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).
479: Make Your Voice Heard
Carles Cufí spoke with us about Zephyr, Nordic, learning, open source development, and corporate goals. Carles had some great suggestions for learning Zephyr: Memfault Interrupt Practical Zephyr blog series Nordic’s Developer Academy Zephyr’s Discord server Zephyr’s YouTube channel (@ZephyrProject), sorted by views Macrobatics term is from Zephyr Devicetree Mysteries, Solved - Marti Bolivar, Nordic Semiconductor There is also the Zephyr website for a full picture. And various Nordic tutorials (see nRF5340 Audio applications). Carles was an author on Getting Started with Bluetooth Low Energy: Tools and Techniques for Low-Power Networking. The cover animal is a mousebird. Transcript
478: The Map Is Not the Territory
Jan Rychter joined us to talk about building a company, electronic components, and software design. Jan is the founder and engineer at PartsBox.com. If you are interested in the meta-analysis of the data, check out his article on the Top Ten Hobby Parts and the Electronic Component Database, You can find out more about Jan through his website (jan.rychter.com), LinkedIn, or Mastodon. Transcript
477: One Thousand New Instructions
Kwabena Agyeman joined Chris and Elecia to talk about optimization, cameras, machine learning, and vision systems. Kwabena is the head of OpenMV (openmv.io), an open source and open hardware system that runs machine learning algorithms on vision data. It uses MicroPython as a development environment so getting started is easy. Their github repositories are under github.com/openmv. You can find some of the SIMD details we talked about on the show: 150% faster: openmv/src/omv/imlib/binary.c 1000% faster: openmv/src/omv/imlib/filter.c Double Pumping: openmv/src/omv/modules/py_tv.c Kwabena has been creating a spreadsheet of different algorithms in camera frames per second (FPS) for Arm processors: Performance Benchmarks - Google Sheets. As time moves on, it will grow. Note: this is a link on the OpenMV website under About. When M55 stuff hits the market expect 4-8x speed gains. The OpenMV YouTube channel is also a good place to get more information about the system (and vision algorithms). Kwabena spoke with us about (the beginnings of) OpenMV on Embedded 212: You Are in Seaworld. Transcript Elecia is giving a free talk for O'Reilly to advertise her Making Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition book. The talk will be an introduction to embedded systems, geared towards software engineers who are suddenly holding a device and want to program it. The talk is May 23, 2024 at 9:00 AM PDT. Sign up here. A video will be available afterward for folks who sign up.
476: Sidetracked by Mining the Moon
Lee Wilkins joined Chris and Elecia to talk about The Open Source Hardware Association, the Open Hardware Summit, and zine culture. The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) provides certification and support for creating open source hardware. The Open Hardware Summit is happening May 3-4, 2024. It is in Montreal, Canada. It also has many online components including a Discord and online Unconferece. All videos are available for later watching on YouTube. Lee’s personal page is leecyb.org. Their zines are available in their shop. Elecia mentioned enjoying There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings by Kenn Amdahl. Transcript
475: Stuffed Animal or Colleague
Chris and Elecia talk about the Embedded Online Conference, their experience learning Zephyr, and some listener questions. Elecia will be presenting on Creating Chaos and Hard Faults at the Embedded Online Conference, Apr 29 - May 3, 2024. Some other talks that look interesting: The Power of a Look-up Table by Nathan Jones Zephyr Tools To Debug Hardware by Chris Gammell Breaking Good: Why Virtual Hardware Prefers Rough Handling by Uri Shaked Beyond Coding: Toward Software Development Expertise by Marian Petre Use the EMBEDDEDFM coupon for a discount (or if your whole team is going, check out the group discounts). Elecia’s book (Making Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition) is shipping (Amazon or Bookshop.org). Zephyr is pretty amazing. Transcript
474: It's All Chaos and Horror
