Guns and Mobile Labs - Nuanced Nomadic Non-essentials

• Dave finally got the poster that Chris sent him. He opened it on his mailbag segment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXWbmODBvhI
• Dave is shopping for a new lab/workspace. He wants to be able to include mechanical elements like a laser cutter and a drill press. The current space isn't well ventilated enough to even use a reflow oven (though he still does sometimes).
• Chris started working part time at Supply Frame, the company that owns FindChips.com and Hackaday. Chris will be helping develop new tools for engineers to navigate the supply chain. This is why he's been traveling more and will continue to travel.
• Because Session 1B of Contextual Electronics started recently (the building portion), Chris will likely need to build while on the road.
• If building on the road, a portable lab will be required. There are some great builds already out there by Ben Heck and across the web.
• But what about protecting your stuff while going through security?
  • Steve Hoefer has written in the past about taking your stuff through as a carry on.
  • Another option is to be allowed to lock your bag...by packing a gun? Kind of a crazy lifehack, but it works! There are very well defined processes on US airlines for registering and checking a bag with a gun in it.
• Dave actually would consider using a tablet based scope (as would Chris) when creating a portable lab. Another benefit is you could use a new simulator with a nice UI called EveryCircuit. It shows current flow and helps people learn circuits.
• The Nest production is on hold because waving your arms can shut off the smoke detector without knowing it.
• The Fuel Band team was laid off and Nike is getting out of wearable hardware. They won't be the last company to bail on the "hot" market of wearables.
• Sick of doing laundry? UC Berkeley is using a PR2 to develop a laundry folding robot.
• Chris has been reading The Second Machine Age (and won't stop talking about it). Much of the computing surplus will go towards robotics and human replacement...which will allow us to work on harder problems.
• A recent infographic shows the extent to robotic deployment in 2014.
• This year the Open Hardware Summit will be in Rome!
• Chris will be attending Electronica in Munich Germany. It likely will be a little far for Dave to attend.
• If you happened to be at Maker Faire Shenzhen, there was a workshop on how to reball BGA parts by hand!
• The workshop was set up by Dangerous Prototypes, who also recently started a service that can layout your boards and get them made for low cost.
• Will layout designers be out moded by fancy software? No.

Next week on the show, we'll have LTSpice guru Mike Englehardt. You can ask him questions over on our subreddit.

Thanks to Elizabeth M for the picture of a suitcase