Embedded - 532: It's Still Real Fire

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Kevin Santo Cappuccio, founder of Architeuthis Flux, joins the show to discuss creating Jumperless, an open-source breadboard that replaces physical jumper wires with software-controlled analog crossbar switches. We explore the need for 445 RGB LEDs on a breadboard, using MicroPython to create scriptable circuits, some of the lessons that can be implemented with the Jumperless, and how it might be used to create new instruments. Kevin also shares the story behind his upcoming Barnacle Board. DISCUSSION RESOURCES & LINKS Jumperless Project & Hardware Resources: Jumperless Docs and Discord Jumperless Shop (Also available via CrowdSupply but any discounts only apply to Kevin's shop) JumperlessV5 · GitHub: Open-source hardware files, schematics, and firmware Barnacle Board - GitHub:  The future of jumperless includes a modular breadboard with custom-stamped clips and removable protoboard tops Other Resources and Mentions: Wokwi Simulator: Online browser-based electronic circuit simulator  Falstad Circuit Simulator: Kevin's favorite browser-based analog simulator Hackaday Prize 2023: Jumperless took 2nd place in the 2023 contest.  Peter Griffin made an Microsoft Excel plugin interface for Jumperless, we discussed it with him in episode 505: Potato in a Number Field.  Kevin also talked with Chris Gammell of The Amp Hour with more information about the electrical response, timing, and the crossbars. Giant squid - Wikipedia 

Welcome to Embedded. I am Elysio White alongside Christopher White. Our guest this week is Kevin Santo Caputocho, founder of Arctoothus Flux, which, as you know, must relate to the giant squid because the giant squid's name is Arctutus ducks. I am so excited. Hi, Kevin. I don't think we're going to talk about squid. Oh, it's going to end up there. But Elysia thinks we're going to talk about squid, so. We'll get there. We'll find a way. Could you tell us about yourself as if you were not a squid? Okay.

Yeah, so I'm Kevin. I obviously make a jumper list and made a whole life around it. Yeah, I don't know, art school dropout. Used to work on squid, like doing science and commercial fishing. So the squid thing is there. And yeah, it's what I do. Just sit around and be a weirdo. What is jumperless?

Oh, okay. So jumperless is a, it's a breadboard that is jumperless. It doesn't need jumper wires. It's weird because it's like it's not a unique idea. I feel like anyone in college is thinking about this thing. Why am I dealing with these stupid jumpers? Yeah. And so it uses analog crossbursts, which is to basically just make the wires a software thing.

Make the wires a software thing. Okay, yeah, there's always the like, we have to start at breadboards. I guess not for this audience, but it basically allows you to like add and remove wires very quickly and really easily. So, yeah, they, instead of actually using a physical wire, you're using a, very complicated set of electronics on the back to make a virtual wire. But it looks like a breadboard with a lot of extra LEDs. And you plug things in, capacitors, resistors, E.Broms, whatever. And you can plug them in somewhat haphazardly.

And then in the software, instead of having all of these little jumper wires that go everywhere and make it look like a trollhead doll, you do that all in software. And then you show it in LED. Yeah. Yeah, that's, yeah, got a lot of LEDs. I think it's 445 of them. So every hole has an LED. And to show the connections, you need to light them all.

So, yeah. Yeah. All right, so we're going to talk more about jumperless, but first we want to do lightning around. Are you ready? Yeah, we're starting with that. All right, cool, yeah. Favorite LED color.

Pink. Squid, anchovies, or sardines. Squid. Wirewrap, solder, or breadboard. Oh, God, I do all of them at the same time. Like, in the same product. I love wire wrap, though. Which is cooler?

Transparency, Iridescence, bioluminescence, or fluorescence. I really like the fluorescence that cuttlefish do. I don't even know if they call it fluorescence, but the bottoms of them, like, actually take in or emit more light than the tops do so they don't cast a shadow. It's a really cool thing on the bellies of cuttlefish. So I'm going to say, do they call it fluorescence? I think it's fluorescence, yeah.

Complete one project or start a dozen? Both. I really like going in and spending years on the same project, like that whole optimization thing. But I also started a dozen projects at the same time and also complete them. I just have free time. I hope I could just do it. If you could teach a college course, what would you want to teach?

I'm going to make up a class. It's going to be doing electronics like an art school dropout. I like that. Favorite fictional robot. Okay. What was that? Flubber with the Webo, little flying girl. I don't know.

It looked like a walkman that was like flying around. And it talked. Okay. I don't know that one. Yeah. It's an acceptable answer. All answers are acceptable. And do you have a tip everyone should know?

I mean, I feel like I have a lot of them. I don't think they're really important. But, oh yeah, just do it. You'll figure it out. Just do stuff. It's cool. Especially with electronics. You don't have to learn.

You just do it and you'll learn. I think that's an interesting thing from somebody who's video for the Hackaday challenge or Hackaday Prize involved sniping a wire and having things light on fire. Was that a real, I mean, really, or did you fake that? I did fake it. Yeah. I actually, I tried it a few times getting, you know, but no, that wasn't.

So what was behind the breadboard was a little tray of like vape juice, like propylene glycol with like nicrome wrapped around like a kind of spongy thing in there. And yeah, so I'm just hitting my power supply right after it cut it. And it like, you know, you do it hard enough and actually just catch us on fire. I'm so disappointed. This is a lie. I'm done. It's still real fire.

I did consider, there were a few ways where you're like, how do you like, you have like a huge moshet and like that's like holding back, you know, 10 amps of current through it. But that's dangerous. No, but you put a couple capacitors that's really fun. And that's really fun. That's not that dangerous. They pop and it's a little explosion and...

That's still scares the crap out of me. You get boiling electrolytic fluid all over you? Well, and if you put them in series, they go pop, pop, pop, pop, which is even better. Can you do that reliably? I feel like I've never been able to, like, do that on purpose. It depends on the capacitor.

You have to get the right kind. You haven't done this intentionally. This is all accidents you've had, right? This is all accident. Well, no, we actually did it intentionally after the third accident. It's one of those things where it's like you'll always be surprised at how much they can actually handle before that happens. And then sometimes they'll just go off for no reason. Yeah.

