Christopher ( @stoneymonster ) and Elecia ( @logicalelegance ) discuss embedded systems education and project documentation. Elecia wrote about her love of notebooks on the https://www.embedded.fm/blog-index . yEd , for when you don’t have Visio. Asciiflow.com , for when you don’t have yEd (or you want to put diagrams in your comments) We talked about many different documents and tried to note design vs implementation, product vs engineering vs user, and why we wanted them. We didn’t mention mec...
May 10, 2019•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 288
Crossing machine intelligence, robotics, and medicine, Patrick Pilarski ( @patrickpilarski ) is working on smart prosthetic limbs. Build your own learning robot references: Weka Data Mining Software in Java for getting to know your data, OpenIA Gym for understanding reinforcement learning algorithms, Robotis Servos for the robot (AX is the lower priced line), and five lines of code: Patrick even made us a file (with comments and everything!). Once done, you can enter the Cybathlon . (Or check ou...
May 02, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 187
Kate Compton ( @GalaxyKate ) spoke with us about casual creators, Twitter bots done cheap and quick, and the creativity that is within each of us. Kate’s website is galaxykate.com . Her Phd dissertation defense is interesting, see it on youtube.com . She is joining UCSC’s CROSS to do more work on casual creators and open source software. (We talked to Carlos Maltzan, the head of CROSS in 285: A Chicken Getting to the Other Side .) Tracery is an open source story generator using a specific gramma...
Apr 25, 2019•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 287
Colin O’Flynn ( @colinoflynn ) spoke with us about security research, power analysis, and hotdogs. Colin’s company is NewAE and you can see his Introduction to Side-Channel Power Analysis video as an intro to his training course. Or you can buy your own ChipWhisperer and go through his extensive tutorials on the wiki pages. ChipWhisperer on Hackaday ColinOFlynn.com Some FPGA resource mentioned: Fpga4fun.com TinyFpga.com MyHdl.org (Python!)...
Apr 18, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 286
Carlos Maltzahn joined us to talk about graduate studies in open source software, research incubators, and how software development tools can be used to aid the reproduction of scientific results. Carlos is the founder and director of the Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS) . He is also an adjunct professor of computer science and engineering at UC Santa Cruz. Some projects we spoke about: Jeff LeFevre — Skyhook: using programmable storage in Ceph to make Postgres and other datab...
Apr 11, 2019•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 285
Ori Bernstein ( @oribernstein ) joined us to talk about the dielectric constants of foods, reflective energy steering, and smart microwaves. Elecia got a little silly. Ori works at Level Hot Pantry for more about the smart microwave, check out his !!ConWest talk . Ori has a github and personal site . EMSL papadum testing (where our thumbnail came from, with permission) Hackaday explained recently why grapes explode Short intro to how a microwave works...
Apr 04, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 284
Jennifer Wang ( @jenbuilds ) spoke with us about machine learning, magic wands, and getting into hardware. For more detail about her magic wand build, you can see Jen’s Hackaday SuperCon talk or her !!ConWest talk. The github repo is well documented with pointers to slides from her SuperCon talk and an HTML version of her Jupyter notebook. Check out this good introduction to machine learning from scikit-learn. It was their choosing the right estimator infographic we were looking at. (Elecia has ...
Mar 28, 2019•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 283
We spoke with Laughlin Barker of OpenROV ( @OpenROV ) about underwater drones, underwater navigation, underwater exploration of the Antarctic, and extraordinarily large (underwater) jellyfish. Watch this video of a Trident ROV being eaten by a shark… yes, you get to see the inside of a shark. S.E.E. Initiative: Science Exploration Education from National Geographic Laughlin left us with a coupon code for the Trident ROV . Please remember to invite us along on your ROV’ing....
Mar 21, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 282
Combining a love of engineering with a love of words, Jenny List ( @Jenny_Alto ) is a contributing editor at Hackaday ( @Hackaday ). Jenny’s writing at Hackaday including Debunking the Drone Versus Plane Hysteria and Ooops, Did We Just Close An Airport Over a UFO Sighting? Previously Jenny worked for Oxford English Press working on computational linguistics software. While there she wrote post about the word “hacker” . Elecia has been secretly dreaming of being a lexicographer since reading Word...
Mar 14, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 281
Chris ( @stoneymonster ) and Elecia ( @logicalelegance ) talk about design patterns, conferences, and Molotov cocktails. Wrapper / Decorator / Facade Observer aka subscriber/publisher ( caveat ) Delegation and Dependency Injection Model View Controller (very important if somewhat dated UI pattern) PyFlakes is a static Python checker KiCAD Conference is in Chicago on April 26-27, 2019 BangBangConWest 2019 is over but the videos will be up soon including the one Elecia noted about liking things (w...
