EP#424: Batman, The King of EDC (Every Day Carry)

Episode Transcript
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Parker Dillmann (00:07):
Welcome to circuit break from Macrofab, a
weekly show about all thingsengineering, DIY projects,
manufacturing, industry news,and bat man's utility belt.
We're your hosts, electricalengineers, Parker Dillmann, and
Steven Kraig. If you want todiscuss this podcast, follow
along with the show notes andarticles that we're gonna
discuss. Head on over toform.macrofab.com. Circuit

(00:32):
breaker from Macrofab.

Stephen Kraig (00:34):
This week, we're exploring one of the most
curious pieces of equipment inpop culture history, Batman's
utility belt.

Yeah. So we usually do, like, Star Wars
episodes, and we never really doanything else. And this is,
like, a superhero one. ButBatman is, I guess, there's,
like, 2 superheroes that are,like, engineering ish. There's
Batman, and then there's TonyStark, Iron Man.

I'm gonna add one more. I think although I don't
even know if they count as asuperhero, but beast from x men.
He was always, like, their techdude.

Well, then if you're gonna do tech dude

There's probably a ton more.

Then you could throw in, like, who's the tech
person from Ninja Turtles?Wasn't that Donatello? Is it
Donatello? I think using tech aspart of their powers. Like,
technically, Tony Stark andBruce Wayne don't have any
powers besides just havingshitloads of money and being
smart.

Yeah. I think that's one of the most
compelling things about Batman,actually. Is the fact that he
just gets by by being crafty andsmart. In fact, the original
Batman was all like detectivecomics DC, was all about Batman
being a detective. He was lessof a, like, this superhero
villain of the night orwhatever.

(01:53):
Yeah. That's true. He was just,like, a really damn good
detective.

Yeah. That's actually if you look at, like,
Adam West Batman too. Like, AdamWest Batman just looks literally
like a normal dude in spandex.Yeah. Yes.
And then modern Batman is, like,hulked out. Yeah. So alright.
Utility belts. So we got alittle history about utility
belts.
Apparently, the utility belt wasnot even introduced in the first

(02:18):
set of comics. It was only itwas first series, but it was,
like, issue 29. Even way back inJuly 1939, right before war
well, right before what? Wasthat like the breakout of World
War 2?

World War 2 started in 38? 38, if I remember
right. It's definitely beforeAmerica entered the war. Yeah.
America was 42, I believe.

Yeah. It was in 38?

So that general time frame.

Yeah. And it contained gas capsules, which is
kinda interesting if World Waris breaking out and the previous
World War was all, like, mustardgas and stuff like that. So it's
kind of interesting that itcontained gas capsules in my
mind.

Was that in the original well, I'm not sure we
have it here, but in theoriginal one, was it just a belt
of gas caps?

Well, that was how it was originally in it, and
then 2 episodes later, it hadthe batarang in it. And then
over time, they added more andmore stuff to it. They changed
to kinda like the design of it.Tim Burton was, like, the first
time they had grappling guns andstuff in it.

Which is like a staple of Batman now.

Yeah. Staple of Batman nowadays, but Tim Burton
was the 1st Batmans to have thatin it. I think he was, like,
attached to the belt too. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Because he he actually, like,
it, like, winds up on the belt.

Was this belt buckle? Yeah. Yeah. It was his
belt buckle. I think that firesup, which is kind of like the
worst ergonomics ever.
Yeah. I bet

you it's incredibly uncomfortable too.
Yeah. Okay. So so hang on. Ifyou think about it, Batman sort
of has 3 superpowers in a way,or the way that they've written
Batman ends up becoming 3superpowers.
The first one is he's reallysmart. In fact, I think Batman
has 5 different degrees,engineering being one of them,

(04:11):
but computer science is another,and I don't remember the others,
but I believe he has 5 differentdegrees. His second superpower
is just money. He has so muchmoney that it's just not an
issue for him. If he needssomething or he needs something
created, or he needs to greasesomething, or blah blah blah, he
just has that capability.

(04:31):
And, the last superpower is hisutility belt. Yeah. The utility
belt just contains all thesuperpowers.

Yeah. Basically. Yeah. I think, like,
modern Batman has stuff in hissuit too that makes him
stronger, kinda like TonyStark's Iron Man suit makes him
stronger. But, definitely olderBatman didn't have that.
Right. And so but anyways, we'retalking about the utility belt.
So what's in the belt? What isin this yellow belt? So it's

(04:59):
interesting that I was doingsome research about this, and I
was actually asked Jacob who'sactually into superheroes at
work.
He's in IT. I don't think beingin IT means you like
superheroes, but I'm just sayingthat's his job.

Just it just happened to me.

Just just happens to be correlate. And,
apparently, in a comic I can'tremember what year it was, but
it's a more modern comic. Someowl people that he had some name
for these this evil group of,like, henchmen, but they're
they're owl people, basically.But they break in the Batman's
cave, and they, like, go throughhis utility belt and, like,

(05:34):
categorize what's in there, andthey get to, like, item, like,
44, and they're, like, we'reonly 30% the way through this
thing.

Oh my god.

