4 is already being prototyped and tested. At the USB workshop-plugfestUSB plugfests are very secret, and company names arenât used. They use a âtest ID numberâ instead of company name, and the attendance is very limited. In many cases, only Keysight and the company testing their device are allowed to be in the room while the testing is done.
21:00A âCompliance Test Specâ describes how you test a device against a specification. Because, you canât test for every single thing in the spec, but you can test a subset of things to verify performance.
22:00Will USB take over everything? It depends on the other organizations and specifications groups. There are other ecosystems and organizations like VESA (DisplayPort) and HDMI that are autonomous. But, both HDMI and VESA have a USB Type-C mode that allows the protocols to work over a USB Type C connector
26:00USB4 implementation is very complex! The different speeds that could be used are pretty complex. USB4 is advertised 40 Gbps, but itâs actually 20 Gbps x2.
30:15It can be 5 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 20 Gbps, and run at x1 or x2, and it can also do alt modes.
31:55Are there any main competitors to USB4? What about the lightning connector from Apple?
35:30Thereâs evidence that there will be a USB4 native display, and some high end USB4 monitors already exist.
36:30USB4 is coming, and if you want to be on the leading edge you better get started now (and why)!
38:20 - stupid questions:When will see USB5? Whatâs the lamest way someone could use USB4? If USB4 is truly universal, shouldnât it go into space?
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Missing episodes?
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Brig Asay, Melissa, and Daniel Bogdanoff sit down to answer the internet's questions about the new 110 GHz UXR oscilloscope. How long did it take? What did it cost? Find out!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GxotFVQ8HE Some of the questions & commentsS K on YouTube: How long does it take to engineer something like this? With custom ASICs all over the place and what notâŠGlitch on YouTube: Can you make a budget version of it for $99?Steve Sousa on YouTube: But how do you test the test instrument?? It's already so massively difficult to make this, how can you measure and qualify it's gain, linearity etc?TechNiqueBeatz on YouTube: About halfway through the video now.. what would the practical application(s) of an oscilloscope like this be?Alberto Vaudagna on YouTube: Do you know what happen to the data after the dsp? It go to the CPU motherboard and processed by the CPU or the data is overlayed on the screen and the gui is runner's by the CPU?How does a piece of equipment like that get delivered? I just don't think UPS or Fedex is going to cut it for million+ dollar prototype. It would be nice to see some higher magnification views of the front end.Ulrich Frank:mNice sturdy-looking handles at the side of the instrument - to hold on to and keep you steady when you hear the price...SAI Peregrinus: That price! It costs less than half the price of a condo in Brooklyn, NY! (Search on Zillow, sort by price high to low. Pg 20 has a few for $2.7M, several of which are 1 bedroom...)RoGeorgeRoGeorge: Wow, speechless!R Bhalakiya: THIS IS ALL VOODOO MAGICMaic Salazar Diagnostics: This is majestic!!Sean Bosse: Holy poop. Bet it was hard keeping this quiet until the release.jonka1: Looking at the front end it looks as if the clock signal paths are of different lengths. How is phase dealt with? Is it in this module or later in software?cims: The Bugatti Veyron of scopes with a price to match, lolOne scope to rule them all...wow! Keyesight drops the proverbial mic with this oneMike Oliver: That is a truly beautiful piece of equipment. It is more of a piece of art work than any other equipment I have ever seen.Gyro on EEVBlog: It's certainly a step change in just how bad a bad day at the office could really get!TiN: I have another question, regarding the input. Are there any scopes that have waveguide input port, instead of very pricey precision 1.0mm/etc connectors?Or in this target scope field, that's not important as much, since owner would connect the input cable and never disconnect? Don't see those to last many cable swaps in field, even 2.4mm is quite fragile.User on EEVBlog: According to the specs, It looks like the 2 channel version he looked at "only" requires 1370 VA and can run off 120V. The 4 channel version only works off 200-240VThe really interesting question: how do they calibrate that calibration probe.They have to characterize the imperfections in it's output to a significantly better accuracy than this scope can measure. Unless there's something new under the sun in calibration methodology?Mikes Electric Stuffâ @mikelectricstuf: Can I get it in beige?Yaghiyahâ @yaghiyah: Does it support Zone Triggering?User on Twitter:Itâll be a couple paychecks before Iâm in the market, but Iâd really be interested in some detail on the probes and signal acquisition techniques. Are folks just dropping a coax connector on the PCB as a test point? The test setup alone has to be a science in itself.Iâd also be interested in knowing if the visiting aliens that you guys mugged to get this scope design are alive and being well cared for.Hi Daniel, just out of curiosity and within any limits of NDAs, can you go into how the design process goes for one of these bleeding-edge instruments? Mostly curious how much of the physical design, like the channels in the hybrid, are designed by a human versus designed parametrically and synthesized
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USB 3.2 DOUBLES the data transfer capabilities of previous USB specifications, and could mean the end of having USB ports on just one side of your computer. Find out more in today's electrical engineering podcast with Jit Lim, Daniel Bogdanoff, and Mike Hoffman.https://youtu.be/VEx6b6_XecI 1:00Jit is the USB and Thunderbolt lead for Keysight.1:30USB 3.2 specifications were released Fall 2017 and released two main capabilities.USB 3.2 doubles the performance of USB 3.1. You can now run 10Gb/s x2. It uses both sides of the CC connector.In the x2 mode, both sides of the connectors are used instead of just one.4:00The other new part of USB 3.2 is that it adds the ability to have the USB silicon farther away from the port. It achieves this using retimers, which makes up for the lossy transmission channel.5:00Why laptops only have USB ports on one side! The USB silicon has to be close to the connector.6:30If the silicon is 5 or 6 inches away from the connector, it will fail the compliance tests. That's why we need retimers.7:15USB is very good at maintaining backwards compatibilityThe USB 3.0 spec and the USB 3.1 spec no longer exist. It's only USB 3.2.The USB 3.2 specification includes the 3.0 and the 3.1 specs as part of them, and acts as a special mode.9:00From a protocol layer and a PHY layer, nothing much has changed. It simply adds communication abilities.9:55Who is driving the USB spec? There's a lot of demand! USB Type C is very popular for VR and AR.12:00There's no benefit to using legacy devices with modern USB 3.2 ports.13:45There's a newly released variant of USB Type C that does not have USB 2.0 support. It repurposes the USB 2 pins. It won't be called USB, but it'll essentially be the same thing. It's used for a new headset.15:20USB Type C is hugely popular for VR and AR applications. You can send data, video feeds, and power.17:00Richie's Vive has an audio cable, a power cable, and an HDMI cable. The new version, though, has a USB Type-C that handles some of this.18:00USB 3.2 will be able to put a retimer on a cable as well. You can put one at each end.What is a retimer? A retimer is used when a signal traverses a lossy board or transmission line. A retimer acquires the signal, recovers it, and retransmits it.It's a type of repeater. Repeaters can be either redrivers or repeaters. A redriver just re-amplifies a signal, including any noise. A retimer does a full data recovery and re-transmission.21:20Stupid Questions:What is your favorite alt mode, and why?If you could rename Type-C to anything, what would you call it?
