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Speaker 1: It's ready, are you? Didn't touch? With technology? With tech
Speaker 1: Stuff from how stuff flix dot com. Hello there, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I am an editor at how Stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as always, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Hey there, all right, today I wanted to take control
Speaker 1: of the podcast. This is different from any other week
Speaker 1: how us. Yeah, we'll see now I'm singing Janet Jackson
Speaker 1: in my head. That's how it's different from every other week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were going through some other songs before we started
Speaker 1: the podcast. It was it was kind of a loopy morning.
Speaker 1: But today we wanted to talk about something that's not loopy,
Speaker 1: although you can have a loop in the programming for it.
Speaker 1: It is a micro controller. We've actually touched on these
Speaker 1: in the past, well a segment of these, because we've
Speaker 1: talked about the Ardueno, which is a kind of micro controller.
Speaker 1: But Jonathan said, why don't we take a step back
Speaker 1: and look at them as a whole. Yeah, we actually
Speaker 1: had some people ask us about micro controllers. We even
Speaker 1: had one person to say, could you explain the difference
Speaker 1: between a micro controller and a microprocessor? And uh, and
Speaker 1: and really the distinction is not black and white. There
Speaker 1: are sort of black and silver. I'm just kidding. It's
Speaker 1: also green in some places. Yeah, now there's um, there's
Speaker 1: a there's certain characteristics that micro controller has, and if
Speaker 1: it has enough of them, that's when we tend to
Speaker 1: call it a micro controller versus a microprocessor. Now, in general,
Speaker 1: a microprocessor tends to be a general purpose component. UM. Basically,
Speaker 1: when most people talk about a microprocessor, they're speaking primarily
Speaker 1: of the chip that does a lot of the computing
Speaker 1: central process and unit is a very that's that's a
Speaker 1: type of microprocessor. That's what I think of when I
Speaker 1: think micropross UM. And there is a processor as part
Speaker 1: of a micro controller. But a micro controller is a
Speaker 1: very very tiny computer. UM. What doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: very very tiny, but it is basically a computer on
Speaker 1: a board. UM. So it would have the board, which
Speaker 1: is the green I was referring to before, the circuit board,
Speaker 1: and it would have a processor sawdered into it. But
Speaker 1: it also might have other inputs and outputs on it,
Speaker 1: maybe an USB output that's wired in and uh, a
Speaker 1: couple of LEDs for example. It could be it could
Speaker 1: be a lot of different things, but usually it's a
Speaker 1: general purpose or i'm sorry, a specific purpose that the
Speaker 1: micro controller is designed to do. And so you find
Speaker 1: them in all kinds of things ovens, toasters, cars, microwaves,
Speaker 1: um and you know, it is a computer, but it
Speaker 1: is it's not like the kind of computer that sits
Speaker 1: in your desktop, right. It's a very specific use. So
Speaker 1: we know we've talked about these and things like we
Speaker 1: had our our podcast about microwavest about a little bit
Speaker 1: on that. But yeah, these are these are computers that
Speaker 1: have very specific uses and because they have these narrow parameters,
Speaker 1: they don't need to be general purpose, so they tend
Speaker 1: to have a fairly limited number of of uses that
Speaker 1: they can they can actually be UM employed for otherwise,
Speaker 1: you know, it's outside the realm of their scope. So
Speaker 1: here are some general guidelines as to what makes a
Speaker 1: micro controller, and I'm pulling these from our article on
Speaker 1: how micro controllers work, which is an extensive article. It
Speaker 1: is it is one of our I mean, and it
Speaker 1: goes into detail if you want technical details about micro controllers.
Speaker 1: It's an excellent resource, and it was written by Marshall Brain,
Speaker 1: who was the founder of how Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: In fact, he uh he took a specific kind of
Speaker 1: micro controller and talks about programming and how that you
Speaker 1: how you would get into that and um, you know,
Speaker 1: it depends on the micro controller how you would program one.
Speaker 1: So we're not going to get into that much detail.
