299: Reasonably Foreseeable Misuse

Monk Eastman (@MonkFunkster) joined us for an enlightening conversation about hardware compliance engineering. We covered the basics of CE, FCC, UL, and battery certification. 

We mentioned that Alan Cohen’s Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market has a good overview of certification. Alan was on Embedded 269: Ultra-Precise Death Ray.

For a deeper view of compliance engineer, Monk suggested this book: Electrical Product Compliance and Safety Engineering.

Listener Skippy wrote about his experience with CE certification.

Monk plays bass saxophone in the East Bay Brass Band.

Details on registering for the Embedded 300 party on Eventbrite.com are in the show itself.

298: In the Cow Case

Eric Brunning (@deeplycloudy) returns to talk about doing science in the field in this crossover episode with the Don’t Panic GeoCast’s John Leeman (@geo_leeman). 

Eric is a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas Tech University specializing in storm electrification and lightning. We spoke with Eric on 268: Cakepan Interferometry about lightning and using baking goods as measurement devices. Eric was also on GeoCast 134: Launching Balloons out of a UHaul.

We spoke with John about his Phd research in 169: Sit on Top of a Volcano. The previous Don’t Panic GeoCast crossover was with John and Sridhar Anandakrishnan in 206: Crushing Amounts of Snow. John’s company is Leeman Geophysical.

The paper was Reconstructing David Huffman’s Legacy in Curved-Crease Folding by Erik D. Demaine, Martin L. Demaine and Duks Koschitz. Elecia is working her way through Erik Demaine’s Phd thesis on the same topic as well as Jun Mitani’s excellent book Curved-Folding Origami Design. Geology also has folds.

For 3D printed origami, Eric mentioned Henny Seggerman’s twitter @henryseg.


297: Mice to Do My Bidding

Chris Svec (@christophersvec) spoke to us about how hope can improve our software and work environments. 

Chris is the author of Embedded Software Engineering 101 blog and has been on the show several times since his first appearance in 78: Happy Cows.

He mentioned Seth Godin’s Three Wishes post. We talked attentional focus and passing basketballs.

Details for the Embedded Cats and Hacks party are in the show. If you can’t attend, well, maybe you can still get a mug (zazzle). If you can attend, iRobot has graciously given us a couple Root robots that we’ll be giving away.

296: Train Me Later

Shruthi Jaganathan spoke with us about recycling, machine learning, and the Jetson Nano (@NVIDIAEmbedded).

More about the Green Machine, the computer vision, machine learning, augmented reality way to sort your lunch leavings. The code is available. The system was on a Jetson TX2 developer kit and Shruthi has been moving it to the physically smaller and only $99 Jetson Nano developer kit (buy). 

Shruthi has been getting into AI with the Jetson Two Days to a Demo as well as NVIDIA’s free Getting Started with AI on the Jetson Nano online course.

For more information about FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), we talked about it with Derek Fronek on Embedded 257: Small Parts Flew Everywhere.


295: In the Key of Lime

This week we talk about CircuitPython (@CircuitPython) with @adafruit’s Kattni Rembor (@kattni) and Scott Shawcroft (@tannewt). 

The suggested first board is CircuitPlayground Express with LEDs, sensors, and buttons. CircuitPython is also available for many other boards including the BLE Feather (NRF52832).

For a basic introduction take a look at What is CircuitPython and see some example scripts. To dig a little deeper, check out the many resources in Awesome CircuitPython. The whole thing is open source so you can see their code. If you are thinking about contributing (or just want some fun chats), get in touch on the CircuitPython channel of the Adafruit Discord server: adafru.it/discord

Many of the language’s design choices favor ease-of-use over ready-for-production. Imagine teaching an intro to programming class without worrying what computers will be used or how to get compilers installed on everyone’s machines before time runs out. 

One final note: Kattni did a project that gave us the show title: Piano in the Key of Lime. After we finished recording, Chris asked her why she didn’t add a kiwi fruit to her mix… Kattni explained she had limes and they were small. Chris only wanted a different fruit so she could rename it Piano in the Kiwi of Lime. It is always sad when we stop recording too early.

294: Ludicrous Numbers of LEDs

Mike Harrison (@mikelectricstuf) challenged us to a PIC fight on Twitter. Surprisingly, no blood was shed and we mostly talked about LEDs and art installations.

Mike’s YouTube Channel and his website electricstuff.co.uk

His professional hire-him-to-work-on-your-neat-stuff site is whitewing.co.uk

For driving LEDs, Mike likes the TI TLC5971: 12-Channel, 16-Bit ES-PWM RGB LED Driver with 3.3V Linear Regulator.

Mike will be at 2019 Hackaday SuperCon!


293: Skateboard Tricks

Limor Fried of Adafruit spoke with us about engineering, education, and business. 

Some new boards we talked about include the PyGamer and PyBadge (which also has a lower cost version).

TinyUSB, an open and tiny USB stack from Hathach.