Logic gates and origami? Professor Inna Zakharevich joined us to talk about Turing complete origami crease patterns. We started talking about Turing completeness which led to a Conway’s Game of Life-like 2D cellular automaton called Rule 110 (Wikipedia) which can be implemented with logic gates (AND, OR, NOT). These logic gates can be implemented as creases in paper (with the direction of the crease indicating 0 or 1). The paper describing the proof is called Flat Origami is Turing Complete (arxiv and PDF). Quanta Magazine has a summary article: How to Build an Origami Computer. Inna’s page at Cornell University also has the crease patterns for the logic gates (pdf). Inna is an aficionado of the origami work by Satoshi Kamiya who creates complex and lifelike patterns. Some other origami mentioned: Origami Stegosaurus by John Montroll YouTube Folding video (Part 1 of 3) Ilan Garibi’s Pineapple Tessellation (PDF instructions) Eric Gjerde Spread Hex Origami Tessellation (This also has the equilateral triangle grid needed to fold Inna’s gate logic) Peter Engel Amanda Ghassaei’s Origami Simulator (Mooser’s is under Examples->Origami) Some other math mentioned: Veritasium’s Math's Fundamental Flaw talks about Goerthe’s Incompleteness Theorem Physical Logic Game: Turing Tumble - Build Marble-Powered Computers Mathematics of Paper Folding (Wikipedia) Transcript Memfault is making software the most reliable part of the IoT with its device reliability platform that enables teams to be more proactive with remote debugging, monitoring and OTA update capabilities. Try Memfault's new sandbox demo at demo.memfault.com. Embedded.fm listeners receive 25% off their first-year contract with Memfault by booking a demo here: https://go.memfault.com/demo-request-embedded
473: Math Is Not the Answer
Philip Koopman joined us to talk about how modulo 255 vs 256 makes a huge difference in checksum error detection, how to get the most out of your checksum or CRC, and why understanding how they work is worth the effort. Philip has recently published Understanding Checksums and Cyclic Redundancy Checks. He’s better known for Better Embedded System Software as well as his two books about safety and autonomous vehicles: The UL 4600 Guidebook: What to Include in an Autonomous Vehicle Safety Case How Safe Is Safe Enough?: Measuring and Predicting Autonomous Vehicle Safety Phil’s YouTube page has a number of videos with great visuals to go along with his books. He also has three(!) blogs: Safe Autonomy Better Embedded System SW Checksum and CRC Central (including a post on checksum speed comparison) Currently, Phil is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University (his page there). You can follow him on LinkedIn. Elecia read (and give 2.5 stars to) Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature by Marcus du Sautoy: “Interesting but uneven, I kept reading to find out what horrible things math profs do to their children in the name of fun. Worth it when I finally got to a small section with Claude Shannon (and Richard Hamming). It didn’t help with this podcast but it was neat.” Transcript Nordic Semiconductor empowers wireless innovation, by providing hardware, software, tools and services that allow developers to create the IoT products of tomorrow. Learn more about Nordic Semiconductor at nordicsemi.com, check out the DevAcademy at academy.nordicsemi.com and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at devzone.nordicsemi.com.
472: Field of Boxes
Making Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition came out today! Chris and Elecia talk about the changes, the writing, but not the eldritch horror. Then we talk about pianos and origami. The electronic version is available now on Amazon, ebooks.com, Google Play and where you get your ebooks. The paper copy will be out in about two weeks, you can preorder now. It is also available on the O’Reilly Learning System, here is a 30-day Trial. See the Embedded.fm Origami and Flex PCBs newsletter, sign up for future newsletters here. Memfault is hosting its first launch week of the year! On Tuesday, March 12th, Memfault CEO François Baldassari will showcase how to evaluate the health and performance of your embedded devices clearly within Memfault's observability platform. Join the webinar to discover how simple it is to monitor three necessary device measures: stability, battery, and connectivity. Register today!