So there's over a 120 items in the utility belt,
and I think figuring out how youwould pack all that stuff
together is, like, that could beits own episode of trying to
figure out how to, like, managea 120 items and know exactly
where everything is at in yourutility belt. And be able

to just recall them immediately in the stress
of whatever he's doing.

Yeah. Exactly. So I picked some items that I
wanna talk about that's in hisutility belt, but we're not
gonna do, like, items that haveidentical real life examples,
like grappling hooks, smokepellets, grenade. There's like
20 different kinds of grenadesin his utility belt. Grenades
exist, so we're not gonna talkabout them.

(06:27):
So the first one is probably oneof the most famous ones, the
batarang. And so the batarang isa boomerang shaped like a bat,
but it's not like a bat bat.It's like a his symbol bat.
Right? But it always comes backto him or, like, it's stuck in
things.
Like, he can kinda, like,determine what happens to it. He
chooses he chooses what happensto it. Yeah. I think the

(06:50):
batarang is like a drone. So ithas, like, have you seen those,
like, ads or, like, the ballthat you throw when it comes
back to you?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
I don't know if that device isactually real, but that's what
the batarang is. The batarang isone of those except it's really
sharp and can, like, cutpeople's heads off, like, in
James Bond, the the dude withthe hat.

Oh, Oddjob?

Yeah. Is Oddjob with the hat or was that in
Austin Powers?

Well, no. In Austin Powers, that's random
task.

Is Ram is and does Ram test throw a shoe?

Yeah. And odd job shows his hat.

Throws his hat. Okay. Got it. But, yeah, that's
what it does. It, like well,technically, Batman doesn't no.
That's Spider Man. Spider Mandoesn't technically kill anyone.

Batman, his creed, he doesn't kill people.

That's true. Yeah. Okay.

But if you watch the movies, he doesn't kill
people, but he, like, severelymaims people, and leaves them in
situations where they're mostlikely going to die. Yeah.

I think he throws people off roofs and
stuff, so

Yeah. But he'll throw them off roofs, but, like,
capture them with a grapplinghook and leave them hanging
upside down, which, you know,you do that for long enough and
someone will die.

Yeah. I mean, that's like Spider Man then.
Spider Man does pretty much thesame thing. Mhmm. So that's what
I think a batarang is.
A batarang is drone technology.It's got some way to maneuver
itself. So because I don't thinkBatman, while he's trained in a
lot of martial arts, I don'tthink he can throw a boomerang
perfectly, especially thesethings, which are, like, clearly

(08:26):
not really aerodynamic like aboomerang is.

Yeah. And the way I'm sure something like this
they're symmetrical in, like,the x axis of a batarang, but in
the y axis, they're not. Iwouldn't expect these things to
fly very well. On top of that,in the movies, like, if he wants
to, like, throw it and have oneof the wings of the batarang,
like, stick into a wall orsomething like that, it always
happens. Yeah.
So it's almost like he gets tochoose how that works, and I

(08:53):
just don't think he's that goodat throwing these things.

He could be, though. He could just have a
range underneath his Wayne towerwhen he just throws these all
day. Just all day.

There is a scene where he it shows him grinding
them by hand. So he manufacturesthese and sharpens them himself,
basically.

I mean, I guess it makes sense. Because could
you imagine going to, like, amanufacturer on, like,
AliExpress and sending them adrawing of a batarang. I mean,
like, hey. I need, like, a 1,000of these. They're gonna figure
out that you're Batman.

I think they actually covered that in one of
the movies too, where they weregetting his plastic ears for his
head cowl. Uh-huh. And Alfred'slike, we have to order like
10,000 of these so it doesn'tlook suspicious that there's 1
guy ordering like 5 of them. Andthen

and then it shows up on the news everywhere.
Right? What show is that from?What movie?

That's the first Batman, the first Christopher
Nolan Batman. Dark Knight Rises?

I can't remember the name. So he orders
them as like costumes?

Yes. Basically, they they order them as if it
was like a Halloween thing andhe owns all of them. But it's
not suspicious because theyorder something like 10,000 of
them.

Yeah. So he probably does that. He probably
orders a million of thesethings, like, lasered out and
you think he would do that, butinstead of grinding it himself.
But maybe maybe that's thesecret. It's like the grind on
the edge is like a certain shapethat only he can manufacture.

Oh, and only he can get it. Yeah. Yeah. I could
see him, once again, there'swith the cash thing, just
buying, like, some amazing CNCmachine and just basically
roughed out the shape, and thenhe hand does the the bevels on
it so they Yeah. Fly just right.

But you think you would just be able to buy a
machine that does that part too?

Okay. Wait. Hang on. That's a Tony Stark thing.
Batman still has, like, the handtouch on it.
Whereas Tony Stark would be,like, I don't wanna waste my
time with this. Design a wholemachine to make me this one
thing. Right?

Yeah. That's true. Do you think Robin is the
person that actually runs hisCNC machines then? He's just a
hired help. Just runs.
Now the bat tracer. Now we dohave GPS trackers in real life,
but this just gets more into,like, movie tropes, I guess.

