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Alan Cohen joined us to talk about brain waves, medical product development, open source, and helpful engineering. Alan has been working on VolksEEG (volkseeg.org, github.com/VolksEEG/VolksEEG). This is an EEG (wiki Electroencephalography) which detects brain waves. It uses the TI ADS1299 EEG monitoring chip and the Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Sense. Alan wrote Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market, published by O'Reilly. He talked about it on a previous episode: 269: Ultra-Precise Death Ray You can find him on twitter as @proto2product and on LinkedIn. Helpful Engineering (helpfulengineering.org) aims to deliver more open source solutions to society's systemic challenges.

Chris and Elecia discuss civic duties, the CAN bus, fulfilling Kickstarter orders, and the answers to a series of questions about embedded systems. Elecia was recently introduced to TRIZ inventive principles (wikipedia page) and started reading And Suddenly the Inventor Appeared: TRIZ: Theory of Inventive Problem Solving by Genrich Altshuller. You can support the show by becoming a patron on Patreon: patreon.com/embedded Or your company can sponsor a show, see the Sponsor page of embedded.fm

We spoke to author Robin Sloan about his books and near-future science fiction. Robin wrote Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore and Sourdough. Find Robin on twitter as @robin_____sloan. Robin's website is robinsloan.com. Go there for some short stories, sign up for his newsletter and check out his new 'zine (also at wizard.limo). Oh! Don't forget his blog, including a description of his neural net for audio generation and for writing. Some books Robin suggested: Home: A Short History of an Idea by Witold Rybczynshi Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie Hild by Nicola Griffith

Sunshine Jones spoke with us about synthesizers, electronics, and philosophy. Find him on twitter @Sunshine_Jones and instagram at sunshine_jones_ Sunshine's music is most easily found at TheUrgencyOfChange.com. His writing is at Sunshine-Jones.com. We talked about Sunshine's User's Guide to the Roland SE-02. That includes Ahmed, a track produced using only the SE-02. Sunshine also wrote about building a polysynth. The intro music is an excerpt from LELEK, released on Air Texture Vol. V. The exit music is Fall In Love Not In Line, released this year on vinyl only, TUOC01. See TheUrgencyOfChange.com for more. Sunshine was the host of SundaySoul.com, a live podcast about music and life.

Ingo Muschenetz spoke with us about software, management, podcasts, and interacting with people. Ingo's LinkedIn page Ingo works for Axway, they are hiring: Axway Careers Ingo keeps up with many podcasts, here are some of his favorites: Podcasts that talk about a complex topic, provide insight Throughline Planet Money Indicator https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510325/the-indicator-from-planet-money Freakonomics Podcasts with interviews and discussions about lives and careers Conan OBrian https://www.earwolf.com/show/conan-obrien Andy Richter https://www.earwolf.com/show/the-three-questions-with-andy-richter/ Fresh Air Podcasts that don't fit into a category other than "interesting": 99% invisible 20000 Hz RadioLab https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab Podcasts that Ingo didn't mention but meant to: The Daily: https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-daily Software Engineering Daily: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/ The Bugle: https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/ Switched on Pop: https://switchedonpop.com/ Gastropod: https://gastropod.com/

Jeremy Fielding spoke with us about mechanical engineering, robotics, robot operating system, YouTube, and solving problems. You can find all of Jeremy's links on his main site: jeremyfielding.com but here are a few short cuts: YouTube channel: Jeremy Fielding Twitter: @jeremy_fielding Instagram: @jeremy_fielding Patreon: jeremyfieldingsr Jeremy's Industrial arm punching video Elecia's typing robot Jeremey had a neat way to go about solving a problem. He called it Dr. FARM: D Define the problem R Research other solutions, partial solutions, terminology F Function: what do I want it it do? A Appearance: what should it look like? R Risk: is anyone going to get hurt in manufacture and function? M Model: prototype the design AR3 Open Source Control Software and a version with ROS MoveIt

Liam Cadigan joined us to talk about founding a successful startup from a college capstone project. Liam is a co-founder of InspectAR and worked on the board files the system uses. Liam can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter. Check out InspectAR. They are also on Twitter and on Instagram. The Inventor's Dilemma: The Remarkable Life of H. Joseph Gerber