Speaker 1: We're really going to touch on, uh, the uses of
Speaker 1: micro controllers in general and and what goes into you know,
Speaker 1: the makeup of them. Yeah, we might talk a little
Speaker 1: bit excellent, Yeah, we'll talk a little bit about programming,
Speaker 1: but we're going to take a very general approach because otherwise,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to do a specific podcast over
Speaker 1: each one and that would just be ridiculous. But but
Speaker 1: Marshall went into detail on that specific kind of micro
Speaker 1: controller and which is a programmed in basic Yes, which
Speaker 1: is kind of cool because I don't usually typically think
Speaker 1: of that as a micro controller language. Right, So let's
Speaker 1: let's get down to the basic features of what a
Speaker 1: micro controller is. So as as Marshall pointed out, they
Speaker 1: are typically embedded in something else. So a micro controller
Speaker 1: is not its own thing, it is part of something else.
Speaker 1: So for an example, the microwave. The micro controller is
Speaker 1: what allows the commands you put into the microwave to
Speaker 1: be transferred into action within the microwave itself. Then they
Speaker 1: are dedicated to a specific task or specific program, and
Speaker 1: that program tends to be stored and read only memory
Speaker 1: and does not change. So, in other words, it's something
Speaker 1: that you're going to do over and over again, you
Speaker 1: know it's it's it's dedicated to a task that is
Speaker 1: repeatable and is not changing after you've done it once.
Speaker 1: So like a calculator and you you use a calculator
Speaker 1: to add five to five, that's never going to change
Speaker 1: unless the laws of the universe change, in which case
Speaker 1: or you know, some some sort of crazy, wacky parallel
Speaker 1: universe thing happens. Yeah, remind me to get a new calculator, right,
Speaker 1: so then you have. They also tend to be very efficient.
Speaker 1: They tend to not require a lot of power to operate.
Speaker 1: So for example, you know, you might have a full
Speaker 1: computer that has its own onboard battery, but you tend
Speaker 1: to keep bit plugged in because it drains a lot
Speaker 1: of power. Right, Well, micro controllers do not require so
Speaker 1: much power, so they can be battery operated and last
Speaker 1: for a long time and they're only pulling power whenever
Speaker 1: they're in use. So that's why you could have a
Speaker 1: calculator that's battery operated and you don't have to change
Speaker 1: the batteries out that frequently. And of course you have
Speaker 1: one that has also the little solar panels on it,
Speaker 1: you may not ever have to change the batteries, depending
Speaker 1: on you know, the the environment you are in when
Speaker 1: you are using it. UH. It has a dedicated input
Speaker 1: device and usually, but not always, has some sort of
Speaker 1: display to show the output for the device. And UH
Speaker 1: normally you have this display there when you are first
Speaker 1: building or programming your micro controller, and it's in order
Speaker 1: for you to make sure that the program you have
Speaker 1: built is operating properly before you start to go into
Speaker 1: like a manufacturing phase and you start implementing it into
Speaker 1: a product. So you would want to be able to
Speaker 1: test this extensively before you went into full production, otherwise
Speaker 1: you could end up producing a line of of things
Speaker 1: that are flawed because there was some line of code
Speaker 1: that you left out, or there was an extra character
Speaker 1: or something. And now when you add five to five
Speaker 1: you get cake. Like I said, I need a new
Speaker 1: calculator cake. Now, the the use of microwave in this
Speaker 1: case is a good example because um, you know, in
Speaker 1: the in the chips baked into them, not baked into
Speaker 1: soldered into I'm just tripping all over stuff today, UM,
Speaker 1: soldered into the board inside the micro controller in the microwave. UM,
Speaker 1: it's got instructions on you know what each of those
Speaker 1: digits does. On the keypad, it's got UM instructions on
Speaker 1: on what to do when you press the coffee button
Speaker 1: versus the the popcorn button. UM. So many of these
Speaker 1: microwaves have these dedicated buttons now UM. But it basically
Speaker 1: the instructions are, hey, if he presses the pizza button,
Speaker 1: that means put the microwave on high for seventy five
Speaker 1: seconds and that's it, you know, start. So it has
Speaker 1: those instructions in there, and it also has a display
Speaker 1: UM instructions, so it shows what is going on to
Speaker 1: the user, so that he or she has an idea
Speaker 1: of how long it's going to be cooked for and
Speaker 1: what power. But you know, it doesn't have to do
Speaker 1: things like tuna radio or um uh try to find
Speaker 1: Facebook or something like that, or or do WiFi, because
Speaker 1: it's not a program to do that, so they can
Speaker 1: they can mass produce these boards with the ROMs already
Speaker 1: in them and assemble it as part of the microwave,
Speaker 1: and every microwave should work that comes off the line
Speaker 1: with that board, and it should work the same, right
Speaker 1: and UH, and it doesn't have to be a manual
Speaker 1: input for a micro controller to produce an output. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the micro controllers you have in your car
Speaker 1: could be connected to various sensors in your car, and
Speaker 1: what happens is the sensor sends an input to the
Speaker 1: micro controller, which then UH creates the appropriate output for
Speaker 1: whatever that might be. And it might be that it
Speaker 1: changes the settings of something else it's in your car,
Speaker 1: or it might be that sends a signal so that
Speaker 1: the little check engine light pops up on your on
Speaker 1: your dashboard, so that you then have to figure out
Speaker 1: what the heck has gone wrong. So for example, in
Speaker 1: my house, you figure out where you put the electrical
Speaker 1: tape so that you can tape over the check engine like, well,
Speaker 1: problem solved. Well that anybody who's actually watched when they
Speaker 1: do the diagnostics on a car, And this would be
Speaker 1: good for the folks over car stuff to talk about
Speaker 1: but um in more detail. But you know, there is
Speaker 1: a board that they plug into so that the mechanic
Speaker 1: can plug in and it will read what the micro
Speaker 1: controllers inside the car, and there are several for different functions.