(11:20):
Because GPS trackers in reallife are like the size of a cell
phone and a little bit thicker.That's about the size they are.
Mainly because battery life andthat kind of stuff.
But in Batman, they're sometimesthey're round, like, about the
size of a quarter, a little bitthicker. Sometimes they're bat
shaped.

Oh, of course.

But they always have a red LED on them that
blinks. Yep. Yep. And I alwaysthink if you wanna track someone
and not let them know, you wouldliterally you wouldn't do that.
You wouldn't just have ablinking red LED on it.
Yeah.

I think doesn't he have I think he has one that
sticks to the side of stuff, buthe, like, shoots it out of a gun
and it's got like, I don't know,it's got like some like snot
glue that's Sticks on it.Freezes and sticks it on the
side. But you're right. Most ofthe time, it's just this bat
shaped thing that as soon as heputs it on there, it starts

(12:15):
audibly beeping. That too.
The the beeping.

And but that's that's like in every movie that
they have a GPS tracker, italways does that.

They have to notify the viewer of what it is
doing.

Without saying I'm putting a GPS tracker on
this car, clunked.

Yeah. I mean, it's I think it's kind of the
same thing where it's like,okay, this mysterious box that
has red, green, and I don'tknow, pick any other color wire
hanging out of it, and like 5 7segment displays on it. That's a
bomb. That's a bomb. It's abomb.

Right? I think the bat tracer existed in, like,
the Adam West era too.

And if it did Not over a cellular network.

Yeah. No. Not over cellular or GPS, but
probably using, like you know,where they use 2 antennas to do
a, not a doppler effect, butvery similar where you can hone
in on a radio beacon.Triangulate? Yeah.
Triangle. Well, is it reallytriangulate? It is
triangulation. Triangulate takes3. Right?
Yeah. I remember seeing a,picture of a truck driving down

(13:23):
the road that they put a hugeflat metal sheet on top with I
think it was, like, 12 antennassticking up. And that's what it
was for. It was to drive aroundand look for whatever radio
signal you're trying to find. Ithink the bat tracer is really
cool just because the it stillcan't get away from that movie
trope of, like, the beepingsound and the red LED.

(13:45):
Bruce Wayne can make it whateverhe wants because he has infinite
money. Right? But he's stickingwith that movie trope.

Go for it.

Go for it.

Maybe it's just easier on him. He's like, screw
it. Whatever.

Yeah. Maybe he just buys them off the shelf.
Maybe old GPS trackers actuallybeep, and we just They're just

what what's the Apple tracker? The Apple tag or
whatever? He just buys thosenow.

Air tag.

Air tags. Yeah. He just buys those cheaper and
easier.

Because those beep too. Do they really? Yeah.
They have a couple differenttones they beep. Like, if the if
the person who owns it hasn'tchecked in on it in a while, it
will start it has a certainchime.
It's it's to prevent you from,like, slipping it into someone's
jacket or whatever without themnoticing. Alright. Next thing.
This one came from Jacob, and itis one of the most ridiculous

(14:36):
things. And it's a new thingtoo.
Well, new ish in terms of Batmanbecause if Batman is from 1939,
this is from 2011. In 2011,there was a comic where I don't
know the circumstances, butBatman gets turned back into,
like, 19 sixties Adam WestBatman. Oh, that's great. Okay.

(14:56):
And a villain is attacking him.
A female villain is attackinghim, and he says, I can't punch
a woman. And so he pulls outliterally bat female villain
repellent. And while sprayingthe villain, yells bat apologies
and runs

away. Oh, that's so good. That's classic. That is
a fantastic throwback to the oldAdam West Batman because that's
he would have absolutely saidthat.

Yeah. The the shark repellent from the Adam
West Batman movie, I thinkthat's what the throwback is
too, but, I mean Oh, a 100%.It's so Adam West Batman always
had a spray or a powder foreverything. That was, like, his
stick, I guess. Yeah.
Because that was one that hehad, like, a anti blasting blast
powder where he could sprinkleit on, like, explosives and it

(15:48):
would stop. They wouldn'texplode anymore.

I suppose in some way, like, if you had an
explosive that was really,really sensitive to the pH of
something, and you could justneutralize it with a buffer
solution, then there's somevalidity to that. Right?

Yeah. That's exactly what it's like though.
There was a container of, like,talcum powder, basically. Oh,
was it a no. No.
No. That one was a

Just baking soda.

I think that one was actually like a spray.
Looked like a spray paint can,basically.

Okay.

It says powder on on the can, though. Yeah.
Instead of, like you wouldn'tthink a spray paint like, what
comes out of spray paint canisn't powder. Because it's it's
liquidus. Yeah.
That female villain repellent. Iactually, I I was racking my
brain over this, and I actuallyasked chat gpt what it thought
that was. And only thing it cancome up with was some, like,

(16:46):
pheromones that made somehowevil people cry or something.

Evil people. I think it's

just like axe body spray.

Yeah. Like, concentrated axe

body spray. Concentrated axe body spray.
Because it only has to only workon female villains, not male
villains. Because, otherwise, itwould just say bat villain
repellent. Right?

Right. Right. Right. No. This is specifically
formulated Yeah.
For female villain. And it's batdash female dash Yeah.

