Kathleen Vaeth of MicroGen Systems (@MicroGenSystems) spoke with Elecia (@LogicalElegance) about energy harvesting using MEMS devices. Some introductory videos: BOLT™ Micro Power Generator An energy harvester enables TI eZ430 with Linear LTC3588 While we missed it on the show, Kathleen also wanted to mention MicroGen Systems' finite element modeling partners: SoftMEMS and Open Engineering ....
Author Laura Lemay ( @lemay ) spoke with Elecia ( @logicalelegance ) about writing books, APIs, code, and science fiction. Laura wrote many of the Teach Yourself ... in 21 Days books: her bibliography on Amazon . Laura's blog includes short stories. November is National Novel Writing Month, see the NaNoWriMo site Edward Tufte wrote the amazing Envisioning Information (among many other beautiful and informative books) Neal Stephenson wrote Diamond Age Laura suggests Patrick Ness' The Knife of Nev...
From the MEMS Industry Group Executive Congress : Ivo Stivoric, co-founder of the Body Media which was purchased by Jawbone CEO Sam Guilaume and Dave Rothenberg of Movea Stephen Walsh, ISKN – iSketchnote , one of the pitches in the MEMS Elevator Pitch Session From the 2013 IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference : David Peter works with New Life International . His paper was "A Simple Algorithm for Chlorine Concentration Control"...
In this in-depth technical discussion, Dr. Ken Lunde helps Elecia understand how to internationalize her (memory constrained) device. CJVK Information Processing , Ken's excellent O'Reilly book on internationalization [Note: there is a 40% off print and 50% off ebook coupon in the last few minutes of the show.] Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) Images of the bone ideograph that is different between Chinese and Japanese (U+9AA8) can be found on Wikipedia . Other sources of information: Ken's CJK Typ...
Jen Costillo surfaced briefly from her startup-induced blackout to share her wisdom about manufacturing consumer products. They discussed new product development and working from (and making modifications to) Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, CA. Jen and Elecia pined for this (probably not really a two pack) microscope ....
Listener Jim Gf posed an interesting question about how to tell if you are a good embedded software engineer. Producer Christopher White joins Elecia to fail to give an answer. While they mention the embedded C test , they devolve into "why would you ask that question?", impostor syndrome , and methods for dealing with it . (Normally our podcasts are recorded during the day but this one was after a long, fairly grueling day for the co-hosts. You may hear the clink of glass as we drank a nice Pin...
Jeri Ellsworth joins Elecia to talk about about co-founding Technical Illusions and their virtual and augmented reality product CastAR . Jeri gives an in-depth introduction to virtual reality, augmented reality and motion sickness. They also talk about hardware engineers working with software engineers, the CastAR's Kickstarter , children's toys, and tagging sharks for science ....
Jordan Hart from Digital Media Academy joined Elecia to discuss ways to make science, technology, and engineering fun for kids through Minecraft, Arduino robotics, and music. DMA video: Robotics and Electrical Engineering with Arduino TED talk: The child-driven education which describes the "method of the grandmother" teaching style. Georgia Tech online CS Master's degree Sincere apologies to fans of Gottfried Leibnitz, he had a truly amazing career that went well beyond calculus, read about it ...
Rob Mitchell and Elecia discuss management, what they like about project schedules, and lessons learned on the path from engineer to manager.
Phil King of Weekend Engineering returned to give Elecia advice on how to fabricate a board, both in a professional capacity and for garage projects. EaglePCB is a commercial package which is also available as a free, noncommercial version for small 2-layer boards. Other open source packages mentioned include Kicad and gEDA . Some board fabricators provide free tools that work only with their fab houses (such as ExpressPCB ). Digikey's SchemeIt provides a way to get a PDF schematic (and a BOM), ...
Karen Field ( @karenfield ) and Elecia talk about 2014 DesignWest, the embedded systems conference, and how to submit your idea for a session. 2014 DesignWest is March 31 - April 3, 2014. Call for abstracts is open, submit your idea ! Speaker benefits include speaker room, speaker party, full conference pass, conversation starting badge for networking, plus resume fodder....
Elecia White and Amy Button discuss Amy's dream of going to Mars, her previous role in training astronauts to handle disasters, and her current work on a magic box of rocks that will keep Orion's air breathable. Mars One Amy's applicant page (with video ) Nixon's moon disaster speech Amy's favorite other applicant...
Elecia White spoke with Elizabeth Brenner about devices that can be used to help families worry less about grandparents who live alone (and 87-year-old neighbor friends named Dolores). Life Alert is the big name in senior push-button call systems. Life Call are the "Help, I've fallen and I can't get up" people. (See the commercial !) Life Call and Lileline have accelerometers to detect falls. Twilio allows programs to send and receive phone calls and text messages using its web service APIs. If ...
Elecia tries to get a handle on whether Agile works with embedded software. Curtis Cole ( @citizencurtis ) argues in favor of user stories, scrums, and story points. Agile software development on Wikipedia Test Driven Development for Embedded C by James Grenning "Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those oth...
Andreas Eieland ( @AndreasMCUguy) from Atmel joined Elecia to talk about how the AVR processor line came to life, why there is an AVR in Arduino, and the spirit of making things. Arduino AVR Freaks Atmel's AVR home OpenCores AVR FPGA implementation Elecia's new dev kit is a SAM D20 Xplained Pro...