Alex Glow filled our heads with project ideas. Alex is the Resident Hardware Nerd at Hackster.io. Her page is glowascii and you might want to see Archimedes the AI robot owl and the Hardware 101 channel. They have many sponsored contests including BadgeLove. You can find her on Twitter at @glowascii. Lightning round led us to many possibles: It you were building an IoT stuffed animal, what would you use? Mycroft and Snips are what is inside Archimedes. If you were building a camera to monitor a 3d printer, what would you use? For her M3D Micro Printer, Alex would use the Raspberry Pi based OctoPi to monitor it. If you were going to a classroom of 2nd graders, what boards would you take? The BBC Micro:bit (based on Code Bug) or some LittleBits kits (Star Wars Droid Inventor Kit and Korg Synth Kit are on Amazon (those are Embedded affiliate links, btw). If you were going to make a car-sized fighting robot, what dev system would you use? The Open Source Novena DIY Laptop initially designed Bunnie Huang There were more software and hardware kits to explore: Google DIY AI Arduino Maker1000 Raspberry Pi Chirp.io For your amusement Floppotron plays Bohemian Rhapsody Alex gave a shout out to her first hackerspace All Hands Active Ableton is audio workstation and sequencer software. Alex recommends Women's Audio Mission as a good way to learn audio production and recording if you are in the San Francisco area. There is an Interplanetary File System and Alex worked on a portable printer console for it. Elecia is always willing to talk about Ty the typing robot and/or narwhals teaching Bayes Rule. She recommended the book There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings by Kenn Amdahl.

Mario Marchese (aka Mario the Maker Magician) spoke with us about robots performing magic, humans performing magic, and writing a book about making magic. We also covered art, making, learning, Sesame Street, performance, design, humor, Piff the Magic Dragon [sic], magic secrets, and gracefully handling technological failure. You can find Mario on: His website mariothemagician.com YouTube (MariotheMagicianNYC) Instagram (mariothemagician) Twitter (@mariomagician) Facebook (mariothemagician). His book is The Maker Magician's Handbook: A Beginner's Guide to Magic + Making. We talked about Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, 19th century French watchmaker, magician and illusionist, and the amazing Aldo Colombini.

Leah Buechley spoke with us about the intersection of computer science and art. She is an associate professor in the computer science department of the University of New Mexico where she directs the Hand and Machine research group. Her website is leahbuechley.com, her research group website is handandmachine.cs.unm.edu. You can find her on Twitter at @leahbuechley. She wrote the book Textile Messages: Dispatches From the World of E-Textiles and Education and developed the LilyPad Arduino for wearable electronics. We talked about Chibitronics, paper circuits, developed by Jie Qi (who was on Embedded 277: The Sport of Kings talking about patents as well as Chibitronics) We talked about Nettrice Gaskins' Techno-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation: Culturally Relevant Making Inside and Outside of the Classroom An example of a tiny stepper motor on eBay Introduction to VQGAN + CLIP to generate art

Chris (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) discuss Blender, Make, TCP/IP, and listener questions (mostly about the podcast itself). Lightweight IP: an open source TCP/IP stack for embedded systems Look for Lazy Tutorials for Blender in Ian Hubert's YouTube Channel or if you want something a little simpler, try the Blender Beginner Tutorial (donut!). Ukulele and acoustic guitar kits are at StewMac.com Book with sponge sneeze information: Brilliant Abyss by Helen Scales This episode was sponsored by InspectAR. If you design, debug, or just need to use PCBs, InspectAR can give you superpowers. It's an augmented reality app and platform that allows you to visualize every layer, every connection, every aspect of your actual physical board in real time InspectAR is free for trial and home use. With a subscription you get powerful collaboration and debugging features including annotating the AR view, sharing comments, setting up test and calibration procedures. Check it out!

Adelle Lin (@Adellelin) spoke with us about wearables, art, playfulness, and getting together in virtual reality. Adelle's website is touchtech.io. For some VR get togethers, Adelle recommends AltSpace (altvr.com) and Mozilla Hubs (hubs.mozilla.com). Some other remote get togethers: Virtual Burning Man (August 29 - September 7, 2021) A. Maze Conference (July 21-24, 2021, remote) We mentioned the Nautilus jigsaw puzzle from Nervous Systems but actually have the smaller Ammonite one.

