455: Snaps!

Natalie Friedman joins us to discuss when, where, how, and why robots should wear clothing. Natalie is a PhD candidate at Cornell Tech. 

Natalie’s website is natalie-friedman.com and you can find her papers in the research section. She has an Instagram account: @natalie.victoria.f

AIForGood shows several robots dressed in home, business and social attire.

Roomba cosplaying a mouse (Instructable)

Pepper is an android-ish robot made by SoftBank. There are many clothing lines devoted to dressing it for whatever occasion you need, simply search for Pepper robot clothing. What could go wrong?

Natalie recommended Fashion Is Spinach by Elizabeth Hawes. It is fascinating.

Transcript

452: Numbers on Computers Are Weird

Julia Evans spoke with us about how computers compute. We discussed number representation including floating point as well as Julia’s extensive collection of ‘zines and comics.

Julia’s zines about debugging, managers, Linux commands, and more are available on WizardZines.com. If you want samples, check out the comics section. Also, the experiments (aka playgrounds) are great additions to the zines (and fun on their own), letting you explore without changing your own DNS or removing all the files from your root directory. If you want to check out numbers, look at memory-spy (or from other sites like https://float.exposed/ and https://integer.exposed/)

Julia also has a detailed blog on jvns.ca and active github repositories. She was on Embedded 141: Malevolent and Trying to Trick You.

Sponsorship of this episode by Volta Labs, an MIT spin-off that is developing a novel lab automation platform for genome sequencing. We raised $20 million as part of our Series-A funding and are hiring for several roles related to embedded software. All roles are full-time, 100% onsite in Boston, MA, and require the ability to thrive in an early-stage startup.

• Senior Firmware Engineer - Design/develop/debug firmware for our instrument platform. Requires strong experience with RTOS, C/C++, ARM-based microcontrollers

• Tech Lead, Instrument Software - Lead design/development of instrument control software. Requires prior experience as a tech lead and strong experience programming control systems in Python on Linux.

• Tech Lead, Electrical and Embedded Systems - Lead design/development of electrical subsystems and firmware. Prior experience as a tech lead, strong experience with electrical design / bring-up, and integration between firmware and electromechanical systems.

Transcript

445: I Do Not Like Blinking

We spoke with Charlyn Gonda about making things glow, dealing with imposter syndrome, and using origami.

Charlyn’s website is charlyn.codes, the projects we talked about are documented there. You can find her on Instagram (@chardane) and Mastodon (https://leds.social/@charlyn).

Adafruit came up a lot in this episode. 

• NeoPixel Jewel

• DotStar High Density 8x8 Grid

• SAMD21 QT Py and RP2040 QT Py

• Adafruit IO 

Jason Coon’s Fibonacci displays are mesmerizing. Check them out on Jason’s website www.evilgeniuslabs.org or acquire them on Tindie. It can be controlled with the Pixelblaze.

Sonobe modules in origami

Transcript

294: Ludicrous Numbers of LEDs (Repeat)

Mike Harrison (@mikelectricstuf) challenged us to a PIC fight on Twitter. Surprisingly, no blood was shed and we mostly talked about LEDs and art installations.

Mike’s YouTube Channel and his website electricstuff.co.uk

His professional hire-him-to-work-on-your-neat-stuff site is whitewing.co.uk

For driving LEDs, Mike likes the TI TLC5971: 12-Channel, 16-Bit ES-PWM RGB LED Driver with 3.3V Linear Regulator.

314: Why Are Wings Needed in Space? (Repeat)

Mohit Bhoite makes functional electronic sculptures from components and brass wire. We spoke with him on the hows and whys of making art.

Mohit’s sculptures, including the Tie Fighter. More on his instagram: mohitbhoite

Jiri Prause has a wonderful tutorial on how to make simpler freeform electronics on Instructables.

Peter Vogel is another artist making phenomenal freeform electronics.