Okay. That would have been a fun project. I would have liked to do that. So we talked to Peter Griffin about jumperless where he made an Excel interface. Peter, you're such a wild. man. He made an Excel interface so that he could connect the breadboard up according to the spreadsheet. And then that goes down via serial interface to your breadboard, your jumperless. And then...

Via a plug-in that only works if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription and or on Windows. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me. And then it tells the jumperless connect this point to that point. And the jumperless uses magical electronics I don't care about to do that. You care. We're going to ask about the magic electronics. Oh, I wasn't. I mean, it's just a bunch of the chips that act like...

Yeah, but I have questions about that. SOC. Later on, we'll ask you. Okay. Okay. I mean, it's kind of like a field programmable array. Yeah. I mean, okay, I have a bound to pick with the FPGA characterization.

It's okay. It's just like the story that they tell you with FPGA is different from what's actually going on. Like they're actually just a bunch of lookup tables. It's not like wiring anything from one side to another. Yeah. Does the jumperless? The jumperless is like it's a real like it's carrying current. It's an analog switch.

Okay. No, I wish FPGA's worked like. That's always my thing. Yeah. I like it either way. And I'm worried this question's going to come out wrong, but I'm just going to go for it. Is this a tool or a toy? Absolutely a fucking toy.

That's what it's for. Yeah, no. You can find things to do with it that are fun, but no, do not put this in a mission critical. Oh, sure. Yeah. But there's a whole vast continuum of toy. up to things like I consider this may want my, maybe my last podcast, but I consider like the, the Arduino toy in some sense, sometimes.

Yeah. I'm not going to disagree with that. I have one of the most seen articles that says don't use Arduino and professional. But that's not to say you can't use it for useful things or learn a lot by using it. Oh, no. I have no problem with it, but it does make a difference. am I buying this for myself or am I expecting my company to buy a half dozen and use them in different projects?

If you expect them to do that, you should probably tell them it's not a toy. Well, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Do we want to like cut a second version of this where I say it is an absolutely necessary tool for your company if someone needs to justify it to their boss? Okay. So we've established it's a breadboard that makes software connections instead of hardware

and that it has lots of LEDs and it's very pretty. Of course, the blinking LEDs makes it hard for me to watch the videos. Some of the videos were pretty fun because I mentioned the fire. But how do you explain this to people outside makers and hardware engineers? Oh, I totally just choke on it and like barely answer the question. And then someone else who understands it will come in and save me usually. Like I have like normie friends that it would be like, here's what it does. And I'm like, oh, thank God.

Thank you. Because we have to start at what a breadboard is. It's hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And unlike a real, not a real, a passive breadboard, however you want to call it. Those are pre-wired in columns.

These ones are too. Oh, they are. Okay. So you're mapping column to column. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah.

It would be really, really a lot of chips to map any point to any other point. Yeah. Yeah. There was a lot of it in this where you want to keep it as familiar as possible. So it is like it's set up like a real breadboard, even keeping some of the mistakes of the past that are, you know, like the power rails are offset on a regular breadboard. Yes. It is very wrong. But like, oh, the worst one, I'm going to ruin everybody's life right now.

Okay, you know how it's marked every five rows on a breadboard? Yeah. There are three rows between one and five. and there's four between the rest of them. And it's ridiculous. It's like one indexed, kind of, but then every five. So between one and five is shorter than the other ones. It's so gnarly and I had to do it.

When I was watching some of the videos, I saw that it was using Waukwi, which is an online... Electronic simulator. Yeah. Yeah. But why do you need physical hardware if you are using a simulator? Yeah, because it's fun. So that works fine if you're like if you, I mean, actually it doesn't work fine.

Even like an OLED, like Waukwe doesn't actually do like electrical simulation under the hood. It's kind of just faking it. You know, like you send signals to an OLED and it just like just interprets those like the OLED should. but there's like there's no most of the things that don't work aren't going to be caught in a lot of simulators like that no walkwe is for writing software

yeah yeah it's great and if you're awesome if your resistor network isn't quite right I'm not sure it cares yeah no it doesn't and you definitely can power quote fake power emulate power to a lot more motors

and LEDs than you can can't be if you are actually dealing with current yeah walkwee's for the software it's not for the hardware totally and i love that kind like my favorite circuit simulator is false dad yeah yeah i don't yeah i don't care what what trip amp i'm using i just want an op amp like you know i'm just checking my math you know and i also think okay so for walkwee why have it at all is most parts are not on there and it's a lot of work to put in a fresh part. And it's just better.

I don't know. Hardware's just nice. It's like more tactile. I agree sometimes. Sometimes it's irritating, but usually what's irritating is the wiring part of it. And it seems like that's the part you're fixing. So cool. Yeah.

Yeah. And I guess maybe it's more of just a me thing. But like I always go and get all the most obscure parts I can find. Like every else. CSE order is like my card is filled with like parts you would never heard of just to have samples of everything. Yeah. So like, yeah, I'm almost always using something obscure and it would never be like, you know,

no one wrote the thing in the simulator for it. Right. And I don't, yeah, it still works with walkwee, but oh yeah, I think this is probably a distinction we should make in this early on is that there's the OG jumperless, the original one, which is the video with like the cutting the wires. Okay. And then there's the jumperless V5, which is like the more like Apple ad kind of thing. The more, I'm sorry, Apple ad?

Shiny? The launch video for that doesn't actually like say anything. It's just like, you know, shows you what it can do, but it's not like, it's not an explainer like the old video. Got it. Got it. And everything still applies. They're like crossbar matrix is basically the same.

The big thing I did with V5, though, is scraping WACWI was very clunky. And with V5, I was like, it all comes down to like actually being able to like tell you what's going on. You know, like, so now you can just use it on the breadboard. You don't have to use Wockwee. Okay. But you also added the little probe? Yeah. Okay.

How do you explain the probe? I can't explain that one. I'm sorry, there's this little thing and it makes the other little thing work thing, better thing, something, connect thing? Yeah, exactly. Nailed it. Yeah, so, okay, so on the original jump list,

after I shipped, I had already made the hard work, never thought of a probe. Then I came up with a way to do a probe. Like, I had some extra GPI pins broken out and turns out, like with the jump list, So you can scan every row. Right. Like 100 times a second.

So it's looking for like, and so one of those GPI opens just like emits a PWM signal and it just checks one at a time. Like, you know, connects it to an ADC. Hey, do I see a wiggly PWM there? And I go to the next one. And so the probe was like a hacked in thing. And then turns out that's the best way to use it because I don't like looking at a computer if I'm breadboarding. And so then the V5 was. all about that. It was like, all right, we're going to, you know, make the probe part of it.

And that's, you should be able to use it without touching a computer. Just plug it in for power. And so now the probe, instead of sending over Serio connect A1 to B3 and C4 to D12 and playing battleships, now you have this probe that you touch one point and then you touch it another and then magically they create an invisible wire. Yeah. Except it's visible because it's LED. Yeah. It's visible, but it's invisible until I tell you about it.

Yeah. And so you don't need a computer anymore. But one of the things I really liked about the computer and the ideas I got while looking at it was scriptable circuits. Oh, yes. Yeah, that too. Have you done anything? It seems like an odd and magical idea,

but I keep trying to fit it into what I know, and I think what I need to do is treat it like an imaginary, or a toy that helps with imaginary play, that I can think of more big things. I still don't think it's a toy. Prototyping is a real thing. That's, you know, and anything that speeds up prototyping or is less error prone.

Like when I was doing my synth stuff, after a while, it gets really tiring to have all those wires. Or maybe you want to make a change and reroute something like you're saying. Once something gets complicated enough, it's sometimes hard to do that without getting lost. Yeah. So the scriptable thing, though, this is actually like this, I have to thank Peter a lot for that. Because he was doing the Excel GUI and we're like coming up like, you know, how do you want to control it and stuff like that? And I had these like single character commands.

And then eventually now it's got a micropython interpreter in it. I was like, oh, this is so much easier. I could just have it run Python. Yeah, because you have a Raspberry Pipeko in there that's controlling all those crossbars, right? Yeah. So Micropython is a very compatible system to put on there. Yeah, and it has its own module for all the very specific jumper-lessy stuff. So, you know, connect that, measure that, whatever.

So what have you seen done or what have you had done? that the scriptine becomes cool. Oh, yeah. Okay, so we have one guy, George architect. He's doing like high-end audio stuff, but he got really into the idea of, for audio, like I had never heard of this,

switched capacitors and switched resistors. Great idea. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, you know, it only actually cares about like, you could duty cycle a capacitor and it would be half the capacitor, you know.

if you do it quick enough. And so he's doing that where he's like simulating components by switching the crossbars on and off super crazy fast. That sounds like a terrible idea. Explain it to me like I'm a software engineer. So I think what he's working on is that there's a thing where it's like, some audio person's going to be listening to this and be like, dude, what are you talking? I think Christopher should have to explain it.

Well, I was just thinking of guitar pedals or something like that where you have a filtering network and you want to remove things completely or add new things without having necessarily a pot or a variable capacitor or like you're saying, what I wasn't considering what you're saying, where you're rapidly switching something in and out. I'm not sure what that would, that's terrifying,

but probably sounds really cool. I probably can make some very strange effects by actually altering the circuit at audio rate or close to it. Yeah, I can do like 500 kilohertz of like, on and off. The switches are so fast. Yeah. Okay. So I think what he was looking at and the reason this was relevant was like, they do these things. There's like these really expensive machines you would put on like some particular pedal, you know, some vintage pedal they don't make anymore. And it will like twist all the knobs and like characterize it. So you can simulate it

into your like audio software. But it like seriously like physically like twiddles all the knobs and everything. And so he wanted to do something that would do that more software. And I think the switch capacitor was so he can twiddle the knobs without a robotic arm. Okay. Probably building an impulse response for some sort of convolution thing. Yeah. And then put that into software and I've got a virtual pedal that does the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if Kevin has noticed, but the next. question on the outline was, so I'm a software engineer and I want to make a guitar pedal. I didn't even notice that.

Christopher doesn't read the outlines. It's just the natural place for us to go. It really is. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. So my first question about making guitar pedals with this is do the networks do anything bad for impedance or anything else? No. Oh, good. Someone actually was nice enough to characterize these.

yeah, he had all the equipment at work. I wouldn't even know where to start on how to like really those high-end scopes and stuff. But so a breadboard just without any connections, like a 3 dB roll off, so you get half the signal out is 13 megahertz. Oh, okay. And then doing it through a jump list is 8 megahertz. I don't care. Yeah, it's like it's so high that I'm actually, it's surprising. Oh, that's great.

It's more than you would even anyone would expect you could actually push through a breadboard in the first place. Like finding out that it is, oh my God, that's 10 times higher than I expected. Yeah, I would think it would...

The jump list takes off half that almost. I would have thought breadboards crap out at, I don't know, a couple meghertz. It's actually, you can do it on the thing because it lets you do PWM. And I didn't cap the PWM. So like from the PICA, you can do 62 megahertz coming out of it.

And you could watch. it on your scope like the signal getting smaller and smaller as it gets yeah oh okay so okay so huh well i'm thinking of a lot of things to do with this now that's that was the point is to have a fun little there's a lot of weird stuff you can do because i've not thought of all of them yeah because you could you could have a i'm totally spitballing but i could think of like an oscillator right some little synthesizer kind of thing you could probably do probably fit a simple voltage control oscillator on this spreadboard. But then you could

mess with the components and people do things called circuit bending where they'll take an old kids toy or something that made sounds and they'll go in there and pop resistors off or caps or replace them, go in and put switches in places and turn them into synthesizers and make weird sounds. But if you can modulate

like the actual components themselves being rerouted and hit audio rate, you could do some really weird stuff. I know. I wish I did more like I was a synth guy. Like I'm only like I have to just ask the bunch of synth people in my Discord. This is a thing you do? How does this? Are there other areas that have come up like that? Like music and synth and guitar pedals all seem like they would be a natural fit. Are there other areas of natural fit you've found? Here's the most insane one, dyslexic people. like half of the people that like use this a lot are dyslexic. Like something with dyslexia and like wires just,

it doesn't work well in your head. And this like to that, I mean, that's what they say it like, it actually like, oh, I can actually like see a circuit now. Like I would have never expected that, right? Yeah. On the other hand, colorblind folks probably hate you.

Well, you can use. colors that aren't conflicting, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if someone asked I would do that, make a color, like which kind of color blindness? It's always so funny with color blindness, though, because it's like, people are like, oh, that's not color. And it's like, there is a type of colorblind that will make any two colors.

