Embedded podcast

#Gadgets #Science #Elecia White #Logical Elegance #Tech #Natural Sciences #Machine Learning

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Embedded is the show for people who love gadgets. Making them, breaking them, and everything in between. Weekly interviews with engineers, educators, and enthusiasts. Find the show, blog, and more at embedded.fm.

346 episodes

Embedded

20,496 subscribers

updated about 20 hours ago

Series home•Feed

346 episodes

#Gadgets #Science #Elecia White #Logical Elegance #Tech #Natural Sciences #Machine Learning

All episodes

Embedded

1
500: Nerding Out About the Ducks 1:08:02

20 hours ago1:08:02

1:08:02

Komathi Sundaram spoke with us about her enthusiasm for tests and test automation. We talked about the different joys of testing vs. development, setting up CI servers, and different kinds of tests including unit, hardware-in-the-loop, and simulation. It may sound dry but we had a lot of fun. Komathi’s site is TheKomSea.com which hosts her blog as well as contact info. She will be speaking on automated hardware in the loop test processes at the Embedded Online Conference . Transcript…

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499: This Is Your Problem 50:51

16 days ago50:51

50:51

We spoke with Janet Hansen about the world of professional costumery (with electronics) and becoming an artist. Janet’s business is Enlighted where you can find custom illuminated clothing as well as Janet’s ready-made art. Janet’s personal site is janethansen.com which is more focused on her artistic pursuits. Janet mentioned Seeed’s MSGEQ7 . We talked about Janet’s light up pillow with Debra Ansell on 494: All Tech Is Wearable — Embedded . Transcript…

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498: To Consume Stickers 1:06:34

29 days ago1:06:34

1:06:34

At the end of this week’s show, Elecia reads a Winnie the Pooh poem as Cookie Monster death metal. Before that, Chris and Elecia chat about mental health, journaling, personal projects, and listener questions. Please sign up for the Nordic Giveaway ! You can also sign up for the Embedded newsletter . Maybe now with job postings? Elecia’s journaling notebook is this one on JetPens (which is where she gets her nice pens and some of her stickers and washi tape). From discussing some listener messages, we mentioned: Matt Keeter’s talk on debuggability in production where you don’t have access to the system that is faulting ( video and slides ) Letter boards (in the Adirondacks), see those in action here Wokwi simulator is a great place to get more embedded experience without buying all the kits. Christopher has said that there will not, definitely not, under any circumstances, be a whole death metal album of Winnie the Pooh poems. Elecia is practicing anyway. Transcript…

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497: Everyone Likes Tiny 1:24:18

6 weeks ago1:24:18

1:24:18

OpenMV has a new Kickstarter so CEO Kwabena Agyeman chatted with us about more powerful (and smaller!) programmable cameras. See OpenMV ’s site for their existing cameras. See their (already funded!) kickstarter page for the super powerful N6 and the ridiculously small AE3. Note that OpenMV still is committed to open source. See their github if you want to know more. Edge AI is the idea of putting intelligence in the devices (instead of in the cloud). There is an advocacy and education foundation called Edge AI Foundation . This organization was formerly the TinyML Foundation. Edge Impulse and Roboflow are companies that aid in creating and training AI models that can be put on devices. ARM talks about their Ethos-U55 NPU (and how to write software for it ). Transcript…

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496: Beauty, Elegance, Consistency 59:56

8 weeks ago59:56

59:56

Professor Shimon Schocken spoke with us about teaching computer science from NAND logic gates to arithmetic units, micro assembly, virtual machines, compilers, operating systems, and the Tetris games. We also talk about good design, good interfaces, and good tests. Shimon’s book is Elements of Computing Systems and the website with the course lecture notes, slides, videos, simulators, and everything you need is nand2tetris.org . Shimon mentioned his work with teaching math, that is www.matific.com . You can find out more about Shimon’s other projects on his site shimonschocken.com (including his fascinating TED talk: The self-organizing computer course ). Shimon’s co-author is Noam Nisan who also wrote about understanding logic systems (look, anytime we can bring up Gödel's incompleteness theorems , we will). We talked about Tim Bell’s CS Unplugged, teaching computer science concepts without a computer. It comes in Classic and Modern flavors. Transcript…

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495: Shortcut the Difficulties of Reality 1:01:56

10 weeks ago1:01:56

1:01:56

Professor Cindy Harnett spoke to us about new and different sensors and actuators, primarily designed for soft robotics and fabricated with relatively low cost materials. Cindy is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Louisville where she runs the Harnett Lab . The papers we discussed are here . You can find a longer list of Cindy’s papers on Google Scholar . The video of the SESAME actuator is especially interesting. Transcript…

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1
494: All Tech Is Wearable 1:15:56

12 weeks ago1:15:56

1:15:56

Debra Ansell joined us to talk about finding friends and exchanging neat gifts, accidentally tricking people into making unmanufacutable boards, and happy, blinking lights. Debra is usually known by the moniker GeekMomProjects (also her website is geekmomprojects.com ). She has been writing for Make Magazine . Debra won one of the SuperCon badge add-on awards so her poseable Bendy SAO will be available at SuperCon Europe. Some other things we mentioned: Seeed Studio XIAO board Adafruit QT Py Debra’s Remoticon talk about PCB structures Martin Oehler is Maketvee on YouTube and Mastodon Janet Hansen is on Mastodon and has an incredible Enlightened Designs wearables website. #makergiftexchange on your favorite social media platform And some upcoming events that promise to have lots of LEDs: Teardown 2025 | Crowd Supply (Jun ‘25) Portland Winter Light Festival (Feb ‘25) Transcript…

