After a few announcements, we replayed the episode where James Grenning told us about Test Driven Development. Note: the contest mentioned in the show is over. However, the SparkFun TinkerKit contest ends December 9th so you still have time to win something! Other announcements include: Elecia was on the Don't Panic GeoCast (#97) You can send us email by hitting the contact link on embedded.fm This does not count for our Patreon because it is a repeat...
Nov 30, 2016•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chris and Elecia answer listener emails on-air. Patreon Embedded.fm blog SparkFun Tinker Kit BB8 Sphero Jewelbots (from #173 ) Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner The Wild Robot by Peter Brown...
Nov 22, 2016•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast Toni Klopfenstein ( @ToniCorinne ) joined us to talk about what it is like working at SparkFun ( @SparkFun ) and why open source hardware is important. Open Source Hardware Association ( OSHWA.org ) has a certification program for open source hardware projects and products. Some of the SparkFun products and posts we talked about: Tinker Kit SparkPunk Sound Kit FLiR Dev Kit with its hookup guide and neat video Digital handpan (electronic drum) blog post Inflatable Friends (balloon robot) blog pos...
Nov 16, 2016•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jean Labrosse of Micrium ( @Micrium ) spoke with us about writing a real time operating system (uC/OS), building a business, and caring about code quality. Take a look at the uC/OS operating systems (available for free to makers ) and Jean's excellent and free RTOS books (it was the Kinetis one that talks about the medical process). Also, check out the uCProbe which integrates with your debugger to replace some logic analyzer and oscilloscope features. Jean's blog about detecting stack overflows...
Nov 09, 2016•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast We spoke to Evan Shapiro, CTO and cofounder of Knit Health ( @KnitHealth ), about baby monitors, IoT security, neural nets, and professional poker. The Knit Health Kickstarter ends November 17, 2016. Evan recommended Google Tensor Flow and Python's Theano for an introduction to machine learning. (If those sound familiar it is because Kat Scott mentioned them as well.) Evan also suggested that if you'd like to know more about the history of neural nets, check out this post by Audrey Korenkov . If...
Nov 02, 2016•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast George Stocker ( @gortok ) spoke with us about software, Jewelbots ( @Jewelbots ) and learning embedded systems to ship the product. Elecia's book is Making Embedded Systems . George also recommended Getting Started with BLE and Programming Pearls . The processor we talked about was the Nordic nRF51 , a BLE system on a chip....
Oct 26, 2016•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast James Cameron of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) tells us about Forth, science fiction, and laptops. We have some tickets for ARM's mbed Connect conference is Oct 24, 2016 in Santa Clara. Will you be in the area? Want to go? Contact us if you want one of our free tickets! (There are still some tickets remaining.) One Laptop Per Child is one.laptop.org . Some getting started information on Forth: Mitch Bradley's Forth and Open Firmware Lessons James has been writing about putting C Forth on a Teensy ...
Oct 19, 2016•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Saar Drimer of Boldport ( @boldport ) spoke with us about the crossover of art to electronics and building a business around it. Monthly, the Boldport Club ships aesthetically-pleasing electronics kits. We discussed past projects include The Lady and Touchy on the show. The seahorse board is on the blog. Micah Scott ( @scanlime ) has entrancing videos of putting together the first club project ( Pease ) and second one ( Superhero ). Saar uses PCBMode to create his circuits. He also wrote the too...
Oct 12, 2016•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Elecia tries to get Chris to do her homework in preparation for her "Embedded Software: The Tricky Parts" presentation at IEEE-Computer Society meeting in San Jose, CA on Oct 11, 2016. If you register , you can attend, in person or online! And for free! We have some tickets for ARM's mbed Connect conference is Oct 24, 2016 in Santa Clara. Will you be in the area? Want to go? Contact us if you want one of our free tickets! (There are still some tickets remaining.) Also: their unit test framework ...
Oct 04, 2016•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast After a few new announcements, we replayed the episode where Jack Ganssle shared his wisdom on being a good embedded software engineer (hint: it takes discipline). The new announcements include: Book giveaway contest deadline Oct 1st ARM's mbed Connect conference is Oct 24th IEEE CS talk by Elecia iRobot has internships (and other jobs), check their job site and if you want to apply, email csvec. Jack's website is filled with great essays and new videos. He's also written the Art of Designing Em...
