OSH Park Silk Screen Win

I've been whipping out PCB's like they were going out of fashion in the last few months, in large because I find I really enjoy the puzzle of laying out a design in the smallest area. The recent burst of productivity however is completely down to OSH Park. The high quality PCB production and quick sub-2 week turn around from this service means I can solve my jigsaw and have it in my hands within a few weeks - jet fuel for a hackers fire.


THE SILK SCREEN CONUNDRUM

Things don't always go well when I make PCBs ;0) Here is a quick shot of the gerbers for a simple DC regulator I bashed out in a few hours. Nice and symmetrical, but can you spot the mistake?

Its a classic - the grey box here is on the silk screen layer (bPlace to be precise in Eagle). My original reason for putting this rectangle on here was so I could mark on the board the output voltage of the board (which depends on the values of R1 + R2 so I can make specific versions of it) - seemed like a great idea at the time.

Why is this an issue? Well, the silk screen layer is the top most layer on a PCB. Underneath this is the solder mask and then the actual copper you want to connect your components to. Putting a large rectangle of silk screen on your PCB pretty much implies that you don't intend to put any components in that area!

In the name of making something prettier, I had inadvertently put a layer of silk screen over the pads that the regulator needed to be soldered onto...


TO KEEPOUT OR NOT TO KEEPOUT?

Now, its not quite the stupid mistake that it looks on first glance. I had put rectangles in the keepout plane (layer 40) around the pads for the components, assuming that this also applied to the solder mask when the gerbers were generated (the pic below has keepout layer enabled for reference). In the Eagle however its hard to see the keepout areas clearly and so when I viewed the PCB images on the OSH Park website, they looked nearly identical and I pressed the order button and went to bed.

A good example of what happens when solder mask goes all over your pads can be found here. You can scrape it off, but its hard to do and keep your pads fully intact.

THE OSH PARK MIRACLE 

A day later or so, the image displayed on OSH Park's website for my PCB finally rang an alarm bell as I was driving to work and I realized that the keepout layer was not in-fact doing anything and I'd made a dud PCB order. I whipped off the silkscreen and resubmitted again during lunch - a 2$ mistake and another thing to add to the checklist for sure but not the end of the day.

The boards turned up 10 days later, packages in the mail 2 days in a row.  Below are 2 board revisions - top pic is front of the board (identical for both revisions), the middle is the rear with the silkscreen issue and bottom is the second batch where I'd removed it.

The first set of boards with the silk screen issue had magical perfect rectangles cut out of the silk screen printing for the pads to shine through!!! Yay! So much better than my large keepout rectangle that stretched over all the pads.

Needless to say my happiness with the OSH Park PCB service just went up another 4 notches! I'd probably not rely on whatever tool set is being used to create the PCB panels to fix up my stupid mistakes in the future (i.e. cut out holes from the silkscreen), but for now I'm super pleased with the results.

Assembled board shot below - the write-up of this can wait for another day however :D

315MHz / 433MHz RF - Part 1

A few months ago, I was scratching an itch and digging into the reliability of high frequency radio transmissions in a home environment, a practical example being 'how far away from the garage will my garage door opener reliably work?'. All of this was really a precursor to understanding what kind of throughput could you get out of a adhoc network of 433MHz transmitters scattered around the home. But we're getting ahead of the story (and about 8 blog posts of content...).


RF CONTROLLED SOCKETS

To bootstrap some experiments with 315/433MHz transmissions, I picked up a cheap set of 3x wireless remote controlled sockets from Amazon (http://goo.gl/bgNX6s) to see what people were buying in volume (and writing great reviews about).

Taking apart the transmitter and the 3 socket receivers, it clear to see why these are so inexpensive to buy. The transmitter is using a very simple chip that simply sends out hard coded messages depending on which of the multiple buttons is pressed. Circuit wise, each button simply connects 12v from the battery to the chip (via current limiting resister) and when a button is pressed, the chip wakes up from some ultra low power mode and transmits an RF message. The RF transmitter itself is a separate component, supplied current directly from the battery via a 2907A transistor (itself driven by the chip).

There is actually a great write up of a very similar chip here, schematic example shown below.

So how does it perform? Pretty well as it happens. From anywhere in my home I could turn a light on and off and walking down the street, I was also able to control them from over 70m away (although they were less reliable at this point).

