Dan Shapiro ( @danshapiro ), CEO of Glowforge ( @glowforge ), speaks with us about laser cutters and his book, The Hot Seat . If you succumb to the wonder of 3D laser printers, consider using our Glowforge link so you get $100 (and we get $100). Dan's book, the one Elecia gushes about, is The Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook . Some of that information is also found in Dan's blog . If you are in the Seattle area, Glowforge is hiring! Check out their jobs page . We didn't talk much about Robot ...
Nov 12, 2015•1 hr 9 min
Windell Oskay ( @Oskay ) of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories ( @EMSL ) told us about co-authoring a book: The Annotated Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory . Some great EMSL links: A signed copy of Windell's book Dis-integrated 555 timer kit Candle flicker LEDs Food in specimen jars EMSL blog post Spherical pen plotter ( EggBot Pro! ) The book Chris brought up was Thinking Physics . Windell is also on Google Plus . Contest to get Windell's signed book ends 11/13, send in your entry!...
Nov 05, 2015•1 hr 16 min
Bob Coggeshall ( @BobCoggeshall ) runs a boutique assembly house. And he co-wrote sudo. There are sandwich jokes. Bob's business is Small Batch Assembly ( @SmallBatchA ). (There might be a discount on your first order near the end of the show. Maybe.) His pick and place machine is a Mancorp MC400 . Octopart's Common Parts Library We mentioned OSHPark a few times, Laen has been on Embedded.fm: 92: Everybody Behave, Please Boldport makes nonlinear traces ( SEAHORSE !!) Relevant XKCD panel My Date ...
Oct 28, 2015•1 hr 20 min
Chris and Elecia try out their new recording location, give advice for getting a job in embedded software, and respond to listener emails. SparkFun's Pit of Despair is a blog post about how to create products from prototypes. Visual Studio has plug-ins that support microprocessors, see Visual Micro . The Guardian reports that 2016 VW models have a different defeat....
Oct 21, 2015•58 min
We spoke with Fran Blanche ( @contourcorsets ) of Frantone about guitar tone. Fran has several articles and posts about space, electronics, and assorted whatnot at her design writings page. Her video blog is on YouTube. There are many different guitar pedals you can build for yourself as a way to get a better handle on analog electronics. Elecia found these at Mammoth Electronics . The song that was the first to have flanging was " The Big Hurt " by Toni Fisher in 1959....
Oct 14, 2015•1 hr 1 min
Kathleen Sidenblad discusses her career through Silicon Valley, from engineer at Systems Control Inc in 1976 to VP of Engineering today. For more about Kathy, check out this Storehouse interview.
Oct 01, 2015•1 hr 4 min
Ben Krasnow of the Applied Science YouTube channel talks with us about scanning electron microscopes, generating liquid nitrogen, and cookies. Hackaday Conference is Nov 14-15, 2015 in SF, CA! Call for proposals . (Ben and Elecia are Hackaday Prize Judges .) Contact Ben through twitter: @BenKrasnow Applied Science YouTube channel (and don't forget the associated Patreon ). Some specific videos we talked about: Cookie machine Electron microscope scanning vinyl record Faraday effect (control light...
Sep 24, 2015•1 hr 17 min
Morgan Allen ( @captain_morgan ) spoke with us about Sphero and Node.JS. This is all not-so-secretly a discussion of the BB8 robot. Correction: Despite Elecia's repeated insistence that these are steppers, she's just wrong. The motors are DC which only makes sense in a consumer product. More details on this in a later episode. BB8s from Amazon (probably won't arrive until next year) More info on Elecia's teardown and talk: embedded.fm/hddg The BB8 toy is based on Sphero ( buy ). They have an ope...
Sep 16, 2015•57 min
Chris and Elecia discuss listener emails and other assorted topics. Preprocessor fun BLE 4.2 writeup from EETimes and the FAQ from Bluetooth.org Drones should follow existing aviation keep out standards (Nick links us to some wiki pages) Automatic dependent surveillance NOTAM Federal Aviation Regulations: Temporary flight restrictions NYT Amazon culture article Cake under a microscope...
Sep 09, 2015•58 min
Glenn Scott ( @GlennCScott ) spoke with us about API design and techniques for writing good software. Glenn glossed over his bio but it is quite impressive. You can reach him via his PARC page . PARC's Content Centric Networking home: ccnx.org which we talked about in 75: End Up in a Puppy Fight . Literate Programming by Knuth And the more recommended Bob Martin's books While latest source code requires licensing, the binary version of CCN includes the LongBow tools (in user/local/parc/bin). Des...
Sep 02, 2015•1 hr 22 min
Daniel Hienzsch ( @ rheingoldheavy ) spoke with us about reverse engineering a board, bypass capacitors, and serial protocols. Rheingold Heavy is Dan's company for educational boards. The one he started with was the I2C and SPI education board (its fulfilled kickstarter page ). He brought us the the Graphic Equalizer Kit and Bubble Display Experimentation Pack . Dan's Arduino from Scratch blog series looks at the Arduino hardware in great detail. Contextual Electronics course for learning to bui...
