350: The State of the Empire Is Good

Ben Hencke (@ledmage, @im889) updated us on blinking lights and running a small hardware business. You can find the current PixelBlaze in the ElectoMage store on Tindie (tindie.com/stores/electromage/) or signup for a shiny new version on CrowdSupply.

Ben’s personal site (bhencke.com) has lots of projects including a page devoted to the awesome Pixelblaze projects (including the BioTronEsis alien light sea creatures which someone who hosts this show hopes will be in her Christmas stocking and the post about leaded solder discussed in the show).

When Ben is making Pixelblaze, the brand is ElectroMage (electromage.com/) so you can see more about Pixelblaze there including the forum.

We didn’t talk about TapGlo, the arcade ping pong table that Ben is also working on.

Favorite solder paste: LOCTITE GC 10 paste (henkel-adhesives)

About his favorite acronym, Ben says, “XMLHttpRequest is my favorite because it perfectly illustrates how we're (developers) bad at naming things and like to come up with arbitrary rules for things. The story about how XML is all caps and Html is camel case is just too perfect, and it's popular use rarely has anything to do with XML”

Finally, There are 40 different flavors of Kit Kat. There are 12 flavors of candy corn, they all taste the same.

242: The Cilantro of Robots (Repeat)

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:

349: Open Down to the Transistor

Drew Fustini (@pdp7) spoke with us about building Linux, RISC-V cores, and many other things. Links, so many links!

Drew is a board member of the BeagleBoard.org Foundation and of the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA.org). He is an open source hardware designer at OSHPark (he recommends their blog!). He writes a monthly column for Hackspace Magazine, for example The Rise of the FPGA in Issue 26 and  Intro to RISC-V. 

Yocto is a tool to help build a Linux distribution specific to your board and application! Bootlin offers free training material for Yocto and OpenEmbedded (as well as many other things such as Embedded Linux and Linux kernel development). Or there is a video: Buildroot vs Yocto: Differences for Your Daily Job - Luca Ceresoli at Embedded Linux Conference. Or look at Embedded Apprentice Linux Engineer (e-ale.org). Or maybe another video: “Yocto Project Dev Day Virtual 2020 #3: Yocto Project Kernel Lab, Hands-On, Part 1” by Trevor Woerner.

RISC-V is an open source processor core. Well, really, RISC-V itself is just an open spec for an instruction set architecture (ISA). But you can try it out in hardware even if you don’t want to play with an FPGA. The SiSpeed Longan Nano has a GigaDevices microcontroller dev board (with an OLED on board!, more info).

Did you know you can run Linux on RISC-V? The cheapest method is emulation and Renode is brilliant for that. Here is Drew using it on the train (twitter). Sipeed boards with Kendryte K210 start at only $13 and can even run Linux (tutorial). There are also affordable open hardware FPGA with free software toolchain support like the ICE40 based Icebreaker and Fomu. For a bit more money, the bigger ECP5 can run Linux. Or look at Greg Davill’s wonderful Orange Crab. For a lot more money but on silicon, the Icicle with Microchip PolarFire SoC is aimed at corporate use.

Or you can produce your own physical chips. For free (for a limited time). See the talk from Tim Ansell - Skywater PDK: Fully open source manufacturable PDK for a 130nm process

Drew attends a lot of conferences, here are highlights from the past:

Here are some future conferences he’s planning to attend:

348: Flop Onto the Bouncy Castle

Whitney Huang of Zipline (@zipline) spoke with us about drone delivery of medical products: technology, operations, and applications.

For more information about Zipline, check out flyzipline.com. Also, Zipline is hiring for positions in San Francisco, CA, USA, North America and Ghana, Africa.

Tacocopter was a thing in 2011. (Ok, not a very serious thing but still.)

Transcript of this show: embedded.fm/transcripts/348

346: You Have Everything You Need

Sophy Wong (@sophywong) creates projects she can wear and writes about them so others can make them as well. We talked about fashion, design, inspiration, and motivation.

Sophy’s website is sophywong.com. We spoke about her book, Wearable Tech Projects. Check out her projects on Adafruit, Hackspace Magazine and Make Magazine. She also did a video interview with Tested.

Sophy’s space suit was used in Saul’s King of Misery music video.

