Embedded

Christopher (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) talks about vacations for learning and hobbies then answered listener questions. Chris' toys include the Prusa I3 Mk3 and the UAD Arrow. Elecia likes Camille Fournier's book, The Manager's Path. She also got to plug her own book, Making Embedded Systems: Design Patterns for Great Software. Pacific spiny lumpsucker (Eumicrotremus orbis) at the Seymour Science Center

Brandon Wilson (@brandonlwilson) shared his stories about hacking TI calculators (and other things). TICalc.org has the latest on getting started yourself including Z80 assemblers, or start on Brandon's website: brandonw.net Bradon will be speaking at Hardwear.io, a security conference for the hardware and security community. The conference consists of training (11th - 12th Sept 2018) and conference (13th - 14th Sept 2018). It is in The Hague, Netherlands. His talk is The Race to Secure Texas Instruments Graphing Calculators. He will also be hosting a village called Dumping the ROM of the Most Secure Sega Genesis Game Ever Created. Topics: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:33 Brandon Wilson 00:01:39 Lightning Round 00:02:37 Calculators! 00:03:58 Programmable calculators, using TI BASIC 00:05:00 Ti-85, programmable via assembly language 00:06:35 App store for my calculator? 00:07:34 How does TI prevent cheating? 00:09:41 Testguard for teachers 00:12:53 Some are WiFi capable 00:13:41 How Brandon learned to hack the TI 00:15:12 Processors used in the TI calcs 00:16:39 What tools are available for reverse engineering? 00:17:42 Breaking the keys 00:18:49 Flash unlock protection 00:20:14 TI hacker community 00:21:32 TI used 512-bit RSA keys 00:22:32 Key broken after 2 months of brute force 00:22:58 TI threatened the first key breaker 00:23:31 Built a distributed community to attack keys 00:24:38 TI was not happy 00:25:03 DMCA takedown notice 00:27:28 EFF offered to help 00:29:30 The ethics of circumventing TIs protection 00:33:23 Calculators as a platform for learning HW/FW 00:35:11 Hackers' responsibility toward the hacked 00:39:05 Hacks Brandon is uncomfortable with 00:42:55 Bug bounties, are they effective? 00:44:02 Brandon's other projects 00:44:26 TI calculator processors used all over 00:44:50 Sega Genesis 00:47:54 Code execution via the Sega Genesis CD 00:53:35 Calculators changed my life (back up) 00:54:21 Other projects, USB 00:55:31 Abuse the USB protocol 00:58:24 Modifying USB flash drive FW 01:03:21 Reverse engineering tools 01:06:13 Hardwear.io conference, Brandon's hacking village 01:09:22 Brandon's Final Thought 01:10:19 Outro 01:11:20 Final Quote

We spoke with Axel Poschmannof DarkMatter LLC(@GuardedbyGenius) about embedded security. For a great in-depth introduction, Axel suggested Christof Paar's Introduction to Cryptography class, available on YouTube. We also talked about ENISA's Hardware Threat Landscape and Good Practices Guide. Axel will be speaking at Hardwear.io, a security conference for the hardware and security community. The conference consists of training (11th - 12th Sept 2018) and conference (13th - 14th Sept 2018). It is in The Hague, Netherlands. DarkMatter is hiring. Elecia has some discount coupons for the Particle.io Spectra conference.

Derek Fronek spoke with us about FIRST robotics. His TechHOUNDS (@TechHOUNDS868) team is based in Carmel, Indiana. They won the state competition and placed 5th in the high school FRC championship. Derek mentioned the roboRIO controller board, TalonSRX speed controller, and the Spark motor controller. Many of these offer deep discounts to FIRST robotics participants. Check out FirstInspires.org to find a team near you. The game comes out in January but many teams start forming in September. Derek's personal website includes his other projects and a way to contact him. Sparkfun has an autonomous vehicle competition, this is their 10th year. Elecia wrote a related blog post for Derek, a few notes about media training. Music for after you finish the episode

