Antoine van Gelder spoke to us about making digital musical instruments, USB, and FPGAs. Antoine works for Great Scott Gadgets, specifically on the Cynthion USB protocol analysis tool that can be used in conjunction with Python and GSG’s FaceDancer to act as a new USB device. While bonding over MurderBot Diaries was a given, Antoine also mentioned …

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 Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI which you can read in its pre-book form here: https://moralcodes.pubpub.org/ Alan’s day job is as a Professor of…

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 Creating Chaos and Hard Faults talk and slides. STM32 Application Note AN4989 microcontroller debug toolbox includes semi…

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: The Nuts and Bolts of Quantum Computing. If you want to make your own quantum circuit simulator, it only takes 27 lines of Python: A Quantum Circ…

Professor Colleen Lewis joined us to talk teaching pointers with stuffies, explaining inheritance through tigers, and computer science pedagogy. Check out her YouTube channel to view her videos explaining CS concepts with physical models. These are also collected on her website: Physical Models of Java. If you are an instructor (or thinking about t…

Chris and Elecia talk about their current adventures in conference talks, play dates, and skunks. Elecia’s talks are available on YouTube: Creating Chaos and Hard Faults: An introduction to hard fault handlings, stack overflows, and debugging hard bugs Introduction to Embedded Systems (O'Reilly Expert Webinar): An introductions to… well, embedded s…

Jerry Twomey spoke with us about his new O’Reilly book Applied Embedded Electronics which covers embedded topics such as EMI, signal processing, control systems and non-ideal components. Jerry is also the principal engineer at Effective Electrons. His articles are linked from there and you can contact him via the site. Here is a 30-day trial for th…

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 Practical Zephyr blog series Nordic’s Developer Academy Zephyr’s Discord server Zephyr’s YouTube channel (@ZephyrProject), sorted by views Macrobatics term is from Zephyr D…

Jan Rychter joined us to talk about building a company, electronic components, and software design. Jan is the founder and engineer at PartsBox.com. If you are interested in the meta-analysis of the data, check out his article on the Top Ten Hobby Parts and the Electronic Component Database, You can find out more about Jan through his website(jan.r…

Kwabena Agyeman joined Chris and Elecia to talk about optimization, cameras, machine learning, and vision systems. Kwabena is the head of OpenMV (openmv.io), 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 reposito…

Lee Wilkins joined Chris and Elecia to talk about The Open Source Hardware Association, the Open Hardware Summit, and zine culture. The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) provides certification and support for creating open source hardware. The Open Hardware Summit is happening May 3-4, 2024. It is in Montreal, Canada. It also has many online…

Chris and Elecia talk about the Embedded Online Conference, their experience learning Zephyr, and some listener questions. Elecia will be presenting on Creating Chaos and Hard Faults at the Embedded Online Conference, Apr 29 - May 3, 2024. Some other talks that look interesting: The Power of a Look-up Table by Nathan Jones Zephyr Tools To Debug Har…

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 Rule 110 (Wikipedia) which can be implemented with logic gates (AND, OR, NOT). These logic gates can be implemented a…

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 Understanding Checksums and Cyclic Redundancy Checks. He’s better known for Better Embedded System S…

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 Amazon, ebooks.com, Google Play and where you get your ebooks. The paper copy will be out in about two weeks, you can preorder now. …

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 Electrosmith website, specifically the Daisy Seed. The electro-smith …

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 attending or presenting. Early bird tickets are available for a limited time! Teardown is put on by Crow…

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: Embedded Online, April 29-May 4, virtual (Elecia will be speaking) Open Hardware Summit in May 3-4, Montreal, Canada Embedded…

Anders Nielsen joined us to talk about why the 6502 is the best processor. Anders also sells 65uino kits on his store: imania.dk. For more explanation of what they are, how they work, attaching peripherals, and programming in assembly, look at Anders’ YouTube channel @AndersNielsenAA, read his blog on abnielsen.com, or read about it on its Hackaday…

Chris and Elecia talk about cars, fleeting moments of fame, their year, and the sorry state of tools in the embedded space. Chris became internet famous for asking a car dealership’s chatbot (powered by ChatGPT) to generate Python code for fluid dynamics problems. After this, someone else asked the chatbot to sell a car for $1. Pass the Bricks is a…

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! Pybricks is a MicroPython based coding environment that works across all Lego PoweredUp hubs and on the latest Mindstorms elements. The cr…

Yanina Bellini Saibene joined us to discuss teaching, localization, barriers to learning coding, and global communities. Yani works on Teach Tech Together (https://teachtogether.tech/) 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 The Carpentries which teaches co…

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 Making Embedded Systems is finished! (Except for a couple months of tech reviews, updating, copyediting, and drawings.) It will be out in March. All of the back issues of …

Kevin Lannen is an embedded systems engineer making powered wheelchairs safer. This sounded interesting to us. Kevin works at LUCI Mobility (luci.com). Check out their tear jerker introduction video as well as technical description of over-the-air update concerns on smart wheelchairs. We also talked about the app that goes with the system: LUCI Vie…

