I am Elecia White alongside Christopher White. We're here to chat about the interests, careers, and lives of engineers, artists, educators and makers. Our diverse guest list includes names you may have heard and engineers working quietly in the trenches. Either way, they are knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and inspiring.
We'd love to share our enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM).
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Sonia Grego speaks with us about a topic no one likes to talk about, but could be used to monitor personal dietary health and widespread disease outbreaks. Toilets! Sonia leads Duke University's Smart Toilet Lab and the spin out Coprata which makes the Microbiome Activity Tracker. As discussed in the show, when developing a project far from where it will be deployed, there are many common issues. The Lessons Learned chapter of Sonia's recent book gives an excellent introduction to the unexpected...
Kenneth Finnegan entertained us with stories about accidentally contributing to the internet's ability to network. Wondering how the internet works? All those terms about IPv4, IPv6, BGP, OSPF, CDN and other alphabet soup? Check out the YouTube videos by NetworkChuck . Kenneth writes about his adventures on his blog, The Life of Kenneth . Some of the posts related to this show are: Creating an Internet Exchange for Even More Fun and Less Profit Building an Anycast Secondary DNS Service Building ...
Chris and Elecia apologize, discuss uses and abuses of chatbots, reach out to an uncertain manager, try to help someone out of their professor's draconian rules, and extol the joys of reading. Chabot Space & Science Center is in Oakland, CA, US. It is wonderful! Some suggestions for UncertainManager: Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Resilient Management Manager's Path Soft Skills Engineering podcast Hang in there! You are probably doing better than you think...
Mark Omo and James Rowley spoke with us about safecracking, security, and the ethics of doing a bad job. Mark and James gave an excellent talk on the development of their safecracking tools at DEF CON 33: Cash, Drugs, and Guns: Why Your Safes Aren't Safe . It included a section of interaction involving the lock maker's lawyers bullying them and how the Electronic Frontier Foundation ( EFF ) has a Coders' Rights Project to support security research. As mentioned in the show, the US Cyber Trust Ma...
James Cameron spoke with us about programming for and operating a large telescope. The show is a blend of astronomy, engineering on the fly, and weird lady bug habitats. The Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) is part of the Australian National University's Siding Spring Observatory in Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia. The AAT has an all sky camera where you can check in on a very dark sky. James was on Embedded Episode 172: Tell Forth You Me Please where we talked about the Forth programm...
Nathan Jones and Chris Svec give Chris and Elecia their 2025 performance review. Donations went to Elevate Tutoring , an organization that provides funding and support to low-income and first-generation college students as well as free STEM tutoring for underserved schools. Embedded has already sent in the match to the donations for a total of over $5000. Here is a list of all Embedded.fm episodes . We mentioned the Foldscope , a small but mighty microscope. Also, mentioned was the book If I Onl...
Sophi Kravitz joined us to talk about art, science, and engineering. You can see Messages from Space on Sophi's website /sophikravitz.com ). A subset of the artwork had a short stay for a demo at Chabot Space & Science Center . The completed work will be shown in 2026. Sophi mentioned collaborating with two sonic environment artists Sofy Yuditskaya and Ria Rajan . Geiger–Müller tube is an ionizing radiation detector. Cosmic rays move through space at nearly the speed of light, generally orig...
Nick Kartsioukas joined us to talk about security in embedded systems. Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) is the primary database to check your software libraries, tools, and OSs: cve.org . Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP, owasp.org ) has information on how to improve security in all kinds of applications, including embedded application security . There are also cheatsheets, Nick particularly recommends Software Supply Chain Security - OWASP Cheat Sheet . Wait, what is...
Philip Koopman joined us to talk about embedded systems becoming embodied and intelligent. We focus on the safety considerations of making an intelligent and embodied device. Phil's new book is Embodied AI Safety: Reimagining safety engineering for artificial intelligence in physical systems . It uses robotaxis as an example as it discusses safety, security, human/computer interface, AI, and a bit of legal theory for tort negligence. If you'd like a taster, Phil gave a wonderful summary in his v...
Jason Turner of C++ Weekly and Empty Crate spoke with us about the joy of puzzles, the changing directions of an interesting career, and the C++ programming language. I mean, of course we talked about C++. But only a little. Jason recently published Programming Puzzles Big Book: 400 pages of fun for ages 7-99 , a book of puzzles for the logically minded. It teaches programming concepts as engaging puzzles: recursion, binary, assembly, Lisp, regular expressions. You may not know what you are lear...