Chris (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) celebrate the 256th episode with a confusing lack of cupcakes. IAmTheCalvary.org has an excellent Hippocratic Oath for Connected Medical Devices Make Magazine has some tips to tighten security on DIY IoT Projects. Rockstar Language Specification (and FizzBuzz example) The C++ episode discussed was #247 with Jason Turner. Topics and Times: 00:00 Zero 00:27 Intro and cupcakes 03:09 Patreon and Slack 04:24 Transcripts, chapter markers? 07:48 Listener question: ST HAL, Cube, SPL, Bare Metal? 14:22 Hippocratic Oath for Connected Medical Devices 19:32 Make magazine article on DIY IoT Security 22:36 NYC Embedded and Engineering Meetup? 23:42 C++: Expressiveness, optimization vs. good code 30:21 C++: Spec size vs. C#/Java 32:22 A question of parentheses leads to mild violence and ranting 35:43 Rockstar: The Language! 43:59 Wherein we "discuss" Rust for some reason, again. 46:45 Elecia's Projects in Python and JSON 50:18 Elecia's available for gigs! 50:50 Elecia's ML overview blog post 51:38 The end of Embedded 52:42 Wrap up 54:04 Winnie the Pooh continues...

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.

Gabriel Jacobo (@gabrieljacobo) spoke with us about embedded graphics, contributing to the Linux SDL, using MQTT, and working far from his employers. Gabriel's blogand resumeare available on his site mdqinc.com. His github repo is under gabomdq. SDL is Simple DirectMedia Layer (wiki). It is not so simple. For MQTT-based home automation, he uses the Raspberry Pi Home Assistantbuild and many Node MCUs(ESP8266s running Lua, Micropython, or Arduino Framework).

Micah Elizabeth Scott (@scanlime) came to talk about Fadecandy, a really neat way to control smart LEDs (NeoPixel, AdaFruit's term for the WS2812). The conversation ranged from beautiful LED control algorithms and open source embedded projects to triangle tessellations, art, and identity. AdaFruit has a great intro to Fadecandy. Fadecandy is open source hardware and software, see the repository. Micah's blog is a combo of art and technology. Burning Man's Ardent Mobile Cloud (also a lovely still pic). Elecia also mentioned Deep Darc's hack of the GE Color Effects lights.

Jen Costillo (@rebelbotjen) joins Elecia White to discuss the secret parts of C, keywords that only embedded software engineers seem to know about. Jen and Elecia talk about interviewing and why these keywords make good questions for finding folks who use the language to its full potential. On the show they mention a list of embedded interview questions with answers. (Note: Elecia's book has many excellent interview questions and what interviewers look for when they ask them.) Producer Christopher White sends along a more concise introduction to the often unused register keyword. NOTE: This is a repeat episode from before we'd settled on our name. Note that Jen is the co-host of the Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast.

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. 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 Designby Raph Koster Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experienceby 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)

Katie Malone (@multiarmbandit) works in data science, has podcast about machine learning, and has a Phd in Physics. We mostly talked about machine learning, ways to kill people, mathematics, and impostor syndrome. Katie is the host of the Linear Digressionspodcast (@LinDigressions). She recommended the Linear Digressions interview with Matt Mightas something Embedded listeners might enjoy. Katie and Ben also recently did a show about git. Katie taught Udacity's Intro to Machine Learningcourse (free!). She also recommends the Andrew Ng Machine Learning Coursera course. Neural nets can be fooled in hilarious ways: Muffins vs dogs, Labradoodles vs chicken, and more. Intentional, adversarial attacks are also possible. Impostor syndromeis totally a thing. We've talked about it before. You might recognize the discussion methodology from Embedded #24: I'm a Total Fraud. Katie works at Civis Analyticsand they are hiring.

This week, we spoke with Addie (@atdiy) and Whisker (@whixr), the Toymakers (@Tymkrs). Their latest CypherCon badges included a complete phone system. For more information, check out the user documentation at hackthebadge.com or the related Reddit post. There is a video of Joe Grand's 2018 CypherCon talk if you'd like to watch him talk about his juvenile delinquency. In our last episode with Addie and Whisker (#205), we talked about the CypherCon 2017 badges and their Tindie store. Tindie module for phone The "Drew" mentioned is Drew Fustini (@pdp7). Though only Whisker supports accosting him to talk about OSH Park board colors.

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 tutorialsfrom 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.)