In addition to the many excellent tutorials there are some interesting business related posts on Adafruit Learn: How to Build a Hardware Startup and How to Start a Hackerspace

Want to get more involved with the extensive, wonderful, and supportive Adafruit community? Join their Discord chat server or Show and Tell on Wednesdays 7:30pm (ET) followed by Ask an Engineer at 8pm. 


292: Now I Feel Less Cool

Christopher (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) babble about their current projects involving ants, guitars, machine learning, and party planning.

A video of Christopher’s ants

Some tweet threads about our tour of Santa Cruz Guitar Company.

  1. Arrival (also: very old wood)

  2. Wood is awesome

  3. Adding science to precision craft

Elecia has been reading  Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow by Aurélien Géron. While the 2nd edition preview is on O’Reilly’s electronic library (formerly Safari Online), it will be available via Amazon on July 5th. Or pick up the first edition.

Phillip Johnston of Embedded Artistry (290: Rule of Thumbs) is looking for blog posts, exchanging editing and exposure for posts that make sense on the site. Contact him with a topic idea before jumping in. For the Embedded blog, related to the show with Phillip, Elecia wrote a post about learning to give feedback.

Listener Brian asked about a CS degree for going into firmware. We mentioned our show with Dennis Jackson (211: 4 Weeks, 3 Days).

Listener Craig asked about PICs. We suggested taking a look at Jay Carlson’s Amazing $1 Microcontroller. We talked to Jay in 226: Camp AVR vs. Camp Microchip.

Listener Happyday asked about UL testing. We added FCC testing then asked if any of you could help us. Hit the contact link on Embedded.fm.

Embedded has a Patreon. There are new sponsorship levels! Nothing has changed though.

291: General Drip and Tinkle

Karl Auerbach of InterWorking Labs spoke with us about how the internet works.

We talked about domain name services (DNS being the primary one), registries and registrars, domain thieves, and the History of the Internet project.

Karl runs his own (non-DNS) domain name service on his site www.cavebear.com. The site also includes notes from his time on the ICANN board (such as this one where they talk about redemption periods).

290: Rule of Thumbs

We spoke with Phillip Johnston (@mbeddedartistry) of Embedded Artistry about consulting, writing, and learning.

In the Embedded Artistry welcome page, there is a list of Phillip’s favorite articles as well as his most popular articles. Some of Phillip’s favorites include:

We also talked about code reviews and some best practices.

The Embedded Artistry newsletter is a good way to keep up with embedded topics. You can subscribe to it at embeddedartistry.com/newsletter

What are condition variables?

289: Stamping HORSE on Zebras

Alicia Gibb (@pipix) joined Elecia to talk about open source hardware, the OSHW association (@ohsummit), using trademarks for quality control, and light-up LEGO blocks.

Alicia is the editor and author of Building Open Source Hardware: DIY Manufacturing for Hackers and Makers. It is a handy resource for any manufacturing.

Alicia is the director of the Blow Things Up Lab, part of the Atlas Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Light up LEGO blocks are available at Build Upons.

The LilyPad Arduino has many sewable electronics components.

You can find more talks and hacks on Alicia’s personal site, aliciagibb.com.

288: You Got a Screen!

Christopher (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) discuss embedded systems education and project documentation.

Elecia wrote about her love of notebooks on the https://www.embedded.fm/blog-index.

yEd, for when you don’t have Visio. Asciiflow.com, for when you don’t have yEd (or you want to put diagrams in your comments)

We talked about many different documents and tried to note design vs implementation, product vs engineering vs user, and why we wanted them. We didn’t mention mechanical things because, ya know, software engineers. Some documentation we mentioned:

  • Product documentation

  • Schematics with block diagrams and comments. Also a GPIO to function spreadsheet.

  • UI flow when the system has a screens (Balsamiq for wireframe testing UIs)

  • SW spec and design doc: what do we plan to build and what are the tricky parts

  • SW configuration and SW developer docs: how to rebuild the computer that can build the code from scratch, also notes on debugging methodology

  • User manual: Usually not written by SW but may need SW’s patient input

  • Code comments: Functions and files get 5Ws: who, what, why, when, where, and how.

    • Who should call this?

    • What will its effect be? (“What will it do” but not in line by line detail!)

    • How does it work?

    • Why does it work this way?

    • When should it be called?

    • Where are its parameters? (“What” works here too but “where” is nice to remind you to check your memory assumptions.)

  • Repository checkin comments

  • Style guide (Such as Google’s or PEP)

  • Manufacturing docs and tests docs

Adafruit and Sparkfun both write good documentation, writing to users about how to use their code. Elecia likes Adafruit’s sensor library as a good set of code to review (including how much is in their docs vs their code).

187: Self-Driving Arm (Repeat)

Crossing machine intelligence, robotics, and medicine, Patrick Pilarski (@patrickpilarski) is working on smart prosthetic limbs.

Build your own learning robot references: Weka Data Mining Software in Java for getting to know your data, OpenIA Gym for understanding reinforcement learning algorithms, Robotis Servos for the robot (AX is the lower priced line), and five lines of code:

pred = numpy.dot(xt,w)                  
delta = r + gamma*numpy.dot(xtp1,w) - pred  
e = gamma*lamda*e + xt                  
w = w + alpha*delta*e                   
xt = xtp1

Patrick even made us a file (with comments and everything!).

