Things are looking up

Dave and Chris catch up on appliance repair nightmares, major career announcements, and hardware security threats. Dave shares his frustration attempting to fix a top-of-the-line Miele washing machine door interlock, while Chris recalls diagnosing a failed dishwasher sump pump. Chris then announces his new role as Developer Relations Lead at Hubble Network%, detailing their hybrid terrestrial and satellite Bluetooth infrastructure. The discussion shifts to semiconductor physics with Dave’s video on light erasing LCD pixels, cybersecurity supply chain vulnerabilities on Ledger crypto hardware wallets, AI voice-changing phone scams, the official End-Of-Life (EOL) of the Zilog Z80 microcontroller, running WebAssembly SDRs on an ESP32-S3, and open-source silicon with Bunnie Huang’s daBao RISC-V chip.

Timeline

• Dave and Chris kick off the episode complaining about persistent microphone and gain issues in the studio. (00:00:30)
• Dave details his ordeal trying to find spare parts for a failed Miele W1 washing machine door interlock teardown. (00:01:15)
• They reminisce about washing machine “fuzzy logic” marketing from back in the day compared to modern AI buzzwerds. (00:01:45)
• Dave breaks down the complex mechanical solenoid interlock required by European safety standards and the pain of shipping delays. (00:02:45)
• Discussing the economics of white goods repair: repair technician quotes ($1,300 interlock + mainboard) versus buying a brand-new appliance. (00:06:15)
• Chris shares his own recent experience diagnosing a failed sump pump on an 8-year-old dishwasher. (00:08:45)
• Comparing basic household appliance automation to the extreme complexity and risks of home humanoid robots. (00:11:15)
• The mystery of dishwasher wash cycles: why the 1-hour power wash uses less water than the eco mode according to the display. (00:12:45)
• Chris announces “things are looking up” with his new role as Developer Relations Lead at Hubble Network, following up on Episode 728 with Alex Haro. (00:14:15)
• Overview of Hubble’s hybrid Bluetooth architecture: a terrestrial network using 100M+ participating devices alongside satellite relays. (00:15:00)
• How standard 2.4 GHz Bluetooth commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) chips use FSK narrowband modulation to transmit data directly to orbit. (00:17:30)
• Satellite link budgets and power requirements: dropping from +20 dBm external preamps today down to +4 dBm for next-gen satellites. (00:19:00)
• Reviewing Hubble’s terrestrial hexagon coverage map and plans to scale from CubeSats to larger, more sensitive satellites. (00:19:45)
• How background location partner apps like Life360 help backhaul terrestrial Bluetooth advertisements. (00:21:00)
• Satellite overpasses in North America (1–2 passes per day) and developer tooling for calculating satellite pass windows. (00:23:00)
• Chris reflects on his 5-year tenure at Canonical (makers of Ubuntu) and staying dynamic in tech careers. (00:24:15)
• A look at corporate identity: why Canonical kept its name rather than renaming to match its famous Ubuntu brand. (00:26:30)
• Dave explains his video on erasing LCD pixels with light, diving into TFT storage capacitors and amorphous silicon band gap physics. (00:27:45)
• Chris accidentally drops a Seeed Studio 60 GHz radar heartbeat monitor live in the lab while discussing physics. (00:30:00)
• Teaching kids about physics: Dave shares how bringing a thermal camera into a kindergarten class demonstrated invisible light through a garbage bag. (00:33:45)
• Nostalgic action movies that hold up: Predator, Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park’s “spare no expense” practical effects. (00:36:00)
• Supply chain security issues explained: physical interception, seed phrase theft, and hardware wallet tampering. (00:38:00)
• Elaborate hardware wallet scams: pre-printed fake seed phrase sheets, shipping company database breaches, and bogus CEO replacement letters. (00:41:45)
• Credit card skimmers at gas pumps, fake ATM front panels, and a $100M supply chain hack via a Malaysian authorized reseller NDA purchase. (00:43:30)
• The rise of AI voice-changing phone scams: Dave’s 25-minute call with scammers impersonating Australian Federal Police using real-time voice translation. (00:47:15)
• Open-source CAD updates: the new FreeCAD release, plain-text CAD workflows, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations. (00:51:00)
• Dave’s video on getting paid $175/hr to eliminate your own PCB design job and single-prompt automated PCB/schematic generation tools. (00:53:00)
• Reflecting on Episode 736 with Eric Pan and how Shenzhen manufacturing automation connects with AI hardware design outputs. (00:56:00)
• Hacked YouTube creator channels (Kiss Analog & Learning Electronics Repair): session cookie hijacking via fake CAPTCHas on vintage datasheet websites. (00:57:30)
• The end of an era: Littlefuse / IXYS officially places the iconic Zilog Z80 microcontroller on End-Of-Life (EOL) after 50 years. (01:01:00)
• Asianometry’s video on Exxon’s Office Fling detailing Zilog’s history and Exxon’s foray into office automation. (01:02:45)
• Modern browser capabilities: running Xbox games in browser windows via WebGPU and browser-based emulation. (01:04:00)
• Chris’s internal prototyping tool: running Python in WebAssembly via WebSerial to process raw 2.4 GHz IQ data from an ESP32-S3 as a browser-based SDR. (01:04:45)
• Dave and Chris add an ESP32 footprint to the Micro Timer project, opening up the possibility of connecting the timer directly to space. (01:09:15)
• Crowd Supply versus Kickstarter: Mouser integration and Bunnie Huang’s custom daBao RISC-V co-processor products on Crowd Supply (why the daBaos were late). Cross-links to past interviews with [Bunnie Huang (Episode 260)]](https://theamphour.com/230-an-interview-with-bunnie-huang/) and Sean ‘xobs’ Cross (Episode 521). (01:12:00)
• The open-source versus closed-source silicon security debate: why full RTL transparency doesn’t automatically prevent hardware exploits. (01:16:30)
• Show wrap-up and a sneak peek at next week’s interview with the CTO of Ambiq. (01:17:30)