471: Bicycle Built For Two
Where electronics meets music, there is a board called Daisy. Created by ElectroSmith, Andrew Ikenberry, the goal of the board is to teach computers to sing. Andrew joined us to talk about music, audio processing, instruments, product design, and electronic manufacturing. See the Electrosmith website, specifically the Daisy Seed. The electro-smith github repository is extensive (with many Daisy Examples). Also see their YouTube channel. Electrosmith is offering 5% off until mid-March for folks with the coupon code mentioned in the show. We mentioned a number of synths but the CHOMPI is particularly nifty. Daisy Bell - Wikipedia (and where you might have heard that before (and if that doesn’t give “teach computers to sing” a creepy vibe, I don’t know what will)). Transcript Nordic Semiconductor empowers wireless innovation, by providing hardware, software, tools and services that allow developers to create the IoT products of tomorrow. Learn more about Nordic Semiconductor at nordicsemi.com, check out the DevAcademy at academy.nordicsemi.com and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at devzone.nordicsemi.com.
470: Upping the Chaos Level
Helen Leigh joined us to talk about putting together conferences (including Teardown 2024), indie hardware producers (including via Crowd Supply), and building communities. Teardown will be June 21-23 in Portland, OR, USA. More information about attending or presenting. Early bird tickets are available for a limited time! Teardown is put on by Crowd Supply, a company that helps hardware companies launch products. Hardware Happy Hour Portland is a regular meetup that Helen organizes. Helen will be hosting a meetup in Oakland, CA, USA on Feb 15: Oakland Sound Hackers. She is also hosting a San Francisco, CA meetup on March 6: Open Hardware Happy Hour. Helen’s personal site is helenleigh.me. She has been on the show twice before in 355: Favorite Ways to Make Noises and 261: Blowing Their Fragile Little Minds. Transcript Memfault is making software the most reliable part of the IoT with its device reliability platform that enables teams to be more proactive with remote debugging, monitoring and OTA update capabilities. Try Memfault's new sandbox demo at demo.memfault.com. Embedded.fm listeners receive 25% off their first-year contract with Memfault by booking a demo here: https://go.memfault.com/demo-request-embedded
469: Saving the World Is Not a Hobby
Chris and Elecia chat with each other about motor encoder reading methods, conferences coming up, soldering irons, schematic reviews, looking for a new job, and general life. Some conferences coming up in the embedded space: Embedded Online, April 29-May 4, virtual (Elecia will be speaking) Open Hardware Summit in May 3-4, Montreal, Canada Embedded World in April 9-11 in Nuremburg, Germany Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories was purchased by Bantam Tools! Starter soldering irons? It seemed like small pen-style ones were more popular than big soldering stations. See the Adafruit USB C Powered Soldering Iron - Adjustable Temperature Pen-Style - TS80P. Or for much less (but you can write your own firmware!), the Pinecil. And one vote for the RT Soldering Pen on Tindie because it uses Weller RT tips (which are more expensive than the soldering pen but much less expensive than the Weller station that uses the RT tips). Embedded Artistry has excellent advice for the role of the firmware in schematic reviews. Adafruit Playgrounds looks like a neat place to write up your project. Transcript Nordic Semiconductor empowers wireless innovation, by providing hardware, software, tools and services that allow developers to create the IoT products of tomorrow. Learn more about Nordic Semiconductor at nordicsemi.com, check out the DevAcademy at academy.nordicsemi.com and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at devzone.nordicsemi.com.
468: Designed to Kill All Humans
Anders Nielsen joined us to talk about why the 6502 is the best processor. Anders also sells 65uino kits on his store: imania.dk. For more explanation of what they are, how they work, attaching peripherals, and programming in assembly, look at Anders’ YouTube channel @AndersNielsenAA, read his blog on abnielsen.com, or read about it on its Hackaday.io project page.** We also mentioned Ben Eater’s 6502 Kit, Adrian's Digital Basement - YouTube, and Rodnay Zaks’ Programming the 6502. ** Anders was a two time semi-finalist for the Hackaday Challenge but we didn’t talk about that. Here is his Hackaday page. Transcript Memfault is making software the most reliable part of the IoT with its device reliability platform that enables teams to be more proactive with remote debugging, monitoring and OTA update capabilities. Try Memfault's new sandbox demo at demo.memfault.com. Embedded.fm listeners receive 25% off their first-year contract with Memfault by booking a demo here: https://go.memfault.com/demo-request-embedded.