There's dashes in it.

Right. And it's written on the side of the can,
of course, beneath the Batmanlogo. Yes.

Yes. Which we'll get into the Batman logo
later in the podcast. I havethat in here too. Bat apologies.
Yeah.
Bat I I like I couldn't believethat was real when he when Jacob
sent that to me, and I was like,I went and looked it up myself,
and I'm like, I can't believethey I could've if it was, like,
the eighties or maybe the earlynineties, I could totally

(17:51):
believe that being a thing. 2011is when that comic came out.

If you Google Batman female villain repellent,
you can see the snippet from thecomic. It's chef's kiss for
sure.

Mhmm.

Yeah. I love that. Axe body spray.

That's a rough one there. I would think the
people who own the Batmanlicense would probably wanna
take that one back.

I don't know. Maybe they enjoy it like we do.

I can't just believe it. At the time, I
couldn't believe that being athing in 2011. Anyways, next
thing, the universal tool. Andso what this is is a remote
hacking device slash computerthat basically it's kinda like
the what's the device in StarTrek? The tricorder?

Yeah. Tricorder.

It's like a tricorder. And thinking about
this, I have one of these. It'scalled a flipper 0. It's a
device that allows you to, like,beam and receive transmissions
and modify stuff on the fly,like a hacking device. That's
what a flipper 0 is.
Yeah. It's not that, you know,Batman had this in, like, the

(19:04):
eighties or something.

Yeah. Okay. So I'm looking at the fandom
website right now on thisdevice, the universal pool. And
let me just label off a handfulof things it has on it. It has
an oscilloscope slashvectorscope display on it.
It has broadband HDTV jack, amultiline analyzer, which I

(19:26):
whatever that is, CPU breakoutbox, which basically looks like
an expansion port.

So it has a parallel port.

Yeah. A parallel port, but it also has an RS 232
logic controller and breakoutbox and an EPROM reader writer
on it.

So It's more than a flipper 0 then.

Yeah. It's got it's got a little bit of
everything on it.

I like how it has an eprom reader where I
guess, nowadays, it would belike an NFC reader writer.

Well, in addition to this, it's still Yeah. Still
useful having a e prom readerwriter, but it's surprising that
the fandom has gone that far togo to in into, like, that level
of tech that he has. Like, fullon, like, protocols.

I would say nowadays, Batman probably can
get away without an e promwriter reader.

I would not mind having one of those universal
tools. That would be prettylegit. If you if you walked into
your job and they're like,here's your universal tool.

Thank you. That would be pretty cool. Yeah. I
think just having, like, an Iguess they have portable
oscilloscopes now that arebasically multimeters with the
oscilloscope screen on them.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. But his is not just an
oscilloscope. It also has avector display on it, which I
don't know why he would need oneof those, but still is pretty
cool.

I mean, back then, you had a lot more analog
signals. Sure. And so a vectordisplay was pretty important for
debugging. But nowadays, I thinkI've only seen a vector display
once, and it was it's an arcadegame. I don't think I've
actually seen 1.

At my last job, we had a vector display, but it
was just there to make coolpictures with music.

I think it's what most people use them
nowadays for.

Yeah. They're a novelty for sure.

If anyone that's listening knows what you
could use a vector display todebug nowadays, let us know in
our, community discord. It'd beformed dot macro fab dot com.

I could see a really goofy, like, storyline
where, I don't know, he has to,like, analog hack into, like, a
door lock, and the vectordisplay is displaying like some
strange image and he has to turnpotentiometers until it becomes
a circle, and when it's finallylike a perfect circle, the door
unlocks or something like that.That would be pretty cool. And

(21:43):
that's like, I don't know.That's 2 waves that he's getting
in the right orientation andphase and whatnot.

I like that idea a lot. Alright. Next item,
the Sonic Devastator. So weactually have similar device so
sonic devastator's, audio devicethat he has, but it's that's
technically not in his utilitybelts and his gloves, but we're
gonna cheat a bit. But it beamssound waves at villains and no
goo no good doers.

(22:12):
That's Batman.

Ne ne'er do wells. Yeah. Yeah.

And it, like, immobilizes them with the sound
waves. So we actually havedevices like this nowadays on,
like, ships and stuff. They callthem, like, non lethal deterrent
devices.

Yeah. They use them for, like, riot control and
things like that.

Yeah. But I started going down, like, what
kinds we have nowadays, and thisis very interesting. So we have
3 different kinds, actually. Wehave sub audible, audible, and
high frequency. And they allaffect different parts of your
body.
So clear like, the audible kindjust makes it awful for your
your hearing and Yeah.

Makes it painful.

Yeah. But the problem with the audible kind is
you put on hearing protectionand you kind of nullify it. So
Sure. They don't really use theaudible kind too much anymore
because it's very easy todefeat. But there's sub audible,
which is like Is

that, like, just jiggle your guts or what? It
make you feel uncomfortable.

So they figured out there's certain frequencies
that actually vibrate youreyeballs and make it impossible
for you to see. No. Yeah.

That's oh.

