375: Hiding in Your Roomba

Brittany Postnikoff (@Straithe) spoke with us about scary robots, neat stickers, and contributing to open source projects.

Brittany’s website is straithe.com and her sticker channel is twitch.tv/str41the. Her github repo has curated reading lists on technical topics.

She’s working at Great Scott Gadgets, maker of a variety of hardware tools including Luna, a toolkit for working with USB. (This was mentioned on a previous Embedded show, 337: Not Completely Explode with Kate Tempkin.)

And if you want Embedded merchandise like mugs, mousepads, and wall art, we have a store for you.

374: Getting Rafty

Tenaya Hurst Conklin (@TenayaHurst) discussed STEAM teaching tools and kits from RAFT (@RAFTBayArea). 

RAFT is at raft.net. The Abiotic Dissection activity is pretty amusing (from the STEAM Learning Sheets) as are the games in the idea sheets. They also have a summer camp and a Youtube channel.

Tenaya’s website is roguemaking.com. She was previously on Embedded 49: Is that an Arduino in your pocket?

142: New and Improved Appendages (Repeat)

Sarah Petkus offers to let her robot lick Christopher's leg. Christopher agrees reluctantly once we determine the saliva will be anti-bacterial hand sanitizer.

Sarah is a kinetic artist and some of her projects include a robot army (built your own from parts printed out or purchased at robot-army.com), Noodlefeet, and Carl (the flamingo of pendulum inversion). Her Zoness.com site is an umbrella for her drawn and robotic art. Specifically, you may enjoy her webcomic Gravity Road, her YouTube channel, and/or her Robotic Arts blog.

Some other topics we discussed:

Also, please check out our new embedded.fm/blog or if you prefer email updates, sign up at embedded.fm/subscribe.

373: Docker! Docker! Docker!

It’s another Elecia and Chris episode and this time we cover handling hourly work when the task doesn’t neatly divide into hours, using Docker (and Conda and Virtualenv) for development, growing the podcast, overdoing conference talks, and trying to find a new laptop. Phew!

The Embedded Online Conference is coming up the week of May 17th 2021, and Elecia’s talk will be Buried Treasure and Map Files (Note: the coupon code is still valid and mentioned early in the episode. Elecia will also put up a copy of her talk on YouTube after some time.)

372: The Motivation of Creativity

Anne Barela (@anne_engineer) spoke with us about working as an engineer in the US Foreign Service and writing tutorials for Adafruit. Anne has also written two books: Getting Started with Adafruit Trinket and Getting Started with Adafruit Circuit Playground Express.

To see Anne’s writing on Adafruit, check out her page: learn.adafruit.com/users/AnneBarela

We also looked at Adafruit’s Home Automation board.

370: This Is the Whey

Alvaro Prieto (@alvaroprieto) spoke with us about cheese, making, work, the reverse engineering podcast, weather, and motivation.

Alvaro is a host of the Unnamed Reverse Engineering podcast. Some of his favorite episodes include #41 with Samy Kamkar, #14 with Joe Grand, and #23 with Major Malfunction. (Jen Costillo co-hosts the show and has been on Embedded several times.)

Alvaro works at Sofar Ocean, making oceanic sensing platforms. He has a personal website linking to his other exploits.

We talked about some Embedded episodes as well:

Also, we’ve all really enjoyed the Disney’s Mandolorian.

369: More Pirate Jokes

Chris and Elecia talk with each other about contracting, architecture, origami research, Digilent’s new oscilloscope, TensorFlow, map files, conference talks, art and the upcoming 12AX7 album.

Digilent sent us a pre-production Analog Discovery Pro ADP3450.

Elecia’s Origami Github.

Embedded Patreon

Embedded Online Conference talk Buried Treasure and Map Files (Note: the coupon code from Jacob’s show is still valid and Elecia will put up a copy of her talk on YouTube.)

12XA7, we’ll let you know when the Kickstarter goes live.

250: Yolo Snarf (Repeat)

Finally! An episode with version control! And D&D! Chris Svec (@christophersvec) joins us to discuss why version control is critical to professional software development and what the most important concepts are.

T-Shirts are on sale for a limited time: US distributor and EU distributor.

You can read more from Chris on the Embedded Blog. He writes the ESE101 column (new posts soon!).

If you are new to version control or learning git, Atlassian has a great set of posts and tutorials from high level “what is version control?” to helping you figure out good usage models (Svec mentioned gitflow). Atlassian has an interactive tutorial that lets you try out the repository commands (or try the Github interactive tutorials). Of course, there is a good O’Reilly book about git.

If you are using SVN (aka Subversion), the Red Bean book from O’Reilly is a good resource.

(Elecia's shirt said You Obviously Like Owls from topatoco.com.)

qc-yolo-art_compact.png

368: Amazing That Any of This Works

Al Sweigart (@AlSweigart) spoke with us about getting better at Python programming. 

Al’s book site is InventWithPython.com. You can find his books there as well as No Starch Press and Amazon. 

  • Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

  • Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python

  • Cracking Codes with Python

  • Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python

Al’s personal site (alsweigart.com) has talks, videos, and a lot of code to look at. Or check out his github repo including the small text based games: https://github.com/asweigart/pythonstdiogames

Al’s YouTube Channel, including his Calm Programming series.

We also talked about:

367: Data of Our Lives

Dr. Ayanna Howard (@robotsmarts, wiki) spoke with us about sex, race, and robots. 

Ayanna’s Audible book is Sex, Race, and Robots: How to Be Human in the Age of AI. You can see more of her research from her Google Scholar page.

Find some best practices and tools for reducing bias AI:

Ayanna has recently moved from being Professor and Department Chair at Georgia Tech to be Dean of Engineering at The Ohio State University. Her current favorite robot is Pepper.

Ayanna spoke more about her robotics and trust research on Embedded 207: I Love My Robot Monkey Head (transcript). 

366: All the Wrong Tools

Laurel Cummings (@justblamelaurel) teaches people how to build what is required with the material on hand. We talked with her about how to engineer survival solutions on-the-fly, often while performing disaster relief. Also: what could be made with chewing gum and paper clips.

Laurel works at Building Momentum (buildmo.com). They are currently hiring.

Laurel spoke at SuperCon 2019 about Austere Engineering.

365: Barbed Wire Fence and Great WiFi

Cy Keener spoke with us about sensors, Arduinos, ice, and the crossover between art and science.

You can see some of his field work and gallery installations at his site: cykeener.com and on his vimeo channel. Cy is an art professor at the University of Maryland (bio, youtube)

Cy’s advisor at Stanford was Paul DeMarinis (pauldemarinis.org, Stanford page).

Arduiniana: a blog of useful Arduino libraries

We also talked about some custom sensors by Lovro Valcic of Bruncin (bruncin.com).


364: All the Abstractions

Jacob Beningo spoke with us about embedded systems, conference talks, writing articles and books, and best practices in development. Jacob is a consultant and instructor, see his website for more details (beningo.com).

Jacob is one of the organizers of the Embedded Online Conference, May 18,19, and 20. Session times is generally noted in Eastern Time (Americas). A coupon code for a discount on registration is in the show. Jacob will be giving a talk called Best Practices for RTOS Application Design.

He likes the full visibility of tracing, using the Segger J-Trace with SystemView or Precipio.

Jacob has written three books:

He’s also written many articles for Embedded.com as well as his own blog.

He recommends the IEEE Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK). The SWEBOK is a free download from IEEE, which covers the best practices that engineers should be following when they develop software along with processes and strategies.

Jacob also recommends Renesas’ Synergy Software Quality Handbook that describes the processes that they used to develop and validate their software.

363: Squishy Nature

Alana Sherman of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI, @MBARI_News) spoke with us about engineering for deep sea environments and jelly creatures.

Alana’s MBARI page notes that she worked on DeepPIV and the Benthic Rover. She is also a part of the BioInspiration Lab.

Larvaceans: image search, short video, or (my favorite!) the long video.

It is probably too late to purchase tshirts but… in case it isn’t, here is the link.

362: Permutations of Underscores

Chris and Elecia chat about their projects, Python, choosing boards, social media, tshirts, and self care.

T Shirts are on sale until the end of February! To decode the titles check out the giant list of all embedded episodes.

Our social media empire is growing. Please follow us on any of these sites:

2021 Embedded Online Conference is May 18-19 & 20, 2021

Raspberry Pi Pico

Meaning of underscores in Python and Python CTypes

255: Jellyfish Are Pretty Badass (Repeat)

Ariel Waldman (@arielwaldman) spoke with us about how science, art, and all of the other disciplines can build a better world.

Ariel does many amazing things, it is hard to list them all.

Ariel fell in love with NASA while watching the When We Left Earth miniseries.

360: Cats Love It!

Ben Hest (@bombledmonk) of Digikey (@digikey) answered questions about finding parts, warehouses, packaging orders, and sweeping components off the floor.

The Digikey website: digikey.com. It is ok to click around, looking for a ton of information (as well as parts). 

Want to see someone search for parts? Limor at Adafruit does this every week in The Great Search videos!

Ben’s favorite new parts are the Raspberry Pi Pico and the Parallax Propeller 2.

Embedded T-shirts are available!

You could also have your own waffle paper maker: Geami Wrap.

Digikey is hiring for IT and Software Engineering positions! Check out their open jobs here.

359: You Can Never Have Too Many Socks

Thea Flowers (Stargirl, @theavalkyrie) creates open source and open hardware craft synthesizers that use Circuit Python for customization. She also writes about the internals of the SAMD21.

Thea’s synthesizer modules are found at Winterbloom, including Castor & Pollux and the Big Honking Button. It is all open source hardware so you can find code and schematics on Thea’s github site: github.com/theacodes 

Thea’s site is thea.codes. You can find her blog there with deeply technical and detailed posts such as The most thoroughly commented linker script (probably), The Design of the Roland Juno oscillators, and Understanding the SAMD21 Clocks. 

For more information about the Eurorack, listen to Embedded 356: Deceive and Manipulate You with Leonardo Laguna Ruiz of Vult.