Marian Petre spoke to us about her research on how to make software developers better at developing software. Marian is an Emeritus Professor of the School of Computing & Communications at the Open University in the United Kingdom. She also has a Wikipedia page. The short version of How Expert Programmers Think About Errors is on the NeverWorkInThe…

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 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 …

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 Cost of Change, part of NeverWorkInTheory which summarizes scientific literature about software development. Greg is the founder of Software…

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 Making Makers: Kids, Tools, and the Future of In…

Trond Snekvik spoke with us about developing VSCode extensions and Bluetooth meshes. Trond is a Staff Software Engineer at Nordic Semiconductor. Nordic’s Visual Studio Code Extensions include device tree and kconfig support for the Zephyr project as well as tools for nRF Connect. Trond’s github page: github.com/trond-snekvik In 329: At Least 32-Bit…

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 (Mythbusters episode in which Jamie says “Quack, damn you!”) Elecia continues to work on Mak…

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 micropython.org. Wait, no, one step back. Before listening to the show, you probably should read the Wikipedia MicroPython entry because we kind of start in…

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 natalie-friedman.com and you can find her papers in the research section. She has an Instagram account: @natalie.victoria.f AIForGood shows several robots dressed in home, business and social a…

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 Tiny Tapeout, a way to possibly get your design on to real silicon. The digital design guide is a great way to start looking at how chips work. If you aren’t quite ready…

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 Crowd Supply’s Teardown 2023 June 23-24 in Portla…

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 WizardZines.com. If you want samples, check out the comics section. Also, the experiments …

Phillip Johnston of Embedded Artistry, Tyler Hoffman of Memfault, 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 Embedded YouTube channel or directly from memfault (…

Kari Love joined us to talk about soft robotics, robots in religion, and squishiness. Kari co-authored Soft Robotics: A DIY Introduction to Squishy, Stretchy, and Flexible Robots. Her website is karimakes.com. She was previously on Embedded 189: The Squishiness Factor One of the pneumatic drives that we mentioned was a Hackaday Prize Winner: FlowIO…

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: From Concept to Launch: What It Takes to Build and Ship a New Device Elecia was on Alpenglow’s Industries Solder Sesh #60 with…

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: flap actuators video. Your source for the PCB actuators: flexar.io Carl’s YouTube channel is filled with hardware, software, successes, and…

We spoke with Chris Gammell about IoT, podcasting, relaxing, and learning. Chris works at Golioth.io. They have a neat blog that talks about reference designs, Zephyr RTOS, and making products. We talked about ESP chips which are made by Espressif. The ESP32 line is RISC-V. Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) Some YouTube channels we discussed:…

Chris and Elecia talk about ChatGPT, conferences, online compilers, and Ardupilot. Compiler Explorer: godbolt.org (and function pointer example) Jupyter Notebooks with colab: colab.research.google.com/ (and one of Elecia’s origami pattern generator collabs) Sign up for the Embedded newsletter! Support us on Patreon. Conferences and happenings: Hack…

We spoke with Charlyn Gonda about making things glow, dealing with imposter syndrome, and using origami. Charlyn’s website is charlyn.codes, the projects we talked about are documented there. You can find her on Instagram (@chardane) and Mastodon (https://leds.social/@charlyn). Adafruit came up a lot in this episode. NeoPixel Jewel DotStar High Den…

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 Clearance and Tolerance 3D Printer Gauge. The book we mentioned was Hot Seat by Dan Shapiro (Embedded 125: I Like Cheat Codes). Peter on Github Transcript Please…

Chris and Elecia talk about photons, comets, patterns, other flying objects, and cameras. Chris uses PixInsight 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 n…

Adafruit’s Liz Clark (BlitzCityDIY) spoke with us about MIDI, music, and tutorials. Liz’s Adafruit Tutorials include MIDI for Makers CircuitPython Trombone Champ Controller Mini LED Matrix Audio Visualizer CircuitPython MIDI to CV Skull Liz sometimes hosts the Adafruit Show and Tell which is Wednesdays 7:30pm ET. Speaking of Adafruit videos, we men…

Chris and Elecia talk with Mark Smith (aka SmittyHalibut and N6MTS) about amateur radio, interconnect standards, and podcasting. Mark is a host of the Ham Radio Workbench podcast. His company is Halibut Electronics (electronics.halibut.com). He’s been working on Open Headset Interconnect Standard and Satellite Optimized Amateur Radio (SOAR). Find M…

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: https://agileembeddedpodcast.com/ Jeff’s website is jeffgable.com and Luca’s is luca…

Chris and Elecia talk about house maintenance, blinking LEDs, paper engineering and more. Cutting Mobius Strips Video: Tadashi Tokieda cuts various combinations of loops and Mobius loops - with surprising results. festi.info/boxes.py generates boxes for laser cutting (or other SVG consuming device). Boxes.py is a python module that lets you program…

We talked with John Taylor about his book, how to handle data, and the open/closed principle of software development. John’s book is Patterns in the Machine. It was mentioned on Embedded Artistry and is part of their Design for Change course. John also has a blog (PatternsInTheMachine.net) and a github repo that is a companion to his book, showing …

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 AI at the Edge: Solving Real-World Problems with Embedded Machine Learning from O’Reilly Media. He is also the Head of Machine Learning at Edge Impulse, which makes machine learning on embedd…