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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).

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

458: Fiddling, DIY, and Cursing 08/31/2023

458: Fiddling, DIY, and Cursing Trond Snekvik spoke with us about developing VSCode extensions and Bluetooth meshes. Trond is a Staff Software Engineer at Nordic Semiconductor. include device tree and kconfig support for the Zephyr project as well as tools for nRF Connect. Trond’s github page: In , Kate Stewart of the Linux Foundation spoke with us about Zephyr in 2020 Thank you to Christopher for providing a picture of what may (or may not) be a troll. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/27907869

457: Rubber Duck Phase Cancellation 08/17/2023

457: Rubber Duck Phase Cancellation Chris and Elecia chat about their ongoing efforts to create and learn. Then they answer some listener questions. Duck quacks do echo but the echoes seem to align in phase so that there is no interruption making the echo sounds like an extension of the quack ( in which Jamie says “Quack, damn you!”) Elecia continues to work on Making Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition. . Classpert is offering an asynchronous cohort for Elecia’s . You'd be going through the class with others and there will be discussions and mentor (and Elecia’s) help on the Discord. No live classes but you get access to the best bits of the previous live classes. Class starts in September. for the tenth annual Hackaday Supercon is Nov 3-5, 2023 in Pasadena, CA. Someone there will be giving out stickers. More details to follow on that front. Elecia is enjoying YouTube series. (It is a prereq for The Plant Psychologist’s .) Last () had tidbits about learning the Kalman filter. Some of that came from , some were fresh. There doesn’t seem to be a good introduction to semantic webs in linguistics. from a Linguistics Discovery Journal. If you like the show and would like to the show, we now take Ko-fi donations (), as well as Patreon and reviews in your favorite podcasting app. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/27785700

456: Left Right Symmetry of a Banana 08/03/2023

456: Left Right Symmetry of a Banana Damien George spoke with us about developing with and for MicroPython while Elecia tries not to spill all the secrets about her client. To start at the beginning, you probably want to check out . Wait, no, one step back. Before listening to the show, you probably should read the because we kind of start in the middle in the show. You can find the code on github: . The PyBoard can be found on . It is out of stock but show parts may be available soon(ish). For more about branes, Lie point symmetries and other physics fun stuff, check out Damien’s list of papers on . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/27652899

455: Snaps! 07/20/2023

455: Snaps! Natalie Friedman joins us to discuss when, where, how, and why robots should wear clothing. Natalie is a PhD candidate at Cornell Tech. Natalie’s website is and you can find her papers in the section. She has an Instagram account: AIForGood in home, business and social attire. Roomba cosplaying a mouse () is an android-ish robot made by SoftBank. There are many clothing lines devoted to dressing it for whatever occasion you need, simply search for Pepper robot clothing. What could go wrong? Natalie recommended . It is fascinating. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/27525492

454: Printf Hello 07/06/2023

454: Printf Hello Uri Shaked surprises us with a chat about silicon design when we were expecting to talk about a web-based board simulator. If you want to try your hand at silicon design, check out , a way to possibly get your design on to real silicon. The is a great way to start looking at how chips work. If you aren’t quite ready for silicon, Wokwi has a Verilog simulator where you can learn to do the digital design. The is amazing. is a web-Based simulator, simulating processors, boards, and peripherals. You can build a whole system there, from to to boards you can program in C when you click More Options on the front page. You can also create your own peripheral using the . Or learn to use . And now there is . All that and Wokwi is open source: Uri recommends reading by Derek Sivers Previously on /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/27395154

453: Too Dumb to Quit 06/22/2023

453: Too Dumb to Quit Nathan Jones has been talking about building command line interfaces, good design practices in C, creating MCU boards, wielding the PIC of destiny, and going beyond Arduino. As we are too lazy to attend the conferences, we asked him to give us the highlights. Nathan is giving two conference talks at June 23-24 in Portland, Oregon: He spoke recently at the about Object Oriented Programming (well, really good design practices). He has a so you can look at the examples for yourself. He also gave a workshop on creating a simple command line interface (). Probably the best place to start is his where he collects all the bits and pieces you might want to know about getting into embedded systems. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/27241029

