Embedded

Tyler Hoffman joined us to discuss the issues associated with embedded devices at consumer scale. We talked about firmware update, device management, and remote diagnostics for millions of devices. Tyler is a co-founder at Memfault ( memfault.com ), a company that works on IoT dashboards and embedded tools. (We will invite Tyler back to talk about embedded tools but someone was preparing a lecture...

Alpenglow's Carrie Sundra spoke with us about frivolous circuits, solder live streaming, and yarn. Alpenglow Industries sells frivolous circuits, some pre-built (like FUnicorn) and some are buildables such as the cute but evil heart soldering kits called PS-I Hate You . Carrie's YouTube channel is alpenglowindustries where she livecasts Wednesday afternoon Pacific Time. You can still watch the Blo...

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 genera...

Alan Cohen joined us to talk about brain waves, medical product development, open source, and helpful engineering. Alan has been working on VolksEEG ( volkseeg.org , github.com/VolksEEG/VolksEEG ). This is an EEG ( wiki Electroencephalography ) which detects brain waves. It uses the TI ADS1299 EEG monitoring chip and the Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Sense . Alan wrote Prototype to Product: A Practica...

Chris and Elecia discuss civic duties, the CAN bus, fulfilling Kickstarter orders, and the answers to a series of questions about embedded systems. Elecia was recently introduced to TRIZ inventive principles ( wikipedia page ) and started reading And Suddenly the Inventor Appeared: TRIZ: Theory of Inventive Problem Solving by Genrich Altshuller. You can support the show by becoming a patron on Pat...

We spoke to author Robin Sloan about his books and near-future science fiction. Robin wrote Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore and Sourdough . Find Robin on twitter as @robin_____sloan . Robin's website is robinsloan.com . Go there for some short stories, sign up for his newsletter and check out his new 'zine (also at wizard.limo ). Oh! Don't forget his blog, including a description of his neural ne...

Sunshine Jones spoke with us about synthesizers, electronics, and philosophy. Find him on twitter @Sunshine_Jones and instagram at sunshine_jones_ Sunshine's music is most easily found at TheUrgencyOfChange.com . His writing is at Sunshine-Jones.com . We talked about Sunshine's User's Guide to the Roland SE-02 . That includes Ahmed, a track produced using only the SE-02. Sunshine also wrote about...

Ingo Muschenetz spoke with us about software, management, podcasts, and interacting with people.  Ingo's LinkedIn page Ingo works for Axway, they are hiring: Axway Careers Ingo keeps up with many podcasts, here are some of his favorites: Podcasts that talk about a complex topic, provide insight Throughline Planet Money Indicator  https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510325/the-indicator-from-planet-money...

Jeremy Fielding spoke with us about mechanical engineering, robotics, robot operating system, YouTube, and solving problems. You can find all of Jeremy's links on his main site: jeremyfielding.com but here are a few short cuts: YouTube channel: Jeremy Fielding Twitter: @jeremy_fielding Instagram: @jeremy_fielding Patreon: jeremyfieldingsr Jeremy's Industrial arm punching video Elecia's typing robo...

Liam Cadigan joined us to talk about founding a successful startup from a college capstone project. Liam is a co-founder of InspectAR and worked on the board files the system uses. Liam can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter . Check out InspectAR . They are also on Twitter and on Instagram . The Inventor's Dilemma: The Remarkable Life of H. Joseph Gerber

Alex Glow 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 . You can find her on Twitter at @glowascii . Lightning round led us to many possibles: It you were building an IoT stuffed animal, what wou...

Mario Marchese (aka Mario the Maker Magician) spoke with us about robots performing magic, humans performing magic, and writing a book about making magic. We also covered art, making, learning, Sesame Street, performance, design, humor, Piff the Magic Dragon [sic], magic secrets, and gracefully handling technological failure. You can find Mario on: His website mariothemagician.com YouTube ( Mariot...

Leah Buechley spoke with us about the intersection of computer science and art. She is an associate professor in the computer science department of the University of New Mexico where she directs the Hand and Machine research group. Her website is leahbuechley.com , her research group website is handandmachine.cs.unm.edu . You can find her on Twitter at @leahbuechley. She wrote the book Textile Mes...

Chris ( @stoneymonster ) and Elecia ( @logicalelegance ) discuss Blender, Make, TCP/IP, and listener questions (mostly about the podcast itself). Lightweight IP : an open source TCP/IP stack for embedded systems Look for Lazy Tutorials for Blender in Ian Hubert's YouTube Channel or if you want something a little simpler, try the Blender Beginner Tutorial (donut!) . Ukulele and acoustic guitar kits...

Adelle Lin ( @Adellelin ) spoke with us about wearables, art, playfulness, and getting together in virtual reality. Adelle's website is touchtech.io . For some VR get togethers, Adelle recommends AltSpace ( altvr.com ) and Mozilla Hubs ( hubs.mozilla.com ). Some other remote get togethers: Virtual Burning Man (August 29 - September 7, 2021) A. Maze Conference (July 21-24, 2021, remote) We mentione...

Tom Anderson ( @tomacorp ) joined us to talk about floating pins, ADCs, and teaching and learning things. Tom mentioned Horowitz and Hill's Art of Electronics and the vintage books on TubeBooks.org . Tom wrote about  JFETs and vacuum tubes and Power Supply Filter Design for PCBs . He recommended the TI app note on floating inputs and a power supply book: Modern DC-to-DC Switchmode Power Converter...

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...

Nitya Narasimhan ( @nitya ) spoke with us about visualizing learning, visual storytelling, sketchnotes, and finding a job that satisfies. Nitya's sketchnotes are all available on the @sketchthedocs Twitter stream that includes links to the hi-res drawing, a time-lapse of the drawing being created, and a blog post describing the information in more detail. The hi-res images are also on github , or...

On this quick bonus episode, Elecia and Christopher chat about their various recent projects, some of which have just been released into the wild. Christopher's band 12AX7 just launched their album Kickstarter, which was selected as one of Kickstarter's "Projects We Love". Check it out here if you are interested in finding out more or backing it. It'll run through July 16th at 10am Pacific Time. E...

Erin Kennedy ( @RobotGrrl ) spoke with us about learning new things, nice robots at the beach, lighting up fog voxels, and being part of the maker community. Erin's Robot Missions ( @RobotMissions ) was founded to develop robots to clean shorelines of plastic. Her personal website is robotgrrl.xyz (check out the project showcase ).  Erin also worked on a Hackaday Dream Team that worked on innovati...

From his view in retirement, David Comer spoke with us about continuing to learn, staying engaged in an engineering career, and how the Galileo memory module worked.

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. (Th...

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 y...

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...

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 File...