Claire Rowland (@clurr) joined to discuss creating good user experiences for the Internet of Things. Claire is the lead author of Designing Connected Products: UX for the Consumer Internet of Things. You can find more about her on clairerowland.com, from her talks (including Interusability: UX for Connected Products), her book's website, and her guest appearance on the IoT Podcast (episode 21). Her new report about user experience and the IoT will be on Iotuk.org.uk in June of 2018. Elecia was also on the IoT Podcast: episode 158. It was @SwiftOnSecurity who posted the tweet about experts and their typical response.

Chris (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) answer listener emails. We did a show with Dennis Jackson about transitioning from software to embedded: 211: 4 Weeks, 3 Days Chibios RTOS: MyNewt or Zephyr may be more worth your time. Software tool: Beyond Compare for excellent differencing, including folder level Other people answer STEAM vs STEM (in about the same way we did). C++ standards for safety: NASA, ESA, JSF-AV rules, and Jason Turner's C++ best practices. Elecia played with Javascript to make a watchface for her Fitbit Versa Chris got a Blackaddr Guitar Teensy Shield which uses the Teensy Audio Library to do amazing guitar effects via code. Elecia's Twitter bot is @pajamaswithfeet (Tracery code on cheapbotsdonequick.com) Making Embedded Systems book Embedded Patreon

Jason Turner (@lefticus) of the CPPCast (@cppcast) spoke with us about modern C++ in embedded systems. Jason's articles can be found on EmptyCrate.com. You can also contact him there and find out more about his training sessions. Jason's video channel is on C++ Weekly and includes an ARM emulator written in C++, running on Compiler Explorer. Jason often uses Compiler Explorerby Matt Godbolt (Embedded #190: Trust Me, I'm Right). Jason's C++ Best Practices Guide on Github. Listen to CPPCast at cppcast.comor on your favorite podcast app. CPPCon 2016 keynote Rich Code for Tiny Computers, where Jason writes a Commodore 64 game in C++. Jason recommended looking at Odin Holmes' twitter (@odinthenerd) as well as Odin's talks from CPPCon (such as his 2017 talk about agent based class design). Odin runs an embedded C++ conference in Germany called Embo++. Also look into Jens Weller's Meeting C++conference. During the show, Elecia was looking at cppreference.com. She would also like to apologize to Bjarne Stroustrup. Embedded Patreon

Alvaro Prieto (@alvaroprieto) spoke with us about laser turrets, tearing down quadcopters, flux capacitors, the moon, and culture at work. Alvaro's blog Alvaro's github repositories including Proto-X quadcopter information, Silta bus monitoring, and Skype video message exporter for OSX. One of the inspirations for taking apart the Proto-X was watching Micah talk about her Coastermelt project. We talked to her about it on episode 101: Taking Apart the Toaster. One of his reasons for going to Planet Labs was knowing Shaun Meehan, check out his Amp Hour interview. Daemon by Daniel Suarez Video of Supercon talk on laser shooting robots Podcast Award nominations open in early 2016 Getting a picture of the moon in stereo requires some planning especially in 1949 when Alvaro's great-grandfather took these."> Getting a picture of the moon in stereo requires some planning especially in 1949 when Alvaro's great-grandfather took these."> Getting a picture of the moon in stereo requires some planning especially in 1949 when Alvaro's great-grandfather took these. On the slide are two images of the moon that combine to create a nicely stereo image." data-lightbox-theme="dark"> On the slide are two images of the moon that combine to create a nicely stereo image." data-lightbox-theme="dark">On the slide are two images of the moon that combine to create a nicely stereo image.

We spoke with Dr. Bennie Lewis (@_benjoe02) about machine learning and robotics. Bennie is a Senior Research Scientist at Lockheed Martin, content creator, and Twitch streamer (benjoe02) NVIDIA Jetson platformand Cuda for deep learning LEGO Mindstorms SAMS C++ in One Hour a Dayby Siddhartha Rao

Stephen Kraig (@Macro_Ninjaneer) and Parker Dillmann (@LnghrnEngineer), of Macrofab (@MacroFab) joined us to chat about getting hardware and software to work together. Stephen and Parker are also hosts of the Macrofab podcast. We compared out-the-ordinary podcast guests. For MacroFab episode 112 it was their conversation with a patent lawyer. For Embedded episode 150 it was our conversation with a tax accountant. Schematics for the Apollo Guidance Computer (and their Kicad replica on github).