Katherine "Smalls" Connell spoke with us about making thin and flexible circuits, making stretchable electronics, and running a successful Kickstarter. Katherine's Kickstarter: Sprite Lights LED Body Art (light-up tattoo) . Katherine shares her makes, describing her build process for companion robots and other projects. You can find her as The Small Wonder on Hackster.io and Hackaday.io . She often goes by Smalls on other social media. We talked about a paper on making stretchable circuits: Sili...
Chris and Elecia talk about the show overflowing to another bit, fight over vim vs nano, consider awards, discuss writing (and self-motivation), consider linear algebra on AI cores, encourage remote device quality assurance, describe design documentation, review timer multipliers, and consider changing chip vendors. A list of all Embedded Episodes Support the show and get goodies: Patreon/embedded and Ko-fi.com/embedded Data-Driven Science and Engineering book (currently on chapter 8 and working...
This episode features Christina Cyr, CEO of Detour and creator of the Cyrcle Phone, who shares her journey in hardware entrepreneurship, including winning a CES Innovation Award and the unique aspects of running a social purpose corporation. She delves into the critical importance and evolving methods of lithium battery recycling, advocating for sustainable practices over raw material mining. Christina also offers valuable career advice, covering technical growth, re-entering the workforce, and strategies for funding and pursuing hardware ideas, emphasizing networking and continuous learning.
Steve Hinch, a former HP and Agilent executive, consultant, and author, delves into his extensive career, offering insights into fostering innovation, navigating corporate culture, and effective management. He discusses the legacy of "The HP Way," the balance between short-term shareholder demands and long-term employee investment, and the nuances of product versus process innovation. Hinch also provides practical advice for aspiring managers and reflects on the changing landscape of engineering leadership.
William Griffin spoke to us about hardware-in-the-loop testing, simulation, terminology, learning complex topics, and books. We don't usually expand upon the show title but Wikipedia has a rabbit hole called Evil demon so there you go. Books mentioned: Make: Electronic Music from Scratch: A Beginner's Guide to Homegrown Audio Gizmos CMOS Cookbook How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Adventures of a Curious Character Drive: The ...
Chris and Elecia chat about books, courses, alternate podcasts, electronics, statistics, kidnapping Roo, and journaling failures. The Embedded Patreon book club is reading Data-Driven Science and Engineering: Machine Learning, Dynamical Systems, and Control by Steven L. Brunton, J. Nathan Kutz. PDF book and links to lectures are at databookuw.com . Some recent links of interest: Datasaurus dozen : a collection of different small data sets that have the same summary statistics. You can see all th...
This episode features Dmitry Grinberg, a software engineer who specializes in running Linux on minimal hardware, including an 8-pin microcontroller and a 4-bit Intel 4004. He delves into the intricacies of MIPS emulation, custom bootloaders, and ingenious hardware abstraction techniques required to achieve these feats, often involving unconventional component usage and overclocking. Dmitry also shares his motivations for inspiring others in embedded systems and offers candid critiques of certain chip manufacturers.
We spoke with Peter Griffin about Jumperless Breadboards, no-install GUI development, Excel, and puppies. Jumperless Breadboard at CrowdSupply Colab GUI for Jumperless Breadboard Website GUI for Jumperless Breadboard Excel GUI for Jumperless Breadboard (though it has some USB DTR issues as noted in the show: Jumperless_V5_GUI (Shared).xlsx . Note Microsoft Datastreamer is a serial interface to Excel Teardown 2025 will have talks up soon! Cory Doctorow wrote about 'Enshittification' in Wired . We...
It's another episode with Elecia and Chris. This week they discuss people that have influenced their lives and careers, thinking about past career choices and regrets therein, identities, the Embedded Slack book club, and electronic projects. Chris is currently taking Dogbotic's DIY Rhythm Widgets course which covers making an analog drum machine from components. We had Dogbotic founder Kirk Pearson on the show on Episode 491 . Elecia mentioned the book that the Embedded Slack #book-club channel...
Emily Lovell spoke with us about teaching how to contribute to open source, including her own experience creating the LilyTiny as a Master's student and researching the impact as a PhD student. The LilyTiny work was done in conjunction with Leah Buechley ( Embedded episode 382 ). See the paper The LilyTiny: A Case Study in Expanding Access to Electronic Textiles or watch the video . UCSC Open Source Program Office (note this is different from the Center for Research in Open Source Software ( CRO...