Once done, you can enter the Cybathlon. (Or check out a look at Cybathlon 2016 coverage.)

Machine Man by Max Barry

Snow Country by Bokushi Suzuki

Aimee Mullins and her many amazing legs (TED Talk)

Patrick is a professor at University of Alberta, though a lot more than that: he is the Canada Research Chair in Machine Intelligence for Rehabilitation at the University of Alberta, and Assistant Professor in the Division of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and a principal investigator with both the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute  (Amii) and the Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (RLAI). See his TED talk: Intelligent Artificial Limbs.

287: Joke With No Punchline

Kate Compton (@GalaxyKate) spoke with us about casual creators, Twitter bots done cheap and quick, and the creativity that is within each of us.

Kate’s website is galaxykate.com. Her Phd dissertation defense is interesting, see it on youtube.com. She is joining UCSC’s CROSS to do more work on casual creators and open source software. (We talked to Carlos Maltzan, the head of CROSS in 285: A Chicken Getting to the Other Side.)

Tracery is an open source story generator using a specific grammar. One example is at Kate’s BrightSpiral.com which creates a whole story every time you refresh.

You can use Tracery to make Twitter bots via CheapBotsDoneQuick.com. They are often text (@infinite_scream, @str_voyage, @DUNSONnDRAGGAN) or emoji based (@choochoobot, @infinitedeserts). However, Tracery and CBDQ  can be used to create SVG images (such as @softlandscapes).

Elecia’s text bot is @pajamaswithfeet. It tweets (usually) kind things you can (sometimes) say to other people (or yourself).


286: Twenty Cans of Gas

Colin O’Flynn (@colinoflynn) spoke with us about security research, power analysis, and hotdogs.

Colin’s company is NewAE and you can see his Introduction to Side-Channel Power Analysis video as an intro to his training course. Or you can buy your own ChipWhisperer and go through his extensive tutorials on the wiki pages.

ChipWhisperer on Hackaday

ColinOFlynn.com

Some FPGA resource mentioned:

285: A Chicken Getting to the Other Side

Carlos Maltzahn joined us to talk about graduate studies in open source software, research incubators, and how software development tools can be used to aid the reproduction of scientific results.

Carlos is the founder and director of the Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS). He is also an adjunct professor of computer science and engineering at UC Santa Cruz.

Some projects we spoke about:

  • Jeff LeFevre — Skyhook: using programmable storage in Ceph to make Postgres and other databases more scalable and elastic (skyhookdm.com)

  • Ivo Jimenez — Black Swan: using DevOps techniques and strategies to speed up the systems research delivery life cycle (falsifiable.us)

  • Kate Compton — Tracery2 and Chancery: using open source software to support artists and poets (tracery.io)

Carlos mentioned the wonderful notion of “being productively lost”.  He picked up the idea at a POSSE (Professors Open Source Software Experience).

284: Honking Big Asparagus

Ori Bernstein (@oribernstein) joined us to talk about the dielectric constants of foods, reflective energy steering, and smart microwaves. Elecia got a little silly.

Ori works at Level Hot Pantry for more about the smart microwave, check out his !!ConWest talk. Ori has a github and personal site.

283: Flippendo Is Kind of a Swirly

Jennifer Wang (@jenbuilds) spoke with us about machine learning, magic wands, and getting into hardware.

For more detail about her magic wand build, you can see Jen’s Hackaday SuperCon talk or her !!ConWest talk. The github repo is well documented with pointers to slides from her SuperCon talk and an HTML version of her Jupyter notebook.

Check out this good introduction to machine learning from scikit-learn. It was their choosing the right estimator infographic we were looking at. (Elecia has bookmarked this list of machine learning cheat sheets.)

Jennifer’s personal sites are jenbuilds.com and jewang.net. She recommends the Recurse Center and wrote a blog post on her experience there.

282: Tin Can Through a Wet Noodle

We spoke with Laughlin Barker of OpenROV (@OpenROV) about underwater drones, underwater navigation, underwater exploration of the Antarctic, and extraordinarily large (underwater) jellyfish.

Watch this video of a Trident ROV being eaten by a shark… yes, you get to see the inside of a shark.

S.E.E. Initiative: Science Exploration Education from National Geographic

Laughlin left us with a coupon code for the Trident ROV. Please remember to invite us along on your ROV’ing.

281: Tame Geek

Combining a love of engineering with a love of words, Jenny List (@Jenny_Alto) is a contributing editor at Hackaday (@Hackaday).

Jenny’s writing at Hackaday including Debunking the Drone Versus Plane Hysteria and Ooops, Did We Just Close An Airport Over a UFO Sighting?

Previously Jenny worked for Oxford English Press working on computational linguistics software. While there she wrote post about the word “hacker”.

Elecia has been secretly dreaming of being a lexicographer since reading Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper.