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).
427: No Fisticuffs or Casting of Spells
Elizabeth Wharton spoke to us about laws, computers, cybersecurity, and funding education in rural communities. She is a strong proponent of privacy by design and de-identification by default. Liz (@LawyerLiz) is the VP of Operations at Scythe.io (@scythe_io), a company that works in cybersecurity. She won the Cybersecurity or Privacy Woman Law Professional of the Year for 2022 at DefCon. Liz is on the advisory board of the Rural Tech Fund (@ruraltechfund) which strives to reduce the digital divide between rural and urban areas. We mentioned disclose.io and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA, wiki). Transcript
426: Equivalently Annoying
Elecia and Chris are back from vacation and catching up! Today’s topics include: last week’s burnout episode and what we learned, what is a PSoC and why would you want one, how to get up to speed as a junior engineer, and a few more side quests. The burnout episode with Keith Hildesheim was last week, we encourage you to check it out, we learned some things about ourselves and maybe you will too. Chris mentioned astrophotography and here’s the link to the reddit post that inspires him to keep going: astrounding Jupiter video. In case you missed it in the newsletter, which you should definitely sign up for, here’s Chris’ list of VSCode extensions: AutoScroll - Have a log file open that you're monitoring? This extension keeps the tab scrolled to the bottom at all times. Doxygen Documentation Generator - Quickly generate and pre-fill those tedious doxygen style comments. GitHub Pull Requests and Issues - Make pull-requests or do reviews for Github right in the editor. GitLens - Easily see revision history and "blame" for every line of code in a pretty unobtrusive way. Header source switch - Ever want to switch really quickly to a C file's header (or vice versa)? This adds a keyboard shortcut to do just that. TODO Highlight - Makes those millions of TODOs and FIXMEs light up in a nice neon color so you can't ignore them anymore. Transcript
425: Burnout Leads to the Dark Side
Keith Hildesheim joined us in an excellent conversation about avoiding burnout at work (and dealing with the aftereffects). Keith mentioned some useful books and articles: Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle Mindset: The New Psychology of Success SCARF Model Burnout Is About Your Workplace, Not Your People 5 Ways to Boost Your Resilience at Work How to Make Stress Your Friend Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindfulness Exercises 3 Ways to Recharge When You're Burned Out. Transcript Keith also sent over a few charts and checklists which you can see on the website episode notes.
294: Ludicrous Numbers of LEDs (Repeat)
Mike Harrison challenged us to a PIC fight on twitter. Surprisingly, no blood was shed and we mostly talked about LEDs and art installations. Mike’s YouTube Channel and his website electricstuff.co.uk. He's on twitter as @mikelectricstuf. Here's a link to what prompted the show: PIC fight on Twitter. His professional hire-him-to-work-on-your-neat-stuff site is whitewing.co.uk For driving LEDs, Mike likes the TI TLC5971: 12-Channel, 16-Bit ES-PWM RGB LED Driver with 3.3V Linear Regulator.
316: Obviously Wasn't Obvious (Repeat)
Professor Barbara Liskov spoke with us about the Liskov substitution principle, data abstraction, software crisis, and winning a Turing Award. See Professor Liskov’s page at MIT, including her incredible CV.
424: Between Midnight and 6am
Gustavo Pezzi spoke with us about using fun and simple systems to explain low-level concepts and how they work in higher-level engineering tasks. For example, teaching microprocessor concepts using Atari 2600 assembly and physics by creating a simple game engine. Gustavo’s site is Pikuma.com. He has a free taster course on bit-shifting. We also talked about Atari 2600 Programming with 6502 Assembly and Physics Game Engine Programming. Stella, a multi-platform Atari 2600 emulator For examples of optimizing in different ways, check out this bit hacks page. Gustavo is mentoring for Classpert’s Building a Language course. (This is where Elecia teaches Making Embedded Systems.) The conjecture about a shortage of electrical engineers was from The Register. Transcript
423: Speaking of Aardvarks
Phillip Johnston joined us to talk about how engineering approaches can change over time. This conversation started with Phillip’s Embedded Artistry blog post How Our Approach to Abstract Interfaces Has Changed Over the Years. His new course is Designing Embedded Software for Change. Embedded Artistry has a Design Pattern Catalogue (though Elecia was looking at Software design patterns on Wikipedia during the podcast). https://github.com/embvm Phillip is working with Memfault on an ongoing embedded systems panel. The first topic they covered was observability metrics for IoT devices. There is a panel coming up on how to debug embedded devices in production. Some reading that Phillip mentioned: Toward a New Model of Abstraction in Software Engineering by Gregor Kiczales A Procedure for Designing Abstract Interfaces for Device Interface Modules by Kathryn Heninger Britton, R. Alan Parker, David L. Parnas Designing Software for Ease of Extension and Contraction by David L. Parnas (1979) Design Patterns for Embedded Systems in C: An Embedded Software Engineering Toolkit by Bruce Powel Douglass Best Paper Awards in Computer Science from Jeff Huang Creating a Circular Buffer in C and C++ - Embedded Artistry Aardvark I2C/SPI Host Adapter - Total Phase Transcript
422: It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature
Chris and Elecia chat about origami, learning, whether to future proof tools or buy the cheaper option, simulators, and classes. Elecia is gearing up to teach another Making Embedded Systems course. Sign up if you want to be in the Yellow Seahorses cohort! Sign up early and often. Sign up other people. Ask other people to sign themselves up and even more other people. Well, you get the idea. Check out Wokwi! While it looks like it is for Arduino from the front page, there is a lot of work going on to support C/C++ APIs such as the one for Raspberry Pi Pico or the Rust one for the ESP32. Please ask a professor what they’d need to use Wokwi in their class! In episode 158: Programming Is Too Difficult for Humans, we talked about the Ada language and using it on ARM cores. Learn Ada (at AdaCore). News Dead spiders are coming soon to a robot near you Continuous ultrasounds: probably not for swimming Is CERN opening a portal to hell? Scientists claim not. Transcript Thank you to our sponsor this week!
