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).
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 While some parts are out of date, the general theory is still good.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
305: Humans Have a Terrible Spec Sheet (Repeat)
Amanda “w0z” Wozniak spoke with us about her career through biomedical engineering and startups. Amanda contributed a chapter to Building Open Source Hardware: DIY Manufacturing. (A book we spoke with Alicia Gibb about in #289.) Amanda’s chapter was titled Design Process: How to Get from Nothing to Something. For more information about the companies we discussed, check out Amanda’s LinkedIn page.
410: Emacs From the Future
Chris and Elecia chat about tools, interrupts, and general happenings. Thank you to Newark for supporting the show! The part that was not guessed was an RF FET: MRF1K50HR5. Elecia found MCU on Eclipse (Eric Styger)’s tutorials on Visual Studio Code for C/C++ with ARM Cortex-M (Part 1). Embedded has a Patreon page where you can get access to the Slack group. The book club is starting Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market by Alan Cohen. Wokwi Raspberry Pi Pico projects from Elecia: Command Line Interface and PWM Experiments with Logic Analyzer Phillip Johnston of Embedded Artistry and Tyler Hoffman from Memfault are kicking off a quarterly embedded discussion panel. This month is about building embedded systems at scale using device metrics: Embedded Device Observability Metrics Panel Jonathan Beri from Golioth created instructions on how to use USB from WSL2. Copy-editing game. Transcript. Thank you to Newark for sponsoring this episode of Embedded!
409: A Better World
Dr. Shirley Davis spoke with us about her book: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion For Dummies. Dr. Davis is a speaker and consultant on diversity, equity, and inclusion topics; her website is drshirleydavis.com. Dr. Davis’ books include: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion For Dummies Living Beyond “What If?”: Release the Limits and Realize Your Dreams The Seat: How to Get Invited to the Table When You're Over-Performing but Undervalued Reinvent Yourself: Strategies for Achieving Success in Every Area of Your Life Transcript
295: In the Key of Lime (Repeat)
This week we talk about CircuitPython with Adafruit's Kattni Rembor and Scott Shawcroft. The suggested first board is CircuitPlayground Express with LEDs, sensors, and buttons. CircuitPython is also available for many other boards including the BLE Feather (NRF52832). For a basic introduction take a look at What is CircuitPython and see some example scripts. To dig a little deeper, check out the many resources in Awesome CircuitPython. The whole thing is open source so you can see their code. If you are thinking about contributing (or just want some fun chats), get in touch on the CircuitPython channel of the Adafruit Discord server: adafru.it/discord Many of the language’s design choices favor ease-of-use over ready-for-production. Imagine teaching an intro to programming class without worrying what computers will be used or how to get compilers installed on everyone’s machines before time runs out. One final note: Kattni did a project that gave us the show title: Piano in the Key of Lime. After we finished recording, Chris asked her why she didn’t add a kiwi fruit to her mix… Kattni explained she had limes and they were small. Chris only wanted a different fruit so she could rename it Piano in the Kiwi of Lime. It is always sad when we stop recording too early.
408: Room In Your Heart for Your Robot
Machine learning engineer and science fiction author S. B. Divya joined us to talk about artificial intelligence, robotics, and humanity. Divya’s first full-length book is Machinehood which has been nominated for a Nebula (as was her novella Runtime). You can find more about Divya on her website (sbdivya.com) or on her Wikipedia page. Divya also co-hosted EscapePod, a podcast of science fiction stories. Transcript
407: Boards Are Like Sandwiches
Mihir Shah of Royal Circuits joined us to talk about how PCBs are fabricated and how companies are funded. Mihir was CEO of InspectAR before they were acquired by Cadence. Mihir works for Royal Circuits and runs a newsletter called TheAnalog.io We talked about InspectAR on Embedded 384: What Is a Board File? with Liam Cadigan. Transcript for this show This episode is sponsored by Newark, a leading international distributor of industrial and electronic components. From design and testing to production and maintenance, discover why so many choose to partner with Newark!