Speaker 1: Um you know will say, hey, the check engine line
Speaker 1: is on because you know error code five seven five
Speaker 1: one two, and they look it up in a book
Speaker 1: and they go, oh, well, that means that the e
Speaker 1: g R valve needs replacing or yeah, or there's a
Speaker 1: belt that is not working properly. Yeah, and then it
Speaker 1: turns out. Just in case you're wondering, there are apps
Speaker 1: out there for smartphones where you can get a proprietary
Speaker 1: cable that will hook up into a smartphone and you
Speaker 1: hook the other end of the cable to your your
Speaker 1: cars computer and it will actually tell you what the
Speaker 1: code is. Now, you may still have to go and
Speaker 1: look up what the code means, because not all of
Speaker 1: these apps have a complete database on what every single
Speaker 1: code for every single model of vehicle translates to. But
Speaker 1: at least then you can have an idea of what's
Speaker 1: actually wrong. Which that's for that, you know, if I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it yourself. Yeah, we're getting off topic of it,
Speaker 1: but the idea being that you will you'll be able
Speaker 1: to diagnose what's wrong with your car. So that way,
Speaker 1: when you take it into a mechanic, you can be
Speaker 1: reasonably sure that whatever the mechanics telling you is either
Speaker 1: true or not true, because there's always that worry, you know,
Speaker 1: when cars get more and more sophisticated and becomes more
Speaker 1: and more difficult to understand what's going on with them.
Speaker 1: You never really know if what the mechanics telling you
Speaker 1: is actually what's wrong with your car, or maybe they're
Speaker 1: adding onto it. Yeah. Well, of course not every mechanic
Speaker 1: is untrustworthy, but sometimes there there there's some good mechanics
Speaker 1: out there. But that's the thing is that because you
Speaker 1: don't know, you have to entirely on them exactly. I
Speaker 1: don't think you're so off topic, Jonathan, because, uh, you
Speaker 1: know that that really indicates how pervasive micro controllers really are. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, people talk about the computers in their cars
Speaker 1: or you'll see. Uh. I have a toaster that I
Speaker 1: thought was kind of funny a few years ago because
Speaker 1: it said, you know that it it had a microprocessor inside,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, really, is that a selling point
Speaker 1: for my toaster? Um. But yeah, I mean, these these
Speaker 1: devices are in just about anything that we plug in
Speaker 1: these days, and some things that we don't, like your cars,
Speaker 1: and um, you know. The the good the advantage to
Speaker 1: that is that, you know, it does make these devices
Speaker 1: more sophisticated. It gives us more control in some cases,
Speaker 1: it gives us more um options as far as what
Speaker 1: we can do with all the I mean this gigantic
Speaker 1: range of devices. It also provides more points to break
Speaker 1: down because you know, typically the more complex a thing is,
Speaker 1: the more chances it has to bust. This is something
Speaker 1: we yes, well, systems have a tendency. The more the
Speaker 1: more organized and complex a system, the greater the tendency
Speaker 1: is for it to slowly break down into the simplest
Speaker 1: form right right, And that's you know that. I think
Speaker 1: that is why it's interesting to look at micro controllers because, um,
Speaker 1: it gives you a sense of what's going on behind
Speaker 1: the scenes and what may or may not be at
Speaker 1: at play. Um. But it's good that micro controllers can
Speaker 1: help us track these things down to when it's not
Speaker 1: the micro controller itself that's the fault. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: typically these are not things that we program ourselves like
Speaker 1: you program a computer. You might learn Java or Ruby
Speaker 1: or Python to go program a computer. Most of these
Speaker 1: things are behind the scenes that ROMs are soldered onto
Speaker 1: the boards. We never touched them. Yeah, now that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you can't, but right, but they're they're specific types
Speaker 1: of micro controllers you would have to get in order
Speaker 1: to be able to to program on top of them.
