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The PCB Design Podcast features conversations on all facets of PCB Design and Hardware Development
Episodes
Tuesday Nov 15, 2022
Tuesday Nov 15, 2022
It’s that time again to have Altium’s VP of Marketing, Lawrence Romine, the bearer of good news when it comes to Altium Designer’s latest features. We will discuss what’s coming in Altium Designer 23 which includes multi-board and harness design capabilities.
You don’t want to miss this one. Watch through the end and be sure to check the show notes and additional resources below.
Show Highlights
- Altium Designer®’s regular and reliable updates are incomparable in the industry, stay on top of the monthly updates through the OnTrack newsletter
- There are 3 major themes to come in Altium Designer 2023
- Multi-board systems and harness design – empower PCB designers and electrical engineers to design harnesses
- Collaboration and teamwork
- Make Altium Designer a necessity for every PCB designer – the world's greatest and most elegant design experience
- Code Designer, coming soon – the ability to work natively in Altium Designer and in Mcad tool of choice
- Multi-board and harness design capability, Altium Designer is fully supported through Altium 365
- It's never too soon to involve the other stakeholders in your PCB design
- Altium 365 releases commenting capability to both bombs and draftsman documents
- New power analysis capability powered by Keysight, anybody that can design a printed circuit board can now do some power analysis
- Altium Designer users are encouraged to check out all of the extensions, especially the new power analyzer
Links and Resources:
Connect with Lawrence Romine on LinkedIn
- Stay on top of Altium Designer versions updates
- What’s new in Altium 365
- Read: Come See the New Power Analyzer by Keysight in Altium Designer 22.9
- Connect with Zach on LinkedIn
- Visit Nexar website
- Visit Octopart website
Tuesday Jun 21, 2022
Tuesday Jun 21, 2022
In this episode, a returning guest Gabriel Goldstein shares the electronics behind the thrills in escape rooms. He also generously gives some valuable advice on finding your niche and starting your own electronics business.
Gabriel was the former owner of Anidea Engineering and Escape Room Tech. Listen to this episode and be inspired by how he married two industries together and become the master of this very unique niche.
- Gabriel’s background, he is the former owner of Anidea Engineering and Escape Room Tech
- The business of producing low-volume products - his first big project is an ARM9 with 16 mb of RAM, a PDA style learning device
- The fascinating technology in the escape room includes off-the-shelf surveillance cameras, keyboards, and maglocks. Gabriel describes the technology behind the “magic doors”
- They use RFID and developed their RS45-based networking system
- A successful escape room requires an extreme collaboration of multiple skill sets that include electronics guys, theater guys, and game theory team just to name the least
- The escape room industry is a marriage of electronics and haunt industry
- Creating a small, showpiece project could be a gateway to a PCB design career
- Software engineers have GitHub, while PCB designers have Arduino and Raspberry Pi
- Gabriel wrote blogs to educate his customers about the business of producing products that sell
- He became Mr. Networker hanging out at the Angel Forum groups and the venture capital groups
- For about 6 years he was out there in the community to help out, give back and help build a business
- He recommends a book from Martin Gerber – Awakening the Entrepreneur Within
- “If you're going to take off the engineering hat and try to turn this into a business, please learn how to run a business because it's a completely different skill set”
- Ending the conversation with a little anecdote from Gabriel, an inspiration to be in the business mindset and going for the American Dream
Resources:
Connect with Gabriel Goldstein on LinkedIn
Visit Escape Room Techs website
Read Martin Gerber’s Awakening the Entrepreneur Within
Watch the previous episode with Gabriel Goldstein - How to Build a New Data Management System
Read Gabriel Goldstein’s Blog Articles on LinkedIn
Connect with Zach on LinkedIn
Thursday Feb 17, 2022
Thursday Feb 17, 2022
It’s a privilege to be sitting down with Didrik Beck, CEO of Elmatica, the world’s oldest PCB broker company and now part of the NCAB group and CAB group. Together we will dive into exciting topics surrounding cybersecurity, compliance, and supply chain and his upcoming presentation at IPC Apex. Didrik has some interesting insights on supply chain Cybersecurity management in the PCB design and manufacturing industry. Make sure to watch through the end and check out the additional resources below. This episode will be an insightful one!
Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics
Watch the video, click here.