Mar 08, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 280
Valve's Alan Yates ( @vk2zay ) spoke with us about the science and technology of virtual reality. Elecia looked at the iFixIt Teardown of the HTC Vive system as she was unwilling to take apart Christopher's system. Alan shared some of his other favorite reverse engineering efforts: Doc OK’s Lighthouse videos , documentation on github by nairol , and a blog by Trammell Hudson . Alan's sensor circuit diagrams were on twitter: SparkleTree sensor circuit (think simplified) and the closer-to-producti...
Mar 01, 2019•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 162
Patrick Yeon ( @patyeon ) spoke with us about nonprofit spaceships then asked our opinions about embedded software. Pat is working for something something nonprofit space something something . To fill in some of the blanks, apply for a job on NonprofitSpaceship.org . Pat was previously on episode 153: Space Nerf Gun when we talked about cost-optimized satellites. We talked about several books: Turn the Ship Around! A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders by L. David Marquet Managers Path:...
Feb 22, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 279
Matthew Liberty ( @mliberty1 ) shared good advice for lowering power. We talk about different ways to measure current (Matt has a nice write-up ) and things software can do to decrease power consumption. Sleeping is critical, of course, as is choosing your clock speed and setting the GPIOs to good states. Everything is fine until you start getting into the microamps, then your multimeter measurements may start to fail you. (EEvblog explains why in his uCurrent intro .) Eventually, you may want t...
Feb 15, 2019•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 278
Jie Qi ( @qijie ) spoke with us about making paper-based electronics ( @Chibitronics ) and learning about patent law (via @Patentpandas ). Jie Qi is the founder of Chibitronics , a crafting electronics platform that uses paper and stickers to create (and teach) circuits. Building the company and working on electronics-filled pop-up books led to the realization that patent law does apply to open source maker-type companies. She started PatentPandas.org to share what she’s learned. Jie is not the ...
Feb 08, 2019•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 277
Jesse Rutherford ( @BentTronics ) gave us an in-depth look at the 555 timer IC ( wiki ). Jesse runs Bent-tronics.com and wrote The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to the 555 Timer ( Amazon ). Some great 555 projects: 555 Decimal Adding Machine 555 found in a drill trigger speed controller as seen on the Ben Heck Show 555 found inside a solar charger controller, video by Julian Ilett Somehow, despite it being in the plan, we didn’t mention the Evil Mad Scientist The Three Fives Kit: A Discrete 555 Time...
Jan 31, 2019•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 276
Janelle Shane ( @JanelleCShane ) shared truly weird responses from AIs. Her website is AIWeirdness.com where you can find machine-learning-generated ideas for paint colors , ice cream , and cocktails (and many other things). We never said they were good ideas. Janelle’s FAQ will help you get started trying out RNNs yourself. We recommend the Embedded show titles . We talked about BigGAN which generates pictures based on input images. Wikipedia list of animals by number of neurons Janelle’s upcom...
Jan 25, 2019•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 275
Ivan Kravets ( @ikravets ) spoke with us about PlatformIO ( @PlatformIO_Org ), IDEs, embedded libraries, and RISC-V. PlatformIO is an editor, an integrated development environment with debugging and unit testing, and/or a library index. Its goal is to make embedded development easier and more consistent across host operating systems and development hardware. It is also a .org because the goal is to make all of this open source and free to engineers. Ivan Kravets is the founder of PlatformIO.org ...
Jan 18, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 274
Chris and Elecia chat with each other about the new year. All is fine until she starts quizzing him about some language details of his new project. Many object-oriented resources suggest using composition (has-a) over inheritance (is-a-type-of) ( wiki ). Where do swift extensions fit in? It seems to me (Elecia here) that extension is invisible composition that allows adding of functions. For example, say you want a TiltSensor and you already have an ImuSensor object so you need to add a function...
Jan 11, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 273
Chris Gammell ( @Chris_Gammell ) of The Amp Hour ( @TheAmpHour ) joined us to talk about the state of the industry, listeners, guests, and life in general. Embedded’s accounting episode ( 150: Sad Country Song ) Contextual Electronics Consulting forum ( requires you to apply ) Remote work 250: Yolo Snarf Excellent video on how prototype PCBs have improved over the years Quickly falling cost of dev boards Elecia worked on learning and building robots and happily got a related job Chris W is build...
