459: Ideas Have to Come From Somewhere

Professor AnnMarie Thomas spoke with us about playful learning through joy,  whimsy, surprise, and meeting new people. 

We also spoke with AnnMarie about how adults can foster an environment that encourages innovation. See more about that (and the interviews of various engineers and makers) in her book Making Makers: Kids, Tools, and the Future of Innovation

You can find AnnMarie on Mastodon: mastodon.social/@AnnMariePT

If you want to know more about squishy circuits, check out AnnMarie’s TED talk: Hands-on science with squishy circuits (or the related book Squishy Circuits (21st Century Skills Innovation Library: Makers as Innovators)).

She is the head of The Playful Learning Lab at the University of St. Thomas where she is a professor of engineering and entrepreneurship. 

We also talked about the LEGO Foundation. More about that on LearningThroughPlay.com

AnnMarie suggested the cephalopod-centric novel The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler. Elecia countered with The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery (non-fiction).

And now, a question for you to ponder, what is your most meaningful learning experience?

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. 

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

444: It Is If You Do It Wrong

Peter Griffin spoke with us about operant boxes, juggling many projects, getting into embedded systems, and bottle rockets. 

When we talked about 3D printing, Peter mentioned the Maker Muse Clearance and Tolerance 3D Printer Gauge.

The book we mentioned was Hot Seat by Dan Shapiro (Embedded 125: I Like Cheat Codes).

Peter on Github

Transcript

Please note that Peter Griffin spoke with Embedded.fm as an individual and not as representative of Slalom Consulting or any other organization.  All views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are his own and not necessarily those of his employer or any other organization.

417: I Don’t Know How My Brain Works

Alexandra Covor spoke with us about engineering, making, drawing, school, and what it means to be an artist. 

Alex’s projects are on GitHub and Hackster.io. Her electronics comics can be found as PikaComics on Instagram.

The 2022 Open Hardware Summit named Alex as part of the Ada Lovelace Fellowship. Her favorite talk from the summit was Anuradha Reddy talking about Knotty (Naughty) Hardware.

Alex works for Zalmotek, a design services firm in Bucharest. We talked about Waylay.io, including their smart pet feeder built on that platform. For example projects for Edge Impulse, they built a tools organizer that uses ML.

Transcript

396: Untangle the Mess

Uri Shaked shows us Wokwi, his board and processor simulator. We checked out Arduino code in GDB and then looked at his simulator for the Cortex-M0 Raspberry Pi Pico. 

First, you should totally  look at Wokwi.com. As Christopher noted, signing up for an account shows you many other things. Then you can go look at the processors written in TypeScript in Uri’s Github repos: github.com/urish. Find Wokwi on Twitter (@WokwiMakes, Uri is @UriShaked). You can also find Wokwi on Facebook.

Uri live-coded development of the Pico’s RP2040, it is on Wokwi’s YouTube channel. You can find out more about the RP2040 or the AVR core in the ATMega family by taking his free courses on Hackaday: hackaday.io/urishaked  (Scroll down for courses.)

Uri’s homepage is urish.org. You can find The Salsa Beat Machine there as well as some of his other projects. He has a blog there as well as at Wokwi.

Susie Hansen - La Salsa Nunca Se Acaba

392: It Was C++ the Whole Time!

Debra Ansell joined us to talk about making light up accessories, patenting ideas, and sharing projects.

Debra’s project website is geekmomprojects.com, she’s @geekmomprojects on Twitter and Instagram. Her github repo uses the same ID: github.com/geekmomprojects/. 

We talked about using coin cell batteries as switches. Many other accessories do this but one of our favorites was the Tiny Edge Lit Sphere.

Debra’s company is brightwearables.com. She holds patents US10813428B1 and US11092329B2.

389: Blobs Are Not Stressful

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 videos talked about Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators. Our favorite is Arcade.

Alpenglow Yarn sells electronic-based tools for dyers and yarn creators. 

On Twitter:@alpenglowind @alpenglowyarn @frivolous_circs

On Instagram:@alpenglowind @alpenglowyarn

Alpenglow also has a Tindie store: alpenglow/ 

383: The Monkey’s Not Gonna Work

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 book is The Maker Magician's Handbook: A Beginner's Guide to Magic + Making.

We talked about Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, 19th century French watchmaker, magician and illusionist, and the amazing Aldo Colombini.

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

377: Robot at the Park

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.

372: The Motivation of Creativity

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.

370: This Is the Whey

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 exploits.

We talked about some Embedded episodes as well:

Also, we’ve all really enjoyed the Disney’s Mandolorian.

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!)


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:

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

333: Project Purgatory

Bailey Steinfadt (@baileysteinfadt) spoke with us about the makerspaces, communities, following many paths, and misbehaving robots.

Bailey works at Dojo Five and Stone Path Engineering. 

Area 515 is a non-profit maker space in the Des Moines, Iowa area. They supported their local emergency services with over 6000 face shields. If you are looking for something to do with your 3d printer, look at One Shot Bias Tape Maker and the how to use it video.

Bailey recommended the Makers On Tap podcast and grill mats for soldering. Elecia recommended the You Can Do It!: The Merit Badge Handbook for Grown-Up Girls as a book she’s only picked up once in a bookstore years ago but has thought about as an excuse to pick up new skills.

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:

IMG_0177.jpeg



244: Magic And Electrons

Kristina Durivage (@gelicia) described her path getting into making and hardware hacking as a complement to her day job working in front-end software.

Kristina’s portfolio.gelicia.com includes write-ups on her projects (TweetSkirt, Kitchen Playset Game) as well as links to her talks. Or you can skip to her github.com/gelicia repository.

Kristina has a chapter in the 10 LED Projects for Geeks book coming out from NoStarch Press.

Thank you to Patreon Embedded supporters for Kristina’s mic!

Elecia and Kristina both recommend the classic Robert Aspirin Myth Adventure books!

LED in a resin bead!

LED in a resin bead!

239: Tweet My Boots

What do you do after space debris, hacking dinosaurs, and judging robots? If you are Dr. Lucy Rogers (@DrLucyRogers), you build an organization devoted to promoting the Making industry: Guild of Makers (@GuildOfMakers)

Lucy’s personal site is lucyrogers.com. She wrote the book It’s ONLY Rocket Science: An Introduction in Plain English.

Guild of Maker’s Twitter hack chats are weekly on Tuesdays at 8pm UTC. They use the tag #MakersHour.

Lucy programs in Node-RED, a visual language.