It was very obvious from using these sockets however that as the distance from the socket increased, so did the length of time needed to hold down the button before the socket would respond. The most obvious hypothesis is that the transmitter just keeps sending a command as long as the key is held down and that the likelihood of a single command being correctly received by the socket diminishes as the distance between the transmitter the the receiver increases.

UNIFORM TESTING

To give a little more uniformity to the results (and because I like hacking things), I put together a quick PCB that contained a bunch of transistors that I could use to drive each of the individual buttons from a Raspberry Pi. Well, this experiment was one reason - I was also about the head to the UK for Christmas and wanted to automate a method of turning on my Christmas lights whilst I was away. So yeah, lets make a PCB.

I was super impressed with +James Neal and OSHPark for the turn around time, having seen up to a month from other vendors that outsource to China. PCBs look pretty sweet as well!

The board contains an I2C GPIO expander (16 IO pins) and a couple of ICs containing 7x darlington pairs each in each. I used DIP parts as I already had the I2C expander in my box of bits and thought I could reuse the board for general purpose expansion in the future. Schematic is over on github with the Eagle files / BOM. You can also order these PCBs over at OSHPark website, here.

I wired a small loom from the button through hole legs on the back of the board (+ GND and 12v) so I could emulate pressing the buttons via a transistor. Note, its a high side load, but I am using a NPN to switch the 12v to the input pin of the remote receiver.

Wiring this up to a Raspberry Pi looks like this:

Poor quality picture due to taking it in the middle of the night after a few beers (I was leaving the next day for the UK).

OBLIGATORY PYTHON APP

The code to control these sockets at specific times can be found over on github. Hold time for each button was fixed at .3 seconds for reliability, although 25ms actually worked in reality.

When I got back, I reversed engineering the protocol for these sockets (spoiler, it was OOK / ASK) and implemented this directly using a 315MHz RF transmitter. Then a made some very interesting graphs of the protocols reliability, but that is a write-up for another time.

Colored Logcat on Android

A fast hack done many moons ago to get logcat running over adb in color on an Android device. Posted for prosperity.


COLOR LOGCAT

Many moons ago, +Jeff Sharkey posted a python script to colour (or even color) in the output according to error severity etc...

And it was good.

http://jsharkey.org/blog/2009/04/22/modifying-the-android-logcat-stream-for-full-color-debugging/

PYTHON 2.6

At some point when hacking away for some project or other, I cross compiled python to ARM v5 (at the time, the default ARM architecture for Android) and statically linked it against gcc, I assume so it could run on a busybox based initramfs (but it was a long time ago and I was in China at the time drunk on jetlag). I fell across the code again and decided to see if it runs on my latest Android phone.

Poking at the code, it seems I stripped a lot of support libraries from the 2.7 release (the .py files) so it would take up less disk space (originally it was installed on the system disk of a development device). However, these files are pretty quick to restore if required from the python distribution.

Python was super handy when scripting power management tests i.e. grabbing the contents of /proc/stat and comparing against the behavior of the CPU governor.

CLOGCAT

Here is the code that you can extract / push to an Android device and experience the joy of color logcat over a serial cable. I quickly butchered it so it runs from /data instead of the system disk.

cd <extracted directory>
adb push clogcat-rev3 /data/local/tmp
adb shell
cd /data/local/tmp
./setup_clogcat.sh
./clogcat.sh <normal logcat parameters>

I recall in the past installing an Android terminal emulator APK and running clogcat from a shell, more to see what it did performance wise than anything. It was pretty sweet even on 2009 era SoCs (the good old days!).


RETROSPECTIVE

I suspect that adding in a little color to logcat would have been achieved much quicker by editing the src to the logcat app and inserting code that sends terminal colors commands in between the various log prints.

#define RED_ON "\033[0;31m"
#define RED_OFF WHITE_ON

#define YELLOW_ON "\033[0;33m"
#define YELLOW_OFF WHITE_ON

printf( RED_ON "All the errors!\n", RED_OFF );

Moving to the USA

Over the years I have put together a series of mails, passing on our experience in relocating to the US from the UK back in 2008. When doing this again for a good friend that is coming to join the party, I thought it worth polishing a little and posting for others to find. So here it is, split into various parts.


THE VISA

Recounting how our application process went and the paper work side of the deal.

http://the-mighty-fidget.blogspot.com/2013/10/moving-to-us-visa.html



THE MOVE

Shipping some cheap student furniture and leaving behind 200 rare CD singles did turn out to be quite an event.

http://the-mighty-fidget.blogspot.com/2013/10/moving-to-us-move.html



 THE US of A

Installing ourselves in the US was relatively easy, yet it could have been more streamlined had we known a few things in advance.

http://the-mighty-fidget.blogspot.com/2013/10/moving-to-us-us-of-a.html



MISC THINGS ABOUT SETTLING IN

Less sage advice, more wrong opinionated nonsense.

http://the-mighty-fidget.blogspot.com/2013/10/moving-to-us-settling-in.html

Moving to the US: SETTLING IN

Part 4 of a series about moving to the US. Jump to the main article here.


SETTLING IN

A lot more subjective discussion, but here is a section focusing on the bay area and acclimatizing to the US soil.

First up is a small list of neighborhoods / towns that I feel you can comfortably live without a car. Or rather, 2 cars (assuming one of you needs to commute to the office). There are a lot more areas we also like, but they are 2 car towns and after 5 years, we have still not got around to this way of living and like to walk to places for dinner etc...

Bay Area Housing

• San Francisco

Very little to be said about this, yet not all areas are equal.

• Lake Merrit (Oakland)

Popular area for people that work in the east bay or commute on the BART to San

Francisco. Gentrified a lot in the last few years and is now a restaurant destination

spot over there.

• Berkeley

Home of University of California Berkeley, the majority of this hood is well developed,        

its on the Bart and close to a huge amount of natural beauty that we love to trek

through at the weekends

• Rockridge

Apparently a hotspot of hipster activity in Oakland that we know several people have

moved to this area recently

• Palo Alto

Stanford University and a great town centre for eating out in the warm summer

evenings make this a go to place even though we don’t live there

• Mountain View

Heart of silicon valley, home to Google and generally a very well kept town

• Los Altos

The suburban side of Palo Alto

• Los Gatos

At the mountain foothills, this has a great quality of life by being slightly off the beaten

path.

For east bay living, I would highly recommend being close to a Bart for easy access to San Francisco for work / drinks as well as being able to commute around the rest of the peninsula without a car. Saying that, lots of people seem to be leaving the city:

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/7205/

Where to live in San Francisco:

For San Francisco itself, a lot has been written about the various micro-hoods in the city - a map that stylizes the area for easy reading as well as a slightly more accurate  street / block map below:

In terms of places I think are worth pointing out, here is a quick write up:

- SOMA (South or Market Area) / South Beach

This is where we originally moved to after relocating to the US. It was super close to the CalTrain station (so I could catch the train to work) and at the time, relatively inexpensive to grab an apartment (a fully furnished sublet was $3000 for a studio, then we paid $3200 for a 2 bed apartment in a great location next to the AT&T ballpark, then finally $2800 for a 2 bed apartment block over the top of City Beer Store). The “relatively inexpensive” comment is true compared to today's rents which seem to have gone up 20-50% - its still WAY more expensive that the UK (especially Cambridge rents).

The major downsides to SOMA is that around half of it can be described as “gentrifying” (although the rental prices these days don’t reflect this transition phase) and parts of it can be dead at night. The South Beach area however is fantastic, close to the Embarcadero and almost always sunny and warm.

- The Mission

“Where the hipsters live” is a bit of a blanket statement for this neighborhood, but it reflects a lot of the culture found here. A mix of latin, counter-culture, art, intelligence and great food and drinks make it a good destination for nightlife and around the peripherals of the main area (Dolores Park for example) is also a great place to live, smack bang in the middle of things with friendly San Francisco streets on your doorstep

Downsides are that this area tends to be a little higher in crime and can get "a little wild" on occasion.

- Noe Valley

This is where we live! The area is well known for being family and pet friendly, although there really is a mix of all types here. Very safe at night, great restaurants and a very neighborly feel (people stopping on the streets to chat etc…)

Peripheral neighborhoods to Noe - Glen Park and Bernal - are also popular family ‘settling’ neighborhood that we considered when moving the last time.

- Cole Valley (Upper Haight)

Right on the edge of Golden Gate park, this is a great neighborhood for architecture as well as cosy coffee shops. It is right next to the counter-culture flash point of the Haight and tends to have a very open minded attitude.

- Hayes Valley

A lovely place to wander along, grab a drink (the German beirgarten is great on a nice day) and get food. It is close enough to downtown and market street but retains a good neighborhood feel.

