Embedded - 510: The Secret Chip

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Christina Cyr spoke with us about building cell phones, entrepreneurship, social purpose corporations, awards, lithium recycling, and her interesting career path.  We talked about Christina’s Cyrcle Phone, the related kit from dTOOR, and her CES Innovation Award. We also mentioned Fairphone in the section about social purpose corporation. There is a great paper from Nature about lithium-ion battery recycling: The evolution of lithium-ion battery recycling | Nature Reviews Clean Technology Christina Cyr Personal Website  Wellfound (formerly AngelList) is a startup focused job site that may lead to non-fulltime positions. Crunchbase may help you figure out is the startup has capital (also Pitchbook thought that generally has a cost). ADH connectors by JST and the SparkFun JST Battery Removal Tool The quote was from Hemlock & Silver by T Kingfisher and it was a lovely fantasy mystery with an incredible first chapter. Note: there are some audio artifacts on Christina’s track, we apologize as there was a technical issue that couldn’t be resolved. We’ve tried to clean it up with post-processing. There’s nothing wrong with your headphones :) Transcript                                If you’re interested in how 3D printing is changing design engineering, Mouser Electronics has some great resources to check out. Their Empowering Innovation Together platform is taking a deep dive into additive manufacturing—covering smarter production, faster prototyping, and breakthrough materials that move ideas beyond prototypes into real-world products. You’ll find podcasts, expert articles, and videos that keep you informed and inspired. Sound like your thing? Head to Mouser.com/empowering-innovation and explore.

Welcome to Embedded. I am Elysio White, alongside Christopher White. Our guest this week is Christina Sear, and we're going to talk about geometry, maybe awards, maybe starting a company. Telephones. Oh, and telephones. Telephones. That's what they're called. Hello, Christina.

Welcome. Hi, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Could you tell us about yourself as if we met at SuperCon Lunch? Oh, I'm the CEO of Detour. I created the Circle Phone. It's an Android phone with a round display. I've taught over 300 people how to build their own phone at conferences and universities.

And occasionally I do work on the side for other companies. I've helped them improve their quality and reliability on PCC. that involve communication. And we have lots of questions for actually all of that, I think. But first we want to do lightning round. Are you ready? No one's ever ready for this, but go ahead. What is your favorite communication device that is not a phone? Oh, that's a great question. Radio.

All right. Favorite shape. I love this question. Probably... I'm trying to decide hexagon, octagon, octahedron dome. Bucky ball? Yeah, one of those. Yes, exactly, exactly.

Sphere, I should say Sphere. Yeah. Favorite fictional robot. Okay, so I had a list prepared. It went somewhere. but basically it starts off with I love vacuum robots because it was the first time

a robot can actually do something for me in real life and that's not fictional it's not fictional that's good point good point so in movies I love humanoids because they're so intriguing

it's like all of the complexities of the social dilemmas and like all that kind of stuff is so yeah I love I love diving into that. But my favorite, like, hardware is robot from the 2018 drama of Lost in Space. I loved that series.

So, yeah, I loved how they showed emotion on a blank screen on the face. That was really intriguing to me. Yeah, I thought I did a good job with that series. When you said Android, I was going to say, okay, like data or like murder bot. But I think now you've kind of answered that with the Lost in Space robots. Yeah, just that emotion is amazing. Favorite place to get batteries from? Oh, this is a great spot.

So what a great question. So I don't think this is accessible so much anymore, especially after August 1st with all the tariffs and everything. But, you know, of course, going on Alibaba and looking for, you know, battery vendors and then kind of interviewing them and asking them, you know, what they can provide and all that kind of stuff. So that's been my favorite. And I have some stories about that because evidently you can ship batteries if they're installed in something. So, like, when they would send samples, they would rip out, like, a regular... like they would pick a toy and rip out the batteries from the toy and then install the lithium

batteries and an extra lithium battery to actually run the toy. So the toy would like run under inspection. But like I would arrive and I would get like this cute like one was like the Totoro mascot like a little nightlight like that you can have by your desk and my kids love them. They were fantastic. So I had known. never thought about that. That's a way that you could ship batteries installed in a device, you know, but like, because there's, they don't really define that very, uh, anyways, I'm not being, this is not a quick answer for laying around. Um, but as a side note, um, and I didn't put this in my notes, but, uh, I talked to somebody who worked for a battery connectors,

a battery connector company and she sat down and spent some time with me and convinced, me to switch from a pH connector, which everybody uses in all their maker boards, to an ADHD connector. And it's transformed my life. So anybody, I highly recommend switching to the ADHD. Because, you know, the pH, one, you try to pull it out, you know, to like switch batteries or something. And like, it's difficult to pull out. And sometimes you pull out the wires instead of pulling out the plug and like all these kinds of things. You don't have that problem with the ADHD. It's a better connection.

