Alpenglow’s Carrie Sundra spoke with us about frivolous circuits, solder live streaming, and yarn. Alpenglow Industries sells frivolous circuits, some pre-built (like FUnicorn) and some are buildables such as the cute but evil heart soldering kits called PS-I Hate You . Carrie’s YouTube channel is alpenglowindustries where she livecasts Wednesday afternoon Pacific Time. You can still watch the Blob Solder sesh with Debra of GeekMomProjects . Please send pictures of your blobs. One of the recent ...
Oct 14, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 389
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 book is...
Oct 07, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 275
Alan Cohen joined us to talk about brain waves, medical product development, open source, and helpful engineering. Alan has been working on VolksEEG ( volkseeg.org , github.com/VolksEEG/VolksEEG ). This is an EEG ( wiki Electroencephalography ) which detects brain waves. It uses the TI ADS1299 EEG monitoring chip and the Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Sense . Alan wrote Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market , published by O’Reilly. He talked about it on a previous episode: 269...
Sep 30, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 388
Chris and Elecia discuss civic duties, the CAN bus, fulfilling Kickstarter orders, and the answers to a series of questions about embedded systems. Elecia was recently introduced to TRIZ inventive principles ( wikipedia page ) and started reading And Suddenly the Inventor Appeared: TRIZ: Theory of Inventive Problem Solving by Genrich Altshuller. You can support the show by becoming a patron on Patreon: patreon.com/embedded Or your company can sponsor a show, see the Sponsor page of embedded.fm...
Sep 23, 2021•59 min•Ep. 387
We spoke to author Robin Sloan about his books and near-future science fiction. Robin wrote Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore and Sourdough . Find Robin on twitter as @robin_____sloan . Robin’s website is robinsloan.com . Go there for some short stories, sign up for his newsletter and check out his new ‘zine (also at wizard.limo ). Oh! Don’t forget his blog, including a description of his neural net for audio generation and for writing . Some books Robin suggested: Home: A Short History of an Ide...
Sep 16, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 235
Sunshine Jones spoke with us about synthesizers, electronics, and philosophy. Find him on twitter @Sunshine_Jones and instagram at sunshine_jones_ Sunshine’s music is most easily found at TheUrgencyOfChange.com . His writing is at Sunshine-Jones.com . We talked about Sunshine’s User’s Guide to the Roland SE-02 . That includes Ahmed, a track produced using only the SE-02. Sunshine also wrote about building a polysynth . The intro music is an excerpt from LELEK, released on Air Texture Vol. V. The...
Sep 09, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 230
Ingo Muschenetz spoke with us about software, management, podcasts, and interacting with people. Ingo’s LinkedIn page Ingo works for Axway, they are hiring: Axway Careers Ingo keeps up with many podcasts, here are some of his favorites: Podcasts that talk about a complex topic, provide insight Throughline Planet Money Indicator https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510325/the-indicator-from-planet-money Freakonomics Podcasts with interviews and discussions about lives and careers Conan OBrian https://www...
Sep 02, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 386
Jeremy Fielding spoke with us about mechanical engineering, robotics, robot operating system, YouTube, and solving problems. You can find all of Jeremy’s links on his main site: jeremyfielding.com but here are a few short cuts: YouTube channel: Jeremy Fielding Twitter: @jeremy_fielding Instagram: @jeremy_fielding Patreon: jeremyfieldingsr Jeremy’s Industrial arm punching video Elecia’s typing robot Jeremey had a neat way to go about solving a problem. He called it Dr. FARM: D Define the problem ...
Aug 26, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 385
Liam Cadigan joined us to talk about founding a successful startup from a college capstone project. Liam is a co-founder of InspectAR and worked on the board files the system uses. Liam can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter . Check out InspectAR . They are also on Twitter and on Instagram . The Inventor's Dilemma: The Remarkable Life of H. Joseph Gerber...
Aug 19, 2021•52 min•Ep. 384
Alex Glow 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 . You can find her on Twitter at @glowascii . 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 monito...
Aug 13, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 271
Mario Marchese (aka Mario the Maker Magician) spoke with us about robots performing magic, humans performing magic, and writing a book about making magic. We also covered art, making, learning, Sesame Street, performance, design, humor, Piff the Magic Dragon [sic], magic secrets, and gracefully handling technological failure. You can find Mario on: His website mariothemagician.com YouTube ( MariotheMagicianNYC ) Instagram ( mariothemagician ) Twitter ( @mariomagician ) Facebook ( mariothemagicia...