Dec 28, 2018•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 272
Alex Glow ( @glowascii ) filled our heads with project ideas. Alex is the Resident Hardware Nerd at Hackster.io . Her page is glowascii and you might want to see Archimedes the AI robot owl and the Hardware 101 channel . They have many sponsored contests including BadgeLove . Lightning round led us to many possibles: It you were building an IoT stuffed animal, what would you use? Mycroft and Snips are what is inside Archimedes. If you were building a camera to monitor a 3d printer, what would yo...
Dec 21, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 271
James Grenning ( @jwgrenning ) joined us to talk about Test Driven Development, dealing with legacy code, and cleaning out very large pipes. James is the author of Test Driven Development for Embedded C . If you want to take his live online course, check out the remote delivered TDD classes on Wingman Software . His blog has many great articles including TDD How-to: Get Your Legacy C into a Test Harness and TDD Guided by ZOMBIES . Book: Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers Ja...
Dec 14, 2018•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 270
Alan Cohen ( @proto2product ) wrote a great book about taking an idea and making it into a product. We spoke with him about the development process and the eleven deadly sins of product development. We did not talk about ultra-precise death rays. Books we discussed: Alan’s Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market Elecia’s Making Embedded Systems The Mythical Man-Month, Anniversary Edition: Essays On Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. The Manager's Path: A Guide ...
Dec 06, 2018•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 269
Christopher White resurrects an Apple ][+ with his brother Matthew White. This is a show about the software Christopher and Matthew wrote when they were kids and the hardware they wrote it on. Matthew's favorite fictional robot (we should have asked): Venus Probe from Six Million Dollar Man . We did ask about his favorite fictional computer and there is a video for that too. Apple ][+ Wiki Timex Sinclair Z81 Wiki Eric Schlaepfer's Monster 6502 Grant's 6502 Computer Kerbal Space Program for the A...
Nov 30, 2018•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 164
After many bouts of lightning round, we finally got our lightning questions answered by Eric Brunning ( @deeplycloudy ). Eric is a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas Tech University specializing in storm electrification and lightning . You can hear some of Eric’s field adventures by listening to his episode of the Don’t Panic Geocast show. The Wikipedia page for lightning will lead you down many strange pathways. Though the Wikipedia Lightning Energy Harvesting page may convince you that...
Nov 15, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 268
Lindsey Kuper ( @lindsey ) spoke with us about !!Con West , being a new professor , and reading technical journals. The call for speakers for !!Con West is open until November 30, 2018. The conference will be in Santa Cruz, CA on February 23-24. Lindsey’s blog is Composition.al and it has advice for !!Con proposals , advice for potential grad students , and updates on Lindsay’s work . The Banana Slug is the UCSC mascot. Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System by Leslie L...
Nov 09, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 267
Chris ( @stoneymonster ) and Elecia ( @logicalelegance ) talk about conferences, simulations, and future episodes. Simulation/Emulation: QEMU and Renode . Chris also noted there were QEMU for STM32 instances such as this one from beckus . For conferences, we named several but had no particularly useful advice. We did recommend classes such as James Grenning’s training on TDD in Embedded Systems and Jack Ganssle’s Better Firmware Faster . There are several (free) machine learning courses availabl...
Nov 01, 2018•51 min•Ep. 266
Anita Pagin gave us an insider’s view of being a recruiter. Anita recently started at Carbon3D and is recruiting for software and hardware . Anita also does career coaching on the side . Given the advice she gave us for free, imagine what she could tell you if you paid her. Finally, Elecia’s favorite list of resume keywords ....
Oct 26, 2018•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 265
Chris Svec ( @christophersvec ) returns to chat about recruiting for embedded jobs and to help us answer listener questions. Also, he’s looking for engineers to join him at iRobot . Want to get into embedded and don’t know how? We did a show about that: 211: 4 Weeks, 3 Days . Also, there is an EdX class that is popular and a Coursera course that may be useful . You can meet up with Chris at Hackaday Supercon in Pasadena, CA on Nov 2-4. Fulgurites are cooled lightning....
Oct 18, 2018•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 264
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...
Oct 12, 2018•57 min•Ep. 109
Professor Angela Sodemann of @ASU spoke with us about new ways of teaching, robotics, and haptic displays . Angela’s robotics courses can be found at RoboGrok.com , including the parts kit . Note that they focus on creating usable robotics as well as teaching theory so there is math, code, and hardware....
Oct 04, 2018•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 263