Kristina Durivage (@gelicia) described her path getting into making and hardware hacking as a complement to her day job working in front-end software. Kristina's portfolio.gelicia.com includes write-ups on her projects (TweetSkirt, Kitchen Playset Game) as well as links to her talks. Or you can skip to her github.com/gelicia repository. Kristina has a chapter in the 10 LED Projects for Geeks book coming out from NoStarch Press. Thank you to Patreon Embedded supporters for Kristina's mic! Elecia and Kristina both recommend the classic Robert Aspirin Myth Adventure books!

We spoke with Michael Barr (@embeddedbarr) about the Barr Group embedded systems survey. You can download the 2018 survey at the Barr Group survey page. The Barr Group Embedded C Coding Standardis also free to download (with registration). You can buy a paper copy on Amazon. Programming Embedded Systems in C and C++ 1st Editionby Michael Barr, also available for free in HTML on the Barr Group site. The second edition is Programming Embedded Systems: With C and GNU Development Tools, 2nd Editionby Michael Barr and Anthony Massa. The second book was Embedded Systems Dictionaryby Jack Ganssle and Michael Barr Elecia's book is Making Embedded Systems: Design Patterns for Great Software.

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 Catand a Cartoon Guide to the Internet of Things). You can find more of her writing and videos on BuzzFeedand 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: Accelerandoby Charles Stross Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Lessby Sherry Turkle (MIT site) Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Ageby Sherry Turkle (MIT site) Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousnessby Peter Godfrey-Smith (Note: Elecia also wrote a whole octopus annotated bibliography in a recent post)

Andrei Chichak and Alvaro Prieto (@alvaroprieto) join us to talk about bits and how to manipulate them. Alvaro is host of the Unnamed Reverse Engineeringpodcast. His other Embedded appearances are 130, 200, and 215. Andrei ("Andrei from the Great White North") works at CBF Systems. His other Embedded appearances are 99, 114, 139, and 200. Andrei wrote about bit manipulation as part of Embedded Wednesdayson Embedded.fm: Logic in C, part II. Andrei recommends using ISO646.hto reduce confusion around bit manipulation. Also, his suggested calculator is the SwissMicros DM16L Elecia wrote an introduction to binary and hex. For more information about programming and binary, see How to Count by Steven Frank For advanced bit twiddling, check out: Bit Twiddling Hackswebsite Hacker's Delightbook by Henry S. Warren Jr (1st Edis also available)

Jasmine Brackett (@asiwatch) spoke with us about @Tindie's electronics marketplace, this year's Hackaday Prize, and tips for wearable electronics. If you want to buy on Tindie, check out their homepage tindie.com. If you want to sell, that is straightforward too: tindie.com/about/sell. There is an Embedded contest for the Tindie Blinky LED badge, a nifty little learn to solder kit. Contest ends April 20, 2018 (midnight UTC). You are to send a number to us using the contact link. Closest one wins. One number per person. You can also get these badges at the Dublin Hackaday Unconference (April 7, 2018, Dublin, Ireland) and at meetups where Jasmine is a presenter. Thank you to Ben Hencke for some good questions. He talked about his Tindie store with us on 220: Cascading Waterfall of Lights. Jasmine mentioned the RC2014, homebrew z80 computer kit. Both Tindie and Hackaday are owned by Supplyframe. Finally, we talked to Emile Petrone when Tindie was a fairly new thing on 72: This is My NASA Phone.

What do you do after space debris, hacking dinosaurs, and judging robots? If you are Dr. Lucy Rogers (@DrLucyRogers), you build an organization devoted to promoting the Making industry: Guild of Makers (@GuildOfMakers) Lucy's personal site is lucyrogers.com. She wrote the book It's ONLY Rocket Science: An Introduction in Plain English. Guild of Maker's Twitter hack chats are weekly on Tuesdays at 8pm UTC. They use the tag #MakersHour. Lucy programs in Node-RED, a visual language.

Dan Saks answers many questions about C++ in embedded systems: where it works, where it doesn't, and a path to getting started. Dan Saks is the founder and president of Saks & Associates. He was a columnist for The C/C++ Users Journal, Embedded Systems Design and several other publications. He also served as secretary of the ANSI and ISO C++ standards committee in its early years. We touched on some of his articles: Poor reasons for rejecting C++ Preventing dynamic allocation Calling constructors with placement new Andrei suggested Sams Teach Yourself C++ in One Hour a Day, Seventh Edition by Siddhartha Rao as a good primer for experienced C programmers reluctantly learning C++. NOTE: The contest already ended.

