MEP EP#185: What You Are Designed To Do – A Joe Grand Manufacturing Adventure

The MacroFab Engineering Podcast Design Contest sponsored by Mouser Electronics deadline has been extended! We have cash prizes up to $1000 for the winners. The deadline is August 31st and it is closing fast! More information can be found on here!

Joe Grand

• Also known as Kingpin
• Computer engineer, hardware hacker, product designer, teacher, advisor, runner, daddy, honorary doctor, TV host, member of legendary hacker group L0pht Heavy Industries
• Proprietor of Grand Idea Studio.
• Has been creating, exploring, and manipulating electronic systems since the 1980s
• Previous podcast appearance was on MEP EP#73: Joe Grand: The Origin Story

On-shore Verse Off-shore Manufacturing

• Pros and cons?
• Dealing with the difficulties
  • Time difference
  • Language barrier
  • Cultural differences
• Impact of tariffs
• Supply Chain Security
• Delivering instructions for unique and custom designs
• Production: What is it like to spin up 30K units?

Defcon Badge Design and Manufacturing Challenges

• Hardware and Software timeline
• What made you go with the Kinetis KL27 Microcontroller?
• Near field magnetic induction (NFMI)
  • What made you go with NFMI verse NFC or RFID type technologies?
  • How does NFMI work?
  • “How the hell were you able to buy NXH2261UK’s? I’ve been watching this part ever since it came out & I still don’t have a data sheet!” -Tom Paden from Hackaday comment section
• How do you design for abuse knowing ~30k people are going to bang the living hell out of that hardware

Additional Questions

• Based on the talk you gave this year and releasing some information early. Will Defcon change its policy of keeping digital badges super secret? If hardware folks had some lead time we could actually get some crazy stuff done at the con.
• Design reason behind no SAO connector on the badge?
• What do you want to see out of defcon 28?
• Who's a better engineer? Matt Damon from the Martian or Matt Damon from interstellar?

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