Dave and Chris discuss Golioth getting acquired by Canonical (makers of Ubuntu), trying out OpenClaw in the lab, changes to space plans, big new factories, Arm making chips, and more!

Alex is founder and CEO of Efficient Power Conversion, a leading manufacturer of GaN MOSFET's. Alex is also the inventor of the original Power MOSFET and HEXFET at International Rectifier. Also, former CEO of International Rectifier (founded by his father!), https://epc-co.com We cover everything from inventing the power MOSFET on his first day on the job to silicon physics, AI data centres and humanoid robots. Enjoy.

Zachariah Peterson joins Chris to discuss doing PCB layout and creating content for engineers looking to learn more about how to build their own PCBs

Chris will be having a meetup in London March 8th, 2026 click here for more info. He will also be at Embedded World the following week at various events. Dave is also headed to a meetup in Sydney that he has presented at in the past. The "lazy man move" for meetup organizers: scheduling events within walking distance of home to simplify travel logistics. Chris provides details on his latest high-density hardware project, a 22mm circular board packed with 0201 components, Bluetooth, and a suite of sensors, noting a move from BGA to QFN for better assembly reliability. There is significant skepticism regarding "solid-state transformers" and tech articles claiming they will replace the traditional power grid, with the hosts citing efficiency losses that become massive at megawatt scales. A fascinating look into global supply chains reveals how a single AI prompt can be traced back through layers of manufacturing to sugarcane fermentation and high-purity quartz mines in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. The creeping normalization of biometric face scanning in public spaces, from water park lockers to international airport terminals. The marketing tactics behind Donut Lab’s solid-state battery claims, explaining how "independent third-party testing" can be carefully hand-picked to avoid industry standards. They want us  to talk about it like this The nuances of UL certification explains how companies sometimes use specific lab reports to imply broader official endorsements that do not actually exist. Dave shares his experience watching the show Silicon Valley with his son and discusses the "hideous accuracy" of the Australian public service comedy Utopia. The pros and cons of modular hardware are debated, covering the Framework laptop’s "Ship of Theseus" repairability model versus high-end gaming tablets like the Asus ROG Flow Z13. Dave’s viral social media quest for the best Linux distribution leads to a consensus on Linux Mint as the top choice for beginners, fueling the ongoing joke about the "Year of the Linux Desktop". Recent industry news highlights the release candidate for KiCad 10 and the discovery of a three-cent Paduk microcontroller performing auxiliary functions inside Rode wireless microphones. Pimoroni did extreme an cooling project back in 2024 that successfully overclocked the RP2350 microcontroller to 800 MHz. We just found out about it from a post from Jeff Geerling.

David Ray joins Dave (Jones) to talk about the history of electronics manufacturing and how he has built a high mix manufacturing business while regularly educating the public about how electronics work.

Founder of Pebble and CEO of CoreDevices, Eric Migicovsky, joins Chris to talk about the history of the Pebble Watch and resurrecting the hardware to serve a very loyal ecosystem. Along the way, Eric has continued to create new gadgets like the Index 01 ring.

Martin Rowe is a long time technical editor for publications like EE World, EDN, and Test and Measurement World. He stops by The Amp Hour to talk about the things he has seen and the people he has met in the electronics industry, and he's still going strong!

Dave and Chris discuss staying connected while traveling, building terminal interfaces for custom hardware, using coding tools, the Teensy and recent events surrounding the manufacture, Zephyr, Raspberry Pi PIOs, and more!

Aaed is a YouTuber who builds a variety of robots and a mechanical engineering student at Purdue. He joins Chris to talk building robots and robotics components from the ground up, with a focus on lowering the cost and barrier to entry. They also discuss modern engineering education.

Dr Mark Palmeri is a professor at Duke University in the Biomedical Engineering (BME) field. He joins Chris to talk about using open tools (KiCad, ngspice, Zephyr, Jupyter notebooks, Python) to build educational resources and how he shares those courses with the world outside of Duke. He also walks through the Tympanometer project, built with Duke BME Design Fellows.