It's easier to get in and out for prototypes. And it takes up like a third of the space. These are the JST variants of the JST connectors. Yes. Yes. I think I have the wrong ones for all the things I'm doing. And SparkFund actually sells a little tool to disconnect them. No, to disconnect the connector because it's so hard to do without destroying the

the cramp yes that's valuable information okay i will get that tool because i need it you know if i'm trying out somebody else's um but yeah it's just a piece of plastic but yeah yeah and um yeah they have better ratings and um you know for um voltages and stuff it's just it's a vastly better tool um so yeah uh any company i work with i'm like you really consider uh switching to this if you can. I'm going to consider that her tip everyone should know. Yeah, yeah. That sounds great. We have a quick break before we jump back in. If you're interested in how 3D printing is changing design engineering, Mouser Electronics has some great resources to check out. Their empowering

innovation together platform is taking a deep dive into additive manufacturing. That's three-day printing. They're covering smarter production, faster prototyping, and breakthrough materials that move ideas beyond prototypes into real-world products. You'll find podcasts, expert articles, and videos to keep you informed and inspired. Sound like your thing? Head over to mauser.com slash empowering-innovation and explore their latest content. Now let's get back to the show.

Shall we go on to the longer questions? Yeah, let's do that. Yes, let's do that. Okay. You mentioned detour, which is spelled D, capital T, capital O, capital O, capital R. Yes. Pronounced. Ditor.

Ditor. I get it now. Wow. These things take me sometimes years to get, so thank you for helping me with that. And you mentioned the circle phone. how are those two things related i didn't quite understand that's a great question so what we started with was you know hey we're making a phone with a round display but there were these cool displays that were in the shape of hearts and stars it's maybe not a star it's like a if you have a bubbly star It's more like a flower, you know, with the flower petals.

And so, yeah, we started seeing all these really cool displays. And we're like, okay, so I think we can do, once we get the software nailed down for the circle phone, like we know all the bits to change for these other shapes as well. So we could do all of these other cool, you know, collectible phones, you know, and all these different shapes. And so that was kind of the initial. thread and because of that and I had to incorporate so it's a long story because like really I was just building this phone for myself but then I couldn't buy parts unless I was you know a company and so then I had to incorporate and blah blah blah so um the original question was the linkage so

originally the acronym for the company was designing the opposite of rectangle so we could design everything under the sun, any shape, any form, but it could not be the rectangle because that was what everybody else was building. And this is how we distinguished, you know, what we were doing apart from what everybody else was building. And of course, since all of our co-founders are female and we have a very diverse, we've had a very diverse collection of people that have worked on the phone. So we also thought it was a detour, you know, from other companies and were actually a social purpose corporation and had to file special paperwork for that, which means that you put, you know, kind of people and the environment above profit.

And, you know, no investor really wants to see that. But you really have a sincere, earnest desire, you know, to make a better company. So, yeah, so that was detour. But the acronym, what it stood for, was also a little bit negative. So we actually have a newer slogan that developed like six months later. And it's non-rectacular phones for non-rectacular people. That would have been a more awkward acronym, though. Yes.

So sometimes we do abbreviate it. So, you know, non-rectacular phones, so it's NRP, NRP, NRP. but that doesn't make sense at all. So, nurp, nurp. Yeah. Okay, a social purpose corporation, and this is U.S.-based, but is a... And it's only in some states.

Sorry to interrupt. Oh, no, that's good. It's a for-profit business, like a normal corporation, but it also has a specific social or public benefit goal. Yes, yes. And in general, companies, who file as a social purpose corporation are generally environmentally focused. And we do, our phone is environmentally focused as well.

The enclosure is supposed to be biodegradable and it's repair friendly, user repair friendly. So there's a lot of, you know, environmental aspects to it. But being environmentally sound in the smartphone industry is really difficult. That seemed impossible. So, yes, it does. But we still keep looking for avenues to do that. And hopefully we'll talk about some of them on the podcast here.

It's funny because we only very recently talked to Steve Hinch, who made it a point to say that corporations, public corporations, ones that are shareholders. They have to do what's in the best interest of the shareholders, not in the best interest of the future. Financially of the shareholders. Not in the best interest of the workers. Customers. It has to be the shareholders, which is such a limited and limiting view.

Yes. I loved it when he said that. That was just really grounding. Like, yes, that reflects. everything that I've seen in the industry. It reflects a lot of what's wrong with the industry. Yes. Yes.

It does. That's kind of new. No, it doesn't. I thought before, like, 2010-ish, there wasn't quite as much focus on that. I don't know that that's true. No, no, I'm thinking back and forth on that. I feel like I heard about fiduciary duty long before that. I think we're becoming more and more aware of it in current years.

But yeah, what was it before, like, even in like the 1920s, like when they got the railroad up and running? Was it in the best interests of the investors? Or that's a really good question. I don't know, but I did that. I remember it being complained about somewhere before there. I thought it got stricter recently. Possible. It's good to know that there's an alternative, but you said there's more paperwork. Yes, but you know, you do have to claim it as you and like kind of submit formal documentation when you incorporate.

In addition to that, then you also have a social, have to have a social purpose corporation like annual statement and it's tied to your websites. So you have to have that as a main like at the bottom of your website. You need to have a link to that. But I have to say that most corporations

who file for SPC are not around two years later. It's really a well-meaning filing. And then also, So if you're not in it for the investors, if you're in it for the environment, you know, maybe you've sold all that product and then you close the business. You know, it's, it's, I don't think it's worthless to do it. I think it's worthwhile to do it. But maybe it is a factor of that particular setup that makes the company not be, not be alive for very long. But we've been alive for 10 years. So. And do investors run screaming when you are near them? I was told that initially, but I think investors run screaming from hardware faster than a social purpose corporation.