Chris and Elecia answered some listener questions about dynamic memory and shared code. Then Elecia gave a presentation about ShotSpotter, the gunshot location system she worked on. Elecia enjoyed The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies by Jason Fagone. Ben is the editor of HackSpace, a new magazine about making (and hacking). It's produced by Raspberry Pi, but it's technologically agnostic. The first issue is free online. The ShotSpotter presentation was originally given with Sarah Newman at the 2008 Grace Hopper Celebration of women in computing.

Jan Jongboom (@janjongboom) of Mbed (@ArmMbed) joined us to talk about compilers, online hardware simulators, and inference on embedded devices. Find out more about Mbed on mbed.com. The board simulator is at labs.mbed.com(Mbed OS Simulator). The code for the simulator is on Jan's Github. Mbed Labs also has the uTensor inference framework for using TensorFlow models on devices. You can see some of Jan's talks and his blog on janjongboom.com. Jan will be running a workshop at SxSW called Changing the World with Open, Long-Range IoT on March 10 in Austin, TX. Additionally, he will be hosting an IoT Deep Dive Workshop on LoRA on March 14 (also in Austin, TX). For background on LoRA, check out the recent Amp Hour episode with Richard Ginus.

Roger Linn (@roger_linn) gave us new ideas about musical instruments, detailing how wonderful expressive control, 3D buttons, and keyscanning can be. Roger's company is Roger Linn Design. We talked extensively about the LinnStrument, some about the AdrenaLinn for guitar, and only a little bit about the analog drum machine Tempest. A key matrix circuit is a popular way to handle a large number of buttons but it falls prey to n-key rollover. Roger adds force sense resistors to this (FSR example at Sparkfun). If you have an idea for an instrument, Roger has already written his response to your request for a prototype. Roger gave a keynote address at ADC '16 about the LinnStrument, including showing the sounds it can make. OHMI Trust is the one handed musical instrument society enabling music making for everyone. Roger mentioned some other expressive instruments including: Roli Seaboard Haken Continuum Madrona Labs Soundplane Eigenharp

We spoke to author Robin Sloan (@robinsloan) about his books and near-future science fiction. Robin wrote Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore and Sourdough. 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

Dustin Franklin of NVIDIA (@NVIDIAEmbedded) spoke with us about the Jetson TX2, a board designed to bring AI into embedded systems. Dusty wrote Two Days to a Demo, both the original supervised learning version and the newer reinforcement learning version. In general, check out Dusty's github repo to see what's new. Also, The Redtail project is an autonomous navigation system for drones and land vehicles based on the TX2. The NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference is in San Jose, CA, March 26-29, 2018. Your coupon for 25% off: NVCYATO The Jetson TX1/TX2 ChallengeRocket contest ends February 18th. You can find Dusty on on the NVIDIA forums.

Chris and Elecia chatted about listener emails, and other stuff and things. Elecia wrote a book called Making Embedded Systems, if you want to see the chapter about interrupts and timers, hit the contact link on embedded.fm. We also recommend our blog, Chris Svec wrote about the MSP430 from a microprocessor point of view (ESE101) and Andrei Chichak wrote about an ST processor with a more pragmatic and C focused view (Embedded Wednesdays). You can support the podcast through Patreon. Kalman filter explanation video with Pokemon Ben Krasnow's Applied Science YouTube channel Usbourne's books for teaching kids electronics and programming (the free '80s ones are near the bottom) Formally verified microkernel: seL4 Microkernel The first Pokemon games used every programming trick there is for optimization STM bought Atollic and released TrueStudio Pro for free for STM parts

We spoke with Jackson Keating (@jacksonakeating) about Bluetooth Low Energy, going over GATTs layouts and the general BLE usage. While Jackson prefers the Bluetooth spec as the best reading explanation, Elecia liked the Adafruit BLE introduction. She wrote about some of her initial experiences with different chips and Chris Svec wrote about BLE roles. We all agreed that the examples and tutorials from your chip vendor is a good place to get experience. A random UUID generator is uuidgen on Mac or online on uuidgenerator.net. Elecia mentioned 108: Nebarious, an Embedded episode where we talked about how BLE lacks security. Jackson suggested looking at the Core Bluetooth API for IOS development as well as the Nordic and LightBlue apps for debugging.

