Embedded

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

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Professor AnnMarie Thomas spoke with us about playful learning through joy, whimsy, surprise, and meeting new people. We also spoke with AnnMarie about how adults can foster an environment that encourages innovation. See more about that (and the interviews of various engineers and makers) in her book Making Makers: Kids, Tools, and the Future of Innovation You can find AnnMarie on Mastodon: mastodon.social/@AnnMariePT If you want to know more about squishy circuits, check out AnnMarie's TED talk: Hands-on science with squishy circuits (or the related book Squishy Circuits (21st Century Skills Innovation Library: Makers as Innovators)). She is the head of The Playful Learning Lab at the University of St. Thomas where she is a professor of engineering and entrepreneurship. We also talked about the LEGO Foundation. More about that on LearningThroughPlay.com AnnMarie suggested the cephalopod-centric novel The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler. Elecia countered with The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery (non-fiction). And now, a question for you to ponder, what is your most meaningful learning experience? Transcript

Trond Snekvik spoke with us about developing VSCode extensions and Bluetooth meshes. Trond is a Staff Software Engineer at Nordic Semiconductor. Nordic's Visual Studio Code Extensions include device tree and kconfig support for the Zephyr project as well as tools for nRF Connect. Trond's github page: github.com/trond-snekvik In 329: At Least 32-Bits, Thank You, Kate Stewart of the Linux Foundation spoke with us about Zephyr in 2020 Transcript Thank you to Christopher for providing a picture of what may (or may not) be a troll.

Chris and Elecia chat about their ongoing efforts to create and learn. Then they answer some listener questions. Duck quacks do echo but the echoes seem to align in phase so that there is no interruption making the echo sounds like an extension of the quack (Mythbusters episode in which Jamie says "Quack, damn you!") Elecia continues to work on Making Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition. The early release copy is available on the O'Reilly Learning System. Classpert is offering an asynchronous cohort for Elecia's Making Embedded Systems course. You'd be going through the class with others and there will be discussions and mentor (and Elecia's) help on the Discord. No live classes but you get access to the best bits of the previous live classes. Class starts in September. Tickets are on sale for the tenth annual Hackaday Supercon is Nov 3-5, 2023 in Pasadena, CA. Someone there will be giving out stickers. More details to follow on that front. Elecia is enjoying OrigamibyBoice Crease Pattern Class YouTube series. (It is a prereq for The Plant Psychologist's Origami Design Class.) Last week's newsletter (sign up here!) had tidbits about learning the Kalman filter. Some of that came from Elecia's blog post about it, some were fresh. There doesn't seem to be a good introduction to semantic webs in linguistics. Here is a too-dense article about Semantic Maps as Metrics on Meaning from a Linguistics Discovery Journal. If you like the show and would like to support the show, we now take Ko-fi donations (https://ko-fi.com/embedded), as well as Patreon and reviews in your favorite podcasting app. Transcript

Damien George spoke with us about developing with and for MicroPython while Elecia tries not to spill all the secrets about her client. To start at the beginning, you probably want to check out micropython.org. Wait, no, one step back. Before listening to the show, you probably should read the Wikipedia MicroPython entry because we kind of start in the middle in the show. You can find the code on github: github.com/micropython/micropython. The PyBoard can be found on store.micropython.org. It is out of stock but lead time trends show parts may be available soon(ish). For more about branes, Lie point symmetries and other physics fun stuff, check out Damien's list of papers on dpgeorge.net. Transcript

Natalie Friedman joins us to discuss when, where, how, and why robots should wear clothing. Natalie is a PhD candidate at Cornell Tech. Natalie's website is natalie-friedman.com and you can find her papers in the research section. She has an Instagram account: @natalie.victoria.f AIForGood shows several robots dressed in home, business and social attire. Roomba cosplaying a mouse (Instructable) Pepper is an android-ish robot made by SoftBank. There are many clothing lines devoted to dressing it for whatever occasion you need, simply search for Pepper robot clothing. What could go wrong? Natalie recommended Fashion Is Spinach by Elizabeth Hawes. It is fascinating. Transcript

