Producer Chris White ( @stoneymonster ) and Elecia discuss some insurmountable problems and some strategies for approaching them. Google it (or look on Stack Exchange ). Explain the problem to someone else… even if they aren't there (use a stuffed animal or write a really detailed email, anticipating potential questions). Draw a picture (system/subsystem architecture or code block diagram or a doodle). Make sure you are running what you think you are, start over from a blank slate, making no ass...
Feb 12, 2014•1 hr 1 min
Dr. Karen Shell and Elecia talk about modelling vs. building models, ocean albedo vs. ice, climate vs. weather, and science vs. policy. They gloat about being on vacation only intermittently. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) NASA's climate change home Help run climate models on your home computer at climateprediction.net Karen's class will be looking at data from NOAA's Climate at a Glance...
Jan 31, 2014•50 min
Elecia gushes about her favorite logic (and protocol) analyzer to Saleae co-founder Mark Garrison. They also discuss start-ups, manufacturing, and covering yourself with rum and pretending to be a pirate when harbor patrol arrives. Saleae Logic 8 on Amazon (or from Saleae ) Saleae Logic 16 on Amazon (or from Saleae ) Space X reusable rocket video Saleae's blog talks about Mark and Joe's boat, start here The mooshimeter multimeter (as seen on Hackaday and Dragon Innovation )...
Jan 22, 2014•53 min
Want to learn how to get from idea to schematic, through layout, all the way to physical boards? Elecia spoke with Chris Gammell about his Contextual Electronics course to teach the missing steps between what an EE learns in college and what an design engineer's job entails. Chris is co-host of the excellent electronics podcast The Amp Hour and author of Chris Gammell's Analog Life . On twitter, contact Chris via @Chris_Gammell or ask questions about the course @ContextualElec . We mentioned UT ...
Jan 15, 2014•57 min
Elecia describes to Christopher ( @stoneymonster ) how to design and create a firmware update mechanism. Hilarity ensues. 4k PC emulator Making Embedded Systems, the book, on O'Reilly (coupon in last 2 minutes of the show) or on Amazon ....
Jan 09, 20140
Alison Chaiken ( Google+ ) and Elecia discuss what you need to know to get into development for the automotive market. Check out Alison's she-devel site for a big list of links and resources or go to a Silicon Valley Automotive Open Source Group meetup to say hello. A small subset: Open source engine management system on DIYEFI Car hacking site MP3 Car Vehicle standards ISO-26262 CORRECTION: In the show, Elecia talks about airplane certification levels as though only the size of the plane matter...
Jan 02, 2014•56 min
Patrick Kane ( @PSoC_Nation ) is the director of the Cypress University Alliance , working with colleges to provide development kits and information to college (and high school) students. Happily, Patrick brought Elecia a new dev kit: CY8CKIT-042 .
Dec 24, 2013•42 min
Producer Christopher ( @stoneymonster ) joins Elecia to look through their mailbag and talk about gift ideas. Podcasts we like: The Amp Hour 99% Invisible Radiolab 5x5 network’s Back to Work Accidental tech Splendid Table (food) Some listener suggestions on where to get small run boards made: http://www.cadsoftusa.com http://www.seeedstudio.com/service/index.php?r=site/pcbService http://www.pcbcart.com/ http://oshpark.com/ Gift ideas (specifics): Dropcam and Dropcam Pro Nest thermostat and smoke...
Dec 19, 2013•1 hr 15 min
James Grenning ( @jwgrenning ) joined Elecia to talk about how to be a good programmer using Test Driven Development (TDD). James' excellent book on how to use TDD: Test Driven Development for Embedded Systems Take a class from Renaissance Software Manual test is not sustainable blog post, from James' blog Legacy code challenge from Github SOLID design principles Iterative and Incremental Development article by Craig Larman Untapped : the beer drinker's twitter To get the signed copy of James' b...
Dec 11, 2013•56 min
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 ....
Dec 04, 2013•46 min
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...
Nov 20, 2013•48 min
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”...
Nov 13, 20130
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...
Nov 07, 2013•1 hr 1 min
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 ....
Oct 30, 2013•51 min
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...
Oct 23, 2013•54 min
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 ....
Oct 16, 2013•1 hr 8 min
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 ...
Oct 09, 2013•49 min
Rob Mitchell and Elecia discuss management, what they like about project schedules, and lessons learned on the path from engineer to manager.
Oct 02, 2013•44 min
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), ...
Sep 26, 2013•1 hr 14 min
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....
Sep 18, 2013•47 min
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...
Sep 11, 2013•43 min
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 ...
Sep 04, 2013•54 min
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...
Aug 28, 2013•54 min
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...
Aug 21, 2013•48 min
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...
Aug 15, 2013•42 min
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....
Aug 07, 2013•54 min
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
Jul 31, 2013•50 min
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 ...
Jul 25, 2013•1 hr 2 min
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...
Jul 17, 2013•58 min
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 ...
Jul 09, 2013•1 hr 3 min
