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The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

By: The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)
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A weekly podcast about the electronics industry. Occasional guests. Lots of laughs.Copyright © The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast 2020 Physics Science
Episodes
  • #726 – Arduino’s Invisible Touch with Massimo Banzi

    #726 – Arduino’s Invisible Touch with Massimo Banzi
    Jun 17 2026
    Welcome, Massimo Banzi of SuperModerno and co-founder of Arduino Introduction and SuperModerno: Massimo introduces himself as a “friendly nerd” and discusses his new project, SuperModernoThe project aims to explain the “behind the scenes” of technology to prevent people from becoming “slaves to the platform”The History of Technology: Massimo expresses his passion for technology’s history, emphasizing non-American innovators to show Europeans they can also lead in technology, citing the UK-based origins of the Arm processorThe Legacy of Olivetti: He highlights Olivetti (founded in 1908), which moved from typewriters to creating the Programma 101, the first desktop computer used by NASA to compute orbits for the Apollo programDesign as a Differentiator: Olivetti was the first tech company to apply design to everything (products, posters, and architecture)This inspired Massimo’s concept of the “invisible touch”, the idea that consistent, intentional design creates a unique connection with users and gives a company a competitive edgeThe Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII): Massimo’s path led him to IDII, located in the former Olivetti research building, where he transitioned from a two-week sabbatical to a four-year stayLearning by Making: To help students with no electronics background, Massimo drew on how he learned as a seven-year-old (“learning by making”) to remove the friction of interacting with technologyThe Founding Team: He met Tom Igoe (ITP) and David Cuartielles, and they realized students were afraid to be creative because they feared “blowing up” expensive tools like the Basic StampThe “Pizza and a Beer” Price Point: Massimo aimed for a hardware cost of 20 Euros, roughly what a student would spend on a pizza and a beer, to encourage experimentationBuilding the Platform: Along with David Mellis, the team adapted Processing (a language for artists) by “surgically” replacing Java with C++ to create the Arduino IDEIvrea Manufacturing: Leveraging the industrial base of Ivrea and Torino (the “Detroit of Italy”), Massimo was able to find local PCB manufacturers and assemblers just a short drive awayFrom Hacking to AVR: Massimo’s early work involved hacking satellite TV PIC chips for soccer fans, but mentor Bill Verplank encouraged him to use AVR microcontrollers because they could be programmed simply in CEnabling Creators: Massimo shares stories of how Arduino enabled others, such as Josef Prusa, who started with Arduino as a teenager before building his global open-source 3D printer companyThe Innovation of Simplicity: Massimo argues that Arduino’s true innovation is the user experienceThis is measured by the “Time to First Blink”, the goal for a user to go from downloading software to blinking an LED in five minutesStandardization and “The Core”: Arduino became an ad-hoc standard by providing a compatibility layer across different microcontrollersMassimo believes in having a “small slice of a really large pie” by allowing other architectures to work within the ecosystemHardware Architecture and the “Lasagna”: Inspired by the PC104 format, the board uses a layered approach where modules stack like a lasagnaThe “Shield of a King”: The name Arduino comes from King Arduino of Ivrea; David Cuartielles suggested that since the board was named after a king, the add-on modules should be called “Shields”Hardware Design Choices: The board fits a credit card size (to stay within the free version of Eagle software) and is blue because that color was thought to be less tiring for workers’ eyesHappy Accidents: The unique shape was chosen to be “ourselves instead of everyone else”During the design process, Massimo inadvertently moved a connector by half a step, creating an offset header that they kept for consistency after the first few thousand were madeThe Discovery of Auto-Reset: During a workshop in Germany, Massimo solved the frustration of manual resets by soldering a capacitor to the DTR pin, allowing the software to trigger the reset automaticallyThe US Market and Legal Battles: Tom Igoe’s adoption of Arduino at NYU helped the US become the project’s single biggest marketThis growth led to a difficult legal battle for control of the brand against a former partnerSupport from Arm: Massimo credits Arm Ltd (and CEO Simon Segars) for providing the strategic support that allowed the founders to regain control of the company. Massimo believes this is the first time he has talked about the role of Arm in the difficult legal process.Industrial and AI Expansion: Partnerships with Intel and Microsoft (Windows 10 IoT) led to early forays into TinyML (AI on small boards) back in 2017The Qualcomm Acquisition: In October 2025, Qualcomm acquired Arduino, which Massimo sees as essential for bringing “advanced silicon” into the family to handle the increasing complexity of technologyThe “Arduino Formula” and Layering: Massimo ...
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • #725 – The Secret Life of Circuits with lcamtuf / Michał Zalewski