- Sunset / Richmond (by the Golden Gate Park)

This is one of the most affordable areas to live in SF, its close to the ocean and has great transport links to downtown. The main downside to this is the FOG that likes to eat this area for a third of the year, although it often burns off before lunch.

- Russian Hill / Nob Hill / Hayes Valley / Fillmore / The Marina

All great places, just run out of time to write about them at the moment

Some SF links:

http://www.sfgate.com/neighborhoods/

http://www.zippgo.com/blog/2013/01/26/the-renters-guide-to-picking-a-san-francisco-neighborhood/

http://www.thebolditalic.com/articles/1958-moving-to-san-francisco

Crime maps of the various areas (and don’t be dissuaded by the sea of red in all areas - the city is generally safe).

http://www.sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1618

and Berkeley:

http://police.berkeley.edu/crimemap/

Cost of living in the bay area

There is no disguising it  - housing costs in the bay area are some of the highest in the entire country. Compared to the UK, you can spend up to half of your monthly wage on rent for the higher end properties. Saying this, really great affordable properties are find-able, although it might take a while to come across the right one. 1 bed apartments can go from $1800 in San Francisco up to $4000 for a ‘modern’ / large 2 bedroom apartment near one of the more desirable cross streets depending on the town. This can be almost halved in cost as you move out of the city into the east bay.

Around 75% of all rentals go through craiglist in the bay area (http://sfbay.craigslist.org/apa/). Pad mapper (http://www.padmapper.com/) is a good mashup of Google Maps / Craigslist to give an idea of relative costs by area.

The good news… We tend to pay $50 a month for gas / electric for a 3 bedroom house - this is for 3/4 of the year and it does go up a bit in the few months we actually need to turn on our heat - but then we live in a drafty Victorian. Our first year, living in a modern apartment, we turned the heating on just once.  Our internet comes from Monkey Brains (http://www.monkeybrains.net/) which is a private ISP in San Francisco running over a microwave channel for 35$ a month with 20Mbits up/down. Garbage is around $90 for 3 months and water is metered and has been roughly 50-80$ a month with constant visitors (4 adults). If you live in an apartment, bills are divided by occupants, and often included in the rent which saves money - I think our previous rents listed above had all bills included (or we might have paid for electric in one place).

Fuel is ‘cheap’ compared to the UK - its rumored to be around $3.25 this Christmas (still, I have a receipt for 1.65$ a few years ago). Auto insurance can be down to 350$ for 6 months depending on your car.

Food is a bit of enigma. If you shop at a cheap store (non-organic, imported from south america) then its around 1 / 3 of the price of food in the UK for more fresher produce. If you shop at the locally sourced, seasonal markets and eat only organic food then my wife spends around 80$ a week in various places (farmers markets, Wholefoods, Trader Joe’s). There are some great independent supermarkets around as well that we really enjoy shopping at - Berkeley Bowl over the bridge in the east bay (http://www.berkeleybowl.com/) and Rainbow in San Francisco (http://www.rainbow.coop/).

Temporary housing or sublets

Craigslist does have a lot of sublets, but another popular temporary housing site is airbnb that supports by the night up to monthly rentals (these are usually negotiable over the price on the site). When I first moved over, I ended up in corporate housing near the office which was fully furnished and extendable by the month (had a gym, pool etc… on site) - worth a look at the link below for example costs for the place I was in - its “reasonable” even if it does not seem it at the start.

http://www.prometheusreg.com/san-francisco-properties/550-moreland

Social in the US

First, if your from Europe its actively hard to stop people talking to you about your accent, where you come from or their family history. I rarely get annoyed by this and often end up chatting to random people and having actual interesting conversations.

Secondly, the bay area is FULL of things to do - I challenge anyone to be bored. Driving up to wine country on a sunday afternoon (1hr over the bridge), the annual maker faire (http://makerfaire.com/) or just cycling through Golden Gate park down to the beach for coffee at the Cliff House (http://www.cliffhouse.com/).  Hiking seems to be the favourite past time here and the area is full of trails, often with destinations at the end of them - one of the oldest fixed platform telescopes (http://www.ucolick.org/) or Muir Woods (http://www.nps.gov/muwo/index.htm) the site of the founding of the united nations in the middle of a redwood forest with 380ft trees.

Meetup is a heavily used resource to people to find like minded people to get together and chat about all sorts of topics (http://www.meetup.com/find/). We attended a British Meetup for a while from there (until we got too busy with other activities) and we know there is a very active German community including a great Berlin and Beyond film festival that we enjoy going to (http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/saf/prj/bby/enindex.htm?wt_sc=berlinbeyond) lasting a week in Jan. If you have any interest in the crafts, ‘shops are very popular over here for wood/metal or other fabrication activities where you rent out a bench by the hour or join a class. Kirstin was into pottery for a while and met a bunch of people through attending this in the evening for example.

The restaurant scene in SF and the surrounding area is one of the best in the world, yet it remains very affordable and you can easy eat out 2 or 3 times a week and not break the bank. Yelp (www.yelp.com) is really THE place I look for restaurant reviews (or dentists, banks or car parks) and it shows the variety available from authentic bier kellar (http://www.yelp.com/biz/suppenk%C3%BCche-san-francisco-2) through to South Indian Dosa’s (http://www.yelp.com/biz/dosa-on-fillmore-san-francisco-3).

Moving to the US: THE US of A

Part 3 of a series about moving to the US. Jump to the main article here.


INSTALLING BRIT v0.1

Here is an incomplete list of things to do in the USA when you first arrive. Mostly a bunch of dull paper work :S

Social Security Card

This is the first thing you need and all the paper work says you have to apply for it immediately upon landing, but SSN website says you can’t apply for it until you have been in the US for 2 weeks (10 working days) so their systems can be updated with your immigration arrival record. I did the latter and on the 10th day went in to their office.

This takes around 3 weeks to turn up in the mail once submitted and although I believe you can get the number from it earlier than this, I was not able to find a method at the time.

This number (the SSN) is needed to track your tax contributions,credit history etc… Basically the National Insurance number equivalent from the UK.

Drivers License

The law says you need to apply for your US license within 10 days of being in the US. HOWEVER! You also need your SSN to get driving license which doesn't arrive for another 3 weeks, so we just sat back and used our UK license until the SSN number was ready.

The license is applied for in 3 steps:

- temporary license valid for a few months

- written test (usually done at the same time as the above application)

- practical test

All this is done at the DMV which is a soulless place to visit. Book an appointment online or be prepared to spend 2 hours doing absolutely nothing. If you join the AA (like the AAA), they do have a DMV counter in their offices which I have heard can be good for walk in appointments, but never used it as most insurance comes with free breakdown recovery anyway. The AA can also give you a 10% discount on a lot of hotels however, which might pay back the $60 membership fee if you travel for a week or so in the US.

The practical test is trivial compared to the UK, but the written test is actually full of enough facts and figures that you have to revise or risk failure and another visit to their office.

Sample question: what is the maximum weight an infant can be in a rear facing seat?

http://dmv.ca.gov/pubs/interactive/tdrive/exam.htm

Top tip - currently the 2 written tests for CA are available online if you Google a little... Usually, the DMV lets you take the second test if you somehow cock up the first one which is nice.

Bank Account

You want to get paid? Then you will need a back account and quickly.

The banks in the US are one of the downsides to living this side of the pond - they charge you to keep your money in their electronic vaults and give back a pitiful interest that costs more in time to declare in your tax return than actually contributed anything to your pocket. The main high street banks (Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America etc…) are all in this category with various levels of evil and gotcha’s depending on what account you have and with whom. Getting a bank account for your spouse who isn't working? Unless she has a balance of 1000 USD at all times and moves 75$ to a savings account every month, I’d expect a charge of around 8-15$ a month. The worst crime however is that most banks in the US allows you to use a competitors cash machine for free. They prefer to charge you 2-3$ per transaction to the privilege!

I originally opened an account at Wells Fargo to get off the ground as they were very close to my office and you will need to make several trips to get the initial account setup. I opened this with a British passport originally, then gave them my SSN when it turned up to build up credit.

After a near disaster with Wells Fargo trying to get a mortgage 4 years later, I moved to “First Republic” (https://www.firstrepublic.com/) bank who I actually can’t recommend enough. Firstly, there are no banking charges or minimum balance nonsense AND they refund all cash machine fees (even outside of the US) - this is mostly because they don’t really have many cash outlets and are very much an online based bank. Other upsides are that you get a private banker (mine is called Tim) who will transfer money around, cancel cards, phone you if your account is getting low and handle international money transfers for you. The only caveat with this is that I understand they want customers that earn over 100k USD a year (combined household income), although I don't see it written down anywhere so it might be a rumor.

