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I am Elecia White alongside Christopher White. We’re here to chat about the interests, careers, and lives of engineers, artists, educators and makers. Our diverse guest list includes names you may have heard and engineers working quietly in the trenches. Either way, they are knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and inspiring. We’d love to share our enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM).

488: Two Slices of Complimentary Bread 10/31/2024

488: Two Slices of Complimentary Bread 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 . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/33715132

487: Focus on Fizzing 10/17/2024

487: Focus on Fizzing 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 facto letters to the editor, please sign up for the . Photo of Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS), taken from Seacliff Beach in Aptos, CA by Chris White /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/33507232

486: A Nice Rainbow Dream 10/03/2024

486: A Nice Rainbow Dream 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 device performance and product analytics, debugging, and over-the-air capabilities. Trusted by leading brands such as Bose, Lyft, Logitech, Panasonic, and Augury, Memfault improves the reliability of devices across consumer electronics and mission-critical industries such as access control, point of sale, energy, and healthcare. To learn more, visit . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/33322037

485: Conversation Is a Kind of Music 09/20/2024

485: Conversation Is a Kind of Music 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 year 2070.) /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/33131897

484: Collecting My Unhelpful Badge 09/05/2024

484: Collecting My Unhelpful Badge 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 IoT products, faster. Its off-the-shelf solution is specifically designed for bandwidth-constrained devices, offering device performance and product analytics, debugging, and over-the-air capabilities. Trusted by leading brands such as Bose, Lyft, Logitech, Panasonic, and Augury, Memfault improves the reliability of devices across consumer electronics and mission-critical industries such as access control, point of sale, energy, and healthcare. To learn more, visit . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/32936307

483: An Ion of the Highest Fidelity 08/23/2024

483: An Ion of the Highest Fidelity 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 physics methods for making ions dance to the tune of quantum computing). If you want to talk to Rick, maybe to get his advice about your resume or career prospects, he sets aside a few hours each week to share his wisdom: You can also find Rick on and . He was also the guest on about security hacking and mentoring. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/32706727

482: Reference the Same Dog Object 08/08/2024

482: Reference the Same Dog Object Professor Colleen Lewis joined us to talk teaching pointers with stuffies, explaining inheritance through tigers, and computer science pedagogy. Check out her to view her videos explaining CS concepts with physical models. These are also collected on her website: . If you are an instructor (or thinking about teaching CS), check out Colleen’s . You may also be interested in some other research: John Edwards Study on Colleen is an Assistant Professor at University Illinois, Urbana-Champaign’s . You can find her papers on (including studies on teaching and learning). 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 device performance and product analytics, debugging, and over-the-air capabilities. Trusted by leading brands such as Bose, Lyft, Logitech, Panasonic, and Augury, Memfault improves the reliability of devices across consumer electronics and mission-critical industries such as access control, point of sale, energy, and healthcare. To learn more, visit . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/32506477

481: The Girl from Evel Knievel 07/25/2024

481: The Girl from Evel Knievel Chris and Elecia talk about their current adventures in conference talks, play dates, and skunks. Elecia’s talks are available on YouTube: : An introduction to hard fault handlings, stack overflows, and debugging hard bugs : An introductions to… well, embedded systems These are both advertising for the 2nd edition of Elecia’s book, . You can also find it on O’Reilly’s Learning System and probably read it with your 30 Day Trial (). Chris got a handheld game console, the Playdate (), and has been writing a game for it. There is an interesting looking . We also mentioned which sounds pretty neat. And where you can see KiCAD schematics without loading KiCAD. Our has been off but will be back to normal next week. The is probably not fun to look at but shows some Python tools for parsing feeds. Neither the dog nor the skunk seem contrite. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/32298107

480: Surprises Early In The Game 06/27/2024

480: Surprises Early In The Game Jerry Twomey spoke with us about his new O’Reilly book which covers embedded topics such as EMI, signal processing, control systems and non-ideal components. Jerry is also the principal engineer at . His from there and you can . Here is a . You can take a look at Jerry’s and Elecia’s as well as hundreds of other books about software, hardware, engineering, and origami. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/31922607

479: Make Your Voice Heard 06/13/2024

479: Make Your Voice Heard Carles Cufí spoke with us about Zephyr, Nordic, learning, open source development, and corporate goals. Carles had some great suggestions for learning Zephyr: Memfault Interrupt blog series Zephyr’s Zephyr’s YouTube channel (), sorted by views Macrobatics term is from There is also the for a full picture. And various Nordic tutorials (see ). Carles was an author on . The cover animal is a . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/31740432

478: The Map Is Not the Territory 05/30/2024

478: The Map Is Not the Territory Jan Rychter joined us to talk about building a company, electronic components, and software design. Jan is the founder and engineer at . If you are interested in the meta-analysis of the data, check out his article on the and the , You can find out more about Jan through his website (), , o. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/31536527

477: One Thousand New Instructions 05/16/2024

477: One Thousand New Instructions Kwabena Agyeman joined Chris and Elecia to talk about optimization, cameras, machine learning, and vision systems. Kwabena is the head of OpenMV (), an open source and open hardware system that runs machine learning algorithms on vision data. It uses MicroPython as a development environment so getting started is easy. Their github repositories are under . You can find some of the SIMD details we talked about on the show: 150% faster: 1000% faster: Double Pumping: Kwabena has been creating a spreadsheet of different algorithms in camera frames per second (FPS) for Arm processors: . As time moves on, it will grow. Note: this is a link on the under About. When M55 stuff hits the market expect 4-8x speed gains. The is also a good place to get more information about the system (and vision algorithms). Kwabena spoke with us about (the beginnings of) OpenMV on . Elecia is giving a free talk for O'Reilly to advertise book. The talk will be an introduction to embedded systems, geared towards software engineers who are suddenly holding a device and want to program it. The talk is May 23, 2024 at 9:00 AM PDT. . A video will be available afterward for folks who sign up. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/31344727

476: Sidetracked by Mining the Moon 05/01/2024

476: Sidetracked by Mining the Moon Lee Wilkins joined Chris and Elecia to talk about The Open Source Hardware Association, the Open Hardware Summit, and zine culture. The (OSHWA) provides certification and support for creating open source hardware. The is happening May 3-4, 2024. It is in Montreal, Canada. It also has many online components including a Discord and online Unconferece. All videos are available for later watching on YouTube. Lee’s personal page is . Their zines are available in . Elecia mentioned enjoying by Kenn Amdahl. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/31073958

475: Stuffed Animal or Colleague 04/19/2024

475: Stuffed Animal or Colleague Chris and Elecia talk about the Embedded Online Conference, their experience learning Zephyr, and some listener questions. Elecia will be presenting on at the , Apr 29 - May 3, 2024. Some other talks that look interesting: Use the EMBEDDEDFM coupon for a discount (or if your whole team is going, check out the ). Elecia’s book (Making Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition) is shipping ( or ). is pretty amazing. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/30894428

474: It's All Chaos and Horror 04/05/2024

474: It's All Chaos and Horror Logic gates and origami? Professor Inna Zakharevich joined us to talk about Turing complete origami crease patterns. We started talking about Turing completeness which led to a Conway’s Game of Life-like 2D cellular automaton called (Wikipedia) which can be implemented with logic gates (AND, OR, NOT). These logic gates can be implemented as creases in paper (with the direction of the crease indicating 0 or 1). The paper describing the proof is called Flat Origami is Turing Complete ( and ). Quanta Magazine has a summary article: . also has the crease patterns for the logic gates (). Inna is an aficionado of the origami work by who creates complex and lifelike patterns. Some other origami mentioned: Ilan Garibi’s Pineapple Tessellation () Eric Gjerde (This also has the equilateral triangle grid needed to fold Inna’s gate logic) Amanda Ghassaei’s (Mooser’s is under Examples->Origami) Some other math mentioned: ’s talks about Goerthe’s Incompleteness Theorem Physical Logic Game: (Wikipedia) 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 . Embedded.fm listeners receive 25% off their first-year contract with Memfault by booking a demo here: /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/30689593

473: Math Is Not the Answer 03/21/2024

473: Math Is Not the Answer Philip Koopman joined us to talk about how modulo 255 vs 256 makes a huge difference in checksum error detection, how to get the most out of your checksum or CRC, and why understanding how they work is worth the effort. Philip has recently published . He’s better known for as well as his two books about safety and autonomous vehicles: has a number of videos with great visuals to go along with his books. He also has three(!) blogs: (including a ) Currently, Phil is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University (). You can follow him on . Elecia read (and give 2.5 stars to) by Marcus du Sautoy: “Interesting but uneven, I kept reading to find out what horrible things math profs do to their children in the name of fun. Worth it when I finally got to a small section with Claude Shannon (and Richard Hamming). It didn’t help with this podcast but it was neat.” 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 , check out the DevAcademy at and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/30488543

472: Field of Boxes 03/07/2024

472: Field of Boxes Making Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition came out today! Chris and Elecia talk about the changes, the writing, but not the eldritch horror. Then we talk about pianos and origami. The electronic version is available now on , , Google Play and where you get your ebooks. The paper copy will be out in about two weeks, you can preorder now. It is also available on the O’Reilly Learning System, here is a . See the Embedded.fm , sign up for future newsletters . Memfault is hosting its first launch week of the year! On Tuesday, March 12th, Memfault CEO François Baldassari will showcase how to evaluate the health and performance of your embedded devices clearly within Memfault's observability platform. Join the webinar to discover how simple it is to monitor three necessary device measures: stability, battery, and connectivity. ! /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/30282333

471: Bicycle Built For Two 02/22/2024

471: Bicycle Built For Two Where electronics meets music, there is a board called Daisy. Created by ElectroSmith, Andrew Ikenberry, the goal of the board is to teach computers to sing. Andrew joined us to talk about music, audio processing, instruments, product design, and electronic manufacturing. See the website, specifically the . The is extensive (with many ). Also see their . Electrosmith is offering 5% off until mid-March for folks with the coupon code mentioned in the show. We mentioned a number of synths but the is particularly nifty. (and (and if that doesn’t give “teach computers to sing” a creepy vibe, I don’t know what will)). 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 , check out the DevAcademy at and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/30073548

470: Upping the Chaos Level 02/09/2024

470: Upping the Chaos Level Helen Leigh joined us to talk about putting together conferences (including Teardown 2024), indie hardware producers (including via Crowd Supply), and building communities. Teardown will be June 21-23 in Portland, OR, USA. More information about or . Early bird tickets are available for a limited time! Teardown is put on by , a company that helps hardware companies launch products. is a regular meetup that Helen organizes. Helen will be hosting a meetup in Oakland, CA, USA on Feb 15: . She is also hosting a San Francisco, CA meetup on March 6: . Helen’s personal site is . She has been on the show twice before in and . 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 . Embedded.fm listeners receive 25% off their first-year contract with Memfault by booking a demo here: /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/29866818

469: Saving the World Is Not a Hobby 01/28/2024

469: Saving the World Is Not a Hobby Chris and Elecia chat with each other about motor encoder reading methods, conferences coming up, soldering irons, schematic reviews, looking for a new job, and general life. Some conferences coming up in the embedded space: , April 29-May 4, virtual (Elecia will be speaking) in May 3-4, Montreal, Canada in April 9-11 in Nuremburg, Germany Starter soldering irons? It seemed like small pen-style ones were more popular than big soldering stations. See the . Or for much less (but you can write your own firmware!), the . And one vote for the because it uses Weller RT tips (which are more expensive than the soldering pen but much less expensive than the Weller station that uses the RT tips). Embedded Artistry has excellent . looks like a neat place to write up your project. 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 , check out the DevAcademy at and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/29677248

468: Designed to Kill All Humans 01/12/2024

468: Designed to Kill All Humans Anders Nielsen joined us to talk about why the 6502 is the best processor. Anders also sells 65uino kits on his store: . For more explanation of what they are, how they work, attaching peripherals, and programming in assembly, look at Anders’ YouTube channel , read his blog on , or read about it on its .** We also mentioned , , and Rodnay Zaks’ . ** Anders was a two time semi-finalist for the Hackaday Challenge but we didn’t talk about that. . 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 . Embedded.fm listeners receive 25% off their first-year contract with Memfault by booking a demo here: . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/29453023

467: Temporary Axolotl 12/29/2023

467: Temporary Axolotl Chris and Elecia talk about cars, fleeting moments of fame, their year, and the sorry state of tools in the embedded space. . After this, someone else asked the chatbot to sell a car for $1. is an organization that takes Lego bricks and turns them into sets for kids who don’t have any. Speaking of re-use, contact the show if you’d like to get in touch with Nelson. Chris is on 4 tracks on Flavigula’s album . He also enjoyed putting together an . Elecia will be speaking at the . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/29265903

466: Attacked by a Goose on the Way to the Office 12/14/2023

466: Attacked by a Goose on the Way to the Office Ralph Hempel spoke with us about the development of Lego Mindstorms from hacking the initial interface to running Debian Linux as well as programming Mindstorms in Python. Happy 25th birthday to Lego Mindstorms! is a MicroPython based coding environment that works across all Lego PoweredUp hubs and on the latest Mindstorms elements. The creators are David Lechner and Laurens Valk. Ralph was the first person to boot a full Debian Linux distro on the brick, see , a Debian Linux for Lego Mindstorms EV3. was originally a site for third party resellers of new and used Lego sets and elements. The site was purchased by the Lego Group a few years ago. It's still a great place to buy individual parts - for example a 4 port PoweredUp hub to run the new PyBricks on :-) is a site dedicated to taking off-the-shelf Lego sets, and creating something new with the set. In particular see the , fantastic Technic vehicles as well as interesting designs for vehicle subsystems. is an absolute genius at coming up with practical applications of new LEGO Elements. Ralph recommends his books as “awesome to read”. Ralph highly recommends by James Grenning (who has been on the show: , , and ). and 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 , check out the DevAcademy at and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/29089823