Speaker 1: I'm going to overclock my toaster like cold toast way well,
Speaker 1: you know, never toasts anymore, reduced the resistance. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Now the there are a couple of other
Speaker 1: little things I want to talk about, other features that
Speaker 1: could possibly uh mark something as a micro controller. They
Speaker 1: tend to be small, They tend to be fairly cheap,
Speaker 1: which is important. I mean, that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why you want a micro controller. You want something that's
Speaker 1: focused and narrow because you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: building in all these other features, and that helps red
Speaker 1: is the cost, which, of course you then turn around
Speaker 1: and you can you can competitively priced whatever your product is,
Speaker 1: whether it's a toaster or a car. And then they
Speaker 1: also often but not always, are made to be pretty
Speaker 1: tough to work in a variety of conditions because obviously,
Speaker 1: if you have a car, the operating conditions inside a
Speaker 1: car tend to be pretty warm. Engines. Engines give off
Speaker 1: a lot of heat, um, and so you need to
Speaker 1: have electronics that can withstand that heat because, as we
Speaker 1: all know, heat plus electronics often equal sad faith. Yes. Well,
Speaker 1: and in the cases of things like uh, now that
Speaker 1: we have these these wireless handheld game controllers and things
Speaker 1: like that, um, you know, sometimes they tend to fly
Speaker 1: around the room when people get a little bit over zealous,
Speaker 1: you know, things like that. You don't want it to
Speaker 1: uh the components to be exposed, because if you do,
Speaker 1: then they're gonna break. Yeah. Yeah, And then you might
Speaker 1: want to know generally how powerful these micro controllers are. Well,
Speaker 1: they don't need to be terribly powerful, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of them, yeah, a lot of them are have
Speaker 1: have some incredibly bare bones specs. Now, one of the
Speaker 1: ones that Marshall wrote about was he said, like, if
Speaker 1: you were to take a low end micro controller chips,
Speaker 1: so this is not the state of the art biting means,
Speaker 1: it would have around it could have around a thousand
Speaker 1: bytes of read only memory and twenty bites of RAM
Speaker 1: on the chip and then eight input output pins. And
Speaker 1: so you know, if you're buying a whole bunch of these,
Speaker 1: they'd be pretty cheap because they're they're not very sophisticated. Um,
Speaker 1: Whereas if you were to get a micro processor, then
Speaker 1: you would have to spend more money because you're going
Speaker 1: to be packing a lot more components, a lot more
Speaker 1: features onto the same size chip. You could certainly build
Speaker 1: one of these yourself. Um. There are plenty of places
Speaker 1: where you can get the chips and boards and other
Speaker 1: components where um you could do you could essentially build
Speaker 1: a micro controller to take over any kind of project
Speaker 1: like this that you wanted to undertake. UM. And you'll
Speaker 1: see that these the processes that you can buy are
Speaker 1: you know, they're fairly inexpensive and they are not designed
Speaker 1: to handle that kind of instruction set um. But what
Speaker 1: what's really cool about that is that you can customize
Speaker 1: a micro controller to do whatever it is that you
Speaker 1: want to do, provided that you have the programming expertise
Speaker 1: to do it. Right now, so you may remember, we
Speaker 1: did an episode about logic gates while back now. Logic
Speaker 1: gates are what allow you to control the flow of
Speaker 1: electrons in such a way, so that you can have
Speaker 1: a meaningful output depending upon particular types of input. And uh,
Speaker 1: what these micro controllers do is they provide you the
Speaker 1: opportunity to build gates in a software environment as opposed
Speaker 1: to a hardware environment. So in other words, you could
Speaker 1: accomplish the same thing that a micro controller does by
Speaker 1: hard wiring things together. But that would make the components
Speaker 1: enormous by comparison, right, because you would have all these
Speaker 1: different wires and all these different components that that were
Speaker 1: connected together, so that let's say you push a button
Speaker 1: and you want this one particular light to come on,
Speaker 1: but not any of these other lights to come on,
Speaker 1: because those lights should only come on if you push
Speaker 1: another button. Well, all the wires you would need to
Speaker 1: put this entire system together might be pretty cumbersome, and
Speaker 1: it might be that, you know, you could not fit