Tim O'Reilly (@timoreilly) talks about economics, books, and the future. Check out Tim's new book, WTF: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us. And yes, this is Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly books. Elecia's Making Embedded Systems has a great-eared nightjar, but she's finally adjusted to a modern dinosaur on her cover.

Sunshine Jones (@Sunshine_Jones) spoke with us about synthesizers, electronics, and philosophy. 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.

Nick Kartsioukas (@ExplodingLemur) spoke with us about information security, melting down spectres, lemurs, and sensible resolutions. Nick recommends Aumasson's Serious Cryptography (also available from NoStarch) as a good orientation. (Offline, he also recommended Shneier's Secrets and Lies.) When thinking about security, you need to develop your threat model (EFF) and not panic (Mickens). As a user of the internet, there are some getting started guides (Motherboard, EFF, Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy) along with Nick's advice of using an antivirus program (comparison), an Adblocker (uBlock), a password manager, and 2-factor authentication. Data backups are also very useful (3-2-1 rule: 3 copies, 2 separate media, 1 offsite). For a professional infosec perspective, the CIS 20 are best practice guidelines for computer security. For Spectre and Meltdown, the best high-level explanation is in Twitter from @gsuberland though XKCD does its usual good job as well. For more detail, about speculative execution bugs, check out this github readme. For the history of the Stuxnet, check out Zetter's Countdown to Zero Day and the Security Now podcast episode 291. Ham radio Field Days for 2018 are June 23-24 Last but not least: Depression lies so get help and if you want to know how to help someone else, look at MakeItOk.org

The Amp Hour and Embedded join up to send a holiday letter to listeners. Chris G is ever improving Contextual Electronics. Chris W has a new band: 12AX7. Elecia still has a book: Making Embedded Systems. Amp Hour episodes mentioned in this one: 372: Where Chris and Dave talk about 2017 304: Alexa jokes 281: The first Amp Hour / Embedded show, with call ins 256: The first time Chris W was on the Amp Hour 187: Elecia joined the Amp Hour for the first time Embedded episodes mentioned: 223: Where Chris talks about his new synth habit 227: Talking about Udacity and learning 203: EE Charlie talks about good design We talked about teaching which led to: Short mention of Dreyfus model of skill acquisition of which Chris G's friend Mel did a great explanatory comic Daniel Spalding's How to Teach Adults (pdf) Dan Luu's Learning To Program post Udacity's Self Driving Car courses Computer vision with Python OpenCV Article on how the difficulty is the point of teaching literature The new art and engineering Function Podcast Hilarious World of Depression podcast Books we are reading! Build Your Own Transistor Radio by Ron Quan The Hobbyist's Guide to RTL-SDR by Carl Laufer Spineless by Juli Berwald about Jellyfish Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs by Tristan Gooley Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant (terrifying mermaids) Catseye by Andre Norton Teach Beyond Your Reach by Robin Neidorf Mastery by Robert Greene Understanding By Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe Making Learning Whole by David Perkins Elecia got a JTrace Pro Cortex-M for herself for Christmas. Chris W got a Moog Werkstatt and an assortment of Teenage Engineering small synths. Chris G mostly got sweaters because Chicago is very cold. BMW now sends YouTube ads via snail mail

Anthony Navarro (@avnavarro42) of Udacity (@udacity) spoke with us about learning. We talked about the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition (an education-oriented technical readiness level) and a little about on trunk skills vs. leaf skills. Elecia took Udacity's term 1 of Self-Driving Car Nanodegree and is planning to take the free AI for Robotics course next. Anthony is enjoying soldering lessons via Boldport (hear #171: Perfectly Good Being Square and Green). Anthony noted there is a free Embedded course on Udacity.

Jay Carlson (@jaydcarlson), author of The Amazing $1 Microcontroller, joined us to talk about comparing microcontrollers and determining our biases. This was an in-depth comparison of different micro features. Jay is an electrical engineer specializing in electronics design and embedded programming (contact). His blog is new and interesting. We talked to SEGGER's Dirk Akeman about JLink on #218: Neutron Star of Dev Boards. Please note that our Patreon model has shifted to monthly instead of per-episode.