- Dedrick Bech introducing Elmatica
- World's oldest PCB broker
- Recently acquired by the NCAB group
- Securing PCBs for different partners in the PCB supply chain
- A quick summary of what was going to be in the IPC Apex paper that Dedrick is presenting
- Different levels of compliance and to what extent does this apply in the PCB design and manufacturing
- Controlled Unclassified Information (UCI)
- Every country has a different view on it
- Two possible aspects of greater focus on compliance
- Intellectual property
- Cybersecurity concerns
- How to get IT and compliance strategy come back and get implemented together
- Data security awareness - some tips and practical steps
- Is it worth it to invest for a data security software and team
- More ways companies can do to help guarantee compliance and prevent data to be copied
- Formalized packages for a high level of compliance - how deep does this have to go for small companies
- Compliance and Cybersecurity differs from country to country and depending on:
- the company
- the country’s regulations
- where the PCB is produced
- There is a room for improvement in creating some compliance hazards for designers
- Start with a good communication with the supply chain team
- Gather data ahead of time
- Misconception about sharing data
- Securing supply chain for large subcontractors
- The importance of reading and understanding Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) regulation
- AltiumLive Connect was successful! Watch the exclusive recorded sessions here
Links and Resources:
Connect with Didrik Bech on LinkedIn
Visit Elmatica’s Website here
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS)
Watch AltiumLive 2022 Connect Recorded Sessions Here
ALTIMADE Design to Manufacture, Made Easy | Request Access Now
Full OnTrack Podcast Library
Altium Website
Download your Altium Designer Free Trial
Learn More about Altium Nexus
Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics
Wednesday May 26, 2021
Wednesday May 26, 2021
In this Ontrack episode, Altium’s Chief Ecosystem Officer, Ted Pawela, and Altium’s Chief Software Architect, Leigh Gawne, join us to give us information about the launching of Nexar. Who is Nexar for? What’s the vision behind it and the strategy (the Why) of this new business unit? They explain how Nexar addresses critical needs for design engineers and delivers direct and frictionless access to the entire ecosystem of electronics tools and service providers.
Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics
Show Highlights:
- The first year of Altium 365: adoption trajectory, feedback, latest advancement, and plans
- Launching of Nexar: What is Nexar? (Open Ecosystem, zero cost)
- Nexar ties together with Altium 365, APIs released April 30th (Octopart), and Partner Dashboard. What can be expected in the following weeks and months?
- Types of partners, goals for those partners, and access to users/Octopart
- Benefits and opportunities for both users and partners
- Mcad slide (workspace)
- What’s in it for users and Industry at large?
- Electronics is still in its infancy.
- Ecad: Walled Garden.
- Cloud is an enabling force to bring electronics into this century and make transformation a reality.
- One of the drivers of this technology is smart and connected devices (cloud-enabled)
- Cloud Security: AWS, the most secure platform, continual improvement
- Work with top experts in cloud security (bank safe vs. bed mattress)
Links and Resources:
Nexar Website
Nexar Official Press Release
Altium 365
Open Source Ventilator (30 days to realization with Altium 365)
Transitioning a global team to Altium 365 during Covid Lockdown
Full OnTrack Podcast Library
Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics
Tuesday Feb 02, 2021
Tuesday Feb 02, 2021
“Those who get to choose, choose Altium Designer.” - Lawrence Romine, Altium VP of Corporate Marketing
In this episode, Lawrence Romine is with us to reveal some exciting news about the new Altium Designer Multi-Plan Subscription Programs. He explains the three components that make up the subscription program and how a designer like you can benefit from each option.
Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics
Show Highlights:
- Introduction of the new Multi-plan Subscription Plan (Includes cloud solution Altium 365 and service and feature-specific choices.
- What’s the difference between “maintenance” and “subscription”?
- Altium making a shift towards Saas (Software-as-a-service), allowing for choosing best-fit solutions
- Definition Standard vs. Pro subscription plans
- Perpetual and on-premise subscription remain available
- Altium 365 enables an unparalleled ability to collaborate across engineering disciplines and with supply chain partners.
Links and Resources:
Altium Designer 21: What’s New?
Lawrence Romine’s LinkedIn Profile
Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics
Thursday Jan 21, 2021
Thursday Jan 21, 2021
What’s in your soft skill toolbox? Eli Hughes is a true full-stack hardware engineer and a co-founder of Tzero Brew. He joins the OnTrack podcast to share his insights on how to foster innovation, manage upstream failure, build trust with your fellow engineers and stakeholders, and develop your soft skills—and other non-technical skills we use to communicate with each other and solve problems effectively.
Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics
Show Highlights:
- Intro to Eli
- Meeting the challenges of working remotely
- A lesson in engineering from a kindergartener
- ”Soft skills for hardware”; humanity in engineering
- Timing and Perception: Shifting targets as customer needs change
- Too easy to be negative; finding positivity in global challenges
- How constraints foster innovation
- Wants vs Needs: building trust with fellow developers
- Jeremy Blum’s take on ‘Empathic Engineering’
- You make it, you fix it: managing upstream failure
- Believing in the Mission: how ordinary people do extraordinary things
- The Part vs the Whole: Lee Ritchey’s homemade Apollo 11 boards
- Elon Musk & Tony Stark: the power of unification
- Expanding your sphere of influence by thinking holistically
- How students at TU Delft is helping paraplegics walk again
- Mining Sci-fi and fantasy reading for soft skills
- Now is the time: get out of your comfort zone!
Links and Resources:
Eli Hughes AltiumLive Presentation: Crossing the Chasm
AltiumLive 2020 Presentations
Jeremy Blum AltiumLive 2018: Empathic Engineering
OnTrack Insight with Lee Ritchey
Altium Stories: Project March (Exoskeleton)
Eric Bogatin Amazon Author Page
OnTrack Insight Videos
Article: 5 Essential Soft Skills for a Successful Career in Engineering
Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics
Tuesday Jul 14, 2020
Tuesday Jul 14, 2020
Angus Thomson is Senior Electronic Engineer and founder of CircuitBuilder, a brand new platform for simplifying the development of custom electronics out of Suffolk, England. Angus joins the OnTrack Podcast to share his experiences as CircuitBuilder’s founder, and to discuss the fine points of CircuitBuilder’s evolving business model, which has so far proven immune to the challenges of the global pandemic.
Altium 365 Podcast Listener Discount
Show Highlights
- Introduction to Angus Thomson
- ”I thought: there’s a better way to do this”—Angus’ road to entrepreneurship
- How CircuitBuilder utilizes Altium 365 to provide customers with realtime 3D views of their designs
- The CircuitBuilder growing network of engineers
- CircuitBuilder’s successful, lightweight recruitment process
- Proving it out in your own backyard: Angus on expanding market reach
- Transparency: How Altium 365 pushes CircuitBuilder beyond the errors of the past
- Design, Manufacture, or both? CircuitBuilder’s evolving business model
- The secret of CircuitBuilder’s resilience during the coronavirus health crisis
- Angus offers his insight on the future of design in a post COVID-19 world, and on CircuitBuilder’s role in that future
Resources:
Tuesday Jul 07, 2020
Tuesday Jul 07, 2020
Istvan Novak, Principal Signal and Power Integrity Engineer for Samtec Inc. and winner of the DesignCon 2020 Engineer of the Year Award joins the OnTrack podcast to talk picosatellites, simulation tools, and the rising importance of power integrity.
Altium 365 Podcast Listener Discount
Show Highlights
- Introduction to Istvan Novak
- A brief look at Samtec Inc., the successful computer equipment manufacturing company headquartered in Indiana.
- Istvan’s path to becoming a Power Integrity expert
- CubeSats and the students who make them
- The challenges of dimensionality: has power integrity become more important than signal integrity?
- When Power Integrity is an afterthought
- The value of expert disagreement
- “Regardless of what we want to simulate, we can find good simulation tools to do it”: Good design and the challenges of modeling and simulation
- Closing thoughts; the first working Picosatellite; and the first electrosmog map of the globe
Resources:
- Istvan Novak on LinkedIn
- Samtec: gEEk spEEk SI Webinars.
- Samtec Silicon-to-Silcon Solutions Website
- The SI-List Archives
- Istvan Novak: DesignCon 2020 Engineer of the Year Award
- BUDAPEST UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMICS Picosatellite
- Istvan Novak’s Electrical Integrity Website
- Picotest Website
- Signal Integrity Journal
- Design 007 Magazine, See pg. 38 Do You Really Need That Ferrite Bead in the PDN?
- First Electrosmog Map of the globe
Tuesday Jun 23, 2020
Tuesday Jun 23, 2020
The town of Calumet, with a population of barely seven-hundred, was once the booming epicenter of Michigan’s upper peninsula mining industry. When the industry began to fail, unemployment skyrocketed, and the townspeople sought local solutions for creating jobs that could sustain the town’s families.