Aug 26, 2015•1 hr 21 min
Andrei Chichak rejoins us to discuss error handling. Andrei's website says how to reach him or email embedded 'at' chichak.ca Windows 10 "Something Happened" error Hitchbot Book Elecia mentioned: Kindness of Strangers by Mike McIntyre Elecia's book covers logging module in Creating a System Architecture (pp 21-25) Robots and children...
Aug 19, 2015•1 hr 28 min
Clive Turvey (Clive1), master of the ST Forums, talks with us about ARM cores and answering difficult technical questions for fun. Some answers: NVIC Interrupts on the same pin number STM32F4 PWM channel 3 ST's Cortex-M7 Books (though we talked more about these being good authors, these are the ones Chris and Elecia have or want): The Definitive Guide to ARM Cortex-M3 and Cortex-M4 Processors, 3rd Edition (Joseph Yiu, 2013) The Definitive Guide to ARM Cortex-M0 and Cortex-M0+ Processors, 2nd Edi...
Aug 13, 2015•1 hr 27 min
Chris ( @stoneymonster ) and Elecia ( @logicalelegance ) chat with each other about drones, listener emails, conferences, fighting robots, and moonlighting. Elecia's Solid talk, an Introduction to Inertial Sensors is on youtube . Washington Post article about Amazon's good drone behavior Apple's IOS security guide (Elecia's security checklist ) Photon WiFi Module (Chris' Linker articles part one and part two ) DAB+ FM Digital Radio Development Board Sad autonomous fighting robot video and lightn...
Aug 04, 2015•1 hr 20 min
Natalie Silvanovich ( @natashenka ) discussed reverse engineering hardware, working on security software, and the fantastic world of Tamagotchis. Natalie's site and blog Hardware Excuse Generator Original CCC 2012 talk: Many Tamagotchis Were Harmed in the Making of this Presentation CCC 2013 talk: Even More Tamagotchis Were Harmed in the Making of this Presentation Natalie's upcoming BlackHat talk: Attacking ECMAScript Engines with Redefinition Flash exploit article for Project Zero: One Perfect...
Jul 29, 2015•50 min
BeagleBone's Jason Kridner ( @Jadon ) returns to tell us about his new book. Jason co-authored a new book: BeagleBone Cookbook: Software and Hardware Problems and Solutions (or at O'Reilly ). His older book is Bad to the Bone: Crafting Electronics Systems with Beaglebone and BeagleBone Black . Previous Embedded.fm episode 60: Fun Things You Can Make out of Beagles BeagleBoard.org's Google Summer of Code page (including BeagleSat and underwater drones !) Some information about putting Xenomai on ...
Jul 22, 2015•1 hr 25 min
James Grenning ( @jwgrenning ) returns to discuss TDD, Agile, and web courses. James was on Embedded.fm episode 30: Eventually Lighting Strikes . James' new company is Wingman Software . His excellent book is TDD for Embedded C . James suggested Training From the Back of the Room! as resource to people looking to put together a class. He uses and recommends CyberDojo as a coding instruction tool. Before Agile was Agile-for-business, it was Extreme Programming . James recommends Extreme Programmi...
Jul 15, 2015•57 min
Jen ( @RebelbotJen ) joined Chris and Elecia to discuss security, privacy, and ethics in wearable computing. Elecia's Linker post is especially relevant this week: Device Security Checklist .. There is already a standard for privacy and security: HIPAA (Title II). While not easy to read, it is a reasonable starting place. Another good (but not quite on-point) resource is the EFF Secure Messaging Scorecard , especially if you consider your device as messaging your user (it's a metaphor, ok?). Als...
Jul 08, 2015•1 hr 30 min
We talked to Craig Cook about learning embedded systems. He recently attended an embedded edX course through University of Texas . The microcontroller and boards used in the course Craig's next course will be Interactive Python through Coursera As we discussed Craig's alarm clock we mentioned many parts including: FM Module ESP8266 WiFi Module Electric Imp ( Sparkfun or Digikey , don't forget the April breakout board) Chris has also been looking at Particle.io's Photon board for WiFi + cloud dev...
Jul 01, 2015•59 min
Chris and Elecia talk about satellites, survey results, and entertainment. ESP8266 has an Arduino IDE (thanks, Karl!) Elecia will be speaking at Solid June 25th and ESC July 22nd. To celebrate the first 100 episodes, Elecia made a spreadsheet of all the guests and topics . Chris read and recommended Neal Stephenson's Seveneves . He was ambivalent about the latest incarnation of battlebots ....
Jun 24, 2015•1 hr 2 min
Manny Wright of Cortus spoke with us about developing processor IP and how it goes from RTL to silicon. Cortus development platform with a Xilinx Spartan and Arduino Due compatibility. Planet Labs satellite contest winners are announced and Elecia has a cold.
Jun 17, 2015•49 min
Atmel’s Andreas Eieland ( @AndreasMCUguy ) spoke with us about low power chips and benchmarks, including tips for measuring and achieving the lowest power possible. EEMBC has a low power benchmark: ULPBench . EETimes wrote up a great introduction to the benchmark. Atmel’s SAM-L posted some excellent numbers for ULPBench. Chris wanted to look at processors between Cortex-M4 and phone chips. Andreas suggested the SAM7 , SAM E , and Cortex-A5 . Programmable logic blocks (Look Up Tables) Coding tips...
Jun 10, 2015•1 hr 5 min
Mark VanderVoord ( @mvandervoord ) spoke with us about leading open source projects and test driven development. His site is ThrowTheSwitch.org , a good place to get started with test driven development. Get more info (and a coupon) for his course . Mark's book is Embedded Testing with Unity and CMock . Lengthy list of unit testing frameworks for C Why's Guide to Learning Ruby (free! with entertaining comics!) D Lang...
Jun 03, 2015•1 hr 10 min
Charles Lohr spoke with us about $5 WiFi (ESP8266), hacking as a hobby, arcade games, and music visualization. Updated 06/02/2015: A listener pointed out that the Arduino IDE can program the ESP8266 , probably an easier setup than Charles' original article. Also, the Linker post for this show is about getting started with BLE . Follow Charles on YouTube (or say hello on Google+ and Hackaday.io ). To get you started, here are Elecia's favorites: High Res Wifi Signal Mapping (ESP8266) ColorChord 2...
May 27, 2015•1 hr 6 min
Micah Elizabeth Scott ( @scanlime ) spoke with us about Coastermelt, art installations, FadeCandy, teaching electronics to artists, and mental health. Her Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) installation is mesmerizing, some videos . In her Coastermelt project, Micah uses the IDA disassembler . FadeCandy is for sale at Adafruit. Zen Photon is online, demonstrating ray tracing. Micah's website shows her current projects. Micah's previous Embedded.fm episode focused on FadeCandy: 41: Pink U...
May 20, 2015•1 hr 14 min
Star Simpson ( @starsandrobots ) and Jen Costillo ( @RebelbotJen ) catch up with Elecia and Chris, discussing how hobby projects have changed over the last two years since the show started. Jen's website: RebelBot Star's website and weekly drone newsletter The Buzzer . Star works at Orion (formerly OnBeep). Novena board and Star's project Balboa ODROID Open Cores Crowd supply and What it took to make the Octopart reference card...
May 06, 2015•1 hr 8 min
Andrei Chichak spoke with us about MISRA-C and ethics. Linker post: It's dangerous to go alone! Take MISRA-C Embedded.fm listener survey (please!) Andrei's has personal website (we failed to talk about his kite aerial photography , it is really neat though) and his company is CBF Systems . Plum Hall C Compiler Validation PC Lint JPL Coding Standards for C (and the mentioned video discussing Mars Code ) ISO 26262 Automobile software standard Cortex-R for high reliability systems ( ARM's descripti...
Apr 29, 2015•1 hr 24 min
Chris and Elecia talk about memetics , learning, and processors. Elecia was coy about the Pasadena party May 9th and 10th, but Hackaday announced it so you can invite yourself . She will also be speaking at the Solid conference in June in SF (email for a coupon!). She'll also be at ESC-Silicon Valley in July . Star Wars Teaser #2 and SpaceX almost-landing BLE fun: T I's CC2640 and Nordic nRF51822 (Elecia likes the BLE Nano with the free, online mbed compiler for getting started with the nRF5122)...
Apr 22, 2015•1 hr 9 min
Professor Paul Fishwick joined us to talk about CS and STEM education, excellent analogies, and the crossover of art and technology. The Linker post related to this episode managed to be reasonably topical for a change. Paul's work: UT Dallas homepage Creative Automata blog and Modeling For Everyone blog TEDx talk Aesthetic Computing , one of his books on art and CS. Online chapter . Creative Automata course Videos Radiolab Color Episode Forrester System Dynamics Max is a visual programming lang...
Apr 15, 2015•1 hr 3 min
Carrie Sundra ( @AlpenglowYarn ) spoke with us about doing a Kickstarter on her own… and nearly failing. The SkeinMinder is an automation tool for small yarn businesses (and enthusiastic amateurs). When the successful Kickstarter nearly fell short, Carrie candidly wrote about it (includes a great description of the economies of scale). Carrie’s yarn company is Alpenglow Yarn . You can use the contact page there to ask for electrical engineering help as well. Carrie is active on Instagram and her...
Apr 08, 2015•1 hr 8 min