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The unsung heroes of the IC world - packaging engineers!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQeBgRy8fJk
The pictures I promised:
The UXR Amplifier Fanout Package:
Bert Signal Conditioning Hybrid Packaging:
UXR Data Processor Flip Chip Packaging: -
Space requires new technologies. Much like the space race of the 1950s, engineers are feverishly working to gain a competitive advantage. Mark Lombardi sits down to explore rad hardening, thermal vacuum chambers, space mining, CubeSats, and battery technology.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTi_LMNZ708 Mark Lombardi - 25 years at HP/Agilent/Keysight. He worked for RT logic for a few years, where he got into space.2:00 - Your odds of survival getting to space are better than getting to the top of Everest.2:30 - Space mining from the Asteroid belt has the potential to create the worlds first trillionaire.3:20 - We need to establish manufacturing in space. For example, what if you manufactured satellites on the moon instead of on earth?4:00 - The main driver is price-per-pound6:10 - The Space Force - it sounds a little silly at first but is very reasonable when you take a closer look.7:45 - How do you test objects bound for space?8:30 - Space is transitioning from government-only to commercial. Businesses are starting to explore how to add value to society and make a profit from space.9:15 - Phased arrays, reusable rockets, LEO satellites are all changing space technology.10:00 - Low earth orbit satellites have much lower delay. Geosynchronous satellites have a 250 ms propagation delay.This has interesting implications for 5G - that 250 ms latency is too long for 5G requirements. So, LEO satellites are what will be used.12:00 - Using LEO satellites will be deployed in force instead of as singles, as mentioned in the Weather Cubesat podcast.13:45 - Ghana launched their own satellite, which is a huge step. They eventually won't be dependent on others for their space access. And, they can do specialized things for reasonable prices.15:00 - Announcements - we haven't podcasted in a long time, sorry! We are switching to 1x per month16:45 - Radiation hardening for electronics, sometimes called electronics hardening. Historically, you had to plan for a long life in a satellite. Now, you don't have to.17:30 - It's also hard to get a rad hardened cutting-edge technology.18:00 - LEO satellites get less radiation, so it's less of a problem. And, since they are cheaper, you can build in an expected mortality rate.19:00 - You can also rev hardware faster, allowing you to use newer technology. Think about imagers, the technology has moved a long way in seven years.19:55 - Space is cold. Space is a vacuum. So, to test our gear you have to reproduce that on earth. To do that, we use special chambers.20:50 - Thermal vacuum chambers (T vac) are used to test space objects. Automotive parts are actually very resilient to temperature changes and can be leveraged into space designs.21:30 - What happens to electronics in space? The vacuum is a bigger challenge than the temperature changes.23:30 - To get more bandwidth, we have to increase frequency. This leads to attenuation in the air and in cables. Some designers are switching to waveguides.25:00 - With modular test equipment, you could potentially have test gear that can survive in space.27:00 - What is the current and projected size of the space industry?28:10 - What batteries are used in space? What factors into battery decisions? - Lithium ion batteries work well in space, and are used when we can charge them with solar energy.28:40 - Deep space exploration uses all sorts of obscure battery technology.29:10 - Electronic propulsion30:05 - Over 150V, things get interesting. The breakdown voltage is different in space than it is on earth. So, designers have to be very careful.
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USB Type-C brings a lot of protocols into one physical connector, but is there room for one protocol to handle all our IO needs? Mike Hoffman and Daniel Bogdanoff sit down with high speed digital communications expert Jit Lim to find out.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYGXPbCfEHg 0:00 This is Jit's 3rd podcast of the series1:00 We already have one connector to rule them all with USB Type-C, but it's just a connector. Will we ever have one specification to rule them all?2:00 Prior to USB Type-C, each protocol required it's own connector. With USB TYpe-C, you can run multiple protocols over the same physical connector3:00 This would make everything more simple for engineers, they would only need to test and characterize one technology.3:30 Jit proposes a "Type-C I/O"4:00 Thunderbolt already allows displayport to tunnel through it4:30 Thunderbolt already has a combination of capabilities. It has a display mode - you can buy a Thunderbolt display. This means you can run data and display using the same technology6:30 There's a notion of a muxed signals7:00 The PHY speed is the most important. Thunderbolt is running 20 Gb/s7:15 What would the physical connection look like? Will the existing USB Type-C interface work? Currently we already see 80 Gb/s ports (4 lanes) in existing consumer PCs9:20 Daniel hates charging his phone without fast charging9:40 The USB protocol is for data transfer, but is there going to be a future USB dispaly protocol? There are already some audio and video modes in current USB, like a PC headset11:30 Why are we changing? The vision is to plug it in and have it "just work"12:00 Today, standards groups are quite separate. They each have their own ecosystems that they are comfortable in. So, this is a big challenge for getting to a single spec13:15 Performance capabilities, like cable loss, is also a concern and challenge14:00 For a tech like this were to exist, will the groups have to merge? Or, will someone just come out with a spec that obsoletes all of the others?15:30 Everyone has a cable hoard. Daniel's is a drawer, Mike's is a shoebox16:30 You still have to be aware of the USB Type-C cables that you buy. There's room for improvement17:30 Mike wants a world of only USB Type-C connectors and 3.5mm headphone jacks18:30 From a test and measurement perspective, it's very attractive to have a single protocol. You'd only have to test at one rate, one time19:30 Stupid questions
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USB 3.2 testing is darn hard! We talk compliance test specs, USB 3.2 testing BKMs, and pre-spec silicon. Guest Jit Lim sits down with Mike Hoffman and Daniel Bogdanoff to talk about the new difficulties engineers are facing as they develop USB 3.2 silicon.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYfiWTG-Nic Agenda:In the last electrical engineering podcast, we talked about how USB 3.2 runs in x2 mode ("by two")This means there's a lot of crosstalk. The USB Type C connector is great, but its small size and fast edges means crosstalk is a serious concern.When we test USB, we want to emulate real-world communications. This means you have to check, connect, and capture signals from four lanes.For testing Thunderbolt you always have to do this, too.Early silicon creators and early adopters are already creating IP and chips for a spec that isn't released yet.2:00 They're testing based on the BKM (Best Known Method)3:30 Jit was just at Keysight World Japan, where many people presented BKMs for current technologies. Waiting for a test spec to be released is not an excuse for starting to work on a technology.4:50 How many companies are actually developing USB 3.2 products? The answer isn't straightforward - the ecosystem is very complex and there are multiple vendors for a single system (like a cable).6:30 Many USB silicon vendors will develop an end-product and get it certified to prove that their silicon will work. They then sell the silicon and IP to other companies for use in their products.7:50 Daniel listened to an interesting podcast about how Monoprice reverse engineers complex products and sells them for cheaper:https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/11/28/366793693/episode-586-how-stuff-gets-cheaper9:40 There are some BNC cables at the Keysight Colorado Springs site that were literally wire pulled and built in the building.10:00 Has anything changed as USB technology advances? There are a lot of new challenges - multiple challenges, retimers, multiple test modesTesting retimers is nontrivial, they are full receivers and full transmitter.11:30 When a new spec is developed, what does that look like? How far does the test group go when setting a new spec?The spec doesn't look at how to test, it just looks it what it should do.Then, there's a compliance test specification (CTS). This is developed by a test group, that looks at how things should be tested.So, there are two groups. the first asks "what should the spec be?" and the second asks "how do we test that group?"13:30 How many people are testing USB 3.2? Even though the compliance test specification is not developed yet? There are non being shipped, but there is a lot of activity!14:30 What are the main challenges? Basics. When you have 10 Gbps over copper on a PCB, people are failing spec! There are issues with some devices passing only intermittently. Especially over long cables and traces.15:45 Cheap PCBs make things even more tricky. So, there's very sophisticated transmitter equalization and even moire sophisticated receiver equalization. It's crucial to keep the low cost PCB material and processes to keep the overall end-product cost low. Using higher end materials would dramatically increase the cost of consumer products.17:30 The first TV Mike bought was after his internship at Intel. He bought a $30-ish 1080i TV for $1600. Now, you couldn't give away that TV.18:30 Stupid questions for Jit:What is your favorite national park and why?What is your favorite PCB material and why?