Tom Anderson (@tomacorp) joined us to talk about floating pins, ADCs, and teaching and learning things. Tom mentioned Horowitz and Hill's Art of Electronics and the vintage books on TubeBooks.org. Tom wrote about JFETs and vacuum tubes and Power Supply Filter Design for PCBs. He recommended the TI app note on floating inputs and a power supply book: Modern DC-to-DC Switchmode Power Converter Circuits. You can fine more of Tom's writing on Medium and the Tempo Automation blog. Other books: Practical Handbook of Curve Design and Generation and CRC Standard Curves and Surfaces Analog Integrated Circuit Design by Johns and Martin Analog Circuit Design by Jim Williams Other Vintage Books: Abramowitz and Stegun Handbook of Mathematical Functions (Applied mathematics) Typical Oscilloscope Circuitry by Tektronix Radiotron Designer's Handbook (TubeBooks.org) Dynamical Analogies (TubeBooks.org)

Alan Cohen (@proto2product) wrote a great book about taking an idea and making it into a product. We spoke with him about the development process and the eleven deadly sins of product development. We did not talk about ultra-precise death rays. Books we discussed: Alan's Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market Elecia's Making Embedded Systems The Mythical Man-Month, Anniversary Edition: Essays On Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change by Camille Fournier Alan mentioned writing software graphically with Enterprise Architect

Nitya Narasimhan (@nitya) spoke with us about visualizing learning, visual storytelling, sketchnotes, and finding a job that satisfies. Nitya's sketchnotes are all available on the @sketchthedocs Twitter stream that includes links to the hi-res drawing, a time-lapse of the drawing being created, and a blog post describing the information in more detail. The hi-res images are also on github, or if you have fast internet to download them all: cloud-skills.dev. If you'd like to create your own visual notes, sketchthedocs.dev has resources for talks and books you might find helpful. More talks can be found from #VisualieIT 2020. In July (links are not live until July 1, 2021), Microsoft and Nitya will be celebrating IoT with JulyOT including an introduction for beginners. Nitya's personal site is nitya.dev

On this quick bonus episode, Elecia and Christopher chat about their various recent projects, some of which have just been released into the wild. Christopher's band 12AX7 just launched their album Kickstarter, which was selected as one of Kickstarter's "Projects We Love". Check it out here if you are interested in finding out more or backing it. It'll run through July 16th at 10am Pacific Time. Elecia's Embedded Online Conference talk on map files will be posted publicly on June 22nd, so be on the lookout for that. In the meantime, the slides and examples are available here at embedded.fm/blog/MapFiles (and on Github) If you'd like other Embedded merchandise such as a mug (many different options), Memory Map Land mousepad (or different poster), we have a Zazzle store. Her lightning talk about origami, Snails, Paper, and Programming: A Computational Approach to Mollusc Morphology in Origami, is already on Youtube and you can watch it now! Elecia's origami github can be found here. Finally if you are interested in having your cat or cats appear in 12AX7's upcoming music video, send Dropbox/Google Drive/iCloud/whatever links to your clips, along with how you'd like to be credited, to [email protected]. Use the subject line "Cats for 12AX7".

Erin Kennedy (@RobotGrrl) spoke with us about learning new things, nice robots at the beach, lighting up fog voxels, and being part of the maker community. Erin's Robot Missions (@RobotMissions) was founded to develop robots to clean shorelines of plastic. Her personal website is robotgrrl.xyz (check out the project showcase). Erin also worked on a Hackaday Dream Team that worked on innovations to reduce the environmental impact of lost or abandoned fishing equipment.

From his view in retirement, David Comer spoke with us about continuing to learn, staying engaged in an engineering career, and how the Galileo memory module worked.

Brittany Postnikoff (@Straithe) spoke with us about scary robots, neat stickers, and contributing to open source projects. Brittany's website is straithe.com and her sticker channel is twitch.tv/str41the. Her github repo has curated reading lists on technical topics. She's working at Great Scott Gadgets, maker of a variety of hardware tools including Luna, a toolkit for working with USB. (This was mentioned on a previous Embedded show, 337: Not Completely Explode with Kate Tempkin.) And if you want Embedded merchandise like mugs, mousepads, and wall art, we have a store for you.