421: Paint the Iceberg Yellow
Chris Hobbs talks with Elecia about safety critical systems. Safety-critical systems keep humans alive. Writing software for these embedded systems carries a heavy responsibility. Engineers need to understand how to make code fail safely and how to reduce risks through good design and careful development. The book discussed was Embedded Software Development for Safety-Critical Systems by Chris Hobbs. This discussion was originally for Classpert (where Elecia is teaching her Making Embedded Systems course) and the video is on Classpert’s YouTube if you want to see faces. There were many terms with letters and numbers, here is a guide: IEC 61508: Functional Safety of Electrical/Electronic/Programmable Electronic Safety-related Systems; relates to industrial systems and forms the foundation for many other standards ISO 26262: Road vehicles - Functional Safety; extends and specializes IEC 61508 for systems within cards IEC 62304 specifies life cycle requirements for the development of medical software and software within medical devices. It has been adopted as national standards and therefore can be used as a benchmark to comply with regulatory requirements. MISRA C: a set of software development guidelines for the C programming language DO178-C and DO178-B: Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification are the primary documents by which the certification authorities such as FAA, EASA and Transport Canada approve all commercial software-based aerospace systems ISO/IEC 29119: Software and systems engineering -- Software testing ISO 14971:2019 Medical devices — Application of risk management to medical devices IEC 62304:2006 Medical device software — Software life cycle processes Transcript
420: Googly Eyes and Top Hats
Dan White, CEO of Filament Games, spoke to us about educational games, how to make play part of learning, and simulating robots. We also discussed what makes a good (or bad) learning experience, the limits of games as educational tools, and the elements of fun. Roblox is a game platform and game creation system. Filament Games is developing a robot simulator called Roboco. Filament has many games out in the wild, check out their portfolio. If this sounds like fun, check out their careers page. Durf live streams game playing Transcript
314: Why Are Wings Needed in Space? (Repeat)
Mohit Bhoite makes functional electronic sculptures from components and brass wire. We spoke with him on the hows and whys of making art. Mohit’s sculptures, including the Tie Fighter. More on his instagram: mohitbhoite Jiri Prause has a wonderful tutorial on how to make simpler freeform electronics on Instructables. Peter Vogel is another artist making phenomenal freeform electronics. Leonardo Ulian uses electronic components in his art (his don’t function but wow). Advice from Mohit on trying this yourself from Bantam Tools. Mohit likes Xuron Pliers Mohit can be found on twitter as @MohitBhoite
419: Fission Chips
Eric Schlaepfer and Windell Oskay are the authors of Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components. We discussed the inner beauty of a number of electronic components as well as cameras, photography, writing, preparing samples, and terrible title puns. You can pre-order the physical book and get a digital early release copy at NoStarch.com/Open-Circuits Windell is co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratory (@EMSL). He and Eric have collaborated before on several projects: The Three Fives Kit: A Discrete 555 Timer The 555SE Discrete 555 Timer The XL741 Discrete Op-Amp Kit The 741SE Discrete 741 Op-Amp Eric is also known for the Monster 6502, a 6502 processor made up of individual transistors. Eric also writes on tubetime.us and is on Twitter as @TubeTimeUS Sign up for the Embedded newsletter by the end of July and be entered to win one of these lovely prizes: The Three Fives Kit: A Discrete 555 Timer (two) A copy of Open Circuits (one) Transcript A lovely reject from the book, this is the base of a neon bulb from GE.