Uri Shaked surprises us with a chat about silicon design when we were expecting to talk about a web-based board simulator. If you want to try your hand at silicon design, check out Tiny Tapeout, a way to possibly get your design on to real silicon. The digital design guide is a great way to start looking at how chips work. If you aren't quite ready for silicon, Wokwi has a Verilog simulator where you can learn to do the digital design. The Verilog Simon Game on Wokwi is amazing. Wokwi is a web-Based simulator, simulating processors, boards, and peripherals. You can build a whole system there, from Dancing Servos to 7-Segment display from 30 LCDs and Arduino Mega to Raspberry Pi Pico boards you can program in C when you click More Options on the front page. You can also create your own peripheral using the Chip API. Or learn to use Zephyr on Wokwi. And now there is Wokwi for VS Code. All that and Wokwi is open source: github.com/urish Uri recommends reading Relax for the same result by Derek Sivers Previously on Embedded 396: Untangle the Mess Transcript

Nathan Jones has been talking about building command line interfaces, good design practices in C, creating MCU boards, wielding the PIC of destiny, and going beyond Arduino. As we are too lazy to attend the conferences, we asked him to give us the highlights. Nathan is giving two conference talks at Crowd Supply's Teardown 2023 June 23-24 in Portland, Oregon: Make Your Own MCU Board Build HackerBox #0040 and Wield the PIC of Destiny! He spoke recently at the Embedded Online Conference about Object Oriented Programming (well, really good design practices). He has a related github repository so you can look at the examples for yourself. He also gave a workshop on creating a simple command line interface (another excellent github repo full of examples). Probably the best place to start is his Embedded for Everyone Wiki where he collects all the bits and pieces you might want to know about getting into embedded systems. Transcript

Julia Evans spoke with us about how computers compute. We discussed number representation including floating point as well as Julia's extensive collection of 'zines and comics. Julia's zines about debugging, managers, Linux commands, and more are available on WizardZines.com. If you want samples, check out the comics section. Also, the experiments (aka playgrounds) are great additions to the zines (and fun on their own), letting you explore without changing your own DNS or removing all the files from your root directory. If you want to check out numbers, look at memory-spy (or from other sites like https://float.exposed/ and https://integer.exposed/) Julia also has a detailed blog on jvns.ca and active github repositories Transcript

Phillip Johnston of Embedded Artistry, Tyler Hoffman of Memfault, and Elecia White discuss the software tasks that tend to fall through the cracks after the device has all its features but before it is in customers' hands. Noah Pendleton of Memfault was the moderator. You can see the video on the Embedded YouTube channel or directly from memfault (also see their other panels and webinars). Memfault's Slack Channel and Interrupt Blog are both excellent resources for embedded information of all kinds. Transcript

Kari Love joined us to talk about soft robotics, robots in religion, and squishiness. Kari co-authored Soft Robotics: A DIY Introduction to Squishy, Stretchy, and Flexible Robots. Her website is karimakes.com. She was previously on Embedded 189: The Squishiness Factor One of the pneumatic drives that we mentioned was a Hackaday Prize Winner: FlowIO. Another was the Soft Robotics Toolkit. However, Kari recommended Amitabh Shrivastava's Programmable Air (Crowd Supply page for Programmable Air). Some search terms for getting started with soft robotics: "DIY Jamming gripper", "Positive pressure gripper", and "bendy straw robot joints". (That last one leads you to the delightful video Make a Robotic Hand with Straws.) Polysense conductive dye for making sensors out of found objects. (On Hackaday.) Simulation of Soft Bodies in Real World Applications (for squish and stretch) include SOFA, Abaqus, and DiffPD. Transcript An incomplete list of power systems people have used for generating soft robotic motion: Pneumatic - air and vacuum Hydraulic - using liquid Electrical - using currents Thermal - using temperatures Cable control - using motor control Magnetic - using magnets Chemical - using reactions Photonic - using light Biological - using living cells Hybrid systems - multiple sources in tandem An incomplete list of things people have used to make soft robots: Fabric Silicone or other rubbers Flexible plastic Plastic films Metallic films Paper Carbon fiber Silly Putty Shape-changing alloys Electroactive polymers Liquid metals Gelatin or Gluten Cell tissue