Tenaya Hurst Conklin (@TenayaHurst) discussed STEAM teaching tools and kits from RAFT (@RAFTBayArea). RAFT is at raft.net. The Abiotic Dissection activity is pretty amusing (from the STEAM Learning Sheets) as are the games in the idea sheets. They also have a summer camp and a Youtube channel. Tenaya's website is roguemaking.com. She was previously on Embedded 49: Is that an Arduino in your pocket?

Sarah Petkus offers to let her robot lick Christopher's leg. Christopher agrees reluctantly once we determine the saliva will be anti-bacterial hand sanitizer. Sarah is a kinetic artist and some of her projects include a robot army (built your own from parts printed out or purchased at robot-army.com), Noodlefeet, and Carl (the flamingo of pendulum inversion). Her Zoness.com site is an umbrella for her drawn and robotic art. Specifically, you may enjoy her webcomic Gravity Road, her YouTube channel, and/or her Robotic Arts blog. Some other topics we discussed: Sarah got into mechatronics at her time as SAIC. Festo's air jellyfish on youtube Algodoo.com 2d physics simulator Woodgears.ca for 3d printable gears Also, please check out our new embedded.fm/blog or if you prefer email updates, sign up at embedded.fm/subscribe.

It's another Elecia and Chris episode and this time we cover handling hourly work when the task doesn't neatly divide into hours, using Docker (and Conda and Virtualenv) for development, growing the podcast, overdoing conference talks, and trying to find a new laptop. Phew! The Embedded Online Conference is coming up the week of May 17th 2021, and Elecia's talk will be Buried Treasure and Map Files (Note: the coupon code is still valid and mentioned early in the episode. Elecia will also put up a copy of her talk on YouTube after some time.)

Anne Barela (@anne_engineer) spoke with us about working as an engineer in the US Foreign Service and writing tutorials for Adafruit. Anne has also written two books: Getting Started with Adafruit Trinket and Getting Started with Adafruit Circuit Playground Express. To see Anne's writing on Adafruit, check out her page: learn.adafruit.com/users/AnneBarela We also looked at Adafruit's Home Automation board.

Doug Ellison (@doug_ellison), Engineering Camera Team Lead at NASA's JPL and Martian photographer, spoke with us about low power systems, cameras, clouds, and dust devils on Mars. The best paper for learning more is from NASA's JPL site: The Mars Science Laboratory Engineering Cameras Mars rovers wiki

Alvaro Prieto (@alvaroprieto) spoke with us about cheese, making, work, the reverse engineering podcast, weather, and motivation. Alvaro is a host of the Unnamed Reverse Engineering podcast. Some of his favorite episodes include #41 with Samy Kamkar, #14 with Joe Grand, and #23 with Major Malfunction. (Jen Costillo co-hosts the show and has been on Embedded several times.) Alvaro works at Sofar Ocean, making oceanic sensing platforms. He has a personal website linking to his other exploits. We talked about some Embedded episodes as well: #282 with Laughlin Barker about OpenROV #174 with Evan Shapiro about baby monitors and professional poker Also, we've all really enjoyed the Disney's Mandolorian.

Chris and Elecia talk with each other about contracting, architecture, origami research, Digilent's new oscilloscope, TensorFlow, map files, conference talks, art and the upcoming 12AX7 album. Digilent sent us a pre-production Analog Discovery Pro ADP3450. Elecia's Origami Github. Embedded Patreon Embedded Online Conference talk Buried Treasure and Map Files (Note: the coupon code from Jacob's show is still valid and Elecia will put up a copy of her talk on YouTube.) 12XA7, we'll let you know when the Kickstarter goes live.

Finally! An episode with version control! And D&D! Chris Svec (@christophersvec) joins us to discuss why version control is critical to professional software development and what the most important concepts are. T-Shirts are on sale for a limited time: US distributor and EU distributor. You can read more from Chris on the Embedded Blog. He writes the ESE101 column (new posts soon!). If you are new to version control or learning git, Atlassian has a great set of posts and tutorials from high level "what is version control?" to helping you figure out good usage models (Svec mentioned gitflow). Atlassian has an interactive tutorial that lets you try out the repository commands (or try the Github interactive tutorials). Of course, there is a good O'Reilly book about git. If you are using SVN (aka Subversion), the Red Bean book from O'Reilly is a good resource. (Elecia's shirt said You Obviously Like Owls from topatoco.com.)