So, yeah, I think there are worse things that you could do to pose your company to not be investor worthy. How do you get funding for your company? That's a good question. I actually don't. So that's the answer to that question. But shipping hardware is really expensive. Are you entirely bootstrapped? Yes. It is entirely expensive. We've had several successful crowdfunding campaigns. Thank you to all of our backers again and again and again. I appreciate you. and it's been from the love of backers and also just my family's determination. Is the Circle Phone for sale now?

Yes. If you go to the Circle Phone website, then if you click the Shop button, it's available. We have one unit left. So when you say the circle phone is available. No, we're doing a heavy lifting there. And one of the global unit available. And I just realized going through inventory that we can actually put together a Japanese unit as well. So maybe you'll see that on our website pretty soon.

But because they are the last units available on the planet, yeah, they're listed at $10,000. So you have to really, really want it. There are people who collect phones, who have thousands of phones. And for those individuals, it may be a worthwhile investment. Or it's also a great dev board. So, for example, if you were developing a round display

for your car, you know, that you wanted to release to the public, maybe we can, you know, work some sort of deal with you. So is it a going concern, actually? I guess I shouldn't have said, are they available? But are you planning to build a lot more? Are you in sales? That's a great question.

So those were as many as we've manufactured. We do actually have thousands of chips, actually available still we could manufacture more but it's time to move on to the 5G so these are all 4G phones and we're just waiting for the 5G chips to actually drop even further in price so so the circle phone has won some pretty interesting awards one of them was the CES Innovation Award Could you tell us about that? Yes. So the CES Innovation Award, I was so excited to go and pick it up.

So I know that's not what you're asking about, but I have to relive this moment of like getting to go, you know, designing a phone. This is actually the second phone. So the first one was just a 2G phone. It was the prototype. and I was testing it on people and they're like, actually, I want to buy this one. And they're like, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, you want to wait for the 4G, really? No, no, no, I want this one. This is great.

It's so cute. And it has a small display on it and everything. But so to me, this is like the real phone, you know, the 4G phone. This is great. Running Android. Fantastic. So when I went to go pick up the award, it meant a lot to me to be able to design something. that someone recognized like that.

But I have to say in the industry, you have to apply for these awards. And one of the things that I was dismayed about was you actually have to pay money to submit the application, which I guess makes sense. They have to have a team of people, you know, reviewing these things.

And I can't remember how much it is for CES, but like for Mobile World Congress, we did submit one year to be considered. And they did consider us. Unfortunately, we lost to the fair phone. Well, fortunately and unfortunately, I love the fair phone and what they're doing. It's so fantastic. They're, you know, reviewing all the sourcing and making sure that it's ethical.

They have replacement parts for your phone. So you can replace, you know, for example, the camera, things like that. and they make sure that, you know, their phone is as environmentally friendly as possible and still looks like a phone, like a rectangular phone that you would see in somebody's hand. Looks like an iPhone. That means, yes, it's wonderful. And I love the team. It's, yeah.

So in the industry, you get to know, like, everybody who's kind of your parallel. And I guess you could say, like, you know, your competitor or whatever. but I don't consider them competitors. I consider all of the fellow phone makers are like brethren, you know, like siblings. And we're all trying to, you know, make this do this impossible thing in the face of just unbelievable odds. But so for the Mobile World Congress, I think it was like that year, it was like $600 that you had to pay just to be considered. And it was interesting because of the next year, I had never received anything like this before, but they reached out to me and said,

can you please apply again? I'm not going to think about it. So, you know, but at that point, I was like so bummed about the previous year. And I was like, I don't think we want to spend, you know, another chunk of change on this. But yeah, so I don't know if that is about this, if that's the same for design awards and everything. But if you're in the smartphone industry, these are the kind of things that you have to pay for. And also, I could go into like also paying for booths and, you know, at all the shows. That's a whole other ball of wax.

Part of the reason that I know you went through some of that was because I asked you before the show started. I have been looking at podcast awards. Oh, yes. And just because Steve Hinch says he's an award-winning author, and I was jealous. And you're like, exactly. Why can't I have an award? And it's like, I don't care what the award is. I'll make you an award.

Yeah. 3D prints. I'm nice. I'll spray paint with some gold. And it really, yes. And it helps because, like, you know, I happen to be in these meetings with. So I'm part of the CTA wireless. division board meetings and it's like it's so hilarious it's like Verizon and there's

Qualcomm and there's Samsung and then there's me it's just like and this room is like filled with only like 20 people and I'm like okay but like you know I'm talking to the Qualcomm guys and I'm like hey you know I know it's hard to get chips and everything but like do you have anything for an award Winnie designer. So it does, it does pay off, I think, to, you know, fill out all these forms because you have to fill out like so many different pieces of paperwork. And like, fortunately the one for CES, it's all in one questionnaire. But you have to say, you know, why your product is, of course, you know, notable.