418: Answer Me These Questions Three
Chris and Elecia question embedded systems then answer listener questions about embedded systems. They mostly agree except about one thing which, after some discussion, they agree upon. Mostly. Video of Cissy Strut cover where Chris plays all of the instruments Video where Elecia shows off some programmatic origami and simulation (not discussed but it seemed reasonable retaliation for talking about Chris’ video) Dynamic Linker for Cortex-M (github repo) Transcript
417: I Don’t Know How My Brain Works
Alexandra Covor spoke with us about engineering, making, drawing, school, and what it means to be an artist. Alex’s projects are on GitHub and Hackster.io. Her electronics comics can be found as PikaComics on Instagram. The 2022 Open Hardware Summit named Alex as part of the Ada Lovelace Fellowship. Her favorite talk from the summit was Anuradha Reddy talking about Knotty (Naughty) Hardware. Alex works for Zalmotek, a design services firm in Bucharest. We talked about Waylay.io, including their smart pet feeder built on that platform. For example projects for Edge Impulse, they built a tools organizer that uses ML. Transcript
416: EEs Are From PIC, SWEs Are From Arm
John Catsoulis is the founder of Udamonic and creator of the Forth-based Scamp development board. He spoke with us about Forth, electrical engineering, and writing a technical book. Find out more about Udamonic’s Scamp at udamonic.com. There are some hardware projects under the Create menu. The Forth programming language is famous for its small size, portability, and post-fix (RPN) nature. John wrote O’Reilly’s Designing Embedded Hardware. While some parts are out of date, the general theory is still good. CuriousMarc’s YouTube channel is full of retro-computer goodness. Long ago, Elecia read The Eudaemonic Pie and imagined a life of high tech crime. Please don’t tell her if it doesn’t hold up well. Transcript
415: Rolling Computers
Lead Solution Architect at Cymotive, Benny Meisels spoke with us about implementing embedded software security in cars. The discussion touches ECUs, IoT vehicles, threat and risk analysis, and how reverse engineering plays a role in security testing. Benny works at Cymotive (https://www.cymotive.com/). You can find him on LinkedIn benny-meisels or on Twitter @benny_meisels. Resources for automotive security: Automotive Security Research Group (ASRG) Upstream Security Hacking a VW Golf Power Steering ECU - Part 1 – Willem Melshing's Blog Instrument Cluster (ICM) Simulator: ICSim on github Program | escar USA conference | Embedded Security in Cars Car in a box, also on github and Arduino based: A lower cost approximation of the Toyota PASTA:Portable Automotive Testbed with Adaptability Ghost Peak: Practical Distance Reduction Attacks Against HRP UWB Ranging Framework Laptop Transcript
414: Puff, the Magically Secure Dragon
Laura Abbott of Oxide Computing spoke with us about a silicon bug in the ROM of the NXP LPC55, affecting the TrustZone. More information about the two issues are in the Oxide blog: Another vulnerability in the LPC55S69 ROM Exploiting Undocumented Hardware Blocks in the LPC55S69 More about LPC55S6x and their LPC55Sxx Secure Boot Ghidra is a software reverse engineering framework… and it is one of the NSA’s github repositories. Laura will also be speaking about this at Hardwear.io in early June 2022 in Santa Clara. Twitter handles: @hardwear_io, @oxidecomputer, @openlabbott, The vulnerability was filed with NIST: NVD - CVE-2021-31532 Transcript
413: Puppy-Like Glee
Chris and Elecia chat about practice, software quality, and empathy for seemingly unmotivated team members. Elecia is teaching another cohort of Making Embedded Systems in the fall, starting late August. There will be reminders between now and then but if you want to sign up, here is the page. The funny and odd music instruction video with the copy-and-paste method of composition. Sign up for the newsletter! Support us on Patreon! Transcript
412: Inductors Don't Have Feelings
Tom Anderson returned to the show to describe how transistors and passives work. We discuss everything from vacuum tubes to diodes to transistors (PNP and NPN) to resistors and capacitors. We search for synonyms among the confusing terminology of cathodes, plates, emitters, anodes, grids, bases, and collectors. This was a tech heavy episode so little bit of brushing up on terms may be useful before (or after): Boltzmann constant Physical constant Vacuum tube Diode logic Diode Push–pull converter Transcript.
411: Batteries Get Upset
Ethan Slattery joined us to talk about animals, animal trackers, and how they work. Ethan works for Wildlife Computers. They use the Argos Network for data transfer. He was previously at MBARI and worked with Engineers for Exploration as an undergraduate. Ethan is also known as CrustyAuklet on Twitter and Github. He also has an Instagram page. Things mentioned in the show you might want to know more about: Nautilus Live is a streaming YouTube channel from an ROV exploring the oceans. They have periodic dives where you can ask scientists about what they are seeing, while they are seeing it. Watch discoveries happen in real-time. Or watch the highlight reels on YouTube. Ze Frank also has a YouTube channel about animals called True Facts that it is … not as scientifically minded. And sometimes NSFW. Start with the True Facts about the Ocotupus. (Note he did a parody of a Nautilus Live dive). The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman Penguin, pangolin, whale shark, weta, you might have heard about those but what about the cassowary? In-depth documentary video, people on the internet are idiots video, and Wikipedia. Transcript
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