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Home > The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast > #466 – An Interview with Ryan Cousins


	Podcast:		The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast
	Episode:		#466 – An Interview with Ryan Cousins
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		01:13:02
	Publish Date:		2019-11-10 18:32:11
	Description:		Welcome, Ryan Cousins of Krtkl! Don’t forget to fill out the 2019 listener survey! Closes November 22nd Krtkl’s embedded/FPGA platform is called Snickerdoodle, which is based on the Xilinx Zynq. Ryan and his team got started working in the medical field working on mechatronics, doing the same stuff over and over again for customers. Saving time from development risk Example where “wires” on a base board were hooked up Greg Davill’s fantastic bodge wiring The Snickerdoodle has a low end and high end product option: Snickerdoodle One is 115 Snickerdoodle Black is 245 piSmasher Customers are doing up to 10K units per year. Started the company about 5 years ago Biggest area of interest is in video space Running up against the edge of what the part can do Since they are targeting industrial customers, Krtkl have to keep supporting older boards Challenge has been keeping community engaged There are other Zynq modules out there, like the Zed board ($450). These are more like traditional dev boards. Crowdfunded 4 years ago on Crowdsupply Ryan was surprised how critical (ahem) people were of the product. Chris checked and he said something nice on the interview with Clint Cole Software layer is an important differentiator Krtkl supported Ubuntu Linux out of the box Working on streamlining the IP, they might eventually have an “app store” for reconfigurable logic IP blocks. Custom peripherals need still need drivers in Linux “Getting linux to run on this thing was more effort than building the hardware” Zynq book Pynq, which shows how to use Python for FPGAs How are customers using this product? Dual core system running 6 axis arm Remote sensing, needed to be lower power. They put the high power module in the FPGA in deep sleep mode. Company doing pinball accessory Smart retail applications There are really two main categories: mechatronic or high bandwidth (things like video) It’s a mix for how many are using linux Krtkl is consulting on 2-3 development projects at any given time “If you want to get a consulting business off the ground, start a crowdfunding campaign” Still waiting on one line item from the crowdfunding campaign to have shipped out 100% of orders. Check out the company at krtkl.com and their main product at snickerdoodle.io Read more about the strife during the crowdfunding campaign on their update page of Crowdsupply Reach out to Ryan by email Read more about getting started on the Snickerdoodle campaign “It’ll only get better with time”
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