Artist Kristin Anderson of Idle Creativity spoke with Elecia about the technology of working with slumped glass, getting started on Etsy (Elecia mentioned her craft electronic ideas), and moving from Silicon Valley technology to artistic pursuits. Kristin's Etsy store , blog , and Facebook page Elecia's intial craft electronics idea and some followup Great book for getting started: Contemporary Fused Glass Kristin suggests Marketing Creativity and Handmadeology as blogs to help build a craft bus...
Christopher White ( @stoneymonster ) emerges from his producer responsibilities to chat with Elecia about starting a podcast: the gadgetry, the software, the distribution, and, the big question, why we do it. Links from the show: Libsyn , a dedicated podcast audio hosting service. SquareSpace , fast and easy website building and hosting. 5x5 , Dan Benjamin's ( @danbenjamin ) phenomenal podcast network. Starting a podcast , Dan's guide to podcast equipment....
Dr. Edward White spoke with Elecia about how technology has changed medicine. He described gadgets used in surgery (harmonic scalpel!), how hospitals acquire tools, and why engineers should be focused on patient benefit. iPhone based EKG
Karen Lightman ( @khlightman ) joins Elecia White to talk about the infinite awesomeness of tiny MEMS devices. Recorded at the (somewhat noisy but lovely and delicious) Blue Brasserie during SEMICON West . Karen is the Executive Director of the MEMS Industry Group , the nonprofit trade association advancing MEMS across global markets. This the group that wrote the standard definitions that make MEMS easier to use, see the Resources section of their website. MEMS Executive Congress in Napa, Nov ...
Jen Costillo ( @r0b0ts0nf1r3 ) joins Elecia White to discuss the secret parts of C, keywords that only embedded software engineers seem to know about. They talk about interviewing and why these keywords make good questions for finding folks who use the language to its full potential. On the show they mention a list of embedded interview questions with answers . (Note: Elecia's book has many excellent interview questions and what interviewers look for when they ask them.) Producer Christopher Whi...
Randi Eckstein grilled Elecia White ( @logicalelegance ) on inertial sensors: when to use accelerometers vs. gyroscopes ; gyroscopes vs. rate sensors; how to make an inertial measurement unit ; the basics of quaternions and Kalman filters ; what products need which sensors (and why). Other good resources: Sensor Wiki (excellent visualizations) Guide to using IMU (step by step practical information starting with ADC capture) Sparkfun inertial sensor buying guide (descriptions on what's available ...
Elecia White is on vacation. Please enjoy some music from the Ballistic Cats !
Josh Chan and Tarun Pondicherry, founders of Light Up , join Elecia White to talk about how to teach electronics to elementary and middle school students. The Light Up Kickstarter ends on June 30, 2013, click on that link to buy your kit or to see the video (including the augmented reality smartphone application). We also talked about going on Kickstarter, being a startup and about HAXLR8R , an accelerator to help hardware startups. El's version of the traffic model of analog electronic componen...
Matt Haines ( @BeardedInventor ) of Electric Imp joins Elecia White to discuss how to connect cats (and other things) to the Internet. Buy an Imp on Adafruit but don't forget the adapter ( aka April board ). Get started with programming in Squirrel and find hardware details in the developer section of Electric Imp. We also mentioned Lockitron , a commercial product that uses Electric Imp....
Akkana Peck ( @akkakk ) joins Elecia White to talk about an introduction to Arduino workshop for high school students. Arduino boards are a fantastic way to encourage people into embedded systems. The boards are cheap , the starter kits are great, there are lots of things you can do with them, and the compiler software is free. Akkana's site (Shallow Sky) has the workshop outline , going from morning general activities to afternoon specific ones. The really simple circuit for the photo-theremin ...
Elecia and Chris ( @stoneymonster ) discuss why they chose to go into consulting and what they've learned while building Logical Elegance into the company it is. SCORE is a great resource for small business, even consulting firms. Also check your local small business administration (SBA) chapter. Elecia's salary to rate conversion can be found as a Google spreadsheet . Chris suggests Crash plan and Backblaze for backing up your client specific virtual machines (and everything else!). If you have...
Elecia White and Phil King of Weekend Engineering talk about things a hardware engineer wants software engineers to know. Drifting a bit from topic to topic, they touch on interviewing, oscilloscopes, ways to light hardware on fire, why they work on projects at home and writing novels. Some links from the show: Phil works at Lytro making amazing cameras. Elecia and Phil have worked at Leapfrog and ShotSpotter together. Very different products. Phil's oscilloscope (the one Elecia borrows) is a Te...
Elecia ( @logicalelegance ) and Jen ( @r0b0ts0nf1r3 ) compare multimeters then install the Saleae Logic to debug a problem. Elecia pines for a nifty oscilloscope. Some products discussed on the show: Saleae Logic USB Logic Analyzer (and direct Saleae website ) (Somewhat expensive) Fluke Digital Multimeter TPI 120 Compact Digital Multimeter (El's desk meter) BK Manual Ranging Tool Kit Digital Multimeter (El's other meter, not Burger King !) Radio Shack 22-801 (Jen's home meter) E xcellent article...
Featuring Elecia "El" White (@logicalelegance), Jen Costillo (@rebelbot @r0b0ts0nf1r3), and Star Simpson (@starsandrobots). This show was recorded at DesignWest, the embedded systems conference. Board and parts vendors: Sparkfun and Adafruit (both have great tutorials) Getting started boards Arduino (and AVRFreaks ) and Raspberry Pi Light things up with ThingM Find components (and datasheets) at Digikey . And Mouser , Future ( Octopart ). Avoid Alibaba.com. Amazon has a wide range of electronics...