Sophy has found inspiration in Debby Millman’s podcast Design Matters, Diana Eng’s Fashion Geek: Clothes Accessories Tech, and the work of Sagmeister.

Transcript: embedded.fm/transcripts/346

345: Do What Apple Says

Gretchen Walker gave advice on creating a BLE iOS application.

Gretchen wrote The Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Core Bluetooth on the PunchThrough (@PunchThrough) blog. There are many other good posts on the blog about BLE from a device perspective and app development (iOS and Android). PunchThrough also makes LightBlue, a great BLE debugging app you can find wherever you find your mobile apps. 

PunchThrough is hiring embedded software engineers in the Minneapolis, MN area. 

Chris and Gretchen both recommend Ray Wenderlich’s site for learning about Swift. Chris also liked the Big Nerd Ranch books: iOS Programming and Swift Programming. 

Elecia liked the NovelBits.io writeup about getting maximum throughput on BLE.

Apple Accessory Design Guide

220: Cascading Waterfall of Lights (Repeat)

Ben Hencke (@im889) spoke with us about OHWS, Tindie, and blinking lights.

Ben sells his Pixelblaze WiFi LED controller on his ElectroMage store on Tindie. It is based on the ESP8266 and uses the DotStar (APA102) lights.

To hear John Leeman’s trip report on the Open Hardware Summit (OHWS), listen to Don’t Panic Geocast, Episode 140 – “Juicero of Tractors”

Ben’s websites are bhencke.com and electromage.com. Go there if you want to see some of Ben’s projects, including Synthia. You can also find Ben on Hackaday, Github, and YouTube.

We talked with Charles Lohr about ESP8266 WiFi controlled lights and ColorChord on Embedded.fm episode 102: The Deadly Fluffy Bunny (With WiFi).

Laser cut mandalas

OSHPark

Small Batch Assembly

More about the 4-bit Radio Shack computer (and an Arduino-based emulator for it!)

Santa Cruz Idea Fab Lab

Talia's nightlight

Talia's nightlight

344: Superposition, Entanglement, and Interference

Kitty Yeung (@KittyArtPhysics) spoke with us about the superposition of quantum computing and fashion. 

If you want to learn more about quantum computing, check out Kitty’s series on Hackaday’s  Quantum Computing Through Comics. 

Kitty works for Microsoft in Quantum Computing (@MSFTQuantum).

Kitty’s art and fashion are available on her site, Art By Physicist, and shop shop.kittyyeung.com. Her recent addition is the Constellation Dress. There is a coupon code in the show.

Kitty has some other DIY fashion projects: Made of Mars and Saturn Dress.

@artbyphysicist on Instagram 

LinkedIn

343: Getting Brains to Work

Chris and Elecia discuss transcripts, listener emails, and brains.

We already have a post about the dangers of using Arduino for professional work.

Elecia got a Cricut Maker to help her make origami and then discovered SVG files were editable (Intro to SVG). She’s putting her origami crease patterns in a github repo eleciawhite/origami), where else would you put it?

About brains, Elecia was reading from Smart But Scattered.

342: That Girl's Brain

Jess Frazelle (@jessfraz) of Oxide Computer (@oxidecomputer) spoke with us about hyperscalers (large companies that make their own datacenter server hardware) and podcasts. 

Jess wrote an article about the power efficiency measurements of datacenter servers: Power to the People (ACM Queue August 2020).

The Oxide podcast is available on oxide.computer/podcast as well as your usual podcast apps. Jess particularly recommended the episode with Jonathan Blow.

Oxide is working to make hyperscaler-style hardware available to everyone. Their goal is to open source all their hardware and software: github.com/oxidecomputer. They use the Rust language for much of their development.

Jess has a blog: blog.jessfraz.com

Rust

236: The Concept of Delayed Gratification (Repeat)

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:

341: Big Hugs to Everybody

Phoenix Perry (@phoenixperry) returns to speak with us about education and the importance of merging art and technology.

Phoenix’s website is phoenixperry.com. The art installation crossing the virtual and the physical world was called Forest Day Dream. Phoenix is teaching a free online class: Create Expressive Video Games.

Phoenix is the Master’s degree coordinator for University of the Arts London Creative Computing Institute.