But you have to like fill out all these other details. And it's just, it took a lot of work. lot of time and, you know, I'd rather be building the next phone. So, yeah, but it is worth it to be able to add that to your belt. So I totally encourage you to do that. It is worth it just so I can say award-winning. I mean, couldn't Christopher just go buy me a blue rodent? I can. I don't know if it'll work the same for you. I know. And, you know, I wonder, you know, once I went to the process and, you know, if you get an award, you're like, Did they just give these to everybody now?

I just got one new kind of thing. But it is hard. It is hard to get an award because you think of there are how many startups are there at CES? There's like... All of them. I know. One year there was 4,000. Oh, my God.

Yeah, and they only give away, I don't know, less than 100 awards. So maybe even less than that. But does that mean that, like, most of those $4,000 paid to be in the running? My goodness, you could make a lot of money. I take it back. No, you don't want to get an award. Yes, right. I want to start giving out the awards.

Please apply. Exactly. I was talking to my friend last night, and I was like, you know, in like, in this, because we also do, like, in the past, we've done philanthropy, you know, like gala's and raising money for organizations and all this kind of stuff. I'm like, you know, I used to look at the people who receive the award and now I start focusing on who gives the award or like who looks for these people to give the award to, you know, if there's no formal like award application process, you know, like, and who, you know, basically these people are the historians of life, you know, who designate like, oh, this person should receive this award.

Like the Nobel Prize is like, do they, who funds that? dynamite as far as I remember No you apply to be people apply No they get nominated Apply you don't apply for your own award Right that's right That's right

So and then it has to be people Who are looking I mean I guess you could talk to your friend And say hey can you please nominate me for this But like people who get nominated out of the blue We're totally off topic What's the next question? Should Elysia start the Embeddies? We can work on that name.

The Embeddies? Like groupies? Like, we can follow you around in like a little VW trailer? No, this would be the awards, the Embeddies. No, that's bad. That's bad. I'll think of something better. Oh, that would be so cool.

Yes. And we could give it to big corporations. Right, right. Like, you know, best microcontroller. It would be like Nordic versus ST versus. Yes, yes. I have some candidates. That would be so cool.

That would be so cool. And they'd have to reapply every year. Oh, yeah. And in order to get best IAMU, you definitely have to show me that code. Oh my gosh, that's so fantastic. Yes. Please do this. Yeah, I think so.

Because otherwise, how do you know which is the best, like, chip really out there? So, for example, I'm at conferences and I feel like a drug dealer. And like, okay, you know, for GNSS, you know, I heard the Sony, the chip is like totally, you know, low in power usage. But I hear there's another one on the street that's like even lower, like, the secret chip, you know, exactly the secret chip, you know, kind of thing. I have done this. I've used secret chips. We did at Fitbit. Yes, yes.

But I mean, the whole, when UBlocks came out with the, with some of the combined chip sets they have. And I was like, you know, no, no, you got to wait a month. I promise you, it will be worth it. Don't buy the two chipsets. It's not, it's not going to be good. And there's also chips that are not available to the, you know, public. Like, you have to be shipping eight million units. Yeah, I went to one company that was, you know, and did some work for them, and they were shipping like eight million units.

The weight of that that you could throw around in the industry, like everybody wanted to do. meet with me at CES. And I was like, oh my gosh, there are these chips out here? How come I have never heard of these? These are incredible, you know, kind of thing. And like new companies coming on the block. I mean, everybody wanted to talk to me. And I was like, I want to talk to you. This is fantastic. You know, so. I just remember being in some meetings with some very nice gentleman from Toshiba. And they had a chip that we used at Fitbit, which I can say now, because I've been there gone there million years and it's not even Fitbit anymore so who cares uh it was a shiba chip and it was the only one in the world that had a little two-d graphics engine at the time and all this great stuff and it wasn't publicly

available all and we were the only customer and they were like so we had we'd made them do silicon changes and all sorts of stuff and go back and forth and they sent us a simulator when they didn't have it was it was amazing i'd never done anything like that before but yes yeah there's definitely chips out there it's like yeah we have this nobody buys it but it might be perfect for you and sometimes it is it's exactly what you need and you're like okay yes can i get eight million they're like yeah um in about 18 months yeah so uh it's yeah it's a different world it's like living impoverished on the streets and then suddenly getting to go to um what's the buckingham palace or you know whatever like the buckingham palace yeah

Exactly. I was like, chirping over the name in my mind. I'm like, is it the bucky-knit? Yes, it is the bucky-knap bells. So, yeah. Next question is. The social responsibility, the social purpose for your corporate corporation, deals with environmental concerns. Yes. And one of the things I saw when I was reading about the circle phone was about lithium battery recycling. Yes. Tell me all. I've, yes, I don't want to talk about this so bad.