Chris and Elecia talk about internetting your thing, motivating yourself with cheese, a pile of scrabble letters, an electric ouija board, and a supervillain origin story. Elecia will be on a Memfault Panel on June 1, 2023: From Concept to Launch: What It Takes to Build and Ship a New Device Elecia was on Alpenglow's Industries Solder Sesh #60 with Carrie Sundra. See the highlights (or the whole thing) on YouTube. Chris has been working on building a baritone ukulele from a StewMac kit. The conversation about uninteresting projects reminded Elecia of one of her favorite blog posts: Resilience Is a Skill Classpert will be offering a self-paced version of Elecia's Making Embedded Systems course. Sign up on Classpert to be notified about the details. The O'Reilly Learning System will have the first looks of the second edition of Making Embedded Systems. The full book should be out in the fall. Transcript

Carl Bugeja makes actuators out of PCBs, puts them to work flapping origami bird wings (or moving robot rovers), and takes videos of the whole process. Oh, and get this, self-soldering circuits. First, origami: flap actuators video. Your source for the PCB actuators: flexar.io Carl's YouTube channel is filled with hardware, software, successes, and misses. Check out his tiny foldable rover and the self-soldering circuit. His projects are open source so you can find the information on github.com/CarlBugeja Carl has a site (carlbugeja.com) and shows his projects on Instagram instagram.com/carl_bugeja Elecia worked on a zero-heat-flux, deep tissue temperature measurement system. Transcript

We spoke with Chris Gammell about IoT, podcasting, relaxing, and learning. Chris works at Golioth.io. They have a neat blog that talks about reference designs, Zephyr RTOS, and making products. We talked about ESP chips which are made by Espressif. The ESP32 line is RISC-V. Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) Some YouTube channels we discussed: Wendover Productions: explaining stuff CGP Grey, especially the recent one about vexillogy and US state flags Blacktail Studio: Soothing woodworking Adam Neely: music theory Shawn Hymel on Digikey's channel explaining continuous integration and delivery: Intro to CI/CD The H note in music Want to know more about self-paced Making Embedded Systems? Sign up for the waitlist at Classpert. Want to learn electronics? Check out Chris Gammell's Contextual Electronics. Transcript

Chris and Elecia talk about ChatGPT, conferences, online compilers, and Ardupilot. Compiler Explorer: godbolt.org (and function pointer example) Jupyter Notebooks with colab: colab.research.google.com/ (and one of Elecia's origami pattern generator collabs) Sign up for the Embedded newsletter! Support us on Patreon. Conferences and happenings: Hackaday Prize Embedded Online Conference : late April, online Open Hardware Summit 2023: end of April in NYC, NY Teardown 2023 | Crowd Supply: late June in Portland, OR SEMICON West: July in San Francisco, CA embedded world North America: October 2024, Austin, TX Transcript

We spoke with Charlyn Gonda about making things glow, dealing with imposter syndrome, and using origami. Charlyn's website is charlyn.codes, the projects we talked about are documented there. You can find her on Instagram (@chardane) and Mastodon (https://leds.social/@charlyn). Adafruit came up a lot in this episode. NeoPixel Jewel DotStar High Density 8x8 Grid SAMD21 QT Py and RP2040 QT Py Adafruit IO Jason Koon's Fibonacci displays are mesmerizing. Check them out on Jason's website www.evilgeniuslabs.org or acquire them on Tindie. It can be controlled with the Pixelblaze. Sonobe modules in origami Transcript

Peter Griffin spoke with us about operant boxes, juggling many projects, getting into embedded systems, and bottle rockets. When we talked about 3D printing, Peter mentioned the Maker Muse Clearance and Tolerance 3D Printer Gauge. The book we mentioned was Hot Seat by Dan Shapiro (Embedded 125: I Like Cheat Codes). Peter on Github Transcript Please note that Peter Griffin spoke with Embedded.fm as an individual and not as representative of Slalom Consulting or any other organization. All views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are his own and not necessarily those of his employer or any other organization.

