Jen Costillo surfaced briefly from her startup-induced blackout to share her wisdom about manufacturing consumer products. They discussed new product development and working from (and making modifications to) Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, CA. Jen and Elecia pined for this (probably not really a two pack) microscope.
Listener Jim Gf posed an interesting question about how to tell if you are a good embedded software engineer. Producer Christopher White joins Elecia to fail to give an answer. While they mention the embedded C test, they devolve into "why would you ask that question?", impostor syndrome, and methods for dealing with it.
(Normally our podcasts are recorded during the day but this one was after a long, fairly grueling day for the co-hosts. You may hear the clink of glass as we drank a nice Pinot Noir from Hahn Winery.)
Jeri Ellsworth joins Elecia to talk about about co-founding Technical Illusions and their virtual and augmented reality product CastAR. Jeri gives an in-depth introduction to virtual reality, augmented reality and motion sickness. They also talk about hardware engineers working with software engineers, the CastAR's Kickstarter, children's toys, and tagging sharks for science.
Jordan Hart from Digital Media Academy joined Elecia to discuss ways to make science, technology, and engineering fun for kids through Minecraft, Arduino robotics, and music.
DMA video: Robotics and Electrical Engineering with
Arduino
Ted talk: The child-driven education which describes the "method of the grandmother" teaching style.
Georgia Tech online CS Master's degree
Sincere apologies to fans of Gottfried Leibnitz, he had a truly amazing career that went well beyond calculus, read about it on Wikipedia.
Rob Mitchell and Elecia discuss management, what they like about project schedules, and lessons learned on the path from engineer to manager.
Phil King of Weekend Engineering returned to give Elecia advice on how to fabricate a board, both in a professional capacity and for garage projects.
EaglePCB is a commercial package which is also available as a free, noncommercial version for small 2-layer boards. Other open source packages mentioned include Kicad and gEDA. Some board fabricators provide free tools that work only with their fab houses (such as ExpressPCB). Digikey's SchemeIt provides a way to get a PDF schematic (and a BOM), but falls down by not providing a way to generate a net list, a critical part of board fabrication.
PCB West is this week at the Santa Clara convention center.
How Printed Circuit Boards are Designed (1960 Edition)
Hildy Licht electronic assembly and manufacturing
Karen Field (@karenfield) and Elecia talk about 2014 DesignWest, the embedded systems conference, and how to submit your idea for a session.
2014 DesignWest is March 31 - April 3, 2014.
Call for abstracts is open, submit your idea!
Speaker benefits include speaker room, speaker party, full conference pass, conversation starting badge for networking, plus resume fodder.
Elecia White and Amy Button discuss Amy's dream of going to Mars, her previous role in training astronauts to handle disasters, and her current work on a magic box of rocks that will keep Orion's air breathable.
Elecia White spoke with Elizabeth Brenner about devices that can be used to help families worry less about grandparents who live alone (and 87-year-old neighbor friends named Dolores).
Life Alert is the big name in senior push-button call systems. Life Call are the "Help, I've fallen and I can't get up" people. (See the commercial!) Life Call and Lileline have accelerometers to detect falls.
Twilio allows programs to send and receive phone calls and text messages using its web service APIs.
If This Then That (ifttt.com) connects channels to allow an event to trigger other events (i.e. "failed to twitter today" -> text family) .
Fibit API for connecting Fitbit data to other applications.
We didn't talk about this but it is a similar idea: Goodnight lamp.
Elecia tries to get a handle on whether Agile works with embedded software. Curtis Cole (@citizencurtis) argues in favor of user stories, scrums, and story points.
Agile software development on Wikipedia
Test Driven Development for Embedded C by James Grenning
"Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Winston Churchill
Andreas Eieland (@AndreasMCUguy) from Atmel joined Elecia to talk about how the AVR processor line came to life, why there is an AVR in Arduino, and the spirit of making things.
OpenCores AVR FPGA implementation
Elecia’s new dev kit is a SAM D20 Xplained Pro
Artist Kristin Anderson of Idle Creativity spoke with Elecia about the technology of working with slumped glass, getting started on Etsy (Elecia mentioned her craft electronic ideas), and moving from Silicon Valley technology to artistic pursuits.
Kristin's Etsy store, blog, and Facebook page
Elecia's intial craft electronics idea and some followup
Great book for getting started: Contemporary Fused Glass
Kristin suggests Marketing Creativity and Handmadeology as blogs to help build a craft business
Etsy is a great resource for learning to use Etsy: forums and video tutorials.
Bullseye Glass, see classes, especially "Set Your Kiln on Fire" [That does sound fun! -El]
Kristin suggests Marketing Creativity and Handmadeology as blogs to help build a craft business
Etsy is a great resource for learning to use Etsy: forums and video tutorials.
Christopher White ( @stoneymonster) emerges from his producer responsibilities to chat with Elecia about starting a podcast: the gadgetry, the software, the distribution, and, the big question, why we do it.
Links from the show:
Libsyn, a dedicated podcast audio hosting service.
SquareSpace, fast and easy website building and hosting.
5x5, Dan Benjamin's (@danbenjamin) phenomenal podcast network.
Starting a podcast, Dan's guide to podcast equipment.
Dr. Edward White spoke with Elecia about how technology has changed medicine. He described gadgets used in surgery (harmonic scalpel!), how hospitals acquire tools, and why engineers should be focused on patient benefit.
Karen Lightman (@khlightman) joins Elecia White to talk about the infinite awesomeness of tiny MEMS devices. Recorded at the (somewhat noisy but lovely and delicious) Blue Brasserie during SEMICON West.
Karen is the Executive Director of the MEMS Industry Group, the nonprofit trade association advancing MEMS across global markets. This the group that wrote the standard definitions that make MEMS easier to use, see the Resources section of their website.
MEMS Executive Congress in Napa, Nov 7-8. Please bring new MEMS devices to the pitch event (Elecia is a judge!).
They mentioned some ignorance of RF MEMS, looks like someone need to read this book.
Energy harvesting kits we discussed were from MicroGen. They have a neat youtube video.
Redux of the Feynman's There's More Room at the Bottom lecture.
Jen Costillo (@r0b0ts0nf1r3) joins Elecia White to discuss the secret parts of C, keywords that only embedded software engineers seem to know about.
They talk about interviewing and why these keywords make good questions for finding folks who use the language to its full potential. On the show they mention a list of embedded interview questions with answers. (Note: Elecia's book has many excellent interview questions and what interviewers look for when they ask them.)
Producer Christopher White sends along a more concise introduction to the often unused register keyword.
Randi Eckstein grilled Elecia White (@logicalelegance) on inertial sensors: when to use accelerometers vs. gyroscopes; gyroscopes vs. rate sensors; how to make an inertial measurement unit; the basics of quaternions and Kalman filters; what products need which sensors (and why).
Other good resources:
Elecia White is on vacation. Please enjoy some music from the Ballistic Cats!
Josh Chan and Tarun Pondicherry, founders of Light Up, join Elecia White to talk about how to teach electronics to elementary and middle school students. The Light Up Kickstarter ends on June 30, 2013, click on that link to buy your kit or to see the video (including the augmented reality smartphone application).
We also talked about going on Kickstarter, being a startup and about HAXLR8R, an accelerator to help hardware startups.
El's version of the traffic model of analog electronic components came from There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings.
Matt Haines (@BeardedInventor) of Electric Imp joins Elecia White to discuss how to connect cats (and other things) to the Internet.
Buy an Imp on Adafruit but don't forget the adapter (aka April board). Get started with programming in Squirrel and find hardware details in the developer section of Electric Imp.
We also mentioned Lockitron, a commercial product that uses Electric Imp.