Maria Gorlatova spoke with us about how the combination of devices and cloud computing will change the world as we know it. Maria's bio, blog, and LinkedIn page. Other topics: Federated Learning from Google AWS Greengrass from Amazon Black Mirror from Netflix Note: we really should have talked about Amazon and FreeRTOS. I heard another podcastmight have mentioned it. We'll try to get more info soon.

Windell Oskay (@Oskay) of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories (@EMSL) told us about co-authoring a book: The Annotated Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory. Some great EMSL links: A signed copy of Windell's book Dis-integrated 555 timer kit Candle flicker LEDs Food in specimen jars EMSL blog post Spherical pen plotter (EggBot Pro!) The book Chris brought up was Thinking Physics. Windell is also on Google Plus. Contest to get Windell's signed book has already ended!

Andrei Chichak joins Elecia and Christopher to do a deep dive into the world of interrupts. Andrei writes on our blog: Embedded Wednesdays. He has written specifically about interrupts in multiple ways: general introduction, buttons and debouncing, peripheral data transfer via DMA, and so on). The knock-knock joke comes from Chris Svec's Embedded.fm blog post on interrupts. Jack Ganssle on debouncing buttons

Christopher (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) chat about listener questions and things they've been up to. A listener turned Chris on to Ray Wilson and his Music From Outer Space website on DIY analog synths and book Make: Analog Synthesizers. After collecting parts for a total DIY, he found and built a neat kit: Kastle Synth (as heard on the show) and has connected it to his Roland SE-02 Analog Synthesizer (on Amazon). BTW, his ham radio WSPR kit is the Ultimate 3 in case you are behind on hobbies. You can hear more about it in 197: Smell the Transistor. Elecia has been working through Udacity's Self-Driving Engineer nanodegree. She completed term 1 with its computer vision and machine learning and is on to term 2 with sensor fusion, localization, and control. She blissfully is unaware of the cost because she got to be an industry expert for the Intro to Self-Driving Cars course. Listener Simon asked about non-fiction books. Elecia gets many of hers by looking at what is on discount at BookBub's science section which lead to two books she highly recommends Spirals in Time (snail facts) and Tristan Gooley's How to Read Water (beach explainer). Chris has been reading Scott Wolley's The Network: The Battle for the Airwaves and the Birth of the Communications Age and How Music Works by David Byrne. Some show-related recommendations include Gretchen Bakke's The Grid (hear Gretchen on episode 213: Electricity Doesn't Behave Like an Apple) and Jimmy Soni's Mind at Play (hear Jimmy on episode 221: Hiding in Plain Sight). She's reading Tim O'Reilly's WTF book about the future in anticipation of an upcoming episode. That's a good reminder: we, of course, also recommend Making Embedded Systems. Zach asked about Michael Barr's Embedded Software Training in a Box. Apologies if we weren't specific enough, it would likely make a better blog post. Also: $1 Microcontrollers!

Jonathan Beri (@beriberikix) spoke with us about his double life: Particle.io product manager by day, maker by night (and weekends). Jonathan wrote a chapter about piDuino5 Mobile Robot Platform in JavaScript Robotics. Product manager resources from product.careers and Ken Norton's Newsletter. For an alternate take, there is a good cartoon about effective product management from Henrik Kniberg. For getting into open source, see the guide from Github. Also, there is a newi-sh consortium, the TODO group, with guides and resources about running open source projects. There is also the often useful Google's developer documentation style guide. NerdRage's video on the chemistry of etching The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen by Bunnie Huang Speaking of Robot Operating System (we did, briefly), IEEE Spectrum had a nice history of ROS.

