492: Octopus Army
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Nathan Jones chatted with us about his proposal for a computer architecture book based on a 4-bit computer. Nathan found the 4-bit computer in the and was amazed by some of the ideas that folks implemented (see SuperCon ). Nathan , highlighting some of his ideas for a book. If you’d like to try your hand at the badge, find it on Nathan’s . Nathan also spoke recently at the Embedded Online Conference (, , and ) and the Teardown Conference ( and ). If you have an idea you’d like to propose, check out O’Reilly’s . While you may not go with them, the proposal is a good place...
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491: Oscillators Oscillating Other Oscillators
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Chris and Elecia spoke with Kirk Pearson about running audio-electronic-art workshops, interesting sounds, and their book Find the book and a whole kit of parts on the . A few clicks from there you can find the (don’t forget the coupon in the show audio). We also mentioned The Thing (), Elliot Williams’ writing on CMOS synthesizers () and the videos of Sebastian Tomczak (YouTube: ). Memfault is a leading embedded device observability platform that empowers teams to build better IoT products, faster. Its off-the-shelf solution is specifically designed for...
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490: Wait Until Physics Has Happened
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Nikolaus Correll spoke with us about robots, teaching robotics, and writing books about robots. Nikolaus is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado, see his (or his ). We discussed Nikolaus’ (or ). These go along with his (which can be compiled from source ). Masters of Computer Science online via and . While the is no longer in production, Nikolaus also mentioned the . Nordic Semiconductor has been the driving force for Bluetooth Low Energy MCUs and wireless SoCs since the early 2010s, and they offer solutions for low-power Wi-Fi and global Cellular IoT as...
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489: Constructive Cat
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Chris and Elecia discuss her origami art show, ponder PRs for solo developers, attempt to explain GDB debugging, and make a to-do list for getting rid of Kanga. Elecia is having an Origami Octopus Garden art show at the Aptos Public Library for the month of November, 2024. The postcard advertisement is below. There are more pictures on her Instagram (). The python tessellation generator is . Memfault’s Interrupt post is a much more considered explanation of GDB and includes pointers to other resources (including using Python with GDB). Memfault is a leading embedded device...
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488: Two Slices of Complimentary Bread
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Adrienne Braganza Tacke spoke with us about her book Looks Good To Me: Constructive Code Reviews. It is about how to make code reviews more useful, effective, and congenial. Adrienne’s book is available now as an or a paper copy later in the year (). Check out the example t from Appendix A. Adrienne’s personal website is .
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487: Focus on Fizzing
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Chris and Elecia chat about simulated robots, portents in the sky, the futility of making plans, and grad school. A problem with mics led us to delay the show with Shimon Schoken from (co-author of Elements of ). Look for that later in the year. Elecia is playing with , a robotics physics simulator. Simpler than ROS’s Gazebo, it also can run in an online mode where you can run it on a browser, . Chris talked about processing his photos of Comet using and . Then we talked about grad school (including ). Tony sent in this insect detector: . If you want links like this or de...
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486: A Nice Rainbow Dream
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Antoine van Gelder spoke to us about making digital musical instruments, USB, and FPGAs. Antoine works for , specifically on the USB protocol analysis tool that can be used in conjunction with Python and to act as a new USB device. While bonding over was a given, Antoine also mentioned which Elecia countered with , the book that covers the NAND2Tetris material. Memfault is a leading embedded device observability platform that empowers teams to build better IoT products, faster. Its off-the-shelf solution is specifically designed for bandwidth-constrained devices, offering...
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485: Conversation Is a Kind of Music
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Alan Blackwell spoke with us about the lurking dangers of large language models, the magical nature of artificial intelligence, and the future of interacting with computers. Alan is the author of which you can read in its pre-book form here: Alan’s day job is as a Professor of Interdisciplinary Design in the Cambridge University department of Computer Science and Technology. See his research interests on . (Also, given as homework in the newsletter, we didn’t directly discuss Jo Walton’s '', a playful history of automated text generation, written from a perspective in the...
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484: Collecting My Unhelpful Badge
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Chris and Elecia talk to each other about setting aside memory in a linker file, printing using your debugger, looking around a new code base, pointers as optimization, choosing processors, skill trees and merit badges. Elecia’s talk and slides. STM32 Application Note includes semihosting. Memfault’s Interrupt blog has a good . Elecia and Steph’s . A far more detailed one pointed out by a listener: The most influential book Elecia has never read is . Memfault is a leading embedded device observability platform that empowers teams to build better...
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483: An Ion of the Highest Fidelity
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Rick Altherr spoke with us about high-speed control, complicated systems, and making quantum computers. If you want to know more about building quantum computers, take a listen to Rick’s MacroFab episode: . If you want to make your own quantum circuit simulator, it only takes 27 lines of Python: . What about if you actually want to know about quantum computing? Rick suggests while we look back at Embedded.fm with Kitty Yeung, talking about her Quantum Computing Comic book and Hackaday lecture series. Rick works for where they do trapped-ion quantum computing (there are different...
info_outlineChris 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).
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.