This week, we mix things up a bit. This joint show with the Don't Panic Geocast . This episode explores what happens when electrical engineering meets geoscience in cold places. We’re joined by guest Dr. Sridhar Anandakrishnan of Penn State to talk about geopebbles, ice, climate, and more! Asimov Robot Series Anthropornis (giant penguins) Ice crystal structure Ice streams GeoPebble Propeller Programming (Book) Fun Paper Friday: The Boring Company...
Jun 28, 2017•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week we talked to Addie ( @atdiy ) and Whisker ( @whixr ), the Toymakers ( @Tymkrs ). They make electronics kits, videos, and conference badges. Toymakers site ( tymkrs.com ) has a link to their IRC channel, videos, and Tindie store (including those amazing heart simulators , the easy to make Amplify Me , and Protosynth Midi ). Their reddit community is r/Tymkrs . It has a lot more information about the CypherCon 2017 badges . More about CypherCon at cyphercon.com . Some of their ZombieTech...
Jun 22, 2017•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Phoenix Perry ( @phoenixperry ) spoke with us about physical games. Phoenix is CTO of DoItKits ( @DoItKits ) and More about Phoenix: Bot Party Her site: PhoenixPerry.com Goldsmith’s page She enjoyed Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin Physical games are sometimes called Alt Ctrl such as at the Alt Ctrl Game Jam . Phoenix co-founded Code Liberation with Nina Freeman ( http://ninasays.so/ ) and Jane Friedhoff ( http://janefriedhoff.com/ ). “Code Liberation catalyzes the creation of digital games and creati...
Jun 14, 2017•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Charlie Ladd ( @csladd ) joined us to give an overview of good hardware practices. The oil quality sensor is from VSI Oil . Recent fiction included Ready Player One , John Scalzi , and Matthew Mather . To stay current, Charlie reviews the trade magazines: EEWeb.com , EDN , ECN , and EETimes . A junior engineer's tale of woe....
Jun 08, 2017•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Professor Alex Dean spoke with us about his ARM embedded systems books and @NCState courses. Alex’s page in North Carolina State University’s department of Electrical and Computer Engineering . His book is Embedded Systems Fundamentals with Arm Cortex M Based Microcontrollers: A Practical Approach (ecopy available from the ARM Media site ). It uses the FRDM-KL25Z as the example board throughout the text. Alex also co-authored Embedded Systems, An Introduction Using the Renesas RX62N His favorite...
May 31, 2017•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Shaun Meehan ( @logiclow ) joined us to talk about robot arms and stealth rocket companies. Shaun’s rocket startup is hiring; information about the job openings are below. Shaun’s robot arm is an ABB IRB-2000 ( video of Fred ). Elecia was reading How to Choose the Right Industrial Robot when Shaun emailed. He convinced her that the MeArm Pocket Size Robotic Arm is the likely best choice for her machine learning typer project (which needs a better name). All this led to a discussion of inverse ki...
May 24, 2017•1 hr 20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 200! Let’s have a party (and a survey )! Former guests joined us in a panel-style celebration of working in embedded systems: Alvaro Prieto, Andrei Chichak, Elizabeth Brenner, Chris Svec, and Chris Gammell. Alvaro Prieto ( @alvaroprieto ) was a guest on 130: Criminal Training Camp . Andrei Chichak writes Embedded Wednesdays and was on 99: You Can Say a Boat , 114: Wild While Loops and 139: Easy to Add Blood Splatter . Elizabeth Brenner ( @eabrenner ) was a guest on 17: Facebook Status: M...
May 17, 2017•2 hr 38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chris and Elecia answer listener questions about contracting (and consulting). Reminders: T-shirts ! Hat contest ! Digilent contest announced in #197 ! It all ends around May 18th so get your entries in now! The original discussion was on episode 4: Are We Not Lawyers? Elecia's salary to rate conversion can be found as a Google spreadsheet ....
May 10, 2017•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Walter Stockwell spoke with us about the legalization of drones, UAVs, UASs, and UFOs. Walter works at DJI which makes the Phantom . They have some jobs open . Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson Intel/Pepsi drone show at SuperBowl halftime AOPA Facebook page The amateur model aircraft organization discussed was the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA). ASSURE UAS Ground Collision Severity Evaluation Final Report (also: press release ) Elecia mentioned the Madgwick Filter . Embedded.fm t-shirts are ava...
May 04, 2017•1 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chris and Elecia talk with each other about science fiction, advertising, ham radios, debugging tools, and programming languages. You can buy Embedded.fm t-shirts until May 18, 2017. You can always buy Elecia’s book: Making Embedded Systems . And don’t forget we have a Patreon if you’d like to support the show directly. Some science fiction we mentioned: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, Nightfall and Last Question by Isaac Asimov, and the All This Time video from Jonathan Coulton. Digilent sent us ...