Chris and Elecia talk about photons, comets, patterns, other flying objects, and cameras. Chris uses PixInsight for processing and has an Ioptron Sky Tracker. Apologies to our southern hemisphere listeners because Polaris is not visible there. There are (of course) other ways to align and even in the northern hemisphere more modern trackers don't necessarily need Polaris. Star Exterminator: who cares what it does it has an awesome name. Though it does what it says (on photos, no real stars were harmed in the making of this podcast). Jupyter Notebooks on a Circuit Python board. Elecia's Yoshimura sine pattern generating Python colab. Also, Rigidly foldable origami gadgets and tessellations is an excellent article about Miura-ori and other rigidly foldable patterns. You can see her patterns over on Instagram. (You can see some of Chris' photos on his Instagram.) Transcript

Adafruit's Liz Clark (BlitzCityDIY) spoke with us about MIDI, music, and tutorials. Liz's Adafruit Tutorials include MIDI for Makers CircuitPython Trombone Champ Controller Mini LED Matrix Audio Visualizer CircuitPython MIDI to CV Skull Liz sometimes hosts the Adafruit Show and Tell which is Wednesdays 7:30pm ET. Speaking of Adafruit videos, we mentioned the Fusion 360 tutorial on Snap Fit Cases. Liz's BlitzCityDIY YouTube channel shows her building instruments including her mentioned Melody Maker. She also has many 3D printables and github repositories under github.com/BlitzCityDIY Christopher notes that there are browser extensions that allow a person to stop auto-playing GIFs. VCVRack is a Eurorack simulator for synthesizer modules. Sadly, Mutable Instruments has shut down. Transcript

Chris and Elecia talk with Mark Smith (aka SmittyHalibut and N6MTS) about amateur radio, interconnect standards, and podcasting. Mark is a host of the Ham Radio Workbench podcast. His company is Halibut Electronics (electronics.halibut.com). He's been working on Open Headset Interconnect Standard and Satellite Optimized Amateur Radio (SOAR). Find Mark as SmittyHalibut on YouTube, github, and Mastodon. Chris talked about getting into WSPR in 197: Smell the Transistor but we first talked about it in 76: Entropy is For Wimps Chris has spec'd out his intended project at QRP Labs, the QCX+ 5W CW Mini. Transcript

Chris and Elecia talk to Jeff Gable and Luca Ingianni of the Agile Embedded podcast, discussing the definition of Agile, agreeing about some things, and disagreeing about others. Agile Embedded can be found in your usual podcast locations or get it from the source: https://agileembeddedpodcast.com/ Jeff's website is jeffgable.com and Luca's is luca.engineer Transcript

Chris and Elecia talk about house maintenance, blinking LEDs, paper engineering and more. Cutting Mobius Strips Video: Tadashi Tokieda cuts various combinations of loops and Mobius loops - with surprising results. festi.info/boxes.py generates boxes for laser cutting (or other SVG consuming device). Boxes.py is a python module that lets you programmatically generate the SVGs. (Github repo) Amanda Ghassaei's Sugarcube is a MIDI instrument using this SparkFun button pad. We also talked about the Mikroe 8800 Retro Click. Elecia is taking Paper Engineering with Kelli Anderson. Chris is taking songwriting courses from School of Song. Transcript

We talked with John Taylor about his book, how to handle data, and the open/closed principle of software development. John's book is Patterns in the Machine. It was mentioned on Embedded Artistry and is part of their Design for Change course. John also has a blog (PatternsInTheMachine.net) and a github repo that is a companion to his book, showing the PIM framework. Transcript

Daniel Situnayake joined us to talk about AI, embedded systems, his new book on the previously mentioned topics, and writing technical books. Daniel's book is AI at the Edge: Solving Real-World Problems with Embedded Machine Learning from O'Reilly Media. He is also the Head of Machine Learning at Edge Impulse, which makes machine learning on embedded devices simpler. They have a Responsible AI License which aims to keep our robot overlords from being too evil. We mentioned AI Dungeon as an amusing D&D style adventure with an AI. We also talked about ChatGPT. Daniel was previously on the show, Episode 327: A Little Bit of Human Knowledge, shortly after his first book came out: TinyML: Machine Learning with TensorFlow Lite on Arduino and Ultra-Low-Power Microcontrollers Transcript

Chris Svec joined us to talk about kids programming and how well the Joel Test has held up. Svec's son ("The Kid") developed an interest in programming by playing games. Most of his programming desires are around building games of his own. Any time we talk about kids and programming, Scratch comes up. It really is that neat and is The Kid approved. Some resources to get you started (actually, getting started is easy, you may want a book to do more than the basics): The Everything Kids' Scratch Coding Book: Learn to Code and Create Your Own Cool Games! by Jason Rukman Scratch 3 Programming Playground: Learn to Program by Making Cool Games by Al Sweigart (hey, we know that guy!) griffpatch on YouTube Digipen.edu had two courses The Kid (and Svec) took. Both are free on YouTube: Introduction to Game Design Lessons DigiPen Basic Game Development Series Finally, in a shockingly unrelated twist, we talked about the Joel Test for determining the health of a software development organization. No determination was made on how good The Kid finds his current position. Transcript