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Kenny shares his experience debugging 800 MHz EMC issues at an unnamed engineering site. The culprit? A power supply! Sometimes, that 1:1 probe just isn't enough...Daniel Bogdanoff and guest host Erin chat with Kenny Johnson about the impact of power supplies on conducted and radiated emissions.Video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY5HoXkPQJELinks to discussed topics:Decoupling Capacitor Optimization for Power Integrity Webcast:https://www.keysight.com/main/eventDetail.jspx?cc=US&lc=eng&ckey=2908999&nid=-35724.0.08Slides:https://www.keysight.com/upload/cmc_upload/All/29March2018WebcastSlides.pdfHow to Design for Power Integrity Video Series:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtq84kH8xZ9FNXAsf-odoGNe6h5A6D3inSlides:https://www.keysight.com/upload/cmc_upload/All/5_Power_Integrity_Ecosystem.pdfKenny's Favorite Probehttps://www.keysight.com/en/pd-1938466/high-voltage-probe-10001-30-kv-50-mhz?cc=US&lc=engAgenda:00:00Kenny likes textbooks1:30Kenny is a power integrity expert2:00Mobile device design is hard, Kenny feels bad for designers2:15Power integrity is coupled in with their radio, and makes it hard to pass EMI and EMC3:20EMI/EMC is failing, but:Hardware guy has good dataSoftware guy has good softwarePower guy looks to have no issues4:45 FCC, ETSI5:00Types of EMI and EMC are:Conducted emissionsRadiated emissions6:00Example: The IoT processor is only clocking at 5 MHz, but the EMC engineer is picking up noise up to 750-800 MHz. And, the system is dropping bits.7:15The 1:1 passive probe was hiding the higher frequency noise.Then, they were able to trigger on the power supply and see the noise in the data line - power supply induced jitter.A common rule of thumb is to have 20 MHz of bandwidth, but that's not always enough!10:50Optimizing decoupling capacitors. How to choose the right capacitors? Where to place decoupling capacitors?11:50Many complex components come with design guidelines (voltage regulators, capacitors, etc.). But, it shouldn't be treated as law.13:00Helpful resources13:40If you're working on more prosaic devices (they aren't crazy fast), even if you aren't having an EMI issue, the same part of the board that's having the EMI issues can also pollute the antennas.14:30How much bandwidth should you get?15:25Kenny connects to his device at full bandwidth, then pulls up an FFT. Then, he bandwidth limits to where the FFT rolls off.16:15A new power rail probe goes out to 6 GHz. Why do we need this much bandwidth? Higher BW noise!18:00Kenny saw a startup hub in Boston. It had a lot of different startups that pooled their collective resources to get access to higher end test equipment.19:00Kenny feels like the free tools are good for qualitative measurements, but not for quantitative measurements.20:46 - Adam Savage - "Buy the cheapest tool first. If you break it, go buy a nice one."21:30 Kenny is part of the inspiration for this podcast.24:45Stupid Questions:What's the worst possible power integrity advice you could possibly give to someone?What's your favorite probe and why?
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Astronaut Kay Hire answers the question: "What advice would you give to an engineer hoping to become an astronaut?"
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We have surprisingly little knowledge of weather. When specifically does a cloud rain? How do these clouds form? We don't have good answers to these questions. Getting those answers is an electrical engineering problem - one that a handful of professors and NASA are solving with CubeSats.Historically, we've used large satellites and ground-based systems to track weather patterns, but CubeSat arrays are becoming a viable option. In this episode, Daniel Bogdanoff sits down with the leading researchers in this area to hear about the challenges and advancements being made in this area.Interviewees:Charles Norton - JPL Engineering and Science Directorate POCJoel T Johnson - ECE Department Chair and Professor at The Ohio State UniversityChristopher Ball - Research Scientist at The Ohio State UniversityDr. V. Chandrasekar (Chandra) - ECE Professor at Colorado State UniversityEva Peral - Radar Digital Systems Group Supervisor at JPLhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBzMM1cW3YIAgendaIntroSpace is changing. Big, expensive satellites used to be our only option. But, as youâve probably heard on this podcast, when it comes to technology the world is always shrinking â and satellites are no exception. And thatâs what weâre exploring today, specifically, the way cubesats (miniature satellites) are revolutionizing the way we look at earthâs weather.Hi, my name is Daniel Bogdanoff, and welcome to EEs Talk Tech. In our last episode, I brought you all along with me to Wallops flight facility in Virginia for a rocket launch. It was an eye-opening experience for me, and I wanted to cover more than was reasonable for a single episode. So today, weâre blending the style of last episode and our standard interview-style podcast. I sat down with some EE professors from Ohio State University and Colorado State University to talk about their cube sat projects â all of which monitor weather using radiometers or radar and are pretty high tech.I also apologize in advance for the background noise during the interviews, Iâve done the best I can to minimize the noise and voiceover parts I feel are hard to hear. Iâve also used clips from their NASA TV presentations wherever possible.Letâs get started, and hear a little bit about the advantages of CubeSats from Charles Norton.Advantages of CubeSats [1:05]Cubesats are nice not just because theyâre cheaper and smaller. Thanks to the miniaturization of new technologies in both their physical size and their power consumption, we can deploy more systems, more rapidly, and at a lower cost. They also require smaller teams to develop and operate, and can even have higher measurement accuracy than existing assets.CubeRRT [3:51]At its core, CubeRRT is all about making radiometry measurements better by processing out man made emissions â leaving only the earthâs natural emissions.From NASA: "Microwave radiometers provide important data for Earth science investigations, such as soil moisture, atmospheric water vapor, sea surface temperature and sea surface winds. Man-made radiofrequency interference (RFI) reduces the accuracy of microwave radiometer data, thus the CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology Validation (CubeRRT) mission demonstrates technologies to detect and remove these unwanted RFI signals. Successful completion of the CubeRRT mission demonstrates that RFI processing is feasible in space, high volumes of data may be processed aboard a satellite, and that future satellite-based radiometers may utilize RFI mitigation."TEMPEST-D [8:00]Instead of having a big satellite sitting in geosynchronous orbit, an array of CubeSats can be put in orbit such that they each pass over the same spot at set intervals. With some careful calibration, differences in the measurement equipment gets normalized out and they get good weather data.From JPL: "TEMPEST-D is a technology demonstration mission to enable millimeter wave radiometer technologies on a low-cost, short development schedule. The mission ... reduces the risk, cost, and development duration for a future TEMPEST mission, which would provide the first ever temporal observations of cloud and precipitation processes on a global scale. For TEMPEST-D, JPL developed a mm-wave radiometer payload that operates at five channels from 89 to 182 GHz and fits in a 4U volume within the 6U CubeSat."RainCube [11:47] & the Origami AntennaFrom JPL: "RainCube (Radar in a CubeSat) is a technology demonstration mission to enable Ka-band precipitation radar technologies on a low-cost, quick-turnaround platform. RainCube developed a 35.75 GHz radar payload to operate within the 6U CubeSat form factor. This mission will validate a new architecture for Ka-band radars and an ultra-compact lightweight deployable Ka-band antenna in a space environment to raise the technology readiness level (TRL) of the radar and antenna from 4 to 7 within the three year life of the program. RainCube will also demonstrate the feasibility of a radar payload on a CubeSat platform."Foldable Antenna [12:20]1.5U volume, Ka-band 35.75 GHz RADAR antenna.Why Measure Weather from Space? [15:00]These are just a few of the cubesat projects that went up on the OA9 rocket launch. To hear more about that, check out EEs Talk Tech electrical engineering podcast episode #29 - The Long Road to Space.