Al Sweigart (@AlSweigart) spoke with us about getting better at Python programming. Al's book site is InventWithPython.com. You can find his books there as well as No Starch Press and Amazon. Automate the Boring Stuff with Python Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python Cracking Codes with Python Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python Al's personal site (alsweigart.com) has talks, videos, and a lot of code to look at. Or check out his github repo including the small text based games: https://github.com/asweigart/pythonstdiogames Al's YouTube Channel, including his Calm Programming series. We also talked about: scratch.mit.edu - a fun way to learn to program where you are almost never wrong Fluent Python: Clear, Concise, and Effective Programming by Luciano Ramalho. PyCon and their talk videos Online origami simulator (origamisimulator.org)

Dr. Ayanna Howard (@robotsmarts, wiki) spoke with us about sex, race, and robots. Ayanna's Audible book is Sex, Race, and Robots: How to Be Human in the Age of AI. You can see more of her research from her Google Scholar page. Find some best practices and tools for reducing bias AI: Partnership on AI AI Fairness 360 (IBM) Model Cards (Google) Ayanna has recently moved from being Professor and Department Chair at Georgia Tech to be Dean of Engineering at The Ohio State University. Her current favorite robot is Pepper. Ayanna spoke more about her robotics and trust research on Embedded 207: I Love My Robot Monkey Head (transcript).

Laurel Cummings (@justblamelaurel) teaches people how to build what is required with the material on hand. We talked with her about how to engineer survival solutions on-the-fly, often while performing disaster relief. Also: what could be made with chewing gum and paper clips. Laurel works at Building Momentum (buildmo.com). They are currently hiring. Laurel spoke at SuperCon 2019 about Austere Engineering.

Cy Keener spoke with us about sensors, Arduinos, ice, and the crossover between art and science. You can see some of his field work and gallery installations at his site: cykeener.com and on his vimeo channel. Cy is an art professor at the University of Maryland (bio, youtube) Cy's advisor at Stanford was Paul DeMarinis (pauldemarinis.org, Stanford page). Arduiniana: a blog of useful Arduino libraries We also talked about some custom sensors by Lovro Valcic of Bruncin (bruncin.com).

Jacob Beningo spoke with us about embedded systems, conference talks, writing articles and books, and best practices in development. Jacob is a consultant and instructor, see his website for more details (beningo.com). Jacob is one of the organizers of the Embedded Online Conference, May 18,19, and 20. Session times is generally noted in Eastern Time (Americas). A coupon code for a discount on registration is in the show. Jacob will be giving a talk called Best Practices for RTOS Application Design. He likes the full visibility of tracing, using the Segger J-Trace with SystemView or Precipio. Jacob has written three books: MicroPython Projects: A do-it-yourself guide for embedded developers to build a range of applications using Python Reusable Firmware Development: A Practical Approach to APIs, HALs and Drivers API Standard for MCUs He's also written many articles for Embedded.com as well as his own blog. He recommends the IEEE Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK). The SWEBOK is a free download from IEEE, which covers the best practices that engineers should be following when they develop software along with processes and strategies. Jacob also recommends Renesas' Synergy Software Quality Handbook that describes the processes that they used to develop and validate their software.

Alana Sherman of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI, @MBARI_News) spoke with us about engineering for deep sea environments and jelly creatures. Alana's MBARI page notes that she worked on DeepPIV and the Benthic Rover. She is also a part of the BioInspiration Lab. Larvaceans: image search, short video, or (my favorite!) the long video. It is probably too late to purchase tshirts but… in case it isn't, here is the link.