465: Dinosaurs, Pirates, Spaceships 12/01/2023

465: Dinosaurs, Pirates, Spaceships Yanina Bellini Saibene joined us to discuss teaching, localization, barriers to learning coding, and global communities. Yani works on Teach Tech Together () with Greg Wilson. It is a fantastic resource if you are learning to teach. It is available in English and Spanish. She also works on which teaches coding and data science skills to researchers worldwide. Yani has a site () that includes (for free). She is also the community manager of and is part of . You can find Yani on . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/28875698

464: Please Make This Monster Look Scary 11/16/2023

464: Please Make This Monster Look Scary Chris and Elecia talk about their favorite processors, their breakfast preferences, large language model ethics, presents, and Eeyore's birthday. Elecia’s new edition of her book is finished! (Except for a couple months of tech reviews, updating, copyediting, and drawings.) It will be out in March. Chris’ radio kit that he mentioned but didn’t name is the 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 , check out the DevAcademy at and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/28681048

463: Layers of Band-Aids 11/02/2023

463: Layers of Band-Aids Kevin Lannen is an embedded systems engineer making powered wheelchairs safer. This sounded interesting to us. Kevin works at LUCI Mobility (). Check out their as well as technical description of . We also talked about the app that goes with the system: . You can find Kevin on Twitter () and . 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 . Embedded.fm listeners receive 25% off their first-year contract with Memfault by booking a demo here: /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/28502738

462: Spontaneously High Performing 10/19/2023

462: Spontaneously High Performing Marian Petre spoke to us about her research on how to make software developers better at developing software. Marian is an . She also has a . The short version of is on the page along with other talks about academic studies on software development topics. The longer version is a keynote from Strange Loop 2022: . This concept as well as many others are summarized in by Marian Petre and Andre van der Hoek (MIT Press, 2016). The provides an annotated bibliography. Marian has also co-written . She is current conducting inquiries into: Code dreams: This research studies whether software developers dream about coding – and, if so, the nature of those dreams. Following on from work on software developers’ mental imagery and cognitive processes during programming, this project investigates developers’ experience of coding in their dreams (whatever form that takes), and whether the content of such dreams provides insight into the developers’ design and problem solving. Invisible work that adds value to software development: The notion of ‘invisible work’ – activity that adds value in software development but is often overlooked or undervalued by management and promotion processes – arose repeatedly in discussions at Strange Loop 2022. Developers asked for evidence they could use to fuel conversations -- and potentially promote change -- in their organisations. This research aims to capture the main categories of ‘invisible work’ identified by developers (e.g., reducing technical debt; improving efficiency; addressing security; development of tools and resources; design discussions; …), and to gather concrete examples of the value that work adds to software. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/28370990

461: Am I the Cow in This Scenario? 10/05/2023

461: Am I the Cow in This Scenario? Chris and Elecia discuss the pros and cons of completing one project or starting a dozen. Elecia’s 2nd edition of Making Embedded Systems is coming out in March. (Preview is on .) She’s working on a companion repository that is already filled with links and goodies: . If you’d like to know more about signal processing, check out aka The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing By Steven W. Smith, Ph.D. And as noted in , there is an interesting overlap between smoothies and the Fourier Transform. We also talked a bit about Greg Wilson’s recent episode with Elecia (). 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 , check out the DevAcademy at and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/28240943

460: I Don’t Care What Your Math Says 09/28/2023

460: I Don’t Care What Your Math Says Author, engineer, manager, and professor, Dr. Greg Wilson joined Elecia to talk about teaching, science in computer science, ethics, and policy. The request for curriculum that started the conversation was the , part of which summarizes scientific literature about software development. Greg is the founder of , a site that creates curriculum for teaching software concepts (including data and library science). for those who want to learn about software, data, and library science. It is a great site if you are teaching, trying to get someone else to teach, learning, or looking for some guidance on how to do the above. Check out their . Greg’s site is . Here you can find his books including full copies of several of his books including , , and most recently . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/28173149

459: Ideas Have to Come From Somewhere 09/14/2023

459: Ideas Have to Come From Somewhere Professor AnnMarie Thomas spoke with us about playful learning through joy, whimsy, surprise, and meeting new people. We also spoke with AnnMarie about how adults can foster an environment that encourages innovation. See more about that (and the interviews of various engineers and makers) in her book You can find AnnMarie on Mastodon: If you want to know more about squishy circuits, check out AnnMarie’s TED talk: (or the related book ). She is the head of at the University of St. Thomas where she is a . We also talked about the LEGO Foundation. More about that on AnnMarie suggested the cephalopod-centric novel by Ray Nayler. Elecia countered with by Sy Montgomery (non-fiction). And now, a question for you to ponder, what is your most meaningful learning experience? /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/28037184

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