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I went for a rocket launch, and stayed for the science. Have you ever wondered what it actually takes to get a rocket into space? And why we go there at all? I hadn't. Come with me on a behind the scenes tour of Wallops Flight Facility. Space balloons, sounding rockets, and a bonafide rocket launch!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSXNDekILwULinks:Thank you again to Laurie Bonneau, John Mitchell, and John Huntington, NASA, and Orbital ATK/Northrup Grumman for letting me use your amazing photos!Check out Laurie B's Flickr page hereJohn M's Flickr page hereand John Huntington's coverage of the launch.Keysight oscilloscope probe promotion here.Agenda:0:00 - Getting to Wallops Flight Facility4:40 - "What's on Board" Science Briefings8:03 - CubeSats9:32 - Concrete in Space?11:10 - Cold Atom Laboratory and Bose Einstein Condensates15:09 - Launch Pad 0A Visit15:50 - Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF)19:29 - Range Control Center21:23 - Space Balloons24:25 - Sounding Rocket Machine Shop and Test Lab28:53 - Astronaut Kay Hire31:04 - OA9 rocket launch day!Transcript:On the Virginia coast, hours away from any major airport, youâll find what appears to be a sleepy little town. Itâs not a tourist town or a beach town, thatâs further down the road. Driving through, youâll see an abandoned roller rink and billboards for opioid abuse programs, a retro country radio station, and the seafood restaurant in the next town over. Thereâs a single diner is nestled in a gas station, right across the street from a house with a half dozen American flags and a huge âsupport our troopsâ sign in the front yard.But when you drive a little further, you might start to wonder if thereâs more to this town than meets the eye. Down the road from the diner is the smallest Lockheed Martin building Iâve ever seen. Drive a minute longer, and the forest clears.Immediately, you know thereâs more to this town.Your eyes are first drawn to giant satellite communication antennas, and then to radar installations and what look to be airplane hangers emblazoned with the NASA logo. Of course, all of this is surrounded by fences with stern warnings for trespassers and loiterers â keeping gawkers at bay, leaving them to wonder whatâs going on in there.Thanks to you, who follow us on YouTube and the EEs Talk Tech podcast, I wasnât left to wonder. And now, neither are you.NASA granted me and select others special access to tour the facilities.So, what is this place?Turns out, itâs a lot of things.The most exciting role of this place, for me anyways, is that itâs the site of Antares rocket launches.Twice per year, this sleepy, backwoods town wakes up with a start. The worldâs top engineers, scientists, and researchers flock to the town. Wide-eyed high school students working the counter at the lone diner try desperately to feed a line of people that stretches out the door. The hotels in the area are completely booked.Because this weekend, weâre going to space.Have you ever wondered what makes a place like this tick? Thereâs an entire economy and ecosystem dedicated to keeping it afloat.I always thought the rocketry aspect was the main attraction, but never gave much thought to the actual point of it all. Space is pretty cool, but what does humanity actually gain by getting there?Thatâs what weâre going to look at today. Weâre going to explore the science. Go past those warning-ridden fences. Take a look at some of the projects that get a lot of press, and some that are less glamorous. Then weâre going to look at how those projects get deployed. And yes, that includes a rocket launch. Here we go.Day 1. Itâs Friday, May 18th. For me, it means travel day. One of the reasons Wallops Flight Facility is a great location is that thereâs, quote âvirtually unimpeded airspace.â For visitors, this means you have to drive from your major airport of choice for at least a couple hours. So, itâs gonna be a long day. I figure Iâll leave home around 7 AM and arrive at my hotel roughly 16 hours later.Itâs a long day for domestic travel, but whatâs a guy to do? As the plane doors close at the gate in Denver, I find out the launch has been delayed 24 hours for additional spacecraft inspections. Itâs too late to get off the plane, so I shrug, text my wife that Iâm going to be another day on the road, and mentally score one point for fate. Fate 1, Daniel 0. From what I hear, though, delayed launches are just part of the process. No one wants a failed launch.When I land in DC itâs raining pretty hard, and I decide I donât really want to cram in a few hours of driving. So I scramble to re-arrange lodging, and catch a movie before bed. Take that, fate.Day 2. Saturday. I drive from DC to the coast, and start to wonder if Iâm really in the right place. I check my phone map, and it says Iâm on track. Once the woods clear and I see the com arrays and the hangers with the NASA logo, I know Iâm in the right place. After showing a couple forms of ID to an armed federal agent, I get my pass and am ushered into the dayâs event â the âwhatâs on boardâ mission briefing.This is when I start to think about more than just the rocketry. Scientists from around the country show off their experiments, which have been loaded into the Cygnus spacecraft, attached to the Antares rocket, and are about to be delivered to the ISS. Theyâre being delivered on the OA-9 cargo mission, which is why Iâm in town. OA9 is completely run by Orbital ATK. Orbital ATK is one of the two commercial companies with NASA launch contracts. The other is SpaceX. But, donât compare them to Space X, itâs a bit of a touchy subject around here.Back to the experiments - which NASA likes to call âinvestigations.â Technically, an experimentâs goal is to prove or disprove a hypothesis, and an investigation is more about gathering data. Potayto potahto.There are over a thousand kilograms of investigations headed to the ISS this weekend. Access to space gives scientists and engineers the ability to test things that simply arenât possible on earth. Thereâs the height advantage â we can look at more of the earth at once without the curvature getting in the way. Thereâs the obstruction advantage â we can see things without the earthâs atmosphere getting in the way. And thereâs the gravity advantage â namely, we can sustain a microgravity environment for more than a dozen seconds.The investigations being presented also showed me the breadth and diversity of investigations taking place in space. To give you a taste, here are my personal favorites that are a part of this mission. Full disclosure, Iâll likely be too casual with some of these terms, so feel free to correct me in the YouTube comments or at EEs Talk Tech.com:Thereâs a DNA/RNA sequencing kit designed to find unknown microbes on the international space station. Itâs called âBiomolecule Extraction and Sequencing Technologyâ investigation, or âBESTâ for short. In my opinion, this is the best acronym.They can find most of the bugs on the ISS with their current, culture-based processes, but this kit will allow them to find other microbes. It will also let them track mutations of known microbes â apparently spaceflight causes genetic, epigenetic, and transcriptomic changes.Thereâs also a sextant for navigation practice, and some medical tools to monitor astronautâs eyesight. Apparently long term spaceflight messes with peopleâs eyes. You know, theyâve seen thingsâŠThereâs a liquid separation tool that uses capillary forces to separate flowing liquids. Normally, youâd have to let liquids settle (think oil â vinegar salad dressing), but this does it while liquids flow. Speaking of salad dressing, thereâs an enhanced vegetable grower on board, too.Astronauts will record the flavor and texture of the plants, and their results will be compared to a control sample in Houston. Apparently, even salad is an investigation in space.Another interesting part of the payload is an array of CubeSats â dubbed âCubeRRTâ- aimed at measuring the earthâs RF emissions to mitigate environmental noise. Microwave Radiometers, a tool used to gather environmental data like seawater salinity, temperature, and humidity are extremely sensitive to the emissions. Because of earth noise and increased spectrum use, the radiometer measurements are becoming noisier and noisier â and will possibly become unusable in the not-to-distant future. The goal of these cubesats is to monitor these environmental factors and create a system to remove noise in real-time. When I sat down with the professors responsible for the program, they mentioned that the emissivity of water was a deciding factor in earth noise. Sensitivity to water vapor peaks around 24 GHz, which is right in the middle of the allocated spectrum for these tools. Vegetation and soil moisture also play a role. So, CubeRRT will be able to measure earth-noise from 6 GHz to 40 GHz. If you want to hear more about this topic, I sat down for an interview with this team that will be a future podcast â assuming my recording worked out.There was also a concrete project â concrete formation is a pretty well defined terrestrial science, but itâs not well defined in a microgravity environment. Astronauts will mix concrete, let it set, and send it earthward for analysis. The findings of this project are the first stages of exploring construction options for the moon and mars. Can you use Martian soil to make concrete? Weâll see.Finally, the coldest known spot in the universe will soon be the ISS. Led by Jet Propulsion Laboratories, five different research teams will share time on this project â the Cold Atom Laboratory which is designed to cool gas particles to âlike one-tenth of a billion of a degree above absolute zero.