    #725 – The Secret Life of Circuits with lcamtuf / Michał Zalewski
    Jun 4 2026

    Welcome Michał Zalewski, AKA lcamtuf!

    • The lcamtuf Substack is where Michał is writing most these days
    • Chris first found and geeked out about the CNC guide on the lcamtuf original site (discussed many times here)
    • Michał is interested in the craft of teaching electronics
    • He recently published The Secret Life of Circuits with No Starch Press
      • Use the code AMPHOUR26 for 30% off The Secret Life of Circuits valid from June 1st through June 30th
      • It was announced on his blog here
    • Deriving fomulas from basic trigonometry sometimes bugs people who think electronics should only work with calculus
    • Software geeks follow the site, often getting lots of attention on Hacker News
    • Row hammer DRAM
    • There were no Information Security degrees in the early days, so the field was made up of folks with backgrounds in math and EEs
    • Fuzzing for security
    • SMBC cartoon for blming humans
    • Books
      • American Fuzzy Lop
      • The Tangled Web
      • P0f v3
      • Silence on the Wire
    • Security stuff (including books on the subject) ages over time, as opposed to electronics
    • On the subjects of Calculators (and Michał’s collection)
      • Calculators are a footnote in the history of computing, but still intriguing
      • Dead ends in calculators
      • CRT displays on calculators
      • Nixie tubes
      • Discrete moving into logic gates into processors
      • Mechanical calculators are rare and get a high price online
    • Working with transistors
    • The Secret Life of Circuits start with FET based transistors vs BJT
    • BJTs are often right after diode chapter because of the multiple junctions in an NPN, but that doesn’t make it easier to understand
    • Projects
      • A recent project involved making a clock out of current meters
      • Woodworking and AI example
      • Want to see all lcamtuf articles in one place?
      • Sokoban
      • Sir box-a-lot
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    1 hr
  • #724 – All Heat, No Useful Work

    #724 – All Heat, No Useful Work
    May 25 2026

    • Chris just got back from a work trip to Madrid
    • He also got to hang out with Matt Venn (and coworker Mike Szczys) in Valencia
    • Dave has a new data center going in across the street
    • Chris enjoyed this episode of Prof G Markets where they talked about the impact of data centers on power and the rise of “behind the meter” generation
    • Dave without internet for a week. Chris has had multiday losses after fiber has been cut in his neighborhood.
    • Humanoid robots…on a plane!
    • Chris has been working on 0201 components on a tiny Bluetooth board
    • The Iran War and subsequent rise in petroleum product sourcing issues is starting to impact the PCB industry
    • PCBs we are used to ordering at low cost (JLC, PCBway, etc) are normally loss leaders to get larger business later
    • Chris found his low cost microscope from Florin/Voltlog trinocular video
    • lcamtuf will be on the show soon, Chris bought a CNC mill because of a single webpage of his making
    • TagMod board is a new breakout Chris made for injecting power through a 10 pin TagConnect cable.
    • NXP devboards somehow have LEDs as bright as the sun
    • Dave has been revisiting his solar analytics (update: he figured out he’s getting charged more too!)
    • Chris has been working at Canonical (makers of Ubuntu, new owners of Golioth) for a few months now. That was the trip to Spain.
    • Dogfooding your own product
    • Chris created a backronym: “Application Level Program Optimization” or… ALPO
    • Chris built a new vibe coded project for talking to Zephyr devices using Web Serial and passing firmware packages over SMP
    • CI/CD
    • Debian now requires “fully reproducable” builds to harden against supply chain attacks
    • Veritasium video about Linux bug
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    1 hr and 5 mins
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