Embedded

Mario Marchese (aka Mario the Maker Magician) spoke with us about robots performing magic, humans performing magic, and writing a book about making magic. We also covered art, making, learning, Sesame Street, performance, design, humor, Piff the Magic Dragon [sic], magic secrets, and gracefully handling technological failure. You can find Mario on: His website mariothemagician.com YouTube (MariotheMagicianNYC) Instagram (mariothemagician) Twitter (@mariomagician) Facebook (mariothemagician).  His book is The Maker Magician's Handbook: A Beginner's Guide to Magic + Making. We talked about Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, 19th century French watchmaker, magician and illusionist, and the amazing Aldo Colombini.

Leah Buechley spoke with us about the intersection of computer science and art. She is an associate professor in the computer science department of the University of New Mexico where she directs the Hand and Machine research group. Her website is leahbuechley.com, her research group website is handandmachine.cs.unm.edu. You can find her on Twitter at @leahbuechley. She wrote the book Textile Messages: Dispatches From the World of E-Textiles and Education and developed the LilyPad Arduino for wearable electronics. We talked about Chibitronics, paper circuits, developed by Jie Qi  (who was on Embedded 277: The Sport of Kings talking about patents as well as Chibitronics) We talked about Nettrice Gaskins’ Techno-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation: Culturally Relevant Making Inside and Outside of the Classroom An example of a tiny stepper motor on eBay Introduction to VQGAN + CLIP to generate art

Chris (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) discuss Blender, Make, TCP/IP, and listener questions (mostly about the podcast itself). Lightweight IP: an open source TCP/IP stack for embedded systems Look for Lazy Tutorials for Blender in Ian Hubert’s YouTube Channel or if you want something a little simpler, try the Blender Beginner Tutorial (donut!). Ukulele and acoustic guitar kits are at StewMac.com Book with sponge sneeze information: Brilliant Abyss by Helen Scales This episode was sponsored by InspectAR. If you design, debug, or just need to use PCBs, InspectAR can give you superpowers. It’s an augmented reality app and platform that allows you to visualize every layer, every connection, every aspect of your actual physical board in real time InspectAR is free for trial and home use. With a subscription you get powerful collaboration and debugging features including annotating the AR view, sharing comments, setting up test and calibration procedures. Check it out!  

Adelle Lin (@Adellelin) spoke with us about wearables, art, playfulness, and getting together in virtual reality. Adelle’s website is touchtech.io. For some VR get togethers, Adelle recommends AltSpace (altvr.com) and Mozilla Hubs (hubs.mozilla.com). Some other remote get togethers: Virtual Burning Man (August 29 - September 7, 2021) A. Maze Conference (July 21-24, 2021, remote) We mentioned the Nautilus jigsaw puzzle from Nervous Systems but actually have the smaller Ammonite one.

Tom Anderson (@tomacorp) joined us to talk about floating pins, ADCs, and teaching and learning things. Tom mentioned Horowitz and Hill’s Art of Electronics and the vintage books on TubeBooks.org. Tom wrote about  JFETs and vacuum tubes and Power Supply Filter Design for PCBs. He recommended the TI app note on floating inputs and a power supply book: Modern DC-to-DC Switchmode Power Converter Circuits. You can fine more of Tom’s writing on Medium and the Tempo Automation blog. Other books: Practical Handbook of Curve Design and Generation and CRC Standard Curves and Surfaces Analog Integrated Circuit Design by Johns and Martin Analog Circuit Design by Jim Williams Other Vintage Books: Abramowitz and Stegun Handbook of Mathematical Functions (Applied mathematics) Typical Oscilloscope Circuitry by Tektronix Radiotron Designer's Handbook (TubeBooks.org) Dynamical Analogies (TubeBooks.org)

Alan Cohen (@proto2product) wrote a great book about taking an idea and making it into a product. We spoke with him about the development process and the eleven deadly sins of product development. We did not talk about ultra-precise death rays. Books we discussed: Alan’s Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market Elecia’s Making Embedded Systems The Mythical Man-Month, Anniversary Edition: Essays On Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.   The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change by Camille Fournier Alan mentioned writing software graphically with Enterprise Architect

The podcast discusses topics such as visualizing learning, sketchnotes, finding a satisfying job, sketch noting approaches, using puzzles for visual storytelling, upcoming IoT event, low code tools for machine learning, representation in engineering.

On this quick bonus episode, Elecia and Christopher chat about their various recent projects, some of which have just been released into the wild. Christopher’s band 12AX7 just launched their album Kickstarter, which was selected as one of Kickstarter’s "Projects We Love”. Check it out here if you are interested in finding out more or backing it. It’ll run through July 16th at 10am Pacific Time. Elecia’s Embedded Online Conference talk on map files will be posted publicly on June 22nd, so be on the lookout for that. In the meantime, the slides and examples are available here at embedded.fm/blog/MapFiles (and on Github) If you’d like other Embedded merchandise such as a mug (many different options), Memory Map Land mousepad (or different poster), we have a Zazzle store. Her lightning talk about origami, Snails, Paper, and Programming: A Computational Approach to Mollusc Morphology in Origami, is already on Youtube and you can watch it now! Elecia’s origami github can be found here. Finally if you are interested in having your cat or cats appear in 12AX7’s upcoming music video, send Dropbox/Google Drive/iCloud/whatever links to your clips, along with how you’d like to be credited, to show@embedded.fm. Use the subject line “Cats for 12AX7”.

Erin Kennedy (@RobotGrrl) spoke with us about learning new things, nice robots at the beach, lighting up fog voxels, and being part of the maker community. Erin’s Robot Missions (@RobotMissions) was founded to develop robots to clean shorelines of plastic. Her personal website is robotgrrl.xyz (check out the project showcase).  Erin also worked on a Hackaday Dream Team that worked on innovations to reduce the environmental impact of lost or abandoned fishing equipment.

From his view in retirement, David Comer spoke with us about continuing to learn, staying engaged in an engineering career, and how the Galileo memory module worked.