â (Robert Shotwell). One team, led by Nobel prize winning physicist Eric Cornell, will study Bose Einstein condensates.This was a new thing to me, so I did a little digging. A Bose Einstein condensate is a quantum state theorized by Bose and Einstein, and realized in 1995 by the same Dr. Eric Cornell we were just speaking of. Essentially, if you super cool a gas â like super-duper cool it â the atoms start to increase in size and behave as waves. Eventually, the size of these wave-atoms becomes larger than the average distance between wave-particles â meaning theyâll begin to interact. At a certain point, all of the wave-particles (known as Bosons) settle in the same quantum state and form one big, happy quantum wave, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate.The problem with this, is that theyâre really, really hard to create. One of the reasons for this is gravity. Hence, the Cold Atom Lab. The micro-gravity environment of the space station will allow Dr. Cornell and his associates to reach temperatures colder than that of earth. All without needing time from astronauts. Pretty cool!Sorry, couldnât resist.Clearly, thereâs a huge breadth of projects invested in this launch.After the briefing, its back to the hotel to get some work done â it is a workday after all. The day concludes with a dinner with some of the other attendees. Because, what engineer doesnât love a meal with a bunch of complete strangers?In a public setting, I almost always feel like the biggest geek in the room. Sometimes thatâs fun, most of the time itâs not â Iâm sure a lot of you can relate. But this was different. Thereâs something about being a room full of other self-proclaimed space geeks that really made me feel at home.After a little too much of the good luck ice cream that Orbital ATK orders from a local shop â itâs chocolate with chili powder and cinnamon, which is surprisingly ok - itâs time to rest up for day 2.Day 2 starts at 8AM. Thatâs not bad unless you factor in a couple hour time change for me. I quickly wake up, though, as we all hop on a bus to go out visit the rocket. Naturally, we arenât able to go right up to it, but weâre pretty darn close. Closer than youâd normally get to a fully-primed rocket, anyways. âSurrealâ is a term thrown around a lot by launch 1st timers like me, and though itâs clichĂ©, itâs probably the best word to describe the feeling. It reminds me a bit of my childhood, when I could get a glimpse of the Matterhorn at Disneyland while driving to Grandmaâs house on the 5. Thereâs this academic knowledge of a whole group of people living in their little complex, separated world, and the sight of the monument is just the surface of it.After 15 minutes of staring, itâs time to head over to what becomes my favorite stop of the tour â the horizontal integration facility, also known as the HIF.We got to get up close and personal with OA10, the next launch scheduled for a fall launch. Naturally, itâs only partially assembled. The HIF is the place that takes all the pieces and parts from around the world and connects them into one cohesive vehicle. Due to the presence of âactive ordinanceâ and âexport controlled technology,â all wireless devices had to be left outside and our picture taking was limited. So, I canât show you the advanced piping and routing that is the backbone of a rocket engine, but think copper-shiny-jet-engine-plumbing on steroids.I was surprised by how much coordination was involved in the rocket and assembly.Again, it was fascinating to me to see so many teams working on so many discrete, but integrated projects. And to watch it all come together in this sleepy backwoods town feels a bit ironic.A quick pit stop for a press conference, and itâs off to the Range Control Center.The RCC acts as a sort of mission control for launches and other on-site missions. This is where I start to see the work of yet another set of behind-the-scenes teams. Meteorologists to check winds and weather, radar controls to monitor air & boat traffic (the previous launch got scrubbed by a small boat that came too close), technical teams to handle copious amounts of real-time data and processing, specialists manning custom rocket system monitoring software, and more. The ability to photograph any of this was again limited, but it looked something like the systems youâd see bad guys working on in a James Bond dam-hostage situation.Each of these teams come together and repeatedly rehearse each launch under varying circumstances and environments so that theyâre ready to handle any surprises that could pop up on launch day. Itâs humbling to think that each of these workstations essentially represents a mission-critical team.We hop back on the buses and head over to the space balloon research center.Space balloons sound a bit counterintuitive, after all, how can a balloon float if thereâs no atmosphere? Well, they go up to 120,000 feet â so not really into space which more-or-less starts around 100 km. Itâs called near space. These balloons are described by Gabe Garde, Mission Operations Manager for the balloon program, as Football field-sized, ultra-sonically heat-welded trashbags. Really. Theyâre huge .2-.8 mil thick plastic bags that can stay in the sky for weeks or months. Thatâs about the thickness of a sandwich bag, but the plastic is a little sturdier. Sometimes referred to as the B-line to space, balloons are the quickest and most cost efficient route to near space.They can also be launched from nearly anywhere on the globe. Gabe, for example, has spent a collective year living in Antarctica for balloon missions. Why Antarctica?Remember when we found the giant hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica? Space balloons were the vehicle for those measurement tools. The generally-flat geometry of the universe was also confirmed by a balloon-borne investigation.These balloons have recently been with a giant gimbal, known as the âWallops arc second pointerâWe then float out of the balloon research center and file into a giant machine shop â part of the Sounding Rocket Lab, where we meet this fine fellow. [6420]Nose cone that launches off the rocket to expose scientific equipment, coated with a spray-on silicon as a heat-deterrentOne of the benefits of sounding rockets is the possibility for extremely quick turnaround times. How fast?9 years! That makes me feel better about the timing of some of my projects.There are also some electrical test rooms with racks full of equipment and the wrong-colored oscilloscopes, in my opinion anyways. I did a little probing into what electronics theyâre using, but didnât get much info beyond the fact that the sounding rockets use an RS-485 communications bus. Iâll have to bug them a little more next time.After a couple more technical presentations, we have a little chat with Astronaut Kay Hire. She talks through a lot of the processes, activities, and emotions astronauts go through â they donât deviate much from what youâll find in a standard astronaut interview. But, there was a moment that stood out.This seems like a pretty obvious statement, but being surrounded by the teams of people working on slivers of the rocket & surrounding projects really drives this point home.She also talked a little bit about navigating around space junk and debris:After all, the launch already got pushed back a day because they needed to run more tests. So, with our official tour over for the day, we head out to get tacos (which are pretty good by East-coast standards), and worry about Kayâs parting words. Thereâs also so debate about whether or not itâs worth pulling an all-nighter into day 3.Why pull an all-nighter? Day 3 starts at 1:30 AM. Iâm not in the all-nighter camp â I had my share in college, so, I head back to the hotel for a nap â wake up at 1:30, munch gas station donuts and coffee, and drive to meet our bus â in the pouring rain â not a good sign. I expect a pretty subdued bus crowd, given the time and the weather, but the energy is palpable â you can feel the anticipation. Federal guards escort us and the media to the launch-viewing area. As the crow flies, weâre roughly 2 miles away from the rocket, which is as close as anyone gets to these things. I set up my camera gear alongside some other folks, and glance down the line of media photographers. Thereâs easily over a million bucks worth of camera gear here. Loudspeakers stream the coms, and we start to get worried. The weather folks over at the Range Control Center donât like what they are seeing, and move the launch target time to the very end of the 5-minute window. We hear words like âanomalyâ and âverifying the authenticity of the fire alarmâ and get more nervous. I get more coffee and donuts from the catering tent and wait. Apparently donuts are my nervous food.Tee minus 12 minutes, and itâs time for the go-no go for launch poll. Everyone goes quiet as the work through the countdown. Over the loudspeakers, we hearThe group collectively releases a sigh of relief, some cheer. Weâre launching today. We buckle down for the 12 minute wait.30 seconds left, and all we can do is fidget and wonder if our camera settings are correct. They say that you shouldnât try to photograph your first launch â you should just enjoy it and let the million bucks in camera gear handle the pictures. I like a challenge so I take a stab at it, but I recommend that if you go see a launch you let other people do the filming.10 seconds. The iconic countdown startsâŠHereâs what it sounds like when you can see the launch, but before the sound arrives (a good 14 seconds before the sound hits us. The night sky turns to daylight, and the rocket starts to make its way up. Iâm struck by how slow it looks at first, and how the 200 ft flame does a weird, glitchy dance. It passes through the clouds.Then the sound hits us. Itâs xdB louder than us talking & cheering. You can feel it, like less bassey fireworks.The sound slowly fades to a low rumble as the rocket re-appears above the clouds. A few minutes later, the light cuts out. Because stage 2 uses solid-fuel, thereâs no throttle. So the Orbital ATK telemetry team calculates the velocity and position of the craft. With this telemetry data, they know how long they have to wait before igniting the second stage. This ensures that they only need minimal adjustments to get sync with the ISS.Adjustments require fuel, which means weight, which means cost. And, private space is all about cost-per-pound into orbit. Thatâs why the launch window was only 5 minutes, it was a cost play. Cost was also a big factor in the decision to retire the space shuttle.Stage two kicks in, the brightest star in the sky. Slowly, it fades out and is goneItâs now past 5AM and people start to pack up, tired, but happy. The firefighting teams hop in their firetrucks and drive towards the launch pad. I can only imagine the relief of the teams that have spent months and years on these systems. Youâd never know, though, as their voices ring out over the loudspeakers, working through their post-launch checklists. They are a little more casual, though, a little bit of pride and relief sneaking past their professional masks. There are some anomalies, though, so it may still be a long day for a few folks.After this 2 Âœ day space bonanza, I say goodbye to my new friends and start the long trip home to Colorado. While driving across the massive Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and flying over the Rocky Mountains, I have some time to think about something Astronaut Kay Hire said in her talk. She said this:I canât help but resonate with this in the moment. Iâm driving over a 4.3 mile steel bridge â when it was built it was the largest over-water steel structure. Iâm flying over half of the USA, a trip would take weeks without technology. Then, I think back to the rocket launch. Months, years, and careers were spent making that launch happen. Even more months and years of time was dedicated to the cargo. Even more time dedicated to having a place in space to put it all. Teams upon teams, collective lifetimes of effort â all boiled down to a single, fiery, loud instant.I dwell on Kayâs statement. âWeâre not to fly in space. But weâre built to adapt.â Clearly. Thatâs why we have spacesuits, 4 mile long bridges, airplanes, and sleepy towns that transform into technology centers. So I agree. Weâre not built to fly in space. But maybe, maybe we were made for it.Most of the big white coms arrays belong to the NOAA Command and Data Acquisition Station. NOAA, founded by Nixon, has a suite of environmental monitoring satellites. These satellites need to be nudged periodically to remain in orbit, and they send down an obscene amount of data that needs to be collected and distributed.The next time your local weather forecast is accurate, the data that enabled it probably came through this site.
