We spoke with Dr. Bennie Lewis (@_benjoe02) about machine learning and robotics. Bennie is a Senior Research Scientist at Lockheed Martin, content creator, and Twitch streamer (benjoe02)
NVIDIA Jetson platform and Cuda for deep learning
SAMS C++ in One Hour a Day by Siddhartha Rao
Bennie is also on Instagram (benjoe02) and YouTube.
Stephen Kraig (@Macro_Ninjaneer) and Parker Dillmann (@LnghrnEngineer), of Macrofab (@MacroFab) joined us to chat about getting hardware and software to work together.
Stephen and Parker are also hosts of the Macrofab podcast.
We compared out-the-ordinary podcast guests. For MacroFab episode 112 it was their conversation with a patent lawyer. For Embedded episode 150 it was our conversation with a tax accountant.
Schematics for the Apollo Guidance Computer (and their Kicad replica on github).
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!
We spoke with Michael Barr (@embeddedbarr) about the Barr Group embedded systems survey.
You can download the 2018 survey at the Barr Group survey page. The Barr Group Embedded C Coding Standard is also free to download (with registration). You can buy a paper copy on Amazon.
Programming Embedded Systems in C and C++ 1st Edition by Michael Barr, also available for free in HTML on the Barr Group site. The second edition is Programming Embedded Systems: With C and GNU Development Tools, 2nd Edition by Michael Barr and Anthony Massa.
The second book was Embedded Systems Dictionary by Jack Ganssle and Michael Barr
Elecia’s book is Making Embedded Systems: Design Patterns for Great Software.
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)
Andrei Chichak and Alvaro Prieto (@alvaroprieto) join us to talk about bits and how to manipulate them.
Alvaro is host of the Unnamed Reverse Engineering podcast. His other Embedded appearances are 130, 200, and 215.
Andrei (“Andrei from the Great White North”) works at CBF Systems. His other Embedded appearances are 99, 114, 139, and 200.
Andrei wrote about bit manipulation as part of Embedded Wednesdays on Embedded.fm: Logic in C, part II. Andrei recommends using ISO646.h to reduce confusion around bit manipulation. Also, his suggested calculator is the SwissMicros DM16L
Elecia wrote an introduction to binary and hex.
For more information about programming and binary, see How to Count by Steven Frank
For advanced bit twiddling, check out:
Listener Prashant pointed out an error that goes to shows that we really should have been writing these numbers down and agreed on the zero base to start with:
In Episode 241 @36:45 when Elecia talks about turning on GPIO3, and GPIO3 is the 3rd bit (I am assuming starting at index 0), you write 8. However when Andrei starts explaining he talks of the mask as 100, which has a value 4. I guess he assumed that the 3rd bit meant 3rd starting from index 1.
Jasmine Brackett (@asiwatch) spoke with us about @Tindie’s electronics marketplace, this year’s Hackaday Prize, and tips for wearable electronics.
If you want to buy on Tindie, check out their homepage tindie.com. If you want to sell, that is straightforward too: tindie.com/about/sell.
There is an Embedded contest for the Tindie Blinky LED badge, a nifty little learn to solder kit. Contest ends April 20, 2018 (midnight UTC). You are to send a number to us using the contact link. Closest one wins. One number per person.
You can also get these badges at the Dublin Hackaday Unconference (April 7, 2018, Dublin, Ireland) and at meetups where Jasmine is a presenter.
Thank you to Ben Hencke for some good questions. He talked about his Tindie store with us on 220: Cascading Waterfall of Lights.
Jasmine mentioned the RC2014, homebrew z80 computer kit.
Both Tindie and Hackaday are owned by Supplyframe.
Finally, we talked to Emile Petrone when Tindie was a fairly new thing on 72: This is My NASA Phone.
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.
Dan Saks answers many questions about C++ in embedded systems: where it works, where it doesn't, and a path to getting started.
Dan Saks is the founder and president of Saks & Associates. He was a columnist for The C/C++ Users Journal, Embedded Systems Design and several other publications. He also served as secretary of the ANSI and ISO C++ standards committee in its early years.
We touched on some of his articles:
Andrei suggested Sams Teach Yourself C++ in One Hour a Day, Seventh Edition by Siddhartha Rao as a good primer for experienced C programmers reluctantly learning C++.
NOTE: The contest already ended.
Chris and Elecia answered some listener questions about dynamic memory and shared code. Then Elecia gave a presentation about ShotSpotter, the gunshot location system she worked on.
Elecia enjoyed The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies by Jason Fagone.
Ben is the editor of HackSpace, a new magazine about making (and hacking). It's produced by Raspberry Pi, but it's technologically agnostic. The first issue is free online.
The ShotSpotter presentation was originally given with Sarah Newman at the 2008 Grace Hopper Celebration of women in computing.
Jan Jongboom (@janjongboom) of Mbed (@ArmMbed) joined us to talk about compilers, online hardware simulators, and inference on embedded devices.
Find out more about Mbed on mbed.com. The board simulator is at labs.mbed.com (Mbed OS Simulator). The code for the simulator is on Jan’s Github. Mbed Labs also has the uTensor inference framework for using TensorFlow models on devices.
You can see some of Jan’s talks and his blog on janjongboom.com.
Jan will be running a workshop at SxSW called Changing the World with Open, Long-Range IoT on March 10 in Austin, TX. Additionally, he will be hosting an IoT Deep Dive Workshop on LoRA on March 14 (also in Austin, TX).
For background on LoRA, check out the recent Amp Hour episode with Richard Ginus.
Roger Linn (@roger_linn) gave us new ideas about musical instruments, detailing how wonderful expressive control, 3D buttons, and keyscanning can be.