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493: Put the Peeps in the Chili Pot 1:20:33

14 weeks ago1:20:33

1:20:33

Elecia and Chris talk with each other about the state of Chris’ mind, what makes an embedded developer stand out, “LEGO block” based design, unit tests, and astronomy. Whew! Elecia was recently on the Changelog podcast, talking about the world of embedded systems . Chris has been working with Micropython (we talked with Damien George about Micropython on episode 456 ). He’s using a Pyboard to start, but is looking to move on to this board from Sparkfun. Wikipedia has a nice reference on what the pulse-per-second signal is all about . Elecia talked about her experience using CFFI to drive unit tests. She also talked about some facts from Information is Beautiful . Chris’ telescope is the ZWO Seestar S50 . There’s also a smaller Seestar S30 now which has a wider field-of-view. Title reference (Chris and Elecia both thoroughly enjoyed The Good Place, the TV show this is taken from.) Transcript…

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492: Octopus Army 1:09:50

18 weeks ago1:09:50

1:09:50

Nathan Jones chatted with us about his proposal for a computer architecture book based on a 4-bit computer. Nathan found the 4-bit computer in the Hackaday SuperCon 2022 badge and was amazed by some of the ideas that folks implemented (see SuperCon Badge Hacking Awards Ceremony ). Nathan spoke at Hackaday SuperCon 2023 on the processor architecture , highlighting some of his ideas for a book. If you’d like to try your hand at the badge, find it on Nathan’s Voja4 Tindie page . Nathan also spoke recently at the Embedded Online Conference ( Building a Simple CLI , OOP in C , and The Power of a Look-up Table ) and the Teardown Conference ( Making Your Own MCU Boards and Building a Simple CLI ). If you have an idea you’d like to propose, check out O’Reilly’s proposal for a book or class . While you may not go with them, the proposal is a good place to get all of your ideas down. We mentioned a few other computer architecture books as competitors for Nathan’s proposed book: Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach by John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson Introduction to Computing Systems: From bits & gates to C & beyond by Yale N. Patt and Sanjay J. Patel The Elements of Computing Systems , by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken (MIT Press) with supporting material and simulator on nand2tetris . Nathan also did a survey of the Embedded Slack community. You can gain access by becoming a Patreon or Kofi supporter . Transcript…

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1
491: Oscillators Oscillating Other Oscillators 1:06:50

20 weeks ago1:06:50

1:06:50

Chris and Elecia spoke with Kirk Pearson about running audio-electronic-art workshops, interesting sounds, and their book Make: Electronic Music from Scratch: A Beginner's Guide to Homegrown Audio Gizmos. Find the book and a whole kit of parts on the Dogbotic Merch page . A few clicks from there you can find the Workshop List (don’t forget the coupon in the show audio). We also mentioned The Thing ( a sneaky listening device ), Elliot Williams’ writing on CMOS synthesizers ( a series called Logic-Noise ) and the videos of Sebastian Tomczak (YouTube: littlescalemusic ). Transcript…

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490: Wait Until Physics Has Happened 1:05:37

22 weeks ago1:05:37

1:05:37

Nikolaus Correll spoke with us about robots, teaching robotics, and writing books about robots. Nikolaus is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado, see his lab website (or his Wikipedia page ). We discussed Nikolaus’ Introduction to Robotics with Webots Specialization Coursera course (or YouTube Playlist ). These go along with his Introduction to Autonomous Robots (which can be compiled from source from github ). Masters of Computer Science online via University of Colorado and Georgia Tech . While the Arcbotics’ Sparki is no longer in production, Nikolaus also mentioned the Amazon Racer . Transcript…

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489: Constructive Cat 1:01:50

24 weeks ago1:01:50

1:01:50

Chris and Elecia discuss her origami art show, ponder PRs for solo developers, attempt to explain GDB debugging, and make a to-do list for getting rid of Kanga. Elecia is having an Origami Octopus Garden art show at the Aptos Public Library for the month of November, 2024. The postcard advertisement is below. There are more pictures on her Instagram ( @elecia_white ). The python tessellation generator is here . Memfault’s Interrupt Debugging Firmware with GDB post is a much more considered explanation of GDB and includes pointers to other resources (including using Python with GDB). Transcript…

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1
488: Two Slices of Complimentary Bread 1:10:20

26 weeks ago1:10:20

1:10:20

Andrienne 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 ebook at manning.com or a paper copy later in the year ( Amazon link ). Check out the example Team Working Agreemen t from Appendix A. Adrienne’s personal website is adrienne.io . Transcript…

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1
487: Focus on Fizzing 1:05:28

28 weeks ago1:05:28

1:05:28

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 Nand2Tetris (co-author of Elements of The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles ). Look for that later in the year. Elecia is playing with Webots , 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, selecting between many different robots . Chris talked about processing his photos of Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) using PixInsight and Siril . Then we talked about grad school (including Georgia Tech’s reasonably affordable CS Master’s Degree ). Tony sent in this insect detector: Mothbox . If you want links like this or de facto letters to the editor, please sign up for the Embedded.fm newsletter . Transcript…

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1
486: A Nice Rainbow Dream 54:42

30 weeks ago54:42