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Receiver testing (Rx) was never a concern for DDR design. Until now. The margin for error ran out, and now Rx testing is getting standardized. We sit down with Stephanie Rubalcava to explore the challenges of this new ground.Video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl9p3nwOJ5UAudio:Agenda:1:00This is the first time in the industry that high-accuracy, standardized receiver measurements need to be done2:20DDR is very different from traditional memory in terms of testing3:10Process of getting specs defined3:50What a DDR receiver test (DDR Rx Test) looks like4:50Even being just 100 mV off when testing can make a part appear to fail5:20The BERT sends out a signal to test the channel, but what's really being tested is the DIMM and device's ability to receive data under certain conditions6:30Receiver types across different devices? There's a DQS data clock signal, and a data signal. There are also command and address lines in DDR.6:50For Rx testing, we're calibrating the signal going into the receiver7:30JEDEC develops a lot of the testing standards8:10Two components of test standards: compliance and characterization. Compliance asks "do I meet the spec?" Characterization asks "how well does my system perform, and where is my fail point?"9:35Receiver test as whole is a challenge for engineersThey need new kinds of calibration, DDR fixtures, and tests.12:20DDR Transmitters (DDR Tx) are progressing with DDR5 as well as receivers. We do have the DDR Tx history testing all the way back to DDR1.There are similar specifications for characteristics of DDR transmitters and DDR receivers.13:20DDR Transmitter testing is at "the ball of the part" and checks for signal characteristics.
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"I tend to not turn Tombstone on outside of the arena. It scares the crap out of me..." - Ray Billings, Hardcore Robotics team captain. We sit down with BattleBots' resident bad boy to talk about the engineering behind the world's meanest fighting robots. We also talk robot carnage. Because we know you're really here for robot carnage.https://youtu.be/Wc4g_f0YeI8Agenda:00:03 Ray Billings leads the Hardcore Robotics Battlebots team, and is the âresident villainâ on Battlebots.00:40 Mike went to high school with Rayâs son01:15 Rayâs robot, âTombstoneâ is ranked #1 on the Battlebots circuit. Highlights here.1:34 The winner trophy for Battlebots is a giant nut.2:00 Ray doesnât turn on the robot very often outside of the arena2:35 Rayâs carnage story: he bent a 1â thick titanium plate3:20 You have to see combat robots live to get the full experience4:10 The first match of Battlebots 2018 should be one of the most epic Battlebots fights of all time4:30 Ray has done over 1,000 combat robot matches in 17 years5:00 How Ray got into Battlebots6:25 The main robot is called an offset horizontal spinner. It spins a 70-75 lb bar at 2500 rpm.7:40 The body is 4130 choromoly tubing. The drive motors were intended for an electric wheelchair, and the weapons motor is from an electric golf cart.8:20 Normal electrical motors are not designed to work for combat robots. Ray significantly stresses the motors.8:50 The weapon motor was designed to be used at 48V 300A, but Ray uses it at 60V and 1100A (at spinup). This would overheat and destroy the motor, so it shouldnât be done long-term.9:40 â 70-80kW at spinup, and no start capacitor. He just uses a big marine relay.10:00 Rayâs robot has 1 second to be lethal10:30 If thereâs a motor-stall potential mid match, Ray will turn off the motor to save batteries/electronics11:00 Whatâs the weak point of Rayâs robot? One match, the weapon bar snapped in half.11:40 Ray uses tool-grade steel, so it wonât bend, itâll just snap.12:40 The shock loads can break the case. The weapon motor looks like itâs rigidly mounted, but because itâs on a titanium plate it has some shock absorber. Thereâs also a clutch system in the sprocket to help offset shock.13:40 Rayâs robot has to take all of the force that the opponentâs robots do (equal and opposite), but if itâs coming in a direction you want vs. one you donât want you can design-in protection.14:40 What test challenges were faced during assembly and design?Itâs been highly iterated. There are no shortcuts for designing combat robots. You have to see where something breaks, then adjust.15:45 When Ray started in 2004, his robot was just a âmiddle of the packâ robot. With years of iteration, itâs now a class-dominant robot.16:45 Ray spins up the robot at least once before a competition. Itâll pick up debris from the ground and throw it around.17:50 Battery technology and batteries for combat robots: Originally they used lead acid batteries for their current ability. Now, almost everyone uses Lithium chemistry. The sport is about power-to-weight ratio, so the lighter batteries have given people much more flexibility.19:00 Why arenât there gas powered combat robots? There are some that have flamethrowers, and there are a couple gas powered ones. However, they arenât as dependable.20:15 Ray has wrecked arenas. The arena rails are 1/2â steel, and Ray can cut a soda-can sized hole in them. Heâs wrecked panels and ceiling lights.21:20 Combat robot communication systems: today everything runs on 2.4 GHz digitally encoded systems. They often use RC plane controls because they are highly customizable and there are a lot of available channels.22:00 Drive systems: the wheels & motors come together. They use a hard foam in the tires so you canât get a flat.22:45 Centrifugal force â not a huge problem because the blade spins in-plane. But, when he gets bumped up the blade fights gravity before it can self-right.24:40 The rest of the Hardcore Robotics team is three people.. The team is Ray, his son (Justin), and his friend Rick. Rick used to run his own team, but has more fun fabricating and building robots than he does driving them.25:30 There will be 6 fights/hour, and the show will be on the Discovery channel and the science channel premiering May 11th.26:15 The first fight got leaked in some promo footage, Tombstone vs. Minotaur.26:35 Would Ray rather fight a good robot or a bad one? Ray says âanyone.âBattlebots 2018 (season 3) will have âfight cardâ fights, then a playoff of the top 16 robots.27:50 A given frame only lasts an event or two before needing to be replaced. This many fights is really hard on the robot.29:20 Combat robot kits are a great way to get into the sport, especially ant-weight and beetle weight kits.30:00 Stupid questions31:15 Ray wants to try a new hammer robot, a full-shell spinner, and a vertical spinner.32:40 Support Ray by getting Hardcore Robotics gear from battlebots.com and the toys from Target, Amazon, hexbugs, etc.33:15 Ray is also an engineer at Intel.
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Keeping specs secret is just part of the job. Getting a usable, working spec is another. We sat down with Jennie Grosslight to learn why JEDEC guards a spec, the basic DDR architecture, and geek out about the challenges of probing DDR.Hosted by Daniel Bogdanoff and Mike Hoffman, EEs Talk Tech is a twice-monthly engineering podcast discussing tech trends and industry news from an electrical engineer's perspective.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opPsgSrDCOoAgenda:1:00How are electrical engineering and protocol specifications defined?2:00Bigger companies tend to drive specifications because they can afford to put money into new productsSometimes small or midsize companies with an idea can make something new happen, but they have to push it2:50Most memory technologies have a couple players:1. The chipset and the memory controller industry2. The actual devices that store data (DRAM)3:30There's a tremendous amount of work between all the players to make all the parts work together.5:00Why JEDEC keeps information about new products private as they're being developed:If you spread your information too wide then you can get a lot of misinformation. Fake news!Early discussions also might not resemble the end product6:20DDR5, LPDDR, and 3D silicon die stacking are new and exciting in memory7:00We keep pushing physics to new edges7:20Heat management in 3D silicon is a big challenge8:20LPDDR5 is the new low power memory for devices like cell phones and embedded devices9:105G devices will likely depend on low power memory10:20Once the RF challenges of 5G are figured out there will be even more challenges on the digital side. Systems have to deal with large bandwidths and low latencies11:10Higher performance and lower power is driving development of LPDDR5It will be interesting to see if improvements are made in jumps or very slowly12:00Dropping voltage swing and increasing speed both make the eye smallerMaking the eye smaller makes you more vulnerable to crosstalk12:20 - Completely closed eyes for DDR513:00How to probe DDR?We use a lot of simulation because the circuits are so sensitive14:20Crosstalk is often a problem when making DDR and LPDDR measurements14:50Economics drives everything so new technology is often based on existing systems15:40What comes next is up to who comes up with the best idea16:40What will drive change is when the existing materials can no longer meet performance17:50Power is important for big data farms as well as cell phones19:50GDDR and DDR21:00Chipset rank on a DIMMThe pieces share a common data bus so you need to know the order to properly test24:20DIMM interposer used for logic measurements for servers25:50With a scope a ball grid array is used under a device or the pins are probedOscilloscope interposers are available that work similarly to the logic analyzer interposersThe logic analyzer looks at all the signals at once, typically the oscilloscope only looks at a few28:10When testing you want to validate that the device followed the protocal in the right sequence29:10Data rates of DDRDDR5 is supposed to get to 6400 MT/s
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"You reach critical certain thresholds that are driven by the laws of physics and material science" - Perry KellerDDR5 marks a huge shift in thinking for traditional high-tech memory and IO engineering teams. The implications of this are just now being digested by the industry, and opening up doors for new technologies. In today's electrical engineering podcast, Daniel Bogdanoff and Mike Hoffman sit down with Perry Keller to discuss how engineers should "get their game on" for DDR5.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2qCeUVjtZsAudio:Sign up for the DDR5 Webcast with Perry on April 24, 2018!Agenda:00:20 Getting your game on with DDR5LPDDR5 6.4 gigatransfers per second (GT/s)"You reach critical certain thresholds that are driven by the laws of physics and material science" - Perry Keller1:00 We're running into the limits of what physics allows2:00 DDR3 at 1600 - the timing budget was starting to close.2:30 With DDR5, a whole new set of concepts need to be embraced.3:00 DesignCon is the trade show - Mike is famous for his picture with ChipHead4:00 Rick Eads talked about DesignCon in the PCIe electrical engineering podcast4:40 The DDR5 paradigm shift is being slowly digested4:50 DDR (double data rate) introduced source synchronous clockingAll the previous memories had a system clock that governed when data was transferred.Source synchronous clocking is when the system controlling the data also controls the clock. Source synchronous clocking is also known as forward clocking.This was the start of high speed digital design.At 1600 Megatransfers per second (MT/s), this all started falling apart.For DDR5, you have to go from high speed digital design concepts to concepts in high speed serial systems, like USB.The reason is that you cant control the timing as tightly. So, you have to count on where the data eye is.As long as the receiver can follow where that data eye is, you can capture the information reliably.DRAM doesn't use an embedded clock due to latency. There's a lot of overhead, which reduces channel efficiency9:00DDR is single ended for data, but over time more signals become differential.You can't just drop High Speed Serial techniques into DDR and have it work.The problem is, the eye is closed. The old techniques won't work anymore.10:45DDR is the last remaining wide parallel communication system.There's a controller on one end, which is the CPU. The other end is a memory device.11:15With DDR5, the eye is closed. So, the receiver will play a bigger part. It's important to understand the concepts of equalizing receivers.You have to think about how the controller and the receiver work together.12:20Historically, the memory folks and IO folks have been different teams. The concepts were different. Now, those teams are merging13:00DDR5 is one of the last steps before people have to start grappling with communication theory. Modulation, etc.14:10Most PCs now will have two channels of communication that's dozens or hundreds of bits wide.14:45What is 3D silicon?If 3D silicon doesn't come through, we'll have to push more bits through copper.3D silicon is nice because you can pack more into a smaller space.3D silicon is multiple chips bonded together. Vias connect through the chips instead of traces.The biggest delay for 3D silicon is that it turns on its head the entire value delivery system.7 years ago, JEDEC started working on wide IO17:15What's the difference between 3D silicon and having it all built right into the processor?It's the difference between working in two dimensions and three dimensions. If you go 3D, you can minimize footprint and connections18:45Flash memory, the big deal has been building multiple active layers.19:45The ability to stack would be useful for mobile.21:45Where is technology today with DDR?DDR4 is now mainstream, and JEDEC started on DDR5 a year ago (2017)
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"It's a miracle it works at all." Not the most inspiring words from someone who helped define the latest DDR spec. But, that's the the state of today's memory systems. Closed eyes and mV voltage swings are the topic of today's electrical engineering podcast. Daniel Bogdanoff (@Keysight_Daniel) and Mike Hoffman sit down with Perry Keller to talk about the state of memory today and it's inevitable march into the future.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uan7gQ82tWYAgenda:00:00 Today's guest is Perry Keller, he works a lot with standards committees and making next generation technology happen.00:50 Perry has been working with memory for 15 years.1:10 He also did ASIC design, project management for software and hardware1:25Perry is on the JEDEC board of directorsJEDEC is one of the oldest standards body, maybe older than IEEE1:50 JEDEC was established to create standards for semiconductors. This was an era when vacuum tubes were being replaced by solid state devices.2:00 JEDEC started by working on instruction set standards2:15 There are two main groups. A wide bandgap semiconductors group and a memory group.3:00 Volatile memory vs. nonvolatile memory. An SSD is nonvolatile storage, like in a phone. But if you look at a DIMM in a PC that's volatile.3:40 Nonvolatile memory is everywhere, even in light bulbs.4:00 Even a DRAM can hold its contents for quite some time. JEDEC had discussions about doing massive erases because spooks will try to recover data from it.DRAM uses capacitors for storage, so the colder they are the longer they hold their charge.4:45 DRAM is the last vestige of the classical wide single ended parallel bus. "It's a miracle that it works at all."5:30 Perry showed a friend a GDDR5 bus and challenged him to get an eye on it and he couldn't.6:10 Even though DDR signals look awful, it depends on reliable data transfer. The timing and clocking is set up in a way to deal with all of the various factors.7:00 DDR specifications continue to march forward. There's always something going on in memory.8:00 Perry got involved with JEDEC through a conversation with the board chairman.8:35 When DDR started, 144 MT/s (megatransfers per second) was considered fast. But, DDR5 has and end of life goal of 6.5 GT/s on a 80+ bit wide single ended parallel bus.9:05 What are the big drivers for memory technology? Power. Power is everything. LPDDR - low power DDR - is a big push right now.9:30 if you look at the memory ecosystem, the big activity is in mobile. The server applications are becoming focused with the cloud, but the new technology and investment is mobile.10:00 If you look at a DRAM, you can divide it into three major categories. Mainstream PC memory, low power memory, and GDDR. GDDR is graphics memory. The differences are in both power and cost.For example, LPDDR is static designs. You can clock it down to DC, which you can't do with normal DDR.The first DDR was essentially TTL compatible. Now, we're looking at 1.1V power supplies and voltage swings in the mV.Semiconductor technology is driving the voltages down to a large degree.11:45 DRAM and GDDR is a big deal for servers.A company from China tried to get JEDEC to increase the operating temperature range of DRAMs by 10 C. They fire up one new coal fired power plant per week in China to meet growing demand. They found they could cut it down to only 3 per month with this change in temperature specs.13:10 About 5 years ago, the industry realized that simply increasing I/O speeds wouldn't help system performance that much because the core memory access time hasn't changed in 15 years. The I/O rate has increased, but basically they do that by pulling more bits at once out of the core and shifting them out. The latency is what really hurts at a system level.14:15 Development teams say that their entire budget for designing silicon is paid for out of smaller electric bills.15:00 Wide bandgap semiconductors are happy running at very high temperatures. If these temperatures end up in the data centers, you'll have to have moon suits to access the servers.16:30 Perry says there's more interesting stuff going on in the computing than he's seen in his whole career.The interface between different levels is not very smooth. The magic in a spin-up disk is in the cache-optimizing algorithms. That whole 8-level structure is being re-thought.18:00 Von Neumann architectures are not constraining people any more.18:10 Anything that happens architecturally in the computing world affects and is affected by memory.22:10 When we move from packaged semiconductors to 3D silicon we will see the end of DDR. The first successful step is called high bandwidth memory, which is essentially a replacement for GDDR5.23:00 To move to a new DDR spec, you basically have to double the burst size.
