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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).

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

446: World's Best PB&J 03/30/2023

446: World's Best PB&J Chris and Elecia talk about ChatGPT, conferences, online compilers, and Ardupilot. Compiler Explorer: (and ) Jupyter Notebooks with colab: (and one of ) Sign up for the ! Support us on . Conferences and happenings: : late April, online : end of April in NYC, NY : late June in Portland, OR : July in San Francisco, CA October 2024, Austin, TX /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/26398212

445: I Do Not Like Blinking 03/16/2023

445: I Do Not Like Blinking We spoke with Charlyn Gonda about making things glow, dealing with imposter syndrome, and using origami. Charlyn’s website is , the projects we talked about are documented there. You can find her on Instagram () and Mastodon (). came up a lot in this episode. and Jason Koon’s Fibonacci displays are mesmerizing. Check them out on Jason’s website or acquire them on . It can be controlled with the . in origami /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/26254692

444: It Is If You Do It Wrong 03/03/2023

444: It Is If You Do It Wrong Peter Griffin spoke with us about operant boxes, juggling many projects, getting into embedded systems, and bottle rockets. When we talked about 3D printing, Peter mentioned the Maker Muse . The book we mentioned was by Dan Shapiro (). Please note that Peter Griffin spoke with Embedded.fm as an individual and not as representative of Slalom Consulting or any other organization. All views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are his own and not necessarily those of his employer or any other organization. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/26112120

443: Vexing Machines 02/17/2023

443: Vexing Machines Chris and Elecia talk about photons, comets, patterns, other flying objects, and cameras. Chris uses for processing and has an Ioptron Sky Tracker. Apologies to our southern hemisphere listeners because Polaris is not visible there. There are (of course) other ways to align and even in the northern hemisphere more modern trackers don’t necessarily need Polaris. : who cares what it does it has an awesome name. Though it does what it says (on photos, no real stars were harmed in the making of this podcast). . Elecia’s . Also, is an excellent article about Miura-ori and other rigidly foldable patterns. You can see her . (You can see some of Chris’ photos on .) /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/25958214

442: I Do Like Musical Robots 02/03/2023

442: I Do Like Musical Robots Adafruit’s Liz Clark (BlitzCityDIY) spoke with us about MIDI, music, and tutorials. include Liz sometimes hosts the which is Wednesdays 7:30pm ET. Speaking of Adafruit videos, we mentioned the . Liz’s channel shows her building instruments including her mentioned Melody Maker. She also has many and github repositories under Christopher notes that there are browser extensions that allow a person to stop auto-playing GIFs. is a Eurorack simulator for synthesizer modules. Sadly, has shut down. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/25815837

441: Ear Goobers 01/20/2023

441: Ear Goobers Chris and Elecia talk with Mark Smith (aka SmittyHalibut and N6MTS) about amateur radio, interconnect standards, and podcasting. Mark is a host of the podcast. His company is Halibut Electronics (). He’s been working on Open Headset Interconnect Standard and . Find Mark as SmittyHalibut on , , and . Chris talked about getting into WSPR in but we first talked about it in Chris has spec’d out his intended project at , the . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/25664136

440: Condemned to Being Perfect 01/13/2023

440: Condemned to Being Perfect Chris and Elecia talk to Jeff Gable and Luca Ingianni of the Agile Embedded podcast, discussing the definition of Agile, agreeing about some things, and disagreeing about others. Agile Embedded can be found in your usual podcast locations or get it from the source: Jeff’s website is and Luca’s is /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/25593609

439: Ditches and Psychology 01/06/2023

439: Ditches and Psychology Chris and Elecia talk about house maintenance, blinking LEDs, paper engineering and more. Cutting Mobius Strips Video: generates boxes for laser cutting (or other SVG consuming device). is a python module that lets you programmatically generate the SVGs. () Amanda Ghassaei’s is a MIDI instrument using this . We also talked about the . Elecia is taking . Chris is taking songwriting courses from . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/25520409

