Chaffered Chocolate Coemption

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• Dave and Chris discuss the after-Easter candy/chocolate sales. And many other cultural differences.
• Injection molding plastics is an art and a necessary skill for high run products. Have you ever worked on molds?
• Chris has a new podcast about general engineering topics. This will free his brain to talk more circuits on The Amp Hour!
• Dave likes the new OSHW RC controller by Gizmo For You. Design files can be found at OS-RC.com.
• Kent Lundberg is still working through Jim Williams' app notes. There is a great "best-of" page that points out the key ones to read.
• Though it's still just a rumor, the DARPA grand challenge that could be forthcoming sounds awesome. Robots to save people...then conquer them all?
• Is there any use still for Germanium Diodes? Interesting uses in an old Sylvania manual. Have they been supplanted by Schottkey and other low drop variants? Or does an application still exist that requires them?
• Jack Ganssle calls out a similarly awesome old book for playing with BJT circuits. Lots of great applications for trying out analog circuits.
• Do you go to expensive conferences on your company's dollar? Would you go to the forthcoming Hardware Innovation Workshop for $775?
• Conferences are good for networking, if nothing else. Chris recommends, "Never Eat Alone" by Keith Ferrazzi, a book on how to do just that.
• Chris used CircuitLab to share a SPICE-like circuit with a friend to illustrate a point. If you want to see the Low Pass Filter Chris entered into the program, see here.
• If you're interested in sharing schematics (KiCAD only right now) in a more interactive way than PDFs, Circuit Bee is an option.
• Chris was trying to illustrate Bode Plots for the friend. Pronounced "Boh-Dee", according to his (impressive!) wikipedia page.
• If you're interested in analog filtering, specifically Sallen Key Filters, check out this app note from TI.
• We have a winner from last week's contest, Lorin Tauss! Though it was not requisite, the chip he suggested was great and was this week's CotW!
• Chip of the Week
  • The AD8555 by Analog Devices is a zero-drift, digitally programmable sensor signal amplifier. You can tweak offsets with a DAC and clamp at a specified input voltage. Pretty cool!
• Switch mode power supplies (SMPS) are a topic most younger engineers (Chris included) take a while to get accustomed to (especially when starting with a linear regulator or similar). There was a great application note by Microchip about the basics of SMPS and the different topologies that are available.
• Dave has talked about the differences (and similarities!) between SMPS and Linear Regulators before on EEVblog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM7t1Mpu7s4