334: Bag of Heuristics

Matt Godbolt (@mattgodbolt) joined us to talk about assembly code, becoming a verb, 6502s, exploring compilers, and application binary interfaces.

Compiler Explorer can be found at godbolt.org. The code is on github (compiler-explorer/compiler-explorer). 

Matt also has jsbeeb, a BBC Micro (6502) simulator. You can try it out at bbc.godbolt.org. Its code and more information is on github (mattgodbolt/bbc-micro-emulation). Matt recently gave a video presentation about jsbeeb for ABUG. 

Some other videos that may be of interest:

The best compiler book seems to be The Dragon Book.

Hyrum’s Law on writing interfaces.

Application Binary Interface (ABI)

333: Project Purgatory

Bailey Steinfadt (@baileysteinfadt) spoke with us about the makerspaces, communities, following many paths, and misbehaving robots.

Bailey works at Dojo Five and Stone Path Engineering. 

Area 515 is a non-profit maker space in the Des Moines, Iowa area. They supported their local emergency services with over 6000 face shields. If you are looking for something to do with your 3d printer, look at One Shot Bias Tape Maker and the how to use it video.

Bailey recommended the Makers On Tap podcast and grill mats for soldering. Elecia recommended the You Can Do It!: The Merit Badge Handbook for Grown-Up Girls as a book she’s only picked up once in a bookstore years ago but has thought about as an excuse to pick up new skills.

332: There Were Fires

Doug Harriman of Simplexity (@SimplexityPD) spoke with us about motors, controllers, and designing mechatronic systems.

Simplexity (or if you want to contact them)

Doug recommends Control Systems Engineering by Norman S. Nise. Elecia recommends Notes on Diffy Qs by Jiří Lebl from American Institute of Mathematics list of free and approved math textbooks. They both like the 3 Brown 1 Blue YouTube channel.

If you liked the part about how to choose a motor, you might want to watch Doug’s webinar on DC Motors & Motion Control Systems (you’ll have to give your info to see it), see his post about What is a Motion Control System and Five Tips for Mechatronic System Integration.

331: Friendly Tea Kettle

Dr. Katy Huff (@katyhuff) spoke with us about nuclear engineering, effective software development, and the apropos command.

Katy wrote an O’Reilly book describing Python software development to scientists: Effective Computation in Physics: Field Guide to Research with Python. She has been involved with Software Carpentry.

Katy is a professor at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering. She uses Bell and Glasstone’s Nuclear Reactor Theory in her Nuclear Reactor Theory class. 

Katy’s personal site

Stellerator

Godiva Device

Janelle Shane creates the AI Weirdness blog. (She was also a guest in #275: Don’t Do What the Computer Tells You.)

330: I Just Want a Dog

Chris Svec (@christophersvec) chatted with us about going from engineer to manager and working from home. 

Chris had many book recommendations (these are affiliate links):

Chris is hiring for his team. Check out the iRobot Jobs page or look at the specific jobs he’s hiring for (in Boston, MA): Associate Software Engineer and Principal Software Engineer.

Chris gave a talk to Purdue students about working from home, there is a video and a summary blog post.

An interesting tweet about the difference between working from home and what people are doing now. The Canadian Federal government gave the following advice:

EXxX5B5X0AAhTth.jpg


Finally, Svec’s family wants a cat. They probably won’t get a Sphinx despite it matching all the criteria. Maybe an Abyssinian. Or maybe a dog.

image (3).png

190: Trust Me, I’m Right (Repeat)

Matt Godbolt (@mattgodbolt) spoke with us about settling arguments with Compiler Explorer.

March Micro Madness is here!

Compiler Explorer comes in different flavors:

You can see the beta version by putting a beta on the end:  https://gcc.godbolt.org/beta/

This a fully open source project. You can read the code and/or run your own version:

Matt works at DRW working on low latency software. Note that DRW is hiring for software engineers. You can read about the evolution of Compiler Explorer on their blog.

Matt’s personal blog is xania.org. You might like parts about 6502 Timings. He also has several conference talks on YouTube including x86 Internals for Fun & Profit and Emulating a 6502 in Javascript. Matt was previously at Argonaut Games.

Jason Turner of C++ Weekly and his C++17 Commodore 64

Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor? paper (with a nod to Don’t Panic GeoCast’s Fun Paper Friday)

 

327: A Little Bit of Human Knowledge

Daniel Situnayake (@dansitu) spoke with us about machine learning on microcontrollers.

Dan is the author of TinyML: Machine Learning with TensorFlow Lite on Arduino and Ultra-Low-Power Microcontrollers. You can read the first several chapters at tinymlbook.com. 

TinyML is a part of TensorFlow Lite. See the microcontroller getting started guide.

Dan works for Edge Impulse (@EdgeImpulse) which is making tools for easier machine learning integration at the edge. Their tools are free and they also have a getting started guide.

Dan recently posted on the Edge Impulse blog about training a TinyML model to capture lion roars.

For TinyML meetups and a forum, check out tinyml.org

Lacuna Space: low cost sensors transmitting to space

The Rainforest Connection is using small sensors to monitor for chainsaw sounds


326: Wrong in the Right Way

Erin Talvitie of Harvey Mudd College spoke with us about machine learning, hallucinating data, and making good decisions based on imperfect predictions.

Paper we discussed: Self-Correcting Models for Model-Based Reinforcement Learning

Erin’s grant: Using Imperfect Predictions to Make Good Decisions

For a reinforcement learning book, Erin suggests Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction by Richard S. Sutton and Andrew G. Barto or the lecture series by David Silver.