Chris and Elecia take an in-studio vacation, chatting about what they've been doing. A few technical topics came up, entirely unintentionally. Shirts are on sale James Webb Space Telescope Pop-Up Card Spicy Honey Github Codespaces lets you try out some code bases Some quirks of C How do breakpoints even work? (via Memfault's Interrupt) Transcript

Thea Flowers creates open source and open hardware craft synthesizers that use Circuit Python for customization. She also writes about the internals of the SAMD21. Thea's synthesizer modules are found at Winterbloom, including Castor & Pollux and the Big Honking Button. It is all open source hardware so you can find code and schematics on Thea's github site: github.com/theacodes Thea's site is thea.codes. You can find her blog there with deeply technical and detailed posts such as The most thoroughly commented linker script (probably), The Design of the Roland Juno oscillators, and Understanding the SAMD21 Clocks. She's on Twitter as Stargirl, @theavalkyrie. For more information about the Eurorack, listen to Embedded 356: Deceive and Manipulate You with Leonardo Laguna Ruiz of Vult.

Sarah Withee spoke with us about using an artificial pancreas, learning many programming languages, and FIRST robotics. More about the Open Artificial Pancreas System can be found at OpenAPS.org or in their documentation. Some other pieces we talked about include: LoopKit: an automated insulin delivery app template for iOS github (some additional docs) AndroidAPS github (additional docs) Reilly Link is the communication method for some insulin pumps Orange Link is a Reilly Link compatible device to run OpenAPS To get involved with FIRST robotics, the place to start is FIRSTInspires.org Sarah's website is GeekyGirlSarah.com. Her programming language comparison tool is Code Thesaurus: codethesaur.us/ If you want to see small algorithms written in different languages, check out Rosetta Code Transcript

Michael Gielda spoke with us about Renode, an open source embedded systems simulator. It also simulates large distributed systems and network communications. Check out Renode.io and the boards supported by Renode and Zephyr on Renodepedia. Elecia played with the Nucleo F401 tutorial on colab. Michael is the co-founder of Antmicro. The ESP32-C3 is a commercial RISC-V core with WiFi and BLE. We also mentioned Wokwi on the show. (And we had its creator Uri Shaked as a guest on episode 396: Untangle the Mess Transcript

Martha Wells is a science fiction and fantasy author. She spoke with us about her books (including Murderbot Diaries!), writing, and creating fantastical worlds. Marth (@marthawells1) has won Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards for her work. We mostly talked about the Murderbot Diaries and the Books of the Raksura. Oh, and the Star Wars tie-in about Leia, Razor's Edge. And The Witch King is coming out next year, a brand new world. Heck, just look at her full catalog. Martha also has a blog and a website. As often happens when book dragons get together, we talked about our hoards. Some books and authors that came up: Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal Ian Halle Ancillary Justice trilogy by Ann Leckie Phyllis Gotlieb (Wikipedia) Andre Norton (Wikipedia) Zenna Henderson (Wikipedia) The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold (we didn't like the new covers as much as the old but the books are great either way) Tor.com is a fantastic site with lots of free fiction. Murderbot started there and has a few short stories that are otherwise hard to find. There is a rare and sold out Subterranean Press edition of the Murderbot Diaries with illustrations from Tommy Arnold. See some of the illustrations. Transcript

Jasper van Woudenberg spoke with us about hacking hardware, writing a technical book, and ethics. The Hardware Hacking Handbook was written by Jasper and Colin O'Flynn (ChipWhisperer and episode 286: Twenty Cans of Gas). The site related to the book is hardwarehacking.io, you don't need the book to play with some of the examples. Jasper (@jzvw) is also the CTO of Riscure North America, a company that specializes in hardware security. They are hiring. Transcript