Leonardo Ulian uses electronic components in his art (his don’t function but wow).

Advice from Mohit on trying this yourself from Bantam Tools. Mohit likes Xuron Pliers

Mohit can be found on twitter as @MohitBhoite

Transcript

406: R2D2 Is a Trash Can

Jorvon Moss (Odd Jayy) joined us to talk about making robots, steampunk aesthetics, uploading consciousness to AIs, and the importance of drawing.

You can find Jay on Twitter (@Odd_Jayy) and Instagram (@odd_jayy). He’s been moving his Hackster projects over to Digikey’s Maker.io space: www.digikey.com/en/maker. Jay’s projects are collected here.

Elecia brought up the science fiction book Machinehood by S. B. Divya. Jay returned with Martha Well’s Murderbot Diaries.  

Jay mentioned Mycroft.ai, open source voice assistant. Jay was interviewed by Make Magazine (article). He was on the cover of the magazine; the YouTube video where he was informed was heartwarming.

Transcript

394: Being Four-Year-Olds

Professor HyunJoo Oh of GeorgiaTech spoke to us about paper machines, paper mechanical movements, paper sensors, paper tiny Jansen Strandbeests, and paper art.

HyunJoo is a professor at GeorgiaTech. She is the director of the CoDe Craft group. Some of the projects we spoke about can be found on the CoDe Craft Projects page. 

PaperMech.net has demonstrations of different mechanical movements as well as FoldMecha which shows you what cardboard you need to cut out to make your own mechanical movement, including making a cardboard walker using Jansen mechanism (Theo Jansen (wikipedia) made the Strandbeest). HyunJoo recommends two books for exploring further:

• The 507 Mechanical Movements book as a way to explore more mechanical movements

• Paper Automata: Four Working Models to Cut Out and Glue Together by Rob Ives 

With Unblackboxing Computers, HyunJoo is exploring sensors that can be made with copper tape on paper. The introduction video: https://vimeo.com/637626404/f670dff03e 

382: Playing In the Desert

Leah Buechley (@leahbuechley) 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.

She wrote the book Textile Messages: Dispatches From the World of E-Textiles and Education and developed the LilyPad Arduino for wearable electronics.

We talked about Chibitronics, paper circuits, developed by Jie Qi  (who was on Embedded 277: The Sport of Kings talking about patents as well as Chibitronics)

We talked about Nettrice Gaskins’ Techno-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation: Culturally Relevant Making Inside and Outside of the Classroom

An example of a tiny stepper motor on eBay

Introduction to VQGAN + CLIP to generate art

365: Barbed Wire Fence and Great WiFi

Cy Keener spoke with us about sensors, Arduinos, ice, and the crossover between art and science.

You can see some of his field work and gallery installations at his site: cykeener.com and on his vimeo channel. Cy is an art professor at the University of Maryland (bio, youtube)

Cy’s advisor at Stanford was Paul DeMarinis (pauldemarinis.org, Stanford page).

Arduiniana: a blog of useful Arduino libraries

We also talked about some custom sensors by Lovro Valcic of Bruncin (bruncin.com).

255: Jellyfish Are Pretty Badass (Repeat)

Ariel Waldman (@arielwaldman) spoke with us about how science, art, and all of the other disciplines can build a better world.

Ariel does many amazing things, it is hard to list them all.

• Homepage: arielwaldman.com

• YouTube: arielwaldman

• Science Hack Day: sciencehackday.org and Twitter @ScienceHackDay

• Space Hack directory of ways to get involved: spacehack.org

• Patreon page: arielwaldman

• Book: What's It Like in Space?: Stories from Astronauts Who've Been There

• NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts council, look at niacfellows.org to apply.

Ariel fell in love with NASA while watching the When We Left Earth miniseries.

358: Woodturning Influencer

Emily Velasco (@MLE_Online) spoke with us about artistic projects, retro-future aesthetics, and scientific communication. 