Chris and Elecia chat about their projects, Python, choosing boards, social media, tshirts, and self care. T Shirts are on sale until the end of February! To decode the titles check out the giant list of all embedded episodes. Our social media empire is growing. Please follow us on any of these sites: Twitter @embeddedfm Instagram @embeddedpodcast Facebook @embeddedfm LinkedIn @Embeddedfm YouTube Embedded Podcast Patreon Embedded Mailchimp Newsletter (weekly) Embedded.fm 2021 Embedded Online Conference is May 18-19 & 20, 2021 Raspberry Pi Pico Meaning of underscores in Python and Python CTypes

Ariel Waldman (@arielwaldman) spoke with us about how science, art, and all of the other disciplines can build a better world. Ariel does many amazing things, it is hard to list them all. Homepage: arielwaldman.com YouTube: arielwaldman Science Hack Day: sciencehackday.org and Twitter @ScienceHackDay Space Hack directory of ways to get involved: spacehack.org Patreon page: arielwaldman Book: What's It Like in Space?: Stories from Astronauts Who've Been There NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts council, look at niacfellows.org to apply. Ariel fell in love with NASA while watching the When We Left Earth miniseries.

Christelle Rohaut (@chrisrohaut) spoke with us about circular economies and how innovation can build better cities. Christelle is co-founder and CEO of Codi. She is on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Second Harvest Food Bank

Ben Hest of Digikey (@digikey) answered questions about finding parts, warehouses, packaging orders, and sweeping components off the floor. The Digikey website: digikey.com. It is ok to click around, looking for a ton of information (as well as parts). Want to see someone search for parts? Limor at Adafruit does this every week in The Great Search videos! Ben's favorite new parts are the Raspberry Pi Pico and the Parallax Propeller 2. Embedded T-shirts are available! You could also have your own waffle paper maker: Geami Wrap. Digikey is hiring for IT and Software Engineering positions! Check out their open jobs here.

Thea Flowers (Stargirl, @theavalkyrie) 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. For more information about the Eurorack, listen to Embedded 356: Deceive and Manipulate You with Leonardo Laguna Ruiz of Vult.

Emily Velasco (@MLE_Online) spoke with us about artistic projects, retro-future aesthetics, and scientific communication. She shows and describes the projects on YouTube: Emily's Electric Oddities including the Optical Sound Decoder, Port-A-Vid, Hairy Cacti, and the Lissajukebox. Many of Emily's professional writings can be found on Wevolver, usually redirected to sites where they are published.

Chris and Elecia talk about making albums, making progress, DIY shot reporting, getting credit, and project management. Check out the Embedded transcripts (now with older shows appearing weekly!). The Embedded Patreon provides the funds for guest mics, transcripts (new and old), and new shirt designs. Thank you very much to the supporters. Thank you to our listeners for raising over $5000 for DigitalNest! Books and articles mentioned: Tessellations for Everyone Risk Up Front: Managing Projects in a Complex World Software Project Survival Guide Object-oriented design patterns in the kernel Open source gunshot sensor Thank you to 2020 sponsors including Qt and Triplebyte as well as InterWorking Labs for their early patreon-business-level support.

We spoke with Kathleen Tuite (@kaflurbaleen) about augmented reality, computer vision, games with a purpose, and meetups. Kathleen's personal site (filled with many interesting projects we didn't talk about) is SuperFireTruck.com. Her graduate work was in using photogrammetry to build models. Kathleen works for GrokStyle, a company that lets you find furniture you like based on what you see. GrokStyle is used in the Augmented Reality try-it-at-home IKEA Place app. Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Language translating/learning app and online game is Duolingo TensorFlow in Javascript HCOMP 2018: Human Computer Conference with Keynote by Zooniverse's Lucy Fortson (no video for that yet but we hope)

Leonardo Laguna Ruiz of Vult spoke with us about modelling electronics, modular synthesizers, and modulating sound. We talked in detail about applied digital signal processing. Leonardo's website is www.vult-dsp.com. Check out the Freak Filter, the user manual alone is a course in signal processing. You can buy finished or DIY versions on vult-dsp.com/store. The physical hardware is a Eurorack module (wiki) but the Vult modules are also available for the VCV Rack, a Eurorack simulator that you can use to build your own modular synthesizer. Leonardo has a YouTube channel where he goes in depth on signal processing: youtube.com/c/LeonardoLagunaRuiz. He's also written about modeling vintage analog sound on the Wolfram blog. For more information about the Vult programming language (or an example for how to build your own, check out the github repository: http://modlfo.github.io/vult/overview/ This episode was sponsored by Qt, a cross platform application framework for desktop, mobile and embedded devices. That means you get a full set of libraries for nearly everything you can think of, plus a world-class GUI that will give you a native look wherever your code runs. Try Qt for free at www.qt.io/download (qt.io/embeddedfm ! And check out Qt for MCUs!)