I don't know if they've deployed that at all,
but there's, like, a story in,like, the it's Sonic. It's the
Wikipedia article for a sonicweapon that talks about how that
was discovered. It's like 0.7Hertz and then, like, 4. You
have to combine a coupledifferent low frequencies and,
like, it will make your, like,eyeball pulse.

Oh, so I bet things just go blurry.

Yeah. Everything just kinda goes woo
woo woo woo. Oh, that'sfrightening, actually. Yeah. And
then on the opposite side, youhave high frequency, which can,
like, destroy, like, yourorgans.

Yeah. Yeah. That that sounds like the real
dangerous one. Yeah. I mean, theaudible one, if if it's enough,
you you can Yeah.
Cause hearing damage or whatnot,but the high frequency one,
yeah, you can you can jigglethings loose.

Yes. Liquify.

Put enough energy into it. Mhmm. But if this is on
his belt or on his wrist orwhatever, there's probably not
enough energy to cause any kindof permanent damage, which is
frankly not what Batman is goingfor most of the time he's
fighting crime.

Crime. Yeah. And in the comics, it's all
audible too. Because if you cansurprise your assailants, the
audible would probably work finebecause most people don't walk
around, you know, with earprotection on. This one is also
really weird.
It's the identity disc.

Okay.

K? So Batman and his utility belt has a
little disc about the size of aquarter or half dollar that is
blank. But if he pours aspecific chemical that he he
doesn't say what the chemical isin the comic. This is an older

It it's gotta be bat chemical or show or chemical
b or something like that.

Chemical b. But when he pours a special chemical
on it, it reveals text whoidentifies who Batman's real
identity is.

Okay.

And what it's for is if he's captured and he's
about to die, right, he can pourthis liquid on his disc to
basically reveal to whoeverfinds his body or whoever finds
the disc that who Batman reallyis, and so no one can
impersonate Batman and causemore harm.

Oh, that's kinda cool.

But the whole thing is he has to have enough
time to, like, pour this specialliquid on it. It's not like a
fail safe where, like, if hedoes like a, a better way to do
it would be like, hey, every dayBatman has to go log in to some
server. And if he doesn't, it,like, fail trips over, and then
it his identity getsbroadcasted.

Or it could be connected to his heart rate. And
if that stops Yeah. Then, dosomething.

I think it's like in the comic pain, there's,
like, fire behind him. Like he'sin like a burning building.
That's like about to come downand he's just standing there
hunched over this little disc,pouring this liquid vial on this
desk. Oh, and then he

goes, I hope this develops. Yeah.

And then he says it's also made of espresso,
so it won't burn. Oh, man.

Well, okay. I had not heard of that without is is
that the old Adam West or notAdam West? The the comp the

old comic? I think that was, like, in the
eighties.

Oh, okay.

I'm trying to remember when that one was, but
it was it's definitely an olderBatman comic. But I I just
laughed at the whole idea of,like, he's about to die. And
he's like, he's like, hold upbefore you kill me. I gotta I
gotta do this first.

I gotta do a chemical experiment. Yeah. Oh,
that's fantastic.

Alright. Last one is lock picking. And I know
lock picking is you just getlock picks no matter what, but
can you get lock picks that havethe Batman logo in the handle?

You're, like, bent into the handle. Right?
Yeah. Bent into the handle.

So this got me think because Batman's actually
really good at picking locks,but they don't really show that
in, like, newer Batman. He justkicks the doors down now. Right.
But old Batman could reallyeasily get into locks. And so I
propose a question for thoselistening.
Is the lock picking lawyer whoruns a YouTube channel about
picking locks, is he Batman?Cause we don't know what lock

(27:45):
picking lawyer looks like. Wejust see his hands, and we've
never seen lock picking lawyer,Bruce Wayne, or Batman in the
same room together. You neverknow. Maybe.
Then my lockpicking lawyer, areyou Batman?

I do like the idea that his lock picks have to
have the logo on them. Oh, yeah.Just so that he knows, like,

I'm Batman. We we have more items. Steven has
some items that are in his belt.We we need to get to that topic
though of of the logos.

Let me just I got 4 items real quick. Let me blast

through that, and then we'll go on to

the next topic. These 4 items, I chuckle a lot
about them. I found this on awebsite, screenrant.com. They
had a list of a list of items inthe in in his thing. For one of
the items on there was justcrayons.
There is actually a comic bookwhere him and Batman and Robin
are on top of a train, and forwhat ever reason, they need to
make a sign. And they don't pullout like a Sharpie or like a pen

(28:44):
or something like that. In fact,Batman's like, good thing we
have crayons, and he, like, justdraws a picture to, I don't
know, write a sign for somebody.So, yeah, crayons. Apparently,
he has lollipops in his utilitybelt.
Oh, no. There's a time when helike, there was a kid who was
crying or whatnot, and he neededto console the kid. And so pulls

(29:07):
out a lollipop and gives it tothe kid. I don't know. Seems a
little bit weird to to me, butthat's in there.
Apparently, he also alwayscarries around a Kryptonite ring
for that, like, situation thatthere's just a roaming superman
around and he needs to keep himin check.