Note that the first paycheck from a US company is usually in paper form, then the rest are electronic and transferred directly into your account. The pay is bi-weekly (means every 2 weeks in US terminology) and you can actually split up the wage into several different destination accounts at the majority of companies (i.e. 40% to me, 2% to the wife, 58% to new car fund) which is useful.

UK banks and money transfer

We actually kept all our bank accounts in the UK with enough money in them to take a trip back and not have to use a US based credit card. You do need a fixed address however to manage this, but really I only get junk mail from them - all statements etc… are online these days.

To transfer money to the US when we first moved over (first 4 weeks can be a bit lean which is why the credit card setup from the UK sounds like a great idea), I actually used XE.com as it had the best rates, then wired money to XE from barclays online account and waited for it to be deposited in my US bank account around a week later. The second time I moved over money was with First Republic who not only beat the XE transfer rate but also handled most of the transfer themselves including giving daily updates on where it was and what the micro-exchange rate was at the time. If you are thinking about going with First Republic and can hold off a few weeks for the transfer, I’d do it this way as I spent a considerable amount of time figuring it out myself the first time.

EAD

The Employment Authorization Document for L2 visa holders (the document that your spouse needs to be able to get a job) takes between 3 weeks to 3 months to apply for and arrive after you land in the US. Before this card arrives, the spouse is not allowed to work BUT they can volunteer (provided it is an actual volunteer position i.e. you cannot work for free in a position that someone would normally get paid to do in hope that it will become paid once the EAD comes through). Kirstin used to help out at the Ferry Building Farmers Market for example, helping with their fundraising events. There are hundreds of other examples of organisations in the bay area that really survive on donated time including our favorite, MuttVille and its considered very common to dedicate your career experience to charitable concerns.

Unfortunately, you cannot apply for a SSN until the EAD comes through (as really, the SSN is only needed to pay tax). However, this means you also cannot apply for a Drivers Licence until all this paper work is sorted out!

Health Insurance

As the US has really no free health care, it’s critical to setup your health, dental and opticians within the first week or so of arriving. Most companies offer a selection of health care providers, the difference really being the type of care you get, your choices in how to get the care and also the amount you pay out of pocket a month for it (either directly or in taxable benefits).

Employers will both setup health care schemes, arrange deals with the health care providers and also contribute a percentage of the cost per employee every month.

The main types of plans fall into the following categories:

- Fully integrated one stop-shop (aka Integrated Managed Care Consortium - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_delivery_system)

   Examples of this are Kaiser who run hospitals, doctors, birthing clinics and everything in-between. You sign up with these guys and you can only use their services (or pay full price elsewhere in cash). This is a cheap option if the employee ends up paying most of the cost of the health care, although if a company is paying all of the cost, it might not be the best option. Kaiser does have a good reputation however so you are not sacrificing health care, just flexibility and potentially wait times.

- HMO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_maintenance_organization)

  In short, its a company that might run some of its own hospitals etc… but more likely just has strong contracts with various private institutions that give it preferential rates to use them. If you select a HMO, you can attend any doctor “in network” as part of the plan, but if you stray “out of network” to use a specific doctor or service (such as root canal specialist), expect to pay a pretty penny. This scheme is good for people that want flexibility in their choice of health care provider, but still pay a low-ish amount per month.

- PPO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_provider_organization)

  Very similar to a HMO health plan, a PPO basically gives you a much wider access to a network of dentists, doctors and opticians in exchange for a moderately more expensive monthly premium. This is the plan we chose as we can look up reviews of dentists etc… and pick the best ones in the city for a good price. It rarely costs us much a year, although we have good health still and don't visit the doctors very often.

- HSA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_savings_account)

  This is a strange one as its actually a bank account with ties to the medical profession. Instead of paying a premium every month, you put money into a special account (as will your employer) that comes with a VISA card and can be used to pay for health care as you go. A HSA usually negotiates rates with dentists etc… so you don’t pay full price, but you still pay in your money directly (from your special account). This is great if you don’t have some major expenses planned, for example, having our baby generated a bill from the hospital of over 80k USD to the insurance company - I don’t envisage having a VISA card with this much money on if hanging around! However, this is great if you don’t plan on being sick and just need incidental coverage.

For all of these schemes, there is generally a thing called “a co-pay” involved with any transaction. This is basically a fee from 5-40$ that you pay per visit to a doctor or dentist.