Helen Leigh (@helenleigh) joined us to talk about music, electronics, books, and starting a new job at CrowdSupply (@crowd_supply). Helen was previously on Embedded #261: Blowing Their Fragile Little Minds where we talked about subversive geography, her book The Crafty Kid's Guide to DIY Electronics, and the mini.mu musical gloves. Helen has a book coming out in 2021 about DIY Music Tech including a soft version of the Michel Waisvisz' CrackleBox (Kraakdos). Check out some of the projects in HackSpace magazine issue 36 and 37 (the book will be serialised in HackSpace). Or look on YouTube for some examples of Helen's purring tentacle and her circuit sculpture harp. Helen mentioned Bunnie Huang's Precursor, an open mobile phone, on CrowdSupply (campaign ending shortly). The Giant German Congress mentioned is the CCC Congress Festival Helen's preferred thread (the one you can actually get) is Madiera's conductive threads. Hit the contact link for purchasing. (Helen notes you can use it for both sides in a sewing machine!)

Becky Worledge of the Qt Company (@qtproject) spoke with us about application frameworks, organizing large code bases, and automotive regulations. The best place to get started with Qt is the getting started page: doc.qt.io/qt-5/gettingstarted.html Or skip that and head straight for the code: github.com/qt Maybe backtrack to see what is available: qt.io/product/features Hmm, was there talk of Qt and Python? PySide was it? qt.io/qt-for-python But wait, Qt for MCU? What platforms are supported? QtForMCUs/qtul-supported-platforms.html Finally, don't get eaten by a Grue, sense when they are coming: doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtsensors-grue-example.html Qt6 is coming out Dec 2020. So maybe replace all the qt-5 in the links with qt-6 to see if it is ready yet! Oh, and Qt is hiring: qt.io/careers The quote at the end is not from Abraham Lincoln. (Quote Investigator). Still a good thought.

Seth Hillbrand (@SethHillbrand), lead developer for KiCAD (@kicad_pcb), spoke with us about open source development, EDA tools, pronunciation, and inclusion. Check out KiCAD! Seth's company provides support for KiCAD (kipro-pcb.com, @kiproeda).

John McMaster (@johndmcmaster) told us about the process of opening up chips to see how the processors are structured and what the firmware says. See John's website for information on getting started (as well as digging much deeper). John has given some interesting Hardwear.io talks including Capturing Mask ROMs and Taming Hydrofluoric Acid to Extract Firmware. His talks and many others are available on the Hardwear.io archive. Or sign up for the Hardwear.io Online Hardware Security Training, Berlin Jan 2021. As mentioned in the show: John wrote a blog post about his top lab accidents and explosions. Paper: Reverse engineering Flash EEPROM memories using Scanning Electron Microscopy by Franck Courbon, Sergei Skorobogatov, and Christopher Woods Rompar and bitract are the two programs mentioned as helpful for getting from an image to binary code.

Chris and Elecia discuss transcripts, lightsabers, seashells, python, numpy, matlab and how to get into embedded systems development. Embedded show transcripts are available at embedded.fm/transcripts Elecia's origami github repository includes a python script for generating origami shell folding patterns. The paper described was Analysis of Shell Coiling: General Problems by David M. Raup from the Journal of Paleontology , Sep., 1966, Vol. 40, No. 5. Chris used this model to print his lightsaber: Star Wars Lightsaber (Normal version) from YouMagine The episode was sponsored by Triplebyte. If you are looking to prove your skills, develop your knowledge, or find a job you love, check out Triplebyte.

