Embedded

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 spok...

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 . EMSL papadum testing (where our thumbnail came from, with permission) Hackaday explained recently...

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...

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 c...

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 abo...

Chris ( @stoneymonster ) and Elecia ( @logicalelegance ) talk about design patterns, conferences, and Molotov cocktails. Wrapper /   Decorator  / Facade Observer aka subscriber/publisher ( caveat ) Delegation and Dependency Injection Model View Controller (very important if somewhat dated UI pattern) PyFlakes is a static Python checker KiCAD Conference is in Chicago on April 26-27, 2019 BangBangCo...

Valve's Alan Yates ( @vk2zay ) spoke with us about the science and technology of virtual reality.  Elecia looked at the iFixIt Teardown of the HTC Vive system  as she was unwilling to take apart Christopher's system.  Alan shared some of his other favorite reverse engineering efforts:  Doc OK's Lighthouse videos , documentation on github by nairol , and a blog by Trammell Hudson . Alan's sensor ci...

Patrick Yeon ( @patyeon ) spoke with us about nonprofit spaceships then asked our opinions about embedded software. Pat is working for something something nonprofit space something something . To fill in some of the blanks, apply for a job on NonprofitSpaceship.org . Pat was previously on episode 153: Space Nerf Gun when we talked about cost-optimized satellites. We talked about several books: Tur...

Matthew Liberty ( @mliberty1 ) shared good advice for lowering power. We talk about different ways to measure current (Matt has a nice write-up ) and things software can do to decrease power consumption. Sleeping is critical, of course, as is choosing your clock speed and setting the GPIOs to good states. Everything is fine until you start getting into the microamps, then your multimeter measureme...

Jie Qi ( @qijie ) spoke with us about making paper-based electronics ( @Chibitronics ) and learning about patent law (via @Patentpandas ). Jie Qi is the founder of Chibitronics , a crafting electronics platform that uses paper and stickers to create (and teach) circuits. Building the company and working on electronics-filled pop-up books led to the realization that patent law does apply to open so...

Jesse Rutherford ( @BentTronics ) gave us an in-depth look at the 555 timer IC ( wiki ). Jesse runs Bent-tronics.com and wrote The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to the 555 Timer ( Amazon ). Some great 555 projects: 555 Decimal Adding Machine 555 found in a drill trigger speed controller as seen on the Ben Heck Show 555 found inside a solar charger controller, video by Julian Ilett Somehow, despite it...

Janelle Shane ( @JanelleCShane ) shared truly weird responses from AIs. Her website is AIWeirdness.com where you can find machine-learning-generated ideas for paint colors , ice cream , and cocktails (and many other things). We never said they were good ideas. Janelle's FAQ will help you get started trying out RNNs yourself. We recommend the Embedded show titles . We talked about BigGAN which gene...

Ivan Kravets ( @ikravets )  spoke with us about PlatformIO ( @PlatformIO_Org ), IDEs, embedded libraries, and RISC-V. PlatformIO is an editor, an integrated development environment with debugging and unit testing, and/or a library index. Its goal is to make embedded development easier and more consistent across host operating systems and development hardware. It is also a .org because the goal is...

Chris and Elecia chat with each other about the new year. All is fine until she starts quizzing him about some language details of his new project. Many object-oriented resources suggest using composition (has-a) over inheritance (is-a-type-of) ( wiki ). Where do swift extensions fit in? It seems to me (Elecia here) that extension is invisible composition that allows adding of functions. For examp...

Chris Gammell ( @Chris_Gammell ) of The Amp Hour ( @TheAmpHour ) joined us to talk about the state of the industry, listeners, guests, and life in general. Embedded's accounting episode ( 150: Sad Country Song ) Contextual Electronics Consulting forum ( requires you to apply ) Remote work 250: Yolo Snarf Excellent video on how prototype PCBs have improved over the years Quickly falling cost of dev...

Alex Glow ( @glowascii ) filled our heads with project ideas. Alex is the Resident Hardware Nerd at Hackster.io . Her page is glowascii and you might want to see Archimedes the AI robot owl and the Hardware 101 channel . They have many sponsored contests including BadgeLove . Lightning round led us to many possibles: It you were building an IoT stuffed animal, what would you use? Mycroft and Snips...

James Grenning ( @jwgrenning ) joined us to talk about Test Driven Development, dealing with legacy code, and cleaning out very large pipes. James is the author of Test Driven Development for Embedded C . If you want to take his live online course, check out the remote delivered TDD classes on Wingman Software . His blog has many great articles including TDD How-to: Get Your Legacy C into a Test H...

Alan Cohen ( @proto2product ) wrote a great book about taking an idea and making it into a product. We spoke with him about the development process and the eleven deadly sins of product development. We did not talk about ultra-precise death rays. Books we discussed: Alan's Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market Elecia's Making Embedded Systems The Mythical Man-Month, Anniver...

Christopher White resurrects an Apple ][+ with his brother Matthew White. This is a show about the software Christopher and Matthew wrote when they were kids and the hardware they wrote it on. Matthew's favorite fictional robot (we should have asked): Venus Probe from Six Million Dollar Man . We did ask about his favorite fictional computer and there is a video for that too. Apple ][+ Wiki Timex S...

After many bouts of lightning round, we finally got our lightning questions answered by Eric Brunning ( @deeplycloudy ). Eric is a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas Tech University specializing in storm electrification and lightning . You can hear some of Eric's field adventures by listening to his episode of the Don't Panic Geocast show. The Wikipedia page for lightning will lead you dow...

Lindsey Kuper ( @lindsey ) spoke with us about !!Con West , being a new professor , and reading technical journals. The call for speakers for !!Con West is open until November 30, 2018. The conference will be in Santa Cruz, CA on February 23-24. Lindsey's blog is Composition.al and it has advice for !!Con proposals , advice for potential grad students , and updates on Lindsay's work . The Banana S...

Chris ( @stoneymonster ) and Elecia ( @logicalelegance ) talk about conferences, simulations, and future episodes. Simulation/Emulation: QEMU and Renode . Chris also noted there were QEMU for STM32 instances such as this one from beckus . For conferences, we named several but had no particularly useful advice. We did recommend classes such as James Grenning's training on TDD in Embedded Systems an...

Anita Pagin gave us an insider's view of being a recruiter. Anita recently started at Carbon3D and is recruiting for software and hardware . Anita also does career coaching on the side . Given the advice she gave us for free, imagine what she could tell you if you paid her. Finally, Elecia's favorite list of resume keywords .

Chris Svec ( @christophersvec ) returns to chat about recruiting for embedded jobs and to help us answer listener questions. Also, he's looking for engineers to join him at iRobot . Want to get into embedded and don't know how? We did a show about that: 211: 4 Weeks, 3 Days . Also, there is an EdX class that is popular and a Coursera course that may be useful . You can meet up with Chris at Hackad...

James Grenning ( @jwgrenning ) returns to discuss TDD, Agile, and web courses.  James was on Embedded.fm episode 30: Eventually Lighting Strikes . James' new company is Wingman Software . His excellent book is  TDD for Embedded C .  James suggested  Training From the Back of the Room!  as resource to people looking to put together a class. He uses and recommends CyberDojo as a coding instruction t...