Aug 05, 2021•57 min•Ep. 383
Leah Buechley spoke with us about the intersection of computer science and art. She is an associate professor in the computer science department of the University of New Mexico where she directs the Hand and Machine research group. Her website is leahbuechley.com , her research group website is handandmachine.cs.unm.edu . You can find her on Twitter at @leahbuechley. She wrote the book Textile Messages: Dispatches From the World of E-Textiles and Education and developed the LilyPad Arduino for w...
Jul 29, 2021•55 min•Ep. 382
Chris ( @stoneymonster ) and Elecia ( @logicalelegance ) discuss Blender, Make, TCP/IP, and listener questions (mostly about the podcast itself). Lightweight IP : an open source TCP/IP stack for embedded systems Look for Lazy Tutorials for Blender in Ian Hubert’s YouTube Channel or if you want something a little simpler, try the Blender Beginner Tutorial (donut!) . Ukulele and acoustic guitar kits are at StewMac.com Book with sponge sneeze information: Brilliant Abyss by Helen Scales This episod...
Jul 22, 2021•58 min•Ep. 381
Adelle Lin ( @Adellelin ) spoke with us about wearables, art, playfulness, and getting together in virtual reality. Adelle’s website is touchtech.io . For some VR get togethers, Adelle recommends AltSpace ( altvr.com ) and Mozilla Hubs ( hubs.mozilla.com ). Some other remote get togethers: Virtual Burning Man (August 29 - September 7, 2021) A. Maze Conference (July 21-24, 2021, remote) We mentioned the Nautilus jigsaw puzzle from Nervous Systems but actually have the smaller Ammonite one ....
Jul 16, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 380
Tom Anderson ( @tomacorp ) joined us to talk about floating pins, ADCs, and teaching and learning things. Tom mentioned Horowitz and Hill’s Art of Electronics and the vintage books on TubeBooks.org . Tom wrote about JFETs and vacuum tubes and Power Supply Filter Design for PCBs . He recommended the TI app note on floating inputs and a power supply book: Modern DC-to-DC Switchmode Power Converter Circuits . You can fine more of Tom’s writing on Medium and the Tempo Automation blog . Other books: ...
Jul 08, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 379
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 ...
Jul 02, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 269
Nitya Narasimhan ( @nitya ) spoke with us about visualizing learning, visual storytelling, sketchnotes, and finding a job that satisfies. Nitya’s sketchnotes are all available on the @sketchthedocs Twitter stream that includes links to the hi-res drawing, a time-lapse of the drawing being created, and a blog post describing the information in more detail. The hi-res images are also on github , or if you have fast internet to download them all: cloud-skills.dev . If you’d like to create your own ...
Jun 24, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 378
On this quick bonus episode, Elecia and Christopher chat about their various recent projects, some of which have just been released into the wild. Christopher’s band 12AX7 just launched their album Kickstarter, which was selected as one of Kickstarter’s "Projects We Love”. Check it out here if you are interested in finding out more or backing it. It’ll run through July 16th at 10am Pacific Time. Elecia’s Embedded Online Conference talk on map files will be posted publicly on June 22nd, so be on ...
Jun 18, 2021•21 min
Erin Kennedy ( @RobotGrrl ) spoke with us about learning new things, nice robots at the beach, lighting up fog voxels, and being part of the maker community. Erin’s Robot Missions ( @RobotMissions ) was founded to develop robots to clean shorelines of plastic. Her personal website is robotgrrl.xyz (check out the project showcase ). Erin also worked on a Hackaday Dream Team that worked on innovations to reduce the environmental impact of lost or abandoned fishing equipment....
Jun 17, 2021•55 min•Ep. 377
From his view in retirement, David Comer spoke with us about continuing to learn, staying engaged in an engineering career, and how the Galileo memory module worked.
Jun 10, 2021•59 min•Ep. 376
Brittany Postnikoff ( @Straithe ) spoke with us about scary robots, neat stickers, and contributing to open source projects. Brittany’s website is straithe.com and her sticker channel is twitch.tv/str41the . Her github repo has curated reading lists on technical topics . She’s working at Great Scott Gadgets , maker of a variety of hardware tools including Luna , a toolkit for working with USB. (This was mentioned on a previous Embedded show, 337: Not Completely Explode with Kate Tempkin.) And if...