So I am really excited about the possibilities of making lithium batteries from recycled lithium. So there's actually more lithium in a ton of iPhones, or let's just be, let's just be generic. there is a ton of, there's more lithium in a ton of smartphones than there is in a ton of raw lithium ore. Okay. So when you think about that, but which one is more easily recoverable? That's a good point. So actually raw lithium ore is not that easily recoverable because it involves vast amounts of water. to yeah and it dehydrates the towns around it and causes this huge environmental impact there are programs

I think the Gates Foundation is working on one research project that uses like an eighth of the water but really let's not do we have all of these used phones on the earth that we could be reclaiming reclaiming the lithium from and the second piece of the puzzle so it's 2021 was the first year that we could make batteries from recycled lithium more cheaply more cheaply am i using that correctly cheaper than we could from raw lithium ore but at scale you had to do 30 to 70,000 units so it was not for like a maker individual, but definitely for any company who's involved in large scale industry, this would be a great path. So the second important piece of the puzzle is that in 2021, as of 2021, the recycling of lithium batteries became better. And how it became better was

that normally they would just grind the entire lithium pouch pack from a smartphone. And lithium pouches have a little circuit board on the top to regulate the temperature. So basically, not only were you grinding the lithium pack, but you were grinding everything in that PCB. So now recyclers know to remove that PCB before they grind the pack. And the pack only has like four or five. elements in it. And so because of that, it's able to be recycled a lot easier than previously. Those elements are able to be isolated a lot easier. And if you think about it, think about the possibilities. If you are refining that lithium one more time, think of how efficient those

batteries could be. I mean, just in theory. I'm not saying that there's research or scientific evidence out there right now. But just probably, you know, if you refine it one more time, it's going to be more pure, more efficient. And you're recycling, because some consumers don't want to use recycled materials. But if you're refining it one more time for metals, it is good. Okay, wait a minute. I can understand you're not wanting somebody else's refurbished tennis shoes. Right. You don't wear tennis shoes.

I have ordered tennis shoes this year. You don't want anybody's tennis shoes. But recycled batteries. Recycled metal. That seems like... I mean, we've crossed that with aluminum. I mean, people are okay with aluminum.

Exactly. And steel? Right. Like 90% of steel is recycled? Is recycled? Mm-hmm. And a lot of batteries, like, for car batteries, especially, they are done it

when they're at 80% capacity, when they're still usable for storage infrastructure. So you can just take those batteries wholesale and keep using them somewhere else. Didn't this cause a fire near us recently? That's true of all lithium batteries. That's a separate issue. But fires are because people don't know to recycle their phones outside of the regular trash waste stream. And so there is actually, movement in the lot. So let me back up a little bit. So in 2021, you know, I was really excited

about this. And I thought, what smartphone manufacturer is dealing in these volumes? And we can pitch them. Yeah. And they said that this is a fabulous idea. It's too early for us. And I said, you're competing against, you know, this other smartphone company who is bragging. about, you know, this particular piece in their phone, and it takes up less than 1% of the weight by volume. If you use a battery from recycled lithium, your phone will suddenly be 30% eco-friendly. I mean, just by weight alone.

Think of the awards. Think of the awards. Exactly. And they're like, no, no, it's too really. But at CES 20, let's see, this was 20, 25, 2024, they announced that they were finally making, you know, diving into batteries made from recycled. Okay, so now I know which company it wasn't. And, and in addition to that, I've heard nothing since then from them, but I think it is a long process. You know, we were offering to make 20,000 units and to be able to, you know, substitute those batteries, make them completely to the specs that they had for, you know, one of the lines of phones.

And I recommended it, you know, for their second tier phones. And we were going to make it here in the United States. So there is a battery recycler in Texas, Austin, Texas, who recycles only three versions of this manufacturer. manufacturers' phones. And so they know exactly what plastics. The plastics are made of so they can actually offer those plastics for sale again. And they do a great job of recycling the lithium. And then we had a smelter on the East Coast to be able to smelt the batteries. And then we had a manufacturer, I think in New Jersey, for manufacturing the batteries. So we were all ready to go. But yeah, Hopefully, since they work with different vendors, I'm sure they're working with their vendors at this time.

So moving on from that, I approached Bunny Huang and I said, gosh, I'd really like to do like, you know, wouldn't it be cool to like do a crowdfunding, you know, effort to make this recycled battery, you know, from recycled lithium? But I'm like, you know, all these maker projects have different lithium pouches, different sizes, different requirements. And then he's like, oh, well, why don't you do that 18650 battery? Because that is like standardized. And then, you know, people would buy lots of those. And I'm like, you know, I loved you so much before this moment. And then you just come up with this brilliant idea. And this idea that I've been thinking about for like over a year.

And I'm like, thanks. And I'm like, and we were at the crowd supply, tear down. You know, and I'm like, and he's like, and you could do it through crowd supply. And because, you know, with their vendor, they have to like, whatever you sell through the crowdfunding campaign, they actually have to buy the same amount, you know, to store, to sell to average consumers. And I'm like, oh my gosh, you just like doubled my, you know, my. My MOQ, it was like amazing. Yeah, he's amazing.

And except for my chagrin, I am coming up with that solution, like, right away. So if you see another crowdfunding campaign from me in the future, it may be for that. But there was one more note on the lithium batteries. The Infrastructure Investment in Jobs Act requires the EPA in the U.S. Department of Energy, the DOE, to develop a national EPR framework for batteries that addresses battery recycling goals, cost structures for mandatory recycling, reporting requirements, product design, collection models, and transportation of collected materials. The kickoff was in April 2025, but it was talked about, you know,

kind of bubbling to the surface all in 2024. So if you are into batteries in any way or just even slightly interested, I will send this link to Alicia to add to the show notes for the EPA.gov so that you can join the meetings. And I've learned so much from these meetings about collection practices and like preventing fires and how many fires have been started just in the last. you know, a couple years from lithium batteries and how there's going to be more education to the consumer about takeback programs, of course, for OEMs, but also how to recycle just anything with a lithium battery. And more battery collection centers will be stood up in the next couple of years because of this. So I'm really excited to see this because it also means that these items can be recycled even better in the future.

So I have hope for our future, for our future electronics. I have some listener questions. Yes. CG asked all of these, okay? She was the only one I talked to. How did you continue to grow technically as an engineer after you left college? that's a great question so I bounced from technical job to technical job I would change jobs every year kind of fun I mean as a consultant yeah I do that but it was a myriad of things because my degrees are in

biochemistry and physics and because of that and because Because of some... Wait a minute. Biochemistry and physics with a side of Japanese, right? Yes, yes, this is true. So what happened was... So, for example, like, I was writing, like, in college during the summers, I would write testing procedures for testing piping aboard nuclear submarines.

Yeah, exactly. When they were coming for overhaul, they would rip out all the guts, and then they would put everything back, put all the piping back, and they had to make sure that, you know, nothing leaked. So it would be for oil, water, air. And I would be the one writing all those testing procedures. You know, I don't know. I was like 19.

So I... Why? Why you? Because a friend of mine had had the job previously, and he's like, hey, I really like this job. It was really cool, you know. But I'm moving on to this other job. Can I recommend your name?

And I was like, yes, please. I would love to give this a try. And so, yeah, so I did that for a year. I did, I worked on clinical trials for the medicines that people take for AIDS today, the triple drug combination, first came out. And I was one of the three techs who got to see the results. Oh, wow. Because I was really fortunate because I had,

biochemistry, like midway through my college education. And by the way, I went to Occidental. Go, Oxy. I know you guys went some months. And so, and there's tunnels underneath Occidental. Anyways, it's so cool. But anyways, so I took all the sciences there except for like geology. But anyways, one of the instructors for biochemistry had just graduated with her P.A. and knew this new technique, PCR. And so we learned PCR in the lab. And so I got to go do this amazing thing for this research laboratory. And I just started, I would just go to work.

And a PCR was not as automated as it is today. It would be like a 10-hour shift. And so, you know, you would spend the samples and like do all this stuff. And at the end of the day, you know, you see the result. And I would just start crying and like the guys over that would do the blue Eliza test would just be like, I know these patients are testing negative on the blue Eliza now. It's just incredible. And up to then we just had, what was it, AZT? And that would just buy you. Like, yeah, it would just buy you 12 months. So, yeah, it's just amazing. So I'm so proud of this almost like I designed the medicine to myself. self and it's not. Like, I just happen to be a techie. It's cool to be present at those moments.

Yeah. Yes, at those moments in history. So, yeah, I worked down in Los Angeles for, was a laboratory for the three main doctor's offices that, that collected all the samples for people with HIV. So, yeah, that was an amazing job. And then I went through a billion different other. other jobs. But the first job that I actually had my year annual review in was I was working on Japanese software at Microsoft. And my manager's like, you're shaking. I'm like, this is my first

annual review I've ever had. But it was a great opportunity to work with really smart people and have your job change every like three or four months. Like there would always be new techniques, new, you know, new things that they were going to try. And that was an invigorating environment. And then I had kids and I felt like my world stopped for 10 years. So I took care of the kids for 10 years. And then I wanted to build this phone and I started, you know, building hobby phone after hobby phone at a maker space in downtown Seattle called Metrics. It was open for like 10 years. It was a huge incubator for lots of startup CEOs. And I met a lot of incredible people there.

But pretty soon, like I said, I couldn't get the parts unless I had a company. And so I kind of fell into it. But I had to say raising kids, it was really daunting, being so technical leading up to it. And then thinking about getting into the job force again was just an insurmountable. activity. And I would show up at pickup to go pick up my kids. And I would be with these other women or I wouldn't say other women. Let's see other stay at home spouses or other stay at home parents who had like this one woman had a PhD in chemistry and she had four boys. And she's like, yeah, I'm not going back to that. And just because it's so tech, you know, we would talk about like our

technical degrees and like how hard it would be to enter the workforce again. But once I was in the startup arena, I saw how easy it could be to onboard to a new, to a startup who was working on new technology because a lot of startups don't have a lot of money. They only need you for like 10 hours a week, can only pay you for that amount. And you're learning something new. If I had only known, I would have gone back to the workforce, probably at least five years. years earlier. I could have worked while my kids were in school and onboarded that way. So I wish there was some onboarding for people who decide to stay home and take care of their kids but have worked in the technical industry because we have incredible minds. And you start to see things a little

bit differently after having kids too. So yeah, I just, so yeah, I have some onboarding tips. for people I'm not like check out. I think it's called wanderlust now. It used to be called Angel List. It's a list of jobs available for startups. And then cross-reference that with crunch base, make sure the startup got funded recently. And then those are great places to not only apply for that job, just contact them directly and say, hey, you know, I've, this is, this was my background. I'm interested in your product. You know, where can I fit in? How could I help, you know, kind of thing. Angelus became wanderlist?