Apr 26, 2017•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Aditi Hilbert ( @HilbertAditi ) spoke with us about MyNewt , an Apache-licensed RTOS and bootloader. MyNewt’s Apache page is mynewt.apache.org and the github repository is github.com/apache/incubator-mynewt-core . In the README.md, check out the section marked browsing which points to the file system, ble stack, and assorted other source code goodies you may want to read. The secure bootloader code is also in there but as it is also a cross-RTOS effort (with Linux’s Zephyr), you can find the MCU...
Apr 20, 2017•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast We discussed CubeSats with their co-inventor, Professor Jordi Puig-Suari, Professor of Aerospace Engineering at CalPoly SLO and co-founder of Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems . The 2017 CubeSat conference is in San Luis Obispo, CA on April 26-28. More details at CubeSat.org . Information about CubeSats at CalPoly SLO can be found at PolySat.org . Tyvak is hiring for a number of different positions: tyvak.com/careers . For more satellite goodness, we spoke with Patrick Yeon of Planet about their Cube...
Apr 12, 2017•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Shulie Tornel ( @helixpea ) joined us to talk about the 2017 Hackaday Prize ( @hackaday and @hackadayio ). Hackaday World Create Day is April 22nd, let them know if you want do a meetup so they can add you to the calendar. Elecia gave away all of her potential ideas, trying to figure out which one would work best for entry. It was probably Maxwell except for its lack of novelty (Embedded shows #17 and #54 and there is a SparkFun Tutorial ). Are you entering? The first phase (until May) is commun...
Apr 06, 2017•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Owen Anderson ( @OwenResistor ) joined us to talk about how compilers are written. We discussed LLVM , intermediate representation , clang , and GPUs. As mentioned at the end of the show, Owen’s current employer is hiring . If you are interested and would like to get the brownie points that come with being a friend of a friend, contact us and we’ll connect you to Owen and he’ll submit your resume. Recent books Owen mentioned: Manager Path , Feminist Fight Club , The Laundry Files series by Charl...
Mar 29, 2017•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Terry Dunlap , CEO of Tactical Network Solutions ( @tacnetsol ), spoke with us about security in the Internet of Things. The good: Top 10 Secure Coding Practices (from CERT.org) UL 2900 standard (consumer label for security) The bad and the ugly: FTC complain about TrendNet FDA alert about St Jude’s implantable defibrillator Mirai botnet...
Mar 22, 2017•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chris ( @stoneymonster ) and Elecia ( @logicalelegance ) answer listener emails. Get your entries in for March Micro Madness , the matches start very soon. The short story Elecia finds most memorable is All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury. We mentioned Procopio who teaches microcontrollers at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education ITESM ( site , wiki ) Hector sent up the IEEE Code of Ethics , a good high-level set of rules....
Mar 15, 2017•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Matt Godbolt ( @mattgodbolt ) spoke with us about settling arguments with Compiler Explorer . Compiler Explorer comes different flavors: https://rust.godbolt.org/ https://d.godbolt.org/ https://go.godbolt.org/ https://gcc.godbolt.org/ You can see the beta version by putting a beta on the end: https://gcc.godbolt.org/beta/ This a fully open source project. You can read the code and/or run your own version: https://github.com/mattgodbolt/compiler-explorer https://github.com/mattgodbolt/compiler-ex...
Mar 08, 2017•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kari Love ( @ikyotochan ) spoke with us about creating soft robotics. You can see her edible soft robots talk from 33c3 . Kari works at Super-Releaser . Her personal site (and blog) is Kari Makes . Kari mentioned that the Super-Release intern Aidan had some picks for soft robotics on Instructables . Super-Releaser created the Glaucus soft robot and Adafruit has an in-depth tutorial for how to make it . Some videos of soft actuators and soft robots: Super-Releaser Playing with Heat-Sealed Actuato...
Mar 02, 2017•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Scott Hanselman ( @shanselman ) of the Hanselminutes Podcast talks about technology podcasting and philosophy. You can find Scott's blog on Hanselman.com/blog and his other podcasts on Hanselman.com/podcasts . We talked about Hansleminutes' WebVR episode with Ada Rose Edwards and Alcohol and Tech with Victor Yocco . We also mentioned Scott's blog post from 2014 about what technologies he would learn if he had to start over....
Feb 23, 2017•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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: pred = numpy.dot(xt,w) delta = r + gamma*numpy.dot(xtp1,w) - pred e = gamma*lamda*e + xt w = w + alpha*delta*e xt ...