Rob Cooke, Director of Engineering Services at Calumet Electronics Corp, joins the OnTrack podcast to discuss the Open Source Ventilator project, his experiences implementing Altium-365, and the radical decision business owners in that small town of Calumet, Michigan made more than 50 years ago, which led to the rise of Calumet Electronics Corp.
Altium 365 Podcast Listener Discount
Show Highlights
- Intro to Rob Cooke: how he got involved with Dugan Karnazes and the Open Source Ventilator Project.
- From copper ore to copper pours: Calumet, Michigan’s fascinating backstory.
- So what’s the hold-up? The right tool for avoiding excessive holds and other barriers to expedient design.
- Reality transcends the map: Altium-365 demos vs firsthand experience.
- The impact and implications of sudden hyper-efficiency at the designer, fabricator, and assembler level.
- The shock of realtime: “This is what can happen when things don’t go on hold!”
- Rob offers some final thoughts on the purchasing and quoting paradigm.
Resources:
- Rob Cooke on LinkedIn
- Calumet Website
- Open Source Ventilator Video
- AltiumLive 365 Demo
- Altium 365 product page
- Open Source Ventilator Project (OSV) Combats Ventilator Shortage
- Previous Episode with Rob Cooke: How to Conquer Data Package Problems
Wednesday Jun 03, 2020
Wednesday Jun 03, 2020
The renowned global trade association known as IPC has put together a network of printed board design engineering affiliates under the name IPC Design. IPC Design’s affiliates are comprised of PCB design engineers across the globe who are working to advance the art and science of printed design engineering.
IPC Design’s Patrick Crawford and Teresa Rowe join the OnTrack Podcast
Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.
Show Highlights
- What is IPC Design, and what is its primary mission?
- Increased global presence and participation: How IPC is molding its future.
- IPC Design’s worldwide buy-in, its fresh new participants, and how the quarantine has affected participation.
- Has productivity gone up since quarantine?
- Lessons in remote working and the importance of taking time for yourself.
- Between January 2020 and now.
- What’s in store for the future: IPC’s collaborative content model.
- America, Europe, and Asia: IPC’s leadership group and global design committee.
- IPC Design is looking to fill a leadership role in Asia.
- What’s in it for you, the designer? Teresa and Patrick count the ways designers will benefit from IPC Design.
- ”Let’s start up a chapter!”: How individuals, student groups, and companies can get affiliated with IPC Design.
- Translators of the world, connect! How IPC Design can serve and collaborate with STEM groups all over the globe.
Resources:
Teresa Rowe on LinkedIn
Patrick Crawford on LinkedIn
IPC Website
Link to IPC Design webpage
Link to IPC Design enrollment page
Patrick Crawford’s video presentation on IPC Design
Realtime with IPC
IPC CEO John Mitchell on the Impact of COVID-19 on the Electronics Supply Chain
Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.
Tuesday May 26, 2020
Tuesday May 26, 2020
A leading research and advisory company, Gartner, Inc., found that nearly 75% of the 317 CFOs and business finance leaders they surveyed planned to move at least 5% of their formerly on-site workforce into permanently remote positions even after the COVID-19-related quarantines have ended.
Zach Peterson, prolific technology content writer, scientist/engineer, and owner and CEO of Northwest Engineering Solutions, joins the OnTrack Podcast to examine the implications of this finding, and to share best practices for creating a viable and productive remote working environment from both a manager’s and employee’s perspective.
Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.
Show Highlights
- The business case for remote teams, and a worldwide freelancing network’s shocking statistic about the future of remote work
- Suggestions for managers and employees that will ensure their remote teams remain viable and productive
- The importance of setting clear expectations for your remote team
- Why you shouldn’t “babysit” your remote workers; the importance of allowing workers to work within their comfort zones
- Setting clear boundaries: how remote working can upset our work/life balance, and what steps one should take to cultivate it
- Tackling the myth of slackers in the remote work environment
- Ideal tools for the remote working environment
- “Engage earlier rather than later”—tips for maintaining the relationship between design engineers and manufacturers in a remote environment
Resources:
Zach’s Technical Articles on Altium.Com
How to Manage a Remote Team for Electronics Design
Signal Integrity Article Coronavirus Shows how Quickly Electronics Supply Chains Can
Sunday May 10, 2020
Sunday May 10, 2020
Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.