So well, no. That kryptonite ring, sometimes
it's like a chunk of kryptonitejust depends on the error of
Batman, basically. Yeah. Right.Is it's interesting, especially
when, like, the Justice League,like, cartoon and stuff, where I
think he actually gives thekryptonite to Superman as, like,
a sign of trust.

Yes. Yeah. I think that, in fact, there's an
episode oh, I think it's Batmanthe animated series that came
out in the early nineties.There's a whole episode where it
shows him writing the logs intothe bat computer in the bat cave
where he goes through everysuperhero in the justice league,
and he talks about theirsuperpower and how he can defeat

(30:10):
their superpower, and he writeslike an entire thing about if
they go rogue, here's what I do.And it's a pretty cool episode
because there's no, like, it'sliterally just Batman at his
computer writing these logs, butit's fascinating because he has
all of these reports on thesesuperheroes.
And I think Superman was, yeah,I just have Kryptonite. Like,

(30:32):
we're fine. Don't worry aboutit. Okay. And then there was
there was one last item thatScreen Rant had, and I love this
because they literallycategorized this as an item in
his utility belt.
It's just cash. He just hasmoney. In fact, one of the
pictures they have is just likea wad of cash on a table, and

(30:53):
it's like, yep. That's that's athing.

And I mean, it makes sense.

Totally. Yeah. One of his superpowers.

Because I'll put it this way, if you were in
that span spandex doesn't haveback pockets for wallets.

Actually, you could make the argument that the
cash is more of the universaltool than the universal tool.

So we were joking about this earlier.
Batman and his gadgets andeverything Batman has,
including, like, some of theitems that he designs and
builds, always have the Batmanlogo on it. Mhmm. Why? Why do

you think Well, even the different eras, every
Batman always has the Batmanlogo on their stuff, or the item
itself is the shape of the logo.Like, they're just so proud of
this logo.

Yeah. It's do you think he gets stickers made?

I think absolutely, but I think it goes
further than that. Stickers arelike the lowest level of things.
I think I think the like, hespends an unreal amount of time
machining metals, getting thingsprinted, getting stickers for
sure, like everything has to belike flawless. Actually, what
would be really funny is to seethe, like, discard pile.

I was about to say of all

of these, like, messed up logos on the ground.

But they're all like a messed up batarang. Yeah.
But it's only messed up because,like, the lasering is, like, a
millimeter off of, like, hislogo.

Yep. Yeah. If it was my bat cave, knowing the way
I have my basement, I wouldhave, like, parts of it that are
really clean and then parts thatare just, like, piles of, like,
discarded, like, that's it.Sorry.

Do you think that's what Alfred has to do?
Categorize that and put it allaway?

Oh, yeah. That that makes sense. Absolutely.
Yeah. I wonder if, if Alfred isinvolved in well, no.
Absolutely. In fact, we weretalking mentioning it earlier.
Alfred does a lot of thecommunication, with vendors and
things like that.

So Alfred's a butler, but more importantly,
Alfred's actually hisprocurement team.

Yeah. His procurement team. Absolutely.
Because yeah. I mean, theyactually say that because he's,
like, communicating withwhatever factory in China that
they were getting the the batears done.
Isn't that funny that that was amust? Like, they had to have
that.

Yeah. Well, just the the fact that's a scene
in a movie. I I can totally seethat being, like, a scene in,
like, one of the cartoon showsor, like, a comic, but it's in
one of the big budget movies.

Well, there's a really good reason for it
though. I I think the reasonthey put that there is to make
it seem like he wasn't as muchof just a toy and the fact that
it makes you take Batman alittle bit more serious that
he's putting that much thoughtinto things, that it's not just
like some guy dressing up in acostume. They I mean, they
mentioned that a whole bunch oftimes in the movies where it's
like that, you know, I'm I'mjust I'm not a guy who fights

(33:47):
crime in a costume even thoughhe really is. He put a lot of
thought into his perception. Andin fact, I think that goes to
what we're talking about here.
His perception is the logos gotto be everywhere because people
have to know the symbol. Thesymbol matters for Gotham.

Yeah. I think that's what it comes down to is
if you find how many batarangsdo you think are just, like,
littered across Gotham?

Yeah. It's gotta be a ton. Right? And every
single one of those is bespoke.We already said, like, he sat
there with a grinder and didevery single one of them by
hand.
Every single one. Yeah. All theway to the point where the bat
signal. I mean the the big thelight that they display up in
the sky, which funny enough ifyou think about that, Gotham has
to have some of the worstweather out there because it's

(34:35):
got to be overcast all the timein order for that light to work.
Right?
It's really funny because mywife and I were driving home
from something the other night,and, one of the towns around
here had 2 spotlights going. Andyou could easily tell that the
spotlights were going, butthere's no way on earth that you
could tell, like where the beamwas ending. I mean it was it was

(34:55):
a fairly clear night, it wasfoggy enough that you could see
the lights. And I mentioned thatabout Batman, I was like the bat
signal's really dumb. It isreally dumb.
Because if it's a clear night,it makes no sense whatsoever.
Right?

Yeah. It could literally just be, like, a
button and then, like, a sirengoes off or, like, they just sit
on the radio.

