307: Big While Loop
Chris and Elecia explain when and why to use an operating system on a microcontroller (real-time or not).
Thank you to our Embedded Patreon supporters, particularly to our corporate patreon, InterWorking Labs (iwl.com).
306: What Is in the Magic Box?
Dr. Loretta Cheeks (@loretta_cheeks) spoke with us about implicit bias in text, machine learning, getting a PhD, and STEAM outreach via Strong Ties (strongtiesaz.org).
Also see:
Loretta’s research on identifying implicit bias (The thumbnail image is from her work.)
Lotetta’s TEDx talk on AI and remembering
Thank you to our Embedded Patreon supporters for Loretta’s mic, particularly to our corporate patron, InterWorking Labs (iwl.com).
305: Humans Have a Terrible Spec Sheet
Amanda “w0z” Wozniak (@kainzowa) spoke with us about her career through biomedical engineering and startups.
Amanda contributed a chapter to Building Open Source Hardware: DIY Manufacturing. (A book we spoke with Alicia Gibb about in #289.) Amanda’s chapter was titled Design Process: How to Get from Nothing to Something.
For more information about the companies we discussed, check out Amanda’s LinkedIn page.
304: ADC Channel Six
What do you get when you connect the open-source reverse engineer of Valve’s Steam Controller and the main electrical engineer of said device?
Jeff Keyzer (@mightyohm) and Gregory Gluszek (@greggersaurus) join us to talk about building and taking apart devices.
Greg’s project is on github as the OpenSteamController. He used pinkySim, an ARM simulator.
Jeff has left Valve and is now a freelance engineer as well as selling kits on mightyohm.com. The incredibly useful comic on how to solder lives there: mightyohm.com/soldercomic
I-Opener was the computer discussed.
303: Kids, Turn in Your Chips
Jay Carlson (@jaydcarlson) is back on the show to discuss education and the techniques he’s using to teach embedded systems.
Jay has some great posts on his jaycarlson.net blog. The one related to this show was entitled “How I Teach Embedded Systems.” Jay was also on Embedded 226: Camp AVR Vs. Camp Microchip where we discussed his fantastic survey of micros in The Amazing $1 Microcontroller. We also mentioned one of his recent posts about 3 cent micros.
Teaching has many different approaches. We talked about Bloom’s taxonomy and mentioned the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition.
51: There Is No Crying in Strcpy (Repeat)
Jen Costillo (@rebelbotjen) joins Elecia and Christopher to discuss their experiences interviewing (both as interviewer and interviewee).
Elecia did an hour long webinar on how to conduct technical interviews. In this show, she mentions a good post-interview ratings system.
Google discovered that their brainteasers are not a very effective way to interview.
Despite the news that swearing is good for you, we tried to bleep everything.
Also, it is minesweeper, not minefield. What were we thinking? It was obviously all Christopher’s fault. Though we should have stood up to him.
Elecia's book has more interview questions but from the perspective of how do you ask a question and what do you look for in a response.
302: Worst Book Ever
Christopher interviews an embedded systems engineer with ~25 years of experience across medical, scientific, industrial and consumer products. He asks about career trajectory, field stories, and assorted destruction.
Making Embedded Systems: Design Patterns for Great Software
Tony’s show about Kalman Filters was 43: A Lot of High-Falutin’ Math
301: Giant Novelty Check
Carter Frost spoke with us about the Cabrillo College Robotics club and winning the 2019 NASA Swarmathon.
Cabrillo has many student clubs. Cabrillo Robotics has a Facebook page and is @CabrilloRobotic on Twitter.
The club gets its funding from the Cabrillo Foundation (to donate, make sure to note “Cabrillo Robotics Club” in your contribution).
Please RSVP for the Embedded 300 party on Eventbrite.com.
300: Introverts Disperse!
Christopher and Elecia talk about the upcoming Embedded 300 party (Sept 7th!), podcasting, and listener emails.
Please RSVP for the party. If you didn’t hear the link in the show or don’t recall it, contact us. Thank you to iRobot for sending us Root Robots as prizes!
We send the Samson Meteor as our guest mic.
Thank you for listening!
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.
Some tweet threads about our tour of Santa Cruz Guitar Company.
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
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.