For a machine learning book, Elecia likes Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow: Concepts, Tools, and Techniques to Build Intelligent Systems by Aurélien Géron

325: Hasn’t Been R2D2'd

John Saunders (@NYCCNC) spoke with us about building a Johnny Five robot on his NYC CNC YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/saunixcomp). 

You can find all of the Johnny Five build videos on a playlist or check out the NYC CNC page. As mentioned, Input Inc did a lot of the preliminary work.

John recommends books:

John is also the founder of Saunders Machine Works (they have a contact page).

How Johnny Five got his name

324: I’ll Let You Name Your Baby

Adam Wolf (@adamwwolf) of Wayne and Layne (www.wayneandlayne.com) spoke with us about making kits, museum exhibit engineering, working on KiCad, and extraterrestrial art philosophy.

Adam has a personal blog on www.feelslikeburning.com/blog/ as well as a website adamwolf.org. Adam co-wrote Make: Lego and Arduino Projects

If you want to know how to contribute to KiCad libraries, check out their instruction page: kicad-pcb.org/libraries/contribute/

We also mentioned:

IMG_0177.jpeg



207: I Love My Robot Monkey Head (Repeat)

Professor Ayanna Howard of Georgia Tech joins us to talk about robotics including how androids interact with humans.  Some of her favorite robot include the Darwin, the Nao, and, for home-hacking, the Darwin Mini.

Ayanna has a profile on EngineerGirl.org, a site that lets young women ask questions of women in the engineering profession.

Elecia has been working on a typing robot named Ty, documented on the Embedded.fm blog. It uses a MeArm, on sale in July 2017 at Hackaday.com, with coupon noted in show. (don't use PayPal to check out or you can't apply the coupon). 

Other robots for trying out robots: Lego Mindstorms (lots of books, project ideas, and incredible online tutorials!), Cozmobot, Dash and Dot. Some robotics competition leagues include Vex, Botball, and FIRST. 

321: The Edge of Science Fiction

Jason Derleth of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program spoke with us about what it takes to win a NIAC award.

We first heard about NIAC talking to Ariel Waldman. Her niacfellows.org site has some advice and encouragement for applying. Ariel was on Episode 255 of the show.

Elecia’s one-page overview of Curved-Crease Origami and Flex Circuitry for In-situ Planetary Science Sensor Arrays.

320: Why Isn’t This Working?

Chris Gammell (@Chris_Gammell) of The Amp Hour and Contextual Electronics joined Christopher and Elecia to talk about firmware, learning, and books.

Chris is the host of The Amp Hour, a podcast about electronics and electrical engineering. Chris is also the founder of Contextual Electronics, where you can go to learn how to create electronics. Chris has a long running blog called Analog Life, found on his webpage chrisgammell.com,

Chris is learning firmware as part of his consulting business. He likes Elecia’s Making Embedded Systems book.

KiCon is happening at CERN in September 2020. More information at 2020.kicad-kicon.com.

We talked about Jay Carlson who was on Embedded talking about his Amazing $1 Microcontroller project (#226) and about teaching embedded systems (#303)

We talked about book club books:

And a fun book series called Bobiverse (the Audible version is especially good).

(The outro music is Chris W.’s attempt to troll Chris G. with his “lightning” round answer)

319: Squidly Tentacles

Chris (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) chat about the year 2038, their projects, their new finds, and future shows.

The year 2038 problem is real. Elecia read some of this tweet thread about it.

Single file libraries list on github: (https://github.com/nothings/single_file_libs), including the STB image handling library Chris was originally looking for.

Chris is working on a MIDI project with a NUCLEO-144 (STM32F303ZE) board and various breakout boards from Adafruit and Sparkfun.

Elecia talked about the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program (NIAC) and curved crease origami. She also talked about PID controllers and Tiny ML.

We are now soliciting sponsorship!

211: 4 weeks, 3 days (Repeat)

Dennis Jackson spoke with us about making the career shift from software to embedded.

Dennis buys James Grenning’s Test Driven Development in Embedded C for his new hires and often recommends Elecia’s Making Embedded Systems. His tip that everyone should know was “Learn make!” and he has a reference for that: Why Use Make.

He suggested Joel Spolsky’s reading lists from Joel On Software, even the ones that don’t obviously apply.

Additional suggested-reading articles:

In his previous appearance on Embedded (#94: Don’t Be Clever), we talked about code complexity and measuring cyclomatic complexity. At that time he wanted a tool to monitor the code’s status. He has since found one: pmccabe.

 

318: Amazed at How Things Are Amazing

Darryl Yong (@dyong) is a mathematics professor at Harvey Mudd College (and former classmate of ours, also at HMC). He is working with HMC’s Clinic Program, putting real industry projects in front of teams of college students. He’s also teaching number theory to prison inmates and helping teachers in the chronically underfunded Los Angeles Unified School District.

Darryl writes about his career in education at Adventures in Teaching (profteacher.com). You can read about his experiences with the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program.

If you dig into the archives a bit (2009) you can read about teaching at a high school, for example adapting teaching to different students. What he took away led him to create Math for America Los Angeles, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the number of secondary school mathematics and computer science teacher leaders in the greater Los Angeles Area.

Darryl’s personal page (darrylyong.com) and his HMC page (math.hmc.edu/~dyong). Also, check out HMC’s Clinic Program page.