Speaker 1: this in a very small package. And in fact, we
Speaker 1: see this if we look at the history of electronics,
Speaker 1: you'll see that the older the electronics are, in general,
Speaker 1: the larger the the particular version of whatever it is
Speaker 1: you're looking at was. So, for example, the earliest computers
Speaker 1: took up sometimes an entire floor of a building, because
Speaker 1: you know, you had to accomplish with basic electronic parts
Speaker 1: what we can do with chips today. So a micro controller,
Speaker 1: what that allows you to do with this read only memory,
Speaker 1: that's where you can imprint on that a program that
Speaker 1: through software creates a virtual series of logic gates so
Speaker 1: that depending upon the inputs that the chip receives, it
Speaker 1: will give out a specific type of output. So you
Speaker 1: don't have to hardwire stuff as much with a micro controller,
Speaker 1: although there is still hardwiring because you do have to
Speaker 1: you know, you do have to actually connect inputs to
Speaker 1: those those input pens, those input output pins, and you
Speaker 1: have to connect the output to whatever it is that
Speaker 1: you are you know, using as an output. Often it
Speaker 1: tends to be a little l c D or LED
Speaker 1: screen when you're at least when you're first programming it,
Speaker 1: so that you can make sure that you're getting the
Speaker 1: response that you want. Uh, you know, there is still that,
Speaker 1: but the majority of the work comes from building out
Speaker 1: the logic within the program itself. Now as yeah, and
Speaker 1: and it it really is programming. It really is saying
Speaker 1: for this instance, when this happens, this is what needs
Speaker 1: to happen as a result. That's the basic idea of
Speaker 1: a program, right and given this, given this instance, this output. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it's it's fair to say. And I haven't.
Speaker 1: I'll be honest, I haven't. As much as I want
Speaker 1: to get into, uh some basic hacking, I haven't really
Speaker 1: worked with any microprocessors yet A sorry micro controller, I've
Speaker 1: worked with either one of them. Frankly, um, I'm going
Speaker 1: to trip over everything I say today. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: stop talking. But what I was gonna say is that,
Speaker 1: you know, from many things, many people think of programming
Speaker 1: as you know, egad, it's programming that's not for me,
Speaker 1: and you know, really programming is for anyone. But if
Speaker 1: you are concerned about that, you shouldn't be as far
Speaker 1: as micro controllers are concerned, because we're again talking about
Speaker 1: some very simple things. Um. You know, literally, if somebody
Speaker 1: pushes this button, then you want to do that, and
Speaker 1: if they don't, don't do it. So you know, it's
Speaker 1: not we're not talking about lines and lines and lines
Speaker 1: of code. You're not writing a new operating system for
Speaker 1: a desktop computer. You're writing a very simple, uh set
Speaker 1: of commands to a very simple computer, right, especially since
Speaker 1: you know you've got to keep in mind, these micro
Speaker 1: controllers have very little memory on board. They can't hold
Speaker 1: lines and lines and lines of code. What were we
Speaker 1: talking about again? Yeah? Uh. In fact, the one that
Speaker 1: that Marshall reads about in how micro controllers Work, the
Speaker 1: basic stamp. He explains that it can hold about seventy
Speaker 1: five lines of code. So you have to make sure
Speaker 1: that your program is very succinct, that it's compact, that
Speaker 1: you're not taking up lines and lines and lines to
Speaker 1: accomplish wherever the goal is. So uh, you know, by
Speaker 1: by necessity you are kept to a pretty small amount
Speaker 1: of coding, which if you are just getting into coding,
Speaker 1: might be a great thing. It might be, you know,
Speaker 1: to teach yourself how to think in a sequential way,
Speaker 1: the way a machine processes information. I was about the
Speaker 1: way the machine thinks, but really thinking is well, it's
Speaker 1: not quite the right word thinking in quotes. We like
Speaker 1: to to say that the machine is thinking when you
Speaker 1: see the the hour glass or the spinning beach ball.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's really just processing data. It's just it's
Speaker 1: going through whatever the data is that's coming into it
Speaker 1: and saying, uh, what's the right response to this? I
Speaker 1: got it our glass? Yeah, Well, and and uh that's
Speaker 1: that's sort of what I was getting at. If this is,
Speaker 1: if um, you're interested in get into hacking. And I
Speaker 1: mean that in the the classical sense, not in the
Speaker 1: we're going to break into government computers and take over
Speaker 1: the world sense. Um. You know, a micro controller. Working
Speaker 1: with a micro controller might be a good UM experiment
Speaker 1: because then it would give you something that you could
Speaker 1: physically that you could work with, UM maybe come up
Speaker 1: with your own experiment or your own UM component for
Speaker 1: doing something cool. And it doesn't require an extensive amount
Speaker 1: of programming to make it work. UM, so it might
Speaker 1: be it might be a fun project for somebody who's
Speaker 1: just getting into programming. Yeah, so uh yeah, I would
Speaker 1: recommend anyone who is really interested in learning about programming
Speaker 1: micro controllers and what they can do go to the
Speaker 1: how micro controllers work article first of all, so that
Speaker 1: you can get a basic understanding of the way that
Speaker 1: you would design a micro controller, uh circuit really or
Speaker 1: a component. And then you can their instructions on how
Speaker 1: to build a digital clock with a micro controller and
Speaker 1: also a digital thermometer, so that way you can actually
Speaker 1: learn different things that you can do with the same
Speaker 1: basic component um. And again, these are both very specific
Speaker 1: use cases. So your digital thermometer isn't suddenly going to
Speaker 1: be able to play pac Man, you know, it's it's again,
Speaker 1: it's a dedicated UH task that it's you know, designed for,
Speaker 1: and that's it. So I I do recommend checking it out.
Speaker 1: It is a good way to sort of cut your
Speaker 1: teeth on on programming. Again, this one being in the
Speaker 1: Basic language, but there are of course other languages you
Speaker 1: can learn as well. That tends to be pretty easy
Speaker 1: to learn if you know anything about programming already, even
Speaker 1: if you've never used Basic before. Because it's Basic, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was the language itself was designed as a teaching tool.
Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily intended to be a fully fledged programming
Speaker 1: language to build out sophisticated UH software. It was meant
Speaker 1: to teach people how to think in that way so
Speaker 1: that then they could move on and graduate two more complex,
Speaker 1: more sophisticated programming languages. We did an episode about programming
Speaker 1: languages to where we kind of talked about that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and both Jonathan and I have fiddled around with Basic
Speaker 1: in the past, different versions of Basic. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did Apple Basic. Yeah, I did Amiga basics. So
Speaker 1: there you go. So that's you know that and that
Speaker 1: friends is where the split began. It was only compounded
Speaker 1: by Chris's refusal to watch the movie Jaws. He's never
Speaker 1: going to get over that. It's until I watched the movie.
Speaker 1: You just see those splits, and you know how the
Speaker 1: how the chasm widens further and further with every every episode.
Speaker 1: It's amazing we've gotten through four hundred without hitting each other.
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna need a bigger podcast. I think
Speaker 1: we Hey, nice, nice, he's quoting something he's never seen before.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make me want to hit him at all.
Speaker 1: All right, So anyway, did you have anything else you
Speaker 1: want to say about micro controllers? Um? No, not really,
Speaker 1: but it's that's one of those unheralded things. I mean,
Speaker 1: people just don't talk about. When we talk about computers,
Speaker 1: we usually talk about those machines that we use every day.
Speaker 1: But micro controllers are those machines that we use every
Speaker 1: day and just pick up them as being computers. They
Speaker 1: really are. Yeah, every just about every kind of electronic
Speaker 1: so you can imagine, has some form of micro controller,
Speaker 1: and it often multiple micro controllers. So yeah, very important
Speaker 1: piece of electronics, and if we did not have them
Speaker 1: and we were only relying upon microprocessors, everything would be
Speaker 1: way more expensive or far more primitive. For example, your
Speaker 1: remote control might be the closest kid to the TV.
Speaker 1: That's what it was in my household until we got
Speaker 1: That's why I'm laughing. I remember that, turning the dial
Speaker 1: three spaces. Yeah, Paul Um never never really spoke quite
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah. Anyway, all right, so guys, if you
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