She shows and describes the projects on YouTube: Emily’s Electric Oddities including the Optical Sound Decoder, Port-A-Vid, Hairy Cacti, and the Lissajukebox.

Many of Emily’s professional writings can be found on Wevolver, usually redirected to sites where they are published.

355: Favorite Ways to Make Noises

Helen Leigh (@helenleigh) joined us to talk about music, electronics, books, and starting a new job at CrowdSupply (@crowd_supply).

Helen was previously on Embedded #261: Blowing Their Fragile Little Minds where we talked about subversive geography, her book The Crafty Kid's Guide to DIY Electronics, and the mini.mu musical gloves.

Helen has a book coming out in 2021 about DIY Music Tech including a soft version of the Michel Waisvisz' CrackleBox (Kraakdos). Check out some of the projects in HackSpace magazine issue 36 and 37 (the book will be serialised in HackSpace). Or look on YouTube for some examples of Helen’s purring tentacle and her circuit sculpture harp.

Helen mentioned Bunnie Huang’s Precursor, an open mobile phone, on CrowdSupply (campaign ending shortly).

The Giant German Congress mentioned is the CCC Congress Festival

Helen’s preferred thread (the one you can actually get) is Madiera’s conductive threads. Hit the contact link for purchasing. (Helen notes you can use it for both sides in a sewing machine!)

352: Baby's First Hydrofluoric Acid

John McMaster (@johndmcmaster) told us about the process of opening up chips to see how the processors are structured and what the firmware says. 

See John’s website for information on getting started (as well as digging much deeper).

John has given some interesting Hardwear.io talks including Capturing Mask ROMs and Taming Hydrofluoric Acid to Extract Firmware. His talks and many others are available on the Hardwear.io archive. Or sign up for the Hardwear.io Online Hardware Security Training, Berlin Jan 2021.

As mentioned in the show:

• John wrote a blog post about his top lab accidents and explosions.

• Paper: Reverse engineering Flash EEPROM memories using Scanning Electron Microscopy by Franck Courbon, Sergei Skorobogatov, and Christopher Woods

• Rompar and bitract are the two programs mentioned as helpful for getting from an image to binary code.

242: The Cilantro of Robots (Repeat)

Christine Sunu (@christinesunu) spoke with us about the feelings we get from robots.

For more information about emotive design, check out Christine’s website: christinesunu.com. From there you can find hackpretty.com, some of her talks (including the TED talk with the Fur Worm), and links to her projects (such as Starfish Cat and a Cartoon Guide to the Internet of Things). You can find more of her writing and videos on BuzzFeed and The Verge. You can also hire her product development company Flash Bang.

Embedded 142: New and Improved Appendages is where Sarah Petkus offers to let her robot lick us.

Keepon Robot (or on Wikipedia)

Books we talked about:

• Accelerando by Charles Stross

• Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less by Sherry Turkle (MIT site)

• Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle (MIT site)

• Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith (Note: Elecia also wrote a whole octopus annotated bibliography in a recent post)

346: You Have Everything You Need

Sophy Wong (@sophywong) creates projects she can wear and writes about them so others can make them as well. We talked about fashion, design, inspiration, and motivation.

Sophy’s website is sophywong.com. We spoke about her book, Wearable Tech Projects. Check out her projects on Adafruit, Hackspace Magazine and Make Magazine. She also did a video interview with Tested.

Sophy’s space suit was used in Saul’s King of Misery music video.

Sophy has found inspiration in Debby Millman’s podcast Design Matters, Diana Eng’s Fashion Geek: Clothes Accessories Tech, and the work of Sagmeister.

Transcript: embedded.fm/transcripts/346

344: Superposition, Entanglement, and Interference

Kitty Yeung (@KittyArtPhysics) spoke with us about the superposition of quantum computing and fashion. 

If you want to learn more about quantum computing, check out Kitty’s series on Hackaday’s  Quantum Computing Through Comics. 

Kitty works for Microsoft in Quantum Computing (@MSFTQuantum).

Kitty’s art and fashion are available on her site, Art By Physicist, and shop shop.kittyyeung.com. Her recent addition is the Constellation Dress. There is a coupon code in the show.

Kitty has some other DIY fashion projects: Made of Mars and Saturn Dress.

@artbyphysicist on Instagram 

LinkedIn

341: Big Hugs to Everybody

Phoenix Perry (@phoenixperry) returns to speak with us about education and the importance of merging art and technology.

Phoenix’s website is phoenixperry.com. The art installation crossing the virtual and the physical world was called Forest Day Dream. Phoenix is teaching a free online class: Create Expressive Video Games.

Phoenix is the Master’s degree coordinator for University of the Arts London Creative Computing Institute.

Diversity and accessibility are important, some resources:

• FeministInternet.org

• We Are Not Users: Dialogues, Diversity, and Design

• Archaeologies of Touch: Interfacing with Haptics from Electricity by David Paris

• Critical Play: Radical Game Design by Mary Flanagan

• Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil

• Gone Home (Steam game)

• Her Story (Steam game)

• Bury me, my Love (Mobile game)

• #selfcare (Mobile game)

Phoenix was previously on Embedded 204: Abuse Electricity

324: I’ll Let You Name Your Baby

Adam Wolf (@adamwwolf) of Wayne and Layne (www.wayneandlayne.com) spoke with us about making kits, museum exhibit engineering, working on KiCad, and extraterrestrial art philosophy.

Adam has a personal blog on www.feelslikeburning.com/blog/ as well as a website adamwolf.org. Adam co-wrote Make: Lego and Arduino Projects

If you want to know how to contribute to KiCad libraries, check out their instruction page: kicad-pcb.org/libraries/contribute/

We also mentioned:

• Evil Mad Scientist’s Guide to Improving Open Source Hardware Visual Diffs

• KiCad Automation Tools: tools to autogenerate KiCad artifacts when committing to git

• Kivy: open source Python library for making displays

• Cedux: application framework

• OKGo Upside Down and Inside Out video and Art in Space project

314: Why Are Wings Needed in Space?

Mohit Bhoite (@MohitBhoite) makes functional electronic sculptures from components and brass wire. We spoke with him on the hows and whys of making art.

Mohit’s sculptures, including the Tie Fighter. More on his instagram: mohitbhoite

Jiri Prause has a wonderful tutorial on how to make simpler freeform electronics on Instructables.

Peter Vogel is another artist making phenomenal freeform electronics.

Leonardo Ulian uses electronic components in his art (his don’t function but wow).

Advice from Mohit on trying this yourself from Bantam Tools. Mohit likes Xuron Pliers

Donate to DigitalNest by the end of 2019 and get your donation matched! Thank you to the listener who is doing the match!

313: Where the Paper Knows It Needs to Fold

Robert J. Lang spoke with us about origami, art, math, and lasers.

Robert has many origami books, here is a subset:

• Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical Methods for an Ancient Art (the one we talked about most, has the hummingbird crease pattern)

• Twists, Tilings, and Tessellations: Mathematical Methods for Geometric Origami (his new one, a textbook!)

• Origami in Action: Paper Toys That Fly, Flap, Gobble, and Inflate (not a theory book, just fun folds)

• Origami Sea Life (not mentioned but probably the book Elecia will be getting next)

Robert’s website langorigami.com is full of neat goodies:

• Gallery

• Origami design software including a pointer to the Origamizer by Tomohiro Tachi

• Crease patterns!

Suggested other books:

• Tomoko Fuse's Origami Boxes: Beautiful Paper Gift Boxes

• Origami to Astonish and Amuse by Jeremy Shafer

Origamido has a number of books. Robert uses Origamido paper but it is unobtanium to most people. Unless you are in Maine.

(Note: book links are affiliate links, we get a little kickback if you buy from there.)