One of the bat trackers could start beeping and
blinking. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Because if you if you activate
the bat light, it signals that,hey, someone knows that
someone's doing something badand wants Batman to show up now,
which kinda like ruins thesurprise element that Batman
always has. Oh, sure. Like, itseems that the villains, like,
are always shocked that Batmanshows besides the Joker.

(35:40):
The Joker wants Batman to showup, so he always expects Batman.
But all the other villains arelike, oh, we didn't know Batman
would show up.

We didn't see the big bat sign in the sky. Yeah.
Exactly. I think it's a mixtureof exactly what I just said with
the people need to know thatBatman is, gosh, what is the
phrase they say, the hero theyneed not the hero to deserve. I
probably butchered that, but thelogo means something to Gotham.

(36:10):
Mhmm. And it means something tothe villains of Gotham. But I
also think Batman has an egothat's the size of Gotham. So
he's got to have that logo outthere. So it's a mixture of the
2.

And that actually gives credit to the bat
signal too then. Because, like,oh, there's someone doing evil,
and so we're gonna turn on thisbig old light, and that kinda
lets people of Gotham know thatBatman's on the prowl.

Which wouldn't you think they've just oh, it's
it's 6 PM. Let's turn on the batsignal every night.

Every night? It's just a deterrent.

Right. Right. Right. Which okay. So funny
enough, somewhat side story, butin a similar vein, I visited a
city back in, my college agewhere they had something similar
to that, where they put these,these blue lights at
intersections that were fairlycrime ridden intersections, and

(37:04):
those blue lights were intendedto be deterrents for crime
because it was supposed toilluminate the intersection.
But what they ended up becomingwere crime amplifiers where
people were just like, well justgo to the blue light, like
that's like, and it was a hugefailed experiment by the local
police department, but theyended up, you know, letting them

(37:24):
be. So it it is kinda funnybecause it's it's fairly similar
to this because the logo itself,does it actually deter crime? It
doesn't seem like it does. Itjust calls Batman. That's all it
was.

Yeah. That could be what it is. Do you
think there's, like, on everycorner, like, you know, where in
every corner, you have, like,USPS, like, delivery box. Do you
think Batman on all hisbatarangs say if found, please
deposit in the bat box?

Bat box? Yeah.

Or they can just put it into, like, a
mailbox, and it just shows backup at the Batcave. Wayne Manor?
Yeah. Well, that'd be tooobvious.

Oh, sure. Sure.

Do you think Batman goes to the post office
and has, like, a PO box where hecan get all his equipment back?

He just opens it up, and it's just filled with
batteries.

He's, like,

scooping them into a bag.

In a big old bag.

But but but can you imagine what Ebay would look
like if someone found aBatarang, you know, official
Batman Batarang. Yeah.

Official batarang. Yeah.

He doesn't really leave a lot though. Batarangs,
he does. Yeah. But for the mostpart, he doesn't leave items No.
In places.

Next this is the next segment, I guess, of
this podcast is alright. Yeah.Yeah. Yeah. Wrap it up.
What would an electricalengineer have actually, I have a
better question. Steven, do youhave a utility belt?

I do not, but I think it would be awesome to
have a utility belt. And infact, I went around my office
today, and I pulled all theengineers together. I was like,
quick off work question. It'slike, if you were to create a
Batman style utility belt for adouble e, what would it look
like? And what's funny is so I Icreated this list with my double

(39:11):
e team, but I hadn't seen ahandful of the items that Parker
had put on on our list thatwe're reading from right here
until not that long before thepodcast.
And it's interesting becausesome of these items are like my
engineering team independentlycame up with some of these
items. So I've got a list herethat I think would be fun to go
through of what would a doublee's Batman utility belt look

(39:34):
like. So the whole teamuniversally said no matter what,
even though it's not directly ee, you still need a grappling
hook, and you still needbatarangs. Like, they all were
just like, yes. That's gottahave that.
And some of the some of thearguments were like, you're
sitting at your desk in the laband you look over and you need,

(39:54):
like, a piece of equipment fromacross the room. You just shoot
the grappling hook and pull itin. Right? Like, we don't wanna
walk across the lab to get thato scope. And the batarang is
there in case somebody in caseyou get up from your desk and
someone goes to steal that scopethat you just got.
You could you could stick theirhand to the desk with a
batarang. So those were 1 to 1,Batman has them, double e needs

(40:18):
to have them. So surprisingly,this is where the first one
starts that Batman already has.So everyone said handheld o
scope, gotta have that.Basically a tricorder, but what
it really ends up being is theuniversal tool.
I didn't know the universal toolliterally has an o scope built
into it. So handheld o scope forsure and a multimeter with all

(40:41):
the standard functions plus afunction generator. Those are 3
locations on utility belt. Butthere is one caveat to that, and
this goes a little beyond theutility belt itself. They all
plug into the bat cowl, theheadpiece, and you just see the
scope, or you just see themultimeter, and you can flip

(41:04):
between them or do augmentedreality.
So you're looking at your boardand it just displays the scope
over your vision. Oh, that'scool. That would be really cool.
Right?