Right. Right. Right. Recognizable. Oh, yeah. You just need three options. Okay. So dyslexic folks

or find it easier to build hardware because you don't have to connect A4 to B12 because now you just connect this to that and there's no moving letters in between. Yeah, I think it comes down to like the wires kind of being flat like on the breadboard versus them being a, I mean I guess this is true for all of us

but like the little loopiness I guess. I confess, I don't know. how dyslexia works, but it probably existed before writing. So it's probably some spatial thing that's confusing for people, right? It's a brain spatial thing. So I can understand being, I'm overwhelmed by a breadport of sufficient complexity and wires. And I, yeah, I can see like stuff getting flipped in your mind, impossibly if it's too complicated. I actually remember like in school. Like I didn't really go to school for engineering, but I did take a bunch of classes at a, but I just remember being so amazed that the teacher during a lab

could walk up to someone's breadboard and be like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's wrong. You know, like, just kind of like parse it at a just walking by is so crazy. I'm still amazed by that. I suspect that's practice more than any of us. Yeah, absolutely. I've seen this before, and I know what mistakes you people make. Have you seen anything else with the scriptable circuits? I mean, yes, but I am totally drawing a blank.

Let me see what people are working on. Well, you also mentioned AI circuits. Oh, yeah, that's crazy now. So when I was, what I mentioned there, I mean, this was like pre-AI. You know, like this code base was written before I clawed, you know. But it was like a volvable hardware. I don't know if you ever heard of that. It's like this thing where they're putting rammed.

random gates into an FPGA and then, you know, they would make like a tone discriminator or something. Like it would put a pin high if it was 400 hertz and low if it was 100 hertz and like gave it nothing else. Like that was it. They'd give it a tone and then they would see what comes out with just a completely random set of gates. And so then they would just run that as an evolutionary algorithm for long enough and it would totally do it. reminds me of genetic programming. Yeah, genetic programming. Yeah, exactly. But like, yeah, doing that in hardware is so cool. Yeah. So you could totally do that. You could put a bunch of parts on and just, okay.

Yeah. I mean, nowadays, like, now with LOMs, like, they're amazing at this stuff. Like, I have a whole page in docs, like, for people who want to use, like, LOMs because it's really good at that. Like, it'll, if you're working on something, like, hey, something's wrong. And it's like, it has a bunch of calls for it to, like, check measurements on every place. You know, it could check all of your assumptions just by like querying the board, which has been kind of amazing. We just had someone in the Discord was like, they put down a transistor and it like did the whole transistor tester thing,

told them the gain and everything. Like, LLMs are getting way less horrible at hardware. Well, going back to the tool part, Being able to measure resistors and transistors and other inputs to circuits that need to be precise, that could be a tool. I don't know that it's a tool that is better than what already exists, but it may be more general, which sometimes can be better for small shops. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's also like, yeah, the stuff like e-pram dumpers, like, those make jump.

Camperlusses look cheap, actually. Very much so. But yeah, it's like, hey, you just twiddle the, totally address lines and read the data lines. And there are times if you were reverse engineering something, that it would be easier to do this sort of connector. Oh, yeah. I do that all the time because I always have, as I said,

like the most random LEDs and just getting the like pin out of those sit there and just like try it. You know, you just keep like connected, you know, stuff like that. I don't really consider brute force electronics. Yeah. I don't know how this works. I'll connect it in every possible permutation.

Yeah, it works great. But you also do have some current limits. Prevention of actual fires. Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So the crossbar resistance does take care of that,

which is very nice. I mean, I wish there was zero resistance, and that's like been my whole thing. But yeah, so it's like one connection is about 80 oms. And how it gets that lower is it, it'll just fill up all the available routing space with parallel paths. But even with like 20 oms, like you can't really blow anything up. Like even if you just hook up an LED straight to power, it's like not going to blow up, which is nice. You can source enough current to turn on LEDs. Yeah.

Or do we need to add a MOSFET for everything? Oh, no, I couldn't totally. I think it's, I don't know, it's something like 300 to 500, 400 millimets before like the power rails start to really sag. Yeah, I can push some current. I'm always kind of surprised that a charge pump can do that. And do you need the charge pump for what the user is doing or do you need a charge pump for the, what was it, 150 LEDs you have on there?

Or 150. Yeah. Oh, no, those are powered just straight off five volts. But the charge pump is, so how crossbar switches are is they like, they need, they can only switch stuff within their like their power supply envelope. Like, they're plus and minus that kind of sets your window of what, anything above that, they start being very weird. Like, they don't blow up anymore, but.

They will leak stuff to the rows next to it. Just completely undefined behavior. So you need, I have a plus minus, like, 10 volt power supply on the board, powering all the crossbar switches. Okay. Which is also the, you know, the voltage rails and everything. So that gives you plus minus eight volts on the rails, stuff like that. I've never used a crossbar switch.

My mental model of them is actually really similar to my programmable. logical right mental model, which is you tell it to connect to things and it does and it tries to pretend it's a wire. And there's not a lot more to them that they carry whatever current they're supposed to carry and they truly try to act like wires. Is that a good mental model or are there things I should know about? Yeah, no, like an analog, just an analog C-MOS switch. like that. It's really like it's not sourcing it from the crossbars. Like the, they don't draw basically any current, like all the crossbars. It's actually just, like it has to pass through some silicon, but like, no, it's just like you're turning a switch on

in an ideal sense. But yeah. And then, I mean, like, if you want how it's hooked up, like it really is named after it being a bunch of crossed bars. Like, that's where they came from. Yeah. What are they usually used for? So the, I mean, so the original crossbar, like, you can find old pictures of them from like Bell Labs. These were for telephone networks. This is how they would route calls from. Right. Okay. You know, and so you'd have those crossbars laid out and like, before they even had the electronic control, you get this clip that would just like grab both of them. And like where they crossed, it was like, okay, that's, you know, that's coming from. Louisiana and that's coming go wants to go to this next place you just clip them together old operators

that actually yeah physically moved the connectors I remember there were crossbars and some of the high-end networking products that I was adjacent to but I don't remember what they did I think they were like you know for switching one port to it literally yeah for establishing kind of a permanent connection for one packet you know yeah one port to another port um or it's like if you wanted to flip them if you like when the whole crossover cable thing happened. Like you can just do that. I still have an Ethernet crossover thing. You should throw it trash.