Feb 15, 2017•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Indrek Rebane ( @RebaneIndrek ) spoke with us about the Garage48 Hardware and Arts hackathon, hardware incubators in Estonia, linguistics, hydrology, and startup investments. Garage48 Hardware & Arts hackathon is February 17-19, 2017 at the Institute of Physics, University of Tartu (Tartu, Estonia). The event is organized by Garage48, University of Tartu and the Estonian Academy of Arts. Indrek is CTO of Build It Hardware Accelerator and electronics engineer for Hedgehog Engineering . Recommende...
Feb 09, 2017•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast While we planned to ask Andrei Chichak to podcast when he was in town for the Embedded.fm party, we spent too much time goofing off. So we are replaying Andrei's first appearance on the show where he spoke with us about MISRA-C and ethics. (Note that this is the same Andrei who writes the STM32 Embedded Wednesday posts for the Embedded.fm blog.) Linker post: It's dangerous to go alone! Take MISRA-C Andrei's has personal website (we failed to talk about his kite aerial photography , it is really ...
Feb 02, 2017•1 hr 24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Debby Meredith ( @DebbyMe ) stops by to tell us what it is like being a venture partner and interim VP of engineering. Debby is a venture partner at Icon Ventures . Her website is DebbyMeredith.com . She was on a new podcast: Women Who Code Radio . Computer History Museum's new exhibit is Make Software: Change the World . It opens on January 28, 2017. After recording, Debby mentioned a book she likes: Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist . January 28th Hats and Hacks...
Jan 25, 2017•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ben Krasnow ( @BenKrasnow ) spoke with us about prototyping, Patreon, and staying current. And a whole bunch of stuff. January 28th Hats and Hacks Party RSVP Ben’s YouTube channel is Applied Science . His recent videos have been shot with the high speed Chronos camera (whose creator David Kronstein was on The Amp Hour #325 ). Ben has a Patreon page which funds randomness. ( Embedded also has a Patreon page, for randomness and mics.) Ben was previously on the show: 119: Do Your Neighbors Have Any...
Jan 18, 2017•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Philip Koopman ( @BetterEmbSW ) spoke with us about making better embedded software. His Better Embedded Systems Software blog has lots of great information including links to his growing video library . Two posts noted in the show: Recording Peer Reviews Spreadsheet Code Review Checklist His company, Edge Case Research , performs design and code reviews and teaches how to do them. You can find out more about his course and background on his Carnegie Mellon University staff page . That also lead...
Jan 11, 2017•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chris ( @stoneymonster ) and Elecia ( @logicalelegance ) talk with each other about about a party, listener emails, and assorted questions. RSVP for the Embedded.fm party! The Embedded Blog is at embedded.fm/blog . Chris Svec wrote a post about picking a processor platform . Don’t Panic Geocast episode with Elecia Elecia’a book: Making Embedded Systems Compiler explorer is GodBolt.org Imposter Syndrome: episode #24 is all about. And you might find #78 with Chris Svec relevant. Also: Adam Savage ...
Jan 04, 2017•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chris Gammell ( @Chris_Gammell ) of The Amp Hour and Contextual Electronics joined Elecia and Chris for a holiday special Ampbedded (EmbHour?) episode. Embedded will be having a Hats and Hacks party in Aptos, CA. You can come! RSVP on Eventbrite . Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise Analog Discovery vs Saleae Embedded blog (with Andrei Chichak and Chris Svec) including a post on podcasts we listen to Hemmingway App , us...
Dec 30, 2016•2 hr 43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Have you ever wondered how your programming tool works? Piotr Esden-Tempski and Gareth McMullin have built the Black Magic Probe and joined the show to explain how it works. Kickstarter for Black Magic and 1Bitsy ends December 29th. If you missed it (or need a Black Magic v2 instead of waiting for v2.1) go to the 1BitSquared Store . For more in-depth information about Black Magic, look at Gareth's github repo . For more information about the 1Bitsey dev board, look at 1bitsy.org . Contest! Tweet...
Dec 20, 2016•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Miro Samek ( @mirosamek ) of Quantum Leaps spoke with us about making better state machines through actor objects and hierarchical state machines . Miro wrote a book: Practical UML Statecharts in C/C++: Event-Driven Programming for Embedded Systems . He has an excellent YouTube channel explaining embedded concepts. We discussed his video that describes how a stack overflow works and the related in-depth post on EmbeddedGurus.com . Elecia enjoyed his object oriented programming in C PDF for both ...
Dec 15, 2016•1 hr 22 min•Transcript available on Metacast We spoke with Chris Maury ( @CMaury ) about using speech recognition to interact with devices. Note : Please turn off your Echo and Dots as we invoke Alexa a lot . Chris is the founder of Conversant Labs . They created TinCan.ai which can help you wireframe or prototype a conversational user interface. They can also help you build Alexa Skills, though if you are so inclined, you might try it for yourself: Alexa Skills Kit . Chris will be speaking at the O'Reilly Design Conference in San Francisc...
Dec 07, 2016•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast