117: In as Much as Which
Chris and Elecia discuss listener emails and other assorted topics.
BLE 4.2 writeup from EETimes and the FAQ from Bluetooth.org
Drones should follow existing aviation keep out standards (Nick links us to some wiki pages)
116: You Have to Care
Glenn Scott (@GlennCScott) spoke with us about API design and techniques for writing good software.
Glenn glossed over his bio but it is quite impressive. You can reach him via his PARC page.
PARC's Content Centric Networking home: ccnx.org which we talked about in 75: End Up in a Puppy Fight.
Literate Programming by Knuth
And the more recommended Bob Martin's books
While latest source code requires licensing, the binary version of CCN includes the LongBow tools (in user/local/parc/bin). Description of tools and doxygen docs. The LongBow getting started guide should be part of the mid-September binary release.
115: Datasheeps
Daniel Hienzsch (@rheingoldheavy) spoke with us about reverse engineering a board, bypass capacitors, and serial protocols.
Rheingold Heavy is Dan's company for educational boards. The one he started with was the I2C and SPI education board (its fulfilled kickstarter page). He brought us the the Graphic Equalizer Kit and Bubble Display Experimentation Pack.
Dan's Arduino from Scratch blog series looks at the Arduino hardware in great detail.
Contextual Electronics course for learning to build boards
Chris wrote about his Photon based garage door opener on the Linker blog
TinEye for searching schematic snippets
Goodies.
114: Wild While Loops
Andrei Chichak rejoins us to discuss error handling.
Andrei's website says how to reach him or email embedded 'at' chichak.ca
Windows 10 "Something Happened" error
Book Elecia mentioned: Kindness of Strangers by Mike McIntyre
Elecia's book covers logging module in Creating a System Architecture (pp 21-25)
Andrei's Wolf E-series oven punished him for being on the show.
113: A Little Noddy Program
Clive Turvey (Clive1), master of the ST Forums, talks with us about ARM cores and answering difficult technical questions for fun.
Some answers:
Books (though we talked more about these being good authors, these are the ones Chris and Elecia have or want):
- The Definitive Guide to ARM Cortex-M3 and Cortex-M4 Processors, 3rd Edition (Joseph Yiu, 2013)
- The Definitive Guide to ARM Cortex-M0 and Cortex-M0+ Processors, 2nd Edition (Joseph Yiu, 2015)
- Z80 Assembly Language Programming Paperback (Lance A Leventhal, 1979)
- Programming the 6502 (Rodnay Zaks, 1979)
A bare metal Scheme interpreter for ARM.
Bookshelf Chris was looking at during show.
112: My Brain Is My Resource
Chris (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) chat with each other about drones, listener emails, conferences, fighting robots, and moonlighting.
Elecia's Solid talk, an Introduction to Inertial Sensors is on youtube.
Washington Post article about Amazon's good drone behavior
Apple's IOS security guide (Elecia's security checklist)
Photon WiFi Module (Chris' Linker articles part one and part two)
DAB+ FM Digital Radio Development Board
Sad autonomous fighting robot video and lightning fast autonomous sumo bots video
OpenSCAD- CAD tool suggested by a listener
Light painting pictures (500px)
Aaron Loar, Chris, and Elecia took Aaron's light stick out and played at the park.
111: Potty Train Your Tamagotchi
Natalie Silvanovich (@natashenka) discussed reverse engineering hardware, working on security software, and the fantastic world of Tamagotchis.
Original CCC 2012 talk: Many Tamagotchis Were Harmed in the Making of this Presentation
CCC 2013 talk: Even More Tamagotchis Were Harmed in the Making of this Presentation
Natalie's upcoming BlackHat talk: Attacking ECMAScript Engines with Redefinition
Flash exploit article for Project Zero: One Perfect Bug: Exploiting Type Confusion in Flash
Tamagotchis are still available as are the works of Shel Silverstein (Snowball is in Falling Up).
Natalie's Tamagotchi board
110: Happiness Is a Warm Puppy
BeagleBone's Jason Kridner (@Jadon) returns to tell us about his new book.
Jason co-authored a new book: BeagleBone Cookbook: Software and Hardware Problems and Solutions (or at O'Reilly). His older book is Bad to the Bone: Crafting Electronics Systems with Beaglebone and BeagleBone Black.
Previous Embedded.fm episode 60: Fun Things You Can Make out of Beagles
BeagleBoard.org's Google Summer of Code page (including BeagleSat and underwater drones!)
Some information about putting Xenomai on a BeagleBone Black for real time response.
Chris mentioned Brillo, an alternative Google supported OS that isn't on the BBB.
Project Ara: an open source smartphone
Ardupilot: Autonomous drone piloting.
Dronecode: Drones in Linux
OpenROV: Underwater vehicles
Mars lander Beagle 2 (the Apollo 11 Lunar Module was the Eagle despite some comical confusion). [UPDATE: Listener Mark Stevens pointed out that the Apollo 10 Lunar Module was named Snoopy who was a beagle.]
109: Resurrection of Extreme Programming
James Grenning (@jwgrenning) returns to discuss TDD, Agile, and web courses.
James was on Embedded.fm episode 30: Eventually Lighting Strikes.
James' new company is Wingman Software.
His excellent book is TDD for Embedded C.
James suggested Training From the Back of the Room! as resource to people looking to put together a class. He uses and recommends CyberDojo as a coding instruction tool.
Before Agile was Agile-for-business, it was Extreme Programming. James recommends Extreme Programming Explained.
James will be the keynote speaker at AgileDC in October.
108: Nebarious
Jen (@RebelbotJen) joined Chris and Elecia to discuss security, privacy, and ethics in wearable computing.
Elecia's Linker post is especially relevant this week: Device Security Checklist..
There is already a standard for privacy and security: HIPAA (Title II). While not easy to read, it is a reasonable starting place. Another good (but not quite on-point) resource is the EFF Secure Messaging Scorecard, especially if you consider your device as messaging your user (it's a metaphor, ok?). Also, read all the way to the methodology, not just the pretty checkboxes.
Mike Ryan has great explanations for how to easily crack BLE security. Video to watch. His website has more resources, papers, videos, tools.
The Embedded Systems Conference (Silicon Valley) will be held at the Santa Clara convention center July 20-22.
Wearables and IoT Growing Up: Talking To Your Products About Security And Ethics (Jen, Wed 11am)
Teardown: Wearing Security on Your Sleeve (mostly Jen with Elecia telling jokes if/when things go wrong, Tue 1:30pm, on the show floor so free to attend with an Expo pass. We'll be taking apart a Nymi band.)
Faker to Maker in 45 Minutes or Less (Elecia, Wed 1:30pm)
Casino article: Breaking the House
Chris and Elecia were guests on The Amp Hour.
Jen is interested in putting together a workshop/conference on the intersection of art, dance, and technology. Contact her on Twitter or email info at rebelbots dot com.
107: Until They Are Spaghetti
We talked to Craig Cook about learning embedded systems. He recently attended an embedded edX course through University of Texas.
The microcontroller and boards used in the course
Craig's next course will be Interactive Python through Coursera
As we discussed Craig's alarm clock we mentioned many parts including:
- FM Module
- ESP8266 WiFi Module
- Electric Imp (Sparkfun or Digikey, don't forget the April breakout board)
Chris has also been looking at Particle.io's Photon board for WiFi + cloud development. This will be mentioned on other shows (as well as on The Amp Hour).
106: I Am a Scientism
Chris and Elecia talk about satellites, survey results, and entertainment.
ESP8266 has an Arduino IDE (thanks, Karl!)
Elecia will be speaking at Solid June 25th and ESC July 22nd.
To celebrate the first 100 episodes, Elecia made a spreadsheet of all the guests and topics.
Chris read and recommended Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. He was ambivalent about the latest incarnation of battlebots.
105: Certain Paths Are More Suicidal
Manny Wright of Cortus spoke with us about developing processor IP and how it goes from RTL to silicon.
Cortus development platform with a Xilinx Spartan and Arduino Due compatibility.
Planet Labs satellite contest winners are announced and Elecia has a cold.
104: Only the Paranoid Survive
Atmel’s Andreas Eieland (@AndreasMCUguy) spoke with us about low power chips and benchmarks, including tips for measuring and achieving the lowest power possible.
EEMBC has a low power benchmark: ULPBench. EETimes wrote up a great introduction to the benchmark. Atmel’s SAM-L posted some excellent numbers for ULPBench.
Chris wanted to look at processors between Cortex-M4 and phone chips. Andreas suggested the SAM7, SAM E, and Cortex-A5.
Programmable logic blocks (Look Up Tables)
Coding tips and tricks for AVR micros (most things apply for all embedded development)
App Note: Ultra Low Power Techniques
App Note: Performance Levels and Power Domains
Andreas was also on Episode 15: Robot on the Front, speaking about how the AVR processor line came to life, why there is an AVR in Arduino, and the spirit of making things.
The Planet contest ends Friday June 12 (at midnight your time). Check out their jobs and send in your contest entry.
Also, check out Elecia’s BLE Intro.
103: Tentacles of the Kraken
Mark VanderVoord (@mvandervoord) spoke with us about leading open source projects and test driven development.
His site is ThrowTheSwitch.org, a good place to get started with test driven development. Get more info (and a coupon) for his course. Mark's book is Embedded Testing with Unity and CMock.
Lengthy list of unit testing frameworks for C
Why's Guide to Learning Ruby (free! with entertaining comics!)
102: The Deadly Fluffy Bunny (with Wifi)
Charles Lohr spoke with us about $5 WiFi (ESP8266), hacking as a hobby, arcade games, and music visualization.
Updated 06/02/2015: A listener pointed out that the Arduino IDE can program the ESP8266, probably an easier setup than Charles' original article. Also, the Linker post for this show is about getting started with BLE.
Follow Charles on YouTube (or say hello on Google+ and Hackaday.io). To get you started, here are Elecia's favorites:
- High Res Wifi Signal Mapping (ESP8266)
- ColorChord 2
- Wifi Cup (ESP8266)
For more about the ESP8266:
- Charles' Hackaday write up (and github repository)
- Espressif site
- Electrodragon, Adafruit, and Sparkfun have modules
ST 9 axis inertial measurement unit LSM9DSO
101: Taking Apart the Toaster
Micah Elizabeth Scott (@scanlime) spoke with us about Coastermelt, art installations, FadeCandy, teaching electronics to artists, and mental health.
Her Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) installation is mesmerizing, some videos.
In her Coastermelt project, Micah uses the IDA disassembler.
FadeCandy is for sale at Adafruit.
Zen Photon is online, demonstrating ray tracing.
Micah's website shows her current projects.
Micah's previous Embedded.fm episode focused on FadeCandy: 41: Pink Universes Die Really Quickly.
Robot Odyssey looks awesome.
Captain Awkward is a site where you can get advice on how to say things and deal with difficult situations/people.
Micah's shop has a TypeA 3D printer (note: Tuco's favorite bolts) as well as an OtherMill.
100: Unintentional Radiator
Star Simpson (@starsandrobots) and Jen Costillo (@RebelbotJen) catch up with Elecia and Chris, discussing how hobby projects have changed over the last two years since the show started.
Jen's website: RebelBot
Star's website and weekly drone newsletter The Buzzer. Star works at Orion (formerly OnBeep).
Novena board and Star's project Balboa
Crowd supply and What it took to make the Octopart reference card
99: You Can Say a Boat
Andrei Chichak spoke with us about MISRA-C and ethics.
Linker post: It's dangerous to go alone! Take MISRA-C
Embedded.fm listener survey (please!)
Andrei's has personal website (we failed to talk about his kite aerial photography, it is really neat though) and his company is CBF Systems.
Plum Hall C Compiler Validation
JPL Coding Standards for C (and the mentioned video discussing Mars Code)
ISO 26262 Automobile software standard
Cortex-R for high reliability systems (ARM's description)
National Society of Professional Engineers code of ethics and Canadian Engineering Guidelines on the Code of Ethics
Offline, Andrei recommended two books and another podcast about MISRA:
98: Figments of My Imagination
Chris and Elecia talk about memetics, learning, and processors.
Elecia was coy about the Pasadena party May 9th and 10th, but Hackaday announced it so you can invite yourself. She will also be speaking at the Solid conference in June in SF (email for a coupon!). She'll also be at ESC-Silicon Valley in July.
Star Wars Teaser #2 and SpaceX almost-landing
BLE fun: TI's CC2640 and Nordic nRF51822 (Elecia likes the BLE Nano with the free, online mbed compiler for getting started with the nRF5122).
Everything seems to be a Cortex-M0 these days (including the aforementioned CC2640 and nRF51822). The new Atmel SAM-L series is Cortex-M0 and even more low power than usual. On the other hand, the MSP432 is low power and is a more powerful Cortex-M4 (and inexpensive dev kits!),
Elecia has a book: Making Embedded Systems. It makes a great gift.