Sep 28, 2016•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast John Leeman ( @geo_leeman ) spoke with us about geophysics and associated technology. John is one of the hosts of the Don't Panic GeoCast ( @dontpanicgeo , iTunes ). Some episodes you may like: What if you calibrated your candles differently? Out of the Country (Brad Jolive on moon rocks) "Rock Drills and Beer" Undersampled Radio John is teaching a course at Penn State called Techniques of Geoscientific Experimentation . The information and textbook is online! It uses the SparkFun Inventor's Kit...
Sep 21, 2016•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Briana Morey from MC10 ( @mc10inc ) spoke with us about stretchable electronics, Tesla coils and lasers. She works at MC10, creators of the L'Oreal My UV Patch as well as the BioStampRC . MC10 is hiring ! They are in Lexington, MA, US. The embedded software position is filled already but the EE position is still open. Briana mentioned an excellent science fiction book she'd read recently: Too Like Lightning by Ada Palmer ....
Sep 14, 2016•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Chris and Elecia chat about Bayes Rule, aliens, bit-banging, VGA, and unit testing. Elecia is working on A Narwhal's Guide to Bayes' Rule . ACM has a code of software engineering ethics Toads have trackers ( NPR story ) An introduction to bit-banging SPI (Arduino, WS2812) We talked to James Grenning extensively about testing on 30: Eventually Lightning Strikes (and about his excellent book Test Driven Development for Embedded C ). We spoke with James again on 109: Resurrection of Extreme Program...
Sep 07, 2016•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Bob Apthorpe ( @arclight ) spoke with us about software, nuclear engineering, and improv. Bob is giving away three books! Send in your guess by October 1, 2016. One entry per person. (More info below.) Hackaday SuperCon is Nov 5-6, in Pasadena, CA. Bob's long languishing blog is overscope.cynistar.net . Peep (The Network Aualizer): Monitoring Your Network with Sound Safety-I and Safety-II: The Past and Future of Safety Management Now! The books you may win! Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffrey, s...
Aug 31, 2016•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Shimona Carvalho ( @shimonkey ) joins us to talk about user interface design in embedded systems. Then we talk about internationalization and localization. Then photography. Shimona's website is shimonacarvalho.com and her Flicker account is shimonkey . For an introduction to user interface design, Shimona recommended The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman . Internationalization and localization were delved in far deeper in episode 26: The Tofu Problem . Some of the material from that will ...
Aug 16, 2016•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Aug 09, 2016•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Elecia went to Hackaday's SuperCon, got to announce the Hackaday Prize 2015 winners , then talked to the organizers about their conference. The guests this week were (in order of appearance): Amber Cunningham Dan Hienzsch ( 115: Datasheeps ) Adam Fabio Brian Benchoff Aleksandar Bradic Sophi Kravitz ( 77: Goldfish, Fetch My Slippers! and 91: Save Us from Astronauts ) Mike Szczys ( 69: Look at this Entire Aisle of Standoffs ) Tamagotchi Hive Adam promised us a list of contributors to the goodie ba...
Aug 05, 2016•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nadya Peek ( @nadyapeek ) joined us to talk about making machines that build things. Nadya's website is infosyncratic.nl , which includes her blog. Nadya's dissertation defense on Making Machines that Make: Object-Oriented Hardware Meets Object-Oriented Software was standing room only. MIT Center For Bits and Atoms , which studies "how to turn data into things, and things into data." Mods.cba.mit.edu Machines that Make: MTM.cba.mit.edu...
Aug 03, 2016•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jul 26, 2016•1 hr 22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kat Scott ( @kscottz ) gave us an introduction to computer vision. She co-authored the O'Reilly Python book Practical Computer Vision with SimpleCV: The Simple Way to Make Technology See . The book's website is SimpleCV.org . Kat also suggested looking at the samples in the OpenCV Github repo . To integrate computer vision into a robot or manufacturing system, Kat mentioned ROS (Robot Operating System, ROS.org ). Buzzfeed had an article about SnapChat Filters . Kat works at Planet. And they are ...
Jul 19, 2016•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Daniel Hienzsch ( @rheingoldheavy ) and Majenta Strongheart ( majentastronghe _art ) gave us suggestions on setting up a home shop and information on setting up a maker space. Daniel is the resident engineer at SupplyFrame's Pasadena Design Lab . He still the owns and runs RheingoldHeavy.com , a company devoted to educational boards, as we talked about on episode 115: Datasheeps . Majenta's web page is MajentaStrongheart.com . We talked more about School of the Art Institute of Chicago with Sara...