It doesn't matter anymore. I know. Yeah, think crossbars for that. But I actually got a pink one so that people would stop stealing it. And I would always know which one was mine. So I can't get rid of it. That is the correct move is make your stuff pink. No one will take it.

Often works for me. Yeah. Okay, so I make a guitar pedal and I like what it's doing. but now now I need to make a schematic. Does the jumper list help me with that at all? Is it a question that you keep getting? Are people like, okay, I want to use my jumper list now.

I have to move it off of here. Now what do I do? Yeah, that's an interesting one. Okay, so when I read these show notes or you gave me this question, I started doing that. It like made a schematic capture. the like thing in jump righty yeah i was like is that podcast sniping what it what is the turn for this yeah it's really it's weird because it's like okay i am it's funny because it's like yeah it's

a lot of people use it as kind of a teaching tool but i'm like i'm such a like curmudgeon about this stuff from like damn it cat should be hard like you should like take the time to do it like you'll you'll learn so much more builds character Yeah, like you'll think about it. Like, if you make it too easy, you'll, like, miss stuff. And then you'll, like, order boards. And they're like, you know, they're fucked because you never were, like, quietly routing it and, like, thinking like, oh, is that, should that be there?

You know, like, all that. I don't know. I guess that's different people's style. But there's also just not the information to make a schematic. So now how I did the schematic capture is it has to, like, it has to ask you where the chips are because it only knows where the wires go. Right, of course. Yeah.

Yeah. It's really, it's an interesting problem of like what, what information is contained in a net list and what's in a schematic. But wait, you've got all this modulation stuff. Can't you modulate each pin and then check the response and then have a database of parts? It's like, oh, that looks like how a potentiometer would respond to a PWM of 5 megahertz. I'm not kidding. I've started. that project.

Oh my God. I should. I should finish that. Because, yeah, of course, I mean, you could. Yeah, it would be awesome. You mentioned education, and I can see how this would be easier for instructors who can't just walk up and see what's wrong with your circuit. Being able to look at the typed instructions would make a lot easier or if it dumps the

pin out. Yeah. Is it mainly for educational use, or who are you selling to? educational institutes, institutions, makers, companies, who's buying them? People who saw them and thought they were cool? And yeah, I have no idea, actually. Honestly, I wish I collected that kind of data, but I don't. It's just engineers, people just like, I don't know if people are using them for education.

I think it's a lot more hobbyist kind of stuff for that. Like a lot of software people wanting to get into hardware are getting into these. And I mean, a lot of it is just like it being so extra as just how it is. Like I've heard that a lot where it keeps people engaged to play with it. Yeah. Like it'll keep you going doing it. There is a point in every breadboard project where I just want to toss it. And I, whether it's for work or for my own amusement,

they're just there's that it's the one wire that breaks the camel's back it just it's too many this is it um so i get that um so you're you're totally a one person operation yeah yeah just me do you spend a lot of time in marketing do you mostly do designing is it fulfillment Is it supporting? You have really good communication for like the designs on GitHub and the videos and all of that. So that part, I know you spent a lot of time on. Where do you end up spending your time and where do you wish you spent more your time? So like, I mean, I'm always bouncing around all of those at once.

Like I always have Discord open for anyone asking a question. And I'm like, I will be right there immediately. So, yeah, doing support and then, you know, getting orders and shipping them, that's always fun. Where I wish I spent more time? I don't know. I think, I mean, right now specifically, I guess this gets into the next thing coming. But I really need to finish designing my next one. I have all the parts, kind of.

I just need to, like, say it's good. Is this the Bernacle board? Yeah. Okay, so, oh, all right. So this kind of talks about, like, what you're doing earlier. Like, okay, you have a breadboard and how do you make it a schematic? Like, all right, I still can't help you there. But the newest one, this is, I'm making dumb breadboards too.

This is the jumperless optional part. It's just a normal breadboard with all of the things, okay, the power rails are continuous and lined up because I made six whole spring clips that fit together. And they're actually on their way right now. Just so, so exciting. Yeah, and spring clip stamping molds made. But the top of the breadboard, instead of it being like the plastic part of the molded shell, is a proto board. It's a PCB. So you. These are the normal five, five holes are connected and there are a whole bunch of columns that aren't connected. And I've seen these being handed out as business cards. We have a stack of them.

Oh, just the Perth board. The Perth board and you solder it, but there's already connections on the Perth board. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. That like mimics of breadboard. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those. It has countersunk holes. So working on a breadboard with a flat surface without some, like, counter sink. Oh, right. Turns out JLC will do countersunk plated holes for you. Amazing. That would make life easier.

Okay. Yeah. So yeah, you breadboard on this, I mean, optionally dumb breadboard. And when you're ready to go, like, you're like, all right, I like this. I made a pedal. You just solder it right there in place. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah.

You remove the proto board and just swap it out. So you now have, your breadboard is permanent. And you could throw that in a drawer instead of your whole breadboard. instead of your whole jumpers. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then the next one, like, that will be, it'll just be that. Like, there's just a regular breadboard,

but it'll have a port. It has a port on the top with a card edge connector. So, and on the back. So you could basically, you have that board and you can, like, stick a jumperless as a module. Like, it's just like a, you know, like a PCIE card or something. You know, like,

and that's all of your crossbar switching and your LEDs and stuff are all controlled on that. And that's completely separate from your breadboard. So you can have a few going at the same time, different projects and whatnot. I'm sorry. I don't understand. It's sorry. It's hard. Yeah. Okay. So you saw the barnacle board.

It's like just a breadboard with like a big card edge connector on the very top of it. Okay. Okay. So I'm good at that. I understand given no jumperless, I could wire a circuit together on this like I would a Perf board with the connector's already there. I've seen lots of those.

Okay. Yeah. But now it's got the side thing and it connects somehow to the jumperless and it becomes a jumperless? You can, okay, so that port on the top of it is mapped one to one with every row in the breadboard. So it's a 70 pin header. And that's like, all right, pin one is the top row. So it's connected to all those rows.

So anything you plug into the top can be electrically connected to every row on the redboard below it. So you can have a project and then the jumperless attaches to it and does more stuff or routes the rows that are on the other board. So it could show you that circuit.

