I am Elecia White alongside Christopher White. We’re here to chat about the interests, careers, and lives of engineers, artists, educators and makers. Our diverse guest list includes names you may have heard and engineers working quietly in the trenches. Either way, they are knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and inspiring.
We’d love to share our enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM).
277: The Sport of Kings
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 source maker-type companies. She started PatentPandas.org to share what she’s learned. Jie is not the only one who has had issues with big companies patenting their open source work. We mentioned Jarek Duda and his fight to keep his compression algorithm unburdened by patents. If you are having or wondering about having an issue, Patent Pandas is intended to be an amusing and gentle introduction. If you are looking for prior art, you can look at the Prior Art Archive and Patents.StackExchange. (If you have some free time, there are often requests to find prior art.) If you are a maker wanting to ensure that your work has dated prior art, submit it to the Wayback machine (Archive.org).
276: Playing a Song on a Potato
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 being in the plan, we didn’t mention the Evil Mad Scientist The Three Fives Kit: A Discrete 555 Timer which builds a 555 Timer out of discrete parts. If only the creator would come on to talk about it and his other cool projects. Note that EMS also has a great description of how the 555 timer works. The giveaway is Jesse’s book and the components to build the projects in his book.
275: Don’t Do What the Computer Tells You
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 generates pictures based on input images. Wikipedia list of animals by number of neurons Janelle’s upcoming book is You Look Like a Thing and I Love You. Sign up for her newsletter to be the first to order it (as well as getting the PG-13 versions of her hilarious AI outputs).
274: Swiss Knife of Embedded Systems
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 to make all of this open source and free to engineers. Ivan Kravets is the founder of PlatformIO.org. Personal site, Github, LinkedIn, and a neat interview. He recommends seeing the Dnieper River if you are in his area. Ivan recently attended the RISC-V Summit. RISC-V is an open source processor core (like ARM but open source). SiFive was mentioned as one of the RISC-V processor vendors. RISC-V is being used extensively in research. Western Digital is planning to develop RISC-V based controllers. And MIPS recently joined RISC-V.
273: Off the Topic of My Jammies
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 example, say you want a TiltSensor and you already have an ImuSensor object so you need to add a function for TiltComputation. You could make the TiltSensor contain an ImuSensor (composition). You call the ImuSensor functions to check the readings when running TiltComputation function. You don’t need to know what is in ImuSensor, only what the API is. You could have TiltSensor be a child class of ImuSensor (inheritance) so that TiltSensor responds to all ImuSensor functions as well as its new TiltComputation function. You could use the variables in ImuSensor directly for TiltCompulation but you will need to know what is in ImuSensor for that to work. Or, in Swift, you could have TiltSensor be an extension of ImuSensor. Except it wouldn’t be called TiltSensor, it would be part of ImuSensor: any file that had access to your extensions would be able to create an ImuSensor instance and call TiltComputation as if it was part of the original ImuSensor API. The TiltComputation function would only have access to its extension’s variables and ImuSensor’s API. You get to add new functionality without breaking backward compatibility. Some more resources on this topic: Composing Types in Swift Swift Language Guide: Extensions Swift Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide by Matthew Mathias and John Gallagher iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide by Christian Keur and Aaron Hillegass LinkedIn Learning Courses Blender Beta with EEVEE renderer The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers by Robert C. Martin Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by Steve McConnell Gelly Roll Glitter Pens (by Sakura) Google Podcast Link (or see the Subscribe page)
272: Stick ‘Em on Whales
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 boards Elecia worked on learning and building robots and happily got a related job Chris W is building IOS apps Object oriented Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market by Alan Cohen (Emebdded.fm interview) CircuitPython Visual Basic as a prototyping language ESP32 and EXP8266 longevity and use in products WiFi provisioning Electric Imp, Particle.io Azure IoT Hub, AWS IoT, Google Cloud Iot, Ubidots, and IoT App Story (the one Chris G remembered later) Wallet.fail Anki Vector robot Genuine People Personality (from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) Genuine people personalities are coming to our gadgets (ArsTechnica) LoRA and chuckable sensors LoRaWAN and ARM Mbed OS Telepresence and mirroring others The Amp Hour ToorCamp episodes Sourdough (a novel about robotics and AI) and Embedded’s interview with the author Energy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smil Jeri Ellsworth spoke about the demise of CarstAR in The Amp Hour 394 The Stone Monsters music products Llama and the IoT zines Related Oatmeal comic Supporting Embedded Patreon leads to a link to their slack channel, mentioned in this show. Supporting The Amp Hour Patreon is also a great idea.
