5: Passion is contagious

Akkana Peck (@akkakk) joins Elecia White to talk about an introduction to Arduino workshop for high school students.

Arduino boards are a fantastic way to encourage people into embedded systems. The boards are cheap, the starter kits are great, there are lots of things you can do with them, and the compiler software is free.

Akkana's site (Shallow Sky) has the workshop outline, going from morning general activities to afternoon specific ones. The really simple circuit for the photo-theremin we had on the show is linked from there (and the latest code is on github). A separate post describes the the cheap motor boards she's been working on, including the specific chips (including the H-bridge).

The summer camp we discussed is GetSET and they eloquently describe themselves as "a program for high school girls of underrepresented ethnic groups to show them that engineering is fun, is creative, improves lives, and is an exciting career option". It is free to the student, funded through the efforts of the Santa Clara Society of Women Engineers (SWE) chapter.

To volunteer for Akkana's workshop (Wednesday June 26, 9am-4pm at Santa Clara University) contact her on twitter or email us here at the show (show@makingembeddedsysetms.com).

 

 

 

4: Are we not lawyers?

Elecia and Chris (@stoneymonster) discuss why they chose to go into consulting and what they've learned while building Logical Elegance into the company it is.

SCORE is a great resource for small business, even consulting firms.  Also check your local small business administration (SBA) chapter.

Elecia's salary to rate conversion can be found as a Google spreadsheet. 

Chris suggests Crash plan and Backblaze for backing up your client specific virtual machines (and everything else!).

If you have specific requests, drop us a note via the contact link on embedded.fm or by emailing show@makingembeddedsystems.com

 

 

 

3: Plenty of candy, no guns

​Elecia White and Phil King of Weekend Engineering talk about things a hardware engineer wants software engineers to know. Drifting a bit from topic to topic, they touch on interviewing, oscilloscopes, ways to light hardware on fire, why they work on projects at home and writing novels.

Some links from the show:​

Phil works at Lytro making amazing cameras.​ Elecia and Phil have worked at Leapfrog and ShotSpotter together. Very different products.

Phil's oscilloscope (the one Elecia borrows) is a Tektronix DPO4034.​

At Phil's instigation, Elecia wrote a space opera novel for NaNoWriNo a few years back.​ (If you contact us, you can have a PDF for free. But really, she wrote it in a month, what do you expect? Buy her real book to get the good stuff.)

​

​

​

2: My little pony stopped outputting

Elecia (@logicalelegance) and Jen () compare multimeters then install the Saleae Logic to debug a problem. Elecia pines for a nifty oscilloscope.

Some products discussed on the show:

Saleae Logic USB Logic Analyzer (and direct Saleae website)

(Somewhat expensive) Fluke Digital Multimeter

TPI 120 Compact Digital Multimeter (El's desk meter)

BK Manual Ranging Tool Kit Digital Multimeter (El's other meter, not Burger King!)

Radio Shack  22-801 (Jen's home meter)

Excellent article on SPI protocol on WIkipedia

​Board with SPI devices that was debugged during the show.

​Board with SPI devices that was debugged during the show.

1: Start Tinkering

Featuring Elecia "El" White (@logicalelegance), Jen Costillo (@rebelbot @r0b0ts0nf1r3), and Star Simpson (@starsandrobots).

This show was recorded at DesignWest, the embedded systems conference.