Yeah. That would be cool.

Same thing with heat vision. So you could just
look at your board and it justdisplays over your eyes thermal
vision. Yeah. Yeah. So thatwould be freaking yes.
Chef's kiss. One engineer said Ihave to have 26 gauge solid core
wire, and one said 30 gaugestranded wire. So these are for

(41:34):
your bodge jobs

Yeah.

That you gotta do. I think having both of
those, if you had both of those,you're good to go.

I would say you also need to add at least, like,
18 or 16 gauge.

Something a little thicker.

In case she carries some power. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

Heat shrink, black. Has to be black heat
shrink. Right?

With Batman logos all

all every 2

issues. Batman logos on it. So screen into it.

Well, I that's I I hope that exists somewhere.
There's some heat shrink withthe Batman logo on it. That
would be yeah. I should havethought about that. That's
perfect.
Yeah. With the Batman logo. Now,here's one of the more fun ones.
Aerosolized Kapton tape, whereyou could just spray on,
whatever tape you need. I thinkthat would be absolutely good.

Yeah. That's a that's a really good one.

Let's see here. Oh, magic smoke bombs. So
they're smoke bombs, but theyhave the same smoke that's in
ICs in case you're in like areally bad meeting and you need
to get away. You just pop ahandful of those and run out

of the meeting room. It's just the blue smoke
that comes out of ice.

Yeah. But it's but it's got that, like,
electronic smell to it. Theozone? The ozone smell to it?
Yep.
I really do like the theaerosolized Kapton. Yeah. That
that's perfect. Yep. Yep.

(43:10):
Yep. So both thermally, both canwithstand high temperatures and,
high dielectrics.

Oh, there's one thing you're missing in there.
Oh, yeah. What's that? Is a, aharness tape. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Not electrical tape,harness tape. Because electric
tape just gets all gooey.

Well, but it would of course. Once again, it
would be electrical tape with,like, the logo every few inches.
Yeah.

Or I bet you Batman, Bruce Wayne, could
develop an electrical tape thatdoesn't get gooey.

Could also see him having, like, zip ties. Oh,

no. Zip ties. No zip ties gotta be in there.

Yeah. Zip ties, but they have to have something
special about them where they'relike zip ties the

The head of the zip tie is a bat logo.

Oh, yeah. It's just like 2 wings that come off
this.

Two wings on that little part that ratchets.

Yeah. I like that. But that might be the one
thing where, like, the zip tieis just straight yellow. It it
and like the logo is black.Yeah.
Yellow zepti is a black. Yeah. Ithink it would be really cool if
you came to work, starting a newjob, and there you show up to
your desk and there's just thisyellow belt sitting there, and
you see all the engineerswearing a yellow belt. Wearing

yellow belts?

Yes. I know I'd be in the right place.

I'd be like, what did I get myself into? Or,
or what if, what if you show upfor an interview and you're
wearing the utility belt as theinterviewee?

You know, I feel like some places would be like,
sorry, dude. This ain't theright place for you, but some
places would absolutely lovethat.

Yeah. If an engineer showed up at an
interview with a utility belt,I'd be like, when can you start?

Actually okay. Look. Look. Look. Wait.
Hang on. Slight tangent.Somebody out there, that's
really in my opinion, that's nota bad idea. Now that would be a
very weird interview, but if youshowed up and they were like,
tell me something about you, andyou stood up and you just
started pulling out like, I cansolder, and you put a soldering
iron on the table, and thenyou're like, I know how to do

(45:13):
this, and you put it on thetable, like, this is your double
e utility bill. Look, I knowit's weird, but it you would
stand out for sure.
Mhmm. And, in fact, slighttangent story, I met a guy once
who told me about an interviewhe did where he he had hats,
literal hats for every job hehad worked at, And, like, he he

(45:35):
he made some of them obviously,but he went into the interview
and he would put on a hat and hewould talk about that, and that
he would take it off, put on hisnext hat, and talk about oh, no.
Now look. It's super lame andParker's face falling hard here,
but the guys remembered him. Hewas very memorable for that.
This is similar to that. I daresomebody out there to give this

(45:56):
a shot. Put on your doubleutility belt. It's the lamest
thing ever, but do it. Give it ashot.

If someone does that

You Parker will give you a job.

You can have a free prototype at. You have that
proof, but, man, that that thatwould be something to see.

Yeah. Yeah. That would be fun.

Alright. So before we sign off, go to our
discourse. It's formdotmacrofab.com. Post your
utility belts, post what youwould put in your utility belts,
bonus points for if it has batin it. And with that, let's sign

(46:41):
off.
Alright.

Well, thank you for listening to circuit break
from Macrofab. We were yourhosts, Steven Craig. And Parker
Doman. So long for now.

Later, everyone. Thank you. Yes. You
are a listener for downloadingour podcast. Tell your friends
and coworkers about CircuitBreak, the podcast from
Macrofab.
If you have a cool idea,project, or topic you want us to
discuss, let Steven and I andthe community know. Our

(47:14):
community where you can findpersonal projects, discussion
about the podcast, andengineering topics and news is
located atform.macrofab.com.

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