467: Temporary Axolotl
Chris and Elecia talk about cars, fleeting moments of fame, their year, and the sorry state of tools in the embedded space. Chris became internet famous for asking a car dealership’s chatbot (powered by ChatGPT) to generate Python code for fluid dynamics problems. After this, someone else asked the chatbot to sell a car for $1. Pass the Bricks is an organization that takes Lego bricks and turns them into sets for kids who don’t have any. Speaking of re-use, contact the show if you’d like to get in touch with Nelson. Chris is on 4 tracks on Flavigula’s album Nine Sided Die. He also enjoyed putting together an EMSL Bulbdial clock kit. Elecia will be speaking at the Embedded Online Conference. Transcript
466: Attacked by a Goose on the Way to the Office
Ralph Hempel spoke with us about the development of Lego Mindstorms from hacking the initial interface to running Debian Linux as well as programming Mindstorms in Python. Happy 25th birthday to Lego Mindstorms! Pybricks is a MicroPython based coding environment that works across all Lego PoweredUp hubs and on the latest Mindstorms elements. The creators are David Lechner and Laurens Valk. Ralph was the first person to boot a full Debian Linux distro on the brick, see EV3Dev, a Debian Linux for Lego Mindstorms EV3. BrickLink was originally a site for third party resellers of new and used Lego sets and elements. The site was purchased by the Lego Group a few years ago. It's still a great place to buy individual parts - for example a 4 port PoweredUp hub to run the new PyBricks on :-) ReBrickable is a site dedicated to taking off-the-shelf Lego sets, and creating something new with the set. In particular see the MOCs Designed by LUCAMOCS, fantastic Technic vehicles as well as interesting designs for vehicle subsystems. Yoshihito ISOGAWA - YouTube is an absolute genius at coming up with practical applications of new LEGO Elements. Ralph recommends his books as “awesome to read”. LEGO uses 18 Cucumbers to build real Log House Ralph highly recommends Test Driven Development for Embedded C by James Grenning (who has been on the show: 270: Broccoli is Good Too, 109: Resurrection of Extreme Programming, and 30: Eventually Lightning Strikes). Origami Simulator and Elecia’s origami generating python code on github Transcript Nordic Semiconductor empowers wireless innovation, by providing hardware, software, tools and services that allow developers to create the IoT products of tomorrow. Learn more about Nordic Semiconductor at nordicsemi.com, check out the DevAcademy at academy.nordicsemi.com and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at devzone.nordicsemi.com.
465: Dinosaurs, Pirates, Spaceships
Yanina Bellini Saibene joined us to discuss teaching, localization, barriers to learning coding, and global communities. Yani works on Teach Tech Together (https://teachtogether.tech/) with Greg Wilson. It is a fantastic resource if you are learning to teach. It is available in English and Spanish. She also works on The Carpentries which teaches coding and data science skills to researchers worldwide. Yani has a site (yabellini.netlify.app) that includes the courses she has online (for free). She is also the community manager of rOpenSci and is part of R-Ladies. You can find Yani on fosstodon.org/@yabellini. Transcript
464: Please Make This Monster Look Scary
Chris and Elecia talk about their favorite processors, their breakfast preferences, large language model ethics, presents, and Eeyore's birthday. Elecia’s new edition of her book Making Embedded Systems is finished! (Except for a couple months of tech reviews, updating, copyediting, and drawings.) It will be out in March. All of the back issues of Byte Magazine Chris’ radio kit that he mentioned but didn’t name is the QRP Labs QCX+ 5W CW Transceiver. Transcript Nordic Semiconductor empowers wireless innovation, by providing hardware, software, tools and services that allow developers to create the IoT products of tomorrow. Learn more about Nordic Semiconductor at nordicsemi.com, check out the DevAcademy at academy.nordicsemi.com and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at devzone.nordicsemi.com.