438: There Is Nothing That Is True 12/15/2022

438: There Is Nothing That Is True We talked with John Taylor about his book, how to handle data, and the open/closed principle of software development. John’s book is . It was mentioned on and is part of their Design for Change course. John also has a blog () and a that is a companion to his book, showing the PIM framework. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/25344000

437: Chirping With the Experts 12/08/2022

437: Chirping With the Experts Daniel Situnayake joined us to talk about AI, embedded systems, his new book on the previously mentioned topics, and writing technical books. Daniel’s book is from O’Reilly Media. He is also the Head of Machine Learning at , which makes machine learning on embedded devices simpler. They have a which aims to keep our robot overlords from being too evil. We mentioned as an amusing D&D style adventure with an AI. We also talked about . Daniel was previously on the show, , shortly after his first book came out: /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/25272564

436: 20 GOTO 10 12/02/2022

436: 20 GOTO 10 Chris Svec joined us to talk about kids programming and how well the Joel Test has held up. Svec’s son (“The Kid”) developed an interest in programming by playing games. Most of his programming desires are around building games of his own. Any time we talk about kids and programming, comes up. It really is that neat and is The Kid approved. Some resources to get you started (actually, getting started is easy, you may want a book to do more than the basics): by Jason Rukman by Al Sweigart (!) had two courses The Kid (and Svec) took. Both are free on YouTube: Finally, in a shockingly unrelated twist, we talked about the for determining the health of a software development organization. No determination was made on how good The Kid finds his current position. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/25194921

435: Sad Lack of Gnomes 11/25/2022

435: Sad Lack of Gnomes Chris and Elecia take an in-studio vacation, chatting about what they’ve been doing. A few technical topics came up, entirely unintentionally. lets you try out some code bases /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/25127436

359: You Can Never Have Too Many Socks (Repeat) 11/18/2022

359: You Can Never Have Too Many Socks (Repeat) Thea Flowers creates open source and open hardware craft synthesizers that use Circuit Python for customization. She also writes about the internals of the SAMD21. Thea’s synthesizer modules are found at , including and the . It is all open source hardware so you can find code and schematics on Thea’s github site: Thea’s site is . You can find her there with deeply technical and detailed posts such as , , and . She’s on Twitter as . For more information about the Eurorack, listen to with Leonardo Laguna Ruiz of Vult. /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/25056681

434: I Love It, It’s Exhausting 11/11/2022

434: I Love It, It’s Exhausting Sarah Withee spoke with us about using an artificial pancreas, learning many programming languages, and FIRST robotics. More about the Open Artificial Pancreas System can be found at or in . Some other pieces we talked about include: (some additional ) (additional ) is the communication method for some insulin pumps is a Reilly Link compatible device to run OpenAPS To get involved with FIRST robotics, the place to start is Sarah’s website is . Her programming language comparison tool is Code Thesaurus: If you want to see small algorithms written in different languages, check out /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/24974877

433: Getting Mad About Capes 11/03/2022

433: Getting Mad About Capes Michael Gielda spoke with us about Renode, an open source embedded systems simulator. It also simulates large distributed systems and network communications. Check out and the boards supported by Renode and Zephyr on . Elecia played with the . Michael is the co-founder of . The is a commercial RISC-V core with WiFi and BLE. We also mentioned on the show. (And we had its creator Uri Shaked as a guest on episode /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/24899406

432: Robot Bechdel Test 10/27/2022

432: Robot Bechdel Test Martha Wells is a science fiction and fantasy author. She spoke with us about her books (including Murderbot Diaries!), writing, and creating fantastical worlds. Marth () has won Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards for her work. We mostly talked about the and the . Oh, and the Star Wars tie-in about Leia, . And is coming out next year, a brand new world. Heck, just look at . Martha also has a and a . As often happens when book dragons get together, we talked about our hoards. Some books and authors that came up: by by by () () () by (we didn’t like the new covers as much as the old but the books are great either way) is a fantastic site with lots of free fiction. Murderbot started there and has a few short stories that are otherwise hard to find. There is a rare and sold out Subterranean Press edition of the Murderbot Diaries with illustrations from Tommy Arnold. . /episode/index/show/makingembeddedsystems/id/24825897

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