Chris and Elecia bounce from topic to topic, discussing life and work and occasionally answering listener emails. Python can format code into equations in Latex with Latexify (as noted in this tweet) Interesting sensor: Sensing deep-tissue physiology via wearable ultrasonic phased arrays Turing Complete - a listener-recommended logic gate puzzle game for Steam. In the past, we've also talked about Zachtronics' TIS-100 which is similar and Shenzhen IO which is at the circuit level. Oh, and there is The Human Resource Machine by Tomorrow Corporation. A listener recommended the Agile Embedded Podcast, particularly the episode on technical debt. News that Rollercoasters are triggering iPhone 14 and Apple Watch Crash Detection led to a mentions of a blog post about debugging Fitbit's issues with rollercoasters and accelerometers. Visual Studio Code for embedded systems development: You can use CubeMX and Platform.io (here is a how-to) Try out this stm32-for-vscode extension that claims to do what you want (we haven't tried it, tell us if it works) Or you can go more directly with the cortex-debug extension and locally installed ARM GCC package. Don't forget the VSCode Code Spell Checker extension. From the notes for Elecia's class: Where to buy small quantity prototyping components Having looked for an OLED display part in Live Class, I wanted to put together a list of where you might want to look for components, especially for the prototype stage. Adafruit and Sparkfun (and EMSL and a lot of other maker stores). If you are using their code as template or test code, look for their boards to see if you can use them. Worldwide and large components distributors with local distribution: Digikey is worldwide and they resell Adafruit and Sparkfun so if you don't want to start with an "OLED" search on Digikey and sort through the results, well, you can start with easier prototype parts. Farnell is a UK company though they have other names in other locations (Newark in the US and Element14 in Asia and Oceania). If they have your flag, you can probably get cheap shipping. Farnell is usually good for all of Europe. RS Components is also new to me though they seem to stock Adafruit parts as well as general electronics. They have lots of distributors all over the world (including more in Africa than I usually see). AliExpress is huge and worldwide, shipping from Asia. It is hard to find things but searching "Adafruit [part]" or "Sparkfun [part]" and you might find what you want… or a cheaper knockoff. Usually you want results in the Electronic Components and Supplies. Note: if it seems too good to be true it probably is. UK has Pimoroni and Cool Components and OkDo resell Adafruit and Sparkfun as well as other pieces like BBC micro:bit and Raspberry Pi. These may work for European countries. Seeed Studio has a wide variety of parts, the Grove and Components categories have parts that might be interesting. They deliver quickly and cheaply to Oceania and Asia. DFRobot is new to me but looks great. It was recommended for folks in Asia and Oceania. Their parts are resold through Digikey, Arrow, Farnell (Newark). Australia: Little Bird Electronics, Core Electronics, and Altronics Transcript Thank you to our sponsor this week!

We were joined in the studio by the Evil Mad Scientists Lenore Edman and Windell Oskay. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories (@EMSL) produces the disintegrated 555 Timer kit and 741 Op-Amp kit. These were made in conjunction with Eric Schlaepfer, who also created the Monster 6502. EMSL also makes the Eggbot kit and AxiDraw not-kit (and mini-kit). For a history of the pen plotter, check out Sher Minn's Plotter People talk on YouTube. (They have too many neat things to list here, go look on their page: https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/directory. Or stop into their Sunnyvale, California shop.) We talked about the beauty of boards including Kong Money and ElectroCookie's candy colored shields and Arduino Leonardo. Jepson Herbarium has interesting workshops including one about seaweed. At one workshop, Lenore and Windell got to talk to Josie Iselin, author of The Curious World of Seaweed. Elecia enjoyed Slime: How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us by Ruth Kassinger. Windell was previously on Embedded episode #124: Please Don't Light Yourself on Fire, we mainly talked about the book he co-authored: The Annotated Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory. Lenore was previously on Embedded episode #40: Mwahaha Session, we talked about EMSL. Our post-show tidepooling was very successful with a variety of nudibranchs, shrimp, seaweed, sea birds, snails, and hermit crabs.

We spoke with Duncan Haldane about creating hardware schematics by writing software code, three dimensional circuits, and bio-inspired jumping robots. Duncan is the CEO of JitX (jitx.com). They recently received Series A funding and are currently hiring engineers. Please mention that you heard about JitX here on Embedded. While earning a PhD at UC Berkeley, Duncan (@DuncanHaldane) also worked on Salto (video) and OpenRoach (github). Transcript