It could do all the LED stuff. You can wire it with regular wires. And then it can, it could show you one at a time where to put like physical wires if you want. Okay. And you can remove the jumperless as a module. So now it's just a redboard again. And then even further still, you could solder it all together and remove the

soldered proto board. Could I then plug back in the soldered proto board and have it tell me if I did it right? Yes. Yes, you can. You're just making it up right now, actually. I am. I am. Good idea.

Oh my God. Yeah. That one comes down to style. It's really weird. It's like to put the like the connector, like the card edge connector part is ugly. And I'm like it's really killing me like trying to figure out how to do this where it doesn't look like crap. Like just visually. Yeah. No, I can see that because it's, I mean, the jumper list, it has style. It has opinions about how it should look. And. For all that I am not in favor of blinking lights, I do appreciate that that is, there's some coolness there. And you're hitting the black and lights and synth wave almost aesthetic. But the barnacle is aptly named. Yes, you call the tops barnacles, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you know, some things just need to be functional. Yeah. No. That's not. No. No. I strongly disagree. Not everything needs. No, yeah. It has to be functional too. It just also has to look good. I think it looks cool. I mean, it's still black. It's still kind of that's that sinister, you know, doesn't look like an 80s piece of electronics. It's not green. Yeah. Yeah, right. I mean, yeah, that's just that SLS just looks so good. Like the 3D printed nylon that they do. it's just so strong. It's just amazing as a 3D printing material. I do think if somebody has that fear of holes thing.

Oh, my God. Yeah. I have some worse ones for that one, too. Like, yeah. Okay, so when does the barnacle come out? Are you doing crowd supply again? Is this in conjunction with jump on this v6? Yeah, I think that's all going to be mashed up into one.

I like, yeah, I'm like going to say it here. I have no idea. When it's done, I'll launch it. Yeah, I mean, probably in a few months. It'll probably be ready. And there will be some way to explain what it does better than what I just did now. Yeah. This can be a practice way.

I did. I made a bunch of prototypes and handed them out at DefCon. That was fun. Just does regular breadboards. It was fun. When you do a V6, Are you going to try to reduce the cost or? No.

No, not at all. No, okay. That's what this thing is about. So the idea would be like you can kind of, the problem is like it, these actually cost a ton to make. Like just in, yeah. Just in LEDs. Yeah. That's like 20 bucks at bomb cost.

Like just LEDs. It's crazy. And then the spring clips, like I have like, I have them custom made. and they're like, I don't know, 10 cents a piece. They're so good, though. Like, they're so buttery smooth. I, like, won't, like, I won't compromise on that. Well, you can destroy the ones on cheap breadboards with certain parts, right?

Yes, I can say for sure you can. Bigger chip pins and stuff because they're expecting, you know, resistors. They're pushing them in and up. And if you get big little dev boards and then you try to, you know, jiggle them in and out, yeah, it goes bad. now these are they're so they're so good it's like phosphor bronze it's just like it's what they should be made out of but obviously there's a reason they don't because it's expensive has anybody come to you and said we want to use your amazingly buttery smooth pins I mean yeah

that's that's kind of why I'm doing I started barnacle board was like people just kept asking me like could you just make a regular breadboard like you know I use regular breadboards yeah and I can't go back like I have a bunch of like prototypes that I use for my own stuff. Like if I'm doing like, most of the stuff I do is like tube circuits. So it's like that will blow up a jumperless. So I can't use this. But I just use my own breadboards all the time.

And I can't use a regular one. They just like, they're annoying now. So that's what people wanted. They wanted like a luxury breadboard. And that's, yeah, that's what I'm doing. Because it is like, like, and so that was like the whole idea of having that PCB at the top removable is like. I can't really get around it being expensive, but I can make it so you only need one.

Right? Like, you don't toss the whole breadboard in the drawer. You could have that one, and then you can have different projects even going at the same time. That's your little template thing, and then the other part is the consumable that's cheap. That's a great idea. I like that idea. Yeah. Okay.

Now let's talk about the thing that makes no sense at all. Okay. Good. This is totally open source. That's quick. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

You always ask this question. I still don't understand how you can make a living. Because nobody's going to build this, even if it's open source. It's amazing. Yeah. No one has. I want them to you so bad. Seriously, I'm like, I want this to be.

It's like open sourcing a jet engine. Yeah, okay. That's the problem. Yeah. There's just so many lower hanging fruits. better margin than a jumperless. Like, you have to want to make this, you know? It's a, yeah, it has to be a crusade.

It can't be like a thing. You're just like, oh, we're just going to like produce these and sell them on Amazon, you know. But if anyone's listening to this and wants to do that, please do. I will help. So basically, this is something you want more than you want to have beer career. No, it's just like, I mean, yeah, it's just like I get enough from selling them and then like, you know, I just want it to be like there's some be some adoption. Like, you know, there's like a thousand of them out there and like I'm assuming most of them are in someone's drawer who has never touched it. But like this thing could do so much stuff.

And if there's enough people like actually using it, like even if it was not something I sold, they could just. take my firmware and put it on there. It's fine. Okay. It would just be cooler. So let's say we have some listeners and they have them in their drawer. Whip it out right now, guys. What do you want them to do with it this weekend? Oh, that's a good one. Okay. Whatever you've wanted to do for a while, I think you should start with a 555.

I think that's a good way to get comfortable. There's a, if you go on Jumper IDE, first update, your firmware. I push firmware updates like every day. Go on jumper ID, go to the jumper net registry and open 555 guided and it will guide you through putting a 555 circuit together like one at a time. Like here tap there. Tell me where it is and it will do it for you. And then once you get that, you'll keep going. How many components is that? 555, like three. Yeah, that's what I thought. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's very small. Yeah, what? No, you should do anything you want to do. Just make a circuit. Connect an Arduino to the coolest little display module you have laying around and some buttons and make a little UI in Micropython. And you're all good.

I mean, we mentioned Micropython and the Raspberry Pi Pico that drives the crossbars. And you can, can, one can, program for that. You can program the crossbars and then you can write something to do beyond that or scriptable crossbars so that you can change your components. Yeah. But you also have a header that is off the main breadboard, a fixed header that is a nano footprint. So if you, if what you're trying to get to is a nano-competure. controlled circuit or the nano footprint has a whole bunch of different boards.