Jul 12, 2016•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chris and Elecia talk to each other about compiler optimizations, bit banging I2C, listener emails, and small-town parades. Games to learn/play with assembly languages include The Human Resource Machine by Tomorrow Corporation and TIS-100 by Zachtronics . We've been enjoying the Embedded Thoughts blog. And Chris is reading Practical Electronics for Inventors and liking it. We talked a little about Interview.io's adventure in voice changing. Shirts are gone for awhile. New logo stickers are avail...
Jul 05, 2016•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Fabien Chouteau ( @DesChips ) of AdaCore ( @AdaCoreCompany ) spoke with us about the Make with Ada Programming Competition. Giveaway boards are GONE. The Ada programming language ( wiki ) is interesting in that it was designed for safety critical embedded systems (actually designed, requirements doc and everything!). The Ada Information Clearinghouse has a nice list of tutorials and books as does the very helpful Make with Ada Getting Started page . Elecia's favorite was Inspirel's Ada on Cortex...
Jun 28, 2016•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Robb Walters of Flybrix ( @flybrix ) spoke with us about LEGO-based drones. We graciously let him leave with all his hardware. This time. For a limited time, you can get an Embedded.fm tshirt: teespring.com/embedded-fm . Order by the end of June or miss out. ( More info about the shirts .) You can order your Flybrix kit and or read their controller code on github (or their controller app code ). Robb mentioned a C++ book he liked, it was Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use...
Jun 23, 2016•1 hr 24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jeri Ellsworth ( @jeriellsworth) spoke with us about the latest developments at CastAR, hiring engineers, and her favorite engine. Embedded.fm T-Shirts are available until the end of June on Teespring ( more info ). CastAR is making an augmented reality system. They are in Palo Alto, CA, USA and they are hiring . They work with Playground . Jeri was last on Embedded.fm episode 23: Go For Everything I Want ....
Jun 16, 2016•1 hr 22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jonathan Bradshaw spoke with us about working with hardware engineers, schematic reviews, and FPGAs. At the end of the podcast, Jonathan made a pitch for folks to submit proposals for the IEEE Southern Power Electronics Conference in Auckland in December. The FPGA boards Elecia mentioned were the XLR8 board and the Papillio platform (more on the latter in show #66 ). By the way, The Amp Hour is our “enemy podcast” but we actually like their show quite a lot. It is a joke. But do feel free to twe...
Jun 08, 2016•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jeff Keyzer ( @MightyOhm ) joined us to talk about consumer manufacturing, how to solder, and having a full time job and a kit company. Jeff's blog is on MightyOhm.com . The Geiger Counter kit is available at MightyOhm.com/geiger . The really, really useful Soldering Is Easy comic book is MightyOhm.com/soldercomic . At Valve, Jeff worked on the Steam Controller (hardware specs at bottom of the Valve page or for sale on Amazon ). There is also a neat video showing the manufacturing automation in ...
Jun 02, 2016•1 hr 22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Patrick Yeon of Planet Labs spoke with us about making satellites. We discussed a method of using orientation to control drag to control speed . While Patrick wasn't sure what he could say about GPS receivers on satellites, another site describes them as part of the flock. Sign up to get access to the huge Open California data set. Planet has many applications and their blog shows off some interesting finds, such as identifying illegal gold mines encroaching on rainforests , quantifying ports wi...
May 25, 2016•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chris and Elecia chat about hobbies and respond to listener feedback and questions. Chris was on an episode of Let's Drone Out, you can listen to it here or search in your favorite podcast platform. It is recorded and broadcast live every Thursday at 8 P.M. (UTC+1) on Powering On . Chris' new quadcopter is a Vortex 285 . It runs Clean Flight , an open source flight controller software package. While we had various opinions about RTOSs, we were both interested in the one Alvaro suggested to us: Z...
May 18, 2016•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Paul Sidenblad spoke to us about his engineering career, starting off with GE's work on the Gambit spy satellite. Google Protobufs Elecia read Eye in the Sky: The Story of the CORONA Spy Satellites a few years ago and remembers liking it, though this was the first time the information was useful....
May 11, 2016•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