Ben Hencke (@ledmage, @im889) updated us on blinking lights and running a small hardware business. You can find the current PixelBlaze in the Electomage store on Tindie (tindie.com/stores/electromage/) or signup for a shiny new version on CrowdSupply. Ben's personal site (bhencke.com) has lots of projects including a page devoted to the awesome Pixelblaze projects (including the BioTronEsis alien light sea creatures which someone who hosts this show hopes will be in her Christmas stocking). When Ben is making Pixelblaze, the brand is ElectroMage (electromage.com/) so you can see more about Pixelblaze there including the forum. We didn't talk about TapGlo, the arcade ping pong table that Ben is also working on. Favorite solder paste: LOCTITE GC 10 paste (henkel-adhesives) About his favorite acronym, Ben says, "XMLHttpRequest is my favorite because it perfectly illustrates how we're (developers) bad at naming things and like to come up with arbitrary rules for things. The story about how XML is all caps and Html is camel case is just too perfect, and it's popular use rarely has anything to do with XML" Finally, There are 40 different flavors of Kit Kat. There are 12 flavors of candy corn, they all taste the same.

Christine Sunu (@christinesunu) spoke with us about the feelings we get from robots. For more information about emotive design, check out Christine's website: christinesunu.com. From there you can find hackpretty.com, some of her talks (including the TED talk with the Fur Worm), and links to her projects (such as Starfish Cat and a Cartoon Guide to the Internet of Things). You can find more of her writing and videos on BuzzFeed and The Verge. You can also hire her product development company Flash Bang. Embedded 142: New and Improved Appendages is where Sarah Petkus offers to let her robot lick us. Keepon Robot (or on Wikipedia) Books we talked about: Accelerando by Charles Stross Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less by Sherry Turkle (MIT site) Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle (MIT site) Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith (Note: Elecia also wrote a whole octopus annotated bibliography in a recent post)

Drew Fustini (@pdp7) spoke with us about building Linux, RISC-V cores, and many other things. Links, so many links! Drew is a board member of the BeagleBoard.org Foundation and of the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA.org). He is an open source hardware designer at OSHPark (he recommends their blog!). He writes a monthly column for Hackspace Magazine, for example The Rise of the FPGA in Issue 26 and Intro to RISC-V. Yocto is a tool to help build a Linux distribution specific to your board and application! Bootlin offers free training material for Yocto and OpenEmbedded (as well as many other things such as Embedded Linux and Linux kernel development). Or there is a video: Buildroot vs Yocto: Differences for Your Daily Job - Luca Ceresoli at Embedded Linux Conference. Or look at Embedded Apprentice Linux Engineer (e-ale.org). Or maybe another video: "Yocto Project Dev Day Virtual 2020 #3: Yocto Project Kernel Lab, Hands-On, Part 1" by Trevor Woerner. RISC-V is an open source processor core. Well, cores. But you can try them out in hardware even if you don't want to play with an FPGA. The SiSpeed Longan Nano has a GigaDevices microcontroller dev board (with an OLED on board!, more info). Did you know you can run Linux on RISC-V? The cheapest method is emulation and Renode is brilliant for that. Here is Drew using it on the train (twitter). Sipeed boards with Kendryte K210 start at only $13 and can even run Linux (tutorial). There are also affordable open hardware FPGA with free software toolchain support like the ICE40 based Icebreaker and Fomu. For a bit more money, the bigger ECP5 can run Linux. Or look at Greg Davill's wonderful Orange Crab. For a lot more money but on silicon, the Icicle with Microchip PolarFire SoC is aimed at corporate use. Or you can produce your own physical chips. For free (for a limited time). See the talk from Tim Ansell - Skywater PDK: Fully open source manufacturable PDK for a 130nm process Drew attends a lot of conferences, here are highlights from the past: OHS 2020 wrist badge OHS 2018 epaper badge ELC-2018 EALE Buildroot - Thomas Petazzoni ELC-2018 EALE Bitbake YP - Behan Webster Linux on RISC-V with open hardware and open FPGA tools Sldies for Embedded Linux Conference Video from FOSS North Linaro Connect BoF: gpio and pinctrl in Linux kernel (Slides) RISC-V: How an open ISA benefits hardware security (Slides) (Hardwear.io video) Here are some future conferences he's planning to attend: Embedded Linux Conference Europe ($50) October 26-29, 2020 (Virtual) Yocto Project Virtual Summit ($40) October 29-30, 2020 (Virtual) Open Hardware Summit March 13, 2020