496: Beauty, Elegance, Consistency
Embedded
Professor Shimon Schocken spoke with us about teaching computer science from NAND logic gates to arithmetic units, micro assembly, virtual machines, compilers, operating systems, and the Tetris games. We also talk about good design, good interfaces, and good tests. Shimon’s book is and the website with the course lecture notes, slides, videos, simulators, and everything you need is . Shimon mentioned his work with teaching math, that is . You can find out more about Shimon’s other projects on his site (including his fascinating TED talk: ). Shimon’s co-author is Noam Nisan who...
info_outline
495: Shortcut the Difficulties of Reality
Embedded
Professor Cindy Harnett spoke to us about new and different sensors and actuators, primarily designed for soft robotics and fabricated with relatively low cost materials. Cindy is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the where she runs the . The papers we discussed are . You can find a longer list of Cindy’s papers on . The is especially interesting. 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 well. If you plan on developing...
info_outline
494: All Tech Is Wearable
Embedded
Debra Ansell joined us to talk about finding friends and exchanging neat gifts, accidentally tricking people into making unmanufacutable boards, and happy, blinking lights. Debra is usually known by the moniker GeekMomProjects (also her website is ). She has been writing for . Debra won one of the SuperCon badge so her poseable will be available at SuperCon Europe. Some other things we mentioned: Martin Oehler is Maketvee on and Janet Hansen is on and has an incredible wearables website. #makergiftexchange on your favorite social media platform And some...
info_outline
493: Put the Peeps in the Chili Pot
Embedded
Elecia and Chris talk with each other about the state of Chris’ mind, what makes an embedded developer stand out, “LEGO block” based design, unit tests, and astronomy. Whew! Elecia was recently on the Changelog podcast, talking about the . Chris has been working with Micropython (we talked with Damien George about Micropython on ). He’s using a Pyboard to start, but is looking to move on to from Sparkfun. Wikipedia . Elecia talked about her experience using to drive unit tests. She also talked about some facts from . Chris’ telescope is the . There’s also a smaller now which has...
info_outline
492: Octopus Army
Embedded
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...
info_outline
491: Oscillators Oscillating Other Oscillators
Embedded
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...
info_outline
490: Wait Until Physics Has Happened
Embedded
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...
info_outline
489: Constructive Cat
Embedded
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...
info_outline
488: Two Slices of Complimentary Bread
Embedded
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 .
info_outline
487: Focus on Fizzing
Embedded
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...
info_outlineHelen 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.
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