Jun 03, 2021•55 min•Ep. 375
Tenaya Hurst Conklin ( @TenayaHurst ) discussed STEAM teaching tools and kits from RAFT ( @RAFTBayArea ). RAFT is at raft.net . The Abiotic Dissection activity is pretty amusing (from the STEAM Learning Sheets ) as are the games in the idea sheets . They also have a summer camp and a Youtube channel . Tenaya’s website is roguemaking.com . She was previously on Embedded 49: Is that an Arduino in your pocket?...
May 27, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 374
Sarah Petkus offers to let her robot lick Christopher's leg. Christopher agrees reluctantly once we determine the saliva will be anti-bacterial hand sanitizer. Sarah is a kinetic artist and some of her projects include a robot army (built your own from parts printed out or purchased at robot-army.com ), Noodlefeet , and Carl (the flamingo of pendulum inversion). Her Zoness.com site is an umbrella for her drawn and robotic art. Specifically, you may enjoy her webcomic Gravity Road , her YouTube c...
May 20, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 142
It’s another Elecia and Chris episode and this time we cover handling hourly work when the task doesn’t neatly divide into hours, using Docker (and Conda and Virtualenv) for development, growing the podcast, overdoing conference talks, and trying to find a new laptop. Phew! The Embedded Online Conference is coming up the week of May 17th 2021, and Elecia’s talk will be Buried Treasure and Map Files (Note: the coupon code is still valid and mentioned early in the episode. Elecia will also put up ...
May 13, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 373
Anne Barela (@anne_engineer) spoke with us about working as an engineer in the US Foreign Service and writing tutorials for Adafruit . Anne has also written two books: Getting Started with Adafruit Trinket and Getting Started with Adafruit Circuit Playground Express . To see Anne’s writing on Adafruit, check out her page: learn.adafruit.com/users/AnneBarela We also looked at Adafruit’s Home Automation board ....
May 06, 2021•55 min•Ep. 372
Doug Ellison (@doug_ellison) , Engineering Camera Team Lead at NASA’s JPL and Martian photographer, spoke with us about low power systems, cameras, clouds, and dust devils on Mars. The best paper for learning more is from NASA’s JPL site: The Mars Science Laboratory Engineering Cameras Mars rovers wiki...
Apr 29, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 371
Alvaro Prieto ( @alvaroprieto ) spoke with us about cheese, making, work, the reverse engineering podcast, weather, and motivation. Alvaro is a host of the Unnamed Reverse Engineering podcast . Some of his favorite episodes include #41 with Samy Kamkar , #14 with Joe Grand , and #23 with Major Malfunction . (Jen Costillo co-hosts the show and has been on Embedded several times .) Alvaro works at Sofar Ocean , making oceanic sensing platforms. He has a personal website linking to his other exploi...
Apr 22, 2021•59 min•Ep. 370
Chris and Elecia talk with each other about contracting, architecture, origami research, Digilent’s new oscilloscope, TensorFlow, map files, conference talks, art and the upcoming 12AX7 album. Digilent sent us a pre-production Analog Discovery Pro ADP3450 . Elecia’s Origami Github . Embedded Patreon Embedded Online Conference talk Buried Treasure and Map Files (Note: the coupon code from Jacob’s show is still valid and Elecia will put up a copy of her talk on YouTube.) 12XA7 , we’ll let you know...
Apr 15, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 369
Finally! An episode with version control! And D&D! Chris Svec (@christophersvec) joins us to discuss why version control is critical to professional software development and what the most important concepts are. T-Shirts are on sale for a limited time: US distributor and EU distributor . You can read more from Chris on the Embedded Blog . He writes the ESE101 column (new posts soon!). If you are new to version control or learning git, Atlassian has a great set of posts and tutorials from high le...
Apr 08, 2021•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 250
Al Sweigart (@AlSweigart) spoke with us about getting better at Python programming. Al’s book site is InventWithPython.com . You can find his books there as well as No Starch Press and Amazon . Automate the Boring Stuff with Python Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python Cracking Codes with Python Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python Al’s personal site ( alsweigart.com ) has talks, videos, and a lot of code to look at. Or check out his github repo including the small text based games: https://g...
Apr 01, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 368