Diversity and accessibility are important, some resources:

Phoenix was previously on Embedded 204: Abuse Electricity

340: The Left Bunny Slipper

Chris and Elecia talk about getting transcriptions, accessibility, operating systems, and networking.

Elecia recommends reading Haben by Haben Girma (@HabenGirma). 

Transcripts will initially be only available to Patreon supporters. To become a Patreon supporter, go to patreon.com/embedded. If you can’t be a supporter and still really want the transcripts, hit the contact link.

Chris Gammell’s nifty new podcast (video!) is Contextual Electronics. 

Want to know more about how operating systems work? Listeners recommended Miro Samek’s video series. 

Chris answered some questions about LISP networking. More information about the layers of the network can be found in the OSI model. The mobile focused LISP project that Chris worked on is now at openoverlayrouter.org and has pointers for more documentation and code.

339: Integrity of the Curling Club

Dan Zimmerman (@dmz) spoke with us about voting, voting machines, building trust in software, and transparency.

Dan works for Galois (https://galois.com/ , @galois) and Free and Fair (https://freeandfair.us/, @free_and_fair). He worked on the US Vote Foundation’s E2E-VIV Project on the Future of Voting. The artifacts from that project are on github: github.com/GaloisInc/e2eviv.

Dan (and Galois) worked with Microsoft on ElectionGaurd, a suite of tools to help make elections end-to-end verifiable,  The tools are open source: github.com/microsoft/electionguard

The Helios verifiable online election system is also open source: github.com/benadida/helios-server

We failed to talk about the DARPA SSITH and FETT programs but if you are still reading the show notes, they might be of interest. We also didn’t talk about the National Academies report on Securing the Vote.

338: Working With People Is Terrible

In a surprising turn of tables, Christopher White (@stoneymonster) joins the show as a guest to talk about his career, burnout, and musical instruments. 

Christopher attended Harvey Mudd College for his undergrad mathematics degree then got a Master’s degree in physics at San Jose State University.

Some things he has worked on include:

His current band is 12ax7 (12ax7.fm). The outro music is a track called “Solstice”.

337: Not Completely Explode

Kate Temkin (@ktemkin) explained USB: how to get started, general orientation, useful tools, and when you’d use it in embedded systems.

Kate’s website is ktemkin.com. She works at Great Scott Gadgets.

References for USB: 

USB Stacks we talked about:

Open Source VIDs are available from Openmoko and Pid.codes

Kate recently gave a talk about making USB accessible. Part of the talk was about Luna, an FPGA based USB multitool.

Some open source FPGA tools:

336: Common Sense Is Not Common Sense

Philana Benton (@TechnoPHILiANA) spoke with us about mentoring: how to be a good mentor, what to expect, and what not to do. 

If you’d like to try mentoring, sign up for Philana’s DivTekSpace (divtekspace.org). You can do a resume review, a mock interview, give career advice, and/or refer students to your company.

Philana’s home page is philanaaurelia.com

We also mentioned imentor.org

335: Patching on the Surface of Mars

Joel Sherrill (JoelSherrill) spoke with us about choosing embedded operating systems and why open source RTEMS (RTEMS_OAR) is a good choice.

Embedded #307: Big While Loop: Chris and Elecia talk about when and where they’d use RTOSs

Embedded #93: Delicious Gumbo: Joel gave an introduction to the RTEMS RTOS

Joel works at OAR Corp (oarcorp.com) on RTEMS (rtems.org). RTEMS runs on many development boards including the BeagleBone, Raspberry Pi, and two FPGA boards: ARM ZYNQ-7000 and the Arty Board.

Joel recommends the operating systems book by Alan Burns and Andy Wellens. It comes in many flavors and editions including Real Time Systems and Programming Languages: Ada 95, Real-Time Java and Real-Time C/POSIX (3rd Edition).

NASA Core Flight System (https://cfs.gsfc.nasa.gov/)

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) (https://epics-controls.org/)

226: Camp AVR Vs. Camp Microchip (Repeat)

Jay Carlson (@jaydcarlson), author of The Amazing $1 Microcontroller, joined us to talk about comparing microcontrollers and determining our biases. This was an in-depth comparison of different micro features.

Jay is an electrical engineer specializing in electronics design and embedded programming (contact). His blog is new and interesting.

We talked to SEGGER’s Dirk Akeman about JLink on #218: Neutron Star of Dev Boards.