406: R2D2 Is a Trash Can
Jorvon Moss (Odd Jayy) joined us to talk about making robots, steampunk aesthetics, uploading consciousness to AIs, and the importance of drawing. You can find Jay on Twitter (@Odd_Jayy) and Instagram (@odd_jayy). He’s been moving his Hackster projects over to Digikey’s Maker.io space: www.digikey.com/en/maker. Jay’s projects are collected here. Elecia brought up the science fiction book Machinehood by S. B. Divya. Jay returned with Martha Well’s Murderbot Diaries. Jay mentioned Mycroft.ai, open source voice assistant. Jay was interviewed by Make Magazine (article). He was on the cover of the magazine; the YouTube video where he was informed was heartwarming. Transcript
405: Bacta Tank for Your Brain
Chris and Elecia talk about burnout, a SPI + RTOS bug, newsletters, receiving feedback, Elecia’s class, and listener projects. Elecia’s Making Embedded Systems course on Classpert is starting a new cohort on March 19th. She gave a live talk related to the class about looking beneath the surface of Arduino (YouTube version). She’s excited about the Wokwi Raspberry Pi Pico simulator with C. Want more interesting email? ThePrepared is a weekly email about engineering, infrastructure, and manufacturing news Elecia was interviewed by TheAnalog.io newsletter which is a weekly email about manufacturing and engineering Embedded.fm has a weekly newsletter about topics related to the engineering focused podcast (and transcript) Chris Lott wrote a Hackaday article about episode 404: Uppercase A, Lowercase R M with Reinhard Keil. Elecia enjoyed Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. Serial Wombat peripheral expander for Arduino will be on Kickstarter soon Chris wanted machine readable datasheets, listener Nick responds with Cyanobyte on github. Infineon (previously Cypress) PSoC (wiki) is a chip/FPGA thing. We talked with Patrick Kane about it in episode 32: Woo Woo Woo
404: Uppercase A, Lowercase R M
Reinhard Keil joined us to talk about creating the Keil compiler, the 8051 processor, Arm’s CMSIS, and the new cloud-based Keil Studio IDE. MDK-Community is a new free-for-non-commercial use, not-code-size restricted version of the Keil compiler (+ everything else). CMSIS is a set of open source components for use with Arm processors. The signal processing and neural net components are optimized for speedy use. The SVD and DAP components are used by tool vendors so there may be components you care about more than others. Keil Studio is Arm’s new cloud-based IDE with a debugger that connects to boards on your desk: keil.arm.com. Reinhard talks more about the advantages of cloud-based development in this white paper. Arm Virtual Hardware has multiple integrations, the official product page is www.arm.com/virtual-hardware. The MDK integration and nifty examples are described in the press release. Reinhard mentioned the Ethos-U65 processor for neural networks. The Dragon Book about compilers Transcript
403: Engineers Are a Difficult People
Shawn Hymel spoke to us about creating education videos and written tutorials; marketing by and for engineers; and bowties. You can find Shawn teaching FPGAs, RTOSs and other interesting topics on Digikey’s YouTube channel. Shawn also has two embedded Machine Learning courses on Coursera (free!). Or start at his personal site: shawnhymel.com where you can find written tutorials like How to Set Up Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ Toolchain on Windows with VS Code. Shawn talked about Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. Macmillan. He referenced Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne Elecia enjoyed The Visual Mba: Two Years of Business School Packed into One Priceless Book of Pure Awesomeness by Jason Barron Embedded has: A Patreon page where you can support us and get into the Slack community A newsletter that sends you a weekly email about the show and little notes Transcripts that you can use to look things up or follow along if the speakers are unclear If you’d like to help the show grow, please write a review. Or share it with a friend. Or send it to your school’s Dean of Computer Science and/or Engineering and tell them it should be part of the curriculum to see what engineering lives and careers are like. Or send it to your company’s Director of New Hires and say it is important for techy folks to stay current and engaged in embedded systems. Transcript
402: We Are a Lazy Species
Chris Svec of iRobot and Phillip Johnston of Embedded Artistry join Christopher and Elecia to talk about the hows and whys of estimating software schedules.. The article that started the discussion was Agile Otter’s Platitudes of Doom. You can participate in these sorts of discussions on the Embedded Slack Channel by supporting Embedded on Patreon. On Phillip’s Embedded Artistry Website you can find a library of courses, hundreds of free articles, and even more member's only content. Their current focus is developing two new courses: Designing Embedded Software for Change and Abstractions and Interfaces. There are also many great posts on planning and estimation.
278: Bricks’ Batteries Last Forever (Repeat)
Matthew Liberty 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 measurements may start to fail you. (EEvblog explains why in his uCurrent intro.) Eventually, you may want to measure nanoamp sleep states along with amp-consuming wake states. Matt’s Joulescope is a tool to do just that (Kickstarter goes live Feb 19, 2019!), automatically moving between 9 orders of magnitude of dynamic range and graphing the results on your computer. Matthew’s consulting company is JetPerch. We mentioned Colin O’Flynn’s ChipWhisperer which uses differential power analysis for security attacks. We also talked about Jacob Beningo’s post on protecting your tools. Find Matt on Twitter as @mliberty1. Elecia is giving away a chapter of her O’Reilly book, Making Embedded Systems. It is Chapter 10: Reducing Power Consumption. Hit the contact link if you want a copy.
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