271: Shell Scripts for the Soul
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 are what is inside Archimedes. If you were building a camera to monitor a 3d printer, what would you use? For her M3D Micro Printer, Alex would use the Raspberry Pi based OctoPi to monitor it. If you were going to a classroom of 2nd graders, what boards would you take? The BBC Micro:bit (based on Code Bug) or some LittleBits kits (Star Wars Droid Inventor Kit and Korg Synth Kit are on Amazon (those are Embedded affiliate links, btw). If you were going to make a car-sized fighting robot, what dev system would you use? The Open Source Novena DIY Laptop initially designed Bunnie Huang There were more software and hardware kits to explore: Google DIY AI Arduino Maker1000 Raspberry Pi Chirp.io For your amusement Floppotron plays Bohemian Rhapsody Alex gave a shout out to her first hackerspace All Hands Active Ableton is audio workstation and sequencer software. Alex recommends Women’s Audio Mission as a good way to learn audio production and recording if you are in the San Francisco area. There is an Interplanetary File System and Alex worked on a portable printer console for it. Elecia is always willing to talk about Ty the typing robot and/or narwhals teaching Bayes Rule. She recommended the book There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings by Kenn Amdahl.
270: Broccoli Is Good Too
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 Harness and TDD Guided by ZOMBIES. Book: Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers James mentioned Given-When-Then, a testing design pattern (brief intro). Kent Beck also wrote about test && commit || revert style testing. James and Bob Martin present IoT implementation strategies in a series of videos on Clean Coders. James mentioned working with a Synapse Wireless radio.
269: Ultra-Precise Death Ray
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, Anniversary Edition: Essays On Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change by Camille Fournier Alan mentioned writing software graphically with Enterprise Architect
164: Heatsink in a Shoebox (Repeat)
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 Sinclair Z81 Wiki Eric Schlaepfer's Monster 6502 Grant's 6502 Computer Kerbal Space Program for the Apple ][ Elecia got to $42 in Lemonade Stand by the end of the show Matthew's Nebula Wars and Eye of Eternal Death BASIC games circa 1982 and 1981 respectively. If you feel like it, you can try out an Apple ][ in your web browser, with tons of disks available at the Internet Archive or in a Javascript Emulator. Elecia's book is Making Embedded Systems.
268: Cakepan Interferometry
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 down many strange pathways. Though the Wikipedia Lightning Energy Harvesting page may convince you that it isn’t feasible (though some math might as well, as discussed on this show). For more about lightning interferometry, check out Michael Stock’s in-depth site. You can hear lightning on Jupiter if you listen to the right bands. Neat video of the Milky Way in radio waves reflecting off the moon Elecia really enjoyed The Cloudspotter’s Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney.
267: Cute and Squishy
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 Slug is the UCSC mascot. Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System by Leslie Lamport, 1978
266: Drive off the End of the Universe
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 and Jack Ganssle’s Better Firmware Faster. There are several (free) machine learning courses available from Udacity including Intro to Machine Learning which was part of the Self-Driving Car series that Elecia took. The future basics episodes were grouped into: Flow of program control (pre-RTOS) Design patterns RTOS information
265: What’s Your Superpower
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.
264: Do It for the Herd
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 Hackaday Supercon in Pasadena, CA on Nov 2-4. Fulgurites are cooled lightning.
109: Resurrection of Extreme Programming (Repeat)
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 tool. Before Agile was Agile-for-business, it was Extreme Programming. James recommends Extreme Programming Explained. James will be the keynote speaker at AgileDC in October.
263: Experience the Theory
Professor Angela Sodemann of @ASU spoke with us about new ways of teaching, robotics, and haptic displays. Angela’s robotics courses can be found at RoboGrok.com, including the parts kit. Note that they focus on creating usable robotics as well as teaching theory so there is math, code, and hardware.
262: Egg Freckles
Noah Leon made a film: Love Notes to Newton. It features the people who love and the people who built the Apple Newton. We spoke with him about the Newton and about filmmaking. Noah runs Moosefuel Media. He wanted to mention Frank Orlando of OrlandoMedia, the art designer for the film and promotional material. Profits from Love Notes to Newton go to Be The Match, a registry of bone marrow donors. You can sign up for the Newton mailing list at NewtonTalk.net. The book about the Newton development is Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton by Markos Kounalakis. The documentary about Compaq is Silicon Cowboys (Netflix).
261: Blowing Their Fragile Little Minds
Helen Leigh (@helenleigh) is an author, education writer and maker. She spoke with us about making learning fun (and subversive). Her latest book is The Crafty Kid's Guide to DIY Electronics, out in November 2018. The instrument gloves were the mi.mu (full version) and the mini.mu DIY kit (coming soon to Pimoroni and Adafruit). The mini.mu uses the BBC Micro:bit. Helen worked on earlier books including Mission Explore from the Geography Collective. These are out of print but still obtainable (and may be in your local library). She recommends the book The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. For meeting people in education and technology, Helen is looking forward to the next EMF Camp. As far as tech and education conferences, the BETT trade show is interesting. We mentioned “Phoenix” a few times, that is Phoenix Perry who was on episode 204: Abuse Electricity.
260: We Talked a Lot
Christopher (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) talks about vacations for learning and hobbies then answered listener questions. Chris’ toys include the Prusa I3 Mk3 and the UAD Arrow. Elecia likes Camille Fournier’s book, The Manager’s Path. She also got to plug her own book, Making Embedded Systems: Design Patterns for Great Software. Pacific spiny lumpsucker (Eumicrotremus orbis) at the Seymour Science Center
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