Altium 365 is here, and its CAD-aware approach to cloud-based design is already cutting lead times down by orders of magnitude. How will this affect designers, and how will it affect the electronics industry as a whole? Leigh Gawne, Chief Software Architect at Altium 365, answers these questions and more. Get an exclusive look inside the impact Altium 365 is having on the electronics industry and learn more about this powerful new tool.
Show Highlights:
- Up until this point, ECAD has been confined to the desktop. Leigh explains how Altium 365 breaks this trend, allowing anyone with an internet-enabled device to interact and collaborate in the design process—directly from a web browser.
- No download necessary: Altium 365 ditches the software download for manufacturers and other stakeholders.
- Is the Google Drive comparison accurate? Leigh demonstrates how Altium 365’s approach to ‘CAD-awareness’ pushes its capabilities far beyond the reach of ordinary cloud-based design tools.
- Is this design manufacturable? Resolving essential questions with the click of a button in Altium 365, allowing designers to instantly share designs as a live view or as a snapshot.
- Never lose a comment thread again. Leigh explains how Altium 365’s ‘contextual commenting’ feature allows designers to attach comment threads right to relevant features in the design.
- Customers, procurement personnel, and project management: How Altium 365 facilitates seamless interaction with secondary stakeholders.
- Altium 365’s option for browser-driven design review minimizes mistakes and pulls more stakeholders into the chain.
- Supply chains are dynamic and are often subject to radical, unexpected changes, especially in a pandemic. Leigh breaks down Altium 365’s “baked-in” Octopart capability, which allows designers to monitor their supply chains in real-time.
- Navigating the ‘new normal’: Leigh examines Altium 365’s important and powerful role for product design in the post-coronavirus age.
- Out the door in 30 days: Reviewing Altium 365’s integral role in the Open Source Ventilator Project’s incredible success story.
- Success all around: How Altium 365 makes it trivial to duplicate another company’s achievements.
- Leigh looks at the future of the electronics in the wake of this powerful new tool.
Links and Resources:
Exclusive Sharable Listener Discount Link
Altium Designer-Altium 365
Altium 365 Customer Stories Videos: Skyship, Arduino, Project March
Altium 365 Webpage
Altium 365 LIVE Demo from AltiumLive 2019 with Leigh Gawne
Open Source Ventilator Podcast with Dugan Karnazes
Now you can get the ultimate PCB design productivity with the easiest platform for PCB design. Easily communicate design changes to your team with Altium 365.
Tuesday May 05, 2020
Tuesday May 05, 2020
Altium 365 has launched in the midst of a worldwide quarantine effort—a time when companies have drastically reduced the in-office workforce, and financial constraints and travel restrictions have never been tighter.
Altium’s VP of marketing, Lawrence Romine, joins the OnTrack Podcast to explain how Altium 365 removes the obstacles presented by the lockdown effort, why it’s the perfect tool for the post-coronavirus environment, and how the launch timing couldn’t be more serendipitous.
Work from Anywhere. Connect with Anyone.
Show Highlights:
- Altium 365 has launched on schedule; a brief look at why the timing couldn’t be more perfect.
- Working remotely. The Altium 365 cloud based platform which Altium Designer and Concord Pro run on.
- Seamless integration: the symbiotic relationship between Altium Designer and Altium 365.
- Arduino, SkyShips, and you: the various types of Altium 365 users, and how the addition of new features addresses their individual needs.
- Flattening the curve: Altium’s conscientious approach to the learning curve when adding new features.
- Design Reviews in a pandemic—a use case: How Altium 365 removes the obstacles presented by a remote work environment.
- Some users describe the experience of Altium 365’s cloud-based real-time collaboration as “similar to working in Google Docs”. Lawrence elaborates.
- It’s as easy as sending a link: How Altium 365 frees up budgets by eliminating excessive travel, phone calls, and emails.
- “Simplicity is the ultimate expression of sophistication”: Lawrence recalls an automotive experience from his life in praise of Altium 365’s design ethic.
- As simple as using a web browser: How sales personnel are utilizing Altium 365 as a demonstration tool for prospective clients.
- Lawrence’s predictions about the farside of the COVID-19 calamity.
Links and Resources:
Exclusive Sharable Listener Discount Link
Altium Designer-Altium 365
Altium 365 Customer Stories Videos: Skyship, Arduino, Project March
Altium 365 Webpage
AltiumLive: Altium 365
Altium 365 Security
Now you can get the ultimate PCB design productivity with the easiest platform for PCB design. Easily communicate design changes to your team with Altium 365.