Chris and Elecia talk about Murderbot, LLMs (AI), bikes, control algorithms, and fancy math. The website with the ecology jobs is wildlabs.net from 501: inside the Armpit of Giraffe with Meredith Palmer and Akiba.. The algorithm Elecia mentioned was from Patent US7370713B1 . The Control Bootcamp YouTube series is a great introduction to control systems beyond PIDs There is also a book from the same folks (with matlab and some python code): Data-Driven Science and Engineering: Machine Learning, D...
We spoke with ecologist Dr. Meredith Palmer and embedded engineer Akiba about lions, terror, and technology. Akiba works for FreakLabs.org on global conservation projects. We talked about their Boombox which Meredith uses to create experiments to map the landscape of fear in predator/prey relationships. While this may look like pranking animals with jump scares, well, there is real science being done. What would it look like to be smooched by a lioness? ( Video ) Bird hears lion, decides to go o...
Komathi Sundaram spoke with us about her enthusiasm for tests and test automation. We talked about the different joys of testing vs. development, setting up CI servers, and different kinds of tests including unit, hardware-in-the-loop, and simulation. It may sound dry but we had a lot of fun. Komathi's site is TheKomSea.com which hosts her blog as well as contact info. She will be speaking on automated hardware in the loop test processes at the Embedded Online Conference . Transcript Nordic Semi...
We spoke with Janet Hansen about the world of professional costumery (with electronics) and becoming an artist. Janet's business is Enlighted where you can find custom illuminated clothing as well as Janet's ready-made art. Janet's personal site is janethansen.com which is more focused on her artistic pursuits. Janet mentioned Seeed's MSGEQ7 . We talked about Janet's light up pillow with Debra Ansell on 494: All Tech Is Wearable — Embedded . Transcript If you're interested in the intersection of...
At the end of this week's show, Elecia reads a Winnie the Pooh poem as Cookie Monster death metal. Before that, Chris and Elecia chat about mental health, journaling, personal projects, and listener questions. Please sign up for the Nordic Giveaway ! You can also sign up for the Embedded newsletter . Maybe now with job postings? Elecia's journaling notebook is this one on JetPens (which is where she gets her nice pens and some of her stickers and washi tape). From discussing some listener messag...
OpenMV has a new Kickstarter so CEO Kwabena Agyeman chatted with us about more powerful (and smaller!) programmable cameras. See OpenMV 's site for their existing cameras. See their (already funded!) kickstarter page for the super powerful N6 and the ridiculously small AE3. Note that OpenMV still is committed to open source. See their github if you want to know more. Edge AI is the idea of putting intelligence in the devices (instead of in the cloud). There is an advocacy and education foundatio...
Professor Shimon Schocken spoke with us about teaching computer science from NAND logic gates to arithmetic units, micro assembly, virtual machines, compilers, operating systems, and the Tetris games. We also talk about good design, good interfaces, and good tests. Shimon's book is Elements of Computing Systems and the website with the course lecture notes, slides, videos, simulators, and everything you need is nand2tetris.org . Shimon mentioned his work with teaching math, that is www.matific.c...
Professor Cindy Harnett spoke to us about new and different sensors and actuators, primarily designed for soft robotics and fabricated with relatively low cost materials. Cindy is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Louisville where she runs the Harnett Lab . The papers we discussed are here . You can find a longer list of Cindy's papers on Google Scholar . The video of the SESAME actuator is especially interesting. Transcript Nordic Semiconductor has been the...
Debra Ansell joined us to talk about finding friends and exchanging neat gifts, accidentally tricking people into making unmanufacutable boards, and happy, blinking lights. Debra is usually known by the moniker GeekMomProjects (also her website is geekmomprojects.com ). She has been writing for Make Magazine . Debra won one of the SuperCon badge add-on awards so her poseable Bendy SAO will be available at SuperCon Europe. Some other things we mentioned: Seeed Studio XIAO board Adafruit QT Py Deb...
Elecia and Chris talk with each other about the state of Chris' mind, what makes an embedded developer stand out, "LEGO block" based design, unit tests, and astronomy. Whew! Elecia was recently on the Changelog podcast, talking about the world of embedded systems . Chris has been working with Micropython (we talked with Damien George about Micropython on episode 456 ). He's using a Pyboard to start, but is looking to move on to this board from Sparkfun. Wikipedia has a nice reference on what the...