Author Jimmy Soni (@jimmyasoni) spoke with us about his biography of Claude Shannon, founder of information theory and digital circuit theory. A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman. For an introduction to the book, read their post 10,000 Hours With Claude Shannon: How A Genius Thinks, Works, and Lives. Rome's Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner Mark Levinson's Particle Fever is a documentary film about the Large Hadron Collider. He is also directing a film about Claude Shannon Scientific Aspects of Juggling by Claude Shannon

Ben Hencke (@im889) spoke with us about OHWS, Tindie, and blinking lights. Ben sells his Pixelblaze WiFi LED controller on his ElectroMage store on Tindie. It is based on the ESP8266 and uses the DotStar (APA102) lights. To hear John Leeman's trip report on the Open Hardware Summit (OHWS), listen to Don't Panic Geocast, Episode 140 – "Juicero of Tractors" Ben's websites are bhencke.com and electromage.com. Go there if you want to see some of Ben's projects, including Synthia. You can also find Ben on Hackaday, Github, and YouTube. We talked with Charles Lohr about ESP8266 WiFi controlled lights and ColorChord on Embedded.fm episode 102: The Deadly Fluffy Bunny (With WiFi). Laser cut mandalas OSHPark Small Batch Assembly More about the 4-bit Radio Shack computer (and an Arduino-based emulator for it!) Santa Cruz Idea Fab Lab Ben Hencke (@im889) spoke with us about OHWS, Tindie, and blinking lights. Ben sells his Pixelblaze WiFi LED controller on his ElectroMage store on Tindie. It is based on the ESP8266 and uses the DotStar (APA102) lights. To hear John Leeman's trip report on the Open Hardware Summit (OHWS), listen to Don't Panic Geocast, Episode 140 – "Juicero of Tractors" Ben's websites are bhencke.com and electromage.com. Go there if you want to see some of Ben's projects, including Synthia. You can also find Ben on Hackaday, Github, and YouTube. We talked with Charles Lohr about ESP8266 WiFi controlled lights and ColorChord on Embedded.fm episode 102: The Deadly Fluffy Bunny (With WiFi). Laser cut mandalas OSHPark Small Batch Assembly More about the 4-bit Radio Shack computer (and an Arduino-based emulator for it!) Santa Cruz Idea Fab Lab Talia's nightlight

Josh Bleecher Snyder (@offbymany) joined us to talk about PayPal's Beacon, being acquired, the Go programming language, BTLE, computer vision, and working at a large company after founding small ones. Bluetooth Low Energy: A Developer's Handbook by Robin Heydon TI CC2540 BTLE module Learning OpenCV: Computer Vision by Gary Bradski and Adrian Kaehler Gatt is a Go package for building Bluetooth Low Energy peripherals (video description by Josh from GopherCon 2014) Card.io Machine learning's Theano Eigen Library for matrix math

Kelly Shortridge (@swagitda_) spoke with us about the intersection of security and behavioral economics. Kelly's writing and talks are linked from her personal site swagitda.com. Kelly is currently a Product Manager at SecurityScorecard. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman What Works by Iris Bohnet Risky Business, a podcast about security Teen Vogue's How to Keep Your Internet Browser History Private Surveillance Self-Defense from EFF, including security for journalists as mentioned in the show Bloomberg's Matt Levine Twitter suggestion @SwiftOnSecurity, @thegrugq, and @sawgitda_.

Dirk Akeman of SEGGER (@SEGGERMicro) joined us to talk about debugger specifics. Ozone standalone debugger for use with J-Links SystemView visualization tool for RTOS and system debugging Jlink Products Turning an ST-Link on a development board into a J-Link We recently did two other shows on debugging: a general intro with Alvaro Prieto and one with a focus on the development-system's debugger software interface with Pierre-Marie de Rodat. Herd immunity and find a flu shot And, yes, we did bleep Dirk's answer for favorite processor because he later reconsidered the idea that he only had one favorite.

Bob Skala of Interactive Instruments spoke with us about very large servo motors, wind tunnels, and staying current in tech. Hydraulic Press YouTube channel (and our favorite video) The Wright Brothers by David McCullough Other good tech podcasts included The Amp Hour and HamRadio 360 WorkBench Chris talked about getting into WSPR in 197: Smell the Transistor but we first talked about it in 76: Entropy is For Wimps. The new WSPR mode he mentioned is called FT8 (google it). And a note from Bob: Below is a link to a type of servo system that tries to simplify the interface to be more like a stepper. It integrates the driver and motor into a single package so you can treat it like a stepper with digital step and direction or serial commands. You get the smoothness, speed, accuracy and low power (when idle) of a servo but the servo motor, driver, and cabling are integrated into one magic box. You add a DC supply and simple control signals and you are all set. They came out with this to replace stepper motors. I haven't used one yet but I hope to at some point. https://www.teknic.com/products/clearpath-brushless-dc-servo-motors/