Yes. It was hard for me to keep up with. I think it's wanderlust. Yeah, because angelus seems to be some sort of other thing now. Right. Building infrastructure, powering startup economy, whatever that means.

All right. Yes, it really veered. Oh, well-found. Excuse me. Oh, wow. This is the name. I thought they'd just gone away. Okay.

Good. Mm-hmm. Search for guitar pedal embedded development jobs. Okay, so I'm going to cut this part. I think it's really important for people who are out of the workforce to realize that you don't have to jump in the pool over your head. You can dip your toe in.

This is an important point. And the startups are actually, it's easy to get sucked into them. And you should realize that if you hit a good startup and they grow, really fast, they're going to want you to work for them. But for a lot of startups, a little bit of help is enough. Yes. And if you're doing it for your intellectual curiosity, you might be able to do some work for a lower rate. I mean, don't devalue yourself.

Yes. But there is, you know, you can do pro bono work that is interesting to you without devaluing you're, what will be the rate you have when you go back to a full-time job. Indeed. And nine out of ten startups actually fail. Right. So the chance that you're going to be part of a startup that actually succeeds is, is rare. But, but you will learn so much just in the, even the first six months that you work there about business.

You'll learn about the technology. that they're working on, you'll get to meet interesting people. That's, you know, when I first started, I realized it wasn't how much cash I had, but who I knew, you know, to ask about these important technical topics. That was actually a better currency than the dollar. And it gives you access to people. who have done it before. And whether or not that turns into a formal mentorship relationship

or if it just turns into a, I got a weird call from some investor. Have you ever used them? And the other person says, stay away. That sort of information is really worth it. This is true. And in particular, in hardware, when you're pitching investors, So the typical number for pitching investors until you get funded for software is the average number is like 30 to 45.

But for hardware, it's 149. So you have to pitch a lot of investors. And that's if you know what you're doing. Like not the investor who invested $10,000 last year. You know, you have to wade through a lot of those investors. to get to the ones who are actually investing, you know, not hundreds of thousands of dollars, but actually millions of dollars because hardware is expensive. It's really expensive. So those investors are few and far between. And I'm blanking on the name.

Crunch base, of course, is a place to go. But there's, oh, I'm sorry, I'll put it in the notes later. Their pitchbook is definitely the place to go. And that's like to get access to pitchbook, it's a propository of, you know, who's invested in what. It's very reliable. They do their research. They were bought by Morningstar years ago. It's just their information is really solid.

However, to get a subscription, it's like $5,000 per month. Yet, if you are an alum. or a college student, or you can even hire a college student who has access at their college to pitch book, that's worth your time and money to invest in, to have, do that research and find out what investor is actually interested in your product. It saves a lot of time and a lot of wasted energy. Do you have any advice for someone wanting to get started on their own hardware idea. Just do it. Just do it. You learn so much just by diving in and figuring it out. You meet so many people, you know, because you'll get, you'll get the courage, you'll get over your hesitation

because you'll want to know so badly, like what chip was in this product kind of thing. And you will, you know, hunt that information down until you can find someone. who's going to give you the answer. And in the process, you will discover people, products, possibilities, potential, and you'll develop your skill set. So, yeah, just dive in. How do you know if it's going to be a good idea? It doesn't matter.

It's your idea. So, yeah, it's your idea, and you should go with it. You should just really explore it and figure it out. And along the way, your idea will probably change and you'll get new ideas. And, yeah, it doesn't matter if it's a good idea. It doesn't have to be a good idea. Anybody or anything. Yeah, just do it.

And I know that's hard in hardware because hardware is really expensive, but you'll figure out how to find recycled products. or recycled materials that you can build it from until you can afford or be part of a team who's building something similar. How do you find the motivation? Oh, gosh, this is a really good question. So some days waking up and, you know, trudging to the desk and, you know, especially if the day before, you just reached a block. issue. And you could not, for the life of you, figure out any way past it. Always definitely sleep on it. The morning always looks better. Morning routines, really important. I always eat oatmeal

every single morning. I try to walk the dog every single morning. Just so the like normal life can happen. But for me, the key has been having an accountability person. So Seth Kansarion's shout out to him, he's been mine for the past, what, two and a half years. We met at SuperCon, gosh, several years ago now. And I said, and he's a sole practitioner and he's a consultant, an E consultant. I said, sometimes it's just really hard. And I hear about these other, you know, startup founders who have this like three point list. And they're like, if I can just get this three point list done today, you know, not... a whole sea of activities, but just like, this is my three-point list. And sometimes