When you say pops a micropython on there, you have two places to put it. Oh yeah. Yeah, you do. Yeah, so micropython, that's running on the jump list. And you can, oh my God, it goes very deep. So you can actually tag things over Uart from the, like the Arduino can control the jumperless to you if it sends something over uart. But yeah, Micropython is running on the RP 2350, and it has access to all the connections.

It has 10 GPIO that you can put anywhere you want. It has, you know, 5 ADCs, two DACs and current sensors. Like there's all like Micropython API for that. So like, you kind of don't need the Arduino, but like if you wanted to put it on something else, yes, you would program on the Arduino. And that can be done through the same wire because Arduino will take code over Uart. So you can just flash it. Right.

Yeah. Jumpblis shows up as four ports. So like one of the ports is like one of those like serial adapter things. I could just act like that. I was thinking the nano would be for when I wanted to control the circuit when I had taken the system off the jumper. Was that not the use mechanism? I mean, the nanohedder just actually acts like more breadboard for the most part. Okay.

It's got a couple of the hardwired pins for power. But yeah, I guess, yeah, that would be what you do. So you'd like, if you wanted your Arduino, yeah, you're totally right. You'd take it off of the jumper list and then it would work that way. So yeah, if that is your intention not to just make it on the jumper list and then like, hey, it works. and then move along, yeah, you would probably want to program on the Arduino. And you can actually do that from WACWI, which is actually really fun. So the app scrapes WACWWCWI, but also scrapes the code and compiles it.

And so it will flash the Arduino as you type, like, as you enter code in WACWI, it'll like, you can just flash it from the web browser, which is very fun, through the same wire. Like, you don't, yeah, you don't have to plug in the Arduino. crazy that works. You see it looks perplexed. I'm not sure. That's a good idea, but that's okay.

I do tend to type faster than I can think, so. Well, yeah, you have to pay it safe. That would be crazy for C to just try to compile every keystroke. It's just like error, error. Yeah. But yeah, that lets you do like, you know, that is a workflow that people like, I think, um, basically just making walk we, real because you could have the diagram and your code right there and you can you know doing all your

Arduino stuff right there and the wiring which will just kind of be copied over to the Chimperlis and then you get to make that emulation into a real hardware and then with the barnacle you can lift up that hardware solder it together and connect it back to an Arduino and now you have a circuit now you have a good to hard pedal yeah finally we got there. That took us a while to make this guitar pedal. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So people who have one in the drawer, you try the 555 timer, and then if you're interested in sense, you go look up a couple of circuits because that's going to be easier to change there. And you don't end up with the massive wires. And you can do the oscillator to oscillator thing that usually ends up with fun sounds. What oscillator to oscillators are the best? It's not the triangle to triangle.

It's like square a sign. Basically you're doing FM modulation at that point. Yeah. But it's audio range, so it's just weird. Square wave. Start with a square wave and modulate it with. Yeah, you can do all sorts of stuff. So it sounds good.

Wait, so you're saying like, yeah, I don't know what that is, actually. Is this like you just have two oscillators running on top of each other? Basically, yeah, you take one as the input to the other. And so if you think about a sine wave, not with another sign wave added to it, but with another signway multiplied. Yeah. So then your sine wave has wiggles on it. And that's frequency modulation. It adds all sorts of weird harmonics and stuff.

And then the rates change. The waveform can evolve. Yeah, it's fun. And Dogbotics isn't offering classes anymore, but they still have that book, which was really good. book, and they still have in-person workshops they're doing. But, yeah. I think the synth class may still exist. They're still, they were doing just the synth class still.

That's making your own synthesizer, and that's the one you did where... No, I did the drum machine, which is very similar. Okay. But similar circuits, yeah, similar circuits. But that had a big breadboard that would have been vastly simplified by this. Well, the circuits, there were a lot of circuits. so it would cost me a fortune to do it all on trip. You know, I think I had five or six standard breadboards at the end of it that were all wired together.

So, but this would be like, I was just thinking about using jumperless to like, because synthesizers tend to be modular. You have pieces you want to switch in and out or you want to connect in different ways to each other. So you could have, you know, normal breadboard modules or the barnacles and then have the jumperless be. just a router between them or have some filtering on it or something that fits and then connect those in different ways and experiment that way because you're not just experiment you're not just necessarily experimenting with the individual components you can you know have circuits talk to each other yeah and you could do like i mean how i tend to use

it is like okay i'm making some yeah i'm usually doing like logic 7400 logic circuits and stuff but it's like I don't need the clock circuit anymore. That's what you use Micropython on the jumper list to do. Right. So you can almost record what would be coming out of the module to the left and capture what would be going out of it. Yeah. And so, yeah, you can do them like one at a time.

You can basically simulate the other modules if you need to. Yeah, there's a ton of stuff you can do with sense that, you know, a purist doing analog sense is like, well, I want to make a voltage controlled oscillator, but I'm going to use, you know, I have something over here that generates the voltage and analog, but you can replace all that with the pico and, you know, go out of DAC to do the, the oscillator control stuff. And similar things can be pushed into the microcontroller. Nobody's going to be able to tell a difference.

Yeah. The important part is the analog oscillator, yeah. Yeah. It's tubes or bust. We're not doing this. We have to do tubes. That is my dream of the jump list being. able to handle high enough voltages to do tubes because that's like everything I do that's

not jumperless is tubes. I could see this being useful. Like you have an electronics kit that has a whole bunch of different parts and it comes with a book. Christopher's looking at me like I'm crazy, but it's in the garage. Probably has been since he was 15. That old thing with the components laid out and you wire between the components for kids. It was a kid's electronic.

Yeah, yeah, the spring clips. Oh, those are awesome. Yeah, I had one of this. But that also tends to get pretty messy pretty quickly. Yeah. Oh, my God. And taking stuff out of those little spring things. Oh, my God. Yeah.

It was always like stranded wire too. Yeah. I need to do that as a bit of like hook up a jumper list just underneath one of those. You know, it's like on the back, just put a bunch of wires into it. Yeah. But I could see, I was headed towards it. I could see, you said hook up a 555, which is a pretty common introductory project. I could see going through the whole book and not having the wires be a defeating component.