Roger’s company is Roger Linn Design. We talked extensively about the LinnStrument, some about the AdrenaLinn for guitar, and only a little bit about the analog drum machine Tempest.
A key matrix circuit is a popular way to handle a large number of buttons but it falls prey to n-key rollover. Roger adds force sense resistors to this (FSR example at Sparkfun).
If you have an idea for an instrument, Roger has already written his response to your request for a prototype. Roger gave a keynote address at ADC '16 about the LinnStrument, including showing the sounds it can make.
OHMI Trust is the one handed musical instrument society enabling music making for everyone.
Roger mentioned some other expressive instruments including:
We spoke to author Robin Sloan (@robinsloan) about his books and near-future science fiction.
Robin wrote Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore and Sourdough.
Robin’s website is robinsloan.com. Go there for some short stories, sign up for his newsletter and check out his new ‘zine (also at wizard.limo). Oh! Don’t forget his blog, including a description of his neural net for audio generation and for writing.
Some books Robin suggested:
Dustin Franklin of NVIDIA (@NVIDIAEmbedded) spoke with us about the Jetson TX2, a board designed to bring AI into embedded systems.
Dusty wrote Two Days to a Demo, both the original supervised learning version and the newer reinforcement learning version. In general, check out Dusty’s github repo to see what’s new. Also, The Redtail project is an autonomous navigation system for drones and land vehicles based on the TX2.
The NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference is in San Jose, CA, March 26-29, 2018. Your coupon for 25% off: NVCYATO
The Jetson TX1/TX2 ChallengeRocket contest ends February 18th.
You can find Dusty on on the NVIDIA forums.
Chris and Elecia chatted about listener emails, and other stuff and things.
Elecia wrote a book called Making Embedded Systems, if you want to see the chapter about interrupts and timers, hit the contact link on embedded.fm.
We also recommend our blog, Chris Svec wrote about the MSP430 from a microprocessor point of view (ESE101) and Andrei Chichak wrote about an ST processor with a more pragmatic and C focused view (Embedded Wednesdays).
You can support the podcast through Patreon.
Kalman filter explanation video with Pokemon
Ben Krasnow's Applied Science YouTube channel
Usbourne's books for teaching kids electronics and programming (the free '80s ones are near the bottom)
Formally verified microkernel: seL4 Microkernel
The first Pokemon games used every programming trick there is for optimization
STM bought Atollic and released TrueStudio Pro for free for STM parts
We spoke with Jackson Keating (@jacksonakeating) about Bluetooth Low Energy, going over GATTs layouts and the general BLE usage.
While Jackson prefers the Bluetooth spec as the best reading explanation, Elecia liked the Adafruit BLE introduction. She wrote about some of her initial experiences with different chips and Chris Svec wrote about BLE roles. We all agreed that the examples and tutorials from your chip vendor is a good place to get experience.
A random UUID generator is uuidgen on Mac or online on uuidgenerator.net.
Elecia mentioned 108: Nebarious, an Embedded episode where we talked about how BLE lacks security.
Jackson suggested looking at the Core Bluetooth API for IOS development as well as the Nordic and LightBlue apps for debugging.
Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) talks about economics, books, and the future. Check out Tim’s new book, WTF: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us. And yes, this is Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly books.
Elecia’s Making Embedded Systems has a great-eared nightjar, but she’s finally adjusted to a modern dinosaur on her cover.
Sunshine Jones (@Sunshine_Jones) spoke with us about synthesizers, electronics, and philosophy.
Sunshine’s music is most easily found at TheUrgencyOfChange.com. His writing is at Sunshine-Jones.com.
We talked about Sunshine’s User’s Guide to the Roland SE-02. That includes Ahmed, a track produced using only the SE-02.
Sunshine also wrote about building a polysynth.
The intro music is an excerpt from LELEK, released on Air Texture Vol. V. The exit music is Fall In Love Not In Line, released this year on vinyl only, TUOC01. See TheUrgencyOfChange.com for more.
Sunshine was the host of SundaySoul.com, a live podcast about music and life.
Nick Kartsioukas (@ExplodingLemur) spoke with us about information security, melting down spectres, lemurs, and sensible resolutions.
Nick recommends Aumasson’s Serious Cryptography (also available from NoStarch) as a good orientation. (Offline, he also recommended Shneier’s Secrets and Lies.)
When thinking about security, you need to develop your threat model (EFF) and not panic (Mickens). As a user of the internet, there are some getting started guides (Motherboard, EFF, Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy) along with Nick’s advice of using an antivirus program (comparison), an Adblocker (uBlock), a password manager, and 2-factor authentication. Data backups are also very useful (3-2-1 rule: 3 copies, 2 separate media, 1 offsite). For a professional infosec perspective, the CIS 20 are best practice guidelines for computer security.
For Spectre and Meltdown, the best high-level explanation is in Twitter from @gsuberland though XKCD does its usual good job as well. For more detail, about speculative execution bugs, check out this github readme.
For the history of the Stuxnet, check out Zetter’s Countdown to Zero Day and the Security Now podcast episode 291.
Ham radio Field Days for 2018 are June 23-24
Last but not least: Depression lies so get help and if you want to know how to help someone else, look at MakeItOk.org
The Amp Hour and Embedded join up to send a holiday letter to listeners.
Chris G is ever improving Contextual Electronics. Chris W has a new band: 12ax7. Elecia still has a book: Making Embedded Systems.
Amp Hour episodes mentioned in this one:
Embedded episodes mentioned:
We talked about teaching which led to:
Books we are reading!
Elecia got a JTrace Pro Cortex-M for herself for Christmas. Chris W got a Moog Werkstatt and an assortment of Teenage Engineering small synths. Chris G mostly got sweaters because Chicago is very cold.
BMW now sends YouTube ads via snail mail