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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•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...
Mar 01, 2019•1 hr 22 min•Ep 162•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•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...
Nov 30, 2018•1 hr 9 min•Ep 164•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast Noah Leon made a film: Love Notes to Newton . It features the people who love and the people who built the Apple Newton . We spoke with him about the Newton and about filmmaking. Noah runs Moosefuel Media . He wanted to mention Frank Orlando of OrlandoMedia , the art designer for the film and promotional material. Profits from Love Notes to Newton go to Be The Match , a registry of bone marrow donors. You can sign up for the Newton mailing list at NewtonTalk.net . The book about the Newton devel...
Sep 28, 2018•1 hr 8 min•Ep 262•Transcript available on Metacast Helen Leigh ( @helenleigh ) is an author, education writer and maker. She spoke with us about making learning fun (and subversive). Her latest book is The Crafty Kid's Guide to DIY Electronics , out in November 2018. The instrument gloves were the mi.mu ( full version ) and the mini.mu DIY kit (coming soon to Pimoroni and Adafruit ). The mini.mu uses the BBC Micro:bit . Helen worked on earlier books including Mission Explore from the Geography Collective. These are out of print but still obtaina...
Sep 21, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep 261•Transcript available on Metacast Christopher ( @stoneymonster ) and Elecia ( @logicalelegance ) talks about vacations for learning and hobbies then answered listener questions. Chris’ toys include the Prusa I3 Mk3 and the UAD Arrow . Elecia likes Camille Fournier’s book, The Manager’s Path . She also got to plug her own book, Making Embedded Systems: Design Patterns for Great Software . Pacific spiny lumpsucker ( Eumicrotremus orbis ) at the Seymour Science Center...
Sep 14, 2018•56 min•Ep 260•Transcript available on Metacast Brandon Wilson ( @brandonlwilson ) shared his stories about hacking TI calculators (and other things). TICalc.org has the latest on getting started yourself including Z80 assemblers, or start on Brandon’s website: brandonw.net Bradon will be speaking at Hardwear.io , a security conference for the hardware and security community. The conference consists of training (11th - 12th Sept 2018) and conference (13th - 14th Sept 2018). It is in The Hague, Netherlands. His talk is The Race to Secure Texas...
Sep 07, 2018•1 hr 12 min•Ep 259•Transcript available on Metacast 