Yeah. And it would be so much better. So anyway. I also have examples on the jumper list. Like if you go in, it has a file system. and if you go into Python script examples, it'll just give you a bunch of little projects to do. Oh, cool.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I figured that would be helpful. There's so much more that I didn't find. I mean, I think... It goes too deep. I'm sorry. It goes too deep.

And it's very cool. And yet it's still a little hard to explain. Yeah, especially without visuals. Because it's a very, very visual thing. Like, yeah, I could be showing you. Yeah. Yeah. It was like every, yeah, nothing really does anything that makes noises.

Are you, you started this, uh, wait a minute, I guess the question is, did you start this for the Hackaday Prize in 2020? Or had you already developed it? And that was just one of the places you showed it off. That got me. It was good timing. Uh, because it was like, I was already working on it. I had like, I think, two rounds of prototypes at that point. And then the Hackaday Prize came and I was like, okay, this is time to, you know, finish it.

There was finally a deadline, you know. Yeah, so I was already doing it. Did you win any prizes or any of the subcategories? Yeah, I got like 20, 23. I got second place. Oh, wow. 20 grand funding for more jump-billist stuff. Woohoo.

Sweet. Yeah, that was awesome. It was like the last one they ever did. It is great. The Supercon does have their call for proposals open until August 26th. Oh, that's good other people to hear, yes. I will never do a talk. It's so terrifying.

Like, even the concept of, like, getting on stage and, like, pontificating like that would drive me crazy. Okay, then I hate to tell you that, this, but the audience for this show is a lot larger than that. It's too late. He's already done. He's already imagined them all naked. That's just weird. Yeah, we'll just do it like over the phone. Like I'll just like do a talk but not even be in the same room.

I'll just be talking into a microphone in front of my computer. Oh, one of our listeners asked me to ask you about lenticular silk screen shirts. Oh, yeah. I did those for last Supercon. It was a test and they barely worked. But I think we got it. Wait, those are the things where it's like a little animation if you see it a different angle. Yeah.

Yeah, okay. Oh, okay. So, oh, yeah. So I was doing, we did like a test run of these. I do so many jumperless shirts. I just like designing shirts. And my friend owns a print shop. So we're just always, like almost any event, I'll have like a bunch of jumperless shirts to give out.

But at last Supercon, we did this like test of this I wanted to do. You can use puff ink. use a layer of puff ink as like lines and then you print colors on top of it and then when you puff it in the dryer it will like become like how a lenticular thing is so it's like a little kind of ideally it's like a little

I don't know vertical thing with printing on either side so you look at it from one side and it's it's one image and you look at it from the other and it's a different image and so yeah that's what I made at SuperCon

I did make lenticular shirts. They didn't work that great, but the next one will. Seems difficult because, you know, shirts are not flat unless you're, you know, a door wearing it. Yeah. The curve seems like it would cause some problems with the effect. Yeah, and like no one's ever done it that way. Like there's a few ways that people have done it,

but they usually do it on like simple logos. And like, because I'm an idiot, I just went like full CMO. image of front and back side of the breadboard. Yeah, like crazy. Yeah. But they work. It was cool. They were venticular shirts.

The next ones are going to be better. We learned what we needed to learn for the next run. Cool. Yeah. All right. Then I'm going to close up the show because we have lots more to do. We did not talk about Squid at all. So we'll have to have you back at.

some point just to talk about squid. All right, yes. I'll come in as a squid enthusiast. And you offered a coupon for for buying jumperlises. Yeah. Jumperlises. Is that the plural or is it jumper I? It's an octopus joke.

Come on. Yeah, I know. I really want that to be a controversial thing because they're all right. Could be Hungarian. It's actually jumpers. Jumperlis. Exactly. Thank you.

Yeah. Okay, so Embedded FM is the coupon code, and it will get you 15% off for at least the next month. After that, Kevin gets the opportunity to turn us off. I always forget to turn them off. It's cool. It'll go on forever. Yeah, it's all good. Kevin, do you have any thoughts who'd like to leave us with?

Okay. Did you ask my favorite acronym? I have a bunch of squid thoughts I want to talk about. No, no. The Cope Court? Go for it. If I already said it really, just cut out the first one. But the favorite acronym of Squid, superconducting quantum interference devices.

Oh. That totally bridges the world of what I do. Huh. So that's my final thought. It's a really sensitive magnetometer. You get like a little like little rings of superconductor and they measure like a magnet, like a magnet, like a magnet, on a truck a mile away kind of stuff. All right.

That's a weird closing thought. We're just going to go back to the lightning round. Cool. At least I got squid in there. Yeah. Our guest has been Kevin Santo Capucho, founder of Arctutus, Flux, creator of jumperless and doer of silly things.

Thanks, Kevin. It's really fun to talk to. Thanks. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to Peter for the introduction and to Seth for his questions. Thank you to our Patreon listener Slack group for their support and their amusement. Also, thank you for listening. You can always contact us at show atembedded.fm. Or hit the contact link on Embedded FM. And now I do not have a quote to leave you with.

I have facts. The giant squid arctuthous ducks is a species of deep ocean-dwelling squid. It can grow to a tremendous size, offering an example of abyssal gigantism. Recent estimates put the body size at around 5 meters, 16 feet, 4 females. Males are slightly shorter. It makes it longer than the colossal squid, which, is at an estimate of only 2.1 or 4.2 meters, 14 feet. But it is substantially lighter, much less robust arms. And realistically, the arms are the whole thing. The mantle of the giant squid

is quite a bit smaller than the mantle of the colossal squid. I have strong opinions on the giant squid is way cooler. The colossal squid, they're like stubby and round. I think it's misnamed. I expected something. Every time I see colossal squid in the, you know, science news and stuff, I'm like, is that it? It doesn't look that big compared to a giant squid. Colossal should be bigger, right? It should be like a kaiju. They're both kaiju. And then there's like, there's the Humboldt squid down in Mexico, which are like, I mean, they're huge, but like, not even close.

But you almost, people call those giant squids sometimes, too. Well, the Humboldt squid, they come up closer to the sunball squid. surface and we see them more often, so they're quite a bit more terrifying. A 14-foot squid in the deep sea that I'm never, ever going to see is not as scary as a seven-foot squid that I might accidentally swim with. Yeah. Because you always see giant squid when they're like dead. Yeah.

Like, ah, you're not so tough now. Come meet me on land.