it includes, you know, calling the doctor for that doctor's visit or whatever. You know, it may not be specifically work-focused, but just having that task list every single day. And then sending it to him and exchanging one with him, I can also, you know, bounce questions off of him because he's an E, so it's kind of water cooler talk. You know, like, hey, yeah, I'm working on this chip and I used, you know, this microscope or I used this analyzer and I had some good experience with it, but, you know, there were some caveats and here they are, you know, kind of thing. So having that accountability buddy, especially if they're in your industry, really, really

helps, especially if you're a sole consultant. So that's really help for me. And the other thing that's really helped for me, I know this isn't like motivational, but it ends up being motivational. For every project I work on, I have a little notebook. So some people save these in various formats since, of course, I was a Microsoft baby. I saved them in Word, but it has pictures and links and to whatever I'm working on. And it has, I don't have to input things every day, so it's not like a, I call it my work journal, but it's not, like, I do also have a work journal, but it's per project. So, for example, when I worked on the display driver for the circle phone for this latest version, it was banging my head against a wall for six months.

And it turned out four months in, they gave us the wrong file. And another month later, they sent us the new file, but the vendor, intermediary, who was trying to send it to us, it got trapped in his email, he missed it for a month. So it wasn't until the last month that actually could finally get that file and start developing the display. And what that did to our business was, you know, it was really horrible, but you learn to just keep going. And I also had links of like all of the

threads that I could pull off the internet in one place. So when I had to go back to the display, so I made another one for the camera driver. And the camera driver, like I got it working. You know, we were on the road to 20, let's see, what was it? The 2020 CES. We had a booth there and all the kind of stuff. And then I was like, oh my gosh, the back camera's not working. Like, what is going to do? What are we going to do? And fortunately, everybody wanted to take a selfie with the phone, but like not too far away.

So thank God. There's some tricks that you learn in the booth that, like, for example, people will not input their email or contact information into, like if you have a tablet. Heck no. If you want to scan there. But if you have a piece. a pad of paper and a pencil or a pen and you're like, oh, did you want more information? Well, yeah, we're keeping this list, you know, for people who wanted more information, you know, but it's just

on this pad of paper. Like, so many people will give you their email address and they can see other people's email addresses and what questions they wrote down. And like, I could not believe that. Like, it was mind boggling to me and horrifying to me. Like, that this, it was like so old school, they were like, oh, yeah, sure, you know. And like, oh, yeah, I know this person. I'm like, you know, I meant to talk with them and blah, blah, blah. So like, yeah, it was mind-boggling to me. So we always keep a pad of paper and a pen now at the booth. Just in case people do want to leave their contact information for later. But yeah, isn't that astounding? It's like social, what is that called? Social engineering. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's really interesting. And I, you know, you said input your email, and I have been in booths, and I'm just like, no, thank you. I'll walk away now. Right, right. And yeah, if you handed me a piece of paper and I was sort of interested, especially if I got to see the other people's email addresses and questions, for some reason that would make me do it. It disarms you.

It totally disarms you. And I can't tell you how awful it is for me later after the conference. exhausted, you know, the next week, I pull up this pad and I have to like transcribe all of the email addresses like into, like to send them the information that they want, you know, do the follow up and all that kind of stuff. And I'm sure this is what sales people do. You know, they keep your contact information. They follow up after the events. And they're really good at that. And I've noticed there's a cadence for, yeah, for CES, there's a cadence. Typically I'll get a follow-up from a vendor like two weeks after. Because everybody's just exhausted. They usually have

some cold or something. The crud. Because it's like, CES, I love it to death, but like one year, over 200,000 people attended, and there are only 150,000 rooms in Las Vegas. So like, you do the math. It's like, and that was before every, you know, before the pandemic. So before everything, you know, went online. And they have tons of people attending online in addition to everybody who attends in person. There are 13 different tracks. So whether you're doing, gosh, what is it, health or smart home or education or, you know, they have all these different tracks. It's like 13 different conferences all in one conference. It's amazing. And you definitely have to wear tennis shoes. It's in several different venues. You have to take the monorail between different

venues. Yeah, it's enormous, but you see so many inspirational things at that conference. I love it. Yeah. Talking about good conferences, that tear down and Supercon, yeah, those are my loves. So, Christina, thank you for spending so long with us. I have more questions, and yet we should go about our day? Definitely. Definitely. It's a good Sunday here in the Northwest. We're migrating from Blackberry season to Apple season. So I hope the weather is holding up for you down where you are. It is. It's perfect. So we need to go out and play. Yes, definitely with the dog. Do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with? Go out and learn. That's my first. final thought. It's a good one.

Our guest has been Christina Sear, Senior Principal, Electrical Engineer, and CEO of the Circle Phone. Thanks, Christina. Thank you. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to our Patreon supporters and to Mouser for supporting us.

Thank you to Deborah Ansel for the connection and Cigi Oluadara for the suggestion. And then thank you for listening. You can always contact us at show at embedded.fm or hit the contact link on Embedded.fm. And now a quote to leave you with.

This is from T. Kingfeshire. Hemlock and Silver came out recently, and I started it before this show and barely made it on time because it is a good book. There is a crazy wild light that comes over you when you discover something new, something extraordinary.

If you try to share that and people look at you blankly, It's crushing. But if there's someone else there to say, really? And take fire with enthusiasm alongside you, well, that will keep you going for a long time.