463: Layers of Band-Aids
Kevin Lannen is an embedded systems engineer making powered wheelchairs safer. This sounded interesting to us. Kevin works at LUCI Mobility (luci.com). Check out their tear jerker introduction video as well as technical description of over-the-air update concerns on smart wheelchairs. We also talked about the app that goes with the system: LUCI View. You can find Kevin on Twitter (@kevlan) and LinkedIn. Go Baby Go - The Adaptive Sports Connection Transcript Memfault is making software the most reliable part of the IoT with its device reliability platform that enables teams to be more proactive with remote debugging, monitoring and OTA update capabilities. Try Memfault's new sandbox demo at demo.memfault.com. Embedded.fm listeners receive 25% off their first-year contract with Memfault by booking a demo here: https://go.memfault.com/demo-request-embedded
462: Spontaneously High Performing
Marian Petre spoke to us about her research on how to make software developers better at developing software. Marian is an Emeritus Professor of the School of Computing & Communications at the Open University in the United Kingdom. She also has a Wikipedia page. The short version of How Expert Programmers Think About Errors is on the NeverWorkInTheory.org page along with other talks about academic studies on software development topics. The longer version is a keynote from Strange Loop 2022: "Expert Software Developers' Approach to Error". This concept as well as many others are summarized in Software Design Decoded: 66 Ways Experts Think (Mit Press) by Marian Petre and Andre van der Hoek (MIT Press, 2016). The book’s website provides an annotated bibliography. Marian has also co-written Software Designers in Action: A Human-Centric Look at Design Work. She is current conducting inquiries into: Code dreams: This research studies whether software developers dream about coding – and, if so, the nature of those dreams. Following on from work on software developers’ mental imagery and cognitive processes during programming, this project investigates developers’ experience of coding in their dreams (whatever form that takes), and whether the content of such dreams provides insight into the developers’ design and problem solving. Invisible work that adds value to software development: The notion of ‘invisible work’ – activity that adds value in software development but is often overlooked or undervalued by management and promotion processes – arose repeatedly in discussions at Strange Loop 2022. Developers asked for evidence they could use to fuel conversations -- and potentially promote change -- in their organisations. This research aims to capture the main categories of ‘invisible work’ identified by developers (e.g., reducing technical debt; improving efficiency; addressing security; development of tools and resources; design discussions; …), and to gather concrete examples of the value that work adds to software. Transcript
461: Am I the Cow in This Scenario?
Chris and Elecia discuss the pros and cons of completing one project or starting a dozen. Elecia’s 2nd edition of Making Embedded Systems is coming out in March. (Preview is on O’Reilly’s Learning System.) She’s working on a companion repository that is already filled with links and goodies: github.com/eleciawhite/making-embedded-systems. If you’d like to know more about signal processing, check out DSPGuide.com aka The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing By Steven W. Smith, Ph.D. And as noted in last week’s newsletter, there is an interesting overlap between smoothies and the Fourier Transform. Giang Vinh Loc used Charles Lohr’s RISCV on Arduino UNO to boot Linux (in 16 hours). We also talked a bit about Greg Wilson’s recent episode with Elecia (Embedded 460: I Don’t Care What Your Math Says). Transcript Thanks to Nordic for sponsoring this week's show! Nordic Semiconductor empowers wireless innovation, by providing hardware, software, tools and services that allow developers to create the IoT products of tomorrow. Learn more about Nordic Semiconductor at nordicsemi.com, check out the DevAcademy at academy.nordicsemi.com and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at devzone.nordicsemi.com.
460: I Don’t Care What Your Math Says
Author, engineer, manager, and professor, Dr. Greg Wilson joined Elecia to talk about teaching, science in computer science, ethics, and policy. The request for curriculum that started the conversation was the Cost of Change, part of NeverWorkInTheory which summarizes scientific literature about software development. Greg is the founder of Software Carpentry, a site that creates curriculum for teaching software concepts (including data and library science). Software Carpentry has great lessons for those who want to learn about software, data, and library science. It is a great site if you are teaching, trying to get someone else to teach, learning, or looking for some guidance on how to do the above. Check out their reading list. Greg’s site is The Third Bit. Here you can find his books including full copies of several of his books including The Architecture of Open Source Applications, Teaching Tech Together, and most recently Software Design by Example. Transcript
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