452: Numbers on Computers Are Weird 06/15/2023

452: Numbers on Computers Are Weird Julia Evans spoke with us about how computers compute. We discussed number representation including floating point as well as Julia’s extensive collection of ‘zines and comics. Julia’s zines about debugging, managers, Linux commands, and more are available on . If you want samples, check out the comics section. Also, the experiments (aka playgrounds) are great additions to the zines (and fun on their own), letting you explore without changing your own DNS or removing all the files from your root directory. If you want to check out numbers, look at (or from other sites like and ) Julia also has a detailed blog on and active /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/27164910

451: From Concept to Launch 06/08/2023

451: From Concept to Launch Phillip Johnston of , Tyler Hoffman of , and Elecia White discuss the software tasks that tend to fall through the cracks after the device has all its features but before it is in customers' hands. Noah Pendleton of Memfault was the moderator. You can see the video on the or (also see their ). and are both excellent resources for embedded information of all kinds. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/27087207

450: Swimming Through Nutritious Slurry 05/25/2023

450: Swimming Through Nutritious Slurry Kari Love joined us to talk about soft robotics, robots in religion, and squishiness. Kari co-authored . Her website is . She was previously on One of the pneumatic drives that we mentioned was a Hackaday Prize Winner: . Another was the . However, Kari recommended Amitabh Shrivastava’s (). Some search terms for getting started with soft robotics: “DIY Jamming gripper”, “Positive pressure gripper”, and “bendy straw robot joints”. (That last one leads you to the delightful video .) conductive dye for making sensors out of found objects. (.) Simulation of Soft Bodies in Real World Applications (for squish and stretch) include , , and . An incomplete list of power systems people have used for generating soft robotic motion: Pneumatic - air and vacuum Hydraulic - using liquid Electrical - using currents Thermal - using temperatures Cable control - using motor control Magnetic - using magnets Chemical - using reactions Photonic - using light Biological - using living cells Hybrid systems - multiple sources in tandem An incomplete list of things people have used to make soft robots: Fabric Silicone or other rubbers Flexible plastic Plastic films Metallic films Paper Carbon fiber Silly Putty Shape-changing alloys Electroactive polymers Liquid metals Gelatin or Gluten Cell tissue /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/26955900

449: Soldering the Ukulele 05/11/2023

449: Soldering the Ukulele Chris and Elecia talk about internetting your thing, motivating yourself with cheese, a pile of scrabble letters, an electric ouija board, and a supervillain origin story. Elecia will be on a Memfault Panel on June 1, 2023: Elecia was on Alpenglow’s Industries Solder Sesh #60 with Carrie Sundra. See the highlights (or the whole thing) on . Chris has been working on building a . The conversation about uninteresting projects reminded Elecia of one of her favorite blog posts: Classpert will be offering a self-paced version of Elecia’s Making Embedded Systems course. Sign up on to be notified about the details. The will have the first looks of the second edition of Making Embedded Systems. The full book should be out in the fall. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/26816904

448: Little Squiggles All Around 04/27/2023

448: Little Squiggles All Around Carl Bugeja makes actuators out of PCBs, puts them to work flapping origami bird wings (or moving robot rovers), and takes videos of the whole process. Oh, and get this, self-soldering circuits. First, origami: . Your source for the PCB actuators: is filled with hardware, software, successes, and misses. Check out his tiny and the . His projects are open source so you can find the information on Carl has a site () and shows his projects on Instagram Elecia worked on a . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/26677665

447: All Sorts of Weird Problems 04/13/2023

447: All Sorts of Weird Problems We spoke with Chris Gammell about IoT, podcasting, relaxing, and learning. Chris works at . They have a that talks about reference designs, Zephyr RTOS, and making products. We talked about ESP chips which are made by . The line is RISC-V. (CoAP) Some YouTube channels we discussed: : explaining stuff , especially the recent : Soothing woodworking : music theory Shawn Hymel on Digikey’s channel explaining continuous integration and delivery: Want to know more about self-paced Making Embedded Systems? Want to learn electronics? Check out Chris Gammell’s . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/26537778

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