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It seems most large labs have a go-to data person. You know, the one who had to upgrade his PC so it could handle insanely complex Excel pivot tables? In large electrical engineering R&D labs, measurement data can often be inaccessible and unreliable.In today's electrical engineering podcast, Daniel Bogdanoff (@Keysight_Daniel) sits down with Ailee Grumbine and Brad Doerr to talk about techniques for managing test & measurement data for large engineering projects.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atsZlEx0WTgAgenda:1:10 - Who is using data analytics?2:00 - for a hobbyist in the garage, they may still have a lot of data. But, because it's a one-person team, it's much easier to handle the data.Medium and large size teams generate a lot of data. There are a lot of prototypes, tests, etc.3:25 - The best teams manage their data efficiently. They are able to make quick, informed decisions.4:25 - A manager told Brad, "I would rather re-make the measurements because I don't trust the data that we have."6:00 - Separate the properties from the measurements. Separate the data from the metadata. Separating data from production lines, prototype units, etc. helps us at Keysight make good engineering decisions.9:30 - Data analytics helps for analyzing simulation data before tape out of a chip.10:30 - It's common to have multiple IT people managing a specific project.11:00 - Engineering companies should use a data analytics tool that is data and domain agnostic.11:45 - Many teams have an engineer or two that manage data for their teams. Often, it's the team lead. They often get buried in data analytics instead of engineering and analysis work. It's a bad investment to have engineers doing IT work.14:00 - A lot of high speed serial standards have workshops and plugfests. They test their products to make sure they are interoperable and how they stack up against their competitors.15:30 - We plan to capture industry-wide data and let people see how their project stacks up against the industry as a whole.16:45 - On the design side, it's important to see how the design team's simulation results stack up against the validation team's empirical results.18:00 - Data analytics is crucial for manufacturing. About 10% of our R&D tests make it to manufacturing. And, manufacturing has a different set of data and metrics.19:00 - Do people get hired/fired based on data? In one situation, there was a lack of data being shared that ended up costing the company over $1M and 6 months of time-to-market.
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Phil Gresock, Keysight's Radar Lead, sits down with us to discuss the basics of radar and give us a peek into the world of aerospace electronic warfare.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScwCCTozNuYAgenda:00:20 Adaptive cruise control for cars works really well.1:00 the history of radar - the original radar display was an oscilloscope in WWII. (radar test equipment)http://www.pearl-harbor.com/georgeelliott/scope.html1:45 Early warning radar2:00 The rumor that carrots are good for your eyesight was a British misinformation campaign.2:58 The British had the "chain home radar system" all along the coast that pointed to their western front. They wanted early warning radar because they had limited defensive forces. By knowing what was coming, they could allocate defenses appropriately.3:45 Radar originally was a defensive mechanism.3:50 How does radar work? You send out a pulse that is modulated on a carrier frequency. If that pulse gets reflected back, we can do some math and work out how far away something is.4:30 Typically, there's a specific frequency used. For long range radar, like search and early warning radar, a lower frequency is used.5:15 What does a modern radar system look like?It depends on the application. Early warning systems are often anchored on old oil rigs. The rigs have a radome installed on them.6:25 How does radar detect something so small and so far away? A lot of it depends on the frequencies and processing techniques you use.6:40 There are some radar techniques you can use, for example bouncing off of the sea, the earth, the troposphere.7:15 Radar also has some navigational benefits. For example, wind shear flying into Breckenridge airport. A change in medium is measurable.8:10 Radars also get installed on missiles to do some last-minute corrections.8:35 Ultimately, the goal of radar is to detect something. You're trying to figure out range, elevation (azimuth), velocity, etc.Different target sizes and ranges require different pulse widths, different frequencies, etc.Azimuth is easy to determine because you know what direction your radar is pointing.To detect velocity with radar you can use doppler shift.10:30 Radar cross section analysis gives even more information.11:00 There are spheres in space for radar calibration. You can send pulses to the sphere and measure what you get back.Radar calibration sphere in low earth orbit:http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA532032 (for full paper, click the "full text" link)11:40 There are also reflectors on the moon so you can use laser telescopes to measure the reflection.Mirrors on the moon:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment12:30 NASA put reflectors in space.12:58 So, you send a pulse out and get a return signal, but there was a scattering effect. There are libraries for what a return pulse for different objects looks like so you can identify what you are looking at.14:00 Radar counter intelligence techniques.First, you have to know you are being painted by radar. Military jets have a number of antennas all around it. And, you generally know what radars are being used in a theater of operation. So, there will be a warning that will let you know you are being painted by a certain type of radar.15:30 Get Daniel on a fighter jet16:05 How do you stop your radar from being detected or interfered with? There are a few techniques.Radar frequency hopping is changing the frequency used from pulse to pulse.Radar frequency modulation changes the modulation pulse to pulse - phase shifts, amplitude changes, frequency chirps, etc.This helps avoid detection, get better performance, or reduce susceptibility to jamming.If you know how your radar responds to different signals, you have a lot of flexibility in what signal you use.How do you spoof a radar? You have to know what is incident upon you and know how that will act over time. You can send out pulses advanced or lagging in time or with different Doppler shifts to give misinformation to the receiver.You can also drown out the pulses so that your pulses get read instead of your reflections.You have to have an intimate understanding of the radar you're trying to defeat, a good system to handle that quickly, and good knowledge that something is actually happening.We need radar profile flash cards.Radar peak energies are anywhere from kilowatts to Megawatts.21:10 A recent US Navy ship had a new hull design, and it has to turn on a beacon because it had so little reflections.https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/10/14/some-of-the-numbers-behind-the-u-s-navys-new-zumwalt-class-destroyer-infographic/#da435a17059722:00 Phil thinks radars are pretty cool, and it shows up in a lot more places than you'd expect.Radar stands for "radio detection and ranging."
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We sit down with Phil Gresock to talk about the basics of RF for "DC plebians." Learn about RF designs, radio frequencies, RADAR, GPS, and RF terms you need to know in today's electrical engineering podcast!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZlpOXjaxTIAgenda:RF stands for radio frequency00:40 Phil Gresock was an RF application engineer1:15 Everything is time domain, but a lot of RF testing tools end up being frequency domain oriented2:15 Think about radio, for example. A tall radio tower isnât actually one big antenna!3:50 Check out the FCC spectrum allocation chart4:10 RF communication is useful when we want to communicate and it doesnât make sense to run a cable to what we're communicating to.4:50 When you tune your radio to a frequency, you are tuning to a center frequency. The center frequency is then down converted into a range6:30 Check out Mikeâs blog on how signal modulation works:7:00 Communication is just one use case. RADAR also is an RF application.8:10 The principles between RF and DC or digital use models are very similar, but the words we use tend to be different.Bandwidth for oscilloscopes means DC to a frequency, but for RF it means the analysis bandwidth around a center frequency9:22 Cellular and FCC allocation chart will talk about different "channels."Channel in the RF world refers to frequency ranges, but in the DC domain it typically refers to a specific input.10:25 Basic RF block diagram:First, thereâs an input from an FPGA or data creating device. Then, the signal gets mixed with a local oscillator (LO). That then connects to a transmission medium, like a fiber optic cable or through the air.Cable TV is an RF signal that is cabled, not wireless.Then, the transmitted signal connects to an RF downcoverter, which is basically another mixer, and that gets fed into a processing block.13:50 Tesla created a remote control boat and pretended it was voice controlled.15:30 Does the military arena influence consumer electronics, or does the consumer electronics industry influence military technology?16:00 GPS is a great example of military tech moving to consumer electronics17:00 IoT (internet of things) is also driving a lot of the technology18:00 The ISM band is unregulated!19:15 A router uses a regulated frequency and hops off the frequency when itâs being used for emergency communications20:50 RADAR, how does it work?22:22 To learn more about RF, check out App Note 150 here:http://www.keysight.com/main/editorial.jspx?cc=US&lc=eng&ckey=459160&id=459160&cmpid=zzfindappnote150
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